Dead Cert

CHAPTER NINE

The bar was covered with a big sheet of gleaming copper. The beer handles shone. The glasses sparkled. It was a clean, friendly little room with warm lighting and original oils of fishing villages round the walls.

Kate and I leaned on the bar and discussed sherries with the innkeeper. He was a military-looking man of about fifty with a bristly moustache waxed at the ends. I put him down as a retired sergeant-major. But he knew his stuff, and the sherry he recommended to us was excellent. We were his first customers, and we stood chatting to him. He had the friendly manner of all good innkeepers, but underlying this I saw a definite wariness. It was like the nostril cocked for danger in a springbok; uneasy, even when all appeared safe. But I didn't pay much attention, for his troubles, I thought erroneously, had nothing to do with me.

Another man and a girl came in, and Kate and I turned to take our drinks over to one of the small scattered tables. As we did so she stumbled, knocked her glass against the edge of the bar and broke it. A jagged edge cut her hand, and it began to bleed freely.

The innkeeper called his wife, a thin, small woman with bleached hair. She saw the blood welling out of Kate's hand, and exclaimed with concern, 'Come and put it under the cold tap. That'll stop the bleeding. Mind you don't get it on your nice coat.'

She opened a hatch in the bar to let us through, and led us into her kitchen, which was as spotless as the bar. On a table at one side were slices of bread, butter, cooked meats, and chopped salads. We had interrupted the innkeeper's wife in making sandwiches for the evening's customers. She went across to the sink, turned on the tap, and beckoned to Kate to put her hand in the running water. I stood just inside the kitchen door looking round me.

'I'm so sorry to be giving you all this trouble,' said Kate, as the blood dripped into the sink. 'It really isn't a very bad cut. There just seems to be an awful lot of gore coming out of it.'

'It's no trouble at all, dear,' said the innkeeper's wife. 'I'll find you a bandage.' She opened a dresser drawer to look for one, giving Kate a reassuring smile.

I started to walk over from the doorway to take a closer look at the damage. Instantly there was a deadly menacing snarl, and a black Alsatian dog emerged from a box beside the refrigerator. His yellow eyes were fixed on me, his mouth was slightly open with the top lip drawn back, and the razor-sharp teeth were parted. There was a collar round his neck, but he was not chained up. Another snarl rumbled deep in his throat.

I stood stock still in the centre of the kitchen.

The innkeeper's wife took a heavy stick from beside the dresser and went over to the dog. She seemed flustered.

'Lie down, Prince. Lie down.' She pointed with the stick to the box. The dog, after a second's hesitation, stepped back into it and sat erect, still looking at me with the utmost hostility. I didn't move.

'I'm very sorry, sir. He doesn't like strange men. He's a very good guard dog, you see. He won't hurt you now, not while I'm here.' And she laid the stick on the dresser, and went over to Kate with cotton wool, disinfectant, and a bandage.

I took a step towards Kate. Muscles rippled along the dog's back, but he stayed in his box. I finished the journey to the sink. The bleeding had almost stopped, and, as Kate said, it was not a bad cut. The innkeeper's wife dabbed it with cotton wool soaked in disinfectant, dried it, and wound on a length of white gauze bandage.

I leaned against the draining board, looking at the dog and the heavy stick, and remembering the underlying edginess of the innkeeper. They added up to just one thing.

Protection.

Protection against what? Protection against Protection, said my brain, dutifully, in a refrain. Someone had been trying the Protection racket on mine host. Pay up or we smash up your pub- or you- or your wife. But this particular innkeeper, whether or not I was right about his sergeant-major past, looked tough enough to defy that sort of bullying. The collectors of Protection had been met, or were to be met, by an authentically lethal Alsatian. They were likely to need protection themselves.

The innkeeper put his head round the door.

'All right?' he said.

'It's fine, thank you very much,' said Kate.

'I've been admiring your dog,' I said.

The innkeeper took a step into the room. Prince turned his head away from me for the first time and looked at his master.

'He's a fine fellow,' he agreed.

Suddenly out of nowhere there floated into my mind a peach of an idea. There could not, after all, be too many gangs in Brighton, and I had wondered several times why a taxi line should employ thugs and fight pitched battles. So I said, with a regrettable lack of caution, 'Marconicars.'

The innkeeper's professionally friendly smile vanished, and he suddenly looked at me with appalling, vivid hate. He picked the heavy stick off the dresser and raised it to hit me. The dog was out of his box in one fluid stride, crouching ready to spring, with his ears flat and his teeth bared. I had struck oil with a vengeance.

Kate came to the rescue. She stepped to my side and said, without the slightest trace of alarm, 'For heaven's sake don't hit him too hard because Aunt Deb is expecting us for roast lamb and the odd potato within half an hour or so and she is very strict about us being back on the dot.'

This surprising drivel made the innkeeper hesitate long enough for me to say 'I don't belong to Marconicars. I'm against them. Do be a good chap and put that stick down, and tell Prince his fangs are not required.'

The innkeeper lowered the stick, but he left Prince where he was, on guard four feet in front of me.

Kate said to me, 'Whatever have we walked into?' The bandage was trailing from her hand, and the blood was beginning to ooze through. She wound up the rest of the bandage unconcernedly and tucked in the end.

'Protection, I think?' I said to the innkeeper. 'It was just a wild guess, about the taxis. I'd worked out why you need such an effective guard dog, and I've been thinking about taxi-drivers for days. The two things just clicked, that's all.'

'Some of the Marconicar taxi-drivers beat him up a bit a week ago,' said Kate conversationally to the innkeeper's wife. 'So you can't expect him to be quite sane on the subject.'

The innkeeper gave us both a long look. Then he went to his dog and put his hand round its neck and fondled it under its chin. The wicked yellow eyes closed, the lips relaxed over the sharp teeth, and the dog leaned against his master's leg in devotion. The innkeeper patted its rump, and sent it back to its box.

'A good dog, Prince,' he said, with a touch of irony. 'Well now, we can't leave the bar unattended. Sue, dear, will you look after the customers while I talk to these young people?'

'There's the sandwiches not made yet,' protested Sue.

'I'll do them,' said Kate, cheerfully. 'And let's hope I don't bleed into them too much.' She picked up a knife and began to butter the slices of bread. The innkeeper and his wife looked less able to deal with Kate than with the taxi-drivers: but after hesitating a moment, the wife went out to the bar.

'Now, sir,' said the innkeeper.

I outlined for him the story of Bill's death and my close contact with the taxi-drivers in the horse-box. I said, 'If I can find out who's at the back of Marconicars, I'll probably have the man who arranged Major Davidson's accident.'

'Yes, I see that,' he said. 'I hope you have more luck than I've had. Trying to find out who owns Marconicars is like running head on into a brick wall. Dead end. I'll tell you all I can, though. The more people sniping at them, the sooner they'll be liquidated.' He leaned over and picked up two sandwiches. He gave one to me, and bit into the other.

'Don't forget to leave room for the roast lamb,' said Kate, seeing me eating. She looked at her watch. 'Oh, dear, we'll be terribly late for dinner and I hate to make Aunt Deb cross.' But she went on placidly with her buttering.

'I bought The Blue Duck eighteen months ago,' said the innkeeper. 'When I got out into civvy street.'

'Sergeant-major?' I murmured.

'Regimental,' he said, with justifiable pride. 'Thomkins, my name is. Well, I bought The Blue Duck with my savings and my retirement pay, and dead cheap it was too. Too cheap. I should have known there'd be a catch. We hadn't been here more than three weeks, and taking good money too, when this chap comes in one night and says as bold as brass that if we didn't pay up like the last landlord it'd be just too bad for us. And he picked up six glasses off the bar and smashed them. He said he wanted fifty quid a week. Well, I ask you, fifty quid! No wonder the last landlord wanted to get out. I was told afterwards he'd been trying to sell the place for months, but all the locals found out they would be buying trouble and left it alone for some muggins like me straight out of the army and still wet behind the ears to come along and jump in with my big feet.'

Innkeeper Thomkins chewed on his sandwich while he thought.

'Well, then, I told him to eff off. And he came back the next night with about five others and smashed the place to bits. They knocked me out with one of my own bottles and locked my wife in the heads. Then they smashed all the bottles in the bar and all the glasses, and all the chairs. When I came round I was lying on the floor in the mess, and they were standing over me in a ring. They said that was just a taste. If I didn't cough up the fifty quid a week they'd be back to smash every bottle in the store-room and all the wine in the cellar. After that, they said, it would be my wife.'

His face was furious, as he relived it.

'What happened?' I asked.

'Well, my God, after the Germans and the Japs I wasn't giving in meekly to some little runts at the English seaside. I paid up for a couple of months to give myself a bit of breathing space, but fifty quid takes a bit of finding, on top of overheads and taxes. It's a good little business, see, but at that rate I wasn't going to be left with much more than my pension. It wasn't on.'

'Did you tell the police?' I asked.

A curious look of shame came into Thomkins' face. 'No,' he said hesitantly, 'not then I didn't. I didn't know then where the men had come from, see, and they'd threatened God knows what if I went to the police. Anyway, it's not good army tactics to re-engage an enemy who has defeated you once, unless you've got reinforcements. That's when I started to think about a dog. And I did go to the police later,' he finished, a little defensively.

'Surely the police can close the Marconicar taxi line if it's being used for systematic crime,' I said.

'Well, you'd think so,' he said, 'but it isn't like that. It's a real taxi service, you know. A big one. Most of the drivers are on the up and up and don't even know what's going on. I told a couple of them once that they were a front for the protection racket and they refused to believe me. The crooked ones look so plausible, see? Just like the others. They drive a taxi up to your door at closing time, say, all innocent like, and walk in and ask quietly for the money; and as like as not they'll pick up a customer in the pub and drive him home for the normal fare as respectable as you please.'

'Couldn't you have a policeman in plain clothes sitting at the bar ready to arrest the taxi driver when he came to collect the money?' suggested Kate.

The innkeeper said bitterly, 'It wouldn't do no good, miss. It isn't only that they come in on different days, at different times, so that a copper might have to wait a fortnight to catch one, but there aren't any grounds for arrest. They've got an IOU with my signature on it for fifty pounds, and if there was any trouble with the police, all they'd have to do would be show it, and they couldn't be touched. The police'll help all right if you can give them something they can use in court, but when it's just one man's word against another, they can't do much.'

'A pity you signed the IOU,' I sighed.

'I didn't,' he said, indignantly, 'but it looks like my signature, even to me. I tried to grab it once, but the chap who showed it to me said it wouldn't matter if I tore it up, they'd soon make out another one. They must have had my signature on a letter or something, and copied it. Easy enough to do.'

'You do pay them, then,' I said, rather disappointed.

'Not on your nellie, I don't,' said the innkeeper, his moustache bristling. 'I haven't paid them a sou for a year or more. Not since I got Prince. He chewed four of them up in a month, and that discouraged them, I can tell you. But they're still around all the time. Sue and I daren't go out much, and we always go together and take Prince with us. I've had burglar alarm bells put on all the doors and windows and they go off with an awful clatter if anyone tries to break in while we're out or asleep. It's no way to live, sir. It's getting on Sue's nerves.'

'What a dismal story,' said Kate, licking chutney off her fingers. 'Surely you can't go on like that for ever?'

'Oh, no, miss, we're beating them now. It isn't only us, see, that they got money from. They had a regular round. Ten or eleven pubs like ours – free houses. And a lot of little shops, tobacconists, souvenir shops, that sort of thing, and six or seven little caf‚s. None of the big places. They only pick on businesses run by people who own them, like us. When I cottoned on to that I went round to every place I thought they might be putting the screws on and asked the owners straight out if they were paying protection. It took me weeks, it's such a big area. The ones that were paying were all dead scared, of course, and wouldn't talk, but I knew who they were, just by the way they clammed up. I told them we ought to stop paying and fight. But a lot of them have kids and they wouldn't risk it, and you can't blame them.'

'What did you do?' asked Kate, enthralled.

'I got Prince. A year old, he was then. I'd done a bit of dog handling in the army, and I trained Prince to be a proper fighter.'

'You did, indeed,' I said, looking at the dog who now lay peacefully in his box with his chin on his paws.

'I took him round and showed him to some of the other victims of the protection racket,' Thomkins went on, 'and told them that if they'd get dogs too we'd chase off the taxi-drivers. Some of them didn't realize the taxis were mixed up in it. They were too scared to open their eyes. Anyway, in the end a lot of them did get dogs and I helped to train them, but it's difficult, the dog's only got to obey one master, see, and I had to get them to obey someone else, not me. Still, they weren't too bad. Not as good as Prince, of course.'

'Of course,' said Kate.

The innkeeper looked at her suspiciously, but she was demurely piling sandwiches on to a plate.

'Go on,' I said.

'In the end I got some of the people with children to join in too. They bought Alsatians or bull terriers, and we arranged a system for taking all the kiddies to school by car. Those regular walks to school laid them wide open to trouble, see? I hired a judo expert and his car to do nothing but ferry the children and their mothers about. We all club together to pay him. He's expensive, of course, but nothing approaching the protection money.'

'How splendid,' said Kate warmly.

'We're beating them all right, but it isn't all plain sailing yet. They smashed up the Cockleshell caf‚ a fortnight ago, just round the corner from here. But we've got a system to deal with that, too, now. Several of us went round to help clear up the mess, and we all put something into the hat to pay for new tables and chairs. They've got an Alsatian bitch at that caf‚, and she'd come into season and they'd locked her in a bedroom. I ask you! Dogs are best,' said the innkeeper, seriously.

Kate gave a snort of delight.

'Have the taxi-drivers attacked any of you personally, or has it always been your property?' I asked.

'Apart from being hit on the head with my own bottle, you mean?' The innkeeper pulled up his sleeve and showed us one end of a scar on his forearm. 'That's about seven inches long. Three of them jumped me one evening when I went out to post a letter. It was just after Prince had sent one of their fellows off, and silly like, I went out without him. It was only a step to the pillar box, see? A mistake though. They made a mess of me, but I got a good look at them. They told me I'd get the same again if I went to the police. But I rang the boys in blue right up, and told them the lot. It was a blond young brute who slashed my arm and my evidence got him six months,' he said with satisfaction. 'After that I was careful not to move a step without Prince, and they've never got near enough to have another go at me.'

'How about the other victims?' I asked.

'Same as me,' he said. 'Three or four of them were beaten up and slashed with knives. After I'd got them dogs I persuaded some of them to tell the police. They'd had the worst of it by then, I thought, but they were still scared of giving evidence in court. The gang have never actually killed anyone, as far as I know. It wouldn't be sense, anyhow, would it? A man can't pay up if he's dead.'

'No,' I said, thoughtfully. 'I suppose he can't. They might reckon that one death would bring everyone else to heel, though.'

'You needn't think I haven't that in my mind all the time,' he said sombrely, 'but there's a deal of difference between six months for assault and a life sentence or a hanging, and I expect that's what has stopped 'em. This isn't Chicago after all, though you'd wonder sometimes.'

I said, 'I suppose if they can't get money from their old victims, the gang try protecting people who don't know about your systems and your dogs-'

The innkeeper interrupted, 'We've got a system for that, too. We put an advertisement in the Brighton paper every week telling anyone who has been threatened with Protection to write to a Box number and they will get help. It works a treat, I can tell you.'

Kate and I looked at him with genuine admiration.

'They should have made you a general,' I said, 'not a sergeant-major.'

'I've planned a few incidents in my time,' he said modestly. 'Those young lieutenants in the war, straight out of civvy street and rushed through an officer course, they were glad enough now and then for a suggestion from a regular.' He stirred. 'Well, how about a drink now?'

But Kate and I thanked him and excused ourselves, as it was already eight o'clock. Thomkins and I promised to let each other know how we fared in battle, and we parted on the best of terms. But I didn't attempt to pat Prince.

Aunt Deb sat in the drawing-room tapping her foot. Kate apologized very prettily for our lateness, and Aunt Deb thawed. She and Kate were clearly deeply attached to each other.

During dinner it was to Uncle George that Kate addressed most of the account of our afternoon's adventures. She told him amusingly and lightly about the wandering horse-box and made a rude joke about the Pavilion Plaza's paste sandwiches, which drew a mild reproof from Aunt Deb to the effect that the Pavilion Plaza was the most hospitable of the Brighton hotels. I gave a fleeting thought to the flighty Mavis, whom I had suspected, perhaps unjustly, of dispensing her own brand of hospitality on the upper floors.

'And then we had a drink in a darling little pub called The Blue Duck,' said Kate, leaving out the telephone box and our walk through the Lanes. 'I cut my hand there-' she held it out complete with bandage, '-but not very badly of course, and we went into the kitchen to wash the blood off, and that's what made us late. They had the most terrifying Alsatian there that I'd ever seen in my life. He snarled a couple of times at Alan and made him shiver in his shoes like a jelly-' She paused to eat a mouthful of roast lamb.

'Do you care for dogs, Mr York?' said Aunt Deb, with a touch of disdain. She was devoted to her dachshund.

'It depends,' I said.

Kate said, 'You don't exactly fall in love with Prince. I expect they call him Prince because he's black. The

Black Prince. Anyway, he's useful if any dog is. If I told you two dears what the man who keeps The Blue Duck told Alan and me about the skulduggery that goes on in respectable little old Brighton, you wouldn't sleep sound in your beds.'

'Then please don't tell us, Kate dear?' said Aunt Deb. 'I have enough trouble with insomnia as it is.'

I looked at Uncle George to see how he liked being deprived of the end of the story, and saw him push his half-filled plate away with a gesture of revulsion, as if he were suddenly about to vomit.

He noticed I was watching, and with a wry smile said, 'Indigestion, I'm afraid. Another of the boring nuisances of old age. We're a couple of old crocks now, you know.'

He tried to raise a chuckle, but it was a poor affair. There was a tinge of grey in the pink cheeks, and fine beads of sweat had appeared on the already moist-looking skin. Something was deeply wrong in Uncle George's world.

Aunt Deb looked very concerned about it, and as sheltering her from unpleasant realities was for him so old and ingrained a habit, he made a great effort to rally his resources. He took a sip of water and blotted his mouth on his napkin, and I saw the tremor in his chubby hands. But there was steel in the man under all that fat, and he cleared his throat and spoke normally enough.

He said, 'It quite slipped my mind, Kate my dear, but while you were out Gregory rang up to talk to you about Heavens Above. I asked him how the horse was doing and he said it had something wrong with its leg and won't be able to run on Thursday at Bristol as you planned.'

Kate looked disappointed. 'Is he lame?' she asked.

Uncle George said, 'I could swear Gregory said the horse had thrown out a splint. He hadn't broken any bones though, has he? Most peculiar.' He was mystified, and so, I saw, was Kate.

'Horses' leg-bones sometimes grow knobs all of a sudden, and that is what a splint is,' I said. 'The leg is hot and tender while the splint is forming, but it usually lasts only two or three weeks. Heavens Above will be sound again after that.'

'What a pest,' said Kate. 'I was so looking forward to Thursday. Will you be going to Bristol, Alan, now that my horse isn't running?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I'm riding Palindrome there. Do try and come Kate, it would be lovely to see you.' I spoke enthusiastically, which made Aunt Deb straighten her back and bend on me a look of renewed disapproval.

'It is not good for a young gel's reputation for her to be seen too often in the company of jockeys,' she said.

At eleven o'clock, when Uncle George had locked the study door on his collection of trophies, and when Aunt Deb had swallowed her nightly quota of sleeping pills, Kate and I went out of the house to put her car away in the garage. We had left it in the drive in our haste before dinner.

The lights of the house, muted by curtains, took the blackness out of the night, so that I could still see Kate's face as she walked beside me.

I opened the car door for her, but she paused before stepping in.

'They're getting old,' she said, in a sad voice, 'and I don't know what I'd do without them.'

'They'll live for years yet,' I said.

'I hope so- Aunt Deb looks very tired sometimes, and Uncle George used to have so much more bounce. I think he's worried about something now- and I'm afraid it's Aunt Deb's heart, though they haven't said- They'd never tell me if there was anything wrong with them.' She shivered.

I put my arms round her and kissed her. She smiled.

'You're a kind person, Alan.'

I didn't feel kind. I wanted to throw her in the car and drive off with her at once to some wild and lonely hollow on the Downs for a purpose of which the cave men would thoroughly have approved. It was an effort for me to hold her lightly, and yet essential.

'I love you, Kate,' I said, and I controlled even my breathing.

'No,' she said, 'Don't say it. Please don't say it.' She traced my eyebrows with her finger. The dim light was reflected in her eyes as she looked at me, her body leaning gently against mine, her head held back.

'Why not?'

'Because I don't know- I'm not sure- I've liked you kissing me and I like being with you. But love is so big a word. It's too important. I'm- I'm not- ready-'

And there it was. Kate the beautiful, the brave, the friendly, was also Kate the unawakened. She was not aware yet of the fire that I perceived in her at every turn. It had been battened down from childhood by her Edwardian aunt, and how to release it without shocking her was a puzzle.

'Love's easy to learn,' I said. 'It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window.'

'And you're left holding the baby,' said Kate, keeping her feet on the ground.

'We could get married first,' I said, smiling at her.

'No. Dear Alan. No. Not yet.' Then she said, almost in a whisper, 'I'm so sorry.'

She got into the car and drove slowly round to the barn garage. I followed behind the car and helped her shut the big garage doors, and walked back with her to the house. On the doorstep she paused and squeezed my hand, and gave me a soft, brief, sisterly kiss.

I didn't want it.

I didn't feel at all like a brother.