Proof

Four

Monday mornings I always spent in the shop restocking the shelves after the weekend’s sales and drawing up lists of what I would need as replacements. Monday afternoons I drove the van to the wholesalers for spirits, soft drinks, cigarettes, sweets and crisps, putting some directly into the shop on my return, and the reserves into the storeroom.

Mondays also I took stock of the cases of wines stacked floor to shoulder level in the storeroom and telephoned shippers for more. Mondays the storeroom got tidied by five p.m., checked and ready for the week ahead. Mondays were always hard work.

That particular Monday morning, heavy with the dead feeling of aftermath, I went drearily to work sliding Gordon’s gin into neat green rows and slotting Liebfraumilch into its rack; tidying the Teacher’s, counting the Bell’s, noticing we were out of Moulin à Vent. All of it automatic, my mind still with the Hawthorns, wondering how Jack was, and Jimmy, and how soon I should telephone to find out.

When I first had the shop I had just met Emma, and we had run it together with a sense of adventure that had never quite left us. Nowadays I had more prosaic help in the shape of a Mrs Palissey and also her nephew, Brian, who had willing enough muscles but couldn’t read.

Mrs Palissey, generous both as to bosom and gossip, arrived punctually at nine-thirty and told me wide-eyed that she’d seen on the morning television news about the Sheik being killed at the party.

‘You were there, Mr Beach, weren’t you?’ She was agog for gory details and waited expectantly, and with an inward sigh I satisfied at least some of her curiosity. Brian loomed over her, six feet tall, listening intently with his mouth open. Brian did most things with his mouth open, outward sign of inward retardation. Brian worked for me because his aunt had begged me piteously. ‘It’s giving my sister a nervous breakdown having him mooning round the house all day every day, and he could lift things here for me when you’re out, and he’ll be no trouble, I’ll see to that.’

At first I feared I had simply transferred the imminent breakdown from the sister to myself, but when one got used to Brian’s heavy breathing and permanent state of anxiety, one could count on the plus side that he would shift heavy cases of bottles all day without complaining, and didn’t talk much.

‘All those poor people!’ exclaimed Mrs Palissey, enjoying the drama. ‘That poor Mrs Hawthorn. Such a nice lady, I always think.’

‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing: and life did, I supposed, have to on. Automatic, pointless life, like asking Brian to go into storeroom and fetch another case of White Satin.

He nodded without closing the mouth and went off on the errand, returning unerringly with the right thing. He might not be able to read, but I had found he could recognise the general appearance of a bottle and label if I told him three or four times what it was, and he now knew all the regular items by sight. Mrs Palissey said at least once a week that she was ever so proud of him, considering.

Mrs Palissey and I remained by common consent on formal terms of Mrs and Mr: more dignified, she said. By nature she liked to please and was in consequence a good saleswoman, making genuinely helpful suggestions to irresolute customers. ‘Don’t know their own minds, do they, Mr Beach?’ she would say when they’d gone and I would agree truthfully that no, they often didn’t. Mrs Palissey and I tended to have the same conversations over and over and slightly too often.

She was honest in all major ways and unscrupulous in minor. She would never cheat me through the till, but Brian ate his way through a lot more crisps and Mars bars than I gave him myself, and spare light bulbs and half-full jars of Nescafé tended to go home with Mrs P. if she was short. Mrs Palissey considered such things ‘perks’ but would have regarded taking a bottle of sherry as stealing. I respected the distinction and was grateful for it, and paid her a little over the norm.

Whenever we were both there together, Mrs Palissey served the shop customers while I sat in the tiny office within earshot taking orders over the telephone and doing the paperwork, ready to help her if necessary. Some customers, particularly men, came for the wine-chat as much as the product, and her true knowledge there was sweet, dry, cheap, expensive, popular.

It was a man’s voice I could hear saying, ‘Is Mr Beach himself in?’ and Mrs Palissey’s helpfully answering, ‘Yes, sir, he’ll be right with you,’ and I rose and took the few steps into his sight.

The man there, dressed in a belted fawn raincoat, was perhaps a shade older than myself and had a noticeably authoritative manner. Without enormous surprise I watched him reach into an inner pocket for a badge of office and introduce himself as Detective Sergeant Ridger, Thames Valley police. He hoped I might be able to help him with his enquiries.

My mind did one of those quick half-guilty canters round everything possible I might have done wrong before I came to the more sensible conclusion that his presence must have something to do with the accident. And so it had, in a way, but not how I could have expected.

‘Do you know a Mr d’Alban, sir?’ He consulted his memory. ‘The Honourable James d’Alban, sir?’

‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘He was injured yesterday at the Hawthorn party. He’s not... dying?’ I shied at the last minute away from ‘dead’.

‘No, sir, he’s not. As far as I know he’s in Battle Hospital with broken ribs, a pierced lung, and concussion.’

Enough to be going on with, I thought ironically. Poor Jimmy.

Ridger had a short over-neat haircut, watchful brown eyes, a calculator-wristwatch bristling with knobs and no gift for public relations. He said impersonally, ‘Mr d’Alban woke up to some extent in the ambulance taking him to hospital and began talking disjointedly but repeatedly about a man called Larry Trent and some unpronounceable whisky that wasn’t what it ought to be, and you, sir, who would know for certain if you tasted it.’

I just waited.

Ridger went on, ‘There was a uniformed policeman in the ambulance with Mr d’Alban, and the constable reported the substance of those remarks to us, as he was aware we had reason to be interested in them. Mr d’Alban, he said, was totally unable to answer any questions yesterday and indeed appeared not to know he was being addressed.’

I wished vaguely that Ridger would talk more naturally, not as if reading from a notebook. Mrs Palissey was listening hard though pretending not to, with Brian frowning uncomprehendingly beside her. Ridger glanced at them a shade uneasily and asked if we could talk somewhere in private.

I took him into the miniscule office, large enough only for a desk, two chairs and a heater: about five feet square, approximately. He sat in the visitors’ chair without waste of time and said, ‘We’ve tried to interview Mr d’Alban this morning but he is in Intensive Care and the doctor refused us entry.’ He shrugged. ‘They say to try tomorrow, but for our purposes tomorrow may be too late.’

‘And your purposes are... what?’ I asked.

For the first time he seemed to look at me as a person, not just as an aid to enquiries; but I wasn’t sure I liked the change because in his warming interest there was also a hint of manipulation. I had dealt in my time with dozens of salesmen seeking business, and Ridger’s was the same sort of approach. He needed something from me that called for persuasion.

‘Do you verify, sir, that Mr d’Alban did talk to you about this whisky?’

‘Yes, he did, yesterday morning.’

Ridger looked almost smug with satisfaction.

‘You may not know, sir,’ he said, ‘that Mr Larry Trent died in yesterday’s accident.’

‘Yes, I did know.’

‘Well, sir...’ he discreetly cleared his throat, lowering his voice for the sales pitch, softening the natural bossiness in his face. ‘To be frank, we’ve had other complaints about the Silver Moondance. On two former occasions investigations have been carried out there, both times by the Office of Weights and Measures, and by Customs and Excise. On neither occasion was any infringement found.’

He paused.

‘But this time?’ I prompted obligingly.

‘This time we think that in view of Mr Trent’s death, it might be possible to make another inspection this morning.’

‘Ah.’

I wasn’t sure that he liked the dry understanding in my voice, but he soldiered on. ‘We have reason to believe that in the past someone at the Silver Moondance, possibly Mr Trent himself, has been tipped off in advance that the investigations were in hand. So this time my superiors in the CID would like to make some preliminary enquiries of our own, assisted, if you are agreeable, by yourself, as an impartial expert.’

‘Um,’ I said, doubtfully. ‘This morning, did you say?’

‘Now, sir, if you would be so good.’

‘This very minute?’

‘We think, sir, the quicker the better.’

‘You must surely have your own experts?’ I said.

It appeared... er... that there was no official expert available at such short notice, and that as time was all important... would I go?

I could see no real reason why not to, so I said briefly, ‘All right’, and told Mrs Palissey I’d be back as soon as I could. Ridger drove us in his car, and I wondered on the way just how much of an expert the delirious Jimmy had made me out to be, and whether I would be of any use at all, when it came to the point.

The Silver Moondance, along the valley from the small Thames-side town where I had my shop, had originally been a sprawlingly ugly house built on the highest part of a field sloping up from the river. It had over the years metamorphosed successively into school, nursing home, and general boarding house, adding inappropriate wings at every change. Its most recent transformation had been also the most radical, so that little could now be seen of the original shiny yellow-grey bricks for glossier expanses of plate glass. At night from the river the place looked like Blackpool fully illuminated, and even by day, from the road, one could see ‘Silver Moondance’ blinking on and off in white letters over the doorway.

‘Do they know you here, sir?’ Ridger belatedly asked as we turned into the drive.

I shook my head. ‘Shouldn’t think so. The last time I came here it was the Riverland Guest Home, full of old retired people. I used to deliver their drinks.’

Dears, they had been, I remembered nostalgically, and great topers, on the whole, taking joy in their liquid pleasures.

Ridger grunted without much interest and parked on an acre or two of unpopulated tarmac. ‘They should just be open,’ he said with satisfaction, locking the car doors. ‘Ready, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And Sergeant... um... let me do the talking.’

‘But...’

‘Best not to alarm them,’ I said, persuasively, ‘if you don’t want them pouring the Laphroaig down the sink.’

‘The what?’

‘What we’re looking for.’

‘Oh.’ He thought. ‘Very well.’

I said, ‘Fine,’ without emphasis and we walked through the flashing portal into the ritzy plush of the entrance hall.

There were lights on everywhere, but no one in sight. A reception desk; unattended. A flat air of nothing happening and nothing expected.

Ridger and I walked toward a wrought iron and driftwood sign announcing ‘Silver Moondance Saloon’, and pushed through Western-style swing doors into the room beyond. It was red, black and silver, very large and uninhabited. There were many tables, each with four bentwood chairs set neatly round, and an orthodox bar at one end, open for business.

No bartender.

Ridger walked purposefully across and rapped on the counter, I following him more slowly.

No one came. Ridger rapped again, louder and longer, and was presently rewarded by a youngish fair-haired man coming through another swinging door at the back of the bar area, sweating visibly and struggling into a white jacket.

‘Give us a chance,’ he said crossly. ‘We’ve only been open five minutes.’ He wiped his damp forehead with his fingers and buttoned his coat. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Is the restaurant open?’ I said.

‘What? Not yet. They don’t start serving before twelve.’

‘And the wine waiter, would he be here?’

The barman looked at the clock and shook his head. ‘What do you want him for? Whatever drinks you want, I’ll get them.’

‘The wine list,’ I said humbly. ‘Could I see it?’

He shrugged, reached under the bar, and produced a padded crimson folder. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, handing it across.

He was not actively rude, I thought, just thrown off the rails by the boss’s demise. Practised, a touch effeminate, with unfortunate pimples and a silver identification bracelet inscribed with ‘Tom’. I could feel Ridger beginning to bristle beside me, so I said mildly, ‘Could I have a scotch, please?’

The barman gave a half-exasperated glance at the wine list in my hand but turned away and thrust a regulation glass against the optic measure on a standard-sized bottle of Bell’s.

‘Something for you?’ I said to Ridger.

‘Tomato juice. Without Worcester sauce.’

The barman put my whisky on the counter. ‘Anything in yours?’ he asked.

‘No, thanks.’

I paid for the two drinks and we went to sit at one of the tables furthest away from the bar.

‘This isn’t what we came for,’ Ridger said protestingly.

‘First things first,’ I said, smelling the whisky. ‘Start at the bottom and work up. Good wine-tasting tactics.’

‘But...’ He thought better of it, and shrugged. ‘All right, then. Your way. But don’t take too long.’

I sucked a very small amount of whisky into my mouth and let it wander back over my tongue. One can’t judge whisky with the taste buds at the tip, up by the front teeth, but only along the sides of the tongue and at the back, and I let everything that was there in the way of flavour develop to the full before I swallowed, and then waited a while for the aftertaste.

‘Well?’ said Ridger. ‘What now?’

‘For a start,’ I said. ‘This isn’t Bell’s.’

Ridger looked unexpectedly startled. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Do you know anything about whisky?’ I asked.

‘No. I’m a beer man, myself. Drink the odd whisky and ginger now and then, that’s all.’

‘Do you want to know?’ I flicked a finger at the glass. ‘I mean, shall I explain?’

‘Will it take long?’

‘No.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Scotch whisky is made of barley,’ I said. ‘You can malt barley, like is done for beer. You let the grains start to grow, to form shoots about an inch or two long. Then for whisky you smoke the shoots, which are called malts, over burning peat, until they pick up the peat and smoke flavours and are crisp. Then you make a mash of the malts with water and let it ferment, then you distil it and put the distillation in wooden casks to age for several years, and that’s pure malt whisky, full of overtones of various tastes.’

‘Right,’ Ridger said, nodding, his crisp hair-cut clearly concentrating.

‘It’s much cheaper,’ I said, ‘to make the barley into a mash without going through the malting and smoking stages, and much quicker because the aging process is years shorter, and that sort of whisky is called grain whisky and is a great deal plainer on the tongue.’

‘O.K.’ he said. ‘Go on.’

‘Good standard scotches like Bell’s are a mixture of malt and grain whiskies. The more malt, the more varied and subtle the flavour. This in this glass has very little or no malt, which doesn’t matter at all if you want to mix it with ginger, because you’d kill the malt flavour anyway.’

Ridger looked round the empty room. ‘With this place full, with smoke and perfume and ginger ale, who’s to know the difference?’

‘It would take a brave man,’ I said, smiling.

‘What next, then?’

‘We might hide the scotch in your tomato juice.’ I poured the one into the other, to his horror. ‘I can’t drink it,’ I explained. ‘Do you want a drunk expert? No good at all.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said, weakly for him, and I went over to the bar and asked the barman if he had any malts.

‘Sure,’ he said, waving a hand along a row of bottles. ‘Glenfiddich, down at the other end there.’

‘Mm,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Do you have any Laphroaig?’

‘La-what?’

‘Laphroaig. A friend of mine had some here. He said it was great. He said as I liked malts I should definitely try it.’

The barman looked at his stock, but shook his head.

‘Perhaps it’s in the restaurant,’ I said. ‘I think he did mention drinking it after dinner. Perhaps it’s on the drinks trolley.’ I pulled out my wallet and opened it expectantly, and with a considering glance at the notes in sight the barman decided to go on the errand. He returned quite soon with a genuine Laphroaig bottle and charged me outrageously for a nip, which I paid without demur, giving him a tip on top.

I carried the glass to the far table to join Ridger.

‘What do you do now?’ I asked. ‘Pray?’

‘Taste it,’ he said tersely.

I smelled it first, however, and tasted it slowly as before, Ridger sitting forward tensely in his chair.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not Laphroaig.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘Absolutely positive. Laphroaig is as smoky as you can get. Pure malt. There’s almost no malt at all in what I’ve just tasted. It’s the same whisky as before.’

‘Thanks very much, Mr Beach,’ he said with deep satisfaction. ‘That’s great.’

He stood up, walked over to the bar and asked to see the bottle from which his friend had just drunk. The bartender obligingly pushed it across the counter, and Ridger picked it up. Then with his other hand he pulled out his identification, and the barman, angry, started snouting.

Ridger proved to have a radio inside his jacket. He spoke to some unseen headquarters, received a tinny reply, and told the bartender the police would be prohibiting the sale of all alcohol at the Silver Moondance for that day at least, while tests were made on the stock.

‘You’re barmy,’ the bartender yelled, and to me, viciously, ‘Creep.’

His loud voice brought colleagues in the shape of a worried man in a dark suit who looked junior and ineffective, and a girl in a short pert waitress uniform, long fawn legs below a scarlet tunic, scarlet headband over her hair.

Ridger took stock of the opposition and found himself very much in charge. The ineffective junior announced himself to be the assistant manager, which drew looks of scorn and amazement from the waitress and the barman. Assistant to the assistant, I rather gathered. Ridger explained forcibly again that no liquor was to be sold pending investigations, and all three of them said they knew nothing about anything, and we would have to talk to... er... talk to...

‘The management?’ I suggested.

They nodded dumbly.

‘Let’s do that,’ I said. ‘Where’s the manager?’

The assistant to the assistant manager finally said that the manager was on holiday and the assistant manager was ill. Head office was sending someone to take over as soon as possible.

‘Head office?’ I said. ‘Didn’t Larry Trent own the place?’

‘Er...’ said the assistant unhappily. ‘I really don’t know. Mr Trent never said he didn’t, I mean, I thought he did. But when I got here this morning the telephone was ringing, and it was head office. That’s what he said, anyway. He wanted to speak to the manager, and when I explained he said he would send someone along straight away.’

‘Who ran things last night?’ Ridger demanded.

‘What? Oh... we’re closed, Sunday nights.’

‘And yesterday lunchtime?’

‘The assistant manager was here, but he’d got ‘flu. He went home to bed as soon as we closed. And of course Mr Trent had been here until opening time, seeing that everything was all right before he went to Mr Hawthorn’s party.’

All three looked demoralised but at the same time slightly defiant, seeing the policeman as their natural enemy. Relations scarcely improved when Ridger’s reinforcements rolled up: two uniformed constables bringing tape and labels for sealing all the bottles.

I diffidently suggested to Ridger that he should extend his suspicions to the wines.

‘Wines?’ he frowned. ‘Yes, if you like, but we’ve got enough with the spirits.’

‘All the same,’ I murmured, and Ridger told the assistant to show me where they kept the wine, and to help me and one of his constables bring any bottles I wanted into the bar. The assistant, deciding that helpfulness would establish his driven-snow innocence, put no obstacles in my way, and in due course, and after consulting the wine list, the assistant, the constable and I returned to the bar carrying two large baskets full of bottles.

The spirits bottles all having been sealed, there was at our return a lull of activity in the Silver Moondance Saloon. I unloaded the bottles onto two tables, six white wine on one, six red on another, and from my jacket pocket produced my favourite corkscrew.

‘Hey,’ the barman protested. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘Every bottle I open will be paid for,’ I said, matter-of-factly. ‘And what’s it to you?’

The barman shrugged. ‘Give me twelve glasses,’ I said, ‘and one of those pewter tankards,’ and he did. I opened the six bottles of varying white wines and under the interested gaze of six pairs of eyes poured a little of the first into a glass. Niersteiner, it said on the label: and Niersteiner it was. I spat the tasted mouthful into the pewter tankard, to disgusted reaction from the audience.

‘Do you want him to get drunk?’ Ridger demanded, belatedly understanding. ‘The evidence of a drunk taster wouldn’t be acceptable.’

I tasted the second white. Chablis, as it should have been.

The third was similarly O.K., a Pouilly Fuissé.

By the time I’d finished the sixth, a Sauternes, the barman had greatly relaxed.

‘Nothing wrong with them?’ Ridger asked, not worried.

‘Nothing,’ I agreed, stuffing the corks back. ‘I’ll try the reds.’

The reds were a St Emilion, a St Estôphe, a Måcon, a Valpolicella, a Volnay and a Nuits St Georges, all dated 1979. I smelled and tasted each one carefully, spitting and waiting a few moments in between sips so that each wine should be fresh on the tongue, and by the time I’d finished everyone else was restive.

‘Well,’ Ridger demanded, ‘are they all right?’

‘They’re quite pleasant,’ I said, ‘but they’re all the same.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘that notwithstanding all those pretty labels, the wine in all of these bottles is none of them. It’s a blend. Mostly Italian, I would say, mixed with some French and possibly some Yugoslav, but it could be anything.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the barman said impatiently. ‘We have people every day saying how good the wines are.’

‘Mm,’ I said neutrally. ‘Perhaps you do.’

‘Are you positive?’ Ridger asked me. ‘They’re all the same?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded as if that settled it and instructed the constables to seal and label the six reds with the date, time and place of confiscation. Then he told the barman to find two boxes to hold all the labelled bottles, which brought a toss of the head, a mulish petulance and a slow and grudging compliance.

I kept my word and paid for all the wine, the only action of mine which pleased the barman from first to last. I got him to itemise every bottle on a Silver Moondance billhead and sign it ‘Received in full’, and then I paid him by credit card, tucking away the receipts.

Ridger seemed to think paying was unnecessary, but then shrugged, and he and the contable began putting the wine into one of the boxes and the whiskies into the other; and into this sullenly orderly scene erupted the man from head office.