England Expects (2 page)

Mirabelle smiled. Now that was confidence. Tonight’s bout, which would feature two of these unbeatable Brighton youngsters, was set for 7 p.m. at the Crown and Anchor on Preston Road. If that’s where the murdered man had been heading he’d certainly arrived in Brighton in good time.

It’s not that far to Preston Road, Mirabelle thought, her curiosity stirring. She could nip up this evening and take a look.

Chapter 3

Boxing is show business with blood
.

6.30 p.m., Crown and Anchor

T
he man on the door shifted uneasily as Detective Superintendent Alan McGregor flashed his warrant card. The pub was already filling up, and McGregor noticed that in addition to the usual Brighton crowd, there were a few faces he didn’t recognise. Most of them were far too well dressed to be relying solely on ration coupons. Plenty of men would travel to watch a decent fight, and Brighton had hosted the top junior action of the season so far. Commentators were making wild claims for the future careers of the young crop of Brighton fighters. It put on undue pressure, McGregor reckoned. Still, he was keen to be here, and not only because it was where Joey Gillingham had intended to spend the evening. The Superintendent decided he might hazard a quid on the second bout. He liked a bit of hand-to-hand.

Inside, the pub was shabby but well kept. A clean smell of hops emanated from the bar. The front room was set out like a normal pub and that’s where most people were congregated. McGregor knew it wouldn’t take long before the crowd began to filter into the back room where a ring was pegged out with a few benches around it. At the bar, a man in a sharp suit with a dolly bird on his arm was trying to order a bottle of champagne, much to the barman’s surprise.

‘Don’t you got nuffink decent?’ he said, his East End accent thick as treacle.

‘There’s beer on draught and we got spirits.’ The barman pointed sheepishly at the gantry.

The dolly bird pursed her startlingly pink lips and made do with a gin and bitter.

McGregor scanned the rest of the crowd. He eyed a huddle where illegal odds were being offered and then he turned his attention to the punters cheerily greeting each other as they arrived. It had been a hell of a season for the Brighton boys. Some of the men had brought their sons to the match. A group of kids in short trousers and long socks were drinking Vimto from the bottle as they headed outside. The boys were excited – rattling on about the fight and taking good-humoured pot shots at each other. There was nothing suspicious here, or at least nothing McGregor immediately felt related to the murder that morning. One or two of the men were spreading the news about Joey’s death. He’d been well known in Brighton, particularly in these circles, so, McGregor reasoned, perhaps he’d be able to pick up something of use. Background.

The Superintendent sidled up to the bar and ordered a half-pint and a whisky chaser before he noticed Mirabelle. She was flushed from the sunshine, wearing a pale peach summer dress cinched at the waist with an elegant tan leather belt. As ever, she took his breath away as she removed her sunglasses and glanced around the pub, her hazel eyes adjusting to the low light. Her hair was down this evening – he hadn’t seen it that way before. It looked silky as she shook it. Normally reserved, it was as if she’d relaxed in the sunshine. He’d hardly seen her since they’d had lunch at the Savoy last year after an inquest hearing. McGregor wanted to repeat the experience, but Miss Bevan always seemed so cool towards him that he’d ducked out of asking her again. There was nowhere like the Savoy in Brighton anyway, and after London’s finest nothing else
seemed good enough. At heart the Superintendent was actually rather shy. He lifted a hand in greeting.

‘Miss Bevan. I had no idea you were interested in boxing. Might I buy you a drink? A whisky, isn’t it?’

Mirabelle nodded. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful day?’

McGregor’s knee-jerk reaction was to say ‘Not for Joey Gillingham’, but he stopped himself just in time, telling himself that Mirabelle Bevan wouldn’t want to hear about the case he was working on. What had been on McGregor’s mind most was the unprofessional behaviour of some of his officers. His deputy, Robinson, had ordered Gillingham’s body removed from the crime scene before he’d had a chance to inspect it.

‘Cut and dried, boss,’ Robinson had sniffed. ‘I reckoned it was best to get on.’

By the time McGregor got there all that remained was one traumatised barber, a vermilion spatter and a napkin soaked in Joey Gillingham’s blood.

‘There’s no question about the cause of death, is there?’ Robinson defended himself. ‘It’s hot, and there were kids on the way to school. I decided to get the corpse back to the mortuary. Seemed for the best.’

McGregor didn’t doubt it, but he liked to see a body in situ. It was the usual protocol.

‘No more slap-happy stuff,’ he’d warned Robinson. ‘I’m the DS. We do it my way, by the book.’

‘You’ll have had a busy day, Superintendent?’ Mirabelle cut into McGregor’s thoughts, lifting her drink for him to clink the glass. ‘Talking to the
Express
, were you?’

‘How did you . . .’

Mirabelle pointed to a man sitting on a bar stool. He was reading the
Argus
and Joey Gillingham’s murder was headline news.
Express Journalist Butchered In Local Barber’s Chair
, it read. McGregor blushed. He had been so involved he hadn’t even
considered the newspapers would make a meal of this morning’s murder. There’d been too much to do. Now it sank in.

‘They’ll play it up for all it’s worth,’ he said. ‘Journalists love journalists. They think their opinions are important.’

‘Wasn’t he important?’

‘Sports writer? Not groundbreaking individuals as a rule, but every corpse is important, isn’t it? Looks like this one had a few dodgy contacts but then you’d expect that. He was a gambling man. His editor said he was down for this.’ McGregor nodded towards the boxing ring just visible through the back.

Mirabelle checked her watch. ‘He arrived very early, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps he was hoping to make a day of it.’

‘Horrible affair.’

‘At least it was over quickly. Poor fellow probably didn’t know what was happening. If I had to choose how to go . . .’ McGregor stopped. What was wrong with him? He sounded like a miserable old sod with a death wish. Mirabelle looked taken aback. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

She smiled politely and sipped her whisky, taking a moment to soak in the atmosphere.

‘The boxing is in the other section. They’ve got changing rooms through there, too. It’s a proper professional set-up, though tonight the fighters are junior amateurs. You haven’t been before?’

Mirabelle raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘You got me.’

‘You didn’t know this one, did you? I mean, our victim?’ McGregor’s voice betrayed his nervousness. Mirabelle Bevan was in the disconcerting habit of being on first-name terms with a larger number of people who ended up dead of violent causes than the average member of the population. This, McGregor noted, did not stop him from wanting to become further acquainted with her.

‘I don’t read the
Express
as a rule. I’d never heard of the poor chap. The circumstances made me curious, that’s all.’

‘Mirabelle,’ McGregor leaned in, concerned, ‘I don’t know who killed Joey Gillingham, but whoever they are they’re violent, so please don’t go poking about. I’m not sure you should be here at all.’

‘All murderers are violent by definition.’ Mirabelle didn’t back down. ‘Besides, the Crown and Anchor is a public place. It sounds as if the fight tonight will be terrific. I had no idea the local team was doing so well.’

McGregor downed his half-pint and lifted his whisky. At least he could keep an eye on her. ‘Let’s go through,’ he said.

In the back room it was quieter. On the bench a fat, white-haired priest sat patiently, a large wooden cross on a chain rising and falling on the vast expanse of his cassock with every breath.

‘Two of the kids fighting tonight are from the church youth club. Don’t worry. The old crow’s not here to administer the last rites. It’ll be Queensberry rules.’ McGregor was enjoying showing Mirabelle round. Usually she was so competent he had hardly any part to play but today she was hanging on his words. His heart lifted as she parted her lips to form a question.

‘So,’ she said, ‘have you found the murder weapon yet?’

If there was one thing that was good about a sports crowd it made it easy to mingle. A match was always a good conversation opener. By half past nine Mirabelle had ascertained that Joey Gillingham was reasonably popular. He’d been a generous winner when his bets came in. Professionally, the general consensus was that his column had been firm but fair. He’d spent a good deal of time in Brighton this spring, not only on account of the boxing team’s successes but also because of the racecourse.

‘Joey liked the gee-gees,’ a drunk man told Mirabelle. ‘He wasn’t a fella for the football. Not really. He preferred the
horses and the dogs and, of course, this stuff.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the ring.

‘Sounds to me like he had a lot of friends in Brighton.’

‘Friends? Everyone’s a friend of Joey Gillingham, ain’t they? Them boys knows what’s what.’ The man laid a sweaty palm on her arm and squeezed. ‘They’ll give you a tip sometimes, know what I mean?’

Mirabelle humoured him. She was getting what she wanted, after all. ‘And he was a ladies’ man like you, I’d guess?’

McGregor watched the encounter open-mouthed. Mirabelle seemed almost flirtatious. Still, the fellow spilled the beans.

‘I never saw Joey with a woman. He was obsessed with the gee-gees, love. It was like a religion. There’s normally hardly any women at the boxing. That means you’re special, ain’t you? Can I get you a drink? A lady like you needs feeding up.’

The man ran his eyes down Mirabelle’s body and licked his lips. He dwelled on the swell of her blouse.

‘Enough’s enough, fella,’ McGregor cut in, but Mirabelle was ahead of him and had already moved away.

The Superintendent quickly gave up curtailing her enquiries, realising with a guilty twinge that the men responded to her more openly than when he asked the questions. It was amazing. Mirabelle had an instinct for exactly what information to push for and she was formidable – steel-willed and smiling. She made an interrogation sound as if it was only a conversation. Between bouts the Superintendent fetched drinks, acting the solicitous minder rather than making enquiries of his own.

‘Is that your old man?’ he heard one fellow ask, nodding in his direction.

‘He’s my brother,’ Mirabelle confided in a whisper and McGregor allowed himself a surreptitious smile.

When the young fighters stepped into the ring the Superintendent wasn’t sure if Mirabelle would be able to
watch them hammer it out, but as the bell sounded she took the violence in her stride and didn’t flinch when the matches became heated. It couldn’t be easy for a woman, watching the kids slug each other until they were swollen and bloody while the audience bayed for victory.

‘You aren’t squeamish, are you?’ McGregor checked.

A look from Mirabelle dismissed the idea.

In the end, both the local boys won. Johnny Thwaite, a stocky, muscle-bound sixteen-year-old from Eastbourne, beat a seventeen-year-old called Davie Osler till the poor kid gave up. Afterwards, Thwaite, elated, climbed out of the ring to hug his father, a whiff of sweat and the tang of blood wafting off him, the heat of his body palpable on the air. He looked like he could go another ten rounds.

‘Well done, Johnny,’ the boy’s father said, flinging his arms around his son. ‘You slammed him. You’d have made your mother proud tonight.’

The fat priest, who it seemed had won money, came over and clapped the kid on the back.

Second up, there was Ricky Philips, a fourteen-year-old flyweight who was the favourite not only on account of his left hook but also because he came from Kemp Town. He knocked out a Jewish kid who’d come down from Shoreditch. One tight punch after another, and the crowd raised the roof on the Crown and Anchor. The MC was barely audible over the screaming until Philips triumphed, raising his hand in the air and taking a wide-grinned bow as the MC counted out the beaten boy to the jeers of the crowd.

McGregor watched Mirabelle, who remained impassive.

‘It’s not the first time I’ve been to the boxing,’ she assured him and McGregor didn’t ask again.

At the end of the night the fighters were taken off to have their wounds seen to and the priest climbed into the ring to say a prayer. The audience stood respectfully, heads bowed. Then
the barman called time and McGregor helped Mirabelle into her light summer coat and walked her outside.

‘I hope that boy gets back up to London all right,’ she said.

‘The Jewish kid? I’m sure he’ll be looked after.’

‘The last train must have gone though.’

Miss Bevan, McGregor noted, was kind-hearted even if she was ruthless in her enquiries. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as McGregor touched her arm to guide her towards his car. The air was still warm despite the fading light and a balmy breeze swept in from the sea. The roar of engines starting cut the silence as the well-heeled among the crowd headed home. One man walked into the blackness with his son on his shoulders explaining the Queensberry rules. Several more ran for the last bus, shouting the names of the fighters.

‘I’ll see you back home,’ the Superintendent offered, holding open the door as Mirabelle slipped into the front seat.

‘You’ve been down here a while now.’

‘A couple of years, I suppose.’

‘Has England been good to you?’

‘It’s a lot warmer than Scotland, that’s for sure.’ The Superintendent shrugged. ‘But the golf courses are tamer. I miss losing my ball in the gorse. Scotland’s a wildcat. She’d scratch you to death given the chance. Brighton’s a softer place.’

Mirabelle raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Softer? You really think so?’

‘Yes. The odd homicide notwithstanding. Things seem less serious down here. I’m probably due a trip north. I don’t want to lose my edge.’

‘Family?’

‘I don’t have any family now. Only a few friends.’ His mother had died the year before. The family home in Davidson’s Mains had lain empty for months now. He couldn’t decide what to do with the old place, and the family solicitor kept pestering him about it.

‘Well, it would be a nice trip, wouldn’t it? To go back to Edinburgh to see them. A holiday.’