Maxwell’s Movie (9 page)

‘I just want to see Mr Villiers,’ Maxwell persisted.

‘Nah,’ the coloured man was pulling out five pound coins. ‘Take it from me, man, he’s not your type. You have a little shufty in number three, now. That’ll get your pecker up.’

‘Mr Villiers.’ Stubborn was Maxwell’s middle name.

‘All right.’ The coloured man raised both hands, ‘Felicity has gone to get him, but while you’re waiting, you might as well have some pleasure before business. Besides,’ he closed to his man, ‘if you’re looking for a particular girl, it might be that number three’s the one.’

‘No,’ Maxwell smiled sadly, ‘that’s not likely’

‘A fiver,’ the coloured man insisted, towering over Maxwell in the eerie blue light.

‘All right,’ Maxwell decided to buy some time, ‘a fiver.’ And he exchanged his note for the coins.

There was a small door ahead of him with a scratched star on the front and the number three below it. He pushed gently and found himself standing in a narrow booth, lit by a single red bulb in the top corner. Raucous music blared through the wall facing him and a disembodied voice said, ‘You put your money in the slot, Granddad. To your right.’

Maxwell peered into the gloom and found it. As his first coin hit the mark, a grille flew open at eye level and he found himself staring into a small, well-lit room with mirrors on all its surfaces. An Asian girl in a blonde wig and plaits stood in a far corner, sucking an enormous lollipop. ‘Worst Shirley Temple I ever saw,’ Maxwell muttered to himself. The girl was all of thirty, but she wore white ankle socks, a short pleated skirt and a school blouse and tie. After a few seconds, she undulated around the room and Maxwell became aware of other slots in other doors giving other men the same view he had. What grabbed him most though was the face of the coloured man directly across the room from him, cheek by cheek with the girl at the doorway. They both stared intently at Maxwell.

The thirty-year-old Year Ten girl was peeling off her tie and ripping off her blouse as the grille slammed shut. Damn! Maxwell wanted to watch those two across the room as much as they clearly wanted to watch him. He fumbled with his second coin and the grille flew open again. The pair were still there, talking silently under the shrill blast of the taped jazz while the girl cavorted in the centre, swinging her large breasts to the music and rolling her tongue around the lolly. Then in the grille across the room, the girl’s face was replaced by a man’s: dark, swarthy, watchful. There was something about those eyes that Maxwell didn’t like. And he couldn’t look away.

The schoolgirl was in front of him now, in his way, jutting her nipples out at him, inviting him to suck her lolly. He waved her aside, but the grille snapped shut again and he found himself feeding the machine for all he was worth. The coloured man had gone from the far grille now and only the dark, hypnotic eyes stared at him, like Svengali to his Trilby, a cobra to its prey.

The girl had hauled herself up onto a frame Maxwell hadn’t noticed was there, bending her knees and lifting her skirt to reveal her skimpy white knickers. She leaned towards his grille. ‘Would you like me to do something sexy?’ she asked.

‘What?’ He was trying to see past her.

‘Anything you like,’ she purred, misunderstanding the tone of his question. ‘Have you got yourself out?’ She tried to peer into his cubicle, her hand stroking across the knicker elastic, sliding between her legs. Under her tense thighs he saw the dark eyes blink, close and vanish and the grille came down again.

He spun to the door, wrenching it open and collided with a fat man with a shiny bald head. ‘Here,’ Maxwell stuffed his remaining two pounds into the punter’s sweaty hand, ‘have one on me, but I wouldn’t accept her lolly if I were you. I’m not sure where it’s been.’ And he was out in the foyer, making for the stairs.

He found them faster than he intended, because the coloured man in the white T-shirt had grabbed his arm and had pushed him against the wall. Maxwell felt the world spin and the most indescribable nausea swept over him as he felt a boot in his kidneys. Then he was dragged down a corridor, his right cheek scraping on the flock wallpaper and he was thrown into a back room.

As he steadied himself in a desperate attempt to keep his feet, he was aware of a desk and, sitting beyond it his feet crossed over at the ankles on a level with Maxwell’s waist, was the man with the eyes.

‘I hear you’re looking for Gregory Villiers,’ the man said. He was the wrong side of fifty and even further the wrong side of sixteen stone.

‘That’s right.’ Maxwell tried to stand up, but the pain in his back wouldn’t let him. He was aware of the coloured man at his elbow.

‘And who might you be?’ the man with the eyes asked.

‘I might be the bloke who reports you to the police for GBH,’ Maxwell winced. He felt iron fingers yank back his hair and his neck all but snapped. With what little strength he still possessed, Maxwell clenched his fist together and swung sideways, catching his man in the ribs and knocking him off balance. The coloured man crashed against the wall, but bounced off it and came forward with eyes blazing.

‘Prince!’ the man with the eyes barked and the coloured man stopped like a frozen frame from a film, his jaw flexing, his fists still in the air. ‘Leave us now, will you?’ The accent was thick, but unplaceable. ‘Mr Maxwell and I want to have a little chat.’

‘We do?’ Maxwell’s eyes narrowed.

‘I’m Gregory Villiers’ – the man leaned forward over the desk – ‘won’t you have a seat, Mr Maxwell?’ Villiers tilted his head imperceptibly and Maxwell heard Prince leave. The Head of Sixth lowered himself gingerly to the padded plush.

‘Cigar?’ Villiers was doing his best to live up to the reputation of sleaze. Surely he wasn’t going to offer to make Maxwell a star?

‘No, thanks. If it isn’t a cliché, I’d like some answers.’

Villiers leaned back and lit a Havana for himself. ‘What do you think of Amrit’s act?’ he asked.

‘Who?’

‘The Lolita in booth three.’

‘Rather long in the tooth, I thought.’ Maxwell believed in calling a spade a spade.

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘It’s the law, of course. Vice. Not like the old days, Mr Maxwell. Half of C Division’d get in here of a night. Now they’re all squeaky-clean, wet-behind-the-ears kids. Now, look, I’m sorry Prince was a little … what shall we say, martial? … earlier. He’s got a heart of gold and was just obeying orders.’

‘Bit like Himmler,’ Maxwell beamed.

The impresario was fazed for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he grinned, coughing a little over his cigar and pointing it at Maxwell, ‘yes, that’s right. Very similar. Now, what can I do for you? Er … something special? Golden showers, perhaps? Trip to the farmyard?’

‘Alice Goode.’

Villiers blinked, the dark eyes for a moment lost, confused. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

It was Maxwell’s turn to lean forward. ‘Not what, Mr Villiers,’ he said levelly. ‘Who. Alice Goode was a young lady. She’s dead now’

‘I don’t think I follow …’

‘She worked for you year before last, last year, whenever. Whether it was this dive stripping for weirdoes in French maid’s outfits or whatever, I don’t know’

‘How did you get on to me?’

‘The same way the police did,’ Maxwell told him.

‘The police?’ Villiers repeated. ‘No, you’ve lost me.’

‘I was told that Alice worked in Soho …’

‘It’s a big manor,’ Villiers shrugged.

‘… for Gregory Villiers,’ Maxwell finished his sentence. ‘Or are you going to tell me the phone book’s full of them?’

‘All right.’ Villiers could fence with the best of them. He’d been closed down three times by the Vice Squad. He employed the Met’s Obscene Publications as letter-openers for him. ‘Alice worked for me. But that was then. What are you talking about, dead?’

‘She was murdered,’ Maxwell told him.

‘Christ!’

There was something in the man’s tone that Maxwell hadn’t expected, hadn’t bargained for. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘So help me God.’ Villiers shook his head.

‘You don’t read the papers? Watch the news?’

‘Too depressing.’ Villiers blew smoke rings to the brown ceiling. ‘Violence and viciousness everywhere you look. And the economy! I mean, I like a laugh

‘They found her body four days ago. She’d been strangled.’

‘Jesus!’

‘When did you see her last?’

‘Alice? Christ knows. Where are we now? May? It must have been last spring – yeah, over a year ago.’

‘What did she do for you?’

‘For me?’ Villiers had suddenly tired of his cigar and stubbed it out on his silver ashtray. ‘Not a lot, personally. Too lanky. I like them more solid. She was desperate, she said, needed the money’

‘You put her in the booths?’

‘Nah, she hadn’t got the temperament for that. No, Alice had a certain something. Don’t know what you’d call it. Charisma, I suppose. Couldn’t waste her talents on such a small turnover. She did some shoots.’

‘Shoots? You mean films?’

‘Yeah. With the late, great Pryce Garrison.’

‘Late? Great? Pryce Garrison?’ It wasn’t often Maxwell needed confirmation of nearly every word in a sentence.

‘All right,’ Villiers grinned, ‘so maybe he wasn’t so great. Still, ten inches isn’t bad, is it?’ He winked. ‘And his name wasn’t Pryce Garrison, either. It was Kenneth Winkler. But,’ he raised a triumphant finger, ‘he is late. That I do know. Died five months ago. Drove his car into a brick wall, the stupid shit.’ He shook his head.

‘People die in your business, Mr Villiers,’ Maxwell found himself observing.

The impresario scraped his swivel chair back slowly, ‘Which bring us to another point, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Business. For the last half-hour you’ve been in mine. Now, I’ve been generous. I’ve given you my precious time and some honest answers. Now it’s your turn to tell me, what’s your business? Private dick?’

That in itself was a rarity in Villiers’ business, ‘I’m a teacher,’ Maxwell admitted.

‘A teacher?’ Villiers started to snigger. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘you’ve got your own resources. Don’t know why you needed booth three.’

‘I didn’t,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I needed you.’

‘Sweet,’ Villiers said, but he wasn’t smiling. ‘But I don’t think I can help you any further, Mr Maxwell.’

‘The films,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, ‘what films was she in? Were they distributed? If so, where?’

But the interview was at an end. Villiers had nudged a button under his desk and Prince and a friend, equally black, equally massive, stood in the shadows by the door.

‘Would you show Mr Maxwell out?’ Villiers asked. ‘The side door, I think.’

Maxwell knew a brick wall when he saw one and he stood up, collecting his battered hat. ‘I hope, for Alice’s sake,’ he said, ‘you were more forthcoming with the police.’

‘I haven’t had a visit from the police in a month of Sundays,’ Villiers said. ‘They’re so squeaky clean these days, I think even crossing the threshold offends them. Goodbye, Mr Maxwell. Do call again if you change your mind about Amrit. She can do things with bananas that would make your eyes water.’

Maxwell didn’t doubt it. He didn’t doubt it either when he felt a fist in the small of his back and heard his own skull crack on brickwork. And so he wasn’t at all surprised when the lights went out.

Gregory Villiers tapped his phone numbers with his plump glittering fingers. He let it ring four times.

‘Dee?’ He recognized the voice on the other end of the line. ‘It’s Gregory. What do you know about an old geezer called Maxwell? Fiftyish, bow tie; smartarse type. Says he’s a teacher. He’s sniffing round about Alice Goode. Right. Yeah. Your patch, I should think. Make a few enquiries, will you? I’ve given him a bit of a smacking, but he might be the persistent type. Can’t have that, can we? Keep an eye.’

8

‘Contusions,’ the freckle-faced kid was saying, ‘suspected concussion. Severe bruising.’

Maxwell groaned.

‘Painful, sir, I expect,’ the lad said, poised by the bed with his notepad. Maxwell was vaguely surprised they didn’t give the coppers lap-top computers these days. Or at least a course in shorthand. The lad wrote down everything laboriously. That he could write at all, Maxwell silently thanked a teacher.

‘It’s my bum.’ Maxwell steeled himself to adjust whatever of his tackle remained intact. ‘You’ve seen
The Eiger Sanction
,
The Hudsucker Proxy
? Well, this feels like
The Maxwell Prolapse
.’

‘Just bruising.’ A crisp, Irish nurse swept in through the screens. ‘Are you going to be long, officer?’ she asked, hands on hips. ‘Only some of us have a hospital to run.’

‘Nearly finished,’ the lad said and waited for her to tut at him, look at Maxwell, tut at him and go. ‘I don’t suppose,’ the boy-detective said, leaning a little closer to his victim, ‘you’d care to tell me what you were
really
doing in Soho?’

Maxwell toyed with chuckling, but discretion was the better part of valour and he abandoned the idea in a blur of pain. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘just taking in the sights. That little card on the door frame offering French lessons on the third floor didn’t sound very kosher, but when another read “Quantum Physics Explained”, well, I obviously jumped at the chance. Wouldn’t you?’

The lad’s cold blue eyes just got colder. He closed his notebook with a sigh and stood up. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t leap at anything in Soho, especially after dark. We’ll do what we can, of course, but … “I was hit from behind, officer. It all happened so quickly”, isn’t a lot to go on, is it?’

‘Your life must be full of clichés, I suppose.’ Maxwell looked up at his man. As he feared, the lad didn’t know what a cliché was and he nodded vaguely before disappearing behind the green screen.

No sooner had the material stopped shaking than the Irish nurse was back, all flaming red hair and starch and belt. ‘Bath time,’ she announced. Maxwell was about to protest, when it suddenly crossed his mind that that belt might not be a nursing credential at all. What if Judy O’Grady here was seventh Dan of a seventh Dan? He’d taken one beating this weekend already; he really wasn’t up to another. So his sole effort of protest was to try to hide under the covers.

‘Jesus!’ Sylvia Matthews hauled open the front door of her flat and helped the walking wounded inside. She ran her fingers lightly over the purple ridge above Maxwell’s right eye, the blue swelling across his left jaw. Both his eyes were black and there was a plaster across the bridge of his nose – clearly a bridge too far. ‘Max, Max,’ and she cradled his head, ‘what happened to you?’

‘This is what you get,’ he slurred, ‘for trying to ride first class on British Rail without a first-class ticket.’

She helped him limp over to the settee and eased him down. ‘Where’ve you been?’ She fussed around him, the nurse in her taking over from the lover. The man she’d loved now for more years than she cared to remember lay broken in her living room, his body stiff and hurt, his eyes wild with pain.

‘Soho,’ he told he. ‘You should see the other guy’

‘Should I?’ she wondered aloud.

‘Not a mark on him. Actually, there were two of them.’

‘Soho, Max?’

He caught the whiff of disapproval in her voice. ‘Now, don’t come the Victorian matron with me, Matron. I got a lead on Alice Goode.’

‘A lead? Max, what are you getting into?’

‘Why, Nursie,’ he shook his head, ‘are you or are you not the one who got me embroiled when Jenny Hyde was killed?’

‘That was different,’ Sylvia flustered. ‘Jenny was one of your girls.’

‘And Alice was one of my colleagues,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘It’s the same thing.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ She plumped up the cushions for him. ‘If you were in Soho, Max, you were out of your league. And if Alice was there, so was she.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell admitted, ‘Now, there, I think you’re right. I got onto a decidedly shady character who goes by the name of Gregory Villiers. Nice and aristocratic that – family name of the Dukes of Buckingham and so on. In fact, our Mr Villiers comes from down-town Athens unless I miss my guess – Greg the Greek – though he’s quite good at accents.’

‘Can I get you anything, Max?’ She was still appalled by the state of his face. ‘A drink?’

‘Southern Comfort would be dandy, Sylv,’ he said. ‘And one of those bendy straws.’

She crossed to the cupboard that passed for her drinks cabinet. ‘What’s Villiers’ link with Alice?’

‘He employed her last year, making porn movies.’

Sylvia stood up, bottle in her hand. ‘Really?’ Her eyes widened.

‘The girl needed money, apparently.’

‘Rubbish. Nobody needs money that badly.’ She poured him a drink.

‘Now, Nursie,’ he smiled as well as he could, ‘there’s nothing like a bit of salaciousness to reveal peoples’ prejudices.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, Max,’ she gave him the glass, ‘but this isn’t the Dark Ages: girls driven onto the streets by abject poverty. It’s like something out of
Gaslight
.’

Maxwell was too polite to point out how woefully off Sylvia was in her periodization. Still, it was probably meant as a figure of speech. ‘So maybe she enjoyed it,’ he suggested. Her look said it all. ‘I know,’ he stepped in as quickly as his swollen tongue would allow, ‘you’re the sort of person who goes around the London Underground sticking “This degrades women” all over the bra adverts, but you’ve got to accept that not everyone subscribes to that view’

‘That’s not fair, Max,’ she scolded him. ‘Anyway, they stopped doing those years ago. I just can’t believe it of Alice.’

‘Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?’ He rested his head back and closed his eyes. ‘We didn’t know Alice; any of us. She was a colleague, an NOT. I expected her to crawl along walls and avert her gaze as the great Maxwell swept past. Her role was to laugh at my jokes, be in awe of my dazzling brilliance – oh, and maybe learn how to be a teacher somewhere along the way. I don’t suppose I addressed more than a dozen words to her since she joined us.’

‘And now she’s dead!’

That was one of the things Maxwell hated about Sylvia Matthews. She had a habit of being right so bloody often. Actually, he didn’t hate it in Sylvia Matthews. It was exactly how he felt and he hated it in himself.

‘Are we saying,’ Sylvia sat at his feet, resting her head on his good knee, ‘that Alice was killed because of her porn activities?’

‘I don’t know’ He wanted to shrug, but that gesture was beyond him at that moment and he let it go. ‘But I’d probably place odds on it.’

‘Why now?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, was Alice still involved in all that?’

Again, I don’t know.’

‘Max, who did this to you?’ She was looking at his wounds again.

‘One of them was a black man the size of an outside lavatory. His name was Prince. The other one I only saw fleetingly. First they knocked me along the corridor and then down some steps, I think. I’d show you my bruises except it would embarrass you.’

‘I’m a nurse, remember.’ She looked at him knowingly, ‘But why did they do it?’

‘Orders from Villiers would be my guess. Perhaps he doesn’t like snoopers, or perhaps …’

‘Max,’ she looked at his dark-circled eyes, ‘you’ve got that old inscrutable look in your eyes. What is it?’

Maxwell gave her his Christopher Lee Fu Manchu. ‘Perhaps I got too close.’

‘You can say that again. Max, you must tell the police.’

‘I have, or rather they’ve already talked to me. Some fresh-faced kid still wet behind the ears interviewed me in hospital. It was a patrol car that picked me up – I think; it was all something of a blur. But how did he know?’

“The fresh-faced kid?’

Maxwell was propping himself up on his one good elbow. ‘No, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Where did we hear about Alice?’

‘Er …’

‘At the Devil’s Ladle,’ he reminded her. ‘Stewart, that officious prig of a proprietor, said she was some sort of tart.’

‘Was she?’

‘No. He was a bit off there. Although God knows how else she eked out her grant. The point is where did Stewart get his information?’

‘The papers?’

‘Nothing there.’ Maxwell shook his head as vigorously as he dared. ‘All the stories I read carried the same thing. Teacher at Leighford High. Most of them also carried Diamond’s official “No comment”. Looked really caring, that, didn’t it?’

‘Perhaps Stewart had heard some gossip,’ Sylvia offered.

‘Ah yes, Nursie, but the source. We historians always consider the source. Is it reliable? Does it show any signs of bias – and the other codswallop they invented when they dreamed up GCSE courses … how long ago was it now?’

‘We could always ask him,’ Sylvia said.

‘Mr and Mrs Ronay? No, I think we’ve blown our cover there, old girl. He wouldn’t give us the time of day. But …’ and he propped himself up still further, ‘… I know a woman who could.’

Monday mornings at Leighford High were something else. The foyer was full of Year Nine girls gossiping about what they had or had not done at the weekend and with whom and how – the graphic and feeble fumblings of adolescence. It all stopped, however, as Maxwell shuffled past them, his bandages contrasting nicely with his swarthy face. They stared at him in disbelief.

‘Good God, Max,’ Roger Garrett, the First Deputy, stepped aside in the main corridor as though Maxwell were a leper.

‘Thank you for your concern, Roger,’ the Head of Sixth Form mumbled. ‘Got caught in a revolving door at Allders. Bitch, isn’t it?’

‘Bloody ’ell, sir,’ was the next compassionate rejoinder.

‘Joseph.’ Maxwell nodded at the brick shithouse in Year Ten who blocked the stairway.

‘Me and Eric’ll sort him, sir, whoever it was panned your head,’ Joseph promised solemnly.

‘I’m sure you would.’ Maxwell couldn’t have put a sheet of paper between the boys’ biceps, standing as the lads were, shoulder to shoulder. ‘And if I had the bugger’s address, I’d send you round there, believe me. Now, off the stairs, ’cos you’re a fire hazard, know what I mean?’

The shoulders broke. Mad Max had asked. That was enough.

‘I should take more water with it next time, Max,’ was the cold comfort of the Ice Maiden, Deirdre Lessing, as she swept past him on the upper corridor.

‘You’d know, dear lady,’ he beamed, raising his hat with what bonhomie he could muster and he half fell into his office, careful to reach the soft chair before the floor reached him.

‘Max!’ Helen Maitland was the Deputy Head of Sixth Form; a French teacher who’d discovered that perennial pregnancy could get you away from the chalk face for months at a time. In common with most men, Maxwell thought there ought to be a law against it, but he was too much of a public schoolboy to say so. ‘What on earth happened?’

‘Not so much earth, my dear,’ Maxwell plonked his hat on the desk beside him, ‘more carpet, followed by stone steps, followed by narrow passageway. Helen, can you handle the UCAS Assembly today? The thought of explaining the university entrance process to the hundred herberts of Year Twelve is a little daunting for me this morning.’

‘Max,’ Helen sat next to him, ‘you ought to be home in bed.’

‘Aha,’ Maxwell beamed, ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

Helen’s face said it all. She lived for her own kids these days, not somebody else’s. Gareth had walked out on her, on them. There’d be no more pregnancies, no more maternity leave, no more going home to the strong arms and the discarded socks. But what did Maxwell know? The cantankerous old bastard was a bachelor. He’d probably never had a relationship in his life. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’ll do the Assembly. You go home. Roger will cover you.’

‘Now, there’s a prospect I don’t relish,’ Maxwell grimaced, ‘being covered by Roger Rabbit.’

‘Oh, Max.’ She’d crossed to the door, an armful of paper clutched across her chest. ‘I almost forgot. There was a phone call for you. About ten minutes ago.’

‘Oh, who?’

‘Don’t know. Ask Pamela.’

‘Who?’

‘The girl on the switchboard.’

‘Oh, Thingee. I do wish you’d be more accurate, Helen.’

‘Max.’ His Number Two had stopped in the doorway. ‘What happened to Alice? Really, I mean?’

‘Really?’ Maxwell hobbled across to his phone. ‘Someone killed her, Helen. That’s all I know’

‘No, Max,’ Helen shook her head. ‘I know you. You’re Mad Max. That’s not all you know’ And she exited with the heavy tread he’d learned to recognize in her year at the school, her great white blouse and oatmeal skirt reminding him again why the sixth form called her The Fridge.

‘Young, Count,’ Maxwell was dabbing the bruise on the ridge of his eyebrow with the stuff they’d given him when he discharged himself from hospital. ‘That’s all Thingee could remember.’ He paused and looked in the mirror to where his black and white Tom who-wasn’t-quite-a-Tom-any-more sat on the linen basket, flicking his tail in an irritated sort of way. Had he passed up a good night’s hunting for this? Who the Hell was Thingee?

‘You know,’ Maxwell read the beast’s mind again, ‘the girl on the switchboard. Apparently her name’s Pamela. There, now, I knew it was worth going in on a Monday, the things you find out.’ And he found himself singing through a thick lip the words of the old Wayne Fontana song ‘ “Pamela, Pamela, remember the days, of inkwells and apples and books and school plays.” Anyway, ow,’ his fingers had probed too far against his sensitive cheekbone, ‘the phone call came from a young male, Thingee didn’t know how old. She’s only a slip of a thingee herself, of course. Still it was odd.’

Maxwell turned to his pet, ‘Why, I don’t hear you ask? Because the caller said he had to talk to Mr Maxwell and that he was afraid no one else would do. That’s what Thingee’s note said. Unfortunately, punctuation isn’t her strong suit. Remember
The List of Adrian Messenger
, Count? Of course you do. Kirk Douglas is the baddie but half the cast are in disguise. Well, that bit where the Frenchman is remembering, for George C. Scott’s benefit, his conversation after the plane crash with the dying Messenger? It’s all to do with punctuation, really, the stresses on various words and so on. Insert the odd full stop, Count, and what do we have? “I have to talk to Mr Maxwell and I’m afraid no one else will do” – that could be my bank manager, my dentist or the man from the Forestry Commission telling me I can sponsor that sapling after all. But with that full stop, that little black spot that killed old Billy Bones, what do we have now? “I have to talk to Mr Maxwell and I’m afraid. No one else will do.’ That makes it one person only, Count. That makes it Ronnie Parsons.’