The Secret Tunnel (25 page)

“That’s it, boy. Open your pretty mouth and take it.”

He did as he was told—and at that very moment, as my head slid along his velvety tongue, Simmonds burst out of the cubicle and caught us in the act. The young copper
stopped in midsuck, a look of terror in his pretty blue eyes, his lips stretched around the base of my dick. I held his head in place, and even thrust a little. It was an exquisite scenario.

“Well, well, well,” said Simmonds, in his best mean-conductor voice, “what have we here?”

The young copper couldn’t reply; I made sure of that.

“Looks like we’ve got a queer, Mitch.”

“Sure does. Look at the way he’s sucking my cock.”

“Yeah. He likes it, doesn’t he?”

The poor boy’s eyes were watering now, and I brushed a tear from his cheek.

“Now, Tom, what are we going to do with this young fellow?”

“I guess we should turn him over to the police, Mitch.”

“I guess we should. But it seems a shame to ruin such a promising career.”

The boy was making various noises in the back of his throat. I stroked his hair, and gently fucked his mouth. I noticed he didn’t gag once.

“So, copper,” I said, stroking his smooth cheek, “are you going to cooperate with us? Or do you we turn you in?”

He nodded vigorously, which had the interesting effect of working my cock into hitherto unexplored areas of his mouth.

“If I take my cock out, you aren’t going to shout for help?”

He shook his head just as vigorously.

“Okay. Here we go.” I took my hands from the back of his head, and let him slide off in his own time. A long string of saliva and precum connected us for a while, then he wiped his mouth and got to his feet.

“You’re not going to tell on me, are you sir?”

“That rather depends on you. What’s your name?”

“Godwin, sir. PC Jack Godwin.”

“Well, PC Jack Godwin, you’re in luck. We’re looking for a young lad just like you.”

“What for?”

“Not what you think, although maybe later.” I could see that Simmonds was interested; he was looking at the young blond cop with a positively wolfish expression on his face. “We need some inside information.”

“On what?”

I heard footsteps; we had been in there long enough, and the hunters were returning.

“Not here. Let’s walk.”

There was a café on the corner, where we ordered tea.

“Right, Jack. We have a job for you.”

“What?”

“I need to find out about a dead man.”

“Where did he die?”

“Somewhere between York and Peterborough. Around about Grantham. In a train, in a tunnel.”

“That’s local constabulary, then. Or Transport Police. I’m Met.”

“So’s Superintendent Dickinson. Ah, that made you prick up your ears. You’ve heard of him?”

“Of course. He’s big in homicide.”

“That sounds like our man.”

“What’s he got to do with this dead man?”

“If my suspicions are right, a hell of a lot. I need you to find out where the body is. Who’s doing the autopsy. Who’s handling the case. What’s the procedure?”

“If it’s a suspicious death—”

“Yeah, I’d say it was suspicious.”

“Well, then, there would be a coroner’s report and, if necessary, an autopsy.”

“How quickly would that happen?”

“Straight away.”

“That’s what I need. Can you get them for me?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly is no good to me, Jack. An innocent man is going to hang if you don’t help me.”

“There’s very little I can do.”

“A murderer is going to get away scot-free.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir. Where do you imagine the body to be?”

“It may have been taken off the train at Peterborough. It may be in London. Those would be the first places to look.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Jack—”

“Yes, sir?”

“If you want another taste of this”—I pulled his hand under the table to my groin—“don’t let me down.”

He left without even finishing his tea. Would I ever see him again? Would he simply run to his bosses, and land us in jail ourselves? I was counting on luck more than judgment—and he seemed like a good bet. But it was all a gamble. For all we knew, Bertrand could be dead by now—and there was nothing we could do about it. We were laying a trap for Dickinson, stacking up the evidence against him—but how would we catch him? Everything pointed toward him as Rhys’s killer—but I could be completely wrong. He could just be a detective with distasteful methods. Maybe I had painted him as a villain out of jealousy; he was doing the work that I would like to be doing. Perhaps he was just an unscrupulous man who didn’t much care what people thought of him, not above abusing his authority when it suited him, but not a killer. In which case, I would have egg on my face—and whoever had got Bertrand, I was doing nothing to help him.

These gloomy musings must have shown on my face.

“Chin up, Mitch,” said Simmonds. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I hope so. But will we get there in time? I have a terrible feeling that something—”

“What?”

“Something is going to happen tonight.”

WE MADE IT BACK TO THE GARRICK JUST IN TIME. THE audience was spilling out onto the pavement, hailing cabs, smoking cigarettes, trying to gain access to the stage door, through which, at some point, Taylor and Bankhead would pass. There were newspapermen everywhere. Somewhere in the melee were Morgan and Belinda, Lady Antonia and her cronies, and God knew who else.

Yes! There was a face I recognized! A handsome young man, short, shifty-looking, jumping up and down to survey the crowd, his hat pushed back on his head. And I recognized his friend too, taller, more heavily built. He had a camera hung around his neck. Where did I know them from? Somewhere recent? I racked my brain. British-American? No. Before that. Of course: the Flying Scotsman. They were the reporters I’d seen talking to David Rhys. The ones Dickinson, in his disguise as a British-American publicity director, had thrown off the train during that fortuitous stop at York.

And here they were again: two more pieces of the jigsaw, falling strangely into place.

They were not difficult to reach. Approaching, I tipped my hat to them, but they ignored me, far more interested in the comings and goings of the glittering first-night crowd.

“I believe I saw you gentlemen on the train from Edinburgh.”

I got a scowl in return.

“Still tailing Hugo Taylor, then?”

“What does it look like?” said the shorter of the two. He had very pale blue eyes, which could have been attractive in a less suspicious-looking face.

“I bet you guys would like to hear a story about Hugo Taylor, wouldn’t you?”

“Piss off, mate,” said the photographer. “We’re working.”

I suppose that pressmen are bothered constantly by members of the public desperate to get their crackpot theories into print.

“So it won’t interest you to know, then, that there was an attempt on his life this evening.”

“Bollocks. Hey! Scott! Here comes Lady Antonia! Get a picture of her!”

The cameraman did as he was told. The reporter scribbled in his notebook.

“And there’s Cecil Beaton! And Noël Coward!”

“Together?”

“No. We’ll say they’ve cut each other. Get the shot!”

“Someone put cyanide in his mouthwash.”

“Please, sir,” said Scott, the photographer. “We’ve asked you nicely to leave us in peace and get on with our job. Now will you take the hint and fuck off?”

“I just told you there was an attempt on the leading man’s life. Is that not of interest to your editor?”

“We heard he had a funny turn. Happens all the time. They’re all doping, these actors.” The reporter barely bothered to look at me, his eyes riveted on the crowd. “We can’t write about it. Orders from above.”

“Then I shall take my story elsewhere.”

“Good luck.”

Ill-mannered little prick! I wanted to knock him down. But I sensed that he knew things that might be useful to me.

“Thank you. And tomorrow, try explaining to your editor that you missed a story all about Prince George.”

That got his attention.

“What?”

“Prince George. Backstage in Hugo Taylor’s dressing room. Displaying a lively concern. Shortly after Mr. Taylor’s costar, Daisy Athenasy, was arrested in connection with the murder of a man on the Flying Scotsman.”

“You are joking.”

“I wish I were.”

“Scott, keep snapping. I’ve got a scoop.”

“But Connor, for God’s sake—”

“Do as I tell you.” Connor, the weaselly little reporter, took my arm and led me aside, while Scott kept shooting, occasionally casting angry glances in our direction.

“Go on, Mr.…er…?”

“Mitchell. Edward Mitchell.” He took down my name. “Shortly after you left the train at York, a man was killed…” I told him the whole story, and he scribbled.

When I’d finished, he said, “You really expect me to believe that that interfering bastard who chucked us off the train was an undercover cop?”

“Yes. Call your news desk. Perhaps some of the senior reporters will know the name. You’re just showbiz—”

“All right, all right. No need to get shirty. But come on, mate. Even if he is a copper, you can’t seriously think that he bumped off some bloke just because he was—what? Nobbing some other feller? You’ve got to have a better motive than that. What do you reckon? Jealous lover? Queer love triangle?”

“No, I don’t think that was the reason.”

“Then what? Come on, you’re wasting my time.”

“I think,” I said, improvising wildly, “that David Rhys found out something about Hugo Taylor and Prince George.”

I made that up on the spur of the moment, to persuade Connor that I wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill—but suddenly it made sense. Of course! If Dickinson was in league with the British Fascists, trying to “clean up” the royal family and remove Prince George from his undesirable connections, then any inadvertent discovery of the royal person’s peccadilloes would be a very good motive for murder.

“And where does Daisy Athenasy fit into all this?”

There he had me, but I wasn’t going to admit it. There was no point in telling him about Daisy’s drug habit, as that was clearly common knowledge. Once again, I scrabbled around for a foothold in the scree of supposition.

I said, “British-American is making blue movies—”

“You don’t say?”

“—to make up the shortfall for her box-office disasters.”

“Go on.”

I felt like saying “I’m going as fast as I can—it takes time to make this crap up!”—but then I had another flash of intuition.

“And they were being blackmailed by Peter Dickinson.”

“I thought you told me he was working for them?”

“He was. But I see it all now. They’d agreed to let him pretend to be a British-American employee, on the understanding that he was trying to crack the drug ring that was supplying Daisy. Herbert Waits, her husband, would have wanted to get her off the drugs—”

“Or possibly he wanted proof that she was on them,” said Connor, who clearly had ambitions to get out of showbiz reporting and into proper investigative journalism. “That way, he could fire her on a morals clause—and get a very easy divorce. She’s been a millstone round his neck
ever since she frog-marched him up the aisle.”

“And then,” I continued, “Dickinson turned on Waits, said that he’d blow the whistle on the studio’s secret activities, unless… Unless what?”

“Unless he lets him get to Hugo Taylor.”

We looked at each other. Could this possibly be true? Had Peter Dickinson really abused his position that far—to pervert the course of a criminal investigation to his own warped political ends? It was ridiculous. But then, life often is.

I had a buzzing in my ears, flashes in my eyes, and I felt as if I might faint. I suppose it was a form of panic, or euphoria. I have had it once or twice before, when I’ve realized that I am about to have sex with someone.

“So,” said Connor. “Prove it.”

There’s the rub, I thought. Proof. I had none.

“You have to believe me.”

“For all I know, mate, you could be some republican crackpot or religious maniac trying to spread a crazy story about the royal family, or the film industry. We get them every day. I can’t publish without proof. This is a risky enough story as it is. The editor will need a cast-iron case, otherwise the legal actions would be fucking horrific. If you can’t back it up, mate, you’re just pissing in the wind.”

I couldn’t let him go like this. He was ready to believe me—possibly ready to help—but without proof, I was wasting my time. And time was in even shorter supply than proof. The crowd was surging around the stage door. Hugo Taylor and Tallulah Bankhead would soon be coming out. I had to move. What could I do?

Simmonds suddenly appeared at my side.

“Mitch!”

“Not now, Simmonds. I’m trying to think.”

“Mitch, come quickly!”

“What is it? Not Taylor…” I had a sudden, horrible suspicion
that the hair dryer had, after all, done its lethal work.

“No. It’s Godwin.”

Godwin! My cock-hungry little policeman! Back so soon! I followed Simmonds’s pointing finger, and there stood PC Jack Godwin, still in plain clothes, accompanied by another police officer in uniform. He was beckoning me over.

“Here’s your proof,” I said to Connor. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

He followed me over. I shook Godwin by the hand.

“What have you got for me, Jack?”

“It’s not me, sir. It’s my sergeant here. Mr. Mitchell—Sergeant Shipton.

Shipton? Surely not…

The uniformed sergeant held out a hand. “Evening, Mitch.”