He swung the Cooper, naked tyres squealing, into the sharp corner of the road down to the beach. It reached a dead end at the slipway, and to the right was a public car park. Mark was a keen surfer and a member of the surfing club, based in those days in the little wooden hut at the rear of the car park. He waved cheerily at the car park attendant. There was a kind of unofficial agreement that the surfers parked for free, but you had to keep the grumpy white-coated attendant sweet. A group of the lads were sitting forlornly outside the hut enjoying the sun, but despondent because that day, even in windy Pelham Bay, there was little or no surf.
Mark parked and briskly walked the hundred yards or so to the deckchair stand in search of Bill Turpin. There was not much happened in Pelham Bay that Bill Turpin didn’t know about. Bill was not a gossip, and it was partly that which made his value as a contact so much greater to a reporter. If you could get the non-talkers to talk to you, then you were always on the verge of cracking the ‘big one’ — or so the Jim Sykeses of the newspaper world always promised.
Mark picked himself a chair, set it up, and sat down next to Johnny Cooke.
‘Wotcher Casanova,’ he said.
Johnny whistled a few unrecognisable notes and grinned at him. Mark was the only person who ever referred to Johnny’s court case of the previous year. Everyone else pretended it had never happened. Johnny would have preferred it to be out in the open, so that he could explain to anyone he cared enough about that it hadn’t been the way it seemed. It really hadn’t. He found the direct approach a welcome change. It made him feel comfortable with Mark. He knew Mark’s amusement was genuine. The reporter really couldn’t give a damn.
He held out his hand. ‘That’ll be a bob for the deckchair, thank you,’ he said.
‘You have to be joking,’ replied Mark. ‘Where’s the Walt Disney of the West of England?’
‘On the prowl as usual. And if you don’t get out of that chair smartish he’ll make the pair of us into sausage meat for his hot dogs.’
Mark produced a packet of Gauloises and lit one — it was more of an affectation than a habit.
He puffed a cloud of smoke into the blue sky. ‘Your boss and me, we’re like that, mate.’ He held up his hand with two fingers crossed. ‘I’m telling you.’
Johnny was saved from answering by the arrival of Bill Turpin who, chewing his foul-smelling pipe, seemed to materialise from nowhere. He had an uncanny knack of doing that.
‘Doing all right on that paper of yours, then, boy.’ A statement rather than a question.
Mark started. ‘Yeah. Oh yeah.’
‘Well then, price of a deckchair won’t worry you. Johnny, give him a ticket.’
Mark fished around in his pocket for change.
There was no point in arguing with Bill Turpin. The old man chewed his pipe some more. ‘Discount for locals,’ he said. ‘That’ll be a tanner.’
‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘You’ve taken my last penny as usual, so what about some help? What do you know about this body, Bill? Is it on?’
‘’Tis on, lad, like I told the police...’ he began. That made sense, thought Mark. Bill would be first stop for the cops too.
‘I don’t know much worth telling... I was standing there by the ice cream van, just looking out over the sea wall and I could see something floating in the water...’
Bill’s voice trailed off. ‘Anyway, next thing I know Reg Stone’s maid is screaming her poor little heart out right across the bay.’
‘Reg Stone’s maid? The councillor?’
‘Yep. That maid of his is down here all summer with them mazed lot who lie around on the lavatory roof over by the lido.’
‘Oh I know that lot. Don’t think I know the girl though.’
Mark had never even asked her name that night at the school dance. Unusually for him he could still remember every detail of his encounter with Jennifer Stone by the dustbins, although he had no idea who she was. He had been turned on by her to distraction, and it had been days before his excitement had died down.
But the teacher who had interrupted that promising encounter, whilst not identifying Jenny who kept in the shadows, had identified Mark as he ran off. The school threatened Mark with the police if he ever went near one of their pupils again, and he was left in no doubt that if he tried to pursue the girl who had so aroused him, he would end up in jail. It was only because his father was the school chaplain that the police had not been called this time, he was told. He had shortly afterwards found Irene, and had been using her ever since as a poor but willing substitute. Nothing that he did to Irene ever seemed really to satisfy him. Yet the young body that had clung to him so eagerly in the dustbin yard had left a lasting impression.
Mark had his notebook out now.
‘How does she fit into it all then?’
‘Found the body, poor maid. Out swimming.’
‘Hey, what a great line. I’d better have words with young Miss Stone...’
‘You’ll be bleddy lucky. Took her straight off to ’ospital. In a terrible state. Terrible.’
‘Shock, huh?’ Mark turned to a clean page in his notebook, jotted down ‘Stone’ and began to doodle the letter S into an elaborate snake. He picked Bill’s brains about the time the body was found and any other details he could think of, but the older man was reticent, even for him.
‘No way it could have been an accident, I don’t suppose?’ Mark looked at Bill thoughtfully.
‘Not the way I heard it,’ said the old man. ‘Strangled. That don’t happen by accident, do it?’
‘Ah. Cops tell you that?’
‘Mebbe. Cops! Pah. Don’t know what they think I do all day apart from sticking my nose into other folks’ business.’
Mark laughed. ‘Trouble is, you usually do know other folks’ business, don’t you?’
‘Too sharp by ’alf, boy, that’s your trouble. You lads today need a couple of years in the army. That’d wipe the smirk off your smug young faces. Put on a bit of muscle too.’ He shook Mark by the shoulder.
Mark tried to wrench away the old man’s hand, but he could not force the bony fingers apart.
‘Jesus Christ, Bill. Let go, will you?’
Bill obliged and Mark rubbed his sore shoulder. Bill looked pleased with himself, he was almost grinning. He secretly enjoyed his encounters with Mark when the young reporter came looking for information. They had had each other’s measure from the beginning, these two. None the less Mark had no idea that Bill was even remotely aware of his attempts to uncover the secrets of the old man’s past. Mark should have expected that, because he knew Bill always found out about anything and everything happening in Pelham Bay. But with the brash confidence of youth, it had somehow not occurred to Mark that Bill would have been aware of his futile investigations. In fact Bill had watched, untroubled, as Mark fruitlessly questioned distant relatives, business contacts, and anyone even vaguely connected with the old man. In a way Bill accepted this kind of attention as his right — more of an accolade than an intrusive insult, and he was quite certain that no local paper hack was going to make any discoveries likely to cause him concern. The older man would amuse himself giving Mark a bit of a hard time, but even so he always seemed to have some little gem that he would pass on — just as he had on this occasion. There was a lot in Mark which Bill Turpin recognised and which Mark Piddle had yet to learn about himself.
Bill thrust his right hand deep into the pocket of his old grey flannels, and with his left removed the pipe which all the time had been clasped between his teeth.
‘Load of nancy boys, you youngsters today...’