‘You should tell that to Marchant, too,’ I said.

  His smile became more natural. ‘But you’d prefer it if I didn’t.’

  I hadn’t thought about it, but he was right. I felt I was getting close to something. I could tell Marchant when I needed his help. ‘For the time being, maybe,’ I said.

  ‘But there is something I need from you. Those photos.’

  ‘Not much use to you are they, given the chap in them isn’t Metzger?’

  ‘Still more my side of things than yours, though.’

  I shrugged. He was right. ‘They’re at home.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  I’d finished my drink now and couldn’t find any other excuse not to go. We walked back up towards the racetrack until he stopped at a car parked at the roadside. It was a J-Type Midget, white with red leather seats. The weather was good enough for it to have the top down. He vaulted into the driver’s seat without opening the door. The car suited him and I liked to think it would have suited me, if I’d been able to afford one, but I was probably kidding myself. I climbed in more conventionally on the other side. The engine sprang to life and we were off.

  ‘You’ll have to let me know the way,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘Head back down into town.’

  ‘Righto!’

  We turned on to Elm Grove, where the gradient that had caused the tram such effort in bringing me up the hill now had the reverse effect. The car speeded up without any impetus from Tremaine’s right foot. He changed down a gear.

  ‘I find it best to keep her in second along here,’ he shouted over the noise of the wind and the engine.

  I gave him further directions, but it was an easy enough journey home: a slight kink at the bottom of the hill, then across the Level, another kink and on to Rose Hill Terrace. Tremaine stayed in his car while I went up to my rooms. I got the envelope from my filing cabinet, realising I didn’t have long. I’d not told him exactly how many pictures the full set contained. I could keep perhaps two and he’d be none the wiser, but I’d have to choose quickly. I was about to empty them out on to my desk when I heard the creak of a foot on the stair. I turned and a moment later, Tremaine appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Just thought I’d take a look at where poor old Al died,’ he explained. ‘May I?’

  ‘Please come in,’ I replied nervously. He must have been suspicious even to come up after me. My guilty reaction would only have reinforced his misgivings.

  ‘Those the piccies?’ He held out his hand. There was nothing I could do but give him the envelope and all the photographs it contained.

  ‘They found him through there,’ I said, pointing to the living room door. He went in first and I followed. I was pleased to see that Jack had finally fixed the window. ‘He was lying against the wall, beside the chair.’

  Tremaine nodded slowly. ‘Gruesome,’ he said. He looked around. ‘Not sure what I was really expecting to see,’ he announced at last. He went back out and downstairs to the front door, with me close behind him.

  ‘I suppose this is goodbye, then,’ he said, offering me his hand.

  I took it. ‘I suppose so. Though you said you might be able to find some work for me … your department.’

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘I think we both know that that was just to try to keep you off Metzger’s scent. It didn’t even achieve that.’

  He tipped his hat and walked down the steps to the pavement. Moments later he had driven away. I went back up to my room. I wasn’t too surprised to learn that Tremaine’s job offer had been bogus. It didn’t matter. Even if I wanted a job in London, I’d prefer to get it through Uncle Graham. But there were still leads to be followed, and the most important was Remick. He was supposed to be calling me here, so I’d have to wait around. Besides, I had plenty to be getting on with. It would have been better to have kept hold of one or two of those photographs, but it wasn’t essential. I’d recreated them from memory before, and I could do so again. But I’d be more accurate if the memory was fresh. I reached for my pad and pencils and began to draw the face of Mr X as I now knew it to be.

  But his wasn’t the only face I drew that afternoon.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was 8 o’clock and Remick still hadn’t called. He’d seemed scared enough, though maybe it wasn’t me he was scared of. But I knew his haunts. I walked up to the Queen’s Road and stuck my head through the door of every pub along there, and a few off it. There were a lot of them. Lottie was sitting at the bar of the Royal Standard, just where I’d found her earlier in the week. She saw my face in the mirror.

  ‘Hello, lover,’ she said absentmindedly. She was more than a little tipsy.

  ‘Evening.’ I tried to look at her in the mirror, but immediately the reflected angular patterns began to dance. I stared down at the bar. They could bring on the aura and then the headache would almost certainly follow. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the colours persisted on the inside of my eyelids. At last they faded. I was all right again for now.

  ‘You not well?’ asked Lottie.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You need a drink.’ She called across to the barman. ‘Get him a pint. And I’ll have a Mackeson’s.’ When the drinks came, she made no attempt to pay for them. The barman looked at me wearily and I felt obliged to cough up. It could have been a routine the two of them had worked out between them.

  ‘You talk to that girl, then?’

  ‘Rachael, you mean?’ I knew perfectly well who she meant, but it was pleasant to feel the name on my lips.

  Lottie shrugged, uninterested in the detail.

  ‘I found her. She was very helpful.’ I kept my eyes on the frothy head of my drink as I spoke.

  She emitted a slight chuckle. ‘“Helpful”? Just as long as you didn’t help yourself.’ It was only down to chance – or to my own stupidity – that I hadn’t, but I said nothing. She interpreted my silence as a yes. ‘You didn’t? You want to be careful. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Spindly Cochran.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I assured her, ‘and I won’t.’

  ‘So you found out who did for Al?’

  ‘I found out who didn’t.’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

  A thought hit me. I’d found no clues to point to it, but it was an obvious solution. ‘You don’t think Cochran could have done it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If he didn’t like what O’Connor had done with Rachael – didn’t like her having her photos taken, at least not without getting a cut himself.’

  She turned to face me, which was rare in itself, and placed a hand on my arm. She spoke in a hiss. ‘Don’t you go saying that sort of thing about Spindly. He doesn’t like having lies told about him.’

  ‘But it makes sense.’

  ‘It makes no sense. Spindly would never kill a man, not if it was easier to shake him down. Did Al strike you as the kind who’d want to do things the hard way?’

  I couldn’t speak for Cochran, but her view of matters fitted O’Connor to a T. And what evidence I had so far indicated elsewhere. But it was a possibility I shouldn’t have overlooked.

  ‘So is that the best you’ve got?’ she asked.

  ‘Percy Remick knows something. I’ve been trying to find him.’

  ‘Percy? You saw him on Monday, at the funeral.’

  ‘I saw him today as well, at the races.’

  ‘He’s no murderer. Mind you, he must know a few.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what he’s supposed to be telling me.’ I drained my pint quickly. I knew I was wasting time sitting here.

  ‘Well, he’s not been in here tonight. Have a look in the Evening Star.’

  ‘Been there.’

  ‘Maybe the Butchers?’

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  He wasn’t in the Three Jolly Butchers, but I eventually found him in the Quadrant. I almost didn’t notice him but, as I was about to leave, his son came in – the one I’d seen up at the track. The boy gave me a fearful look, then turned and left, but it was enough to tell me his father was in there somewhere. I took a second glance around, more carefully this time and there he was, huddled in a corner. He looked terrible. As far as I knew he was in his forties, but now seemed around three decades older than when I’d seen him up at the track, just a few hours before. He sat as though deliberately trying to go unnoticed, pathetic and small, with his legs crossed and his arms tucked against his body. His head was lowered, but that didn’t hide a livid bruise to his right eye. His lips sucked at the tiniest stub of a hand-rolled cigarette, which he held delicately between the tips of his index finger and thumb. His hand was bandaged, including each of his four fingers. Blood seeped through the dirty white linen.

  Without asking, I bought him a Scotch from the bar, but I didn’t feel like anything more myself. When I put the glass down in front of him, it took a moment for him to notice it. He reached for it with his other hand and I saw that it was bandaged, too, but in this case the bloodstains showed on the palm, not the back. Then he looked up and saw me. He snatched his hand away from the glass as though it was hot.

  ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ he said.

  I sat down next to him. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You asked questions.’

  ‘You answered them.’

  ‘I fucking didn’t. And don’t you tell anyone I did.’

  ‘You were going to.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’ He spoke loudly, making sure the whole bar would hear. ‘I only said that to get rid of you.’

  ‘It didn’t work, did it? Here I am.’

  ‘And the sooner you get lost, the better.’ There was nothing more he could get from his roll-up and he threw it to the floor. I offered him one of my Player’s. He eyed it suspiciously, then took it. I lit it, and one for myself.

  ‘Don’t forget your drink,’ I said. He gave it that same wary look, then quickly raised the glass to his mouth and knocked back half of it. The blood on his bandages glistened, still wet. It was the unmistakable mark of a razor – the hands instinctively go up to protect the face but with nothing to protect themselves. It could have been me if Tremaine hadn’t shown up. Perhaps we shared the same attacker, Remick punished doubly to balance the failure in dealing with me. ‘Was it Dudley’s man?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Why would he care about what O’Connor was up to? And, besides, Dudley …’ He came to a sudden halt, realizing he was being too helpful. He swallowed the rest of his drink. ‘Like I say, just get lost.’

  I looked at him. I didn’t know him that well but I had some idea of the sort of man he was. When he’d said he call me with the names, he’d meant it. He’d been scared by me, by my pathetic attempt at bullying. But now he’d encountered a professional, and there was nothing I could do to make him more afraid than he was. Nothing I was prepared to do, anyway. I reached into my pocket and laid my sketches out on the table in front of him, straightening them up so he could examine the faces.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ I said. ‘Just point.’

  With a groan he lifted his head back. I could see another bruise on his jaw, and the thin line of a shallow razor cut across his neck – a deliberate reminder of what might happen next time. He produced a hawking sound in his throat and then his head shot forward as he spat on to the table. It hit one of the drawings, catching Mr X square on the cheek and slowly spreading into a tiny puddle. I wiped it clean with the sleeve of my overcoat, then collected it together with the others and stood up.

  ‘Thanks!’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Pleasure.’

  I was back on Queen’s Road before it occurred to me that my sarcasm might not have been in order. I’d asked him to point, but perhaps he’d chosen to be more subtle, indicating who’d attacked him in a quite different way. I dismissed the thought; no one could have aimed that well. I walked back up the hill towards the station.

  ‘Mister!’

  I turned. A figure was standing in the shadows of Air Street, on the far side of the pub. It sounded like a woman’s voice. Whoever it was had a slight build. I wondered if it might be someone in the same line of business as Rachael but without her own cosy flat to work from. After all, we weren’t so very far from West Street.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked. I kept on the main road, under a streetlamp that hung from the side of the building. This girl could easily be the bait for a trap.

  ‘My name’s Ronald … Ronald Remick. You were just talking to my dad.’ He stepped forward. It was the boy I’d seen at the races and, not long before, when I first went into the pub.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened to him,’ I said.

  Ronald sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘I was there. The bloke said he’d do the same for me next time. That’s what really scared dad.’

  ‘Who did? Who was it?’

  He shook his head. His eyes were wet. ‘Why should I tell you? I saw you, too. You pushed him over. He’s not well.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. But it’s not the same as that, is it?’ I nodded my head in the direction of where I’d left his father. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to be tough to do the right thing. You know that. You’ve seen it in the talkies, haven’t you?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘And you can look at me and look at him, and you can tell which one’s the bad guy and which one’s the good guy.’

  ‘Still doesn’t mean you can help.’

  ‘I can’t do anything if I don’t know. Had you seen him before?’

  A shake of the head.

  ‘But you’d recognize him again.’

  ‘Course.’

  I took a step forward, trying not to startle him, like you’d approach a stray cat, but he didn’t move. I pulled out the drawings again and showed him the first. ‘Is that him?’

  ‘No, that’s Teddy Granger,’ He spoke quickly, which made him sound unconvincing. ‘He works for Frank Dudley.’ The second part of it was true, as I already knew to my cost. I’d not had long to study his face, but I’d seen it very close up and so made a reasonable stab at a good likeness. Perhaps Ronald’s gabbling was a sign of fear, not deceit.

  I showed him the second drawing but he shook his head, then the third. ‘That’s him. He came round our house today, after the races.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Like I said, I never saw him before. But he’s nothing. Just muscle.’ From a boy of his age, it was an astute understanding of how the world worked.

  ‘So who’s his boss?’ I asked. ‘Who pulls the strings?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘There’d be no point this fellow coming to see your dad, and not saying who sent him, would there?’

  ‘I heard him say a name, his boss’s name. It’s … It’s …’ Finally, he blurted out the word: ‘Holsworth.’ He took a step back into the shadows, as if cowering from the revenge that might be meted out to him even for mentioning that name.

  To me it was a disappointment. The boy had given it a good build-up, as if sensing my eagerness, my hope, that with this one revelation everything would fall into place. But the name meant nothing. An entirely new suspect, and perhaps not a suspect at all, not one for O’Connor’s murder. It certainly wasn’t on that list of bookies; it might have been somewhere else in O’Connor’s notebook, but it didn’t ring a bell. It was a shame I couldn’t check anymore.

  ‘So what does this Holsworth do?’ I asked. ‘Is he another bookie? Is he in the rackets?’

  ‘He’s not a bookie, for sure. I don’t know about the rest of it. I just heard the name.’

  ‘That’ll be enough. You’ve been a good lad.’ I reached into my pocket and found a two-bob bit. I held it out to him. He stepped away.

  ‘I don’t want that. That’s blood money, that is. They told us about it in Sunday school.’

  I couldn’t quite see the connection, but I didn’t press it. ‘How about a fag, then?’ I asked, holding out the packet. ‘They mention those in the Bible?’

  ‘S’pose not.’ He reached out towards the carton. It seemed like a pathetic reward, given how much he’d told me. ‘Take the whole pack,’ I said. It was about half full.

  He grabbed it with a subdued ‘Thanks, Mister,’ then made to disappear along the twitten than ran behind the shops, parallel to Queen’s Road.

  ‘One more thing,’ I called after him. He stopped and turned, eyeing the cigarettes in his hand, keen to savour his reward. ‘The bloke that did that to your dad – did he have an accent?’

  ‘Yeah, he did. A funny one. Northern – but not Yorkshire.’

  ‘Geordie?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I considered trying to give a rendition, but it would have been laughable. Anyway, there was no need. ‘Never mind,’ I said. He ran off and I began to make my way home.

  I didn’t need to know the accent. I was certain now that it wasn’t German. But Ronald Remick had identified the man quite definitely from my sketch of him. Perhaps his father, Percy, really had been intent on doing the same with his well-aimed expectoration. I could see no way to make the pieces fit, but I had no doubt as to what I’d discovered. The man who’d slashed Remick senior’s hands, who’d punched him in the face and God-knew-what-else was the same man that O’Connor had photographed screwing Rachael at the Metropole Hotel, the same man I’d seen leaving her flat the previous night.

  But still I didn’t know his name. To me he remained Mr X.

  CHAPTER 17

  I awoke early, though it was already light. I’d asked Mrs Croft often enough, but she never got around to putting up thicker curtains, or telling Jack to. If it came to a war, she might have to. I gazed at the ceiling, trying to make sense of it all. Only yesterday Tremaine and I had agreed that there were two separate matters here: O’Connor’s murder and the attempt to blackmail Metzger. I hadn’t really believed it, and I doubt Tremaine did either. But yesterday it had been simply a gut feeling. Now there was a link: Mr X. He was the man in O’Connor’s photographs and, the moment I started to investigate O’Connor’s list of names, he appeared and beat up the one person who’d had even half a mind to give me information.