Clearly O’Connor and Mr X had been working together. I could only guess that O’Connor was the brains within the team. He’d have planned it all. He took the pictures while Mr X did the hard work – if that was an appropriate term for it. And then O’Connor had another blackmail scheme going: collecting the names of punters on a losing streak so he could squeeze them for a little more, rather than let their wives or their employers or their bank managers know what was going on. He might need muscle for that, too. If O’Connor had still been alive, then it would have made perfect sense that, as soon as I started asking Remick questions, the bookie would be persuaded to shut up. O’Connor would have sent Mr X round to do it. So what did it signify that Mr X had done so of his own volition? Was he carrying on O’Connor’s operation for himself? Not on his own, he wasn’t. He was working for this chap Holsworth. Obviously Holsworth was taking over O’Connor’s business. And to do that, he’d first have to get rid of O’Connor. And why do that himself? Why not get someone else to do it, someone like Mr X?

  And so I was back where I started. Plus ça change. The man in the photographs was the man who had killed O’Connor. I’d been wrong about who he was, and wrong about why he’d done it, but everything else remained the same.

  But there could still be more to it than that. Tremaine wasn’t levelling with me, any more than I was with him. He must have spotted, long before I told him, that the photographs were duds. Perhaps he’d already confronted Metzger with them. He was trying to find out what O’Connor had been up to, just as much as I was. That’s why he’d been up there at the races. His story about tailing me was bull. If he’d followed me all the way from my place, how come he needed to ask me for directions to get back there? It was a stupid mistake for a professional.

  And there was one other thing that nagged at me. If O’Connor had hired Mr X to go up to that room in the Metropole, and if both of them – Rachael and Mr X – had known they were being photographed, then why did O’Connor need to go to the effort of concealing himself. It was almost as though he was the only one who didn’t know what was going on. And yet all the evidence indicated that he himself had planned it.

  The only useful question was: what next? Who could I talk to that I’d not already tried, and either been told what they knew, or told to get lost. There were only two candidates, a face without a name and a name without a face: Mr X and Holsworth. Could they be one and the same? It was conceivable. I only had the name from young Ronald Remick and he could have been confused.

  But I was looking at things the wrong way. I didn’t need to speak to anyone new. When you’re trying to solve a crossword puzzle, you don’t go through the clues just once and then give up. The discovery of one word gives you letters to help with other words that you previously hadn’t been able to guess. So you go round again and again until the whole thing’s solved – or until you reach deadlock. It was the same here. I’d go and talk to people again, armed with the new information I’d since received from others. I already knew where to start: Mullender.

  *

  Mullender had taken over Thompson’s business, and when he wasn’t up at the track, Thompson worked out of a house just east of the Old Steine, in Devonshire Place. I’d been there once and it was somewhere to start looking. It was mid-morning when I rapped the heavy brass knocker against the door. It opened quickly, as though someone had been waiting behind it. I recalled Thompson telling me it always paid to keep a man on the door; it looked good in front of the callers you wanted to see, and gave you an extra few seconds to escape out the back from those you didn’t.

  The boy who opened the door was unfeasibly thin, with a pencil moustache and a straw panama that was jammed down on to his curly hair. He was only about twenty. He looked at me but said nothing.

  I spoke instead. ‘Mullender in?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  It was exactly the question Mullender himself had asked me when we first met. ‘Tell him it’s Charlie Woolf, O’Connor’s friend.’

  The door closed in my face and I waited. The sun hadn’t hit this side of the street yet, but it was already warm. Glancing south, I could make out a little patch of sea glittering blue, scarcely distinguishable from the sky above it. It would be Saturday tomorrow, Whit Sunday the day after, and then the bank holiday. It would be a busy time for Mullender, who made his money from more than just racing. It would be a busy time for everyone in Brighton, when the trains from London spilled out their passengers on to the Queen’s Road, pockets and purses brimming with cash, and we all would try to make sure just a few shillings of it came our way.

  The door opened again. ‘He’s not in.’ The response had taken far too long for it to be true.

  ‘Tell him I know who did Percy Remick over.’

  The door closed again, but this time I didn’t have nearly so long to wait. ‘Come in.’ It was a grudging invitation. I followed the skinny figure up a flight of stairs and then to the back of the house. He knocked on a door, which was opened from the inside, but didn’t enter. Instead he indicated that I should go on in alone. The man who had opened this door was older, and far better dressed. He wore a pair of pince-nez, which gave him an air of respectability, as though he were a lawyer or an accountant. A man in Mullender’s position would require the services of both.

  ‘Mr Mullender will see you on the terrace,’ he said. He pointed to a pair of French windows that stood open. Beyond I could just see Mullender enjoying the fresh air while he read a newspaper spread out on the wrought-iron table in front of him. As I went out he folded up the paper and put it to one side, then indicated I should sit opposite him in a chair that matched the table.

  ‘Percy Remick deserved everything he got,’ he announced.

  ‘For talking to O’Connor?’

  ‘For talking to you.’

  ‘He didn’t. He might have done, but he changed his mind.’

  ‘That was wise of him. Like I told you yesterday, it’s a very intimate relationship a bookie has with his clients. Percy just had to be reminded of it.’

  I suddenly wondered if I might have got things very wrong. Mullender was talking like he approved of what had happened to Remick. Approving was only a step away from instigating.

  But Mullender had more to say. ‘Even so, it’s not up to the punters to start enforcing the rules.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘We’ve got a code, all of us in this business.’ He must have caught my sceptical expression. ‘Oh, I’m sure it doesn’t match up to your high and mighty standards, but it stops this town descending into anarchy. And if one of us breaches it, then it’s up to us to deal with that. Otherwise it just turns into a free-for-all.’

  I felt a little safer now and decided to push my luck. ‘So you don’t approve of what Holsworth did?’

  Mullender eyed me, suspecting, quite correctly, that I was bluffing, but I held his gaze. ‘If he’d asked, I’d have had a word with Percy. It didn’t need to come to that.’

  ‘So Holsworth’s one of the “losers”?’ My mind was racing, but it seemed like a good guess, based on what little I’d heard. I had to convince Mullender that he was telling me what I already knew.

  Mullender let out a brief laugh. ‘Oh, he’s a loser, but not like that. I mean he loses money – just can’t pick a winner. If he backs a horse, then I’ll lengthen the odds. But he’s loaded – I don’t know where from. I think they call it a private income. However much he spends at the track, it doesn’t put a dent in it.’

  Private income. It was the same phrase Lottie had used to brush over how she made ends meet, but for her it meant something quite different.

  ‘Not a good mark for O’Connor, then?’

  ‘You can’t blackmail a man who doesn’t care. What is it they say: “Publish and be damned.”?’ He chuckled, proud of his erudition, though I didn’t ask him who he thought he was quoting.

  ‘But then why bother with Remick?’

  Mullender shrugged. ‘Pride, I suppose. Who knows?’

  Once again I reached into my pocket and drew out three of the drawings I’d made, laying them on the table between us. There was a slight breeze, so I kept my fingers on them, splayed out to keep a firm hold on all three. ‘Recognize any of these?’ I asked.

  He scoffed. ‘You know I do,’ he said, though he’d scarcely looked at them.

  ‘Care to give me names?’

  He leaned back, putting his hands behind his head and laughing openly now. ‘What’s your game, Charlie? You trying to play me or something?’ He gestured with his hand. ‘Look, you obviously know about Holsworth, but you’re not getting anything from me. If you’re worried about Percy, don’t be. He’s learned his lesson. And you should learn yours. So sod off!’

  He said it light-heartedly, but there was a threat in his eyes. As he spoke, the man in the pince-nez appeared at the open doors. It was time for me to leave. And I’d learned enough. I was led back downstairs and to the front door. Then I was back out on the street. I was in something of a daze, just like I’d been after my beating at the racetrack, but this time there was no physical cause. The shock now was purely mental. I made my way down to the Old Steine, without really thinking, then found a bench where I could sit and take it all in.

  I tried to replay the scene in my mind, wondering if I might have been mistaken, but there was no question about it. The action had been subconscious on Mullender’s part, but still definite and unmistakable. At the same moment that he was saying, ‘You obviously know about Holsworth,’ his hand had flicked out at the three drawings I’d put on the table – at one of them specifically. It could have meant nothing other than that he was indicating Holsworth’s picture. He thought I already knew, so he’d been incautious.

  I’d shown him three drawings. One was of Frank Dudley’s henchman, Teddy Granger, but it wasn’t that one he’d pointed to, and I’d never expected it to be. The second had been of Mr X. If Mullender had indicated him, then I wouldn’t have been too surprised. Only that morning I’d speculated that Holsworth and Mr X might be one and the same. But they were not.

  Mullender had pointed towards my third sketch. I wasn’t even sure why I’d shown it to him, or even why I’d drawn it, but I suppose I’d become suspicious up at the racetrack the previous day. If anyone was going to be able to tell me whether a face seen in the enclosure was a regular punter or just a one-off visitor it would be someone like Mullender. But I hadn’t expected to learn so much – to learn who Holsworth was. But then I already knew Holsworth quite well, albeit by another name.

  The name I knew was Ralph Tremaine.

  CHAPTER 18

  I marched up the hill and into Hove. It still didn’t fit together. So Tremaine went by the name of Holsworth. There was nothing so surprising in that. He was a spy, so of course he had aliases. But what was there for him to spy on up at Brighton races? There could be a million answers to that, or a thousand at least. The men who gambled their money up there on race days – the Eloi – came from every walk of life. Some of them might be German, some might be Bolsheviks, or at least work for them. Again it hit me that Tremaine had been lying when he described the two sides of this case as separate. They were both about the same type of crime: blackmail. O’Connor’s scheme of getting lists of big losers from bookies such as Remick was – just like his photographs at the Metropole – carried out at Tremaine’s behest. Perhaps he had a suspect in mind; perhaps he was just fishing. Either way, gambling was as good a vice as sex when it came to persuading someone to betray their country.

  As to Tremaine himself being a gambler – and a loser – that could be genuine or it could be part of the same operation. It would be much easier to uncover and befriend punters with heavy losses if you’re one of them. Even if the ponies really were a hobby for Tremaine, like Mullender had said, he could afford it. He was one of the sort who could always fall back on his family for money. I was, too, though I chose not to.

  But there was still one piece that didn’t fit: Mr X. If he was working for Tremaine, then Tremaine must have recognized him in the photographs. So how could he ever have hoped to fool Metzger with them? There was still one person who might have the solution, and I was on my way to visit her now. Even so, none of it got close to answering the main question, the only real question: who killed Alan O’Connor?

  I stood at the door, my thumb hovering over the button. It would be the first time we’d seen each other since my rejection of her. The previous time I’d come this way, it had been with the intent of correcting that mistake, but now I pushed such ideas from my mind. I pressed the bell.

  ‘Yes?’ The voice was familiar even through the speaker.

  ‘It’s Charlie. Charlie Woolf.’

  ‘I don’t know any Charlie Woolf. I know a Carol Woolf.’

  ‘Just open the door, will you?’ I instantly regretted saying it. There was time enough to indulge her flirting. The pause seemed timed to convey her annoyance, but then the lock buzzed and I entered. When I got up to her flat, the door was open, just as before. I went inside. Once again she was wearing a dressing gown, but not the showy satin number of earlier in the week. This was long and practical. She had her spectacles on, but no make-up. I could only assume she’d not long been out of bed. Even like that, she was still beguiling.

  I got straight to the point. ‘I came to see you on Wednesday.’

  ‘I know you did, sweetheart. We went to see your mum, remember?’ She sounded quite natural, as though she had nothing to hide – as though she could never be afflicted by a guilty conscience.

  ‘After that. Late. Getting on for midnight.’

  She averted her eyes, but still she didn’t cotton on. ‘I hoped you would. But if I don’t answer the door, it means I’m busy.’ Then her eyes were on me. ‘I’m not busy now. Not for hours.’

  ‘I saw him leave.’

  ‘Who?’ Then she realized. ‘Oh.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I can’t tell you a trick’s name.’ She reminded me of Mullender and the other bookies. It was the code of the Morlocks.

  ‘You bloody well will tell me.’ My anger was entirely fake, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed expressing even synthetic emotion to her. I was evidently convincing.

  ‘He’s called Ingram. Vince Ingram.’

  At last I had it. A name for Mr X. That’s if it was genuine. He could have been lying … or she could. ‘Not “Ernie”?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not Ernie.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I didn’t know before, did I? Not till he came round on Wednesday.’

  ‘He came round? Just like that?’

  ‘He called first, but I was free. I’d told him how to get in touch the first time. I’m not going to miss a chance for business. He said he’d enjoyed it last time. Wanted to do it again, you know, normally.’

  ‘And that’s when he told you his name?’ She nodded. ‘And did you believe him?’

  She laughed. ‘More than I did when he said he was called Ernie.’

  ‘You know anything more? An address?’

  ‘You don’t ask that sort of thing.’

  ‘You got a telephone directory?’

  She nodded her head towards the table near the window, where the telephone sat. ‘But I already looked,’ she said. ‘He’s not there.’

  I went over to the phone. ‘I thought you said you didn’t ask that sort of thing.’

  ‘You don’t ask, but you still try to find out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s safer that way.’

  I didn’t press the point. It was easy to forget how precarious her existence – the existence of any girl in her line of work – could be. However vile men like Spindly Cochran were for taking their cut, they still might save a brass’s life once in a while. The directory was sitting on a shelf under the table. I scanned its pages anyway, but she was right. There was no V. Ingram in there. No Ingram at all.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really.’ I wondered what else I could get out of her. I still needed to show her my drawings but, if she recognized one face in particular, she’d clam up. There was something she’d said earlier that I’d tried to ignore, but I knew I had to follow it up, however sordid the response might turn out to be.

  ‘What did you mean, normally?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said when he came to see you again he wanted to do it normally.’ I spoke the word with a strange revulsion.

  ‘Well, you know. Just the two of us.’

  I felt my face redden. Images began to push their way into my mind, but they didn’t distract me from the inconsistency of what she’d implied. ‘It was just you two at the Metropole, wasn’t it?’

  ‘And Al. He was in the linen cupboard, remember?’ She giggled. Was it really so everyday to her?

  ‘So Ingram knew O’Connor was there? Knew he was taking photographs?’

  ‘I didn’t guess it at the time, but something was up.’

  ‘And when you saw him again, he admitted it?’

  Little wrinkles formed between her eyebrows, just above the bridge of her glasses. ‘I’m not sure. He never really said. But that must have been what he meant … I mean afterwards, on Wednesday. He said he’d preferred it – no, said he “did better” – when he’d known he was putting on a show.’

  I should have pressed her for even more, but I doubted I could stomach the details. ‘So, if you both knew he was there, what was the point of O’Connor hiding next door?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’re the detective.’

  I’d already come up with some kind of answer, but I moved on. I got out of my chair and sat beside her on the chaise longue, close enough that our legs touched, not because it would help me find out anything else, just because it felt nice. I put three sketches on the table in front of us, though not quite the same trio I’d shown Mullender. This time, I didn’t bother with Dudley’s flunky; he wasn’t relevant. I kept my eyes on her throughout, looking for the slenderest hint of a reaction. ‘Recognize any of these?’