Dark Briggate Blues E-Book

Chris Nickson

• Herausgeber: The Mystery Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Leeds, 1954: When Joanna Hart came into his office, enquiry agent Dan Markham thought it would be an easy case. All the blonde with red lips and swinging hips wanted was to know if her husband was unfaithful. But when the man is killed, Markham's involvement makes him suspect number one. As the evidence piles against him, he realises someone has set him up. In a deadly game, Markham has to battle to keep his client and himself alive. All he can rely on are his wits and the rusty skills he acquired during his National Service in military intelligence. But can he hope to be any match against a killer who has spies on every corner of Leeds and a reach that goes all the way to Whitehall?

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR THE CROOKED SPIRE BY CHRIS NICKSON

‘The author powerfully evokes a sense of time and place with all the detailed and meticulous research he has carried out for this very suspenseful and well plotted story of corruption and murder.’

Eurocrime

‘[A] convincing depiction of late-medieval England makes this a satisfying comfort read.’

Publishers Weekly

‘[Nickson] makes us feels as though we are living what seems like a fourteenth-century version of dystopia, giving this remarkable novel a powerful immediacy.’

Booklist (starred review)

To Leeds Book Club, the little book club that could. With gratitude.

CONTENTS

Praise for the Crooked Spire by Chris Nickson

Title

Dedication

Prologue

Part One Blues In The Night

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two Someone To Watch Over Me

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Three Round About Midnight

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

PRELUDE TO A KISS

Leeds, 1954

In the September evening light, Dan Markham paused at the corner of Byron Street, his key in the door of the Ford Anglia.

Over the road, on Regent Street, an ambulance stood outside Hart Ford, lights flashing in the sunlight, the back doors open wide, three black police cars beside it. He stood for a moment, watching the scene until one of the policemen glanced up, a familiar face staring at him.

Markham started the engine and drove away.

***

The next morning he’d only been in the office for five minutes when the door opened and Detective Sergeant Baker walked in, wheezing from the stairs and flopping into a chair. The man looked as if he’d been up all night, unshaven and worn, eyes like flint. He smelt of stale tobacco, a ring of grime around his shirt collar. A faded tea stain coloured the front of his mackintosh. He took off his hat, straightened the brim and placed it on his lap.

‘I saw you down by Hart Ford yesterday evening. Do you know what happened there?’

‘No.’ A burglary, he’d thought, or someone injured. He hadn’t heard the news on the Home Service or seen a newspaper.

‘Someone killed Freddie Hart,’ Baker told him. ‘You know who that is, don’t you?’

‘Freddie Hart?’ No, Markham thought. That wasn’t possible. That just wasn’t possible.

‘Of course you do, since his wife hired you.’ The sergeant stared at him. ‘Want to tell me what you were doing there, lad?’

‘I was working.’ He could feel his heart thudding, palms slick.

Baker ran his hands down his face and sighed.

‘Do I look like I came in on the milk train? I know you were bloody working. I want to know what you were doing, where you’d been and why you were parked there.’

Markham lit a cigarette. It gave him a few seconds to compose his thoughts. The truth was innocent enough.

‘I’d followed one of Hart’s employees home.’

‘Who?’ Baker asked.

‘A girl called Annie Willis. She’s the secretary, lives in Meanwood. I’d been on the bus. I was walking back to my car.’

‘That’s better.’ The man’s mouth smiled but his eyes showed nothing. ‘Now, why were you after her?’

‘I needed to find out who she was. Hart had taken her out after work on Saturday.’

‘Oh aye? And what business is that of yours? Or were you just being a nosy parker?’

‘Mrs Hart thought her husband was having a fling with someone. I’m an enquiry agent, that’s what I do. You know that.’

‘Divorce jobbie, was it?’ Baker asked with contempt.

‘She wanted me to find out what’s going on.’ The sergeant raised a thick eyebrow disbelievingly. ‘After that it’s her problem.’

‘She also said you happened to be in the Harewood Arms in Follifoot on Sunday when she and Mr Hart arrived. Bit of a coincidence isn’t it? Off your patch, lad. You’ve never struck me as the country pub type.’

‘Hart had taken the secretary there the night before. I wanted to hear if anyone was talking about him.’

‘Too bloody clever by half in the end, weren’t you?’ Baker sat forward and placed his palms on the desk. ‘A little while after the business closed last night, someone came to see Mr. Hart and shot him.’ He paused. ‘Now, you’re working for the wife, who thinks he’s got a bit on the side. Maybe she just decided she was better off rid of him and paid you to do it.’ His voice grew colder as he spoke. ‘I know what you lot are like in this line of work. Bastards, all of you. I daresay you’d be willing to pull the trigger if the price was right.’ Markham shook his head. He felt a bead of sweat run down his back. ‘No one’s straight in your game, lad, not if they want to make a bob. Everybody lies.’

‘Look, I’m sorry about Freddie Hart,’ Markham said. ‘But it wasn’t anything to do with me.’

‘Have you ever seen someone who’s been shot?’

‘No.’

‘Of course you haven’t, you were too young for the war. I did.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘There are prettier sights in the world. I saw the bullet hole. Pound to a penny it was a .38 calibre. Close range.’

‘There are still plenty of guns floating around from the war,’ Markham said. ‘Every officer had a sidearm.’

‘Aye, and they were easy enough to buy and smuggle.’ Baker ran a hand across his chin. ‘You bring one back from National Service, did you?’

‘No. I wasn’t an officer.’

‘Don’t avoid the bloody question.’

‘I don’t have a gun.’

‘But they taught you to shoot, didn’t they?’

‘Of course,’ he answered. It was part of basic training. ‘Me and most of the men in the country.’

‘Be careful,’ the detective warned. ‘I’ve been up since yesterday morning and my temper’s fraying.’

‘I didn’t kill Freddie Hart,’ Markham repeated. ‘Is that plain enough for you? I followed the girl on a bus to Meanwood. She lives at 15 Bentley Grove. Then I bought cigarettes at the shop at the end of the street. The woman will remember me. I had to wait a quarter of an hour for the bus back.’

Baker nodded. ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll be checking all that. And to see if that lass you were trailing had a jealous boyfriend of her own.’ He placed the hat back on his head and pushed himself upright. ‘I don’t like what you do. It’s a grubby trade. Enquiry agent.’ He almost spat the words. ‘Someone has to suffer for you to make money. I don’t like that at all.’

Markham sat behind the desk after he’d gone, smoking a cigarette until it burned hot in his mouth. He ground it out in the ashtray and lit another, waiting until he was convinced that Baker wouldn’t return. Finally he pulled the bottom drawer open. It was where he kept the Webley, the one he’d brought back from his time in Germany.

The drawer was empty.

Frantic, he scrambled around, feeling the panic rise as he ransacked the rest of the desk. It had been there on Saturday: he’d seen it.

He looked again. The filing cabinets, the cupboard in the corner.

No gun. Nothing else was missing.

Penny to a pound the bullet had been a .38, Baker said. The same ammunition as the Webley. And his fingerprints were on that revolver.

Someone was setting him up.

Someone had been in his office and taken the gun.

Why? Who?

He needed answers. He needed to talk to Joanna Hart.

Part One

BLUES IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

She’d arrived the Friday before, in the middle of a balmy afternoon. Markham had the windows open in the office to draw in a little breeze. The third of September, a date everyone remembered, the day Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, fifteen years before. When he went out for his dinner he’d seen all the memories and loss on the faces.

She was waiting outside the office on Albion Place when he returned, dressed in a royal blue skirt, a white blouse and a hip-length jacket, the bag dangling from her hand. Her blonde hair set in short, neat waves.

‘Can I help you?’ Markham asked, bringing the keys from his pocket.

‘I’m looking for Mr Markham.’ It was a cultured voice. Expensively educated. Good breeding, his mother would have called it.

‘I’m Dan Markham. What can I do for you?’ He unlocked the door and she stood at the entrance, assessing the room with its worn lino floor and view of the old grey roof tiles before pursing her lips in disapproval. ‘Please, sit down, Mrs …?’

‘Jones,’ she answered and he immediately knew what the job would be. Divorce. They always used the same names – Smith, Jones, Brown – as if they offered protection.

The woman perched on the chair and removed her gloves. About thirty, he guessed, with a porcelain complexion, her lips a deep, emphatic red. The clothes looked ordinary enough, but they hadn’t come off the rack at Marshall’s; some seamstress in a little shop had worked long and hard to make them. She had style. And money.

‘Well, Mrs Jones …’

‘Forgive me.’ She lowered her eyes for a moment. ‘I’ve never met an enquiry agent before.’

He gave a gentle, reassuring smile. ‘Nothing like an American private detective from the films, I’m afraid.’ His office was an unprepossessing room that had probably looked exactly the same before the war.

She hesitated. ‘It’s just that you’re rather young.’

How long until they stopped saying that, he wondered?

‘I’ve spent time in military intelligence and I’ve been doing this for four years now,’ he told her with a smile. ‘I’m a professional. And I’m good at what I do, Mrs Jones.’

This was the crux, the moment. Either she’d leave now or she’d tell him everything. She didn’t move. After a moment she took a breath.

‘I’m sure my husband’s having an affair.’ The women always blurted out the words. With men he had to work, to coax it out of them piece by piece, as if the admission cost them all their pride.

‘Why do you think that?’ He took out the pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She moved to take it, leaning forward into the match flame.

‘He’s out almost every night. I’ve smelt perfume on him. He doesn’t seem to want to spend time with me any more.’

‘Have you talked to him about it?’

‘God no. Of course not.’ She seemed horrified at the suggestion. ‘How could I?’

‘How long have you been married, Mrs Jones?’

‘Five years.’ She raised her head to look at him. ‘Six in January.’

‘And when did your husband’s behaviour change?’

‘About two months ago,’ she answered after some thought. ‘Just after that hot weekend we had during Wimbledon.’

The end of June. He made a note on the pad.

‘Did anything unusual happen during that time?’

‘Not that I can think of.’ Now she’d begun, her gaze was squarely on his face.

‘What does your husband do?’

‘He owns an agency that sells motor cars.’

That explained the money. Cars were big business these days.

‘And you’d like me to see if he’s having an affair.’

‘I’m certain he’s having one, Mr Markham.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘I want to know who with.’

‘I have to tell you, Mrs Jones, divorce is a messy business.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to divorce him.’ Her voice turned cold. ‘I want a hold over him.’

***

It took two more cigarettes to draw all the details from her. Her real name first – Joanna Hart. No children. A house out in Alwoodley. A golden life.

Reluctantly, like slowly drawing back a curtain, she’d revealed the rest of the picture. Freddie Hart was eleven years older than his wife, from a well-to-do family. His father had put up the money for a Ford dealership two years before. Now he was there all hours. Off first thing in the morning, then meetings and dinners until late. All business, that was what he told her. But the scent on his skin and the lipstick traces on his handkerchief told a different story.

‘What do you think, Mr Markham?’ Her voice was cool, no trace of emotion.

‘I’ll look into it, if that’s what you want.’

She brought a five-pound note from her handbag and placed it on the desk.

‘Is this enough to retain your services?’

‘More than enough.’ It was a full week’s wages. ‘How do you want my reports?’

‘I come into town every Tuesday and Friday,’ she said. ‘I usually take luncheon at Betty’s. You can meet me in the cafe there at noon.’ She replaced the gloves on her hands. All the nervous gestures had disappeared and she moved with easy assurance. ‘Good day, Mr Markham.’

He heard the click of her heels on the stairs, gave her ten seconds and followed.

She never looked back, swinging her hips as she moved down the street then turned up Briggate. He kept his distance, holding back as she stopped at the entrance to Thornton’s Arcade.

She stayed for two minutes, checking her watch impatiently, until a man hurried up. They embraced and her face softened as he kissed her on the cheek and they walked away together.

***

He turned the car down Eastgate. At the roundabout, beneath the long grey face of Quarry Hill flats, he turned along Regent Street. The motor car dealers had gathered here, a cluster of them with their shiny new buildings of chrome and glass. Every one of them promised the future and the freedom of the road. They did a good trade; there were more vehicles on the road every month.

He didn’t want a new car. He couldn’t afford one; anyway, he knew a mechanic who kept his Anglia running sweeter than it had when it rolled off the production line. He passed Hart Ford, a place of yellow stone and large, gleaming windows that stood out brightly. The building spoke of solidity, of trust and modernity. The other half of the block was Victorian, decaying. The Reginald Building was carved over a boarded-up entrance. The past and the future, side by side.

Tomorrow he’d go and take a look. For now, though, he was content to go home. There was nothing more to keep him working today.

***

He ran a hot bath and soaked until the water began to cool. In the living room he selected The Amazing Bud Powell from the stack of records in the corner and put it on the gramophone, letting the strange sound of ‘Un Poco Loco’ fill the room, Powell’s piano on its strange, mad journey.

Markham found eggs in a bowl on the shelf, along with half an onion, some cloves of garlic and a pair of mushrooms he’d bought at the market for a fancy Continental meal that never happened. It only took a few minutes to turn the ingredients into an omelette.

The LP finished and he swapped it for some Sarah Vaughan. Outside, beyond the window, the world was carrying on. Men were on their way home from work, wives were cooking tea. In here, though, caught in the music, he could close his eyes and try to imagine himself in a New York jazz club.

It was dark when he stirred in the chair. The record was still turning, the click of the needle in the groove sounding like a hushed birdsong. With a smile he remembered the way his father so often fell asleep after eating.

His parents had been dead for five years now. The summer of 1949. He’d only been back from National Service for two months when it happened, and still deciding what to do with his life. His parents went away on the holiday they’d booked to Scotland. He went down to the station to see them off and received a postcard from his mother three days later. The next he knew was the copper knocking on the door to say they’d died of injuries after a train crash in a place he’d never heard of – Ardler Junction. Somewhere and nowhere.

The house had been rented. After the funeral and the sad gathering of distant relatives, all that remained was to divide the possessions with his sister. The photographs, the furniture, the small keepsakes and the surprisingly large bank account.

His share had been enough to buy a second-hand car and still keep plenty in the bank. He found the flat and took a position as a clerk in an insurance company. The day he turned twenty-one, legally an adult, he handed in his notice at the job, took the lease on an office and set up in business as an enquiry agent.

He got by on divorces. God knew there was no shortage of them. People who’d married right after the peace and now regretted it. The wartime marriages that had sunk to nothing once the fighting stopped. They were his bread and butter. Those and the frauds that employers wanted discovered and kept away from the ears of the Inland Revenue. It was enough to pay his bills.

CHAPTER TWO

He was ready by nine the next morning, dressed in his best suit, brogues shined and the tie just so in a Windsor knot. Town would be busy; it was the same every Saturday. Consume, consume; it was beginning to feel like a national fever.

On Regent Street he pulled into Hart Ford, parking at the side of the building. Already there were couples, young and old alike, walking around the shiny new vehicles whilst earnest salesmen tried to convince them that Ford was the motor car that would improve their lives.

He strolled into the showroom, eyeing the models, the Prefect, Popular, Consul, Zephyr and the brand new Zodiac on gorgeous display. Idly, he wandered from one to another, opening doors to glance at the dashboards before moving on. Finally, on his second time around, a voice behind him said, ‘That’s a good car, you know. Top of the range. Better than a Wolseley, if you ask me. Terribly good value for money. Very smart with the two-tone paint and it’ll go up to eighty when you put your foot down.’

He turned with a smile to face a man in his early forties, still trim, a dark David Niven moustache clipped close and the first hint of grey moving back from his temples. His nails were clean and manicured, with no nicotine stains on his fingers.

‘How much is it?’ Markham asked.

‘Eight hundred and fifty-one.’ He winked. ‘But we’ve been known to let the spare pound go now and again.’

The voice held the ready charm and the confidence that only came with a lifetime of opportunity.

‘Not cheap.’

‘But worth it, old chap,’ the man said. ‘Unless you spring for a Jag, you won’t find a better car on the road. I’m Freddie Hart. I own the place.’

He stood about five feet seven, his back straight, wearing tailored cavalry twill trousers and a blazer with the Royal Army Service Corps badge on the breast pocket.

‘Dan Markham.’

‘Do you drive now, Mr Markham?’ he asked, as if he expected the answer to be ‘no’.

‘I have an Anglia.’

Hart nodded.

‘Lovely little motor car. And one of ours, of course,’ he added with another smile. ‘Good taste on your part. But try this and it’ll never seem the same again.’

‘I’m honestly only looking. Curious.’

‘Well, if you want to take it out and try it, just let me know. It’s the only way to tell, isn’t it? And if you’re interested, I can give you a very fair price for yours.’ He leaned closer. ‘To tell you the truth, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a motor car these days. It’s hard to keep enough stock.’

‘Good business to be in,’ Markham said.

‘Thriving. You take your time, old chap. If you want anything, just ask for me.’ He held out his hand and they shook before Hart disappeared through a glass door, stopping in a secretary’s office to lean over the desk.

Could it be that obvious, that clichéd: an affair with the secretary? The glass was frosted, but he could see that her hair was blonde. Hart’s grin turned wolfish as he looked at her. If something was going on, at least it would be easy to discover.

But it left one question. Who was the man Joanna Hart had met on Briggate yesterday?

***

He decided to go into the office for an hour, squeezing through the crowds that filled the pavements. The post lay on the floor, a bill and an onionskin airmail letter from Carla in Italy. He looked at the postmark. Sent six days earlier.

Ciao bella, cara … you see, it’s easy to pick up the language! I’m having a ridiculous time. Spent a week in Venice that could easily have lasted a month or a year. I’m in Florence now and I can see why those rich young men used to relish the Grand Tour. Everywhere I turn it takes my breath away. My God, these Italians had a love of beauty that we English never seemed to discover for ourselves. While they dissect the soul, our Constables and Gainsboroughs paint these stolid scenes. Sometimes I think the only one worth a damn was Turner.

Anyway, the weather is beautiful (of course!) and I’m brown as a berry, although my bum’s sore from Italian men pinching it! It really is true what they say. We should come here next year and you can look after me – what do you say? Everything’s unbelievably cheap, we could live here on next to nothing. I leave for Rome tomorrow, all that history and grandeur they taught us about in school. Then home again. I bloody well hope you’ve missed me!

She’d signed it with three kisses, everything scrawled in her own disorganised fashion. Another eight days and she’d be back; he’d circled the date in his diary. Soon enough he’d see her smile and hold her again. He’d missed her.

Their meeting had been pure accident, a lunchtime in the record shop downstairs at Vallance’s. He was looking through the LP sleeves, hoping they’d finally decided to stock some jazz, when he heard the woman next to him mutter, ‘Oh bugger.’

He turned and noticed her, auburn hair, every inch as tall as him, in a bright, flame-patterned dress under a maroon coat. In a black-and-white world she was a splash of Technicolor.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for something to inspire me. But this lot are all dead, aren’t they?’ She frowned. ‘If they’re not, they look it.’

‘I know who you need,’ he told her.

‘Who?’

‘Thelonious Monk.’

She burst out laughing, a hand covering the deep red of her mouth.

‘You just made that up.’

He met her the next day and lent her the record. The following morning the telephone rang in his office.

‘You sod,’ she said, with no hello or how are you. ‘He’s brutal. He’s bloody wonderful. Do you have any more?’

He asked her out, a meal at Jacomelli’s, and they began seeing each other regularly. They enjoyed each other’s company, and some nights they ended up in bed together.

She was an artist, making her living as an instructor at Leeds College of Art. The daughter of a Sheffield doctor, she’d been offered a scholarship and then stayed on to teach when she’d finished her diploma.

Carla had her studio at the college. He’d often find her there at lunchtimes or in the early evenings, bright clothes covered by an ancient smock, a scarf wound around her brilliant hair, sipping tea from a flask and working. She was good, everything striking and bold, even if he didn’t understand any of her paintings.

They’d gone to London together once, a long dirty weekend in the capital. She had to go down, did he want to come with her? Of course he did. He hadn’t been since he was a child, back before the war. She’d taken him around the National and the Tate, praising and criticising by turns. Then they spent an evening in Soho, eating real Italian food and eavesdropping on conversations in the pubs before heading off to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. They walked and watched the tarts in their windows before going back to the hotel.

The next morning, she announced she’d meet him at twelve.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I have a meeting at my gallery.’

‘Your gallery?’

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘They sell my work. Didn’t I tell you before? It’s why I needed to come down here. Can you do the catch on this brassiere?’

***

He folded the letter, stuck it back in the envelope and slid it into his jacket pocket. Now she’d put thoughts of Italy into his mind. He decided to go up to Donmar’s to eat. It wasn’t Soho, and he was certain it wasn’t anything like Naples or Milan, but it was all Leeds had to offer.

Carla had brought him here. She seemed to gravitate to places like this, to find them without effort. All he had to offer her was jazz.

***

By half past four he was parked on Byron Street, close enough to the corner of Regent Street to have a view across to Hart Ford. Time crawled by, the way it always did when he was waiting. At five he sat upright, a camera ready in his hands. The last of the customers vanished from the dealership and there was a short parade of salesmen and mechanics leaving to form queues at the bus stops. But no blonde woman.

Then she was there, in the passenger window of a shiny new Humber Hawk. He snapped a couple of pictures, enough to show her face, with Freddie Hart at the steering wheel. No Ford for him, Markham thought. As the car moved away, Markham started the Anglia and followed.

Beyond the city the traffic thinned to just a few cars and Markham had to keep his distance, hoping they wouldn’t turn off the main road where he might lose them.

Finally, as they came to Pannal, the Hawk indicated a right-hand turn and he knew exactly where they were going. The Harewood Arms in Follifoot. A little country pub for the well-heeled set. He parked in sight of the entrance, in ample time to snap more shots of them going in, Hart’s arm possessively around the woman’s waist.

***

At ten he drove back into town. The crowds from the late shows and the Odeon and the Ritz filled the pavements, mixing with the drinkers leaving pubs before closing time. He parked and crossed the street, then pushed open a door and took the stairs down to the cellar and Studio 20. The only jazz club in Leeds. Open seven nights a week, as late as the musicians were willing to play.

It was early yet, just six people in the audience. A piano player he didn’t recognise doodled on the keyboard, trying to herd an improvisation into a version of ‘Lover Come Back To Me’. Everything would begin to come alive around midnight, when the musicians drifted in from their paying gigs, ready to have some fun.

Bob Barclay, the owner, sat behind his partition, tapping his hand in time on the wood, nodding at Markham as he saw him. The club had no alcohol licence, so it was tea, coffee or orange squash, and uncomfortable chairs. Somewhere only for the jazz faithful. And when the sound took flight, it was worthwhile. But not tonight. The air was flat, without any sense of expectation. He turned on his heel and went back to the car.

Out past Sheepscar he turned on to a side street. This had probably been a respectable area once, he thought. Now it had been left to run down and fade away. He walked up the path to a detached Edwardian villa, every window carefully blacked out as if the war had never ended.

Inside, Markham paid his half-crown to Marvin, the large West Indian man on the door, and entered. Apart from one back room the house was empty, sounds rattling up the stairway. A thick old dining table with heavy, lovingly turned legs served as a bar. Other small tables and chairs were scattered around. Music played scratchily from a gramophone in the corner, some American rhythm and blues to liven up the atmosphere.

‘Whisky, Mr Markham?’ Thomas the barman held up a bottle with no label and a dark amber liquid.

‘Is it?’

‘Fresh from the glens,’ the man answered with a grin. ‘Just distilled it yesterday.’

He could believe it. No one came to the International Club for the quality of the drink. Just for the fact that it served alcohol outside licensing hours. It wasn’t even a real club; there was no membership, simply an entry charge, and any trouble dealt with efficiently and viciously by Marvin and his knife.

He lifted the glass, took a tiny sip and nodded.

‘The real thing,’ he said with surprise.

‘Only to special customers,’ Thomas laughed. ‘But don’t tell everyone.’

The place had been around since just after the war. Plenty of backhanders went to the coppers to stop them closing it. He’d spotted enough of them in here, knocking back the booze until the small hours. But the International catered to everyone, from councillors and businessmen wanting the seamy side to those who craved one extra drink then another, eking out the last of their wages.

The man he hoped to find was huddled on a chair by the darkened window, hands turning and turning an empty glass on the table. Markham sat next to him.

‘Keeping busy, Brian?’

The man glanced up and shrugged. He was in his mid-thirties, sandy hair already fading away from his forehead. His eyes were glazed, the worse for wear after a long evening of drinking. But every night was the same for Brian Harding, one more chance to obliterate the world and his inheritance. He was lucky: he’d been doing it since he was demobbed, his liver hadn’t packed up yet and he still had money left.

‘Do you know someone called Freddie Hart?’

‘Course.’ He gave a small chuckle. ‘Freddie. He was always a bit of a bastard.’ There was no hint of slurring, every word clearly enunciated. Whatever horrors the drink smothered, it didn’t affect his speech.

‘What about his wife?’

‘Joanna?’ Harding snorted dismissively. ‘Everyone had Jo. Well, everyone but Freddie. I think that’s why he married her, to show he could go one better than the rest of us.’ He turned the glass upside down and stared pointedly. Markham passed over his own whisky. ‘Why are you interested in that pair, Dan?’

‘Just a passing curiosity,’ he said. ‘So what made Freddie Hart a bastard?’

‘His father wangled him a billet in the Service Corps and he was quite happy to sit on his arse while the rest of us were out there fighting.’ He knew that Harding had been amongst the first troops into the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and since then he’d spent his time trying to erase the sights from his head. ‘Feathered the nest a little, that’s what I heard. And then his father set him up with that Ford place. A licence to print money.’

‘Wealthy family?’

‘Buckets of the stuff. Grandfather made his money with something or other, bought up a chunk of the North Riding and settled back to become lord of the manor. All very feudal. That’s the way Freddie was brought up. My brother was at school with him. Said he was a shit even then. A sneak.’

‘What about Joanna?’

‘Harrogate,’ Harding said simply, as if that explained everything. Markham waited. ‘Joanna Wilson – that was her maiden name. Mad for everything in trousers when she was younger. A real looker back then, too.’ He turned. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s still quite the thing. But her family’s skint. They’re squeaking by these days, from what I hear. Sold off everything they can.’

‘So she has nothing of her own?’

‘Only the notches on the bedpost.’ Harding smiled and showed a row of brown, rotted teeth. ‘Nothing that’ll buy you a cup of tea and a sandwich.’ He downed the drink in a gulp.

‘Look after yourself, Brian.’ Markham stood.

‘I always do, Dan. A few glasses is just what the doctor ordered.’