'You want me?'
'That's right.'
He thought: Rose, the girl, someone asking questions. His memory flashed back: he remembered how she caught him with his hand under the table, feeling for something. He grinned dully and said: 'Well, they haven't sent the Big Four anyway.'
'Mind coming round to the station?'
'Got a warrant?'
'It's only Brewer been complaining you hit him.
You left your scar all right.'
The Boy began to laugh. 'Brewer? Me? I wouldn't touch him.'
'Come round and see the inspector?'
'Of course I will.'
They came out onto the parade. A pavement photographer saw them coming and lifted the cap from his camera. The Boy put his hands in front of his face and went by. 'You ought to put a stop to those things,' he said. 'Fine thing it'd be to have a picture postcard stuck up on the pier, you and me walking to the station.'
'They caught a murderer once in town with one of those snaps.'
'I read about it,' the Boy said and fell silent. This is Colleoni's doing, he thought, he's showing off: he put Brewer up to this.
'Brewer's wife's pretty bad, they say,' the detectiTe remarked softly.
'Is she?' the Boy said. 'I wouldn't know.'
'Got your alibi ready, I suppose?'
'How do I know? I don't know when he said I hit him. A geezer can't have an alibi for every minute of the day.'
'You're a wide kid,' the detective said, 'but you needn't get fussed about this. The inspector wants to have a friendly chat, that's all.'
He led the way through the charge room. A man with a tired ageing face sat behind a desk. 'Sit down, Brown,' he said. He opened a cigarette box and pushed it across.
'I don't smoke,' the Boy said. He sat down and watched the inspector alertly. 'Aren't you going to charge me?'
'There's no charge,' the inspector said. 'Brewer thought better of it.' He paused. He looked more tired than ever. He said: 'I want to talk straight for once.
We know more about each other than we admit. I don't interfere with you and Brewer: I've got more important things to do than prevent you and Brewer arguing. But you know just as well as I do that Brewer wouldn't come here to complain if he hadn't been put up to it.'
'You've certainly got ideas,' the Boy said.
'Put up to it by someone who's not afraid of your mob.'
'There's not much escapes the bogies,' the Boy said, grimacing derisively.
'The races start next week, and I don't want to have any big-scale mob fighting in Brighton. I don't mind you carving each other up in a quiet way, I don't give a penny for your worthless skins, but when two mobs start scrapping, people who matter may get hurt.'
'Meaning who?' the Boy said.
'Meaning decent innocent people. Poor people out to put a shilling on the tote. Clerks, charwomen, navvies. People who wouldn't be seen dead talking to you or to Colleoni.'
'What are you getting at?' the Boy said.
'I'm getting at-this. You aren't big enough for your job, Brown. You can't stand against Colleoni. If there's any fighting I shall come down like a ton of bricks on both of you but it will be Colleoni who'll have the alibis. No one's going to fake you an alibi against Colleoni. You take my advice. Clear out of Brighton.'
'Fine,' the Boy said. 'A bogy doing Colleoni's job for him.'
'This is private and unofficial,' the inspector said.
'I'm being human for once. I don't care if you get carved or Colleoni gets carved, but I'm not going to have innocent people hurt if I can help it.'
'You think I'm finished?' the Boy said. He grinned uneasily, looking away, looking at the walls plastered with notices. Dog Licences. Gun Licences. Found Drowned. A dead face met his eye staring from the wall, unnaturally pasty. Unbrushed hair. A scar by the mouth. 'You think Colleoni'll keep the peace better?' He could read the writing: 'One nickel watch, waistcoat and trousers of grey cloth, blue striped shirt, aertex drawers.'
'Well?'
'It's valuable advice,' the Boy said, grinning down at the polished desk, the box of Players, a crystal paperweight. 'I'll have to think it over. I'm young to retire.'
'You're too young to run a racket if you ask me.'
'So Brewer's not bringing a charge?'
'He's not afraid to. I talked him out of it. I wanted to have a chance to speak to you straight.'
'Well,' the Boy said, standing up, 'maybe I'll be seeing you, maybe not.' He grinned again, passing through the charge room, but a bright spot of colour stood out on each cheekbone. There was poison in his veins, though he grinned and bore it. He had been insulted. He was going to show the world. They thought because he was only seventeen... he jerked his narrow shoulders back at the memory that he'd killed his man, and these bogies who thought they were clever weren't clever enough to discover that. He trailed the clouds of his own glory after him: hell lay about him in his infancy. He was ready for more deaths.
PART THREE
IDA ARNOLD sat up in the boarding-house bed.
For a moment she didn't know where she was.
Her head ached with the thick night at Sherry's.
It came slowly back to her as she stared at the heavy ewer on the floor, the basin of grey water in which she had perfunctorily washed, the bright pink roses on the wallpaper, a wedding group Phil Corkery dithering outside the front door, pecking at her lips, swaying off down the parade as if that was all he could expect, while the tide receded. She looked round the room: it didn't look so good in the morning light as when she had booked it, but 'it's homely,' she thought with satisfaction, 'it's what I like.'
The sun was shining. Brighton was at its best. The passage outside her room was gritty with sand--she felt it under her shoes all the way downstairs; and in the hall there were a pail, two spades, and a long piece of seaweed hanging by the door as a barometer. There were a lot of sandshoes lying about, and from the dining room came a child's querulous voice repeating over and over: 'I 'don't want to dig. I want to go to the pictures. I don't want to dig.'
At one she was meeting Phil Corkery at Snow's.
Before that there were things to do; she had to go easy on the money, not put away too much in the way of Guinness. It wasn't cheap living down at Brighton, and she wasn't going to take cash from Corkery she had a conscience, she had a code, and if she took cash she gave something in return. Black Boy was the answer: she had to see about it first thing before the odds shortened: sinews of war; and she made her way towards Kemp Town to the only bookie she knew: old Jim Tate, 'Honest Jim' of the half-crown enclosure.
He bellowed at her as soon as she got inside his office: 'Here's Ida. Sit down, Mrs. Turner,' getting her name wrong. He pushed a box of Gold Flake across to her. 'Inhale a cheroot.' He was a little more than life size. His voice, after the race meetings of twenty years, could hit no tone which wasn't loud and hoarse. He was a man you needed to look at through the wrong end of a telescope if you were to believe him the fine healthy fellow he made himself out to be.
When you were close to him, you saw the thick blue veins on the left forehead, the red money-spider's web across the eyeballs. 'Well, Mrs. Turner Ida, what is it you fancy?'
'Black Boy,' Ida said.
'Black Boy,' Jim Tate repeated. 'That's ten to one.'
'Twelve to one.'
'The odds have shortened. There's been a packet laid on Black Boy this week. You wouldn't get ten to one
