us who the...”—his eye flickered to Leaper—“the miscreant is. The portrait or the bell: gaolbird. But a dairy or the Salvation Army barracks, or something of that kind: seek out the son of Bacchus.”
“What a field that would offer,” murmured Kebble.
This time Mr Grope really did look up at the clock. And he said: “Ah, well...”
Chapter Five
Mr Grope was not the only one who sought a connection between the two explosions. Leonard Leaper also gave the matter thought. His reasoning was conditioned by regular absorption of radiation from the
This vital journal, the joining of whose staff was Leaper’s idea of ultimate beatitude, had taught him that any two consecutive events that displayed the slightest similarity were a series. So he knew that what had disturbed Chalmsbury was a succession of crimes that promised the indefinite recurrence in headlines of phrases like ‘strikes again’. This was satisfactory for, like all true devotees of the
Thus, although he would have dismissed as futile the subtle theorizing of Grope, he quickly spotted and approved the coincidence of both explosions having been set off on the same night of the week. The third, he was sure, would take place on a Tuesday also.
Tonight, perhaps: why not?
He had therefore prepared himself, if not for a probe, at least for a vigil.
Chalmsbury was not a large town and he calculated that an unobtrusive patrol of a few of its streets after midnight might easily enable him to catch sight of the dynamiter in time to stalk him to his objective. Optimism was another quality Leaper had acquired from the
Before leaving his lodgings he dressed in dark flannels, a shirt and jersey of deep blue, and black plimsolls. He looked like a junior cat burglar.
His appearance was remarked upon as soon as he entered the Bay Tree snack bar in St Luke’s Square where he intended to while away the time until it closed at eleven.
“I like your sleuthing set, Len.”
He glowered at the round-faced girl who was shuffling along one of the table benches to make room for him. She giggled. “Where’s the apashy hat?”
With great forbearance Leaper sat beside her and stirred the coffee he had collected at the counter. “I’m on a job,” he announced.
“What, for the paper?” The girls eyes widened. “Is that why you’re dressed up?”
“Gets cold towards morning.” The casual tone bespoke veteran status in nocturnal news-gathering.
“What is it you’re going to do? Tell me, Len.”
“Depends.”
“Are you on a story?” She pronounced the word as if naming a forbidden ecstasy.
He sipped his coffee and reflected that journalism’s drudgery and humiliations had their occasional reward. He even permitted himself momentary enjoyment of a favourite vision: his nonchalant acceptance of a girl’s All, eagerly bestowed in tribute to his having secured one of those scoops of the year that were featured every fortnight or so in the
A glance at his companion, however, dispelled hope of the dream’s imminent realization. Her eyes, engaged in another widening exercise, were fixed upon a new arrival. She shuffled her All towards Leaper, but not in tribute. It was to provide a seat for a young man wearing the splendid blazer of the Chalmsbury Co-operative Society Table Tennis Club.
Leaper moved to another bench. He drank very slowly a second and a third cup of coffee. No other girl spoke to him but he didn’t care. Apart from that one recurrent fantasy in which his anonymous admirer (“Grateful Reader” perhaps?) disrobed while gazing at his picture and by-line, he regarded females solely as the elemental material of news stories. What matter if they snubbed him now? They would be delivered in time to his notebook, if not as young objects of Serious Offences or maturer victims of lust and ligature, then at last as pathetic shop-lifting matrons who knew not What Had Come Over Them.
This misogynist mood strong upon him, Leaper left the Bay Tree half an hour earlier than he had intended. He joined the aimlessly circulating stream of citizens, most of whom had just been disgorged from the nine pubs in the square, and were in that state of alcoholic optimism that forbids abandonment of the streets in case innkeepers should of a sudden discover their clocks to be an hour fast and re-open their doors.
Gradually the crowd thinned until there remained only three or four happy and demonstrative discussion groups. In a shadowed doorway Leaper looked and listened until these, too, dispersed. Then he crossed the square just as the cold, greenish purple veil of the mercury lighting was whisked from the sky and the moon’s softer radiance flooded down.
Leaper halted by the corner of Friar Street and looked back. The tower of the parish church rode above the silvered roofs like a great stone horseman. It dwarfed even the most presumptuous buildings: the furniture repository that once had been a cinema, the four floors of Councillor Pointer’s wine and spirits warehouse, the window-slotted concrete slab with which a national insurance company had sought to impress the natives. These and the rest of the shops and public-houses and offices had lost their day-time identities. They looked as if they had bled to death. Picking a route at random, Leaper entered Friar Street and padded slowly as far as the next intersection. A clock struck the first quarter after midnight. He stood and peered along the gently curving street on his left. It was empty save for a large ragged dog that trailed fitfully from gutter to gutter. The dog raised its snout on sensing Leaper’s arrival and loped away.
Leaper chose the right-hand road which led eventually to the quays above the town. He kept to its moon- shadowed side where the houses were tall and without front gardens. Further along, these gave way to newer houses and the symmetry of a council estate began to assert itself. He neither saw nor heard anything that encouraged exploration in that direction so he struck off through a narrow crescent, passed beneath a railway bridge and arrived at a junction of five roads.
