in your life, and you didn't want it messed up. And she said in that case better you headed off home and got your head down before nine o'clock so you could be sure of waking at the crack to get out and practice.'
'You have been talking to her!' declared Chip indignantly. 'I don't suppose she said she was sorry?'
'As in, sorry I was wrong?' said Joe. 'Chip, I don't know much about handling women, but two things I do know. One is, never tell them anything is more important than the way you feel about them. The other is, don't matter they're so much in the wrong they could go to jail for it, there's always part of them that knows they're absolutely in the right.'
'Well, thanks for that good advice,' said Chip, moving away. 'But me and Eloise are history now, so it doesn't make much difference.'
'Believe me, you're well out of it, Chip,' said Joe, recalling with a shudder Jurassic's subtle way with a rival.
He'd fallen into step with Chip, if taking one and a half steps to the youngster's one could so be termed. He got a distinct impression the boy was trying to shake him off.
Breathing hard, he said, 'When you were talking to Mr. Rowe just now, he say anything about your career?'
'Well, yes, he did,' admitted Chip. 'He said there'd been a lot of interest in the support package and, all being well, as long as I didn't blot my copy-book and knew who my real friends were, I had a bright future.'
Yes, thought Joe. And then he tossed you the key to his super-luxe wheels and told you to run along and put his new highly expensive travel case in the boot. It's called putting you in your place.
Joe had experienced plenty of being put in his place, which he paid little heed to on the grounds that he found his place so very much to his liking that he had no notion of trying to get out of it. Also it was often very helpful to a PI for folk to be so certain you were in your place they didn't watch you as close as they should have done.
But to a young man with ambitions, being sent off to put the bag in the Audi was like saying, this is where you are and that's where you'd like to be, so keep your nose clean else you'll never take even the first step.
Talking of steps, the boy's had now lengthened so much he was several yards ahead. The distance didn't stop Colin Rowe glowering at him as he came out of the pro's shop and spotted the approaching procession.
Chip reached him and said in a loud voice, 'Case is in your car, Mr. Rowe. Here are your keys.'
'Thanks, Chip,' said Rowe.
The youngster went into the shop. Joe approached, trying to give the impression of a man who just happened to be walking in that direction.
Rowe, now smiling broadly, said, 'Joe, nice to see you again. Taking another look at us, are you? Wise man. Second impressions are always best, that's what we say in the estate business.'
'Meeting Chris for coffee,' said Joe, following his practice of sticking to a simple lie. 'Thought I'd get here early and take a stroll around, if that's OK?'
'Of course it is. Take a good look. You've certainly given yourself plenty of time. I like a man who's thorough. Did Chris show you our changing rooms? Just over here.'
He led the way to the main building through a door marked Members Only.
Joe's experience of changing rooms was limited to what was on offer in the world of Sunday-morning football, which at the luxury end amounted to little more than a hut with wooden benches, four-inch nails driven into the wall to act as coat-pegs, and a couple of luke-warm showers whose thin trickle somehow managed to spread more water over the muddy floor than over your muddy body.
This was something else. The benches were upholstered in dark green leather, the walls were lined with richly glowing mahogany lockers each bearing a gilded name in cursive script, while the floor was covered with a carpet even more expensive than the one in the Audi's boot, and the only mud in sight was that carried in on Rowe's hand-made shoes.
'Showers through there,' said Rowe, pointing.
Joe advanced through a small antechamber lined with shelves bearing bars of soap, bottles of shower gel and hair shampoo, and gleaming alps of snow-white bath sheets. Beyond this there must have been a dozen or more cubicles, each as spacious as his own bathroom back on Rasselas.
He said, 'Hey, how do I get the tile concession?'
Rowe laughed and said, 'That your line of business then, Joe, construction?'
'Sometimes,' said Joe. 'More facilitating, know what I mean?'
'Yes, I see,' said Rowe, nodding vigorously, presumably to indicate he did know what Joe meant, which was good as Joe himself didn't have the faintest idea, but he'd really liked the word when he came across it in his crossword.
Rowe had got most of his kit off by now. A thing Joe had noticed in his admittedly limited dealings with the upper classes was the higher you got, the less it bothered them flashing their flesh. Himself, he'd been brought up so proper by Aunt Mirabelle that he could have changed out of overalls into evening suit under a tea towel without bringing a blush to a maiden cheek.
Feeling rather uncomfortable as Rowe dropped his boxers and started to cram his pretty hefty parts into an athletic support, Joe said, 'Leave you to it, then.'
'Sure. Hope to catch you later. And hey! We haven't forgotten you promised to join us for a round some time.'
In your dreams, thought Joe as he made his escape.
And in my nightmares!
19
Go with the Garbage
To Joe Sixsmith, the detective process was more like an act of creative imagination than a rational process, though of course if you'd suggested this to him in a pub, he'd have advised you went home and drank a couple of liters of water and hoped you'd wake up feeling better in the morning.
Someone, probably Butcher, had once told him he had something called negative capability, which meant he didn't let being surrounded by stuff in a case that made no sense bother him.
Joe had laughed at her joke. Why should he let anything bother him when, like a good pilgrim, he had his own Good Book, Endo Venera's Not So Private Eye? Often when the way forward seemed a bit uncertain, one of Endo's elegantly phrased maxims would float into his mind.
It would be nice, opined Endo, if investigation was all high life and high-balls, but sometimes you gotta go with the garbage.
At the moment, iced coffee on the terrace (the Hoo equivalent of high life and high-balls) seemed very attractive, but that would mean maybe running up against the other two corners of the Bermuda Triangle. Just because he was beginning to feel some uneasiness about Colin Rowe didn't mean they were necessarily tarred with the same brush, but at the very least they might start pressing him again to play a few holes with them. Also Butcher had implied Arthur Surtees was a guy to be scared of, and when a lawyer as scary as Butcher told you that about another lawyer, only a fool didn't pay heed.
So when Joe came out of the locker room, instead of heading left round the front of the clubhouse he made his way right round the rear, toward the service area behind the kitchen where the garbage was.
Though Endo Venera gave many graphic and often unsavory examples of significant finds he'd made among garbage, Joe didn't really have it in mind to start rifling through the rubbish. Not that it would have been all that easy anyway. Normally even behind the most elegant of restaurants, the waste area is unhygienic and squalid. Not at the Royal Hoo. Here there were no loosely tied black plastic bags, easy for PI's and vermin to penetrate, but a neat line of elegant green bins with hinged lids sufficiently tight fitting to contain all but the slightest whiff of decay, even in this hot weather.
Also there was a witness, a figure lounging against the wall alongside the kitchen doorway, a cigarette between his lips.
Joe recognized him as the club steward.
