should have been murdered.’
‘Harmless!’
He laughed. ‘If you hadn’t thought him harmless, you’d have kept out of his way.’
‘You’re so right,’ I said with feeling. ‘But now I see a villain in every respectable citizen. It’s very disturbing.’
‘Most of them are villains, in one way or another,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Keeps us busy. By the way, what do you think of Sparkle’s chances this year in the Hennessy…?’
When eventually I put the telephone down Dolly grabbed it with a sarcastic ‘Do you mind?’ and asked the switchboard girl to get her three numbers in a row, ‘without interruptions from Halley’. I grinned, got the packet of photographs out of the plywood table drawer, and looked through them again. They didn’t tell me any more than before. Ellis Bolt’s letters to Kraye. Now you see it, now you don’t. A villain in every respectable citizen. Play it secretly, I thought, close to the chest, in case the eyes looking over your shoulder give you away. I wondered why I was so oppressed by a vague feeling of apprehension, and decided in irritation that a bullet in the stomach had made me nervous.
When Dolly finished her calls I took the receiver out of her hand and got through to my bank manager.
‘Mr Hopper? This is Sid Halley… yes, fine thanks, and you? Good. Now, would you tell me just how much I have in both my accounts, deposit and current?’
‘They’re quite healthy, actually,’ he said in his gravelly bass voice. ‘You’ve had several dividends in lately. Hang on a minute, and I’ll send for the exact figures.’ He spoke to someone in the background and then came back. ‘It’s time you re-invested some of it.’
‘I do have some investments in mind,’ I agreed. ‘That’s what I want to discuss with you. I’m planning to buy some shares this time from another stockbroker, not through the bank. Er… please don’t think that I’m dissatisfied; how could I be, when you’ve done so well for me. It’s something to do with my work at the agency.’
‘Say no more. What exactly do you want?’
‘Well, to give you as a reference,’ I said. ‘He’s sure to want one, but I would be very grateful if you would make it as impersonal and as strictly financial as possible. Don’t mention either my past occupation or my present one. That’s very important.’
‘I won’t, then. Anything else?’
‘Nothing… oh, yes. I’ve introduced myself to him as John Halley. Would you refer to me like that if he gets in touch with you?’
‘Right. I’ll look forward to hearing from you one day what it’s all about. Why don’t you come in and see me? I’ve some very good cigars.’ The deep voice was amused. ‘Ah, here are the figures…’ He told me the total, which for once was bigger than I expected. That happy state of affairs wouldn’t last very long, I reflected, if I had to live for two years without any salary from Radnor. And no one’s fault but my own.
Giving Dolly back her telephone with an ironic bow, I went upstairs to Bona Fides. Jack Copeland’s mud coloured jersey had a dark blue darn on the chest and a fraying stretch of ribbing on the hip. He was picking at a loose thread and making it worse.
‘Anything on Kraye yet?’ I asked. ‘Or is it too early?’
‘George has got something on the prelim, I think,’ he answered. ‘Anybody got any scissors?’ A large area of jersey disintegrated into ladders. ‘Blast.’
Laughing, I went over to George’s desk. The prelim was a sheet of handwritten notes in George’s concertinaed style. ‘Leg mat, 2 yrs. 2 prev, 1 div, 1 sui dec.’ it began, followed by a list of names and dates.
‘Oh, yeah?’I said.
‘Yeah.’ He grinned. ‘Kraye was legally married to Doria Dawn, nee Easterman, two years ago. Before that he had two other wives. One killed herself; the other divorced him for cruelty.’ He pointed to the names and dates.
‘So clear,’ I agreed. ‘When you know how.’
‘If you weren’t so impatient you’d have a legible typed report. But as you’re here…’ He went on down the page, pointing. ‘Geologists think him a bit eccentric… quartz has no intrinsic value, most of it’s much too common, except for the gem stones, but Kraye goes round trying to buy chunks of it if they take his fancy. They know him quite well along the road at the Geology Museum. But not a breath of any dirty work. Clubs… he belongs to these three, not over-liked, but most members think he’s a brilliant fellow, talks very well. He gambles at Crockfords, ends up about all square over the months. He travels, always first-class, usually by boat, not air. No job or profession, can’t trace him on any professional or university lists. Thought to live on investments, playing the stock market,
‘No talk of him being crooked in any way?’
‘Not a word. You want him dug deeper?’
‘If you can do it without him finding out.’
George nodded. ‘Do you want him tailed?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not at present.’ A twenty-four-hour tail was heavy on man-power and expensive to the client, quite apart from the risk of the quarry noticing and being warned of the hunt. ‘Anything on his early life?’ I asked.
George shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nobody who knows him now has known him longer than about ten years. He either wasn’t born in Britain, or his name at birth wasn’t Kraye. No known relatives.’
‘You’ve done marvels, George. All this in one day.’
‘Contacts, chum, contacts. A lot of phoning, a bit of pubbing, a touch of gossip with the local tradesmen… nothing to it.’
Jack, moodily poking his fingers through the cobweb remains of his jersey, looked at me over the half-moon specs and said that there wasn’t a prelim on Bolt yet because ex-sergeant Carter, who was working on it, hadn’t phoned in.
‘If he does,’ I said, ‘let me know? I’ve an appointment with Bolt at three thirty. It would be handy to know the set-up before I go.’
‘O.K.’
After that I went down and looked out of the windows of the Racing Section for half an hour, idly watching life go by in the Cromwell Road and wondering just what sort of mess I was making of the Kraye investigation. A novice chaser in the Grand National, I thought wryly; that was me. Though, come to think of it, I had once ridden a novice in the National, and got round, too. Slightly cheered, I took Dolly out to a drink and a sandwich in the snack bar at the Air Terminal, where we sat and envied the people starting off on their travels. So much expectation in the faces, as if they could fly away and leave their troubles on the ground. An illusion, I thought sourly. Your troubles flew with you; a drag in the mind… a deformity in the pocket.
I laughed and joked with Dolly, as usual. What else can you do?
The firm of Charing, Street and King occupied two rooms in a large block of offices belonging to a bigger firm, and consisted entirely of Bolt, his clerk and a secretary.
I was shown the door of the secretary’s office, and went into a dull, tidy, fog-coloured box of a room with cold fluorescent lighting and a close-up view of the fire-escape through the grimy window. A woman sat at a desk by the right hand wall, facing the window, with her back towards me. A yard behind her chair was a door with ELLIS BOLT painted on a frosted glass panel. It occurred to me that she was most awkwardly placed in the room, but that perhaps she liked sitting in a potential draught and having to turn round every time someone came in.
She didn’t turn round, however. She merely moved her head round a fraction towards me and said ‘Yes?’
‘I have an appointment with Mr Bolt,’ I said. ‘At three thirty.’
‘Oh, yes, you must be Mr Halley. Do sit down. I’ll see if Mr Bolt is free now.’
She pointed to an easy chair a step ahead of me, and flipped a switch on her desk. While I listened to her telling Mr Bolt I was there, in the quiet voice I had heard on the telephone, I had time to see she was in her late thirties, slender, upright in her chair, with a smooth wing of straight, dark hair falling down beside her cheek. If anything, it was too young a hair style for her. There were no rings on her fingers, and no nail varnish either. Her clothes were dark and uninteresting. It seemed as though she were making a deliberate attempt to be unattractive, yet her profile, when she half turned and told me Mr Bolt would see me, was pleasant enough. I had a glimpse of
