Marina and I spent a quiet evening at home in front of the television eating ready-made and microwaved shepherd’s pie off trays on our laps.
‘You know those street corners I was going to ring my bell on?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, tomorrow’s
‘Are you saying that I should be extra-careful tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And always.’
‘Rosie hardly leaves my side.’
I wished that Rosie were a seventeen-stone body-builder rather than a five-foot two size six.
‘I think I’ll go and get
‘You be careful, too,’ said Marina.
I was. I avoided dark corners and kept a keen eye on my back. I made it safely to the news-stand outside the station and then back to Ebury Street without incident.
There was no need to search this paper. You would have had to be blind to miss it. They must have been short of news.
Under a ‘Pump Exclusive’ banner on the front page was the headline ‘MURDER OR SUICIDE?’ with the sub- headline ‘HALLEY ORCHESTRATES THE INVESTIGATION’. The article beneath described in detail everything I had revealed to Paddy. They ‘quoted’ Professor Aubrey Winterton as saying that the bullet definitely came from the same gun that had been used to kill Bill Burton. They even managed to state that Sid Halley was confident that an arrest was imminent. I put that down to Paddy’s tendency for exaggeration.
‘That’s what I call shouting from a street corner,’ said Marina. ‘Is it true?’
‘Not about the arrest. And some of the rest is guesswork.’
No one could be in any doubt that I had blatantly ignored the message that Marina had received the evening she was beaten up. Even I had not expected my game to work so well that it would make the front page. I thought a paragraph in Chris Beecher’s column or an inch or two on the racing page would have been all I could have hoped for. This much coverage made me very nervous but it was too late now;
I double-checked the locks, removed my arm and went to bed. Neither Marina nor I felt in the mood for nookie.
In the morning we took extra care going to the car. I had reiterated to the staff downstairs at the front desk that no one, repeat no one, was to be allowed up to my flat without their calling me first. Absolutely, they had agreed.
I dropped Marina at work, though not before taking a few detours to see if we were being followed. Rosie, the petite bodyguard, was waiting for Marina in the Institute foyer. She waved at me as I drove away.
I pointed the Audi towards north-west London and went to see Frank Snow.
Harrow School is actually in Harrow on the Hill, a neat little village perched, as its name suggests, on a hill surrounded by suburban London. It seems strangely isolated from its great metropolitan neighbour as if it has somehow remained constant throughout its long history whilst life changed elsewhere around it. The village is mostly made up of the many school buildings with the Harrow School Outfitters being the largest store in the High Street.
I eventually found the right office under a cloister near the school chapel and Frank Snow was there, seated at a central table sticking labels on a stack of envelopes.
‘For the old boys’ newsletters,’ he said in explanation.
He was a tall man with a full head of wavy white hair. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and looked every inch the schoolmaster.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ he asked.
‘Love one, thank you.’
He busied himself with an electric kettle in the corner while I wandered round looking at the rows of framed photographs on the walls. Many of them were faded black-and-white images of serious-looking, unsmiling boys in straw boaters. Others were more recent, in colour, of sports teams in striped jerseys with happier faces.
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Just a little milk, please,’ I said.
He pushed the pile of envelopes to one side and placed two steaming mugs down on the end of the table.
‘Now, how can I help you, Mr Halley?’
‘I was hoping you could give me some background information on one of your old boys.’
‘As I explained to you on the telephone,’ he said, ‘we don’t discuss old boys with the media.’ He took a sip of his coffee.
‘As I explained to you,’ I replied, ‘I’m not from the media.’
It was not the most auspicious of openings.
‘Well, who are you then?’ he asked.
I decided against telling him that I was a private detective as I thought that might have been even lower on his scale than the media.
‘I’m assisting the Standing Cabinet Sub-Committee on Legislative Outcomes in their consideration of internet gambling as part of the new Gambling and Gaming Act.’
If you can’t blind them with science, I thought, baffle them with bullshit.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
I repeated it.
‘I see.’ He didn’t appear to.
‘Yes. One of your old boys runs an internet gambling website and I was hoping you might be able to tell me about his time at Harrow.’
‘I’m not sure that I can. Our records are confidential, you know.’
‘Don’t worry about the Data Protection Act,’ I said. ‘This is an official inquiry.’
It wasn’t, but he wouldn’t know that.
‘I can assure you, Mr Halley, that our records have been confidential far longer than that piece of legislation has been on the statute book.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I had been put in my place.
‘Now who exactly are you asking about?’
‘George Lochs,’ I said. ‘At least, that’s what he calls himself now. When he was at Harrow he was — ’
‘Clarence Lochstein,’ Frank Snow interrupted.
‘Exactly. You remember him, then.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Has he been up to no good?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.’
‘What can you tell me about him?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure. What do you want to know?’
‘I heard that he was expelled for taking bets from the other boys.’
‘That’s not exactly true,’ he said. ‘He was sacked for striking a member of staff.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Who?’
‘His housemaster,’ he said. ‘As you say, Lochstein and another boy were indeed caught taking bets from the other boys and, it was rumoured, from some of the younger, more avant-garde members of Common Room.’
He paused.
‘Yes?’
‘It was in the latter days of corporal punishment and the headmaster instructed the boys’ housemasters to give each of them a sound beating. Six of the best.’
‘So?’
