Under Orders

‘Whichever suits you.’

‘Office, then. Ten?’

‘Fine.’

I didn’t bother to ask him what it was about. Archie was naturally a secretive man and on the telephone he habitually gave an excellent impression of a Trappist monk. He didn’t trust telephones and, as an ex-member of MI5, he should know. Today he had been unusually effusive and was probably regretting it already.

Marina and I decided to walk down to the Goring Hotel for a glass of wine and a sandwich. As a jockey I had never been able to eat a large lunch, even on non-racing Sundays, and the routine of eating only an evening meal had survived the disaster.

We took the lift down and stepped out into the marble-floored lobby. I had chosen this apartment building partly due to the 24-hour manned desk facing the entrance with its bank of CCTV monitors. I had been attacked outside my previous home so I valued the peace of mind provided by the eclectic band of individuals who made up the team of porters/security men.

‘Morning, Derek,’ I said.

‘Afternoon, Mr Halley,’ he corrected.

Reassuring, reliable and discreet, no one set foot in the building without their knowledge and say-so.

Half an hour later, sustained by a shared smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of wine, we hurried back to the flat in watery March sunshine that did little to alleviate the biting northerly wind on our backs.

‘Ah, Mr Halley,’ said Derek as we walked in, ‘guest for you.’

My ‘guest’ was sitting in the lobby and he was having difficulty getting up from a deep armchair. He was in his mid-sixties and was wearing dirty brown corduroy trousers and an old green sweater with a hole in the front. A shock of grey hair protruded from under a well-worn cap.

In his right hand he held a copy of The Pump.

‘Sid Halley!’ His booming voice filled the air with sound and he took two quick steps towards me.

Oh no, not again.

I looked around for reinforcement from Derek but he had decided to stay in relative safety behind the desk.

But instead of trying to hit me, the man thrust the newspaper in my face. ‘Did you kill my son?’ he demanded at maximum decibels.

I nearly laughed but thought better of it.

‘No, I did not.’ Even to my ears it sounded very melodramatic.

‘No, I didn’t really think so.’ His shoulders slumped and he sat down heavily on the arm of the chair. ‘But The Pump seemed so… oh, I don’t know… so believable.’ He spoke with a strong Welsh accent and I quite expected him to add ‘Boyo’ to the end of each sentence.

‘I’ve driven all the way here from Brecon.’ He gulped and his eyes filled with tears. ‘I set out to kill you. In revenge. But… the more I drove, the more stupid that seemed. It wouldn’t bring Huw back and, by the time I’d gone half way, I realised that you wouldn’t have done it. Huw always says…’ he faltered, ‘… said… that you, look, are on the side of the bloody angels. God, what am I doing here?’

He began to cry, his shoulders jerking up and down with great sobs that he tried to suppress.

Marina squatted down next to him. ‘Mr Walker,’ her melodic tone brought his chin up a fraction, ‘let’s go upstairs and get you a cup of tea.’

She stood and pulled him to his feet and guided him towards the lift.

‘Thanks, Derek,’ I said.

Derek stood wide-eyed and uncharacteristically silent as the lift doors closed.

Marina fussed around Mr Walker like a mother hen and soon had him sitting on the sofa sipping strong sweet tea from a blue-and-white striped mug.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked while stroking his hand.

He smiled at her. ‘Evan,’ he said.

‘Well, Evan,’ she smiled back, ‘have you had anything to eat for lunch?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I haven’t had anything to eat since Friday night. Since when the police came to tell…’ He tailed off, the memory still too raw to describe. ‘I don’t feel like eating.’

Nevertheless, Marina disappeared into the kitchen.

‘How did you know where I lived?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The man from The Pump told me.’

‘You just phoned them up and they gave you my address?’

‘No, I didn’t phone them.’ He looked slightly disturbed. ‘A man from The Pump phoned me at six o’clock this morning to ask whether I had seen their newspaper. Course I hadn’t. Not at six in the morning. I’d fed the cattle but there’s no delivery on Sundays and the shop doesn’t open until nine.’ He made it sound like a major failing.

He paused and looked at me. Was he thinking what I was thinking? Why did The Pump call him so specifically to ensure he read their paper?

‘So did you go and get a copy of The Pump?’ I asked, prompting him to continue.

‘Well, I did,’ he said, ‘but not from our local shop, see, it still wasn’t open when I left. I stopped to get one in Abergavenny.’

Marina reappeared with a mountain of scrambled eggs on toast that Evan Walker devoured like a starving dog, hardly stopping to draw breath.

‘Thank you,’ he smiled again. ‘Delicious. I didn’t realise how hungry I was.’

‘But why did you set off for London if you hadn’t read the piece in the paper?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t need to read it. The man from The Pump read the whole thing out to me over the phone. I was bloody mad, I can tell you. He kept saying what was in the paper was only the half of it. He good as told me you’d done it and no mistake. “Sid Halley murdered your son,” he said, and he said you’d probably get away with it because you’d done a deal with the police. Then he gave me your address and asked me what I was going to do about it.’

‘Did he give you his name?’ I asked. I already suspected who had called him.

‘No,’ he paused to think, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Was it a man called Chris Beecher?’ I asked

‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask his name.’ He paused again and shook his head. ‘Right bloody idiot I’ve been. See that now, but at the time I was so bloody angry.’ He dropped his eyes from mine. ‘I’m glad that bloody drive was long enough for me to come to my senses.’

So was I.

He sighed. ‘I suppose you’ll call the police now?’

‘How were you going to kill me?’ I asked, ignoring his question.

‘With my shotgun. It’s still in the car.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Outside on the road.’

‘I’ll get it,’ I said. ‘What type of car and where are the keys?’

‘Old grey Ford.’ He patted his flat pockets. ‘Keys must be in it.’

I went down and it was still there with the keys in the ignition, unstolen. Good job it was a Sunday, I thought, or he would have had at least three parking tickets by now. Amazingly, the shotgun was still there, too, lying in plain view on the back seat.

I picked it up, locked the car and turned to go back upstairs.

I am not sure why I noticed the young man in a car on the far side of the road take aim at me, maybe it was his movement that caught my eye. I strode straight across to him and lifted the business end of the shotgun I was holding in his general direction.

He had aimed not a gun but a camera that he now lowered to his lap. Experienced paparazzi would have gone on snapping, I thought — Sid Halley threatening a photographer with a loaded shotgun, just what The Pump would have loved for the front