'What time does Aunt Deb expect us back?' I asked.
'Dinner is at eight. We've got until then,' said Kate. 'Let's walk through the Lanes and look at the antique shops.'
We went slowly down the back pathways of Brighton, pausing before each brightly lit window to admire the contents. And stopping, too, in one or two corners in the growing dusk, to continue where we had left off in the telephone box. Kate's kisses were sweet and virginal. She was unpractised in love, and though her body trembled once or twice in my arms, there was no passion, no hunger in her response.
At the end of one of the Lanes, while we were discussing whether to go any further, some lights were suddenly switched on behind us. We turned round. The licensee of The Blue Duck was opening his doors for the evening. It looked a cosy place.
'How about a snifter before we go back?' I suggested.
'Lovely,' said Kate. And in this casual inconsequential way we made the most decisive move in our afternoon's sleuthing.
We went into The Blue Duck.
CHAPTER NINE
The bar was covered with a big sheet of gleaming copper. The beer handles shone. The glasses sparkled. It was a clean, friendly little room with warm lighting and original oils of fishing villages round the walls.
Kate and I leaned on the bar and discussed sherries with the innkeeper. He was a military-looking man of about fifty with a bristly moustache waxed at the ends. I put him down as a retired sergeant-major. But he knew his stuff, and the sherry he recommended to us was excellent. We were his first customers, and we stood chatting to him. He had the friendly manner of all good innkeepers, but underlying this I saw a definite wariness. It was like the nostril cocked for danger in a springbok; uneasy, even when all appeared safe. But I didn't pay much attention, for his troubles, I thought erroneously, had nothing to do with me.
Another man and a girl came in, and Kate and I turned to take our drinks over to one of the small scattered tables. As we did so she stumbled, knocked her glass against the edge of the bar and broke it. A jagged edge cut her hand, and it began to bleed freely.
The innkeeper called his wife, a thin, small woman with bleached hair. She saw the blood welling out of Kate's hand, and exclaimed with concern, 'Come and put it under the cold tap. That'll stop the bleeding. Mind you don't get it on your nice coat.'
She opened a hatch in the bar to let us through, and led us into her kitchen, which was as spotless as the bar. On a table at one side were slices of bread, butter, cooked meats, and chopped salads. We had interrupted the innkeeper's wife in making sandwiches for the evening's customers. She went across to the sink, turned on the tap, and beckoned to Kate to put her hand in the running water. I stood just inside the kitchen door looking round me.
'I'm so sorry to be giving you all this trouble,' said Kate, as the blood dripped into the sink. 'It really isn't a very bad cut. There just seems to be an awful lot of gore coming out of it.'
'It's no trouble at all, dear,' said the innkeeper's wife. 'I'll find you a bandage.' She opened a dresser drawer to look for one, giving Kate a reassuring smile.
I started to walk over from the doorway to take a closer look at the damage. Instantly there was a deadly menacing snarl, and a black Alsatian dog emerged from a box beside the refrigerator. His yellow eyes were fixed on me, his mouth was slightly open with the top lip drawn back, and the razor-sharp teeth were parted. There was a collar round his neck, but he was not chained up. Another snarl rumbled deep in his throat.
I stood stock still in the centre of the kitchen.
The innkeeper's wife took a heavy stick from beside the dresser and went over to the dog. She seemed flustered.
'Lie down, Prince. Lie down.' She pointed with the stick to the box. The dog, after a second's hesitation, stepped back into it and sat erect, still looking at me with the utmost hostility. I didn't move.
'I'm very sorry, sir. He doesn't like strange men. He's a very good guard dog, you see. He won't hurt you now, not while I'm here.' And she laid the stick on the dresser, and went over to Kate with cotton wool, disinfectant, and a bandage.
I took a step towards Kate. Muscles rippled along the dog's back, but he stayed in his box. I finished the journey to the sink. The bleeding had almost stopped, and, as Kate said, it was not a bad cut. The innkeeper's wife dabbed it with cotton wool soaked in disinfectant, dried it, and wound on a length of white gauze bandage.
I leaned against the draining board, looking at the dog and the heavy stick, and remembering the underlying edginess of the innkeeper. They added up to just one thing.
Protection.
Protection against what? Protection against Protection, said my brain, dutifully, in a refrain. Someone had been trying the Protection racket on mine host. Pay up or we smash up your pub- or you- or your wife. But this particular innkeeper, whether or not I was right about his sergeant-major past, looked tough enough to defy that sort of bullying. The collectors of Protection had been met, or were to be met, by an authentically lethal Alsatian. They were likely to need protection themselves.
The innkeeper put his head round the door.
'All right?' he said.
'It's fine, thank you very much,' said Kate.
'I've been admiring your dog,' I said.
The innkeeper took a step into the room. Prince turned his head away from me for the first time and looked at his master.
'He's a fine fellow,' he agreed.
Suddenly out of nowhere there floated into my mind a peach of an idea. There could not, after all, be too many gangs in Brighton, and I had wondered several times why a taxi line should employ thugs and fight pitched battles. So I said, with a regrettable lack of caution, 'Marconicars.'
The innkeeper's professionally friendly smile vanished, and he suddenly looked at me with appalling, vivid hate. He picked the heavy stick off the dresser and raised it to hit me. The dog was out of his box in one fluid stride, crouching ready to spring, with his ears flat and his teeth bared. I had struck oil with a vengeance.
Kate came to the rescue. She stepped to my side and said, without the slightest trace of alarm, 'For heaven's sake don't hit him too hard because Aunt Deb is expecting us for roast lamb and the odd potato within half an hour or so and she is very strict about us being back on the dot.'
This surprising drivel made the innkeeper hesitate long enough for me to say 'I don't belong to Marconicars. I'm against them. Do be a good chap and put that stick down, and tell Prince his fangs are not required.'
The innkeeper lowered the stick, but he left Prince where he was, on guard four feet in front of me.
Kate said to me, 'Whatever have we walked into?' The bandage was trailing from her hand, and the blood was beginning to ooze through. She wound up the rest of the bandage unconcernedly and tucked in the end.
'Protection, I think?' I said to the innkeeper. 'It was just a wild guess, about the taxis. I'd worked out why you need such an effective guard dog, and I've been thinking about taxi-drivers for days. The two things just clicked, that's all.'
'Some of the Marconicar taxi-drivers beat him up a bit a week ago,' said Kate conversationally to the innkeeper's wife. 'So you can't expect him to be quite sane on the subject.'
The innkeeper gave us both a long look. Then he went to his dog and put his hand round its neck and fondled it under its chin. The wicked yellow eyes closed, the lips relaxed over the sharp teeth, and the dog leaned against his master's leg in devotion. The innkeeper patted its rump, and sent it back to its box.
'A good dog, Prince,' he said, with a touch of irony. 'Well now, we can't leave the bar unattended. Sue, dear, will you look after the customers while I talk to these young people?'
'There's the sandwiches not made yet,' protested Sue.
'I'll do them,' said Kate, cheerfully. 'And let's hope I don't bleed into them too much.' She picked up a knife and began to butter the slices of bread. The innkeeper and his wife looked less able to deal with Kate than with the
