taxi-drivers: but after hesitating a moment, the wife went out to the bar.
'Now, sir,' said the innkeeper.
I outlined for him the story of Bill's death and my close contact with the taxi-drivers in the horse-box. I said, 'If I can find out who's at the back of Marconicars, I'll probably have the man who arranged Major Davidson's accident.'
'Yes, I see that,' he said. 'I hope you have more luck than I've had. Trying to find out who owns Marconicars is like running head on into a brick wall. Dead end. I'll tell you all I can, though. The more people sniping at them, the sooner they'll be liquidated.' He leaned over and picked up two sandwiches. He gave one to me, and bit into the other.
'Don't forget to leave room for the roast lamb,' said Kate, seeing me eating. She looked at her watch. 'Oh, dear, we'll be terribly late for dinner and I hate to make Aunt Deb cross.' But she went on placidly with her buttering.
'I bought The Blue Duck eighteen months ago,' said the innkeeper. 'When I got out into civvy street.'
'Sergeant-major?' I murmured.
'Regimental,' he said, with justifiable pride. 'Thomkins, my name is. Well, I bought The Blue Duck with my savings and my retirement pay, and dead cheap it was too. Too cheap. I should have known there'd be a catch. We hadn't been here more than three weeks, and taking good money too, when this chap comes in one night and says as bold as brass that if we didn't pay up like the last landlord it'd be just too bad for us. And he picked up six glasses off the bar and smashed them. He said he wanted fifty quid a week. Well, I ask you, fifty quid! No wonder the last landlord wanted to get out. I was told afterwards he'd been trying to sell the place for months, but all the locals found out they would be buying trouble and left it alone for some muggins like me straight out of the army and still wet behind the ears to come along and jump in with my big feet.'
Innkeeper Thomkins chewed on his sandwich while he thought.
'Well, then, I told him to eff off. And he came back the next night with about five others and smashed the place to bits. They knocked me out with one of my own bottles and locked my wife in the heads. Then they smashed all the bottles in the bar and all the glasses, and all the chairs. When I came round I was lying on the floor in the mess, and they were standing over me in a ring. They said that was just a taste. If I didn't cough up the fifty quid a week they'd be back to smash every bottle in the store-room and all the wine in the cellar. After that, they said, it would be my wife.'
His face was furious, as he relived it.
'What happened?' I asked.
'Well, my God, after the Germans and the Japs I wasn't giving in meekly to some little runts at the English seaside. I paid up for a couple of months to give myself a bit of breathing space, but fifty quid takes a bit of finding, on top of overheads and taxes. It's a good little business, see, but at that rate I wasn't going to be left with much more than my pension. It wasn't on.'
'Did you tell the police?' I asked.
A curious look of shame came into Thomkins' face. 'No,' he said hesitantly, 'not then I didn't. I didn't know then where the men had come from, see, and they'd threatened God knows what if I went to the police. Anyway, it's not good army tactics to re-engage an enemy who has defeated you once, unless you've got reinforcements. That's when I started to think about a dog. And I did go to the police later,' he finished, a little defensively.
'Surely the police can close the Marconicar taxi line if it's being used for systematic crime,' I said.
'Well, you'd think so,' he said, 'but it isn't like that. It's a real taxi service, you know. A big one. Most of the drivers are on the up and up and don't even know what's going on. I told a couple of them once that they were a front for the protection racket and they refused to believe me. The crooked ones look so plausible, see? Just like the others. They drive a taxi up to your door at closing time, say, all innocent like, and walk in and ask quietly for the money; and as like as not they'll pick up a customer in the pub and drive him home for the normal fare as respectable as you please.'
'Couldn't you have a policeman in plain clothes sitting at the bar ready to arrest the taxi driver when he came to collect the money?' suggested Kate.
The innkeeper said bitterly, 'It wouldn't do no good, miss. It isn't only that they come in on different days, at different times, so that a copper might have to wait a fortnight to catch one, but there aren't any grounds for arrest. They've got an IOU with my signature on it for fifty pounds, and if there was any trouble with the police, all they'd have to do would be show it, and they couldn't be touched. The police'll help all right if you can give them something they can use in court, but when it's just one man's word against another, they can't do much.'
'A pity you signed the IOU,' I sighed.
'I didn't,' he said, indignantly, 'but it looks like my signature, even to me. I tried to grab it once, but the chap who showed it to me said it wouldn't matter if I tore it up, they'd soon make out another one. They must have had my signature on a letter or something, and copied it. Easy enough to do.'
'You do pay them, then,' I said, rather disappointed.
'Not on your nellie, I don't,' said the innkeeper, his moustache bristling. 'I haven't paid them a sou for a year or more. Not since I got Prince. He chewed four of them up in a month, and that discouraged them, I can tell you. But they're still around all the time. Sue and I daren't go out much, and we always go together and take Prince with us. I've had burglar alarm bells put on all the doors and windows and they go off with an awful clatter if anyone tries to break in while we're out or asleep. It's no way to live, sir. It's getting on Sue's nerves.'
'What a dismal story,' said Kate, licking chutney off her fingers. 'Surely you can't go on like that for ever?'
'Oh, no, miss, we're beating them now. It isn't only us, see, that they got money from. They had a regular round. Ten or eleven pubs like ours – free houses. And a lot of little shops, tobacconists, souvenir shops, that sort of thing, and six or seven little caf‚s. None of the big places. They only pick on businesses run by people who own them, like us. When I cottoned on to that I went round to every place I thought they might be putting the screws on and asked the owners straight out if they were paying protection. It took me weeks, it's such a big area. The ones that were paying were all dead scared, of course, and wouldn't talk, but I knew who they were, just by the way they clammed up. I told them we ought to stop paying and fight. But a lot of them have kids and they wouldn't risk it, and you can't blame them.'
'What did you do?' asked Kate, enthralled.
'I got Prince. A year old, he was then. I'd done a bit of dog handling in the army, and I trained Prince to be a proper fighter.'
'You did, indeed,' I said, looking at the dog who now lay peacefully in his box with his chin on his paws.
'I took him round and showed him to some of the other victims of the protection racket,' Thomkins went on, 'and told them that if they'd get dogs too we'd chase off the taxi-drivers. Some of them didn't realize the taxis were mixed up in it. They were too scared to open their eyes. Anyway, in the end a lot of them did get dogs and I helped to train them, but it's difficult, the dog's only got to obey one master, see, and I had to get them to obey someone else, not me. Still, they weren't too bad. Not as good as Prince, of course.'
'Of course,' said Kate.
The innkeeper looked at her suspiciously, but she was demurely piling sandwiches on to a plate.
'Go on,' I said.
'In the end I got some of the people with children to join in too. They bought Alsatians or bull terriers, and we arranged a system for taking all the kiddies to school by car. Those regular walks to school laid them wide open to trouble, see? I hired a judo expert and his car to do nothing but ferry the children and their mothers about. We all club together to pay him. He's expensive, of course, but nothing approaching the protection money.'
'How splendid,' said Kate warmly.
'We're beating them all right, but it isn't all plain sailing yet. They smashed up the Cockleshell caf‚ a fortnight ago, just round the corner from here. But we've got a system to deal with that, too, now. Several of us went round to help clear up the mess, and we all put something into the hat to pay for new tables and chairs. They've got an Alsatian bitch at that caf‚, and she'd come into season and they'd locked her in a bedroom. I ask you! Dogs are best,' said the innkeeper, seriously.
Kate gave a snort of delight.
'Have the taxi-drivers attacked any of you personally, or has it always been your property?' I asked.
'Apart from being hit on the head with my own bottle, you mean?' The innkeeper pulled up his sleeve and showed us one end of a scar on his forearm. 'That's about seven inches long. Three of them jumped me one
