REGINALD HILL
THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES

A Joe Sixsmith novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Reginald Hill 2008

“Roar of the butterflies” extract copyright © P G Wodehouse Reproduced by permission of the Estate of P G Wodehouse c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007252732

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007292936

Version: 2016-01-28

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1 ’Fonlies

2 Enter a YFG

3 A Willie Day

4 Blackball

5 Tiger

6 Pastures New

7 A Fortunate Lie

8 Trust

9 A Royal Summons

10 Favours

11 Knobbly Scones and Lipton’s Tea

12 The Hole

13 Legal Advice

14 What’s Become of Waring?

15 Twitch

16 Wondrous Regiment

17 A Message from Frank

18 A Patch of Oil

19 And in my nightmares!

20 Lightning Strikes Twice

21 Frozen Broccoli

22 The Right Price

23 Pillow Talk

24 A Saving Bell

25 Last Breakfast

26 Pain

27 End of Play

Keep Reading

About Reginald Hill

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Dedication

For

WRECKING CREWS

the world over.

(You know who you are!)

’Fonlies

Joe Sixsmith was adrift in space.

Light years beneath him gleamed the tiny orb he was supposed to make contact with, but he knew it was an impossible dream.

His muscles had melted, his lungs were starved of oxygen, and the only part of his mind not paralysed by terror was the bit that dealt with ’fonlies.

’fonly I’d done this…’fonly I’d done that…

‘No use messing with ’fonlies,’ Aunt Mirabelle used to say. ‘’fonlies don’t get your homework done, Joseph. You miss your football Saturday morning, you’ve got no one to blame ’cept yourself.’

How right she was! No one to blame ’cept himself…except maybe Willie Woodbine for being such a social climber…and Beryl Boddington maybe for standing him up…and definitely Merv Golightly for having a mouth like the Channel Tunnel…but first and last and as usual, himself, Joseph Gaylord (even Mirabelle kept quiet about that) Sixsmith for always going boldly half-assed where nobody had ever come back from before!

Enter a YFG

Way it started was this.

Monday afternoon, day before yesterday, though it seemed a lot longer ago, he’d been sitting in his office, minding his own business, which didn’t take much minding this time of year. Summer had parked its anticyclone firmly over Luton and fused the days and nights of July together with a heat too enervating to start a race riot in, let alone perpetrate any of the crimes that might send the distressed citizenry in search of a PI. Ice creams melted before they could reach your mouth, birds huddled beneath cats for shade, and flies buzzed with relief into spiders’ webs whose owners felt the tremor along the line and thought that maybe next Friday they’d stroll down there to take a look.

The plus side was that Joe too felt as energetic as a poached egg and couldn’t whip up much concern at the lack of client incentive to head off down the mean streets.

So clad in an off-white singlet and Bermuda shorts patterned with scarlet parrots sinking their beaks into rainbow-striped pumpkins, Joe sat at his desk and relaxed with his favourite book, Not So Private Eye, the reminiscences of Endo Venera, the famous Mafia soldier turned gumshoe. This was Joe’s bible. Everything you needed to know about being a PI was here, except maybe how to stay awake.

His head nodded, and he slipped into a dream in which he and Beryl Boddington were sliding naked down an iceberg, and he wasn’t at all pleased to have his descent interrupted by a voice saying, ‘Mr Sixsmith? Would you be Mr Sixsmith?’

He opened his eyes and found he was being addressed by a Young Fair God.

He was thirty at most, tall, boyishly handsome, with hair that shone pale gold against the darker gold of skin glowing with a proper expensive Mediterranean yacht kind of tan, not the russet-and-red skin-peeling version which made any large gathering of Lutonians look like Vermont in the Fall. His lean athletic frame was clad in a linen jacket, cream slacks and an open-necked shirt white enough to signal surrender at half a mile. He looked, thought Joe, just like one of those hunks you see in up-market mail-order catalogues where, despite the alleged cutting out of the middle man, the gear still costs three times what you’d expect to pay down Luton market.

But it wasn’t this that caught and held Joe’s attention. It was the fact that the guy looked cool. Not cool in the laid-back hey-man-how-you-doin’? kind of way, though that too. No, this guy looked like he was standing in some nice and easy air-conditioned zone of his own rather than the sauna of Joe’s office. Perhaps this was a special deal available only to Young Fair Gods.

‘Hope you don’t mind. I just came in. The door was open,’ said the YFG. He had a quails’-eggs-easy-over-on-cinnamon-toast kind of voice.

‘Yeah, that’s OK. Trying to get a through draught,’ said Joe. Then repeated trying in ironic acknowledgement that not so much air was moving between the open window and door as would have fluttered a maidenhair fern.

‘All right if I sit down?’ said the YFG, sinking on to an old dining chair with the confidence of one whose creamy slacks have been treated with a dust-repellent potion unobtainable by the common herd. ‘My name is Porphyry. Christian Porphyry.’

‘U-huh,’ said Joe, unsurprised. Creature like this wasn’t going to be called Fred Jones, not if (as he firmly believed) there was an underlying order to things.

Also the name wasn’t totally unfamiliar, at least the Porphyry bit. He’d seen it in the paper recently, but even memory found it hard to move back through this heat haze. He could check it out later if he had the energy, because he’d certainly not had the energy to dump any newspapers for the past week or so. In fact, come to think of it, he doubted if he’d had the energy to open one, so the Porphyry reference must have been front page or back page, i.e. headline news or sport. He realized that these thoughts had occupied rather more time than they would have done normally, and since his u-huh the sort of companionable silence had developed between them which was OK between a pair of buddies fishing off a river bank but didn’t promise to move the PI/client relationship forward very far.

He said, ‘Sixsmith. Joe Sixsmith.’

‘Yes. I thought you must be,’ said Porphyry with a pleasant smile.

Joe found himself smiling back. There was something very attractive about this guy. He felt really easy with him, which was not a good way to feel with someone who’d just strolled into your office. For all Joe knew, Porphyry could be a cop interested in the provenance of the six-pack of Guinness cooling in his washroom hand basin, which he’d got (plus another nineteen) from his taxi-driving friend Merv Golightly on the assurance that the fifty per cent discount Merv was offering derived from their being bankrupt stock. (‘You mean,’ Joe had enquired for the avoidance of doubt, ‘that the guy these came from was bankrupt?’ to which after a little thought Merv had replied, ‘Well, yeah, I’d guess he is now.’)

Or could be the YFG was a solicitor about to serve a writ for non-payment of any of the things Joe had non-paid recently.

Or could even be he was a hit man on a contract taken out by one of the top criminals Joe had crossed in his unrelenting crusade for justice…

No, scrub that one. This guy didn’t look like he’d slap your wrist for less than a grand, and in pay-back terms Joe’s recent toe-treading didn’t rate much more than a ten-quid kicking up an alley.

He realized another companionable silence was developing.

He said, ‘How can I help you, Mr Porphyry?’ ‘I do hope so,’ said Porphyry with such touching vulnerability of tone and expression that Joe hadn’t the heart to point out this wasn’t a helpful or even a possible reply to his question. But the YFG hadn’t finished. Maybe divine revelation was on its way.

‘Willie spoke very highly of you,’ he said with the stress on very and a slight but emphatic nod of his beautiful head as if this testimonial from this source was confirmation absolute of Joe’s competence.

‘He did, huh?’ said Joe, trying to identify his unexpected fan. Trouble was most of the Willies he could bring to mind failed on both counts – speaking highly of him or being on friendly terms with YFGs. He gave up and added, ‘That would be Willie…?’

‘Woodbine,’ said Porphyry.

‘As in Detective Superintendent Woodbine?’ said Joe disbelievingly.

‘That’s the chap. Done awfully well for himself, old Willie. Naturally I turned to him first. Not his line of country really, he said. But if I wanted to try the private sector, there’s this chap, Joe Sixsmith. Cutting edge of investigation. He’s your man.’

He smiled as he spoke, the happy smile of a voyager arrived at last in safe haven.

Another silence began. This time Joe didn’t even disturb it with an U-huh. If the guy had been paying him, he might have felt different, but it was too hot for a man to exert himself with no certainty of reward, and besides he was wrestling with the problem of how come Willie Woodbine was pushing clients his way, particularly clients like this.

A phone rang. It wasn’t Joe’s. His desk phone had the harsh shriek of a crow just landed on an electrified fence and his mobile played the Hallelujah chorus. This one let out a soft yet firm double note, like the deferential cough of a butler wanting to catch master’s attention.

‘Sorry,’ said Porphyry, producing the neatest mobile Joe had ever seen cased in what looked like old gold.

He put it to his ear and listened. Then he switched off, stood up and said, ‘I’m afraid I have to go. Look, I’m tied up today, but can you do tomorrow morning? Let’s meet at the club, how does that sound? I think it would be good for you to get a feel of the place. I can show you round. Scene of the crime, that sort of thing.’

What crime? wondered Joe. And which club? Time to get some sense into this interchange.

‘Look, Mr Porphyry…’ he began.

‘Chris,’ said the man. ‘And I shall call you Joe. It will authenticate our cover, isn’t that what you chaps say? You’re interested in applying for membership, if anyone asks. Half ten all right for you? That gives us time for a look around, and we can have a spot of lunch after. OK?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Joe, glad at last to have something concrete to get his teeth into, though, come to think of it, all that was likely to do was break your teeth. ‘Look, I’m pretty busy just now and until I know…’

‘Of course, I realize you’re in great demand, Mr Sixsmith, Joe, and I certainly don’t expect to take up your time for nothing.’

He produced a wallet, took out four fifties that looked like they’d just rolled off the press, and placed them on the desk.

‘Will that cover today? Once you understand the fine details of the case, then we can regularize finances. So I’ll see you at the club in the morning.’

‘What details?’ asked Joe, dragging his gaze from the money. ‘Of what case? And what club?’

Experience should have taught him that if you ask more than one question at a time, you usually get an answer to the least important.

‘The Who, of course,’ said Porphyry, slightly puzzled as if this were not a question he expected to be asked.

His answer meant nothing to Joe. Luton wasn’t short of clubs, and he’d expected something like Dirty Harry’s, which was the hottest, or maybe Skimbleshanks, which was the classiest, except these weren’t places people did much lunchtime rendezvousing in.

But whatever the time of day, the Who rang no bell. Presumably named after the famous seventies group – everything was retro these days – or maybe after Doctor Who, the TV space opera which was enjoying a revival. Either way, he didn’t know the place. But for a PI to display ignorance of the club scene might finally begin to scratch the bright shiny image Willie Woodbine had created for him, so best to let it be and ask around.

‘Till tomorrow then,’ said Porphyry, heading for the door.

Here he paused and cast a speculative eye over Joe. He seemed to be meditating a parting utterance. Joe paid close attention in case at last a clue was going to be offered.

But Young Fair Gods speak only in riddles.

‘There’s a shorts dispensation during the hot weather for those with the legs to stand it, but they have to be tailored, of course. Myself, I just love the parrots. Bye.’

And he was gone, leaving only a faint aroma of something too pleasant to be called aftershave in a slender zone of coolth, both of which the nuzzling heat gobbled up in a few seconds.

A Willie Day

Joe sat for a moment wondering if it had all been a desert mirage brought on by heat exhaustion. But the crisp notes remained on his desk, and now further confirmation burst into the office in the attractive shape of Beryl Boddington, his in-out girlfriend, one vision authenticating another.

‘And who was that gorgeous creature?’ she demanded, hurrying past Joe to peer out of the window. ‘Saw the fancy wheels outside and soon as I clocked him on the stairs I thought, he’s the man. Yeah, there he goes.’

Joe swept the money out of sight into his shorts pocket, then joined Beryl at the window.

Below, Porphyry was vaulting into an Aston DB9 Volante parked behind Joe’s Morris Oxford. His golden hair bounced and shimmered in the midday sun. It was like looking down at a shampoo ad. As he pulled away he glanced up, smiled and waved.

Beryl waved back with huge enthusiasm.

‘That’s solved one problem,’ she said. ‘Now I know what I want for my birthday.’

‘The car?’ suggested Joe.

‘That too,’ she said. ‘Come on. Tell me who he is. I’m sure I’ve seen him before. If he’s not a movie star, he surely ought to be.’

‘Oh, he’s just a client,’ said Joe negligently. ‘If I take him on, that is.’

Maybe he should have felt jealous, but not in this weather. Anyway where was the harm in someone fantasizing about what was out of their reach, long as they stayed happy with what was in it? His trouble with Beryl was the way she hovered on the boundary of out and in. Sometimes she kept him at a distance, other times they were so close that if they’d been any closer they’d have fused. His mind drifted back to the last such occasion and he found as he studied her sturdy yet well shaped body in its very becoming blue-and-white nurse’s uniform that this heat wasn’t totally enervating after all.

‘Don’t I get a kiss then?’ he said.

‘Not in those shorts, you don’t,’ said Beryl. ‘Surely you know the guy’s name?’

‘Porphyry,’ said Joe, wishing she wouldn’t go on about the YFG. ‘I could always take them off.’

‘Don’t even dream about it. Porphyry. Of course! I knew I’d seen him. His picture was on the front page of the Bedfordshire Bugle last week. He’s just got engaged. Damn!’

‘Maybe I can catch you on the rebound,’ said Joe. ‘So why’s he important enough to get his picture on the front page just because he’s got engaged?’

‘Well, first, he’s gorgeous; second, his family have been around the county for ever and a day; and third, he’s got engaged to Tiff Emerson whose daddy owns nearly everything in the media that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t, including the Bugle. Where you been, Joe?’

‘Maybe I’ve got more important things than gossip columns to fill my mind.’

‘Such as?’ she demanded, looking around the office. ‘So much dust on that filing cabinet, don’t think it’s been opened since Christmas.’

‘So you’re a detective now,’ said Joe. ‘First thing you should learn is, the real important cases, nothing goes down on paper.’

‘What real important cases?’ she laughed.

‘Like the one I’m meeting Mr Porphyry, Chris, to discuss over lunch tomorrow,’ he said triumphantly.

It worked. For a moment she looked impressed.

Then she shrugged and said, ‘Well, that’s a pity, ’cos that’s why I dropped in to see you. I’ve got to break our date tonight. They’re short-staffed at the hospital and need me to do an extra shift. I was going to suggest that maybe if you could find time in your busy schedule we could go somewhere nice and cool for a drink and a sandwich tomorrow lunch, but seeing as how you’re engaged, I’d better look elsewhere. Bye, Joe.’

She headed for the door. He tried to think of something to say to halt her.

‘I can always cancel,’ he said.

‘Let Chris Porphyry down? Don’t be stupid, Joe.’

But she was obviously touched by the thought that he’d do this for her and when he moved forward to kiss her, she didn’t back off even though she was right about the shorts. But her mind was still dwelling on the YFG.

‘You must be on the up, Joe, getting clients like that. Where are you meeting him?’

‘Some club I never heard of called the Who. You any idea where it is?’

She thought a moment then began to laugh.

‘That’s not a club like you think of a club, Joe. That will be the Hoo, aitch oh oh, the Royal Hoo Golf Club. That is seriously posh.’

‘Yeah? A posh golf club?’ He considered the idea dubiously. ‘Any idea how I get there?’

‘You could try bank robbery and a skin graft. Sorry. Head out on the Upleck road till you hit the bypass, then get off at the big roundabout; it’s along one of those little roads no one ever uses, don’t recollect which one, but you’ll know you’re getting close by the watch towers and the big signs saying No Hawkers, Vendors or Racial Minorities. They’re particular what people wear too, I dare say.’

She glanced significantly at his shorts, which were resuming normal service.

‘He said there was a dispensation in the hot weather,’ protested Joe.

‘For those you don’t need a dispensation, more like a disposal unit,’ said Beryl. ‘You ever play golf, Joe?’

‘May have done,’ said Joe, reluctant to admit that what he knew about the game could have been written on the point of a tee peg. Football was the only sport he had any real interest in, and nowadays his active participation there consisted of shouting advice at his beloved Luton City FC and singing Songs from the Shows on Supporters’ Club social nights.

‘Oh yeah?’ she said. ‘So what’s your handicap, Tiger? Apart from not being able to see the ball over your belly.’

She didn’t wait for a response but ran laughing down the stairs.

‘Why shouldn’t I be a good golfer?’ Joe called after her, stung by the reference to his waistline. ‘Lot of things about me you don’t know.’

Which, considering Beryl’s intimacy with his Aunt Mirabelle, wasn’t likely to be true, but a man was entitled to his dignity.

His musings were interrupted by the screech of the office phone.

He picked it up and said, ‘Sixsmith Investigations. We’re here to help you.’

‘Today it’s me helping you, Joe,’ said a man’s voice.

Joe recognized the voice, not because it was distinctive, but because it was Detective Superintendent Willie Woodbine’s, which was a good voice to recognize. He hesitated a moment before he replied. His relationship with the Super was a bit like his relationship with Beryl. Not that he had any ambition to get in bed with the guy, but sometimes it was man to man, sometimes boss to man, sometimes first name, sometimes not. Trick was to read the signals and decide if this was a Willie day. Same with Beryl, if you thought about it.

He decided to sit on the fence.

‘Hi there, how’re you doing?’ he said.

‘That could depend on you, Joe. I was ringing to tell you that I’ve pushed a possible client your way. Christian Porphyry. You heard of him?’

‘Didn’t I see his picture in the paper recently?’ said Joe. ‘Got arrested or something?’

He didn’t see the need to tell Woodbine Porphyry had been and gone. Might be some chance of getting a bit of info from the horse’s mouth.

‘Got engaged, Joe. Not the same thing. Though, come to think of it, maybe you’re right.’

He chuckled. His voice was quite friendly. Looked like this might be a Willie day, which probably meant he wanted something. Woodbine was the kind of ambitious cop whose gaze was fixed on the high ground. He only glanced down in search of small change that someone else had dropped. In his mind, professional and social upward mobility marched hand in hand and he’d married accordingly. But popular judgement was that he’d need to become Lord High Executioner before his wife would reckon she’d been compensated for her noble condescension.

He stopped chuckling and went on, ‘The thing is, Joe, I’ve given you a good write-up, and I just wanted to make sure you won’t let me down.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Willie, no sir, you can rely on good old Joe.’

He’d over-hammed it. Woodbine said sharply, ‘This is serious, Joe. I hope you’re going to take it seriously.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Joe in his serious voice. ‘Might help, though, if you gave me a hint what it is I’m being serious about?’

‘It’s nothing, storm in a teacup, really. Mr Porphyry, Christian, has got himself a bit of bother at the golf club. He mentioned it to me, asked my advice. I gave it some thought, and I told him, Sorry, Chris, but this doesn’t get close to being a police matter. You know me, Joe, always willing to stretch things a bit for a friend, but in this case I really couldn’t see how anything in the official machinery could be of any use. But I hate to let a chum down. And it struck me, what he really needed was someone so unofficial, you’d pay him no heed. Someone so unlikely, no one would worry about him. Someone you’d not lay good money on to know his arse from his elbow. Someone like you, Joe.’

It wasn’t exactly a glowing testimonial. But Joe knew that he probably only survived in Luton because Willie Woodbine felt able to give it.

Very few cops like private eyes. Most view them with grave suspicion. And a few hate their guts and would love to put them out of business.

Not that Joe had looked like he needed much help in that line when he started. But somehow again and again after stumbling around like a short-sighted man in a close-planted pine forest on a dark night, he had emerged blinking with mild surprise into bright light and open country with everything lying clearly before him.

On more than one occasion Willie Woodbine had been nicely placed to take most of the credit. But the cop was clear-sighted enough to recognize it was Joe’s success, not his own, and from time to time he reached out a protective hand, not so much to pay a debt as to protect an asset.

Reaching out the hand of patronage was something new.

‘That what you told Mr Porphyry about me, Willie?’

‘No,’ sighed Woodbine. ‘I told him that in something like this, despite appearances, if anyone could get the job done, it was likely to be you. So don’t you go letting me down, Joe. Or else…’

‘Yeah yeah,’ said Joe, to whom a veiled threat was like a veiled exotic dancer. While you didn’t know the exact proportions of what you were going to see when the veil came off, you knew you were unlikely to see anything you hadn’t seen before. ‘But just what is the job, Willie?’

There was another voice in the background now, saying something Joe couldn’t make out, but the tone was urgent.

‘Joe, got to go. Keep me posted, OK?’

The phone went dead.

‘Shoot,’ said Joe, draining his can of Guinness.

He hadn’t got much further forward. What could a bit of bother at a golf club amount to? Taking a leak in a bunker, maybe. Or wearing shorts with parrots on.

There was mystery here, and maybe trouble. At least he had the consolation of knowing beneath the parrots he had two hundred quid of the YFG’s money thawing in his pocket.

He looked at his watch. Just after three, but he might as well go home. He didn’t anticipate getting any more business today.

He tossed the can towards the waste bin, missed, rose wearily and went out to brave the heat of the Luton dog days.

Blackball

As Joe drove the Morris through Bullpat Square, he saw a familiar figure coming out of the wide-open door of the Law Centre. Tiny enough for even a vertically challenged PI to loom over, from behind she could have been taken for a twelve-year-old, but that wasn’t an error anyone persisted in once they’d looked into those steely eyes and even less after they’d listened to the words issuing out of that wide, determined mouth, usually borne on a jet of noxious smoke from a thin cheroot.

This was Cheryl Butcher, founder and leading lawyer of the Centre, which offered a pay-what-you-can-afford legal service to the disadvantaged of the city.

Joe slowed to walking pace and pulled into the kerb.

‘Hey, Butcher,’ he called. ‘You looking for action?’

She didn’t even glance his way.

‘What the hell would you know about action, Sixsmith?’

‘Enough to know you walk too far in this heat, you’re going to melt away. Like a lift?’

Wise-cracking was an area of traditional gumshoe activity Joe didn’t usually bother with. It required from-the-hip rapid-fire responses and he was honest enough to recognize himself as an old-fashioned muzzle-loader. But his relationship with Butcher somehow seemed to stimulate him to make the effort. Maybe it was the certainty that in their mutual mockery there was a lot of respect.

‘You heading to Rasselas?’

The Rasselas Estate was a collection of sixties high-rise blocks which would probably have been demolished years ago if a determined Residents’ Committee, led by Major Sholto Tweedie, ably assisted by such powerful personalities as Joe’s Aunt Mirabelle, hadn’t succeeded in making it a place fit for humans to live in.

‘I surely am.’

‘Then you can drop me at Hermsprong,’ said Butcher, opening the car door and stepping in, which you could do with the old Morris Oxford if you were only as big as the lawyer.

Architecturally, Hermsprong was a mirror image of Rasselas built on the other side of the canal. And, like a mirror image, it showed everything back to front.

Unlike reconstructed Rasselas, every cliché of depressed urban high-rise living could be found on Hermsprong.

Crack-houses, corner dealers, lifts that were moving urinals when they moved at all, underpasses which were rats’ alleys where you could lose more than your bones, the highest break-in rate, the lowest clear-up rate, more hoodies than a monastery, and so on, and so on. If ever a place should have been razed to the ground, Hermsprong was it. But paradoxically it survived because of Rasselas’s success. How could you say an experiment had failed when you could produce evidence only a mile away that it could succeed? Or to put it another way, why should you demolish Hermsprong and relocate its inmates to the lovely new small well-planned developments the council was building to the east when the inhabitants of Rasselas were so much more deserving?

These were the arguments the sophists of the City Council produced in order to postpone a decision which was going to put an intolerable strain on their already overstretched budget.

Joe knew that to ask why Butcher was heading for Hermsprong would be like asking a bank robber why he robbed banks. ’Cos that’s where my clients are, stupid.

Instead he said, ‘You’re not going to light that thing in my car, are you?’

Referring to the cheroot which Butcher had inserted between her lips.

‘Jesus, Sixsmith, you should watch more old movies. You can’t be a proper PI unless you chain smoke!’

‘Like you can’t be a proper lawyer ’less you wear a wig and charge five hundred pounds a minute?’

‘Don’t insult me. I’m worth more than that.’

But she put the cheroot away then asked, ‘So, business is so bad you’ve shut up shop and decided to spend the rest of the day watching mucky videos?’

‘Wrong, as usual. Matter of fact, I’m going home to do some research on the very important client I’ll be lunching with at his club tomorrow.’

‘Oh yes? And I’m going to meet the Lord Chancellor to talk about becoming a High Court judge!’

This provoked Joe to telling her all about his encounter with the YFG.

She listened with interest. He tried to conceal his ignorance of what the case was all about by claiming client confidentiality but she saw through that straightaway.

‘You mean you haven’t got the faintest idea, don’t you? How many times do I have to tell you, Sixsmith? Always find out what you’re getting into before you get into it. Interesting though that the sun doesn’t shine all the time, not even on Golden Boy.’

‘You know Porphyry?’

‘Not personally, but professionally I had occasion to do some research on the family three, four years back in connection with a compensation case.’

‘Shoot. And that was against Porphyry?’ said Joe, feeling illogically dismayed.

‘Against the Porphyry Estate, which makes it the same thing. One of their employees died. Coroner said accident, no one to blame, but that’s what they appoint coroners for, isn’t it? To make sure the Porphyrys of this world never get blamed. There was a widow and a son. I reckoned they deserved better.’

‘And did they get it?’

‘Unhappily the mother didn’t survive her husband long enough for things to run their course. If there is a God, he’s a member at Royal Hoo and looks after His own.’

‘I thought Chris was OK,’ Joe protested.

‘And you’ve got O-levels for character judgement, right? I’m sure he’s a very likeable guy. In the class war, the ones that make you like them are the worst, Joe. He might seem to be trailing clouds of glory, but he’s also trailing a couple of centuries of unearned privilege. And if you get to thinking he’s different from the rest, remind yourself he’s just got engaged to a fluff-head whose father runs some of the most fascist imprints of our mainly fascist press.’

To Joe this sounded a bit unfair on the Bugle, but political debate with Butcher was a waste of time.

‘All I know is the guy’s got some kind of trouble,’ he said weakly.

‘Yes, and that is good news,’ said Butcher. ‘But what’s really puzzling is why he’s looking for help from you of all people.’

Indignantly he retorted, ‘’Cos I was recommended, that’s why?’

‘Recommended?’ she said incredulously. ‘Who by? The Samaritans?’

‘By Willie Woodbine, no less.’

Which meant he had to tell her all that part of the story too.

To his surprise she nodded as if it all made perfect sense.

‘Poor Willie,’ she said. ‘Must be in a real tizz. And you’re his last resort.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘You don’t know anything, do you, Joe?’ she said. He knew she was going to be really patronizing when she called him Joe, but he didn’t mind. Folk could rarely be patronizing without telling you stuff you didn’t know just to show how much more they knew than you did.

She said, ‘Willie Woodbine’s dad used to buttle for the Porphyrys…’

‘Battle?’ interrupted Joe. ‘You mean, like he was a minder or something?’

‘He was their butler, for God’s sake. Willie must be three or four years older than Chris, just the age gap for a bit of hero worship, young master being shown the ropes by the butler’s worldly-wise son. Boot on the other foot when they grew up, of course, but there’s a relationship there which begins to assume at least the appearance of equality when Willie joins the police force and starts his rapid climb up the ladder. If he gets to be chief constable, he might even get invited round to dinner.’

‘Miaow,’ said Joe, who might have observed, had he been given to self-, social-, psycho-, or indeed any kind of analysis, how interesting it was that folk from nice bourgeois backgrounds like Butcher were much more inclined to get hot under the collar about the inequalities of class than natural-born plebs like himself.

She ignored him and went on, ‘So it’s not surprising that Willie, with his eyes on the top, should want to do the young master a service, particularly in this area.’

‘You’re losing me,’ said Joe.

‘It’s finding you that’s the problem,’ she sighed. ‘The golf club. The Royal Hoo. Getting into the Hoo is the ultimate accolade in Luton high society. If your face doesn’t fit, you’ve more chance of getting into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot wearing shorts like yours!’

Now Joe did feel hurt. Class didn’t bother him but snipes at his fashion sense did, ’less they came from a rich client or a gorgeous in-out girlfriend. He refused to let himself be diverted, however, and asked, ‘So you don’t just go along and pay your admission fee?’

‘No! They need to look you over, check your family and friends then move on to your bank balance, your tailor and your table manners. After that if you’ve got someone to propose you, second you and probably third and fourth you, they take a vote…’

‘Who’s this they?’

‘Some committee,’ she said dismissively. ‘And it just takes one blackball and you’ve had it.’

‘Black ball?’ said Joe. ‘Don’t like the sound of that.’

‘Don’t go vulgar on me, Joe,’ she said.

‘Sorry. So Chris is putting Willie up for membership, is that what you’re saying?’

‘So I’d guess. And of course if you want to get into the Hoo, then getting yourself proposed by Christian Porphyry is just about the closest thing you can get to a guarantee of success.’

‘Because everybody likes him, you mean?’ said Joe, who didn’t find this hard to believe. One of the many perks of being a YFG had to be that everybody liked you.

‘Don’t be silly. What’s liking got to do with it? Because the Royal Hoo more or less belongs to the Porphyry family, of course.’

‘That more or less?’ asked Joe.

‘I don’t know the precise details,’ said Butcher. ‘Just what I picked up when researching the family background. Know your enemy, Joe. You never can tell when some little detail might come in useful in court.’

Joe shuddered at the thought of finding himself on the wrong end of Butcher in a courtroom. Not even Young Fair Gods were safe.

He said, ‘OK, give me the history lesson, long as you’re not charging.’

‘I’ll put it on your slate,’ she said. ‘Back in the twenties, one of the Porphyrys was so hooked on golf he built a course on an outlying stretch of the family estate known as the Royal Hoo because, according to tradition, King Charles had been hidden there in a peasant’s hut during the Civil War.’

‘And he was anonymous, so they called it Hoo?’

‘Funny. I hope. No, it’s called Hoo because that’s what hoo means: a spur of land. At first it was for private use only, by invitation from the family. Then the war came and the course got ploughed up. When peace broke out, and the UK was once more a land fit for golfers, the old gang of chums and hangers on started pestering Porphyry to have the course refurbished. Only this was a new Porphyry, your boy’s grandfather, I’d guess, and he was commercially a lot sharper and didn’t see why he should pick up all the tabs. He insisted a proper company was formed and the Royal Hoo Golf Club as we know it – everyone, that is, except you – came into being.’

‘With the Porphyrys still in control?’

‘Don’t know the contractual details, but I’d guess they kept a controlling interest. People like them don’t give their land away, free gratis and for nothing,’ she said grimly.

‘So, with Christian’s backing, Willie looks like a cert for membership? Good for him, if that’s what he wants.’

‘And good for you too, Joe. Maybe. I’d guess whatever trouble Porphyry’s got, he did what the ruling classes always do and turned to his old butler for help. That’s OK if you’ve got a Crichton or a Jeeves, but all he had was Woodbine, who felt he couldn’t help officially but tried to keep his nose up master’s bum by recommending you as a last resort.’

Joe tried not to show he was hurt but he wasn’t very good at dissimulation, and Butcher, who was very fond of him, said placatingly, ‘Look, I don’t mean you don’t get results. For God’s sake, I’ve recommended you myself, haven’t I?’

This was true, and the memory eased the smart a little.

‘All I meant was, I mean, Jesus, what can you do in a set-up like the Hoo? You’ll stick out like a…’

She seemed lost for a simile.

‘Like a black ball,’ completed Joe.

This time she didn’t reprove his vulgarity.

‘Something like that. When Porphyry met you, didn’t he say anything?’

‘Like, hey man, no one mentioned you were a short black balding no-hoper with parrots on his shorts? No, I don’t recollect hearing anything like that. Unless giving me four fifties and saying come and have lunch with me at the club is posh shorthand for I’d be crazy to hire a slob like you.’

‘Joe, don’t go sensitive on me. It doesn’t suit you.’

He consulted his feelings. She was right. And in any case, it was too much of an effort in this weather to keep it up.

‘Apology accepted,’ he said.

‘Apology? You going deaf too?’

That was better. Now they were back on their proper footing.

They chatted about other things till Butcher told Joe to drop her in an area on the fringe of Hermsprong that even in the full brightness of a midsummer day had an aura of dark menace.

‘You want I should come with you?’ offered Joe, glancing uneasily at a group of young men who looked like they were planning to blow up Parliament.

‘To do what?’ she asked. Then, relenting, she added, ‘No, I’ll be OK, Joe, but thanks for the thought. It’s you who needs protection. I’m just going among the poor and the disadvantaged. Tomorrow you’ll be mixing with the rich and successful. That’s where the sabre-toothed tigers roam. Take care of yourself there, Joe.’

She got out of the car, lit her cheroot, and set off along the pavement, pausing by the terrorists to say something that made them laugh and exchanging high fives with them before she moved on.

Sixsmith watched her vanish behind the graffti’d wall of a walkway, tracking her progress for a little while by the spoor of tobacco smoke which hung almost without motion in the lifeless air. She’d be OK, he guessed. She was worth more to these people alive than dead. This was her chosen world. People like Porphyry and the other members of the Royal Hoo were the enemy, which was why she knew so much about them, presumably.

Not that Butcher was the only one able to identify the enemy.

The terrorists had begun a slow drift towards the Morris.

He gave them a friendly wave and accelerated away towards the visible haven of Rasselas.

Tiger

That night, with Beryl working, nothing but repeats on the box, and his cat Whitey plunged deep into whatever the summer equivalent of hibernation was, Joe decided to wander round to the Luton City Supporters’ Club bar in search of social solace.

To start with it seemed a good decision. He arrived just in time to get in on the end of a round that most democratic of club chairmen, Sir Monty Wright, was buying to celebrate the close-season signing of a sixteen-year-old Croatian wunderkind. Word was that Man U and Chelsea had both been sniffing around, but while they hesitated, Sir Monty, who hadn’t got where he was by hesitating, had dipped his hand into his apparently bottomless purse and said to the manager, ‘Go get him.’

Joe bore his pint of Guinness to a seat next to his friend, Merv Golightly, self-styled prince of Luton cabbies but known because of his exuberant driving style as the man who put the X in taxi.

‘Good to see you, Joe,’ he said. ‘But I thought you was on a promise tonight. What happened? Beryl give you the elbow?’

‘Something came up at the hospital,’ said Joe.

‘Better than washing her hair, I suppose,’ laughed Merv. ‘So how’s business? Slow or stopped?’

The slur prompted Joe to tell Merv about Christian Porphyry. If he’d hoped to impress his friend he was disappointed.

‘And this guy wants you to meet him at the Royal Hoo? And he’s going to say you’re applying for membership? Must be someone there he really wants to wind up! Give him the finger, Joe. He’s using you. You don’t believe me? Take a look at Sir Monty there.’

Joe, ever a literalist, turned to look towards the table where Sir Monty was holding court with some of his directors. He found Sir Monty was looking back. Joe gave him a cheerful wave and got a nod in return, which was not to be sneezed at from a man worth a couple of billion and rising.

The Wright-Price supermarket chain had started from a flourishing corner shop owned by the Wright family in a Luton suburb. When Monty was eighteen, one of the big supermarket chains looking to expand had approached Wright senior with an offer for the business, while at the same time negotiating with the Council for the purchase of a small playing field adjacent to the shop. This looked a smart move, taking over a flourishing local business and acquiring enough land to expand it into a full-blooded hypermarket. With young Monty pulling his parents’ strings, the sale of the shop was delayed and delayed until the day before the Council Planning Committee meeting which was expected to confirm the sale of the playing field on the nod. Fearing that if they went ahead with the land purchase before they’d got the shop, the Wrights would be in an even stronger bargaining position, the big chain caved in to most of their demands and ended up paying almost twice as much as their original offer.

The deal was signed.

Next day the Planning Committee voted to reject the chain’s offer for the playing field, preferring, as it said, to put the needs of the local community first.

On the same day the bulldozers moved on to a piece of derelict land only half a mile away and, financed by the big chain’s own money augmented by a large loan from a city bank whose CEO had long nursed a grudge against his opposite number on the chain’s board, the first of Monty Wright’s supermarkets was erected in record time.

Five years later even the City’s most dedicated doubters had to accept that the Wright-Price chain was here to stay. By that time another dozen shops had gone up in the southeast and marketing whiz-kids were keen to climb aboard the bandwagon. The fact that an early appointee to the Board of Directors was a local businessman called Ratcliffe King who had happened to be Chairman of the Planning Committee which rejected the application to purchase the playing field was noted but not commented on. At least not by anyone with any sense. Ratcliffe King wasn’t known as King Rat in Luton political circles without reason. No longer a councillor, he retained the title and still wielded much of the political power in his role as head of ProtoVision, the planning and development consultancy he had founded on retirement from public life. Officially his role on the Wright-Price board was and remained nonexecutive, but in the view of many he’d played a central strategic role in the campaign which twenty years on had led to Monty Wright being knighted for services to industry as head of a company no longer coveted by the market leaders as possible prey but feared by them as potential predator.

‘What about Sir Monty?’ asked Joe, turning back to Merv. ‘And keep your voice down, I think he heard you talking about him.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Merv. ‘Not saying anything everyone doesn’t know.’

But he dropped his voice a little, or as much as he could, before he went on, ‘Like I said, look at Monty. All that lolly plus the title – even got his teeth straightened to go to the Palace, I heard! – and what happens when he applies to join the Royal Hoo? They turn him down flat!’

‘So what’s your point?’ asked Joe, who liked things spelt out.

‘My point is, doesn’t matter what this plonker Porphyry says. The only way they’ll let you into the Royal Hoo is through the back door dressed as a waiter! Maybe that’s it. Maybe they’re short of staff. They ask to see your testimonials, just you be careful!’

Merv’s difficulty in keeping his voice low even to share a confidence was compounded by a compulsion when uttering a bon mot to up the volume several decibels as if to make sure no one in the same building was deprived. Heads turned, and when a few moments later he went to the bar to get a round in, he was pressed to elaborate by several of the other drinkers.

The result was, for the rest of the evening Joe found himself the object of much cheerful waggery. Normally this was water off a duck’s back, but even his good nature was finding it hard to raise a smile the tenth time someone tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Pardon me, sir, aren’t you the one they call Tiger?’

Rumours of the joke must have reached Sir Monty’s table. After a visit to the Gents, Joe returned to see Merv sitting next to the baronet, talking expansively. At least he wasn’t getting the easy laughs he’d wrung out of the rest of his audience. Indeed, Sir Monty, though listening attentively, had a deep frown on his face. Maybe after his own experience with the Royal Hoo he didn’t reckon there was much to laugh at.

Serves Merv right, thought Joe.

‘Fancy another one, Tiger?’ called an acquaintance from the bar.

‘No thanks. On my way home,’ he replied.

It wasn’t just the golf jokes that had got to him. He’d found himself thinking, what if Merv was right and this guy Porphyry was pulling his plonker by using him to get at some of his fellow members? He hadn’t struck Joe as that kind of bean-head, but what did he know about the mind processes of Young Fair Gods? So tell him to take a jump. Except he didn’t know how to contact him. OK, just don’t turn up. Except he had two hundred quid of the guy’s money in an envelope in his back pocket (somehow it hadn’t seemed decent to put such lovely clean money in with the dirty old stuff in his wallet). Perhaps he should get there early, intercept him in the car park, hand back the cash and take off. But that would be hard.

‘What would you do, Whitey?’ he asked the cat, who’d woken up long enough to join him for a late supper after he got home.

For answer Whitey yawned, jumped up on the bed and closed his eyes.

‘Good answer,’ said Joe, who was blessed with the invaluable gift of rarely letting the troubles of the day spill over into his rest.

He lay down beside the cat and soon joined him in deep and dreamless sleep.

Pastures New

The Reverend Percy Potemkin, pastor of Boyling Corner Chapel, master of its famous choir, and known wherever song is sung or souls are saved as Rev Pot, preached a mean sermon.

Twice every Sunday he preached it, and with slight variations he made it do for weddings, funerals, christenings, and the opening of garden fêtes.

Any suggestion that a little variety might not come amiss was greeted with the response, ‘If it’s not broke, why fix it?’ And if the doubter were foolish enough to persist in his doubt, perhaps educing in evidence the fact that most regular members of the congregation knew the words by heart, Rev Pot would reply, ‘Now that is good, that’s exactly what I want. I’m just a messenger, these are the words of the Lord, and He wants them to be burned on your soul so you never forget!’

A couple of lines from the mean sermon came into Joe’s mind as he drove in search of the Royal Hoo Golf Club not long after ten o’clock the following sweltering morning.

Hell is a populous city a lot like Luton, and one of its suburbs is called Privilege and another is called Wealth. They look at things differently there.

Following Beryl’s directions he found himself on the big roundabout which he sent the Morris round three times before opting for the only exit that didn’t have a signpost. Soon he found himself driving along narrow country roads, not much more than lanes really, winding between high hedgerows. To make matters worse he got stuck behind a tractor for half a mile. Finally it turned into a gateway. When the driver stopped to open the gate Joe drew up alongside.

‘All right for the Royal Hoo, am I?’ he asked.

The man, who looked like a farmer in every respect except that his expression was happy, said, ‘Oh yes, another mile or so, and there you are. Lovely day for golf.’

At least he doesn’t assume I’m a delivery man, thought Joe.

Leaning over the gate he saw a possible explanation of the man’s demeanour in the shape of an estate agent’s sale board across which was plastered SOLD.

‘Selling up then?’ he said. ‘Expect you’ll miss it.’

‘Miss drought, and drench, and interfering bastards from DEFRA? Oh yes, I’ll miss them, right enough! I’ll lie in bed on a cold wet winter’s morning and think of some other poor sod getting up to milk his beasts! It’s a mug’s game these days, farming.’

‘Lucky you found a mug then,’ said Joe lightly.

‘Not really. Some so-called agri-conglomerate with a fancy name. “New Pastures”, would you believe? Pastures! They’ll likely cover the place in polytunnels and grow soft fruit. Me, I’ll be long gone. Cheers now. Enjoy your game.’

‘You too,’ said Joe.

He drove on, smiling.

After perhaps a mile the high hedgerows gave way to an even higher wall, topped with shards of champagne-bottle glass that signalled clearer than billboards he was getting near one or both of Rev Pot’s suburbs.

One thing you couldn’t say about the Royal Hoo, however, was that it was ostentatious.

Joe had once been retained to look into a suspected fiddle in the kitchen of a very exclusive restaurant. He had walked by it three times before spotting the entrance. When he’d suggested to the owner that a sign invisible till you got within six feet wasn’t going to bring in much passing trade, the man had winced and replied, ‘The kind of people who don’t know where we are, why would I want to tell them?’

The Hoo clearly worked on the same principle. Not that the entrance itself was understated. Eventually the wall was interrupted by a massive granite archway on which he wouldn’t have been surprised to find listed the dead of both world wars.

Instead all he found after getting out of the car to do a recce was a sign as discreet as that of a Harley Street pox doctor. It didn’t declare but rather murmured that this was indeed the Royal Hoo Golf Club.

Slightly more prominent on the left-hand pillar was a notice suggesting that tradesmen and others of the ilk might care to continue another half-mile till they encountered a lane on the left which would take them to the rear of the clubhouse. Joe was momentarily tempted. But he hadn’t changed into his best blue slacks and yellow polo shirt for nothing, so he boldly sent the Morris rolling between a pair of gates containing enough wrought iron to make a small battleship.

Instantly he knew he was in a different country. Luton might be only fifteen minutes drive away, but this was somewhere else.

The driveway wound along an avenue of tall and probably ancient trees. Horticulture wasn’t one of Joe’s areas of expertise and the best he could say about them was that they weren’t silver birches, palms, or monkey puzzles. Between their huge trunks he could see sweeping lengths of manicured greensward and from time to time he got glimpses ahead of what looked like the kind of stately home the proles were permitted to rubberneck around for a substantial fee a couple of days a week during the summer. Presumably this was the clubhouse. Eventually as he got closer, the driveway forked. Another of those signs so discreet he’d have missed it if he’d been doing more than five mph indicated that cars should bear to the right.

The car park, screened from the house by a colourful shrubbery, was full of serious machinery. You parked a Beamer here, you were anonymous. Couple of Rollers, lovely old Daimler, a vintage Bugatti, at least three autograph Range Rovers, Jags across the spectrum, a scarlet Ferrari that you tiptoed round in case you woke it up, several other sports jobs of varying degrees of flashness. But nowhere any sign of Porphyry’s Volante.

Not surprising. He was deliberately early. It was something he’d read in Not So Private Eye, his PI Bible. When a meet’s been set up on ground you don’t know, get there first to suss things out.

He got out of his car and strolled over to the Bugati to take a closer look.

‘Morning, sir? That your Morris?’

He turned to see a fresh-faced youngster of eighteen or nineteen coming towards him. At least it wasn’t a heavy in a security uniform alerted by CCTV that a dodgy-looking character was prowling round the car park, but it probably amounted to the same thing.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘Not in the wrong car park, am I?’

Maybe at the Hoo they had auto-apartheid.

‘Oh no, this is fine. Nice motor, but I think you could do with a bit of air in your front offside.’

‘Could all do with a bit of air,’ said Joe, checking it out. The kid was right.

‘Wouldn’t be Mr Sixsmith by any chance, would it, sir?’

‘That’s me, yeah.’

‘Mr Porphyry mentioned you might be coming,’ said the youth. ‘I’m Chip Harvey, assistant pro.’

He held out his hand. Joe shook it. The kid seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

‘First time here, is it, sir?’ he said. ‘I hope you like the look of us. It’s a lovely course. It would make a marvellous championship venue, but as I’m sure you know if you’re looking to join us, the membership here doesn’t care for that sort of public exposure. Let me show you to the clubhouse.’

If you’re looking to join us, thought Joe. Said without the slightest hint of some hope! In the light of morning, the doubts sown by Merv had withered considerably. Porphyry had struck him as straight and he was used to backing his own judgement. However daft the membership story might play to outsiders, what was the guy supposed to say? That he was bringing a PI to lunch with a view to casing the joint!

Really he would have preferred to hang around the car park till Porphyry appeared, but that would have looked a bit odd, so he let himself be guided through the shrubbery.

Close up, the clubhouse had even more of the feel of a stately home about it. French windows opened on to a long terrace spotted with parosoled tables. No plastic DIY superstore stuff these, but the kind of old-fashioned, twisty wrought-iron jobs you’d look to find in the gardens of folk who didn’t have to buy their own furniture. Not that Joe spent much time among such people, but he was a great fan of heritage movies. Come to think of it, the scatter of people drinking coffee or long fruit drinks in elegant glasses could have been carefully arranged there by Messrs Merchant and Ivory. Of course these days, when class can be cloned as easy as sheep, anyone could buy the gear and walk the walk and talk the talk. But there’s always a pea under the mattress, and to Joe’s keen eye, where real kiss-my-ass class showed through was in the way your born-to-its sat easy. Folk like him either slumped or, at best, lolled. Somewhere towards the top of the heap you learned the art of reclining gracefully. Most of these folk here either had it, or were working very hard at getting it.

One end of the terrace overlooked a huge circle of lawn only slightly smaller than Kensington Gardens. From the numbered flag at its centre he deduced it was the eighteenth green. Green was the right word. It was so green it could have played for Ireland. Considering there’d been a hosepipe ban in the Luton area for a fortnight, reducing most gardens and public parks to dustbowls that would have made a dromedary cough, Joe couldn’t understand why everyone here wasn’t under arrest. And it wasn’t just the actual green. The undulating crescent of tree-lined fairway stretching into the distance didn’t look like it was dying of thirst either. Maybe here at Royal Hoo they had their own special cloud which sprinkled a little rain during the hours of darkness.

Chip Harvey sat him at a table and said, ‘This do you, sir?’

‘Yeah, this is fine,’ said Joe. ‘You don’t have Mr Porphyry’s – Chris’s – number, do you? I could give him a bell, see if there’s a hold up?’

He pulled out his mobile. The young man grimaced and said, ‘No can do, I’m afraid, sir. Use of mobiles is strictly forbidden on the course or in the clubhouse. Heavy fine even if it just rings! You’d need to go back to your car to use it, but I’m sure Mr Porphyry will be here soon. Relax, have a drink. The steward will be along in a minute. Enjoy your day, sir.’

Nice boy, thought Joe, taking in his surroundings. This was OK, this was the real deal. Comfy seat under a parasol, lovely view, four crisp new monkeys in his pocket, steward would be along in a moment, even a breath of what must be the only breeze in the whole county, what more could a man ask? Envy and resentment didn’t play a large part in Joe’s outlook. Social injustices and inequalities had to be personalized before they hit his indignation button. If as he sat here he saw another black, balding, middling aged, vertically challenged, slightly overweight, redundant lathe-operator being given the runaround because of all or any one of these conditions, he would have groaned regretfully, stood up, and taken sides with the guy. But long as these folk didn’t mind him, he certainly wasn’t going to mind them. He’d learned his Bible the hard way, meaning Aunt Mirabelle’s way, and that meant it stuck, especially her favourite bits, one of which was what Paul wrote to them Ephesians, whoever they were. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Well, that was OK for Paul and Rev Pot, and good luck to them. Let all them preachers and politicians and newspaper columnists and such sort out the principalities and powers. Joe was happy to restrict his wrestling to good old-fashioned flesh and blood.

Out of the corner of his eye, he observed that one of a trio of men sitting a couple of tables away had caught Chip Harvey’s attention as he passed and seemed to be questioning him closely. Oh shoot, thought Joe. Is good old-fashioned flesh and blood going to get to me before I can order a drink?

It looked like it. The man stood up. He was maybe forty, solidly built but mostly muscle, little flab. He was wearing a pale brown sports shirt and matching tailored shorts which made Joe glad he’d grounded the Technicolor parrots. His vigorous dark brown hair was rather becomingly tipped with grey and he had the kind of square open face which gets people buying double glazing or giving cash advances to jobbing builders. He was smiling but Joe didn’t let this lull his fears. Places he did most of his drinking in, if a guy came at you with intent to smash your face in, he usually had the decency to look like a guy whose intent this was. Here, he guessed, different conventions might apply.

But it seemed he was wrong.

‘Mr Sixsmith, I believe? I’m Tom Latimer, club vice-captain. Young Chip tells me you’re waiting for Chris Porphyry.’

‘That’s right,’ said Joe, taking the outstretched hand and returning the warm handshake. ‘Nice boy, that Chip.’

‘Yes, we have high hopes of him. Think he might make it on the tour. He’ll need backing, of course, but we’ve got big hearts as well as deep pockets here at the Hoo.’

This didn’t mean a lot to Joe, who in any case was preoccupied by the fact that the handshake had become a tow rope drawing him out of his seat as Latimer continued, ‘Wonder if you’d care to join us? Chris isn’t the best of timekeepers, I’m afraid. Always hits the first tee at a run!’

Unable to think of a good way to say, No, thanks, I’d rather sit here by myself, Joe found himself moving towards the other two men who were also brushing up the welcoming smiles.

One was less successful than the other. His name was Arthur Surtees, thirty something, his head close shaven presumably to hide the fact that he was bald anyway, and his deep sunken watchful eyes giving the lie to his wide stretched mouth, like a poorly put-together police photofit.

The other was Colin Rowe, in his fifties, grey-haired, with a lean intelligent face which would have looked well on a college professor. His smile was perfectly natural, nothing exaggerated about it, the kind of wryly sympathetic expression which would, Joe imagined, encourage an errant student to admit he hadn’t done his homework.

But why do I get the feeling these guys know exactly who I am? thought Joe. That was impossible. Had to be his own sense of being out of place talking.

The steward, wearing a linen jacket as white and crisp as a hoar-frost, appeared as Joe sat down. Thinking that maybe a pint of cold Guinness might strike a wrong note, Joe asked for coffee.

‘Hot or iced, sir?’ the steward enquired. He had a lovely voice, like an old-fashioned actor’s. You probably needed a public school education just to get a job keeping bar at places like Royal Hoo.

Joe hesitated. Cold coffee? You got that down at Dot’s Diner, you sent it back to be put in the microwave.

‘Iced, I think, Bert,’ said Latimer. ‘And the same again for the rest of us. Well, Joe – all right if I call you Joe? We don’t stand on ceremony here – how do you like the look of us so far?’

Joe had no natural talent to deceive, which could be a bit of a drawback in his chosen profession. He was working on it, but on the whole he made do in most situations by looking for straws of truth to get a firm hold of.

‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Weather like this, it beats sitting in my office.’

‘We all know the feeling,’ said Surtees. ‘So where do you play, Joe?’

Why the shoot can’t folk make conversation without asking direct questions? Joe wondered, as he marshalled the few facts he knew about golf to ascertain if there was an answer like ‘left wing’ or ‘in goal’. Didn’t seem likely, so presumably they were into geography. Could tell them Luton Municipal Pitch’n’Putt and watch their faces, but that two hundred nestling against his left buttock was beginning to feel very much at home there.

He said, ‘I travel around a lot, so anywhere I can, really.’

‘And welcome wherever you go, I’m sure,’ said Latimer heartily.

A silence. With a bit of luck, thought Joe, it might turn into a siesta and stretch to fill the minutes till Porphyry appeared.

But luck wasn’t on offer.

‘So how’s your game, Joe?’ said Colin Rowe.

‘Well, you know what it’s like, up and down,’ said Joe.

Rowe laughed and said, ‘Part of its charm, eh? Pity they didn’t build its fluctuations into the handicap system. Doesn’t matter if I feel like crap, when I step on that first tee, I’m playing off 5. Arthur here’s a bandit 7. And Tom’s 9.’

‘On a good day with the wind behind me,’ said Latimer lightly. ‘So how about you, Joe?’

‘Sorry?’ said Joe.

‘Just wondering what your handicap was,’ said Latimer.

Joe found a dozen smart answers crowding his tongue. He guessed a couple of them might be floating around Latimer’s mind too. So don’t give him the satisfaction, just play it straight. Which sounded a lot easier than it was. That golf had a handicap system he knew, but how it worked he had no idea. The only other game he knew that used handicaps was polo, and that was only because it had come up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Joe, who was quite keen to be a millionaire, had been trying to improve his general knowledge by making a note of all the correct answers till Beryl had screamed with laughter and said, ‘Joe, this stuff you’re trying to learn is exactly the stuff you don’t need to know, ’cos they’ve asked it already!’ But the polo question had stuck.

What is the best handicap a top-class polo player can have?

The four alternatives had been 0, 10, 24, 36.

The answer had been 10. Seemed that beginners started at 0 or even minus something, and 24 and 36 didn’t exist.

Which fitted very well here. Rowe had said he was 7 and Surtees was 5 while Latimer, the club vice-captain and therefore presumably one of its best players, was 9.

So play it safe.

‘Oh pretty low, you know,’ he said vaguely.

‘Pretty low? Come on, Joe, don’t be modest!’ said Surtees with just the hint of a sneer.

He’s trying to provoke me! thought Joe. Wants me to claim I’m a top gun, then he’ll look for a way to show me up. Well, hard luck, mate. One thing I’ve learned is if you have to lie, keep it in bounds of reason.

‘No, really,’ he said. ‘My handicap’s nothing. A big 0.’

In other words I’m a rank beginner. Put that in your pipe!

‘Scratch, eh? Thought as much,’ said Rowe. ‘Soon as I set eyes on you, I thought, there’s a scratch man if ever I saw one!’

Scratch man. Now that sounded really offensive, but Rowe didn’t say it in a particularly offensive way, and in any case a guy who was actually boasting when he said he was a lousy golfer didn’t ought to get hot and bothered when he was told that’s just what he looked like.

‘Yeah? Well, like the man said, what you see is what you get,’ said Joe pleasantly.

Rowe smiled but the other two were looking at him speculatively and he began to wonder if maybe Porphyry had told Chip Harvey something different and he’d passed it on to these guys. Well, if he had, that was Porphyry’s problem. Where was the man anyway? He didn’t like to look at his own watch but he managed to cop a glance at the chunky gold Rolex on Latimer’s wrist and saw that it was after ten thirty.

Bert, the steward, materialized at the table bearing a laden tray. He set it down and began distributing the drinks.

‘Your iced coffee, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Joe, thinking, I’m only here five minutes and already the staff know my name.

He sipped the coffee. It was delicious. This was the sort of thing people who joined the Royal Hoo knew from birth, he guessed. Luke-warm coffee tastes like ditchwater but, lose a few more degrees and you get this nectar.

Latimer glanced at his watch.

‘What time are you meeting Chris?’ he asked.

‘Ten thirty.’

‘Passed that now. Bad form keeping a guest waiting, but Chris is always a bit of a law unto himself.’

‘In more ways than one,’ said Surtees shortly.

‘Now, now, Arthur,’ reproved Latimer. ‘But not to worry, Joe. Even if Chris does stand you up, we’ll see you don’t have a wasted journey. We were just trying to work up enough energy to play a couple of holes before lunch. We could do with a fourth. What do you say, fellows? Shall we persuade Joe to join us and show us his style?’

‘Only if he gives us half a dozen gotchas,’ said Surtees.

This was evidently a joke. They all laughed immoderately and Joe joined in, partly to give the impression he knew what they were laughing about, but also because, as a naturally sociable man, he always found mirth infectious.

But when the laughs died away, Latimer returned to the attack, ‘So that’s agreed. You’ll do us the honour then, Joe? If Chris doesn’t show?’

They were all regarding him expectantly.

‘Love to,’ said Joe. ‘Only I haven’t brought my gear.’

His long experience of trying to get out of Aunt Mirabelle’s arrangements, which usually involved meeting homely spinsters who’d reached the age where hope’s allegedly eternal springs were drying to a trickle, should have taught him that any excuse that wasn’t rock solid was tissue paper to a determined arranger.

‘No problem. Young Chip will fit you up in two minutes in the pro’s shop.’

The rock-solid excuse produced after the sandy-based one has collapsed rarely sounds totally convincing, but Joe didn’t let such a consideration bother him. He hesitated only to decide between the urgent hospital appointment to discover if his recently diagnosed brain tumour was operable and the need to meet his wife and seven children who were arriving at Heathrow from Barbados mid afternoon.

Then over Latimer’s shoulder he saw the air shimmer as if at the flutter of an angel’s wings and a moment later salvation appeared in the form of a YFG.

‘That’s most kind of you,’ he said. ‘I’d really love to play with you guys…’

He paused to enjoy the shadow of surprise which ran across each of their faces, then he said, ‘But, hey, it will have to be some other time. Sorry. Here’s Chris now. Thanks for your hospitality.’

He stood up as Porphyry reached the table.

‘Joe,’ he said. ‘So sorry I’m late.’

‘No problem,’ said Joe. ‘Your friends have been making me really welcome.’

‘That’s kind of them. We’re a welcoming club. Catch you later, Tom.’

‘Why don’t you and Joe join us?’ said Latimer pleasantly.

‘Thanks, but no. We’re a bit pressed for time and I wanted to show Joe round.’

‘Well, I hope you like what you see, Joe. And don’t forget. You’ve promised us a game so we can see your style.’

Joe gave him the big grin.

‘No problem, Tom,’ he said. ‘That’s one promise I definitely won’t forget.’

Meaning, if ever I come here again which at this moment don’t feel likely, I’m going to buy me a plaster cast from the Plastic Poo Joke Shop and wrap it round my leg!

A Fortunate Lie

As they descended the flight of stairs which led down from the terrace on to the course Christian Porphyry apologized again for his lateness, adding, ‘Still, you seemed to be managing very well on your own.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe negligently. ‘Undercover work hones you up for pretty well every extremity, even sitting around drinking iced coffee on a hot day. Seemed nice guys, your three friends.’

‘The Bermuda Triangle?’ Porphyry laughed. ‘Yes, they’re very good company.’

‘So why do you call them that then?’

‘Well, Colin runs Rowe Estates, you’ve probably seen their boards. And Arthur’s a lawyer, while Tom is the boss of Latimer Trust, financial services and investment, that sort of thing. So, property, finance and the law – some members say if they suck you in, when you come out the other side, you don’t know which way’s up or down! Just a club joke. Means nothing.’

They were walking along the side of a fairway. A buggy came towards them, pulling a small trailer. The driver brought it to a halt and got out.

‘I’d like a word, Mr Porphyry,’ he said.

He was a small red-headed man with a face so savagely assaulted by the sun that it looked like a baked potato just plucked from the embers. He spoke with the kind of Scottish accent that Joe could only localize as more Glasgow Rangers than Edinburgh Festival.

‘What is it, Davie?’

‘It’s about a replacement for Steve Waring. It’s getting urgent.’

‘He still hasn’t shown up then?’

‘No, he hasna, and it means the rest of us are working like blacks to keep the course in nick.’

Porphyry shook his head doubtfully. Maybe, thought Joe, he’s going to tell the guy that anyone who talks like he does should go easy on the racism. But all the YFG said was, ‘It’s really Mr Rowe you should be talking to, Davie. He’s chairman of the Greens Committee.’

‘Aye, I know and I’ve tried that, but he says that when it came up, you said let’s wait a wee while longer to see if Steve shows up.’

‘Did I? Yes, I believe I did. I mean, it’s only been…how long?’

‘A week.’

‘There you are then. Hardly any time. I know this job means a lot to Steve, and you yourself say he’s been a good worker. Probably something’s come up that he had to sort out, and he’ll show up again any time now. I’d just hate for him to come back and find his job had gone.’

‘It’s a credit to your hairt, Mr Porphyry,’ said Davie with only a small amount of discernible irony. ‘But I called round at his digs last night and there’s been no sign of him or word from him since last week. Landlady says he owes a month’s back rent. I reckon he’s done a runner and we won’t be seeing hide nor hair of him this side of Christmas. We need another pair of hands now, else things will start slipping.’

‘All right, Davie. I understand. I’ll have a word with Mr Rowe.’

The man got back in his buggy and drove on.

‘Head greenkeeper,’ said Porphyry. ‘Bit rough-edged, but the salt of the earth.’

Which was a good thing to have with a baked potato, thought Joe.

‘Davie what?’ he asked.

‘Well, Davie actually. David Davie. Never sure whether it’s his first or second name I’m using. Still, doesn’t seem to trouble him.’

‘And is he any part of your trouble?’ asked Joe, keen to get down to cases.

‘On no. Not at all. Definitely not.’

As if provoked by the question, Porphyry now strode forward at a pace which in Joe’s case came close to a trot. It was very hot and though there were plenty of trees to their right, unfortunately the sun was in the wrong quarter of the sky to afford them any shade.

Suddenly Porphyry came to a halt.

‘Stand still, Joe,’ he commanded.

Though only too pleased to obey, Joe’s natural curiosity still made him gasp, ‘What for?’

‘Chaps on the tee. Best be careful.’

Joe followed the YFG’s gaze back down the fairway. Some figures had appeared at a distance so great he had to screw up his eyes to work out there were four of them.

‘You think those guys could reach us here?’ he asked doubtingly.

‘Probably not, but what I meant was, we don’t want to disturb their concentration by movement. And best keep your voice down too.’

‘My voice? You’re joking, yeah? I’d need a bullhorn before they could hear me!’

Porphyry smiled and said, or rather whispered, ‘Normally, yes, Joe. But golf sensitizes the hearing remarkably. You know the great Wodehouse, of course?’

‘Woodhouse? Played for the Posh and Grimsby then went into the fight game?’ hazarded Joe.

‘Don’t recollect that, though he was a man of great and varied talent. In particular he loved his golf and of course he wrote some of the funniest books in the language. In one of them he talks about a golfer so sensitive, he could be put off his stroke by the roaring of butterflies in the adjacent meadow.’

The YFG chuckled as he spoke, but more as if appreciating a point well made than simply laughing at a bit of daftness. Joe was getting the impression that, apart from being stellar rich, you also needed a sense of humour from outer space to qualify for the Hoo. What was it the Bermuda Triangle had found so funny? Oh yes, the notion of him giving them something called gotchas.

Reckoning he wasn’t going to get much further with roaring butterflies, he asked, ‘What’s a gotcha?’

‘In golf, you mean?’

‘Yeah. In golf.’

‘Well, it has no official standing, you understand? Though I have known occasions when some of the chaps have had a couple too many before a game and have actually put it into practice.’

Did this guy know how to give a straight answer?

‘But what is it?’ demanded Joe.

‘It means if, say, you agreed to have three gotchas each at the start of the game, on three occasions as your opponent was playing his shot you would be entitled to reach between his legs from behind, seize his testicles and cry Gotcha! I think we can move on now, Joe.’

It seemed a good idea, and the further the better.

Not that any of the golfers’ drives had come within fifty yards of them, but that didn’t make Joe feel any safer. OK, in his game of choice, football, you could get a smack in the goolies, but if the ref noticed, then it was a red-card job for the offender. But here in crazy Hoo-land, they built it into the rules!

It was time for some straight talking. The two hundred in his back pocket no longer seemed an issue. In fact it felt earned out already.

He put on a sprint and caught up with the YFG.

‘Mr Porphyry…’ he gasped.

‘Chris.’

Joe took a deep breath. It felt like it might be his last but he wanted to be sure he got out everything he wanted to say in a form which even a Young Fair God could not misunderstand.

‘Chris. In case you haven’t noticed, Chris, it’s so hot that I’d jump in a pond full of alligators if one happened to be handy. I’m out of breath, and there’s a bunch of guys behind us drilling little white balls through the air at a hundred miles an hour. And even if they ain’t disturbed by the rumpus all them butterflies is kicking up, I guess any control over direction they’ve got won’t hold up much if someone grabs their family jewels just as they’re making their shot. So unless what you want to hire me for is to guess what you want to hire me for, I’d appreciate it if you could get to the point and tell me just what it is you want to hire me for!’

That made things clear, he reckoned. In fact, he doubted if he could have made things clearer without adding semaphore.

‘Point taken, Joe,’ said Porphyry. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose there are some things a chap just doesn’t like to talk about.’

This took what little remained of Joe’s breath away. The guy really didn’t want to tell him what he wanted to hire him for!

He said, ‘Look, I’ve worked on all kinds of cases, stuff you wouldn’t imagine. And, long as it don’t involve interfering with kids or farm animals, I’m cool, OK?’

‘Yes, I see. Well, it’s nothing like that, thank God, but it’s bad. Really bad.’ He took a deep breath and blurted out, ‘The thing is, I’ve been accused of cheating.’

‘Cheating?’ echoed Joe. ‘You mean like cheating on Miss Emerson, your fiancée?’

‘No! Worse than that. Cheating at golf.’

‘At golf? During a game, you mean?’ Joe liked to get things absolutely straight, especially when dealing with an alien being. ‘You’ve been accused of cheating at a game of golf?’

‘That’s it. Yes. Ghastly, isn’t it? A really filthy thing to have laid on you. Filthy.’

His expression turned haunted and gloomy. It was like the sun going down, though, oddly, distress didn’t age his features. On the contrary, he looked even younger, a young fair child now rather than a young fair god.

Joe felt his own spirits sink in sympathy. It hurt him to see the young man so unhappy, even though for the life of him he couldn’t work out the cause of such unhappiness. Yeah, cheating in sport was bad, but this day and age, it was part of the game. Guy you were marking tried to give you the slip, you pulled his shirt. He got by you and posed a real danger to your goal, you took his legs out. You got tackled in your opponents’ penalty area, you went down hard, holding your knee and screaming. OK, if the ref was a drama critic, he might award a free kick against you, maybe even give you a yellow card, in the very worst cases a red. But it was all in a day’s work, no one thought any the worse of you for it, whether you were playing five-aside in the park or earning a hundred grand a week in the Premiership. In fact, if you got a reputation in the pro game, it could be a nice little earner after you’d left the game with articles on My Fifty Favourite Fouls or How to Be a Hard Man. You might even do a movie or get a TV show.

So how was golf different?

He said, ‘How serious is this?’

Porphyry said, ‘If proven, I could be chucked out of the club.’

‘Must be lots of other clubs,’ said Joe consolingly.

‘Not if you’ve been chucked out of the Hoo,’ said Porphyry.

Joe doubted if it would make much difference down at the Municipal Pitch’n’Putt, but was sensitive enough to see this might be only a limited consolation.

‘So what kind of case can they put together?’ he said.

To his surprise, Porphyry reached out and squeezed his hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘For what?’ said Joe in some alarm.

‘For not needing to ask if I’m innocent.’

He’s missing the point, thought Joe. In life there was right and wrong. During his long childhood tuition at the hands of Aunt Mirabelle, that had been drummed into him by example, precept, and punishment. But in law there was only what could or couldn’t be proved. But he hadn’t got the heart to tell Porphyry he was misinterpreting a simple practical question as a wholehearted vote of confidence.

Porphyry, to his relief, had removed his hand.

Joe said, ‘Yeah, but like I said, can they make a case?’

‘Oh yes, I’m afraid so. Not much point in bringing an accusation otherwise.’

This at least was pragmatic. Eventually he didn’t doubt he was going to have to ask, So what exactly do you imagine I can do to help you? without any expectation of a satisfactory answer. It might be kinder to ask it now and get the disappointment over.

Instead he heard himself saying, ‘This cheating, just what are you supposed to have done?’

‘That’s what I was going to show you,’ said Porphyry. ‘Scene of the crime, or rather scene of the non-crime. I knew you’d want to see it.’

His face was back to full radiance. Oh shoot! thought Joe. He imagines I’m going to pull out my magnifying glass, crawl around the undergrowth for a bit, then stand up with an instant solution.

At least they’d turned off now under the shade of the trees. A couple of minutes later they emerged on an elevated ridge of land which a sign told Joe was the sixteenth tee.

‘It was exactly a week ago, Tuesday,’ said Porphyry. ‘I was playing Syd Cockernhoe in a singles. Second round of the Vardon Cup, that’s the club’s annual knock-out. I was lying dormy three down when we got here…’

‘Lying what?’ interrupted Joe, trying to translate this into English as he listened but unable to come up with anything beyond lying bastard, which didn’t make sense.

‘I was three holes down with only three to play. I needed to win every hole to halve the match.’

‘To get a draw, you mean?’

‘That’s right. Now, the sixteenth’s a real challenge, Shot hole one…’

‘Sorry?’ said Joe. It was like talking to a foreigner who knew enough of the language to sound fluent but who kept on getting words and phrases in the wrong place.

‘Most difficult hole on the course. It’s a par five, four ninety-eight yards, so it’s not the distance. What makes it hard is that sharp dog-leg right you see up ahead at two hundred yards. Then another hundred yards on the fairway curves away to the left. Not a right-angle bend like the dogleg, but a distinct change of direction. Once round that you can see the green way ahead, slightly elevated and protected by the Elephant Trap, that’s the deepest bunker on the course.’

‘Chris,’ said Joe. ‘I don’t play golf and, up till now, I thought what I knew about golf you could write on a matchbox, but now I see I wouldn’t need all that space. Could we maybe try basic English?’

‘Sorry. I really don’t know how else to explain things. But I’ll try.’

He took a deep breath then he resumed.

‘The fewer shots you take to reach the green the better. You follow that?’

Joe nodded.

‘Good. Now the conventional way of playing this hole would be to hit your first shot from the tee, that’s where we are, straight up to the dog-leg, that’s the bend. Then you would hit your second shot to the next bend, hopefully with a bit of draw, that means making it curl to the left so that it actually goes around the second bend as far as you can get it, to lessen the distance of your third shot. OK?’

‘Yes,’ lied Joe.

‘But what long hitters, and desperate idiots who are three down with three to play do is try to cut the first corner by hitting a drive straight over the trees on the right there, and hoping it takes a hop round the second bend and brings the green in sight.’

‘So you can get there in two shots?’

‘That’s right!’ said Porphyry, delighted. ‘I’m both a reasonably long hitter and a very dedicated idiot. Also I was dormy three, so I really let one go, didn’t quite catch it perfectly, and produced a slice. That means the ball started bending right. It wasn’t a huge slice but it was enough. I heard the ball rattling among the trees. All I could hope was that I was lucky and had a decent lie so that I could chip out. Of course I played a provisional…’

He had started walking forward as he talked and Joe was once more trotting slightly behind.

‘A Provisional?’ he gasped, wondering how the IRA had got into things.

‘I hit a second ball in case the first were lost,’ explained Porphyry. ‘You get a penalty shot for a lost ball, so if I didn’t find the first one, that would mean I’d played three with my second.’

‘Even though you’d only hit it once?’ said Joe.

‘Right! You’re beginning to get it, Joe,’ said the YFG with a confidence which was totally misplaced. ‘Syd was up by the dog-leg but had drifted into the short rough on the left. My provisional was up there too. He went forward to locate his ball while I shot off into the woods hoping to spot my first.’

They were in the woods in question now. Again the shade was welcome. As they followed a diagonal line towards the stretch of fairway out of sight from the tee, Joe glimpsed a house through the trees, set well back.

As if answering a question, Porphyry said, ‘That’s Penley Farm where Jimmy Postgate lives. One of our founder members. In fact, come to think of it, the only one still with us. In his eighties, but still manages nine now and then. Lost distance, of course, but he’s never lost the ability to hit a straight ball. Dead straight in everything, Jimmy. True English gentleman, which is what makes it so difficult.’

‘Sorry?’ said Joe, thinking, here we go! Back to round-the-houses land.

‘But I’d better stick to the proper sequence so’s not to confuse you,’ said Porphyry. ‘I was poking around pretty aimlessly. To tell the truth, I hadn’t much hope, when you hear a ball clatter like that, you know it could have gone anywhere. Then I glimpsed something white up ahead towards the fairway there. Thought it was probably a mushroom at first, but when I went up to it, lo and behold, it was my ball! Here it was, right here. A truly fortunate lie.’

They came almost to the edge of the trees. Here the ground was free of undergrowth, bare earth mainly with a bit of scrubby grass.

‘How did you know it was your ball?’ wondered Joe.

‘Chap always knows what ball he’s playing with, otherwise there could be all kinds of confusion. I’m a Titleist man myself, always Number 1, and just to make assurance doubly sure, I have them personalized.’

He pulled a ball out of his pocket and handed it to Joe. On it in purple was stamped a small seahorse with the initials CP.

‘Family coat of arms. Three seahorses rampant, and a dolphin couchant.’

Joe listened uncomprehendingly, but once the bit was between his teeth, he wasn’t a man to let himself be led astray, especially not by seahorses.

He said, ‘So you found your first ball. What about the other one you hit?’

‘Oh, I gave Syd a wave to show him I was all right, and he played his second shot, then picked up my provisional and brought it with him. No use for it, you see, not once I’d found the first one.’

Joe was still a bit bewildered by all this two-ball stuff. The same with tennis where if you missed your first serve, they let you have another. Imagine trying that in footie. Oh sorry, ref, says Beckham. I didn’t mean to blaze that one over the bar, can I have another go?

But it was too hot for diversion.

He said, ‘Any chance of getting to the cheating bit?’

‘Yes, I’m getting there,’ said Porphyry with just the faintest hint of irritation. Even gods don’t care to be hurried. ‘Syd’s shot was pretty good, he drew it round the bend nicely, leaving himself a medium iron to reach the green in regulation. Now a half was no good to me – you recall I was dormy three. So I took out my three wood. As you’ll have noticed, I didn’t have a view of the green. I was going to need to get not only the distance but put enough draw on the ball to take it round the bend and up to the green. As if to make up for my drive, I hit a cracker. Off it went and when we got to the green it was lying four feet from the flag and I knocked it in for an eagle. That means two under par. Three shots on this hole. So even though Syd got a birdie, that’s four shots on this hole, I won.’

Joe said, ‘My head’s hurting.’

Porphyry said anxiously, ‘It must be the sun. You should have worn a hat. Would you like to sit down for a minute?’

‘No, I’m fine. We any nearer the cheating?’

‘Nearly there,’ said the YFG, heading back into the woods in the direction of the house. ‘What happened was that Syd was a bit demoralized. Getting a birdie and still losing the hole can do that. I won the next two holes so we ended up all square.’

‘Like a draw?’

‘That’s it. But you can’t have a draw in a knock-out competition, so we went down the first again.’

‘To play another eighteen holes, you mean?’ said Joe aghast.

‘Oh no. First man to win a hole wins the match,’ said Porphyry.

‘Like a penalty shoot-out?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I won that hole too, so we headed back to the clubhouse for a drink. My treat, of course, being the winner. We were standing at the bar. Syd was telling everyone who came in that I must have sacrificed a virgin to the devil or something, coming back from dormy three to win. He was particularly eloquent on my incredible luck on the sixteenth, clattering my drive into the woods, and yet still somehow managing to come up with an eagle to beat his birdie. He’d just repeated the story for the third or fourth time when Jimmy Postgate came in. That’s Jimmy from Penley Farm, the house I showed you on the far edge of these woods. He speaks quite loudly, Jimmy, because he’s a touch deaf. So everyone in the bar heard it loud and clear when he took a golf ball out of his pocket and tossed it to me, saying, “Here’s the one you lost at the sixteenth, Chris. Plopped right into my swimming pool! Good job there was no one in there or it might have been a burial-at-sea job!”’

Trust

Now the Young Fair God fell silent, clearly reliving what even Joe with his weak grasp on the finer points of the game could see must have been a devastating moment.

But just to be quite sure he said, ‘So if that was your ball went into the swimming pool, no way you could have found it sitting nice and handy right at the edge of the fairway. No way except one, that is?’

‘Except one?’

The YFG was regarding him with hope brightening his face. Poor sod thinks I’m going to pull a rabbit out of the hat, thought Joe. Willie Woodbine must really have sold him the notion I’m some kind of voodoo priest. Well, it was disillusion time.

He said, ‘The except one being that you put it there.’

The light died.

‘Of course. That’s the obvious conclusion everyone reached.’

‘Not everyone, surely?’

‘Oh, one or two like Jimmy tell me they find it impossible to believe, but I wouldn’t blame them if even they had doubts. Let’s face it, what other explanation can there be?’

‘Only that you were fitted up,’ said Joe.

‘Fitted up?’

It was hard to believe in this wall-to-wall TV cop-show age that anybody could still be ignorant of the jargon.

‘That it’s a fix,’ said Joe. ‘That someone wants you to be accused of cheating.’

‘Oh,’ said the YFG, sounding disappointed again. ‘That’s what Willie suggested.’

‘Willie Woodbine? You called in the police?’

‘Good lord, no. I didn’t do anything. I really thought it was so absurd it would just go away, some simple explanation would present itself, we’d all have a laugh and that would be that. But as the days went by, it became clear it wasn’t going away.’

‘People were accusing you, you mean?’

‘Of course not. No, it was people coming up to me and assuring me they didn’t believe a word of it that made me realize how much everyone was talking. I’d invited Willie along for a game on Saturday – I’m putting him up for membership, you know – and while we were playing, it just sort of came up. I suppose I was hoping his professional expertise might be able to show me a way out. He was very sympathetic, but didn’t see how he could help officially. That was when he recommended you, Joe. So that’s why I came to see you yesterday.’

‘Yeah. Great. But Willie did reckon it might be an attempt to frame you?’

‘Or a bad joke, perhaps, that went wrong. That’s what he said. Told me to ask myself who might be capable of doing such a thing.’

‘And?’

‘I haven’t been able to think of a soul.’

‘You got no enemies then?’ said Joe doubtfully.

‘Not that I know of.’

That figured. Joe too had once had a similar sunny confidence in human kind, till his chosen profession showed him flaws in his argument. Now he knew, sadly, that the fact that Porphyry thought everyone loved him would be enough to make those who didn’t hate him even more.

So no help with who? Which meant that the poor sod wasn’t going to be much help with why? either. How? was the easy one. Porphyry hit his ball into the wood. A lurking plotter hurled a similar ball into Postgate’s swimming pool, then placed the original one, or a third ball, if he couldn’t find the original, on the fringe of the fairway.

Or maybe this guy Postgate himself had orchestrated the whole thing. That would make life a lot simpler.

A few minutes later Joe was scrubbing this particular theory.

Porphyry now led him to Penley Farm, entering the long rear garden by a wicket gate. A man was dozing on a cane chair by a small swimming pool. He had a mop of vigorous white hair and a sun-browned complexion. As they got near, Porphyry called out, ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ and the man opened his eyes, looking rather disorientated and extremely ancient. But when he saw who it was, a smile lit up his face, reducing him to a healthy eighty-year-old, and he rose to greet them.

‘Chris, good to see you,’ he said, shaking the YFG’s hand vigorously.

‘You too, you’re looking well, Jimmy. This is Joe Sixsmith. He’s a private detective. Joe, meet Jimmy Postgate, last of his kind – more’s the pity.’

Joe, who’d been expecting his role as prospective member to be maintained everywhere in the club, was a bit taken aback by Porphyry’s sudden attack of directness, but Postgate seemed to take it in his stride.

‘Private detective, eh?’ he said. ‘Never met one of them before. You look a bit overheated to me, Joe. Fancy a glass of lemonade? Or do you chaps only drink straight bourbon?’

‘Lemonade would be great,’ said Joe.

They sat by the pool and drank their lemonade which was home-made and delicious, but it soon became apparent to Joe that it was going to be the only profitable part of the visit, unless you could count Postgate’s uncompromising assertion of his undentable belief in Porphyry’s innocence. Coming from a man who had inadvertently provided the cornerstone of the case against him, this struck Joe as a bit of a paradox, which he defined as something that didn’t make sense or made more sense than at first appeared, but whether it helped or hindered him he couldn’t say so he sent it to the Recycle Bin.

Invited to offer an alternative explanation of events, Postgate just shook his head and repeated, ‘No, it beats me. Beats me. All I know is that young Chris here doesn’t have a dishonest bone in him. Now, what can I do to help?’

Change your story, thought Joe. Though it was probably too late for even that to help.

He said, ‘Could you explain exactly what happened?’

‘I was sitting in my chair here, reading my evening paper, when there was a splash, and when I looked into the pool I saw a ball. Fished it out and recognized it as one of Chris’s. No surprise there.’

‘You weren’t surprised?’ said Joe, puzzled.

‘No! Takes a big hitter and Chris is one of the longest hitters in the club. It’s a carry of at least three hundred yards. Even though it was well off line, I thought Chris would be quite chuffed to hear he’d got that distance when I tossed the ball back to him in the clubhouse. If I’d known the bother it was going to cause, I’d have kept my mouth shut!’

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