Headline Murder Read online

  WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT

  HEADLINE MURDER

  Superbly crafted and breezy as a stroll along the pier, this Brighton-based murder mystery is a delight. Headline Murder is the real deal, giving a wonderful insight into local journalism and capturing the swinging sixties to perfection. Bring on the next Crampton Chronicle.

  Peter Lovesey, award-winning crime mystery writer

  They say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t there. So if you fancy taking a trip down someone else’s memory lane, you can’t do better than Colin Crampton, crime reporter extraordinaire in Headline Murder. The clipped noir style of Peter Bartram’s prose fits both the man and the times to perfection. The story is a real ‘whodunit’ in the classic mould. The characters and the city of Brighton leap off the page newly minted but feeling like old friends. And don’t worry if you don’t remember the sixties because you weren’t even born then. There is none of the clunky scene-setting that so many writers find so necessary. Crampton takes you back effortlessly.

  M. J. Trow, acclaimed author of 40 crime mystery novels

  First published by Roundfire Books, 2015

  Roundfire Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,

  Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

  [email protected]

  www.johnhuntpublishing.com

  www.roundfire-books.com

  For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

  Text copyright: Peter Bartram 2014

  This book is a work of fiction and all the characters and events, except those clearly matters of public record, are imaginary and any resemblance to persons living or dead is unintentional and coincidental.

  ISBN: 978 1 78535 072 6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933326

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Peter Bartram as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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

  Design: Stuart Davies

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

  We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

  Chapter 1

  The phone call that set me on the trail of the disappeared golf man who left his balls behind came one scorching Saturday afternoon in August.

  I was sitting at my desk in the newsroom of the Brighton Evening Chronicle feeling like a barbecued steak that’d just been flipped on the griddle. The window was open and the high summer’s heat oozed into the newsroom like boiled treacle.

  I could hear a saxophonist playing a jazz riff in the Royal Pavilion gardens. Something slow and sultry in a minor key.

  Even the long plangent notes seemed to be dripping with sweat.

  I leant back in my chair, loosened my collar and tried to imagine I was Nanook of the North huddled in an igloo. But after a hard day, my brain was too tired to make the leap. The last edition – the Night Final – was on the streets and the newsroom was deserted. The other reporters had left for the beach. Or, more likely, the pubs. I should’ve joined them. I could almost taste the fizz in the gin and tonic. Hear the tinkle of the ice cubes. Smell the zest of the lemon.

  But I had to work late. And the heat was doing nothing for my scratchy mood. My byline – Colin Crampton, crime correspondent – hadn’t been on the front page for more than two weeks. Worst of all, Frank Figgis, the news editor, had started to hassle me about the dearth of hard crime news in the paper. As if he thought I was Mr Big of the Brighton underworld. What did he expect me to do? Stage a payroll snatch? Mastermind a bank heist? Order up a body thoughtfully bludgeoned with a blunt instrument?

  I picked up the Night Final from my desk, turned to page fourteen. The best I’d come up with for this evening’s paper was a vicar fined five pounds for cycling without lights. I was frustrated. Brighton’s more imaginative criminals seemed to have taken a vacation along with everyone else. Except me. I badly needed a holiday.

  But I needed a front-page headline – a splash – even more.

  I put down the Chronicle and reached for my notebook. I flipped through the pages. Stared at my Pitman’s shorthand. I willed the strokes and logograms, the dots and dashes to give up a story. Any story. But it looked as though the only way I was going to get a splash was to jump off the end of Palace Pier.

  The saxophonist reached his crescendo. The last notes faded in the heat.

  I tossed my notebook back on the desk, stood up, walked over to the window and looked out.

  The saxophonist was putting his instrument back into its case. He took out a spotted handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  Behind me a voice said: “‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.’”

  I turned. The poet was Frank Figgis who had materialised in the newsroom. He was a small man with a craggy face and skin creased with fine lines like worn leather. He had hard brown eyes and a prominent nose. He carved his shiny black hair into a strict centre parting with a tram line of bald pate down the middle. He had his jacket slung over his shoulder. His red braces hitched his trousers up so tight he always looked as though he was walking on tip-toe to avoid a painful injury. He smelt of Brylcreem.

  I gestured at the empty room. “Let’s forget about the staring and just call me the last man standing.”

  I crossed to my desk and sat down. “Or, in this heat, sitting.”

  Figgis perched on the edge of my desk looking like an emaciated vulture in search of a snack. He shook the last Woodbine out of his packet and lit up.

  “I’ve got nothing to lead with in Monday’s paper,” he said.

  “August is always a slow news month,” I said. “The silly season.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Anything at this morning’s magistrates’ court?”

  “Saturdays are always quiet,” I said. “We were supposed to have gross indecency under the West Pier but the lawyer didn’t turn up.”

  “Under the pier?”

  “At the court. To defend the accused.”

  “Who was the dirty dog?”

  “A beach-front photographer. Looks like he’d got the wrong idea about close-ups.”

  Figgis took another drag on his cigarette. “Might make a down-page par with a teaser headline.”

  Figgis had a penchant for headlines with dreadful puns. I could usually second guess what they’d be.

  “Over exposed?” I said.

  “No. Sign of the times,” he said.

  “As a headline on that story, it makes no sense.”

  “No, I mean the story is a sign of the times.”

  “Get with it,” I said. “This is nineteen sixty-two, the swinging sixties.”

  “Doesn’t mean you have to swing it under the pier,” Figgis said. He rubbed his forehead as though he had a headache. The lines on his face looked deeper than usual.

  Figgis was one of the old-school journalists. I suspected he still yearned for the days when respectable spinsters sent their maids out the room, drew their curtains, dipped a digestive into their Earl Grey, then drooled over a column of court reporting in which “intimacy” took place, preferably with the lights on.

  He stubbed out his fag between his fingers and tossed the dog-end into my waste bin.

  “Swinging or not, we need some hard crime news to boost circulation,” h
e said. “Find something for Monday’s paper. And make it a stronger story than a dirty old man with his trousers round his ankles.”

  He slid off the edge of my desk and headed back to his office swinging his jacket behind him.

  “And, by the way, the headline on that West Pier story,” he said over his shoulder. “Beach bum.”

  Figgis disappeared into his office. I thumped my desk with frustration.

  And it was at that moment that my telephone rang.

  I lifted the receiver.

  A voice said: “Got a minute?”

  It was a deep confident voice with a hint of rural Sussex in the vowels. It belonged to Ted Wilson. He was a detective inspector in Brighton’s police force.

  I said: “What’s wrong with this town? It seems to have gone all law abiding.”

  “Yes. Great isn’t it?”

  “Not from where I’m sitting. Figgis and I have just been scratching around for a front-page story for Monday’s paper.”

  “As it happens, I could have something that might make a column or two for your rag.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He said: “The owner of the miniature golf course on the seafront has disappeared.”

  “So call the Salvation Army. They deal in missing persons. I deal in hard news. When I can get it.”

  “So you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to tell you?”

  “There are only two types of missing persons,” I said. “Those that are never seen again because they don’t want to be found. And those that turn up of their own free will because they do.”

  He said: “You’ve forgotten the third category.”

  “You mean the ones that turn up again dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that likely with the disappeared golf man?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Has a crime been committed?”

  “Not as far as we know. But we don’t think he planned to leave.”

  “Why?”

  “He left his equipment behind.”

  “Equipment?”

  “His golf clubs. And his balls.”

  “That could be embarrassing.”

  Wilson said: “Are you looking for a laugh or a story?”

  I said: “What makes you think this is worth even a column inch?”

  “Because there’s a backstory to it.”

  “Tell me.”

  There was a pause. I imagined Ted scratching his beard as he decided how to play it.

  He said: “Perhaps we could talk about it over a drink. Let’s meet later.”

  I said: “Not too much later. I’ve got a date this evening.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Fortunately not,” I said.

  “How about seven o’clock?” Wilson said.

  “Fine, as long as we don’t take more than twenty minutes.”

  “Seven it is, then. The usual place.”

  “Discreet, as always. I’ll be there.”

  The line went dead.

  I sat there for a minute thinking that a disappeared golf man who’d left his balls behind would barely make a ripple let alone a splash for the front page.

  Then I remembered what Figgis had said about finding a story by Monday, shrugged into my jacket and went out.

  Chapter 2

  Prinny’s Pleasure was the ideal rendezvous for a clandestine meeting.

  It was a run-down boozer in a modest street of terraced cottages in the North Laine part of town. The place had frosted glass windows and a door with peeling brown paint. A pub sign board hung from a rusting bracket above the door. The board featured a portrait of Mrs Fitzherbert wearing a bouffant wig. Or it could have been her own hair with a following wind.

  More to the point, the place had hardly any customers, which suited Ted and me just fine. I pushed through the door into the bar. The room was an old-fashioned snug once patronised by Victorian gentry who thought themselves too posh to drink with workers in the public bar. Green flock wallpaper had turned grey. The place smelt of stale beer.

  Jeff, the landlord, perched on a stool behind the bar. He was a thin man wearing a blue shirt at least one size too big. He had two-days of face fuzz on his chin and dirt under his fingernails. He was lighting a Capstan Full Strength.

  I walked over to the bar. It was empty except for an ashtray of Jeff’s dog-ends and a glass cabinet containing two cheese sandwiches and a dead fly.

  I said: “Give me a large gin, small tonic, one ice cube and two slices of lemon.”

  He said: “Bleedin’ hell. What do you think this is? A cocktail lounge?”

  “I took it for a slop house that had gone down in the world but I thought I’d try and get a drink anyway. Still, I can always take my raging thirst elsewhere.”

  “Journalists! Full of backchat and bullshit.”

  Jeff grumbled something else in the same vein and slid off his stool. He grabbed a glass from under the bar and turned towards the optics.

  The pub’s door creaked. I looked round. Ted Wilson stood framed in the opening. He glanced back furtively, then hurried inside.

  “Better add a large scotch to the order,” I said to Jeff. “No ice. And don’t be too quick on the draw with those optics.”

  Ted and I took our drinks to the corner table at the back of the bar.

  Ted was a heavyset man with the weary expression of somebody who’d seen too many nasty things in dark corners. He was wearing a crumpled blue suit. He had a couple of Bics and a blunt pencil stuffed in the breast pocket.

  He took a swig of his whisky and said: “That hit the spot.”

  I’d first met Ted shortly after I’d joined the Chronicle a year ago. He was a cautious copper who made sure of his facts. No shooting star, but he’d climbed through the ranks which can’t have been easy in Brighton’s police where funny handshakes often determined who got on and who didn’t.

  I swallowed a good slug of the G&T and said: “So what’s the story with the vanishing golf impresario?”

  Ted took another pull at his scotch. “You’ll have seen the Krazy Kat miniature golf course?” he said.

  I nodded. It occupied a hundred-yard stretch of the beach close to the Esplanade. I’d seen trippers tapping golf balls round the concrete fairways. It was the sort of thing holidaymakers do when they’re bored or desperate.

  Ted said: “Thursday evening, the desk sergeant took a call from the young lad who runs the ticket kiosk.”

  He flipped open a notebook. “Robert Barnet. Apparently, he’s a student from London who’s been hired for the summer season. Anyway, he was calling to report the Krazy Kat’s proprietor missing. One Arnold Trumper. Hadn’t been near the place for two days. Barnet says until then Trumper had been there every day, regular as a high tide. Barnet was calling because he was worried that if Trumper didn’t put in an appearance on Friday he wouldn’t get his week’s wages. Which, as Trumper is still absent without leave, I’m assuming he hasn’t.”

  “So why the teasing telephone call this afternoon?”

  Ted took another gulp of whisky. “Two reasons. First, although we’ve noted the details, this isn’t something we’re taking too seriously at the moment. Trumper is an adult and he’s only been gone four days. And there’s no evidence of a crime. So the report is just a piece of paper in an in-tray.”

  “And the second?”

  “That’s where I come to the backstory. You see, Trumper has been involved in a police investigation before. His wife – Mildred, I recall – was murdered.”

  Ted picked up his glass and drained it. He put the glass back on the table with a flourish. Like a conjuror who’s just pulled off a trick. Which I suppose, in a way, he had. He’d certainly surprised me.

  I finished my own drink slowly. I needed time to think about what he’d told me. I signalled to Jeff to bring refills.

  Then I asked: “When was Mildred murdered?”

  “Shortly after war broke out. In early 1940, I believe.”
/>   “And you’re suggesting there might be a connection between this murdered woman and Trumper’s disappearance now – if he has vanished – twenty-two years later?”

  “Not necessarily. It’s just that Trumper is a man with an interesting past.”

  “But not a criminal record?”

  “A man of good character, as far as we know.”

  Jeff shuffled over and thumped our drinks on the table. I handed him a fistful of coins.

  I turned back to Ted: “So who murdered Trumper’s wife?”

  “That’s where it becomes more complicated. You see, Mildred had been having an affair with a Reginald Farnsworth. He owned a small building firm – nothing fancy, more of a man-and-boy operation. Back in early 1940, Trumper had hired him to make some alterations to his golf course. One day Trumper found Reggie and Mildred in the little room at the back of the ticket office. You can guess what they’d been doing.”

  “Scoring a hole in one.”

  “If you’re going to be crude about it. Anyway, Trumper threw Mildred out on the spot. He made it clear he’d finished with her for ever. At first, Mildred wasn’t bothered. It seems she and Trumper had occupied opposite ends of the fairway for years.”

  “A loveless marriage?” I asked.

  Ted nodded. “Mildred assumed she’d move in with Reggie. But there was a complication. It turned out that Reggie hadn’t been entirely straight with her. He was already married with a young daughter. He’d been spreading his cement on both sides of the wall.”

  “So she was out in the cold.”

  “Not exactly. Farnsworth told Mildred that he’d leave his wife and find somewhere to live with her. So she found cheap lodgings in a B&B while she waited for Farnsworth to break the good news to his missus. But by the spring of 1940 the ‘phoney war’ as they’d been calling it became all too real. The Germans invaded Belgium. Farnsworth was in the Territorial Army and was called up for active service. It seems that what with going away to fight and the uncertainty of war, he couldn’t bring himself to leave his wife and kid.”

  “So Mildred had burned her boats,” I said. “No Reggie and no Trumper.”