John Eider - Late of the Payroll

Monday

Inspector Graham Rase sat back on the green leather sofa that ran along the wainscotted wall. He was in the Reading Room of the Club, itself a part of the Royal Hotel and the closest thing that Southney, the town he lived in, had to a gentleman’s club of the old definition. Not that they had yet been reached by anything of the newer definition, of which he was rather glad he considered, as he watched the air move across the large quiet space of the room before him.

‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ asked Parris, the ancient steward of the sanctum.

‘No, thank you, I must be off soon.’

‘Very well,’ answered the man leaving as quietly as he had arrived.

Grey, as he preferred to be known, had been invited to join upon becoming Acting Inspector, and had retained the membership after being confirmed in that role — a side-benefit, for the bestowing of which, he was almost as grateful to his employers as for giving him the job itself. It was his Superintendent Rose, a Clubman himself, who both promoted and proposed him.

He had arrived there late this day, coming not from work but an inter-divisional conference on the new thinking in tackling narcotic crime, especially among the young. A depressing day, with much evidence presented of lives ruined, as well as from those who had turned themselves around. At least these meetings with officers from other forces though reassured the Inspector that his own team were not alone in the struggle. But getting back into town for near nine o’clock, too late to want to cook for himself, he had remembered the Dining Room, and how it catered for members at that hour.

Having moved to the Reading Room, he recalled how what had been a lingering sense of the snobbery of the Club before becoming a member had changed, upon his acceptance, to a growing appreciation of having such a place at his disposal. This was no secret society, but only a space for business people to relax. And like the library that as a child he would flee to as an oasis in a chaotic day, so be began to find just being in these hallowed rooms made him smile.

Across the room sat a gentlemen farmer, who Grey knew to live alone and so ate here most evenings. By the windows with a brass lamp to compensate for the dying light of autumn, two younger men in blazers — who might have been anything from salesmen to civil servants — pored over a broadsheet newspaper. Was anyone out there waiting? If so, then the men were not rushed to get back to them.

Having eaten now though, and knowing he couldn’t sit here all evening musing on familiar themes, he roused himself to leave. Nodding his respects to the steward, he pressed first through the Club’s leather doors before spinning out through the rotating glass of the hotel entrance, to emerge into the warm air remaining of a still warmer day. He made his way the short distance to the Young Prince Hal Tavern.

Though nearly October, they had been blessed this past fortnight with the weather held back from a poor August; and Grey for one was glad to have at last a few weeks in the year when he could quite safely leave the house each morning without a coat.

The Prince had been his regular haunt long before the Club had lured him away at least a part of the time, it being close to both his home and work. Of the pubs in town it had the warmest atmosphere, and the heaters on in winter, not that they were needed yet with the upstairs windows of the flats he passed flung wide open to the summer-like evening. He pushed open the doors to the Prince. He knew the landlord.

‘Pint, Grey?’ Bill Blunt asked without moving from his position resting against the fridge at the back of the bar, his head beside the optics.

‘Just a half, thanks.’

‘Early night?’

‘Never pays to overdo it.’

‘I forgot, you coppers are all tee-totallers aren’t you,’ added the landlord caustically. ‘Good job your not or I’d be a poor man.’

‘Don’t be soft — you make a killing at this place,’ Grey entering into their familiar banter. ‘We should know; we have to break up enough crowd scenes. How much are you pouring down these lads’ throats on a Friday night?’

‘Only what they pay for.’

‘Not much being paid for tonight though.’ Grey cast his eye across the bar almost as empty as the club he had just left.

‘No, a night like this makes a brewer weep. I bet they’re all where you’ve just come from, aren’t they?’

‘Bill, wherever they are, they are not there. When I left I took half their custom with me.’ It had actually been a quarter, but he exaggerated for effect.

‘Well, what a shame — all that uneaten lobster.’ It was Bill’s oft-asserted contention that not only would he himself not have joined the Club had he been invited on bended knee by the proprietor, but that he would also shun in the street and bar from his own establishment anyone he personally knew to be a member; however in Grey’s case this was a threat forever held off.

‘Yeah, they were scooping unsold caviar in the bin.’

‘Not good, Grey. Not good for a community — an elite like that cutting themselves off. How does that fit with the Post-War Dream, eh Grey? The Labour government wanted us all going to the same schools, lined up in the same hospital beds. How are we going to improve things when the nobs are buying better services, leaving us in the mire?

‘Your pub’s not that bad.’

‘And I could use another word.’

‘Yes, I’m quite sure of that.’

‘I know you’ve heard this speech before. I just wish I didn’t have to keep making it.’

‘Probably good someone still is.’

‘Aye, aye.’

The Lounge was empty enough to let them talk without the interruption of anyone wishing to be served, but Grey let his friend’s point linger a while while nursing his half. Bill called goodnight to a couple who had been sipping gin and limes by the door — business dressed, he older, she younger. A boss and secretary, supposed Grey, though no deeper thoughts flowed from this starting point as they might had he noted such salaciousness while brighter-minded.

‘I might be off myself in a little while.’

‘Aye, I’d close up early if it weren’t for those lads still here.’ Bill gestured with a tilt of the head to the Bar, this being a traditionally laid-out public house.

Tilting his own head, Grey looked through the broad archway, that formed the link from the plush Lounge with its cushioned chairs through to the Bar with its maroon leather stools. There he saw four men who, though some way along the L-shaped bar, had been talking loudly enough for their voices if not quite their words to have caught his fleeting attention.

‘I’m going to have to ask them to sup up in a minute,’ said Bill as he leaned across and rung the polished brass bell above the bar by its crimson cord. That was another thing Grey liked about this place — Bill had never applied for a later licence. Except for on only three or four big evenings a year he still called time as eleven, thus preserving in these two rooms for just a little while longer a trace of the land he and Grey had been brought up in.

‘Anything been happening?’ Grey asked quietly, a combination, as Bill knew full well, of professional data-gathering and personal plain nosiness; his friend lived to be intrigued.

A gesture of the head drew Grey in closer, ‘Well, as it happens…’ The man leant in further to whisper, ‘You know there’s been talk, up at the plant.’

‘There’s always talk,’ Grey groaned, he hoping this might be something new.

‘Well, some of the workers are getting antsy — the management have put back announcing the new contract, the one with the hotel chain: the little fridges and drinks machines, the one that’s meant to keep them busy over the winter? Some of the lads,’ he glanced conspiratorially around the almost empty pub, lingering on the lads in the Bar, ‘are thinking there isn’t going to be a new contract. No new work. And now there’s talk…’