Robert Ryan - Signal Red

'That she was on board the Empress of Canada, out of Liverpool to Montreal. At Montreal, she was considered too "distressed" to enter the country and was returned on the ship. At Liverpool, it was discovered that her cabin was empty. However, there was a suspicion that she had simply wandered off the ship, down the gangplank and into the city.'

'Now we know different,' said Hatherill. 'It was a bad return crossing, by all accounts. Plenty of storms. A distracted person might easily have been swept over.'

'Or a disturbed one might have jumped,' added Billy.

'Indeed.'

The Police Constable's shoulders relaxed a little. 'Well, I'm glad that is cleared up. The family will claim the body, I suppose.'

Hatherill nodded. 'With some reluctance, I might add. Seems she was not the best-loved member of the Dunwoodys. There is some bickering over who will pay for the burial.'

Billy watched the PC's head shake back and forth in disbelief. 'Charming.'

'Well, yes, absolutely. Charming.' Hatherill lit one of his cigarettes. He didn't offer them around. He waited until he blew his first, satisfying cloud of blue smoke before continuing. 'Some might say it was charming that her body was left on the beach to be tossed around like a piece of driftwood. To be defaced by the seagulls and crabs, like carrion. Some might say that was very charming indeed.'

Billy could see that the copper's neck had coloured above his white shirt. 'Sir, you have to understand people around here…'

Hatherill banged the desk with his free hand. A photo frame fell onto the floor and its glass cracked, but he ignored it.

'You don't have to understand "people round here" to smell greed when it gets into your nostrils. Yes, greed. Not compassion or otherwise, but greed. How else do you explain the fact that the Bones family serve a claret that wouldn't disgrace White's or Simpson's?' He paused, as if he really expected an answer. 'Well?'

Trellick shuffled. 'I don't know, sir. Relatives-'

'The same relatives who supplied the pub with the identical claret? If we were to search your mother's house, would we find a bottle or two? Well – would we?'

'I don't know.'

'I think you do. I think you know that the storms dislodged cases and cases of the stuff, destined for the warehouses of Bristol. And they ended up here – on the same beach as that poor woman. And if you reported the body, then the beach would have been sealed off and any further bonanza confiscated by the authorities. It was like, what's that film?'

' Whisky Galore,'' Billy offered, having been primed to do so.

Hatherill smoked on for a while, his face set into a mask of annoyance and disappointment. Trellick's neck was glowing crimson and glistening with sweat now. Billy almost felt sorry for the young PC.

1Whisky Galore,' Hatherill finally repeated. 'Although in the film, I don't believe there is a body to get in the way. So in Claret Galore, the body becomes invisible. A kind of collective blindness grips the whole village. "Body? What body?" Then, once the locals are certain that all the cases that are coming their way have been washed ashore, the scales fall from their eyes. "Oh look, it's not a shop-window dummy, after all. Or a seal. It's a person. Somebody's daughter. Perhaps somebody's wife." Marvellous. "Let's call the authorities." Is that what happened, son?' He didn't wait for a reply. 'I think it was.'

'Sir…'

'No, don't say anything. You'll just dig yourself in deeper. I suspect you are not a bad local copper. I think that in five years' time, if some landlord leans on you to turn a blind eye, you'll tell him to fuck off. Even if he is your uncle. Oh, aye. A tight-knit community all right. Too tight-knit. I tell you what I am going to do. I'm going to write my report about the woman, and I will not mention my suspicions about the wine.'

'Thank you, sir.' The young officer's voice shook with relief.

'At the same time, you are going to put in for a transfer. You are going to say you need wider experience and I am going to agree. Bristol, perhaps. See what big city coppering is about. How does that sound?'

The reply was flat. 'Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'I think you could show a bit more enthusiasm, son. After all,' Hatherill stared at Billy, to emphasise that his words weren't only aimed at Trellick, 'I'm giving you a second chance.'

The Night Mail screamed by, its distinctive maroon livery a blur, the porthole-like lower lights above the bogeys one continuous streak of silver. The horn sounded its double-note warning and dopplered into the night. Five feet from the train, the slipstream tugging at his clothes and distorting his face, Bruce Reynolds checked his watch, the hour he had spent crouched in the damp chill of the dead hours of the early morning forgotten.

'Two minutes late,' he said, once silence had descended, broken only by the groan and click of the steel tracks.

'Terrible,' said Charlie, looking down the line at the intense green lights and, beyond them, the fuzzy glow of Cheddington station. 'What's the average?'

Bruce had sent someone up to Sears Crossing every night for the nine previous nights, making him sit in the bushes, waiting for the Up train to roar by. 'Never more than fifteen minutes either side of three-ten.'

'It's high, isn't it? Off the ground.'

'We'll need ladders, short ones. I'll get some measurements.'

Charlie pointed to the spidery gantry that straddled the tracks. 'And that's the light Roger will fix?'

'Yes.'

There was a beat. The overhead lines hummed with unheard conversations. 'You happy with the crew we have?'

'The new faces? Well, Bobby's all right.' They knew Bobby Welch as a man who dabbled in crime, although not usually anything on this scale. He was, as Bruce liked to say, small beer, but he wouldn't have anything too challenging to accomplish. 'Tiny Dave did well enough at the airport. Jim Hussey is solid enough. What about you?'

'Beggars can't be choosers.'

'Yeah, well,' said Bruce, zipping up his jacket and turning away from the tracks. 'Maybe we won't be beggars after this.'

Charlie gave a low, rueful laugh. 'I think we said that before Heathrow.'

'Yeah. Well, maybe this is our second bite at the cherry, eh?' But his words were drowned out by another fast-moving train, punching through the night.

'What?'

'Nothing. We move it along to the next stage.'

'What's that?' asked Charlie.

'Getting the grub in.'

Battersea, South-west London, June 1963

'I do not know why I am doing this, Tony. I pay people to do this for me.'

Janie Riley sat in the passenger seat of the Hillman Husky, arms folded, her lower lip jutting out in a display of serious petulance. She had her hair backcombed and it had been dyed blonde. She looked like the singer out of the Springfields. Yet the voice coming out of her mouth was one he hadn't heard before. It was posh, refined, with all the vowels and consonants present and correct.

Tony turned off the engine. 'I don't know why I'm doing it either. As Bruce said, horses for courses.'

'Well, why can't he use that cheap whore Mary Manson?'

Mary Manson was not a cheap whore. She had, however, begun to nudge out Janie as Bruce's 'companion', turning up in the pubs and clubs where Janie once held sway. Janie wasn't sure what she had done to rock the boat. Was it her fault that Colin had rubbed Bruce up the wrong way with some hare-brained scheme about old Greek marble?

'Janie, I don't like shopping any more than you do. But everyone has a job to do. Today, yours is to help us out here.'

'Like some fishwife.'

'Don't you mean housewife?'

She glared at him. 'Fuck off.' It was, he thought, strangely attractive to be sworn at in a cut-glass accent.