The Riddle Of The Third Mile Read online

  It was 10.40 a.m. when he left the station buffet and walked briskly to the Bakerloo line, where, as he queued for his ticket, he realized that he must have left his timetable in the buffet. But that was of no great moment, either. There were plenty of trains to choose from, and he’d made a mental note of some of the times.

  He could not have known, of course, that he would not be travelling back to Oxford that night.

  On the tube he opened his briefcase and took out two sheets of paper: the first was a letter addressed to himself, amateurishly typed but perfectly literate-a letter that still seemed very strange to him; the second was a more professionally typed sheet (indeed, typed by Browne-Smith himself) comprising a list of students from Oxford University, with the names of their colleges appended in brackets, and the words “Class One, Literae Humaniores” printed across the top in bold, red capitals. But Browne-Smith glanced only cursorily at the two sheets through his bifocal lenses. It appeared that he was merely reassuring himself that both were still in existence. Nothing more.

  At Edgware Road he looked up above the carriage-windows, noting that there were only two more stops, and for almost the first time he felt a flutter of excitement somewhere in his diaphragm. It was that letter… Very odd! Even the address had been odd, with the full details carefully stated: Room 4, Staircase T, Second Quad, Lonsdale College, Oxford. Such specificity was rare, and seemed to suggest that whoever had sent the letter was more than usually anxious for it not to go astray-more than a little knowledgeable, too, about the college’s geography… Staircase T, Second Quad… In his mind’s eye, Browne-Smith saw himself climbing those few stairs once more; climbing them, as he had done for the past thirty years, up to the first landing, where his own name, handprinted in white, Gothic lettering, still stood above the door. And immediately opposite him, Room 3-where George Westerby, the Geography don, had lived for almost exactly the same time: just one term longer than himself, in fact. Their mutual hatred was intense, the whole college knew that, though it might just have been different if Westerby had ever been prepared to make the feeblest gesture towards some reconciliation. But he had never done so.

  Via the ziggurat of steep escalators, Browne-Smith emerged at 11.05 a.m. into the bright sunlight of Piccadilly Circus, crossed over into Shaftesbury Avenue, and immediately plunged into the maze of roads and alleyways that criss-cross the area off Great Windmill Street, Here abounded small cinemas that featured films of hard, uncompromising porn, with stills outside of nudes and semi-nudes, vast-breasted and voluptuous; clubs that promised passers-by the prospects of erotic, non-stop nudity; bookshops that boasted the glossiest, grossest magazines for paedophiles and buffs of bestiality. And it was along these gaudy streets, beneath the orange and the yellow signs, past the inviting doors, that Browne-Smith walked slowly, savouring the uncensored atmosphere, and feeling himself inexorably sucked into the cesspool that is known as Soho.

  It was in a narrow lane just off Brewer Street that he spotted it-as he’d known he would: The Flamenco Topless Bar: No Membership Fee: Please Walk Straight Down.’ The wide, shallow steps that led from the foyer down to the subterranean premises had once been carpeted in heavy crimson, but now the middle of the tread resembled more the trampled sward of a National Trust beauty spot at the height of a glorious summer. He was walking past, but there must have been some tell-tale hesitation in his step, for the acne-faced youth who lounged just inside the doorway had spotted him already.

  ‘Lovely girls in here, sir. Just walk straight down. No membership fee.’

  ‘The bar is open, is it? I only want a drink.’

  ‘Bar’s always open here, sir. Just walk straight down.’ The young man stepped aside, and Browne-Smith took his fateful step across the entrance and slowly descended to The Flamenco Topless Bar. Facilis descensus Avemo.

  At the foot of the stairs further progress was barred by a velvet drape, and he was wondering what he should do when a seemingly disembodied head poked through a gap in the middle of the curtain- the head of an attractive young girl of no more than nineteen or twenty years, the hazel eyes luridly blued and blackened by harsh mascaras, but the senuous mouth devoid of any lipstick. A pink tongue completed a slow circuit round the soft-looking mouth, and a pleasant voice asked simply and sweetly for only £1.

  ‘There’s no membership fee; it says so outside. And the man on the door said so.’

  The face smiled, as it always smiled at the gullible men who’d trodden those broad and easy stairs.

  ‘It’s not a membership fee-just admission. You know what I mean?’ The eyes held his with simmering sexuality, and the note passed quickly through the crimson curtain.

  The Flamenco Bar was a low-ceilinged affair with the seats grouped in alcoves a deux, towards one of which the young girl escorted him. She was, herself, fully clothed; and, after handing her client a buff-coloured drinks list, she departed without a further word to her wonted seat behind a poor imitation of a drinking-man’s bar, whereat she was soon deeply engrossed in her zodiacal predictions as reported in the Daily Mirror.

  It seemed to Browne-Smith, as he struggled to interpret the long bill of fare, that the minimum charge for any semi-alcoholic beverage was £3. And he was beginning to suspect that the best value for such an exorbitant charge was probably two (separate) half-glasses of lager-when he heard her voice.

  ‘Can I take your order?’

  Over the top of his glasses he looked up at the young woman who stood in front of him. She was leaning forward, completely naked from the waist upwards, her long, pink skirt split widely to the top of her thigh.

  ‘The lager, I think, please.’

  She made a note on the pad she held. ‘Would you like me to sit with you?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘You’d have to buy me a drink.’

  ‘All right.’

  She pointed to the very bottom of the card:

  Flamenco Revenge- & marriage of green-eyed Chartreuse with aphrodisiac Cointreau. Soho Wallbanger-z dramatic confrontation of voluptuous Vodka with a tantalizing taste of Tia Maria. EastemEcstasy – an irresistible alchemy of rejuvenating Gin and pulse-quickening Campari. Price: £6.00

  £6.00!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Browne-Smith, ‘but I just can’t afford-’

  ‘I can’t sit with you if you won’t buy me a drink.’

  ‘It’s so terribly expensive, though, isn’t it? I just can’t aff-’

  ‘All right!’ The words were clipped and final, and she left his table, to return a few minutes later with his first small glass of lager, setting the meagre measure before him with studied indifference and departing immediately.

  From the alcove behind him, Browne-Smith could hear the conversation distinctly:

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Ostrighlia.’

  ‘Nice there?’

  ‘Sure is!’

  ‘You’d like me to sit with you?’

  ‘Sure would!’

  ‘You’d have to buy me a drink.’

  ‘Just you nime it, bighby!’

  Browne-Smith swallowed a mouthful of his flat and tepid lager and took stock of the situation. Apart from the proximate Australian, he could see only one other customer, a man of indeterminate age (forty? fifty? sixty?) who sat at the bar reading a book. In contrast to his balding pate and the grey-white patches at his temples, the neatly-trimmed and black-brown beard was quite devoid of grizzled hairs; and for a few seconds the fanciful notion occurred to Browne-Smith that the man might be in disguise, this notion being somewhat reinforced by the fact that he was wearing a pair of incongruous sunglasses which masked the eyes whilst not, apparently, blurring the print of the page upon which he appeared so totally engrossed.

  From where Browne-Smith sat, the decor looked universally cheap. The carpet, a continuation of the stairway crimson, was dirty and stained, with threadbare patches beneath most of the plastic tables; the chairs were flimsy, rickety, wickerwork structures which seemed b
arely capable of supporting the weight of any over-fleshed client; the walls and ceiling had clearly once been painted white, but were now grubby and stained with the incessant smoke of cigarettes. But there was one touch of culture-a most surprising one: the soberly volumed background music was the slow movement of Mozart’s ‘Elvira Madigan’ piano concerto (played by Barenboim-Browne-Smith could have sworn it), and this seemed to him almost as incongruous as listening to Shakin’ Stevens in St Paul’s Cathedral.

  Another man was admitted through the curtain and was duly visited by the same white-breasted beauty who had brought his own lager; the man at the bar turned over another page of his book; the Australian, clearly audible still, was none too subtly prodding his hostess into revealing what exactly it was she was selling, because she’d got what he wanted and his only concern was the price she might be asking for it; the girl behind the bar had obviously exhausted whatever the Daily Mirror could prognosticate; and Barenboim had landed lightly upon the final notes of that ethereal movement.

  Browne-Smith’s glass was now empty, and the only two hostesses on view were happily supping whatever the management had decided were today’s ingredients for Soho Wailbangers, Flamenco Revenges, el al. So he got up, walked over to the bar and sat himself down on a stool.

  ‘I’ve got another one paid for, I think.’

  ‘I’ll bring it to you.’

  ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll sit here.’

  ‘I said I’d bring it to you.’

  ‘You don’t mind me sitting here, do you?’

  ‘You si’ down where you were – you understand English?’ All pretence at civility had vanished, and her voice sounded hard and mean.

  ‘All right,’ said Browne-Smith quietly. ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble.’ He sat down at a table a few yards from the bar, and watched the girl, and waited.

  ‘You still didn’t ‘ear wha’ I said, did you?” The voice was now crudely menacing, but Browne-Smith decided that a few more rounds of small-arms fire could safely be expended; not quite time yet for the heavy artillery. He was enjoying himself.

  ‘I did hear you, I assure you. But-’

  ‘Look! I told you!’ (Which she hadn’t.) ‘If you want a bloody rub-off there’s a sauna right across the road. OK?’

  ‘But I don’t-’

  ‘I shan’t tell you again, mister.’

  Browne-Smith stood up, and stepped slowly to the bar, where the man reading the book flicked over another page, disinterestedly neutral, it appeared, in the outcome of the escalating hostilities.

  ‘I’d like a pint of decent beer, if you have one.’ He spoke quietly.

  ‘If you don’t want tha’ lager-’

  Abruptly Browne-Smith crashed his glass on the counter, and fixed the girl with his eyes. ‘Lager? Let me tell.you something, miss! That’s not lager-that’s horse-piss!’

  The battle odds had changed dramatically, and the girl had clearly lost her self-control as she pointed a shaking, carmined finger towards the crimson curtain: ‘Get out!’

  ‘Oh no! I’ve paid for my drinks.’

  ‘You heard what the lady said.’ It was the man sitting his book by the bar. Although he had neither lifted his eyes one centimetre from the text, nor lifted, it seemed, his flat (West Country?) voice one semitone above its customary pitch, the brief words sounded ominously final.

  But Browne-Smith, completely ignoring the man who had just spoken to him, continued to glare at the girl. ‘Never speak to me like that again!’

  The hissed authority of these words reduced the girl to speechlessness, but the seated man had slowly closed his book, and now at last he raised his eyes. The fingers of his right hand crept across to the upper muscles of his left arm and, although as he eased himself off the bar-stool he stood some two or three inches shorter than Browne-Smith, he looked a dangerous adversary. He said nothing more.

  The velvet curtains by which Browne-Smith had entered were only some three yards to his left, and there were several seconds during which a quick, if inglorious, exit could easily have been effected. But no such decision was taken; and before he could consider the situation further he felt his left wrist grasped powerfully, and found himself propelled towards a door marked ; ‘Private’.

  Two things he was to remember as his escort knocked quietly upon this door. First, he saw the look on the face of the man from Australia, a look that was three-parts puzzlement and one pan panic; second, he observed the title of the book the bearded man was reading: Know Your Köchel Numbers.

  The anonymous Australian, sitting no more than four or five yards from the door, was destined never to mention this episode to another living soul. And indeed, even had he reason to do so, it seems most improbable that he would have mentioned that enigmatic little moment, just before the door closed behind the two men, when the one of them who seemed to be causing the trouble, the one whose name he would never know, had suddenly looked at his wrist-watch, and said in a voice that sounded inexplicably calm: ‘My goodness! I see it’s exactly twelve noon.’

  For a few seconds after he had crossed the threshold of the office, Browne-Smith experienced that dazzling, zigzag pain again that seemed to saw its way across his brain, momentarily cutting him off from any recollection of himself and of what he was doing. But then it stopped-as suddenly as it had started-and he thought he was in control of things once more.

  Looking out over the lawn of Second Quad, George Westerby had watched the tallish figure (several inches taller than himself) striding out towards the Porter’s Lodge at 8.15 a.m. that same morning. Uppermost in his mind at that moment-and he gloried in it-was the realization that he would be seeing very little more of his detested colleague, Browne-Smith. He himself, George Westerby, having recently, celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday, was retiring at last. Indeed, a removal firm had already been at work on his vast accumulation of books; and the treasured rows from more than half his shelves had been removed in blocks, stringed up, and stacked into the tea-chests that now occupied an uncomfortably large area of the floor space. And soon, of course, there would be the wooden crates, and the lumbering, muscled men who would transfer his precious possessions to the flat he had purchased in London. A smaller place, naturally, and one that might well pose a few storage problems. That could wait though, certainly until after his forthcoming holiday in the Aegean Isles… over to Asia across that azure sea…

  But even as he stood there by the window, nodding slowly and contentedly to himself for a few moments, it was Browne-Smith who still dominated his thoughts. It had always been “Browne-Smith” with him-not even “Malaria” Browne-Smith, as though such familiarity might compromise his eternal antagonism. There would be only a few more nights now when he would have to dine in Hall with that odious man; just a few more lunches, occasionally standing awkwardly proximate over the cold buffets; only one more College meeting, at the beginning of next week- the very last one. For the Trinity Term was almost over now; his last term, and very soon his last day and his last hours; and then the moment (when it came) of looking down for the very last time on that immaculate lawn…

  George Westerby was collectively conscious of all these things as he stood watching from his first-floor window on that chilly early morning of the 11th July. What he did not know at that time-what he could not have known-was that Lonsdale College was never again to welcome Browne-Smith within its quiet quads.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Friday, 11th July

  In which we hem a tantalizing glimpse of high-floss harlotiy.

  The taxi-driver knew the street, and Browne-Smith settled himself in the back seat with a heightened sense of excitement. He would have wished to savour these moments longer, but in less than five minutes the taxi pulled up at the kerb of Number 29, a large four-storied balconied building in a fashionable terrace just behind Russell Square. In general, although the original brickwork on the lower reaches of the walls had been smutted by traffic-fumes and smoke, the house seemed to have maint
ained its elegant fagade with comparative ease. The black door, with its polished brass knobs and letter-box, was framed by white pillars; and the woodwork of the windows was also painted white, with neatly kept window-boxes adding their splash of greens and reds. Black railings, set in concrete, were stretched along the front; behind which, after a gap of about five feet, the wall of the house continued down to a basement. On these railings a board had been affixed:

  Luxury Apartments for Sale or to Let

  Please apply: Brooks and Gilbert

  (Sole Agents) Tel. 01-483 2307

  Viewing by appointment only

  Browne-Smith walked up the three shallow steps, and pressed the single bell, apprehensively fingering the blue card that was now in his inside jacket-pocket. He waited. But he had heard no sound of ringing on the other side of the great door, and he could see no sign of life. At this moment, and for the first time, the idea filtered into his mind that he might have been cruelly duped for the silly fool – the silly old fool – that he was, in going along with the whole disreputable and dishonourable business. He turned to look at the busy street and saw an aristocratic female disembarking from a taxi only a few doors away. No, it wasn’t too late even now! He could just forget it all, hail the taxi…

  But the door had opened silently behind him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ (That West Country intonation again.)

  ‘I’m a friend of Mr Sullivan’s.’ (Hardly the customary tone of his Mods tutorials-hesitant and slightly croaky.)

  ‘You have an appointment?’

  He took out the small, oblong card and handed it to her. The typewritten legend was exceedingly brief, but also (as Browne-Smith saw it) exceedingly significant: ‘Please admit bearer’-nothing else, except for that little constellation of asterisks clustered hi the top right-hand corner.

  The woman stood aside and beckoned him over the threshold, closing the door (again noiselessly) behind them. ‘You’re an important client, sir, and we welcome you.’ She smiled appropriately as they moved through the large entrance hall, carpeted in a light-olive shade, with the same carpeting leading up the wide staircase which faced the front door. She turned to him as she walked on ahead up these stairs, and Browne-Smith noticed her inappropriately ugly teeth as she smiled again. ‘All blue cards are on the first floor, sir. I’m afraid we haven’t got our full complement of girls just for the moment-it’s the evenings usually that we have our busiest time. But I’m sure you won’t be disappointed in any way. No one’s ever disappointed here.’