The Green Inker

THE GREEN-INKER

By

Chester Stern

Published by Chester Stern at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Chester Stern

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PROLOGUE

If it had not been for Polly the body might never have been found.

It lay not ten feet from the path but unseen behind the thicket. Even the passing of the seasons might not have revealed the grisly secret, for the spiky green sepulchre beneath which it lay was an evergreen holly bush whose leaves would not ever be wholly shed. Eventually the irreversible process of decay, accelerated by the ceaseless toil of insects, would have stripped the body of its human form leaving just a skeleton. Even the bones might have been displaced by passing scavengers so that the carcass would soon have been unrecognisable as a boy.

Polly walked this path every day of her life but she never ventured into the undergrowth. As a youngster she had gambolled in the long grass intrigued by squirrels and fascinated by rabbits. Nowadays she just plodded along. Head down. Drooly jowls dangling ears, and greying muzzle. A soppy old dog, as her owner affectionately described her.

Today something infinitesimal caused Polly to stop in her tracks. The faintest of smells carried on the light summer breeze, perhaps.

Her owner was a hundred yards ahead. Out of sight. Around the next bend in the track.

Polly barked. A single bark. Harsh. Urgent. Polly was not a barking dog. Her owner stopped, turned, and called her name. When she did not appear he walked back to where he had last seen her. Puzzled by her disappearance he called again. He was answered by a whine, a pathetic canine whimper. Polly was distressed. Her owner plunged into the thicket in the direction from which the sound had come and found his dog, her tail tucked firmly between her hind legs, standing guard over the body.

In an instant he knew the child. Instinctively.

Naked. Lying face up. Creamy skin with a greyish tinge in the half-light beneath the branches. His arms outstretched above his head as if in exultant celebration. His eyes wide open. Pale blue with an opaque translucency as they gazed heavenward. Sightless in death.

At first glance he appeared perfect. Untouched. Undamaged. Alongside his head, neatly folded, a pile of clothes. Grey socks, grey trousers, white shirt, and the distinctive green and black striped blazer of The Wykeham School.

This was the child for whom the entire nation had been searching these past ten days.

Polly’s owner knew exactly whom he had discovered. And a great melancholy engulfed him.

CHAPTER ONE

Barrington Percival Shakeshaft chuckled to himself.

The involuntary laugh set off a paroxysm of coughing. A rumbling, baritone, thundering, deep within his diaphragm. The cough of a lifelong smoker. He removed the Meerschaum pipe from between his teeth and allowed the spasm to run its phlegmy course.

When his chest had stopped heaving, he lifted the half-rimmed spectacles from the end of his nose, took a red-and-white polka dot silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his tweed hunter jacket, and wiped the moisture from the corner of his eyes.

Then he replaced the thin clay stem of the pipe in the gap, between his nicotine-stained lower front teeth, which seemed custom-made for the purpose, re-adjusted his reading glasses and, still smiling broadly, returned to perusal of the folded newspaper on his lap.

He leant forward and selected a pen from a forest of writing implements propped haphazardly in a souvenir Coronation mug on the desk in front of him. They were mostly ballpoint pens. And mostly green.

He circled the short article he’d been reading in the Surrey and Sussex Free Advertiser. The headline read: POLICE CHIEF’S SON STARS IN TV MURDER RE-RUN. The item began: ‘The son of Surrey Detective Chief Inspector Patrick O’Shaughnessy – the man leading the hunt for the killer of Dorking schoolboy Charlie Parkin a year ago – is to play the part of the dead child in a first anniversary reconstruction of the grisly crime for television.

‘Thirteen year-old Daniel O’Shaughnessy…’

‘This’ll do nicely’, said Shakeshaft to himself. ‘Oh yes, this’ll do very nicely indeed’. He giggled again. This time taking care not to set off another coughing fit.

Barrington Shakeshaft would not have called himself an eccentric. But others would. And did.

Born an only child in Brighton during the war, his upbringing had been anything but conventional. His father was a jazz saxophonist who met his doting mother, a jazz singer, in the louche Mayfair club where they nightly made their living. Their son was cared for by his maternal grandmother and a succession of scatty aunts before being packed off to boarding school as soon as decency allowed. By the age of thirteen he was a scholar at the exclusive Christ’s Hospital public school for boys in Sussex.

At sixteen he quit school and joined a bank in the City of London but soon found the life of a clerk too restricting and ran away to sea.

In his time he had smuggled drugs for the Mafia, spied for the British security services, run guns for African rebels, worked as a stuntman on Spaghetti Westerns, done a stint of body guarding for an Arab prince, and been part of a CIA hit squad.

He was fond of saying that his genes had been ‘hardwired to adventure’. Indeed it was his favourite saying. He repeated it often along with a succession of colourful tales from his past, which most people he encountered took with a large pinch of salt. But those who troubled to investigate further found that almost everything he claimed about his extraordinary life turned out to be true.

Now in his sixties Shakeshaft lived peaceably with his dogs and his horses on a smallholding near Pyecombe in Sussex – a parcel of land with farm buildings, acquired from the proceeds of one of his legally dubious, and tactfully forgotten, escapades.

His daughter and son-in-law, along with their two children, actually lived in the rambling Victorian farmhouse while Shakeshaft himself, in keeping with his nomadic history, chose to live in a caravan in the paddock.

He referred to it constantly as a caravan but, in fact, those who were expert in such things would have described it as a sophisticated modern mobile home. It was a Bluebird Calypso. Thirty-five feet long by twelve feet wide containing a spacious sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which had been turned into a study-cum-office. Running water was plumbed in and the electricity supply had been extended from the main house.

Barrington Shakeshaft had retained his need for solitude and independence whilst not sacrificing any of the modern comforts.

These days he spent his time thinking up ever more ingenious ways of duping the gullible. In recent years he had discovered a talent for reproducing Old Masters and at one time made a more than decent profit from selling his forged paintings to art experts who ought to have known better. He had even fooled the specialists on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow with a fake Cezanne, which he knocked up in about four hours.

Nowadays, between riding, walking and tinkering with his motorbike and his sports car, he amused himself by inventing hoaxes.

Shakeshaft’s hoaxes were never carried out for malicious purposes nor, any longer, for financial gain. They were joyfully imaginative things - a celebration of his wit and creativity. They were part of what he liked to call his Robin Hood Impulse – a desire to prick the pompous, expose the pretentious, and embarrass those he thought had become too overbearingly self-confident.

Lately he had taken to exploiting the gullibility of newspapers, whose voracious appetite for more and more titillating stories to give their readers sometimes caused them not to question the sources too closely. The consequences could be devastatingly embarrassing and often costly too.

Today Barrington Shakeshaft had a simple plan in mind and he was anxious to share it.

A noise outside captured his attention. He looked up at the window. Several assorted pairs of striped pyjamas and floral boxer shorts pegged to a makeshift washing line, strung between the corner of the caravan and an apple tree in the orchard, flapped idly in the breeze. Between them perched a blackbird singing his heart out.

Shakeshaft smiled a knowing smile and drained the remains of his coffee. He stood up, folded the newspaper into four and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He glanced at himself in the mirror and stroked the full bushy beard he still wore – a legacy from his seafaring days. It had once been thick, lustrous, and black. Now it was a dull sandy brown with an inch-wide white stripe running from top to bottom just offset to the right of his nose.

He took a deerstalker hat from a peg on the back of the door and left the caravan. Then, jumping aboard his pride and joy, a lovingly restored bright yellow 1954 Hydra-Glide Harley Davidson, he roared out of the gate in a cloud of dust and gravel.

Bound for Hassocks railway station and thence, to London.

* * * * * *

Logan Hunter took a sip of his gin and tonic and fingered the silver cufflink on his right wrist. He looked at his watch. The minister was late.

As a regular, and valued, customer of La Poule au Pot he no longer had to ask for a discreet table when making a booking. The staff had long ago guessed that he was a journalist and understood instinctively that his lunch guests would not part with the kind of confidential information he clearly sought unless they were sure that they could not be overheard. All the signs were there. The furtive glances. The leaning forward. The whispered exchanges.

So Hunter was almost always given the same table for two, tucked away in the corner by the window. Not that anyone could hear very much at all above the hubbub when lunchtime was in full swing at La Poule au Pot.

Pimlico’s iconic French eaterie had been a favourite with Logan Hunter ever since he landed the job of Chief Crime Correspondent and acquired an expense account. He liked the rustic feel of it – the French farmhouse décor, complete with dried flowers, and the robust peasant fare. He found the Gallic insouciance of the waiters charming. But most of all he loved the seemingly bottomless Magnums of house red. And, invariably, so did his guests.

Luc Ironside bounded in and shook hands. Brisk and businesslike. Not the slightest hint of an apology for being late. Just a cheery: ‘Hello Logan. How nice to see you again. How are you?’

There was always an extra neatness about Ironside. He looked the sort who was fastidious about his appearance. Probably took longer than his wife to get dressed in the mornings. Cuffs always protruding a regulation half inch from the sleeves of his jacket - just enough to show off discreet but expensive cufflinks. Ties always silk, usually paisley patterned and always tied with an immaculate Windsor knot. His nails impeccable clean and neatly manicured.

His dark hair was short and crinkly - greying at the temples. Some might have thought him a good-looking man but his features were too small and perfect to be regarded as handsome in the masculine sense.

‘Good to see you too, minister’, said Hunter. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

In his strange, and often surreal, world of crime reporting there were four groups of people from whom Logan Hunter routinely obtained information - criminals, policemen, victims of crime, and politicians. Of these Hunter much preferred the company of policemen. They were only really interested in the hospitality his expense account could buy. They were distrustful of the press, yes, but reckoned they were smart enough to handle themselves in the company of a simple hack who was buying the drinks. They were reluctant to reveal the innermost secrets of their investigations but quick to see the advantage of publicity in the right circumstances. Each side was using the other. There were mutual benefits.

Politicians, on the other hand, were all take and no give. They always had an agenda. Self-promotion was the name of the game. They enjoyed an expensive lunch or a bottle of fine wine as much as the next man but their information and opinions could not be bought. They were freely available. They would do or say anything just to get their names in the paper.

Hunter had known Luc Ironside for several years because, as a backbencher, he specialised in home affairs and could be relied upon to respond instantly with a pithy quote. In opposition he had chaired the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee and now he was a junior minister at the Home Office responsible for policing.

Today’s meeting was more of a social get-together than a working lunch. Hunter was keen to keep abreast of the government’s thinking on the law and order issues of the day but he was keener still to remain friends with a man whose political star was clearly in the ascendancy.

For a while they caught up on current Westminster gossip and chatted amicably about the latest stories to be grabbing the headlines. Hunter started with soupe a l’oignon and the minister began with pate de foie gras.

They both knew the convention that the guest was expected to sing for his supper so, when the bouillabaisse and cassoulet had been served, Ironside leaned forward and said with a smug air: ‘I’ve a little stocking-filler for you, Logan. You’re getting it first so I’m sure you’ll be able to make something of it’.

Hunter, whose mouth was full, merely grunted and nodded assent.

‘We’re about to announce a new forensic science initiative under the government’s crime reduction strategy’, said Ironside. ‘Its been trialled in Northamptonshire and Avon and we’ll be rolling it out nationwide next month’.

Hunter’s heart sank. Dull, dull, dull!, he thought. He could just imagine the conversation between the Home Secretary’s political adviser and the Home Office press office. Luc’s being lunched by Logan Hunter from the Mail on Sunday today. Is there anything we can plant with him? Any upcoming non-controversial initiatives we need to get out there on a suck-it-and-see basis?

It was not the kind of story that his Editor would find what he called sexy but both sides knew that, being offered as an exclusive by a government minister, it could not be ignored, so Hunter would have to try and find room for it in the paper.

He put his knife and fork down, took a notebook from his pocket, and feigned interest. ‘So how will it work?’, he asked.

‘Well, as you know we have been able to deliver significant improvements and extra efficiencies in the Forensic Science Service since we took away its agency status and made it a government-owned company’, said the minister. ‘The partnership with private companies along with the £50m we put in to prime the pump has produced remarkable results. But the police have been asking for more so now we are going to extend the service provided by the regional laboratories by setting up satellite laboratories, kind of mini-mobile labs in large vehicles manned by forensic scientists, which will travel to the scenes of major ongoing crimes’.

He droned on for several minutes, extolling the virtues of the new initiative, while his host politely asked relevant questions and made a few casual notes.

At length Hunter put them both out of their misery by suggesting that he had recorded enough quotes from the minister for the story he intended to write and could catch up on any extra details by calling the press office after lunch.

At this Ironside relaxed and they both tucked in to the claret.

‘Fascinating stuff forensic science’, said the minister ‘I toyed with the idea of a career in pathology myself at one time. I started off reading medicine, you know, but couldn’t handle all the practical so switched to law. Matter of fact that’s how I met my wife. She was a medical student too but she didn’t follow it through either. What a loss to the medical profession, eh?’

The wine seemed to loosen the minister’s tongue and he proceeded to be less than discreet about his boss, the Home Secretary.

‘David’s getting a lot of flak in cabinet for the tough stance he’s taking over the firemen’, he said. ‘I’ve tried to warn him that it is far too early in the dispute to dig your heels in on a matter of principle. They’ve got a case and public opinion is behind them but David wants to see himself as a latter-day Margaret Thatcher so he is coming out with this I won’t be threatened or bullied into negotiating with public servants whose first duty is to protect us all crap.

‘The Prime Minister is not at all happy. He wants a softly-softly approach. He can see this thing escalating into another very unpopular strike with the military having to take on the fire fighting role like they did the last time’.

Hunter made placatory noises but the minister was not finished.

‘And he made a right cock-up with that embarrassing statement to the House the other day about the terrorist suspect under house arrest who turns out not to be a terrorist at all’, he guffawed.

I’m not the only one he’s talking to like this, thought Hunter. This is a whispering campaign. The man’s ambition is all consuming. He’s manoeuvring himself to be the next Home Secretary.

‘Doesn’t sound like he’ll survive the next cabinet reshuffle’, he said, almost to himself.

‘And that may not be too far away’, responded Ironside. ‘Anyway I’d better get off to the House. Thanks for a lovely lunch.

‘Next time we meet I may have something very interesting to tell you’.

He stood up, shook hands, tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger, winked, and was gone.

* * * * * *

The voice on the telephone was deep and resonant. The vowels were rounded and mellifluous. A blatantly bogus attempt to convey gravitas.

‘Is Himself at home?’, asked the voice.

The Deputy News Editor recognised the caller immediately. It had been his misfortune to field many such calls in the past. But he wasn’t letting on. ‘I’m sorry. Who?’, he asked.

‘Is His Lordship deigning to receive visitors today?’, replied the voice.

‘I’m sorry, this is the news desk of The Mail on Sunday’, said the executive, ‘who exactly is it you are after?’

‘The world’s finest crime reporter’, came the instant response.

‘Who shall I say is calling?’

‘A friend. Just a friend. He’ll know’.

The Deputy News Editor put his hand over the mouthpiece and yelled across the newsroom: ‘Loag. Your favourite Green-Inker is here’. He giggled. ‘He wants to see you urgently. Says it is something to your advantage’.

Logan Hunter looked up from his workstation and rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘I’m too busy’, he yelled back. ‘Tell him to get a coffee in the canteen and I’ll pop down in fifteen’.

The news desk executive conveyed the message but moments later came back with: ‘He says he’ll be over the road in Boogie’s. He’ll see you there in fifteen’.

‘Oh God, he wants a sesh’, groaned Hunter. ‘I can’t get into a drinking session with him. Not today. I’ve just got too much on’.

He glanced at his screen. ‘Look Pete, I’ll just knock off this piece about the Iranian terrorist that they want for an early page then I’ll nip out for twenty minutes, no more. Okay?’

The Deputy News Editor nodded.

The green ink thing had been a bit of a revelation to Logan Hunter when he first arrived in London.

He was used to receiving letters from readers.

In the early part of his career it had been a source of immense pride to receive tangible proof that somebody had actually read what he had written and was sufficiently interested to note his name and communicate with him personally. He replied to every letter conscientiously and studiously investigated every allegation of wrongdoing no matter how far fetched.

But after a while he realised that he was not the only reporter to receive fan mail. His correspondents were not adoring acolytes so captivated by his golden prose that they simply had to touch base with him. He soon learned that every newspaper receives a daily postbag of letters, mostly addressed to named writers. They range from well-meaning old ladies with strong opinions and innovative suggestions for improvements to society, to prisoners languishing in jail and trying to prove their