Cut to the Chase (25 page)

On alighting from the train at Stourbridge Junction Wallace had discovered that the town was still some distance away, but there was a railway shuttle service into the town itself, thus the eventual arrival at Stourbridge Town Station.

Not for the first time he noted the difference between Australian and English towns. In England every town has its own character, in many cases its own distinctive building materials dug up from local quarries, and a sprinkling of old buildings that would date back several centuries, in some cases even before Australia was colonised. In Australian towns architecture was very similar wherever you were, the same awnings over the pavements, all built of much the same brick and to the same design. It had often been said that if you were dumped anywhere in Australia you'd feel at home because all towns everywhere looked the same. You wouldn't even know which state you were in, a possible exception being South Australia where the telegraph poles, or stobie poles as they were called, were distinctive, being made of old metal railway tracks and concrete to combat termites.

Stourbridge seemed to have a character all of its own, with occasional buildings that looked as if they had been standing for at least two or three centuries.

He began to walk along High Street which was full of shoppers, mainly women with shopping baskets and wheeling prams. As he wandered up the street and gazed in the shop windows he revelled in the feeling of normality, though he still looked nervously over his shoulder for policemen.

It was during the course of his window gazing that he spotted a book shop over on the other side of the street, with the name Adele Briscoe across the facia. He gazed at it for a few minutes, pondering what to do, now that he had attained his destination he was momentarily stumped. Who was it who said that the worst part of a journey was to arrive?

Finally he crossed the street and sidled up to the shop, peering in crossways through the return window. He couldn't see much, mainly reflection of the street, so he moved across the frontage and peered in, ostensibly viewing the books in the window which confirmed what McKay had said, many tended to be Left oriented.

Straining his eyes to look at the counter beyond, he could see a middle aged woman was serving a man dressed in shirt and jeans who was buying a paperback book. Wallace looked hard and long at the woman, she was aged about early to middle 40's at a guess, dark haired and seemed to look somewhat studious and severe. As the customer turned away to make his exit she looked up and saw Wallace standing near the window, he hastily looked away, moving up the street towards the front of the next door shop.

He looked into the shop as he crossed the book shop doorway, but she was giving her attention to another customer who had appeared from the recesses of the shop. He could see no sign of any male server or assistant in the shop.

He wandered up the street for a few yards and pondered, leant against the buttress between a butchers shop and a newsagency and looked back at the bookshop. He tried to look as if he had no cares in the world as he looked around carefully in both directions for either policemen or brawny Indonesians, taking care not to catch anyone's eye or to smile too much. He had no wish to be reported and subsequently arrested as a prowling vagrant, homosexual or roué. He peered around, there were a couple of men who seemed to be standing around perusing the street like he was, but eventually they walked off, one went into a nearby shop and the other disappeared up the High Street.

Wallace had the camera and its fittings in the small carry case that McKay had given him, which also contained a small camera, with the lens pointing through a hole at the one end. He finally decided to affix the tie camera, but needed somewhere to go as he had to don the tie as well. There was no problem with the size of the camera, but he could hardly start attaching it correctly to his person in the middle of the main street. It had been no surprise to find that it had been manufactured in Japan.

‘What the hell do you expect?' McKay had said scathingly when Wallace had pointed it out. ‘Australians are too busy going out on strike and going to the footy to be able to apply themselves to making stuff like this…' a cynical statement that was very harsh but Wallace didn't take him up on it, they had had enough arguments as it was.

He went into a gents' toilet and locked himself into a cubicle where he did the necessary. The tie looked somewhat incongruous with the clothes he was wearing, but he wasn't out to make a fashion statement. When affixed the camera looked like a brooch or badge or possibly a tie pin, with the main works hidden behind the tie and clipped to the shirt. He wandered back up to the shop and peered in once more. The second customer was still being served by the woman assistant. He watched her as she moved out from the counter and made her way across the shop to the opposite wall where there were more books.

She had an earnest look about her, the sort of look one associated with deeply religious people or those very politically intense. As she walked back to the counter she looked in Wallace's direction and he feigned interest in some books in the shop window. He decided to move away to consider the next move, but his foot caught on a slight unevenness between the footpath and the shop step and he virtually fell into the shop. It had not been his intention to enter it at that point; but his mind was made up for him as he was off balance and off-guard.

‘I'll be with you in a moment,' she said.

Wallace nodded and cast his eyes around the shop, as a bookshop it had a wide range, fiction, reference books and history, though there was a high proportion of political journals and various others that seemed to be Left oriented.

There was a door leading to the rear of the shop which was ajar. He could see someone moving about in the room beyond it. He decided that he may as well call it a day and disappear. He had been intending to wait outside until the suspected Murray Craddock left the shop before taking snap shots.

He ambled over to the door, feigning interest in a range of political biographies, and was about to sidle back into the street when a man entered the shop through the door at the rear.

‘Can I help you, sir?'

‘Yes, thanks! G'day. How yer going?' Wallace replied, being taken completely by surprise. He indicated the nearest shelf of books which happened to be the nearest to hand, ‘Er…these are an interesting selection.'

‘Jeez! It's good to hear an Aussie voice again, mate. Where yer from?'

Wallace felt adrenalin course all the way into his boots and back again. He had done it again! He had a mental picture of McKay clapping his hand to his forehead in exasperation. After easing his way through all those damned canal locks and conversing with other boatmen and the occasional lock-keeper, entering pubs and ordering food and conversing with barmen and waiters without once uttering any Australian idioms, he had finally made contact with his quarry and then given himself away twice in two short sentences. It was also quite likely that being caught in such an off-guard manner his Australian accent and intonations had come to the fore. He looked helplessly at the man who he now assumed must be the missing Murray Craddock and shook his proffered hand.

As Wallace travelled back to Birmingham on the train from Stourbridge he felt dazed. Though the situation as it had developed did appear to be likely to assist him with the task that McKay had set, Wallace was nonetheless appalled that he could have given himself away so easily. The use of ‘G'day' was elementary, anyone of Australian origin would have picked that one out, the use of ‘thanks' instead of ‘please' may not be so obvious to those not versed in Australian idiom, but: ‘How yer going?' was another giveaway. Clearly he would have to watch it. There were other expressions Wallace had managed to curb so far, the ubiquitous ‘No worries', ‘too right' with its derivative of ‘too bloody right' and the instantly recognisable ‘fair dinkum'.

True, Craddock was or had been an Australian and would notice them immediately, but there could be expatriate Australians in the English county police forces that could pounce on them at once if Wallace uttered them.

He had had a long chat with the man he assumed could be Craddock, who had introduced himself as Adam Morris, Wallace passing himself off as an Australian on holiday and touring, which was probably reasonably truthful enough. Morris, or Craddock, had given him his home address, and an invitation to dinner the following week. Wallace had hesitated to accept the man's bread when he was attempting to spy on him, but such had been the other's delight at meeting a fellow Aussie that Wallace had not been able to put him off.

The lady in the shop was Adele Briscoe, she seemed to be a quite intense type, judging by her conversations with customers who came in, she appeared to be conversant with any author in whom they were interested which indicated she knew her stuff when it came to peddling books, and also the details of any Communist writers, coups d'état or Revolutions.

Wallace found Craddock's invitation difficult to refuse; during the somewhat one sided conversation Wallace had already ascertained that he lived nearby. He decided that if he did attend the man's house or lodgings his base had better be nearer to hand. He had also managed to manipulate the tie camera and pressed the button a few times, he hoped the shots came out.

It was dusk when Wallace approached the canal basin in Birmingham; after leaving the railway station he had caught a bus along Broad Street that dropped him near the entrance to the canal basin at Gas Street. He passed through the narrow arch that led to the canal bank and then pulled up with a jolt when he heard voices. He could see shadowy figures moving about on and near his boat and promptly dropped flat behind a row of garbage bins.

‘Is this bastard ever going to come back?'

‘No sign of him, he's been gone a long time.'

‘Well he must be back sometime tonight or maybe tomorrow. We get him then…eh? Ravindran will be avenged!'

‘Well he won't be coming back tonight now, I'd say, he'll be staying somewhere like he did the night before last. He'll be back tomorrow if not tonight.'

There were four of them, they walked up and down the paved area alongside a hamburger shop and then some way back along the tow path and paused near the bins where Wallace crouched trembling with fear.

‘Do we hang on any longer?'

‘In this cold? We'll wait in the car for another hour or so. Go and fetch it and park it near the arch.'

One of them vanished through the archway and the others lit cigarettes.

‘Why not wait here behind these bins?'

‘You're welcome if you can stand the smell!' Wallace nearly froze with horror, but had time to agree with the sentiments. Somebody had ditched something nasty in the left hand bin and it stank to high heaven.

About three to four minutes passed and then Wallace caught sight of headlights sliding across the archway and the sound of a car engine on the roadway above.

‘Come on, we'll wait in the car, it's too cold to hang around out here. We'll see him when he comes back. To reach the boat he's got to pass through the archway.'

They moved off and disappeared in the direction of Gas Street. Wallace lay behind the bin for about ten more minutes, suspecting a possible trap or, at best, that someone could come back having forgotten something. But nothing happened, he crept out furtively and ran at the crouch down the paved tow path and cautiously boarded the boat. He had inevitable fears of a fifth man lying in wait on the boat, but after crawling around on hands and knees on the deck and peering cautiously around corners down below he was satisfied there was nobody there.

It was as cold on the boat as it was outside, he could appreciate that the four men, whoever they were, would prefer to wait in a warm motor vehicle sooner than hang around either by the boat or on it.

Wallace crept down below and considered what to do. Clearly he had to move; to stay there would be suicide. He picked up the canal map and examined it with a torch, holding a blanket over his head, the map and the torch.

He would have to pass under Broad Street, retracing his steps to some degree, and then take another arm to travel in the direction of Stourbridge. So he had to turn the boat around, a good idea if attempting to throw them off the scent. Dare he start the engine? Maybe not, it would have to be sheer muscle until he had manoeuvred under the bridge and was well out of earshot.

Wallace unhitched the boat and armed himself with a barge pole, reflecting that it may also come in handy as a weapon if they returned. He fended off and the boat's stern swung into the centre of the canal. He prayed that no other craft would come in at a high rate of knots while he was executing the manoeuvre, though it was highly unlikely at this time of night. He ran to the bow and pushed hard, fortunately the canal basin was wide at this point. Nevertheless the bow hit the opposite bank, he fended off again and nearly fell overboard.