On a building site somewhere in Birmingham, the burly foreman, Joe Lodge, is having a disagreement with his moustachioed boss, Steve Burrell. Both men are originally from Swansea. Steve’s been cutting costs on equipment and materials. He tries to explain his reasons why. “It’s not my fault I’ve got 24,000 quid tied up in houses that aren’t sold yet,” he protests. “Just because the bank have cut my overdraft –”
Joe, unconvinced, interrupts. “Not your fault?”
“– they get all windy,” continues Steve. “But once I’ve sold them –”
“Overpriced, jerry-built pigsties run up on the –”
“They’re good houses,” asserts Steve. “They’ll go in the end and –”
Joe shakes his head. “You’re finished. You know that?”
“Once we’ve turned this corner –”
“Thought yourself too smart for the rest of us in Mumbles Bay, didn’t you?” accuses Joe. “Walked out on the only bit of hard work you ever –” Steve walks out again now. Telling Joe to get lost, he marches off, towards his nearby parked car. Joe shouts after him. “Sniffed around for a bit of money to marry so you could have it cushy. No learning a trade for you. Might get your mitts dirty!”
Steve is now by his car. “You’ll be looking for another job in a minute, Joe,” he warns.
“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” replies Joe, not sounding particularly concerned about it.
“We’ll clean up,” says Steve, optimistic as ever. “Once we’ve sold the houses – we’ll clean up, all right.” He gets into the car.
“Call yourself a builder!” shouts Joe, before going back to work. He moves to a ladder, still boiling with rage. “Doesn’t he ever learn?” he mutters to himself, as he begins to climb. “Buying on the cheap from the wide boys…” Suddenly, his foot slips on an iron rung, then crashes through the two wooden rungs beneath it. A workmate, Charlie Ridge, sees what’s happening. He calls to Joe to hang on, as he runs over to help. Joe clings desperately to the ladder. Then, with a scream, he falls. He lands, on his back, in a pile of sand.
Steve stares in horror from his car. Then he gets out and rushes to the scene. Joe is still lying where he fell as Charlie and the other builders run up to him. Steve’s anxiety manifests itself as anger. “What are you playing at?” he demands.
Joe looks up. “Look at that ladder. How many times have I told you?”
Steve turns and sees the shattered, splintered ladder. “I’ll get some replacements,” he promises. “But with everything else on my plate, I’d have thought you –”
Joe looks alarmed as he tries to get up. “Here, I –” Charlie extends a hand to help him, but is brusquely rebuffed. “I can manage,” snaps Joe.
“What’s the matter now?” asks Steve.
“My legs,” says Joe. “I –” With an edge of fear in his voice, Steve tells him to get up. Again, Charlie reaches out to help Joe. “Leave me alone!” cries Joe. He’s scrabbling in the sand, struggling desperately to get up. He turns to Steve. “Blast your eyes, Steve. I can’t move. I can’t ruddy well move!”
Steve looks on, appalled, incredulous, alarmed.
* * *
In London, Marker has the gas fire on. It’s supposed to be summer, but it feels cold in his attic office. Marker is sitting at his desk, looking at a bill he’s just opened. He winces at what he sees. Several other demands for payment lie scattered across the desk. There’s a knock on the door. Marker answers it and looks questioningly at the man who steps inside. “Beck,” says the man.
“Ah,” says Marker, remembering him. “Solicitor. You wrote to me.”
Beck nods. “Ten days ago.”
Marker quotes the letter from memory as he closes the door. “‘Come and see me in Birmingham and I might have something to interest you.’ Long way to go for a ‘might’.”
“The last job you did for me worked out well enough, didn’t it?”
“That was three years ago,” recalls Marker, returning to his desk. “Runaway wife. Two months tracking her down so that her husband could slap her face as soon as I returned her and then walk out on her himself. Worked out well?”
Beck sits down. “You got your money.”
“It was a struggle.” Marker looks at the bill again. “Who is it this time?” he asks. “Another builder?”
“No,” replies Beck. “Not another builder.” Marker looks up, surprised. “Burrell asked for you particularly,” adds Beck.
“Aren’t there any inquiry agents in Birmingham?” asks Marker.
“Several,” says Beck. “I checked with a few when you didn’t answer my letter –”
“I was busy.”
“So were they, I discovered.” Drily, Beck adds, “Glad to know you are.”
“Steve Burrell,” remembers Marker. “What’s he lost this time?”
“His foreman,” replies Beck. “Fell off a ladder and couldn’t get up again. Paralysed from the waist down.”
“Broken spine?”
“Not according to the doctors. Hysterical paralysis, they call it.”
“Hysterical?”
“It’s the insurance company that’s laughing, though. Burrell’s been cheating.”
“But he can’t,” Marker points out. “Accident insurance is compulsory.”
“It’s the small print he’s been cheating on. The bit about keeping his equipment in good order at all times. The ladder his foreman fell off was rotten – like all his ladders. There wasn’t a sound one in the place. Joe Lodge, the foreman, had been on to him for weeks about it.”
“So what’s Burrell got to pay out now?”
“Lodge is suing him for £30,000,” says Beck. “After that, it’s Burrell who won’t be able to get up.”
“Where do I come in?” asks Marker.
“Lodge fell on to a pile of soft sand.” Beck raises an ironic eyebrow. “Paralysed for life?”
“You’ll never prove he’s shamming.”
“Nobody’s asking me to.”
“Suppose I can’t?”
“Then Burrell will lose his business and still be paying off for the rest of his life.”
“Leaving just what for me?” wonders Marker.
“I dare say you can have the clothes off his back.”
Marker turns off the fire. “I’m sorry, Mr Beck, but I don’t have to go to Birmingham to get a new suit.”
Beck regards the one he’s wearing. “Looks as if you ought to go somewhere for one.”
“People are a bit slow paying their bills, that’s all,” claims Marker.
Beck glances at the bills on the desk. “Evidently.” He takes a closer look at the electricity bill. “Steep, isn’t it?”
Marker agrees. “Perpendicular. I must have been away and left everything on.”
“Well, it’s up to you,” says Beck. “I was in London, so I thought I’d drop in.”
“I can’t afford to go to Birmingham.”
“Just what can you afford? Light?”
“London’s my hunting ground, Mr Beck. This is where my contacts are. Once they find I’m not around… well, no one asks for you twice in this game.”
“I did,” the solicitor points out.
“Leave the office empty for a month and with no one to answer the phone when it rings, it soon won’t ring at all.”
“Has it rung much lately?”
“Things’ll pick up,” says Marker, with more confidence than he feels.
“I tried to call you myself yesterday. They said your phone was out of service.”
Marker frowns. “But I was using it myself only –”
“Out of service,” repeats Beck, very precisely. “Not the same as out of order.” Marker quickly fumbles in a drawer, pulls out the phone bill and looks at it. “They always cut off the incoming calls to start with,” continues Beck. “Usual practice.”
“I only have to slip a cheque in the post,” says Marker.
Beck smiles as he stands up. “There’s a train from Paddington at 9.10. See you at my office when you get there.” Beck goes out. Marker thinks.
* * *
A few hours later, a train pulls into Birmingham’s Snow Hill station. It draws to a halt. Marker alights, carrying a small case, and moves to the forecourt to get a taxi.
* * *
Steve Burrell’s office is a small room with a window looking down on the builders’ yard below. A door leads off to stairs down to the yard, while another leads to Steve’s private flat. Steve’s clerk, Arthur Holt, is just rising from one of the desks. Steve is pacing, nervously, but trying hard to appear cool and matter-of-fact about the whole thing. “He’s had it in for me for twenty years,” claims Steve. “That’s all there is behind this, you know. Jealousy.”
“He was a good foreman,” says Holt, gloomily.
“You know what, Arthur? When I think of poor old Joe, I’m sorry for him.” Steve reminds Holt that the doctors can’t find anything medically wrong with Joe.
“But they’re not going to stand up in court and say he’s a fraud, are they?” Holt points out. “They’ve made that plain enough, and short of that, Mr Burrell –”
“I’ve got someone to cut Joe down to size,” Steve assures him. “He’ll soon catch him out.” As is on cue, Marker appears at the door. Steve greets him, effusively. “Marker! Talk of the devil! Good to see you again. Still on the ball, eh?” He gestures towards the other door. “Come into the flat. It’s a bit more comfortable.”
Steve and Marker go through into the adjoining flat, which is small but expensively, flashily, furnished. Besides the door to the office, another leads to a bedroom and another to a kitchenette. Steve sits down on a comfortable sofa. Marker remains standing, looking around. “Nice place,” he remarks.
Steve nods, casually. “Not bad for nine guineas a week.”
Marker looks incredulous. “Nine guineas? I pay seven pounds in London for one draughty office.”
Steve invites him to take a seat, and begins to explain why he thinks Joe Lodge might be shamming. “He’s out to ruin me, Marker.” Steve reveals that he and Joe grew up on the same street. “Went to school together, came to Birmingham together, started work together. Builders out at Smethwick.” He gets up and goes to a drawer. “The boss was tight. Had us fagging for the foreman, making the men’s tea, sweeping out the muck.” He takes out a bottle of pills. “After a couple of weeks, I upped and went. And that’s why Joe’s trying to break me now.”
“Because you turned in a job?” asks Marker.
Steve nods as he opens the bottle. “He never forgave me.”
“He stuck it?”
“Course he stuck it,” says Steve. He pauses to swallow one of the pills, explaining that they’re for migraines. “They lay me out flat if I don’t take precautions. Yes, Joe stuck it. Solid, reliable, nose-to-the-grindstone Joe. He’s a great sticker. But this is the joke, Marker. While Joe slaved away learning to lay bricks, I just lived on my wits and the bookies and a few women, and never settled to anything. By rights, I ought to have come a cropper long ago. But what happened?”
Marker guesses. “You came into money?”
“Right. I ran into Margot Stratton. Her old man set me up with a business of my own as a wedding present – and six months later, I’m Joe’s boss. See what I mean? In Joe’s eyes, I’m the living proof that there’s no justice.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” says Marker. “Why did he come to work for you if he felt like that?”
“Joe always gets a kick out of playing the martyr,” explains Steve. “I offered him a partnership, you know, but he turned it down.” Marker asks where Joe is now. “At home,” replies Steve. “They let him out of hospital a couple of days ago. Get in his house, Marker. He must be in and out of that wheelchair a dozen times a day. A photograph, an eyewitness? You’ve only got to catch him once.”
“Who’s looking after him? His wife?”
Steve looks cagey. “No. Actually… he got rid of her six months ago.” He puts the pills away. “She’s living with her sister at the moment.”
“Know her phone number?”
“You don’t need to bother her. All you have to do, Marker –”
Marker insists. “I know how to do my job, Mr Burrell. Where can I get hold of his wife?”
* * *
Liz Lodge, a blonde with a beehive hairdo, sits waiting on a bench outside the Bull Ring Shopping Centre later that day. After a moment, Marker joins her. He apologises for being late. “Took me longer than I thought. How do you ever find your way around this place?”
Liz shrugs. “You get used to it. What can I do for you?”
A little awkwardly, Marker explains. “I’ve been hired by Steve Burrell to… ascertain whether your husband is really paralysed.” Liz doesn’t react. “Do you think he is?” asks Marker.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you consider – for everybody’s sake – going back to him?”
Liz looks at Marker, sharply. “To spy on him, you mean?”
“Better than me doing it, surely?”
“It’s your job,” Liz points out. “You do it all the time, don’t you – a detective?”
“I do it when I have to, Mrs Lodge. And in this case… well, if you were to do it for me –”
“I’m his wife.”
“I know,” says Marker. “You could keep it in the family,” he argues. “No need for me to snoop about at all. Nicer all round, I should have thought.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried to go back? As soon as this happened, I went straight off to the hospital. He wouldn’t even see me.”
“Still, he’s home now, and with no one to look after him –”
“The District Nurse looks in twice a day, and Mrs Jarvis next door is doing what she can. He doesn’t need me. He told me again this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Through the letterbox,” says Liz. “That’s the nearest I can get to him. Pleading with my husband through the letterbox of my own house. So what do you deduce from that, Mr Detective? That he is a phoney? That he doesn’t want me in the house in case I catch him out? Or that he simply doesn’t want me in the house anyway? Even if he is paralysed.”
* * *
The next day, Mrs Jarvis, a friendly but outspoken neighbour, is with Joe in his living room. He’s in a wheelchair, filling his pipe. “I’m not having her back, Mrs Jarvis,” he states, cool but blunt.
“She is your wife, Mr Lodge,” Mrs Jarvis points out.
“Hasn’t been behaving like it lately, has she?”
“Who turned her out in the first place?”
“I’d trouble you to keep out of this, Mrs Jarvis,” says Joe. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me. No one can say I’m not grateful, but –”
She interrupts him. “I can’t go on dropping in to do for you – not for ever.”
Joe is unmoved. “You’re under no obligation. I can manage on my own.”
“How?” asks Mrs Jarvis.
“I’ve stood on my own two feet all my life and –” Joe breaks off, realising the absurdity of what he’s just said. “All right, but even in this contraption, I’ll manage. I’ll have £30,000 to look after me. More if I can get it. So no one need worry about me.”
The front doorbell rings. Mrs Jarvis moves to the hallway to answer it.
“If that’s Liz, don’t let her in,” says Joe. Then he propels himself vigorously towards a table, where he picks up some matches to light his pipe.
* * *
Out in the hallway, Mrs Jarvis answers the door. Marker stands there, grinning. “Good morning,” he beams. “Smiler’s the name. I wonder, now. Would the lord and master be at home, by any chance?”
Mrs Jarvis returns to the living room to see. Joe, lit match in hand, looks up from his pipe as she enters. “There’s a bloke at the door wants a word with you, Mr Lodge,” she informs him, adding, rather dubiously, “A Mr Smiler, he says.”
Joe frowns. “Who?”
“Smiler,” says Marker, who’s now standing in the door from the hallway. “Cheerful name for a cheerful bloke.” He glances in the direction of Mrs Jarvis. “I don’t know if your good lady has things to do in the kitchen…” He pointedly holds the door open for her. Puzzled, but taking the hint, she goes. “Woman’s whatsit never done, eh?” smiles Marker as she passes. He closes the door behind her.
“What do you want?” asks Joe.
“Didn’t like to raise it in front of the missus,” claims Marker.
“She’s not the missus,” says Joe. “She’s a neighbour. Now, who are you?”
“Just called in about the payments, sir.” Marker hands Joe a couple of pages of small print to look at. “All written down there if you’d just like to check, sir.” Joe puts his pipe down on the table while he studies the document. “Head Office did drop you a line, I fancy,” lies Marker. “They usually do.” As he says this, he takes the pipe and quietly places it out of Joe’s reach on a high shelf. “Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Just overlooked it, eh? Happens to the best of us.”
Joe looks up from the paperwork. “I don’t owe no one anything!” he says, belligerently. “Never have!”
Marker acts affronted. “I wouldn’t take that tone, sir.”
“What would you take?” asks Joe. “The washing machine?”
“It won’t come to that, sir, I –”
“Go on, take it,” says Joe, challengingly. “Because if you can find a washing machine in this house, you’ve better eyes than I have.”
Marker raises an index finger. “Now, you wouldn’t have been so foolish as to –”
“I’ve never bought anything on the HP in my life. Nor’s the wife.”
“Now, look, Mr Burge –”
Joe looks confused. “Burge? The name’s Lodge. Joe Lodge.”
Marker feigns puzzlement of his own. “But this is…” He takes the document back and reads out the address. “14 Elgin Drive, Birmingham…” He squints at the postal district. “Birmingham 6?”
Joe shakes his head. “You’re not even in the right district. This is 14 Elgin Road. And my name’s Lodge.”
Marker puts on a show of surprise as Mrs Jarvis returns, now wearing her hat and coat, ready to leave. Joe tells Marker to get out. Marker hastily backs away. “All my fault, sir,” he says. “Proper mix-up.” He turns to Mrs Jarvis. “It’s all right, ma’am, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll let myself out.” He retreats into the hallway, leaving the door ajar, still apologising. “My mistake entirely. Frightfully sorry.” He opens the front door and slams it shut – but remains inside the house. He slips quietly into a room opposite.
* * *
In the living room, Mrs Jarvis is taking her leave of Joe. “Bye-bye for now. I’ll look in this afternoon to see if there’s anything, and Nurse’ll be in tonight, I suppose.” She goes to the hallway and out through the front door.
Marker silently emerges from his hiding place to watch Joe through the half-open door. The man is wheeling himself around the room, looking for his pipe. Then he sees it, up on the shelf, where Marker left it. He glares, furious, then turns and looks towards the window. Marker watches, intently, as Joe looks back from the window, then up at the pipe. Joe leans back slightly, as if about to move… when suddenly there’s a ring at the front door. Marker starts, then quickly backs into the kitchen, as Joe propels himself out into the hallway.
“Who is it?” asks Joe. He sees the outline of someone through the glass panes of the door. “Liz?”
“No,” says the voice of Mrs Jarvis. “It’s me. Left my shopping bag.” Joe lets her in. “I’ll forget my own name one day,” she continues.
“You left my pipe where I can’t reach it,” complains Joe, as they move towards the living room.
“I never touched your pipe,” protests Mrs Jarvis.
“Well, I couldn’t have put it on the shelf, could I?”
As they go into the living room, Marker reappears from the kitchen. He hears the incredulous Mrs Jarvis asking, “On the shelf?”, as he creeps towards the front door.
“There it is,” comes Joe’s voice. “How do you expect me to reach that?”
“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaims the voice of Mrs Jarvis, as Marker slips out of the house.
* * *
In the living room, Mrs Jarvis has taken down the pipe. She looks towards the hallway. “He must have done it,” she decides.
“Who?” asks Joe.
“Mr Smiler,” says Mrs Jarvis. “Now, what would he want to do a thing like that for?”
Joe looks at her, quizzically, and then at his pipe.
* * *
That evening, Marker is reporting back to Steve Burrell in the latter’s flat. “You’d have soon got another chance,” reckons Steve. “You should have hung on.”
Marker asks, “Has the thought never struck you, Mr Burrell, that Joe Lodge might really be paralysed?”
Steve looks unhappy. “That’s not the sort of thought I can afford.”
“It could be the only one that makes sense,” reasons Marker.
“£30,000 makes sense, surely.”
“Not if you’re lumbered with a wheelchair to get it.”
“He’ll run my business well enough from a wheelchair. And as long as he doesn’t have a wife around to watch him, he’ll be able to stretch his legs when he feels like it, too.”
“He must hate your guts.”
“He does.”
“But why?” wonders Marker. “You can’t tell me that just because you struck it rich when you married Margot Stratton –”
He stops as they hear Liz’s voice out in the office. “You in, darling?” she calls. “Steve?” Steve looks awkward. Marker looks surprised. Liz comes in and stops short, embarrassed, as she sees that Steve already has a visitor. “Mr Marker,” she says.
“You’d better come in, Liz,” says Steve, uncomfortably. “You’ve met Marker, haven’t you?”
Marker stares at them both. “You two?” he says, his astonishment turning to anger and disappointment. “For Pete’s sake, why didn’t you tell me?”
Joe, unconvinced, interrupts. “Not your fault?”
“– they get all windy,” continues Steve. “But once I’ve sold them –”
“Overpriced, jerry-built pigsties run up on the –”
“They’re good houses,” asserts Steve. “They’ll go in the end and –”
Joe shakes his head. “You’re finished. You know that?”
“Once we’ve turned this corner –”
“Thought yourself too smart for the rest of us in Mumbles Bay, didn’t you?” accuses Joe. “Walked out on the only bit of hard work you ever –” Steve walks out again now. Telling Joe to get lost, he marches off, towards his nearby parked car. Joe shouts after him. “Sniffed around for a bit of money to marry so you could have it cushy. No learning a trade for you. Might get your mitts dirty!”
Steve is now by his car. “You’ll be looking for another job in a minute, Joe,” he warns.
“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” replies Joe, not sounding particularly concerned about it.
“We’ll clean up,” says Steve, optimistic as ever. “Once we’ve sold the houses – we’ll clean up, all right.” He gets into the car.
“Call yourself a builder!” shouts Joe, before going back to work. He moves to a ladder, still boiling with rage. “Doesn’t he ever learn?” he mutters to himself, as he begins to climb. “Buying on the cheap from the wide boys…” Suddenly, his foot slips on an iron rung, then crashes through the two wooden rungs beneath it. A workmate, Charlie Ridge, sees what’s happening. He calls to Joe to hang on, as he runs over to help. Joe clings desperately to the ladder. Then, with a scream, he falls. He lands, on his back, in a pile of sand.
Steve stares in horror from his car. Then he gets out and rushes to the scene. Joe is still lying where he fell as Charlie and the other builders run up to him. Steve’s anxiety manifests itself as anger. “What are you playing at?” he demands.
Joe looks up. “Look at that ladder. How many times have I told you?”
Steve turns and sees the shattered, splintered ladder. “I’ll get some replacements,” he promises. “But with everything else on my plate, I’d have thought you –”
Joe looks alarmed as he tries to get up. “Here, I –” Charlie extends a hand to help him, but is brusquely rebuffed. “I can manage,” snaps Joe.
“What’s the matter now?” asks Steve.
“My legs,” says Joe. “I –” With an edge of fear in his voice, Steve tells him to get up. Again, Charlie reaches out to help Joe. “Leave me alone!” cries Joe. He’s scrabbling in the sand, struggling desperately to get up. He turns to Steve. “Blast your eyes, Steve. I can’t move. I can’t ruddy well move!”
Steve looks on, appalled, incredulous, alarmed.
* * *
In London, Marker has the gas fire on. It’s supposed to be summer, but it feels cold in his attic office. Marker is sitting at his desk, looking at a bill he’s just opened. He winces at what he sees. Several other demands for payment lie scattered across the desk. There’s a knock on the door. Marker answers it and looks questioningly at the man who steps inside. “Beck,” says the man.
“Ah,” says Marker, remembering him. “Solicitor. You wrote to me.”
Beck nods. “Ten days ago.”
Marker quotes the letter from memory as he closes the door. “‘Come and see me in Birmingham and I might have something to interest you.’ Long way to go for a ‘might’.”
“The last job you did for me worked out well enough, didn’t it?”
“That was three years ago,” recalls Marker, returning to his desk. “Runaway wife. Two months tracking her down so that her husband could slap her face as soon as I returned her and then walk out on her himself. Worked out well?”
Beck sits down. “You got your money.”
“It was a struggle.” Marker looks at the bill again. “Who is it this time?” he asks. “Another builder?”
“No,” replies Beck. “Not another builder.” Marker looks up, surprised. “Burrell asked for you particularly,” adds Beck.
“Aren’t there any inquiry agents in Birmingham?” asks Marker.
“Several,” says Beck. “I checked with a few when you didn’t answer my letter –”
“I was busy.”
“So were they, I discovered.” Drily, Beck adds, “Glad to know you are.”
“Steve Burrell,” remembers Marker. “What’s he lost this time?”
“His foreman,” replies Beck. “Fell off a ladder and couldn’t get up again. Paralysed from the waist down.”
“Broken spine?”
“Not according to the doctors. Hysterical paralysis, they call it.”
“Hysterical?”
“It’s the insurance company that’s laughing, though. Burrell’s been cheating.”
“But he can’t,” Marker points out. “Accident insurance is compulsory.”
“It’s the small print he’s been cheating on. The bit about keeping his equipment in good order at all times. The ladder his foreman fell off was rotten – like all his ladders. There wasn’t a sound one in the place. Joe Lodge, the foreman, had been on to him for weeks about it.”
“So what’s Burrell got to pay out now?”
“Lodge is suing him for £30,000,” says Beck. “After that, it’s Burrell who won’t be able to get up.”
“Where do I come in?” asks Marker.
“Lodge fell on to a pile of soft sand.” Beck raises an ironic eyebrow. “Paralysed for life?”
“You’ll never prove he’s shamming.”
“Nobody’s asking me to.”
“Suppose I can’t?”
“Then Burrell will lose his business and still be paying off for the rest of his life.”
“Leaving just what for me?” wonders Marker.
“I dare say you can have the clothes off his back.”
Marker turns off the fire. “I’m sorry, Mr Beck, but I don’t have to go to Birmingham to get a new suit.”
Beck regards the one he’s wearing. “Looks as if you ought to go somewhere for one.”
“People are a bit slow paying their bills, that’s all,” claims Marker.
Beck glances at the bills on the desk. “Evidently.” He takes a closer look at the electricity bill. “Steep, isn’t it?”
Marker agrees. “Perpendicular. I must have been away and left everything on.”
“Well, it’s up to you,” says Beck. “I was in London, so I thought I’d drop in.”
“I can’t afford to go to Birmingham.”
“Just what can you afford? Light?”
“London’s my hunting ground, Mr Beck. This is where my contacts are. Once they find I’m not around… well, no one asks for you twice in this game.”
“I did,” the solicitor points out.
“Leave the office empty for a month and with no one to answer the phone when it rings, it soon won’t ring at all.”
“Has it rung much lately?”
“Things’ll pick up,” says Marker, with more confidence than he feels.
“I tried to call you myself yesterday. They said your phone was out of service.”
Marker frowns. “But I was using it myself only –”
“Out of service,” repeats Beck, very precisely. “Not the same as out of order.” Marker quickly fumbles in a drawer, pulls out the phone bill and looks at it. “They always cut off the incoming calls to start with,” continues Beck. “Usual practice.”
“I only have to slip a cheque in the post,” says Marker.
Beck smiles as he stands up. “There’s a train from Paddington at 9.10. See you at my office when you get there.” Beck goes out. Marker thinks.
* * *
A few hours later, a train pulls into Birmingham’s Snow Hill station. It draws to a halt. Marker alights, carrying a small case, and moves to the forecourt to get a taxi.
* * *
Steve Burrell’s office is a small room with a window looking down on the builders’ yard below. A door leads off to stairs down to the yard, while another leads to Steve’s private flat. Steve’s clerk, Arthur Holt, is just rising from one of the desks. Steve is pacing, nervously, but trying hard to appear cool and matter-of-fact about the whole thing. “He’s had it in for me for twenty years,” claims Steve. “That’s all there is behind this, you know. Jealousy.”
“He was a good foreman,” says Holt, gloomily.
“You know what, Arthur? When I think of poor old Joe, I’m sorry for him.” Steve reminds Holt that the doctors can’t find anything medically wrong with Joe.
“But they’re not going to stand up in court and say he’s a fraud, are they?” Holt points out. “They’ve made that plain enough, and short of that, Mr Burrell –”
“I’ve got someone to cut Joe down to size,” Steve assures him. “He’ll soon catch him out.” As is on cue, Marker appears at the door. Steve greets him, effusively. “Marker! Talk of the devil! Good to see you again. Still on the ball, eh?” He gestures towards the other door. “Come into the flat. It’s a bit more comfortable.”
Steve and Marker go through into the adjoining flat, which is small but expensively, flashily, furnished. Besides the door to the office, another leads to a bedroom and another to a kitchenette. Steve sits down on a comfortable sofa. Marker remains standing, looking around. “Nice place,” he remarks.
Steve nods, casually. “Not bad for nine guineas a week.”
Marker looks incredulous. “Nine guineas? I pay seven pounds in London for one draughty office.”
Steve invites him to take a seat, and begins to explain why he thinks Joe Lodge might be shamming. “He’s out to ruin me, Marker.” Steve reveals that he and Joe grew up on the same street. “Went to school together, came to Birmingham together, started work together. Builders out at Smethwick.” He gets up and goes to a drawer. “The boss was tight. Had us fagging for the foreman, making the men’s tea, sweeping out the muck.” He takes out a bottle of pills. “After a couple of weeks, I upped and went. And that’s why Joe’s trying to break me now.”
“Because you turned in a job?” asks Marker.
Steve nods as he opens the bottle. “He never forgave me.”
“He stuck it?”
“Course he stuck it,” says Steve. He pauses to swallow one of the pills, explaining that they’re for migraines. “They lay me out flat if I don’t take precautions. Yes, Joe stuck it. Solid, reliable, nose-to-the-grindstone Joe. He’s a great sticker. But this is the joke, Marker. While Joe slaved away learning to lay bricks, I just lived on my wits and the bookies and a few women, and never settled to anything. By rights, I ought to have come a cropper long ago. But what happened?”
Marker guesses. “You came into money?”
“Right. I ran into Margot Stratton. Her old man set me up with a business of my own as a wedding present – and six months later, I’m Joe’s boss. See what I mean? In Joe’s eyes, I’m the living proof that there’s no justice.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” says Marker. “Why did he come to work for you if he felt like that?”
“Joe always gets a kick out of playing the martyr,” explains Steve. “I offered him a partnership, you know, but he turned it down.” Marker asks where Joe is now. “At home,” replies Steve. “They let him out of hospital a couple of days ago. Get in his house, Marker. He must be in and out of that wheelchair a dozen times a day. A photograph, an eyewitness? You’ve only got to catch him once.”
“Who’s looking after him? His wife?”
Steve looks cagey. “No. Actually… he got rid of her six months ago.” He puts the pills away. “She’s living with her sister at the moment.”
“Know her phone number?”
“You don’t need to bother her. All you have to do, Marker –”
Marker insists. “I know how to do my job, Mr Burrell. Where can I get hold of his wife?”
* * *
Liz Lodge, a blonde with a beehive hairdo, sits waiting on a bench outside the Bull Ring Shopping Centre later that day. After a moment, Marker joins her. He apologises for being late. “Took me longer than I thought. How do you ever find your way around this place?”
Liz shrugs. “You get used to it. What can I do for you?”
A little awkwardly, Marker explains. “I’ve been hired by Steve Burrell to… ascertain whether your husband is really paralysed.” Liz doesn’t react. “Do you think he is?” asks Marker.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you consider – for everybody’s sake – going back to him?”
Liz looks at Marker, sharply. “To spy on him, you mean?”
“Better than me doing it, surely?”
“It’s your job,” Liz points out. “You do it all the time, don’t you – a detective?”
“I do it when I have to, Mrs Lodge. And in this case… well, if you were to do it for me –”
“I’m his wife.”
“I know,” says Marker. “You could keep it in the family,” he argues. “No need for me to snoop about at all. Nicer all round, I should have thought.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried to go back? As soon as this happened, I went straight off to the hospital. He wouldn’t even see me.”
“Still, he’s home now, and with no one to look after him –”
“The District Nurse looks in twice a day, and Mrs Jarvis next door is doing what she can. He doesn’t need me. He told me again this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Through the letterbox,” says Liz. “That’s the nearest I can get to him. Pleading with my husband through the letterbox of my own house. So what do you deduce from that, Mr Detective? That he is a phoney? That he doesn’t want me in the house in case I catch him out? Or that he simply doesn’t want me in the house anyway? Even if he is paralysed.”
* * *
The next day, Mrs Jarvis, a friendly but outspoken neighbour, is with Joe in his living room. He’s in a wheelchair, filling his pipe. “I’m not having her back, Mrs Jarvis,” he states, cool but blunt.
“She is your wife, Mr Lodge,” Mrs Jarvis points out.
“Hasn’t been behaving like it lately, has she?”
“Who turned her out in the first place?”
“I’d trouble you to keep out of this, Mrs Jarvis,” says Joe. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me. No one can say I’m not grateful, but –”
She interrupts him. “I can’t go on dropping in to do for you – not for ever.”
Joe is unmoved. “You’re under no obligation. I can manage on my own.”
“How?” asks Mrs Jarvis.
“I’ve stood on my own two feet all my life and –” Joe breaks off, realising the absurdity of what he’s just said. “All right, but even in this contraption, I’ll manage. I’ll have £30,000 to look after me. More if I can get it. So no one need worry about me.”
The front doorbell rings. Mrs Jarvis moves to the hallway to answer it.
“If that’s Liz, don’t let her in,” says Joe. Then he propels himself vigorously towards a table, where he picks up some matches to light his pipe.
* * *
Out in the hallway, Mrs Jarvis answers the door. Marker stands there, grinning. “Good morning,” he beams. “Smiler’s the name. I wonder, now. Would the lord and master be at home, by any chance?”
Mrs Jarvis returns to the living room to see. Joe, lit match in hand, looks up from his pipe as she enters. “There’s a bloke at the door wants a word with you, Mr Lodge,” she informs him, adding, rather dubiously, “A Mr Smiler, he says.”
Joe frowns. “Who?”
“Smiler,” says Marker, who’s now standing in the door from the hallway. “Cheerful name for a cheerful bloke.” He glances in the direction of Mrs Jarvis. “I don’t know if your good lady has things to do in the kitchen…” He pointedly holds the door open for her. Puzzled, but taking the hint, she goes. “Woman’s whatsit never done, eh?” smiles Marker as she passes. He closes the door behind her.
“What do you want?” asks Joe.
“Didn’t like to raise it in front of the missus,” claims Marker.
“She’s not the missus,” says Joe. “She’s a neighbour. Now, who are you?”
“Just called in about the payments, sir.” Marker hands Joe a couple of pages of small print to look at. “All written down there if you’d just like to check, sir.” Joe puts his pipe down on the table while he studies the document. “Head Office did drop you a line, I fancy,” lies Marker. “They usually do.” As he says this, he takes the pipe and quietly places it out of Joe’s reach on a high shelf. “Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Just overlooked it, eh? Happens to the best of us.”
Joe looks up from the paperwork. “I don’t owe no one anything!” he says, belligerently. “Never have!”
Marker acts affronted. “I wouldn’t take that tone, sir.”
“What would you take?” asks Joe. “The washing machine?”
“It won’t come to that, sir, I –”
“Go on, take it,” says Joe, challengingly. “Because if you can find a washing machine in this house, you’ve better eyes than I have.”
Marker raises an index finger. “Now, you wouldn’t have been so foolish as to –”
“I’ve never bought anything on the HP in my life. Nor’s the wife.”
“Now, look, Mr Burge –”
Joe looks confused. “Burge? The name’s Lodge. Joe Lodge.”
Marker feigns puzzlement of his own. “But this is…” He takes the document back and reads out the address. “14 Elgin Drive, Birmingham…” He squints at the postal district. “Birmingham 6?”
Joe shakes his head. “You’re not even in the right district. This is 14 Elgin Road. And my name’s Lodge.”
Marker puts on a show of surprise as Mrs Jarvis returns, now wearing her hat and coat, ready to leave. Joe tells Marker to get out. Marker hastily backs away. “All my fault, sir,” he says. “Proper mix-up.” He turns to Mrs Jarvis. “It’s all right, ma’am, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll let myself out.” He retreats into the hallway, leaving the door ajar, still apologising. “My mistake entirely. Frightfully sorry.” He opens the front door and slams it shut – but remains inside the house. He slips quietly into a room opposite.
* * *
In the living room, Mrs Jarvis is taking her leave of Joe. “Bye-bye for now. I’ll look in this afternoon to see if there’s anything, and Nurse’ll be in tonight, I suppose.” She goes to the hallway and out through the front door.
Marker silently emerges from his hiding place to watch Joe through the half-open door. The man is wheeling himself around the room, looking for his pipe. Then he sees it, up on the shelf, where Marker left it. He glares, furious, then turns and looks towards the window. Marker watches, intently, as Joe looks back from the window, then up at the pipe. Joe leans back slightly, as if about to move… when suddenly there’s a ring at the front door. Marker starts, then quickly backs into the kitchen, as Joe propels himself out into the hallway.
“Who is it?” asks Joe. He sees the outline of someone through the glass panes of the door. “Liz?”
“No,” says the voice of Mrs Jarvis. “It’s me. Left my shopping bag.” Joe lets her in. “I’ll forget my own name one day,” she continues.
“You left my pipe where I can’t reach it,” complains Joe, as they move towards the living room.
“I never touched your pipe,” protests Mrs Jarvis.
“Well, I couldn’t have put it on the shelf, could I?”
As they go into the living room, Marker reappears from the kitchen. He hears the incredulous Mrs Jarvis asking, “On the shelf?”, as he creeps towards the front door.
“There it is,” comes Joe’s voice. “How do you expect me to reach that?”
“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaims the voice of Mrs Jarvis, as Marker slips out of the house.
* * *
In the living room, Mrs Jarvis has taken down the pipe. She looks towards the hallway. “He must have done it,” she decides.
“Who?” asks Joe.
“Mr Smiler,” says Mrs Jarvis. “Now, what would he want to do a thing like that for?”
Joe looks at her, quizzically, and then at his pipe.
* * *
That evening, Marker is reporting back to Steve Burrell in the latter’s flat. “You’d have soon got another chance,” reckons Steve. “You should have hung on.”
Marker asks, “Has the thought never struck you, Mr Burrell, that Joe Lodge might really be paralysed?”
Steve looks unhappy. “That’s not the sort of thought I can afford.”
“It could be the only one that makes sense,” reasons Marker.
“£30,000 makes sense, surely.”
“Not if you’re lumbered with a wheelchair to get it.”
“He’ll run my business well enough from a wheelchair. And as long as he doesn’t have a wife around to watch him, he’ll be able to stretch his legs when he feels like it, too.”
“He must hate your guts.”
“He does.”
“But why?” wonders Marker. “You can’t tell me that just because you struck it rich when you married Margot Stratton –”
He stops as they hear Liz’s voice out in the office. “You in, darling?” she calls. “Steve?” Steve looks awkward. Marker looks surprised. Liz comes in and stops short, embarrassed, as she sees that Steve already has a visitor. “Mr Marker,” she says.
“You’d better come in, Liz,” says Steve, uncomfortably. “You’ve met Marker, haven’t you?”
Marker stares at them both. “You two?” he says, his astonishment turning to anger and disappointment. “For Pete’s sake, why didn’t you tell me?”