was less unfriendliness in her gaze than in her father’s. As I accepted the mug of tea and sat down, unbidden, at the table beside the impaled bird, she said, ‘So you are the lawyer as has come to take my brothers away.’
I patted the briefcase I had brought with me. ‘I am acting on behalf of Bedderwick Walker Entertainments, with whom I understand your father is keen to come to an agreement. I have a copy of the contract here, Mr Howe, and will be happy to familiarize you with its contents. We can go over it clause by clause, if you so desire, provided I am able to meet Stebbings and his boat at your jetty in approximately two hours’ time.’
Howe crammed the last of his crust into his mouth, masticated for a while, and then said, ‘It’s for the best, Robbie, I keep a-telling you. The boys can’t hang around here for ever and a day, not now’s they’re growed up.’
‘That’s correct,’ I said, snapping open the briefcase. ‘The contract guarantees you and your sons a substantial salary, payable monthly, for a period of three years. It gives Bedderwick Walker the option of renewal of contract for a further two years, at a fee subject to negotiation. Bearing in mind that Bedderwick Walker will invest a considerable amount of money in training and projecting your sons, the arrangements are eminently generous.’
‘You’re still taking my brothers away from home,’ said the girl. ‘Who will look after them, I’d like to know.’
Ignoring her, I spread the contract out before Howe, pushing aside the butter and a jar of pickle.
‘I trust that your sons are ready to return to London with me?’
‘They’re willing enough to go, yes.’
He looked up with a helpless expression, and said to his daughter, ‘Robbie, see as they’re all packed, will you?’
As Howe picked up the contract to study it, I saw his hand was shaking. He had well-shaped hands, with long fingers. He watched Robbie as, without another word, she padded into the kitchen on her bare feet.
‘It’s hard to know what’s best, Mr …’ he said gazing at the dead bird as if addressing it. ‘May and I got on so well, we helped each other with everything as came up. That’s her in the photo over there.’
He pointed to a framed photograph of his dead wife, standing on the mantelpiece. A sepia face stared out at the world from under a large hat.
‘I’m sure she would be happy with the contract as it stands.’
Still he wouldn’t bring his attention back to the document.
‘That May was a very fine woman,’ he said. ‘One of the best, that she was.’
I offered no comment.
‘It wasn’t my fault she died. Nor did I ought to really blame the lads for her death, because they couldn’t help coming into the world the way they was. Though I feel bitter at times … Anyone would. I took up taxidermy when she went – got just about every bird as ever visits the Head pinned up here on my walls, Mister … Though I haven’t got a roseate tern, which is uncommon scarce these days …’
He managed this speech with another comic face, giving me another wink and a jerk of the head as he changed the subject away from his dead wife, almost as if he were making fun of himself. The effect was somehow as sinister as it was ludicrous, and I directed his attention to the contract.
We went through the document carefully, Howe showing himself to be less foolish than his gauche social manner suggested. In my profession, I am accustomed to dealing with people who live solely for money. Albert Howe, I discerned, was indifferent to it; he wanted a fair future for his sons and believed he had secured one; the question of remuneration was a minor one to him. This factor alone set him apart from ninety per cent of the population.
As he signed the copies of the contract, the daughter appeared again, wearing a torn plastic apron over her jeans. She began to clear the table.
‘The boys are ready, Dad,’ she said. She sniffed as if she had been weeping.
‘Come forth, lads, don’t be shy!’ called Howe, jerking his head.
The dog barked in the kitchen, and Tom and Barry came forth.
Contrary to my expectations, the twins were conveyed to London without difficulty. They loitered on the way to the jetty but raised no objection to climbing into Stebbings’ boat when it arrived. They waved farewell to their sister in rather a perfunctory fashion.
As previously arranged, the car awaiting me at Deepdale Staithe conveyed us straight to London; I surmised that a rail journey might have its difficulties. Apart from visits to hospital and one appearance on a medical programme on BBC TV (the appearance which had inspired Zak Bedderwick to sign them up), the Howe twins had scarcely left L’Estrange Head, never mind Norfolk, until now. The journey passed without incident. They were interested in everything, especially when we entered the environs of London. It was dark when I deposited them at Zak Bedderwick’s flat.
The car then drove me to my own apartment, where I was glad to take a sherry and a warm bath, and play myself Telemann sonatas.
Zak Bedderwick was every inch a business man. He was successful in the competitive world of pop music, and would have been equally successful in banking or oil. As such, he was in my opinion a rarity. Most of the big names in his field can grasp neither their own business nor rock-and-roll. At this time, there was nobody to rival his flair or the range of his activities.
He had appointed a manager by the name of Nick Sidney to concentrate on the Howe twins and lick them into promotable shape. The twins stayed in Zak’s flat overnight and no longer. The next morning, Nick Sidney arrived promptly at ten o’clock and took them down to Humbleden. I doubt if Zak ever saw them personally after that occasion; like everyone else, he had a morbid curiosity to inspect Siamese twins at first hand; once that curiosity was satisfied, his interest was purely financial.
The rest of the story hardly involves me. Bedderwick Walker was not my only concern, and at this period I became increasingly involved with a lawsuit pending over the nefarious actions of a certain Foreign Affairs Minister of a certain African state.
In any case, little news filtered out of Humbleden. Humbleden had been designed for that end.
Humbleden was one of Zak’s country places. It was a grand Georgian mansion (with part of an earlier Tudor manor still preserved) standing in two hundred acres of ground with its own private lake and airstrip and a view across the Solent. What went on there was nobody’s business. All the same, rumours trickled out.
Nick Sidney’s training methods were known to be rather rigorous. He was a man in his late thirties, thick-set and running slightly to fat, with a shock of greasy curly hair. He had been a second division football team manager before becoming first a disc jockey and then part of Zak Bedderwick’s entourage.
Sidney went to work immediately on the Howe twins. He got them cleaned up and groomed and suitably dressed, and christened them officially with their professional name, the Bang-Bang. Tom and Barry Bang-Bang.
Musical training commenced the day after they arrived at Humbleden. There were one or two second-string Bedderwick groups which Sidney could have used for backing. Instead, he chose a heavier group, the Noise, then being led by the guitarist and songwriter, Paul Day.
The
