Tinplate Read online

  His first words set the seal on my visit. ‘You’re lucky to find me home, Mr Marklin. My wife and I only flew in last night from South Africa. Spent two months there with my daughter and her family. Ever been?’

  I smiled and said ‘No’, anxious now for the abortive visit to end as soon as politely possible. But Mr Rankin had other thoughts in mind, like showing me the family photographs from Cape Town, taking me round the house, giving me the rare privilege of seeing his antique toy collection (which was magnificent — over five thousand pieces, nearly all mint — but I wasn’t in the mood) and entertaining me to coffee and biscuits. He was the very essence of the perfect host, and I felt the very essence of the worst form of rat for refusing a walk round the grounds, and not hiding my impatience to leave. He seemed genuine enough, and it was pretty unlikely he had organized a toy heist from as far away as the land of Apartheid. But then, that could be the cleverness of it all. A perfect alibi in black and white. I asked him what airline he flew.

  ‘British Airways,’ he replied, a little nonplussed by my interest, and I felt a rat once more. But I would have to check, just in case my vibes were letting me down. Then I touched my forelock and left.

  I headed south to Bournemouth, where Mr Vivian Stone had his address off Branksome Chine, an exclusive part of the town where even to breathe costs you money. I had been there before, delivering a Marklin Junkers 52 aircraft in mint condition, so I knew what to expect. Even so, the conspicuous opulence was still hard to take. Mr Stone’s jewellery business had to be doing rather better than awfully well. Like having at least fifty Liz Taylors as clients, for a start. The electric gate opened at the touch of a button and I drove in.

  He answered the gold plated knocker himself. I had refused to repeat what I had done on my previous visit — inadvertently playing selections from Fiddler on the Roof in chimes by pushing the doorbell button. Mr Stone was around forty-five, thinnish, with silver-grey hair, and the short-sighted look that comes from always counting money. He didn’t waste any time (I guess because time was money) and soon whisked me through the house and outside again to his swimming pool, beside which lay someone a little younger but a good deal more developed, nay, overdeveloped, dressed in flesh and bikini bottoms. She was lucky — it was the first really warm day of the year. He ignored her. She ignored him — and me. I guess that made her his wife.

  ‘You were lucky to …’

  I laughed and interrupted, ‘I know, I know. I’m lucky to find you in.’

  He looked puzzled, then went on, ‘Never mind. I’ve just come back for some lunch and a swim. Then I have to be off again. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘That would be nice. A Campari and soda, please.’

  He mixed one from a gilt trolley loaded with all sorts of booze, then poured himself some orange juice.

  ‘Never drink when I’m working,’ he said. ‘Got something that would interest me, Mr Marklin? Is that why you called?’

  Mrs Stone turned over to toast the other side — the top side — and, besides other things, I saw where some of his money had gone. And every finger was aglitter from podgy knuckle to fleshy first joint. The bikini top still lay by her paperback, which, surprisingly, was Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. I decided to go in the deep end.

  ‘I’ve got the chance of a very fine collection from the south of France.’ I watched his eyes carefully. But nothing seemed to be registering. I went on, ‘Eleven tinplate toys, which I’m told are mint. Mainly from the twenties.’

  ‘Go on, Mr Marklin, but they sound pricey to me,’ he said, sipping his orange juice. Nothing yet.

  ‘Yes, they are. But they’re quite unique: JEPS; a Marklin battleship, turn of the century, an original Citroen taxi cab with basketweave sides …’

  The lady began pouring oil on what once were assets, and I took a large gulp of my Campari.

  ‘Now I know they’re too pricey, Mr Marklin. Pity, but I can’t be in the market right now. I’m just opening another store in Geneva and all my money is tied up. Great shame, isn’t it, Mrs Stone?’ He was one of those men who addresses his wife as if they were merely acquaintances. Maybe these two were. She nodded, and plucked a lip salve out of thin air, and began a life preserving exercise on her mouth. I couldn’t stand much more of this, yet I had really learned almost nothing. Either he was telling the truth, or he was an accomplished liar. And his wife gave nothing away. She probably never did.

  I finished my Campari, and made my farewells. Vivian Stone asked me if I could find my own way out as he was going to take a dip. I gave the whole jaded Hollywood scene a last scan with my Cinemascope eye and, frustrated as hell, walked back to the Beetle. I saw a Panther de Ville displaying its Bugatti-like rear out of his threesome garage, and snuggling beside it what looked like a Ferrari. But his electric gates had shut behind me by the time I could be certain of its colour. It was, surprise, surprise, red. But then most Ferraris are, damn it.

  *

  I went via Sandbanks and took the ferry route home. Even though it only clanked and jangled its four-minute way on its huge chains across the inlet to Poole Harbour within sight of Browrisea Island, it always gave me a sense of adventure, a lingering left-over from my childhood days of wonder. But today even that feeling was muted as I stood by the rail under the shadow of what could be in store for me unless … This morning had taught me next to nothing. So now I only had twenty-seven mornings left.

  I got back in the car and drove off the ramp and along the slim road between the dunes. The first holiday-makers were already busying themselves trying to find lots of things not to do: mainly young people enjoying that sexual springtime before they start having kids. I envied them. Not that I have any kids, but the fact they didn’t know, or probably care yet about, what lay ahead. I pulled the Beetle off the road, into the entrance of one of the car-parks that seemed the least occupied. I needed time to think.

  Gerald Rankin I felt I probably had to discount, but I would ring British Airways just to check. He certainly did not come across as enough of a fanatic to act in such an ungentlemanly fashion as to stoop to robbery, nor enough of a sadist as to stoop to the trick of substituting plastic Camaros.

  But then I didn’t think Vivian Stone would either — substitute Camaros, I mean. Maybe he was up to the robbery and he just might be fanatical enough, but it took a touch of class to bother to buy eleven Macao-made Camaros and drop them into the boxes instead. And Mr Vivian Stone had everything except class. What’s more, I bet he would think it a wicked waste of money to shell out for plastic substitutes when he could get away with leaving nothing. But I could be wrong. He might be cleverer than I thought and be pulling a double bluff — and he did have a red Ferrari in his garage. I kicked myself at having been so obsessed with the girl on the autoroute that I never checked her car’s number plates. I somehow don’t think Roger Moore will ever play me in a movie.

  The more I sat there in the dunes, the more depressed I became, despite the May sun through the open top of the Beetle. Even if I was pretty certain someone like Vivian Stone had the toys, I did not see how I was going to prove it, or how I was going to get possession of them. And it could still be Chalmers himself playing a double or treble game, or, indeed, anyone in this whole wide world who had a crush on old clockwork relics. Still, I had to start somewhere, and Rankin and Stone had seemed the most likely lads for investigation in this neck of the woods. I started up the Beetle, U-turned in the almost empty car-park, and went back to the junction with the ferry road.

  I waited for a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud to go by, which I saw was being driven by a rather striking girl with violent-coloured hair. I pulled out and kept behind it. (Men are such dreamers.) As we swept along towards Studland, I noticed the rear of the car was somewhat different from normal Silver Clouds. It had a rear window that lifted up in addition to the boot lid — a kind of millionaire’s hatchback. I had seen one some years before at a motor show. It was a conversion by an English coachbuilding firm ca
lled Harold Radford, who produced it for the huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ set. Bloomin’ nice, if you could afford it. I decided I couldn’t right now (either the car or the girl) and pulled off to park behind my little ‘Toy Emporium’ — that’s the rather twee name dreamt up by my ex-wife who is still in advertising. The Silver Cloud swept on westwards.

  Bing would not speak to me when I got in, for one of his passions is riding in the car. I made myself a rather sloppy omelette, but forswore any frozen chips as I had put on quite a few unwanted pounds at the Colombe D’Or. Then I opened up shop, and sat dejectedly behind the little counter without a plan in my head. At least this way I might make a few pounds from local punters while I tried to sort something out.

  Small, relatively inexpensive, die-cast toys were the backbone of the old toy business — the kind of things everyone had as a child, however poor: Dinkys, Corgis, Spot-Ons, Lesney Matchbox, and early Yesteryears were a particularly hot line. I had a mass of them, ranging from a pound or two up to around £1,000 for a pre-Dinky ss1 from Hornby. I divided my stock into pre-war and post-war on labelled shelves, so that any customer could identify immediately with his own particular nostalgia rating. Larger and more expensive toys were in glass cabinets, and very rare items were listed in my stock sheets available on demand. These toys I kept secreted in my attic or over at Gus Tribble’s. There’s no point in making a burglar’s life too easy — which, come to think of it, was just what I had done on my trip to the south of France.

  The afternoon proved to be not exactly a seller’s paradise. As always there were quite a few time-wasters who just wanted to touch and stare. However, I did sell a mint boxed fifties Dinky De Soto for £18, an unboxed, rather chipped 39 series Buick for £12, (both to one forty-five-year-old customer) and a Dinky aeroplane, a Republic Thunderbolt fighter made until the company’s demise in 1979, for £14 — a reasonable appreciation rate over its original price of £1.95 in 1979. It’s a funny old business. I worked out that this left only £21,956 to find.

  My suicide was forestalled by the phone. I prayed it wouldn’t be Deborah after money again. It wasn’t. It was Gus with a drop of good news to plop into the maelstrom of my mind, though unfortunately, not about the lost toys. It was more of the Spitfire saga. Apparently, he had heard from a friend of his in Swanage, who was a good boy and went to church, that the Vicar of St Sebastian’s had just received a letter from the aged mother of PO Redfern, who lived in what I still call Rhodesia. In it, she stated that she had just heard about the controversy over the proposed dig for the Spitfire and wished it to go ahead so that her son could have a proper burial in hallowed ground.

  I said to Gus, didn’t that now settle the matter our way? He replied that he thought the Vicar was terrified of Mr Randolph Treasure, and that he would only sanction the dig if the rich landowner agreed to drop his objections. I said that was ridiculous. Gus said that was life. I said we can’t put up with that. Gus said he thought he had an answer. I said what, and he said I should go and see Treasure, try to persuade him to drop his objections and threaten to call another public meeting if he didn’t. I said I’d got enough on my plate at the moment. Gus said how selfish could anyone get, and how he’d always reckoned I was a kind of regular guy and would always fight for what I believed in, and never let go. I said I wasn’t going to be talked to like that. So he said what was I going to do about it? So I said I would go and see Treasure. And that’s what I did, because I’d suddenly remembered something else.

  Four

  Next morning that ‘old Victorian thing near Lulworth’, as Gus had described it, turned out to be quite an assembly of stones. Victorian folly it may have been, but it was still quite impressive with pointed steeples at every turn and abbey-like windows with sharp tops. And it was a hell of a size with, as I discovered later, around twelve bedrooms, four bathrooms, five reception rooms, an indoor swimming pool and a jacuzzi big enough for a regiment. And then there was the nine-hole golf course and a drive almost as big as Mr Rankin’s. I parked my yellow Beetle, and was admitted to the house by a sour-faced woman who said she was the housekeeper. I just hoped Mr Treasure would not say I was lucky to find him in.

  He didn’t. He just asked me how the toy business was, and had I had any more Marklins recently. I said I hadn’t, and had he? He said unfortunately, no, they were a bit thin on the ground. I agreed and he offered me a drink. For some reason, I declined. There was something about Mr Treasure that made me think twice about accepting anything from him. He would have been a star turn in the time of the Borgias, and within his own stone walls he came over, somehow, as even more frightening than in your average church hall. He poured himself a large straight Scotch, and sat down opposite me.

  ‘If it’s not toys you’ve come about, Mr Marklin, what can I do for you?’ He leaned forward, his hairy hands clasping his glass as if I was about to filch it from him. This man was certainly not the type to let go.

  ‘It’s about the Spitfire, and Pilot Officer Redfern.’

  He suddenly sat back in his chintz armchair and guffawed as only a certain inbred and expensively educated type of Englishman can.

  ‘Oh, that! Mr Marklin, all that controversy is dead and buried. We had the vote at St Sebastian’s …’

  There’s been a resurrection, Mr Treasure. Redfern’s mother is still alive in Rhodesia, and she has written to ask for the dig to go ahead, and for her son to be properly buried.’

  Treasure sat up straight again, and took a measured sip of his Famous Grouse. I could detect his mind working overtime.

  ‘I’m sure the Vicar would not want the whole issue raised all over again, Mr Marklin. The affair has caused enough local trouble as it is.’

  I looked at those hairy hands again, and decided the Vicar would be putty in them.

  ‘But his mother is his next of kin, Mr Treasure. And she wants him to have a decent burial in hallowed ground. The Vicar’s duty, if I may say so, is to her and not to the public meeting that did not realize she was still alive.’

  Treasure, I could see, was not a man whose judgements were usually questioned. His grip on his glass tightened and I was pretty certain he was pretending it was me he was throttling. He looked me directly in the eyes.

  ‘What’s your interest in it all, Mr Marklin? Hoping to filch some poor bits off the Spitfire to sell to some aviation nut?’

  I didn’t rise to his taunt.

  ‘Mr Treasure, some friends and I would like, as you must be aware, to start a small museum to commemorate the part Warmwell played in the defence of the country. Every part of the Spitfire recovered would go into that museum, which would be run in conjunction with the South Western Historical Aviation Society. The museum would be non profit-making. That is my interest in it all, as you put it.’

  He got up and began pacing around the chairs and settees as if waiting for feeding time.

  ‘I can’t quite believe you, Mr Marklin. It’s too altruistic to be true. And what’s more, if PO Redfern’s mother had written to the Vicar, he would have been in touch with me.’

  I couldn’t resist it. ‘Why? Does he owe you something?’

  Treasure stopped in his tracks, and carefully put his glass down on a sidetable. It saved him crushing it to smithereens.

  ‘I think, Mr Marklin, you have now outstayed your welcome. I’ll get Mrs Fitzpayne to see you out.’ He made for the door.

  ‘Don’t be so hasty, Mr Treasure. I answered your question about what was in it for me if the dig went ahead. Now I want to know what’s in it for you if it doesn’t.’

  For a split second his eyes wavered. ‘After all,’ I continued, ‘you pleaded on Pilot Officer Redfern’s personal behalf in the church hall. Now surely, he would want to obey his own mother’s wishes rather than yours.’

  I knew I would get no verbal response, but his eyes had been enough. He bellowed for Mrs Fitzpayne, and I heard footsteps outside the door. But is was no sour-faced harridan who made her entrance. It was the girl with the v
iolent hair from the Harold Radford Rolls-Royce. It wasn’t just me she took by surprise.

  ‘What are you doing back, Arabella?’ he muttered, quietly.

  She swaggered into the room. ‘I felt like it, that’s all. It’s not warm enough on the beach.’ She came across to me, I was glad to see. ‘And who’s this rather interesting new face?’ She held out her red-tipped hand. I took it — it was no hardship.

  ‘Marklin — Peter Marklin.’ I looked her in the long-lashed eyes. She winked the left one.

  ‘I’m Arabella, as you’ll have gathered. Full title — Arabella Donna Trench. My enemies call be Belladonna. My friends call me often.’

  I liked this girl; she was as corny as I was, only prettier.

  Treasure liked me even less now, which was mutual.

  ‘I was just seeing Mr Marklin to the door. He’s a busy man. Sells toys for a living, would you believe.’

  She turned to him. ‘Don’t knock it, Randolph. You collect toys — you’re crazy about them. You just don’t like anyone knowing how infatuated …’

  He almost ran to her and grasped her wrist. ‘That’s enough.’ His voice made it quite plain he meant what he said. ‘Mr Marklin is going right now, aren’t you Mr Marklin?’

  I wondered what she saw in him, beyond a vast house, a Rolls and all the money you could throw around.

  ‘I’m going, Mr Treasure, aren’t I, Mr Treasure?’ I mimicked him, and Arabella smiled. She was definitely growing on me. ‘But I think I’ll be back, Mr Treasure. And I won’t just be talking about Spitfires. I just may throw in a battleship or two.’