Free Young Petrella by Michael Gilbert Page A

“Lot of grown-up kids. But I know Solly, Mungo and old Turner belong to one – Sons of Enterprise. Highside Lodge – and come to think of it, I believe Alf Lowson joined ’em lately.”
    “What do they do?”
    “They have outings. Hire a coach and drink their way to Southend and back. And a party at Christmas. Men only.”
    Petrella extracted the address of the Lodge secretary and went thoughtfully back to Crown Road Police Station. He was aware that he was treading on very dangerous ground. When a lot of grown men got together and called each other brother and elected officers and wore strange emblems, they were apt to be touchy about their privacy.
    As it turned out, this was one possible piece of trouble which did not eventuate. At the station he found a message waiting for him. The Nipper had moved in again. Mrs. Porter, owner of a large confectioners in Milton Road, had locked her shop up on the previous evening and gone to visit her sister in hospital. On her return she had noticed nothing amiss. It was not until after lunch next day that she had occasion to go to the cash box in the bedroom cupboard.
    “ Mrs .Porter,” said Petrella. “Has she got a husband?”
    “A widow,” said Sergeant Gwilliam. “Runs the shop herself. It’s her life savings, so far as I could make out.”
    Petrella acquitted the all-male Sons of Enterprise of his unworthy suspicions and began his thinking again. He was aware that time was running against him. By the first post that morning Chief Inspector Haxtell had received a letter which had caused him to go red in the face and beat the desk with his fist.
    It was from Councillor Hayes, a notorious local busybody, and it suggested (Councillor Hayes rarely stated anything, but he was a master of suggestion) that the police were applying the rule of “one law for the rich, another for the poor”. “I and my fellow councillors notice with regret,” it concluded, “that whilst the police are only too active in arresting and persecuting” (this word had been thinly crossed out and “prosecuting” written over the top) “members of the working class who are guilty of the smallest infringement, they do not show the same activity in arresting a man who constitutes a serious threat to the livelihood and savings of the small shopkeeper.”
    “I wouldn’t call Solly a small shopkeeper,” said Sergeant Gwilliam, when the letter was read to him. “Anyway, that’s only old Hayes blowing his top. He’s been wanting to get back at us because we never caught the man who did his house. Between you and me I always wondered if he didn’t do it himself for the insurance.”
    Haxtell ignored this slanderous statement.
    “How’s Petrella getting on?”
    Sergeant Gwilliam had to admit that he didn’t know. For all his placidity, he too was worried. He knew the power of local politics.
    In fact Petrella was back where he had started. He was talking to Peggs.
    “Poor old Ma Porter,” said Peggs. “How many times I told her it was asking for trouble keeping all her money in the bottom of the wardrobe. Silly old cow.”
    “She a friend of yours?”
    “We use the same pub – when I get a night off. Which isn’t often. I knew her old man. He was the only man I ever saw drink a quart of stout without stopping. Stout, not beer. Solly gave him ten to one in dollars he couldn’t do it. It’s the only time I ever seen Solly pay up cheerful.”
    Petrella agreed that it was a considerable feat, at any odds, and took his departure. He must have been tired at the time, because he was halfway home before he realised the significance of what Peggs had told him.
    It seemed so important, that he didn’t waste time going back, but dived into the nearest telephone box and rang back.
    “You know what you were saying about Mr. Porter—”
    “The one who drunk—?”
    “Yes. What pub were you talking about?”
    “The Bull, of course. Everyone goes to the Bull.”
    “That’s what I thought,”