Brighton Belle Page 0,2

checked right and left, and slipped a small leather-bound flask from her crocodile-skin handbag to wash down the sandwich with a tiny swig. Back at the office she always made herself a strong cup of tea and sipped it with a cracker so that if her boss came in he would be none the wiser. The whisky was the only outward sign that Mirabelle Bevan was in mourning. It reminded her of Jack.

As she negotiated the steps in her vertiginous heels and glided back onto the Promenade, Ron came into view, his hands deep in his apron pockets, chatting to two girls. It was always easier to avoid paying the tuppence when the sun was out and a stream of pretty girls occupied the deckchairs on the pebbles. Mirabelle smiled as she cut away from the front and made her way back to the office, in a grubby white stone building on the corner of East Street and Brill Lane. She climbed the dark stairway to the second floor, passed the sign that said MCGUIGAN & MCGUIGAN DEBT RECOVERY and opened the frosted-glass door with every intention of putting on the kettle to boil, but the sight that greeted her stopped Mirabelle in her tracks. Big Ben McGuigan was sitting at his desk. That, in itself, was unusual. Big Ben was what one might call a man of action and, much to Mirabelle’s relief, was rarely in his office. But it wasn’t only his presence that lent a perturbing air to the office that spring afternoon. Mirabelle’s boss was sitting under a grimy blue towel with a cloud of menthol steam emanating from above his head. The place smelled like a hammam.

‘Mr McGuigan.’ Mirabelle coughed.

Big Ben emerged with his chubby face flushed. He had been out all morning collecting money from what he referred to as ‘his friends in the slums’. He had seemed in perfectly good health when he left.

‘Mirabelle, Mirabelle, not so great,’ he said and disappeared back under the towel from where he mumbled, ‘Put on the kettle. I need a hot drink.’

Mirabelle complied. She made two cups of strong milky tea and laid one on Big Ben’s desk. It was most unlike him to ask for anything. In the eighteen months since Mirabelle had taken the job she hadn’t had a single request. Unbidden she opened the mail, dealt with the ledger, the files, the banking and the invoices. She answered the telephone, leaving accurate and detailed messages that required no further explanation on Big Ben’s tidy desk. Occasionally a client might come to the office in pursuit of their money. Most days there was a visit from at least one debtor, either ready to pay or to give their excuses, which they seemed to clutch to their chests and then let out, too quickly, like machine-gunfire. Mirabelle Bevan dealt with everything briskly. Big Ben appreciated her efficiency and she appreciated his absence or, on his fleeting visits to the office, his silence. After everything she had been through, it was the perfect job.

‘Are you ill?’ Mirabelle enquired gently.

One of Big Ben’s rheumy blue eyes peered through a crack in the towel. He removed the tea from the desktop and disappeared back beneath the swathe of material. The sound of him drinking ensued.

‘Cold. Influenza. Maybe pneumonia,’ he said.

A shadow of amusement passed across Mirabelle’s face. Big Ben was six feet two inches in height and he weighed two hundred pounds. An ex-professional boxer, he had been a sergeant major during the war. The thousands of conscripts who had passed through his capable hands had endowed him with a highly honed capacity for judging human nature and a complete inability to accept any form of excuse. He had set up McGuigan & McGuigan after he demobbed and quickly gained a good reputation for chasing other people’s money, on commission. Big Ben, it transpired, was the only McGuigan – the sole employee of the firm until Mirabelle arrived – but he thought that the dual name sounded more professional, so he’d doubled up. It was all very businesslike, which was something both Ben McGuigan and Mirabelle Bevan had recognised in each other from the first moment they’d met. The interview for the job lasted two minutes – exactly long enough to establish that he knew what he wanted and she knew what to do. Until today Mirabelle had never seen Big Ben display any kind of weakness.

‘Do you think it might be a good idea to go home?’