The Gigantic Shadow

Chapter One

‘The name’s Mekles,’ Jerry Wilton said. ‘Nicholas Mekles. You must have heard of him.’

Should he have suspected something then, should there have been some small jarring shudder, like the moment when the fated ship first noses into the iceberg? Such a premonition would have been irrational, and Hunter liked to think that his life was ruled by reason. He felt nothing.

‘The name is familiar,’ he said. ‘But the fame escapes me.’

Jerry wiped his red face with a grey silk handkerchief. It was a hot day in early June, and the window in his small office was closed.

‘I don’t know what you read, but it isn’t the papers,’ he grumbled. ‘Mekles is always in the news. Big parties on his yacht, the Minerva, in the Med. or the Adriatic. Film actress fell off it during one of them, got herself drowned, she was his mistress, people said she might have been pushed. Owns a shipping fleet, shady goings-on I seem to remember in relation to that, Charlie Cash can dig it out for you. Gambles a lot, Monte Carlo, Nice. Fabulous villa out there on the Riviera, more big parties, socialites rubbing shoulders with crooks. Never married, but women queue up for him, socialites again a lot of them. And more, lots of it, the same sort. Plenty for Charlie to get his teeth into.’

‘I remember him now,’ Hunter said. ‘A sort of blend of playboy and gangster.’

‘More gangster than playboy. There are all sorts of rumours about him. They say he keeps half a dozen thugs as bodyguards. Also that he takes a lot of trouble to get the dirt on anyone he has dealings with.’ Jerry looked at the three pills on his desk, blue, green and white, selected the blue one, popped it in his mouth and swallowed.

Even then Hunter felt no anticipatory tremor. ‘A pretty tough customer.’

Jerry nodded solemnly. His face was glistening again, but this time he did not bother to wipe it. ‘He’s coming to England on Friday week, staying over till Tuesday. We’ve approached him, told him about the programme, and he’s agreed in principle.’

‘Why would a man like that want to go in front of the cameras?’ Hunter wondered. ‘He’s got a lot to hide.’

‘Vain as a peacock. Likes to show off in front of his women. Tickled to death to be asked.’

‘Even on my programme?’

‘Especially on your programme. Nicholas Mekles pitting his wits against those of TV’s special investigator and coming out on top – what a thrill for him. And anyway, it’s fame to be on that little old silver screen, something money can’t buy. Don’t tell me I’ve got to teach you psychology as well as fixing the programmes,’ Jerry cried in a pretended exasperation that only just missed being real. Hunter watched, fascinated, as he picked up the green pill and swallowed it, as he had the blue, without water. ‘Replaces the salt you lose through sweat,’ Jerry explained. ‘Salt makes energy. You take three in half an hour, twice a day. They cost thirty bob a packet. What do you think?’

‘It seems all right.’ He had found in the past that it was never wise to show too much enthusiasm.

‘All right!’ Jerry flung up his hands. ‘I serve up something like this on a plate for you, something that’s really the chance of a lifetime to turn a gangster inside out, and you say it seems all right.’ Again there was an undercurrent of real annoyance beneath the jocularity.

‘When I say all right, I mean I like it.’ And he did mean it, he had no real reservations. ‘It seems to me we’ve got to be a bit cagey, that’s all. The thing’s got slander possibilities sticking out all over it.’

‘Just a matter of the way you handle it.’ With agreement obtained, Jerry was mellow, calmly judicial.

‘Make the questions too soft and we get nowhere. Make them too hard, and we get a slander action up our shirts.’

‘I don’t think Mekles can afford to bring slander actions. Anyway you can handle it, you and Charlie, you’ve handled trickier ones.’ Jerry exuded confidence, went so far as to give a wink from the little blue eye in his boiled red face. ‘After all, it’s the trickiness that makes the programme, isn’t that right? Now, let’s get down to brass tacks.’

Before Hunter left, Jerry had swallowed the white pill.

Chapter Two

Hunter’s television programme was called ‘Bill Hunter – Personal Investigator,’ and it had a subsidiary heading tacked on: ‘Presents the News Behind the News.’ The programme ran for a quarter of an hour each week, and consisted simply of an unscripted interview with some celebrated or notorious person. There were, however, unusual features about it. Most programmes billed as ‘unscripted’ are so only in name – the protagonists have discussed very thoroughly in advance the course that the programme is to take. Hunter, however, had stipulated from the start that he should not meet his subject in advance, or discuss a line of questioning with him. The questions might be disconcerting, the answers might come as a surprise to Hunter. The programme therefore rightly appeared to viewers as a battle of wits.

This impression was enhanced by the fact that the people interviewed had always a slightly gamey flavour about them. They were film stars famous for the number or nature of their love affairs, generals suddenly sacked or demoted, extreme Left or Right wing politicians, surprisingly rich American trade unionists, organisers of nudist colonies, former members of secret societies devoted to violence. To the watchers sitting comfortably in their armchairs it seemed that the people interviewed were being ruthlessly quizzed by a Personal Investigator who had discovered a complete range of skeletons in their cupboards.

In fact, the questions were all based upon the material unearthed by Hunter’s research assistant Charlie Cash, and Charlie’s research rarely went beyond industrious digging in old newspaper cuttings plus the fruits of intelligent guesswork from conversations with friends around Fleet Street. Occasionally questions based on Charlie’s speculations provoked unexpected reactions, and the person interviewed got really annoyed. These were the moments when the watchers in suburban semis wriggled most deliciously in their overstuffed armchairs, the moments that fixed the Personal Investigator in their minds as an inquisitorial father figure extracting secrets from mentally-tortured victims. The idea was seven-eighths illusion, but then, as Hunter sometimes reflected, wasn’t the whole apparatus and effect of TV designed to create an illusion? The difference between TV and the cinema, he had once heard someone say, was that while both created legendary figures, the cinema did not try to deny that they were fabulous while TV pretended that they were just homebodies like you and me.

Reality faced him now, however, reality quite undeniable, in the shape of Charlie Cash sitting across the table from him in Charlie’s little Fleet Street office, a dusty cubicle filled with law and reference books, quite remote from Jerry Wilton’s splendour of glass walls and chromium fittings. Charlie sat behind a table spilling over with papers. He had a long thin nose, sloping shoulders, and the hungry look of a good research man. He twisted a toothpick in his mouth.

‘Here’s the stuff on Nick the Greek.’ He handed over two large envelopes marked A and B. The first contained facts, the second what Charlie called his intelligent guesswork. There would be a separate page for each story, and appended to the story would be a note from Charlie about its origins and possible use. Charlie, with the aid of a secretary, gave this kind of service to a dozen people, and got well paid for it.

‘Is he a Greek?’

‘He’s rich, a crook, a commercial genius. Must be a Greek or an Armenian or a Jew, isn’t that right, statistics can’t lie. Anyway they say he carries a Greek passport, though there seems to be a bit of mystery about it.’

‘How does it strike you?’

Charlie looked down his long nose. ‘Not too good.’

‘Jerry thought we were on to a winner.’

‘Jerry believes what he reads in the papers. He doesn’t know a tiger from pussy. This Mekles is a nasty piece of work.’

‘We’ve handled nasty pieces of work before now.’

‘Yes, but this is different. The stuff about our friend Nick that Jerry is thinking of is really old hat. That girl who fell off the yacht, for instance, Lindy Powers –’

‘The film actress?’

‘That’s what they called her. She had a bit part in a B film, then lay around Hollywood until Mekles picked her up. Anyway, the press did that to death at the time. If you want to give it another going over, you can, but it’s stale stuff. Same with a lot of the rest of it. There was a story that he had some famous stolen paintings in his villa on the Riviera. Mekles showed reporters round, turned out the paintings had been bought through art dealers, only he’d bought shrewdly and cheaply. That sort of thing.’

‘Do you mean we haven’t got a story?’

‘You’ve got a story, only I don’t see how you’re going to tell it without landing up to your neck in slander. And other trouble too, I dare say. Nasty revengeful type friend Nick is said to be.’

‘What’s the story, then?’

‘There are half a dozen, and they’re all poison. You know the international groups controlling tarts are supposed to have taken a knock since the Messina brothers were put inside? So that the import of French tarts into Britain by marriages of convenience almost stopped, for instance? Well, in the last few months the organisation has got a lot tighter again. Mekles is said to be one of two or three people controlling it. Then drugs – he’s said to have both the import-export and the distribution ends tied up. It’s distribution that’s the problem as you know, getting the stuff into and out of the country is easy here, not like the States. Fake antiques is another sideline – there’s still a ready sale for them in the States, though Americans have smartened up a lot in the last few years and look twice at worm holes made with a drill. But Mekles has an east end factory turning out the stuff.’

‘Let’s get down to cases, Charlie. How much of this can I use?’

Charlie dropped the toothpick into a waste basket, picked another. ‘I thought I’d made that plain. None of it.’

‘None of it?’

‘I don’t see how you can. It’s all B stuff. I know it, but there’s no proof. Take the factory. It runs as a perfectly straight concern, making cheap furniture that falls to bits when you use it. Now, a pal of mine named Jack Foldol, a bookie’s tout, knows the manager at this factory, a White Pole, if you know what I mean, named Kosinsky. One day Kosinsky told him about the other stuff they made, and the prices they got for it. Kosinsky also said that one day Myerson, that’s the man who’s supposed to own the place, had made a terrific fuss about an important conference, cleared everyone out of the place. Kosinsky was curious, managed to hang around, saw Mekles arrive, recognised him from newspaper photographs. Kosinsky hasn’t any doubt it was Mekles, heard a little bit of what they were saying, enough to know that Mekles was giving Myerson orders.’

‘If it was Mekles.’

‘That’s what I mean. It’s all hearsay stuff. I told you you couldn’t use it.’

‘Does Mekles come here often? From the way Jerry spoke I thought this was a first visit.’

‘Hell, no, he’s been in England a dozen times. Why should they keep him out, he’s a solid citizen. It’s a headache, and I’m glad it’s yours.’

Hunter nodded, took the envelopes. He had, even now, no warning presentiment. He had made good programmes out of less promising material.

‘How’s Anna?’ It was a question Charlie never forgot to ask. ‘That’s a great little woman, Bill. One of these days I’m going to come along and take her away from you. In the meantime, don’t forget to kiss her foot for me, will you?’

Chapter Three

On that Monday night he stepped into the hotel’s revolving door, was whirled round, and then whirled round again before he got out. Inside he spoke to a commissionaire. ‘Mekles,’ he said, ‘Mr Nicholas Mekles.’

On the commissionaire’s face there was a fine glaze of disapproval. ‘Mr Mekles is on the fourth floor, sir.’

Are your eyes fixed so that you can’t look at me when you speak? he wanted to ask. But before he could say anything a voice called from the other side of the reception hall and he saw Jerry Wilton, sweating and anxious.

‘Been looking out for you, Bill. How are you?’

‘How should I be? Hot.’ Outside the night was hot, in here it was cool, but the air conditioning had a stifling effect. He wanted to pull his shirt collar open.

‘We’re all set. Less than quarter of an hour to spare.’ Jerry managed to sound reproachful. ‘I’ve been talking to Mekles. He seems a nice little chap, most co-operative. Just time for a word with him, if you’d like one.’

‘No, thanks.’ Jerry always wanted him to talk to the subjects, and he always refused. ‘I’d like a drink.’

‘A drink, yes, of course.’ Jerry’s anxiety was perceptibly increased, but he was brave about it. ‘There’s a bar round to the left. Let’s make it a quick one, you know me, just a time slave, like to be on the platform half an hour before the train goes.’

While they drank whisky Jerry turned round a ring on his finger, tapped the counter, scratched one leg with the other, did everything but look at his watch. ‘How did the programme come along?’

‘Terrible. Just terrible!’

‘What’s that?’ Jerry looked as though he had heard a priest reading from a handbook on atheism.

‘I told you, terrible. We like to play with squibs and you’ve given me a stick of dynamite. You’d better hope I won’t set a match to it.’ He held out his glass for another whisky.

Jerry stared, then laughed. ‘You aren’t serious, Bill.’

‘Perfectly serious.’ What makes me needle him, Hunter wondered, even though the needling is the truth, and it probably will be a terrible programme?

When they got out of the lift at the fourth floor flexes were trailing all over the place. Two electricians were hanging about, and there was a stocky man with a cauliflower ear in the corridor.

‘One of Mekles’ bodyguards,’ Jerry whispered. ‘He really does have them. And do you know, Bill, he’s taken the whole bloody floor? What it is to be rich, eh?’ Admiration was blended with envy in Jerry’s voice.

‘What it is to come out on top in the rat race.’

Jerry looked at him, said nothing. They turned left into the room where the telecast was to take place, and Hunter walked under the intense heat of the arcs. Three or four people began talking to him at once. Would he sit down in his special chair, raise his head, raise his hand, lean forward. He did all that. While the make-up men were working on his face, brushing his jacket, he saw Charlie Cash hovering in the background, and raised a hand.

Charlie came over. ‘You’ve got everything?’

‘In here.’ Hunter tapped his head.

‘Got a line to work on?’

‘I put my trust in God.’

‘You believers.’ Charlie turned down the corners of his mobile comedian’s mouth, went away.

Jerry Wilton walked over to an inner room, opened the door, spoke to somebody there, came back.

‘We’re on in one minute. Quiet, please.’

There was silence. Hunter could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He wanted to wipe his forehead, but didn’t dare to do so. The green light showed and he heard a voice full of synthetic excitement and enthusiasm saying:

‘And now we bring you again our News Behind the News programme, with Personal Investigator Bill Hunter in another candid, unscripted, no-holds-barred interview with one of the most interesting personalities in London this week, with –’

Now on more than a million television screens the announcer’s face was replaced by Hunter’s, and he began to talk: ‘–a modern mystery man, Mr Nicholas Mekles. To many of us Mr Mekles is a name. We know of him as the owner of a shipping fleet. He is lucky enough to have a fabulous villa on the Riviera and an equally fabulous yacht. He is reputed to exercise control over a dozen different organisations. Some people say he is the richest man in the world.’ Hunter paused, so that his next words should take on an emphasis that was not in his voice. ‘How has Mr Mekles reached his present position? Where did the money come from? Those are two of the intriguing questions I propose to ask this man of mystery. Mr Mekles is paying one of his occasional visits to London – he has taken the whole fourth floor of the Park Lane Grand Hotel, and it’s from a room in his suite that I am talking to you. And now, let’s meet the man of mystery.’

The cameras followed him as he walked across the room and tapped on the inner door. This door opened and Mekles came out, a man like a very elegant lizard, olive-skinned and sweetly smiling, with small snapping dark eyes.

The two men sat down, Hunter with his back to the cameras so that the audience looked past him at Mekles. For the rest of the programme the watchers would never see Hunter’s face. The effect had been adapted