Whispers Under Ground

seemed to retain full movement in both his arms – although with a noticeable shake. His legs were concealed by a tartan blanket that fell all the way to his feet. He was clean-shaven, well scrubbed and he seemed genuinely pleased to see us which, in case you’re wondering, is another square of the suspicious behaviour bingo card.
    ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘It’s the fuzz.’ He noticed Lesley’s mask and did an exaggerated double take. ‘Young lady, don’t you think you’re taking the concept of undercover work just a tad too seriously? Can I offer you tea? Varenka is very reliable with tea, providing you like it with lemon.’
    ‘As it happens, I’d love a cuppa,’ I said. If he was going to play louche upper crust I wasn’t beyond doing cockney copper.
    ‘Sit, sit,’ he said and gestured us to the pair of chairs arranged by the dining table. He wheeled himself into position opposite and clasped his hands together to keep them still. ‘Now you must tell me what brings you bursting through my door?’
    ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but David Faber recently went missing and we’re part of the investigation into his whereabouts,’ I said.
    ‘I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a David Faber,’ said Woodville-Gentle. ‘Is he famous?’
    I made a show of opening my notebook and flicking back through the pages. ‘You were both at Magdalene College, Oxford at the same time, from 1956 to 1959.’
    ‘Not quite correct,’ said Woodville-Gentle. ‘I was there from 1957 and while my memory is not what it was I’m fairly certain I would have remembered a name like Faber. Do you have a photograph?’
    Lesley pulled a picture from her inside pocket, an obviously modern colour print of a monochrome photograph. It showed a young man in a tweed jacket and authentically wavy period haircut standing against a nondescript brick wall with ivy. ‘Does it ring any bells?’ she asked.
    Woodville-Gentle squinted at the picture.
    ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said.
    I’d have been amazed if he had, given that me and Lesley had downloaded it off a Swedish Facebook page. David Faber was entirely fictitious and we’d chosen a Swede because it made it extremely unlikely that any of the Little Crocodiles would actually recognise him. It was just an excuse to poke our noses into their lives without alerting any practitioners, if there were any others, that we were after them.
    ‘It was our information that he was in the same social club at Cambridge,’ I flicked through my notebook again. ‘The Little Crocodiles.’
    ‘Dining club,’ said Woodville-Gentle.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘They were called dining clubs,’ he said. ‘Not social clubs. An excuse to go and eat and drink to excess although I daresay we did some charity work and the like.’
    Varenka arrived with the tea, Russian style, black with lemon and served in glasses. Once she’d served us she took up a position behind me and Lesley where we couldn’t see her without turning. That’s a bit of a cop trick and we don’t like it when people do it to us.
    ‘Alas, I am afraid there’s no cake or biscuits in the flat,’ said Woodville-Gentle. ‘I’m not allowed them on doctor’s orders and I’m much more mobile, and ingenious at ferreting out the things that are bad for me than you might think.’
    I sipped my tea while Lesley asked some routine questions. Woodville-Gentle remembered the names of some of his contemporaries who he knew had been members of the Little Crocodiles, and others who he thought might have been. Most of the names were already on our list but it’s always good to corroborate your information. He did give us the names of some female undergraduates who he described as ‘affiliate members’ – it was all grist to the mill. Five minutes in, I said that I heard there was a brilliant view from the balcony and asked if I might have a look. Woodville-Gentle told me to help myself, so I got up and, after Varenka had shown me how to open the slide door, stepped outside. I’d absently-mindedly tapped my jacket pocket when getting up. I had a box of matches in there to sell the illusion, so I was pretty certain that they assumed I was going out for a smoke. It was all part of Lesley’s cunning plan.
    The view was astonishing. Leaning on the balcony parapet I looked south over the Dome of St Paul’s and across the river to Elephant and Castle where the building affectionately known as the Electric Razor vied for