The Blood of an Englishman by James McClure Page B

no obvious effect, and found the reception area equally disappointing. For a start, it was a large room with very little in it, and what there was seemed very makeshift and cheap. The walls were covered in planks that nobody had bothered to paint, the floor was tiled in cork in the manner of an old-fashioned bathroom, and the furniture had been made out of chrome tubing that looked suspiciously like secondhand motor-bike exhausts, necessitating some very uncomfortable-seeming designs. As for the ceiling, it was stuck over with sacking of all things, and the pictures almost defied description, having no doubt been splattered together by somebody’s two-year-old. He, for one, would definitely ask for his money back.
    In his second glance, he took in a small glass tank filled with tropical fish on the reception desk, and behind it, putting down a red telephone, was a buxom young woman with a thick blonde plait, flatish features and big Afrikaner-blue eyes. Glad to find something in the room that didn’t seem alien, he warmed to her instantly and introduced himself, for the first time that day, in his mother tongue.
    “I am sorry,” she said shyly. “I am not long from Sweden. You speak English?”
    “Ja, when I have to, miss,” he sighed. “I’m from the CID, the police—I’d like to see your boss.”
    “One moment, please,” she lisped, pressing a hidden buzzer.
    There was an awkward silence. Kramer stooped over the fish tank and pretended to admire its inhabitants. “I like your aquarium,” he said politely.
    “I am sorry?”
    It was hopeless.
    Then the boss arrived, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, dressed in white slacks, a singlet and white tennis shoes, walking with a spring in his step that looked very tiring. His big round head was notable for its glisten of sweat, its high pinkcoloring, and some of the most horrible blackheads Kramer had ever seen on a face that size; it was like starting a conversation with a slice of watermelon.
    “Glad to meet you, Lieutenant Kramer!” the owner of the gym said. “Jimmy Winters is the name, health and fitness is my game! You’ll find everything here to keep you in tip-top shape, right on your toes, ready for anything that comes up!” And all the time he went on shaking hands, trying to demonstrate his crushing grip.
    “Do you do skipping then, Mr. Winters?” asked Kramer.
    “Skipping! Weights! Isometrics!”
    “I’m interested to know if you have such a thing as a Master Skip skipping rope,” said Kramer, quite prepared to go on shaking hands if it made the man happy. “I’m working on a murder case where one is involved, you see.”
    “A Master-what? I don’t know, to be honest, but would you like to take a look?”
    “Please.”
    “Well, shall we …?” Winters had gone right up on to his toes, and seemed to want his hand back. “I mean.…”
    “After you, Mr. Winters.”
    A girlish giggle, Kramer decided, as he followed the great oaf down a narrow passage, could sound just as nice in Swedish, and he wondered what her name was. Then the passage ended in a dazzle of white light and gleaming equipment.
    “Not bad, hey?” said Winters, proudly. “What you saw when you came in cost me a pretty penny, but this!—this is nothing but the latest, nothing but the best.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “And look at the clientele.…” Winters whispered behind a raised hand. “All the top-notch, the cream. You won’t find skolly boys in here pumping iron!”
    It was certainly an educative and engaging sight to see so many of Trekkersburg’s leading citizens stripped down andrunning over. What Kramer enjoyed most was the Supreme Court’s most pompous and self-righteous judge, so paunchy he looked pregnant, using a vibrating-belt machine with every indication that he hoped, with so much bouncing about, to procure an illegal abortion.
    “The skipping ropes are kept over here,” said Winters, leading the way across to five pegs in the wall. “Probably