The Mystery of the Single Red Sock

Travel back in time and place to November 1963 Brighton, England … where trouble at the liquor store leads to a big surprise. Installment 1

I’m Colin Crampton, crime reporter on the Evening Chronicle.

It's my job to file stories for my paper.

But sometimes the story finds me.

And the mystery of the single red sock began in a violent way while I was buying a bottle of Gordon's gin.

I was in old Fred Cartland’s off-licence on the corner of Dyke Road and Chatham Place. It was grey day, the first Thursday in November.

Fred didn’t get a lot of customers. He was a wizened old bloke, who walked with a stoop. Most of his hair had fallen out except for one lanky strand which he wrapped round his bald pate in ever decreasing circles. It made his head look like a walnut whip curly chocolate. His false teeth squeaked when he talked. And he tended to dribble. So there were usually damp patches on his shirt.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people found all this a bit of a challenge to cope with the first time they went into the place. So not many came back a second time.

I wouldn’t have bothered making the uphill hike from the Chronicle offices myself if it wasn’t for the fact that Fred traded in something other than gin.

He’d had an ill-spent youth that had extended well into middle-age. Which meant he knew most of the wrong people in Brighton. He picked up a lot of the gossip about who was supposed to be planning the next crime of the century. At least, that was his boast.

Actually, the people Fred knew never were planning the big one. They were normally street crooks with a quick scam. But sometimes Fred would hear a nugget of useful intelligence. He’d slipped me the odd snippet of information with my gin from time to time.

Anyway, Fred had just handed me the green bottle and was telling me about a new crew who were planning a betting scam up at the racecourse when the shop bell tinkled. I turned round.