Peter's on the case...

It was one of those joints that kinda told a guy to keep his wits cocked and a full belt of mental Magnum 45 slugs stacked ready.

OK, the house in Shoebury Road looked like a regular North Shoebury pad. Four walls, a roof and no bullet-holes in the front door. The neat garden told me there was some high-bred floral type dame around.

It was the kind of suburban street where a local cop can sleep out the years to his pension without fear of getting gunned down in the streets. 'Cept maybe by his wife when she goes mad-dog crazy from the monotony.

The house where the guy who calls himself Peter Williams lived was no exception. It was the sort of straight-down-the-line roof-job where a retired civil servant might live out his days.

The message to any gumshoe was clear enough: "Wipe your feet street-boy, you're in a decent neighbourhood now."

I knocked the creases in my fedora straight. Peter Williams was a respectable type guy, alright. Not the sort to tolerate scruffbags lightly. I knew this already. I knew a lot about so-called Peter Williams. I had all the gen on him.

He was mid-60s, two grown-up kids. He'd been on the Government payroll most of his life. Trained as a journalist on Middlesborough papers, but joined the Government Information Service when the bambinos arrived and the mortgage-man started to lean against the lamp-post outside his door.

Then he moved into the Diplomatic Service as an information officer. High point as a press-officer came when he organised Queen Juliana's state visit. Spent the last decade as a business journalist. Then it was time for the big gold timepiece from the boss, and the long twilight, watching the grass grow on the lawn.

Peter Williams' cards didn't stack quite as simple as that, though. I knew something else about this particular male caucasian. He had a double-life. My bunch of fives hit the door.

The guy who answered it was tallish, affable, self-assured. "Call me Peter," he said.

He ushered me in. Next thing I knew, he'd introduced me to his wife. Ex-nurse type. Name: Cath. Friendly, hospitable, keen to make me feel at home. So this was the dame who did the garden.

Then she said it. Words I can never forget: "Would you like a cup of tea?" "Sure," I said. "I'll have a cup. Straight, please, ma'am. Cut the sugar, shot of milk. Don't bother with a handle on the cup."

While Mrs "Peter Williams" made the tea, I turned to the guy known as Peter. I needed to hit him hard and fast, while his guard was still down.

"OK, Richard . . ." I said.

You had to give it to him. The guy didn't bat an eyelid."You can call me Richard, if you like," he said. "It was my uncle's name. He was killed in World War One."

"OK, Richard . . . Richard Hope ."

I waited for the goons to appear from behind the settee. I waited for the great heave-ho, out into the mean streets of Shoebury. All I got, though, was: "Richard Hope, that's right. Hope seemed like a good nom-de-plume for a new novel, for obvious reasons."

You had to give it to him. This was one cool hombre. He wasn't even trying to hide his other life. He was flaunting it. Talked fancy French words like nom-de-plume, too.

"So," I said, "behind this facade of suburban normality and afternoon tea, you are Richard Hope, who specialises in crime." "OK," he groaned, blinking behind his specs. "You're right. I'm into crime."

Hell, it was the easiest confession of my career. We stared at each other in the winter twilight. For a few seconds there was silence - a silence punctured only by a distant scream from a few blocks away. Yet another murder in north Shoebury, probably - or perhaps just somebody who had turned the shower-tap on too cold.

Then the disclosure came pouring out. Once Peter Williams/Richard Hope got talking, it was going to take a hand-grenade to stop him, and I'd left mine at home.

He continued: "I read a lot of crime novels. It seemed natural for me to write a crime novel, I suppose." So Peter Williams took up his pen, and Richard Hope was born.

The crime novelist that Peter especially liked was Raymond Chandler. Chandler - remember him? Author type. More or less created the private eye novel. And the mean prose style to go with it.

Peter came clean. He liked the atmosphere of mean streets and intricate webs of deceit and double-cross in Chandler's books. He liked the terse sentences that sound like hiccups. He relished the chance to write lines like: "I sucked in the smells of Walworth as we cruised down Essex Street."

"So my book, Chase the Lady, ended up as a Chandleresque novel," said the Hope guy, plugging me with a between-the-ears sales pitch that would have turned a Colt 45 green with envy. "The style of Raymond Chandler is infectious," he continued. I had to agree.

Now it was time for the big question. Peter Williams and Richard Hope were sorted. But what about the Third Man? What about Sam Sparrow?

"This Sparrow guy. He's the hero of Richard Hope's - I mean, your - novel. He's an investigative journalist. You're a retired journalist. How much of Sparrow is you?"

Peter Williams smiled thinly and for the first time he really looked mysterious - and dangerous. "I was never an investigative journalist. I worked for the Government," he said. "We weren't spin doctors. We informed people. We gave journalists the facts."

"And the facts about your private eye novel?"

Peter Williams was true to his calling as an information officer. He gave it to me straight: "I've written about places I know. But Sam Sparrow is a figure of imagination."

I'd been hit by the straight unvarnished facts. And what I was hearing was the thing I most dreaded.

I got the message. Peter Williams really was just a retired public servant who writes novels for fun. And a shiver like 10,000 ice-cold manhattan cocktails ran down my spine.

Chase the Lady by Richard Hope, published by Citron, is on sale at bookshops for £7.99.

Cracking out the words like bullets from a gun - Crime novelist Peter Williams loves the writing style of private eye Philip Marlowe creator Raymond Chandler, which is reflected in his own work, written under the pen name of Richard Hope

Picture: NICK ANSELL

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.