Guilt at the Garage

by Simon Brett

  ‘Oh,’ said Malee, ‘there is one other thing I have found out since we spoke at the weekend.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I have found that Bill had another bank account.’

  ‘For the garage?’

  ‘No. There was an ordinary business account and a savings account for the garage. The same for us at home. I did not want him to set up a joint account for us. I thought that might encourage the family to see me as a gold-digger. But Bill insisted. So, we had the joint account and a savings account. But the new one I have found is different.’

  ‘How did you find out about it?’

  ‘A statement came through the post.’

  ‘You said it was different from the other accounts.’

  ‘Different bank, for a start. All the others are NatWest. This one’s HSBC, and he only set it up last October.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the business?’

  ‘I don’t think it can be. All the activity going through it is transfers of money from the joint account to this new HSBC account, and payments going out of it.’

  ‘Payments to the same recipients?’

  ‘There are two different recipients. To one the payment’s always five hundred pounds.’

  ‘And how regular are they?’

  ‘Every couple of weeks. Sometimes more often. But there isn’t a pattern. No standing orders or direct debits. Just as and when.’

  ‘Presumably it says on the statement who these payments are being made to?’

  ‘Yes. It says “APIPENSION”.’

  ‘So maybe he did set up a new pension?’

  ‘It seems unlikely. His pension arrangements were all sorted through a financial adviser Bill had worked with for years. I’ve called the guy in question and he knows nothing about it. And I’ve checked through Bill’s papers. There’s nothing there about an “APIPENSION” – or, I suppose, more likely, an “A.P.I. PENSION”. Nothing.’

  ‘And what about the other payments? You said there were two recipients.’

  ‘Yes. There are fewer of the others, but they’re for larger amounts. Two thousand, three thousand, that kind of thing.’

  ‘And who’s the payee there?’

  ‘“VADJ Trading”.’

  ‘Mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. Needless to say I’ve googled it. Nothing.’

  A suspicion was forming in Carole’s mind, but she didn’t want to spell it out. See first in which direction Malee’s thoughts had been moving.

  ‘So, do you have any thoughts about where the money might have been going?’

  Malee’s answer showed that she shared Carole’s suspicions exactly. ‘The only thing I can think,’ she said, ‘is that Bill was being blackmailed.’

  By the time Carole had finished the call, Jude had opened the bottle, poured two glasses and was sitting at the kitchen table with hers half empty. Seeing her neighbour’s raised eyebrow, she said, ‘Had to get the taste of Frankie’s Chardonnay out of my mouth.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Carole, taking a modest sip as she sat down. ‘We used to drink bottle after bottle of the stuff.’

  ‘I find that very encouraging. Evidence that some things – like your taste – can improve as you get older.’ Jude grinned. ‘I could only hear your end of the conversation with Malee. Very frustrating.’

  Quickly, Carole brought her up to date.

  ‘Blackmail?’ Jude echoed. ‘What would someone like Bill Shefford have done to be blackmailed about?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Carole picked up the diary. ‘But maybe something in here will give us a clue.’

  Jude moved round to the other side of the table, so they could both look at the same time.

  The first thing they noticed was that the book wasn’t strictly a diary. It didn’t have pages printed with dates, and yet it contained a lot of hand-written dates in Bill Shefford’s large, rather childlike, hand. Presumably, it was one in a long sequence of notebooks which he replaced as soon as they were filled and which contained every detail of his business life. The pages of the one on the High Tor kitchen table were interleaved with bills and scraps of paper and its bulk was held closed by a large rubber band. The paper was decorated with a lot of oily smudges.

  The first entry was early February of the previous year, some eleven months before. And as they flicked through, the pattern of how he used the book became clear. There appeared to be little personal stuff, except for the occasional note to self on the level of ‘pick up a loaf of bread’. Otherwise, it was a record of the garage’s business. There were notes about parts that had to be ordered, dates and addresses where cars needed to be picked up for service, customer’s phone numbers and reminders of when the MOTs of his regulars were due.

  Though on first glance, the entries, scribbled down in biro or pencil, might appear to be random, Bill had a system going that probably worked better for him than using a conventional printed diary. When a directive had been followed or a job completed, the note was crossed out. By that simple means, Bill Shefford had always kept on top of his business.

  Once Carole and Jude had worked out his method, they realized they didn’t have to check through every entry. Which was just as well, because in places the crossing-out made the original notes virtually indecipherable. The pages were thin and bumpy from Bill Shefford’s vigorous scribbling.

  ‘Let’s move on to October,’ said Jude. ‘That’s when Malee said he started to get distant from her, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carole confirmed, stifling a yawn. She was beginning to think it was bedtime if she was to be up at six thirty for Gulliver’s walk on Fethering Beach. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything, though. It’s all garage stuff, nothing personal.’

  ‘We must keep looking,’ said Jude, rather firmly. She was better at late nights than her neighbour. ‘This is the only proper lead we’ve got. Come on, let me fill up your glass.’

  ‘I don’t think I should have any … Oh, all right.’

  Fortified with Sauvignon Blanc, they continued to scan the notebook. ‘More cars being picked up … More taken to the MOT Test Centre …’ said Carole, on a note of defeatism. ‘More brake pads being ordered …’

  She was rather beginning to wish that it had been Jude’s fridge in which there had been a cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. It’s very easy to make your excuses and leave from someone else’s house. Getting a visitor out of your own without being positively rude is always a trickier assignment.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Jude, her eyes darting across the open pages. ‘There’s something different here.’

  ‘What?’ asked Carole rather grumpily. By the Aga, Gulliver coughed again. She wondered if he was going down with something.

  ‘Look, although there are lots of dates in the book, dates when cars are being delivered or picked up for service and what-have-you, there are very few actual timings.’

  ‘Nothing strange about that,’ said Carole. ‘When I booked the Renault in with Bill, I wouldn’t say, “I’ll be with you at eight thirty a.m. on the dot.” I’d just say I’d bring it in first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Exactly. And the same when Bill was picking up cars from people’s houses for service. We’ve seen lots of those entries. He’d just put down “a.m.” or “p.m.”. Same with deliveries of parts and things. He’d put down the date when they’d arrive, not the time.’

  ‘So? I can’t really see that this is a very big deal, and I am beginning to get rather weary, Jude, so, if you don’t mind—’

  ‘No, look, Carole – here!’ Jude’s finger pointed to an entry. Though scored through by a pencil line, it was still quite legible. ‘9 October 3.00 p.m. H.’ ‘And another one there – see, a week later! And there! And there! Dates, times.’

  ‘And always “H”,’ said Carole, intrigued in spite of herself.

  Jude’s finger continued running down the lines and flicking on to the next page. The finger stopped. ‘Now that one’s different.’

&nb
sp; Carole peered across to read, under the pencilled crossing-out: ‘17 October 10.15 a.m. MOT.’

  ‘That’s not strange. The diary’s full of dates for MOTs. He kept a record of when his customers’ MOTs were due. It was part of the Shefford’s service. He always rang me about the Renault.’

  ‘Yes, but none of the other MOT references have got times on them. Just dates.’

  ‘So? One of his customers was pernickety about the time of day he or she could bring the car in – or have it picked up. There’s nothing more to it than that, Jude.’

  ‘I wonder …’

  ‘There really isn’t.’ Carole looked at her watch and went all Carole Seddon. ‘It’s nearly midnight. I don’t think we’re going to work this out now. Are we?’

  ‘No, probably not,’ Jude admitted in a tone of disappointment.

  ‘So, let’s try again in the morning. When our minds are fresher.’

  ‘All right,’ Jude conceded grudgingly. ‘First thing?’

  ‘Well, not my “first thing”. Gulliver and I will be down on the beach by seven.’

  ‘After that then?’

  ‘No. Tomorrow’s the day I do my monthly shop for non-perishable items at the Sainsbury’s in Rustington.’ (Some rituals of Carole Seddon’s life could not be changed for mere murder investigations.)

  ‘When will you be through with that?’

  ‘Let’s say half past ten.’

  ‘Come round to me for coffee when you get back.’

  ‘Very well, Jude. And now I’m afraid—’

  ‘Ooh, do you mind if I take the diary?’ Carole’s expression suggested that she really did mind. ‘You won’t have a chance to look at it if you’re dog walking and Sainsburying, will you?’

  Carole was forced to concede she wouldn’t. And on that, Jude finally took the hint and left. With the precious diary.

  And with both of them wondering what on earth ‘H’ stood for.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Jude was still deeply asleep the following morning when her neighbour and Gulliver strode past Woodside Cottage on their way to Fethering Beach. Carole was limping more. Perhaps it was the angle at which she’d slept. Oh dear, she’d hoped she was too young to have arthritis.

  Jude didn’t have any clients booked in for the morning, so she made her getting-up routine more elaborate than usual. The eight o’clock cup of tea under the duvet was followed by half an hour’s meditation before a bath with essential oils and scented candles. Then breakfast of coffee and toast slathered with butter and honey.

  But this was not mere self-indulgence. Jude needed her mind to be relaxed and ready. That morning she knew she had to think.

  She wanted to have clarified her own ideas on the case before Carole joined her.

  To aid concentration, Jude made green tea. Then she sat down on the sofa, which was covered by a variegation of throws. She took up a cross-legged yoga position and focused her mind on Bill Shefford’s death.

  Jude felt as she did when there was a tune she couldn’t quite remember. All its elements were there, every note and phrase. She just had to join the fragments of memory together in the right order. Then all would be complete. And it would sing in her mind.

  She thought of the various people who had surrounded Bill Shefford. Malee, Billy, Shannon, Rhona, Frankie. All with their own agendas. Was it one of them who was being paid from his secret bank account? What secret did they know that he would be so desperate to keep hidden?

  She extended the range of characters. Not people who’d had direct contact with Bill Shefford, but people she had seen over the previous weeks who had discussed the death. She felt sure things had been said which were relevant if only she could work out why. She scoured her memory for snatches of conversation in the Crown and Anchor, observations from Ted Crisp or even the odious Barney Poulton. She tried to read between the lines of Tom Kendrick’s responses.

  Then of course there were the people who she hadn’t seen much of but Carole had. That bizarre couple, Adrian and Gwyneth Greenford. There was enough going on in their lives, Jude felt certain, to fill a good few psychological case studies. But could any connection be made between them and Bill Shefford?

  Thinking of the Greenfords made her also remember Karen and Chrissie and the Ilkley tie-in. She was sure something pertinent had been said that Saturday evening in Leeds, but again she couldn’t drag it up to the surface of her recollections.

  And then, of course, there were a couple of other names in the equation. Was it possible that Jeremiah had had anything to do with Bill Shefford? He certainly knew Dr Rawley, the man who Carole had met and Jude hadn’t. The man who had apparently been treating the garage owner, and who had signed his death certificate.

  Jude decided it was time to take a closer look at the battered green diary.

  The process was a frustrating one. Convinced that the book did have secrets to yield, she went through the entries in much more detail than the night before. Starting at the point where she and Carole had begun to flick through the pages to pick up again in October, she checked out everything in the intervening months. But it was all more of the same. Records of cars due to be picked up for service, with little notes like ‘brakes making a clicking noise’, ‘smell of oil’ and so on. Reminders of parts to be ordered, upcoming MOTs, dates of VAT quarters, invoices to slow payers that had to be chased up.

  There were a few notes taken of web addresses, but those Jude checked out on her laptop were all garage-related, dealers of cars and parts for them.

  Still, the only entries that didn’t conform remained the timed references to ‘H’ and the one timed MOT. Though she was coming round to Carole’s view that there was nothing sinister about the latter.

  Jude checked her watch. Twenty-five past ten. She had heard the Renault arrive next door some quarter of an hour before, but knew that Carole wouldn’t arrive until the dot of the appointed hour. That was just how Carole Seddon worked.

  Oh, well, might be worth having another look at the entries right at the beginning of the diary. They’d flicked fairly randomly through February and March, at that stage just trying to establish how Bill had organized the contents.

  On the first page she saw something that hadn’t caught their attention before. Through the crossing-out, it read: ‘Organize insurance on SAAB for M.’

  Car-related yes – that’s why it hadn’t registered – but personal too. He must have started this particular diary almost immediately after he’d come back from Thailand with his new bride-to-be. And he needed to add her to the insurance so that she could drive his car. Presumably until he’d organized another vehicle for her personal use.

  OK, not of major importance but intriguing. Jude looked with renewed interest at the next couple of pages.

  And she saw another entry that wasn’t work-related. Scratched through with a dash of biro, it still read quite clearly, ‘Get bait for Sunday.’

  Just at that moment, the front doorbell rang and she let Carole in. Before even offering coffee, she pointed out her discovery.

  ‘I don’t see why that’s so important,’ said Carole, a little sniffily.

  ‘It’s important because I remember Rhona telling me that every Sunday Bill used to go fishing with his mate Red.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  Jude couldn’t imagine why her neighbour was looking so uncomfortable.

  ‘But Rhona,’ she went on, ‘said that Malee put paid to those fishing trips. She wouldn’t allow Bill to go. And yet, here he is, after getting back from Thailand with Malee, and he’s reminding himself that he needs to get bait for the Sunday.’

  ‘Maybe it was after that that Malee put her foot down.’

  ‘Maybe, Carole. But it’s still worth investigating. This guy Red had known Bill all his life. He might be able to give us some useful background on him.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Now, I wonder how we can get in touch with him. Billy or Shannon will probably have a contact number.’
/>   ‘Actually,’ said Carole in a small voice, ‘I know where you can find him.’

  Jude went on her own to search out Red. Carole, still embarrassed by her failed encounter, had said, ‘I’m sure you’re more likely to get through to him with your natural empathy.’ Only Carole Seddon could make those two words sound like an accusation.

  It was sunny for February but nippy. Still only three boats were moored in the so-called marina. Jude was very aware of the smell: salt sea with undertones of diesel oil and rotting vegetation.

  Red was once again sitting there, on the transom box by the outboard, going through the elaborate process of rolling a matchstick-thin cigarette. He had clocked Jude’s arrival on the pontoon but did not look up until he’d put the fag in his mouth and lit it with a disposable lighter. His expression was as unwelcoming as Carole had led her to expect.

  ‘What do you want? Are you from the council?’

  ‘No. My name’s Jude and I—’

  ‘I don’t care what your name is. Why’re you here?’

  Jude had prepared the line she was going to take. ‘I’ve recently been seeing Rhona Hampton.’

  The effect of the name instantaneously softened his manner. ‘Oh. You a friend of hers then?’

  ‘I’ve been treating her for a medical condition.’ She avoided the word ‘healer’, in case he was one of those people who would be put off by it.

  ‘Oh?’ Alarm wrinkled his face even more. ‘You haven’t come to tell me she’s popped her clogs, have you? I’d heard the old girl was in a bad way, but—’

  ‘No, no,’ Jude reassured him. ‘She’s still with us, but I’m afraid I don’t think it’ll be long.’

  ‘I’d heard that, and all.’ He half-rose from the transom box and indicated one of the side benches. ‘Why don’t you come on board?’

  As lightly as someone of her bulk could, Jude stepped over the gunwale and sat down.

  ‘Could I get you a cup of tea or …?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, having caught a glimpse through the hatch of the boat’s chaotically grubby interior.