Percy Crow

by Daniel Kemp

  None of them knew that he was cheating on them too! He, the swine, was not there. I got a felt pen and scribbled across the connecting window what he'd done, so everyone could see.

  I had the locks changed at the apartment, told the concierge that he was not welcome and left two full suitcases of his cut-up clothing in the reception area where we were living. Filed for divorce the very next day. Painful period, but one I got over. I learned a huge lesson with that escape, Harry, one that taught me the value of love. Everything in life comes with a price, including that emotion people call love. But if you pay cheaply for it, it won't last. The more you pay the more chance that it will have. There has never been anything cheap about me but I sold myself way short of my value to that man. Father said that I never come with a price tag. I'm an expensive person to know, H, and an even more expensive person to know well. And I don't mean by any of that it's simply money that buys my love!”

  * * *

  We breakfasted with George, who questioned if all was okay with Serena and me. I presumed he could sense the apprehension between us, and was not enquiring into our more amorous intimacy. As I was thinking of George's celibate life, the house phone rang. It was Allan Finch, from the Institute of Agriculture, the man I'd sent the farmhouse photo to.

  “Hello, Harry. It was great to hear from you the other day. Must be all of ten years since that wedding of Godfrey and Sheila where we last had a good old natter. How goes Annie's? I heard from someone that you were working for the petroleum industry in Holland. I told them that they must be wrong, as you'd never give up on your first love of farming.”

  “I was in Antwerp for a time, working for a new start-up company, Allan, but that it wasn't for long, so yes, that's true to an extent but I'm still trying to hack it as green-booted turner of God's fine earth. I take it you've had some luck with that old photograph I sent you?”

  “Luck indeed! It's on the market, Harry. Changed very little, in a lovely part of Wales, Monmouthshire. This charming place is just off the road between Monmouth and Raglan, very near to the castle that's there. A40 all the way from London, if that's now your base. I would imagine that your snap of the place was taken in or around the late seventies as there's an old Massy Ferguson tractor poking out of a barn that looks new to me. That particular model was popular from 1970 onwards until replaced in '79. The spreading equipment and flails look from that era as well. If I'm right, and I'm pretty sure I am, it was owned during that time by the Kettleworth family. Down through three generations of them. They sold it to a land agency in 1984. Must have left farming altogether, as I couldn't find any transfer listed. The whole farm was kept intact and leased to a certain Mr Carpenter, in 1990. As I said, it's now back on the market, all hundred and sixty-eight acres. There's more in our archives if you want to dig around yourself. You'd be very welcome if you wanted to. We can go over our days out in Bosnia, eh! You interested in that size of acreage, Harry? Would have thought it a bit on the small side for you! By the way, the place is called Lady Lamb Farm and all arable.”

  As I asked Allan to repeat the names and dates, so as to write them down, my trusted old Nokia bleeped with a message.

  “Allan, old sport, we simply must meet up. Can I give you to my assistant, as there's someone I honestly can't afford to miss on my mobile? George is his name, and a deft touch at confining relevant information to paper. Never my forte, that. Jot things down on odd bits and pieces then throw the things away by mistake. Arrange a date with George, and I'll be there.” I disliked handing him over in such a rude way but had no choice. The caller on my mobile was from British intelligence, my pal at The Box.

  After being vigorously berated for keeping the same phone number that was registered in-house at Vauxhall, he then complimented me on my memory. The code he texted was an old line-out call we had both known when playing rugby. Once again I had to use George. I messaged him back with George's mobile number. Moments later, he rang.

  He had identified three of the photographs. One was a small fifty-bed Children's Hospital, in Southern Ireland, once used by Drogheda City Council. The second, an Ulster police station in Newry, and the third; Grange Manor, on the north-east coast of Southern Ireland. They had one thing in common, all three had been deliberately set on fire and at first thought to have been IRA targets as the same type of incendiary devices had been used. However, the arsonist of the fifty-bed children's hospital, just outside the centre of Drogheda, where the bodies of two nuns were found, was arrested seven months after the fire. He was at the time a secretary to the board of governors. At his trial, he was found guilty of murder and committed to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. There he was assessed to be suffering from a psychiatric disorder and a danger to himself. For some unknown reason, not noted, he was transferred from Ireland to England, ending up in Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire a year later and there he remained.

  “An unusual happening, given the differences between the two countries, but there you have it! Thomas Crowther was his name, Harry, and he shone in the limelight rather more recently for a completely different reason. Crowther had a regular visitor who even a backward country bumpkin like yourself would have heard of; Terry Row, the BBC television presenter, the serial abuser of kids! And by the way, there were casualties at both the other locations. A party of four at Grange Manor, who I cannot give you the names of as that file is sealed, and a Royal Ulster police officer at the Newry one, who I can name but only if you promise not to bother me again.”

  I did promise but had my fingers crossed in case I needed to go back on my word.

  “A Welshman, by the unusually uncommon name of John Williams. The year for both was the same as the hospital. Have a scream of a time, Harry.”

  “You never told me the year, old boy!”

  “Sorry, laughing too much about my joke of John Williams being an unusual name for a Welshman. They were all in 1952. Have fun, Harry!”

  He laughed as the phone went dead, but I never shared in his amusement that day. Things were getting serious.

  Terry Row was the same man, then a theatrical producer, who had attended the Eton Square party of '81. Lord Maudlin was neither unduly prejudiced nor suffered from any form of homophobia but one thing I know to be beyond doubt was his absolute abhorrence of paedophiles. First there was Percy, with the background that Lily had elaborated upon and now Terry Row. Puzzling questions were flying through my head.

  As I made an assessment of all I had to date, it was obvious that George was now pivotal to the proceedings, it was crying out for his secretarial and organisation skills. His enquiries at the letting offices for Pilgrim Street had uncover something peculiar that could become important, but needed the time to investigate that only he had. Mrs Squires had turned up no more suspicious photos, nor had either of them found any more names that were unusual on the guest list, but what we had found, and how to tie them together was going to be a mammoth exercise. I made my excuses, choosing to be alone with those pounding, convoluted facts bouncing around my brain on a stroll to Queen Annie's Gate and our old banking premises there.

  The building was unchanged with the single brass plaque saying, Private still the only fixture on the highly glossed, painted black door. Being the first born male into the family it was never my ultimate destiny to become custodian of Annie's, but many times I had visited, mainly with Maudlin and Phillip. I was never close enough to my father, particularly after the death of my mother, to spend any memorable time with him. Nor was I close enough to my youngest brother to visit London. The two of them lived in a completely different world than I, and yet strangely it was London life that separated the both from each other. One of the things that always fascinated me so much about the bank was that plain black door. Perhaps it signified power and strength to me, a permanent sense of belonging in time. It oozed stability, along with reverence. Annie's required none of the brashness of the commercial banks with their cosmetic attraction seeking out investors, our investors needed no such indu
cement. They not only wanted a return on their deposited money but also anonymity and secrecy.

  When I first saw the name Annie's written on some ancient parchment, I puzzled over the missing apostrophe. When it was explained, it was like most things in my family; far from straightforward. The Royal Bank of Saint George, the original name for the private bank, was withdrawn from Catholic Genoa in 1534, being housed near to Hampton Court Palace, home of Henry VIII. When George III, a successor, first thought of acquiring Buckingham House in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte, the necessary money for that purpose was raised from the bank that my family had, since its inauguration in 1407, controlled. As most business in those days used cash, or bonds, it was decided that our bank be moved closer to London and in particular, the building that was to become Buckingham Palace, the principal residence for the future kings and queens of England. That's why Queen Anne's Gate, a few hundred yards away, became its home in 1763. It was then thought necessary to change the name so that it distanced the bank significantly from royalty in order to assuage any fears that investors may have concerning the King's judgement and his lack of financial acumen.

  On the first notification sent to inform, and pacify bondholders, the apostrophe was omitted by a clerk's mistake. Thinking that no one would believe that the highly educated, respectable family of Patersons could possibly employ such a fool, and too proud to admit that they could ever make an error, it remained as Annies until our departure, two years or so ago. I doubted that any embarrassment was ever openly shown. There were many oddities one could attribute to the Paterson family, one being its lines of succession to its full range of titles. It was the common norm that the eldest son would succeed to any family peerage on the death of the holder, but in our family the title went first to the youngest son. This peculiarity was granted one year after the bank was established in this country. I always imagined that the Paterson who was be placed in charge of the bank was a close friend of the King and wanted compensating for being away from any excitement.

  Those childhood memories and thoughts swirled around in my mind as I walked through St. James's Park on my return to Eton Square. The sweet smell of newly cut grass, along with the perfumed scent of summer flowers were a welcome divergence from the stench of the nearby road traffic, but I was homesick and no amount of cascading fountains, nor preening pelicans, could change that. I craved Harrogate and home. I had ample time before the annual grouse shoot was to take place on the estate, but my heart wanted away from London as quickly as it could be decently arranged. I rang Joseph from the same public telephone box that Elliot had used to call me months before his murder asking him to send down John, my chauffeur, to pick me up. I wanted the privacy of a car to travel home in, not the public confines of a train!

  Chapter Eleven: Charlie Reilly

  My first port of call, when arriving at The Hall, was to visit Sir Michael at his home on the other side of York. The family's solicitors had found no trace of any surviving relatives of Charlie, who had died leaving no dependants with no evidence of any marriage. The relationship between him and Percy Crow, which had been alluded to in Sir Michael's first report, was central to everything. I hoped he had more. I was not disappointed.

  I figured that Lord Maudlin Paterson could have first come across Percy's name whilst reporting back to HM Government from Spain during his indelicate time in that country when Paulo was conceived. Percy had joined the Irish contingent of the International Brigade and fought alongside the Canadians in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, but although this could have been the case, nothing was known by Sir Michael, as wasn't the reason for my enquiries. I suspected Percy and Charlie had remained close for all their lives. It was a starting point, and all I had.

  “The most salient point to remember, Harry, is that Charlie was a very resourceful, dangerous and ingenious man. He showed no overt political affiliations but covertly supported all things that favoured the Republicans first, and then when they faded, the Provos. He was going about his business with abject furtiveness. His progress through their equivalent to our Foreign Office was slow but steady. He ended up, you know, as Ireland's trade representative in Germany. That's where he died in '93. Had a rather grand home outside Munich in some unpronounceable privately secured estate, backing on to a park with an equally unpronounceable name. Sorry, can't speak German. Far too guttural for my delicate throat! In essence, he became a fix-it man, the Republican Army's quartermaster! Dabbled in everything that was aimed at us. Of course, back in the dark ages there was no proof that Sinn Féin and the IRA were connected. Stacks of merited speculation but nothing that could be proven. That definitive proof didn't come until 2005, but as far back as 1965 Charlie was a top member of both. Did you know that they tried to bomb Churchill's funeral procession route?” I shook my head, as I didn't know.

  “Early IRA bombs used mercury switches alongside the electronic type deployed during the Second World War, but we suspected Charlie was the johnny who procured the modern military squib fuses that we found in three explosive devices randomly placed along the route. They were US manufactured, highly efficient and deadly to defuse! It was pure luck, Harry, that we discovered them. Some forward-thinking senior officer in Special Branch had ordered the emptying of pavement rubbish bins, and the temporary sealing of such only the day before the event. That's where we found them. We firmly believed that Charlie had a contact in the States, but with us never having enough manpower at that time, put with the fact that the Americans were unhelpful, that suspicion was never able to be corroborated. We were up against a wall. The American anti-British administration never changed for years! Lot of rhetoric to the contrary but, well, I doubt I need to fill you in there, Harry?”

  I nodded in acceptance of that truism and asked, “Did you have a name for this contact, Michael, or any description?”

  “At first it was all rather vague and extremely tenuous. An Ulster member of Parliament was in New York when he recognised Charlie speaking to a man whom he described as 'shadowy'. Said he'd never seen him in any of the usual American delegations and looked more of a gangster than a politician. Nowadays I guess the distinction isn't so great.” He sat back, tasting his brandy with approval as though washing away that part in his memory, then carried on.

  “Added that both were locked in conversation that appeared conspiratorial, being seated concealed behind a screen in an otherwise empty lobby of The Waldorf Astor. Our man was visiting a senior American judge who was staying at that hotel. Charlie was dressed in shirtsleeves and casual trousers, whilst the inclement winter of that year required a heavy overcoat and snow boots for his guest. The Ulsterman confirmed at the desk that Charlie was a resident, his caller had been expected, met by Charlie on arrival. So, no name there, Harry, I'm sorry to report. We considered it to be a rather expensive hangout for a junior member of external affairs and that's when our interest started. The Americans had an ongoing investigation into a gent by the name of Patrick Simms, an Irish hood out of Detroit, Michigan, who vaguely fitted the description, but the cooperation between us and them virtually dried up round about the same time. It left us with having no way of knowing if it was indeed the same man.”

  “When was this sighting?” I asked.

  “Middle of December! Must have been seven or eight weeks before Winnie's ceremonial funeral, and a short while after Lyndon B's re-election, Harry. He was erratic in his support at the best of times, but hold fire, I haven't finished yet. Charlie had been living in Dublin with a family named Malone. The husband, Paul Malone, was, amongst other things, a bookie. One of the richest man in the city at that time. He had a car as far back as 1921, when most of Ireland were savagely poor. He used to give local kids rides on the running-board!

  His wife, Dot they called her, had the blackest of hair imaginable. Dyed, of course. She always wore thick red lipstick and had three huge diamond rings on each hand. Boasted how each ring represented her husband's six affairs! She was a runner for a
n abortionist. We believe that it was Malone who steered Charlie towards a career in politics as opposed to more openly violent pursuits, and in him, along with his wife Dot, Charlie experienced an early taste of avarice and envy. With Percy's known inventiveness and Charlie's contacts that he made in America, both in fund raising and gun running, it can be easily understood how he became a very wealthy man in his later years.”

  Where had he got the inventiveness that Percy was well known for? But I never interrupted him to ask.

  “Had we known in 1921 that the IRA was on its knees, and almost finished, things would have been very different, but we didn't know. One reason for that was that chappie Paul Malone. He started to fund the IRA just when they needed money and weapons, then he actively supported the growing division within the organisation, favouring neither side with his assets. He had a well published speech that he favoured using at Republican rallies, it went along the lines of: 'Violence on its own is not the end of a just campaign, that must be done by soft voices and large ears, but violence can open the door for that dialogue.' I learned it by heart. At the end of the war amongst themselves, he was promoted, becoming their chief banker and second in overall command behind Colin Finnerary. All in all, he was a manipulative man who got what he went after.