by Tom Sharpe
‘Now then, my dear,’ he said to his daughter. ‘I want you to put in writing, that is to write down, what you have just told me.’ For a moment he hesitated. He was putting an unbearable burden on the poor woman to ask her to write anything vaguely coherent, indeed to write at all. ‘Have you anyone who can help you write it down? Where are you staying?’
‘With Auntie Bea, Daddy,’ said Vy, much happier now that the storm seemed to have passed.
Again Sir Edward hesitated. ‘Auntie Bea?’ he said, and was conscious once more of a frisson of horror. He had once in the mid-seventies, while on a Parliamentary fact-finding mission to Outer Mongolia, been forced to share a tent with the so-called Auntie Bea and had found her fascination with thongs and the sexual attributes of leather at first exhilarating and then terrifying. He had never played the role of a woman in an encounter with a woman before. Eton had been bad enough: Ulan Bator was frankly appalling. That his daughter should now be the plaything of a woman like Auntie Bea struck him as being exceedingly bizarre and ironic.
All the same, there could be no doubting Auntie Bea’s intellect when she chose to apply it. He could cheerfully leave Sir Arnold Gonders’ baleful curriculum vitae in her hands. And, of course, Vy. Sir Edward cheered up. He had a purpose in life once more and his daughter had finally found a woman who could make use of her. When he finally got rid of Lady Vy he made several phone calls and then changed for dinner. He would sound old Elisha Beconn out about police corruption and ways of combating it and get another ball of influence rolling. It was worth decanting a really good claret. Besides, he had a theory to explain why Lady Thatcher was such a passionate advocate of arming the Bosnian Muslims. Her son was an arms dealer and by backing the Muslims so openly she was bound to help dear little Markie’s standing in Saudi Arabia. It was in the discovery of real motivation in politics that Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre found his greatest pleasure.
21
‘Of course I don’t know where he is,’ Victor Gould said irritably. He disliked being phoned late at night and he particularly disliked being phoned late at night by Bletchley Bright with questions about his wretched son, Timothy. As a result, and because he had something of a bad conscience, he was less than forthcoming. ‘It’s true that he did come here some time ago . . .’
‘What the devil did he do that for?’ demanded Bletchley with his usual tact.
‘Perhaps he wanted somewhere to stay,’ said Victor, just managing to keep his temper. ‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’
‘Ask him? How the hell can I? I’m trying to find out where he has got to. The damned boy has disappeared.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Victor. ‘I can assure you that I haven’t got him.’
‘Didn’t suppose for a moment you had,’ said Bletchley. ‘Can’t see why he should come to you in any case. Still, if he does, be so good as to let us know.’
‘Of course,’ said Victor and put the phone down with a new and furious resolve not to have anything whatsoever to do with the damned Bright family in future. They were all impossibly rude and arrogant and Bletchley, who was usually one of the more polite ones, was showing his true Bright colours. Victor Gould turned out the light and lay in the darkness wondering what had happened to the ghastly Timothy. Perhaps he had been killed on that motorbike and his body hadn’t been found. Victor didn’t like the possibility but it had to be faced. Above all, he didn’t like the thought of all that money sitting under the stairs. And finally and most decisively, there was Henry’s future to be taken into account. No matter what had happened on that fateful night, Victor Gould was determined to keep his nephew’s involvement out of it. After all, Timothy Bright had invited himself down to Pud End and had helped himself to – had stolen in fact – the tobacco with the Toad in it. Whatever had happened to him was of his own doing and no one else was to blame. Having come to this conclusion Victor Gould turned on his side and went to sleep.
*
Within the Bright family assembled at Drumstruthie there was no such peace to be had. The realization that his son was a thief came particularly hard to Bletchley Bright but while he was anxious to do something he was certainly not prepared to repay Aunt Boskie her one hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds out of his own pocket.
‘With interest of course,’ Fergus told him.
Bletchley looked at the old man as if he had said something obscene. ‘With interest be damned,’ he retorted. ‘Even if Boskie is correct, and I am by no means convinced that the full facts have been placed before us –’
‘Balls,’ Fergus interrupted. ‘Don’t talk like a Prime Minister at Question Time. No fudge, sir. Your son has stolen Boskie’s savings and there’s no getting away from it. If you want to keep him out of the courts, you will see that Boskie is fully repaid and with interest at a bank deposit rate. What’s more, if those shares have moved up since that damned boy sold them, you’ll make good that loss too.’
Bletchley looked desperately round at the other family members who had gathered at Drumstruthie, and found not a single sympathetic eye.
‘It will almost certainly mean selling Voleney,’ he said. ‘And you know what that means. The old house has been in the family since 1720 and –’
‘And it will remain in the family, Bletchley,’ rumbled Judge Benderby Bright, who was still furious at having to fly back at such short notice from his holiday on his yacht in Llafranc. ‘If you are forced to meet your boy’s debts by selling the house, you will offer Voleney to the family to buy at a properly adjusted price. Should you try to do otherwise, the Serious Fraud Squad will immediately be informed of your son’s crimes. I hope I have made myself clear.’
There could be no doubting it. Even Boskie’s empty chair was implacably censorious.
‘If you say so,’ said Bletchley. ‘I suppose it will have to be like that.’
‘It doesn’t have to be, provided you find your boy and get Boskie’s money from him,’ said Fergus.
‘But how am I going to do that without bringing terrible publicity down on us all?’ Bletchley complained. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.’
No one said anything but all the eyes round the table watched him carefully. Bletchley sensed this shift of initiative in his favour. ‘All right then, I’ll take out advertisements in all the newspapers and put his photo in. That will surely bring results.’
It was a vain attempt. Still no one stirred, but their eyes indicated the veto. A true Bright would never have made such a terrible threat. Bletchley Bright came to the family heel.
‘Oh, all right,’ he said. ‘All the same it’s jolly hard to know how to go about finding Timothy if he doesn’t want to be found. He’s just vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘Very wise of him,’ muttered the Judge. ‘In his shoes I’d stay there. Have you enquired of the French Foreign Legion?’
‘Or the police,’ said Vernon. ‘You may have some luck with them. I always did think allowing him to have a motorbike was a most dangerous thing to do.’
‘I never did encourage him,’ Bletchley replied, ‘besides he’s twenty-eight. I’d hardly call him a boy.’
‘Never mind what you’d call him. What I am trying to say is that he may well have come off the thing and even possibly . . . Do you happen to know if he’s insured?’
‘He’s bound to be,’ said Bletchley, taking hope from this prospect.
‘I don’t suppose he’s sufficiently covered to repay Boskie,’ said Fergus. ‘And in any case it is too much to hope for.’
Bletchley Bright left the gathering a drained and drawn man. The realities he had spent a lifetime avoiding had finally caught up with him in the shape of a dissolute and criminal offspring.
*
When he arrived back at Voleney it was to be greeted by a distraught Ernestine. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘It’s too awful. Do you know that Boskie has escaped?’
‘Escaped? What on earth are you talking about? She can’t have. She’s not being i
mprisoned anywhere.’
‘That’s what Fergus has just phoned to say,’ his wife told him. ‘He said I was to tell you that she has escaped from the clinic and gone to London to see the Home Secretary.’
‘But she can’t have. She’s seriously ill and –’
‘Fergus said that if she dies, the family will hold you responsible for her death.’
Bletchley stared at his wife through bloodshot eyes. It had been a long drive from Drumstruthie and he had had time to try to think. ‘Never mind the old bitch dying. Why has she gone to see the Home Secretary? What on earth for?’
‘To tell him about Timothy, of course. Apparently she knows the Minister personally. Fergus seemed to think she had an affairs with him . . . In fact he’s certain she did.’
As she broke down and began to cry, Bletchley took the decanter in his hands and poured himself a stiff whisky. ‘If you’re seriously telling me that Aunt Boskie who is ninety had an affair with a man who at best reckoning can’t be more than forty-three, you must be mad. She’d have been in her sixties when he hit puberty. It’s a positively filthy thought. She’d be older than you are now, for Christ’s sake. Don’t be silly.’
The taunt was too much for his wife. ‘I’m only telling you what Fergus said. And why is it so silly? You think it’s silly for a woman my age to want to be made love to by a young healthy man with real feelings and the body to express them with? You’re the one who’s mad. Mad, mad, mad, mad . . .’
As she dashed from the room and her words reached him distantly from the corridor, Bletchley Bright looked sorrowfully round the great room and let his mind, such as it was, roam back through the centuries to the time the first Bright, old Bidecombe Bright who was known as ‘Brandy’, had stood there and had been proud of the achievements that had culminated in the building of Voleney House. And now, thanks to the criminal lunacy of his damned son, he, Bletchley Bright, directly descended from old Brandy, was going to have to sell the house he had been born and brought up and had led such a wonderfully idle life in. It was an unbearable prospect. He poured himself another Scotch and went into the gun room.
22
Miss Midden was entirely a different person when she arrived in Fowey. She had had to change trains to get to Plymouth and had had very little sleep. Looking at her face in the mirror of the station lavatory, she thought it was suitably careworn for the role she had chosen for herself. She went out and bought a round hat and a blue coat at a charity shop and put them on. She also bought a large canvas hold-all. Then she went to a car rental office, hired an Escort for the day, and drove to Pud End. She intended to arrive at lunchtime when Mr Gould would be too busy or hungry to want to bother asking too many awkward questions.
He hardly asked any at all. He didn’t want to know about bloody Timothy Bright. He was still seething over Bletchley’s rudeness on the phone.
‘I’m from the hospital,’ she told him. ‘I’ve come for Timothy Bright’s things. He’s ever so much better now he’s off the drip and he’s asked for them.’
Victor Gould said he was glad to hear it, though whether he was glad Timothy Bright was off the drip or in hospital or simply because he didn’t want the bloody lout’s things in his house it was impossible to say. He went to fetch them and Miss Midden bustled along behind him chattering about how busy she was and how she had to go over to Bodmin because old Mr Reavis needed his insulin and . . .
Victor Gould watched her drive off before realizing he hadn’t asked which hospital his damned nephew was in. Not that he cared. He was expecting Mrs Gould back next day and wasn’t looking forward to her return. He decided to say nothing about Timothy or his things. Silence, where the Bright family was concerned, was golden, and anyway he was going to have enough of her forgiveness without getting further into guilt.
By two o’clock Miss Midden was back on the train. She had phoned the Major and told him to pick her up at eleven that night.
*
By that time Inspector Rascombe’s investigation into any unusual activities in the Stagstead area had unearthed the anonymous phone call.
‘Came in on Monday morning at 11.12 a.m.,’ the WPC on duty told him. ‘Man’s voice. Wouldn’t leave his name or address. Using a public phone booth. It’s written down here.’
The Detective Inspector looked at the message. ‘“Boys being buggered Middenhall,” repeated twice. Interesting, very interesting. That’s where that awful woman lives, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Gave us a lot of trouble some years back.’
The WPC didn’t share his dislike. ‘Miss Midden. Very respectable lady by all accounts. Middens have been up there for yonks.’
‘That’s all very well, but who are the people at the Middenhall?’ said Rascombe, and went on to check out two car thefts at Pyal and a break-in at Ratfen and finally some sheep stealing over on Loft Fell Moss. Nothing added up to a definite lead to paedophilia.
He had more luck on the computer file of sex offenders and was particularly struck by the name MacPhee who had done time in 1972 for ‘cottaging’ and whose address in 1984 had been the Ruffles Hotel, Stagstead. MacPhee had also been arrested and charged on four charges of being drunk and disorderly over the years. ‘You’d better check that fucker out,’ said the Inspector. ‘Yes, I’d like to know a bit more about this Major MacPhee.’
But in fact the Major came fairly far down the Inspector’s list of interesting sex offenders and the area had a sufficient number to keep him busy for some time. It was only when he came back to his office and found that the same Major MacPhee’s present address was The Midden Farm that he took notice of him again. ‘We get a call from a hoaxer about some boy being buggered at the Middenhall and we find this bloke living up there with a record for D and D and cottaging. This smells dirty to me, don’t it just. What else do we have up there, Sergeant? I want to know.’
‘There, or down the road at the Middenhall as well?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘The Middenhall? What’s that?’
‘Don’t know how to describe it,’ said the Sergeant. ‘It’s not exactly a guest house or a nursing home. At least I don’t think it is. It’s some sort of community place people come and stay in.’
‘Really? A community place? What sort of people?’ said Rascombe, whose nose for dreadful dirt was now firmly fixed on the Middenhall.
‘Well, I don’t know exactly. I heard someone say Miss Midden – she’s the old biddy who owns the place – Miss Midden had told this person that they were all family and entitled to live there for free.’
‘Really? Family? What sort of family? Got kids, have they?’ said the Inspector. ‘I want to know about this family.’
‘I’ll get the names from the council offices, the names for poll-tax purposes. Could get a lead that way.’
‘Follow that up, Sergeant. I want to know everything there is to know about this Middenhall place and the people up there. Send someone over to the Council. Oh yes, and make sure the enquiry is discreet. This could be a very important case indeed.’
*
As a result of this instruction a plainclothes man visited the Community Charge offices with such awesome discretion that the news that the police were interested in Miss Midden and the goings-on at the Middenhall was guaranteed to spread rapidly through Shire Hall and thence to the general public in Stagstead.
That afternoon the Inspector brought in some of his men from Tween and set up a special unit to watch the Middenhall. ‘I’ve called you here,’ he told them, ‘because this could be a big one and if it’s as big a one as I think it is we’ve got to play dead cagey. We get this one right we’re going to give our public image the car-wash it needs. What we are about to uncover is something the media’s going to love us for. And considering the shit they’ve flung fanwise at us, this time they’re going to lick arse and love it.’ He paused to let the point sink it before going on. ‘Only thing is we’re up against people with a lot of influence and political pull. That’s why I’ve called you in. You
’re not locals and you aren’t known in the district. We can’t afford any slip-ups. Right? Right. Any questions?’
A detective sergeant in the front row put up his hand.
‘Yes, Bruton, what is it?’
‘I’m local,’ he said
‘Yeah, well, we need you because you know the area. That’s why you’re here.’
‘Could we know the area where all this is taking place, sir?’
‘In due course, yes, of course you can. I’m just trying to set the scene in your heads so we don’t blow the case. And the way we can do that is by being too nosy. In fact the moment these people get a whiff of copper in the air they’re going to go to ground so fast we won’t know they was ever there. So it’s long-range surveillance all the way, which of course doesn’t make it any easier for us. Right? Right.’ And having answered his own question the Inspector asked if there were any from the floor.
And again the Sergeant in the front row put up his hand. ‘When you say long-range surveillance, sir, what exactly had you got in mind?’
Rascombe looked at Bruton doubtfully. He was beginning to wonder if it was wise to have such a troublemaker on the team. In the Inspector’s mind questions equalled trouble. The fewer anyone asked the better he liked it. And them. He was beginning to dislike the Sergeant.
‘By long-range surveillance, Sergeant,’ he said, going into official patter, ‘we mean the avoidance of any line-of-sight contact with the suspect or, as in this case, suspects; the use of audio-visual auxiliary equipment in a non-observable context for the maintenance of continuous monitoring of said suspects’ modus vivendis and operandis, the assessment of the material so obtained by trained officers with a view to building up a comprehensive and in-depth psychological profile of the suspect’s psychology. I hope I’ve made myself clear, Sergeant.’