‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid I’m just going to have to do it. Funnily enough, I don’t feel so worried about that after this morning. He’s pinched my briefcase on the way from London and duffed my car in Somerset, but his really nasty efforts have both been here. I don’t think he’d actually attack me away from home.’
‘You can’t tell,’ I said. ‘He (or she) is obviously unbalanced.’
‘Yes, but so far he (or she) has only threatened — not attacked.’
‘That could end at any moment,’ said John. ‘Since you don’t know what it is that he thinks he’s protecting, you won’t know if you stumble across it and that might trigger him off. If all his attempts to stop you finding it fail, then he may simply try to stop you publishing.’
‘I suppose that’s right,’ she said, ‘but I intend to finish my research and write my book, so don’t try and persuade me not to.’
John backed off. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘I know better than that. But you want to think about how you do things.’
‘Like how?’
‘Don’t travel by car — ’
She interrupted with a laugh. ‘I haven’t got one, remember. Somebody swiped it and your wonderful English police have so far failed to find it!’
‘I know, I know, but just be careful, take the train, keep your eye on people around you when you’re working. See who’s using the same files, keep your eyes peeled for someone who could be watching you. Oh yes, one more thing — shake your boots out before you put them on.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘You go on looking for my car and I’ll get on with the job.’
So she did. I wasn’t at all happy about it, but for the next few weeks she was here, there and everywhere. Down to London, off to Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Birmingham. I was uneasy all the time. Every day I was nervous until I knew she was home. Every time we went out together — to the pictures, to restaurants or whatever — I searched the house and garden.
Nothing happened.
Sheila got bored with the remorseless hard slog of tracking the remaining three families and would occasionally go back on aspects of the first three. She asked me to write to the Bank of England about Uncle Matthew Wainwright’s fabled gold. I did and had a reply from the Secretary to the Bank:
Dear Mr Tyroll,
It is usually a surprise to the general public to be told that there are, in fact, very few unclaimed deposits in the Bank’s hands. I am sorry to tell you that there is no account here under any of the names you have suggested.
‘You should send that to Mrs Wainwright and Norman,’ Sheila said.
‘Not likely! They wouldn’t believe it. They’d want to know why I’d enquired, and it might fuel any belief that you really are Cousin Matilda from Oz come to scoop the loot.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Where can I find out about these pirates?’
‘Pirates?’
‘Yes. Jack Garton’s ancestor sounds as if he might give me an interesting chapter, but there isn’t much about him in the stuff Garton gave me.’
‘Try Esquemeling’s History of the Buccaneers of America.’
‘Where would I find that?’
‘In the study — somewhere behind the door. It’s a battered old dark red book with silver titling.’
‘Do many piracy cases, do you?’
‘No. I told you, my mother had some weird books and I inherited them.’
Half an hour later she was back. ‘Esquemeling,’ she said, ‘is very good on all the pirates you already know about, but I can’t find anything about Edward Somers. Got any other ideas?’
‘Try the Internet,’ I said. ‘Isn’t the truth supposed to be out there. Bang in “skull+crossbones” and see what comes up.’
That did the trick. An hour later she was back with some sheets of printout.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘you have good ideas. Have a look at this.’
It was a graphic print of an eighteenth-century pamphlet called ‘A narrative of the Exploits of Edwarde Somers the Privateer’. On the front was a crudely cut woodblock illustration of a bow-legged man in a wide-brimmed hat, armed with cutlass and pistol.
‘Look at the last page,’ she said.
I looked and saw quickly what she meant:
While the Revenger was being refitted in Bluefields Captain Somers took a wife, none other than a black wench from the Barbadoes who served the topers at the sign of the Three Gallions. When the Revenger weighed anchor the Captain’s new wife was aboard her and, when Somers fell in with the Spaniard Esmeralda and took her, it was rumoured that Mrs Somers did as much execution upon the Spaniard’s crew as any man of the Revenger’s company and was voted a full share by the crew. Made rich beyond his dreams by the treasure taken from the Esmeralda, Somers then sailed for Bristol, where he, as was the custom of his calling who had the good fortune to leave their profession by their own choice, sold his Revenger to his mate, Robert Fortune and, as the sailors say, swallowed the anchor, for he purchased lands and built a fine house, determining never to go to sea again. Nor did he, but lived many years on his estate, where he was esteemed an amiable man, not above taking a pot at the alehouse with men of any station and where his handsome wife was pointed out for her custom of taking a pipe of tobacco with the men.
I laughed. ‘So Mad Jack Garton has got West Indian blood! What a turn-up! I said he’d only told you the secrets he didn’t mind you knowing.’
‘Too right,’ she said. ‘Still, it’s another interesting bit for the book. Where’s Bluefields?’
‘On the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Real old pirate territory. The population is still a mix of European, Negro and local blood and the town itself is named after a Dutch pirate.’
‘Sounds picturesque. I bet the Three Gallions was a dandy of a pub. I just love the idea of a black barmaid from there ending up as lady of the manor in that little Disney village we went to. Wonder if there’s any pictures of Mrs Somers about anywhere. Let the world see the face that turned Edward Somers into a landed gentleman.’
‘Have you thought about another aspect of this?’ I asked.
‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re chicken about revealing the skeleton in Mad Jack’s closet.’
‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘but you should consider that it may also have given us another suspect.’
Suspects! Chubby Norman? Probably not. Captain Smythe? Possibly or possibly not. Now Mad Jack Garton. Possibly. And all the other three so-far-undiscovered families and everybody’s sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and children and nephews and God knows who.
Chapter 12
The next day was spoiled before it had begun. A glance at my office diary revealed that Julian Sawney had an appointment to see me late in the day. The timing didn’t really matter; an appointment with Sawney always spilled its gloom across the whole day.
He was his usual pompous, irritable self when he arrived.
‘Mr Tyroll,’ he said, ‘I’ve already explained about that outrageous affair of the radio that was stolen in the boarding house where I live.’
‘Yes, Mr Sawney,’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘just look at this!’
He drew a sheet of paper from his inside pocket and flung it onto my blotter. I didn’t need to read it to see that it was a charge sheet. I read it:
Julian Nugent Sawney on or about the third day of April entered the premises of William Thomas as a trespasser and while therein stole a Kanya battery/mains stereo radio/cassette recorder property of the said William Thomas.
‘Burglary,’ I said.
‘But I’ve told you — I didn’t!’
‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘you told me that you hadn’t suborned some fellow lodger to steal the radio. You didn’t tell me that you hadn’t burgled it yourself. You said that she was saying you persuaded her to steal it.’
‘That’s what she was saying then.’
‘And wha
t’s she saying now?’
‘That I stole it and gave it to her.’
‘So, she’s been charged with receiving the radio knowing it to have been stolen, yes?’
‘No — she’s a witness against me.’
‘Unsupported evidence of an accomplice,’ I reminded him. ‘What other evidence have they got?’
He looked more untrustworthy than usual. ‘They have a statement from me.’
‘Saying what, precisely?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mr Sawney, if you made the statement you must know what it says.’
‘I was upset, Mr Tyrol! — very upset. I really can’t recall what I said.’
‘Wonderful!’ I said. ‘Never mind. Where’s the notice with the serial number of the interview? I can get a copy of the tape.’
‘It isn’t on tape.’
Police forces have been taping interviews for more than fifteen years. I couldn’t remember when I last saw a written confession statement. As soon as scientific document examination began to prove that some paper statements were forgeries, they moved to tape-recording. It’s far harder to prove any faking.
‘Why is it on paper? Did you ask to make a written statement?’
‘No. I didn’t want to make a statement at all.’
‘Mr Sawney, even under the latest rules they can’t force you to make a statement. Did you ask them to call me or the duty solicitor?’
‘Yes, but they said they couldn’t get hold of you and I’d have to wait ages.’
I sighed. Anyone trying to decide whether Julian Sawney or the Central Midlands police are lying is wasting their time. I looked at the charge sheet.
‘It says here that you were charged at 21.42 on the night before last.’
‘Yes, about then.’
‘I was at home. I was available.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that. I only know what they told me. They said they couldn’t find you.’
‘Why on earth you, of all people, should believe a policeman I do not know. Still, you made a written statement and you don’t know what it says.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Who wrote it? You or them?’
‘One of them did. I can’t write very quickly.’
‘But you signed it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did they make you write the bit at the end which says, “I have read the above statement and I have been told that I can add, alter or correct anything I wish”?’
‘They made me copy something out that was on a card, printed in capitals,’
‘That will have been it,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s called the “caption” and it makes it very difficult to say afterwards that you didn’t mean what’s in the statement. As you may find.’
‘But I didn’t read the statement!’
‘Why not?’
‘It was in the policeman’s writing. I can’t read handwriting.’
‘Why not, Mr Sawney?’
‘I have trouble. I was in a road accident. It caused a form of epilepsy. I can’t read handwriting or small print.’
I looked at the folded racing paper in his pocket and said nothing.
‘They read it out to me and then I signed it.’
‘Why?’
He looked at me with astonishment — the first time he’d looked at me directly since he came in. ‘I had to. There were two of them.’
‘They frightened you?’ I asked.
‘Of course. I didn’t know what they would do to me.’
‘They have to put you before a magistrate in the morning,’ I said. ‘They don’t like putting prisoners up who’re covered in blood and bruises and plasters and bandages. It’s bad for the image.’
‘What are we going to do about it, Mr Tyroll?’
‘At the moment we are going to do precisely nothing. When I get a copy of the mysterious statement you made and the summary of their case from the Crown Prosecution Service, then we can think about what to do.’
‘But if I get convicted it’ll trigger off the suspended sentence, won’t it?’
‘Certainly, but you should have thought of that before signing your name to a statement which you had neither written nor read.’
‘They did read it over to me,’ he said.
‘You won’t be terribly surprised, will you, when we get a copy of it and there are bits in it which they didn’t read out, will you?’
‘Might that happen?’
‘It’s been known,’ I said.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, starting to get pompous again, ‘I think that you are not very sympathetic to my problems, Mr Tyroll,’
‘Mr Sawney,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing in the rules that says I have to sympathise with you, only that I have to try and defend you to the best of my ability within the law. Good afternoon.’
At home I slumped into a chair and made vague motions for a large drink. Sheila brought me one.
‘Bad day?’ she asked.
‘In capitals,’ I said. ‘Sawney was my last client of the day. Came into the office with a newspaper in his pocket, folded to the racing page, and sat and told me that he could only read capitals.’
‘You think he was lying?’
‘I always think Sawney is lying, and I’m usually right.’
‘If you don’t want to defend him, why do it?’
‘Comes with the territory,’ I said. ‘It’s the court’s job — not mine, or the police, or the Crown Prosecution Service — to decide who’s guilty. If I start treating clients as if I think they’re guilty I might as well pack up.’
‘But surely you can pick and choose?’
‘As a matter of fact, under the Law Society rules I can only refuse a client’s instructions for good reason. The mere fact that I don’t like him, that I don’t trust him and that most of the time I think he’s guilty, isn’t a sufficient reason.’
‘What about the crimes people are charged with? Can’t you refuse to defend certain kinds of crimes?’
‘Strictly speaking, no, though some firms won’t defend rape charges or child molestation or animal cruelty. That’s the worst reason in the world, though. Once you start picking and choosing who’s going to have a defence you’ve voted for tyranny.’
‘Gloom, gloom,’ she said, and poured me another drink. ‘Do you want to hear my good news?’
‘Go on,’ I said, Tighten the terrible darkness of my soul.’
‘Huh! Whoever said lawyers have souls? Anyway, look at this.’
‘This’ was a letter. The fan mail had been dwindling as the media attention dropped off, and much of what did arrive was repeat letters from nutters who’d already written a number of times. This seemed to be a new one. It was typed on unheaded cream bond from an address in Lancashire. It said:
Dear Dr McKenna,
I do not live in Staffordshire, but I still visit friends in that area. While there recently I saw a piece in the Staffordshire Sentinel about your search for the relatives of a man called Simmonds. I think you’ll find that the family are now called Lewis, though they still live in Staffordshire. I have a certain amount of information that may help you and would be happy to meet you and discuss it. On the 14th I shall be in Staffordshire. Perhaps we could meet at the lounge bar of the Oak Tree Hotel in Moorstall about 8.30 p.m. I know it’s a little out of your way, but it’s the best I can suggest in the near future. Perhaps you would care to ring me at the number above and let me know if this will be convenient.
Yours sincerely, Alan Lewis
‘So,’ I said, ‘a breakthrough in Staffordshire at last.’
‘Yes, and it looks good. I’d already found out that the direct male line of Simmondses died out in the generation after my man and the descent is through a family called Lewis, so it looks like this guy’s one of them and might save me a lot of slog.’
‘And what are the Lewis family? Your researches seem to have been moving steadily up the social scale. Mrs Wainwright, lower middle class; Captain Smythe,
middle class; Mad Jack, upper middle class. I was really hoping to get an invite to Buckingham Palace when you finally discovered that the Royals are descended from one of your lot.’
‘Can’t be,’ she said, ‘or Oz wouldn’t be trying to sack the Queen. If she was of good old convict stock they’d build her a palace in Sydney. Seriously, though, the reason why I got on to those first three is exactly because of class.’
‘What do Aussies know about class? You’re always telling the world yours is a classless society!’
‘Yair,’ she said. ‘Drop round the Capital Territory pubs on a pay night and you’re bound to find the Governor-General having a gargle with some of his ocker mates then slipping out the back for a spot of two-up. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know about class. We have social historians, very clever ones, who’ve studied it and know how the great British religion works.’
‘If you’re going to lecture me on social equality, I’m going to have a shower and you can cook dinner all alone,’ I said.
‘What I was about to say was that the working class in England don’t have the same kind of interest in their ancestors that the middle class do. That’s why I haven’t been contacted by the other families, I expect. The first three moved up scale or stayed up, but the other three either stayed down or went down, so they’re the ones that are hard to locate.’
Later in the evening she phoned Lewis. When she came off the phone she looked slightly puzzled.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
‘Nothing really,’ she said. ‘We’re meeting him at the Oak Tree on the 14th. It was just his accent — posh English.’
‘What does he do for a living?’
‘He said he’s a salesman for an electronics company. He was on a mobile.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘How do I know where he was? He could have been in Adelaide for all I know!’
‘I meant did he say where he was?’
‘No. There was music in the background.’
‘Jukebox? Television? Band? Radio?’
‘Well, it wasn’t a jukebox, anyway. It was Grieg’s Piano Concerto.’
‘How very un-working class,’ I said.
Chapter 13
Bad Penny Blues Page 8