Londoners say that if you stand on any Thames bridge on an average Saturday night, you will smell three things above all others: diesel fumes, marijuana and chicken tikka. I’ve never put it to the test, but any one of them, or a mixture of all three, would have been preferable to the stench given off by Fivestar Pet Products in Tilbury. It hit us from half a mile away, intensifying as we approached, and as we got out of the Land Rover neither of us would have been surprised had we needed to hack our way through a physical form of it.
I parked in the visitors’ car park, noting that the staff one was almost full, a sign of the firm’s prosperity. We hurried across to an elderly brick building which a century ago had been a stable for dray horses and now housed the offices of Fivestar Ltd. Jaikie was still concerned about being recognised, or perhaps about not being recognised, but either way he’d stepped neatly into the role I’d assigned him. We were directors of a firm called County Fare who supplied all manner of top class goods to garden centres, farm shops, country fairs and the like.
The middle-aged lady at reception, Mrs B Lanfranco according to the name tag on her blouse, listened politely as I explained that we were looking to add a quality range of dog food to our list and wondered if Mr Stringer would be interested in supplying it. She invited us to take a seat in a small jungle of potted palms and with us safely at a distance, she swivelled round in her chair and spoke quietly on the phone to someone called Marie, presumably the boss’s secretary. I picked out one or two phrases which gave me confidence. “Two gentlemen”, for example, and “business proposition” and best of all “seem genuine”. I put that down to the Land Rover she’d seen us arrive in, the Countryman anoraks we were wearing.
A few minutes later William Stringer himself appeared at the glass door leading to a small suite of offices. He was a far cry from the skin and bone carcass I’d expected to meet, being four stone overweight with a large, drooping face obscuring the neck he’d once had. His eyes were small and quick and what little remained of his hair was slicked back with a coloured gel. He was quietly dressed and loudly spoken.
“Gentlemen, Bill Stringer, I gather you're interested in one of our products.”
The handshake was strong and pudgy, and after the introductions he invited us to follow him back through the glass door, first asking Mrs B Lanfranco to rustle up some coffee.
His own office was as unfussy as the rest of the place with a desk, a few chairs and a middle-aged secretary through a glass partition, working at a computer. The side wall was dominated by an oil portrait, Andy Warhol style, of a can of Fivestar, with another of the brand's cat food hanging at a respectful distance. Stringer gestured for us to pull up two working armchairs to his desk.
“You decided to just drop in on us, rather than phone ahead?” he said.
“We’re in town visiting suppliers, thought we’d come and see what you're all about.” I made an expansive gesture. “Business seems to be thriving.”
William Stringer enjoyed being stroked and gave us a well rehearsed appreciation of his own achievements. Eight years ago it had been a matter of survival, he said. His father, God bless him, had allowed the business to run down but with hard graft Bill Jr. had set it back on its feet again. He’d re-vamped the production process, re-tooled the entire operation, and was now at a point where the place was running 24/7. And he wasn’t the only one who worked hard here, he quipped, as Mrs Lanfranco brought in the coffee. Every member of staff, from the factory floor to the boardroom, had played their part.
“It’s true, it’s a damn good workforce,” he repeated once Mrs Lanfranco had departed. “My policy is simple. The harder somebody works, the more I pay: weekly wages, Christmas bonuses and free dog food.” I’d been nodding my approval all the way. “So, how can I help you?”
I told him that if we liked what we saw, and I’d every confidence that we would, then I would place an initial order for 2000 cans of Fivestar and take it from there.
“Like what you see?” he asked, a little warily.
“A quick look at the process itself, if someone could spare the time.”
He smiled. “You’ve come to see us on an ordinary working day. To catch us out. I like your style, Mr Hawk.”
He pressed an intercom button and asked his secretary to phone across to the shop floor and arrange for Derek to show two visitors round.
The factory itself, set at a slight distance from the offices, was a modern building, concrete sections over a steel framework, insulated panels for a roof. It had a neatness to it, an efficiency, even a cleanliness I hadn’t expected, given the nature of what was being produced here. The hum and clatter of machinery was softened by innocuous music, orchestral versions of once popular songs.
Derek Jones was the shift foreman, a Jamaican in his 50s who told us that he’d been with the company through thick and thin, good times and bad. Where would we like our tour of the place to start? You choose, I said. He took us to the chiller, a refrigerated room where a forest of incoming carcasses, hanging on a moving rail, was checked along with its offal for quality. I gathered that most of what was here today was the remains of old dairy cattle, past their prime and too tough for the supermarkets or the school meals service. The trimmed carcasses were hauled on handcarts, piled high, through to the hub of the operation where they were placed in one end of a huge cylindrical tank. When full, the tank was closed off and then revolved slowly as blades inside it rendered down the contents. It was the same principle as a kitchen blender, Derek said, and from there the product was never touched again by human hand. It was pumped from the tank in near liquid form to one of several vats the size of small swimming pools, where it was microwaved. When cooked it was piped straight to a conveyor belt, an exact amount was poured into each can and allowed to set in its own natural gelatine before having a lid attached. At no stage was anything added, Derek assured us. As it said on the can, it was exactly what a dog would find in the wild, turned into canine spam.
Back in his office, Stringer’s bonhomie had been replaced by a business-like frostiness. His secretary was standing beside him and had clearly discovered that we weren’t who we’d pretended to be.
“We’ve looked up County Fare on the web, Mr Hawk,” said Stringer. “We can’t find you.”
“That’s because we don’t exist,” I replied.
My no-nonsense reply was intended to faze him but appeared not to. He walked to the door and opened it.
“Gentlemen, I am an extremely busy man.”
Jaikie made a move to leave, but I caught him by the arm.
“I’m sorry I had to go through this charade, Mr Stringer, but…”
“Marie, phone the police will you. Tell them we have two intruders and I would like them removed.”
“That would do more harm than good,” I said.
The secretary turned at the door in the glass partition and waited for her boss to respond.
“That sounds like a threat, Mr Hawk, if that is indeed your name.”
“Nathan Hawk. I’m a retired police officer.”
“Call it by its proper name, Dad,” said Jaikie. “You’re a private detective.”
“And you are his son? Only I’ve an uncanny feeling we've met before.”
Jaikie was ready with his smile. “Oh, really? Where do you think we…?”
I cut him off. “A young man called Patrick Scott has been murdered. The only clue to the crime was found in a tin of Fivestar dog food.”
Stringer let go of the office door and it closed of its own accord. He came towards me slowly, trying to make sense of what I’d just said, and in the face of their immediate disbelief I took him and his secretary through the events that had led to our being there. They listened attentively, with Stringer breaking off just once to pull out a handful of tissues from a box on his desk and dabbing the sweat from his forehead. By the time I’d finished he’d managed to compose himself and agreed with George Corrigan: a metal plate and my supposition weren’t much to
go on and if I were to claim, to a newspaper or anyone else, that Fivestar dog food was at the heart of a murder investigation, he would take legal action.
“Mr Stringer, I’ve no plans to tell anyone anything about your dog food.” He looked at me, aware that I might have played this kind of game before and certain that my discretion would come at a price. “All I want to know is have you had occasion to sack anyone lately, someone who didn’t respect the company’s work ethic or, indeed, someone you simply fell out with or became uneasy about. During the last couple of years, say?”
“There hasn’t been anyone,” he replied immediately. “I’ve been running this business since my father’s death and I haven’t had to fire a single soul. People have left, certainly, but they've always given me the appropriate notice…”
He stopped, raised a hand to his chin and stroked it hard as if to reshape it. Failing to do so, he suddenly recalled with a hint of bitterness that there was somebody.
“I didn’t sack him, he sacked himself. Charles Drayton. Worked here for ten years. Rose to be shift foreman. He walked in here one morning and told me to stuff the job. Walked out again.”
“Did he give a reason?”
“He said he’d won money on the lottery.”
“When was this?”
Stringer turned to his secretary.
“November the 19th a year ago,” she replied from memory.
“Presumably you've still got his address, Marie?”
She’d be only too happy to forget it, she said, but didn’t think there was much chance of that. “Thirty-four, Clark Road, East Tilbury.”
I wrote it down on a small notepad on Stringer’s desk and tore off the page. Stringer was smiling as if, in spite of everything, the last laugh would be his.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“There’s a kind of poetic justice at work, if poetry can apply to a business such as ours. The last I heard of Charlie Drayton he had cancer, just about everywhere.”
I didn’t really get the joke but I thanked him for the coffee and we left. As we pulled out of the car park Jaikie said admiringly, “So that’s where I get it from. That was quite a performance, Dad.”
Number 34, Clark Road was the last house in the street and stood slightly apart from its neighbours overlooking the bleakest of farmland and beyond that to the Thames Estuary, softened at the edges today by a winter haze. The smell here was more traditional, the familiar one of ozone and recently treated sewage and it was difficult to believe that just 20 miles down the coast from here stood Southend where, as a boy, I’d swum in the sea with my father.
The house itself was a 1950s build, chucked up in the post-war rush but still in one piece in spite of its construction and exposure to the elements. It stood alone on a large elevated plot, a castle of its kind, surrounded by the scrap of a lifetime, consisting in the main of old cars, trucks and trailers. It wasn’t all rubbish, however. Fifty yards away, outside a brick-built workshop, stood a red 1960s’ MG Sports. The tarpaulin covering it had been hauled back and weighted down by a couple of rocks. Examining the car were two men, most likely a father and son, the one to want it, the other to sign the cheque. I didn’t pay them much attention, to be honest. I should have done.
In my time as a police officer I must have knocked on thousands of doors but never before has one been opened by a Catholic priest. He was a man in his late 20s, dressed in a dark suit with a roman collar and carrying a shoulder bag. His face was tense and drained of colour, the result of shock, I would have said, but he managed to nod a greeting at us before turning back to the woman who’d followed him to the door. She was somewhere in her 60s, small and wiry, her white hair styled to hide its sparseness.
She said goodbye to the priest and thanked him. He told her it had been no problem, he’d been happy to hear Charlie’s confession and if he required anything further, she should call. He gave extra weight to his departure – and himself a little courage, I fancied – with some words about us all needing to make our peace with the Lord, then he walked off down the path and got into a Fiat two sizes too small for him. As he drove away the woman watched him, lips pursed against his sanctimony.
“Barely out of nappies,” she said. “What does he know about sin? If you’ve come about the MG, those two have beaten you to it.”
Bucked by Jaikie’s compliment about my acting skills, I went straight for it. “I was hoping to speak with Charlie, Mrs Drayton.”
“What about?”
“I guess he hasn’t mentioned me. Nathan Hawk? I heard about his illness, decided to pop round and see him but with the priest and everything…”
She looked me over, moving slightly to get me in profile as if that might jog her memory. Finally she decided that she’d neither seen nor heard of me before, folded her arms and leaned against the door jamb.
“He’s not seeing people today.”
Reluctant to concede but short of ways to get past her, I turned to Jaikie. He laid a filial hand on my arm.
“Mrs Drayton, I’ve never seen Dad so upset as when he heard about Charlie. I said ‘Look if he meant that much to you, if you really were that close, why don’t we jump in the Land Rover…’”
And just as Jaikie was about to go over the top, I was blessed with one of those strokes of luck that every investigation deserves. Beyond Mrs Drayton, way back in the gloom of the hallway, I caught sight of a figure in white, ghostly for a moment until I realised that this must be her dying husband. He wore cotton pyjamas, the jacket unbuttoned, revealing a body that had been hollowed out by the cancer William Stringer had been so pleased about. As his flesh had shrivelled, so his skin had been drawn around his bones, so tightly that at any moment it might be pierced by a jutting rib or an axe-like shoulder blade. The cruellest change had been to his face. His cheeks had been gouged out, chemo-therapy had left him with thin wispy hair, his eyes were slow and staring, seeing little. Here was the reason the young priest had been upset.
He came towards us, using the wall to stay upright and even as I wondered how best to take advantage of him being away from his death bed, it seemed as if some all-powerful puppeteer cut the strings above him and he collapsed, joint by joint, ending up slumped against the hall table. Hearing him fall his wife turned and hurried back to him. I followed while Jaikie, with well-mannered uncertainty, brought up the rear, closing the front door behind him.
“Charlie, what are you doing!” she screeched. She grabbed at her hair with both hands, trying to control her fear. “You bloody old fool.”
“Let’s get him back into bed,” I said. “Jaikie, take him under his arm.”
Between us we lifted him to a standing position and hauled him along to a room at the end of the hall. It had been set up as a last-but-one resting place and had the smell of imminent death to it, an airless heat overladen with disinfectant. A bed in the centre had a cylinder beside it, oxygen I assumed from the mouthpiece hanging on the headboard. Within reach there was a table on which stood a large enamel bowl, a flannel draped over the side of it. There were towels, ointments for infected skin, painkillers, a dish of sweets. On the wall opposite hung several framed posters advertising past events of the MG Enthusiasts’ Club interspersed with enlarged photos of the family. I counted three children from the dozen or more set around an elaborate carving of Christ on the cross. He was looking pretty rough as well.
Mrs Drayton pulled back the duvet and straightened the sheet while Jaikie and I stood holding her husband. He caught sight of us in a mirror but was way beyond caring who we were, being more concerned about where he was heading almost certainly within the next week.
We manhandled him into a sitting position against the pillows his wife had plumped up. His trip to the hall had exhausted him, but after a few sips of water he said to me, “Was it… your boy?”
His voice was thin and tremulous but the words were clear.
“Who, Charlie?” I asked quietly. “Who are you talking about?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time,” said his wife.
Drayton looked at me with eyes that had come back to life for a moment as he searched my face for reasons why I might be paying him a visit. He repeated his question. “Was it… your son?”
I shook my head and he closed his eyes with some relief and within half a minute he appeared to be asleep. His wife sighed and pulled the duvet up around his chest, then led us out of the room, thanking us all the way. The act of helping to get her husband back into bed had turned us from malicious snoopers into kind-hearted confidantes.
“He’s never mentioned what he did?” I asked as soon as the chance arose.
From the way I’d put the question I might have been asking about one of his hobbies. Mrs Drayton knew I wasn't.
“Something dreadful to a young lad, that’s all he’ll tell me. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even true, but it worries him so much it must be…” She broke off and looked at me, not doubting my integrity but concerned about my religious sensibilities. In the end she laid them aside. “That bloody priest knows all about it, but he won't tell me either.”
I smiled in support of her disdain. “You know, Mrs Drayton, I heard somewhere that Charlie won some money on the lottery. When all this is over why don’t you treat yourself?”
She chuckled, though not with any joy. “I would if there was any of it left. Old bugger spent most of it buying up cars. How do you throw 25 grand away in under three years?”
Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 8