“Will he know it was me who called, once he’s rested?”
“Maybe. He has good days and bad days. Today was bad. Tomorrow? Why don’t you pop in and see?”
“I’ll do that.”
We saw ourselves out and as we walked back to the Land Rover I turned to glance over at the red MG Sports. The two men who’d been checking it out when we arrived had replaced the tarpaulin and gone.
When we reached home there was no sign of Laura so I phoned her immediately. She would be with us in 30 minutes and although news from the Trust was as expected, being a resounding no, there was a fresh glimmer of hope from elsewhere. I asked her to elaborate but she refused to do so over the phone in case it sounded fanciful. Face to face I might just agree that all was not lost. Did Jaikie like Chinese takeaway? In common with his siblings, I told her, Jaikie would eat anything she put before him.
She duly arrived with a Chinese and as we dug into it she told us about her day. The Health Trust had said no to any part of the quarter of a million she and her practice partners needed. No surprises there. However, things had taken a bit of a turn in the last few hours. The Trust was made up of seven people. Running the whole affair was the Chairman, Non-executive. Below him, prompting him at every turn, constantly rustling papers and trying not to meet other people’s gaze, was the Finance Director, Executive. To his left sat one of two women on the board, the Director of Service Improvement, Executive…
Laura paused to apologise, assuring us that these people were superfluous to her story. The only name that mattered was that of Dr Michael Wilson, Non-executive, a tanned, white-haired man in his early 80s. None of the others liked him and Laura hadn’t been too keen on him herself to begin with. He was forever arguing the toss over minor points and doing so just for the sake of it, but after the day’s wrangling was over and they’d said their frosty farewells, he’d caught up with her in County Hall car park and told her to meet him in a pub.
“Which one?” I asked.
She thought that was pretty irrelevant too until I pointed out that where a man likes to drink tells you most of what you need to know about him.
“Elderly, Tory and moneyed. The King’s Head, Ashendon,” she said. “Mind you, George Corrigan was there and he’s none of those things, but that's also superfluous.”
No it wasn’t. It meant that he’d been keeping an eye on her just as I’d asked him to.
“So, since Dr Wilson promised it would be to my advantage, I followed him there at a steady 20 miles an hour and once in the bar, with a gin and tonic in his hand, he spent half an hour trashing the other members of the board before he got down to business.”
He told Laura that the whole application process had been a farce, start to finish. There had never been that kind of cash available in the Trust so why they’d wasted time behaving as if there were was beyond him. Bloody bureaucrats. Jobs for the boys. Old codgers, scared of losing their grip, wanting to feel useful in their dotage.
I was beginning to like him, if only for his jaundiced view of humanity. That aside, he thought he knew where Laura could raise the money she needed and advised her to approach a charitable trust called Argent Sans Cordes. Wilson had a very English way of pronouncing it but said that it was run by a group of European businessmen who considered cases like Laura’s and if they liked a project, if they thought it served the community, they looked favourably upon it.
“Or in Dr Wilson’s less pretentious language,” she modified, “the buggers sometimes cough up.”
“In return for what?” I asked.
She raised a forefinger to let me know that she’d been ready for the question. “Absolution, for having picked our pockets in the first place, Wilson said.”
She took a business card from her bag and passed it to me. The main name on it was Argent Sans Cordes, but running a close second was that of Julien Raphael, Investment Facilitator.
“Investment Facilitator?” I said. “Sounds better in French, probably.”
“You’ve already made up your mind about him?”
“On the strength of his poncy office, yes. I know that corner of Bloomsbury Square.”
“Dr Wilson suggested something else,” said Laura. “When I meet up with Raphael, he thinks I should go alone, without my fellow partners. ‘Those boring old sods will do more harm than good’. Quote.”
What struck me about Wilson’s suggestion wasn’t the money Argent Sans Cordes was theoretically willing to part with but the amount of work they must have done to get the elderly doctor on side. Had he come willingly, I wondered, believing that he was helping a rejected applicant? Or had he been coerced? People still need money in their early 80s and he was certainly new to them or he would have known how to pronounce their name. And I didn’t like the suggestion that Laura went to see Raphael alone.
“What do you know about Wilson?”
“He used to have a practice in Long Crendon. Passed it on to his son who threw it all up and went to work in Botswana.”
Not for the first time since Jaikie had been staying at Beech Tree, he and Laura ganged up on me with Jaikie leading the charge.
“Dad, that’s your imminent disaster look, as Mum used to call it.”
“From one of her pet sayings to one of mine. If it sounds too good to be true…”
“Dad, she can’t just thumb her nose at a possible 250 grand, sitting there in this Argent Sans Cordes, waiting to be used.”
I asked if either of them had considered a link between this possible pools win and the murder of Patrick Scott. They hadn’t, but what on earth could the connection be? I reminded them that records had been wiped, Jaikie had been attacked and Laura’s house had been broken into and whatever those people were looking for hadn’t turned up. Was there just a chance that they’d decided to change tack and try buying it?
She laughed. “From me? Do I have it?”
“I’ve no idea but you must be onto something and Patrick Scott is the key to it.”
“All because I started asking questions about him?”
“They think you know more than you’re telling.”
She stood up and took a few awkward steps, going nowhere. “You’re frightening me, Nathan.”
“Good, because you’re usually the one who’s got their head screwed on.”
“Dad…”
“Julien Raphael hasn’t made an offer yet, Laura. He’s dangled money in front of you and, like the sucker he takes you for, you’re reaching for it instead of asking yourself who he is and why he’s suddenly appeared.”
She sat down again, perched on the edge of the chair, muttering that she wasn’t keen on being labelled a sucker.
“Then you won’t like this either,” I said. “Today Jaikie and I met the man who got rid of Patrick Scott’s body. He thought I might have been Patrick’s father and was heartily relieved to learn that I wasn’t. I can’t tell you if he killed him, but I do know he got paid £25,000 for turning him into dog food.”
“And told everybody he’d won it on the lottery,” Jaikie added.
She nodded slowly and reached across the table. I laid my hand on top of hers, keeping us both calm. “A fortnight ago, the two of you were trying to persuade me there was a case to investigate. I didn’t really want to know. Now it’s the other way round. I believe this kid has been murdered and you two, three if you include Martin, have lost perspective. Your quarter of a million pounds is trumping my dead body, Laura, and this Julien Raphael knew it would. He’s banking on you being prepared to do anything to get your surgery built. Can you honestly tell me he’s whistling dixie?”
She didn’t like the sound of that but acknowledged that there was a vestige of truth in it.
“So what now?” she asked frostily.
“Like I keep saying, the next move is where it gets tricky.”
I explained that I no longer had an army of old friends and ex-colleagues to call upon in times of need. Most of them had retired, leaving me without people to
run names and faces through police meat grinders. As recently as last year I would have phoned Steve Yates, spent half an hour chewing the fat, wishing the old days had never passed, and then asked him to run Julien Raphael’s name through the Interpol database. Twenty-four hours later he would have called me back with chapter and verse. Right now, though, Steve was criss-crossing the States with his wife on the Harley, living the biker dream at 55 years of age. I looked at the business card again, hoping it would tell me something new. It didn’t.
“Go see him and take me with you, but be absolutely clear in your mind about our purpose. We’re not after money. We want to know what his connection is to a young man who ended up as dog food.”
I’m not sure how heavily she edited my words, but you can bet it was enough to offer the possibility that while I could obtain whatever information I was in search of, she might also be able to get her funding. When I made to argue the point, she dismissed it as understood.
With the mention of food, albeit dog food, Jaikie had started digging around in the fried rice for leftover prawns.
“What about Richard Slater?” he said.
“What about him?”
“A journalist of that standing has a legion of contacts, an army of researchers, they could provide the info your old cronies used to. And he’s just dying to be my new best friend.”
It wasn’t a bad idea and without being too fulsome I thanked him for it. He responded by asking what we were doing tomorrow and although I hadn’t banked on him becoming my side-kick, I invited him to join me on another trip to Tilbury. Hopefully we’d catch Charlie Drayton on one of his good days.
-8-
Jaikie must have been up half the night, though he denied it, putting together a research document about Argent Sans Cordes, gleaned from Google, maps, photos, testimonials, the lot. ASC was, as Dr Wilson had claimed, the charitable window box of a group of European companies, Renault, BMW, Bosch being three names that leaped out, all intent upon putting back into the community some of the benefits they had reaped. In general it was publicity written by docile admirers with limited vocabulary and one-track minds. There wasn’t a cross word to be found anywhere about the set up, often the case when money is given away without strings attached. And like any organisation from Church Roof Funds to NHS pyramids, its governing body was cumbersome and top heavy with political lobby fodder. These weren’t Dr Wilson’s paid codgers, though, scared of getting old, wanting to feel useful. They were big name MPs, academics and media mouths.
Laura told us she had a quiet day planned, the high point of which would be making an appointment to see Julien Raphael at his London offices. She waited for me to pronounce.
“Any time you like,” I said. “Just don’t tell him you’ll be bringing a friend.”
She went back upstairs to shower and Jaikie proved again that he wasn't just female eye candy by asking an intelligent question.
“What do we do if Corrigan decides to follow us again?”
“He won’t.”
He raised the eyebrows, more Jaikie than Dirk Bogarde this time.
“He’s tailing Laura, like I asked him to,” I said.
“He’s on our side, then?”
“Maybe, but what makes you think the good guys always play fair? Which is why I went up to The Crown last night and let all four of his tyres down. I repeat, he won’t be following us.”
It turned out that Charles Drayton was having the worst day of his life. A swarm of vehicles was buzzing around number 34 Clark Road, among them a police patrol car, a doctor’s car and a mortuary van, the drivers of which were huddled in a group discussing the meaning of life, no doubt. There were a few other cars, presumably belonging to friends and relatives, among them the Fiat I’d seen the young priest drive away in yesterday. One car was conspicuous by its absence. The Red MG Sports.
“What’s all this?” Jaikie asked, as we drove past to find a parking spot.
“At a rough guess, he’s checked out in the night.”
It was a strange experience being introduced by Mrs Drayton to her children as another friend of their father. I’d only invented the relationship 24 hours ago, the shortest friendship I’d ever had, but nevertheless a fruitful one. I’d established that Drayton did get rid of the body and was paid handsomely to do so. I’d come today to ask what more he knew, fully expecting him to still be alive and able to tell me. His wife had expected the same.
“When the end came, it came quickly,” she said. “Too bloody quickly, if you ask me. The specialist gave him another three weeks.”
She showed us into her living room where her three children, all in their 20s, two girls and a boy, had spent the morning receiving old friends and neighbours. The room was furnished in the same style as the Draytons’ back yard in that not a single piece of furniture matched another, having been acquired, just like his cars and trailers, one bargain at a time. The children gave the same impression yet the one thing they did have in common was the nature of their grief: restrained, dignified and genuine. Whatever their father had been up to in his spare time, his family clearly loved him. They’d been building up to his death for three months now, one of the girls told me, but when it finally came it still hit them like a ton of scrap.
“When did he pass?” I asked Mrs Drayton.
She didn’t like the word “pass” anymore than I did. “Die, you mean? About two this morning, the doctor reckons. I took him in his tea at six, lukewarm, three sugars, there he was gone.”
“Do you think I might go and say goodbye?”
“Help yourself.”
I went into the dying room on my own. Jaikie had decided against accompanying me, real death being a very different proposition to that on a film set. The heat had been turned right down to a point where I shivered and seeing Drayton laid out on the bed, covered in a hospital night gown out of the ark, threw me back to an elderly relative who had also died in a downstairs room. My great grandmother Mabel Hawk who, when she finally let go, looked far better at 94 than Drayton did at 60. But the whiteness was there. The white wispy hair, waxen skin, bloodless hands and fingernails. As with Mabel, Charlie’s eyes were closed and to that extent he looked a damn sight more peaceful than he deserved to. His corpse had been kissed on the forehead by the elder daughter, a smudge of scarlet lipstick said as much.
I lifted the makeshift shroud. The spindly, emaciated form had nothing new to tell me, it simply confirmed what I already knew: morphine notwithstanding, it must have been a painful death. His upper arms were a blue black mass of needle marks, his mouth was dry and crusty, just as it had been when I first saw him. I checked out the cylinder and the mouth-piece, all intact and set in their place. I went over and twitched the curtains at the window. It was double-glazed, closed and locked. Whoever had hastened his death, and I believed that someone had, they’d left no calling card, no trace of their visit. At least not on the strength of my cursory inspection.
I went back to the living room where the family had been joined by the young priest I’d met yesterday. He’d been unable to give Charlie the last rites, but at least he’d heard his confession, he said, and now followed it up with something grating about the importance of family and friends at such a time. We continued to trot out the patter of condolence, with Jaikie being rather good at the one-size-fits-all when it comes to the recently departed, so long as you stick to generalities: in Charlie’s case his courage, his determination, his pride in his children.
When the priest stood up to leave I said it was time we made tracks as well. Mrs Drayton saw us all to the door, suffering more banalities from the man of God, even as he backed away down the front path. She sighed with relief when the front gate closed behind him, then she turned and thanked us for our help yesterday, me for being a friend to Charlie. It was a pity that he hadn’t rallied before he died, she said, been more himself for a few hours and able to talk over old times with me. I asked her if he’d said anything, late yesterday perhaps. She knew exa
ctly what I meant. I wanted to know if he’d elaborated on the “something dreadful he’d done to a young lad”. She shook her head.
I nodded over to the workshop where the red MG Sports had stood. “You sold the car, I see.”
“That’s the only good thing in all this,” she replied. “They came back last night, those two who were looking it over yesterday. Two grand cash.”
“Who were they?”
“Old friends of Charlie’s. Don’t know their names but they’re always polite.”
We shook hands and said goodbye and Mrs Drayton watched us walk down the path. Whether that was the good manners of her generation or because something about my questions had made her uneasy, I couldn’t say, but as the front door closed behind us, I said to Jaikie, “Where’s that bloody priest?”
I knew full well where he was. He was 200 yards away and about to get into his car and drive off. I hurried over to him calling out just once, “Wait!”
He turned, saw who’d yelled to him and leaned back against the driver’s door, folding his arms.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, when I reached him.
“First things first. Me calling you Father goes against the grain. What’s your Christian name?”
“Robert.”
“Okay, Robert, yesterday you took Charlie Drayton’s confession. You came out of that house white as a sheet and we both know the reason why. You’re one of the few people who knows what happened to Patrick Scott…”
He held up a hand. “And now you expect me to flout the sanctity of the confessional, Mr Hawk?”
“He got rid of a body. He threw it into a dog food processor. All I want to know is did he kill him as well and if not, who did?”
“Canon Law forbids it and comes down from a higher power than either of us.”
“Canon Law’s 300 years old, Robert, and it isn’t absolute. This boy has been murdered and you can help me to catch…”
He shouted me down. “I suggest you take your request for me to break the seal to the relevant authority.”
Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 9