‘Mr Pascoe. Mr Thackeray’s ready now.’
From the girl’s tone, she had clearly already addressed him once. Bloody hell, she must be thinking the poor old sod’s brain is falling apart.
He stood up and the movement shook the bits of his brain back together again.
‘Huby,’ he said. ‘Your name’s Huby.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘And the actor you’re friendly with is called Lomas?’
‘Yes.’
‘My secretary is the late Mrs Huby’s grand-niece, Inspector. Mr Lomas is the son of Mrs Huby’s cousin once removed, Mrs Stephanie Windibanks. I did explain all these family connections to Superintendent Dalziel.’
Who left me to muddle along by myself! thought Pascoe as he went to meet Eden Thackeray who was standing in the doorway of his office.
‘You’ll have to explain it all to me again,’ said Pascoe.
It took more than thirty minutes. Thackeray was determined he was not going to have to repeat himself a third time.
When he had finished, Pascoe said, ‘You knew Mrs Huby very well, I suppose, Mr Thackeray.’
‘I was her solicitor for fifteen years, Mr Pascoe. Before that, my father acted for her. When he died and I became senior partner, Mrs Huby’s affairs were part of my inheritance. But I would not say I knew her well. It took her several years to come to regard me as much more than a usurping office boy.’
Pascoe smiled and said, ‘What kind of woman was she?’
Thackeray looked thoughtful and said, ‘Between ourselves?’
Pascoe nodded and made a big business of putting away his notebook.
‘Between ourselves, she was a pretty awful kind of woman,’ said Thackeray. ‘Overbearing, rude, opinionated and snobbish. She could also be charming, entertaining and considerate, but only on feast days or to members of the Royal Family. Her pretensions to culture started and finished with a passion for Grand Opera. She was politically naïve, which is a polite way of saying she was a natural Fascist. She found it hard to forgive the Tories for conniving at the giving away of India and she sat glued to her television set during the Falklands crisis in the firm belief that after the task force had mopped up the Argies, it would carry on its cleaning crusade wherever frogs, wogs or reds pretended to rule the waves. She treated her animals better than her relatives and she squandered what little she did have of unselfish, altruistic human affection on one crazy obsession which ruined her own life, soiled the lives of others, and brought us all to this present unhappy situation.’
‘You should have been a barrister,’ said Pascoe. ‘That was a pretty powerful speech for the prosecution. It’s this obsession of hers I’m interested in. Was it based purely on a mother’s intuition or did she actually educe evidence that her son might in fact have survived? What, in other words, are the facts?’
‘I can be of very little help to you there, Inspector,’ said Thackeray. ‘I gathered from remarks she let slip from time to time that she never gave up the active investigation of her son’s disappearance, but our firm was only peripherally involved. Perhaps this was because her investigations had to be clandestine while her husband was alive, and she found it hard to get out of the habit. Or perhaps it was because she recognized my own strong scepticism and my father’s before me.’
‘Her husband didn’t share her hope, then?’
‘No, indeed. He bore with her, and perhaps even had a faint glimmer himself, till the war was over and the POW camps had all been accounted for. Then, so my father told me, he gave commands that his son was not to be mentioned except as dead. He had a memorial tablet put up in St Wilfrid’s at Greendale and a service was held. Mrs Huby was too ill to attend.’
‘But she paid heed to his wishes? He must have been a pretty strong-willed fellow too,’ said Pascoe.
‘It was a battle of giants,’ said Thackeray. ‘He was a truly hard man, Sam Huby. But she had the one weapon most ladies keep up their sleeves to administer the coup de grâce.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Longevity, Inspector. Look around you. The graves are full of men and the cruise-liners full of widows.’
Pascoe laughed out loud.
‘You know how to keep a chap cheerful,’ he said. ‘You said just now your firm had little to do with Mrs Huby’s actual researches, but you must have drawn up the will?’
‘Indeed yes. Many years ago.’
‘Did you approve of the will?’
‘That is not a proper question,’ said Thackeray. ‘So this is not a proper answer. No, I did not. I pressed for such modification as I could, but she was adamant about the main clause and I saw no reason to lose the firm a profitable account.’
‘No question of balance-of-the-mind-disturbed?’
‘Not when she made her will, certainly.’
‘But later, you think there was?’ pressed Pascoe, catching a lawyer’s quibble.
‘In the past three years, perhaps. She had a stroke, you know. She was seriously ill for a little while, but made a remarkable recovery, except that now she spoke quite openly of a psychic conspiracy to keep her son from her. Who the conspirators were was never quite clear, but according to the old girl they’d sent a black demon as a pretended emissary from her son but she had seen through the deception and dismissed him. Don’t ask me how, but the victory, as she called it, reaffirmed her confidence that Alexander was alive. But, fearful of being incapacitated again, she framed an advertisement to be placed in the Italian papers saying she was seriously ill and inviting anyone with information to contact me. This advertisement I caused to be placed in the Italian press two months ago when she had her second stroke. When Pontelli approached me, he produced a copy of the advertisement from La Nazione.'’
‘I see. Were there any other responses to the advert?’ inquired Pascoe.
‘Naturally. We are talking about human beings, Inspector. In both our trades we know that rogues abound. Mainly they consisted of people who wrote claiming to have information about the whereabouts of Alex and offering to sell it.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘I replied with a photograph asking if they were certain the mature man they knew and the young man on the photo could be the same person.’
‘I should have thought they’d have all passed that test,’ laughed Pascoe.
‘Indeed they did. One hundred per cent positive identification. Happily the photograph I sent them was a snapshot of myself aged twenty and looking as unlike Alex Huby as you can imagine!’
‘Clever,’ said Pascoe sincerely. ‘But Pontelli, I gather, was convincing.’
‘Oh yes. He didn’t write, of course. Just turned up to discover, he claimed, that he was too late and his mother was dead. Hence his dramatic appearance at the funeral.’
‘Not so convincing now we know he had been in the country for a week beforehand,’ said Pascoe.
‘He admitted that, said he had vacillated, uncertain how best to proceed. He claimed to have rung up Troy House to ask after his mother’s health on three occasions and on the last was told she was dead. Miss Keech confirms there were calls of inquiry from people she did not always identify.’
‘And Pontelli was persuasive?’
‘Oh yes. He had certainly done his homework. Date of birth, details of family, schooling, Troy House - he trotted out enough to give me pause, but when I started asking about his reasons for staying away all these years, he grew agitated, tapped his head, said something about long-suffering and a time of healing, and left very abruptly, saying he would be in touch again soon.’
‘Leaving you half convinced?’ asked Pascoe.
‘Oh no. It takes more than that even to half convince a lawyer!’
The phone rang. Lexie Huby told Thackeray there was a call for Pascoe. He took it at the solicitor’s desk while the other man courteously pretended to be examining the view from the window.
It was Dalziel.
‘Peter, that picture of Pontelli’s been
run in some of the other papers in the Challenger group and we’ve had a call from Leeds. Owner of the Highmore Hotel says he reckons our boy was there for two weeks registered as Mr A. Ponting of London. Did a bunk last Friday, they reckon, with a fortnight’s bill outstanding. I’ve cleared it locally for you to drive over there and chat to this fellow, name of Balder. OK?’
‘I suppose so, but I want to go out to Troy House, and then to the Old Mill …’
‘Get 'em on the way back, you’ve got all day,’ growled Dalziel. ‘You’re not the only one who’s busy, you know. I’ve got landed with a Rotary lunch. Them things go on most of the afternoon. Then it’ll be back to the grindstone. I’ve found out that this PAWS fellow, Goodenough, and the Windibanks woman are still staying at the Howard Arms. Interesting they should still be hanging around, isn’t it? I thought I’d better stroll round and have a chat.’
And I bet it just happens to coincide with licensing hours! thought Pascoe viciously.
He said, ‘I’d better take some prints in the hotel room just to be one hundred per cent sure. Could you ask Seymour to get a box of tricks and meet me back at the station? In fact, he can drive me. My own car’s knocking a bit and I don’t want to risk getting stuck in the Leeds rush.’
‘Seymour? I suppose you can have him,’ grumbled Dalziel. ‘It’s a bloody nuisance yon bugger Wield skiving off.’
‘Wield. Oh yes. Glad you mentioned him,’ said Pascoe provocatively. ‘Thought I’d drop in on my way home tonight, see how he is. Want to go halves on a bunch of grapes?’
‘Bunch of bananas more likely!’ said Dalziel. ‘Tell him the organ grinder would like his monkey back! Cheers!’
The phone slammed down. Pascoe carefully replaced his receiver and greeted Thackeray with the sunny smile of a man who is ashamed of his own murderous thoughts.
‘Incidentally,’ he said. ‘What sort of records did Mrs Huby keep of her search for her son?’
‘I’ve really no idea,’ said Thackeray. ‘It was a very personal thing for her. I believe there’s a filing cabinet in the study at Troy House full of her private stuff. All her business and financial papers were kept here or at her accountant’s, of course. Normally the next of kin would sort out the personal things, but in this case … well, I suppose it will fall to me as executor in the end.’
‘Yes. Perhaps I could collect them for you, save you the bother of a trip …’ murmured Pascoe. ‘I’d like to look myself.’
‘But don’t want to bother with a warrant,’ suggested Thackeray. ‘Of course. I’ll tell Miss Keech you’re coming, shall I? What time?’
‘Oh, it’ll be four, four-thirty, I should think. Thank you, Mr Thackeray. Good day.’
As he left he tried the winning smile on the little secretary again but the big spectacles merely flashed light at him, then darkened as she bowed her head once more to the typewriter.
Chapter 4
By his own not unreasonable standards, Dalziel was right in his suspicions of Wield. Not that the fat superintendent was unwilling to admit that there might be conditions of the heart more painful than angina, but unless they were treatable under the NHS, he wasn’t about to accept them as excuses for absence.
The sergeant had returned to his flat the previous evening uncertain of what he might find. Most probable seemed that Cliff Sharman would have preceded him to collect his belongings and continue on his way. He felt both disappointment and relief to discover the boy’s bag where it had been since the previous Saturday.
He was still unable to work out precisely what the youth was playing at. Why for instance had he kept quiet about his connection with Wield when he was brought into the station? The obvious, if not the only answer, was that the last thing a potential blackmailer wants is to bring things out in the open. Also, the boy’s silence had invited his own, and thus deepened his complicity.
He sat with these and other equally cynical thoughts till close to midnight when he heard a key turn in the lock. He held his breath. The lounge door slowly opened. The single table lamp threw the boy’s face into strange relief.
‘Hello, Mac,’ said Sharman.
Wield did not reply.
‘I left my things.’
‘They’re where you left them.’
‘Yeah. I’ll get 'em and be on my way.’
‘You’ll have a bit of a wait for your bus!’ said Wield savagely.
‘Bus?’
‘Yes. All that crap about hitchhiking and turning up here by chance! With a timetable in your wallet!’
‘You went through my wallet?’ said the youth in apparently genuine surprise. ‘Christ, I should’ve known you would! That’s what you’re trained to do, isn’t it, being a pig.’
‘Don’t knock it, son,’ said Wield. ‘After all, that’s what brought you here in the first place, wasn’t it?’
‘To stay with a pig?’
‘To see what you could squeeze out of me. I’ve had a word with Maurice, lad. I know all about you, believe me.’
‘You two speaking again, are you? Nice to think I’ve brought you together,’ said Sharman with a not-very-convincing sneer. ‘What’d he have to say?’
‘What do you think? A glowing testimonial?’
‘No. But if he told you I came up here just because of you, he’s a bloody liar! I mean, think about it, Mac! I’m going to take off into the sticks to try to put the black on a gay cop just on the basis of what Mo lets slip in bed? I mean, shit, the kind of pigs I know in the Met would have had me picked up at Heathrow with an arseful of junk if they got half a sniff I was a threat to them! No one told me it’d be any different up here in the paddy-fields.’
‘You rang me all the same,’ said Wield, rendered almost defensive by the force of this argument.
‘I felt lost,’ said Sharman. ‘I mean, here I was, not knowing anyone. For all I knew, they still tarred and feathered gays up here. I needed a friendly native and you were the nearest possibility.’
It was almost convincing, except that Wield was acutely aware of his readiness to be convinced and this made him reinforce his scepticism.
‘Very touching,’ he said. ‘So what did bring you up to sunny Yorkshire? A message from Mo, was it?’
‘Listen,’ said Sharman. ‘It wasn’t Mo that mentioned this place first, it was me. That’s what set him on telling about you. It was me who started it, not the other way round, OK?’
‘Oh aye? And what the hell did you have to say about Yorkshire?’ sneered Wield.
The boy hesitated a moment, then took a deep breath and began.
‘Mo had been asking me about my family. I don’t think he was really interested. You know the way you chatter on when you’re …well, you know. Anyway, I told him I lived down in Dulwich with my gran. My mum died a few years back, and Gran brought me up. Dad paid the bills, well, he paid what he could, and he’d come and stay with us as often as he could, but he worked a lot up west, in clubs and hotels, and he had to live in, so he couldn’t get down to Dulwich as often as he’d have liked. Then about three years ago, he went off. Well, he did sometimes. I got a card from him. He always sent me a card if he went off anywhere, so I’d know not to expect him in the next week or so, then he’d send another saying when he was going to be back. Only this time there wasn’t another card, just the first one. And that one came from here. This town. That’s what I told Mo; that’s when he said he used to live here and started telling me about you. Well, he wasn’t really interested in what I was saying, was he? Why should he be? So I shut up and let him tell me these funny stories about him screwing around with a copper.’
Wield ignored the pain in his heart and said coldly, ‘So, you decided to come up here and look for your dad? After three years? Is that it?’
‘Yeah, that’s it!’ said the boy defiantly.
‘This postcard, you’ve still got it?’
‘I did have it,’ said the youth, looking distressed. ‘But I must’ve left it at Mo’s when I came away.’
&nbs
p; ‘Very careless. But then you are careless, aren’t you? Careless with other people’s possessions as well as your own.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Maurice says you robbed him,’ said Wield.
‘He’s a lying cunt! I didn’t take nothing that wasn’t owing me!’
‘Owing you. For what?’
‘We’d been sharing expenses, that sort of thing. When we split up, I was owed.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Wield. ‘Let’s have the truth, lad.’
‘We had a row,’ said Sharman sullenly. ‘I brought someone back to the flat. I thought Mo was away for the night but he came back unexpectedly. He was very nasty and he chucked me out. I went back for my stuff next day when he was at work and, like I say, I just took what was owing me.’
‘And you decided to come up here and look for your dear old dad after three years?’ mocked Wield.
‘That’s right!’ exploded Sharman. ‘That’s what I decided. I’d thought of it before, but I’d never done anything about it. Don’t you ever put things off and keep putting them off?’
Oh yes, thought Wield. I do. I do.
He said, ‘And what did you expect to do when you got here. Just walk around till you bumped into this father of yours?’
‘Why the fuck not?’ cried Sharman. ‘I didn’t think it’d be quite as big as this, and I thought he might sort of stick out.’
‘Stick out?’
‘Yeah, stick out. He’s black, you see. I mean, not like me, but really black, and I thought …’
‘You thought it was all sort of little villages up here where the kids’d follow a black man round the streets, staring at him like he’d dropped out of the moon?’
‘No, don’t be stupid,’ said the youth unconvincingly.
‘And what have you done to find him?’ said Wield, still unpersuaded by any of this.
‘What the fuck could I do? Ask a policeman?’
‘Why not? First thing you did was telephone one.’
The boy suddenly grinned.
‘It’s daft, but I never thought of it that way,’ he said. ‘No, I’ve tried ringing round the Sharmans in the phone book in case there were any relatives. I think he came from up north originally. But no luck. So then I thought I’d advertise.’
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