Grief Encounters

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And we opened the curtains upstairs, closed the doors, switched the computer off and unplugged it, so we’re in the clear. A job well done and we’re as safe as houses.’

  ‘Not his house.’

  ‘Well, no, not his house, but we’ve covered everything. All we have to do now is be patient.’

  Teri stood up and started pulling her husband to his feet. ‘Patience isn’t one of my virtues,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’m sure our bed is just as good as his. Bring the bottle.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The riots generated enough paperwork to fuel a small power station and enough hot air to make it redundant. By the end of the week things were settling down and I could direct my thoughts and resources towards simpler, less contentious issues, like murder. The politicians agreed that the riots were not racially motivated, which was a great relief to us all, and resumed their vacations. Those of us who thought differently were just grateful that tempers had cooled along with the weather. Serena was sitting at her desk reading something, and looked up as I walked in to the office. I gestured for her to join me in mine and she rose to her feet.

  She sat in the spare chair, pushed her notebook onto the desk and looked at me. I said: ‘Are you doing anything tonight, Serena?’

  ‘Um, er, no, not really,’ and I swear she blushed.

  ‘If you’re not, I’ve a little job for you.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  I spread my AA three-miles-to-the-inch road atlas on the desk and pointed. ‘That’s where the pub called the Hairy Lemon is,’ I showed her, ‘and this, down here, right where the pages join, as always, is where Magdalena’s body was found. Let me show you on the A to Zs.’ I produced the books and found the pages straight away because I’d already looked. ‘That’s where the pub is, and…that’s where the body was found. They’re only about twelve miles apart, in a straight line, but as you can see, there’s no obvious easy route between the two.’

  ‘You want me to drive the route and see how long it takes?’

  ‘In both directions, please, between about ten and eleven.’

  She looked disappointed, as if she’d been expecting something more exciting, but she said: ‘No problem.’

  Serena was hardly back at her desk when Maggie rang. ‘It’s me, Chas,’ she blurted out. ‘I’ve got a positive on the necklace.’

  ‘You have! That’s great. Where are you?’ I’d had Maggie and a couple of others asking round the jewellers to see if anybody had tried to off-load the necklace. Robbery is a powerful motive, and we have to follow every lead, if only to eliminate that possibility and pre-empt the defence’s smokescreens when we eventually put someone before a court.

  ‘Henderson’s on Wilson Street in Halifax. Mr Henderson said a bloke came in with something like the piece in your drawing about two months ago, maybe less. He couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘Did he buy it?’

  ‘No. It’s called a torque, by the way.’

  ‘A torque?’

  ‘That’s right. Mr Henderson said it was an attractive piece but not anything in his line. He said it was made by an amateur and had little intrinsic value, so he told the seller to try a pawnbroker. He said the seller looked as if he could be a down-and-out.’

  ‘Well done, Maggie, well done. So now it’s the pawnshops.’

  ‘Yep. No rest for the wicked.’

  I looked out of the window, then at the pile of paperwork in front of me. The ACC wanted an update, we were behind with our budget forecast, there was a reminder from finance that I hadn’t claimed any expenses for three months and I’d been invited to give my comments on a proposed merger of forces. Well, Gilbert had been invited, but we had similar views about that one. Outside, the sun was shining again and I could hear the pigeons cooing above the rumble of the traffic. There couldn’t be that many pawnbrokers in Halifax, I thought, and if the man was on foot…

  ‘Where are you now, Maggie?’ I asked.

  ‘At the end of Wilson Street. Are you coming?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘That’s what I predicted.’

  ‘Am I that obvious?’

  ‘Yes. I need to use the loo, so I’ll see you in Debenhams, soon as you like.’

  ‘Do you have the Yellow Pages with you?’

  ‘Never go anywhere without them.’

  ‘OK. See you in the restaurant. I’m on my way.’

  It took me nearly half an hour and Maggie was growing restless when I arrived, but she managed another coffee while I ate a bacon sandwich. She’d already extracted the addresses of the town’s pawnshops and plotted the shortest route between them.

  But it wasn’t necessary, because we struck pay dirt at the very first one, just round the corner from the jeweller’s. The buxom woman behind the counter, draped in the obligatory prince’s ransom of gold chains, looked carefully at our IDs, listened to what we said and went away. Five seconds later she returned and laid an ornate necklace on the glass-topped counter.

  ‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘I allowed him ten pounds against it. More than it’s worth.’

  ‘Did you take his name and address?’

  ‘Of course.’ She reached under the counter and produced a ledger. ‘He’s here somewhere. Do you have a date?’

  ‘Second week in August.’

  ‘This must be him. Mexican-style necklace, ten pounds.’ She spun the book round so I could read it for myself. He was called F Raw and lived in town. I put my finger on the place and Maggie copied it down.

  ‘We’ll have to take this,’ I told the woman. ‘Do you have a plastic bag we can put it in?’

  ‘I thought you carried them with you.’

  ‘We do, but we had a run on them this morning.’

  ‘I’ll need a receipt for the necklace. I gave ten pounds for it.’

  She didn’t ask if it was stolen. She’d no need to.

  We decided to go and see Mr Raw, and collected Maggie’s car from the multi-storey. She knew the way and in minutes we were driving along a street of terraced houses, looking for number 52. The local primary school had just disgorged its charges and the street was filled with little groups of them, carrying impossibly large rucksacks, accompanied by their mothers. We were in the middle of the Asian community, and some of the kids wore turbans or topknots with their school blazers. The adults were in pyjama suits in bright colours and one wore a full burka. It was black and white, with just her eyes showing, and the cut of it looked expensive. She was tall and slim, and I suspected that she was fully aware of the impact she had. Another, leading a little girl by the hand, wore an eau-de-Nil suit and four-inch stilettos. The kids chatted and dashed back and forth between groups, like kids all over the world. Maggie stopped to let them cross the road and we both smiled.

  Number 52 let the street down. The windows were dirty and bags of rubbish were strewn about the small front yard. ‘Shall we disturb his reverie?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Park where you can and we’ll do a PNC check.’ I phoned the nick and asked for it. Only certain officers have access to the computer and the data it contains, and we weren’t on the list. Two minutes later the reply came back, just as the school party, or what remained of them, caught up and passed us. The woman in the burka and the one in stilettos weren’t with them. Frederick Raw had convictions for being drunk and disorderly, causing an affray, assault, ABH and threatening behaviour while armed – the arm being a shotgun – and had spent a decent portion of his adult life as a guest of the Queen.

  ‘Sh-sh-sheest,’ I hissed. ‘We nearly walked into that one, Maggie.’

  So I did some more telephoning and thirty minutes later a familiar battered Ford Transit turned into the street and parked nearby. Maggie raised a finger off the wheel in acknowledgement and we drove back to Heckley.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Richard Wentbridge asked his wife.

  ‘Shopping,’ she replied. ‘With Fiona. You know it’s our s
hopping day, or have you stopped my credit card?’

  He looked sideways at her, unsure of her attitude. ‘I thought you’d forgiven me,’ he ventured.

  ‘But not forgotten,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you when we get the million off Zed Zed Doodlebug next door.’

  ‘I told you: we have to be patient. It’s money in the bank for a rainy day, which hopefully will never arrive. So where are you going?’

  ‘Dreary old Leeds again. Fiona’s choice.’

  ‘Do you want a lift?’

  ‘No. She’s coming here and I’ve ordered a taxi. We can still afford taxis, can’t we?’

  ‘Somehow, dearest, I can’t imagine you going on the bus, even if one ever came this way.’

  ‘Ah! I’d slit my wrists first. She should be here by now.’

  The sun was shining again and the combination of hot weather and the recent downpours had caused the plantlife to shoot up over the last few days. The Wentbridges employed a gardener for a few hours every week, but Richard insisted on cutting the grass himself because he was the proud owner of a Hayter Heritage ride-on lawn tractor and didn’t see why he should employ a gardener to have all the fun. He kissed his wife goodbye and went through the inside door into the garage, where he tossed his shirt onto the bonnet of the Mazda and climbed aboard the mower. The engine started first turn of the key and he steered carefully out onto the drive and round the side of the house, towards nearly half an acre of waiting grass. Fiona had pulled onto the drive as he exited the garage and she gave him a wave. A flock of small birds flew away as he turned down the side of the orchard to make the first cut.

  Their taxi deposited the two women on Duncan Street, as close to the pedestrianised area in the centre of Leeds as was practical. They turned up their noses at the fashions on offer in the Corn Exchange but had a giggle over some of the gear in the S&M and Goth shops. Fiona held a leather bustier adorned with studs and zips in front of herself and Teri nodded approvingly. Then it was to the overpriced designer ware in the Victorian Quarter.

  They lunched at Anthony’s and rested themselves over coffee in preparation for the serious shopping. A cursory glance around House of Fraser set the credit cards vibrating before they plunged into Harvey Nichols and their version of heaven. The liveried doorman pulled the door open with a smile and in Switzerland the Coutts Bank von Ernst cleared the decks in anticipation of some serious trading.

  Richard Wentbridge parked the mower in its corner of the garage and retrieved his shirt. In the kitchen he took two bottles of his favourite Czech lager from the fridge and poured them into a pint glass. He showered, changed into freshly laundered chinos and polo shirt, and carried what remained of the lager upstairs to the computer room.

  Ten minutes later he was feeling despondent but not defeated. The stock market was depressed and his various other business interests were suffering from the general fall-off in spending, while his outgoings were multiplying like rabbits. They weren’t there yet, but another couple of months like this one and he could be having cash-flow problems. He’d have to off-load something, and that would be like selling the family silver. He thought about Teri, loose in Leeds with a credit card, and hoped she wasn’t being silly.

  A little pile of CDs at the back of the desk, behind the monitor, caught his eye, and he reached for them. There were three of them, in plastic see-through envelopes, and written in marker pen on the top envelope was the message Ibiza 2003, Disk 1. The second one was Ibiza 2003, Disk 2 and the last one was, predictably, Ibiza 2003, Disk 3.

  The trouble was, Disk 3 was missing. The envelope was empty. Richard Wentbridge had never been to Ibiza. He’d never had a desire to go to Ibiza and never intended going there. It was probably the last place on earth that he wanted to go, and watching three disks-worth of somebody’s holiday photographs taken in Ibiza was about as appealing to him as spending a month living in one of the dumpsters at the back of the hospital amputation ward.

  He’d assumed that nobody else would pick them up and want to watch them. That’s why he’d chosen Ibiza as a suitable label for the disks. The disks that contained the images of bruised and beaten, ravaged and raped children that he’d uploaded onto his next door neighbour’s hard drive. A freezing cold hand with metal fingers clutched at his bowels and he desperately needed the toilet.

  He ran through the entire expedition, over and over again, but always came up with the same answer: he couldn’t remember removing Disk 3 from Zed Boogey’s D drive. He could remember inserting it, hitting the right buttons and glancing briefly at the image of a Chinese-looking girl being held down by two men, but not removing it. He’d left it there; of that he was certain.

  He’d done the same thing with his own computer hundreds of times. Almost every time he logged on a message came up saying Non-system disk error. Replace and strike any key when ready, because there was still a disk in one of the drives. He mentally cursed himself for not being aware of the risk, but he also gained some comfort from it. Maybe Zed Boogey did the same thing. Perhaps he wouldn’t look twice at the renegade disk. Perhaps…

  It was all conjecture. He would deny any knowledge, if challenged, and nobody could prove otherwise. Meanwhile, he’d just have to wait and see. He took another lager from the fridge and gazed through the window across the newly mown lawn. This was his domain, and nobody would ever take it from him.

  The taxi dropped Fiona and Teri off at the Wentbridges’ riverside apartment and they struggled the last few yards laden down with bags bearing the familiar logo, chattering and giggling like jackdaws in a farmyard. Teri held a bag between her teeth as she typed in the number for the security door and Fiona leant against the wall, making gurgling noises. Teri had bought two silk tops, three pairs of shoes and had replenished her make-up drawer. Fiona was taking home a suit by Gaultier, a black lace teddy for a special occasion and five blouses. In the flat they dropped the bags and slipped off their shoes, still giggling. Teri slopped gin and tonic into tumblers and passed one to her friend.

  ‘Oh, that’s better,’ Fiona gasped after taking a long draught.

  ‘Definitely,’ Teri agreed, licking her lips. ‘There’s nothing like a good stiff one after a hard day’s shopping,’ and they both spilt their drinks as they laughed.

  ‘You didn’t buy much,’ Fiona stated when she had recovered. ‘I thought you were going to make him pay for his transgressions.’

  ‘You mean losing a million when he was with you?’ She spat the word out to exaggerate her displeasure, as if pretending that being with her friend was her only objection. ‘I haven’t finished with him, yet. He’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Poor Richard. He really was unlucky, you know. Don’t be too hard on him.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Teri reached for the gin bottle and recharged their drinks. They were in the kitchen, Teri leaning back against the work surface, Fiona sitting on an art deco stool from the breakfast bar.

  ‘Thank you,’ Fiona said, and placed her glass on the bar. ‘So how are things with Mr Wonderful,’ she asked. ‘We haven’t mentioned him, yet.’

  ‘Who could you possibly mean?’ Teri wondered, but her eyes lit up and Fiona was transfixed by them.

  ‘Torl, of course!’ Fiona blurted out. ‘Don’t go all coy on me. I want to know everything about him, starting with what he’s like in bed.’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since Monday, and we haven’t, you know, done it, yet. He’s nice. I like him. He’s a bit weird; you’re never quite sure if he’s listening to what you say or far away on another planet, but he’s interesting, and funny.’

  ‘Tristan’s still convinced he’s a fraud.’

  ‘Well he’s wrong.’

  ‘And he’s boss of this big company?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s that all right.’

  ‘So why haven’t you shagged him?’

  Teri pulled another stool from under the breakfast bar and placed it close against Fiona’s, but pointing the othe
r way. She sat on it, facing Fiona, and took one of her hands in hers.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ she said. ‘He’s religious. Some sort of minister. Methodist, I think he told me. Apparently, if we went to bed with each other it would be a sin.’

  ‘Of course it’s a sin,’ Fiona stated. ‘That’s what makes it so much fun.’

  ‘I’m working on him. I think it will only take a little push.’

  ‘Then give him a push, for God’s sake. I’m starting to worry about you.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. All is under control. He’s there for the taking. Money first, then sex. It will be his reward.’

  ‘He hasn’t, you know, converted you, has he?’

  Teri reached out with her free hand and placed it behind Fiona’s neck, lifting her tresses and letting them fall through her fingers. Fiona saw the look in those big brown eyes and moved closer, her hand on Teri’s knee.

  ‘Oh, no, my darling,’ Teri said as she pulled Fiona’s face towards hers. ‘He hasn’t converted me. You’re the only person who ever converted me to anything.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We had a prisoner in the cells. 6 a.m. Thursday morning I strode into the nick and checked the night log and it said we had one prisoner in the cells. Prisoners are a bind. We try to avoid them at all costs. They have to be fed, dressed, watched over, taken to court and generally pandered to when we could be out doing more important things, like, well, catching more prisoners.

  We were in early because I wanted a little talk with Frederick Raw, and he had a record of violence as long as Heckley High Street, so it had to be done properly. It’s amazing how many ex-shotgun licensees just happen to have an unregistered one lying around. The mess room was crowded with uniforms wearing body armour, carrying weapons, sipping coffee. Upstairs in CID, Dave was waiting, and one or two others.

  He said: ‘Morning, Charlie. There’s a prisoner in the cells.’

  ‘Mmm, I saw the log. Anybody we know?’

  ‘The Happy Fryer.’

  ‘Who?’