Crime in the Community

by Cecilia Peartree

  Chapter 17 The day after the day after....

  ‘Toast again?' said Christopher as she brought it in. By chance she had used his father's favourite plate, a white one with a pattern of red cherries and gold flourishes.

  'Of course,' she said, putting it down on the coffee table. 'Are you sure you don't want a drink?'

  'Maybe later,' he said, crunching. She had waited exactly the right length of time to butter the toast, so that it was just melting in places but not dripping off the edges all down his chin. She really was too perfect to be true. Who was she anyway?

  'Who are you anyway?' he mumbled through the toast.

  Amaryllis sat down opposite him, on the settee where Big Dave and Mrs Stevenson had slept. Christopher no longer had a problem with that - all things considered, it was about the least weird thing that had happened lately.

  'Where do you want me to start?' she asked.

  'Well, for a start, how did you know where I was? Nobody saw me drive off from the hospital with the two bad guys. How did you know to come to the moor?'

  'You're forgetting something, aren't you?'

  'What? Did somebody call you from the hospital? The police?'

  'The parcel of money,' she explained patiently. 'Remember when I got you to put the microdots in it?'

  'Microdots....' He thought back to when they had been preparing the parcel, right back in the morning when they had planned to use it against the baddies in some way. Yes! Amaryllis had said she could track whoever had the parcel... so she had been able to use it to track Christopher! That part of it was suddenly crystal clear.

  And as it became clear, the feelings he had became clear as well, and it all flooded into him at once - the fear and the panic and that sense of having been deserted by everyone. Christopher started to shiver again.

  'It's all right,' said Amaryllis. 'Just wait a minute, don't think about it, and it'll be fine. Remember you're safe now.'

  He took a deep breath, and found himself asking, 'So what was all this about the parcel of money anyway? What was it for? Why did the American push it through the letter-box disguised as a fish supper?'

  'The fish supper was a red herring,' said Amaryllis, and burst out laughing. 'It was dirty money - it had been used for drug trafficking. The Americans got it from the Iranians – your brother-in-law in fact, or his henchmen. They tricked the Americans into being postmen for them. Told them you were a terrorist and you’d try and use the money for explosives to blow up a plane, but they were setting a trap for you to walk into - the payoff for the Americans was going to be your head on a platter.’

  Christopher shuddered. Amaryllis continued.

  ‘Your brother-in-law’s friends were waiting for the parcel to get to you, then they planned to tip off the police and they would find it and arrest you... they’d be able to take the children without you getting in the way. The American bugged it so that if by some mischance the police didn't find it, you would do something silly with it, and he'd be able to keep tabs on you. Until he got the chance to - well - you know the rest.'

  ‘Take the children? My brother-in-law’s friends? It doesn’t make sense – does it?' He remembered the flash of insight he had experienced on the way to Auchterderran. He didn't really want to believe that Caroline's husband - Faisal and Marina's father - was a crook, but…

  Amaryllis hesitated.

  'I'll be fine,' he said. 'What has this to do with the children?'

  'Everything,' said Amaryllis simply. 'Simon and his sidekick were working for the children's father, in Iran.'

  ‘But their father’s a political prisoner.....'

  'No, he isn't a political prisoner. He's a drugs baron. He has so many people on his payroll that it's hard to find anybody who isn’t working for him in certain areas.'

  'But he can't be - Caroline said - '

  Christopher ground to a halt. Caroline had let him believe the children's father was a political prisoner because he himself had guessed that was why the man was still in Iran and not in Scotland with his family. The children's father hadn't been prevented from leaving Iran by the merciless penal system; he had deliberately chosen to stay there to be in the best position to continue managing his drugs operation. No wonder Caroline was such a wreck. She must have run away from him, and been constantly worried that he would send people after her. But why hadn't she told him? And what did Amaryllis have to do with it? She was waiting now, watching him to gauge his reaction before saying any more.

  'Caroline managed to get herself and the children away from him by being very brave,' said Amaryllis. 'She contacted us a few years ago, and we got her out of Iran. That was well before I retired. When it looked as if she might need protection they brought me out of retirement on a temporary basis, since I wanted to be here anyway.... I think I'm going to have to leave town, by the way. My cover's shot to pieces.'

  'If it hadn't been for you, I would have been shot to pieces,' said Christopher. 'Do you still need a cover now that you've really retired? Pitkirtly's a nice quiet little place - well, apart from the things that have been happening over the past few days, that is. You could pick a worse place to retire to, all things considered.'

  He didn't know why he was rambling on like this. She didn't want to hear it, and he didn’t think he was making sense anyway.

  'Getting back to what happened,' said Amaryllis, studiously ignoring his last couple of sentences, 'the children's father wanted to get them back, by fair means or foul. According to his value system, they belong to him - and so does Caroline. He wasn't too bothered about her though - she was no longer of much use to him. Too flaky.'

  She said it without censure, just as a matter of fact. She carried straight on. 'He recruited Simon, who was one of ours.’

  ‘A British spy?’

  ‘We call them agents… Somebody got suspicious of him, and they decided I should come out of retirement for a while and keep an eye on things here. Simon was meant to be doing that and we wanted to give him just enough rope… His Iranian friends got a bit out of hand though - that's what all the shooting was about the other night, and the taking of Steve Paxman.'

  'So it was all part of the same thing?' Christopher tried to suppress the naïve surprise that was in his mind as he spoke.

  'I must be slipping – I used to be able to guess what my target was going to do, and get ahead of him, and I very nearly left it too late this time. Simon’s out of circulation now, but it may not stop with him. There could be others. You have to be aware of that. But we're building up a dossier about Caroline’s husband which we're going to pass on to the Iranian authorities when it's complete. He could be looking at a real jail sentence. Not a soft option, in Iran.'

  ‘What about the Americans? Where do they fit in?’

  ‘They – well, they haven’t been very nice either. They wanted the kids too. They wanted to use them as bargaining counters. To get to their father. That was why they went along with all this stuff about terrorism – they can’t really have believed that – one glance at your cv would have told them you were squeaky-clean, just an innocent playing with the big boys... They didn’t want you dead though - it was Pearson McPherson who gave you the parcel of money and who rescued you from the gunman that night.'

  'So this whole thing with Simon and the money and the shooting and the threats and the mineshaft - it was all to do with the kids?' said Christopher incredulously. He pictured Faisal leaning over the Monopoly board, Marina in the kitchen running her hands through the dodgy money.... he could have died because of the kids?

  'Caroline and the kids can move on,' said Amaryllis, watching him closely again. 'You'd be in the clear - it's unlikely they'd send anyone after you again. Especially if you couldn’t tell them where the kids were.'

  'But - I wouldn't be able to see them again?'

  'Just think it over,' said Amaryllis. 'Caroline isn't well enough to come out of hospital now anyway, so that gives everybody a breathing-space. She'll be well looked after
- now that they know what she's likely to try and do, I don't think they'll be letting her go anywhere on her own until she's had intensive psychotherapy. And it'll take the kids' father a while to replace Simon. It’s not that often one of our agents goes bad. And then they would have to plant somebody else here - I'm guessing it takes a while for people to get used to a stranger in Pitkirtly?'

  'You know it does,' said Christopher with a grin, recalling the reception Amaryllis had had at the Queen of Scots that first time. He had a sudden unwelcome thought; but having had it, he couldn’t suppress it. ‘Where does Steve Paxman fit in? Does he fit in? Where is he?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It was a case of mistaken identity. I believe he’s in a safe house not far away, living at the expense of the British nation.’

  ‘A safe house? What’s that supposed to mean?... Mistaken identity?’

  ‘The Iranians kidnapped him by mistake, thinking it was you. Then Simon found out and was furious with them. He knew it wasn't you and he didn't want his fingerprints found on it. He told us what had happened, in his role as one of our agents, and we worked it all out and got Steve out of the way for a while. In case he got under our feet. Which is why he’s had to stay out of circulation. But don’t worry, he’s fine.’

  ‘Do you mean fine in the secret agent sense, or really fine?’

  ‘Really fine. I hope.’ He couldn’t see if Amaryllis had crossed her fingers behind her back. He guessed that kind of childish symbolism didn’t mean much to her anyway. She continued, 'So everyone's better staying where they are for a while. Which is good for me, because I want to be here.'

  'That's one thing I can't understand!' he said. 'Why would anybody want to be in Pitkirtly? Not that it isn't a nice place to live,' he added hastily. 'River frontage, harbour, nice rural area, not too far from Edinburgh and so on. People are all right once you get used to them - '

  'And vice versa,' she said.

  'And if you really want fun and excitement, you can always join the PLIF steering group.' A smile spread slowly over Christopher's face as he said the last sentence. 'Jock McLean's going to be so put out that he's missed it all,' he added. 'Just because of going to Milngavie.'

  After that waves of exhaustion washed over him and he allowed Big Dave, who turned out to have been lurking in the kitchen refereeing the kids' arguments and probably making eyes at Mrs Stevenson, to help him to bed. It was useful having Big Dave there, since he wouldn't have wanted to ask Amaryllis to assist with that. Well, maybe later, was his last conscious thought that night.

  His first thought on waking in the morning was panic.

  Surely Big Dave and Mrs Stevenson wouldn't stay on now that the crisis was over?

  It was much worse than that, he discovered when he went downstairs. Jock McLean and Young Dave had both appeared, somehow divining what had gone on the day before - Christopher later found out that it had all been reported on the television news. Of course there had been certain inaccuracies in the report, and Christopher's name had been given as Christian Wilsinga from Sweden rather than from Pitkirtly, while it seemed that he had been rescued from the clutches of a couple of extortionists as a result of a police intelligence operation, no mention of spies or Iranians.

  'Did your department have a hand in these reports?' he asked Amaryllis, who was still hanging around too, thank goodness.

  She sighed. 'No, we just left it to the news reporters to screw it up on their own. They can usually scramble things a lot more effectively than we can. They get a third-hand story from somebody who overhears the police talking in the pub, and then they make up the rest.'

  'Indeed they do,' said Jock McLean ponderously. Christopher noticed he sounded more ponderous than before; perhaps he himself had now got used to being a man of action and few words, so more sensitive to wordy people. 'I remember,' continued Jock, 'when the Evening News decided to report on an incident at school. They got all the pupils' names wrong, said they had been carrying knives when one had had an air-gun, and described me as an elderly maths teacher!'

  He waited for people to howl with laughter at this example of press incompetence, but for some reason there was silence around the kitchen table.

  Young Dave, who was dressed for jogging, ate another piece of toast.

  'Just let me know if you want to bring a case against them,' he said to Christopher. Somehow, like Jock's ponderousness, Young Dave's self-importance seemed to have been magnified by events.

  'Who do you mean? The reporters? The kidnappers?' said Christopher.

  'Anybody,' said Young Dave, waving his toast around so that the chunks from the extra-chunky marmalade started to fly off around the kitchen. Fortunately he himself was the only person there who was fussy enough to object to getting marmalade chunks on his clothes. He brushed a particularly large chunk fastidiously from his tracksuit top on to the kitchen floor.

  'I don't think I'd go to those lengths, thanks,' said Christopher. He glanced around. 'Where's Faisal?'

  'Gone to school,' said Big Dave proudly. 'The Council should give me a job as an attendance officer. I just told him he'd be in prison before he was fifteen if he didn't go, and off he went, easy peasy.'

  'Yes,' said Christopher uneasily. 'Thanks for taking Marina there yesterday. The headmistress rang me up to warn me about you, by the way.'

  'What?' Big Dave was scandalised. 'The nerve of it. A respectable elderly man like me! Some of those people are just too vigilant for their own good. Seeing the worst everywhere.. Well, I took Jemima along today so that headmistress can put that in her pipe and smoke it.'

  Christopher decided at once not to switch on his mobile all day, to avoid having to speak to the head teacher again. Then he remembered that his mobile had been thrown out of the car somewhere en route to Auchterderran. He smiled to himself. Some good had come out of this, after all.

  'Has anyone contacted the hospital this morning?' he asked, hoping that someone had so that he wouldn't have to speak to the head nurse woman again either.

  There was a pause

  'We didn't think they'd give information to anyone who isn't a relative,' said Mrs Stevenson in mitigation.

  'You're right, they probably wouldn't,' he agreed. 'I'll ring them later.'

  He got up to put more toast on, and found Mrs Stevenson in his way.

  'You stay where you are, Christopher,' she said firmly. 'I'll get you anything you want.'

  'Just coffee and toast,' he muttered. He didn't want to throw these kind people out, but he had the feeling that he would prefer to be on his own so that he could reassemble his jangled thoughts and try again to make sense of all that had happened.

  The post arrived.

  Young Dave brought in a letter for Christopher and then left rather abruptly. Maybe he had realised how much sugar he had consumed in the form of chunky marmalade and was going to try and work it off with extreme exercise.

  'It looks kind of official,' said Jock McLean, peering at the postmark and looking on the back flap for signs of who had sent it.

  'It's the Council again,' said Christopher. 'I wonder what they want this time.'

  It was a massive and incomprehensible form, couched in Council-speak. Something to do with applying for funding. It rang a subdued and distant bell in his head.

  'Remember,' said Amaryllis, picking up the form, 'you got a letter yesterday about this. Before – before everything kicked off. They were more or less telling you to apply. Do you need help filling it in?'

  'Are you offering?'

  'I certainly am,' she said. 'I want to see that village hall restored to its former - um - glory - or something.'

  'Glory?' said Big Dave. 'When was it ever glorious?'

  Christopher wanted to ask her about glory in the context of the tunnel, but he was reluctant to say anything about it in front of the others.

  'Just a figure of speech,' murmured Amaryllis.

  'If we're going to be filling in forms and that,' said Big Dave, 'we'd better get t
hat kid Darren along to get the young person's point of view.'

  Jock McLean made a hideous snuffling noise, and wrinkled up his face like a pig to go with it. 'Point of view? The young person's point of view is usually that they just want to be left alone to hang out with their pals and have a drink. Or twelve. And then maybe go and vandalise some school or old people's home. We shouldn't need to pander to that.'

  'I think we'll have to, if we want the money,' Christopher pointed out. 'It's probably part of Council policy that they don't give money to anybody who doesn't press the right buttons.'

  It was strange, reflected Christopher, how quickly he had slipped back into his usual routine of eating toast and having mild disagreements with Jock McLean. In some ways it was more restful than talking people down from roofs then being kidnapped and almost thrown down a disused mine shaft, and in other ways it was quite depressing to realise how little had changed. He had vaguely imagined up to now that the only reason why he lacked confidence in gatherings, and was often ignored when others were canvassing opinions, was that he was a man of intellect and not a man of action. But now that he was, unintentionally, a man of action too, it was still happening.

  Christopher found himself winding down and becoming more and more monosyllabic, and somehow they all detected that he wanted to be left on his own, and they drifted off in ones and twos. Jock McLean, least sensitive person in the room as always, was the last to leave, apart from Amaryllis, who seemed to be 'minding' Christopher, either on her own behalf or that of the authorities. She wouldn’t let him answer the telephone when it rang, but she did pass on a message from the nursing supervisor in the hospital, to say that Caroline was 'comfortable' and that she was now being monitored night and day to ensure that they didn't have another 'high level incident' on their hands.

  'High level incident!' laughed Christopher, on the brink of hysteria. 'That's one way of looking at it!'

  'Try not to get wound up about it,' Amaryllis advised. 'You'll find there isn't room in your brain to think about all that happened yesterday in one go. Better to just accept that Caroline's being taken care of now, and that yesterday is in the past.'

  'So - you do trauma counselling as part of your job?' said Christopher. 'It's really a complete package, isn't it? I suppose filling in the funding application is a kind of therapy? Have you got a mole on the Council as well?'

  'Certainly not!' said Amaryllis sharply, and then with a visible effort softened her tone, as if recalling that Christopher was in a vulnerable state and she should be gentle with him. 'No – I just believe in collaborating with people whose interests happen to coincide with mine.’

  ‘Wasn’t that how we got into cahoots with Stalin?' said Christopher lazily, getting up from the kitchen table and moving through to the sitting-room, where he picked up an old copy of 'Archives Unlimited', his favourite light reading.

  It wasn't until the following day that he had the energy to try and find out about Amaryllis, the glory days of the village hall, and the reason she had got stuck in the tunnel. The answers were rather surprising.

  'It's because of my father,' she said simply. 'He lived in Pitkirtly. Years ago, of course. He came here just before the war.'

  Christopher was taken aback. He had not imagined Amaryllis would turn out to have any Scottish connections, although he had of course wondered what she was doing in such a small, relatively boring town which might have seemed to someone from the south to be in the middle of nowhere.

  'Was he from around here?' he asked, afraid of pushing too hard.

  She hesitated, thought about it and said, 'Not exactly.... He was a refugee at first.'

  'A refugee? Before the war? Where from?... Don't answer that if you'd rather not.'

  'A Jewish refugee. From Germany,' she said, apparently reluctant to tell him.

  'Ah,' said Christopher, trying to sound sympathetic - not that he didn't feel genuine sympathy for somebody who had had to leave their homeland and, presumably, some of his friends and relations, behind and flee to a cold northerly climate where people might not necessarily be welcoming. 'And he ended up in Pitkirtly?'

  'Yes... He settled down here and got married. Then - '

  She hesitated again, and Christopher held his breath.

  '- he made lots of money and wanted to give something back to the town,' she said in a final rush, apparently embarrassed.

  'That's good,' said Christopher, not really understanding. 'So - what did he give back?'

  'He re-built the village hall,' said Amaryllis.

  'Ah,' said Christopher. Something was becoming clearer, but he still couldn't quite make out what sort of shape it had.

  'The one in Merchantman Wynd. You know. The one - '

  'Yes, the one where you got stuck in the tunnel behind the cupboard under the sink,' said Christopher. 'The one we went to see with Steve Paxman and the one he was in raptures over. The one that's almost a ruin again but some people think can be restored to its former glory.'

  'I'm sorry I didn't tell you before,' she said. 'The old hall was a ruin - worse than it is now - people had taken away the stone to build houses so there was hardly anything left.'

  'What, did he make the tunnel too?' Having previously been content to carry on not knowing anything about Amaryllis, Christopher now wanted to know everything. Or at least, everything that was relevant. He hadn't quite defined the word 'relevant' in his own mind yet.

  'No, the tunnel used to belong to a gang of smugglers,' said Amaryllis, and smiled suddenly. 'My mother's family - they kept the secret to themselves for a couple of centuries. It's been handed down through the family.'

  'So that's why you were checking it out the other night,' said Christopher, and felt relieved that there hadn't been any more sinister purpose behind her night-time excursion. 'Lucky it didn't fall in on you.'

  'Somebody's been looking after it,' she said, but didn't say who it was. Perhaps the landlord of the Elgin Arms, he thought. He could always have used it for storage as well - maybe he even kept up the tradition and stored things he didn't want the VAT man or the Excise people to know about.

  'Pity they didn't keep it free of spiders!' said Christopher.

  'My father would have hated to see the hall the way it is now,' said Amaryllis wistfully. 'He always said he'd seen enough destruction for several lifetimes.'

  He was still rather wary of this new softer Amaryllis, and would almost have preferred her to show her acerbic old self, at least occasionally. But no doubt that one would come rushing back from vacation if the need arose.

  'So,' he said, 'what do you think are the chances of the Council paying for it to be restored?'

  She frowned. 'Not that great, to be honest. It's a bit of a wreck. It was built in the early 50s when it was hard to get good building materials. Not like all those old Victorian church halls and libraries, built from stone and built to last.'

  'Early 50s? So, very nearly historic, then?'

  'It'll cost a fortune to restore, anyway,' said Amaryllis. 'I'm not even sure how much. I suppose part of the form is to do with getting estimates.'

  'Quite a major building job,' commented Christopher. 'Maybe in the Big Society we're meant to get together, rope in local builders and structural engineers on a voluntary basis, and do it themselves, for the cost of the materials. But I can't see that happening here.'

  'No, you're right. I think that sort of thing only happens on television anyway. Not in real life, where nobody does anything without being paid for it.'

  She sounded wistful again, as if wishing she could be one of the people getting their hands dirty - and scratched and bruised and calloused - doing the actual work. But he couldn't imagine she would stick at it: she would get bored and feel like doing something more dangerous, or more exciting - away from Pitkirtly. He realised this was why he hadn't even tried to get any closer to her than circumstances had dictated. She wasn't meant to live out her life in a small boring place like this. She needed the bright lights
, the adrenalin rush, the car chase, the hand to hand combat....

  The phone rang.

  Amaryllis answered it and then handed it to him.

  ‘It’s the police again. Don’t let them bully you.’

  ‘Sssh, they’ll hear you,’ hissed Christopher. ‘Hello,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘Mr Wilson? I should just mention we have policies and safeguards in place to prevent bullying or harassment of members of the public, and we take that sort of thing very seriously indeed.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s fine. Is this anything to do with – what happened yesterday?’

  ‘Yesterday? No, sir, I don’t know anything about that. Our investigations have been going on for some time… This is Inspector Douglas calling from Fraud.’

  ‘Fraud?’ Christopher couldn’t think what he meant at first, and racked his brain to think of a place name that sounded like ‘fraud’ – Frood? Abroad?

  ‘I’m afraid I need to ask you some further questions,’ said Inspector Douglas. ‘You may have to come over to Edinburgh.’

  Amaryllis wrenched the phone out of Christopher’s grasp and started to harangue the inspector. Christopher wondered if the police had safeguards and policies to protect them from people like her. It seemed unlikely. He had never met anyone at all like her before.

  ‘… can’t come over to Edinburgh! If there was any kind of communication between departments in the police, you’d know that in the past few days he’s been shot at by Iranian gangsters, he’s talked his sister out of a suicide attempt and he’s been kidnapped and threatened, then rescued at the eleventh hour…. Well, if you must speak to him, you’ll just have to come here to his house… No, of course I haven’t been drinking!.. Here he is. I don’t know what’s so urgent about fraud anyway – that kind of case goes on for months and months.’

  She handed the phone back to Christopher. Listening to her side of the conversation, he had doubted if her intervention had been at all useful, but Inspector Douglas did seem a bit on the subdued side when he spoke.

  ‘Your – friend – has suggested we come to you, sir – in the light of recent events.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher.

  ‘It’s quite pressing, so we’d like to speak to you today. What time would be convenient?’

  They settled on a time later in the day. Oh, God, was Christopher’s thought as he rang off, another lot of policemen for Mr Browning next-door to gawp at. There was one who should be out at an old people’s bingo club to give him something to do.

  At the last minute Christopher wondered if he should be more concerned about what Inspector Douglas had to say. Maybe he was too relaxed: it could be that the police were about to arrest him over the Council grant problem, about which, he now realised, he hadn’t yet spoken to Young Dave. He wished he had remembered to do it earlier when Dave was merrily showering everyone with marmalade. They might have been able to straighten out the whole thing between them and avoid any fuss.

  When he spoke to Inspector Douglas he realised that wouldn’t have been possible. This thing was far bigger than PLIF.

  ‘It was the bank account that made us think of you,’ said Inspector Douglas. ‘It had your name on it. But Mr Jackson seemed to be the one making all the deposits. Do you know anything at all about this?’

  ‘I only found out the other day there was a bank account in the name of PLIF,’ said Christopher. ‘With seven hundred and eighty three pounds of Council money in it.’

  Inspector Douglas and the other policeman caught each other’s eyes and started laughing. Amaryllis, who had insisted on being present – ‘You write down that I’m his lawyer if you like, but I’m not going anywhere’ – glared at the two of them.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Inspector Douglas to Christopher. ‘Seven hundred – seven hundred pounds and – what did you say?‘

  ‘And eighty three,’ said Christopher.

  The more junior policeman gave a chortle, which he stifled almost right away.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ said Christopher.

  ‘No, sir, I completely agree,’ said Inspector Douglas, forcing his lips into a straight line. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that the account now holds a total of two hundred and ninety thousand, eight hundred and twenty six pounds?’

  ‘And fifty nine pence,’ added the other policeman.

  ‘I was rounding,’ said Inspector Douglas.

  ‘Yes, it would,’ said Christopher, stunned.

  ‘Would what?’ said Inspector Douglas.

  ‘It would surprise me. A lot.’

  ‘I thought that might be the case,’ said Inspector Douglas. He sighed. ‘I’ve got to ask you this. Were you involved with Mr Jackson in setting up the account?’

  ‘No,’ said Christopher. The thought of being mixed up in something like this made him groan aloud.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ said Inspector Douglas, catching Amaryllis’s vigilant eye.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just so sleazy.’

  ‘I think we’re in agreement about that, Mr Wilson.’ Inspector Douglas leaned forward as if he were about to get to the point of the whole conversation. ‘Of course this is all confidential, but I can tell you that Mr Jackson is currently helping us with our enquiries into an important case. The PLIF bank account is of central importance.’

  Christopher gulped.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water, Mr Wilson?’ said the junior policeman. ‘A cup of tea?’

  Christopher shook his head.

  ‘I’ll help in any way I can,’ he said, finding words after a struggle. ‘I didn’t find out about the bank account until I spoke to someone from the Council the other day – was it Monday? Yes, I think so. Linda McSween. Department of Communities and Knowledge. I’ve got her phone number somewhere.’

  He tried feebly to extricate himself from the nest of blankets Amaryllis had created around him before the police arrived, perhaps to emphasise her point about him not being fit to go to the police station.

  ‘You don’t need to find it just now,’ she said. ‘Does he?’

  Fixed with another glare, Inspector Douglas had no choice but to agree.

  ‘I thought their records must be wrong,’ Christopher continued, ‘but then I wondered if Young Dave – Mr Jackson – had set up the account on his own initiative to help PLIF. As a kind of surprise. But I haven’t had the chance to check it out with him.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be giving much away if I told you he was definitely acting on his own initiative, Mr Wilson,’ said Inspector Douglas. ‘Also for his own benefit and nobody else’s. If we can get a handwriting sample from you now to compare with the signatures held on the account, that would be extremely helpful.’

  Christopher’s hand shook as he wrote the sample. What if his nervousness made it look, by some quirk of fate, identical to his forged signature? After the police had gone, he ran that idea past Amaryllis, and she stuck out her foot, tripped it up and then stood on it to squash it.

  ‘Won’t make any difference,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be in the clear and Young Dave – well let’s just say politely that he’ll be completely screwed. On the wrong end of the legal process. And very unpopular too – I hear the money in that account was from a pension scam.’

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Just came to me. More toast?' she offered brightly.