by Liz Evans
‘Skerries,’ I reminded her.
‘Oh yes ... Tom. I had a weird fax from the Munich police the other day.’
It was about the last thing I’d expected.
‘They - the police - had just had to deal with an abandoned van. It had lost its number plates ... vandalised, I guess ... but it was left-hand drive and they found a half-used pallet of tiles in the back, with an advice note addressed to us. They wondered if it was one of ours. I think they wanted to sting us with the bill for towing away. I denied all knowledge, naturally. But it sounded to me like Tom’s van.’
‘How the hell did it get to Germany?’
‘Ferry. Shuttle. Autobahns. Take your pick. Anyway, I must get back and give Larry the good news.’
‘Will he take Figgy - I mean Fergal - into the business, d’you reckon?’
‘He may not want to be taken. There’s still the skating.’
‘He’s broken his leg.’
‘It’ll mend.’
‘Might leave a permanent weakness. In fact, I’d almost bet on it.’
‘Why?’ Marina’s motherly instincts were finally placed on red alert. ‘Have the doctors said something?’
‘No. But he couldn’t land a job with Starlight Express. And he came home, didn’t he?’
She got the point immediately. ‘And now we’ve all got a face-saving reason for the end of his bid to skate. That’s sad.’
‘But handy.’
‘Very. Because, believe it or not, he’s actually quite a talented builder.’
‘I have to go myself. Give the happy couple my best.’
I’d got as far as the hospital gates when I spotted Mickey in my rear-view mirror. Either she’d popped out to do a quick aerobic work-out in the car-park, or she was trying to attract my attention. I circled around.
‘We thought you were coming back,’ she gasped, leaning down to my open window. ‘Figgy wants to see you. He said it was important.’
We had to scour the parking lot and bins to find a discarded ticket that hadn’t expired yet. Marina had left by the time I got back to the ward and Rachel had popped upstairs to see her friend Ada in Women’s Medical.
‘You’ve got ten minutes, Figgy,’ I told him. ‘After that it’s a thirty-quid fine for the car-park ... and you pay it.’
‘It will only take a couple of seconds.’
‘Nice accent. Did the bang on the head scramble the vocal cords?’
Figgy grinned. He really was a dead ringer for his mum. ‘Got ter speak like the natives, ain’t yer?’ he mocked, returning to his ‘sarf Lundin’ dialect. ‘Otherwise they reckon you to be a plum. Didn’ wanna get duffed up, did I?’
‘Not when you can come home and do it.’
‘Yes. Well, at least that wasn’t personal.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Are you quite certain the driver wasn’t out to get you?’
‘Course they weren’t. It was just another spacehead with stolen wheels. They boast about it in the arcades. Compare notes on who’s managed to steal the motor with the most poke. Who’d want to run me over? Apart from my dad ... and Mum assures me he was home, so he’s got an alibi. Now can you shut up and let me say what I’ve got to say.’
‘Fire away.’
‘First off ... thanks for looking out for Mickey.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Secondly, I’m sorry about taking your fat mate’s flat ...’
‘You’re definitely not welcome ... past or present ... and lay off the “fat”.’
‘Cholesterolly challenged, then. Anyhow, I had to get Mickey in somewhere decent ... she couldn’t have stood that hut much longer. But I’ll pay your mate some rent, soon as I get sorted out.’
‘No! Absolutely not. Don’t speak, phone or write Annie. Make like you’ve never set foot in that building ... understand?’
‘Whatever you say, your Graciness.’
‘Great. Now if you’ve finished grovelling ...’
‘I haven’t. Park yourself again. This is the important bit coming up ... important for you anyway. You know the first time we met, when you were asking about the blind wrinkly with the dog, and the babe girlfriend. Well, I lied when I said I’d seen her coming out of that block of flats. I’ve never seen her.’
He gave a convulsive swallow, and told me the whole story.
CHAPTER 36
I drove back to Henry’s house too fast.
I knew I was going too fast when I saw the blue lights in my rear mirror and the flashing headlamps two inches from my bumper.
In theory Terry should have stayed with the car whilst his partner did the patter. But Rosco wasn’t going to let an opportunity like this get away.
He kept it formal; not a flicker that he’d recognised my registration number and that it was on an unofficial black-list run by those officers who thought I’d got off lightly when I’d been allowed to resign from the force rather than face a disciplinary hearing.
‘Do you know what speed you were doing along the front?’
‘No. I never look at the speedometer. Don’t you know?’
Terry flexed his shoulders and tossed the keys he’d already taken from my ignition. ‘Will you step out of the car, please, madam.’
We’d already collected a small audience prepared for the early-evening entertainment. A circle of jaws chomped steadily on burgers, chips and chicken dippers as they enjoyed my virtuoso performance on the breathalyser and Rosco’s award- winning tyre-prodding and tax-checking routine.
We’d just about gone through the entire performance when a Porsche drew into the kerb behind us and the estate agent I least wanted to see sprang out.
‘Hi. Pigs!’
It wasn’t the brightest thing to say to a couple of coppers.
Especially this particular couple. You could see the sinews bulging and knotting in Terry’s neck as he descended on Jason.
The spectators were with Jason, urging him on with whistles and catcalls. It took the poor bloke a while to realise what he’d done. Long enough for me to spot Janice in his front passenger seat.
I wandered over and leant inside. ‘Thought you weren’t going out with him?’
‘He said he’d let an apartment to a record producer. I thought it was worth a shot.’ She wrinkled her nose at the threesome now having a row over my car. ‘He’s a real little shit, isn’t he?’
‘We didn’t really get that well acquainted ... but speaking of shits, you remember the day Henry Summerstone first turned up at the offices?’
‘What about it?’
‘How come I got him? Why didn’t you pass him over to Vetch ... or one of the others?’
She told me. It wasn’t too flattering.
Jason’s tantrum was now in full spate. ‘Of course I’m old enough to drive. Listen, you moron, my father knows the Chief Constable ...’
‘Finished with me, Terry?’ I asked.
He barely glanced at me as he flicked my keys back and told me to watch my speed in future.
Jason was a trier, I’ll give him that. Even as they were thrusting him in the back of the patrol car, he resisted long enough to shout, ‘I’ve found a flat. Pigs welcome. No problemo.’
‘No porkers,’ I yelled back, restarting my ignition. ‘Gone to the great sty in the sky. Cheers, Jason.’
I managed to find a public phone that was working and tracked down Nola at the social club. She filled me in on the background behind her earlier remark that security at Wexton’s had been tightened up a couple of years ago after a break-in, before I headed back along St John’s Road.
Henry answered the door with Beano in his usual tail- wagging mode tagging along behind. I didn’t waste time on social chit-chat.
‘Coming through, Henry.’ Barging past, I headed straight for the lounge.
Henry followed me in. The green glasses were twisting this way and that trying to locate me. ‘Grace? What are you doing?’
�
��Checking out your tape collection, Henry.’ I was on my knees by the cabinet, shuffling plastic cases. ‘Assuming this system is alphabetical, I guess Little Dorrit will be between Hard Times and Martin Chuzzlewit.’
‘I wasn’t aware that you read braille?’
‘Public libraries are wonderful institutions. You’d be amazed what you can pick up. In my case ... a braille dictionary. Bear with me, I don’t suppose I can do this stuff at anything like your speed.’
He stood listening to me fingering my way down the shelf for a while longer, then said abruptly: ‘Second row, sixth tape.’
‘Thanks.’ I slammed shut Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. When the library hadn’t been able to come up with a braille dictionary I’d just taken out the heaviest book I could see ... after all, Henry couldn’t.
Taking a seat, I waited for him to do the same.
He sat opposite me, pulling the dog closer and trapping him between his knees as he stroked the silky head.
‘I’m sorry, m’dear. I should have told you the truth ... but one of the hardest things to take at my age is ridicule. To know that people are laughing ... not even behind your back, but to your face ... and you can’t see them. I was afraid if I admitted to the real situation, you’d be disgusted. So I invented that story about Kristen taking the tapes. I couldn’t admit to knowing too much about her appearance, or indeed her address ... I thought it would look strange.’
‘Whereas the real situation is ...?’
‘We had a brief relationship.’ He held up a hand to check a laugh I hadn’t uttered. ‘I know how unlikely that sounds. And believe me, I was as surprised as you undoubtedly are ... After so many years, to experience such intense joy again ... it was beautiful, and very precious to me. Then she left ... with no word. I wasn’t sure what to do. Perhaps it hadn’t meant anything at all to her. Perhaps it was just a laugh ... a joke on her part. Or maybe she’d thought that a clean break was kindest ... I had no way of knowing. In the end I came up with that missing tapes story. It seemed a face-saving way of making contact with her, with no embarrassment on either side. If something had happened to her, I might have been in a position to assist. And if she’d simply decided she didn’t want anything more to do with me ... at least I should have peace of mind. Now that we know about her past ... well, perhaps the disappearance wasn’t as out of character as I’d thought. I wish she’d confided in me, I might have been able to help.’
‘Bollocks, Henry.’
I dug into my file and extracted a sheet of paper. ‘This is a photocopy of the report on Rob Wingett’s accident.’
‘Who?’
‘Give it a rest, Henry. OK, as reported by the local Herald: A motor-cycle accident last Friday resulted in the death of the driver. Rob Wingett, (thirty-six), lived locally and had been employed as a test engineer at Wexton’s Engineering in Seatoun for the past ten years. A police spokesman said no other vehicles were involved.’
‘That’s it. The only press report of that accident. Yet according to Kristen’s file at Wexton’s she applied for that job after reading about Rob’s death. Now I know times are tough, but it’s hard to swallow her sitting in London scanning every local rag in the country in the hope that someone will have dropped dead in a job she fancies. You put her up to it.’
‘Why me? It could have been anyone. Stephen Bridgeman, for example. That story about her stealing files always sounded a little bizarre to me. Perhaps there was a previous relationship.’
‘No relationship. But even if there had been ... Stephen didn’t pay Figgy to set me on the right track.’
‘Who?’
‘The roller-skating squatter you paid to take me to Kristen’s flat.’
Figgy had confessed from the hospital bed: ‘The blind man ...I spoke to him a few times ... early mornings, when we were in the hut. Mickey never knew ... she always slept in later than me. Anyway, a couple days before you came along, he told me someone would be round asking questions about a woman. Told me what she looked like ... and then he gave me fifty pounds to describe her to whoever turned up and point out that flat to them.’ Leaning back, he’d closed his eyes and smiled weakly. ‘Sorry, your Graciness, but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.’
Henry asked why he’d bother with such an elaborate charade. ‘Why not just tell you myself and instruct you to find her?’
‘Yeah, I wondered about that myself. And then I found out why you’d employed me in particular.’
‘He asked me who worked cheapest,’ Janice had said offhandedly.
‘Cheapest, in this case, Henry, meaning not-so-hot.’
‘In most cases, m’dear. Do you have a point?’
‘You wanted someone who’d be bright enough to track down Kristen for you ... but preferably not smart enough to work out it was you sent her into Wexton’s in the first place. After all, you ended up in the dock last time you tried a similar trick.’
Nola had explained, over a barrage of American baseball commentary from the club television, that someone had broken into Wexton’s a couple of years ago and been caught escaping with assorted accounts files. He’d been given a two-year suspended sentence. And so had the bloke who’d paid him to do it. She couldn’t remember the names.
‘It was you, wasn’t it, Henry? Where’d you get the burglar from? The One-Stop-Drug-Shop next door? You’re still on that suspended sentence. If it had come out you’d tried a similar trick again, you could have found yourself inside serving the rest of your time. This way you get to keep your distance and plead ignorance if it comes out you’re the one who hired me. I can even swear you didn’t realise Kristen was working at Wexton’s, can’t I? The way I imagine it is, you picked her up in a bar or club somewhere. She’s out on parole, living in a dump, short of cash. And she’s not adverse to a little amateur prostitution if she needs a bit of spending cash.’
‘What makes you think I pick up young women in bars?’
I moved across to sit next to him. Whipping out my pocket recorder, I switched it on.
I can’t click my fingers. But the two finger clicks I’d persuaded the helpful librarian to record rang out. Beano whined, twisted free of his master’s grip, padded across to me and thrust his nose into my crotch.
‘Neat trick, Henry. How long did it take you to teach him that one?’
‘I’m sorry, m’dear. Don’t quite follow.’
‘Oh, come on.’ I rewound and clicked again. Beano nuzzled with more enthusiasm. ‘Aren’t you going to rescue me from your dog’s embarrassing attentions? And have a quick feel whilst you’re in there? One of Bone’s friends reckoned you were a groper. The shy one, of course. The one who wouldn’t make too much fuss. You wouldn’t have tried it on with the others, would you? They’d have given you a quick knee-castration job. And you needed Bone to get all the hot gossip from Wexton’s.’
‘So I enjoy contact with the opposite sex. The loss of one physical sense doesn’t eliminate the need for others, you know.’
‘OK, so you ... or Beano ... make contact with Kristen. Was she Julie-Frances Keble or Kristen Keats by then?’
‘Julie,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I never knew her real surname, believe it or not, until you told me in that cafe the other day. And I did not pick her up in some sleazy club as you fondly imagine. I met her on a park bench. She was extremely unhappy. She’d found a technical clerking job that was way below her capabilities but a criminal record rather limited her options.’
‘She told you about that?’
‘People tell you all sorts of things if you’re blind. You’d be surprised. Apparently there had been some talk about her completing her degree, but she - in the bizarre parlance of today - “couldn’t get her head round it”. She spoke about getting out ... wanted to live abroad. Make a fresh start. She was complaining about the number of countries not prepared to let someone with a drug conviction in. I made some joke about her getting a fake passport and she said she wouldn’t have to, she knew where she could l
ay hands on a real one. Then she told me about her friend Kristen.’
‘And you suggested a little industrial espionage.’
‘Wexton’s were holding out on me. They’re supposed to pay me a fixed share of the profits. Yet the amount has been decreasing for years. Hard times, they said. Reduced share of the market. Everyone taking a cut. Poppycock, sheer bloody poppycock. Young Bone was full of it last summer: Bridgeman was going to buy her a show-jumper; take the family on some expensive jaunt abroad; move to a bigger house. The only person taking a cut in that little set-up was me.’
He was nearly spluttering with rage. I guess, from his point of view, it could have looked like that. After all, he didn’t have the privilege of knowing Bridgeman’s plans to rip off his own designs. However, I would have thought an accountant would have set him straight on the legitimate profits.
‘I tried that. Waste of time. They pulled the wool over his eyes. Charged me a fortune to tell me I wasn’t being robbed, when I knew damn well I was. I can’t live on the pittance Joan and Bridgeman see fit to dole out to me ... and I won’t.’
‘So you hired Julie to become Kristen Keats.’
‘In a manner of speaking. When she told me about this Kristen and her engineering background, I realised she could be my chance. She was still hesitant about using her friend’s documents. She had images of ending up in a foreign jail. After two years in a British one, it wasn’t an enticing prospect. So I suggested a dress rehearsal. Live as Kristen for a few months, see if she could pull it off.’
‘And do a little spying on the side.’
‘Why not? She was merely collecting information that I was entitled to. And with the promise of substantial commission from whatever additional profits I should obtain as a result of her activities.’