by J M Gregson
‘That was behind the door when we arrived here on the fourth of May. It could have been dropped there at any time in the previous five days. Or it might have been only there for an hour or two. It was a Saturday once more, so the site was crowded with people again.’
Bert shook his head sadly. ‘Which could imply that the person who delivered this is normally only here at weekends, or that someone who is here much more frequently merely chooses to make himself more anonymous by sheltering within the crowd. I’m sorry if I’m stating the obvious: you’ve probably worked these things out for yourselves.’
Lisa said quickly, ‘But it’s good to have some sort of official confirmation. You’ve seen this sort of thing before, but it’s totally new and merely shocking for me and for Jason. Jenny, our daughter, hasn’t seen them and we’d prefer that she doesn’t get to know about them.’
‘Do you think these might be in any way connected with Jenny? Moonstruck teenagers and even young men can become quite unbalanced by pretty girls. It usually passes mercifully quickly.’
Lisa glanced at her husband. They exchanged quick, nervous smiles. ‘We think it’s highly unlikely that these have any connection with Jenny. She hasn’t been here very much. She has her own circle of friends from school and we have difficulty getting her to come here with us.’
‘Then you’re probably right to keep this from her. The fewer people who know about it, the better. It’s almost certainly a crank, and cranks thrive on publicity. If he gets no reaction at all, he’s likely to get bored and either cease his activities altogether or go away and torment someone else. I presume you’re willing to let me take these things away?’
Lisa shuddered. ‘Very willing indeed. I hope I never see them again.’
Bert Hook smiled as reassuringly as he could. ‘And I hope they don’t become exhibits A and B in a court case. I think that is very unlikely.’
Jason Ramsbottom looked at the two items which had caused them so much dismay and discussion. ‘I don’t expect you’ll get much from them. He’s covered his tracks pretty well, hasn’t he?’
Bert looked down at the messages again. ‘The newspaper technique is quite common now – you aren’t the only one who watches crime series. People think it makes them anonymous, but sometimes they reveal more about themselves than they think they are doing. The sources they use for their letters can be revealing. Even the glues they use have sometimes given pointers.’ He was clutching at straws: it wasn’t easy to identify anonymous letter-writers until you could question suspects, and there were at present far too many candidates. ‘Have you any thoughts yourselves about who might have done this?’
The couple glanced at each other again before Lisa said, ‘We’ve thought about it, obviously, but we haven’t come up with anyone. We’ve only had this place for two years. We hardly know many of the people who are around when Twin Lakes is busy at weekends.’
‘Has anyone shown a particular interest in you? Tried to find things out about you and the way you live your lives?’
Jason shook his head. ‘No. People ask you what you do for a living when you’re on the golf course or in the bar at weekends, but that’s natural enough – it’s no more than a means of getting a conversation going, most of the time.’
Lisa said, ‘There’s Debbie Keane, of course. She wants to know everyone’s business, not just ours. But that’s because she lives here almost all the time and hasn’t enough to occupy her. She’s a nosey parker, but there’s nothing vicious about her. I couldn’t see her being responsible for this.’
‘But if she pries into people’s lives, she might have some idea about who would be vicious enough to go to the trouble of devising notes like these. Because there’s quite a lot of care and labour gone into those notes. And you might not be the only victims. Have you heard of anyone else who’s been badgered with the same sort of threats?’
‘No. But we haven’t enquired. Jason thought we should keep our own troubles to ourselves. I’ve chatted to other women on the site, half-hoping to hear that they’ve had letters like ours. But no one has seemed even slightly alarmed or disturbed.’
Bert sighed. ‘I now have to ask you the most embarrassing question. Is there anything in either of your lives which could make you the subject of threats like this? Nothing excuses these notes, but it might help us to identify the culprit if you could give us some clue to their resentment. Have you offended anyone in the recent past? It might not be anything very serious – the person who has compiled these notes isn’t likely to be rational or balanced.’
Again they looked at each other for a couple of seconds before Jason turned to Hook and said firmly, ‘No. We discussed this, seeking some sort of reason for these notes. But we haven’t come up with anything.’
‘I need hardly say that anything you tell me here will be treated as strictly confidential. It would be simply a pointer towards the identity of someone choosing to threaten you.’
Jason said tersely, ‘No. There’s nothing.’
Bert knew that he really needed to question them separately. Wives and husbands had their own secrets, even from each other. Affairs, outbursts of violence, debts incurred, incidents from a previous life. People would confess things when questioned alone which they would never reveal in the presence of a partner or spouse, however cosy and intimate they seemed together.
Hook grinned, closing his questioning, wondering where he went from here even as he said, ‘I think it’s time we had a knock round your little golf course, Jason. Help to maintain my status as a bona fide visitor, and tune me up for a no-quarter-given game with John Lambert on Sunday.’
It was a pleasant course, and tricky enough to lure the energetic but rather erratic golfer that was Bert Hook into a couple of high-scoring situations. But he played well enough on the other holes to beat his host two and one and trouser the modest pound which was their stake. He was introduced to seven of the residents as they played twice round the nine-hole course. That helped to justify his presence here and allay his slight feelings of guilt about using a wild goose chase to be out here playing golf on a Friday. None of the people he met seemed a possible writer of poison-pen letters – but you never knew, at this stage.
He locked his clubs in the boot of the car and walked round the lake with a couple they had seen on the course and a highly friendly Labrador. They gazed across the tranquil lake, where a solitary dinghy drifted with a fisherman sitting motionless beside his rod. The Labrador owner identified the dinghy occupant for him. ‘That’s Wally Keane. Decent golfer and highly skilled bowls player. Knows every yard of this site and probably just how deep that lake is at every point. Bit of a recluse. We think he sails to get away from his wife. Debbie’s into everyone’s business and spends most of her time chattering incessantly about it. But she’s quite harmless really, and even useful, at times – if you want to know anything about Twin Lakes, Debbie’s your woman.’
It was almost as if they’d been preparing Hook for what was to follow. When he arrived back at the Ramsbottoms’ holiday home, a cheerful, grey-haired woman was in earnest conversation with Lisa, who introduced him. ‘This is Debbie Keane. Lives here for eleven months of the year and knows every blade of grass and every bit of scandal.’
‘Oh, go on with you!’ said Debbie, who was obviously delighted with the description. ‘Are you thinking of coming to join us here, Mr Hook?’
‘Oh, Bert’s just a visitor of ours for the day,’ said Lisa hastily. ‘He’s been knocking a ball around the golf course with Jason.’
‘And what do you do for a living, Bert?’ asked Debbie imperturbably.
Hook took the plunge. ‘I’m a police officer, Mrs Keane. Detective Sergeant in the CID, actually.’
‘Oo-er! Better watch my Ps and Qs now, hadn’t I, Lisa?’ Debbie, who looked to be in her middle fifties, vibrated with the same giggle that had animated her thirty years earlier.
‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Keane, there are a few questions I’d like to a
sk you, when you’ve finished your cup of tea. It won’t take long, but I think it would be best if we spoke in private.’
FOUR
Geoffrey Tiler took his time selecting the plants. There wasn’t a lot of ground available, so you wanted to be sure you made the most of it. His partner thought Geoffrey knew all about gardening. Even though he declared repeatedly that he didn’t, his new companion saw that only as a becoming modesty in him. It was good to have someone who saw only the best in you.
Geoff decided on begonias and pelargoniums, in the end. The nursery had them labelled as geraniums, but you couldn’t blame them for that: it was the name most people still used for them. They flowered all through the summer and on into the autumn, until the first frosts cut them down; they’d be ideal for the bed in full sun which he had prepared for them. He stowed the trays carefully in the boot of his car and shut the lid on them firmly. The little plants needed the light, but they’d have to exist in the dark for a few hours. It was warm today, but if he left the boxes of plants on the back shelf, they might roast in the sun in the airless car. There had been steady rain only a couple of days ago, so that the soil would be warm and receptive. He’d enjoy planting these annuals out over the weekend.
The lunch break was over. Tiler drove the short distance back to the factory and slipped his jacket on before he left the car, preparing himself for his different and more sober working life. He tightened the tie at his neck, threw back his shoulders and marched purposefully back through the reception area and the anteroom to his office.
‘Come through in five minutes, please, Laura. I’ve three or four letters to answer from this morning’s post. We’ll decide whether they’re snail mail or email when you come in.’ He spoke breezily to his PA, as if it was important to establish his return from gardening to small-time tycoonery. Or to conceal his horticultural expertise and his purchase of plants, he thought ruefully. Why it should be important to him to conceal that, as if it were some sort of moral weakness, he couldn’t imagine. Role-playing, he supposed; they said almost everyone did that, whatever their station in life. It was only a small factory, but he was the owner and it seemed to him as well as to his staff that he had to play the man in charge. And that apparently excluded harmless hobbies like gardening.
He smiled at the heading on his notepaper as he studied the morning’s post and planned his replies: You Need It. We Make It. He still didn’t like dictating anything but standard letters without a little forethought. You could annoy people if you used the wrong phrases, or even if you used the standard clichés; they made some people feel they were being fobbed off rather than receiving the individual consideration they merited. He made the odd note for each letter on the pad in front of him, then agreed with Laura that each of the four messages should be conveyed in a formal letter. Heads of firms tended to be older people, and for most of them letters still had more standing than emails.
His small plastics firm was doing well, considering the recession which had seen off many concerns of this size. Prices were keen, but orders were still coming in and one or two competitors had gone. You Need It. We Make It was the mantra he had set at the top of his stationery when it had been redesigned two years ago. It wasn’t strictly true, but they would have a go at most things that offered a lucrative market and they knew where to locate larger suppliers when designs occasionally proved too complex or expensive for them.
Laura went away to prepare the letters for his signature and he called in the sales rep he had arranged to see earlier in the day. This was a man of thirty-three who had come here on a slightly reduced salary when his previous firm had folded. He was professionally affable and confident as a rule, but the prospect of this meeting with Geoffrey Tiler had obviously made him nervous.
He wasn’t able to conceal his anxiety as he came in and sat down on the chair in front of the boss’s desk. Not a good thing in a salesman, Geoffrey reflected; you should exude self-assurance, even when you did not feel it, if you were to convince prospective customers of the excellence of what you had to offer. But that was unfair. This was an interview with your employer, not a selling exercise, and he didn’t want false bonhomie or feigned aplomb from the man.
Tiler looked at him steadily for a moment. ‘We’ve lost the Brownlee account, Frank. Would you say that is any way down to you?’
‘No, sir. I think they were determined to go. They’d made up their minds before they saw me.’
‘Did you try to win them back?’ He didn’t make suggestions as to how Frank might have done that. He wanted those to come from the man sitting uncomfortably on the other side of the desk and having to account for himself. It was tough, but it was part of the job. He’d sat in that position himself, many years ago now. It was that experience which had made him determined to get out of sales as quickly as he could: you were always at the mercy of other people, in sales.
‘I offered him the lowest price on our goods that I could, sir. The one we’d agreed I could go down to, if the customer was important enough to us.’
‘But he wouldn’t bite?’
‘No. He seemed determined to go. I got the impression that one of our competitors had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Probably taken a loss, just to get that order.’
‘I see. Have you any evidence to support that view?’
‘No, sir. It was an impression I got from speaking to Griffiths. As I said, he seemed to have decided before I got there that he was placing his order elsewhere.’
‘And you hadn’t seen this coming before you spoke to him on Tuesday? You hadn’t had any hints at your previous meeting with him that he was considering switching his suppliers?’
The salesman shifted a little on his seat. ‘No, sir. He’d seemed perfectly friendly. He’d given me the feeling that he was satisfied with the quality of what we were offering and with the prices we were charging him for it.’
‘How long ago was this previous meeting, Frank?’
The man folded his arms. ‘About two months ago, I think.’
Tiler glanced down at the notes in front of him, though he knew perfectly well what he was going to say. ‘Three and a half months, according to my records. You haven’t given him a phone call during that time?’
‘No, sir, I don’t believe I have. I’ve been pretty busy during the last few weeks, trying to work up new business.’
‘And you’ve had a certain amount of success, Frank, on which I congratulated you at the time. But the two new orders you secured represent about a quarter of the business we have now lost, as Brownlee take their custom elsewhere.’
‘Yes, sir. I realize that. Hopefully the new orders will develop into greater quantities when the clients are satisfied with our products.’
‘Hopefully they might, yes. But both of them are small firms. It will take them many years to grow to the size of Brownlee, even if they are successful. They are the kind of business we should pick up, I’m not disputing that. But not at the expense of the Brownlee custom, Frank.’
‘The two things aren’t connected, sir.’ Belatedly, the salesman became more aggressive. ‘I didn’t neglect Brownlee to secure these other outlets. The cancellation of the Brownlee order hit me like a bolt from the blue on Tuesday.’
‘I see. Well, I accept that, Frank. The question we have to ask is whether it should have hit you like that. Clients, especially big and long-established clients, need to be kept warm. Do you honestly think that you shouldn’t have seen this coming? Are you quite sure that there was nothing you could have done to anticipate it and possibly prevent it?’
The man opposite him squirmed a little on his upright seat. He was used to enlarging on the excellence of what he could offer to people who knew nothing of his background and little about the firm he worked for. This man knew all about him, and far more about the financial health of this company than he ever would. You couldn’t spin yarns here; you couldn’t pull the wool over this man’s eyes. Even those clichés seemed third-hand and u
seless here; he realized in his discomfort how heavily he dealt in clichés during his working day.
The old, well-worn phrases got you by, with people who didn’t know you or whom you met only occasionally in the course of your work. But this man knew him too well to be sidetracked by the conventional bits of jargon. The trouble with being a salesman was that you presented only one side of a case for all of your working life: that was what everyone expected you to do, in order to sell your product. But it also meant that no one was disposed to believe you, even when you spoke the most heartfelt truth.
He tried to produce his usual cheerful air, but felt himself failing miserably as he looked into the round, experienced face opposite him. ‘I got no warning of this, sir. The MD at Brownlee seemed perfectly happy with our goods and our service when I last saw him. I – I could perhaps have kept in touch with him a little better in the intervening period, but I don’t think it would have made any difference to the decision he made last Tuesday.’
‘You may well be right in that, Frank. But as you didn’t contact him, we’ll never know, will we? I shall be seeing the Brownlee board member who oversees most of their buying at a conference next week. I’ll have a word with him there and try to see whether this switch to another supplier is irrevocable, or whether we have a chance of getting back with them in the future.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’m sure that you’ll find that—’
‘What about the other clients on your patch? Are you happy that none of them is going to defect to the competition?’
‘I don’t think that is likely to happen, sir.’
Tiler let that limp statement hang in the air for a moment, allowing his man to hear and endure the flaccidity of it. ‘Better make sure it doesn’t, eh, Frank? Better keep the buyers warm and make sure they appreciate how good our products are and how keen our prices are. What Brownlee have done will get around, as you know, and other people will be asking themselves whether they’ve got the best deal possible in these cut-throat times.’