Buried in the Past

by Bill Kitson

  ‘Because Freddie works for Thornton’s biggest competitor. And Freddie’s bosses won’t like it one little bit if they find out. And knowing what I do about the firm Freddie works for, I wouldn’t like to be his life insurance company if they do get to hear about it. What exactly did the Ferret say?’

  ‘I only heard bits between serving punters. It was something to do with his boss going to see a bloke somewhere up north, someone who had an accident. Freddie mentions this, and Thornton’s mega unimpressed, but then Freddie says something else I didn’t catch and then they’re talking about diamonds and I could see Thornton was getting a real hard on by the news. Next thing I know he’s gone, clutching an address and taking Mr Muscle along for protection.’

  ‘Did you catch the name of the man they were talking about?’

  ‘Berry, I think. Raymond Berry.’

  ‘Not Berry, Perry. Ray Perry?’

  Candy nodded.

  ‘That’s a real blast from the past and I can see why it would interest Thornton – and Freddie the Ferret’s employer. It might also interest my old mate DI Mike Nash.’

  ‘I’ve had some success,’ Clara began. ‘Remember, you asked me to try and find out what had happened to Ray Perry’s mother? I made some enquiries around the area where the Perry family was based – the local council, Social Services, local charities and even the local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. They wouldn’t tell me anything about their members, naturally, but they put me in touch with a retired pastor who’s been very active in helping down-and-outs and homeless people over the years. I spoke with him and he remembered Mrs Perry very well; regarded her as one of his success stories. Contrary to what we suspected, Mrs Perry didn’t die of alcoholism. In fact, at around the time of her brother-in-law’s murder she went in for a prolonged course of rehabilitation. Once she’d dried out, she spent a long time helping the pastor deal with women in a similar situation, or who had become homeless, or were escaping from an abusive relationship.

  ‘The pastor told me he all but lost contact with her after she joined what he referred to as a “quasi-religious sect”. I say all but, because he still receives a Christmas card from her every year. The last one showed a picture of the headquarters of the sect, which, as he remembered it, was based in an old country mansion somewhere in the Scottish borders.

  ‘I rang various local authorities and got lucky. The sect is based in the Kelso area and is known as The Children of the One True Light. I rang them’ – Clara grinned – ‘and after I’d waited for them to announce their title, I spoke to someone who referred to herself as their almoner. She was quite open, said they didn’t believe in hiding anything and that Sister Evangeline, as Mrs Perry is now known, is one of their most respected elders. I asked if it would be possible to speak to her, but was told she was instructing some novices in the ways of the brotherhood and would be tied up for most of the day. I also asked about the possibility of a visit, and was told that was quite permissible. I said I’d ring back after I’d spoken with you.’

  ‘That’s extremely good work, Clara, and I’ve been doing a bit of thinking.’ Nash smiled as he heard Mironova groan. ‘Let’s face it, we’re making little or no progress as things stand, with either end of the case, so here’s what I suggest. We believe that the same person killed Graham Nattrass and Max Perry, even though there is a quarter of a century gap between the two murders and half the length of the country. At about the time that Nattrass was being killed, Max Perry’s nephew Raymond was also being attacked only a few miles away. Conclusion?’

  ‘That all three events were linked, even though we’re not sure what the link is.’

  ‘OK. Any ideas?’

  ‘It could be the missing woman, Frankie Da Silva, although I’m not sure in what way she could be connected to Nattrass. Similarly, it could be this talk of diamonds.’

  ‘I don’t see how Nattrass could be connected to the diamonds, Clara. He wasn’t born at the time, besides which the diamond story is just a rumour.’

  ‘Which leaves the woman.’

  ‘Possibly, but without more fact, more background, we’re snookered.’

  ‘That was what Wellings told us, barroom gossip I think he called it, all those years ago.’

  ‘I think we have to try and force things to happen.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Let’s start with background on the people concerned. Begin with Ray and Max Perry. I think we should visit the Children of the Whatever-Their-Name-Is and interview Sister Angelica, or whatever Ray Perry’s mother calls herself these days. If anyone can shed any light on their activities, she can. Besides which, she needs to know what’s happened to Ray.’

  ‘Her name’s Evangeline. OK, I’ll phone for that appointment, shall I?’

  ‘Please, and when Viv gets in ask him to concentrate on Graham Nattrass, find out more about his parents and upbringing. He can make a start on that. It will make a change from his trawl through theatrical agencies, although I’m still hoping that will yield something about the mysterious Frankie Da Silva.’

  ‘And what will you be doing whilst we’re busy with that? Nothing, same as usual, or sitting here pretending to think?’

  ‘No, I’m going to go through these files again and then phone my friend Brian in the Met. He might be able to tell us more about what happened to Max Perry’s organization after he was murdered. He might also be able to shed some light on what became of the one person involved in all this that we haven’t given much thought to.’

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘Max Perry’s widow, Corinna. It might be interesting to find out where she is and what she’s doing these days.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten it’s my long weekend and I’m off tomorrow have you? I’m going to visit David; he’s got a weekend pass.’

  ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘DS Shaw, please?’ Nash identified himself and waited.

  After a couple of minutes, he heard, ‘Morning, Guv’nor. I was just about to phone you.’

  Nash laughed. ‘It’s a while since anyone called me that.’

  ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  ‘I need some background information, if you can help.’

  ‘Would this have something to do with the Perrys?’

  ‘Yes, I’m trying to piece together the past and present.’

  ‘The odd thing is, I was going to ring you with something that might be relevant. This girl I’m seeing, Candy, she works behind the bar in a club run by a slimeball, name of Thornton. Going back before our time, he used to be apprentice to Dirty Harry Callaghan, took over after Callaghan was killed. Anyway, Candy overheard a conversation during which Perry’s name was mentioned. By what she told me, Thornton was being fed a load of info and then he called in one of his hired goons and they shot off up north somewhere. At a guess, I’d say you’ll now have the pleasure of their company.’

  ‘Did your girl hear any more? Was there anything mentioned about diamonds?’

  This time it was Shaw’s turn to be astonished. ‘How did you know?’

  Nash explained, adding, ‘Which leads me to think there might be more than a grain of truth in this old diamond rumour. What I really wanted to know was what had happened to Max Perry’s set-up after he was murdered, and where his wife Corinna is nowadays.’

  ‘That’s easy. She’s shacked up with the guy who’s now running Max’s old firm.’

  ‘Really? Who is it? Do I know him?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s a fairly unpleasant character; goes by the name of Phil Miller. Nobody knows too much about him, and nobody likes to ask. The odd thing is, Thornton was told Miller and Corinna had headed north before he decided to do the same.’

  ‘Strange how everything points towards these alleged diamonds,’ Nash said. ‘There’s another link with the present day, though, apart from Ray and the supposed diamonds.’ Nash explained about the identical MO. ‘We wouldn’t have made the connection but for the attack
on Ray, which caused us to request Max’s file as well.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought it was Ray Perry you were interested in? Max was before my time. Ray was, too, come to think about it. I reckon when his Uncle Max was murdered, I’d have still been in kindergarten but I can ask one or two blokes who have been in this division a lot longer than I have. I’ll find out what I can and get back to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Brian, that’s great.’

  ‘One thing I do know. The guy who was feeding Thornton with information is braver than he looks. He works in a betting shop run by Phil Miller. If Miller gets to hear he’s been passing the news, he’ll be very unhappy. And when Phil Miller gets unhappy, somebody usually finishes up getting hurt. Oh, and one other thing, watch out for Thornton’s hired hand. Goes by the name of Mr Muscle, but he’s more of a deterrent than a detergent.’

  Next morning, Nash’s Range Rover was already in the car park when Viv arrived. He made two coffees and took them to the office where Nash greeted him, ‘Morning, Viv, how did you go on in Netherdale yesterday?’

  ‘It was bloody frustrating, to put it mildly. I went to the register office to get Nattrass’s birth certificate, which I thought was going to be quite straightforward. No such luck. As far as they’re concerned, Graham Nattrass doesn’t exist, and never did.’

  ‘You mean they’ve no record of his birth?’

  ‘No, and I made sure I’d got my facts right. I took his date of birth from the form he filled in when he applied for the job at the garage, because I thought that’s one thing you’re never going to get wrong, or forget, and the register office has no record of anyone by the name of Graham Nattrass born on that day.’

  ‘Perhaps he was born elsewhere, in a district covered by another office.’

  ‘No, they checked the records nationwide. Even then there was nothing to show for it.’

  ‘He could have been born abroad, I suppose.’

  ‘That was one thought I had,’ Pearce agreed, ‘but if I had to guess, I’d rather go for him being adopted.’

  Nash stared at him in surprise. ‘It’s a possibility, but why put that at the top of your list?’

  ‘After I left the register office, I went for a coffee to think it over, and that’s when I had the idea. If he was adopted, that would explain the change of name, and also why we couldn’t locate him on the births register. So, as I was next door to the council offices, I thought it might be worth asking them to check their adoption records for that and the next couple of years. I thought that would be enough to start with, and then if we didn’t get any result from that, we could extend it, because he could have been adopted at any age.’

  ‘Good thinking. Did it pay off? Did you find anything?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘So, unless he was adopted later, that’s another dead end.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it is, actually.’

  Nash frowned, his expression puzzled. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because when I said I found nothing, I meant there was nothing in their files to find. In fact there were no files to look through.’

  ‘Sorry, Viv, you’ve lost me. Completely.’

  ‘The files for that period are missing.’

  ‘How do you mean, missing?’

  ‘Missing, as in vanished, disappeared, lost or stolen. Except that I think stolen is the most likely case.’

  ‘What on earth happened?’

  ‘That’s what is exercising the so-called brains of the department at the moment. All they were able to tell me is that every adoption file from the year Nattrass was born and the three years afterwards has gone. They reckon there is no way they could have been accidentally lost, or mislaid, so they feel sure they must have been taken deliberately.’

  ‘Have they any evidence? Any sign of a break in?’

  ‘None whatsoever. The only thing they could think of that might have some relevance was a false alarm they had about three weeks ago. Somebody phoned the fire brigade to report a fire in the council offices. The whole building was evacuated whilst the fire brigade checked it out, and it was over an hour before they were allowed back in. The chief reason they remember it,’ Viv’s tone was sarcastic, ‘is that it was pouring down that day and they were all soaked through by the time they got back inside. Actually, I remembered the incident once they mentioned it, because the fire department turned out a couple of appliances and a raft of men, for what turned out to be a hoax. Some of the men were furious.’

  ‘And you reckon the phoney alarm call was designed to give the thief time to remove those files whilst he was sure to be undisturbed? How would he get in, though, if everyone was being kept outside?’

  ‘He could have stayed hidden in the building or gone in dressed as a fireman. And if that was the case, who would challenge him?’

  ‘That sounds feasible,’ Nash agreed after a moment’s thought. ‘But it does mean we’re at a dead end as far as Nattrass is concerned, at least for the time being. It might change if we are able to find out what his original name was, but at the moment I can’t see how we could do that. Better go back to trawling through the theatrical agencies and see if you have any more luck tracing the mysterious Frankie Da Silva.’

  It wasn’t until late that afternoon that Nash’s sense of frustration lifted, and then only marginally. Pearce came into his office bearing a mug of coffee and news that Nash hoped signalled the beginning of a change in their fortune. ‘I’ve managed to locate Frankie Da Silva’s agent,’ Viv told him. ‘Luckily, the receptionist at the agency has been there over thirty years, and remembers not only all their clients, but which particular agent handled them. The bloke who handled Frankie has retired now. He lives in Chichester, and when I rang him he was really helpful’ – Pearce grinned – ‘once I could get him off the subject of gardening.’

  ‘Did he come up with anything useful?’

  ‘Yes, he remembers Frankie well. He reckoned she had potential for a big showbiz career and it was one of the biggest disappointments of his time as an agent when Frankie told him she’d decided to quit.’

  ‘So she didn’t simply vanish without informing him, then?’

  ‘Not according to him. He said she went in to see him, he wasn’t able to recall the date, but said she told him that she had decided to retire because her circumstances had changed.’

  ‘What did he think she meant by that?’

  ‘He said she didn’t exactly spell it out, but he got the impression it had something to do with Ray Perry. I got the feeling he didn’t like Perry much, possibly because he thought Ray was taking away a rich future source of income. He told me Frankie had been working at one of those dinner-cum-cabaret spots. She was on a rolling engagement there and apparently the management were quite peeved when she decided to leave.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the agent kept her file, by any chance? We couldn’t be that lucky.’ Nash’s despondent tone reflected their lack of progress.

  ‘He didn’t need to.’ Pearce smiled and tapped his temple. ‘It’s all in there. He recited everything he knew, even down to her last address. I know it’s correct because I checked Ray Perry’s charge sheet, and he’d got it, spot on.’

  ‘Did he tell you her real name, or was that asking too much?’

  ‘No, he remembered that too, pretty much. Like us, he thought her name was too exotic to be real; invented for her stage career. But apparently, when he challenged her about it, she proved it. The agency insists that all their prospective clients fill in a biography, with next of kin and so forth, and when he told Frankie he didn’t believe her, she produced some document, passport, driving licence, he wasn’t sure which, that proved it to be correct.’

  ‘That should make her easy to trace; there can’t be that many people called Da Silva around.’

  ‘It was her Christian name he had a problem with. He said Frankie wasn’t exactly correct. Everyone called her that, but her proper name was longer. Like Mike and Michael, I suppose.’
/>
  ‘I get you. So her real name could be something like Francine, or Françoise?’

  ‘That sort of thing, certainly, although I tried both of them on him and he said they weren’t right.’

  ‘Nevertheless, the fact that he was able to confirm her surname is a start. Did he know where she came from? Before she moved to London, I mean? Although I suppose she could have been from London all along.’

  ‘No, the only information he had was a London address, even before she and Ray Perry moved in together. Where she came from originally, he’d no idea.’

  chapter ten

  With the intervening weekend, it was Monday before Mironova returned to work. ‘Do you want to bring me up to date with what’s happened whilst I’ve been away?’ she asked Nash.

  ‘That won’t take long,’ he muttered. He related the curious tale of the missing adoption papers, and then gave her details of Pearce’s success with the agent. When he’d finished, Clara sat for a few moments in silence.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Nash asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. I was trying to look at what Viv was told, viewing it from a woman’s perspective, and it doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘What doesn’t seem right?’

  ‘We were told that Frankie was allegedly going to run off with Callaghan, but if that was true, the last thing she’d do was tell her agent and the management of the place where she was working that she was quitting. That would be inviting all sorts of trouble if word got back to Ray Perry.’

  ‘Perhaps she did, and Ray actually did murder Callaghan.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘No, that’s wrong. A woman wouldn’t think or act like that, especially if she was cheating on her partner, given that he had a reputation for violence. There had to be some other reason.’

  ‘Any idea what that might be?’

  ‘I can think of two possibilities. Either because she had decided to get married, or—’

  Nash caught on quickly. ‘Or because she was pregnant?’