The Kill Call

by Stephen Booth

  ‘It reduces the market value by a vast amount,’ said the agent. ‘Unrestricted, this property might have fetched the best part of three hundred thousand, but we’re marketing Eden View for just below two hundred. Even so, it’s going to be difficult finding the right buyer.’

  Cooper looked at the house. That seemed a shame. But then, there were lots of people who were having difficulty selling their houses. He remembered Fry telling him once about the young migrant workers who had been replacing the students in her part of town. Poles, Czechs, Romanians. It was odd that the country should be so open to European migrants on the one hand, while here in some of the villages, properties could only be bought by someone from the very same parish, by a person who belonged here, in the old-fashioned, traditional sense. They were two distinct worlds, existing alongside each other.

  Finally the agent let them into the house. The interior seemed incongruous, hardly fitting for a house worth half a million pounds on the open market. No one was taking much care about cleaning and maintenance. That might be common for a rented property, but the feeling of the place didn’t fit the image of Michael Clay, the businessman and certified accountant.

  In the sitting room, a pile of celebrity gossip magazines lay on the table by an armchair. They all seemed to have headlines like Chanelle spills the beanz. Not what he would have imagined as Mr Clay’s choice of reading.

  ‘Perhaps I was right about there being a woman involved,’ said Fry. ‘But I just had the wrong man.’

  ‘You think Michael Clay might have been the one having an affair?’

  ‘This looks like a kind of love nest to me, Ben.’

  ‘A love nest on the cheap, though.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Clay’s wife died five years ago,’ said Cooper. ‘Why would he go to such lengths to conceal a relationship? Who was he hiding it from?’

  Fry shrugged. ‘His children? I bet Erin Lacey doesn’t know about this place. Or maybe his business colleagues? Perhaps he was ashamed of his relationship. Ashamed of her, whoever she is.’

  The kitchen seemed to contain a microwave and not much else. Cooper opened a cupboard. No, he was wrong. Half a jar of coffee and a tin of powdered milk.

  ‘I can’t imagine that Michael Clay spent much time here himself.’

  In a corner were black plastic bin liners bursting with rubbish. Amazing how often he saw that. As if it was too much trouble to put the stuff out for the binmen once a week. Or maybe the household had got on the wrong side of the garbage police and been penalized for putting the wrong stuff in their recycling bin. You could get your collections suspended for failing to distinguish between tin foil and plastic these days. Some authorities were really cracking down on bin crime.

  One wall of the main bedroom was decorated with a poster containing the famous peace symbol, a circle surrounding a cross with its horizontal arms inclined downwards. Cooper had once read that the designer of that symbol had based it on the representation of an individual with palms stretched outwards and downwards. The gesture of despair, associated with the death of Man. And the circle, an unborn child. But the symbol was also said to incorporate the semaphore letters ‘N’ and ‘D’ for ‘nuclear disarmament’. It was best known as the official logo of the CND.

  ‘Did Michael Clay strike you as an old hippie?’ he called to Fry.

  ‘No. But how can you tell? Lots of hippies turn into accountants and bank managers when they grow up, don’t they?’

  ‘I’ve heard there are even some in the police.’

  One of the top drawers of the dressing table was very stiff. At first, Cooper thought it was locked, but with a good tug it moved slightly, and he realized it was just jammed. Probably the wood had warped over the years, so that the drawer no longer slid straight on its runners.

  With a bit of manoeuvring, he managed to get the drawer straight, and it finally squealed open. Inside was just one item – an old-fashioned, velvet-covered jewellery box with metal clasps. Quite a large box, too. It had filled the drawer completely. When Cooper gently prised the box open, it was like looking down at a miniature dragon’s hoard. A tangled mass of silver chains lay on the velvet, with the occasional glint of a solid band or the glitter of a gemstone. Blue stones, translucent stones like diamonds – and one that was jet black. Was that onyx? He couldn’t quite remember. Then Cooper smiled. He should have been thinking gold and silver-coloured. Because surely these items were all imitation. They would have been worth a fortune otherwise.

  Something at the bottom of the heap caught Cooper’s eye. A glint of gold, but an unusual shape. He pushed the chains aside and drew it out. He found himself holding a small badge. A crown and a wreath around a curious little figure he couldn’t quite make out. The left hand seemed to be raised to the eyes, and the right hand was holding a flaming torch. And the figure was wearing – what? A breast plate? Armour? The only help was the motto etched on a scroll at the bottom of the badge. It said: Forewarned is forearmed.

  ‘What the heck does that mean?’

  At that moment, Fry called him to join her in the other bedroom. She had opened a case containing a laptop computer and some papers.

  ‘Michael Clay’s?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Yes, it seems to be. He must have been here at some time since he left home on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the laptop is password protected, so we’ll have to hand it over to the experts if we want to get anything off it. Did you notice that both bedrooms have been occupied?’

  ‘Yes. That’s interesting.’

  ‘And what do you make of this?’

  Fry shook out the contents of a large buff envelope on to the bed. Cooper saw an old colour photograph of about a dozen men and one woman, all dressed in identical outfits, a sort of blue tunic and trousers, with berets worn at various rakish angles. They looked cheerful, a group of mates enjoying their work. He guessed their ages must have ranged from about seventy down to seventeen or so. A motley bunch, definitely.

  But when was it taken? Most snaps had been in black and white until the early sixties, if the Cooper family album was a typical example. The earliest colour photo he could remember was of his parents on holiday in Wales with some friends, back before they were married – 1962, or around that time. In this photo, the subjects were standing in front of a small brick tower with a set of steps leading up the outside wall. There appeared to be no roof to the tower – he could see the sky through a doorway at the top of the steps. There also seemed to be an old-fashioned striped canvas deckchair leaning against the wall up there.

  Automatically, Cooper turned the print over. Many people did what his mother had always done, and recorded all kinds of information on the back of a photograph. Date, place, the names of everyone shown in the picture. You never knew your luck.

  But this one was infuriatingly sparse in its caption. It said simply 4 Romeo.

  He pointed out the inscription to Fry.

  ‘Which one is Romeo, then?’ she said.

  ‘Number four? The fourth one from the left?’

  They both looked closely at the line-up faces. The fourth man from the left was a fat character with a jowly chin. An unlikely Romeo. Cooper counted four from the right instead, and came up with a weedy-looking youth peering at the camera through round, wire-rimmed glasses. TinTin maybe, but not Romeo.

  Fry placed a finger on another face. ‘I think this one could be Michael Clay, though,’ she said. ‘A lot younger, of course. But there’s something about the shape of the face that’s very distinctive.’

  ‘What else is in the envelope, Diane?’

  ‘Just these –’

  Fry held out a tie with a small logo on it, and a badge identical to the one Cooper had seen in the drawer in the other bedroom.

  ‘“Forewarned is forearmed” – but what does it mean?’

  Before Fry could reply, the front door of the house opened cautiously. They heard a nervous voice downstairs.

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing her
e?’

  * * *

  Her name was Pauline Outram, and she seemed to be permanently on the verge of bursting into laughter. What Fry had at first taken for a nervous cough was actually a sort of constant half-snigger, as if she didn’t want to be considered lacking in a sense of humour if someone made a joke that she didn’t understand. Fry wanted to tell her to stop it, that she wasn’t about to make any jokes.

  ‘We’re here because we’re looking for Michael Clay,’ said Fry.

  ‘That’s funny, because so am I.’

  ‘You don’t know where he is?’

  ‘He should be here. But I guess …’

  ‘You know who we are,’ said Fry, after identification had been shown. ‘Now explain to us who exactly you are.’

  Fry was genuinely curious to know. She didn’t think Pauline Outram looked much like a secret mistress. Not even the right age, really. A fifty-one-year-old man going through a mid-life crisis was likely to go for someone about half his age. Or so she’d heard. But Pauline must be in her late thirties, and there was nothing sexy or glamorous about her. Nothing about Pauline Outram suggested she’d come here to meet a lover.

  But the question didn’t seem easy for Pauline to answer. She looked from one detective to the other, struggling for words.

  ‘We won’t be shocked,’ said Fry. ‘You can tell us the truth. We only want to locate Mr Clay. It doesn’t matter what your relationship was, as long as it helps us to find him.’

  And then it dawned on Pauline what Fry was suggesting.

  ‘Oh no, you’ve got it wrong,’ she said, shaking her head, that nervous half-laugh setting Fry’s nerves on edge.

  ‘Are you not having an affair with Michael Clay?’

  ‘No, no. You don’t understand. I’m not his lover. That’s not why he leased this house for me.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  Pauline Outram looked her in the eye, her face calm and serious for the first time. And it was only then that Fry saw the faint family resemblance to Michael Clay.

  ‘I’m Michael’s niece. His brother Stuart’s daughter.’

  28

  Back at the office half an hour later, Cooper went to his PC and Googled the motto on the badge he’d found in Eden View. Forewarned is forearmed. It was a common enough phrase, an old adage that he must have heard his parents use time and again.

  Google presented several sources for definitions. ‘Praemonitus, praemunitus. Knowledge of imminent danger can prepare us to overcome it.’ There was even a link to George W. Bush using the phrase in a speech about Iran. Corporate intelligence, cancer research, travel tips on avoiding pickpockets … Not much use.

  Cooper clicked through three or four pages of links without success, and was about to give up looking when he saw a different reference. It was a book title, advertised by a seller on ABE, the second-hand book dealers’ site. He clicked on the link and found himself reading a description of the book being offered. A history of the Royal Observer Corps, evidently some branch of the British armed forces. Could that be right?

  A fresh search and a few more clicks found a picture of the ROC logo. The figure on the badge was apparently based on an Elizabethan beacon lighter, who used to watch the coast and warn of approaching Spanish ships. And, yes, that was the Corps motto: Forewarned is forearmed.

  So there had been a Royal Observer Corps cap badge in Michael Clay’s briefcase, along with the tie and the photograph. Had Clay served in the ROC? And what about the identical badge in Pauline Outram’s jewellery box? Sentimental value, presumably. A former boyfriend? Or had there been women in the ROC? Did it still exist, in fact? Too many questions. But Cooper had an idea there was someone he could ask, who might know those things.

  There was obviously more of a local connection to be explored in this case than at first appeared. Patrick Rawson might be Birmingham Irish, but it was only thanks to Pauline Outram that they’d discovered Michael Clay’s origins.

  Cooper had almost smiled as Fry had confronted Pauline in that rented house and discovered a fact that might have taken another twenty-four hours for them to turn up.

  ‘My name is Outram because my mother never got married,’ Pauline had said. ‘Not to Stuart Clay, or anyone else. She died when I was very young.’

  ‘And you’re from a local family?’ Fry asked, trying to piece together an entirely new angle.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how did your mother meet Stuart Clay?’

  ‘They were neighbours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know?’ said Pauline. ‘The Clays are from Birchlow originally. But they moved away from the area, and it was only recently I was able to get in touch. Michael didn’t even know of my existence. I was brought up in the name of my adopted parents, and changed it back to Outram when I came of age.’

  Remembering it, Cooper really did smile. He felt sure that Fry wasn’t going to like all this.

  * * *

  Fry studied Erin Lacey with a critical eye. They were sitting in the DI’s office, Mrs Lacey being regarded as the distressed relative of a missing person, even if she had been unnecessarily evasive about her father’s movements earlier in the week.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of the existence of Pauline Outram,’ she said. ‘I’ve never met her, and I don’t want to. I didn’t realize Dad had gone so far as to provide her with a house.’

  ‘It’s only leased,’ said Fry.

  ‘Well, that hardly makes it any better. She has no right to financial support from Dad.’

  DI Hitchens straightened his tie, a signal that he wanted to come in on the money issue. That was his thing, financial problems. The word was like a bell to one of Pavlov’s dogs.

  ‘Is there a problem with money, Mrs Lacey?’ said Hitchens.

  ‘No. But … well, it’s our inheritance he’s squandering on her. Mine, and my children’s.’

  ‘I see. You’re worried that your father has been diverting too much money to help Miss Outram.’

  ‘Far too much. She’s not worth a tenth of it.’

  Fry shifted in her chair to get a better view of Erin Lacey’s eyes. She was sitting to one side, so that she could observe her profile and her posture, the little nervous mannerisms that could be such a giveaway. But the eyes were often just as revealing.

  ‘You say you’ve never met Pauline Outram, yet you seem to have a strong degree of animosity towards her,’ she said.

  ‘From what I’ve heard, she’s wasted her life. She’s, what … in her late thirties? Dad says she’s never married, never had any children, and never been able to hold down a proper job. I dread to think how she’s been spending her life until now. She was brought up in foster homes, you know.’

  Fry instantly felt her attitude to Erin Lacey freezing. In her heart was an iciness deeper than the Arctic Ocean. Professionalism and training barely held her back.

  ‘That doesn’t’, she said, ‘make her a worthless person.’

  In other circumstances, she would have had taken Lacey apart verbally, lain her own history in front of the woman and confronted her with her own prejudices. But that wasn’t what she was here for. Right now, she had to suppress her own feelings, try not to alienate an important witness too much. She felt Hitchens watching her, and tried not to meet his eye.

  ‘She’s had relationships with all kinds of men,’ said Lacey. ‘And none of them has ever hung around very long. That has to tell you something, doesn’t it?’

  Something about the lack of commitment from men, perhaps, thought Fry. But she held her tongue and didn’t say it.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t think she was a fit person for Dad to be spending money on. She’s not really a member of the family. She was illegitimate.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to her mother?’ asked Hitchens.

  ‘I heard that she killed herself.’

  ‘That’s correct. According to Pauline Outram, she drowned herself in Birch Reservoir. Pauline was only a few months old at the
time.’

  ‘That’s hardly my fault. It doesn’t justify Pauline Outram selling some sob-story to my father when she found out that we had money and she didn’t.’

  ‘But Miss Outram told us that her father and yours were very close,’ said Fry.

  ‘Well, that’s true, at least. They were almost inseparable, even though Dad was a few years younger. He told me that’s how they were right back to when they were boys here in Derbyshire. I think that’s probably quite unusual for brothers, isn’t it? Normally they tend to fight a lot – well, I know my two do. But when Uncle Stuart died of pancreatic cancer last year, it broke Dad up. You could see then how close they were. It took Dad ages to get round to sorting out Uncle Stuart’s things, because he just couldn’t face the memories. He found that job very difficult, stayed shut away with his brother’s papers for hours. And this thing with the illegitimate daughter – well, I think this is Dad’s way of trying to express his feelings towards his brother. He can be so naïve about people sometimes. So easily taken in.’

  ‘You think Pauline Outram has conned him in some way? Do you think she’s not really who she says she is?’

  ‘No. I know Dad did a few checks on her.’

  ‘Not so naïve, then?’

  ‘I made him do it.’

  ‘Which means Pauline Outram is your cousin,’ said Fry.

  ‘I suppose so. But you don’t have to be tied to your cousins, do you?’

  Fry sat back, feeling suddenly tired. Erin Lacey’s version of events fit quite closely with the story told by Pauline Outram earlier, though with a different spin, of course. Strange that the two women should feel so diametrically opposed to each other when their fathers had been so close. But then, perhaps that closeness was the sole reason they hated each other.