Sour Grapes

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘It’s not exactly an insurmountable problem, I wouldn’t have thought. I suppose we might have trouble if the firm’s gone out of business, but only then. Look, have you got the names of the men who were on duty that night?’

  ‘Some of them, I think. Hang on and I’ll check.’

  Willow waited, hearing the muted sounds of rustling paper and the occasional unladylike curse, which made her smile. At last Emma was back, saying, ‘The only ones named in my files are Terry Lepe and George Tedsmore, who were on duty when Lutterworth was supposed to have gone out the first time, but not when he eventually left and discovered the car had been stolen. The shifts change over at eight thirty. But look, Willow, do you really think it’s worth going to all the trouble of tracking them down? I mean, presumably his own legal team must have asked sensible—and searching—questions, even if the police asked only the sort designed to get the answer they wanted.’

  ‘You never know. I’d have thought it was worth a shot. I’m more than happy to do it. It shouldn’t take long and if I don’t find anything I’ll give up straight away and we won’t either of us have lost anything except an hour or two in which I probably wouldn’t have done anything else anyway. If I do find something I’ll report.’

  ‘Willow, I know I say this much too often, but you are amazing.’

  ‘Nonsense. But I do like investigation.’

  ‘Won’t Tom be furious with us?’ said Emma, who had worryingly clear memories of his terrified anger after Willow had been assaulted in hospital by one of her suspects in an investigation she had carried out only days after Lucinda’s birth.

  ‘Too bad if he is. I’m so bored with my beastly book. He’s not here. I need something else to do. You need a spot of help. No,’ Willow added quickly, ‘I don’t mean you need it, but you could use it. And anyway, Lutterworth is safely in prison already. He can’t get at either of us. So, whatever he was doing that night, he’s no threat to you or me.’

  ‘That’s true. You’re right again. Well, best of luck, Willow, and many, many thanks.’

  Willow was smiling as she put down her receiver. She filed the dreary chapter she had been attempting to jazz up and switched off the computer, reaching for the London Business Telephone Directory with her other hand.

  It turned out to be surprisingly easy to persuade the Hill, Snow, Parkes press officer that Willow needed to know the name of the firm who had once provided security for the partnership’s head office. A glance at the directory gave her their number, and a quick telephone call established that they were still in business. Willow told the young-sounding receptionist who answered her call that she was anxious to speak to Terry Lepe and wondered if she could be given the number of the place where he was working that day or perhaps leave a message asking him to contact her.

  The receptionist did not seem at all surprised by Willow’s request and politely asked her to wait for a moment. When she returned to the telephone it was to announce that Terry Lepe was no longer with the company.

  ‘What a pity!’ said Willow. ‘He was so highly recommended to me. Then, what about George Tedsmore? Might it be possible to get in touch with him instead?’

  ‘Just one moment,’ said the receptionist, and then only a second or two later. ‘Putting you through.’

  Willow, who had assumed that the man would be out on duty or sleeping off a night shift at home, quickly adjusted her planned approach.

  ‘Tedsmore,’ said a growly, South London voice.

  ‘George Tedsmore? Hello, my name is Worth, Mrs Worth. You’ve been recommended to me as someone who could give me some good advice about security. I wonder whether it would be possible to come and see you to discuss it?’

  ‘What sort of problem?’ he said, sounding much more careful than the receptionist had been.

  ‘It’s too complicated to discuss over the phone,’ said Willow. ‘It really would be easier if I could explain face to face.’ She had no reason to think he would refuse to talk about the Lutterworth case, but it seemed much more likely that she would get useful information out of him if she had him sitting in front of her as she asked her questions and could watch his reactions as well as listen to his answers.

  ‘OK. When d’you want to come?’

  ‘When are you free?’

  ‘’Sa’ternoon? Three?’

  ‘Fine. Where should I come?’

  ‘Head office, Rosebery Avenue. Knock and enter, as the actress said to the bishop.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Willow, curious that so unpolished a man should apparently have become part of the administration of a company that was large and successful enough to have provided security for a firm like Hill, Snow, Parkes, ‘I’ll see you later.’

  Tedsmore looked very much as she had expected from his voice: a big man in his late fifties, with rough grey hair and strong hands with stubby fingers. There was a broad smile on his square face and a distinct twinkle in his faded grey eyes. He half stood as Willow was shown into his small, glass-walled office, and leaned across his desk to shake hands.

  ‘So, what d’you want from us, Mrs Worth?’ he said after he had fetched her a plastic beaker of disgusting imitation tea from an automatic machine. He was not drinking anything. ‘You’ve got some need for security? We’re not bodyguards, you know. Nor yet private eyes. We supply security guards for offices mostly; or building sites and factories.’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t want that?’ she asked, trying not to smile.

  He gestured towards her jacket. It was some time since she had felt the need to spend her royalties on couture suits and expensive jewellery, but she still took a great deal of pleasure in buying clothes made by people who understood the luxury of understated elegance and superlative cut and fabric.

  ‘Not many of our clients come here looking like you,’ he said, ‘and most of them introduce themselves with the name of their firm. If you’d wanted a bodyguard I could’ve understood.’

  ‘No. I’m not nearly rich or prominent enough for anyone to want to kidnap or damage me.’

  ‘So, why are you here then?’

  ‘I want a bit of information.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ he said, no longer smiling. She thought that in his younger days he might have looked quite dangerous. ‘And what might that be about then?’

  ‘About the night that a man called Andrew Lutterworth was arrested. D’you remember it? You were working at Hill, Snow, Parkes then.’

  ‘Yeah. Not having lost me marbles, I know I was,’ he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘But why should I remember that night in particular?’

  For a moment Willow assumed the question was meant to be taken at face value and was about to explain why the dramatic and presumably much-discussed events must have stuck in his memory. Then she realised what he meant and felt for her handbag. She had been to a cash machine on her way to his office and had just over one hundred pounds with her.

  ‘Why not?’ she said, lifting the bag on to her knee. ‘What would it take to remind you?’

  ‘A ton maybe?’

  She sat in silence for a full minute, as though weighing up whether it was worth it or not.

  ‘OK. But it had better be good for that.’

  ‘It’ll be true.’

  ‘Well, that’s the crucial point.’ She opened her bag and took out the wad of money, making a mental note to keep Emma unaware of the bribe. It was not that she would have disapproved in principle, but Willow knew that she would be mortified to think of anyone spending that sort of money on her behalf.

  ‘Not a bad bung,’ he said, grinning. ‘What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Willow, taking out a notebook. ‘Starting with whether you did or did not see Lutterworth going out to park his car that night, or coming back again to work just as your shift ended.’

  ‘You’ve wasted your money, love,’ he said, reaching round to tuck it away in an inner pocket of the jacket he had hung over the back of his chair. ‘W
e already told the rozzers. He didn’t go out nor come in.’

  ‘As far as you saw?’

  ‘’Sright.’

  ‘Would it have been possible for you not to see?’

  He shrugged, showing off the fatness of his shoulders and paunch as his shirt rode up.

  ‘Possible; not likely.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  He shrugged again, but his face gave her all the answer she needed. Perhaps feeling that he had been short-changing her, he said. ‘I didn’t mind him so much as some of the lads.’

  ‘Which lads in particular?’

  ‘Lots of them.’

  ‘Who specifically? Terry, perhaps?’

  ‘You talked to Terry?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Willow. ‘They said he doesn’t work for the company any more.’

  ‘Correct. I thought you must’ve found him, though.’

  ‘Found him?’ Willow repeated, becoming much more interested. ‘Did you think he’d disappeared?’

  George Tedsmore laughed, but he did not seem amused. Willow began to feel the first tingling alertness that always accompanied a useful discovery. She raised her eyebrows in a silent question, which he did not answer.

  ‘I see,’ she said eventually, deciding to put her question more clearly later. ‘So, why did Terry so particularly loathe Andrew Lutterworth?’

  ‘They’d got across each other. Terry was a young bloke, see; not like me and some of the other lads. We’ve seen it all and learned to take it, but it riled him. You know, when they give us orders without looking at us, never used our names, treated us like dirt.’

  ‘Was Lutterworth worse than the rest?’

  Tedsmore scratched his neck, raising a bunch of reddish flesh above his shirt collar and then letting it flop down again. Willow wondered whether he had put on weight after he had been promoted to desk work or whether someone in the organisation had decided that he was no longer fit enough for active duty and found something for him to do in the office.

  ‘Sort of. Ruder and more impatient-like. And as for common? I ask you.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Willow, surprised that Tedsmore should mind so much about the man’s class.

  ‘A lot of them are like that, you know. Brains like razors, but thick as shit when it comes to real life; no common sense at all.’

  Aha, thought Willow, amused by her own misunderstanding. Common sense, I see.

  ‘Even Terry could’ve run rings around him, and he’s no genius. Head in the clouds, that Lutterworth.’

  ‘Or in his clients’affairs?’ suggested Willow, interested in the first suggestion of corroboration of Lutterworth’s own story that he might have forgotten the street in which he had parked his car. Ever since Emma had pointed that out to her, she had been puzzled.

  ‘You must have seen a lot of him in the evenings when he was nipping in and out of the building to get his car out of the car park and all that.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do you remember any occasion on which he had forgotten to lock it or lost the keys or anything like that?’

  Tedsmore took a moment to think, but then shook his head. ‘’Course I might not’ve heard about it. You’d do better to ask his sekertry. Nice little thing she was and always sorting out his messes for him. Dunno what happened to her, though, after he was sacked.’

  Willow wrote herself a note, well aware that the Hill, Snow, Parkes press officer would be less likely to answer questions about an ex-partner’s secretary than about a security company that no longer had any connection with the partnership.

  ‘Did she like him or was she like this Terry and full of resentment?’

  ‘She always talked friendly enough about him,’ said Tedsmore, looking surprised at the question.

  ‘Oh. Well, I will try to see her if I can. What was her name?’

  Tedsmore scratched his head in a parody of puzzlement. Willow wondered if he was about to ask for an even bigger bung and was prepared to hold out for full value for the first before she gave him any more.

  ‘Fanny? Mandy? Candy? Can’t remember, sorry. Sally? No, it’s gone.’ Seeing Willow’s impatience he scowled. ‘Look, there’s hundreds of girls in places like that. I don’t remember them all when they’re in front of me every day and it’s been years since I was there.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I see. But look, you still haven’t told me exactly how Lutterworth had riled Terry so badly.’

  Tedsmore shrugged again, but after a little prodding from Willow produced a long, involved story about a mislaid parcel and unfair aspersions cast on Lutterworth’s secretary by Terry, and a public bollocking by Lutterworth, followed by ‘unwarrantable rudeness’ from Terry and then by a formal warning from Personnel. Humiliated and spitting with fury, according to Tedsmore, Terry had gone out of his way to irritate Lutterworth whenever he could safely do so after that.

  ‘What a pity he isn’t with the company any more,’ said Willow at the end of the story. ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘’Bout eighteen months ago,’ said Tedsmore, dashing her hopes that he might have decamped as soon as Lutterworth had been charged. ‘No, more. Perhaps two years.’

  ‘What made him go?’

  Tedsmore shook his head and clamped his full lips shut. Willow told him that she did not think she had yet had enough information for her hundred pounds and was not going to leave until she had the full story of Terry Lepe’s defection.

  ‘Wanted a change of scene,’ growled Tedsmore. ‘Didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You can do better than that. It doesn’t sound in the least convincing.’

  The door behind her opened and she looked round to see a much younger, better-dressed man standing there with a disapproving expression on his face.

  ‘Are you very busy, George?’ he asked in the voice of one who wants to say something much ruder but dare not in case he might antagonise a paying client

  ‘Won’t be long now, Ron. Mrs Worth here was just asking whether we’d be interested in quoting for security for her brother-in-law’s factory.’

  ‘Really?’ said the man called Ron, coming further into the room so that he could shake hands with her. ‘Well, I hope George here is helping you. Whereabouts is the factory?’

  Willow took a moment to look meaningfully at her reluctant source and then turned to say charmingly, ‘Near Ashford, but it’s not a very big business…’

  ‘Ashford in Kent or Middlesex?’

  ‘Kent, actually,’ she said without any hesitation. ‘But I’m coming to the conclusion that the job might be a little small for your organisation. It’s just that you came so highly recommended that I thought I’d better consult you first.’

  ‘Did we? That’s great. By who?’

  ‘An old friend of mine, Norman Addams,’ she said, making up a name at random. ‘He used to work at Hill, Snow, Parkes when you did their security and he was full of your praises.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Not sure I ever met him, but of course the name’s familiar. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. But I’d like a word with you later, George. Last month’s duty rosters are a bit worrying.’

  ‘Sure, Ron. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve sorted Mrs Worth.’

  Ron removed himself. When he had had time to get right out of earshot, George said gruffly, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was conditional, you know,’ said Willow, looking at the sweat on his forehead. ‘I could still go and tell him what you were really doing this afternoon. Times are hard, I take it, even in the security business?’

  Tedsmore did not answer.

  ‘Downsizing, are they?’ suggested Willow. His face gave him away. ‘And most unlikely to keep on someone selling information about clients, even past clients. OK, now we know where we are. Tell me about Terry and why he left and I’ll leave you in peace. Otherwise, I’ll have to speak to your boss.’

  It took a little more persuasion and threat, but eventually Tedsmore said, ‘There was this girl, see. Terry’d been giving her one a
nd she started creating. Up the spout prob’ly, though he said not. But she started belling him here. Just once a week at first, then every day, then on the hour every hour, hoping to catch him between shifts or getting his pay or something. She did get him one time and I heard him telling her he was leaving the country, going to America he said, where he’d got a job. He said he’d send for her when he was fixed up with a flat and all.’

  ‘And had he? Got a job in America, I mean?’

  ‘Nah. Gone up north more likely. Anything to get shot of her. Naggy bird, she was.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Who keeps the telephone records here?’ asked Willow coolly. ‘Someone must in a security company. Could you get hold of them? Or should I ask Ron?’

  Tedsmore lumbered to his feet The expression on his face suggested that he was genuinely afraid for his job and bitterly resentful of the chance that had led his boss to see Willow in his office.

  ‘Wait here. Don’t move. Don’t talk to anyone. And don’t touch the phone.’

  ‘All right,’ said Willow, peacefully leafing through the notes she had made.

  Tedsmore was back in a surprisingly short time with the information that Terry Lepe’s girlfriend had been called Susie Peatsea. He also gave Willow the telephone number Susie had left. Not wishing to push her luck any further, Willow thanked him and, with the door open, said loudly that she thought she ought to look for a smaller, less well-known firm for her brother-in-law’s factory. George Tedsmore did not look particularly appreciative of her efforts on his behalf and positively hustled her out of the building.

  Willow returned to the Mews to type up an account of her meeting with him for Emma, adding at the end:

  Clearly this goes some way to supporting Lutterworth’s alibi. He was vague about practical details when concentrating on a work problem and so he could have left his car unlocked and unalarmed. And it seemed to me from the whole tenor of Tedsmore’s answers that he and Lepe might easily not have noticed, let alone recorded the names of, everyone who passed their station. Tedsmore himself might easily have been out of it when Lutterworth walked out to fetch his car and Lepe disliked the man so much he could have taken the opportunity to make trouble for him. Altogether I’d have said that this made things look better for your man. I’ll have a word with Susie Peatsea, if she’s still living at the same place, and see if I can find out anything more. Hope all’s well. Love to you and Jag.