‘Hello love. More questions or are you just feeling a little lonely tonight,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye.
‘A bit of both probably. When I was in your house I saw an old photo of a man in uniform. Was that your father?’
‘Could have been my dad or my husband, I’ve got photos of them both on the sideboard.’
‘I take it that they were in the army?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that, they were both RAF men, aircraft mechanics. My dad, Herbert Swithenbank, came down from Yorkshire during the war to assemble Hurricanes, that’s why he was based at Henlow. He was there for the whole war so he was. Then after the war he taught my Derek aircraft maintenance, that’s how we met.’
She then gave him a potted history of her family and was just getting started on her second oldest nephew when the nurse came to give her some medication. Mac slipped quietly away.
As Mac drove back to Letchworth he thought through what he’d learnt. The last burglary seemed to contradict his theory that the break-ins were linked to men who had served in the Hertfordshire Regiment but Mac was beginning to think that it might just prove the opposite. He needed to talk to Tim.
He drove home and rang Eileen. The downside of her being a one woman taxi company was that she wasn’t always available. Mac was always a bit disappointed when he rang and got the recorded message telling him that she was off-duty. He’d gotten to know her over time and it had become more like getting a lift from a friend than anything else. Luckily she was working and Mac had a nice chat with her on the way to the pub.
Fifteen minutes later he was sitting at table thirteen in the Magnets opposite his friend Tim. They had a little more than half a pint left but when Tim heard that they were about to discuss a case he went straight to the bar and got another round in.
‘Just so we don’t have to interrupt ourselves,’ he explained.
Mac took him through what he found in some detail. Mac could tell that Tim wasn’t totally convinced with Mac’s lead.
‘I mean it’s all just based on a photo frame having been moved. Might it just be a coincidence that they all had relatives in the same army unit? I mean Letchworth is a fairly small place.’
That was why he liked talking things over with Tim. When he was in the force he had his sergeant Peter Harper. He was always willing to shoot one of his pet theories down in flames if he saw a flaw and of course he always had his Nora.
‘Well you might be right,’ Mac conceded, ‘but I can’t help thinking that there’s something to it.’
‘What about the last one though? What was her name again?’ Tim asked.
‘Doris Westwood.’
‘Well her father was in the RAF and even if he had have been in the army it wouldn’t have been the Hertfordshire Regiment,’ Tim stated.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because Henlow’s in Bedfordshire.’
‘God you’re right, so it is. Henlow being so close I forget it’s in another county. Anyway it might still fit my theory. This is what I think’s been going on. Something happened seventy years ago in Greece and, after all these years, someone’s interested in finding out more about it. I think that this someone got hold of the journal and found out the names of the men in the unit. They were then able to trace their relatives…’
Mac suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. Tim had seen him like this before and didn’t attempt to interrupt his friend’s thoughts.
‘Sorry,’ Mac apologised. ‘Where was I? Oh yes they traced their relatives and then broke into each house looking for something. As nothing was stolen, apart from chocolate, I can only think they were after information of some sort. I think they found what they were looking for at Monty Llewellyn-fforbes house.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Whoever’s behind this is quite clever. The last burglary was a total red herring, an RAF family and also someone from outside the county. It makes the pattern a bit harder to spot. Also if Monty’s had been the last burglary we might have concluded that they found what they were looking for and would want to look a bit closer at that one.’
‘Sounds plausible,’ Tim said. ‘By the way why did you stop just now?’
‘It suddenly hit me where my next stop should be, the County Records Office. I think that must have been the chocolate thief’s next call after finding the journal.’
Tim gave this some thought.
‘So they first of all find the journal and get a list of all the men in the unit that were in Greece. Then they worked out who their relatives were and then systematically break into each relative’s house until they found what they were looking for. So in that case there shouldn’t be any more break-ins, should there?’
‘I’d bet on it.’
‘Any idea yet what they might have been after?’
‘Not a sausage,’ Mac said as he shook his head.
Thinking of sausages made him realise that he was hungry.
‘I’ll need to read more of the journal. I’m hoping that it might shed some light on the whole thing but we’ll see. Anyway that’s not the only case I have on at the moment. I’m also going to be doing a bit of safe cracking,’ Mac said with a smile.
‘Safe cracking? I hope you’ve not finally turned criminal in your old age?’ Tim asked teasingly.
‘No, it’s all above board. An old man died and didn’t leave the code to his safe. His daughter’s asked me if I could find someone to open it for them.’
‘Oh, that’s okay then. And have you found someone?’
‘Yes, one of the best I ever came across too. I met him earlier this evening. First time we’ve seen each other in a few years.’
‘I take it that you were professionally involved as it were?’ Tim asked.
‘Yes but not in the way you mean. He helped me solve a case of attempted murder a few years back.’
Mac told Tim the full story.
‘It sounds as if you quite liked him,’ Tim observed.
‘Yes I did. He was a thief sure enough but he never stole for himself and all the people he took money from could well afford it. The papers called him ‘Robber Red’ or the ‘Socialist Safe Cracker’ but mostly ‘The Taxman’.’
‘Yes I think I remember something about him now. One of the papers reckoned that most of the money he made from the robberies ended up being given to charities.’
‘Yes homeless charities. It came out in the trial that his family had been homeless more than once so you can understand that. Anyway he had his own rules and as far as I know he always stuck to them. In all his robberies there was never any violence involved, apart from the last one I suppose.’
‘Tell me,’ Tim said.
‘Well he’d planned to rob an extremely wealthy Arab prince who was in London for the casinos. Somehow Jimmy had found out that this prince had a safe stuffed full of bank notes, mostly pounds and euros, and Jimmy’s aim was to relieve him of it. He’d planned it meticulously and had made sure the prince was in the casino before he started cracking the safe. Judging by his previous visits he knew the prince would be in there for hours. However it was just pure bad luck that the prince had to go back to his office, something to do with a sudden drop in the price of oil, and he caught Jimmy at it.’
‘So what did Jimmy do?’
‘Nothing. The prince had two minders with him and they kicked him around the room for a while before they bothered to call the police. Jimmy didn’t even try to defend himself.’
‘What happened then?’
‘He got two years for breaking and entering, even though it was a first offence.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much considering he was The Taxman,’ Tim commented.
‘I reckon the judge gave him a bit less than he might of because of the battering he’d taken. Anyway they couldn’t prove he was the Taxman, there wasn’t anything to connect him to the other burglaries. If they had he’d have gotten a whole lot more than two years but they never found a note.’
‘A note?’
‘Yes the Taxman always left a note saying ‘You have been taxed’. They thought he might have just had time to shred it so they took the contents of the shredder and tried to piece them together. They found nothing.’
‘So what’s he doing now?’
‘Working in a warehouse in Welwyn Garden City. From what he said I think he hates it though. He was in an open prison and they taught him gardening. He won some awards too, so he said. Knowing Jimmy I’d bet his gardens were good. He never does anything by halves.’
Mac had a thought.
‘You meet a lot of people with big gardens don’t you? If you ever hear that someone’s after a gardener let me know.’
‘The record would be a problem though,’ Tim said with a frown.
Mac decided that a break in the proceedings was required.
‘Two pints and two foot-long hot dogs?’ he asked.
Tim didn’t say no.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday – five days before Easter
Mac had looked up the opening hours before he went to bed. The Records Office at Hertford opened at nine. He set his alarm for seven.
He slept well and was once again grateful his back was no worse than normal. He was on a good run for once. He decided to read a few more pages of the journal while he ate breakfast.
‘Been here three days now and it’s not what I was expecting. The old guard aren’t all that keen on carrying out their duties and seem to do as little as they can get away with. They all seem down in the dumps. I asked Benny about this and all he said was that ‘We’re now helping the people who were our enemies to catch the people who are our friends.’ This was followed by quite a few choice swear words. He wouldn’t say any more about it which, for someone who would normally gab about anything, I thought was very strange.
It was also strange that it was Ted Daniels, one of the quiet ones, who finally explained the situation to me and Alfie. He said that when they got sent over in forty three they were fighting alongside a partisan group ‘up there’. He pointed to the high mountains that more or less encircled the town. He said –
‘They were good men and a good laugh too once you got to know the lingo a bit. We fought side by side, summer and winter. We lived in caves and stole sheep and any other food we could get our hands on to survive. There were good friends, both British and Partisans, who never made it down. They’re buried together up there. So between us we helped push the Germans out of Greece and what thanks did they get? When the Yanks and our top brass took over they put the bastards who we’d been fighting back in power. The local army colonel here was a Nazi collaborator and most of the police too. They were the cowards who kowtowed to the Germans while the real men were up in the mountains fighting.’
I asked him why things had turned out that way.
Ted said that -
‘The top brass are afraid that the country might go the same way as Albania and Yugoslavia, become a communist country. So what if they want to do that I say, it’s their country anyway, isn’t it? I mean God knows I’m no Red myself but some of the Partisans we fought with were communists and they were some of the best blokes I’ve ever met. I’m bloody sick of it, none of us has any idea what we’re still doing here. They say that we know the territory and that they want us to chase our pals around the mountains. Meanwhile we have to smile at the Nazis with their fancy uniforms whose throats we’d have happily cut not so long ago. The scum strut around the place like they own it. Problem is they bloody do now.’
Ted stopped and walked off. I could see he was getting very upset. Me and Alfie talked about it and we both came to the conclusion that we wished to God we’d been posted somewhere else.’
Mac reluctantly put the journal down. It was time to go.
The Records Office was at County Hall, not far from the Regimental Museum he’d visited the day before. A young lady dressed in jeans and a top that didn’t quite cover her midriff explained that he’d have to make an appointment. He showed her his warrant card. She changed her mind.
‘Do you get many people coming in here doing family research?’ Mac asked.
‘Not as many as you might think. We get the odd person now and then researching their own family but its professional researchers who visit us the most. We have a couple who are in and out of here all the time. Oh and sometimes the doctors of course.’
‘Doctors?’
‘Yes, we sometimes get doctors from the University researching how a patient’s family members had died and so on. We also get a few epidemiologists from time to time who do more historical research.’
‘Do you keep track of what people look at during their research?’ Mac asked hopefully.
The girl smiled and shook her head.
‘No I’m afraid not. Once they’ve applied and been granted access we just let them loose on the database. It’s quite safe as they can’t change anything, they can only look.’
‘So you don’t keep any records of who comes in and out?’
‘I didn’t say that. We like to know who’s looking at our records and we have to get them to sign in and out anyway for fire safety reasons.’
She showed him the visitor book. After signing it himself Mac took it to a nearby table and looked closely at the entries. A couple of names were repeated again and again. The professional researchers Mac guessed. He turned the pages back to around the date that Mr. Theodrakis had signed for a copy of the journal. There were only three possible candidates – James Allsopp, Margaret Turnbull and Dr. John Snow. That last one started a tickle in Mac’s brain. He got his phone out and looked the name up on the internet.
He got a myriad of results about some character in a TV show that Mac had heard of but never watched. Tucked in amongst them were a few entries for ‘John Snow (1813-1858), a British physician considered one of the founders of epidemiology...’
Mac read the entry and remembered that he’d read about this doctor before. Dr. John Snow was the first to prove that the killer disease cholera was spread through contaminated water and not through the air. Mac wondered if this was another false name and how many people might know about John Snow who weren’t a doctor.
He took the book back to the receptionist.
‘I’m sorry but what’s your name?’ Mac asked.
‘Tracy, Tracy Harrison,’ she replied.
‘Tracy, do you always check what people sign in as?’ Mac asked.
Tracy gave it some thought.
‘No I don’t suppose we do. We just check their identity or pass or whatever they’ve got. But why would someone sign in with another name?’ she asked.
‘What about this one?’ he asked pointing to Dr. John Snow’s signature.
‘Sorry no,’ she replied after giving it some thought.
No luck there then. He asked about the other two signatures for James Allsopp and Margaret Turnbull but had no luck there either. He took photos of the signatures.
He then asked Tracy if she could get him any information about any possible descendants of Ted Daniels, Benny O’Shea, Barney Posnett, Tommy Saunders and Andy Shoreham.
She smiled widely. Mac thought that she was very pretty when she smiled.
‘Thanks, it’ll be nice to have some proper work to do for a change. Give me an hour or so and I’ll see what I can come up with,’ she replied.
Mac decided to sit in the car while he thought of what his next step should be. Dr. John Snow, he knew it was probably a false name but even false names can tell you something. They can tell you that someone is Greek and perhaps also that they’re a doctor. He compared the Theodrakis and Snow signatures. They looked very alike but then again he was no handwriting expert. He knew the lead was tenuous in the extreme but Mac decided he was going to follow it up anyway.
An hour and ten minutes later Tracy gave him her results.
‘Unfortunately I’ve found nothing on Benny O’Shea, I presumed his first name was Benjamin, or on a Thomas Saunders who would be
around the right age. That might simply be because they moved out of the area after they came back from the war. However I did find out something about Andrew Shoreham and Edward Daniels. Andrew Shoreham got married in 1950 but had no children. He died in 1989 and his wife died two years afterwards. As for Edward Daniels, I’m afraid he died in 1952. He never got married or had children as far as I can tell.’
‘What was the cause of death?’ Mac asked.
Tracy consulted her notes.
‘Suicide I’m afraid. The causes of death were formally given as ‘Dysthymia’, which we’d know better as depression nowadays, and gas poisoning. He probably stuck his head in an unlit oven, quite a popular way of killing yourself back then. However its better news when it comes to Barnaby Posnett. Here unusual names really help. He married in 1950 and had a son, Robert Posnett, five years later. Robert should still be alive as I haven’t found a death certificate for him.’
‘Perhaps he moved as well?’ Mac suggested.
‘Oh no he still lives in Letchworth, well up until last year anyway. I looked him up on the Electoral Register.’
‘So you have his address too? That’s brilliant,’ Mac said with a smile.
She wrote down the address. Apparently Mr. Posnett lived two streets away from Mac.
Once sat back in the car Mac looked up the University Medical School on his phone. It was situated at the campus in Hatfield. He decided to go there first, as he wasn’t too far away, and interview Mr. Posnett later.
It took him less time to drive there than it did to find the Medical School once he’d got there. The campus was huge and the school was right in the centre of it, somewhere. He got sent from building to building until finally a receptionist admitted that he was actually in the right place. He showed her his warrant card.
‘I’m looking for any information on a doctor who I believe might work here. Can you help?’
The woman smiled broadly at him and said, ‘No.’
She explained that he’d need to go to the University’s HR office. She must have seen the look of frustration on Mac’s face, she gave him a map of the campus and carefully drew the route he should take. Even so he got lost again.
The Weeping Women (The Mac Maguire detective mysteries Book 3) Page 7