The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1)

by Barrie Roberts

  We stood on the steps and I tried all three of the Yale keys on the ring. One of them turned in the lock, but the door remained locked.

  ‘Funny,’ I thought aloud. ‘Parry’s men wouldn’t have dropped the catch. Let’s go round the back.’

  We followed the path along the side of the house and turned into the rear yard. I saw it at once — a square hole cut in the frosted glass of the back door.

  ‘Go next door,’ I told her, ‘and phone John Parry. Tell him your grandfather’s place has been burgled.’ I gave her the phone number. ‘I’ll be in the garden,’ I said.

  As Sheila went on her errand I limped across the path between the yard and the back garden. The garden was all lawn, overhung by two mature trees at the far corners. I sat on a seat under one of the trees and lit a cigarette. While I waited for Sheila I turned the case over in my mind.

  A retired local government officer in his eighties who lives alone and writes a strange letter to his only living relative, then gets killed while strolling in the park by a killer with an expensive taste in sports coats. A meaningless description circulated by the police and a detective superintendent who keeps information from the officer in charge in the case. A burglary at the dead man’s home and perhaps — perhaps — an attempt on the victim’s lawyer last night. I churned it all backwards and forwards, but it kept bringing me back to the same point — the point where I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  Sheila returned and sat beside me, silently. Minutes later Parry appeared round the side of the house with two younger officers. He came over to us.

  ‘Haven’t been inside, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought there was something funny when none of the keys would open the front door, then I saw the hole in the back door.’

  Parry turned and looked. ‘Cut,’ he said. ‘There’s tidy, isn’t it?’

  He moved down the garden towards the house and Sheila rose to follow him, but I pulled her back down to the seat.

  ‘Leave it till the cops have finished,’ I said. ‘There could be a real mess in there and it’ll only upset you.’

  We sat, silent again, until Sergeant Parry came out to us.

  ‘What’s it like?’ I asked him.

  ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘it’s tidy. In fact it’s the neatest, tidiest bloody house-breaking I ever did see. Would you know if something was missing, Sheila?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose if it was something important I might.’

  ‘Well, come and look then,’ said Parry, and shepherded us down to the back door.

  I had bought and sold dozens of houses similar to the old man’s. I knew the agents’ description by heart — ‘Ground floor: hall, two sitting rooms, dining room and kitchen; First floor: three bedrooms, bathroom and boxroom.’

  The back door gave on to the kitchen. There was no sign of disorder there. Even the piece cut from the pane in the door was missing. Next was a small breakfast room, set out with dining table and chairs. Again there was no sign of disturbance. Parry bypassed the middle room and took us into the front sitting room, where a wide bay window looked out on to the street. The three-piece suite and coffee table seemed in order and, more to the point, a thirty-inch colour television stood on a cabinet in the corner with a video recorder underneath it.

  ‘Are you sure someone came in?’ I asked. ‘The telly and the video are still here.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure,’ said Parry. ‘They weren’t looking for tellies and videos, but they were looking for something. Come next door.’

  He took us into the middle room, a smaller room with French windows looking on to the back yard. It was lined with books and an old roll-topped desk with its lid pushed up stood in the right-hand corner by the fireplace.

  ‘D’you see anything amiss, Sheila?’ asked Parry.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. They’ve been at the bookshelves. All the books are standing forward on the shelves. Gramps hated that. He always used to push them right back.’

  Parry nodded. ‘I saw this house yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘The books in here were all in order then. Soon as I came in today I knew someone had been through this room.’

  ‘What were they looking for?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘If we knew that, we’d know a lot,’ replied the detective. ‘Can you spot anything missing?’

  She stood in the middle of the room, looking about her, then walked to the bookshelves to the left of the fireplace. Running her hand along a shelf she came to a large red volume and pulled it out. She opened its cover and closed it again.

  ‘I don’t think they looked in the books,’ she said. ‘They must have pulled them out to look behind.’

  ‘How do you know they didn’t look inside?’ asked Parry.

  She laid the red volume on the desk and opened the cover again. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘They don’t seem to have disturbed that.’

  It was not a book. It was a large tin box, its outside printed in colour to imitate a decorative red book-binding. Even the edges were gilded and marked with page lines.

  ‘They gave them away with biscuits before the war,’ she said. ‘You were supposed to keep your jewellery and your insurance policies in them. When I came over as a kid Grandpa showed it to me and I thought it was wonderful.’

  ‘What did he keep in it?’ Parry asked.

  ‘Just his personal mementoes, snapshots and things.’ She reached into the box. ‘And this,’ she said, lifting something out. It was an old-fashioned gold watch. She held it up on its chain. ‘Don’t tell me somebody wouldn’t have pocketed that if they’d seen it.’

  ‘You could be right,’ mused the detective. ‘What else was in there?’

  ‘Like I said — snapshots and stuff, souvenirs. I don’t know altogether.’

  ‘Will you take it,’ he said, ‘and have a look through it? Let me know if there’s anything missing or odd in it, will you?’

  His two assistants joined us. ‘No luck, sarge,’ said one. ‘None of the neighbours heard or saw a thing, last night or this morning.’ He looked around him. ‘Do we know what they wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘God knows,’ said Parry, gloomily, ‘and he’s not telling, is he?’

  6

  Back in the office Sheila sat and took out the contents of the tin box, one at a time, laying them along the edge of my desk.

  There was the gold watch, with its inscription on the back — ‘Presented to Walter Brown by the County Borough of Belston, for 45 years of loyal service.’ Underneath it, still neatly folded in its envelope, was the letter from the Mayor which had accompanied the watch. There were insurance policies on the old man’s life, the house and its contents, all premiums paid when due, and an airline’s miniature ‘Crossing the Line’ certificate, dated about ten years before.

  ‘When did he go abroad?’ I asked.

  ‘He flew out once to visit us,’ Sheila said. ‘Stayed for six weeks, but he didn’t like it. ‘Too bloody casual altogether,’ he called us — not the family, Australia. He thought Adelaide was boring, all those straight streets. We went up to Ayers Rock, though, and he loved that.’

  She went on laying out the contents of the tin. There was a postcard view of Ayers Rock, lit by the red glow at sunset with black desert all around, and a handful of colour snaps of the family by the Rock. An elastic band held together a small sheaf of letters in a childish hand and tucked into the band was a tiepin. Set at its centre was a small opal with a tiny silver boomerang mounted across it. Sheila took it out and held it.

  ‘We went to Cooberpedy,’ she said, ‘to see the opal mines. It was summer, and the temperature goes up to a hundred, but he always wore a tie — his union tie — and he always kept his shirtsleeves buttoned down. We used to rag him about it. I bought him this in the souvenir shop there.’

  She clenched her hand tightly around the little pin and suddenly tears sprang in her eyes. She lowered her head and let them flow unchecked. I got up from the desk a
nd moved behind her, touching her shoulder with my hand. Her free hand clasped mine.

  ‘Don’t go, Chris,’ she said, and buried her face against me. I held her while she sobbed. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. She pulled away and searched in her shoulder bag for a tissue and a mirror.

  When she had wiped her eyes she smiled at me. I was glad to see the brightness back in her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I was a big tough Aussie, but I did warn you I’d howl eventually. I had planned to do it in private, though.’

  ‘He meant a great deal to you,’ I said.

  ‘He did. It wasn’t just that he was all I’d got. When we came here when I was a kid he was so good to me. I know my mother and father reckoned he could be awkward, but he was never anything but kind to me. He was a crusty, upright, decent, individualist old man, Chris, and he was the best grandfather anyone could want.’

  She placed the tiepin on the desk and I picked it up. ‘You know some people think opal’s an unlucky stone?’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘But it shouldn’t have been for him. He was a Capricorn. It was his birthstone.’

  I picked up the phone and called Jayne. ‘If you’ve still got your Birthdays Bottle in the bottom drawer, could you bring it in with a couple of glasses, please? No — purely medicinal.’

  The drink brought colour back to Sheila’s cheeks and she picked more snapshots out of the box. They were deckle-edged colour pictures of her parents and her around a Christmas tree on a wooden verandah, Sheila in cap and gown at her graduation, Sheila in black and white, about ten years old in an English garden. A bundle of membership cards in a rubber band followed, cards going back before the war, recording dues paid to the Labour Party and the National Association of Local Government Officers. There was a solid metal badge, a crown with ARP underneath it. She pushed it across the desk.

  ‘Do you know what that is?’ she asked. ‘What’s ‘ARP’ stand for?’

  ‘‘Air Raid Precautions’ or ‘Air Raid Patrol’. It’s an air raid warden’s badge from the war,’ I said, and turned it over in my hand. ‘He must have volunteered to go round shouting at people who left chinks in their blackout,’ I commented.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The hallmark on the back means it’s silver. They only gave silver ones to people who volunteered. People who were assigned got plain metal ones.’

  She grinned. ‘You Pommies are crazy,’ she said. ‘A world war on and you handed out solid silver badges!’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect an Aussie Republican to understand the fundamental importance of the distinction,’ I said. ‘One simply has to keep the amateurs and the professionals apart — gentlemen and players, you know, that kind of thing. Once one allows these distinctions to erode one loses all structure in society and before you know it you’ll have a barrow boy as Lord Chancellor. Anyway, we’re not that stupid — giving the volunteers a silver badge must have been a hell of a lot cheaper than paying them!’

  She grinned. ‘Less of the Republican,’ she said. ‘I’m a loyal citizen of the Commonwealth and subject of the Crown. Grandpa wouldn’t have let me grow up any other way. He was a non-revolutionary socialist who believed in democratic monarchy. He used to say that presidents were just clapped-out politicians on the make, that’s why the Yanks keep shooting theirs and the French keep changing them.’

  She delved into the box again and showed me a copy of her grandfather’s will. ‘I guess that answers one question,’ she said.

  Beneath the will were two cards and some buff booklets. The cards bore a crown imprint and the booklets had a crown over the letters ‘MofF’ and a bold title, ‘Ration Book’.

  ‘Identity cards,’ she said, holding up the cards, ‘for himself and his wife, and ration books.’ She put two of the books down and leafed through the third one. I picked up another and read the name inscribed in watered-down official ink on the cover.

  ‘Who was James Brown?’ I asked.

  ‘Grandpa’s brother — my Great-Uncle Jimmy. He lived in Nottingham and he died when I was about twelve. What’s this?’ she said, passing me another photograph.

  It was a black and white, postcard-sized print, evidently pretty old. I peered at it, then took a magnifying glass from a drawer and examined it in more detail.

  ‘There’s no one I recognise in it,’ Sheila said.

  ‘It’s fairly old,’ I said. ‘There’s a group of blokes, seven of them, sitting and standing in a pub. 1940s, from the clothing. No women. A fellow on the left who didn’t quite get into the shot. All the men around their twenties and thirties. No one who looks like your grandfather. Glasses raised, big smiles, right hands making V-signs.’

  ‘You mean the international ‘Up yours’ sign?’

  ‘No, the Winston Churchill version the other way round — the Victory sign. No, wait a minute.’

  I applied the lens again. ‘One of them is giving it the usual way round.’

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Looks like a Victory party to me, VE Day or VJ Day, two fingers up, either way around, to Hitler and Co., a toast to victory.’ I passed the photograph back.

  She looked at it again. ‘I wonder who they were,’ she mused, ‘and why he wasn’t in it.’

  ‘Perhaps he was behind the camera, or maybe that’s his shoulder and knee at the edge. It looks like some of his contemporaries drinking to victory.’

  Another photograph came out, a hand-tinted print of a young couple in wedding clothes, Walter Brown and his bride. Sheila looked at it for a few moments then set it down. The box was almost empty, apart from a few objects in the corners. She scooped them into one hand and put them on the desk, pushing them into a row, one by one.

  There was a flat brass tab with a deeply stamped number on it. ‘A lamp check,’ she said. ‘It belonged to Great-Grandad, the miner.’ She turned it over to show the words ‘North Wellwich Colliery Co.’ stamped on the back. Next to it lay a pair of double-sided cufflinks, each face of chased silver and linked with fine chains.

  ‘Grandpa’s posh cufflinks,’ she said. ‘They were Great-Grandad’s, too. He used to tell me how his mother gave them to her husband on their wedding day and they were the most valuable things he ever owned. Grandpa only ever wore them when he was being really flash.’

  The rest were badges, a metal Labour Party badge, a CND lapel button, an Anti-Apartheid button, the broken rifle of the Peace Pledge Union, the stylised eye of the old National Council for Civil Liberties.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Sheila, separating one of the badges from the others.

  It was a two-inch lapel button with a striking image of a skull in a gasmask and the word ‘CHOKE!’.

  ‘It’s a local environmental group,’ I explained. “Community Health or Kerrenwood Enterprises’. It was formed a few years ago to protest against a chemical disposal plant that they own here. They’re one of those firms that import other countries’ poisons and dispose of them ‘safely’ here, usually by pouring them down old mineshafts so that they can seep into the water-table eventually.’

  We both surveyed the display on the desktop for a while, then I said, ‘Does any of it seem odd to you? Or is there anything missing?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s all there so far as I know, from an old miner’s lamp check to this year’s insurance receipts. The private museum of Walter Brown, deceased,’ and she lifted her glass.

  I drank with her, then topped up the glasses.

  ‘So it doesn’t help us?’ I said.

  ‘Not a bit,’ she confirmed. ‘So we’ll have to try something else. Have you still got the house keys?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, taking them from my pocket. ‘You want to go back there?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and picked them up. ‘Can I borrow your phone?’

  I pushed the instrument across the desk and she looked at the key-tab before dialling. ‘Since you refuse to sit at a long table and read the will to
me and Mrs Croft, I shall have to meet her some other way.’

  Her call was answered; she introduced herself to Mrs Croft and made an appointment to meet for afternoon tea at the Victoria.

  ‘Shall I come along?’ I asked as she replaced the phone.

  ‘Not likely!’ she said. ‘I turn up with a lawyer and she’ll think I’m going to accuse her of pinching the teaspoons and watering the washing-up liquid. No, we two girls both had an interest in Grandpa. Maybe she’ll tell me what was biting him once we get cosy.’

  She replaced the contents of the tin and slipped it into her capacious shoulder bag. ‘Tell John Parry, will you, that there wasn’t anything he’d be interested in here,’ she said. ‘Then, if you’re doing nothing tonight, I’ll buy the tucker and you can tell me why you’ve been limping all day and never mentioned it. See you at the Victoria, seven thirty.’

  7

  There were fewer curious visitors to our table in the Jubilee Room that night. Instead, last night’s people leaned across their tables and quietly told each other that Tyroll was over there, dining with that extraordinary Australian blonde.

  Sheila watched the process and grinned. ‘Are you some kind of superstar in Belston?’ she asked.

  ‘Far from it,’ I said, ruefully. ‘I told you — they think I’m some kind of subversive. Since you’re an Aussie they probably think we’re plotting the People’s Republic of Belston. Anyway, Belston gossips out of habit. A barrister pal of mine says he loves doing cases up here because the gossip’s better than in London.’

  ‘Then you’d better come clean,’ she said, ‘before I have to get it off the gossips.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you — if you fell over the cat last night you’d have said so, but you’ve been humping around like Long John Silver all day and not saying a word. Who did it to you?’