by Granger, Ann
‘Thank you, Hayley, I’m very well. Is that all you wanted me for? To ask after my health?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Bennison brightly, ‘There’s a woman downstairs wanting to speak to you. She says she’s Lucas Burton’s auntie.’
Her name was Mrs Joy Gotobed. In a draw for one of the most unfortunate combinations of first names and surnames, thought Jess in deepest sympathy, Joy Gotobed had held the winning ticket. Perhaps she was resigned to it, and the avalanche of inevitable jokes, because she’d always been burdened with an unfortunate name.
‘I was Joy Crapper,’ she said. ‘And Marvin – Lucas, he called himself later on – he was the son of my sister, Marilyn.’
Her appearance lent a subtle cruelty to her name. She was elderly and thin and poorly dressed in a rusty black suit. The skin on her workworn hands was loose and wrinkled, as if she wore a pair of overlarge gloves. Her wedding ring too was loose. She wore no engagement ring. Her teeth were false, too even, too white and not particularly well fitting. But there was something painfully honest and lacking pretence about her which commanded respect.
‘I saw in my paper that he was dead.’ Her hands twisted nervously in her lap. ‘It said he’d been murdered. It gave me a really bad turn. He wasn’t – I mean, I hadn’t seen him for years – but he was flesh and blood and Marilyn’s boy. I brought him up, you see. Me and my husband, together, that is. We had no kids of our own and Marilyn, well, she couldn’t look after the baby. We never knew who his father was. Marilyn never said. Chances are, she didn’t know herself.’
Mrs Gotobed looked down at her hands and becoming aware of their nervous action, clasped them tightly to control them. ‘It’s not a nice thing to say of your own sister,’ she said. ‘But it’s true. Marilyn always liked a good time. She liked a few drinks, too. Next morning she never could remember where she’d been or who she’d been with . . . But she was a good-hearted sort. I was very fond of her.’
‘She’s dead now, I take it?’ Jess asked as Mrs Gotobed faltered to a stop.
‘Oh, yes, dear. She didn’t make old bones. Well, with her lifestyle, she wouldn’t, would she? I think Marvin must have been about five when his mum died. But, like I said, Ronnie – that’s my husband – and me, we were Marvin’s parents. We brought him up. Ronnie, he’s dead too, now. Died ten years ago. Asbestos, you know? That’s what did for him and his lungs. He worked on demolition sites in the days before they knew how dangerous that stuff was and all the old buildings they were pulling down, well, they were full of it.’
Mrs Gotobed seemed to remember something and reached for her capacious plastic handbag. She rummaged in it and brought out two newspaper clippings. ‘This one,’ she said, holding it up for Jess to see, ‘is the one in the paper about his being found dead. And this one . . .’ She held up the other clipping. ‘It’s some lawyer, asking about next of kin. I phoned up his office and I came down from London today to go there and see him. He told me to bring documentation.’ She spoke the last word carefully, wanting to get the unfamiliar term right. ‘I brought everything I’d got. My marriage lines and Marvin’s birth certificate and the certificate he got for his “O” levels and photos . . .’ She was rummaging in the bag again. ‘I’ve got Marilyn’s death certificate. Her liver packed up. Well, it would do, wouldn’t it?’
She turned her attention back to Jess. ‘Only I thought, I ought to come and see you first. I wanted to ask if you knew yet who killed Marvin? I want you to catch him.’
‘We want that, too, Mrs Gotobed,’ said Jess. ‘And we are doing our very best. When did you last see your nephew?’
Mrs Gotobed chose not to answer this directly. Jess sensed the question embarrassed her.
‘It was a month or so before Ronnie died,’ she said at last, staring past Jess towards the blank wall opposite.
‘Ten years ago?’
Mrs Gotobed’s thin cheeks flushed. ‘We’d drifted apart, like you do. He married very young and it didn’t work out and after that, we saw less and less of him.
‘That last time I ran into him, it was coming up to Christmas and my friend said to me, “Come on, Joy, you need a break. Let’s go and take in the shops. We don’t have to buy anything, just look.” I didn’t really like going off and leaving Ronnie for more than an hour. He was very ill by then. But an old mate of his said he’d come and sit in with him. Ronnie liked that idea so off I went with my friend. We were walking down Oxford Street when who should I see coming straight towards us but Marvin. He was older, of course, and he’d put on a bit of weight and was dressed very smart, but it was Marvin all right.
‘I called out to him, “Marvin! It’s me, Auntie Joy.” He looked as though you could have knocked him down with a feather. But he was very polite and asked after Uncle Ronnie. I told him, Ronnie wasn’t too well. I didn’t want to worry him with telling him just how bad it was. He said he was sorry to hear that. His name wasn’t Marvin any more; it was Lucas, Lucas Burton. Well, I was the one who was surprised at that! I just said, well, that was very nice. What else could I say? He did look as though he’d done well for himself. He was always full of ideas, ideas for making money, that is. But he was a bright boy, did well at school. I introduced my friend. We chatted a bit about the crowds and the Christmas lights in the streets. Then he took out his wallet and gave me fifty pounds. “You and your friend go and have yourselves a nice lunch,” he said. He was sorry he couldn’t come with us but he’d arranged to meet someone. So, off he went, and my friend and I went and had the lunch. I told Ronnie, when I got back, I’d seen Marvin and he was looking as though things were going all right for him. Ronnie was pleased, I think. Although, to be honest with you, by then Ronnie had sort of lost interest in everything.’
‘Yes,’ Jess said awkwardly, ‘your nephew did do well.’
What could she say to this woman? Joy Gotobed née Crapper had worked hard all her life for little reward. It had been no picnic. She knew it was no use complaining about one’s lot and so she didn’t complain. Now, late in life, it looked as though she might be sole heir to a fortune. Did she have any idea how much nephew Marvin had been worth when he died? Probably not. Reggie Foscott would wait until he’d established her credentials before he gave her any idea. But if there really was no one else, then Joy Gotobed was now a very rich woman. What would she do with the money? It was too late to share her good fortune with Ronnie. It was hard to imagine her going on a world cruise or even going back to Oxford Street to buy in the shops, not merely to look. A habit of thrift would be built into her system.
Nor was she young. When she died, who then would inherit? She had no children.
Lucas Burton! Jess mentally addressed the dead man. This woman and her husband brought you up. They gave you a home when your feckless mother couldn’t. She and her husband considered you their son. You couldn’t even keep in touch. When you met her by chance you gave her fifty quid. Fifty pounds! You’d have spent more than that on a pair of shoes! You originally left your entire estate to your divorced wife and never mentioned to Foscott you had anyone else. You wiped them from your memory bank. You knew how poor they were. Couldn’t you have done something for her and for your Uncle Ronnie during all those years? What was the use of all that damn money, Lucas? Some one should have reminded you: you can’t take it with you.
‘Got it!’ said Phil Morton with satisfaction, putting down the phone. ‘It’s a private despository company. You know, the sort of place that will store anything you like for a price: your personal documents, your antiques, stuff you haven’t got room for at home. They don’t ask questions. There’s plenty of stuff stored in those warehouses that the owners don’t want anyone to know they’ve got. That’s why whenever there’s a breakin at one of them – as does happen from time to time although their security is pretty tight – you can’t find out exactly what’s missing. No one will tell you!’
Nor was it easy, as it turned out, to get access to Andrew Ferris’s locked container, even brandishing a s
earch warrant. The manager, a plump, worried-looking individual with a receding hairline who could have been any age from thirty to fifty, was clearly rendered even more unhappy by a visit from the police.
‘We don’t question clients as to precisely what they choose to deposit here, Inspector, that’s not our business . . .’ the manager said, gazing at Jess’s warrant with something like horror. ‘We only insist that there are no dangerous substances, flammable, explosive, a threat to our staff’s health . . . We get them to sign a declaration to that effect. Health and Safety regulations are very strict these days. But we can’t ask them what’s in the boxes. Discretion, that’s what they pay for, that and security. They trust us. Where would our business be without trust?’
‘Do you know what my business is?’ Jess retorted. ‘Right now, it’s murder.’
So they got access to it at last, and there, in an old black japanned box, they found it all: Eva’s lipstick, her mobile, Burton’s mobile, his little black address book . . . the lot. In a separate plastic rubbish sack they even found Jess’s backpack with her mobile phone and her ID tossed in with the rest.
‘Told you he was a collector,’ said Morton smugly.
‘If you ask me,’ returned Jess, flourishing the address book, ‘he was a potential blackmailer!’
Chapter 19
‘I am glad you have arrested him,’ said Milada.
Still basking in the rare light of Milada’s approval, Phil Morton had been emboldened to ask her out. Suspecting that taking her to a pub would be too much of a busman’s holiday for her, and also that she’d probably like to go out of the immediate area, he’d taken her to a flat race meeting at Bath. Milada had unexpectedly proved to have a keen eye for a winner.
‘There, look!’ She laid out the twenty-pound notes in a neat row before him. ‘Now we can go somewhere and have a proper meal!’
Morton decided to overlook the implication that without Milada’s winnings, he’d have taken her to the nearest pizza palace. ‘We’re going for a proper meal, anyway,’ he said firmly. ‘And put your winnings away. It’s my treat.’
‘You lost all your money,’ Milada pointed out. ‘No, no, we spend mine.’
The argument had been postponed. The bill hadn’t yet arrived and they were still sitting at the table in the restaurant Milada had picked out. It was, Morton had realised with sinking heart as soon as they went in, an expensive one. But he’d asked her out and, call him old fashioned, he would pick up the bill.
‘I think,’ said Milada now, selecting one of the peppermint creams that had accompanied their coffee, ‘I shall look for a new job.’
‘Here in England, I hope,’ said Morton. ‘You’re not going back home already?’
‘No, I came for one year, maybe two. I stay. But I don’t like it now at the Foot to the Ground. Mr Westcott grumbles because he says Eva’s death was bad publicity. Photographers come and take pictures. It takes the business . . .’ Milada took a deep breath and produced the new word in her vocabulary. ‘Downmarket!’
‘Business will pick up,’ said Morton. ‘Westcott needn’t worry. No publicity is bad publicity, they say.’
‘I don’t stay, anyway. Mr Westcott is going to hire a waitress to replace Eva and she will share our room, the one Eva and I shared. Sharing with Eva was OK, but perhaps I don’t get on well with a new girl. He hasn’t got one yet,’ she added, ‘because of the bad publicity. No one wants to come.’
‘If you go, he’ll really be left in the lurch,’ Morton pointed out. ‘He won’t have anyone.’
‘Oh, I wait until he has a new girl working there. Then I shall go. David Jones, he’s gone already.’
‘He has?’ Morton was startled.
‘He has gone to Canada,’ said Milada, selecting another chocolate.
‘Blimey.’
‘He will come back for trial. He is a witness, yes? He has uncle there, in Canada. He will study at Canadian university, perhaps. Not medicine, no, he’s interested in archaeology now.’ She shook her head. ‘He is a strange one, that one. Eva didn’t like him much.’
‘You met Eva’s parents, when they came over?’ Morton asked.
‘Oh, yes, they collected all her things. They wanted to talk to me about her. They asked if she was happy in England. They wanted to know how she met that man Ferris and why she liked him enough to go out with him. But I couldn’t tell them about her, not much anyway. She never said anything to me and I didn’t ask her. We only worked together.’
It seemed to Morton a sad little epitaph on a young life.
‘I come down here,’ said Eli, ‘to see how you’re managing, now you lost part of your stable block.’
He stood foursquare in front of the ruins of the former tack room and office and now shook his head dolefully.
‘I’m having a bit of trouble with the insurance company,’ admitted Penny. ‘But I do hope they’ll pay up. At the moment I can keep the horses in the field you so kindly let me use. But that means I’m not really offering proper livery services. Somehow or other, I’ll have to get the money together to reconstruct the loose boxes that burned down.’
Eli rubbed his chin and surveyed the scene further. The acrid smell of charred wood still pervaded the air. Surprisingly, only half the row of loose boxes had been lost and the row on the other side of the yard hadn’t been touched. But it was a desolate scene of blackened planks and puddles of water, a fine powdering of ash over everything.
‘Puts people off,’ said Penny sadly. ‘They think their animals aren’t safe here with me. A couple of owners are talking of taking their horses elsewhere.’
‘What you need,’ said Eli in a slow, deliberate way, with a cautious sideways glance at her, ‘is proper brick-built stabling, and one of them all-weather exercise surfaces, cinders or the like. Maybe even put a roof over it, no sides, just a roof to keep the water off folk on a rainy day.’
Penny looked at him in surprise. ‘My, you have thought it out, Eli.’
Eli reddened. ‘Townies, they don’t care for getting wet. A nice yard would bring folk in. They’d pay more, too.’
‘Can’t afford it, even if the insurance people pay up,’ Penny told him briskly, after a momentary daydream of a splendid all-brick stable block with a cinder exercise yard, rows of happy horses poking their noses over their brand-new doors and even happier owners begging her to take in their animals; or ambitious parents bringing their offspring for riding lessons. ‘The insurance will only replace like for like. To build in brick I’d have to find the extra money myself. Forget the cinder surface.’
Eli cleared his throat and rubbed his chin even more vigorously, his fingers rasping on the stubble of whiskers.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘I got a lot of land. Government people keep coming down and snooping. I’m getting on. I’ll have to get rid of some of it. Oh, I don’t want to sell it all. I don’t fancy seeing it disappear under a lot of them little brick boxes they call houses nowadays. But it’s a lot to be thinking about and worrying over. So I’m minded to sell some of it. But then I’ll need to invest the money I get for it in something else.’
More clearing of his throat and rubbing of his chin. ‘I always liked horses. You got a nice little business here but what you need is capital. I got capital, or I will have when the land’s sold. I’ve got a little bit now, put by. I’m not talking of taking over your little business and running it. You’d still do that. Do whatever you’d want. But I’d invest in it.’ Eli paused and ventured a look at Penny. ‘What do you think of that?’
Penny, rendered almost speechless, managed to gasp, ‘Think? Eli, it would be wonderful!’
‘Ah!’ Eli brightened and his embarrassment faded, now that his suggestion hadn’t been rejected. ‘We’d see a lawyer feller and get it all done legal. So that when I drop off the twig, you get my share of the business. Me being a lot older than you,’ he added in explanation.
‘Haven’t you got any other heirs, Eli?’
‘No,’ said Eli, ‘unless you count my daft cousin Walter that lives down Newnham way, and he’s not likely to outlive me. He’s eighty-five already. There would be plenty of grazing left for the new business. You could keep that old one-eyed horse of yours out to grass for as long as you wanted. We – I mean you and me, if we were partners in the business – we could buy a couple of nice riding ponies, build up that side of it. I know a feller deals in horses.’
‘Oh, Eli!’ Penny flung her arms round him, or as far round his substantial girth as they would go. ‘You’re wonderful!’
Puce in the face, Eli mumbled for a moment or two and shuffled his feet. ‘I’m getting fed up with the scrap business, anyway,’ he said. ‘Especially since another government feller came down the other day and began poking his nose into that! Wanted to see my receipts. I got them, mind, I keep them all in an old shoebox. I give that to him, after I tipped the cat out. She likes to sleep in it. He sat there all day sorting them out and muttering, “You need to keep proper accounts, Mr Smith.” “Whaffor?” I asked him. “Anyway, I never took to schooling. I can’t write and can’t read. So how am I going to do it? You tell me.” That shut him up. He got in his little car and drove off. Reckon he took a flea or two with him, out of that shoebox. The cat’s got a few. I noticed the other day.
‘I’m a countryman,’ concluded Eli, ‘I always was, always will be. Horses would suit me.’
‘The arrangement would suit me fine, too, Eli,’ Penny said.
‘Right, then,’ Eli declared, now it was settled. ‘I’ll tell them.’
‘Tell the Inland Revenue?’
‘What?’ asked Eli, ‘Oh, see what you mean, I’ll tell them as well, I suppose. I was thinking of—just thinking.’
That evening Eli explained his new business project to his family. It was the first time they’d gathered since the recent anniversary. Somehow they’d got wind of the proposed changes to his life and sat waiting to hear about it. He couldn’t keep anything from them.