by Frank Smith
But Sean was adamant. His own father wouldn’t hesitate to use his belt if he found out that his son had disobeyed him, and he wasn’t prepared to chance it.
But after one more sleepless night, the thought of those two dead people beneath the water was more than Jimmy could bear. He didn’t care what Sean said; someone had to be told. He had to pass a phone box on his way to school, so he would pop in there and disguise his voice. He’d seen them do it on TV. He’d use a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, except he didn’t have a handkerchief, but probably a Kleenex would do just as well.
He practiced lowering his voice as he walked to school. ‘This is a man calling,’ he said gruffly. ‘I want to report –’ what was it Sean had called it? Oh, yes, he remembered now – ‘I want to report a suicide pack.’
He froze as a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. ‘Talking to yourself, Greenwood?’ Mr Tadman asked good-naturedly. ‘That’s not a good sign, especially first thing on a Monday morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Better hurry along if you don’t want to be late.’
There was a strong breeze funnelling through the valley, and as Tadman strode ahead and Jimmy trotted along behind, the boy couldn’t take his eyes off the teacher’s hair. It was streaming out behind him in the wind – for all the world as if it were floating in water.
‘I’m telling you, that’s the name of the place, Tregalles! It’s where Doyle was born.’
‘Oh, yeah? And my name is Muggins, I suppose,’ Tregalles snorted. ‘Oh, no, Len, I’m not falling for that one. I suppose you’ll be telling me next it’s just a short hop over the mountain from Ballykissangel. Right? Sorry, Len, but even you have to admit Ballybunion is a just a little bit far-fetched.’
Jenny Morris, one of the civilian clerks in the office, who had just brought Ormside a sheaf of faxes, said, ‘There’s a golf course there. You’d know that if you played golf, Sergeant. It’s something like one of the top ten in the world.’
‘Oh, yes? So you’re in on this as well, are you?’ Tregalles scoffed. ‘Ballybunion!’
‘It’s in County Kerry,’ Jenny said as she dropped the faxes in Ormside’s in tray. ‘You can look it up on the map if you don’t believe me.’ She smiled winningly at the sergeant and walked away.
‘All right, Len, what’s all this about? So you’ve got something on Doyle, but stop messing me about and let’s have it. You say they think they’ve traced an uncle. Where is he really?’
‘All right, don’t believe me then,’ he said, ‘but I’m telling you, he’s in a nursing home in Ballybunion in County Kerry. His name is Brendan O’Hanlon, which was Doyle’s mother’s maiden name, but he’s not exactly with it most of the time, if you know what I mean. The local police, the Garda, say that Doyle did come from there, but his mother and father died years ago, and there are no other relatives living in the area. And if Doyle is on their patch, they have no knowledge of it.’
‘Any chance that they’ve got the wrong O’Hanlon?’
‘No. In one of his more lucid moments, O’Hanlon produced several Christmas cards sent to him over the years by Doyle from his caravan site address, so they have the right one. The Garda are sending copies through so we can compare the handwriting with that of Doyle – assuming we can find enough to compare it with.’
‘Well, I’ll believe that,’ Tregalles conceded, ‘but I’ll give you odds there’s no such place as Ballybunion.’
‘You’re on,’ said Ormside, and reached for his wallet.
Tregalles eyed him suspiciously, then shook his head. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘This is a set-up, isn’t it? You and Jenny. So maybe there is such a place and you wanted me not to believe it so you could make money on a bet.’
Ormside sighed heavily. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything in school where you come from?’ he asked. ‘Tell you what, Tregalles: go and take a look on a map for Ballybunion. Start with Ireland. It’s that big island to the left of England.’
‘I was about to call you,’ Ormside said when Paget looked in before leaving for the day. ‘They’ve found Newman’s van; it’s at the bottom of an abandoned quarry under about five feet of water. An anonymous call came in to Control at 16.10 from a pay phone. They thought it was some kid having them on at first, but when he said there were two dead people in it, they dispatched a car. They spotted the van, but they couldn’t tell from above if there was anyone inside or not. One of the uniforms volunteered to go down to see if there was anyone inside, but it turned out to be empty.
‘They can’t get a diver or a crew to winch it up until later tonight at the earliest, so they’ve cordoned off the area, put a guard on it and left it till morning. They reckon they can have the van up by about nine if all goes well. I imagine you’ll want Tregalles out there when they bring it up?’
‘I do, but I’d like to see this for myself, so give me the location and tell him I’ll meet him there first thing tomorrow morning.’
Ormside frowned. ‘I thought you were over at New Street for most of the week,’ he said. ‘Finished early, did you?’
Something like a grin tugged at the corners of Paget’s mouth as he said, ‘It seems the chief constable scheduled Mr Brock for the race relations and sensitivity course,’ he said, ‘so he won’t be available for the rest of the week.’
Ten
Tuesday, March 18
Paget and Tregalles arrived just in time to see several scenes of crime officers going over the ground leading to the edge of the quarry directly above the submerged van.
‘Not that we expect to find very much,’ one of the men confided. ‘Too many people have trampled the ground, but we may have better luck with the van.’
Two divers were already in the water, attaching cables, and a short time later the van was winched up to hang motionless over the water for several minutes while the water drained out of it before it was pulled on to tarpaulins spread out on the ground. Men in white overalls and gum boots converged on it, examining the exterior thoroughly before proceeding further.
There was remarkably little damage to the vehicle. The windscreen was gone, as was the glass in one headlight, and the driver’s door wouldn’t close properly, but other than a few scratches and dents on the bodywork, it was relatively undamaged. The number plates were missing, but there was no doubt that it was Newman’s van. Tregalles had brought along the picture Emma Baker had loaned them, and it matched in every detail.
‘Did you see any ladders and a roof rack?’ Paget asked one of the divers. ‘They probably came off when the van hit the water.’ He showed the man the picture.
The diver shook his head. ‘Nothing like that down there,’ he said, ‘and being metal, they won’t have floated away, will they? Besides, we’ve searched the length and breadth of the pool looking for the driver and there’s nothing down there except for the odd bit of rubbish people have tossed in there from time to time. But we will be bringing up everything we find in the immediate vicinity just in case.’
More water spilled out of the van when the back doors were opened. The interior was a jumble of water-soaked tools, electrical cords, rags, a jacket, odd lengths of wood, brushes, tins of paint and the remnants of wallpaper rolls. One of the paint tins was open, and the oil-based paint had congealed in a glistening sheen on top of the water to cover everything in what looked like green slime.
‘But no body,’ Tregalles observed quietly, ‘so at least we can still hope that Newman is alive.’
Charlie had been thinking about it all morning, but there was nothing for it but to ask Grace straight out. The last thing he wanted to do was become involved in the private lives of his staff, but something was seriously wrong here, and he had to find out what was going on for his own peace of mind.
He’d noticed that Grace hadn’t been quite herself, lately. Nothing he could put his finger on, exactly, but it seemed to him that she was more withdrawn, even distant at times, and that wasn’t like her at all. Even some of her co-workers had noticed it too, in fact he’d
heard one of them making a joke of it, suggesting that it might have something to do with the fact that she was now living with Paget, and wasn’t getting a full night’s rest. Charlie himself had asked her if she was all right on a couple of occasions, but she’d always assured him that she was fine.
He had to admit that he did tend to put more work her way simply because he knew it would be dealt with expeditiously, but he hadn’t asked her to work overtime for weeks. Yet Paget had spoken as if it were a regular thing.
Charlie could see Grace’s cubicle from where he sat in his own office. He saw her look up at the clock, then stand up and stretch. Lunchtime. He watched as she picked up her coat and her handbag and started for the door.
Perhaps it was best left alone. There might be a very simple, logical explanation for whatever was going on. On the other hand, if he didn’t do it now, the mystery would continue and he’d be left wondering. Besides, now was as good a time as any because the office would be deserted for at least half an hour before the others returned to their desks.
Charlie almost let her go, but as she passed his door, he found his voice and called out, ‘Grace! Can you spare a minute before you go to lunch? Do you mind?’
She stopped and stood there in the doorway, a faintly questioning look in her eyes as she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t mind, Charlie,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Of course it’s possible that Newman drove the van into the quarry himself, but I doubt it,’ Paget told Alcott later that day. ‘But my gut tells me that someone else drove it over the edge, and if that is the case, I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope of finding Newman alive. The van’s been taken in for further examination, but with everything covered in paint and water, I doubt if they will have much luck with it.
‘As for Doyle, we’ve traced what appears to be his only living relative in Ireland, but there is no indication that Doyle himself is over there. And that’s all we have at the moment, but I’ll let you know the minute we have anything more.’
‘That will be the day when you see Ormside crack a smile,’ Tregalles was fond of saying of the dour sergeant, but when Paget came down from Alcott’s office, Ormside was looking positively cheerful.
‘Looks like things are finally beginning to move,’ he told Paget. ‘Trader Sam in Tenborough had a man come in this morning to try to sell him Emma Baker’s camera. Fortunately for us, Sam had his wits about him, because when he recognized the camera from the description we circulated last week, he told the chap he was pretty sure it was worth a lot of money, but he would like his partner to see it before making an offer. He said his partner knew more about cameras than he did, but he wouldn’t be in until after lunch. So he told the man to come back about two this afternoon, when he said he was sure he would have some good news for him. In fact, Sam doesn’t have a partner, but he persuaded the punter to leave the camera with him, and gave him a receipt for it, so the man is bound to be back.’
‘Any chance that it was Newman himself?’
‘Not unless he’s disguised himself as a middle-aged man who’s going bald. They have him on the shop’s surveillance tape. The man gave his name as Bernard Green when Sam made out the receipt, and I have someone checking that out now.’
Paget felt a surge of relief. Finding the van was one thing, but it was unlikely to be of much help in finding out what had happened to Newman. Now, at least, they would have someone to question. He glanced at the clock. ‘Get a couple of men over there as soon as you can in case this man comes back early,’ he said, ‘and tell them to make sure they don’t do anything to make him suspicious before they grab him and bring him and the camera back here. This is the first real break we’ve had, so let’s not blow it.’
‘Not to worry,’ Ormside told him, ‘they’re already on their way, and they know what will happen to them if they let this chap slip through their fingers.’
Bernie Green squirmed in his seat as he watched Tregalles set the tape recorder in motion. He sat facing Paget across the table, hands in front of him, fingers laced tightly together. They were big hands with large knuckles that stood out like rows of white pebbles beneath the skin; the hands of a manual worker. His clothes, too, were those of a worker: thick woollen shirt, open at the neck to reveal the top of a grubby-looking vest, well-worn jeans and sturdy boots. His shoulders were narrow, his body lean and muscular except for a noticeable gut that bulged over his belt. His face had a thin, pinched look about it, and his receding hairline made it look even longer and narrower than it really was. A self-styled independent building jobber, he described what he did as ‘a bit of this and a bit of that, if you know what I mean’. He was forty-one.
He claimed to have bought the camera around ten days ago from a man he’d never seen before in a pub called the Black Swan in Tenborough. He said he’d felt sorry for the man, who told him he was having to sell his photographic equipment, because he’d lost his job, his wife was ill, and he needed the money. Green said he’d offered the man thirty pounds for it, and finally bought the camera for forty.
‘I used to do a bit of photography myself,’ he explained, ‘so I knew it was worth more than forty quid anyway.’
‘By about ten times as much,’ Paget observed. ‘Weren’t you surprised that he was willing to sell it for so little?’
‘Yeah, well, like I said, he was down on his luck.’
‘And I suppose it never occurred to you that the camera might be stolen?’
‘Honest to God, if I’d known that, I swear I’d’ve never touched it,’ Green said earnestly. ‘I mean, he seemed so genuine it never occurred to me. He told me he’d been laid off work and his wife needed an operation, but she couldn’t get in for another six months or more, so he was trying to raise enough money to go private. He really sounded desperate.’ Green shook his head and looked sad. ‘And I believed him,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I s’pose it’s more fool me for being soft-hearted, and I’ll have to say goodbye to my forty quid as well.’
‘You can say goodbye to hell of a lot more than forty quid if you’re lying to us,’ Tregalles told him.
‘You live here in Broadminster,’ said Paget, ‘so what were you doing in a pub in Tenborough?’
‘Ah, well, I’d had a bit of work over there, and it was getting a bit late, like, so I stopped in for a drink and bite before coming back home.’
‘If you thought you were dealing in legitimate goods, why did you go over to Tenborough to try to sell it?’ asked Paget. ‘More work over there, was it?’
‘Yeah, well, I did just happen to be over that way, so I thought I’d pop in. I’d heard Trader Sam pays better prices than anyone here.’
‘And you just happened to have the camera with you, I suppose?’ Paget didn’t wait for an answer. ‘However, be that as it may, let’s assume for the moment that there was such a man in the Black Swan. What reason did he give for not offering the camera to a reputable dealer?’
Bernie sniffed and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose. ‘He said he’d tried, but they said they weren’t interested in film cameras, not with digital being all the thing now, and they wouldn’t give him anything for it.’
‘And you believed that as well?’ Paget scoffed. ‘The lens on this camera alone is worth two or three hundred quid at least. And if, as you say, you were into photography at one time, you would have known that, and so would any dealer. You knew very well that you were buying stolen goods – if you bought it at all.’
Bernie was trying to look calm, but he couldn’t stop sweating. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I told you, I bought it fair and square from this bloke, because I thought I was doing him a favour.’
Tregalles snorted. ‘Doing him a favour?’ he echoed. ‘Forty quid for a camera that’s got to be worth ten times that much? Doing yourself a favour, more like. What else did you buy off him?’
‘Nothing. Honest to God. It was just the camera.’
‘So we won�
��t find any more stolen goods at your house when we search it, right?’
Green looked startled. ‘You can’t do that!’ he yelped. ‘You’ve got no right!’
‘Believe me, Mr Green, we have every right,’ Paget told him. ‘In fact, your house is being searched as we speak, so I suggest that you start telling us the truth, because I don’t believe a word you’ve said. I don’t think you bought this camera in a pub; I don’t think you bought it at all. I think you took it from a man who disappeared a couple of weeks ago, a man who is most likely dead, which means that you are in a lot of trouble, Mr Green. In fact, you could be facing a charge of murder. At the very least you will be charged with receiving stolen goods, so we will need your fingerprints.’
But Green was shaking his head violently. ‘I don’t know anything about all that,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Honest to God, I’m telling you the truth! I bought this camera off a bloke in the Black Swan, and if I knew who he was, I’d tell you. But I can’t because I’ve never seen him before. What else can I say?’
‘You could try the truth,’ Tregalles told him, ‘because what you’ve told us is a load of cobblers, and we don’t believe a word of it. You are either very stupid, or you think we are. So what it comes down to is this: if you bought the camera from this mysterious stranger in the pub, you would have to be pretty stupid to not know it was stolen. On the other hand, if you did not buy the camera from a man in a pub, then you stole it yourself from the man who is missing, and you know what happened to him, so I say we hold you as prime suspect. No matter how you look at it, Bernie, you have a lot of explaining to do.’
Green looked to Paget for help, but the chief inspector’s face might have been cast in stone. Green’s shoulders slumped and he spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘All right,’ he said wearily, ‘so maybe I did sort of suspect the camera was stolen, but I could see the bloody thing was worth hundreds, and all he was asking was fifty quid. I mean, it was too tempting to pass up. But it’s not as if I knew it was stolen is it? I mean it’s not the same, is it?’