Dead Reckoning

by Patricia Hall

  “Talk to the Press office about circulating the appeal right across the county,” Thackeray said. “And if we get no leads by the weekend, we’d best go for radio, TV, the national papers — someone must know who he is, and by then we should have some sort of picture to give them. Have we checked his fingerprints?”

  “Yep,” Mower said. “No match found so he seems to have been a good lad, whoever he was. Amos is keeping DNA samples, of course, but if his prints aren’t on record there’s no chance his DNA is.”

  Thackeray sighed again in frustration.

  “It’s more than twenty-four hours since he was found, probably thirty-six since he died, according to Amos, so why has nobody missed him? Even if he lives alone, he has to go out to work, he can’t live in total isolation.” And yet, he thought, there had been a time years ago when he had spent bank holiday weekends, and even whole weeks of official leave locked in a bleak flat on his own, deep in a black depression, speaking to no one, his only companion the plaintive voice of Billie Holiday, and as far as he knew, in nobody’s thoughts until he chose to emerge again when the duty roster demanded. Perhaps the dead man had his own reasons for living a solitary and isolated life. Perhaps there really was no one who cared enough to miss him now he was gone. He shivered slightly as if a ghost had walked through the door, and got to his feet, anxious to be away. He suddenly felt urgently in need of Laura’s company.

  Laura helped her grandmother up the stone steps and through the lobby of the Clarendon Hotel, where the heavy swing doors were held open for them by the uniformed porter. Joyce had looked pale and stressed, Laura thought, when she had collected her from the tiny bungalow in the shadow of Bradfield’s most notorious tower blocks, officially named the Heights but since as long as Laura could remember, jeeringly and not inaccurately, dubbed Wuthering both by the locals who lived there and the majority who were thankful they didn’t. Joyce had dressed carefully in her smartest navy blue suit but her efforts could not disguise her increasing frailty and the massive effort she had to make to walk with her single stick.

  Laura spotted her father as soon as they entered the lobby. Under cover of helping Joyce off with her coat, she assessed the short, dapper, smartly suited man standing by the bar, drumming his fingers impatiently on the dark mahogany and chatting to the motherly woman on the other side of the counter. It was almost two years since she had seen Jack Ackroyd and he had put on a little weight in the meantime. Life in the sun evidently suited him: his hair had thinned and the family red had turned to silver but his skin was tanned and glowing and his smile as self-satisfied as she remembered it. He had survived one heart-attack, which had provoked the sale of his business and his retirement to the golf courses of Portugal, but today at least he appeared to be rejuvenated, excitement in every inch of him.

  Laura had never been able to pin down the precise point at which she and her father had found themselves on opposing sides in the family war but it was almost as far back as she could remember. He had appeared to treat her mother, a kindly woman who hated conflict, abominably from as long ago as Laura could recall and by the time she had been sent away to boarding school to, in her father’s words, knock the rough edges off her, she had already been telling her mother, in a tight angry whisper, to leave him. But that was something her mother would never contemplate and in some ways Laura had been relieved to find herself removed from the battlefield at the age of eleven, at least during term-time.

  The person she had missed most when she left home, of course, was the grandmother she so resembled both physically and in temperament, and she realised now that her banishment to blandest southern England for her schooling was as much a ploy to remove her from Joyce’s influence as to curb her increasing involvement in the conflict at home. She had infuriated her father further by insisting on returning to Bradfield to go to the local university, instead of trying for the Oxford place that her father coveted for her. She had not followed Joyce as far down the socialist road as her combative grandmother had wished, but nor had she been overwhelmed with enthusiasm for her father’s ruthless business instincts. Both accused her of fence-sitting even now, and she had to acknowledge her own scepticism, uncomfortable at times, but an attribute quite useful for a journalist. But every time she saw Jack again she knew that her heart, if not her head, was still with Joyce who had marched her unprotesting as a child to stuff leaflets through the letterboxes of Bradfield’s grimmest estates. Nothing much had changed out there, she thought, except that the warriors ready to do battle for the dispossessed seemed thinner on the ground these days and their voices muffled by the greater contentment which had swept the country. Which did not mean that the warriors did not have a point.

  “Dad,” she said, advancing across the bar’s thick carpet and leaning down slightly to peck him on the cheek. He had bitterly resented the moment when his daughter had grown taller than he was. “How are you? How’s Mum?” Laura asked.

  “In fine fettle, as it goes, both of us,” Jack said. “The old ticker seems to be bearing up whatever that expensive quack at the Infirmary predicted. He’d have had me six foot under by now.”

  He looked past his daughter, who as usual had turned every other male head in the bar, to where his mother was approaching more slowly, leaning heavily on her stick.

  “Now then, Mother?” he said. “Still not ready to move out to warmer climes?”

  “Jack,” Joyce said, without much warmth. “They’ll put me in a box first.”

  “Aye, I reckon they will that,” her son said, his smile freezing and bright blue eyes turning cold. He turned to Laura. “She’ll still not be helped, then?”

  “Not a lot,” Laura said with a wicked smile. Her grandmother’s fierce independence was something she could understand even if, on occasion, it gave her sleepless nights.

  “Pot of tea do you then?” Jack asked. “You’ll not be wanting anything stronger just yet, will you?” Without waiting for an answer he led the way to the adjoining lounge where a congregation of Bradfield’s decreasing band of blue rinse matrons who had resisted white flight to Harrogate were indulging in tea and cream cakes. An empty table set with tea-cups and a plate of sandwiches had evidently been reserved for Jack but as the waiter bustled up and the two women made themselves comfortable Jack glanced at his watch.

  “I’ve an unexpected meeting at five thirty,” he said. “But we’ve time for a chat.”

  “This is just a business trip, then?” Laura asked.

  “Aye, just a couple of days, all being well. You know one of the big mills is in trouble, terminal trouble from what I hear, if some beggar doesn’t put a rescue package together.”

  “And you’re involved in the rescue package? For Earnshaws?” Laura said incredulously.

  “Aye, well, summat like that,” Jack said, tapping the side of his nose ostentatiously. “And don’t you go mentioning that to anyone at that rag of yours either. That’s strictly confidential, that is.”

  “There’s hundreds of jobs threatened if they close that mill,” Joyce said sharply.

  “I dare say,” Jack said. “But that goes for you too, Mother. I don’t want you tipping off your union mates that summat’s in the wind. Not a word to anyone, right?”

  “Most of my union mates are long dead,” Joyce said bitterly. “And the young ones don’t seem to have the faintest idea how to take the bosses on and win.”

  “That’s not what I hear about Earnshaws,” Jack said. “Any road, never mind about business for now. If anything comes of what I’m here to talk about you’ll be the first to know, Laura. How’ll that do?”

  “Fine,” she said without much enthusiasm. Like her grandmother, she seriously doubted that anything Jack would be associated with was likely to benefit the workers even fractionally more than it would benefit Jack Ackroyd.

  “You and Frank Earnshaw go way back, don’t you?” Joyce said, still prickly with suspicion.

  “I rented space from him in that white elephant of a m
ill years ago, when I was getting started.” Jack said. “It’s been on its last legs for as long as I can remember.”

  “How’s that wife of yours?” Joyce said, changing the subject and shifting her position awkwardly in her chair. Laura guessed that her arthritis was painful but knew she would never complain. She had also suspected for years that Joyce had never fully approved of her daughter-in-law, a woman who seldom answered back and the last person to cope with a man as overbearing as Jack Ackroyd.

  “She’s very fit,” Jack said. “She sent her love to you both and wants to know when you’re coming out to see us. A trip would do you the world of good, Mother. It’s still in the sixties in the afternoons, at this time of the year, and a nice breeze off the Atlantic. And what about you Laura? Still seeing that copper of yours, are you? Bring him with you, if you like.”

  Laura nodded, bending to sip her tea to hide her annoyance.

  “Anything in it, then?” Jack persisted, oblivious to the rising tension around the tea table. “Is he going to wed you, or not? He seems to be taking his time about it.”

  “I’ll send you an invitation to the wedding, if and when,” Laura said through gritted teeth, her cheeks flaming.

  “Like that is it?” Jack blundered on, with a meaningful look in Joyce’s direction. “I’ve said before you could do better for yourself than a bloody detective. After all the money I laid out on your posh education.”

  Laura got to her feet abruptly, almost spilling her tea.

  “He’s an Oxford graduate, you idiot,” she hissed as she made her way to the cloakroom, watched by a dozen pairs of censorious eyes as the duennas of the Clarendon lounge paused to take in the scene, forks of creamy confections halfway to their pursed crimson lips. With the heavy door shut behind her, Laura splashed her face with cold water and attempted a smile at her reflection in the mirror. Why do I let him wind me up like that? she wondered. She combed her unruly curls and more coolly contemplated the undoubted fact that Michael Thackeray was taking an unconscionable time to marry her. His moves towards a divorce at last gave her grounds for hope, but that was not something she intended to share with Jack. The irony was, she thought ruefully, that when Michael had met her father the two men had got on quite amicably, had possibly even liked each other. She was probably, an impediment to a beautiful friendship.

  “Bloody men,” she said, not realising that she had spoken aloud until someone emerging from a cubicle behind her spoke.

  “Bloody right,” the woman said, manoeuvring her endowments more comfortably inside her skin-tight Lycra dress and moving to the mirror to effect repairs to an already camouflage-thick maquillage. She seemed as out of place as a clown at a funeral in the rather stuffy environs of the Clarendon but by no means fazed by her surroundings. “Never give ‘em an inch without t’cash up front, I say,” this unexpected adviser offered.

  “A wedding ring would be nice,” Laura said, throwing caution to the winds.

  “Oh, that,” the primping woman said, fluffing out her big blonde hair and contorting herself to inspect her stocking seams. “Not worth the paper they’re written on these days, marriage lines. A pre-nuptial contract’s worth having though. Pins the beggars down, that does.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” Laura said with a grin, quite cheered at the thought of persuading Michael to sign away half his worldly goods, which consisted largely of a collection of jazz and blues recordings, and some scruffy furniture which she would not give house-room to, before she consented to become his wife.

  “Must dash,” her companion said, cramming her make-up back into her tiny black handbag. “It does no harm to keep them waiting, but not so’s they get bored.” And with that she swept out of the cloakroom in a haze of a heavy perfume that Laura knew Michael would hate.

  When she went slowly back to the lounge, she found Jack and Joyce chatting reasonably amiably over their buttered scones. Joyce glanced at Laura, sharp-eyed, but relaxed when she saw that her granddaughter had evidently calmed down.

  “Jack wants to take us both out for a meal tomorrow night,” Joyce said. “That’d be nice.”

  “Bring your copper along, an’all,” Jack said magnanimously.

  “I’ll call you,” Laura said noncommittally.

  Her father shrugged and glanced at the door.

  “I can see the colleagues I’m meeting, so I’ll love you and leave you. Give us a bell in the morning and I’ll book us a table in the carvery,” he said, getting to his feet. Laura and Joyce watched him thread his way through the tea tables and join two smartly dressed men in the lobby, one white and one Asian.

  “What’s he up to?” Joyce asked.

  “I’ve no idea, but I shouldn’t think it’ll necessarily do Earnshaws mill any good,” Laura said. “Come on, have another cup of tea as he’s paying. And then I’ll run you home.”

  Chapter Four

  While the Ackroyd family was taking tea in the Clarendon lounge, a fair-haired young man with the beginnings of a paunch and an air of sleepy superiority was downing his third consecutive double malt and leaning against the mahogany and brass bar next door at an increasingly acute angle.

  “I mean, it’s obvious that these people won’t move into the twenty-first century, isn’t it?” Matthew Earnshaw asked the comfortable woman in a black dress who was carefully polishing already gleaming glasses on the other side of the counter. “They’re hardly out of the bloody middle ages, are they?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, sir,” the barmaid said with well-rehearsed neutrality. “I take people as I find them. You have to, in this job.”

  “I know, but let’s say someone wanted to modernise the Clarendon, and let’s face it, it could do with a make-over. Wouldn’t you be pleased about that?”

  “I suppose it would depend on whether I’d still have a job or not, sir, wouldn’t it. They don’t vote for Christmas, don’t turkeys, do they?”

  “God, I despair of this bloody country,” Earnshaw muttered pushing his empty glass over the counter. “Give me another, will you? I don’t know where my bloody brother is. He promised he’d be here at four and it’s twenty-five past bloody five now. I’m going to be driving home through the blasted rush hour.”

  “Do you think you should, sir? If you’re driving, I mean?” The barmaid’s voice was as deferential as ever as she stood with the bottle of Glenmorangie poised and made her point, but the young man flushed with anger.

  “Are you fucking refusing to serve me?” he asked.

  “No sir, just wondering …”

  “The same again,” Earnshaw said flatly, looking round the bar where the scattering of customers were glancing curiously in his direction. He drained his fresh drink quickly.

  “If my brother Simon comes in looking for me tell him to call me on my mobile,” he said to the barmaid. “He’s had his switched off all day, the silly bastard. Can’t contact him.”

  Concentrating hard to keep his gait steady he made his way to the door, where he passed a group of three men coming the other way. He nodded vaguely at the one who gave him a nod of recognition as they passed. In his present state he could not for the life of him recall who the tall grey-haired man in the designer suit was, still less his companions, a heavily built Asian and a small silver-haired man with acute blue eyes.

  “Who’s that?” Jack Ackroyd asked when they were out of earshot.

  “That’s Matthew Earnshaw, Frank’s younger lad, pissed as usual,” the tall man said. “He’s one of the problems that company’s up against. I tell you, if it weren’t for him they might not be in the terminal mess they’re in. Still it’s no skin off our nose.”

  Matthew Earnshaw arrived at his father’s house unscathed more than an hour later, the erratic driving of his BMW safely masked by the heavy traffic which had kept his speed down to a crawl for most of the ten mile journey to Broadley. He pulled up in a scatter of gravel on the drive outside the heavy stone Victorian mansion where he and his brother had been brought
up. He pressed the doorbell persistently and pushed past the Phillipina housekeeper who opened it for him without a word, storming into the sitting room where his parents were drinking sherry.

  “He didn’t fucking turn up,” he announced with a scowl.

  “Language, Matthew,” his mother said reprovingly but his father, grey-suited and showing signs of the anxiety which seemed to have creased his face deeply around the eyes and forehead was more interested in his son’s message than the manner of its delivery.

  “Didn’t he call you?” he asked sharply.

  “His mobile’s switched off. I haven’t heard from him since we made the arrangement to meet on Sunday. I know he’s got some girl he’s not letting on about, but this is ridiculous.” Matthew crossed to the sideboard on the far side of the room and poured himself a large Scotch without ice or water. “You get the feeling he enjoys buggering us about,” he said, lowering himself carefully onto the sofa beside his mother. “Making us sweat.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Christine Earnshaw said placatingly. “He must be busy.”

  “The bloody university’s on vacation. Why should he be busy?” her husband asked. “He knows what we’re trying to do and how important his input is. He knows we need to talk to him.”

  “You should have bought him out when he decided to go all eco …eco …fucking green on us,” Matthew said. “You can bet your life he’ll be as obstructive as he can as long as he can and then where will we be? This week’s bloody crucial and he knows that. But if he really wants to get up our noses, he and Grandad between them can stop us dead, you know that. It’d be just like the pair of them to do it deliberately, out of spite.”