Boiling Point

by Frank Lean

  Yachts were required to call the lock-head for clearance when sailing out of the port. Morton V. E. Devereaux-Almond was a keen weekend sailor. He wasn’t regarded as inexperienced. No special notice was taken when he set off last weekend to do the Morecambe Bay triangle: Fleetwood, Piel Island, Glasson Dock and then back to Fleetwood. Sailing in Morecambe Bay makes particular demands on a yachtsman. The bay has vigorous tides with a big rise and fall and many shoals. The fact that he’d had his yacht berthed at Fleetwood for some years without getting into difficulties showed that Almond was a competent sailor with basic knowledge of tides and chart-work.

  The marina superintendent assured me that he’d personally seen Almond at the helm of his yacht when it passed through the lock gates last Saturday. After some persuasion he phoned his colleague who’d been on duty on Sunday afternoon. At weekends yachtsmen radio the marina superintendent to check that there’s sufficient water for them to enter the marina. The colleague remembered the call from ‘Spirit’ and it wasn’t Almond who made the call. ‘Spirit’, with a draught of about two metres, wasn’t an especially large yacht but there was one unusual thing. Whoever was steering the yacht on Sunday wasn’t familiar with the channel leading into the Wyre estuary.

  The channel was marked with buoys and lights and there was a bell called Fairway Number One where vessels were supposed to line up and follow the buoys along a more or less straight line into the estuary. In the past ships had been wrecked on King Scar or Little Ford, shifting grounds on either side of the deep channel. Last Sunday, whoever was steering the ‘Spirit’ had grounded it in under two metres of water on the east side of the channel and, rather than wait for rising water, had called the marina for a tow.

  It wasn’t Almond who paid the call-out fee in cash, but a short man, not a local and not much of a sailor according to the crew. He apparently didn’t know that he could have raised the boat’s keel and kept himself out of trouble. The crew didn’t ask for his name or do any kind of check. There was nothing unusual about that. It isn’t the practice to do a checklist of returning yachtsmen. The marina looks after the yachts and the people look after themselves. They have their own club and their own friends at the port. Berthing and storage charges for the ‘Spirit’ were all paid in advance for the year. For all anyone knew Almond might have been in the cabin sleeping off a drinking bout. It would have been possible for one man to crew the yacht. It was designed for short-handed ocean cruising but Almond usually took a friend from the yacht club with him when he went for an overnight cruise.

  Persuading the superintendent to let me see the yacht was a lot more difficult. He explained that he was in a job’s worth situation.

  ‘OK, we’ll just let the police handle it,’ I said as casually as I could.

  ‘There’s all kinds of valuable gear on those boats,’ he protested.

  ‘We’re hardly likely to make off with the anchor with two small children with us,’ Janine told him.

  He looked at her doubtfully and then came out of his cabin and locked the door.

  ‘We’ve had pilferage from the yachts,’ he explained. ‘That’s why we have the fence and the floodlights.’

  ‘Search us if you like,’ Janine retorted. ‘I’m a journalist and I’m sure my paper would be interested in a feature on how unhelpful you were in locating a missing person.’

  Grudgingly, the superintendent led us to where the ‘Spirit’ was berthed. He gestured us to keep back while he inspected the boat.

  ‘That shouldn’t be like that,’ he said when he got on the deck. ‘Someone’s left the cabin door unlocked.’

  I clambered aboard, all limbs aching, and he pointed to the cabin door. An unlocked padlock swung gently from its hasp. I pushed the door open. The cabin had been turned over from top to bottom.

  ‘Right, I’m calling the police,’ Janine said when I hauled myself back off the yacht.

  ‘No, we’ll call Cullen at Operation Calverley,’ I said. ‘If Devereaux-Almond’s gone the same way as Levy, he’ll have to know.’

  Mention of Cullen’s name had a powerful effect on me. I could feel the solid concrete moving under my feet. Then there was an overwhelming feeling of weakness and suddenly I was lying on the ground. When I came round only a moment later I could still hear things but as if from a way off. Janine was talking about me . . . ‘He was in a bad car crash only the other day, I shouldn’t have let him come . . .’

  ‘Do you want me to get an ambulance?’

  ‘No, if you could phone for a taxi I think I can get him back to where we’re staying.’

  ‘All this about the police that your friend was going on about . . . I think he’s overwrought. These yachties often stay out overnight or come back on someone else’s vessel. There’s no need for all this drama. The chap Mr Devereaux-Almond hired to sail with him might have dropped him anywhere and then brought the yacht back to its mooring. If he sailed through the night and then back he could have reached the Irish Republic, North Wales, the Isle of Man, the Cumbrian coast, Liverpool . . . all in a day’s sailing distance. Normally we wouldn’t get worried about Mr Devereaux-Almond at all unless someone raises the alarm. I mean there was no distress call. He’s a very competent yachtsman. Whoever was on the yacht with him would have raised the alarm if there’d been an accident.’

  ‘But the mess in the cabin . . .’

  ‘Yes, there is that,’ the superintendent agreed, ‘but I’ve seen a lot worse. There was quite a blow that weekend and the chap did run aground. He was probably suffering from exhaustion if he’d been sailing a long distance single-handed. He might have been trying to shift weight to get the boat off.’

  ‘Janine,’ I said feebly. It felt as if I was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.

  ‘Oh, Dave, you are a fool, you should be in bed and that’s where you’re going.’

  42

  IT WAS TUESDAY before I felt like getting out of bed.

  ‘Dave, how do you feel about going home?’ Janine asked as soon as my feet touched the floor. ‘Celeste has been phoning me almost hourly and there are things to do in Manchester. Your business is going to pot while you’re here. I’ve had to give her all kinds of instructions and I’d rather be back in Manchester.’

  ‘But this is your holiday.’

  ‘Fine holiday. First I’m threatened by Harrow and then my partner drags me off in search of yet another murder victim. I’d rather be at home.’

  ‘Do as you please,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t sulk, Dave. You’re in no position to. What you’ve got to do is to accept that you’re not superhuman. You can’t get up and just walk away from a car smash like you did.’

  ‘But I . . .’

  ‘Shut up and listen for once.’

  ‘I don’t know if this Devereaux-Almond has come to a sticky end or not. I don’t care. All I care about is you and the children and I’m not prepared to sit around waiting for someone to come and tell me that your next accident has been fatal.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you? I doubt it. What I’m telling you is to drop this whole thing and come back with me and we’ll try and start again on a new footing. I know I’ve been difficult but so have you. You’re obsessed with that tart King and her problems.’

  For once in my life I felt too weak to argue. Janine took my silence as agreement. At least, I think she did. Ideas flickered through my weary mind. How could we be sure that whoever had killed Devereaux-Almond, and I was sure he had been disposed of, would be satisfied to let things rest? Wasn’t I next on the list? Would he be content to leave me as a near miss?

  ‘Good, then that’s settled,’ Janine said briskly. ‘There’ll be no more trouble with Henry Talbot either. I’ll arrange for him to have some visiting rights with the children, so you can forget about Clyde Harrow and his feeble blackmail attempts. Let that dirty animal stew in his own juice.’

  I didn’t see much of her for the rest of the week. It rained almost continuo
usly and I spent the rest of the children’s half-term sitting in front of the television with them. Jenny was happy enough with books and Lloyd liked watching the same videos over and over. Janine said nothing more about matrimonial plans and I felt in no position to remind her. It was the weekend before I was well enough to walk as far as the Meadows. On Sunday we all went for a bike ride that left me dripping sweat after half a mile.

  However, the fact that I was worrying about fitness showed that I was on the mend and Monday found me feeling well enough for the office. There I discovered that if a week is a long time in politics, then it’s an eternity in the life of a detective agency. I got an inkling of what had been going on when I saw two neatly dressed young men, one white and one Afro-Caribbean, letting themselves in from the street. I’d never seen either of them before but they both appeared to be completely familiar with Pimpernel Investigations. One of them looked at me oddly as I walked in after them, as much as to ask me what right I had to be there. They went through reception and on into the back.

  The reception area was a shock. Only one thing was familiar. Sitting at her desk, a new larger desk, was Celeste. I noticed that she was wearing a pinstriped business suit. She looked as efficient and deadly as a Challenger tank waiting to go into action. The reception suite had been refurnished and decorated in vivid colours and the back rooms extended. My spacious quarters had been swallowed by a nest of small cubicles. There were six of them, each with a small desk, phone and filing cabinet. Celeste was in transports of joy as she showed me round.

  ‘We got these office fitters in last Monday,’ she explained, ‘and they said there was room for six small offices and a receptionist in the communications room. We’ll have investigators and they can see clients and write up their reports and do their work from their own little offices.’

  ‘Celeste, when you say “we” decided this and “we” decided that, who do you mean?’ I asked grudgingly.

  She looked at me in surprise. ‘Why, Ms White and me. I thought she’d discussed everything with you?’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said feebly. ‘But Celeste, where’s my office?’

  ‘Well, Janine . . . er, Ms White, thought you could be out here with me if you wanted or you could have one of those offices.’ she said awkwardly. ‘She said you wouldn’t be spending much time in here now. You’ll be out getting new business and meeting influential contacts. I did tell her how you like to spend time on your own thinking about things but she just laughed and said you won’t have much time for that from now on.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she’s right,’ I said, struggling to take it all in. ‘But tell me, these two guys, who are they?’

  ‘Michael Coe, he’s the younger one with the ginger hair. Your friend Mark Ross recommended him. He’s an expert in all forms of electronic surveillance. He was in the army, Northern Ireland I think, but he won’t say. He’s got marvellous ideas for fixing up small cameras where people won’t notice them. We can do all the surveillance we need without having squads of ex-plods everywhere.

  ‘So you’ve given them their cards.’ I spoke quietly, without any intonation.

  ‘No cards, they’re self-employed. But Mr Coe isn’t, he’s on a salary and so is Mr Snyder . . . Peter, that is. He used to work for Investigations Unlimited, but they had to let him go . . . we’ve taken a lot of their business . . . and he’s very well up with fraud investigations. Ms White used to know him. He’s never been a policeman. He lives in Cheadle Hulme and he has four small children.’

  As Celeste chatted on, confidently filling me in on the new managerial structure, I felt a wave of intense weariness sweep over me. From having a small one-man business that just about supported myself and a teenage secretary, I now had a massive monthly salaries bill to meet. I wondered if I could cope.

  Then a surge of annoyance told me that I could. Was I going to allow my girlfriend and a teenage secretary who’d done three months in evening college to organise me out of my life’s work? No, I wasn’t. It was still my name on the office door. I looked to check. Yes, there it was . . . D. Cunane, Proprietor.

  Celeste followed my glance.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said proudly. ‘Ms White’s arranged for sign writers to come and do the outside of the office. She’s got a designer to work on a logo for us. She thinks it’s a good idea to keep the pimpernel theme but in smaller characters because customers might get the idea that we’re some kind of wild cowboy outfit . . . you know, like the adventure novels . . . Sir Percy Blakeney and all that jazz?’

  I nodded, determined not to give a hint of my stupefaction.

  Giving me a warm smile she took a large card from behind her desk.

  ‘Here’s the new logo. Terrific, isn’t it?’ she said warmly.

  ‘Great, just great,’ I agreed.

  Poor old ‘pimpernel’ had shrunk to tiny lowercase characters. It was the words INVESTIGATION AND PROTECTION that hit you in the eye. D. Cunane didn’t appear at all.

  I started laughing. I don’t know why. The only thing I could think of was that the joke was on me.

  ‘Are you all right, Dave, er, Mr Cunane?’ Celeste asked. ‘You looked as white as a sheet there for a while, if you don’t mind me saying, er, I thought you were going to faint on me. Janine told me what happened to you.’

  ‘I feel fine. I couldn’t be better,’ I said between wheezing laughs.

  ‘I knew that Marti King was trouble. My sister’s boyfriend, Lennie, has told her that Vince King has lots of mates on the outside here in Manchester. Men he was in the army with and men who’ve done time with him. They look up to him because he’s never grassed.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. As if on cue my two salaried employees emerged from their cubicles, anxious to see what was happening. I introduced myself and my near-hysterical laughter generated a mood of jollity all round. I could see we were all going to get on well and as a matter of fact we did. They seemed to know more about what they were doing than I did and I let them get on with it.

  I just sat in the reception area for a while trying to get my bearings while Coe and Snyder went back to work. Celeste nervously busied herself sorting various pieces of paper.

  ‘Celeste, I want you to know you’ve done a terrific job and that I probably wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for you,’ I said.

  ‘Ms White did a lot as well,’ she said, beaming with pleasure.

  ‘There’s just one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘Harry Sirpells . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, he came in making an awful fuss. Demanding money and cursing, he was. I told him he’d get paid at the end of the month. He said there was no way he was going to do more work for you.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Did he leave anything?’

  ‘There was an envelope,’ she muttered doubtfully, ‘but we’ve moved everything round so much. It must be here somewhere.’ She began looking through her desk drawers.

  ‘Celeste, it must be here. That envelope cost me a lot of money,’ I said when she threw her arms up in defeat.

  ‘Ms White went through everything on your desk and gave it to me to file. She didn’t throw anything away. I was with her all the time.’

  During the next hour and a half I discovered just how much rubbish I’d accumulated in a relatively short time. The envelope from Sirpells eventually turned up inside another file marked ‘Miscellaneous’ stuck at the back of a cabinet containing expenses claims. The words Devereaux-Almond Investigation were written on it in Sirpells’ spidery handwriting. Obviously Janine thought that I’d spent enough time on Devereaux-Almond.

  Seraphina Carlyle, 1928–1989, was buried in the plot next to an Eduardo Colonna, 1902–1973. There were two Carlyle infants buried in the same plot and there was space on her gravestone for further inscriptions. The inscription on Eduardo Colonna’s gravestone also mentioned his wife Maria, and his brother Antonio, lost at sea on 2 July 1940. There were other Colonna grave
stones, the earliest dated 1906. There were no Almonds but there were several Allemanos. One of the Allemano headstones recorded a Carlo Allemano, also lost at sea on 2 July 1940.

  A separate piece of paper at the end of this report stated that North West Mercian Investments appeared to be a structure of interlocking companies like serpents trying to swallow their own tails. Who owned what had baffled Harry Sirpells and it baffled me. One of the companies involved was the Carlyle Corporation. Further investigation would require substantial payment in advance . . .

  It all made a fine puzzle but there were several places I could make a start.

  I looked up from the papers to scratch my head and discovered that Celeste was watching me intently.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

  I looked at her. As usual, it was difficult to read her expression. She’d spent a lot of time with Janine over the last week, long enough to have discussed my little peculiarities. I wondered if the question of the Sirpells file had come up and how long it would be before Janine learned that I was still investigating the links between the Carlyles and Devereaux-Almond.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, suddenly deciding that I had quite enough on my plate without the Carlyles and Vince King. I needed a rest before I got involved with them again, if ever.

  ‘Put this back where we found it, will you?’

  Celeste smiled happily.

  The next few weeks went by in a whirl.

  I took on more staff. I had to, the work was rolling in. Janine’s forecast was accurate; I didn’t need an office of my own. The filing cabinets maintained by Celeste were quite sufficient. I spent most of my days out of the office interviewing bank managers and business consultants and accountants. It was strange but exhilarating, as if I’d begun a completely new existence with a fresh personality.

  What I found really new and different was the atmosphere of success which seemed to trail behind me like a bad smell. Before, if I’d had an appointment with a bank manager I’d had to spend hours waiting to be seen and then usually sat with my eyes studying the carpet while I was lectured on the need for financial prudence. Now I was setting up salary structures and pension schemes and all was sweetness and light. It took some getting used to.