Fifty
Much of the west of Scotland was uncharted territory to Sir James Proud, and Wishaw was included in the extensive list of places of which he was almost totally ignorant. He knew no more than that it was conjoined to Motherwell, Bob Skinner’s home town, which he had visited once for an ACPOS meeting in the offices of North Lanarkshire council.
He came off the M8 at Newhouse, and headed into the former steel town, past the site that had once been home to the Ravenscraig strip mill, allowing his global positioning system to guide him to Wishaw. There was no obvious boundary between the two towns, so he was slightly taken aback when he was instructed to make a right turn, then a left and found himself stopping outside number seventeen Church Road, where a sign beside the door confirmed that he had arrived at the offices of Woodburn Hill and White.
Having checked that he was parked legally, he stepped into a dull reception area, pulling off his driving gloves and stuffing them into the pockets of his Barbour jacket. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ a young voice asked him. Its owner was seated behind a desk that was bound in a leather-like cream fabric, designer furniture which told him at once that this law firm was determined to present a modern image to its clients. The same could have been said of the receptionist: her hair was three different colours and she wore a top with ‘FCUK’ emblazoned across it. Earlier in his career, Sir James would have regarded it as grounds for arrest. A sign beside her computer keyboard told him that her name was Kylie McGrane.
‘I’d like to see one of your partners,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not sure which one.’
‘Well,’ said the girl, ‘there’s Mr Leckie, there’s Mrs Gillingham and there’s Miss Ward.’
Proud’s eyebrows rose slightly at the third name. ‘Miss Ward, I think, if she’s available. Her name doesn’t appear on the internet. Why is that?’
‘She’s only just been made a partner, sir. Who shall I tell her is calling?’
The chief constable produced a card from the breast pocket of his sports jacket and handed it to the receptionist. As she read it, her eyes widened and her mouth opened a little. ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment, sir,’ she stammered. She rushed from the reception area, returning around a minute later with another woman, stocky, dark-haired, square-faced, in her early thirties, with the sort of sharp, perceptive eyes that Proud used to fear in the early days of his career, when he was required on occasion to go into the witness box.
‘Sir James,’ she said, extending a hand, ‘I’m Ethel Ward. Is this an official visit?’
‘Well, yes,’ he replied, carefully, ‘but a very discreet one.’
‘Come through and tell me about it, then.’ She led him, past a staircase, to a small room at the rear of the building; there were bars outside the window. ‘I’m the junior partner,’ she said, with a sudden smile that made her seem not grim at all. ‘In this firm you climb the stairs through seniority.’
‘How long have you been in existence?’
‘As Woodburn Hill and White? Since 1969, but the Woodburn part was founded in 1931. As for Hill and White, that firm goes back to the nineteenth century, 1880, if I can remember my local history. You’ll know what it’s like with the older law firms; the names on the door mean nothing at all. Those three gentlemen are long dead.’ She looked at him as he took the seat she offered, and the sharpness was back in her eyes. ‘So, Sir James, what’s brought you off your patch?’
‘I’m trying to trace someone; a person who’s been missing for a long time.’
‘Someone from Wishaw?’
‘No, but the trail’s led me here. It’s all got to do with a man called Claude Bothwell, a teacher of modern languages. He was once married to a lady from these parts; coincidentally, she has the same name as you.’
The solicitor stared at him, unable to hide her surprise. ‘It’s no coincidence,’ she told him. ‘That’s my aunt Ethel you’re talking about, the heiress, as my grandfather calls her.’
‘Your grandfather?’
‘Yes, Herbert Ward, Bert to his friends. He was a partner in the firm till he retired, but he’s still pretty well known around here so we keep his name on our notepaper as a consultant.’
Proud was confused. ‘But Herbert Ward was Ethel Ward’s father.’
‘Different Herbert: the one you’re talking about was my grandfather’s uncle. He and Aunt Ethel . . . she’s not really my aunt, but that’s how she’s always been referred to . . . were cousins. Sir James, you’d be much better talking to him. He’s got all the family history, and scandals, in his head. Aunt Ethel very definitely falls into the latter category. Hold on a minute.’ She picked up her phone, dialled and waited. ‘Grandpa,’ she said, when an answer came, ‘you’re in, good. I’m sending someone down to see you. His name’s Sir James Proud . . . Yes, the same one. He’ll explain when he gets there.’ She hung up. ‘That’s settled; he’s expecting you. He lives in a place called Thorny Grove.’
‘But that’s where . . .’
‘Where Aunt Ethel lived? Yes, I know, but it’s different now: it’s been turned into a retirement community. The big house has been converted into flats and there are some cottages in the grounds. Grandpa has one of those; it’s number three. To get there,’ she pointed, ‘turn right at the end of Church Road, go across the Main Street, then down the hill until you come to a cul-de-sac sign. Thorny Grove’s in there.’
Fifty-one
Wilding glared up at the clock: it was almost fifteen minutes past midday, Big Ming was late and he was annoyed. After his most recent run-in with his new boss he was in no mood to be pissed about by a witness, especially one as gob-smackingly weird as Mr James Smith.
He retrieved his contact details from the file and dialled the number that he had been given. It rang out a dozen times before he hung up. He returned to his summary of the interview with Kitty Philips, checking for a third time to make sure that he had included all the relevant details, although in truth there had been damn few. Apart from provoking another fight with Mackenzie, the visit had added nothing to the sum total of the investigators’ knowledge.
Mackenzie: there was no doubt that the man had a track record. He had proved himself in almost record time in the Drugs Squad, and before that he had been credited with some impressive arrests in Glasgow . . . among them, legend had it, his own brother. Wilding reckoned that somewhere along the line someone had told him that the end justifies the method, a dangerous principle in criminal investigation. The sergeant was a disciplined officer; he had served with Dan Pringle, Maggie Rose, Stevie Steele and other good people and had learned from them the importance of staying focused. And here he was, working for a boss who had introduced a drugs investigation slap-bang into the middle of a homicide inquiry without calling for any specialist help, a guy who went off at irrelevant tangents during interviews yet who bollocked subordinates for showing any sort of initiative. He found himself hoping to be in the room the first time he tried that with DI Steele.
He looked at the clock again. ‘Bugger,’ he swore. ‘Enough of this.’ He walked out of the CID suite and through to the front office. ‘I need a car and a driver, Mac,’ he told the desk sergeant. ‘I need to go up to Millend to roust out a witness.’
‘You’ll need a big driver, then. Mike,’ the sergeant called out to a massive constable who had just walked through the front door, ‘stop there, turn round and drive DS Wilding up to the Wild West.’
PC Drake sighed; clearly there were destinations to which he would rather have been ordered. The Millend scheme had earned its tag and its reputation the hard way, and guarded both proudly, prepared to defend its status as Edinburgh’s hardest neighbourhood against all comers.
Wilding followed him outside to his patrol car, where his partner, PC ‘Never’ Wright, waited behind the wheel. He had worn the nickname so long that most people had forgotten that his given name was Johnstone. ‘One of you’ll be enough. We’re just going to pick a bloke up.’
Mike Drake shook
his head. ‘No, Sarge. He may not want to be picked up; that could lead to all sorts of problems. You got the address?’
‘Seventy-seven three Pound Driveway.’
‘Smashin’! Maybe we should take an armed-response team too.’
Wright drove quickly and smoothly away from the station heading westward along the Waterfront. Eventually he took a left turn off a roundabout, into a street that bore no resemblance to those they had passed before. The buildings were grey concrete, ugly structures that looked more like giant pigeon-holes than homes. Give someone a house in a place like this, and you’re giving him a message. Wilding kept his thoughts to himself. He was new to the Leith office, and Drake and Wright looked as if they might be the sort of old-fashioned coppers who believed that the inhabitants of places like the Wild West were born trying to head-butt the midwife.
Pound Driveway was in the heart of the scheme, a three-storey, flat-roofed block, its walls grimy and weather-stained. Wright parked the car in front of a stairway entrance with the number 77 displayed on a wooden sign. ‘Lucky,’ he said. ‘Most of the numbers have been ripped off to confuse the enemy, namely us.’ He climbed out of the driver’s seat and leaned against the vehicle. ‘I’ll wait by the motor, Mike. It goes best with four wheels.’
Wilding looked around; he could not see a living soul, but he knew that did not mean there was nobody there.
Big Ming’s flat was on the top floor. Drake led the way up the graffiti-lined stairway, past solid, unglazed doors. ‘Dealer,’ he said, pointing to one on the second floor. ‘It’s steel, with an extra big letterbox.’
‘Dealing what?’
‘Grass mostly. There’s a lot grown around here; if we raided every house in schemes like this in Scotland we’d need to build a new jail for the folk with rooms filled with plants and sodium lights.’
Smith’s door was wooden like the rest. There was no sign of extra security, only a Yale lock and a handle. Drake thumped it with his gloved fist. From somewhere down below they heard the sound of a toilet being flushed. The PC grinned. ‘The dealer probably thought we’d come for him. That’ll be him sending the evidence down the toilet.’ He turned to Wilding. ‘You sure the guy’s in, Sarge?’
‘He told me he’d nowhere else to go.’
Drake battered the door again, so hard that it swung open. ‘What the hell? The Yale must have sprung.’
‘He invited us in, didn’t he, Mike?’ said Wilding.
‘Absolutely.’
The detective stepped inside; a door faced him at the end of a corridor. It was ajar and the sound of daytime television drifted out. ‘Ming,’ he called, stepping forward.
He saw the feet before he reached the doorway. They were encased in filthy carpet slippers and the toes were pointing up. ‘Bloody hell!’ Wilding exclaimed, as he threw the door open and stepped into the room. Big Ming was staring at the ceiling; in the middle of his forehead, there was a third, red eye, from which a thin trickle of blood ran down to the carpet.
Fifty-two
Proud took time out for lunch in a small café near Wishaw Cross, then followed the directions which the solicitor had given him. In less than three minutes he found himself driving into the retirement community. He parked in an area signed ‘Visitors’, climbed out and looked around.
When it was a family home, Thorny Grove would have been an imposing mansion, in its surroundings, although in Edinburgh terms it was only a little above modest. Still, it looked large enough to have formed half a dozen apartments, with an attic flat above, and its gardens were large enough to have accommodated a further six small red-roofed bungalows. Number three was closest to the main building and to a block of garages; as he approached, Herbert Ward was waiting for him at the front door. He was a small, bald man, stocky like his granddaughter, and with the same inquisitive eyes.
‘Sir James Proud?’ His accent was gruff, and a bit like Bob Skinner’s: Lanarkshire with the rough corners knocked off and polished.
‘Yes, sir; it’s good of you to see me.’
The old man ushered him inside, and into a small but expensively furnished living room. ‘Not at all. I can’t watch the racing channel all the time: bad for me. Take a seat. Can I offer you a drink?’
‘No, thank you; I’m driving.’
‘Of course you are. Sorry, I’m a member of the “just the one won’t hurt” generation. How about tea?’
‘Really, I’m fine.’
‘If you say so. Now, to what do I owe the courtesy?’
‘It’s a complicated story, but I’m trying to trace a seventy-year-old woman named Annabelle Gentle.’
‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid. I haven’t had much to do with the ladies since my wife died six years ago.’
‘I didn’t expect you to know of her, but the connection is with a man named Claude Bothwell, to whom she was engaged to be married over forty years ago.’
‘Good God!’ the old lawyer exclaimed. ‘So she ditched him eventually, did she?’
‘You remember him?’
‘I recall his existence, but little about him physically. We met on only one occasion, after he and Ethel were married when they came into the office to make joint wills. That was a joke: he had nothing, while she had the modest fortune that she’d inherited from her parents.’
‘They died in a boating accident, I’m informed.’
‘You could call it that. They were in Cannes for the winter and they went on a cruise on some sort of yacht: a storm got up, the thing rolled over and everyone on board was drowned.’
‘And Ethel inherited.’
‘She was an only child. To explain my family background, Sir James, I come from the professional side, and Ethel came from the moneyed side . . . through her mother. Uncle Bert didn’t make his money, he married it. The Marshalls, Aunt Meg’s family, owned the steelworks. Bert worked there and became general manager, then managing director, after they were married. Aunt Meg was a frightful snob, and Cousin Ethel took after her. I never did like the wee shrew.’
‘When did Bothwell come on the scene? Had they known each other long, before they were married?’
‘No, only a few months, weeks even; that was part of the scandal. He showed up in Wishaw the year after Uncle Bert and Aunt Meg died, to take a job in the High School. He was a lodger in a house in Caley Drive, hardly Ethel’s social scene, but they met at a Coronation party organised by the parish church. After that they were seen together a lot: Green’s Playhouse was a favourite haunt as I recall, and she had never been seen at the cinema before. She was about ten years older than him, so you can imagine the talk . . . or maybe you can’t, being from the next generation.’ Proud smiled: he liked to be made to feel like a youngster. ‘Next thing anybody knew, they were married. Nobody was invited, not even my mother and father, her closest living relatives. We wouldn’t have known about it in advance, but for a wee paragraph in the Wishaw Press reporting the posting of their names in the registrar’s.’
‘Did you see much of them after that?’
‘Hardly anything; I was busy with work and my family and, like I said, I didn’t like the woman anyway, so our paths never crossed.’
‘How did they come to leave town?’
‘Abruptly, just about sums it up. Ethel came into the office one day, about three years after their marriage, and instructed me to put Thorny Grove on the market. She told me that she and Claude had had enough of Wishaw and were selling up and moving, as she put it, “to more acceptable surroundings”. I wished her all the best and did as she asked. The house sold for what was a hell of a lot of money at the time.’
‘Did you ask her where they were going?’
Bert Ward nodded. ‘That I did. She told me that Claude wanted to go somewhere he could use his French properly. The world was theirs to explore, Sir James. With the sale of the house, Ethel was worth tidily over a hundred thousand, easily more than a million in today’s terms. I’ve often wondered what happened to them, but it’s never ke
pt me awake at night.’
‘Someone must still think of her. Your granddaughter’s name is Ethel, after all.’
‘That’s pure coincidence. She was named after her maternal grandmother.’ He frowned. ‘No, I suppose I’ve always assumed, if for no other reason than the fact that her will’s still gathering dust up there in Church Road, that she’s still alive, sitting in an olive grove or a vineyard in the South of France, cracking the whip over Claude. However, from what you say, if she is still cracking the whip, it’s not over him. Where did he wind up?’
‘Glasgow,’ Proud told him, ‘teaching in Jordanhill School, a year later . . . at least that’s where he surfaced next.’
‘She must have binned him bloody quick, then. Maybe the outside world worked wonders for her.’
‘It worked wonders for him: he remarried in Glasgow in that same year.’
‘He did what? But he couldn’t possibly have been divorced. Not enough time would have elapsed.’
‘He wasn’t, not in Scotland at any rate. I suppose it’s possible they went to Nevada or Mexico, or some other lax jurisdiction, but it doesn’t seem likely, especially when you consider that he married for a third time in 1961, again with no evidence of divorce.’
‘Good God! I’d never have thought he had it in him. So what you’re saying is that he ditched her, is that it?’
As he looked out of the old man’s window, Sir James Proud was visited by a dark thought, one that he had been pushing to the back of his mind, until finally he had to give it voice. ‘I hope that’s what I’m saying, Mr Ward. I really hope it is.’
The old man caught his meaning at once. ‘You don’t imagine . . .’
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