The Scaffold: The sensational legal thriller everyone's talking about (Alistar Duncan Series Book 3)

by Douglas Stewart

  THE SCAFFOLD

  Douglas Stewart

  © Douglas Stewart 1981

  Douglas Stewart has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1981 by Robert Hale Limited.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  1

  Tuesday, 15th January

  SHEPTON MALLET

  The three men hovered over the body, not knowing medically whether Mark Hillyer was alive or dead. Nevertheless, they were all convinced that he was dead as he lay, forming his own trench, in the thick mire of the building site. Above him the scaffolding, two storeys high, was spattered with the sleet which had persisted all morning.

  “And so, young Dwight, you do what I say,” Ronnie Arnold twisted his face in menace at Dwight Riley. “Then you’ll be all right.” With the foreman dead, he was now the senior man on site. But Riley was not the youngest, for that privilege lay with Kenny Robertson, but being mentally retarded he was looked on as the babe.

  “And if you get this wrong you’ll get your head kicked in,” added Kenny Robertson. If their fists had been raised to the listener’s frightened features, the two men could not have been more intimidating.

  “OK, Dwight? We were all in the kitchen. Or I may have just gone out for a pee. You’re not sure. We heard the noise and came out.” Arnold jutted his jaw forward. “That’s it. No more. No less. But we saw nothing.”

  “And that’s the truth.” Dwight Riley nodded his head as he spoke.

  “That’s right, Dwight. And don’t forget it.” Ronnie Arnold trudged away in his dirty wellingtons. “I’ll be back in a minute. I don’t know whether the boss is next door but I’ll use his phone anyway.”

  2

  Tuesday, 15th January

  BRISTOL

  As he waited for the arrival of his secretary, Alistair Duncan peered out of the window. Spring was a million miles from Queen Square that Tuesday. Not a pedestrian in sight. The sleet, which had been promised for the afternoon, had come early, hurrying down from Iceland to add to the misery of the economic situation. For a moment he tried to imagine the Square come April but no image would form and not for the first time he promised himself a painting of the Square in springtime, as a reminder.

  Bad though it was looking out, worse still he knew that he’d soon be working in it, probably for the rest of the day. His thoughts were interrupted as his door opened and the day’s most cheerful sight entered. Lucy, complete with a Sierra Leone tan, produced a cup of coffee. “And a chocolate biscuit too.”

  “Why’s that?” Alistair Duncan was genuinely puzzled. But then he always was with Lucy. Fifteen years as a solicitor had taught him a lot but never to understand his secretary.

  Her well rounded teeth shining from the soft brown skin of her face, Lucy replied. “Because you’ve been a good boy, dictating all the commas in the right places for a change.” That Alistair Duncan was her boss and a well established partner in the substantial solicitors’ firm of Wyatt, Hebditch & Co. made no difference to her at all. She had a way with all people and her handling of clients was an object lesson. For the boorish men it was a verbal strip-tease; for the whining ladies she displayed the sympathy of all girls together in a man’s world. But with Alistair Duncan? It was respect, masked beneath an irreverent poking of fun, an unwillingness to reveal the pride which she took in her job.

  “The Great Dictator, am I?” Duncan’s dark brown hair bobbed as he spoke. “But no more treats today. I’ve got to go out to a building site.”

  “What’s happened? I thought you’d kept your diary clear to catch up?”

  “I’ve just had a call from Mostyn Trask of the Regal Provident Insurance. There’s been a fatal accident on a building site at Shepton Mallet. Forty-three minutes ago Mark Hillyer was alive, well and working there. Forty-two minutes ago he was dead. The insurers fear a big claim and want me to investigate at once.”

  “Funny name that, the Regal Provident. You won’t find any insurer less regal or provident than Mostyn Trask.”

  “Right. But he’s still the best Claims Manager in Bristol. Even though he is Welsh.”

  “Shall I pop out for sandwiches and coffee for you?”

  “No, thanks. There’ll be no time for lunch.” The rugged face creased a little. She knew that the day he did without lunch the world famine would have arrived. She was about to comment when the new push-button telephone interrupted.

  “Oh, good,” commented Duncan. “That’s the call I’ve been waiting for. Then I can get away.”

  “See you later?”

  “Maybe. It depends what I find at Shepton.”

  A few moments later he’d changed from his Lovat suit into a pullover and old flannels which he topped with an anorak and then was gone, looking more like something from an ecology demonstration than a city solicitor. It wasn’t just the clothing; there was the slightly overlong hair, emphasised by the Force Seven, and a deceptive manner of laissez-faire. Although Duncan exuded success and confidence whatever he wore, nevertheless, the impression given by his massive frame and battle-scarred face was of a man who had wintered a North Sea rig, had battled through the deepest of Mendip potholes and had out-ganged every Irish ganger on the M5 motorway. Though he had done none of these things it was, however, the way he looked at thirty-five years old, strong as an ox and scarred only by the injury of top-class rugby and the stress of overlong hours fighting authority and litigation. Like a cab in a rank, he took his clients as they came, devoting himself to success, unconcerned about conventional home life. His foolish marriage had ended without rancour or children as quickly as he and his wife had both faced the inevitable. Now his lifestyle as a neo-bachelor could be seconded without guilt or remorse.

  From the time-stained façade of the dignified offices, Lucy looked down as her boss climbed into his Stag. She wondered if she’d feel the same way about him if he were married. Probably. She’d never known him until after the divorce and, from the day she’d joined the firm, she’d always known that their relationship could be something special—indeed just occasionally she had sensed that Alistair Duncan was aware of her own feelings towards him. The car reversed crisply, before gliding away into the southbound traffic, its dipped headlights cutting a path through the morning sleet.

  With just a shade of reluctance she turned away. Somehow the office wasn’t the same when he was out.

  3

  Tuesday, 15th January

  SHEPTON MALLET

  The sun never shines in Shepton Mallet, or so it seemed to Alistair Duncan. Whenever he had driven through it, there always seemed to be a bank of grey clouds lying over the town, defying the blue skies all around. Today, the small grey town was at its funereal best. Everything seemed grey and inanimate, not least the people of whom Duncan asked the way. After several three-point turns and a sergeant-major’s command of Anglo-Saxon, he found Quire Street, just of
f the Wells Road. It slipped away from the town, past a shabby pub with a cindered car-park, which lay puddled and empty. The solicitor drove slowly, taking in the details. Middle-class at first, Quire Street rose in standard away from the town as the smattering of semis gave way to de-luxe, individual homes, mainly new, mainly Georgian-styled and commanding £80,000 plus.

  On rounding a slight bend in the road, he identified his destination. There were two police cars and an ambulance crowding the tree-lined street. His interest quickening, the sleet seemed unimportant now, the gale even less so. Suddenly there was the scent of excitement, the scent which he always felt when confronting a new case, a new problem.

  As he stood in the road, he weighed the scene before him. To his right, but only just so, was an individual property called ‘Patrose’, set well back, its frontage a fascinating blend of large and small windows. By the house was a double garage and a driveway which split a garden of perhaps an acre, ringed by a burglar-proof wall. Next door and immediately in front of Duncan was the building site. The view was obscured by shrubs and bushes which had obviously been standing for many years and which the builder had been careful not to disturb. There were signs of a partially converted property and, prominent on the site, was the name Patrick Cowle & Co.—Builders.

  Glad to be wearing his gumboots, Duncan trudged through the cloying grey mud track leading to the works but, before he had gone a few yards, he was stopped by a young constable.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Thank you. Duncan’s the name. I’m a partner in Wyatt, Hebditch & Co., of Bristol and I’m here to look after the position of Patrick Cowle & Co., on the instructions of the insurers. You’ve no objection if I have a look round?”

  “That’s not for me to say, sir. You’d better see my chief. He’s in the building.”

  “Thank you.”

  Before going any further, Duncan took in the immediate view. Three cottages were being converted into a single dwelling. Built of local stone, standing two floors high, it would soon command a substantial price in this neighbourhood. Around the building was scaffolding and there were signs that, if the weather had been better, someone might have been working on the roof.

  Very nice, Duncan muttered to himself as he assessed the potential of its garden. It would be very secluded. All that was needed was some landscaping and a few trees, which anyone rich enough to buy this property would be able to afford with ease. Just a bit of money and the sea of rubble, scrub, planks, mud and spoil-heaps would be transformed into a huge profit for the builder.

  A peaked cap pulled low over his face against the weather, another policeman stood at the rear corner of the building. Duncan approached him and it was only when he got within a few paces that he realised that the man was guarding the body, which still lay on the ground, covered now with black sheeting and yet unmistakably a corpse. Pausing only to memorise a quick photo for the future, Duncan pushed open the original door of the middle cottage and found himself in a chill, windswept hall, where a thin man with a trilby hat and sheepskin coat looked at him sharply. The eyes were narrow, challenging and probably hostile. The impression was heightened by the chilling blueness of the man’s features, caused by hanging about for too long on a January morning.

  “Yes? I’m Detective Chief Superintendent Dacombe.”

  “Thank you, yes. I’m the solicitor here to represent the builders. My name’s Alistair Duncan.” He stretched out an arm to shake hands but the detective pretended not to have seen.

  “Ah, Mr. Duncan!” It was another man who spoke. “I’m Patrick Cowle. My insurers have acted very quickly. As you will have gathered, this is my site. And Mark Hillyer—the dead man—was my foreman.”

  “I’m sorry.” Duncan was about to continue when Dacombe spoke again.

  “You’re pretty quick off the mark. Corpses are usually rotten before your lot arrive.” It was not said in anger or jest. Just matter-of-fact and, as Duncan appreciated, probably correct as well. “You’ll want to have a look round, talk to the men. I’ve no objection to you looking round once my Scenes of Crime men have finished. But you mustn’t take any statements until we’ve taken ours. You’re lucky. You can see the body in position. Normally it would have been moved by now but we’ve had a hectic weekend. There was a gang of tearaways through Shepton over the weekend. Seven break-ins no less. And,” he looked at Mr. Cowle, “with all respect to Mr. Cowle here, they’re much more interesting to us. This one’s not really a police job at all. It’s one for the Factories Inspector.”

  “I think they like to be called the Health and Safety Inspectorate,” Duncan prompted, anxious to generate a relationship with the officer as quickly as possible. Dacombe seemed to share Duncan’s scepticism of the pedantry.

  “God bless ’em all,” said Dacombe.

  “Fell from the scaffolding, did he?”

  “Electrocuted. That’s my guess. We’re not sure but we switched the power off anyway.”

  “Sorry, Superintendent, but can you start from square one? Imagine I know nothing. You’d be absolutely right.”

  Dacombe was about to speak when the head of the Scenes of Crime team arrived. “Sorry. I must get on. But Mr. Cowle will tell you about it.”

  Patrick Cowle scarcely looked like a builder. Indeed, in his impeccable suit, blue shirt and silk tie, he looked more like the solicitor. “I’m glad we can talk for a moment. You’re here to look after my interests?”

  “Yes. That’s right. I’m not here to represent you personally. I take my instructions from your insurers. They pay me.”

  “Fine. Well, I think I’m in trouble.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “As you can see, we’re converting this into a luxury home. All I know really is that Mark Hillyer, the foreman, arrived this morning as usual. At a guess he was going to sheet down the roofing. The tarpaulin had come free in the gale. No good for roofing, this weather. Mind, that’s only speculation on my part, because I wasn’t on site. Anyway, what seems obvious is that he fell from the scaffolding. The men didn’t see anything but the police seem to think the main power cable, supplying the house, must have touched the scaffolding when Mark Hillyer was on it. He got the full voltage and then fell fifteen feet to the ground. When he was found he was dead.”

  “Who was here then?”

  “Three of my chaps were in the building. None of them doing much. Bugger all, I expect. Never do much this sort of weather. Bloody waste of my money.”

  Duncan had trouble lighting his pipe but was glad that he persevered. “If your scaffolding was touched by the electric cable then you’re right. You are in trouble. It sounds expensive for your insurers.”

  “Can you explain?”

  Duncan looked round but there was no one listening, as the policemen were gathering round the body. “I want to join them, but, very quickly, the position is that, if Mark Hillyer had dependants, then, properly advised, there’d be a claim for damages against your firm, alleging it was your company’s fault that he died. If that’s proved, in court or to my satisfaction, then the Regal Provident will have to pay. But it goes further. If your scaffolding was too close to an electric cable, then you’re responsible for a criminal offence. You could well be prosecuted.”

  “For murder, manslaughter or what?”

  Duncan laughed. “Oh, no. Breach of safety regulations under the Act. There’d be a hefty fine and lots of adverse publicity. But you won’t go to prison.”

  “That’s a relief.” Cowle smiled. “Sorry if it sounded a silly question.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Should I instruct my own solicitor?”

  “You might need one. It’s hard to say yet. Anyway, let’s get outside and see what’s going on. A bit of gentle eavesdropping might help.”

  The two men left the limited protection of the house to join the group who faced the body. Uncovered now, a nasty blow to the right temple was revealed. It looked as if he’d hit the ground head first. Dunca
n judged the dead man as perhaps thirty-eight years old, with dark, curly hair and a swarthy face with strong features. Perhaps an element of gipsy in his background somewhere. Maybe five feet eight inches tall, he was built like a rugby hooker. On his hands were no gloves and he was wearing a torn donkey jacket and denim trousers. The blood from the blow on the temple had trickled down his face, but, other than that, there was no sign of injury. Duncan wondered what he’d been expecting. Dramatic signs of burning? Hair standing on end? A blackened figure? Anyway, it wasn’t like that at all.

  As the police photographer clicked this way and then that, Duncan studied the overhead cable. It entered the building about twelve feet above the ground and close, fairly close, to an upright scaffold and, if Duncan’s eyes told the truth, there were signs of arcing. And, on a windy day like this? Following his line of thought, Duncan’s eyes ran along the power cable. They passed over a pole, stationed in the centre of the garden, which helped suspend the line on its route from the road. Even now the cable swayed in the wind and it was easy to imagine that extra gust, completing the connection, sending hundreds of volts in St. Vitus dance through Mark Hillyer’s bare wet hands. Live scaffold equals dead foreman was a simple formula.

  “I’ve no objection to you talking freely to Mr. Cowle,” said Dacombe. “He was off site. My embargo covers the three workmen and the scaffolding. You mustn’t go up there. We’re checking for footprints, and so on.”

  “You mean, to see if there was some sort of fight? Was he pushed?” Duncan’s face displayed more than a flicker of interest.

  Dacombe’s already thin face narrowed further. “We check everything. But there are no indications of foul play. Even once we’ve finished with the scaffolding, I expect you’ll find the man from the Ministry of Ag. and Fish will forbid access.” Dacombe laughed at his own joke.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Duncan nodded, well aware of the loving relish with which the new bureaucracy issued their prohibition notices. “But don’t laugh now —that looks like him coming.” Solicitor and detective glanced towards the roadway and watched a short, overweight, puffy-faced individual, in a marquee-sized coat, tread his suede-shoed way across the site. A younger man, carrying half his weight might not have ruined his trousers but the new arrival managed to submerge his right foot up to the shin in a puddle of cement-coloured water.