Limestone Cowboy

by Stuart Pawson

  In the middle of the room was an antique table with a shine on it that took a hundred years of sore knuckles to produce, and on the table was a perspex box, keeping the dust off the model it held. I stood up and walked over to inspect it.

  “It’s this house, I think,” I told Dave.

  He came to join me. It was beautifully made, with delicate stonework and tall chimneys, and an ornate, tiled roof that must have taken hours to construct. Tiny figures were grouped at the front around a model car and others were neatly parked nearby. Trees like the ones I’d seen on model railway layouts were dotted around the grounds, and at the back ancient met modern. There was a huge extension, bigger than the floor plan of the original building but only one storey high, with two more cars – a Rolls Royce and a little yellow coupe – parked outside. His and hers, at a guess. It was all metal and glass, one part being a swimming pool and the rest of it what looked like office space.

  “Like it?” said voice behind us like the crack of a whip. We turned and introduced ourselves to Sir Morton Grainger, multimillionaire and supermarket supremo.

  When we’d shaken hands I said: “Is it this place?”

  “That’s right,” he replied. “My wife made the model to help get the improvements past the planning people.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Oh yes, it’s all up and running. Been so for nearly five years.”

  He was about five feet seven tall and dressed in what I believe is called County: hacking jacket; fawn slacks; heather-mix shirt and woven tie. His hair was fair and crinkly and the broken veins on his cheeks indicated an outdoor man who enjoys a drop or two. A hunting man, at a guess, with a military background.

  He gestured for us to sit down and I noticed that his brogues were shiny enough for him to shave by in the absence of a mirror, or perhaps use to signal a passing plane were he ever unfortunate enough to be shipwrecked. There’s no substitute for breeding, I reluctantly admitted to myself, drawing my grubby footwear under the chair, out of sight.

  “Thanks for seeing us, Sir Morton,” I began, “and I apologise for you hearing about this business somewhat indirectly. We did try to contact you but you lead a busy life.”

  “The price of success, Inspector. Constantly trying to keep ahead of the game. Actually, I’m glad you’re here. Any chance of you doing something about the press – they’re camped outside the bloody gates?”

  “There was just one there when we arrived,” I told him, “and we’ve sent her on her way.”

  “Oh, that’s good. Thank you. So how is the man who was poisoned?”

  “He’s recovering, but there’s been another.”

  “Oh dear. It’s a nasty business. Is he alright?”

  “It’s a woman, but we’re told she’ll recover. This time it appears to be a tin of corned beef that’s caused the problem. I’m afraid you’ll have to widen the scope of the call-back.”

  “Bloody hell! That’s all we need. So how much nearer are you to catching the person responsible?”

  “No nearer at all, but we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Right. So fire away, but make it quick, I’ve a train to catch.”

  “Will do. First of all I’d like to say that all your managers have been very cooperative. These days, what with all the red tape, political correctness and civil rights that we are beset with, it would have been easy for any one of them to obstruct the enquiry, but they didn’t and we’re grateful. I believe you’re just passing through.”

  “That’s right. You’re lucky to catch me. I’m on my way to play in a pro-am at St Andrew’s. Charity do on the Old Course. Won’t be back until Monday.”

  Golf, not hunting. Near enough, though. I said: “Sounds fun. In that case, as we won’t be able to contact you, it would be helpful if you could issue an instruction to your managers to keep up with the cooperation.”

  “No problem, Inspector. I’ll put Sebastian onto it straight away.”

  “Smashing. Thanks for that. Now, if we can ask you a few questions pertinent to the enquiry…”

  He’d always tried to play fair, he told us, and as far as he knew had no business enemies. Some of the stores were built on greenfield sites and opposition, both local and from organised groups, had been vocal, but the applications had gone through. Supermarkets were what people wanted. He hadn’t cancelled any big contracts causing companies to go bust, and he’d received no threats or demands for money.

  “You will,” I told him, “but most will be from cranks, opportunists. It’s important that any that arrive are sent straight to us with the minimum of handling.”

  He said that he understood and he would include that in the message to his managers. When he started looking at his watch we stood up to leave. We shook hands again and as he walked us to the door I said: “Your wife’s an architect, I believe.”

  “That’s right. She’s a partner in a practice.”

  “In London?”

  “Head office is in London, but she works from home most of the time.”

  “Oh. Did she design the extension?” I tried to think of a grander word than extension, but couldn’t.

  “The leisure and office complex? That’s right. With her own fair hands.”

  “She must be a clever lady.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  But there was no pride in his voice as he said it.

  *

  “So what do you think?” I asked as we drove out through the gate.

  “He’s a twat.”

  “Another one! But a rich twat, wouldn’t you say?”

  “And that.”

  “With no enemies.”

  “If you believe that you’ll stand for the drop o’ York.”

  “He seemed concerned about the victims.”

  “The only thing he’s concerned about is his profits.”

  “And his golf handicap?”

  “Aye, and I bet he cheats at that.”

  “Is your ulcer playing up?”

  “It could be. Did you ring her?”

  “Who?”

  “Who! Who do you think? Rosie.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He snorted disdainfully and concentrated on driving. A woman was negotiating her way across the High Street with a baby buggy and Dave held up the traffic for her. She smiled a thank you and tipped buggy and youngster it contained violently backwards to mount the kerb. A Reward poster fastened to a lighting column caught my eye. I twisted in my seat as we accelerated away and saw that it was for a lost cat. Approaching the turn-off for the nick I said: “Have you got the address of that girl in your notebook? The one who was relocated by Robshaw. It was somewhere in the Sylvan Fields.”

  “Yeah. Want to go see her?”

  “We might as well. She may give us a different perspective on the cosy world of Grainger’s superstores.”

  Sylvan Fields is a rambling estate on the edge of Heckley, although it might be more accurate to say that Heckley is a small industrial and market town on the edge of the Sylvan Fields estate. Most of the houses date from the between-the-wars era, built for heroes, what was left of them, in a wave of compassion and social engineering. All went well for a couple of generations, but by the seventies the decline was well under way and accelerating. Nobody knows what the mechanism is, although thousands of theses have been written on the subject. Greater freedom, less respect for authority, prosperity, poverty, lower morals, breakdown of family life? Who can say? Alcohol and drugs, the advent of the motor car? Rock and roll and the Pill?

  How about Y-fronts? Perhaps the decline in standards and increased tendency for violence, particularly amongst young men, was brought about by something as simple as the introduction and widespread use of snug-fitting underwear, causing the testes to overheat with the subsequent over-production of testosterone. Thinking about it, I could not recall a single case of a burglar or mugger being described by witnesses as wearing a kilt.

  Dave passed me his notebook and I found
the address. “28, Windermere Drive,” I told him. “Know where it is?”

  “No problem.”

  “Anywhere near where you lived?”

  “No, we were at the rough end. Shirley lived in the next street, Buttermere Drive.”

  I didn’t speak as Dave negotiated the estate, avoiding the bricks that strewed the road and the various wheeled devices dotted about the place like exhibits in a sculpture park: old prams, shopping trolleys and a couple of burnt-out cars. A dog chased out of a gateway at our car, then changed its mind and trotted back whence it came. There was a community centre on a corner that I’d seen a picture of in the Heckley Gazette when a local councillor cut the tape, its walls already sprayed with graffiti. Jeb and Shaz believed in advertising their feelings for each other.

  I think Dave sensed what I was thinking, so he said: “There are some nice people live here, Charlie. They’re not all yobs, y’know.”

  “I know that, Dave.”

  The litter thinned out and the houses changed colour. The council has a segregation policy, lumping most of the problem tenants at one end of the estate, together with the single mums, divorcees and rent-evaders. The best tenants, the ones who’ve had the foresight and wherewithal to buy their homes, are on the north side. Now the gardens were tidy, the hedges trimmed or replaced by brickwork, and the houses painted in individual styles. Burglar alarms adorned walls instead of satellite dishes. Dave turned into Windermere Drive and we looked for house numbers.

  The girl was called Rebecca. She was born north of the tracks but was heading south, fast. It must be heartbreaking for parents to bring up a child to be polite, speak in sentences and take an interest in the world outside, only to see all their hard work swept aside by street culture as the kid reaches puberty.

  Rebecca was eating Pringles, watching television, as her mother showed us through into the front room. The house was spotless but cluttered in a familiar way. They just didn’t make them big enough for a growing family. She was dumpy and pasty-faced, with a mouth that permanently drooped at the corners.

  “Two gentlemen to see you, Becky,” her mother said. “About when you worked at Grainger’s. It’s about this food scare.”

  Becky’s gaze switched from the TV to me and back again as she felt for her mouth with another Pringle. Her mother invited us to sit down and asked if we’d like a cup of tea.

  “No thanks,” Dave said, “but can we have the TV off, please.” In a fantasy story Becky’s glare would have turned him to stone.

  “How long did you work at Grainger’s, Becky?” Dave asked.

  Realising, probably for the first time ever, that pressing the red button caused the moving images to go away, Becky turned on the settee to face her interrogator. “’Bout six months,” she replied.

  “Did you like working there?”

  “No.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “It wa’ borin’”

  “Have you seen anything on telly about the scare we’re having?”

  “A bit.”

  “Did you ever see anything suspicious while you were at Grainger’s?”

  “Suspicious? Like what?” Her mouth re-formed into a snarl, as if she thought the question ridiculous.

  “Like anybody tampering with food. Tinned food in particular.”

  “No.”

  “Nothing that you can remember?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve said so, ’aven’t I?”

  “Becky!” her mother admonished.

  “Are you looking for another job?” I asked.

  She turned to me and I felt the chill of her disdain. “There is nowt,” she stated.

  “But you’re looking?”

  “I’m trying to get my ’ead together.”

  “I understand you were moved from the store floor into the warehouse,” Dave said.

  Becky’s expression changed quickly, from a brief flash of embarrassment, through glee and back to bored stiff again, like a shaft of light through a crack in a wall.

  “That cow had me moved,” she said.

  “Becky!”

  “Well she is.”

  “Which cow would that be, Becky?”

  “Mrs Brown. Sharon stuck-up Brown cow.”

  Her mother said: “Becky, will you try to be polite to the gentlemen.”

  “It’s OK,” I told her with a grin. “We get much worse.”

  “Why did she have you moved?” Dave asked.

  “I dropped things.”

  Her mother coughed. “Becky’s always had this problem,” she explained. “She’s all fingers and thumbs, keeps dropping things.”

  “What did you drop?” Dave asked.

  The look of glee returned and lingered this time. “Jars of things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Beetroot. Pickled onions. Things like that.”

  “Big jars?” Dave asked. Now he was smiling.

  “Yer. Right big jars.”

  I stood up and stretched, rotating my shoulders a couple of times. “Could we have a word in the kitchen, please?” I said to Becky’s mum, and moved towards the door.

  The sun shone in through the window and there was a pleasing smell coming from the oven. “That cup of tea would be most welcome,” I said. She clicked the switch on the kettle and it rumbled into life.

  “Sugar and milk?”

  “No, just black. Has Becky always been a problem?”

  She nodded and turned away from me, and I heard her sniff a couple of times.

  “We learned that Becky had left under a bit of a cloud,” I said, “and we’ve been looking for someone with a grudge. It’s obviously not your daughter but we thought she might have some ideas, give us an insider’s view of the company. DC Sparkington will tease it out of her if she’s seen anything.”

  Her mother poured the tea and handed me a mug.

  “Thank you. Is Becky looking for another job?”

  “There isn’t anything,” her mother replied. “She goes to the job centre – sometimes I take her – but the only jobs she could do are in catering. And what with her little problem…”

  “It sounds difficult.”

  “It is. We thought she’d be all right at Grainger’s, but we were wrong. Now she doesn’t seem bothered. Trouble is, there’s no incentive for someone like her. She was on minimum wage, which wasn’t too bad for a girl with Becky’s qualifications, and most welcome, believe me, but she sees other girls on the estate who are much better off. Girls who went to school with her and are living the life of Riley, getting benefits and the rent paid because they’ve got kiddies.”

  She had a moan about the injustices of the system and we agreed that it was an insoluble problem. Try to do something about it and the children were the ones who paid the price. Dave came through, edging his bulk into the kitchen and rolling his eyes as he saw the mug of tea in my hand. Voices from the other room indicated that the TV was back on. We said thank you and she asked how the poisoned man was.

  “He’ll live,” I told her.

  “Back to t’nick?” Dave asked as he started the engine.

  “Yes please, driver. What did you learn?”

  “Aha!” he responded. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “OK. I’ll just sit here patiently waiting for a moment when you might find it convenient to fill me in.”

  “Right. Get this: Becky reckons that all-hands Robshaw is screwing old-cow Mrs Brown.”

  “Gerraway! All-hands Robshaw. Is she saying that he belongs to the touchy-feely school of management training?”

  “Can’t leave the girls alone, it would seem.”

  “And presumably Mrs Brown is the bespectacled lady called Sharon who brought in the complaints book?”

  “Head of human resources, based at the Heckley branch.”

  “You did well.”

  “There’s a bit more. Becky left because she was being bullied. It was OK on the shop floo
r but started when she was moved to the warehouse. Mrs Brown knew about it but didn’t do anything.”

  After a while I said: “Poor kid. What do you reckon’s wrong with her?”

  “Don’t know. When we went in, after a few seconds, I had this flash that she was Down’s syndrome. Then I realised that she wasn’t, just – what do we say these days? – has learning difficulties.”

  “Hmm. I went through the same process.”

  “Makes me realise how lucky we’ve been with our two.”

  “I bet. Have you heard from Sophie yet?”

  His shake of the head and ensuing silence were more eloquent than words and I knew I was treading a minefield, so I changed the subject.

  “What have you got against Grainger – Sir Morton?” I asked him. “You didn’t exactly take to him when we met.”

  “Huh!”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ll tell you in the office.”

  But he didn’t have the chance to tell me. There was a note on my desk from Pete Goodfellow and another saying that Mr Wood wanted to see me ASAP. Pete had done his homework about Sir Morton, as requested. He was a Foreign and Commonwealth Office man, not army, and had held a junior position at some God-forsaken outpost in the Pacific until hurriedly promoted when his boss drowned while snorkelling. He was stationed in Fiji, and when the Queen, on a tour of the more distant corners of the Commonwealth, unexpectedly changed her itinerary to visit her loyal subjects in Tuvalu, Junior Consul Grainger had filled the breach and ensured that everything went along swimmingly. His reward was promotion and promise of a KCMG, whatever that meant. Grainger’s older brother had inherited the burgeoning family business, but he was killed while racing a vintage grand prix car in Belgium and the whole lot passed to Morton, or Sir Morton as he became on leaving the FCO.

  A line from Dylan’s “Idiot Wind” flashed through my mind: And when she died it all came to me, I can’t help it if I’m lucky. I walked through into the main office and passed the note to Dave.

  “Tuvalu?” he said, after considering the note for nearly a minute.

  “Yep.”

  “Wear the fox hat?”

  “It’s in the Pacific.”

  “Thanks. That pins it down. Fancy a pint tonight?”

  “Good idea. Gilbert wants me, I’ll be upstairs.”