Last Reminder

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘You mean old Grumpysod? Coming back for a coffee?’

  ‘No, if you don’t mind. I want to be off early. We’ve identified all the Jones boys accounts, so I’ve left you a breakdown. Oh, and while I was at your desk I took a message from a PC Young. He’s our new DVLC Liaison Officer. Could you ring him, please?’

  ‘Oh, right. Wonder what he wants.’

  Sparky was sitting at the word processor, typing a report. ‘Hello, Dave,’ I said. ‘Where’s this message from Maud?’

  ‘I left it on your desk,’ he replied. ‘Can I have a word, Charlie?’

  ‘Sure.’ This was Sparky at his most formal. I hung my jacket behind the door and pulled a chair out, alongside him.

  ‘I, er, heard about the car, the Jag,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I nearly cried when I saw it, but I soon put it in perspective. That reminds me – I need to collect a claims form. Don’t suppose you’ve heard if the SOCO has had a look at it, have you?’

  ‘It was Sophie’s fault, wasn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘It was,’ he insisted. ‘She must have told the photographer at the Lord Mayor’s parade who the car belonged to. That’s how someone knew it was yours. I’ll have a word with her, Charlie.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I told him. ‘They’re growing up fast enough as it is. It’s not Sophie’s fault that some maniac has a grudge against me.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’

  I thumped his knee with my fist. ‘Let’s have a look at these figures from Maud,’ I said.

  The gist of it was that the seven Joneses, whoever they were, had deposited between two and three thousand pounds each with Goodrich, nearly every week, for just over two years. That amounted to the tidy sum of £1.78 million.

  Four hundred thousand had gone into diamonds, and therefore down the drain; and another eighty-eight thousand was safely deposited in legitimate investments. That left nearly £1.3 million unaccounted for, possibly converted into something else, like, she suggested, gold. Her footnote commented that seven bank managers were heading for a bleak Christmas.

  Not long ago a mugger stabbed a pensioner in Heckley for fifty pence. There was no shortage of candidates who’d kill for a share in a million and a bit.

  PC Young’s number was written on the bottom of the report. I dialled it.

  ‘Hello, Mr Priest,’ he said, after I’d introduced myself. ‘I’m the DVLC Liaison Officer. I understand you own an E-type Jaguar, licence number…’

  Any enquiries about car numbers and owners have to be directed through each force’s liaison officer, who then talks directly with the licensing centre in Swansea. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Want to buy it?’

  ‘Sorry, but no. Maybe if it had been a Ford Escort… According to Swansea you have a block on your number.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve instructed all my staff to do the same.’

  ‘That makes sense. What I rang for is to tell you that the West Pennine Liaison Officer took a call from one of their PCs this morning, asking for the name and address of the owner of your Jag. I just thought you’d like to know about it.’

  ‘You bet I’d like to know about it!’ I declared. ‘Did he give it to him?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Good. Thanks. It might be legitimate: maybe he’s seen me speeding somewhere – not that I do, you understand.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of suggesting it, sir.’

  ‘I should think not. Look, on Saturday night someone trashed the Jag for me. Slashed the tyres and seats, poured hydraulic fluid over everything else. I’m afraid I’m going to have to follow this up. Can you find out the name and number of the PC for me, please?’

  There are informal ways of dealing with situations like this. We go on courses, get drunk together, stray over into each other’s territory, and slowly build up a network of inter-force contacts. In my case, with my service, it’s more like a labyrinth. I rang a DI in West Pennine that I once shared a park bench with when we were locked out of the academy and asked him to do some nosing around.

  I wanted to write my report on the meeting with Jimmy the Fish, but the telephone wouldn’t stop ringing. We grumble at Superintendent Wood, but miss him when he’s not there to field all the calls that come down the channels. The chief constable’s secretary rang from Force HQ for our projected figures for crimes of violence and burglaries, needed for a meeting he was attending tomorrow.

  ‘Ah!’ I improvised. ‘Haven’t they arrived, yet?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she replied in her snootiest voice. She rarely addresses anyone as low in the pecking order as me.

  ‘Right. Well, I can’t remember the actual numbers, and the computer’s playing up, but crimes of violence are expected to rise by, er, three per cent, and burglaries by, er, four per cent. If you have the last figures there, could you work them out, please?’

  She said she would, but wasn’t pleased about it. Tough Tipp-Ex, I thought. Reports, I’m keen on. I give every member of the team plenty of time to do their reports, and sometimes we catch a criminal through them. Statistics are for politicians. All they catch are votes. We were really hoping for a decrease in crime, but it wasn’t in our interest to admit it. I slammed the phone down, grabbed my coat and fled before it could ring again.

  Jimmy Hoyle helped me fill in the claims form I collected on the way home. We surveyed the Jaguar in his garage, walking round it with glum faces, as if it were the last, dying specimen of an endangered species, which, in a way, it was. It looked as if it had been engaged in a monumental struggle against an ancient enemy, fought to the death. And lost.

  ‘It’s all superficial,’ Jimmy assured me. ‘It’ll put right.’

  ‘Of course it will,’ I replied with forced enthusiasm. It was hard to believe, looking at the wreck they’d left me with.

  ‘Don’t mention the wedding,’ Jimmy advised as I read out a question about the purpose of my journey.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re not insured for it. It’s called hire and reward. Just put pleasure.’

  ‘Right. So what do you reckon, about?’

  ‘Oh, thick end of four grand.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  Jimmy wanted to go for a pint, but I declined. Once he gets in a pub he believes it’s bad manners to leave before closing time. Driving home I thought about our conversation and one I’d held earlier in the day with Inspector Adey.

  I’d seen him in the washroom at the station, wearing his full uniform, and asked him what the celebration was. He was handing out cautions to juveniles, and the uniform was to impress them with the gravity of the situation. He’d just done the first three. One had consumed a Mars bar and a can of Coke while pushing an empty trolley around the supermarket. He fell into the poverty trap: unemployed, but too young to claim benefit. Said he was hungry. Another had paddled in the koi carp pool in the shopping mall and the last one stole all the garden gnomes on the Barratt estate and lined them up across the road.

  They’d have criminal records until they were eighteen. And here was me, plotting to sting an insurance company for four thousand pounds, knowing there’d be no comebacks. It was a so-called victimless crime, but it was still fraud. To he that hath, it shall be given; or to put it another way, life’s a bitch.

  I typed my report of the day trip to Bridlington on my own word processor, in the spare bedroom-cum-office. I checked it, made some alterations and ran off a copy for our files and another for Fearnside. It would be easier to transmit it electronically, or send a disk, but it’s forbidden. That’s how you spread viruses. I talked to his office and a few minutes later he rang me from home.

  I’ll say one thing for him: he’s a good listener. ‘Tell me the messages again,’ he asked, when I’d finished.

  ‘McAnally’s was, “The martyrdom of St Sebastian”, and Morgan’s was, “Five yards in, at five yard intervals.”’

  ‘Mmm. Sounds blood
y nonsense to me. Do you reckon he was having you on?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind. Oh, by the way, I suggested that we might lose his file, if he cooperated. Is that OK?’

  ‘He hasn’t got a file.’

  ‘I know, but I said he had a whole drawer to himself, that you thought he was the driver. Actually, he didn’t bust a gut denying it.’

  ‘Didn’t he, eh? Suppose we could lose him, providing this is good information. What do you reckon, Charlie?’

  ‘I really don’t know, but in the absence of anything better…’ I let it hang in the air.

  ‘Right. You’re not going to suggest that I domicile myself in the British Museum and swot up on the lives of the bloody saints, are you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘That’s for Hollywood. It’ll be something more obvious than that. They had the right idea, looking for a pub or a church.’

  ‘The simple explanation – Occam’s razor, eh?’

  ‘Took the words right out of my mouth, Mr Fearnside.’

  ‘Splendid. Well, you keep on with it, Charlie, and let me know how it goes. I’ll put some of our brainboxes on to these messages. One or two of them time their soft-boiled eggs by doing The Times crossword. Maybe they can put their efforts towards something useful for a change, eh?’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  All Tuesday we were bogged down with a missing thirteen-year-old girl. Monday morning she’d told her parents she was going to a chum’s after school, but when she wasn’t home by eleven p.m. they rang the other girl’s parents. Samantha wasn’t there, hadn’t been there, and she hadn’t been to school either. Nothing knackers the overtime budget like a vulnerable MFH. The nightshift, with some help from CID, looked into her background, friends, state of mind and everything else that might shed some light on her whereabouts. She had some strange acquaintances, and when I came on it was fairly certain that she’d run away. We’d have to go through the motions though, and the helicopter and the task force started an interim search of the local countryside.

  We found her early in the evening, after somebody heard our appeal on Look North and put the finger on her boyfriend. They were drunk, in bed, at his council flat in one of the Sylvan Fields tower blocks. He was unemployed, thirty-eight, had four children elsewhere and normally slept with an eight-foot-long boa constrictor. He swore blind she’d told him she was seventeen and she said she loved him. We couldn’t afford any more overtime for the next two months.

  I was in the shower when the phone rang, washing that man right outa my hair. It could have been anyone, and some folks don’t like talking to answerphones, so I dashed downstairs leaving soggy footprints on the Axminster. ‘Priest,’ I said into it.

  ‘Hi, Pissquick. How y’doing?’ came Mike Freer’s melodious tones.

  ‘You got me out the shower!’ I protested.

  ‘It comes with the training. Always strike when the opposition least expects it. That’s what we’ve just done. Since when did Drug Squad knock on anyone’s door at eight o’clock in the evening?’

  ‘Is there a point in this, Mike? I’ve stood here dripping so often I have flag iris growing in my hallway.’

  ‘And frog spawn?’

  ‘Buckets of it.’

  ‘OK. Well, put some in a jar and take it down to City HQ. I’m sure Michael Angelo Watts would appreciate something to amuse him as he sits in his cosy ten-by-eight.’

  ‘You’ve lifted him!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘’Bout an hour ago, in Chapeltown.’

  ‘Fantabulosa! What’s he saying?’

  ‘Would you believe: “Bring me my solicitor”?’

  ‘I believe it. Great. I wonder how soon Les Isles will let me have a crack at him?’

  ‘After everybody else, I imagine. Just thought you’d like to know. S’long.’

  ‘Thanks, bye.’

  The water was running cold when I went back upstairs. I thought about walking to the local again, and ruining all their evenings, but decided they weren’t worth it. I settled for watching a science programme on Channel 4 and a reasonably early night.

  The PC who’d tried to find my name and address from the DVLC said that a civilian had made an unofficial complaint to him about an E-type Jaguar being driven recklessly. He hadn’t taken the civilian’s name, but decided to look into it ‘just out of interest’. What he meant was that one of his shady friends had slipped him fifty quid for the information. The liaison officer asked him all about it, prompted by my DI colleague. A discreet eye would be kept on his future behaviour. I thanked my opposite number for his assistance and put the phone down.

  Simon Mingeles was Michael Angelo Watts’ brief. He was in court on Wednesday morning, defending the AIDS virus against a crimes against humanity rap, so I had to wait until he was available to hold his client’s hand. It was almost three thirty when I spoke the time into the tape recorder, in one of City’s interview rooms.

  Michael wore baggy pantaloons, some sort of ethnic top and an expression of bored arrogance. Mingeles had that glow that a two-hour lunch gives one.

  ‘Inspector Priest,’ Mingeles began, ‘my client has already spoken at length to DCI Makinson and Superintendent Isles. I really do not know what we can learn from more of these pointless conversations. Until my client is charged I am advising him not to answer any more questions. He will, of course, vigorously deny any charges made against him.’

  ‘Mr Watts is still under caution,’ I reminded them. ‘As it says, it may harm his defence if he does not mention, when asked, something which he intends to rely on in court. I’ve looked at the transcripts of the previous interviews and I’d hardly describe them as speaking at length, Mr Mingeles. Being downright evasive is more like it.’

  ‘Very well, go ahead’ he said, with a dismissive wave. Some would blame his assumed superiority and oily confidence on the claret he’d consumed with his lunch, but I knew he was always like this.

  I turned to Watts. ‘Where were you at ten thirty, last Thursday night?’ I asked.

  ‘Mr Priest,’ Mingeles interrupted. ‘My client has already explained his whereabouts to your superior officers. Is it really necessary to go through all this again?’

  ‘We have senior officers, Mr Mingeles, not superiors. And while we’re on the subject of titles, by your client, I assume you mean Mr Watts. Don’t you think it more polite to address him by his name?’ This was becoming another hobby-horse.

  Mingeles blinked, but came straight back. ‘I am touched by your concern for our relationship, Mr Priest, but that is something between us and nothing to do with you or your investigation. Could we stick to the business that brings us here?’

  ‘So where were you?’ I asked Watts again.

  His big hooded eyes glared at me and gave a perfunctory flick towards his mouthpiece. Why not? He was paying him enough.

  ‘My client was at a private drinking club, as stated earlier, on more than one occasion,’ Mingeles said.

  ‘An illegal club?’ I wondered.

  ‘Awaiting a licence, yes.’

  Like I’m waiting for a call from Steven Spielberg. ‘And where is this club?’

  ‘In Heckley.’

  ‘The address?’

  Mingeles sighed. ‘Mr Priest. This information is on record, with me. It can be furnished to you if and when my client is charged. Until that time he prefers not to disclose the whereabouts of the club or the names of the witnesses who can vouch for his presence there.’

  I said, ‘That’s bullshit, Mingeles, and you know it.’ The big PC standing at the door to make sure we didn’t attack each other shuffled his feet.

  ‘That is the position,’ the lawyer stated, with admirable restraint.

  ‘OK.’ I wanted Watts to speak, say anything, just to get his jaw working. Who knows? Once he started, he might not be able to stop. I rocked my chair back on two legs and asked him, ‘Do you remember me, Michael?’

  The big eyes flicked from me to Mingeles, who extended his fingers in a gesture that told hi
m to go ahead and answer. ‘Yeah, I met you. You fuckin’ Crazy Horse,’ he said.

  Mingeles looked puzzled, wondering if I was having sex with the spirit of the Sioux chief. I smiled at the memory of the rhubarb run.

  ‘How much did that little venture cost you?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ Mingeles insisted, placing a hand on his client’s arm.

  ‘So what is the street price of heroin?’

  ‘No comment,’ Mingeles snapped.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s try you with another one. How much is an ounce of gold, on the black market, these days?’

  Mingeles jumped in again with ‘My client has no comment to make.’

  I turned to the tape and said, ‘Accused opened his mouth to speak but solicitor intervened.’

  ‘This is disgraceful!’ Mingeles blurted out. ‘You are putting implications on this that are entirely fictitious. I demand that you withdraw the comment or it be stricken from the tape.’

  I said, ‘No, Mr Mingeles. You jumped in because you assumed that your client might know the answer. I was merely underlining this.’

  He turned to Michael and advised him not to reply again until they’d conferred.

  ‘What’s your date of birth?’ I asked.

  Mingeles nodded with a sigh of resignation.

  ‘Third September, nineteen sixty-six.’

  ‘And your shoe size?’

  ‘We are not here to play games,’ Mingeles complained.

  ‘We found a footprint. What’s your shoe size?’

  Nod of approval, followed by ‘Eight and a half.’

  We hadn’t found a print, but I could play silly buggers just as good as them. I said, ‘So tell me how your fingerprints came to be on your father’s telephone?’

  The tame brief chipped in again with the usual complaint that this had already been explored, mulled over, analysed and generally put to bed with Makinson and Isles. ‘I’d like to hear it for myself,’ I said.

  Watts received the go-ahead. ‘I borrow it, and lose it somewhere. That’s all.’

  ‘Do you often borrow your father’s portable telephone?’

  He looked sideways, and when the nod came said, ‘Yeah, all the time.’