Learning Curve

by Catherine Aird

  It was still like that today. The bereaved could therefore slip in and out without the fear of a hard sell or being viewed from the pavement by the maudlin or curious. Actually the betting shop management went one further and, like the Royal Oak public house further along the road, had opaque glass in their windows, being more afraid of wives than of the glances of casual passers-by.

  When cremations had overtaken burials in popularity, the old man’s son, Tod’s grandfather, had caused a tasteful rosewood urn to appear in the window as artfully placed there as any museum’s objet d’art.

  ‘And keep it private,’ the next old man had added.

  Tod’s attempt to have flowers put there as well had been dismissed by his own father on the grounds that there were more than enough flowers about the place as it was. And that they needed attention.

  ‘And keep it private,’ his father had said.

  ‘Tod, we would like to know when Derek Tridgell’s funeral is planned,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan without preamble.

  ‘Friday afternoon,’ said Tod Morton, that young sprig of the firm. He had been located by the two policemen in his shirtsleeves round the back of the building and interrupted in his daily task of washing down the firm’s best limousine. He straightened up and tossed a sponge into a bucket. ‘Two o’clock at St Michael’s and All Angels at Friar’s Flensant, should you want to know.’

  ‘We do want to know,’ said Sloan.

  ‘And we want to be there,’ added Detective Constable Crosby. This was not strictly true since Crosby didn’t enjoy attending funerals any more than he liked being present at post-mortems but he knew where his duty lay.

  ‘Something up, then?’ asked Tod. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Yes, there is and no, you shouldn’t,’ said Sloan briskly. ‘What we want, Tod, is to be there as part of the crowd.’

  ‘Not as us,’ contributed Crosby.

  ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult since there will be a crowd,’ forecast Tod Morton. ‘Quite a popular figure in Friar’s Flensant was our Derek Tridgell. And clever, too. Research chemist at work and a caver by way of recreation.’ He wrinkled his nose in recollection. ‘I think he used to play squash as well, one time, but you can’t play that for ever.’

  ‘Caver?’

  ‘That’s right, Inspector. One of those nutters who go down the Hoath Hole at Chislet Crags or whatever it is they call them over towards Calleford. It’s on the farmer’s land there and he lets them all play underground, seeing as it doesn’t upset his livestock and that they do it for fun. Their idea of fun, not mine or his. At their own risk, of course.’

  ‘How can you own a hole?’ asked Crosby of nobody in particular.

  ‘At least Derek Tridgell used to be a caver once upon a time,’ went on Tod, ignoring this. ‘I daresay he got a bit too ill for it in the end like he got too old for squash. A good player in his day, though, they said.’

  ‘But he wasn’t really all that old when he died,’ said Sloan, himself a man beginning to be conscious of the passing years.

  The young undertaker said judiciously, ‘I wouldn’t have called him exactly old myself either. Not for these days. Pancreatic cancer, I think the family said he had, poor chap. Getting more common, that is.’

  That the undertaker would be more aware of current mortality trends than most people was something that hadn’t occurred to Sloan before.

  ‘They’re coming in again tomorrow.’ Tod Morton had long ago perfected the art of referring to the newly bereaved by the blanket term of ‘the family’. Never if he could possibly help it did he ever use the word ‘widow’, especially when it came to heated disagreements over who wanted what at a funeral.

  ‘And what sort of a funeral are the Tridgells having?’ asked Sloan, glad that it would be a biggish one, giving all the better cover for strangers there.

  ‘Conventional church,’ said Tod promptly. ‘You won’t stand out in that sort of congregation, Inspector, unless you go in uniform, of course.’

  ‘No fireworks?’ said Crosby, slightly disappointed.

  ‘No animals, anyway, thank goodness,’ said Tod. ‘The last time we had a horse in the church it ate the Easter lilies. Dogs don’t help, either,’ he added bitterly. ‘They howl. I’m sure they know who’s in the coffin.’

  ‘This funeral, Tod,’ said Sloan, a busy man.

  ‘Friday afternoon, like I said and, as far as I know, nothing out of the ordinary planned.’ replied Tod. ‘Service to be taken by the Vicar of Friar’s Flensant, Mr Tompkinson. Nice chap with half a dozen parishes to run but a bit too keen all the same.’

  Rightly taking this to mean that his homily was likely to go on too long, Sloan asked who else would be speaking.

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ Tod shook his head. ‘Not usually my problem, that.’ When confronted by a warring family, the undertaker was actually quite skilled at steering a path between la pompe funèbres on the one hand and a lack of ceremony redolent of the burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna – in his cloak and without a funeral note – on the other hand. ‘And it’s a burial so it can take its time.’

  ‘So all you have to do then, Tod,’ observed Detective Constable Crosby, ‘is to get him to the church in time.’

  ‘You could put it like that,’ said Tod seriously. ‘It’s the “crem” that doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’ He stooped to collect his bucket. ‘Or as my old dad always says, it’s only the deceased who’s allowed to be late at a funeral. Nobody else.’

  ‘There’s something else we wanted to ask you, Tod,’ said Sloan, pulling a photocopy of a newspaper report out of an envelope. ‘Do you remember burying a man called Michael Linane?’

  ‘Not likely to forget it, am I?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Nasty business.’ Tod straightened up. ‘When I die I want it to be quietly in a bed in my own home, not drowning in a vat of chemicals at work. And I don’t want to die in hospital, either,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Not these days.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan was about to withdraw more press cuttings from the envelope when Tod said, ‘Come inside.’

  Sitting opposite the two policemen in the clients’ chairs in his office, Tod studied the newspaper. ‘“Berebury Man Killed in Works Accident at Luston”,’ he read aloud. ‘Oh, yes, I remember that all right. Last year. Nasty business. Couldn’t get it out of my mind for a bit. We buried him, seeing his being a local round here although the accident was over Luston way. We just got the remains of the poor chap afterwards. Don’t always get those, of course.’

  ‘If you don’t then you can’t have a funeral, can you?’ remarked Crosby.

  Tod looked at him curiously. ‘No, you can’t. It’s only happened once before that I know of. Awful business, that was.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan looked up. ‘I don’t get you, Tod.’

  ‘There’s a body down in those limestone caves that nobody could get to. We haven’t buried him. Chap called Edmund Leaton, at least I think that was his name. It was a bit before my time in the firm but Dad used to talk about it. They said it was a roof fall that did that. Or was it a flash flood? I don’t remember now. He’s still down there – been there for years. The powers that be said there was too much of a risk of another roof fall to try to get him out. The farmer hasn’t let anyone down that particular cave ever since. It’s out of bounds to everyone.’

  Detective Constable Crosby said that he couldn’t see that still being down there was any different from being buried in a churchyard since it was still earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and both churchyard and caves were underground.

  ‘Cemeteries help the grieving process,’ said Tod with assurance. ‘Like that Michael Linane who got his chips last year over at Luston Chemicals. He’s in the cemetery at Berebury. The family can visit his grave – they can’t with the other poor fellow.’

  ‘It wasn’t a police matter, though, at the chemical works,’ said Sloan. ‘I’ve checked and, even though he lived here in
Berebury, the death didn’t come our way. It was all done over in Luston because that was where he died.’

  ‘Inquest and Health and Safety Executive, if I remember rightly,’ said Tod. ‘I think they called it either an industrial accident or death by misadventure at the inquest. I’m not sure which. All I get after one of those is a burial order from the coroner.’

  ‘“A rose by any other name …”’ began Crosby, stopping when he realised where the quotation was going.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ intervened Tod swiftly. ‘Their paperwork was perfect – the firm were very good at that – it was just the wire guard round the tank that wasn’t perfect. Or rather they said that someone had pulled it back before he fell in but they didn’t know who. Might even have been the deceased, of course.’

  Sloan fixed Crosby with his eye and dared him to speak. This was not the moment for any discussion on whether a man had fallen or been pushed.

  Or jumped.

  ‘He had a big funeral in Berebury Parish Church,’ went on Tod. ‘Half of Luston Chemicals turned out for him – half of the county, too, come to that. I think the deceased was quite high up in their firm. Must have been, because there was a great tribute to him given by the chairman of his outfit. A guy called Ralph Iddon. Came in a Roller and dressed the part which always goes down well.’ He winked at Crosby. ‘Second-best dressed person there.’

  ‘Who was the best dressed then?’ asked the constable somewhat naively.

  ‘The deceased, of course,’ said Tod, grinning. ‘Our shrouds are the best.’

  ‘Iddon could have been feeling guilty about the accident,’ said Sloan, the psychology of grief being something every policeman learnt the hard way.

  ‘Not the man who saw him struggling in the vat, though, and said he tried to get him out,’ went on Tod as if the inspector hadn’t spoken. ‘He wasn’t at the funeral from all accounts. Notable by his absence, as they say. All too much for him, I daresay, and I don’t wonder myself.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Sloan soberly, ‘not the sort of thing you’d forget in a hurry.’

  ‘I daresay the dust will settle.’ The young undertaker was wise before his time by virtue of his occupation. ‘It usually does.’

  ‘In time, Tod. In time,’ said the detective inspector. ‘Come along, Crosby. We must get going.’

  It was when they were alone in the police car that Sloan sighed and said, ‘We’d better look up the other death that Tod mentioned, too, Crosby. The caving one. Probably a waste of time but then,’ he added resignedly, ‘so much of our work is.’

  ‘Well, Sloan?’ barked Superintendent Leeyes, when the two policemen got back to the police station. ‘Have you found out who killed who?’

  ‘No, sir. Neither, sir.’

  ‘If anyone did, of course,’ he growled.

  ‘Quite so, sir. But there was a death last year at Luston Chemicals which may or may not have been the one that the deceased had been talking about.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t hedge your bets all the time, Sloan,’ said Leeyes irritably. ‘It doesn’t help.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan decided against saying that false positives didn’t help an investigation either and pulled out a folder instead. ‘That is according to a report in the local newspaper, sir …’

  ‘Not always the gospel truth, Sloan,’ Leeyes reminded him, ‘what you read in newspapers. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘No, sir,’ nodded Sloan. He didn’t see any point in reminding the superintendent that you didn’t have to have been a policeman very long and know the inside story of what had been reported to know that accuracy was not necessarily the name of the newspaper’s game.

  Sales were.

  He cleared his throat and went on. ‘According to the account in the Luston News that we found, sir, there was a fatality affecting a Berebury man last year in the pharmaceutical firm he worked for over in Luston that raised a few questions. It just might have been the death that Derek Tridgell talked about to his family since he was in the same line of business himself.’

  ‘Then why weren’t we told?’ bounced back the superintendent, whose view of the territorial imperative encompassed all deaths in East Calleshire that weren’t certified as natural – and those last preferably only so having being certified as such after a post-mortem examination by Dr Dabbe, the hospital pathologist.

  ‘According to the newspaper report, sir, it would seem that the death was judged to be the result of an industrial accident.’

  ‘Suspicious circumstances are always a matter for the police, Sloan,’ trumpeted Leeyes. ‘I don’t like them being written off as accidents.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.’ He coughed and said, ‘It seems that in due course the Health and Safety Executive will be bringing an action against the company – Luston Chemicals, that is – for negligence. You know, that big works on the main road from Berebury.’

  ‘I know where it is, Sloan, thank you. A blind man couldn’t miss it.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The smell.’

  ‘Ah, of course.’

  ‘And the inquest verdict – as if I couldn’t guess?’

  ‘Death by misadventure.’

  Leeyes sniffed.

  ‘The coroner,’ hastened on Sloan, ‘was sitting with a jury, of course.’ The detective inspector was conscious that red rags didn’t come any redder to the superintendent – let alone a bull – than mention of the coroner. Mr Locombe-Stapleford, the current holder of that ancient office, was a long-standing arch-enemy of his superior officer.

  ‘It appears,’ resumed Sloan swiftly, ‘that a man called Michael Linane slipped and fell into a vat of chemicals while at work there.’

  Leeyes sat up and, less reticent than Crosby, immediately said, ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’

  ‘According to the newspaper report of the evidence, he slipped.’

  ‘And why wasn’t the vat properly protected?’

  ‘It was, sir, but the protective rail had been unhitched and slid back. By whom we don’t yet know.’

  He sniffed. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t like the idea either of a man standing beside a vat of anything and then ending up in it. ‘It wasn’t altogether clear from the newspaper report why he wanted to access the vat – or even if he did.’

  ‘Was he alive at the time?’ enquired the superintendent, a policeman through and through.

  Sloan reread the newspaper report and said carefully, ‘There is no suggestion here that he wasn’t.’

  ‘What was in the vat?’

  ‘The firm pleaded a certain amount of commercial sensitivity and wouldn’t say exactly. They argued that as the man had drowned it wasn’t …’ Sloan glanced down at the newspaper report again and found the word he was looking for, ‘germane.’

  ‘A certain amount?’

  ‘That is, they revealed some of the contents at the inquest but not all.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  Sloan consulted the newspaper. ‘A fellow employee called Christopher Honley, their chief chemist, saw him trip but was too far away to stop him falling in and couldn’t get him out afterwards. He had to shout for help but it came too late and the man drowned.’

  Leeyes jerked his head. ‘You’d better interview this Honley fellow.’

  ‘Crosby’s trying to find him now.’

  ‘He’s not still at the firm, then?’

  ‘Their human resources department tell me that he took early retirement soon after the accident. They say that he was deeply affected by it but as far as they know he hasn’t moved house.’

  ‘What did the deceased do at the firm?’

  ‘I am told, sir, that he was head of sales for their project called Mendaner.’

  ‘And what, pray, may I ask is Mendaner?’

  ‘The firm’s patented name for the composition of one of the preparations they manufacture.’ Sloan glanced down again at the newspaper repo
rt. ‘I understand that it is something that works as a selective nerve regenerator after it’s been damaged by illness or accident. They say it helps recovery.’

  ‘Valuable, then.’

  ‘Very, commercially, I understand,’ said Sloan, consciously splitting a hair. ‘I wouldn’t know about medically, sir.’

  Superintendent Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Then find out, Sloan.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He hesitated. ‘We’re also going to be looking into the record of young Paul Tridgell, the son of the man who died at Friar’s Flensant saying what he did. He was in a car accident – a crash over Calleford way just before Christmas last year.’ He paused and then added, ‘With a fatality. Crosby turned it up in the record.’

  The superintendent sniffed. ‘Is that why the man ran away to South America? Couldn’t live with the memory? Or because we were after him?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’

  ‘Survivor guilt is a funny thing,’ observed Leeyes.

  Detective Inspector Sloan thought that remorse was a terrible thing, too, but he didn’t say so.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘When was it you said this road traffic accident was, Seedy?’ asked Inspector Harpe. ‘Last December?’

  ‘It looks from the newspaper as if it happened sometime in the week just before Christmas,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, who had decided that Paul Tridgell’s road accident was the one line of enquiry that could be pursued from within the police station.

  ‘There’s always bad road traffic accidents round about then,’ declared Inspector Harpe, Head of Traffic in ‘F’ Division. He was known throughout the force as ‘Happy Harry’ on account of his never having been seen to smile. He on his part maintained that there was never anything in Traffic Division at which to even twitch the lips. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘A fatality, did you say, Seedy?’

  Inspector Harpe and his friend, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, were closeted in the traffic inspector’s little office at Berebury Police Station. ‘It looks like there was at least one dead at the time,’ said Sloan. ‘I don’t know about later.’