by Nina Jon
She continued to drive along the motorway for an hour, hoping to see his car either up ahead, or parked by a roadside restaurant, but she didn’t. She’d have to call Orla and tell her what had happened, promising to try again. She pulled into a lay-by and telephoned Orla from there. She began to explain what had just happened, but found herself interrupted.
“He was driving at what speed?”
“Rather too fast for me to be able to find out,” Jane replied.
“My husband does not drive fast,” Orla said angrily. “He would never exceed the speed limit. He’s a conscientious, law-abiding family man. You must have followed the wrong car, woman.”
“I can assure you I…” Jane said, only to find herself interrupted again.
“You were following the wrong car, that’s all there is to it. I’ll let you know when he’s next away, you can have another go. Only next time, make sure you follow the right car, woman,” Orla said, abruptly ending the call at her end.
Orla had sounded so insistent, that for a moment, Jane did wonder if she had indeed been following the wrong car. Of course she hadn’t, she told herself. The car was quite distinctive. It had one of those irritating ‘Baby on Board’ signs hanging in the back window, and was seemingly held together by black duck tape, which covered both rear wheel arches. Until it had reached the motorway, Jane had not let it out of her sight. There was obviously something a bit Jekyll and Hyde about Peter Wilson and this whole case. Contrary to what Orla Wilson believed, Jane was now certain there was nothing innocent about Peter Wilson’s excursions at all. From the wheel of her car, she mimicked Orla. “I don’t have to put up with your rudeness, woman, but my interest has been aroused and I am intrigued to know what is going on, sufficiently intrigued to continue the chase.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Opportunity Knocks
I
Jane returned home to find messages left on both her landline number and mobile (which she always kept switched off in the car) from James Haley asking if she could call him back. She did so immediately.
“Fonebies have verified the sketches,” he said, the excitement clear in his voice. “They’re authentically Jasper August and they date to the right time. We’ve even found a couple of his thumbprints on them! I’m ecstatic. I hope you are too. We intend to announce the discovery to the media tomorrow morning.”
“Please remember, I’d rather have my name left out of things if there’s going to be any publicity,” Jane reminded him.
“There will be some publicity, but not as much as if we’d found a long-lost portrait. Don’t worry – I’ll make sure you’re not mentioned by name.”
“In that case, I’m more than happy to sell you my sketches for the sum we agreed, Mr Haley.”
The minute she came off the phone from James Haley, she telephoned Graham Burslem.
“Told you it was genuine,” he said.
The money would be in her account by the end of the day, she explained and once there, she’d deduct her bill and expenses and arrange for the balance to be sent straight through to his bank account as agreed.
“Thank you my dear,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
She came off the phone to discover Orla Wilson had called when she’d been on the phone to Graham Burslem. Jane listened to a blunt message informing her that Peter Wilson was going away again the very next day, and could Jane follow him, and this time could she try to follow the right car.
“I’ll try,” Jane said meekly, replacing the receiver.
Having checked her answer phone messages, she decided to check her e-mails. She found one from her neighbour, Charity, which was unusual. Attached to the brief message – ‘Hasn’t the boy done good!’ – were two attachments. The first featured Jack (captured on a mobile phone) standing at the front of his classroom next to his teacher.
“All of the projects handed in were of a very high standard and congratulations to all of you, you have clearly all worked very hard at this project,” the teacher said. “However, I must pick Jack out for the highest praise. I couldn’t put your project about the wool shop down Jack, from the minute I began reading it. You have literally brought to life a building I thought was nothing more than a musty old shop, and I can’t wait to watch the virtual reality tour of the shop or better still, pay a visit to the shop myself.”
Jack beamed. The camera scanned the room. Some of Jack’s classmates clapped, whilst others groaned and pretended to make themselves sick. One even lobbed a paper ball in Jack’s direction. The camera zoomed in on a young girl sitting at the back of the classroom. She smiled shyly at Jack, who smiled back. Who’s this? Jane wondered.
The second attachment contained Jack’s project. Jane printed it out and settled down to read it from the comfort of her living room.
As she read on, a possible way to help the Bailey sisters occurred to her. She called Jack to run it by him.
“Jack your project’s fantastic,” she said. “You’ve unearthed so much. Would you mind if I forwarded it on to the local media? It’s the kind of story they’d love.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely.”
“Will I be famous?”
“Maybe for fifteen minutes.”
Jane rang up the local news’ desk and spoke to a young freelance reporter called Lili Alsop, who she told all about Jack’s project and his discoveries about the wool shop. “I personally found the whole thing quite poignant, particularly as the wool shop is facing demolition,” Jane said. “Please allow me to e-mail it to you.”
II
A short while later, Jack returned home from football practice to hear Charity say,
“He’s just this minute got back. I’ll have him there in thirty minutes.”
“Go upstairs and have a shower,” she ordered immediately she’d replaced the receiver. “And wash your hair.”
“Why should I?” he argued.
“Because some journalist’s on her way to the wool shop as we speak to interview the Bailey sisters about how old the wool shop really is. She wants you to be there as well because you discovered everything.”
“But why do I have to wash my hair?” he complained.
“Because I don’t want people to think you’re being dragged up, that’s why,” Charity barked at him, snatching one of his newly washed shirts from the top of the ironing pile and setting up the ironing board.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
National Treasures
I
The interview took place in the wool shop’s tiny parlour room. Jack took his place next to the sisters on the Chesterton, his freshly washed hair neatly combed back, and sporting a crisply ironed white shirt.
“Had you any idea that your little wool shop was one of the oldest of its kind in the country, possibly the oldest?” Lili asked the sisters.
“We had no idea, did we girls?” Dotty said. “Until young Jack told us.”
“Please share your part in this with us, Jack?” Lili asked.
“It was just a school project, to start with. I wasn’t going to do more than I had to, you know, but the more I learned about the shop and how old it was, the more I wanted to learn about it. I think there’s a whole lot more still to learn.”
“Are you really sure that our shop is the oldest?” Nellie asked.
“I checked with the Guinness book of records and they don’t know of one older,” Lili said.
“Oh, we don’t know about that, do we girls?” Lettice said. “There may be another one somewhere.”
“Well, I’m sure it won’t have been run by the same family for four centuries,” the young reporter said.
Lili finished her interview by moving the group outside to the market square. She positioned the sisters and Jack on either side of her, and framed the wool shop in the picture behind them. “Such a shame this lovely old shop with such a history is to be lost to redevelopment,” she said to the camera, “but I suppose that’s pr
ogress.”
II
Gene Ward, the executive producer of the country’s most popular breakfast television show - Top of the Morning to You TV, known throughout the country as TMTV – watched Lili’s interview with the sisters on the regional news programme. He liked what he saw and telephoned the shows’ producer to gauge the viewer’s response to the interview. He liked what he heard.
“We’ve been deluged with calls and e-mails about those old ladies,” was the reply, “mostly along the lines of the old dears and that shop of theirs, being national treasures which should be preserved. That kid’s site’s getting hundreds of hits apparently. You really should go national on this one. Those three are tailor-made for breakfast TV.”
III
Gene Ward arrived at the wool shop later the same evening. The sisters cautiously opened its door and lined up, shoulder by shoulder, their arms folded as though prepared for an invasion. He smiled at them, they glowered back at him.
“Who are you? Have you come to knock our house down?” Nellie demanded.
“If you have, it will be over our dead bodies,” Lettice said.
“On the contrary. I’d like nothing more than to help you save your wool shop. I’ve come to ask to you to appear on breakfast TV tomorrow morning, and give your side of the story. Could I come in?” he asked. “It’s rather cold out here and it’s beginning to drizzle.”
The sisters ignored him and moved away to huddle together some way from the front door. After a few moments of consultation, they returned. “No, you can stay right where you are,” Nellie said.
“It’s not personal, young man,” Dotty said to Gene, who was approaching sixty. “It’s just that the last time we invited someone into our home, he told us he was going to knock it down.”
“I want to save your home. Please hear me out.”
They listened patiently as he explained who he was and why he was there. “If you agree to appear on our TV show, millions of people will hear your story.”
Once again the sisters left him where he was to huddle together. They returned to tell him they were reluctant to travel to London, and leave their shop unattended, even for one night.
“We might come back and discover they’ve knocked our home down,” Lettice said.
“We’ll post a local TV crew outside with a camera, to make sure they can’t,” Gene promised, impatient to be on his way. It was growing late and raining quite heavily. He didn’t have an umbrella and was getting wetter and wetter, something which seemed to leave the sisters unmoved. Again, they left him to talk the proposal over amongst themselves. They returned after about five minutes.
“We accept,” Dotty said on behalf of her sisters. “But only because we don’t open the shop on Monday. If it had been any other day of the week, we would have had to say no, because we all have to be here to open the shop up.”
The rain was literally running down that Gene’s back and dripping off his nose. His clothes were drenched through, and his glasses so covered in water he could hardly see any of the sisters. He took them off and dried them on the inside of his jacket, and put them back on. “Great,” he said, somewhat through clenched teeth. This indomitable spirit of theirs would undoubtedly go down well with his viewers, he knew, but all it was doing for him right now was causing him to catch pneumonia. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait in the car while you pack what you need. It’s a little wet out here.”
“Never mind that, young man,” Lettice said sternly. “Where is that camera crew you promised to guard our property? We’re not going until it’s here.”
“I’ll call them right now,” he promised.
While the Bailey sisters went to pack, Gene Ward telephoned a freelance cameraman he knew lived nearby, and asked if he would turn up with his camera and sit outside the shop. “Just until I get them into the car, and on their way to London. I’ll pay you for an evening’s work.”
“My sisters and I haven’t been to London since 1937,” Nellie said, the last of the three old ladies to get into the back of the car. “Do you imagine it’s changed much?” she asked Gene, who held open the door.
“I think the least we can do is arrange a tour for you afterwards,” Gene promised. He closed the back door and walked back to the driver’s seat.
“Do you think you could arrange for us to meet the Queen perhaps?” Dotty enquired. “We would so like to meet her, wouldn’t we girls?”
“If you’re a big hit tomorrow morning and having met you, I’m sure you will be, there’ll be nothing you won’t be able to do,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
10 Upper Alan Street, Sheffield
I
Jane had been on Peter Wilson’s tail for less than thirty minutes and so far the journey was a familiar one.
The ‘Baby on Board’ sign bobbed up and down on the back window, the same piece of black duck tape hung off the rear left-hand wheel shaft flapping furiously in the wind, and already touching eighty miles an hour and accelerating, the car had just cut across two lanes of motorway traffic to speed along the right-hand carriageway, with Jane wondering how she was going to keep up.
Just as they passed under a bridge, Peter suddenly reduced his speed and pulled into the inside lane. Jane attempted to do likewise, but she was slightly too slow and ended up driving past the speed trap Peter Wilson had obviously seen and slowed down to avoid. She passed it at seventy-six miles an hour and quickly found herself flagged down. Forced to pull over by the roadside, she could only watch Peter Wilson race away from her. Dammit, she thought, rolling down the car window to the young police officer stood there, breathalyser in hand.
II
The next day, Jane met Ant Dillard in the cafeteria of the Magistrates’ Court for lunch. He literally roared with laughter when Jane told him about her being pulled over and breathalysed.
“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” she said. “Me – a part-time lay magistrate!”
“Our fellow magistrates will all find this very amusing,” he said, chuckling to himself. “They all hold you in very high esteem, you know. Or rather they did.”
“Breathalysed at the roadside. A woman of my age. I just hope no one I know saw me. I managed to reduce my speed down to seventy-six-miles-an-hour, but it was a seventy-mile-an-hour limit. How many points is that? Three or six? And what about my insurance? Will it affect my premiums?”
“You’ll have to declare an interest if someone appears before you at the bench for a speeding offence,” he reminded her, clearly finding the whole thing highly entertaining.
“This is so infuriating. I still have no idea where Peter Wilson is driving to when he leaves his wife, but I’m certain it’s not to job hunt. At this rate, I’ll end up losing my driving licence and I’ll still be no further to cracking the case.” She stared at the uneaten sandwiches she’d bought for her lunch. “I don’t know why I bought this, I have no appetite.” She pushed her lunch away. “Anything interesting at this morning’s session?”
Ant finished off the last few mouthfuls of his burger and French fries and patted his lips with a napkin. “Tramps, thieves and drunks. Who else do we ever see here? Oh, and speeding motorists, of course.”
“I’m at my wits end, Ant, I really am. How am I going to find out what Peter Wilson is up to?” she said in despair.
“Fear not, my dear. Leave everything to me. What’s his registration number?”
Jane took out her notepad and opened it at the right page. She read out the registration number, which Ant wrote down on a napkin. Armed with this information, he walked over to a couple of young police officers due to give evidence in an overrunning case, drinking coffee at a nearby table. After a brief exchange of words, and a radio conversation between the police station and one of the officers, Ant rejoined Jane.
“His car is registered to an address in Sheffield.”
“Sheffield?” Jane repeated.
He handed her a piece of paper, on which the police offic
ers had written down an address.
“10 Upper Alan Street, Sheffield,” Jane read. “This is making less and less sense.”
Ant, who was enormously proud of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the country’s road network, raised his finger. “Oh, but it does. If you were to continue on the motorway until Virginia Waters, then take Junction 12 onto the M25 and stay on it until Junction 21 until you hit the M1, hey presto, you’re well on your way to Sheffield. Incidentally, that car’s been registered to him at that address for more than ten years.”
“Ten years? That’s longer than he’s been married to Orla. Much longer.”
“He’s been living at that address for at least that length of time.”
“Good heavens. I don’t think this is going to turn out to be an open and shut case, do you, Ant?”
“When are your cases ever open and shut, Jane?”
“When indeed? When indeed?” she repeated, deciding she would have lunch after all. There was nothing like a good puzzle to whet the appetite, she always found.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Top of the Morning to You
I
To the relief of TMTV’s production crew, the Bailey sisters seemed to be quite at ease under the hot TV studio lights. Dan Slack, the show’s popular, good-looking, dark haired, Northern Irish anchor, listened attentively, while Lettice Bailey, sandwiched between her sisters on the famous breakfast show sofa, said, “We didn’t know the shop was as old as it is, you understand.”
“But we did know it was very old, Lettice,” Nellie said. “Didn’t we, Dotty?”
“We did, Nellie,” Dotty said.
“The shop isn’t the same as it was when Agnes and Samuel Bailey lived there, of course,” Nellie Bailey pointed out. “That was a long time ago. We have running water, gas and electricity,” she said proudly. “They wouldn’t have had anything like that in those days.”
“And thanks to a very nice man from the council, we’ve had an inside toilet for the last fifteen years,” Dotty said.