by Nina Jon
The group of men handed the photograph around in turn. Each stared at it, only to shake their heads. “No, don’t know him.” “Sorry, can’t help.” “Any of you lot seen him?” someone asked. Unfortunately no one in the group had. Eventually the photograph was returned to Jane.
“There’s a Lost and Found board in the beer tent,” the kiosk man said. “You could pin your photograph up there. Someone might recognise him. I think someone’s plugged a laptop in there. You could post details of him on our website.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Chase
On their way back to the beer tent, Felix stopped to pick up the two sandwiches he’d dropped moments earlier. He stared at them. Both were squashed flat. One had a footprint on it.
“That baying mob’s trampled them underfoot,” he said indignantly, throwing them in the bin.
“Better them than us,” Jane replied.
The beer tent teemed with people, forcing Jane and Felix to stop immediately once through its entrance. Those in the tent weren’t gathered around the bar but the tentpole. They clapped while a guitarist played snake-charming music. Jane and Felix both looked up. A man was attempting to climb to the top of the tent’s central pole wearing only his underwear. The pole must have been twenty metres high. Jane looked away, fearing for the man’s safety. Felix, however, joined the crowd and began to clap and chant: Higher! Higher!
Jane left him to it and walked around the tent until she found the Lost and Found board. She took some time to read it. The cork board was covered with notices and photographs. The left-hand side was taken up with missing biker paraphernalia, such as motorcycles, helmets, jackets, as well as the usual Hammer Horror ads searching for missing body parts including, as Felix would put it, the obligatory false teeth. Were these the same ones Felix found in the churchyard, Jane wondered. Maybe she should put up a found notice to reunite teeth with toothless owner? She read the notice next to it. This featured a man grinning into the camera with a live rat sitting on his shoulders, holding the stuffed rodent equivalent of a butter fly collection. Above the photograph was a handwritten notice stating:
‘Yorkshire biker reunited with former pets! Thanks to everyone involved in hunt.’
Lovely, Jane thought, realising for the first time how passé it had been of them to bury Adele’s dead pet hamster in the garden, rather than stuffing and framing it.
The right-hand side of the notice board contained the missing people ads. These had mostly been placed by people trying to track down old friends or old flames. The most poignant ad there had been placed by the parents of a man missing since aged eighteen, last seen driving away from a motorcycle rally. He’d now be thirty-two, Jane realised, staring at a photograph of the young man, pinned next to their ad. Jane could only hope he was safe and well, wherever he was.
She removed a card announcing the safe return of a studded jacket to its owner, turned it over, and on its rear wrote:
‘Missing! Last seen twenty-eight years ago, then called Pete(r) Mark Lambert. Pete, your son wants to get in touch. Interested? Please call…’
After adding her mobile phone number, she pinned her card up on the board, leaving enough room for the photograph to be pinned beside it. This she scanned onto the laptop before typing her message to Pete Lambert below it and posting it onto the rally’s webpage. This done, she pinned the photograph on the notice board under her hand-written message.
She wasn’t sure what more she could do and made her way back to the entrance. Just as she reached it, screaming broke out and the guitarist began playing the Striptease. Jane looked up to discover the man at the top of the tent pole had removed his underwear, which he waved around his head with one hand, while firmly gripping the tent pole with the other. Jane looked away; she was a respectable widow woman, after all.
She met up with Felix outside.
“Apparently that’s his party trick. He goes around the tent afterwards collecting money in his Y-fronts. Any luck?” he asked her.
“I left a message. We’ll have to see if it produces a response. Do you mind waiting a while longer just in case somebody telephones me?”
“On the contrary,” Felix said, taking out a handkerchief with which he mopped his brow. “I can carry on re-living my youth and pretend it’s all in the name of duty.”
They returned to the main arena, just as a young mother left it, dragging a reluctant child with each hand behind her,
“If we leave now, we’ll miss the traffic,” the young mother said. “But I bought a ticket for the raffle!” one of the children said.
“Oh those things never win,” her mother replied.
“Why did you tell me to use my pocket money to buy one then?” the child argued, angrily throwing something on the ground behind her.
Once the family had passed them, Felix picked it up. It was
a scrunched up raffle ticket, on the back of which was written
Wardrobe. With the family no longer in view, Felix popped the ticket into his pocket, before following Jane inside.
He sat down beside her, about halfway along the back row, and settled down to watch a race between twenty motorcyclists.
“He who comes last comes first!” a voice over the loudhailer informed the audience. “Coming first’s for losers!”
A hooter signalled the start of the race. Each motorcyclist drove as slowly as he or she could manage. One by one, the contestants either fell off their bikes or their bikes stalled. By the end of the first lap sixteen had come off their bikes. Two more quickly followed, leaving only two. As each contestant jumped off their bike, they removed their helmets, allowing Jane to scrutinise them. All the male contestants were too young to be Johnny’s father. One might be a half-brother, she thought, but then so might half the rally.
Down on the sand track, the two surviving race contestants slowed down even further, whereupon one immediately fell off. This left the rider of a silver-blue Toyota the winner. To rapturous applause from the audience, he gave a victory lap, arm held aloft. Jane and Felix got to their feet to join the audience in a standing ovation. Jane glanced at the phone in her hand, but it remained silent. She decided to buy them both a coffee.
By the time she got back, another contest was underway in the arena below. Bikes lined up next to each other, roped to heavy objects: a sledge weighed down with bricks; a wardrobe; a fridge freezer; a large stone statue, and at the end of the row, a wheel-less caravan. While the bikes warmed up, rally staff placed tombolas with the names of the various objects on them, along the track.
“Ah!” Felix said, patting the raffle ticket in his pocket.
Within a few minutes of the hooter sounding, the rope attached to the caravan had snapped, bricks from the sledge littered the track, the arms had fallen off the statue, and the fridge freezer was in pieces, leaving Wardrobe with a clear run to the end.
“Let’s make it a bit harder for him!” a voice said over the loudspeaker, as other motorcyclists hurriedly attached their bikes to the caravan, and gave chase. Some in the audience cheered, others booed.
Wardrobe glanced over his shoulder and tried to go faster, but his load made that impossible. The others may have been dragging a wheel-less caravan around the track, but there were many more of them and they were catching him up. The audience, including Felix, jumped to their feet.
“Wardrobe!” “Wardrobe!” “Caravan!” “Caravan!” they shouted.
“Come on you Wardrobe!” Felix yelled.
Jane took the opportunity to remove some theatre binoculars from her bag with which to study the crowd again. Most people were too focused on the action to notice. Her search was fruitless. No one she saw reminded her enough of either Johnny, or the photograph of his father, to make it worth her while approaching them.
In the arena below, it was neck to neck in the sprint to the winning line. Caravan had lost one and a half sides, its back door hung open and most of its furniture now covered the track. Wardrobe wasn’t in much
better condition. After a concerted effort, Team Caravan crossed the winning line first, whereupon the caravan’s remaining side fell off and it rolled over. Wardrobe leapt off his bike, pointed to the other contest ants and raised six fingers in the air then he pointed to himself and raised one finger in the air.
“Fair?” he yelled.
Over the loudspeaker a voice said, “No one said we were playing by the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules! I formally declare Caravan the winner. We will now spin the tombola containing the tickets bought by all you clever people who correctly predicted Caravan would ultimately triumph.”
A raffle ticket was pulled from the tombola labelled Caravan and held aloft to the crowd. “The proud winner of a keg of beer is blue seventy-eight! Blue seventy-eight! A worthy winner!”
A woman from the audience made her way into the arena to fetch her prize.
“Boo!” people shouted. “Cheat!” “Hiss!” “Should have been Wardrobe!”
Felix jumped to his feet, waved his raffle ticket in the air, and joined in the crowd shouting, “We was robbed!”
“Okay! Okay!” the referee said over the loudspeaker. A young member of staff spun the tombola drum marked Wardrobe and pulled a raffle ticket from it. “A second keg of beer goes to pink one hundred and three! Pink one hundred and three!”
Felix stared at the ticket in his hand. It was white twenty-five. He sat down.
Entertaining though this was, Jane was growing annoyed. She still hadn’t seen any face in the crowd which reminded her of Johnny, or the photograph of his father, nor had anyone responded to her message. She checked the time. They’d been there for most of the day and still had to get home. “I think we may have to leave it and hope someone gets in touch, Felix,” she said.
“Whatever you want to do, Jane.”
They got to their feet and made their way to the end of their row. They waited to join the crowds pushing their way up the stairwell, when a man walking past them on his way towards the exit, inadvertently dropped a photograph. Felix stared at it, but before he could say anything, the man picked it up, and moved on.
“That was your photograph!” Felix said.
“Are you sure?” Jane asked.
“Quite sure.”
Jane stared at the man. He was middle aged, quite tall, as was Johnny, and balding. He was clad in leather and he held a motorbike helmet under his arm, and more importantly, he was about to leave the arena.
“I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but follow that biker!” Jane said.
The two hurried after him, following him into the bike park. He was parked some way from their bike, but they were closer to the entrance than he. When they got to their bike they were both a bit breathless, but they couldn’t afford to dawdle. The man concerned already sat astride his bike, putting on his helmet. Soon he’d start his bike and join the queue waiting to exit the rally. Jane quickly climbed into the sidecar, while Felix jumped onto their bike and prepared for the chase.
Minutes later they roared down the motorway, after the biker. Jane did not feel at all easy. In order not to lose their man, Felix had to drive extremely quickly and weave in and out of the traffic, throwing Jane from one side of the side-car to the other, despite her seatbelt. To steady herself, she held onto the sides with both hands. Her sciatica was beginning to play up, but when she tried to ask Felix to slow down, a fly flew into her mouth. She couldn’t even take her hands from the side to remove it. Eventually she spat it out, but the side car wasn’t covered and she was hit in the face with her own spittle. After wiping her face, she said, as loudly as she could, “Felix, I think we’re travelling too quickly.”
Felix couldn’t have heard her because instead of slowing down, he speeded up, shouting, ‘Woo Ha!’ at the top of his voice.
Well I’m glad you’re enjoying the thrill of the chase, Felix Dawson-Jones, she, who couldn’t remember the last time she had been so uncomfortable, thought. This chase reminded Jane of her pursuit of another Peter only the month before. Another Peter who enjoyed racing up and down motorways, and another one with a morally ambiguous character.
To Jane’s enormous relief, the motorcyclist pulled in at a petrol station just up ahead of them to fill up. Felix followed him, pulling into the other side of the pump used by the motorcyclist. Jane decided to wait for the motorcyclist in the garage shop. He appeared minutes later. She allowed him to pay for his petrol, before approaching him with the words: “Pete Lambert?”
“Who love?” he replied.
“Pete Lambert. That’s the name of the man in the photograph you took from the Lost and Found board at the rally. I know you have it. I saw you drop it and pick it up again. I put the photograph on the board, you see. Do you still use the name
Pete Lambert, or do you go by another name?”
“Ah,” he said, sheepishly. “Got me!”
Now she could study him more closely, she couldn’t see any resemblance in him to Johnny. He was also too young to be Johnny’s father. She did not think she had her man.
“Before you go on I need to tell you something,” the man in front of her said. “I’m not the man in the photograph. I don’t know who he is. For a start I’m only forty-two, and he’s going to be a lot older than that now, let’s face it.”
“Why did you take the photograph?”
“My daughter likes to collect old fashioned photographs for her school folder. The guy’s hair and his clothes, well they’re dated by our standards. She loves stuff like that. I didn’t think anyone would notice. Sorry,” he said, handing her the photograph. He gave her an embarrassed shrug before he left the shop.
She walked over to Felix, who waited to pay for the petrol. He’d heard everything.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Jane said wearily.
She was upset more than anything. Felix joined her minutes later. He’d bought her a bag of fruit and nuts. She opened and began to eat them.
“Do you want to go back to the rally?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. He wasn’t there. Or he didn’t want to be found. Let’s go home.”
When they reached the bike, Felix gave a little holler of delight. He’d found a small blue envelope inside the crisps he’d bought himself, promising a cash prize or some free crisps. He opened it, grinned, and showed it to Jane. The envelope contained nothing more than a picture of a man spread-eagled against a brick wall, and the words: ‘Better luck next time!’
“I know just how he feels,” Jane said. She threw the bag of nuts into the bin. “They’re stale. Like the trail to Johnny’s father!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There’s Only One Emma Greenlee
I
The property where Emma Greenlee and her flatmate lived was part of a terrace of newly built houses constructed from pale yellow brickwork, forming one side of a square, which overlooked a communal lawned garden. Each house had a small upper-floor balcony, just large enough for one person to stand on.
At just after ten o’clock Johnny, flanked by Charity and Jack, arrived in the square. Emma’s boyfriend, Kevin, walked over to join them.
“That’s her house, the one in the middle,” Kevin said, pointing at the house in question. They all looked over to it. “She has the bedroom at the front. She always goes to bed at ten-fifteen. Now, as I’m meant to be doing the serenading, not you, would you mind serenading her from under the balcony, where she can’t see you?”
Johnny did as he was instructed. While he positioned himself directly underneath Emma’s balcony, her boyfriend strode across the lawn. About halfway across, he turned around to face Emma’s house. Charity and Jack stayed where they were.
On the dot of ten-fifteen, the light went on in Emma’s bedroom; her boyfriend raised his arm. This was the cue for Johnny to begin singing. To the tune of O Sole Mio by Di Capua, he sang:
“There’s just one Emma Greenlee. Will you appear?
Oh Emma Greenlee – appear to me-e-e.”
As
Johnny belted the first verse out, Kevin mimed the words, complete with arm movements and facial expressions. People crossing the square stopped to watch. Some opened their windows and put their heads outside. A few even left their houses to gather in the gardens, and by the time Emma appeared on her balcony, there was quite a crowd of onlookers. Emma looked both embarrassed and flattered. Charity nudged Jack. It was going well.
Meanwhile Johnny continued singing, and Kevin miming.
“Oh Emma Greenlee,
From Stoke on Trently,
I so love you,
Will you marry me-e-e?”
Kevin through his arms out expansively, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth as wide as he could. On the words: ‘Will you marry me?’ he knelt on the ground, hands clasped as though in prayer.
Johnny was just about to repeat the verse, when he heard a voice above him ask, “Excuse me, but who are you?”
He looked up. In his enthusiasm, he’d inadvertently stepped out from under the balcony and into view. Emma continued to peer down at him. Johnny glanced in her boyfriend’s direction. So did Emma.
“Emm!” Kevin said, running towards her. “I can’t hit a note – you know that – so I hired someone to do it for me. But I wrote the words!”
“He did,” Johnny said.
“From the heart,” Kevin said.
“I don’t know what to say,” Emma said.
Kevin stopped running, knelt down beneath her balcony, and said, “Emma Greenlee, will you marry me?”
Emma looked at the crowd then back to her boyfriend, before raising her arms above her head and shouting at the top of her voice: “Yes!”
The crowd cheered and clapped. Emma’s front door was opened by her crying flatmate, while Emma jumped up and down, shouting, “I’m engaged! I’m engaged!”
Johnny, rather concerned that the balcony wasn’t designed for someone to jump up and down on it, ran over to Emma’s boyfriend and shook his hand vigorously. “Congratulations mate,” he said.
A quick glance at the balcony showed both men that Emma had gone indoors.