by Nina Jon
It had been early evening, and they’d been sitting in their front room, Hugh hidden behind the newspaper and Jane taking up the hem of Adele’s school pinafore. She’d looked at her husband, “And what, pray, is fence jumping, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“It’s like hurdling, only it’s over fences,” he’d explained patiently, looking up from his newspaper. “It says in the paper that a boy from Adele’s school has just broken one of his legs fence jumping.”
“I heard a boy had broken his leg. I wasn’t aware of the full circumstances. I think he’s a couple of years older than Adele. I believe he’s now back at school, wearing a cast and relishing the attention, busily collecting signatures.”
“The paper is getting quite worked up about it, suggesting fences should be made higher to stop it happening. How ridiculous,” he’d said, getting quite worked up himself. “When I was a youngster, there was nothing me and my friends liked better than a spot of fence jumping. It was the challenge of getting over in one, that we used to love. The important thing is to be able to get a good run at it. It’s essential, if you’re to be able get over, or not as the case may be. Believe it or not, I was something of a rebel when I was young,” he’d said with a grin.
Jane had returned to her needlework once more, only to be interrupted by her husband again.
“What I enjoyed even more than fence jumping was branch traversing. Shall I tell you what that is?”
“Please do. As if I can’t guess.”
“First you have to find your tree. The taller the better. Next you climb your tree, getting as high as you dare to. Remember, there are other boys watching and reputations are at stake.
Once you’ve selected your branch – it has to be as thick as you can find, but not too thick, it has to be able to bend – you slowly swing your way along the branch, swing – not walk, not crawl – swing. We’re not talking about a tightrope walk here, you understand? No. We’re a talking about swinging along a branch, holding on to it for dear life with both hands. The branch inevitably bends under the weight of the boy dangling down from it, allowing him to let go and drop gently onto the ground, if it doesn’t break under his weight first, which is how my cousin came to break his arm. It’s got to be high enough for there to be a challenge, but not so high that an accident is inevitable. Tall trees and high fences are too much of a challenge for any young boy to resist. Any attempt to stop it will just make things worse,” he said, slapping the newspaper with the back of his hand to emphasise that this was a subject he felt quite strongly about.
Jane continued to stare up at the oak tree on the lane at the back of old Jimmy’s garden. “Now I see how. I just need to know who and why? And to know that, all we need do is to catch your thieves red-handed,” she said.
The plan was a simple one. They would lay a trap. Jimmy was to stand behind his stall selling his wares, whilst Jane would hide behind the old chicken coop and keep watch. Nothing happened for the first two afternoons. But on the third day, the thieves struck.
By this time, Jane had moved location and was sitting inside the garden shed, looking out over the garden through a peephole Jimmy had drilled in the wall of the shed especially for this purpose. Jane suspected that the thieves were likely to strike at any moment, because there were three large cauliflowers in the garden ready for picking. “It won’t be long now, Jimmy,” she said. “They won’t be able to resist.”
The rustling of leaves first alerted Jane to the thieves’ presence. She focused her binoculars on the oak. After a few moments, she saw a young lad climbing up the tree trunk. Jane recognised him. It was one of the Russell twins, Colin and Clive, a pair of identical eleven-year-old twin boys who lived near her. Jane wasn’t sure which one she was watching. Whichever one it was, she knew his brother wouldn’t be far away. She watched as the boy reached a branch which overhung Jimmy’s garden. He crawled along it for a very short distance, then took hold of the branch with both hands and began to slowly inch his way along it, crossing one arm over the other, his feet dangling below. The further he moved along the branch, the more it bent under his weight. Jane wondered if the branch might snap and the boy receive a painful comeuppance, but it wasn’t to be. He was by now two thirds of the way along the branch. The branch had bent sufficiently low under his weight for him to be able to safely let go and fall to the ground. He landed on both feet. His legs bent under him and he fell over. It didn’t take him long to jump to his feet. He quickly looked around and realising the coast was clear, he ran over to the vegetable patch. He took a pen knife out of his pocket and helped himself to both cauliflowers. With a cauliflower under each arm, he walked back up the garden towards the bungalow. From there he started to sprint along the garden. Still clutching the vegetables under his arms, he hurdled over the rear fence, one leg outstretched in front of the other. He cleared it in one and avoided stepping in the sand.
Jane could only laugh at his audacity. Once in, and crime committed, climbing over the back fence would have been an easier way to have made a fast exit, but it would have meant leaving footprints behind as evidence. Also, for a high-spirited young lad, climbing over a fence was nothing like as much fun as jumping over a fence. The boy’s brother, Jane presumed, was somewhere out front, keeping watch. They had probably devised a simple warning cry, such as a loud whistle, for example.
Jane and Jimmy arrived at the home of the Russell twins some ten minutes later. They found the two boys playing football in a field to the rear of their back garden, one protecting a goal made from two jumpers placed on the ground, the other facing the goal, ready to take aim at a cauliflower on the ground in front of him, substituting as a football.
“Good Lord!” Jane said.
“Why don’t you get your dad to buy you a real football?” Jimmy hollered at the boys. “’Stead of practicing your shots using my cauliflowers?”
They froze. The pitch was already covered with the remnants of the cauliflower they’d kicked from one end of the pitch to the other. Its florets and broken stalks were strewn over the field. The twins looked at each other. They wanted to scarper, but realised there wasn’t any point as they were known to their victim by name.
“Someone confiscated our last football, and the one before that,” one of the boys said.
“Got sick of you kicking it into his garden, did he?” Jimmy said.
“Through his window more like,” the other one admitted.
The boys slouched over to join Jane and Jimmy at the side of the field.
“Our dad won’t let us have another ball until we pay him back for the window,” one of the two boys said.
“So you thought you’d help yourself to my cabbages and cauliflowers instead, did you?” Jimmy said, attempting to sound stern.
“We couldn’t resist it,” the other boy said. “Please don’t tell our dad, old Jimmy. We won’t have no pocket money left!”
“Which one are you?” Jimmy asked.
“Colin,” the boy admitted.
“Well, Colin, I will tell your dad if you call me old again,” Jimmy said.
“Sorry,” the boy apologised.
“Tell you what. I won’t tell on you, if you run some chores for me now and then and help me out when I ask you to,” Jimmy said.
The boys both nodded quickly and eagerly.
“There’s plenty needs doing both inside and outside. There’s windows to wash and a drive to weed for a start.”
“Anything, just don’t grass us up,” Clive said, with his brother nodding earnestly beside him.
“In exchange for which I’ll let you use my football. It’s made from real leather, you know.”
“Thanks Jimmy, you’re a good ’un,” Colin said.
Clive ran back and retrieved the cauliflower from the ground, and returned with it, holding it out to the old man, who shook his head.
“See if you can score a penalty with it, lad,” he said to Clive. “And you see if you can stop him,” he said to Colin.
“Really!” Jane said.
“Why not? I always plant too many, and besides, I haven’t had much to laugh about since my missus passed over.”
The boys quickly returned to the pitch. Watched by Jane and Jimmy, Clive took his position as goalie and Colin as striker. Colin carefully positioned the cauliflower on the ground, took a run at it, and with one massive kick sent the cauliflower flying over the head and outstretched arms of the goalie. It hit the ground, breaking in two.
“Goal,” Colin yelled, jumping up and down and punching the air in triumph.
Jane and Jimmy returned to his bungalow.
“Jimmy, you’re not really going to allow those two to clean the house are you? They’ll never do it properly, you know. They’ll make more of a mess than there already is, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Jimmy turned to scowl at her.
“I was rather hoping you’d let me clean the bungalow for you. I do so love cleaning,” she continued. “I find it cathartic. I get a real sense of satisfaction from seeing a job well done. I love to see everything gleaming. But Hugh is so tidy. He even clears up after Adele. I barely have anything left to do.”
“You’re just like my missus, you are.”
“Why thank you Jimmy,” Jane said, genuinely flattered by the compliment.
III
Jane’s attention turned from her reminiscing, to the purchase of her new Smartphone and she continued on her way to the phone shop which was owned by the adult Colin Russell.
When she reached it, she found a crime scene waiting for her. Colin’s seven-year-old son Kieran, guiltily peered out from behind his dad’s legs, clutching a football for dear life, while his father apologised profusely to the owner of a car whose front windscreen was cracked from side to side. The crack emanated from a muddy football-shaped imprint in the middle of the windscreen. It didn’t need a private detective to solve this one, Jane thought, suppressing a smile. Colin pressed money into the motorist’s hands and apologised once again.
Once the motorist had driven away, Colin took his young son by his shoulders. “How many times have I told you not to kick your football into the road,” he said.
“It wasn’t my fault,” the boy argued. “The car didn’t come round the corner until I’d kicked it.”
Colin was clearly about to argue further with his son when he spotted Jane. She greeted him with a wide smile. Colin looked down on his son, and ruffled his hair. “Don’t do it again.”
The rather surprised child stared at his dad for a few moments before saying, “No fear, dad.”
After watching his son run away as fast as he could, Colin asked, “How can I help you, Jane?”
“I believe it’s time I bought a Smartphone, Colin. I need it for my detective agency.”
The two turned and walked into his shop.
“Jimmy Anderson’s old place is back on the market, I see,” Jane said, still trying to stop herself from laughing out loud.
“So I heard.”
“Your lad seems to be a chip off the old block, or should I say young block,” she said to Colin.
He opened a glass cabinet containing his range of phones and removed a selection of them. “Tell me about it,” he said grimacing.
He placed the phones he’d taken from the cabinet on top of the counter.
“I made a list of all the things I need the phone to do,” Jane said, handing Colin the list in question. She’d spent some time compiling it, adding something else when she thought of it. He glanced down the ‘must-have’ list:
take photos
internet
memos
maps
something I could use to kill time when staking out suspects.
Colin gave her an old-fashioned look and said, “You can’t get a Smartphone that doesn’t do all those things nowadays. You want a phone with maps, I can give you a phone with GPS tracking. Not sure where you are, I can give you a phone that can hazard a guess.”
“Really?” she said.
“Really,” he replied. “We’ve got camera phones, music phones, fashion phones, gaming phones, phones for social climbers, phones for social networkers, phones for those too young to social network but who do anyway. They’re usually bright pink and called Best Mate. We’ve got phones to help you organise your life, entertain you and impress people with how organised, entertaining and impressive you are. The only phones we don’t have are phones for antisocial recluses, ’cos they don’t use ’em.”
Jane stared at the selection in front of her.
“Please choose the one you think most suitable,” she said.
Colin pushed one in her direction. She quite liked the look of it. It was curved and made from chrome.
“It’ll do everything you want and more. You’ll see it’s better turned out and a bit more curvaceous than some of the others,” he said. “Not unlike yourself, Jane.”
“I’ll take it.”
Some minutes passed while Colin set up Jane’s new Smartphone for her with her existing telephone number and e-mail address. When he finished, he said, “You have mail.”
Jane realised she hadn’t checked her e-mails since she’d left for Greenfields. She took the phone from him. The e-mail was from Charity. It was unusual for Charity to send her e-mails, with her living next door. She opened it to find the photos of Johnny’s underwear shoot, but unlike everyone else who’d received the photographs of Johnny in his thong, she did not scream with laughter. She did not think the photographs funny. Even Colin’s wry comments – “Think my missus would like to meet him!” – couldn’t force a smile. Her only response to these photographs was to think – Now I remember where I’ve seen you before, Monty!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Mantrap
I
Monty was the man who’d climbed the tentpole at the bikers’ rally. No wonder she hadn’t immediately recognised him. She’d been trying to look anywhere but at him. Monty didn’t know Pete Lambert. He was a show-off and a chancer who’d do anything to entertain an audience, and if he could earn himself a bit of money from it then so much the better.
She had little doubt he was already busy entertaining all his friends at her expense with an amusing story about gullible old ladies. She sent him a text asking how his search for Peter Lambert was going and got a quick response.
‘He’s been spotted in a betting shop. I’m on his trail! Can you send me more money? I’ll need it if I’m to track him down!’
She turned her phone off. She could have screamed in frustration. Not because of the lost money or time, but because she was no further forward in finding Pete Lambert than she had been at the beginning of the month. She was really not in a good mood by the time she got home.
“What that Monty needs is a visit from the police,” she told Maria.
“You should call them,” Maria said, handing her a freshly made coffee, and sitting down beside her at the kitchen table.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do Maria, I’m not getting anywhere in my search for Johnny’s father, and I still have no idea where the young girl I followed has come by so much money. It’s so frustrating. I know I said I wanted a challenge, but this is getting ridiculous!”
“I confident you will solve all your cases soon,” Maria said with a knowing smile. “I’m glad one of us is.”
“I have a special reason for confidence.”
“Which is?”
“You remember I also clean for witch, yes?”
“I do remember,” Jane said, wondering why Maria was raising this now. “A white witch I believe.”
“Very white. She only go out if full moon. I tell her of you only yesterday. I say you very clever lady, but sometimes even you are …” she struggled to find the English word.
“Stumped?” Jane suggested.
“Yes, stumped. I tell her this and she say we must straight away cast spell for the unstumping.”
&n
bsp; “Cast a spell for the what?”
“She has a spell for everything. You name it, she casts it. So we do. We make magick for you. We cast for you spell of inspiration.” Maria said.
Jane did not know whether to laugh or cry, or look for a new home help.
“You not believe?” Maria asked.
“Not really.”
“Me, I have open mind. You should also. There more things in heaven and earth. Many people say so.”
“So I understand.”
“A spell of inspiration take twenty-four hours to work. We make twenty-four hours ago. That means any minute now it will take effect.”
At that moment, Jane’s phone rang. It was Stella Barnes.
“I’m actually in the middle of my ironing…” Stella said “…but I had to stop to call you straight away. I’ve suddenly remembered something Pete did years ago. It’s just come to me out of the blue. My youngest’s really into the band Franks. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but you would have if you were a teenage boy.”
Jane said she hadn’t.
“You haven’t missed much. Like I said, he’s really into them. Every single one of his T-shirts have the name Franks on them it. Must have been ironing the same logo twenty times which jogged my memory. When Pete was about fifteen, he was busted by the police for joyriding. He got out of it by giving the police a false name and address.”
“Can you remember the name?”
“That’s just it. I can. The name he gave to the police was Franks. Johnny Franks. It was the name of the place he played snooker in. It was actually called the Sir James Frank Hall, but everyone called it Johnny Franks. He said the name just came into his head. I don’t know if it helps?”
This information lifted Jane’s spirit enormously. The clue provided by Stella Barnes may prove to be another red herring but at least it gave her something to go on. She said the same to Stella.