by Nina Jon
Tom Howells showed Jane into his office, but even as he sat down at his desk, he needed a second puff at his inhaler.
His office looked out on to a narrow street at the back of the building. It was quite large, but cluttered with files, boxes of paperwork and piles of books. From what Jane could see, each one was a good worthy Socialist tract. Tom Howells sat behind his large desk and Jane sat across it from him.
“Emphysema,” he explained, following yet another puff of the inhaler.
He continually played with an empty ashtray on his desk, running his fingers round the rim. Now that Jane was face to face with Johnny Lamberts’ father, she could see he looked a good deal older than his sixty years.
“So your granddad was on the docks, was he?” Tom wheezed as he spoke.
“Greenwich,” she replied truthfully. “He died falling from scaffolding. Someone died on those docks every week in those days. No one can believe it nowadays, in our health and safety conscious world.”
“Working men still die in preventable industrial accidents all the time, Mrs Hetherington. And from industrial diseases, myself being a case in question,” he said, leaning across his desk and pointing at her, to make his point. “People think health and safety has put a stop to all of this, but it hasn’t,” he wheezed angrily. He would have continued, but breathlessness forced him to stop. He puffed on his inhaler three more times. “It’s vital that people understand the hardship still suffered by the working man up and down the country.”
Whilst Jane did not entirely disagree with the sentiments, this topic was getting her nowhere. She had no alternative but to interrupt him and steer the subject matter around to the reason for her visit. “Do you have a son who works on the docks?” she asked.
“I don’t have a son at all,” he replied brazenly. “I don’t have any kids as a matter of fact. I’ve had three wives and now I don’t have one. No more women for me.”
“Actually I think you do have a son, Mr Howells, or should I call you Mr Lambert? You have a son called Johnny.”
He stared at her. He was speechless. Too shocked even to reach for his inhaler.
“Sue?” he finally managed to gasp. “You flatter me,” Jane said, for her neighbour’s mother would have been a decade younger than she.
“My name really is Jane Hetherington and although I did have a grandfather who died on the docks, this is not the reason for my visit to you today. You see, I live next door to your son, Johnny. He asked me to try and find you. I’m a private detective. You turned out to be very elusive, Tom, or should I say Pete? It was a job to find you, but as you can see I did, and so here I am. And rather more to the point, here you are.”
“My God!” Another puff at the inhaler followed. “I haven’t thought about him and his mum since the day I left. This is too much, I need a fag.”
He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. “I know, I know, smoking indoors is illegal, but they can’t shoot me for it, can they?”
He lit up a cigarette and began to smoke it. This made him cough. Even so, he continued to smoke, though every breath was clearly agony for him. Jane used to smoke. As she knew only too well, smoking was every smoker’s closest friend to whom one could always return in one’s hour of need, even after a decade’s absence. Eventually, he held out the packet to Jane. She was so annoyed she almost took one, but remembering how long it had taken her to give up, declined his offer.
He continued to smoke, unable even to look at her. This moment was not something he had ever thought would happen to him, and he’d made no preparations for it. He had no way of dealing with it, other than to hide behind a mask of cigarette smoke.
“I think I should tell you that your son is alive and well. However, his mother died a few years ago.”
“Sue’s dead? I didn’t know that.”
Well, you wouldn’t, would you, Jane thought crossly.
“She have any more kids?”
“She didn’t remarry, nor have any more children, that I’m aware of.”
“Thought she would,” he said, awkwardly.
“Well she didn’t,” Jane snapped, inadvertently allowing herself to sound as angry as she felt.
“We weren’t getting on, you see. Thought it best if I left. Make a fresh start, like. I’ll be honest. I put her and the kiddie right out of me mind like. I closed that door behind me. Thought she’d do the same thing.”
Jane made no comment.
“He’s well, you say, my boy?”
Jane nodded and said, “As is your half-sister Stella, although she’s Stella Barnes now.”
Another silence followed this revelation. This allowed Jane to scrutinise Tom Howells carefully. He put out his cigarette and played with the cigarette lighter, twisting it around his fingers. With his head half-bowed and still avoiding eye contact, he mulled over the news. Jane had never been able to understand how some people were able to disassociate themselves from the enormity of their actions; nor the ease with which some were able to convince themselves that their actions were for the best, even when they were plainly cruel and selfish. Pete Lambert was a case in hand. He’d wiped the existence of his first wife and son from his memory without a qualm, and persuaded himself that because he’d moved on with his life without a thought for the past, so would Sue and Johnny. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that for those rejected, moving on was not so easy. Jane had no idea whether the embarrassment and awkwardness he was displaying, reflected real sorrow and remorse for his actions from years ago, or not.
“Stella got your letter,” Jane said. “She went to the Fleet and waited for you there. She even went back the next month. Did you change your mind?”
When Tom Howells looked completely blank, Jane said, “You sent Stella a letter asking that she met you in the Fleet, in Gore…”
“I never did! I haven’t been near the Fleet since I married Sue.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I never did, I tell you. I put the whole lot of them out of my mind when I went.”
“You sent Sue a postcard from Blackpool. I used it to find you – I’m Cat-Trap by the way. You haven’t won a holiday I’m afraid.”
He stared at her for a few moments then said, “I didn’t send the card no more than I sent a letter. I don’t know who sent the letter, but I know the lady in the photograph sent the card to Sue. I made the mistake of telling her about Sue. She said she did it so’s Sue’d know to get on with her life. Not sure I believe that. I knew Sue would use it to find me, so I changed my name again to something I knew I could remember, and moved on again without either of them.”
An uneasy silence followed.
“Could you tell my boy something for me?” he eventually said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Olive Branch
Johnny felt rather pleased with himself. He’d earned good money lobbing a tree on the common. He slammed the money onto the kitchen table. “Not bad for a day’s work, eh?” he said.
“I’ve finally got enough to take you skiing. Where and when do you want to go – St. Moritz!”
When Charity didn’t reply, he said, “Look a bit happier about it, won’t you? I’ve worked my what-sits off to take you skiing. I know, I know – it’s the least I can do after what I did, etc, etc – but I am trying to make amends here.”
“Johnny,” a sombre sounding Charity said, “Jane’s here. She’s got something to tell you.”
The couple moved to join Jane in the front room, where she told Johnny about her meeting with his father that morning. She left nothing out, nor did she embellish anything. She merely informed Johnny factually how she’d tracked down his father and then she repeated the conversation she’d had with him.
“So he’s dying then?” Charity said. If her words sounded harsh, it was because they were said without a shred of sympathy, for she felt none.
“I’m afraid that if you wish to make peace with your father, Johnny, you must do it
now,” Jane said softly.
At that moment, Jack walked into the room. Responding to the silence, he asked, “Why are you lot so quiet? What’s going on?”
“Jane’s found me old man,” Johnny said.
“Told you she was good,” Jack said, disappearing out of the room again.
Jane rose. “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll show myself out.”
Jane followed Jack into the kitchen. She found him leaning up against one of the kitchen units, hungrily eating a bag of cheese and onion crisps.
“Wonder what Johnny’ll do?” Jack mused. “Dunno what I’d do if I was him. It’s not right what his dad did. Not sure I’d want to see him again if I was Johnny.”
Jane wasn’t either. To change the subject, she pointed to the words emblazoned across to the bag of crisps:-
‘Is there £100,000 inside this packet?!?’
“I presume there wasn’t?” Jack glanced at the packet. “Na. Someone’s already won it, worst luck. They claimed the prize months ago. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. You wouldn’t believe how many bags of crisps me, Johnny and Charity have eaten, and all we ever seem to get are these.”
He reached behind him, and from a bowl on the worktop, picked up the same ‘prize’ Felix had won with his crisps – the picture of a man spread-eagled against a brick wall and the words:- Better Luck Next Time!
“We haven’t even won so much as a free bag of crisps, let alone one hundred thousand pounds. It sucks,” Jack said.
As Jane stared at the tiny picture, an idea hit her like the brick wall in the picture. Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said he could resist anything but temptation?
Jack tipped the remains of the bag of crisps into his mouth to finish them off, and made to throw the empty crisp bag in the bin. “Could I?” Jane asked.
Jack handed it to her. She flattened out the empty bag and stared at it.
“You don’t happen to know who won the one hundred thousand pounds do you?” she asked him. “Was it a man or a woman? Someone young or old?”
“It was an eighteen year old girl. When Charity heard, she said: ‘The money won’t make her happy,’ and I said, ‘bet it will’.”
“I don’t think it has,” Jane said, still staring at the crisp bag in her hand.
“You know who won it?”
“I think I might.”
“Who?”
“A young woman called Lucy.”
She wondered why she hadn’t worked it out the moment Felix had stood up at the bikers’ rally with a raffle ticket which didn’t really belong to him, trying to claim a prize which wasn’t his.
Jane quickly returned home to set another trap. With her own number withheld, and her new Smartphone set to ‘record’, she telephoned Lucy Erpingham. She introduced herself, using her maiden name.
“My name is Jane Preston, and I represent the Frazer Crisps’ promotional department. I understand that you recently claimed the one hundred thousand pounds cash prize?”
“Er, er…”
“There is no easy way for me to put this, and on behalf of my company I must apologise profusely, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you for it back.”
“What?” Lucy shrieked. “You can’t. You can’t.”
“I’m afraid someone else is maintaining that the winning envelope in fact belonged to them, and the prize was claimed without their knowledge or agreement. We’re going to have to verify who is the genuine winner, and why two winners have come forward. Let’s not make this any more difficult than it already is.”
“I’m the real winner,” Lucy said. “I found the envelope. I showed you the receipt. The money is mine. Those other people are lying. They’re…Oh my God!”
The line went dead at Lucy’s end.
Jane immediately sent an e-mail to Jodie, with the telephone recording attached.
‘I think I have established how your sister came across the money she’s so gaily spending, and why she is avoiding you. However, I must warn you, you are not going to like what you’re about to learn.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Will No One Rid Me of this Turbulent Mouse?
The following morning, as Jane scattered seeds along the tree-lined border which separated her property from the field at its rear, an anxious looking Maria summoned her to the summerhouse. The look on Maria’s face told Jane she was not to be confronted with good news.
“He’s found his way back!” Maria said, pointing to the mouse droppings on the floor of the summerhouse.
“There’s nothing for it but poison,” Jane said wearily.
“Poison! You put him far away, yet he back already. The mouse must be genius to make such epic journey! He deserves our respect.”
Jane thought this show of horror ironic, coming from a woman who was proposing death by a blunt instrument for the mouse only a few weeks earlier.
“It can’t be the same mouse. I must have an infestation. I’ll be overrun. I don’t want to either, but what’s the alternative?”
“Magick!” Maria said.
“Magick?”
“My white witch has magicked away hundreds of mouses – she’s told me so. She says spells. Mouses leave. No lives lost.” Jane studied her to see whether or not she was joking.
Apparently she wasn’t. “I think I need more than a sprinkling of fairy dust, Maria.”
Maria, it seemed, was not going to give up without a fight. A bit like the mouse.
“Her magick help you before. Why not now?”
“When did it help me before?”
“You solve your cases only when we cast for you spell of inspiration. How else you explain?”
“I like to think I played some part, Maria,” Jane murmured.
“You played your part after spell of inspiration inspire you,” Maria said, now clearly a convert to Wicca. “Anyway, where harm in trying magick? You nice lady. You try not to hurt animals. As you say yourself, not many mouses like yours left in wild.”
This was true, thought Jane. Not only that, but the mouse, or mice, had, in their own way, helped her track down Johnny’s father.
“Well, I suppose it might be worth giving it a go. I’d rather not have to share my summerhouse with the carcasses of decaying mice, although I remain to be convinced.”
Jane left Maria calling her white witch and returned to scattering her seeds. Johnny appeared in his back garden. She hadn’t seen him since the evening before. She waved at him, and he jumped over the fence and walked over to join her.
“I bought these last year,” she said. “I’ve never seen them before. They’re a type of poppy. They like shade and woodland-like soil. I thought a few clumps along the border here would look nice.” She poured some more seeds into her hand, then handed Johnny the packet to study.
Johnny read the packet. The flowers were called Stytophorum. They had bright yellow, saucer-shaped petals and wide lobed leaves. Judging by the picture, the leaves grew on long stalks to stand taller than the flowers. Jane was right, he thought – clumps of them spreading along the ground here would look nice. He poured some of the seeds into his own hand and threw them under the base of a tree.
“I’ve decided not to contact my father,” he said.
Jane hurled the last of the seeds in her hand away into the distance.
“No?” she asked softly.
“Since he walked out, not a moment has gone by when I haven’t thought about him, but he hasn’t thought about me and Mum once. Not once. How could he think walking out wouldn’t devastate me and Mum? Did he really think we’d just move on without a care in the world ’cos he could? He’s my Dad. He was her husband. You care more about me than he does.”
His words were spoken in such a tone of anguish and disappointment it broke Jane’s heart to hear them. She did care about him, and so did Charity, and Jack and Stella. They all cared about him – deeply. She reached out and touched his arm. “Cup of tea?” she asked. “I stil
l have some of those Garibaldi biscuits left, I think.”
As the two walked back to the house together, Johnny said, “Don’t know what I expected. Guess I hoped there was a nicer explanation, you know, like he wanted to come back but couldn’t for some reason, or he had amnesia or something.”
Once they were indoors, Jane filled the kettle while Johnny sat down at the kitchen table.
“I was lucky with my parents,” she said. “So was Hugh, but his mother, Hettie wasn’t. Her father was a heavy drinker. He once marooned her mother, brother and herself in London, when she was still just a child. They’d driven down as a family. Her mother had taken them shopping, whilst her father went to see one of his business partners. It must have been what’s called a wet lunch, because he was so drunk afterwards that he drove back home without them. People didn’t worry about drink driving then, it wasn’t even illegal. Her poor mother had so little money on her, she had to beg the guard to let her and the children travel on the train without a ticket. Her father had to meet her at the station, and settle up with the guard. Married women didn’t have their own credit cards back then.” She placed the pot of tea and the biscuits on the table. “You know what they say – you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Unfortunately, that’s all too true.” To lighten the mood, she said, “I hear you’ve raised enough for the holiday?”
“Yeah. Didn’t need as much now Jack’s not going.”
“Is he not?”
“He wants to stay here, to be with Polly. He wants to stay at our place by himself, but Charity won’t have it. Can he bunk down here for the week? Otherwise I think we’ll all be staying.”
“Of course he can. It’ll be nice to have the company.”
Johnny’s phone began to ring.
“It’s Felix,” he said, answering it. “Hey Felix, how’s it going?”
Felix hurriedly returned the greeting before launching into a rant: “Okay, let me start at the beginning. Last night I saw smoke rising from the churchyard and thinking a fire had broken out, Miles and I rushed over there, but when we got there all we found was a saucepan abandoned in a camp fire. Miles thought he heard someone say a name – Dee, Lee, Bee, Itmee – or something, but there was no one there. The pan had some vile sticky liquid in the bottom. I tasted it. It was cough mixture. I’ve found plenty of empty cough mixture bottles in churchyards over the years, but never some warmed up before! Anyway, I’ve had enough. I’ve bought one of those mosquito things which make an abominable shrieking noise, only audible to the under twenty-ones. I tested it on mine, it worked a treat. It drove them nuts!” he said, with a chuckle. “Personally I’d make them compulsory on all public buildings.”