by Tim Ellis
‘It was the right thing to do.’
‘I know... So, why do you think that me finding out about my parents is a threat to national security?’
‘Go back to the beginning, Parish. Maybe it’s not your parents, but you that’s the threat to national security.’
‘I’m going to miss you, Doc.’
‘I’ll be keeping watch over you, Parish.’
‘I’d be grateful, Doc, goodbye.’
‘Goodbye Parish, and say goodbye to the beautiful Constable Richards for me.’
‘I will, Doc.’ He finished his coffee and left.
***
Sunday, 15th May
‘Right, get your glad rags on,’ Parish said to Angie and Richards at breakfast. ‘We’re going out for lunch.’
‘What, you and mum?’
‘Don’t you want to come, love?’ Angie said.
‘Where?’
‘Wait and see,’ Parish said.
‘I think I’ve had enough surprises.’
‘You’ve got two choices. You either walk to the car or I can sling you over my shoulder and carry you?’
‘You’re so mean, Sir.’
‘Go and get ready, Richards.’
‘I’ll need...’
‘You’ve got half an hour. I don’t want you spending three hours in the bathroom.’
‘Are you going to let him order me about like that on my day off, mum?’
‘You should come with us and get some fresh air. It’ll do you good.’
‘Some mother you’ve turned out to be,’ she said stamping upstairs.
Parish drove there, but he planned to have a couple of drinks, so Angie could drive back. She couldn’t drink alcohol because of the baby. He took the A121 through Waltham Abbey and Waltham Cross, and arrived in Goffs Oak at eleven forty-five.
‘Why have you brought us to a field, Sir?’
‘You’re determined not to enjoy yourself aren’t you, Richards?’
‘Huh!’
‘According to my birth certificate, which is probably a total fabrication, this is where I spent the first two years of my life.’
Richards sat forward in the back seat. ‘Really?’
‘And my parents, if they actually were my parents, lived here.’
‘Where?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Richards. We’ll have lunch, and then we’ll do some detective work.’
‘Have you brought a picnic, mum?’
‘Naughty children get smacked, Richards.’
‘You wouldn’t, and anyway it’s illegal to smack naughty children.’
Parish drove along Cuffley Hill, turned into Newgatestreet Road, and pulled into the car park outside The Goffs Oak pub.
‘This looks nice,’ Richards said.
‘Only the best for the two most beautiful women in the world.’
‘I could have been prettier if you’d let me take my time this morning.’
‘Stop complaining, Richards.’
‘Huh.’
‘I hope they do roast beef,’ Angie said.
They did do roast beef, which is also what Parish had. Richards ordered the crispy duck.
‘Where are we going first, Sir?’
‘Here. You’re going to go into the bar to ask any local people you can find if they knew George and Enid Parish from around 1980, where they lived, where they worked, and anything else you can find out about them.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to sit here and talk with your mother, and while I’m doing that I’m going to have another pint of Guinness.’
‘You only brought me to do all the work.’
‘Think of it as training in how to extract information from hostile witnesses.’
‘Why will they be hostile?’
‘Local people in rural communities always are.’
She stood up and pushed her chair in. ‘I don’t believe everything you tell me, you know?’
‘Are you still here, Richards?’
After three-quarters of an hour they had to go in search of her, and eventually found her surrounded by seven men in the bar.
‘When you’re ready, Richards?’
‘Do we have to, Sir?’
‘Yes, we do. We’ve got the church to visit yet.’
After she’d exchanged names and telephone numbers with all her admirers she followed Parish and Angie outside.
‘Did you forget what you were meant to be doing?’ Parish said.
‘No, they helped me.’
‘Oh? It didn’t look like they were helping.’
‘They knew the old people who lived here in 1980.’
‘Did you find out anything?’
‘I’m a detective, aren’t I?’
‘Nearly... So?’
‘I know where your parents lived and where they worked, but nobody remembered them having a baby.’
‘Okay. I won’t make you pay for your share of lunch then.’
‘As if.’
Angie drove and Richards directed her along Crouch Lane, over Rags Brook and along a rutted track to Elderberry Farm.
‘The owner is a Michael Wells,’ Richards said as they climbed out of the car.
Michael Wells was a man in his late sixties. He wore a faded blue checked shirt, a muddy blue overall, and a floppy hat. His face was a roadmap of lines and furrows with patches of grey stubble and sagging eyelids that made him look perpetually sleepy.
‘What do you want?’ he said in an unwelcoming voice as he came to meet them.
Parish stepped forward. ‘I understand George Parish worked here?’
‘Over thirty years ago. What’s it to you?’
‘I’m Jed Parish, his son.’
‘Liar. George and Enid couldn’t have children.’
‘On my birth certificate, they’re my parents.’
‘Well, it’s a forgery. They didn’t have no children.’
‘Did they adopt a child?’ Richards asked.
‘No. In all the time George worked for me, him and Enid didn’t have no children.’
‘Thank you, Richards, I’ll ask the questions.’
‘Huh.’
‘Do you know anything about the car crash?’
‘What car crash?’
‘The one they died in?’
‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong people – that’ll be it. George didn’t die in no car crash, he just disappeared. One day him and Enid were here, the next they was gone. Don’t know what happened to them, but they was the talk of the village for a long time.’
‘Thanks very much for your help, Mr Wells.’
‘You’re welcome.’
As Parish turned to go he thought of something. ‘You don’t know if there are any pictures of George and Enid anywhere, do you?’
Wells rubbed the stubble on his chin and then his eyes opened wide. ‘Wait here,’ he said striding towards his house, which was a stone two-storey building with wood-framed windows and a misshapen slate roof. He ducked through the open front door and was gone for about five minutes. Parish was beginning to wonder whether they’d be left there on purpose when the old man reappeared.
‘Here,’ he said offering Parish a newspaper cutting. ‘That’ll do it.’
It was an article from the Goffs Oak Herald about the bumper harvest of 1979 and the picture contained a group of farm workers. Underneath the picture were the names of each of the group. To the right of the picture stood a tall bony-looking man with dark hair called George Parish.
‘Ay, that was a good year for the harvest. You don’t get many like that, especially these days.’
Parish offered the picture back, but Wells said, ‘You can keep it, I ain’t got no more use for it.’
‘Thank you,’ Parish said and turned to go again, but Wells stopped him in his tracks before he’d taken two paces.
‘He weren’t English, you know.’
‘Who, George?’
‘Ay. Said he was, bu
t he had an accent. I heard him and Enid arguing once, and they weren’t shouting at each other in English.’
‘Do you know what language it was?’
‘I weren’t no good with languages, but I reckon it was either Spanish or Italian, or something like that.’
Parish was taken by surprise. He’d had it in the back of his mind that George and Enid Parish were Russian sleepers who had been called back home when the Soviet Union began to collapse. So much for that theory, he thought. Spanish or Italian! What the hell did that mean?
‘You’ve been a great help, Mr Wells, thank you.’
‘They had a little cottage on Chiltern Close, number five it was. Strangest thing though...’
‘What?’ Parish said.
‘They left in the night, took some clothes with them, but left everything else, and never came back for any of it. Didn’t even say goodbye or nowt.’
‘And there was no child?’
‘Nope, definitely no kid.’
They climbed into the car.
‘What does it all mean, Sir?’
‘It means that George and Enid Parish, which probably weren’t their real names, weren’t my parents.’
‘But if they weren’t,’ Angie said. ‘Who were?’
‘A good question, but there are lots of others. Who were George and Enid Parish? Where did they come from? Why did they disappear? Where did they go? Why are they on my birth certificate as my parents? Who are my real parents? Who gave me to them? Who the hell am I? There are probably a million other questions I could think of given time.’
‘It’s starting to get dark, Sir.’
‘Yes, we’ll take a quick look at 5 Chiltern Close and then head home.’
‘If they weren’t your parents,’ Richards said. ‘There doesn’t seem much point looking at the house because you never lived there.’
‘Maybe I did, maybe they kept me a secret for some reason.’
‘You’re clutching at shadows, Jed,’ Angie said.
‘It seems that’s all there is,’ he said.
Number 5 Chiltern Close was a small stone cottage, but other people lived there now. He didn’t stay long before he started off home.
‘Maybe you came from the planet Krypton, Sir, and your real name is Luke Skywalker.’
‘You watch far too much television, Richards.’
‘Huh.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Monday, 16th May
He had to wear his police uniform with the Inspector’s pips The Chief’s funeral was not really the place he’d expected to wear it for the first time, but he thought it was fitting because Walter Day had promoted him.
The Medal Ceremony for Angie and Toadstone followed by the Queen’s Garden Party was due to take place on Saturday 21st May. It was there that he’d hoped to where his new uniform, and be accompanied by the Chief and Doc Michelin.
Today, he would have to say goodbye to Walter Day, and he was really sad about that. Next week, he’d have to say farewell to Doc Michelin. He hated goodbyes, especially when they were said to friends.
Angie and Richards were by his side, and the three of them sat next to Kowalski and Jerry, and Ed Gorman and his wife Daisy. The Church was full to bursting – everyone to a man liked Walter Day.
Richards cried the whole time and couldn’t sing either of the two hymns.
Outside, Debbie Shinwell said, ‘Walter made a will, and you two are invited to the reading.’
‘Oh, Sir,’ Richards said, and carried on crying.
‘Come to Walter’s house, the solicitor is meeting us there to read the will.’
Walter Day had no surviving relatives. The only people at the reading, besides the solicitor, were Debbie, Parish, Richards and Angie.
The solicitor listed Walter Day’s assets, and it transpired that he was rich, even after death duties. He left half a million pounds to Debbie, his house – valued at £750,000 – to Richards, and the remaining £250,000 to Parish and Angie’s new baby, on the proviso that if it was a boy one of his names would be Walter.
Richards ran out into her new back garden crying. Debbie said, ‘He told me he’d changed his will, and that he’d left the house to Mary. He loved her as if she was his own daughter, and you two welcomed him into your home as a friend. He loved all three of you.’
‘We loved him as well,’ Angie said. ‘We’re going to miss him terribly.’
Tears ran from Parish’s eyes, he was too emotional to speak. In such a short time, Walter Day had become the father he’d never had.
‘I won’t be coming back to the station,’ Debbie said. ‘I’m taking my husband on a world cruise. While we’re away I’ll instruct solicitors to sell our house and everything else of any value, and we’ll see where we end up. Harold hasn’t got long to live, so we’ll see the world before he goes, and then I’ll start a new life wherever that might be.’
They wished her good luck, found Richards and went back home.
In the afternoon he phoned Somerset House and spoke to the registrar quoting the letter he’d received.
‘When you say there are no records,’ he said, ‘what exactly does that mean?’
‘If I type George Parish into the database, the results are unrelated to your request. As far as we’re concerned, a person by that name was never born, never married an Enid, and never died.’
He had a thought. ‘I have a birth certificate, George and Enid Parish are identified as my parents, but on the certificate there’s also a number, which I assume is an issue number?’
‘Most definitely, what is it?’
He was sat in the garden having a beer. Digby lay at his feet. ‘One moment.’ He had to go in through the patio doors and take it out of a drawer. ‘4086549721.’
He could hear the man keying in the numbers.
‘Ah...’
‘What?’
‘There was a batch stolen in the late seventies. Your certificate is the first and only one to appear from that stolen batch.’
‘So, in other words, it’s a forgery?’
‘I’m sorry, yes.’
‘Thanks for your help.’
He disconnected the call. Now he didn’t even have a birth certificate. He grabbed another beer from the fridge. His whole life was a lie. If he wasn’t Jed Parish, who was he?
***
Tuesday, 17th May
He arrived at the King George Hospital Trauma & Counselling Clinic at nine twenty-five. The receptionist behind the curved wooden counter asked him to sit down and offered him coffee, which he accepted. Before she’d made it though, a door opened and the pierced and hairy Dr Marie Rafferty appeared.
‘Mr Parish?’
He wondered if the receptionist would bring his coffee through as he went into the Doctor’s consulting room. There was a couch, and he felt tired just looking at it. He sat in the chair she directed him to.
‘It’s Inspector Parish, unless you want me to call you Miss Rafferty?’
‘So, you’ve set out your stall?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’ll treat you as a hostile patient similar to the way barristers treat awkward witnesses.’
‘Awkward? I only asked you to call me Inspector instead of Mister.’
‘Yes, but you chose to do it, and you chose to do it now.’
‘Well, I don’t want you thinking I’m a pushover.’
She sat down in the easy chair opposite him. Her hair had been skewered on top of her head with a wooden three-pronged comb. She wore a multicoloured long baggy dress that resembled a tent, and the diamond stud had been replaced with a tiny dark stone that he thought looked more like a blackhead.
Leaning back in the chair and opening up an A4 notebook she said out loud and wrote, ‘Antagonistic.’
‘I’m not antagonistic,’ he said.
As she wrote in her notebook she continued to speak out loud. ‘Defensive.’
‘Where are you getting all this from?’
‘Your behaviou
r and your words. Look at how you’re sat. Your legs are crossed, you’re turned slightly away from me, and your knuckles are white from gripping the arms of the chair. Everything you’ve said since...’
There was a soft knock on the door and the receptionist came in with his coffee. He took it and thanked her. Maybe this would make him less antagonistic, he thought.
‘As I was saying... everything you’ve said since you entered this room has been combative. You see yourself in opposition to me, when I’m actually here to help you.’
‘You’re making the assumption I need help.’
‘Which is a valid assumption since you’re the one who booked the appointment.’
Yes, of course, he’d only booked an appointment to keep Richards happy and make sure she got back into the programme. ‘Yeah, that was probably a mistake. I’m sure you’re a brilliant therapist, but I think I’ll go now.’
‘Afraid,’ she wrote down.
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Tell me about your childhood?’
He spent the remaining time telling Dr Rafferty about Beechtree Orphanage, his abuse at the hands of those who were meant to keep him safe, his journey through the care system, university, joining the police, Walter Day, Richards, Doc Michelin, Angie and her pregnancy. In fact, he told her everything there was to tell about Jed Parish. It was as if she had opened up the floodgates. Then he described what had happened when he contacted Somerset House, and his investigations at Goffs Oak.
‘We might be able to find out what happened during those first two years of your life through regression therapy if you’re willing?’
‘Isn’t my session over?’
‘I knew you’d be trouble, so I kept the next slot free.’
‘What does it entail?’
She started a metronome.
‘Under hypnosis we travel back in time. It’s controversial, and there are issues about reliability, but in your case I don’t think that will matter. We’ll find what we find, and it might make sense, or it might not.’
‘I don’t think you’ll be able to...’
‘Three, two, one.’ Dr Rafferty clicked her fingers.