Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

My mind immediately jumped to those photographs I’d taken of Tommy and his freight container. Tommy already had copies, so he had no reason to steal them from me, but Janni didn’t. Was he trying to get sight of them – hoping to meet Tommy’s blackmail head on, and perhaps to unearth some counter-evidence that implicated Tommy?

  That made a kind of sense, though I didn’t really see how Dave could know about the pictures. Maybe they’d been mentioned when the brothers were under suspicion, or maybe he was just guessing. I thought I’d better play dumb, and simply said, “Photographs of what?”

  “You tell me.” He paused. “So are there any pictures, or is it all a figment of Tommy’s fertile imagination?”

  “To be totally honest, I’m not sure.”

  “Meaning that there are.”

  “Meaning that I need to think about it. I promise I’ll get back to you if there’s anything to report.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  The problem was that I didn’t have the pictures myself. They were on a CD, and I happened to know that this was in the possession of Sandy, my ex-wife. When she left me she’d laid claim to a whole bundle of disks containing photographs we’d taken over the years. Later I’d realised that some of the pictures I’d taken for magazine articles had been muddled up among them.

  I sat with my hand poised on my phone for several minutes, then pressed the code for Sandy. “It’s me. How would you feel if I dropped in?”

  Chapter 20

  Sandy was living in a neat suburban terrace house in Ealing, west London. I drove over on a breezy spring morning. It didn’t exactly conjure up the exciting lifestyle she’d implied that she wanted, but it certainly eclipsed my rather drab house in Thornton Heath. The frontage was finished in white pebbledash that gleamed in the sun, and flowers were springing up in the neat garden.

  She opened the door holding her mobile phone and looking distracted. She was smartly dressed in a skirt and jacket. “I didn’t think you were going to make it in time. I’ve got to go out.”

  “I thought you worked from home.” She’d set up some kind of practice in alternative therapies.

  “Yes, but I do have customers to see.” She waved me in and shut the door, ushering me through to a sunny lounge. “So how are you, Mike?”

  “I’m good. I’m fine. You’re looking well.” She’d let her naturally blond hair grow longer than when we were together, and currently it was tied in a loose pony tail. I still found her attractive, despite everything.

  “Alan says that too, but I’ve put on pounds this year.” She didn’t explain who Alan was and I decided not to ask. Instead, I said truthfully. “I don’t see it myself.”

  She looked at me appraisingly. “I must say you look better than I got from Joanna.”

  “A good friend she is.”

  She laughed. “You should be grateful that people are looking out for you – even me.”

  “I am.”

  We said nothing for a moment, then she said. “Hey, I like your book. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a good read.”

  “My god. I can’t believe you bought it.”

  “Well, J talked it up, so I thought why not? It’s quite revealing, actually.”

  “How so?”

  “All that stuff about that girl you were pining for. I can see now that I was just a stop-gap all along. I should have realised.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up her hands defensively and gave me an ironic smile. “Just joking.”

  “The leading character isn’t me. He’s fictional.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.” I wandered over and looked through the glazed double doors on to an extensive lawn, then turned back to her. “I think I’ll keep my next novel secret.”

  “You won’t sell many copies then.”

  Another silence, then she said, “Look, I really do have to go. I’m not just trying to avoid you. Why don’t you come round again another time, when there’s more time to talk? I do want us to be friends. Life’s too short.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Anyway, you want those pictures.” She crossed to a pine wall cabinet and opened the door, revealing an array of CD cases. “All our old stuff is in here. Knock yourself out.”

  “Ha.”

  “Can I leave you to lock up? I really am running late. Just pull the front door after you.”

  * * *

  Back at home, I shoved the CD into my new drive unit. There were about a dozen pictures in all, taken in that scruffy yard in the suburbs of Luton. They all showed more or less the same thing – Tommy Noble standing in front of or near the back doors of a twenty-foot freight container.

  He was wearing a hoodie that hid any significant detail of his face, so he was unrecognisable even without any doctoring of the image. The doors of the container were open, revealing a small compartment to one side, complete with a wooden chair and some old carpet on the floor. Luxury travel for the upmarket asylum-seeker. Tommy had shown me how this was built to resemble a wooden crate, and had been transported alongside genuine crates.

  I worked my way through the images several times, looking for something that Tommy might think Janni would find incriminating about them. Beyond the container was a nondescript wooden fence, and immediately to the right of the container, some of the shots showed the back of a big car – a sports utility vehicle. We had carefully leaned an old wooden board against the bumper so that the registration number wouldn’t be visible.

  It was during my third or fourth pass that I spotted something reflected in the rear window of the SUV: a man leaning on the corner of another container behind us – outside our field of vision, except in that reflection.

  From the angular shape of his face I was immediately convinced it was Janni. He must have been there during the entire session, but whether with Tommy’s knowledge or not I had no idea. Either way, this looked like proof that Janni was aware of the trafficking scam. It also showed that he knew Tommy had talked to me.

  The figure only appeared in four of images. I applied various filters to lighten and sharpen the image, but the main features of the face remained obstinately absent, and only the outline shape was clear.

  So were these pictures what my intruder had been looking for? It seemed possible. But would they give Tommy the hold over Janni that he was evidently expecting? I couldn’t tell.

  My first priority was to secure them. I carefully uploaded copies of the full set to two different cloud computing servers that I used. As for the original, I hid it in plain sight among the CDs on my shelf. The intruder had already checked those.

  All I needed to do now was decide what to do with this new information.

  Chapter 21

  Desmond Markham had been born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1938, and had married Shirley Hedges, also of Ashby, in 1960. He had studied accounting, and joined an accountancy practice in Burton-on-Trent in 1966. Evidently he had become increasingly interested in the property market, and by 1974 was working for a firm of property investors in Manchester.

  I’d learned most of this by following internet leads suggested by the Writers’ resource goodies. My search was now much more structured and methodical than before. Web sites that I’d never found in the past were proving unexpectedly fruitful. It was amazing what a lot you could learn about people from freely available public internet sources. You just had to persevere.

  I’d discovered that in 1983 Markham left the investment firm to become a partner in a new company, HGRC Properties (1983). He was managing director and there were two other directors – Shirley Markham and Robert Stainer, whoever he was. I couldn’t discover what the initials HGRC stood for, but they evidently pre-dated Markham’s arrival on the scene.

  HGRC had grown rapidly into a multi-million pound business, and the Markhams had moved into their expensive house in Bowden in 1987. But in 1990 Markham appeared to have resigned, and after that he and his wife evidently ceased to exist.

&nb
sp; Catrina Markham had been born in 1979, and had attended a school in south Manchester. She too had ceased to exist in 1990.

  So far I’d found no reference to the family being involved in an accident of any sort, and no press reports about them. They had simply evaporated.

  On top of that information, I knew that they had spent at least one holiday in Cornwall in 1990, and I had a vague sense that they might have visited the Fairmile on at least one previous occasion. But soon after the time when I knew them, they had disappeared forever.

  I wrote down a short list of possible explanations for their disappearance.

  * Murdered, and bodies never found.

  * Killed in some kind of accident (as yet unknown).

  * Emigrated.

  * Changed their name.

  * Went into witness protection.

  Those last three items could all apply simultaneously, or in any combination.

  I decided that murder was unlikely. If a whole family had disappeared in mysterious circumstances, surely there would have been press reports over a fairly long period? Yet I’d found nothing.

  Emigration was a simple explanation, and was the one I’d adopted for the fictitious family in my book. But tracking down the real family if that were the case would be an almost insurmountable challenge. I couldn’t possibly access records for every country where they might conceivably have gone; the very idea was absurd. And if they’d changed their name it would be a lost cause anyway.

  The idea of witness protection was interesting. Maybe Markham had blown the whistle on some financial scam and had to go into hiding. Or the family might have changed their name and gone into hiding on their own initiative. That would make them equally difficult to track down.

  I pushed my chair away from my desk and swivelled all the way round. I could see a problem looming, and it might prevent me taking this pursuit much further. If the family had indeed gone into hiding, whether enforced or self-imposed, the last thing I should be doing was trying to winkle them out of it. Although many years had passed since they’d vanished, they could still be under threat from whatever had driven them away in the first place. Who did I think I was to be putting them in danger?

  The Catch 22 was, how would I know? I would need to find out if they were in hiding in order to know whether I should be looking for them.

  * * *

  I paced around my small office trying to think this through. Maybe this was where the search ended. Joanna had shoved me off on this trajectory, and I’d kept going because it had been a diversion from proper work, but it simply wasn’t necessary or significant in the wider scheme of things.

  I tried to itemise the reasons for carrying on. Was there an article in this somewhere? An exposé? If so, of what? Maybe there was some potential here, but it was pretty nebulous.

  Was it research for another novel? No, I’d already hijacked my memory of these people for my existing novel. I couldn’t very well use the same theme a second time.

  Or was I still trying to lay the ghosts of my adolescent romantic fantasies? Well, possibly; but I wasn’t getting very far with that either. And now that I’d met Ashley, maybe the exercise had already fulfilled an alternative purpose. I might not have tracked down Trina Markham, but apparently I’d become involved with another girl whom I’d actually encountered at the same time. This was little short of astonishing, and serendipity if ever I saw it.

  I smiled sourly to myself. I hadn’t really become involved with Ashley – I just wanted to be, or wished I could be. But whatever the reality of our relationship, it didn’t depend on this search.

  Chapter 22

  “Mike, are you up for a trip to Amsterdam?” It was Phil Connor from the materials handling magazine – by no means a regular caller.

  Cautiously I answered, “I could be.”

  “There’s a mechanical handling show coming up. Normally we would cover this one in-house – it’s a big event in our calendar – but I’ve got unexpected family commitments and Adrian is otherwise engaged, and my usual regulars are already covering it for other people. You’ll really be doing me a favour if you take this on.”

  I did some fast thinking. Reporting on handling systems in the context of a general logistics show was one thing – it just required some intelligently applied business knowledge. Covering a specialised technical show was a rather different proposition. My knowledge of hydraulic cranes and forklift trucks was strictly superficial, and experts would soon peg me as a total impostor.

  Yet I couldn’t afford to turn away good work, and I felt I should cultivate Phil. How difficult would it be to busk my way through this? I asked him how much he would be paying, and his answer clinched it. The rate was unexpectedly generous, and included the flight and a hotel.

  “I’ll put it in my diary.”

  * * *

  I soon found myself regretting that decision. That afternoon my email system pinged, and I saw a message from ashley@latimerlogistics.com. It was headed “We meet again!”, and there was no text in it – just a photographic attachment. I opened the image and stared at it with fascination.

  I could see immediately that it was a picture taken on one of the lawns at the Fairmile Hotel. Slightly to the right of centre stood Trina, dressed in her familiar white top and blue shorts. She had her hands on the shoulders of a younger boy, perhaps pretending to strangle him; but her eye had been caught by something to the left of the image, and she was glancing over there rather than looking at the boy.

  My eyes followed her gaze, and on the far left of the picture stood a much younger version of myself, on a narrow path that ran alongside the lawn. I was dressed in khaki shorts and a grey T-shirt, and I was bending over, handing an object to a small child who had presumably dropped it.

  I zoomed in closer. Was this child Ashley? Had we in fact met each other all those years ago? I smiled to myself. “Met” was perhaps an exaggeration; “encountered” might be closer. The child was in part-profile, and I couldn’t see anything of Ashley in that small face. But she would know.

  I leaned back in my chair, staring at the picture. It must be her. Smiling to myself, I picked up my mobile and scrolled down to the number for Latimer Logistics.

  “Mr Stanhope! What d’you reckon?”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “My brother dug it out. I scanned it this morning.” She paused. “So we’ve known each other nearly all our lives. What do you think of that?”

  “Amazing! So do you remember me now that you’ve seen this?”

  She laughed. “Not really, sorry! I bet you don’t remember me either.”

  “Er, no.”

  “Well, there you go. Anyway, Trina looks just the way I remember her.”

  I couldn’t decide what to say next. I hadn’t been able to think of any appropriate way to follow up our meeting in the Midlands, so I’d done nothing. This was the first time we’d been in contact since then.

  She said hesitantly, “How’s life in London?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. You?”

  “Likewise.”

  She paused. I sensed that she was working up to some separate point. “Um, since you’re on, I’m going to be in London in a couple of weeks’ time. With Jack. I was going to call you anyway. We’re going to a do with some of his old college mates. It’s an annual thing. I was thinking that maybe you might fancy meeting for lunch while I’m there.” A pause. “If you’re free.”

  “With you and Jack?”

  “Well, no.” Another pause, then a little too quickly, “It’s on a Monday, and he’s coming straight back to Truro on the Tuesday, but I’m going up to see a girl friend in Bishops Stortford. I’ll be coming back on the Wednesday. I thought maybe we could meet up at lunchtime, when I’m on my way back through London.” She broke off. “I suppose it sounds a bit half-baked …”

  I jumped in quickly. “It’s an excellent idea. Let’s do it. Consider it agreed.”

  We fixed a time and place, then a sudd
en thought struck me. The day in question was my second day at the handling show in Holland. I’d been booked on an afternoon flight back to Gatwick.

  “Fuck, I’m supposed to be in Amsterdam on that day.”

  “Oh, look, it doesn’t matter, honestly. It was just a thought.”

  “It does matter. There must be some way round this.” My mind was racing. I’d told Phil I wanted that extra half-day at the show in case I needed to catch up on things I’d missed the previous day. Maybe I could do without it.

  “Let me see if I can re-schedule. I might be able to get back to London by lunchtime Wednesday.”

  “Well, if you’re sure …”

  “I’m sure.” I probably spoke a bit too vehemently, but I wanted to sound reassuring and definite. To lighten the tone, I added, “In the meantime, let me know if you find any more photos like the one you sent.”

  “I will.” Then, “I’ve got Patrick on the case.”

  * * *

  I put the phone down and sat there for a while, replaying the conversation we’d just had.

  I’d just made a date. With Ashley. There was no other way of looking at it. We weren’t old friends planning a reunion; we were scarcely friends at all. And we weren’t meeting because we happened to have been thrown together in the same environment. Quite the opposite; we were going out of our way to meet up under an arrangement that could prove quite tricky to pull off.

  Basically, we’d just tacitly agreed to move our relationship forward. If this wasn’t a date, I couldn’t think what was.

  I still couldn’t quite believe she was interested in me. After Sandy, my confidence had taken a battering, and I knew some women found my manner off-putting. Either I was too keen or I was too cynical – I’d heard it all. In a way I suppose I’d reverted to type. For some reason, Ashley apparently hadn’t been put off. Not yet, anyway.