I said, “Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why do those people come here?”
He shrugged. “Because they’re interested in the murder.”
“But why them? Why those particular people?”
“I have no idea.”
* * *
We went back down the hill and got in the car. Clean Head started the engine. “Let’s go and visit Abner the Zombie Cat,” said Tinkler. “Perhaps he’ll fart for us.”
“Abner the Zombie What?” said Clean Head, frowning as she turned onto the Dover Road. Tinkler explained in extensive detail, lingering on the effects of sardines on the digestive system of the poor cat.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Slow down.”
“What is it?” said Nevada.
There, parked by the side of the road, was the van we’d seen earlier, with the nocturnal skyscape painted on its side and the logo Ms Moon is sending us to sleep with her healing silver rays. Clean Head pulled up beside it and I got out of the car. There was no one in the van. I walked around it and looked at the other side.
Of course, painted on this side was the big smiling sun shining its rays across a blue sky and the lettering that read: Mr Sunshine is giving us some golden love today. Nevada got out of the car and joined me. I said, “It’s not a companion piece. It’s the same van.”
“Night and day,” said Nevada. “Yin and yang. The great cosmic balance.”
I made a note of the licence plate. I had no idea why, or what I’d do with it. Then we got back in the car and set off for London.
We told Clean Head and Tinkler the gruesome story we’d learned on our murder tour. This proved to be a mistake, at least in the case of Tinkler. All the way back he kept singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’.
“Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun!”
He wouldn’t shut up. Even when Clean Head told him to, he kept on quietly humming the tune. “I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s stuck in my head now.”
16. MUD ON THE PLATES
We got back to London to find two cats who thought they’d been criminally neglected and underfed. As soon as we started pouring biscuits into their bowls, the phone began to ring. So I left Nevada to make sure that Turk wouldn’t steal Fanny’s leftovers from her bowl. Or vice versa.
It was Joan Honeyland, who rang regularly at no particular time of day for updates on our quest. I told her I hadn’t found any new records and was immediately met with her usual rush of reassurances that there was no hurry and that I was doing a fine job. This didn’t lessen my regret about how little I’d so far achieved for her, and I weighed up whether I should tell her about our guided tour of the pub in Kingsdown.
The problem was, we’d spent quite a lot of her money on that little outing and it had yielded very little of direct value to her. It was turning out that the Silk Stockings Murder, as ghoulishly interesting as it might be in its own right, didn’t seem relevant to the task at hand. This was because her father, good old Lucky, was utterly peripheral. All we’d gleaned from our local historian were some sound bites concerning the colonel’s steadfast loyalty and support for Johnny Thomas, and those death cell visits. How he’d held Johnny’s hand, literally and figuratively, on the night before the young airman went to the gallows.
But we’d already had all this from other sources.
Luckily Miss Honeyland seemed content to do most of the talking, so I didn’t have to bring this up. She took pleasure in informing me that our half-wit recording engineer—my term, not hers—had finally managed to get hold of a turntable with a 78rpm speed setting and was now able to proceed with the much-discussed digital transfer of the Flare Path Orchestra records.
This cooled me down a little in regard to this chump and his endless postponements. In a way, I could see what the problem had been. Most turntables today are intended for club and DJ use. They are designed for scratching, mixing and backtracking, and only have 33 and 45 settings. There isn’t much call for beat-matching on shellac.
Nonetheless, I didn’t entirely understand the delay. There were still millions of turntables out there, old ones and new ones with a 78 setting, that he could have bought or borrowed.
Perhaps he simply wanted to do the job properly and had been looking for a suitably high-precision deck that really would go around at exactly and precisely 78 revolutions per minute without variation and allow the music to be most accurately and realistically harvested out of those antique grooves.
I wondered what the odds on that were.
As soon as I said goodbye to Miss Honeyland and hung up, the phone rang again. I thought she’d forgotten something and called back. But it was just my voicemail telling me I had a message. Nevada came and sat on the arm of the sofa as I dialled in to hear it. “Who is it?” she said.
“Gresford-Jones.” I listened to the maddeningly measured nasal cadences of the old teacher.
“He must have heard us talking about him,” said Nevada. “His ears must have been burning. Abner’s ears must have been burning. What’s left of them, his little decaying undead ears.”
Gresford-Jones seemed to feel that speaking to someone’s voicemail was like addressing a class full of particularly stupid children. Everything was painstakingly enunciated, to allow no chance of ambiguity or error. But eventually he concluded, and the gist of it was that he had some further reminiscences and anecdotal material that he thought might be vital for our purposes.
In other words, that we’d be willing to pay for.
He finished by asking if we would be interested, and if so to ring him and make an appointment. I rang straight back, but there was no answer. And no voicemail.
I tried him again just before we went to bed. No dice.
The following day I tried him again at regular intervals and began to curse his lack of any kind of mechanism for handling phone messages.
“Yes, you’d think he could at least train his zombie cat to answer it,” said Nevada, when I groused to her about the situation.
The next day I tried to reach him five times before lunch and three times after. After the fourth attempt, I went out for a walk on the Common, resisting the urge to try him on my mobile. When I came back I sat down before I took my jacket off, picked up the phone and called him again. As if responding to my determination, Gresford-Jones answered promptly, and I made an appointment to see him at his earliest availability. I didn’t think there would be too many other demands on his time, but it turned out he had to inspect his diary with microscopic care before he’d agree on when we could actually see him. But agree we did. Eventually.
As I hung up and went to report my triumph to Nevada—and finally take my jacket off—the phone rang again. I went back and answered it.
It was Gerry Wuggins.
He sounded strange.
* * *
We walked through the red metal ranch-style gate and up the hill towards Gerry’s house. It was a cloudy day here in Sevenoaks. The air smelled nice, with a country sweetness. But there was a bite in it and the birds seemed to be huddling to keep warm in the trees above us. Where had spring gone?
“You said he sounded strange when he rang you,” said Nevada. “Strange in what way?”
“Well, as if he was reluctant to be talking to me.”
“But he rang you,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said. “He was reluctant, but also relieved. He said he was glad to have reached me. And he sounded like he really was.”
“Shh,” said Nevada. “There he is now.”
Gerry was indeed revealed as we walked around the bend in the driveway, standing in front of us. He was wearing tweed trousers and a checked shirt under an old green sweater with brass buttons. His ruddy face shifted from anxiety to a smile of welcome, and he waved his big hands in greeting, shoes scuffling eagerly as he came downhill to meet us.
“Good to see you again,” he said, shaking our hands. “Bit different around here, isn’t it, without a
wedding going on? Quieter.” He led us up the hill and across the lawn, into the gardens behind the house. We sat down at a folding pink metal table on the flagstone patio. He poured us glasses of Pimm’s from a jug as we sat looking out at the vegetable beds, which were extensive and impressive. Green beans were much in evidence in the nearby greenhouse. I remembered his chutney and wondered if I should ask for a jar for Tinkler, for old times’ sake.
Nevada took out her phone, switched it to record, and set it on the table in front of us. Gerry paused in pouring the drinks. “What’s that for?” He peered at the phone.
“To record your anecdotes about Lucky Honeyland,” I said. “As agreed. That’s why we’re here.” Nevada gave me a look. Perhaps I spoke a little sharply, but we’d come all this way, driving the Volvo we’d borrowed from Tinkler, and I wasn’t interested in changes of heart or other complications.
But Gerry just relaxed and smiled. “Oh, yeah, that. We can do that too.” He handed us our drinks. “But first there’s something else. Something I need to get off my chest.” He took a deep breath, frowning and glancing down at the table in front of him as if searching for something there. I got the impression he didn’t want to meet our eyes. “Do you remember what I said the last time I saw you, about my records?”
I looked at him. “You said your wife had thrown them away.”
He raised his pale eyes to gaze into mine. He didn’t look happy. “Yeah, look, mate, I’m sorry about that.”
There was silence for a moment while this sunk in. We could hear the birds singing in the garden. I said, “You mean she didn’t throw them away?”
He nodded. Nevada said, “You mean you’ve still got your records?” He nodded again. “But that’s wonderful news,” she said. She looked at me. “Isn’t that wonderful news?”
“It is. Wonderful.” I was watching Gerry, waiting for further explanation. The obvious question was: why had he lied to us? I could see he was struggling with something, and I waited.
Finally he said, “You see, what happened was, the night you came around, after you were gone—in fact, while you were still here—Sheryll had a word with me.” Sheryll was the second wife. I remembered her calling him away from the kitchen and talking to him out of earshot. And then I remembered the look she had given us when we came back. She hadn’t been glad to see us.
“You see,” said Gerry, “she thought you were a bit dodgy. Not you, but the situation. It did seem a bit dodgy, what with you turning up like that in the middle of the night, the night of Belinda’s wedding reception, and wanting to buy the records like that.”
“It was only the middle of the night because you told us to come back later,” said Nevada mildly.
He shook his head. “I know, dear, I know. But it’s just that Sheryll thought you might be up to something, you know, trying to pull a fast one.”
I said, “We offered to pay you whatever you wanted for them. We have a very generous expense account. It’s hard to see how we could be pulling a fast one.” I was a little nettled by his confession, but I thought that I was managing to sound civil and polite in spite of that. Anxious glances from Nevada suggested otherwise.
“I know, I know, but she just didn’t want me to rush into selling them. She knows how much those records mean to me, and she didn’t want me to rush into doing anything with them.” I noticed that the records, which he’d previously said he didn’t play anymore and indeed implied he might never play again, had suddenly become treasured heirlooms. I could see where this was going.
I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “But it’s all right with her if you sell them now?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, towards the house, as though expecting the ominous spectre of his wife to appear. “Yeah.”
“What changed her mind?” I imagined her researching the records on the Internet and trying to work out how much money she could get for them. She’d seemed like the shrewd, organised type. But this wouldn’t have proved an easy task. The records were so rare they almost never changed hands, and there was precious little price data available on them. Probably the only thing she could find would be my blog about the 78 we’d discovered inside Tinkler’s speaker.
And that, I reflected gloomily, had been a deliberate attempt to drive up the price of any and all Flare Path Orchestra records. So I braced myself now for Gerry’s financial demands. I hoped Miss Honeyland wouldn’t mind being taken to the cleaners.
But instead Gerry said, “We didn’t change our minds. We had our minds changed for us, sort of. You see, we had a bit of a break-in.”
Nevada and I looked at each other. “When?” I said.
“The other night. Someone broke in. Or they tried to.” He sipped his Pimm’s and stared into its ruddy red depths. “Came very bloody close, too.” He looked at me. “And that’s sort of spooked us. Spooked Sheryll and, I must admit, me too. So she suggested we should get rid of the records after all. Sell them to you.”
I said, “Why would a break-in make you want to sell me the records?”
He blinked at me. “Because they were after them, after the records. That’s what they tried to break in to get. So we figured we’d be better off selling them, and then we don’t have to worry about them. Don’t have to worry about security issues.” He rattled the ice in his glass and took a sip.
“How do you know they were after the records?” I glanced at his large stylish house, rising in stacked blocks on the green slope above us. There were plenty of other things in there worth stealing.
“It was the ladder that gave it away,” said Gerry. “They had a big folding ladder with them. Not the sort of thing you cart along on the off-chance. They definitely knew they were going to need it. And they went straight to the north wing of the house, which is the bit with the attic on top of it, and they put the ladder up beside the attic window.” We all turned and looked at the house. I could see the section he was talking about, a two-storey unit set centrally in the rambling building. “If they just wanted to break into the house, there were a lot of other windows easier to get at. Doors, too, for that matter.” He shook his head. “No, they were definitely heading for the attic.”
“And the only valuable items in your attic are the records?” said Nevada.
“I don’t think they’re interested in my old beer-making kit.”
“How did they know the records were in the attic?” I said.
Gerry shook his head mournfully. “You remember the day of the wedding? There was some blokes who crashed the reception.”
I remembered the wedding crashers very well. I’d almost been beaten up on the presumption that I was one of them.
“Well,” said Gerry, “it turns out that they’d been asking some odd questions. Though nobody ever thought to tell me until after the break-in.”
“But they didn’t get away with anything?” I tried not to let the urgency show in my voice.
Gerry smiled slowly. “No, we have a pretty good security system here. That is one thing we do have. They were detected as soon as they entered the grounds, and the alarm went off before they got anywhere near the window.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “You said you didn’t trust us.”
He spread his big hands in a helpless gesture. “Not me, son. The wife. And it’s not that she didn’t trust you, exactly…”
“But she thought there was something dodgy about our interest in your records.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“So then someone turns up and tries to break in and steal those records.”
He looked at me. “Yeah?”
“So why didn’t you think it was us?”
“You?” he said.
Nevada nodded. “That’s right. We would seem to be the obvious culprits. Why didn’t you think it was us?”
“Oh,” said Gerry. “There was never any question of it being you. Any of your mob. We picked them up on the surveillance cameras, our would-be burglars. They were hefty lads. Very hefty.
And I’m very glad we didn’t have a run-in with them. Anyway, they were a lot bigger than either of you or your friend who couldn’t stop stuffing his gob.”
“But you couldn’t see their faces?” said Nevada.
Gerry shook his head. “They was wearing the traditional black ski masks.”
“We could have hired someone,” I said. He stared at me in puzzlement. “We could have hired the hefty lads in the ski masks.”
He shook his head again. “No, I never thought it was you. You’re not the type. They were the type. Looked like they do this sort of thing for a living. They’d reversed their van in by our gate so it was pointing back up the street and ready for a quick getaway in case they needed it. Which, in this case, they did. When they heard the alarm they scarpered and got out of here, sharpish.”
“A van?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I felt a cold crawl of premonition up my spine. I said, “It was an old-fashioned Volkswagen van with a sun and a moon and a lot of hippie nonsense painted on the sides.”
He stared at me as if I was mad.
“No, mate. It was a modern Hyundai CRDI 116 white diesel van with the twin side loading doors and nothing painted on it at all.”
“Did you get the licence number?” said Nevada, while I pondered this information.
“No. The plates were covered with mud, accidentally-on-purpose, like.”
We finished our Pimm’s as we discussed a price for his records, and then he went inside the house and got them for us. There were a dozen of them, all 78s, in three cardboard albums each holding four discs. They were pristine, with glossy black playing surfaces.
After he wrapped them they made a heavy, expensive bundle under my arm. “Don’t drop them,” said Nevada, as we walked back down the hill.
“I’ll try not to.”
I glanced back at the house and I thought I saw the pale face of the wife, looking down at us from one of the upstairs windows.
17. FAMILY
Joan Honeyland was ecstatic about our latest discovery. She arranged for Albert the chauffeur to come and pick the records up the following day, first thing. We were still eating breakfast when he arrived, in complete livery including black gloves and cap. Normally at this time of the morning Nevada would still be in her dressing gown, but today she was fully and smartly dressed. I asked if this was the effect of a man in uniform.
Victory Disc Page 16
