Dave Slater Mystery Novels Box Set Three

by P. F. Ford

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  ‘I wish I did,’ she said. ‘I’d give him a piece of my mind, I can tell you.’

  ‘How long after he moved out did Joe move in? Was it straight away?’

  ‘Ooh, no,’ she said. ‘It was a good three months or so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. I can’t forget when Bill left because it was just before my birthday, which is at the end of August. I was so disappointed I won’t forget that in a hurry. And I’m sure Joe moved in a couple of weeks before Christmas, and one of the first things he did was finish that patio. It wasn’t right, working out in the cold, and with his arthritis too!’

  Norman was deep in thought and didn’t say anything.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘now you come to mention him, I’ve got something. I don’t know if it’s any use or not.’ She walked over to the back door, where a coat hung on a hook. She slipped her hand into one of the pockets and drew out two letters. She walked back and handed them to him.

  ‘These came the other day when we were over at Joe’s. I was annoyed because the post was supposed to have been stopped and diverted to Joe’s solicitor, so I stuffed them in my pocket. Then, of course, I forgot all about them until you just mentioned his name.’

  ‘That’s odd, they should go to the solicitor if the post’s been diverted,’ said Norman.

  ‘No, not these. Look at the name on the envelopes. It’s Joe’s letters that are being diverted to the solicitor. These are addressed to Bill. You’d think they’d know he didn’t live here any more after all this time, wouldn’t you?’

  Norman looked at the two letters, which were both clearly addressed to Mr William Harding. One was definitely a utility bill, and he thought the other might be from a bank or something similar.

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to get going,’ said Norman, glancing at his watch, barely able to contain his excitement. He held up the two letters. ‘Can I take these?’

  ‘Are they important?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘I doubt it, but they might tell us something. You don’t mind?’

  ‘No, you take ’em,’ she said, regretfully. ‘I don’t want the damned things.’

  ‘Thanks for speaking to me.’

  ‘That’s all right, dear,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’

  Norman made his way out as graciously as he could, trying not to make it too obvious he was suddenly in a great hurry. He climbed into his car, waved goodbye to the watching Rosie, and drove off as slowly as he could. Once he was round the first corner, he pulled over and carefully tore open the first envelope addressed to William Harding. He let out a long, loud whistle. Just as he had thought, it was a statement from one of the utility companies.

  ‘Christ!’ he said out loud. ‘It’s his electricity statement for the last quarter.’

  He reached for the other envelope and opened it. This yielded even bigger news. It was William Harding’s latest bank statement, and there had obviously been a regular supply of money coming in, more than enough to cover his outgoings. ‘Holy crap,’ Norman said. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘While you were out, I called the landlord who owns Joe Dalgetty’s house,’ said Watson when Slater returned half an hour later. ‘I was hoping he might confirm who the tenant was but, surprise, surprise, he started spouting off about data protection and how he couldn’t name any names. Even so, I did manage to find something out. He must have thought I was some sort of debt collector because when I told him the address I was interested in, he told me the tenant had never missed a single payment and always paid on the same day every month, just like he had since he first arrived in 2008. He didn’t seem to consider that was the data that needed protecting!’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Slater, not quite sure this information had actually moved them any further forward. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Then I went a step further and checked the electoral roll. Lo and behold, I think I now have proof our Mr Dalgetty knew all about William Harding. According to the electoral roll, the person currently registered to vote at that address is one William Harding.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Slater. ‘Now you’re talking. But don’t you have to update that thing every year?’

  ‘Well, yes, exactly,’ Watson said. ‘That’s my point. It has been updated every year. The thing is, anyone can fill in a form and send it back, and who’s going check if it’s the same signature on the form as the year before? And, of course, you can do it online these days so there is no signature to check. But my question is, why would he keep doing that every year?’

  ‘Rosie said Joe had only been living there for about five years,’ said Slater. ‘But Harding arrived in 2008. What if this Harding guy has a reason for doing a runner? He moves on and leaves everything behind, and then Joe takes over the house. But if we’re right about Joe, and he’s trying to keep a low profile, it makes sense that he keeps registering Harding on the electoral roll so if anyone does a search for him, they won’t find his name.’

  ‘Can I be cheeky and point out a tiny flaw in that theory?’ Watson asked.

  ‘Yeah, sure, go ahead.’

  ‘If Harding has fled the scene as you suggested, doesn’t that mean someone was looking for him?’

  ‘That’s one possibility,’ said Slater.

  ‘Then wouldn’t Joe be taking a risk keeping the electoral roll up to date? He could be inviting Harding’s hunter to come and pay him a visit.’

  ‘That’s a good point,’ said Slater. ‘But maybe it proves Joe knew why Harding had gone and knew he wasn’t inviting trouble.’

  ‘Gosh, yes! I think you’re probably right,’ she agreed. ‘And keeping the electoral roll updated meant there was no risk of being taken to task for not being registered to vote.’

  ‘Right,’ said Slater. ‘I still think there’s no doubt he was hiding from someone.’

  ‘I found something else I think you’ll be interested in—’

  She was interrupted by the door crashing open as a jubilant Norman rushed into the office.

  ‘You might wanna give me a standing ovation,’ he said as he pushed the door closed behind him.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Slater, totally unmoved by Norman’s antics. ‘Let’s hear it first.’

  ‘You’re going to love what I’ve just discovered. To quote Alice in Wonderland, this case gets interestinger and interestinger.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s curioser and curioser,’ corrected Watson.

  Norman stared at her, nonplussed, for just a moment, then he seemed to recall who she was and why she was there.

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he said with a smile. ‘But who cares? Just wait till you see what I’ve got!’

  With a huge grin, he pulled the two now crumpled letters from his pocket and waved them in the air. ‘Tada!’ he sang.

  ‘And this is what, exactly?’ asked Slater.

  ‘Two letters!’

  ‘Wow! Really? I never would have guessed. But what’s so important about them?’

  ‘Note the name on the front,’ said Norman. ‘The addressee.’

  ‘I’d need binoculars to read that from here.’

  ‘It’s William Harding,’ said Norman, impatiently.

  ‘Gosh!’ said Watson.

  ‘Yeah, that figures,’ said Slater, shrugging.

  Norman looked suitably unimpressed. ‘What do you mean “yeah, that figures”?’

  Slater gave him a wicked got-one-over-on-you grin.

  ‘Watson’s just been telling me how she called the landlord and checked the electoral roll. To all intents and purposes, William Harding is still living in that house, and he’s still paying the rent as he has, every month, for the past eight years.’

  Now Norman looked momentarily crestfallen. ‘Really? You already know? Crap!’ he said. Then remembered the contents of the letters and his spirits rallied. ‘Ah, yeah, but I bet you didn�
�t know he’s still paying the electricity bill, and I’ve got his bank statement!’

  Slater beamed at him. ‘Now, that is something we didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Well done, Norm.’

  ‘Yes, jolly well done,’ added Watson.

  Norman accepted the plaudits with a little bow and placed the two letters down on Watson’s makeshift desk. He spread the bank statement out.

  ‘You can see here’—he pointed at the statement—‘the rent goes out on the first of the month. There’s money in the account, but there’s only one month here so it’s hard to see if it was one big sum to start or if there have been regular payments into it.’

  Slater whistled as he looked at the statement. He pointed out one of the payments. ‘This looks like a monthly payment for gas, and there’s the electricity one. Well, now we know for sure there is definitely something dodgy going on here.’

  ‘It sure smells of something,’ agreed Norman.

  ‘It’s beginning to look as if Joe knew William Harding,’ said Slater. ‘That would explain how he managed to move into the house without the landlord knowing.’

  ‘Are you suggesting this Harding guy is some sort of benefactor?’ asked Norman. ‘Then how come he’s vanished?’

  ‘We don’t know he has,’ said Slater. ‘We haven’t tried looking for him yet.’

  ‘Noted.’ Watson reached for a pen. ‘I’ll add it to my search list. Actually, I’d quite like to find him. I could do with someone to pay my rent and bills every month.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ said Norman.

  ‘It’s a pity we can’t get hold of some more of these statements,’ said Slater. ‘It would be a real help.’

  ‘Maybe Joe kept them hidden away somewhere,’ said Norman. ‘I know we had a look around his place, but we didn’t exactly turn it upside down, did we? Maybe they’re up in the loft.’

  ‘Err, can I make a suggestion?’ Watson looked enquiringly at Slater.

  ‘If you’re going to work with me,’ he said, ‘you need to understand I’m not one of those people who thinks he knows everything and everyone else is an idiot. You don’t have to ask permission to offer your opinion. If you have an idea, I would love to hear it.’

  ‘I might be able to access those bank statements,’ she said.

  ‘You can?’

  ‘If you think it would help. I need to make a phone call to the boss, and it’ll probably take twenty-four hours to set up, but I’m sure he can swing it for us if we’ve got the account number.’

  Slater looked at Norman, who smiled back at him and inclined his head. ‘He did say it was a bit different from what you’re used to, didn’t he?’

  ‘I’m beginning to like this idea,’ said Slater. ‘You make your call, Watson.’

  ***

  ‘Well, now, this is interesting,’ said Watson, studying her laptop fifteen minutes later. ‘On a hunch, I thought it might be an idea to check the story Rosie said Joe told her about his childhood, so I set up a search for kids in Windsor in the sixties. It seems there was a little boy called Joseph Dalgetty who went to school there at around the right time.’

  ‘Now there’s a coincidence,’ said Norman. ‘This is beginning to look like some sort of identity theft. Maybe we can follow the trail and see exactly where he fell off the radar.’

  ‘I can tell you exactly when that happened,’ she said, staring at her screen. ‘It was January 15th, 1959. He and another little boy, Arthur Bradbury, were knocked down in a car accident. They were both eight years old.’

  ‘Jeez, that must have been bad luck,’ said Norman. ‘I didn’t think there was much traffic around in those days.’

  ‘I don’t think bad luck really comes into it when you and your friends are playing chicken by choosing to race across the road in front of oncoming cars. It seems the driver had no chance of stopping.’

  ‘Suicide disguised as selfish fun,’ said Slater, shaking his head.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, sir! I don’t think they intended to die,’ said Watson.

  ‘I don’t suppose the driver intended to run them down,’ said Slater, ‘but he would have had to live the rest of his life knowing he’d killed two small boys.’

  ‘They were only eight years old. They wouldn’t have realised the consequences for the driver,’ said Watson.

  Slater sighed. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’m sure knowing that would have been a great consolation to the poor sod who killed them.’

  ‘Was this kid’s father in the army?’ asked Norman, keen to change the subject.

  ‘As it happens, yes, he was,’ Watson said.

  ‘Now that is interesting,’ said Slater.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Norman.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly, but whoever Rosie’s friend was, we know Joe Dalgetty wasn’t his real name, right? Now I can accept there must be hundreds of ways he could have come up with a new name, but what are the chances of choosing a name at random and then inventing a fact that’s actually true?’

  ‘You think maybe he was there when the accident happened?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but it would have been big news in Windsor. If he had been living there, he must have known about it. Maybe he knew the two boys involved, and then when he needed a new ID he remembered the names. He certainly wouldn’t be the first person to adopt the identity of a kid who died years ago.’

  ‘And that far back it doesn’t have to be exact, does it?’ said Norman. ‘You know, a year or two in either direction just to blur the edges and make it fit his own appearance. Yeah, it figures, when you think about it.’

  ‘I suppose I might as well cancel this second search,’ said Watson. ‘Poor little Joe can’t have come back from Germany if he was already dead before his father was posted there.’

  ‘No, hang on,’ said Slater. ‘If Joe told Rosie the truth about going to school in Windsor, maybe he told the truth about going to Germany and then coming back a few years later. Can you do a search for boys coming back around that time?’

  ‘I can search for families with boys,’ she said, ‘but it would be a lot easier if I had a name to search for. There are two barracks in Windsor, and there were lots of soldiers being posted to Germany and coming back. I could end up with hundreds of possibilities.’

  ‘Can you narrow it down by age of the boys? Rosie said he was a young teenager. Can you try searching for boys aged twelve–fourteen?’

  ‘For the whole of the sixties?’ asked a horrified Watson. ‘It’ll still be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘So let’s assume he was the same age as the two boys who died,’ said Slater. ‘Let’s say he was eight in 1959, add on five years, give or take another year or two, try 1962–1966, that should narrow it down quite a bit.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Norman, ‘don’t forget Rosie said she thought he was older than he claimed. You could be ten years out with that search.’

  ‘Crap! I’d forgotten that,’ said Slater.

  ‘Why don’t I start with this search, and see what we find,’ suggested Watson, as she keyed in the search parameters. ‘I can always widen the search if we draw a blank.’

  Ten minutes later, they reconvened to hear Watson announce the results of the search.

  ‘Well, you won’t be surprised to hear there’s no one called Joe Dalgetty,’ she said. ‘But we have got six other names.’

  Slater smiled a satisfied smile. ‘Six? So I did manage to narrow it down for you, right?’

  A small smile escaped onto Watson’s face. ‘No one likes a smart arse, sir,’ she said without looking up from her work.

  Slater grinned. ‘Hey, you’re the newbie here. You shouldn’t be back-chatting the bosses.’

  ‘Don’t include me,’ said Norman. ‘I agree with the newbie.’

  ‘Creep,’ muttered Slater.

  ‘Smart arse.’

  ‘Are any of these names of interest?’ asked Watson, reading from the screen. ‘Willets, Brown, Major, Roberts, James, and
Harding.’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Norman. ‘Did you say Harding?’

  ‘Yes, and the reason they tripped the flag is they had a son, William, who was twelve years old when his family returned in 1965.’

  ‘Now, isn’t that a coincidence?’ said Norman.

  ‘That’s twice they’re connected,’ said Slater. ‘Once by the house, and now by Windsor. That has to be important.’

  ‘It makes you wonder why he was paying the bills for Joe Dalgetty doesn’t it?’ said Watson. ‘Do you think Joe had something on him?’

  ‘We can ask Harding if we ever find him,’ said Norman. ‘But, as far as we know, five years ago he seems to have vanished. People will tell you it’s impossible to disappear these days, but it’s really not that difficult. And it’s even easier if you have an accomplice.’

  Watson squinted at him. ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Well, let’s say Harding wants to disappear, but he wants to make it look as if he’s still around, so he gets an accomplice like our friend Joe to live in his house. The bills are all paid by direct debit so all Joe has to do is keep an eye on the account and maybe pay some money in every now and then. To the big wide world, it looks as if Harding is still where he always was. He would only get caught out if someone comes physically looking for him.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Watson. ‘But if Joe’s dead, who’s going to keep up the pretence? Do you think Harding will have to surface now?’

  ‘It’s been five years,’ said Slater. ‘I should think he’s been gone long enough not to need to worry. Wherever he’s hiding, he’s not likely to get found now.’

  ‘So, Joe served his purpose?’ asked Watson.

  ‘I suppose you could say that,’ said Norman.

  ‘Maybe Harding killed him, then,’ she suggested.

  Norman looked at Slater in disbelief.

  Watson caught the look. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Am I speaking out of turn?’

  Slater smiled. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘You’re just making us look a bit slow and wonder why we hadn’t thought of that!’