by K T Findlay
‘Here, put that down for a minute. I reckon there’s something hidden here.’ he said.
Mark followed the pointing finger and looked at the wall. ‘I can’t see anything.’ he said.
‘Come over here then, maybe you need to have the light just right.’
Mark joined Ted and looked along the wall. ‘Okay, I see it. Maybe it’s just a bad repair?’
Ted shrugged. ‘Then we should give someone the opportunity to fix it, eh?’ And so saying, he whacked his jemmy bar into the wall. There was a loud metallic clang as the end of the tool smashed through the plaster. Ted changed tack and started to use the jemmy as an adze to strip away the wall.
‘Stone me! It’s a safe!’ gasped Mark.
Ted worked the jemmy down the sides of the steel box. ‘It’s bolted into place, and it’s a good one. We’ll never get it opened in here. We’ll have to get it out.’
‘How?’ complained his friend.
‘Like this.’
It took them a good three hours and Terry Walker’s own saw to pry the safe free and even then it came with great lumps of wood attached.
‘Cripes, I hope it’s worth it.’ whispered Mark as he helped Ted lug the safe across the lawn to their grey Ford Transit.
‘I’m sure we’ll get our just desserts.’ said Ted confidently.
2 Baby steps
The following morning, Freddy parked the blue Transit van in the Throcking Square car park across the road from the police station, and he and James went for a stroll around the town. They bought some soft drink in the supermarket and headed east, around the edge of the school grounds.
‘Why don’t we climb the hill to get a better view?’ asked James within the hearing of a teacher on playground duty.
‘Good idea, shall I get the map out?’ replied Freddy, playing his role of rambler to the full.
‘Nah, we’ll get it out if we get lost but I’d rather explore without it.’ answered James. The teacher, who knew full well that Throcking proper only had six roads leading up the hill, shook her head at the idea of anyone needing a map. She shook it even more a few minutes later as she watched the two men start the steep climb up Beattie Close. It was a dead end, and the only one of the six roads that didn’t reach the top.
James glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Good. She thinks we’re a couple of twits, but memorable twits. She’ll tell this story to the other teachers and we’ll be just a couple of silly ramblers by nightfall.’
‘How far up is Walker’s place?’ asked Freddy, beginning to puff with the exertion.
‘Almost at the top, on the left, just before the turning circle.’
‘You mean the one with the police car outside it?’
‘Oh bugger.’ groaned James. ‘What are the chances?’
The two plugged on until they arrived outside the house. ‘Nothing serious I hope.’ said Freddy to an officer walking down the path towards them.
‘Burglary.’ said the cop.
‘What? Here?’ asked James. ‘But it seems such a nice community.’
‘It is.’ replied the officer. ‘It won’t be locals. Have you seen a Transit in your travels?’
‘Just our own.’ said Freddy.
‘Colour?’ demanded the cop, suddenly a lot more interested.
‘Blue.’ said Freddy. ‘It’s parked across the road from your station.’
‘Were you out and about last night?’ persisted the cop.
‘Yep. We’re staying in Little Throcking, at the BnB. We had dinner in the café next door, then visited a friend in Ornamental Estate. We never came to Throcking though.’
The officer took down their details and the number of their van before a thought struck him. ‘Why have you come up here then?’
James gave him a smile. ‘To get to the top of the village so we could see the view.’
The cop laughed. ‘You’ve taken the only wrong road in the place! Better use a map next time! Look, go back to the bottom, turn left or right, it doesn’t matter which, and then take the next road uphill and you’ll be at Messines Road at the top of the village. You can’t miss.’
They thanked him for his advice and ambled back down to the school where the teacher was rounding up the last of the kids at the end of the break. Freddy gave her a friendly wave, which she pretended not to see. When they finally made it to Messines Road, they made a point of looking long and hard at the view, comparing various landmarks with their map. A couple of curtains twitched, further cementing the ramblers story in the locals’ minds. Finally they strolled slowly west, admiring the view and the neat, well kept gardens until James stopped outside a small house, white, with blue windows and doors.
‘This is Thomlinson’s place.’ he said.
There was no reply when they knocked.
‘He’s probably at work.’ suggested Freddy.
Edgar Thomlinson was indeed at work, or at least in the police station. He, Peregrin, an HR representative and Thomlinson’s direct superior spent all morning cloistered in a meeting room, going over a number of his questionable actions in the previous years. As the day went on, the individual incidents, which had all been properly dealt with at the time, morphed into a distinct pattern of incompetence at the very least.
Thomlinson had waved the offer of having a support person or lawyer present, but was already beginning to seriously regret his decision before Peregrin pulled out a plastic phial in a see through bag. He recognised it instantly as a blood sample, and when Peregrin explained where it had been found, Thomlinson’s heart skipped a beat. Mention of the envelopes, and that strenuous efforts were being made to recover them, gave it another belt.
The only saving grace was that at no point had anyone suggested that he’d been anything other than incompetent. Nothing criminal was being inferred, but it didn’t need to be. The HR rep pointed out how it would look in the papers if it was suggested that not just one, but three men had walked free from very serious charges purely because of his negligence. He was given an out and he took it.
‘If you resign,’ the HR rep had suggested, ‘we’ll give you two month’s pay, plus your holiday pay, and you won’t have to work out your notice. It’ll give you three months on full pay if you resign and leave today.’
That afternoon he made a phone call, packed his bags and headed north, which was why there was no reply when James and Freddy tried again that evening.
The following morning, Friday, James popped into the public phone box outside the café and called their base. ‘He’s probably taken off somewhere to lick his wounds.’ he said to Freddy later, as he sat down to his full English breakfast in the café.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Freddy.
‘He’s been given the heave, left the force, buggered off.’
‘Oh great, how’re we going to find him?’
James sipped his tea. ‘Base tells me his parents live in Huddersfield. I’ve got the network looking for his car, and asked base to check if he phoned anyone yesterday. Got to start somewhere. Are you going to eat that tomato?’
After breakfast the pair drove to Dalton, checking out some of the walking tracks along the way, and arrived at Dick Harland’s place just as he was leaving home after lunch. He blanched when they told him who they were and what they wanted, but once they’d convinced him they were who they said they were and weren’t there to arrest him, he was frank and truthful.
‘Well that was a waste of time.’ said James sourly, as Dick drove off back to work.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ mused his colleague, ‘at least we know he lacks the initiative or brains to do anything on his own, and everything he said matches what Holmes told us. Come on, let’s get me a hire car and I’ll take off to Huddersfield. You can find out what those burglars took, and heavy the fences.’
That evening as Freddy was dealing with the traffic heading north, James was on the phone to base to find out what had been stolen. He was deeply perturbed when they told him about the damage to the
wall and that the police were certain that a safe or something very similar had been pried from the woodwork. He also took note of the descriptions of the jewellery that was known to have been taken, based on the police inventory done after Walker’s disappearance. He didn’t really care about it, but it might prove useful in tracking down whoever had stolen the safe. He confirmed the names and addresses of all the known and suspected fences of stolen property within a fifty mile radius, then went for a walk along the beach.
On Saturday morning he set to work ploughing through his list, sorting out the ones in Ipington first, then Little Dimpton before knocking off those in Dalton before lunch. First on his Dalton list was Saver Pete’s.
‘I don’t nark mate.’ said Saver Pete in response to James’s request.
‘Then I suggest you update your will.’ smiled James. ‘Tonight would be good.’
Saver Pete paled. ‘Come on man, I’ve got a business to run. People need to trust me, or they won’t sell.’
‘Ah, trust, the oil that makes the criminal world go round. A very precious commodity. Well trust me on this my friend, I want something that these people took and that jewellery is our best way of finding them. If I hear that you found out about the stuff and didn’t tell me, I shall get very cross indeed.’ growled James.
‘How cross?’ sneered Saver Pete.
James cast an eye over the row of second hand volumes to his left and pulled out a history book. He thumbed through it until he found the right page, and handed it, open at the spot, to Saver Pete. ‘How about an Edward the Second special?’
Saver Pete’s jaw dropped and James leaned in close. ‘Got any pokers in your stock Pete? I’m looking for a big one.’
Saver Pete threw up his hands. ‘Okay, okay, you got it, I believe you! Just don’t tell anyone, okay? Sheesh, there’s no need to get uppity!’
In the far corner of the shop, Mark Evans, burglar, stayed on his knees, apparently fascinated by a late model video player, as James left the shop. He gave him a two minute head start before he too walked out, as nonchalantly as possible. He kept it together for half a block before he broke into a run back to the grey Transit.
‘We’ve got to get rid of the stuff we nicked last Wednesday in Throcking!’ he gasped as he arrived in the third floor flat he shared with his mate.
‘Yeah, well that’s why you went out, dummy!’ laughed Ted.
Mark shook his head violently. ‘No! There’s this really dangerous bloke looking for the gear, I mean a guy who’s threatening to kill the fences if they don’t snitch.’
Ted’s eyebrows rose. ‘They wouldn’t! He’s got no hope.’
‘You didn’t see him Ted! Saver Pete was terrified. The guy threatened to do an Edward the Second on him, whatever that means. Pete gave in straight away.’
Ted paled. ‘Well if Pete gave in, so will everyone else. He’s the toughest of all of them. We’d better bury the stuff.’
Mark glanced over to the corner where the safe sat, still attached to the bits of wood it had been screwed into. ‘We’re on the third floor man! Where are we going to bury it? We don’t even have a spade for crying out loud!’
‘All right, all right, keep your hair on. Okay, nobody ever comes up here, so just bury it with other stuff in the corner for now. We’ll have to figure something out later on.’
◆◆◆
Freddy glared at the sign welcoming him to Summer Wine Land. The photograph promised glorious vistas of hills bathed in sunshine, not the blustery blasts of rain currently seeking out the weak points in his wet weather gear. Sighing heavily, he set off through the murk in pursuit of his quarry.
Thomlinson’s parents had told him that he’d taken himself off into the Pennines for a “bit of a walk” as they’d put it. What that actually meant was that they’d dropped him off and he was currently walking the various paths on his own. Freddy had been surprised to find that even in this weather there seemed to be an interminable number of nutters happily hiking from place to place, but he was glad they were there. From them he was able to gather enough snippets of information to keep him on Thomlinson’s trail, but it still took him eleven days and numerous false leads before he finally caught him up, replenishing his supplies in Holmfirth.
‘Nope, he just vanished. We looked everywhere, and I mean everywhere for the guy, but never found so much as a torn shirt.’ Thomlinson said, finishing his second pint. ‘Yes please.’ he smiled to Freddy, who hadn’t actually offered.
‘Why were you looking for a torn shirt?’ Freddy asked when he returned from the bar with fresh glasses.
‘It’s just an expression.’ replied Thomlinson. ‘Usually when folks go missing around Throcking, it’s because they’ve fallen into one of the rivers or something, and they almost always damage their clothes. So we look for bits of ripped cloth as much as we do for the person. I’ve found three like that.’ he grinned happily.
‘But you never found anything of Walker’s?’
Thomlinson took another sup. ‘Nope. And there’s never been a sign of him since. His bank accounts haven’t been touched, and his stuff’s still sitting there in the house because he can’t be declared legally dead yet.’
‘Well most of it maybe, but somebody swiped some jewellery and ripped a safe out of the wall the day before you left the police.’
Thomlinson shook his head. ‘Technically, I still work for the police.’
It was Freddy’s turn to laugh. ‘Fair enough Mr policeman. So tell me, why did you folks not open the safe in his house.’
‘We didn’t know he had one, that’s why!’ explained Thomlinson. “I was part of the team that searched the house for clues and there wasn’t a safe.’
‘It was plastered into the wall, behind the painting of his wife.’
Thomlinson paused to take another sup. ‘Really? I remember that painting. Very nice… I took it off the wall myself. There was no sign of anything behind it though, just a painted wall.’
‘You didn’t think the wall was unusually thick?’ Freddy probed.
Thomlinson shook his head. ‘It was the kitchen on the other side, yeah? With large cupboards I seem to remember. It must have backed into one of those somehow, and we didn’t spot it. We were looking for a body, not a safe walled up so not even its owner could get at it. Be fair!’
◆◆◆
Two dinners, four lunches, three bottles of gin, and two weeks after their first meeting, Sally arrived outside Emma’s house in Little Throcking, with a huge wooden pole on a hired trailer.
‘How are you going today?’ Sally asked.
Emma rubbed her eyes. ‘Still not sleeping very well. I keep reaching for George on the other side of the bed, and that’s another box of tissues gone. Other than that I’m just dandy! What’s with the log?’
‘I’ve brought you a flag pole!’ Sally cried.
‘A what?’ laughed Emma. ‘What do I need a flag pole for?’
Sally touched a finger to the side of her nose. ‘For when we want to send a message without using the phone, or driving round. The police can search call records, and there’s going to come a point where we need to communicate but leave no record.’
‘Oh, I get it!’ laughed Emma. ‘ Like in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.’
‘Bang on.’ said Sally. ‘Like they did in Winter Holiday.’
‘I loved those books.’ said Emma sadly. ‘I haven’t read them for years.’
‘Why ever not darling?’ asked Sally. ‘What’s wrong with reading a kid’s book if you want to? Look, there’s a simple rule of life that we’re going to break. Men get to play their entire lives, leaving the women to be the grown ups. Well to hell with that! It’s about time you and I got in touch with our inner girls and had some fun! Here. Grab that end.’
Together they carried the pole down the side of the house to the east facing back garden. Sally put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, and pointed across the Sky river valley towards Throcking. ‘It’s great th
at you’re up here on the edge of town. We’ll have no trouble seeing each other’s flags. Come on, let’s get this thing in the ground.’ she said.
Two hours later, a very dirty Sally was showing a just as grubby Emma how to raise and lower the flags on her newly erected pole. Then she handed over two small volumes.
‘You’ve got two code books. This one’s the safe one for when we’re having fun, and you can leave it lying around. This on the other hand,’ she said, flourishing the slightly thicker of the two, ‘is for hunting. It’s got a few extras in it so put it away when you’re not actually using it.’
Sally ran through all the flags until she was sure that Emma was comfortable using the codes, and working the flags. Then she pointed across the valley again. ‘Okay. So what do the flags say at my place?’
Emma searched through the hunting code book.
‘The top one has two horizontal arrows pointing towards each other. That means “Meet me”. The second one has a white square on a blue background. That means “Emma’s place”, I mean my place.’
She looked across the valley again. ‘The last one has four arrows, pointing up, down, left and right. That means “Go out” So all together it means “Meet me at your place so we can go out”, right?’
Sally grinned. ‘Perfect!’
‘So where are we going?’ asked Emma, smiling back.
Sally looked at her still dirty hands. ‘Let’s get ourselves cleaned up first, have some morning tea, and then we’ll go to Dalton after you’ve got dressed in a pair of shorts or loose pants. Oh, and you’ll need sneakers.’
‘Dalton!’ stuttered Emma. ‘But I always get dressed up to go to the big smoke!’
‘Trust me. Sneakers and shorts will be just perfect for where we’re going.’ said Sally.
An hour later they were admiring the panoramic vista from Throcking Castle, an Iron Age hill fort at the head of the Sky valley.
‘I hate to break it to you Sally, but this isn’t Dalton.’ said Emma.
Sally laughed. ‘True enough, but I wanted to show you why we’re going to Dalton. Just look at that view!’
