by John Dean
‘An unfortunate turn of phrase,’ murmured Blizzard. ‘Besides, we are not here to arrest you. We just want…’
‘Or that Elspeth Roberts, I always thought she was the type to…’
‘Please, Mrs Savage, all we want is to know about you and Henderson Ramage.’
‘I do not wish to discuss that horrible man!’
‘Will you just tell us what happened, for God’s sake!’ exclaimed Blizzard.
The show of emotion seemed to work and, after staring at him for a moment, something in Moira Savage changed and she nodded meekly. Suddenly, there was an air of vulnerability they had not seen in her before and her features softened.
‘Would you gentlemen like a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘This could take some time.’
Ten minutes later, as the detectives sipped from china cups and nibbled at biscuits, the atmosphere in the room had changed completely. Suddenly, Moira Savage looked like she was ready to unburden herself of a dark secret. Whether it was Blizzard’s harsh tone of voice, or the realisation that the detectives would find out her secret anyway, Moira Savage had decided to co-operate, a relief to Blizzard, who knew from tough experience that buttoned-up Tory women were the hardest of nuts to crack if they set their minds to it. Give me a mindless thug any day, he thought. You could reason with mindless thugs.
‘I apologise if I was a bit short earlier,’ said Moira. ‘It is just that this affair with the housing development has been somewhat fractious, as you can imagine.’
‘But I thought everyone was against it?’ asked Colley.
‘Not everyone, alas, Sergeant,’ said Moira, shaking her head. ‘They were the first time it was proposed fifteen years ago but nothing ever happened so we assumed that he had dropped the idea. When the idea was revived, the parish council had a meeting about it. I have to be frank, I was shocked at what transpired. I expected complete support for my motion to oppose the development again but that did not happen this time.’
‘Why not?’ asked Blizzard.
‘The meeting turned into a heated affair and some harsh things were said. Mr Ramage made some highly personal comments about some of the councillors, myself included. In the end, we voted nine to two to oppose his plan. Mr Ramage stormed out, uttering some profanities as he did. It was all very unpleasant.’
‘Is there not a touch of irony here, Mrs Savage?’ said Blizzard and he looked around him. ‘I mean, this house itself is fairly recent, surely?’
‘They were different times, Chief Inspector,’ said Moira sharply.
‘Of course, they were,’ said Blizzard, ignoring her frosty look. ‘So tell me, what were your reasons for opposing the plan?’
‘The village would become too large.’ She became animated, ‘Besides, the last thing we should be doing is taking away our countryside. Hafton is expanding rapidly enough as it is without losing more land around our villages. And the proposal includes the felling of a number of mature trees, which are habitats for wild birds.’
‘Then there’s the POW camp,’ commented Colley.
‘Yes, that as well. Although the housing would in theory skirt round the edge of the camp, we all know what happens – give it a year or so and there would be an application to build more. The only way they could expand the estate would be to bulldoze the huts but I have made no secret of the fact that I think the camp should be preserved.’
‘Why?’ asked the sergeant.
‘I am sure it would make a tourist attraction,’ said Moira. ‘Perhaps we could expand it to celebrate the history of the Hafton Regiment as well.’
‘Can’t see it,’ said Colley.
‘It’s an important historical site, David,’ said Blizzard. ‘There’s not many of these places left.’
‘I am delighted to hear that you share my beliefs, Chief Inspector,’ said Moira.
‘So, if this place is so important,’ said Colley, ‘how come at least two councillors backed Ramage’s housing plan?’
‘They were the younger ones,’ she said. ‘They said that it was time the village moved into the 20th Century, said we needed some new blood. Clearly, they do not realise that until people like me and Brian arrived, this village was dying.’
‘Brian?’ asked the sergeant.
‘My husband.’
‘So I guess this has not been good for community spirit,’ said Blizzard, conscious of the way tensions always ebbed and flowed in the village where he lived; ebbed and flowed in every small community.
‘It has not, Chief Inspector,’ replied Moira sadly. ‘Although I have to say that the issue merely brought to the surface tensions that had been there for some time.’
‘I can see that,’ said Blizzard. ‘But how does all of this impact on our inquiry, Mrs Savage?’
‘I imagine whoever suggested you talk to me was referring to the threats, Chief Inspector.’
‘Threats?’ asked Blizzard, eyes gleaming. ‘From Henderson Ramage?’
‘Well, I say threats, maybe that is putting it a touch dramatically.’
‘What happened?’
‘I have always spoken out very strongly against the housing plan and I sent a strongly worded submission to the Government inspector to consider at the original inquiry. A somewhat short man called Baldridge. Ill-fitting suit. Didn’t clean his teeth very well. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they clean their teeth.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Blizzard.
‘Anyway, someone did not like what I said this time around either because…’ She paused, surprising them as her self-contained façade crumbled. ‘Certain unpleasant things have happened.’
‘Things?’ asked Blizzard.
‘Yes, one week a pick-up truck was parked across our drive for two or three days running, blocking us in. We could not get the car out and it caused a lot of problems. My husband attends a lot of meetings. He had to use…’ She paused for a moment as if about to reveal a terrible and sordid secret. ‘Taxis.’
‘How terrible,’ murmured Blizzard, earning himself a stern look over her spectacles. ‘What is the world coming to?’
‘And you believe it was Mr Ramage’s truck?’ asked Colley quickly, trying to avoid one of Blizzard’s rows if at all possible.
‘Oh, I know it was,’ she said. ‘I have seen him driving the filthy thing up to the farm.’
‘Anything else happen?’
‘Yes, one day I noticed two rather burly men standing on the other side of the green.’ She gestured through the window into the gathering gloom. ‘By the Post Office. Just staring at the house. They did not do anything but the message was clear. Mr Ramage was trying to intimidate me.’
‘And did it work?’ asked Colley, doubtful that anything could intimidate this indomitable woman.
‘It was certainly disturbing,’ she said, voice trembling slightly. ‘As were the phone calls.’
‘Phone calls?’ said Blizzard.
‘Yes, late at night. They would start whenever I said something in public about the housing plan and go on for several weeks. Then they would stop. Then I would say something else and they would start again.’
‘Do you know who the phone calls were from?’
‘Nothing is ever said but I knew. It’s Henderson Ramage. He is a truly horrible man. It has all caused tensions within our marriage, I am afraid.’
‘Tensions?’
‘Yes. A couple of my husband’s clients received letters saying that he was under investigation by the police for fraud.’
‘What does he do for a living?’ asked the sergeant.
‘He owns Savage’s land agents over in Burniston. The letters suggested that he had been misappropriating funds raised during the sale of land.’
‘And I take it he was not under investigation?’ asked Blizzard.
‘Of course not. But it still caused him a lot of trouble. At least two clients that I know of switched to another firm. After that, my husband said he wanted me to drop my opposition to the housing plan. Said it w
as costing us money. That’s Brian all over.’
‘But you did not do as your husband said?’ asked Blizzard.
‘I can’t do that, Chief Inspector,’ said Moira. ‘I love my husband but to give up on this issue would not be right. Not after so long fighting it.’
‘Surely you have made your point, though,’ said Colley. ‘The plan went back to the council this time around and they approved it. That’s the end of it, isn’t it?’
‘I cannot just let it end at that.’ She looked more animated than she had been throughout the entire interview. ‘The housing estate will destroy the character of this village and it is my duty as parish council chairwoman to make my views known.’
‘So, when was the latest incident?’ asked Colley.
‘A few days ago. She walked over to an antique bureau in the corner of the room and took out a piece of paper. ‘This.’
She handed the paper over to the sergeant. Decorated with a crudely drawn gravestone, it read, ‘You will lie where they lay if you do not shut up. R.I.P Miora’ in capital letters clipped from a newspaper. Colley noted the misspelling of the name for future reference.
‘When did this arrive?’ asked the sergeant, handing it to Blizzard.
‘The day the news broke about the discovery of the bodies,’ she said. ‘I told some people in the shop that perhaps the area could be designated an official war grave; I said that if that happened, we might be able to block the housing development.’
‘Who did you say this to?’ asked the chief inspector. ‘Who was in the shop?’
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ she said. ‘Word goes round villages like this in minutes. I might as well have put a poster on the church notice board.’
‘And have you followed up the idea?’ asked Colley.
‘Yes, I went to see Elspeth Roberts. I know her quite well now and she has been very supportive of my efforts to preserve the camp. I wanted to see if the idea was feasible. The note,’ she gestured to the piece of paper in Blizzard’s hand, ‘was on the mat when I got back home.’
‘And who do you think sent it?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘I think someone told Henderson Ramage about my comments,’ she said. ‘But I have no proof that he is behind all this.’
‘It’s a remarkable coincidence if he isn’t,’ remarked Blizzard. ‘From what we hear, he is indeed increasingly angry at all the delays on the site.’
‘He’s worried that the housing company will pull out,’ said Moira. ‘Getting them to do that is the main aim of our campaign.’
‘Why on earth did you not come to the police about this when it all started?’ asked Blizzard in exasperation, glancing down at the note.
‘What could you have done?’
‘We would have investigated it.’
‘Chief Inspector,’ said Moira, voice stronger now, composure fully restored, ‘I am a great supporter of the work the police do but on this occasion, I fail to see what contacting you would have achieved.’
‘Mrs Savage,’ said Blizzard earnestly. ‘People like Henderson Ramage rely on victims not contacting the police. You should have come to see us.’
‘Yes, well there was a reason that I didn’t.’ The vulnerability was back again as she turned haunted eyes on the detectives.
‘Which was?’ asked Blizzard.
‘I am frightened, Mr Blizzard.’ She seemed close to tears. ‘I know that Henderson Ramage is an unpleasant man and, if he heard that I had called the police in, who knows what he might have done next? It could only have made things worse.’
‘Well, we’re in now,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Like it or not.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I imagine you are.’
* * *
A few minutes later, the officers were walking to the car when Blizzard’s mobile phone rang. He listened for a few moments, watched by Colley, then punched the air.
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘You on a promise?’ asked Colley.
‘No, even better than that,’ said Blizzard. ‘That was my contact at the city council, the rail company has agreed to sell them Tenby Street Station so they can turn it into a railway museum.’
‘And am I pleased about this?’ asked Colley, thinking of the dilapidated building a couple of miles outside the city centre.
‘It’s marvellous,’ said Blizzard. ‘We can move the Old Lady there.’
‘Whatever,’ said Colley, who had never understood the chief inspector’s passion for railways. ‘Personally, I would have thought being on a promise from young Fee was more exciting.’
‘Well that just shows you what…’ Blizzard paused and looked at his sergeant thoughtfully. ‘No, actually you’re right, maybe I’ll swing round her place later.’
‘That’s my boy,’ said Colley.
Chapter nine
‘Perhaps they aren’t going to come,’ said Blizzard into the darkness.
‘They’ll come,’ replied Fee Ellis from the back seat of the car, but her voice did not sound as confident as earlier in the evening.
‘I hope so,’ grunted Colley. He shifted uncomfortably in the front passenger seat next to Blizzard. ‘I’m missing the eighteenth repeat of Prisoner Cell Block H for this.’
Ellis leaned forward and cuffed him affectionately on the head.
It was midnight, a week after the interview with Moira Savage, and the three officers had been sitting in Blizzard’s car, parked in the shadows at Hafton’s ferry terminal for the best part of two hours. Stretching out in front of them, the quayside was virtually deserted, illuminated by harsh spotlights, the tarmac glistening from the drizzle that had fallen steadily throughout the evening. A hundred metres to the car’s right was the ugly concrete control tower and they could see through the top floor windows a couple of figures moving about in the half-light as they scanned the river for the approach of the ferry.
Beyond the tower, the officers could just make out the dark waters of the River Haft and the glinting reflections of the sprawling chemical complex on the south side, pinpricks of light on a winter’s night. To the officers’ left, over towards the main road into Hafton city centre, and on a slight rise, was the ferry terminal car park but there were only a few vehicles waiting, barely visible through the border of bedraggled bushes, their occupants concealed by the shadows thrown by the wan street lamps. All in all, it made for a damp and dismal sight.
But the reason the officers were there was far from dismal, promising a glittering prize at the end of the night. A tip-off from one of Ellis’s informants had led to a hurriedly-organised joint police and customs operation that promised to deal a major blow against one of the city’s most troubling new crime trends. Over recent months, officers had noticed a growing number of men hanging around street corners in bedsit-land, unkempt, thin and emaciated individuals, dressed in ill-fitting jeans and T-shirts and giving the appearance of not having washed for days. That they were illegal immigrants was easy to prove, brought over to Britain from North Africa with no jobs to go to and no visible means of support. There was also growing evidence that they were largely responsible for the worrying rising tide of street robberies in the city.
Detectives surmised that the robbers were either stealing to survive, or to order for the gang who had smuggled them into Britain and Arthur Ronald had made it clear that he wanted the situation brought back under control.
The tip-off that brought Blizzard and his officers to the ferry terminal came from a man who worked on the docks and who seemed truly terrified when he passed the information on to Ellis when they met in a local park the day before. According to the man, a lorry was due to travel over on the last ferry that night, ostensibly carrying a cargo of fruit bound for the local indoor market but really transporting a group of illegal immigrants being smuggled into the UK.
It was more than enough to tantalise Ronald and Blizzard and they moved quickly. Protocol in such situations dictated that customs take the lead, but Ronald had
a good relationship with his counterpart at the ferry terminal – Gerry Hope was a former police sergeant – and they quickly agreed to mount a joint operation. So now, dotted around the deserted terminal, were ten customs officers as well as cars containing police. Parked further back, concealed behind sheds next to the main road entrance, were the firearms and tactical support units to be deployed in case of emergency. Ronald and Blizzard had insisted they be there: in one of the incidents, a street robber had produced a handgun when challenged by a member of the public.
During their long vigil in the car, Blizzard had hardly said a word even though Colley and Ellis had made occasional attempts to start conversations. Although seemingly wrapped up in his own thoughts, Blizzard welcomed the action because in the week after the gathering in Hut 23, progress had been slow on the Knoefler inquiry and he was coming under pressure from Ronald to produce a breakthrough. It had all been very frustrating, so Blizzard was praying that the operation at the terminal produced something to deflect the questions away from him especially as enquiries had failed to link anyone else to the death.
* * *
‘What’s that?’ asked Colley, as he scanned the river and noticed a glow in the distance.
‘That,’ said Blizzard, as the gigantic column of light edged its way round a bend in the river, ‘is the ferry, my boy. So, Fee, you still reckon our little friends are on board?’
‘My informant seemed pretty convinced,’ she said.
‘I just hope we don’t open it to reveal a truck load of baked beans,’ grunted the chief inspector.
The radio crackled. It was Ronald, who was sitting in another car parked on the other side of the quayside, Gerry Hope alongside him. The men, who had worked together over on the Eastern side when Hope was a police officer, had been yarning about the old days and had not, at first, noticed the ferry come into view.
‘You see it?’ said a disembodied voice.
‘We’ve got it, Arthur,’ said Blizzard, watching as the ferry turned towards the terminal.
‘Remember, let the customs boys take the lead. They’ll watch the lorry off the ferry and do what appears to be a routine search. We don’t want to spook anyone. Once they find the illegals, we move in.’
