But there was something in Batty Hattie Duchamps’s story that eerily rang true. It was her report of having been unable to sleep, “Because of my age, young man,” and, parting her lace curtains as per usual in the wee small hours in case of any threats to her or the local community, having espied the Crawford’s gardener—Barry, she believed was his name—trundling an oversize wheelbarrow along the main (only) road. With...a...pig...in...tow!
“Pretty damned unusual, would you not say? Fellows walking their dogs for pees and poops before beddy byes a person can understand. Better than their poor beasts peeing or pooping on the carpet. But, walking a pig?”
“Pig?” said Dennis. The Crawford geezer had lived with a pig, hadn’t he? And what if…? It was a long shot, but one worth taking when there were no other options on the table.
“Pig,” Batty Hattie confirmed. “Filthy creatures.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea where this Barry person might live?” Dennis had quizzed Hattie, who, batty though she was reputed to be, came up with specific directions.
“Shouldn’t be allowed to live there. It’s against all the regulations. I’ve told the Council enough times,” she called after Dennis. “And now he’s harbouring pigs.”
But, having thanked Hattie profusely for her help, told her she had assisted in a major crime investigation, and wished her at least some sleep tonight, Dennis was already on his way with Colin and Hans.
“Sleep, peep,” said Hattie, closing the door behind him and shifting on arthritic legs to her “radio room” for the afternoon’s episode of The Archers in which Ben was forecast to have become worried by claims of Alf Grundy’s historic paedophilia.
Eleven
Sir Magnus Montague was underwhelmed by Julie Mackintosh’s progress in the hunt for Jeremy Crawford when she reported back.
“Not even a hint of a sniff of a trace, girl?” he said from behind his Chippendale desk.
Julie shook her head.
“One hopes you checked all the twitterings or twootings or whatever they’re called. Good money I’m paying you. Wouldn’t like to think of it going to waste.”
“No, Sir Magnus.”
“No what? ‘No, I didn’t check all the twootings, Sir Magnus.’ Or, ‘No, I wouldn’t like to think of your good money going to waste, Sir Magnus.’”
“The latter,” said Julie, although the salary she was paid was a pittance by comparison with the male staff in the office.
“Should jolly well think so, girl. Need to be careful which way the wind’s blowing when it comes to possible promotions, eh? In the light of which, one hopes the answer to the twootings question wasn’t also a ‘no.’”
Which of course it was. No way had Julie intended to waste her precious time scrolling through thousands of clearly bananas tweets. But she wasn’t going to fess up to it. Not to Bossy Boy, anyway. On the other hand, nor was she going to lie. “Never tell lies, our Julie,” her dad, Steve, had always told her. “They’ll always catch up with you in the end, luv. Particularly if you can’t remember who you told which lie to.” And Steve would have known after all those years of working the Mersey docks and being told he’d never lose his job...until the night before he did and Julie’s mother left home. Yet still he’d somehow managed to send her to university down in The Smoke. They said in Liverpool the only good things to go south were rain clouds, but Steve had nonetheless believed such a move would give his only child the chances in life he’d never had. And Julie loved him for it.
So she never lied. On the other hand, largely through exposure to the very academics in whom Steve had so much faith, she had quickly learnt how to obfuscate. Getting a straight answer from an academic was like extracting truth from a politician. Never reply to the question you’re asked was the maxim. Always hum and haw for a bit, then come up with an abstruse answer to the question you wanted to be asked instead.
The preferred question Julie framed for this occasion was: “How hopeful are you of future progress in the hunt for Jeremy Crawford, Miss Mackintosh?”
Dodging precise details of Bossy Boy’s tweetings/twootings enquiry, therefore, Julie nodded and said the material was certainly interesting and she was working day and night on a complex algorithmic formula she was confident would, within next to no time, deliver the very goods Sir Magnus had requested: viz Jeremy Crawford’s whereabouts. She would report back in a few days.
“Gosh...well...um,” said Sir Magnus, perplexed just in the manner Julie wanted him. “All-go-rhythmic, eh? And a formula to boot. Sort of dancing while you work, is it?”
Swallowing a giggle, Julie claimed she needed to get on with the job ASAP and excused herself.
“I shall be out of the office for a few days,” she called over her shoulder. “Anything urgent, you’ve got my mobile number. Have a nice day.”
What Julie hadn’t told Sir Magnus—which wasn’t a lie, just a matter of withholding the truth—was that, during the “research” in which she hadn’t contacted million-pound-seekers worldwide, she had been in touch with both “Jim” in Knotty Ash and “Betty” in Fanbury in regard to their claimed sightings of Jeremy Crawford.
“Jim” had been friendly enough and even given Julie his Skype number “so’s we can have a proper chat,” but, when she made the connection, she’d concluded he was either an out-of-work Sir Ken Dodd impersonator or, more likely, off his trolley. Same straggly hair as Sir Ken, same protruding teeth although they looked false, same tickling stick being wafted about, but not funny. Far from it. Gloomy and self-pitying, more like. Before Julie could get a word in edgewise, he was telling her about how life had kicked him in the teeth even though he was an obvious genius. How he could have been in The Beatles if he’d wanted, but he hadn’t reckoned them good enough to play his songs. How he could have been one of the Liverpool Poets along with Roger McGough, Adrian Henri, and Brian Patten, only his poems were better than theirs. Deeper and more complex. How his plays compared with Shakespeare’s. How at least two of his kitchen sink novels were far better than “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,” only...
That’s when Julie had interrupted and asked about the sighting of Jeremy Crawford, to which “Jim” had replied: “Who?” before embarking on a rant against Margaret Thatcher and all subsequent Tory governments, especially the latest one led by a woman called Maggie May, before launching into his version of the song about the whore who wouldn’t walk down Lime Street any more.
Leaving “Jim” to his world, Julie had thanked him for his time and disconnected.
The correspondence with “Betty,” by comparison, had been more interesting. No Skype this time, just a phone number and a cryptic one-liner, saying: “You can find me in Fanbury.” Impressed indeed had “Betty” Dawkins been at having been contacted by the very Jackie Lamur who’d posted the original bonkers banker tweet. Best to stay in her good books, he reckoned. Might even help with his investigation.
That was why Julie Mackintosh was to be “out of the office for a few days.”
~ * ~
Barry deferred any further enquiries into the purpose of PC Dawkins’s visit by plying him with several glasses of nettle brandy and then launching into a lengthy off-the-wall disquisition on the manner in which simple and innocent stories could be hyped out of all recognition by the regular and social media.
“Take this bonkers banker tale, for example,” he said. “Local chappie, as I understand it. It would take an idiot to believe there is any truth in the wild accusations about him, wouldn’t it? Especially not the million pound reward for his capture. Pure fabrication and pernicious tittle tattle in my view. ”
“Um,” said Dennis.
“I assume an officer of the law would share such a view,” said Barry.
“Erm,” said Dennis.
“Don’t tell me you don’t.”
Dennis hummed and hawed some more, swallowed hard and semi-nodded. “I just thought…”
“Well, I suggest you think again, PC Dawkins.
I wouldn’t like to think your unexpected visit to my humble home was in any way related to that nonsense.”
“But it was you who brought this pig to your house at the dead of night?” said Dennis, unwilling to concede the game just yet. “The one over there,” he added, nodding at Pete, who said, “Oink.”
Barry rubbed at his stubbly chin. “Yes, that was I,” he said after a pause.
“The pig who’d lived with the Crawford geezer in his barn,” said Dennis, encouraged by the admission.
“So the story goes. Probably apocryphal but…”
“Although it is true that you are the Crawfords’ gardener and might know him if you saw him.”
“I can’t deny it, Constable.”
“And why would you have been stealing the pig at the dead of night?” said Dennis/“Betty” hoisting both eyebrows. “Especially as from what I heard, anywhere the pig went Crawford would follow. Don’t s’pose you had anybody hidden in the wheelbarrow you was pushing that night, did you?”
Forced onto the back foot by a copper who wasn’t as daft as he looked, Barry was left with no option but to tell the truth.
“Ha-hah,” said Dennis/“Betty.” Triumphantly.
But Barry wasn’t giving up on the falsehood of media narratives.
“Crawford’s story is not what you think it is, PC Dawkins,” he stressed. “It is of the simple and innocent kind I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion, now blown out of all proportion. All I was doing was helping a fellow human being in some distress,” he added before explaining why it was that Jeremy had left his millionaire lifestyle and wife for a leap into the unknown.
“Nothing to do with politics or international plots. He was just sick and tired of the life he was leading, that was all.”
Dennis nodded. He could understand that part of the story. Sympathize even. “No-boots-on-carpets” Missus Crawford seemed to him a perfectly understandable reason to do a runner. What took him a little longer to get his head around was the choose/chosen argument Barry then explained, especially if it led to penury. Who would want to live without all that money, chosen or not bloody chosen, he wanted to know.
“Me,” said Jeremy, emerging from behind the kitchen door. “Thanks for doing your best to protect me, Barry, but I reckon it’s time I took up the tale.”
Dennis’s jaw dropped at the sight of one million pounds on legs. Not that he looked worth the money, mind you. Bonkers, yes, all messy and dishevelled and everything. But valuable…? Dennis/“Betty” didn’t think so. Almost felt sorry for the bloke.
“It’s all quite simple really,” Jeremy continued. “Barry was right. I just ran away from my old life, that’s all. Never been to Russia. Never had anything to do with spying or politics or anything like that. Believe the press, clap me in irons, and claim your reward if you want to, but you’ll never get your money because, like everything else about me out there, it’s a fiction.”
Dennis/“Betty” squinted back and forth between Barry and Jeremy like a spectator at Wimbledon.
“And just while we’re on the subject of money, perhaps I might further explain my current attitude to it? That be all right with you?”
Dennis/“Betty” nodded.
“What was that Dickens’ quote you came up with the other day, Barry? The one with Mister Micawber in it,” said Jeremy.
“‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, result happiness.’”
“That’s it. Thanks. So you see, Mister policeman, it’s just a matter of cutting one’s clothes according to one’s cloth. Money is not the be all and end all of everything. A little more than you need is ample. But, in my experience at least, too much of it can be a burden. What was it your friend Karl Marx said, Bazza?”
“‘If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds’? And that’s the last of my quotes if you don’t mind, Jezza. I’m not just a quote machine, you know. Also it gets boring.”
But it seemed Dennis/“Betty” had got the point.
“Mmm,” he said.
“Before long,” said Jeremy, “you’re doing what it tells you to do. Dancing to its rhythms. Needing this and needing that, fancy cars and suchlike, even though, if you think about it, you don’t really need them at all. You just want them. To show the world how successful you are. That’s how you get chosen by them, rather than making your own choice. That’s why...”
“You did the runner,” said Dennis.
Jeremy nodded. “Enough was enough. Arrest me if you must. For what crime, I don’t know. But that’s why you’re here, right?”
“That’s why I was here. Don’t s’pose there’s any of that nettle brandy left in the bottle, Mister...?”
“Just call me ‘Barry.’”
“Okay, Barry. And I’m Dennis. Look, I need a loo break. Could you show me where it is?”
“No problem. Step this way. I’ll fetch a fresh bottle while we’re at it.”
It was Dennis who returned first from the nether regions of the Shepherd’s Hut and, after the considerable thought he’d put into the matter while peeing, sheepishly confessed to Jeremy his recent Twitter activities. How keen he’d been on collecting the million-pound reward offered for any information leading to the capture of the megalomaniac bonkers banker on the loose. He even fessed up to his alias.
“Betty?” Jeremy laughed. “Some name for a copper with a beard.”
Dennis blushed.
“Anyway, Betty, it’s your call. Like I said, I’m here if you want me. Get the handcuffs out and go for the big bucks, if you still believe in them. But before you do, a further word of warning. The prime reason for suggesting that the million pound reward is a fiction is that Barry and I know the origin of the bonkers banker post and I should tell you Jackie Lamur’s boss isn’t the most reliable when it comes to shelling out that kind of money. Probably just offering one more of his rubber cheques to suck in the punters. But, like I said, it’s your call.”
“Here we are,” said Barry, returning with the fresh bottle. “Top-ups for everyone?”
To which everyone gladly agreed.
“‘Betty’ here is one of the tweeters who swallowed the Lamur post,” Jeremy told Barry when the topping-up was over.
“Betty?” said Barry, peering around the room.
Dennis blushed again.
“That’s what Dennis is called when he’s on Twitter.”
Barry frowned. “Some name for a copper with a beard.”
“That’s what I said.”
Dennis re-blushed and this time also squirmed. “Spur of the moment thing, wasn’t it? Copper’s pay ain’t all that brilliant. Surprised you didn’t have a go yourself, Barry. Gardening can’t bring in much.”
Barry nodded and smiled. “Like Mister Micawber, I make ends meet.”
“Also, Barry wasn’t always a gardener,” said Jeremy. “Used to be an Oxford professor before he thought better of it.”
“Bloody ’ell. The two of you make a proper pair. Anyhow, look, I’ve made up my mind, innit?”
“To take me in and claim your mythical reward, Betty?”
Dennis sucked at his nettle brandy. “Quit it with the ‘Betty,’ okay?”
Jeremy and Barry shrugged and nodded.
“No, I ain’t goin’ to take you in. And I ain’t goin’ to claim no reward neither. Enjoyed our little chat, didn’t I? Made a lot of sense to me.”
“Raaf, raaf,” chorused Hans and Colin who’d been listening in.
“So, what I was thinkin’ was...”
Barry and Jeremy exchanged squints.
It was Barry who spoke up. “Yes?”
“See, only if you was willin’...I wouldn’t mind...only for a few days like…”
“Dossing with us?” said Jeremy.
“Well...um...”
“You’d be very welcome, old fellow,” said Barry. “It’s not
a big house, but there’s room for all. There might be a few questions asked at your place of employment, of course. But that would be for you to negotiate. Let us just say we wouldn’t want any more strangers knocking on our door.”
Dennis dropped his head into his hands and fiddled with his beard. “See, the thing is, I’ve never liked being a copper all that much. Wouldn’t take me nothing to toss in my badge altogether and I’d never say nothing to nobody about where I’d gone. Honest Injun.”
“Raaf, raaaaafff,” said Hans and Colin, who were as bored with being police sniffer dogs as Dennis was with being a policeman. Hans was particularly pleased if the boss’s words meant he could spend some quality time with Shirley.
“Oink,” said Pete, more as an expression of general support than from any self-interest. Pete just liked it when humans got along with each other.
“Well, it’s an interesting idea and you’d be welcome,” said Jeremy. “Keep me out of the pokey for a while anyway.”
“Thanks. I’ll pull my weight, and there’s plenty of that, as you can see,” said Dennis, patting his belly. “There’s one other thing I haven’t told you, though. And you’re not going to like this. Before I came looking for you, I had a message from Jackie Lamur on my phone sayin’ she’d fancy a chat with me.”
“And?” said Jeremy.
“She sounded kosher and said she could be in Fanbury in two shakes of a dog’s tail. That was yesterday. But…”
“But?” said Jeremy.
“While I was in the loo just now, she called me. Seemed like such a nice girl and I’d always liked her tweets, so…”
“You told her where you were,” said Barry.
“Yes. Look, I’m sorry. Must’ve been the drinks you gave me that made me talk but she’d already been speaking with Batty Hattie who’d told her about funny goings-on in the village and talking to me and how she’d sent me to this address and…”
“Like you, she’s found us,” said Jeremy.
“Yes. Sorry. Look, I’d take it back if I could, only now it’s too late, and...”
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