Worthless Remains

by Peter Helton

  ‘We’ve no current address.’

  ‘In that case I’ll work on my standard rate until I find him, and on percentage after that.’

  I preferred working for a daily rate but a percentage deal could sometimes work out very well, especially if it only took you a couple of days to get a result. Of course if you came up empty-handed then you had worked for nothing. Over the years I’d become a reluctant expert in that.

  ‘I thought you might say that. And that’s all I’m authorized to offer you. All the details of the case are there. Find him quickly and nail him. Of course if it was me I’d just tip him out of that chair and see what happens,’ Haarbottle said sweetly.

  I looked up from the photograph. Haarbottle was a tall thin man in a pale blue M&S suit and looked totally harmless, but he was an insurance man through and through – suspicious, vicious and stingy. ‘He’ll claim a sudden improvement brought on by the shock,’ I told him. ‘That’s not the way to get your money back.’

  Haarbottle grunted contemptuously and jabbed a moistened index finger at the crumbs on his plate. ‘Just make sure he’s not booking himself on a flight to Lourdes so he can come back miraculously cured. I tell you, these people stop at nothing.’

  ‘Steady on.’

  ‘Anyway, onwards and upwards. Call me personally; my numbers are on the file.’ He grabbed his briefcase and strode out of the Pump Rooms without paying for his bun. No matter, I was now on expenses, so I ordered a fresh pot of tea and some crumpets. While I piled blackcurrant jam on to those I went through the file. It made depressing reading.

  Mike Dealey had been minding his own business one sunny day, riding his Ducati along the A4 towards Bristol when a builder’s van pulled out in front of him. It was a classic T-bone sorry-didn’t-see-you-mate accident. Dealey was lucky to survive. He spent three months at the Royal United and left it in a wheelchair. According to the file he was a broken man in more ways than one. He had been a heating engineer yet the head injury had left him unable to walk, with painful spasms in his legs and a host of other ailments, like a fear of loud noises and bouts of depression. His fiancée left him while he was still in hospital, which might not have helped.

  Three-quarters of a million pounds didn’t seem much money, considering, and I was beginning to hope, for his sake as much as mine, that he was only faking it. But how did you fake a girlfriend dumping you?

  It did occur to me as I left the Pump Rooms that we didn’t exactly have a sworn statement to that effect – it was only hearsay, things the Griffins people had perhaps picked up at the hospital. Who was to say that she was the dumper? Mike Dealey could easily have decided to make a fresh start by himself with the aid of all that money. Not that these days three-quarters of a million set you up for life but it did give you a certain head start.

  I had parked the bike opposite the Pig & Fiddle and while I walked there the sun disappeared behind dark rain clouds. I didn’t see it as an omen since at that moment I still felt at one with the world, something that new expense accounts and fresh assignments often do to me. My first task was to find Dealey and that was a job for Tim. Not that I was incapable of finding people without him, but Tim was so much better (and quicker) at it that I had come to rely on him a lot. And since he often worked for no more than a few beers and food I called him at work, told him what I wanted and invited him up for a barbecue after work. Then I popped into the nearest supermarket and bought stuff Tim could incinerate and then drown in barbecue sauce.

  A few hours later the barbecue was sizzling with lamb kebabs. Ever since our return from Corfu we had been eating à la Greque. The earlier rain clouds hadn’t come to much and late evening sunshine gilded the valley. Tim eased his broad shoulders into a wicker chair on the Mill House verandah and shook his woolly head. ‘Drew a blank. Couldn’t find him on the register or anywhere else. He’s keeping a low profile. We’ll find him though.’ Tim had been gesturing with his closed bottle of Pilsner and when he opened it he sprayed himself and surroundings with beer froth.

  ‘Cheers, Tim.’ Annis mopped at her jeans with a napkin.

  Tim’s chrome, leather and hardwood flat in Northampton Street was stuffed with computer gear and he kept it to laboratory standards of cleanliness by eating out and drinking in the pub next door. He liked to leave his mess elsewhere, like at my place.

  ‘So how are we going to go about it? If I don’t know where he lives then the job’s a non-starter and at the moment I need all the work I can get.’

  Annis gave the kebabs a last quarter turn on the barbecue. ‘What else do you know about him?’

  ‘Hang on, the file’s still in the kitchen.’ I fetched it and flipped it open. ‘He used to live in a third-floor flat behind the Circus somewhere, which he can’t now because of his legs, but where he eventually moved to it doesn’t say.’

  ‘How come Griffins don’t know?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Because he doesn’t want them to know?’

  Annis doused the kebabs with lemon juice and handed them around. ‘It does look a bit suspicious. On the other hand he could simply have moved away.’

  ‘The anonymous tip-off came in a letter that was posted in Bath. If they had seen him in Majorca they probably would have said so.’

  ‘Is that him there?’ Tim pointed with the end of his kebab and dribbled meat juice over the photograph.

  I held the pics up in turn. ‘Yup, that’s him in a wheelchair; that’s him supposedly walking on his own two feet; and that’s him taking possession of his car, a Honda modified for wheelchair use.’

  ‘Can you read the number plate on it?’

  I squinted. ‘I can, just. Oh good, we’re sorted, then.’

  ‘We’ll ask PC Whatsisname to find out for us.’

  ‘That means wine labels,’ I reminded Tim.

  ‘No probs. I’ll print some out on your computer later, if you’ve got the bottles.’

  We call him PC Whatsisname because Watt’s his name, Police Constable Nick Watt. Doubts about the precise wattage of Nick’s brain have long been dogging his career. We got quite friendly a few years back and he can sometimes be bribed to find out things for us. It saves Tim trying to hack into police computers and risk a lengthy jail term, but then bribing a police officer isn’t popular with the courts either. Five years earlier Nick had won a competition in the Police Gazette. His prize: a week in France. The happiest time of his life. While there he fell in love with an unapproachable waitress and discovered French wine; he had even brought an empty bottle of his favourite tipple back as a souvenir but had been unable to lay his hands on any more of the plonk, for the simple reason that it was rubbish and didn’t travel. It was simply called JM Blanchard, probably after the chap who made it in his garage. We scanned the label, stuck them on a half-decent Merlot and Nick, suffering badly from nostalgia for his untouchable French waitress, swore it was the very vintage he had been drinking on holiday while adoring her from afar. Naturally these bottles were fiendishly difficult to get hold of and Nick appreciated all my efforts on his behalf.

  ‘The DVLA will have a record of the registered keeper,’ Tim said, spraying feta crumbs over his jeans. ‘They’ll even have the name of his last MOT garage. By this time tomorrow we’ll have Mr Dealey pinned down.’

  It was to this end that at noon the next day I was sitting in the Café Retro drinking cappuccino opposite Constable Watt. Unlike most of his colleagues he shunned the current fashion for extreme crew cuts and looked uncommonly cuddly for an officer of the law. He was out of uniform, on his way to clock on at Manvers Street nick around the corner, but looked shiftily around him as though fearful of spies. Nick loved a bit of conspiracy. I saw he had brought an optimistically large bag with him to carry off the plonk.

  ‘I could only get hold of four bottles this time,’ I told him. ‘It’s getting very hard to find.’ I simply didn’t have any more of the Merlot at the house and while he had convinced himself that it tasted exactly how he remembered the original, he mi
ght well notice if I changed over to yet another substitute.

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll make them last. What are you after? Nothing too dodgy, I did warn you.’

  ‘Not at all.’ I simply relayed the whole story.

  ‘Three-quarters of a million? That’s a nice nest egg. OK, if he’s on the database I’ll find him. Soon as I get a chance.’

  We were interrupted by the chime of my mobile. It was Jake, calling from his car restoration workshop.

  ‘Honeysett . . .’ There was a sound as though someone was grinding a cat in half. ‘Get yourself up here.’

  ‘Look, if it’s about the van . . .’ Opposite me Watt pulled a knowing face. He imagined my life to be a series of crises and wasn’t far wrong.

  ‘Forget the van,’ Jake shouted over the background of workshop noises. ‘I never expected to see much of it again. Wouldn’t have lent it to you otherwise.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘It’s a surprise. You’ll like it. Some of it, anyways.’ He hung up.

  Watt widened his eyes expectantly. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Apparently not. Which is most mysterious. I’d better go and see what it’s about.’

  Watt checked his watch. ‘I’m due to clock on anyway. Got to hide these in my locker first.’ He lifted the bag and the bottles clinked their nostalgic promise.

  I watched him walk guiltily towards Manvers Street while I started up the Norton. The noise of the thing always turned a few heads, which was another reason why it was pretty useless for a private detective. So Jake had a surprise for me. I didn’t dare hope.

  Jake lived up near Ford, on the way to Chippenham, on a rambling smallholding. Originally the plan had been to breed ponies there and when that venture failed he had turned his hobby, restoring vintage cars, into a thriving business. Jake looked after Annis’s 1960s Land Rover and had for many years – and under protest – kept my equally ancient Citroën DS 21 alive. Jake specialized in British classics and professed to hate French motors. My last DS had literally rusted away beneath me and Jake had towed it to the scrapheap with many a told-you-so.

  It was another fine day and once I had left the tortuous traffic of Bath behind I opened the Norton’s throttle to an ear-splitting fifty miles per hour. The vibrations numbed my wrists, tickled the soles of my feet in their boots and it all helped to remind me that fifty years is a long time in motoring. Still fun, though. I turned into Jake’s yard and found a space to leave the hot, ticking machine. The fawn and rust of the Norton blended in well with the rest of the scenery up here. The workshop and the outbuildings surrounding it looked nearly as dilapidated as my own place, only with the addition of automotive junk of every description; whole engines, part engines, wheels and axles, car doors and bonnets. Neatly parked were a few whole cars inside lockups and under tarpaulin. There was a brown Rover in mint condition, just arrived or ready to be collected. Not far away stood the – to my eyes at least – unpromising remains of a pale blue Wolseley. You didn’t see many of those on the road.

  I found Jake in his workshop underneath a black 1940s Riley in the company of one of his mechanics, a factotum with white, electrified hair. They were making an awful racket and were swearing a lot. There were tools and oil rags on the ground around them. The air smelled of hot metal and burnt rubber. Give me detective work any time.

  ‘You’ll have to wait until we’ve got this bastard sorted,’ Jake said to my legs.

  ‘It’s probably the floggle-toggle,’ I said helpfully.

  The banging stopped long enough for Jake to growl, ‘Shut up, Chris, and put the kettle on.’

  While the clanging and grinding and swearing resumed I filled the kettle. Barely audible, my phone chimed again. This time it was Annis. Something about another job. Something about digging something up? I was desperate for more work so didn’t quibble. ‘I can hardly hear you!’ I shouted down the phone. ‘Tell them I’ll definitely do it!’

  Anyone can make a mistake.

  I made tea and had time to drink it in the sunshine outside. Thirty yards or so away, behind the farmhouse proper, Jake’s wife Sally gave me a wave, then returned to taking colourful washing off the line; Jake’s two mongrel dogs ran senselessly to and fro across the yard for the heck of it; a collared dove landed on a fencepost and took off again; bees buzzed. At last the workshop noise stopped and soon after that Jake emerged. His overalls looked like he had been in a fight and there was a new tear on his knee. The knuckles on his right hand were freshly grazed and his face was a mask of oil and sweat but he seemed happy enough.

  ‘Got the bugger sorted,’ he said, wiping his hands on an oily rag, which made them dirtier.

  Since I probably wouldn’t understand the answer I didn’t even pretend to be interested in his fight with the Riley. ‘So where’s the surprise?’ I asked instead, feeling like a kid.

  ‘I hid it round the back.’

  ‘Crafty.’

  He walked off, signalling me to follow round the corner. ‘Not because of you, you nit, but to avoid embarrassment.’ We rounded the next corner and there, on a bit of concrete hard standing next to the old milking parlour, stood the surprise. ‘Et, voilà. Don’t say I never do anything for you. This is far beyond the call of duty, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘It is. I’m speechless.’ And there it was, Car of the Century (the last one, obviously), a Citroën DS 21, circa 1972. It was gleaming in the sunshine and my heart leapt. Tentatively.

  ‘Obviously I hid it back here because a) it’s a bloody Frog chariot and b) it’s bright pink.’

  ‘Yes, that could be a problem.’

  ‘Otherwise it’s practically mint; wouldn’t have accepted it otherwise. I took it in part-payment.’

  I opened the driver door with reverence and slipped behind the wheel. Jake was right, the leather seats, the dash, even the carpeted floor looked exactly as they had the day the car had rolled off the assembly line forty years ago. Only some criminal had sprayed the bodywork raspberry ice-cream pink. The interior smelled of flowery perfume.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing you can’t afford.’

  ‘That’s very cheap then. It needs respraying.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock. It’s already booked in. Come back in a couple of days.’

  THREE

  A recurring delusion of mine is that there is time to do it all: the painting and the private-eye work, looking after Mill House and the mill pond, having a meaningful relationship, cooking, cleaning and mowing the grass. I forget that most people who have multiple careers, a large house and three acres of land and yet look wide awake in the afternoons also tend to have a lot of help, hired or otherwise. My own help consisted of a largely undomesticated Annis, herself always busy in the studio, an increasingly part-time Tim and two lazy black-faced sheep who were supposed to keep the grass down. All of which meant that my own attempts at Renaissance Mannishness frequently ran into trouble. It never stopped me trying, though.

  There had been no word yet from Constable Whatsisname about Dealey’s address so I spent the rest of the day drawing the junk in the outbuildings from odd angles with a view to using them as the basis for a painting. A bit more abstract perhaps but still fundamentally figurative, though without the sheep. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get sheep past Simon Paris.

  By next morning I still hadn’t heard from Watt so I started transferring my drawings to the canvas. Since I would be sure to invoice Griffins insurance for this waiting time it felt doubly blissful – decent light, free warmth, a new painting, and I was practically getting paid by the hour. In the outbuildings, bright sunlight had been slanting through the gaps in the slatted walls, creating bright patches of light alternating with deep, mys-terious shadows. I would carve the lights out of the canvas by painting the shadows first. To this end I mixed a large amount of a deep, cardinal purple that for some reason was called caput mortum, which translates as ‘death head’ or if you are an alchemist, ‘worthless remains’. In my case it
was prophetic since it remained unused on my palette. My brush hesitated for a second over the canvas while I took another glance at the preparatory drawings I had arranged on the floor, which gave Annis time to burst through the door with the cordless phone in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

  ‘I just took a call from Sergeant Whatsit, he gave me this address. And it’s Jake on the phone for you.’

  I quickly scanned the note, it was Dealey’s address and it had a Bath postcode. Then I took the phone.

  ‘Your Frog carriage awaits, swivelling headlights and all. I got it back early.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  He told me. Annis could see from my face that I was listening to a hideous sound in my ear; she stood whistling tunelessly and rolled her eyes to the rafters. ‘Can I pay you in instalments?’ I begged.

  ‘Certainly. In that case I can let you have the front seats and the off-side rear wheel.’

  ‘All right, I expect I’ll scrape it together somehow.’ I terminated the call.

  ‘The DS reborn,’ said Annis. ‘Praise be, whatever the cost, as long as it gets you off the Norton. Just as well you got a second assignment then.’

  ‘What second assignment?’

  ‘The one I called you about yesterday? You said to accept. I left you a note on your office desk.’

  ‘I never look at notes on my office desk. I never go in my office.’

  ‘Perhaps now’s a good time to try it: the job starts tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Doing what?’

  ‘Babysitting Guy Middleton.’ Annis was slipping out of the door already. The sun lit up her strawberry hair. She was beautiful and had a pencil behind her left ear. Perhaps the drawing bug had bit.

  I ran after her through the overgrown meadow. ‘The TV guy with the hair and that?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘The one who presents the archaeology programme? Time Tunnel?’

  ‘Time Lines. Yes. It was the production company that called. The details are on your desk.’

  ‘And they want me?’