The television commentator cuts in quietly, “Lord Valentine D’Eynscourte, an Olympic standard fencer not unused to high tension, seems genuinely overcome. And still we do not know what this grand project is to be.”
Valentine’s gaze returns directly into the camera, “Forgive me, I find this truly awesome, as our American cousins would say. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the site of The D’Eynscourte University of Ancaster County, a site and community we intend to make one of the truly great beacons of learning for the world down future ages.”
Applause ripples through the scene as Allegri’s choral Miserere swells. Val retires into the semi-circle of people behind. The lady of Albion House, dressed in a subdued light green with yellow and red scarf, waits for the explosive top C of the angelic choir boy’s voice to fade before she begins.
“In a country hailed as the home of democracy with its mother of Parliaments, devoted to values it holds dear that have spread across the world to the benefit of billions of people. The birthplace of the industrial and information revolution and ages, Britain has long held universities as the keystone for life and progress.
“In the land of Newton, Darwin, Crick, Watson, Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin,” Rebecca Hakluyt enthuses, “Russell and Keynes, Shakespeare and Milton, Jane Austen and Dickens …”
A pause, the camera pulls back to show her full figure as her arms open in natural welcome, “Even in such august company, this mystical place, home of knowledge and learning for over a thousand years is the natural birthplace of our ambitious project.”
Art house computer creations of a gleaming futuristic campus, all sweeping lawns and quadrangle around a placid lake, through every season appear, accompanied by a soundtrack of bird song and lilting violins. Gaggles of eager students from every nation wander amongst sleek white buildings that blend with the curves and angles of the landscape and frame the ruins as the lady of Albion House gives practical details in voice over. Brought to pass over the next five years to the design of an internationally acclaimed woman architect, the creation will employ five thousand in construction, one thousand staff when operational to serve five thousand plus purely graduate students. The whole campus to be built and run on key environmental principles, self-sustaining as far as possible, respecting past and present to forge the future.
Mrs Hakluyt reappears in close-up to extol, “The brightest minds of both students and teachers from across the globe – in all of the sciences, IT, business, manufacturing, languages and not forgetting the Humanities and Classics.”
The audience, a host of journalists local and national now clearly visible, are getting restless as Bartlett is introduced as the Vice Chancellor Designate and gives a brief vision of the University as ‘a beacon of blue sky thinking first and last, sharing our advances with our fellow D’Eynscourte Universities being rolled out right now as I speak in New York State and Shanghai with more to come in Africa, Europe, South America and Australasia.
“Such an institution has long been my dream, and it is truly one to cherish.”
Time has run its course; close ups of the eager crowd are less frequent now. But the politician has further baubles to entrance on screen. First, our local MP introduces the British Prime Minister at the Cabinet table in 10 Downing Street. She welcomes this new development and the concept wholeheartedly and looks forward to all that it will bring Britain and the world. Embarrassingly after such high vision with no mention of filthy lucre, she pointedly stresses that no public money is to be spent.
Next on screen, the Chinese Premier sits alone in the most lavish of ornate reception rooms and is also effusive in word and gesture about ‘Unity of efforts for human progress.’ Last, the big screens fill first with the White House to the sound of the Stars and Stripes, and then the orange glow that is President Donald Trump. He welcomes this opportunity for a Twenty-first Century approach with America’s oldest and newest allies, ‘Folks I like and know I can do business with.’
***
It is over, even as a summary of the similar ceremony in China begins on our television. That event is structured precisely as in Ancaster County but this time ending with the Chinese President’s piece to camera. It too is sedate and serious with lilting and then inspiring Asian melodies even if set in a colossal and packed conference centre within the Shanghai World Financial Centre. The teeming spires of progress all reaching for the sky through background windows. A hushed English commentator reveres the building nicknamed ‘the bottle opener.’ The launch is led by the two Chinese lady diners at Albion House, Bai Yen, captioned as a senior executive of The D’Eynscourte Bank of China, and her mother Shi Yen, senior Vice President. Mark Castle is right. Both women are beautiful. A Chinese Professor of Analytics is present for the visionary academic mission statement and a senior politician from the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China stresses government support.
With illustrations cutting in constantly, references are made to everyone from Confucius to present day industrialists and Nobel Prize winners and the ‘Four Great Novels.’ I stir as the commentator breathlessly whispers explanation, ‘To understand China you need to study the novels. All have the philosophical, spiritual and religious underpinnings characteristic of Chinese civilization.’ I vividly remember enjoying their tales of loyalty, treachery, triumph and defeat, elements hailed as showing the very best and worst of life in China.
In the American ceremony, Charles Hakluyt leads proceedings in a mid-Atlantic accent, accompanied by Professor Joe Tasker and ‘The esteemed Lady Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs’ in a sumptuous Washington DC conference suite. Brimming with the all-American razz of flags, a flashing light show, a media melee, underpinned by folk, jazz, blues, rock and roll, ballads and finally Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ as background rhythm. Mention comes of George Washington, Jefferson, Abigail Adams, Bessie Smith, Katherine Hepburn, Martin Luther King, Cassius Clay, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin et al, along with film clips lest people forget who these fine folk are.
The President’s oration is brief, referencing how America has both produced and welcomed great minds to a country that is ‘The shining city on the hill,’ and ‘A light of freedom that will burn ever brighter with these new universities.’
Lucinda leaps to her feet, “Wonder if they want a top PR person – looks to me like they have one already, shame. You were right Caleb, a University it is, drinks are on me.”
For myself, I am a little overcome with emotion. Because my county is finally to get its long sought after University, the first and only one no doubt as we are after all a mere backwater. Because Val is in part responsible, fulfilling his father’s dream. Because I can hear in my mind the poetry of Vaughan William’s lark returning to the land as the composer’s melody entwines itself around and then breaks free, rising to ever loftier heights. Is this what the University means for my county?
***
The ACC calls. She had no inkling of this development. The Chief Constable had appointed a small special task force, led by Creel, to attend to full security with the utmost secrecy for the announcement she has just watched. The bank insisted. It should have been her responsibility. Creel’s devious disloyalty astounds her. We agree it would have helped to know of the project, but we cannot readily see how it affects Pippa’s death. Lucinda departs. I send Gadd home as it is his night with his kids.
Why keep the University a secret at all? A sense of the dramatic, I can understand. Intellectual property perhaps. To avoid opposition until the deal is done? Jobs and investment are sorely needed, especially with Brexit wreaking havoc on the county’s income, so the county will welcome it. But there will be some, perhaps much opposition to Chinese intrusion into the very weft and weave of intellectual life in the West? Will President Trump really stay supportive when patriotic Republican senators raise strident voices against? We will see; surely it goes against his ‘America First’ mantra and opens American ideas, rese
arch and applications to prying Chinese eyes if not imitation? The Americans can trust the Brits to be poodles, after all we gave them Blair, support for wars anywhere and everywhere, the jet engine, our advanced research on the atom bomb and computers amongst much besides in return for condescension and patronage that always costs us top dollar. China are clearly not so blatantly stupid.
73
Even the usually unpredictable Ancaster weather conspired with the all-powerful banks to give them sunshine. Dull darkness now descends even as a sparkling limousine pulls into the Merian Police Station yard. A bespoke suited chauffeur appears to extricate the two occupants from the warm luxury within. My email pings with a note from the Chief Constable no less, requiring me to see ‘two important people’ and ‘accept what is said in the good faith it is offered.’
The London QC, one Sir Bentley Arbuthnot and his junior, Anastasia Vane-Gascoyne are brought up by a suitably cowed young PC. Freshly back from China they inform me they were present there to advise Bai and Yen Shi in producing statements concerning the unfortunate death outside Albion House earlier in the month.
No doubt they prepped the two Chinese women on the long flight in a private jet from London to Shanghai, and essentially wrote what was parroted to the British Embassy official who took the women’s statements and verified signatures.
No handshakes are offered or wanted as their sweet deodorant and perfume waft through the squad room. The two lawyers’ disdain for this town, this place and me are palpable as they hand the short statements over. Their heads are clearly already in the Michelin starred restaurant they are planning to visit back in civilisation. It is almost a throwaway demand that I sign an acceptance note they have drafted. Mere couriers that they are, they must know it is not the way things work.
I take the documents, ignore the acceptance sheet the junior, stern of business suit and tight hair bun, proffers. I sit at the conference table, inviting them to do likewise. They remain standing; they do not have time to waste.
“As you wish but I need to read these, ask any supplementary questions and then we can discuss my confirming the statement as delivered – but without accepting the substance of course.”
Sir Bentley, all aristocrat in look, clothes and manner, actually wipes a chair with a pristine white cloth and sits in high dudgeon, protesting that the Chief Constable himself and the Foreign Office have approved the way this has been carried out. His junior suddenly has the inevitable fountain pen and leather notebook such people carry ready to take copious notes. She need not have worried, I snapped audio record on my phone as they came up the stairs.
I cut in to his mellow fruity monologue, interrupting a man who no doubt charges by the hour for his endless harangues on behalf of the great and the bad, “I am the Senior Investigating Officer Mr Arbuthnot, Ms Vane-Gascoyne, I will decide, nobody else.”
It is bluff. I know it will be hard, if not impossible, to apply pressure after the University announcement today dangled investment, jobs, untold future revenue, prospects and prestige for the county but I need to try for Pippa’s sake. The Hakluyts have outflanked us, but still do not know about the evidence we have from Castle, Pippa’s photographs, Adams and forensics.
***
I read the statements three times in silence, save for the puttering of the propane gas fires. The Chinese women’s statements are identical. Both insist they were sat dozing in the rear of their silver Bentley. The chauffeur Mark Castle was driving and thought he had hit a fox just beyond the Albion House gates. The elder woman, Shi Yen, insisted that they stop, look and tend to the fox if they could. The statement explains that though foxes are looked upon as likely evil spirits in Chinese folklore, it is not done to antagonize them. The two of them, Castle and young Mr Hakluyt had searched for no more than twenty minutes to find the second fox they thought had been hit, and been reassured on the phone by Albion’s security that they would look in daylight. The car had then continued to London with Castle driving all the way. Staff at the house would confirm Castle was driving as they had left, and they had stopped for a comfort break and petrol at a Services along the way when people had admired the car and seen Castle at the wheel. Neither woman saw or felt the car impact with a person, or anything else for that matter, before it mounted the grass kerb by the gate.
I do not question or challenge, do not say that Castle says the opposite, has offered himself for questioning without legal subterfuge and the size of the footprint that got out of the driver’s door immediately after impact supports his version even if forensics on the car has not helped at all after it was thoroughly cleaned against our warning. The choice is always to retain knowledge to use later, or flay them a little immediately to see ‘what flies out of the coop,’ as the Ancaster saying goes. A little of the latter can go a long way even with skilled flunkeys such as this.
“I know your name from somewhere Sir Bentley, are you from our fine county?”
His loud harrumph may have graced our Medieval Courts when threatening someone with being hung, drawn and quartered for such insult and impudence, as I go on, “So neither of these fine ladies was driving?”
The absurdity of such a suggestion pours out of their very pores. To him I am in the nonsensical land of Evelyn Waugh.
“One of them did not drive, hit Pippa Langstaffe – that is her name by the way, lest you do not know – and then step out of the driver’s door?”
Arbuthnot manages to earn a bag of the many guineas he is no doubt charging, “No. Do please read the statements.”
There are other questions I do not ask: do the two women know of the dead woman, did they meet her in China a few weeks ago when she was there, do they know the story she was pursuing about their bank, did the driver run into her deliberately or by accident, did they move the body, were they involved in holding up the investigation so they could escape to China and draft this mediocre attempt to satisfy British justice?
Those can wait for when we have the women in our interview room, perhaps ‘The Box’ if I have my way, and that means waiting until they are next in England. Without giving any warning that such an interview is planned for the Hakluyts, Crowley, Val and the Chinese women. The key thing for the women is motive. Why would they want Pippa dead? They did know she was at the end of the Albion House drive, according to Adams, but why would they want her dead and by their own hand?
Having skimmed and seen both statements are duly signed, attested and dated, I read them very carefully three more times, enjoying the thrum of Arbuthnot’s fingertips now impatiently drumming on the table top.
I turn to the ‘Acceptance Note’ they want me to sign. It asks that, on behalf of Ancaster Police, I accept the version of events and confirm that no further action will be taken against their clients or the Bank. It is preposterous and begs the question of why they even think we will consider signing such a note in any circumstances. I doubt even the Chief knew such a stark sign-off of our public responsibility was afoot. Undoubtedly these are top lawyers used to bamboozling friend and foe, but even they must know this is a nonsensical step way too far. All I can think is that their clients have instructed them to try such high-handed tactics.
I stand, inform their shocked faces that I cannot sign any such note or undertaking and nor will my police force. Ah, the art of the lawyer, or the con man, to try and make their opponent feel truly in the wrong as is proved next.
Sir Bentley stands and gives a three-minute oration that natural justice demands I sign, these important women have offered their precious time and truthfulness in good faith to help correct some ‘unfortunate misunderstandings’ and this is how they are to be repaid.
“It is,’ I reply seriously, only just managing to restrain laughter at his nonsense. “But we would gladly offer them hospitality at our headquarters the next time they are in the UK to do a proper formal interview ourselves and we could no doubt clear the whole ‘misunderstanding’ of a woman dying after being hit by their car in a very short
time.”
He blusters on then about ‘the bigger picture’, the investment and goodwill being poured into Ancaster County as the founding heart of ‘the grand vision of a global chain of Universities – you surely will appreciate that, Cambridge graduate that you are?’
His hectoring tone says he cannot believe my last point and is tired of me: a nobody should sign as instructed and return to the rock from whence I came.
Nobody expects what comes next. I ask if he knows the origins and meaning of his Christian name and its local connections. He rises to his full height, over six feet I have no doubt, flicks a little fluff off his Saville Row suit and waves young Anastasia to join him in leaving.
“Funny thing, names,” I venture as he reaches the door. “Bentley, for instance, means ‘a clearing covered with coarse grass,’ often used for compost or manure in these parts, precisely the kind of stuff you have tried to shovel over me. Good afternoon.”
I watch his puce face stalk away to their car. An unwise way to handle things, a petty way to end, which may cost me dear later but I care not a jot.
74
A busy Ister pub is not a good idea for me, especially a copper’s pub where for most I will be as welcome as a QC tearing a young PC apart on the stand in court. Harry Fletcher, Head of the Drugs Squad, had texted me as I watched my legal friends depart. ‘Result on our Ister murder, drinks to celebrate, my squad and yours, Turks Head snug at 8.’ Fenwick, Parsons, Whittle will be there. Though I long to sleep and dream, I need to support them so force myself to drive once more through the chill night to Ister.
Slipping into the back door to the empty snug reserved for parties and ‘results,’ I can see a host of coppers, recognizable by their light grey shirts and black ties, off shift and relaxing now through in the nearby public bar. The publican, a retired Sergeant from Odling’s squad, appears, raises a questioning eyebrow at me but provides the pint I ask for.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 46
