“So why the four o’clock call?” Jaikie asked.
“Well, having said we know nothing I’ll now say there’s no such thing in a murder inquiry. We three know something about this boy. We’ve missed it, that’s all.”
“Did you ever visit The Chiltern Clinic?” said Laura, prompted by the metal plate, I presume. “For a description, I mean. Somebody there might remember him.”
“The Chiltern’s the last place I can go. Alarm bells rang when you phoned them, if I walk in there they’ll lock the place down.”
“That doesn’t alter the fact that at some point he broke a metatarsal. The people who made this were quite adamant.”
“Ambrose and Dawlish from Corby,” said Jaikie, finally sitting up properly. “AD07FI673.”
“Memory man, eh?”
“You said after a few days you knew how a normal victim spent their free time, Dad. Well, Patrick Scott went skiing, didn’t he. What does that conjure up, Laura?”
She smiled. “St Moritz, Claviere, Cesana, Scotland even. You?”
“Aspen, Colorado. Lake Tahoe. Kirkwood in California.”
“Yes, well, like you famously said, Jaikie, all I have to do now is track him down. Anywhere in the world where it snows so that shouldn’t be too…”
Again, I wish I could say it was a eureka moment, a dazzling piece of deduction, but it was another case of why the hell didn’t I think of that before. That sudden chill around my ankles was the draught from a distant door opening and Patrick Scott was standing the other side of it.
“That first time you phoned The Chiltern, Laura, what did they tell you about the plate?”
“I can’t remember exactly. Probably something like…”
Jaikie was word perfect. “We were in The Crown and the girl on the phone had told you ‘the number on the plate referred to a Patrick Scott, aged 24’. He came to them as an emergency, via the ambulance service. ‘A skiing accident, badly fractured metatarsal.’ Then Dad moaned about you not getting an address.”
“Say you break a bone in any of those places you two mentioned. St Moritz, for example. Where would you be taken?”
Laura answered as if it were all too obvious. “The nearest emergency point. Celerina, top of the Cresta run.”
“And from there to a hospital? One nearby or a day’s journey away?”
“Nearby,” she said, catching on. “So why take Patrick Scott all the way to the Chiltern Clinic from St Moritz?”
I slapped the table and they both flinched. “Because he wasn’t skiing in St Moritz or anywhere like it. He wasn’t somewhere that boasted real snow. He broke his foot in this country. Skiing, yes, but on a dry ski-slope.”
Jaikie laughed. “You mean Bracknell, Esher, Brentwood?”
“Those places may not have the ring of Aspen, Colorado but it doesn’t make him any the less dead.”
I beckoned him to the table and asked him to do a Google search on my laptop for dry slopes within a 50-mile radius of The Chiltern Clinic. They both wanted to know where that would get us. I reminded them that we had a rough date for when the accident happened, the August before last, we had a name for the victim. If necessary I’d approach every one of those slopes till I found what I was looking for.
“Which is?” said Jaikie.
“He’ll have paid to use the place. Debit card, credit card. We can prove that he did exist. See, I told you we knew something.”
Delighted though they were, it didn’t stop Jaikie pointing out that if the nameless, faceless ‘they’ we were probably dealing with could wipe the NHS database, which was no doubt linked to that of the Chiltern Clinic, the records of a tin-pot ski-slope would have been no problem. It was a good point.
“Unless, like us, they heard the word skiing and assumed foreign climes,” said Laura.
“Jaikie, give them to me alphabetically,” I said. “Phone numbers.”
I walked over to the wall phone by the back door, took it from its cradle and turned to see them both smiling, Laura to herself, Jaikie right at me.
“Dad, it’s 4.30 in the morning. Maybe leave it a few hours?”
-9-
As with all theories dreamed up in the middle of the night, when they seem crystal clear, this one had clouded over by nine o’clock the next day. Sleep was the great problem solver, according to my mother, but now I looked again at the list of ski-slopes Jaikie had printed out, I wondered how I could be sure that Patrick Scott had visited any one of them, or that they, in their turn, had kept perfect records.
Nevertheless, getting in touch with them was now essential if for no other reason than to eliminate possibilities. Fair enough, but as a serving police officer I would’ve had a team to do the donkey work, the texting, phoning, emailing. Here I had only Jaikie, who would worry that people recognised his voice, and Laura who had a full-time job anyway. There were 27 slopes within a 50-mile radius of The Chiltern Clinic. I’d expected more. If we broadened the trawl to take in London the number would rise almost certainly, though not to unmanageable proportions.
After breakfast I divided the list into three and gave Laura and Jaikie a script to work from. Without saying as much, they were to be members of the human resources team at County Fare. An employee of the firm called Patrick Scott claimed to have broken a bone in his foot and was using it as a reason to take time off for physio appointments. If this accident was real, fair enough, we’d support him, if not we’d think again. There were several possible responses ranging from the most likely – no, never heard of him – to the one we were looking for, yes. In case of the latter they should hand over to me. For anything in between they should lie.
It was routine and tedious work, as far as I was concerned, but my new recruits soon began to get a kick out of being gently deceptive. If I had any criticisms at all it was that Jaikie gave it a little too much Hamlet at Elsinore and Laura veered towards asking the person on the other end where it hurt. By the time we’d reached number 17 on the list, with nothing positive to show for it, I was beginning to lose heart. Just after a break for coffee, though, all that changed when I was put through to the manager of The Snow Centre at Hemel Hempstead. He picked up almost immediately, telling me that his name was Kevin Stapleton. I began to parrot the script and got as far as the name Patrick Scott, at which point he said, “Don’t tell me he’s turned up.”
His response threw me but I quickly regained my balance. “Well, in a way, yes.”
“He either has or he hasn’t. Which is it?” He was excited, but my refusal to answer quickly made him suspicious. “Who am I speaking to?”
He was in a cleft stick now and knew it. He couldn’t go back and deny knowledge of Patrick, but for reasons best known to himself he wasn’t prepared to talk further.
“I don’t discuss the people who use our facility,” he said. “Thanks for your call.”
The line went dead. Jaikie and Laura finished their own calls and turned to find me already on my feet, reaching for my leather jacket and momentarily wondering, though God knows why at that particular moment, if Jim Kelloway had got a point and I should invest in a new one.
“You off somewhere?” Jaikie asked.
“Hemel Hempstead. The manager there knew him, assumed from me asking about him that he’d turned up.”
“Can I come?” Jaikie asked.
“Stay here and find out for me if Ralph Askew’s grandfather was in Italy during the war. That should be easy enough. Not so easy is whether Ralph is a film buff or not.” I paused at the door, unhappy to admit that I might have been wrong about someone. “Any problem, get onto George Corrigan.”
To speak the truth about Hemel Hempstead is to run the risk of offending anyone who lives there, so I’ll be brief. I know it for having the most tortuous traffic system in Europe where six roundabouts are chained together in one. I’ve been unable to avoid it over the years with it being en route to the M1 motorway and that just about sums the place up. It’s one of those southern towns famous only f
or being on the way to somewhere else. It was the case 150 years ago with the Grand Union Canal, London to Birmingham, it’s the case today with the motorway to Leeds and the main line railway to Scotland. All three carve the place into chunks, rendering it disjointed and characterless, and the double-barrelled name gives it no more charm than, for example, Leighton Buzzard or the unthinkable Milton Keynes. I said I’d be brief…
My only interest in Hemel Hempstead that morning was The Snow Centre. It is a pale imitation of the real thing in every respect, an indoor parody of the Alps with home-made snow. A wallscape depicting a sunny part of Switzerland runs the entire length of one slope, trying to create an atmosphere, but it remains tantalisingly unreachable.
Kevin Stapleton had the air of a man who’d spent too long sitting tight and hoping for a better offer, presumably one that took him to the real thing, the ski slopes of France, Italy or Switzerland. He must have known that time was running out. He was in his late 30s and there would be younger, more attractive, less forgettable men who would be chosen ahead of him. Should he go or should he stick it out in Hemel? While he made up his mind he was running a successful business here, with apparently satisfied customers and contented staff, but he was hardly brimming over with joy. Not that I’m an expert on the latter.
He was losing his black hair rapidly. There were strands of it on the shoulder of his jacket. He was putting on weight. The said jacket didn’t quite fit anymore.
He took me into the mock après-ski bar where we stood at the window alongside proud mothers watching children as young as five descend fearlessly, return to the summit on the ski-lift and do it all again. After a few pleasantries with regular customers, he ordered me an orange juice, himself a diet coke, and took me to a corner table. Though not surprised to see me, he was hardly the most welcoming of hosts and with it being half-term they were busy, so the sooner we got whatever it was over and done with the better. He spoke as if he knew that at the heart of my questions lay more than just a broken bone and my first thought was that he’d always known that Patrick’s accident would return to haunt him. But as I pressed him for answers, I sensed more to his hostility than a possible insurance claim against the company he worked for.
“You said on the phone that you knew Patrick Scott,” I began.
“I said no such thing. I said…”
“I know what you really said, Kevin, but you gave yourself away. You knew him.”
He noticed that I’d used the past tense. I told him I’d done so on purpose because Patrick was dead. He took time to absorb the news, wondering no doubt if a man could die from a broken metatarsal or complications arising therefrom. Deciding that it was unlikely, he allowed himself to react to the news.
“What did he die of?” he asked.
“Somebody murdered him.”
He mouthed the words “fucking hell” and I went on to explain most of the events that had brought me to this apology for Switzerland. I’m not sure he heard much of it.
When I stopped talking he said, “You sound like a cop.”
“Used to be. Can’t seem to shake it off. An unsolved murder comes my way, I jump in.”
He responded quietly, aware that news of a customer being murdered wouldn’t go down well in this bar. “They didn’t catch whoever killed him?”
“D’you know, Kevin, you are the first person I’ve met who acknowledges that he actually existed.” He took it as a compliment, for some reason, until I added, “I’d like you to think about that.”
“Why, does it make me a suspect?”
I spluttered a little. “What is wrong with your generation? Everything’s about you, you, you. I said the first person to acknowledge him, not the last person to see him alive.”
He shuffled his chair closer to the table and leaned forward, lowering his voice even further. He told me that Patrick was a regular there at Hemel, a strange, neurotic sort of guy but he liked him. Had reason to be grateful to him. They’d had a new ski-lift put in and it kept breaking down. Patrick was the man who could fix it in 20 minutes. He was an engineer of some kind, always had a new invention on the go, something he said that would Save the World.
“He used those words?”
“Quite often. Is it a problem?”
“No, but it’s a long time since I heard anyone express the desire to do it. I’ve missed it. When he broke his foot…?”
“August 15th, last year. I looked it up after you phoned.”
“You called an ambulance?”
He nodded. “A private outfit we use. Cambry’s. They came within minutes, took him… wherever. I never saw him again.”
At least I was narrowing down the time scale. The accident took place on August 15th, just over a year ago. Charles Drayton quit his job in the following November, the 19th to be precise. Five months during which, at some point, Patrick Scott was killed and turned into Fivestar.
“Did he come here alone, or with friends?” I asked.
Stapleton looked at me with mistrust, which he tried to pass off as curiosity.
“Why d’you ask?”
“No reason. Or there wasn't, till you asked me why I’d asked. Who did he come with?”
He took a few surreptitious deep breaths and appeared to consult his diet coke before responding. “You tell me he’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. He came with a girlfriend, Belinda Hewitt.”
“Was she here the night he broke his foot?”
He nodded. “I haven’t seen her since, either.”
“And you wish you had?” In response to my old-fashioned look he turned away, mouthing the words “fucking hell” again. “Don’t blame yourself, I have a nose for these things.”
I was disappointed, though. I’d begun to hope that Patrick Scott’s murder would turn out to be an interesting one with a chance of it involving government lackeys, civil servants, press, big business, cover-ups; and yet here it was in danger of boiling down to a love triangle gone haywire. When I put this to Stapleton, he smiled for the first time since we’d met. Wonderful teeth, as white as the snow beyond the window.
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” he said.
He’d slept with her once. He knew it was inexcusable, another man’s girlfriend, but besides being this captivating, flame-haired beauty, Belinda was also a very persuasive creature.
“Is that the polite way of saying she was gagging for it?”
He winced at my crudeness. “Not at all. They were here one evening and they had a row. Patrick just got up, walked out, drove home, leaving Belinda to cry on my shoulder. I took her back to my place in Apsley.”
He shrugged to make what had clearly followed understandable.
“Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt?” I said.
“If you must.”
“Do me a favour. Poor boy, backed into a corner where some divisive woman forces you to screw her? You think I’ve never heard it before? What had they been rowing about?”
“She thought he was involved with some girl called Henrietta. She was the real love of his life, according to Pat.”
“You mean according to Belinda, according to Pat.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“I suppose you never met this Henrietta?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Just Belinda.”
He was beginning to resent my style and accused me of making it sound as if they’d had a lurid affair lasting God knows how long and not the one night stand it was. If I’d finished my questions, he had work to get on with.
“Couple more,” I said. “Where did Patrick live?”
He looked round the bar. It was filling up. He waved to a couple of newcomers and I waited for him to give me back his full attention.
“Where did he live?” he repeated. “No idea.”
“Kevin, your worst fear right now, based on what you already know about me, should be that I raise my voice and all these people here learn that one of your punters was murdered and you’d
been screwing his girlfriend.”
He was the one to raise his voice, in a strangulated sort of way. “I don’t know where he lived. Ask Belinda.”
“Okay, where does she live?”
“I don’t know that either, but she runs an antique shop. Not the real pricey stuff, more home decor and ornamental.”
“Where?”
“Golborne Road, West London. Off Portobello.”
“Number?”
“No idea, but it’s called, wait for it… Belinda’s.”
I smiled at him. My own teeth are pretty good, considering what they’ve been through, but I drink far too much tea and coffee, I’m told.
“When I find her, shall I give her your love?”
Back at Winchendon, the workforce had had a fruitful afternoon too and couldn't wait to tell the boss all about it. Unlike most new recruits, however, one of them was keen to make a three-act drama out of the essentially routine work, the other was putting the finishing touches to an apple and blackberry pie.
“You want the good news or the bad first?” Jaikie asked.
“You choose,” I said.
He had difficulty with that. “Well, I guess it depends on your definition of either. One man’s crappy performance is another’s Olivier Award.”
“Ralph Askew,” I said, sharply.
“That’s the bad news. He told you the truth. He is a film buff, he’s even on the board of bloody BAFTA. And his grandfather was in Italy during the war. We found him on a regimental database.”
To their bewilderment, I said that wasn’t bad news, it was excellent.
“We thought you wanted us to come up with something damning,” said Laura.
“You have done. Askew told me at the premier of All Good Men that Richard Slater was a means of ‘getting him through the door’. If he’s on the board of BAFTA…”
“He wouldn’t need help getting cinema tickets,” said Jaikie. “He was probably given a fistful.”
“If Askew was the bad news, what’s the good?”
“Julien Raphael,” said Laura. “He phoned to ask if I’d send him the plans for the new Health Centre, before we meet.”
Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 11
