Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Douglas Watkinson

  “Most of these are high-minded and worthy, I’m afraid, and I know Ralph wanted dirt, dirt and more dirt.” Slater picked out an item on the list at random. “Recon Ltd. They couldn’t be more tree-hugging if they lived in the woods.”

  His wife shuffled the bits of paper and found reference to a young company based in Cambridge that wanted to recycle waste food, turn it into a delicious and nutritious substitute and ship it off to the starving millions.

  “Recycled burgers and chips, pizzas, kebabs?” Jaikie said, grimacing.

  “Presumably.”

  “Is there something there called The Magic Carpet?” I asked.

  Slater looked down his list. “Yes, it’s evidently a means of making the desert bloom. Rushfarthing Enterprises. And they take the idea of extracting water from the driest of land even further. Aquatrap. It’s a means of harvesting condensation over vast areas, containing it between two waterproof layers and channelling it. Clever.”

  “How do they get water to rise up through one layer and stay there, not sink back?” Jaikie asked.

  “That’s the clever bit,” said Imogen. “It’s porous one way, not the other. Based on the idea of disposable nappies.”

  So Rochester hadn’t exactly lied to us, in that The Magic Carpet was an idea dreamed up by Patrick Scott. It just wasn’t the invention everybody was keen to get hold of and certainly wasn’t worth murdering for.

  “He also asked about you and Dr Peterson,” said Richard.

  “What exactly?”

  “Started off with how well did we know you. I mean fair enough, he just dropped your name into the conversation and asked a passing question. But he wouldn’t accept that we didn’t know you very well. When did we meet? Did we know if you were retired officially, or did you perhaps work for some security firm? What did we know about Dr Peterson? Then, had you ever mentioned a young man by the name of Patrick Scott?”

  “So he knows I’m interested. Why would he think I told you all about it?”

  Jaikie gave a nervous cough. “When Richard interviewed me I mentioned that you were looking into his disappearance, Dad.”

  I turned back to the Slaters. “Anything else?”

  “Only that, as Dickie says, he wouldn’t let it drop. He wanted us to speculate on why Dr Peterson’s house had been broken into. We said we didn’t know that it had been but he wasn’t satisfied. ‘You must know, you’re a bloody journalist, it must be on the grapevine’.”

  Richard held up a hand. “Worth saying here that we were onto the second bottle of Rovero by then.”

  “In the end I became quite scratchy and, calling on those past familiarities, I said I wanted to talk about something else other than you, Mr Hawk.” She smiled gently. “No offence. He could sense that he’d overstepped the mark, called up his driver and 20 minutes later he left.”

  “We thought you should know,” said Richard. “With there being a murder to answer for.”

  “If not two. May I have a copy of that research?”

  Imogen went over to a printer, began scanning the documents and rolling them off.

  “Coffee’s done,” said Jaikie, nodding to it.

  Slater over-apologised for not having noticed himself, poured four cups and dug out some biscuits. He was sorry about those as well, but he and Imogen weren’t great biscuit eaters.

  “Now let me turn the tables on Ralph Askew,” I said. “What do you know about him?”

  “Apart from the fact that he broke my girly heart,” Imogen said lightly.

  “How did he get into politics?”

  “Father’s footsteps. In our final year a local Tory party back home at Selingthwaite asked if he’d be their next candidate. He was 23 years old and flattered beyond belief. We’d get married, he promised, have a flat in London, a home in the North, I’d go into journalism, he’d be an MP.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “One evening, in vino veritas he told me that an MI5 recruiting office had approached him. It was the days when they still trawled Oxbridge shamelessly for new blood. Wouldn’t it interfere with him being an MP, I asked, like a fool. Not at all, he replied.”

  “They wanted him to be their man at Westminster?”

  She nodded. “There was one problem, however. My father was a journalist, quite a firebrand, left-wing and anti-establishment and I was hellbent on following in his footsteps. Not the sort of wife Ralph wanted, so three days later he finished with me. At the time I was heartbroken, now I think of it as a close shave.”

  “He’s a most unlikely looking spy,” said Jaikie, through a mouthful of shortbread.

  I appealed to the Slaters. “I keep telling him they bear more resemblance to the man next door than to George Clooney.”

  “Whatever they look like, I’ve always thought of them as snappers up of unconsidered trifles,” said Richard. “People who listen at keyholes, compute gossip into allegations, turn smears into damning evidence. For all their apparent paltriness they’re highly dangerous.”

  “Yet you refer to Ralph as an old friend,” I said.

  “Then let me put it on the record now. He isn’t. And never was.”

  It sounds bizarre, I know, but we went from the Slaters’ house to The Natural History Museum and for several reasons that jostle for position as I recall them. I needed to think over what Imogen and Richard Slater had told me, and to do so without Jaikie offering his opinion at every turn. I also wanted to bask in the memories of Family the museum evoked. We lost Con there once when he was eight years old, though only for an hour, and found him transfixed by the fossilised skeleton of a mosasaur, Platycarpus ictericus, to be precise, an 81 million-year-old lizard. As a result of the experience none of us has ever forgotten what that creature looked like.

  An odd-shaped couple of hours, then, and just as we were leaving I received a text from Detective Sergeant Alan Baker at Tilbury. It was brief and to the point. No joy with Gaffneys. Releasing them today. AB.

  With the kind of unthinking arrogance that assured me I could do something about that, point something out Baker had missed, find another reason for holding the Gaffneys, I decided to take a preposterous detour home to Winchendon via Tilbury. Jaikie insisted on driving, in the belief that it was safest for both of us, and only became uneasy as we drove into the visitors’ car park at Tilbury nick. He was, after all, still uninsured on the Land Rover, which, during the journey, had started playing up again.

  God knows what Tilbury nick is made of but its slabs are blue and grey, the bolted on lettering more suited to a cheap diner than a police station. The front line of the local battle against crime was manned by a uniformed PC, early 30s and glasses, locked in a steel cage whereas once he’d have had 20-20 vision and stood six foot tall the other side of an elm counter, as if at any moment he might reach down and pull you a pint. This bloke recognised Jaikie, though he wasn’t sure where from.

  “Yeah, what can I do for you?” he asked, whereas once he’d have called us sir and asked how he could help.

  “I’d like to speak to DS Baker.”

  “Who shall I say…?”

  “Nathan Hawk.”

  He ran the name and face through his memory but nothing came back.

  “Take a seat,” he said, whereas once he’d have asked us if we minded waiting. In spite of an overwhelming desire to challenge him with this decline in standards, I held off.

  When Baker eventually appeared he beckoned us through the security arch and tried to be friendly, but quickly realised there wasn’t much point in my case and turned his attention to Jaikie. As we walked up to his office - the elevator had broken - he bragged about his 16-year-old daughter, Emma. She was pleased as punch to have got Jaikie’s autograph. She was thinking of going into acting herself. She did it at school, belonged to a local amdram group, had applied to go on Britain’s Got Talent but they hadn’t got back to her yet…

  “You want tea, coffee?” he said when we reached his office.

  “I’d prefe
r an explanation,” I said. “No sugar.”

  He chose not to see it as a challenge, but an exchange of information between two professionals.

  “Guvnor, we’ve had the bastards here for 96 hours. I tried for another extension, magistrate wouldn’t play ball…”

  “So you let ‘em go?”

  “Neil Manning’s next door doing the paperwork.”

  Jerome and Trader Gaffney were still in the building, then, the other side of the dividing wall. At best it was stud and plaster.

  “I could have filled you in over the phone,” Baker went on. “Saved you the journey.”

  “I was told you were the hard man on this manor.”

  He shook his head slowly, warning me. “You know what the problems are. Don’t make it personal.”

  “So what did you find out from the Gaffneys, apart from fuck all? Who are they working for?”

  “They wouldn’t say, either on or off tape. I’ve no doubt they killed Charles Drayton but there’s no trace of them in that back room where he died. Yes, there are prints in the kitchen, on tea cups, on bank notes. It means they were there but only to buy the MG. They gave the wife two grand for it, and yes it was worth ten, but whichever one of them slipped away to kill Charlie wore Marigolds.”

  “No link to Patrick Scott?”

  He shrugged. “The day you were at his parents’ house, they came to pick up money he owed them, they say. And no I don’t believe that either, but Gerald Scott says it’s true.”

  “Then he’s lying as well.”

  “Can you blame the poor bastard? His wife is so scrambled you could eat her off toast.”

  The phone on his desk buzzed and he lifted the receiver. He didn’t even say okay, just kay, then turned to us, big smile.

  “Bite to eat in the canteen before you go, guys?”

  “No thanks.”

  “It wasn’t an offer.” He held the smile, no doubt hoping I’d smile back. “More of a Health and Safety requirement.”

  The reason for it became clear five minutes after we’d sat down at a canteen table, Jaikie and Baker with chunks of Dundee cake, me with a straight cup of tea. Through the window I caught sight of Neil Manning leading Trader and his uncle to a car. To Baker’s consternation I rose and tapped on the window. Trader turned, surprised to see me at first, then he raised his hand and waved back, just with the tips of his fingers. Manning shoved him on his way. I sat down again.

  “Watch your back, Nathan, that’s all I can say. Apart from sorry.”

  There was a log jam on the M25 so, Hobson’s choice, we went through the centre of London and hit serious traffic on the Marylebone Road. But at least the spell in Tilbury nick’s car park had given the Land Rover a new burst of energy and I was now in a reasonably fit state of mind to drive it. Jaikie was studying Richard Slater’s research on Edward Rochester. Occasionally he would break off and invite me to pour scorn on some of the projects Rochester had thrown money into.

  “Does anyone really want to spend their holiday in an undersea hotel? Somebody came to him, crackpot idea, he put in $10 million.”

  “Investment or donation?” I asked.

  “Either way it’s money down the drain. Okay, so spray on skin. Good idea. So too most of the medical stuff here, but Christ, why don’t governments put money into this?” He tapped an item on the list. “Two hundred grand for a body part farm. That’s just sick.”

  “Unless you’re the one who needs the part. Like this bastard behind me who’ll be a prime candidate if he doesn’t pull back.”

  Jaikie turned to see a sports car accelerating the ten-yard distance between us, coming to within a foot of my bumper, then braking hard. It was a Mazda RX8, Jaikie informed me before going back to the research.

  “Teleportation. Beam me up, Scottie. It’s on the cards, evidently, and Rochester’s in there. A whole bunch of green stuff as well as medical projects, but do we really need vertical farms? Or am I becoming a luddite just like you?”

  The driver behind me did it again. He allowed a gap to develop then roared his way to closing it. People on the pavement turned, unimpressed.

  “Rough guesstimate, he’s given away $100 million in the last five years,” Jaikie went on. “It’s some kind of guilt thing, surely. Cell regeneration, anti-ageing, fair enough, but here it is… the idea that we could live forever. Pure Hollywood.”

  I asked if there was anything on the list about regenerating old Land Rovers since mine had just begun to object to the stop-start nature of our progress. Jaikie said there was nothing specific to Land Rovers but Rochester had given a fair old chunk to some guys who’d designed a water car.

  “And look at this!” He laughed. “He’s backed a company that’s taken fireflies to bits, the insects, to get the secret of their luminescence. In ten years’ time the streets’ll be lit in the same way as a firefly’s arse.”

  We were approaching Madame Tussauds waxworks, where Jaikie’s attention wandered from the list and over to the museum and the queue outside, then inevitably to the exhibits inside. In time he muttered, “One day, eh, Dad?”

  “Me or you?”

  He laughed. The traffic stopped at the junction. The Land Rover stalled. I turned the key. Nothing happened. I gave it a moment and tried again. Nothing. Again. Even less.

  “Don’t do this to me,” I whispered.

  I gave it a long, aggressive turn and the starter motor began to groan. The traffic ahead moved off on a green light. We didn’t. The Mazda moron leaned on his horn. In the rear view mirror I could see him waving me on. The mist began to gather, same colour as his car.

  “Dad, The Map.”

  “Fuck The Map.”

  I got out of the Land Rover, threw the door shut behind me. Jaikie followed, saying something I couldn’t hear. The man I was about to break in half wound his window down and I got a double reflection of myself in his sunglasses, caught a whiff of his shoddy perfume.

  “Look what we’ve got here,” I said to anyone listening, and there were quite a few by then. “A carbon-guzzling tosser in such a hurry to go nowhere, except into me.”

  He tried to open the door to get out, I slammed it back on him. I made a grab for the sunglasses and they fell off as he turned his head to avoid my hand. Jaikie took me by the arm but all that did was give the 30-something a chance to get out of the car. Others were now hooting or trying to work their way round us. The queue outside Madame Tussauds was enthralled. A free show.

  My adversary was big and he wasn’t afraid, but nor was he the dirty fighter those years on the streets had made me. Jaikie got between us, one arm stretched out to each man. I could see his lips moving, no doubt talking sense. I saw the moment when the 30-something recognised him and calmed down by one degree. I still wanted to punch his lights out, his and the Mazda’s, and Alan Baker’s, and Neil Manning’s, and Trader Gaffney’s, and his uncle Jerome’s and anyone else I held responsible for the year-long silence about Patrick Scott.

  And then all of a sudden I didn’t. The change was so dramatic that it bothered Jaikie.

  “Dad, what is it?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “What?”

  “I know what they’re all so exercised about. Askew, Raphael, Rochester.” I turned and headed for the Land Rover. “Let’s go.”

  “Dad, Land Rover’s dead.”

  I remember thinking that at least it had waited until I’d worked out the reason for Patrick Scott’s disappearance and his probable murder. There it sat in all its glory, still dignified, its final act of nobility being to bring a section of London traffic to a halt.

  “Get your stuff from it,” I said.

  I turned to the 30-something and believe it or not, I thanked him.

  I was monosyllabic on the way home, according to Jaikie, and it wasn’t simply because I hadn’t travelled on a train in over six months, or that I was mourning the loss of my four-wheeled friend. The journey from Marylebone Station took under an hour, but top and tail that
with getting a vehicle recovery firm to cart the Land Rover away, then at the other end have Laura pick us up from Haddenham Station, it turned into a three-hour marathon.

  Once inside the kitchen at Beech Tree, I asked Jaikie to call Jodie and have her join us. Fresh pair of eyes, sharp mind, and a healthy distance from the jumble of facts surrounding the case. She drove over in her father’s pickup.

  “What I really need is a big office whiteboard,” I said. “Jaikie, grab that end of the dresser, move it into the corner.”

  He paused for a moment, then realised I was serious and did as I’d asked. Laura stepped in to save the odd item from falling, Jodie watched in restrained disbelief. The wallspace we created was white, whiter than the rest of the room and fringed by cobwebs that provided a useful frame. I took the black marker pen from the dresser drawer.

  “What are we actually doing?” asked Jodie.

  “I want you to join up dots for me. It’s a self-doubt thing. Had it all my life. I know I’m right but could be wrong.”

  There were two kinds of suspects in this case, I explained. The ones we went looking for - Kevin Stapleton, the girlfriend Belinda, the Gaffneys, Rochester. And the ones who came to us - Raphael, Wilson, Askew. I decided to lay it out in columns and in the first wrote Raphael/ASC 250K. Lies. Didn’t read plans. But who were these European companies so anxious to put back into the community?

  Jaikie came up with them from memory and I wrote them down. Tata Steel. MacDonald’s, of course. Toyota. Danone. Coca-Cola, surprise surprise. Trans World Haulage. Walmart. Shell BP. Glaxo Smith Kline. Bloomberg. Nokia. BMW. Roche.

  “That’s the main board,” he said. “There are smaller fish. You want me to open their page?”

  I shook my head.

  “Where does Dr Wilson fit in?” Laura asked.

  “He’s Raphael’s man, certainly, but he hasn’t killed Patrick Scott. He might know why somebody else has, though.”