Some By Fire dcp-6

by Stuart Pawson

  Look after them, Maggie, it's a tough time for them."

  She finished her tea, looked at her watch and decided there were a few minutes to waste. "So, did you have a riotous Friday evening?" she asked.

  "Went to the Eagle," I replied. "Don't bother going. It's a fun pub now."

  "The Eagle up on the moors?"

  "Mmm."

  "They used to do decent grub."

  "Not any more."

  "That's a shame. Did you, um, go by yourself, or were you, um, accompanied?" Maggie takes a sisterly interest in my love life.

  "I, er, did have a companion with me," I admitted.

  "The radiographer?"

  "No."

  "The librarian?"

  "She's not a librarian. I thought she was but she'd just gone in to see her best friend, who is the librarian. They were both behind the counter and when they saw me approaching they fought to decide who served me."

  "And the librarian friend won?"

  "No," I said with forced patience, "Jacquie won."

  "Ah, it's Jacquie, is it? So what does Jacquie do?"

  "She owns Annie's Frock Shop in the mall."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "So she's a lady of independent means?"

  "Let's just say she's doing better than I am."

  "Great, Charlie. I hope it works out for you. Tell me, why don't they call it Jacquie's Frock Shop?"

  "I don't know. Maybe it's like Alice's Restaurant."

  Maggie looked puzzled, then said: "So what happened to the radiographer?"

  "She saw through me," I replied.

  I had an hour doing paperwork until I felt the need for another brew coming on and went upstairs to see Superintendent Wood. When we were settled behind our mugs and I'd brought him up to date on crime in a small Pennine town, I said: "What can you tell me about Keith Crosby?"

  He took that first tentative sip to test the temperature and replied:

  "Keith Crosby? Our old MP? Why, what's he done?"

  "Nothing that I know of, but he wants to see me. Says it's important.

  I thought you might have met him at one of your charity bashes, or the Freemasons."

  "How many times," he sighed, 'do I have to tell you? It's the Rotary Club, not the Freemasons."

  "It's all the same," I told him.

  "No it's not."

  "You all piss in the same pot…"

  "No we don't." '… while standing on a chair, with one trouser leg rolled up."

  "Do you want to know about Crosby or don't you?"

  "Do you know him?"

  "I've only met him briefly, but I know about him. He gets talked about."

  "Ah, so you go for the gossip," I said.

  Gilbert nodded in agreement. "You'd be surprised what I learn, Charlie, when tongues have been loosened by the Macallan."

  I told him about me and Sparky being at the fire that caused Crosby's fall from grace. Gilbert hadn't known we were there. I was supposing that Crosby had some new evidence, and wanted to know as much as possible about him before we met.

  "He remembers you from the fire?" Gilbert wondered.

  "Yes."

  "It was sad, I suppose," he went on. "Poor bloke had only been an MP for a couple of years. Achieved his life's ambition, then, splodge, it's taken from him. Word has it that he'd set up a love nest with a gorgeous black girl, but I doubt if it's true. Anyhow, it cost him his job."

  "It was sad for the people burnt to death in the fire, Gilbert," I said. "Tell me how he's got to where he is now, if you can."

  "Well," he began, 'you've heard of the Friends in Need organisation?"

  "Yes. It was a forerunner of the Samaritans, wasn't it?"

  "Not exactly. The Samaritans came first, I believe, but the Friends is slightly different. Crosby started it long before he became an MR It was a counselling service intended primarily for the student population, but the idea is that you call them long before you reach the suicide state. He must have got the idea when he was at university himself. From small beginnings it spread to other universities, and now it's targeted at specific professional groups, especially the ones with high suicide rates. Doctors, for example. The theory is that each client also becomes a counsellor, so you are accountable to each other, if you follow me."

  "You mean, they'd introduce a doctor who was having problems to someone similar who'd pulled through, so they could counsel each other?"

  "I think that's it. If you are responsible for someone else's well-being you are, hopefully, less likely to top yourself. I bet they had some really miserable phone calls, but we all enjoy a good moan, don't we? Anyway, he got an MBE for it, so somebody thinks it works.

  After resigning from Parliament he threw himself into it, but I don't know if he still runs the show; he must be nearly seventy now."

  "Where does he come from?"

  "He's not English. Well, nationalised, not born here. Poland, Hungary or somewhere. I think he probably fled here with his parents during the war. When are you seeing him?"

  I looked at my watch. "Twelve o'clock. I've stung him for lunch."

  He was dressed differently but I easily recognised him. The politician's suit was replaced by fawn slacks and a crumpled linen jacket, and he wore a straw Panama hat. The face was long and aristocratic, as I remembered it, with a nose designed for looking down or sniffing claret. Our Man in Heckley. I rose as he glanced around the pub garden, and he lifted a hand in recognition and threaded his way between the plastic furniture.

  "This is pleasant," I said as he seated himself next to me. The garden led down to the canal, and several narrow-boats were moored nearby. I fetched two pints of bitter while he composed his speech.

  We sipped the froth off the tops of our glasses, and after licking his lips appreciatively he said: "I'm very grateful for you seeing me, Mr.

  Priest. I know you're a busy man."

  "We never close an unsolved case, Mr. Crosby," I replied.

  "Right. I've been trying to decide where to start, not really knowing how much you already know…"

  "First of all," I said, 'how about telling me how you came to own a run-down house in Chapeltown when you lived in your constituency, Heckley." If it was a love nest we'd better have it out in the open, then I could go home and mow the lawn.

  He nodded, eager to explain. "I think it would be better for me to begin there," he replied. I turned my chair slightly towards him because the sun was slanting into my left eye. A dappled shadow from the hat's brim fell across the top half of his face and he gazed comfortably at me through watery blue eyes. I decided to buy a hat just like it.

  "The house originally belonged to a lady I knew as Aunt Flossie," he told me. "She fostered me when I came to Leeds as a young teenager.

  Adopted me, almost. We drifted apart as I began to find my feet, because she clung to the old ways she was orthodox Jewish while I threw myself into being everything English. She couldn't understand that, Mr. Priest, but I loved it here. England was like a dream come true for me."

  "Where did you come from?" I asked.

  "Germany. A town called Augsburg, in Bavaria."

  A mosquito landed on the rim of my glass and another was irritating my neck. Al fresco has its problems. I wafted them away and took a sip.

  "Go on," I invited.

  "In 1975 she died and left me the house, as simple as that. I was the nearest thing to any family she had. We'd kept in touch, it wasn't a great surprise to me. I put the house up for sale but nobody was buying houses at the time, and a little later a woman came into my Saturday-morning surgery saying that she had to escape from her boyfriend. He beat her up regularly and she feared for the safety of her little girl."

  "Jasmine Turnbull," I said.

  He paused, mouth still open, then said: "That's right, Mr. Priest.

  Jasmine Turnbull." He had a drink of his beer and I waited for him to continue. "Now," he said, 'it seems unbelievably naive of me, but at the time it was a perfe
ctly natural arrangement. I owned a spare house, fully furnished, and Mrs. Turnbull, Jasmine's mother, needed somewhere to go, desperately. We agreed that she could live there for a couple of weeks, see if it was suitable, and start paying me a small rent when she was eligible for benefits. I was horrified when my agent told me how it would look if the papers got hold of it. Mind you," he said, with the first hint of a smile since he arrived, 'she was a beautiful girl. I think I might have been rather flattered by the accusations. To cut the story short, I had a word with Social Services and they moved another couple of battered wives in. That got me out of the frying pan, but…" He stopped, realising that his choice of phrase wasn't appropriate, and started again. "Because the place was now regarded as multiple occupancy, we were in breach of the fire regulations. We were arguing about who was responsible frankly, who paid when… when…" He reached for his glass and turned it in his fingers. '… when thirty-two Leopold Avenue burnt down," he said, very quietly, 'and eight lives were lost."

  A waitress hovered nearby and when he finished speaking she asked if we'd like to see a menu. I shook my head and she went away. "And you had to resign as an MP," I said.

  He nodded.

  "And now you have some new evidence?"

  He gave a little start, as if just waking, and said: "New evidence? Oh, I'm not sure."

  "So what is it you want to tell me?"

  He took a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his brow and neck with it. The forecasters had predicted the hottest day of the year and it was looking as if they were right. Three elderly women with pink arms protruding from flowery dresses stood debating where to sit and eventually arranged themselves around the next table. They looked like sisters.

  "What do you know about John Joseph Fox?" Crosby asked.

  Now it was my turn to be surprised. J. J. Fox was one of the top six entrepreneurs in the country, fighting it out with the others to be the next Murdoch or Rowland, but with half the population expecting him to be another Maxwell. He was a Flash Harry with the Midas touch, famous in the past for his golden Rolls Royces and platinum women, but nowadays courted by politicians of all persuasions because of his media interests. I shrugged my shoulders. "Just what I read in the papers,"

  I said. "What's he got to do with it?"

  "Do you know how he started in business?"

  "Mmm. He claims to have begun with a barrow in the East End, doesn't he?"

  "As you say, that's what he claims. There may be a kernel of truth in it. His real beginning was when he won a boxer in a poker game."

  "A boxer?" I queried.

  "A boxer, Mr. Priest. A heavyweight with a glass chin. That didn't matter; you just backed the other fellow. He moved with a violent crowd in London in the late forties, early fifties. He expanded rapidly, from second-hand cars sold from bomb sites to bingo and discotheques when the cinemas began to close. J. J. Fox became an expert at turning one man's failure into his success. It's a lesson he has exploited to the full over the years." He paused for a drink. The old ladies were leaning forward, studying menus, their heads bobbing about like cauliflowers in a cauldron. Crosby carefully placed his glass on the table and continued. "Unfortunately, as he expanded he attracted attention from the gangs that were becoming a feature of life in south London at the time. He wasn't really a criminal, just a struggling businessman who had to be flexible with the rules.

  Ultimately he wanted to be part of the Establishment, not fighting it.

  So he assessed the situation and decided to move north, lock, stock and barrel. Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds were sitting ducks for someone with his talents."

  "He created the Reynard Organisation, didn't he?" I asked, trying to show off the little I knew about the man.

  "That's right. He moved into the high streets, with a chain of boutiques; pop groups; music outlets; fast food. He had his finger on the pulse of the times and kept one step ahead of the trends. Now, as you know, he's big league. It's the FT100 and public utilities now, plus the two newspapers, if you can call them that, the football club and controlling shares in a television station. The Reynard bandwagon is unstoppable, and J. J. Fox runs it single-handed from a deck chair on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean."

  "He built the big new hotel in Leeds," I said.

  "The Fox Borealis," Crosby stated. "And the office block across the river from it. Leeds is the fastest-growing financial centre outside London, Mr. Priest, and Fox has a slice of the action."

  I knew it was, I'd read it in the papers often enough, but I didn't know what it meant. "So where is this leading us?" I asked.

  Crosby deflated with an audible sigh, drumming his fingers on the table as he gathered his thoughts. "He hasn't changed," he began. "He still exploits other people's bad luck, but he manipulates their luck for them."

  I thought I was beginning to see where he was leading me. "You mean insider dealing?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "No, it's much more than that." He leaned forward, closer to me, and began to speak rapidly in a low voice. "Two years ago, Mr. Priest, there was a crash on the Northern and Borders Railway. One person was killed and it was put down to a signalling fault caused by vandalism. A month later two trainloads of commuters had narrow escapes when one train cut across the other. The passengers were hurled to the floor as then-train braked and some of them saw the other train go by. Five seconds earlier and it could have been the worst disaster in British railway history. Again it was blamed on vandalism and hundreds of passengers vowed they would never travel by N and B again. Share prices plunged from over five hundred pence, Mr.

  Priest, to below four hundred. Guess who stepped in to rescue the business? That's right, J. J. Fox. They now stand at five-eighty pence. Not bad, eh? Seven years ago they were giving away shares in the Alpha Brig oilfield after borehole samples were analysed and the predictions made the whole thing look like a white elephant. J. J. Fox bought up every available share and blow me if it didn't turn out to be a software fault and the samples were promising after all. Everybody agrees that the water companies have a licence to print money, but last year was the driest on record and things looked dodgy for a while. When a technician put a decimal point in the wrong place and tipped a hundred times too much concentrated aluminium sulphate into the Tipley Valley supply, five thousand people were made ill. Tipley Water shares plummeted but this year they are predicting a record dividend. Guess who suddenly became a major shareholder? I could go on and on and on, Mr. Priest." He sat back and waited for a reaction.

  I wasn't happy. The midges were bothering me, my beer was warm and I didn't like his story. I had no doubts that Fox was a crook, but so what? Everybody in his position must have done something mean and nasty as they fought their way up the heap. Nice people didn't make it because they couldn't do it. Well, that was my excuse. "So what's all this to do with the fire?" I asked.

  "I'm sorry," he said, leaning forward. "I get carried away. It's all been bottled up inside me for so long. Back in 1975 Fox was just making his mark nationally. He'd been involved in several contracts with a certain company of planners working on town centre developments.

  I'd been looking into his activities for a number of years, when I was in local government, and didn't like what I was seeing. I asked questions in the House about him, and wanted him to appear before a select committee to explain his apparent good fortune. Proving what I knew was difficult, as I'm sure you appreciate, and I couldn't voice my allegations outside the House, but I wanted his replies on record. The fire, like so many events, came at a very opportune moment for Mr.

  Fox."

  I wished that we had the power of parliamentary privilege to shelter behind, and said: "You're saying he started the fire to discredit you?"

  "Not personally, Mr. Priest. He didn't start the fire personally. He has a network of recruits to do his dirty work for him, but he gave the orders. It's the only explanation. The technician with Tipley Water is currently on a Reynard management training scheme. The comp
uter programmer with Alpha Brig escaped the sack and moved to a systems analyst post in the Reynard Organisation, until he died in an accident.

  Fox looks after his friends, one way or another."

  "Can you put all this in writing for me?" I asked. It's a simple enough theory. Someone pops in and gives you a lifetime's work, so you bounce it straight back at them by suggesting they put it all in writing. Often, you never hear from them again.

  "It's all here," he said, delving into his inside pocket and producing a bundle of papers and envelopes.

  Ah well, I thought, it was never much of a theory. I pointed at his empty glass. "Same again?"

  "Oh, er, yes please."

  I meandered to the bar and ordered a pint of orange juice for myself.

  I'd tell him I'd ask around, do what I could, but I'd only be stalling him. Fox might be as guilty as hell, we might even prove it, but we'd never get near a conviction. His lawyers would tie us in knots, spin things out for years, cost the taxpayer a fortune and we'd be accused of wasting public money by pursuing a man who gave employment to thousands. He would be left whiter than white. Perhaps, they'd concede, some of his staff were over enthusiastic in their desire to see Reynard do well, but that was the unfortunate reverse side of loyalty… We were on a hiding to sod-all.

  I placed his beer in front of him and sat down. The three ladies were poring over the menus again, their empty dinner plates in a considerate pile for the waitress to collect. The fence around the garden was lined with tubs of blooms, blazing with colour. Fat bees stumbled between them, overladen with pollen. "The flowers are gorgeous," I said, nodding in their direction.

  "Geraniums," he told me, although I was already fairly sure of it.

  "They bring back memories for me." He looked unhappy, his thoughts filled with oomph ah bands and lederhosen, and thanked me absent-mindedly for the beer. After a silence he said: "Did you see the television programme a few years ago about Fox's early life?"

  "No."

  "It was a harrowing account, Mr. Priest, even after making allowances for it being a Reynard production. It told of how the storm troopers came to arrest his parents a few days after the Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass. His name then was Johannes Josef Fuchs, he said, and his father was an outspoken lawyer, hated by the Nazis, and a Jew, of course. Young J. J. was bundled out of the back of the house with as much money as they had, plus a few items of jewellery, and told to find his way to France and then England. He was twelve years old.