Some By Fire dcp-6

by Stuart Pawson

  Inside was about par for the course: lots of pale wood, potted palms and low furniture; four businessmen in their shirt sleeves holding a conference around a paper-strewn coffee table; a lone woman tapping the day's sales into a laptop; and the Four Seasons playing softly in the background. Vivaldi, that is, not the American group. I sank into a settee and looked for a waitress.

  The Coles crane was leaving at the same time as I was. As I walked out of the building I saw it turn on to the road, its yellow strobe light flashing and three cars already queuing behind it, and hoped it wasn't heading south. I eased out of my parking place and noticed the fox over the entrance, with two workmen tightening the holding-down bolts.

  It was in full flight, tail stretched out behind, and glancing back over its shoulder.

  "How appropriate," I said under my breath. "How jolly appropriate."

  Friday morning a fax arrived giving the names of half of Duncan's fellow course members, with parents' addresses. We'd reckoned that if mummy and daddy had been in their forties when their offspring left the nest to explore the groves of academe they'd probably be in their late sixties now. Assuming that sponsoring one or more children through university had left them impoverished, there was a good chance that they hadn't moved far.

  Monday morning another fax came with the rest of the names, giving a total of sixty-nine for me to be going on with. Jeremy had added a note saying that it would take him the rest of the week to list the students in the years above and below Duncan, and a long time if I wanted everybody at the university. He was throwing himself into this. I did a quick calculation. If the university had doubled in size since 1975 he was talking about 11,000 names. If I did four a day, without time off, it would take me nearly eight years to trace and interview them all. I faxed him back, thanking him profusely for his assistance but saying I had enough to be going on with.

  Jeff and Maggie made a map showing the route the burglars had taken as they milked the McLellands' credit cards for all they could. Only one purchase had been made two and a half thousand for a Hewlett Packard computer system from the Power Store but cash withdrawals from machines and travel agents took the total to nearly five grand. Jeff had drawn the routes taken after the previous robberies in different colours, and had highlighted the places where the time-gaps indicated that they had possibly returned to base with the transit and transferred to something faster and less noticeable. It gave us a good picture of the general vicinity they operated from.

  "They're somewhere in the Golden Triangle," Dave stated. That's his name for the area bounded by Halifax, Huddersfield and Heckley.

  "It certainly looks like it," I agreed.

  "So they're our babies. What are we going to do about it?"

  "Can I make a suggestion, Charlie?" Jeff said. I spread my fingers in a be-my-guest gesture. "Well," he continued, "I've been studying my Transits and this aerial behind the driver is really unusual. In fact, I haven't seen another like it, and a Transit passes you on the M62 about every fifteen seconds. They must be the most popular vehicle ever built. If we go public, say on Crimewatch, someone's bound to recognise it."

  Dave jumped in with: "If we do that, we alert the villains too.

  The Transit is the only decent lead we have. Going public will lose it for us."

  I stroked my chin and thought about it. "I'll have a word with our friends," I told them, when I'd made my decision. "You might be right, Jeff, but for the moment I'd like to keep this knowledge within the team. If someone does finger the van for us we'll still need evidence to put them on the scene."

  Nigel had been quiet up to now. He broke his silence, saying: "Has anyone else been receiving calls from double-glazing people?"

  "Mmm, me," I replied. "What's that got to do with it?"

  "I have, too," Jeff added.

  "I've had four calls in as many days," Nigel told us. "As I'm ex-directory I couldn't help wondering where they got my number from. I reckon someone has sold them a list of all our names and addresses and phone numbers. Maybe someone here, or maybe at the federation, or possibly the subscription list for the Review."

  "The point of your story being that we're as leaky as a wicker basket,"

  I suggested.

  "Yep, and there's a good chance they already know what we have on them."

  You're both right, as always," I agreed, 'but I'm using my golden vote to overrule you. We're supposed to be detectives, so let's find them our way."

  The phone rang, effectively rubber-stamping my decision. Fearnside didn't introduce himself, he just said: "Can you be at the SFO at nine a.m. tomorrow?"

  "Er, nine a.m.?" I queried, downcast.

  "That's right."

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  "Good," and he was gone.

  I looked into the earpiece, as if expecting to see his face there before it receded back down the wires, and replaced the handset.

  "Trouble?" Nigel asked.

  Jeff didn't know anything about the Crosby case. I trusted him implicitly, but didn't want to go through the whole thing again. It always becomes awkward and embarrassing when you start keeping secrets from the team. "Er, no," I said. I'd have to set off about five o'clock and I was seeing Jacquie tonight. "No trouble at all."

  The Serious Fraud Office is situated in NW1, which is about as accessible as Iquitos, Peru, to someone like me. I'd been before but couldn't remember the way, so I studied the map and jotted the route on a Post-it. Jacquie was content to go for a quick drink and afterwards didn't mind me dropping her off at the door. I half-heartedly suggested that she come down to London with me for the day, but she was seeing a buyer.

  It was a dewy morning, the air as cool as that first sip of a well-earned pint. The blackbirds were singing and my pet blue tits were already scurrying between feeding ground and nest, their beaks stuffed with caterpillars and their feathers growing raggy with the non-stop effort. I brushed a spider's web off my face and wrecked the one adorning the wing mirror of my car, but not before' the perpetrator had dashed for shelter behind the glass. "I'll get you," I murmured to it.

  Early-morning driving can be fun, before twenty million bleary-eyed commuters stagger to their garages and swamp the roads. I did the first hundred miles in ninety minutes and at six twenty-five pressed the button on the radio, just in time to catch up with the sport and the news headlines.

  Big deal. Manchester United had lost and there was a bomb scare at Mount Pleasant sorting office, two streets away from the SFO. Traffic chaos was expected, and we were advised to travel in by public transport. I took the sissy's way out and abandoned the car at Cockfosters, not far from where I'd met Fearnside one week ago, and caught the tube.

  "Ah!" said the receptionist, when I introduced myself to her at precisely eight fifty-eight. As Miss Jean Brodie said, I didn't wish to appear intimidated by being late, or early. She found a message in her log book and told me that the meeting had been put back one hour.

  "It's due to the bomb scare," she explained.

  "Bomb scare? What bomb scare?" I replied.

  I went for a walk and tried again at ten o'clock. This time they were in. Fearnside introduced me to Chief Superintendent Tregellis, who sat behind a huge oak desk and looked like all top cops should look. His fierceness was enhanced by a deep cleft that ran from the middle of his cheek down past the corner of his mouth, like a duelling scar, except that there was a matching one at the other side and he didn't look the type to turn the other cheek. He was big and angular, with a shock of spiky black hair, his rolled-up sleeves giving him an air of no-nonsense efficiency. We did our best to break each other's fingers as we shook hands, and he invited me to sit down.

  "Two hundred miles you've had to come, Charlie," he said, 'and you beat us here. We are duly chastened."

  "And quite rightly," I replied.

  He picked up a phone and dialled three numbers. "Get yourself in here and bring some coffee with you," he said into it.

  Fearnside was hovering. "I'll
leave you with Mr. Tregellis, if you don't mind, Charlie. I think he'll be very interested in what you have to say." I jumped to my feet and shook his hand while wishing him a happy retirement and saying how much I'd enjoyed working with him. The poor bloke looked choked and we agreed to talk on the phone when this was all over, neither of us believing it.

  When he'd gone Tregellis said: "Bout time the old bugger was put out to grass. He's been cruising these last three years."

  "He's helped me a lot in the past," I stated, matter of fact. If he thought I was going to start slagging Fearnside off he was wrong. The door opened and two men came in: a lanky one in a power shirt, bow tie and blue braces, and a dumpy skinhead. Dumpy was carrying a tray filled with jugs and cups; his pal looked as if he'd refuse to carry anything heavier than a figure on a balance sheet. Tregellis's desk was equipped with enough chairs for mini-conferences and they both sat on my right, with their backs to the window. I pulled a brand-new typist's pad from my briefcase and when Tregellis introduced us I wrote their names down. Dumpy was a DS and Lord Peter Wimsey was from the legal department.

  "Right, Charlie," Tregellis began when the coffee was poured. "Tell us what you've got."

  It didn't take long and I only had one copy of the file to offer them.

  Dumpy took it to someone to get more. They were good listeners, I'll give them that. As I spoke Tregellis rubbed the blunt end of his pencil up and down the groove in his right cheek. I half-expected him to dislodge a couple of acorns, but he didn't. "That's more or less it," I concluded. "If you tell me that Crosby's paranoid I'll believe you and drop the whole thing."

  Lord Wimsey's real name was Piers Forrester and that was as good a reason as any for hating him. "Mr. Crosby isn't paranoid," he announced. "J. J. Fox is as nasty a piece of shite as you'll ever step in. What you have here, Priest, is confirmation of what we already know but it doesn't give us any more in the way of evidence."

  Tregellis glanced at him in a way that spoke volumes and leaned forward. There was a faded tattoo on his forearm that could have been an anchor. "J. J. Fox owns SWTV, as you know," he told me. "He put in the highest bid when the franchise was offered, back in 1985, and because of his media experience his offer was accepted. Nothing wrong with that, you might say." I nodded my agreement. "The second highest bid was from a consortium of established media figures. Fox's bid, which beat the deadline by minutes, was one million pounds above theirs. All the other bids were miles away. Mary Perigo was secretary for the consortium. Spinster, fifty years old, but not bad-looking.

  While the bids were being calculated she found herself a boyfriend.

  Called himself Rodger Wakefield. Rodger with a "d" in the middle, she stressed, when she told a girlfriend all about him. This friend said he sounded urbane, suave and generous with his money. Two days after it was announced that Fox had won the franchise she was found dead in her car on the top floor of a multi storey The car was burnt out."

  "Was thej any evidence that she'd leaked information?" I asked.

  "There were six in the consortium," Tregellis continued. "Some businessmen, some from the bright side of the footlights. They all knew the size of the bid, of course, as did Miss Perigo. Then they had partners, wives and mistresses, not to mention pals at the club, accountants, bank managers and the girl who typed the letter. We looked, Charlie, believe me we looked, but anyone could have leaked that figure."

  "Was she murdered?"

  "Cause of death was never established, but the car had been torched deliberately."

  "What did Rodger Wakefield have to say?"

  "We never found him. She'd told her friend his name, but otherwise was very coy about him. The friend had wondered if he was married. They were seen together at a charity "do" she'd help organise, in Newbury, and she'd named him as her guest, but according to acquaintances Mr.

  Wakefield was unusually camera-shy. The Berkshire Life photographer was there, snapping away, but Wakefield only appears in the background of someone else's picture, a three-quarters rear view, I'm afraid.

  Several people saw him, however, and say they'd recognise him again."

  "Did he have an accent?"

  "Public school northern, educated southern; take your pick."

  "How hard have you looked for him?"

  "We haven't. Met CID circulated an E-fit. The usual; he was a murder suspect."

  "What's the state of play at the moment?"

  "With Mary Perigo or J. J. Fox?"

  "Fox."

  "There isn't one. What with bent pension funds and NHS scams and computer fraud we're up to here." He waved a hand above his head.

  "We've nobody working on it. Now and again someone writes us a letter and we put it on the file. Crosby isn't the only enemy that Fox has; five years ago the War Crimes Bureau contacted us and asked if we had anything on him. That's about it."

  "Did you help them?"

  He looked grim. "I suspect a copy of what we had may have fallen into their hands. Up to then we had never suspected that he wasn't a Jew.

  Crosby's story corroborates that."

  "Maybe Crosby was the one who tipped them off," I suggested.

  Tregellis pointed a finger at his head, as if shooting himself, and said: "Of course."

  "So what do you want me to do?" I asked.

  "Anything you can," he replied. "You're the murder specialist, we're only fraud. Find Wakefield for us. You're nearer to Fox's base than we are. See what you can dig up."

  "Bring us Fox's head on a plate, Priest," Forrester said. "That's what we'd like you to do."

  I finished my coffee and scanned the two lines of notes I'd made.

  Looking at Tregellis I said: "So you reckon there's something in Crosby's story?"

  He nodded.

  "I'll be working on my own."

  "We're not expecting miracles."

  "Expenses?"

  "Send them to me."

  "Right," I said, nodding. "Right."

  Tregellis stood up, rotated his head and rubbed his neck. "I'm sure you appreciate that we're in shaky territory with this, Charlie, so the fewer people who know about it the better. I'll have a word with your people and N-CIS, and your contacts down here will be Piers and Graham," he nodded at the others, 'but feel free to come straight to me if necessary. Anything else you need to know?"

  "Not at the moment," I replied, then turning to Piers and Graham said:

  "But if I'm working with you two I'd better have your extension numbers." They rattled them at me. "Thank you. And your home numbers and mobiles."

  Forrester's glare had been honed by a thousand years of superiority since the days when it meant a sentence of death to some poor serf.

  Graham, on the other hand, was beaming like the sunrise over Dublin Bay. "And I'd appreciate a copy of Rodger Wakefield's photograph and the E-fit," I added, 'as soon as possible."

  Chapter 5

  I'd done some digging about Duncan Roberts and discovered that he'd slashed his own throat with a Stanley knife and bled to death. The address was in Brixton, at the far end of the Victoria Line, which was convenient. Every town should have an underground system. I ticked off the stations, memorised the poem of the month and watched the people, grateful that this wasn't my patch. I'd have arrested every one of them. As I came out of the station a gang of seriously cool youths swept by on rollerblades, swerving in and out of the parked cars, and a consumptive skinhead jerked the lead of what looked like a pit bull terrier as I passed him. Living in a city has certain attractions, even for a small-town boy like me, but I was damned if I could remember any of them as I strolled by the derelict tenements and corner shops with security grilles over the windows. Flyposters and take away trays were a major industry round here. A wino, sitting on some steps with a rubbish bag for a back rest, watched me go by, wondering if he could tap a white man for a drink, deciding against it.

  I saw the street I wanted and crossed the road.

  The house could have been the one in Chapelt
own. The door was open and the soulless, thump of a drum machine was coming from deep within. I hammered on the door in competition with it and smelled cooking. Spicy cooking. My stomach gurgled and sent a memo to my brain. It said:

  "FEED ME!" I knocked again, but harder.

  A giant West Indian ambled out of the gloom, a look of bewilderment on his face. He was grey-haired, wearing jeans and a vest the size of a marquee, and carrying a soup ladle. I decided to do it the proper way.

  "Detective Inspector Priest," I said, holding my ID out. "Are you the proprietor?"

  "What you want?" he asked, his face immobile.

  "A word. Is this your place?"

  "I am the proprietor," he replied, and his expression developed a hint of pride. I'd given him a new title.

  "You do bed and breakfast for DSS clients," I said.

  "Full," he told me. "No room."

  I know I dress casual, but I'd never thought it was that casual. "I don't want a room," I told him. "You had a man called Duncan Roberts staying here until about two months ago?"

  "No," he answered.

  "You did."

  "No."

  "He committed suicide."

  "Nobody of that name stay here."

  I repeated the address to him and he agreed this was the place. "Well, he lived here," I insisted.

  "No."

  "He killed himself. Bled to death."

  "Nobody do that here."

  "I want to see his room."

  "He not live here."

  "What happened to his belongings?"

  "He not live here."

  He was stubborn, unhelpful and pretending to be thick. I know the type; I'm from Yorkshire. I started again at the beginning, but it was a waste of breath. I thanked him for his time and headed back towards the station. The yob with the dog was coming the other way. He nodded a hello, I said: "Ow do."

  Gilbert greeted me with: "Ah! Just the man," when I called in his office for my morning cup pa and to discuss tactics. "What the devil did you volunteer us for at the SCOGs meeting?" He rummaged through his papers for the minutes of the meeting I' dattended.