Dry Bones

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Where the hell were you all day yesterday, Jennie?’ asks a gruff voice on the other end of the line. ‘I called your bloody flat, I called your bloody office, I even made a tour of your favourite bloody boozers – and what a epic voyage that was – but there was no bloody sign of you.’

  ‘I was out of town, George,’ I say, as half of my brain curses Hobson for ringing me so early, and the other half worries that he considered it necessary to ring me so early.

  ‘You were out of town!’ he repeats, in a voice that suggests I may just have committed an illegal act. ‘And what were you doing out of town?’

  Oh no, George, you don’t catch me as easy as that, even if I am only half-awake (at best).

  ‘I was doing my job,’ I say.

  I’m expecting him to persist with this line of questioning, but what he actually says is, ‘If I’m remembering it rightly, there’s a cafe just at the end of your street, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘It’s called the Copper Kettle, but …’

  ‘Be there in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind telling me what this is all about …’

  ‘Just bloody be there!’

  The Copper Kettle is one of those places that falls well short of living up to the gentility and refinement of its name. Its tablecloths are plastic, its mugs heavy and chipped, and its cutlery clearly sourced from dozens of different places. It is not the kind of establishment in which you ask for a napkin (even a paper one), and anyone requesting brown bread is automatically assumed to be a member of the aristocracy, who has drifted in there by accident.

  George Hobson doesn’t look as if he’s drifted in by accident. As he lowers his body (with unnecessary force, I feel) into the seat opposite me, he looks like a man with a definite purpose.

  ‘This new murder better not have anything to do with the case you’re investigating, or I’ll feed you – and your client – to the sharks,’ he says, without preamble.

  ‘What new murder?’ I ask.

  A look which is mid-way between astonishment and disbelief comes to his face.

  ‘You haven’t heard?’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t get back until late, and then I went straight to bed,’ I tell him. ‘The next thing I knew, you were phoning me up.’

  ‘The victim is one Leonard Moon,’ he says heavily.

  For a moment, I can’t think who the devil he might be referring to, then I say, ‘Lennie Moon?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But who would want to kill him?’

  ‘A very good question – and if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t be bothering to talk to you.’

  ‘How did he die?’ I ask.

  ‘His neck was broken. The doc said it was a very clean break, and he probably died instantly.’

  ‘Where was he killed? Was it at home or was it …?’

  ‘Who’s the police officer here?’ George interrupts me.

  ‘You are, but …’

  ‘Then that must mean that I get to ask the questions and you get to answer them, mustn’t it?’

  There’s really no arguing with that.

  ‘You say you were away all day yesterday?’ George continues.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘So you didn’t search Lennie Moon’s bedsit?’

  ‘I don’t even know where Lennie Moon’s bedsit is.’

  ‘The reason I ask is because somebody searched it – and that person, whoever he or she was, did it very thoroughly, but also very carefully, so as to leave no mess. My guess would be that he or she desperately wanted to find something, but he or she didn’t want the police to know that he or she had been looking.’

  Whoever it was had been a little bit unlucky that the investigation had landed on George’s desk, because – as I’d seen with the Shivering Turn case – studying the mess (or lack of it) that an intruder left behind was one of his specialities, and once he’s stopped fixating on the idea that it was me, he’ll probably be able to build up a fairly accurate profile of who actually was responsible.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I say, in an effort to speed the process up. ‘If I’m lying, may my throat close up whenever I try to drink a gin and tonic.’

  George subjects me to a hard stare for maybe ten seconds, then he smiles and says, ‘OK, so it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Do you think they found what they were looking for?’

  George shakes his head. ‘I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, they searched every inch of the bedsit, so either it was the very last place they looked, or they didn’t find it at all.’

  ‘So it’s still there?’

  ‘Or it was never there at all.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine anything that Lennie Moon might have that anyone else would want,’ I say.

  It’s a mistake – and I realise that the moment that the words are out of my mouth.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about him,’ George says, his voice larded with fresh suspicions.

  ‘I don’t know much about him at all,’ I protest, as I inwardly curse my own stupidity. ‘I saw him around, now and again, when I was a student, but I’ve only spoken to him once, and that was recently.’

  ‘And what did you talk about?’ George demands – and it is very much a demand, in a suspect-interrogator sort of way.

  ‘He said that he’d lost the boat that Mr Jenkins made for him, that Mr Jenkins had been very brave in the war (it turns out he was) and that he’s got a war medal of his own.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Has he what?’

  ‘Has he got a medal?’

  ‘No, how could he have, when he was a porter at St Luke’s throughout the war?’

  ‘So he was making it up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which probably means there’s no point in looking for any such medal in his bedsit, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘That would be my guess.’

  Hobson leans forward – and I call him Hobson because my friend George left the café the moment I let slip that I knew more about Lennie than I could reasonably be supposed to know.

  ‘I need to know all the details of the case you’re currently working on,’ he says, seriously.

  ‘And you know that I can’t give them to you,’ I tell him.

  ‘Then I need your assurance that whatever it is, it can’t possibly have anything to do with the death of Lennie Moon.’

  Albert Boulting disappeared in 1916, James Makepeace in 1943. Given that there were twenty-seven years between the two, it would be stretching things, without the evidence of the bodies in the air vent, to find any credible connection there. And, it should never be forgotten, the bodies in the vent may not even be Boulting and Makepeace, but could be someone else entirely.

  Now add Lennie’s death to the equation – thirty-one years later – and that credulity is stretched to breaking point.

  For God’s sake, Lennie Moon wasn’t even born when Albert Boulting disappeared.

  So it should be very easy for me to look my old friend George Hobson squarely in the eyes and say, ‘There’s no connection between my investigation and Lennie’s death.’

  And do you know what – I can’t do it.

  I can’t do it because my gut is telling me that however incredible it might seem, all these things are connected.

  ‘Well?’ George says impatiently.

  ‘I can’t think of any way in which Lennie’s death might be connected to my investigation,’ I tell him.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ he says.

  ‘It’s all I can give you,’ I counter.

  ‘I’ve helped you in the past,’ he says.

  ‘I know you have,’ I agree. ‘I’ve really appreciated it.’

  ‘I’ve even cut a couple of corners for you, corners which were – at best – of dubious legality.’

  ‘I know that too,’ I say, and the truth is, I’m almost in tears.

  ‘And I’ve done it all through friendshi
p,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if you won’t do or say anything to help me solve this murder, then that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. There’ll be no more cosy chats, no more juicy titbits. You’re out there on your own.’

  He’d probably be satisfied if I just gave him Charlie’s name, I think. And why wouldn’t I? After all, Charlie let me go to the police for information – thus marking myself out – when he could have easily given me the information himself. And now I really need to talk to him – and he must know I do – he’s disappeared as mysteriously as Boulting and Makepeace did.

  So go on – tell George. Give him Charlie’s name!

  ‘If I uncover any information that might help you and won’t damage my client, I’ll see you get it right away,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘Again, that’s just not good enough,’ George says.

  No, I didn’t think it would be.

  He stands up. ‘I hope you don’t live to regret this.’

  Well, Jesus, so do I!

  It is as I am bicycling down the Broad towards St Luke’s that the idea starts to take some sort of shape inside my head.

  The one thing that connects everything that’s happened – says the little pixie at the back of my mind, who is attempting to sort things into rinky-dink order – is Mr Gough.

  Mr Gough, I repeat, incredulously.

  Mr Gough, my pixie says, unperturbed. Mr Gough – that towering figure without whom it is impossible to imagine anything happening in the college. He was there at St Luke’s when Boulting went missing. He was there when Makepeace went missing.

  And he was around twenty years dead when Lennie Moon was killed, I point out.

  Hold on, says the pixie, I haven’t finished yet. Would you accept that all Mr Gough cared about was the honour of the college?

  Yes, by all accounts that was his only motivating force.

  So he might well have killed Boulting because, through his disgusting activities, he was about to disgrace the college?

  Yes.

  And Makepeace, too?

  Well, George Hobson did say that Makepeace was in some kind of trouble with the police just before he disappeared.

  What about Lennie? Might not Lennie have done something that would bring the college into disrepute?

  That’s harder to imagine.

  But not impossible?

  No, not impossible.

  So, what if Mr Gough had foreseen that kind of situation arising, and had set up a clandestine cleansing unit to nip any scandals in the bud, even after he was no longer around?

  And who would be running this unit?

  Mr Jenkins?

  It could be him – or it could be someone else entirely …

  The more I think of it, the more it starts to make sense.

  Kings are desperate to leave a legacy behind them. Take Henry VIII as an example. He was perfectly content with his wife – she had been his friend and counsellor for over twenty years. And if he ever felt like a nubile wench on the side – well, he was the king, and there were any number of young women more than willing to accommodate him. Yet, because he wanted a legitimate son to carry on his dynasty, he divorced his wife, which involved arguing with the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor and creating divisions in England that were not fully resolved for over two hundred years.

  And if kings are permitted to have such vaunting ambitions, might not a college head porter be allowed to have some quite modest ones?

  Mr Jenkins is wearing a black armband and a mournful expression.

  ‘The wife and I helped to look after Lennie for all those years,’ he tells me. ‘He was almost like family to us.’

  Yes, I’m sure it’s all very difficult for you, but he’s not my focus of interest at the moment, I think callously.

  ‘Would you mind if we talked a little about Mr Gough?’ I ask, doing my best to mask my impatience.

  ‘I suppose not,’ he says, giving me one of those sideways looks that people give other people, when they’ve not quite worked out what’s going on.

  ‘Did Mr Gough have any close friends – someone who he really trusted?’ I ask.

  The expression that comes to Mr Jenkins’ face says, as clearly as a flashing neon sign, that I’ve offended him.

  ‘I like to think Mr Gough trusted me,’ he says.

  This isn’t going to be easy, I tell myself.

  ‘How can I phrase this?’ I say – and it really isn’t a rhetorical question. ‘I know … I know Mr Gough would have trusted you to do something that he knew was right, but would he also have trusted you do something which he knew was wrong – but still really wanted doing?’

  ‘Mr Gough would never have wanted something doing that he knew was wrong,’ Mr Jenkins says stonily.

  ‘Let’s go back to his friends,’ I suggest, teetering on the edge of desperation. ‘Were there any of them who …’

  ‘Mr Gough didn’t have friends,’ Mr Jenkins interrupts. ‘He was the head porter and he couldn’t have friends, because there was the danger of people thinking he had favourites.’

  ‘But you’re a head porter now, and you have friends,’ I say.

  And the moment the words are out of my mouth, I think, how can you say that? You don’t know for a fact he has friends – because you know virtually nothing about Mr Jenkins.

  ‘I do have friends,’ he agrees, ‘but I could never be the kind of head porter he was. And times change,’ he continues sadly. ‘Conditions change and attitudes change, and I doubt if even Mr Gough could be the head porter that he used to be, if he was in charge today.’

  ‘Do you know anything about his will?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I don’t. It was none of my business and I had no interest in the matter.’

  I have reached number nine on my personal desperation scale, and have only one notch left to go.

  ‘When you went to his funeral,’ I say, taking that one last shot at it, ‘did you happen to notice anyone who seemed peculiar?’

  ‘I didn’t go to his funeral,’ Mr Jenkins says.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I would have done, of course, if it had been held in Oxford, or even in some other part of Great Britain – but it wasn’t.’

  I don’t know why the hairs on the back of my neck should have started to tingle, but the plain fact is that they have.

  ‘So where was the funeral held?’ I ask.

  ‘In some village in Majorca,’ Mr Jenkins says. Then, in case I need some clarification, he adds, ‘It’s a Spanish island stuck out in the middle of the Mediterranean.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but why was he …?’

  ‘It’s where he went to live when he retired. We were all surprised when he told us that him and his missus were moving there, because, as far as any of us knew, they’d never been abroad before.’

  Suddenly, as if to supplement my tingling hair, my heart is beating a little bit faster.

  And why?

  Because what’s just been described to me is all so convenient!

  Think about it! A man in his early seventies, who everyone agrees is as strong as a horse, goes off to a Spanish island (having shown no interest in ‘abroad’ before), and is dead within the month. Now what does that tell you?

  ‘Did Mrs Gough come back to England after her husband died?’ I ask Mr Jenkins.

  ‘I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t think so, because I’m almost certain that if she had come back, she’d have paid us a visit.’

  Excellent!

  ‘How were you informed that he was dead?’ I ask. ‘Did the college get a letter from the government?’

  ‘Oh, nothing as formal as that,’ Mr Jenkins says. ‘Somebody living on the island kindly sent us a press cutting. I think we’ve still got it.’

  He opens one of the drawers in the desk, takes out a battered file, and extracts from it a piece of newspaper which has gone brown with age.

  ‘You can look at it if you’d like to,’ he says.

  M
ajorca English News

  College Ex-Head Porter Dies.

  We are sad to report the death of Edwin Gough, which was due to a heart attack. Mr Gough had been a part of our little community for less than a month. He leaves behind a widow, Martha.

  There’s more, but having got the gist, I turn the article over, and see that on the other side are the Spanish football results from the previous Saturday, which, if my suspicions prove correct, is a really nice touch.

  So what have we got here?

  We’ve got an Englishman with no experience of life abroad, who moves to Majorca, where, back in 1954, long before the tourist boom, the island was still recovering from the Civil War and life was quite primitive.

  We have his widow, who decides that, even without his support, she can make a life for herself in a society where women count for so little that they have to get their husbands’ permission to study, work or even drive.

  And we have a tiny English expatriate community that still thinks it is worthwhile to produce a newspaper on a professional printing press.

  It doesn’t take me long to get the confirmations I need to turn my theory into a working hypothesis.

  The first thing I do is to ring the Balearics office of the Spanish Tourist Board. The very helpful young woman who deals with my enquiry is adamant that there is not now, nor ever has been, a local newspaper called the Majorca English News.

  ‘In 1954 there were only a handful of English people livin’ on Majorca,’ she tells me. ‘For why would they need a newspaper?’

  Quite!

  The General Register Office for England and Wales is quite sure that though Edwin Gough was both born and married (to one Martha Green), there is no record of his death, and therefore, all other things being equal, it can be assumed that he is still alive.

  That’s good enough for me. I make one more (pointless) attempt to get in touch with Charlie Swift, then cycle down to Cornmarket and book a seat on the first available flight to Majorca.

  THIRTEEN

  14 October 1974

  As we were coming in to land, I looked down at Palma de Mallorca Airport and realised just what a bloody big place it was.

  ‘Well, of course it’s bloody big,’ said the hugely scornful voice in my head which I immediately recognised as the goblin who only used to visit me occasionally, but now seems to have taken settled in permanently, and, furthermore, to have signed up as a partner to my benevolent pixie, thus forming a resident double act.