by Bud Craig
I had come to the conclusion Helen was lonely and isolated. She had no close friend she could confide in, hence her touching faith in me. Since setting up as a private investigator I had often thought somebody would see through me one day. On the contrary, simply by saying I was a PI, I had gained people’s trust almost immediately.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She twisted the letter round in her hands. I thought for a moment she was going to hurl it across the room.
“Oh, I don’t know. Part of me wants to forget about it. I’ve never even met this Jennings character and I certainly don’t want to get involved in a murder investigation. I’ve got enough to worry about as it is.”
Poor Helen. She didn’t ask for any of this.
“The worst part is what he says about his own son. How could he be so cruel? I daren’t show it to Jake. It would trigger another crisis.”
“I see what you mean. Listen, Helen, I suggest you make a couple of copies of the letter and scan it into your laptop.”
“Yes?”
“Let me have a copy, you keep one and send the original to the police with a brief note to explain what it’s all about. Address it to DCI Ellerton.”
It was only when I left Helen that I remembered Sarita was no longer dealing with the Jennings case. Ah, well, never mind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saturday 27th February 2016
Around noon, two days before my sixtieth birthday, I pounded along a footpath in Ribblesdale, glad to be protected from the cold by several layers of clothing, a woolly hat and a pair of thick gloves.
“Nearly at the Farmers Arms, Steve.”
We’d set off from our B & B about ten that morning and now, two and a half hours later, the exercise had got me thinking about lunch.
“Great. I think a nice drop of Scotch is what we need to warm ourselves up.”
“Steve, how many times do I have to tell you? Whisky is the worst thing in the world, with the possible exception of Edith Piaf.”
He laughed as we rounded a bend and saw the pub ahead of us. Steve ordered two pints of Black Sheep and a Glenfiddich in the cosy bar. Nicely ensconced at a table with a view of the dale in all its glory, we raised our glasses.
“All the best, Gus. Here’s to the next sixty years.”
A profound thought, that, sixty years from now. My two and two thirds grandchildren might be retired by then.
“The next sixty years,” we said, clinking glasses.
“This is just the first day of a weekend of celebrations for you, mate. I hope you can cope with it at your age.”
“I’m still younger than you and don’t you forget it.”
“In that case I expect a bit of respect. Anyway,” said Steve, “I thought you were planning a party for your birthday.”
“I decided I couldn’t be arsed. We’re having a family meal at Rachel’s.”
“Sounds good. Will Theresa be coming over from Oz?”
My dad and Steve still used her official name when referring to my sister, but she preferred to be known as Terri.
“No, Felicity, her partner, has had chemotherapy and won’t be able to manage the flight.”
“Shame. What put you off the party idea?”
“Don’t know, really. Maybe it was those two fellers having a wrestling match at your do.”
Steve chuckled quietly.
“A right carry on, that was. Just look what it’s led to.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, Gus, every time you get involved with a case, you create havoc.”
He followed this with an amused shake of the head, a sip of whisky and a swig of beer. Sarita, I recalled, had said something similar.
“The first thing that happens is we find out Adam Jennings is really somebody else,” Steve went on, “then the poor feller gets himself killed…”
“Hey, you can’t hold me responsible for that…”
“You don’t actually have to do anything, just a hint of your involvement is enough.”
“Fair point,” I said.
“And there’s that bloke from Timperley, Keith something.”
“Keith Witton.”
“That’s the one. I wonder if the police will ever find him and if they do, will his evidence be all that important?”
“Who knows? One thing’s for sure, there are plenty of suspects.”
“There’s all the Ancarner workers for a start,” said Steve, “and anyone else who lost money when it collapsed.”
“Aye, and Adam’s partner, Colette, must be in the frame; Jerry had a motive, so did the girlfriend in the Isle of Man.”
“The Isle of Man, that brings back memories. What year was it we went there?”
“1976.”
“Yeah, it was that long, hot summer,” said Steve, a faraway look in his eyes. “I don’t think we really appreciated the beauty of the scenery on that holiday.”
“We were too busy boozing and chasing women.”
Steve smiled, his mind forty years away.
“What were those two girls called? They were from the North East somewhere.”
“Mine was Jenny from Jarrow, yours was…”
“Sally from South Shields.”
We drank in silence, letting the nostalgia wash over us, thinking back to the days when we were two randy twenty-year-olds. I hadn’t even met Louise. What would the young Gus Keane have thought if he’d known how life would turn out for him?
* * *
“And now,” said Rachel at her house in Worsley, “we have two more guests of honour.”
My birthday had finally arrived and the family were assembled round my daughter’s dining room table. I had noticed two spare chairs with nobody sitting at them, but when I asked why, was told to wait and see. I had the feeling everyone knew something I didn’t as Rachel suddenly raised her voice.
“You can come in now.”
We all turned to the door to see two grey-haired women walk into the room hand in hand: my sister and her partner.
“Surprise! Surprise!” said one of them.
“Terri,” I shouted. “I thought…”
“You know what thought did,” she replied in an Australian accent.
“Thought followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding,” I riposted quick as a flash, remembering word perfect a saying from my childhood.
I stood up and gave both women a hug.
“Great to see you. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“We did,” put in Rachel. “We decided to surprise you.”
“I didn’t want to miss my little brother’s sixtieth, did I?” said Terri.
They took their seats. Now there were nine of us, with an age range from one to ninety-two. Petty impressive, I’d say. We settled down to a traditional roast dinner.
“Oh, by the way, Gus,” said Felicity, “you’re invited to a wedding in April.”
“Wedding, what are you on about?”
Terri and Felicity looked at one another.
“He’s always been a bit slow,” said Terri.
Then the penny dropped.
“Oh, you two are getting married. Fantastic.”
They looked at one another like soppy teenagers.
“We thought we’d take advantage while we were over here,” said Felicity. “No gay marriage in Australia.”
“Yet,” added Terri.
* * *
“Come on, Gus, I’m gonna teach you how to jive,” said Terri, about six weeks later.
We got up together and walked onto the dance floor of the Keaton Hall, a five-star hotel I had first visited a few years ago. Just driving into the car park had brought back memories, not all of them good. The only time I had stayed at the Keaton someone else had been paying, but probably wished she hadn’t bothered.
My sister had got married a couple of hours ago, she and Felicity looking glamorous in long white dresses, very simple in style. The Australian champagne had flowed all day. The Lazers, Rachel’
s band, were playing a fifties number called Be Bop A Lula. It was one of the 45s Terri used to play for me on her Dansette record player in her baby-sitting days. Janice, the lead guitarist, was on vocals for this number.
“That singer’s sexy, isn’t she?” said my sister.
I was a bit thrown by the question at first. Still, it wasn’t difficult to think of a suitable answer, not for a heterosexual man with half decent eyesight.
“Yes.”
I twirled Terri round inexpertly. The jiving lesson hadn’t gone too well at first but I felt as if I were slowly getting the hang of it.
“I knew you’d agree with me, Gus,” she said, “we’ve always had the same taste in women.”
“What?”
I wasn’t expecting that comment and didn’t know how to respond.
“Remember Dusty Springfield?”
Where was this leading?
“Everyone remembers Dusty.”
“When you were lusting after her in your teenage years,” she explained, “I was doing exactly the same.”
I just nodded, concentrating on my jiving.
“And then there was Felicity.”
“Your Felicity?”
“Certainly. When I brought her home for the first time, I could see you fancied her something rotten.”
“I didn’t think it was so obvious.”
Images of my teenage fantasies about an older woman flashed across my mind.
“Oh, it was, believe me.”
I began to see this weird conversation maybe wasn’t so weird after all. We all had the same kind of feelings, didn’t we?
“It was the same when you introduced me to Louise.”
“You mean you fancied Louise?”
She nodded, looking past me towards the stage in the Bridgewater room.
“Still do. What’s her name, the guitarist?” she said.
“Janice.”
“Mmm. Look at the way she moves round the stage. My God, if I were thirty years younger.”
“Don’t forget you’re married now, should you be eyeing up other women?”
“No harm in looking.”
“Anyway, Terri, how do you know whether she’s gay or straight?”
She continued to stare at the gyrations that always seem to accompany guitar solos.
“I don’t.”
PART TWO
ME MYSELF I
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday 16th May 2018
I was watching the Ireland cricket team’s first test match against Pakistan on Sky Sports when my phone rang.
“Hello,” I said.
“Is that Gus Keane?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t recognise the woman’s voice. She had the modulated vowels of an old-fashioned BBC announcer and I didn’t know anybody who talked like that.
“This is Tess Weekes.”
“Tess…?”
“Weekes. I was Peter Goodall’s partner.”
Peter Goodall, where had I heard that name before?
“The name rings a bell but I’m afraid I…?”
“He was my partner and the head of Ancarner,” she said. “He was murdered in 2016.”
My God, a voice from the past.
“Yes, I remember that. It must have been terrible.”
What else was there to say?
“It still is.”
“Of course. Er, how can I help you?”
“I’d like you to investigate Peter’s murder.”
People talk about being left speechless but Ms Weekes’ words really did have that effect on me.
“What do you think?” she asked after a long silence.
“I reckon you should tell me a bit more about it.”
“It’s just that I can’t… I mean, I… Well, basically I want answers. I need to know who did this terrible thing. The police have had more than two years to sort this out, without success. I thought I would bring in someone else and, well, you come highly recommended.”
“I see.”
“Please, tell me you will take the case.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be happy to, but the passage of time makes it even more difficult than it might have been.”
I heard her sigh over the phone.
“I’m aware of that, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Just tell me one thing, Tess. Why now?”
“Today would have been Peter’s fiftieth birthday. I thought re-starting the investigation could be his present.”
An offer I couldn’t refuse.
“Well, the sooner we start the better. What do you suggest?”
“I’d like you to come over to see me on the Isle of Man as soon as possible. We can discuss a sort of plan of campaign and you can start your inquiries on the island.”
“That sounds OK.”
“I can organise flights and book an apartment for you. If you need to bring someone with you, that would be fine.”
‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ I said to myself when Tess had rung off, promising to e-mail details to me. At least a trip to the Isle of Man might mean an escape from Brexit. Strange to think that when Adam – or Peter – died, we still had a few months to wait for the referendum. Though the leave vote had won the day, even now, two years on, Brexit still dominated the news and nobody knew how it would all turn out.
Thinking I had better remind myself about the details of Peter Goodall’s – or Adam Jennings’ – murder, which hadn’t crossed my mind for ages, I switched off the cricket and went into my office. There I read the notes I’d made at the time Jerry had hired me to have Adam Jennings followed. Then I spent half an hour on the internet trying to assimilate the main points. By the time I had printed off a few newspaper articles, it was lunchtime so I made my way into the kitchen.
It would be weird to be back in the Isle of Man for the first time since that boyhood trip with Steve. This time Louise would be the ideal person to take with me. We still saw each other on the same basis as before and we had talked about going away together some time. A freebie across the Irish Sea sounded good.
In the meantime, I had to work out how to go about investigating the murder. I should see Paul Winston first. He was the one who discovered Jennings’ double life. I dug out his report from two years ago and went through it again. Just by trailing Jennings a few miles to Manchester Airport he had discovered that he was also Peter Goodall before anyone else had suspected it.
I gave him a call and arranged to meet for lunch the next day, when I had to be at Ordsall Tower. I promised Paul a free meal and payment for his time. Who could resist such an offer? I’d made a start. Any more planning could wait. Tonight, I was baby-sitting for Danny and Natalie. Their daughter, Sally, now aged two, was just as cute as my other two grandkids.
* * *
The next day, on the way to Tony and Dino’s in Salford Quays, Paul, wearing an immaculate blue suit and open-neck shirt, moaned about his work at Salford Council’s IT section, a job he didn’t have at the time Jennings met his untimely end. His enthusiasm was reserved for his two-year-old son, Aiden, who was of course a budding genius. Once inside the restaurant, we ordered, then got down to business.
“What do you remember about the Jennings case?” I said.
“Not a lot, to be honest. I mean, it was interesting at the time. A guy, like, pretending to be somebody else. That would make anyone sit up and take notice. After a bit, I never gave it another thought. And a lot’s happened since then to kind of drive it out of my mind.”
“Yeah, but cast your mind back. He was with another bloke, wasn’t he?”
“Aye, that’s right. There was something unusual about the way the other guy walked… He had a bit of a limp, that was it, can’t remember which leg it was… and he wore glasses. White hair, southern accent.”
“Not bad after all this time. Did anything else strike you about the other man at the time?”
He thought for a while.
“He was dressed for business, yo
u know, ready for a day’s work. Like he was off to an important meeting.”
Did that mean the other feller must be something to do with Ancarner? Where was he now? I wondered.
“Looking back now, Paul, what do you think about all this?”
Our steak and chips arrived as he considered my question.
“It all seemed to be so easy, know what I mean?” said Paul, adding plenty of ketchup to his chips and picking up his knife and fork. “Here’s this guy, right, who leads a perfectly normal life, on the surface at least, and every now and again he turns into somebody else.”
“Amazing when you think about it.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at the time. But it wasn’t that amazing, was it? If he could get away with it, anybody could. What I’m saying is it can’t be that difficult.”
“Maybe you just have to have the confidence to carry it off.”
“Yeah,” said Paul, “but you’d need to know how to go about it, get documents and all that. He could have gone online or had somebody helping him, who knows?”
Somebody helping him? That idea might be worth pursuing. Who might that be? Surely Jennings would be able to buy any assistance he needed.
* * *
“According to IsleofMan.com there’s no capital gains tax over there,” I said to Louise as we waited at Manchester Airport three days later.
Airports do my head in, I said to myself as I scrolled down a bit further on my phone. People rushed around in their brand new, white trainers, their faces lined with anxiety, dragging suitcases on wheels and clutching boarding passes. An atmosphere of anxiety, boredom and restless anticipation pervaded the place.
“Income tax is 10% standard rate, 20% higher rate. No individual pays more than a hundred and twenty-five grand a year.”
That must have been the attraction for the late billionaire Peter Goodall. Why were the people who could well afford to pay their taxes so reluctant to fork out? Louise looked up from her guidebook.
“Are you thinking of investing your millions over there?” said Louise, stretching her legs out and kicking off her sandals. She wiggled her toes, as if to show off her pink toenail varnish.
“I thought I would. I mean, a man in my position can’t be expected to pay tax. That’s for the plebs.”
