In Vino Veritas

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘There’s only two that we know of who can handle a sixty-million-pound wash,’ Detective Constable Aird offered. ‘The Ponsi brothers – good economic crime name, theirs … Alberto and Giovanni Ponsi … and a second possibility is Leonard McLaverty, although both will have to subcontract if they’re going to launder sixty million pounds within reasonable time.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Meadows nodded in agreement. ‘So who’s your money on?’ he appealed to the assembled officers.

  ‘McLaverty, sir.’ DC Gwen Cousins leaned forward. She was a serious-minded woman in her early thirties. Few officers in the Economic Crime Unit had ever seen her smile. ‘If only because we don’t know where he is. The Ponsi brothers are both known to be at their respective homes, so we know where they are and they know that we know where they are. They can’t go to the corner shop without this unit knowing about it … but McLaverty, as we know, has vanished. He could be anywhere. Heavens, we don’t even know what he looks like these days. We just have an old photograph of him when he was heavily bearded with long hair. If he walked into this room now, clean-shaven with a crew-cut, we wouldn’t recognize him. So my money is on McLaverty.’

  ‘Yes … I’m inclined to agree with you, Gwen.’ Meadows turned and glanced out of his office window at the buildings on the Surrey Bank of the River Thames. ‘All we can do is wait until he surfaces … but he’s busy, he’s active … he’ll surface. So apart from him and his crew, what else is happening?’

  ‘A fraud, sir,’ Escritt advised, ‘referred to this unit from the Hounslow police. The same old story really – an elderly lady is reported to have been persuaded by a very charming young man into paying fifty thousand pounds into his privately run hedge fund … and then he vanished.’ Escritt shrugged.

  DC Aird forced a smile. ‘I’ll flag up our interest in him to all other units.’

  DC Cousins glanced despairingly at the ceiling. ‘Don’t people ever learn?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Meadows groaned, ‘as you say, the same old story. So, let’s have the details … please.’

  Tom Ainsclough tapped on the doorframe of Harry Vicary’s office and walked in. ‘Got the results from the fingerprints on the beer glass, boss.’ He held up a sheet of paper with an air of triumph. ‘He is Andrew “Big Andy” Cragg, no alias. A lot of relatively minor convictions, car theft, of and from … He collected three years for grievous bodily harm which he spent in Wormwood Scrubs – that was fifteen years ago. Present age is given as fifty-six. No convictions in the last ten years.’

  ‘A burnt-out recidivist.’ Harry Vicary leaned back in his chair. ‘So how do you feel about your three days in Notting Hill? Take a seat.’ Vicary indicated a vacant chair in front of his desk.

  ‘Annoyed … and also a bit amused.’ Ainsclough slid into the chair. ‘Annoyed at the waste of time … amused at being pinned as a copper as soon as I arrived.’

  ‘I like people who have the ability to laugh at themselves.’ Vicary smiled warmly. ‘It shows emotional maturity and we have learned something useful … down-and-outs don’t stand still … we’ll remember that.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I do want to nail that gang. You should have seen that Afro-Caribbean geezer, diamonds in his teeth, crocodile-skin shoes, Rolex … and all derived from importing and selling cocaine.’

  ‘We know them, Tom, the Holmes Gang, and we’ll nail them soon enough.’

  ‘Shall I go and pick up Cragg? I’ve a good idea where he’ll be, at least between midday and six p.m.’

  ‘No … not yet.’ Vicary held up his hand. ‘Let’s wait until we know whether there is something in the allotments or not. Victor’s on that at the moment.’

  Detective Sergeant Victor Swannell, a uniformed sergeant, six constables and the volunteer manager of the Malpas Road allotments in New Cross, London, SE4, formed a loose line as they watched a brown-and-white Springer Spaniel eagerly crisscross the plots. Swannell took his eye off the dog briefly and surveyed the surrounding area. He noted two-storey terraced houses in the main, of late Victorian to mid-twentieth-century style. An adjacent area of parkland provided additional greenery, above which the sky was an expanse of blue with high, wispy clouds. Swannell glanced about him more closely and noted again how everyone was appropriately dressed for the weather, with the sergeant and constables in white short-sleeved shirts and serge trousers, he in his lightweight summer suit and the allotment manager in a white T-shirt and khaki shorts. Eventually the Springer Spaniel stopped its enthusiastic crisscrossing of the allotments and lay down on a plot of land with its tail wagging and tongue hanging out of the left-hand side of its mouth, a very alert look in his eyes.

  ‘Oh …’ The allotment supervisor turned to his right and looked up at Swannell, who towered head and shoulders above him. ‘I saw a TV drama once where a sniffer dog did just that and it meant he had found something. Does that mean the same thing – he’s found something?’

  ‘It does,’ Swannell replied quietly as the dog handler strode confidently towards the Spaniel, slipped a leash over its head and around its neck, patted the dog then handed him a small rubber ball to chew on as a reward for scenting something of interest. ‘He’s scented decaying flesh,’ Swannell explained. ‘Whether human or not remains to be seen.’ Swannell turned to the uniformed sergeant. ‘Sergeant!’

  ‘Sir!’ The sergeant’s reply was prompt, instant.

  ‘We’ll need you to dig there,’ Swannell said. ‘You know the procedure.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant, a young man for his rank, Swannell thought, clearly a ‘young thruster’ with an eye for going a long way with the Metropolitan Police, turned to the line of constables. ‘Right, boys … the ground is baked hard so we’ll dig in twos and do so in half-hour shifts. Constables Pearson and Stubbs, you take the first shift, then Constables Watson and Bailey, then Constables Harrison and Blake. So, three two-man teams, half-hour shifts. Carry on, please.’

  ‘Who rents that particular allotment?’ Swannell turned to the allotment supervisor as the dog handler led the tail-wagging Spaniel away and the first two constables, spades in hand, advanced on the area to be excavated.

  ‘Geezer called Bennett.’ The allotment supervisor was a short, overweight man, in Swannell’s view. He was bespectacled with a round, ruddy-complexioned face. ‘But he’s only just taken the plot over. That particular plot has been unworked for years. It’s well fallow now. It will be a good producer that will, a nice little producer.’

  ‘Do you know who the last rentee was?’ Swannell brushed a persistent fly from his face.

  ‘Not off-hand, I don’t,’ the allotment supervisor wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, ‘but I have all the records in the office.’ He pointed to a wooden hut which stood near the entrance of the allotments. ‘Shall we go and consult them?’

  ‘Lead on,’ Swannell replied with a generous smile. ‘Just lead the way.’

  Victor Swannell found the interior of the hut to be pleasantly cool with a cosy feel, though perhaps a little cluttered for his taste. He noted plant pots and gardening tools, many aged and some rusting. He noticed a mechanical rotavator occupying an over-large floor area of the shed in relation to its size, with dried soil caked to the blades. ‘Have you been the governor here for a while, Mr … I’m sorry; I have forgotten your name, sir.’

  ‘Vere, Tony Vere,’ the man replied as he reached for an A4 bound notebook. ‘I am the “reeve” of the allotments, to give me my proper title. It’s actually a medieval designation which we have rescued from obscurity and which originally meant a sort of manager or overseer of a specific area of farms, a person who kept an overview of the area of land and one who settled localized disputes. We chose the name for these allotments in preference to “manager” or “coordinator” because we liked the antiquity of the word and its strong agricultural link.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Swannell replied. ‘In fact, I have a relative of that name … a cousin … I can tell him the origin of his name next time I see him.’<
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  ‘Well, I am pleased to have been of some assistance already.’ Tony Vere opened the ledger. ‘Computers still have to arrive in Britain’s allotments, but I dare say it’s only a matter of time before the wretched things reach us. We already have to contend with mobile phones interrupting the work. Beats me that many men come here as a form of escape from home life only to leave their mobile phone switched on. Allotments have a certain peace and a tranquillity about them, even in London, and New Cross doesn’t have a great deal of green space. I mean, there’s the park over there, these allotments, a few small front and back gardens and, well, frankly that’s your lot, but even then this land has to be used to grow edible produce, so at certain times of the year the allotment looks like a lot of little ploughed fields all in two neat rows.’

  ‘I see.’ Swannell continued to glance round the shed. ‘So I couldn’t rent an allotment to sow a lawn to sunbathe on?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Vere gasped. ‘It wouldn’t be permitted … just edible produce. The nearest you could get to a lawn would be say half-a-dozen apple trees on an otherwise grassed-over area. I dare say that that might be permitted. But a lawn to use to relax on … not a chance. Only edible produce, it’s law and I mean by Act of Parliament.’ Tony Vere ran his short, stubby fingers down the column of names in the ledger. ‘You see, the allotments as we know them were established during the First World War, The Great War as it was then known.’

  ‘Or the war to end all wars,’ Swannell commented dryly.

  ‘Indeed.’ Vere breathed deeply. ‘It didn’t quite work out like that, but whatever … Anyway, Britain was facing severe food shortages due to the effectiveness of the U-boat blockade which sank many ships bringing food from overseas. As a consequence, Lloyd George’s government ordered local authorities to give up all unused ground, or “idle” ground, as the term then was, for the use of cultivation of food stuffs by ordinary people growing their own, so as to help feed the populace, and the rule that only edible produce can be grown on the nation’s allotments still holds good.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Victor Swannell glanced around the interior of the hut once again, this time noting framed photographs of people proudly showing vegetables which they had, he thought, presumably grown on their allotment, and he also noted people manning tables upon which produce was displayed for sale. ‘I have had a history lesson.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Vere continued to look closely at the ledger. ‘It really is quite a story. Another fact which might be of interest to you is that the creation of the allotments was the first time that land had been given to ordinary people since the common land in parishes up and down the nation was taken from them during the Parliamentary Enclosures during the seventeen hundreds and the early eighteen hundreds. Oh …’ Tony Vere followed Swannell’s gaze, ‘… that photograph is one of our annual sale of produce – they’re very popular. We all grow more than we can eat so we sell off the surplus at next-to-nothing prices. It gives us a little financial float and means we avoid the great sin of wasting good food. Our annual sales are very popular, as I said, not just because the produce is inexpensive but also because they actually taste like vegetables and fruit, unlike the tasteless stuff you buy in supermarkets.’

  ‘Yes,’ Swannell replied, ‘I have heard that said before about allotment produce.’ He returned his gaze towards Tony Vere.

  ‘The usage has changed, which is another interesting fact …’ Tony Vere turned a page of the ledger. ‘The allotments started out as a wholly working-class activity but nowadays they have come to be dominated by the professional middle classes. The allotment which you are interested in is in fact rented by the managing director of a small company, for example, and many holders on this site are similarly employed.’

  ‘I confess that seems to be the way of it.’ Swannell waited patiently for Tony Vere to search out the information he sought. ‘The working class start something and pretty soon the middle class take it over. Male-voice choirs in South Wales, for example, were started by coalminers as a means of self-improvement during the growth of Methodism and other non-conformist religions, but nowadays you don’t get a school headship in Wales unless you sing in a choir.’

  ‘Really!’ Tony Vere turned to Swannell with a keen alertness in his eyes.

  ‘So I have been informed.’ Swannell nodded in reply.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Vere returned his attention to the ledger, ‘but I ought not to be surprised. You hear many educated voices on the allotments as neighbours will chat whilst digging or taking a break from weeding to talk to each other.’

  Swannell remained silent as he pondered how a ‘voice’ could be educated, although he knew what Tony Vere had meant was ‘the cultivated voice of an educated person’.

  ‘Ah ha!’ Tony Vere exclaimed with a note of excitement. ‘Here we are: plot twenty-three, which is the allotment in question, was last let to a gentleman called Dickinson who gave up the rental five years ago. I remember him, a nice old boy; he always had time for you. Before that it was rented by a geezer called Hill. He was here before I took over as the allotments reeve. I became reeve upon retiring from the civil service. It gets me out of the house, which is what my wife likes. She got used to having the house to herself during the day when I was working. It’s a bit selfish of her but she is a selfish woman. I mean, I worked from the day I left school until my sixty-fifth birthday so as to provide for my own and you’d think she’d let me enjoy my home in my retirement, but she doesn’t see that way. If it’s daytime during the working week then it’s “her” home, not “ours”. It only becomes “ours” at weekends and the evening.’

  ‘A little selfish, as you say,’ Swannell grunted in agreement.

  ‘Mr Hill appears to have rented plot twenty-three for just six months and sometimes that is the way of it. A lot of folk have a romantic view of being an allotment holder, then find out how much hard physical work is involved and give it up after a few months. Others stay for years. Ah … now, before Mr Hill it was rented by a man called Carlyon. He appears to have had it for a number of years. Before him …’

  ‘I don’t need to go any further back.’ Swannell cut Tony Vere off in mid-speech. ‘Tell me about Mr Hill, who had the allotment for a few months. When was that?’

  ‘About ten years ago … according to this,’ Vere replied.

  ‘He will interest me if there are human remains in the allotment. Do you have his address?’

  ‘Geoffrey Road.’ Tony Vere read the address in the ledger. ‘Number three hundred and twenty-three. Whether he is still at that address or not, I can’t say.’

  ‘I’ll take the chance.’ Swannell glanced behind him and out through the open door of the hut. ‘Is that near here?’

  ‘Yes, quite close,’ Vere explained. ‘A ten-minute walk for a fit man such as yourself, sir.’

  ‘I see.’ Swannell turned back to Tony Vere. ‘Tell me, when a person takes an allotment, do they have to provide proof of identity?’

  ‘Not to the same extent that a person would have to prove his identity when opening a bank account,’ Tony Vere explained. ‘I have in fact allocated allotments to people I know only by sight. I see them in the streets round here or in the pub. So no, I dare say the answer is no, they don’t have to prove their identity.’

  ‘That might be something of an obstacle for us,’ Swannell mused, speaking more to himself than to Tony Vere.

  ‘You still don’t know whether the dog found human remains or not.’ Vere smiled. ‘Don’t rush your fences, sir. It’s a lesson I have learned.’

  ‘Our informant gave a precise location … he apparently seemed genuine and the dog has found something at the given location,’ Swannell growled. ‘There’ll be human remains under the surface of that allotment, if only because the hairs on my old wooden leg tell me so.’ Swannell paused. ‘So, who was the supervisor … the reeve, when Mr Hill rented plot twenty-three?’

  ‘That would be my predecessor, Ron Brazie
r,’ Vere replied.

  ‘Where can I find him?’ Swannell brushed another fly from his face.

  ‘You can’t,’ Tony Vere shrugged apologetically. ‘Sadly he is no longer with us. He suffered a small stroke and seemed to be making a good recovery, then he suffered a larger, massive stroke just a couple of months later, from which he did not recover. A blessing, really – he would have been little more than a vegetable. His was a very well-attended funeral.’

  ‘I see.’ Swannell forced a smile. ‘So he won’t be able to tell me much about Mr Hill?’

  ‘Nope … not much.’ Tony Vere returned the smile. ‘Mind you, the next allotment, plot twenty-four, is rented by a geezer called Moffatt, who is one of our long-term rentees. I am sure he will remember Mr Hill. I am reluctant to let you have Mr Moffatt’s address without his permission.’

  ‘Fair enough, but you may have to,’ Swannell growled again, ‘depending on what we find in plot twenty-three. Leaving that issue aside for a moment, though, tell me: how secure are the allotments?’

  ‘Well,’ Vere pursed his lips, ‘frankly there is hardly any security at all and that is because hardly any is needed; a few plots of soil in which potatoes and carrots are growing is hardly the Bank of England. As you may have noticed, the allotments are surrounded by a privet hedge about four feet high, which anyone with any strength can force their way through.’

  ‘What about the gate?’ Swannell pressed. ‘Is that kept locked at night? Does it have any sort of alarm system attached to it?’

  ‘No alarm system,’ Vere advised, ‘and yes, it is locked with a padlock although, having said that, all allotment holders are given a key to the padlock and, of course, it would be the easiest thing in the world to have a copy cut. You see, like I said, our little patch of England is hardly The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.’