The Work of a Narrow Mind

by Faith Martin

  He saw one of Chivnor’s brothers, a lad of about thirteen or so, spot the Porsche and say something to the other lad with him, who looked to be about eleven. He pointed at the Porsche and probably said something both foul-mouthed and appreciative, because Jake saw Darren Chivnor start to look his way.

  Even though it was a cold November night, Jake had the window wound down and had one elbow casually hanging out as he drove past. There was plenty of street lighting about and he saw Darren clock first the Porsche, then the driver.

  He didn’t exactly do a classic double take, but Jake was in no doubt that Chivnor had recognized him from the pub last night, and must immediately have started wondering on what the chances were of them coming across each other again so soon, which was fine by the multi-millionaire. In fact, Jake was relying on the thug to have just that cockroach-like sense of caution. It was bound to make him curious, and his own sense of self-survival would make it almost certain that he’d have to try and find out what Jake’s game was.

  Satisfied that he’d done enough, Jake drove on and found a legal parking spot a little further down into the estate and quickly jogged back down toward the fireworks display. He was in a residential area, and the streets were full of families and excited kids dancing about and waving sparklers around and, in spite of their parents’ dire warnings about the consequences, letting off bangers at the feet of their squealing, dancing friends.

  All the mayhem was one of the many reasons why he didn’t spot his old colleague and pal, Jimmy Jessop, walking a hundred yards or so behind him. Of course, Jimmy was dressed in a long raincoat and had an old woollen bobble-hat pulled low down over his ears, so that he looked like any other anonymous old-age pensioner simply out to enjoy the entertainment.

  When Jake fetched up on the bit of waste ground, the display was just starting with an impressive line of Catherine wheels that were busy spiralling out lines of blue, white, red and green circles. He stood and watched them, making no effort to look for or approach Darren Chivnor and his younger brothers. If all went as he hoped it would, he would have no need.

  Instead, he stood on the edge of the crowd, and watched. Some Roman candles came next. Jimmy Jessop, stationing himself behind and just to the right of Jake, glanced around casually.

  They were not a quarter of a mile from the pub he’d visited yesterday, and Jimmy doubted very much that the boy wonder was here for the fireworks. After all, when you’re worth millions you could afford tickets to the vast displays that the city usually put on. Either that, or he could attend the private parties put on by his well-heeled friends. Hell, if you were Jake Barnes, Jimmy thought with a silent grunt of laughter, you could pay for your own display in your own back garden that would far outstrip this effort, and not have to resort to anything more than raiding the petty cash box.

  So when, after about ten minutes, a very likely looking lad indeed began to edge towards Jake, Jimmy began taking snaps of the pretty fireworks with his camera phone. And if said camera just happened to point Jake’s way, none of the excited kids or happy families around him, munching on burgers and baked potatoes, seemed to notice.

  Jake himself said nothing as he felt a man’s presence by his side. He didn’t even look around as Darren Chivnor moved up to his elbow. Both men looked up as a rocket whooshed into the sky, spitting out a fountainhead of lime green, blue and red sparks into the air above them.

  ‘Nice Porsche,’ Darren said.

  ‘Thanks. I like it,’ Jake responded. His heart was thumping, and his throat felt constricted, but he was pleased with the way he sounded. Casual. Confident. Unworried.

  ‘Cost a packet, I expect.’

  ‘It’s a classic,’ Jake agreed modestly. ‘Not a bathtub Porsche, but then it’s only my third car.’

  ‘Third car? You’ve only ever had three cars?’ Darren asked, clearly puzzled and caught out by the response.

  Jake tensed. He didn’t want to laugh, or put the thug’s back up. Nothing, he assumed, could make you an enemy faster than making someone like Chivnor think that you were insulting their intelligence or talking down to them.

  ‘No. I meant I keep a collection, and the Porsche is only my third-best car,’ he explained, trying to make it sound as throw-away and easy going as possible. The last thing he needed was to sound as if was trying to start a pissing contest. He shrugged inside his sheepskin-lined, caramel-coloured coat and managed a self-mocking laugh. ‘I’m a bit of a sports-car freak, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, got it. You only drive the Porsche when you’re slumming it,’ Chivnor said, a shade sullenly.

  Jake, not sure how best to answer that, merely shrugged again and said nothing, on the basis that, when you found yourself in a hole, it was usually best to stop shovelling. For, just as Jake had worried he might have, the skinhead had clearly taken offence.

  Darren shot a sideways glance at him, then unexpectedly laughed. ‘No worries, mate. My kid brothers were well impressed, third car or not.’

  Jake smiled a shade warily, and watched the path of another rocket.

  Chivnor lit a cigarette. ‘Saw you in the pub yesterday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What you after then? You a journalist?’

  ‘Hell no,’ Jake said, genuinely surprised by the question. Apparently, the spontaneous surprise of his words seemed to reassure Medcalfe’s lieutenant, because he grinned again and nodded his head in approval.

  ‘Good. Because there ain’t no story for the meee-deee-ah here,’ Chivnor said flatly, making a sarcastic sing-song out of the word ‘media’. ‘They tend to end up very discouraged whenever some hot shot out to make a name for himself as a crime reporter starts snooping around. ‘Sides, haven’t they heard? The Leys has cleaned up its act, so we don’t want no bad pub-leeec-eeety around here.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I’ve been the victim of media attention myself from time to time,’ Jake said, truthfully enough. ‘Trust me, I’m no friend of reporters.’

  ‘You ain’t a player,’ Chivnor said flatly, making it a statement rather than question. ‘I’d know you if you were. And so would my boss.’

  ‘No, I’m not a player,’ Jake confirmed, ‘nor do I have any ambitions to be,’ he added, careful to keep his voice amiable.

  ‘You out to score? If so, you’ve got the wrong bloke,’ Chivnor said, sounding rather amused now. ‘Been a long time since anybody mistook me for a dealer. Not that I can’t point you in the right direction like—’

  ‘Please, do me a favour,’ Jake interrupted. ‘Do I look like a mug?’

  Chivnor shrugged. ‘OK. You ain’t a journo, you don’t want to score, and you ain’t looking to make trouble. I admit it, you got me curious. So who are you then?’

  ‘I’m a very rich man,’ Jake said simply. ‘My name’s Jake Barnes. Look me up. I expect I’m on Google.’

  ‘Who isn’t nowadays?’ Chivnor said, massively unimpressed. ‘I expect my old mum’s mongrel Mutley, is on there. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to make you rich too.’

  Chivnor laughed. ‘Do I look like a mug?’

  ‘Nope,’ Jake said flatly. ‘And there’s nothing stupid about becoming rich. I should know. I grew up on an estate just like this,’ he said, nodding around him. ‘Now I’ve got holiday homes in the Caribbean, Gstaad and Sydney. I drive what I like, wear silk in bed if I fancy it, and enjoy a certain class of lady. Like I said, look me up. And if I want to spread a goodly amount of money your way, you’d have to be a mug not to at least listen to what I have to say. Right?’

  Chivnor watched another rocket light up the sky, and for the first time, Jake dared to turn and look at him.

  From his vantage point, Jimmy Jessop took a quick photograph of the two men. He had no idea who the skinhead was, but if he wasn’t in the police data base somewhere, then he’d eat his bobble-hat.

  Bobble and all.

  ‘Maybe,’ Chivnor said flatly, and then just turned and walked away, calling to his two kids brothers
to join him at the burger stand as he did so.

  It was only then that Jake realized that his knees felt like jelly and his chest was hurting, because he’d forgotten to breathe out. He let out his breath in an explosive whoosh, and left before the fireworks display had finished.

  Jimmy Jessop, however, waited until the very end, and then followed, at a carefully calculated distance, the skinhead and the two younger kids with him. He jotted down the licence plate number of the car that they got into, then slowly walked back to his own vehicle.

  It wouldn’t take him long to upload the photographs onto his computer. He’d made sure he knew how to engage the night-time gizmo on his camera so he was reasonably confident that they’d give him a clear enough image.

  But he had a bad feeling about this. Something about the tattooed skinhead gave Jimmy a bad case of the shivers. Whatever it was Jake was up to, he was already sure that the kid was in way over his head.

  He only hoped that between them, he and Hillary Greene would be able to make sure that the boy didn’t actually drown.

  The next morning Jimmy got in early and was already working through his list of possible muggers-turned-home-invaders when Hillary strolled past the open door.

  ‘Guv,’ he called her into the doorway, then solemnly handed her over the photographs and gave her a run down on what he’d been doing last night.

  ‘I expect to have a positive ID on our friend there sometime today guv,’ he finished. ‘Maybe tomorrow, if the computer boys are backlogged.’

  ‘OK,’ Hillary said, eyeing the tattooed skinhead in the photographs with a sigh. ‘It’s not looking good for our Jake, is it?’ she added morosely. ‘You sure you didn’t see him score?’

  ‘No, guv,’ Jimmy said firmly. ‘Nothing was exchanged between them except for a few words. Besides, I think we’d have spotted it by now if our boy was a user, don’t you?’

  Hillary nodded. She didn’t think Jake had a habit, but he might still be using. Or just starting out. But she hoped not. Even more, she hoped he wasn’t setting up shop as a dealer himself. But then, why would he? He sure as hell didn’t need the money.

  ‘OK, let me know the moment you’ve ID’d our charmer here,’ she said.

  Jimmy coughed a warning, and Hillary slipped the photographs discreetly back into the brown paper folder and held it down by her side before turning casually and smiling at Wendy, who had been hiking energetically down the corridor towards them and now appeared just behind her. If she’d noticed Hillary’s actions, she gave no sign, and Hillary moved to one side to let her pass.

  ‘Jake pulled in just behind me in the car-park, guv,’ Wendy greeted her cheerfully. ‘So, first come, first served, right? If you’ve got any plum assignments in mind that is?’

  Hillary agreed cheerfully that that sounded about right to her. ‘So Jake can stay in the office and give Jimmy a hand when he’s finished doing his own assignments, and we get to visit Caulcott again,’ she said, laughing as Wendy groaned and theatrically rolled her extravagantly black-lined eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure I actually got the good end of the bargain there,’ she moaned, but with a happy smile. Today she was wearing an old black-lace blouse, with an intricate cameo tight around her throat, and a long black skirt, with black granny boots. Her face was ghostly pale, contrasting with her panda-like black eyes and cherry-red lipstick.

  ‘If you want to stay here instead of learning how to interview witnesses—’ Hillary began, but Wendy was already shaking her head. ‘Right then, follow me.’

  As they passed Jake coming down the corridor, Wendy shot him a cheerful finger, and Jake mussed her orange-tipped spiky hair in passing. Just what the Goth thought about that was unprintable and still echoing along the corridor when they started to climb the stairs back into the meagre grey daylight.

  Graham Teign and his wife lived at the end of the row of cottages where Sylvia, Freddie de la Mare, and the now deceased Maureen Coles had once lived, and were obviously a little excited and pleased to see Wendy again.

  ‘Come on in, love,’ Graham Teign said, not unsurprisingly perhaps, recognizing her at once as he answered the door, and stepping aside to let them pass. He was a tall, thin man with greying hair and large, knobbly hands that had perpetually dirty fingernails from all the gardening that he no doubt did. Even in November, his garden, front and back, was a riot of shrubs, artfully mixed, with attractive foliage and late-blooming Michaelmas daisies.

  ‘Visitors, darling,’ he called through to the front room, where a plump woman of similar age was busy knitting on a pair of outsized needles. A multi-coloured scarf lay gathering pace on her lap as she looked up, her eyes eagerly seeking out those of first Wendy and then Hillary.

  ‘My wife, Gill,’ the man of the house introduced her with obvious and touching pride.

  Hillary showed them both her ID, not that they seemed all that interested in it, and Gill Teign nodded. ‘Well, sit you down then. Gray, why don’t you put the kettle on. Tea? Coffee?’

  Hillary accepted coffee, Wendy opted for tea, and they both chose a chair each from the mismatched ones on offer in the eclectically furnished room. A small fire blazed away merrily in the grate, occasionally making a popping sound as the flames hit some resin in the wood.

  ‘This is about poor Sylvie, of course,’ Gill Teign said, nodding her head. She had an untidy mop of brown curls, heavily shot through with grey, and a slightly sagging face, as if she’d recently lost a lot of weight. ‘I still can’t get over that. You any nearer to finding out who did it?’

  ‘We were hoping you could help us with that,’ Hillary said, just as her husband came back with a laden tray. It didn’t take long for everyone to sort themselves out and soon they were all sipping from mugs and the Teigns were talking about their old friend.

  ‘Course, we knew all about that ding-dong about some Maurice Chevalier look-alike down at that old folks’ club Sylvie used to go to,’ Gill Teign said, somehow managing to keep on knitting whilst drinking her tea at the same time. Her needles clacked at lightning speed too, and Wendy found it fascinating that the woman didn’t ever seem to have to look down to see what her hands were actually doing. ‘Me and Gray had a laugh about that, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yerse,’ her husband agreed, examining his dirty fingernails. ‘Mind you, I don’t think Sylvie thought it was that much of a laughing matter, Gilly.’

  ‘Oh tush.’ His wife tossed her head dismissively.

  ‘Tush nothing,’ her husband insisted. ‘I got the feeling that Sylvie was serious about the fella, you know.’

  Gill Teign sighed heavily. ‘Well, you might be right at that,’ she conceded eventually. ‘She’d been a widow for some time. Perhaps she had hoped that something might come of it. She had to be lonely, don’t you think, living all by herself?’

  ‘What did the man in question think about that?’ Hillary asked, deliberately stirring the pot a little. ‘Was he as keen, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, couldn’t say. We never met him, did we, Gray?’ Gill said at once.

  ‘No, we didn’t go to the club. Still don’t. Reckon we’re a long way off needing the services of the Forget-me-not Club just yet,’ her husband said fervently.

  Hillary nodded. It was interesting. Ideas as to how serious Sylvia had been about her love-rival were definitely mixed; some of her friends and neighbours sure that it was nothing more than a storm in a teacup whilst others, like the Teigns, thinking that it might genuinely have been important to Sylvia.

  If it had been, she needed to know about it. She was going to have to talk to Ruby Broadstairs and the man in question soon and see if she couldn’t sort out, once and for all, just how things had really been between them. A love triangle was a potentially explosive bit of geometry, no matter what the ages of the three sides.

  After all, neither of the other two involved, according to DI Jarvis, had had an alibi for the time of Sylvia’s death.

  ‘What can you tell me about Freda?’ Hillary ask
ed casually, making Wendy look up from her notebook and give Hillary a curious look. She’d read Jake’s report on the Freda de la Mare interview the moment that he’d finished it and he’d made it very clear that Hillary, for some reason, had found the talk more than interesting.

  Now here was proof that she was definitely digging for dirt on the artist. Wendy wished that she’d been the one sitting in on that interview, and hoped she didn’t miss anything else that good.

  ‘Freddie? Oh, she and Sylvie were great chums. Had been for donkey’s years,’ Gill said.

  ‘Oh yerse, thick as thieves those two. Maureen as well. The three musketeers we called them,’ Graham Teign said. And then laughed. ‘Or the three must-get-beers, as Freddie renamed them when she heard about it.’

  ‘Oh Gray! That sounds awful,’ Gill said, but she was smiling. ‘Well, Freddie likes a glass of wine, and she might get a bit merry in the Horse and Groom at Christmas time and so on, but she’s hardly a heavy drinker.’

  ‘Did Sylvie like to drink?’ Hillary asked, slightly surprised. There had been no report in DI Jarvis’s investigation that indicated anything like that.

  ‘No, no, that was just Freddie’s joke, I think,’ Graham said. ‘Being an artist, she sort of marches to her own tune, like. No, Sylvie liked the odd glass or two on special occasions, as do we all, but nothing more than that. The same for Maureen, although towards the end, I don’t think she drank at all. You know, she started to go gaga.’

  ‘It’s called Alzheimer’s, Gray,’ his wife said reprovingly. ‘Freddie was one of the first to notice it. Her memory started going. Then Sylvie, who lived right next door, started hearing odd things – like the vacuum going in the middle of the night. Apparently Maureen had woken up, saw that it was two-thirty or something, and thought it was in the afternoon instead of the middle of the night, and started doing the housework.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘It was sad. But between them, Freddie and Sylvie took care of her. Saved her from having to go into a home until right to the very end. Or almost. Like I said, they were thick as thieves those three. Had been ever since they were all young women.’