Walking Into the Ocean

by David Whellams

  “Because I am guessing you’re leaving town tomorrow. Persona non grata?”

  The waitress from the restaurant came over to the table and handed him André Lasker’s ring.

  Wendie looked at it. “Is that your wedding ring?”

  “No, Miss Merwyn, it’s André Lasker’s.”

  She raised one beautifully pencilled eyebrow. “Mr. Cammon, you are a complicated man.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Peter rang Sam at the garage, even though it was 7:25 a.m. In some way, he hoped Mayta would answer, but Sam picked up on the first ring.

  “Inspector, we stayed up to watch you on TV last night.”

  “Lord, Sam, how did you figure I’d be on TV?”

  “Psychic. At least, Mayta’s psychic. She also watches TV. She’s sitting right here. You want to talk to her?”

  “No, but give her my best . . .”

  “She sends her love. The cameras make you look pale. We’re drinking tea. We’re in the Little Room. What can I do for you? How’s the car?”

  “I’m leaving town this afternoon. In disgrace.”

  “You said the wrong thing to the television?”

  “Exactly. But I need to see Martin before I go. Is it too early to call?”

  “Inspector, you don’t understand. My nephew has called me four times. He has never been this happy.” Sam exhaled at the end of the line. “Martin always gets to work early. Just show up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have the Subaru back by noon.”

  “Whatever . . . Mayta tells me call ahead to Martin, so I will take care of that now.”

  “Oh, if an Inspector Verden shows up, tell him I’ll be there soon.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Almost as charming as Mayta.”

  “Wow!”

  “But not quite.”

  “I’ll tell her that.”

  The Subaru’s SatNav led him smoothly to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Whittlesun Branch, on the edge of town. Six people waited at the locked front door for the office to open at 8:30. Peter locked the Subaru and walked around to the side of the brick building and on to the back, where he found an iron door above a loading bay. He rapped on the door, and in less than thirty seconds it was opened by a fresh-faced twenty-year-old lad. His tie was already askew and his black hair flopped over his forehead. He smiled in recognition, in his enthusiasm not bothering to introduce himself.

  “Inspector, it’s all in my office.” He led Peter down a short hallway to a nondescript room with a door labelled Manager.

  “Is this your office, Martin?”

  “No, it’s Mr. Kerwin’s, but he’s not here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s never here, mostly. He may actually be on strike. They strike here a lot.”

  “Your uncle speaks highly of you. And I’m betting you never join the strike.”

  Martin smiled broadly. “Too many fun things to think about doing. If only someone were interested.”

  “Show me the material.”

  The young man had arrayed the files in three precise stacks along the desk. “The government of the U.K. has always claimed that its domestic laws mesh nicely with the EU rules regarding auto exports. That was, shall we say, complacent of them. In practice, the U.K. never much cared what the EU systems did. Until computerized registration was centralized in Brussels, the tracking of imported vehicles remained problematic. The result was too many people taking advantage of the rules. Kind of a regulatory arbitrage.”

  “Run me through an example,” Peter said.

  “Okay. I’m an exporter in Britain. I want to dump my crappy old cars onto the Continental market. I can export them for parts, but there’s more money if can sell them as drivable. But I don’t want to pay the expense to bring the vehicles up to standard. Here’s what I do. To certify the car as ‘disabled,’ I take it to an authorized treatment facility in, say, Dorset. As the owner-seller, I don’t have to pay for a licence as long as the vehicle doesn’t appear on public roads. Then I apply for a Certificate of Permanent Export, an EU-mandated form identifying the car as refurbished and drivable. I count on nobody in Britain or the EU destination country noticing the switch.”

  “But won’t the Customs people in the receiving country notice the discrepancy?” Peter said.

  “You’d hope so. But bureaucrats believe the form on the top of the file before they believe their own eyes. As long as the EU form lists verifiable VIN, cylinder capacity, chassis number and a few other things, they tend to be happy. Here’s how the scam worked, until recently. The exporting company would simply fill out the EU export application and lie through their teeth about the fitness of the vehicle. They would back it up with a false report from an alleged mechanic stating the car was up to standard.”

  “You said ‘until recently’?”

  “The British government finally operationalized its Changes to Current Vehicle Form to standardize all the details at this end to bring it in line with Brussels. But more important, the British and EU form numbers have to match now.”

  “Did that make André Lasker change his ways?”

  “Certainly slowed him down. I can only discover five deals he made in the last year, two of which were legit. These were kosher exports of certifiably rebuilt cars, one to Portugal, the other to southern Italy. The remaining three were the ones you called me about. Actually, the cars involved may have been accurately characterized, but the export companies are hollow shells. Lasker outsmarted himself a bit on those three.”

  “What about before then?” Peter said.

  “Sixteen.” He slapped his palm down on the second stack. “All suspicious, using shell companies.”

  “Then how did you figure they were Lasker’s?”

  Martin balked for a moment. His look was somewhere between apprehension at revealing his own methods of inquiry, which were perhaps a bit sketchy in themselves, and the urge to launch a fresh lecture on the mysteries of car registration. He smiled. “Two things. Our system supports data mining of EU stats. I ran data sets on companies that sent cars between eight and sixteen years old to secondary markets on the Continent over the past six years. I cross-reffed them against the U.K. Directory of Auto Dealers, Repairers, Wholesalers and Retailers, and if the exporting company listed on the EU form wasn’t in the directory, I pulled it. You see, that might indicate a shell company running a scam.”

  “The second factor?” Peter asked.

  “Even with false names all over the form, you have to list a contact telephone number. André Lasker put the legit phone number of his garage on that Portugal export, the kosher one from last year. I simply correlated the phone number against the entire base. Didn’t always work, I suspect, but I picked up sixteen cases that likely were Lasker’s.”

  Martin swept a hand over the documents. “These papers won’t tell you the ultimate price of the vehicles, or their true value, but they prove that your man was on the shady side of the export business. Look at this one.”

  He slipped a package of forms from the middle of a stack. The export company was Western Auto, but the signature of the authorizing corporate officer read Stanhope. “Fake name but it sure looks like André Lasker’s handwriting.”

  So, thought Peter, Lasker ran an active but secretive sideline in car exporting. He paid cash for old vehicles, minimally fixed them up in his garage and channelled them into the export stream. He often lied about their state of repair, and corporate shells obscured the ownership trail. Lasker potentially faced charges of commercial fraud, tax evasion and conversion under British and European Union criminal statutes. Albrecht Zoren would probably join him in the dock.

  But, for the purposes of the active investigation, a crucial question loomed, and Martin was ready for it.

  “Can we tell where the cars were shipped to, and if they stayed in the destination country?” Peter said.

  Martin smiled. “Sure can. Here’s the Country Receiving list.”

&
nbsp; He passed Peter a single sheet. Of the sixteen questionable exports, three were bound for Portugal, three for Malta, four for Italy (Bari), two for Poland, two for Slovakia, one for Sweden and another for Greece.

  Peter looked at Martin, who was still smiling. Peter offered a responsive grin. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said. “It’s a pretty eclectic list.”

  “Yup. Means two things, for certain. First, he produced cars on order. Second, there was a broker, a middle man involved, with tentacles into all the EU countries. I’ll try to find him.”

  Peter returned the Subaru to Sam’s Auto, only to find that Mayta was off doing errands. He had wanted to see her, suspecting that he was saying goodbye to the two of them. In effect, he was in the process of saying goodbye to all of Whittlesun, and, perhaps subconsciously, he yearned for Mayta to snap him out of his self-absorbed gloom. Tommy Verden was already there when Peter arrived and he and Sam were discussing cars, comparing abstruse features of various vehicles they had owned over the decades.

  Peter described his meeting with Martin in detail. Sam declared, “He’s a bright boy, a bright boy.”

  Their farewell was outwardly cheerful but there was a definite mood of abandonment as Peter handed over the keys to the rental. Peter got into the front of the Mercedes and waved to Sam. Verden eased out onto the cobbled street.

  “Well, boss, are we back to the cottage then?”

  “Not quite, and don’t call me boss. Just a short call before we leave Whittlesun behind.” He opened his phone and pressed the numbers left by Salvez in his message from — what, two days ago, or was it just yesterday? He listened to the phone chime three or four times; the answerphone took over. “This is Father Salvez. I am not available at the moment but messages can be left at St. Elegias Catholic Church administration office.” A new telephone number was given. There was no beep; the line cut itself.

  He called the church office and got a general message regarding church hours. He asked Tommy to set his SatNav for St. Elegias. This makes no sense, he thought. Why would Salvez employ an answering machine that didn’t take messages? He couldn’t imagine why Salvez needed to speak with him, but that puzzle was enough to spark his professional instincts. Had the sick priest remembered something about the Laskers? Or had he seen the Rover?

  He tried the church again. “Hello?” an ancient female voice answered, resentful at this interruption.

  “Good afternoon. This is Chief Inspector Cammon of New Scotland Yard. May I speak to Father Salvez?”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “I called his house number, but he wasn’t there either.”

  “He doesn’t have a house, it’s a flat, and he probably was there. Just wasn’t answering.”

  Peter had dealt with hundreds of witnesses over the years, but he still hated confronting the recalcitrant ones over the phone. “How can I reach him?”

  “You can knock on his door, the best way. You say you’re from the police?”

  Peter didn’t waver. “I need to see him on official police business.”

  “I’ll give you the address, then.” Peter could hear her riffling some papers in the background. She dictated the address, her voice softening a bit. “Can you pick up his messages on your way, and give them to him? There’s been a few people calling. He only lives two streets from the church.”

  “Can’t he pick them up himself?”

  “Not in the condition he’s in.”

  Twenty minutes on — as Tommy drove — and they were at St. Elegias, which boasted its own graveyard and a small verge of lawn all the way around it. Otherwise, it was a fairly modest Roman Catholic church, its shape not unlike St. George’s nearby in Weymouth. There was a seeping frost in the air; Peter got out and looked up at the sky, trying to guess the odds of snow.

  A nameplate, which had been riveted to the side door a long time ago, read Father Robert Clarke and listed two subordinates in smaller print. Another sign gave the phone number for the administration office; it was the one from Salvez’s message. Peter did a full circle of the stone building. Clarke was also identified on the main sign at the entrance. A large encased display on the lawn in front of the church held a statue of the Virgin. Behind it, a sign stencilled in red on parchment paper exhibited the quote of the week: Have you found your King?

  Peter did not at first realize that the house behind St. Elegias was the rectory. It was a compact, cottage-like home, evidently the residence of Father Clarke. A panel on the railing on the front steps confirmed this and requested that visitors call at the church for assistance. Father Salvez most certainly didn’t live here.

  Peter hailed Tommy, who understood, and killed the ignition. He got out of the car and waited while Peter descended the steps at the side of the building. He found the right office by following the odour of brewed tea. The old receptionist, whose dried-apple face matched the crotchety voice on the phone, appeared to be counting hymnbooks.

  “Sixteen . . . seventeen . . . eighteen,” she intoned.

  Peter’s arrival made her lose count. “Yes?” she snapped.

  “Peter Cammon.” He entered the office. He wasn’t what she expected in a police officer, and that suited him fine. She seemed impressed by his black suit.

  She handed over a sealed envelope. “Please give him these, his messages.” She paused and said, with unexpected warmth, “Say hello to the Father for us.”

  “Can I ask you one thing?” Peter said.

  “I suppose.”

  “Why does Father Salvez’s name not appear on the list of priests?”

  “Because he’s not formally associated with us.”

  Formally associated? Her answer begged the question of why the office continued to function as his mail drop, if little more.

  “He’s retired,” she went on. “He doesn’t work here.”

  “Is he somehow formally affiliated with the Abbey?” For every tidbit of information, the dry, pale woman retrenched behind the battlements.

  She scowled. “The Abbey is deconsecrated. Excuse me, officer, but Father Salvez is ill. He’s being treated for prostate cancer. He doesn’t have formal duties here.”

  Her compassion was so thin, so grudging, that Peter decided to let it go as hopeless. He stuffed the packet of messages into his jacket and left.

  Peter and Tommy decided to leave their car in the church space and walk to Salvez’s flat. They found it easily, a beige brick cube of identical units three streets over. The lobby index identified 524 as the priest’s flat, although “Father” was not appended to the name. Verden waited for a resident to exit, smiled at her, and held open the door for Peter. The lift was broken and so they took the rear stairs to the fifth floor. Peter knocked on 524. He was just about to knock a second time when the locks began to rattle on the interior side.

  The priest was thinner than before, when Peter had seen him in his long cassock, and now he looked deathly. Peter’s mother, who was as anti-Catholic as a Huguenot could be, opined that priests often looked like their own undertakers, but Peter felt only a welling up of concern, mixed with alarm, at the stick-man before him. When he saw Peter in the doorway, the priest recoiled in distress, although Peter was certain that Salvez recognized him. He wasn’t sure what this meant. They had been on friendly terms; Salvez had saved him at the cliff’s edge, and they had left an interesting conversation unfinished, with the implicit promise of meeting again. Had he waited too long to get back to him? The priest stepped back and lost his balance. Verden swooped past Peter and caught the man neatly. He gently lowered him to the carpet.

  “This is embarrassing,” Salvez wheezed.

  “Why, Father? This is a nice soft carpet, isn’t it?” Verden said.

  The sick man gasped for breath. “It’s just . . . nothing.”

  “‘Take up thy bed and walk another day,’ the Bible says,” Verden pronounced. Salvez tried to laugh, but only choked on his next breath.

  Peter’s colleague turned out to be a ma
ster of practical sympathy. Verden lifted the emaciated man in his arms and brought him to the chesterfield, which faced a small black-and-white television tuned to the news. Peter dipped under Verden’s arm and plumped up the three pillows. He took a seat next to the television, so that Salvez could look directly at him. “Father Salvez,” he said, “this is Inspector Verden.”

  “Your first name, Inspector?” The voice was weak.

  “Tommy.”

  “Thank you for the rescue, Tommy.”

  “No problem. I’ll make tea.” All business, he left for the kitchen.

  The flat was neat, if threadbare. Newspapers and food cartons circled the old man’s nesting spot on the couch.

  “These are your messages,” Peter said. He handed over the sealed envelope, and Salvez tucked it under a cushion.

  “Are you all right, Father?”

  “Yes. I had radiation treatment yesterday. It’s not the first time.”

  “Has anyone been here with you since?” Peter could hear dishes rattling in the kitchen.

  “A neighbour woman came by yesterday afternoon and fixed me something. Oh, and two fellows helped me up the freight lift. The main lift is broken. But mostly I’ve been sleeping.”

  Peter hadn’t understood the extent of the man’s alienation from his own church. He lived in poverty, yet no one from St. Elegias had offered to tend to him. For the fourth or fifth time in two days, Peter thought of his mother: acts of charity are to be done without question. Every man Peter’s age knew about prostate cancer; luckily, he had avoided it. The choices were ugly — radiation, hormone therapy, surgery. With radiation, collateral damage to the plumbing around the prostate gland was common, and disabling. Salvez should not have been left alone. But then, he might have lied to the medical staff.

  “Why did you call me, Father?” Peter asked.

  “Did I call you?” Peter saw that he was troubled, confused.

  “Yes, at my hotel two days ago.”

  “Oh, yes. I enjoyed our talk at the Abbey. I wanted to say goodbye. I figured that you would be leaving soon, and so . . .” The exertion drained him, and he lay back on the pillows.