Fifth Member

by Claire Rayner

  ‘I promise,’ George said. ‘Have you found out exactly where this place is?’ They were walking now down a road lined with middling-sized buildings, many of which bore elaborate logos; office buildings and small factory units, George thought. A typical business park. She collected herself: industrial estate in England.

  ‘I’ve got the address.’ Julie reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of flimsy paper. ‘Here we are: Unit Seventeen A. In Lyons Way. It’s a spur off this main road.’

  They found it fairly easily, and for a moment George’s spirits sank. There were few people about; most of the crowd had gone streaming towards the Conference Centre, but the area was by no means deserted. She looked at the building they had reached, a boxy brick structure with blank windows and a very simple sign over the door in paint on a wooden fascia that read ‘17a EASTWEST IMPORTS 17a’ and that was all. Parked in front was a small and rather battered green van.

  ‘We’ll be noticed going in,’ she murmured to Julie as a man and woman, walking fast, went by. ‘There are more people around than I’d hoped, Sunday afternoon and all.’

  Julie was looking up at the building. ‘Mmm? Oh, I expect it’s parking,’ she said. ‘They’d rather find somewhere free around here than use the paid car park nearer the Conference Centre. But they won’t be interested in us. We just have to be determined and relaxed as though we’re entitled to be here. Don’t worry.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m worrying about,’ George said. ‘It’s you. If I get caught doing what I shouldn’t, all I get is a row with Gus. If you do …’ She let the words hang in the air.

  ‘I know,’ Julie said. ‘But I’d rather take that chance than go on feeding a computer for the rest of my working life. This’ll either show I can be a real detective or it won’t. If I am I’ll get on in the Force. If I’m not the sooner I’m out the better.’ She giggled. ‘I can always try my hand at being a private one. Like on the telly. I’ve been thinking of that. Come on. It’s getting late. All these people’ll disappear soon – the concert starts at three and it’s almost that now.’

  And indeed the numbers of people around did seem to have diminished. The last few hurriers were well on their way to the Centre and the area was becoming quieter by the moment. George turned back to speak to Julie, to find she had already crossed the small open paved area in front of the building towards the door. George hurried after her.

  ‘This is a padlock and it’s too small for my keys,’ Julie said. ‘Dammit, dammit, dammit. We’ll have to see if there’s another way in.’ She turned and moved away to the corner of the building and vanished round it. George followed her.

  At the side there were only several large, high windows – too high to peer through – but no door. The back of the building was the same. It wasn’t till they rounded the third corner and were coming back towards the front that Julie stopped. There at last was a side door but this too was fastened with a padlock and that made Julie grimace. But alongside the door was a lower window, within reach of the top step of the three that led up to the side door.

  ‘That’s a lavatory,’ Julie said. ‘See? That pipe up there by the roof corner with the sort of birds’ nest of chicken wire over it? That’s the sort they have over lavatories. Something to do with the soil pipe. I bet the window isn’t locked. People always forget to lock lavatory windows. And it’s sizeable. We can get in there.’ She looked at George’s hips thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, you can manage it, I think.’

  ‘Thank you,’ George said bitingly and then shook her head. ‘Getting in through windows? That doesn’t sound too scientific to me. I’d have thought your keys would –’

  ‘No use here,’ Julie said. She was clearly enjoying herself hugely. The rather frightened young constable of the Ratcliffe Street nick seemed to have been replaced by a very determined young woman indeed. ‘Here, make a back for me. I’m going up.’

  She shoved at George’s shoulders and obediently George bent, tightening her joints and muscles as Julie set one trainer-shod foot on her back and then, with both hands on the sill of the window, hauled herself up. She was heavy, but stood on George’s back for only a second or two, the time it took to push in the window.

  ‘Now,’ she said in a sort of gasp. ‘I was right. I’m in.’ She pulled herself up even higher, and as George straightened her back to see, her legs vanished inside. After a moment she reappeared, face up this time, and looked out at George.

  ‘Can you manage to get up here if I give you a tug?’ she demanded.

  George looked over her shoulder. There was no one around that she could see, just the adjoining building as boxy and as anonymous as this one with matching dead-eyed windows, and a stretch of empty road in front of the building away to her right. It seemed safe enough. ‘I’ll have a go.’ She reached up and, with a tug from Julie (that pulled her arm muscles so much it was days before the discomfort faded), managed to get herself into the window, head first. Julie was ready for her, and she was able to put her knee up on the sill and get inside by reaching down and holding on to the edge of the lavatory pan that was beside the window. She almost somersaulted her way in, but at last there she was, red faced and breathless, but standing on the floor.

  ‘Get us!’ Julie said and giggled, excitedly, yet again. She was a great giggler, George decided. ‘This is such fun.’ She turned, pushed open the lavatory door and went out into the main part of the building.

  ‘I like the way you take it for granted there’s no one here,’ George hissed behind her. ‘For all you know there’s a night watchman or someone having a snooze in a corner somewhere.’

  ‘Not with both doors padlocked from the outside,’ Julie said cheerfully, making no effort to lower her voice. ‘This place is empty as last week’s pay packet. Now, what are we looking for?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ George said. ‘Something. Anything. Information about the man whose place it is. Was, I mean. Some sort of link between him and the people in our case because of the green van and the little man at the airport we all heard so much about. I don’t know what I’m looking for but I’ll know it when I see it.’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ Julie said. ‘How shall we do it? Together, or separately? We’ll be quicker separated, I imagine.’

  ‘Then separate it shall be. I’ll take this side, you take the other, OK?’

  George looked down at her side of the corridor on to which the lavatory door had opened and considered. It was a very long corridor with doors running off it and, after a moment, she walked purposefully to the far end and began to open the doors and look inside, one after the other.

  The first one led to a cupboard full of buckets and brooms and the smell of sour floorcloths. She wrinkled her nose and closed the door sharply. The second opened into what was clearly a staff restroom, with shabby old chairs, a battered coffee table well marked with rings from hot cups and a few elderly crumpled magazines and dirty ashtrays, which made the room reek of stale tobacco. Again George closed the door gratefully.

  The third door at last offered something interesting. The smell that greeted her here was one that took her immediately back to her childhood: the scent of new cloth. It was like the shop where her mother used to take her to buy new underclothes for school. Even the light seemed the same: subdued, because of the blinds over the windows, and muffled because of the rows of hanging rails, each of them laden with garments.

  This then, George thought, was the stuff of the business carried out by Eastwest Imports. She began to edge along the narrow walkways between the rails, riffling the garments as she went. They were an odd mix, she thought: cotton and wool, silky fabrics and crêpe and chiffons, heavy knits, firm cloths. She frowned. There seemed to be no logic to the way they were displayed either. Fripperies that were clearly meant for a female buyer jostled with heavy knitted jackets that not only shouted butch man, but which had the buttons arranged so that they fastened left over right to prove it. Any ordinary business, surely, would sort
their stock out so that when orders came in, groups of garments could be collected easily.

  Then she stopped and stared blankly into space. Long ago as a high-school student wanting extra money to spend in such fleshpots as Buffalo had to offer, she had taken a Saturday job in a clothing store. She remembered all too clearly now the day she had sat in their stockroom, unpacking the newly delivered items. Dress style 78764PLK, sizes six thru twenty, five colorways each, all to be laboriously checked so that she could make sure all the garments ordered were the ones that had arrived. That was how a clothing business was run; she’d learned that much.

  But on these rails there were no different sizes and colourways at all. Each garment was a singleton, one after another. And she ran her hands along the rails again to confirm that, yes, she was right. Each and every one was a single garment.

  She stepped back and took an overview, counting the rails, estimating the number of garments there. Five long rails. Each one holding – she began to count the hangers, and then did the multiplication. And stopped frowning, feeling amazement fill her. There were over five hundred different styles of garment here, some for men, some for women and, she could now see, some for children too. She touched one of them, a particularly attractive gingham frock which looked just about big enough to fit a two-year-old and felt a little surge of – what? Some sort of feeling she had no time to consider now. After a moment she turned and went back to the door. It was high time she found out what else this place held.

  She met Julie outside, looking for her. ‘I’ve found very little,’ she said, looking as woebegone as a child who has found her Christmas stocking empty. ‘Just a workshop of some sort, with sewing machines and so forth and piles of cut-up fabric – and boxes full of fancy labels for clothes. I don’t know much about fashion but I suppose that’s what they do here.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ George said. ‘Show me the workshop.’

  Julie led her back down the corridor to the other end and pushed open a door. George stared around and, as she did so, she saw the whole thing as clearly as though someone were standing there describing to her exactly what was happening, and how.

  ‘Julie,’ she said and she was jubilant. ‘Julie, this is as fancy a way of making money on other people’s backs as you’ll ever see.’

  ‘Eh?’ Julie said, startled. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Show me the labels first,’ George said. ‘So’s I can be sure.’

  Julie went over to the other side of the room and beckoned. ‘They’re too big to fetch to you,’ she said. ‘Come and look.’

  George did and found herself looking down at a series of large wooden boxes arranged in neat patterns. Each was full to the top with strips of printed ribbons and paper tags; each box had different ones, but essentially they were all the same. The trimmings that go on garments to tell shop customers about them, what the size is, how to care for them. But above all the designer’s name.

  ‘See?’ George said, squatting beside the boxes. ‘D K N Y. That’s Donna Karan New York. And Chanel. And Calvin Klein. And Gucci and Valentine and Yves St Laurent and Christian Dior and Issey Miyake. Ye Gods, is there anyone who isn’t here?’

  ‘You’ll have to explain.’ Julie was looking mulish. ‘This is a lot of nonsense to me. So what if they’re clothes labels? What’s that got to do with –’

  ‘Everything,’ George said. ‘This is crime in a big way, Julie. What happens here is industrial espionage. They get hold of original garments of very expensive designers – probably even before they’re properly launched by the companies that own them – and bring them here. Then’ – she looked around again – ‘Yes, there they are. Then each garment is carefully unpicked – I dare say they’re photographed first to make sure they get an accurate record, we’ll have to find the office where the paperwork is – unpicked and the pieces numbered.’ She had picked up a small pile of pieces in the bright gingham and denim similar to that in the little girl’s dress she had seen in the other room. ‘Next they’re sent off with the labels – see? This is OshKosh B’Gosh: wonderful kids’ clothes from the States, very expensive but gorgeous and beautifully made. They send it all off to little workshops around the country, I suppose, where they copy the garments exactly, put in the labels and there you have it. The finished clothes are sent to another place on another business park somewhere, so that they cover their tracks, and then sold off as originals with a huge mark-up. And the actual designer gets nothing.’

  ‘Wow,’ Julie said after a moment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not. But what else can it be? I found the rails of originals inside – some of them are amazing – and I’ll bet there’s also a place here where they’ve got fabric – cheap copies of the materials the originals are made of.’ She fingered the gingham fabric on the table. ‘This is shoddy stuff, cheap and full of dressing compared with the dress I saw and handled in the other room. Come and see for yourself. And then let’s see if we can find the office. There has to be one, for heaven’s sake!’

  She showed Julie the other room, and as she reached the end of the last rail, where she hadn’t been before, she yelped with excitement. ‘I should have been all round when I was in here before. Look!’

  There was another door. Julie pushed it open and shot through and then they both stopped on the threshold and stared.

  ‘Well, you were right,’ Julie said after a moment. ‘I’ve never seen so much cloth in one space in my life. Not even in John Lewis’s, when I went to buy some curtain material for my mum.’ The room was massive, with all the walls filled from floor to ceiling with shelving, and each shelf packed with rolls of fabric of all colours, sorts and weights. It was here that the scent of new fabric was strongest and George took a deep breath of satisfaction.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was, wasn’t I? And now let’s see if there’s an office in the same sort of place on the other side of the building.’

  They almost ran down the long corridor, this time, and at the far end counted back the doors until they identified the one that corresponded with the room with the rails. They found themselves in another room, just like the one in which they had found the fabric pieces and the boxes of labels. This one was equipped with knitting machines, however, rather than sewing machines, and boxes of brilliantly coloured yarns stood on the tables. George went in and ran her fingers along the yarns and shook her head. ‘Shoddy again,’ she said. ‘Cheap man-made fibres.’

  ‘These labels are different,’ Julie reported, almost head first inside a wooden box. ‘Look, Pringle and Kaffe Fassett and Coorgie.’

  ‘I’ll bet they are. This is the knitwear workshop. But look over there.’ She pushed past Julie and shoved at a big rail, covered with a vast yellow dust sheet, that was standing in the corner. ‘Going by the other room there should be a door. Ah, here it is.’ She tried to push open the door she had found but this time she was stopped. It was locked and she looked over her shoulder at Julie and grinned. ‘Time for your skeleton keys, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s ever wasted, is it?’

  Delighted, Julie pulled her bunch of keys out of her pocket. George peered at them. They looked very ordinary to her, car keys, Yale keys, deadlock and luggage keys, and she said as much.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ Julie almost crowed. ‘Have a look.’ She took one of the deadlock keys in both hands, twisted and pulled and the barrel of the key seemed to split and open. Julie made a folding movement and there, suddenly, was a classic skeleton key, the slender ends and hooks neatly fitted in the barrel, with the false part bent back to double the handle end.

  ‘Brilliant,’ George said. ‘Go for it, Julie.’ And she went back to look at the stuff on the tables, leaving Julie to fiddle with her keys.

  As she stood there, the door that led to the corridor opened. She lifted her head to find herself staring in frozen horror at a man in a guard’s uniform, holding a large stick in his hand. And peering in from beneath his raised arm was the face of an old wom
an who was standing behind him, staring avidly, with a small dog under her arm. The dog, when it saw George, began to yap furiously and tried to jump out of the restraining hold. George jumped back and in so doing hit the sheet-covered hanging rail which moved round smoothly on its wheels to its previous position. So at least, she found herself thinking as she stood and stared back at the two people in the doorway, trying not to grimace at the dreadful noise the small dog was making, at least he can’t see Julie. Which is a silly thought, really, she told herself in an oddly abstracted way, because of course they’ll find her in a moment or two. And there goes the poor kid’s career, and it’s all my fault.

  20

  The guard lost his patience with the dog before George did. He turned to the old woman and said sharply, ‘If you don’t mind, madam, I’ll take over now. Just take your dog away with you. Can’t hear meself think.’

  The woman looked affronted. ‘If I ’adn’t ’ad to take ’er out for a bit of exercise, I’d never ’ave seen this one climbing in, would I? If it ’adn’t been for my Cherry Pie ’ere, you’d never ’ave known nothin’ about it, and now you want to chuck me out? Well. We’re not goin’ no place till I see this one properly arrested. I’m waitin’ ’ere till the coppers arrives, I am.’ Since she had to shriek to make herself heard above the noise the dog was making, the effect was ear shattering and George covered her ears with her hands. But she was grateful for the din. If Julie was making any sound behind the screen, at least she wouldn’t be heard.

  ‘There’s no need to get into a state over this,’ she said to the guard, raising her own voice. ‘I’m here on police business. A bit unorthodox, I grant you, but police business all the same.’

  The old woman glared at her venomously. ‘If you believe that you’ll believe anything,’ she said to the guard. ‘What sort of police business ’as people slidin’ in through winders, tell me that? Oh, yes, I saw you with your rump in the air, an’ I’ll give evidence in court about it, just you see if I don’t.’