Losing Ground

by Catherine Aird

  Stuart heard a hiss down the line at the mention of the name.

  ‘…and Mr Perry has made it abundantly clear that Berebury Homes aren’t prepared to sell Tolmie Park to us or anyone else.’ What Stuart Bellamy badly needed to know was where he could go from here and he was distinctly short of ideas.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Wendy Pullen heatedly, ‘not when you work out what they stand to make from developing the land there. But even then you’d have thought they’d have had their price. Everyone else has.’

  ‘Yes.’ This was something that Stuart Bellamy couldn’t work out either. Anyone would have thought that taking a cheque and laughing all the way to the bank would have been preferable to working one’s socks off building houses that nobody wanted built there. And Lionel Perry hadn’t even wanted to talk about taking a cheque. It wasn’t clear why this should be but Stuart Bellamy could see that it was the first of the many hurdles he would have to clear before being able to report to Jason Burke that he had secured his schoolboy dream for him.

  Wendy Pullen had been thinking about something else. She asked tentatively, ‘What do the people you are acting for have in mind to do with Tolmie Park, should they get it?’

  ‘Oh, keep it residential,’ said Stuart Bellamy. He could almost hear the seraphic look that came over her face.

  ‘Residential,’ she breathed. ‘How lovely. Just what we were hoping for – a buyer who cared.’

  Stuart Bellamy acknowledged that his principal cared very much. He did not say anything about indulging a childhood ambition. Or the holding of open-air pop concerts in the grounds.

  ‘But, of course, you can’t tell me his name,’ she said, quite forgetting – feminist that she was – that the name might have been that of a woman.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Bellamy regretfully.

  ‘I quite understand about commercial secrecy,’ she murmured. ‘Very important. It’s just that sometimes a good name can swing it with a planning committee.’

  ‘Of course,’ murmured Bellamy, suppressing the fact that he didn’t think in this case Jason’s name would.

  ‘Then,’ she said briskly, ‘we’ll just have to think of some other way of helping you. Leave it to me.’

  As everyone knows, there is no such animal as complete secrecy. News that there was another buyer in the market for Tolmie Park had reached the bigwigs at Calleford Construction at a speed that had surprised no one in the world of business. And as everyone also knows, all information about a firm that is being stalked by another is grist to the predator’s mill.

  ‘If you ask me,’ growled their finance director, ‘their Lionel Perry is trying to use the reverse chasse glide ploy.’

  ‘You sound like a dancing master,’ said his chairman unhelpfully.

  ‘All right then, a killer bee.’

  ‘I still don’t get you,’ said the chairman, who had reached his present eminence by exhibiting an obstinate refusal to say he understood anything when he didn’t. More difficult still for his subordinates to cope with was his tendency to declare that he didn’t understand something when he did. Then he would sit back and listen while some poor unfortunate member of staff spelt out an untenable position.

  ‘A reverse chasse glide,’ the finance director began again, ‘is where a company wants to acquire another company…’

  ‘A take-over,’ interrupted the chairman impatiently.

  ‘An attempted take-over,’ said the finance director, who wouldn’t have got where he had either if he had allowed himself to be railroaded by the chairman at every turn. ‘It’s when the company being stalked suddenly acquires another firm or a big liability in order to make itself less attractive to the predator.’

  ‘It happens in the animal world,’ offered a younger man, his progress in the firm distinctly hampered by a tendency to take his full annual leave, go home on time and not to work through weekends. He was, instead, a promising naturalist and highly thought of by the binocular brigade.

  ‘But this is someone wanting to buy Berebury Homes out,’ pointed out the chairman, ignoring this last comment, ‘not someone wanting to make them too big to buy.’

  ‘And,’ volunteered the promising naturalist, ‘we heard that these new people, whoever they are, didn’t want to develop the place like Berebury Homes do.’

  ‘No?’ snarled the chairman. ‘What else could they do with it?’

  ‘Live in it,’ suggested the other man. ‘At least, that’s what I’d heard they wanted to do,’ he added hastily as his chairman’s expression changed to one of complete and utter disbelief.

  Why Lionel Perry of Berebury Homes would not do business with someone who said he was prepared to buy him out for ready money was something that Detective Inspector Sloan could not fathom either. He was, though, giving the question serious consideration.

  ‘Without any strings attached as far as I can see,’ added Sloan, grabbing a mug of coffee.

  ‘For cash, too,’ said Crosby, who was of an age to regard cash as opposed to credit with a certain amount of simple wonder.

  ‘And who wasn’t even interested in checking out the prospective purchaser’s financial credentials, let alone asking him why he wanted it,’ pointed out Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘You’d have thought it was the first thing any real businessman would have done. Quite apart from anything else, there was always the possibility that he was passing up on a very good deal for the firm.’

  He was visited by yet another interesting thought. ‘I’m no expert on company law, Crosby, but I have an idea that that action might not be legal in itself seeing as a board’s first duty is to its shareholders.’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it?’ agreed Detective Constable Crosby, who was augmenting his own coffee with a Chelsea bun. He brightened. ‘It might have been that he was afraid the buyer wanted the place so that he could get up to no good like that Sir Francis Filligree and his pals. Perhaps that Stuart Bellamy wanted to buy Tolmie Park so that they could turn it into a modern – what did that girl at the museum call it? – Hellfire Club? And the present owners – Berebury Homes, that is – didn’t want him to.’

  Sloan took another sip of his coffee and said drily, ‘Lionel Perry didn’t strike me as being quite as public-spirited as that, Crosby.’ He wondered if he should try to explain to the detective constable that public-spirited actions could – and often did – cover a multitude of sins but then he decided that this was not the moment for a long lecture on the limits of corporate responsibility and went on, ‘There must be a better reason than that although I’m blowed if I can think of one. Not offhand.’

  Detective Constable Crosby finished off his bun without suggesting any reason at all why Lionel Perry should not have made further enquiries about what had sounded like a very good offer. And more especially why the chairman of Berebury Homes should not have even considered it appropriate to enquire further into the capacity of the prospective purchaser to pay for Tolmie Park, cash down.

  ‘And why should he – or anyone else for that matter – try to burn the place down, anyway?’ asked Sloan, adding this to the already long list of imponderables.

  ‘To get it cheaper?’ suggested Crosby. ‘Damaged goods, you know – second-hand rose – part worn – that sort of thing?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan said that since the prospective purchaser appeared to have all the money in the world a damaged building versus an existing one would seem to be irrelevant – in fact a fire sale might even make buying it a less attractive proposition.

  ‘If he’s so rich, then how come we don’t know him?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘That, if I may say so, Crosby, is as sad a commentary on contemporary society as I have ever heard.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Nevertheless, Detective Inspector Sloan decided fairly to himself, the constable had a point. The police usually did know the very rich in their patch, for to be rich and a wrong-doer seemed to be the case far too often these days when old money no lo
nger prevailed as it had once done and making great sums of money legally was a great deal more difficult than in days of yore.

  And to be rich and upright was to invite theft and thus be known to the police in quite another way.

  He set his coffee cup down and said to Crosby, ‘I can’t tell you why we don’t know him but you told me that nothing came up when you checked Stuart Bellamy out.’ That adage about not asking any successful man how he had come by his first million pounds still applied when more and more men became millionaires and even when a million pounds wasn’t what it had been when Sloan was a boy.

  ‘Clean as a whistle,’ said the detective constable, ‘but the funny thing is that although the chap he was acting for is quite a different kettle of fish…’

  ‘Jason Burke?’

  ‘Him. He’s as clean as a whistle, too. Even though,’ here the constable delivered his punch-line with relish, ‘he’s the one who uses the stage name of Kevin Cowlick.’

  Sloan sat back and allowed himself to relax for a long moment. ‘That at least might explain the money. That man’s a real pop idol if ever there was one.’

  A set-up where one man acted for another; where men used more than one name; where men had more money than they knew what to do with; where they got other people to launder that money for a cut of it; where men – and all too often now, poor women – were metaphorically taking in each other’s fiscal washing and returning it actually – legally – squeaky clean, which was the object of the whole exercise; were now all part of today’s policing.

  ‘And whether,’ Sloan said, ‘you happen to consider the man’s gains ill-gotten or not I suppose comes down to whether or not you like his music.’ There were those folk – his own mother for one – who would not allow it even to be called music.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Crosby.

  ‘And as to why he or anyone else should want to nick the painting from the museum, I couldn’t begin to guess,’ said Sloan, mentally adding this fact, too, to his list of all the other unknowns in the case that had surfaced so far. ‘Perhaps if this Kevin Cowlick wanted the house that badly and couldn’t buy it in the end, his man…’

  ‘Stuart Bellamy?’ supplied Crosby.

  ‘Stuart Bellamy could have thought the painting might make a good souvenir.’

  Crosby was examining the tips of his fingers with interest, having seemingly forgotten that Chelsea buns were sticky. ‘If you ask me, sir, he seemed a bit worried about it all – as if his job was on the line – you know, that sort of thing.’

  Sloan rejected this out of hand. ‘The painting is a portrait of the fourth baronet – there’s not a lot of the house in it.’

  ‘So what could there be in it for Lionel Perry and his crowd in building new houses that’s better than selling without doing any work?’ asked Crosby, licking his fingers.

  ‘I can see that this line of reasoning would appeal to you, Crosby,’ he said. ‘What indeed?’

  ‘If you ask me, it would save a lot of effort.’

  ‘It would be much better, too, than the uncertainty of waiting for planning permission,’ Sloan reminded him, still convinced that this was a factor in the equation – which particular equation he was less sure about.

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Crosby, his diction somewhat impaired by the finger-licking.

  ‘You say that this Jason Burke is young?’ said Sloan.

  ‘His sidekick says so,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Not that Stuart Bellamy is all that old himself, but he’s older than Burke.’

  ‘I think,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘that a visit to Jason Burke is called for quite soon.’

  Young and rich was not a common combination and it would be interesting to meet someone who was both.

  Jonathon Ayling hobbled out of his office in the slippers the police had left him with and stepped into the reception area of Berebury Precision Engineers. ‘They’ve taken my shoes away,’ he said to the girl there, pointing to his feet.

  ‘They can’t do that,’ she said.

  ‘I know they can’t,’ he snapped.

  ‘Not without arresting you,’ she said, worldly wise.

  ‘But what was I supposed to do? Say they couldn’t have them and let them draw their own conclusions?’

  ‘I thought you said you hadn’t done anything wrong,’ she said pertly.

  ‘I haven’t and therefore I’d be glad if you’d refrain from telling everyone about the police.’

  She stared at him. ‘They haven’t gone and arrested you, have they?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what were they doing here?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Jonathon Ayling.

  She giggled. ‘They’ll do that next time.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. Now, I’ve got some important telephone calls to make so don’t let anyone disturb me until I say so.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Ayling,’ she said in the mocking tones she imagined were used in upmarket offices.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said turning back.

  ‘Thousands wouldn’t but I’ll keep the mob at bay for you,’ she said, waiting until he was out of earshot before ringing her best friend to tell her all about it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Only too happy to help you in any way we can, gentlemen.’ Lionel Perry took the chair at the head of the boardroom table at Berebury Homes Ltd with the ease of long practice and waved the two policemen into seats opposite. He motioned Auriole Allen to the seat at his side.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. Having heard this sentiment expressed with varying degrees of sincerity many times before, he immediately dismissed it as worthless. ‘For starters we shall be wanting a note of all the movements of you and your staff this morning.’

  ‘I quite understand, Inspector.’

  ‘Especially those of them whose route to work leads past Tolmie Park.’

  Perry gave a quick nod. ‘Me for a start, Inspector. Actually, I had a puncture not far from there myself this morning – Robert Selby always comes in that way and Derek Hitchin sometimes.’ He turned to Auriole Allen. ‘You don’t, but I don’t know about that new fellow…you know, the young one.’

  ‘Ned Phillips,’ supplied Auriole Allen. ‘He’s lodging out beyond Tolmie. In Almstone.’

  ‘Naturally we were all very sorry here to learn about the fire,’ Perry went on fluently, ‘but I gather from our architect who is over there now that the damage is not irretrievable.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Sloan, mentally registering the fact that the chairman of Berebury Homes was not on site now himself, having shown a marked preference for seeing the two policemen on his own home ground.

  That home ground obviously included holiday snaps – quite good ones, too – of Swiss mountains. Sloan noted automatically that he was sitting under a fine view of Mont Rosa. It brought back the holiday he and his wife, Margaret, had had in Interlaken. That had been before the advent of their son, which had put foreign holidays out of reach in more senses than one.

  Lionel Perry let them have the benefit of one of those benevolent gestures that figured so prominently in his photograph on the front cover of the company’s annual report. ‘Regrettable as the fire is from our point of view, Inspector, it’s more of an inconvenience than a disaster. We had no plans to demolish the house at Tolmie – indeed we shall be looking to our insurers to cover the cost of any reinstatement.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, who had been considering that the fire might have been a positive bonus to the firm, contrived to look interested.

  Auriole Allen stirred at Lionel Perry’s side. ‘Fortunately it had recently been the subject of a full survey.’ She picked up a sheet of paper. ‘I can let you have a copy of the statement we’ve just released to the press, Inspector, if that’s any help.’

  Sloan sat back in his chair as he tried to calculate how many years it had been since he had taken anything in a newspaper at face value, while Crosby perked up and asked
Lionel Perry curiously, ‘What’s your sort of disaster, then?’

  ‘Any developer could tell you that, young man.’ Lionel Perry gave the urbane smile so beloved of his shareholders. ‘Great crested newts.’

  ‘Newts?’ echoed Crosby in spite of himself.

  ‘Great crested newts. They don’t – er – relocate easily. Or – nearly as bad as newts – is having important archaeological remains found on site,’ said Perry. ‘The regulations say that no development shall take place until the applicant or the developer has secured the implementation of a programme of archaeological work in accordance with a written scheme…how does it go on, Auriole?’

  ‘Written scheme of investigation,’ she said, deftly taking up the thread, ‘which has been submitted to and approved by the local planning authority.’

  Perry sighed. ‘So you see, young man, we can always be undone by the Romans.’

  ‘Not refusal of planning permission, then?’ put in Sloan before Crosby could complain about being addressed as a young man. It was a sensitive issue with him.

  Perry smiled again. ‘You can appeal against unreasonable refusal of planning permission, Inspector. There are procedures and guidelines and so forth plus a certain amount of logic…’

  Not a lot of it, thought Sloan to himself, if his own experience of bureaucratic life had anything to do with it. Logic was usually thin on the ground.

  ‘…especially if you can cite sustainability,’ went on Perry. ‘But there’s no appeal against newts or a Roman villa.’

  ‘And what’s sustainability, then?’ asked Crosby.

  The chairman of Berebury Homes, Ltd leant back in his chair with the air of a man giving a familiar lecture. ‘Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.’

  Since Detective Constable Crosby looked quite blank at this, Auriole Allen explained kindly, ‘It’s achieving the best possible balance between environmental, social and economic issues in the district.’

  Crosby’s face cleared. ‘I get you. What you want but not too much of either.’