by Frank Lean
‘I wanted information.’
‘Did you get any?’
‘Some, but mostly lies.’
‘Hmmmph!’ Janine muttered with a trace of satisfaction. ‘Did she have you beaten up?’ Her words came out as smoothly as an assassin’s dagger.
I’d have smiled if it hadn’t been so painful. The matter-of-fact way Janine expected me to be routinely beaten up went a long way to explain why she was reluctant to scramble onto my bandwagon.
‘I told you that was a car crash.’
‘Oh, yes, and you just walked away from it? Don’t expect me to believe that. The bitch! I’ll see she gets what’s coming to her.’
I looked at Janine helplessly. She gave me an encouraging smile. This was the moment when a completely honest man would have let it all hang out, but I didn’t. I was selfish enough to think that one moment of stupidity shouldn’t be allowed to put my life with Janine in jeopardy.
Janine looked me up and down for a moment. I wasn’t dressed in shreds and patches any more. I’d managed to spend half an hour under the shower and I’d discarded the neck brace and the sling. I was still hurting everywhere but I told myself worse things had happened to me before. What I did know was that if I took to my bed now it would be a long while before I got the show on the road again, if ever.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘You saw I sorted your flat out?’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, though I would have been happier if she’d left it.
‘I packed a bag for you and we’re all packed for an early start tomorrow, so I suppose we can go now if it’s so urgent.’
‘It is,’ I assured her.
‘Just promise me one thing, Dave . . . If there’s a story in all this, you’ll let me have it first.’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘and then you can share it with Clyde.’
‘No!’ she snapped. She then blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘I’m not going to London with that oily rag. He was here last night.’
‘Really,’ I murmured.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said hotly. ‘Clyde knows how to flatter a woman. He said he’d like me to help him with his material.’
‘I bet he did. What happened?’
‘You don’t own me, Dave.’
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have opened my mouth,’ I said. It was lucky that my face was so battered. My own guilty looks didn’t show, but Janine couldn’t hide hers.
‘Don’t kick off at me!’ she warned. ‘I won’t be seeing him again. Do you know, he came round to the paper at lunch time? He took me to Nico Central for lunch. Talk about an octopus – you’d think he was old enough to walk down the street by himself without having to drape himself all over me. Then when we got to the restaurant he put his hand on my bottom. I don’t take that from anyone.’
‘What happened? Did you throw hot soup over him?’
‘Let’s just say I discouraged him,’ she said.
I laughed delightedly, pain be damned.
‘Blast you, Dave!’ she snapped. ‘What makes you think you’re so superior? I bet you had it off with that drunken lush.’
‘Touché,’ I said, ‘but seriously, Janine. You’re the only woman for me, the only possible woman.’
‘Hmmmph!’ she snorted. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? Sometimes I wonder about you, Dave Cunane.’ She took my wrist and smacked my hand quite painfully. ‘Evens?’ she asked, giving me a kiss.
Whatever else it did, Blackpool didn’t disappoint Jenny and Lloyd.
By the time we’d crawled into town behind an immense stream of traffic, found somewhere to stay and then installed ourselves on an open-topped tram to view the ‘lights’ in the teeth of a freezing wind, I was quite ready to call it a day. Not so, Jenny and Lloyd. They were in heaven. With their little faces reddened by the chill, they strained to see each illuminated ‘tableau’. What with wind lashing their hair back, the tableaux straining at their moorings, and the screeching of steel wheels on rails, it was more like a scene from a survival movie than a visit to a place of entertainment, but the children loved every minute and sleep was the furthest thing from their minds.
When we got back to our red brick hotel on the North Shore, though, we all slept the sleep of the just, even those who weren’t entitled to, like me. I woke before the others. Beside me, the light of a fresh day shone on Janine’s regular features, all contentiousness smoothed away by sleep. I loved that face. She sighed and turned over. From the next room came the gentle hum of the children’s breathing, like the purring of contented cats. Whatever else happened to me, this was the way I wanted life to be from now on. Any sacrifice was worth making, any danger worth facing to preserve this. I climbed out of bed quietly and tiptoed to the bathroom.
One look at myself in the mirror was enough to break the glowing romantic mood. I looked like a walking disaster zone. What right did I have to attach these people to me? I couldn’t protect myself, let alone them. The next white van to zoom my way might wipe out the lot of us.
As I shaved, or rather directed my razor where it would cause least pain, I was able to study my battered features. A few more feet and it would have been solid concrete coming through that windscreen at me, not mud. I could almost visualise the funeral. Parents, a few close friends – a very few – a number of embarrassed-looking private detectives anxious not to be reminded of their own mortality, and that would be it. Janine and the children? They’d be well advised to stay away.
I shook myself. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with these maudlin reflections.
Having time to think I came up with two alternative hypotheses. My first was that it was Marti King who’d ordered the attempted hit on the motorway. She’d had her mobile and it would have been perfectly possible to send someone up the M1 after me. The other option was that Marti hadn’t directly arranged for the white van, but she’d parted company with me knowing well enough that I was in danger and hoping that I would lead the killers away from her. So that meant she was either murderous or lethally selfish; either way, she was bad news.
I had to find out more about Devereaux-Almond. A lot seemed to revolve round him. Olley was killed about four hours after I left Devereaux-Almond’s house at Rochdale, and that same day someone else visited Devereaux-Almond and the gentleman nimbly cleared off to his yacht at Fleetwood. Levy was killed not long after he used a tapped telephone line to promise information about Devereaux-Almond. It also turned out that the same man had been involved in the mysterious adoption of problem-child Marti into the Carlyle family.
I tried to hold the ideas in my mind and work out what the connection was but the confidence with which I’d started the day drained away like the soapy water I’d just shaved in. Cullen was expecting answers from me. For all I knew I might find myself in the dock trying to explain to a judge and jury but the truth was that all I knew about any of these people was what they’d chosen to reveal to me.
I felt hot and angry with myself. My whole body ached and by rights I should still have been in a hospital bed. I strode over to the window and looked out. I was desperate to get out and start finding a few answers but now I was fixed up with a family. I had to wait for them. I pummelled my head. There must be something, something I’d seen or heard that would give me a start. I sat and listened to the breathing again. Gradually I became a little calmer. All right, I told myself, the big picture won’t come . . . so start piecing together the small details that you do know.
I could phone Harry Sirpells, he might be in his office now. I crept round to Janine’s side of the bed and took the mobile out of her bag.
I tiptoed to the door and let myself out. As I turned to close the door gently behind me Janine turned over and gave me a wave. I walked down to the hotel lobby, scene of many frantic political meetings. There were pictures of politicians all over the place. I found an empty armchair under the anxious yet combative gaze of Harold Wilson . . .
‘Harry, it’s Dave Cunane here,’ I announced.
<
br /> ‘Early bird aren’t you?’ he replied. The word ‘bird’ was pronounced ‘bu-urred’. I should think it’s impossible to get a broader Lancashire accent than Harry’s without actually speaking Old English. ‘It’s only just gone nine.’
‘This is urgent, Harry . . .’
‘What’s all this about you expanding?’ he asked. ‘You used to be a one man and his dog outfit like me.’
‘Times change, Harry.’
This produced a longish pause.
‘I found out some of what you want but it’s going to cost you,’ the Rochdale detective said gravely. He gave each word a good chew before he spat it out.
‘I didn’t expect you to work for nothing.’
‘No, but that girl you have working for you seems to have funny ideas about expenses.’
‘Oh,’ I muttered.
‘I’ve had to wine and dine several legal executives and clerks to get what I’ve dug up. They’re vain little buggers, nothing but the best will do before they’ll loosen their tongues for a bit of malicious gossip.’
‘Harry, Devereaux-Almond . . . did you find something?’
‘That girl of yours . . . I don’t know.’
‘Harry, cut to the chase,’ I pleaded.
‘Right, well, you’ll be getting a bill for three hundred and I don’t want any more quibbling.’
‘Just tell me,’ I begged. I felt as if I was burning up.
‘Your man’s ex-clerk, George Holmes, wasn’t surprised when I came digging for stuff on his former boss. Hasn’t a good word to say for him. Apparently Almond, as he was before he stuck the fancy handle on his jug, was the prize chump among the local legal fraternity, really bog-standard. He was the man you’d choose if you wanted someone to forget something. Forgot several important matters, did Mr Almond, and came within an inch of being struck off several times.’
‘Do you mean he forgot things in the criminal sense? Like paid money into his own bank account and forgot to pay it out again?’
‘No, he weren’t actually dishonest, not sticky-fingered, like. He really forgot things, such as important papers for cases he’d been dealing with, even simple conveyances . . . he forgot to complete. According to Holmes, he was the one that conducted whatever business the firm did, not Almond.’
I listened intently. Somehow what the broad-spoken Rochdalian was saying didn’t fit my expectations.
‘Listen, Harry, this guy has a fifty-foot motor yacht and a huge house and he’s retired well before the normal age . . .’
‘I’m coming to that! Don’t be so impatient, Dave. I don’t know, you Manchester folk, you think we’re hicks from the sticks up here, don’t you.’
‘No.’
‘Aye, rubes down the tubes, that’s what we are.’
‘You’re not a rube, Harry,’ I assured him. ‘You’re an arsehole!’
He laughed heartily at this. I could have done without the banter but I was desperate for more information. I felt my life depended on it.
‘Right, monkey! Well, according to Holmes, Almond had trouble keeping his office open and paying Holmes his wages which was pretty poor stuff for a solicitor . . . you don’t hear of many of them lads going belly up . . . then he got this case out of the blue. A murder case . . .’
‘The King case.’
‘Oh, you know about that, do you? Any road, this Almond bugger never looked back after that. He started handling the legal affairs of a big conglomerate . . . North West Mercian Investments . . . or at least he pretended he did.’
‘Pretended?’
‘Holmes reckoned that Almond once told him that all he got paid for was putting his name on documents. Nice work if you can get it, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted with a guilty twinge. That was more or less what I did at Pimpernel these days.
‘Holmes reckons that Almond’s been on the inside of several very juicy property deals. You know . . . quite by accident he’s bought up land that suddenly turned out to be very valuable.’
‘Anything on this North West Mercian?’
‘Nothing. Offices in Manchester apparently but I can do some digging at Companies House if you want.’
‘Yeah, I do want.’
‘Have you won the Lottery or something?’ he asked.
‘Something like that,’ I murmured. ‘I want you to do another thing for me.’
‘I’m all ears, chief.’
‘There’s this cemetery, it’s on Moston Lane, North Manchester.’
‘Oh, aye. I know it,’ he said.
‘I want you to go there and find the Italian section and write down all the names on the graves beginning with C.’
‘Are you losing it, boss?’
‘Get the names down, all the ones beginning with C in the Italian section . . . even if they’re Welsh or Irish or English or whatever, as long as they’re in the Italian section I want them written down. I want a result by Monday.’
‘This Almond isn’t an Eye-talian and his name begins with A, anyway.’
I thought for a minute.
‘Are you still there, Dave?’ Harry Sirpells asked anxiously.
‘Yes, and while you’re at it you can do all the names beginning with A as well as the Cs.’
‘This’ll cost you. Weather’s rough up here.’
‘Oh, come on. It’ll put some colour in your cheeks. Two hundred quid if it’s on my desk by Monday morning.’
‘I don’t know. I’m a detective agency, not one of them blooming genetic places.’
‘Genealogical, Harry. This is just a little historical enquiry I’m making.’
‘Aye, happen you’d need to go where the bodies are buried for that.’
‘That’s just it,’ I told him. I gave him the number of Janine’s mobile and while I was looking up her number in the memory was interested to note that she had Clyde Harrow’s office and home numbers stored.
My next call was to my own office on the off-chance that Celeste was in.
She was.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she shrieked. ‘We’re at panic stations here.’
‘I was unavoidably detained yesterday. It was a test of your initiative.’
‘Man! It was that daft dibble Cullen, wasn’t it? He’s harassing you, man. I can get my cousin to help you. He’s on the Community Forum. The police’ll have to listen to him.’
‘I was in hospital, Celeste. A little accident.’
‘Are you still there?’
‘No.’
‘This place is buzzing. You need to be here.’
I noted Celeste’s deep concern for her employer’s well-being. Presumably she thought that if I was well enough to speak to her I was well enough to be at work.
‘Celeste, there were floods yesterday. You’re not telling me that there was much observing to be done. Even insurance fraudsters would have been indoors.’
‘It’s not them. It’s that Mr Cunliffe. He keeps phoning about your expansion plans. I told him you were in London and he just kept on phoning. He sounds frantic. He’s sent round a load more cases. Some of them are in Wigan and Frodsham . . . all over.’
‘That’s great! If he phones this morning tell him I’m in conference with my bankers.’
‘Are you?’
‘Just tell him, Celeste. I’ll be in next week.’
My call to Celeste terminated just as Janine came into the lobby with the children.
40
WE STARTED OUR day together with the Full English Breakfast.
Looking at the plate in front of me it came to me why those Full English of the past were so full of confidence. The large knives and forks, the extravagant quantities, the heavy white linen and the solid napkin rings, they all must have made the consumers of such breakfasts very sure of their place in the world.
Thinking of my own recent adventures, I didn’t feel too secure and confident.
‘You know, Janine, I think I should have got a job in a bank,’ I said.
‘What’s brough
t this on?’ Janine asked crossly. ‘You wouldn’t have stuck for more than a week.’
‘Miss Seagrave says jobs in banks aren’t very secure,’ Jenny solemnly advised us. ‘She says all that will be done by computers in a few years’ time.’
Janine began grinding her teeth at the mention of her rival for Jenny’s affection. I smiled placidly at her.
‘I wonder if I could interest Miss Seagrave in a job at Pimpernel Investigations,’ I said. ‘She seems to have an answer for everything and I could do with the help.’
‘Miss Seagrave says teaching children is the most noble job anyone can do,’ Jenny replied.
‘What about brain surgeons and doctors?’ Janine countered.
‘They need teachers to start them off,’ Jenny said majestically.
‘What does she have to say about journalists?’ Janine asked. ‘I suppose she thinks they’re just useless ornaments.’
‘I asked her that,’ Jenny said without a trace of sarcasm. ‘She says she’s sure they have a very useful purpose but she doesn’t know what it is yet.’
‘That’s it,’ Janine snapped. ‘If I’m going to get Miss Seagrave night, noon and morning I’m going home.’
Both children looked at her in alarm.
‘Simmer down,’ I said. ‘Miss Seagrave’s nothing compared to Paddy. He knows everything.’
The children bent their heads and began to polish off another round of thickly buttered toast. I poured out more tea for Janine and myself. I was about to try to soothe Janine when she suddenly disappeared in a mass of red roses. That is, I looked away for a moment and a waiter brought over a massive bouquet and more or less thrust it into Janine’s face.
She gaped at me in surprise. I shook my head. Janine began opening the attached greetings card but she needn’t have bothered.
‘Permission to come aboard!’ Clyde Harrow boomed in his ripest, fruitiest voice. ‘Peace offering, ma’am,’ he said cheekily. ‘I was upset to think you might have misunderstood my little gesture yesterday.’
‘Misunderstood?’ Janine gasped. Then she began to look dangerous. The roses landed on the floor with a crunch of cellophane. ‘Misunderstood! Why, you conceited, arrogant pig, how dare you come crawling after me?’
