2010
TWENTY-TWO
I’D NEVER ACTUALLY stayed at the White Hart before. Waking the morning after my arrival in St Austell, I looked down from the window of my room at the early risers of the town hurrying along Church Street; then across, through the trees, at the tower of Holy Trinity. The years since Oliver Foster’s funeral seemed to roll away as I looked. How could it be more than four decades ago? It wasn’t possible, surely. So much time couldn’t feel like so little.
But it could. And it did. This was my first visit to St Austell since my mother had moved to Lytham to live with my aunt, a year or so after my father’s death. Someone else was growing up now in the house I’d grown up in. Wren & Co.’s old premises in East Hill had been demolished to make way for a supermarket. Nanstrassoe House had gone too, replaced by a cul-de-sac of up-market dwellings called Nanstrassoe Close. Even the General Wolfe, I’d been dismayed to discover the previous evening, had closed down. Nothing seemed to be as I remembered it. Yet what I remembered felt more real to me than the scene I looked out on that morning. The passage of time and the changes it had brought had made me a stranger.
My old school and Cornish China Clays’ sixties office block were still standing on the hill above the town, however. All that had changed there was signage. The grammar had been subsumed within Poltair Comprehensive long since and CCC now styled itself Intercontinental Kaolins (Cornwall). But its days were numbered, according to rumours I’d heard during my brief stopover in Augusta. It faced downsizing as Cornish production declined. Smaller premises were being sought for a smaller workforce.
It was certainly obvious that the offices on Tregonissey Road were larger than they any longer needed to be. The car park was a long way short of full when I arrived for my ten o’clock appointment with Pete Newlove and a whole wing appeared to be unoccupied. The weather was suitably nostalgic, though. A soft rain on the heavy side of drizzle was falling from a pewter-grey sky. It had never rained quite like that anywhere else I’d been in all the years of my absence.
The lean, long-haired, droopy-moustached accounts clerk I’d first met at Wren & Co. in the summer of 1968 was now a paunchy, balding man in his early sixties whose post as Resources Manager (St Austell) entitled him to a large office overlooking the town, a six-foot desk and a high-backed leather swivel-chair that squeaked like a trapped mouse at every move.
‘Long time no see, Jon,’ was his predictable if accurate greeting. It had to be fifteen years or more since we’d last set eyes on each other. ‘Still in harness, then?’
‘Not for much longer, Pete. I’m on my way out.’
‘Yeah? I wouldn’t be too sure. You once lost a fiver to me betting you wouldn’t work for CCC after university. Strikes me you just can’t let go.’
‘I’m letting go. You can bank on that.’
He smiled. ‘If you say so.’
‘Anyway, what’s your excuse for still being here?’
‘They keep paying me, Jon. Simple as that. Though maybe I should say you keep paying me, considering how close you are to the centre of things these days.’
‘The only thing I’m close to is retirement. I’ve handed in my notice. This little damage limitation exercise is my last assignment.’
‘Really? Sorry to hear that.’
‘Why? It comes to us all.’
‘I didn’t mean I’m sorry you’re retiring. I mean I’m sorry you’re going out on a bum note. Damage limitation, did you say? Poisoned chalice, I’d call it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Don’t you know? Oh, before I forget …’ He ferreted in a drawer, pulled out a car key with an IK-insignia fob attached and slid it across the desk to me. ‘Beaumont’s PA said we should allocate some transport to you. Freelander near the main entrance is yours for the duration.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
I took the key, wondering how long I’d have to wait for him to expand on his ‘poisoned chalice’ remark. He wrapped a rubber band round his finger, then unwrapped it, then stared out through the window at the grey sprawl of St Austell. Finally, and to my surprise, he took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, flipped up the top and offered it to me.
‘Smoke?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve given up.’
He sighed. ‘Naturally.’
‘Also, I must have passed at least half a dozen NO SMOKING signs on my way up here.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ He put the cigarettes away, satisfied, apparently, to have made some kind of point. ‘And I actually obey them. It’s pitiful, really. That old pension’s quite a tyrant.’
‘You could start drawing it any time you wanted.’
‘True. But to live on it I’d have to cut back on the booze, the fags and the gee-gees. I don’t fancy that.’
‘You’ll have to sooner or later.’
‘Yeah. Just like we’ll have to get to the point sooner or later, so, why don’t we? Doctor Fay Whitworth. You’ve met her?’
‘I had lunch with her in Bristol yesterday.’
‘Right. So I don’t need to fill you in. I’m sure she did that. Smart woman. And I don’t just mean clever. I thought my luck was in when she showed up here, you know. Clever, attractive, single lady, in need of company and, er, evening entertainment … Don’t look at me like that. A bloke can dream, can’t he? Anyway, this dream turned into a nightmare. Missing records. Can you believe it? Missing bloody records from fifty years ago. I mean, who the hell cares?’
‘Doctor Whitworth, Pete. And therefore the people you and I both work for.’
‘OK.’ He held up his hands. ‘Point taken. No excuses will do. Somebody’s filleted the Wren and Co. files and it’s all my fault.’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Not yet you aren’t. But when you put your report in to Beaumont, what’ll you say then?’
‘Depends what I find out while I’m here.’
‘Sweet FA. That’s what you’ll find out. Those files could have been raided any time since the sixties, maybe in the sixties. Remember Oliver Foster? Maybe that’s what he was up to in the basement over at East Hill.’
‘I don’t think so. All Wren and Co. documents would have been checked and collated when they were moved here after the takeover in sixty-eight. It has to have happened since then.’
‘Which still gives us forty-two years to play with. I bet no one’s looked at the stuff in all that time. Why would they?’
‘Someone has looked, though, haven’t they, Pete? That’s the whole point. And you’ve just asked the right question: why?’
‘Search me.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it won’t come to that.’
He laughed. ‘Very funny.’
‘I should probably start by looking at the files as they presently are.’
‘That won’t tell you anything.’
‘Even so …’
‘OK.’ He levered himself out of the chair. ‘Let’s step down into the dungeons. Then you can do all the looking you like.’
The basement was a vast, strip-lit concrete cavern, resonant with the hum of the building’s boiler. It had been fitted out with lockable wired-off cages, housing different sections of CCC records, along with redundant furniture, office equipment and assorted junk that should have been disposed of many years previously and probably would have been if the size of the basement hadn’t made it so easy to stow everything away out of sight. There were typewriters galore, rusty filing cabinets, broken-backed chairs, wobbly-legged tables, bundles of maps, stacks of catalogues and piles and piles of paper.
‘There are probably a few fossilized members of staff down here somewhere,’ Pete joked as he led the way along the passage between the cages. ‘File and forget should be the company’s motto. What would that be in Latin?’
He rambled on in a similar vein until we reached our destination: the Wren & Co. cage. The box-files Fay Whitworth had consulted stood on open metal shelving, n
eatly labelled as she’d described. Some loose files and leather-bound minute books lay on a small table next to the shelving unit, disarranged as if Fay had merely stepped out for a coffee before resuming her researches. But her researches, of course, were not going to be resumed, unless I discovered what had become of the missing records.
Pete opened the padlock on the cage door and we stepped in. I pulled out a box-file dated in the mid-sixties, propped it on the stack of minute books and took a look. It was exactly as Fay had said. Two or three authentic documents, then nothing but blank flimsy paper. I pulled out a couple more, while Pete looked on amusedly, with the same result. Almost everything from the last twelve years of Wren & Co.’s independent existence had vanished. Minute books detailing board meetings from before the First World War were there for anyone to leaf through. But the late 1950s and all of the 1960s was a different story – a different, empty story.
‘It’s a baffler, isn’t it?’ said Pete, jingling the padlock key in his hand. ‘A real baffler.’
‘Has the cage always been kept locked?’ I asked with a sigh.
‘No. I’ve only been particular about that since Doctor Whitworth’s visit. Shutting the stable door, I know. But there it is.’
‘So more or less anyone could have done this, at any time?’
‘Pretty much. They wouldn’t even have had to be a member of staff. It would’ve been easy to slip down here from reception if you knew the layout of the building. And what you were looking for, of course.’
‘The paper they substituted for the real documents. It’s the flimsy stuff we used to use for carbon copies.’
‘So it is. But if you’re thinking that proves the stunt was pulled before PCs replaced typewriters, think again. There’s a pallet-load of that kind of paper in one of the cages further down.’
‘Unlocked, of course?’
‘You said it.’
‘Bloody hell.’
Pete grinned at me. ‘It just goes on getting better, doesn’t it?’
‘Any ideas?’
‘Me? Ideas are above my pay grade, Jon. You know that.’
‘They were even further above it when you and I worked at Wren’s. That didn’t stop you having them.’
‘True.’
‘So?’
‘Well …’
‘What?’
‘I’ve no idea. Honestly. It’s beyond me. But … no idea doesn’t mean no clue.’ His grin was becoming mischievous now. ‘I, er … found something.’
‘Found what? Where?’
‘I came down here after Doctor Whitworth threw her fit and saw just what you’ve seen. When I couldn’t do anything for her, she stormed off back to Bristol. Then Beaumont peppered me with angry emails. He even phoned me once to give me a bollocking. It didn’t get him or Doctor Whitworth anywhere, of course.’
‘Where’s the “but” in this, Pete?’
‘Just coming. Last time I was down here, I dropped the key while I was checking the padlock. When I bent down to get it, I noticed something lying underneath the shelving unit. It was a single sheet of paper. A memo, as it turned out, from George Wren to Greville Lashley, dating from late 1959. Now, how did that get there, do you suppose?’
‘You have a theory?’
‘My guess is it slipped down the back of the unit while our mysterious thief was emptying the files.’
‘Which proves?’
‘Nothing. Unless the memo is one of the documents the thief was particularly interested in.’
‘Any reason to think it was?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What did the memo say?’
‘Thought you’d never ask. See for yourself. It’s back where it belongs now.’ He pulled down the 1959/60 box-file, put it on the table and opened the lid. ‘Here we are.’ He turned over the first couple of documents to reveal the memorandum, then leant back to let me see it.
26 November 1959
To: Mr Lashley
Please advise me at your earliest convenience of your conclusions as to how we should best proceed in the matter of the Trudgeon contract in light of the issues arising from your perusal of Mr Foster’s correspondence.
G. Wren
At first glance, the memo was notable only for its utter blandness. Kenneth Foster had been dead four months in November 1959. George Wren had presumably asked Lashley to tidy up various pieces of business Foster had been dealing with and wanted to know what he’d done about one of them. Earth-shattering, it wasn’t. ‘Is this supposed to prove something, Pete?’
Pete shrugged. ‘That’s for you to say.’
‘It’s just a memo. George Wren must have sent hundreds of the bloody things in his time, if not thousands.’
‘True. But whatever our thief was after would look like this, wouldn’t it? It would look insignificant.’
‘Maybe. But how do you suggest we distinguish between the apparently insignificant and genuinely insignificant?’
‘That’s your problem, Jon. I’m just trying to … lend a helping hand.’ He shrugged. ‘It struck me our thief might have separated the stuff he was seriously interested in from the rest as he went through the file. Then one piece of that stuff could have slipped down the back of the shelf. There’d be nothing to stop it finishing up on the floor, would there? Which is exactly where I found it.’
I looked at the shelving unit. It had no back and wasn’t fixed to the wall. It could have happened as Pete had suggested. But it was a big could. ‘Know anything about the Trudgeon contract?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Not really. Wilf Trudgeon was a haulier based in Charlestown. You must remember his lorries.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No? Well, it was before your time, I suppose. He handled most of the transport for Wren’s from the dryers to the docks. Wren’s bought him out in the end. It was the only way we could get an A licence of our own.’
‘A what?’
‘An A licence. You needed one to operate as a haulier in those days. They were like gold dust. I was at school with Wilf Trudgeon’s son. Dick Trudgeon. Big lad. Built like a brick shithouse. He joined the police. Dick Truncheon, we used to call him. I wonder what happened to him. Retired now, I guess. Like we should be. Like you soon will be.’
‘A haulage contract from half a century ago? I don’t get it, Pete. It can’t possibly matter to anyone, can it?’
‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you?’
‘Who else have you told about this?’
‘No one. It doesn’t amount to anything really, does it? Like you said, it’s … insignificant.’
‘I’d better take a photocopy of the memo, even so.’
‘I’ve got one waiting for you upstairs. Seen enough down here?’
‘More than enough.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
We stepped out of the cage and Pete locked it behind us. Then we headed for the stairs.
‘There are a couple of things I ought to mention, Jon,’ Pete said as we reached them.
‘Oh yes?’
‘We could talk them over out front before we go back to my office. I don’t know about you, but I could do with some fresh air.’
Pete’s need of fresh air was heavily qualified. He immediately lit a cigarette once we were outside. We took shelter from the rain in the covered way that linked the main building with the laboratory block and he puffed away tensely for a moment or two before explaining what the ‘couple of things’ were.
‘First off, I guess you ought to know Adam Lashley’s in town.’
It was worrying enough that Adam had phoned Fay Whitworth from London. His presence in St Austell was downright disturbing. ‘He is?’
‘’Fraid so. After his father sold Nanstrassoe House he bought a place out at Carlyon Bay. Wavecrest, it’s called. About halfway along Sea Road. Absolutely massive, as you’d expect. Empty most of the time, of course, while he’s off in Thailand. But he’s back now. A woman in the marketing department who walks h
er dog out on the coast path near there saw him tooling past in his Lotus yesterday morning. Quite a coincidence, hey? You and him showing up in the same week.’
‘I doubt it’s a coincidence.’
‘Me too.’
‘Fay Whitworth said he’d contacted her recently. He’d urged her to stop making a fuss about the missing records, apparently.’
‘It’s a pity she didn’t take his advice.’
‘What’s he up to, I wonder.’
‘No one seems to know. I hope it doesn’t involve turning up here and throwing his weight around. Of course, he could have come down to … er …’ Pete hesitated and took a fretful drag on his cigarette.
‘To what?’
‘Well, that’s the other thing, Jon. He could be here to see his … half-sister.’
‘Vivien’s in St Austell too?’
‘Yeah. Rumour is she’s had it pretty rough these last few years. Well, not just these last few, I guess. Losing her son and her husband like she did …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s bound to have taken its toll.’
I said nothing. There was nothing I felt capable of saying. The tragic misfortunes of the Normingtons had been amply documented in the tabloid press, where the family had been portrayed as an example of the aristocracy brought low by hard drugs and soft living. The facts were widely known. And the facts were all I knew.
‘When did you last see her, Jon?’
‘Twenty-six years ago.’
‘As long as that?’
‘It feels like less.’
‘It won’t if you see her now.’
I looked at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘She’s not … looking too good these days.’
‘Where’s she living?’
‘In a caravan … out at Lannerwrack Dryers.’
‘A caravan?’
‘She pitched it there a few months ago.’
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