As I’d calculated, there was no chance Dora Strake would refuse to talk to me once the bait had been dangled before her of a possible explanation of her brother’s murder. I set off for Plymouth a few hours later – alone, despite Pete’s pleas to accompany me. I claimed Dora might be alarmed if we arrived mob-handed, although she’d sounded unflappable enough. The truth was that there were aspects of my involvement with Strake I didn’t want to have to disclose to Pete. Having him along threatened to cramp my style. I consoled him with the promise of a full account of the trip when I got back.
THIRTY-EIGHT
HILLINGDON COURT WAS a purpose-built block of sheltered apartments off Mannamead Road, set in its own leafy, well-maintained grounds. Whatever Dora Strake had done with her life, it had evidently been more remunerative than anything her brother had accomplished, although, of course, she’d wasted much less money than he had on booze, cigarettes and three-legged racehorses.
She was a small, bright-eyed, white-haired old lady, gingerly arthritic in her movements but quite obviously in full possession of her wits. The intense concentration with which she received my account of how I’d tracked her down was a warning in itself. She wasn’t to be trifled with.
I suppressed my personal knowledge of what Strake had been up to during the trip to Naples he’d never returned from, but I volunteered everything else – the missing records, the evidence Strake had been following Oliver, the claims he’d made at the time of his arrest by PC Trudgeon. What Dora would make of it all I had no idea. But I felt sure she was intelligent enough to know her brother had been no saint, and candour tends to reward candour in my experience.
‘Dear, dear, dear,’ was her first response. Her further thoughts were delayed by the fetching of hot water to top up the teapot. Then: ‘It would be pointless to deny Gordon had a shady side to him, Mr Kellaway. I could blame it on the war. He spent so long away in the army, seeing things and doing things that may have made him … mistrustful of humanity. But it won’t quite wash, will it? Thousands of other young men did their bit without losing what my father would have called their moral compass. Gordon was a great disappointment to him. “Your trouble, boy,” he used to say, “is that you think the world owes you a living. Well, it doesn’t.” Now my father had his faults – more than a few – but I fear he was quite right where Gordon was concerned.
‘He was my brother. I loved him. But I wasn’t blind to his weaknesses. I hoped the job with Wren’s would put him on the right road and for a long time I thought it had. He never told me he’d been sacked until he came to stay with me in the early months of 1969. And he never said why he’d left St Austell. I assumed he’d turned to me because he was short of money, though he always seemed to have plenty to spend in the pubs and betting shops. Then he announced that some work had come his way and off he went. To Italy, as it turned out.’
‘Did he say what kind of work?’
‘No. He was cagey about it, very cagey. Not that that was unusual. He was always one to play his cards close to his chest. To be honest, I was glad to see the back of him. We didn’t part on the best of terms, something I’ve long regretted. When the police told me he’d been murdered, in Naples … well, I was dumbstruck. I had no idea he’d been planning to leave the country.’
She looked at me apologetically. ‘It’s kind of you to have come all this way to speak to me, Mr Kellaway. I dare say Gordon’s murder may well have had something to do with these other things you’ve told me about him. But what it all amounts to – what exactly he was doing and at whose say-so – I’m afraid I simply can’t imagine. Do you think he may have stolen the records that have gone missing … to cover his tracks in some way?’
‘It’s possible, though actually I doubt he could have stolen them.’
‘Well, you’d know better than me.’
‘I was hoping he might have let something slip during his stay with you that could point us towards an explanation.’
‘Alas, no. Gordon was terribly secretive. And infuriatingly tight-lipped.’ She smiled at some fond memory. ‘He was very protective towards me when we were growing up. I suppose that’s what made me so tolerant of his … prickliness in later life. All I can tell you is this: I felt he was … waiting for something while he was here. A message. An order. Then he got it. I don’t know how. He never used my telephone. And no one ever phoned him. He never had any post either. But he was careful about things like that. He’d use call-boxes. Or he’d talk some pub landlord into holding letters for him. That was the sort of man he was. “Always look after number one, Dor,” he used to say. “First rule of life.” Sadly, he didn’t prove to be very good at it, did he? Father often predicted he’d come to a bad end. And so he did.’
‘He never mentioned Wilf or Mike Trudgeon?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Or Oliver Foster?’
‘No. Though I may have mentioned Oliver Foster to Gordon. His death was reported in the Western Morning News. And the connection with Wren’s stuck in my mind. I don’t recall anything Gordon said about it, though. Probably because he didn’t say anything.’
‘No. I don’t suppose he did.’ I sighed. ‘It seems to be a recurring theme.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr Kellaway. It looks as if Gordon took his secrets with him to the grave. I’d like to know what they were every bit as much as you would. But I don’t think we’re going to find out, do you?’
I’d arrived in Plymouth optimistic that at last, at long last, I was going to break through to the truth. I left not merely frustrated by a wasted journey but despondent about my chances of ever learning anything new. The secrets I was chasing were too old, the keepers of them too long dead. I’d embarked on a ghost hunt, but the ghosts steadfastly refused to walk.
I phoned Pete as promised and he was waiting for me in the bar when I reached the White Hart. He didn’t seem surprised I’d drawn a blank.
‘I tried to warn you, Jon. Without your own personal Tardis, you’re never going to find out what happened, and why, forty-plus years ago.’
‘What d’you suggest I do, then?’
‘Give up. And drink up. What d’you say to a Saturday night pub crawl?’
When I woke next morning, thick-headed and raw-throated, I wished I’d turned Pete down. All I could recall of the evening was boozy reminiscence and swaying transits of St Austell town centre, hedged about with the troubling conviction that I’d made a fool of myself, though exactly how was, like much else, unclear.
Maybe, I reflected as I stood under the shower, some such outcome was only to have been expected, considering a fool’s errand was what I’d been sent on. If so, it was time to accept the futility of what I’d been asked to do. I’d finish my questioning of IK staff, compose some kind of report about the missing records, email it to Presley Beaumont and then … go home.
Wherever home was. My peripatetic career and recent domestic solitude hadn’t equipped me to pronounce on the subject with any confidence. Retirement would make it a subject I couldn’t ignore. Maybe it was one more deserving of my attention than puzzling gaps in the archives of a small and long defunct china clay company. Maybe I should let the past take care of itself.
I cut through the worst of the hangover with a pot of strong black coffee, skipped the rest of breakfast and headed out in the Freelander. It was still early for a Sunday and I had the roads largely to myself. The weather was cool and clear. There was a cleansing freshness in the air. I drove up to Goss Moor, parked where Oliver had insisted I park that last day of his life, forty-two years before, and stood where he’d posed for his photograph.
‘Why have me take pictures you knew no one would ever see, Oliver?’ I murmured. ‘Why play such an elaborate game when you knew you were never going to finish it?’
‘You can’t afford to do all your thinking during the game,’ I remembered him telling me about tournament chess, although chess, of course, wasn’t really what he was talking about. ‘
You have to prepare yourself properly. You have to play the game in your head before you move a single pawn.’
‘Did that mean you knew it was going to turn out like this? Did that mean you knew I’d never understand?’
‘You helped me, Jonathan. And I’m grateful. You drive on. I’ll be fine.’
His final words to me. An acknowledgement. A farewell. A benediction. And maybe the only kind of ending there was ever going to be.
I drove back the same way I had that summer evening in 1968, by way of Roche and Scredda. The route, like everything else, had been chosen by Oliver, chosen for his particular purposes. I didn’t stop where I’d dropped him at the roadside, near Relurgis Pit, but I found myself glancing in the rear-view mirror as I drove past, half expecting to see him shouldering his knapsack and starting up the bank. He wasn’t there, of course. He was gone, long gone. But still I sensed he was watching me. If so, I felt sure, there was nothing for him to watch.
The road into St Austell from Scredda took me past the IK offices and my old school and then the library, where I’d met Oliver to deliver the bar of soap containing the pattern of Wren’s basement key. The younger me kept pace effortlessly with my older, scarcely wiser self.
As I crossed the bridge over the railway line in Carlyon Road, I noticed someone I half recognized hurrying towards the station. A second glance confirmed it was Mad, Adam’s girlfriend. She was wearing a short pink mac, jeans and Ugg boots and was struggling along with a large, bulging shoulder-bag, large enough, I suspected, to hold most of her few possessions.
It was too late by then to turn down towards the station myself. I had to head on to the roundabout at the top of East Hill before doubling back. By the time I drove into the station forecourt, Mad was nowhere to be seen. I pulled into a short-stay parking space and hurried into the ticket office.
She was turning away from the counter, ticket in hand, when she saw me. She flinched with surprise. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, her voice drained of all the confidence and ebullience I remembered from our previous encounter.
The reason was hard to miss: an angrily swollen black eye. ‘What happened to you?’ I asked at once.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, looking past me towards the platforms.
‘Are you leaving?’
‘Er, yeah. I’m going … to London. To, er … stay with a mate.’
‘When’s the train?’
She glanced at the clock. ‘About … twenty minutes.’
‘Maybe I could buy you a coffee.’ I gestured towards the café.
‘Nah. That’s … all right.’
‘Come on. You look as if you need one. And I certainly do.’
She weakened. ‘I suppose … All right, then. Ta.’
I took her bag, sat her down at one of the tables and went to fetch our coffees. I watched her as I waited to pay. She was staring out through the café’s picture window at the taxi rank and, beyond it, the grey roofscape of St Austell. She seemed both younger and older than when I’d met her at Wavecrest: weaker and more vulnerable, yet harder and grimmer.
‘There you go,’ I said, delivering her coffee and sitting down.
‘Are you catching the train?’ she asked, frowning at me sideways as she tilted her face to deny me a clear view of her black eye.
‘No. I was driving past. I stopped when I saw you.’
‘Why?’
‘You looked like you were … leaving town.’
‘I am. What’s it to you?’
‘I was … surprised. That’s all.’
‘Life’s full of surprises.’
‘Such as finding out Adam has a violent temper?’
‘I already—’ She stopped and chewed her lip. ‘I don’t want to talk about Adam.’
‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’
‘Could I … ask you a favour?’
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t tell him … you saw me here.’
‘OK. I won’t.’
‘Thanks … Jonathan.’
‘How old are you, Mad?’
‘Why d’you want to know?’
‘It’s just a question.’
‘All right. Sorry, I’m … nineteen.’
‘Nineteen. Good.’
‘Why’s it good?’
‘Because you have plenty of time to start again. And again and again, if it comes to it. Forget Adam. Forget all about him. That’s my advice.’
‘I might take it.’
‘You should.’
She raised a feeble little smile. ‘I bet you wish you could forget about him.’
I laughed. ‘You’re right there.’
‘He’s … not always a bastard.’
‘I’m sure he isn’t.’
‘It’s just there are … lines. When you cross them … you wish you hadn’t.’
‘What sort of lines?’
‘Well, like … him and that fucking garage.’
‘The garage?’
‘At Wavecrest. Adam always gets the car out and has me meet him on the drive. Even in the rain. I wasn’t allowed to go down there. Made a big thing of it. Such a big thing I … well, I decided I would … just to spite him. I mean, I waited till he was out, obviously. I’m not stupid. And I didn’t touch anything. But … somehow … he knew.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s so fucking suspicious.’
‘Is that why he hit you?’
She raised a hand to her brow, masking her black eye. ‘Yeah. He went completely ape. I’ve never seen him so …’ Her gaze fell. ‘It wasn’t just the eye.’
‘When was this?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. He was all, like, kissy-kissy-make-it-better later. But … I’d decided by then I had to clear out. It’s golf again this morning, so …’
‘You grabbed your chance.’
‘Yeah.’ She took her hand away and looked at me directly. ‘It’s a joke, really. There’s nothing to see in the garage. You’d think he was, like, hiding a body down there, but all that’s there are tools and polishes for the Lotus and a pile of boxes.’
‘Boxes?’
‘Yeah. Half a dozen cardboard boxes, stacked against the wall.’
‘What’s in them?’
‘Dunno. I didn’t look. They’re sealed with … brown tape, y’know? I knew he’d notice if I opened one, so I … left well alone.’
‘Anything written on the boxes?’
‘The name of some removal company. Printed, like. Nothing written. They’re all the same. I guess they’re stuff … he never got round to unpacking.’
‘Could be.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The way you’re frowning. It’s like … you know what’s in the boxes. And it isn’t just … stuff.’
I shrugged. ‘How could I know?’
She took a gulp of coffee and stared at me. ‘He’s frightened of you.’
‘Adam? Never.’
‘Yes, he is. And this is why, isn’t it?’
‘Mad, I can assure you I—’
‘I don’t want to know,’ she cut in. ‘So there’s no need to deny it. I’m getting out. I’m finished with Adam. I should never have started. He’s too old for me. And too …’ She flapped a hand dismissively in lieu of analysing Adam’s assorted neuroses. ‘Can we go outside? I’m dying for a ciggy.’
After she’d smoked her yearned-for cigarette, we went back into the station and I stood with her on the platform, waiting for the London train. She babbled on about the friend she was going to stay with. I listened politely. We said no more about Adam. When the train was announced, I persuaded her to let me give her some money for the journey, though I reckoned what I handed over would last her longer than that. She gave me a preposterously passionate kiss by way of thanks. ‘You should have taken that swim with me, Jonathan,’ she said, grinning mischievously. I couldn’t help grinning back. Then the train came rumbling in.
After it had left, with Mad safely aboard, I walked back to the car and p
honed Pete.
He sounded as if I’d woken him up. ‘What can I … do for you, Jon … this beautiful Sunday morning?’
‘You can make some coffee. I’m coming straight round.’
‘What?’
‘Coffee, Pete. We have to talk. I’m on my way.’
Pete’s flat was conveniently close to both IK and the town centre. He’d admitted to me the night before that he should have invested in somewhere bigger and smarter, but the inertia of the unambitious bachelor had got the better of him. I found him wandering around in his dressing-gown, coffee mug in one hand, cigarette in the other, amidst unwashed dishes and flung-aside newspapers. He looked like a man who found the chaos of his surroundings entirely congenial and he sounded as if he’d have much preferred to be left to wallow in them.
‘Let me get this straight,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘You reckon the boxes this girl Mad saw in the garage at Wavecrest contain the missing records?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? That’s why Adam wants you to say you got rid of them. To cover his tracks. And it’s why he went berserk when he discovered Mad had disobeyed him and gone down to the garage. Because that’s where he’s hidden them.’
‘Or his pornography collection. You don’t know the records are there. You can’t.’
‘No. But I can find out, with your help.’
Pete swallowed some coffee and grimaced at me. ‘Oh, no …’
‘Look, all you have to do is phone Adam and say you want to call round this evening to discuss his proposal. He’ll think you want to haggle over the price he’s offered. Fine. Haggle away. As long as you ask to use the loo first. Leave the window open so I can climb in and cut down to the garage while you keep Adam busy.’
‘What if he refuses to see me?’
‘He won’t. He’s desperate for you to agree you’ll confess to stealing the records.’
‘OK. But what if … he sends me to an upstairs loo?’
‘For God’s sake, Pete, why would he? There’ll be one for visitors on the ground floor. Just get in there and open the window. You can leave the rest to me.’
‘What is the rest?’
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