by Tom Trott
Thalia was silent. I was looking at the room just as it always was: bookshelves full of local guides and maps, cocktail cabinet stocked with every obscure spirit and liqueur, the gentle passing lights of the bypass out the window; in front of the window my desk, with my gold pen, my bowl of pistachios, the intercom, and my reading lamp; and behind the desk my brown leather chair. But that’s where things were different, because on my desk were a pair of heavy-booted feet, and in my chair was the person they belonged to: Tidy.
‘I was going to make her wait outside,’ Thalia said over my shoulder. ‘She threatened to put me over her knee and spank me if I tried.’
Wisely, I chose not to say anything, I just closed the door.
She was a vision. I thought that if I saw her again, somehow she wouldn’t be as beautiful as I remembered her, but she was even lovelier, more vivid for being real, tangible, sitting in my chair, feet on my desk. Her big mouth was smiling, and she had on violet lipstick. Once again, she was almost head to toe in leather, this time separate trousers and a jacket. In front of her was an untouched cocktail in a martini glass, she pushed it forward.
‘I made you an Aviation cocktail, toots, but it might have lost its chill by now.’
I played it cool, ‘Thank you,’ and sauntered unhurriedly to the desk, picking the glass up by the stem and tasting the liquor. It was good. I sat down in the chair opposite, where the clients normally sat.
‘You found me,’ I stated.
‘There aren’t that many private detectives in this city called Joe. Only one, in fact. Nice office, I can’t afford anything this nice in London.’
‘Thank you. Nice drink.’ I took another sip.
‘It’s so rare to find crème de violette, I had to use it.’
‘Still down here on business,’ I asked casually, ‘or did you make a special trip?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘I thought for a second you had come all the way down to find me.’
‘I would have, for you.’
‘Why?’
She just smiled.
‘Afraid to answer?’ I teased.
‘I enjoyed our little adventure. I wanted to know if anything came of it. Then I saw the news.’
‘I left you out of it.’
‘I guessed. I came here to say thank you.’
I nodded receipt.
‘I saw the newspaper you have framed out there,’ she nodded toward the reception, ‘did you really save a little girl from a fire?’
‘Yes and no.’
She just raised her eyebrows.
‘I started the fire.’
She didn’t seem to believe me. ‘Grabarz’ she sounded out, ‘where does that come from?’
‘Poland. It means gravedigger.’
‘Appropriate?’
‘I hope not.’ I leant back in the client chair. ‘Are you going to tell me what Tidy is short for?’
‘Yetide, baby,’ she smiled, ‘Ajanlekoko.’
‘And what does that mean?’ I enquired.
‘A dog chasing a wolf.’
I frowned. ‘It does not.’
She just nodded.
‘Appropriate?’ I asked.
She blew a kiss. ‘Who knows?’
I took another sip. ‘So, is this a long job you’re working on down here.’
‘I certainly hope so. I like long projects. In depth, you know. It’s more satisfying in the end.’
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
She sensed as much and smiled. ‘That’s the problem with investigators: we’re bad conversationalists. We only know how to ask questions.’
I smiled back. ‘And we’re naturally suspicious of them too.’
She took a cigar out of her pocket and started playing with it. ‘I heard a rumour about you.’
‘How bad?’
‘Apparently you claim to have met the Brighton Bogeyman, whatever they call him.’
‘Max.’ I took a gulp of my drink. ‘No, I just met a man. A murderer and a kidnapper. He talked himself up, I believed him for a while. I was young.’
‘So you don’t believe he was the bogeyman?’
‘I don’t believe there is a bogeyman.’
She shrugged. ‘The legend certainly seems to have caught fire in the public consciousness.’
‘Whatever amuses people is fine with me.’
‘You don’t want to find out the truth?’
‘People don’t want the truth,’ I told her. ‘The reason people still write books about Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac is because the mystery was never solved. That’s why they’re lucky he’s not real: because if he was real, sooner or later someone would find out he was Joe Bloggs from down the street and they wouldn’t buy newspapers anymore.’
She smiled and nodded to herself, apparently treating my words with more consideration than they deserved. Then she took her feet off the desk and sat up straight. ‘So, what happened to your friend?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly. ‘He was killed at the farm, then his body taken and dumped in my car when they took his car.’
‘Why would they do that? Why not hide his body in his own car? Unless they knew who you were. You said your friend contacted you.’
I shook my head. ‘There’s no sense to it. The thing I keep coming back to is that they thought it would be funny.’
‘Maybe they just wanted to confuse things as much as possible,’ she mused, ‘non-linear warfare, all that stuff. Clearly they weren’t worried about the body being found. Finding it in your boot would waste police time, draw attention away from what they were doing.’
I shrugged. ‘It had to be improvised, they had no way of knowing I would be there. I’m pretty sure they planned to put the body in his Mercedes and hide it away down some random country lane, wherever his car is right now. But when they saw my car they must have known someone was onto them, so they improvised. The idea must be to draw attention away from the farm. The police couldn’t even take a look at the scene without the owner’s permission. I wonder who the owner is now?’
‘Praesidio Sheltered Holdings,’ crackled Thalia’s voice through the intercom.
I sighed. ‘If you’re listening you might as well come in.’
I heard her heels clack and then the door swing open. Then she strutted in and over to the drinks cabinet where she poured herself some whisky. Then she leant against the cabinet, which gave a worrying clink.
Once she had taken a sip she spoke again: ‘Praesidio Sheltered Holdings own Little Fawn Farm, have done for five years. They’re registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands.’ She smiled sardonically. ‘Andy wanted me to explain the burglaries to you. I can’t stay all night, how long do you think you’ll be?’
‘It’s ok, you can explain in front of Tidy, we met the night Clarence died.’
‘Sorry to be rough on you earlier, doll,’ Tidy apologised.
Thalia didn’t even glance at her, she was still fixed on me. ‘How would I know, you haven’t told me anything about that night. I had to read about it in the papers. Andy knows more than I do. And so does this random bitch!’
‘Steady,’ I said.
‘I like her,’ was Tidy’s response.
I filled Thalia in on all the details: finding Clarence’s body, finding Tidy in his office, finding the body missing, visiting Andy, Daye, and Burke, and calling it a night. Then I filled them both in on what happened next: how I found the body in my car, what Price told me in custody, the Almore casefile (which I gave to Thalia), Berlin & Seamark, Almore himself, all the way to the moment I came through the door.
‘Better?’ I asked her.
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘Fine. Now tell me what Andy told you.’
She took out one of her thin wispy rollups and lit it. Normally I would tell her off because I liked to keep the office free from the stench of tobacco, but she knew I wouldn’t dare this time.
‘He said he looked into the burglarie
s, the ones that were used to back up the idea of who called 999. He said that all of them were investigated and signed off by Merton and Meek. He says they are sketchy and look to be lazily investigated, but there’s nothing there that will surprise anyone who’s heard stories of George Meek. But get this for detective work: Andy says that ninety percent of Meek’s paperwork, and it was him that always did the writing, was done in black pen. But the burglaries were all done in blue pen. Still his handwriting though. The only other report written in blue pen is that of the night of the murders. And all George’s other reports from around the times of the burglaries, even ones apparently written the same day, were written in black ink.’
‘So Andy thinks the burglaries are just phantoms, written up to lend credence to the 999 call. But why bother?’
‘Well, Andy didn’t tell me, but obviously they didn’t want anyone to wonder too hard how anyone could’ve heard those shots out in the middle of nowhere.’
I nodded without meaning to. ‘Now tell me about the money.’
She marched out into the reception.
Emboldened by Thalia’s cigarette, Tidy had put her cigar away and instead lit a joint, playfully blowing smoke rings in my direction.
Thalia returned brandishing a piece of paper. It was a printed copy of our bank statement. On it read “paid in: 110,110.01 – ref: endeavour to solve.”
‘How do you know it’s from Clarence?’ I asked.
‘Simon called me. It’s definitely their bank account.’
‘Who?’
‘His assistant. He wanted to ask me what it was all about, he didn’t know anything about it either, he had been going through Clarence’s finances for the police. I’m sure they’ll want to ask you about it.’
I read it again. ‘“Endeavour to solve”, what the hell does that mean?’
‘I was hoping you’d know.’
‘Maybe it’s just instructions,’ Tidy offered, ‘endeavour to solve who killed me.’
‘Thanks,’ Thalia deadpanned with a bitter smile, then she smelt the cannabis and her smoky eyes bulged in disbelief.
I rifled through my memories of his office. The only papers on his desk were bills and...
‘Clarence loved his cryptic crosswords,’ I mused, ‘maybe it’s a clue.’
I could practically hear their eyebrows raising.
‘Cryptic clues have clues inside themselves,’ I continued, half to myself, ‘like “untangle” or “drunk” means anagram. Or “regularly” might mean to take alternate letters from a word.’
‘Well, I’m lost already,’ announced Tidy.
‘I remember once,’ I continued, ‘we were both at the law courts waiting for a case to finish and he was passing the time with a paper, I was bothering him, putting him off he said, so he tried to show me how to do them. I didn’t pay much attention. Daye likes them too, I think he tried to show me as well.’
They both looked beaten.
‘Why “endeavour”?’ I asked. ‘It’s an unusual word, if this were a cryptic clue it would be there for a reason. It was a ship wasn’t it?’
Tidy shrugged.
‘I only know it as a TV show,’ Thalia responded.
I frowned.
‘Surely the numbers are the code,’ Tidy suggested. ‘They’re just as unusual, why send that specific amount, unless it’s everything he had.’
‘Was it?’ I asked Thalia.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied blankly.
‘Let’s assume the numbers are the code. The way to solve them is hidden in the reference. “Endeavour to solve.” Does “endeavour” solve the code somehow?’
Tidy was tapping something into her phone. ‘It’s 155,546 in US Dollars. 126,325.75 in Euros. 16,664,544.41 Japanese Yen.’
‘I don’t think that’s it.’
‘They’re ones and zeros,’ Thalia said, ‘that must be deliberate, right?’
‘Everything Clarence did was deliberate.’
‘In binary 11011001 means a U with an accent on it,’ Tidy offered, ‘or D9, or 217.’
‘Let’s assume it’s not binary then.’
She kept tapping. ‘Depending on how you enter it as GPS coordinates you either get somewhere in Guinea or Ghana.’
‘Let’s assume they’re not coordinates then.’
‘What else can we try?’ she asked enthusiastically.
‘Stop for a minute,’ I held up a hand. ‘They key is in the word “endeavour”. Thalia, what was the TV show you were thinking of?’
She looked mildly embarrassed. ‘You know: Endeavour.’
I shrugged.
‘The young Inspector Morse.’
‘Morse!’ I ejaculated. ‘“Endeavour to solve”, “Morse to solve”: the numbers are in Morse code.’
Tidy tapped away at her phone again.
‘But which is dots and which is dashes?’ I wondered aloud.
‘Surely noughts are dots and ones are dashes,’ Thalia said, emboldened by her discovery of the solution, ‘ones are a dash on their side.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Tidy corrected her.
‘What?’ Thalia shot.
Tidy had a grin on her face, she seemed to like Thalia angry as much as I did. ‘He couldn’t start the numbers with a zero, could he? So whatever he wanted to spell, whether it started with a dot or a dash, that had to be a one.’
‘She’s right,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t when Thalia shot a betrayed look at me. ‘Either way, without spaces indicated there must be a hundred different options.’
‘If you take each number on its own,’ Tidy explained, reading from her phone, ‘following your girl’s idea about the dots and dashes, the message reads “T.T.E.T.T.E.E.T.”’
‘Well, I certainly hope that’s not the message he’s trying to send us from the grave,’ I deadpanned.
‘It’s either that or “E.E.T.E.E.T.T.E.” if we swap the dots and dashes. As pairs it’s “M.A.N.A.” or “I.N.A.N.”. Using the punctuation in the numbers it’s “G.G.A.” or “U.U.N.”’
I took out my phone and looked up a copy of the Morse alphabet.
International Morse Code:
A ·- B -··· C –·-· D -·· E · F ··-· G --· H ···· I ·· J ·--- K -·- L ·-·· M -- N -· O --- P ·--· Q --·- R ·-· S ··· T - U ··- V ···- W ·-- X -··- Y -·-- Z --··
I despaired.
‘I think we had better leave that for tonight.’
I finished the cocktail whilst the other two went on smoking. After a minute or two I started talking again, again without aim.
‘What I can’t understand is who would want to cover up the Almore case, and why Clarence was looking into it. I don’t believe the lawyers hired him; and Almore certainly didn’t, he doesn’t have the money for starters. And who would worry about it coming out? Burke is certainly concerned with his so-called legend, but I didn’t get the vibe from him: he didn’t try and scare me off, he was more upset I hadn’t heard of him. Merton is dead. And that just leaves George Meek. George managed to fool me and everyone else for too many years, and I could definitely see him as an accomplice, but he doesn’t have the brainpower to pull off something this well-executed.’
‘And we know it can’t just be him as there had to be two of them to drive the two cars,’ Thalia reminded me.
I nodded slowly.
‘You’re obsessed with the past,’ Tidy commented offhand.
I frowned.
‘Why does it have to be connected with the Almore case?’ she asked.
I furrowed my brow further.
She continued: ‘A man was found dead on someone’s property. The body was moved off the property. Sure, other people were murdered there ten years ago, but why assume that’s connected? The first people I’d want to question are the owners.’
‘But they’re just some tax-haven shell company.’
‘That’s where they’re registered, precious, but the land is here. Whatever is going on is going on here, and it’s somet
hing to do with that farm.’
I thought for a moment, not wanting to agree too readily. ‘You’re right,’ I announced, standing up, ‘the truth is out there. I think it’s time for another expedition.’
‘Now?’ Thalia asked.
‘Why not?’
She smiled bitterly. ‘You two have fun.’
Tidy’s eyes glowed. ‘Oh, we will.’
11
Third Time Unlucky
This time we were going to do things properly. I changed out of my suit, my Italian leather shoes, and into something far more practical. I grabbed the biggest torch I had, my lock picking gear, multi-tool, brass knuckles, and an OS map of the area around the farm.
Thalia was long gone by this time and Tidy was waiting in reception. I emerged, locked up the office, and we climbed into the rented Kia, leaving her dirt bike safely in the office car park, round a corner, in shadow.
We decided to approach the farm by road this time, rather than traipse across the fields. Plus it would give us an idea of the route the killer must have driven. All we had to do was enter the bypass by the office and drive one mile west to the next junction. There we came off the bypass, crossed over it, and pulled off the little roundabout onto Braypool Lane. Ignoring the left turn toward the little collection of houses nestled next to the A-road, we turned right toward nothing at all, and then took a turning that led north, away from the bypass and the city, up the slope of the Downs.
We crawled up this little one-lane road, riddled with potholes and shingle. It crested quickly and then we were descending gradually the side of the valley. The headlights revealed nothing but wire fences on both sides, and on the right telegraph poles running parallel to the tarmac. Every few metres a bush had grown around the wire fence, hiding it. At one point we glimpsed a water trough for livestock. The road appeared to split ahead but when we arrived it was just a turning into a field, the entrance to which had been blocked with wooden bollards. A kissing gate to the right of it would still accept ramblers.
We continued down the single-lane road, the tarmac momentarily free of potholes and well-maintained. It curved gently to the right, reaching the base of the valley. We were briefly flanked by trees, but they disappeared again, and from here the fences that bordered the road were all wooden.
