The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  King, who was doodling on his pad and had written ‘Cernach’, and after moving the order of the characters around had come up with the word, beloved of Glasgow-speak, ‘Chancer’, could only nod and say, ‘Yes, I assume they have.’ Then: ‘Did you make any attempts to validate the proposal?’

  ‘Good heavens, yes…buildings and contents. We…Gary authorized that, reputable buildings valuer and an auctioneer and valuer, for the contents and as you see, both…they’re at the front of the file…’

  ‘Oh yes…’ King murmured his thanks as he located the valuers’ reports.

  ‘Both reported that the building and contents were as Mrs Carberrie had stated. The building was in good repair. It had the fire alarm and sprinkler system we asked for…the burglar alarm was fitted and the contents were validated by Holmes and Lesters, no less. So she was insuring just what she said she had to insure.’

  ‘I see that the last evaluation was done ten months prior to the fire.’

  ‘Yes. The evaluations were redone each time the policy was due for renewal.’

  ‘So, annually?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you don’t know what was destroyed in the fire…all you can say you know is what the condition of the building was and what the contents of the building were some ten months prior to the fire?’

  ‘Well…’ Pulleyne began to look uncomfortable, ‘but there was a full investigation…one of your chaps from the police station at Charing Cross…an elderly man as policemen go…’

  ‘Mr Sussock.’

  ‘Was that his name? I can’t recall.’

  ‘Well, it’s the name written here and he is an officer in P Division which is the Charing Cross police station of which you speak, as you say, just across the road from here.’

  ‘Well, the police and the insurance company investigated and found the incinerated contents appeared to be what was in the insurance manifest.’

  ‘So you paid out in good faith?’

  ‘We had to. The police reported their findings that a felon had broken in, got past the alarms, stolen the jewellery and had set fire to the building, four seats of fire plus liberally splashed petrol to conceal his tracks. The fire got such a hold, as I recall, because the fire brigade were fully committed to a warehouse blaze south of the Water at the time and had to summon appliances from an outlying station to attend to the Bath Street fire. By the time they arrived, everything had gone.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘Well, they don’t call Glasgow “tinderbox city” for nothing, Mr King.’

  King said nothing. He was beginning to find Pulleyne’s naivety trying. Two major fires on the same night, in the same city, just don’t happen, and if one was clearly a case of wilful fire-raising so might be the other in order to stretch the emergency services. He was also embarrassed for his profession…Ray Sussock must have wondered…he couldn’t possibly have failed to make a connection…he just couldn’t…

  ‘So we paid up. We had to.’

  ‘Had to?’

  ‘Gary forced it really, felt obliged…but he was right…we have had nothing but a flood of proposals since…things are becoming fit and healthy again and our name is good. We wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for Gary.’

  ‘As you have said. Tell me, did you ever meet Mrs Carberrie?’

  ‘Oh, horrible, horrible woman. Truly horrible. Those teeth, that voice…’

  ‘As a person?’

  ‘Nothing there that I could see, all noise, expensive jewellery and clothing and that was it. An empty vessel making the most sound, if you ask me.’

  ‘I wonder if we know her?’

  ‘You ought not to. Felons don’t get insurance. Perhaps not all felons, petty felons probably won’t have a problem. But in the event of a claim being made, we do a Criminal Records check and if the check is positive and if it’s a serious offence, we deem the proposal invalid and don’t pay out. We would refund all payments made to the policy but we won’t pay out.’

  ‘It’ll still be worth a check.’ King scribbled a note on his pad. ‘So to recap, the property and all it contained went up in smoke and it was investigated.’

  ‘It was, fully…I mean, a claim like that.’ Pulleyne reached forward and lifted the silver coffee pot and replenished first King’s cup and then his own. ‘But as you have said, it was a good-faith payment because we knew what was in the building ten months prior to the fire, not on the night of the fire. I confess I’m beginning to feel a little uncomfortable, Mr King…you’re implying fraud?’

  ‘I’m really not implying anything, Mr Pulleyne. Not yet.’ King laid his pad on his lap and picked up his cup of coffee. ‘I’m sure that you are constantly on your guard for insurance fraud

  ‘Oh, we are.’

  ‘Strikes me it could be a bit like telling a lie…’

  ‘Well, it is a lie.’

  ‘In the sense that if it’s big enough you’ll be believed…or a bit like Captain Cook’s ship arriving off the north coast of Australia

  ‘I don’t know that anecdote.’

  ‘Apparently when the ship arrived the Aborigines who were fishing in the shallows glanced at it once and carried on fishing…just ignored it…that something so large could be man made was totally outside their ken. But when the ship, The Endeavour, lowered a longboat, they showed the Aborigines something that they could understand and they attacked the longboat. I’ve heard the story used to illustrate the human being’s ability to ignore something very large and obvious if they find it too sinister to take on board, like the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, for example.’

  ‘And you’re saying that the Bath Street claim was a huge fraud, so huge that we just didn’t see it as a fraud?’

  ‘I’m floating the possibility.’

  Pulleyne rested his head on his left palm and curled his right hand round his cup. ‘No…no…no…it can’t be…Gary would have checked into that…their order books…I mean business accounts, they were doing good business…businesses that start to flounder become victims of insurance fraud, especially if the owner is late middle aged…you know the sketch, devoted all his life to building up a business and is banking on selling it as a thriving concern to pay for a comfortable retirement, only to see it begin to fall apart around his sixtieth year…people in that situation act out of desperation and do stupid things with petrol. Especially if they try and make it look accidental, but the owner of Cernach Antiques didn’t fit that…that…’

  ‘Profile?’

  ‘That’s the word…profile, that profile, she didn’t fit it. She was still young enough to start over if necessary…and she was just at the beginning of her business life, her ambition would be strong…and we had access to the accounts. She was doing good business.’

  ‘Perhaps…perhaps I’m getting cynical. It’s an occupational hazard. Police work makes you cynical. I try to fight it but it gets hold of me from time to time…creeps in.’ King leafed through the file and came across pages of statements of the Cernach Antiques accounts held at the Clydesdale Bank. ‘Money going in, money going out and a healthy bank balance.’ King raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You see, that is not the balance sheet of a business that is going to the wall. It just isn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps…’ King studied the account. ‘I’m not an accountant, nor a business person, but doesn’t something strike you as a little odd about these figures?’ He rotated the file and handed it to Pulleyne.

  ‘Odd?’ Pulleyne pushed his cup on one side and pulled the file towards him. ‘No…money going in, money paid out…a constant balance with a small variance…it’s a healthy business. They’re trading antiques at the top end of the market, three-, four-figure sums…selling at a profit, allowing themselves a personal income and keeping the business in black. Lucky them. Not a candidate for insurance fraud.’

  ‘Again, perhaps.’

  ‘But you find it odd?’

  ‘Probably cynicism again, Mr Pulleyn
e, but haven’t you noticed how the sum of ingoing and outgoing money never exceeds one thousand pounds per month? I mean, if you were to open an account like this, keep a certain sum always in reserve, in this case a few thousand pounds and then rotate another sum of money, in this case one thousand pounds, through the account, but do so on random trading days and for random amounts, a few hundred pounds here, fifty pounds there, but never exceeding the one-thousand-pound figure, or whatever the agreed figure is, would you not achieve a healthy-looking business account?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pulleyne nodded. ‘Yes, in a word, you would.’

  ‘You see, there just doesn’t seem to be a quiet period, that’s what I noticed. It’s my understanding that businesses have quiet periods and hectic periods, but this account just ticks over quietly, endlessly. It shouldn’t do that. Or should it?’

  ‘I don’t know…perhaps there are no such things as annual fluctuations in the antiques business. The only people who could tell us what happened is the Clydesdale Bank, if they still retained the cheques, which after this length of time, they won’t.’

  ‘I really think I’d like to talk to your half-brother.’

  ‘Gary? He doesn’t work for us any more. He sold out.’

  ‘Sold out?’

  ‘He stuck it out…can’t take that from him…he got us into the mess with the Bath Street claim but he stuck with us. In fact, he was the first person to put his house up, raised a second mortgage, sold possessions and so led the way out of the mess, enabled us to pay the Bath Street claim and stayed with us until we were almost in the black and with the proposals flooding in. He got us our good name. And then he sold out. I bought his share and I’m now the senior director. Suited both of us. Gary has enough money to see himself out and I’ve got a major slice of the business.’

  ‘Which you owe to Gary. So where will I find him?’

  ‘Now, he’ll be on the rifle range.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s using the money to indulge in his passion for shooting. He has a rifle and goes into the Highlands and blows the brains out of stags.’

  ‘Stalking.’

  ‘Is the correct term. Gary and I, you know, we may have been close but there were things we did not see eye to eye on and firearms was one of them. But each to his own. He has quite a collection of guns, you know.’

  ‘Really? Where does he live?’

  ‘Busby. Fifty-two, Honeycomb Drive, Busby. He shoots at the Kilmarnock Gun Club. They have a range at the edge of Fenwick Moor. You’ll know instantly whether he’s at either place—he has a yellow Jaguar. A Mark II circa 1962. You may have seen it driving about the city. A very distinctive car. Bit loud for my taste, but Gary likes it.”

  King thanked Pulleyne for his time. At the door to Pulleyne’s office he turned and said, ‘Look, we’d be obliged if you didn’t mention my visit to anyone. We like to play our cards close to our chest.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘And of course there still may have been nothing untoward happened at all.’

  Bungalow. Derelict, down-and-outs for the use of. Montgomerie stood by his car and photographed the building which had been circled on the Ordnance Survey map found in Ronnie Grenn’s bedroom. It stood set back from the road, remote, on the northern edge of Kilsyth. The nearest neighbour appeared to Montgomerie to be a similar bungalow which stood perhaps four hundred yards away. The town of Kilsyth began about a mile beyond the neighbouring house. Beyond the building was a field in which four or five horses stood contentedly chewing grass. The field was surrounded by black trunks and branches of leafless trees, and beyond the fields lay other fields and woodland, and beyond that the wild, black and green of the Campsie Hills and over all was a complete blanket of low, still, grey cloud. Montgomerie returned his gaze to the building. It would not, he thought, even in its prime, have been a particularly attractive building. It was small, and of unimaginative design. ‘Utilitarian’ was the word which came to Montgomerie’s mind as he considered the bungalow. It had a door set centrally with a window at either side. It was faced with pebble dash and a roof of corrugated iron. The door had been pulled off its hinges and lay beside the house, all the windowpanes had been smashed and half the roof had been removed. It had, thought Montgomerie, by means of compensation, a generous garden of perhaps half an acre. Now overgrown, but with a magnificent oak standing at the bottom of the garden to the rear of the building and doubtless explaining the name of the property, carved in wood and strongly fastened to the gate.

  Montgomerie drove back to Glasgow. Oak Cottage was not, he pondered as he cruised south-westwards on the A803, not his choice of ‘des res’ and he hoped that he never would come to find Oak Cottage by Kilsyth an attractive place to live, even in retirement. But he had to concede, that if Donoghue’s intuition was correct, it would make an ideal place to conceal a kidnap victim, especially in the summer months. No need of light or heating that might attract unwanted attention, for instance.

  In P Division, having signed in and taken the steps to the CID corridor two at a time, he peeled off his blue-and-yellow ski jacket and slung it on Abernethy’s desk, sank into his chair and picked up the phone. The Land Registry at Kilsyth and Cumbernauld District Council advised him that Oak Cottage of the address given was without certain ownership, all enquiries are to be diverted to Langley, Dells and Langley, Solicitors and Notaries Public, of Kilsyth.

  ‘Langley, Dells and Langley,’ said a chirrupy female voice on the other end of the phone line. Happy with her job, mused Montgomerie, even towards the end of the working day. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘Owner died intestate,’ the thin voice to whom Montgomerie had been connected dryly told him, ‘an elderly lady whose only son is believed to be domiciled in Australia, or New Zealand. All efforts to trace him have thus far failed. There are more distant relatives anxious to assume ownership but all efforts to trace the son and heir cannot yet be said to be reasonably exhausted in the eyes of the law.’

  ‘I see. Can I ask how long has the property been empty? About?’

  ‘Fifteen years. About. It was for sale briefly when the owner was still with us but in hospital.’

  ‘Anybody expressed an interest in buying it at all, or even just viewing the property?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, but I can check the file.’

  ‘If you would.’

  ‘Phone you back. Glasgow Police, did you say?’

  ‘P Division. Charing Cross.’ Montgomerie provided the phone number.

  Dryness of tone and thinness of voice, Montgomerie found, did not mean inefficiency. His coffee was still too hot to drink when Hamish Dell returned his call and was able to advise him that a gentleman called Westwater, Gary Westwater of 52, Honeycomb Drive, Busby, had requested keys to the property just over eight years previously. He didn’t make an offer to buy and shortly afterwards the owner died a peaceful death at which point the property was taken off the market and attempts to trace her son were put afoot.

  ‘Gary Westwater.’ Montgomerie spoke aloud. The name didn’t mean anything to him but he noted it, and the address, and he thanked Hamish Dell, solicitor and notary public, for his time, his trouble and his information.

  On a whim, Richard King walked into the antique furniture shop on Sauchiehall Street.

  ‘Oh’—the slender assistant in the pinstriped trouser suit looked disappointed—‘we’re just closing, sir.’

  ‘Police.’ King showed her his ID. ‘Won’t keep you long. It’s a bit of information I need.’

  The young assistant suggested that he might like to speak to the owner, Mr Dickson?

  Dickson’s office was behind a one-way mirror set in the wall of the building, so that he and any other person in his office could look out and see Sauchiehall Street going past, but the people on the pavement would see only their reflection as they passed the window. Some, King noticed as he sat in the chair in front of Dickson’s desk, enjoyed their image more than others.

  ‘It�
��s not unusual that people stop and preen themselves at the window.’ Dickson took a cigarette from a silver cigarette box on his desk, and, in a movement King had only ever previously seen in old films, tapped the end of the cigarette on the desk top before placing it in his mouth and lighting it with a slim cigarette lighter, also silver. He cupped his free hand round the end of the cigarette as he lit it, as if shielding it from a breeze. He was a small man, King found it difficult to age him, fifty pushing sixty, he thought. Smartly dressed, gold-tinted smile, yellow handkerchief in the breast pocket of his brown jacket. Too much jewellery for a man, in King’s view: a ring on each finger, a watch on his left wrist, a broad gold bracelet on his right. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Picking your brains, really, sir.’ King watched a blue-and-yellow Kelvin Scottish double-decker move slowly up Sauchiehall Street, people rushed past the window, the evening rush hour was just beginning, no time for preening at the moment. People had only one word in mind: home. ‘You may remember the fire in Bath Street about four and a half years ago?’

  ‘Cernach’s?’ Dickson nodded. ‘Not many people in the antiques business in Scotland don’t know about that fire.’

  They lost a lot of good stuff.’

  Dickson remained silent. Then he raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘Are you asking me, or telling me? If I were to ask you to write that sentence down, would there be a question mark at the end of it?’

  ‘Confess I don’t know myself.’ King returned the smile, and noticed that a sensitive whiff of wood polish in the office emerged from under the odour of cigarette smoke. ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘So I take it that the police are renewing their interest in the blaze?’