The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  Israel Fancy was a slender man in King’s eyes, sober suit in brown, and ill-matching black tie on a white shirt, as if anticipating attending a funeral later in the day. He was also sombre in a skullcap: black with an embroidered border of silver. He said, ‘Westmorland dowry chest?’

  ‘A Westmorland dowry chest,’ repeated King. ‘It was recently purchased by Dickson’s of Sauchiehall Street. They still have it in their shop.’

  Fancy leaned forward and pressed a button on an intercom on his desk. ‘Judith, can you bring me the manifest of the last auction, please.’ He released the button. ‘We have auctions of antique furniture once a month, the last one was three weeks ago.’ He spoke with Received Pronunciation, like a BBC newscaster; while probably proud to be a Scots Jew, he could easily be taken for an Englishman by his speaking voice. Doubtless, thought King, he was the product of a very expensive education. The two men waited in silence, though the hum of traffic on Great Western Road was distinct and discernible. Judith knocked and entered the room. She proved to be smartly dressed, bespectacled, proudly so, wearing large-lensed metal-framed spectacles. King thought her to be in her early twenties. Fancy, he thought to be about sixty. Judith handed Fancy a thick folder of white paper and then withdrew quietly, efficiently. Fancy began to leaf through the file, slowly, methodically, as if, King felt, unable to scan a page. He settled down for a long wait.

  ‘Westmorland dowry chest,’ Fancy said eventually, with no trace of emotion, and King felt the man capable of panning for gold and saying, ‘Nugget, as big as a birds egg,’ with the same matter-of-factness. ‘Yes, sold to Dickson’s indeed.’

  ‘From whom did you buy it?’

  ‘A lady called Margaret Mooney. I can tell you that without looking up another file. The auction business is a haven for crooks, Mr King. There are auctioneers and there are auctioneers. Some do not ask too many questions about the origin of the items they place under their hammer. As doubtless you are aware. We, on the other hand, jealously protect our good name. We want to know from whom we buy and to whom we sell. And we keep our records. Our earliest files go back two hundred years.’

  King inclined his head. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘And so you should be. I also want to emphasize that we would not normally give this information out. But you did say it was a murder enquiry.’

  ‘As indeed it is.’

  ‘I really can’t imagine Mrs Mooney being involved in anything like that. I’ve got to know her quite well. We’ve sold a lot of furniture for her in the last few years.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes…every few months, in fact. Some very fine items too, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. A pleasant lady. Well kept for her age…benefits of an easy life, I assume. She lives in Busby, asks me or one of my valuers to visit Her in her home. She’s clearing a relative’s house, so she told me. Has the item of furniture brought to her home, we value it there and if she asks us to do so, we take it into our storeroom until the next auction.’

  ‘Once every few months?’

  ‘Yes. Nice stuff. Always very good stuff.’

  ‘Nothing that you might have seen before?’

  ‘Probably, but I’ve been an auctioneer in this city for over forty years, it does happen that items tend to be placed back on the market from time to time.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t think it unusual to again sell something that you know that you sold a few years earlier?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Would you have a note of Mrs Mooney’s address?’

  ‘I can tell you, I’ve been there often enough. It’s twenty-three, Muckhart Avenue, Busby.’

  King said, ‘Thank you.’

  On his return to P Division, King phoned the major auctioneers in the west of Scotland. There were just six, including Fancy’s. The other five too, he found, knew Mrs Mooney of Busby very well, for had they not been auctioning furniture for her for the last few years, one item every few months? High-quality items too. Again, after each conversation King said, ‘Thank you.’ He said, ‘Thank you, thank you very much indeed.’

  Montgomerie too received much useful information by phone. He leaned back in his chair, holding the phone against his left ear with his right hand, his right arm being curled around the back of his head. He held a mug of coffee in his left hand. He spoke to Hamish Dell, solicitor, and notary public of Kilsyth.

  ‘Oak Cottage again?’ Dell’s voice sounded tetchy to Montgomerie.

  ‘If you don’t mind. Sorry to put you to so much trouble, Mr Dell.’

  ‘No trouble. How can I help?’

  ‘Really just to clarify a point. You say the property was empty and on the market for a period of time some years ago?’

  ‘Yes. How long ago precisely I can’t say off hand, but it must be eight or so years. It was summer time, I remember that. As I believe I have already informed you, the situation was that the householder was then elderly and had decided to seek what I believe is to be termed frail ambulant accommodation, and in order to pay for same, she agreed to sell her house. Like many elderly people she was cash-poor, property-wealthy. She did in fact enter a nursing home, with no intention of returning to Oak Cottage. Her house was cleared and her possessions placed in storage. Just one week after she entered the nursing home she was admitted to hospital and became a long-stay patient and her place in the nursing home was given to another elderly person.’

  1 see.’

  ‘It was while our client was in hospital that the property was placed on the market, according to her instructions. Her body was failing but her mind was as sharp as a tack.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So we followed our instructions. Not many folk were interested in the property, one or two asked for the keys. One guy in particular came back twice.’

  ‘You didn’t show people around?’

  ‘No…no need, there was nothing in the house. It had been stripped to its floorboards and the fuel supply turned off. We just took proof of identity and handed over the keys. It’s the normal practice.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘In the event, the owner died in hospital before the property was sold. At which point it was taken off the market until her son could be traced. It’s remained empty and growing more and more derelict as the years go on.’

  ‘The man who came back to view the property on more than one occasion. That would be Gary Westwater, right?’

  ‘Yes, as I said before: tall guy, middle aged, a bit full of himself as I recall, remember him because of his car, lovely Mark II Jaguar. The colour, yellow, was a bit loud for me. Lovely car though. I see it from time to time around the region.’

  Montgomerie sipped the coffee. ‘Well, thank you once again for your help, Mr Dell.’

  King listening from his desk said: ‘Anything new?’

  Montgomerie shook his head. ‘Not really, but it’s all beginning to come together.’

  ‘I think we should go and see Fabian.’

  ‘No.’ Montgomerie shook his head. ‘I want to check something. I’m going to drive out to Oak Cottage. Coming?’

  King stood and reached for his coat.

  ‘There’s not a trace.’

  ‘You’d better be right.’

  ‘All the carpets up and away like you said.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘Burned like you said. We took it down the East End, some waste ground. Three separate sites. Furniture was given to the charity shops.’

  ‘You’ve ordered new stuff?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Not the same shops though?’

  ‘No…different shop. They’re coming tomorrow to measure it up.’

  ‘The gun?’

  ‘It’s away, Gary. I told you.’

  ‘Aye…did anybody ever tell you that you’re one greedy female? You’ve got pound-note signs for eyeballs, so you have.’

  A pause. He glared at her. She blinked timidly at him. Their
voices echoed in the room, stripped down to bare plaster and floorboards.

  The police,’ he said slowly, ‘the police have been asking my half-brother questions.’

  ‘About Ronnie?’

  ‘About Cernach Antiques. Remember them?’

  ‘Oh God.’ She gasped the words. ‘Already?’

  ‘Aye, that too. See, that’s what I came to tell you, Carberrie. That’s what’s at stake now. They’re on to you, on to me, on to all of us. Get this bleached. Get this room bleached down to nothing. Now.’

  It rained during Montgomerie and King’s outward journey to Oak Cottage, Kilsyth, and it rained during their return journey to Glasgow. But the rain had eased off when they stood speaking to Mrs Test, with grey skirt and black shawl and silver hair and booming voice, and whose cottage was the next cottage along from Oak Cottage, separated by a field in which were horses.

  ‘Didn’t care for him. Didn’t take to him at all,’ she boomed, as if calling children in from across the field rather than speaking to King and Montgomerie who stood at her doorstep, inches from her. ‘“Laughing Boy”, I called him. With his ha…ha…ha…just came to tell you ha…ha…ha…Mind you, he could’ve left me in the dark, I mind that he could have done that.’

  ‘What did he say to you, Mrs Test?’

  ‘Och…he was saying he was moving into Oak Cottage and he had a man doing measurements and a bit of work so I wasn’t to worry if I saw folk hanging about the place or lights burning at night.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Och aye…there was a wee guy about the place for a week, driving off in his van.’

  ‘Van?’

  ‘Aye. Ex-Post Office van. My man was a postman, God rest him. It was the sort of van he drove before he died, God rest him. Never lived to get his pension, the poor soul. But I ken the type and the colour, the wee wire-mesh grill behind the driver’s seat—ex-Post Office. They sell them off at motor auctions, ye ken. It was one of those.’

  ‘Did you see anybody else?’

  ‘Laughing Boy in his flash yellow motor once or twice, two women, one red-haired and the other dark-haired, and the wee guy supposed to be doing some work on the house. Work? I see him…I’m an old woman and I do more work in my bed than he ever did. Sunning himself by the side of the house, giving his scrawny wee body a tan. Mind you, he’d nothing else going for him, nothing for it but to tan himself. Oh, but see my Jack, see him, now there was a man. Army, that’s where we met…then the Post Office. All his days he worked. Aye…I’ve not much in my wee home but I’ve fine, proud memories.’

  Montgomerie smiled. So did King, who then asked, ‘And all this was some time ago?’

  ‘Eight years, or thereabouts. See my man Jack, he was still warm in the clay…that’s how I noticed the Post Office van because just a week or so earlier my man Jack was driving one. Then he was in the clay and then the same sort of van was at the door of Oak Cottage, so yes, eight years ago this year. Be nine years next summer.’

  They only stayed a week?’

  ‘Or so. Then they just left. Thanks be…I mean, who’d want them as neighbours?’

  ‘And the wee guy? He did no work?’

  ‘Not that I saw. Except when he first arrived. He dug up the back garden.’

  ‘Dug it up?’

  ‘Dug a hole, I mean. Right at the bottom of the garden. I was a wee bit curious. Dare say I did a wee nosy out my back window, but then a couple of times I saw him he was after carrying rubbish out and putting it in the hole and burning it. So then it made sense. I thought, well, at least they’re keeping their pitch clean. Took no notice after that, except in passing, y’ken.’

  Having thanked Mrs Test, King and Montgomerie returned to the road and their car. Neither man could help his gaze being drawn to Oak Cottage, its garden, and especially the bottom of its garden.

  ‘Now,’ said Montgomerie, fishing in his ski-jacket pocket for his car keys, ‘now we speak to Fabian.’

  It was then that the rain came on again.

  Upon their return to P Division Police Station, King found a note waiting for him in his pigeonhole. It was from the collator. One Carberrie, Mary, forty-seven years of age, had a conviction for theft ten years earlier and which is now spent.

  Fabian Donoghue finished his pipe, placed it in his ashtray and picked up the file and walked to Findlater’s office. He tapped on the door of Findlater’s office and walked in as custom and practice and personal working relationship allowed. He found Chief Superintendent Findlater standing staring at a huge rubber plant that dominated his office; having been bought as a young plant and repotted twice, now it grew out of a pot the size of a dustbin and spread its tentacles up the

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  walls and along the ceiling. The plant, it seemed, was all and everything to Findlater, and many a CID officer had stepped silently into Findlater’s office believing the office to be vacant in order to leave a file on his desk or to perform some other task, only to find Findlater standing stroking the plant and murmuring sweet nothings to the nearest fleshy leaf.

  ‘I’ve got a problem, Fabian.’ Findlater turned as Donoghue entered his office.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s Heathcliff.’

  ‘Heathcliff?’

  ‘My rubber plant.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What to do with him when I go.’

  ‘Go, sir?’

  ‘Retire, Fabian. I’m coming up to my retirement in a few months. Thirty years’ service. Police Cadet Findlater in Elgin is now CS Findlater in Glasgow. Tell you, I remember the early days better than I do yesterday. Myself and Mrs Findlater are going on preparation for retirement courses. It’s apparently a major upheaval in a marriage, especially if the husband is the only breadwinner. The wife is used to having her man out of the house for eight, ten hours at a time, then all of a sudden he’s there all the time, in the way, under her feet, she has to start sharing her personal space. Marriages have foundered on retirement. So we are told.’

  Donoghue caught his breath.

  ‘Say something to reach you, Fabian?’

  ‘Frankly you did, sir. I think you explained something.’

  ‘Well, that’s all to the good, eh?’

  ‘I think it is, I really think it is.’

  Findlater nodded and smiled at Donoghue, always dressed in a sombre pinstripe suit with a gold hunter’s chain looped across his waistcoat. ‘But what do I do about Heathcliff?’

  ‘Prune it, sir.’

  ‘Him. Prune him.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Donoghue shifted his weight from one leg to the other. ‘Prune him.’

  ‘Want to avoid doing that, Fabian.’ Findlater turned and considered the plant. ‘It can be taken out in a one-er. I know it can. We have a team of willing volunteers, we can get him into the car park. I can hire a lorry…a five-tonner. I can get it into my house. It can be done. No, the real problem is with Mrs Findlater. You see, she has brought this up in our pre-retirement discussion groups. It is not that she objects to having to share our home with me on a full-time basis, but she objects to having to share it with Heathcliff as well. Especially since I’m going to put him next to the television. The problem really is how do I stop her poisoning him while I’m at the golf club? A good dose of saline solution and my lovely wee boy’s a goner. I can’t see the committee allowing him to take up residence in the clubhouse. It’s a worry. I fret about it. But you didn’t come here to speak to me of plants and things?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Donoghue patted the file. ‘I’d like to put you in the picture about the murder…’

  ‘Fella with no brains that greeted us on the day the clocks went back? Two days ago?’

  That’s the one, sir. We’ve made headway and its shaped up to be more than a petty ned getting filled in by like felons.’

  ‘Really?’ Findlater indicated the chair in front of his desk. ‘Take a pew and tell me about it.’

  Findlater listened intently and without interruption until Donog
hue said ‘…and that’s about it, sir.’

  ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right, Fabian.’ Findlater leaned back in his chair. Behind him on the wall hung a photograph of the man fly fishing. ‘Ronnie Grenn, the deceased, served time for a jewellery robbery and wilful fire-raising which nobody believed he was capable of committing, but he put his hand up for it and collected a lenient seven years. In the pokey he makes noises about having enough dosh waiting for him to come out to enable him to go straight like his mentor, Kit Saffa, who is as bent as a three-pound note, but that is by the by. The point is that Ronnie Grenn is coming out to a wedge so as to go straight. So he says. And in prison he is visited by a woman called Mary Carberrie who apparently reinforces that notion, and also allows him to think that he has got her waiting for him as well. And yet upon his release, he gets his brains blown out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Investigations into the antecedents of the deceased indicate some possible connection with the abduction and presumed murder of the Edinburgh heiress, Ann “Annie” Oakley, by name. It then transpires that the ownership of Cernach Antiques is registered in the name of Carberrie, Mary. The insurance on Cernach Antiques was arranged with a certain Gary Westwater of the Glasgow and Trossachs Insurance Company. He insisted, during a boardroom battle of El Alamein proportions and intensity, that their insurance company meet the claim even to the point of fellow directors selling their personal belongings and raising second mortgages. As if he was determined that the insurance company should pay up, despite some misgivings about it being an insurance scam of epic dimensions. Anyway, they pay up, and the insurance company, more by accident than design, goes from strength to strength and said Gary Westwater sells his interest and goes into retirement in order to spend his time blasting Monarchs of the Glen to pieces with very powerful rifles. So we have a high-velocity link there, don’t we? Gary Westwater’s passion is for the type of weapon that extracted Ronnie Grenn’s brains. So by this time, if you are right, abduction, murder, insurance scam, we are talking about money having been criminally obtained in the sum of…?’