Last Reminder

by Stuart Pawson

  The office was deserted, which was fine by me. I typed my reports and read some others. Eastwood would be busy assistant-managering at the York and Durham. I’d assume he worked normal office hours and hit him at about six, after he’d eaten but before he started on the Temeraire.

  Maggie and Sparky came in with long faces. They’d plenty of misery to report, but no confessions.

  Eastwood was leathering his Audi when I arrived, still wearing his suit and tie. Some office types can’t wait to get out of a suit when they go home, but he wasn’t one of them.

  At the back of his house I noticed a brand new greenhouse standing on a concrete base. It must have been new because there was nothing in it. Eastwood apologised for the non-existent mess and showed me inside.

  ‘How can I help you, Inspector?’ he asked.

  I didn’t prat about. I just laid the photo of the pirate attack on the table and said, ‘Do you recognise this lady?’

  He swallowed and placed two manicured fingers over his lips, as if a great gob of bile had just made a bid for freedom. ‘Y-Yes,’ he stuttered, stifling a burp. ‘It’s m-my ex-wife.’

  ‘Oh, could you explain?’

  ‘Well, er, yes. Did you find this at Hartley’s?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Well, er, 1993 I think it was. Joan and I had booked to go on a cruise, and Hartley remarked that he hadn’t had a holiday for years. We saw quite a bit of him in those days – he used to make up a bridge foursome, twice a week. So, Joan and I discussed it between ourselves and suggested he come on the cruise with us. He leapt at the idea.’

  I bet he did. ‘So why did you stop seeing so much of him?’ I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just one of those things. We grew bored with him. All he ever talked about was work, kept trying to involve me in his schemes, pump me for information, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And you like to leave it all behind you in the office,’ I suggested. ‘Work on your models.’

  ‘Quite, Inspector.’

  ‘Pardon my asking, Mr Eastwood, but was your divorce anything to do with Goodrich?’

  The bile was still causing him a problem. ‘No,’ he replied, swallowing and grimacing at the same time.

  ‘Mrs Eastwood wasn’t having an affair with him?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  He’d replied just a little too quickly, so I waited for him to enlarge.

  ‘She…he… She went through a bad patch – nerves, you know. Then decided she wanted a completely fresh start. I think he influenced her, made her feel dissatisfied, but no more than that. We quarrelled a lot. She didn’t appreciate the pressures I was under.’

  No, it must be difficult trying to make all those little figures with peg-legs and eye-patches and parrots on their shoulders. ‘So where is she now?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, where did she go?’

  ‘To a flat in Heckley, but she’s moved since then.’

  ‘And you don’t know where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where would you look if you needed to find her?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Think, Mr Eastwood. Has she any relatives?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A sister in Bradford. They were fairly close, she might know where Joan is.’

  ‘Do you have the sister’s address?’

  ‘I suppose so, somewhere.’

  ‘In that case, I’d be very grateful if you could find it for me.’

  On the way out I cast a backward glance at the concrete pad under the greenhouse, and wondered how thick it was.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I stopped at a corner shop and bought an A to Z. The sister, Dorothy, lived somewhere off the Haworth Road, on the far side of the town, and Eastwood didn’t know her phone number. Some enquiries are like pushing a Tesco’s trolley up the down escalator. Bradford has developed a system of by-passes, but I wanted to go through the city centre. There was gridlock at Forster Square, caused by a broken-down bus. Just after the buses were de-regulated the ones in Bradford carried the message: Privately run for the benefit of the customer, or something similar. Immediately underneath were the words: No change given. I noted that they’d had the decency to remove the benefit of the customer bit. A young girl in a sari and a Nissan let me filter on to the roundabout and I gave her a wave. We were off again.

  I drove through the Land of a Thousand Curries, past cinemas converted into mosques or carpet warehouses, and halal butchers that had been Coops and Thrifts when I was a kid. Old men in pyjama trousers, sticking out from under Umbro anoraks, strolled the pavements, followed by women who might have been sixteen or sixty, ravishing or dog-ugly. The veil is a great equaliser. I felt uncomfortable. I think I subscribe to the melting pot theory of integration. If we have to have ghettos, let them be multinational. The Romans knew a thing or two. When they conquered a country they adopted the local gods. It must have saved them a lot of hassle.

  Dorothy opened the door as far as a chain would allow and a cat shot out through the gap. It was a bow-fronted terrace house in a street that was running to seed but not quite decay. I’d had to park three doors away, and a couple of cars standing on blocks told me that the rot was starting.

  ‘I’m DI Priest from Heckley CID,’ I told the pale face that peered at my warrant card through the gap, almost level with my own. ‘I’m trying to trace your sister, Joan Eastwood. I wonder if I could come in and have a word with you?’

  She took the chain off and let me in. The front room was barely furnished, with unframed prints by Klimt and Modigliani on the emulsioned walls, and I had the choice of sitting either on an upright chair or something between a futon and a palliasse. I chose the upright and Dorothy dossed on the floor, next to her coffee mug and ashtray. She was wearing jeans and a baggy sweater that was perpetually falling off one shoulder, revealing a pale-blue bra strap.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, waving the mug at me and removing the fag from her lips to have a drink. ‘Can I offer you a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks all the same, but no. Can you tell me if you know where Joan is?’

  ‘Is this to do with Hartley Goodrich?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. We believe your sister was friendly with him and may be able to tell us something about his lifestyle.’

  She smiled and took a drag of her cigarette, which brought on a coughing fit. For a few seconds I thought she was going to choke, but another swig and a puff restored her equilibrium. Sometimes I think there must be a link between smoking and coughing. Perhaps it’s something the medical profession should look into. ‘Ambleside Road,’ she said. ‘Number twenty-three. That’s Leeds, Alwoodley. A nice area. And, boy, will she be able to tell you about Hartley’s lifestyle.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘No, I’m only guessing about them. You’d better ask her yourself.’

  ‘So you think they were having an affair?’

  She nipped the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray and reached out for the packet of Benson and Hedges that was nearby. ‘More than likely, in my opinion.’

  ‘Have you ever met Goodrich?’

  She nodded and smiled, dabbing the end of a fresh cigarette against a five-for-a-pound plastic lighter.

  ‘When was this?’ I asked.

  ‘Bout four, five years ago. Maybe longer. They used to play bridge on Saturday evenings and tried to fix me up with him. Joan was full of how wonderful he was. Hartley this, Hartley that. In fact, he was a slimy little toad, except that he wasn’t little, apart from his intellect. I couldn’t stand the guy, but for a couple of weeks I had a certain sadistic pleasure in pandering to his political views. Then I exploded and told him what a fascist shite he was.’ She turned her hands palms upwards. ‘That was the end of my journey into suburbia.’

  I laughed, conscious that she probably regarded me as a fascist shite, too. ‘I bet that was worth seeing,’ I said.

  ‘I enjoyed it, but I’ve a feeling I may have driven Joa
n into his arms. Have you met her ex, Derek?’

  ‘Yes. He gave me your address.’

  ‘Has he finished the Temeraire, yet?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ I chuckled.

  She heaved a big sigh and put the cigarette between her lips. I rose to leave, thanking her for her assistance. The fug in the room was like it used to be in pubs twenty years ago.

  She hauled herself upright, saying, ‘You’re a man of the world, Inspector, so you probably recognise the types. I’m the bright sister who made a mess of things; Joan was the dumb one who made good. C’est la vie.’

  ‘Oh, I suspect you have your moments,’ I told her.

  ‘Moments,’ she agreed, nodding wistfully.

  ‘One more thing – when did you last see Joan?’

  ‘It’d be about six weeks ago. Met her for lunch in Leeds. But we talk on the phone every fortnight or so.’

  ‘And did she seem just the same as always?’

  ‘Yes, as far as I could tell.’

  ‘Does she work?’

  ‘Yes, as a nursing auxiliary at the local hospital. She moved there to be near the job. Perhaps that’s something you should ask her about, too.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

  ‘She worked for York and Durham, like Derek. Pension plan, key to the executive toilets, the full package. Left in an unseemly hurry and was unemployed for a while, after their marriage collapsed. I’d have thought she could have wangled herself a transfer to another branch. Something happened, but I don’t know what.’

  ‘I see. Thanks. So when I’ve gone, presumably you’ll give her a sisterly ring and tell her I’m looking for her.’

  ‘Yes, presumably I will.’

  ‘In that case, maybe we could ring her now and make me an appointment, if you don’t mind?’

  Joan worked shifts and wasn’t answering, so I rang her from the station the following morning and then hot-wheeled it over to Leeds. She was probably about five years older than her sister and a good six inches shorter. She had a round face compared with Dorothy’s long Virginia Woolf countenance, and dressed differently – mohair twinset against denim and Aran. As far as I knew they were full sisters, but it didn’t look as if they shared the same gene pool. Perhaps their mother had been susceptible to the odd smooth-talking insurance man, too. The permissive society didn’t really begin in the sixties, we just started talking about it then.

  She had the upstairs flat in a rather swish maisonette. Rented furnished, I presumed, although her stamp was on the place: lots of artificial flowers and the dreaded Lladró. Her hand shook as she poured me a cup of tea.

  ‘Mmm, I needed that,’ I told her, taking a sip. When she was settled I asked her how well she knew Mr Goodrich.

  ‘Fairly well, I suppose,’ she replied.

  ‘I believe you held bridge evenings,’ I prompted.

  ‘Y-yes, that’s right. For a while.’

  ‘Was he any good?’

  ‘Quite good. Very competitive – he tried harder than we did. He liked to win.’

  ‘Did he bring his own partner?’ I asked. I’d heard about bridge evenings. Sometimes they didn’t even bring a pack of cards.

  ‘No. We always had a problem finding a fourth. The lady on the other side of us liked a game, but she had to go into a home. Alzheimer’s disease. Then Dorothy made the numbers up for a while, but it wasn’t really her thing. So eventually they fizzled out.’

  ‘And how many times did you go on holiday together?’

  She’d put her cup down, then picked it up again to keep her fingers occupied. Now she placed it back on the table to avoid spilling the contents. I obviously knew a lot more than she expected.

  ‘Just the once, a Caribbean cruise.’

  ‘Mrs Eastwood, was Goodrich one of the reasons for the failure of your marriage?’

  She shook her head defiantly. ‘No, not at all.’

  I asked her all the routine stuff about when she’d last seen him, finishing off with a query about investments.

  ‘After the divorce,’ she said, ‘Derek had to buy my half of the house. Hartley offered to invest the money for me.’

  ‘And did you let him?’

  She nodded and sniffed.

  ‘Have you lost your money?’

  Another nod and sniff. ‘It’s looking like it. Well, twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘In diamonds?’

  ‘Diamond. Singular.’

  I asked her if she could tell me anything about his business acquaintances, but she had nothing to volunteer.

  ‘Have you ever heard of K. Tom Davis?’ I asked.

  She looked up, startled. ‘Yes, but I never met him. He was behind the diamonds. It was his fault that it all went wrong. Hartley was duped just as much as anybody else.’

  She couldn’t expand on her theory, so I invited her to ring me if she thought of anything else and left. I picked up a beef sandwich and a curd tart, carefully avoiding the spoonerism, at a local bakery and made my way back to Heckley. Waiting on my desk was a brown envelope, bursting at the seams. It contained a thick wad of coloured photocopies of the poster I’d done for the bullbars campaign. That was quick, for Traffic, I thought. I put a small pile on everybody’s desk and pinned a couple on notice boards. Then I went to the loo.

  Nigel was washing his hands. ‘Hi, boss,’ he greeted me. ‘I’ve a message for you.’

  There was the sound of a toilet flushing, and a huge PC came out of a cubicle, tucking his shirt flap into his waistband.

  ‘Hello, George,’ I said. ‘Successful?’

  ‘Grand, Mr Priest,’ he replied. ‘Like a flock o’ pigeons landin’ on a wet roof.’

  Nigel’s gaze switched from the PC to me and back again, his jaw hanging slack, like a moose with a gumboil. He’s from Berkshire, and lies awake at night wondering if he’d be more at home in Ulan Bator.

  ‘What was it?’ I asked him.

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘The message.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Two things, actually. First of all the Dean brothers are in the court lists for Monday, so I may be out of circulation for a couple of days. And a chap called Davis just rang. Said you’d been chasing him. He left his number.’

  ‘Justin Davis?’

  ‘No, Tom something-or-other.’

  ‘K. Tom. Great.’

  Walking back to the office Nigel said, ‘I’ve been wondering about inviting Heather – Professor Simms – out for dinner. She’s frightfully attractive, don’t you think?’

  ‘Our new pathologist? Mmm, yes, she is.’

  ‘She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but I don’t suppose you know if she has a boyfriend or anything?’

  We were back at Nigel’s desk and he tore the top page off his notepad and handed it to me. ‘No idea,’ I told him. ‘Met her for the first time myself on Monday. Just go for it, Nigel. She can only say no. Defeat is no disgrace, to quote Idi Amin’s chiropodist.’

  Now he looked more puzzled than ever. ‘Just one thing,’ I confided, lowering my voice. ‘If she offers to cook for you, don’t touch the liver.’

  K. Tom Davis’s wife answered the phone. ‘Hello, Mrs Davis,’ I said. ‘This is Inspector Priest. I have a message to ring your husband at this number.’

  He was there, so I drove straight over to see him. The obligatory Range Rover stood in front of the garages and I wished I’d brought the bullbars leaflets with me, but as I walked past the car I was pleasantly surprised to see it didn’t have them fitted. I thumbed the bell-push and heard the first four bars of Canon in D from deep within. Or maybe it was the last four bars. Or any combination of bars in between.

  This time we didn’t sit in the glorified greenhouse. I slithered about on a chesterfield that was as comfortable as a piano lid and they accompanied me on the matching easy chairs. More depressing hunting scenes adorned the walls – horses frozen in mid-leap against backgrounds straight out of How to Paint Trees.

  K. Tom was a big man, impressive, but his
beer gut was winning the weight war and his nose had dipped into too many whisky glasses. The gold cufflinks would have paid off my one and only creditor, leaving the sovereign rings – one on each hand – to put a new set of tyres on the cause of same debt.

  ‘I was scared,’ he explained, when I asked him the reason for his disappearance. ‘I read about Goodrich’s murder and I suppose I panicked. Thought I’d be next on the list, maybe. I told Ruth I was going to see Justin, but I booked into the Devonshire Hotel, in Wharfedale, for a couple of nights.’ At the mention of his wife’s name he broke off rolling the bottom of his tie and gestured towards her. ‘I rang her last night,’ he continued, ‘and she told me of your visit. It’s a terrible business, Inspector. If I can help in any way you have only to ask.’

  ‘Well, first of all, we’re not sure that it was murder, but somebody did hit him over the head. At the moment we’re calling it a suspicious death.’ Might as well clarify that right from the beginning. ‘When did you last see Goodrich?’

  ‘Good grief, let me see. Must be over six months ago. I’ve only seen him once since we…since…’

  ‘Since you went bankrupt?’

  ‘Since we called the receiver in.’

  ‘So what made you think you might be next on the list?’

  The bottom of his tie looked like a spring roll and I felt hungry. He realised what he was doing and flattened it against his stomach. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I, er, assumed it was a mad creditor, out for revenge because he’d lost a few quid. They should see what we’ve lost. They all think that we’re the villains of the piece, but we’ve been hurt most of all. The blame really lies with the banks. If they hadn’t pulled the plug on us, nobody would have been hurt.’

  And Robert Maxwell was a big cuddly teddy bear. I asked them where they were on Sunday night, Monday morning – not because I cared but because that was what they expected me to ask. They never left the house.

  ‘Are there any creditors who have been particularly hostile, or threatened violence?’ I asked.