Learning Curve

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Ah, I remember that pile-up. Nasty. Proper recipe for disaster, it was.’

  ‘Accident waiting to happen?’ That was one thing to be said for the detective branch of the force: you never knew what was going to happen next. In Traffic Division you usually did.

  ‘I’ll say, Seedy. Overcrowded car, early hours of the morning, and nearly all high on drink, if not drugs. Come to think of it, though, taking drugs didn’t come into that one because we checked. What they didn’t take either, though, was that bend in the road outside Cullingoak. The car went straight off the tarmac and totalled into a tree. Gave us a lot of trouble afterwards, that did, seeing that the tree couldn’t tell us a lot.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Sloan curiously. He thought it was only the detective branch of the police service that encountered difficulties at work.

  ‘Turned out to be a bit of a problem about knowing who’d been at the wheel.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and went on, ‘A well-meaning member of the public had come across the wreckage and sent for us and the ambulance people. But before we got there he’d got all but one of the people out – some must have been thrown out on impact – and strewn them all over the place. We couldn’t work out a thing from where they were lying.’

  Sloan gave a sympathetic nod. ‘They say it’s only a matter of time before computer generated imaging will be able to tell you where in the car everyone had been.’

  ‘Maybe, Seedy, but in the meantime some people needed to know. The coroner, for starters.’

  ‘Seat belts?’ asked Sloan more mundanely. He didn’t need telling that among those who also needed to know who had been at the wheel were the car’s insurers.

  ‘Not on your life – or, to be strictly accurate – not on their lives.’ The traffic man shrugged his shoulders. ‘We think a couple of them might have been thrown out of the vehicle and ended up on the actual road – the other motorist swears he didn’t try to move any of them far but it didn’t help. And in any case there weren’t enough seat belts to go round should they have had a mind to put them on.’

  ‘They never learn,’ sighed Sloan.

  ‘I can tell you that your Paul Tridgell – he’s the one you’re interested in, isn’t he? – was one of the survivors in spite of roads being hard places to land on. Mind you, they had to get the fire and rescue people over there to cut one of the others out. The car was upside down which didn’t help working out who had been sitting where.’

  ‘Tridgell seems to have survived all right, physically anyway, if what I’ve seen of him is anything to go by,’ said Sloan. There would be no real telling about the psychological after-effects of the accident without asking penetrating questions, and Sloan wasn’t ready to talk to Paul Tridgell again.

  Not just yet.

  ‘You never can tell,’ said Harpe lugubriously.

  ‘So what did old Double-Barrelled make of it?’

  ‘Locombe-Stapleford? Oh, the coroner decided that since there wasn’t enough evidence to enable him to be certain who had been driving he couldn’t – how did it he put it in his language? – “properly apportion culpability”, especially as the owner of the car hadn’t been in the vehicle. In the end he brought in a verdict of “Death by Misadventure” for the boy who was killed but he wasn’t happy.’

  ‘And even so the insurance company would still have wanted to know who had been doing the driving,’ pointed out Sloan.

  ‘And how,’ said Harpe heavily. ‘Not our problem, the insurance people, though. They have to fight their own corner, which I may say they usually do very well.’

  ‘And what did the owner have to say about it? I hope the car wasn’t a cut-and-shut job, or,’ he added, ‘taken without consent.’

  ‘No, it was the old, old story,’ said Harpe wearily. ‘Boyfriend borrowed the girl’s mother’s car for a night out, promising to drive carefully.’

  ‘And get the girl home by midnight, I expect,’ supplemented Sloan, Cinderella not being the only one of whom this was expected. Cherished daughters came into this category, too. He homed in on the main point. ‘He took the car with her mother’s consent anyway, that right?’

  ‘In the event that didn’t come into it. Even that bunch of lunatics decided that the boyfriend was too drunk to drive after their evening out. They can all remember that much but they’re not saying who did take the wheel. Not nohow.’

  ‘Difficult,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘Moreover,’ snorted Inspector Harpe, ‘every single one of the survivors insists that they can’t remember no matter how many times we ask them.’

  ‘It’s not only the Mafia who have honour codes,’ observed Sloan. ‘The young have them of their own, too, as well as bad memories.’

  ‘The boyfriend died at the scene and the daughter’s been in a wheelchair ever since,’ said Harpe.

  ‘And what happened to our Paul Tridgell, then?’

  ‘Woke up in hospital three days later and swore he couldn’t remember anything at all after they left the pub. Neither, they said, could any of the others. Mind you,’ he added with a cynicism borne of long experience, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if they’d all engaged solicitors by then. End of story.’

  ‘Or the beginning of another one,’ said Sloan soberly, getting up to go. ‘Thanks, Harry.’ He paused on his way out of the traffic inspector’s office. ‘I suppose I’d better have the names and addresses of all the others in that car. The super’s bound to ask if I’ve checked on them, too.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ said his friend, shoving a list in his direction.

  ‘A nice little run for you next, Crosby,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan genially after he had left Inspector Harpe’s room. ‘We’re off to Luston. No need for speed, though,’ he added, since the road between Berebury and Luston boasted the only serious stretch of dual carriageway in the county of Calleshire. He turned over a page in his notebook and read out an address there. ‘I gather Acacia Avenue is in one of their leafy suburbs.’

  ‘Didn’t know they had any leafy suburbs there,’ rejoined Crosby. Luston was the county’s only really industrial town and was still grimy in spite of a succession of Clean Air Acts. He shrugged his shoulders and added grudgingly, ‘but I suppose the nobs have to live somewhere.’

  ‘Not only to live somewhere but like it,’ pointed out Sloan, whose own mortgage for a small semi-detached house in suburban Berebury weighed heavily on the family budget at certain times of the month. ‘Otherwise they move out into the countryside, double-quick.’

  Where Christopher Honley lived was in a double-fronted house with garaging for two large cars. Crosby surveyed it with interest. ‘Retired through ill wealth, sir, would you say?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say anything at all, Crosby,’ Sloan reproved him, ‘and it’s high time you learnt that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s a policeman’s job to look and listen, not to jump to conclusions early on and don’t you forget it.’ Cases where the police had tailored the evidence to meld with a preconceived judgement on the guilt of the wrong person were not unknown. And not without unhappy consequences, either – for all concerned. Fitting up was what it was called in the police force and very unpopular it was with everyone outside it, especially defence counsel, the press and the Crown Prosecution Service. And their chief constable.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the constable, driving right up to the front door of number 24 and bringing the police car to a stop with a loud scrunch of brakes on the loose gravel.

  This brought a tall, thin man to the door, a much younger man than the detective inspector had expected.

  ‘Mr Christopher Honley?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Yes?’ responded the man warily.

  Sloan flashed a warrant card and introduced himself and Crosby. ‘We’d like to talk to you about the death of Michael Linane at Luston Chemicals.’

  ‘Oh, not again,’ Honley sighed. He spread his hands wide open in a gesture of despair. ‘I’ve told everybody everything I know
about a dozen times already.’

  ‘Then,’ said Crosby brightly, ‘you’ll have got your story off by heart now.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Constable,’ Honley turned to him and said coldly, ‘telling it again and again doesn’t help in spite of what all the shrinks in the world tell you. It was all quite ghastly and I, for one, can’t forget it.’ Chris Honley cast them both an enigmatic look and sighed. ‘I suppose you’d better come inside.’

  Sitting in a comfortable chair in a well-furnished room, Sloan took in his surroundings with interest. Early retirement and unemployment had patently not yet led to any severe retrenchment on Honley’s part. He must remember, though, on the other hand that it was quite possible that Crosby might have been right for once in a while and the man had retired with a handsome pay-off. For his silence, perhaps? It was impossible to say.

  At this stage, anyway.

  Honley said wearily, ‘I just couldn’t reach the poor fellow and that’s all there is to it. I tried but there was nothing there for me to hang on to any more than there had been for him.’ Honley sunk his head between his hands. ‘Don’t think I didn’t try to get to him, Inspector, because I did and I’ve been haunted by the whole ghastly thing ever since.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ Sloan had guessed that Luston Chemicals was quite a big firm but he already knew for certain that the death of a stranger was a very different matter from the death of someone you knew. It was what made wars possible. Not murder, though. It was other things that made murder possible.

  ‘Of course I knew him, Inspector. Michael Linane was Head of Sales here and in charge of the commercial development of one of our most successful products ever – an important job in any firm of pharmaceutical chemists.’ He restated every salesman’s credo. ‘There’d be no use our producing something good for patients if doctors didn’t prescribe it, would there?’

  ‘None,’ agreed Sloan, ignoring this piece of business thinking and cutting to the chase, so to speak. ‘Tell me, what took you past this vat when you did?’

  ‘I’d been looking out for a couple of fellows from Berebury Pharmaceuticals – they’d been over at a meeting that morning with Michael Linane and our chairman, Ralph Iddon …’

  ‘Big job,’ observed Sloan detachedly, ‘being chairman of your outfit.’

  ‘You can say that again, Inspector. But he’s a very clever fellow. In his own way, that is, of course.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Sloan, wondering exactly what way that could be. It was the very clever chaps who made a speciality of doing things that were illegal who made the most trouble for the police. The unclever ones who did things that were illegal were less trouble – but then they weren’t usually to be found at the head of big pharmaceutical firms.

  ‘I can assure you that he’s very good at business,’ insisted Chris Honley.

  Detective Inspector Sloan said he was very glad to hear it, it being always said that money made the world go round. On the other hand he wasn’t sure that it made it a better place. He tucked this thought carefully away at the back of his mind against some mythical time in the future when he had could consider the proposition.

  ‘It’s important in the pharmaceutical world, you know,’ Honley was going on. ‘Big Pharma has got very big indeed these days.’

  Sloan forbore to say that in his opinion being good at one’s job was important in every world.

  Honley was still going on. ‘Those two men from Berebury Pharmaceuticals had come over to see Michael and our chairman earlier that morning. I didn’t know what it was all about at the time but there were voices raised and someone saw the men from Berebury marching out of Ralph Iddon’s office looking very angry indeed. The thing was …’

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Sloan into the pause.

  ‘Nobody knew where the pair had got to after that. They’d stormed out in such a temper and didn’t wait to be steered to the front door. I happened to be passing the chairman’s door at the time and was sent to help find them, and make sure that they hadn’t seen anything that they shouldn’t and then show them out properly.’ He smiled faintly. ‘You can’t afford to let your business rivals loose in your works. Dangerous.’

  ‘And did you find them?’ said Sloan, making a mental note of the man’s use of the word ‘rivals’.

  ‘I found one of them. Derek Tridgell – you know, the fellow who’s just died. He told me that he was lost and that his boss – he’s called Sharp – Jonathon Sharp – was also looking for the way out but he didn’t know where he’d got to.’

  ‘And what did your chairman have to say about that at the inquest?’ asked Sloan with interest.

  ‘That he’d had a normal meeting with the men from Berebury about the pricing of one of their products, and then a short one with Michael Linane afterwards to do with increasing production of our tablet Mendaner as soon as possible. Nothing too out of the ordinary, he said, but as sales of it were taking off they had to act quickly. He said that was the last time he saw him.’

  ‘So you gave in your notice and left your employers,’ prompted Sloan, making a note. ‘Why was that, then? Especially if the firm was doing so well with this product.’ He glanced down at his notebook. ‘Mendaner, you said it was called.’

  Honley spread his hands open in a gesture of despair. ‘I just couldn’t go on working there, Inspector. Not without looking at the spot where poor Michael had bought it in such a terrible way every single working day. Nobody could. Oh, I know the firm was well insured and Linane’s people were being looked after very well, but I found I couldn’t concentrate on anything else however hard I tried. It was dreadful.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. And he did. There were officers at the police station who couldn’t ever shake off memories of tragedies they had had to attend no matter how hard they tried or for how long. Some of them retired, too, although they found out too late that even then the memories didn’t go away. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Left the firm.’ He waved a hand. ‘Oh, I know it was a mad thing to do but I just couldn’t stand being there any longer. Not day after day.’ He looked in the direction of a side table with a studio portrait of a woman on it inside a silver frame. ‘And my wife said she couldn’t stand living with me, being around as I was after the accident and that I had to do something about it or she would leave me. She was sure I had to leave Luston Chemicals or have a nervous breakdown – so was my doctor.’

  ‘And so what are you doing now?’ asked Sloan, there being no sign whatsoever of any downsizing about the place and sizeable cars being notably juicy.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Honley shortly. ‘Well, for the time being anyway.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sloan.

  The man jerked his head. ‘I suppose that you could say that theoretically I’m on gardening leave at the moment.’

  Sloan raised his eyebrows. ‘Only theoretically?’ he queried.

  ‘Yes, Inspector. That’s all you can call it politely.’

  ‘So you’ve got another job lined up,’ divined Crosby.

  ‘Will have very soon,’ amended Honley. He looked at the two policemen. ‘Actually, it’s over at Berebury Pharmaceuticals but it doesn’t start quite yet. Oh, my old firm mightn’t like it but they can’t stop me. My solicitors have said so. I’ve been headhunted, you see.’

  Suddenly Detective Inspector Sloan had a burst of enlightenment and did see. ‘To replace Derek Tridgell?’

  ‘Dead man’s shoes,’ said Crosby complacently. ‘I’ve heard of them.’

  Honley nodded. ‘That’s right. And that’s why I can’t very well start there for a little while.’

  ‘Not until after the man’s been properly buried,’ said Crosby. ‘It wouldn’t be decent.’

  ‘Their head honcho, Jonathon Sharp, is a really smart cookie, I can tell you,’ said Honley.

  ‘Sharp by name and sharp by nature?’ suggested Crosby.

  ‘He’s had me lined up ever since he knew Tridgell wasn’t going to
get better but naturally we couldn’t say anything.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Sloan, making a mental note of the link between the two businesses. ‘And shall you be working in the same field as Tridgell was?’

  ‘With their product Ameliorite? Oh, no. That’s all done and dusted now – it’s probably not even in production over there any longer. It’s dead in the water. Besides, as I said, Luston Chemicals has its own product – Mendaner – that does very nearly the same thing rather cheaper. It’s up to Luston’s sales team now to carry on with that. Not my pigeon, sales, thank goodness and anyway they’ve got a replacement for Michael lined up. No, I’ll be working on something quite new that Derek had only just started out on. They’d got quite a few candidates in the pipeline over there that Derek Tridgell had been dealing with. He was a good man, you know.’

  ‘Candidates?’ asked Crosby, who had been told he wasn’t candidate material for the examination for sergeant: the phrase ‘In your dreams, laddy’, still rankled.

  ‘Candidates in our line,’ explained Honley, ‘are drugs that have been developed but not yet tested on humans.’

  Crosby announced that he was against vivisection.

  ‘On humans,’ repeated Honley.

  The detective constable raised no objection to this.

  ‘What you do have to worry about, gentlemen, in our way of business is falling off a patent cliff.’ Catching sight of Crosby’s puzzled face, Chris Honley hurried to explain. ‘When that happens anyone can manufacture your invention without paying you a royalty. That’s why you need to have a good product line.’

  ‘There’s no sentiment in business,’ remarked Crosby.

  There wasn’t a lot in police work either, thought Sloan, though there was often compassion, which was just as important.

  ‘My appointment’s not going to be announced until after the funeral,’ Honley was going on, ‘and then only after Derek’s wife has been told in private.’

  ‘Widow,’ said Crosby unnecessarily.