Nothing But Lies

by Lyndon Stacey

  As Daniel and Jahan walked away, the little boy tugged at his hand.

  ‘Mrs Boo is a nice lady, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is,’ he agreed. ‘Weren’t you a lucky boy to sit on Frankie?’

  Boo Travers might be a nice lady, Daniel reflected as they made their way back onto the main showground, though he wasn’t a hundred percent certain on that one, yet. However, one thing he did know; she was a woman with a lot on her mind, and he wouldn’t have minded betting that the beefy Scotsman had a lot to do with it. The strain showing on her face when she had thought Daniel was no longer looking had belied the airy confidence in her words.

  In the horsebox, on the way home, with Jahan having succumbed to contented exhaustion, Daniel outlined his encounter with Boo to Tamiko.

  ‘It obviously wasn’t the man you saw at her stables, that time,’ he said, having described Cal to her.

  ‘No. I tell you before, that was her brother,’ Tamiko said. ‘He wasn’t at all like this man you describe. His hair was light-coloured, um … blond with a beard that was more brown, or orange?’

  ‘Ginger?’ Daniel suggested.

  ‘Yes, ginger. And even though he was cross with me a bit for being there, he was not at all like this Cal who sounds like an arsow.’

  Daniel smothered a laugh. ‘A what?’

  She flushed slightly. ‘An arsow. Do I not say it right? It’s what Jo-Ji says sometimes when people behave very stupid.’

  ‘No, you’re fine. You just surprised me, that’s all.’

  Tamiko’s flush deepened. ‘It is perhaps not a very ladylike thing to say?’

  ‘Not very but it doesn’t bother me,’ Daniel assured her. Then after a period of silence, ‘I shouldn’t make a habit of copying everything Joey says, if I were you. The language of the police locker room can leave a bit to be desired.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Inga leaned through the door from the living quarters. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been listening, but did I hear you talking about Steven – Boo Travers’ brother?’

  ‘If that’s his name, yes. Tami saw him the other day, when she went to drop off the martingale she’d borrowed.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know he’d come home. I, um … used to know him quite well, before he went away.’

  From the pink tinge to her complexion, Daniel inferred that she had probably known him very well.

  ‘Did you say he had fair hair?’ she asked Tamiko. ‘It was darker when I knew him.’

  ‘So, where’s he been?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘He emigrated: Australia.’

  ‘Well, that could explain the hair. Sun bleached, perhaps.’

  ‘Of course, you’re right. But I wonder why he didn’t call me when he knew he was coming. Do you know if he’s still here?’

  ‘Boo said he was just visiting for a couple of days. She gave me the impression he wasn’t there anymore, sorry.’

  ‘Oh.’ Inga’s face registered her disappointment, then she said brightly, ‘It’s been four and a half years, I expect he’s moved on with his life – married even. Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  ‘Perhaps Boo has another brother,’ Daniel suggested. ‘It seems a long way to come for such a short visit.’

  ‘Perhaps he comes to see her son who is ill,’ Tamiko said.

  ‘Yes, that’s probably it,’ Daniel agreed. ‘Anyway, this guy I saw was a friend of her father’s, according to her, but it was almost like he had some hold over her, from what I overheard. She obviously doesn’t like him – and didn’t mind telling him so – but it’s as if, for some reason, she can’t get rid of him. Interesting.’

  Tamiko glanced sideways. ‘You are wearing your policeman’s hat.’

  He smiled. ‘It’s a fixture. Sorry, just thinking aloud. What we should be doing is celebrating all these rosettes.’ He nodded towards the half dozen bright ribbons displayed along the top of the windscreen.

  ‘I am pleased, very pleased, but there is also a guilty feeling.’

  ‘No, there shouldn’t be. Hana would be pleased for you. Just enjoy.’

  ‘Natalie was very pleased with the way Raffa went,’ Inga told her. Samson and Raffa’s owner had been at the ringside with a party of friends to see her horses jump. Daniel had been briefly introduced by Tamiko and his impression had been of a pretty, plumpish, blonde-haired woman in a strappy sundress, slightly high on alcohol and the company of friends. ‘She wanted to know if you are still going to the fundraiser tomorrow night and if she could have a lift,’ Inga added.

  ‘I suppose so. I had forgotten about it,’ Tamiko said. ‘It’s to raise a fund for an injured rider we know,’ she added for Daniel’s benefit.

  ‘If you go, will there be room for me?’ Inga asked. ‘I have no car at the moment.’

  ‘Yes. Sure,’ Tamiko told her, the query having apparently decided her. ‘We can pick you both up at seven. That’s if Daniel …?’

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  Daniel found himself reflecting on Tamiko’s observation about his policeman’s hat, later that evening, when he borrowed Jo-Ji’s computer to catch up on correspondence. Jahan was in bed and Tamiko dozing on the sofa, and after dealing with personal emails from Drew and Fred Bowden, and the inevitable accumulated dross of an Internet account left idle for a few days, he found himself pondering the possibility of finding any information on Boo Travers’ Scotsman online.

  The problem was that he didn’t even have a full name for the man. Cal, she had called him, but he had no way of knowing whether that was a first name, like Callum, or a nickname derived from his surname. For Boo’s father, whose supposed buddy the overbearing Cal had been, he had no information at all.

  Wishing he had the police’s national computer network to call on, he decided that the only search route open to him was through Boo herself, and with the limited information he held on her, he started with the electoral rolls. That none of it was any of his business, he freely admitted, but his curiosity had been piqued and he knew from experience that it would keep niggling at him until it was satisfied.

  A search of the electoral roll found Belinda Travers living at Rufford Manor, and gave him the names of three others, presumably her children, living at the same address. Her eldest son, Harrison, who Daniel had already met, was presumably living elsewhere, but of the three, the two females bore the surname Travers, and the male was listed under the name Spencer Allen.

  Was this the son with leukaemia, he wondered? And did it mean that Spencer wasn’t Dennie Travers’ son or merely that he’d declined to alter his name when his mother and father had finally married? If this was the case, was it safe to assume that Allen had been Boo’s maiden name, or had she perhaps been married before?

  The website refused to divulge any more information without him spending money so he abandoned it in favour of a genealogy site, where he took advantage of a free trial subscription to search for possible matches for the birth of a Belinda Allen, somewhere between forty and fifty years previously. Even doing a countrywide search there were mercifully few entries and taking a punt on one registered in the Bath area, he came up with one registered forty-six years ago with a mother’s maiden name of Lightfoot. Thanking providence that it hadn’t been Smith or Jones, Daniel then searched for a marriage between Allen and Lightfoot in the Bath area, in the five years previous to the birth, but drew a blank. Widening both his search area and time period, he got lucky. A David Harrison Allen had married a Carol Anne Lightfoot in Cirencester, some twelve years before Belinda had been born, and unless the fact that Boo’s eldest son was also called Harrison was a huge coincidence, Daniel felt fairly confident that he was on the right path.

  Trying a search for births, surname Allen, in the period before and after Belinda’s birth, he found one other male birth to a mother with the maiden name of Lightfoot. His name was Steven. That then, would be the brother that Tamiko had seen at Belinda’s home; the one who Inga had claimed to know. There were no others that he could f
ind.

  Trying a new direction, he did a general search for Boo’s father, David Harrison Allen, and scanned through the military records. This was doomed to disappoint because closer inspection revealed that there was nothing more recent than the Second World War. Scrolling on down, he found two mentions of his man in newspaper archives, one of which was an obituary dated seven years previously, from which he learned that Boo’s father had been a well-respected solicitor and town councillor who had passed away in a nursing home at the age of eighty-five and been survived by two children.

  Apart from serving in the second world war, long before Cal would have been born, there was no mention in the biography of any army career; it looked like David Allen had always intended to study law. Either he had the wrong man or Boo had lied about her father’s connection to the Scotsman. He was inclined to suspect the latter, as the ages of the two men would have been so widely divergent. The second article merely concerned a town planning issue in which he had been involved.

  Daniel sat back and gazed at the screen, thoughtfully. With no recent army records available to view, it seemed he was snookered, unless he could persuade someone to search through military records for him. But even if he could find someone willing to do so, what could he give them to go on?

  Returning to the search page, he singled out newspaper archives and entered the keywords ‘Wessex Light Infantry’ and ‘Cal’, clicking search, without much optimism.

  The computer screen blinked, went blank and then threw up three results: one regional paper and two national dailies. With quickening interest, Daniel clicked to view the first result and let his breath go in a long, low whistle.

  ‘Well, well,’ he breathed. ‘Whadda y’know?’

  Zooming in on the grainy image, he read of the dishonourable discharge from the WLI of twenty-three-year-old Corporal John McAllum, known as Cal, and nineteen-year-old Private Dennis Travers, both recently stationed in Wiltshire. It seemed that the two of them had been involved in an illegal and highly suspect bookmaking business, based at an unnamed licensed premises near their barracks, which had subsequently led to a civilian trial. The paper was dated some thirty-three years ago.

  It seemed that Boo Travers’ connection with the Scot wasn’t through her father, as she’d claimed, but by way of her dead husband. But why had she lied? Had Dennie been involved in other nefarious business with the Scotsman before he died, that had somehow left Boo inextricably linked to Cal?

  Daniel read through the other two reports but learned no more, except that it had apparently been the opinion of the court that Private Travers had been led on by his older co-conspirator, and should therefore be treated more leniently. Because of this, the nineteen-year-old had been spared a custodial sentence, being required instead to complete a term of community service.

  Daniel turned the computer off and sat back in his chair. It seemed his copper’s instinct had been true, after all. There was some mystery attached to Boo’s relationship with McAllum, but he was no nearer to knowing what it was. Presumably Dennie Travers had turned his life round after his first, ill-starred venture into criminality, as he had risen to become MD of Travers-King Construction, but had he remained friends with his army buddy? Having had the benefit of meeting the Scotsman face to face, Daniel felt it was unlikely. He wasn’t the kind of man a socially climbing businessman would want to be seen to associate with. So was it blackmail, then? Had McAllum had some hold over Travers? A hold that continued to exercise some power over his widow, even after his death?

  Daniel got to his feet. It was time to go out with Tamiko to let the dogs have a last run and tuck the horses up for the night. Turning the light off as he left the room, he was aware that far from satisfying his curiosity, he had set it ablaze, and he could no more leave the mystery unsolved than he could stop breathing.

  EIGHT

  The next morning brought a phone call from the social worker assigned to Jahan’s case, with the unwelcome, but not totally unexpected news that, as the boy’s father, Samir Jafari was claiming the right to have custody of Jahan.

  Jo-Ji, who took the call, was quick to raise concerns about Jafari’s fitness to be a father, citing Hana’s claims of abuse, and was assured that full checks were being carried out.

  ‘You should know, as well, that the kid is absolutely terrified of his father,’ Jo-Ji told them, and received the promise that it was Jahan’s interests that everyone had at heart.

  ‘So they might have,’ he said darkly, as he put down the phone. ‘But if Jafari’s name is on the birth certificate, they’ll have the devil’s own job stopping him taking the poor kid. We’ll just have to hope Hana really did report Samir and wasn’t just saying it to please us.’

  ‘They can’t make him live with his father if he doesn’t want to, can they?’ Tamiko looked anxious and Jo-Ji put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘They’ll have a fight on their hands if they try,’ he told her. ‘If she did report him, as she claimed she did, it’ll be on record, even if she retracted it later. If it’s there, I should imagine we’ll be OK.’

  ‘But then what will happen to Jahan?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see, sweetheart. One day at a time. Everyone wants the best for him.’ He broke off as Jahan appeared, cuddling the sleepy Siamese cat, Yasu, with whom he had formed a bond that appeared to be mutual.

  ‘Yasu says he’s hungry,’ he announced.

  ‘Yasu is telling you lies,’ Tamiko said assuming a severe expression. ‘He has just eaten a big breakfast. If he eat anymore he’ll be too fat and lazy to move. He needs to go outside and catch the mice.’

  ‘Shall I take him out?’ Jahan asked.

  ‘Tell you what – I’ll come with you,’ Daniel said, the possibility that Jahan’s father might attempt to snatch the boy at the forefront of his mind.

  ‘And I must get on. I have clients soon,’ Tamiko said.

  At seven, that evening, driving his own rather scruffy Mercedes, Daniel pulled up at Natalie’s front door. With her leg encased in a plaster cast, Natalie could only sensibly be installed in the front passenger seat, her crutches stowed beside her, while Tamiko and Inga took the back seat. Taz had been left with Jo-Ji, who had volunteered to look after Jahan for the evening.

  Away from her giggling friends, Natalie proved to be a pleasant enough companion, although Daniel soon became aware that the sidelong glances she sent at him under her heavy lashes were openly flirtatious.

  The venue for the fundraiser, the function room of a town centre hotel, was already filling up in a promising fashion by the time Daniel’s party got there, a quarter of an hour after it started. Tamiko had explained that Marcus Stenhouse, an accomplished and popular rider who had been the mainstay of many national teams, had been badly injured in a crashing fall, the previous autumn. He had been left partially paralysed but hope had been offered him in the shape of a groundbreaking but expensive operation in the USA, hence the fundraising event.

  Plied with champagne or orange juice according to preference and driving status, the guests were being entertained by the light strains of a string quartet, whose efforts were competing for attention with the speakers of two TV screens that were showing, on a loop, recordings of some of Mr Stenhouse’s most notable successes. In one corner, a photographer was offering to take a photograph of anyone or couple who cared to pose for one; someone else had brought along a selection of riding and eveningwear; and tickets were being sold for a raffle with some impressive prizes.

  The walls were covered with boards bearing newspaper clippings and photographic evidence of the man’s show jumping career, and there was to be a charity auction of promises, Natalie told Daniel, leaving one of her crutches by the door and claiming his arm for support, thereby presumably thinking to assure herself of an escort for the evening. Daniel caught Tamiko’s eye and could tell by its twinkle that she was laughing at him.

  They moved round the room as a group, accepting the canapés that were on offer
and dutifully buying raffle tickets.

  Several people stopped to speak to his companions, one or two offering their sympathy to Tamiko, but the only person Daniel knew was Boo Travers, who was attending with her son, Harrison. Of the Scotsman, there was unsurprisingly no sign. At such an event he would have stuck out like a nun in a knocking shop.

  From the evidence on show, Daniel could see that the so far absent Marcus Stenhouse, who had sent his apologies and was expected to put in an appearance at any moment, had indeed been a force majeure in the showjumping world, and was as popular as Tamiko had stated. However, endless photographs of people and horses he didn’t know soon began to pall on Daniel and he found himself watching the clock. He had a suspicion that the late arrival of its focus had been carefully calculated to encourage people to stay longer at the fundraiser and spend their money.

  ‘Oh, look! There’s Boo Travers!’ Natalie exclaimed, pointing at a photograph of four riders lining up for a prize-giving. ‘Have you met Boo? She’s a sweetie! Boo, have you seen this?’ she called out, seeing her across the room.

  Daniel dutifully looked at the photo. It was dated some six years previously, and the winning team of riders were named as Marcus Stenhouse, Sally Porter-Hughes, and Steven and Belinda Allen.

  ‘My God, I look two stone heavier in that photo!’ Boo exclaimed, coming over in response to Natalie’s call. ‘That was the last time I jumped old Barney Bear. He retired after that. God, he was a fabulous horse! You remember him, don’t you, Harry?’

  Coming up to the group more slowly, her son shrugged.

  ‘You know me. One brown horse is much like another,’ he said. ‘But I remember the party we had afterwards!’

  ‘Harrison takes after his father,’ Boo said rolling her eyes. ‘Works hard and parties hard, with no time for anything else.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you can say that about Dad!’ her son put in with a wink in Daniel’s direction. ‘I have got three siblings, after all!’

  ‘Cheeky sod!’ his mother said fondly.

  ‘You’re not a rider, then?’ Daniel asked. Wearing black jeans, a white T-shirt and a casual jacket, it was easy to see that Harrison kept himself fit one way or another. He might be stocky; he certainly wasn’t fat.