The Vital Chain

by Sally Spencer

  Finally, it was open, and Grandmother lifted the lid. The box was lined with purple velvet cloth which, over the years, had faded. In the centre of the box lay a six-inch piece of rope.’

  ‘This is part of the rope my father-in-law used to hang himself with,’ Grandmother said. ‘I don’t know how Charlie managed to lay his hands on it – I’m told all evidence belongs to the police – but he was a determined man, and he usually succeeded in getting his own way.’

  ‘He kept it in his study, you say?’

  ‘That’s right. It was on his desk. And whenever people put pressure on him to delegate more, he’d open the box and look at the rope.’ Grandmother closed the box again. ‘Charlie didn’t really blame Mr Carson for his father’s death, you know – he blamed the fact that there was no chain of command.’

  ‘So did your husband start his furniture company right after his father’s death?’ Flint asked.

  ‘No,’ Grandmother said. ‘At first he tried to get other jobs in retailing – it was the only trade he knew – but after a couple of weeks he began to see the situation was hopeless. Nobody wanted to employ a man who’d worked for a business which had gone broke. Going into furniture manufacturing was nothing more than an act of desperation.’

  ‘Where did he get the capital from?’ Flint wondered aloud.

  ‘He went down to London, to see his old captain, who was an architect and property developer. He didn’t mention that he’d saved the captain’s life. He didn’t have to – the captain brought it up the moment he entered the door. Charlie outlined his ideas. There was a building boom, he said. People were moving out of the slums into new houses. They had more space than they’d ever had before. Children who’d shared bedrooms with brothers or sisters would have a room of their own. All this extra space would need furnishing – but people wouldn’t want the dark heavy stuff they’d been used to before the war. Bright and light – that was the key.’

  ‘And the captain loaned him the money?’

  ‘Not immediately. He could see the possibilities, and he suggested they go into partnership. But my Charlie wasn’t having any of that – not after what had happened to his father and Mr Carson. In the end, he persuaded the captain to lend him the cash he needed at a proper commercial rate.’

  ‘You’re looking tired, Mrs Conroy,’ Flint said.

  ‘Yes,’ Grandmother agreed. ‘It’s been a long, hard day.’

  The Chief Inspector stood up. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said. He looked down at the photograph album, which was still lying on the coffee table. ‘Could I borrow that?’

  ‘Borrow it!’ Grandmother asked, alarmed. ‘Why should you want to borrow it?’

  ‘I think it will help me to get to know your family better,’ Flint said. ‘I’ll take care of it. I promise.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it will be all right,’ Grandmother said, as she reluctantly handed her lifetime of memories over to him.

  He was almost at the door when Grandmother said, ‘We never told our children – or their children – about what happened to Charlie’s father. We’ve kept it a secret from them all these years. But now Rob and Philip – Rob especially – will have to be told.’

  ‘Why?’ Flint asked.

  ‘Because if they don’t know what Charlie found hanging in the garden that morning, they’ll never understand what he wrote in his will.’

  ****

  It was as Flint was walking up the lane from my grandparents’ house that he noticed two people standing by the stocks in front of the church. He recognised one of them – the broad young man who he’d last seen in Bridgend Hospital – but his companion, a woman of about the same age, was a complete stranger.

  The couple were looking down the High Street, as if admiring the view, but there was a certain stiffness about them which didn’t look quite natural. It was almost as if they’d struck up a pose to disguise their real purpose in being there, Flint thought.

  The chief inspector drew level with them, and Bill Harper seemed to notice him for the first time.

  ‘Ah, Mr Flint! Well met! Well met indeed!’ he said with a heartiness which may not have been faked, but certainly sounded as if it was. He lifted his arm and placed it possessively on the woman’s shoulder. ‘May I introduce my wife Susan.’

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Harper,’ Flint said, but he was thinking, ‘Just what the bloody hell is going on here?’

  ‘We were just taking a walk around the village,’ Harper continued. ‘It’s something we often do in the early evening.’

  Now that didn’t ring true, Flint told himself. He’d only spoken to Bill Harper once before, but he’d come away with the firm impression that staying late at the office to demonstrate his dedication to his job was much more his style than strolling round the village.

  The chief inspector took a closer look at Susan Harper. His initial impression had been that she was pretty – and it was an accurate assessment as far as it went. Yet though she did have all the right features, conventionally arranged, there was something missing.

  It was the eyes that were wrong he decided. They were deep wells of disappointment. They affected her whole being. And even the way she was standing next to her husband – like a dog which knows it has only been taken for a walk as an excuse to visit the pub – reflected her disillusionment with life.

  ‘Funny running into you like this,’ Bill Harper said, ‘because I was just wondering if you’d managed to contact Paul Taylor yet.’

  He sounded casual – but not quite casual enough.

  He’s rehearsed this, Flint thought. He’s got the whole conversation scripted, and he wants to lead me by the nose. Well, maybe it’s time he learned that this particular Taffy chief inspector isn’t anybody’s dupe.

  ‘Paul Taylor? That name rings a bell, but I couldn’t quite say from where,’ Flint lied.

  Harper looked surprised. ‘Paul was Edward Conroy’s executive assistant,’ he said. ‘My ’oppo, in a manner of speaking.’

  And now you’re about to have a go at stabbing him in the back, aren’t you, Flint guessed?

  ‘Is there any particular reason why it should be of interest to you whether or not I’ve talked to Mr Taylor?’ he asked.

  Harper shrugged. ‘No, I was just curious. He’s been away on a short holiday, you see.’ He scratched his nose thoughtfully. ‘It did strike me as odd that he should go away just when the biggest deal the Conroys have ever been involved in was going through. But there you are, I’m only an executive assistant myself, and it wasn’t really my place to comment.’

  ‘Yes, well, people do odd things every once in a while,’ Flint said philosophically. He made a half turn. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me …’

  ‘The thing is,’ Bill Harper said hastily, ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to him myself because, as you can imagine, with four directors dead there’s a great deal of company business that he and I need to deal with. I was expecting to see him at Mr Conroy’s funeral – paying due respect to the big chief and all that sort of thing – but there was no sign of him.’

  ‘Perhaps he just doesn’t like funerals,’ Flint suggested.

  ‘So I rang him at home,’ Harper pressed on, ‘but there was no reply. Finally, since there seemed to be no other way of contacting him, I motored over to his house to leave a message. His car’s not there, and the neighbours say they haven’t seen him since he set off on his trip.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s staying with friends or relatives,’ Flint suggested.

  ‘I don’t think he is. I called his parents. They said he normally rings them every couple of days, but they haven’t had a peep out of him for a week.’

  Enough was enough. ‘So because he’s disappeared, you’re trying to finger him for three murders, are you?’ Flint asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Harper said, clearly outraged. ‘But I was brought up to cooperate with the police and I thought this was something that you needed to know.’

  And being a devious bastard
by nature, he’d had to go all round the houses instead of coming straight to the point, Flint thought. Still, it was a useful piece of information – and there was no point in ignoring the message just because you couldn’t stand the messenger.

  Chapter Ten

  The nurses in Bridgend Hospital worked on a three-shift system, and the one responsible for my welfare between four in the afternoon and midnight was a pretty blonde girl called Lucy Cavendish. Lucy was in her final year of nursing, having finally set the date to marry her young man, who was making steady progress up the career ladder in Lloyd’s Bank. She liked going to the theatre – though only to see musicals – playing tennis and visiting stately homes. When I occasionally let bad language slip into my conversation, she looked suitably shocked.

  It was Lucy who brought the news that while I’d been taking my afternoon nap, I’d had a phone call.

  Marie, my soul screamed.

  ‘Was it … was it a woman?’ I asked.

  Lucy shook her head regretfully. ‘No, I’m afraid it was a man – a Mr McBride. He’s down at the railway station. He wanted to know if you were allowed visitors.’

  That was typical of the man, I thought fondly. Anyone else would have established what the visiting hours were before travelling all the way from Oxford, but Andy had never been good at long-term planning.

  ‘Is he the Andy McBride?’ Lucy asked. ‘You know … the one who wrote …’ she coloured slightly, ‘the one who wrote Gobshite?’

  ‘Yes, he’s the Andy McBride,’ I admitted.

  ‘But I love it!’ Lucy gasped. ‘I mean, I don’t normally read that sort of book, but it was so … so…’

  ‘So sweeping?’ I suggested. ‘So poetic?’

  ‘It gave me goose bumps,’ Lucy said. She cleared her throat. ‘Anyway, we told him he could see you, and he’s taking a taxi right up here. I hope that’s all right.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I assured her, remembering a time when, if Andy had had the money for a taxi in his pocket, he would have chosen to spend it on something else much more fundamental to his existence.

  I remembered something else, too – the moment I’d seen the first extract of what would eventually turn out to be Gobshite , but to me would always be simply THE BOOK.

  ****

  I’d received it one warm June morning six years earlier, sandwiched between two lots of new manuscripts. It was in a cheap exercise book, and was written in pencil. There was no title – no author’s name on the front cover. The handwriting was erratic, sometimes degenerating into printing, and often very difficult to decipher. I’d almost thrown it straight into the bin; then, guiltily, I’d told myself that if someone had bothered to write it, the least I could do was make an effort to read the first page.

  By the end of the second paragraph, I was hooked. It was written in a vernacular style, and told of a Glasgow boyhood in the 50s. The author, I guessed, had not had much more than a rudimentary education, but he was a natural writer. I could smell the bonfires which he described burning on the old bombsites. I could feel the thrill of the chase when the writer and his friends went hunting wild cats. My bowels turned to water as I stood side by side with the writer’s gang as it confronted its rivals. Then I reached the last page – and on the final line the manuscript ended mid-sentence.

  I walked out of my office, the exercise book still in my hand, and went over to reception. ‘Where did this come from, Janet?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d never have bothered you with it, but you did say you wanted to see everything which came into the office,’ my secretary answered defensively.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed impatiently. ‘But where did this particular piece of “everything” come from.’

  ‘I found it in the letter box.’

  ‘In an envelope?’

  ‘No, just as you see it now.’

  So I had received the freshest bit of writing I’d read in years, and I had no idea what its source was. I went back into my office to think things over. Perhaps when he sent the next extract, the author would include his address. Or perhaps there wouldn’t be another extract at all. There was nothing to do but wait. I picked up the next manuscript, and noted with dismay that I could count seven clichés in the opening paragraph.

  Time passed, and more exercise books keep appearing, irregularly, on the mat. The manuscript – although that was a polite word for it – had grown to 50,000 words and had reached the point at which the unknown author had been released from prison and decided that it was time to leave the city of his birth and explore the wider world. He had hitchhiked down to Carlisle and from there to Manchester. He had been intending to travel all the way to London, but had got drunk one night in Oxford, and waking up on a bench, stinking of his own vomit, had decided that since life was brutish everywhere, he might as well stay where he was.

  It was after I’d come to the end of that notebook that I decided not to wait for the next, but instead to go out and find the author.

  ****

  The door opened, and Andy walked into the hospital room. He was wearing a car coat, check shirt, jeans and combat boots – all of them clean, all of them reasonably expensive. I anxiously examined his face for signs that he’d been drinking, then breathed a sigh of relief when I found none.

  ‘I’d ha’ been here sooner, but I was outta the country when it happened,’ Andy said. ‘I was on a book tour of Australia.’

  I smiled. ‘I know you were,’ I said. ‘I sent you on it.’

  Andy nodded. ‘O’ course ye did. Anyway, I caught the first flight back …’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a loon if you think I’m gonna stay away when you might need me,’ Andy said. ‘Listen, Rob, I’m hellish sorry aboot what happened, an’ if there’s anythin’ I can do …’

  ‘You can tell me about the tour,’ I said. ‘Did it go well?’

  ‘Na’ bad,’ Andy said. ‘They’re awright, them Aussies. I get on well with them.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ I asked. ‘You’re all right yourself.’

  ****

  Since the notebooks had been delivered by hand, it was very likely that the man who had written them still lived in Oxford, and since he was a habitual criminal with a serious drink problem, there didn’t seem much point in asking after him at the Randolph Hotel. If I was to find him anywhere, I decided, it would be at the Salvation Army Citadel at the end of Littlegate Street – a stone’s throw from my office.

  I felt as if I were stalking a frightened animal – one so timid that even the slightest wrong move on my part would send my quarry scurrying for the undergrowth, never to reappear. So I trod cautiously, exercising a patience which, knowing my own nature, surprised me. Each morning, including the weekends, I would tour the city centre, studying the dropouts, searching for a clue which might tell me that one of them was my mysterious writer.

  Many of the residents of the Citadel congregated, for reasons known only to themselves, around the Carfax Tower area. There they would sit, wearing overcoats tied up with string even on the hottest day, and drink their cider or cheap wine. By nine o’clock in the morning they were already drunk. By nine-thirty, many of them were insensible. It was a depressing quest I had set myself, but I felt compelled to find the man who had somehow managed to make sense out of the meaningless journey which was his life.

  It was during the third week of my search that I found my man. Andy was sitting on a bench in St Giles, his exercise book on his knee, a pencil held in his grubby hand. There was a bottle of Strongbow cider at his feet, and after writing a few words, he would gaze longingly at it. Then, by what was obviously a supreme effort of will, he would return to the page and force out another sentence.

  I watched him for over ten minutes before I plucked up the nerve to approach him, and when I did, the only words which came to my mind were ‘Thank you!’

  The derelict looked up. He was probably my age, but he looked older – or at least, worse. He was
a broad man, but had clearly let his body go to seed. He had sandy hair with strands of white in it. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheekbones full of broken veins. His nose had obviously been smashed at some time, and reset badly. The teeth in his wide mouth were mostly rotten.

  ‘Wha’ did ye say?’ he demanded belligerently.

  ‘Thank you,’ I repeated. ‘Thank you for writing such a wonderful book.’

  For a moment, I thought he would deny that he had, then he shook his head and said, ‘I wasna sure that anybody was readin’ the bloody thing.’

  ‘But you kept writing, anyway.’

  ‘It didna seem like I had any choice.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Robert Conroy.’

  Andy had hesitated for a moment, just looking at the hand, before he finally shook it. ‘Andy McBride.’

  ‘I want to publish your book,’ I told him. ‘I can’t pay you as much as some of the other publishing houses might offer, but I can assure you that I really do care about it.’

  Andy reached down for the bottle of Strongbow and took a deep swig. ‘It isna finished,’ he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  ‘I know that. I’m prepared to wait until it is.’

  A look of anguish came into Andy’s bloodshot eyes. ‘I don’ know if it’ll ever be finished,’ he moaned. ‘It gets harder all the time. The drink’s the problem. I canna hold off it for as long as I used to.’

  He took another gulp from his bottle. Already I was starting to notice the change in him. Another few minutes, and he would have no idea where he was, let alone what our conversation had been about.

  ‘If you want help, I’ll give it to you,’ I promised.

  ‘Help? What kinda help?’

  ‘I’ll rent somewhere for you to live. Probably only a bed-sit, but it should be an improvement on the Citadel.’

  Andy shook his head. ‘Wouldna do nae good. Doesna matter where I am. Like I told you, the drink’s the problem.’

  ‘If medical treatment will help, I’ll pay for it,’ I said. ‘And if you need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, I’ll go there with you.’