Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  Sandy and I had bought this house together, and in seven years there had never been any trouble of this kind. The house was in a terrace with limited rear access, and had always felt pretty secure. But not, I reflected, if you took a sledgehammer to the front door. I wondered why no neighbours had been roused. Perhaps a single well-judged blow had been all it had taken: enough to wake people up, not enough to prompt them to action.

  I wanted to believe this was a random intrusion, but something about it didn’t ring true. If you were inclined to break into any old house, surely you would look for a weak point, you wouldn’t just barge in through a locked front door – almost indifferent to possible detection, and presumably not even certain that the door would yield? It felt as though someone had singled me out, and was determined to make a show of the intrusion.

  I had no idea who that someone might be, yet somewhere in a corner of my mind, my memory of the Noble brothers wouldn’t let go of me.

  1988

  “I’ve come for my passports.”

  The short man looked back at Hawkins. “Sorry mate – passports? This is a hardware store, not the passport office.”

  Hawkins sighed. “Milo arranged it. Ask him if you want. I’ve got the money.”

  The man glanced nervously around the shop, even though they were the only two people in it. “Show me.”

  He unfolded a roll of notes and fanned them out.

  “OK, OK, no need to advertise.” The man crossed to the door, flipped the lock and rotated the sign to “Closed”, then turned to Hawkins. “Follow me.”

  The back room was confined and damp. Ancient stock in limp cardboard boxes exuded mould from the shelves. A single table lamp cast a pool of light on a wooden work surface topped in brownish linoleum. On it were three UK passports.

  “The price has gone up. Did Milo mention it? It’s double now.”

  “The fuck it is.”

  “Take it or leave it. Either way, we keep the deposit.”

  A tube train rumbled past on the District line, nearly overhead. The lamp shook slightly.

  “It’s a fucking rip-off.” But he reached into his pocket and pulled out a second wad of money. Somehow he’d expected nothing less.

  “Nice doing business with you.”

  Chapter 11

  My house phone rang next morning while the police were dusting down the front door for fingerprints. Most people used my mobile, so I picked up the receiver cautiously.

  “Mike, it’s Sandy. How are you doing?”

  What in the world did my ex-wife want? We hadn’t spoken for more than a year, and the last occasion hadn’t been particularly amicable.

  I’d never entirely understood where our marriage went wrong. We’d lived together for four years, then been married for eleven, and in the beginning things had seemed fine.

  Looking back, I could see that the spark had disappeared much too soon. It was as if we’d been searching for something when we met, and had both been deceived into thinking we’d found it. She’d kept on jumping from job to job, unable to settle to anything but unwilling to think of starting a family, while I’d immersed myself in my journalistic life. We’d ended up on different trajectories.

  Still, it took us a long time to admit we’d reached that point, and even after we did, I carried on trying to make the best of it. Sandy, however, had become increasingly restless and unhappy, and finally we decided the only solution was a complete break.

  Uncharitably, I now felt I needed to head off some kind of reproach. I couldn’t stop myself from replying a little curtly, “I’m very well, thank you very much. How are you?”

  There was a pause, then: “Mike, don’t be nasty. I’m just ringing to be friendly. If we can’t even start off on a decent footing I don’t see the point.”

  “Sorry, sorry. It’s just that your timing is unfortunate. I’ve been burgled, and the place is in chaos. I’m not in the best of moods.”

  “My god! What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was away. When I got back last night the front door was open and somebody had turned the place over.”

  “God. What did they take?”

  I looked around. “I haven’t worked that out yet. Nothing obvious. They just made a mess of everything. I haven’t got round to clearing it all up yet.”

  “How horrible. You poor thing.” She was silent for a moment. “Did you say they came in through the front door? How come? Did they have a key?”

  “No, they just bashed it in. It’s a miracle the neighbours didn’t hear.”

  “Bloody hell. Is that kind of thing common in your area now?”

  “I hope not! I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

  “Perhaps it’s revenge by someone you upset in one of your campaigning articles. A kind of retribution.”

  Immediately I thought again of Janni and Tommy Noble and that article of mine. The menace in Janni Noble’s look wouldn’t leave me. But this was much too involved to raise with Sandy. I merely said, “I doubt it.”

  She said nothing for a moment, then, “Would you like me to come round and help you clean things up?”

  This was a surprise. So far as I knew she lived with her new partner in west London, miles from here. More to the point, we hadn’t actually met for several years, and it was much longer since we’d found ourselves together in a domestic setting.

  Actually the idea of her help was unexpectedly tempting, but I couldn’t really imagine how it would work. I said, “No, it’s very good of you to suggest it, but I’ve got things under control.”

  “Well, the offer’s there.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” I cleared my throat. “So why were you calling?”

  Now she seemed to hesitate. “Well, I bumped into Joanna Miles the other day, and I asked her how you were doing.” She paused.

  “And?”

  “Well …” I could tell she was searching for the right words. “She seemed to think your fridge was always full of booze, but never had any food in it.”

  I gave her a silent burst of ironic applause for this. She was telling me delicately that Joanna thought I was drinking too much – one of the bones of contention when Sandy finally left. Thank you Joanna.

  “I get what you’re saying, Sandy.”

  “Do you?” A pause. “I still worry.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “You need to move on with your life. You need to find someone. It’s been too long.”

  “Please, no lectures this morning. I’ve got enough to deal with here.”

  “OK OK. Well let me know if there’s anything I can do about this break-in.”

  * * *

  I’d left the house more or less as I found it last night, so everything was still in chaos. After the police had finished their work I started half-heartedly picking things up and putting them back where they belonged.

  I didn’t need Sandy’s pity, that was for sure, but her comments had struck a chord; it would have been nice to be sharing this chore, not confronting it on my own. I knew things could never have worked between us, but I’d never quite got over her departure, or recovered the confidence to strike out with someone new.

  One of the last items I replaced was the picture of the girl in Falmouth, which had fallen on the floor and lay half-concealed under a chair. I propped it back on the mantelpiece. “See what you’ve done to me,” I mouthed at it. “If I hadn’t taken that extra day off to chase down to Falmouth, maybe none of this would have happened.”

  Or it would have happened anyway, and I might have had to confront the intruders in person. I wondered how I would have dealt with that.

  Wearily I picked up my Yellow Pages and started searching for locksmiths and joiners. I would need to have the front door repaired before I could spend another night away – and keep my computers where I could see them.

  * * *

  I needed something to cheer myself up, and it was a bit early for a drink, even by my standards. Instead,
I called up the web site where I’d published my book. Eleven copies had now been sold – several more than the last time I looked. Was that good? Or was it just more of my friends and acquaintances rallying to the cause?

  Frankly I didn’t think I had enough willing friends to account for all these sales, but how else did anybody know about the book? My plans for blanket promotion on the internet had somehow slipped on to the back burner, and I wasn’t sure how else the word could have got out.

  I closed the browser tab and wondered what else I could do. Well, how about picking up the threads of my search for Trina and her parents? I now knew their surname, so I could do a web search – something that had been more or less out of the question before.

  I typed “Desmond” and “Markham” and “Trina” into Google, and got 145,000 hits: not terribly promising. Did this mean they were indubitably out there to be found, or that even looking for them was a lost cause?

  I homed in on just Desmond Markham (after all, Trina might have married and changed her surname), and that reduced the number of finds dramatically. I could actually work with the list I got. I tried following some of them up – looking at Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles and other mentions.

  Most of these Desmond Markhams seemed to be the wrong age or to have the wrong family, and I couldn’t find any cross-references to Trina or the Fairmile. After a while I drew to a halt, wondering where to take this next.

  If I’d been determined enough I could have tried tracking down all these Desmond Markhams and eliminated them one by one; and if I’d been a private detective on a case, presumably I would have. But I wasn’t, and I felt unsure of the boundaries and constraints on this project. At the end of the day, just how important was it? The answer was not very.

  As a temporising measure I called up Linda Dysart’s Facebook page, checking without much hope to see if anyone had added anything to our short exchange about the Markhams. Immediately I sat up to attention. A new contributor, evidently one of Linda’s other friends, had made a posting.

  “I knew Trina slightly from the Fairmile, and I might have a small clue for you. She lived in a house called West End Lodge. I remember that because our own house was The Lodge, but it was in a completely different town. I wrote it in my diary, which I still have.”

  West End Lodge: how many of those were there in the country? Was there a database anywhere listing house names as distinct from addresses? On the whole I suspected not.

  But as she’d implied, it might be a clue.

  Chapter 12

  “Mike. Nice piece on Latimer Logistics. We gave it an extra page. Shame to waste all that good stuff. Nice pics too.”

  This was an unfamiliar Jason Bright. The positive note was back in his voice. Until lately his phone calls seemed to have started much more ominously, casting doubt over my future work for his magazine. I said nothing for a moment, then tried a cautious, “Glad you liked it.”

  “I got the sense that you really enjoyed talking to them.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose I did.” I was waiting for the catch.

  He paused. “The Logistics Fair. I wondered if you’d like to cover it for us. Barry has twisted his ankle, stupid sod. Can’t take on any job that involves walking.”

  Not a catch, then; another commission. Not my favourite kind of job, but under the circumstances I couldn’t afford to be fussy. I adopted what I hope was an upbeat tone. “Of course, more than happy to step in.”

  “A nice full report? Plenty of detail?” Back to that slightly carping, admonitory note. How hard did I have to work before I could dismiss it?

  “Will do.”

  Trade shows were grist to the mill for the business press. They meant dozens of suppliers all grouped together in one place: an ideal opportunity to quiz them about their latest products and services and get their views on the state of the universe. The only problem was that their priority was to sell to potential customers, not chew the fat with journalists. You had to pick your moment, and hope you would find someone on each stand who was willing to talk to you. It was hard work.

  I sat back. What was the matter with me? I worried when I didn’t get enough work, especially from Jason, then grumbled when jobs did materialise. I couldn’t have it both ways, could I?

  * * *

  Two days later I arrived at the west London exhibition centre with a familiar sense of trepidation. So many people to see – so much information to gather. After fumbling through the complex registration process I was released into the central arena, and I stood for a moment getting my bearings.

  Glitzy show stands stretched away in every direction, and a buzz of suppressed energy pervaded the space. Visitors strode importantly past along grey-carpeted aisles, stabbing at their smartphones or chatting animatedly to colleagues. Stand lights glowed, music trickled from a myriad sources. If you ever thought logistics was a boring subject, this event was calculated to convince you otherwise.

  I headed off in search of the press room. At least that would give me some thinking space before the onslaught.

  The tried and tested technique for reporting on these events was to get a rhythm going. Find a relevant stand that didn’t look overrun with visitors, winkle out someone who seemed ready to talk to the press, find out if they had anything remotely interesting to report, then feed on the adrenaline to brace you for the next encounter. And make notes; without them you’d never remember anything. The trick was not to stop, or your energy levels would collapse. Exhausting, but it was the only way.

  I was on my seventh or eighth stand, chatting to an earnest PR woman, when a voice accosted me from the other side of the stand. “Mike, isn’t it? Mike Stanhope?” It was one of the sales staff for the company, a logistics contractor based in Stoke-on-Trent.

  He threaded his way across the stand and shook my hand amiably – a short, wiry man of Asian descent with a Yorkshire accent and an infectious grin. “It’s Freddie. I met you when I worked with the Stobart group. After that I moved over to Allied Northern in Oldham as their warehouse manager.”

  Allied was Janni Noble’s now-defunct company. “You’ve moved on again, presumably,” I said somewhat redundantly.

  He ratcheted up the grin. “Alas, Allied is no more. I had to seek pastures new.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve fallen on your feet.”

  The PR lady retreated to talk to another journalist, and I chatted on for a while with Freddie. “Janni Noble is doing OK for himself these days,” he commented. “He’s a partner in a truck and van rental business in Trafford Park now. Did you know that?”

  I didn’t, but immediately I connected this information with the conversation I’d had with Janni when I first met him over lunch with Rick Ashton. The business Ashton was doing with him must involve rental trucks.

  “Is he here today?”

  “I haven’t seen him. I don’t think they have a stand here. But the way they’re growing, they will next year.”

  * * *

  By four o’clock my reserves of energy were more or less exhausted. I stood in the middle of an aisle, scanning my notes. I’d visited thirty-one stands, and had enough material to write news items about seventeen of them. Surely that was enough?

  Then, with a sinking feeling, I saw ahead of me a section of the show area that I’d somehow managed to miss until now, packed with stands I should have visited: mostly logistics companies. With an inward groan I headed towards them. Maybe I could drop in on a sample selection, and leave it at that?

  Half an hour and three conversations later, I was standing in front of yet another stand, probably looking dazed, when a female voice addressed me.

  “Mr Stanhope! Are you going to write a nice glowing piece about us?”

  Ashley Renwick was smiling at me from the edge of the stand. I glanced up at the illuminated red fascia, which read “Latimer Logistics. We deliver.”

  I smiled at her. “What’s the matter? Not satisfied with my last effort?”

  “More t
han satisfied, actually. Very happy. Look.”

  I followed her gaze, and on one of the stand walls was a giant extract from my article, juxtaposed with a grainy black and white blow-up of one of my photographs, showing a warehouse interior. All very arty.

  “And we had a batch of reprints produced. Here, have one.” She wandered over to a table, and I followed her on to the floorboards of the stand.

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Very old school, having physical reprints.” She handed me a copy. “But they work well at events like this. It’s nice to have something tactile to give people.”

  I looked down at the reprint. She said, “Can I offer you some refreshment?”

  A quadruple gin would have gone down well, but I accepted a coffee, and I sat on a stool at the stand’s own bar counter while she poured it. The show had quietened down, and there were just a couple of sales staff on the stand. One was busying himself with racks of sale literature while the other sat at a low table, tapping something into a laptop computer.

  “I don’t know if you wanted to speak to Bob Latimer? He’s around today, but I’m afraid he and the other top brass have gone off to a reception somewhere.”

  “That’s fine. I’m happy to talk to you.” I smiled at Ashley. She was wearing a dark T-shirt with “Latimer Logistics” and the company logo embroidered in red across the chest. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you would be here.”

  “I keep popping up like a bad penny.” She gestured round at the stand. “I spend quite a lot of time organising this kind of thing. Feels like it, anyway. Off to the NEC in a couple of weeks’ time. No rest for the wicked.”

  “Do these shows pay off for you?”

  “Usually. We get solid sales leads. That’s the bottom line.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, then she asked, “Have you had any more success finding your mystery lady?”