I walked across the car park with him to his battered Volvo — made in Sweden, the Land of Eternal Sidelights and agreed to read his notes and have a think about what he'd told me. He shook my hand as if I'd promised to buy the vehicle from him and I said I'd be in touch.
I didn't mow the lawn. Closer inspection showed it would last another week, and it's not good to cut grass during a dry spell. Well, that's what my father taught me. I opened a can of lager, spread myself out on the garden seat and listened to the world turning on its axis.
I don't see much of Jacquie at weekends. She stays in on Saturday nights, doing her books, her hair and everything else that beautiful ladies do that we men know nothing about. Sundays, when possible, I like to go walking. Once, I'd suggested she come with me and you'd have thought I'd asked her to pose naked for the Police Review.
"Walking?" she'd queried. "You mean… up hills? For fun?"
So I went on my own. This particular Sunday dawned blue-skied and filled with promise, and I watched a golden sunrise through my rearview mirrors as I headed towards the Lake District. I beat the crowds and found a parking place in the little park just outside Braithwaite. The Coledale Round is a tough walk and you're straight into it. You put the car keys in a safe pocket, hitch up your shorts, step over the stile and start climbing. The path stretches straight and true before you, to the summit of Grisedale Pike two miles away and 2,000 feet higher.
It's good thinking time. You stare down at the path six feet ahead of your boots and let your mind wander. Anything will do, as long as it takes it off the burning sensation in your chest and the wobbles in your legs. After twenty minutes I stopped and turned around to see how far I'd come. The village was like Toytown down below and beyond it the classically proportioned Skiddaw was bathed in sunlight. I took a few deep breaths, eased the straps on my shoulders and told my feet to get moving.
The whole Round was a bit too much for me on such a hot day. One of the pieces of knowledge that comes with the passing of the years is when to say: "Enough!" I ate my sandwiches on a flat rock under Hopegill Head, sunbathed for an hour then dropped into the valley and followed the miners' road back to the car. It was a good day out. I didn't come to any conclusions about Crosby and Fox, but my legs were definitely a shade browner. Perhaps I'd go to work in my shorts tomorrow.
In the cold light of a Heckley Monday it didn't seem such a good idea, so it was back to the grown-up trousers. We'd had a fracas in the town centre after evensong, so all the cells were filled with rebellious D and Ds demanding their rights prior to appearing before the beak. It's the communion wine that does it. Nothing to do with CID, thank goodness, except that it had taken a big chunk out of the overtime budget. Maggie and Nigel went to circulate the list of property stolen from the McLellands while Jeff and Sparky went to talk to the travel agency managers and collect the names of any customers who'd been booking holidays when the raids took place. I spread the papers Keith Crosby had given me across my desk and started to read.
Everything was on a diskette, but he'd told me he used Apple Mac while I was strictly Microsoft. It didn't matter, as he'd provided hard copies of the important stuff and there wasn't much of it. Nigel was an Apple Mac man, so I'd ask him to run off the full story. The main item was a list of about fifty companies that had fallen on difficult times and crashed in value. Fox had stepped in and bought low, which ain't a crime, and soon afterwards, miraculously, they all appeared to be doing quite nicely. Crosby had listed them in date order, with share price or company value fluctuations over the relevant period and number of shares bought by Fox. Other information was patchy. Against some he'd typed details of the troubles they'd been beset by, and occasionally there was a name. The first on the list was a small chain of betting shops that had suffered a couple of fires and a disastrous loss on the 1970 Grand National when the telephone lines went dead and they couldn't lay off some large bets. Gay Trip had cost them a fortune. Last on it was the Tipley Valley Water Company. It made interesting reading, very interesting, but I couldn't put it much stronger than that. Accidents happen, and anybody could have bought shares in the companies, though when Fox did it was usually enough to take control. I made a few notes, read the letter from Andrew Roberts again and extracted my road atlas from the bottom drawer. It was eight years old; I really ought to bring a new one in. Welwyn Garden City is nearer to London than I thought. I looked in my diary for a number and wrote it on my pad. Directory Enquiries gave me Andrew Roberts's, no problem. Just for the hell of it I did a person check on him and discovered he'd never come to our attention. There must be millions out there like that. I opened my diary at the week ahead and rang Gilbert on the internal.
"Are you likely to need me tomorrow?" I asked him.
"Umm, no, I don't think so," he replied. "Anything special?"
"I want to nip down to see Commander Fearnside."
"Your friend at N-CIS?"
"Mmm."
"Not going to accept that job he keeps offering you, I hope."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Gilbert. How could I possibly leave after that? No, I've a load of stuff I want to talk to him about. It might be something big, but it's more likely to be a waste of time. He sees the big picture, though. He'll give it a fair hearing."
"OK. I'll be in most of the week. Arrange it to suit yourself and let me know what he says about it."
"Cheers, boss." I clicked the cradle and dialled again.
"Charlie!" Fearnside boomed after I'd manipulated my way past several flunkies. "Long time no see. How are you, old boy?"
"Fine, Mr. Fearnside. And you?"
"Counting the days, Charlie. Counting the days."
"Aren't we all. I want an hour of your time, if you don't mind, soon as possible, about a long-running saga that's not going to go away.
It's too big for me to handle without some authority from on high, but its source is an ex-MP, so I've got to take it seriously."
"Right, Charlie. The wife's got tickets for the ballet tonight, but I could always tell her that something's…"
"Er, not that soon," I interrupted. "How about tomorrow?"
He sounded disappointed, but agreed to meet me at the Happy Burger on the M25, near Waltham Cross. He has a thing about their pancakes and likes to escape from the office whenever possible. Clandestine meetings at motorway services made him feel important, but we'd worked on a couple of big jobs together and I trusted him to know if Crosby was being paranoid or if there really was a case. I placed the phone back and wandered into the open-plan, feeling suddenly restless. The wheels were in motion. There was nobody to talk to, so I filled the kettle and switched it on. Somebody's tabloid was lying there. I looked at the ladies' bosoms, the front page and the sport, in that order. Rebecca, on page three, was studying law. A barrister's wig was perched on her head, improving her posture wonderfully, and the caption read: All stand for the judge. She was beautiful, as they always are. Humiliating the plain ones isn't any fun. Silly girl, I thought. Thumbing through the rest I came across the horoscopes and scanned the dates. July 23 to August 23, that was me. Leo, would you believe it. It said that I was drifting aimlessly, and ought to try harder to create an impression. I knew I should have come in my shorts.
"How much is on it?" Nigel asked much later after he'd listened to the story, turning the diskette in his fingers as if he'd never seen one before.
"Not sure," I replied. "Just do one copy to start with, please, for me to give to Fearnside. Then, if there's not too much of it, do another couple. Put something on your FIN33 to cover it."
Sparky was sitting on the edge of my desk, perusing the list Crosby had given me. "Bloody hell," he concluded, offering it back to me.
"Is that your considered opinion?" I asked.
"I knew there was more to that fire than everybody thought," he replied.
"Are you sure he's not a nutter?" Nigel asked. "When we lived in Virginia Water we had a neighbour who claimed to be the last descendant of Walter Raleigh. Spent the family fortune trying to prove it and finished up in a mental hospital."
"No, I'm not sure at all," I replied.
"You mean…" Sparky began, '… there really is a place called Virginia Water?"
"Of course there is," I told him. "And very nice, too. It's close to Blackbush airport."
"Blackbush airport," Nigel echoed. "How do you know about Blackbush airport?"
"I saw Dylan there in '79. Me and quarter of a million others."
"You were there!" he exclaimed. "With all the hippies! We couldn't get out of the avenue for two days."
"Cultural event of the century," I declared. "Now here's what we do.
We keep this under our hats. We three and Mr. Wood are the only ones to know about it. Nigel, you and Jeff will have to run the everyday show, while I work on this when I can. I'll borrow Dave when I need another pair of eyes and ears. OK?"
"No problem, boss."
"If anything goes off I want to be there," Dave insisted, his tone as hard as millstone grit.
"I know you do, old son," I assured him. "And you will be."
Tuesday morning someone hijacked the postman's van and ram-raided the Sylvan Fields news agent with it. They escaped with four boxes of cheese and onion crisps and ten copies of the Guardian. We're looking for a liberal with a savoury tooth. I escaped by a nifty piece of delegation and headed south on the M1.
A lorry with a puncture in the middle of the roadworks near Northampton ate up the extra hour I'd allowed, so I arrived at the Happy Burger just about dead on time. Fearnside was sitting in his big Rover. He got out as I parked and we walked into the cafe together, without ceremony.
"It's good to see you, Charlie," he said when we were seated in the smoking section, where it was quieter.
"And you, Mr. Fearnside," I replied. "I just hope I'm not wasting your time."
"Well, first of all, let's cut out this Mr. Fearnside nonsense, eh?
It's Roland. And secondly, you got me out of an accountability meeting, so you're definitely not wasting my time. So what's it all about, eh?"
They did pancakes with cherries, maple syrup or caramel sauce, and Fearnside ordered one of each. The little girl who took the order looked flustered. She might be an ace at French irregular verbs, but this hadn't been in her crash course on waitressing. "You mean, all on one plate?" she improvised.
"Yes please," Fearnside told her, beaming. I ordered a cheeseburger.
When she'd gone I said: "In July 1975 we had an MP called Keith Crosby in Heckley. You may remember him." Fearnside gave a hesitant nod. "He fell from grace when an old terraced house he'd been bequeathed by an aunt burned down and eight people women and children were burned to death. He'd allowed the house to be used as a shelter for battered women and it was breaking the fire regulations. He resigned as an MP shortly afterwards."
Our waitress was hovering. I stopped speaking and looked up at her.
"We don't do three pancakes together," she told Fearnside, 'but you could have them on separate plates, if that's all right?"
"That will be fine, my dear," he replied with a warm smile. He was growing benevolent in his old age. I decided he must be nearer to retiring than I'd thought. "Go on, Charlie," he prompted as she turned to leave.
"Keith Crosby is convinced that J. J. Fox was behind the fire, to deliberately discredit him. Apparently he'd been investigating Fox's background and business methods. Asking questions in the House."
"J. J. Fox!" Fearnside mouthed, almost silently. "The J. J. Fox?"
"Of the Reynard Organisation," I confirmed.
"Pardon me asking this, Charlie, but does he have any… you know… evidence!"
I pushed a manila envelope across the table. "I'd hardly call it evidence, but it's all in there."
"Bloody hell, Charlie," he said. "When I was with the SFO we had a file on Fox thicker than prep school porridge, but we never pinned anything on him. Not that that meant a lot; we had files on nearly everyone who earned more than the commissioner did." He patted the envelope. "I'll have to talk to a few people. You realise that, don't you?"
What he meant was that Fox would have friends in the force, and they might have fraternal contacts in Yorkshire. "No problem," I said.
The girl brought the food and Fearnside slid his pancakes, each complete with a blob of vanilla ice cream, on to one plate. "There you go, my dear," he said, handing her the two redundant plates. I cut my cheeseburger in half and wished I'd ordered it with fries.
We ate in silence and I continued the story over coffee. Fearnside dabbed his chin with his napkin and nodded at my words. At the far end of the restaurant a couple and their two children were eating. The older child, a teenage boy, was brain damaged He kept jerking his head around and waving his arms. His father fed him spoonfuls of food and wiped his mouth. Both of them were smiling, as if it were a game they played. I half-remembered a line from a poem; G. K. Chesterton, I believe: To love is to love the unlovable, or it is no virtue at all, and for a moment or two everything I was trying to do seemed second rate.
"Hell's teeth, Charlie," Fearnside said. "If you can land something on Fox the SFO'll put your statue up in Elm Street."
"So you think it's worth pursuing?"
"From what you've told me, most certainly, old boy."
"Good. I'm just glad I haven't wasted your time."
"Not at all. Not at all."
I decided to have a little celebration and have cream in my coffee. As I fumbled with a plastic thimble of what passed for it I said: "So how long have you got to go, then, Roland?" His reply took the wind out of my spinnaker.
"Um, allowing for leave, I'll be away a week on Friday."
And then I'd be on my own, I thought.
I hadn't known what to expect of Welwyn Garden City, so it came as a pleasant surprise. I'd telephoned the Robertses after arranging to meet Fearnside, and Mrs. Roberts had told me that her husband, Andrew, would be in any night after five thirty. Two junctions on the M25 and four short ones up the Al and I was there, an hour early. The approaches to the town it's not a city, that's just its name were along an avenue with wide close-cropped verges and wall-to-wall trees. I followed the intermittent town centre signs and found myself on a one-way system that routed me into the shopping area, where my initial enthusiasm gave way to dismay. The planners had done a good job, with some decent open spaces, and it's probably a pleasant enough place to live and work, but the architect only knew one type of brick and one shape of window. He was working to a tight schedule, so he designed one building and rubber-stamped the rest. Couldn't see any of the famous concrete cows anywhere. Or was that Milton Keynes? Come to think of it, was it Milton Keynes where I was supposed to be? I decided it didn't make much difference either way. I thought about exploring the town centre, but a drive through sufficed. I found the street where the Robertses lived and parked up for an hour, listening to the radio.
It was an ornate semi with jutting eaves in what was more like an overgrown jungle than a leafy suburb. Someone had overlooked the simple fact that trees grow. Their front garden boasted a giant flowering cherry, long past its best, and a wishing well. A Bedford Rascal with Andrew's Carpet Fitter's painted on the side stood on the drive, behind a fairly recent Saab and an elderly Fiesta. I was at the home of the phantom apostrophe bandit. The garage door was open and a teenage boy with lank blond hair and acne was working on a Honda trail bike. There was a nasty blank space behind the engine, with two suspicious-looking bolts projecting into it.
"Problems?" I said, to introduce myself.
He spared me a worried glance and said: "Yeah, it's eight-stroking on the overrun."
"That sounds painful."
"It's the carburettor."
"Will you be able to fix it?"
"I hope so. Are you looking for Dad?"
"Yep."
"He's round the back. DAD! Your visitor's here."
Dad wore his hair in a ponytail and had a tattoo, nothing extravagant, on each arm. He was wearing cut-down jeans and a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt. Definitely not what I'd expected.
"DI Charlie Priest," I said, extending my hand, 'from Heckley CID."
He gave me a limp shake. "Andrew Roberts. Pleased to meet you. I'm just lighting the barbecue, round the back." He turned and led the way, me following behind.
It had just reached the God-will-it-ever-burn stage, with smoke billowing over the lapboard fence into the neighbour's yard. The back garden was mainly lawn, with those little apple trees that only reach five feet tall growing along one side and a greenhouse down at the bottom. They had a pond with a naked cherub piddling into it, and an ultraviolet bug-killer was already glowing on the wall, like a neon sign outside a house of pleasure. This was a no-fly zone. He poked his head into the kitchen to tell his wife I was here and invited me to sit on a plastic chair.
"First of all," I began, 'can I say how sorry I am about your brother."
"Fancy a beer?" he asked. I opened my mouth to say how jolly welcome that would be but he cut me off with: "Oh, you're on duty, aren't you?
Never mind, I'll get Shaz to make a pot of tea. Duncan? Yeah, it were sad. To tell the troof I hadn't seen him for years. He was free years older than me, went his own way, like. You said on the phone that it was somefing that happened back in 1975."
"That's right. There was a fire, in Leeds. A short while ago Duncan, or someone we now believe to be Duncan, rang the Friends in Need people to say he knew who started the fire."
"I wrote to them," he said, adding: "Well, I got DJ to."
"DJ?"
He pointed towards the garage and said: "Duncan John."
"Your son?"
"Yeah. He's a bright lad. We've always called him DJ."
"It was your letter that put us on to Duncan. Your brother Duncan, that is. The person who rang was obviously distressed, suicidal."
"Jesus," he hissed.
"Did Duncan know Leeds, back then?"
"Yeah. He was at the university there."
A minute piece of the jigsaw fell into place. "Tell me about him," I invited. "What was he like, before he went to Leeds?"
He fingered his left ear and I noticed the ring through it. "He was my big bruvver," he said. "I looked up to him. Troof is, I worshipped him. At least I did until he went to Leeds. After that there was a lot of pressure on me from Mam and Dad to follow him, but I just wasn't bright enough. Before that, though, we got on well. All he was interested in was bikes. Push bikes, that is. He raced them, on the road, on the track, and he'd take me wiv him. He was good, and we had some fun. Then things went pear-shaped, and suddenly they didn't want me to follow him. They were quite happy for number two son to settle for an apprenticeship."
"Pear-shaped? In what way?"
"He fell in wiv the wrong crowd. He did well his first year, kept up wiv his training and his studies, but then he started drinking a lot and got into debt. He bought a Claud Butler, he said, but I didn't believe him. We dreamt about Claud Butlers in them days. He used to write to me, all about the parties and how they'd drunk the pub dry. It sounded great at the time, but afterwards I realised that he was sliding. He kept sending home for money, first from Dad, then Mam, and then from me. He dropped out halfway through his second year, and we hardly saw or heard from him again after that."
"You say he went to Leeds University?"
"Yeah."
"To read what?"
"Chemistry."
"Did you save his letters?"
He shook his head. "No, sorry."
"Did he mention any names in them?"
Another head-shake.
"Did he mention Keith Crosby?"
"The Friends in Need man? No."
"Any girlfriends?"
"No." He hesitated, then added: "Come to fink of it, he did mention one, once."
"Can you remember her name?"
"He didn't say. He just said he was going out wiv this bird but he didn't fink he'd ever dare bring her home. He raved on about her. Said she had purple hair and a ring frew her nose. In them days that was way out. From anuvver planet. I'd never even seen anyone like that back then. Not for real. I didn't believe him and he said he'd send me a picture, but he never did."
"That's a shame," I said.
It was a sad story, and it's a hundred times more common since drugs other than alcohol became freely available. After Leeds Duncan had moved to Manchester, vanished for ten years and resurfaced in Brixton, living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They'd last met at their mother's funeral. Andrew had tried to help him and lots of promises were made, but it hadn't worked out. The barbecue was glowing brightly and I could sense Andrew's impatience to be up there flourishing the giant pepper grinder. He didn't invite me to share a steak so I thanked him for his help and left. I never got that cup of tea and didn't find out who Shaz was. As I walked past the Rascal I resisted the urge to whip out my pen and draw a line through the offending apostrophe. "How many effs in apostrophe?" "There is no effin' apostrophe." "Boom-boom, thank you and good night."
"Where is everybody?" I asked, surveying the empty desks and noting the absence of jackets, daily papers and items of food required to see a team of the force's finest through their strife-torn day. Job on, I was told. The chief suspect for the ram-raid had just had an early-morning call and at that very moment was standing in his summer-weight jim jams explaining that he'd always been a Guardian reader; he bought it for the dog-racing tips.
I had my usual meeting with Mr. Wood and started committing yesterday's story to print. I'd just reached the bit where the waitress at the Happy Burger kissed me goodbye and hoped I'd come again when the outer door burst open and the troops came laughing and jostling into the office. There was a knock on my door and Nigel entered, followed by Dave. I clicked Save and rocked my chair back on two legs. "Success?" I asked.
"Yep," Nigel said, with a self-satisfied grin.
"Go on."
"Definitely a criminal type. Found a Guardian under a cushion on the settee."
"Bang to rights," I said.
"Oh, and about an ounce of what looks like herbal cannabis."
"It gets better." Herbal cannabis was suddenly turning up all over the place. I turned to Dave. "Did he, er, behave himself?" I asked, nodding at Nigel. He has a reputation for impetuosity.
"He was OK," Sparky replied.
"Only OK?"
"Well, I wasn't going to mention it…"
"Mention what?"
"Don't encourage him," Nigel interrupted. "He'll mention it, whatever it is. Believe me, he'll mention it. Nothing will stop him."
"I don't know if I ought to…" Dave continued, feigning awkwardness.
"Now you've got to tell me," I replied, my hands in an appealing gesture that I'd seen so many times in court.
"Well…" he went on, 'we brayed on the front door, like we do, and this little old lady opened it…"
"Mmm."
"And… well… it's just that… to be honest… I thought Freeze, motherfucker! was a bit over the top."
"I never!" Nigel exclaimed. "Oh, forget it!"
"Little old ladies can be dangerous, David," I warned him. "Especially if they're carrying a handbag. Sometimes they have a jar of Pond's cold cream tucked in the bottom corner. Get sandbagged by one of those and it's like being hit by a flat-nosed.45. Anyway, it looks like you've saved us from a red face, so well done the boys."
"What about you?" Dave asked.
I flicked the monitor with the back of my knuckles. "Just putting it all down," I replied.
"J. J. Fox had a mention on the YTV news last night," Nigel said.
"What's he done?" I asked.
"Apparently that big new office block he's built near the river in Leeds is going to house Reynard Insurance, which will mean about a thousand extra jobs for the region. They're expecting him to come personally to cut the ribbon when it opens."
"Really? Did they say when?"
"Fraid not, but they said he'll no doubt stay at the Fox Borealis, where the penthouse suite is permanently earmarked for him."
"With a pad on the roof for his helicopter," Dave added.
"How frightfully non-U," I said. "It sounds as if Leeds has adopted a new son. Maybe we' 11 get a chance to have an audience with him when he comes, so let's do our homework."
The multiscreen was re showing Seven, and I fancied watching it again, but Jacquie wanted to see the one about three girls from small-town America who vowed to stay friends whatever life threw at them, so that's what I bought tickets for. The willowy blonde married a millionaire, the husband of the perky brunette beat her up and the redhead caught cancer. I used the time to muse on Crosby's story, wonder where I fitted in life's big picture and reflect on the nature of the universe immediately before the Big Bang. Some professor of radio astronomy had been on PM talking about waves ripples in space that he had detected. He said they were vibrations from the Big Bang, still travelling outwards fifteen billion years later. In which case, I thought, how come we arrived here first? Maybe I'd write to him and ask. Everybody was in tears as we left the cinema, so it must have all worked out in the end. I hadn't expected it to still be light outside, but it was. We strolled hand-in-hand through the town centre, which was nice, and had a pizza, which wasn't. Pizza isn't on my menu. If the Romans had taken the recipe for Yorkshire pudding back with them we'd never have heard of pizza. Jacquie invited me in for a coffee and introduced me to the kitten she'd acquired. I tickled its ears while we listened to Neil Diamond and Jacquie fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I used to like Neil Diamond, years ago. Now, I feel like throwing up. I sat through "Sweet Caroline', for old times' sake, and said I'd better go. We had a short but torrid necking session behind her front door and I left. Another day over.
Leeds became a university city early in the twentieth century. The colleges upon which it was built rose out of necessity, not from the beneficence of a monarch with aspirations beyond his intellect and a weather eye on his place in history. The textile industry required chemists and the mines and railways needed engineers. Then, as the north burgeoned with industrial growth, all the incidental needs of the population grew apace with it. Doctors and priests; bankers and businessmen; entrepreneurs and charlatans: they were swept in as if by a spring flood, dragged along on the coat tails of steam, iron, coal and wool. The Parkinson Tower is a Portland stone monolith that dominates the skyline to the north of the city and marks the epic entre of the rambling campus. I drove by it and looked for a parking place.
The University Registrar and Secretary was called Hugh Roper-Jones and he'd been at his desk when I rang him. Unfortunately he was about to attend a briefing of potential undergraduates, but he told me he had to be free before twelve for a lunch appointment. I said it wouldn't take long and I'd be waiting outside his door.
I walked down the road past the departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics and Electrical Engineering and there it was Chemistry. Duncan Roberts had been studying chemistry. I ran up the steps and through the wood and glass doors. Inside was a lobby but no reception desk. I scanned the notice-boards that lined the walls and decided that students hadn't changed much since my day.
They still needed cheap accommodation and sold bicycles and went to concerts and piss-ups. A series of glossy posters advertised the department and listed some of its achievements. It reminded me that this was where they invented DFO. We use it to develop latent fingerprints, and I felt I was among friends. The next door led into a corridor with a lecture theatre facing me. A sign on the wall indicated that SOMS was on the fourth floor and LHASAUK on the second.
Now I was way out of my depth. One thing I did know was that Roper-Jones's office was not in this block, so I left.
He was in the E. C. Stoner Building, and waiting for me. I told him about the phone call from Duncan and suggested that he'd possibly witnessed someone starting a fire, back in 1975, in which there had been a fatality. Perhaps, I was wondering, he had confided in a fellow student. If Mr. Roper-Jones could furnish me with the names and last-known addresses of Duncan's classmates I could be on my way and leave him to lunch in peace.
"Ah!" he said ominously, fingering a cuff.
"Don't tell me," I said.
"I'm afraid, Inspector, that our computerised records only go back as far as 1980."
"Damn!"
"Before that, they are all on cards."
"But you have them?"
"Oh yes. We can go right back to 1905, and before, for some departments."
The door behind me opened and a female voice said: "Oh, sorry!" I turned round and saw an elegant woman in a blue dress with white stripes, holding the door wide.
"Five minutes, Emm, please," Roper-Jones told her and she left.
"If somebody could show us the cards I could supply a body to go through them," I suggested.
"I think we'll be able to do better than that for you, Inspector," he replied. "Let me show you the students' office."
He led me along the corridor to where it widened to make a waiting area, with a row of tellers' windows in the wall, like a bank. We went through a door into the large office behind the windows. It was cluttered with boxes and files and desks and terminals. They were running out of space. Would computerisation save them before they achieved meltdown and had to move to bigger premises? It was unlikely; there is no single recorded case in history of computerisation ever saving paper.
"Jeremy," Roper-Jones said to a fresh-faced young man wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, 'this is Inspector Priest from the CID. He wants some information from the files. Would you give him all the help you can, please." Turning to me he went on: "Sorry to have to dash, Inspector, and it's been a pleasure to meet you. Jeremy's our archive expert; if the information is there he'll find it for you. And if we can be of further assistance, feel free to call us any time. As you'll have noticed, things are rather quiet at the moment. During term we haven't time to breathe. I'd be rather interested to know if you solve the case, Inspector. It's all grist for the mill, as they say."
Or common room gossip, I thought. "I'll keep you informed," I promised, 'and I'm grateful for your co-operation." We shook hands and he fled. He'd have something to tell Emm Emma? Emily? over lunch.
Jeremy had turned a chair around for me. "Are you allowed to go for your lunch while the boss is out?" I asked.
"No problem, Inspector," he replied with a grin.
"It's Charlie. Charlie Priest. C'mon then; let's have a quick look at these files and then I'll treat you."
After I dropped Jeremy off I went for a drive round the city. The one-way system had changed but I just went with the flow for a while then followed the signs for the Royal Armouries. I knew the Fox Borealis was nearby, backing on to the River Aire. What I didn't realise was just how big it was; fifteen storeys, I counted, which must have made it the tallest building in Leeds. And directly across the river was the matching office block. The pair of them made an impressive gateway to the town for anyone coming up the river. They were almost all glass, which reflected the colour of the sky and made them look less intrusive. For once, the architects had got it right.
The hotel was open, doing business, but the finishing touches were still being added. A Coles crane was parked across the entrance, lifting a huge gilt fox, the company's emblem, on to the roof of the portico. I decided to pop in for afternoon tea and a workman in a hard hat directed me around the danger zone.
Inside was about par for the course: lots of pale wood, potted palms and low furniture; four businessmen in their shirt sleeves holding a conference around a paper-strewn coffee table; a lone woman tapping the day's sales into a laptop; and the Four Seasons playing softly in the background. Vivaldi, that is, not the American group. I sank into a settee and looked for a waitress.
The Coles crane was leaving at the same time as I was. As I walked out of the building I saw it turn on to the road, its yellow strobe light flashing and three cars already queuing behind it, and hoped it wasn't heading south. I eased out of my parking place and noticed the fox over the entrance, with two workmen tightening the holding-down bolts.
It was in full flight, tail stretched out behind, and glancing back over its shoulder.
"How appropriate," I said under my breath. "How jolly appropriate."
Friday morning a fax arrived giving the names of half of Duncan's fellow course members, with parents' addresses. We'd reckoned that if mummy and daddy had been in their forties when their offspring left the nest to explore the groves of academe they'd probably be in their late sixties now. Assuming that sponsoring one or more children through university had left them impoverished, there was a good chance that they hadn't moved far.
Monday morning another fax came with the rest of the names, giving a total of sixty-nine for me to be going on with. Jeremy had added a note saying that it would take him the rest of the week to list the students in the years above and below Duncan, and a long time if I wanted everybody at the university. He was throwing himself into this. I did a quick calculation. If the university had doubled in size since 1975 he was talking about 11,000 names. If I did four a day, without time off, it would take me nearly eight years to trace and interview them all. I faxed him back, thanking him profusely for his assistance but saying I had enough to be going on with.
Jeff and Maggie made a map showing the route the burglars had taken as they milked the McLellands' credit cards for all they could. Only one purchase had been made two and a half thousand for a Hewlett Packard computer system from the Power Store but cash withdrawals from machines and travel agents took the total to nearly five grand. Jeff had drawn the routes taken after the previous robberies in different colours, and had highlighted the places where the time-gaps indicated that they had possibly returned to base with the transit and transferred to something faster and less noticeable. It gave us a good picture of the general vicinity they operated from.
"They're somewhere in the Golden Triangle," Dave stated. That's his name for the area bounded by Halifax, Huddersfield and Heckley.
"It certainly looks like it," I agreed.
"So they're our babies. What are we going to do about it?"
"Can I make a suggestion, Charlie?" Jeff said. I spread my fingers in a be-my-guest gesture. "Well," he continued, "I've been studying my Transits and this aerial behind the driver is really unusual. In fact, I haven't seen another like it, and a Transit passes you on the M62 about every fifteen seconds. They must be the most popular vehicle ever built. If we go public, say on Crimewatch, someone's bound to recognise it."
Dave jumped in with: "If we do that, we alert the villains too.
The Transit is the only decent lead we have. Going public will lose it for us."
I stroked my chin and thought about it. "I'll have a word with our friends," I told them, when I'd made my decision. "You might be right, Jeff, but for the moment I'd like to keep this knowledge within the team. If someone does finger the van for us we'll still need evidence to put them on the scene."
Nigel had been quiet up to now. He broke his silence, saying: "Has anyone else been receiving calls from double-glazing people?"
"Mmm, me," I replied. "What's that got to do with it?"
"I have, too," Jeff added.
"I've had four calls in as many days," Nigel told us. "As I'm ex-directory I couldn't help wondering where they got my number from. I reckon someone has sold them a list of all our names and addresses and phone numbers. Maybe someone here, or maybe at the federation, or possibly the subscription list for the Review."
"The point of your story being that we're as leaky as a wicker basket,"
I suggested.
"Yep, and there's a good chance they already know what we have on them."
You're both right, as always," I agreed, 'but I'm using my golden vote to overrule you. We're supposed to be detectives, so let's find them our way."
The phone rang, effectively rubber-stamping my decision. Fearnside didn't introduce himself, he just said: "Can you be at the SFO at nine a.m. tomorrow?"
"Er, nine a.m.?" I queried, downcast.
"That's right."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Good," and he was gone.
I looked into the earpiece, as if expecting to see his face there before it receded back down the wires, and replaced the handset.
"Trouble?" Nigel asked.
Jeff didn't know anything about the Crosby case. I trusted him implicitly, but didn't want to go through the whole thing again. It always becomes awkward and embarrassing when you start keeping secrets from the team. "Er, no," I said. I'd have to set off about five o'clock and I was seeing Jacquie tonight. "No trouble at all."
The Serious Fraud Office is situated in NW1, which is about as accessible as Iquitos, Peru, to someone like me. I'd been before but couldn't remember the way, so I studied the map and jotted the route on a Post-it. Jacquie was content to go for a quick drink and afterwards didn't mind me dropping her off at the door. I half-heartedly suggested that she come down to London with me for the day, but she was seeing a buyer.
It was a dewy morning, the air as cool as that first sip of a well-earned pint. The blackbirds were singing and my pet blue tits were already scurrying between feeding ground and nest, their beaks stuffed with caterpillars and their feathers growing raggy with the non-stop effort. I brushed a spider's web off my face and wrecked the one adorning the wing mirror of my car, but not before' the perpetrator had dashed for shelter behind the glass. "I'll get you," I murmured to it.
Early-morning driving can be fun, before twenty million bleary-eyed commuters stagger to their garages and swamp the roads. I did the first hundred miles in ninety minutes and at six twenty-five pressed the button on the radio, just in time to catch up with the sport and the news headlines.
Big deal. Manchester United had lost and there was a bomb scare at Mount Pleasant sorting office, two streets away from the SFO. Traffic chaos was expected, and we were advised to travel in by public transport. I took the sissy's way out and abandoned the car at Cockfosters, not far from where I'd met Fearnside one week ago, and caught the tube.
"Ah!" said the receptionist, when I introduced myself to her at precisely eight fifty-eight. As Miss Jean Brodie said, I didn't wish to appear intimidated by being late, or early. She found a message in her log book and told me that the meeting had been put back one hour.
"It's due to the bomb scare," she explained.
"Bomb scare? What bomb scare?" I replied.
I went for a walk and tried again at ten o'clock. This time they were in. Fearnside introduced me to Chief Superintendent Tregellis, who sat behind a huge oak desk and looked like all top cops should look. His fierceness was enhanced by a deep cleft that ran from the middle of his cheek down past the corner of his mouth, like a duelling scar, except that there was a matching one at the other side and he didn't look the type to turn the other cheek. He was big and angular, with a shock of spiky black hair, his rolled-up sleeves giving him an air of no-nonsense efficiency. We did our best to break each other's fingers as we shook hands, and he invited me to sit down.
"Two hundred miles you've had to come, Charlie," he said, 'and you beat us here. We are duly chastened."
"And quite rightly," I replied.
He picked up a phone and dialled three numbers. "Get yourself in here and bring some coffee with you," he said into it.
Fearnside was hovering. "I'll leave you with Mr. Tregellis, if you don't mind, Charlie. I think he'll be very interested in what you have to say." I jumped to my feet and shook his hand while wishing him a happy retirement and saying how much I'd enjoyed working with him. The poor bloke looked choked and we agreed to talk on the phone when this was all over, neither of us believing it.
When he'd gone Tregellis said: "Bout time the old bugger was put out to grass. He's been cruising these last three years."
"He's helped me a lot in the past," I stated, matter of fact. If he thought I was going to start slagging Fearnside off he was wrong. The door opened and two men came in: a lanky one in a power shirt, bow tie and blue braces, and a dumpy skinhead. Dumpy was carrying a tray filled with jugs and cups; his pal looked as if he'd refuse to carry anything heavier than a figure on a balance sheet. Tregellis's desk was equipped with enough chairs for mini-conferences and they both sat on my right, with their backs to the window. I pulled a brand-new typist's pad from my briefcase and when Tregellis introduced us I wrote their names down. Dumpy was a DS and Lord Peter Wimsey was from the legal department.
"Right, Charlie," Tregellis began when the coffee was poured. "Tell us what you've got."
It didn't take long and I only had one copy of the file to offer them.
Dumpy took it to someone to get more. They were good listeners, I'll give them that. As I spoke Tregellis rubbed the blunt end of his pencil up and down the groove in his right cheek. I half-expected him to dislodge a couple of acorns, but he didn't. "That's more or less it," I concluded. "If you tell me that Crosby's paranoid I'll believe you and drop the whole thing."
Lord Wimsey's real name was Piers Forrester and that was as good a reason as any for hating him. "Mr. Crosby isn't paranoid," he announced. "J. J. Fox is as nasty a piece of shite as you'll ever step in. What you have here, Priest, is confirmation of what we already know but it doesn't give us any more in the way of evidence."
Tregellis glanced at him in a way that spoke volumes and leaned forward. There was a faded tattoo on his forearm that could have been an anchor. "J. J. Fox owns SWTV, as you know," he told me. "He put in the highest bid when the franchise was offered, back in 1985, and because of his media experience his offer was accepted. Nothing wrong with that, you might say." I nodded my agreement. "The second highest bid was from a consortium of established media figures. Fox's bid, which beat the deadline by minutes, was one million pounds above theirs. All the other bids were miles away. Mary Perigo was secretary for the consortium. Spinster, fifty years old, but not bad-looking.
While the bids were being calculated she found herself a boyfriend.
Called himself Rodger Wakefield. Rodger with a "d" in the middle, she stressed, when she told a girlfriend all about him. This friend said he sounded urbane, suave and generous with his money. Two days after it was announced that Fox had won the franchise she was found dead in her car on the top floor of a multi storey The car was burnt out."
"Was thej any evidence that she'd leaked information?" I asked.
"There were six in the consortium," Tregellis continued. "Some businessmen, some from the bright side of the footlights. They all knew the size of the bid, of course, as did Miss Perigo. Then they had partners, wives and mistresses, not to mention pals at the club, accountants, bank managers and the girl who typed the letter. We looked, Charlie, believe me we looked, but anyone could have leaked that figure."
"Was she murdered?"
"Cause of death was never established, but the car had been torched deliberately."
"What did Rodger Wakefield have to say?"
"We never found him. She'd told her friend his name, but otherwise was very coy about him. The friend had wondered if he was married. They were seen together at a charity "do" she'd help organise, in Newbury, and she'd named him as her guest, but according to acquaintances Mr.
Wakefield was unusually camera-shy. The Berkshire Life photographer was there, snapping away, but Wakefield only appears in the background of someone else's picture, a three-quarters rear view, I'm afraid.
Several people saw him, however, and say they'd recognise him again."
"Did he have an accent?"
"Public school northern, educated southern; take your pick."
"How hard have you looked for him?"
"We haven't. Met CID circulated an E-fit. The usual; he was a murder suspect."
"What's the state of play at the moment?"
"With Mary Perigo or J. J. Fox?"
"Fox."
"There isn't one. What with bent pension funds and NHS scams and computer fraud we're up to here." He waved a hand above his head.
"We've nobody working on it. Now and again someone writes us a letter and we put it on the file. Crosby isn't the only enemy that Fox has; five years ago the War Crimes Bureau contacted us and asked if we had anything on him. That's about it."
"Did you help them?"
He looked grim. "I suspect a copy of what we had may have fallen into their hands. Up to then we had never suspected that he wasn't a Jew.
Crosby's story corroborates that."
"Maybe Crosby was the one who tipped them off," I suggested.
Tregellis pointed a finger at his head, as if shooting himself, and said: "Of course."
"So what do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Anything you can," he replied. "You're the murder specialist, we're only fraud. Find Wakefield for us. You're nearer to Fox's base than we are. See what you can dig up."
"Bring us Fox's head on a plate, Priest," Forrester said. "That's what we'd like you to do."
I finished my coffee and scanned the two lines of notes I'd made.
Looking at Tregellis I said: "So you reckon there's something in Crosby's story?"
He nodded.
"I'll be working on my own."
"We're not expecting miracles."
"Expenses?"
"Send them to me."
"Right," I said, nodding. "Right."
Tregellis stood up, rotated his head and rubbed his neck. "I'm sure you appreciate that we're in shaky territory with this, Charlie, so the fewer people who know about it the better. I'll have a word with your people and N-CIS, and your contacts down here will be Piers and Graham," he nodded at the others, 'but feel free to come straight to me if necessary. Anything else you need to know?"
"Not at the moment," I replied, then turning to Piers and Graham said:
"But if I'm working with you two I'd better have your extension numbers." They rattled them at me. "Thank you. And your home numbers and mobiles."
Forrester's glare had been honed by a thousand years of superiority since the days when it meant a sentence of death to some poor serf.
Graham, on the other hand, was beaming like the sunrise over Dublin Bay. "And I'd appreciate a copy of Rodger Wakefield's photograph and the E-fit," I added, 'as soon as possible."