Some by Fire (10 page)

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 cooperation.’ 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. ‘JJ 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 leant forward. There was a faded tattoo on his forearm that could have been an anchor. ‘JJ 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 multistorey. The car was burnt out.’