Widows & Orphans (36 page)

‘I’m not going to make a speech,’ he said.

‘Hear hear!’ Trevor interjected. ‘I mean…’

‘We’ll save that for Friday,’ Duncan said, sparing his blushes, ‘but I can’t let the occasion pass without saying a few words. This is a sad but inevitable moment. In recent years I’ve often felt like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Rowena said, as Brian sniggered.

‘For me this hasn’t been a family business so much as a community one – there, you knew you wouldn’t get away without hearing the word one last time. Perhaps I’m being too much of a Jeremiah in fearing that everything will change. After all, the
Mercury
name is being kept on along with several of you: Brian and Trevor in Basingstoke; Rowena, Jake and Stewart here, even if your roles will be redefined.’

‘Yes, how many “s”s in Sassenach?’ Stewart asked to general bemusement. ‘I’ll quite likely be subbing the
Aberdeen Advertiser
or the
Hull Gazette
.’

‘I’m keeping what I really think about you all till Friday … oh, that came out wrong! For now I just want to thank you for the support you’ve given me over the years and say that, although I’m leaving the
Mercury
, I’m not leaving Francombe and I look forward to seeing you socially.’ He found himself staring at Brian, whose eyes were a blank. ‘So I ask you to drink to the future of everyone here and of the
Mercury
. The future!’

‘The future!’

Duncan raised his glass as the toast was echoed. Then, feeling a desperate urge to escape, he edged towards the door. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll slip away.’

‘Not so fast, boss,’ Ken said, stepping forward with a package that Duncan immediately identified. ‘Your last paper won’t be out till tomorrow but we’ve got together to give you a sneak preview of the front page.’

Taking a gulp of champagne Duncan unwrapped the
spike
and studied the tribute from his anagrammatic reporters. ‘I shan’t read it now,’ he said, his eyes misting over at the
allusion to the well-loved caretaker, who had once provoked such ridicule. ‘But I shall do as soon as I’m upstairs. Thank you … thank you all so much. I’ll truly treasure it.’

Thuds and thumps resounded around him as he made for the door and they banged him out in the time-honoured way. He went up to the flat where, suddenly feeling confined, he decided to take himself out for lunch and then to a film matinée, an indulgence that he had not enjoyed for years. But a glimpse of the snowfall outside his window deterred him so, after heating up a tin of soup and wishing that he had drunk another glass of champagne, he sat down to read the
spike
. Laughing out loud at the affectionate raillery, he was startled by a knock at the door.

‘Missing me already?’ he said, opening it to find Sheila.

‘I’m sorry, Duncan, but there are two policemen asking for you downstairs.’

‘Can’t somebody else deal with it? I’m officially retired.’

‘They asked for you by name. One of them’s Ted Ravenscroft.’

‘Perhaps he hasn’t heard about the takeover. Where are my shoes?’

Having slipped them on, he made his way downstairs with Sheila following anxiously. As he passed the reporters’ room, he was surprised to find Brian and Jake hovering in the doorway. ‘No rest for the wicked,’ he said as he headed down to the ground floor.

‘Hello, Ted … Constable,’ he said to the two policemen who were waiting warily. ‘You’re a bit behind the times, Ted. I’ve edited my last issue. If there’s anything you want from now on, you should speak to Rowena Birdseye.’ ‘Duncan Neville?’ Ted asked, his voice even more uneasy than his stance.

‘Yes, of course,’ Duncan replied perplexed.

‘Are you the owner of the Apple MacBook serial number W88134K20P2 left at Mr Fixit, 32 Bartholomew Road, Francombe on Friday, 7 February 2014?’

‘I’m the owner of an Apple MacBook, which I took in for repair last week, but I’ve no idea of the serial number. What’s this about? Has it been stolen?’

‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. You don’t have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.’

For someone so reluctant to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday, Adele had taken a keen interest in the preparations for the party. As Duncan had predicted, her misgivings, prompted by the sale of the paper and his own arrest, dwindled as the day approached, to be replaced by a constant fear that he would bungle the arrangements. He had respected her wish that it be an intimate gathering; not that there was much choice, given her reduced social circle. So along with Alison, Malcolm, their two sons and Jamie, he had invited her three fellow bridge players, two former colleagues from the Townswomen’s Guild, the president of the horticultural society and Henry.

On the day itself Chris came to cook, set out and serve the food, while his friend Paul, whose artistic talents were not confined to doll-making, decked the sitting room, dining room and hall with bunches of balloons, garlands of paper flowers, strings of tissue pompoms and, most strikingly, eight full-size photographic cut-outs of Adele aged between ten and sixty (vanity had vetoed any later image). Chris who, much to Duncan’s embarrassment, refused any payment for what he described as a birthday gift, had returned to work soon after Duncan moved back to Ridgemount. Having agonised over cutting Chris’s hours now that he himself could attend to his mother’s basic needs, he discovered that Chris in turn had been worrying how to tell them that, with his grandmother safely installed in Castlemaine and his injured shoulder ruling out lifting, he had decided to go back into catering management. He would, however, be happy to help out with Adele whenever he could.

Duncan pondered the irony that for all the damage Neil had done him, he had unwittingly solved the problem of how to limit Adele’s expenditure. It’s an ill wind, he thought bitterly as he found himself once again reliving the ordeal of his arrest. He sensed Ted Matthews’s discomfiture and his colleague’s contempt as they drove him to Falworth Road police station. Once there, he had his watch, wallet, keys, belt and
mobile confiscated – although he was permitted to make a call on the station phone to Victor Sheringham, his solicitor – before being escorted down to a cell. Victor, who had planned to leave work early to take his daughters sledging on the South Downs (inducing Duncan’s one authentic pang of guilt), headed straight for the station, where he learnt that, when Tim Barker examined Duncan’s hard disk, he had uncovered over four hundred indecent images of children.

‘What children?’ Duncan asked. ‘Are they friends or strangers? How old? Girls or boys?’

‘I know nothing except that they’re underage,’ Victor replied wretchedly, ‘There are some girls but mainly boys.’

‘There you are then!’ Duncan said, with a momentary sense of exultation. ‘How can they be mine? I haven’t felt the slightest stirring in that direction since school.’

Victor who, to Duncan’s dismay, seemed more concerned to find a valid reason for his having looked at the images than to accept that the very notion was preposterous, asked whether he might have downloaded them during the course of an investigation into child pornography that had subsequently been dropped.

‘You’re saying that under the pressure of weekly deadlines I managed to forget that I had four hundred pictures of unspeakable wickedness and degradation on my screen? No!’

Duncan reaffirmed his innocence when shortly afterwards he was taken up to an interview room, which reeked of body odour and air freshener, and questioned. Having explained that the laptop did not have a password and that the only people who had access to his flat were his son, his fiancée, her son and his cleaner, he asked whether it might have been possible for someone with a grievance against him (‘the sort of computer whizz-kid who hacks into the Pentagon’) to make it look as if he had downloaded the images in order to incriminate him.

‘Who would want to do that?’ one of the two interviewing officers asked incredulously.

‘The Mayor, half the Town Council, assorted hoteliers, property developers, publicans, supermarket chains, bus companies, hospital administrators, not to mention your own chief constable. Anyone whom the
Mercury
has held to account over the past twenty years!’

To his own relief and Victor’s surprise, Duncan was not charged but released on police bail pending further investigation. Victor drove him home, where his parting remark that ‘At least I don’t need to give you my usual spiel about not talking to the press’ fell flat. Duncan had not realised how deeply he was in shock until he struggled up the stairs. Every step seemed like ten and by the time he reached the top he was gasping for breath. He stumbled through his front door, poured himself a tumbler of whisky and sank on to the sofa, but the respite was short-lived. Having ignored the flashing
nine
on the message indicator of his answering machine, he was forced to respond to the call that came through a few minutes later. Sounding strained, Alison announced that she was on her way to Francombe, having been rung up by a distraught Adele with news of his arrest. His horror that his mother knew was heightened by the memory of the firebomb attack that had triggered the death of Mrs Ponsonby. Panic-stricken, he proposed to drive straight over to Ridgemount but Alison dissuaded him, insisting that Adele was safe in the hands of Chris and that he himself needed rest.

The mystery of how Adele had found out was solved by his next caller. After pledging his support ‘moral, practical and liquid if you just want to get soused’, Ken described how, to the fury of the entire office, including Trevor, Brian had written up his arrest on the
Mercury
website. ‘No doubt it’s a taste of the balanced, informed reporting we can expect from Newscom,’ he said, as if the decline in journalistic standards were the true offence. Having promised to ring him if there were anything he needed, Duncan hung up and contemplated this latest blow. If his mother, who had no access
to what she dubbed ‘the interweb’, had heard what had happened, the news must have spread all over town. For now he was concerned solely with Jamie and Ellen. However painful it was to repeat a story that seemed more unreal with every telling, he owed them an explanation – or at least an account. He dialled Jamie’s mobile, only to lose heart and instead ring Linda, whose outraged incredulity (‘If they can muddle up babies in a maternity unit, they can muddle up hard disks at a computer shop’) reduced him to tears. Despite a nagging doubt over her unwillingness to put Jamie on the line if he had indeed ‘rubbished’ the charge as she claimed, he rang off feeling reassured.

Musing sourly that the one virtue of his arrest was to remove any need for sobriety, he poured himself another tumbler of whisky and rang Ellen.

‘Duncan, thank God! I’ve been so worried. Did you get my message?’

He glanced contritely at the flashing
nine
. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t played any of them back yet.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘I should hope not!’ he said with a rush of anguish.

‘I mean I can’t believe it’s happened to you. Neil showed me the
Mercury
website. Did you know that people can write comments underneath? Whatever you do, don’t read them,’ she added quickly.

‘I can’t. I don’t have a computer. I could go down to the office but they’ve probably changed the locks … or at any rate the password.’

‘It’s not a joke!’

‘I know. Ellen, I’m sorry.’

‘Why? You haven’t done anything.’

‘Of course not,’ he replied, unsure if it had been a question or a statement. ‘I mean I’m sorry that this has flared up around us. Just when we should be … when we have been … when we will be so happy. Oh God, Ellen, I want to see you so much.’

‘Me too. But there’s no way I can get away right now.’

‘I could call a cab and come to you. Unless I’m already on a minicab blacklist throughout Francombe.’

‘It’s not a joke!’

‘I know, but I have to keep my sanity somehow. Shall I come round?’

‘No, not this evening. Tomorrow will be better. I’ve got Neil … he keeps saying “it could have been me”.’

‘What could? Nothing could. It’s all some terrible nightmare. You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. Everything will be easier tomorrow.’

While he had hoped for a more emphatic endorsement, he told himself that an element of caution was inevitable. After all, she had been married to Matthew for nineteen years without realising that he was committing a multimillion-pound fraud. Moreover, she had had to endure her mother’s insinuations that his attraction to her cloaked an attraction to her children. Under the circumstances it was remarkable that she had any faith left in him at all.

‘Believe me, it’ll sort itself out. And whatever else we mustn’t let it spoil our Valentine’s Day date.’

In the event, Duncan spent the evening with his mother. He had quit Mercury House first thing the previous day, unable to face the questions, suspicions and, most painful of all, the sympathy of the staff, and had driven to Ridgemount where Adele greeted him with moist eyes and the veiled reproach that she had been up all night. Alison, whose cool head had never been more welcome, at once began organising both him and his defence, promising that straight after breakfast she would ring Malcolm and ask him to find the leading London lawyer in his field since they couldn’t trust anyone in Francombe, a remark that revived Adele’s tears.

Alison’s misgivings were confounded when, on Friday morning, Victor rang with the news that the police had provided him with the forensic evidence for which he had been
pressing. Analysis of the hard drive showed that all the offending files had been created in two sessions with none having been accessed or modified since then. The sessions in question were between 6 and 9 p.m. on Thursday, 30 January and between 6 and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, 5 February. Duncan’s immediate task was to account for his whereabouts during each, which turned out to be remarkably straightforward for, although the police had impounded his pocket diary, along with his entire collection of DVDs and his battered Penguin edition of
Lolita
, Sheila kept an office diary into which all his engagements were transferred. Alison drove straight to Mercury House, returning with proof that on the evening of 30 January he had chaired a protest meeting at the Morley Road refugee centre attended by, among others, two police community support officers, and on the evening of 5 February he had taken Ellen to Brighton to see a touring production of
Tosca
.

Victor arranged for him to attend the police station that afternoon with details of both events, along with credit card receipts from the Brighton theatre car park and Terre à Terre Restaurant. Duncan’s relief was qualified since, as he revealed first to Ellen and then to the police, Neil had been at his flat on both occasions, purportedly working on his local history project. Later that evening, when they were due to be at the Metropole, twisting and shaking to the retro sounds of The Crimplenes, Ellen rang with the news that Neil had been arrested after school and she had accompanied him as his ‘appropriate adult’. Confronted with the evidence, he had made no attempt to deny his guilt, while steadfastly refusing to offer any explanation, even after the interviewing officer warned him that being over the age of ten he risked prosecution. He claimed that he bore Duncan no grudge and when, as though in a last-ditch attempt to justify their tactics, the officer asked whether Duncan had ever done anything to him ‘like the men in the pictures’, he shook his head.