Fault Line - Retail (42 page)

‘I’m with you and your mum on that,’ said Pete.

‘How much did Wren’s pay for the business?’ I asked, looking across at Pete.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Info like that wasn’t doled out to the lower ranks. Dick?’

Trudgeon gave a shrug of his own. ‘I wasn’t told the exact figure. But you boys could find out if you wanted to, couldn’t you? Surely there’s a—’ He broke off.

‘A record of it somewhere?’ Pete grinned at me, even though there was nothing to grin about.

‘Have you any idea why someone would want to strip Wren’s files of paperwork relating to Trudgeon Haulage, Dick?’ I asked. It was time to pose the question directly.

He pondered his answer for a long time, then said, ‘Dad and Mike are both dead. I suppose it can’t do any harm to tell you.’ There was another lengthy pause. He drank some beer. He looked at each of us in turn. And then: ‘It’s strange you two digging this up after so long. I haven’t thought about it in donkey’s years. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time. To be honest, I wasn’t too keen to get to the bottom of it. I’d only just started with the force. The last thing I needed was … dodgy dealing by members of my own family. So, I … turned a deaf ear.

‘A deaf ear to what, you’re wondering.’ He sighed. ‘Well, this would have been January or February of ’sixty-nine. I can’t remember more exactly than that. But it was certainly early in the year. A cold, wet weekday night. The kind of night when you did more standing in doorways than pounding the beat. St Austell was quiet as the grave. Until I heard the sound of glass being smashed down East Hill as I was walking along South Street. I stepped on it then and found this fellow, drunk as a lord, standing outside Wren’s old offices. They were still unoccupied after the takeover by CCC. He’d thrown an empty whisky bottle at one of the windows and broken it. There was quite a lot of glass about. He was swaying like a corn-stalk in the breeze and swearing like a trooper. Angry about something, but too far gone to make sense. I arrested him as drunk and disorderly and marched him off to the station.

‘It was as the sergeant was booking him that he caught my name.
That
really seemed to set him off. “I’ve done enough for your father and your brother over the years for you to overlook a bit of broken glass.” That kind of thing. I didn’t know what he was on about, though the sarge raised an eyebrow at me. He was still hollering when we put him in a cell for the night. By next morning, he’d quietened down. But he hadn’t forgotten me and mine. He said my brother would go bail for him. And damn me if he didn’t. Mike delivered the money straight after the magistrate had remanded him. I remember Mike told me to steer clear of the subject with Dad. “Least said, soonest mended,” was how he put it.’

‘You’re talking about Gordon Strake, aren’t you?’ Pete cut in. ‘I remember reading he’d been fined in the paper.’

‘That was his name, yes. Strake. A former sales rep for Wren’s. Given the boot for drunkenness, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Did you ever ask your brother what Strake had done for him and your father, Dick?’ I pressed.

He shook his head. ‘No. It sounded to me as if some form of corruption was involved. I really didn’t want to know. Mike told me he’d make sure Strake left town and I was … well, not happy, of course, but … relieved, I suppose … to leave it at that.’

‘And this … corruption … could be the reason the records were stolen?’

‘Well, it could be, couldn’t it? If I had to name a suspect, I’d go for Strake.’

‘Long dead, I’m afraid.’

‘Easy to blame, then. That should be good news for you boys. A neat explanation to serve up to your boss.’ Trudgeon squinted at me. ‘You don’t look very pleased about it, though.’

Trudgeon headed home not long after, claiming his supper would be spoiling. He thanked us for the beer and we thanked him for his frankness. Quite where his frankness had taken us was hard to say, however. Pete was gagging for a cigarette by then, so we stepped round to the harbour, where seagulls were feasting from discarded chip wrappers and the setting sun was casting a queasy light on the house fronts of the town.

‘It comes back to Strake,’ I mused as Pete greedily inhaled his first lungful of smoke. ‘It always seems to.’

‘You really think he stole the records?’ Pete asked through a spluttering cough.

‘I’d like to. It’d be … convenient. But I’m not sure. He didn’t know his way around the building, did he? And there were quite a few people who’d have recognized him and queried why he was there.’

‘I’ve meant to ask you before how you reckon he ended up getting himself murdered – in Naples, of all places. I was surprised when I heard that on the grapevine, I can tell you. You were there at the time, weren’t you?’

‘I was staying at the Villa Orchis on Capri. I wasn’t in Naples.’

‘Same neck of the woods, though. What d’you think took Strake there?’

‘If I had to guess, I’d say he was planning to touch Francis Wren for a loan, but he got into trouble – fatal trouble – before he had the chance.’

‘Well, that would be like him, I suppose. There’s no chance his murder’s connected to our little mystery, then?’

There was every chance, of course. I knew that. And so, I suspected, did Pete. ‘No way to tell,’ I said neutrally.

‘And forty years too late to ask Strake to explain himself.’

‘Yes. It is.’ As I spoke, a thought struck me. Maybe, by an indirect route, it wasn’t too late. ‘Hold on, though. There was a sister in Plymouth. She wrote to Lashley, notifying him of her brother’s death. Strake had been living with her prior to his trip to Italy. He must have gone there after Mike Trudgeon gave him his marching orders from St Austell.’

‘Got a name for this sister, have you? Or an address?’

‘No. But Lashley probably filed the letter in CCC’s personnel records.’

‘Meaning it wouldn’t be in the stuff that’s gone missing.’

‘Exactly.’

‘She could be dead herself, Jon. Or gaga in a home. Or Lashley might have thrown the letter away.’

‘Or she mightn’t be dead. Or gaga. And the letter might be in the file.’

‘Yeah.’ Pete drew on his cigarette. ‘We’d better check, hadn’t we?’

‘First thing in the morning?’

He nodded. ‘Bright and early.’

And early it certainly was when I drove into the virtually empty car park at IK (St Austell) the following morning. None of the few members of staff planning to spend part of their Saturday in the office had yet arrived, with one exception.

Pete was waiting for me by the main entrance, puffing on a cigarette. His red-rimmed eyes and grimacing expression suggested the whisky chasers had caught up with the pints of beer overnight and formed a head-splitting combination. He didn’t look to have shaved either. All in all, he wasn’t a pretty sight.

‘I hope this’ll be worth the effort,’ he growled as we went in.

‘So do I, Pete.’

‘We’ll have to go up to my office to get the keys for the CCC cages. Fortunately, that’s where the kettle is. I need a strong black coffee.’

‘Looking at you, I’d have to agree.’

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t had the benefit of a full English and a cafetière of the finest Colombian, have I?’

‘Chez Newlove doesn’t run to that?’

‘Take a guess.’

‘On the whole, I’d rather not.’

All I got by way of a response as he made a stumbling start on the stairs was a defiant V-sign.

Fifteen minutes later, we were in the basement, heading for the cage containing CCC records from the sixties and seventies, with Pete slurping coffee from a mug as we went.

The box-files looked the same as those used for Wren’s records, but we were confident we weren’t going to be confronted by sheet after sheet of blank paper, if only because Fay Whitworth had
already
examined them. And our confidence was rewarded. The records were intact.

Or so they appeared to be. But the personnel files contained no letter written to Lashley by Gordon Strake’s sister in the summer of 1969. We checked meticulously. It just wasn’t there. Pete unhelpfully repeated his suggestion that Lashley had thrown it away.

But he hadn’t. He just hadn’t passed it on to the personnel department. When we sifted through the files of the department he’d been responsible for at CCC, Logistics, there it was, with a note in his handwriting:
No action required
. An understandable statement – at the time.

I held the letter under the light to read, with Pete craning over my shoulder.

12 Gascoyne Terrace

Plymouth

Devon

18th July 1969

Dear Mr Lashley,

I am writing to tell you that my brother, Gordon Strake, died on the ninth of this month. As you were his employer at Walter Wren & Co., I thought you ought to know, because I remember he said he would be due a pension from the company. He lived here after leaving St Austell earlier this year and remained a bachelor, so there will be no widow’s pension due either. If you need any more information, my telephone number is Plymouth 68115.

Yours sincerely,

Dora Strake

‘Do you think he rang her?’ Pete asked.

‘Probably not. But I’m going to ring her. Now.’

‘She wrote that more than forty years ago, Jon. What are the chances of her picking up the phone and saying, “Oh yes.
That
letter. Thanks for getting back to me”?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘As long as you’re prepared to be disappointed.’

‘I’m
always
prepared to be disappointed.’

According to Pete, Plymouth 68115 was sure to have acquired an extra digit since 1969, supposing it was still connected. He was right. And it was. The woman who answered sounded much younger than Dora Strake was bound to be. But my luck was in. She knew Dora.

‘We bought this house from her three years ago, when she moved into sheltered accommodation.’

‘Do you happen to know her address?’

‘Oh yes. We send her a card every Christmas.’

‘And a phone number?’

‘Yes. Do you want it?’

A few minutes later, I was talking to Dora herself. It had been almost too simple. But simplicity wasn’t going to carry me much further. Courteous though she was, Dora was also understandably puzzled.

‘You’re phoning about Gordon? My brother Gordon? And you used to work for Wren’s, you say?’

‘I know it’s all a long time ago, Miss Strake. But—’

‘A
very
long time.’

‘I knew your brother. Not well, but … our paths crossed. I’ve never quite understood the circumstances of his death. It happened in Naples, I believe.’

‘He was murdered, Mr Kellaway. The Italian police never discovered who’d killed him. Or why. It was dreadful. Just dreadful. He’s buried there, you know, in Naples. I sometimes wish …’ There was a silence. Then: ‘Never mind.’

‘Something’s happened, Miss Strake. Something that might – just might – help to explain what occurred in Naples.’

‘Really?’

‘I was wondering if perhaps we could meet.’

As I’d calculated, there was no chance Dora Strake would refuse to talk to me once the bait had been dangled before her of a possible explanation of her brother’s murder. I set off for Plymouth a few hours later – alone, despite Pete’s pleas to accompany me. I claimed Dora might be alarmed if we arrived mob-handed, although she’d sounded unflappable enough. The truth was that there were aspects of my involvement with Strake I didn’t want to have to disclose to Pete. Having him along threatened to cramp my style. I consoled him with the promise of a full account of the trip when I got back.

THIRTY-EIGHT

HILLINGDON COURT WAS
a purpose-built block of sheltered apartments off Mannamead Road, set in its own leafy, well-maintained grounds. Whatever Dora Strake had done with her life, it had evidently been more remunerative than anything her brother had accomplished, although, of course, she’d wasted much less money than he had on booze, cigarettes and three-legged racehorses.

She was a small, bright-eyed, white-haired old lady, gingerly arthritic in her movements but quite obviously in full possession of her wits. The intense concentration with which she received my account of how I’d tracked her down was a warning in itself. She wasn’t to be trifled with.

I suppressed my personal knowledge of what Strake had been up to during the trip to Naples he’d never returned from, but I volunteered everything else – the missing records, the evidence Strake had been following Oliver, the claims he’d made at the time of his arrest by PC Trudgeon. What Dora would make of it all I had no idea. But I felt sure she was intelligent enough to know her brother had been no saint, and candour tends to reward candour in my experience.

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ was her first response. Her further thoughts were delayed by the fetching of hot water to top up the teapot. Then: ‘It would be pointless to deny Gordon had a shady side to him, Mr Kellaway. I could blame it on the war. He spent so long
away
in the army, seeing things and doing things that may have made him … mistrustful of humanity. But it won’t quite wash, will it? Thousands of other young men did their bit without losing what my father would have called their moral compass. Gordon was a great disappointment to him. “Your trouble, boy,” he used to say, “is that you think the world owes you a living. Well, it doesn’t.” Now my father had his faults – more than a few – but I fear he was quite right where Gordon was concerned.

‘He was my brother. I loved him. But I wasn’t blind to his weaknesses. I hoped the job with Wren’s would put him on the right road and for a long time I thought it had. He never told me he’d been sacked until he came to stay with me in the early months of 1969. And he never said why he’d left St Austell. I assumed he’d turned to me because he was short of money, though he always seemed to have plenty to spend in the pubs and betting shops. Then he announced that some work had come his way and off he went. To Italy, as it turned out.’

‘Did he say what kind of work?’

‘No. He was cagey about it, very cagey. Not that that was unusual. He was always one to play his cards close to his chest. To be honest, I was glad to see the back of him. We didn’t part on the best of terms, something I’ve long regretted. When the police told me he’d been murdered, in Naples … well, I was dumbstruck. I had no idea he’d been planning to leave the country.’