Learning Curve Page 11

  ‘After all,’ said Trevor, ‘it looked to me as if they’d gone through everything possible at the time. They were pretty thorough then.’

  Tim gave a visible shudder. ‘You can say that again, mate. I couldn’t believe how horrible the coroner was at Bill’s inquest. Talk about the Spanish Inquisition – I still wake up in the night thinking about it.’

  Another silence fell on the quartet. The emotional effects of the accident were by common consent a taboo subject and never mentioned. Post-traumatic stress syndrome had been strenuously denied by them all.

  ‘Something’s stirred the police up all over again,’ said Paul. He had come out of the tragic evening the least physically damaged of all of them. No one was going to be allowed to suspect how affected in other ways he had been. ‘The trouble is we don’t know what it is that’s got them going second time round.’ Paul did know, but he wasn’t going to tell the others.

  Tim looked out of the window at the gathering darkness and got to his feet. ‘I’d like to get going now, if it’s all the same with you people. I’m on duty tonight.’ He turned at the door, his hand on the handle and admitted self-consciously, ‘Actually I haven’t got back to driving yet. No car, these days. But there’s a bus due any minute now.’

  Trevor pulled the corners of his mouth down and mumbled that he’d got back to driving but he didn’t enjoy it any more. ‘It’s not like it used to be. The fun’s gone out of it these days. I’ll hang on a bit longer though, Elizabeth, if it’s all right with you.’

  ‘I haven’t driven since because I’ve lost that first fine careless rapture, too, even though I’ve got that adapted car,’ said the girl astringently. ‘But you can stay.’

  ‘I don’t want to be late either,’ said Paul tactfully. ‘I’ve promised to take my sister down to the Lamb and Flag for a drink tonight.’ He added seriously, ‘On foot.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘Well, Sloan, are we dealing with a popcorn thriller or aren’t we?’ demanded Superintendent Leeyes the next morning from the comfort of his own office. The barrier of a sizeable desk between him and his subordinate served still further to fortify the impression of his overriding authority. It was a very different scenario from standing, windswept, in a marsh beside a river, thought Sloan, trying to interview a patently busy man about something that had happened in a cave a long time before.

  ‘A popcorn thriller, sir?’ said Sloan. ‘I’m afraid that …’

  ‘One where you’re too frightened to chew popcorn while you’re watching the film,’ expanded the superintendent. ‘Ghastly stuff, of course. Popcorn, I mean, not that I suppose the film is ever any better. I never touch it myself.’

  ‘No, sir. Naturally. Of course not.’ Sloan hesitated. ‘I’m not quite sure that I take your meaning though …’

  ‘A really exciting thriller, Sloan,’ Leeyes declared, ‘keeps your mind on the screen not on your belly. So, have we got a real thriller on our hands or is this whole business a figment of the imagination of a dying man?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, sir. All I can say at this stage is that I’m certain the son doesn’t think so, although he strenuously denies staring at anyone in particular when he read out that bit about it being a time to kill.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Leeyes tetchily, ‘I’m afraid that his stressing of the word “kill” at the funeral and glaring at someone unknown hardly amounts to evidence likely to convince the Crown Prosecution Service that they have a winnable case.’

  ‘I agree that it’s not a lot to go on, sir,’ conceded the detective inspector.

  ‘A bite-sized clue if ever there was one,’ grumbled Leeyes. ‘And there’s that Ponzi scheme over at Pelling that needs looking into before any more fools and their money are parted.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sloan was the first to agree that it had been a very small clue at Friar’s Flensant if ever there was one and said so.

  ‘And did you get anywhere with the wrong remainderman that the deceased had talked about?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Actually Sloan thought the expression ‘Last man standing’ described a remainderman best. He didn’t see how anyone could get that wrong. You were the last or you weren’t.

  ‘And you say the man’s widow and daughter still insist that they have no idea what the deceased was talking about?’

  ‘None. It was they who sent for us.’

  ‘That figures, otherwise,’ concluded Superintendent Leeyes, worldly-wise, ‘they wouldn’t have needed to have told us a dicky-bird about it.’ The superintendent drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘And now that you say that you’ve followed up all your leads, what do you think?’

  ‘The deceased was only actually present at one of the deaths – the one down the Chislet Caves …’ began Sloan, notebook at the ready.

  ‘Caves, did you say?’ Leeyes sat up. ‘Plato had a lot to say about caves.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan. That must have come from a course on history, myths and legends attended briefly – very briefly – by the superintendent one winter. The brevity of his attendance had been spectacular even by the superintendent’s track record (and there had been a happy winner of a sweepstake at the police station who had gone for the lowest numbers).

  If Sloan remembered correctly it had foundered on the moment when Leeyes had had Oedipus’s history spelt out by the lecturer. The superintendent, whose views on sentencing were widely known in ‘F’ Division and by the magistrates on the Berebury bench, had declared that Oedipus’s killing of his father, marrying his mother and siring four of her children had merited greater punishment than easy exile.

  ‘Plato had these prisoners chained in a cave so that they could only look at a wall,’ Leeyes informed him now.

  ‘Indeed, sir?’ Sloan tried to sound interested. Police contact with prisons was deliberately kept at an absolute minimum.

  ‘So that all that the prisoners were able to see were the shadows of people walking in front of a fire that was behind them.’

  ‘Very confusing, I’m sure, sir.’

  ‘Stopped them dealing with reality,’ said Leeyes, summing up in a very few words a famous allegory of Plato as narrated by Socrates.

  ‘The shadow not the substance?’ offered Detective Inspector Sloan tentatively.

  ‘Exactly, Sloan. And that’s what I think you’re dealing with.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He hurried on, his further investigation of the Ponzi scheme at Pelling looming ever nearer, ‘As I was saying, sir, Derek Tridgell was in a cave under Chislet Crags when a man was killed and might have been present at a chemical firm when another man died – we can’t confirm that yet – but there was also someone at the wheel of a car who killed a man and Derek Tridgell’s son was one of those in that car.’

  ‘Don’t haver, man.’

  ‘I have also, sir, been trying to work out the significance of Derek Tridgell using the word “killed” and not “murdered”.’

  ‘If any,’ said Leeyes flatly.

  ‘Killing would include the driver of the car, sir. Someone died – was killed – in that accident and Derek Tridgell might have known who was at the wheel.’

  ‘Or been told.’

  ‘Or even guessed,’ sighed Sloan. ‘After all, sir, that son of his took himself off to South America very soon after the accident.’

  ‘What about his mother?’ asked Leeyes. ‘Does she know?’

  ‘If she does, sir, she isn’t saying,’ said Sloan, adding, ‘but I think that some of the survivors of that accident know all right. That’s half the trouble, and they aren’t saying anything either.’

  Sloan closed the door of Superintendent Leeyes’ room behind him with care. The thought of getting back to the peace and quiet of his own office came as a real relief after trying to follow his superior officer’s tortuous way of thinking. Half of his own mind was still meditating on the words of a dying man at Friar’s Flensant but – conscientious working detective that he was – the other half was already beginni
ng to turn towards the possible financial fraud out at Pelling. There was at least nothing urgent about what Derek Tridgell had said but even now gullible people might be being deprived of their life’s savings, which was undoubtedly urgent.

  Detective Constable Crosby was there in his office waiting for him. ‘It’s Inspector Harpe, sir. He said would you please ring him as soon as.’

  Sloan picked up the internal telephone on the instant. ‘That you, Harry? What’s up?’

  ‘Ah, Seedy, glad to have got you. Listen, you were interested in a man called Paul Tridgell, weren’t you?’

  ‘What about him?’ said Sloan immediately. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was in that pile-up last Christmas, remember? The one we spoke about. Well, I have news for you.’

  Sloan pulled his notebook in front of him on the desk, pen poised. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He and his sister were walking home from their local out at Friar’s Flensant last night.’

  ‘The Lamb and Flag Inn,’ supplied Sloan.

  ‘That’s the place. There’s a stretch of road there without a pavement and, of course, being out in the sticks like it is in the village, there isn’t any street lighting either.’

  ‘Go on.’ Sloan’s pen hovered over his notebook.

  ‘It seems a car came up from behind them and knocked Paul Tridgell over. He was walking on the outside, of course.’

  There wasn’t any ‘of course’ about it these days but this was neither the time nor the place to be talking about the courteous behaviour of Englishmen of yesteryear in walking on the outside to shelter their ladies from passing traffic.

  ‘The car didn’t touch the sister although it seems she fell forward, too,’ Harpe was going on, ‘but Tridgell’s badly bruised all over and they’re not sure whether he’s broken his wrist or not. He’ll be out of action for a bit anyway.’

  ‘Which is presumably what someone wanted,’ said Sloan, thinking aloud. ‘That’s if it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Harry Harpe. ‘Your department, that, Seedy. Not mine. The hospital says he’ll be all right when the bruises go down – they’re going to take another look at his X-rays this morning – but, having examined the scene myself last night, I’d say that it was a pretty close-run thing. It looks as if the driver didn’t slow down at all – there’s not a skid mark in sight.’

  ‘Make of car?’

  ‘You’re joking. That sister of his …’

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘I understand she’s an art student which should have made her observant but take it from me, her eye does not extend to the make of motor vehicles. All she can remember is that she thought the car was black …’

  A saying about all cats being black in the dark flitted through Sloan’s mind but he didn’t voice it.

  ‘And that it didn’t stop,’ finished the traffic inspector. ‘She knew that, all right.’

  ‘Ah.’ Both policemen knew that that was what mattered.

  ‘The casualty himself was a bit more spot on,’ admitted Harpe grudgingly. ‘He said he looked for the number plate as he fell and realised that it was being driven without lights. No tail lights to be seen.’

  ‘So it was no accident,’ concluded Sloan.

  ‘Nope, because he was also aware of something else. It didn’t dawn on him though until the hospital had finished with him.’

  ‘What was that?’ The page in Sloan’s notebook was filling up.

  ‘He thought that the dashboard lights might have been covered over – there was no light showing in the vehicle at all. Hence no light reflected on the driver’s face.’

  ‘He’d only need to be masked to be totally unidentifiable, then,’ said Sloan.

  ‘He certainly might have been but don’t forget, Seedy, there’s still the car.’ In the admittedly jaundiced view of the traffic inspector, evidence gleaned from vehicles was more reliable than that from human beings. For one thing, machines didn’t change the story that they’d told.

  ‘Glass on the road?’ asked Sloan, perking up. What could be learnt by forensic specialists from broken glass was a constant source of wonder to him.

  ‘None, which was interesting in itself. You can tape a headlight all over, you know, so that it doesn’t shatter on impact.’

  ‘Tyre marks?’

  ‘Not many since, as I said, the driver doesn’t seem to have braked at all and what marks that are there are a darn side too common to be much help but, rest assured, Seedy, we’ve put the word out this morning. Anyone taking a car with a damaged nearside front wing into a garage anywhere any time soon is going to be reported to us pretty pronto.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan thanked his friend, folded his notebook shut and put away his pen. It had, he noted, taken less than five minutes to put a potential fraud at Pelling completely out of his mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At much the same time Jonathon Sharp was welcoming Chris Honley into his office at Berebury Pharmaceuticals. The chairman belonged to the tidy desk school of business management – there was just the one sheet of paper in front of him and so far there was nothing whatsoever written on it.

  ‘Come along in and sit down, Honley,’ he said, waving an inviting arm in the direction of a standard office chair the other side of his desk. There were no easy chairs placed cosily side by side in front of a low coffee table for informal chats in Jonathon Sharp’s room. The decor was totally businesslike. And there was no doubt either about who was in charge. ‘I’ve told Marion Tridgell about your coming here from Luston Chemicals and that we wanted you to get stuck in as soon as possible.’ He gave him an encouraging smile. ‘There’s nothing stopping you settling down here now your gardening leave’s up.’

  ‘How did she take it?’ asked Honley curiously. ‘After all, it’s all been a bit quick, her husband having only just died.’

  ‘She was very calm about your coming, as I thought she would be. She said she didn’t know you but had heard about your good work at Luston Chemicals. She quite understood that you wouldn’t want to stay on there after what had happened to poor Michael Linane.’

  Ralph Iddon, the Luston firm’s chairman, hadn’t been anything like as calm about Chris Honley’s jumping ship from his own outfit – especially to his going to that particular firm too – but the chemist saw no reason to tell his new employer this.

  Honley shuddered now. ‘No way was I going to stay there. Not ever.’

  ‘Their loss, our gain,’ beamed Sharp benevolently.

  ‘At least you say Marion Tridgell understands how I felt which is more than Ralph Iddon seemed to,’ said Honley bitterly. ‘He’s got no fine feelings, that man.’

  ‘She’s a sensible woman,’ said Sharp, tapping his desk with his pen, ‘which is more than you could say for Paul, that son of hers. He’s much too uptight for his own good.’ That he thought Paul Tridgell might be a bit of a problem to anybody else as well he did not mention to the man sitting in front of him.

  ‘He must be quite young still,’ said the other man tolerantly.

  ‘I think in a way,’ went on Jonathon Sharp, following his own train of thought, ‘Marion’s lost interest in the firm now, apart from Derek’s pension, of course. Drawn the shutters down on the past and all that but still, of course, very proud of what he did for Ameliorite.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ said Honley warmly. ‘It was a really elegant product from a pharmaceutical point of view. Derek Tridgell knew his job, all right, and he did you proud over here. By the way, what’s going to happen to Ameliorite now?’

  Sharp sighed. ‘Token production only – you can’t fight predatory pricing, you know. By the time you’ve won your court case you’ll already have gone to the wall. Since your sainted lot at Luston undercut us, the product’s dead in the water, blast them.’

  ‘Well, I hope to do as well for Berebury Pharmaceuticals as poor Derek did – by the way, what are we going to call what I’ll be be working on?’

  Jonathon Shar
p drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Good question.’

  ‘Or do you just want it still only to have a number?’

  The chairman shook his head. ‘I don’t like numbers – people get them wrong too easily. The fat finger syndrome and all that. No, a name would be better.’

  ‘It’s got to have a name that won’t mean anything to anyone poking about,’ insisted Honley. ‘Not like Ameliorite, which does what it says on the tin – ameliorates pain. Or Mendaner, come to that. The trouble with all doctors,’ he added bitterly, ‘is that they only see pain as a symptom, not as a problem to the patient.’

  Sharp stared at his desk for a long minute and then took up his pen, a little smile twitching his lips. ‘I know – we’ll call it after something to do with caving as a sort of tribute to Derek. That should put anyone off the scent.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Honley, sitting back comfortably in his chair. ‘I’d heard that going down holes in the ground was his thing.’

  ‘He took me down the caves at Chislet Crags once and that was quite enough,’ shuddered Sharp. ‘I could never see the attraction myself but he used to say that you needed a touch of danger in your life to keep you on your toes. Like that philosopher who thought it was good for you to live on the side of a volcano.’

  ‘Rather him than me. I was told that he was a great caver, though.’

  ‘He thought caving was the perfect antidote to pharmaceutical research,’ said Sharp. ‘I can’t understand why myself. A dirty and dangerous hobby, if you ask me.’

  ‘Life in the lab can be a touch unexciting from time to time,’ said Chris Honley moderately.

  ‘I hope it isn’t going to be with you here,’ responded his new boss immediately. ‘We’ve got a lot riding on you, Honley, and I’d like your time here to be very exciting and our new project successful.’

  ‘So what are we going to call it, then?’ asked Chris Honley again. ‘It needs a name or people won’t think I’m actually doing any work.’