Losing Ground Page 11

  ‘Well put,’ said Lionel Perry, metaphorically patting him on the back. ‘Anyway, we have no plans to demolish the house. All we want to do is carry out some sympathetic restoration and create a number of attractive living units…’

  ‘Houses and apartments,’ translated Auriole Allen swiftly.

  ‘But I understand you haven’t got actual permission yet,’ advanced Detective Inspector Sloan, putting in his oar. His oar was, after all, the one that counted.

  ‘An application for outline planning permission is with the Berebury Council as we speak,’ said Lionel Perry.

  ‘All still in the balance, then,’ said Crosby chattily.

  ‘The highways people have raised no objections as far as the traffic situation is concerned,’ said the chairman. ‘That’s most important.’

  Detective Constable Crosby’s head came up with a jerk at the mention of the word traffic since his main ambition in life was to join F Division’s traffic section. This wish was only exceeded by the determination of the traffic section not to have him there.

  ‘The Calleshire County Council has an input, too,’ Auriole Allen obliquely supplemented Lionel Perry like the good employee she was, ‘but we understand that they’re ready to go along with our plans.’

  ‘And, importantly,’ added Perry, ‘no neighbours have raised any objections with the planning authority.’

  ‘There aren’t any neighbours,’ protested Crosby.

  ‘Exactly, constable,’ said Perry with the air of a schoolmaster giving a pupil full marks.

  Detective Inspector Sloan leafed through the pages of his notebook. ‘We are in the process, sir, of investigating some – er – additional material found at the site.’

  ‘Really? What sort of material? Tell me.’

  ‘We wonder if you could throw any light on why there should have been a pile of bones in the middle of the billiard room floor.’

  ‘Bones? Good God! You mean there was a person there when the building went up?’ The colour of the man’s face went from healthy pink to a deadly ashen.

  ‘Just a pile of bones,’ said Sloan.

  Lionel Perry looked genuinely stricken. ‘As far as we were concerned, Inspector,’ he said, recovering himself a little, ‘the building had been empty for a couple of years at least. I have absolutely no idea why there should have been anyone there.’

  ‘There wasn’t,’ said Detective Sloan quietly. ‘The bones aren’t human.’

  Lionel Perry sank back in his chair, patently relieved. ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘What we would also like to know, sir, is why those bones should have been sitting on a pile of lobster shells.’

  The change in the man was startling. ‘Lobster shells?’ he echoed shakily. His face, which had been starting to resume its usual colour, reverted to an ashen-white.

  ‘Genus Homarus,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, automatically noting that the chairman’s hands had now acquired a distinct tremor.

  ‘I’ve no idea at all,’ Lionel Perry said in a voice now grown quite husky.

  But, as Detective Inspector Sloan was later to report to Superintendent Leeyes, ‘He was lying.’

  Derek Hitchin, Berebury Homes’s project manager, walked well away from Randolph Mansfield in the grounds of Tolmie Park, fished out his mobile telephone from his pocket and punched in the number of the direct line to the planning officer at Berebury Council.

  ‘That you, Jeremy?’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ said a voice cautiously.

  ‘Derek here.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘As it happens, yes, but remember that it’s something you can’t always count on.’

  ‘Look here, Jeremy, we’re going to have to put in some revised plans for Tolmie Park.’

  ‘Word had reached us,’ said Stratton neutrally.

  ‘Not a big amendment.’

  ‘You surprise me.’ The planning officer did not sound at all surprised.

  ‘Nothing too significant.’

  ‘I see. Just a little local difficulty, then,’ said Stratton ironically.

  ‘Don’t be like that. Randolph’s bound to be in touch and then take his time over his blasted drawings. Elegant they may be but quick he isn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know any architects who are,’ responded Stratton. ‘Occupational disease of the profession.’

  ‘I don’t need to tell you, Jeremy, that there’s a lot riding on our getting the project started soon,’ said Derek Hitchin.

  ‘And I don’t need to tell you,’ said Stratton, ‘that that, of course, is not really the concern of the local authority.’

  ‘There’s a very great deal riding on it, actually,’ said Hitchin. ‘Including my job.’

  ‘Listed building consent always takes time, too,’ said Jeremy Stratton obliquely.

  ‘What matters most,’ said Hitchin tightly, ‘is the planning committee’s decision…’

  ‘But Derek…’

  ‘And what matters to the planning committee is the opinion of their chief planning officer. They listen to him, all right. Even I know that.’

  ‘Berebury Council can’t speak for English Heritage…and you should know that, too.’

  ‘They’re no trouble,’ said Hitchin confidently. ‘After all, we’re saving an old building. Our worry is that the fire is the work of Calleshire Construction – delaying things while they limber up for a takeover.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, that is not the concern of the local authority either.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly ours with bells on. And if it wasn’t them who did it then my money’s on the Berebury Preservation Society.’

  ‘They are indeed a very active local interest group,’ said Jeremy Stratton guardedly.

  ‘Their Jonathon Ayling really gets my goat.’

  But Jeremy Stratton was much too much a local government servant to be drawn into comment on that young man over the telephone.

  Or on anything else.

  It was purely a question of following routine that made Detective Inspector Sloan telephone his opposite number in Calleford. ‘We’re checking on something over here at Berebury,’ he said, ‘and we’d like the low-down on an outfit over your way.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Calleford Construction. It’s a building firm.’

  ‘I’ll say it is,’ said the man warmly. ‘The biggest and best in Calleshire – that’s according to them, of course.’

  ‘And is it?’ said Sloan, who hadn’t been born yesterday.

  He could hear his opposite number sucking his teeth. ‘Biggest, certainly. As for being the best, I wouldn’t know. I don’t live in one of their houses.’ He sniffed. ‘Probably the only person round here who doesn’t.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’ said Sloan.

  ‘If there’s room on the land to build a house then Calleshire Construction’ll build two there. Or three.’

  ‘Anything known?’ enquired Sloan since overcrowded building was only an aesthetic crime.

  ‘No funny business – that’s as far as we’ve heard, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ That was a given in all police work.

  A cackle came down the phone line. ‘No need for funny business, anyway. Money running out of their ears. Must be, with this housing boom.’

  That, thought Sloan, was a sad reflection on business morality if ever there was one. Although, he reminded himself, on the other hand, the association between crime and pressing need applied to drug-taking clearly enough. He contented himself with saying, ‘There’s a suggestion this end that Calleshire Construction might be planning a takeover of Berebury Homes.’

  ‘Eat or be eaten,’ said the voice from Calleford. ‘Law of the jungle.’

  No head of a criminal investigation department, however small that department, needed to be told about the law of the jungle. ‘So a takeover might be on the cards then?’

  ‘Calleford Construction cou
ld probably have them for breakfast.’ Food was clearly still in the mind of Sloan’s opposite number. ‘It would be an obvious move for them. There are the economies of scale for starters…’

  ‘Small is beautiful.’ Sloan quoted someone famous. He wasn’t sure who. Yes, he was. Schumacher. The superintendent had the sentiment on the calendar in his office as part of his campaign against the amalgamation of police forces.

  ‘And there’s something else I’ve always found big business keen on.’

  ‘Besides money?’

  Sloan’s irony went unremarked. ‘Consolidation,’ said the other man.

  Sloan roughly translated that into, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’

  ‘So what’s your problem over in Berebury, then?’ asked his opposite number.

  ‘Arson,’ Sloan settled for the one thing that he was sure about. ‘Damage to a building due for redevelopment.’

  The voice at the other end of the line gave this due consideration before asking, ‘Would that be good or bad for your firm?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan sighed. ‘Part of the trouble is that for the life of me, I don’t know. Delay might weaken it – upset the finances and so on – if it holds up development.’

  ‘Calleford Construction would get their hands on it for less then. Delay would hold them up, too, of course…’

  ‘But then, they could afford it,’ concluded Sloan. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘On the other hand…’

  ‘Yes?’ One of the first things every police officer learnt when appearing in court was that there was invariably an ‘other hand’. It was something defence lawyers were always very keen on.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said his opposite number, ‘arson often facilitates redevelopment.’

  ‘We’d thought about that, too.’

  ‘Heads you win, tails you win,’ offered the man in Calleford philosophically. ‘I can tell you one thing for nothing,’ he went on, ‘and that’s that the head honcho at the firm over here is one of the smartest cookies around. No flies on him and he doesn’t take prisoners, either.’

  ‘I have news for you, Jason,’ grinned Stuart Bellamy, pushing open the pop star’s studio door. ‘The fuzz are after us.’

  ‘It’s all up, then is it?’ Jason Burke looked up, unalarmed. He was fiddling with a synthesiser in the corner. ‘By the way, Stu, I don’t think that’s what they call the police any more. It’s dated.’

  ‘Right,’ conceded Bellamy, bowing to a higher realism. One of the things that performers like Kevin Cowlick had to be was up-to-date in current slang all the time.

  Jason pushed a knob up a little, cocked his head to listen to the adjusted sound, and then said, ‘What is it we are meant to have been and gone and done, then? Tell me.’

  Stuart Bellamy, accountant marque, grinned and said, ‘I think it’s to have enough money to make an offer for Tolmie Park, cash on the nail.’ He frowned. ‘At least, I think that’s the crime. They’re very hot on money-laundering these days.’

  ‘What about those spreadsheet thingies you do each year for the tax people?’

  ‘Balance sheet and income and expenditure account?’ Stuart was never sure how much of Jason’s professed ignorance was genuine.

  ‘Them. You’re the one who’s always saying they’re so important. Not me, mate.’

  ‘They are,’ insisted Bellamy, ‘but of course the Berebury Homes people haven’t seen them yet.’

  Jason Burke moved over to the piano and started to strum his way through a scale. ‘Should be good enough for them when they do.’

  Stuart Bellamy appreciated that this was the nearest Jason Burke – or Kevin Cowlick for that matter – would come to awarding him an accolade for good management.

  Jason cocked his thumb at a shelf full of singles, ‘If not, those should be good enough for ‘em instead.’

  ‘They should. But don’t forget that they don’t know about those yet, either,’ Bellamy reminded him, ‘but I expect they will pretty soon.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve been wondering why the police have got on to us so quickly in the first place. I think it might have been my fault for mentioning readily available funds to Lionel Perry so early on.’

  ‘For which read cash,’ said Jason.

  ‘I guess he told the police and they always get twitchy when there’s a lot of money around that they don’t know about and which hasn’t been in somebody’s family for yonks.’

  Jason’s fingers hit the top of the scale with a thump. ‘According to the radio, there’s not a lot of damage from the fire at Tolmie Park. And all of it confined to the billiard room, which is stuck on the back anyway.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Bellamy, trying to sound as if he meant it. Buying Tolmie Park wasn’t going to be easy whichever way you looked at it.

  ‘Strikes me as downright fishy,’ said Burke frankly. ‘You really didn’t do it, Stu, did you?’

  Bellamy looked at him warily. He still never knew when Burke was joking and when he was being deadly serious. The pop star’s calculatedly expressionless face went down well with his fans; his deadpan look made life very difficult for everyone else.

  ‘Cos your job’s on the line if you did, Stu. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Course I didn’t, Jason. Arson couldn’t have helped you buy the place any way you look at it.’

  ‘It must have been meant to help somebody do something,’ said the pop star, wise in his generation.

  ‘Ah, I do think you’re right there, Jas. Otherwise the police wouldn’t be noseying around like they are.’

  ‘So you can go straight ahead, then, and open negotiations, can’t you?’ said Burke. ‘What’s your next move going to be?’

  Bellamy frowned. ‘I think we should let Douglas Anderson at the bank know that one of these days we’ll be wanting to spend big money all at once. It never does any harm to prepare the ground with your money people.’

  ‘And quite soon, Stu. Tell him that we’ll be wanting it quite soon and to have the dibs ready.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Stuart Bellamy, retreating to the cubbyhole that constituted his office without telling Jason that ‘dibs’ wasn’t what they called money these days.

  It was Ned Phillips who met Randolph Mansfield and Derek Hitchin when they returned to the offices of Berebury Homes from the damaged Tolmie Park. ‘Message from Mr Selby,’ he said to the new arrivals. ‘He’s had to go over to see the bank manager about something. He said to say he wants both your opinions about the damage as soon as possible…’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it, that he always wants things quickly when it takes such an age to get any figures out of him,’ said Hitchin.

  ‘He wants to know about the damage both from an insurance point of view and from a planning one,’ hurried on Ned Phillips.

  ‘And ne’er the twain shall meet,’ said Mansfield sourly. ‘Nobody understands that there are some things about old buildings that you can’t quantify. He thinks an architect is just a builder who’s been to a finishing school.’

  ‘The trouble,’ grumbled Hitchin, ‘is that our Robert also thinks that planning is something that you can quantify. Well, you can’t. It’s more organic than that. If you ask me, it’s more like being in the lap of the gods.’

  ‘It’s certainly more luck than judgement,’ said Mansfield, ever the architect.

  ‘I thought there were guidelines,’ said Ned Phillips tentatively, looking alertly from one man to the other.

  ‘Guidelines not tram lines,’ said Hitchin. ‘With tram lines at least you know where they’re going…’

  ‘And where they end,’ put in Mansfield.

  ‘Guidelines,’ said Hitchin, ‘are what you might call, “always open to interpretation”.’

  ‘Bah,’ said Mansfield.

  ‘Er – I see,’ said Ned Phillips hastily. ‘Not helpful but still constraining.’

  ‘Especially when you want to be really innovative,’ said the architect. ‘Good design should be
a living thing.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Derek Hitchin, casting a sly glance at the architect, ‘radicalisation can be impractical.’

  ‘Only sometimes,’ came back Randolph Mansfield. Turning to Ned Phillips, he said, ‘None of this is your headache, anyway. It’s mine. Tell Mr Selby I’ll let him have his report just as soon as I can.’

  ‘Copy to the chairman,’ added Phillips. ‘I forgot to say that.’

  Hitchin sniffed, ‘There always is. Lionel likes to be kept in the picture.’

  Mansfield gave a hollow laugh. ‘Not that he always understands the principles of good design.’

  ‘Or the difficulties of carrying it out,’ said Hitchin, more graciously than was usual for him.

  ‘Right…’ said Ned Phillips uncertainly, going on, ‘but then I suppose chairmen are meant to be looking at the big picture.’

  ‘True.’ Mansfield stroked his chin. ‘So they say, anyway. Sometimes they’re just minding their backs.’

  ‘Can’t always see the wood for the trees, though, some of ‘em,’ said Hitchin.

  ‘The big picture and the future,’ said Mansfield, ‘that’s what they’re meant to be looking at.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hitchin. ‘The future. Now, there’s a thing.’

  Ned Phillips looked from one man to the other. ‘What’s up with the future?’

  Derek Hitchin said, ‘Nothing for you to be worrying your pretty little copper-nob about, laddie.’

  Ned Phillips flushed.

  ‘Be like us,’ said Randolph Mansfield, ‘and worry instead about why there was what is euphemistically called “a heavy police presence” at Tolmie Park since the fire. They want to interview us all about where we were this morning when the fire started.’

  ‘Police?’ stammered Phillips, his flush fading as quickly as it had come. ‘But I thought…’ His voice fell away before he had completed the sentence.

  ‘But you thought what?’ asked the architect curiously.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Phillips. He shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘That book you sent me to look up, sir,’ Detective Constable Crosby was standing by Sloan’s desk looking uncomfortable. ‘The baronetage.’