Trevor looked wistfully at his car. It was a two minute drive to the port buildings, and a ten minute walk, but he couldn’t see either of the kids willingly climbing into it. Returning his keys to his pocket he followed them.
They walked quickly. Trevor found it difficult to keep up with them, particularly when the pavement ended in a patch of rough ground. Legs aching, he finally stood in front of the square multi-storey building. Once white, it was covered with green mildew and slime. All the windows were boarded over and the ground floor doors sported huge iron bars fastened with massive padlocks.
‘How do you get in here?’ Trevor asked.
‘Around here.’ The girl led the way over a carpet of broken glass and rubble to the side of the building. The sixty-foot wall was punctuated by a series of windows that ran symmetrically upwards from every floor except the ground. She stopped half way along and looked up.
‘Next one.’ The boy aligned his body in front of a narrow, boarded window on the first floor, then held out his hands.
Dell looked at him and glanced at the window above. In one swift, easy movement, she took his hands and climbed the length of his body on to his shoulders. He clasped his hands on her ankles as she balanced precariously and reached for the boarded window. She pulled at the bottom of the board. It swung outwards. Hooking her hands inside on to the windowsill, she swung herself off the boy’s shoulders and upwards. Ducking her head she wriggled inside. Trevor held his breath until her feet disappeared beneath the board.
Moments later a knotted rope fell from above, one end secured inside the building.
‘You promise. No pigs around here evicting us?’
‘I’ll do all I can,’ Trevor assured the boy.
Ten sweating minutes later Trevor eased himself inside, tumbling over the windowsill into a black void.
‘Light a candle, Dell,’ came a disembodied voice from behind him.
‘I can’t find the bloody things, Jason.’
‘I’ll strike a match.’ A brief glare was followed by a small flickering flame that did little to dispel the gloom.
‘You’d better tell the landlord there’s no electricity,’ Trevor joked.
‘It’s got water,’ the girl retorted defensively.
‘Which is more than most squats I’ve been in.’
‘You want to see where that man was dossing.’
Taking the candle, Jason led the way across what seemed to be a vast hall, but without a chink of light coming in from the outside it was difficult to gauge the size of the place. He opened a door, and the rank, musty odour of rodent droppings wafted out to meet them.
‘Rats,’ the girl confirmed. ‘They usually run from the light.’
Jason walked ahead, holding the candle high, shielding its flame with his hand. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Trevor saw bundles of rags and piles of newspapers and cardboard boxes heaped along the sides of the corridor. There were plaques on some of the doors. WOMEN’S W.C.
MEN’S W.C. MANAGER. GENERAL OFFICE.
They turned a corner and were faced by an old fashioned iron lift cage sunk into the centre of a stair well. Jason paused at the foot of the stairs that led upwards.
‘The higher you go, the fewer rats there are,’
Dell assured Trevor as they began to climb. ‘We live down there.’ She pointed down the corridor on the next floor. ‘And we saw him going in here.’ She pushed open the first door on her right. Trevor held out his hand to Jason.
‘You want the candle?’
‘Only for a moment.’
Jason reluctantly gave it to him.
Trevor moved forward. The room was small with benches around the side and hooks on the wall.
It had probably been a cloakroom. Trevor wondered how many years it had been since workers had hung their coats on the pegs. He had lived in the town for fifteen years and he couldn’t remember the factory being operational. The air was cold, dank. He raised the candle and peered around. He spotted a bundle on a bench in the corner. He walked towards it, checking the floor as he went. It was dusty, but there were so many scuff marks in the dirt his wouldn’t be noticed.
The bundle turned out be a sleeping bag. Next to it stood an empty tin, the baked bean wrapper still around it. Inside the tin was a stub of candle. Below them was a small, battered suitcase. Trevor was tempted to spring the clasps with his penknife, but there were two witnesses standing behind him, and legally he had no right to look inside, or even be here. Not without a search warrant. And if there were prints on the case they might produce an answer to the riddle of Tony’s identity – if he had a record.
‘Seen all you want?’ Jason’s voice startled him.
‘For now.’
‘You’ll be back, won’t you?’ the girl insisted.
‘To arrest him.’
Trevor reflected that now that the kids knew what he looked like, it wouldn’t be him who returned.
‘We’ll be keeping an eye on the outside of the building in case he comes back to pick up his things.
But you have my word. You won’t be evicted, or bothered.’
‘Your word,’ Jason sneered.
Trevor returned the candle to Jason and removed the envelope from his pocket. ‘My name is Trevor, Sergeant Trevor Joseph.’ He wrote it on the back, scribbling the direct line number to his office in the station, his home telephone number and his mobile beneath it. Unzipping the inside pocket of his anorak he removed fifteen pounds, all the notes he was carrying. He pushed them into the envelope and handed it to the girl. ‘That’s my telephone number. If you see that man again, or you need help, I promise I’ll do all I can for you.’
The girl took the envelope and pushed it down the front of her sweater.
As Jason led the way out Trevor checked the door. There was no name plate, but it was the first one on the right at the top of the stairs on the third floor. He noted the number of steps, imprinting the directions from the cloakroom back to the room with the loose window board. Someone would need those directions tonight. He’d try to ensure that he kept his promise to the kids. And whatever time “Tony” returned there’d be a reception committee waiting, and with luck, they’d discover exactly who had been killed, and why.
Trevor rubbed his legs as he climbed out of his car.
He’d landed awkwardly when he’d jumped the last foot from the rope the kids had used as an access into the old factory. Momentarily crippled and cursing soundly he’d stood back and watched Jason pull in the rope and jump the sixteen feet to the ground. There’d been a time; and not that long ago, he reflected regretfully, when he could have done the same and run a mile afterwards. Limping, he hobbled into the station.
‘You all right, sir?’ Sarah Merchant asked as he hobbled past her desk.
‘Fine,’ he grimaced, heading down the corridor towards his office. Peter had taken possession of his desk, yet again, Anna was behind hers, and Dan was standing in the doorway that opened into his office.
‘We were considering putting out a missing persons report on you,’ Peter commented.
‘You were lost this morning.’
‘Not as lost as I’d have liked to have been.’
Peter had spent a fruitless ten minutes over breakfast trying to persuade Anna that an hour of passion in the pub would make their relationship blossom.
She’d remained unconvinced and had insisted on driving back as soon as the coffee pot was empty.
Leaving him exasperated and frustrated.
‘Was the trip worth it?’ Trevor looked from Peter’s long face to Anna’s.
‘We didn’t discover anything Inspector Edwards didn’t two years ago.’
‘Except affirmation from Anthony George’s boyfriend…’
‘You met him?’ Trevor asked.
‘We did,’ Peter said. ‘He told us he bought his pub with a loan from Anthony George that George’s solicitor cancelled after his death.’
‘Very generous of him considering it was someone else’s money.’
‘There were no documents to substantiate the loan. The solicitor probably didn’t think that thirty thousand pounds figured largely in the scheme of things. Particularly when the two hundred thousand pounds Anthony left his mother was given to charity less than six months later, along with the half a million she left when she died.’ Anna crossed her arms on the desk and sank her chin on to them.
‘Did this solicitor have the right to distribute George’s money?’
‘Every right. He was the sole executor of the will. The boyfriend also said the Anthony he knew couldn’t be the Tony in our film because his Anthony would never have worn rags or slept in a hostel for the homeless. He was too fastidious to end up on skid row. Yes please,’ Anna said to Trevor when he went to the water cooler.
Peter watched Trevor hobble across the room.
‘You’re crippled again?’
‘In the line of duty.’
‘You’ve got something, haven’t you?’ Peter fished.
Trevor filled two paper cups with water, handed Anna one, pulled out a chair and lowered himself on to it. ‘I’ve found Tony.’
‘You’ve raided Patrick’s mortuary?’ Peter quipped.
‘No.’ Trevor smiled. ‘I met four kids who are squatting in the old factory down the docks.’
‘The weaving mill?’ Anna asked.
‘Is that what it used to be?’
‘Get to the point,’ Peter ordered irritably.
‘They said our man slept there last night.’
‘Kids, down-and-outs,’ Peter mocked. ‘And you believed them?’
‘It took me a while to get them to talk to me.
And I wouldn’t have succeeded if one of them, a young girl, hadn’t been frightened by the murder.
She’s young, no more than fifteen or sixteen, probably a runaway. They identified Tony from these.’ He tossed the file of photographs on to his desk. ‘Then they took me inside the squat…’
‘It’s open?’ Dan asked.
‘After a fashion.’ Trevor sipped his water.
‘I’ll get the boys to check it out.’
‘I gave them my word I’d turn a blind eye.’
‘You did what!’ Peter shook his head in disbelief.
‘This is a murder investigation, and we on Serious Crimes have to bend the rules from time to time. Not like you on the Drug Squad.’ Trevor lectured, tongue in cheek. Peter had bent the rules more times than any other copper on the local force.
‘Trevor’s right,’ Dan agreed. ‘We’d never get any information if we didn’t play ball with our narks.’
‘The kids showed me the room he’s dossing in.
He left some stuff there. A suitcase, a sleeping bag…’
‘All ready for a stake-out,’ Dan said thoughtfully.
Trevor’s smile widened. ‘Unfortunately, the kids know me.’
‘Which leaves me,’ Peter complained.
‘Us,’ Anna corrected.
‘Women don’t go undercover in squats.’
‘Equality in all things,’ Anna gave Peter a radiant and insincere smile.
‘Did the kids say what time they expected this Tony, if it is him, back?’ Dan glanced at his watch.
‘It’s not a hotel you check into, although they do have running water,’ Trevor said.
‘You both have suitable clothes?’ Dan looked from Peter to Anna.
‘At home,’ Anna left her chair.
‘Pity there’s no time for you to grow stubble, Peter,’ Dan observed.
‘He looks disreputable enough the way he is,’
Anna joked.
‘I’m for lunch.’ Dan looked to the others.
‘I’ll go to the canteen with you,’ Trevor stretched his aching legs.
‘Back here in two hours?’
‘Give us time to eat as well as change,’ Peter protested.
‘An hour to transform yourselves and an hour for lunch,’ Dan said. ‘What more do you want? You don’t even have to shower.’
Peter looked at Anna. He was tempted to add an hour to the timetable for seduction, but decided against it. He was beginning to learn that every wisecrack he made at Anna’s expense cost him in the long run.
‘Eat first, transformation later?’ Peter suggested as he drove away from the station.
‘If it’s anything in the nature of a last meal, there’s an expensive but brilliant Italian place down the road.’
‘Make it Chinese take-away and we can eat at my place.’
She looked at him coolly. ‘As long as it is just eat.’
‘What else could I possibly have in mind at this hour?’
‘Don’t tempt me to answer that. If you stop off at my place I’ll pick up my things.’
‘Do you really live here, or just keep it to impress gullible girls with your clean-living habits?’ Anna asked Peter as she wandered around the clinically clean living room of Peter’s flat. It was furnished, simply and severely in the standard Berber carpet, unimaginative three piece suite and coffee table, middle-market landlords call “furnishings”. The curtains were gold plush. The view they framed over the sands and sea, spectacular. There wasn’t an ornament on the mantelpiece, and only one picture to indicate Peter’s taste. A macabre gold framed print of Breughel’s Triumph of Death.
‘I live here, and you’re looking at the proof. My single decorative possession and the only thing my wife gave me that I liked,’ he said as she studied the print.
‘Was she trying to tell you something?’
‘All things come to an end, even lousy marriages. It gave me the strength to file for divorce.’
‘You must have loved her to marry her.’
‘I didn’t relish the idea of living alone, but she cured me of my fear of the dark.’
‘Are you never serious?’
‘What’s there to be serious about?’
‘Life?’ She walked into the kitchen which was a windowless alcove off the living room. The under cupboard lighting was bright enough to see that the cream worktop Peter was setting plates out on, sparkled. ‘Where do you keep your mess and dirt?’
‘I haven’t any. The lady who comes in twice a week to clean sees to that.’
‘I’d like her telephone number.’
‘You’d have to call a fumigation squad before Betty would set foot inside your house.’ He loaded a tray. Carrying it into the living room, he laid the table with a clean cloth and unpacked the bag they’d picked up at the Chinese. ‘Your chop suey, ma’am.’
‘I could get used to that.’
‘Chinese take-away?’
‘You calling me ma’am.’
‘You should be so lucky. I’ll make super before you do.’