Page 6 of An Old Spy Story

PART THREE: THE INTERVIEW

  Andy Wilson

  Police Inspector Clive Peterson wandered into the office, removed his wet raincoat and hung it on a hook.

  “You still, here, Andy? I thought you were on an early shift.” “I was.” Andy Wilson yawned, put down Oliver Thomas’s pile of typewritten notes and looked at his watch. It was ten thirty and dark outside.

  “God,” he said, “what a tale. I don’t know how much to believe but it sort of rings true. It turns out that the old guy has had quite a chequered past but I still don’t know what he got up to in Malaga.”

  “You mean Mr Thomas, the guy we detained earlier?”

  “Yes. Here – have a look,” Andy pushed the notes towards him.

  “The other old guy is still in intensive care I understand,”

  said Clive. “Where is our friend now?”

  “I stuck him in the hotel. I can’t charge him with anything and he can’t go far. I’ve got all his belongings, his envelope with the wad of euros and his passport and we’ve impounded his old Jaguar. It was in the car park but untaxed and uninsured although he claims the papers are in the post.”

  “Ha!” said Clive. “I’ve heard that before. So, what’s that?”

  He sat down, picked up the pile of typewritten notes and flipped through it. “Christ,” he said. “You’ve been reading this? How old was the typewriter?”

  “Old,” said Andy. “But the more I read, the less inclined I was to put it down. It reads like an old spy story. In fact, our eighty-six-year-old Mr Oliver Thomas seems to have once worked for British Intelligence. But that’s not all. He’s claiming the old guy in Malaga was a crook with links to the Mafia and all sorts. There’s a lot of private stuff in there as well, though. It’s as if he wrote it to down to get a few other things off his chest as well.

  “There’s even a bit of sex in it, Clive! It’s worth a read. He’s also got some sort of plan brewing towards the end. But unfortunately, it stops just as it starts to get interesting.” Andy Wilson laughed. “I actually like the old guy,” he added.

  “Like your little old grandad, is he?”

  “Yeh, but my old grandad only worked for British Rail. This guy’s been around.”

  “What’s the plan?” Clive asked.

  “I’ll get him in here tomorrow morning for an early start.”

  “So, Mr Thomas, are you feeling better? Can we start again where we left off yesterday?”

  Oliver Thomas sat, his legs crossed, with his stick resting against the coffee table. He looked bright and alert. He had also shaved.

  “Did you read my notes, Inspector?”

  “Yes,” said Andy, “it only took me the best part of six hours here plus two more last night in bed but I suppose it made a good read. Is there any truth in any of it?”

  Oliver Thomas shook his head, removed his glasses and wiped with the hem of his jumper.

  “How far did you get?” he asked.

  “To the end.”

  “Really? Well done. Cliff hanger, was it?”

  “So where did you meet Betty?”

  “In Nice – Cannes to be precise.”

  “So, you’ve been travelling, Mr Thomas? Not just Malaga and Frankfurt.”

  “Flying brought back memories.”

  “Yes, I can understand that. You seem to have done a bit in your time, Mr Thomas. Can I now ask you a few more questions?”

  “Can I ask you one first?” Oliver Thomas said.

  Andy Wilson winced. “One,” he said.

  “Is he dead now Inspector?”

  “If you mean Major Alex Donaldson, I can confirm he is still in intensive care. You don’t seem to like him, Mr Thomas.”

  Oliver Thomas started at the policeman across the top of his glasses.

  “I thought you said you’d read my notes, Inspector. In which case, you should understand.”

  “Yes, but you can’t go around shooting people, Mr Thomas.”

  “Who said I shot him? And, anyway, why not? Donaldson did, although he was always very clever in the way he subcontracted jobs.”

  Andy Wilson got up and walked around the room.

  “Mr Thomas. I’ve read your notes. It all makes interesting reading but your detailed notes, which have noticeable gaps anyway, end at the point you decided to do something about Major Donaldson. So, would you be so kind as to fill me on the big gap that now exists between when the notes finished and you arrived back here at Gatwick Airport?”

  Oliver Thomas looked down at the coffee table where his notes lay on Andy Wilson’s side. It was open at the very last page.

  “I haven’t touched a drop since that moment,” he said pointing at the last page with the tip of his stick.

  “Congratulations. Now can you please start from the bit that says, and I quote, ‘I am working on an audacious plan.’ What audacious plan? Did you fulfil it?”

  “I’ll tell you what I did next and about my trip to Nice and Malaga. How long have we got?”

  “I’m easy, Mr Thomas. Take your time but I warn you I will be butting in at regular intervals to keep you on track so to speak and will not hesitate to jump in to cut out the slightest bit of crap that you might feel inclined to offer. Is that good enough for you?”

  “Thank you, Inspector. By the way, you can call me Ollie.”

  “Mmm. I’m Andy. Proceed.”

  “Well,” he said, “I blame the audacious plan on Marmite, Andy.”

  “Marmite?”

  “Did you not read about Thomas’s Disease?”

  “Yes. I hope I don’t catch it.”

  “Well, Marmite is the cure.”

  “I hate the stuff.”

  “Well, pray you never suffer from TD because I believe that within Marmite’s dark and sticky heart there are mysterious ingredients that include a cure for TD. It’s also a brain stimulant.”

  “Can we come back to the audacious plan?”

  “I’m getting to it. But it involves Marmite. Having decided the need for a plan I resolved never to touch another drop of Bell’s whisky. Instead, I made myself some tea, toast and Marmite. It was then that I decided to take the car for a spin as I’ve always found driving conducive to constructive thought.”

  “Was it taxed and insured, Mr Thomas? Ollie.”

  Oliver Thomas scratched his head. “Probably not on reflection.”

  “Where did you head for? The south of France?”

  “The Forest of Dean.”

  “When will we get to the Malaga part, Ollie?”

  “Soon. The Forest wasn’t where I’d planned to go, especially as it was after midnight, but it’s where I ended up as I needed to drive somewhere to think. I’d turned the rest of the loaf of Mother’s Pride sliced bread into a pile of toast ready to eat when I got back. Then I reversed the car out of the garage.”

  “So, you reversed the uninsured and untaxed car out onto the public road, Ollie.”

  “It was a dark night, cold and damp but, by two o’clock, and having got as far as Coleford and with no traffic on the road except a few large trucks and one police car I turned around and came back. It was nearly three o’clock by the time I was home. I parked the car in the garage again, shut the door, cleaned the dirt from her headlights, told her I’d give her a proper wash tomorrow, gave her bonnet a good pat and went inside. But my point in telling you this is that by then my mind was as clear as a bell and the plan was crystallizing.”

  “Go on. What was the plan, Ollie?”

  “It formed while I sat down to finish off my pile of cold toast and Marmite.”

  “At three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yes, but I then slept in the chair. It was next morning when I set off.”

  “You set off where, Ollie?”

  “Oxfordshire.”

  Little Ollie

  The weather had changed from cold, cloudy and damp to dry and frosty on the morning that Oliver Thomas opened the garage doors, threw his stick into the foot well of the car pa
ssenger seat and eased himself onto the cold leather of the driver’s seat. As expected the Jaguar engine fired immediately.

  He slipped the car into reverse gear and moved quietly out onto the road. Then he stopped, got out and glanced over to the Carrington’s house to see if Fred was watching. It was still dark and there wasn’t even a light on in the house so he closed the garage door as quietly as possible, got back into the car and was soon out on the road that led to Cheltenham and Oxford.

  Later, with the road getting busy, he pulled in at a fuel station, parked and went in to buy a local map.

  “As I returned to my car, Andy, I noticed I wasn’t using my stick. I stood there with my map in my hand and walked around the car to check the lights and any signs of mud or grime as I hate a dirty car. It was as I came full circle to the front windscreen that I saw that my tax had expired.”

  “Ah,” said Andy Wilson, “so it wasn’t when in the Forest of Dean that you first noticed this? Tell me, Ollie. With all your claimed attention to detail, how do you explain this?”

  Oliver Thomas held his hands up.

  “Sorry, but I did get back in the car to think about what to do. But with no easy and quick solution coming to mind I decided to carry on. It was a question of priorities, Andy.”

  “Mmm. Go on.”

  By eight o’clock and by navigating along country lanes he found the village mentioned by Jim as Donaldson’s last known address.

  It was marked by a simple sign that said, “Little Avening welcomes careful drivers”.

  By now it was a clear, spring-like morning with the low sun already clearing an early frost. The neat village consisted of old houses and cottages hidden behind high hedges and wooden gates and at the end of long driveways. But almost as soon as he realized he had arrived he found he was in open countryside again. The village was, indeed, small.

  So he found the first entrance to a field with an open gate, pulled in, reversed and drove back again. At what seemed to be the centre of the hamlet, there was a red pillar box beside an almost invisible junction leading into an even smaller country lane. So he parked the car and sat looking at his map. Little Avening was just a dot.

  But as he sat there, a knock on his windscreen made him jump. A middle-aged woman with an annoyed look on her face was glaring through the glass at him. So he put his map on the passenger seat and wound the window down.

  “You can’t park here, you know. No one can walk by,” she said in a most angry tone and then stuck her head through the window to within six inches of his face. A surprisingly strong smell resembling smoked kippers wafted in with the cold air. ”We can’t get by, do you hear?”

  Oliver Thomas backed away a little and took his glasses off but the short time it took him to do that seemed far too long for her.

  “My dog. I’m trying to walk my dog. Can’t you see?”

  She then withdrew a little, bent down and lifted a tiny animal that resembled a large white rat on a string apparently to give the creature a better view of the interior of his car. The dog yapped and bared a pink tongue and a set of teeth so small and perfect that he felt he was looking at an advert for private dentistry. A puff of doggy steam came out with the yap.

  “Quiet, Ollie,” she said.

  Now this shocked him as he had no idea how she knew his name and, anyway, he hadn’t even opened his mouth to introduce himself.

  He was about to say something when she bent down to place the dog back on the ground. For a few minutes, he lost sight of them so he leaned out of the window only to see a rotund rear covered in tweed. The other end was patting the dog, which was staring up at her and still panting little puffs of steam.

  “There, Ollie, it’s only an old man. I know. There’s a good boy.” She then suddenly stood upright and clearly caught him watching her rear so he rapidly withdrew his own head and looked for his glasses.

  “I do apologise, madam,“ he said. “But I was trying to locate a house.”

  “I see. Well along as you don’t sit there for too long I suppose.”

  “May I introduce myself, madam?” he asked.

  “I see, well, yes.”

  “It seems I may share my name with your dog, Madam. You see, my name is Oliver Thomas. Friends call me Ollie. I’m looking for a house called Chalford Hall.”

  The woman stared and then burst out laughing in a way he had always associated with middle-aged ladies from Oxfordshire who wore tweed.

  “Oh, I say, how amusing. Ollie meet Ollie. Ha, ha, ha!”

  “Yes, I said, “it is rather a coincidence. But do you, by any chance, know Chalford Hall?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I live there.”

  He was shocked, not least because he had been half expecting to meet one of Donaldson’s wives at Chalford Hall. This woman didn’t, in the least, fit the picture in his mind.

  “Oh yes,” she said, “it’s just up the lane,” and she pointed to the smaller lane opposite.

  Then, as he tried to catch up, she continued.

  “Are you delivering something? You don’t look like a courier to me and the car is a bit fancy. Things usually arrive in white vans, these days. Also, you don’t quite look the sort, if I may say so. How old are you?”

  Oliver Thomas had been taken aback at her impertinence but held his tongue.

  “I’m eighty-six madam,” he said although wondering what business it was of hers and sorely tempted to ask how old she was.

  “What is it you require?” she asked.

  “I am looking for someone I used to know and I understood he lives there.”

  “I see, well it might be my husband I suppose but he’s abroad at present.”

  This was starting to look promising but he still couldn’t imagine her with a ninety years old husband of Donaldson’s type. So, he decided to probe, still sitting in his car and looking out at the woman who was now peering directly into the car with her face inches from his own. The fishy smell increased. “My friend is getting on in years. He would be about ninety now. His name is Donaldson.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “We bought the Hall from someone called Donaldson, not that we ever met him.”

  “Really?” he said, feeling he was getting somewhere. “So, do you know where he is now?”

  “Oh, I’ve really no idea. Is he still alive? He wasn’t living in England when we bought the place, which must be twenty-five years ago.”

  Jim’s information about where Donaldson was living was clearly many years out of date. For a moment Oliver Thomas had felt let down as though his mission to track him down was already hitting the buffers.

  The woman backed away again and bent down to the other Ollie and picked the creature up again. It bared his teeth at him again but this time stayed silent and almost seemed to be smiling.

  “So how far have you come?” the woman said.

  “From Gloucester,” he replied.

  “That’s a jolly, nice car,” she said. “My husband had a Jaguar once. He keeps a Maserati in the garage for weekends but now he usually runs around in the Bentley. I use the Porsche for shopping. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  As she was suddenly showing an unexpectedly friendly side, Oliver Thomas was mildly taken aback but was in dire need of a drink of some description. “That’s very kind,” he said.

  “Then would you mind awfully given Ollie and me a lift up the lane. He’s getting on a bit now and gets very tired paws these days, don’t you, Ollie.”

  With that he opened the passenger door and she and Ollie got in, the dog wiping its muddy feet all over her tweed skirt.

  “I don’t normally get into cars with strange gentlemen,” she said and gave her Oxfordshire laugh, “But you look harmless enough to me and I like the car.”

  A few minutes later she was directing him through an impressive gateway with stone pillars and up a tree-lined drive to a large Cotswold stone house worthy of the title of Chalford Hall.

  “It’s far too big, actually,” she said as he
drove onto a semicircular gravel driveway with wide stone steps leading up to a large front door, “but my husband likes it. He says it’s a wonderful place to get away from the City.”

  “What does your husband do?” he asked, surprising himself by the rapid way their relationship was developing after only fifteen minutes.

  They walked up the steps and she turned the large door knob. It clearly wasn’t locked.

  “Come in, come in,” she said as little Ollie bounded away. “Oh, George is the founding partner of Griffith-Pace Securities. Worth a fortune even before I married him. Mother was so pleased. Ha. Come in, do. Wipe your feet, Ollie. Sorry, Mr Thomas, I mean my little Ollie here.”

  “And so, the conversation with Priscilla Griffith-Pace continued, Andy,” Oliver Thomas said.

  Andy Wilson got up, walked to a coffee machine and came back with some plastic cups and put them on the table.

  “Go on, Ollie,” he said, sliding one of the cups towards him.

  “Thank you. Well, we sat in a room with large bay windows hung with red velvet curtains that overlooked acres of rolling fields with mature horse chestnut trees just coming into leaf and a shimmering lake and it was all very pleasant compared to what I had just left behind in Gloucester. A huge log fire gave out so much heat that I could feel it warming my face from thirty yards away.”

  “So, what light was she able to throw on Donaldson, Ollie?”

  “Not a great deal as it turned out, but her gardener, Nigel, was a mine of information.”

  “Carry on, Ollie.”

  They had bought Chalford Hall through an agent about twenty-five years ago. The vendor was Donaldson. It was empty and looked unlived in when they had first viewed it and she understood from locals in the village that he was rarely ever seen there.

  “Apparently, they didn’t like him, my dear. Oh, dear me no,” she continued but then put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry if he’s a friend of yours.”

  Oliver Thomas put her right on that without going into the reasons.

  “That’s a relief. But his face just didn’t fit, you see. It can be like that in the countryside. He wasn’t landed gentry or similar and he also came from Edinburgh.”

  A woman with a couple of teenage boys had also lived there, but that they were hardly ever around. She had heard that the children had been boarded at Repton.

  “Plenty of money, you see. But I only know that from the local post office,” she said. “The village pub is also closed now of course, as they all are, but the old landlord, now sadly dead, knew him. He also knew the man’s wife I understand. She used to drink a lot I believe. Being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous is not the sort of person the residents of Little Avening were used to. Cockney as well, so her accent just didn’t go down well.”

  Oliver Thomas’s ears cocked up just as the other Ollie’s did. “What was her name, Mrs Griffith-Pace?” he asked.

  “Oh, call me Cilla, please. Oh, her name was also a bit common for the likes of Little Avening. They hadn’t had a Betty here before either but I suppose it matched her accent.”

  Then she had put her hand to her mouth once again. “Oh dear me, Mr Thomas, I do hope I’m not offending you but I’m sometimes a bit frank with my words.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “your description fits perfectly.”

  Ollie, the dog, padded over to the corner of the room as though disgusted by the rumours about Betty. Then Ollie Thomas saw him pull a smoked kipper from a dish marked ‘Dog’ and drag it to a clear part of the polished oak floor where he sat down, exposed his immaculate teeth again, smiled at the new visitor and chomped noisily on the fish.

  He continued to watch the dog because he didn’t want Cilla to see his own reaction, for it was looking as though his flippant thought that Donaldson might have got hitched to Betty from “The Feathers” might have been true.

  “So, what did Betty do before she came here?” he asked. “Oh, rumour had it she had been a barmaid all her life. It

  just added to the list of horror stories about her and Mr Donaldson himself.”

  “He wasn’t just plain Mister Donaldson, he was an army Major,” Oliver Thomas replied.

  “Really?” she said, “I am surprised. That doesn’t fit the impression one gets but it was a long time ago so perhaps reputations become a little exaggerated.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “So how long is it since you met your friend, Mr Thomas?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t a friend, Cilla. Far from it.”

  “I see. Oh dear, you seem to be suggesting that his local reputation was not so far-fetched after all.”

  “I suspect, Cilla, that his local reputation was grossly underestimated. I am aware that his capacity to exploit others in order to make a vast fortune by running a Mafia-like organisation was probably second to none at the time and it has never been fully appreciated.”

  Cilla put her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh, my goodness. Just to think that such a disgraceful man used to live here. Did you here that, Ollie?”

  Little Ollie glanced up, but then returned to his kipper.

  Oliver Thomas felt he was sounding like a barrister summing up the case for the prosecution. But the room where he was sitting was so overwhelming compared to the sitting room in Gloucester that he felt he had to match his words to fit the quality of the place where he was now sipping Earl Grey tea from a bone china cup.

  “By the way,” he said, “call me Ollie”.

  And with that, Ollie the canine padded over to him, wagged his tail, poked his tongue out, licked his lips and smiled. Their conversation continued until late into the morning.

  “Cilla was delightful company, Andy, and gave me a conducted tour of the Hall and introduced me to Milly the cook and Nigel, the gardener.

  “And all the time, Andy, my stick was on the back seat of the car. I forgot about it because I didn’t seem to need it. But it was Nigel the gardener who came up trumps.”

  “So how long had Nigel worked for Mrs Grffith-Pace, Ollie?” asked Andy.

  “Cilla had inherited him from Donaldson. And Nigel turned out to be a mine of information. Far from being a monosyllabic Oxfordshire gardener, Nigel, a man probably in his early sixties, was a master of conversation. We sat on wooden stools in his huge, up market potting shed, surrounded by shelves full of books with titles like The World’s Greatest Gardens and The History of Arboretums.”

  Oliver Thomas stopped as though remembering the stacked shelves.

  “Knowing your interest in exotic trees, Ollie, you must have found that very interesting.”

  “Yes, but there wasn’t time.”

  “I know the feeling, Ollie. What happened next?”

  Nigel had been at Chalford Hall for forty years.

  He had first arrived there when the house had been in the Jarman family but when Sir Walter Jarman died the family couldn’t afford to keep it going so they had put it up for sale and Nigel had temporarily lost his job.

  “But then the Donaldson’s arrived,” said Nigel, “Betty and two boys. The boys were boarded at school and poor Betty was mostly left by herself. But, luckily, I got the job of gardener back again. Donaldson used to stay here for a few days then go back to Scotland or London.”

  Nigel thought he also had another house in Edinburgh.

  “Tell Ollie about Betty’s drinking, Nigel,” egged on Cilla Griffith-Price.

  Nigel then confirmed that Betty was an alcoholic or as near as possible to one. Apparently, she spent nearly all her time sat in the kitchen drinking gin and red wine. Nigel had felt sorry for her. She had seemed lonely and very depressed and she and Donaldson used to argue a lot. There was some talk of physical abuse and, apparently, it had so frightened the cleaner that she left. The house had become very untidy and dirty.

  “But then Nigel’s revelation became very, very interesting, Andy.”

  “Go on.” Andy Wilson was sipping his coffee.

  “He
said that another man, a friend of Major Donaldson from Edinburgh, arrived on the scene. He stayed at Chalford Hall more and more regularly and it soon became clear that he and Betty were having an affair. But Donaldson seemed unconcerned as though it was part of an arrangement between the three of them. So, I asked Nigel the name of the new arrival.”

  “And what was his name, Ollie?”

  “Royston Forsyth.”

  “Brigadier Forsyth himself, Ollie?” said Andy.

  “Oh yes. If there was ever a need to find a piece of missing jigsaw this was it.”

  “And then what?”

  Oliver Thomas had asked Nigel if Mr Forsyth was, by any chance, a Brigadier in the army.

  “Oh, no, certainly not as far as I know,” he replied, “Donaldson and Forsyth used to sit around drinking and talking business most of the time. Mr Forsyth worked for a Swiss bank in London, I believe, so it was mostly about money and I only know that because in the summer they used to sit outside by the greenhouse drinking beer and I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  “So what happened to make them sell up and leave?” Oliver Thomas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nigel said. “But Betty had already disappeared. Suddenly she was not there. We supposed she had just got fed up and walked out, but we never heard anything more. I also understand the two boys at Repton were then expelled for some reason. Like many public schools, it was all hushed up. Where they all went, I don’t know.”

  Cilla had been listening whilst nursing little Ollie on her lap.

  “Well, I hadn’t heard that bit,” said Cilla.

  “You never asked me,“ said Nigel.

  “Well I never,” said Cilla.

  Oliver Thomas looked at Cilla and smiled. “My wife used to say that,” he said and Cilla looked at him. “So is your wife, uh . . .”

  “Yes,” he said, “she died a few months ago. Since then I’ve been trying to piece one or two things together and Donaldson’s name keeps cropping up.”

  They talked a few more generalities but then he asked Nigel: “So do you know where Donaldson went after he sold Chalford Hall?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “he went to live in Cannes in the south of France but I know he also had a place in Malaga because I found some papers in a sack that I used to start a bonfire.”

  “Do you have any of those addresses?”

  “Oh yes,” said Nigel, “I kept some of the papers because Major Donaldson left owing staff wages going back several weeks and I have always thought that one day I’d go out there and track him down.”

  Nigel then went to a drawer beneath his neat bookshelf, pulled out a heavy pile of old Gardeners World diaries and laid them on the table.

  “Here we are. This is the 1986 version. That was the last year we ever saw him or Mr Forsyth.”

  Like an expert filing clerk Nigel went straight to the inside back cover and took out two folded pieces of paper.

  “There,” he said. He handed them to Oliver Thomas who took his glasses from his inside pocket and put them on.

  “Hm,” he said, “these are the first abbreviated statements from Credit Suisse in Zurich that I’ve seen since my days in Libya.”

  It was clear that Donaldson had made a big mistake in not destroying them. But, Nigel was right. There were also two addresses – one in Cannes and one in Malaga.

  “This is the second time I’ve seen something of Donaldson’s in the space of a few days. The bastard rarely kept written records of anything. But he wasn’t short of money, was he?” Oliver Thomas said.

  “Exactly,” said Nigel, “so why didn’t he have the decency to pay our wages before he left. Mrs Griffith-Pace is always very punctual.”

  Cilla then looked at the papers. “Mmm,” she murmured, looking at the figures, “Nearly as much as George earns in a week but I suppose it was worth far more in 1986.”

  Ollie the canine then jumped off of Cilla’s lap and stood looking up at her smiling with his teeth.

  “Time for din dins, Ollie. Come on, let’s go and find you something. How about you, big Ollie? Would you care to join little Ollie and me for some lunch? I’ll get Milly to cook some nice smoked haddock.”

  Betty

  Inspector Andy Wilson yawned and stretched his arms and legs from his side of the table. “You’re making me feel hungry, Ollie. More coffee?”

  “What about some fish for lunch, Andy? I’ve developed a taste for fish since I was at Chalford Hall and have hardly eaten since the day before yesterday. Don’t the police offer food for detainees?”

  “I’ll see what I can rustle up.” Andy Wilson got up and wandered outside leaving Oliver Thomas alone at the coffee table. The phone was lying on the coffee table. It rang. Oliver Thomas looked around and picked it up.

  “Yes?”

  “Andy,” the voice on the other end said clearly mistaking the voice. “Malaga phoned. The old guy is still in intensive care with the gunshot wound and associated heart problems. The Spanish police are now searching the property but they confirm your man was seen leaving and pointing the gun at staff.”

  “Thanks,” said Oliver Thomas and pressed the red button.

  Andy Wilson returned. “I’ve ordered fish and chips. OK?”

  “Thank you,” replied Oliver Thomas, “That’s better than nothing. My appetite found a new lease after that lunch at Chalford Hall.”

  “Please continue, Ollie.”

  Oliver Thomas’s Jaguar had run like a sewing machine all the way back to Gloucester and it was dusk when he arrived home. But, as he fumbled with the door key, he heard a familiar voice behind him. It was Fred Carrington.

  “Evening, Mr Thomas.”

  “Ah, evening Fred. Nice weather for the time of year.”

  “Been out today?” Fred had learned the art of being nosey from his wife.

  “Yes, I popped over to Oxfordshire for lunch.”

  “Friends?” Fred asked.

  “Yes,” Oliver Thomas said, “the wife of a friend of mine. He runs a Merchant bank in the City. I got invited to their country residence for lunch.”

  “That’s nice,” said Fred.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “I’m off to Nice at the weekend then I’ll probably fly down to Malaga for a short while and then I might pop over to Malta.”

  “Not seen you in the supermarket recently,” said Fred.

  “No, I’ve been far too busy. I’ve got work to do and I’m likely to be away a while.”

  “I see.”

  “I must go, Fred. I’ve got some papers to work on. By the way, you need to get a man in to chop that monkey-puzzle down. It’s looking increasingly sad and it might be kind to put it out of its misery.”

  He went inside, sat down and then remembered that he’d left his stick in the car. But he decided to leave it there until morning as he felt very tired and knew he’d sleep like a log, as Sarah used to say.

  But he was up again at six thirty and sat down to re-read the pieces of paper that Nigel had saved from the 1981 bonfire.

  Both letters were from Credit Suisse, Zurich, one of them to Mr R Forsyth and the other to Major A. Donaldson, both showing the Chalford Hall, Little Avening address. The letter to Forsyth confirmed the transfer of the sum of US Dollars 750,000 to a Santander Bank account in Barcelona. The letter to Donaldson stated that the balance of his account with Credit Suisse stood at US Dollars 4,535,868 as at 4th October 1981 and confirmed that an amount of US Dollars 1.500,000 had been transferred on 3rd September 1981 to a Santander Bank account in Malaga.

  They were sums of money that any honest, nine to five, civil servant was unlikely ever to have accumulated. And who knew how many other accounts existed?

  But the letters also showed changes of address for future correspondence – an address in Cannes for Forsyth and one in Malaga for Donaldson.

  So, as soon as he knew the local travel agent was open for business, he phoned, booked a ticket to Nice, made an appointment to call in later on anothe
r matter, made some other arrangements and sat back, feeling like a new man with a reason to live.

  With an air ticket, a plan of action and a job to do, it was as though he had picked up where he had left off thirty years ago.

  He drank tea, not whisky, ate toast and Marmite for breakfast and had a tin of sardines on toast for lunch.

  He gathered up all the old papers and newspaper cuttings and, after removing the one remaining item that still lay wrapped in its original oily cloth at the bottom of the old box of papers and files, he put everything back.

  He carefully re-packed the item in the oily rag inside an old shoe box and then took the bus into the city, visited the travel agent and then called at another company to drop off the shoe box.

  Then he returned home, found his Oliver Thomas passport that he had always renewed whenever it became due in case Sarah ever wanted to go abroad on holiday, found an old map of the south of France and put everything into his old black case. And by dinnertime he felt so hungry again that he opened a tin of soup, finished off the bread and then ate a tin of peaches.

  Finally, he went up to the spare room, slept like a log and woke up at the sensible hour of seven with no sign of a hangover.

  He washed, shaved, sorted out a few clothes, tidied the sitting room and, by ten o’clock he was ready to go with the black case on the back seat of the car.

  He passed Fred Carrington on the road and wound down his window.

  “Just off to France and Spain on business, Fred,” he said and then watched in his mirror as his neighbour trudged home with his plastic bags.

  “Then I drove to Gatwick Airport, Andy. I parked the car in the long-term car park. But it has changed a lot since the last time I flew out on British Caledonian.

  “It’s a pity you parked your car almost blocking the bus stop, Ollie. If you hadn’t, perhaps no one would have spotted the lack of a tax disc.”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t find a decent space. As it was, I found I hardly needed my bloody stick anyway. That visit to Oxfordshire was like a miracle trip to Lourdes for me.”

  “Ah, here’s the fish and chips,” said Andy as a man in an apron and white cap knocked and came in. “Tuck in.”

  “But you didn’t go to Lourdes but flew to Nice, then Ollie?” Andy went on, sticking a potato chip in his mouth and sucking his fingers.

  “Yes,” replied Oliver Thomas, pulling off a slice of battered fish, “I arrived in Nice just after dark. The warm night air was so much more invigorating than arriving outside Gloucester station.”

  “Yes, I imagine it was,” said Andy Wilson. “So what happened next?”

  “I took a taxi to the Negresco Hotel. Do you know it?” “Only that it’s likely to be way beyond my salary to be able to afford to stay there, Ollie.”

  “Yes, so I found out. But I once met Farouk there for lunch, you see. It was many years ago, at a time when Farouk was still thinking of moving to France. I suggested to him that the south of France had a far nicer climate than Paris.”

  “Were you just planning on having dinner there?”

  “Oh no,” Oliver Thomas replied, “I planned to stay and felt sure I would get a room, after all I had been used to traveling without a need for advanced bookings for fifty years. But I was surprised to be told it was full and I should have booked.”

  “Serves you right, Ollie,” Andy laughed, munching on his fish and chips.

  “Oh no, I soon got in,” Oliver Thomas replied. “As I stood at reception wondering what to do, one of the staff took a phone call that was clearly a last-minute cancellation and within ten minutes a bellboy in fancy dress was carrying my bag up to an ornate front room overlooking the Promenade.”

  “Luxury then, Ollie. How did you afford it? I thought you were penniless.”

  “Well, it was a far cry from the Airport Hotel in Lagos, Andy, I can tell you. Ha! But after watching a ridiculous pornographic French film on a TV the size of a cinema screen, I spent a comfortable night in the bed which was wide enough to sleep six others without anyone noticing each other. The room also had a large, well-stocked bar but I only took the peanuts.”

  “Phew,” said Andy Wilson, “I’m stuffed, Ollie. Can you manage some of these chips?”

  “Sure, tip them on here. Thanks.”

  “Did you eat breakfast next morning, Ollie?”

  “Oh yes, but I only had a croissant and coffee. The bloody breakfast room looked like a replica of one I once visited at Chatsworth House.”

  “You like good food in opulent surroundings then, Ollie.”

  “You mean like eating fish and chips out of a plastic box, Andy?”

  “Ha,” laughed Andy Wilson. “So, then what happened?”

  “By nine o’clock, having booked myself to stay for at least another three nights, another man wearing a strange hat, red and blue fancy dress, white gloves and Wellington boots found me a nice Mercedes taxi and I set off for Cannes. It was a delightful early spring morning and it brought back memories of my travelling days, especially as we passed a sign for Grasse. I had known an export agent once who mostly specialized in Francophone Africa. He dealt in canned, tropical fruit. I know Michel lived in Grasse but we never met there. We used to meet by accident in hotels in places like Accra, Freetown and Douala.

  “But the taxi passed on, into Cannes and eventually dropped me outside a big, iron, gate by a high stone wall overhung with trees covered in white flowers. I asked the taxi driver to wait saying I had no idea how long I would be but that I’d pay him for his time.

  “I pressed a large black bell on the gate and put my ear against a metal grill. Seconds later I heard the rough voice of an elderly woman.

  “In rather poor French I said that my name was Christopher Stanton from England and that I was trying to make contact with an old friend of mine, Royston Forsyth. But I then apologized for my French in English.

  “The voice said, ‘Oh, really?’ in an English voice that rang of east London and then told me to wait. A few minutes later the same voice came from the metal grill. ‘What name was it again?’

  “’Christopher Stanton,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to call without an appointment.’

  “The woman seemed to sniff but said, ‘OK, wait. The gate will open. Come in.’

  “With that, the gates clicked and slowly opened inwards and I walked inside.

  “The driveway was far longer and steeper than I expected but the lawns and gardens made the walk a pleasant enough one and I eventually arrived at the house, an ornate brick and stone villa with orange roof tiles, a high chimney and a thick covering of ivy and other foliage. I walked up five wide steps towards a shiny black door feeling for the first time that my stick, which was back at the Negresco, would have been useful. “Then I rang another bell and the door opened almost immediately.

  “An elderly lady stood there wearing the sort of outfit I understand some people wear to the gym these days – baggy trousers and a half-zipped up jacket. The entire outfit was in powder blue and, despite her age, which looked seventy, she wore a pair of white plimsolls, or trainers as I think they are now called.

  “Her hair was not grey, which would have been the most likely colour for a woman of her years, but a shade of yellow with streaks of auburn. Her face was full and red as though she spent lengthy periods sitting in a deck chair somewhere sunny and she wore two large earrings that dangled almost down to her shoulders.

  “I took all this in as I stood there gathering my breath.

  “‘Yes?’ she said, in perfect Whitechapel English and, even though it was only one word she used, I instantly recognized the voice.

  “My mind was racing. This was Betty from the Feathers and we were face to face for the first time for more than forty years.

  “‘Good morning,’ I said, touching my forelock. ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you but my name is Christopher Stanton and I was hoping to catch up with an old friend of mine, Roy Forsyth as I heard he was living here.’

  “‘I see
,’ she said, looking me up and down, ‘and why would you want to see him?’

  “The London accent was getting better all the time.

  “‘Old time’s sake, really,’ I said, biding for time while deciding the best way forward. I was also looking down towards the floor and her plimsolls, not because I liked them but to reduce the chance of her recognizing my face.

  “‘Well you’re too bleedin’ late, mate,’ she exploded. ‘The fucking bastard pegged out fifteen years ago.’

  “I now looked up at her face. It looked angry and I felt sure I could smell gin but perhaps it was my imagination based on what Nigel the gardener had told me.

  “‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘that’s sad.’

  “‘No, it fucking well ain’t. Fucking bastards – all of them.

  Friends of them, are you?’

  “‘Oh dear,’ I repeated, ‘I didn’t know him too well you understand, in fact I think I only ever met him once.’

  “‘So how is he a bleedin’ friend, then?’

  “Her voice really was quite rough, Andy, even for a woman of her age. But it was a good question.

  “‘Well, maybe I should call myself an acquaintance,’ I said, backtracking a little.

  “‘So, what the bleedin’ ’ell do you want?’ she said, putting both hands on her powder blue hips.

  “‘I just wanted to catch up with him, I suppose,’ I said, ‘I was visiting Nice. But it looks like I’m fifteen years too late.

  What happened to him? How old was he when he died?’

  “I knew I was asking too many questions and she wisely ignored them. She was still standing with her hands on her hips and looked very cross and she avoided my question.

  “‘How the fuck did you know he used to live here?’ she asked, instead.

  “‘Another old acquaintance,’ I said.

  “My mind was still running at break neck speed behind the small talk.

  “Part of my mind was still hearing the loud and bawdy banter in the Feathers where she used to pull pints of Bass bitter and empty little jars of whelks and cockles into small white dishes before sprinkling vinegar over them.

  “I could remember her words. ‘Bloody jars. Can’t ever friggin’ open them without breaking your bloody nails. Wanna go, Ollie? Your hands are so much bigger. Big hands, big cock, eh? You open my little jar and I’ll warm your cockles, eh? Ha ha. Want another pint while you’re trying?’

  “But as I was imagining the scene of fifty years ago, an idea was forming.

  “‘Actually,’ I said, ‘he still owes my other old acquaintance some money.’

  “‘Fucking bastard. Does he? How bleedin’ much?’ “I knew then I’d hit a nerve.

  “‘Oh, it’s not a lot,’ I said.

  “‘So, who’s your other bloody acquaintance?’ she asked, changing her adjectives slightly.

  “‘Oh, he was the gardener at a place where Roy used to live. It’s not important really.’

  “‘You mean Nigel?’ she asked.

  “I was surprised, Andy, that she’d not said fucking Nigel. But, ‘Yes, that’s him,’ I said, acting innocently, ‘He’s still working at the old place. Do you know him? He’s been there donkey’s years now. Hands as rough as sandpaper. Nice chap, though. I bumped into him in a pub in Oxford recently and he told me he was still waiting to be paid. We laughed about it. He said he had found out, somehow, that Roy had moved to live in Cannes. He said it wasn’t really worth bothering about after so long but he clearly hadn’t forgotten and seemed a bit annoyed. So, I said to him that as I was visiting Nice, shortly, I’d see if I could sort it out for him. Debts are debts I always say. You must never give up trying to get money that you are legitimately owed. It’s only fair and just.’

  “‘Fucking bastard.’ Betty scowled.

  “‘Nigel or Roy?’ I asked for clarification.

  “‘Fucking Roy Forsyth. That’s who.’

  “‘You don’t seem to have liked Roy, madam,’ I said, politely.

  “‘Liked? Liked? He and that fucking business partner of his, Donaldson, should have been shot years ago. I tried fucking strangling both of them at various times. Police were called once or twice.’

  “’So were they up to no good?’ I asked with my head on one side as though finding it difficult to understand how bad anyone could be.

  “‘Fucking Scottish Mafia, that’s what I used to called them. I married that sod Major fucking Alex Donaldson so I got to knew a few things that would make your bloody hair curl.’

  “‘Really?’ I said. This was proving very enlightening, as you can see, Andy.

  “‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but if I dared to say anything . . .’ she stopped and drew a flat hand across her neck. ‘Kkkuk!’ she said, apparently imitating the sound of a throat being cut.

  “It was then that I saw her cleavage, Andy. It was the very same one from the Feathers fifty years ago, and the subject of my recent dreams. It sagged more than I recalled and was lined with wrinkles and very much more freckled and red. But, mottled and sun tanned though it was, it was definitely the same cleavage that always reminded me of a large and speckled peach. But the give-away was the gold chain with the cross that hung down and mostly disappeared inside her powder blue top. Her voice had dropped an octave from how I remembered it and she now sounded husky as though she had spent the fifty years smoking and drinking.

  “But this was, without question, Betty from the Feathers and, suddenly, I felt sorry for her as it looked as though she, too, had been drawn into Donaldson’s life and suffered.

  “‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I threatened to report everything I knew to the police and even said I would speak to the local MP. It was all tied up with Government stuff and politics, you know. Fucking bastard worked in the Government or somewhere or other though I never really understood what it was all about or how he got away with it. Fucking criminal more like.’

  “‘How dreadful,’ I said, ‘so why didn’t you do something?’

  “‘Ha!’ she laughed falsely, ‘Do something? Kkkuk! Say something? Kkkuk! Try to run away? Kkkuk! But threaten to kill myself? OK, no problem, feel free, go ahead. Here’s the knife. Nice man.’

  “‘Oh, dear,’ I said.

  “‘Huh! I was stupid. I then got involved with his bloody mate, your fucking acquaintance Roy Forsyth. Thought he might be better and it would eventually turn out OK, but like hell it did. He was tarred with the same brush. I found out later they were in cahoots and up to their necks in the same shit. I find out later that fucking Roy Forsyth had done time for embezzlement. Ex banker, nice way with words, smart suit and tie. Smooth as a rattlesnake. He’d even been a local Councillor at some time but got caught for taking a bribe. Educated bloody criminals I called ’em. They were partners in crime and both from some public school in Edinburgh. They made a bloody fortune, but search me how. I never understood. The only saving grace was that my twin boys got paid to board at Repton. But then they got expelled for bringing drugs in. And I know exactly where they came from – their own fucking father, that’s who. He thought it was funny. He’d planted heroin in their suitcase when they went back to school after Easter one time. The poor lads were frightened to death of him. But it was to get at me, to have something else to hold over me like a noose. That was how he operated. He always found something to hang over you like a threat.‘

  “‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘So what happened to your boys?’

  “‘They got taken to Spain to help their father’s business. I never saw them again. God knows what they’re up to. They’re probably tarred with the same bloody brush by now but they were too young to know any better.’

  “‘Good gracious,’ I said, ‘So, don’t you ever see your sons?’

  “‘No,’ she said and although I expected the answer I detected some definite sadness, eroded though it may have been over time. ‘They probably think I’m dead,’ she added even more sadly and I saw a genuine look of sadness in her eyes. She sniffed.

&nb
sp; “‘And when did you last see them?’

  “‘Twenty-five years this month. They will both be forty-five now.’

  “‘So why don’t you go to see them?’ I asked.

  “‘And bump into fucking Alex Donaldson? No thanks.

  Anyway, if I as much as put a foot in Spain I am likely to find myself upside down in a ditch somewhere. Nice fucking bloke is Alex Donaldson.’

  “‘So, is Mr Donaldson still alive?’ I asked.

  “‘Oh yes. The sod bought a fancy, bloody place, the size of a Texan ranch, near Malaga. Like bloody Dallas it was. He moved there with another floozy. He’d be too bloody old to service the wench nowadays but I guarantee he’s found a way to keep her quiet.’

  “I stood there, Andy, trying hard not to look at Betty’s cleavage but feeling desperately sorry for her. But she seemed to be getting impatient now. Or was it nerves? Did she just want to talk to someone who might listen? Perhaps she needed another gin. Her mouth twisted sideways and she looked at her watch. So, I said:

  “‘Well, I’m sorry to hear all that. I’d better be on my way.’ It sounded pathetic but there was not a lot more to say without coming out with my own list of grievances and that would have taken months.

  “‘How much did they owe Nigel?’ Betty suddenly asked. “‘Six hundred pounds,’ I said.

  “‘Just a minute,’ she said and disappeared.

  “A minute later I heard the plimsolls squeaking on the wooden floor and Betty handed me an envelope with a large bundle of notes hanging out.

  “‘Here,’ Betty said. ‘It’s five thousand euros. That should cover what Nigel was owed, with some interest. I don’t need it. Wish him well for me. He was a good gardener. You can’t get them for love nor money around here.’

  “Betty, despite her bad experiences, did not seem short of cash. Perhaps, though, this was a portion of Donaldson’s silence money.

  “I thanked her, apologized for arriving out of the blue without an appointment and started back down the steps.

  Betty watched me go.

  “But at the bottom I couldn’t resist one last look at her and so I stopped and turned.

  “‘Are you sure we haven’t met before?’ she said, clearly puzzled.

  “‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said and then turned and made my way down the driveway to the gate where I turned around yet again and waved. Betty was still watching me.

  “But that explains the cash you found in my bag, Andy. Am I now cleared of any suspicions of theft?”

  “Yes, Ollie. I think we can probably strike that one off,” said Andy. “But what happened next?”

  Malaga

  “I spent a further two days and nights at the Negresco, Andy. The place was too ornate for my liking although the croissants were nice. I became very friendly with the man in the fancy uniform on the front door and he pointed me towards a café where I ate lunch each day. In the evening, he pointed me towards another one where I ate dinner but by the third morning I no longer needed any breakfast.”

  “What about your fish and chips, Ollie? Have you finished?”

  “Yes, thanks. Do you want me to continue now? I ask because we are rapidly reaching the particular event which concerns you.“

  “Please. Go ahead. Feel free, Ollie. At your own pace. It’s another three months before my summer holidays.”

  “Sorry it’s taking a while, Andy but you can see why I warned you. Will you be visiting Spain on holiday, Andy? If so, I can offer some tips on where to stay and where not to stay.”

  “I’m not sure yet, Ollie. Please proceed.”

  “Well, I checked out of the Negresco on the third morning, said cheerio to my friend, Claude on the front door and took a taxi to the airport again.”

  “I see you make friends easily, Ollie.”

  “I like to think it comes naturally, Andy, although I’ve not had much practice over the last twenty years. But while I was away I noticed how much I’ve missed it.”

  “So how did you put up with life in Gloucester for so long?”

  Andy Wilson saw Oliver Thomas look away as though his question had hit a nerve and decided to add to his question to give more time for a reply. “I mean, I thought you said the drinking and the so-called Thomas’s Disease was a reaction to boredom.”

  Oliver Thomas scratched his head and sighed.

  “Perhaps I have gone a little over the top in saying I was depressed, Andy. Perhaps it is only in the last few years, and since Sarah became ill, that I have found life depressing. I think that that had a lot to do with Sarah slowly disappearing into her illness and leaving me with no one to talk to. It was as though she had left me and I missed her company. But for most of the time since we went to live in Gloucester, I cannot say I felt totally unfulfilled. We would go for drives in the car.

  We would go on short holidays to Wales and to Cornwall and we would spend hours in the back garden. We never went abroad of course, but Sarah loved her flowers and her vegetable patch. It is a fact I find hard to admit, but so did I.

  “I think it is a left over from the years of culture shock when I would return home for just a few days between longer trips abroad. Domesticity seemed, at that time, dreadfully mundane and I suspect I grew to believe that nothing was as good as travelling and mixing with so many other nationalities. I had always thought I needed to earn money to provide for my family and, if that meant spending long weeks of the year travelling abroad, then so be it. But I discovered after moving to Gloucester that that was not the case. I slowly found that a quiet life of living within means was just as satisfying. Sarah had a whole list of sayings about that. Waste not, want not. Make ends meet. Make do and mend. That was her philosophy. What’s more, Andy, I know Sarah liked me being around the house. We were making up for lost time and, even more surprisingly, I liked being there. In fact, it was the best time of my life.”

  Oliver Thomas looked down at the floor between his feet and Andy Wilson saw that his eyes were watering.

  “Mm,” Oliver Thomas went on, wiping his cheek, “I miss my Sarah.”

  Andy Wilson coughed and leaned forward to move the phone an inch.

  “Mm,” he heard Oliver Thomas repeat. “So, I said goodbye to Claude, joked with him in poor French that he should smarten himself up a little, polish his ridiculous boots and straighten his hat. Claude told me to buy a new pair of shoes.

  Then he shook my hand, opened the taxi door and I got in.

  Then I looked back to see him waving at me.”

  Andy Wilson heard him sniff back something watery and wipe his face again.

  “So, you went to the airport, Ollie?”

  “Yes,” he looked up, his eyes clearly red around the edges.

  Then he sniffed once again. “I took an Air France flight to Malaga.”

  Oliver Thomas coughed, clearly trying to bring himself together.

  He took a deep breath. “Do you know Malaga, Andy?”

  “Ah, no – unfortunately. I did venture to Majorca once with some mates. When I was single.”

  “Don’t go there, Andy. I have never liked Malaga. It has a certain tone about it, which does not appeal to my sense of order. Perhaps it’s Picasso’s influence. I was unsure whether to stay in the city or outside. But I had already thought about this before I left Gloucester and had decided to stay somewhere in the centre near the Cathedral in case I needed to lose myself among crowds.”

  “So where did you stay, Ollie?”

  “I booked a room at a small hotel in the centre, in a busy street called Ataranzanas, close to the Picasso Museum and port. It’s an area I knew quite well and it hasn’t changed much. But, checking in, I asked the reception clerk if a small parcel had been delivered to await my arrival. Miraculously, it was there waiting for me and it, and my bag, was carried up to the first floor where I found myself in a rather dim but adequate room overlooking a small courtyard.”

  “Sounds cosy, Ollie. What was in the package?”

  “We’l
l come to that, Andy. But, yes, this hotel was much more to my liking and I decided to go immediately out into the street, have a look around to get my bearings, buy a local map and a small haversack and find a café.

  “Later, with the evening drawing on I returned to my room and opened my parcel. Inside, wrapped in several layers of foil to confuse any x-ray machines, was the item that had sat in an oily cloth at the bottom of the old box in the bedroom at home for twenty years.”

  “You sent something by courier in advance, Ollie? Why not take it with you?”

  “It was my gun, Andy.”

  “Your what?”

  “My hand gun, Andy. The one you referred to earlier when I was arrested.”

  “You weren’t arrested. You were detained for questioning.”

  “Anyway, I took the gun out, checked it, placed it on the bed, wrapped it up in its old cloth again, put it into my new haversack along with an envelope containing some other papers I’d brought with me and I turned in for the night.”

  “You must have slept soundly with your gun lying next to you, Ollie.”

  “Yes, indeed. I slept very well and when I awoke I was hungry.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But I took a quick look at what amounted to the breakfast room downstairs by the bar, decided it was not for me and wandered out into the street again. By nine thirty I was back again having drunk a nice cup of coffee with a couple of churros. Nourished sufficiently to last a full day and raring to go, I recovered my haversack from my room and went to find a taxi.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just drive the Jaguar down to Malaga, Ollie. It would have been a nice ride. But then what happened?”

  The address on the paper that Nigel had given Oliver Thomas was, like Little Avening, a dot on his newly purchased and detailed map of the Malaga area.

  San Licata was marked as near Antequera but Oliver Thomas decided it could only be a tiny hamlet, if that.

  His Spanish was not as good as his Arabic or French but he soon found a taxi driver who spoke reasonable English and was willing to sit around and wait for him, paid by the time.

  Then, under a clear blue sky, they drove out of Malaga through rocky terrain strewn with conifer trees and a carpet of yellow wild flowers. They drove through Antequera, headed for Cordoba and, after passing through another village turned right off the main road and followed a small river that trickled over stones and boulders until they reached a small lake surrounded by conifers. The taxi driver stopped, looked around and scratched his head.

  “I never go this way before, señor but I think this is the place,” he said and pointed to a rough track between more trees and rocks. “But no cars ever come this way.”

  “Let’s try anyway,” suggested Oliver Thomas.

  “OK, señor, you pay,” and he laughed, clearly enjoying the drive. He and Oliver Thomas were getting on very well.

  They bumped their way for another mile or so, the track getting steep and higher until they reached a summit where the rough, stony track suddenly dropped steeply down again onto the other side.

  “I think this road only good for donkeys, señor.”

  Before them was a panoramic view of a valley and way down, shimmering in the heat of late morning, a large house or villa with a red roof and groups of other buildings, all surrounded by a white wall in an, almost, perfect oval shape.

  A better, narrow but tarmacked road led away from what looked like a pillared gate in one side of the wall and disappeared behind another hillside.

  “I think that is the place, señor. But we come on wrong road, I think. Much better if we come from Cordoba side on that road,” the taxi driver said, pointing.

  Oliver Thomas agreed and they turned and went back.

  After a further half hour of driving, the taxi driver and Oliver Thomas were on first name terms.

  “How you know about this place, Ollie?”

  “It is probably the headquarters of the Spanish Mafia, Rafael! I need to speak to them about some unfinished business.”

  “No! I think you joke, señor. You don’t look like the Mafia to me, Ollie.”

  “Why is that, Rafael?”

  “Mafia, they are rich and wear the gold rings and smoke the cigarra. You look more like the man who ride on Spanish donkey, if you don’t mind me saying, Ollie.”

  “I don’t mind at all, Rafael. But I think I am more like the donkey himself.”

  Rafael laughed and laughed until tears ran down his face and when he had recovered he said, “I think you are a very funny man, Ollie. I think you are a good one for joking.”

  “Well, I’m a bit out of practice,” Oliver Thomas replied and then sat thinking.

  “I think I need to start practicing everything again, Rafael.” “You mean the joking?”

  “No. I need to practice how to live again.”

  Rafael glanced at him from staring at the road ahead.

  “But joking is a good start to living, Ollie. You know any Spanish jokes?”

  Oliver Thomas sat thinking.

  “Yes, one,” he said smiling, “but English jokes must always include Irish people. You know about that, Rafael?”

  Rafael looked at him again, laughed and carried on driving.

  “Yes, I heard. But the Irish jokes are very good. You want to tell me?”

  “Well,” said Oliver Thomas, “you know Julio Iglesias, the Spanish singer, Rafael?”

  “Of course.”

  “An Irishman once asked him why the Spanish used the word manyana so much. Julio Iglesias said that it was because the Spanish were very relaxed people. Maybe a job will be done tomorrow, maybe the next day or maybe next week, next month or next year.”

  “Yes, that is Spain, Ollie.”

  “Then Julio Iglesias asked the Irishman if the Irish had a word similar to manyana. No, said the Irishman. We don’t have a word to describe that amount of urgency.”

  Rafael laughed.

  “That is a good one, Ollie. Do you know any more?”

  Oliver Thomas sat for a moment.

  “I have one more, Rafael. You want to hear it?”

  “Of course!”

  Oliver Thomas sat without speaking for a moment but then said, “I say, Rafael, do you want to hear it?”

  “Of course. I already say.”

  “So, you can hear OK, Rafael?”

  “Of course, my ear is very good.”

  “OK. Because do you know about the Spanish man, Fabio, who was deaf? Fabio told his friend, ‘Hey, Felipe, I have just bought myself an aid for deafness that is a wonderful. When I put it in my ear nobody knows I am wearing it.’ And Felipe says, ‘That is fantastic. What will they invent next? It must be very expensive. How much did it cost?’ And you know what Fabio says, Rafael?”

  “No, Ollie. What?”

  “The time is a quarter past two.”

  Rafael laughed and laughed so much he had to stop the car for a moment to wipe his eyes. Then, as they got moving once again, he asked: “So you have business with these Mafia, Ollie?”

  “It’s unfinished business, Rafael. But my real business was export.”

  “Ah, export. My sister, she has a very good business. She is making fine table cloths,” Rafael said. “You want me to speak to her about business, Ollie?”

  “Yes, why not,” Oliver Thomas replied, “I’m always on the lookout for opportunities. Here’s my card.”

  He pulled an old Thomas Import Export card from his pocket - one that he’d found during his recent clearing up.

  Still driving, Rafael looked at it then stuck it into the top pocket of his shirt. “But how old you are, señor? Excuse me for my asking.”

  “Eighty-six. But today I feel like thirty-six.”

  “It’s the good life, señor, I see. You must keep active, not stop. Keep the joking. Keep going until drop dead like all donkeys. Best way to die I think.’

  “Yes,” Oliver Thomas agreed. “You never know if death is just around the corner, do
you Rafael?”

  And with that, they rounded a corner in the road. “Please stop here, Rafael.”

  “You ready to die so soon, Ollie?” Rafael asked, laughing.

  “Perhaps,” he said and Rafael stopped laughing.

  Oliver Thomas stopped his explanation to Andy Wilson. First, he scratched his head. Then he rubbed his grey, facial stubble with his hand and then stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it as though something might be blocking it.

  “What do you think of Rafael, Andy?” he asked.

  Andy Wilson was sitting on the edge of his seat. “I like him,” he said.

  “Yes, me too. He is just the sort of man I get on with. Not only friendly but a few business contacts as well. An opportunist. I’d like a longer chat with him sometime.”

  “You want to carry on, Ollie?”

  “Yes. We were approaching the white wall we had seen from the other side of the mountain when I told Rafael to stop. The pillared gateway hadn’t looked big from the other side but from this approach it was big and impressive.

  “An arch in U.S. cattle ranch style showed that this was, indeed, ‘San Licata’. The name stretched in large black letters right across the arch.

  “And it was then that I suddenly realized where I had heard the name before. Licata was the small town in Sicily. Do you remember that, Andy?”

  “Yes, and also the name of the boat in Malta, the one that carried the IRA shipment. That was called Licata.”

  “That’s it. Bingo, I thought. Beneath the arch was what looked like a gate-keepers lodge, but the gates were wide open. A driveway led through a bright green lawn bordered with short conifer trees. A man was spraying water onto the grass with a hose.”

  “We go in?” Rafael asked as though offering to lead a cavalry charge.

  “Wait a moment, Rafael. I need to think.”

  “This place makes me nervous, Ollie. It looks like Spanish Mafia,” Rafael said. “How long you want to think, Ollie?”

  “’Sshh!” Oliver Thomas said. “I’m thinking.”

  The thinking didn’t take long.

  Oliver Thomas told Rafael to drive up to the gate but wait for him outside.

  Two minutes later he checked the contents of his haversack which he had placed on the back seat of the taxi and then, taking his stick this time because he wanted to appear old and infirm, he got out of Rafael’s taxi.

  “Please wait, Rafael. OK?”

  He tottered towards the gate.

  As he approached, the main villa came into view.

  It was deceptively large and built on a split-level, the land to the rear lower than the front and the high, surrounding wall disappeared down the hillside beyond the villa, reappearing further along near some other smaller houses. The view beyond the villa looked out across miles of open Spanish countryside. The gardens themselves were mostly grass and the only trees were the few that bordered the driveway.

  The concrete driveway led towards the red-tiled villa and some wide, semi-circular steps. At the top of the steps was a high and wide wooden door that opened into a darker interior. The driveway itself then forked and led away to the other houses and buildings that looked like low roofed warehouses.

  Several cars – new BMWs and a Mercedes – were parked along the driveway and a pick-up truck and three other cars sat, in dark shadow under a corrugated shelter beyond the main house. It had all the characteristics of a big home-based family business and reminded Oliver Thomas of one he had once known that perched on the side of Mount Vesuvius.

  “Do you want to know about that place at Somme Vesuviano near Naples, Andy?”

  “Another time, Ollie, just keep going.”

  “But this Spanish place was so similar. It needs investigating, Andy. Because I know that the Naples business was run by a family called Perillo. Do you remember the Perillo name, Andy?”

  “The lawyer in Malta?”

  “That’s it. I want to go there again sometime, after this is finished.”

  “Later, Ollie. What happened next?”

  There was no one in the lodge office so Oliver Thomas walked straight through the gate, using his stick as a prop until the man watering the grass spotted him.

  He then dropped his hose with the water still running from it and ran over, shouting in Spanish.

  Oliver Thomas waved his stick in what he thought might be interpreted as a friendly manner and the man stopped some distance from him, but continued to shout in strongly accented Spanish.

  “I’m very sorry but do you speak English?” Oliver Thomas asked.

  The man looked at the stick and then at Oliver Thomas. “OK, watta ya want? Watta your name?” and he came a little closer.

  “I’m sorry but I haven’t got long,” he replied. “My taxi is waiting. I just wanted to speak to Mr Donaldson.”

  “Which Mr Donaldson? We have a many here.’

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “It’s Major Donaldson I wanted to speak to.”

  “Major Donaldson, he very olda man now, no see visitatori.”

  “What about the other Donaldsons?”

  “Which wunna you want? We have a many here.”

  “His son, perhaps?”

  “He havva two son. Which wunna you wanna?”

  “I don’t really mind. I just wanted to leave a message or something.”

  “We donna do that ’ere.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We dunna see visitatori ’ere.”

  “’Then is it possible to leave a message?”

  “Watta your message?”

  “I have it here. It’s written down.”

  “OK. I givva to Peter.”

  “Peter?” Oliver Thomas asked, checking.

  “Yah. He wunna olda brother.”

  “Would that be Major Donaldson’s son?”

  “Yah. Peter he twinna brother Simon.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember,” Oliver Thomas said. “I lost contact with the family some years ago. Very nice family. How is the Major? He must be quite old now.”

  “Yah. He very olda now. Have sedia a rotelli. He not do so mucha now. How you knowa family?”

  “Oh,” Oliver Thomas laughed, perhaps wrongly. He was trying to think what a sedia a rotelli might be and then decided it might be a wheelchair. “Oh, it’s a very long story – we worked together for many years. Partners in crime you might say, ha ha.”

  “Is my accent, good, Andy? Do you recognise it?” Oliver Thomas asked Andy Wilson.

  “Ah, I don’t think so. Is it Spanish?” said Andy Wilson.

  “Tut,” Oliver Thomas replied. “The man was Italian. My Naples accent is very clear.”

  “Sorry Ollie. Go on.”

  The Italian was watching Oliver Thomas from a distance.

  “Yes, partners in crime,” he repeated and winked at him although he knew he may have been too far away for him to see. “Same camorra, you know?”

  “Camorra?” the Italian said and his Naples pronunciation of the Italian word for gang was spot on.

  “Si, Major Donaldson was my boss. The big capo.”

  “OK,” the Italian said and Oliver Thomas sensed him loosening up. “Your boss, uh? He still the big capo. Watta your message?”

  “Major Donaldson would love to see me,” he said. “We knew each other for a very long time. Maybe forty years he was my amico. E impresa familiare, you know?”

  He knew his Italian was rusty but a few words thrown in about Donaldson being a friend and a family business had looked sensible.

  “We donna have visitatori here. Only visitatori importanti.”

  “I am visitatori importanti,” Oliver Thomas replied and held out his arms and hands, palms upwards, like a true Italian, except that his stick hung from his right arm.

  “Watta your name?”

  “Mi chiamo, David,” Oliver Thomas said, holding back the surname Reynolds but hoping that the hosepipe Italian might even think David was his family name.

  “Watta your message
?”

  “Can I not meet him to give it?” he asked.

  “Ees not possible.”

  “OK, never mind,” he said. “Can you give this to either Peter or Simon?”

  Oliver Thomas sighed, deliberately and heavily and put his haversack on the ground. The hosepipe Italian came a little closer.

  Oliver Thomas took out a single piece of paper and held it out.

  The hosepipe took it and said, “Ees Arabic?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Some of the words are. The rest is English but I’m sure the Major will understand.”

  “OK, I givva to Peter first, maybe the capo he wanna see you, I dunna know.”

  “Grazie mille,” Oliver Thomas said, “I’ll be back tomorrow at the same time and hope to meet him.”

  “With that, Andy, I raised my stick as a sort of salute, turned and started to walk back to the gate and Rafael in the waiting taxi. But I had already caught sight of someone watching from the doorway of the villa and, because I was purposely walking slowly with my stick, I had only gone a few steps when I heard another voice behind me.

  “I turned and, shading my eyes from the sun, saw another man in jeans and tee shirt coming down the villa steps and walking quickly towards the hosepipe man.

  “‘Che cos’e, Umberto?’

  “Umberto, the hosepipe man, said, ‘I dunno, boss. He come inna ’ere and wanna speak to Maggiore.’

  “Then the tee shirted one appeared to grab my piece of paper from Umberto. But I turned once more and continued to hobble my way towards the gate and Rafael’s taxi. Rafael clambered out of his taxi and walked towards me as if to help someone old enough to be his grandfather struggling in the heat with only a stick to help him. But before he had reached me I heard the English voice again, clearly shouting towards me, ‘Hey, old man. What do you want?’

  “You must have felt insulted, Ollie?” Andy Wilson said, laughing.

  “No, Andy. I wanted to appear old and frail and I pretended not to hear. I continued plodding towards the taxi but Rafael was now right next to me and he grabbed my arm. I leaned on him, looked straight into his face and said: ‘I’m OK, Rafael, but, I’m going back in there. If I’m not out again in one hour, please phone the police on your mobile and get them to come out here.’

  “Rafael looked a little shocked. ‘La policia?’ “ ‘Yes,’ I said and then added, ‘por favor. And if they ask, say you think an old man has just died.’

  “‘Madre de Dios. You wanna die like the donkey now, Señor? So soon?’

  “‘No, I don’t want to die,’ I said, ‘But there’s another old man in there and he’s older than me. Si gracis.’

  “Then what, Ollie?” asked Andy Wilson.

  The tee shirted English man was walking rapidly towards them.

  “What’s going on?” he asked from some distance away.

  Oliver Thomas could now see he was still holding the paperwork in his hand. He looked at Rafael.

  “OK, give me half an hour,” he said to the taxi driver, “and then – you know what to do.”

  Rafael looked at him and then at the English man approaching.

  “One minute you say one hour, Ollie, then you say half an hour. OK, si señor, te cuida,’ he said.

  “OK, up to you, Rafael. If you hear trouble, phone the police.”

  “What sort of trouble, Ollie?”

  “Pistola, excopata, gun. You’ll know it’s trouble when you hear it.”

  “Madre de Dios!”

  Rafael then went back to his taxi to reverse it a few yards further away under the shade of a tree.

  Oliver Thomas turned to look at the English man.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but I just wanted to catch up with Alex Donaldson.”

  Donaldson’s son was now stood right in front of him. “What about?”

  “Licata,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The paper,” he said, pointing at what the son was holding in his hand. “It’s a Bill of Lading for a shipment that went out of Libya many years ago, on an Italian vessel called Licata.”

  “So?” he said, looking at it.

  “That’s what I want to speak to Alex Donaldson about.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “My name is David Reynolds,” he said and started to rummage inside his rucksack. “Here – my passport.” The man took it and opened it.

  “It’s old, fucking expired,” he said.

  “I know,” he replied, “I must get around to renewing it.”

  “How do you know my father?”

  “You must be one of his twin sons,” Oliver Thomas said as a reply. “Which one are you?”

  “Never mind. How do you know my father?”

  “Oh, we go back sixty years or more – back to the war.”

  Oliver Thomas tried to smile. “He was my boss once.”

  “So, what’s this Licata shit?”

  “Alex would know,’ he said. “How is he? Must be getting on a bit now. I’m eighty-six, he must be ninety. But, oh yes, your father and I go back many, many years. It’s such a long time. I just wanted to catch up, that’s all.”

  “How did you know he was here?”

  “Ah,” Oliver Thomas said, his lingering smile turning into a short laugh, “Alex always said he would know where to find me. But I found him, instead. So how is the old bugger? Still smoking Craven A or has he given up because they don’t make them any longer? We used to meet in the Feathers in Mayfair. We had some real laughs there. I worked for him for nearly forty years. Is he in? I’m sorry to call unannounced but we always had that sort of arrangement. Your father often used to call me when I was busy and I was always expected to drop everything and run.”

  Oliver Thomas dropped his stick down onto the dusty ground and held his back as though it was about to break. Then he bent down to the haversack again.

  “Phew, it’s hot for the time of year. It feels nearly as hot as Kufra and I’m not as used to it as I once was. But I’ve got something else here that Alex might like to see – for old time’s sake.”

  He walked nearer and handed him an envelope though whether he was giving it to Peter or Simon he still wasn’t sure. Whichever twin it was, tore the envelope open and withdrew two sheets of paper Oliver Thomas had typed on his old type- writer back in Gloucester.

  “What the fuck is this?” the twin said, and he turned it over to read the second page.

  “It’s an invoice,” Oliver Thomas said, “for just over six million pounds.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “Oh, no,’ he said. “It’s an invoice from my business, Thomas Import Export Limited and you’ll see it’s neatly broken down into various items.”

  He waited just a moment for the twin to read it and then said: “As you see, the items on the front page include back pay, unpaid travel expenses and consultancy work. On the second page, you will see a further, much longer list.”

  He waited for him to scan the second page.

  “You will note that these include such items as losses I incurred on a shipment of military supplies destined for Chad, which, by the way, will be the subject of a criminal investigation unless my invoice is paid in full. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly. There is also a breakdown of costs I incurred in trying to stop the shipment of several forty-foot containers containing stolen Mercedes cars instead of medical equipment. These, incidentally, were paid for partly by charitable donations that included a sum of £535 raised at a garden party I once attended in Walton-on-Thames.

  “There is a small, separate item, number 37, which are my company’s charges, previously unclaimed, for train fares to visit the Scottish office of your dear father.

  “Item number 46 on my invoice is a much bigger sum and covers danger money for having helped to organize a meeting for a Member of the House of Lords in the West African bush. My charges in this case are for not saying anything about this to anyone unless asked by a Judge in the High Court, in wh
ich case I will reduce the amount shown.”

  The Donaldson twin looked straight at Oliver Thomas.

  “You’re bloody crazy.”

  “Oh no,” he said, “not in the least. But unless I get paid for it, I will go straight to the Police, the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise once I get back to England with a file a foot thick about Alex Donaldson’s business activities over the last sixty years.”

  “You are fucking mad.”

  “Please stop saying that,” Oliver Thomas said, politely. “What’s more, a copy of the invoice and its accompanying files is lodged with a solicitor back in England and if I fail to return to England for any reason he is under strict instructions to release the contents to the powers that be.”

  Oliver Thomas stared at the man wondering if it was starting to sink in.

  And, in case it wasn’t, he added: “And as I’m so old now and couldn’t care a fuck whether I get away from here dead, alive or embedded in a block of concrete ready to be shipped to Naples or Sicily to be dropped with a splash into the Mediterranean it’s entirely up to you. I’d always fancied being fed to the fish somewhere near Amalfi if that’s convenient. But the question is, do you want the whole of your fucking Scottish, Italian and Spanish arms dealing, drugs smuggling and money laundering operation cracked wide open?”

  The Donaldson twin stood, his mouth open and with an unexpected twitch in his cheek.

  “So, can I see him or no?” Oliver Thomas concluded.

  “Fucking hell,” the twin said as the hosepipe Italian sidled up alongside and peered around his shoulder.

  The twin stood shaking his head and said, “Fuck,” again and Oliver Thomas saw one of his father’s features on his face a bubble of white spittle had appeared on his upper lip.

  “Umberto, go tell padre, he has a visitor,” he said over his shoulder.

  “You sure, boss?”

  “Go!”

  Umberto scurried away along the driveway towards a large puddle of water that had formed from his hosepipe. Donaldson’s twin son then returned to the paperwork in his hand. He had not yet looked at the Bill of Lading with the Arabic lettering.

  “And what the fuck is this?”

  Umberto stopped in his tracks as though expecting that his instructions might be about to change.

  “Your father knows,” Oliver Thomas replied.

  “Tell me.”

  “It covers a shipment of arms that was sent from Libya to Northern Ireland during the IRA troubles,” Oliver Thomas said. “The boat was called the Licata and the file on that is particularly thick.”

  “I know nothing.”

  “Why would you?” Oliver Thomas said, “It was long before your time. And, by the way,” he said pointing with his stick to the pretentious arch over the main entrance, “As far as I know there is no Saint Licata. Licata is just a small place in southern Sicily. But I assume your dear father always held ambitions of sainthood for himself, although I would venture to suggest that any sainthood is more likely to be granted by the chap who lives beneath our feet rather than the one living in the clouds above.”

  “Come with me,” he growled and walked off with Oliver Thomas’s expired passport and the papers.

  Umberto moved but stopped just past the puddle still with a look of uncertainty on his face. Then he followed like a nervous dog.

  Oliver Thomas bent down to pick up his haversack and then followed the two men, slowly, back along the driveway, through the pool of water and towards the steps of the villa.

  By the time, he had arrived at the bottom step, Umberto and the son had already disappeared into the cooler, darker interior so he stood for a moment for a different view of San Licata.

  At the end of the driveway was what looked like a warehouse, its doors wide open. Two men were putting loaded pallets into the back of a small truck with a forklift. They stopped to watch but Oliver Thomas waved his stick and they carried on. Strange old men with walking sticks, it appeared, were of no concern.

  “You really must speak to the Italian authorities, Andy. This place was a carbon copy of the one in Naples. There is a connection somewhere and the common theme is the name Perillo. I could take you right to the main gate of the one in Vesuviano right now. The Italians think they’ve got rid of old style mafia. They may well have but sophisticated, organized crime is everywhere.”

  “Yes, Ollie. We know,” Andy Wilson replied. “The problem is usually gathering the evidence that’ll stand up in Court and finding the ring leaders. And many of them have insurance policies in the form of politicians and others lying low or in their pockets.”

  “I know, Andy, but no excuses. When you want to move, just call me.”

  “Will do, Ollie. So, what happened next?”

  Oliver Thomas stood at the bottom of the wide steps waiting.

  A few minutes later Umberto appeared again, looking flushed and worried.

  “You left your water on,” Oliver Thomas said, pointing to the expanding puddle on the driveway.

  “Si, signore, I know issa wet. Please to follow.”

  Oliver Thomas followed Umberto up the marble steps onto more marble – a wide, brown tiled hallway with closed doors off to the right and left and then another wide, semicircular stairway this time leading down.

  Umberto waited at the bottom of the second stairway as Oliver Thomas hobbled down, holding onto a brass banister with his left hand and to his stick in the other. His haversack was still hanging over one shoulder.

  “Please to follow.”

  He then followed Umberto along a darker, cool corridor with an ornate red ceiling lit by a single, shiny, brass and crystal chandelier and watched Umberto knock on the door at the far end and wait.

  As he caught up, the door was opened and the son stood there.

  “OK ‘berto. Wait outside the house.”

  Umberto almost bowed and then scuttled back along the corridor.

  Donaldson

  “I have to admit, Andy, my stomach, which had only seen two churros and a small cup of coffee all day, was churning, though it was not with hunger. It is not every day one gets a chance to renew your acquaintance with a murderous, international, crook especially one who you once thought was dead.”

  “I’ve never been in the position myself, Ollie. So, I wouldn’t know. I don’t suppose you even got a cup of coffee.”

  “Patience, Andy, I’m coming to it.”

  “You got a cup, Ollie?”

  “No.”

  The son, whichever one it was, backed into the room and nodded his head for Oliver Thomas to follow. There was a lot to take in.

  This was not like the Negresco in Nice but just as ornate. The floor was the same marble as elsewhere but a vast, Chinese carpet started from near the door and extended into the far distance.

  A large, four-poster bed with cream drapes and gold sashes stood on one side with several shining, wooden tables and chairs on both sides.

  A large desk covered in marquetry and a green leather writing area stood on Oliver Thomas’s right. A telephone in shiny brass and a table lamp with a green shade were the only items on it.

  At the far end was a wide, open patio door leading onto a white, tiled, veranda with a low wall of short pillars and a red awning over a white table and chairs. Two wide windows on either side of the patio door were also open giving a view over a huge expanse of open Spanish countryside beyond.

  A faint breeze moved a red velvet curtain that hung from close to the ceiling.

  For a moment, the bright sunlight from outside made everything inside except the green lamp on the desk look dark but Oliver Thomas saw the son walk across the carpet towards one of the windows and then sit on a sofa made of shiny, gold fabric with gilt arms.

  It was then that he saw the silhouette.

  The dark figure was still forty feet away and was sat in what looked like a wheelchair against one of the open windows. The head was bent slightly to one side and something small, like an
ornate ring, flashed on a hand resting on the arm of the wheelchair and rose to the head. The silhouette coughed and gurgled and for a second Oliver Thomas thought it was Jim.

  Then it spoke. “Fucking Ollie Thomas.”

  It was only three, slowly spoken words but the voice was rough and deep. It trembled slightly and there was the faintest hint of Scottish accent that seemed to have increased over the years.

  “Mr fucking Reynolds, back from the dead.”

  Oliver Thomas tried moving closer in the hope of seeing some detail but was stopped by his stick which embedded itself into the deep pile of the Chinese carpet. He almost toppled forward but just managed to regain his position and dignity and stood with the stick still embedded in the carpet, his two hands clenched over the curved handle.

  He stared at the black figure in the wheelchair.

  “Oliver, fucking, Thomas.”

  Oliver Thomas said nothing but was determined not to look directly towards the windows. He had not come all this way to see a silhouette again and his eyes needed to grow accustomed to the light. He wanted a detailed look of the ninety-year old Donaldson to see what living in this style for forty years may have done to his features.

  “Bless my fucking soul. I hoped you were dead,” Donaldson growled.

  “No such luck,” Oliver Thomas said.

  “But I heard your dear wife is gone.”

  The fact that Donaldson already knew shocked him but he held his ground and didn’t flinch.

  “We all have to go sometime,” he said and was proud of the sound of his own voice. To him, it sounded thirty years younger than Donaldson’s.

  “Enjoying your retirement, Ollie?”

  “The time passes.”

  “Didn’t get to retire anywhere nice then?”

  “Gloucester is fine.”

  “Matter of opinion I suppose.” He chose not to respond.

  “Did Sarah tell you that if you moved a fucking inch we’d get you?”

  “Not in as many words. But I guessed.”

  “Good as gold Sarah. Just like Beaty Collins.”

  “Yes,” he said, “The two most important women in my life.”

  The silhouette manoeuvred itself up in the chair and coughed like Jim again.

  “So – going globetrotting again then, Ollie.”

  “Only recently.”

  “Been anywhere beside Spain?”

  “Only as far as Little Avening.”

  “Become a detective as well as a fucking salesman, have you?”

  He heard the spittle emerge and settle somewhere.

  “Not really,” he said, “I’ve been catching up on my invoices.”

  “So, I see. It’s a big bill, Ollie. Six million quid is a lot.”

  “I left off a lot because I wasn’t sure if you could afford it.”

  Out of the corner of my eye he saw the son stir on his golden sofa.

  “You’re a joker, Ollie, and a stupid, fucking sucker.“

  “Perhaps, but I tried to run an honest business. And being blackmailed isn’t nice.”

  “But you worked for the Government, Ollie. Governments aren’t nice.”

  “I was patriotic.”

  “An admirable quality, Ollie, but very naïve.”

  “I didn’t do it for the money.”

  “I can see that, Ollie. It shows.”

  “You, on the other hand, worked only for yourself.”

  “But look what I’ve got, Ollie.” Donaldson raised his hands as though pointing to the opulence. “What have you got?”

  “A clear conscience.”

  “Ha,” Donaldson was clearly trying to laugh but failed. “So, what the fuck do you want, Ollie? Money? What for? To go abroad at last? What have you got left, Ollie? Your good looks?”

  The son settled into his sofa again.

  Oliver Thomas unclenched his hands from the stick and scratched his nose.

  “Any chance I can see your own handsome features then?” he asked. “Why don’t you stand up and get away from the window and let me check. All you’ve ever been in your life is a black shadow. You’ve cast it far and wide. At least I can stand. For all I know I could be speaking to an impostor.”

  “Why don’t you just fuck off back to the suburbs where you came from, dear boy.”

  “I aim to,” he said, “but I thought I’d pay one last visit to your office before you die. It’s a nice view. Nice carpet and nice golden bed, too. Got a golden piss pot underneath it, have you?”

  Oliver Thomas knew he was winding him up but it was something he’d waited to do for too long. He had even dreamed of suitable phrases to use. But Donaldson’s reaction was to cough productively and swallow whatever came up.

  “The climate doesn’t suit you, Major. You should move somewhere more temperate. Somewhere like Alaska. The cold would match your sensitive nature.”

  Donaldson was growling but whether it was his temper boiling or more thick mucus gathering in his throat it was impossible to tell.

  “You always had a nice turn of phrase, Ollie. But what the fuck do you want?”

  “What did you want, Ollie?” asked Andy Wilson. “Why did you go there?”

  Andy Wilson was trying to establish a motive for whatever had happened.

  “I wanted to see the bastard. I wanted to ask a few questions. I wanted to put him right on a few things and to correct any misapprehensions he might still have. I wanted to see what he’d done with his accumulated and ill-gotten gains, to prove to myself that money doesn’t bring happiness and to be able to add the final chapter.”

  Andy Wilson yawned, stood up and stretched.

  “Mm,” he said and then came back to the table that separated them. Then he leaned on it, his face just a few inches from Oliver Thomas. “So why take a gun?”

  “Just in case, Andy, and you haven’t heard me out yet.”

  At that moment, the phone on the table rang. Andy picked it up and took it to the corner of the room away from Oliver Thomas.

  “Yes?... I see….What time?..... Do they know what happened?....I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it….. He’s still here. Oh yes, he’s very co-operative, it’s just the time it’s taking to get anywhere. Sixty years crammed into less than twenty-four hours. Yes. Thanks.”

  Oliver Thomas had been listening.

  “Spain?” he asked.

  “No, not Spain, Ollie. That was Clive. We have some bad news. Major Donaldson died about an hour ago.” Andy Wilson sat down once more. “You’d better hurry up and tell me what happened, Ollie,” he said, gravely.

  Oliver Thomas sat with no expression. “Mm,” he said, “the bastard wasn’t well even before I arrived.”

  “But that’s no excuse for what happened. You can’t go around shooting people just for the sake of settling old scores.”

  “Who said it was settling old scores?” replied Oliver Thomas. “But neither was I paying homage to the bastard. I was there to close the book and to see for myself how it all turned out. I’d already documented everything. Now it’s up to you.

  “Look!“ Oliver Thomas said impatiently but realising he wasn’t making himself understood.

  “I know I’m not completely innocent. I have done some questionable things over the years, but who hasn’t and what you’ve read are abstracts, a flavour. But I’ve admitted to certain things in writing, including a few days of being unfaithful to my wife. How many do that these days? So, go ahead and arrest me.

  “But for what? For being complicit? For being an innocent victim? For being naïve? For being threatened and black-mailed?

  “Yes, Andy, I admit to all that. Stick the handcuffs on. Feel free. What you still don’t seem to understand is that when you live a certain style of life and put every ounce of energy into it, sometimes life itself comes up behind and bites you in the bloody arse.

  ”And anyway, you still haven’t heard me out. I told you it would take a while. And the sixty bloody years crammed into just twenty-four
hours takes twenty-four hours not twenty-three. Can’t you bloody wait?”

  For the first time, Andy Wilson saw some anger directed at himself. “So, it wasn’t revenge, Ollie?”

  Oliver Thomas stared back.

  “No,” he replied and shook his head as though he wasn’t getting his message across. “I admit I insulted him but I’ve done that many times before and it was always tit for tat. And insults aren’t a crime.”

  “Did you expect Donaldson to write out a cheque for several million pounds while you pointed your gun at him?”

  “Tut,” sounded Oliver Thomas and Andy Wilson saw a hesitation, something he hadn’t seen in Oliver Thomas before. Until now he had seemed clear, precise and factual with no hint of uncertainty.

  “If not that, then what was it you wanted?” Andy pursued.

  “It was a well-planned confrontation.”

  Andy Wilson got up and clapped his hand to his forehead. “A well-planned confrontation? What the bloody hell is a well-planned confrontation, Ollie? From this side of the table it looks like you went in there carrying a gun to kill Donaldson. That’s premeditated murder for Christ’s sake.”

  Oliver Thomas sat back and sighed.

  “What have I just said, Andy?”

  “That it was a well-planned bloody confrontation, whatever that is.”

  “Yes,” said Oliver Thomas leaning forward again. “But I also said, can’t you bloody well wait? I haven’t finished yet!”

  “OK, Ollie,” Andy sighed, “please carry on. Where were we?”

  “You always had a nice turn of phrase, Ollie,” Donaldson growled. “But what the fuck do you want?”

  It was a good question but Oliver Thomas had worked out what he wanted two weeks before, on the drive back from Chalford Hall.

  He shifted the haversack on his shoulder to a more comfortable position. Then he checked his foothold and took one of his hands off the walking stick and rubbed his cheek.

  Forty years ago, Donaldson would have already sprung at his throat or reminded him of his or his family’s vulnerability.

  But he was now looking frail and vulnerable himself, even with a middle-aged son sitting next to him. The son himself looked uncomfortable, fidgeting as he was on his gilt sofa.

  He kept looking nervously towards his father as though he had been brought up to know his place and that his place was to listen, keep quiet and await instructions. This was Donaldson’s style. It had been honed over ninety years. Donaldson needed to get his own way – always.

  If he felt remotely undermined, he threatened.

  If he felt remotely at risk from others, he blackmailed.

  If he felt afraid of losing something he wanted, he bribed.

  If a scrap of paper was finished with he screwed it up and threw it into the bin or the flames of the nearest coal fire and if a scrap of human life was finished with he was willing to do the same thing.

  If it meant keeping people apart from one another in case they learned too much, he kept them apart.

  So, Donaldson would not immediately seek help from his son because that would have been a sign of weakness. He would try something else first.

  Oliver Thomas took a deep breath. “What do I want, Major? I wanted to pay you a visit. I wanted to see how you were living. I wanted to judge for myself whether being naïve by trusting people and having a sense of duty and patriotism was best in the long run.”

  Donaldson stirred in his wheelchair but seemed to have very little energy.

  Oliver Thomas pulled his stick out of the thick carpet and prodded it into another spot. With his eyesight improving fast, he could see Donaldson clenching and unclenching his fist and was starting to make out more of his features.

  This was Donaldson all right but looking thinner and more wrinkled than when he last saw him. His red skull showed through hair that was now much greyer and sparser and his hands were brown and covered in deep veins and mottled with brown spots from too much sitting in deck chairs.

  “Why don’t you just fuck off back to Gloucester?”

  “I intend to. But you, too, should try a cooler climate, Major. I’ve got a nice Cherry tree in the garden you could sunbathe under.”

  “Fuck off. Why are you here?”

  “Hasn’t your son told you? I’ve already given him my invoice and one copy of the whole file on you is in this bag. But there’s another copy back in England with my solicitor. So, you can bloody well shoot me now if you want because frankly, Major, I just don’t bloody care anymore.”

  Oliver Thomas stared at him but, out of the corner of his eye, watched the son put his hands on the arms of the sofa as though about to get up.

  “Do you want to pay up? If so I’ll open a Santander Bank account in the same branch as you in Malaga and you can transfer it later today. Then I’ll give all the proceeds to charity. How about that?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You sound tired, Major. You used to argue your side a lot better than that. Losing your powers? Running out of fresh ideas for blackmail? Is there something wrong with you? Perhaps you should go back to bed.”

  The son got up and went to the back of the wheelchair and whispered something in his father’s ear. But Oliver Thomas was in no mood for distractions yet.

  “If your son thinks money might get rid of me, let me say this.” He paused and pointed his stick at the invoice on the tiled floor next to Donaldson’s wheelchair. “That invoice is a rough calculation of how much you and your Scottish friend Forsyth cost me over the years but, frankly, I don’t need money. If there’s one thing I learned from Sarah over the years and especially during the time I took care of her when she was sick, money is totally irrelevant. Whatever threats you made against Sarah, were like water off a duck’s back to her. Sarah took it in her stride. She stuck by me without saying a word. And I stuck by her without saying a word either. You had no effect on us, Major. Yes, I might have liked living somewhere else, but what the hell. I have no more regrets and it looks as though I’ll far outlive you.”

  Donaldson was emitting a sound like, “Fff . . .” as he blew air. His hands were moving as though he was desperate to stand up. Then he coughed and the effort made his face redden and his eyes stare.

  “And another thing Major. The thought of taking money from you fills me with a sense of utter disgust and I wouldn’t even give it to charity. They’d probably want to know where it came from and as I wouldn’t be able to give them assurances that it was not the proceeds of crime I’m sure they’d hand it back.

  “So, what do I want, Major? Nothing other than to see with my own eyes what all this has got you and perhaps to write a final chapter to the report I’m filing.

  “But I’m not too bothered about the final chapter. As I’ve already told your son I couldn’t care a fuck whether I get away from here dead, alive or embedded in a block of concrete. So perhaps your son would like to march me off the premises and you can give the orders to others to pour the cement. That would be your usual method, Major. Subcontracting dirty jobs was always your preferred method.”

  Oliver Thomas hesitated before adding, “Alternatively, I’m happy to be found lying dead by a bus shelter.”

  Donaldson’s son moved from behind the wheelchair. “What do you mean?” he asked and looked surprisingly shocked.

  “Oh, come on. Surely you know what happens to innocent people like Beatrice Collins and others. Your father uses people for as long as they are useful and then issues a disposal contract? Am I right Major?”

  Donaldson gurgled incoherently.

  “Disposal was, of course, the last resort but your father had all sorts of other ways to exert pressure. He’s tried them all – threats, blackmail, bribery.”

  “Get out of here,” Donaldson’s gurgling became understandable and he waved a weak hand.

  “Please,” said Oliver Thomas, “What’s happened to your powers of persuasion? Have they run out? It’s too late to threaten my family now, Major.”


  Oliver Thomas then looked at, and spoke to, the son standing alongside his father. “Are you surprised? How much more has he kept from you over the years?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I suggest you just get out. Can’t you see my father isn’t well?”

  Donaldson’s face was showing signs of turning puce. In the past, it would have been the precursor to an explosion but he now seemed barely able to breathe.

  Oliver Thomas pointed his stick at Donaldson’s son. “Do you know your mother is still alive?”

  Donaldson trembled and his son’s mouth opened.

  “Oh yes. Betty lives in a very nice house, paid for by your father,” said Oliver Thomas and he flicked his stick towards the window. Donaldson’s face reddened more deeply. “She’s in the south of France. But she can’t come here because she’s too scared.”

  “My mother?” the son asked and looked at his father.

  “Are you Peter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go and see her before it’s too late. She’s OK. But she’s far too scared to come here.”

  “Fuck off,” growled Donaldson, “Why don’t you just fuck off. Get out.”

  He coughed, almost choked on something in his throat and his right hand disappeared behind his back as though something was making him uncomfortable.

  Peter moved to the back of the wheelchair and Oliver Thomas saw that his lips were trembling. “You’re lying. How do you know about my mother? Where is she?”

  “She lives in Cannes. I met her.”

  “Christ!” muttered Peter. “And what happened to Beaty?”

  Oliver Thomas’s instincts were proving reliable. Suffering from Thomas’s Disease was, for the first time, showing it had some advantages.

  “One day someone phoned me to say she was sick and wouldn’t be coming to work,” he said. “A few days later she was dead. But then I found a note from her which proved she had been living in fear of your father for twenty-five years. I’ve still got the note. What’s more it has your father’s handwriting on it.”

  “Christ!” said Peter again.

  “Were you the one who was told to phone me, Peter? I ask because it’s the way you said Beaty. I only mentioned Beatrice. What was wrong with her? Why did she die?”

  “Fucking hell!” Peter said in reply and looked at his father who seemed to be trying to turn his head around to see where his son was standing. To Oliver Thomas it looked as though he had thrown a few hand grenades into the room. Peter’s eyes were now scanning the ornate room as if skeletons might be hiding in cupboards.

  “Yes, fucking hell is a very good description,” he said and eased the haversack off his shoulder and put it on the carpet.

  “But do you really know what you’re involved in here, Peter? Do you realise the amount of evidence I’ve got of fraud and corruption and links with organisations like the old IRA? By the way, is Umberto’s family name Perillo by any chance? Because I’m sure I met him once before in Naples. How much control have you got here? Are you just another yes man? An errand boy? A wheelchair pusher? Are you actually afraid of your own father? Do you want to appear in a court with your father in handcuffs as well as a wheelchair?”

  Donaldson was blowing air. His face was getting redder and redder by the second but the knuckles of one hand were white as he gripped the arm of the wheelchair. The other hand was still behind his back. He started to hiss. Oliver Thomas looked at him and Peter came around to the side of the wheelchair.

  “I think I’d better be on my way,” Oliver Thomas said, “You don’t look at all well, Major.”

  Then he bent down to the haversack and opened it. “Here,” he said, standing up. “Do you want to see a copy of the whole file, Peter, or shall I give it to your father?”

  "Fuck you. Get out of here.” Donaldson was leaning too far forward in the wheelchair trying to get out. His face was puce. His eyes were round and staring at Oliver Thomas.

  “I’ll leave it here.” Oliver Thomas placed the fat brown envelope onto the carpet next to his stick. Then he lifted his haversack back on to his shoulder. “I’ll be on my way. Nice to meet you once again, Major.”

  He turned and walked two steps. Behind him he heard the wheelchair move. It squeaked and something rattled. Then he heard Donaldson growl something and Peter’s voice shout, “No, Dad.”

  Oliver Thomas was on his third step when he turned to see what was happening. The wheelchair was toppling forward. Donaldson was staring at him but still gripping one arm of the chair with his hand.

  Peter was hanging onto the other chair arm with one hand and trying to pull Donaldson back by his shoulders. Donaldson was almost purple, his eyes staring and blobs of spit dribbled from his lips.

  “Fuck you, Ollie, you bastard.”

  Oliver Thomas watched as Donaldson still seemed desperate to get out of the wheelchair while Peter was wrestling him back.

  It was then that the hand which had been behind Donaldson’s back forced its way out. He was holding a gun.

  “No, Dad, no.”

  Donaldson pointed the gun directly at Oliver Thomas’s head but then the wheelchair toppled further forward and the gun pointed downwards. Peter pulled on his father’s shoulders and tried to move around to the arm holding the gun. “No, Dad, no. For Christ’s sake.”

  It was then that the gun went off with a loud crack.

  Donaldson seemed to relax. His body fell out of the wheelchair like a bundle of rags and settled on the edge of the Chinese carpet with the wheelchair partly on top of him.

  Oliver Thomas stood for a second, transfixed. But then he turned. In doing so, his stick caught in the pile of the carpet and he stumbled. The haversack slipped off his shoulder and the only remaining item inside fell out.

  He picked it up, still wrapped in its oily cloth and, without putting it back in the haversack, carried it, stumbling towards the door. He turned the handle.

  Behind him, Peter was kneeling over his father and, at the same time, kicking the fallen wheelchair out of the way. He went out of the door and walked as fast as he could along the corridor to the stairs where Umberto was standing with a horrified look on his face. Clearly, he had heard something but was too scared to investigate.

  “’Berto, go quick. Correre. Ammalarsi. Padre sick,” Oliver Thomas said, trying to recall a few relevant Italian words. Then he pointed towards the door behind which Donaldson lay in a pool of blood that was already spoiling the Chinese carpet.

  “That’s what happened, Andy.”

  “You didn’t shoot him?”

  “He tried to shoot me but accidentally shot himself.”

  “That’s your story?”

  “Go check the bullet inside his vest.”

  “So, where’s your gun?”

  “In Spain.”

  “Where?”

  “Hidden.”

  Andy Wilson lay back in his chair and stretched his legs out before him beneath the coffee table. Oliver Thomas was still sitting forward in his seat. He adjusted the glasses on his nose and looked at his watch.

  “Got any more questions, Andy? The twenty-four hours are up in five minutes.”

  “Yes,” said Andy. “Do you want a cup of tea and a sandwich?”

  “Thanks. Tuna mayonnaise.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  Andy Wilson got up and strolled out of the room. Oliver Thomas lay back in his seat but then glanced at his black bag. He got up, went over, rummaged through his dirty clothes, pulled out the envelope containing six thousand Euros, put it on the table and was staring at it when Andy Wilson returned.

  “They don’t have tuna so I’ve ordered you smoked salmon,” he said and then pointed at the envelope. “Betty’s money?”

  “Yes. I took a flyer about Betty and I still feel sorry for her.”

  “What do you mean – a flyer?”

  “I just guessed that Peter thought his mother was dead. I didn’t really know. But I think that’s wh
at finally tipped Donaldson. One of his many secrets was out.”

  “OK,” said Andy, “Tell me what happened after you practiced your Italian on Umberto and walked out of the villa because we have reports that you pointed the gun at staff.”

  “Pointed it?” said Oliver Thomas. “No. I may have been waving it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I came out into the bright sun. I could hardly see a damn thing. People were running towards the house shouting. I nearly fell down the main steps. The gun fell out of the cloth. It bounced on the steps. The running people stopped running. I picked it up and waved it at the people and then kept on walking as fast as I could towards the main gate. The people who were running and had now stopped running were now staring.”

  “That’s it? You waved it?”

  “Of course – I couldn’t use the damn thing, anyway!”

  “Are you afraid of shooting people, Ollie?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So why couldn’t you use it if you had to?”

  “The bloody thing is broken, that’s why. I removed the trigger mechanism many years ago. I hate damned guns. I hate the noise they make and they make me nervous.”

  Andy laughed.

  “So why did you take it?”

  “Well, you never know, Andy.”

  “And where is it now?”

  “In Spain.”

  “Yes, you said. But where? We might need to recover it for evidence etcetera.”

  “I left it outside the main gate of the villa.”

  “On the ground?”

  “No, I deliberately dropped my haversack over a large stone. I bent down to pick it up and, at the same time, pushed the gun under the stone. It’s a well-known practice in my business, Andy. It’s on the right-hand side of the roadway, under the fifth stone back from the big round boulder.”

  “And your taxi?”

  “Rafael was still waiting for me. He hadn’t phoned the police but he had a Spanish joke ready instead.”

  “What was the joke, Ollie?”

  Oliver Thomas started to laugh. Tears started before he could begin.

  “Come on, Ollie. Share it!”

  “Sorry, Andy, but it is very funny.”

  “Come on, man, I’m laughing myself and I haven’t heard it yet.”

  “OK, wait until I stop laughing.

  “OK – it’s about a man called Pedro.

  “Pedro was picking olives in the field and suddenly felt the need for a shit so he asks his boss if it’s OK. Boss says yes, no problem and Pedro goes off to the shed.

  “But twenty minutes later and he still hasn’t come back so the boss knocks on the shed door and calls out, ‘Hey Pedro, Que pasa? Why you take so long?’

  “Pedro opens the door and says, ‘Sorry boss.’ But then he goes back inside to the hole in the ground and stirs it with a stick.

  “The boss says, ‘Hey Pedro, Que haces? What are you doing?’

  “And Pedro says, ‘Señor, it’s my coat. He has fallen down the hole.’

  “The boss says, ‘Pedro. Your coat, he will be no good when you find him.’

  “And Pedro says, ‘Si Señor, I know, but he has my lunch in the pocket!’”

  When he had stopped, both of them were laughing with tears running down their cheeks.

  But then someone knocked on the door. “I think that’s our lunch,” said Andy.

  Fred Carrington

  Fred Carrington was in his garden snipping dead heads off his few daffodils when Oliver Thomas’s taxi pulled up outside the house. He tried desperately to avoid him but Fred called across the road.

  “You’re back then Mr Thomas?”

  “Yes,” he said, fumbling to find the door key in his black bag and, at the same time, trying hard not to look at his neighbour. He put the bag down to see if the key had dropped to the bottom but kept his back to Fred in the hope he would go away.

  But Fred came over.

  “Where’s the car?” he asked.

  “I left it at Gatwick,” he said. “It needs a tax disc.”

  “Oh, dear. The police were looking for you,” Fred said. “I happened to see them when I returned from shopping. They rang your doorbell. They then returned to their car and I saw them on their mobile phones.”

  “Oh?” Oliver said, wondering when this was but still searching for his key.

  Fred had all the answers.

  “Yes, it was three days ago,” he said. “I spoke to them and I told them you were abroad.”

  “That’s kind of you, Fred.”

  “I told them you had said you were going away on business.”

  Fred smirked as though he really hadn’t believed what Oliver had told him.

  “That would have been useful for them, Fred.”

  “Yes, they seemed interested. They asked me how old you were because they seemed to know you were well past retirement.”

  “It’s positive age discrimination, Fred. They need to ensure they meet their equality targets.”

  “They asked me if I knew where you were. Of course, I told them you had said you were going to France and Spain. They then got back into their car and I watched them make some more phone calls.”

  “Was it a blue and yellow BMW with blue flashing lights or a proper British car, Fred?”

  “It was a Ford Focus.”

  “It must have been important to send the top brass around, then Fred,” he replied.

  “Yes, but then they got out again and asked me if I knew when you were expected back. I said you hadn’t told me but that you had once said you had spent many years travelling in foreign parts and often mixed with some pretty seedy individuals.”

  “That was very helpful, Fred.”

  “Yes, they then asked me if I knew whether you possessed a fire arms certificate but, naturally, I said I didn’t expect so but that I couldn’t be certain.”

  “Sorry, Fred, I should have told you I was taking the gun with me.”

  “Oh dear, is there a problem?”

  “None at all, Fred, I’ve found it now,” Oliver Thomas said, and he held up his front door key and let himself in.

  THE END