minutes earlier than usual, to give me time for a shower in the morning. It was two minutes past midnight. It had been quite a Monday.
CHAPTER THREE
There was a message on my desk next morning to ring a PC in Traffic. I did it straight away, in case it was anything I might need in the meeting.
‘It doesn’t matter, Mr Priest,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t realise you were tied up with a big case. It’ll do some other time.’
‘Go on, you might as well tell me,’ I said.
‘It’s OK. I was just going to ask you to do a poster for us.’
I went to art college before I became a policeman. It’s an unusual route into the force, but it can be surprisingly useful. Any of them could have told me about the Fighting Temeraire, but how many knew that Wham! took their name from a Roy Lichtenstein painting? It doesn’t help solve cases, but I pick up a few useful points at Trivial Pursuit. The drawback is that I get asked to do all the posters for police dances.
‘No problem,’ I told him. ‘Send me the details and I’ll do it when I can.’ Actually, I find it quite relaxing, enjoy doing them.
‘It’s about bullbars,’ he said.
‘Bullbars?’
‘Yeah, you know, on the front of off-road vehicles. The van that hit that little boy in town last week was fitted with one. We’ve just received the pathologist’s report and it says that they made a significant contribution to his injuries. In other words, if it hadn’t been for them, he’d be alive today.’
‘Mmm, it’s sad,’ I said. ‘So what do you want? A little poster that you can stick up all over town?’
‘That’s right, Mr Priest. And maybe we can go round putting them behind their wipers while they’re in the supermarket, that sort of thing.’
‘Right, I’ll see what I can come up with. Have you managed to find some money in the budget for them?’
‘No, sir. We’ve decided to pay for them ourselves.’
‘Out of your own pockets?’
‘That’s right.’
‘OK, well, put me down for a couple of quid. Give me a few days — as you said, we’re a bit busy at the moment.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
The phone was halfway back to its cradle when I heard him calling me.
‘Mr Priest!’
‘Yes?’
‘Sergeant Smedley would like a word with you.’
He came on after a couple of seconds. ‘Hello, Charlie,’ he said.
‘Hi, George. What can I do for you?’
‘Do you still have that old E-type Jaguar?’
‘You mean thirty thousand quids’ worth of desirable motor car; the pinnacle of auto engineering, never approached before or since?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Yes, I still have it. Want to buy it?’
‘No. I’ll stick with my Morris Eight. More my image. Can I put you down for the cavalcade at the Lord Mayor’s parade?’
‘Oh, I should think so. I enjoyed it last year. Will you send me the details?’
‘Will do. Cheers.’
‘No problem.’
I inherited the Jag when my father died. It was a wreck, but I restored it, more or less in his memory. Then I sold it and bought it back again. It’s fun to drive, but I’m not an enthusiast. Annabelle likes it, which is all the reason I need for keeping it.
Upstairs, I had another coffee with Gilbert. ‘Hobnob?’ he asked, pushing the packet towards me.
‘Not for me,’ I replied with a grimace. ‘I’ve just finished a piece of chipboard.’
I brought him up-to-date with the case and Gilbert filled me in with a few titbits that he’d gleaned. Goodrich was a member of the Rotary club, Neighbourhood Watch, the Road Safety Committee and several other worthy organisations; all of which, no doubt, brought him many openings through which to ply his trade. Nothing illegal in that.
‘Let’s have this one sewn up, Charlie,’ Gilbert said. ‘Then we can get the strength back on the streets, where they belong. I’m catching hell from the Chamber of Commerce.’
‘My heart bleeds for you,’ I told him, looking at my watch. ‘I bet some of those shopkeepers can be really nasty. C’mon, let’s see what Fraud Squad have found for us.’
There were twenty-five assorted policemen and women waiting in the conference room, talking noisily, reading newspapers — all, depressingly, tabloids — and sitting on the desks.
‘Quiet!’ I shouted, trying to hush them. Slowly, they turned their attentions our way. ‘We don’t expect you to leap to your feet when we come in,’ I railed, ‘but it would be nice if you could tear yourselves away from the football pages.’
‘It’s the financial news,’ the worst offender answered, turning a picture of a blonde bimbo towards me.
‘OK. Settle down. Before we begin Mr Wood has an urgent message.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Very urgent. Next week I am on holiday, so it would be nice if we could wind this up before then.’
‘Skiing in Aspen, Mr Wood?’ Sparky wondered aloud.
‘No, David, we’re going to our cottage in Cornwall. The phone number is ex-directory and sorry, but you can’t have it. The next piece of good news I have for you concerns overtime.’
‘All unpaid,’ somebody called out.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Gilbert told him. ‘We might manage to squeeze something from the budget, but no promises. Now let’s get on with this enquiry. DS Newley is at the PM, so hopefully he’ll have some news for us soon. Meanwhile, we’ll treat it as murder, committed some time on Sunday evening. Over to you, Mr Priest.’
‘I’ll assume you all know the background,’ I told them, ‘so let’s fill in the details. Jeff, what can you tell us?’
DS Caton placed his notebook on the desk in front of him. ‘Not a great deal, I’m afraid,’ was the answer. ‘First of all, Goodrich doesn’t appear to have any next of kin. He never married and his parents are dead. An older sister died a couple of years ago, and so far we’ve not found a will. Various solicitors he did business with are being contacted with a view to finding this. We have managed to track down his secretary. In Scotland.’
‘Day out for you there, Jeff,’ someone said.
‘Don’t think I’ll bother,’ he responded. ‘She’s a middle-aged widow and only worked for him for two years, before he went bankrupt. Now she’s returned home to look after her elderly parents. We’ve asked the local CID to have a word with her.’
Funny how these youngsters thought ‘ middle-aged widow’ was a pejorative. I knew one that any of them would have climbed a hot lava flow for, except that they’d have been in my footsteps.
‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Not really. Young Luke has found something, on Goodrich’s computer, but I’ll let Maud tell you that.’
‘Thanks, Jeff. The stage is yours, Maud.’
She stood up. ‘Can I come to the front?’ she wondered.
‘Course you can.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘Here, use my chair.’
‘It’s OK, Mr Priest. I prefer to stand.’ She shuffled the sheaf of papers she was holding and addressed the room. There were four women in it, and the only other non-white was Shaheed, an Asian PC. ‘First of all, I’ll tell you
