Chapter 23
The following morning, Larry visited the two juniors who were busy sifting through the papers in a room at the back of Challis Street Police Station. Their mood was not much better than the day before.
Larry brought two coffees from a local café, hopeful that it would lighten the mood. ‘What have you found?’ he asked.
‘Apart from a total mess?’ a young woman in her twenties said. Larry thought she looked too young to be a qualified crime scene investigator, or maybe he was starting to get old. He was in his early forties, and the junior police officers straight out of police college were looking young to him. He did not like the idea of getting old, which explained why he and his wife were into a vegan diet and macrobiotics and anti-oxidants.
He thought their interest in the subject may be helping, but he and his wife were still getting older. He wondered if Tom Wellings, the seventy-year-old employee of Sean O’Reilly, had the right idea.
Here was a man who had led a good life, stress-free, and still had the ability to down the pints of a night time. Nowadays, Larry started to feel woozy after two pints, but apparently Wellings was good for six, and the next day he would be at work early, none the worse for wear.
Larry picked up some old order books, browned and covered in dust, to see if he could help.
‘We have a system here,’ an obviously well-fed man in his thirties said. Larry had seen him at O’Reilly’s, attempting to take control of the retrieval operation. The young lady assisting him had taken little notice of him, and she had been collecting from one side of the roof cavity, he from the other. To Larry, personality counted for a lot, the ability to get on with your fellow worker was vital. It was clear that the man with the expanding waistline, even though he was still young, had very little in the way of personality and little to recommend him.
‘Rose, watch what you’re doing,’ Duncan said, a little too loudly for Larry.
‘You mind your side of the room, I’ll mind mine,’ Rose said. It was clear she had the measure of her colleague.
‘What have you found?’ Larry asked for the second time. Both Duncan and Rose had stopped work for a few minutes. Duncan took the opportunity to pop outside for a cigarette.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Rose said to Larry when it was just the two of them in the room.
‘Fancy himself, does he?’
‘And any loose piece of skirt.’
‘Has he hit on you?’
‘He’s tried. Not a chance.’
‘Apart from your colleague, what have you found?’
‘There is paperwork dating back to the sixties. It had basically just been thrown in there, collecting dust and spiders’ webs, and God knows how many dust mites.’
‘1987 is the year we are after,’ Larry reminded her.
‘Not so easy. We can only sift through in a logical manner. No point diving in here and there.’
‘I suppose not,’ Larry said. He was enjoying his conversation with the young lady.
‘We need a couple of days. Some of the paperwork, especially the work orders, are in very poor condition, eaten through by dust mites, and the rats had made a home in there at some time in the past.’
‘Fine. Let me know when you find anything of interest.’
Duncan returned, bringing the smell of stale cigarettes with him. ‘That’s better,’ he said.
Larry left the pair of them to the task, glad to be out of the room with the stuffy old smell. He took a deep breath on exiting, taking in the fresh air. The weather was getting colder, and he knew that Wendy would soon be feeling the aches and pains in her body, the signs of increasingly debilitating arthritis.
She had taken a couple of days off after her husband’s funeral, but he knew she would be back in the office the next day. Larry liked the woman a lot. Sure, she smoked terrible cigarettes, her diet was certainly not vegan or macrobiotic, but she was energetic and enthusiastic and determined. He had to admire that in a person.
He was still not sure about his relationship with his DCI. He knew that Isaac was competent and loyal to his staff, Wendy’s elevation to sergeant testament to that fact. He also knew that Isaac was ambitious and determined to solve their current case as soon as possible.
***
Isaac was not in a good mood on Larry’s arrival at the office. ‘Mavis Richardson is dead,’ he said.
‘Suspicious?’ Larry’s reply.
‘Gordon Windsor is on his way out to her house.’
‘The woman was eighty-five.’
‘You know what this means?’ Isaac said. ‘All those who could have killed Garry Solomon or knew the reason for his murder are now dead, every last one of them.’
Larry understood what his DCI was saying. Chasing Garry Solomon’s murderer was of less interest than resolving who had pushed Montague Grenfell down the stairs outside his office, and if Mavis Richardson’s death was suspicious, then somebody knew something about the past.
‘It’s all related to the death of Garry Solomon, I’m sure of it.’ Isaac, like many an experienced police officer, especially in a murder investigation, had developed a sixth sense that defied logic. Larry knew he did not have it yet.
‘Even Montague Grenfell’s death is proving difficult,’ Larry said.
‘It shouldn’t be,’ Isaac replied. ‘We know it was a man he scuffled with, the shoe size found at the top of the stairs proves that. And a woman would not have had the strength, or
