Dying to Know

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This first world edition publishoped 2010

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2010 by Keith McCarthy.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

McCarthy, Keith, 1960–

Dying to Know.

1. Physicians – Fiction. 2. Antique dealers – Crimes against – Fiction. 3. Police – England – London – Fiction.

4. London (England) – Social conditions – 20th century – Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0043-2   (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6897-8   (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-244-4   (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

W
intertime on the allotments – on any allotments, it must be said – is not a joyous time. It is not the kind of place to go if you're looking for companionship, or happiness, or even much in the way of life. Few things grow in winter, after all, and of those that do, few are colourful. There is much brown, a load of grey and abundant cold. Those hardy souls who venture there at such times are necessarily the keenest of gardeners – there is only so much gardening to be done at this time of year – and they are men and women of a particular stripe; they are dedicated allotmenteers, whose lives revolve around the place, who attend the committee meetings, who enter every category in the biannual flower and produce show, who know each other but rarely converse. They spend as many hours on their strip of land as they can, sitting and sipping tea from a flask, watching the seasons turn, the aircraft make their stratospheric trails overhead as they fly into Gatwick Airport, the birds as they search for scant food.

My father, Launceston Elliot, Senior, is one such. Retired GP, man of mysterious ways, urban sage and more irritating than itching powder around the scrotum, he spends more time than I think is good for him sitting outside his shed. He drinks tea laced with whisky and he has the ability that is so rare nowadays to be able to sit and do nothing; doing nothing is more than an art, it is a skill, and it is a skill that few can now be bothered to acquire.

For this I admire him.

And he is dangerous, too. Dangerous to himself and to those who love him, as he demonstrated one evening in later October, 1975.

It was my afternoon off from the surgery and I did not wish to be there, but he had asked me to come and there had been something in his voice – a familiar something – that rang a bell in my head; unfortunately, it was the bell that they usually sound when someone has passed over. The weather was cold and it was growing dark and there might have been rain in the air, it might have been damp fog; it made no difference, it was still uncomfortable.

Dad didn't notice, though, because he had found something, and he wanted to show it to me.

‘It's quite incredible!' he said.

I was starting to shiver. I had a thick anorak on, but such a thing can only hold the heat so long. ‘What is?'

‘That I should find this. I've had this plot for eight years; I thought I'd dug every inch of it, but you can still be surprised.'

‘Surprised by what?'

An old woman with an upright gait and protuberant bosom passed by in front of us and exchanged nods with my father before he continued. ‘I was digging the bean trench. It's a lot earlier than most people do it, I know, but I like to open it as soon as I've got the space and then keep throwing compost into it for as long as possible.' I made little effort to stifle the yawn; I was yawning with cold, not tiredness. ‘Anyway, I've never sited the trench in that particular place, so I suppose that's why I'd never found it before. Got to dig the trench deep, you see; at least four feet and preferably six . . .'

I could no longer pretend that it was a damp fog closing in; I was definitely being rained upon. I asked somewhat irritably, ‘What is the point of this piffle?'

He glanced at me and in that glance there was a lifetime's love, affection and exasperation. He didn't say anything, though. Instead, he reached under his chair – a tubular frame, folding sun chair that was probably thinking that it had died and gone to hell – and pulled out a tin that had once held Crawford's Teatime Assorted Biscuits that he then handed to me.

It no longer held biscuits, though.

Now, it held a grenade.

‘Bloody hell!' I nearly dropped the tin.

‘Good, isn't it?' He was smiling fondly, as if it were a puppy he'd just been given.

‘Is it real?'

He was genuinely appalled at my ignorance. ‘Of course it is. A World War Two Mills bomb. I've thrown a fair few of those, I can tell you. There's many a Jerry who was sorry he ever encountered me when I had one of those in my hand.' He spoke nostalgically of his memories, much as he might had he been recalling a family picnic.

‘And could it go off?'

He frowned. ‘I'm fairly sure it's primed; I think that the detonator's been inserted.'

He didn't seem to think that this was anything more than a detail. ‘Dad . . .' I began nervously, but he was off being my father again. ‘The secret's in the timing, of course.'

‘Is it?'

‘Oh, yes. It's not the pin coming out that matters; that only releases the lever. You've got either four or seven seconds then before it explodes, so you don't want to throw it too early. There were cases when the sods kicked it back and blew one of us up.'

How unsporting, I thought. ‘Didn't you know how long you had?'

He looked uncertain for just a moment, then just breezed on. ‘Of course we did.'

‘And this one?'

He shrugged. ‘God only knows.'

Well, I thought, it's never going to matter. I asked, ‘How on earth did it get here?'

‘Ah, yes, I've been wondering about that. I think it must have been Fred Giles. He was an old soldier – a corporal in the Marines, I think – and he had a great collection of memorabilia from his time in the military. He had this plot before I did.' He paused, then added sadly, ‘Passed away not too long ago.'

I looked at it again; rather nervously, it must be admitted. It was fairly heavily caked in clay. ‘Is it safe as long as we don't do anything stupid?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said confidently, and almost immediately undermined the effect that this had on me by saying, ‘Well, I should think it is . . .'

I put the lid back on and handed the tin back to him, very slowly and very carefully. He looked a little hurt, as if I had rejected a Christmas present. I said, ‘Get rid of it. Call the police and get it disposed of properly.'

‘Why? It's a souvenir, that is.'

‘It's also illegal to be in possession of souvenirs like this.'

He looked vague, a sure sign that I had said something he didn't like. ‘Is it? Well, I'll tell someone . . . when I get round to it . . .'

‘Dad.'

He hastened to reassure me with an insincere smile. ‘Don't worry, Lance. I'm not going to do anything stupid.'

The rain began to lash down.

ONE

I
t was the morning of November 5th that I first heard the name Ricky Baines. My informant was Jessie Trout, who was tormented by haemorrhoids. I do not exaggerate when I use the word ‘tormented'. These were not vague swellings, these were not a cause of slight discomfort; in short, these were not a joke, neither to Jessie, who had to sit on them, nor to me, who had to look at them with depressing regularity. They had attitude, these piles; they dared Jessie to rest her legs and squash them and they dared me to do anything to interfere with them.

For perhaps the tenth time that year and the hundredth time since I had come to practise medicine in Thornton Heath, Surrey, I straightened up and pulled a disposable glove off my hand. ‘Right you are, Mrs Trout.'

‘Well?' she asked as she pulled up her lacy underwear and was helped back into a sitting position by Jane, our nurse. Jane was quiet and empathetic and the perfect person to work with; she never seemed to get phased, neither by the antics of the patients, nor those of the medical staff.

‘I think they're getting worse, Mrs Trout.'

‘They certainly feel as if they are.'

I had washed my hands and was sitting back behind my desk. Mrs Trout was a very short forty-nine-year-old woman with a painfully tight perm and nervous air that led to a very slight but quite noticeable tic affecting her left eye. She wasn't unduly heavy but her lack of height made her look otherwise. Having helped Mrs Trout into a more socially acceptable position, Jane raised her eyebrows at me –
Do you need me anymore?
– and left at the slight shake of my head and my smile of gratitude.

‘You really should think about an operation.'

‘Oh, no!' Mrs Trout was genuinely terrified by the prospect.

‘Surgical techniques have advanced . . .'

‘I won't hear of it. My poor old mum went through agonies after she had hers done. I can still remember the screams coming from the toilet.'