High Island Blues (8 page)

‘That’s where Sally Adamson lives. The BBC Natural History Unit is based there.’

‘Do you think that’s significant?’ George asked. ‘Do you think she knows more about it than she told you?’

‘No,’ Molly said. ‘I believed her. Really, she was quite relaxed about the enquiry.’ She paused, held out her glass for a refill. ‘ Will we go to Bristol? Look at the office?’

‘I don’t know. There may be no need. We might get all the answers from Brownscombe Associates.’

But later that evening, when he phoned Brownscombe Associates he gained little information. He spoke to Michael Brownscombe’s personal assistant. She was pleasant and apologetic but she refused to pass on any information about clients’ accounts. He would have to speak to Michael or Laurie, the partners, she said. He asked when it might be convenient to speak to Michael or Laurie and she was even more apologetic. They were both on vacation. For ten days. Perhaps he would like to phone back in about two weeks’ time. She would notify them of his call.

‘You must have a number for an emergency,’ he persisted.

‘Sure,’ she said, as polite as ever. ‘But excuse me, sir, this doesn’t sound so urgent that I need to disturb them.’ And she replaced the receiver.

‘We’ll go to Bristol then,’ Molly said. ‘We can track down what’s been going on from this end.’

Reluctantly George agreed.

They left early the next morning. It meant a dreadful commuter train into town, then the InterCity from Paddington to Bristol. The address George had been given was in a busy street lined with shops, close to the British Aerospace factory. The taxi stopped outside a florist’s shop. There were sad blooms in buckets on the pavement – daffodils and narcissi which had hardly opened but which were already turning brown – and in the window a display of wreaths. George and Molly looked out, confused.

‘This is it,’ the taxi driver said impatiently. ‘This is the number you gave me.’

Then George saw that there was office space above the florist’s shop and that a ‘To Let’ sign had been posted in the window. There was a separate door beside the shop which must have led upstairs, but it was locked. They looked through the letter-box but there was no mail on the floor. It must have been collected by the landlord or estate agent.

The florist was called Maggie. She was scrawny and middle-aged, a chain-smoker with nicotine coloured hair. They spoke to her for nearly an hour and in that time no customers came into the shop. She was glad to answer their questions. She enjoyed the company.

‘It was a shame,’ Maggie said. ‘That poor babby up there all day by himself. A boy his age needs people around him.’

‘What age are we talking about?’

‘Seventeen, eighteen. But to look at him you wouldn’t have thought he was more than fifteen. A nice kid. As proud as punch when he started. He said this was his first sniff at a job. I’d take him on here but you can see what it’s like. I’ll be lucky if I’m still here in twelve months’ time.’

‘Do you know anything about his employer?’

‘I showed her round the office before she took it on. The landlord asked me. I keep a key.’

‘What was she like?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘One of those businesswomen. Too much lipstick and a jacket that a man should wear. Pushy, you know. Full of grand plans. She made out it would do until they got something better. I thought to myself: if you’re that grand lady you wouldn’t be looking at a place like this.’

‘Local?’ George asked.

‘You joking? A voice like that? American, weren’t she?’

‘What was the name of the boy who worked here?’ Molly asked.

‘Jason. Jason Tucker.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to know where Jason lives?’

And Maggie gave them the address without question. It seemed she knew Jason’s mum. They went to the bingo together.

When the couple turned up at Jason’s home he was filling out forms. The Social Security didn’t believe that he hadn’t been paid for his last week at work. The man in the office had even implied that he had deliberately made himself unemployed. His mother was a care assistant in an old people’s home and she couldn’t afford to keep him. He didn’t mention a father.

He was a child of the recession: respectable, insecure, desperate to please. It was clear that he had worked hard at school but nothing had come easily to him. He would have liked an office job. Filing, copying lists of numbers, one of the old, paper shuffling jobs which had all but disappeared. He said the Wildlife Partnership job had seemed a dream. Just right for him. And he liked the idea of helping animals.

‘Did you get it through the Job Centre?’ Molly asked.

‘No. It was advertised in the local paper.’

‘And there was an interview?’

‘Not a real interview. Not formal. More of a chat like, with Miss Brown?’

‘Miss Brown?’

‘The American lady. From the Wildlife Partnership.’

‘What did Miss Brown look like, Jason?’

He screwed up his face in concentration. He must have looked like that when he was taking his exams.

‘Blonde hair tied back,’ he said. ‘Smart, you know. Well dressed. Kind of mysterious. She wore those tinted glasses. He paused and blushed. Perhaps the mysterious Miss Brown had figured in his fantasies. ‘Her first name was Jessica. She told me to call her Jessica.’

‘How old was she?’ Molly asked.

That really threw him. ‘I dunno,’ he said.

‘Younger than your mother?’

‘Oh, yeah!’

‘Thirty? Forty?’

‘I suppose about thirty,’ he said, but he still sounded uncertain.

‘And she offered you the job?’

He nodded. ‘She said it wouldn’t be much fun.’ He was defending her. ‘She said I’d be stuck in the office, answering the phone. For the time being at least. I had to take down the details of the people who wanted to make credit card donations. Then there were the brochures to label and send out. Pretty boring it was really. Some days nothing happened at all. But I thought something might come of it. And it was a job, wasn’t it? Better than nothing.’

He stared bleakly across the table at them.

‘Weren’t you ever tempted to stay at home?’

‘No!’ He pretended to be shocked, then added honestly: ‘I never knew when she was going to phone, did I?’

‘It was always Miss Brown who phoned? It was never somebody else from the organization. Michael? Laurie? Do those names mean anything to you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘ It was always Jessica.’

‘Did you meet anyone else?’

‘No. She’d come in at the beginning of the month. Take away all the membership and donation details, give me my pay.’

‘How were you paid?’ Molly interrupted.

‘Cash,’ he said. ‘Always cash.’

‘Is there anything else you can think of, which might help us trace her?’

He shook his head sadly. They sat for a moment in silence.

‘We’ve been authorized,’ Molly said formally, ‘by the person who’s employing us, to pay your last week’s wages and a small sum in compensation. Do you have a bank account?’

He nodded, not quite understanding, slow as ever to catch on.

She wrote a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds and pushed it across the table towards him.

‘We’ll put it down to expenses,’ she said to George in the street. ‘Cecily Jessop can afford it.’

When they had returned from Bristol there had been a message from Cecily Jessop on the telephone answering machine. There had been none of the hesitation which was most people’s response to the tape. Her voice echoed around their living-room as if she were yelling through a megaphone.

‘What the hell are you up to George? Come and see me. Give me a progress report.’

So a month after the first time, he returned to the crumbling grandeur of The Deuchars. The sun was shining. Cecily was showing a group of school children round the garden, explaining the basic methodology of her common bird census. She wore a straw hat with a wide brim, which looked as if it had been nibbled by a goat, and a shapeless T-shirt under which her breasts sagged almost to her midriff. The outfit was completed by a pair of khaki army shorts and sand shoes. The teachers accompanying the party seemed surprised by her appearance and rather shocked by her language. Perhaps they expected something different from a Lady, but George was certain the children were learning nothing new.

‘George!’ Cecily shouted when she saw him walk through the trees towards her. ‘And about time, too!’

They were working in woodland and there was a smell of wild garlic.

‘Let me set these buggers something to occupy them and I’ll be with you. We’ll get Vanessa to make us some tea.’

They drank the tea sitting on the kitchen doorstep. There was the occasional shriek of a child’s voice from the woods.

‘It’s nice to have kids about the place,’ Cecily said. Then, complacently: ‘ I’m good with them you know, George. It’s a gift. Perhaps I should have had a brood of my own. What do you think Vanessa? Do you see me as a mother?’

Vanessa was a small woman, still neatly attractive in a floral print frock and sandals. George could imagine that she had once been a force’s sweetheart. At Cecily’s question she looked up, but she did not answer. She had brought herself a chair from the kitchen so she was sitting a little apart. She was knitting very fast, looking absently about her as the needles flew. George had met her several times but couldn’t remember ever having heard her speak. During the rest of the conversation Cecily ignored her.

‘What have you found out for me, George?’ Cecily demanded. Sitting close beside her he could still smell the garlic which must have been crushed by her sand shoes. Her knees were scratched and bruised like a boy’s. ‘ How far have you got along the trail?’

‘I believe I’ve reached a dead-end. For the moment at least. I’m sorry.’

‘Nonsense George,’ she said briskly. ‘You can’t have been trying.’

He summarized the investigation so far, the trip to Bristol, Molly’s lunch with Sally.

‘I was on that programme once,’ she said.
‘Wildside.’

‘Were you?’

‘Don’t sound so astonished George. I told you children liked me. It was after the Rio summit.’

‘So you met Sally Adamson?’

‘The girl who presents it? Yes. Pleasant enough. No science but what can you expect these days. I know her father of course.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oliver Adamson. He’s a solicitor. Advised me on setting up the trust to run this place. A bit of a stuffed shirt but he seems to know his business. You must know Oliver, George. He’s a birdwatcher. Or he was. Quite keen at one time.’

And George, dredging through his memory, realized that he did remember Oliver Adamson. But the birdwatching world was a small one, so that wasn’t surprising.

‘He dotes on that daughter of his,’ Cecily was saying. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t pulled a few strings to get her that job. You can tell he’d do anything for her.’

‘So you see,’ George said, hoping to pull her attention back to the subject, ‘I don’t think there’s very much more we can do for the moment.’

‘What about the bank account? Those credit card donations must have been paid in somewhere. We could find out from the credit companies, trace what happened to the money after that.’

‘We’d need to convince the police that a fraud had been committed before they’d be allowed access to any accounts. Until I’ve spoken to the American end of the operation I don’t think I can do that. It certainly looks suspicious but its just possible that Jessica Brown was an agent of the Wildlife Partnership acting illegally but in good faith. The organization is doing valuable work. You wouldn’t want to damage their reputation until we know what’s going on.’

‘So the answer lies with those Brownscombes,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid it does.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said graciously. ‘I can wait for two weeks. Now the office in Bristol is shut no other mug is being ripped off. You can telephone the Brownscombes when they come back from holiday. I’m quite determined about this George. I want no defeatism. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

‘Perhaps you’d like me to go over to the States,’ George suggested hopefully. ‘I could check out the Houston office in person. Make absolutely sure.’

‘There’ll be no need for that George. I told you I was prepared to pay reasonable expenses, not subsidize a birding holiday, so you can see the spring migration at High Island.’

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘there was no harm in trying.’

And at that she laughed like a clown, rocking backwards and forwards on the kitchen step, her hands clasped around her scabby knees. Vanessa stopped knitting briefly, looked indulgently at her friend and returned her attention to her clicking needles.

George watched Molly preparing supper. She was skinning chicken pieces with a sharp knife. While he’d been at The Deuchars she’d spent the day working in the garden. He wasn’t sure her hands were entirely clean. He looked away.

The telephone rang. Molly straightened from the chicken. She wiped her hands across her forehead, leaving a streak of grease behind.

‘It’s all right,’ George said. ‘I’ll get it.’

He recognized the voice at once. He’d bumped into Rob Earl at birdwatching sites since the younger man was a teenager and more recently they’d become good friends. They’d both been part of an expedition which had taken a Land Rover overland to India, birdwatching all the way. Despite the difference in their age and background they’d survived it pretty well.

‘Back from your travels? Want a bed for the night?’ They put Rob up often when he landed at Gatwick.

‘No,’ Rob said. ‘ I’m phoning from High Island.’

‘Lucky bugger.’ George was amused by the coincidence. ‘I was just saying today that I wish I were in Texas. What have you had?’

‘I can’t talk about that now.’

‘What’s wrong?’ George asked easily, not thinking that anything was really wrong, that it would be some scrape with a girl, some hassle with money. Rob was always in debt.

‘I’m here leading a party for West Country Wildlife, but I arranged to meet up with a couple of old friends at the same time. We all arrived the day before yesterday. We’re staying at the same place, the Oaklands Hotel. Do you know it?’