The Garden Party (2 page)

‘But two days ago you were unsticking bricks,' Brunnie clarified, ‘rather than sticking them together?'

‘Yes, sir,' Brady replied, ‘that's correct. The job came by word of mouth, as it often does. Strange it is; one job comes to an end, nothing in sight, you're looking at being idle—'

‘Idle?'

‘Oh yes, sir,' Brady explained, ‘it's an old word for “unemployed” . . . it lasted longer in Scotland than it did in the rest of Britain, I just picked it up.'

‘I see,' Brunnie smiled. ‘Carry on . . .'

‘Well, it is the way of it, sir,' Brady continued. ‘You work your way into the building trade, into the building community. Over the years I have got to know chippies and sparkies as well as other trowels.'

‘Trowels?'

‘Bricklayers, sir,' Brady explained, ‘they're called “brickies” or “trowels”, and we put work each other's way. Anyway a chippie . . . a carpenter—'

‘Yes, I know that.' Brunnie grinned. ‘A sparkie's an electrician.'

‘Yes, sir.' Brady found himself relaxing in Brunnie's company. ‘Well, it turns out that the chippie is putting up shelves for this geezer over in Barking, so he is.'

‘All right.'

‘It's a bit out of my way; plenty of local brickies over in Barking; but things were a bit quiet and you never ever turn down work.'

‘So I believe.' Brunnie stroked his beard.

‘Well . . . it's fatal if you do.' Brady cleared his throat. ‘So, anyway, the chippie is working away up in the attic of this geezer's house and there is this almighty rumble from just outside, and the wife of the gentleman, who is having a study built in his attic, is downstairs and she lets out this almighty scream, so Martin—'

‘Martin?' Brunnie queried.

‘Martin Phelps, my mate the chippie.'

‘Ah, yes.' Brunnie nodded.

‘So Martin – good lad is Martin – he runs down the stairs like all the fiends in Hell are chasing after him and he's thinking that an aircraft has crashed or something, so he is, but what he finds is that a coach, a small one . . . you know the ones that can carry twenty passengers and you only need a normal driving licence to drive?'

‘I know the type,' Brunnie said. ‘Carry on, please . . .'

‘Well . . . yes . . . well one of those has crashed into the wall. See, beside the house, to let you understand, sir, is a path which runs from the pavement to the back garden of this geezer's property.'

‘Yes.'

‘And then there is the wall . . . like a boundary.'

‘Yes.'

‘And on the other side of the wall there is a small hotel with a car park in front and the motor coach was about to pick up passengers, and it was trying to turn round.'

‘And the driver crashed into the wall?' Brunnie anticipated Brady.

‘Yes, sir, that's what happened.' Brady hunched over the table as if getting into his stride of telling the tale of the motor coach and the brick wall. ‘And, anyway, the police, you guys, were called because Martin Phelps says the coach driver didn't just strike the wall a glancing blow when he was inching forwards; it was more in the manner of crashing into it at ninety miles an hour. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration.'

‘All right.' Brunnie nodded. ‘I get the picture.'

‘So the police smelled drink on his breath and he is taken away.'

‘He would be.' Brunnie chuckled.

‘Fortunate in a sense, he hadn't picked up any passengers, but he demolished the wall and the motor coach is a tow-in job . . . probably a write-off.'

‘Yes.'

‘So . . .' Brady continued with what Brunnie sensed was a developing relish, ‘the geezer what Martin Phelps is putting up shelves for now has half a wall blocking the pathway at the side of the house, which is not good news, not very clever at all . . . and the owner of the motor coach hire company is full of liability but he is not wanting to claim on his insurance which, if he did, he reckons would skyrocket his old premium, so he is offering to pay for the rebuilding of the wall out of his own piggy bank.'

‘I follow.' Brunnie spoke softly.

‘So Martin, the chippie – he is right on the ball is old Martin – he says to the coach operator that he knows a builder, a good builder . . . bit of a brown envelope merchant but a good man.'

‘Being you?' Brunnie smiled. ‘The brown envelope merchant?'

‘Yes . . . I only work for hard cash . . . just cash in hand.'

Brunnie held up his hand, though he smiled broadly, ‘You'd better not tell me that, just stick to the story, you're doing well.'

‘OK.' Brady looked sheepish. ‘Thank you, sir, I hadn't thought . . . but I do declare it to the Revenue.'

‘Just not all of it,' Brunnie grinned. ‘It's OK, I am not bothered about that, not unless it is a million pound fraud . . . then I might sit up.'

‘Yes, sir.' Brady held eye contact with Brunnie for a fraction of a second. ‘Thanks anyway. So Martin bells me and tells me what has happened, and asks me to motor over there and take a butcher's, so he does. So over I go, it was quiet, like I said . . . give the damage a quick gander . . . give a fair quote to the coach operator and we shake hands . . . all that was about a week ago, a bit more in fact.'

‘OK . . . carry on,' Brunnie replied encouragingly.

‘The wall is not a tall wall. It's about six feet high . . . two metres . . . and twenty feet long, and there is a gap in the middle of about ten feet where the coach crashed into it, so I went to work putting the bricks back together and it was when I was doing that that I found the note.'

‘All right.'

‘But I can't fathom it, neither I can, because you see the wall is Victorian, glazed brick, but the note is on modern writing paper . . . in a plastic bin liner. The note was well in the wall between the two lines of bricks; two vertical lines topped off with heavy coping stones. See, sir, think of a ham sandwich on its side . . . the bread is the two walls . . . the ham is the narrow space between the two walls.'

‘The cavity?'

‘Yes, sir.' Brady nodded. ‘That's the word; just a very narrow cavity between the two walls; that was where I found the note. So I took the note home. I have a niece and she is wed to a police officer . . . so I phoned Nettie, my niece, her name is Annette but we call her “Nettie”, so we do, and I asked her advice and she asked her husband, and he said to take it to New Scotland Yard.'

‘And here you are.' Brunnie raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, sir, and here I am –' Brady shrugged his shoulders – ‘and here I am. Don't know what I have started . . . if anything. But, yes, sir, here I am.'

Harry Vicary leaned forward with a furrowed brow as he read the photocopy of the note which lay on his desktop. He re-read it and then he focussed his attention upon the handwriting. He noted the large and clumsy, childlike scrawl and he also noted the very evident spelling errors. ‘Semi-literate,' he commented softly.

‘Probably and possibly, sir.' Brunnie reclined backwards in the chair in front of Vicary's desk, with arms folded and legs crossed. ‘But only probably and only possibly.'

‘Probably? Possibly?' Vicary looked up at Brunnie with a brief smile. ‘Why do you say that, Frank?'

‘Well, sir, it is simply that disguising your handwriting by writing a note with your subordinate hand – pretending to be semi-literate – is another way of throwing the hounds off the scent; another way of hiding your identity. It is not easy for a genuinely semi-literate person to give the impression that they are literate . . . such a person would have to know that they are semi-literate, and would have to check the spelling of each word using a dictionary. That is not easy for a semi-literate and is also very time-consuming.'

‘Yes . . .' Vicary once again looked at the note. ‘I take your point and so we won't jump to the conclusion that we are dealing with a semi-literate person. “The bodies”, which he has spelled “b-o-d-y-s”, “is here” . . . which I assume means “are here” . . . “one day they will get a right burial” . . . spelling burial as “b-u-r-y-a-l”, by which we can assume the note writer means a proper funeral, do you think?'

‘Yes, sir.' Brunnie unfolded his arms and clasped his hands together in front of him. ‘That would be my reading of it. The writer is notifying the authorities in some time to come of the location of the possible unlawful burial of two or more bodies in the hope that they'll get a proper funeral and their souls will be released. Proper burial confirms, I think, that we are talking about human remains; we are not going to dig up a pair of much-loved dogs or cats or a couple of hamsters.'

Vicary chuckled softly.

‘And,' Brunnie continued, ‘the note seems to have been written by someone with a conscience, and a male of the species because of where it was found.'

‘Inside a brick wall you mean?' Vicary asked.

‘Yes, sir, as if placed there by a bricklayer. Women get everywhere these days, even flying fast jets and being in command of battleships, but I have yet to come across a female brickie. It's hard to see a woman surviving on a building site . . . but working alone and building a brick wall, well . . . it's feasible,' Brunnie suggested, ‘it is feasible.'

‘Yes . . . just,' Vicary growled, ‘but I think you are right, we must assume that we are looking for a male . . . and someone with a conscience . . . and . . . and also someone who assumed that he'd be well out of it by the time his note was found, but he left the note in a plastic bin liner . . . which is?'

‘With forensics, sir,' Brunnie replied promptly, ‘along with the original note.'

‘Good. So, the wall . . .' Vicary brought the conversation back on track. ‘It is described as being of the Victorian era but contains a note written on contemporary notepaper wrapped in a plastic bag. The only conclusion we can draw is that the wall was rebuilt some time in its recent history, in addition to the rebuilding of the present time, and it was rebuilt by someone who knew about what might be two shallow graves or some other form of concealment, and –' Vicary leaned back in his chair – ‘rebuilt by someone who knew there would be some fallout upon the discovery of said concealment and who wanted to ensure that he was not going to get in the way of said fallout. He knew about the bodies and he knew that his head would be for the chopping block if and when they were discovered, but he also wanted to ensure that they were discovered at some point. A villain with a conscience.'

‘Seems so, sir . . . or somebody trying to protect another living person; wanting to ensure that another person is well out of it by the time the remains are found.'

‘Yes . . . dare say we'll find out at some point.' Vicary held up the photocopy. ‘And the map . . . well, hardly a map . . . simple diagram . . . clear as a bell; two lines which join each other, and close to the join is a cross . . . and from the note there is a line leading to the cross.' Vicary paused. ‘There is, though, no indication that this map shows a location within the Greater London area.'

‘I thought that also, sir.' Brunnie once again glanced out of the window of Vicary's office. He saw blue sky and high, wispy white cloud . . . summer over London Town.

‘If it isn't of London, we'll broadcast it nationwide to all the provincial forces, but for now we'll assume it shows a location within London.' Vicary placed the photocopy back on his desktop and re-read the note. ‘There won't be many Monkhams, quite a few Orchards though . . . whether Avenue, Street, Road, Drive or any other name . . . but there will only be one place where a Monkham something will join an Orchard something.'

‘Shall I get on to that, sir?' Brunnie stood. ‘I just need an
A to Z
.'

‘Yes, please, if you would, if you would.' Vicary smiled. ‘Who is in the unit right now?'

‘Just Tom Ainsclough and Penny Yewdall, sir; they're both addressing paperwork at the moment, which –' Brunnie opened his right palm – ‘may well be important . . . if not vital . . . but I don't doubt for a second that they will mind being torn from it.'

Vicary grinned. ‘I don't doubt it either. Ask them to go out to the address in question, will you, and obtain any information they can about the earlier rebuilding of the wall, then pick up a trail if they can, see where it takes them.'

‘Very good, sir.'

‘Then open a file, get a case number from the collator and write up what has been reported so far.'

‘Yes, sir.' Brunnie stood and reached for the handle of the door of Vicary's office.

‘Well, as you see this is the wall –' the man indicated the wall with his left hand – ‘one wall, brick, boundary definition, for the purpose of. It is at least the wall in its present condition. Most of the middle section, as you see, is in the form of loose bricks on the ground.' He was a tall man, slender, round-lensed spectacles, T-shirt, trimmed beard, wispy hair, jeans and sports shoes. He had, thought Tom Ainsclough, a warm and a confident manner about him. Ainsclough also noticed clipped vowel sounds in his speaking voice which emerged occasionally within his apparent Received Pronunciation. He might, Ainsclough thought, be a man who could initially be taken for a native of the Home Counties until he felt the need to bathe, whereupon he would announce his intention to take a bath rather than a ‘barthe'. For this man there would be no ‘R' in bath, or path, or many other words in which the southern English clearly believe there to be one. Neither Yewdall nor Ainsclough were surprised when the man gave his occupation as that of ‘university lecturer'. ‘Lovely glazed brick, as you see . . . gorgeous . . . really gorgeous . . . they could afford such luxury in Victorian times.'

‘Yes.' Ainsclough nodded his agreement and smiled. ‘I too appreciate glazed brick; it glows in the sun on occasions, like Northern Red Brick.'