The Garden Party (4 page)

‘Only I don't want to finger no one.' Montgomery seemed to the officers to be very wary. ‘There could be comebacks for me.'

‘There'll be no comebacks,' Ainsclough spoke reassuringly, ‘no comebacks at all.'

‘OK. Well, he's living in Pilgrims Hatch.'

‘Where on earth is that?' Yewdall returned her attention to Alexander Montgomery.

‘Just ten minutes' drive to the north of here.'

‘Suits us.' Ainsclough opened his notebook. ‘What is the address?'

‘Two brothers they were . . . still are . . . one went to Spain and the other, he wouldn't be dragged from England, wouldn't even be dragged from Greater London. “I don't need to travel because I have already arrived”, that's his take on life.' Montgomery sat forward. ‘Reckon I would feel the same; just know where my roots are.'

‘So do you have his address in Pilgrims Hatch?' Ainsclough began to grow impatient.

‘Not his address, just his phone number. I never phoned him, never needed to, but when we kept getting business for him I'd give the folk his number, though not for some years now. These days I just tell folk looking for the builders that they have ceased trading.' Alexander Montgomery turned to his right and opened an ancient card filing box which Ainsclough thought dated from the 1930s, recalling a similar one in the home of a very elderly relative when he was a child in northern England. Montgomery extracted a card from a drawer. ‘Got a pen, governor?' he asked.

‘We did all right me and young Tony, mustn't grumble. There's only a year between us but he was always “young” Tony. But mustn't grumble; never did anyone any good grumbling didn't, not ever . . . ever . . . ever.' Roy Cole had revealed himself to be a tall, sinewy man with a silver beard that reached down to his chest and which he stroked thoughtfully and lovingly when speaking to Ainsclough and Yewdall, with his long, slender fingers. His hair, also silver, had receded totally, leaving just a narrow band which ran from behind one ear, round the back of his head to his other ear, and which he had allowed to grow long so that it hung well over his collar. He could, thought Yewdall, who had rapidly warmed to the man, be taken for an artist or a sage in a university, rather than the retired builder he actually was. Roy Cole received the officers on the veranda of his house which projected from the front of the building. He sat in an inter-war period chair made of wicker and of the type which Yewdall had only ever observed in the bathrooms of elderly homeowners. Yewdall and Ainsclough accepted the invitation to sit on a wooden bench which was surfaced with faded varnish, and which also occupied a place on the veranda, but on the opposite side of the front door to where Roy Cole's chair stood. The veranda looked out on to the front garden of the bungalow, which the officers noted to have become overgrown in what seemed to be an accepting of nature in a generous-minded attitude. It was not uncontrollably overgrown, nor was it manicured to a lifeless perfection with every blade of grass cut to the correct length and all weeds plucked from the flowerbeds. Rather, Roy Cole's garden seemed to Yewdall and Ainsclough to have been allowed to develop into a powerful and confident declaration of the joy of life and of nature's bounty. It was abundant with colour provided by living things which sprang forth and bloomed in reds and blues, yellows and whites in the mid-June sun. Roy Cole's attitude served to remind Yewdall of a man she had once met who had said, ‘What is a weed but a flower that nobody wants?', and indeed here she noticed bees pollinating the dandelions as much as they pollinated the lupins and hollyhocks and roses. ‘Thanks for the phone call,' Roy Cole said, ‘letting me know that you were on your way, and thanks also for telling me it was nothing for me to worry about. Montgomery also phoned, telling me you were calling on me.'

‘Did he?' Ainsclough observed the effect of a zephyr gliding across the garden, causing the flowers in the centre to sway gently for an instant, all under a vast blue sky.

‘Yes . . . yes, he did. Just a courtesy call; probably didn't want the old boy to have a seizure.'

‘We would have been more sensitive.' Yewdall relished the scent and fragrance which rose from the garden. She then explained the reason that she and Ainsclough had called upon him.

‘Yes . . . yes . . .' Roy Cole seemed to the officers to be clearly relieved when he learned the reason for their visit; his head lifted noticeably and he began to look towards the officers rather than down at his feet or to his right and towards the garden. ‘Yes, I do well remember that old job, four or five years ago now, I think. It was an interesting old job . . . a nice old job . . . dismantling took more time than the rebuilding, because it had to be dismantled brick by brick; couldn't put a sledge hammer to it.'

‘So we understand.' Yewdall's eye was caught by a large honey bee flitting from blossom to blossom.

‘Yes.' Cole pursed his lips. ‘Glazed Victorian bricks with coping stones on top. They were caked in soot, mind, but would have made a splendid sight when newly laid, and after a hundred years of East End soot and grime . . . well . . . really quite dull by the time we saw the wall. Leaning dangerously, but it was still glazed brick, there to be rescued.'

‘Can't carve your initials in glazed brick,' Ainsclough prompted.

‘That, and they're longer lasting. Nice family in that house; kept us well supplied.' Roy Cole looked upwards.

‘Well supplied?' Yewdall asked.

‘With food and drink. You can fairly expect a mug of tea from householders, but that old geezer he brought us bacon sandwiches, a bowl of roast potatoes, broth in beakers. It was chilly weather, not like now, so the grub was especially well received and he talked to us like we were his equals, and him a university lecturer. He could have been a real toff with his nose well in the air, but he wasn't. He was just like an ordinary old geezer. We appreciated that and we did our best for him; a real down to earth sort of bloke. A nice job all round that was.'

‘Good to hear,' Ainsclough spoke reassuringly, ‘but we've met him and he told us that he had a working-class background, which might explain why he felt at home with a team of builders.'

‘I didn't know that.' Cole glanced at Ainsclough. ‘But he was still a decent geezer, all the same.'

‘So,' Ainsclough asked, ‘how many men did you have working on the wall?'

‘Varied.' Cole stroked his beard. ‘More on the dismantling, that's certain, just one or two on the rebuilding. The full crew was me, Tony, Gordon, Des and Keith.'

‘Could you be more specific, please?' Ainsclough opened his notebook.

‘Yes.' Cole continued to stroke his beard slowly and rhythmi-cally. ‘Des . . . Desmond Holst . . . Gordon, he was Gordon Owens . . . cocky little Londoner despite his Welsh name. Who else did I say?'

‘Keith,' Ainsclough reminded Cole, ‘Keith someone.'

‘Keith . . . Keith Barnes, London bloke with a London name; all good, steady workers.'

‘Where can we contact them?'

‘In the wind, mate –' Cole made a sweeping gesture with the opened palm of his right hand – ‘in the wind. They're out there somewhere. You see, that's the way it is in the building trade; it's all down to word of mouth. When a builder is setting on he'll put the word out and blokes who are not working will get in touch, and if they are good workers they'll be set on. So when I got the job of rebuilding the wall I put the word out that I wanted three trowels . . . but careful trowels, because it was a delicate job. That same day I got phone calls . . . and I was looking for blokes who were painstaking, not slap dash. If it was a demolition job that would be different, builders do demolish you know, but anyway we got the trowels we wanted within two days.'

‘I see.' Yewdall enjoyed a blackbird's sudden burst of song. ‘So you and your brother and Messrs Holst, Owens and Barnes did the job?'

‘Yes.' Cole nodded. ‘Just the five of us.'

‘We are in fact more interested in the rebuilding,' Yewdall probed, ‘who did that?'

‘Me and Des,' Cole replied matter of factly, ‘me and Des.'

‘Just the two of you? You and Desmond Holst?' Ainsclough clarified.

‘Yes,' Roy Cole replied slowly. ‘I remember we got a big job that we knew was coming up and we wanted it bad . . . building a repair garage. We needed ten trowels for it, so Tony got on with that, leaving me and Des to rebuild the wall, and once or twice Des was by himself if Tony wanted an extra trowel on the garage just to get well on top of that job.'

‘So,' Yewdall asked, ‘tell us where in the wind might we find Desmond Holst?'

‘Well, if he's still with us he'll be in his local, but I did hear that he took badly with pneumonia . . . hospital job . . . isolation ward . . . draining stuff from his lungs. A very bad way they said, so he might have gone before, as my old granddad used to say.'

‘Fair enough,' Yewdall replied, ‘we can but ask. Which is his local or which was his local?'

‘The Neptune, Seven Kings High Road, near Goodmayes Railway Station.'

‘Observations,' Yewdall asked, driving the car at a steady speed in a southerly direction towards London and towards Seven Kings in particular, ‘observations and impressions?'

‘Of Roy Cole?'

‘Yes . . . and of Alexander Montgomery.'

‘Well.' Ainsclough looked straight ahead. ‘Confess I was surprised and disappointed for Roy Cole. A retired builder should have ended up with more than a run down little bungalow to show for a lifetime of self-employment in the building trade.'

‘Yes, I felt the same,' Yewdall replied.

‘And he was relieved when he found we wanted to talk about the building of the wall. Something was bothering him but he doesn't have form written on him.'

‘His brother in Spain, possibly he nicked all the money . . . ran off with the family silver and doesn't want the police involved.' Yewdall kept her eyes focussed on the road.

‘Possibly, but you know there's Spain and there's Spain.' Ainsclough glanced briefly to his left at the vast hole that was the clay quarry. ‘I went to Benidorm once, for my sins, never again I tell you. Anyway, I soon got tired of the glittery seafront development and went walking behind the hotels, and I didn't have to walk very far before I was back in medieval Europe . . . people sharing their houses with farm animals . . . beasts of the field on the ground floor . . . humankind above them.'

‘Point taken.' Yewdall slowed the car so as to negotiate a bend in the road. ‘But I think you're right, there's a hidden agenda there. Roy Cole has been the victim of something he doesn't want the police to know about.' She paused. ‘And Alexander Montgomery? Your views?'

‘Well, he has form stamped all over him.' Ainsclough took a deep breath. ‘I'll do a criminal records check when we get back to the Yard.'

The remainder of the journey to Seven Kings was passed in a comfortable and relaxed silence. It was the sort of silence that can only develop between two people who know each other well, who like each other on whatever level, and who work well together and who know exactly what the other is thinking.

The Neptune pub on Seven Kings High Road, Ilford, was easily located by Ainsclough and Yewdall, being where Roy Cole had described, to wit, close to Goodmayes Railway Station. It was found to occupy a corner site, as did many pubs of the Victorian era, which were built into terraces comprising a parade of shops with family accommodation above the business premises, and such was the location of The Neptune. It stood on the corner of a small street which joined Seven Kings High Road at right angles, with the front of the pub, and the main entrance, on the High Road. To the left of the pub, as viewed from the outside, there was a row of ten small shops until the terrace of buildings was interrupted by a junction where another side road joined the High Road. Ainsclough glanced along the row of shops, and noted a newsagent's, a betting shop, a café, a butcher's, a grocer's and a fishmonger's, with a military surplus shop occupying the other corner site. He ran his eye back along the row of shops to The Neptune, which had, he saw with some pleasure, retained many of the original Victorian features. It had stained-glass windows with a band of royal-blue above the windows with the name ‘The Neptune' in large, gold letters. The wooden sign, at that moment hanging quite still above the doorway, showed a bearded male with the body of a fish from the waist down.

Having parked their car as close to The Neptune as they legally could, Ainsclough and Yewdall walked across the high street and entered the pub. It contained, they noted, few patrons at that time of day and what hushed conversation was being carried on instantly stopped upon the entry of the two police officers. Taking in the interior in a single sweep of his eyes, Tom Ainsclough noticed a pub which, just as on the outside, had retained many of the original features. It had the high ceilings favoured by the Victorians, with the solid wooden beams being covered in ornate plasterwork. It had a long bar of solid and polished wood, a dark blue carpet on which stood circular tables of wrought iron topped with polished wood and wooden chairs surrounding each table. It was, noted Ainsclough, only the electric lighting and a large, flat screen television mounted on the wall opposite the bar which showed that The Neptune was in the twenty-first century. The officers walked up to the bar where the publican stood, barrel-chested, with his hands resting on the bar, clean-shaven, and wearing an expensive-looking shirt and wristwatch. As the officers stood at the bar the low hum of conversation in the pub resumed.

‘They're just a little suspicious of strangers.' The publican grinned warmly, showing gold-capped teeth. ‘Especially if it's the Old Bill.'

‘It shows?' Ainsclough returned the smile.

‘It's stamped on your forehead, mate.'