Catalyst (7 page)

“Okay, I'll try to get the info for the meeting at four.”

“Well, don't kill yourself, I don't suppose it's going to lead anywhere but it's a loose end we could do with tying up. In the absence of any actual leads, loose ends start to look quite attractive, don't you think? Anyway, we haven't finished our constitutional yet. Let's keep going and see if we can scrounge a cup of tea from somewhere. Might as well cash in on the euphoria.”

George and Irene Holland pulled into the huge car-park at Cullen Hall at just after 10.00 am that same morning. They were on their two-weekly shopping trip from their home in Meadow Village, just a mile and a half away. They regarded this fortnightly event as a sort of raid, the aim being to get in and out as quickly as possible with a minimum of human contact.

George was sixty-five years old, a retired school teacher. Slightly less than medium height, he was a little overweight due to – he was quick to explain – ‘the natural slowing down of his metabolism'. He was dressed trendily in blue jeans, checked shirt and casual jacket and his open friendly face sported a small neatly-trimmed goatee beard. His head was naturally bald except for a semicircle of hair round the back at about ear-level which he fashionably removed with un-guarded clippers every other week.

He opened the boot of the Fiesta and Irene lifted out the shopping bags. Irene was the same age as her husband, but looked ten years younger. She was petite and pretty with a trim little figure that most women half her age would die for. Her fair hair, though thinning a little now, retained most of its natural colour with only the slightest hint of grey visible in places.

“Morning, lovely day.”

They both looked up in surprise at two smiling women walking past them, and instinctively looked around to make sure they were the target for the greeting.

“Yes, beautiful,” said Irene, smiling back when it was clear that they were. The women passed by and George and Irene looked at each other with eyebrows raised in astonishment.

“Well, that's a first,” said George. “They must be tourists.”

“Perhaps they are,” said Irene, pointing to a line of coaches parked in front of the entrance to the shops. “The place looks like it's back in business.”

They went into the mall with its impressive marble floors and columns, fountains and sculptures. The place was bustling with people, in contrast to previous visits. They made their way towards the Food Hall at one end of the complex, past large groups of shoppers moving around together visiting the High Street retail stores; clearly day trippers from the coaches outside. The collective mood was relaxed and happy.

As they waited with a full trolley at the Tesco check-out, they chatted amiably to a couple about their own age who were behind them in the queue.

“I'm sure I've seen you here before,” said the woman. “Do you live on the estate?”

“No we're from Meadow Village, just down the road,” Irene replied, “but we come here to shop.”

“Oh, Meadow Village. It's a lovely place isn't it? We've been to the Dog and Duck a couple of times for a meal, haven't we, Seth?”

“Yes, really nice food,” said Seth.

“We're very lucky having an excellent restaurant like that in such a small place,” said George. “We tend to take it for granted.”

“There are some very good eating places in Cullen Field,” Seth said, “but people tend to stay in at night. We hadn't had a night out on the estate for months until last week, had we Cathy? You had to be very careful before.”

“Before?” asked Irene. “You mean before the shootings?”

“Yes. Things seem quite different now,” said Cathy. “Well, they have been so far.” She held up her hands with fingers crossed. “Don't want to tempt providence.”

“You mean it's all changed in just a week?” asked George. “It was only three kids, wasn't it? How can their not being around make that much difference?” He was thinking back to the last time the gang had descended on the village. There had been fifty or sixty of them then.

“Well, the Bradys weren't kids for a start,” said Seth, “and they were behind just about everything, apparently. I don't think anyone realised that, especially the police. Then all the aggro just seemed to stop when they got killed. Everybody's talking to everybody else, the atmosphere's completely changed. It's as if this guy is out there watching over us. It must sound weird to an outsider, but that's the way it feels.”

“As I said –
so far
,” added Cathy. “I suppose it might be just until the gangs get organised again. Even so, hopefully it won't go back to being as bad as it was.”

“We've had problems with them in the village,” said Irene, “but not that often. Enough to keep you on your guard all the time, though; like you can't relax completely, you're always listening out just in case.”

They'd reached the check-out and the conversation stopped as they loaded the bags and put them back in the trolley. Having paid and stepped out of the way, they waited for Cathy and Seth and walked back with them to the exit to the car park.

“So what are you planning to do now?” asked Cathy.

“Well, normally we just head back home,” said George, “but I think we might drop in to Waterstones and have a browse. I guess we could have a coffee there as well.” He turned to Irene who nodded.

“Just as long as we get back with the frozen stuff in time,” she said.

They pushed through the doors and into the car park to unload the trolley.

“Actually, if you fancy a coffee and a look at some books,” said Seth, “at the far end of the precinct – the end opposite the Food Hall – there are a some tea rooms and cafes set out round a little village green along with a couple of craft shops and a little bookseller.”

“Right, thank you,” said George, “we'll definitely give that a try. I'm George, by the way, this is Irene.”

“Seth and Cathy.”

“Lovely to meet you,” said Irene. “I really hope we'll see you again.”

They shook hands and said their goodbyes.

“This is nothing short of a revelation,” said George. “Come on, let's do the village green thing and then get back. We‘ll have to come again soon to have a better look round when we've not got defrosting burgers to worry about. And I think we should mention it at the meeting tonight after the talk.”

Jo Cottrell flicked through the pages of her notebook until she found the right place.

“Right,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “After I left you, I called on the houses at either side of Number 12 – that's 11 and 14, they're numbered going round the close, but there's no Number 13. Tenants of both of these houses had been spoken to before, but not specifically about Number 12. There was no-one in at Number 11, but the lady on the other side, a Mrs Maxine Johnston, said the house had been empty since she and her husband had moved in – that was five months ago. She said that she understood that the elderly lady who lived there had become ill and left to live with a friend. But the house went up for sale only on Saturday – two days ago. The vendor is Marlburgh Borough Council. They have a policy whereby when a rented property becomes available they put it up for sale for a period of six months before re-letting it if there are no takers. Incidentally, so far they haven't sold any houses on Cullen Field. It'll be interesting to see if that pattern changes now.”

David was pacing round his office, an activity which always made it look much smaller than it was. The twelve-foot square room was very sparingly appointed. Apart from David's desk and large swivel chair, the only items of furniture were an old unused filing cabinet in one corner and two dining type chairs pulled up to the desk opposite his own, one of which Jo was currently occupying. On the back wall were a number of framed photographs – mostly team pictures from his rugby days – with half-a-dozen more standing in frames on his desk arranged around his PC.

“And the lady who left?” asked David. “Mrs… ?”

“Deverall, Alma Deverall. I've spoken to the council; they didn't know she'd moved out of the house. Last Tuesday they received a letter, posted the previous day, informing them that she wished to terminate the tenancy with immediate effect, and requesting details of any final settlement in lieu of the contractual notice period. The sender's address at the top of the letter was 12 St George's Close and it was signed by Mrs Deverall. Anyway, they sent her the information on Wednesday.”

“What about the rent payments to the council during the months she was away?” asked David.

“Apparently she had an agreement to pay it in cash at the council offices. They stopped accepting cash payments around five years ago but made concessions for several elderly tenants if they were already paying by cash, and Mrs Deverall was one of them. So these cash amounts were paid in by someone claiming to be a carer who turned up each month, just as she had, to pay the rent.”

“Did the carer give her name?”

“
His
name,” Jo corrected, “and no, he didn't.”

“Can we get his name?”

“I assume we can. I'm waiting to hear from Social Services.”

“Next of kin?”

“Initially there was a son designated as a prime contact, but his name was removed two-and-a-half years ago. No-one kept a record as to why, but one of the people in the rent office thinks that he was in the armed forces and had been killed in action.”

“How do they know when the name was deleted?” asked David.

“When they change any field on the record, they have to insert the date of the amendment before they can save it. The prime contact field now just states ‘None' and the date of that change was two-and-a-half years ago. By the way, the name wasn't deleted as such; it's automatically stored in a history file. His name was John Alexander Deverall. Could this be something, do you think, sir? Should we keep digging?”

“It's a bit of a stretch even for the most committed conspiracy theorist, isn't it?” he replied. “But there's just something… ” he added, screwing up his brow in thought and leaning against the wall.

“What?” asked Jo, frowning herself as if in sympathy with her boss.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “It's just that the timing is a bit of a coincidence. The house is empty for at least five months – all the time Mrs Johnston's been next door – and no action is taken. Then, a few days after the killings, the council receive a letter that the tenant will not be returning. And if we hadn't gone for our walkabout today, we wouldn't have picked up that it was for sale. It's as if someone timed it so we wouldn't see it during the door-to-doors… God, what did I say about conspiracy theorists?”

“You're not thinking, are you,” said Jo, “that this lady might be a master of disguise and a brilliant shot with a pistol?” David gave a chuckle. “Much more likely the timing's just a coincidence, sir. Or perhaps she thinks that now there's a real chance of a sale, what with the change of atmosphere on the estate and all.”

“It would be a bit soon for anyone to be drawing conclusions like that, and it's not the case, anyway. It's not the resident who's selling the property, it's the council. In fact, the reverse applies; it's more likely now that the tenant would return with everything looking so much rosier, rather than choosing not to come back.”

“That's only if her leaving was in any way linked to the problems on the estate,” said Jo. “If what Mrs Johnston heard is right, she left because she was ill, and if she moved in with friends or family, they might have simply offered her the chance to stay indefinitely. As I said, the timing is most likely just a coincidence.”

“Even so, I think we need to find out a bit more about Mrs Deverall before we can rule her out of the equation. And it's not so much about the timing issue. Think about it; if you were acting on behalf of this woman, would you want to be trekking in to the council office every month, probably to stand in a queue, to pay over some money that you've got, quite likely, by standing in another queue at a cash point? Surely not when you can phone the council and set up a direct debit for everyone's convenience.
Unless
you didn't want to leave a trail. And why would a carer be paying it for her, anyway, and not the people she's staying with?”