Gift Wrapped (21 page)

Kate looked to her left, as if in thought. ‘I can take a few days off,' she suggested. ‘I can do that very easily. It will be the easiest thing to do, I think. If I am not here then I can't let the cat out of the bag. Yes, that's the answer, I'll do that.'

‘And that,' Webster smiled, ‘would be greatly appreciated by the Vale of York police.'

‘Have you ... or are you detecting a little turbulence?' Hennessey leaned back in his chair and pyramided his fingers. ‘Or perhaps it is a little muddying of the waters you have discovered?'

‘Either might be the case, sir.' Webster sat in one of the chairs in front of Hennessey's desk. ‘Someone who was once nothing more than a public-spirited citizen who did as all citizens are asked and reported something suspicious. Well, she has now accumulated a cloud of suspicion above her head. Mrs Bartlem clearly told us that her husband had told her that the numbers on the back of the postcards were map reference numbers.'

‘Which they were.'

‘Yes, sir, and they led us straight to the discovery of the body of James Wenlock, but it also transpired that her husband had been reported as a missing person some five years ago, as I have just said. So unless she has remarried, or is in a common-law union then, well, as you say sir, muddy waters ... something for us to look at.'

‘And in France,' Hennessey growled. ‘I hate the damn French, wretched people that they are. Do we know anything about Mr Bartlem's disappearance?'

‘No, sir, I checked. We don't have a missing persons file on him because his disappearance was apparently reported to the French authorities.'

‘I see ... but his name was Bartlem?' Hennessey asked.

‘We can only assume so, sir,' Webster replied. ‘Unless, as I said, she has remarried.'

Hennessey reached for the phone book on his desk. ‘Thank goodness he wasn't a Smith or a Brown.' He grinned as he opened the telephone directory and turned to the surnames beginning with BAR. ‘I count six listings for subscribers with that surname so that is with a possible further six ex-directory.'

‘Six, sir?' Webster asked curiously.

‘Yes.' Hennessey picked up his telephone. ‘I once asked a lady who worked for British Telecom how much larger the telephone directory would be if all numbers were listed and the answer was twice as large, and she said that without having to think about her answer. So for every number listed there is approximately one ex-directory number. Myself being one such.'

‘As we are, sir.' Webster smiled.

‘I should think so. It does not do for anyone who works with the public to have their telephone number in the directory. That's really asking for trouble.' Hennessey dialled a number. When his call was answered he said, ‘Ah, hello, Vale of York police here, nothing to be alarmed about. We are anxiously trying to locate the family of a gentleman of your surname who was reported missing about five years ago when on holiday in France. Ah ... not your family, madam? Thank you.' He replaced the phone and then picked it up again and dialled another number, and when his call was answered he repeated the question. It was when he had asked the question of the fourth person he called that, upon the answer, he raised his thumb to Reginald Webster. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘we are interested, very interested. Will you be in for the rest of the day, sir? Good, one of my officers, Detective Constable Webster, will be with you shortly. Thank you.' He replaced the phone gently. He looked at Webster and smiled. ‘Fancy a walk, Reg?'

‘A walk, sir?' Webster smiled. ‘How far? To where?'

‘Yes, a walk, just a most gentle stroll. I'd walk if I was to be the one visiting. But I do confess I can think of a few who'd use a car. The address is in East Mount Road.'

‘Sorry?' Webster frowned. ‘I don't know that road, sir.'

‘Out of the main entrance, left on to Blossom Street, third left, little cul-de-sac of terraced housing,' Hennessey advised him. ‘You can probably see the roof from the CID officers' room.'

‘No one would drive that distance, sir,' Reginald Webster stated with indignation, ‘no one.'

‘I know those who would, I assure you,' Hennessey replied in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Not police officers perhaps, but I still know people who'd drive that short distance. You are calling on one Paul Bartlem.'

‘Well, I'll walk.'

Webster stood and walked out of Hennessey's office, and then tapped gently but authoritatively on the door of the address in East Mount Road ten minutes after signing out of Micklegate Bar Police Station.

Paul Bartlem revealed himself to be a short, thin man who stood about five feet five inches tall, Webster guessed. His house, as George Hennessey had said, was in a terrace of nineteenth-century back-to-backs so that one stepped from the pavement across his threshold and into his living room, with the small kitchen being at the back of the house, and bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Mr Bartlem was dressed casually in an old pair of jeans, sports shoes and a blue T-shirt. ‘You're the police?' he asked.

‘Yes, sir.' Webster showed Bartlem his ID.

‘Please come in.' Paul Bartlem stepped aside and Webster entered the living room. He found it to be neatly kept, smelling of wood polish and air freshener, with ‘low brow' books on a shelf in an alcove and a small television set in the opposite corner. Webster sat, upon invitation, in a leather-bound armchair.

‘It was a shock. It always has been a great worry but what else can we do but sit and wait?' Bartlem said after the introductions and formalities had been concluded. He had the manner of a man, thought Webster, who was appealing for charity. ‘You see, sir, there were four of us, two boys and two girls, and now it's just the three of us. We always meet on our Edward's birthday and we go to a restaurant for a meal and a drink ... this is at lunchtime, you understand, not in the evening ... and before we eat we go into a church and light a candle for him. We see each other at various times during the rest of the year, of course, but we always have that special day for Edward. We still hope that he is alive somewhere but it's a thin hope. And as the years go by the hope gets thinner. We know that, but you do read about people who wake up after being in a coma for years or who suddenly remember their name after a decade of amnesia ... so there's hope.'

‘Yes,' Webster nodded, ‘it's true that sort of thing does happen. While there's life, there's hope.' He paused. ‘We understand that your brother, Edward Bartlem, disappeared whilst on holiday in France?'

‘So his wife said.' Paul Bartlem's jaw then suddenly set hard. ‘Frankly, we just don't know what happened. He went on holiday with his wife and her sister, just the three of them in a green and white VW camper van, and only the two sisters returned. You can't help but feel a little suspicious. All sorts of possible explanations start running round your mind as if they're playing leapfrog with each other. One bounces over another, but at the end of the day you're still left wondering ... and waiting.'

‘You think that something sinister happened to your brother Edward?' Webster asked. ‘That seems to be what you are implying, sir.'

‘Yes ... oh, yes.' Paul Bartlem nodded with undisguised certainty. ‘Nothing at all adds up about the whole story. You see we were, and still are, a close family, and our Eddie would have sent us postcards if nothing else. It was planned as a three-week holiday so we could expect three postcards from him, probably more come to think of it, because they were travelling about in their old camper van, but not one postcard arrived, not one. So whatever it was that happened to our Edward happened in the first few days of their holiday.' Bartlem settled back into his armchair and glanced at a particularly large fly which was buzzing noisily against a windowpane. ‘My wife ... both of us, me and my wife, never did take to the family he married into, the Cleg sisters ...'

‘Cleg?'

‘Yes,' Bartlem nodded. ‘But with only one “g”, like the horsefly. I'd rather be stung by a bee or a wasp than be bitten by a cleg; they sink their teeth into you because they're after your blood, and that's with teeth designed to bite into horseflesh.'

‘I know,' Webster winced. He had once had that experience. ‘Believe me, I know.'

‘So a trip to Europe, it was long planned, and then at the last moment she announces that her sister is going to be accompanying them. The day before they were due to depart she, the other Cleg sister, turns up with all her bags packed saying she's having a bad time with her husband and that she desperately needs to get away for a week or two. If you have a bad patch you work it out if you ask me, you don't run away. My wife passed away recently – she was only forty-seven. That's no age at all.'

‘I am sorry,' Webster spoke softly, ‘that is unfairly young.'

‘Yes ... a heart attack. There is no justice in life, no justice at all. Old men have heart attacks, not women who are halfway through their life expectancy. Can you believe it? She was still south of fifty and she had a coronary?' Bartlem cast another glare towards the fly on the windowpane. ‘But at least we did have twenty-seven years of good and happy marriage.'

‘That is something,' Webster offered. ‘That is some condolence.'

‘Yes, and I like to I think of it like that.' Bartlem stared straight ahead. ‘Are you married?'

‘Yes,' Webster replied, ‘yes, I am.'

‘Happily?'

‘Very happily.' Webster nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, we are very content. I look forward to going home at the end of each shift.'

‘I thought so.' Bartlem smiled. ‘You have that contented look about you. People who are happily married always have such a look about them. I was often told that I had just such a look. That look of deep contentment. But Julia, she was the boss in that marriage and I just could never see what Edward saw in her. Neither did my wife and neither did my sisters ... none of us could see the attraction he saw. And he never had that contented look about him, never. Not ever.'

‘Your brother was a teacher, I believe?' Webster asked.

‘Edward, a teacher!' Paul Bartlem scoffed. ‘Good Lord, no ... no, no, no. Edward, a teacher! Edward, let me tell you, was a taxi driver.'

‘A taxi driver!' Webster gasped.

‘Yes ... well, I dare say that I am doing his good memory a great injustice there, a huge injustice. He was a taxi operator. He owned a small fleet of taxis. Five plates. York, the city fathers of, will allow only so many taxis on its streets.'

‘As does any other city or town,' Webster commented. ‘They all cap the numbers of taxi plates issued.'

‘Yes, as you say, only a limited number of taxis per city, so the plates which permit the car to be used as a taxi are worth quite a bit of money,' Bartlem explained, ‘as you can imagine.'

‘So I believe. Five plates,' Webster commented. ‘He was well-set.'

‘His was a minnow by comparison,' Bartlem replied. ‘Large companies in big cities ... well, those big boys can have more than fifty plates, but they can keep their cars running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with shifts of drivers, and they also have their own repair service facilities.'

‘Again, so I believe,' Webster replied.

‘So anyway, Edward and his wife went to France on a touring holiday and his sister-in-law went with them at the last minute.' Paul Bartlem clenched his fist. ‘Nothing makes any sense. Eddie didn't like foreigners ... and he especially didn't like the French.'

‘He would get on well with my boss.' Webster grinned. ‘He is Francophobic as well.'

‘Really?' Paul Bartlem chuckled briefly. ‘You see, we had an elderly relative, Great Uncle George. He escaped at Dunkirk, and he told us that the French artillery shelled the boats taking the British soldiers to England until they, the French artillery, that is, were quelled by a Royal Navy cruiser's six-inch guns. The French were trying to curry favour with the Germans, you see ... changing sides in the middle of the battle when it became clear that the Germans were winning.'

‘I never heard that story,' Webster replied.

‘Well, it was the case in our family that Great Uncle George's hatred for the French was infectious. He always said to give him a German any day – at least they'll shoot you in the chest ... but we four grew up hating the French because of Uncle George's hatred for them and our Eddie, he drove cars for a living so all he wanted was a summer holiday living in a hotel where he didn't have to do any driving. So then he goes to France on a driving holiday. It made no sense at all, not at the time and it still doesn't ... just does not add up and deliver.'

‘Yes, I can understand the puzzle,' Webster said.

‘Biggest unexplained mystery in our generation of Bartlems,' Paul Bartlem replied. ‘We just can't fathom it. Can't fathom it at all.'

‘Can you please elaborate on what you meant by your family not seeing what your brother saw in his wife?' Webster asked. ‘How did Julia Cleg seem to you as a personality?'

‘Well ... I ... I always found her to be very pushy – she was always wanting more. Our Eddie, for instance, he would have settled for one plate, just the one plate and a car. Run the single taxi as his source of income then at the end of it all he'd sell the plate for retirement money ... but she ... madam the queen, pressured him into expanding. She bullied him into borrowing money, using the plate as collateral in order to buy another plate, then borrow against two plates to be able to buy a third plate. She forced him to incur massive debts ... even remortgaging their house. Eddie didn't want worries like that, and he didn't want the problems of employing people, but he did that anyway and they moved into a house in Sutton on the Forest.'

‘Pleasant village,' Webster commented, ‘from what little I have seen of it.'