North Prospect (5 page)

*

Mrs. Ascot-Brown’s son was nobody’s fool. He was a lead accountant at Barclay’s Bank in the Mayflower Plaza in Plymouth. Educated at Plymouth College, he had won a scholarship to Oxford but, unhappy with his subject, after two years he left the course and enrolled at Oxford Brooks University to read accountancy. On graduation he worked in the City of London at the new Barclay’s Bank Tower where he specialized in Company taxation. His rise was meteoric and, before long, he had taken over the Accounts department. After his father fell ill, Gerald Ascot-Brown took a demotion and transferred to Plymouth in order to be near his mother.

   Gerald had never married: it seemed that the only people he cared about were his father and his mother. And care for her he certainly did, some might say to excess, especially after his father died.  She wanted for nothing.  The last holiday they had all had together had been a cruise to the Caribbean.  On their return, as his father’s condition deteriorated, Gerald, the ever dutiful son, arranged for a nurse to sit with him during the day, thus alleviating his mother of any stress and in the evening he organised a carer to bathe him and prepare him for bed. 

*

A passing cyclist on his way to work at Home Farm became curious when he saw the light in the church graveyard. Who could possibly be working in the churchyard so very early in the morning? After propping his bike at the lych gate Tommy Gilroy entered the graveyard. The lamp still lay on top of a mound of earth but in the dawning light there were no longer any shadows. What confronted the cyclist sent shivers down his spine.

   All the impedimenta abandoned by the undertakers lay strewn around the graves; mounds of earth piled high, spades, green Astroturf bundles unrolled, so that the cyclist had difficulty approaching the gas lamp.

   Stumbling over flowers and flower pots he found a coffin lid which had been thrown aside and now lay propped against a nearby gravestone. Cautiously he approached the grave and there, under the fading stars, he found the coffin empty. 

   Tommy was still shaking when Liz Anderson arrived in quick response to his call. She was a local policewoman who had driven across from Honiton  Police station. Tommy knew her from various charitable events. Soon afterwards another police car arrived, driven by another member of the church, Harry Brown. All three stood around the open grave, peering in. There was no body, that was for sure, and a quick search around the graveyard didn’t produce one either. 

  The first question that crossed Liz Anderson’s mind was, ‘Who would want to steal a body?’   It was evident that the grave had been freshly dug, clearly a recent funeral and the flowers that had been lying on top now lay scattered all around. Over the next hour or so, as dawn broke, marks were revealed in the damp grass and along the pathway where the body had been dragged, leading to the lych gate.

   It took the police nearly half an hour to raise the Reverend Richard Newall from his slumbers. He arrived at the church in a very bad mood. Today of all days! He had two weddings arranged and one of the brides, the daughter of a local businessman, had paid for a choir and a whole ten minutes of celebration bells. His heart sank.

   He was soon able to give the police the name of the recently-deceased woman and her nearest relative, Gerald Ascot-Brown. The police were soon heading to his address in Elderberry Lane. What they discovered there would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

   Ten minutes later Liz Anderson was stooping outside the house, shaking and vomiting. A half hour later, the duty social worker from the local Social Services team in Honiton arrived at the scene. Entering the house he found Mr Ascot-Brown shouting at the corpse of his mother which now lay on the kitchen table. An electric cord which had been attached to the deceased lady’s big toe and plugged into the light socket had been switched on, causing some scorching to the body, but had subsequently fused. There was a distinct smell of burning flesh.

   Liz called for back-up, 

  The duty doctor arrived shortly afterwards and quickly assessed the situation. He examined the patient and formally asked the social worker to make an application under the 1983 Mental Health Act.  The social worker had no hesitation in agreeing and supplied the doctor with the necessary documents.

   ‘He’s nutty as a fucking fruitcake,’ he said, in typical professional jargon.

Gerald Ascot-Brown was having a long one-way conversation with his deceased mother. His parting words were, ‘I will be back for you Mummy.’

The End

The Affair . . .

For a long time we sat staring at one another, saying nothing. Saski’s confession that she had been having an affair hit me hard. Of course, I knew things hadn’t been good at home. I had been away quite a lot trying to expand the business here in Spain. I was Sales Manager for a well-known tool hire company and they had sent me out here to try to set up a European base. But who, for Christ’s sake, wants to hire tools from an Englishman who can barely get by in Spanish, let alone in the local dialect, ‘Valenciano?’

   So, you may well ask, why tools? That’s easy, it’s all I know. I’d sold and hired tools successfully in England for most of my working life and had been sure that there would be a market in the wealthy, north-eastern corner of Spain. There were garages and engineering works everywhere and I was selling high quality, state-of-the-art tools.  But I was struggling to make money.

   Saski had started to cry. I hate it when she does that.  I love her so much.

   I watched her sip her coffee. She then dabbed her eyes dry with a soggy tissue.

   ‘Want to tell me who he is?’

   She nodded.

   At the next table, a group of English tourists were unusually noisy. From their accents they were clearly from Manchester and the subject of their conversation was Manchester United: what else? I thought. Their accents grated on me. I heard an older man begin to order: the ‘camarero’ stood with pencil poised and the  man pointed to each member of the group in turn. Meanwhile I was conscious of Saski speaking, or rather, she was about to finish what she had been saying.

   ‘I’m sorry, I missed that.’

   She appeared to be annoyed: clearly she was aware that I had been paying more attention to the English group than to her.

   ‘If you really must know,’ she hesitated for a moment, ‘it’s Peter.’

   I was silent for a moment. My best mate? Jesus!

   ‘Peter Dempsey?’ I exclaimed.

   She nodded.

   ‘How long?’ I managed to croak.

   ‘A year.’

   ‘A year! Jesus! And bonking in my bed I suppose!’

   I must have said this quite loudly as the Manchester crowd looked across and sniggered.

   ‘It’s not like that,’ she said. It was obvious that we now had the full attention of eight randy Mancunians. Deeply embarrassed, Saski stood to leave.

   ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Don’t go.’

   For a moment she hesitated, then sat down again.

 The Manchester crowd had finished their coffee and they were arguing about football. It was Man U or City. I couldn’t care less, I was a Chelsea fan. They were ready to leave. The older guy was shouting to the camarero for his bill in awful Spanish.

   ‘La coo-enta,’ he shouted. La coo-enta.’

   The waiter, keen to be rid of the rabble, quickly handed over the tab. The Chief Mancunian threw a pile of euros onto a plate. The waiter carefully examined each coin individually.

   ‘No,’ he finally said, and handed the Chief Mancunian back four euros.

   The Mancunian examined the bill.

   ‘These no good,’ the waiter said, in poor English.

   ‘Not good? Of course they’re bloody good.’

   Voices were being raised and the Mancunian was clearly both embarrassed and offended, after all, he had left a rather generous tip. He stood up. He towered above the waiter.

   Saski and I forgot our own troubles and watched to see what would happen next, delighted to have our turn to stare.

   ‘Por que?  Why?’ yelped the Mancunian.

  The young waiter chose his words carefully and pointed to the four offending coins.

 ‘These are not good.’

 ‘Why the bloody ‘ell not?’

   ‘They are Alemanes.’

   ‘They are European euros.’

   ‘Si, si, but Alemanes, German. Not good here.’ He pointed to the obverse side of the coin. ‘Aleman. This is Espaǹa.’

   It was January 2nd 2002, the second day that we were able to spend our euros. Saski and I had both been to the bank earlier in the week to collect a small plastic bag with plastic coins showing the various euro denominations. The Spanish were to take to the euro as a duck takes to water. Clearly, except this man.

The waiter doggedly held out his hand. The Mancunian pushed it away. A shouting match ensued, the cook emerged. The Art Café in the port of Javea soon erupted into a full-blown wrestling match with much pushing and shoving. A passing Spaniard pitched in. Suddenly, two Guardia Civil officers were at the door. Instantly, the shouting stopped. The two officers, unable to believe their eyes, must have considered for a moment finding another café for their morning coffee. They shook their heads in disbelief, marched in and stood between the opposing parties like referees at a wrestling match.

   ‘What’s going on?’ they demanded in Spanish.

   The waiter, now with the full weight of the law clearly on his side, explained to the officers that the foreigners were trying to avoid paying for their coffee by passing off ‘foreign money.’

   The younger of the two officers examined the coins proffered by the waiter and smiled. She had a face that lit up the Café. She then burst out laughing, her colleague joined in, and then the waiter began to laugh. Even the Mancunian caught the infection and began to laugh. Soon everyone was either laughing or smiling.

   The young officer sat down with the coins in her hand and carefully explained to the waiter. It dawned on him like a developing photograph in fix.

 I heard the officer whisper to him, ‘Change, everything has changed now.’

   Smiling, I turned to Saski but she was nowhere to be seen.  

The End

Also by Les Lunt

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