“Take it, and welcome,” she said. “What are you really here for? Was he in trouble with the police?”
“As I told you at the start, this is about the man in a coma. I thought your uncle Cyril was alive and might help us identify him.”
“You’ve got another mystery now.” Unexpectedly, she was reconciled to the police presence.
He made a point of writing a form of receipt on the reverse of one of his official cards. Then he pocketed the bag containing the necklace.
“You spoke of betting before we found this. Uncle Cyril liked a flutter, then?”
“He was addicted. It’s why there’s nothing left that’s worth having, apart from…” Her voice trailed off. “Wicked old blighter. Any money I get from the sale of the cottage will go to paying off his debts.”
“That’s tough, really tough. I didn’t know.”
“You said something about him playing Scrabble with Max. That wouldn’t have been for matchsticks, he’ll have made sure of that. You get points for making words, don’t you?”
“I believe you do.”
“He’d lay money on anything. Horses, football, poker. He had a few good wins, but of course in the long run he lost, big time. He ran up massive debts and had some nasty people coming to collect from time to time.”
“Who were they-do you know?”
“He never said. I heard about it from Jessie one time. She was shocked. She said they acted like bailiffs, seizing his electrical goods, his TV, his laptop, even his power tools. She told him to report them but he wouldn’t. He was so worried, he was taking Temazepam to get any sleep at all. Are you still going to help me with this job?”
“Of course. We started and we’ll finish.”
“What we need is an Allen key,” she told him after examining the bolts on the bed frame.
“Definitely,” he said, trying to sound competent. He was not a handyman. He wouldn’t have known an Allen key from a pineapple.
“There’s one downstairs.”
While she was fetching it, he weighed the new information. If Cyril Hardstaff had been in hock to some loan shark he must have felt insecure, to say the least. Unsurprising that he’d have a hiding place for anything of value. Presumably it had been waiting there to be pawned or sold. A man of charm and wit on the surface, at desperation point underneath. These old men and their personal failings were bringing extra layers of deception to the case.
He was relieved to find that the Allen key was nothing more complicated than an L-shaped spanner you used like a key. While loosening the bolts, he asked Hilary whether Cyril had ever been married.
“He was, yes, to my aunt Winnie. She died of a brain tumour seven or eight years ago. A tough lady and very successful. She started a secretarial agency in the days when every business wanted typing staff and it got to be one of the biggest in London, worth millions. She kept Uncle Cyril well under her thumb. He didn’t do much of his gambling while she was alive. We were all a bit scared of Aunt Winnie.”
“I was wondering if the necklace could have been hers.”
“No chance. She went in for fashion jewellery. Showy modern stuff. We’d better turn the bed on its side. It’s going to collapse if you loosen the other bolt.”
“Good thinking,” he said. “I was on the point of doing it.”
In a short time he had the headboard and footboard separated from the frame.
“Did Cyril inherit the fortune his wife earned?”
A smile and a shake of the head. “She was smart. When she wrote her will, she put all her money in trust. He was allowed an annuity of fifty thousand but he couldn’t get his hands on the rest, except a salary was set aside for a housekeeper-because she knew he wasn’t capable of managing on his own. He’s had a string of housekeepers, has Uncle Cyril. He’s not easy to manage. The house in a posh part of London went to him, but he sold it to get more cash to gamble with. I think he bought a smaller place and then sold that, and so on, until he ended up in this dump. Prop them against the wall and you can unscrew the other bed,” she said. She was definitely the foreman of this team.
“If Aunt Winnie was as wealthy as you say, some of her fortune must be left over.”
“I won’t see a brass penny of it. It’s all going to War on Want.”
“Rather that than the bookmakers.”
“True.”
The second room had been the housekeeper’s. Nothing personal remained but it had a fresher look to it than Cyril’s room and the bed was a divan with a padded headboard. He succeeded in shifting the mattress without damaging anything-except one of his lower vertebrae.
He’d never been kicked by a shire horse but he now had some idea how it felt.
He roared.
“What’s up?” Hilary asked.
He slumped on to the sprung bedstead. “Give me a moment.”
“Your back, is it?”
He rubbed it, trying not to swear.
“You know what they say,” she said. “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”
“Do they?”
He was in too much agony to trade smart talk.
“There’s a medicine cabinet in the bathroom where he kept his sleeping tablets,” she said. “There must be painkillers of some sort.”
“I don’t want his stuff.”
“I can see if there’s anything you can rub on it. I don’t mind doing it for you.”
“No thanks.” She might not mind but he did. He braced himself and succeeded in standing up. “Let’s see if we can unscrew the legs from this thing.”
“You’re tougher than you look,” Hilary told him.
“I played rugby when I was younger,” he said. “The idea is to get straight back into the game.”
Presently he’d recovered enough to slide the mattress out to the landing on its side and let it shoot downstairs. They dealt with the other one the same way. Then without actually needing to lift them, they manoeuvred them into the van.
She offered to leave the bedsteads for another day, but he insisted he would be all right and they returned upstairs to finish the job. He really believed there was some benefit in soldiering on rather than collapsing and letting the injury stiffen up.
When they shifted the second bed he saw something gleaming on the floor that turned out to be a cheap plastic hairbrush. Pink, with white nylon bristles.
“Jessie’s,” Hilary said, picking it up. “She didn’t leave anything else behind.”
“She won’t be coming back for it,” he said. “Can I see?”
“Keep it if you want.”
“I will.” No detective worthy of the name turns down an offer like that. He wrapped the brush in the folded papers in his jacket pocket. A few blonde hairs were enmeshed between the bristles.
Hilary offered black coffee-there was no milk in the small kitchen-and he drank it standing up.
“All you got for helping me was a sore back and an old hairbrush,” Hilary said. “This hasn’t helped your friend in hospital.”
In his present state of discomfort, he had to think who his friend in hospital was. Pellegrini and friendship went together like fire and water.
A lot has happened since I last put anything in the diary. How events move on. Memo to myself: must do better in keeping the record updated. If I leave it too late, there’s no point really.
What can I say about the last one? He was an overdue train that needed taking into the terminus (he’d appreciate that). After his wife went, he found life increasingly difficult. He had vague suspicions certain people were taking advantage, but he was in no condition to stop them. I did him a service, ending his journey.
13
The drive back was a blur. He made a short stop at work to bag up the hairbrush for forensics and then went straight home, needing to get horizontal. The pain in his lower back wasn’t going to go away quickly. He let himself in, swallowed some painkillers and dropped like wet washing on the sofa in the front room.