Andy Wilson met me in the hotel lobby at 9am.
In the light of day and with my eyes feeling less tired I put his age at about thirty-five, which meant he’d be far more adept with modern technology, phones and so on than me.
He guided me outside to a plain-looking car, not the blue and yellow one like the day before and after I’d thrown my stick and black bag onto the back seat, invited me to sit next to him in the front passenger seat. It was high up and had a big wide head rest which made me smile. If this was an abduction or a bullet was to be fired through the windscreen then I needed a good view.
He saw me smiling. “Sleep well, Mr Thomas?”
“Excellent, thank you,” I replied. “It’s been a hectic, few days.”
He then drove off not in the direction of the airport but onto the main road.
“Taking me home, Andy?” I asked hopefully but wondering where my car was.
“To the police station,” he said.
“To be formally charged?”
“More questions,” he said.
The journey didn’t take long. I was then escorted inside this office block with police everywhere. He signed something at a desk and I was then escorted to an office with a desk behind which sat another young man in jeans and tee shirt. I assumed this was their idea of plain clothes but I didn’t ask. The tee shirt stood up. “This him, Andy?”
Andy nodded. “This is him, Clive. Mr Oliver Thomas.”
“Old spy and fiction writer,” the tee shirt said as if trying to be amusing. I winced. The word spy still grates with me.
He didn’t shake my hand. He didn’t even come around the desk but sat down again which I assumed was the way all suspected murderers were treated.
“Clive Peterson,” he said from behind the desk. “I’m not stopping. I’m leaving you in the capable hands of Andy here because he was up all-night reading this.” He poked at my typewritten notes with a finger as if I’d ruined their bureaucracy by not typing it on their official forms so I glanced at Andy to see if I could detect similar signs of disdain.
“I read it,” he confirmed though I detected a stifled yawn. Had it bored him I wondered? Had it kept him up late?
Clive Peterson stood up. “Right then. I’m off.” He pushed past me and said to Andy, “Call me when you’re done.” Then I heard him whisper, “He looks like my grandad.” Then he left.
I didn’t see Andy’s reaction. Instead, he pointed to a chair for me and took over Clive’s behind the desk. He picked up my notes, flipped through them and then pushed them aside. “So, Mr Thomas, as you’re looking better than yesterday, can we pick up where we left off?”
Andy was right. I felt good. The chair was comfortable, I’d had a good shave without cutting myself and I’d carried the stick rather than actually using it. It was now on the floor by my bag. “Did you finish read my notes?”
“It was an interesting read. Is there any truth in it?”
I wiped my glasses on the hem of my jumper. “How far did you get?”
“To the end.”
“Congratulations.”
“Trouble is it ends with you merely saying you decided to act which doesn’t, of course, answer the big question.” He turned to the last page of my notes and prodded it with his finger just like his colleague. “Can we start here? Where it ends?”
I still remembered my last few typed words about owing it to Sarah and Beatie and myself to act. But just before I left Gloucester, I’d also scribbled a few more words in pencil about “working on an audacious plan.” He hadn’t mentioned that yet. “Can I ask you a question first?” I said.
“One,” he replied.
“Is the bastard dead?”
“If you mean Major Alex Donaldson, I can confirm he’s still in intensive care. You don’t seem to like him, Mr Thomas.”
“I thought you said you’d read my notes,” I replied.
“But you can’t go around shooting people, Mr Thomas.”
“Who says I shot him? And, anyway, why not? Donaldson killed people, although he usually subcontracted killings and assassinations.”
Andy Wilson got up and walked around the room. “Mr Thomas. Would you be so kind as to fill in the big gap that exists between when the notes finish and you arrived back here?”
I was feeling very relaxed. “I haven’t touched a drop of whisky since the moment I made that decision.” I told him.
“I’m so pleased. Now can you please start from the bit scribbled at the bottom that says, and I quote, ‘I am working on an audacious plan.’ What audacious plan? Did it involve a gun? And did you fulfil it?”
“I’ll tell you what I did next,” I said. “But it’s important we put things into context and I provide the evidence. Then we can move onto my trip to Nice and Malaga. How long have we got?”
He sighed. Perhaps he was getting used to me. “I’m easy,” he said. “But just be aware I’ll not hesitate to jump and cut out the slightest bit of crap that you might feel inclined to offer. Is that good enough for you?”
“That seems very fair,” I said. “By the way, you can call me Ollie.”
“I’m Andy. Proceed.”
“Well,” I said, “I blame the audacious plan on Marmite.”
“Marmite?”
“Did you read about Thomas’s Disease?”
“I hope I never catch it.”
“Marmite is the cure.”
“I hate the darned stuff.”
“Well, pray you never suffer from TD because within Marmite’s dark and sticky heart there are ingredients that include a cure for TD. It’s also a brain stimulant.”
“I’m waiting for the audacious plan.”
“I’m getting to it. But it involves Marmite. Having decided the need for a plan I resolved never to touch another drop of whisky. Instead, I made myself some tea, toast and Marmite. Then I took the car for a spin as I’ve always found driving conducive to constructive thought.”
“Was it taxed and insured, Mr Thomas? Ollie?”
It was a good question. “Probably not on reflection,” I admitted.
“Where did you head for? The south of France?”
“The Forest of Dean.”
“When will we get to the Malaga part, Ollie?”
“Soon. The Forest wasn’t where I’d planned to go but it’s where I ended up. I just needed to drive and think. I took some Marmite on toast with me.”
Andy seemed surprised. “You took a picnic?”
I remember that night so clearly. It was a dark night, cold and damp but, by two o’clock, and having got as far as Coleford and with no traffic on the road except a few large trucks and one police car I turned around and came back.
“When I returned around 3am, Andy, my mind was as clear as a bell and the plan was crystallizing.”
“Can we discuss the plan, Ollie?”
“I finished off the cold toast and Marmite, slept for an hour in the chair and set off before daylight.”
“Where did you go?”
“Oxfordshire.”
During the night it had turned frosty and the road outside was quite slippery when I checked but I tossed the stick onto the back seat of the car and set off. Fred Carrington would normally watch me coming and going but it was still dark and there wasn’t even a light on at number 26. I quietly closed the garage door and was soon out on the road to Oxford.
I didn’t rush but after a while, as the traffic became busy, I pulled in at a fuel station and bought a map of Oxfordshire. By eight o’clock and by navigating along country lanes I found the village mentioned by Jim as Donaldson’s last known address. On the narrow road it was marked by a sign that said, “Little Avening Welcomes Careful Drivers”.
By then it was a clear, spring-like morning with the low sun already clearing the early frost. It was a neat and tiny village of old houses and cottages hidden behind high hedges and wooden gates but almost as soon as I arrived, I found I was back in open countryside again so I stopped, reversed and drove back again. In what seemed to be the centre of the village there was a red mail box beside an almost invisible junction leading into an even smaller country lane. So, I parked the car and studied my map again. Little Avening was just a dot.
But as I sat there, a knock on his windscreen made me jump. A middle-aged woman with an annoyed look on her face glared at me through the glass so I put the map on the passenger seat and wound the window down.
“You can’t park here, you know. No one can walk by,” she said in a most angry tone and then stuck her head through the window to within six inches of my face. A surprisingly strong smell resembling smoked fish wafted in with the cold air. “We can’t walk past, do you hear? I’m trying to walk my dog. Can’t you see?”
She withdrew her head, bent down and lifted a tiny animal resembling a large white rat on a string apparently to give the creature a better view of the interior of my car. The creature yapped and bared a pink tongue and a set of teeth so small and perfect that I felt I was looking at an advert for private dentistry. A puff of doggy steam came out with the yap.
“Quiet, Ollie,” she said.
I hadn’t, of course, uttered a word so far and certainly not introduced myself. I was about to say something when she bent down to place the dog back on the ground and for a few minutes I lost sight of them so I leaned out of the window only to see a large, rotund rear covered in tweed. The other end was patting the dog, which was staring up at her and still panting little puffs of steam.
“There, Ollie, it’s only an old man. There’s a good boy.”
She suddenly stood upright and so I quickly withdrew my own head and looked for my glasses. “I do apologise, madam,” I said. “But I was trying to locate a house.”
“I see. Along as you don’t sit there for too long, I suppose.”
“May I introduce myself, madam?” I asked.
She sniffed. “Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“It seems I may share my name with your dog, Madam. You see, my name is Oliver Thomas. Friends call me Ollie.”
The woman stared and then burst out laughing in a way I have always associated with late middle-aged ladies from Oxfordshire who wear tweed. “Oh, I say, how amusing. Ollie meet Ollie. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Yes,” I said, “It’s rather a coincidence. But do you, by any chance, know Chalford Hall?”
“Chalford Hall?” she said. “Of course. I live there.”
I was shocked, not least because I had half expected to meet one of Donaldson’s wives at Chalford Hall. This woman didn’t, in the least, fit the picture in my mind.
“It’s up the lane,” she said, pointing to the smaller lane opposite the mail box. “Are you delivering something? You don’t look like a courier to me and the car is a bit fancy. Things usually arrive in white vans, these days. Also, you don’t quite look the sort, if I may say so. How old are you?”
I was, I admit, taken slightly aback at her impertinence. “I’m eighty-six madam,” I said. My age was, of course, of no relevance at all and I was sorely tempted to ask how old she was.
“What is it you require?” she asked somewhat formally.
“I am looking for someone I used to know and I understood he lives there.”
“Well it might be my husband I suppose but he’s abroad at present.”
This looked promising but I still couldn’t imagine her with a ninety years old husband of Donaldson’s type. I decided to probe a little as she peered at me through the side window. “My friend is getting on in years. He would be about ninety now. His name is Donaldson.”
“Ah,” she said as if light was dawning. “We bought the property from someone called Donaldson, not that we ever met him.”
This made more sense. “Do you know where he lives now?”
“Oh, I’ve really no idea. Is he still alive? He wasn’t living in England when we bought the place twenty-five years ago.”
Jim’s information about where Donaldson was living was clearly many years out of date and for a moment I felt let down as though my mission to track him down was already hitting the buffers.
The woman bent down to the other Ollie and picked the creature up again. It bared its teeth at me again but stayed silent and almost seemed to be smiling. “So how far have you come?” she asked.
“From Gloucester,” he replied.
“That’s a jolly, nice car,” she said. “My husband had a Jaguar once. He now keeps a Maserati in the garage for weekends but usually runs around in the Bentley. I use the Porsche for shopping. Would you like a cup of tea?”
I was taken aback but the sudden show of a friendly side, but was in dire need of a drink of some description. “That’s very kind,” I said.
“Then would you mind awfully given Ollie and me a lift up the lane. He’s getting a bit old now and gets very tired paws.” She patted his tiny head. “Don’t you, Ollie, my little precious.”
With that I opened the passenger door and she and Ollie got in, the dog wiping its muddy feet all over her tweed skirt. “I don’t normally get into cars with strange gentlemen,” she said and gave her Oxfordshire laugh, “But you look harmless enough and I like the car.”
A few minutes later we passed through an impressive gateway with stone pillars and up a tree-lined drive to a large Cotswold stone house worthy of the title of Chalford Hall. She’d gossiped most of the way.
“It’s far too big, actually,” she said as we drove onto a semi-circular gravel driveway with wide stone steps leading up to a large front door, “But my husband likes it. He says it’s a wonderful place to get away from the City.”
“What does your husband do?” I asked, surprising myelf by the rapid way our relationship was developing after only fifteen minutes. I didn’t get an immediate answer because she was struggling to clamber out whilst still holding little Ollie. She led me up the steps and turned the large door knob. It clearly wasn’t locked.
“Come in, come in,” she said as little Ollie bounded away, slipping and sliding on a shiny tiled floor. She closed the door behind us. “Oh, George,” she said remembering my earlier question. “George is the founding partner of Griffith-Pace Securities. Worth a fortune even before I married him. Mother was so pleased. Come in, do. Wipe your feet, Ollie. Sorry, Mr Thomas, I mean my little Ollie here.”
“That’s how I came to meet Priscilla Griffith-Pace,” I told Andy Wilson.
“I only hope it’s relevant, Ollie,” Andy replied. “Fancy a coffee?” He got up, walked away and returned with some plastic cups, put them on the desk and slid one towards me. “Where were we, Ollie?”
“Chalford Hall.”
“Ah yes. Proceed.”
“We sat in a room with a huge log fire and large bay windows hung with red velvet curtains that overlooked acres of rolling fields with mature horse chestnut trees just coming into leaf and a shimmering lake. It was all very pleasant compared to what I had left behind in Gloucester.”
“Sounds lovely but what light was she able to throw on Donaldson, Ollie?”
“Not a great deal as it turned out.”
“Ollie, for Christ’s sake………”
“But her gardener, Nigel, turned out to be very useful,” I told Andy.
Cilla said that when they’d bought Chalford Hall from Donaldson it was empty. Locals in the village told her Donaldson was rarely ever seen and they didn’t like him. Neither did they like the woman who they assumed was his wife. She was an alcoholic and alcoholics were not the sort of person the residents of Little Avening were used to. Neither were they keen on people called Betty with strong London accents. There were also two teenage boys who boarded at Repton had but were rarely seen.
“Everything started to fit,” I told Andy.
But Cilla, thinking Donaldson was an old friend, apologised. I soon put her right. I told her that his reputation was far worse than petty local gossip. Whilst working for British Intelligence, I said, he made a vast fortune by running a Mafia-like organisation that was second to none at the time.
Cilla was shocked but then suggested I meet Milly the cook and Nigel, the gardener because Nigel had known Donaldson.
I met Nigel in a greenhouse out the back. He’d been at Chalford Hall for forty years when the house had been in the Jarman family but when Sir Walter Jarman died the family couldn’t afford to keep it going so, they put it up for sale and Nigel had temporarily lost his job.
Then the Donaldson’s arrived, he told me. Betty and two boys. The boys were at school and Betty was left by herself. Luckily, he’d got the job of gardener back again. Donaldson used to stay there for a few days then return to Scotland or London.
Nigel confirmed everything about Betty being an alcoholic who spent most of her time in the kitchen drinking gin and red wine. He’d felt sorry for her. She and Donaldson would argue a lot and there was evidence of so much physical abuse that the cleaner left. The house became dirty and untidy.
“But then, Andy, Nigel mentioned another man, a friend of Donaldson from Edinburgh who arrived and stayed at Chalford Hall. The new cleaner, Cheryl, claimed that this man and Betty were having an affair. Donaldson though had seemed unconcerned as if it was part of an arrangement between the three of them.”
“And what was this guy’s name, Ollie?” Andy asked me.
“Royston Forsyth,” I said with a raised eyebrow. At last, Andy sat up.
“Forsyth himself? The Brigadier?” he said.
I nodded.
I asked Nigel if Mr Forsyth was, by any chance, a Brigadier but Nigel shook his head. “Very unlikely,” he said. “He and Donaldson would sit around drinking and talking business most of the time.”
Forsyth, Nigel said, worked for a Swiss bank in London. Discussions were all about money. Nigel knew that because in the summer they would sit outside the greenhouse drinking beer and he could hear them.
I asked him why he thought Donaldson decided to sell the house. He said he didn’t know but Betty disappeared. Suddenly she wasn’t there. Around the same time he’d also heard that the two boys were expelled from school for some reason.
“Then came more crucial pieces of evidence,” I told Andy. “I asked Nigel if he knew where Donaldson had gone after Chalford Hall was sold.”
Oh yes, he said, he went to live in Cannes in the south of France but he also had a place in Malaga. Nigel grinned at me. “I know that because I found some papers in a sack that I used to start a bonfire,” he said. “I kept them because Major Donaldson left owing staff wages going back several weeks. I always thought that one day I’d go out there and track him down.”
Nigel then went to a drawer beneath his neat bookshelf, pulled out a heavy pile of old Gardeners World diaries and laid them on the table. “Here we are,” he said. “The 1986 version. The last year we ever saw him or Forsyth.”
From the inside back cover, he took out two folded pieces of paper. “There,” he said.
I looked at them. They were abbreviated statements from Credit Suisse in Zurich, pieces of paper I’d not seen since my days in Libya. Donaldson had made a big mistake in not destroying them but Nigel was right. They showed account numbers and also two addresses – one in Cannes and one in Malaga.
“Cilla then invited me for lunch, Andy. We had smoked haddock and white parsley sauce.”
My talk of food seemed to awaken Andy because he suggested lunch. “I’ll order something,” he said.
As he left, the desk phone so I picked it up. “Andy,” the voice said. “Malaga phoned. The old guy is still in intensive care but things are not looking good. The Spanish police are now searching the property but they confirm your man was seen leaving and pointing the gun at staff.”
“Thanks,” I said thinking there was both good and bad news there but also some matters which I’d need to explain.
I pressed the red button and returned to thinking about lunch with Cilla and the drive home afterwards. Fred Carrington had been standing by his gate when I arrived. “Evening, Mr Thomas,” he called. “Been out today?”
Whilst looking for my front door key I told the nosy fellow that I’d popped over to Oxfordshire for lunch. “The wife of a friend of mine who runs a Merchant bank in the City,” I said to shut him up.
“I’m off to Nice at the weekend,” I added. “Then I’ll probably head down to Malaga. I might be away for a while. I’m far too busy to stand and chat. I’ve got papers to work on this evening. By the way, you need to get someone in to chop that monkey-puzzle down. It’s looking increasingly sad and it might be kinder to put it out of its misery.”
Andy returned. “I’ve ordered fish and chips,” he said. “Where were we, Ollie? Please proceed. “
I proceeded by describing what Nigel had saved from the 1981 bonfire.
Both letters were from Credit Suisse, Zurich, one of them to Mr R Forsyth and the other to Major A. Donaldson, both showing the Chalford Hall, Little Avening address. The letter to Forsyth confirmed the transfer of the sum of 750,000 US dollars to a Santander Bank account in Barcelona. The letter to Donaldson stated that the balance of his account with Credit Suisse stood at 4,535,868 US dollars as at 4th October 1981 and that an amount of another 1.500,000 dollars had been transferred on 3rd September 1981 to a Santander Bank account in Malaga.
“Sums of money any honest, nine to five, civil servant was unlikely to accumulate and how many other accounts did they have?” I told Andy before adding, “How’s your own police pension growing, Andy?”
The letters also showed addresses – an address in Cannes for Forsyth and one in Malaga for Donaldson so, as soon as the local travel agent opened for business next day I booked an air ticket to Nice, made an appointment to call in later on another matter, made some other arrangements and sat back, feeling like a new man with a reason to live.
“With an air ticket and a plan of action I felt as if I’d picked up where I left off thirty years ago, Andy.”
The door opened and in came our lunch – plastic boxes of fish and chips - and at Andy’s request continued with my story as we ate.
“I gathered up my type-written report, tidied all the old papers and newspaper cuttings I’d been working on and, apart from one item which I placed in an old shoe box, took the bus into the city, collected my air ticket, dealt with the shoe box, returned home and slept like a log,” I told Andy.
By ten next morning I was ready to go with the black case on the back seat of the car when I spotted Fred Carrington. “I’m just off to France and Spain on business, Fred,” I said and then watched him trudge home with his shopping basket.
Andy interrupted. “Can we please leave out the neighbours and focus on your trip, Ollie?”
“Certainly,” I said as I finished off the battered fish and the last chip.
It was late afternoon when I arrived in Nice.
I took a taxi to the Negresco Hotel on the Promenade des Anglais only because it is fairly central and because I’d once eaten lunch there with Farouk. The Negresco is not my sort of hotel. It’s more like a stately home complete with antiques, museum and art gallery and I had no intention of staying there but I got talking to the doorman, Charles, who, in keeping with the rest of the hotel, wears a strange hat, red and blue fancy dress, white gloves and Wellington boots. But he seemed to like my reminiscences and my tale of eating langoustines and Chablis with Farouk (who paid). Apparently feeling sorry for me and my old, black bag, he then told me he could arrange a sizeable discount so I got a room the size of a football pitch with an antique bed and fell asleep watching a pornographic French film on a TV the size of a cinema screen.
By nine o’clock next morning, Charles found me a nice Mercedes taxi and I set off for Cannes.
It was a delightful spring morning which brought back more memories of my travelling days, especially when we passed the sign for Grasse. I had known an export agent once who specialized in Francophone Africa and dealt in canned, tropical fruit. Michel lived in Grasse but we never met there but by accident in hotels in places like Accra, Freetown and Douala.
The taxi passed on, into Cannes and eventually dropped me outside a big, iron, gate by a high stone wall overhung with trees covered in white flowers. I asked the driver to wait saying I had no idea how long I would be but that I’d pay him for his time. Neither did I know what to expect when I pressed the large black bell on the gate. I put my ear to the metal grill and heard the rough voice of an elderly woman.
In rather poor French I announced my name as Christopher Stanton from England and that I was trying to make contact with an old friend of mine, Royston Forsyth. I then apologized for my French in English.
The voice said, “Christ almighty” in an accent that rang of east London. “What did you say your name was?”
“Christopher Stanton,” I said, “I’m sorry to call without an appointment.”
I heard her sniff but then say, “OK, wait. The gate will open. Come in.” And with that, the gates clicked, slowly opened inwards and I walked inside.
The driveway was longer and steeper than I expected but the lawns and gardens made the walk a pleasant enough one. I eventually arrived at the house, an ornate brick and stone villa with orange roof tiles, a high chimney and a thick covering of ivy. I walked up five wide steps towards a shiny black door feeling for the first time that my stick, which I’d left in the taxi, would have been useful. I rang another bell and the door opened immediately as if I’d been watched all the way up the drive.
An elderly lady stood there wearing baggy trousers and a half-zipped up jacket. The entire outfit was in powder blue and, despite her age, which looked seventy, she wore a pair of white plimsolls. Her hair was not grey but a pale shade of yellow with streaks of auburn. Her face was full, red and freckled as if she spent lengthy periods sitting in a deck chair somewhere sunny. In her ears were two large earrings that dangled almost to her shoulders. I took all this in as I stood there gathering my breath.
“Yeh?” she said. “What’s going on then?” It was spoken in perfect Whitechapel English and, even though she’d only spoken a few words I instantly recognized the voice. This was Betty from the Feathers and we were face to face for the first time for almost fifty years.
“Good morning,” I said, touching my forelock. “I’m sorry for disturbing you. My name is Christopher Stanton and I was hoping to catch up with an old friend of mine, Roy Forsyth, as I heard he was living here.”
“‘I see,” she said, looking at me suspiciously “And why would you want to see him?’
“Old time’s sake, I suppose,” I said.
She exploded. “Well you’re too bleedin’ late, mate. The fucking bastard pegged out fifteen years ago.”
She might have sprayed me with something because I felt sure I could smell gin. “Oh dear,” I said, ‘That’s sad.”
“No, it fucking well ain’t. Fucking bastards, all of them. Friends of them, are you?”
“Oh dear,” I repeated, “I didn’t know him too well you understand, in fact I think I only ever met him once.’
“So how is he a bleedin’ friend, then?”
It was a good question. I backtracked. “Perhaps I should call myself an acquaintance,” I said.
“So, what the bloody ’ell do you want?” she said, putting both hands on her hips.
“Just to catch up with him, I suppose,” I said, “I was visiting Nice. But it looks like I’m fifteen years too late. What happened to him? How old was he when he died?”
I was asking too many questions and she wisely ignored them but part of my mind was hearing the bawdy banter in the Feathers where she used to pull pints of Bass bitter and empty little jars of whelks and cockles into small white dishes before sprinkling vinegar over them. I could even remember some of her words. ‘Bloody jars. Can’t ever friggin’ open them without breaking my bloody nails. Wanna go, Ollie? Your hands are so much bigger. Big hands, big cock, eh? You open my little jar and I’ll warm your cockles, eh? Want another pint while you’re trying?’
She interrupted my thoughts. “How did you know where to come?”
“Another old acquaintance,” I said. “Roy still owes him money.”
That did the trick.
“Fucking bastard. How bleedin’ much? And who’s your other acquaintance?”
“The gardener at a place where Roy used to live.”
“You mean Nigel?’ she asked lowering her hands from her hips.
“Yes, that’s him,’ I said, “Nigel. He’s still working at the old place. Chalford Hall. Do you know him? I bumped into him in a pub in Oxford and he told me he was still waiting to be paid. We laughed about it. He said Roy had moved to Cannes. It wasn’t re