Clock Face of Ills Read online

  Also by the Author

  Beyond all Doubt

  Whisper of Death

  Non Fiction

  How I Write and Publish Murder Mystery

  Writing as Jacinta Sequentez:

  The Foreigner

  Writing as Shelby Summers:

  Fortunes Along the Boulevard

  Clock Face of Ills

  Paige Elizabeth Turner

  Copyright © 2018 Paige Elizabeth Turner

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

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  ISBN 9781788031165

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  For Sue Ablett. In recognition and appreciation of her devotion to the Evesham Festival of Words.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Many authors rely on others’ expertise and cooperation to help us develop and enrich our fictitious settings.

  I am indebted to Mr Peter Dickenson, Estate Agent and Chartered Surveyor, of High Street, Bidford-on-Avon, for advice concerning conveyance and contract detail.

  (NOTE: This story contains references to a property acquisition and sales contract. The scenarios are a product of the author’s imagination and are highly fictionalised. They do not represent, in any form whatsoever, a process by which property might be obtained, purchased or sold.)

  I acknowledge Mariusz Skonieczny for his informative book: Gold Production from Beginning to End (ISBN 978-0-9848490-1-7) from which I mined many gems.

  To my brother, Peter, I extend gratitude for initial research of the Clogau gold belt.

  To Mel, for providing the analogy of sweet words and ants.

  And to draft readers Frederick Dickson and Albert Atifi, thanks for your review and comments.

  Prologue

  Phillip McMaster slams the bill on the table. Two tumblers of Scotch whisky jump in protest. Heads turn from adjacent tables. Silence drowns alcohol-fuelled banter.

  ‘You fix this, and make sure you fix that Angelo prat,’ wheezes McMaster.

  ‘Pay your own friggin’ bill,’ recoils Jeff Main. ‘I’m here to do you a favour. I never wanted in on this in the first place. I’m the paperwork man, not an action hero you pull out of a Mattel box to perform at your beck and call.’

  McMaster extends his palms like a placating politician. ‘Okay Jeff. Settle down. I’ve got the tab. Okay?’

  Phillip, known to colleagues as Phil, a seasoned detective inspector who found his niche placement in a small regional office, has bedded down in career hibernation. He’d long ago settled into a comfort zone; happy to drift from one file to the next, to do only as required, and no more. Promotion and career progress – dissolved aspirations of the once eager officer – have melded into the nicotine-infused ceilings of Worcester CID.

  Five years’ earlier, his sonorous instructions boomed across offices with the mellifluous harmony of Placido Domingo. Today, McMaster huffs like a punctured blacksmith’s bellow, legacy of his daily 60-cigarette habit. His physique also resembles the bellow: puffed up and full of hot air. At 42 years-of-age, and after 22 hard years in the constabulary, Phillip McMaster personifies the role of desk sergeant. His medical records should note ‘obese’, but the constabulary chooses to play down the condition as ‘slightly overweight’. Spider veins criss-cross his sun-deprived complexion. Glowing cheeks and nose pay homage to Dewar’s redeeming powers. Thin, peppered hair wavers like wheat stalks ravaged by a locust plague, and the skin beneath his eyes hangs like a pair of old saddle bags drooping from the bony back of a prairie horse.

  For McMaster, life parallels the game of Snakes and Ladders. He slides beneath promotional opportunities; he falls into pits of depression propagated by marital disharmony; and his alcoholic dependence drops him into a fantasy criminal underworld.

  He’ll climb out of allegations of impropriety, and he’ll step up the pace of an investigation until he nails his suspect. His mental capacity is top of the game. Locked away in his cerebral safe are the names, faces and crimes of every person he’s arrested and prosecuted during his generally non-eventful career. He also remembers the few he’s freed, his eyes closed to the activities of those he believes capable of furthering his agenda; and he zealously guards mental profiles of those recruited into his clandestine empire of chicanery and scams.

  McMaster lives by his self-conceived doctrine: ‘financial security is the ability to seize opportunity and shield it from authority’s eyes’. He applies the creed to all manner of deceptive conduct, from swapping bar codes on B&Q’s power tools to returning items of clothing for refunds after wearing them to one-off functions. Why rent a dinner suit when I can buy one from a retailer with a lax return policy and claim a full refund the following day? If the sales assistant objects, he coolly removes his wallet and lays it on the sales counter – making sure it falls face up to clearly display his police warrant card. The hapless assistant buckles to the innocent intimidation and cheerfully completes the refund.

  He has learnt through several misdealings that success and happiness are born of intelligent coercion and communication with the right people. Invariably, those ‘right people’ have no respect for law. For the past five years, he’s held permanent ownership – under the auspice of ‘reservation’ – over a table inside the Knight’s Arms. The ‘Arms’ – as abridged by the locals, is a renowned rendezvous for informants of dubious background who provide information for both his judicial a
nd personal interests. It carries its history from the late sixteenth century, when, as a tavern, it hosted lords’ and earls’ messengers en-route to delivering sealed vellum pouches of taxes to King Edward VI. While England has matured into the twenty-first century, the Arms stand as a snapshot of 500 years past. Its tiny rooms remain intact; the telltale odour of hops and malt and stale tobacco hover about the low ceiling, and the pungent sweat of daily toil clings to walls like calcified mist on a Perspex shower screen.

  The small room is still, as if a mute button has silenced the pair of widescreen televisions hanging above the bar. A six-square-metre ceiling of straw, mud and cowpat render, crudely brushed with the mandatory magnolia, and illuminated by six 25-watt power saving globes, reflects glistening perspiration from Main’s brow.

  McMaster glares: ‘I know you’re the paperwork man. But I’m the head man, aren’t I? For the past year, I’ve papered your pocket with real bills – tens, twenties and fifties. Now, I’m thinking that if you want our little arrangement to continue, we have to come to an understanding. Right? There has to be some sort of hierarchal order. Right? You see where I’m coming from?’

  Main knows exactly where. He’d once skimmed profit from McMaster’s share portfolio after being instructed to sell 12,500 shares in a small trading company. Main had no way of knowing that Phillip McMaster was the major shareholder of that registered company, and that McMaster knew exactly what the sale should have returned.

  McMaster had turned the tables to his advantage. Rather than report Main for criminal deception, he recognised the ingenuity as an exploitable trait. To date, his scams and schemes have lined Main’s pockets with more than £40,000.

  McMaster continues: ‘You remember how you tried to, shall we say, rip me off?’

  ‘I’ve apologised for that a thousand times. You never let me forget – it was a poor business decision.’

  ‘And I make the good decisions, right?’

  ‘Yes, Phil. Always.’ Main shrinks into a small-time thug, afraid of his menacing Mafia-styled boss.

  ‘Angelo’s not pulling his weight. We’ve got to get that property deal sewn up. Quick.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I thought we’d sealed it.’

  ‘Well, we haven’t. You were too soft on that fuckin’ wog bastard.’

  Main turns to the cash register’s beeping shrill. ‘Better keep your voice down. There’s not enough distractions.’

  McMaster sets a ferocious scowl. ‘Only fucking distraction here is you.’

  I

  The brass mail flap snaps shut. Letters topple to the floor. I grab the bundle and shuffle the envelopes like a deck of cards; throw aside a BT bill, Office Plus stationery account, a window envelope addressed to my business name – Watts Happening? Investigations – and a large, brown Readers’ Digest envelope promising to excite me because I’ve made the final cut in their ‘Last Chance Draw’ £١,٠٠٠,٠٠٠ prize pool. I hadn’t even entered the damn thing!

  Since establishing Watts Happening? Investigations six months ago, I have undertaken enquiries ranging from missing persons to untimely deaths. I take credit for helping a lawyer solve a suspicious family death – an enquiry which resulted in my contribution solving two related mysterious casualties. With good fortune, I continue to swim in a stream of interesting enquiries.

  I’d originally set up in Worcester, but over-reacted to the scale of the aforementioned family death enquiry by moving to Newquay in Cornwall as part of a career, slash, sea change. I later succumbed to the magnetism of my geographic roots after a chance Worcester file pulled me past my old flat and office. The ‘To Let’ sign dangling from the window hung as an omen – a divine invitation beckoning my return. But the task wasn’t easy. On trying to re-lease the property, I struggled to convince the landlord of my reliability. My previous two years’ unblemished tenancy apparently stood for nothing because I had to assure him that I would not go ‘hopping around the country’, at my earliest opportunity.

  To enunciate my point, I slipped in the clincher: ‘Looks like it’s been vacant since I left. You’re obviously overwhelmed with offers.’ Flushed with funds, I flashed six months’ advance rent before him and, well, he couldn’t resist the sight. Then again, might it have been my loose, flouncy top, teasing him with an ample hint of mauve bra strap? Turns grown men to water. Too bad for them. Whilst there’s not much in the bra, it’s the hope of getting their hands on the merchandise that hypnotises them to my commands.

  I am about to head out to deposit Alexander Beecham’s £2,000 cheque when the phone stops me.

  ‘Hello. Olivia? Superintendent Jack Thornton.’

  Shit! I recognise the surname. I should have returned his call last night. I freeze. Even the innocent freeze when a police officer calls. But this is business. I hope. I learn that I am required for ‘a spot of observing’. Excitement rises. Nothing better than the chance to get my teeth into a big one. I relish assignments of a covert nature; the darkness of tailing and watching; slithering around – chameleon like – tracing a target’s every move. I explain my reluctance to enter another working relationship with police, especially after having been castigated over my association with DCI Stafford, whose assistance I’d sought during the latter stage of my employment as a detective sergeant with West Mercia Police. Ironically, it was Stafford who recommended me to Thornton.

  Thornton describes a situation requiring external sources to penetrate an internal investigation. He confides that I’m chosen because of my belligerence, devotion to duty, and ability to utilise every available resource to achieve resolution. Documented in my Personal History File is the cruel analogy: ‘like a dog with a bone’. I accept the term as a compliment, but the world of officialdom would infer negative connotations. I would be Thornton’s eyes in my petite, girl-next-door body. Such is the private investigator’s role: uncover things that your instructor cannot; use the shield of anonymity to extract information, and then gawk in awe as he receives slaps on the back for a job well done. On the other side, should the investigation turn sour, I will be the scapegoat.

  I profile him as a compatriot stickler for detail. Not that I object to that, but he stretches the trait too far, wanting complete separation of our roles – which actually suits me – and insisting that I not contact any other police member during the term of contract. I anticipate his use of the term ‘observing’ as a full-on, intense survey of a senior police officer whose identity would be code named throughout the investigation. His real name might never be revealed. What Thornton does not know, is that I am one who shifts the earth to uncover little snippets concealed from all but those immediately beneath command.

  I am uneasy about spying on former colleagues. It is not a pride bolstering role, or one to gloat about at Christmas parties, but I do recognise the need for underhanded surveillance to keep the constabulary scrupulous.

  I arrange to meet Thornton at the Worcester CID office, an inconvenience I will defray into future invoices – assuming I agree to the collaboration.

  II

  On completion of an enquiry into the ownership of recovered stolen goods, McMaster heads home along the A44, a BBC broadcast of the third Test between England and New Zealand blaring in the background, and smoke curling from a cigarette in the foreground – contrary to the constabulary’s ‘no smoking in police vehicles’ policy.

  A red Renault flashes by. Blonde hair trails from the driver’s window. McMaster tries to overlook the infraction because he proudly avoids vehicular policing and revenue-raising. Had the driver not been a young female, he would continue his journey, counting six-ball overs and sweating to the escalating required run rate. Instead, he maintains a steady eighty-five miles per hour behind the Renault, flashes his headlights, and then, in a move more dangerous than the offending driver’s actions, pulls alongside the car, thrusts his badge to the passenger window, and motions her to the verge.
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br />   Both cars retreat to a convenient lay-by where McMaster withdraws from his Vauxhall, lights another cigarette, and approaches the driver. A flustered young woman grimaces: ‘Sorry. I’ve had a bad day.’

  McMaster studies her: about twenty-years-old, bottle-blonde hair, deep brown eyes of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern background and skin glowing like Crème Caramel. Black eyeliner rolls down her left cheek. She wears a white blouse, a black lace tie pinched at the neck and a black linen skirt riding high on her thighs.

  Conscious of McMaster’s seedy glare, she drops her hands to her lap.

  ‘So, what’s the rush?’

  ‘Just late. I’ll be honest. I just wanted to get home. I know I was going too fast, but I was careful.’

  ‘You work in a restaurant?’

  ‘No. Heavenly Spirits. I’m a manager.’

  ‘So what’s that, a fortune telling shop?’

  ‘No. We sell wines and spirits. Specialise in spirits – the wine’s just a sideline.’

  ‘Girl after my heart.’

  She cringes.

  McMaster had once faced a disciplinary hearing for taking personal details from a woman. The Internal Affairs panel heard the allegation and dismissed the complaint as a vengeful objection to a traffic fine.

  ‘I’ll have to make a note of this. What’s your name and address?’

  ‘No please. I can’t afford to be fined. I’m going through a rough patch of personal problems.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’ll be fined, but I must record your details as a person I’ve spoken to whilst on duty.’

  ‘Rose Maree Hernandez.’

  McMaster scratches Rose’s details into his notebook, together with her work location. He lectures the dangers of speeding, and finishes with an abrupt: ‘You may hear something within the week.’