Clock Face of Ills Read online

  * * *

  McMaster pulls into the driveway of Ashton Hill. He’d discovered the property eight years’ earlier during an afternoon’s cruising about the countryside in an unmarked police car. By the most intriguing circumstance, he was tasked to investigate a complaint of vandals smashing windows at an abandoned property. The offenders, in true fashion, had decamped before police arrived, but that didn’t obviate the need for McMaster to complete crime reports, which might later be required by the property’s owners or an insurance company. After searching Land Registry details, McMaster located records noting the Medicinal Trust as owner. Further checks disclosed that the Trust had long been liquidated, and its few assets dispersed to creditors. Then he found the diamond: the property was sitting in limbo pending transfer to the crown.

  He jumped at the opportunity to acquire the property. Whilst claiming to be a proud Brit who would lie down for his country, he abhors the monarchy’s accumulation of wealth while the average citizen struggles to pay rent or mortgage, council tax and television licences, and contents insurance for their few possessions. He therefore instructed solicitor, Steven Weston, to obtain the estate ‘at all costs’. McMaster defined ‘at all costs’: ‘to encourage those in authority to reach a favourable agreement either by legal threat or cash under the council chamber’s table’.

  Seven months’ later, Steve Weston secured Ashton Hill’s title.

  Over the following two years, McMaster and his wife, Gloria, worked tirelessly to restore the property to its original condition. Expenditure soared beyond the purchase price, brought about by Phillip’s insistence that one wing be totally remodelled. The faded title document decreed that no major departure from the building’s original structure be allowed. McMaster chose to interpret ‘major departure’ so loose that its inclusion became superfluous. Because McMaster is not one to capitulate to authority, it is no surprise that he also flouted conditions of the listed buildings’ register. With selfish pride, he boasted: they can’t tell me what to do with my property.

  He stared at the title’s scaled-down cross-hatched area near the rear boundary. A bold stamp read: ‘Do not Plough’. Colouration denoted a 165-metre strip, extending from the centre of McMaster’s property and into the neighbouring Blackshaw’s Mill. The McMasters had no intention of ploughing. Nor had they plans to develop the rear acreage. Renovating the new home was a priority that pushed the title document’s discoloured markings into the background – but not too far from Phillip McMaster. To a detective, the addendum hid like a jewel in a pot plant: Why would an owner of rural land affix such a clause?

  In trying to answer the conundrum, he considered the prospect of unstable earth, underground caves or tunnels, and the likelihood of buried relics or graves of long-passed clan. But no evidence supported the hypothesis. A painstaking sweep with a hired metal detector revealed nothing – discounting his worst-case scenario of the field being riddled with century-old sub-surface rabbit traps. The trauma continued: What can I find out without ploughing? Who the hell would know if I do?

  It was curiosity, trumping the detective’s penchant of leaving no question unanswered, that compelled McMaster to research Ashton Hill’s history. The estate’s original plans survive in Westlands Council archives. Records show the property had been constructed in 1822 to the order of Lord Stevenson, a then prominent member of the House of Lords. At the time of lodgement, only the owner or tax collector would have reason to inspect the huge sheet. Stevenson would have had no inkling that in 190 years’ time all manner of council proprietorship over its residents’ rights to privacy, and the willy-nilly granting of Freedom of Information applications to all and sundry would reward every nosy-parker with information to which they were not, and should not be, entitled.

  On Stevenson’s death in 1860, the estate passed to his only child, Penelope, who remained a hermit in the property until consumption claimed her in 1884. To comply with her father’s wish that the estate pass to charity in the event of there being no lineal family descendant, the property was gifted to the Medicinal Trust, whose charter it was, ironically, to research prevention of communicable diseases.

  On inheriting the property, trust custodians planned to convert the ground floors to research facilities, and the upper floor to office space. The south wing would house the Trust’s physician. The custodians’ foresight, however, was shattered after discovering Lord Stevenson’s covenant demanding the property maintain its original facade and fit out. They could not successfully renovate the estate. Nor could they sell it – the slightest infraction would deliver the property to the crown. As a consequence, the trust forsook the bequest, leaving Ashton Hill vacant and neglected for 97 years.

  The twenty-first century parallels the nineteenth, insomuch as males’ acuity ranks high. Both eras judge personal standing and credibility by wealth. Stevenson flaunted his by erecting the palatial 17-room mansion on a prominent rise, but discrete enough to escape the cacophony of galloping hooves and crackling carriage wheels emanating from the nearby Worcester to Evesham road.

  Today, McMaster flaunts the renovated mansion under duress of whining lorry tyres, screaming four-cylinder, ten thousand revs-per-minute motorcycles, and the morning and evening commuter procession that swells to hundreds of weekend tourists who alone have elevated the status of the once rutted track to the well-travelled A44. His foresight in planting a parallel stand of cedars and willows mutes the busy thoroughfare’s traffic noise.

  Bordering the McMaster property lays Blackshaw’s Mill. Surrounded by 25 fertile Worcestershire acres fronting the River Avon, the former textile factory was long ago converted to a family home. Today, the only survivors of the eighteenth-century mill are two huge water wheels that once drove a score of antiquated bevelled cogs which creaked and groaned crude mechanical agitation to the wash and dye rooms.

  For the past fourteen years Giuseppe and Maria Caruso have lovingly tended the property. Its heyday returned a regular income from sheep sales, baled hay, and grazing the local pony club’s horses. Today, wild grass baled into cheap chaff withers in the fields.

  Giuseppe is one of Britain’s early invasions of European migrants, having arrived with his parents in 1962 and settling in Manchester – home to a strong Italian community. At sixteen-years-old he joined his father, Giuseppe senior, who was a master craftsman in laying terrazzo. With the advent of fibreglass and resin shower bases, and vinyl and ceramic tiled flooring, terrazzo lost favour with builders. Young Giuseppe could have followed fellow tradesman into kerbing and paving, but laying daily expanses of dull grey concrete failed to excite as did the sparkling, glittery medium he had enjoyed for twenty-odd years. He disappointed his father by joining Royal Mail as a sorter.

  Employed behind the counter of Manchester City Post Office was Postal Clerk Grade Two, Maria Mazzini, a stunning beauty of classic Italian proportion, coached to shun male attention. Never could she wear down Giuseppe’s proposals for an evening at the cinema; she had no chance, because Giuseppe walked into the Post Office every day at 4.45 p.m., moseyed up to her counter, and purchased six first class stamps. When they married in 1985, twenty-seven months after first setting eyes on each other, Giuseppe presented Maria his tin of 2,484 stamps – six hundred and twenty pounds worth.

  Maria is now the archetypal rotund Italian grandmother – living only for her family of six children and four grandchildren. Three daughters drifted away on the wave of marriage, and two sons chose to settle in Italy after a backpacking holiday convinced them that more opportunities lay in their ancestral country than did in England. The sibling’s exodus came about not by heartfelt wishes to embark on their own life, but of their own volition to escape violent arguments lifting the Caruso roof.

  Giuseppe Caruso is the quintessential master of the home – and of his wife. Tall and silver-haired, his dominant bearing often resulted in elder siblings having to rescue their mother from his wayward fists. The s
oft-natured young man who’d swept Maria from the Post Office floor had hardened like clay in a kiln. From the oven stepped a strong-willed bully who wanted everything his own way – and would get it. He created arguments from the most trivial circumstances: late meals; clothes not ironed properly; overspending at the supermarket; and his wife’s frequent molly-coddling of their youngest child.

  Conceived late in the Caruso’s marriage, Angelo was a heaven-sent gift. The special son’s name credited His divinity. However, from the dawn of his teen years, Angelo disappointed many. Became a nightmare. Walked with the devil. Lashings of attention which had extended into mid-childhood, slowly diminished, leaving Angelo with little supervision. He compensated by doing as he pleased, growing independent and gaining self-assurance while ignoring the wishes of others – including his parents, who sat a distant second on his list of personal ties. The taste of self-sufficiency moulded Angelo’s template for the future.

  He grew up, encouraged by his brothers, to rush to his mother’s defence. He is now, other than God, his mother’s only saviour. The most recent intervention saw Angelo punch his father to the ground. His elderly namesake did not retaliate; he banished Angelo from the family home. In defiance, Angelo continues to maintain regular contact with his mother in a relationship motivated only by his desire to cement a place at the forefront of his parents’ final bequests. Today, few words are spoken between Angelo and Giuseppe Caruso.

  And few words flutter between Giuseppe Caruso and Phillip McMaster.

  III

  Phillip and Gloria McMaster befriended the Carusos after moving in to the restored Ashton Hill six years’ earlier. Their rapport lolled around casual ‘hellos’, as opposed to the over-cordial friendships of longstanding rural residents. That suited the McMasters, for they barely exchanged a word between themselves. Phillip though, did extend the Caruso’s Christmas cordiality by delivering wine and chocolates recycled from constabulary well-wishers. Gloria too, weighed in with Avon testers that failed to meet her pretentious expectations. The insincere gift-giving merely paves a path to favours. Building a credit bank. Such is McMaster’s modus operandi – graft others into his debt.

  A fortnight earlier – shortly after Christmas – he’d approached Giuseppe, hoping to resolve a boundary problem. The issue arose after McMaster found what he believed was a discrepancy on his council tax notice. After recovering a copy of the original title document from one of his safes, he compared the land area with that specified on the council notice. It didn’t resolve the dilemma. Both figures tallied. But McMaster wasn’t satisfied. He buzzed down to the rear boundary and paced out the measurement. One stride to the metre; proven reliable over years of pacing out crime scenes, marking-out evidence locations, pinpointing positions of deceased or injured, and taking measurements of vehicular skid marks. Scene of crime officers (SOCO) would later confirm his computations – to within a few inches – with their scientific apparatus or humble measuring tape.

  The rear measurement accorded with both the tax notice and Land Registry title. He thrust a cigarette into his mouth, moved to the side boundaries and paced the parallel fence lines, pulling up six paces short of the official measurement. He double- and triple-checked to ensure he had not miscalculated by a whole six metres. He hadn’t.

  The legacy of McMaster’s twenty-plus years of police service has taught him to check all facts before conducting an enquiry, whether official or domestic. He attended the council office to detail his problem and received the fob off: ‘We rate by the title information. We have no reason to dispute official documents. Your argument’s against the neighbour, not Westlands.’

  ‘I’m not here to argue with anyone. All I want is to verify that council’s measurements are correct.’

  McMaster had expected the council to pass him off because council does not make mistakes. His temper-testing thirty-minute query was ultimately rewarded with a folder of archived material. The historic sheets detailed dates of acquisition and ownership changes, and confirmed the accuracy of official records. Only then did McMaster concede that a discrepancy did exist between those records and his measurements.

  Before returning to Ashton Hill he bought a 100-metre ‘Guaranteed to not Stretch’ nylon/fibreglass tape. Subsequent measurements confirmed his suspicion: the adjacent landholder – in years or centuries prior to the Caruso’s taking possession – had moved the rear boundary by 5.7 metres. Nearly six metres, or 20-odd feet over 544 feet, is a substantial chunk of land. As efforts to retrieve it could spark a full-blown dispute, McMaster appointed surveyors to repeg his estate.

  The boundary discrepancy brewed ill will between the neighbours. Caruso called him ‘infantile’ for haggling over the small strip of land. ‘I don’t have a problem,’ he said. ‘You take the land if you’re sure it’s yours.’ The proposal was sincere and generous. Caruso would not miss the sliver from his 25-acre holding.

  ‘Thank you, Joe, but no.’ McMaster responded. ‘What’s fair is fair, right? If I’ve made a mistake, I don’t want to see you deprived because of it. Proper checks will give us both the detail and evidence we need, right.’

  ‘You police. Always evidence, evidence, evidence. Why we no have the gentleman’s agreement still? One handshake. Everything done.’

  ‘It’s a different world, Joe. Everything has to be right, right? And legal. I can’t even order a black coffee without fear of being called a racist. Can’t eat bloody white bread anymore; only order multigrain, right? – saves the drama. And don’t even get me started on my black pudding!’

  Giuseppe shot McMaster a quizzical look. ‘How’s a surveyor tell if the boundary’s been moved?’

  ‘They mark out the land to the exact measurements as noted on the original land title documents. I might even get in a mate to do a geological survey; run a scanner across the surface, bit like an X-ray of the earth. I’m sure we’ll find a sign of fence or gate posts; maybe decayed roots of an old hedgerow or even a course of stone from an old dry wall.’

  ‘Good luck to you. Like I’m say, I don’t care. I save you the trouble and give the land.’

  One week later, the West Midland Surveyors’ report read: “We hereby certify the property described on Plan of Subdivision XD83642BS as Lot 29, now known as Ashton Hill, is deficient in length of eighteen feet and five inches on the West and East boundaries, respectively. We have duly pegged intersecting boundaries with approved stakes.”

  McMaster dug holes for fence posts. Scooped out dregs by hand. The second handful sparkled. Darts of light pranced about like effervescent bubbles jumping from a carbonated drink. He ran his fingers through the fine silt. Sifted it from one hand to the other. Spat on his shirt sleeve and wiped a small stone. Swivelled his head as if he were about to shoplift a block of chocolate. And then he slipped a fingernail size gold pebble into his pocket.

  He dropped posts into the holes and paced back to his house. On a table lay the laminated topographic estate plan. McMaster’s interest focused on the lower section: ‘Do not Plough. Preserved land.’

  He mapped an imaginary vein, rich in gold deposits, worming its way beneath his and the Caruso property.

  Across the border, Wales holds a place in the annals of British gold, when, in 70AD, scavenging Romans picked up the shiny ore. Over succeeding centuries, exploration and production gained momentum, right through to the late 1930s. In Gwynedd, North Wales, commercial operations began in the 1850s, where significant development enriched the small country until, in 1999, flattening gold prices and adverse economic conditions closed the mine. Other mining companies followed, citing strangling Occupational Health and Safety laws, environmental concerns – including the new emphasis on carbon emissions – and to top it all off, unrealistic union demands.

  McMaster’s relentless research uncovered details of a licence granted in 2010 to allow mining within a 120-square kilometre area known as the Dolgellau Gold Belt in Wales. He h
oped a stratigraphic relationship would exist between Dolgellau and his find in the West Midlands. The Cambrian mountain range rose between the two locales, and it was that phenomenon that convinced McMaster that his finding might well be a satellite artery of Dolgellau.

  He hoped that since Giuseppe had been so willing to forsake a small strip of land, he might be receptive to selling the whole farm. During subsequent over-the-fence banter, he made a veiled offer for the Caruso property. Giuseppe was not so restrained and forcefully rejected the proposal: ‘We no want to move.’

  You’ll move. Such was McMaster’s resolve. Never one to quit a challenge, he forecast reaping millions of pounds of instant wealth – with or without Caruso’s land. The burning problem flared before him: How do I extract riches from my property without arousing the Caruso’s interest?

  Days later, while inspecting the new rear fence, McMaster noticed Maria Caruso tending her vegetable garden. It was no coincidence. McMaster complimented the lush rows of green foliage and freshly turned earth.

  ‘I’ll be doing a bit of that soon.’

  ‘You like the gardening, Mr Mac?’

  ‘Only for business. I’m going to set up a farm. Vegetables. Plenty of them. Maybe nuts and olives too.’

  He steered the conversation to Blackshaw’s Mill. Maria confided that she’d long dreamed of moving to a small village. ‘My Giuseppe, he’s just want to stay here. He’s not want the trouble of packing and moving. He’s just say this is our home – nowhere else there will be family. I’m say, “the family’s gone”. He’s so stubborn is my Giuseppe.’

  IV

  Dennis Stonebridge slides the knife through the envelope. Peers inside. Smiles. Taps the wad of £20 notes and sinks the envelope into his jacket. He hands McMaster a certificate and shakes his hand with the vigorous pumping a car salesman injects into a prospective customer he hopes will generate substantial commissions for the lavish, dangling gold chains, the chronographic watch and the diamond encrusted dental work that radiates the salesman’s permanent dazzling persona.