Chapter 11 - Fingers and Thumbs
A call was put through to the Clerk's office for D.I. Helford. The team looking through Chewter's house had seen his bank records, and found that large sums of cash had been deposited at intervals since his departure from the Council. No source was obvious, so the officer in charge had contacted the bank to pursue further enquiries. A small diary had been found in a jacket in the wardrobe, and it showed that he was expecting to meet someone two nights ago at 11pm, though no location was written in. The entry looked like 'A.D' but it was scribbled and unclear. The following day a medical appointment was entered, so the officer had checked around the doctor's surgeries, found the right one, and was told that Mr Chewter had failed to turn up yesterday.
"Found any relatives or friends?" the Inspector asked.
"Not yet, sir, seems like a loner to me."
"We need to find out where he went two nights ago - perhaps he went out for a drink first, and met this 'A.D' after the pubs shut. See if you can find any trace of him in the locals."
"Right, sir, just as soon as we finish here."
"Check the paper shop over the road from him - any gossip the man there can give you. Don't forget to look for his laptop, and any storage devices. Oh, and bring me any sets of keys you find in the house."
"Paper shop, laptop, keys, OK, sir." The officer sounded bored.
Helford was wishing he could be there, as he liked to get a feel for the victim's living space. He especially liked to look at their books and music - it gave him an insight into the influences which had shaped the mind of the person. So far all he knew was that Chewter had a cat and bought regular newspapers.
Dean had finished looking through his pile of personnel records, and flipped the last folder shut. "Did you find only current employees?" Helford asked him. Dean had a quick think. "Yes, only people here," was the reply.
Helford's mouth set in an angry line. He got up again and went next door to Fiona's office. Without any preamble he demanded: "I want all the files on ex-employees."
She looked up defiantly. "They're down in the basement, as I told you."
"There was a female employee who left after a problem with Mr Chewter - where is her file?"
"Who do you mean?"
He paused. That was the other thing he'd meant to ask Kim Coulthard while James was out of the room, so as not to embarrass her. If Fiona was going to be infuriating it would be quicker to ask Kim. He made a rapid exit and found Kim in the kitchenette where she was making a coffee. Quietly he asked her for the name of the other employee. "Anya Dortmann," she replied. "I'd better write it down for you. Funny, that was the one whose tax details I needed - she called me because she's moving abroad."
Back in her office Helford watched her write the name down, and began to see a glimmer of hope. 'A.D', a motive, and a rapid exit abroad. Would she have had the means and the opportunity, this Anya Dortmann?
Returning to Fiona's office he insisted that she check in the safe to find Anya Dortmann's file, but she showed him the remaining contents of the safe and he could see for himself that no files were there. "When did you start keeping them down in the basement, Miss Carvell? Mrs Coulthard came in here recently to look up details of Anya Dortmann's tax records, and you had the file in here then."
Fiona looked very uncomfortable. "I moved them about a week ago," she admitted.
"Why?" he pressed her.
"There was too much in the safe - something had to go into the archives."
"You took it upon yourself to make that decision? Surely you should have consulted your colleagues, they might have needed the files."
Fiona winced. She knew she had been caught out, and the same question would be asked by the Clerk, and Kim Coulthard. She suffered an internal struggle, then her bony frame abruptly sat down in her chair and she picked up a pencil, jabbing it into her hand repeatedly. She started to say something, stopped, and started again.
"Well, the truth is" - jab, jab, - "I had a phone call" - jab - "from, er," - jab - "Mr Chewter."
Helford became alarmed at the jabbing, and said kindly, "Please don't get upset, Miss Carvell, I only want to know how the files came to be moved and when. Please, continue what you were saying."
She put the pencil down with a skinny, trembling hand, and fixed her gaze on the papers in front of her. Quietly she resumed her story: "He said that he was embarrassed about what had happened before he left, and didn't want the new Clerk to see his file. He asked me to take his file - and Miss Dortmann's - and put them in the basement. He told me there was a set of old personnel records in one of the cabinets, and it would be a favour to him if I could put them in there. I didn't see any harm in it - after all, the files were still available if anyone wanted to see them. There were only a few ex-employee files anyway - we've had very little turnover of staff in recent years. People started, but almost no-one left. One died - the Clerk before Mr Chewter. I took all the ex-employee files away, so it didn't look odd just the two going."
"You took all the ex-employee files? How many would that have been?"
"Four - no, five."
"Were they all in beige folders like the ones we've been checking?"
"Manila," she corrected him. "Yes, they were - not like the ones downstairs, that was an older style of folder we used."
This was getting weirder by the minute. Someone had removed all the files that Fiona claimed to have taken to the basement. After the fingerprint team had done their work there, he would have to have the whole room searched.
"Names of the ex-employees, please?"
Fiona took a deep breath, and reeled off the names. "Chewter, Dortmann, DaSilva, Lawless, Newey."
"Can you just briefly tell me why each of them left?"
"You already know all about Mr Chewter, I suppose?" Helford nodded. "Anya Dortmann left because of a?problem?but also she was taking a course in child welfare, and I understand she wanted to become a nanny or something. I believe she is taking up a position soon, working for a family in Portugal. Jennifer DaSilva left to have a baby and didn't come back after maternity leave - she was the receptionist here before Imogen Stanley. Carl Lawless left because he wanted to join the army. He was in the Amenities team. Mr Newey was the Parish Clerk before Mr Chewter. He died of a brain haemorrhage at home, poor man - he was only fifty-nine."
"Yes, that must have been dreadful. I suppose his replacement had to be found quickly?" Helford was determined to get all he could out of Fiona while she was in a chastened mood.
"Yes, it was all rather rushed, looking back. The Council at least had a bit of notice when Mr Chewter resigned - er, left - I mean..."
Helford decided to let her off lightly. "On another subject - can you think of any reason for the other files being removed? Any controversial details in any of those people's files?"
Fiona hesitated. "We-ell.....you know, I suppose why Mr Chewter wanted Anya Dortmann's file put away....?"
The inspector nodded. Fiona seemed relieved to be absolved from the responsibility of telling tales. She frowned for a moment or two with her head down, then shrugged. "I can't think of any other file with any unusual entries - everyone else left for very straightforward reasons, and there were no remarkable circumstances."
"Did Mr Chewter ask you to remove Kim Coulthard's file? After all, she was also the - er - subject of his attentions."
"As a matter of fact he did ask if I could remove any pages from her file dealing with him, but I refused. I said it would be most improper."
"Please wait here a minute," he asked her. Back in the Clerk's office he found Kim's file in the pile Dean had looked through. He took it and laid it in front of Fiona. "Could you show me which pages that would have been?" he asked.
She leafed through the file, and on reaching the end, flipped it over and looked through again. A frown creased her brow. "That's funny - I must have missed it." She went slowly through the file a third time, clo
sing it slowly at the end. "It's gone - it's all missing," she whispered.
"I think we will need to have your fingerprints eliminated, Miss Carvell, and then we may be able to work out who removed the files from downstairs and the pages from this file."
Fiona looked up at him. "Well, isn't it obvious?" she replied caustically. "Mr Chewter did it himself. He must have kept keys, and let himself in."
Helford leaned forward, looking at her in a new light. She had a logical mind, which drew sensible conclusions from evidence, even if she lacked imagination. "How easy would it have been for him to get in, without being seen?" he enquired.
She considered this, and snorted suddenly, making Helford jump. "I told them!" she exploded. "I kept saying that the CCTV should cover the back entrance as well, but they said it was never used except for deliveries during working hours. You can't see it from the road - the vans reverse round the back of that hedge, and they're out of sight. Of course when there's a delivery, someone opens the back door and sees the stuff in, then locks up again, so it doesn't matter. But I always thought it was a security risk."
Helford looked at the keys she had given him, and found the one labelled 'Back Door'. It was a large Chubb, so the back was fitted with a deadlock. This had to be the way that any criminals had got in and out of the building. "Is the back door wired into the alarm system?" he asked.
"Yes, of course."
"And how often do you change the code?"
"Not often enough, in my opinion. The cleaners complain that they can't remember if we change it, so it hasn't been changed for - oh, two or three years, I suppose."
"Thank you, Miss Carvell, you've been most helpful. My sergeant will be round later to take your fingerprints - yes, I'm sorry, it is an unpleasant necessity - and I'd appreciate the set of keys as soon as you can get it done." He smiled at her, but the tight-lipped look had returned to her face.
Dean had been busy directing a pair of officers who had been sent from the station to join the investigation. They were now touring the building arranging to take prints, and had sealed off the other archive room in preparation for a dusting for fingerprints. Helford brought Dean up to speed on the back entrance, and they set off downstairs for a look at the area.
Sure enough, there was an entrance that was quite invisible from the road. A high box hedge, clipped in ornamental style, obscured a slip road that ran behind it, leading to the back entrance.
"Let's walk right round this place, Dean, and see what a burglar would see," Helford suggested. They took a tour, and noticed that even from the small field behind the building, a line of trees and hedgerows in between made it impossible to see a van parked in the little road round the back. As if to prove the point, a Transit van marked with the livery of a well-known office supplies company emerged from the end of the hedge. They had missed seeing it arrive.
In Reception the Inspector asked Imogen about the delivery that had just come in. "That's right," she smiled. "Louie, with the A4 paper. He does two rings on his mobile, and I get someone to open up the back for him. It's much quicker than him stopping in front and lugging it through the porch - he can just open the back of his van and chuck it out in the rear corridor."
Imogen was having quite a day herself. The Pebbleton History Club had a meeting in the Clandecy Room, and she had to explain over and over again why the building was crawling with policemen. The History Club (membership twelve, combined age nine hundred and twelve) was arriving for their monthly meeting. They signed the Visitors book in slow, spidery handwriting, while chatting to her about all sorts of things. She was endlessly patient with them, but her work suffered for at least half-an-hour as they trickled in. They all adored her, and she enjoyed their visits, especially as she had lost the last of her grandparents not long ago.
"I miss Cuffy," she thought to herself, as the final History Club members tottered away to the Clandecy Room. Cuffy wasn't a member of the Club, but he came to her memory as he had earlier that morning, when the inspector said Mr Chewter had disappeared. He hadn't been seen for weeks, with or without his familiar straw boater. Sue was coming back from her holiday on Monday, and she would ask her if she could find out anything.
Sue had useful contacts in the area, as part of her work was to keep in touch with charities and welfare groups in the area. There were youth initiatives, centres for the elderly, day programs for people with learning difficulties, and other worthy efforts. After the latest one began, a drive to improve the health of the village residents, Sue had suggested a slogan: 'Pebbleton - the place to be if you're spotty, potty, dotty or grotty!' Yes, Sue would know how to find out where Cuffy had gone.
The young constable who had taken her fingerprints had made her laugh through the experience, and now she had something to talk about at lunch. Her boyfriend was taking her out, as he had become very protective since the news last night. Her social network had sent her the news via Facebook, but the originator was a Twitter fan.
At that very moment the offending Tweeter was being scolded by Harry Tanner in the Amenities van. "I told you to keep your trap shut, Ben Wickens - now look, the whole village is outside Southcliff Hall. You just couldn't resist showing off, could you. Now, I don't want to hear another word out of you until we get out of here and back to work. We'll never get those shrubs in at this rate."
They were pulling up into the car park outside the building, with a dozen viburnums stacked in the back of the van, their roots wrapped with plastic to stop them drying out. A call from Fiona had brought them back to have their prints taken, at the request of the police. Harry was exaggerating a little about the whole village, but certainly a crowd still hung around the front of the porch. A lucky few were under the shade, but some fanned themselves as they waited in the midday heat. It was unusually warm, for late in an English summer. Harry was grumpy - he preferred to plant shrubs in cool, damp weather. Plants, in his opinion, deserved more attention than people. They gave less trouble and were far more rewarding.
Their two colleagues on the Amenities team were also arriving, and together the team trooped into the building, their distinctive shirts and logos gaining them easy entry past the constable at the door. In Reception the pair of cleaners stood chatting, and a rueful reunion began. Vicky, the youngest, went to the staff room and put the kettle on, and the senior cleaner, Zoe, took orders for tea and coffee. "Might as well be comfortable," she reasoned.
Harry went upstairs to see Fiona, and came back down with a large bunch of keys in his hand and a signed slip of paper. "Ben, make yourself useful," he ordered grumpily. "Fiona says the police need a full set of these copied - go over to Keymate and get them done. Leave them if you have to, and we'll pick them up later. I'll let them know if your name is called."
One by one, each member of staff was escorted upstairs to the large table in the staff room and had their fingerprints taken. It was an unnerving experience, even for the innocent. For those conscious of any illegal activity, it was nerve-wracking. Dean wandered between the waiting group and the few being processing upstairs. As he watched, he was aware of the nerves - it was a bit like being a customs officer, he thought to himself. If only he could open their thoughts as easily as opening a suitcase.
Ben returned, with two keys in his hand. He held them out to Harry. "They can't do these, they're too old - the guy said no-one stocks them anymore."
Harry took the offending keys up to Fiona. "Oh! That's odd - well, never mind. I'll tell the Inspector."
She had borrowed Kim's keys to make the copies, and left her own with the officers. She knew every key by sight, but the Inspector would soon figure out which ones these were. She knew, and was drawing her own conclusions. When she explained to D.I.Helford that these keys were too outdated to be copied, he immediately compared the two old keys to the labelled ones, and found they fitted the archive rooms. He nodded slowly to himself. "Please find me Mr Goswell's set of ke
ys, Miss Carvell."
She disappeared, and returned with another set of keys. She had checked on the way, and her conclusions were borne out. Mr Goswell did not have, probably had never had, the keys to the archive rooms. The inspector looked, made no comment, but wrote in his notebook. "Thank you, that's all," he said, handing the keys back to her. Fiona was mortified, believing that she should have checked the keys before the new Clerk was given them. It never occurred to her that the deceitful actions of the last Clerk were not her responsibility. She returned to her office, suffering all kinds of guilt and self-doubt. How could she have been so blind to Mr Chewter's real nature?
The inspector finished his sandwiches, and closed his eyes for a few minutes. He opened them abruptly when Dean came back in the room. "How's it going?" he asked. Dean updated him on the progress of the fingerprinting. "Any odd reactions?"
"Only one," Dean replied. "I thought the Clerk acted strangely. Not in a guilty way, exactly, but - well, resigned. As though he knew the game was up, as if we'd find out something because of his fingerprints. He put on a good face when it was being done, joking a bit, but I watched him before, while he was waiting, and coming up the stairs. He wasn't relaxed at all."
"Interesting....I've just found out that the previous Clerk apparently failed to hand over the keys to the archive rooms to the new Clerk. My guess is that he tried to have the whole set copied, found that those two were too old, and kept them so he could come in and out as he pleased. He asked Fiona Carvell to move his personnel file to the archive room, and it also looks as though he pinched that and some other files."
"But then why....if Chewter was up to no good, why should the new Clerk be the one to worry?"
"I have a hunch that he has a past. His CV is strangely.....featureless. I wondered if some of it was made up, so I wrote down the places he worked a while ago. Most places only check your most recent jobs, and don't bother with the historic stuff. I intend to get his background checked out. Certainly he wasn't as qualified as the Clerk who died - the one Chewter replaced."
"They haven't had much luck with Clerks - how did he die?"
"Brain haemorrhage at home - don't get carried away, Dean," Helford smiled. "But you're right, two dead Clerks must be making Goswell nervous. Perhaps that's what he was thinking about. We mustn't set too much store by our observations of reactions. People are odd, you never know what they are thinking really."
As he said it he reminded himself that the minds of his two teenage sons were as much a mystery. His wife had told him that the boys wanted to take part in the Extreme Sports Weekend, and he had to make a decision. They wanted to bungee jump and try hang-gliding, but his wife was sure that they would be permanently injured, especially by the bungee jumping. She'd heard about eye damage, and he meant to look it up on the internet, but had run out of time last weekend. The boys were getting agitated as time ran out to book places for the events. He pulled out his mobile phone and switched it on. Dean left him to it, and went to get them both some tea.
"Hi, love - can't talk long. Do the boys still want to do the Extreme Sports?" His wife said that it was all they talked about. "OK, I know you don't agree with the bungee jumping, but I understand there's abseiling. That's safer, you're roped on all the time. What about that?"
"Oh, Keith, I don't know...."
"Pip, we can't stop them doing everything - they'll just go and do more dangerous things as soon as they're eighteen. Let me find out what's available. I'm here at the Council offices, just over the way from the Tourism place. They have the booking forms there. If I ask which are the safer ones, I'll book something. OK?" Pippa Helford reluctantly agreed. Like most mothers, she was scared for her offspring, but she trusted her husband to make sensible decisions.
When Dean returned they made a list of things to do. Dean was anxious to follow up the hint provided by the vicar, and wanted to have Councillor Clandecy interrogated. "Not just him," said Helford. "If one can be corrupt, so can two or three. Let's get a list, and just for good measure we'll have them fingerprinted as well."
Dean grinned. Sometimes Helford's working class roots showed, and he took mischievous pleasure in making those of more elevated social status eat humble pie. He was in for a surprise, however.