“Can’t they give you a proper clipboard, then?” I asked frivolously.
“Spending cuts,” he grumbled. “They’ll be asking us to bring our own water next, you mark my words. By the way, why did you come down that old rutted track? Why didn’t you use the tarmac road? Much better for your fancy car, I’d have thought.” Rod pointed to a beautiful tarmac road leading off into the distance. He smiled when he saw the frown on my face.
We sat and chatted for around five minutes. It seemed that the lady of the house had been clearing rubbish and had decided to pile it all up and start a bonfire; not a great idea when the landscape is tinder dry, after a particularly dry winter and spring. In Rod’s view she hadn’t built the fire properly, and when the wind swung around it blew flaming debris and flying sparks onto the roof of the single storey extension. The flat roof was still littered with dried leaves and twigs from the previous autumn, and these quickly caught fire. The lady panicked and, instead of securing the house, she ran next door for help. By the time help arrived, in the shape of the fire crew, the flat roof was well ablaze and flames had leapt in through an open window and ignited the curtains. There was little left to save. At least no lives had been lost. The owners had moved out earlier in the week, and the lady of the house had been tidying up the grounds for the new owner.
“You’ll be needing to speak to Brenda; she’s the owner and the policyholder. She’s next door with Mrs Withers,” Rodney told me without lifting his eyes from his report.
***
Brenda was a slight woman unsuited to her name, in my opinion. I don’t know why, it just seemed to me she would have suited a more delicate name like Emma or Florence. She had obviously been pretty in her younger days but she had aged quickly. She was forty seven years old but could have been ten years older. Perhaps her appearance owed more to her distress over the house burning down. Her eyes were puffy and red with crying. Her face was smudged with soot.
Obviously in this business you learn to show sensitivity as you are often dealing with people who have suffered a loss of property, and sometimes a loved one. I eased into the questioning by asking Brenda if she had lost anything irreplaceable in the fire, although I already knew that the house was empty. She brightened immediately as she began to realise that, disastrous though the fire had been, she had lost only a house that they were vacating in any event. Her belongings had been moved out, and were all safe.
After more, gentle questioning I was able to determine that the house had been sold and contracts should have been exchanged last Friday. She told me that she should have been in Brussels by now. Unfortunately the exchange had been delayed and was now due to take place on Monday. Somehow I couldn’t see that happening.
“Brenda, this is the situation,” I began. “Once contracts are exchanged, the new owner is responsible for insuring the property, and so if you had exchanged last Friday it would have been their problem and probably a legal argument would have ensued. To be honest, this way is simpler. Can you tell me what you insured the buildings for? The rebuilding costs, I mean?”
“Yes, the insurance is set at half a million pounds, for buildings only,” the weepy lady replied.
“OK, Brenda. That should be more than enough. I think that the RICS Rebuilding index will probably suggest around a hundred and seventy five thousand, but we need to add around twenty five per cent to that because the house is so far out in the countryside. Even so, we’re only talking two hundred and twenty five thousand or so, depending on the standard of finishing you had inside.”
“Oh, it was beautiful inside, always was, and Brenda had all the bathrooms and the kitchen done last year, didn’t you, Brenda?” Mrs Withers interjected helpfully. Brenda looked close to tears again as she nodded her agreement.
I discovered that Brenda was due to fly out to Brussels to join her husband, who had bought a flat in the Belgian capital so that he could fulfil his new role as the EU Commissioner for Labour Relations. I was impressed.
My phone rang, which was amazing way up here in the hills.
“Josh, are you alone?” It was Eddie from Dale County Insurance, Brenda’s insurer.
“Hold on,” I said as I excused myself from the presence of the two middle aged women. “OK, I’m outside, and I’m on my own.”
“Josh, I’m sorry to do this to you, mate.” I knew what was coming and I dreaded it. “The duty staff at head office have dug out the policy and they thought that they had better call me at home.”
“Come on, Eddie,” I sighed. “Don’t tell me there’s a problem with the policy. The poor woman is in pieces already.”
“Look, mate, I’m going to see what I can do, but she doesn’t have a policy with us anymore. She wrote to us last month, cancelling the policy as of last Friday, and we have already refunded the balance of her premium.”
I sighed, and swore under my breath. When would people learn? They decide to terminate their insurance, the sale date slips and they aren’t insured against loss. I see it time and time again. People save fifty pounds on the premium, but then something goes wrong and suddenly they are faced with a bill of tens of thousands.
Eddie and I spoke for a few moments more and then, feeling sick to my stomach, I went back inside to see Brenda.
***
It was a month since I had seen Brenda driven away in the ambulance. I had tried to be positive and I explained to her that the insurers would see what they could do, but to no avail. Brenda started hyperventilating and then she passed out.
In the intervening period the insurers had been under extreme pressure from the new EU Labour Relations Commissioner, and they may have given in had it not been for a stubborn refusal by the underwriters to accept the loss.
I personally took calls from the local MP, a Minister at the DTI and the Insurance Ombudsman. Nothing could change the facts. Brenda had cancelled the policy a week before the fire.
Eddie rang, his voice panicky. The tone of his message was that Brenda was back in the UK, staying with her sister whilst her husband calmed down. He blamed her, the grasping insurers and the unconscionable loss adjusters, according to Eddie, who had just put the phone down after a tirade from Brussels.
“You’re next on his list, buddy. Prepare yourself.”
I reviewed the papers on the case. The house was due to be sold for four hundred thousand pounds, and as the owners had neither the time nor the funds to rebuild, the plot was now being offered for sale, with the plans, for just one hundred and fifty thousand.
Between the three of us - Eddie, Brenda and me - we were bearing the brunt of the blame for the loss of a cool two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
The phone rang and I picked it up. “Josh Hammond speaking.”
“Please hold for the European Commissioner,” a slightly accented female voice requested. A moment’s silence followed, and then barely controlled anger.
“Is that Mr Hammond of Dyson Brecht?”
“Yes it is, Mr Hickstead.”
Chapter 2 4
Peppers Restaurant, Woolwich. London. Friday 9:30pm.
Once I had explained how I had first encountered Arthur Hickstead, the others acknowledged that it was probably enough to provide him with a motive for a blackmail attempt, especially as the amount of money he had lost was exactly the same amount that the blackmailer had demanded from me. However, the others did not see his arrest as imminent. I suggested that, had the blackmailer been an unemployed bus driver, he would have been on his way to the police station by now with his hands manacled behind his back. No-one disagreed, but they patiently explained that they had a long way to go before Bob could be taken before a court.