‘Where did Alf get all this money?’ Olivia’s eyes were wide.
‘Are they contributions?’ I asked.
‘Nobody ever gave us that much money. Never!’
Alf was a flake, his theology even flakier, so that I could believe. ‘Could Alf have collected it over a long period of time? Saving it up?’
‘What we collect in the can? What comes in the mail? I take to the bank. There’s five, maybe six hundred pounds in the bank right now.’
‘Where do you think the money came from, then, Olivia?’
‘How should I know?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not legal, and that’s a fact.’
I closed the lid to the boot, resisting the urge to wipe off my fingerprints. ‘I think we better clear off before Alf comes home.’
Olivia checked her watch. ‘He won’t be home for hours. Won’t leave till Derrick leaves, and Derrick won’t miss the workers heading home.’
‘Derrick the tall bloke?’ I asked as Olivia helped me ease the cover back over the BMW and tie it down.
‘Right. Ah-maze-ing. Got arrested once for breaking into this lab up in Essex and letting all the animals out of the cages.’
‘My kind of guy,’ I said as I closed the garage door, replaced the lock and shoved the U-shaped shackle home.
I drove Olivia to the nearby bus station where she could catch a coach directly to Brixham. There was time to spare, so we sat in the car park with the windows open, enjoying a pleasant afternoon breeze.
Olivia stopped gnawing on her thumbnail long enough to ask, ‘What do you think I should do about Alf?’
‘Well, as much as I’d like to pin Susan’s accident on somebody, the fact that his car isn’t obviously damaged, and he has receipts that show he was probably on his way to the Chunnel at the time…’ I let my voice trail off.
‘But the money?’
‘I don’t know about the money, Olivia. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Alf keeps a big bag of money in his car. He’s no spring chicken. He could have been saving it up for years.’
Olivia climbed out of the car, closed the door. She leaned through the open window, resting her elbows on the sill. ‘If you believe that, Hannah, then I have a bridge that I can sell you real cheap.’
I had to laugh. ‘Well, take care, Olivia. You still have my phone number, right?’
She patted her handbag. ‘Know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think I can wait to start being a barmaid. Alf wants watching, don’t you think?’
EIGHTEEN
‘Gazump is a Cockney corruption of gezumph, a Yiddish word that means to swindle or overcharge.’Simon Clark, ‘Gazumping London’, www.Bloomberg.com, July 26, 2007
Hannah, you are totally screwed.
Although I drove around for several minutes, I couldn’t find a single available parking space in the Visitors’ Center car park. My hopes were raised when the tail lights of a green Vauxhall flashed white and the vehicle began to back in my direction. I had already turned the steering wheel, preparing to slip into its space, when another car zipped around the corner and beat me to it. The smirk on the driver’s face as he aced me out made me wish I carried a box cutter so I could put it to good use on the young jerk’s tires.
So I waited, idling, still fuming, near the entrance. Eventually, a woman entered the car park from Flavel Place, carrying two shopping bags. I followed her to her parking space, positioned the car strategically and waited while she stowed her purchases in the boot. She gave me a friendly wave, pulled out, and I slotted my car in, thinking, whew, dodged that bullet.
I walked the long way around to Horn Hill House, scanning light poles, eaves and rooftops along the way, checking to see if there were any CCTV cameras installed anywhere in the vicinity of the spot on the Embankment where Susan had been struck down.
Zero, zip, nada.
Other than a webcam on the roof of the Royal Castle Hotel (was it even operational?), Dartmouth didn’t seem to be a town that was overly concerned about serious crime. Even the pint-sized police station appeared devoid of closed-circuit recording devices.
That night at dinner I asked Janet and Alan Brelsford about it.
Alan crossed his knife and fork on his plate and scowled. ‘Don’t get me started!’
‘We petitioned for the cameras,’ Janet said. ‘We don’t have much trouble here on Horn Hill, but there have been a number of problems with hooliganism and vandals at Royal Avenue Gardens. However…’ She drew out the word. ‘The town council, in their infinite wisdom, voted the proposal down.’
‘They think they can handle the vandalism and petty crime with better street lighting.’ Alan picked up his silverware and began sawing on his lamb chop. ‘Idiots!’
‘What happened to Susan Parker had nothing to do with the presence or absence of street lighting, though, did it?’ I sighed. ‘It was daylight. If there’d been a camera down there, the person who ran Susan down might even now be cooling his or her heels in one of Her Majesty’s fine prisons.’
‘What you fail to understand, my American friend, is that installing CCTV cameras is an invasion of privacy. It might even contravene the Human Rights Act.’ Alan drew quote marks in the air with his fingers.
‘In which case,’ Janet huffed, ‘there needs to be a massive effort to pull them down all across the country. How many at last count? Forty-two million?’
‘To be fair,’ Alan said, chewing thoughtfully, ‘the town council did consult the police, who weren’t entirely on board. Said, and I quote, “it wouldn’t help in the legal process”, whatever the hell that means.’
‘Stingy sods. They just don’t want to spend the money!’
‘It’s the same in the States,’ Paul complained. ‘We bend over backwards to protect the guilty, always at the expense of the innocent.’
‘Makes me tired,’ I said.
‘Me, too,’ Paul said. ‘So, let’s change the subject.’ He smiled apologetically at our hosts, then affectionately at me. ‘Once you turn Hannah on, it’s sometimes hard to turn her off.’
Five minutes later I was really ‘on,’ telling the tale of my adventures with Olivia. I’d reached the part about the BMW and discovering the money in the boot, when the house phone rang.
Janet pushed her chair away from the table and hurried off to take the call. ‘Sorry, but that’s probably a booking. They always call at night, for some reason.’
When Janet returned, she was grinning. ‘Guess who’s coming back tomorrow?’
Back? I thought for a minute. ‘Cathy Yates?’
‘Yup. By train, this time. I’m collecting her at the station in Totnes.’ Janet reclaimed her chair, helped herself to more runner beans, then sent the bowl on another circuit around the table.
‘Had I but known,’ I said, piling some beans on my plate, ‘I could have picked her up in her very own rental car.’
‘Oh, you squeaked by on that one, Hannah Ives.’ Janet waggled her brows. ‘While you were in the shower, Europcar called saying they’d collected it. Cathy’d left them our number.’
Paul shook his head. ‘Hannah sometimes skates on very thin ice.’
I stuck out my tongue at him. ‘Better to be lucky than smart.’
Alan laughed. ‘Who said that?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it seemed appropriate.’
Janet turned to me. ‘Cathy says she has exciting news.’
‘Gosh, I wonder if she’s found out more about her father?’
‘I asked her that, but she just laughed and said I’d have to wait until she got here.’
When Cathy arrived, she didn’t make us wait long for her news. She dragged her bag into the entrance hall, parked it next to the newel post, and plopped herself down on a chair in the lounge. While five minutes out of Dartmouth, Janet had given me a head’s up on her cell phone, so Paul and I were waiting for them.