What's happened to bring it all back again? What do we know now that we didn't know before?" I had a feeling he was using me, and that's a feeling I don't like.
"This came last Tuesday," he said, extracting a crumpled envelope from the sheaf of papers. "I made you a photocopy."
I took the page he offered me and read it. There was a Welwyn Garden City address at the top and it went on:
Dear Mr. Crosby It is my sad duty to inform you that my older brother, Duncan Roberts, committed suicide four weeks ago. We found your address and telephone number among his papers and assume he had been in contact with the Friend's in Need society. May I take this opportunity to thank you for any help you may have offered Duncan, but unfortunately there was nothing anyone could do for him. Please accept this small cheque as a donation to help you in your good work. Yours sincerely, Andrew Roberts.
It was brief and to the point. Somebody was clearing up, doing their housework, after an untimely death in the family. You can excuse a surplus apostrophe in a situation like that.
"There was a cheque for twenty pounds with it," Crosby informed me.
"So who was Duncan Roberts?" I asked, laying the photocopy on the table. I was growing tired of riddles.
"Four weeks earlier," he explained, "I was on holiday in Ireland. When I returned the Friends informed me that a man had been trying to contact me. He phoned three times, sounding desperate, but would not talk to anyone else. The calls were traced to a phone box in south London. In the third and final call he said: "Tell him I did it. I started the fire, and I'm sorry." Then he hung up and there were no more calls. A few weeks later this letter arrives. It must be the same person, Mr. Priest. Duncan Roberts started the fire and it's been troubling his conscience all these years. I feel sure that it will be possible to link him to J. J. Fox."
He certainly knew how to string me along, and he hadn't finished yet.
My thoughts were a jumble of confusion. I wanted to help him, but what good could it do? Fox was an old man. We could hound him to his grave, but would we feel any better for it? Sometimes hatred keeps you going. Remove the object of the hatred and you've nothing left. Crosby had spent a lifetime pursuing J. J. Fox, for what? Because he bent the rules? Because, perhaps, some unknown people had died? It wasn't worth eating your heart and soul out for. Not even that.
Crosby read my mind and went for the jugular. He said: "I adopted the name Keith Crosby when I came to this country, Mr. Priest. Keith was an English pilot I met when I was hiding in France. Crosby was borrowed from Bing Crosby. I thought the name had a nice ring to it.
My real name, the one I used for the first twelve years of my life, was Johannes Josef Fuchs. I was that small boy on the train, attacked by the Hitler Youth. 1940 was the worst winter in living memory. I should have died, they expected me to die, but I didn't. I don't know what happened to my parents. I went into Parliament to fight people like J. J. Fox, Mr. Priest. Fox, whoever he was then, stole my clothes, my papers and my money, but most of all, Mr. Priest, he stole my identity.
Will you help me get it back, please?"
I watched his eyes blinking back the tears, unable to comprehend what they had seen when they were in the head of a child. All we can do is try. His beer was untouched and a ladybird was mounting an unsupported expedition across the tabletop. "What else have you there?" I asked, reaching for the bundle of papers.
Chapter 4
I walked across the car park with him to his battered Volvo — made in Sweden, the Land of Eternal Sidelights and agreed to read his notes and have a think about what he'd told me. He shook my hand as if I'd promised to buy the vehicle from him and I said I'd be in touch.
I didn't mow the lawn. Closer inspection showed it would last another week, and it's not good to cut grass during a dry spell. Well, that's what my father taught me. I opened a can of lager, spread myself out on the garden seat and listened to the world turning on its axis.
I don't see much of Jacquie at weekends. She stays in on Saturday nights, doing her books, her hair and everything else that beautiful ladies do that we men know nothing about. Sundays, when possible, I like to go walking. Once, I'd suggested she come with me and you'd have thought I'd asked her to pose naked for the Police Review.
"Walking?" she'd queried. "You mean… up hills? For fun?"
So I went on my own. This particular Sunday dawned blue-skied and filled with promise, and I watched a golden sunrise through my rearview mirrors as I headed towards the Lake District. I beat the crowds and found a parking place in the little park just outside Braithwaite. The Coledale Round is a tough walk and you're straight into it. You put the car keys in a safe pocket, hitch up your shorts, step over the stile and start climbing. The path stretches straight and true before you, to the summit of Grisedale Pike two miles away and 2,000 feet higher.
It's good thinking time. You stare down at the path six feet ahead of your boots and let your mind wander. Anything will do, as long as it takes it off the burning sensation in your chest and the wobbles in your legs. After twenty minutes I stopped and turned around to see how far I'd come. The village was like Toytown down below and beyond it the classically proportioned Skiddaw was bathed in sunlight. I took a few deep breaths, eased the straps on my shoulders and told my feet to get moving.
The whole Round was a bit too much for me on such a hot day. One of the pieces of knowledge that comes with the passing of the years is when to say: "Enough!" I ate my sandwiches on a flat rock under Hopegill Head, sunbathed for an hour then dropped into the valley and followed the miners' road back to the car. It was a good day out. I didn't come to any conclusions about Crosby and Fox, but my legs were definitely a shade browner. Perhaps I'd go to work in my shorts tomorrow.
In the cold light of a Heckley Monday it didn't seem such a good idea, so it was back to the grown-up trousers. We'd had a fracas in the town centre after evensong, so all the cells were filled with rebellious D and Ds demanding their rights prior to appearing before the beak. It's the communion wine that does it. Nothing to do with CID, thank goodness, except that it had taken a big chunk out of the overtime budget. Maggie and Nigel went to circulate the list of property stolen from the McLellands while Jeff and Sparky went to talk to the travel agency managers and collect the names of any customers who'd been booking holidays when the raids took place. I spread the papers Keith Crosby had given me across my desk and started to read.
Everything was on a diskette, but he'd told me he used Apple Mac while I was strictly Microsoft. It didn't matter, as he'd provided hard copies of the important stuff and there wasn't much of it. Nigel was an Apple Mac man, so I'd ask him to run off the full story. The main item was a list of about fifty companies that had fallen on difficult times and crashed in value. Fox had stepped in and bought low, which ain't a crime, and soon afterwards, miraculously, they all appeared to be doing quite nicely. Crosby had listed them in date order, with share price or company value fluctuations over the relevant period and number of shares bought by Fox. Other information was patchy. Against some he'd typed details of the troubles they'd been beset by, and occasionally there was a name. The first on the list was a small chain of betting shops that had suffered a couple of fires and a disastrous loss on the 1970 Grand National when the telephone lines went dead and they couldn't lay off some large bets. Gay Trip had cost them a fortune. Last on it was the Tipley Valley Water Company. It made interesting reading, very interesting, but I couldn't put it much stronger than that. Accidents happen, and anybody could have bought shares in the companies, though when Fox did it was usually enough to take control. I made a few notes, read the letter from Andrew Roberts again and extracted my road atlas from the bottom drawer. It was eight years old; I really ought to bring a new one in. Welwyn Garden City is nearer to London than I thought. I looked in my diary for a number and wrote it on my pad. Directory Enquiries gave me Andrew Roberts's, no problem. Just for the hell of it I did a person check on him and discovered he'd never come to our attention. There must be millions out there like that. I opened my diary at the week ahead and rang Gilbert on the internal.