We lunched on a bench in the square. Every town should have a square, a focal point. Ours has just been refurbished at monstrous cost, but it looks good and the office workers and shoppers certainly enjoy it when the weather's fine. We had ham sandwiches in oven-bottom cakes, and tea from polystyrene beakers.
A girl, about six feet two, clomped by on platform soles. She had the longest legs, the briefest mini and the skimpiest top I could imagine.
Well, not quite imagine, but the longest, briefest and skimpiest I'd seen in a while. I turned my head to follow her, sandwich poised before my open mouth.
"You'll go blind," Sparky warned.
"It's this warm weather," I complained. "It makes me feel poorly."
"It certainly brings them out. What do you think of them?" He nodded towards the statue in the middle of the square.
It was a bronze, about half life-size, showing two doctors dressed rather differently; one Victorian, one Edwardian. J. H. Bell and F. W.
Eurich lived in Bradford, when the woollen industry was at its height and employed hundreds of thousands of people. Of all the afflictions that beset them, wool sorters disease was the most feared. A man might go to work perfectly healthy in the morning and be dead from it by supper-time. The French called it la mala die de Bradford. Dr. Bell reckoned it was caused by imported fleeces and was a form of anthrax.
Eurich took up the Petri dish and confirmed the link. He devised a way of treating the fleeces and the disease was eradicated. Pasteur was lauded for discovering how to protect animals against the disease, but the good doctors had gone un recognised for their work with humans until Heckley decided to honour them.
"It's somewhere fpr the pigeons to sit," I said.
"Did you vote?" Dave asked. The local paper, the Gazette, had conducted a referendum on who should grace the new square.
"Mmm." I finished my sandwich and rolled the paper into a ball, trying to wipe my hands on it.
"Who for?"
"Them." I nodded towards the doctors.
"Really? I'd never heard of them."
"Neither had I until someone nominated them. Who did you vote for?"
"Denis Law."
"Denis Law! A foot baller I should have known."
"He gave pleasure to millions," he retorted, primly.
"He was the best, but he didn't save any lives."
Dave took my empty cup and wrapper and walked over to a bin with them.
When he was seated again he said: "Do you think we'll catch them, Charlie?"
The pigeons that had been strutting round our feet like battery-driven toys waddled over to the next bench to see if the pickings were any better there. "We've got to, Dave," I answered. "Nigel thinks that someone might already be dead, sitting tied in their chairs because the message wasn't passed on."
"I've thought the same," he said. "Maybe we should put out an appeal.
Check your neighbours, if you haven't seen them for a while. Something like that."
"I'll mention it to Gilbert. I'll have to get back, make some calls.
Are you all right for seeing a few more miscreants?"
"I've a long list, but I'm not hopeful. This morning's been a waste of time."
"So what do you conclude from that?" I asked him.
"Dunno," he replied. "They could be new boys in town. Or new to the job but clever with it. Or everybody's scared of them.
Or maybe they're from way outside the area."
"All the jobs are centred on Heckley," I said.
"What's fifty miles these days? They could be from the Midlands, travelling north for every job. Or from the north-east. It's probably too hot for them up there. Who knows?"
"Like I said, I'll do some ringing round." I stood up and swung my jacket over my shoulder.
"Want a lift back?"
"No, I'll walk. Let's see what's happening." I undipped my mobile phone. "Oops," I said. "Switched off. No wonder we've had a quiet morning." I pushed the slider across to the red dot and pressed a memory button.
"It's Charlie," I said. "Anything happening?" There was a message for me. "Did he say what he wanted?" He hadn't. "Right," I said, "I'll ring him when I get back."
I must have looked thoughtful as I clipped the phone back on my belt.
"Problems?" Dave asked.
"I don't know. Someone called Keith Crosby wants me to give him a ring."
"The MP?" he asked, his eyes wide.
"Ex-MP. I'm not sure."
"Bloody 'ell. It's been a long time since we saw him."
"Hasn't it? I wonder what he wants."
I was deep in thought as I walked back to the office. Keith Crosby had fallen from grace twenty-odd years earlier, and I'd been at the centre of things. The tall girl stepped out of Top Shop right in front of me and I banged into her. She told me to look where I was going and I said sorry. The tune blasting from within was Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine', number one in 1969, and for a few seconds I lost track of time and place. It had been a long time ago, and was still unfinished business.
Chapter 3
I spent the afternoon on the phone talking to contacts in other regions and divisions. It's called networking these days, when everything has to have a name so that someone can do a PhD in it. I just call it normal. Our press office agreed to ask YTV and the local radio stations to put out a 'check your neighbours' warning when they reported the Joe and Audrey story. About four o'clock the troops came wandering back in, dragging their feet.
"The doctor gave me a couple of minutes with them," Maggie told me as she pushed my door open with her hip and placed two mugs of tea on my desk.
"Thanks, you're a mind-reader," I said, throwing my pencil down and clearing a space for the drinks.
"I asked the obvious," she went on, sitting opposite me, 'but they were too shaken to be much use. Basically, it was a white van and there were two of them, carrying baseball bats and wearing masks. Near as I could find out it was about seven thirty, maybe a little later, and they stayed for a long time. The doctor made me leave it at that. He's a nice old dear. Joe, that is, not the doctor. Mrs. McLelland is still in shock."
"The famous white van," I said, nodding my head.
The door opened again and Dave came in, carrying two steaming mugs in his right hand. "Oh, you've got one," he said.
"Put it there," I said, moving the first one a few inches to one side.
Nigel Newley and Jeff Caton followed him in.
"Maggie's had a fruitful day," I told them when they were settled.
"Baseball bats and a white van, as expected. Any luck with the videos, Jeff?"
"Yep. White Transit going on to the M62 at precisely oh-eight-thirteen yesterday. Phoney number plate He spread a grainy ten-by-eight printout in front of me and laid two more alongside it. "This is from the second robbery, in East Yorkshire, and this one is after the Penistone Road job. Can't read the numbers, unfortunately."
Three white vans, coming towards the camera, an assortment of other vehicles around them. "You reckon it's the same one?" I said.
Jeff pointed with a pencil, leaning across my desk with Maggie alongside him. "Look at the similarities," he told us, 'apart from the obvious ones, like they're all white Transits. See the radio aerial.
It's on the driver's side, just behind him; not the normal position for a Transit. Usually they're just above the windscreen, one side or the other. The tax disc in the windscreen is halfway up the screen in all of them. It could have been higher, it could have been lower. And there's a mark at the top of the screen, there and there. Perhaps once upon a time there was a sun shield stuck across it with some lettering, and a piece got left behind."