‘And we don’t like it,’ added Crosby.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Where to next, sir?’ asked Crosby, after they had found their way back out of the hospital.

  ‘Culshaw’s Bakery,’ said Sloan. ‘Follow your nose to the east of Berebury. You can tell where they are a mile away.’

  ‘Nice smell, though,’ said Crosby, usually hungry.

  ‘And then, Crosby, you can put out an alert at all ports and airports for a young man called Terry Galloway, arriving here from Australia via India. You can’t be too careful in this game and we’ll need to keep an eye on him once he gets here.’

  In spite of him usually giving the impression of being the world’s busiest man, Clive Culshaw made no bones about seeing the police as soon as they arrived at the bakery. Obviously very much a hands-on owner, the man was wearing a white coat and had a white cotton trilby-style hat on his head, all his workers being similarly attired. He was located by a secretary on the factory floor among a welter of vats, cooling trays and moving conveyor belts. An array of commercial-sized ovens covered one wall, exuding heat. Every few minutes a bell rang beside one of them and a worker advanced and lifted out trays of cakes and buns on a long board, whilst another minion loaded a batch of prepared cake tins into it.

  ‘Come along in,’ Culshaw said, leading the way back to his office. A model of a great big harvest loaf stood on the shelf behind his desk, depicting sheaves of corn spilling out of a plaited basket.

  ‘Is that real bread?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby, pointing to it.

  ‘It can be,’ said Culshaw. ‘We call it our Ceres piece. Goddess of Plenty and all that. We sell a lot of them come September time for harvest festivals.’

  ‘“We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land”,’ chanted Crosby, prompted by the memory.

  Clive Culshaw eyed the constable carefully before turning back to Sloan and saying, ‘Now what can I do for you two gentlemen?’

  ‘We’re just checking on people who might have known the late Susan Port,’ said Sloan.

  ‘The late who?’ he said.

  ‘Susan Port.’

  Clive Culshaw shook his head. ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell. Does – did – she work here? I’ll have to ask. I can’t know everyone, you know. Not in a place this size.’

  ‘It is big,’ agreed Sloan, quite surprised himself at the scale of the Culshaw operation.

  ‘Smells good, too,’ said Crosby.

  ‘All the bread will have gone out to the shops long ago,’ said Culshaw. ‘That’s what smells so good, but there’ll be plenty of cakes around if you’re interested.’ He opened the door and called out for coffee.

  ‘You met Mrs Port a couple of months ago,’ persisted Sloan.

  ‘Did I?’ Culshaw’s face was politely blank.

  ‘At the offices of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery.’

  His face cleared. ‘Of course. I remember her now. Neat woman. Not young. What about her?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Crosby, leaping up to hold the door open for a young woman carrying a tray.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ said the baker.

  ‘Do you remember anything else about her, Mr Culshaw?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Not particularly. I was in a hurry to get away and the solicitor fellow was havering a lot.’

  ‘Havering?’

  ‘Well, for one thing he wouldn’t get to the point and tell us how much money he was talking about. I needed to know if the whole exercise was going to be worthwhile.’ He waved a hand to indicate the factory. ‘After all, I’ve got a pretty big business here already.’

  ‘So I can see,’ said Sloan.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Culshaw gave a tight little smile, ‘nobody can usually say that a bit more money doesn’t always come in handy.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, owner of just that part of his house that didn’t belong to the mortgage company, could only agree with him. He reckoned that at the present time the kitchen, dining room and staircase were his by now. And perhaps half the hallway.

  Clive Culshaw said in a worldly-wise tone that anything divided by six didn’t usually amount to much.

  ‘Five now,’ said Crosby insouciantly.

  ‘So, sir,’ carried on Sloan swiftly, ‘we’re just checking up on the people who might have known her.’

  Culshaw looked at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked shrewdly.

  ‘She doesn’t appear to have had any family we can contact, that’s all.’

  Clive Culshaw pushed his hat to the back on his head. ‘I suppose that technically I might be said to be related to her – all of us there were – but so distantly I don’t see how it could possibly count.’

  ‘And that would therefore naturally apply to your brother, Tom, too, wouldn’t it?’ said Sloan.

  The physical temperature of the whole baking operation at the Culshaw factory was definitely on the high side but, at the mention of his brother’s name, an emotional froideur in the owner’s office was immediately apparent.

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Clive Culshaw stiffly.

  ‘I gather,’ said Sloan, ‘that you are both descendants of Algernon Mayton?’

  He nodded. ‘Through my late father. That’s the connection. Dad died when he was quite young, which I understand is why we figure in the trust and not him.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the shop floor. ‘So my mother was left with two small boys to bring up. She had to take over the firm after he died and it was she who built up the business to what it is today.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Well, to what it was when she died two or three years ago, of course,’ he conceded. ‘I’ve done my best ever since then, although it’s hard work.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ murmured Sloan.

  ‘She was a redoubtable woman,’ the baker went on. ‘She worked her fingers to the bone for us when we were boys. Mind you, she was a natural businesswoman through and through. Taught me everything I know about the trade. And kept up with modern trends, too. You know, fancy breads and that sort of thing.’

  ‘What sort of fancy breads?’ asked Sloan casually. Wholemeal was the product of choice in his own household.

  ‘Sourdough, rye, ciabatta, focaccia – you name it, we make it.’

  ‘And your brother, too? Is he in the firm?’

  It was as if a cloud had descended again. ‘Tom’s got no head for business at all. Mother did her best and tried to teach him, of course, although they never got on,’ muttered Culshaw, shaking his head. ‘He failed at every single thing he touched and lost a lot of her money in the process.’ He essayed a thin smile. ‘She used to say that the only board he could understand was an ironing one and he wasn’t too good with that either.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘All Tom ever wanted to do was paint.’ He sniffed. ‘Not that he’s any good at that either. All that he does these days is tinker. That’s why she left all the business to me.’

  ‘All?’ echoed Crosby, advancing to help the young secretary with her tray. ‘Nice,’ he said appreciatively. ‘These cakes, I mean,’ he added hastily as the girl looked up into his eyes and gave him a winning smile. ‘Nice icing.’

  ‘Mother said she wasn’t having Tom ruin everything she’d ever worked for,’ said Culshaw. ‘And that was that.’

  ‘So she didn’t let him?’ said Crosby.

  ‘No,’ he said brusquely. ‘In fact, she made quite sure he couldn’t even try. She tied everything up very tightly in her will, leaving everything to do with the business to me.’ He waved a hand round his office. ‘This is all my responsibility.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, son of a churchgoing mother, tried to recall the parable of the Prodigal Son. As he remembered it, this situation seemed to be the exact opposite.

  Clive Culshaw was still talking. ‘My brother had a go at upsetting her will, but it was absolutely cast iron from a legal standpoint. He lost his challenge even though the judge did say that hard cases made bad law. She always said he wasn’t worth a bag of beans.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, duly making a note. They knew more about unhappy families in the police force than most people did and were more understanding than many.

  ‘Nice,’ said Crosby again, carefully selecting an iced cake with help from the young secretary.

  ‘Presumably, Inspector, you’ll be talking to all the others who were there at Puckles that day?’ said Clive Culshaw.

  ‘All in good time,’ said Crosby quite unnecessarily.

  ‘And what I will be doing,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan to Detective Constable Crosby as they left the baker’s premises, ‘is checking on the finances of his firm. As a matter of routine. Don’t ever underestimate the importance of routine, Crosby.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Have you ever played a card game called Happy Families, Crosby?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan. They had driven back into the town from Culshaw’s Bakery and were now parked in the police station yard before taking to the road again.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think that the Culshaw family can ever have done either.’ Policeman that he was, Sloan had automatically wondered what Clive Culshaw’s brother, Tom, could have done to occasion being disinherited so determinedly by his own mother. The first thought that had crossed his mind was that since Tom was the elder child he might have had a different father from his brother – one that was perhaps unknown to him and resented by his mother. That might explain things. He would have to look into it.

  He had put in another check on whether the man had form, too, as soon as they had got back to the police station: criminal form, that is. Unfortunately, transgressions in some families didn’t always reach the police – or, often as not anyone else’s – records. What families could sweep under the carpet in the way of secrets was something that always amazed him.

  Oh, yes, resolved Sloan to himself, he would certainly await the check on what records there were before he saw Tom Culshaw. In his book, as in that of soldiers in war, time spent in reconnaissance was seldom wasted.

  ‘Daniel Elland and his wife can’t have played Happy Families either, Crosby, not from the sounds of it, anyway,’ he added, going on to quote Baroness Orczy, ‘“We seek him here, we seek him there, we seek him everywhere … that damned elusive Pimpernel”.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘Nothing, Crosby, nothing. Before your time, I’m sure – The Scarlet Pimpernel.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Where to now, sir?’ asked Crosby, playing with the gear lever. He had already placed the car in pole position on an imaginary starting line.

  Sloan flipped through the pages of his notebook. ‘We’ll try Martin Pickford next.’ He read out an address on the far side of the town. ‘It’s beyond the cattle market. And then we’ll come back to the station again, just in case there’s any message through from forensics, although,’ he added pessimistically, ‘on past form it’s a bit early to expect anything from that quarter just yet.’

  ‘I reckon from all accounts whenever we arrive we’ll be a bit early for that man Pickford,’ said Crosby. ‘The solicitor thought so, anyway.’

  It was too early for Martin Pickford.

  Much too early.

  The young man took his time to answer their knock and open the front door. He peered at Sloan and Crosby standing on the doorstep through bleary eyes, one distinctly bloodshot. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said, focussing his eyes with difficulty on Sloan’s proffered warrant card.

  ‘I didn’t think you had, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan at his most formal.

  ‘Whatever it was.’ Pickford’s face was bruised and his hair tousled. He looked, too, as if he’d gone to bed in his clothes.

  ‘It was whatever it was you had had in mind that you’d done,’ contributed Crosby.

  ‘I am innocent,’ declaimed Pickford histrionically. ‘My mates took me home.’ He frowned. ‘At least, I think they did. Or did they take me to the hospital first? I can’t quite remember. I didn’t drive back here, anyway, if that’s what you’re on about, and I’ve been in bed with a wonky eye most of the time since I did get back home. I’ve only just got out of bed.’

  ‘As it happens, it isn’t what we’ve come about, sir,’ said Sloan distantly. ‘We’re not Traffic.’ The unhappy association between the police and the motorist in the minds of the public didn’t always help in an investigation.

  ‘I can’t remember much else now, anyway,’ said Pickford, ‘whatever it was that you wanted to know.’

  ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘My mind’s a blank,’ he confessed, swaying slightly as he spoke. ‘An absolute blank. Was it something that happened on Saturday night?’ Looking slightly abashed, he gave them a cheeky grin. ‘I’m afraid, for starters, I can’t remember much about Saturday night.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir,’ said Sloan. Amnesia, however temporary, however fictional, was no help to a working police officer who liked his interviewees to be able to do better than that. It also gave those being interviewed time to think about an alibi. If they needed one, that is. ‘Why would that have been?’

  ‘We won,’ said Martin Pickford simply. ‘Against a brutal side from Luston.’

  ‘Sounds like a grudge match to me,’ contributed Crosby.

  ‘Won what?’ asked Sloan, remembering that there were always those who considered sport was war without weapons.

  ‘Our match, of course.’ Pickford pointed to his bloodshot eye. ‘One of them got me just there, though, with an elbow. They’re a rough lot, over at Luston, I can tell you.’ He felt the orbital area round his bad eye tentatively and winced as he did so. ‘We celebrated at the Bellingham and I’ve just got their bill. That’s enough to give a fellow a headache even if he hadn’t got one in the first place. Which, I may say, I have in spades.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a mental note to check what had been going on at Berebury’s popular hotel last Saturday night, whilst Crosby muttered something under his breath about playing for the sympathy vote. ‘I would like you to cast your mind back a bit further than last Saturday night, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ sighed the young man, ‘and then I can sit down. I feel better sitting down.’

  The two policemen followed Martin Pickford into what was very obviously a bachelor pad. The computer that sat in the middle of the only table was surrounded by used coffee mugs. A plate with some cold burnt toast on it nestled dangerously near the keyboard, while a pair of studded sports boots covered in mud was parked just to one side of the fireplace. Since his own wife, Margaret, would never even have let him inside the door wearing anything as dirty as that, let alone get near the fire, Sloan deduced that if there was a woman in Pickford’s life she wasn’t around the house very much.

  Or was as undomesticated as he was.

  Pickford slumped down into a chair and sunk his sore head between his hands. ‘That’s better. Now, what’s this all about, Inspector?’

  ‘Can you cast your mind back to your visit to a solicitor’s office?’

  ‘Which one?’ He gave a wry grin. ‘I’ve been to quite a few of them in my time.’

  ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Mostly those of them who specialise in defence cases. Motoring ones. Funny that, when you consider that that’s where I play on the rugby field.’

  ‘And where would that be, sir?’

  ‘Fullback, Inspector.’

  ‘I see, sir. Defence.’ In Sloan’s book that would make him a muddied oaf rather than a flannelled fool. It could also account for the black eye and bruises and the slight limp in his left leg. ‘The meeting we’re interested in took place in the offices of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Oh, that? I can remember that – most of it, anyway.’ Martin Pickford eased his leg into a more comfortable position. ‘Go on.’

  ‘There was a woman there called Mrs Port.’

  He nodded, evidently found that doing so hurt and sunk his head between his hands again. ‘About my father’s age? Grey-haired? Looked all right to me but a bit severe, if you know what I mean. What’s up?’

  ‘She’s died,’ said Crosby before Sloan could speak.

  ‘It happens when you get on,’ said the young man with all the assurance of youth.

  ‘From something she ate,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Ah, that’s different.’

  ‘Very,’ said Sloan. ‘Had you by any chance ever seen her before?’

  Martin Pickford started to shake his head, and wincing, thought better of that, too. He said instead, ‘Not that I’d noticed.’

  Sloan wasn’t surprised at that. His own mother always insisted that all grey-haired women were invisible. ‘Or any of the others there that day?’

  ‘Only the nurse one. Samantha Peters. I’d come across her in the hospital once or twice when I’d gone there on a Saturday night with an injury. I only thought afterwards that I recognised her, although I didn’t know her name or anything else about her until then. You see, I hadn’t seen her out of uniform before, so I wasn’t sure it was her. Not the sort of thing you ask in the Accident and Emergency Department, and anyway, they make darn sure that you can’t read their name badges at the hospital. They turn them the wrong way round if they can.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, only too well aware that there were some policemen who, rightly or wrongly, removed the numbers from their uniforms when attending major disturbances. Rightly should they have feared dangerous repercussions; wrongly if they had planned on behaving less than well by the strict standards set in the comfort of their offices by some faraway watch committee.

  ‘Not fair, that,’ said Pickford.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nowadays, Inspector, when we’re on the field we have numbers on our shirts so that the ref can spot who’s done what.’