After all this ritual Pollard was relieved to find a pleasant, grey-haired man apparently unconcerned about his image and the necessity of living up to it. He came forward to shake hands, and expressed genuine interest at meeting the CID.

  ‘But I mustn’t waste your time,’ he said, as they settled into their chairs. ‘I understand that you want some information about a young branch manager of ours, Bryce Twentyman, down at Torcastle. I think I ought to begin by saying that this is just a bit disconcerting: we think most highly of him. Is it in order for me to ask if he’s fallen foul of the law in any way?’

  ‘We’ve nothing whatever against Mr Twentyman,’ Pollard replied. ‘It so happens that we’re working on a case which makes it necessary for us to enquire into his family history. I’m afraid I can’t be more explicit at the moment. We’ve a searcher on the job at Somerset House, but thought you might be willing to be used as a short cut.’

  ‘This is rather interesting. Do smoke, won’t you?’ Mr Hibberd held out a silver cigarette box. ‘Or would either of you prefer a cigar? No? Well, to begin with, Twentyman is illegitimate. His background was unusual enough to stick in my mind, but I have his file here for any minor details you may care to have. He was brought up in an orphanage, the Pullinger Home for Boys.’

  ‘Somewhere in Dorset, isn’t it?’ asked Pollard.

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Hibberd flicked a switch on his desk. ‘The address and telephone number of the Pullinger Home for Boys, please.’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Hibberd,’ said a disembodied voices followed by a click.

  ‘You may want to contact them. They’d had him from infancy, and he’d done extremely well, getting a grammar school place and good GCE results at both levels, and had an excellent record in all other ways. He didn’t want to go on to a university —’

  ‘Your information, Mr Hibberd,’ broke in the disembodied voice. ‘The former Pullinger Home for Boys is now a co-educational establishment known as the Pullinger School. The address is Upperfleet Park, Upperfleet, Dorset. Telephone number Upperfleet 149. Over.’

  ‘Got all that?’ enquired Mr Hibberd, with a glance at Toye. ‘Well, as I was saying, Twentyman didn’t want to go on to the university. There were funds available, quite apart from the grants he could have got, but he was anxious to become fully independent as soon as possible. The Pullinger people are very sound and enlightened, and sent him to a vocational guidance centre. The upshot was that he applied for a job here. We interviewed him, liked him, and took him on as a trainee. We’ve never regretted it. He’s doing remarkably well, and I think I may say — off the record, of course — that there’s a future for him in Galaxy if he stays with us.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pollard. ‘That’s all most helpful. Do you happen to know if Twentyman’s mother kept in touch with him?’

  ‘When he came here for his interview,’ Mr Hibberd replied, ‘I was careful not to introduce the subject of his parentage, and he didn’t refer to it himself. Boys from homes and orphanages are always highly sensitive about not having had a normal background, you know. But there’s a letter in his file from the Pullinger headmaster, in which he mentions that the mother married, and after this contact with the boy gradually petered out.’

  ‘How absolutely damnable,’ said Pollard with sudden heat. ‘I suppose the headmaster didn’t happen to mention her married name, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he did. Just a moment.’

  The rustle and crackle of papers being turned over was the only sound in the quiet room, high above the roar of the London traffic. Pollard stared at the tip of Toye’s pen poised expectantly above his notebook.

  ‘Yes, here it is,’ Mr Hibberd said. ‘He refers to Twentyman’s mother as Mrs Finch.’

  On leaving Galaxy House Pollard dived into the nearest telephone kiosk and rang his searcher at Somerset House. He told him that Bryce Twentyman was illegitimate, and that his mother had subsequently married a man called Finch. It was urgent to find out if there had been a legitimate son of this marriage, born about twenty-one years ago, and registered under the name of Stephen.

  ‘That ought to speed things up,’ he remarked to Toye as they walked to a bus stop. ‘All the same, even if Twentyman had a bona fide half-brother, it doesn’t follow automatically that he was the chap drowned at Dincombe. There’s something off-beat about that identification … here’s our bus.’

  ‘Of course,’ he went on, as they nosed their way into a traffic block, ‘if this Stephen Finch really existed, what would clinch matters is a reliable description of what he looked like. Birth certificates give the place of birth, and we would start tracing him from there. It rather looks to me as though his parents are dead. Otherwise, why was he identified by Twentyman?’

  Toye agreed. ‘Anyway, sir, it would be easier to get on his trail than young Stobart’s, and to find out what he looked like.’

  ‘Yep. But there were a couple of useful scars on the drowned boy’s body, remember. I think we’ll get the Sallowbourne chaps to have a go at hospital records in the area.’

  Pollard relapsed into silence for the rest of the crawling bus journey, anticipating possible discoveries at Somerset House, and planning related courses of action. He resolutely refused to contemplate what he would do if every lead under investigation simply petered out.

  Arriving back in his room at the Yard, he fell on the report of Henry Stobart’s war service which had just come in. He snatched up the typewritten sheets and began to read, automatically pulling out his chair, and sinking down at his desk. Not daring to skip he ploughed through a mass of detail, his mind racing ahead in search of the statements which his hunch at Bridgeford had led him to expect. He came on them at last and felt a tremor of excitement. Henry Stobart had taken part in the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, going through the entire campaign leading up to the capture of Tunis in May 1943. Thereafter he had served with the force invading Italy, and survived the Anzio landing, but only to be captured by the Germans. He had escaped during his transfer northwards, ultimately rejoining the Allied armies…

  This is it, thought Pollard, searching for the note on the birth of the boy registered as Henry Stobart’s son… Peter Stobart … born October 15, 1943 … Mother: June Stobart, formerly Chadwick … Father: Henry Stobart, serving in HM Armed Forces…

  Lighting a cigarette, Pollard sat back with a pardonable feeling of self-congratulation. It was, however, short-lived. Gratifying as it was to have a hunch confirmed, where exactly did it lead? Was it reasonable to assume that Henry Stobart had come home in due course, and accepted the boy as his? After thinking this over, Pollard decided that it was. In the chaotic state of Italy after the Allied invasion, and because of Stobart going out of circulation as a POW, it would be easy to maintain that news of the birth during the summer had never got through to him. In any case, most men were vague as to the size of young children during the early stages, and it varied a lot, too. If June Stobart had parents or friends who knew the boy hadn’t been born until October 1943, they were most unlikely to give her away to her husband. But somehow, surely, it had come out in the end, and was the reason for the sudden break-up of the marriage, and the contracting-out of Henry Stobart from the normal life of a man in his position? One of those extraordinary chance meetings perhaps, or a need for the child’s birth certificate?

  Pollard suddenly thought of Jane, and their unborn child, and felt a wave of sympathy towards Henry Stobart. If all these surmises were correct, it was more than enough to turn a chap anti-social.

  Bringing himself back to the matter in hand, he took a sheet of paper, and began to write slowly under the heading ESTABLISHED FACTS.

  1. A youth giving his name as Steve Mullins was beaten up by Reg Bickley and disappeared two days later (July 30 last year).

  2. No evidence has been found that he returned to Twiggadon for purposes of revenge, although he had threatened to do so, but there are definite points of resemblance between him and the skeleton.

  3. A youth of approximately the same age, but from the available evidence very different in appearance, was drowned at Dincombe during the night of July 29. This youth’s body was inspected by Henry Stobart on the evening of July 31 for identification purposes. He stated that he had thought from the official description that it might be that of a relation of his wife’s, but after seeing the body, said that he could not put a name to it. Curious wording?

  4. The boy born to Mrs Stobart in October 1943, and registered as Henry Stobart’s son could not have been his child, as he had been out of the country for almost a year.

  5. The drowned youth was subsequently identified by Bryce Twentyman as that of his half-brother, Stephen Finch.

  6. Twentyman is the illegitimate son of a woman who subsequently married a man called Finch.

  7. Twentyman knew of the existence of the car dump.

  So what, Pollard asked himself? He mechanically lit another cigarette, his eyes on the paper in front of him. Presently he took another sheet, headed it FACTS TO BE ESTABLISHED, and started to write again.

  1. Did Twentyman’s mother have a son by her husband, X Finch?

  2. If so, what would have been his age at the time of the Dincombe flood?

  3. What did he look like?

  4. What did Peter Stobart look like, and had he any distinguishing scars?

  It was a relief, he thought, to have got something down on paper, but the AC’s Parthian shot returned to cause him discomfort, and conjure up the gruesome photographs of the still unidentified skeleton. The sound of Toye’s step in the corridor was a welcome distraction.

  ‘I got on to the school without any difficulty, sir,’ the latter reported. ‘There’s been a new headmaster since Twentyman’s time, and he’s away on holiday in Switzerland. But I spoke to the Bursar, who was very helpful. He said that if we wanted to come down and make enquiries he could get hold of a retired member of staff who would have been there in Twentyman’s time, and who makes a thing of keeping in touch with former pupils.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Pollard. ‘It’s difficult to decide priorities at the moment, isn’t it? Take a look at these lists I’ve just made.’

  He pushed the sheets of paper over to Toye, who sat digesting their contents, impassive as an owl behind his horn rims.

  The desk telephone suddenly burred. Pollard grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Put him through,’ he said, adding, ‘Somerset House’, in an aside to Toye. ‘Superintendent Pollard here. Go ahead.’

  The receiver quacked at length, and Pollard scribbled notes.

  ‘Jolly good effort,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, let me have it all in writing when you get back, but I’m glad to have the gist right now. OK.’

  He put down the receiver and grinned at Toye. ‘Twentyman was born in 1934. His mother was a Sonia Thomas, and the father an American salesman, also called Bryce Twentyman. A year later she married Percy Finch, described as a retail ironmonger, of Colsham, Midshire. There was only one child of the marriage, a son, born in 1944 and registered as Stephen Percy.’

  ‘So he did exist, and was Twentyman’s half-brother,’ said Toye thoughtfully. ‘Still is, perhaps, if the Dincombe identification was phony. Where do we go from here, sir?’

  ‘Down to Colsham,’ said Pollard, suddenly coming to a decision. ‘There’s something static about retail ironmongery. I can’t believe it will be all that difficult to track down the Finch family. Look up trains, will you? We’d better go tonight, to save time.’

  ELEVEN

  Colsham was a nineteenth-century Industrial sprawl, drab and unconcerned with providing amenities for visitors. Pollard and Toye spent an uncomfortable night at the Station Hotel against a background of shunting and the hollow calling of diesels. Even breakfast, usually a redeeming feature of the worst British hotel, was half-cold and served at snail’s pace.

  ‘Tell the Manager from me,’ Pollard said to the girl at the reception desk as he paid the bill, ‘that he’ll soon be putting the Hilton out of business.’

  They took their cases and walked out, leaving her staring after them with a baffled expression.

  A frustrating situation awaited them at the police station. One of the town’s chief stores had been raided by a gang of expert thieves during the night, and the atmosphere was one of feverish preoccupation. Pollard tactfully said that he would look in again later, and suggested to Toye that they tried a bit of research at the Public Library. Here they secured the current traders’ directory, and some of its back numbers, and withdrew into a corner of the reading-room. Working backwards they found that P. Finch: Ironmonger, was regularly listed until two years previously, after which time there was no further mention of him. The address given was 76 Alma Road, which reference to a street plan showed to be in a crowded area of what looked like the poorer part of Colsham.

  Armed with this information they returned to the police station, and Pollard was able to put his request for help with a conciseness which earned the gratitude of the harassed Superintendent. Within half an hour they were closeted with a startled Constable Blackett, whose beat had formerly included Alma Road. Reassured by the Yard men’s friendliness and lack of starch, Blackett rapidly regained his confidence, and proved a mine of information on the subject of the Finches.

  Percy Finch, he told them, had died of a stroke a couple of years back. He’d been a proper old so-and-so, begging the Superintendent’s pardon, an Elder of the Strait Gate Tabernacle in Ward Street.

  ‘What on earth’s that?’ asked Pollard, much intrigued.

  From Blackett’s description they gathered that it was a local survival of the once-popular hell-fire sects, purveying a dogma consisting mainly of the condemnation of sex, alcohol, dancing and the theatre. It claimed inside knowledge of the virtual restriction of eternal salvation to its adherents.

  ‘What did the rest of the Finch family consist of?’ asked Pollard. ‘Were they Strait Gaters, too?’

  According to Constable Blackett they had had no option, Percy Finch having been an old tyrant. Mrs Finch, much younger than her husband, had died before Blackett’s time, but it was said she’d been a poor creature, creeping around like a shadow. The boy’d had a hunted sort of look, too. Old Finch had grudged him taking up his eleven-plus place at the secondary school, and hadn’t let him stay for his ‘O’ Levels, making him come back to drudge in the shop. Never let him off the chain, or gave him a penny to bless himself with, from the look of him.

  ‘Where’s this boy now?’

  Disappointingly, however, Blackett could not tell him, having been moved to another beat just before Percy Finch’s death. But he did know that the shop had been going downhill for years, and when everything was sold up there had been a lot of debts to meet.

  ‘There must have been a lawyer to cope with the sale,’ Pollard said. ‘Have you any idea who it was?’

  Blackett scratched his head, and opined that like as not it was Mr Jobsall in West Street, who did a lot of work for the poorer sort of people.

  ‘We’re anxious to have a description of young Finch. What did he look like? Height, and colouring, and so on?’

  In common with so many people Blackett found great difficulty in giving a recognizable description of another human being. Stephen Finch had been on the short side, certainly not tall. Not dark or fair, so that you’d notice it. Eyes? Blackett couldn’t call their colour to mind at all. A thinnish lad, and looking chivvied, as he’d said just now.

  ‘Did he have red hair?’ Pollard asked casually.

  ‘No, sir.’ Here at least, Blackett was on sure ground. ‘I’d swear to that, sir. They always stand out, the carroty ones. Trouble-makers, too, most of ’em.’

  Pollard and Toye exchanged a quick glance of satisfaction.

  ‘What we really want is a photograph of the chap,’ Pollard pursued. ‘Any suggestions? Any girlfriend you can remember who might have a snap of him?’

  Blackett was not optimistic. ‘If he’d ever taken up with a girl, sir, his old man would have fair brained him. I shouldn’t think he’d ever had his picture taken — not ever.’

  Pollard proceeded to make Blackett a friend and admirer for life by giving him an outline of what lay behind the enquiry, and he and Toye then took their leave, to go in search of Mr Jobsall.

  West Street had gone down in the world. Mr Jobsall’s office occupied the ground floor of a once pleasant Victorian house, the front garden of which was now an untidy car port. His clerk, a worried little man, seemed startled by Pollard’s official card, and hastily vanished into the back premises. He soon reappeared to say that Mr Jobsall would see the gentlemen.

  The lawyer was bald and bustling, with thick spectacles and an air of being a man who knew his way about. He eyed Pollard and Toye shrewdly. ‘What d’you want to know about my late client?’ he demanded, when the purpose of their visit had been explained.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Pollard. ‘We’ve no interest in him. But we are anxious to trace his son Stephen, in connection with a case we’re engaged in at the moment, and thought you might be able to help us if you had handled his father’s affairs. I may add that we’ve nothing against Stephen Finch.’.

  ‘Whether you’ve anything against him or not,’ replied Mr Jobsall, leaning back in his chair, and clasping his hands over his fat paunch, ‘I can’t help you. I’ve no idea where he is. Under the terms of his late father’s will, he can’t touch a penny of what was left to him — and it’s precious little — until his twenty-fifth birthday. He was nineteen when his old man kicked the bucket a couple of years ago. When he discovered how the land lay, he told me he was pushing off to get a job somewhere else — he was fed up with Colsham. I knew he’d been kept on a collar and chain, and offered him a spot of good advice free gratis — which I’m not in the habit of doing, by the way. I mid him to keep in touch, and report back for his lolly when it fell due.’

 

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