Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (29 page)

‘That’s a sad story Caroline,’ he said. ‘Having
talked to Kevin, I am sure that he would have understood, even if you had only
come out into the open after his Dad had died. But what was the project that
was going to transform Peter’s fortunes?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘he didn’t tell
me.’

‘’OK, let’s look at it another way. Who was he
dealing with? Did he go to meetings for example?’

‘I don’t know who he was dealing with
Inspector. He met up with someone a couple of times but I don’t know where
–
Skelmersdale
,
Ormskirk
,
Burscough
– I don’t know, he didn’t say. But he
was always up beat and chirpy when he came back. That’s all I know.’

‘Not Southport Caroline?’ added
Lescott
.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Once or twice he
would say things like “the
Skem
Rogues will bolster
my bank account” or something similar but I haven’t the faintest idea what he
meant. He never said.’

‘But didn’t you ask him what he meant?’ asked
Davies.

‘Of course Inspector, but he just smiled. All
he would ever say was that his luck was changing.’

‘Yes, well it certainly did didn’t it?’
responded
Lescott
.

Twenty-One

Pouring yet another cup of his favourite
Bewleys
coffee – rich and strong, yet at the same
time mellow and smooth – Simon Charlton ambled over to the balcony, slid
open the doors, and settled into his chair. Although the weather was by no
means suitable for sun bathing, being on the lee side of the house and
protected by a small roof, the balcony was almost an all-weather feature, and
certainly his favourite place in the house.

Picking his notes up from where he had left
them on the floor at the side of his chair, he turned the pages, trying to find
an indication as to how they all fitted together. Inspector Radcliffe’s
suggestion that the cloned registrations were being used to transport stolen
vehicles was feasible, but that theory only accounted for the plates in Kevin
Archer’s workshop, leaving all the registrations he had documented at the
mansion at the strange estate in the country unexplained. Of course, the
inspector might well have information about those that he was not disclosing,
and under the circumstances, asking Debbie wasn’t an option – she was
already in enough trouble at work thanks to providing him with the address
details – but then again, if she had not checked the registrations out
for him, Radcliffe wouldn’t have any leads would he? Touché.

But, thought Simon as he sipped his coffee,
that wasn’t helping at the moment. Although he had been warned off, and for
sure he didn’t want to make things worse for Debbie, not knowing what the
strange store of cars was or who owned them was annoying him.

Movement on the opposite side of the canal
caught his attention. It was there again. A Ferrari was making its way from the
bridge and towards
Ormskirk
. Or was it going towards
the country mansion? As he watched, the red car drove parallel to the canal,
disappeared behind a small copse where he could hear it accelerating into the
distance, its melodic note music to his ears. Simon flipped back through the
sheets on his knee until he found the page for the Ferrari. Other than the
registration number it was blank. He had no information. Of course, from his
own knowledge he knew it’s make and model, and from his observations he knew
it’s colour, but without asking Debbie, he didn’t know who owned it or the
owner’s address.

Out of sheer frustration he moved back into the
study and went on-line to locate the EBC Brakes web site, a supplier he had
used when he needed performance brake parts for his own car. It wouldn’t give
him any more information than he already knew – certainly not owner
address details – but at least he was doing something. Entering the car’s
registration into the site’s search box labelled UK Car Registration Search, he
clicked the send button and waited for the display to refresh; Ferrari / F430 /
Eight cylinders in V configuration / 4300cc. Without an inside track to the
DVLA at Swansea, he could not access anything more than he already knew. No
owner details. No address details. But why bother? Frustration. Sheer
frustration.

As the screen refreshed, Simon watched each
line display. Make: Toyota, Cylinders: 4, Capacity: 1600cc.

No. No. No!

The car was a Ferrari. No doubt. And the scream
of its engine, like that in his own Olympic, was pure Italian tenor, not
Japanese teenybopper. Clearing the browser history and cache he repeated the
search. Surely there had been an error. But no, there it was again. A
four-cylinder Toyota of just 1600cc capacity.

Why would a hot-blooded Ferrari show up as a
two-a-penny hairdresser’s car? The most obvious reason was that the Ferrari
owner had purchased the registration as a cherished number, but that didn’t
look likely because the registration was in no way distinctive. In any case,
would anybody linked to the other cars bearing dubious plates take a chance on
attracting attention to himself with a personal plate? Very unlikely.

Under the circumstances there was only one
course of action. With the Toyota details still displaying on-screen and the
sheaf of papers open at the Ferrari registration, he reached for his phone and
dialled Debbie’s number.

Before the number connected he cancelled the
call and replaced the receiver.

……….

Frank Davies looked at the old man. Sat in his
armchair he looked comfortable and relaxed. Where others his age worried about
the cost of heating or whether they would see another human being from one
week’s end to the next, he seemed unconcerned and oblivious. Perhaps that was
what old age did; you became oblivious.

Tracking down Arthur Jarvis hadn’t been
difficult. Running a simple on-line telephone directory for Tonbridge, Debbie
Lescott
had found six entries with the name A Jarvis in
Tonbridge. Phoning each in turn, she quickly found that four were Alice,
Andrew, Alex and Alan, leaving only two Arthurs. And of those, one was a
twenty-year-old student while the other lived in a sheltered housing
development.

Bingo! Arthur Jarvis lived in a comfortable
retirement apartment. A modern L shaped building next to the Baptist church
that had originally owned it, the Riverside Housing Association, who actually
referred to it as a Scheme, now owned Leslie
Tew
Court. With three changes of train and an expensive taxi from Tonbridge station
along the High Street and further than he had expected, Davies had found the
journey a bit of a fag. But now he was here, the old guy was extremely
hospitable, very friendly and eager to help. The time might not have been
wasted after all.

With a reasonable head of shiny silvering hair
and a trim military style moustache that still retained vestiges of dark
colour, Arthur Jarvis still cut a crisp figure. Clearly, he had been a smart
guy in his prime. Now in the twilight of his years – though articulate
and in full command of his faculties - Jarvis’ clothes had obviously seen better
days and were well worn, but retained their air of formality. His grey trousers
were almost threadbare, yet their creases were as crisp as the proverbial
knife-edge. And though the temperature in the apartment was close to
twenty-three degrees – and that with a window open – he wore a
white long sleeve shirt and a waistcoat that matched his trousers. The shirt
wasn’t new either, but like the trousers, it too was crisply pressed, its
double cuffs secured by gold cuff links and its open neck filled with a Sammy
cravat. Overall, he presented a crisp image that spoke volumes for his
attention to detail and why the Green Fields site had presumably been so well
ordered and successful in its early days.

Having first insisting on brewing up for the
two of them, Jarvis had settled himself in his favourite chair and opened the
conversation with his own questions. ‘Well Inspector,’ he said. ‘I don’t hear
much from up north these days you know, but to have brought you all the way
down here he mustn’t have died in his sleep. So what do you want from me? Is
there a dispute over the land or something?’

Taken aback, Davies mused over the questions
before answering. He was more used to asking questions than answering, but what
the old man had said was interesting. Sure, Debbie had told the old man of
Archer’s death over the phone, but as far as he knew, nothing had been said
about either the circumstances or the family feud.

‘What makes you ask that Mr Jarvis?’ he
countered.

‘It makes sense lad,’ came the response. ‘If
Archer had just passed away then you lot wouldn’t be involved and a high
ranking officer wouldn’t have travelled all the way down here to see me. Would
you like another cup Inspector?’

‘You are quite right,’ replied Davies,’
declining another drink. ‘But I meant your reference to land. Why mention
land?’

‘I already knew that Peter and his sister were
in dispute about something because he phoned me. But I wouldn’t have thought
that would involve the police.’

‘When was that then Mr Jarvis. Who did you
speak to, Kevin or Peter?’

The old man looked quizzically at Davies.
‘Kevin is the grandson. It’s Peter who’s Fred Archer’s son. I spoke to Peter a
couple of weeks ago. Actually, he was supposed to come down here but he never
turned up. I just supposed that they had sorted everything out themselves and
would get back to me later.’

Now it was Davies’ turn to look quizzical. ‘And
why would they get back to you Mr Jarvis?’

‘Because of the land of course.’

‘Mr Jarvis,’ continued Davies. ‘We seem to be
talking at cross-purposes here. Fred Archer did pass away naturally.
Unfortunately though we are involved. Now, please explain your reference to
land, why it should be a problem, and why any of the Archer’s should need to
get back to you. You sold the caravan site years ago didn’t you?’

Jarvis looked at Davies pensively, obviously
assessing the policeman and wondering how far he should open up. Davies
returned the stare, locking eyes with the old man and raising his eyebrows,
clearly challenging him to break the silence.

Jarvis sighed, then launched into what turned
out to be quite a story. ‘It’s not straightforward Inspector,’ he said. ‘My
father was a farmer. When he retired I didn’t want to take over and become a
farmer myself. So he chopped the farm up into two parcels and I developed one
of them into the caravan site. I took the more attractive part with access from
the bottom road and he sold the rest to Fred Archer. There were two houses,
some outbuildings and a barn, and a few fields. Archer ran it as a smallholding
but the buildings were in a bit of a state so he knocked the two houses through
into one and did them up. I did hear that when he retired he rented out the
fields and let his daughter convert the outbuildings into a house but I’m not
really sure. When I had had enough and wanted to retire myself, old man Archer
said his son – that’s Peter - wanted to buy the caravan site. That’s what
happened Inspector. Peter bought it from me and I moved to a bungalow near my
family. I moved here a couple of years ago.’

‘That all seems straightforward Mr Jarvis. But
I still do not see where the reference to land or a land dispute comes in.’

‘Ah, well. That’s the thing isn’t it?’ said the
old man, giving Davies a steady stare. ‘It’s the fields I loaned that they are
squabbling about isn’t it?’

Davies had followed the story to that point but
by now was quite confused. Were all residents of sheltered housing schemes
dotty? It certainly seemed so, although Jarvis had appeared to be quite
articulate at the outset. ‘Look Mr Jarvis,’ he said, ‘I don’t follow you. Which
fields are we talking about and who did you loan them to?’

‘When we separated the farm into two lots,’
replied Jarvis, ‘it was chopped roughly into two equal halves. But setting up
the caravan site was wildly expensive; I had to put roads in, electric hook-ups
and drainage for each pitch, as well as the reception building and launderette.
So to keep the cost manageable, instead of the complete half, I only developed
about one third of the total. We loaned the spare to Archer and he added it to
his 50%. Just temporarily of course.

‘The arrangement was that he could have the use
of it for free until such time that I was ready to expand the caravan site. But
as it got established I was happy with the site as it was so I never expanded.
I sold the site to Archer’s son Peter, so by rights he then owned the extra
land his dad farmed. When he telephoned me he said that he needed to expand to
compete with a new site so he now needs that land, but his sister, I’ve
forgotten her name Inspector, wouldn’t release it. Apparently the sister
grabbed the father’s land and Peter got cut out. Still, you could have checked
all of that without coming all the way down here. All you needed to do was ask
Peter. You could ask him why he didn’t turn up here when he said he was doing
as well. I bought some biscuits – I don’t eat biscuits usually –
and they are still in the packet.’