Who Sent Clement? Page 13

  “Yes. A friendly chap with white hair?”

  I stare at the nurse, open mouthed.

  The nurse has just described the last man I’d want anywhere near my mother — David Sterling.

  15

  It’s not quite a run, more a frenzied waddle. My stumpy legs propel me along the corridor while my mind considers what revenge Sterling has in mind for Clement’s attack on Messrs Black & Blue.

  For a second, I wish Clement was with me.

  I crash through the doors and look straight across at the bed in the far corner. My mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed. The man with the white hair is sitting on the chair Sergeant Stone occupied last night.

  I stomp across the ward and stare daggers at the man.

  “Morning, Bethany,” he chimes.

  The man does have white hair, but it caps a plump, ruddy face. No beak-like nose and no scar.

  “Stanley. What are you doing here?”

  Embarrassed smiles are swapped between my mother and her estranged husband.

  “Darling, I asked Stanley to drop by.”

  “You mother phoned me this morning,” Stanley adds apologetically.

  “Why?” I ask, turning to my mother and ignoring Stanley.

  “Because he’s my friend. And despite everything that happened, he cares about me.”

  Stanley looks up at me, his eyes like those of a scolded dog seeking forgiveness.

  “Well, nice to see you again, Stanley. Shall we get going, Mum?”

  She frowns at me. “Sit down, darling.”

  I huff like a sulky teenager and slump down on the edge of the bed next to my mother.

  “What’s going on here, Mum?”

  “Stanley has offered to put me up for a few days, to look after me.”

  “No. That’s my job,” I protest.

  “But, darling, you’ve got the shop to run and a fiancé to look after. You’ve got enough on your plate without worrying about me.”

  I look across at Stanley.

  “Where are you even living? Last I heard you were in some grotty bedsit.”

  “I’ve got a mobile home now, Bethany. It’s in a lovely spot out in the sticks. Plenty of peace and quiet.”

  I turn back to my mother.

  “This is madness. Have you forgotten it was Stanley’s help that almost bankrupted you?”

  “That was then, and we were both to blame. He just wants to look after me, and it’s only for a few days; a week at most.”

  “I’m not working now,” Stanley interjects. “So I can be there if your mother needs anything. I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”

  “See, darling? Stanley only wants to help. And it’ll be nice to get away and recuperate in the country.”

  The two of them stare at me expectedly, awaiting my approval. This feels like it was already a done deal before I arrived.

  To confirm my theory, Stanley hands me a slip of paper. “My phone number. Call any time you like, day or night.”

  If I can overcome my controlling instincts, this might actually turn out in my favour. My mother will be far safer holed up in the country and I can concentrate on finding Sterling’s money without worrying about her.

  But just because it happens to suit me, it doesn’t mean I’m about to let Stanley off the hook.

  “If anything happens to her, Stanley, I’ll remove your testicles with a pair of blunt scissors. Clear?”

  I turn to my mother. “And don’t let him persuade you to invest in any more of his hare-brained schemes.”

  They both smile, probably with relief, and I give my mother an overdue hug.

  “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

  “Alright, darling. And please don’t worry about me.”

  I’ll never stop worrying about you, especially where Stanley Goodyear is concerned.

  I say my goodbyes and traipse back to the car park.

  By the time I’m back in the car, a gnawing guilt has set in. Perhaps I was too harsh on Stanley. Compared to the way Karl has treated me, he’s a virtual saint. Stanley might be a hapless fool, but Karl was a conniving, devious, cheating shitbag. My mother was naive, but I also stood blissfully by and let a man destroy my life. I think I’ve lost the moral high ground now.

  I make a mental note to apologise to Stanley when I call later.

  The guilt follows me all the way back to the shop.

  As I pull into the parking bay, I check the clock on the dashboard. Rather than the couple of hours I predicted, I’m back within an hour. With my inherent mistrust of men, I can’t help but see this as an opportunity to catch Clement up to no good.

  I quietly unlock the back door and open it.

  Good God!

  Clement is still sitting in the staffroom with his feet on the table, the radio playing in the background. His face is hidden behind a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray.

  I cough and he drops the book to his lap.

  “Of the thousands of books you could have read, you chose that?”

  He grins back at me. “Have you read it? It’s utter filth.”

  I suppose I should be grateful I didn’t walk in as he was mid-wank.

  “You’re back early,” he adds.

  “Yes. It seems my mother doesn’t require my babysitting service.”

  “You wanna get going then?”

  “Shortly. I want a cup of tea first, and we need to discuss this plan of yours.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I put the kettle on and turn the radio down. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve done those two things in quick succession.

  “I was listening to that,” Clement protests.

  “Listening to what?”

  “The funny Irish fella.”

  I look across at the dial on the radio, set to Radio 2.

  “Graham Norton.”

  “Yeah, him. I was trying to find Radio 1 but I think your set must be buggered.”

  “Eh?”

  “I managed to find the right frequency but it was just a load of bleedin’ noise.”

  “Ah, right,” I snigger. “When did you last listen to Radio 1?”

  “Long time ago.”

  I fill my mug with boiling water and turn to face Clement while it brews.

  “So which DJ did you listen to on a Saturday morning?”

  That’s it, Beth. Embrace the madness.

  “Ed Stewart.”

  I pluck my phone from my handbag and google the Radio 1 schedule from 1975. It lists Ed Steward in the breakfast slot.

  “Is he still on the radio?” Clement asks.

  “He’s dead, I’m afraid.”

  “What about Fluff Freeman?”

  “Dead.”

  “John Peel?”

  “Dead.”

  “Jesus,” he sighs. “That’s bleedin’ tragic.”

  “There are still some old DJs around though. There’s Tony Blackburn, David Hamilton, Johnnie Walker...”

  “Ooh, what about Jimmy Savile?” he interjects excitedly. “I used to bloody love his show on a Sunday afternoon.”

  “Seriously? Come on, Clement, the whole world knows about Savile.”

  “Well, I don’t. What about him?”

  “Erm, he’s also dead. And if he wasn’t, he’d be in prison.”

  “Eh? Why?”

  I turn back around and remove my teabag from the mug. I add a splash of milk, take a sip, and sit down at the table opposite Clement.

  “Savile was a paedophile.”

  “What? A nonce? Never,” he replies in obvious disbelief.

  “Afraid so, and quite a prolific offender as it transpires. There have been scores of allegations against him, over several decades.”

  “Well, bugger me. You’d never have guessed.”

  I almost choke on my tea. “Really? He never struck you as a bit odd?”

  He strokes his moustache. “Now I think about it, he was always a bit touchy-feely with the kids on Jim’ll Fix It.”

&nb
sp; “Indeed.”

  The room falls silent for a moment as Clement processes my revelation.

  “There was a lot of that going on back then, you know,” he says quietly.

  “A lot of what?”

  “Dirty bastards interfering with kids.”

  “So we’re learning.”

  “They make my fucking flesh creep.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “I remember one bloke who used to hang out at my local — Tommy Four-Fingers. He was caught trying to take pictures of kids getting changed at the swimming baths. Unfortunately for Tommy, one of those kids was the nephew of a local gang leader. The kid grassed on Tommy.”

  “Did he go to prison?”

  “Eventually, but not before he was taken to a warehouse where his thumbs were removed with bolt cutters.”

  “My God. That’s awful.”

  “He never took another photo though, on account he couldn’t use a camera without his thumbs.”

  “How very civilised.”

  “Maybe not, but I used to mix with some right evil bastards and there was an unwritten code of conduct — you never messed with women or kids. If you did, and anyone found out, you got what you deserved.”

  It’s my turn to process. The way Clement regales this supposed life of his is quite convincing. His psychosis must be pretty acute.

  I wonder if I’m doing him any favours by indulging him. Shouldn’t he be receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital?

  It’s a horribly selfish stance, but I need his help more than I care about his delusions. I’ll balance my conscience by ensuring he gets medical attention once we’re done. I can’t do this on my own, and at least he seems willing. Besides, who else is going to help me?

  “Anyway, tell me about this plan of yours.”

  He sits up and rubs his hands together. “It’s a bloody long story, doll. Why don’t we talk it over on the train, make better use of our time?”

  “If I’m going to lose a day’s trade, Clement, I’d quite like to know before I commit.”

  “Don’t you have staff?”

  “Um, no. But even if I could get somebody in at such short notice, it wouldn’t be worth it after paying their wages.”

  “No money in books then?”

  “Not since the Kindle.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind. Look, can’t you at least give me the gist of your idea?”

  He leans across the table so our faces are only feet apart, as if he’s about to share some great secret.

  “The plan is to find some lost gold,” he says excitedly.

  I sit back in my chair, incredulous. “How marvellous. I’ve got five days to find twenty grand and your plan is to go on a treasure hunt around London?”

  He looks genuinely hurt that I don’t share his enthusiasm. “You got any better ideas?” he grumbles.

  Clearly, I don’t.

  “No, but I need a bit more than that, Clement.”

  He rolls his eyes and sits back. “Alright. You better make me another brew then.”

  I get up and skip across to the kettle, pausing momentarily to scold myself for being so subservient.

  Like a good little woman, I make Clement’s tea without complaint and place his mug on the table.

  “That alright for you darlin’?” I say in my best Cockney accent.

  He peers into the mug. “Bit weak, but it’ll do,” my sarcasm clearly wasted on him.

  “Okay,” he begins. “Back in ‘71, a gang broke into the vault of Lloyds Bank on Baker Street. They tunnelled in from the cellar of an empty shop two doors down, and then used a thermic lance to cut a hole in the steel floor of the vault. They broke through on a Sunday and bagged the contents of hundreds of safety deposit boxes.”

  “Okay. Still not seeing how this helps us.”

  “Just getting to that. There were four members of the gang, and because some idiot rented the shop using his real name, the old bill arrested him pretty sharpish. Then it was just a case of rounding up his known associates. All four of them were eventually caught and sent down. Now, none of the loot was ever found, and neither of the two lookouts were named. They both got away scot-free.”

  “And?” I interrupt impatiently.

  “I heard on the grapevine that one of those lookouts was a bloke called Harry Cole, and he was paid off with a bar of pure gold they pulled from one of the safety deposit boxes.”

  “And that’s the gold you want to find?”

  “It is, but the story don’t end there. I never knew him, but apparently this Harry fella was the nervous type. As soon as the other gang members were arrested, he would have needed to hide his cut. Make sense?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Unfortunately for poor old Harry, he had a dodgy ticker and dropped dead in the street. The stress of the old bill sniffing around probably finished him off. Sometime later the old bill heard rumours Harry was involved and they turned his gaff inside out. The gold was never found.”

  “But how do you know this Harry character hadn’t already sold it?”

  Clement looks at me like I’m a complete idiot. “Because every bleedin’ copper in London was on the lookout for it. No fence would touch it, so he had no choice but to sit on it for a few months and then get rid. Standard form after a blag like that.”

  “So how much is a bar of gold worth?”

  “Depends. They came in all sorts of sizes but the largest were about four hundred ounces. Back in my day, you’d get about fifty quid an ounce on the black market.”

  “Twenty thousand pounds? In, what? The early seventies?”

  “Yep.”

  I grab my phone and check the value of gold today.

  “Christ. It’s now just under a thousand pounds per ounce. That bar could be worth four hundred thousand pounds.”

  I drop my phone on the table as I work out the myriad ways I could spend that sort of money. Reality quickly kicks back in.

  “I’m hoping you have some idea where this bar might be?”

  “We’ll talk about that on the train. And don’t think for one minute you’ll get four hundred grand for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Firstly, we don’t know what size the bar is — it could be four hundred ounces, or it could be a hundred ounces. And secondly, it’s scrap gold, so you won’t get market value.”

  “Alright. How much less than market value could we get?”

  “Knock about a third off for scrap value, then maybe another ten to twenty percent as an incentive for somebody to buy it without asking any awkward questions.”

  “So, all in all, it’s worth about half the market value?”

  “Yeah, about that.”

  I quickly calculate the possible numbers in my head — a four hundred ounce bar could be worth as much as two hundred thousand pounds.

  “I could pay off Sterling, and my mortgage.”

  “Not such a crazy idea then?”

  “I’m warming to it,” I reply nonchalantly.

  I’m actually trying hard not to show my excitement. However, I need to remain calm, and I need to process what, on the face of it, seems a pretty ludicrous plan.

  “I’m just going to the loo.”

  Clement nods and returns his attention back to Fifty Shades of Grey.

  I grab my phone from the table and head to the toilet. As soon as I’m sitting down, I google the Baker Street robbery of 1971.

  There are pages of results and I’m relieved to see it was a real event and not a figment of Clement’s broken mind. I tap a link to a Wikipedia page. As I scan the text, all of the information checks out, all except the part about Harry Cole and his gold bar. That would make sense, but it doesn’t mean Clement isn’t making it up.

  I google ‘Harry Cole stolen gold’.

  The first page of results are totally irrelevant to my search. I click through to the second page, and more irrelevant results. I’m about to click through to the third page when th
e last result catches my attention. It’s a link to an obscure chat forum I’ve never heard of, but the page title at least appears relevant. I tap the link.

  There are just four posts in the thread. The first asks if anyone had heard about Harry Cole’s alleged involvement in the Baker Street robbery. Two of the replies acknowledge the rumour, but offer nothing to corroborate it. The fourth, and final post, offers a little more. It cites a member of the gang, and his relationship with Harry Cole. A few theories about the missing gold are offered, but then discounted for a variety of reasons. Whoever posted the final message seems to imply that Harry Cole might well have been in possession of stolen gold, but concludes by saying that after such a long time, there is little chance of it ever being found.

  Interesting.

  I flush the chain and consider if this really is as crazy as it sounds. For two hundred thousand pounds, it’s got to be worth a trip to London, hasn’t it?

  I wash my hands and stare at my pale, jaded face, reflected in the mirror above the sink.

  Do you have any idea what you’re doing, Beth?

  I don’t, and I’ve only ever felt like this once before in my life.

  I must have been six years old and we went on holiday to a caravan park in Dorset. On the second day, Dad took me to the indoor swimming pool where they had this brightly coloured flume slide, snaking up to the roof like a twisted beanstalk. I think my dad was reluctant to let me have a go, but I begged him, and he eventually relented.

  I remember clambering excitedly up the steps and staring down this dark hole. With a dozen kids waiting impatiently behind me, it was too late to change my mind. I climbed in and sat down. Before I knew it, I was lying on my back and hurtling down the tube. As the coloured sections of the slide flashed past, I quickly learnt what it was like to have no control and nothing to cling to. No matter how much I wanted it to stop, and I really did, I had no choice but to put my trust in gravity and pray I wouldn’t be splattered against the curved walls. It was my first experience of being totally and utterly helpless.

  After what seemed an age, I was spat out into the swimming pool. Noting the fear on my face, Dad quickly fished me out and wrapped me in a towel. Safety. Comfort.

  As much as the slide scared the living daylights out of me — enough to stop me going back for another turn — there was a faint undercurrent of excitement to the experience. I didn’t understand it, and I haven’t felt it since — until now.