Losing Ground E-Book

Catherine Aird

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Sloan and Crosby
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 245

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The dramatic theft of an 18th Century painting is discovered just moments before the old manor house uniquely depicted in the background of the portrait is set alight; coincidence? Does the reputation of the Baronet, the subject of the painting, as a hell-raiser and member of the Crustacean club have any connection to the fire? Events become decidedly more complex as a grisly spectacle is sighted in the blazing inferno moments before the roof collapses. The pile of bones spotted in the burning room only deepens the mystery which Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby have to piece together, a puzzle which has its roots deep in Berebury's history. Although Tolmie Park has had a somewhat chequered and mysterious past there are those in the community who would fight to preserve it. There are also a number of factions within the area who have differing plans to develop the property, shrouding the blaze in further suspicion. It is up to the team to sift through this assortment of characters and illuminate the truth; in this close knit village of Berebury somebody must have answers.

Leseprobe

Losing Ground

CATHERINE AIRD

For Peach, Plum and Henry with love

Contents

Title PageDedicationCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYAbout the AuthorBy Catherine AirdCopyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘There’s something I want, Stu,’ said Jason Burke, indicating a piece of paper he’d just tossed on the table in front of Stuart Bellamy. ‘Get a load of that.’

Bellamy picked up the paper and read out slowly, ‘A view of Tolmie Park near the market town of Berebury photographed from the air.’

‘That’s right.’ Burke strummed a few notes on a guitar. ‘It’s over Calleford way.’

Bellamy peered at the picture more closely and said warily, ‘Jason, this is a picture of a socking big country house in the middle of a large park.’

‘That’s right.’ Jason bent more carefully over the guitar and twanged the same notes over again. And again. ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere, actually.’

‘A country house that looks as if it’s falling down,’ pointed out Bellamy.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ agreed Jason, reaching for a sheet of music. ‘I expect it is, too. It’s pretty old.’

‘It looks it,’ said Bellamy, adding studiously, ‘Jason, you’ve got a house already. A nice one.’

‘Sure,’ said Jason agreeably, ‘but I want this one, too.’

Stuart Bellamy said nothing for a moment. Working as the manager of Jason Burke, who was known to the wider world of Pop Music as Kevin Cowlick, had already led him into the wilder areas of finance – ones that had not been covered by his own accountancy apprenticeship. Actually, Bellamy hadn’t completed his apprenticeship to become a fully qualified accountant – not that Jason cared about that – but every now and then he wished he had. This was one of those times.

Eventually, sounding as if he understood his employer’s way of thought, he said, ‘Of course, it’s bigger than this one you’ve got now.’ He waved towards the forty-track synthesiser at the other end of the room. ‘And there’d be much more room for extra equipment.’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ said Jason casually, his hand straying to the lock of hair that fell across his forehead and was the inspiration for his stage name. ‘It’s for sentimental reasons. That’s why I want it.’

‘Ah…’ murmured Stuart Bellamy.

‘First big bike ride me and my mate took out of Luston – we were only nippers at the time – we fetched up at this Tolmie Park and I thought that if I got to be rich and famous that I’d like to live there.’

‘I see,’ said Bellamy. And he did. Jason was not the only young man to have spotted a goal early in life and used it as something to aim for or to lay at the feet of some lady. The difference was that Jason was still young…and so far there was no lady.

‘And now I’m rich and famous,’ said Jason simply, ‘I’m going to have it.’ He resumed playing his guitar.

‘That may be easier said than done,’ pointed out Bellamy cautiously. ‘Whoever owns it may not want to sell.’

‘Every man has his price,’ responded Jason. This was one thing that success and its consequent great wealth had already taught the young pop star.

‘True,’ said Stuart Bellamy, ‘very true, but don’t forget it may cost.’

Jason Burke let his glance travel meaningfully over a rack of albums all with the name of Kevin Cowlick on them before he said again ‘I want it.’

‘Sure,’ said Bellamy.

‘So go get it for me, Stu – oh, and Stu…’

‘Yes?’

‘Get me another djembe, too.’

‘Okey dokey.’ Stuart Bellamy thought how like Jason it was to want him to buy for him both a vast country estate and a new drum in the same breath. ‘Will do.’

‘It’s an outrage,’ spluttered Marcus Fixby-Smith, curator of the Greatorex Museum in Granary Row, Berebury. ‘An absolute outrage.’

‘It would appear to be a case of theft,’ pronounced Detective Inspector CD Sloan, rather less emotionally. He was head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of F Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary. As such almost all matters that could not be diverted to Traffic Division or the Family Case Officer landed up on his plate.

This was one of them.

‘Robbery with violence,’ insisted the curator, pointing to the damaged glass top of a showcase.

‘Breaking and entering,’ countered Sloan briskly, indicating the smashed window of the gallery and broken glass.

The museum curator tossed his long hair out of his eyes and said, ‘Inspector, the thief, whoever he was, as well as stealing a portrait, did violence to this show cabinet and quite possibly to the exhibition pieces on display inside it.’

‘I can see that that is very likely, sir,’ agreed Sloan, peering at the damaged piece of museum furniture and its disarranged contents.

‘He must have gone through the glass top while he was standing on it to reach up to get at the portrait,’ declared Fixby-Smith.

‘You could well be right about that,’ said Sloan equably. ‘Where would this showcase have been standing in the ordinary way?’

Marcus Fixby-Smith waved a hand and pointed to the middle of the room. ‘Just over there. Easy enough to drag it up against the wall and hop onto it.’

The museum curator had at his side his assistant, an intelligent and able young woman wearing glasses, called Hilary Collins. Her low-key sandy-coloured blouse and skirt were in direct contrast to the flamboyant clothes of her boss.

Detective Inspector CD Sloan, known to his friends in the Force for obvious reasons as ‘Seedy’, had not been quite so fortunate. He had with him at his side at the museum as his assistant Detective Constable Crosby, dressed – at least in theory – in what was officially described in police circles as plain clothes.

Crosby, though admittedly young, was not really up to being at the cutting edge of detection. What Superintendent Leeyes had said when the call from the museum had come through was: ‘Take him with you, Sloan. He can’t do any more damage there and he might even learn something.’

Seeing the constable advancing at the double on the broken glass of the show cabinet now, Sloan wasn’t so sure of either the premise or the possibility. ‘The Scenes of Crime Officer will want to examine that first, Crosby,’ he said swiftly, motioning him back.

All four of them were standing immediately under the place on the wall of the museum where, until recently, had hung the portrait of Sir Francis Edward Petherton Filligree, 4th Baronet, of Tolmie Park, near Berebury. The oil painting had been cut neatly from its ornate gilt frame. Along the lower edge of the frame was inscribed in black letters the subject’s name and dates. Above this now in the place of the portrait was just an old wooden backing board.

Detective Inspector Sloan turned over a new page in his notebook and wrote down the place, date and time. ‘Would this have been a particularly valuable painting, sir?’

The curator threw out his chest. ‘We have many more important pieces here in the museum naturally, but any portrait by Peter de Vesey has its own value.’

‘Who he?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby insouciantly.

Marcus Fixby-Smith favoured him with the pained expression of an expert talking to a total ignoramus. ‘A well-known local artist, very popular with the eighteenth-century landed classes of Calleshire.’

‘He painted most of them in his day,’ put in Hilary Collins helpfully. ‘We’ve got several more works by the same artist in our collection here and there are some others over in the Calleshire museum and Art Gallery.’

‘We have the best ones, though,’ put in Fixby-Smith quickly.

Sloan, who could recognise a turf war as well as the next man, tried another tack. ‘Would you care to put a value on what has been stolen?’

‘Impossible,’ declared Fixby-Smith histrionically.

‘Not easy,’ explained Hilary Collins. ‘De Vesey portraits so seldom come on the market these days. Families that have them do like to hang onto them, you know.’

‘Ancestor-worship,’ said Detective Constable Crosby under his breath.

‘So why haven’t the Filligrees still got Sir Francis?’ enquired Sloan mildly.

‘I think it could just be because there aren’t any of them left. Filligrees, I mean,’ said Hilary Collins. ‘But I don’t know that for sure.’

‘Perhaps they were broke and had to flog him off,’ put in Crosby. ‘Like selling the family silver.’

The museum curator grimaced. ‘Worse, we might even have been given him. Then we’d have had to have him – I mean, it – whether we liked it or not.’ Since this didn’t quite accord with his earlier stance he added hastily. ‘Of course, we’re always pleased to have anything by Peter de Vesey. Naturally.’

More practically, Hilary Collins said, ‘I turned up our Accession List before you arrived, Inspector, and it looks as if the portrait came into our collection at some time in the late nineteen-thirties. We have it in our records as having got it on long term loan from the family.’

‘There would have been very little market for this sort of work just before the war,’ put in the museum curator authoritatively. ‘Things were very flat in that field then.’

‘They were hard times,’ said Sloan, who had his grandparents’ memories of those years to go on.

‘And I believe the Army requisitioned the house in the war…’ said Hilary Collins.

‘Harder times still,’ said Sloan. That he’d learnt from his own parents.

‘Then after the war,’ she resumed, ‘I understand the authorities used it for a while to house delinquent children…’

It would be a toss-up, thought Sloan, whether they would have done more or less damage than the rough soldiery. ‘And then?’ he asked.

‘I have an idea that at one time someone wanted to carve the place up into self-contained flats but keeping the façade and the style,’ replied Hilary Collins. ‘That was after the delinquent children.’

‘You know the sort of thing, Inspector,’ the curator interrupted her, ‘grand country house living without having to worry about the roof or the drive all on your own.’

‘I do,’ said Sloan. They knew all about the aspirational society in the criminal investigation world, too.

‘Delusions of grandeur, if you ask me,’ muttered Crosby.

‘And then there was a rumour about having a golf course there.’ Hilary Collins frowned. ‘I rather think something went wrong with a bank loan at that stage but that was only hearsay. I’m not sure.’

‘So?’ asked Sloan, mindful of more important problems than a break-in and the history of an old building awaiting him back at the police station. Bank loans that had gone wrong were not exactly hot news there either.

‘I expect the planning people wouldn’t wear any development,’ said Fixby-Smith. ‘Listed building status and all that. All they ever want is for everything to stay “as is”. Still do.’

‘Then?’ asked Sloan patiently.

Hilary Collins screwed up her eyes in the effort of recollection. ‘After that I think it was empty for a long while – got thoroughly neglected. The damp got in and then wet rot.’

‘Disgraceful,’ said Fixby-Smith automatically.

‘I have an idea the local council tried to serve repair notices on the owners but they couldn’t find them.’

‘Neither could the bank, I expect,’ put in Crosby.

‘No responsibility, some people,’ said Fixby-Smith.

‘No money, more like,’ offered Detective Constable Crosby, who lived nearer the ground.

‘I heard that a rather dodgy printing firm moved in after that,’ said Hilary Collins steadily. ‘They put one of their heavy presses in the old billiard room – that sort of thing but who they paid their rent to, I couldn’t say.’

‘If they did,’ said Crosby.

The curator gave a snort and said, ‘Disgraceful, when you come to think about it. Pure sacrilege.’

‘Needs must,’ contributed Crosby. ‘Or the march of progress or something.’

Fixby-Smith looked at the detective constable as if he was seeing him for the first time. ‘I may say that if that’s what you are pleased to call progress, Constable, then…’

‘Sir,’ Detective Inspector Sloan interrupted him swiftly, turning away from the blank space on the wall where the portrait had been and pointing instead at the damaged display cabinet below it. ‘Do you know what will have been in that?’

The curator frowned. ‘Anglo-Saxon artefacts, I think. That right, Hilary?’

‘Yes, Mr Fixby-Smith. Local ones from the site near Larking. Part of the Professor Michael Ripley bequest.’ She advanced on the display case and peered in. ‘I know there was a bronze shield in it – yes, that’s still here. I’d have to check the other items in our records to see if anything is missing.’

‘That’s the Dark Ages, isn’t it?’ said Detective Constable Crosby chattily. ‘The Anglo-Saxons, I mean.’

The curator immediately launched into hortative mode. ‘Calleshire was quite an important place in post-Roman times. There was a big Anglo-Saxon settlement over Larking way and another one near Almstone, both excavated by the late Professor Michael Ripley, a well-known local archaeologist.’ He waved an arm. ‘There is some suggestion that the name relates to the re-use by the Anglo-Saxons of Roman stone there beside the river Alm.’

‘Waste not, want not,’ observed Detective Constable Crosby to no one in particular.

Detective Inspector Sloan who, among other problems, had a complicated case of transactional fraud on his hands back at the police station, returned to the matter in hand. ‘As you will know, sir,’ he said to the curator, ‘there are well-established mechanisms for informing the art world of thefts such as these…’

‘Yes, yes,’ Marcus Fixby-Smith interrupted him testily, ‘the Art Loss Register, but I want that portrait back and I also want to know why it has been stolen.’

‘So do we,’ Sloan reassured him. Actually the police priority was to find out who it was who had done the stealing and then charge him – or sometimes, but not often, her – with burglary but he saw no reason to say so. His own priority just now was to get back to work on the more pressing matters awaiting him back at the police station.

Marcus Fixby-Smith tossed his flowing mane back like an irate horse. ‘Even so, Inspector…’

‘And this means, sir,’ he said firmly, ‘that you will have to keep this gallery closed for the time being.’

Hilary Collins nodded intelligently while the curator snapped, ‘How long for exactly?’

‘Until our enquiries are complete,’ responded Detective Inspector Sloan smoothly, silently acknowledging to himself that well-worn formulae did have their uses. ‘May I take it that this was just a straightforward portrait?’

‘Typical painting of the period,’ the curator came back promptly. ‘Portrait of Sir Francis Filligree leaning against a tree near the house, his new wife at his side, with a distant view of the village church at Tolmie in the background and some lobster shells at his feet.’

‘Lobster shells?’ said Sloan. Kinnisport and the sea were quite a distance away from Tolmie.

‘Lobster and crab shells, actually,’ Hilary Collins made the correction diffidently. ‘I believe there are similar shells in the Filligree coat of arms, too.’

‘In his day,’ explained the curator, ‘Sir Francis was a member of a group of young rabble-rousers called the Crustaceans.’

‘A sort of Hellfire Club, I’m afraid,’ supplemented Hilary Collins.

‘So what’s new?’ observed Detective Constable Crosby, victim of several Saturday night fights with the young and drunk with nothing else to do.

Hilary Collins coughed. ‘I rather think that there was also a particularly good view of Tolmie Park in the upper left hand corner of the painting.’

‘That’s what I said,’ trumpeted Marcus Fixby-Smith. ‘Absolutely typical for its time. Think Thomas Gainsborough’s famous painting of “Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews”…’

‘Who they?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby predictably.

‘A nouveau riche couple – he married money – wanting the world to know how well they’d done,’ said Fixby-Smith.

‘There’s a lot of that about,’ said Crosby.

Not as much, thought Sloan to himself, if the Proceeds of Crime Act got to them first. He had high hopes of this new piece of legislation – and the Assets Recovery Agency – succeeding with the fraud case he was working on now. When he could get to it, that is.

‘In 1748 in the case of the Andrews,’ added Fixby-Smith, pedantically. ‘I’m not sure offhand of the date of Peter de Vesey’s portrait of Sir Francis Filligree.’

‘Nothing changes, anyway,’ said Crosby, patently unimpressed.

Hilary Collins kept her gaze on the damaged door to the gallery. ‘I believe the view of the house in the painting was thought to be an unusual one. We will have a photograph of it in our records – I’ll look it out for you, Inspector.’

Detective Inspector Sloan looked up alertly. ‘Unusual?’

‘As Mr Fixby-Smith has pointed out,’ she said with careful loyalty, ‘it was – I mean, is – typical for its time but I see from their notes that there was something our predecessors here in the museum found noteworthy when they accessed it all those years ago…’

Detective Inspector Sloan listened with attention as Hilary Collins balanced the difficult tightrope between tact and toadying. The curator obviously hadn’t found anything interesting about the portrait at all.

‘It was the particular view of the house,’ she said. ‘Apparently Tolmie Park couldn’t be seen in the ordinary way later – certainly not in our time – from the aspect in the painting.’ Unlike that of the curator, Hilary Collins’ mouse-coloured hair didn’t need tossing about to make a point. ‘Not afterwards.’

‘Afterwards?’ queried Sloan.

‘After some subsequent improvements by Humphry Repton,’ she said.

‘And the Victorians,’ snapped the curator. ‘Mustn’t forget them. If they could ever be said to have improved anything.’

‘Later drawings and photographs always show the front of the house flat on,’ persisted Hilary Collins in a detached way.

‘Full frontal,’ murmured Detective Constable Crosby almost – but not quite – inaudibly.

‘And the view in the portrait?’ asked Sloan swiftly. Informality might be the watchword for today’s policing but it could go too far.

‘If my memory is right, Inspector,’ said Hilary Collins, primly ignoring the detective constable’s observation, ‘that showed the house as seen from the south-east as it was in the beginning.’

‘Before Humphry Repton got his hands on the landscape.’ The curator reasserted himself with practised ease. ‘There should be one of his little red books about it here in the museum somewhere.’

‘Really, sir?’ The only little red book that Sloan knew about had political rather than architectural connections but all information was grist to the police mill. He tucked the fact away in the back of his mind. ‘Now, about your alarm system here…’

Hilary Collins waved a hand in the direction of the window but before they could get near enough to look at it Detective Inspector Sloan’s personal mobile telephone started to ring.

It was Superintendent Leeyes from the police station at Berebury on the other end of the line. ‘Get yourselves over to Tolmie Park as quickly as you can, Sloan,’ he commanded. ‘The house there is on fire.’

CHAPTER TWO

Somewhere where they most definitely did think of change as progress was at the firm of Berebury Homes Ltd. The local development and construction company had its offices in Berebury’s business quarter down by the river. A Project Team meeting was in progress there now.

There were four people present. One of them, Robert Selby, their financial controller, was in full voice. As was usual with those of that ilk, the money man was downplaying anything in the nature of good news. Since the others there knew only too well of Selby’s infinite capacity to cast a decided blight on any proceedings involving money, the downside of what he had to say was accordingly discounted by them all.

‘So the finance for the Tolmie Park development project is now at an important juncture…’ Selby was saying, tapping the notes on the table in front of him for greater emphasis, when he was interrupted by the arrival of Lionel Perry, Chairman and Managing Director of Berebury Homes, Ltd.

‘Sorry to be late, everybody,’ Perry said breezily, slipping into the empty chair at the top of the table. Hung on the wall behind him was a photograph of Mont Blanc, the Swiss mountain. ‘Puncture. Haven’t had one for ages. Do carry on Robert. You were saying something about Tolmie Park, I think…’

‘Yes, Lionel,’ lumbered on Robert Selby ponderously, ‘I was just about to point out that the development there is only going to come right financially if we get planning permission for the whole area from the word go to do it our way.’ He looked round at them all. ‘I hope that you all realise that. Otherwise…’

‘I’m sure they do,’ said Lionel Perry. He glanced round with a quick complicit smile at all the others. ‘That’s very important.’

‘And getting planning permission itself costs a lot as well,’ continued Robert Selby, his pencil still beating a steady tattoo on the outside of his file. Like the chairman, he was dressed in a sober business suit. On the wall behind him was a photograph of the Jungfrau.

‘Bean counter,’ whispered Derek Hitchin, their project manager.

Selby, who hadn’t heard him, carried on. ‘I’ve got my people working on some additional figures now but as you know Section 106 agreements are no help to man nor beast.’

‘Would someone please have the goodness to explain to me what a Section 106 agreement is?’ Auriole Allen was the only woman present at the meeting and didn’t pretend to be knowledgeable about building development, only about advertising and public relations. The photograph behind her chair was of the Silberhorn bathed in the evening Alpenglow.

‘Legally binding agreements between local authorities and developers and landowners,’ spelt out Robert Selby.

She looked bewildered. ‘But we own the land at Tolmie and we’re also the developers of it, aren’t we?’

‘Too right, we are,’ said Selby sourly. ‘That means it’s just us and them.’

‘I don’t think any of us need any reminding of the initial costs, Robert,’ intervened Perry, effortlessly resuming the lead. ‘It’s not new. It happens every time we start talking about a major development project like this.’

He might not have spoken, so quickly did Selby go back to his theme. ‘And quite apart from the application charges, Lionel, there’s what Berebury Council are going to sting us for in the way of all the new roads they’ll want putting in,’ he persisted. ‘Let alone roundabouts.’

‘Require us to put in, you mean,’ said Derek Hitchin, giving a little snort. He was a short peppery man and the mud-spattered donkey-jacket he affected was as much a statement as what he was saying. The photograph on the wall behind his chair was as craggy as his personality: the north face of the Eiger. ‘At least they’re not charging us for planning gain any more.’

‘But you all know that roundabouts cost a bomb, too,’ said Robert Selby, reasserting his role as the finance man. ‘You’re talking big money there.’

‘They’ll want one of those where our land meets the road to the village.’ Derek Hitchin banged the pile of papers on the table in front of him and said sharply, ‘Bound to. We all know that the existing entrance won’t do, coming out on a blind corner like it does. May I point out, too, Lionel, that straightforward outline planning permission is not the only thing that this Tolmie Park undertaking is dependent on. Don’t forget that the final planning footprint isn’t even fixed yet.’

‘Go on,’ said Lionel Perry, stealing a surreptitious glance at his wristwatch. He was due on the first tee of Berebury Golf Course in exactly ninety minutes’ time but had no intention of saying so.

‘And if we don’t get enabling permission for the land beyond the ditch…’ resumed Hitchin.

‘The ha-ha, if you don’t mind,’ put in a man called Randolph Mansfield in a pained voice. He was an architect and had never taken to wearing a collar and tie. He did, though, favour shaggy pale blue denim trousers that he thought made him look younger than he was and really with it. ‘It’s called a ha-ha, not a ditch and it’s designed to make gardens look bigger while keeping the livestock out.’

Derek Hitchin pointedly ignored him, going on, ‘As I was saying, we must get planning permission for all the land beyond the ditch, outside the village envelope or not. We need it to make the project viable. Every bit of it.’

‘The Muster Green, you mean,’ put in the chairman, demonstrating how conversant he was with the matter in hand.

‘If we don’t get planning permission for the Muster Green on top of the go-ahead for the rest of the parkland then we won’t be able to do anything with the old heap because we won’t have enough decent access to satisfy the Highways people and that’s that,’ finished Derek Hitchin flatly. ‘Knockdown bargain or not.’

Auriole Allen stirred uneasily and said, ‘Derek, as the person in charge of press and public relations in this firm, might I point out that it would be as well if we avoided referring to Tolmie Park…’

‘What’s left of it,’ interrupted Derek Hitchin, quite unrepentant.

‘What’s left of it, then,’ conceded Auriole Allen, ‘as an old heap.’

It was house policy to keep the belligerent Derek Hitchin, their very able but distinctly short-fused project manager, away from as many outside contacts as possible. His abrasive manner worked very well with sub-contractors and suppliers; it went down less well with officials and local councillors.

And the press. Especially the press.

Auriole Allen turned on a winning professional smile and went on, ‘The local papers might get to hear of it and you know what they’re like when they sense a row. And then before you can say knife, it’s in all the nationals.’

‘Auriole’s right, of course,’ said Lionel Perry peaceably, well aware that there was nothing the combative Hitchin liked better than a row.

With anyone. With everyone.

‘Not a good idea, Derek,’ he went on easily. Lionel Perry was the very embodiment of a company chairman. Silver-haired and silver-tongued, and of a notably benevolent mien, he photographed well and knew it. It was Lionel Perry’s face that figured on the firm’s advertisements and promotional brochures. It was an image that was worth a lot.

‘Don’t forget, Derek, that the history of the bank’s involvement in Tolmie Park has been kept out of the papers.’

‘So far,’ Auriole Allen reminded them tautly. ‘Only so far. Don’t forget that you can never be quite sure what the press know but aren’t going to print until the time’s ripe. They’re very good at that.’

‘The Calleshire and Counties Bank won’t thank us for making it public anyway,’ said the chairman.

Robert Selby sniffed. ‘Too right, they won’t. Their Douglas Anderson has always been a bit tight-lipped about what happened there.’

Lionel Perry added lightly, ‘And you never know when we’re going to need some extra finance from them ourselves.’

‘Worse than the press,’ Robert Selby came back smartly in his customary role as Cassandra, ‘is that the Berebury Council’s conservation people might get to hear that Derek here thinks the house an old heap. You know what they’re like with their precious listed buildings.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ grumbled Randolph Mansfield. ‘They behave as if every single old building in the county of Calleshire belonged to them.’ Even though strictly speaking he was the firm’s architect, Mansfield was still a man with his own ideas about what should be done with all buildings – old and new.

‘But they talk about them as if they’re ours all right whenever hard cash comes into it,’ snapped the finance director. ‘They’re not theirs then. Oh, dear me, no. When it comes to paying anything out, then they’re ours.’

‘Ours? I ask you!’ spluttered Derek Hitchin, ‘when they won’t let you lay a single finger on them without their permission. Ours, indeed!’

‘Which in the broadest sense,’ said the chairman calmly, ‘I suppose they are, since we all live in Calleshire and enjoy them.’

Of all those present only Auriole Allen appreciated the public relations value of this anodyne statement. The others ignored it for the guff it was.

Lionel Perry stroked his chin and said sagely, ‘This Muster Green you’re talking about – I suppose if the worst comes to the worst and we can’t get planning permission for it included with the rest of the land we could always deal with it separately as an ALMO.’

Auriole Allen sat up smartly and said, ‘I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I do have the heart and stomach of a public relations consultant. What in the name of goodness is an ALMO?’

‘Arm’s Length Management Operation,’ explained Robert Selby.

‘Modus Operandi,’ put in Randolph Mansfield in a long-suffering voice.

Selby ignored him. ‘And let me tell you, Auriole, an ALMO’s nothing like as profitable as a hands-on one.’

‘Easier to manage, though,’ said Derek Hitchin comfortably.

‘Less work for you, you mean,’ said Selby uncharitably.