Chapter 137

Harry knew they wouldn’t have time to properly explain their findings to Laurel. He was still worried about Bill Blunt, and what exactly he might be up to in Telford that day. But he could give her a flavour of them and, hopefully, enlist her help for the next stage in the proceedings. He’d give her the basics – enough to make her realize why she needed to meet Lillian if they were to ever get the full picture.

Danny was pouring the coffee, now, while Laurel had picked up the medals and was examining them more closely. Harry checked his watch discretely, and saw it was already 10.30am. Still no sign of the certificates he was expecting. He wondered if something might have gone wrong at Southport…

“So, these are mine, now?” Laurel asked, eventually.

“Yes. They’re quite valuable, as there were only ever two sets issued. What do you know about the Spanish Civil War?”

Laurel shook her head: “Not a great deal. Why?”

“I think you may know a little more before the day’s out, that’s all,” Harry replied. “Look, Laurel, I’m going to be straight with you: I’m worried that Bill Blunt may be onto this story. I don’t particularly want to see it plastered over this week’s Birkenhead Beagle – and I don’t expect you do, either. He’s in Telford right now.”

“Telford?” Laurel asked, as Danny handed her drink across to her.

“Telford’s where Lillian lives, Laurel,” Danny said, as he passed Harry his drink, too.

“And we can’t be sure what he knows, I’m afraid,” Harry continued. “I can appreciate you must think we’ve been holding stuff back from you, but I hope you realize the predicament we’ve been in.”

Laurel looked at Harry and noticed that he hadn’t shaved that morning. It gave him a certain roguish charm, and he reminded her of a Mexican bandit from a TV movie.

“I think I’m getting a sense of how you’ve been operating, Mr McFry,” she said. “I imagine it’s quite difficult playing your pipe to two paymasters. But you seem to have mastered the art quite nicely.”

Harry caught the slightest whiff of sarcasm, like it was cordite from a gun that had just been fired.

“Deceiving someone’s never pleasant,” Harry said, by way of some sort of atonement, “but sometimes, it’s the only option.” Harry wasn’t sure he even believed that line, but thought he’d delivered it convincingly enough. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to practice a little deception yourself today, if you don’t mind…” he’d said, tailing off as he checked her reaction.

“Deception? What do you mean?”

“We need to arrange to see Lillian McFry today – just in case Bill Blunt is onto her. And I’d like you to accompany us.”

He waited to see what she said.

“You mean undercover?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Let’s say you agree to being our assistant for the day. It would at least give you a chance to meet Lillian – your grandmother. And, depending on how it pans out, we may get the chance to introduce you. Properly, I mean.”

Laurel thought for a second or two, as her fingers played with the stiff material of the ribbon of the largest of the three medals.

“I see,” she said, finally replacing the medal beside the others. “So you want my first meeting with a grandmother I never knew to be framed by deceit?”

“Laurel – she’s 102 years old,” Harry said, slowly. “It could be, given time, we could persuade her to meet you. But how much time does a woman of that age have, do you think?”

She could see what he was saying. Lillian wasn’t likely to agree to meet up with her, and could even be angry if she knew Danny and Harry had betrayed her confidence. It sounded as though playing it by ear was the best bet.

When it came, her reply was firm. “OK, Harry. I’ll do it. But only on two conditions. I want you to tell me everything you know on the journey down to Telford. And I mean the bond, the medals, Mr Blunt, the DNA tests. Everything.”

Harry nodded. She was making it clear that she was the one paying the piper here. It wouldn’t do them any harm to go through the story again, anyway, and it would be good preparation for the meeting with Lillian.

“It’s a deal. But you said ‘two conditions’…”

“You’ll have to let me go home to change,” she said, with a nod to her red overcoat, hanging by the door.

“If I’m to meet my grandmother for the first time, I’d rather not look like a character from a children’s fairy tale – especially one that might be a wolf, in disguise.”

Harry and Danny both smiled, but neither of them was quite sure whether it was the relief that Laurel had agreed to join them, or the sharpness of her joke, that had caused the smiles. Now all they had to do was engineer the trip to see Lillian. Harry noticed Danny psyching himself up for the call, even as he threw another sideways glance at the fax machine, stubbornly still and silent as it sat on the filing cabinet, against the wall.

*

As they left Cardiff en route for Telford, Dave Morris and Jane Tobias were discussing what they had on Dacre Lawrence. And they – or at least Dave – was starting to feel less confident than he had just last week.

The previous afternoon, they’d taken a call from Mabel Harris at the Chapter Road Health Centre. She had, she explained, some information which she felt might be relevant to their enquiries. Could she fax it through to him? When it arrived, about ten minutes later, Dave had called Jane into his office.

“Take a look at these…” he’d said, handing her a sheaf of papers, all copies of births, deaths and marriage certificates.

As she’d leafed through them, Jane had sighed. “Wish I’d done that family history course at night class now!” she’d exclaimed. “How are we expected to make sense of all this?”

Dave had smiled at this. “I know what you mean. Mabel Harris pulled them from Lawrence’s study. Said she thought they might be important. The thing is, they probably are, if we had the time and the ability to put it all together.”

Jane had looked at him. Neither of them really understood the first thing about genealogy – it wasn’t something that had featured much in their training, after all. “So what should we do with them?”

Dave’s shrug had spoken volumes: “We’ll just have to keep it on file, for now. Maybe there’s someone in the office who knows a bit about family history. It’s possible we’ll need it to stack a case up against Lawrence.”

As they headed, now, towards Shropshire, Jane was at the wheel while Dave was leafing through his notes, trying to suppress a feeling of anxiety that had troubled him since he woke up that day.

“You know, I think Tom’s right. This could end up as small beer,” he said. “He’s going to love us if all we can establish is that Lawrence spent a couple of grand of his practice budget paying some computer nerd to tinker with a database.”

Jane had been thinking about this, too. Tom Gauntless might even enjoy their failure.

“You’re missing the point, Dave,” she said. “It’s not just about money. I know he wants us to show all that investment in the project has been worth it, but there are principles involved here, too.”

They turned onto a motorway, slowing as the rush-hour traffic laboured along.

“Look at it this way. We design a national patient record system to make it easier for GPs to access records when patients transfer practices, for instance. Not to allow them to pursue a hobby...”

Morris looked more alarmed than ever. “Is that what you think this is about? A GP abusing his position to further his interest in family history?”

As the car in front came to a halt, and she slowed and applied the handbrake, she turned to him. “You didn’t let me finish. Remember, we’ve both got a gut instinct that there’s more behind this than a doctor with an interest in genealogy. This woman we’re going to see now – I suspect she’s the key to it all.”

“I hope you’re right, Jane. Otherwise it’s going to look like we’ve wasted more than a bit of time. I just wish we had something more tangible than Lawrence paying to have a few census images altered.”

“Stay cool, Dave!” Jane said, as the cars started to move again. “At least we get a day out in Telford. And, if I know old ladies like I think I do, I suspect we’re in for a treat.”

“A treat? What kind of a treat?” Dave asked, even as he appreciated his colleague trying to lift his spirits.

“Oh, well - my money’s on a slice of Battenberg!”

Chapter 136

Laurel McFry arrived at Harry’s office just as the Town Hall clock was chiming ten. Danny opened the door as he heard her heels clipping across the floor in the hallway, Harry having nodded his assent to show her in. The room was at least (relatively) smoke free, Danny thought.

She unbuttoned a stylish red overcoat and handed it to Danny, who shook it gently before hanging it on the hook near the door. She moved to take the seat Danny had just vacated, composing herself elegantly as she surveyed the room. She saw the flip chart, and Harry watched her as her speedy glance tried to assimilate it’s contents.

“How was the conference?” she asked, with just a suggestion of raised eyebrow. Harry looked surprised.
“The conference?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Weren’t you were attending a conference on forensic genealogy in Madrid?”

Harry was momentarily stunned, having forgotten all about his supposed ‘cover’ for the trip to Spain: Laurel was a smarter cookie than he’d thought. Maybe it was time to come clean. He wondered how he could best broach the subject, and how much he should tell her straight off.
“Look, Laurel,” he said, not daring to look her in the eye, “I may as well tell you now – there was no conference.”
Laurel tried to look shocked. “Really? Then I don’t expect you’ll be billing me for the flights…”
Harry smiled. “OK!” he exclaimed, gently. “I think we both know I’ll be billing you for more than the cost of a couple of air tickets. Your missing family has proved to be more complicated than just a stray census record.” Danny had pulled up a chair from the wall, and was watching the discussion. He’d wondered himself how Harry was going to play it with Lauren, but they hadn’t had much time to plot the meeting.

It was Laurel’s turn to smile. “Forgive me if I don’t look surprised,” she said.
Harry shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him. “You know – this whole case has been trickier than any of us could have imagined. If I was a solicitor, I would have had the sense to negotiate a ‘no win, no fee’ position.” He watched for a reaction. “And a thirty per cent cut of the winnings.”
“Yes,” Laurel said, enjoying the discussion, “that would have been the smart thing to do. But a deal’s a deal, wouldn’t you say?” She glanced at Danny. “And what about you, Mr Longhurst? Is that how you would have played it?”

Danny blushed. He remembered his own negotiations with Lauren when she’d first asked him to find her missing family – way before Harry was involved. He’d failed to come up with the goods, and had called Harry in for assistance. But Laurel had paid him his modest fee, anyway.
“In retrospect, I guess,” he said.

Harry knew it was time to stop the small-talk and to start sharing their findings with Laurel.
“Just supposing I told you we’d found your grandmother, Laurel. What would you say to that?”
Laurel looked stunned. “Found?” she asked. “Found, where?”
In her mind, she imagined a census reference, or a copy of a birth certificate. Harry was still fumbling with the pile of papers on the desk in front of him. ‘Here goes…’ he thought.
“Found her alive,” he said, his eyes now lifted to hers.

Danny watched in a mixture of shock and awe at Harry’s revelation. He hoped he knew what Harry was playing at, as he saw Laurel’s eyes widen in surprise.
“My grandmother? Alive?” Laurel exclaimed. “I don’t understand! I thought I was coming here this morning to find out about the bond. I think you have some explaining to do!” Laurel had crossed her legs and arms, everything about her screaming a defensiveness Harry hadn’t anticipated. He saw the look of anxiety on Danny’s face, and wondered whether he might have been better warning him how he’d planned, all along, to confront Laurel with the news of her ancestry.

“Yes, your grandmother. Alive and well and living in Shropshire,” Harry said, finally. “For the avoidance of doubt,” he added “I mean your mother’s mother. Colleen’s mother was someone called Lillian McFry – or rather, Lillian Blythe. She was born in 1904, and is still alive.”

He waited, while Laurel processed the news. He saw Danny relaxing a little, like it might be a relief that the news was out, even if it might make maters more complicated as regards the boy’s working relationship with Lillian.
Laurel’s mind was racing. From being all alone in the world, without a living relative to her name, she felt the sudden joy of knowing she might be connected to someone else - a living, breathing link to her past – someone who could answer all the unanswered questions she had about her family.

“I don’t understand!” she exclaimed, just a little breathless with anticipation. “I never knew about her. Nobody every told me about a grandmother. Are you sure, Harry?”
Harry tipped his chair back and smiled. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Here…” he said, handing her Ana’s fax. “I think you’ll find this makes interesting reading, too.”

Laurel saw the note penned by Ana, but discretely turned the page as if to say she didn’t really need to know what the sender thought of the recipient. But she saw that the country code of the telephone number the fax had come from, and recognised it as Spain.

Harry waited a moment or two while Laurel read the DNA analysis, Danny watching her face all the while for a reaction.
“I think we’ve forgotten something, don’t you, Danny?” Harry said. Danny pursed his brow, while Laurel merely glanced up a second before returning to the report.
“Coffee. Times three, if you don’t mind,” Harry said. “On second thoughts – I’ll sort that out. But if you would, perhaps you can pop down to see if Mrs Shipman’s back yet? This case is going nowhere until we know she’s back in Birkenhead.”

*

Danny found Harry in the small kitchen up the corridor from his office. “She’s back, Harry…” he told him. Harry was filling the coffee jug, and pulled three mugs from the cupboard before turning to Danny.

“Then it looks like everything’s going to plan!” he said. “Here – take these through and organize the coffee, if you don’t mind. I’d better go see Ma Shipman.” With that, he disappeared down the corridor, leaving Danny to negotiate his way back into the office, with the jug and the mugs.
As he turned the handle with his elbow, he found Laurel leafing through the flip chart pages.

She turned as she heard him come in.

“Well, Mr Longhurst – I can see you two have been busy this week!”
Danny nodded, and smiled. “You could put it that way.”
“Well, don’t you worry: if what Harry told me about this mysterious bond is true, I’ll make sure you’re both well rewarded for your efforts – but please…” she said, archly, “don’t mention it to Harry. He looks kind of cute when he’s anxious, don’t you think?” And she winked at Danny.

She crossed to take her seat again, lifting the fax from the desk. “Who’s Ana?” she asked.
‘Here we go again!’ Danny thought, as he poured the water into the coffee machine, his back to her now.
“Just a friend of Harry’s,” he said, perhaps a little unconvincingly. Laurel could sense his discomfort, even though she couldn’t see his face.
“Hmmm... quite a useful friend, by the looks of things. Even if she seems to have an ‘interesting’ view of him. You know, I get the impression your trip to Madrid must have been quite an adventure!”
Danny turned to her. “Not the kind of adventure I’d want to repeat in a hurry,” he said, leaving her to read between the lines.

Harry came back into the room just then.
“Adventure?” he asked, with a grin.
Laurel was composed. “Oh, we were just … chatting. Now, Mr McFry. I’ve read this report. But I think I need your help in interpreting it. And I’m not referring to the cover page…”

Harry moved to sit behind the desk, ignoring her last comment.
“OK. Before we went to Madrid we took a sample of your hair.”
Laurel’s eyes widened. “From your hairbrush. Yes, I know we should have asked, but I think you’ll understand why we didn’t when you’ve heard me out. But first of all, I want you to look at these…” Harry reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the three medals that belonged to Lillian. He placed them on the desk in front of Laurel.
“These are the medals Mr Blunt mentioned, I take it?” she asked, before continuing “The one’s Danny said he knew nothing about?”

Danny had set the machine to make the coffee, and had sat himself down to watch the proceedings. He couldn’t help but admire Laurel’s style, even if he would have preferred if his botched attempt at deception hadn’t figured in the discussion.
Harry took the comment on the chin, for both of them. “Yes. We couldn’t let you know about them at that stage, because Danny had been employed by Lillian McFry to find you, and to give the medals to you. But she’d said she didn’t want you to know who they were from.”
Laurel considered this latest snippet. “So you’re saying that Lillian – my grandmother – didn’t want me to know about her?”
It wasn’t the nicest news to learn. Not when you’d just discovered a blood relative you never knew about. Harry looked for some spin.
“She had her reasons, I’m sure, Laurel. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t out of any sense of malice. When you hear about her life, I think you’ll understand.”

Would she, though? Harry was pinning his hopes on something he couldn’t really be sure of, and knew the risk he was taking in breaking the news to her. He was hoping, too, that Lillian McFry would understand his brokerage role. If she didn’t, there’d be a lot of egg on his face, and maybe even blood on the carpet. He’d have to deal with that one later…

“Would you like to meet her?”
“I imagine that rather depends on whether she’d like to meet me!” Laurel replied, and she looked at Harry as if she thought he might not know the answer to that one.
Danny, too, was more than intrigued. He wondered what Harry had up his sleeve, but he was also wondering about the medals.

“Where did you hide them, Harry?” he asked, pointing at them.
Harry shrugged. “Hide them? It wasn’t a case of hiding them. Let’s just say I put them in safe-keeping.” But Danny was ahead of him.
“Safe-keeping? You mean Mrs Shipman, don’t you?”
The discussion was lost on Laurel, who was looking at the three pieces of be-ribboned metal more closely now.
Harry laughed. “Yes. Let’s face it, could you think of a safer place?”
Danny smiled back. “Not in a hundred years.”

Chapter 135

After almost four decades of widowhood, Lillian McFry was a woman of confirmed habits. She usually woke early – too early to justify getting up – so she’d lie in her bed, with her eyes still closed for the next hour or so, listening to the news on the radio. Sometimes, she would let her mind perform gentle mathematical exercises, to the accompaniment of the soothing tones of the newsreaders. How many times had she opened her front door since she’d lived in that bungalow? How many eggs had she eaten in her life? How many hours since this, or that, had happened? It passed the time, and kept her mind alerter than it perhaps deserved to be.

Over the years, too, she’d become quite the unacknowledged expert on world affairs, having heard about conflict and war in every corner of the planet. A psychologist testing her mental acuity would be surprised that she could name not only the current prime minister, but every one of his predecessors back to the first world war. Lillian listened to the daily parade of politicians as they were wheeled out to justify this or that turn in policy and, whatever their hue, enjoyed imagining their writhing and squirming under the expert probing of the interviewer. She could visualise their discomfort even as she willed them to trip themselves up. They were only a pale imitation of the orators she remembered from her youth, of course: people who could work an audience like a baker kneaded dough, but who had never allowed their ego to get between them and their audience. They had been men and women of substance, not the sugar-spun confections you heard these days: ‘proper politicians’, she liked to think of them as. Now, it all seemed to be about money, and career, and pensions (for themselves, of course).

Tuesday morning was no different for Lillian. Except, as she listened to the news while snugly cosseted by her duvet, her mind was only half attending. She was playing the day forward in her mind, wondering what, by the end of it, she might have learned about Jonathan from her anticipated visitors. She hoped, in her desire to discover the answers, she hadn’t overdone it by scheduling them all to see her today. At her age, though, you sometimes had to take a gamble. If it was true that Jonathan had lived until the 1980’s, then she needed to know why he hadn’t tried to find her. If the songwriters spoke were right, if love conquered all, was a many splendoured thing, and would always prevail, then she felt she deserved to understand why it hadn’t managed to, in her case. She knew, perhaps instinctively, that she’d have to reveal one or two unpleasant facts about Thomas and Stuart McFry – and even herself – in the process. But the truth had long ago lost it’s power to hurt her: she’d learned that much, at least, as she’d grown older.

Time to get up, Lillian! She could tell, by the thin light filtered through her bedroom curtains, that it was a grey day. But then, it was February, and it was all that could be expected. She roused herself, and made her way slowly to the kitchen, where she prepared her simple, yet substantial breakfast. If someone tells you it’s possible to become a centenarian without thinking how you’ve beaten all the actuarial odds stacked against you, then they’re wrong. Anyone who caught a glimpse of Lillian as she slowly buttered her toast might wonder at her thoughts on the matter. Was it her diet that had prolonged her life? Or was it her genes? Some would even argue that the whole matter of longevity could be ascribed to chance. Lillian had her own view: it took a certain cussedness, a practiced determination, to make it past 100. And Lillian had cussedness in spades.

So – bring Tuesday on! She would take whatever it threw at her – including Cyril Galloway! Even he might have something to add to the story that was Jonathan Harcourt’s. She remembered his thin, weasel-like features as he pawed her medals. He was, when all was said and done, one of life’s leeches: a man who prized money above people, and – so far as Lillian was concerned - he deserved everything that was coming to him today. She would expose him for what he was, and it would give her the greatest of pleasure to do so!
*
Colin McAllistair’s morning wasn’t quite following the pattern it normally did. As he slowly roused himself into consciousness, the steady thrum of traffic outside the Travelodge reminded him he wasn’t in his North London home. A stabbing headache, a mouth drier than day-old toast and eyelids that seemed soldered to their sockets with lead – it was altogether something of an alien experience for an academic who didn’t drink a great deal. Someone was trying to project 35mm slides in his head, but the focus wasn’t quite adjusted properly, so the images were, at first, indistinct and blurred. There was a table, in a bar, littered with empty whisky glasses. Was that a taxi? Who was that man sitting next to him in – was it a Chinese restaurant? Was that a bottle of saki on the table? How did it get empty? He forced his eyes open, realizing, for the first time, that he’d fallen asleep on top of the bedclothes, still fully clothed. His suit jacket was rumpled and mussed up.

Before he could re-assemble the events of the previous night into some semblance of order, there was a loud knock at the door to his room. “Yes?” he croaked, and the door was being pushed open by … by the man in the pub, the same man who’d helped him polish off the saki.

“Good morning!” Bill Blunt said, brightly, hovering in the doorway. He looked a little askance at the figure on the bed. “I see you’re already dressed! Good – we’ve got a busy day ahead of us! How about some breakfast, Colin?”

Bill’s voice had the same effect on McAllistair as a jet of water in the face might have. He jumped up and sat on the edge of the bed, his head still throbbing madly. He remembered, suddenly, the discussions in the bar with the journalist from Birkenhead the previous night, how they’d somehow exhausted the pub’s supply of the particular brand of whiskey the two of them preferred. Hadn’t he agreed to something or other – something to do with Lillian McFry?

“Busy day?” he asked, tentatively, his voice still dry and cracked.

Bill had made his way into the room now, and was opening the stiff curtains to the thin, grey skies of Telford, filtered through a gauze of net. He turned to his new ‘colleague’: “Why, of course we’ll be busy! What time are we interviewing Mrs McFry?”

It all came back to Colin, like a bolt. Somehow, he’d agreed with this bellowing buffoon of a newshound that they would work together on interviewing Lillian. It had sounded such a plausible idea at the time, and held out the promise of advance publicity for his planned documentary. Now, as he half-stared at the silhouette of Bill Blunt, he wondered at how easily his normally reserved judgement had been clouded by the drink. The man seemed presentable enough, he supposed – dressed, as he was, in a smart grey suit with a crisp white shirt and maroon tie, and his greying hair swept slickly across his head. He looked, he supposed, quite distinguished. But he was loud – loud! Too loud, McAllistair felt, for an early morning alarm call, and certainly too loud for a woman of the sensibilities he guessed Lillian McFry might have. Then, he caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite the dressing table, and saw a half-drunk, stubble-faced academic in a crumpled jacket and trousers.

“Err – we’re seeing her at … eleven o’clock,” he said, the words seemingly forced up his throat.

“Then I suggest you get yourself a shave, Mr McAllistair. In my experience, these old ladies can be quite particular who they let into their house.” There was a thinly-disguised contempt in Bill Blunt’s voice, the disdain reserved by the hardened drinker for someone who clearly couldn’t down a few glasses of whiskey without suffering a hangover. “How about I meet you at reception in a quarter of an hour? Then, there’s the simple matter of a breakfast to be located. I’m afraid I can’t face the day properly without a couple of rashers and a fried egg down me,” Bill said, pausing for the briefest of moment as he looked McAllistair straight in the eye, “while you, unless I’m much mistaken, are more of a muesli man.” With that, the journalist left the room, leaving Colin to contemplate the awful prospect of a bowl of dried fruit, oats and raisins swimming in milk. At least the room was en-suite.