COUNTER MEASURES

There was no mail for me that morning, but that was no surprise.  There had been no mail for me in the three weeks I’d been renting that tiny second-floor suite of offices in the remote Suffolk coastal town of Oxmarket.  I closed the door of the outer eight by ten office, skirted the table and chair that might one day house a receptionist if the time came that Handful Investigations could run to such glamorous extras, and pushed open the door marked “PRIVATE.”

Behind the door lay the office of the head of Handful Investigations, John Handful. Me.  And not only the head but the entire staff.  It was a bigger room than the reception office, I knew that because I’d measured it, but only a trained surveyor could have told it with the naked eye.

I’m no sybarite, but I had to admit that it was pretty bleak sort of place.  The distempered walls were that delicate tint of off-grey pastel shading from off-white at floor level to off-black just below the ceiling that only coastal fog and the neglect of years can achieve.  In one wall, overlooking the street below was a tall narrow window, washed on the inside, with a monthly calendar close by.  On the linoleum-covered floor a square desk, not new, a laptop, a telephone, a swivel chair for me, a padded leather  armchair for the client, a strip of threadbare carpet to keep the client’s feet from getting cold, a coat-stand and a couple of green metal filing cabinets, both empty.  Nothing more.  There was no room for anything more.

It was at this point of the day when I went through the repetitive ritual of a black coffee and a perusal of the local newspaper the East Anglian Daily Times.  I removed the small travel kettle from the bottom drawer of my desk, filled it up with water from the communal kitchen just down the corridor and spooned in a couple of heaped teaspoons of instant coffee into a chipped mug, ordained with the badge of Arsenal Football Club.

Unusually for this particular newspaper, there was a story right in the middle of the front page that caught my eye, as it involved people from the nearby village of Laithwaite.  As I glanced down the column, there was a photograph of a tubby little man, untidily dressed, with a straggly tuft of a beard that gave him the appearance of a rather elderly goat.  He wore no glasses, and even in the photograph his eyes were the central features of the man, large and widely set under the big domelike forehead with its thick black eyebrows.  The caption over the photograph read:  “This is Tador Zhivkov.  The police want to interview him in connection of the disappearance of his heavily pregnant wife, Adrianna.”

The article went on to say that he had been at large for nearly two months, which seemed to me a long time for a man with such unusual appearance.  Zhivkov had come over with his wife from Poland looking for work.  He managed to get a job at a large local logistical distribution firm and they had found some inexpensive lodgings on the outskirts of Oxmarket and looked to have a bright future settling down in Suffolk.

When Adrianna fell pregnant, this created some financial difficulties, and eventually they both decided to sell their 4x4 for a smaller more economical and family orientated vehicle. According to her husband, on the morning of her disappearance she had arranged for someone to come round and look at the vehicle.  When he got home from work, he found that the house was nice and tidy as it always was but there was no sign of his wife. He immediately contacted friends and family and when they all said they had not seen her he contacted the police. It was soon discovered that her mobile was missing and the police could not trace it because she had either turned it off or the sim card had been removed.  The only phone call received on the landline that day was from her husband, during his tea break.  After a seven-day search and investigation by the Suffolk Constabulary, they had started to become suspicious of her husband who disappeared before he could be questioned further.        

I was just finishing my coffee when I heard the deep double chime of the bell in the reception-room and the sound of hinges creaking.  “RING AND ENTER” the legend on the corridor door read and someone was doing just that.  Ringing and entering.  I opened the top left-hand drawer of my desk, pulled out some papers and envelopes, scattered them before me, and had just risen to my feet when the knock came at my inner door.     

The man who entered was an elderly man wearing a hat.  For a second a sense of revulsion gripped me – revulsion tinged almost with fear and then the mood passed and suddenly I saw standing the cold linoleum floor, not a cold-blooded murderer, but a dirty, friendless man who had been hunted by the police for two months.  I remembered that no man should be judged before he had been heard in his own defence.  Clearly he had come to me to say what he had to say, and I knew that I had no right to hand him over to the police unheard.

“Excuse my walking straight in like this.”  He smiled briefly and half-glanced over his shoulder.  “But it seemed your secretary – “

“That’s all right.  Please come in.”  I waved my visitor to the padded leather armchair on the other side of my desk.

As he came forward he took off his hat and his glasses.  I glanced at the photograph that stared up from me from the East Anglian Daily Times.  There was no doubt about the identity of my visitor.  All he lacked was a beard.

“I see you recognise me,” he said, as he sat down opposite me.  His eyes held mine.  They were large and dark and strangely bright.  I didn’t see a murderer.  What I did see was a man who behind this nondescript exterior with a great brain.  He apologised again for just walking into my office and I noticed that his voice was soft and musical and very quaint, with its accent coloured by Polish and a gentle Suffolk lilt to it.  “I feared,” he explained, “that your natural instincts as a private detective would be to immediately pick up that phone and contact the police.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, his eyes constantly watching me. 

“I didn’t kill my wife.”  He said firmly.

At that I stopped him.  “In your current situation, there is no doubt in my mind that you have not come here on a whim. You would have undoubtedly done your homework and you will know that I have a very close and good working relationship with the Suffolk Constabulary.  So, even if your were to convince me that you are innocent of this crime, it is not in my power to persuade the police – nothing short of a direct alibi will do that.”  

He shook his head slowly and his rather full lips twitched into a wry smile.  “If I had killed Adrianna, then I would have expected mercy from no one.  I have come to you because I saw my 4x4 this morning and I want you to investigate the new owners.”

“How will you pay me?”  Under the circumstances it was a callous question I know, but like everybody else I have bills to pay.

He apologised and removed some notes from his jacket pocket, counted out twenty-five tenners and placed then on the desk in front of me.

“Two hundred and fifty enough?”

I nodded. “Where did you see your vehicle?”

“In Oxmarket.”

“Registration?”  As we spoke I was conscious all the time of those dark bright eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. 

“It was AV09 AWH.”

“What do you mean ‘was’?”

“It is now AV61 EYH.”

“How did you know it was your vehicle?”

“We hadn’t had it long and Adrianna banged into a post in the ASDA car park in Ipswich.”  He smiled a rather tired wry smile at the memory.  “I got a local garage in Oxmarket to do the repair work and he couldn’t quite match up the colour correctly.”

“What is the colour?”

“Electra blue.”

He was so convincing that I had already decided not to tell the police that he had paid me a visit, but it was his final passing statement that suddenly weakened my faith in him.  He had risen to go and his voice became suddenly excited and his eyes blazed with a passion that obviously burned deep within him.  “The owners had a young baby.  I saw them lift the child into the back of the 4x4.”  He paused, as his eyes welled up with tears. “It was the same age that my child would have been if my Adrianna had still been with me.  When I saw their baby, I felt a strange connection to it.  I don’t know why, though.”  After the quiet matter-of-fact way he had spoke about the 4x4, this departure into the melodramatic came as something of a shock.

I told him so and he just said.  “Please check on the vehicle, Mr Handful.  That is all I ask.”

“How will I contact you?”  I asked, holding out my hand, which he shook.

“I will contact you,” he said. “It will be better that way.”

“But I need to know where you are staying,” I insisted.

“No, you don’t.”  He replied.  “The local Polish community is a very close knit community and they will protect me, so please do not try to come and find me.  I do not want any harm to come to you.” 

“Is that where you have been hiding for the last eight weeks?”

“Please, no more questions.”

I nodded.  I could do nothing else.  His grip on my hand tightened.  “I am not a liar, Mr Handful,” he said, “I did not kill my wife.” He then turned and walked out of my office. 

*

After he had gone, I made myself another cup of coffee and sat down behind my desk to try and puzzle it out.  The man’s story was convincing, at any rate in part and I could not believe he was a murderer.  His point about someone coming round to buy the car seemed truthful enough but all that about seeing the car and a baby that he felt connected too, all seemed a little bit laughable.

On a sudden impulse I picked up my phone and rang my friend DI Paul Silver of the Suffolk Constabulary. Paul was in and knew enough about the case to answer my query and then finished with the not so unexpected question: “What’s your interest in the case?”  I explained hastily that the article in the paper had interested me and I wanted to clear up a point that I did not quite understand.  I rang off before he could ask any more questions.

I finished my coffee, slipped on my coat and hurried out of my office and up the main Oxmarket high street, where heavy clouds had rolled in from the southwest and big heavy drops of rain were beginning to spatter the pavement in front of me.

Hammond’s Vehicle Repairs was where the high street ended and the coastal-path started.  I could hear Hammond working, his head buried under the bonnet of a car of some poor unsuspecting customer.

“Ian?”  I called out.

“John?”  His voice was a barely audible murmur from the back of the workshop.

“Yes.” Moving out from behind a Vauxhall, he was imagined more than seen against the dirty back wall, before stepping into the light. 

Hammond had a dark narrow saturnine face, with a strong jaw, black bushy eyebrows and thick black hair – the kind of face which is so essentially an expression in itself that it rarely shows much else.  It was expressionless now and very still.

“What can I do for you?”  

“I need some information.”

“About what?”  He said distrustfully.

“About an Electra Blue 4x4.”  I said.  “You did some work on it a little while back.”

“I’ve already told the police that I did the body repair work on it.”

“I bet you didn’t tell them that you recently changed the number plates on the same vehicle.”

“How do you know that?”  He asked defiantly and then added in the same tone:  “You’re guessing?”

“I know you too well, Ian.” I said matter-of-factly.  “Some work you put through the books and some you don’t.  You forget, ever since Zoë died I like to go for walks along the coastal path to clear my head.  I often walk this way and see your workshop lights on at all hours of the night.”

His expression was a mixture of sadness and anger.

“Zoë was my sister, you know.”

“And she was my wife,” I retorted, “and it is because she was my wife, I am not taking my mobile out of pocket right now and ringing DI Paul Silver and tell him what you have been up too.”

“And what have I been up too?”  His defiance was now verging on the ridiculous.

“At a guess, falsifying MOT certificates, quoting extortionate prices for insurance work and illegally changing number plates on vehicles.”

“How did you know it was me?”  He asked.

“You’re the only one who have the balls and be stupid enough to do such things round here.”     

“So what do you want to know?”

“The name of the owner of the vehicle whose number plate you changed from AVO9 AWH to AV61 EYH.  Which to my reckoning makes the car illegally nearly two years newer?”

“I don’t keep paper work,” he said bitterly.

“All I need is a name,” I said and he gave me a name and address.

*