Lost or Found

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

When Eunice Bailey takes her wedding ring to a London jeweller to have it enlarged, she is very keen for it to be done quickly. She is a reliable and favoured customer and when the jeweller is unable to get in touch with her to collect the ring, he contacts the police. Detective Chief Inspector Brock and Detective Sergeant Poole are assigned to the case, and what begins as a fairly simple missing person enquiry develops into a mystery that has ramifications stretching as far as Bermuda . . .

Release date: October 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 316

Sample

Curiously enough it was not a murder but a missing-person report that caused me to be assigned to the disappearance of Eunice Bailey.

A new enquiry was something of a relief, because we’d been coping with yet another reorganization and change of name. The boy superintendents at New Scotland Yard – that powerhouse
of buzzwords – had obviously been busy. They’d decided that we were now to be called the Homicide and Serious Crime Command. I wondered just how many meetings and conferences had taken
place in order to arrive at this breathtaking decision. And how many cups of coffee and fancy biscuits the Police Fund had paid for as a result. To say nothing of the overtime incurred by those
lesser ranks still entitled to claim it.

The outcome of all this administrative upheaval was that I was now a part of one of four teams of investigators overseen by a detective superintendent. Above him was Detective Chief
Superintendent Alan Cleaver, and even higher up, our beloved commander. The good bit, however, was that we were doing exactly the same job as before, and in the same place. And I had
retained the services of Detective Sergeant Dave Poole, my black bag carrier.

Perhaps I should explain that. It’s not the bag that’s black, it’s Dave Poole.

Dave is something of a character. For a start, he’s married to a gorgeous white girl called Madeleine, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, and he has a good degree in English from
London University. And that makes him very useful in a police force that, these days, is obsessed with putting everything down in writing. In quintuplicate.

‘Ah, Mr Brock.’ The commander entered my office – in itself unusual – waving a piece of paper. That was not unusual; the commander loves bits of paper.

‘Good morning, sir,’ I said rising to my feet.

The commander, unable to concentrate on two things at the same time, ignored my greeting. ‘I’ve received a report from West End Central police station.’

‘Really, sir?’ Funny how the commander never calls it a nick, like the rest of us do. ‘Something interesting, is it?’

‘It emanates from a jeweller in the West End.’ The commander peered at his piece of paper. ‘It seems that a Mrs Eunice Bailey took her wedding ring there to have it enlarged.
And she’s not been back to collect it.’

‘Is that it, sir?’ I queried.

‘That’s all, Mr Brock. I want you to look into it.’

‘But surely it’s a missing-person enquiry, sir.’

‘Indeed it is.’ The commander spoke as though I was somewhat slow at catching on, which I wasn’t; but I was very quick at avoiding grief. ‘It’s possible that there
are felonious undertones.’

‘What particular felonious undertone did you have in mind, sir?’ I asked, risking a reproof for sarcasm. But I needn’t have worried.

‘That’s for you to discover, Mr Brock.’ The commander handed me the piece of paper, reluctantly, I thought. He hates parting with paper. ‘The details of the jeweller are
on there.’ And with that, he left me to it.

I don’t really know how this enquiry finished up with me. There is an entire department at New Scotland Yard that maintains an index of missing persons. And persons go missing every day.
In their hundreds. Most are fed up with their wives or husbands or children. Or their jobs or their in-laws. And there are a dozen other reasons that could cause them to take off. How on earth the
commander read some felonious aspect into this particular missing person was a mystery to me. But if I knew how a commander’s mind worked, I’d probably be a commander myself.

I put my head round the door of the sergeants’ office and beckoned to Dave Poole. ‘We’re going to the West End, Dave.’

‘Oh, how nice, guv. Sex club, is it?’

‘No, a jeweller’s.’

Hiding his disappointment, Dave put on his jacket and grabbed a vehicle logbook and a set of car keys.

‘You’ll never find anywhere to park a car, not since the Mayor’s reduced London’s traffic congestion, Dave,’ I said. ‘We’ll go on the
Underground.’

A mistake. It was a stiflingly hot day, and I resented the convention that required senior CID officers to wear a tie and a jacket.

We walked to Westminster Tube station and eventually a train arrived.

‘We’ll have to change at Victoria to get a train to Green Park, guv.’ Dave was jammed up against a young girl wearing shorts and the top half of a bikini, and who was avidly
reading an Italian guidebook to London. Between Dave and me was a Swedish boy with a backpack that looked as though it contained all his worldly possessions, and took up the space of three other
passengers.

At Victoria, we fought our way through countless itinerant musicians, a heaving mass of humanity, and sundry beggars, to the Victoria Line train for Green Park, and once again found ourselves
sandwiched between tourists. God knows why these people want to come to London. I’d’ve thought that backpacking through Afghanistan was preferable any day.

Finally, we emerged in Piccadilly, to daylight and London’s diesel-laden air.

A suave fellow in a tailcoat greeted us as we entered the impressive premises that housed the jeweller’s establishment. His very demeanour and appearance indicated to my
practised eye that the merchandise would be highly priced.

‘May I help you, sir?’ The tailcoated one glanced suspiciously at Dave.

‘We’re police officers and we need to see the manager,’ I said, waving my warrant card at him.

‘Of course, sir.’ Tailcoat seemed relieved that we weren’t clients. I suppose he didn’t fancy having us mixing with minor foreign royalty, rich illegal immigrants, Z-list
soap stars, and footballers’ wives. ‘This way.’

Our leader piloted us across the thickly carpeted shop floor and up a flight of stairs, before knocking deferentially at a heavy oaken door.

The manager was, I suppose, in his mid-fifties, and was dressed in a Savile Row suit that must have cost more than I earned in a fortnight. He introduced himself as Giles Fancourt.

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock of Scotland Yard,’ I said, having decided not to trot out Homicide and Serious Crime Command every time I introduced myself.
‘And this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’

‘And what can I do for you, gentlemen?’ With a flourish of his hand, Fancourt indicated two expensive chairs with which his beautifully appointed office was furnished. I imagined
them to be genuine antiques, but Dave later told me that they were reproduction Chippendales. He knows about things like that.

‘I understand that you made a report to the police at West End Central police station regarding a Mrs Eunice Bailey, Mr Fancourt.’

‘Ah yes. Mrs Bailey.’ Fancourt leaned back in his high-backed leather executive chair and steepled his fingers. ‘Let me see now . . . ’ He shot forward and took a file
from a desk drawer, and then glanced at a calendar. ‘It was a month ago, Mr Brock. On the seventeenth of May to be precise.’ I got the impression that Mr Fancourt was always precise.
‘Mrs Bailey brought us her wedding ring. To cut a long story short, she complained that it was too tight on her finger, and enquired if we could remove it and enlarge it. One of our
technicians – he’s been with us for over twenty years – cut the ring from her finger and assured madam that an enlargement would not be a problem.’

‘Is this technician here today?’ asked Dave.

‘Er, yes, of course.’

Dave glanced at me. ‘D’you think we should have a word, sir?’ He always called me ‘sir’ in the presence of civilians. Whenever he called me ‘sir’ in
private, it meant something entirely different.

‘Yes, good idea.’ I glanced at Fancourt. ‘Is that possible?’ I asked.

‘Indeed.’ Fancourt pressed down a switch on his intercom. ‘Celia, get hold of Higgins from the workshop for me, and ask him to come to my office.’ He paused.
‘Immediately.’

We waited for at least ten minutes for the man Higgins to appear. I suppose he was a valuable asset to the firm and therefore secure from interference from above. Or comments about his
tardiness.

‘You wanted me, Mr Fancourt?’ He had wispy hair covering an otherwise bald pate, and wore wire-framed spectacles with thick lenses.

‘These gentlemen are police officers, Higgins. Tell them what you know about Mrs Bailey and her wedding ring.’

Higgins sniffed and sought inspiration from a John Constable print that adorned the wall behind the manager’s head. ‘Yeah, she said it was too tight, and wanted it enlarged. I had to
cut it off of her finger – bit delicate that – and told her we could do the work.’

‘Anything else, Mr Higgins?’ asked Dave.

‘Only that she asked if we could do it in a hurry. She said she never liked going around without having it on, being a married woman and that. Quite fussed about it, she was. In fact she
was so touchy about it that she asked if I could do the work there and then. Well, that wasn’t on, but I said I could do it in two days and I’d give her a call when it was ready. I
suppose I took pity on her, mainly because she was quite a stunner. Soft touch for a pretty woman, me.’

Fancourt coughed affectedly at what he doubtless regarded as a sexist remark, but was ignored by the three of us.

‘When you say she was a stunner, Mr Higgins, just what did she look like?’

‘Thirty-five, she must’ve been. Lovely figure. And she had long blonde hair in one of them ponytails. Miniskirt and nice legs. And not short of a quid or two, neither.’ Higgins
chuckled and wiped his hands on his brown overall coat. ‘There, how’s that? Reckon I ought to be in your job.’

‘Have you finished with Higgins, Chief Inspector?’ asked Fancourt, obviously keen to get the technician out of his office.

‘For the moment, Mr Fancourt, yes,’ I said, and waited until Higgins had been dismissed from the presence. ‘Your concern was that Mrs Bailey did not return to collect her ring,
was it?’

‘Yes. Given that she was so anxious to have the work done quickly, it seemed strange that she did not return to collect it. You see, Chief Inspector, Mrs Bailey is a valued client. On
every other occasion that she has had work done, or purchased some item that we were obliged to order or have made, she has always returned promptly to collect it.’

‘Presumably you were worried about the cost.’

Fancourt appeared to be affronted by this remark. ‘Certainly not, Mr Brock. Our only interest is the satisfaction of our customers, and when it was brought to my attention that Mrs Bailey
had not returned, I was somewhat concerned that she might have met with an accident. We attempted to contact her at the telephone number we held for her, but there was never any answer.’

‘Did you leave a message?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. The telephone just rang and rang. I can only assume that Mrs Bailey had not invested in an answering machine, either that or it was not switched on. In the
circumstances, I thought that the only proper course of action was to inform the police.’

‘Quite right,’ I said, only sorry that Mrs Bailey hadn’t taken her damned wedding ring into a jeweller’s establishment in another constabulary area. ‘Perhaps
you’d let me have the number you were ringing.’

Fancourt opened a book and copied out the telephone number on to a slip of paper that bore the name of the jeweller, and a logo of some sort. ‘There you are,’ he said.

‘I suppose there can be no mistake,’ I suggested, pleased that it was not a mobile number. Mobile numbers are more difficult to trace. ‘I was wondering if the number had
somehow been recorded inaccurately. Even by Mrs Bailey,’ I added hurriedly, as a frown descended on the manager’s face.

‘Certainly not,’ said Fancourt sharply. ‘As I said, we had her telephone number on record, and that’s the one she gave this time.’

‘Was it an expensive ring?’ Dave asked.

‘Not when set against some of the stock we hold, no.’ Fancourt swept a hand across his desk. ‘Four or five hundred pounds at most. Chased platinum, I believe.’

Not expensive, eh? When I married my now ex-wife Helga, I’d had to borrow fifteen quid to buy a wedding ring for her. As it turned out it was not a wise investment.

I met Helga Büchner, a twenty-one-year-old German physiotherapist, when I underwent a course of treatment at Westminster Hospital. I’d injured my shoulder after a punch-up with a
group of yobs in Whitehall when I was a PC. It was a whirlwind romance and we married shortly afterwards, despite advice from my mates at the nick. Particularly the women police. But perhaps they
were jealous. The women police, I mean, vain bastard that I am.

And indeed they were right, because it all fell apart when Helga insisted on working after our son was born. When Robert was four she’d left him with a neighbour, and he fell in her pond
and drowned. It was the start of a long period of acrimony that led to an ‘open’ marriage, and finally divorce.

‘Thank you, Mr Fancourt. We’ll let you know of any developments.’

‘Do you want to take possession of the ring as evidence, Chief Inspector?’

‘Evidence of what?’ asked Dave.

Fancourt dithered. ‘Well, isn’t that what you usually do?’

Perhaps he was hoping that the police would also pay for the enlargement. I was almost tempted, just to annoy the commander.

‘No, we’ll leave it with you,’ I said.

‘Do a subscriber check on that number, Dave, and we’ll take it from there,’ I said, as we made our way back to our office at Curtis Green.

Curtis Green is an office block off Whitehall. Before the Metropolitan Police was conned into moving to an unsuitable, and now overflowing, glass and concrete pile in Victoria Street, it was
called New Scotland Yard North. But being here has its advantages; not many people – including the police – know where it is.

‘That phone number goes out to an address in Coburn Street, Holland Park, guv,’ said Dave, after spending a few minutes on the telephone in the incident room. ‘The
subscriber’s a Martin Bailey, and he lives at number fifteen.’

‘Are we up and running on this one, sir?’ asked Colin Wilberforce. Colin is the incident-room manager, and very good at the job he is, too. My main fear is that he’s so good he
may be promoted and whisked away. His impeccable administration ensures that every detail of an enquiry is carefully tabulated on the computer of which he appears to be a master. And to be on the
safe side, he also records the salient points in a book. Using a pen. I like old-fashioned methods.

‘Not yet, Colin, but you might as well put down the few details we have, just in case it develops. Dave’ll give you the pars.’ Policemen tend to talk in shorthand, and
‘pars’ is a contraction of ‘particulars’, and that encompasses just about everything capable of being written down. ‘In the meantime,’ I said, turning back to
Dave, ‘we’ll sally forth and knock on the door of fifteen Coburn Street, Holland Park.’

Dave looked glum, and took a banana from his nylon excuse for a briefcase. Madeleine has told him that they’re good for him – bananas, not briefcases – and who am I to
argue?

The white-painted house where the Baileys lived rose three floors above a basement, and was in pristine condition.

We rang the bell and hammered on the door. There was no reply. We went to the house next door.

The woman who answered had yet to reach her thirtieth birthday, was black and gorgeous. Her colourful dress reached the ground, and was matched by a sort of turban wrapped around her head.

‘Yes?’ She looked at us with suspicion. I didn’t blame her. Given the state of unchecked lawlessness in London, she was right to do so. Even so chic an area as Holland Park was
not beyond the reach of villains of all assorted shapes and sizes.

‘We’re police officers, madam,’ I said.

‘Oh!’ The woman gazed appraisingly at Dave, and Dave gazed back. As I’ve already mentioned, Dave is black. What I haven’t mentioned is that he’s six foot tall and
handsome, and he too has yet to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. ‘How do I know that?’ she asked.

Wise woman. Dave and I produced our warrant cards, and she inspected them closely. ‘Would you like to come in?’ she enquired.

We stepped into the hall and waited while the woman closed the door.

‘I’m Gladys Damjuma,’ the woman announced, ‘and I have diplomatic privilege. My husband is on the staff of our high commission.’ Presumably Mrs Damjuma thought we
were chasing up unpaid parking tickets.

I didn’t ask which high commission; it was of no interest, and we could always find out if we needed to. That’s what the Diplomatic List is for.

‘It’s not actually you we wanted to see,’ said Dave with a disarming smile.

‘It’s not?’ Mrs Damjuma seemed a little disappointed at that.

‘We were wondering if you could tell us anything about your neighbours Mr and Mrs Bailey.’

‘Oh, Martin and Eunice. Very nice people. Come and have a cup of tea.’ Without waiting for a response, Mrs Damjuma opened the door of her elegant sitting room and ushered us in.
Within seconds, a large black woman in a flowery apron appeared and took Mrs Damjuma’s order for tea.

‘Now then, what is it you want to know?’ Gladys Damjuma smiled sweetly at Dave, and I began to feel left out of the conversation.

‘When did you last see Mrs Bailey?’ asked Dave.

‘About two weeks ago, I suppose. I can’t really remember. Most times we only talk if we happen to bump into each other when we’re coming out or going in, but every now and then
we stop for a long chat. Once or twice, Eunice has popped in for a cup of tea. We did have dinner with them one evening, though. That was about a month ago, maybe two.’ Mrs Damjuma looked
vague. ‘Why? What’s Eunice done?’

‘Nothing, as far as we know.’

‘Then what is it all about?’

As briefly as possible, Dave explained about the ring that Eunice Bailey had wanted enlarged, and had failed to collect. ‘The jeweller was afraid that she might have forgotten about
it.’

It was a masterpiece of understatement designed to allay the true reason for our interest: that someone might have topped Eunice. It was fortunate that Mrs Damjuma didn’t seem at all
surprised that this matter should have been followed up by a DCI from Scotland Yard.

‘She’s a very attractive woman, you know.’

‘So we’ve heard,’ continued Dave. ‘We’d like to have a word with her husband, but there was no answer when we knocked at the Baileys’ door.’

‘He works, you know.’

‘Really?’ Dave sounded surprised. Perhaps he imagined that anyone with the money needed to live in Holland Park wouldn’t have to work.

‘Oh yes.’ Mrs Damjuma looked up as the tea was brought in. ‘Put it there,’ she said tersely, waving an imperious hand at a small table near her chair. She spent a minute
or two pouring tea into bone-china cups and handing them round. ‘He’s a very busy man. He’s very often at his office until quite late at night.’

‘Where is his office, Mrs Damjuma?’ Dave asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘D’you know what he does for a living?’

‘I think it’s something to do with property, but I’m not really sure.’ Again our hostess smiled at Dave.

‘When you say he gets home quite late, how late is that?’

‘Sometimes eight or nine. Even when he and Eunice invited us to dinner, he was late getting home. Eunice said it often happens. But when he did arrive, he was very interested in us, an. . .