A Case of Missing on Midthorpe Read online

  “Two pounds seventy eight,” Baldock insisted.

  “What?”

  “You have four odd numbers. It’s impossible for them to come to an odd number. They must come to an even number, two sevens are fourteen, nine plus five also makes fourteen, two fourteens are twenty-eight, so the final price must end in eight.” Baldock became distantly aware of a woman customer queuing behind him and concluded his impromptu lecture. “Assuming the remainder of your arithmetic is correct, it must come to two pounds seventy eight, not seventy-seven.”

  Haigh appeared slightly fazed. “What are you? Some kind of mathematician?”

  “No. It’s just that when I went to school, instead of secretly skimming through the latest Star Wars comic during arithmetic lessons, I listened and learned.”

  Haigh gazed suspiciously upon Baldock as if suspecting a brazen effort to belittle and defraud him in front of his customers. Taking a half pace to his left, he punched the numbers into the cash register, which gave the answer £2.78 in glowing, green LED characters.

  “All right. Two pounds and seventy-eight pee.”

  Baldock blinked rapidly. “You have a till which can add up the numbers, why didn’t you use it?”

  With a broad grin, Haigh tapped his temple. “Brain training, boss. Gotta keep the old mind active. If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

  “I see. Well, you obviously have some way to go yet, so keep it up.” Baldock reached into his wallet, pulled out a debit card and placed it on the counter.

  Haigh stared from the card, up at Baldock, back to the card, and back to Baldock. “Cash,” he insisted.

  “I don’t have any cash on me.”

  “Do you know how much profit I make on those bits?” Haigh gestured broadly at the items on the counter. “Not enough to cover what the bank’ll charge me for taking your card. Cash only.” He held out his hand.

  A sigh came from the irritated woman behind Baldock. Ignoring her, he concentrated on the young shopkeeper. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m Raymond Baldock. The novelist.”

  Haigh shrugged, his face a blank. “So what do you want? An Oscar?”

  “I created the Richard Headingley series.”

  Haigh appeared as dumfounded as ever. “This gets better. Lemme tell you summat, pal. The only Richard Heads I meet are usually the other side of the counter from me.”

  “Headingley, not Head. Do you read books?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you can actually read?”

  “Acourse I can bloody read. I’m not illegible.”

  “Merely illiterate.” Leaning forward, Baldock loomed over the smaller shopkeeper. “I am the Raymond Baldock. I’m the most successful man ever to come from Midthorpe. My last novel sold over three hundred thousand copies in less than six months, and it’s already been transcribed for television. I’m worth more than the stock held in this entire parade of shops and I do not carry cash.”

  More sighs from the woman behind, and Haigh shrugged as he gathered back the four items on the counter. “No cash, no stamps, mints or water.”

  Baldock’s eyebrows shot up. Once more he sensed the impatience of the woman behind him and forced himself to concentrate on the determined minion behind the counter. “I need the stamps. They’re the reason I came in here.” He held up two white envelopes, both addressed in his flowing handwriting, both devoid of stamps.

  Haigh deployed his pencil as a pointer and aimed it through the windows. “There’s a hole in wall on the other side of the road. It’s outside the bank, which I suppose you own. Go there, draw some cash, or go somewhere else for your stamps. If you can find anywhere else where they’ll take plastic.”

  “Now listen—”

  “Acourse, if you want to wander round my shop, buy a few more things, get the bill to something over a tenner, I’ll take your card.”

  “That’s tantamount to blackmail.”

  “I’m not tanting, I’m just saying—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…” Finally losing her cool, the woman from behind pushed past Baldock. “Here, Ivan. Three pounds. Give me his bloody change and get a move on.”

  “Right on, Lisa.” Haigh took the money, pushed the trivial goods across to Baldock, who took them graciously, before backing off. “You’ll find the post box in—”

  This time, it was Baldock who interrupted Haigh. “I know where the post box is. I grew up round here.” With a bleak, half smile of thanks aimed at the woman, he marched out of the shop.

  Once out on the broad pavements of Midthorpe Avenue, while attaching the stamps to the envelopes, he quickly learned that he no longer knew where the post box was.

  Shops lined either side of the road, from the fish ’n’ chip shop and newsagents opposite, to Haighs minimarket and the Midthorpe Uni-Stylist on this side. When he was a boy, the hair stylist had been a greengrocer and Haighs (run by the elder Mr Haigh) had been a sub-post office, outside which stood the required mailbox.

  It was no longer there and worse, he could not see it anywhere.

  Across the road, further on from the newsagents was the bank, where it had always been, flanked by a tanning salon and another takeaway. On this side, was a bakery, a branch of a national chain of bookmakers, and a butchers, beyond which was a small branch of a national supermarket. After parking his Mercedes, Raymond had been tempted to go in there, but when he glanced through the windows he saw Amanda Armitage filling shelves. He had recognised her, and he was certain she would recognise him. He did not want to be recognised, hence his brisk walk down to Haighs, where, curiously enough, it might have been more helpful if Haigh the younger had recognised him.

  As matters stood, he owed a complete stranger almost three pounds, he couldn’t find the post box and he had no wish to chew on the humble pie required to go back into Haigh’s and ask.

  Standing on the pavement, bathed in July sunshine, he caught sight of his reflection in the hairdresser’s window, and even to himself, he looked like a little boy lost. Correction, a little boy lost with a woman bearing down on him. His peripheral vision registered her shadow moving across the pavement and he turned to meet the woman who had come to his rescue.

  Brown eyes under a dark fringe of hair, narrowed on him, her lips, tightly drawn, were ready to give him a piece of her mind, and as she approached, Baldock rehearsed his opening line, but it was with the feeling that she was not a complete stranger. He was sure he knew her.

  “I, er… thank you for helping in there. I owe you three pounds.”

  “Two pounds seventy-eight.” A stern, disapproving reminder.

  There was something about those tight lips. Or was it the snug fit of her skirt and the delightful curvature beneath her shining white business shirt, both accentuating a body which was well looked-after. He frowned internally. He valued intellect over the physical, and there was a clarity in those eyes which spoke of someone above the Midthorpe average. Did he know her or was he imagining it?

  “We won’t quibble over twenty-two pence. If you could give me a few minutes, I’ll go over to the bank and draw some cash.”

  “I don’t have a few minutes. I’m late as it is. Largely thanks to you arguing with Ivan. You can catch me at the Health Centre. Counselling.”

  He smiled knowingly. “Midthorpe did that to a lot of people.”

  The brow furrowed, the lips drew tighter. “What?”

  “Put them into counselling. As I said, I grew up here and—”

  “I am the counsellor.” She interrupted. “Young Ivan may not recognise you, but I’ll bet his father would, and I certainly do.”

  “Ah… Oh… You have me at a disadvantage. I feel I should know you too, but I can’t quite place you.”

  “Lisa Yeoman.”

  Memories flooded his mind. “Right. Excellent. Of course I know you. We were the only two Midthorpers to make it to university.”

  “From our year,” Lisa added. “You were a proper pain in
the bottom then, Raymond. It’s nice to see that your fame and fortune haven’t changed you one bit. If you wanted to use a debit card, why didn’t you go into the supermarket?”

  “I was going to, but I noticed a woman in there who I’m sure is Amanda Armitage, and considering her reputation, I thought I’d be less conspicuous in Haighs’.”

  Lisa tutted. “Well, as young Ivan was trying to tell you, the post box is inside the supermarket. It caught fire once too often out here. So if you don’t want Mandy to recognise you, then turn up your coat collar. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “Yes. Of course. Sorry. I’ll, er, I’ll drop the three pounds off at the Health Centre later.”

  But Lisa was already gone, walking towards a red Ford Fiesta, the keys in her hand.

  Baldock watched her shapely behind, wiggling as she strode to the car, where she bent to unlock the door. Lurid thoughts, prompting memories of teenage years when Lisa had been one of the most captivating girls on the estate, impinged upon his brain. He physically shook his head and frowned inwardly. There were times when he felt he had got close to her twenty years ago, but not that close, and he had not come back to Midthorpe to seek that which he had never found here as a youngster.

  Turning the other way, striding towards the supermarket, the inherent lust in the way he had stared after Lisa was subdued not so much by his sense of purpose, i.e. posting two letters, but by the prospect of Amanda Armitage.

  Mandy was a little older than his thirty-six years, and during those formative adolescent times when he had been maturing on the estate and lusting after the nubile Ms Yeoman, her reputation had been legendary.

  “And mostly horizontal,” he muttered to himself as he arrived at the supermarket entrance.

  Large enough for the needs of a council estate, not large enough to draw in hordes of traffic from other areas, the place had always been a supermarket, but it had undergone many incarnations, even during the years he lived here. Now it was owned and run by a national chain, but it did not appear any the busier. Baldock peered in through the closed door and saw it was almost empty. He could not see more than one or two customers which was probably right for ten o’clock on a Friday morning. It would be busier in the afternoon when the mothers or unemployed fathers collected their offspring from school, but for now a young redhead pottered with a display of sweets near the checkout, and further back, near the tall chillers, he could see someone else stacking soft drinks into the chillers.

  There was no sign of Mandy, so he stepped in and the redhead, no older than about eighteen or nineteen, turned and greeted him with a smile baring her nicotine stained teeth.

  “Post box?” he asked.

  She nodded to the right of the door through which he had just entered. He turned, looked, and there, as promised, was the post box, with Mandy’s grinning form standing alongside it.

  She had maintained her busty figure of two decades previously. Slightly bulkier in all areas, but still displaying a deep cleavage under her work wear, she had not lost the habit of showing off more leg than was strictly decent for a woman employed in a supermarket.

  Not only working there, Baldock noticed, but according to the badge above her left breast, managing the place.

  There was no mistaking the meaning behind her broad smile. She recognised him, and any second now she was about to announce it to the world… or that part of the world inhabiting the supermarket at this hour.

  He quickly considered his options. Should he smile indulgently, pretending he thought her mentally deficient? Or should he ignore her altogether, drop his envelopes in the post box and be on his way?

  “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  Her announcement, packed with salacious humour, left Baldock with no option. He nodded stiffly. “Ms Armitage.”

  “Cowling. And it’s Mrs Cowling. I’ve been wed to Graham these last fifteen months.” She flashed her ring finger at him, laden with ostentatious jewellery. “So what brings the famous Raymond Baldock here?”

  “I have to post these letters,” he explained, and dropped the envelopes in the box.

  “You came all the way back to Midthorpe to post two letters? Don’t they have post boxes in Sussex?”

  “Norfolk,” he corrected her. “No, of course I didn’t come back here to post letters. I have business here.”

  “Ooh. Business. What kinda business?”

  Baldock stood up straight, stared her in the eye. “No business of yours.” He turned for the door.

  He stepped out into the summer sun once again, and took a deep breath. Two ghosts from his past, three if you counted young Haigh (although he did not remember the shopkeeper from his youth) and he had dealt with them. All right, so he had not been devastating, he had not crushed them or compelled them to heed his very presence, but he had scored points from Mandy Armitage, held his own against Haigh, and only to Lisa Yeoman had he yielded some ground. A promising start.

  He made his way back to the roadside outside Haighs and climbed behind the wheel of his silver-grey Mercedes. Time to meet with Mother.

  ***

  Letting herself into her office at the Health Centre, Lisa dropped her briefcase on the floor close to her desk, and flopped into the chair.

  “Raymond bloody Baldock,” she said to the empty room.

  Switching on the computer, she ran through her day’s appointments. Full. The first client, a young woman desperate to give up smoking before her unborn child arrived, would come through the door in the next ten minutes, and from then up to four o’clock, Lisa would have no time to herself.

  She had not recognised Baldock right away. Queuing behind him in Haigh’s she had been conscious only of her anxiety to get to work, and she was already late. She liked half an hour to herself before starting on the day’s workload and the nitpicking with Ivan Haigh was eating into that breather. But once he declared, ‘I am Raymond Baldock, the novelist’, the memories came flooding back.

  Some were happy, some were sad, but mostly they were of absolute frustration at his obdurate and painstaking nature; exactly as he had behaved in the shop. The world had to bend to the will of Raymond Baldock.

  But of course, it did not, and he had never been able to understand why. In the same class throughout their days at Midthorpe Primary, he could not comprehend why others did not hang on his every word. It seemed incredible to him that they were more interested in games of hide and seek than the precise distance from the Earth to Jupiter as determined by the latest orbital telescopes. He was frequently beaten up by other boys, and sometimes by the girls, but still he could not see why, still he did not drop that haughtiness which tried to assume command; tried and failed.

  And when he won his scholarship to the prestigious Headingley School, matters got worse. He would pontificate, he would try to educate whether or not his audience wanted it.

  Even so, as he grew into a tall, athletic teenager, there were those girls who found him impressive and attractive, and Lisa made no apologies for being one of that small number.

  With the benefit of her own higher education, a grounding in psychology and her later training as a general counsellor, it was easy for her to see what was wrong with him. He never played. As a child he never played in the street. A houseful of toys, shared with his elder brother, had never interested him. Only his books. And few of those were fiction. Aside from a fascination with James Bond, most of his reading tended to be biographies or encyclopaedias, and at school, both Midthorpe and Headingley according to him, he preferred solo to team sports; activities such as cross-country running or long-distance track events. He had to be pressed into the rugby, football and cricket teams, and invariably came away with some kind of minor injury.

  Since his emergence as a successful novelist almost a decade previously Lisa had followed his career with an interest bordering on obsession. She had seen or heard him numerous times on TV and radio, and still he had not lost that inherent tone of superiority in his voice. If anything Ca
mbridge had reinforced it to the point where she felt his arrogance would qualify him as a modern politician. Raymond Baldock was clear and determined about everything, and the one aspect of his character which she knew had come from Midthorpe, was his habit of telling it bluntly and as it was… or as he saw it. His view, coloured by an unhappy youth on Midthorpe did not always coincide with reality, but he refused to court popularity, and even those journalists prepared to admit that they did not like him, nevertheless commended his candour.

  “He might be a pompous prat,” said the literary reviewer from one of the weekend broadsheets, “but at least he’s an honest pompous prat.”

  Most of all, Lisa remembered a shy seventeen-year-old who blushed when he kissed her, who steadfastly showed no interest in fondling her burgeoning breasts, or placing his hands on her bottom to crush her closer to him. And a year later, bursting with nervous excitement, he went off to Cambridge, taking his very presence from her, when what she really wanted was for him to take her before he left.

  Chapter Three

  Midthorpe estate was tagged onto South Leeds almost as an afterthought.

  Built in the 1920s to house the families of the men who worked at the now-defunct Midthorpe Colliery, the estate appeared broadly apple shaped when viewed on a map, and Midthorpe Avenue ran north to south through the exact centre.

  Off to either side as Baldock drove down from the shops, were labyrinths of streets, some short, some longer, some cul-de-sac, others through roads. The Nimmons, named after some family that had owned most of the land during the early days of the Industrial Revolution, were to his right, and the Midthorpes sat to his left. He had been brought up in a two-bedroomed house on Midthorpe Terrace, where his mother still lived.

  The Terrace was a strange street: a cul-de-sac at both ends, but it was unevenly split by the inappropriately named, one-mile long Midthorpe Walk passing through the middle. From the Walk, one could turn north into the Terrace (Nos 11-52) or south, (Nos 1-10). Turning left off the Avenue onto the Walk, Baldock next turned right, into the southern part of the street, drove down to the frying pan, and stopped outside No. 1.