Christmas Crackers Read online

  “They start with Somerset House, where all births, deaths and marriages are recorded. Then, when they’ve narrowed the search down, they begin to advertise locally but this is usually when the rightful heirs can’t be found or when an estate is in danger of going to the crown. And heir hunters usually charge a percentage,” Sheila went on. “They could have begun looking for the real Lee Murray shortly after his father’s death, and we may never know why Helmsley ended up here. Maybe a competitor misled him.”

  “One way to find out,” Joe said. Consulting a mental map, he made for the outer rim of the city centre.

  “Joe, this detective’s office is by the riverside.”

  “We can go there after. Right now, we’re going to see an old friend.”

  “Who?”

  Joe smiled.

  ***

  The frumpy, middle-aged receptionist at Tyke Productions stared defiance at Joe and Sheila. “I’m sorry, Mr Murray, but Norman Parrish won’t see anyone without an appointment.”

  Acutely aware of a burly security officer standing a few yards away, Joe found himself in a blind alley, a situation he was not accustomed to. “We’re old friends,” he insisted. “We go all the way back to the schoolyard, me and Norm.”

  “It makes no difference to me if you’re his long lost brother,” the receptionist retorted. “Now I shall have to ask you to leave, or else I’ll get security to escort you from the building.”

  The security officer fidgeted, as if he were on the ready line, awaiting only the call to action.

  Sheila took front and centre from Joe, and leaned across the Formica-topped counter. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Tell Mr Parrish that two old friends from Sanford are here to see him, and if he refuses, he’s likely to be implicated in a particularly nasty murder back home.”

  Shock shot through the receptionist’s face. For a long moment she maintained eye contact with Sheila, as if trying to stare her down, but Sheila refused to budge.

  “One moment,” the receptionist said, and called up the internal directory on her computer screen.

  “You think this’ll work?” Joe asked as the woman began muttering into the headset.

  “We’re not really lying, are we?” Sheila said. “There has been a nasty murder and Victor Helmsley was carrying a printout from this station’s computer. Who else would he have talked to if not Norman?”

  The receptionist had finished speaking into the phone. She looked up at them. “Mr Parrish will be along in a moment,” she declared. “Please take a seat.”

  The pair backed away from the counter and settled onto a large couch, one of three dotted around the marble-tiled floor.

  “You know, I still can’t figure any of this out,” Joe said. “I don’t know how they work things here, but I always got the impression that heir hunters like Helmsley came along and took a lucky dip to see who could find the beneficiaries first.”

  “So did I,” Sheila confessed. “What about it?”

  “Then why was Helmsley murdered?”

  Sheila considered the question. “Could it be that his killing is not related to the will and the search for Lee?”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t believe in coincidence, Sheila, you know that. Your Peter never did, either. Helmsley has a riverside office here in Leeds. If someone was gonna bump him off, he was easier to find here than in Sanford. No, it’s linked to this mysterious will, and if he found out about it here that means there may be others looking for the real Lee Murray, and they could be in danger, too. On the other hand, if they’re not in any danger, why single Helmsley out?”

  Across reception, the other side of the suspicious security guard, the door to the inner building opened and Norman Parrish stepped out.

  The receptionist may have matched Joe’s obduracy with determination, but it was nothing compared to the thunder in Parrish’s lean features. The same age as Joe and Sheila, expertly applied makeup made him look younger on TV, and even now that he was off-screen, his dark hair – touched up Joe had always insisted when he saw Parrish on TV – took ten years off him. But it could not disguise the raised blood pressure at the arrival of two old faces from a past he preferred to forget.

  This was his territory, not the schoolyard at Sanford Secondary Modern where Joe Murray, George Robson and Owen Frickley had mercilessly bullied him, and he was not slow to press home his advantage.

  “I don’t like being threatened, so you have ten seconds to say what you want to say and get out or I’ll have you thrown out.”

  Joe stood up and offered his hand. “And there I was thinking you’d be pleased to see us, Norm.”

  Parrish refused to shake the hand. “It’s Norman, and if I never saw you again this side of hell freezing over, it would still be too soon, Murray. Your time’s up.”

  Joe offered his hand to Sheila, and she, too, stood. “Come on, Sheila. Let’s go. We can always dance on his grave when the killer gets to him.”

  “Very well, Joe.”

  They had not taken three steps towards the exit when Parrish called them back.

  “Wait. Wait. What do you mean, when the killer gets to me?”

  Joe looked over his shoulder and grinned. “One of the private detectives you sent heir hunting has been murdered in Sanford. The way we figure it, the killer wants everyone who knows about it out of the way, and that must include you and the people who work for you.” Joe glanced at the sour receptionist, her wrinkled features now lined with worry. “Maybe even her with a bit of luck.” His keen eyes swung back to Parrish. “Still, as you’re not interested, we’ll look out for news of your death. See ya, Norm.”

  “Wait, wait. Stop.” Parrish appealed to the security officer. “Stop them.”

  “My place is to stop people getting in, Mr Parrish, not getting out.”

  “Murray, for God’s sake, man, if my life’s in danger, don’t just wander off.”

  Joe and Sheila turned. “You wanna talk, Norman? In private, not out here.”

  Parrish led them through the inner door and along a narrow corridor. Joe took in his surroundings with all the anticipation of a child let loose in a toy store, even though the corridor was just that, a bland corridor dotted with closed doors, each of them labelled: administration, conference, producers, controller, rehearsal, news room.

  “So this is where they make all those big programmes, eh?” Joe enthused.

  “This is the administrative wing,” Parrish told him. “Studio access is round the back and it’s not as grand as you think. We don’t make major programmes here, only regional.”

  “Still, you’ve done well for yourself, Norman,” Sheila said. “The snotty little boy from Sanford, now a household name.”

  “Yeah,” Joe sneered. “Everyone in Cleckheaton knows who he is.”

  Parrish rounded on Joe. “And how many people have heard of Joe Murray?”

  “More’n you might think, Norm.”

  “The Lazy Luncheonette is famous all over Yorkshire,” Sheila backed him up, “and when the Sanford Third Age Club get together, Joe is the best DJ Top of The Pops never saw.”

  Parrish threw open a door marked with his name and ushered them in.

  It was hardly the lap of luxury; small, cramped, barely room for Parrish himself to move around, and with three of them in there, it felt overcrowded.

  Parrish took an easy chair by the makeup mirror, Sheila sat on a visitor chair facing him and, left with no other option, Joe perched himself on the dresser table before the mirror.

  “Can’t offer you a drink,” Parrish said. “I’m not allowed it.” He smiled thinly. “Diabetes.”

  “Sure, Norm, sure,” Joe agreed, putting to the back of his mind all the stories he’d heard of near-alcoholism. “I don’t think there’s enough room in here for three people to safely drink anyway. You’d have elbows knocking together.”

  “Cut the wisecracks, Murray, and tell me what it is you want.”

  “Yesterday, a private investigator name
d Victor Helmsley was murdered in Sanford. He wasn’t robbed, so the police are working on the theory that he was killed because of his inquiries, and we know that he was looking for the heir to a will. Amongst his possessions was a computer printout that came from this TV station. Your programme, in fact. So we figure that you put him onto the will.”

  “In which case the police will be along to see me,” Parrish retorted, “so I don’t see why I have to speak to you.”

  “The cops probably will get round to you” Joe agreed, “but they won’t be in a hurry because they’ve already arrested a man for the killing. My nephew.”

  “I always said your family would come to no good, Murray.”

  “This ain’t the school playground, Norm, and I meant what I said out there. The cops have the wrong man. My nephew’s a big bugger, used to play prop for the Sanford Bulls, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. The law have circumstantial evidence against Lee, and they won’t look for another suspect until Lee is proven innocent, and in the meantime, the real killer is on the loose. He – or she – will kill again and since your programme pointed Helmsley in the right direction, it makes you, and every other private eye who got the gen from you, a target.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Murray,” Parrish insisted. “We don’t give out information to heir hunters. We just follow them when they’re on the trail of an unsettled will. Now if that’s all…”

  Sheila cut him off. “In that case, how did Helmsley come by a printout from your computer?”

  Parrish clammed up and stared at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Norman,” Sheila persisted, “we’re not fools and, believe me, Joe has one of the sharpest minds in this part of the country. He will get to know. And if you don’t talk to us, you’ll have to tell the police.”

  “And considering one of the cops on the case is my niece, I’m gonna find out anyway,” Joe told him, going along with Sheila’s lie.

  Parrish sighed. “Do you know how much I make as a TV presenter?”

  “I’ll bet it’s more than Joe makes from the Lazy Luncheonette,” Sheila suggested.

  “You’d probably lose your bet,” Parrish retorted. “By the time I’ve done paying my agent, forking out for clothing so that I look the part, paid my child support bill and kept my present wife in the style she thinks she deserves, I’m probably left with less than the average lorry driver.”

  “So you have a little sideline, huh?” Joe asked.

  Parrish nodded. “I told you, we follow professional heir hunters. That means we get to know about large wills that have never been through probate because the heirs can’t be traced. I sell the information on to a few private eyes. They get in on the case and if they can track down the heir before the heir hunters, they make. Simple as that. It’s a risk, obviously. If the heir hunters get there first, the private eye makes nothing, and my, er, fees are not refundable.”

  “So how much do you charge?” Joe asked.

  “A hundred. It’s cheap, Joe. Way cheaper than buying a bad debt and chasing it up where they may pick up a tenner a week.”

  Joe was suddenly aware that he had had become his given name rather than ‘Murray’. “And Vic Helmsley was one of your contacts?”

  Parrish nodded and frowned. “Rum do, though. He wasn’t asking for a tip off this time. He wanted information on a will he was thinking of pursuing.”

  “Tell us,” Joe insisted.

  Parrish shrugged. “Some industrialist in Australia. Can’t recall the name, except that Helmsley had it wrong. Sounded a bit like you brother, as I recall. Arthur…” he trailed off. “Hang on, it wasn’t your Arthur was it?”

  “No, but Helmsley thought it was,” Sheila said and went on to explain what had happened at the Lazy Luncheonette the previous morning.

  “When Lee got to the hotel, he found Helmsley murdered,” Joe concluded the tale, “and the law think Lee did it.”

  “And you obviously don’t.”

  “I know he didn’t do it,” Joe insisted. “The whole thing smacks of a set up, but it wasn’t Helmsley setting up my nephew. It was someone else.”

  “Well don’t look at me,” Parrish urged. “I’ve no claim on any Aussie will.”

  “What can you tell us about the will?” Sheila asked.

  Again Parrish shrugged. “Only what I learned through the solicitors we talk to. The firm contracted to find the heir are not on our database, but solicitors are like women. They gossip.” He fixed a beady eye on Sheila as he delivered the final words. When she did not react, he went on, “It was worth a few million and the guy died quite recently.” He frowned. “I wish I could remember his name.”

  Joe scowled. “If you’re angling after a payout, Parrish, forget it. The cops’ll get it out of you and they’ll tell me for free.”

  “I’m not,” Parrish pleaded. “I really can’t remember. I know it sounded like Murray. Anyway, as I was saying, he pegged it within the last month, so we were told. A day or two before he died, he sent word to a firm of lawyers in London, asking them to track down his son, Lee Murray. Apparently the kid was brought back to England when he was a baby after Murray and the mother divorced, and all the old man knew was the kid lived in Yorkshire. End of story. The lawyers contacted a number of private eyes in this area and engaged them to work on a results only basis. In other words, they get paid only when they turn up the kid. But the guy who finds Lee Murray is in for a sizeable payday.”

  “Easy to see why Helmsley got the real Lee Murray mixed up with ours. My nephew was brought back from Australia when he was a kid after Rachel and Arthur divorced,” Joe said. “How old is this missing Lee Murray?”

  “About thirty, according to our information,” Parrish replied.

  “And Lee is twenty-eight,” Sheila commented. “Tell me, Norman, did any of the other private investigators come to you?”

  Parrish shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Then why did Helmsley?”

  “He’d had a tip off,” Parrish replied. “He’d been told exactly where he could find Lee Murray. Mind you, he was not one of the private eyes the solicitors commissioned. He’d heard about this completely independently. The lawyers won’t care about that, of course. If he could turn Lee Murray up, they’d be quite happy to pay him a percentage of the settlement.”

  “And he never said where he’d got this tip off?” Joe asked.

  Parrish snorted. “Remember when George Robson used to back horses, Joe? He had a lad working in stables up near Thirsk, didn’t he? And he made a killing at it for a while, didn’t he? But he never told us who that contact was.” He tapped the side of his nose to emphasise his point. “You never give away your sources. Trust me, I know. I was a journalist, remember.”

  Joe strummed his lips with his fingers. “So what have we got? A private eye looking for the heir unofficially and then he’s killed and the wrong Lee Murray is walled up for it.”

  “Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Parrish said.

  “Oh, it does,” Joe argued, “but you need a special kind of mind to make it make sense. A mind like mine.” He hopped off the dresser. “Well, thanks, Norm. That’s all we needed to know… oh, one last thing. Do you know where Helmsley’s office is?”

  Parrish shrugged a third time. “Haven’t a clue. He probably worked from home. A lot of them do.”

  “And what was that about?” Sheila asked as they climbed into Joe’s car for the drive across Leeds.

  Joe turned the engine over and it fired reluctantly into life. “What was what about?”

  “You asked Norman if he knew where Helmsley’s office is. We already know where it is. We have the address on the card he gave Lee yesterday.”

  Joe slipped the transmission home and pulled out of the car park. “Testing the waters. We know Parrish of old. He was never a good liar. If he’d known where Helmsley had his base it would mean he knew a bit more about our late private eye than he was prepared to admit.”

  “And?”
r />   Joe paused, waiting for a gap in the traffic before pulling onto the main road into Leeds. “And what?”

  Sheila tutted. “Was Norman lying? Did he know Vic Helmsley better than he admitted?”

  “Oh. No. I don’t think so. When I asked, he didn’t hesitate, which means he didn’t have to think about his answer. That means that either Norman is telling the truth or he’s a better actor than we ever gave him credit for.” He grinned. “Hey, clever idea of yours telling him we had a printout from his computer.”

  “We wouldn’t have got anywhere otherwise.”

  The mid-morning rush of shoppers, eager to fill their cars with Christmas necessities and luxuries, was in full swing by the time they got to the inner ring road, and it took Joe almost thirty minutes to fight his way east, and through the thronging city centre street, to the old riverside close to Leeds Bridge.

  “Turn left,” Sheila ordered, consulting the map Joe had printed off from his computer.

  He did so and followed a narrow road for almost two hundred yards, surrounded by old and often disused warehouses before coming to a shabby, enclosed yard.

  They were on the river’s edge, the grey waters of the Aire plodding sluggishly past on its long journey to the Humber estuary. Across the broad expanse of the river were more warehouses, many of them turned to one-man business units. Looking back the way they had come, they could see the jam of buses and cars struggling to cross Leeds Bridge.

  Joe swung the car left into the yard. Directly ahead of them was an old, run down, two-storey warehouse-type building, an iron fire–escape leading down from the upper floor. Lower entrances were boarded or bricked up, apart from a single metal door above which a gaily decorated sign read, The Cartshaft.

  “Underground club,” Sheila said. “Peter used to complain about those in Sanford. Hotbeds for trouble late at night.”

  Joe was not interested. Parking in front of the fire escape, he cut the engine, and leaned forward, looking up at the first platform of the fire escape. “There we are,” he said, and opened his door.

  Climbing out, they took in the dusty windows next to the open door on the first landing. They could barely read the yellowed lettering: Helmsley Private Investigations followed by an indistinct telephone number.