Chapter 21

Revelations

Gandalph glanced up from the papers on his desk. “Good morning, Boss. How did it go yesterday?”

Thurstan hung his jacket up as he replied, “It was interesting. Got some good background information all round, although Beck refuses to co-operate further. I get where he’s coming from. What about you and Walsh? You going to see him again today?”

The DC shook his head, “Nope. I’m giving him a day off so he’ll start to miss me but we’re getting on OK. He’s opening up. At the moment, it’s just about his early days. I haven’t pushed him on the drug unit issue.”

The DCI nodded understanding. “Good idea. Fancy a brew?”

Over coffee and biscuits, Thurstan explained the information he’d acquired from Beck and suggested Gandalph feed it into his conversations with Freddy Walsh when the time seemed right. “Don’t forget to mention the fire in the records office. See if he knows anything?”

Returning from taking the empty mugs and the biscuit tin back to the kitchen, Thurstan ventured, “Have you heard anything from that Inspector? What’s her name again?”

Gandalph couldn’t stifle a little grin. “Barkus. She’s been posted to the Chief Con’s office as a bag carrier. She’ll have better things to think about than me now. Happy days!”

His DCI wasn’t so sure. “Stephen, how long do you think you can get away with this before someone other than her asks where the heck you are?”

Gandalph leaned back, a smug look on his face. “I knew someone, once, who went on a six-month project as support staff, doing the admin. When it ended, she didn’t fancy going back to her old job and knew a new project was starting the following week, so she just turned up on the Monday, nice and early, and when the new lot came in, they just assumed she was part of their project team.

“She told her co-workers back where she should have been she was part of the new project’s admin set-up. Seeing as the person she told was getting extra money for filling her shoes whilst she’d been away, they didn’t feel any great need to question it all and it was just accepted. The woman spun it out for eighteen months in all.”

He waved Thurstan’s attempted interjection to the side. “There’s more, Boss. I also knew a bobby who went to an undercover operation, as a computer geek. You know what it’s like in Area - the management flit in and out almost every six months. A couple of changes later, it was being put about he was deep undercover and couldn’t be contacted by anyone. Any requests had to go through a Chief Superintendent in Special Branch. Well, no one felt an urgent need to do that and thinking they’d look foolish trying to serve prosecution requests for him to give evidence in court on his old jobs, they just had them binned, no evidence offered.

“Well, it only came to light when some sergeant from the Criminal Justice Unit found out the police were paying off the civil litigations for malicious prosecution instead of contesting them and the costs were mounting up. So, he phoned the SB Chief Super who parroted what his piece of paper told him, the one left by the bloke he replaced – the bobby was deep undercover and completely unavailable.

“Well, the Sarge told him he’d have to turn up at the Crown Court and tell that to the Judge, who just happened to be ‘Whack’em’ Wickham. Just the thought of it frightened him so much he phoned up the other police force and discovered the bobby worked in an office and had been available all the time. He’d even been working overtime on the footie matches at the weekend every now and then.” He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “I think I’m pretty safe, Boss.” He gave his DCI a large smile.

Thurstan, wanted to say something about complacency, but was interrupted by the phone ringing.

“DCI Baddeley, can I help you? Oh, hello, Wilf.” A pause as he listened. “OK, your place. We should be able to get there in fifteen minutes.”  He looked across at Gandalph. “Come on, they’ve got a result to tell us about the Blackthorn Street Murder.”

****

At Wilf’s, they took tea and accepted the offer of cake from Esme, a small, timid sort. It seemed rude not to do so. There was quite a gathering. Thurstan quickly counted at least ten people but had to stop when those going in and out of the kitchen for sandwiches on paper plates confused him.

Introductions made, Wilf called the meeting to order and those conducting the enquiries went through their findings.

Acknowledging Sir Montague Hillingdon’s line of the family ended with the sinking of the SS Benares, Esme declared she had traced Cedric Hillingdon’s side, discovering he’d had three children, two boys and a girl. Sadly, both boys had died during WW1: Clarence in 1915 at the Battle of Loos and Benedict in 1917 at the Battle of Messines. Their sister, Charlotte, lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1972 aged 90.

She then explained a recent illness had prevented her from further exploration in respect of their progeny but enthusiastically declared she was very hopeful now she was “back on the case”.

Her phraseology reminded Thurstan – Wilf had once used the same words, and he hadn’t been well recently either. A vision of them both in matching dressing gowns, snuggling on a couch, watching a cop show whilst clutching steaming mugs of cold and flu remedy flashed fleetingly through his head.

Next came Sam, a bespeckled, nondescript chap wearing a thin nondescript cardigan to match his trousers. Meticulously cleaning his glasses, he ladled praise upon Esme for being an inspiration to them all in trying to carry on with her research in the face of such adversity. Moving on, he declared Aubrey Hillingdon had died in 1879 in the British disaster at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Zulu War. He’d been a 31-year-old junior officer.

The good news was he’d left behind a son Rupert, only 3 years old when his father died. As an adult, Rupert had been quite busy and produced four sons: Randolph, Frederick, Granville and Edward.

The first two were fathered with his first wife who died in 1911 shortly after giving birth to Frederick. The latter two with his second wife.

Unfortunately, Randolph had died aged 38 in 1945 as a prisoner of war of the Japanese and Frederick, although surviving WW2, had died in 1952 after being taken prisoner at the Battle of the Imjin River during the Korean War. He was 41. Neither married.

The two younger boys had fared better. Edward, at 57 years of age, had died in 1977. He’d never married and had no known children. Granville, however, was the star of the family in that he had two sons: Felix who died in 2015 aged 69 years and the nine years younger Max, still alive and living in Herefordshire.

Looking at the two police officers, Sam concluded, “And that is who, I would suggest, you need to get your Hillingdon DNA sample from.”

After a short break, they moved on to the believed illegitimate son of Sir Montague Hillingdon – Albert William Thompson. Wilf gave the presentation.

“As we already know, Albert William died in WW1 leaving two sons who were William and Joseph. Now, young Joe had joined his local Territorial Army unit in 1936, but I couldn’t find anything about his exploits until I happened upon a record of him as being a member of a Commando unit in the Middle East.”

He took his pipe from his mouth. “Now, this is very interesting. Layforce they were known as. Set up in February 1941 by a Colonel Laycock and they did various island raids in the Mediterranean, disrupting lines of communication, that sort of thing. A sort of precursor of things to come, really, when you think about it. In fact, when they were disbanded, many of their survivors joined the newly formed SAS. 

“Now, regrettably, the record we found for Joseph states he died whilst on one such raid in Crete, May 1941. Even sadder, I think, is he has no known grave.” He paused briefly then glanced down at his notes.

“William fared somewhat better. He joined the Army in 1940 and we found a record of him being taken prisoner at Arnhem, 1944. He was a Sergeant Major in the Parachute Regiment. To cut a long story short, he died in 1983 but there’s a marriage record from 1948. Now, he married late in life, he was forty, his wife was a good ten years younger. They had a son, David, who in turn produced a grandson, William Joseph, in 1976.” He hesitated, straight-faced, for dramatic effect.

“And there you have your Thompson line DNA sample, Mr Baddeley. Both David and William Joseph Thompson are still alive today and living not far from where we are now. You’ve even got a great-great-grandson of Albert William Thompson as a reserve.” Wilf’s enormous smile said it all. He was more than pleased with himself and with what the group had achieved.

Thurstan stood up. Gandalph joined him. The DCI glanced at him and said, “Where are you going?”

“I thought we were leaving,” his DC mumbled, then sat down again.

Thurstan gave a short speech, because he felt it was expected, in which he extended his heartfelt appreciation to all the members present, conscious they would have all contributed something to the searches and information gathering.

Any previous thoughts he may have had concerning the nerdiness of people in such societies were banished to a dungeon of his mind, albeit there was a small candle flickering away in its window.