Conway’s Warning
The local recluse had important information – now Jethro just had to track him down . . .
JETHRO had just dismounted from his motorbike when a woman, waving frantically, came speeding towards him in her wheelchair.
“Constable Hammett, can I have a word?” she called to him.
Jethro was outside his cottage, having just finished a night shift at the police station in the nearby holiday resort of Tewyth, where he was based.
But this coastal village of Gnothrielli was also on his patch as a policeman, so he seldom felt truly off duty. Not that it bothered him. “Livia, good morning,” he greeted the woman with a smile.
“I just wondered if you’d seen Conway,” Livia said. “I see him most days, but I haven’t just lately.”
Conway was . . . Jethro searched for how best to describe him. A hermit? Recluse?
In his mid-fifties, Jethro estimated, Conway had distinctive long hair and an even longer beard, and lived in a caravan tucked away in a tangle of woodland.
He bothered no-one and even the farmer who owned the land was OK with his being there.
Jethro had long ago satisfied himself that Conway was not a wanted man or known “missing person”.
Nor had he ever found any other potentially suspicious motive for the man being there.
“I just wanted away from modern life,” he’d once told Jethro.
“The noise and the bustle and all this internet and computers, it’s too complicated for me.”
Being perfectly content with his own lot as a country bobby, Jethro had some sympathy for this.
Though he was sure that Conway would have had the brains to deal with stuff like the internet, if he’d had a mind to.
“I mean I’ve no real reason to think there’s anything wrong,” Livia now continued.
“But I saw you there and I thought I’d ask.
“I’d go and check on him myself but the path up there is not exactly wheelchair-friendly!”
She smiled at the understatement of her words.
“No, last time I was there the nettles were up to my waist!” Jethro smiled back. “How about I have a cup of tea to wind down from my shift, and then go and see him?”
They said goodbye and Jethro went inside.
He’d just switched the kettle on when his phone rang. It was his immediate superior, DS Chloe Snowe.
“I need a friendly ear, Jeth. Guess who turned up just after you left – the Dragonlady herself!”
“Dragonlady” was the pretty universal, if not especially flattering, nickname for their boss, DI Ratterly.
It was no secret that Ratterly would like to close the Tewyth operation and move them all to the much larger town inland where she was based.
No-one among them had any enthusiasm for the idea.
Fortunately, the local community – showing their usual resistance to change of any sort – had also voiced strong objections.
The fuss they’d made had saved the day for Jethro and his colleagues.
But Ratterly was on them like a ton of bricks given the slightest opportunity.
Jethro listened as Chloe described the bricks that had been aimed in their direction after he’d left that morning.
A new-build on the way out of Gnothrielli had been burgled a few days previously.
The case had been dubbed “the bungalow burglary” because the residence was singlestorey.
It wasn’t, however, what the name normally suggested, being a massive place, built to the wealthy owners’ specifications.
Ironically, they were here, just like Conway, right at the other end of the housing scale, because they also had chosen to escape city life for a quieter location.
Among other things, a lot of expensive jewellery had been taken.
Having spent the last couple of days questioning the type of people into whose hands such items might fall, Jethro could now describe them down to the very last diamond.
But none of this had produced any clue as to who had committed the crime, or where
the spoils might actually be.
“You can imagine Dragonlady,” Chloe said to him, mimicking the DI’S voice.
“We have new, highly influential residents in the area, and what impression are we giving them about the way the area is policed?”
“I suppose she pointed out that it was in my village that the theft occurred?” Jethro said.
“With glee!” Chloe sighed as she hung up.
Jethro had his cup of tea and suddenly felt the need for sleep. But there was Conway to check on, as he’d promised Livia.
And – couldn’t he really do with one or two items from the general store?
He smiled, aware that pretty much every one of his cupboards was full to overflowing.
It would give him the chance to see Oliana . . .
How she felt about him, he hadn’t a clue and didn’t dare try to find out. He smiled again.
She had, however, on his last visit to the store declared mischievously that he must have “about a hundred tins of baked beans stashed away”.
Not quite. But he had more than a few!
A watery sun was peering through the clouds that had earlier darkened the sky as, a few minutes later, he made his way up to Conway’s caravan.
Jethro took the walk slowly, enjoying it. He liked nature.
He stopped to watch the antics of a couple of insects, to try to identify the different birds contributing to the song around him and to examine some mosses in the wild undergrowth.
He was now well off the beaten track.
But his leisurely pace changed when the caravan came into sight.
“What the –?”
He started running. But as he neared his destination he became more cautious, darting from cover to cover, unsure of what might await him.
As an extra precaution he decided to check the area a good distance around before slowly approaching his target.
The caravan, not exactly in prime condition to start with, had been wrecked.
Windows were broken and the door smashed to the extent that it completely collapsed when Jethro cautiously stepped through it.
It proved to be empty. And it was in the same mess inside as out.
Drawers pulled out and the contents strewn all over the floor. Soft furnishings ripped apart.
He called Chloe. “Another burglary?” she suggested.
“He’s not likely to have had much to steal,” Jethro protested.
“And he’s definitely disappeared?”
“It seems he hasn’t been seen for a few days.”
“I’ll put out a missing persons,” Chloe said, “in case he’s in harm’s way, but he may just have gone off for a few days.”
“You mean his van was wrecked after he’d gone?” Jethro said. “Yes, could be.”
“But I’ll organise for the immediate area to be searched and for forensics to examine the caravan anyway,” Chloe continued.
“So, this Conway chap – is that his first or last name?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Jethro said. “Like I say, he lives off grid and very much keeps to himself.”
A picture of Livia popped into his head.
“The woman I spoke to earlier seems to know him better,” he told Chloe. “When the others arrive, I’ll go back and talk to her.”
It wasn’t long before Jethro was heading to
Livia’s house.
When he got there he updated her, choosing his words carefully so as not to cause her undue alarm.
It turned out she knew little more about Conway than did Jethro himself.
“He just turned up here, didn’t he? Never talked about the past.”
“Can you remember the last time you saw him?” Jethro asked.
She thought a moment. “Monday, it would be,” she said. “Yes, definitely Monday. Half-past eleven, dead on.”
“You seem very certain about the time.”
“Well, yes, it was always half-past eleven he came strolling by my front gate for what he called his daily constitutional.
“You could set your clock by him, you really could.” Jethro smiled.
“All such creatures of habit, aren’t we, Livia?” he said as he turned to go. He became thoughtful. The huge bungalow had been burgled on Monday.
It was very likely, from the new owners’ memories of when they last saw the stolen items, that it had happened at a time between quarter to twelve and midday.
Now, the lane on which Livia lived led only to the cliff-top path, which the bungalow overlooked. That was another of its enviable features.
Having huge windows – the side facing the sea was virtually a wall of glass – the views must be stunning.
He did a quick calculation. Yes, he reckoned someone walking past Livia’s at half-past eleven would reach the bungalow at . . .
“. . . quarter to twelve,” he said aloud.
His face still thoughtful, he set off along the cliff path to confirm his time estimate.
He was right – it was just after eleven forty-five when he reached the bungalow.
On his way he’d seen no-one. Like Conway’s caravan, the luxurious home was very much out on its own.
So was it Conway who’d carried out the burglary? He had to ask the question as he turned round and headed back to the village.
Was that why he’d disappeared – fled with his ill-gotten gains?
Jethro hadn’t held any suspicions about his hermit
“It seems he hasn’t been seen for a few days”
So was it Conway who’d carried out the burglary?
lifestyle, accepting what Conway had told him.
But maybe he’d been wrong there.
And yet he didn’t think so.
No, he still believed that Conway was OK. He’d simply wanted that simpler life.
And furthermore, the fact he’d done a runner wouldn’t explain the damage to the caravan either.
He phoned Chloe to see if the team searching round and about the caravan had found anything. They hadn’t.
Jethro sighed with relief. His imagination had been painting pictures of poor Conway’s body lying somewhere amongst the nettles and long grass.
“Does he have a car?” Chloe asked. “Or a vehicle of any kind?”
“To my knowledge, not even a bike,” Jethro said.
“So other than by public transport, he can’t have gone far,” Chloe mused.
“I’ll get in touch with the transport companies.
“Give me a description, though a photograph would be better.”
Jethro gave the description and pictured in his mind the interior of the caravan.
He had a good memory but couldn’t recall seeing any photos among the few possessions Conway had.
He was a keen reader, Jethro knew that from their conversations, and there had been a
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number of books and magazines . . .
Then out of the blue a thought came to him.
“Of course!” he said aloud, sending a startled seagull screeching up into the sky.
He would leave Chloe to make her enquiries with the bus and train companies to make sure.
But he had a feeling someone like Conway could well have left Gnothrielli by a different method.
****
“Yes, we have a supplier based there.” Oliana answered his question when he arrived at the general store a few minutes later.
“There” was a town about 30 miles away.
“And, of course, they deliver to you here,” Jethro said. “Now I think about it, I can recall seeing their vans.”
A picture from his memory flashed in front of him.
He saw a van, complete with the company name and address on the side.
The town in the address had suddenly rung a bell when he’d been picturing the debris thrown about on the floor of Conway’s caravan.
Several of his books were local history publications about that town.
And a couple of the magazines had advertised articles about it on their cover.
“What are their days for delivering to you?” he now asked Oliana.
“Mondays,” she said, “right at the end of the day – we’re Chris’s last drop.”
“This Chris is your usual driver?”
“Yes.”
“Have you got a phone number for him?”
“Hang on, I’ll get it for you.”
Jethro called the number but got voicemail.
He left a message asking Chris to contact him urgently, and the return call came quickly.
“Did I give anyone a lift on Monday?” Chris repeated Jethro’s question. “As a matter of fact, I did.
“A chap turned up as I was shutting the back door of the van ready to set off from Gnothrielli back to town. He asked if I’d mind giving him a lift.” Jethro nodded.
“Said his family were there,” Chris continued.
“He looked flustered and I felt sorry for him, so I said yes because he seemed genuine.”
No wonder he looked flustered, Jethro thought. You would if you’d returned home and found the place, in this case the caravan, wrecked!
Jethro was now pretty sure what must have happened.
Despite being at the bungalow at the relevant time, Conway hadn’t burgled it. But he’d seen who had.
And they’d in turn seen him watching. They’d found out who he was, and come to his caravan to make sure he kept his mouth shut.
Except, thankfully, Conway hadn’t been at home.
So they’d savagely turned the place over as a message.
They knew who he was and where to find him, so he’d better keep quiet or they might come back . . .
Conway had decided to seek refuge somewhere safer, and it seemed from the books and magazines that the nearby town had once been important to him.
“Where exactly did you let him off?” he asked Chris before concluding the call.
“At the roundabout as you go into the town,” Chris said.
“He took the first turning off. It’s just a short road. Comes to a dead end.”
Again, Jethro phoned Chloe, and she phoned colleagues in the town, passing on the information Chris had provided.
It was soon established that Conway had sought refuge at his sister’s.
“You were right, Jeth.” Chloe called him later after an interview with Conway.
“He did see a couple of guys running out of the bungalow.
“They didn’t show any interest in him at the time,” she continued.
“Their priority would have been to get clear of the scene.
“But they must have clocked him nonetheless and found out somehow where he lived.”
“Who are the guys?” “He doesn’t know. But he had seen them a few days before, arguing with . . . is it Paul, the barman in your local pub?”
“I’ll go and speak to him,”
Jethro said.
“Yes, a right pair of thugs,” Paul told Jethro a few minutes later from his position behind the bar in the Sailor.
“Bothering the other customers. I showed them the door.” “Bothering them how?” “Oh, listening to their conversations and butting in with nasty comments.” Jethro nodded to himself. The regulars in the Sailor, he knew, liked a bit of gossip.
He could well imagine mention of the new arrivals in the bungalow and their wealth. And the two guys taking it all in.
“Any idea who the pair were?” he asked Paul.
“No. But they left through the back door and there’s CCTV behind the pub, covering our car park.”
The footage showed more than them leaving.
Paul identified the duo as they were captured by the camera getting into a van.
Jethro sent Chloe the images, which included the registration plate of the van, pretty sure they’d now soon be traced.
“Dragonlady is, for once, pleased with us,” she told him when he reported for duty the next day.
“Because of our prompt and focused action, I quote, the haul from our friends has been retrieved, and a bit more, too.”
“It won’t last,” Jethro said.
“No, but isn’t it nice when it happens?” Chloe said a touch wryly.
****
“Isn’t it nice?” Livia almost repeated Chloe’s words a few days later.
She was referring to the fabulous new caravan bought for Conway by the couple in the bungalow, as a gesture of their gratitude.
“Deserved, of course,” Livia continued, “since it was, after all, Conway, with his testimony, who got
“He looked flustered and I felt sorry for him”
them convicted.”
While Chloe and I just sat back and did nothing, Jethro reflected.
But there was no malice in the thought.
He didn’t do the job for praise and recognition and he knew Chloe didn’t, either.
“It was Oliana who told me about the new caravan,” Livia said.
“And what a business it was getting it up there, apparently.
“The delivery guys came into the store for takeaway coffees to revive them.”
Oliana! Following her remark about how his cupboards must be overflowing, he hadn’t been in for a couple of days.
It was crazy, but even that passing contact between them had become an important part of his life.
Perhaps he could go and tell her about Conway’s new caravan, he thought. Use that as his reason.
But then he remembered that Livia had heard the news from Oliana. He sighed.
Mind you, it occurred to him, Oliana wouldn’t know that he knew that she already knew, would she?
After a couple of seconds, he shook his head.
He had enough exposure to devious plans and deceptions in the course of his job, he decided, without resorting to them himself.
He was sure he had room in his cupboard for another tin of beans! ■