UNCLE GEORGE [Part 7 of 10]

 UNCLE GEORGE      [Part 7 of 10]

By Richard Banks

“Let’s get back to the car,” whispers Ally and we sit there silently contemplating what might have been. For a few minutes the envelope is forgotten and when she asks me where it is I don’t know until a thorough examination of my pockets for some reason reminds me that I put it in the glove compartment. I take it out and open it. Inside there’s a single sheet of notepaper covered back and front in slanty writing that’s not unlike my own.  It’s not too difficult to decipher and I’m well into the first para when Ally nearly explodes with impatience.

         “Well read it then, I’m here too!”

         So I do.

         ‘Dear Nephew, if you be the clever young fellow I thought you would become you will have found this letter and now be reading it. To get this far you will have found out about my involvement in a criminal enterprise smuggling premium brandy for which I spent time in prison. Sorry! I hope this is less embarrassing for you than it was to your mother. If not, you at least have the consolation of knowing that I made a small fortune out of it and that, as little of it was spent on myself, my ill gotten gains may now be the twenty-first century equivalent of buried treasure. What did the silly old chap do with it all, you’ll be thinking. Well, let’s answer the ‘how’ question first. Even though it’s not the first thing on your mind I want you to know what I couldn’t let onto in my lifetime.

         As well as keeping an eye on the old fish house where we kept the contraband, I was also stock-keeper. Whether this was because I was regarded as the most honest man in an unprincipled bunch of desperadoes, or because I was the easiest to intimidate and therefore control, I cannot say, but no one was better placed than myself to squirrel away some of the merchandise. But I didn’t, even when I discovered the unusual functioning of that cupboard. Who was going to notice if I took a few bottles every week or so. If I wasn’t too greedy the answer was no one but, as I say, I didn’t. Who says there’s no honour among thieves, well maybe I wasn’t much of one, just a poor man tempted into something he would normally have kept well clear off. Anyway was it really thievery? Smuggling has been going on for hundreds of years in these parts and if the Revenue lost money they didn’t have in the first place there were many drinkers grateful to be paying less for their booze.

         Anyway, be that as it may it’s not what you’re wanting to know so let’s move on to the events of 25^th August 1992, the night our little operation was busted by the London police. We had a big delivery to make, a lorry to load up and once it was away nothing else for me to do until the following day. Rather than walk home late at night I did what I often did and bedded down on an old lilo I had found on the beach. At 1am the mobile they gave me goes off and one of the guys in the lorry phones to say that they are being followed by the police and are about to abandon the vehicle and make a run for it. Get the hell out of the storeroom he says, and if I get caught don’t grass on him or anyone else because they’ll get even with me however long it takes. It was sound advice, but as to fleeing the storeroom I had a better plan, and one likely to win me their approval. What if I moved the remaining stock down below where no one was likely to find it. Five hours later I had all but a few boxes underground when the police arrived and began to smash down the front door. As they came in I closed the cupboard door with me behind it.

         Two days later it went quiet above and I ventured out to find them gone and the front door replaced by wooden boarding. I left by a side door and went home hoping against hope that I was in the clear, but a reporter from the Echo had seen me on guard duty and the description of me he gave to the police was enough to point them in my direction. I should of course have denied all involvement. They had nothing much on me but in the end I buckled under pressure and confessed myself guilty of everything I had done. What they couldn’t do was make me inform on the others, and because of that, as much as what I did, they sentenced me to three years. 

         My accomplices, more practised criminals than myself, fared better and two of them visited me in prison. While they were aware that a large number of boxes had gone missing they had no hesitation in putting the blame on the Met. There were even rumours that they had sold them to a south London criminal with a chain of night clubs. No one thought me responsible and that’s when the idea began to form in my mind that I might do very well for myself.

         Having served half my sentence I returned home to find myself out of work and with little prospect of getting any. Nobody wanted to know me now, and my criminal associates who promised to see me alright on my release were only good for the occasional fiver. The storeroom which had been abandoned before we took it over was still empty and, as no one knew who owned it there was talk in the local rag of the Council taking it over. There was, it seemed, no time to lose and within three months of my release I found an honest villain who gave me a fair price for what I had and on a misty day in February I saw it taken away to Lord knows where.

         The money went in the loft and then into the Upshire Bank in monthly instalments unlikely, I thought, to attract much attention. A few years on it would all have been in my account, but new money laundering regulations changed my plans and weeks before they were introduced I withdrew the whole amount. What I did with it and the rest of the cash is a mystery known only to myself and one other person. If you want to be number three you still have some work to do, but having got this far I’m thinking the odds may now be in your favour.

         Why don’t I just tell you where the money is? Do I really want you to have it? The truth is I’m not that sure. Perhaps things are best left as they are, but you are kith and kin so I suppose I should be giving you a fair chance. You’re done well to pick-up on the clues I left: the passbook, the letter from the Echo and the keys in the kitchen drawer. Let’s hope for your sake you haven’t taken too much of my stuff to the tip. If you have, your chances of success may now be zero, even though there’s only one more clue to solve. Ready or not here it is: MAT 0279718764  201.

         Good hunting. Be right, do right, you’re nearly there.

 

Uncle George.’

                   

         “Ever had the feeling you’re being played,” says Ally. “He’s got us on a piece of string, and what’s more he’s not even sure whether or not you should have the money, assuming there’s any left.”

         She’s got a point but, as I tell her, there’s no harm in attempting the conundrum. Solve it and we could be home and dry. If not, and it’s taking us somewhere we don’t want to go, we can put it to one side and never come back to it. Ally says nothing in reply but, judging by the expression on her face, she’s already thinking about Uncle’s clue. It doesn’t take us long to reach the conclusion that the long number in the middle is a mobile or landline, but when I dial it we’re a digit short. I add in the 2 that follows and when that don’t work I do the same with the 0 and 1, still no joy. If it’s a landline the first five digits will be an area code but when Ally googles it we find they’re nothing of the kind. 

         “So, if it’s not a telephone number, what is it?” she says

         “No idea, but clearly it relates to something he had in the house, a something that Uncle George thought I might take to the tip.”  

         “So what could that be?”

         “Nothing I can think of.”       

         “Nothing?” She looks at me in a way that suggests I’m being less than convincing.

         Who can blame her, I’m not sure I believe myself. Then I remember the mattress I took to the tip, and the ‘MAT’ in Uncle’s clue becomes only too obvious. There’s no time to lose and we drive at break neck speed to the tip to find it closed and a seven foot wire fence keeping us out.

         Tomorrow we should be getting-up at 4am and returning to London to resume our jobs, but now that’s the last thing on our minds. The tip reopens at 8am and there’s no prize for guessing who will be first in the queue. We head back to Petherdale feeling like we’re just about to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory. But maybe, just maybe, the object we’re looking for isn’t the mattress, maybe it’s something still in the house, so we put-off tea until we’ve checked out every last thing in the house.

         At ten minutes to midnight we give up and go to bed. We still haven’t had anything to eat, but who cares, we’re so tired all we want to do is sleep, and that’s what happens until Ally half wakes from a nightmare that has her trapped in the storeroom basement. In a frantic attempt to find the door she cuffs me in the face. There’s no sleeping now even though we don’t need to be getting up for another three hours.

         “Coffee?” I say, switching on the light.

         She nods and by the time I return from the kitchen she’s sitting up in bed reading a book.

         No one should ever have a eureka moment when they’re holding two mugs of tea, especially when the spillage lands on their bare feet. While Ally is less than pleased when more tea spills over the bedside table she’s even less impressed when I snatch the book from her hands. Ignoring her protests I turn to the acknowledgements page and count the number of digits in the ISBN code.

         “That’s it,” I say.

         “That’s what?” she asks in a tone of voice that suggests she’s more annoyed than inquisitive.

         “The ten digit number in Uncle George’s clue is an ISBN number.”

         “Didn’t know your uncle had any books.”

         I assure her that he did, a small library of some thirty volumes.

         “So where are they now?”

         My euphoria leaves me as quickly as it came. “At the tip,” I say.

         Ally appears to be struggling with her emotions. When she speaks it is her low, monotone voice, the one she uses when she’s angry but trying not to shout. “So, this morning we will be scouring the tip looking not just for a mattress but one of thirty books.”

         I’m about to say yes when I realise it’s thirty minus one. Uncle’s catalogue from the Swaffham Gallery is in the boot of my car. It’s still dark but at least there’s no one around when I dash out in my boxers. I retrieve the book and make equal haste back into the house. I set it down on the dining room table and, with Ally looking on, open it up and turn to what has suddenly become the most important page in the book. The first few digits have a familiar look to them but those that follow don’t. Somewhere in the middle should be a date from history that is famous for something that happened in the 1700s but, “it’s not there,” I wail.

         “What isn’t?” says Ally who, without waiting for an answer, is already reaching out for Uncle’s letter. “OK, keep calm, I’ll read, you check.” She speaks slowly and precisely like someone on Radio 4 reading the shipping forecast.

         I check, trying desperately not to blink. Four digits in we’re on course, four more despite the absence of historical dates we’re still good, and when she reads the final two figures it’s time to celebrate. “Bingo!” I shout as my mother once did at the Roxy. But we’re not there yet, wherever ‘there’ is, but the three digit number that follows can only be one thing. I turn to page 201 where there’s a picture by Roger Harmsworth, an eighteenth century landscape artist, entitled, ‘Meadow at Twilight’. If we need any further evidence that we are where Uncle was pointing us, the initials of the title spell MAT.

         “So much for the mattress,” says Ally whose elation at our discovery is changing to puzzlement. We google both the artist and picture to find that Harmsworth, a well known artist in his own time, was ‘rediscovered’ in the 1990s and is now regarded as one of the early giants of British landscape painting, his paintings to be found in the National Gallery and the private collections of the rich and powerful.

         Meadow at Twilight appears to be one of his lesser works having made it only into the Swaffham Gallery, a private collection, but open to the public three days a week. Could this picture be what Uncle George spent his money on? The idea seems too absurd to be true. More likely we’re looking at yet another clue, at worse a cruel joke from beyond the grave. But, whatever the truth, the picture we have to see. It’s Swaffham first then back to London. After that, who knows.

 

Copyright Richard Banks