Chapter 3

It was morning when the team changeover occurred, and he found himself with Fiona, Jessica and Freda, so had to start all over again, but he got up to have a pee before the second shift started on him. It was just as well that Frances had told him he was not attending university today. His instructions were to stay at home and relax; he would need time to recover, and would probably sleep some more.

It was near lunchtime, just after telling Carol that he wanted a light lunch and see how his system coped; before he was interrupted by Hermione bringing her office phone to him in the sitting room.

“Mr Robertson, there is a Mr Jones on the phone about our company services. As you are in the office today, I thought you might wish to speak with him.” She gave Reg a wink as she went through her formal introduction.

“Thank you, Hermione. Mr Jones, you said?”

“Yes, sir.” Reg took the phone.

“Hello, Mr Jones. I presume you have heard a little about our company, but you may have a special need. What then can we do for you?”

“Mr Robertson, my wife met you at church yesterday, and told me about your company. I had never heard of you. Are you new?”

“We are indeed, sir, but I can offer two previous corporate clients who can attest to our abilities, should you need reassurance.”

“No, I will take your word for it. I work for an insurance company, and we occasionally have trouble recovering stolen or otherwise misappropriated items. I wondered if your firm has in interest in such a ‘recovery’?”

“I see. I confess it was not in our initial company plan, but it has been mentioned as an area we ought to include. If you can tell me a little of something specific, I can see what my staff think of it. If we see a possibility of success, we will accept the challenge, but if I get a negative response by my staff, I shall have to decline the offer of work.”

“That sounds a reasonable position to take, Mr Robertson. I presume you will not be interested in small items, given the size of your basic fee.”

“Quite right, sir. We aim to assist with recovery of much larger amounts, at a minimum greater than our fee. We have shown we can produce six-figure improvements for our clients, though that may not always be the case. We try to make the client satisfied with our work, so that our reputation is enhanced.”

“I take your point. A recent example we have for your consideration is that of suspected arson, with a building valued at around a million pounds. Proving arson is not easy, as you will appreciate, and the police have little interest, without positive evidence. The fire people can tell us that there may be a suspicion of arson, but if there is no sign of an accelerant, the fire service will not commit themselves to arson, and the insurance company are stuck.”

“That sounds a toughie, but we have some experts on our staff that have good ideas, so if you tell me – or send me by email – the details, we can make a preliminary judgement and get back to you. At that valuation, was it an industrial building?”

“Indeed it was. Does that make a difference?”

“We have access to the expertise of a company that buys and sells buildings, so there may be additional talent we can bring to bear. We may have to pay for that expertise, but if it leads to a happy conclusion, I am sure you will not demur.”

“Let us say that if there were not a fully satisfactory solution, it comes out of your basic fee, but if it all works out well, there will be no problem about that extra. Fair?”

“Fair. The details, then?”

“I’ll email it to you. There is much more than can be easily spoken of. You should have it within 24 hours.”

“That will suit us fine, Mr Jones. Goodbye for now.”

Reg put the phone down, and found himself clammy and shivery. He was definitely not himself, despite his performance on the telephone. He decided to try himself with a light lunch, then go back to bed for a postprandial snooze. First, he wrote down a summary of what Mr Jones had told him over the phone, just in case he forgot something.

Carol brought him a cheese and melon salad, complete with baby tomatoes and watercress, and he managed to eat that. He thanked her for her choice. “It was just right for me now, Carol, but don’t assume a full main course for me at dinner time.”

“No bother. One of us will ask you before we serve, and adjust your plateful to suit your appetite.”

“Thanks again to you both. I’ll be off for a snooze shortly. If I can manage to sleep, I don’t want to be wakened until at least four o’clock. Will you pass that round the other ladies?”

“Wow. Elizabeth and Sidra will be delighted to be referred to as ‘ladies’. Holly and I naturally assume we fit that designation...”

“You are indeed ladies. Do the Pringle boys recognise that?”

“They do, Reg. We have them under control; or at least I think we do. They seem to think that their studies come before us girls ... um ... us ladies. We have learned a fair amount about dating recently, but we are still virgins. Certainly I am and I think my sister is also; I haven’t dared ask.”

“Good girl. Time for me to get some sleep before my wives return.”

As he gently drifted of to a drowsy sleep, he wondered how you can set fire to a building and leave no trace of the activity. That conjecture faded with consciousness, and his body relaxed.

“Wake up, Reg! It is four o’clock!” Holly was calling from the door of the master bedroom. His room had been adapted to that designation when his girls laughingly called him ‘master’. It wasn’t any bigger in dimensions, but it had gained a certain ambience...

“Huh? Oh, yes. Four already? I’d best get up, shower and get some clothes on.”

He was still dressing when there was a knock at the front door, and Holly answered it. There was a policeman outside, who asked for Reginald Robertson.

“He is dressing at the moment, sir, after an afternoon sleep. Would you care to come in and wait for a little while?”

The man entered and Holly offered him a cup of tea or coffee, while she sent Carol to inform Reg.

Shortly Reginald entered the room, and greeted the man.

“Sergeant Phillips! What brings you here?”

“To bring you an update, Reg. The Bomb Squad confirmed your first find as an incendiary device, and the second trace proved to be another one. They were confused by these bombs being just a metre down in the soil. If they had come straight down, they should he gone much deeper, seeing that they failed to explode. They had a look at the rock outcrop further up the hill, and deduced that the stick of bombs had struck the rock and bounced off in various directions. This meant they hit the softer ground at odd inclinations, and with reduced velocity, burying themselves only a metre or two.

Having sorted that out, the officer in charge left his men to begin the process of dealing with these, while he looked for more weapons. If two bombs in a stick were defective, the chances are that the whole stick was the same, so there should be more in the vicinity. He explained to me the likely reason for the failures. Many of these bombs were put together with forced labour – slaves, effectively, and so these slaves did what they could to sabotage the fuses. No-one would know about it until they had landed in England, and so the slave workers would be safe from retaliation.

Anyway, the officer had his men blow up the two devices, then organised a detection sweep all round the top of the hill for a quarter of a mile around. They located two more and exploded them in situ as the safest option. Any others lying on the ground were likely found at the time of the war. They have now concluded their work and are clearing up now. The farmer has been told that you can resume your treasure hunting from tomorrow. Happy about that?”

Reg grimaced. “Yes and no, sergeant. I can only do my detecting at the weekend, so making a start tomorrow is not possible for me. It is nice to know the threat has gone away, though. It had me very worried, and my ladies were not too happy as well, about the threat I faced.

Thanks for coming to let me know. I am grateful to you for that.”

As the sergeant was heading back to the front door, he commented, “I was actually surprised to find you at home. I thought I would be leaving a message for you.”

Reg admitted, “A touch of emotional shock from finding bombs, sergeant. I was not too happy, and felt quite unwell for a time. I am partly improved now, but may not be back at university for another day or two.”

“Sorry to hear that, Reg. I know of others who had suffered from that reaction, so you might take a lot longer to get over it. Take care, young man.”

Reg closed the door behind the policeman, and returned to the living room. He had a textbook on meteorology he wanted to get out and read another chapter of it before his wives got home. He had not realised clouds were so heavy, but when you think of the amount of water a cloudburst can drop on the land, it becomes quite believable!

Out of the blue, he found himself shivering again, with his tummy feeling unsafe, and recognised that he was not back to normal at all: it had just seemed that way temporarily. A quick trip to the toilet let him empty his bowels with a bout of diarrhea. He decided to follow the medical advice and not make his own self-diagnosis. The trouble was, he didn’t know what he should be doing now. It was all so confusing ... When his ladies returned, they fussed over him immediately. While enjoying this attention, Reg found himself objecting to it as an over-reaction. He knew he shouldn’t feel this way, but reckoned that this was another symptom of his emotional shock.

When Frances asked him, “Anything new in your emails, Reg?” it came as a shock to him that he had failed to check his emails. He NEVER failed to check his email, normally.

He admitted this failure, so Frances went to his computer and checked for him. She returned a while later to ask with a frown, “What the heck is this stuff about a building, Reg?”

“Oh, yes. I should have said. I was phoned by the husband of a lady one of you girls spoke to yesterday. Oh, no, sorry. It was Jemima, I think.”

“Stop faffing around, Reg, and get to the point: what is this stuff?”

“The guy works for an insurance company, and they want us to investigate a suspected arson that they can’t get evidence for. This is the data for us to look at before we decide to take it on or not.”

“Ah. So we are not committed yet?”

“No. I knew we needed to see the facts before saying whether it was something we could handle.”

“I am glad you did. You are not yourself yet, my man, so leave it to us girls to have a first read-through, and we’ll let you know what we think.”

“Thanks, Frances. I came to the realisation today that I was still not well. I had a snooze in bed this afternoon; I think that helped, but my thinking is still a bit muddled at times.”

“That’s all right, my love. We will see that you are supported back to normal. We do love you, you know.”

“I know, Frances. I am just not myself ... uh, I’ve already said that...”

“Yes. You are not as erudite as you usually are. You’ll get there, though. You are still my Reg.”

“I hope so. I don’t like myself at the moment. Don’t expect me to be able to help much with this insurance scam, darling.”

“You have a pretty competent staff to work on the matter, Reg. Just leave it to us. Oh, I think I am repeating myself, too!” she laughed.

Reg shrugged, and looked around to see if any other of his wives wanted a tete-a-tete, but none were in evidence. Frances had told them not to overwhelm Reg with attention, but to go to him one at a time later.

Unfortunately, this departure merely made him feel nervous, and Frances sighed to herself.

“O.K., Reg. Who do you want to see?”

“Fiona, please; just for a minute.”

Frances went off and sent Fiona to him.

“Yes, Reg?”

“Fiona, this material we have received about a possible arson scam: can you please examine it from a psychological perspective, and give the other girls your ideas on what may be going on there?”

“Look at the perpetrator’s psychology, eh? Sure, I can do that. Anything else?”

“No, apart from your pregnancy: everything going well with that?”

“So far, so good, my love. The midwife wants to give us all a thorough examination next week – or is it later this week? Anyway, she will give us an accurate sit-rep.”

“Sit-rep? Where did you pick up that military term?”

“One of the lecturers mentioned it. He revealed in his lecture that he was an officer in the Territorial Army for many years: surprised me. He seemed an innocuous chap up to that point.”

“Oh? By now, Fiona, you ought know you can’t tell the true content of a book by its cover. It is the same with people, I have found. You girls each have defects of one kind or another that merely hide your talents, but these defects are miniscule in reality. In the full scheme of things you are wonderful women who have enlivened my life and made me the happiest man in the world.”

Fiona seemed to be about to say something about any of her own defects – which she did not believe she had – but thought better of it in case Reg told her exactly what was wrong with her assumed perfection. She preferred simply accepting his obvious love and attention.

Reg went on, wonderingly, “I have a sudden epiphany that the man who is claiming insurance is another human being with unknown talents or connections to unknown talents. Take that thought with you, Fiona; it might be useful.”

After dinner the wives all retired to one of the bedrooms for a private chat, and to look over the emailed documents that Frances had printed out for them. The printer had been busy for a while, producing six copies of the documentation they now had before them.

They each either sat in a chair or lounged on the bed, papers in their hands, silently scanning the data contained therein. It took nearly three-quarters of an hour before they started their analysis of it.

An hour after that, and they were back to speak with Reg in the sitting room. He looked up as they trooped into the room. He could tell they had something to report. He lifted his eyebrows in query.

Frances took the lead. “Reg, we have gone over the data supplied. There is a fire brigade report, a report from the Insurance Company’s structural expert, and another from the firm’s loss adjuster.

Their conclusion, jointly, is that there is a strong possibility that this was arson, but that there is no positive proof of that conclusion, merely hints and assumptions. The biggest factor is that the owner was losing money on that building, and its loss was his financial gain.

The fire brigade’s unease is due to them being unable to show why the fire started. Even in a case of innocence, the cause of the fire is usually self-evident; but in this case all they can say is that it started at a low level, most likely the basement, and there was enough old painted wood and oil-soaked floor timbers to make it burn fiercely. There was no sign of an accelerant, and that has them puzzled.”

Reg had listened carefully, and knew there was more. “And... ?”

Frances gestured towards Fiona, who took up the tale.

“The building was owned by one man, through a limited company with him as sole shareholder. He is married, and the loss adjuster was extremely put out by the man’s equanimity. Oh, he had put on a show of being devastated, but the assessor had seen such shows before, and knew instinctively that it was faked. This made him very suspicious, but he has no concrete evidence to show for his suspicions.”

Erika took over. “The structural engineer says that the building was a solid structure; stone walls with brick interior walls and basement supports. All the rest was timber, but there was a fire alarm fitted with sensors in various parts of the building. The alarms went off, but the batteries were well down, almost totally depleted – another sign that made the investigators suspicious – and so did not sound for long enough, or loudly enough to attract exterior attention. There was no fixed link to the fire station, and no system for someone to ring the fire brigade; in fact the building was empty of people. All the signs pointed to the building prepared for arson, but absolutely no evidence of a fire accelerant.”

Reg was interested, but saw nothing to go on.

“So, girls, what is your verdict? Drop it?”

Jessica, for once, took the lead in this discussion.

“For now, we don’t think so, Reg. We need more data, according to my university colleagues, and I agree. We need to find out more about this owner, Mr Jacob Moss.”

Reg remained puzzled. “Go on, my love.”

“The general consensus is that he can tell us a lot more about his family and his other connections. The girls believe he must have used a more highly technical manner of starting the fire than the fire brigade and insurers are familiar with, so, some kind of expert knowledge had to be available to him. We need to quiz him, to find out what and who he knows.”

Re looked incredulous at this plan. “You expect him to volunteer this information?”

Jessica responded with a smile, “Yes, my dear boy. Most men are willing to talk to a girl, even brag about their exploits; don’t you agree?”

His eyes widened as he accepted this fact of life. Only his earlier reserved personality would not fit this scenario; though as he thought back, he was only too willing to chat to Frances, as a complete stranger, because she was a girl. A boy, he would have probably ignored unless it was study-related.

“All right, you have me there. Men are susceptible to a pretty face or a sultry voice, or a luscious figure. Me: I was susceptible to almost anything back then; I was not ready to cope with female wiles, was I, Frances?”

“We still have an impact on you, my love. That is one of the really nice things about you. You are not a macho type, but one that is loveable. I still find you cute, even when I get you in my embrace.”

“Yes, but you make good use of your enticing breasts, your curvy behind, your deft fingers and your loving touch; dammit, all of you appeals to me, woman!”

Frances told him, “Granted, Reg, so all we have to do is decide which of us has the most alluring voice on the telephone, and she is the one to make the call.”

“But what excuse can she make for calling him out of the blue?”

“Simple: a university project; she is a university student, after all, so it is easy to think up a project that requires a phone call to a few random members of the population. Fiona has suggested one or two examples already, almost as if she knew what was wanted.”

Reg offered, “Something along the lines of ‘what the average Brit thinks about how businesses operate in this country’?”

“That sort of thing, yes, but it has to be angled so that we can ask the questions we want answered. We are going to draft a set of questions to draw him out. We’ll show them to you once we have done that. We don’t want a male input in drafting the questions, as it might skew them the wrong way.”

Reg grimaced as he thought of something.

“That reminds me: I had better phone our farmer friend to tell him I can’t get back to checking his fields for now.”

Fiona intervened to advise, “You might not be able to get back to that, ever, Reg. It might trigger your emotional shock again, if you return to the scene of the bombs you found. No guarantees, but be aware of the possibility, my poor man.”

“Very well; I’ll be prepared for that, but at some point I want to get back to the farm and find out for myself. I need to face my fears instead of running away from them.” The girls nodded their agreement with that thought.

Reg picked up his phone and dialled the number of the farm. Mrs Robson picked up the call, and Reg said who he was.

“Oh, Mr Robertson, thanks for calling. My husband was anxious to get you back to do more searching. He says the local press will write about the bombs and that will draw attention to the farm, just when he was trying to get it ignored. I’ll get him for you.”

Reg waited for a short while, then the farmer spoke.

“Mr Robertson, thanks for calling. You will have heard that I’d like you back as soon as possible?”

“I did, sir, but after discovering these bombs, I have been suffering from emotional shock, and have been advised to take it easy for a while. It has even been suggested that returning to your fields might give me a relapse!”

“Oh, dear, we can’t have that; you must get well first.”

“Sir, I am determined that this will not stop me. As soon as I feel up to it, I am coming over to walk your fields for a while, just to see how I react. I want to face up to my fears, not hide from them.”

“That sounds like a positive attitude, Mr Robertson. Tell me when you are expecting to be here, and I will walk with you, so that if you have a bad reaction, we can get help immediately.”

“That is generous of you, sir. I’ll take you up on that.”

“Right. That is settled. Is it still just weekends that are available?”

“Yes, sir. Weekends only. My ladies demand my presence here on the weekdays.”

“Ah, yes; your ladies. You live an interesting life, Mr Robertson.”

“I do sir, but it does not hide me from the vicissitudes of life, such as the shock I got from finding unexploded bombs. I still shake from time to time and have bouts of nausea.”

“Then look after yourself, young man. We’ll see you when you feel up to it. Farewell.”

“Farewell, sir.”

Reg closed the call with relief. That was another chore dealt with.

Later in the evening, the girls presented him with a list of questions they proposed to ask. To him, they all seemed innocuous. “None of these seem to be awkward questions,” he told them in surprise.