Chapter 15

“Have patience, sir. Not having found the drugs, we posited that the ladies who fled might have removed them by sheer accident if they were unlabelled, as we expect they were, that being the norm for drug packages. We made enquiries as to their whereabouts, but they had few friends, courtesy of the abusive husband who restricted their access to outsiders. One of their few contacts was their hairdresser, who by coincidence is also your family hairdresser.”

“Oh, you mean Priscilla: I think that’s her name.”

“Indeed, sir. We had no leads to go on, but I was in the fortunate position of having a friend in the telephone company she uses, and he provided me with data. Nothing that would be intrusive, no illegal information, just a list of the numbers she called most frequently. A businesswoman like her has many contacts, but most are seldom phoned. Your number, however, was one of the most used by her, and thus my visit.”

“I follow your line of reasoning, Captain, but I fail to see what your intention is with this visit.”

“Ah, of course. You do not think like a policeman, Mr Hargreaves. If there is a chain of evidence, however tenuous, a policeman has to follow that chain to see where it leads. Your home is one of several that we are visiting, but I chose to visit you as your position on this former air base marks you as an unusual family location, and so more likely to be, shall we say, slightly involved, in the nicest possible way. We are not accusing you of any criminal offence, or of any criminal activity, but you may be in a position to assist a couple of ladies in need. Seeing so many lovely ladies in this household, I had to revise my earlier opinion of you upward. I am told that you hold a senior position with Yeats Engineering Group, which recently took over this air base. There are so many peculiarities relating to your life that I wondered if there was one more: Might you or some other be harbouring ladies who needed help? It is merely a possibility we are pursuing, sir.” As he spoke, the captain watched me carefully, but I gave no overt reaction other than a frown. At last I spoke.

“Do you wish to make a quick search of this residence, captain, to assure yourself that we have no connection with the drugs market, innocently or otherwise?”

“That would be most helpful, Mr Hargreaves. Is that okay with your ... ladies?” Jimmy corrected him, “My wives, captain, so they are all Mrs Hargreaves. One proviso applies to them: there is no official record of a marriage in the civil registers, so we are not breaking any state marital laws. Allow me to consult them, for their opinion is important to me. Ladies, have any of you an objection to the captain taking a walk round our home to satisfy himself about any matter he may be concerned with?”

No objection was raised by my women, so I continued, “In that case, can I ask Mrs Sharlene Hargreaves to escort you on a guided tour? The ladies have recently redecorated and furnished the premises, so please do not make any marks on the décor, or you will suffer the ire of the ladies.” Sharl held her hand out to the police captain.

“Captain, if you will come with me, I can give you the short visit that you need, then we have to get on with preparation for tonight’s dinner. Jimmy also normally has a preprandial drink and a short rest before dinner due to his recent illness, so we can leave him to that.” Sharl paraded the captain out of the living room and began with the downstairs. At each room she opened the door and showed the cop the vacant interior before moving to the next room, in a leisurely but efficient walk round the house. The only closed door was the shower room. “Marjory is having her shower after work, so we stay out, Captain. Jimmy takes his shower after dinner.” Once the downstairs had been viewed, she moved to the floor above and continued up until they got to below the attic hatch, which Sharl pointed to.

“Do you need to look in there, captain, before we conclude? I assure you, it is empty.”

“Nonetheless, dear lady, I feel I must stick my head in to ensure completeness. Is there a ladder?” Sharl sighed, “There is a pole with a hook. You used it to pull the hatch down, and it reveals the built-in stepladder for entering the loft.” She stepped into the nearby cupboard and fetched the pole. The police captain did the rest, then climbed up to the opening. Sharl helpfully mentioned, “There is a light switch to your left as you enter, I think.” He flicked the switch and two fluorescent lighting strips came on, illuminating the completely empty loft space. He took a quick glance around, and came back down. He restored the hatch back into position, then handed the pole to Sharl.

“Thank you, Mrs Hargreaves.” He gestured to her protruding midriff. “An impending arrival, ma’am?”

“Not for several months yet, but it is already a trifle restricting. Jimmy is very attentive to our every need, I can assure you. He is a wonderful husband.”

“I am sure he is, ma’am. Thank you for the tour; the house looks lovely.” They went back downstairs to the front door. As she opened it, Cherry appeared from the kitchen to say, “Dinner in ten minutes, Sharl. Can you get Jimmy to the dining room for then?” Sharl ushered out the captain then closed the door behind him. She called back to Cherry, “Fetching him now, Cherry.” In the interim, while Sharlene was giving the cop his tour, two ladies had laid the table fully, while the others had attended to the meal preparations. With some foresight, they had laid places only for Jimmy and his wives, in case the policeman came into the dining room and counted the place settings; there might have been two more than expected. When I entered the dining room, my first glance went to the windows facing to the front. Sharl noticed and said reassuringly, “The cop car has left, Jimmy.” I nodded but said, “Someone could be using binoculars or a telescope from a distance, to see how we behave without a policeman near us. Hold fire on dinner for a moment, girls.” I thought then said, “Would it be normal to close our curtains at this time of day?” Charlotte chipped in, “If the sun is low on the horizon, it would get in our eyes, so we might close the curtains to prevent that annoyance?”

“Good girl!” I declared. “I think we should close the curtains to allow us to have our meal without the sun disturbing us, ladies.” With a grin, Cherry got to her feet to sweep the curtains closed, ostentatiously using a hand to shield her eyes from the low sun.

“We now have a good reason to close the curtains.” she declared. “Is the front door locked?” Sharl was happy to announce, “The front door is securely double locked, Cherry.” I asked Charlotte to release the visitors from their hiding place. “I think we can lay the extra places now, girls.” When they arrived, Elizabeth told them, “My phone went off while we were inside, but I had muted it to avoid unwanted calls, so I ignored it entirely. Jimmy warned me that using a phone helps to pinpoint your location.” Isabella beamed at this example of good advice that her mother had wisely applied. Cherry told them, “Dinner will be served shortly, ladies. Lily and Flora are on waitress duty tonight.” Isabella commented, “You women are so well organised. Do I get a chance to be in the rota of helpers?”

Sharl warned, “Not until we are sure you are not being sought by anyone, Isabella. The cops are taking too much interest in this household for now.”

“Ah. That was why you had us hide away for so long?”

“Exactly so. The gate guard warned us there was a cop car on the way, so that’s why we hustled you to your hideyhole so quickly. I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable, ladies?” Elizabeth replied to that question. “Not at all, physically. It was having to remain silent that was the real trial!” Isabella added, “Yes. Mom likes to talk, so staying silent is a real difficulty for her. Thank God we each had a book in there to read while we waited.” Lily asked, “Were you studying, Isabella?” Isabella replied with a blush, “A romantic novel, Lily. I am not into studying at the moment.” Lily smiled at her. “If you stay as part of this family, you’ll be expected to learn something of value to the family. Jimmy wants us all to better ourselves, educationally.” Isabella gulped, looking frantic. “He doesn’t want me to go off to college to study, does he? My father might find me if I was on a college roll.” Lily chuckled, “No such luck about going so far, Isabella. It is all down to you and what you want to do with your life. If you wanted to go to college, Jimmy would see that your fees were taken care of, and if you needed accomodation, that would be covered too, though he would naturally prefer you came home each night to be with us.” Isabella sighed with relief. “I don’t want to go away to college; I want to be with a man I respect, and if he wants children, I want to bear his children.”

“Oh, he already has children coming, Isabella. You are under no obligation to produce more, unless that is what you want for yourself. Me and Flora decided we wanted our own, and they are on the way, but at an early stage. Sharl, Cherry and Charlotte are much further along; about halfway already. Marjory has only now started, having just recently confirmed her pregnancy.”

“Isn’t Marjory much older than the rest of you?”

“She is, but she had not found the man she wanted, until she met Jimmy at work. That encounter changed her life and ours too.”

“She is not in charge, as the eldest wife?”

“Nobody is actually in charge. We make group decisions. Sharl used to be a bossy type, but Jimmy forced her to change her attitude, and she is now our team leader, as Jimmy calls it. She refers to us before making any major decision, which is a nice change. But now that Marjory is here, she defers to Marjory on education and other important factual matters, while Sharl likes to look after domestic matters. It is working well, for they respect each other. Jimmy of course is the final arbiter if there is a squabble, but that seldom if ever happens. Sharl is indeed a changed woman.” Isabella asked the teenager, “You are about the same age as me, Lily. How do I get to know him, so that I can make an informed decision on marrying him?”

“Talk to him; but talk with him, never at him. He is happy to have a conversation on almost any subject, provided you know what you are talking about, or you want to know things from him. Gardening is not one of his strong points, so if you brush up on gardening, you might have an interesting discussion about herbs, for example, specially so if you know about medicinal uses of herbs.”

“I get it. No wasted chatter; concentrate on interesting material if you can. Is it okay with you if I read up on medicinal herbs? And can I ask him about subjects?”

“Any gardening topic will do fine. As to subjects, he covered quite a lot at university, but he was brought up in Scotland – oil industry father - so he knows a lot about British-type things. He is your true Anglo-American, though that term is a misnomer. It means English and American, but he was seldom in England, so he is more Scotto-American. If you listen to him, he sometimes uses words, terms and traditions he grew up with. For example where you and I grew up with pumpkin lanterns as children, he grew up with what they called neep lanterns – lanterns made of hollowed-out large turnips or swedes, for our pumpkins are not native to Britain.”

“What do you mean, ‘neep’? Where does that come from?”

“Oh, he told us it was a short form of ‘turnip’: tur – nip becomes neep. There is always a simple answer to most questions if you persevere!”

“But he is worth marrying?”

“Ask any of us wives, and you will get the answer, yes. Remember, though, that in civil law, you will not be married to him; none of us are. It is as if you were just living together, as many couples do these days. We actually got a religious ceremony, so we are married in the eyes of the Church, even if not in the eyes of any of the States.”

–------------------ Back at his office, Police Captain Thomson was reviewing the day’s findings. His examination of the number of calls made by the hairdresser had led him to just three likely candidates and he had visited one and had reports on the other two. All of them were blanks. One mark was an elderly couple who kept changing their hair appointments due to medical issues, and they had no sign of their house being used by other than themselves. They even had a cleaner coming in regularly, so any new resident would stand out. The second was a middle-aged couple with four female kids around the early teens. The girls needed the hairdresser’s attention every time they went to a social event, and at that age it was often; the parents could afford to indulge them. More important, they had no spare rooms to accommodate visitors. Lastly, there was this single house on the former air base. It was very large, meant to provide for not only the commandant and his family, but also any visiting dignitaries that were staying overnight. For some reason, it was now occupied by this businessman, Hargreaves, and a pack of women who called themselves his wives! Three of them were obviously pregnant, so in future there would be children to occupy the spare rooms, but by his mental review of the building, there were two or three spare rooms for now. It fitted his scenario, but his visit did not reveal any extra women; not that it would be easy to note them, with various women moving about the house while he was being shown around. There was even that woman in the shower room; theoretically the two runaways might have been in with her. That was just his own imagining, for his guide showed no sign of nervousness at the time; his mind said she was telling the truth.

He remained of the opinion that this household was the best option, but without facts, he could not charge in and search for the drugs he believed might be present. Belief was not a valid argument for a judge to issue a search warrant. Unless something turned up, he would have to drop his chase for this batch of drugs. There were other pressures on his time, and chasing this as a mere possibility was not a pursuable option. He reluctantly closed his file on this batch of drugs lost, presumed destroyed.

Back at the air base, the next several days were a bustle of activity; trucks arriving intermittently with machinery to be installed in an almost vacant third hangar. Preceding them was a crew to lay out the concrete bases for the machinery, with bolts sticking up from the concrete to match holes in the machinery bases ready for the large nuts to be tightened into position. Vibration would thus not be a problem. At the first two hangars, trucks continued to deliver more stock from other warehouses around the city, and a team was now positioning the stock in a more efficient fashion: labeled, barcoded, and being continually added to the laptop database files, to be downloaded to the main database overnight. Another small team were working with the website and its growing database, inputting the data and amending the code if necessary when a new category was added to the database. Purely by word of mouth, news was spreading about this new wide-ranging source of spares of all kinds, unlike the specialist suppliers that catered for particular niche markets. Already sales were ramping up, and in one case the item was now listed as ‘currently out of stock’. The stock buyer from Copies, Fred Corelli, was finding himself in a new and urgent situation. The database managers were now able to print him out a list of spares in short supply, where he needed to find new stock. He was making calls all over the state to any companies that he thought might have such items. Where he found them, he offered to take some of their unwanted or uneeded stock off their hands at a basic price for disposal. He explained that Copies was expanding its range, and was in a position to take on redundant stocks from companies like themselves, and this offered an opportunity for them to offload stuff they had over-ordered in the past. He told them, “We are not looking for parts for current machines, just bits and pieces for models no longer in production. We want to be able to brag that we cover everything, even if it means we buy parts that will be slow in selling. It is an investment in our company’s reputation rather than immediate sales potential, you see.”

This argument usually struck a chord, helping to keep the price low. He was offered a few items that were already in stock at Copies, and then he grudgingly took a small quantity at a rock-bottom price, just to show willing for future occasions. He found his job more interesting than it was previously, and that helped him to make good deals. He knew roughly what prices Copies offered the items at, now that he had a database to look up, so as long as the price he paid for stock was at least half that, he would be happy and so would Copies’ principals, the Yeats Group. He made two deals this day, and was pleased with what would be coming to Copies. All he had to do was continue at this rate, and he should be able to keep on top of demands with his efforts. A week or two ago he was ready to curse the astute finance man Robert Bruce and that live wire from Yeats Group, Jimmy Hargreaves, but now he was pleased with how they had changed things round at the new site. The way things were going, the sales part of the business was going to grow, and grow fast. That he could live with. He might even gain an assistant to help him be more effective in his purchasing. He was not alone in seeing the important changes occurring in Copies business activity. Former chairman Frank Davies was pleased to see the pick-up in sales in just a few days. His deal with the Yeats Group, combined with the clever bidding for the air base by finance director Robert Bruce, had turned out well and looked like doing even better in future. The only drawback was that it meant more strenuous work for the warehouse staff on preparing the website for dealing with enquiries. Users expected to get a response fairly quickly. That meant staffing the inbox for the website almost continuously, and one could not guarantee a knowledgeable person on duty. Often it would be whoever could work at their own job and look after the website queries at the same time, at least for now when the demand was low. The temporary solution was a standard set of answers to provide to the email enquirer by filling in the blanks. The standard replies were: ‘Thank you for your enquiry’ (the start of every answer). ‘The item you ask about is on sale at XXX per YYY, but a bulk purchase in excess of zzzzz qualifies for a ten per cent discount.’ ‘The item you ask about is available in limited quantities. Please state the code for the item and exact number required, and we can advise accordingly.’ ‘The item you ask about is currently out of stock, but we are hoping to get it back in stock shortly. Please enquire again in a few days, or leave a request order for filling when available.’ Lastly, ‘The item you ask about has been selling well and our holding is currently?????. Please advise if your order would be within that total.’ That choice of replies could be sent as fitting to each enquiry, leaving only one other possible enquiry response: ‘The item you enquire about is not currently in our inventory, but we are continually expanding our stock manifest, so it may become available at our next inventory update. Please check back with our database each day, as we improve our range of stock.’ That list was put together to be adequate for any competent worker to be able to answer a normal enquiry without referring it to a more qualified superior. It worked well in practice. At the Yeats Group, I was tasked by Emerson to check the installation of the newly purchased machinery at the air base, and inform him as soon as it was fully in place, so that production could be started again. I told him that would be tomorrow or the next day, as one set of machines were going in first, and then the second set. As well, electric power had to be connected to the machines before they could operate.