The Constant Witness: Jack Knight, #3

By Stuart Warner

A fatal car crash… An anonymous tip-off... Jack Knight investigates

 

Small-town accountant Jack Knight receives an anonymous note implicating one of his friends in a fatal road crash. The crash that killed his girlfriend's grandfather. It happened twenty years back and no witnesses came forward at the time. Why is he the only person in town to get this note and what's he meant to do about it?

 

Jack is reluctant to get involved and some friends counsel him to let sleeping dogs lie. Everyone has secrets they'd prefer not to see the light of day. Will raking up the past cause him more problems than it solves?

 

Driven on by his girlfriend, he continues to dig. When his investigations uncover blackmail threats affecting his family, his business interests and the future of his struggling town, he risks everything to unveil the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Warner
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201971762

Book preview

THURSDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 1990

1

Ambulance. Jack Knight pressed down on the brake pedal of his VW camper as soon as he spotted the flashing light. The ambulance was parked on the road a couple of hundred yards ahead, a left-handed corner wrapped around a rocky outcrop, tight like a horseshoe.

He pointed. ‘Accident.’

Estelle Cornoroy, who was sitting next to him, leaned forward, placing a hand against the front window as they slowed. ‘I think that’s Graham Harrington’s MG.’

‘Yeah.’ The MG was near the ambulance on the side of the road, sat next to the wooden fence on the outside of the bend. A red mini was parked behind it and there was a blue car a bit further on, hidden from full view.

A guy in grey trousers, denims, was standing in the road this side of the vehicles, waving at a farm truck approaching from the opposite direction. The guy looked like Graham. Yeah, it was him.

Jack brought the campervan to a halt about twenty yards away. At least it wasn’t Graham who was hurt. A tall woman was standing next to the ambulance, her hand on the shoulder of a slight man who was climbing into the back, helped by one of the crew. Belinda Daum. Graham’s fiancée. That had to be Ian they were helping, the man she thought was her father.

When the oncoming vehicle had passed, Jack edged forward until he reached Graham. Then he wound down the window.

‘Ian okay?’

Graham nodded. ‘Nothing major. Lucky, though. He could have gone down the bank.’

‘Nasty,’ Jack said. The land dropped away on the other side of the fence. ‘Anything I can do? I could take over from you, deal with the traffic. You should be with Belinda.’

Graham smiled. Not the sort of smile like when you heard a joke. More of a relieved thank you. ‘Haven’t you got things to do?’

‘No. Well, we’re off to The White Hart in Little Oakbridge.’ Jack glanced towards Estelle and she nodded. He looked at Graham again. ‘That can wait though.’

‘It would be a real help.’ Graham pointed. ‘You best carry on through the corner. Park in the layby the other side.’

Jack gave a thumbs up. ‘Give me a couple of minutes. I’ll be back.’

He started the camper forwards again. As they passed the ambulance, he had a better view of the blue car. A Volvo. Had to be Ian’s. The front end was entangled in the wooden fence, right up against a boulder about the height of the radiator grill. That boulder must have been what saved him.

‘He couldn’t have been going fast,’ Estelle said. ‘Granddad went straight through the fence. It’s where he got killed.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. Pity.’ Keeping his eyes on the road, Jack reached a hand across to Estelle, placing it on her thigh. Glanville Tuck. Twenty years before, in 1970. November – Friday the thirteenth. ‘If it hadn’t happened, though, maybe we wouldn’t have met. Not the way we did, anyway.’

He smiled to himself. In a round about sort of way it was Glanville’s death that had brought Estelle to the office of J Knight & Co, a couple of months back, in July. Butterfly flaps its wings. Echoes through time. Estelle coming into the office, asking for the box Glanville had handed over to Dad for safe-keeping all those years before.

She and her mother thought the missing box might contain something of value. That was the excuse, anyway. Really, Estelle had come in to check him out – so she’d admitted, later, when they were getting to know each other. The start of an amazing adventure, that day she came to the office. Ending up in this moment, him and Estelle together, a couple.

As they rounded the bend, he spotted Alice Smallcroft, a local reporter. The Bugle, Drimpton’s weekly newspaper. She was standing in the road, a camera hanging from her neck, doing the same job as Graham – traffic cop. She beckoned him on and he waved at her as they passed. She’d be wanting to leave her station, go round to where the action was.

He pulled into the layby, parked up and then grabbed a couple of high-viz jackets from underneath his seat. Estelle, who was already out of the van and standing by his open door, took one from him. He joined her and they trotted back towards Alice.

‘Sorry, Alice, I can’t take over,’ he said. ‘I’ve promised to relieve Graham. The other end.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay here.’ Estelle gestured to her. ‘You go.’

Alice beamed at her. ‘Thanks very much. I appreciate it.’

‘This is where my granddad died,’ Estelle said. ‘But he went right through the fence.’

‘Oh no.’ Alice’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m really sorry. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

‘Fire away. It’s fine. It was a long time ago.’

‘I’d better leave you to it,’ Jack said.

He waved farewell and then set off at a jog back towards Graham’s end of the horseshoe. He’d driven around here often enough in the six months he’d been living in Drimpton, but it was the first time he’d tried it on foot. Further than he’d thought from one end to the other and not the sort of place you’d want to go for a stroll. No verge.

He glanced up at the rock face. The inside of the bend hugged the rock tight, and the face itself was almost vertical for about twenty feet. Then it sloped backwards like a Neanderthal’s forehead, ending up at a long plateau on the top. The rock had to be about fifty feet high. It was like a promontory sticking out into the sea. Monk’s Crag the locals called it. It was meant to look like a monk’s cowl from a distance. Ripe imagination.

He stepped to one side to avoid a couple of oncoming vehicles – a jeep and a battered black car. When he reached the ambulance, he stopped. Belinda was still standing at the back. The doors were open and she was peering inside. Ian was lying on the bed and the two crew members were attending to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said. ‘I hope your… I hope Ian’s okay. I’ll go and take over from Graham. He can come back here.’

She nodded. ‘Thanks, that’s kind of you.’

‘No, anything I can do to help. Just let me know.’ He wished he could reach out to her, put a hand on her shoulder. His half-sister, but she didn’t know it. And Ian wasn’t her father. She didn’t know that either.

Secrets. There were too many of them in Drimpton. Such a small town, too. Though maybe all small communities were like that, when you dug beneath the surface of day-to-day goings on. Truth was important. Everyone should tell the truth unless there were exceptional circumstances – really exceptional, like you’d almost never come across.

Circumstances like this. He’d sworn to keep the secret, just a few days back. Her mother, Melanie, Dad’s lover. The woman Dad might have married. But, if Dad had done so, maybe there never would have been a Jack Knight. Not in this space-time continuum, anyway.

He was still standing there staring at her, he realised. She was looking towards him, too, though her eyes lacked focus, as if she wasn’t quite there. Her face was pale, a whiter shade of pale as the song went. She must be in shock.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Take care. I’ll fetch Graham.’ He turned away, hurrying.

Graham was looking up the road towards Drimpton but turned when he was still twenty yards away. Must have heard the footsteps.

‘Thanks,’ Graham said, thrusting out a hand towards him as he arrived. They shook.

‘Anything I can do. Just let me know.’ Jack was struggling into his high-viz jacket. Poor Belinda. Their father, John Knight, had been an accountant. So were his two children, Jack and her. It must be in the genes. Maybe if Dad was alive, he’d want the two of them to become business partners.

Instead, she was nabbing his clients. Doing her best, anyway. If she knew they were siblings, maybe she’d retract her business tentacles out of Drimpton. But, even if she didn’t, even if she tried to nick more clients from J Knight & Co, he still wanted to be kind to her, get to know her, help her as best he could – the half-sister he’d never had. Hadn’t known he had, anyway. Not until last week.

‘How long have you got?’ Graham said. ‘I’m not sure when the police will get here. Belinda will want to go to the hospital.’

‘All night if needs be.’

Graham laughed. ‘Thanks. I hope they’re quicker than that. And you’ll have to come to the wedding.’

The wedding? Yeah, Graham and Belinda. A couple of weeks. Thank goodness Ian hadn’t killed himself, though it might have been a mercy. He was dying by all accounts. Some sort of long-term illness. Last week, the first time they’d met, Ian was sitting behind the desk at the local history photographic exhibition. His hands were shaking and his skin looked tight, like he was an animal staked out to dry in the sun.

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but only if Belinda wants me to be there. Don’t talk to her about it now. She’s got other things on her mind. Enough to worry about.’

‘She’s okay about you,’ Graham said. ‘Now she’s coming to know you. I think she thought you’d be like Keith.’

Uncle Keith? It was difficult to believe he was Dad’s brother. Uncle Keith was a money-grabber. It was all he seemed to care about.

‘I know. I can understand where she’s coming from.’

Maybe you should care a lot about money – if you were an accountant. The fact Jack didn’t have a similar yearning might be the universe telling him something.

But no, money could never be the most important thing in life. That was peace and harmony. Truth too. Finding a way to live in concert with those two principles. Peace to everyone. Peace to Uncle Keith. You couldn’t be choosey about when and where you applied your philosophy of life. That was the challenge from the universe, according to Manjeet Gupta, Jack’s mentor. You try to do something, live a certain way, and the universe keeps on testing you.

A lorry was headed towards them from the Drimpton direction. Approaching fast. He strode forward and raised both hands. ‘Sorry, I’m falling down on the job already,’ he said to Graham over his shoulder. ‘You’d best go.’

He felt a pat on his back. ‘Thanks again, mate.’

‘No problem.’ It felt good. Doing something for other people. And this was the perfect job. No social interaction needed. Just stand in the middle of a road, wearing a high-viz jacket. A kind of low-grade superhero. Cut your teeth on the most minor challenges before the universe threw you something tougher.

The lorry shuddered to a stop. He could hear the air brakes as he glanced up at the cab. Yeah, no surprise. Christine Banfield. She was always pushing the speed limit.

‘Anyone dead?’ she shouted down from her open window.

Jack shook his head, and then explained it was a minor prang. ‘I think there’s room to get past.’ The road was two-way but narrow at the best of times.

‘Easy,’ she said.

‘Okay. Crack on then.’

He wanted to tell her to keep the speed down but, knowing her reputation, she’d probably tell him where to go. Anyway, she’d been driving lorries for years and if she didn’t know by now.

She was another of his clients. Only yesterday, he’d been reviewing her financial records. They’d never met but she’d be coming into the office next week to discuss her tax bill. Scraping a living. Just enough to get by. Similar to Graham’s business, Harrington Transport. Running a small-town haulage firm was about as far from a get-rich-quick scheme as you could find.

That’s why Graham wanted to get out of the industry, focus on property development. And, with a bit of luck, it was going to happen. The Harringtons would sell their lorry yard to save Graham’s financial bacon. Losses from his involvement in Uncle Keith’s ill-fated supermarket deal. And, if Graham did hit the jackpot, he’d have money left over to continue his entrepreneurial ventures.

That had been a job well done, negotiating a peace agreement between Graham and his father, Sid. A job worth doing, too. A plus mark on Jack’s scorecard for bringing peace and harmony to Drimpton. To the universe. Not that Uncle Keith agreed, of course. You couldn’t please everyone.

Christine revved the engine and started forward. He jumped to one side and watched her pass.

2

The ambulance and Graham’s MG had left by the time the police arrived nine minutes later. Jack was looking at the police car’s approach when he heard someone calling his name. He glanced around to see Alice Smallcroft, the Bugle reporter, walking towards him.

He smiled, waved and then turned back to the oncoming car. Two men inside. It stopped and Gerald Rye, from Drimpton police station, jumped out on the passenger side. Gerald came over and told Jack he could stand down.

Alice had a quick conversation with Gerald and then strolled over to join Jack, who was standing by the fence, looking past the crashed Volvo towards the other end of the horseshoe where Estelle must be on duty, some hundred yards away. But Monk’s Crag was blocking his line of sight. The bend was too tight. The red mini was still there, parked alongside the fence, a few yards from the Volvo.

‘Any update on the sale of Sid’s yard?’ Alice said.

‘No, nothing yet.’

It had been three days since Jack had been locked in negotiations with Uncle Keith, Sid and Graham. Alice had been loitering outside the portakabin, which served as Graham and Sid’s office, waiting for the story. The deal had been thrashed out in principle. It was just a question of finalising the list of investors. With a bit of luck Belinda would recommend the deal to Melanie and Ian.

‘Keep a look out for tomorrow’s Bugle,’ Alice said. ‘Your name is mentioned. Don’t worry, though, you’re not on the front page.’

‘That’s a relief.’ It sure was. Maybe he could withdraw into the background again now. It had felt weird, stepping into the limelight, but no-one else had been willing to stop Uncle Keith.

‘Anyway,’ Alice said, ‘I’m grateful to Estelle. Interesting story, her grandfather. I’m going to write a piece on Monk’s Crag for next week’s paper. Glanville Tuck, Ian Daum. Two crashes, twenty years apart. One tragedy, the other a good luck story.’

‘Good, excellent.’ Jack felt for Alice, who was desperate for scoops. Drimpton was a sleepy sort of place, short of news flow. And The Bugle was under pressure from a local rival, The Bronsley Courier, which was eating its way into The Bugle’s circulation. Alice was fighting a desperate battle to keep the title alive. Helping Basil, her grandfather, who’d started the paper.

‘Yes, Glanville Tuck’s demise.’ Alice took a notebook out of her pocket and glanced at something she must have written. ‘I reckon it would be interesting to compare the two crashes, and I need to find out whether there’ve been any other bumps here in recent years. Also, what road improvements, if any.’

‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘I guess that could be interesting. There’s a bad camber as well. I don’t know if you noticed but the warning sign is half-covered by the hedge.’ He pointed in the Drimpton direction. ‘Must be a couple of hundred yards back. If you didn’t know it was there, I doubt you’d see it.’

‘Thanks. I’ll check it out. Do you know anything about the 1970 crash?’

‘Only what I’ve heard on the grapevine,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if we head back to Estelle while we’re talking? Where are you parked?’

She pointed at the red mini. He’d assumed it belonged to Belinda, but she must have arrived with Graham in the MG. Unless she’d been with Ian.

Gerald was taking photographs of Ian’s car. Alice stopped to take a few of her own and then ambled up to the fence and looked over. Jack joined her.

‘If the boulder hadn’t stopped him,’ she said.

‘Too right.’ The ground dropped like a railway embankment away from the road to a narrow stream bed about thirty feet down. Here and there small trees and shrubs sprang up from the slope, and a few stone outcrops jutted out in between. Somewhere down at the bottom, Glanville had met his end.

Alice aimed her camera at the stream and Jack heard a click. ‘So,’ she said, ‘tell me what you know.’

‘Glanville? Only what Rufus Holroyd mentioned a couple of months back.’ He tried to remember where they’d been, but couldn’t bring it to mind. The conversation must have been in the context of Glanville’s missing box. And whether there’d been any connection with Dad’s death, twenty-three days before Glanville met his end. Rufus had turned over a few stones back in 1970. Didn’t come up with any answers.

‘What did he say?’

‘Just that Glanville was driving home from the pub – The White Hart – and he went off the road. No witnesses. One of those unsolved mysteries.’

‘Estelle says your father died a couple of weeks before it happened.’

‘Yeah. Twenty-three days. Heart attack. He was walking on the Preseli Hills in West Wales. Rufus found him. They were really good friends. Rufus is my godfather.’

‘He must have died young.’

‘Dad? Mid-fifties.’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ Alice said. ‘You were checking his obituary in the library. Anyway, Basil must have written the report on Glanville. Front-page news, I’m sure. I’ll ask him to give me the lowdown when I see him tomorrow. But, as far as you’re aware, there were no rumours about why he crashed? Estelle said he wasn’t a big drinker, but an evening in the pub? That could have been a factor.’

Possibly. Of course, Glanville must have been shellshocked, losing his precious box. That would be a scoop for Alice, if she ever found out. Imagine reading that in The Bugle. Glanville visits Dad’s office a few days after Dad dies. Doris, Dad’s assistant, knows nothing and the box isn’t in the office safe. Glanville leaves in a daze. Doris watches him out of the window, crossing the road. It’s sheeting with rain and she can see the drops bouncing off his head, but he’s paying them no notice. Oblivious in his dejection.

Life was so weird. If only Glanville had confided in Doris. Sure, she didn’t know where Dad had put the box, but a thorough search might have found it. As it was, it must have been playing on his mind. Big time. The means by which he’d been hoping to buy Orchard Farm, the farm where Estelle and her mother still lived. Instead, it was Rufus who’d bought it. From Uncle Keith, Easter 1970.

Had Glanville committed suicide? The thought flashed into Jack’s mind. So sad if he’d been that desperate. Telling Estelle was going to be a problem. Not the suicide idea. Dad’s involvement in the Orchard Farm saga – 1954.

‘Jack?’ The sound of his name brought him back to the present. Alice was staring at him.

‘Sorry, I beg your pardon?’

‘Thinking of Glanville? Anything helpful to me?’

He shook his head. Yes, but, no, he wasn’t going to tell her. Not unless Estelle wanted to give up the secret of the box. It wouldn’t be wise, though, everyone knowing what she owned.

‘I was just remembering a story someone told me. About Dad.’ Was there nothing he could do to help Alice? ‘Did Estelle mention Bill Richards?’

‘The local councillor?’ Alice said. ‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Bill was drinking with Glanville the night of the crash. I could have a word with him, if you like, see if he’s got any memories. Anyway, I owe him a