16. THE MOTHER

The plot starts to unravel...

“It’s a list of names with property in brackets after them,” said Peter when he had finally got the ancient computer to read the disc from Tom Coppleby’s caravan with the aid of his father’s software. “Look here: Drayton, Mrs, wedding ring, gold watch and under it Foxby, gold chain, brooch, then wilson, cigarette case, and so on.

“I see,” murmured Rosie thoughtfully, and then she noticed something as Peter scrolled the list down. “Look down here!” she pointed after he had scrolled the list down to the very bottom, where there was a line separating it from the rest Bingham, Annabel, 20%.”

“That name rings a bell,” she muttered, “Bingham. Isn’t that what Jerry and Cat said their surname was. I wonder if they know who Annabel Bingham might have been?”

“That’s easy,” said a voice from their door, “Annabel Bingham was my mother’s name.” It was Jerry, followed at a distance by Cat, and he looked far from comfortable. “And it’s why Cat and I came to Twelve Trees Park when we might have towed our van to warmer climes. And it’s why I bought a metal detector with me. Not to search the beach for treasure but to try and find my mother’s gold!”

“She’s on this list as 20% of whatever it’s on about,” said Sergeant Peter Jenson. “Any idea what that might be?”

“Stolen gold,” replied Jerry shortly. “She wasn’t a very nice person, though in all honesty I never knew her. She disappeared before I was even a toddler.”

“So you never knew a mother?” asked Rosie, raising her eyebrows.

Jerry Bingham climbed into the van and sat down heavily near Rosie.

“Are we off to the seaside with your metal detector thingy tomorrow?” called Jack from the back of the van where he was up to something secretive with Jill.

“I wouldn’t take much notice of that old computer,” added Jill, “it doesn’t do half as much as my phone does. It doesn’t even go on the Internet!”

“No, I never did, and my father was wrecked by her disappearance,” muttered Jerry to Rosie. “He had sole care of me, but started drinking too much for his own good, and after one of his stupid bouts of bad temper I was grabbed by social services and put into foster care, where I had as good a set of carers as a boy could hope for. I was still just about a baby back then. After a couple of years I was adopted by those foster parents and had as good a childhood as most and better than some. But it was while I was with them that, bit by bit, I picked up snippets of what my mother had been up to when she disappeared.”

“You must have been quite an inquisitive young man,” suggested Rosie.

“I was probably a right horror!” agreed Jerry, “but I was driven by the need to know. And the story I pieced together over the years told me that my mum had been some kind of gangster’s moll...”

“Mightn’t that be an extreme interpretation of what you learned?” asked Rosie.

“I wish I had a gangster’s moll for a mum,” called Jack.

“No you don’t!” objected Jill, “a gangster’s moll would make a horrible mum!”

“What is a gangster’s moll then?” asked Jack.

“A woman who tarts herself up for a gangster, silly,” said Jill, “and I don’t want a mum who does anything like tarting herself up.”

“Maybe I don’t either, then,” sighed Jack.

“The things I’ve heard...” grumbled Jerry,, ignoring the twins, “the way things were back then … she was in thrall to the most wretched piece of scum on the face of the Earth. He hired her out as a female escort whenever he could find someone who needed escorting, and more, I should think. She became scum so far as I can tell, and that man used her wickedly. They went about as man and wife, she really quite young and he several years older, and they called themselves Mr and Mrs Coppleby. Mr and Mrs Tom Coppleby. I found documents in the papers that my dad had collected, and when he passed away, through drink and drugs, those papers found their way to me.”

“You had a hard time, Jwerry,” said Cat quietly and supportively. He took her hand and squeezed it gently.

“Tom!” exclaimed Rosie, “you mean Tom whose caravan went up earlier today?”

“You’re the police and you can cart me off if you want to,” muttered Jerry, “because if you don’t I’ll be gone by tomorrow. Yes, It was me who opened all the gas taps in the Coppleby caravan because it was him who ruined my childhood, who stole my mother from me (though in all honesty she might have been a truly crap mother. And it was him who so hurt my father that he turned to drink, he who had me taken into care, he who did so much damage to people that I hate to think about it.”

“You filled his van with gas?” asked Rosie, needing confirmation.

“I didn’t know it would explode!” explained Jerry, “all I wanted to do was waste his gas so that when it came to using it there was none left! I emptied his spare gas too, let it drift off into the wind! I did it when I saw them coming across here to talk to you … it seemed the perfect opportunity. I was going to start a campaign against him, the sort of campaign in which everything goes wrong so that he might find out how he made me feel when everything in my life might have gone wrong… But I didn’t mean to kill anyone!”

“It wasn’t a very bright campaign, though, was it?” asked Rosie, “his van is quite close to the Bingham’s house, and they’ve got plenty of gas for sale.”

“I bought it all from them,” grinned Jerry, “and swore them to secrecy. And they were quite happy to go along with me. They knew there was something evil and wrong with the Copplebys, had suspected it for years but didn’t know what. They even knew about the old caravan in the woods and its grisly guardian, though they never knew it was the skeleton of a person but thought it was a manikin put there to scare trespassers off. It was young Mr Bingham who ripped the number plate off the van when they heard you had discovered a real body in it.”

“So that’s why old Tom was so sure the skeleton was female,” murmured Rosie, “and if it’s a female skeleton it just might be...” She didn’t like to say what was on her mind. But Jerry had guessed.

“I worked it out when I first heard about it,” he said, half-choking, “if it’s a female skeleton I’m pretty sure it must be my mother … and before I go I want to find out for sure. Even though she turned out to be the worst mother a child could have she was still mine!”

“We’ll find out,” assured Rosie, “They’ll do a DNA test. They probably already have, and we’ll compare it to your DNA and if there’s a match...”

“If there’s a match you’ll probably be entitled to 20% of Coppleby’s ill-gotten gains,” said Peter Jenson, pointing to the screen.

“I don’t want anything of the sort!” declared Jerry “All I really want is peace of mind and someone to tell me that it wasn’t me who killed June Coppleby when the van went up.”

“But it was, if what you say is true,” sighed Rosie, “I’m sorry...”

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 05.04.17