NATIONAL TREASURE by Barry Faulkner (life books to read .TXT) 📗

Romania and Eastern Europe. Shot dead by Metropolitan Police Organised Crime Squad marksmen in Epping Forest after picking up bags of drugs dropped from a low flying Cessna aircraft and firing at police detectives.

And that was it? Nothing about his family, nothing about Marcia or Janie? Very strange. Had it been edited? You can do that with Wikipedia; if you have something to add to a post you can register as an editor and add it. I checked the page’s editors. There it was – Harry Cohen edited the page March 2020. Harry had removed any reference to James Randall’s marriage to Marcia and of their child Janie – all gone. It doesn’t actually say what changes Harry had made, but it doesn’t take much to figure it out. I skipped to Marcia Johnson’s page. Same thing, Harry Cohen had been in and edited it. Pound to a penny he’d removed all reference to James Randall. But why?

Maybe producers and casting agents had been reluctant to look at Marcia Johnson for a part in their upcoming productions when she was married to James Randall, with the unspoken threat that if she didn’t get the role they might get a visit? Now he was dead he could be removed from her life totally, and Harry had seen to that, so maybe he was thinking it would be good for Marcia’s career. Janie didn’t have a page.

Could there be a connection between James Randall and Janie’s disappearance? Probably not; he was in her life a long while ago. I thought about taking a trip to Janie’s flat but decided to wait until Gold was with me. She was more likely to pick up anything out of the ordinary in a girl’s flat than I was. So I took a long hot shower and settled back to watch The Irishman on Netflix for the second time. Seeing Pesci and De Niro’s large pictures on Harry Cohen’s wall had reminded me of it. I love that film.

 

       CHAPTER 2

210666 worked fine. The alarm box in the hall of Janie Johnson’s flat beeped twice and the red LED went green.

I’d met Gold at the office and we took a cab to the address on the key fob Marcia had given me. Turned out to be a nice house in a small street off the Fulham Palace Road. One day I’ll visit the Palace itself and wander round the museum. I’m sure tourists visit more of the interesting places in London than Londoners ever do – strange that. The house had been converted into ground and upper floor flats; Janie’s was the upper. She’d kept it nice – four good-sized rooms, front lounge, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

Gold pulled pairs of paper overshoes and gloves from her shoulder bag and we put them on. Maybe we’d find a body, and I didn’t want any crime scene contaminated by my size elevens.

‘Right, I’ll take the kitchen, you take the bedroom and bathroom. Meet in the lounge.’

The kitchen was spotless. Janie was obviously house-proud; no crockery left in the sink to be washed and the washing machine was empty, as was the waste bin. I stooped level with the granite worktops and looked along them; a very light covering of dust, enough to show nobody had wiped them for a few days. I checked all the drawers and cupboards; everything was in its rightful place. I moved into the lounge. A sofa covered with scatter cushions, two armchairs, a coffee table and a desk. Minimalistic. I checked down the back of the sofa cushions; a twenty pence piece, a toffee wrapper, and a few crumbs. I’ve had better. Gold came in.

‘Anything?’ I asked.

‘No, the bed is made and everything tidy and in its place.’

‘Okay.’ I went over to a desk by the front windows and opened the drawers. They were obviously Janie’s office; papers arranged in folders, all very neat. I pulled them out and spread them on the coffee table. We started going through them. Janie had kept her bills in order, just the usual utilities.

‘She might have a cleaner.’ Gold passed me a paper. West London Cleaning Company, Commercial and Residential Cleaning. It was a flyer advertising their services.

‘Three hundred a month for a quick flit with a duster and washing up?’

Gold waved my remark away. ‘Never mind that, we need to find out if she uses them and when they came in last. Give them a call.’

Gold was covering all the bases; if Janie had cancelled the cleaner then she obviously knew she was going away and was probably sunning herself on some hot beach in the Mediterranean. If she hadn’t cancelled, then that made her disappearance suspicious.

  ************************************

West London Cleaning Company were closed down. I gave them a ring from the office the next morning but the phone was dead, so nothing worthwhile there.

What was bugging me was that Janie disappeared so soon after her father’s death. Was there a connection, and if so what?

Gold came into the office but she hadn’t turned up anything interesting. ‘They never got a divorce, the BMD has still got them registered as married. Can you believe that all those years separated and Marcia never got a divorce?’

‘That’s strange. Perhaps she didn’t want to go through all the publicity – she was a major star at the time.’ I walked over to the front window and looked down on Borough High street, ‘I can’t help thinking James Randall has something to do with this Janie disappearance.’

‘He’s dead, and Harry Cohen said he’d been out of Janie’s life for twenty years.’

‘Yes, but only recently dead. What if Janie was in touch with him?’

‘And not telling her mum?’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time that daughters did things behind their mother’s backs.’

‘I find it more suspicious that Marcia hasn’t called in the police. I would think