by Danny Miller
‘You’re joking? No?’
‘No … It’s not … It can’t be.’
There came two more bumps in quick succession.
‘What the …? You’ve got to pull over.’
‘Pull over …?’
‘What else …? Pull over.’
Harry Baskin slowed the car and stopped at the side of the road. They were still deep in the Denton countryside, and had been studiously taking the B-roads wherever possible since skirting the Jarrett site so as to avoid the law. The car rested at an angle on the verge of the narrow road. Jimmy McVale was armed with a torch, as they got out and made their way to the back of the car. There it was again, a thumping emanating from the boot.
‘You’ve got to be joking …’
‘She’s still …?’
‘She can’t be …?’
Baskin sent his dense brows skywards a couple of times like that in itself would open the boot. When it didn’t, Jimmy McVale took the hint and went to pop it open.
‘I can’t believe she’s still …’
‘I know, I thought for sure she’d be dead …’
The boot opened and there was Ruby, a blindfold on, greeting them with a big yawn.
‘… dead, dead to the world! How many sleeping pills did you put in her Nesquik?’
Jimmy McVale said, ‘I put two pills in. I have two and I’m out like a light, all night, and I’m a big bloke. She should be fast asleep.’
Harry Baskin looked surprised at this; with what McVale had on his conscience, he’d have thought he’d need the whole bottle just to get a wink of sleep.
‘Where am I?’ asked Ruby in a drowsy voice.
Harry said, ‘You’re safe, sweetheart. You’re going home, darling, back to Mummy and Daddy, I promise you. You just have to be brave for a little longer, okey-dokey?’
She yawned and nodded and let out a wispy little sigh. Jimmy McVale closed the boot.
Tuesday (1)
The black and yellow police tape was still up across the door and the ground-floor windows, barring entry to Grey Gables. Vanessa Fielding, in a long black woollen coat with a fur-trimmed hood, stood on the path looking at the house. At just gone midnight, Grey Gables seemed to suit the night better than the day. Gothic, crumbling, overgrown, its life snuffed out. It would take new blood to restore it to its former glory, fix the brickwork, strip the peeling and mouldering Regency-stripe wallpaper and replace it with something new, light and vibrant.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Frost.
Vanessa took a deep breath, and gave a resigned smile. Frost interpreted this to mean she was ready to face her past, too, lurking there hidden in the woods all these years.
So, armed with torches, Frost, Simms, Vanessa and Plato the dog made their way up the path. Frost couldn’t help but smile – the decrepit old house, the dark woods, the buried treasure, and the faithful dog. His report to Mullett would read like a script for an episode of Scooby-Doo. Still, with a killer like Banes on the loose, as long as it didn’t turn into Friday the 13th …
They made their way around to the back of the house, wading through the long damp grass, then up some scattered paving stones that led to the broken garden fence, which gave them access to the woods.
The luminous dial of Simms’s Swatch told them they’d walked a good ten minutes into the wilds of Denton. With Vanessa guiding them, they knew they were on track. And with a low and sustained growl as it sniffed the air around it, Plato must have sensed they were drawing closer.
‘Good boy … good boy,’ encouraged Frost. He could have been saying it to Simms, too, for Frost had instructed the enthusiastic young PC to keep his mouth shut and let the DI do all the talking. He had a feeling that the closer they got, the deeper into the woods they ventured, the more likely it was that Vanessa, who had been virtually silent, would begin to open up. She did.
‘I hope it won’t disappoint you, Inspector, this “treasure island” we’re after. It’s where Ivan and Conrad used to play as children, just as Ella said. They played pirates. They were always more than just business partners. They were like brothers. Conrad was a local boy, but very much from the wrong side of the tracks, as it were. His mother cleaned for the Fieldings, but she was also more or less Ivan’s nanny. Ivan’s mother was rather an aloof, hands-off sort of woman. I found her rather cold.
‘When Conrad’s mother died suddenly, the father, who wasn’t around much anyway, left him with Ivan’s family whilst he went to look for work. But, of course, he never returned. Apparently, he’d gone abroad, joined a merchant ship to the South Seas or somewhere. Conrad was only about six or seven, so he and Ivan grew up together. Just how happy his life with the Fieldings was, is hard to say. Taking Conrad in was very much Ivan’s father’s idea, who was, according to Ivan and Conrad, a wonderful man. But when he died, I think the mother became resentful of having to look after Conrad as well as her own son. So Conrad ran away when he was fourteen and, like his father, joined a ship to somewhere exotic, looking for adventure. Maybe hoping to become a real pirate.
‘Ivan and Conrad met up again in London years later. By that time they’d both learned their “trades”: Ivan with an uncanny knowledge of fine art and antiques, Conrad with an uncanny ability to steal them. Together again, inseparable. Brothers, again.’
Frost said, ‘Their childhood fantasies came true: they both became pirates, after a fashion. And when you saw the paintings, you knew that’s where Conrad had buried the haul from the 1967 job?’
‘Yes. And I knew it could only mean trouble. Some things are better off left buried. Like the dead.’
Frost didn’t know if that statement was supposed to send a chill up his spine, but it did. It also cued up his next line of questioning perfectly. ‘You say they were like brothers – and yet Ivan betrayed him. Got him sent to prison.’
‘Ivan believed that Conrad betrayed him. Believed he’d kept for himself the Vermeer he was at Eaton Square to steal for Ivan.’
‘Yes, that’s what I heard. But that’s not the betrayal I’m talking about, Vanessa.’
She stopped dead in her tracks and stared ahead of her, into the blackness of the woods. ‘When did you find out?’
‘A friend of Ivan and Conrad, Captain Cavanagh, he saw a picture of Sally and Ella. He said it was unmistakable. It was like seeing a ghost. And once I dug out an old photo of Conrad Wilde, I saw it too. It’s written all over their faces. Conrad Wilde is Sally’s father.’
‘It’s not what it seems.’
‘Nothing ever is, and I’m not making any judgements, just stating some facts.’
Vanessa wrapped her coat around her more tightly, as something seemed to move in on her, a cold blast. ‘It’s over here,’ she said, still refusing to face him, and stalking off. The detective couldn’t see if she was crying, but he suspected she was.
‘I imagine that for both men, you were always the real object of desire for them, not the paintings, the treasures.’
She managed a laugh. ‘What a romantic you are, Inspector.’
‘And yet you chose Ivan over Conrad?’
‘When I first met them, of course I was attracted to Conrad initally. But I knew Conrad couldn’t give me what I wanted. Security. He was too much the lothario, the adventurer, risk-taker, and liable to take off at any minute. Much like his own father.’
‘And yet, you had Conrad’s child?’
She stopped again, and turned to him, her face full of rage. ‘No! No, it wasn’t like that! Don’t make me out to be some stupid scarlet woman, because it fits your simple-minded profile—’
‘Nanna!’
They all turned towards the direction of the little girl’s voice. It was distant, but desperate. Plato barked, slipped its leash and ran ahead. They followed the smart little terrier. They were in the thick of the woods on a mulchy ribbon of track that snaked its way through the cluster of trees, to what would hopefully soon be a clearing.
Vanessa called out to her granddaughter, j
ust as desperate, but nothing came back.
A light glowed in the sky, a spotlight bearing down. And Vanessa’s desperate cries for Ella were now drowned out by the sound of a helicopter whirling overhead. With its arrival, in the distance, came also the roar of a crowd, the protestors, their battle cry rising up, ‘… WE’LL BRING JARRETT’S TO THEIR KNEES IF THEY CUT DOWN OUR PRECIOUS TREES!’
Frost realized they’d been walking at a good clip for about twenty minutes, and were heading south, closer and closer to the Jarrett site.
The three of them raced ahead after Plato, its barking leading the way, and soon their torch beams showed they were in a clearing covered in long grass and thick with ferns. But there they were – unmistakable – the three little hillocks. The largest one, the ‘treasure island’ in the centre, the remains of a fallen tree in front of it, its gnarled and bulbous stump still in the ground, its thick curlicue roots resembling coiled rope on the deck of a galleon.
‘Nanna!’ called out Ella Fielding once more.
‘Ella!’ Vanessa ran towards her granddaughter who stood by the tree stump at the foot of her Treasure Island.
Frost’s torchlight fell on the little girl, but she started screaming, then stopped, just as the blade of a Stanley knife was pressed against her throat again.
‘You touch her and I’ll kill you!’ hissed Vanessa.
Frost grabbed Vanessa by her arm to stop her.
Banes backed away, taking Ella with him, the blade steady at her throat.
They were about twenty feet away from them. Frost was holding Vanessa back, who between sobs was hissing curses and threats at Banes. Simms was now holding Plato, who was growling with the same threatening intensity as Vanessa.
But louder than all this came a groan, a groan of pain. Frost aimed his torch in its direction, and saw that at the base of the central mound, almost hidden, lay Stephen Parker, face down in a hole about three foot deep. It looked like it had the makings of his grave. And he had a shovel in his hand with which he’d been digging it.
‘You, copper!’
Frost didn’t know if Banes was addressing him or Simms, but he took it up. ‘What do you want, Banes?’
‘You know who I am, eh?’
‘Yes, Clive, I do. If that really is your name.’
‘It was Thomas Phelps, last time we spoke,’ said Simms.
Banes flashed the torch in Simms’s face. ‘It’s you again. The spotty young plod in the bow-tie. Don’t feel too bad. I’ve slipped past sharper coppers than you. People have been underestimating me all my life.’ He focused back on Frost. ‘Underneath Parker, you’ll find it.’
‘The treasure?’
Banes added, ‘Lift him up, and put it at my feet, and the little girl lives. Then I’m out of here. Like I never existed.’
‘That’s your speciality, isn’t it?’ Frost aimed his torch squarely at Banes’ face and was shocked at what he saw. His eyes looked like they were sunken into his skull, his skin was bloodless, yet there were livid red blotches on it, like welts, or septic scabs. He glistened with a sheen of sweat. ‘You don’t look like you’re going anywhere, apart from hospital.’
Banes, his voice sounding both raspy and restricted, like he was choking, insisted, ‘Like I said, it’s a big mistake to underestimate me … I’ll kill you all before anything happens to me.’
Plato barked, seemingly pleased at the state of its erstwhile aggressor.
‘Keep that bloody thing away from me!’
Simms reined Plato in, whispering to it to be patient.
Frost calmed the agitated killer. ‘My name’s Frost, Inspector Frost—’
‘I know who you are … seen you in the paper … looking for the kid. Well now you’ve found her … just the wrong one.’
‘Or the right one, depends on how you look at it.’
‘That’s right … I got the right one … so like I said, Frost, don’t underestimate me.’
Frost saw that Ella had her eyes squeezed shut now, her lips were trembling, through fear and the cold, or maybe she was mouthing a prayer. Either way, he had to act fast. Banes was desperation personified, there wasn’t anyone he wouldn’t kill to get what he wanted. Frost knew he had to keep him talking, keep him engaged, stop him sinking into that psychotic head of his.
‘Let’s take it nice and easy, Clive. There’s no need for anything rash to happen. We can all get what we want without anyone getting hurt.’
‘I don’t need you to tell me that. I’m getting exactly what I want, it’s right here. There’s no way I’m walking away without it. Come and take a look.’
Frost edged closer to the hole and shined his torch in. The first thing that grabbed his attention was the open wound at the back of Parker’s head. It had all the hallmarks of a Banes killing. Parker had been hit over the head with a hammer, and most certainly would have been completely dispatched if they hadn’t arrived when they had. The lecturer was face down in the earth with his bloody wound glistening, and his legs twitching in spasms as the blows to his head still worked through his system, destroying the thing that Parker held most precious and believed to be superior to others: his grey matter, his brain cells. There was a metal detector on the ground too.
But that wasn’t what Banes was so keen for Frost to see. Underneath the academic, protruding from his side, was a metal box. The box.
‘You see it, Frost? You see it?’
He glanced up to see Banes grinning maniacally like the psychotic killer Frost knew him to be. Or maybe that was too easy, too obvious. And he was right, Frost didn’t want to underestimate him. ‘I see it. But others have been just as close, and look what good it did them.’
‘I’m different. I’ve got nothing to lose. I never have. Now, do as I say … Get the box, and place it at my feet. Slowly. Try anything, and I will cut the girl’s jugular and she will die in her granny’s arms.’
It was said with such intent and authority that no one doubted it. A deep silence fell over the clearing. Simms breathed heavily. Vanessa closed her eyes, like Ella, and she too looked like she was praying. And Frost eased himself down into the hole. He crouched down, and whispered in Parker’s ear, ‘Can you hear me, Stephen?’
Parker’s breathing was torturously laboured, sounding like every breath would be his last. But he seemed to be semi-conscious and responded with a grunting sound that Frost suspected he would be using for a while. But at least he was alive. The poor fool, thought the detective. Banes obviously had no intention of sharing the spoils with Parker and went to kill him as soon as he hit, literally, pay dirt.
‘Hurry up, Frost!’
The detective carefully moved Parker’s head to the side so he was no longer breathing in and eating mud. He then took off his jacket and made a pillow for him, hoping that it would also help to staunch the blood. Banes, impatient, angry, told him to pull his finger out. Frost complied and lifted the box free from under Parker and climbed out of the shallow hole, looking back at Parker as he did so, hoping it wouldn’t become what Banes had intended it to be, his shallow grave.
The metal box was about the size and dimensions of a shoebox. Given its heft and dull colour, Frost suspected it was made of lead. And even though it had oxidized through the years, and was now a greenish colour, it was still very solid and secure and more than capable of protecting its precious cargo with its heavy padlock.
He took the four or five paces necessary to deliver it at Banes’ feet. If he was going to make a move, he was close enough. But Banes’ Stanley knife was even closer to Ella’s jugular. He could see the blade pressing in, her delicate skin looking ready to part at the slightest increase in pressure.
Frost placed the box before the killer, and saw his dead eyes spark into life once again. Banes’ tongue slipped out of his mouth and he looked like he was going to lick his cracked lips.
But instead he told Frost, ‘Now stand back, back with the others.’
Frost did as he was told, but not before saying, ‘I’ve d
one my part, and as far as I’m concerned you can have it. Just let the girl go.’
‘Throw your torches over there …’ instructed Banes ‘… way over there, by the trees.’
Simms, Vanessa and Frost looked at each other, knowing they would be plunged into darkness. Frost gave them the nod, and led the way by throwing his torch to the ground. They all did the same. Plato barked its disapproval. But it was immediately drowned out by a thunderous sound and a whirlwind churning up the leaves and loose dirt in the clearing. A spotlight beamed down on them as the low-flying helicopter lit up ‘Treasure Island’.
By the time they’d lowered their eyes from the sky, Frost saw that Ella lay face down on the ground. Banes and the box were gone.
Tuesday (2)
‘One … hundred … and … eighty!’
The audience roared. Stamped their feet. And Keith ‘Keefy’ Keathson raised his arms and pumped his fists as he faced his adoring home crowd. He pulled his darts out of the board, and the lager-fuelled chorus from the punters grew even louder as Jocky stepped up to the oche. It was poetry in motion as the arrow left his hand.
Jimmy McVale pulled the gun out of his jacket, spooked by the sudden and incredibly loud roar from inside the Coconut Grove. Harry Baskin and McVale had just hauled themselves out of McVale’s BMW that Harry (the designated driver – at gunpoint) had parked in his own private spot at the rear of the club. It was Harry’s idea to go around the back so they wouldn’t be seen. It suited both men.
‘Put that bleedin’ thing away! Jeez, relax, Jimmy.’
McVale slipped the gun in his waistband. ‘Sounds like you’ve got quite a crowd in there.’
Harry Baskin smiled at the thought. At ten quid a ticket, he knew he’d be in the money. The coffers would be full. He just hoped he would get through tonight and get a chance to spend it. ‘Follow me.’
They made their way into the club, through the back door, through the kitchen, through the caged area where the booze was locked up, and into Harry’s inner sanctum: his office.
