by Peter Helton
Table of Contents
Cover
A Selection of Titles by Peter Helton
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
A Selection of Titles by Peter Helton
The Chris Honeysett Series
HEADCASE
SLIM CHANCE
RAINSTONE FALL
AN INCH OF TIME *
WORTHLESS REMAINS *
INDELIBLE *
The Detective Inspector Liam McLusky Series
FALLING MORE SLOWLY
FOUR BELOW
* available from Severn House
INDELIBLE
A Chris Honeysett Mystery
Peter Helton
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2014
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition published
in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Peter Helton.
The right of Peter Helton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Helton, Peter author.
Indelible.
1. Honeysett, Chris (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Private investigators–Fiction. 3. Artists–Fiction.
4. Bath (England)–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery
stories.
I. Title
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-07278-8423-7 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-529-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-571-0 (ePub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being
described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this
publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons
is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thanks to Juliet Burton, to everyone at Severn House and to Clare Yates for making this book possible. Special thanks to Jess Knowles, the guardian of my sanity. No thanks to Asbo the cat for kicking what Mr Helton laughably calls his ‘USB backup’ under the radiator. Aren’t bagless vacuum cleaners marvellous, though?
Epigraph
‘A successful artist would have no trouble being a successful member of the Mafia.’
Sir Sidney Nolan
‘The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.’
Francis Bacon
ONE
It is always like this. There are no warning signs, no omens in the sky and you won’t feel any different. You’ll get up in the morning just as you do most days, put too much quince jam on your croissants, congratulate yourself on the perfect breakfast egg and enjoy the aroma of your coffee. It’ll be a fine sunny morning in early October, just like this one, and that high-pitched paranoid string music that would instantly have warned you that taking the Norton for a spin might not be a good idea today is simply not there. Such a fine day for it too, and you haven’t done this for ages, not since Jake found you another old Citroën to drive around.
We were enjoying that rare and often wished-for phenomenon: the Indian summer, often predicted but rarely realized, at least in England. I had finished a painting only the day before and my haphazard private-eye business – Aqua Investigations – had nothing at all on the books. No shows to prepare for, no missing persons to pursue and Aqua Investigations’ principle operative was taking the day off. Not that having nothing to do was something I could afford to celebrate for too long. I had recently been paid a decent amount of money by a TV company for looking after the presenter of their archaeology show – very decent in fact, considering what happened to him under my care. Another few grand had found its way into the Aqua Investigations coffers – well, more jam jars to be honest – via a successful insurance job. But Mill House, with its three acres of jungle, dilapidated outbuildings and the tottering barn at the top of the meadow, devoured money in large chunks. My father left it to me because he knew how attached I was to the place. In his suicide note he expressed the hope that the money needed to keep it going might put an end to my life as a feckless painter and make me get a real job at last, though the note was a lot less polite. Becoming a feckless kind of private eye was probably not what he had in mind, either. Money was still frequently short.
I shared house and studio with the talented Ms Jordan. A few years ago, while she was in her last year at art college, Annis had turned up unannounced at Mill House and before I knew why, I had offered her a space to paint in the big old barn I use as a studio. She started helping me with my private-eye jobs soon after that. When I kept finding her sleeping in front of her easel I offered her a room in my house and one thing led to another – what did you expect? What you didn’t expect was to find that Annis was bestowing her favours in equal measure on Tim.
Tim Bigwood is the third member of my hapless little detective agency. He has quite an interesting back story, if cat burglary and safe breaking is your kind of thing, though he had gone straight by the time we met (or so he said) and worked for Bath Uni as an IT consultant. How he could afford to always drive the latest model Audi TT and live in his rather nice flat in Northampton Street on what he earned, I never asked. Everything to do with computers, electronics and the odd bit of lock-picking that needed doing was Tim’s department. That he completed our triumvirate in more intimate ways too came as a bit of a surprise to both of us. But then life is full of surprises, some more surprising than others.
Like Annis’s 1950s Norton starting straight away, for example. Annis doesn’t mind me taking the Norton out for the odd run. She had a rather spectacular crash on it a while back and has since stuck to driving her equally ancient and spectacularly tatty Land Rover.
A few moments after I fired up the machine, Annis’s strawberry-blonde head appeared in the door to the painting studio. She does like the exhaust note of the thing, which is quite impressive even from eighty yards away. She waved and went back to her enormous canvas while I thundered out of the potholed yard and bounced up the rutted track. It eventually brings you to the tarmacked lane that runs the length of our little valley just east of the city of Bat
h. Left or right? I decided on left and tootled off towards town.
I do like Bath, even though sitting in our quiet valley we like to complain about its noise, the amount of tourists and the price of fish. Bath attracts a lot of people and along with the good and the great this brings in those that prey on them. Apart from the usual contingent of ne’er-do-wells, the Georgian city is a favourite haunt of pickpockets, fraudsters, con artists, marriage swindlers, quacks and hotel thieves, all of which give employment to the police, insurers and the likes of Chris Honeysett, painter and private investigator.
No sooner had I made it into town, wearing nothing more elaborate than jeans, boots and my ancient leather jacket, than dark clouds came over the horizon, pushed by a westerly wind that I fancied brought with it the first faint scent of autumn and perhaps the smell of the not-too-distant sea. I did a leisurely tour of the city centre, pootled past the weir, through Orange Grove and past the Abbey, took another look at the clouds and turned for home. It was one of those events where later on you might think: if only I had not wasted those three minutes, everything would have worked out so differently.
I didn’t fancy getting soaked so I speeded up a bit. Along Broad Street, past the Pig & Fiddle and up Walcot Street, over the mini roundabout and I was on the London Road out of town. In no time at all I had turned off the main road and was heading for the valley.
A lot of accidents happen within a mile of the driver’s home, especially after long journeys. You’re nearly there. You relax. You think of what there is to eat in the house, or of the bath you are going to run. You’re still driving but your mind is already through the door and putting the kettle on. Mine was up in the barn, stretching a new canvas and wondering what to paint next. The clouds had not yet swallowed up the sunshine and I knew I would make it home before the rain. I was on the home straight now, the narrow single-track lane that runs through the valley, riding on autopilot, slowly and lazily in high gear. A classic Norton has no mirrors and I hadn’t bothered checking over my shoulder for ages. The exhaust is so loud that other engine noises don’t intrude on your ears until they’re very close indeed, which meant that when I heard the sound of the car behind me it was already very close. I flicked a brief look over my shoulder, and behind me loomed every motorcyclist’s nightmare: the undentable Volvo. It was coming up fast so I adjusted my speed, not wanting to hold up the driver, planning to let the car pass at the first opportunity. The Volvo kept coming. I checked over my shoulder but couldn’t make out the driver through his sun-dazzled windscreen. The car swerved left, then right, then left again, trying to find a way past me in this ridiculously narrow lane. A sudden surge of its big engine alerted me to the fact that he had apparently decided to go through me. He sat just inches from my number plate and accelerated again. I opened the throttle wide. On a modern bike I would have outrun the car quickly but a sixty-year-old Norton has its limitations and even on a modern bike any traffic coming the other way would have meant instant disaster. I inched ahead of the Volvo. The turn-off to Mill House and safety flashed past – I was going far too fast to take it – and I had to flick the bike around a few potholes. The sunshine suddenly disappeared as the clouds overtook us. I was pulling away from the car’s bumper but not quickly enough. I was now going too fast to take the bend which I knew was about to come up and yet I couldn’t afford to touch the brakes. But before the corner, on the left, would be the entrance to Ridge Farm. I would ride in there at full speed like a missile and look for something soft to crash into. During the day the five-bar gate to the farmyard was usually open. Usually. If it wasn’t it would cut me into equal portions like an egg slicer. Behind me the Volvo driver leant on his horn and kept coming. For a few seconds I managed to squeeze a tiny bit more out of the screaming engine to give myself a few more inches of space, then I went for it. I scrubbed off as much speed as I could without getting hit by the Volvo then threw the bike into the turn-off. The gate was open. I flew across the concrete yard, terrifying a couple of loose chickens into the middle of next week as I hurtled past the astonished farmer, a Land Rover and a vet with his arm up a cow’s backside, before I managed to stop inches away from a very solid farmhouse wall.
In the lane the big Volvo yowled past, horn still blaring. Fifty yards further on it missed the bend, crashed through a fence, ploughed uphill across the meadow, hit a stone water trough and flipped on its side. It gave me a warm feeling of instant justice, the kind so sadly absent from most of our lives.
When I got there the wreck steamed, groaned, hissed and ticked like an evil thing. It had been a shiny silver motor only a couple of minutes earlier; now it was lying on the driver’s side in a field, comprehensively junked. The Volvo’s terminal velocity must have been something approaching sixty miles per hour. Just before it crashed I had distinctly heard it shift up a gear. Standing in the field I looked over my shoulder at the corner where it had left the road. There were no tyre marks on the tarmac. Volvoman had made no attempt to brake. It didn’t feel right.
We had called for an ambulance and described where to find the wreck – water troughs don’t come with postcodes. In the meantime I’d see what I could do. I still couldn’t see the driver. The windscreen had shattered into a million pieces but still hung together, rendering it opaque. I gave the car an experimental pull at a front wing; it looked precarious but had in fact ploughed itself solidly into the ground.
Rick Churcher, who owned Ridge Farm and the Volvo-adorned field, puffed up the hill, his noisy border collies dancing around him. Rick looked just like you’d imagine a Somerset farmer to look, especially if he frequently drank too much of his own cider.
‘Anybody hurt?’ he bellowed up the hill.
‘Yes, I think so. It’s a bit quiet for my liking. Give me a hand up; I’ll see if I can get the passenger door open.’
Rick obliged and I pulled myself up on to the wreck. Kneeling on the side of the car I could get a look at the driver despite the cluster of airbags. I couldn’t see his face properly as his head was hanging down towards the other side but I had an impression of an elderly man. I knocked on the unbroken passenger window and called, then tried the door. It was unlocked and I managed to yank it half open, heavy against gravity. I called inside, helpless things like ‘Can you hear me?’ and ‘Are you badly hurt?’ but got no answer.
I turned to Rick. ‘Hold the door up for me, will you? I’ll see if I can reach him.’
Rick obliged again, one strong arm enough to take the weight. I tied my hair back and dived in head first, dangling by my hips. I found one fragile-looking hand, ink-stained and covered in liver spots. I felt around for a pulse at the wrist but found nothing. Next I reached down and tried his neck which was twisted unnaturally away from me. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right but there was nothing there either. It felt bad though, and it smelled bad. It smelled of death. I wriggled painfully backwards across the sill of the door and slid out of the car. I shook my head meaningfully.
Rick shrugged and let the door fall shut like the lid on a rubbish bin. Farmers are more used to death than most. ‘How’d it happen?’
‘Don’t know. One minute I’m cruising along, next thing I know this guy is driving around on my number plate. I had to stuff my bike into your yard to get away from him or he’d have had me – he was trying to drive straight through me. He leant on his horn, drove past your yard and ploughed all the way up here without touching his brakes.’
‘Stupid arse.’ Rick nodded in affirmation, now sure of the driver category. ‘What is he, a kid?’
‘On the contrary. Elderly, I think. I couldn’t see his face but his hair was silver-grey.’ Like his car.
‘Don’t mean much.’ Rick ran a callused hand through what was left of his own hair, sparse and grey. Rick wasn’t forty yet. That’s farming for you. Or cider. ‘You really think he’s snuffed it then,’ he said without a hint of regret. His dispassionate eyes travelled from the car-sized hole in his fence along the scar the vehicle had pr
oduced in his grass. Then he shook his head and gave the car a playful kick with his black wellington boot. ‘I was fond of that stone trough. Nineteenth century that was. It’s cracked right through.’
‘I always thought Volvos were so safe. You’d have thought that kind of crash was survivable, in a car like that. It’s got enough airbags.’
Rick widened his eyes at me, slapped a hand to his forehead and gripped it with fingers splayed wide, as though he’d suffered a sudden seizure. ‘It’s the brain, Chris,’ he moaned. ‘You got seatbelts and airbags to stop your body when you crash but your brain keeps travelling. It keeps going at the same speed your car is going when you crash and slap! It hits the inside of your forehead and twists and sloshes about. Human brain can’t take it, you see? S’not meant to happen. Humans haven’t evolved to go that fast.’ He pondered this for a bit while his black-and-white dogs tore about, quartering the meadow. Then he wagged a decisive finger. ‘Unless you fell off a mountain. You’d be going quite fast if you fell off a mountain. But then you’d be in all sorts of other trouble. The brain-slapping thing probably wouldn’t come into it much.’
‘Not for long.’ There wasn’t a lot I wanted to add to that so we just stood around and chatted about the price of chicken feed, the poor state of the lane and global warming, as you do. I absentmindedly accepted one of Rick’s cigarettes, cheap, filthy stuff he got off the Portuguese fruit pickers who brought van loads of it with them each year when they came to help with the fruit harvest. The warm wind that had blown a grey blanket across the sky wafted the smoke away up the hill.
The ambulance snaked along the lane with its siren going, closely followed by a police car. The paramedics in their green uniform came up carrying their gear, quickly and purposefully. Two police officers took their time at the bottom of the field, talking, gesturing, while the ambulance people went to work. Rick told them they were wasting their time. ‘He’s snuffed it.’ They cheerfully ignored him.
