Tainted Ground

by Margaret Duffy

  I supposed I could feel happy that he was starting to sound like a real policeman. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He would have noticed some half-drunk social misfits nearby and on the spur of the moment decided to slip them fifty quid to have a bit more fun.’

  After telling Elspeth of the change of plan I had driven into Bath to pick Patrick up but it did not appear that he had finished for the day, reading through recent reports in Carrick’s office. Bromsgrove was out on the job somewhere with Lynn Outhwaite.

  ‘It’s worth doing a little digging,’ I argued.

  ‘But dig where? Neither of them has a criminal record. And there are no grounds for searching their house and their own garage. Brandon’s name isn’t even on the list of licensed shotgun holders.’

  Patrick was tired – he had not had much sleep the night before. His face was a little drawn, and I knew that his shoulder was still painful.

  ‘You could interview them again.’

  ‘There are no grounds for that either. But you have a good excuse to talk to Mrs Brandon. See what you make of her now she’s better.’

  I sat back in my chair. ‘Do you have any theories as to the reason someone put the tea in Elspeth’s clothes?’

  ‘Only that whoever did it is arrogant and attempting to get at me personally.’

  ‘What do the forensics bods say? Have you had the report yet? Is it the same kind of tea?’

  ‘Yes, they think it is.’

  ‘I’m convinced whoever went upstairs at the rectory is a woman. It’s the kind of thing a woman would do. Nothing was disturbed. A man would have turned everything over, deliberately, to make his mark. Even wrecked the room. I don’t think that was the impression the person who did it intended to make – it’s deeper than that.’

  ‘But still meant as a distraction to me. Shall we go and talk to James and get his views?’

  He wasn’t tired, he was exhausted. But I stuck to my guns. ‘It’s a threat too. I’m really glad someone’s keeping an eye on the rectory, especially for when we’re not there.’ This, although true, was not really what I had wanted to say, which was that I thought the threat was to Patrick himself and that he had already met the killer. Why did I have a certainty that the murderer thought this son of the parish to be worthy of removal? Patrick would think I had taken leave of my senses if I said that he stank in someone’s nostrils.

  ‘I’ve beefed up surveillance at the rectory,’ were James Carrick’s opening words. ‘I don’t like that development at all.’

  He was seated in an armchair, looking weak enough to melt into it and disappear. Nevertheless, he gave Patrick a hard stare. ‘I understand from Derek Woods that you stopped a few pellets last night.’

  ‘It’s of no consequence,’ Patrick told him. ‘Just shallow flesh wounds.’

  We should have realized that nothing escaped the good sergeant.

  ‘Thank God for that. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but SOCO have turned up a couple of details since we last spoke. It seems that the person who fired the shots might have concealed himself behind one of the stacks of pallets. I take it you didn’t have a wander around inside the building before the Tanners arrived.’

  ‘No, there seemed no need, mainly because I hadn’t actually left the area after we found the ingots.’

  ‘There was very little time then for the farmer and his son to have driven to the pub, someone to overhear them talking and then that person to go to the barn armed with a shotgun.’

  ‘No, it’s something that’s been bothering me slightly. But I can’t see how anyone else could have learned of the find. Roger and Steven would have gone straight there in Roger’s Land Rover, leaving the tractor somewhere. And don’t forget, the distances involved are fairly short.’

  ‘How much time are we talking about?’

  ‘Fifty minutes from the time Roger and Steven left, just after which I rang you, to when the Tanners arrived. Ingrid had turned up again by then – she’d come across the fields on foot. The killer has to be local. What evidence was found behind the pallets?’

  ‘Some wool fibres from a sweater caught on rough wood. They could have been there for ages but forensics don’t think so. And a dropped cartridge. There’s a blurred thumbprint on it, in all probability not a lot of use. How d’you reckon this man got into the barn without you seeing or hearing him?’

  ‘In the dark …’ Patrick shrugged and then regretted it. ‘I used no lights and it was virtually pitch black inside. I didn’t go into the barn at all but concealed myself in a lean-to at the rear so would not have seen anyone approaching on foot and entering through the front doors. You must appreciate I was expecting people either in a car or on motorbikes, the headlights of which would have been likely to reveal anyone trying to hide in the interior.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Whoever it was must have come on foot. I would have heard a car, even if it had been left out in the road.’

  Had I actually followed almost in the murderer’s footsteps or had they come from the opposite direction?

  Carrick said, ‘The killer crept up behind the Tanner brothers when you entered and were endeavouring to arrest them.’

  ‘I sneaked in the barn while they were engrossed in trying to turn the trough over. The light from the bike was directed roughly at the trough, at right angles to an imaginary line between me and the brothers. Anyone to the rear of them and the trough would have been invisible.’

  ‘I saw him running away,’ I said. ‘Just an outline against the night sky between the doors.’

  ‘You mentioned the Brandons to me earlier,’ Patrick said to me. ‘Could it have been William Brandon?’

  ‘The man I saw was going much faster than I would have thought him capable,’ I replied. ‘But he was a heavy sort of man, not used to hurrying.’

  ‘But they’re pensioners, elderly,’ the DCI protested, adding to me, ‘He was the one I promised you’d apologize to. Have you?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t got some kind of resentment thing going for this man?’

  This was not a moment to go all fluffy or switch on the charm. ‘Not enough to want to put him in the frame for murder,’ I said.

  ‘Ingrid hasn’t been able to speak to her yet but it appears Mrs Brandon was at the rectory yesterday,’ Patrick said, perhaps in an effort to draw some of the flak in his own direction.

  ‘I rather thought half the village was,’ Carrick argued.

  ‘James, I was only mentioning points to Patrick raised during routine checking,’ I said, getting exasperated. I went on to repeat all the other points buzzing around in my bonnet as well, including the blue car. Just for the record.

  There was a little silence when I had finished speaking and Carrick looked at his watch. ‘It’s still only five thirty.

  Ingrid, I think it would be a good idea for you to pop in and speak to Mrs Brandon on the way home. You can apologize to her husband at the same time.’ After another, longer, silence he continued, ‘You’re part of my team right now and I won’t tolerate rudeness.’

  It was time to leave.

  Fearing mutiny Patrick bundled me outside. ‘Look,’ he whispered in my ear just outside the front door, ‘he’s doped up to the ears. Tell yourself it’s not James talking, just a handful of pills.’

  I had not the slightest intention of calling in at the mill on the way home. ‘If I’m going to have to do this it’s in my own way. All right?’ I said stiffly.

  ‘Of course,’ Patrick said. ‘Don’t make a such a mountain out of it.’

  ‘I’d like to go to the rectory first.’

  There, I changed my clothes, had a drink of water and raided Patrick’s briefcase. He was in the shower by this time so I was quite safe as I removed his bunch of burglars’ keys (he had not got round to handing them back to MI5), his tiny torch, which I knew had new batteries in it, and another couple of handy bits and pieces. When I found something else, something so unexpected, mind-bl
owingly wonderful and fantastic I clutched it to my bosom for a moment and then tucked it securely in my jacket pocket.

  ‘I’m doing one last job,’ I told Elspeth on the way out.

  ‘Does Patrick know where you’re going?’ she called after me.

  ‘Yes, just to the Brandons.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’

  I walked there and the happenings of the next few hours were only finally pieced together some time afterwards.

  The last garage in the row was still unlocked. I pulled up the door as far as I needed to in order to duck inside, praying that the mechanism would not squeak, entered and then closed it behind me. All seemed to be just the same; one blue car, and nothing else.

  There was a light switch but I dared not use it in case the door did not fit properly and slits of light gave away my presence: it would have to be the torch. I put on a pair of latex gloves before I did anything else and then carefully walked round the exterior of the vehicle. I had already noted the registration number. No tiny lights flashed on the instrument panel indicating that an alarm was set and as the torch beam moved downwards I saw that the keys were in the ignition.

  The previous night the woman, Mrs Brandon or not, had left this garage carrying a package or something similar and taken it into the other one. It had not appeared to be particularly heavy. I was itching to open up the car but something held me back. An un-alarmed vehicle with the keys left in it in an unlocked garage, the owners of which might be, as the expression goes, dodgy? If the garage had been locked the previous night what the hell was different today? It could, of course, be ready for someone’s quick getaway.

  It was my MI5 training, a maxim along the lines of never go down the pathway that your adversary has strewn with roses, only a much pithier version not for use before the nine o’clock watershed, that finally caused me to leave the whole thing severely alone and, as silently as possible, leave the garage.

  The handle of the other garage was not hot-wired, or anything equally unfriendly, and I used Patrick’s keys to open it. Then, having felt the smooth click, I stood quite still, listening, for a minute or so. There were only one or two lights on at the mill but at this side of the building the windows were mostly small, presumably bathrooms and toilets, not the kind people would gaze out of, the glass probably frosted anyway.

  It had started to drizzle, more like a heavy cold mist, and I was glad to get into the comparative warmth of the garage. Warm it was, and stuffy, a black Porsche cosseted from the winter dampness by a tiny heater beneath it. There was nothing else in there at all, not even the box or package I had seen the woman bring in. Perhaps she had put it in the boot of the car: nothing could be seen on the seats.

  This vehicle was alarmed and I made sure I did not touch it. Doubt was now in my mind that either garage was anything to do with the Brandons, whom we already knew possessed an Audi, and could even be rented to people living elsewhere in the village.

  The floor and walls at first glance appeared to have been swept clean. This was not the case I discovered after I had gone down on hands and knees; there was black dust, that might or might not be tea, and sand in all the corners. I carefully placed as generous an amount as was possible in one of the sample bags I had brought with me.

  The drizzle had turned into heavy rain when I emerged and I put up the hood of my jacket. I was not disappointed by not finding anything as I had not expected to come upon a hoard of gold anywhere so obvious. It seemed unlikely that it would be stored indoors, in the flat, which was arguably even more obvious. Thieves and murderers do not usually entrust their loot to banking organizations and William Brandon did not have the physique for digging deep holes. That left more cunning options. I ducked around the side of the garages to explore what lay behind them.

  Immediately, I came upon a stone wall about five feet in height, the continuation of the one that bordered the river from which the mill had originally obtained its power. There was no space worth mentioning between the wall and the rear of the garages. I had no reason to suppose that it did not go all the way along and decided it was preferable to climb over it here rather than risk being spotted walking to the other end and then be faced with the same obstacle.

  I could hear the water flowing somewhere below the wall, managed to jump up and wriggle over the top sufficiently and shone the torch beam down. There was a grassy bank, but it was less than eighteen inches wide, the river probably two or three feet below that but obscured by reeds. The upright coping stones were digging painfully into my ribs by now so I squirmed myself over and swung down, my heart in my mouth for a moment as one of my shoes became jammed in a gap between them. I kicked it free and ended up in a heap on the ground.

  Why the hell was I doing this?

  Because I was surrounded by under-the-weather, if not downright sickly, blokes, who at the rate they were going would never get the job done.

  I edged along the narrow bank. There was nothing to hold on to. If it was anything like the one on the opposite side – the river was about eight feet wide here – it was seriously undermined in places and I took care to tread as close to the base of the wall as possible. I jumped when, with a plop and a splash, a small animal of some kind bolted from almost under my feet and made its escape. A fox barked.

  Pausing where I thought the third garage might be I examined the wall and bank carefully. An enormous dead thistle was there but nothing else. The rain was getting heavier. Then, my left foot slipped and I almost went in the river but I managed to grab a handful of vegetation that fortunately included a small sapling that took my weight and hauled myself back onto the bank.

  I guessed I was now about halfway to the other end of the row and went more slowly. Then the bank became even narrower so I turned my back to the wall and sidestepped and this proved to be much easier, even where the bank for a couple of feet had been undercut almost right away. Nothing now though would save me if I slipped.

  Only some kind of sixth sense prevented me from falling over the large stone that lay right on my route just before I got to the end of the building. It was more like a small boulder but I was able to step over it. Making my way, with difficulty, as there were other, smaller stones on the bank I stood on one of them and looked over the wall. Sure enough, I was a matter of a few yards from the hornbeam hedge.

  Back on my side of the wall, the bank widened out and there was quite a large pile of stones of various sizes. I suddenly realized that they had been left over from building the wall. There was every indication that the big one I had come upon had been part of the pile until quite recently: the vegetation had been flattened where it had been rolled along the ground. I went back and had a proper look at it.

  The stone was slippery from the rain and snow. I put the torch in my pocket for a moment and just about managed to heave it over into the river, the water plants preventing what might, in other circumstances, have been a huge splash. I dug out the torch again, switched it on and found myself gazing at the top of a hammered-in metal peg of some kind which had a thinnish nylon rope tied to it, the other end going over the edge of the river bank and from sight.

  Everything was getting just a bit exciting.

  I knelt and groped down the rope. It was very taut as though it had something heavy tied to the other end, far too heavy, I quickly discovered, for me to pull it up from the position I was in. How deep was the river?

  In the end I worked out that the reeds and rushes were not the kind of plants that grew in deep water and gingerly lowered myself in. Liquid ice spread up to my knees and busily proceeded to freeze me solid. I wasted no time, bent, hauled up what appeared to be a canvas bag and just achieved dumping it up on the bank before all my muscles gave up. Then I had to wade for a short distance before the bank became lower and, shivering, I was able to clamber out. All this I had had to do in the dark for fear of totally immersing the torch. Memo to Patrick: get a waterproof one.

  It was an old, albeit small, army kit ba
g and the rope had been threaded through the metal rings in the top and then knotted several times. It took me what seemed for ever to untie them but I only broke two fingernails in the process and my reward was well worth it: the entrancing gleam of gold.

  The little ingots had been roughly done up in bubble wrap and there did not seem to be enough to represent the entire haul stolen from the dive boat, thought to be around one hundred and fifty. This was not to say that Brandon, or whoever (I was forcing myself to keep an open mind on the actual identity of the person responsible), had bought or received all those plundered.

  I would go and ring his doorbell. But first of all I spent a little while putting the gold somewhere else.

  He opened the front door, eyed me narrowly and said, ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘Just a word,’ I replied, my arms still aching from lugging the gold. ‘With your wife.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘D’you mind telling me where she is?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Bugger off.’

  It was then that I noticed the slick of fresh blood on his shirt sleeve. It was then, if I’d had any sense, I ought to have run like mad.

  Brandon was looking at my soaked clothing.

  ‘It’s pouring,’ I said. ‘Do you own a shotgun?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. Was the gold a little private affair in an otherwise fairly routine life of crime and you decided to retire on the proceeds? Even though they might have helped you hide away the ingots you then had the problem of what to do with all the tedious hangers-on, especially the Manleys as you’d only hired him, through Davies, because you thought his security-guard insider knowledge might come in useful one day.’