Worthless Remains

by Peter Helton

  Both brothers managed to get through their enormous platters in the same time it took me to eat my rabbit food under Tim’s disapproving eye.

  ‘Hey,’ said Tim, ‘I think they’re leaving.’

  ‘Damn, I meant to get outside before they did.’ But it was a false alarm; they were taking a toilet break. Their pints were still half full, I noticed. I knew the toilets in this pub and didn’t envy Mike the task. ‘When they look like they’re about to leave we’ll go outside before they do. We’ll follow in your car.’ Tim was going cross-eyed with boredom. ‘Just to see what happens next. If they both go back to Mike’s bungalow we shan’t bother watching; you can’t see in.’

  ‘There’s gear we can use, you know,’ Tim suggested suggestively.

  ‘Yes, I know. But getting caught installing it in his house could cost more than the job is paying,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. OK, how about a honey trap, then? We’ll get a woman to make advances towards him. See if he suddenly gets the use of his undercarriage back.’

  ‘What if his injury is real and he genuinely falls for her? That would be cruel. And when you say “a woman”, just which woman exactly did you have in mind?’

  ‘All right, it was just a thought,’ Tim said defensively.

  When the brothers came back from the toilets, Tom did not sit down – our cue, I thought. ‘Let’s go.’

  I had been right. Mike finished his Guinness, Tom drained his lager and just as we squeezed past them he mumbled: ‘Please no one mention food for at least a week.’

  ‘We’ll follow them in your car,’ I told Tim, ‘in case they remember my DS.’ We watched from inside Tim’s new Audi TT, another black little number, as the brothers left the pub. Tom stood by the side of Mike’s Honda, helping him in and stowing his wheelchair for him. ‘This looks like a farewell,’ I said. ‘Tell you what, I’m sick of Mike’s bungalow; let’s see how the walking brother lives. He drives that Astra over there, follow him. If Mikey is faking it then Tom must be in on it, surely.’

  ‘I thought we were going to Mark Stoneking’s manor?’ Tim complained.

  ‘Yeah, we will,’ I said soothingly. ‘Just follow him home for now. Not if he lives in Drumnadrochit, obviously.’

  Tom Dealey did not live on the shores of Loch Ness but in Paulton, an ex-mining village south-west of Bath. He drove fast, often overtook cars, which at some stage made me think he had noticed us following, but he slowed down once he reached the village and we followed him without problem into a fairly prosperous estate of modern detached houses. He stopped in front of a bland house with a well-kept bit of lawn and a single garage. Tom Dealey parked his car on the road, which elicited groans from us – since it meant he might just be visiting someone – and when he got out he didn’t give us a second glance as we drove past. Tim drove around the corner and stopped. ‘Now what?’

  I was already out of the car. ‘Just wait here,’ I said and legged it back to the corner, hurrying to catch him before he disappeared, but I needn’t have worried. The garage door was open and when I walked past as though I had business further down the road I saw why Tom Dealey had parked his Astra on the road: in the centre of the garage, its lines unmistakable, stood a wine-red Hayabusa GSX1300R motorcycle. He was just admiring it for a moment, then he closed the garage door and let himself into the house. I legged it round the block and fell back into the passenger seat next to Tim who sat, hands folded on top of the steering wheel, resting his head on his hands.

  I put on my seatbelt. ‘Right, let’s go.’

  Tim started the engine and drove off. ‘And what did we learn from this exercise?’ he asked.

  ‘That the family are bike nutters. Mike Dealey is in a wheelchair after his bike accident but brother Tom still rides a Hayabusa.’

  ‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘It’s a thirteen-hundred cc Suzuki. It does nought to sixty in less time than it takes you to say it. If he rides the bike the way he drives his Astra he might come a cropper without the aid of a white-van man talking on his mobile. Perhaps I’ll get PC Whatsisname to check him out, see if there’s a family history besides biking.’

  Back at the Cross Keys I hopped into the DS and Tim followed me down the country lanes. Chatting on the hands-free mobile (21st-century Honeysett!) on the way to Tarmford I filled Tim in with what had been happening at Tarmford Hall. From the kind of questions he asked I suspected he was more of a Karmic fan than he cared to admit. But the picture I painted of life at the Hall must have been less than glamorous, because Tim said: ‘Perhaps you really can have too much money.’ As we crossed the Tarm at the ford the signal began to break up. It was just before sunset when we arrived at the gate, which soon groaned menacingly open.

  Tim stuck his head out of the window. ‘Holy Moly, it looks like a holiday camp run by the Addams Family.’ He followed me very slowly, weaving along the drive to dodge the countless potholes that had not been improved by the recent traffic, and which were now filled with rainwater. We parked on the lawn. ‘Okay, I’m impressed,’ Tim admitted as he took it all in. ‘It’s amazing what a dozen LPs of incoherent noise can buy.’

  ‘Wait until you see the back of the place.’ We walked around the south side of the Hall where the view opened up across the lawns towards the lake and woods.

  ‘Wow. Capability Brown?’

  ‘Not quite. Sam Gower, Stoneking’s jailbird gardener. He’ll not like what’s been happening here.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Still, it’s only grass.’

  Though Time Lines was still observing a day of rest the devastation of the lawn was becoming ever more obvious. Not only the excavation – three trenches so far, one of them ever-widening – but also the spoil heaps, holes dug by the nighthawks, yellow patches where the camps had stood and black patches where camp fires had been lit. The digger had not been kind to the grass either and a path trampled by the crew between excavation and catering van had also become quite pronounced.

  ‘He didn’t design it, of course, just keeps it all going.’

  ‘Nice job.’

  ‘Depends what your employer is like.’

  Some of the intestinally unchallenged diggers and geo-physics experts enjoyed the sunset on the terrace, drinking, chatting or reading dog-eared novels. Of the rest of the team there was no sign. ‘So where do you want to stick the cameras?’ Tim asked.

  I pulled him out of earshot. ‘Not so loud; half of our suspects are sitting on that terrace.’ We ambled over to the large trench.

  Tim stood and admired the mosaic. ‘That’s some mosaic. I wouldn’t mind a floor like that in my bathroom. What are they going to do with it once they have finished?’

  ‘Fill it back in.’

  ‘Seriously? But why? It’s a waste, isn’t it?’

  ‘Best way to protect it for the future, apparently.’

  ‘What for? Why’s the future more important than the present?’

  ‘It isn’t. But you’re not supposed to steal from it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be more like stealing from the past?’

  ‘Both. Which makes it worse.’

  ‘Okay, Socrates, let’s go to work.’ Tim looked about. ‘So, we have blackmailers, saboteurs, potheads and nighthawks all crawling about this place. Now I’d be inclined, if this was my place, to dig a hole, about twelve-foot deep, lightly cover it with Astroturf and see who drops in.’

  ‘You forgot the sharpened stakes at the bottom.’

  ‘They’re optional. All right, since we’re supposed to be kind to our fellow blaggers we’ll give them their five minutes of fame on the telly instead. We have three cameras we can use for this, two with fairly good night vision. Is there any illumination here at night?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Sky is clouding over. Is there a moon at the moment?’ I nodded. ‘In that case we may get to see something or we may not. They’re really designed to work in ambient light in cities. But we have one infrared. Nothing
escapes infrared, night or day, rain or shine. As long as your night prowlers are flesh and blood, we’ll see them. I’d say we get one camera looking up towards the house, one looking across the lawns towards the lake. What about the infrared?’

  ‘We’ll have to take pot luck; there’s no telling who will go where and do what to whom around here. Stick it in one of those sweet chestnuts and point it at the lower end of the lawn. The nighthawks aren’t yet bold enough to dig holes right by the house.’

  In order to make sure that the cameras remained a secret at least for one night we were going to install them in the dark. In the meantime I took Tim to see the invalided Annis only to find that she had recovered enough to return to the pool house. And she was painting at last. According to her, the purging of the food poisoning had inspired her. I was glad to see it had not inspired her choice of colours.

  Stoneking was there on the opposite side of the pool, sipping a long drink and looking happily across the waters, though was less enthusiastic at seeing yet another new face approaching when I brought Tim to meet him.

  ‘Tim works for me sometimes,’ I explained. ‘He’s good with the electronic side of things. He’ll help me set up some cameras outside to see if we can work out who is creeping around your gardens.’

  ‘Much obliged,’ Stoneking said. ‘If you see anyone give me a shout and I’ll give them a blast with my special anti-intruder cartridges.’ Here he winked at me. ‘I’m just about sick of the whole palaver. I never thought it would get this hectic. But watching your girlfriend at work is quite the antidote, I could watch her for hours.’

  ‘So could we,’ Tim said, ‘but it’s getting dark. Let’s get out there.’

  The equipment came in an aluminium briefcase, complete with the rugged laptop they would be wirelessly sending their images to. I took Tim around the north side of the house, away from the terrace where a couple of people were still sitting and talking. The glowing tips of two cigarettes could be seen at the furthest end. We slipped past the shuttered catering van and the nests of gas bottles and vegetable crates it had spawned, then walked along the paved path that hugged the hedge which screened the greenhouse area. No one appeared to be near as I took Tim under the trees at the bottom. ‘I disturbed someone near here the other night. Perhaps this place is a good candidate for the infrared camera. Point it that-a-way.’ I waved towards the dig.

  ‘As good a place as any. It’s clouding over now; I can’t see any stars. If we’re unlucky we’ll see bugger all.’

  ‘Shame they’re not all infrared then.’

  ‘They all have their pros and cons. You might be able to clearly see the heat signature of a person but you might have trouble distinguishing between one person and another, except by shape. Especially with our camera, which is of course crap.’

  ‘Is it?’ I asked, surprised. ‘Why did we buy a crap camera?’

  ‘Because it was all you could afford.’

  ‘Another mystery solved.’

  There was no great mystery to the installation of any of the cameras either; they were so small that they were easily stuck into the crook of tree branches with a bit of putty. Getting them sited so they actually pointed in the right direction took a while longer. Tim was right about the night-vision cameras: when we tested them they showed mainly nothing. Anyone wearing dark clothing would be practically invisible. Where to site the laptop was the next question. It would be pointless sitting in the attic bedroom watching the screen, as it would take too long to get down into the grounds if I did see something. ‘How about some room on the ground floor?’ Tim asked.

  ‘It could easily give the game away if someone from the house saw me. People do ghost about at night.’

  The first raindrops were falling. ‘Looks like you’ll be up a tree under a brollie then, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so somehow.’ I shut the laptop and made off with it towards the house.

  The engine of the DS 21 is wonderfully quiet. I drove slowly across the grass without headlights to the extreme south side of the lawn and stopped near the mini digger. The car being black, it was virtually invisible from twenty paces away. Tim had no intention of spending the night in the car and went back to keep Annis company while I sprawled on the rear seats with the laptop open, staring at the feed on a split-screen display. If anything moved in any of them I could go to full screen for a better look. I had of course chosen the worst possible night for my vigil. It was pitch dark out there and was now raining in a half-hearted sort of way. If I were up to no good, would I choose to go out on a night like this? Which brought me to another question: never mind the weather, why do it now at all? Nighthawks went scavenging on archaeological sites because they wanted to get at valuables before the archaeologists did. But this Time Lines dig was very limited in scale and would be over in a few days. It would be much safer to wait until the hordes of people had left and sneak into the grounds then. Why the rush? What also intrigued me was the sloppiness of the nighthawks. They appeared to dig holes and then leave valuable coins behind, which would be difficult to miss with a metal detector in your hand.

  Pitch black. Lazy rain. Blank screen. The occasional hum from the laptop fan. Stomach growl. Jaw-splitting yawn. Midnight. I had no flask of coffee to keep me company – bad planning on my part – and should have insisted that either Tim or Annis took turns at this. A whole night of staring at that laptop would render me completely useless the next day. More yawns. I was bored again and this time I knew for certain there were only antacid tablets to keep me amused.

  Another few minutes and my brain was screaming for me to do something, anything, to keep it from turning to jelly. Surely a brain like mine could amuse itself? After all, it was full of stuff. Decades of stuff, all kinds of stuff. Things I knew, things I had seen, people I had known, memories of where I had been, memorable journeys, memorable meals . . . My stomach growled again; it was as bored as my brain. I gave in. I set the programme to record. If something happened during the short time I was inside that was just tough, at least I might have it recorded on the computer. I dashed through the rain to the hall and let myself in.

  The house lay silent. I climbed up the stairs. Tim’s car was still here so perhaps I could bribe him to do a stint at the laptop and if Annis was well enough to paint she could jolly well do an hour of watching the laptop screen. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request. Only I never got to make it. Up in the attic I opened the bedroom door. The room was dark. Through the open door the light from the corridor fell across their sleeping forms. The sheets were a tangled mass near the bottom of the bed. Annis’s red hair sprawled over Tim’s broad chest, one of her hands resting on his shoulder. Sweat still beaded down her narrow back. The room smelled darkly of sex and wine. Tim stirred, disturbed by the light. I gently closed the door again on Tim and his half of the girl.

  Okay . . . coffee, then, I supposed. In the yawningly empty kitchen I shoved the kettle on the stove, furtled about for coffee and found a large jar of it. Beans, naturally; Annis would have approved. Even though here in the north tower I was far from the posh living quarters, the sound of the grinder made me cringe as it seemed to tear the silence apart. I caught the kettle before it started whistling and splashed water into the cafetière. Then on a whim, while I waited for the coffee to settle, I opened the little door next to the pantry. There was that narrow stone staircase, leading up, leading down. I imagined a well-stocked wine cellar below but couldn’t quite imagine what I would find if I went the other way. A faint draught came up or down the steps, hard to tell which, and a smell reminiscent of empty churches. Then, far away and from upstairs came footsteps, slow at first, then speeding up. Quickly I closed the door. Now what? I grabbed the cafetière, ran to the light switch, flicked it off, skidded back past the little door and dived into the pantry and shut myself in. Didn’t spill a drop. Almost immediately I heard the door to the staircase open and close. Holding my breath I quietly lifted the latch on the pantry door and ope
ned it a crack. All I could see was the distorted shadow of a person moving towards the light coming from the corridor, then it was gone. Back in the kitchen I poured myself a mug from the cafetière, then opened the little door again. All was quiet now. On the third step up lay a light bulb and next to it stood a little rubberized torch that hadn’t been there a minute ago; tied to the handle with a red ribbon was a two-foot length of garden cane. Idly I picked up the torch and flicked it on. It bathed the stairs in a filigree web of diffused green light. Eerie green glow, indeed.

  I sighed. There was no time to run up and down spiral staircases now if I wanted to catch whoever was haunting the grounds at night. I topped up my mug and made my way through the rain to the car. Nothing showed on any of the three cameras; only the infrared images gave even a hint that it was raining. I reduced the size of the screens and stopped the recording, then played back the last twenty minutes at high speed. Nothing . . . nothing . . . there! Something had flickered through the infrared screen. This was more like it. I stopped, rewound and there it was, a badger waddling ghostly through the corner of the view. I let the recording run to the end but saw no more. Once more I concentrated on the three live screens. It was difficult, since there was only blackness to see and my mind kept drifting. The moon was out now as the rain lessened and the clouds broke up in the east but even so I could see precisely nothing on the screen. Then a movement made me look up. For a moment I thought I could see something through the car windscreen, a person moving across the lawn. I bent forwards for a better look and poured half a mug of coffee into the laptop. I panicked. Wasn’t that one of the things you were not supposed to do to laptops? I turned it upside down so it could drain on to the spotless interior of my DS while I scrabbled around for something to mop up coffee with. Finding only one crumpled paper napkin that had come with a jam doughnut I started mopping, dabbing sugar crystals from the napkin on to the wet keyboard. ‘Would you like cream with that, Chris?’ I asked myself.