Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County.

by John R Goddard

  At University, Jerry dedicated himself to girls, his studies and becoming adept at a particular form of Asian martial arts and meditation, which he still religiously adheres to. Who am I to mock? Daniel’s gym has long been my home and temple.

  We shared a room as Cambridge freshmen at eighteen, close friends instantly. Bonded by our both being kids from backward Ancaster County in an ocean of sophisticated public school toffs, and our own affectionate love-disdain for what he laughingly always dubbed ‘ye olde shires of Ancaster.’ A ‘Mathmo’ in Cambridge terms, or a Mathematician to the rest of us, Jerry had soared to the very top of even the Oxbridge class, then rejected Grad School offers in America and investment banking where he could have made millions, opting instead for ten years in the civil service. He has never spoken in detail of it but I suspect he was in S.I.S., the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 in popular folk lore, a spooky world which trained him to the highest level in computers, and gave him a care worn sheen that could blend into any environment but warned not to trifle with him in any event.

  Work on computer software with various giant global corporations followed and he flourished without being happy, despite a bevy of beauties at his side. Then, perhaps inexplicably as riches beckoned once more, Jerry became a consultant, setting up a small specialist boutique business, employing a few trusted souls, youngsters in the main, ‘digital natives’ as he calls them. The brightest and best in their fields, all doing contract work for outfits big and small of his own choosing in the IT, security and telecoms areas world-wide. He is abroad a lot, never talks of this work when he returns even as we meet monthly as we always have. Even as my trauma afflicted me and a darker brew stoked within us both somehow.

  I shudder as I remember the carefree day of my wedding, Jerry, myself, Bess, almost gambolling through the streets of Cambridge after the ceremony, followed by Sam, his wife Janet, Henry, Valentine and my radiant mother at a more sedate pace towards the small hotel and reception.

  My mind jumps back to the now and I bark, “My mother.”

  36

  Jerry is his normal calm again. As the installer of my alarms he is the only other person who knows of the Incident Room’s existence, along with the hidden CCTV cameras and alarm beams in the gardens covering every angle of approach. All put in to warn of journalists infiltrating, and to guard against serious enemies that Jerry has long thought were behind my troubles.

  The Rudds and their dog approaching and then veering off from my cottage on Monday night triggered the alarm screens on his iPad. He phoned me from London with a jest about ‘the local peasants revolting’ only to become serious on hearing of the list of Monday’s events, especially Sam’s arrest and the planned sparring bout.

  “I am on my way,” were his final words as he rang off.

  Driving up overnight from London, he had gone straight to his eighty-six-year-old grandmother’s house in Ister as he arrived on Tuesday breakfast time.

  “Nightmare,” his soft baritone intones. “All cordoned off by the police, finessed my way through, Nan pretended it was all nothing but even she was nervous, thought she had heard some gun shots.”

  I listen intently as he goes on, “Police helicopter spotted a big heat source down her road, armed raid that dawn on the cannabis factory, every room stuffed full of them, two houses knocked together, curtains drawn, million pound a year operation.”

  I nod. Growing cannabis in an industrial unit was hard to hide so criminal operations had switched to a portfolio of houses, ideally next to a big factory where they can wire in and unobtrusively steal the £3,000 worth of electricity they need each month and thus avoid the authorities noticing the oddly high bills for a residence if they paid legitimately. Reduces the risk too. If the police close a big unit, their whole business is likely gone. Raid one small house they likely have another dozen to fall back on. The helicopter was shared with two other forces though and only did one day a fortnight for us but a raid normally followed with another four cannabis houses inevitably springing up to take its place.

  “They were bringing out two kids,” Jerry says with disgust. “Kids, seven or eight a cop said, Middle Eastern, been living in a cupboard with food brought in weekly, never let them out.”

  My voice croaks, “Cheap reliable disposable labour to maintain the plants.”

  His voice is vehement, “Bastards. Poor get poorer, crime is easy route out they think. Ister the shite hole.”

  He softens, “Still Gran has agreed to move out, finally, come and live with or near me.”

  I nod. He has a five-storey house in West London, a cottage near Cambridge, and has long wanted his Gran close even as she clung to her home of sixty years and her few friends who remain alive. I do not press him how he actually charmed his way through a highly secure and sensitive police operation which will have shut the whole street for the day.

  He has other news too, “I drifted around for the rest of today. Things are afoot in Ister, the County generally. Groundswell is growing. Rankin’s grip is weakening, so is the word on the street.”

  Do I care? Yes, a major part of my squad’s brief is to target Steve Rankin, sixty-year-old kingpin of drugs, prostitution, protection rackets, nightclubs, anything major in crime in the county for over thirty years. A man who has obliterated all challengers in that time in the most ruthless fashion, killing four himself they say, without ever being charged with anything. A man who has also moved into legitimate business, with a building firm, a large property portfolio and, no doubt, much else we do not know about.

  Jerry sees my eyes are glazing over. He insists I remain in the Incident Room away from any listeners while he brews fresh coffee, and forces me back in detail through events of the past two days.

  I find myself marvelling wryly at how much has happened to me for the bad. I tell of my mother’s clash with the dead woman, the body, the dinner party, Sam being flagrantly fitted up for the crime, the black pick-up following me, the possibly orchestrated incident in Bert’s cafe, Wayne Rudd’s return and threat, his job with the D'Eynscourte estate, the Rudds at my cottage.

  Jerrys asks, “Wayne was the one fingering the girls in your lane, the one you would not let me hurt in common justice at the time?”

  I nod, go on, the boxing match and the palooka insults, Odling and Creel moving to suspend me and being foiled, the press looming for my anniversary, the two distinct types of burglary and the farm thefts. I leave nothing out save my succubus rearing its head more regularly. His silence becomes more ominous as I talk.

  The voice is all sympathy though, “You are expecting another postcard this year as usual.”

  My sigh says I am. A postcard, seemingly in Bess’ hand, from some exotic location somewhere in the world, always the same message and wording.

  ‘My dearest Cal, Grace and I are fine. Please do not worry. Love, Bess. X X.’

  The postcards that have made me save up, cultivate foreign police contacts and take a month’s leave each year to depart whence the cards came. Perth, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and New York. Trips that caused Ancaster police colleagues to be even more disgusted with me. ‘Taking flash holidays when his wife and baby are missing.’ Yet there I was pursuing any and every lead from paedophilia to kidnap or simply a woman hiding herself away with a new life, all with nary a trace of a genuine lead.

  Jerry tells how events concluded last night. He talked to Daniel who told him his fears about ‘the sparring match’ being a set up. Jerry was there in the gym watching, followed me out lest retribution was planned, caught me as I fell, brought me home and ministered to me while also checking the alarm system throughout the house.

  ***

  He leads me outside to our cars; Daniel having had mine returned. It is another cold sour day of gloom laden clouds, cocks their inner clocks awry still crowing beyond the woods and steeple, rooks cawing in tall trees against the dark colours of a damp day. Frozen snow crunches underfoot as I move more easily now to take the d
river’s seat.

  Jerry flicks a small machine on, which sparks only green as he points it around the inside of my car in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotation. I sit quietly as he wanders around, only to return holding a small winking device, retrieved from my back-wheel arch.

  “Tracker, very sophisticated one, clear of bugs though,” he says quietly. “Serious stuff.”

  The words then are heavy, “I don’t like this. Bug and camera on the end of a tiny cable through the wall into your kitchen, another in your lounge. Streamed out instantly.”

  They were not there when he was here a month previously, had been put in Monday night as far as he can tell by the minute degrading of brickwork.

  “Very sophisticated, sensitive, expensive and very well hidden.”

  He goes for fresh coffee and returns with bread and jam in hand. Jerry always likes to constantly stoke his energy levels.

  “Who?” he asks.

  I outline the possibilities.

  Rankin, my new squad’s primary target in our mission statement laid down by ACC Hamnet, a fact that the county’s crime lord will undoubtedly know from informants in the police. He would have the sophistication and motive for all this perhaps though nobody has affected him in thirty years so why should he really worry now about my feeble new squad. Still information is always useful.

  “Two young lieutenants may be pushing him out in his Ister base, some say,” Jerry comments. “Or he has already handed over to them, for a price, all quite amicable.”

  Such is the word. I clashed on strategy with the ACC about all this. Rankin is her bête noire throughout her career and she is desperate to finally imprison him. I argued that Rankin will soon be gone through age; we should look to the future and take down the two new men before they are established.

  She had overruled me saying, “Rankin has another twenty years in him. Believe me.”

  ***

  Only Jerry knows that I actually like Rankin. When my own investigations began after losing Bess and Grace, the man had been a prime suspect for me, one of the few having the means and nous to do the forensic clean up properly and fit me up. And possibly a motive if my old squad were closer to a breakthrough against him in the south of the county then, even if I judged we were nowhere.

  After six months of fruitless research to find my family I brooked no resistance from Rankin’s front gate security, nor the guard outside his imposing front door as I simply barged in to his large country house in the rolling hills north of Ancaster City.

  Surprisingly I was ushered in further without comment by the man himself. To admire a home adorned with paintings, sculptures, stunning photographs of American landscapes and the docks of Ister long ago. In a vast teak panelled library, overflowing with well-thumbed books and oriental fragrance, I sat alone with him for an hour over afternoon tea and cake and questioned him. Or rather listened as he talked of life, art and philosophy.

  Finally, I had asked if he knew who might have taken or harmed my wife and child. He answered by leading me over to a corner table and pointing to a leather-bound copy of Roman poet Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses.’

  “You are a scholar of Ovid?”

  I shrug, “Once.”

  He recited, eyes lost in the dreamy landscape through the French windows to the summer sky beyond, “My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into different shapes and beings.”

  I nodded, the words are from the opening of the ancient writing.

  He surprised me then, “Forgive my school boy translation.

  “Talking about particles changing I know, but could be, perhaps is about people, life too? Things change, a constant dynamic, they will for you too.”

  His gaze returned to me, understanding, perhaps pity there, “Do not let things like Ovid go, such has kept me sane through these many years, it will you.”

  He had nothing to do with my troubles, would never countenance such, he assured me then.

  His gravelly voice was rich and sincere as his grey unblinking eyes pierced me, “Never touch wives or family or kids, that is my rule, never sell drugs to kids, no people trafficking, no under eighteen girls. Hypothetically that is, I would not allow it, never have.”

  I believed him then. I still do.

  As I left, he shook my hand and I let him as he said, “Thirty years ago, I lost my wife and child, took me years to get over it and I knew what had happened and, well, took the appropriate steps. You do not even have that solace. I feel for you, I really do.”

  Jerry and I are both remembering that incident. My friend had sat outside lest I needed the cavalry, and noted how Rankin had some device which blocked the bug I carried neatly hidden in my jacket’s lapel. The security men at the gate had taken away my mobile phone and mini recording device, but not found the bug. We are sure they would have swept the rooms after I left. A careful man Mr Rankin.

  ***

  I lower the tone.

  “Old man Rudd is in burglar alarms and security, might be up to tricks with the bugs and tracker?”

  Jerry is disdainful, “I will look into him but these are pretty sophisticated, spooks or corporate stuff I imagine. Still you can get anything on the Internet and if you know what you are doing, fit it.”

  Wayne’s desire for revenge is motive. Following me around is one thing, but can Rankin or the Rudds conjure up top boxers against me, really set sophisticated bugs and trackers, manipulate Creel and Odling? I doubt it though all three could be entirely separate incidents.

  “Pincer movements with different motives, neither knowing about the other, perhaps,” I say without conviction.

  In the silence, Jerry ventures, “My feeling from day one with Bess and Grace, Cal.”

  His voice is like a funeral knell tolling the points, “Someone we do not know. With knowledge and resources beyond our ken. For reasons, we cannot fathom. Is at the root of all this.”

  A resounding echo on the last, “Determined to harm, if not destroy you.”

  The plans we come up with then seem flimsy in the extreme. Compared to this apocalypse he paints that I dream of nightly.

  37

  Heat means life, progress, the ancients say. Four stuttering propane gas fires give the squad room a modicum of warmth. I still keep my overcoat on. There is a new energy to the group though, even Gadd is visibly enlivened.

  “Squad meeting in thirty,” I say, on route to my office to read crime updates, emails and read the text from my mother once more. It came in moments before I climbed into the ring last night. ‘Come around Wednesday night, Caleb, you know where. Sorry if I frightened you. All is well. X.’ I now text back to confirm.

  The three DCs avoid looking at my bruised face or watching as I wander around the squad room then, pointing the laser beam at wall and ceiling from a small black object like a television remote control in my hand. The green light does not turn red once, as Jerry said it would if there is a bug planted. My office is also clear. ‘Too much is happening, I don’t like it,’ he had said as I left, ordering me to be alert and regularly do this technical check on my police office, squad room and car.

  We gather round the conference table as ACC Hamnet and Jai Li arrive. Their chauffeur carries a box of sandwiches, pastries and coffees. The senior officer sits at the head, indicating for me to sit between her and Jai Li, the others straggling themselves around so they can see the big screen that has also appeared overnight for the projections from the laptop.

  Everyone stares openly at my face now they are closer as the ACC begins, “Sergeant Parsons is off being briefed to lead this team at Ancaster Christmas Market this weekend. With the case urgent DCI Cade, and you missing – due to a sporting event I understand from DC Fenwick.”

  She pauses as Tom smiles and the ACC sips her coffee, “The squad referred to me and consulted with Jai Li. We thought we would join you and DC Gadd kindly took food and drink orders for Charlie to buy on the way in.”

  Gadd concentrates on laying out hi
s notes neatly for once as Jai Li’s sultry voice laughs and says, “After last night’s exertions the ACC thought you might need recovery time this morning DCI Cade. I hope the other guy looks worse than you.”

  Her hand flutters towards my face in a gesture of tender sympathy, or scientific enquiry, but it stops in mid-air as she sees me wince even as I try to smile. A smattering of embarrassed laughter makes me feel almost human. As I pass my own hand gingerly over my face. Feeling the pain, more ointment is needed. Later.

  “Two young PCs have just joined Daniel’s gym,” the ACC says. “Word spread like wildfire. On your side.”

  She does not need to add, ‘For once.’

  ***

  The food is finished and cleared away as Whittle and Fenwick set up the display and the first image flickers onto the screen. They talk us through their morning’s work and discoveries, bringing up the photograph of each car, then name and brief background of the owner and likely driver, their arrival and departure times. The white boards carry the same data, along with pictures of most of the drivers, along with a minute by minute time line of events as we know them.

  They have been very busy this morning, starting at five or six a.m. The DVLA came up with the owners of each car overnight, research provided biographical details, and Gadd studied each car to determine if the driver could be identified from photographs and the number of passengers.

  Not being able to raise me, knowing that Chief Superintendent Creel is not to be involved, they had consulted with the ACC on their next step. The result is they have interviewed most of the owners and drivers by phone, using questions discussed briefly yesterday on location and as developed by the ACC with them this morning.