“Madame of the House - Lady Macbeth, or Scarlett O’Hara, Mum had to explain that one to me, the regular staff call her - had nothing to do with us. Her PA, Head of Security, all the important ones, shits. Sorry. The man Hakluyt, head of the table, he undressed you with his eyes, undressed all the women the same, ‘the leerer’ we called him.”
She tells me the guests, clearly visualising them from their name cards in the seating place. A local MP, the County Council leader, Bishop of Ancaster, ‘all the big wigs we had’. A Cambridge Professor, an American Professor - ‘they both insisted on being called Professor if their waiter asked them a question.’ Drunk Lord D'Eynscourte, Creel, a senior copper - ‘you could just tell,’ and ‘what’s his name, Billie Bos with all the money and factories he has moved abroad. Wives or partners for most of them.”
She surprises me then, “Oh, and two Chinese women.”
The passengers in the silver Bentley surely though we must not assume. No names for these two women as no name cards, one mid-twenties, one older and possibly her mother she thinks though does not know why.
“Exotic, attractive. Everyone sucked up to them as though they were royalty and they loved it.”
She pauses and thinks before revealing that both women were really interested in Lord Val for some reason.
“Hardly fit like Ryan Gosling or Zac Efron is he?”
A trifle harsh Val, I smile, though perhaps true of both of us, especially as I do not know either of those famous names.
“Oh, and Rocco, the Hak’s son was there early on for drinks, very fit,” she blushes then bitterly, "bit above my station in life though hey?”
How did things work on the night, I ask? Drinks reception with nibbles in one giant room ‘like an old ballroom’ downstairs, big fireplace, people just chatted about the weather and lovely house. Dinner in an old-fashioned dining room, ‘massive gleaming table, smartest of chairs, cutlery, crockery, six glasses per person, different wine per course, candelabra.’
Guests hardly said anything when staff were present. Once the meal was finished at ten, everyone retired to another room and discussions there went on between the men, and the Chinese women she thinks, for several hours while she was involved in the cleaning and washing up everything by hand downstairs. All gone by five a.m. when a mini bus took the chef and his crew, and local staff home via the service road.
The door to the restaurant opens slightly, slashing the alley with light and black but thankfully not revealing the two of us as a voice from inside shouts, “Debbie, break time’s up luv, need you back.”
She shrugs off her coat and moves to the door before turning back, “Oh, one thing, Mr Cade, was one really nice guy, big Londoner, security man, treated everyone right, Gary something, he was finishing working for the Haks this week, not very happy with them by all accounts.”
I smile my thanks for her thorough answers, “I am trying to stop - the smoking, my only vice, don’t tell your Mum.”
Is this Chinese wrinkle strange? The connections are building up. One of the postcards I received on the anniversary of Bess and Grace’s disappearance was from Shanghai, another Hong Kong, leading me to chase those clues for a month each time in the Far East without success on what my colleagues called ‘an exotic holiday.’ Thoughts stir at tangents, wild or otherwise. Val’s father died in China, the bank he founded has made its fortune and the family’s - in Hong Kong and China. Val’s legal guardian from age four to twenty-five, Robert Greene, still runs that D'Eynscourte Bank and has famously seldom left China for thirty years.
On the other hand, all probably pure coincidence. The Chinese women are not such a peculiar element really. If whatever business was under discussion involved finance, then a Chinese bank might well be involved these days and the obvious one would be the D'Eynscourte Bank with its local connections and a British boss.
I ring Val to ask about the two Chinese women being present but it goes directly to voice mail. I do not leave a message.
He will probably not tell me anything. I smell a binding Confidentiality Agreement here, stopping even my old friend from helping me. The secrecy and Val’s reluctance to give me details can be understood if they are trying to keep some simple and quite legal commercial development quiet for the moment. Chinese involvement might not be embraced by all either though beggars cannot be choosers in Britain’s post-Brexit world. He may not even be allowed to reveal the Confidentiality clause even exists. What a state for two old friends to find themselves in.
***
I enjoy the soft slap of my footsteps on the snowy cobbled streets as I wander beneath the imposing church spire of St James, the legendary ‘peasant’s church’ where revolts against exploitation began and failed eight hundred years ago. Dim street lights, Victorian in design even now, struggle against the chill air and white shroud of night mist.
The bells boom above me, rolling through the narrow streets in echo. I am opposite the sixteenth century Wheatsheaf pub, all open fires, low beams, small bars in three rooms and locals hushed over Real Ale beer in tin tankards or thick glass pint pots. It was Bess’ favourite pub, mine too every night for a while after she disappeared. Was I on the edge of alcoholism then? No, far from it. I could have been but three months into nightly drinking I just stopped and had not touched a drop since though I so long for one tonight.
I am moving to the door, the lights, warmth and laughter of Christmas beckoning, when Jerry rings and I note each of my DCs has rung me twice. I tell him of developments today in fine detail and that I am seeing my mother shortly. He is hovering in Ister, finding things out, will not be back till early tomorrow. Jerry stresses for the umpteenth time that he has left the bugs in place, that I should be aware but not make it at all obvious I know. Since I speak to nobody at home that is unlikely.
I stand in darkness, bereft in ancient streets, under attack from every quarter it seems as snow drifts down around me once more.
My phone rings again. On the office loudspeaker phone my squad update me before they knock off for the night. It is nine at night, they have pulled a fifteen-hour day. I admonish and congratulate them even as I hear the crackle of achievement in their voices and tell them to not come in until mid-morning tomorrow.
Fenwick is first, they have the identities of the two special guests and the chauffeur in the silver Bentley.
Without thinking I deflate their news, “Two Chinese women, one in her twenties, one in her forties?”
The standard, “Yes, but how did you …?” from Whittle and “Tell you tomorrow” from me.
Whittle credits Fenwick for thinking up ‘their little ruse.’
Fenwick gives credit to Whittle for carrying it out.
Perhaps they detect my impatience as she then explains in an excited rush, “We rang the agency after six, when the day manager had gone, got a clerk, young student, earning some extra money. He gave me their names without a second thought.”
“Asked her out, wants to discuss whether he should join the force,” Fenwick interrupts laughing.
I sigh as Whittle continues, “Bai Yen and Shi Yen, told me they were both beautiful. Bit more on the chauffeur too, one of their best, Mark Castle, has driven these women before, ex-army, he speaks a little Mandarin so they like him.”
I begin walking again, back to my car at the station. I could have got this news in the warm face to face.
Whittle rushes on, “There is more Sir, the car was booked out for two weeks, most of it in Ancaster County, but it was returned Monday morning, five days early, saying they had perhaps scraped it hitting a fox, asked to get it cleaned and to charge the costs.”
The plot thickens.
DC Gadd’s voice crackles in my ear then, “We could not get hold of you guv, wondered whether we should ring the chauffeur, we have his name and address but did not want to spook him.”
He too has a little ruse, way more devious than I would have ever dreamt from him: for Whittle to have a woman to woman with the chauffe
ur’s wife. I tell him it is an excellent idea but to leave it until tomorrow. I will ask Whittle to do it.
A ‘Super Recogniser,’ and now a real copper, our Mr Gadd.
39
Hunger drives many animals out this night despite their instinct screaming against and cold chilling to the bone. Yet with car window down I enjoy the eeriness of silent dark stretching beyond and seemingly forever. A sparrow hawk seeks soundlessly like a baleful shadow through the nearby trees. When it comes, the victim’s cry is piercing, one terrible gorged death to feed the aerial hunter. Rat, rabbit and deer flee from my headlights as they search across road, field, and woodland for food and rest.
Elizabethan poet, diplomat, spy, Sir Thomas Wyatt never ventured this far north but his words come to me now. ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek … I have seen them gentle, tame and meek, that now are wild and do not remember.’ With ‘they’ being animals, birds, people generally or most likely a beloved woman? All are true; from me, people flee. Two shapes, seeming black swans soar serenely above me and away.
Knocking on the door of Miss Loam’s isolated cottage in the midst of the wild Ancaster Fen I know that here at least are two women who will never desert me. The light in the hall is muted as she hugs me close without a word, even as her tears fall on my neck and I enjoy some ease at last. With a stifled sob my mother leads me through to the living room, instantly disappearing through the kitchen door as I stand helpless. I still have not seen her face.
Ovid, my English Springer Spaniel, pads slowly to me, black and white coat glistening as ever despite the sad old eyes. I stoop and cuddle her head close, whispering apology for not having this affectionate and loyal animal with me these past seven years.
Grey haired and spritely still at eighty-five, Martha Loam sits in her rocking chair by the crackling open fire, knitting and listening as my mother busies herself with kettle and crockery for tea that I suspect none of us want at this late hour. The room is homely, old fashioned, little changed in my lifetime. Creaking boards and stairs, the hiss of a water pipe, book lined walls, heavy velvet drapes at windows and doors, solid leather sofa, arm chair and wooden coffee table. Four wooden standard lamps pool light, one in each corner, illuminating the countless photographs - of pupils from over forty years of teaching who have become her erstwhile friends down the decades - that stand on every shelf and table here, in the hall and throughout the house. Ancient deep aromas stroke me as I enjoy a framed new print of a Rembrandt painting hanging on the wall, bought no doubt on Ms Loam’s annual pilgrimage to the art galleries of Europe.
Her gnarled bony hand grips mine as I sit on the sofa near her. We say nothing but listen to the sounds of the clock ticking, crockery tinkling and the clacking of her knitting needles as she works effortlessly. Her mouth silently sounding through ‘plain, plain,’ and then begins again, ‘pearl, pearl.’
I softly raise a delicate question we have discussed before, asking once more if she is sure as I do not want to bring her any hint of trouble.
Her voice is broad local in accent and low so my mother cannot hear. Martha is a lifelong Quaker, has always been a campaigner for right, working against injustice locally, for the end of apartheid in Africa and for women’s rights everywhere.
“I am privileged to live to my principles, help my friends, do what is right and proper, no matter the world’s never ending foolishness, helping you is a privilege, Caleb.”
Her eyes are bright, her all seeing nod saying ‘All will be well’ as it has done since my childhood. If only she were right. I know now she is wrong. For me at least.
My mother Marion returns, places a tray with china teapot and crockery on the table. Only then does she sit by me on the sofa, suddenly close, her face revealed by a pool of yellow light.
It is not my mother. Or at least, not the luminous vivacious mother I saw last Friday at our weekly dinner date at my house. The day she fusses over me, delivers my laundry, stocks my freezer and tidies up as best she can in a home neglected for so many years. As tall as me, with the lithe figure of a woman half her sixty years, then she had a healthy complexion, sparkling golden eyes, hair the colour of honey framing her face, a pert nose she always says she wishes were slightly bigger and a voice that naturally caresses and cares.
My trauma this last seven years has been burden too, staining her life and spirit also. She lost her beloved grand-daughter, her friend Bess, many so called friends, perhaps her job and in many ways, her only son, over it.
Her eyes are more watchful, her approach less trusting when once she thought ill of nobody. Who knows the effort it has cost her to maintain normality? Yes, I am highly biased but for me she has remained beautiful and dignified in meeting all that has been thrown at us, even when she had ten reporters camped outside her door one weekend. All while continuing with a demanding job as Director of Nursing for our local Health Trust, a staff of over a thousand and calls for her to be sacked - because of me.
Now her eyes are bleak, almost staring sightless, face haggard, skin sallow, sagging, hair bedraggled, white streaks slicing it in places. All this newly arrived these past few days. Still she moves with the grace of a dancer as she pours our tea and stands to tender our cups. She has not slept, perhaps for four nights. Her breathing is cracked somehow, eyes holding back a sea of tears, as she sits, lost, concentrating on a small clearly sodden hankie twisting in one hand.
I long to hurtle backwards in time, to when we would call without fail to see Martha and stay for tea every weekend. As a boy, I was often bored, reading an old book, sat listening or playing in the garden alone with nary a house in view and the cold North Sea only a mile or so away. But now I yearn for such carefree times; for us all.
The two women ‘gabbing twenty to the dozen’ then. My mother would be reciting recent events in our village: the school nativity coming soon, her skills at making costumes in demand by desperate unskilled or working parents with no time. Rehearsals for the January pantomime discussed. While the Christmas tree for our village square would be arriving shortly to be unveiled on a Thursday with a sing song led by the vicar and village schoolchildren with mince pies and hot mulled wine to follow. Inevitably the progress of their home-made jam from local berries, of their piccalilli and chutney, and their cherished Christmas puddings created over the summer, would be pondered at great length.
This night nothing stirs as I stare at the embers of logs burning bright, unable to begin myself, unwilling to interrogate my own mother. The dog has laid by my feet, head held up for me to stroke his nose and ears as of old.
I will some help from the old lady, the revered woman who taught my father Frank and Sam, Henry, Bess, me, Val and even his father at D'Eynscourte Primary School. Miss Loam knits on, secure in the house of her birth and long years here, while my mother wrings her white cloth for the umpteenth time, stares unseen and the clock booms eleven to surprise us all with the tea untouched.
***
As always it is hot in here. I shrug my black overcoat off. My mother finally looks up, and starts in horror, her hands moving to softly caress my bruises.
“Remedy, top shelf, green bottle,” Martha’s voice crackles.
Even as my mother returns solicitously I cringe at the vile smell as she pulls out the cork. I almost pull away as she uses cotton wool to dab my face with the ugly green slime of a Loam special concoction from local herbs and seaweed.
“Be still Caleb, have Martha’s remedies ever failed you?” my mother says in mock reprimand, purpose in her voice now, even as she quickly finds every scratch and bruise, even as I come to resemble the Jolly Green Giant.
Her breath is close to my face as she hovers, finishes and says sharply, “And you have been eating fish and chips this night Caleb Cade, shame on you.”
I laugh, seize the moment, take her hands and draw her to sit close beside me as I ask, “Tell me about Saturday.”
The jollity was but momentary. She fights back a tear, sucks in a deep breat
h and tells.
A woman had rung her twice during the week before, introducing herself as a journalist and film maker. My mother put the phone down quickly both times. With my notoriety, she has had a lot of practice. Last Friday night after she got home from seeing me, the woman had rung again and managed to say it was nothing to do with me before my mother disconnected once more. She thought it was just the usual odd journalist, out for a new angle on my story after seven years. Her violent head shake is eloquent to dismiss such hope as forlorn and I feel my own head tighten within.
Saturday morning was the usual routine, eight-thirty at the hairdressers in Ister, then wander the market before coffee and a scone with Sam. She had avoided ‘that appalling Bull boy,’ just seen Sam approaching when a young woman had stood in her way.
“I did not know who she was until she spoke, thought how beautiful a girl, well spoken, stylishly dressed, and then ….”
My mother falters and falls silent with the ticking and the clacking and the low crackling the thinnest of backdrops. The gusting wind and snow outside intrude by breaking on the glass before receding from the heavily draped windows and doors.
I distract her to move things along. Why did she not tell me about the woman when we met last? She did not want to worry me. Did the woman give her name and company? Thinking about it since, the woman was very professional, did give those details but my mother cannot remember beyond one began with P. It was not foreign, but not every day, is all she manages.
She continues about the market. The woman said she just wanted to talk about my mother and father in their youth at Cambridge and in Ancaster.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 24
