I had assured him that it was pure chance; the aroma being distinctive, hard to forget when on a body in a ditch that dark night.
Whittle commented, “Mrs H. did not know sir, complete shock to her about it being on the dead woman.”
“The man playing away guv?” Tom asked. “Got to be.”
I nodded to myself in the car’s darkness, “Need to find out, but first need to know who the dead woman is.”
Tom’s large dark shape turned and agreed as I saw the lights of Merian play on his face, “What a show off, the man, got everything - helicopter, electric cars, priceless watch, people to fetch and carry - but why make such a fuss of it? No style.”
The wife has it for both of them I think as Tom continues, more perceptive than I would have credited him for, “Cunning as a fox that one, perhaps both.”
His next thought jolts me, “I reckon they might have been play acting their hostility to each other at times. Like kids at school pretending they hate one another so you tell your secret thoughts to each of them.”
The boy is no fool. There is much about this afternoon that I simply cannot fathom. Why had such a couple, from a world where control and focus was everything, acted the way they had? Allowing us deep into their home, especially me an alleged wife and child killer? Allowed me to so easily banish their underlings Adams and Crowley, who we really had little right to send away? Why let us see the rift between them, whether or not it was real? Why be so thrown by the perfume revelation, something accomplished people could have just laughed off or challenged? Was Tom right? They were like a pair of hawks working in unison, observing with huge orbs of eyes, piercing beaks, claws out ready.
Controlled effort and violence is the rhythm of boxing training. Keeping me in balance within the ruins of my life, surrounded by the stench of conspiracy and corruption in this once green and pleasant county. Perhaps it was ever thus, the good old days were never golden, as Sam always says, just easier to analyse now they are gone.
Tonight, I barely visualize my punches hitting home at people I would like to hurt. Badly. Rudd, Bull, Odling, Marshall, Smith, Creel, those who tried to hide the dead woman’s body even if they did not kill her, those who took my wife and daughter away from me. Tonight, it is all about the punishing routine. A good punch coming up from the lower limbs, circling onwards through the hips and then through the arm and fist to the imaginary opponent’s rib cage or jaw. The heavy bag swings, catching me a few times in return, as I punish it mercilessly.
Shadow boxing with dumbbell in each hand instead of gloves, then no gloves for speed hitting, left, right, left, right, a hundred times without a mistake or you begin again. Leg and arm muscles dream of relief from the speed bag pyramid, with one strike per hand, then two hits, and so on to ten and then the reverse from ten down to one. Concentrate to stay balanced, crouched, exhilarate in the pain. Avoid the anguish. No time for thought.
Little relief. Speed rope with a hundred regular double-footed jumps as fast as possible; any mistake, as ever, ‘Begin agin laddie.’ A stumble soon after ninety. Passing, Daniel growls, ‘D’naa get lazy boy.’ Begin again, at last a clean hundred, before crisscross jumps on the same rope a hundred times as my finale.
Insanely, I feel much better. Boxing normally sharpens my thoughts, tonight it obliterates them. Sanity breathed in with the sawdust, sweat, muscle fluid in the very air of Merian Boxing Club. Forty eager young men and women, going through individual routines with Daniel’s throaty voice closely observing, cajoling, persuading, coaxing and bullying.
***
Water to drink, towel soaking wet, I cool down.
My body sags as I sit, sweat grimed with exhaustion, in the dilapidated changing room. I manage a nod to two young men, who bounce in, shower, dress and depart even as my thoughts return to the inevitable.
To my Bess and Grace, their shimmering images distorted in the dark even as wind lashes against the dressing room walls. I need to praise Whittle and Fenwick for their efforts today. Amy has long said that I scare people, ever clubbing with harsh jagged words and looks. I am grateful too as Whittle did not agree with my strategy of ‘nasty / softly’ to disrupt the Hakluyts from their comfort zone of superiority. Yet she joined in with skill and gusto.
On our return to the office, their paperwork quickly done I know I should have gone with them when they invited me for a drink. Instead I just felt guilty deceiving them, setting a possible trap by reminding them I would be away Friday night in London, and wishing them good luck at the Ancaster Christmas Market.
I had managed a grin for a fellow local when Tom pulled a face.
Whittle was ever thoughtful, “We did not ask the Hakluyts why they are actually in Ancaster County sir? A couple like them …”
I said I would get Sergeant Parsons to ask when taking the statements, that Whittle should accompany her and Fenwick take Gadd to see Lord D'Eynscourte, Bull and the other staff. Whittle should also check that Albion House really did not have any CCTV footage of their gates or the road outside from cameras on land or drones.
Tom grimaces once more though whether at the news of Parsons staying with the squad or at the thought of more aristocracy to deal with I do not know. Likely both.
55
I revel in the shards of ice scoring my skin from the gym’s cold shower. I revive, feel almost alive. Too many shocks – my mother’s revelations about Val, the mystery of the Hakluyts, the porcelain that so affected me for no reason I can readily think of. Those who argue that mental and physical health are not related have never endured grief or hardship.
Things are winding down in the gym. Daniel is a mere shadow at his desk poring over a ledger, surrounded by mounds of paper and old boxing magazines in the glass windowed office off the entrance hall. He signals for me to come in as I pass.
Metal framed glasses perched on his close-cut grey head, he clears the spare chair of paper and quizzes me about the boxer Jason, and Dizzy Edge. I knew nothing, know nothing about them, do not care.
“Perhaps you should laddie,” he says heavily, instructing me to sit, something that always signals a serious conversation.
I see his stern face is not lightened by his usual bright eyes and affectionate stare. Rather the lumpy battered face, that has met and denied every pain in life, is a mask of worry.
“I talked with another trainer I know, in Manchester, this Jason,” he bites the next word out, “menagerie was booked in for two weeks there, had paid up front, lost the money when they suddenly decided they needed to come here instead.”
Strange, but boxing, life is full of people making strange decisions that do not make any sense.
“Only thing here that they wanted was you Caleb, you.”
I shrug in disbelief.
“Rang on Monday mid-morning, here by the afternoon and first thing they asked about, getting in the ring with you as soon as they could.”
He may have something. Early Monday I had found the body, examined it and been followed by the mysterious black pick up, been harassed by Rudd and Stephenson and seen Sam framed and arrested. But why would any of that trigger a boxer coming over to possibly do a number on me?
Daniel nods as though agreeing with my unspoken thoughts, “And then that whole performance, trying to disrupt you when you were training, the attitude, the illegal punches, the haymaker, the head butt, trying to do you some real damage thinking on it, with a photographer to record your demise boy, and their gang making to see you outside at the end.”
As he talks my mind slews to my first college room in Cambridge, staring out at a medieval quadrangle of manicured grass and serious thought hanging in the air. Such bright times of hope unabashed. I was just eighteen, lost in Milton the political optimist, the poet, the thinker, ever eager to go beyond the ‘phenomena’ of surface appearance to reality.
Apply that approach to material collected while detecting and the answer might be truth, I thought in my early police days but did not mention it to collea
gues. I had once raised it without thinking in a seminar at training college, and received a stunned response. Still, there is much to be added up Milton style this week.
Some pieces of ‘phenomena’ come to mind and I begin to think beyond mere appearance to what might drive them, talking out loud, creating a verbal time line as I go over my week, telling the story, warts and all of my last three days save for the revelation about Val. The noises of the boxing gym fade to silence, the few remaining members leave with calls of farewell but I barely notice as Daniel listens without comment. It is one of his strengths, making him part father figure, part confessor, part sergeant major.
Do all these luminous points, these ‘phenomena’ which have swirled through my week belong to one story, one case?
The woman in the ditch was killed around twenty to two Monday morning, landing in the middle of the field then. The driver was the chauffeur Castle or possibly one of two Chinese women who have now fled. Two persons unknown moved her to the ditch between then and four thirty when Sam arrived.
Odling and Creel quickly sought to take control, charge Sam, brand the woman ‘homeless’ and lose the case as settled and minor in the system. They did not bother with the basics. Did not send out press releases to identify her, tried to squash my attempts later, did not even leaflet the surrounding villages or put posters up in post offices and pubs, nor even check missing persons locally, regionally or nationally.
All of this presumably to give the two Chinese women from D'Eynscourte Bank of China time to complete their business and depart. The Hakluyts, also from the bank, orchestrate a high-level campaign of obfuscation on who was at the Albion dinner party and what it was about, presumably again to allow the Chinese women to escape. The chauffeur is also presumably got out of the way till the weekend on a trip to France though we could find him if needs be.
The attempt to fit Sam up for hit and run, and lose the case in the system, is done out of circumstance rather than malice aforethought against me. Though they undoubtedly relished the chance to harm one of my few friends.
Daniel says nothing as I recite how ‘Cat’ Rudd and Stephenson perhaps tried to unsettle me and Sam, by following us and the incident in the cafe, or perhaps they were there by pure chance. Parsons being so hostile, the drone at my house, the whole boxing match saga with Jason, surely all of these phenomena cannot be unlinked coincidences.
Daniel throws paper hither and thither as he searches one of the nearest piles then, even as I realise I have been talking out loud to myself and him.
“Silent as the grave laddie,” he grunts.
His eyes sparkle then as he comments, “The old boxing strategy. Psych your opponent out, soften them up before you strike for real.”
Words like sandpaper on glass then, “Substance won over style in the ring, will do again Caleb, but someone is after you laddie, a concerted strategy: get Cade.”
His words reverberate out and through the now empty gym.
He is right. The dynamic that goes beneath the appearances, holds all the phenomena together, is conspiracy. Against me. It fits better than cock up or spur of the moment actions or coincidence. Some malicious conductor is waving the baton and composing the requiem against me as he or she goes.
Daniel returns to rummaging in another pile of envelopes and letters on his battered old desk as he goes on, “Sounds to me as though Jason was part of an attempt to occupy you, upset your balance and concentration - going at Sam, incident in the cafe, Creel and Odling, the Albion toffs, pick up following you, Rudd re-appearing just now and his dog, even Sergeant Parsons, though I always liked yon lass at your Sunday lunches.”
He pulls out a letter, reads and waves it triumphantly, “Aye, knew I was right, Jason is sponsored by ‘The D'Eynscourte Bank, erstwhile supporters of sport the world over’ it has it here on the confirmation letter yon Dizzy Edge faxed over.”
I do not mention that it all began with my mother being asked to look at an old photograph. While my mother’s house has been burgled, perhaps because ‘they’ thought the dead woman had handed her something and wanted it back? The other burglaries of the school and newspaper office also involved a search for old photographs and documents.
His face lightens, “Lucky I got the cash off these buggers up front hey? But that bank - linked to your pal’s family somehow, I assume - seem to crop up a lot, do you have an overdraft with them?”
Sam and Daniel are the nearest to a father that I have ever had, strong friends themselves for over forty years and I suspect both widowers who share a secret love for my mother. I would trust either and both with my life and my deepest secrets, as now. I tell him of my mother in the market and her burglary.
Daniel’s shoulders slump as he says, “Ya Ma being contacted and burgled is a worry too and part of it lad.”
To rise again, “Sounds to me that if you find out what this dead lassie was after then you might find out what she wanted of your mother and you, why she was there that night and why she died, if it was no an accident. And a the rest could come together.”
I stand suddenly, wanting to be home.
As I rise Daniel’s final words echo what I am thinking, “You are in the ring, they think they have you on the ropes, surprise attack, take it to ‘em boy”
His voice is all relish then, “Need any help, just ask.”
Friday December 14th
56
For once I sleep in our bedroom, despite the memories that flood over me. I dream the dream, our last night together right here. Her wedding ring hangs by a thread over her bare stomach and then zings rapidly from side to side. She lays her head on my bare chest and so we sleep wrapped around each other. A perfect day. Then Bess’ tear drops burn my skin like acid. The soft smothered call of ‘Daddy’ on the intercom as Grace half wakes. We instinctively rise even as a bright light explodes to blight all and the funeral knell begins without.
Bess, in the labyrinth, spectral, running scared, holding a porcelain dish aloft, fleeing with her prize. Tens of thousands of lit lanterns flutter down and then soar pwards again from a giant skyscraper tower, its smooth black glass reflecting, magnifying the serried ranks of hundreds more such heights of commerce reaching for the stars above.
A voracious twisted dragon, all green, orange and red, emerges from the sky above our rural cottage, ridden by Hakluyt bearing his ancient pottery from a far-off land. The man’s eyes aglow, his musk rank, an evil ogre of charm covered lust wanting to exploit and pillage our home. I am maimed, weak, clawing to climb sharp contours to reach Bess, flailing and falling into black voids of screaming pain.
“Guv?” Whittle’s soft voice of concern at the silence as I finally grab my screeching landline.
“We need you at HQ soonest, guv. A friend of the dead woman is here; we may know who she is.”
***
The two women are exhausted and dishevelled, clearly fraught in mind and body. Totally at odds with their normal highly controlled appearance and behaviour.
ACC Hamnet and Lucinda have come to visit. The world is in deep blackness as I let them in, sounds muffled by the snow that lays, fog that clings, no sound or hint of life or thaw here as winter’s freezing touch grips again.
They come bearing gifts. The welcome sight and wonderful wafts of croissants and pain au raisin fresh from an early opening baker in Ancaster City, thirty-five miles away, a treacherous drive this early on a day like today.
Unseen I activate a small device Jerry has left me in my kitchen to overrule the bug that listens to me there, electronically replacing any conversation with Radio Two, as befits a man of my mature years.
The ACC is blunt. She has not slept, being in the office till two a.m., then on the phone with all and sundry at home till five, before deciding she should see me in person.
“No trail of this discussion,” she says heavily, sat at my pine kitchen table, her gaze sweeping the room, taking in Grace’s fading seven-year-old painting on the fridge, her unused yellow l
orry and kite in one corner. The desolation of dust covered abject loneliness shown by a score of objects in a room she once knew as a beacon of life, colour and laughter.
Coffee created I join the two women. The ACC sips her mug, dips a croissant in it as I hunt for plates to distract them, me, from their sadness at the state of my home, from what is to come which cannot be good.
Lucinda, wrapped in heavy coat, scarf, gloves, boots and trousers, all a matching light brown, is searching the room. “Central heating boiler? Freezing in here.”
My house is an ice box, save for when my mother comes once a week to clean. Perhaps it is self-flagellation, cold showers, a cold house. I open a cupboard, flick the heating switch to full, the boiler fires, the radiators begin to wheeze and gurgle as we all sit. Never has a pain au raisin tasted so enticing. The condemned man eats a hearty breakfast.
“The rich and powerful,” the ACC begins, words stabbing. “Think they own us, can call whoever whenever and demand what they want.”
I can only think back to seven years ago, when life was so sweet, and the then Chief Superintendent Hamnet used to come for Sunday lunch and bounce Grace on her knee right where she is sitting now. Tragedy lurks within every happy memory.
The ACC breaks through to me, reciting what has happened overnight and reminding me sharply that I should answer my mobile. I shake myself; it is in my car charging, has been since I left Merian’s police station. Nothing was ever urgent in Intelligence. Mea culpa.
“First wave of pressure like you would not believe with calls to all of us - the Home and Foreign Office, the Chief Constable, the Police Commissioner, me, Chief Superintendent Creel - relentless and from all directions.”
Within hours of Whittle, Fenwick and I leaving Albion House, the Hakluyt’s London lawyer rang everyone, warning that this was a quiet word only ‘at this stage.’ His clients appreciated that the police have a job to do and are only too willing to help, but would not stand for being harassed and intimidated ‘in their own home,’ with accusations of their guests being suspects issued without justification and suspected illegal recording of the interview.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 34
