Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Douglas Watkinson

  Scattered Remains

  Douglas Watkinson

  IndePenPress

  © Douglas Watkinson 2013

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain by Indepenpress

  All paper used in the printing of this book has been made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests.

  ISBN: 978-1-78003-679-3

  Printed and bound in the UK

  Indepenpress Publishing Limited

  25 Eastern Place

  Brighton

  BN2 1GJ

  A catalogue record of this book is available from

  the British Library

  Cover design by Jacqueline Abromeit

  ~ Other titles in the Nathan Hawk series ~

  Haggard Hawk (Pen Press - 2006; 3rd edition -Indepenpress 2013)

  Easy Prey (Indepenpress 2013)

  Douglas Watkinson comes from an army family and was brought up in London. He was educated at Haberdashers Aske’s and, after a series of unfulfilling jobs, went to East 15 Acting School where he began writing seriously. His first plays were produced while he was still a student but on leaving drama school he began writing for television, inspired by the likes of David Mercer, John Hopkins and Dennis Potter. His first half-hour television play – submitted entirely on spec - was produced in 1978. Shortly afterwards he went to work at the BBC and became a script editor, preparing and contributing to such classics as Z Cars, The Brothers, Duchess of Duke Street and many, many more. In 1980 he went freelance and has since written several stage plays, some radio, and literally hundreds of television scripts, most of which are still being shown on satellite channels in Britain and all over the world. His favourites include Lovejoy, Maybury, Boon, Forever Green, Poirot and, most recently, Midsomer Murders.

  He lives in a thatched house in a Buckinghamshire village with his wife and two German Shepherd dogs, a stone’s throw from the inspiration for Nathan Hawk. Like Hawk, Douglas has four grown-up children who have flown the nest. Theoretically.

  -Prologue-

  When Patrick Scott surfaced he didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but the fact that he was able to have an internal debate about it suggested the latter. However, the pitch darkness probably meant that he was blind and just as he was about to slip into a panic about that he made out a slit of light in the top left hand corner of his perspective. He took a step towards it, only to be whiplashed back, the effect of his hands being fastened behind him to something round and tall. He banged his head backwards and whatever it was rang out hollow and dull.

  Where was he, though? His imagination ran riot over the possibilities: a tomb, a charnel house, a crypt, a sepulchre, a disused mine, a cave in some remote mountain, a sealed wreck twenty thousand leagues under the sea…

  He took a couple of deep breaths and applied some logic, helped by the sound of a cistern flushing way above his head, followed by water rushing down inside whatever he was anchored to. He was in some kind of cellar, then, chained to a downpipe and with any luck the slit of light was the edge of a trap door through which he had entered. And by which he intended to leave. Meantime, this was ‘a situation’, his father would have said, and to deal with it would require the best of all those qualities the old man so valued: courage, determination, common-sense and many more besides. Right now they seemed far easier to list than to live by.

  He tried to give his predicament a context. For the past few days he’d been camping on Bindy’s boat, moored in Paddington Basin while she was off on a buying trip. This particular evening had started well enough with a stroll down the canal to The Malvern Café for something to eat and to soak up its inherent calmth, as the owner called it. It was half a mile from the boat and he’d managed it for over a week now without the aid of the walking stick. When he’d first used it, in the days immediately following the accident, people had stared at him. One elderly woman in the café had even asked him what he’d done to his leg. Nothing, he replied. He’d done something to his foot which was a totally different matter. She didn’t enquire further…

  At The Malvern he had taken his drink to a seat at the window which looked out over the canal and when the waitress brought him his shepherd’s pie she’d said, “The usual for Patrick.”

  He’d looked up at her. Usual. Usual. If you repeat a word often enough it loses meaning, although right then the tactic didn’t seem to be working. Usual. Usual. Christ, he’d become a regular here! He was falling prey to habit. Same place, same time, same dinner. That was how they tracked you down, by latching onto your schedule then striking when you were off guard.

  As he’d glanced around the café he’d realised that at least four other people had been present every evening for nearly a week. Two women who were clearly business partners of some kind, were discussing the week’s work. The more dominant of the pair was an animated creature with a host of hand gestures and darting eyes, head nodding forward like a bird hollowing out a tree as she made her case. Her friend would turn every so often and catch Patrick’s eye, possibly for sympathy, maybe because she liked the look of him but he couldn’t rule out a more sinister reason. The other two regulars were men who clearly knew each other but spoke little. The elder of the two was large and frightening, besuited and reading the Evening Standard while he drank tea and snapped at a sandwich. Occasionally he would peer over the top of the paper, glance at Patrick and look quickly away again. His companion, younger by ten years, wore jeans and an ill-fitting, bright blue ski jacket which drew attention to his peculiar shape.

  “I have to go,” said Patrick, rising from the table.

  The waitress looked down at the shepherd’s pie she was carrying, prompting him to take a £10 note from his back pocket, drop it onto the table, then leave as calmly as possible.

  He walked towards the newly paved marina, cobblestones now instead of trustworthy London slabs, and certainly not good for his foot, although the pain helped him to calm down a little. Safely aboard the narrowboat, with the cabin door bolted behind him, he slumped down on the sofa and thought about what he’d just done. He’d panicked, for no reason whatsoever, and as a result he was still hungry. He went through to the galley and poured himself a bowl of cornflakes. His mother would have been appalled. “Cornflakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she would chide. “You’ll end up looking like one.” Better a cornflake than a flaked almond, he thought, because that’s what she was turning into, poor old girl. She was going nuts. In the months leading up to her diagnosis, Patrick would have sworn that his father, not his mother, was the one losing the plot. But they were both handling it well, with as much dignity as approaching madness allowed. They’d decided to visit some of the places they had always talked about but never journeyed to, starting with the Great Wall of China early last year, moving to San Francisco in the spring. Right now they were in Cuba, of all places…

  His thoughts were interrupted by someone tapping on the cabin roof. He glanced at his watch and sighed, then called out irritably, “Please, I’ve had one hell of a day.”

  “Patrick, could we have a quick word,” said a voice he didn’t recognise, a tinny almost girlie voice.

  He went to the cabin door and opened it. On the other side stood the two men from the café, the ones he’d identified as regulars, Evening Standard and blue skii
ng jacket. The panic had returned, an increase in heart rate first, followed by prickly heat around his neck and sweat breaking out across his forehead.

  “What do you…?” he began, but to no purpose. His two visitors had barged into the cabin, pushing him backwards to give themselves room. The younger one, shorter than his companion by at least six inches, smiled at him.

  “Sorry to be so deliberate. We’d like you to come along with us.”

  “Where to?” Patrick asked.

  “Oh, it’s not far, I assure you. Our business partner would like to talk to you and … well, that’s it really.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Henrietta, of course.”

  “I’ve nothing to say.”

  The man tutted and moved aside to give his companion space in which to operate. The elder man stepped forward and drew a small telescopic cosh from his waistband, slipped his hand through the loop and gripped the handle. With his free hand he grabbed Patrick, turned him 45 degrees and struck him over the side of his neck. Pain first, followed by darkness, then oblivion. A strange paradox, Patrick thought, that he could remember losing consciousness. He’d regained it for about ten seconds, coming to in the back of a car, presumably en route to this place. He was jammed up against the man who had half killed him. The shorter man was driving.

  “Still alive, then,” he said.

  His companion took slight umbrage, as if his skill with the cosh had been brought into question. “Course. But is he really worth what they reckon? He don’t look it to me.”

  He’d been kidnapped, then. People usually did that for money. His parents didn’t have any. Nor did he. All he had was Henrietta. He hoped to God they hadn’t taken her. That was when he must have passed out again and had remained so until now.

  Up in the top left corner, the slit of light suddenly widened and what Patrick had rightly assumed to be a trap door yawned open on rusty hinges. Light fell into the cellar and shone on the overflow of family life, an abundance of old furniture, mainly chairs and chests of drawers, carpets rolled up and stored upright, pictures, hundreds of pictures long since denied places on living room walls.

  A figure stepped into the square of light and descended the stone steps. He paused seven or eight down, turned and flicked a switch. Patrick screwed up his face against the sudden glare and recognised the man as the younger of his assailants. He was turning keys on a ring, presumably trying to find the one to the padlock that held Patrick to the downpipe.

  “We wondered if you were feeling peckish yet,” the man said. “The consensus was for Chinese so we’ve ordered a takeaway…”

  “Where’s this person who wants to talk to me, your business partner?”

  “They’ll be joining us.”

  “Suppose I don’t like what they say?”

  “Hear them out first, surely.”

  “And agree to what they propose or that’s it for me? Curtains?”

  The man found his use of the word curtains mildly amusing and gave a short, giggly laugh.

  “Kill you? Don’t be so daft, you’re far too valuable to kill. No, the plan is to sell you … auction you off to the highest bidder.”

  -1-

  I was in Long Field with Martin Falconer, the night we found the metal plate, and like a fool I promised him that I would ‘look into it’. I was being polite, of course, hoping that by morning he would have forgotten all about it. No such luck.

  God knows why I’d ever wanted to go combine harvesting in the dark, but it had developed into a minor obsession that needed dealing with. I used to lie awake on still nights, listening to the hum of these mechanical monsters in nearby fields and occasionally a beam from their powerful headlights would sweep across the bedroom ceiling as they turned and made their way down yet another strip of rape seed, or whatever they were bringing in. The machines were driven by men I’d come to know during the seven years I’d lived in Winchendon and the tricky part was always going to be asking one of them if I could spend the night with him, up in his cab, just the two of us. Martin Falconer would be the least critical, I thought, but even so I still remember the way he looked at me before saying, “Of course, Nathan. We’re, er … doing a field over in, er … Dorton, er, just past the railway crossing…”

  There were too many ers, too many pauses in the invitation for me to feel totally welcome, but I accepted and he told me to join him whenever I felt like it. He would be there most of the night.

  I arrived at Long Field just after midnight, later than I’d intended. The Land Rover had shown a reluctance to start, but at that age I guess you’re entitled to the odd show of bloody-mindedness. I parked by the gate and watched the John Deere heading towards me, rolling blades out front cutting down all before it, stripping, threshing, winnowing, leaving a cloud of dust to hang in the moonlight. I heard my father's voice: “This bloody machine, driven by one man, is doing the work of a dozen, to say nothing of the team of horses they used for power.” It was one of those obvious truths best acknowledged and then forgotten.

  With the freshly cut stalks jabbing at my ankles, I went over to the combine, scissoring both arms in front of me until the headlights picked me out. Martin brought the machine to a halt and leaned out from the cab door.

  “Come on up!” he yelled over the noise of the engine and, at the same pitch, advised caution as I climbed the fire escape of a ladder up into the cab.

  It wasn’t so much a cab as a flight deck, computerised and air-conditioned, with Classic FM droning away in the background. Martin told me that this machine was so clever it could be programmed to do the work itself. Having paid close on £200,000 for it, he hadn’t tested that claim, but so much for my father’s contention, I thought: this bloody machine didn’t need even one man to work it, never mind the dozen or so of his childhood memories.

  It took about half an hour for the limited appeal of going up one line and down another to work its lack of magic on me and as I began to think of ways to say this to my friend without offending him, he glanced over his shoulder through a glass partition to the hopper that held the winnowed seed.

  “Jesus, didn’t see how full it was getting! That’s yakking to you.” He reached for his mobile as he brought the combine to a halt. “Jan, where are you?”

  Jan, pronounced with a Y, wasn’t from England, according to his voice on speakerphone.

  “Boss, on the road, between farm and you. Trouble with trailer. Nothing to worry. Fix it.”

  “Quick as you can.” Martin finished the call and turned to me. “Jan Zawadski, the new farm manager I told you about.”

  “Where’s the accent from?”

  “Same place he is. Poland.”

  “Plumbers, electricians, now farm managers?”

  He nodded out into the night where, half a mile away, we could see tractor headlights dipping and swerving as Jan obeyed his employer’s instructions to get here quickly. Minutes later he drove into the field towing a high-sided trailer, which he parked alongside the combine. He jumped down from the tractor cab and signalled up to Martin, who referred to the computer, fiddled with a mouse-like accessory until a bendable chimney reached out from the harvester and hung over the empty trailer. At the press of a button out spewed the winnowed seed and I saw Jan back away from the dust. I made out in the darkness a tall, fair-haired man, early 30s, dressed in the eternal check shirt and baggy cords of farm work. And just as I was wondering, along with my father no doubt, where all the English farm managers had gone, something on the ground caught Jan’s eye. He walked over to it, crouched down and picked it up.

  “What’s he bloody found?” Martin mumbled as he opened the door and began the climb down to ground level. I did the same my side.

  “What is it, Jan?”

  “I see it glint in the headlight, Boss. Glint, huh? Is a word?”

  “It’s a word.”

  “I see it glint.”

  He gave the object to Martin, who handled it as if it were treasure trove, exam
ined it for a few moments and then passed it on to me. I held it towards the light. It was a shiny metallic plate, four centimetres long, one centimetre wide, with four countersunk screw holes in it, precisely engineered. It was made of titanium, I thought, the kind of thing used in orthopaedic surgery.

  Then I made the mistake of voicing that opinion, and saw the … glint in Martin’s eye.

  “You mean human bone?” he said.

  “I suppose I do.”

  “So where’s the skeleton?”

  I looked at him, trying to think of ways to unsay what I’d just blurted out, but I held off. It seemed such a cruel thing to do, to a man in search of something to brighten his day. When you spend so much of it grinding up and down fields of rape seed, pausing only to ask yourself why it was given such an unsavoury name, is it any wonder that you long for a little excitement? Classic FM doesn’t really provide it.

  “Leave it with me, I’ll look into it,” I said.

  Against my better judgement, to say nothing of my urge to chuck it in the nearest hedge, I knew the plate was … significant. That isn’t a bad case of hindsight, of big finishes traceable back to small beginnings, but insight based on 30 years’ experience as a police officer. Even though I couldn’t fill in any details there and then, I knew the object we’d found in Long Field that night would have a disturbing story to tell.

  Martin Falconer was dead keen to hear that story and about three weeks later, with the harvest safely in, he started badgering me to keep my word and investigate the whys and wherefores of our discovery. The more he pestered me, the more I resisted. The more he phoned the less I was in. If he dropped round I would be just about to take a shower. If our paths crossed at the pub, I would have an urgent appointment elsewhere that I was already late for. I must have seemed like the busiest, cleanest man he knew.