Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Douglas Watkinson

  As he went to open the car door, I grabbed him by one shoulder, turned him and shoved him back against the bodywork. I stepped right up close into his space and stared at him, but the black magic of physical threat didn’t seem to be working. Without taking his eyes off me he said, with all the smugness of a man who knows that God is on his side, “Would you kindly remove your hand.”

  Priest or not, I had a sudden urge to take his head and slam it down on the bonnet. Trouble was, over the centuries these blokes had been massacred in their thousands for what they believed in, so slapping one from East Tilbury wasn't going to get me very far.

  “So you didn’t ask Charlie for permission to discuss the crime?” I said. “Like you should have done?”

  He seemed surprised that I’d picked up that scrap of Canon Law on my way through as a police officer.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You admit there was one to discuss?”

  He smiled and told me with renewed insolence that I could try any trick I liked to get him to reveal what had passed between him and Charlie, but he was not about to risk excommunication. Canon Law 1388 paragraph 1. Perhaps I knew about that as well? And that’s when the red mist began to gather, in spite of us being in a public street, in spite of my son standing right beside me about to witness his father commit an act of violence. On the fringe I heard Jaikie’s voice.

  “The guy’s just doing his job, Dad.”

  It’s always been an excuse I’ve loathed, but I considered it for a moment before rejecting it. That’s when Jaikie must have seen the warning signs. He stepped forward, reached into my inside pocket and I watched as he took out The Map, unfolded it and spread it on the roof of the Fiat.

  I really should explain about The Map. It’s an imaginary one of the world, bequeathed to me just before he died by an elderly career criminal with whom I shared a particular character flaw. In certain circumstances, usually after undue provocation, we both had - and I still have - a tendency to boil over. So far, so ordinary in anyone’s world. However, just as with Roy Pullman, my problem had always been that for the following five minutes I had absolutely no idea of the damage I frequently caused. To combat this, whenever Roy felt the anger rising he would reach for The Map and, with all the precision of a mime artist, spread it out and place his finger on what he called “a far more agreeable place”. He would go there in his mind and be unreachable, sometimes for over an hour.

  I released my grip on the priest, who must have thought he was witnessing some kind of pagan ritual as Jaikie took my hand and set my forefinger down on The Map. He looked at where it had landed and turned to me.

  “Winchendon,” he said.

  He folded up The Map, replaced it in my pocket and walked me back to the Land Rover.

  The drive home was a subdued affair, each of us silent for our separate reasons. I was first to break it, just as we emerged from the underpass at Hanger Lane, though there’s nothing to be read into us travelling from darkness into light. I muttered my thanks to Jaikie. They were brief and simple. He’d stopped me weighing into Robert the Priest and thereby adding more trouble to my CV. Jaikie nodded and gestured to a garage up ahead where he and Jamal sometimes bought coffee. I changed lanes, someone behind me hooted. Far from annoying me, I found it rather comforting. I was back on familiar ground.

  We sat in silence for a while, drinking the halfway decent Americanos in this mixture of petrol station, corner shop and coffee house. Jaikie had taken a caramel slice as well but was having difficulty eating it with the plastic fork provided. As he abandoned etiquette in favour of his fingers, I suddenly heard myself say, “Do you think I’m being paranoid over this case?”

  It must have sounded like a trick question, which is probably why he took his time over it. Finally he said there must be an easy joke in there somewhere but he’d leave it for another day. Meantime, no, but why had I asked?

  “I think these bastards are closing in. Charlie Drayton dying ahead of time is their latest move.”

  “You think he was murdered?”

  “I’m bloody sure of it. We went to see him yesterday, today he’s dead. As an actor, surely you know: it’s called timing.”

  I took a few sips of coffee, wishing I’d bought a slice of caramel shortbread as well. Jaikie offered me a chunk of his own but he’d mauled it fairly comprehensively by then. I declined.

  “Thing is, from one angle it feels like a crime I’ve invented, drawn out of thin air, but if that’s the case why are so many other people interested? This Julien Raphael hasn’t turned up out of the goodness of his heart. He’ll want something for his money. As for Ralph Askew coming back into Slater’s life all of a sudden? For film tickets?”

  “Does happen, Dad, people just turn up.”

  “After 12 years, bang on cue! And now he’s got a line straight through to you, me and Laura.”

  “What the hell’s he after?”

  “Christ only knows, but MP? Under Secretary? It took someone with access to government records to wipe out any trace of Patrick Scott. Who’s to say they didn't get rid of the man himself?”

  “But Dad, all these guys you mention are just … blokes.”

  It would’ve been my own reaction, 30 years ago, so I brought him up to date in terms he understood, pointing out that the bad guys didn’t necessarily come at you all muscle and good looks with a hoard of extras in tow. More than likely they came in ones and twos with a talent for fading into the wallpaper. Look at the people we already had who fitted that bill. Corrigan from SOU? Not exactly Josh Hartnett. Slater, a reporter, but not one you’d confuse with Robert Redford in that film…

  “All the President’s Men,” he filled in.

  “And Askew, for Christ’s sake? You couldn’t even bring the guy to mind.”

  He laughed. “I still can’t, but maybe that’s what you’re saying, he doesn’t stand out.”

  I nodded. “So you don’t think I’m way off beam?”

  “No. Two murders. Trouble is we’re the only people who know about them, apart from the killers.”

  “Half an hour from now it’ll be three. I just hope he believes me.”

  It was actually 40 minutes later when I parked the Land Rover outside Thame nick and asked at the desk for Jim Kelloway. He’d returned from a holiday in Sri Lanka three days previously, and was sporting a Bournemouth tan that set off his shock of white hair and sharp blue eyes. Here was a man due for retirement in a couple of years’ time, looking to leave behind the pallid grey of police work and reinvent himself as something more colourful than a Detective Sergeant in the Thames Valley Police Force, even though he hadn’t a clue what that might be. He was dressed as sharply as ever, a new jacket from a tailor in Colombo. The man had made him two sports jackets, a suit and half a dozen shirts, all for about 300 quid. He lowered his voice.

  “He does leather jackets as well, guvnor. Send him that one, he’ll do a carbon copy, only new.”

  I said I’d think about it and once we’d dispensed with some mild swooning over Jaikie from the girls in the office, and we’d been shown photos of Kelloway swimming in the Indian Ocean with his granddaughter, visiting an elephant sanctuary, leopard stalking and God knows what else, I told him the story of Patrick Scott. He knew about the break-in at Laura's but that was all, so I took him through the rest of it and he listened without a murmur of doubt, even when it came to my theory about the dog food. When I finally reached the death of Charles Drayton with the accent on it being three weeks before its due date, he paused, took out his iPhone and started to wrestle with it.

  “I know just the man you need,” he said. “Knew him at North Finchley. Bit off the wall like yourself and our generation. Artisan.” He paused with the iPhone. “These bloody things, you think you’ve got the hang of them, a day later it’s all a mystery again.”

  “Would you like me to…?” Jaikie began.

  Kelloway passed him the phone and said, “Alan Baker. His details are on there somewhere.”


  He turned back to me and said that he’d get in touch with Baker that evening, catch him at his ease. And I was right. Charles Drayton’s death, expected or not, should go down in the books and Alan was our man. He was a real lad, which was police shorthand for him being a womaniser, but in all other regards he was dead straight, worked like a bastard, and if there was something there he’d find it.

  “You’re the first person I’ve told about the dog food, outside the family,” I said.

  “Sounds like a damn good way of getting rid to me. In our day the disposal of choice was to bury the body in some new motorway, but times have changed.” He added in response to Jaikie’s inquiring look, “We’ve run out of concrete, son. Feeding to pigs would be my own choice. They’ll eat anything.”

  As usual there was a film to go with the theory.

  “Snatch,” said Jaikie. “Guy Ritchie film.”

  Kelloway leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. “What can I do?”

  It was a genuine question, not a declaration of uselessness.

  “See if Patrick Scott was ever reported missing to police and who by. I don’t think you’ll find anything, but…”

  “Why not?”

  “Because George Corrigan, much as I don’t trust him, will have checked. If he’d found anything he’d have asked questions of me, Laura, Martin Falconer, Jan Zawadski, uncle Tom Cobley an’ all. He hasn’t.”

  He nodded and made a few notes on a tear-off pad and I was glad to have captured his interest. Kelloway had a reputation for laziness which I thought was more of a pretence than anything. Secretly, he was the kind of copper who was anxious to make one big splash before retiring, to leave the job as a legend, not an also ran. Contrary to popular belief, they do exist. I thanked him and, as he reached out to shake Jaikie’s hand, he turned and picked up the notepad.

  “Sorry about this, Jaikie, but would you mind? For the wife.”

  Jaikie smiled. He’d heard all the variations there were on an autograph being for someone else. “What’s her name?”

  “Evelyn.”

  Jaikie wrote To Evelyn, with very best wishes and signed off Jacob Hawk. For some reason, which I’ll never be able to understand, it made Jim Kelloway a very happy man.

  Darkness had fallen by the time we drove out of Thame nick and with it, unsurprisingly, came a general sense of foreboding not helped by the all too recent murder of the one man who knew the name of Patrick Scott’s killer. Why that in turn should’ve made me realise I hadn’t spoken to Laura all day I’ve no idea but I suddenly had the urge to do so, even though we’d be with her in ten minutes. I asked Jaikie to phone and see if she had any plans for supper or should we get something from Waitrose while we were in town. His short burst of local fame had made him cocky again.

  “Shouldn’t I ask first if she’s okay?”

  “You can ask her to reel off the kings and queens of England if you like. I just want to hear her voice.”

  He tried her number only to find that her phone was switched off and as a result we were both edgy as we turned into Morton Lane, with Jaikie having re-dialled several times during the journey to no avail. The limbo persisted right up to the five-bar gate, even while Jaikie opened it for me to drive in and park. Then Dogge came belting towards us and I relaxed. Only one person could have let her loose.

  “Where’ve you been?” I asked, when Laura appeared at the back door.

  “Checking up on me? I took your dog for a walk, down over the valley beyond Chestnut Farm. We had a stalker. George Corrigan.”

  “Bloody Irish, they’re everywhere.”

  “How was Charles Drayton?”

  “Deader than your phone.”

  She smiled. “Come on in and we’ll drink to his memory.”

  Sip by sip during the next couple of hours I mourned the passing of the one viable link I had to Patrick Scott’s murder and, over supper, Jaikie tried to give my gathering bleakness a voice.

  “We reckon Drayton was pushed over the edge. His doctors had given him three weeks, but if he’d lived even for another day he might have told us the name of Patrick Scott’s murderer.”

  “Or admitted doing it himself, perhaps?” Laura suggested.

  That would’ve been far too big a break, I said, but the upshot was I still didn’t have a sliver of proof that Patrick was even dead, never mind that he and Charlie had been murdered. I’d searched the latter’s dying room and found nothing I could use. The rash of needle marks on his upper arm were the perfect cover for someone to shoot God knows what into him while their companion, in another room, counted out £2000 for the red MG Sports. And all Mrs Drayton knew about these two ‘old friends’ was they were always polite to her.

  Today, however, they’d been downright bloody rude, murdered her old man, paid her a fraction of what the MG was worth and brought the hunt for my 38th killer to a dead stop.

  It was three in the morning when I finally accepted that I wasn’t going to fall asleep. It wasn’t the coffee, it wasn’t the scotch and it wasn’t Laura snoring gently away beside me. It was my mother’s voice, repeating one of her treasured truisms. One door closes, another opens, she would say in times of disappointment or loss. My father's eyes would rise to the ceiling as he held back from belittling her optimism. She said it about my very first girlfriend ditching me. What have doors got to do with a broken heart? I wanted to know. You’ll see, she said, you’ll see. One closes, another opens.

  She was right, of course, it’s the way with doors, though as far as catching Patrick Scott’s killer was concerned, I couldn’t yet hear any creaking hinges. Partly to avoid more truisms from my mother, I went downstairs and put the kettle on. Tea. More caffeine.

  As I waited for it to brew I went over to the dresser, took out the metal plate from its place of safety in the cutlery drawer. It was still all I had, the only thing I could actually touch that gave me a link to the victim. It certainly couldn’t be classed as evidence. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it was a metal plate four centimetres long, one centimetre wide, with four countersunk crew holes in it. And the two people who’d persuaded me that it once belonged to a man called Patrick Scott who’d been murdered within the last couple of years were upstairs fast asleep. That didn’t seem fair. I went upstairs to wake them.

  Laura wasn’t as put out as I’d thought she might be. I needed help, I told her, and she was out of bed in a trice, turning the tables and making me feel guilty. She wasn’t on duty that day, she said, she could catch up on sleep if she needed to. What was the problem?

  “Kitchen?” I suggested feebly. “Jaikie’s coming too.”

  She put on the lilac dressing gown, tied it securely at the waist. I carried on up to the attic and prodded Jaikie. From the outset he was downright obstreperous.

  “Wassup?”

  “Rise and shine. Need your help.”

  “Jesus, Dad…”

  He tried to block me out by dragging the duvet up over his head and twisting himself into some pre-historic shape. A minute later and short of air, he flung back his temporary shell, pitched himself forward onto his feet and looked at me. I handed him yesterday’s T-shirt and jeans and after some under-breath swearing, he followed me downstairs. He fell into Maggie’s Dad’s rocker and laid there, body in a straight line at a 45 degree angle to the floor, hands clasped on his chest. It had been the full blown performance of a semi-conscious, belligerent and much put upon man. Laura was already seated at the table, fresh as a daisy. She’d even run a brush through her hair, probably for Jaikie’s sake.

  “So, how can we help?” she asked.

  I was still clutching the metal plate, for some reason, and now held it up to the light, turning it.

  “Tell me what you see when you hear the words Patrick Scott. Describe him for me.”

  Laura clearly didn’t see any point to the exercise but played along. “I imagine him to be six foot tall, dark brown hair, boyish face. Doesn’t smile easily but that’s
part of his stillness, not because he’s miserable. Glasses. Trendy, round, steel-rimmed. Short-sighted.”

  I turned to Jaikie and he rolled his head to get me in his eye line. “A cylinder, six inches high, full metal jacket, with a soppy label on it.”

  “Before he was dog food,” I said.

  “I see the kid everyone picked on at school. Shorter than average and already losing his hair. Works behind the counter at a gym, or somewhere. Nice enough bloke, it’s just that nobody wants his company. What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing will come of nothing, speak again,” he said, as if involuntarily. “King Lear to his youngest daughter.”

  “Zip it. Nathan Hawk to his youngest son. I see nothing because I’ve taught myself to resist mental previews of murder victims. They’re always wrong and wind up getting in the way. Besides, ordinarily after a couple of days I would have known more about a victim than anyone, apart from his mother. I’d have known what he looked like, what colour his skin, hair, eyes were. How tall he was, how much he weighed, if it was fat or flab. How many teeth were in his head, how many bones he’d broken, whether he smoked, drank or did drugs, what he’d had for dinner that day. I’d have known where he lived and who with, what he did or didn’t do for a living, how he spent his free time, who his friends and enemies were. I would have known most of his secrets.” I paused, not expecting a round of applause but hoping for more enthusiasm than Jaikie and Laura showed. “Am I making any sense or is it the coffee talking?”

  “You haven’t had any,” said Laura. She held out her hand for the metal plate. I slid it across the table to her.

  “You’re saying that in Patrick’s case we still know bugger all,” said Jaikie.

  “And somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble to make sure of it. Records wiped, an attack on you, Laura’s house being turned over. Even Corrigan suggested that I step back. Who told him to do that? I wonder. The same people who murdered Charles Drayton to stop him confessing?”