The Hireling's Tale

by Jo Bannister

  Superintendent Hilton cleared his throat. ‘So the mechanic took a shot at Kendall in order to bring Mr Shapiro out to the house. Did he mean to kill Kendall as well?’

  ‘No,’ decided Liz. ‘Donovan’s right - a man as careful as this one hits what he’s aiming at. If he’d been aiming at Kendall the man would be dead. Frank would still have gone to his house. If anything it would have been easier to hit him bent over a body on the back steps than moving around.’

  Hilton sniffed; it looked as if his moustache was shrugging. ‘So Kendall’s part of it?’

  ‘If he’s not the target - if in fact the mechanic went to some trouble to avoid shooting him - I think maybe he’s in it up to his neck.’ Liz was thinking on her feet: until the words came out she hadn’t much more idea than Hilton what she was going to say. ‘He set up the conference, and when one of his clients asked for a tom he fixed it up. He called a girl he used himself. Then he fixed somewhere for them to meet that wasn’t the man’s own room. Maybe he suspected this could get nasty, maybe it was just a matter of discretion. Either way, he invited Mrs Atwood out for supper so they could use her room.

  ‘He wasn’t there when the girl was killed, and maybe he had no reason to expect that. The man must have cleaned up by then or Mrs Atwood would have screamed blue murder when she went up to bed. So maybe the first Kendall knew of what had happened was when Frank talked to him on Monday morning.

  ‘To protect himself he gave Frank everything he asked for, including the list of delegates. But as soon as he could he called his friend to warn him we were on his case. Kendall knows Frank, at least by reputation - he may have overestimated how far we’d got with the investigation. Or maybe he recognized that Frank was their biggest danger: that as long as he was in command discovery was a real and imminent possibility. The rest of us didn’t worry them too much, but Frank Shapiro’s brain is like the mills of God: it grinds exceeding small. To be safe they had to get him out of the picture.’

  ‘You mean, Kendall suggested killing him?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just wanted him in hospital for a couple of weeks until they had the thing tidied up. And maybe even that wasn’t Kendall’s suggestion but what his friend - his client - whoever we’re talking about — thought would be best. He made some calls of his own, and within a few hours a first-class mechanic was on his way to Castlemere. To get Frank Shapiro off the case, and to dispose of the only witness who hadn’t every reason to keep quiet.’

  ‘You’re making a pretty persuasive case against him.’

  Liz had rather surprised herself with how strongly it had come out. She rocked a hand. ‘It’s easier to believe he was involved than that he was an innocent dupe. It could just about have happened without his cooperation but it would be an awful lot harder. Oh, I know, none of this amounts to proof. In fact it’s going to be very hard to prove. But it is suggestive.’

  A shock wave lurched through her expression. Her eyes saucered and her lips blanched and parted. ‘Oh my God!’

  Hilton stared at her. ‘What? Inspector?’

  ‘Kendall,’ she managed. ‘I talked to him last night. At that point I had no reason to suspect him of complicity. I was just keeping him up to date, reassuring him …’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him about the girl. I told him I was sending Donovan to collect her first thing this morning. Sir, if he is involved—’

  The superintendent finished the thought for her. ‘It would be the easiest thing in the world for the mechanic to follow Donovan as he left. Yes.’

  Liz felt someone had kicked a ladder out from under her. Her mind windmilled as she fought for balance. ‘He thought there was a car following him. He gave me the number. Then it disappeared and he thought he’d been wrong. But maybe he wasn’t at all.’ She clutched for a passing straw. ‘Kendall’s in hiding - he’s not supposed to use the phone.’

  Hilton shrugged. ‘That was for his protection. I don’t suppose DC Morgan sat all night watching to make sure the man didn’t cut his own throat.’

  ‘So he knows.’ Liz’s voice was low, stunned. ‘He knows about Maddie, and that she’s coming here and who’s fetching her. They’ll never make it!’

  Detective Superintendent Hilton was not widely known as a kindly man. But he had no interest in rubbing salt into a self-inflicted wound. He stood up abruptly. ‘All right, this is what we do. I’ll go and see Kendall. You call Donovan, warn him he may have a tail. Find out where he is, then organize him some support, from whatever station’s closest. If he can keep out of trouble for another ten minutes they’ll be all right.’ He reached for his coat and headed for the stairs.

  But before he got there he stopped and turned back. ‘Ah - Inspector Graham?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That address in Northampton? I think this constitutes a need to know.’

  Chapter Eight

  Donovan had his hand on his phone when he saw the navy-blue hatchback again. Behind him, this time. He remembered the knot of lorries that he’d passed. The car must have been on the inside, shielded from view. That wasn’t the sort of thing that happened accidentally. To make it happen the driver had manipulated the speeds and positions of three other vehicles, a task comparable with juggling petrol bombs. No undertaking for an amateur.

  First things first. He left the phone in his pocket. ‘We have to get off this road,’ he said tersely, ‘I think we’ve got a tail. No’ - he grabbed Maddie’s shoulder as she went to screw round - ‘don’t turn round: I don’t want him to know we’ve spotted him. We need the element of surprise if we’re going to lose him.’

  ‘Him?’ she echoed breathlessly; as if there could be two answers.

  Donovan shrugged. ‘I guess you were right all along.’

  ‘You were supposed to protect me!’ she wailed, clutching her seat as if it might try to throw her.

  ‘I am protecting you,’ said Donovan indignantly. ‘We’re halfway home’ - this was an exaggeration - ‘and the worst that’s happened so far is that we’re sharing a road with the ungodly. And I’m going to do something about that.’

  His narrow face screwed up with thinking. He was trying to picture exactly where they were, as on a map. The road had divided a mile back; he’d headed south towards Castlemere. But there was another road, coming up on his right, and off that were a whole series of minor roads wandering round the fen. There were those, probably, who knew the little back-ways through the fen even better than Donovan, but most of them were waterfowl. He could take the secondary road as if he was still heading for Peterborough, then double back out of sight and rejoin this road a few miles further on.

  The junction loomed. He slowed the Jaguar, indicating in good time and then making the turn as if he had no idea there was a paid killer behind him.

  For perhaps twenty seconds, which was long enough for him to start wondering if he’d misunderstood, nothing followed. He eased back on the accelerator, watching his mirror. Finally it was there: the navy-blue hatchback. ‘All right,’ he said with a kind of leaden calm. ‘So now we know what we’re dealing with.’

  Maddie had known for three days. She’d known her life was in danger before she fled The Barbican Hotel. She’d known it was still in danger as she hid in King’s Lynn, and after she saw on the news what happened at Kendall’s house she knew that the danger was closing in.

  And still it came as a shock that what she had feared, what she had been so sure would happen, was actually happening now. A man who had been paid to silence her was in a car quarter of a mile back up the road, and her life depended on an unarmed detective who’d be reluctant to put his foot down for fear of damaging his superintendent’s suspension.

  Donovan watched for the first road off on his left, but then cruised on past it apparently oblivious. A mile further on was another, and a third half a mile beyond that. They all came together, along with a fourth that rapidly divided into a fifth, in the middle of the Bedford Levels. Maybe
he didn’t know them as well as he knew the Castlemere Levels a little further south, but if he couldn’t lose a stranger there it was time he took up a less demanding profession.

  Between the second and third turnings he pulled his seatbelt tight and advised Maddie to do the same. ‘It’ll get hectic for a minute or two, but hang on, there are half a dozen chances to lose him in the next couple of miles. If you’re going to scream, do it quietly; if you’re going to throw up, not on the chiefs’s upholstery.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ gritted Maddie Cotterick.

  With the moment when he had to make his move coming up at a steady forty-five miles an hour, what Donovan needed most in the world was a distraction. Experience had taught him, however, that Fate tended to save her surprises for when a man desperately needed a smooth run. So when a tractor began emerging from an adjacent gateway, for a split second Donovan wasn’t sure if he was actually seeing it or if it was just wishful thinking.

  After that, though, instinct took over. He wanted that tractor between him and the hatchback when he turned off the road. He eased up on the accelerator enough that a gap appeared ahead of him and the tractor moved into it. Donovan slowed some more, and saw the hatchback reduce speed behind him. Then he went to pass the tractor.

  But as soon as he had the road in front of it he braked sharply. The tractor braked too, blaring a horn like a coaster in dense fog; behind it the hatchback, which had begun to overtake, was forced to brake as well. Donovan yanked hard at the wheel and the big car answered with well-bred tolerance, cornering snugly into the minor road. A glance in his mirror showed the tractor stalled across the junction and the hatchback flashing its lights in frustration. Castlemere had its share of farmers: Donovan knew that the only thing capable of making them hurry was the promise of an EEC food subsidy. He vented an evil chuckle and floored the accelerator, and the next bend, and the next junction, appeared fast enough for him to lose sight of the pursuit.

  If he hadn’t known about the crossroads further on he’d have taken that first available turning. But he did; and he hoped that the man behind him, who probably didn’t, would assume that was what he’d done. He drove on, as fast as he could steer, and took the second turning, and immediately turned left again. Already he was pointing back towards the Castlemere road.

  The only drawback was that now he had three miles of minor road ahead of him. That hardly mattered if he’d already lost his tail, and he thought there was a good chance that he had. He’d had a choice of five routes since he last saw the navy hatchback; the logic of the one he’d taken was only evident to someone familiar with the area.

  They were through the long straight stretch and into the next bend, and still there was nothing in the mirror. Donovan allowed himself the luxury of a breath that went deeper than his Adam’s apple. Maddie, still clutching her seat as if only death would part them, said in a small tight voice, ‘Are you going to tell your Inspector what’s happening?’

  Until then there hadn’t been time for Donovan to deal with anything but his driving. In truth, though, he’d forgotten the phone inside his jacket. He was just old enough to have learned this job in the pre-Cellnet era, when a policeman’s best chance of summoning urgent assistance was a lapel radio that only worked if he was in the right place at the right time and there wasn’t an R in the month. Even that made him a child of the technological age in Shapiro’s eyes. When he was a beat copper they depended on whistles.

  ‘Er - yeah. You dial.’ He passed her the instrument, repeated the number. ‘When you get DI Graham, I’ll talk to her.’

  She got Queen’s Street. She got Sergeant Bolsover, who performed his function with a weighty deliberation that made the Bedford farmers look like gadflies. She explained that she had DS Donovan for DI Graham, and Sergeant Bolsover said he’d enquire as to whether DI Graham was currently on the premises. Maddie waited. And waited.

  The waiting came to an abrupt end when the Jaguar creamed round a slight left-hand bend and found the road blocked by a navy-blue hatchback and a man holding what appeared at first sight - which is all they had time for - to be a bazooka.

  DC Morgan was a naturally cautious man. He came from the same Fenland stock as Sergeant Bolsover and believed in looking before he leapt. All the same, he didn’t keep Detective Superintendent Hilton waiting on the doorstep while he checked his credentials all the way back to Division, which is what he should probably have done. He might never have seen the man before but he knew him by repute; and those cautious Fenland genes told him that the greatest danger he faced right now was incurring Superintendent Hilton’s displeasure.

  ‘They’re in the back room, sir. WPC Wilson’s with them.’

  Kendall was working at the table, the contents of his briefcase spread across its surface. His wife was trying to watch television, but distractedly: she hadn’t noticed that in flicking between the channels she’d managed to turn the sound off.

  Hilton introduced himself, helped himself to a chair and looked around. The furniture was more old-fashioned than worn. Most of the time nobody lived here at all; and when they did it was usually only for a few days at a time. The only up-to-date item in the room was the TV, because it got enough usage when there was someone in residence to wear out. Sometimes, Hilton supposed, if someone was worried and frustrated enough, it wore out very quickly from the sudden introduction of an ash-tray through the screen.

  ‘Well, Mr and Mrs Kendall, I have some good news.’ He smiled. It was like the smile of a newly-boiled gin-trap. ‘You may be able to go home sooner than we were hoping. It seems Mr Kendall wasn’t the assassin’s target after all.’

  Still with that steely smile in place, he watched their faces minutely. He saw the information hit them and the implications sink in. And what he saw were two quite different reactions. Mrs Kendall’s heart rose, pushing surprise and hope up through her eyes and rounding her lips on an unspoken question.

  Philip Kendall’s heart sank.

  Well now, thought the Top People’s Cop. Either you were looking forward to a few days off work, in which case why did you bring so much of it here with you? Or you know that us making progress with this investigation isn’t good news but bad news from your point of view. If we know you weren’t the target, we know Shapiro was; and if we’re sure of that we probably know why; and if we know why we probably know the rest.

  And sometime soon, he thought, before you commit yourself to saying almost anything else, you’re going to want to make sure just what we do know, what we have reason to suspect and what we’re running up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes. He held his peace, and his smile, continued to watch Kendall, waiting for the tension to become unbearable.

  Mrs Kendall didn’t understand what was passing between them. She looked at her husband, and at the policeman, with mounting confusion, growing impatient with them. ‘That is good news. Isn’t it? Philip?’

  For a second he looked as she had looked watching a television with the sound off. ‘What? Oh - yes. Yes, of course. Um — have you made an arrest, Superintendent?’

  Which was fairly sophisticated thinking for a man unexpectedly delivered from the sword of Damocles. ‘No, sir, not yet. But we know now who we’re looking for, we know who he’s looking for, and we know where he is. Good heavens, we even have the number of his car! We’ll have this sorted out in a jiffy, you mark my words.’

  Looking at Philip Kendall then was like confronting one of the Easter Island statues. His face had the same resolute lack of expression, and pretty much the same colour. But behind the frozen face his brain was racing. Hilton could almost hear the wheels clicking and whirring like a clock.

  He knew - from Hilton’s presence here he knew - that the next thing he should say was ‘I want my solicitor’. Almost certainly. Unless he was jumping the gun. If Hilton was merely kite-flying, or even just bringing him up to date and it was the man’s weird manner that was investing the exchange with sinister overtones, demanding to see his solicitor wou
ld be the same as blurting a confession. But anything else he said would dig him deeper in the mire if he had become a suspect.

  His wife’s eyes on his face, puzzled and increasingly uneasy, did nothing to aid his decision. What he needed most of all was some thinking space, and it didn’t look like he was going to get it. He didn’t know much about police procedure, but enough to suspect that detective superintendents don’t habitually drive thirty miles just to tell someone he mightn’t be in much danger after all.

  But a man doesn’t get to be sales director of a respected company in a difficult and competitive international field if he can’t keep a cool head and take a calculated risk when the need arises. Philip Kendall wasn’t ready to admit defeat while any chance remained that he could get out of this scot-free. There was no evidence against him. There couldn’t be: he hadn’t actually done anything - nothing that left fingerprints, or hairs on the carpet. There was only one person who could connect him to any of this, and if she’d talked they’d be conducting this interview at Queen’s Street. The police didn’t know anything. They were guessing, and Hilton needed him to incriminate himself. That was why he was here.

  Kendall pushed out a slow smile, just smug enough to offend the policeman without giving him cause for complaint. He got up from the table, and stretched, and put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘Well, that’s splendid, Superintendent - isn’ t it, dear? I appreciate you coming to tell us.’

  Instincts honed by a quarter of a century in this job told Superintendent Hilton that Philip Kendall had come within a hair’s breadth of making a full and frank confession, hoping that by assisting in the detention of the major criminals his own contribution could be made to look as minor as possible. And he’d decided against.

  He was right. Hilton couldn’t fault his decision - he was bluffing. He’d come here with a fair idea that the man was involved, had been convinced totally by his reactions, but the actual evidence against him could be written in large letters on the back of a postage stamp. It would have been a mistake to break down at that point; but it’s what most people would have done, and the fact that Kendall declined to told Hilton, in case he hadn’t already realized, that he was dealing with a tough and intelligent adversary. He had to get this right. If he got it wrong, Kendall would wriggle free.