That wonderful scent of carnations, stocks and greenery of which I had used to take a deep breath as I went up the stairs was the same here; we had passed the back room where vases and vases of them were stored. The shop owner where I had lived had observed my appreciation one day and thereafter had always saved a few flowers for me – perhaps with broken stalks, or a couple of petals missing, or just oddments. I am sure she could have used them in wreaths and have always remembered her kindness.
There was no response to ringing the door bell.
‘You’re going in?’ I said in surprise, seeing Patrick’s burglar’s keys in his hand.
‘I actually think we have a duty to go in,’ he replied. ‘For after all, whatever the girl has said, for all we know she might be lying in here gravely ill.’
But Erin was not at home. Everything was very tidy, with nothing left lying around to give us a clue as to where she might have gone or what leads she might be following. Being very careful not to disturb anything, Patrick opened drawers in a computer desk in the living room while I examined similar storage space in the bedroom. We found nothing useful.
I wandered into the kitchen. There was hardly any food in the fridge but a shopping list was fixed under one of the magnets on the door listing the usual things, so presumably Erin intended to return home soon. When I went back into the living room Patrick was sorting through the contents of a letter rack on the desk.
‘Just a couple of bills, some postcards from friends on holiday, photographs of ditto and some letters,’ he reported. ‘I don’t think I need to read those.’
‘That’s a lovely house,’ I commented upon seeing a photograph on a business heading.
‘It’s an old manor house that’s been turned into an hotel and conference centre,’ Patrick said. He went to put the letter back with the rest, but his eye was caught by the wording: ‘“Dear Miss Melrose,”’ he read out, ‘“I regret to inform you that we have no suitable staff vacancies at present but with your superior qualifications in mind I am able to give you an undertaking that I shall put your name down on our records for when such a vacancy should arise. Yours sincerely, Jennifer Lister, Catering Manageress.” What on earth is the girl doing?’
‘A change of career?’ I hazarded.
‘Surely not.’ He frowned. ‘No, definitely not. When we were in the Green Man once she said she was a lousy cook.’ He tapped the letter. ‘This, my dear Watson, is a lead that we must regard as important. But there are a few other things to attend to first.’
The Blue Boar at Kingsbrook did not look as though it had had a lick of paint since the Wars of the Roses. I made a note to inform fellow scribes who wrote historical crime fiction of its unmodernized charms so that they could fall on the place and savour every detail of the grime-encrusted oaken beams, the worn church pews that leaned crookedly against the walls of the public bar in lieu of chairs and upon which so many initials had been carved it was a wonder they had not disintegrated, and the strange smell, a cross between wet dogs and something very dead somewhere beneath the floorboards.
‘You are not having a pint here,’ I told Patrick.
‘It’s lunch time,’ he protested.
‘The locals will have developed the necessary antibodies,’ I said, eyeing the smeary glass tankards hanging on hooks above the bar. ‘You haven’t, and you’ll be on the loo for a week.’ Detecting that right now he was probably regretting having put his job on the line in order to have me along, I added, ‘Oracles have never necessarily said what people wanted to hear. The last thing you need right now is a dose of the trots.’
Nostrils flaring, Patrick slammed his ID down on the bar. ‘Joe Masters?’ he demanded to know of the bored-looking individual standing behind it.
‘That’s me.’ The man had hardly glanced at what was in front of him and gave little attention to the photograph that was now plonked next to it.
‘Seen him in here? He was probably an associate of Daniel Smith.’
Masters shook his head. ‘Nope.’
‘Have a closer look,’ he was encouraged, grittily. ‘This was taken some years ago. He might look quite respectable now.’
Masters peered at the photo in the manner of someone whose reading glasses are elsewhere. ‘Can’t say as I’ve seen him.’
‘How long had Smith been living in the caravan?’
‘It’s been in the paddock out the back for years and used to be rented by a farmer to house veg pickers. But it started to get a bit too scruffy and what with the health-and-safety bods breathing down my neck already, I decided to get rid of it. But this bloke Smith came along and asked if he could use it sometimes in exchange for doing odd jobs for me. He seemed a bit down on his luck, so I agreed. In fact I said he could have it – so as not to be responsible for it any more, like. But the dirty little bugger ended up living there for most of the winter, did precious little to help; in fact he left his rubbish everywhere and spent far too much time in here making a half last the whole evening. I’m glad he’s gone and the caravan’s going as soon as you lot have finished with it.’
‘The man’s been murdered,’ Patrick said reproachfully.
‘He looked the kind who would mix with murderers.’
‘Did anyone ever ask for him? Did you notice him in conversation with anyone on a regular basis?’
‘No, he stank too bad to have real friends,’ was the bald reply.
‘We’ll take a look at the caravan.’
‘Question,’ I said when we were outside and walking around the side of the building towards the rear. ‘Caravans are dreadfully cold and damp things to live in in the winter. It would have been far cosier to have stayed where he did his gardening job for Thora at Buckton Manor.’
‘There’s no beer there, though and, don’t forget, he only possessed a bike and cycling down to the local on dark nights from there wouldn’t have been a joke. I reckon the nearest pub to that place is at least two and a half miles away.’
Men always notice things like exactly where the nearest pubs are, of course.
The ground at the rear of the pub was little better than its interior, the so-called paddock being merely an acre or so of weeds surrounded by a sagging post-and-wire fence, the gate to it flat on the ground a short distance away with grass growing through it. The area might have been a garden at one time, for we almost fell into a pond choked with water plants and there were two or three good trees.
The caravan, set just inside where the gate should have been and surrounded by a walkway of broken paving slabs, was not sealed off, an indication that all forensic testing really had been completed. It was, however, still cordoned off by police incident tape tied to the trees and had ‘KEEP OUT’ notices affixed to it. We stepped over the tape and approached Smith’s last home. With flat tyres, and greenish-black with mould in places, it gave every impression of slowly and inexorably rotting into the mud.
‘I don’t know what we can learn from this,’ Patrick muttered, yanking open the door.
I had a sudden and inexplicable stab of alarm and grabbed his arm before he could enter.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure – but please don’t just walk straight in,’ I said.
‘Look, SOCA have only just completed their stuff. People have been crawling all over it.’
‘Sorry, it’s either that I’m all jittery after what happened last time or –’ I broke off and shrugged, feeling foolish.
‘Or it’s your cat’s whiskers and there’s been every opportunity for someone else to mess around with it,’ he murmured and walked away for a short distance over to a pile of rubbish. Selecting a few bricks and a chunk of wood, he put them all in an old plastic fertilizer sack and tied up the top with a length of rope. Then, carrying it, he came back.
‘Go right over there,’ he told me, waving an arm back towards the building.
‘Do be careful,’ I pleaded.
Positioning himself carefully a practical distance away
, Patrick commenced to swing the sack – actually quite heavy – backwards and forwards until it had sufficient momentum. Then, he released it, putting distance between himself and the caravan as soon as it had left his hand to go hurtling through the open doorway.
There was a loud crash and the floor of the caravan collapsed completely. Moments later there was a flash, an ear-splitting bang and a huge cloud of debris-laden smoke.
I had taken refuge in the entrance to the noisome Gents’, dived farther in when the explosion occurred, met someone on his way out and shoved him inside again as things clattered down on to the corrugated-iron roof above our heads. When it petered out somewhat, we ventured outside. Patrick was just picking himself up from behind some low bushes and appeared unscathed, so I sent the man off for a fire extinguisher, as all that was left of the caravan was a raging bonfire and rolling clouds of acrid smoke.
Patrick came over. ‘That’s it,’ he said in the quiet, flat voice he uses when he is very angry. ‘From now on we’re on a war footing with this bastard even if it means I go to prison for cutting his throat all over his own living-room carpet.’
‘I have a horrible feeling that he’s watching us,’ I said.
Patrick shook his head. ‘No, not in the sense that he’s perched up a tree with a pair of binoculars snooping on us in particular. Like the set-up in the flat, anyone could have been injured in that booby trap – even the guys from the council who would have ended up coming to take the caravan away. No, this is a two-finger salute to the police.’
‘But he didn’t plant the thing before Scenes of Crime people arrived.’
‘There was probably no opportunity, as it would have been guarded as soon as Smith was murdered and I told them where he lived on and off.’
We had found somewhere to have a bite of lunch that was less of a potential health hazard than the Blue Boar, but it was only a café so Patrick had to settle for coffee with his BLT. He had come off the boil but I knew would now be deeply involved with strategy for the rest of our lunch break. I did not interrupt his thoughts.
‘No, there’s nothing for it but to bury our own identities and come up with something that’ll put us in a position to be out and about, watching people but without arousing their suspicions,’ he said at last, pensively stirring his coffee.
‘Well, we’ve done fencing contractors,’ I replied briskly, ‘– or at least you have – and hell’s angels and Irish terrorist plus bimbo and down-and-outs. No, as far as that goes I am not living on the streets again. Sorry.’
Patrick brooded darkly. ‘Looked at from another angle, what is this guy likely to want that we might be able to give him that will lure him out of his rat hole? We already know he sometimes bets on horses and enjoys spending money on himself – yes, the chains and rings were for him. That’s if it is the same bloke, of course.’ He found his mobile. ‘I’ll ask Paul Boles if he knows any more about him.’
I recollected that the DS had said Brocklebank had boasted that he could kill anyone, anyhow, in his younger days.
The signal was poor so Patrick went outside to make the call. ‘No, he can’t think of anything that might be of use right now,’ he reported when he returned.
‘Brocklebank used to brag a lot and must be feeling very full of himself right now,’ I said. ‘He’s literally got away with murder and the police haven’t a clue where to start looking for him. But there’s no brother Ernie now he can tell what a big man he is. If he has a family, they might not have a clue what he gets up to in his other life, so he has to keep quiet about it to them too. What he needs is a chum he can yarn with, drink with, pose around in front of, fool himself into thinking he’s recovered his lost youth – someone with form, someone dangerous.’
‘I can do dangerous,’ Patrick muttered.
Was the man kidding? He’s positively lethal.
‘He might have someone like that already,’ Patrick observed.
‘Do a better someone.’
‘Where will you be in all this?’
‘Your somewhat sleazy bag of a wife – what else?’
In the end I ditched the ‘somewhat’ and went for the whole bling thing, hitting the charity shop again for a couple of tight miniskirts and tops, high-heeled shoes, phoney gold chains and a teddy-style bra (freshly laundered, I was assured) that pushed up my modest bust until it threatened to escape from the aforementioned tops. Patrick’s reaction was a sight to behold when we had a dress rehearsal and I had added full make-up, including false eyelashes, bright-red lipstick, and scragged back my hair into the tight ponytail that I believe is referred to as ‘a Staines facelift’.
‘Overdone?’ I queried.
He tore his gaze from my bosom and found his voice. ‘God, no. But I hardly know it’s you.’
‘Good. I got a chain bracelet and a medallion for you too.’
He donned his black jeans and matching shirt, leaving several of the top buttons undone, and by the time he had added the jewellery and an amazingly naff belt I have never been able to prise away from him that has a buckle decorated with a brass skull with red-glass eyes, the picture was almost complete. Flattening down his normally wavy and slightly unruly hair with gel – something he learned to do when taking part in a film not so long ago – and switching on a sullen scowl resulted in someone I hardly recognized either.
‘This look is a bit dated, you know,’ he said, looking at himself in the mirror.
‘The ignorant lawless often are.’
Neither of us was saying the obvious: that it was an extremely long shot. But we had Greenway on board and this was manifested when we went out as it was getting dark and bought a local evening paper.
‘Woodhill police are concerned that big-time criminals are moving out of London into the wider surrounding area,’ Patrick read aloud from the bottom of the front page as we stood beneath a lamp post. ‘The Home Office has admitted that gangs from central Europe are arriving here and, in some cases, have forced established hoodlums from their “manors”, a fact borne out by the recent spate of shootings and knife attacks in the East End. One such dispossessed “godfather” is Vernon Studley, one of several aliases used by a man on the Metropolitan Police’s ‘most wanted’ list. He is described as tall, dark-haired and of wiry build and a man answering this description was seen with several others shortly before a disturbance at a public house in Ilford a few days ago when three people were admitted to hospital with stab wounds. Off the record the police are saying that this man and his associates are trying to remove any local opposition with a view to moving in. There is no need for undue alarm but under no circumstances are members of the public to approach anyone of whom they are suspicious, but call the police.’
‘Vernon Studley?’ I said. ‘I seem to have heard that name before.’
‘One of the incumbents of our church at home in the seventeenth century, if I remember correctly. The name sort of’ – his eyes went back to my chest – ‘popped into my head. Most of this article is true – even the fracas in Ilford, which, of course, lends authenticity.’
‘Someone may well call the police and we’ll be arrested.’
‘Greenway thought of that. But we’ll escape and go to ground. Knightly knows about the ruse so the law will be slow to react. Poor ol’ Fred’s good at that.’ He dropped the paper in a rubbish bin and, with a raffish leer, crooked an arm. ‘Fancy a drink, babe?’
Despite the get-up we had no intention of flashing ourselves around and sidled into a pub in an old part of Woodhill, the kind of place that still had etched windows advertising stout and locally brewed beer, those companies no doubt long gone. A few people were playing darts in the public bar, a couple of others propped up the bar, but it was otherwise quiet. Subjected to a few sideways glances we found a table in a corner and Patrick went over to order our drinks.
I saw to my glee that one of the women playing darts was dressed very similarly to me. We exchanged the obligatory glares and I tried to guess who she was with �
� the short, fat one, the short, thin one or the taller, hairy man wearing cowboy boots and, yes, a medallion. The whole lot, I guessed, were market traders.
‘Wot are you starin’ at?’ the woman shrieked at me all at once.
This was quite unwanted and shook me. Perhaps I had overdosed on the mascara and eyeshadow. ‘Not you,’ I retorted, as though she was blocking what would otherwise have been a perfectly stunning view.
Heaven preserve me, she came over. ‘I know ’oo you are!’ she hollered. ‘You’re that Sharon Bigtits wot Kev at the paper shop slung out of ’is place for messin’ around wiv uvver blokes.’ She drew herself up with a toss of her head. ‘Kev’s my bruvver, I’ll ’ave you know.’
‘It’s your turn, Chantelle,’ one of the men called across to her, his tone weary.
‘I am not Sharon,’ I said heavily. ‘That’s my man over there and if I messed around with other blokes he’d wring my neck. Now, go back to your bleedin’ arrers.’
Pausing to take a mouthful from his brimming pint, Patrick came over. He gave my antagonist a dismissive glance, she opened her mouth to bandy more words and he bellowed ‘Cool it!’ at the pair of us, making us jump out of our skins.
Cut, I said to myself. Take One in the can.
That was the trouble with being in films.
‘Low-key,’ Patrick admonished in a whisper as he seated himself.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I whispered back.
‘Yes, you did. I know more about the language of womankind than you imagine.’
For the rest of that night we loafed about in pubs and clubs, spending a small fortune in crossing palms with silver to gain admittance to the latter, almost certainly drank too much and saw no one who remotely resembled the mugshot of Brocklebank. It was unrealistic to expect success on the first night, but we told ourselves that we had made our faces known and went back to our digs. There, half undressed, I was taken in a fervent embrace.
Cobweb Page 18
