I tugged at it. It was heavier than I'd expected. Slowly a hole underneath was revealed. I pulled some more and exposed the secret of the substation. There was a Nike sports bag down there. I lifted it out and wrenched back the zip. It's hard to judge these things, but at a rough guess I'd say it contained about three hundred and fifty thousand smackeroos.
We tipped the money into the boot of my car and put the bag, with a few stones inside, back down the hole.
"You didn't tell me it was a public convenience," Sparky complained as he helped me push the door back over the hole.
"Just watch where you put your feet," I told him. "And wipe them before you get in the car."
We phoned the local CID and a sergeant arrived a few minutes later. He was sceptical at first, but I lifted my boot lid and showed him some real money. It convinced him.
"Fuckinell! I wish I'd known that was in there. How long do you want us to watch for?" he said.
"A couple of days should be enough. I'll make it right with your super. Now, do you mind if we leave you and continue with our treasure hunt?"
He didn't mind. As we drove away he was radioing for assistance. "Back to the roundabout and take the Blythe road," instructed Sparky. I did as I was told.
"Quarter of a mile, left on a dirt road."
It was marked Private, owned by the local council and leading to a storage area for their vehicles and various materials like lampposts and road grit. After a while a narrow bridge took us over the Al and the road petered out. We were in a wood again.
"Next instructions, please," I asked.
"I had to park here, leaving the car unlocked, then walk through the trees to the services. They're about a quarter of a mile away. After an hour I was to come back. Georgina should have been in the car."
"I see. OK, you and DS Sparkington retrace your steps to the services.
I'll guard the money. See how long it takes you, Dave."
"Right, boss."
My bladder was complaining of neglect. As soon as they were out of sight I watered the grass beneath an oak tree. Then I telephoned Heckley CID.
"Heckley CID. DS Newley speaking. Can I help you?"
I had to admit it: Nigel would make a brilliant telephonist. "Hi, Nigel. It's Charlie."
"Hello, boss. Where are you?"
"Somewhere in deepest South Yorkshire. Listen, I want you to do a little job for me."
"Fire away. I'm all ears."
"In the car park is a Nissan Patrol. It belongs to Miles Dewhurst."
"Yes, I've seen it."
"Good. The keys are at the front desk. Raise a friendly SOCO and have him go over it with his sticky tape. Just take a few samples for the file."
"Will do. Anything in particular?"
"Not really. A few fibres from a pink toilet roll might be interesting. Check his driving gloves, if he has any. Take some prints from them. You've got about… oh, two hours, no more."
Villains assume they are safe if they wear gloves, not realising that we have a secret weapon. These days we can take glove prints We had another cup pa at the services and returned to Heckley at a leisurely pace. Sparky and I could have eaten a mangy gnu between us, but Dewhurst said he wasn't hungry and it seemed unsympathetic to tuck into anything in his presence.
Gilbert gave Dewhurst a bollocking, or as close to one as I've ever heard him deliver. Gilbert's reprimands are normally of such well-honed subtlety that you come away thinking you've been praised until you reflect on it afterwards. I almost felt sorry for Dewhurst as he loaded the money into the Nissan and drove back to The Firs, Edgely Lane, via his bank. No, I didn't.
"So?" Gilbert said, after we'd settled down in his office with a coffee each.
"Got any biscuits?" I asked.
"Sorry, no. How'd it go?"
"Complete waste of tine. It was a good scheme, could have worked.
Don't believe a word of it, though."
"It was a bit risky, leaving the money, don't you think?"
"A bit, but not much. The place was full of toilet paper. You didn't feel like doing much nosing around in there. I think it was a ploy to keep people away."
"We could always send Scenes of Crime to give it a good going-over,"
Gilbert suggested with a wicked smile. "Why didn't he just steal the money and make it look as if it had been picked up?" he added.
"Then he'd have his own money, but illegally. And we'd be more suspicious."
"Mmm."
"Let's keep playing him along, Gilbert. Things are building up we'll get a breakthrough soon."
Gilbert looked grave. "I'm afraid you might not have the chance," he said.
"Why not?"
"Acting Chief Constable Partridge has been on to me. He wants us to spin Dewhurst's premises. I let him know your feelings, so he said you can have a fortnight."
I stared at Gilbert in disbelief. "A fortnight?" I repeated. "Why a fortnight? What difference does it make if it takes a month? Or a year?"
"That's what he said."
"He's mad. We'll blow it. Everything we've got is circumstantial.
You've seen Dewhurst perform; he'll twist a jury round his Filofax.
We'll be the baddies; or I will be."
I'd stood up to leave, but I sat down again. Dewhurst's story about how he was missing his little girl had been heavily featured in the tabloids. He was receiving letters of sympathy from all over the country, and prayers were regularly said for him in the local churches.
If we went off half-cocked I'd be as popular as a turd in a Jacuzzi.
"You're naive, Charlie," Gilbert stated.
"So it appears. Go on."
He sat back in his big chair and tapped the polished top of his desk with a pencil. He said: "Acting Chief Constable Partridge's immediate, overriding ambition is not to apprehend little Georgina's abductor. No, it's to lose the Acting tag. It's the chief constables' conference in three weeks and he'll be there. Sometime after that there'll be the interviews for the vacancy. This is a high-profile case and he wants an arrest under his belt. The result, when it eventually comes to court, is secondary. If it goes wrong he'll be able to say that it was initiated before his appointment. In the interim he'll take all the credit."
I shook my head slowly from side to side. "You're right, Gilbert," I said. "Naive is hardly the word. I thought all we had to do was catch villains."
"He's an ambitious man, Charlie."
"Well, I refuse to feature in his plans. I want taking off the case."
"I thought you might say that, so I've already given it some consideration. Your request is turned down. You've got two weeks, from the weekend. Come back after that and I'll think again."
Chapter 7
"Go on!" urged Lee Todd. "Let's do it. We've plenty of time."
"No," pleaded his girlfriend, Vicky Smith. "It's not right."
"Not right? You've never said that before."
"I mean now, before we see the vicar. You'll have to wait." A shudder of delight ran through her. They were seated in his Mini, with its huge stereo speakers that blocked the view through the rear window blaring out rave music. Lee's hand was up her miniskirt and his fingers were exploring the crotch of her knickers.
"Stop it!" she demanded, half-heartedly. By sliding forward on the seat she could pull her pants so tight they dug into her puffy thighs and he couldn't get his blunt fingers under the elastic.
"Please!" he begged.
"No!" She snatched his hand away and sat up straight. "Later, when we've seen the vicar about the banns. Then we'll do it, you know, how you like it."
"Promise?"
"Yes, promise."
"Oh, all right then." He extricated himself from her and moved back to his side of the car. They sat smoking a roll-your-own cigarette, and Lee opened a can of Coke. "Are you sure he won't ask if I've been christened?" he said.
"Course he won't. If he does, just say you 'ave."
"But won't he check?"
"Nah. Anyway, th
ings get lost. What difference does it make? Stop being such a wally."
They sat without speaking for a while, bodies jerking to the incessant beat of the electronic music, until Lee announced that he'd never been in a church before.
"It's not a church, it's a vicarage," Vicky told him.
"Same thing," pronounced Lee.
"You don't 'arf talk some rubbish!" declared Vicky. "The vicarage is the 'ouse where the vicar lives. That's the bloody church, through the trees, with the clock on top."
"Well, I'll have to go to church when we get married, won't I? Then it'll be the first time."
"Come on," she said, straightening her skirt and running her fingers through her variegated hair. "It's time to go."
"Wait a minute." Lee fumbled with the pocket of his shirt and took a twist of silver paper from it. He unwrapped two small white pills and tossed one into his mouth, swallowing it with a swig of Coke.
"Hey! Where's mine?" protested Vicky.
"You've already had one."
"So have you." She snatched the last pill from him and gulped it down with a drink from the can. "Come on!"
Bottle was something Lee prided himself in having in abundance, but walking up the drive to the vicarage door drew on all his reserves.
Vicky pressed the bell push.
A dog barked, followed by a light coming on inside and a shadow falling on the frosted glass. The vicar's wife opened the door.
"We've come to see the vicar, about our banns," announced Vicky. Lee stood a respectful yard behind her.
"Oh, how do you do? I'm Mary Conway. You must be Vicky and Lee."
"That's right."
"So pleased to meet you. Ronald said would you mind if he saw you in the church? He's in there now, if you'd care to pop along."
"Oh, all right, then. G'night."
"Just go straight in. Bye bye."
They turned on their heels and walked back down the drive. Halfway up the path to the church Lee's power of speech returned. "Hey, Vicky," he whispered.
"What?"
"When we come out, when we've finished, we could always come back and have it in the graveyard. That'd be a laugh."
"Lee Todd! You're obsessed. Sex! Sex! Sex! That's all you ever think about!"
"I know. That's why you love me, in nit Vicky embraced his arm in both hers and looked up at him. "Probably," she laughed.
The big door swung open and Lee entered a house of God for the first time in his eighteen years. He quietly closed the door behind them. It was not an example of ecclesiastical architecture likely to fill a young heathen with a sense of awe and wonder, being built during one of the Church's more austere periods. What did impress Lee was the power of the silence.
"What do we do?" he hissed.
"Dunno. Look for him, I suppose. Let's go down to the front."
They walked down the aisle together for what was to be the only time in their lives, Lee's trainers padding noiselessly and Vicky's stilettos ringing out on the stone flags.
There was a door marked Vestry, with a glimmer of light visible under it. Lee, now confident that no bolt of lightning was about to smite him, knocked… There was no answer. He turned the handle and they went in.
"Cor, it's a bit warmer in 'ere," Vicky said.
"Yeah. Smells as if someone's been smoking Pashas."
"Pashas? What's them?"
"Strongest cigs ever made, according to my dad. It's one of 'is catch phrases "You smell as if you've been smoking Pashas," he sez."
"Spect it's incense," Vicky told him.
They wandered back into the nave and looked around them.
"How long do we wait?" asked Lee.
"Dunno."
Down near the entrance was a notice board, with letters and schedules and various Third World appeals pinned to it. They studied the messages, and were unmoved by the pictures of pot-bellied children and weeping, wizened mothers.
Lee's bravado had returned by now. Or his animal desires had overcome his apprehension. "Hello! Anybody there?" he shouted. Vicky laughed. Lee sprinted down to the front of the church and climbed into the pulpit. "Today's hymn is "My Way","he called out.
Vicky followed him. "You're daft," she giggled.
Lee put his arms around her and kissed her. He turned her around so that he was behind her and enclosed her breasts in his fingers.
"Don't," Vicky moaned, as his tongue probed her ear.
"Hey! Who's that watching us?" he demanded.
"Where?" said an alarmed Vicky.
"Her up there."
Vicky looked where he gestured. "That's a statue of the Virgin Mary," she explained.
"What, the vicar's wife?"
"No, idiot. Jesus's mum."
"Blimey, bet they had to go a long way to find her."
"Yeah. Specially with sex maniacs like you around."
He resumed his fondling and Vicky rotated her buttocks against his loins. The Mother of God gazed serenely just above their heads as his fingers flicked open the buttons of Vicky's blouse and slid her bra up, revealing nipples as brown and hard as the carved acorns that decorated the oak lectern.
"Stay there," he ordered, suddenly letting go of her. He sprinted to the church door, slid the big bolt across, and was back with her in seconds. Vicky stood pulling the front of her blouse together.
Lee grabbed her hand. "C'mon," he ordered.
"Where?" whimpered Vicky.
"In here," he replied, dragging her towards the vestry. The only furniture in there was the vicar's ancient writing desk and a chair. On the floor in front of the desk was a thick woollen rug, woven in a pattern representing scarab beetles. It was from Morocco, and had been presented to the church by the local Bible-Koran Society, in a gesture of conciliation.
Lee closed the door behind them. The key was in the lock, so he turned it. He kissed Vicky roughly, fondling her and fumbling with her clothing, then forced her down on to the rug.
After the absolute minimum of preliminaries he hooked his fingers into her pants and pulled them off. This time she eased her buttocks off the ground to facilitate their passage.
Lee was kneeling between her legs. He undid his jeans and was on to and into her with a speed that would have impressed a Wensleydale sheep farmer.
Their lovemaking depended on enthusiasm and athleticism rather than tenderness and concern. The aim was to achieve a fleeting moment of intense pleasure as rapidly as possible, which would immediately be followed by a feeling of wondering what all the fuss had been about until the urge to do it again slowly returned.
Sex in unusual places has its own eroticism, but it does sometimes fall down on practicality. Vicky was lying entirely within the borders of the woven pattern, but Lee's feet projected beyond it, on to the parquet floor, which the ladies of the congregation polished, with assiduity and Johnson's wax, every Tuesday morning.
He was wearing Reebok basketball boots, famed for their grip on slippery surfaces. Every thrust of his loins pushed Vicky and the rug across the floor, and every three or four thrusts his toes stuttered forwards to bring him back into the optimum position. Slowly they progressed across the vestry, like some Gothic, ratchet-propelled animal.
It was unsatisfactory for Vicky, too. She flailed her arms around, trying to find a fixture to cling to. There was nothing at all within the arc of her right arm, but the left was underneath the big wooden desk.
She groped about in vain for several seconds, then she thought her fingertips brushed something. The next thrust confirmed her thoughts and the one after that brought it within her grasp.
Vicky grabbed hold and braced herself. It wasn't the solid anchorage she was hoping for. It was soft and yielding, as well as wet and sticky.
It was another hand.
Vicky gasped with terror and yanked her own hand back.
She held it above her and blood dripped from it onto her face.
Her scream echoed around the high roof and set the starlings flying from the tower. With a mig
hty convulsion she threw Lee off and jumped to her feet. The locked door delayed her progress slightly, but within seconds she was running barefoot out into the night, still screaming.
Lee had just reached the good bit. Vicky's first recoil action made him think that for once his timing was perfect. He was on the backstroke, on the verge of the big finale, when she shot out from under him. He impregnated a woven scarab beetle with half a billion of his healthy, if genetically undistinguished, spermatozoa.
Exhausted and frustrated, he collapsed on the rug. He was facing the underside of the desk, but his right arm was obscuring his vision.
Beyond his arm, in the shadows under the desk, Lee could make out what looked like somebody's shoulder, wearing a tweed jacket. His hand was trembling uncontrollably as he drew it back, and he found himself staring into the sightless gaze of the late Reverend Ronald Conway.
Lee caught Vicky at the reproduction lich-gate. She was sobbing and screaming and cursing because she'd hurt her feet in her panic. He grabbed her arm and manhandled her into the car, before shaking her until her teeth rattled. It was an effective treatment for hysteria.
When she quietened down they drove off. Parked in a farm gateway a couple of miles away, they reviewed the situation: they'd had an appointment with the vicar; his wife knew their names; Vicky had left her shoes and knickers behind and Lee had deposited a sample of his body fluids that would have provided for the nation's in vitro fertilisation programme into the next century.
"They'd find us," Lee concluded.
So, for the second time that day, he voluntarily walked into a building that he would normally have avoided like a crocodile avoids sticky toffee. They went to the police station and reported finding a body.
Detective Inspector "Oscar' Peterson had seen it all before. He didn't like churches and the last thing he'd been hoping for was another murder. Especially one like this. A nice juicy domestic would have been OK, but the murder of a vicar didn't fall into the normal pattern of crime. It jarred, like a satellite dish on a Georgian terrace.
Peterson could have retired on full pension three months ago; so he was now working, as he constantly reminded anyone who'd listen, for one-third pay. He needed this like Salman Rushdie needs a season ticket at Bradford Park Avenue.
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