‘That’s what I said.’ She was suddenly in a hurry to get out of there, especially from beneath the bed.
‘What’s that smell?’ he said, once they were standing upright.
‘Aftershave,’ she answered without really thinking then suddenly remembered the broken bottle she’d left beneath the bed. She wasn’t ready to own up.
‘You probably used too much.’
Hopefully he would accept the excuse. After all they had recently spent time lying together in a confined space with only a bathrobe between them.
What could have happened next didn’t happen. The gap between them widened in response to somebody hammering on the front door.
‘Hey. Honey. Are you OK?’
Dominic looked disappointed. ‘Your friend with the pink car?’
Honey nodded. ‘Yes. She’s been driving me around. Have to go now. Sorry to have disturbed you.’
He grinned. ‘You’ll be disturbing me all night.’
Honey blushed. There was no denying that Dominic Christiansen had a certain charm, the sort that spelled danger.
And you’ve got enough danger in your life, she muttered to herself as she headed back down the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The remains of Keith McCall were removed in broad daylight by a team of men with a tractor, a trailer and a load of turnips. They looked like farm labourers though they were far from being that.
One of them was chewing on a straw, his flat cap worn low over his eyes. Another was smoking, the third whistling. To all intents and purposes they were farm labourers taking a load of root vegetables from field to barn. On closer scrutiny it could be seen that their hands were soft and white, their complexions unblemished by outdoor living.
Once the work was complete, every vestige of the decomposed corpse removed, the convoy headed towards the road that led to the sausage factory where they disappeared from view.
Special Branch was informed that their search for Keith McCall was at an end. The search for Peter Orlov, son of Ivan, alias The Tarot Man, was still on.
‘You look peaky. Let me buy you a coffee.’
Honey allowed Mary Jane to lead her by the arm. She couldn’t have protested if she’d tried.
They entered the Foxcub Café which was housed in what had been the estate dairy. Mary Jane sat Honey down in a chair while she collected two cappuccini and two slices of carrot cake.
‘Okay. Talk,’ said Mary Jane pushing the coffee and cake in front of her face.
‘Somebody’s trying to kill me.’
‘Hah! I told you so. Didn’t I tell you so?’
‘You told me so.’
Honey’s voice waivered as she fought to hold back her emotion. She’d hardly slept a wink all night thinking it through.
‘He wouldn’t even tell me the reason why. Just that I was to be careful. I mean, how can I be careful if I don’t know who wants to kill me. A description would have been useful.’
Mary Jane popped a few stray crumbs of cake from her lips into her mouth.
‘Your father did warn you.’
‘My father’s dead.’
‘It doesn’t matter. He still warned you.’
Honey sighed and covered her face with her hands.
‘What am I going to do? Hire a bodyguard?’
‘Does Doherty know?’
‘I’ve tried phoning him. He’s still not answering. Bugger him and that bloody course. Why are men, especially policemen, so set on this team building malarkey? What does it actually do for them?’
Mary Jane rolled her blue eyes heavenwards as she sought a solution to the question.
‘Men are men and are not our immediate problem.’
‘Except for the one who wants to kill me.’
‘You need something to take your mind off things. How about we take a walk around the animal compounds. Animals have a calming presence.’
‘I think that applies to cats and dogs, not carnivores that are inclined to eat you!’
Despite Honey’s negative attitude, Mary Jane was already on her feet. Having no alternative suggestion, Honey followed.
They left the café and entered a gate marked private which led to the back of the house, the so-called tradesmen’s entrance.
The pot rooms, laundry rooms, silver rooms and crockery stores were ranged on the lower level immediately beneath the rooms above, the rooms they were programmed to serve. The servants’ hall was beyond this and next to the scullery where huge sinks ran along one wall equipped with equally large scrubbing brushes. In the distant past, this room had been the domain of hordes of scullery maids, their hands red raw from scrubbing huge roasting pans and piles of plates. A brand new commercial dishwasher had dispensed with all that.
The side door was a heavy wooden affair with clear glass panels at the top, not that they let much light in.
The big bins were to their left. To their right was the climbing wisteria. Ahead was the parkland, acres of grass rolling off beneath oak, elm and ash trees, some of which had been growing there for five hundred years. Most of it was enclosed now, keeping the animals one side, humans the other.
The stone steps led down onto the gravel drive that served the rear of the house. The smell of animal droppings was strong here.
The path took them into another courtyard surrounded by what had been stables for the hunters, the carriage horses and the children’s ponies. One of the buildings had also housed the coachman and his family on the upper floor. They were now turned over mostly to storage areas.
The muted roar of a lion sounded ahead of them. The entrance was at the back of the building. There was a large caged exercise area at the front.
Mary Jane led the way, marching purposefully through a gate to the rear of the stable yard.
‘Giraffe house first.’
The giraffe house smelled of giraffes, or any other ruminating animal come to that. Heaped straw rustled around the great creature’s legs as it positioned them to form four-pronged protection around its baby. The baby’s big brown eyes eyed them from beneath its mother’s belly.
Normally Honey wouldn’t have given it a second glance, but those eyelashes!
‘Look at those eyelashes. They’re enormous and so, so beautiful.’
The baby was trying to suckle. The mother was knocking it away with her head. The thwacking sounded painful.
Honey wagged her finger at the mother giraffe. ‘Poor Baby. Mummy, that is so unfair.’
Honey looked the creature in the eyes and she stared back unblinking.
Honey shouted. ‘Let your baby suckle, you cantankerous bitch!’
The giraffe was so surprised she hardly seemed to notice the baby had succeeded in suckling on her teat.
‘There. It worked,’ said Honey sounding slightly surprised.
‘You hypnotised her,’ Mary Jane remarked safely.
‘I think it was my loud voice. After that I might have resorted to a kick up the butt!’
A door swung open to my left. Honey turned immediately expecting to see Adrian Sayle, the stocky man in safari outfit, calves straining against knee length socks. Instead she saw a woman in a white coat with horn rimmed glasses.
Her smile was wide, though not wide enough to expose all her teeth. There were just too many. She was wearing white wellington boots like people in laboratories wear.
‘I wanted to speak to Adrian. Is he still here?’ It was a useful excuse. She didn’t really want to speak to Adrian except perhaps to ask him about his relationship to Dominic Christiansen.
‘No, my dear,’ she said, shaking her head and smiling at Honey as though she were a silly child who’d just asked for a Walls’ ice cream in Harrods.
‘Adrian was called away. His father’s been taken ill. Apparently he’s not expected to last, the poor man,’ she said, her bottom lip turning down as though she were about to blubber.
‘Do you have a phone number for his father?’
‘No. I don’t think his fath
er has a telephone. It’s way out on the veldt you know.’
‘The veldt. You mean Africa?’
She nodded. ‘The Transvaal. He runs a mission there. His father was a minister of religion you see. Now. What do you want in here?’
A likely story, Honey decided. Another of these damned spooks?
‘I was just showing her the animals,’ said Mary Jane. ‘She’s had a shock and you know how calming animals can be.’
The woman in the white lab coat and wellington boots looked surprised. The name tag on her breast said Maureen Cline.
‘That mostly applies to dogs and cats.’
‘Just as I thought,’ muttered Honey.
‘Do you mind if we take a look in the lion house?’
Maureen looked a little cagey at first.
‘We want to look at them. I promise we’re not going to steal them,’ said Honey.
Mary Jane backed her up. ‘We couldn’t. There’s not enough room in the car.’
She held her head to one side as she made her mind up. Her smile was hesitant, but when it came it was as it was before; a whole mountain range of white teeth interspersed with a flash of gold.
‘Very well.’
The smell of the lion house was exactly as she’d expected it to be; very urinary, similar to the smell of a leaky domestic cat but on a bigger scale. The lion house itself, however, was modern, big and bright.
‘It’s empty.’ Honey was disappointed. All that smell for nothing.
‘They only come in during the winter or when they are ill. The rest of the time they run wild and free out in the park.’
‘Within the fenced-in enclosure,’ Honey added somewhat tenuously.
‘Of course. We wouldn’t want them to eat the visitors, would we?’
‘Have they ever ate anyone?’
‘No. Not humans anyway.’
‘Did you know Keith McCall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get on well with him?’
‘Reasonably enough. He was a work colleague. We worked together. That was it. He didn’t intrude into my private life and I didn’t intrude into his.’
There were four cages. The middle one was larger than the others.
Honey looked through the heavy mesh of the fencing and gate that fronted this particular cage. Unlike the other cages it had three solid walls, the iron bars running only along the front. Straw was heaped up in one corner. A drainage channel ran along the front next to the mesh caging and into a drain. The cover was half solid, half grating. It was built that way so effluent could drain away more freely. Or blood.
‘Well,’ said Honey turning on her heel. ‘No lions today.’
Mary Jane shared her disappointment.
They made their way back into the house, past the kitchens, up the stairs and along to the office where Miss Vincent worked. She had, of course, already gone home to her little cottage down in the village which she shared with her mother.
Over coffee in the café she’d once told Mary Jane that her mother was an invalid who watched by the window until she was safely home.
If anyone knew the secrets of who worked here and when, it was Miss Vincent.
‘I need to check something,’ said Honey.
The offfice was unlit, but enough light filtered through from outside to see one’s way clearly enough. The computer was covered up, the accounts files locked safely away and the post tray empty. Miss Vincent was a tidy soul with tidy ways.
‘She’s very neat and tidy,’ Mary Jane remarked.
‘Yep! Everything is properly filed in the right place so I should have no trouble finding what we’re looking for – whatever it is.’
‘You don’t know what we’re looking for?’
‘I’ll know it when I see it. I am nothing if not methodical in my approach to a given situation. My mind poses a question and has a small box at the end into which I enter a mental tick when an answer is acquired. Quite simple really.’
It sounded very believable and Mary Jane appeared to believe it.
‘Do you want me to keep a lookout?’
Honey was already delving into the staff files. She shook her head. ‘Remember, Miss Vincent likes to be home on time. Her mother waits up for her.’
‘I thought she’d already given you a list.’
‘She did, but it wouldn’t hurt to check again. There’s something I’m missing…’
‘Do you think the name of the person who wants to kill you is on that list?’
‘Possibly. The same person who killed his lordship.’
‘I wonder where he really is? I mean, if the remains were scooped up so nobody could recheck the DNA, then he wasn’t cremated and if that’s the case then where is he?’
Honey grunted. Mary Jane had a point but Honey did not have an answer for that just as she didn’t have an answer for anything else in this case. It was weird, it was huge and it was convoluted. The fact that a government intelligence agency was involved made her nervous. She was out of her league, but hell, she wasn’t going to give in that easily.
‘This is the oddest case I’ve worked on. It’s also the only one in which my own life is at stake. I HAVE to solve it.’
Mary Jane peered over her reading glasses that she’d had the presence of mind to bring with her.
‘You can count on me, Honey. I’m no private dick but I’m going to help you all I can.’
Mary Jane’s enthusiasm was comforting. She was as nutty as a fruitcake, but her heart was in the right place. What did it matter if half the time she lived in another world?
Forcing herself to concentrate and forget she could be a murder victim, she went through the staff files. That was when she finally spotted something.
‘Hello! This is interesting.’
Mary Jane peered over her spectacles. ‘Found something?’
‘I’m damned certain that Keith McCall’s name was not on the other list she gave me. But it appears here. Hang on while I double check.’
Details of each employee were kept in a loose leaf folder. She was one hundred per cent certain that there had not – most definitely NOT been a current employment sheet for Keith McCall. Miss Vincent had been adamant that he’d left a whole month before Adrian Sayle was appointed. Yet here he was!
She checked it again before voicing her find out loud. His job was stated as being head of security. Unlike most of the employees who were paid a monthly wage, McCall didn’t seem to have been paid anything at all.
‘Another spook,’ she said out loud.
‘You mean a Fed?’
‘No. More like CIA, or MI5 as it’s here. But why would an MI5 agent be employed here on a permanent basis?’
‘Shady characters.’
Honey thought of Dominic Christiansen. ‘You can say that again.’
The nagging question was, why hadn’t she seen this sheet before? Also, if the man was self employed and had presented invoices, why were his details stored with employees? Surely he should be in suppliers’ invoices? But there were no invoices. There was nothing to say he’d ever received a penny. He had to be an MI5 agent.
‘I think I need to check Miss Vincent’s reasons for this; it’s her system after all.’
She was slow putting the record sheet back into the file and springing the clip. Something struck her as not being quite right – quite rum in fact. The sheet of paper seemed brilliantly crisp and white compared to the other record sheets.
After clearing away the dishes, Miss Vincent sat herself tiredly in front of the television set and turned it on.
Normally she would sit sipping tea and enjoying putting her feet up and having some time to herself. Tonight she wasn’t really following the plot. She was thinking of Lord Tarquin Torrington.
She’d been nineteen when they’d met and for a few years she’d enjoyed true passion. Her father had been manager of one of the mines in which Tarquin’s family had owned shares. She’d fallen for Tarquin at first sight and for a while everything w
as good, though she’d been warned that it wouldn’t last. On the plus side he was always generous with his money even when their more physical relationship was over. She’d refused to believe it would happen, but happen it did, and although he’d taken her into his confidence over many things, and had even given her a very well paid job, she still hankered for the way things used to be. Eventually she had come to the conclusion that she was just one of many. All she could do was take his generosity for the benefit of both herself and her mother, and like everyone else, be loyal to him and to everything he stood for.
And now he was gone. A tear rolled down her cheek. Gone but not forgotten, and even though she did believe herself to currently be in love with someone else, a very recent acquaintance, she really would always remember.
When the phone rang, she knew who it was and felt that breathless excitement again just as she had when she was young.
‘You’re late phoning. I expected you earlier.’
She fidgeted with her dress collar as she spoke, regretting that she may have sounded annoyed that he hadn’t rang earlier. She had no wish to upset him.
‘I went for a walk in the woods,’ he said.
‘Oh. How very bracing.’
‘I was bird watching,’ he said, ‘but somebody came along and disturbed them. I was very annoyed.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Are you ready for me?’
Miss Vincent felt a frisson of excitement run through her. She’d never contemplated doing such things as she did with this man, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice timid as she sank into the submissive persona he wished her to be.
‘You’d better not be lying. I will smack you very hard if you’re lying. Are you lying, Rosemary?’
‘No. I mean, yes, but I will be ready by the time you call. I promise.’
Her mother had died many years ago but in order to maintain her privacy, she let everyone believe otherwise. Harbouring the tastes she had, it seemed like a good idea, though there had been a desert of a time without a man – the right kind of man – in her life. And now he was here, though his identity she kept top secret. And so did he.
She heard his strong nasal breath roar down the phone and shivered.
Brotherly Blood Page 17
