Blood Substitute

by Margaret Duffy

  I found myself on the receiving end of a look that was probably more protracted than was strictly safe as he was driving the car.

  ‘You thought I was being an arrogant bastard too then.’

  ‘You used to say things like that.’

  ‘Before we were divorced, you mean? No, I’ll re-phrase that: before you chucked me out before we were divorced?’

  Wondering if it still really rankled I defused any difficulty with a big smile, a real one as it happened, musing on the sheer impossibility of anything like that happening now. Unless he went off with someone else, of course.

  ‘You’re sitting there like the bloody Mona Lisa. Say something, woman.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I obliged, having got him rattled, obviously.

  ‘To Hinton Littlemoor. I thought we’d stay with Mum and Dad until Sunday.’

  ‘Your father will expect you to help at the morning service, or at least to sing in the choir. Then, that evening after dinner, when the routine has always been that you have a chat with him in his study, you’re going off to break into a warehouse instead?’

  Patrick breathed out hard, or rather, snorted. ‘My planets must be all to hell today or something. No, all right, we’ll tackle the warehouse on Saturday night and stay over until early Monday morning. Although you don’t have to come with me to Bristol if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Well, yes I do really as it looks a bit strange if you go out on your own.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of leaving until getting on for midnight.’

  ‘I’ll come. You might need an extra hand to stir the consommé.’

  ‘I can see I’ll never live that one down.’

  We had planned to take Elspeth and John out for a meal but as it happened they had been presented with a large oven-ready duck by a local poultry farmer whose daughter John had joined in Holy Matrimony to a gas meter-reader the previous Saturday. The duck, which had only been in the freezer for half an hour, was duly whipped out and prepared for roasting. I was really happy about this as I did not feel like going out again.

  ‘How’s the job?’ Elspeth asked her son later when we had gravitated to the kitchen. A slim, still-attractive woman with a keen intelligence, the gaze she fixed him with was as penetrating as his own.

  ‘It pays the bills,’ was his surprising reply, and because of who was doing the asking it had to be an honest one.

  ‘You really miss MI5, don’t you?’

  He just performed a little shrug and smiled at her sadly.

  ‘All the mayhem, explosions, trails of bodies and that kind of thing,’ she went on, turning to remove the duck from the oven to check on its progress.

  ‘Let me do that, it’s heavy,’ Patrick offered.

  She passed him the oven gloves. ‘We do keep in touch with James Carrick, you know. He and Joanna were over here a couple of evenings ago.’

  ‘And he told you all about the mayhem, explosions, bodies, plagues of frogs and so forth,’ Patrick said.

  ‘No, not in so many words. He couldn’t know, could he? He just said that he was glad your energies were directed in a less – well – unorthodox direction. I can distinctly remember having armed men in the onion bed here on more than one occasion.’

  As it happened James did know quite a lot of what had gone on. But I was not worried about this exchange for Elspeth was merely delighted to see Patrick and often indulged in this heavy teasing. That she was absolutely spot on was another matter.

  ‘You’ll be telling me next that it was you, someone who was described as a madman, who set off all the alarms at Slaterfords in Bristol yesterday. It was in the Bath Chronicle.’

  ‘Yes, that was me,’ Patrick dutifully said, bailing some of the fat out of the roasting tin into a small basin.

  Elspeth laughed, unsurprisingly not believing him, and then said, ‘That reminds me. When Fred Hemmings was here earlier bringing the duck as a thank-you he saw the paper on the table. He asked me if I knew that there’s a rumour that someone who’s on the management side at the store has bought Hagtop Farm.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Patrick said, his face giving nothing away.

  How could anyone forget Hagtop? A huge cattle shed a short distance from the village had been the scene of three stomach-churning murders not all that long ago when Patrick was doing a stint with the local police. He had been peppered with shotgun pellets endeavouring to catch the killer. I had found the killer.

  ‘Only this is the farmhouse itself which, as I’m sure you remember, is about a quarter of a mile away from where the bodies were found,’ Elspeth was saying. ‘Fred said that the house has been practically gutted and old barns and tractor sheds are being converted into extensive living accommodation. He says it must be costing a fortune. Goodness knows where the money’s coming from, the shop’s dreadful.’

  ‘A truly dire shop,’ Patrick agreed.

  ‘Oh, so you do know it then. Apparently it changed hands recently and is worse, if anything. Your father thinks it belongs to the Mafia.’

  ‘Why should he think that?’

  ‘Oh, you know John. A bit like you really, thinks it’s a government plot when the sun doesn’t shine.’

  Patrick put the duck back in the oven and left the kitchen. I discovered later that he had run his father to earth in the church where he was polishing the brass. Ladies might wield dusters and vacuum cleaners and do the flowers but John always polishes the brass. I gather that Patrick qualified as a helper to finish the job and the two returned to the rectory quite quickly, possibly on account of the new bottle of single malt Patrick had brought with him now gracing the kitchen dresser.

  After dinner Patrick and I went for a walk. I was still unaccountably tired but felt we needed to: it had been a massive main course with all the trimmings – almost like a Christmas dinner – followed by one of Elspeth’s celebrated trifles.

  ‘I take it your dad doesn’t actually have any evidence to back up his suspicions about the store,’ I said, wishing I was in bed.

  ‘Not really, but like us, just asking himself how it can stay afloat in today’s cut-throat retail climate. And apparently a local bad boy works there, as a security guard of all things. He did four years for GBH and being in possession of offensive weapons, a knife and a set of spiked knuckle-dusters. I wonder if that was the tattooed barrel of lard I heaved into the pile of boxes. I might need to talk to James about that.’

  ‘I take it this individual isn’t regularly seen in church weeping tears of remorse.’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  I did not have to ask, after following a public footpath across fields we were striking uphill towards Hagtop Farm. It was quite late, the evening fine and dry, and, being the last week of May the sun was only just setting, burning low and redly through the tree trunks of a copse. A small flock of wood pigeons rocketed away, disturbed by our approach.

  ‘Bang,’ said Patrick absently.

  We dine well at home during the winter months, on game that he can pot in the garden from an upstairs window of the barn with an air rifle, other people’s pheasants occasionally among the casualties. Once a seriously injured roe deer – we thought it had been hit by a car – was put out of its misery with a fine head shot from the Smith and Wesson that was ostensibly helping to protect the pair of us from terrorist attack, our names having been on several such organizations’ hit-lists for years. Venison is very good eating. These days he carries a Glock hand gun, which is a better weapon whatever the target. I know that the former weapon was handed back to MI5 but had recently noticed that it, or another one, had miraculously reappeared in the wall safe.

  The murder scene cattle barn came into view over to the west, roughly halfway up the hill. This, John had told us, had been bought by a local farmer when Hagtop was auctioned off. The rector did not know the name of whoever had bought the house and immediate out-buildings but had promised to try to find out. Patrick had urged caution. His father’s response to this, with an
ironic grin on his face, had been a robust declaration that it was the incumbent’s business to find out who had moved into the district so he could save their souls.

  Hagtop farmhouse could be seen on the brow of the hill over to our right and from where we were appeared to be just the same as I remembered it. But as we climbed higher and got closer, crossing a stile into the lane that led to it it was apparent that a lot of work had taken place. As the poultry farmer had said, the house had been almost gutted, the rear part of the roof, the weather side, off with some of the timbers replaced with new wood, all the windows out and the floors between the two storeys just bare joists. The whole place was surrounded with security fencing plastered with KEEP OUT notices and others intimating that it was a hard hat area.

  ‘No one can be living here yet but perhaps we ought to be careful,’ Patrick muttered as we set off to walk around the front of the house, skirting the fencing towards the yard, tractor shed and other buildings. He rounded the corner, stopped dead and quickly went into reverse, almost treading on my toes.

  ‘Someone is living here. There’s a caravan.’

  We returned to the farthest extent of the fencing in front of the house and followed it around the other side towards the rear. Here, the builders must have run out of the tall wire mesh panels, a final one lashed roughly to a plum tree that had probably at one time been part of an orchard. Now there was just waist-high grass and weeds between piles of rubble and rotten timbers.

  Treading carefully we made our way along the back of the house and over to a stone wall at right angles to it, actually the rear of another building. There was an open doorway in it, a light breeze bringing the unmistakable smell of cooking. Patrick signalled to me to remain where I was and went over to look carefully around the door post. Then he came back to me, shaking his head and we went back the way we had come into the lane.

  ‘Nothing?’ I enquired when we were at a safe distance not to be overheard.

  ‘Nothing, just a bloke smoking outside the caravan while his dinner cooked. I’ll follow my own advice and leave well alone for now. We could always come back on Monday morning.’

  ‘If you wave your SOCA warrant card at whichever estate agent handled the sale you can find out who this place belongs to now.’

  ‘Good idea. And it was only a rumour. I suggest, just in case, that we go back by another route so we won’t be spotted.’

  We made our way, bending low and keeping a pile of pallets between us and the house, to a field gate, which was open. We quickly walked downhill in the lee of a thick hedge and after several hundred yards or so – although to me it seemed like miles – picked our way over rough ground, climbed over a stone wall, slid down a steep bank and finished up in a narrow lane. It was now getting dark.

  ‘I wish you’d said it was going to be this sort of walk and I’d have dressed accordingly,’ I grumbled, muddy, extravagantly stung by nettles and with my heart for some reason going like a trip-hammer.

  ‘I can hardly be expected to know in advance how things are going to turn out,’ Patrick observed.

  ‘You know what?’ I shot back at him. ‘It would be wonderful if our life together didn’t have to feel like constantly being on manoeuvres.’

  The man in my life set off up the lane, saying over his shoulder, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have joined.’

  Tears sprang to my eyes and then, unbelievably, a huge sob surfaced that I was too late in smothering with a hand. Others followed and I discovered that to stand helplessly in a country lane, unable to stop yourself bawling your eyes out is a dreadfully humiliating experience. Almost immediately I found myself taken in a hug.

  ‘Ingrid, I’m sorry,’ Patrick murmured into my hair. ‘I’m a real bastard. I don’t know what made me say that. I didn’t mean it.’

  I fought to get myself back under control and then said, or rather gulped, ‘I’m actually feeling pretty exhausted.’

  ‘Home then,’ he said decisively

  I started to walk up the lane with him but again stopped, appalled to find how weak and shaky I was and, worse, had strange ringing noises in my ears. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I told him. ‘I must have the flu coming on or something. I feel quite—’

  A ghastly stinging sensation hit my nose, throat and lungs and I coughed. Three worried-looking people stared down at me.

  ‘Thank the good Lord for that!’ Elspeth exclaimed, screwing the top back on the smelling salts. ‘Patrick, that was far too far to take the girl for a walk when she was looking so tired.’

  ‘Ingrid didn’t say anything about being tired,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Men!’ snorted his mother. ‘I thought she looked fit to drop.’

  Realizing that I was lying on the sofa in the living room of the rectory I said, ‘Where all dilapidated Gillards and their family and friends are placed to have their wounds bathed. I’m on hallowed ground.’

  Everyone looked worried again.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to call a doctor, my dear,’ John said to his wife.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I assured them, sitting up. ‘Just – tired.’

  I discovered later that Patrick had succeeded in catching me as I fainted but had then been forced to lay me down in the recovery position in the road in order to call his father and ask him to pick us up. Really concerned as I was showing no signs of coming round – I think I was probably merely deeply asleep by this time – he had then carried me to a road junction to meet John, collecting, I gather, odd looks from passing motorists. No one had stopped and offered to help.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to go for a check-up,’ Patrick said the next morning after I had slept dreamlessly for twelve hours. His gaze became a stare. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  ‘I could well be pregnant,’ I answered, having done a little mental arithmetic the night before. My internal arrangements have always performed like clockwork: as Patrick himself had once put it, to his chums in the mess of course, ‘You could put the moon right by her.’

  There was rather a long silence.

  Then Patrick said, ‘As you know, after I was blown up in the Falklands the medics assured me that I was firing mostly blanks. Then we tried hard for a baby, had Justin, then Victoria by accident and only bothered with birth control when we thought about it. And now …’

  ‘I’m getting older,’ I reminded him. ‘It’s quite likely just a false alarm. And don’t forget, Vicky was very premature and almost didn’t survive so the auspices aren’t good.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Would you be pleased if I was?’ I asked.

  Ye gods, a soppy smile infused over his face. ‘Of course.’

  To be honest I did not know whether I was overcome with joy or not. Possibly … not.

  ‘Until we know for sure and to be on the safe side you shouldn’t come with me tonight when I have a look at the warehouse.’

  ‘I’m hanged if I’m going to be wrapped in cotton wool!’

  ‘No, I mean it, Ingrid. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you – either of you.’

  As when husbandly edicts had been previously issued, and aware that once upon a time, a long time ago, I had promised to love, honour and obey, I dissected the wording of this one very carefully. It did, like slightly ambiguous decrees in the past, I decided, actually state an ideal situation. To be on the safe side of course I should not go. But nevertheless I would. This was because Patrick was far more important to me and the four youngsters for whom we were already responsible than a mere question mark.

  Eight

  There had been no question of my stowing myself away in the Range Rover or anything silly like that, if indeed it was possible. Even stupider would have been to borrow John or Elspeth’s car as I could not explain my reasons without causing them worry. So I had done none of these things, merely having gone out into the garden after dinner to make a phone call on my mobile. Then, later, when the rector and his wife had gone to bed, Patrick left, having mentioned to them ear
lier that he would be going out for a short while. A little later again I had slipped out of the house and walked the short distance up through the village to the junction with the main road.

  ‘You’re quite sure he’s following orders in taking a look at this place?’ James Carrick said, ever cautious as far as Patrick is concerned. He had not said so but I knew was pleased that I had brought him up to date with our hunt for the tall man, although obviously I had not mentioned Robert Kennedy’s name.

  ‘Positive,’ I told him. ‘I was there when he made the call to Greenway.’

  We were walking along one of the old cobbled roads in Bristol Docks, the masts and funnels of the restored S S Great Britain silhouetted against hazy moonlight in the easterly sky. Most of the warehouses have now been converted into apartments but original corners with what were once old inns remain, some of these now up-market restaurants, where slaves were once brought in on ships and shackled in the cellars before being taken on to work in the tobacco plantations of the southern states of America. I never feel comfortable here.

  James was not comfortable either. ‘I’m still not too sure why he didn’t want you along. Is it trouble he’s expecting?’

  ‘I might be, that’s all.’

  He stopped dead. ‘What? You’re pregnant?’

  ‘I fainted yesterday and there is a slight chance,’ I snapped. ‘He always goes off the over-protective deep end.’

  ‘The man’ll kill me.’

  ‘I’ll tell him the truth – that I didn’t let on until we arrived.’

  ‘D’you know where this warehouse is?’ he asked after a heavy pause.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Patrick?’

  ‘I don’t think he knows the exact address – only that it’s around here somewhere.’

  ‘I ken the first thing that’ll happen is that we’ll bump into him,’ James said unhappily, and as it happened, with uncanny foresight. ‘I’d better ask in that pub just up the road there or we’ll wander around looking for the place until dawn.’

  ‘Surely it’s not still open.’