Praying that Patrick would be waiting for me in the car park – the distance across the field is a lot shorter than by road – I started the vehicle, stalling it in my haste by trying to drive away with next to no revs. With visions of hoodlums pelting along in my wake I roared up the drive, turned left at the top and made for the pub. It occurred to me that I must call the police: the house was unsecured.
With a pang I realized that my home was no longer the peaceful refuge that it used to be. I did not really want to live there anymore.
There was no sign of Patrick, no one was about, the only other vehicle a large red saloon that I had an idea belonged to the publican. Keeping a close watch on my surroundings – I had parked right in the centre of the small car park, facing the entrance – I duly glanced at my watch and then found my phone and dialled 999 to report what had happened. I was given to understand that other residents of the village had reported hearing shots. I had to explain that I would not be able to stay until the police arrived and was not prepared to say where I was going. This was in case anyone was monitoring my calls: I had not actually clapped eyes on the mobile phone Patrick had mentioned, never mind made a note of the number to enable me to ring it. Where the hell was I going?
Four minutes went by and still dead silence hung over the village. Then the quiet was broken by a car going by without stopping. A dog barked a few times. In the distance, probably somewhere out on the moor, a cow bellowed.
No one came.
I waited for seven minutes and then, utterly wretched, turned the key in the ignition and drove away.
There was only one person on the entire planet whom I could ask to look over a vehicle for tagging devices, who was suitably equipped and reliable, that is. The phone rang for quite a time without any interruptions from answering machines, which was what I was expecting, and then a recorded message did cut in. I said nothing, just pressed 4. There was another wait, a silence inhabited by occasional electonic clicks and mutterings.
‘Meadows,’ said a voice I had not heard for a while.
‘Ingrid,’ I said tersely. ‘I have a cuckoo clock that’s suspect.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Not far from Exeter. I daren’t go where I want to until it’s checked over.’
‘Are you in danger?’
‘I could be.’
‘Is the governor not in circulation?’
‘No.’
‘I take it you’re heading roughly east.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll meet you at Claridges.’
‘Claridges’ was the code name for a truly dreadful pub on the outskirts of Shaftesbury that had been used as a drop-off point and meeting place in our D12 days. Terry Meadows had been Patrick’s assistant, in the days before Steve’s arrival, who had finally left MI5, married our then nanny, Dawn, set himself up in business as a security adviser and was living somewhere in Wiltshire. Last I’d heard he was doing very well for himself.
Expecting to see in my mirror at any moment a following vehicle, or vehicles obviously tailing me, I drove very fast, stopping only for petrol. It was well past midnight when I arrived and of course it was long after closing time so the pub’s car park was shut off with large gates. I drove right by and stopped in a lay-by a short distance away.
I suddenly felt very tired, exhausted if I was honest. There was a car already in the lay-by and I had the hand gun securely in my grasp but out of sight when the driver’s door opened and a man got out. He came over and I opened my window.
‘This is a bloody strange time of day to have trouble with cuckoo clocks,’ said Terry cheerfully.
I got out, stiff, not a little scratched by brambles that I had not noticed at the time and gave him a hug. ‘I’m so very, very glad to see you,’ I said.
He seemed surprised by the warmth of my greeting even though, a long time ago, we had fancied one another slightly, more than slightly on my part. But no, we had not gone to bed together and I now thought of him, although he was younger than me, as a big brother.
‘And a few tears,’ he observed, giving me his handkerchief, not for the first time. ‘You sit in the back of the car while I fetch the gizmo.’
When Patrick looks for unwanted electronics he has to undertake screwdriver and spanner wrangling, having gone on a course to learn how to access and put back together again vital parts of our vehicle. The piece of equipment that Terry brought was a laptop computer in a small carrying case that he merely plugged into the Range Rover’s own electronic diagnostic system. He soon found what he was looking for.
‘Patrick had trouble with the locking system in London,’ I told him, having got out of the car to hold the torch for him. ‘He had to take it to a main dealer.’
‘Well, that was probably when this little job was fitted,’ Terry told me, waving it under my nose, having briefly dismantled the front passenger-side doorlock to find it. ‘If Patrick wants to stay ahead of the game he’ll have to get SOCA to buy him one of these detectors.’
I rather thought that SOCA would decline.
‘I’ve deactivated the bug. Do you want to take it to show somebody?’
‘Are you sure there isn’t the smallest sign of life in there somewhere?’ I enquired, looking at the tiny device dubiously.
He trod on it with a hefty boot and then gave me the flattened remains. ‘Quite sure. So where is Patrick?’
‘I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive,’ I whispered, and then briefly told him the story.
When I had fallen silent, he asked, ‘Ingrid, is this new career of Patrick’s really worth it?’
‘No, I’m beginning to think it isn’t.’
‘Where are you going now?’
‘I’m not too sure. I can go to Hinton Littlemoor because there are members of an armed-response unit there. But I shall have to report to Greenway tomorrow. I’m very angry with him. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t ordered Patrick to send me home.’
‘Look, it’s already after midnight. You can’t knock up the rector and his wife now. You ought to come home with me.’
‘It’s all right, I have a key.’
‘Dawn would love to see you – she’s expecting our second,’ he said proudly.
I kissed his cheek. ‘Then I won’t disturb her – she needs her sleep.’
I thanked him again, got back in the car and drove away.
I did not drive far, forced to stop to think over what I could only describe as the outrageousness of the situation. Terry’s question still rang in my ears. No, it simply was not worth it. All we had done was to hold innumerable briefings with Michael Greenway and achieved absolutely nothing. These criminals had run rings around us and still appeared to be in a dominant position. While they had apparently been forced to abandon the Bristol area, temporarily or not, leaving more evidence behind than they might have wished, we were still no nearer to finding out who these people were.
And here I was, running back to tell teacher again.
No.
I did not go to Hinton Littlemoor, spending what was left of the night at an hotel in Shaftesbury. I hated having to stop but I was beginning to feel dizzy from lack of sleep and hunger. In the morning, and after a large breakfast, I headed back to Devon. To hell with scarecrows; dead or alive, I was going to find Patrick.
I rang Greenway near Okehampton, in the mood now to tell him go to hell as well, but desperate to know if he knew where Patrick was. He did not and, predictably, refused to say much over an ordinary line, even a mobile one, in the circumstances, and told me he would ring me back shortly. I waited.
‘There’s no one been seen with gunshot wounds at any of the A and E departments of hospitals in the Plymouth and Tavistock areas and a search of the area around your home by local police found nothing suspicious,’ he duly reported.
‘That means he’s either dead in a ditch somewhere or this bunch of murderers has got hold of him,’ I retorted. ‘Because he would have contacted me by now i
f he was living rough in the countryside or hitching a lift somewhere. I mean, I take it you’ve told him to disappear from your own radars now he’s using a disguise.’
‘Yes, I have. Unless it’s an emergency.’
‘By wrecking our working partnership you’ve compromised the work on the case,’ I furiously told him. ‘You might even have been responsible for Patrick’s death.’
‘Ingrid—’
I cut him off.
For the sole reason of looking for evidence – and what would the police have discovered by way of clues in pitch darkness? – I went home. I had seriously thought of asking James Carrick to come with me but that would have meant more delay until he arrived and remove a really useful person from the investigation.
With all due caution, the Smith and Wesson handy, I drove slowly down the drive in bright late-morning sunshine. I was banking on this being the last thing they – Ballinger, whoever – would expect me to do but there was still a chance that someone had been left on watch. No strange vehicles were in sight, nor had been parked in the village street, no oddly waving or weighted branches in nearby trees. No scarecrows. No van, which was interesting.
I turned and parked the vehicle so that it was positioned for a quick getaway and then, the full commando training kicking in, shot into the garden behind the barn, weapon two-handed at the ready. No one. Back in the courtyard the front door of the barn showed no sign of forced entry. Neither did the main house. I rang both doorbells, wary of possible booby traps should I just unlock the doors and breeze straight in. No one came. No blood stains.
Leaving the courtyard by the narrow pathway that runs around the other side of the barn I examined the ground-floor windows. Still no evidence of forced entry. I repeated this at the house with the same result. Then, standing in the small back garden of the cottage I searched the ground for anything that might tell me what had happened. If Patrick had got away and taken the route he had planned to it would have meant climbing over the low wall that separated the garden from the field and then heading west at the top of the long and quite steep slope that runs down to Lydford Gorge at the bottom. Examining every inch of the way I clambered over the wall, carefully surveying my surroundings before moving off. I then walked along what was, in effect, a meandering sheep path towards where I knew a stile gave access into a lane between houses that eventually led into the cark park where he had said he would meet me.
There was absolutely nothing to see. I deviated from the path a few times to look under hedges and in a large hole in the ground where an ages-old rabbit warren had collapsed under the weight of a tractor the previous year, my heart in my mouth with the thought that I would find a body at any moment.
Nothing.
I reached the stile and saw that it had been repaired recently with a new top bar and steps. The job was badly done, the wood left rough with quite large splinters sticking out. On one of these was caught a tuft of wool. Not that from a sheep but dark blue in colour, from someone’s sweater. I knew that Patrick had such a sweater because I had bought it for him but he had not been wearing it beneath the overalls. I forced myself to dismiss the cosy thought that he had somehow had time to change and then come looking for me. This was, after all, a sort of a right of way for those who lived on this side of the village: the wool could have come from any one of a number of people’s garments.
Mounting the stile I walked up the lane, emerging half a minute later in the car park. The mobile library van was parked in it, the usual group of village ladies chatting at the bottom of the steps. One waved, the others gave me sideways looks. Of course, the police had been at the cottage the previous night. People had heard shots and here was the mad author who must have criminal connections in order to give authenticity to her stories.
I suddenly felt very bored with the lot of them and, worse, had learned nothing by coming back. Once more I got into the Range Rover and left. This time it seemed that I was leaving my life behind. I could never remember feeling more miserable.
Fifteen
Miss Philippa Dean was being watched over in a one-time police section house a stone’s throw from Olympia. Her sister was staying with her for a few days but was out when I called, having taken a bus into the West End to do some shopping. Miss Dean seemed pleased to see me.
‘I’ll be in the next room,’ said the woman police constable on duty.
‘You don’t have to go,’ I told her. ‘This isn’t a private matter.’
But she went, saying she would make tea in a short while.
‘Is that young woman armed?’ asked Miss Dean wonderingly.
‘No, but there’s someone who is in the front room,’ I answered. And someone who is right here, I did not add.
I had had no choice but to ask Greenway if he would arrange the meeting, aware that the man did not actually know what to do with me. He could hardly order me home again and was probably praying, after what I had said to him, that Patrick would turn up and we would then work together. It did not need me to tell him that this situation was highly unsatisfactory to all concerned.
I had gone on to ask him about the CD ROMs that Miss Dean had brought to London with her and he had only said that he did not want to go into details over the phone.
I said, ‘I just have a couple of questions and won’t keep you long. I was wondering if there was anything you can remember about Steven Ballinger that will help me to find him.’
She seated herself in one of the dreadful green armchairs in the rather dreadful room and thought about it. ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t think there is,’ she said after a few moments.
‘The store’s head office was listed in Walthamsden but apparently that’s all it is, an empty office. Do you know why that was?’
‘No. The address was on the notice board, wasn’t it? I’m afraid that not knowing much about retail business I never gave it a thought. I heard Walthamsden Cinema talked about though.’
‘Cinema?’ I echoed.
‘Oh, it’s not one of those modern multi-screen places. This is a little old cinema in a back street somewhere that’s art-deco and Grade 2 listed that Ballinger’s been trying to buy. Needless to say he wants to knock it down and build flats on the site. No, that’s wrong: he’s hoping to redevelop the entire area.’ She finished by adding disparagingly, ‘They’ve probably burned it to the ground as well by now.’
‘Do you know any more details?’
‘Well, I have no idea where it is, other than it’s in a rundown area that’s due for improvement. There’s a Save Walthamsden Picture House Society been formed to fight the proposal. Ballinger cursed them daily.’
‘Was the name Ernie O’Malley ever mentioned?
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He’s supposed to be Ballinger’s brother-in-law.’
Miss Dean smiled. ‘They were all brothers-in-law.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It was the only time I ever saw anyone there laugh. It seemed to be an in-joke. I assumed it meant they were crooks-in-law, or lawless brothers – a bit like the Mafia.’
I thanked her, telling her that it was useful.
‘And your working partner?’ she enquired. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘He’s my husband actually.’
‘I thought you had a long-standing relationship by the way you communicated.’
‘I don’t know where he is right now,’ I admitted.
She gazed at me sympathetically. ‘You must be worried.’
‘I am.’
‘He doesn’t look the kind of man to get too unstuck. Who is the person he loves most in the world, other than you?’
‘His mother.’
‘Ask her. She might know.’
Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
‘Please be careful, my dear. These people are monsters.’
Still fearful of eavesdroppers, even on mobiles, and not in possession of one with more firewalls than Nero’s Rome, I determined not to ask El
speth outright if she had heard from Patrick. It soon became apparent though, after she had assured me that the children were well and happy, that she was choosing her words very carefully.
‘Any – er – other family news?’ I stammered.
‘No, not really. It’s not family but you might like to know that the Fieldings have a new baby boy. And Donna Warrington’s engaged to that boy who fell in the river last year and almost drowned.’
I hadn’t the first clue who these people were. Then it occurred to me that they might not even exist and there were other forces at work here.
‘Oh! And we have a new gardener. He’s just arrived,’ she went on as though being prompted. ‘He’s really good at his job. I didn’t know people from Delhi liked gardening, did you?’
‘No,’ I gasped.
‘Would you like to speak to him? I’ve asked him in for a cup of tea.’ She actually giggled. ‘Indian, of course.’
Ye gods.
Before I had had time to think, let alone reply, a quiet sing-song voice said, ‘Hello, Mrs Gillard. Would you be having a nice day?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I managed to say. ‘Are you staying with the rector long or would you like to come and work for me?’
‘I am very pleased to stay here until the usual gardener comes back from his broken leg. Then I shall be free.’
My heart sank. ‘How long will that be?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘But you just said he’d broken his leg!’
‘Not broken at all badly. No, not badly at all. Just a very small tinge broken.’
I bit my lip hard to stop myself exploding with laughter.
‘You know where I live,’ I said.
‘Yes, the big house with the trees. Goodbye, Mrs Gillard.’
‘Goodbye until tomorrow,’ I whispered.
The ‘big house with the trees’ like ‘Claridges’ was a code name and more correctly the Elms Hotel just off Piccadilly. It had been one of our occasional haunts when we worked for D12 and I personally had not stayed there for years. Tending to be the kind of place frequented, and often lived in, by ladies who looked like Barbara Cartland it was, for the purpose of keeping our heads down, perfect.
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