Lock 13

by Peter Helton

  ‘Will you be around for a while?’

  ‘A couple of days at least.’

  ‘I’ll talk it over with my partner,’ he said and disappeared. It took me a full five minutes to realize that he was one of the Moonglow crew, and I had just told him I’d be here for two more days. Did it matter? Perhaps I was wrong to include them in my boating paranoia.

  I showed the manager my sketch. He seemed delighted with it but made a few suggestions. Could the standing stone be more prominent? And could I leave out the security camera and the burglar alarm? After a very acceptable lunch of homemade this and locally sourced that, I set to work again on my second preliminary sketch. This time I had more of an audience as the place filled up and people stopped to peer at my sketch while carrying their drinks past my table. The second sketch took a little less time, yet it was after five when I packed up my gear and headed back to the boat where I basked in the evening rays on the stern deck.

  So far canal life had turned out less idyllic yet more rewarding than I had expected. I thought I could now understand why people decided to spend all their life on the canals, which made me think of Vince, who had been helpful and friendly and then suddenly disappeared without a word. I recalled the way he had looked at me that night – drunk, yes, but fear or anger also came to mind when I thought about it. I had been talking on the phone at the time. What had Vince overheard that might have spooked him enough to steam away at the crack of dawn? Having found and lost my boating mentor, this soon made me feel uneasy again, though merely about the mysterious workings of the boat itself, and since I wasn’t going anywhere at the moment and the sun was keeping my batteries topped up, I decided to worry about my police escort instead. Were they still here?

  After sunset I ventured down the towpath in the direction of Bath to check if I had reason to worry. I didn’t have far to go to confirm it; in a long line of narrowboats, the white cabin cruiser stood out even in the fading light of the evening. I could have saved myself the bother; when I returned to the pub, I found them already there, sitting morosely opposite each other in front of pints of something or other. Perhaps it was time to turn the tables on them. After having ordered poached trout (a safe bet because it is difficult to ruin), I carried my pint of Guinness to a table where I could observe my observers and began to stare at them as though they were the most fascinating specimen of manhood ever to grace a beer garden. Tonight, though, they both wore shirts and ties. The evenings were getting chillier now and all three of us were wearing leather jackets, only I suspected that on theirs the pockets didn’t have huge holes in them, allowing things like cigarettes and lighters to disappear into the lining, which periodically makes me look as if I’m having a seizure when I hunt for them. But apart from that, I was Mr Cool. And they pretended not to notice. Just as a girl came wandering into the garden carrying my supper, the thinner of the Spiriters put down his e-cigarette to answer his phone which was playing a hectic dance tune. He spoke into the phone, then both of them looked towards the road and abandoned their pints on the table.

  A burgundy Bentley Continental had arrived. The driver was opening the doors for the two officers who were a good head taller than him, then he drove them sedately away into the night. There were no other passengers; someone had sent a car for them. With my phone’s camera I took a pot-shot at the disappearing car, hoping to catch the number plate; there were ways of finding out who owned the wheels. No doubt boats too were registered in someone’s name somewhere, but I had no idea how to find out who owned Free Spirit, while Jake had a contact at the DVLA, a classic car nut, who would occasionally exchange owner details of cars for a bottle of vintage champagne to stick in his hamper when he took out his vintage Rolls Royce Corniche for a Sunday run in the Wye Valley.

  The trout was very acceptable, cooked simply and served with a tiny sprig of curly parsley coyly covering its glassy eye. I took my time over supper, drank two more pints while wondering what to do next. The Bentley’s number plate was fuzzy but readable. I sent the picture to Jake, together with fulsome praise for the boat and a promise to pay for his contact’s champagne in exchange for the registered owner’s name. That done, I went back to Dreamcatcher and changed into dark clothes. I had made up my mind: it was time for a bit of breaking and entering. Tim, who used to do it professionally before going straight, had taught me how to defeat several types of lock, mainly because he no longer wanted to do it himself, even when, as I (often) told him, we were on the side of the angels. The lock-picking kit Tim had bequeathed me came in an elegant leather pouch and in itself counted as ‘going equipped’, which was enough for a custodial sentence; together with the unregistered Webley, it could land me behind bars for quite a while. I opened the kitchen drawer and looked down at the revolver for a minute before closing the drawer again, leaving the gun where it was.

  Despite having been a private detective for longer than I care to admit, I have never quite managed to pull off a casual stroll when I am obviously up to no good. As I made my way casually down the towpath by the light of a young moon, I felt as though a neon sign was flashing above me, spelling ‘UP TO SOMETHING’. My arms refused to swing naturally with the rhythm of my walk, and my eyes darted guiltily here and there, having forgotten how to look innocently out of my head. I walked past the beer garden, where several tables were still occupied by drinkers from the boats, the village and the camp site. I tried whistling tunelessly, which made it worse. Having forgotten to bring gloves on this trip, I took with me a pair of (clean) socks, like a part-time drug-addict burglar, because I had no intention of leaving my fingerprints on a boat used by the police. Of course, I was aware that these days advances in forensics mean a sneeze is enough to give your presence away, but then I had planned to get on and off the cruiser without them knowing that I had been there, a feat that should be perfectly achievable as long as I didn’t try to bake a cake in their galley. I met two torch-carrying people along the towpath, probably boaters heading for a quick drink at the pub before closing time; we exchanged polite mutterings of ‘Evening’ as we passed each other. I did not use my torch and instead made do with moonshine.

  Free Spirit was no longer at the end of the line of boats; the darkened shapes of two more narrowboats lay beyond it. Since I was trying not to use my torch, I swung on board the cruiser without the aid of a gangplank and nearly tripped over a coil of rope on the deck. I felt my way past the boat’s wheel and engine controls down four steep steps to the cabin door. The Yale lock was one I was familiar with, and even in the deep gloom at the foot of the stair, I managed to select the right lock picks. The hardest thing is having enough patience not to leave scratches on the lock that show a breakin has occurred. I had learnt patience because I was rubbish at lock picking and was prepared to be there a while, but the mechanism was worn out and I had no problems getting inside. I closed the door behind me and stood in complete darkness. The place smelled aggressively of body spray or aftershave with an undercurrent of fried sausage. Pointing the torch downwards, I turned it on. The boat had four portholes at the side and two windows at the front. I was relieved to see that all of them were tightly curtained. Being used by now to the long and narrow layout of my narrowboat where the saloon is followed by the galley, dining area, toilet and shower and finally the cabin, I was surprised at how on this boat everything seemed to be crammed into the same place. Two bunks on my left were covered in discarded clothes and open holdalls. A banquette and table were barely large enough for two people to eat at the same time. Behind the door opposite the bunks, I found a toilet and hand basin; the door next to it revealed surely the smallest shower cubicle afloat, packed to the bulkhead with supermarket shopping bags resting on ripped-open boxes of cheap lager. Tucked in one corner was an unopened bottle of blended Scotch. I opened it for them – they would probably blame each other – and took a couple of fortifying swigs. It was surprisingly acceptable, so I took another couple of swigs just to be sure. I closed the door and let the torch be
am travel over the rest of the cabin. There was a galley of sorts which consisted of a stainless-steel basin crammed full of empty beer cans and two gas rings buried under dirty pots and pans from which rose the smell of burnt sausages. What from the outside looked sleek, contemporary and imposing turned out on the inside to be every bit as tragic as a cheap fibreglass caravan from the 1970s. A grey upholstered bench at the very front of the cabin was covered with various papers, some handwritten, some typed, a few maps, but on top of them sat two pairs of binoculars, a pair of rancid-looking trainers, an iPod and a laptop. Having donned my pair of socks to avoid fingerprinting my ID all over the boat, I found the on-button – always a good start and not always a given considering my computer skills – and while I waited for it to power up, I took a photo of the whole mess on my phone. After the flash had subsided, I waited for my eyes to readjust, then dismantled the mess, setting all the objects on the floor so I could get at the papers. The laptop was a state-of-the-art thing as thin as an After Eight mint and loaded within seconds. It was password-protected and there was no chance of me cracking the password unless it was ‘Password’. I turned the thing off. The map was of southern England, with the Kennet and Avon highlighted in blue felt-tip. I set it aside for the moment because I had glimpsed something scary as I lifted it. Underneath it lay a baby-blue plastic folder. It was open and from it had spilled sheets of A4 with six-by-four colour prints stapled into the corners. I took another photograph of how they were arranged before touching them. The memo at the top had a picture of Verity attached. It was a little grainy and looked as though it had been taken late in the evening and through the windscreen of a car: Verity standing next to her boneshaker bicycle outside the Bell in Walcot Street. She seemed to be talking to someone outside the frame. I flipped up the photo and read the brief but chilling note, printed in a tiny font on the single sheet of A4.

  One laptop, Dell Alienware, recover and destroy. Three USB sticks, blue Scandisk, 128GB, recover and destroy. All devices in Verity Lake’s possession capable of holding data, mobile phones, mp3 players, digital radios or cameras to be destroyed. Ms Lake must be left in no doubt that extreme measures will be taken if further images surface. How you impress this on the lady I leave up to you but I suggest you leave a lasting impression. Destroy this communication.

  I pulled out the next sheet. Attached to the top left-hand corner was a photograph of me standing next to the Honda Jazz, taken in a supermarket car park. I was looking at a piece of paper in my hand. The picture had again been taken through a car windscreen. This time, however, the photographer had been crouching low behind the steering wheel and enough of the shape of the wheel was visible, albeit out of focus, to suggest that it was a sports car, and I was willing to bet that the logo beside the speedometer spelled Targa 4S. Which would make it a Porsche. I flipped up the picture and read.

  Chris Honeysett, a PI posing as a painter, or vice versa. Motives unclear. Honeysett appears to be trying to locate Lake who once worked as an artist’s model for him. H. has a good record of finding mis pers, hence keeping close surveillance on him may be one way of finding the girl. If H. is involved, then he needs to be dealt with precisely as the girl. A search of his home computer revealed none of the images in question.

  In a minute I would need another swig of whisky. The next sheet had a long-lens photo of a group of scruffy characters which I recognized as Claw Hammer, Lead Pipe and the dippy Sam who had fancied himself as Verity’s boyfriend and business partner, who had nearly got himself cooked medium-rare in his burning camper van. I turned to the note.

  Various traveller scum Verity hung out with. One of them is definitely involved, but Verity was the brains since this lot have not even one between them. Deal with them any way you like, perhaps get uniform to bust them on drugs/theft robbery charges.

  This was the last sheet in the folder, nothing on the characters from Moonglow. Perhaps Moonglow was just part of my own bit of paranoia which, after this discovery, would be quite superfluous – I had enough to be scared of now. I stared at the sheets of A4; I turned the folder over and over. There was no indication of who might have issued this. I had seen many a police memo in my time and nothing here looked like official Avon and Somerset business. I had also never heard of a Police and Criminal Evidence Act procedure that said ‘deal with them any way you like’, and while police may think of travellers as scum, they tend not to put that in official documents. I went to the shower cubicle for another fortifying swig or two of Scotch before returning to the folder. The question that made me break into a sweat – unless it was the six fingers of whisky I had just consumed – was: Who did these guys answer to? Was it DI Reid or was it DSI Needham? Reid, being in Bath himself, would not need to hand out instructions like these on sheets of A4 and Needham would not be stupid enough. Until now I had trusted Needham and thought of him as a bit of a nuisance but also a proper by-the-book copper I would not hesitate to approach as long as I had first hidden my Webley, about which he has a bit of an obsession. It was Reid, I decided there and then, and Reid had handed the memos to the Spirit crew because he himself had received them.

  It was time to reassemble the mess on the bench exactly how I had found it, using the pictures on my phone. Unfortunately, I had not been very good at charging my mobile on the boat and leaving the camera on standby had drained the last milliampere from its battery. No matter, I would do it from memory.

  I don’t know if you have ever drunk a quarter of a bottle of Scotch, taken something apart you shouldn’t have in a place you ought not to be and then tried to restore it with a torch in your mouth and socks on your hands, but I cannot honestly recommend it unless you are blessed with complete fearlessness, a photographic memory and strong teeth. I shuffled the stuff back the way I thought it had looked, laptop off, on the right, rancid trainers over there and binoculars just there. I had just gratefully taken the torch from my mouth when, out of nowhere it seemed, voices appeared beside the boat. I snapped off the torch. ‘Yes, you did, you made a complete arse of yourself by getting pissed; you could have waited until we got back,’ said the first voice with considerable anger.

  The other voice sounded as drunk as I felt. ‘You’re making a molehill out of … no, a mole, a mole … of a hill. Anyway, we’re here and no harm done. All aboard.’ The noise of inebriated feet stomping and sliding on the bulkhead above me was loud in my ears. The crew were back and my mind was a dark blank. The boat gently swayed as the plods heaved themselves aboard. I staggered through the dark cabin to the only place I knew could hide a grown-up person: the head. I managed to find the door, searched for the door handle with fluttering hands and opened it just as the drunker of the two officers managed to get the door to the cabin open. ‘Core, it’s stuffy in here,’ he complained a few inches from my ear before I managed to shut the door and sink on to the tiny toilet inside.

  I now had a sheet of varnished plywood between me and the two who talked with loud alcohol-fuelled voices, and it didn’t exactly make me feel safe. What were the chances of two blokes who had been drinking not wanting to use the toilet before turning in?

  ‘God, this place is a tip. Get your stuff off my bunk. Why do I always find your bag and stuff on mine?’

  ‘Because yours is the lower,’ said the drunk indignantly, ‘and I can’t see inside my bag when it’s up there, can I?’

  ‘Then kindly put it away afterwards, not leave me to do it.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, takes two ticks, give me a break.’

  I heard rummaging and puffing and straining, and then the less drunk officer suddenly burst out, ‘Mark, you total dickhead! I let you use my iPod and you leave it lying on the floor.’

  ‘I did not!’ protested Mark.

  ‘Yes, you did and I just trod on it! If it’s broken, you’ll buy me a new one and double quick; this job is boring enough – without music, I swear I’ll go mad.’

  ‘I put it there with the binoculars – must have slid off the bench. This wretche
d tub never stands still. Someone farts on the towpath and it rocks like a seesaw. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the whole thing.’ There was a pause. ‘You know what, Nick?’ said Mark, suddenly sounding a lot more sober. ‘I think we’ve backed the wrong horse.’

  ‘Shut up! I don’t want to talk about it. What’s done is done.’

  ‘Is it, though? You don’t want to talk about it because you know I’m right. Do this little job for us and when it comes to the disciplinary hearing I’ll make sure you two will be all right. Well, I think if this goes tits-up, we’ll get heaps more than a reprimand. That lot will end up in the slammer for years for their filthy habits, and whoever poured petrol through that kid’s letter box is gonna get life. And we’ll end up as accessories to the whole disgusting bunch. God, I thought paedophiles were weird but this lot are worse.’

  ‘It’s too late now. We’ll just have to make sure the girl and anyone with her doesn’t get a chance to publish the photos. If they hadn’t messed up when they handed over the money, none of this would have happened and we’d be enjoying our suspension from duty in the pub. But Reid says she was very pretty and sweet, which is why they simply believed her. Weird, when they’re not into girls at all.’

  ‘If they’d have killed her, they would never have found out where the pictures were and someone else could have turned up demanding more money. Or someone could have found them and handed them in at the nearest cop shop. They let her go to see where she’d run to.’

  ‘Yeah, and then promptly lost her. And now this idiot painter is our best bet to find the bitch and he goes off in a bloody boat at two miles an hour. Only he’s not looking very hard; that’s our problem. If he’s given up, then we have some serious work to do. Shit, I’m turning in; early start tomorrow – we don’t want to find the Honey Monster has done a runner at dawn.’