The lift was slowing down. Daisy tried to think of something useful to suggest. ‘What about wheelchairs, ambulances and things? Can I – ’
‘No time for that. I’ll carry her myself.’ He said it as if it was the obvious thing to do, and Daisy thought: Lucky Alusha Mackenzie, having a husband like that.
The lift doors opened and he strode rapidly away, shoulders hunched, head down in that wary walk of his. As he stepped into the street, the sun caught him, illuminating his head with sudden light. It occurred to Daisy, not without an odd little pang, that she would probably never see him again.
After four visits to the Coach and Horses, Colin Hillyard had become quite a regular. It had got to the stage where the landlord, who went by the exotic name of Lionel Meredith-Peacock, greeted him warmly by name – Hillyard was using the name Meynell, a variation on Maynard, which was another favourite of his – and leant an elbow on the bar to exchange comments on the vagaries of the weather as if such things were quite unique to west Berkshire.
It was a Thursday. Hillyard made a point of arriving at more or less the same time every week and staying half an hour or so before leaving in a hurry, lending credence to the idea that he squeezed time out of his busy week to visit an ancient relative living nearby. He’d never elaborated on the elderly aunt or where she lived, nor had he said exactly what he did for a living; he spent too much time expressing quiet, almost languid interest in the local community and listening to the landlord’s repertoire of well-worn anecdotes. Not that he ever pushed the local interest. Apart from establishing right at the outset that the Knowles family, who’d been featured in the local papers over an incident at the Berkshire Show, lived not far away and had been regular users of the pub, he hardly brought up a subject worth mentioning. In fact he’d once listened to the landlord holding forth on the merits of a cruise to Turkey over a package to the Canaries for all of twenty minutes before steering things gently back towards more parochial matters. He made such manoeuvres seem effortless, though he said so himself.
‘People go for Turkey round here, do they?’ he said to Meredith-Peacock, looking ready to be impressed. And then he’d got chapter and verse on the holidays the locals took, and the likely price of them, and how even when farming was meant to be in deep trouble some of them were still off to Kenya and the ‘Sea-shells’ islands, as Meredith-Peacock liked to pronounce them.
Once it came up, Hillyard had pursued the farmers-in-trouble avenue, of course; it was too good to miss. But he went ever so gently, expressing just the right blend of vague commiseration and glaring ignorance befitting a true town-dweller. But though the opening was leading him nicely up to the subject of the Knowles family, which was precisely where he wanted to be, the conversation had had to be aborted. The landlord had gone to serve another customer and when he ambled back along the bar his mind had diverted, by some mysterious progression, onto the subject of rheumatism.
Now it was Thursday again and he was back feeling rather pleased with life, though no thanks to the weather, which was blustery with racing clouds and a sudden sneaky chill which on leaving the car had flipped at the vents of the tweedy sports jacket he had bought specially for the job from a countryman’s outfitters in Hungerford.
It was three and the pub was quiet. There was only one customer at the bar, a ruddy-faced man in heavy boots, work trousers and waxed jacket. Hillyard sat at the next stool, exchanged ritual head-shakes about the gale-force wind with the landlord and ordered a pint of best. The farmer-figure – the landlord called him Bill – waited impatiently to regain the landlord’s attention and resume the conversation that Hillyard had interrupted. He was complaining to the landlord about the sale of some farm, though why it should displease him Hillyard couldn’t make out, since he seemed neither to know nor care about the owners of the property who, it appeared, had been forced to sell at a bad price.
This time Hillyard plunged straight in. No pussy-footing, as Beryl often said, not once you’ve laid the groundwork; no skulking in the woodwork. He came straight out and asked if it was the Knowleses who were selling. The farmer nipped gently at the bait, took the taste of it, and let himself be led forward, jerking only once at the line when something alerted him to Hillyard’s curiosity, and he demanded: ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I read about them in the paper, didn’t I, Lionel? Sad business. Sort of stuck in my mind.’
‘Well, it’s not them that’s selling,’ said the farmer. ‘Not Mrs Knowles, oh no. She’ll stick it out. Family been there too long. As long as anyone can remember. Though she won’t get much out of the place, not this year, oh no,’ he added to the landlord. ‘Hiring all the help in. Not cheap.’
The landlord pulled the conversation towards cancer statistics then, providentially, a new customer diverted his attention and Hillyard was able to lead Farmer Bill onwards, through backwaters of maize and wheat and into the mainstream of the Knowleses’ future.
‘Going to sue, of course.’
‘Sue?’
The beady eyes shot Hillyard a confiding glance. ‘Going to sue the chemical makers. Been advised not to, they’ve all tried to put her off, the lawyers and everyone, but she won’t have it. Off her head if you ask me. Ain’t going to bring her husband back, is it? Not in a month of Sundays.’
‘No.’ Hillyard shook his head solemnly. ‘And the law – ’ He sucked in his breath in a pitying hiss. ‘Well, the only people who get rich are the lawyers, aren’t they?’
‘You’re telling me,’ gasped the farmer emphatically, and the idea triggered a blast of legal grievances that emerged blistering from the barrel of his memory. His protests finally spent, he murmured: ‘That’s what makes it crazy, see. She hasn’t the money – well, not to spare. They’ll bleed her dry.’
Hillyard made a commiserating face. ‘No insurance money. Nothing like that?’
‘Nope. Not that I’ve heard of, at any rate.’
And you would have heard, thought Hillyard. He said: ‘You’d have thought she’d be able to get help. Some sort of legal aid.’
‘Nothing handed out on a tray, is it? Not nowadays. Each man for himself.’ He drained his beer and clunked the glass onto the bar with finality. He straightened up and patted his pockets. ‘Right you are, Lionel,’ he said, raising a farewell hand to the landlord.
He faced Hillyard for a moment. ‘Not that people round here don’t do what they can,’ he said. ‘The neighbours help out. They’re in there right now.’
Hillyard maintained a look of polite interest. ‘Right now?’
‘Gone to the West Country for the week, Mrs Knowles and her son. First holiday in two years.’
Pure icing.
Hillyard almost danced his way to the car, checking his stride only with reluctance.
As he unlocked the car a silky-haired bundle pressed its nose to the glass and, as the door opened, hurled itself into his arms. ‘Precious – were you waiting for your mum, were you? There, I wasn’t so long, was I?’
The Pekinese snorted and snuffled and agitated its plume of tail like an uncontrolled metronome. Climbing in, Hillyard cradled it in his arms and sighed into its long coat: ‘Did Beji miss me, did she? Of course she did, my little baby.’ He gave the dog a rough squeeze and placed it on the sheepskin. ‘Now be a good baby. Mummy’s going to work.’
He didn’t in fact get to work until eight that night. He parked in the spot he’d used before, by a gate on a quiet lane overlooking the Knowleses’ farmhouse. It wasn’t ideal – the house was too far away to see much with the naked eye and he had to clamp the binoculars to the window arch – but it gave as good a view as he was likely to get without camping under a soggy hedge, which really wasn’t his style unless absolutely necessary. At six thirty a Land Rover drew up in the farm yard and a figure got out and went into one of the outbuildings, reappearing from time to time, fetching and carrying between barns and outbuildings.
At seven Hillyard changed into what Beryl called his Action Man kit – a dark track
suit and trainers – and he and Beji had their respective suppers. Beji’s, being the best marrow-bone chunks that money could buy, looked almost the more appetizing. That wicked Beryl and her picnics; always forgetting the cling-film so that the bread got terminal dehydration, throwing in a couple of slabs of processed cheese, a dab of pickle and, no doubt, a splash of cigarette ash, and boasting she was doing him proud. He’d give her a piece of his mind when he got back. Much good it would do him.
At seven thirty he let Beji out to pee and almost missed the Land Rover leaving.
He gave it another half an hour to be on the safe side, and it was dark by the time he drove slowly along the rutted drive towards the farmhouse. Lights had been left shining on a couple of the outbuildings. One of the upstairs windows of the house was also lit, but he guessed this was merely a burglar deterrent.
He drew up just short of the house, turned the car round and killed the lights. Beji growled.
‘Quiet, you little bitch.’
The growl grew into the beginnings of a yap. Hillyard clamped his hand over the back of the dog’s neck and squeezed hard. The growl changed into a whimper. ‘That’ll teach you,’ he hissed.
Releasing his grip, he reached into the back for his bird-watching bag and hitched it diagonally over his head and shoulder. He opened the door and closed it almost noiselessly. With a bit of luck the farm dogs would be in a barn or locked in a back scullery. If they had the run of the house, things would be a bit more tricky. He could deal with one of the hounds, but not both, and he knew there were two, a collie and a Labrador-cross of some sort.
He approached the front door silently and listened for a few seconds before ringing the bell. An immediate frenetic barking came from the depths of the house. For a moment he thought he was in luck and the brutes were locked in a back room, but of course this was too much to hope for. The sound of wildly scrabbling claws on stone flags approached, and a dog threw its weight against the door with such force that it shook under his touch. Hillyard tutted and rolled his eyes in disgust. This door would have been easy – it had a single Yale lock – but on the principle that the dogs were unlikely to be permitted the run of the bedrooms, he would have to go to the infinitely greater trouble of an upstairs window instead.
Finding and extricating a ladder took twenty minutes. The only specimen he could locate was a long and ancient wooden relic with dubious treads. It was extremely heavy and it took all his strength to lift it against the side of the house without rasping the ends against the brickwork.
He rested for a while, listening hard, then climbed towards the window he’d selected, a wooden-framed casement job with what looked like a basic fastening.
Reaching the window, he flashed his torch through the glass and saw a bathroom with its door wide open. Well, he’d just have to risk that, because it was a dream of an entry: the catch was not fully engaged and, threading his bendy plastic through, he was able to slide it down without any trouble and pull the frame open noiselessly. There was all sorts of garbage on the sill – shampoos, toothpastes, old plastic mugs that would make one hell of a noise if they bounced around on the basin beneath. Painstakingly he moved them aside. In and over the basin. He took pride in the way he moved despite his build: smoothly, lightly, weight properly distributed, poised for sudden changes of plan. Beryl called him a bleedin’ ballet dancer.
He had a good listen. His own panting was loud in his ears. He might be a bleedin’ ballet dancer, but he wasn’t as fit as he should be, a result of Beryl’s daily expeditions to the cake shop. He’d have to get back to some sparring and weights.
Everything back in its place: window down, tall mug to the right, shorter one to the left and the clutter reassembled in between. Creep, creep across the lino floor and another listen, short truncheon, military-police issue, ready at his belt, just in case. He could hear the dogs prowling restlessly below and waited until the clack of their claws faded and ceased.
All the bedroom doors were closed. Quick recce inside each. Ma Knowles’ bedroom had the light burning. Her bedside table looked promising but yielded nothing. Have to be downstairs then. Enough to give a girl the vapours.
He left the door to Ma Knowles’ bedroom open and tying a thin cord round the handle led it diagonally across the landing and in through the bathroom door. Then he whistled from the top of the stairs and retreated behind the almost closed bathroom door. The dogs barked and stampeded around downstairs before coming tentatively up. From their furtive behaviour it was obvious this was forbidden territory. The collie trotted into the mum’s bedroom, but the Lab-cross paused outside the door, its nose to the air. It had smelled a rat – or rather it had smelled him, which boiled down to the same thing.
He yanked on the cord, closing the bedroom door and trapping the collie inside, then, while the Lab-cross barked in bemusement at the closed door, he stepped smartly out from behind the bathroom door and gave it a sharp tap on the head. The animal was stunned but conscious, which was just how he wanted it, and he was able to take it by the collar and cajole and drag it downstairs to a sort of scullery and close the door.
There was a large kitchen, a living room, a dining room, cold and musty from lack of use, and a study-cum-office, which was quite the most untidy room Hillyard had ever seen, and that was saying something.
The cascades of paper emanated from an old roll-top desk, its every orifice stuffed with rolls of documents, its open flap piled high with correspondence, much of it unopened.
He settled down for a long night. The curtains were too flimsy to risk the overhead light, so he took a small battery-operated book-light from his bird-watcher’s bag and clipped it to the top of the desk.
The bank statements were jammed into two pigeonholes. Ma Knowles had two accounts, the farm another two, and all four were overdrawn. Letters from the bank manager, which had been relegated to the floor, followed an unyielding tone, kindly but firm. The overdrafts had exceeded agreed limits and could under no circumstances remain unsecured.
The correspondence with the lawyers lay in a thick folder on the top of the desk. It took Hillyard an hour to photograph everything. As always he took pains – each page lined up, the exposure carefully monitored, the light adjusted – but was well rewarded because he got the lot: the letters from the lawyers, the evidence from the experts, the opinions of doctors and scientists, complete with names, addresses and dates.
There was even a letter or two from Miss Field, she of the Waldorf tea dance. Advising Mrs Knowles to give up, then in the very next letter, saying that she understood her reasons for wanting to carry on and could rely totally on Catch’s support.
He was so absorbed in his work that when he sat back at the end of the job he hardly noticed that a full gale had blown up and was buffeting at the window.
Releasing the dogs took some ingenuity. The Lab-cross had recovered sufficiently to howl as he approached the kitchen. He found a tin of dog food and emptied it into the bowl. He opened the door a crack and after a token growl the animal buried its head in the bowl and was still gobbling as he ran up the stairs. He pushed open the door of the main bedroom and stepped neatly out of view as the collie shook itself out of its sleep and loped out, ready if it had but known it for its ration of short truncheon. He must have hit it a bit harder than the Lab because it nosedived onto the floor, out cold. But he didn’t have time to worry about that because the Lab had finished guzzling and was on its way up, growling hard.
Bedroom door closed again, as he had found it, skirt round the poleaxed collie and across the landing into the bathroom again. A moment for a breather then out over the sill again, toiletries rearranged for a second time, down into the yard, ladder back into the outhouse.
It was ten thirty. Two miles clear of the farm he treated himself to a swig of brandy and a cuddle with Beji. Then he stepped on it, in a hurry to get home and bask in the old trout’s praise.
Chapter 9
‘WHO IS THIS person?’ Schenker held up the
newspaper cutting between two forefingers.
‘He was a rock star back in the early Seventies,’ Cramm said. ‘With a group called Amazon. Then he went solo. Very successful. Writes good stuff.’
‘Good stuff?’ Schenker asked doubtfully, narrowing his mouth.
‘Sort of lyrical, a bit sad. Though some are a bit happier, I suppose. But good anyway. Intelligent sort of words, memorable tunes. Often got a message to them – conservation, save the world, you know the sort of thing.’
Schenker didn’t know the sort of thing, not at all. It sounded like pseudo-Green nonsense to him.
‘Well, he should stick to writing songs and stop spreading hysterical stuff he knows nothing about,’ Schenker said firmly, flicking through the sheaf of cuttings. ‘This preservative, it’s definitely not one of ours?’
‘No – Reldane, apparently.’
‘Well, it doesn’t make much difference whose it is, does it? This sort of thing does none of us any good. What I want to know is why the hell the federation didn’t get quoted? They must have been contacted, surely.’ The UK Agrochemical Federation was the trade organization of the pesticide manufacturers. One of its main functions was to counter the screechings of the Green lobby, though in Schenker’s opinion it was largely ineffectual; it never moved without a committee decision and he, more than anyone, knew that committees nipped most effective action in the bud.
‘They say they didn’t have time to reply,’ Cramm explained.
‘How long do they need? A week? A year? Good God, this sort of thing can be answered in two minutes flat.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Make sure the newspapers get a suitable complaint about unbalanced reporting. Make sure the federation gets some sort of statement in. We can’t have this sort of thing splashed all over the papers and not put the record straight. Containment, Cramm. Containment.’ He glanced anxiously at the time – he had to prepare for an important board meeting later in the morning – and reached across his desk for the next problem, which came in the form of a heavy document from the UK division. But Cramm hadn’t quite finished.
Requiem Page 16
