Faithful unto Death

by Caroline Graham

  Barnaby thought it went totally against his deepest instincts so far concerning the case and that it sounded very likely indeed. Having no wish to dwell on such an exasperating insight, he stifled it by the thought that, as they now had a kidnapping and perhaps some mortal remains to search for, he would be able to commandeer a decent team and some sort of realistic budget.

  Perrot, once more on duty in the lane, braced himself as the two men emerged. But Troy was satisfied this time with a rude gesture engaging his thumb and first finger and a murmur of “Panty wanker.”

  Barnaby looked across at the Brockleys. Once more the poodle was up on its hind legs and staring out of the window. Behind the dog stood Iris, white-faced and motionless. Although she also faced the outside world, it was in the alert yet only partly comprehending manner of the blind person. She appeared deeply puzzled and much smaller than when he had last seen her.

  It was now nearly seven. The Chief Inspector felt a strong disinclination at the thought of adding yet more misery to the already deeply miserable content of his day. Someone else could go and talk to the family. He’d had enough.

  “Oh, Constable.”

  “Sir.” PC Perrot, as steely upright as a guardsman, stiffened his sinews even further.

  “Any post at Nightingales—my desk. Got that?”

  “I’ll bring it in personally, Chief Inspector. On the bike.”

  “No need to go mad, Perrot.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Colin Perrot watched the two policemen walk away. His shoulders loosened slightly. He walked up and down the grass verge for a while then let himself through the black and gold iron gates and walked up and down the gravel path. He stood on the step for a bit. A police presence.

  There was not much in the way of spectators to attend the departure of the SOCO team some little time later. Perrot looked at his watch—seven thirty. That explained matters. It took more than a handful of plainclothes investigators to keep Fawcett Green from viewing EastEnders.

  Perrot sighed and wondered, as he was unobserved by anyone with the slightest degree of authority, whether he could perhaps bring one of the patio chairs round to the front of the house and sit down. He’d now been on the go for nine hours and his feet and back ached.

  The overtime was nice though. It was his son’s birthday in a month’s time and Robby wanted a mountain bike. The boy had already accepted that it would probably be secondhand—so many of the children’s presents were—though polished up and looking as smart as his dad could make it. But it would be great to surprise him with a new one.

  Perrot wandered round to the rear of the house at this point, reasoning that this aspect needed just as much surveillance as the front. More, probably, being concealed from public view.

  It was very still and quiet in the garden, the shrubs and trees bathed in a pale, golden light. The only sounds came from a few bees ferreting around in submissive blossoms, frogs jumping in and out of the pond and a dog fox barking, way across the fields.

  Perrot sat in the daisy hammock and relished the silence. He breathed slowly and deeply, savouring the fragrant, musky scents. It seemed impossible that only a short time ago the place had been swarming with men and women extracting ugly disturbing evidence from the sweet-smelling earth.

  Gradually, in the warm soft air, Perrot’s wounded pride began to heal. He had smarted dreadfully after the DCI had so contemptuously dismissed him at Causton station. But over and above his shame at failing so miserably to act in a prompt and intelligent manner was a far greater fear. He was now permanently haunted by the words, “buried in the sticks too long.”

  Perrot was a country man. Transplanted, he felt he would shrivel up and die. Not true, of course. Trixie would tell him not to be so silly. They would be all right, she had said when he voiced his anxiety. As long as they were together.

  But it wasn’t as simple as that. Places changed people. Occasionally Perrot had been away on update courses and some of the townee coppers he had met there—well. The way they spoke to each other, their attitude to the public. Talk about cynical. They sounded as if they were at war half the time. The words “cutting edge” had been bandied around a lot. Perrot had felt really out of place.

  He had made no attempt to talk about his own work, recognising the scorn with which such a description would almost certainly have been received. No one was interested in hearing about the three villages under his care. About the boisterous children, including his own, running noisily out of the brand-new primary school at half past three, clutching paste and paper models or exuberantly painted daubs. Or of how relieved the anxious elderly were to hear his knock on the door. His spare-time activities, refereeing on the football field and supervision of the Infant Cyclists’ Time Trials, also remained unmentioned.

  Naturally there was a downside to the job. Burglaries, an occasional case of child abuse (quickly known about and dealt with in a small community), drunken fights, the odd domestic. But nothing at what you could honestly call the cutting edge. Nevertheless, no one would ever convince Perrot that his daily duties were of no importance. Certainly not that spiteful, foul-mouthed, red-headed, toerag of a sergeant from the town nick. When Perrot had told his wife about the trick played on him, she could hardly believe it. Tried to suggest that her husband had misheard what Troy had said. That no one could be so deliberately mean. That was when Perrot had said that if he was transferred to Causton he would leave the force.

  Leaning back now he closed his eyes and tried to put such thoughts from his mind. No point in jumping the gun. By now the DCI might well have forgotten he ever had such a thought. And if he (Perrot) remained crisp, alert and totally on the ball, there would be nothing to remind the powers that be that he had ever been anything else.

  That was the way to do it. Perrot adjusted a cushion to make himself more comfortable and swung his legs up. A quarter of an hour passed in pleasant contemplation of a tumbling clematis, the Chinese pots and Hollingsworth’s barbecue. The sky became streaked with lavender and pale yellow as the evening came on.

  What would be really good, thought Perrot dreamily, now barely registering the aquatic frogs, what would be really totally excellent would be for him to find some vital clue, or discover someone, someone totally unexpected, in a compromising situation . . . that would bring the case . . . that would solve . . . a successful . . . conclusion . . . so impressed . . . all of us here . . . well done, Constable . . . no question now of . . .

  Perrot slept.

  Chapter Six

  A woman who appears to have walked out on her husband, and that husband’s consequent death, possibly by his own hand, is one thing. The holding of a human being to ransom and their consequent cruel mistreatment is quite another. By lunchtime the following day, an official inquiry into the disappearance of Simone Hollingsworth was up and running.

  Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby had been allocated a team smaller than he would have liked but that was nothing new. They had received as detailed a briefing as he was able to give and had now gone about their business. Every inhabitant of Fawcett Green would be asked what they knew of the dead man and his missing wife in an attempt to obtain feedback on the marriage and the general pattern of their lives.

  The police would hope to come across someone on the market run who had noticed Simone’s movements after she got off the bus; had perhaps even talked to her on the journey. Also they would be checking on possible sightings of strange vehicles in the village on the night of Alan’s death.

  Barnaby composed a fax to be circulated to every estate agency within a ten-mile radius of Causton asking for details of any property let within the last couple of months; this to include shops, offices and even lockups. He also asked for a list of empty properties. It wasn’t very likely that the kidnapper had presented himself at an estate agent’s in the proper manner, signed a contract and written an appropriate cheque. But the possibility could not be overlooked. After all, Simone had to be hidden some
where.

  His team included Sergeant Brierley whom Barnaby had chosen especially to call on the Brockleys. She was sensitive, intelligent and well able to pick up things a more prosaic interviewer might miss.

  Three people remained in the station trying to flesh out what was already known of Alan and Simone’s background, starting with an attempted trace of their ex-partners. The fact that Simone’s previous husband had already been described as a bad lot sounded mildly promising. Was he perhaps connected with the club, described by Avril Jennings as “very Soho,” where Simone used to work?

  The Chief Inspector’s first inclination was to bring Gray Patterson in immediately for further questioning. There was no doubt that the kidnapping, and probable ransom of Mrs. Hollingsworth, would constitute for him a sweet revenge. It would offer not only a certain amount of financial recompense for the theft of his work but the pleasure of knowing that the man responsible had been sweating his days away in a drunken fever of fearful anticipation. Couldn’t improve much on that as a dish best eaten cold.

  But then, thinking it over, he had decided to put off seeing Hollingsworth’s former colleague until after the fingerprint comparisons came back from the laboratory. These had been promised by mid-afternoon, at which time he would be interviewing Freddie Blakeley, Penstemon’s bank manager. Barnaby was hoping to learn more about the company’s financial affairs and also the details of how the ransom money was raised.

  The preliminary inquest had been held on Alan Hollingsworth and adjourned pending further police investigation. The body had been formally identified by Ted Burbage. Hollingsworth’s solicitor Jill Gamble had been able to supply the address and telephone number of the dead man’s brother and the station in central Aberdeen had sent someone to break the news.

  The postmortem report added little to George Bullard’s telephone call. Barnaby, skimming through it, felt his attention wandering and sent out his minion for a caffeine shot.

  “And not that stale stuff that’s been sitting there since . . .” Barnaby was distracted. Now standing by the window, his eye had been caught by a messenger from Forensic crossing the forecourt towards the main building.

  “Since Madonna was a virgin?”

  “Ay?’

  “ ‘In love for the very first time,’ ” croaked Sergeant Troy. Music was a closed book to him.

  “Fresh.”

  By the time his sergeant returned with two cups of excellent smooth Brazilian, Barnaby was engrossed in the SOCO report forms, pulling out from the mass of information the most immediately relevant. The report covered Nightingales and its contents plus the buried photographs. Those for the gardens, garage, car and Hollingsworth’s clothes would follow, piecemeal, over the next few days.

  As was to be expected, there were several unexplained prints around the place. Some would naturally have been made by Simone. Others by Perrot and the vicar. Only Hollingsworth’s were found on the keyboard connected to the monitor displaying the dead man’s final words.

  Barnaby was not cast down by this, for alternative methods of getting the message on to the screen had already been put forward. These included feeding it into the machine by floppy disk. Swapping the keyboards round—there had been two more in the room. Or shielding the one that was used by a thin plastic cover, rather like those used in shops to keep the till clean.

  The report on the photographs of Simone and the plastic envelope file showed several tiny pressure points in the top right-hand corner of the Polaroids, indicating that they had been handled by more than just SOCO’s tweezers. The only fingerprints present were Alan’s. This was also the case with the glass found on the rug.

  The glass contained traces of Haloperidol, as Barnaby had been sure it would. Someone had shaken the drug into the tumbler—none was found in the bottle itself—added the whisky and, presumably, offered the result to the victim, all without leaving a single mark.

  But how had the powder been put in? Bold sleight of hand with the perpetrator simply turning their back? Or in another room with the tumbler then placed on a tray and handed directly to the victim?

  Another possibility was that the murderer could have wiped the glass clean after Hollingsworth became unconscious then simply pressed his fingers round it. This was never as satisfactory as those who tried it seemed to think. Nearly always anxious to make a good impression (so to speak), they used too much force and unnaturally even marks resulted.

  Barnaby closed his eyes and thought himself back into Nightingales’ sitting room at eleven o’clock last Monday evening. He often did this sort of thing and did it rather well. And, as his imagination was vivid but not especially original, he was able to avoid the sort of wild scenarios a more creative person might have dreamed up.

  Here was the room, stale and frowsty, curtains drawn. And here came Alan—Barnaby heard the car door slam—fresh from delivering the ransom. What had they told him? The oldest chestnut in the book, perhaps. That she’d be waiting there when he got home. In which case he would be running through the empty house, upstairs and downstairs, in and out of all the rooms, calling her name, Simone! Simone!

  Poor bastard.

  But what if Nightingales proved not to be empty after all. Perhaps the murderer was already in situ. Or did he—or she—enter surreptitiously, unaware to Hollingsworth? The latter struck Barnaby as rather unlikely. If this was someone the dead man was prepared to sit down and have a drink with, there would be no need for such a furtive approach.

  The temptation was to see some connection between the kidnapping and Hollingsworth’s death, paradoxical though this might at first appear. After all, why kill a goose which has just produced a presumably quite substantial golden egg? And who might well be persuaded to lay a few more.

  One fairly obvious reason was that Hollingsworth had become dangerous. What if, instead of driving away straight after the drop, he had hung around to see who picked the money up? Perhaps even attempted to follow. Spotted, his life wouldn’t be worth twopence. Especially if, as Barnaby’s instincts were strongly telling him, Mrs. Hollingsworth had already been done away with.

  His thick fingers riffled through the report. He noticed there had been no forced entry. As the house had been secure when the body was found, this meant either someone owned a key or they had knocked and been admitted.

  Gray Patterson had had a key. Thrown away, according to him, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? And, even if this was the case, might there not be circumstances when Hollingsworth would let the man he had betrayed into his house? What if Patterson had appeared on the doorstep with some cock and bull story about catching sight of Simone somewhere—on a bus perhaps, or in a café? Highly unlikely, given the true circumstances, but Alan wouldn’t have reasoned like that. Desperate men clutch at any straw.

  Then there was Simone’s key. Presumably in her handbag when she’d boarded the Causton bus, it could by now be in the hands of a very dodgy lot indeed.

  Barnaby pulled back his damp shirt cuff. All these musings, mind-clearing rather than genuinely fruitful, had brought him up to one o’clock. He picked up his crumpled fawn cotton jacket and left his office for the staff canteen and a brief lunch before his meeting at the Nat West.

  Drearily mindful of his weight, the Chief Inspector chose a dish of grated carrots, raisins and almond flakes with a wedge of lemon and two slices of smoked turkey breast. Squeezing the lemon over his salad, he thought the one thing you could say in favour of this sweltering heat was that at least it killed off an inclination to gluttony.

  The station cat, Craig, strolled up. Pressed upon the force under the guise of a great mouser by a telephonist moving house, he immediately circumvented any onerous duties in this direction by moving more or less permanently into the canteen. Here, in spite of constant titbits from gullible diners and doubling his weight in the first week, he strove successfully to give an impression of fragility and despairing hunger that melted nearly every heart. He would have made a fortune as an actor.<
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  “Go away,” instructed Barnaby. “You greedy little scumbag.”

  Craig squinted in that cross, imperious way that cats have when everything they desire is not immediately rushed to their side. Incredulity possessed his squashy, pugilistic features. Briefly he stood his ground then, no sustenance being forthcoming, mewed. Defeated by dryness and imminent starvation, it was no more than a pitiful squeak.

  Resentfully, knowing he was being made a fool of, Barnaby had just started to cut off a sliver of meat when he was distracted by the arrival of his bag carrier who sat down opposite him with a loaded tray.

  “Never much going on menu-wise Monday, is there, boss?” As Troy spoke he pricked a stout glistening sausage with his fork and watched the juice run out. “I suppose they haven’t really got into their stride.”

  Apart from the sausages, his plate held a tottering pile of chips, two fried eggs, a bright orange puddle of baked beans, mushrooms and several chunks of black pudding.

  “Do you mind sitting somewhere else with that lot?”

  “Sorry?” Troy was always alert to the chance of a real or imagined slight. Now that he had actually received one, he looked as if he could hardly believe his ears. In fact, when it came to his expression and that of the cat, there was hardly a whisker to choose between them. Genuinely hurt, he picked up his tray, uncertainly looking about him.

  “There’ll do.” Barnaby pointed directly to the chair behind.

  “Fine by me, sir.”

  It was plain by his tone of voice that Troy had not only distanced himself physically. Barnaby came as close to a smile as any man could faced with a pile of shredded root vegetables and a cat with attitude. Behind him the clash of metal on metal rose to a wild crescendo. It was like wandering into the last act of Hamlet. There was a satisfied pause, a final clatter when the irons were laid to rest then a soft squeak as the plate was mopped clean with a crust of bread.