by Amy Myers
I pushed that thought away and concentrated on the present problem. At least I tried to.
‘Hotel,’ Maria informed him.
‘No, Maria.’ Giovanni was even beaming now. ‘We stay with the Signora Vickers.’
He waved a hand at a blushing Len standing in the Pits doorway. ‘Len ask his wife, Jack, and she say come to stay.’
I felt like a Trabant surrounded by Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. I had to get up to speed, understand what was going on here. Was I glad or sorry at the thought that Giovanni and Maria were leaving Frogs Hill? Glad, I realized, but I needed time to think this through. Louise would be back tonight and to have Giovanni and Maria lodging elsewhere would be by far the best idea since sliced bread.
I have rarely met Mrs Len, but I knew she was a practical lady who specialized in village activities and not in cars. How on earth would she cope with an Italian lady of charm but determination and the flamboyant Giovanni? The Vickers had a cottage on the outskirts of Pluckley but its size meant there would be no escape from the presence of two guests, both of whom would be in unpredictable mode.
‘Yours not to reason why, Jack,’ Zoe murmured at my side. She had obviously noticed my gaping mouth. ‘Just let them get on with it.’
She was right and I did.
Although Len’s home is not so far away that the police could object to it as a temporary residence for Giovanni, they needed to know about the switch, which gave me a good excuse to call in at Charing HQ with the details. It would be a pleasure. It gave me a mission and I wouldn’t have time to brood about Louise.
Besides, DCI Dave Jennings, the academic-looking but practical head of the Kent Car Crime Unit, might know what was going on with the Giovanni case – if case it still was. He works in the same building as DCI Brandon and is therefore a useful source of information – if he feels like communicating it to me. Perhaps Hugh Compton had now turned up and, even though a missing-person case wouldn’t be in Dave’s pigeonhole, he might find out the situation for me.
I thought at first that Dave wasn’t going to see me as I was told he was ‘out’ but I was wrong. He was only too eager to see me and bounded down the stairs to greet me. Unusual.
‘Seen it, have you?’ he asked.
I guessed he meant the Alfa Romeo.
‘No, more’s the pity.’
I followed him up to his office, where he plopped down at his desk and waved me to sit on the far side. I gave him the new address where Giovanni was staying and he raised an eyebrow. He too knew Len.
‘I’d heard you had Donati staying with you. Fixed yourself a nice role as piggy in the middle as usual,’ he commented.
Giovanni, I noted, was in police terms no longer the famous artist Giovanni, but a possible murder suspect and certainly a witness in a missing-person case.
‘Brandon told me the crazy story he came up with,’ Dave continued.
‘If he was guilty he would have thought up a better one than that.’
‘Don’t agree. Could be clever planning to have a stupid story.’
‘Not if other folk don’t see it as such. Any chance of his being charged?’ I added carefully.
Dave found it convenient to stare at his laptop. ‘We may have a job for you, Jack.’
‘What is it?’ Usually a new job fills me with eager curiosity and excitement – not least because it’s a step towards paying the mortgage on Frogs Hill. Now the idea left me cold, probably because he hadn’t answered my question.
‘Missing Land Rover Discovery 1989.’
‘Why choose me?’
‘Thought you might like it.’
‘Why?’ Unlike Dave to be so thoughtful.
‘Reported missing by Paul Ranger. Lives at Manor Cottage, Plumshaw. Land Rover belongs to Peter Compton.’
THREE
Never had I felt less like returning to Frogs Hill. Far from being the refuge, the haven, where life had been manageable and the people I was close to were known and loved quantities, it too had become unknown territory. Today I had to face the fact that for me Louise was loved but not completely known. She would be leaving for London tomorrow but this evening she was returning to Frogs Hill. What would I say? Demand the full story of her relationship with Giovanni? Gloss over the whole sorry episode of a love affair long past? Neither seemed possible.
To make it worse, I had said I’d help Giovanni. Was I morally bound by that pledge now that he was free? Whether I was or not, it seemed I was going to be thrust right back into it. That meant I had no option but to take up Dave’s job, especially since he had made it clear that it had Brandon’s backing. That meant Brandon would welcome my nosing around Plumshaw on the Hugh Compton trail.
Dave had, naturally enough, thought he was doing me a favour by sending me to Plumshaw and twenty-four hours ago I would have agreed. I forced myself to consider whether the missing Land Rover had any connection with Hugh Compton’s disappearance, even though Dave told me the theft had been on the Friday, two days after Hugh had gone missing. It was certain now that Hugh had been in Giovanni’s car. The DNA results were still awaited but other trace evidence, including plenty of fingerprints, proved he had been in the Daytona alive or dead. Whatever my private thoughts about Giovanni, however, I couldn’t see him as a murderer. An insidious voice inside me then reminded me that once I couldn’t have imagined Louise being one of Giovanni’s amusements.
I was still wondering what to do as I reached Pluckley and turned off for Pipers Green and Frogs Hill. The problem loomed even larger and I had a fleeting temptation to flee – maybe to Essex, where my daughter Cara lives, which is safely across the River Thames and away from this nightmare. But I couldn’t do that. The long May evening was beginning to indicate that night was coming, which seemed an omen in itself. I reached the farmhouse, the security lights came on and I braced myself, still without a clue of how to tackle what must come.
No Ford Focus. Louise had either put her beloved silver-blue car away in the garage at the rear of the farmhouse, which she seldom bothered to do, or she was not yet home. It proved to be the latter. The house was dark, unwelcoming, and empty of life, but I realized that was a relief. Giovanni and Maria would be at Len’s home, so at least I would not have to see them together here. No doubt Maria would be equally grateful. Which just left Louise to face. How could Giovanni have been so duplicitous as not to have told me about her? And, worse, how could Louise? I thought she had been fully aware of my friendship with him but it seemed I had been wrong.
Minutes inched by and turned themselves into half an hour. Then the landline phone rang, with Louise at the other end of the line.
‘You’ll be late, sweetheart?’ I heard my voice ask. Odd how natural my voice sounded when inside I felt like a speedster bumping up and down in every pothole in Frogs Hill Lane – which is a great many.
‘Sorry, yes, I’m in London.’ Odd how natural her voice sounded too.
She’s bolted there today, I thought, sinking to the bottom of a particularly large internal pothole. She couldn’t face me any more than I could face her. That didn’t say much for our relationship.
‘Something came up unexpectedly,’ she continued brightly, ‘so I came here today instead of tomorrow.’
I wondered what I had done to deserve this. Our arrangement had always been that she was free to come and go as she wished and so far it had worked out splendidly. Until Giovanni had laughed his way into the picture – even though I had to admit he wasn’t laughing much now.
I murmured something in reply and we talked quite normally – or so it seemed. I put the phone down with a surge of combined relief, panic and complete confusion. Was she ever coming back? Did I even want her to? And, crucially, was it because of Giovanni she was staying away? The second was the only question to which I could give an answer and it was a resounding yes, whatever the cost – although preferably not with the shadow of Giovanni hanging over us.
As I drove to Plumshaw Manor on Tuesday morning, I could n
ot rid myself of mental images of Giovanni flashing along in his Ferrari Daytona behind my humble Polo, chatting happily to Louise sitting beside him and giving me a cheery wave as he shot past me. I was glad when I could turn right outside the imposing Georgian manor and not left towards the outbuildings. Giovanni would have left his stamp there too, even though the crime scene must now have been lifted.
I wondered why I had been told to contact Paul and Stephanie Ranger, rather than the Land Rover’s owner, but realized this would be because of the worry over the missing Hugh, which overrode Peter and Hazel Compton’s concern over the Land Rover’s fate. The Rangers’ home, Manor Cottage, was a hundred yards or so away from the manor and tucked away behind some masking trees. Hardly a cottage, I thought, as I parked outside. It was smaller than the manor but almost as impressive. It was red brick, not stone, and built somewhat later than the manor itself, I guessed. I felt some of the pressure vanish now that I was off (or could pretend I was off) Giovanni territory.
‘Jack Colby?’ Paul Ranger looked to be in his early sixties, greying but not particularly gracefully. In fact there was nothing very graceful about his sturdy figure. He greeted me – if that was the right word – with bland assurance, as he planted himself firmly across the doorway.
‘Found the Land Rover, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘They said they’d put their best man on it.’ His look suggested he had been sadly misled if I was all they could come up with.
‘Perceptive of them,’ I remarked. ‘I need to ask a few questions. OK?’
So far there had been no sign of his inviting me into his domain, and there still wasn’t as he sized me up even more keenly. If I’d been a horse, I’d be destined for the knackers’ yard.
‘Yes, but don’t bother to ask if this business is connected to brother Hugh.’
Hugh’s face was now adorning newspapers, posters and TV. Sightings of him had come in from Cornwall, Calais and John o’ Groats, according to Dave Jennings.
‘No news of him yet, I gather.’
‘Never will be now they’ve let that Italian go.’ Only Paul Ranger added one or two more fruity words. ‘He’ll skip the country.’
We were at an impasse. I was still on the doorstep and he wasn’t budging. His body language suggested he thought I had plans to rush into this dull-looking house and trash it. One can’t tell much about a home from a doorstep, but it can offer tantalizing clues. This one didn’t – not even a mat with ‘Welcome’ on it, which was hardly surprising. Nevertheless, the fact that it looked dull didn’t mean that it wasn’t important as the home of two of the Compton family – which itself was as yet unknown territory. In a murder case this would be fertile ground, so I tried the standard questions in case the going was muddy.
‘Was the Land Rover in a garage or pinched from outside the manor – and when exactly did it disappear? I also need the year and model.’
‘Your superiors have got all that information. You should have it.’
‘Bear with me,’ I said, as cordially as I could manage. ‘I’d like direct information, because it helps build a picture of the crime.’ I wasn’t sure what this picture could be. It was true that I flatter myself I can tell a lot about someone from the kind of car they drive, but the Land Rover didn’t belong to the Rangers, it belonged to Hugh. The only car in sight here was a fairly modern Jaguar.
‘Friday night. Outside the manor, where it’s usually left for daily use. Colour grey. Dent on front wing.’
‘When exactly did it vanish?’ Patience is a virtue I have to struggle to claim.
‘Sometime in the evening,’ he vouchsafed. ‘We’ve been spending a lot of time at the manor with this to-do over my brother-in-law. I saw the Land Rover outside when we left about ten. Gone next morning.’
‘Does your father-in-law drive it himself or does Hugh drive it?’ Surely he was as sick as I was of this doorstep stand-off? Inside, I might at least glean a better idea of the Compton family. I quite saw why Giovanni had found that dinner so forbidding.
‘Does?’ he snorted. ‘Did, in my view. And forget Hugh. Off-limits. He’s dead, you mark my words.’
I would do just that, I thought. There was a great deal of satisfaction in those words. I treated him to what I hoped was the Colby charm. ‘It’s important for the fuller picture.’
‘So that you can flog this fuller picture to the press?’
‘Not my style.’
He grunted. ‘More than can be said for that harpy who came sniffing round here upsetting my wife.’
That had a familiar ring. ‘Pen Roxton, by any chance? From the Graphic?’
‘A colleague of yours, I presume. In it together?’
This was going nowhere, so I would deal with Pen later. ‘My job’s as a classic car specialist. Could I have a look at the Alfa Romeo? The Land Rover’s a classic too so the Alfa could be linked to it, even though you probably don’t see it that way.’
‘Too right. I don’t.’
It wasn’t that he was hostile to me, I decided. He just struck me as one of those people who in their working lives have not reached the pinnacle they felt they deserved, so the older they grow the more they loftily assume the trappings of missed grandeur in their everyday lives.
‘Have the police discounted that theory?’ I asked.
That did it. ‘No, they bloody haven’t!’ he yelled. ‘All they’ve done is set that murderer free.’
‘In that case we can’t be certain the Land Rover isn’t linked to Hugh’s disappearance. He could have returned and borrowed it himself.’
‘He’s dead, man.’
‘Not proven. He could simply be on a mission of his own.’
Another snort. ‘We’d have heard by now. Not a dickey bird.’
He then produced what he clearly thought was a killing blow. ‘I still don’t see how looking at the old wreck in the barn is going to help.’
‘Because,’ I replied calmly, ‘I’m a specialist and I work with specialists in the classic car field, both the good ones and the baddies. I need to see the car.’
Surprisingly, he surrendered and even afforded me a wan grin. ‘OK, I’ll take you over.’
At last we could move away from this doorstep. He carefully shut the door behind him, perhaps in case I decided to storm in on a smash-and-grab raid, and off we walked. I felt I was walking through history along this gravelly path past the Georgian mansion with the cluster of old farm buildings that must have been here in some form for centuries. The last one was the largest and some way from the house. It was a huge tithe barn, with Kentish peg tiles and ancient wooden double doors. Despite its having been a crime scene, I could see no sign of any security measures introduced recently, although there was a strong padlock on the door that looked shiny enough to be new.
‘Very trustworthy of you,’ I remarked, ‘given the publicity that the car might now have.’
‘We’ve plenty of barns, and even if some blighter picked on this one he couldn’t move the Alfa Romeo. Not yet.’
‘You have plans for it?’
Mr Bland Face was back again. ‘When we get round to it.’
‘Who actually owns it?’
‘If that’s relevant, my father-in-law, Peter Compton.’
It was chilly and musty inside, but when my eyes were accustomed to the gloom I could see the shape of the car under a green cover and my heart began to beat faster as my anticipation grew.
‘OK to touch it?’ I asked.
‘Please yourself. No paint left to damage after that lot went round with their crime scene paraphernalia.’
Ignoring this slur, I whipped the cover off and there she was. The Black Beauty, despite the dust of years, the dullness of the paint and brittle-looking upholstery. History sprang into life again. The Alfa Romeo 1937 8C 2900B.
That great man of cars Henry Ford once said, ‘Every time I see an Alfa Romeo go past, I raise my hat.’ I didn’t have a hat with me, but I certainly felt I shoul
d at least bend the knee. Even in that unloved state, she deserved that with her black paint, her sleek elegant lines, the dark red upholstery, and, painted on the bonnet, the grimy but unmistakable remains of the green four-leafed clover thought to have brought the Alfa Romeo luck. Something did: Alfa Romeos won eight Mille Miglia races in the 1930s, during which a brilliant young man called Enzo Ferrari ran their racing department for much of the time.
This car shouldn’t have to end its life here, so why was it here? What a waste. I thought of what Alfa Romeo specialist Ed McDonough had said about one of the remaining 8C 2900Bs – that after all this time it was ‘still zinging down the sweeping lanes’. That’s what this one should be doing, not lying here uncherished. I forgot about the Land Rover, I forgot about the missing Hugh Compton case, I just vowed to myself that I would get to the bottom of the story that had brought the Alfa Romeo here – with which I was sure that the story of Giovanni and Hugh Compton must be entangled.
Paul was growing increasingly impatient. Just as I sensed he was at explosion point we were interrupted by a cheerful voice behind us.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Paul? Trying to flog the old heap?’
This must surely be Stephanie, Paul’s wife and Hugh’s stepsister. As Giovanni said, she looked older than her husband, although she was giving the passing years a run for their money. She was one of those fashion-conscious ladies, who look so manicured and well-dressed that I’m always curious as to whether they appear like that at breakfast or stagger down like the rest of us to fortify themselves before they put on their armour for the day. Giovanni thought she was friendly and certainly she kept her good humour when her husband introduced me, although I received a sharp, speedy look as if life might be setting out to defraud her and I was its current emissary. Then a frown took the place of good humour.
