by Peter Helton
‘Phew,’ I observed eloquently.
Annis let out a deep breath with puffed-out cheeks. ‘What did they want?’
I shrugged. ‘What could they have been looking for?’
‘Sorbie didn’t say. He didn’t answer any of my questions and never volunteered a word. I annoyed the shit out of him for sure.’
‘Did you see at all what Deeks was up to outside?’
‘No, I couldn’t keep an eye on both. Nothing much to find, though, is there?’
‘That’s not necessarily what I’m worried about.’
‘You don’t think Deeks would plant stuff on us? You’re getting paranoid, Chris.’
‘You’re right. Nevertheless, I’ll have a wander about, see what Deeks saw.’
I pulled on my jacket and made myself walk slowly all over my little realm; I kicked at things rusting and mouldering in the outbuildings, got my trouser legs damp crossing the meadow, stood by the mill pond reflecting the dull lead of the sky. The feeling of being watched was growing all the time and I began to imagine eyes and ears in every shadow. Indeed, if Needham was half as clever as I suspected him to be then he had come here to stir things up so he could watch what happened next.
I made doubly sure that no one was hanging around among the hedgerows. The more I thought about it the less sense the last twenty minutes made. I had seen police searches before and they’d been protracted, painstaking affairs involving many officers and technicians, not a couple of CID types wandering about the place with their hands in their pockets while their superior officer took coffee in the kitchen. But when I found no sign of them anywhere I was just too relieved to worry about it for long.
‘It’s out near Monkton Farleigh,’ I explained to Annis while I topped up the Norton’s tank from a jerry can. ‘Rufus Connabear, at Restharrow.’
‘Hairy, evil-smelling dwarf –’
‘You know him?’ I interrupted in astonishment.
‘No, restharrow, you twit! It’s a dwarf shrub, grows like a weed all over the place near my parents’ house in Devon, and it stinks. Strange name to give your house but I guess it takes all sorts.’
‘I’ve come to that conclusion myself recently.’
Monkton Farleigh was a pretty one-eyed village roughly halfway between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. As soon as I’d reached the top of Bathford Hill and the road emerged from the woodland I turned left. After barely a mile I came to a row of three cottages on my left where a tall blonde woman cheerfully herded a clutch of kids into her front garden. I resisted the temptation to ask directions to Restharrow. People would surely remember a man on a vintage motorcycle asking questions once the famous Penny Black had disappeared. Instead I simply rattled along, past church, high street, pub and manor, and before I knew it I was out the other side, leaving the village behind. It took me a while, pottering along various narrow lanes bound by hedgerows, until I found what I was looking for. I was lucky that the place announced itself as Restharrow in faded gilt lettering on a rustic wooden sign stuck to the stone wall that faced the lane. It was not what I had expected. I had been certain a wealthy – even if retired – stamp collector would live in a grander place but quickly reminded myself that any period cottage within a certain radius of Bath was now considered to be worth a small fortune. It was a substantial enough place though and somehow dark, almost sinister, standing alone at a fork in the tree-shaded lane, surrounded by a stone wall just high enough to keep livestock out and sheltered by hedges to the north and west at the back. Two enormous walnut trees teeming with squirrels overshadowed house and garden. There was no garage but a covered car port containing a gleaming blue Jaguar.
Apparently all we had was three days. That didn’t leave much time to establish what the man’s routines were, who else might be living here or coming and going on a regular basis. I allowed myself less than a minute in front of the house with the engine idling, pretending to be answering a text message while snapping pictures of the place with my phone. The front garden was lushly overgrown in the kind of extreme laissez-faire style of horticulture I approved of. I was just about to pull away when a man appeared from the passage between the house and the car port. He was a lean man in his late sixties, had sparse silver hair and wore mustard-coloured trousers, a collarless white shirt and bright yellow Marigolds. He was dragging a bulging green refuse bag behind him.
I put away my mobile. It was that movement rather than the sound of the engine which made him look across. Perhaps I could still have ridden off but the way he adjusted his thin gold spectacles on his nose to scrutinize me made me decide it might look suspicious. Instead I pulled in closer to the open double gate on the drive and parked the bike. He let his bag drop now and surveyed my appearance and the motorbike, screwing up his face with the intensity of a man who has missed several eye-tests. The iron gate was the same height as the wall, about four feet and therefore largely symbolic.
‘I’m a bit lost, I’m afraid,’ I ventured.
He didn’t immediately answer, instead he came towards me and after nodding at my tattered jacket rather than me began inspecting the bike. ‘Norton, thought so,’ he said with the croaky voice of someone who hasn’t spoken a word all day. He elaborately cleared his throat.
‘Yes, she’s recently been restored after a crash. They did a beautiful job,’ I explained.
‘Sorry, you have to speak up, I’m afraid I didn’t put my deaf-aids in this morning.’ He tapped both his ears in explanation.
‘Recently restored,’ I repeated loudly.
‘I remember when they first started making this model. I had an Ariel at the time, the 600 cc side-valve.’
‘The side-valve, right . . .’ Fortunately nothing more seemed to be required of me. Otherwise I’d have been forced to admit that where you stuck your valves on a bike was a matter of supreme indifference to me.
After spending a few minutes in the golden age of motorcycling he eventually came back to the present. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
‘Just directions, really. I was looking for a scenic route to Melksham and got lost.’
‘Ah, well, you’re not so very lost. I have a map of the area, I’ll show you.’
I followed him to his front door. He snapped off the Marigolds. ‘I try and keep the garden going but I find it a bit of a struggle. My wife used to look after that side of things of course. I’m not green-fingered at all, I’m afraid.’
‘You could perhaps get a gardener to look after it for you . . .?’
‘I suppose I could at that,’ he said as though the thought had never occurred to him before. ‘Right, if you wait a minute I’ll get the map.’ He slapped the Marigolds on to the newel post and left me standing by a painted milk urn full of walking sticks while he went upstairs, one hand firmly on the banister. I looked around the gloomy hall. I thought I could detect the so-called female touch in the choice of coloured wallpaper and framed botanical drawings but also sensed a certain edge of neglect in the dirt trodden into the expensive carpet, the layer of dust on everything and even of time slowly running down in the sedate ticking of the longcase clock at the foot of the stairs. Rufus Connabear lived alone and didn’t employ a cleaner or a gardener, I concluded. I tiptoed into the kitchen. This was quite clean and tidy with a simple wooden table playing host to neat piles of letters and other papers, weighted down with clean coffee mugs. Through the window above the sink I could see into the shady garden with its overcrowded beds and overgrown hedge. The old-fashioned back door, I noted with satisfaction, had no security features beyond a simple lock and key.
Back in the hall, while listening for footsteps from above, I peered through the open door into the sitting room. Too many pieces of furniture had been crammed in here; an olive-green three-piece suite, a separate large armchair in a similar colour that nevertheless didn’t quite match. There were underemployed bookshelves on two walls. A sideboard, a small table and several plant stands featuring pots minus the plants completed the clutter. Th
e room had windows back and front, though the back windows were almost completely blocked against the light by the dense foliage of some kind of evergreen outside, making the overstuffed room more gloomy than necessary. Still no sound of footsteps. Now or never. I took a deep breath, crossed the room to the back windows and unlatched the nearest one without actually opening it. Just then I could hear movement above and gained the hall in a hectic bit of tiptoe work around the plant stands as Connabear’s legs appeared on the stairs.
‘Sorry it took so long,’ he said as he descended in a careful fashion. ‘I was sure I could lay my hands on it easily but it proved not to be where I thought it was. I found it in the end, though. Come through,’ he added. In the kitchen he spread out his Ordnance Survey map of the area and pointed out where we were and my best route to Melksham from his front door. It was quite ludicrously simple which made me suspect he had fetched the map simply for something to do, or for a moment of company. Soon he was back on our first subject, telling me more about the development of Ariel and Norton motorcycles than I could possibly hope to remember and laying a papery hand on my arm whenever I made a move towards the door. It was another fifteen minutes until I was allowed outside to mount the Norton again and even then one of his hands remained firmly on the handlebar while he lamented the number of cars on the roads and the discourtesy of today’s drivers. Even though I vigorously agreed with him on this last point I could hardly wait to get out there amongst them once more.
Eventually he let me go and I gave him a cheery wave as I rumbled away down the lane. I would report what little I had found out to Tim and trust to his expertise to get at the stamp, though I hoped I had made things easier for us by opening the latch on the downstairs window. Thanks to Connabear’s directions I was soon back on the A363, returning to Bath. When I drew into the yard at Mill House, however, I could see from Annis’s face as she stood in the door, nodding at what was being said to her on the cordless phone, that we had fresh problems. She handed me the phone.
Tim was at the other end of the line, sounding unusually troubled. ‘I’m being followed. Absolutely everywhere. Go turn your confuser on, I’ll mail the guys to you.’
Up in my attic office I cranked up my computer, then checked my mail. He had sent me three pictures he had taken that day; one, a grainy image probably taken on his mobile of two men, casually dressed, late twenties, early thirties. The location looked like the university car park. The other two pictures were taken with a better camera from Tim’s sitting-room window. They showed the same men on the other side of Tim’s street, about fifty yards to the left. In the first they were sitting in a blue Vauxhall, the passenger with his arm out of the window, adjusting the wing mirror. Both had sharp haircuts and looked wide awake. In the second picture one of them was just returning to the car with a shopping bag from the nearby Co-op.
‘I don’t recognize them,’ said Annis, looking over my shoulder.
I called Tim back. ‘Yeah, I got them but we don’t know them. When did you pick them up?’
‘Oh, they were here when I drove to work but of course I didn’t suspect anything then. When I spotted them again at my lunch break I started to take notice, and when I had to cross the campus in the middle of the afternoon and they were there, waiting, I got suspicious. Took a picture of them on the phone. They followed me home, though to give them their dues I didn’t spot their car behind me, so they know how to follow people. They’re still down there, still sitting in the car, eating. Man, you know you’ve landed a shit job when all your food is triangular and your drinks come in plastic bottles.’
‘Don’t tell them that. Did you see them talking into phones or radios?’
‘No. And they seem to have run out of things to say to each other. Most of the time they’re just sitting there.’
‘Are they trying to be discreet or do they want you to know they are there?’
‘Oh no, they’re pretending not to be there.’
‘They’re probably fuzz-balls then,’ I concluded rashly. ‘There’s two ways to go about it. You can pretend you haven’t noticed and then give them the slip or you go out there and confront them.’ I couldn’t see any other possibilities because right now I wanted Tim here at Mill House so we could make a move towards getting at the Penny Black.
‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Chris.’ Tim spoke slowly, still thinking. ‘If they’re fuzz then they could only be here for two things, the break-in at Telfer’s house or something I pulled off a very long time ago. The best thing is to pretend I haven’t noticed them and do nothing suspicious at all. I’m just an IT guy at Bath Uni, doing my normal day-to-day stuff and I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘Did Annis tell you about the new job the bastard has lined up for us?’
‘She did.’
‘Well, then you know I need you here right now. There’s not much time. Try and give them the slip.’
‘I don’t like it, Chris. I thought I’d lost them on the way home and yet they reappeared.’
‘That’s because they know where you live, dummy.’
‘And do you think they don’t know we’re mates and where you live? If we go breaking into the stamp-man’s place together it’ll be like bringing my own arresting officers with me. We can’t risk that. You’ll have to do it yourself.’
‘But I’m rubbish at that kind of thing.’ Eloquent silence at Tim’s end. ‘Feel free to contradict me at any point. And he’s bound to have the thing in a safe.’
‘You won’t know that until you’ve been looking. But even if he has . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I could perhaps lend you my gear, show you how to work it . . . but I think it’s best we don’t have direct contact at the moment. You had a look at the house, did he seem to have lots of security?’
‘None, as far as I could see,’ I admitted. Rufus Connabear didn’t even have double glazing to shut the draught out, let alone locks on the windows to keep out burglars.
‘There you go. You can have a stab at it then. A kid could do the place over. Only be careful, just because you can’t see security doesn’t always mean there isn’t any, though most people make it obvious to discourage you from even trying. How many people live in the house?’
‘I think the guy lives alone. He’s retirement age and a bit deaf.’
‘There you go, if it’s in a safe you can use dynamite. Just kidding. You’ll have no problems, mate, it’ll be a doddle . . .’
Tim was right of course but breaking into people’s houses, even though I’d done it before, all in a good cause, you understand, wasn’t a task I relished.
‘I’ll come with you if you like,’ Annis offered. ‘As long as we don’t have to climb up ladders or go up drainpipes.’ Annis was fearless at sea level but couldn’t stand heights.
‘No, there’s no point. The fewer bodies on this journey the better.’ Especially with someone as accident prone as me at the helm. ‘I’ll do it by myself and I’ll do it tonight.’
Chapter Fourteen
The feeble beam of the Norton’s headlamp was half drowned by the downpour and illuminated nothing but ten yards of rain bouncing hard off the slickened tarmac on the nightblack lane. I approached the house from the other side, that way I could avoid going through Monkton Farleigh; the otherworldly exhaust note of the machine might stick in the minds of light sleepers in the village. Despite having pored over a map earlier I had no exact idea how far away from Restharrow I was, but when at last I spotted a passing place in the lane that wasn’t filled with several inches of water I gratefully parked the bike, stuffed my gloves into the helmet and hung it on the handlebars. The rain had returned at midnight and had fallen relentlessly out of black skies since then, yet I had eschewed Annis’s offer of the Landy. It was much easier to find a place for stashing the bike than a bulky Land Rover. The drawbacks of using two wheels however became quickly obvious: I was wet, very, very wet. I shivered inside my rain-heavy, sodden gear and set off. My left boot had sprung a leak and befo
re long I had managed to step into a good-sized puddle with it and was miserably squelching along in near total darkness. I had hoped to negotiate my way to the house by starlight but with a hundred per cent cloud cover and pouring rain I was soon forced to use the Mini Maglite I had brought. After five minutes of trudging along the undulating lane I realized I had parked too far from the house. A couple of minutes later I was wondering whether to go back and move the Norton when Restharrow appeared as if out of nowhere, looming darker in the darkness on my right. I killed the light and stood in the big, cold, wet darkness for a while. It yielded nothing. No light was showing at the house. In fact there was no light anywhere and I couldn’t hear a thing beyond the relentless rain. I wondered how weather affected the burglary figures but not for long because this burglary couldn’t wait for a balmy summer’s evening. The only good thing about the heavy rain was that it might help to mask little sounds, like me squelching off the road and walking painfully into a fence I hadn’t seen. I clicked the torch on at short intervals to get my bearings then tried to battle on without it but the darkness out here seemed complete. After slipping and falling once, bumping my knee against the stone wall twice and repeatedly getting my jacket caught on invisible snags I’d had enough and turned on the torch for good. I was bound to make less noise that way.
I managed to scramble over the wall – a child would have done it in half the time – towards the back of the garden and dropped into a muddy flowerbed on the other side. Something hard and thorny travelled up my trouser leg as I did and sliced my calf open as I came down. Before I could stop myself I had informed the darkness in pithy, monosyllabic words of what I thought about this development.
Well, Rufus Connabear was either still asleep or he wasn’t. If he was awake and looking out of his windows then he’d be calling the police about now, if not then I had the smallest chance of getting away with this lunatic effort. I had to keep the torch on all the time now just to avoid big pots full of dead-looking plants everywhere and some concrete bunny rabbits with scary, knowing smiles. At last I got to the back of the cottage and the dense evergreen shrubs that obscured the window I had unlocked on my previous visit. I had to crouch low and come up close to the wall to get through there at all. The windows opened outwards. I put the Maglite in my mouth and got my fingernails under the frame and pulled. Nothing. I pulled harder. More nothing. I got out my keys and used one as a lever. It bent. I trained the torch beam higher to where the latch was. It looked open. Of course when I’d unfastened the latch earlier I hadn’t had time to try whether the window actually opened. For all I knew it had been painted shut three generations ago. I fought my way out of the wet and scratchy shrub and decided I was already thoroughly cheesed off with the way my night was panning out. Having squeezed under the tiny ornamental porch of the back door for some shelter I fumbled with muddy hands for a cigarette that was already drooping with dampness when I prized it out of the packet. Miraculously I got it lit. For a brief moment I stood there, pressed against the kitchen door, and enjoyed the illusion of warmth my smoke provided until a large and well-aimed drop of rain extinguished the glow with a hiss. Disgusted, I flicked the wet thing into the darkness; one for the forensic boys.
