Trowchester Blues

by Alex Beecroft

  “Scared him off?” said the archaeologist, settling on one of the stools Finn had brought in to access the upper shelves. “I don’t think any of us have failed to notice by now that you always recommend the BSDM novels. A bit too vanilla for you, is he? Not open-minded enough?”

  “Good God.” Finn glared at them both, Idris round faced and amused like an onlooker carved on a sexy temple fresco at Khajuraho, James infuriatingly perky under his spiky haircut. “You see. This is why I didn’t want to discuss it. Can a man not keep his perversions to himself in this town? There’s a reason they call it a ‘private’ life.”

  James seemed to realise that he’d gone too far. He spent a long time dissecting his slice of carrot cake as though he expected to find a Bronze Age burial in the centre of it.

  “We ask because we’re your friends,” Idris said, closing a hand around Finn’s wrist. “And because we can’t help noticing that the thing that upset you most this morning was that someone wasn’t answering their phone. When I put this—” he gestured at the bare, burnt room “—on one side, and him on the other, and I realise that he is more important to you than the burning of your books. Well, that’s serious. All joking aside. That’s serious, isn’t it?”

  Finn’s head and hands and heart all still hurt. It had been a hard morning’s work, and he was tired. He put his cake down and drew his stinging hands in to his chest to cradle and keep them warm. Maybe it was time he started being an honest man in other areas, not just his business but his private life too. Michael would approve.

  “Yes, it’s serious.” He gave in, talking to his hands rather than having to watch their faces. “And yes, he’s a lot more vanilla than I thought, but I think we could work that out, given time. It’s just that he’s an ex-cop and I’m . . . Before I came to Trowchester—well, I may have done some things that were not strictly legal, and he may have just found out about them.”

  In the terrible silence that followed, he died a couple of times, somehow not having thought that this confession might cost him his friends, realising it too late, only when the room filled with startled thought.

  “But you’re on the level now,” James said carefully, the words weighted somewhere between a question and a statement.

  “Yes.” That came out a little too vehemently. Finn toned it down for the next sentence to improve believability. “I turned over a new leaf when I came here. That was why I came here—so I could leave it all behind.”

  “Well, then.” Idris’s response was also too much—too positive, too bright. “All you have to do is tell him so. He’ll believe you. What kind of a lover wouldn’t believe you? And it will be fine.”

  Finn pushed his plate away, the relief of hearing Michael’s voice again fading, because it was clear enough that Idris already had doubts about what he was saying, and the man didn’t know the worst of it—didn’t know his contacts were pressuring him to go back, didn’t know he’d already slipped.

  In a way, the failed trial had drawn a line under his activities in London. There wasn’t enough evidence to prove they had actually happened at all, and the trial, the accusations, the lawyers, being unable to be there for Tom . . . He’d been punished for them nevertheless and he felt clean of them.

  But the abbot’s psalter was new, and he could just feel it now—it was going to gnaw through the inside of everything like a worm in the apple until all he had left was a handful of rot.

  Briggs wouldn’t even have burned it. He would have found someone else to fence it for him. How could he have ever believed such a blatant lie? He was such an idiot.

  And now it was too late, and everything was ruined. He’d lose Michael for sure. He’d be lucky if he even kept his friends.

  “Yes,” he said and tried to smile. “Of course he’ll believe me. I’m such a reliable witness, after all.”

  They flinched, both of them, but they stayed, and he was grateful for that. “In the meantime, let’s not be maudlin. Time to put some books back on these shelves.”

  “I’ll be going home now, then, Mr. Hulme.” Kevin put his head around the shower curtain that Finn had secured in the door between the damaged room and the rest of the shop. Like a trooper, Kevin had manned the cash register and kept the shop open while Finn and his friends worked to restore the Jules Verne room. The boy deserved a Christmas bonus, something in cash he didn’t have to declare to the tax man—or his parents. Something just for himself.

  “Thanks, Kevin,” he said. “You’ve done a grand job today. I appreciate it.”

  Kevin reacted with a duck of blue hair, embarrassed, and grunted something unintelligible in return as he swept through the room and paused with his hand on the back door. “It’s looking good.”

  Finn stretched the aches out of his back and regarded his work. A new coat of paint on the walls had made the place clean again. He had painted suckers and questing fingers onto the tendrils of scorching that rose over the ceiling and embedded two faceted red buttons into the centre of it that winked as you turned your head, very like shifting eyes. He’d painted flames around the burn marks on the floor and attempted a trompe l’oeil scene of a rift opening into Hell, from the centre of which a semiruined arch supported the shelves he had stocked with his horror and true crime volumes.

  It wasn’t the greatest work of art, but it gave the impression of being deliberate, as though he’d chosen it, as though it had not in any way been forced on him. That was the effect he’d been going for.

  “Not so bad for a day’s work,” he agreed. “I think we can open the whole shop tomorrow.”

  “I know you don’t want me to know what’s going on.” Kevin stuffed his hands in the belly pocket of his hoodie and shifted from foot to foot. “But someone did this, right? ’Cause you pissed someone off, somehow. Are they going to come back and do it again?”

  There was another question he didn’t want to think about. Curse inquisitive employees and nosy friends.

  Benny and Lisa would almost certainly come back, bringing something they had stolen and wanted fenced. He would refuse them again and yes, they probably would do it again. Or worse.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said and opened the back door, pointedly. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “It something to do with your old patch? Because my dad knows some people. He could probably arrange to put the frighteners on whoever it is. Keep ’em away.”

  Oh yes, because it wasn’t enough to put his own recovery on the line? He’d be damned if he’d lead Kevin back into the underworld. The boy was thinking of college, making something of himself. He was not dragging Kevin into any of this.

  “Run along,” he said, pressing one hand to his forehead, twirling the other dismissively. “I have everything perfectly in hand.”

  He locked the door behind Kevin, took another satisfying examination of the renewed room, and then went upstairs to make himself a coffee and a quick omelette. The book club boys had gone at half five and Kevin at six. There wasn’t a lot of time to wait for Michael, but it made the most of itself, stretching like a rubber band, every second longer than the last.

  It was raining outside, in long ruler-like streaks of cold grey water. A cheerless, miserable night, fully dark now. He looked out to see if he could distinguish the headlights of Michael’s from any others—surely the man wouldn’t walk here in this downpour—but he couldn’t tell one set of lights from another as they rushed up and flicked past.

  He would say, “I didn’t ever mean to deceive you. I left that life behind, just like you left the force. We’re new people now, and there’s no reason we can’t be new together. I’m sorry for what I said to you. I didn’t mean that either. I wanted you to hurt me a little, and I thought it would give you an excuse. We should have discussed it beforehand, I know. Worked out safewords and all of that tedious business. I’m going to be more honest with you in the future. If we have a future, which I very much hope we do.”

  If one was going to qu
ibble about details, it would be one of the largest lies he’d ever told, because he didn’t intend to tell Michael anything about the abbot’s psalter. Considering how off the rails he’d gone over a record that was unproven five years ago, he would utterly lose his shit over anything more recent, and Finn didn’t think he could deal with that right now, when he had so many other things to fret about.

  The sound of a vehicle drawing to a halt by the front door drew him out of his thoughts. A rougher, deeper sound than he had expected. He peered through the window again and saw headlights high off the ground, the boxy shape of a farmer’s Land Rover. Disappointment did not have time to strike, as a second set of lights pulled up across the street. That was the purr of a large car. He couldn’t tell one car from another particularly in this light, but it seemed roughly the right shape for Michael’s Volvo, and it backed so carefully into one of the marked parking bays that it had to be driven by someone who respected the rules far more than was healthy.

  He closed the curtain with a sick sense of anticipation and worry and an irrepressible hope, and bundled himself down the stairway posthaste to get the door open so Michael had to spend as little time as humanly possible outside in that rain.

  The bite of cold, and then a tall figure streaming with water shouldered its way inside.

  Oh, fuck, he thought, having a moment of intense déjà vu as the person came smack up into his face and grabbed him by the arms. Not Benny, not Lisa. Overwhelming scent of wet wool and sheep dip and dung. Another figure in the door, and the security light he’d had the locksmith install this morning finally flicked on, showed him a farmer, flat capped, tweed jacketed, with dirt-covered wellington boots and a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded, his voice rising into the upper octaves as the first man got a better grip on him and dragged him out into the night. “What’s this about? Who the hell are you?”

  Water hit him in the face, soaked his hair and his indoor clothes. The second man opened the back door of the Land Rover and together they tried to force Finn into it. He got his feet braced against the metal step, and struggling with all his might, twisted to look over at what he still thought was Michael’s car. “Help me! Michael, help!”

  The second farmer, the one with the shotgun, followed Finn’s gaze. He was outlined in Michael’s headlights, one hand on the barrel of his gun, its stock still tucked into his elbow. He tilted his head, considering, and then he slid two cartridges into the barrel and snapped the gun closed. Finn’s heart stopped as he took aim.

  Abruptly, Michael’s headlights snapped out. Darkness fell like a stunning blow, beneath which they could just hear the note of an engine driving away. By the time Finn’s eyes adapted, Michael’s car wasn’t there at all.

  He’s left! He’s gone and left! The thought stole the strength from Finn’s legs. They buckled, and his captor pushed him into the back of the Land Rover and locked a metal door on him. He was left crouched in a dog cage, fingers through the bars, trying to shake it apart, as the two farmers climbed in the front and the Land Rover lurched and rattled away to God alone knew where.

  What the fuck? What the ever loving fuck was going on now?

  Finn shook the cage again, well aware that he was probably not capable of doing more damage to it than a couple of healthy sheepdogs. Was this what being an honest man required for everyone or was it just him? Because he hadn’t appreciated the sheer level of heroism involved.

  “You all right back there, son?” The man in the passenger seat twisted round to look at him. Oncoming headlights washed tidally over a weather-beaten face beneath a close-cropped silver beard. Kindly, Finn would have said, though perhaps with a hint of implacability in the set of the mouth. This was the man who had aimed a weapon at Michael, scared him away.

  “What do you think?” Finn demanded. “I’m wet and cramped and confused and extraordinarily pissed off, and I have not the faintest idea what I’ve done to deserve this.”

  “Ah, well.” The man gave him a philosophical smile, wriggled on the seat to get a hand in his pocket and then reached out to thread a hip flask through one of the holes in Finn’s cage. “I can’t tell you that. Have a nip of this, and you’ll feel better.”

  Finn took the flask in astonishment, and as he did so his captor fiddled with the dashboard, turning the heating up. “Be warmer in a moment. You just sit tight, and we’ll be there in no time.”

  “We’ll be where?” Unscrewing the top of the flask, Finn sniffed warily. It certainly smelled like an uncomplicated whiskey. Ancient Grouse, maybe. He wasn’t confident of his own ability to smell poison or tranquillizer—or God knows, truth drugs—under the homely scent of spirits, but what would be the point of drugging him now, when he was already so firmly under their control?

  “You’ll see.”

  He took a sip. It tasted like whiskey too, tracing fire down his throat and warming his cold belly. After five minutes in which he continued not to be poisoned, he took a larger gulp and passed it back. This was probably the least alarming kidnapping he could have imagined, and with that realisation, his fight-or-fight-harder response tamped down enough to let him think.

  Dog hairs were mulched into the muddy carpet on which he knelt. The smell of the Landie was the smell of the countryside—earth and petrol and dung. This wasn’t some hastily disguised getaway vehicle. He was pretty certain the guys looked like farmers because they were. And that was probably a good thing, because it meant that while they were ruthless to poachers and rabbits, they were probably not accustomed to being hit men for criminal gangs.

  That made sense of the civility, but when had he ever done anything to annoy the sons of the sod? He’d always regarded the countryside as picturesque but largely irrelevant to a life spent cherishing art and knowledge for its own sake.

  As he calmed down, his thoughts turned back to Michael—how cleverly and how nonchalantly Michael had got himself out of danger. The guy had been a cop in London, where the criminals had guns and the police were armed with sticks. Finn’s first panicked belief that Michael had been frightened off didn’t stand to reason.

  Probably, possibly, Michael had simply circled round the block to avoid being fired on, and had picked up the Land Rover’s trail as it left. If that was so, he might be following them right now. At the other end of this, when they stopped, Finn needed to be alert for any attempts Michael might make to get him out of there.

  Or he could be delusional. After all, Michael had retired, burnt out, with his mental health as stable as a set of swings. It was also entirely possible that he had seen the gun, panicked, and gone off somewhere to have a flashback in private. The guy had been entirely useless and disappointing during the fire. Why should he break that streak now?

  Finn tried peering through the back window to see if they were being followed, but in the darkness he could only see the car directly behind. That was not Michael’s. He tried telling himself that Michael would not be foolish enough to be that obvious in how he followed them, and while it was a good argument, it didn’t soothe Finn’s nagging feeling that he was on his own again, that no one was looking out for him and no one ever would.

  Past the ring road and away into fields split by dry stone walls, then dense woodland on both sides of the road and a wall on his right topped by stone pineapples. The Landie turned through an archway spanned by wrought iron, with a lamp hanging in the centre of it, dimly illuminating a series of signs advertising the Bonfire Night fireworks display on the weekend just past, a Christmas Craft Fair yet to come.

  The Landie’s wheels ssshed over gravel and thumped into potholes as the road beneath them became a track through rolling meadows. Rain clouds drew aside for long enough to let through a chilly silver sliver of moonlight, in which he glimpsed a distant herd of deer that went bounding away from the sound of their wheels.

  “This is Harcombe House,” he said, mostly to himself. Seat of the Harcombe family, lords of the manor of
Trowchester since the Norman conquest. “I come to the car boot sale here every third weekend of the month.”

  “That’s right.” The driver took his cloth cap off and wiped a hand over his bald patch. In happier circumstances he would have made a fine Father Christmas, with his bushy beard and his air of well-fed conviviality, though Finn had not forgotten the strength of his grasp, probably honed by holding down bulls for slaughter. “It’s a good place to buy tools on the cheap.”

  “Oh no, they’re crap,” the whiskey-proffering bloke commented. “Chinese stuff. Lasts maybe half the winter, and then you have to throw it away.”

  “You know.” Finn’s knees ached, and he had a storm inside him threatening to break out, but he managed a light pleasant tone nevertheless. “You don’t seem like the kind of people who would normally go in for kidnapping.”

  “Ah, it’s not my métier,” Whiskey agreed. “But when you live in the tied cottages, it’s expected you’ll do the odd little favour as part of the rent.”

  “You don’t seem the hardened villain we were led to expect either,” Driver chipped in, as he passed the stable block and the private chapel, swung round the red-brick Tudor wing of the stately home and parked by a small entrance in the larger, L-shaped Georgian side. “But you still can’t go round burgling people’s houses, even if they are as rich as Croesus.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Well, you’ve got to say that, haven’t you?” Driver waved a hand as though he were batting a wasp aside. “But don’t waste your breath on us. It’s not our business. We don’t want to know. Isn’t that right?”

  Whiskey opened his door and climbed down, retrieving his gun on the way. He unlocked the back door, then stood carefully outside lunging distance, with the gun trained on Finn while his partner unlatched the cage. “That’s right,” he smiled like a lovable grandfather. “Strictly pick up and retrieval. Out you come.”

  Finn had to admire their style. They made Benny and Lisa’s hard-man tactics look vulgar.