‘How very un-working class,’ I said.
Chapter 13
Moorstall is a tiny village in a fold below the Staffordshire moors, up near the Potteries. The Oak Tree Hotel is actually about two miles from the village, up a country road.
I had become tactically defensive in my thinking. As our cab pulled into the pub’s forecourt I noted with approval a moderate number of expensive cars parked outside. It seemed an upmarket sort of establishment, not the sort of place where anyone was likely to try any malarkey.
The lounge bar, a large comfortable room with low lights, was quiet, with only a handful of blokes in business suits at the bar, all of whom seemed to know each other and each other’s business. All of the tables were untenanted, so we took one which gave us a wide view of the bar and both its doors. It was about fifteen minutes until our contact was due.
The fifteen minutes passed, and another. I looked at my watch.
‘Your man’s late,’ I remarked. ‘Another drink?’
While I got the drinks I took the opportunity to ask the bartender if he knew Lewis. He screwed up his eyes, thought for a moment, then said that he couldn’t actually recall anyone of that name but he might know the face. I told him that Lewis was a salesman in the electronics line. He screwed up his face again and still couldn’t recall him.
‘The barman doesn’t know our bloke,’ I told Sheila.
‘No reason why he should,’ she said. ‘He did say he was only round here occasionally.’
We gave him an hour, then I went to the bar and asked for a phone.
‘Not got your mobile, sir? There’s a payphone outside in the lobby, sir.’
I followed his pointing finger and found the phone. I called the mobile number that Lewis had given, but it was switched off. On the wall above the phone was a taxi firm’s card. It had a mobile phone number, but lots of one-man firms do. I called it and asked for a car to Stafford.
We had just finished our drinks when the bar door opened and a bearded face wearing shades looked in. ‘Anyone call a taxi?’ it asked.
We followed the elderly driver out on to the car park. A few yards from the pub’s door a red car stood, with ‘Moorstall Taxis’ in adhesive lettering across its rear window. Something flickered in my mind, but it was the name I had seen on the card by the payphone.
As the driver slid into his seat I opened the rear door for Sheila. As she slid in, the driver reached through his open window and touched my arm. ‘Did you drop something there, by the door, sir?’
He pointed towards the pub’s door. I turned and saw something lying at the foot of the step. I moved across the car-park and had almost reached the doorway when my brain switched on. Suddenly I remembered that private hire cars are not allowed to carry the word ‘taxi’ anywhere on them — it’s illegal.
In the same instant I heard a car door slam behind me and, as I spun around, the red car shot away across the car-park and out into the road, disappearing fast along the road towards the slope of the moor.
I plunged headlong through the pub’s door and grabbed the payphone, dialling 999. While I gasped out the details to the police operator, the barman emerged into the lobby.
As I put the phone down he looked at me quizzically.
‘Spot of bother, sir?’
‘The taxi-driver who looked into the bar,’ I said. ‘Did you know him? Is he local?’
He shook his head. ‘Didn’t really see him,’ he said. ‘Bearded bloke, wasn’t he? Didn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen.’
I pointed to the card taped to the wall. ‘Is that your local taxi firm?’
He peered at it. ‘“Moorstall Taxis”? No, sir. There’s only one firm hereabouts, that’s Colin’s Cars in the next village. How did that get there?’
He moved to take the card down, but I stopped his hand.
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘The police will want to see that.’
‘Police?’ he queried. ‘Has there been something wrong?’
The only thing that stopped me knocking the fool senseless on the spot was the sound of two police cars arriving outside. Seconds later a uniformed sergeant and three constables piled through the door.
As succinctly as I could I told my story to the sergeant. Luckily he was clear-headed and fast. Once he’d got the gist he went into action.
‘If he went that way,’ he said, ‘he’s got two choices. The road splits below the moor. One way’ll take him towards Stoke, the other’ll take him up on to the moor.’
He paused for a couple of seconds only. ‘Evans,’ he told one of his constables, ‘cut round the bottom of the village and see if you can head him off on the Stoke road. Parsons, get on to the nick — all available cars to cover both options. Come on, sir. Come with me. We’ll have a look at the moor road.’
‘You think that’s more likely?’ I asked.
‘If he doesn’t want to attract attention to whatever he intends to do, yes,’ he said, which didn’t make me feel the least bit better.
*
As the fake hire car leapt away from the Oak Tree Sheila was flung heavily back in the rear seat. By the time she had righted herself the vehicle was barrelling along a dark country road at dangerously high speed, the bearded driver hunched over the wheel.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, trying to sound desperate, which she was, and helpless, which she never is.
The driver lifted his head slightly. He freed his left hand from the wheel and took a knife from the seat beside him, showing it to her briefly.
‘You know what I’m doing, Dr McKenna. I’m taking you away to somewhere where we can discuss your researches in private and where I can leave you with a souvenir that will remind you not to interfere with me.’
‘You’re going to kill me!’ she said, still trying to sound terrified.
‘Not,’ he said, ‘unless you make that unavoidable. If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have done it a dozen times by now.’
She started to sob, noisily.
There’s no need for you to be afraid,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you — I merely want you to understand that you must stop what you’re doing. You haven’t taken any notice of my previous warnings, so I shall have to inflict a very little pain, but that is only so that every time you look in a mirror you will remember that you must not go on with your pointless researches.’
She remembered that this must be the lunatic who had slit Buggalugs’ throat and sabotaged the Wellington boot and her anger almost made her risk trying to take him from behind, but he had the knife and the car was still travelling at high speed. If she tackled him now they might both get killed. Sooner or later he would have to stop to do his dirty work.
At a junction in the road he swung left, never slackening speed. Above the road on their left the ground climbed. It was now nearly full dark and Sheila was aware of a solid bulk of land looming above them. She fell to sobbing noisily again while she tested both of the rear doors and slipped the lock button off the nearside door.
After about three miles the driver slowed, wrenching the car into a tight turn between two weathered posts at the roadside and into an unmade track. Under cover of the vehicle’s jolting along the track, Sheila sprawled along the rear seat, her head at the driver’s end and her left hand grasping her shoulder-bag firmly.
A particularly heavy jolt slowed the car and distracted the driver. In a second she was up, ramming the bottom edge of her heavy bag into the back of his neck. As he lost his grip on the wheel, she activated her personal alarm and dropped it on the front floor. Her instincts were right — instead of reaching for the knife he scrabbled for the screaming device on the floor.
Sheila doubled over like a spring in the rear seat, wrenched open the nearside door and catapulted herself out, rolling into the undergrowth at the edge of the track.
Oblivious to scratches and bruises she sprang up and looked for the driver. The car had halted a few yards further up the track and he was climbing out. She ran as hard as
she knew how, pounding back down the track towards the road, not knowing whether to expect a shot as she ran.
I was in the back of the sergeant’s police car, trying to keep my seat while the car racketed along the dark, narrow road, and I hunched forward so as not to miss anything passing on the radio.
As we came to the junction the constable driving asked, ‘Left or right, sarge?’
‘Left,’ the sergeant snapped. ‘They’ve seen nothing towards the town. Let’s see if he’s made for the moor.’
His words reminded me again that Sheila was in the hands of the madman who had left poor Buggalugs bleeding on my back doorstep. It was dark and the slope of the moor hung over us — moorland that went on and on, through the Peak into Yorkshire, and that was largely empty.
Our driver slowed suddenly.
‘What’re you doing?’ the sergeant demanded.
‘Look, sarge,’ said the driver, and I leaned further forward.
The headlights had just picked up a figure coming around the next bend in the road. It was Sheila, jogging as easily as though she were out for a morning’s exercise.
Chapter 14
John Parry rang me at the office midway through the following morning.
‘I have had,’ he said, ‘a bewildered inspector of the Staffordshire police on the blower.’
‘What was bewildering him?’ I asked.
‘Well, he filled me in on your adventures of last night on his patch but he seemed to find it difficult to believe your account of how it all began.’
‘I hope you put him straight?’
‘Oh, definitely, boyo. I explained to him that, although superficially members of two respectable professions, you and your intended had a capacity for falling into troubles that nobody else knew existed.’
‘Unfair!’ I said. ‘We are always innocent victims.’
‘Victims you may well become if you continue on your melodramatic way, but innocent strikes me as an actionable misdescription, boyo.’
‘I take it you didn’t just ring up to abuse me and the woman that I love, John?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I rang up to tell you the good news — kidnapping being a serious matter, prohibited by the Offences Against the Person Act, I can now take a more active part in this affair, for which reason I would like to come and see you both this evening, if convenient.’
‘You mean you’re after a free meal, Detective Inspector Parry?’
‘Bribery, boyo — the life’s-blood of the police service — as no one knows better than you. What can a man do when faced with temptation, except succumb to it?’
‘If you go about quoting Oscar Wilde, John, you won’t stay long enough in the service to draw your pension. See you at eight.’
He was prompt, bearing a box of chocolates for Sheila and a bottle of Laphroaig for me.
‘I thought you were the one being bribed,’ I said.
‘No, no. The chocolates are an award to the lady for the plucky and ingenious way in which she extricated herself unharmed from an extremely dangerous situation. The whisky is a consolation for you, for being a big enough idiot to let her get into it.’
‘That’s a bit hard,’ I complained. ‘You told her not to be alone.’
‘So I did, and you left her alone with a strange taxi driver.’
‘Hold on, John,’ Sheila interrupted. ‘The loony separated us with a trick. Anyone would have fallen for it. I know I would.’
‘You, my dear, are an unworldly academic, driven by a thirst to unearth obscure facts which will add to the sum of human knowledge. He is supposed to be an experienced lawyer — versed in the manifold wickednesses of the human heart and mind and always one to pause and consider before making a move.’
‘You were a sad loss to the chapel,’ I said.
‘Not that they thought so at the time,’ he said. ‘It was their idea that a career in the navy would do me good after my trouble with Sansha Pritchard.’
‘You must tell us,’ I said.
‘That’s what they said,’ he said. ‘What’s for dinner?’
Over dinner Sheila gave him the detailed story of the previous night’s events. When she had done he asked, ‘And you can’t recall anything useful about him?’
‘I was trying to get away at the time,’ she said, ‘not drawing pictures.’
‘There was,’ he said, ‘a young lady in Wales, many years ago, who managed to memorise the pattern of a man’s teeth while being raped and they got him.’
‘Well done her!’ said Sheila. ‘But my bloke was disguised.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m certain. I did actually try to get a look at him, but there was nothing to see — beard, moustache, shades and cap — no face to look at. I remember thinking that at least he wasn’t going to kill me.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because he wouldn’t have disguised himself, would he?’
‘True, true. What about his voice? He spoke to you a couple of times.’
‘Yes, but nothing very helpful there. It was just posh Pommy, like on the phone.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that lets out the usual suspects in crimes of violence — the working class. Anything about him that made you think you could have seen him before?’
She thought for a moment. ‘He was too slim for chubby Norman, too tall for Jack Garton or his son and too young for Captain Smythe, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Which doesn’t,’ he said, ‘mean that he isn’t connected with one of the three families you’ve found.’
‘But he used the name Lewis. That’s connected with the Stafford man — James Simmonds.’
‘True, but he seems to have known very early on what you were researching. We have to presume he’s got much the same information that you have — maybe more. He’s certainly got one piece of information that you haven’t — he knows what this is all about.’
‘Sheila might have that information and not recognise it,’ I commented.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Have you got very far with the other families? Like down to the present day?’
‘Two of them, I have,’ she said. ‘I haven’t quite sorted out the Shropshire bunch. What help is that? You’re not going to go bashing about banging on the doors of my possible contacts, are you?’
‘I love,’ he said, wearily, ‘the graceful way in which the public accepts the efforts of its police officers to keep society safe. No, my love, I wasn’t about to go bashing on doors. I was about to see if anyone in the present or previous generation shows up on Criminal Records.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you the details I’ve got so far. I take it all this means that your colleagues over the border didn’t catch him and haven’t got a clue.’
The big Welshman shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. They didn’t get him and they didn’t see the car. They reckon that he went on over the moor after you bailed out. Could have fetched up in Sheffield, or he might have reached the motorway through a side-road. Could have gone anywhere. If they’d contacted us a bit quicker I’d have had Belston watched for the car.’
‘You think he’s hereabouts?’ I said.
‘I told you that. He knows your comings and goings somehow. He must be fairly close at least some of the time. Anything you remember about the inside of the car, Sheila?’
‘Not really.’ She frowned. ‘There were two of those rings on the dash — you know — the kind you can sit a soft drink can in.’
He nodded. Two’s unusual. That’s something if we ever find the car. What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘Ploughing through dross on the Internet again, why?’
‘Staffordshire would like you to go up and give them a full statement, if you will.’
‘He’s not going to try again tomorrow,’ she said.
‘He’s going to try again soon, somehow. What’s more, he’s getting worse. Dead cats and spiders in wellies are one thing, but kidnap with intent to commit GBH at least is a lot wo
rse. I’ll take you up there myself.’
‘Does that mean’, I enquired, ‘that we’re going to have your company for breakfast as well?’
‘How very kind,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that, but I accept — so long as it’s a mixed grill. None of your toast and orange juice nonsense.’
‘Steak, two eggs and fries do?’ asked Sheila.
Chapter 15
Sheila returned from Stafford next evening in a good mood.
‘I have given them a blow-by-blow description of the whole thing,’ she said. They were honest enough to admit that they didn’t know where to start, but John was charming and the young copper who took my statement was really useful.’
‘What about the phone numbers — the one in Lewis’s letter and the fake taxi number?’
‘Two mobiles bought under false names and now switched off,’ she said, ‘and the address which the letter came from was a fake.’
‘Which is why he rushed us into that appointment, so that you weren’t going to write back.’
‘Still,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t a wasted day. John’s right. There are benefits in co-operating with the police. Look at this.’
She produced a piece of paper from her bag and passed it across. It was a photocopy of a Victorian broadsheet.
‘My statement,’ she said, ‘was taken by a very nice sergeant, and when I explained to him how I got into this mess it turned out that he’s a local history enthusiast — particularly local criminal history. He told me that he knew about James Simmonds. What’s more, he took me to the Salt Library and showed me that. Isn’t that great?’
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Though I prefer the older sheets, where they have a cheerful picture of a row of blokes dangling from a scaffold at the top.’
‘Oh, you!’ she said. ‘Don’t you see what this proves? That Jimmy Simmonds had a girlfriend and a son and it even gives her name.’
‘So you’ve got another candidate for the recipient of the penny. Mrs Wainwright will be most upset.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose that I’ll ever know which girl got the token, but it’s really nice to have her name. I wish there was a tune to this song.’
Bad Penny Blues (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 3) Page 9
