‘We do have three members of a tactical firearms unit just across the road,’ I reminded him.
‘They’re for family protection. No, and we can’t creep about out here any longer. I shall break in through the door into the public bar that’s nearest the car park.’
‘It might be bolted.’
‘It might be bolted. So I might have to get in through the effin’ drains.’
The tone in which this latter remark had been uttered made the oracle realize that her pronouncements were no longer required. But all kinds of reservations were streaming through my mind. They might see us and while Patrick was getting in the side door, they would escape through those at the front or rear, probably the latter as that was where their car was most likely to be. There might be others with them who had been posted around the village, watching out for our return.
I mentally strangled the oracle and followed Patrick to the side of the building. The car park was surrounded by a low wall and we were now in full view of the village green and cottages that fronted the lane along one side of it. I stood so as to block from view Patrick’s efforts with his skeleton keys, which live practically permanently in one pocket or another of his jackets.
‘It’s already unlocked,’ he said under his breath, slipping in. ‘Stay outside.’
I never do, though.
Giving him plenty of room, I went in. A clock ticked, a fridge or freezer motor cut in, thin bars of light with motes of dust floating in them shone through gaps in the not-quite-closed curtains. The air smelt of stale beer, dirty lavatories and, as at the barn, cigarette smoke. I gazed around carefully. The bar possessed several mirrors, possibly with an original view of making the room look larger, some of them in corners, thus giving angled reflections. I silently directed Patrick’s attention to what I could see in one of them: a woman smoking somewhere in an adjoining passageway. She had not seen us.
Murphy.
Patrick, who is extremely familiar with the layout of the building, walked silently to where he knew she was and, just around the corner from her, sprang the blade of his knife.
She shrieked and then again when, with the speed of a striking snake, she was grabbed and hauled in to face us. Holding the knife in his other hand as he needed his right to keep hold of her Patrick made a leisurely movement with it in the air right under her nose: an obscene thrust, with overtones of disembowelling and worse, that actually made me feel sick. It had the same kind of effect on Murphy. She fainted.
Having had her virtually tossed in my direction, and hearing heavy footsteps on the nearby stairs, I wrenched open the nearest curtains and grabbed both sets of cord tie-backs. With them, and having rolled the woman over on to her front – we did not want her to vomit and choke to death before she could be sent to prison, did we? – I tied her hands and then both feet tightly together, linking both parcels for good measure.
There came a sound from the passageway, as if a side of beef were colliding with a dresser loaded with pots and pans. Then there was a crashing descent and silence but for what sounded like a saucepan lid going round and round on the quarry-tiled floor until it shivered into stillness. After a short pause came a dragging noise before the sound of a door being slammed. Then a click as a key turned in a lock.
Patrick came, or rather staggered, into view, licking the knuckles of his right hand. ‘You should never hit drunks – normally. Oh, good, you’ve got her.’ He sat down, got up again and, leaning over the bar, took a couple of packets of crisps from a display card, throwing me one.
I shall never forget what happened next. With his gaze now somewhere behind me he fumbled in his jeans pocket, found a pound coin among some loose change and placed it on the counter. Then he smiled, again at something over my shoulder. I turned.
‘You’ve caught the crooks!’ Katie cried, jumping up and down, clapping her hands.
TWENTY
I had not imagined the footsteps behind me, Katie following us from home having spotted us from her bedroom window. Careful questioning on my part later revealed that she had not witnessed the X-rated pas de deux with the knife as she had been hiding behind an oak settle at the time. One thing was sure though, her final involvement with the case had rather overshadowed her brother’s efforts and, before I could stop her, she was on the phone to him yelling the news the moment we reached the rectory. I immediately rang Greenway before he got the news from Benedict first.
Katie and I had left Patrick peacefully eating more crisps while waiting for Carrick, with suitable backup, to arrive. I gather that the DCI arrested and took possession of his prisoners, a brief statement from Patrick and then, with typical consideration, arranged for him to be driven the five hundred yards or so home.
‘I can’t take any of the credit for this,’ Carrick said with just a trace of resentment.
‘Of course you can,’ Patrick declared robustly. ‘You’ve just apprehended Carol Trelonic.’
‘You mean I knocked at her door and when she finally answered I arrested her, don’t you?’ the DCI said sourly.
‘Yes, thereby saving the local rector’s reputation. I understand quite a crowd had gathered to watch her go and there were a few boos and hisses.’
I said, ‘I suppose she’s acting all innocence.’
‘Of course. Saying she only worked at the pub, never had anything to do with Andrews other than that, and that you’re making a victim of a poor recently widowed woman out of sheer spite, etc., etc. What she doesn’t know is that Andrews is selling her down the river as we speak.’
‘Really?’ I exclaimed.
‘According to him she ran the money laundering and moving on stolen goods side of things, as far as the pub went anyway. She also paid your cleaning woman to sniff out any interesting bits of info which must have been how they knew you’d be going for weapons training. I shall need her name and address from you. Andrews is pretty stupid and I reckon they only used him because he’d had experience in running a public house before and no previous criminal convictions.’
‘Which would have been checked when he applied for the tenancy,’ Patrick commented. ‘What about her husband?’
‘Like a lot of the others, just a hired oaf.’
There was a reflective silence while we all, I think, remembered how people like him had been used like disposable commodities. And died.
‘And Murphy?’ Carrick prompted quietly.
‘She fainted,’ Patrick said.
‘I know. That’s what she said too.’
‘Sometimes, and I have to add, very reluctantly, you have to out-Herod Herod,’ Patrick went on when he realized some elaboration was required. ‘She ordered a couple of her yobs to help her kill me slowly and messily, and they didn’t know I had my knife. I don’t think she realized people could be killed so quickly and neatly. It frightened her because, as Ingrid said, no one had ever done anything like that in front of her before. It was one of the weaknesses of her particular mindset and when she thought I was about to do the same to her . . .’
The DCI had, of course, read all the reports forwarded to him by Sussex Police. Soberly, he said, ‘Plus three more outside.’
‘I can’t really claim self-defence as far as they were concerned. But they were being sent into the barn two, three or four at a time to try to get me so, ultimately, it was.’
‘I think I’d have run like hell,’ Carrick admitted.
‘I nearly did. I’m not proud of what I did. In fact—’ Here Patrick broke off for a few moments and cleared his throat. ‘But I’m hoping it might have saved a few innocent lives.’ Then, changing the subject with obvious relief, he went on, ‘And now the whole village is waiting with barely concealed impatience for a new landlord to be taken on. The place belongs to the parish, you see.’
‘You could always apply,’ Carrick said with a grin.
‘I’ve actually given it some thought.’
The two of us stared at him in total disbelief.
‘Only very tem
porarily, you understand,’ Patrick said hurriedly. ‘Until there is a more permanent arrangement.’
‘I understand it’s thought Andrews went off with everyone’s Christmas Club money.’
‘Oh, if he has I reckon it’ll be repaid. An anonymous benefactor will come forward.’
Which he did.
This conversation took place before the usual hundreds of hours of police work was undertaken: checking and rechecking reports, taking statements and liaising with the several police forces and departments involved before cases could be brought to court. It took months as so many suspects were involved and the man referred to as Uncle had spread his criminal empire so widely. Patrick and I both helped with this work and eventually it was satisfying to see these people, Northwood and Murphy included, whom the judge described as ‘callous gutter racketeers who liked to think of themselves as criminal masterminds’ get life imprisonment.
On a personal and family level Matthew did not have to appear before the Youth Offending Team. Commander Greenway was as good as his word and wrote to them saying that the youth in question had a slightly misplaced enthusiasm for investigating and solving what he perceived to be crimes. The boy had since been staying with him personally and while he had received instruction on the inadvisability of such behaviour in future his knowledge of IT and computer literacy had made a huge contribution to police work in apprehending serious criminals.
A couple of months later when we had just returned from a much-needed three-week holiday touring Italy, Patrick had to attend an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission where, as expected, his actions and judgement were questioned, especially in connection with the three men he had killed in the farmyard. It was known by this time that one of them had been the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, wanted in Germany in connection with the triple murders of his ex-partner and her two children. The other two had been Londoners on the Met’s Most Wanted list, one of whom Patrick had recognized from SOCA’s crime records. Obviously, this latest intelligence did not make what he had done ‘all right’.
At this point Commander Greenway had stepped in to ask what alternative actions his employee could have taken. He had had no mobile phone, no backup and his only other option had been to flee and try to get help. By the time that arrived the criminals may well have gone. Or, discovering that he was no longer there as they were repeatedly attacking the barn where he was ‘holed up’, they might have stayed to arrange a deadly ambush for the arriving police personnel. But, despite being seriously dehydrated, Gillard had remained where he was. Greenway had gone on to remind everyone that these were the mobsters who had masterminded the multiple shootings in Bath. He had then become a bit heated, demanding to know that as the operative in question had been engaged specifically because of his special forces training for situations exactly like this, was there now a change of mind and would those in the commission rather mainstream cops put their lives on the line instead and that he, Greenway, hired people who bolted at the first sign of trouble?
There were still unanswered questions, one of which had been put to Patrick. Why had he not fired one of the handguns he had taken from the men in the yard to attract attention? There was another house not far away.
Keeping remarkably patient he had answered, ‘So this guy, if there was a guy, in the next house might have said to himself, “Sounds as though a poacher’s potting game with a pistol.” He might have got into his car and driven down the road to tell his neighbour what was going on, by which time a gunfight would most likely have started. He may well have been killed in crossfire. I probably would have been dead by then too as I’d have run out of ammo. Look, the whole object of what I did was to try to save innocent lives. I agree that things were getting a bit desperate by the time my working partner located where I was.’
‘You were hoping to arrest them?’
‘There was plenty of booze in the house. They’d all have drunk themselves to a standstill eventually.’
‘But then this criminal, Michael Fellows, known as Mick the Kick, from Bristol, arrived.’
‘Fortunately for me he decided to stage a surprise raid – in revenge after what had happened in Bath.’
‘He’s dead, I understand,’ the questioner had said.
‘He is. Last week, when DCI Cookson of Bristol CID had accumulated the evidence he needed to arrest him in connection with the death of his one-time sergeant, he raided the house where a snout had said Fellows was hiding. His decomposing body was found in the hallway. Forensic tests indicated that he had been dead for around a fortnight and had suffered a heart attack, toppled over the banisters on the stairs and broken his neck.’
Which I thought was an ironic fate in the circumstances.
‘You then went on to arrest the serious criminal whose various aliases everyone here is aware of by now, together with Joy Murphy.’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Carrick officially arrested them. As you know, they were in the pub at Hinton Littlemore, probably because they hoped to finish their business with me later. I just thumped Uncle, locked him in the office and scared Murphy so she fainted.’
‘You scared her,’ the man had repeated woodenly.
‘That’s right.’
‘Would you care to explain how you did that?’
He had not explained, merely taken out his knife and, looking him right in the eye, sprung the blade.
They had given up then – it was over.
Table of Contents
Cover
Previous Titles in this series by Margaret Duffy
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Rat Poison Page 24
