Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries)

by Douglas Watkinson

  I leaned back in the chair and reached out for my wine, swirled it round.

  “What next, then?” asked Petra. “I mean you say the police have arrested two people.”

  “The wrong people, but that's their business. The right people wouldn't be hanging around, waiting to be picked up by Charnley. They'll have been well paid for what they did. Well enough to leave the country. Tell you what I find ... strange, though, apart from your behaviour.”

  Petra flared up. “It is not your place to pass judgement!”

  “You think so? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, there's every chance Jim would be alive if you'd acted properly...”

  Her hands broke away to her face, trying to fashion a large enough screen to hide behind. She turned from me but couldn't avoid listening.

  “...but you chose to save your husband's neck. You had a phone with you. You didn't call the police. Why not? Because the phone was traceable, right back to the man who pays the bill.”

  There was silence until Allan chose to break it by asking:

  “What else do you find strange?” he asked. “Something else, apart from our behaviour, you said.”

  “The man never said a word to you.”

  “Not a peep.”

  “Two things follow, then. He either knew you, in which case he wouldn't have needed to take your details...”

  “Unless that was just to scare us,” he said.

  I nodded. “Or, alternatively he didn't want to blow his cover by revealing that he was a she.”

  

  Heading home, I found Prissy Waterman tethering the goats out on the green.

  “When did you get back, Prissy?” I asked.

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “Good holiday, good weather?” I asked.

  “Excellent,” she said. “The girls really enjoyed it, didn't you, Tilly?”

  I looked down at the goat she'd spoken to. “But you can't beat the green, green grass of home, eh, Tilly?”

  Prissy laughed, even though nothing funny had been said. Her mouth opened wide but instead of a throaty roar there came the merest squeak of air passing over her vocal chords. When she closed her mouth again I said:

  “Give Will a message for me, will you. Nathan says Emanuelle it ain't.”

  “I'll tell him,” she said, cheerfully.

  Once home I collapsed into Maggie's Dad's rocker and Hideki came clattering down the stairs, in a dressing gown, still towelling his hair from the shower.

  “Good day?” I asked him.

  “Great day,” he said. “You want coffee?”

  “No thanks. Any ideas about supper?”

  “The Crown, I say. Tonight is curry night.”

  “Good one.”

  “Tea?”

  “No, I'm fine.”

  “I make some anyway.”

  “I've just said I...”

  The kid was trying to be helpful. Why stop him? In fact why not take a photo for posterity of this rare species, a seventeen year old helping round the house? I closed my eyes and drifted around in the day, winding up at my interview with the Wyeths. This third person, the biker Allan and Petra had told me about: who was it? Kate Whitely, up there on The Ridge, directing operations? It wasn't beyond the realms... And the couple in the car? Hired help or Tom and Gizzy? A family affair, to cash in big time. Inherit The Plough, walk off with the two million? As I dozed off the idea fell away into the darkness...

  “I make tea,” said the unmistakable voice.

  “I have made tea,” I corrected him, without opening my eyes. “I have made, he has made, you have made.”

  “Is on table,” he added.

  I opened my eyes and there they were, the teapot and two mugs of tea. But there was no clue as to why he was so gee'd up about them.

  “You and I sit at table. We have...” He wagged a forefinger, beckoning the word, then said triumphantly: “Chinwag!”

  I had misgivings, born of four children and a whole heap of chinwags. Since when do kids of seventeen sit down for a good old natter with their elders, unless they're in big trouble?

  I took my usual place at the table, Hideki took his directly opposite me.

  “Okay, then, what's up?” I said.

  He smiled as broadly as he'd ever done.

  “You don't notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “No, no, first you look.”

  What the hell was he up to? Had he grown another head overnight, was he wearing something new, had he dyed his hair orange?

  “Sorry,” I said, eventually. “You've beaten me.”

  He beamed. “Rock gone!”

  He laid a hand on the table and pressed down. The table stayed. I looked down at the feet to see that each sat in an ingenious cup with a small knob at the side for raising and lowering. His mother had come up with the goods. It was my turn to beam.

  “You little beauty!” I said, getting to my feet.

  In my delight I reached out with both hands to pat his face, both cheeks...

  I saw it in his eyes a split second before he moved. I don't know what he did, something with his hands so slight that I can't even re-picture it, but my arms flew out either side of me, paralysed, and Hideki was on his feet, crouching like a cat. A second later he didn't know where to put himself. He had misread the signs, reacted instinctively to an imagined attack and had done so with a speed that was breathtaking. It was a good ten seconds before I said:

  “It's okay, Hideki. No problem.”

  He wouldn't have it. He came round the table, covered in confusion. He took my hands in his and patted his face with them, just as I'd intended. He tried to explain his sudden outburst:

  “Sorry, sorry. In Japan we don't do this. Pat face.”

  “We don't do a great deal of it in England but...”

  “What means?”

  “It means well done. Humdinger.”

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  There was a ring at the doorbell and Dogge went berserk, just in case we hadn't heard. It broke the tension.

  “That'll be Will Waterman,” I said. “Anymore tea in the pot?”

  

  Will declined the tea and, before he left us to ourselves, I gave Hideki instructions to book a table for two at The Crown, seven thirty.

  Will sat at the table, arms folded across the golfing sweater, head slightly bowed. It struck me that I'd never been this close to him before, so anxious was I not to be hauled through his life story.

  He was the type of man who thought his talents had been vastly underrated and, but for a twist of fate, he could have been an Albert Einstein or a Bertrand Russell. A twist in the drama direction, Gregory Peck or George Clooney; a twist towards the musical, Placido Domingo or Jose Carreras. What he'd done instead was teach information technology at a local comprehensive and, according to some of his students, he was lousy at it.

  He was in good physical shape, though, for his forty odd years, with a full head of soft, dark hair and a pampered complexion. The eyes were slightly dull, however, on account of their stillness. A schemer's eyes. A liar's eyes.

  “...you can imagine my disappointment, Will. There I was thinking if these guns did exist, if someone had walked, or driven down with them to Kate's cottage, they'll be on old Will's security tapes. Down I go to the living room, whack in a tape and what do I see? Our neighbour, heaving away like Michael Douglas in one of his films.”

  He was gazing at a knot in the wood and, as I spoke, he turned his head slightly as if trying to figure out what it reminded him of. I could have told him, having noticed the similarity myself when the table first came to live at Beech Tree. Map of Australia. In spite of his apparent disinterest in what I was saying, however, he'd been listening to me.

  “I mean I know this isn't your fault: your photographic style is fly on the wall, or in this case bug on the ceiling, and you could hardly give them direction, but I could've done with Bella being more - how shall I put it? - pro-active.”


  With his chin still on his chest he looked up at me defiantly, a dirty old man at bay.

  “Have you quite finished?” he said.

  “Not really. What I was after clearly isn't on the tapes so I wondered if you or your sister had seen...”

  “No!”

  “I wondered if you or Prissy had seen any strangers visiting Kate, during the week before the murder?”

  “Why would we have done?”

  “Because if a leaf drops in this village you're out there before it reaches the ground, checking its credentials.”

  “No. No strangers.”

  “Did you see Kate herself, maybe? Carrying the guns, a box, so big?”

  I described the size of the mahogany case with my hands.

  “No.”

  “I do wish you'd give my questions time to settle, before you answer...”

  “It would still be no.”

  I nodded. “Sure you won't have tea?”

  “No tea.”

  “There you go again...”

  He leaned forward, looked square on at me and stressed every word:

  “I have not seen any guns!”

  “Fair enough. Prissy...”

  He was in there like a shot again. “If I haven't seen any, Prissy hasn't seen any.”

  “You share eyes, then, do you? I was going to say: Prissy, does she know about your hobby?”

  “No.”

  “Who's going to tell her? You or me?”

  He looked at me with something almost akin to dignity. “If you'd enjoy doing that, Nathan, go ahead.”

  “Better coming from you,” I said. “Then there's Stefan and Bella. Bit of a problem there, of course. I mean how do you tell a man, without giving offence, that his next door neighbour's got hours of him on tape, screwing?”

  I hadn't had much trouble at all, to be honest, but I didn't want Will to know that. He reached down to stroke Dogge's head while he thought.

  “I won't say it doesn't bother me, Nathan, because it does. I say that because the rest of the village may think Stef's a bit of a joke, stoned out of his mind half the time, but I live next door to the man. I've heard him when he doesn't get his own way and it isn't a pretty sound. If he were ever to find out about this I'm pretty sure he'd take ... commensurate action.”

  “If you thought that, why rig up the camera in the first place?”

  “We all have our weak spots, our ... compulsions. Yours is an easy one, of course, you drink too much.”

  I rustled The Map in my inside pocket. Will rose and went over to the window, looked across at Stefan and Bella's cottage. He stood there, quite still for a moment, that smidgen of dignity there in his manner again. Then he said:

  “I may be a bachelor, Nathan, and no doubt some people in this cruel village think I’m a closet poof. But my weakness is for Annabella Castellone. I'm not saying that a halfway decent tabloid couldn't make me out to be the devil incarnate. I'm sure they'd have a field day.”

  “Given that you keep goats, I'd say you were playing right into their hands.”

  “The truth is they simply wouldn't understand.”

  I slapped the table. No rock.

  “If you're going to say the tapes are some kind of homage to her, don't waste your breath.”

  “The tapes are what they are. But while they're the nearest I'll ever get to Annabella, they also serve to remind me that her husband doesn't deserve her either.” He turned into the room, grabbed the air in a passionate fist. “To me she is as beautiful as she's mysterious.” He voiced the name, slowly with a flourish of his hand and the best Italian accent he could muster. “Annabella Castellone! The romance of all Italy is in that name! Can't you hear it, see it ... feel it?”

  “For Christ's sake, it's Bella we're talking about.” I imitated her Essex girl accent. “Blimey, Nafan, that dog of yours don't 'alf go nuts for our leftovers.”

  He smiled, sadly. “That's what England has done to her. Next time she says anything to you, ask her to repeat it in Italian.”

  “Just so that I understand, you mean?”

  He was clutching the air again, both hands this time. “You'll see an instant transformation, from the woman you've just parodied into exotic Neapolitan beauty. Is it any wonder that the great singers have all been Italian? Voices projecting a language the rest of the world could listen to forever!”

  His performance was so good I was beginning to wonder if he believed it himself.

  “Tell me, does she fuck in English or Italian?”

  “Trust you to bring us back down to earth again, Nathan. That's the law for you. No wings.”

  He jabbed at a particular spot on his head, presumably the focal point of my flightless imagination. He resumed his place at the table and leaned forward, saying:

  “By the way, if you should feel the need to mention the tapes to Stefan, be sure to tell him that I know what else goes on in the bedroom.”

  He raised his eyebrows, as if to say what do you think of that, then?

  “Sounds interesting,” I said.

  “Not so much interesting as useful. I have a tape of it and, if the need arises, if he threatens me with violence, I shall use it against him. I won't bother you with details, Nathan, it might compromise your position as an ex-police officer. You should also know that the tape is not kept, I repeat, not kept in Willow Cottage.”

  “He will know what I'm talking about?”

  “Most definitely.” He patted Dogge once more and rose. “Now, could I have the tapes you stole from me back, please?”

  The man I thought I had at full squirm had put on a pretty good show.

  “I've placed one of them with my bank,” I lied. “You can have the other two.”

  I went through to the living room to get them.

  

  Every second thought I had throughout dinner at The Crown involved Stefan and the 'what else' that went on in the bedroom. Had Will conjured it up in desperation? Or was it real, something he could use as leverage, if need be? I was such bad company throughout the curry that Hideki ate quickly and left me chatting at the bar to a jeroboam of pennies labelled “Comic Relief”. He went through to the snug where his two girlfriends, Liza and Nicky, welcomed him with a squeal or two.

  It came to me in the middle of the night, not with any great force because, as far as I could see, it didn't have a bearing on who killed Jim and Jack. I'd been dreaming, rather casually, that I was strolling down Morton Lane and Dogge had heard Bella's voice. She hared off towards Hawthorn Cottage, leaped over the bottom half of the front door and disappeared. I called several times but she wouldn't come. Bloody dog, I muttered, if I'd had her from a puppy she'd be a lot more biddable than...

  Then, as I surfaced, I remembered who did have her as a puppy. Drugs Squad. She may have been a reject but that didn't mean she hadn't learned anything. She tried to get into Stef and Bella's house every time she passed it because she'd got a whiff of something she'd been taught to recognise.

  So what were we talking about in Hawthorn Cottage? Or rather what were Will Waterman and Dogge talking about? Half a million poundsworth of Burmese heroin or a few quidsworth of local weed?

  It could wait, at least until after Jim's funeral.

  -11-

  Aylesbury Cemetery was an average council graveyard, a petrified forest of stone stumps as far as the eye could see, everything below ground, and most things above, long dead. The plot I'd secured for Jim was on the eastern boundary and there was only one wrinkle in the otherwise smooth operation of laying him to rest. I didn't tell Julie, I wasn't sure how she'd take it, but in accordance with a new council ruling, Jim was being dumped on top of somebody who'd died in 1893. His name was Alfred David Fryer, he was thirty when he keeled over, and my heart went out to him at having Jim Ryder dumped on top of him. The headstone had been temporarily removed as a courtesy to the newcomer.

  There was quite a turnout to see off James Anthony Michael Ryder. More than I'd expected but then
Julie had become something of a local celebrity and that will have pulled in the riff-raff. She'd been covered extensively by Central News and had appeared on the front page of the local paper three times in a row. First, when the shooting happened, again when she regained consciousness and just this morning, albeit in a bottom paragraph, saying that she'd be attending the funeral. That may have been why Charnley had a police officer poking out from behind every headstone.

  Julie was been brought to the cemetery from The Radcliffe by the two coppers guarding her that day, who just happened to be Bailey and McKinnon. The latter pushed her to the graveside in a wheelchair. She looked well, considering what she'd been through. Mind you, perhaps two million quid to do as I pleased with would have put the colour back in my cheeks.

  She thanked me for arranging the burial and for persuading Reg Balfour to conduct the service. I told her Reg had insisted on doing it. That made up, in some measure, for the poor show he put on. I won't say his manner was offhand but it was clear that he hadn't liked the man he was burying. He kicked off with John, chapter eleven. “I am the resurrection, and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live...”

  No chance, I thought, looking round. Live on in the minds of this lot? Jim had no brothers and sisters, his parents were dead. There wasn't once person here today who was going to miss him, not even his wife.

  At Julie's side, Gizzy clung to Tom, both kids looking suddenly grown up in their borrowed black. At one point Gizzy turned to Tom and began to sob into the lapel of his overcoat. Given her feelings about Jim it could only have been for public consumption, an attempt to give credence to the nice girl image she occasionally tried to project. Tom stood resolute, as bewildered as ever, then reached out for his Aunt Julie's hand.

  Reg did a quick hop-scotch, skipping a couple of chapters. I'd had the bible knocked into me so hard as a kid I thought it had fallen out the other side but evidently the names and numbers had stuck. John fourteen. “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you...”