Kate had already phoned her Aunt Jean and was planning to return to Winchendon later that day. Martin would go with her and face up to Sharon but right now he was upstairs, assembling a new bed in the spare room. Kate called him down and, complaining about instructions written by Taiwanese schoolchildren and there not being enough screws to finish the job with, he made us real coffee. You do that, I remember, when you first set up house: you make real coffee.
“I'm glad you dropped in,” he said, setting the pot down on the table. “More than just for the pleasure of your company, I mean. Tell him, Kate, go on.”
“We were talking it over last night,” said Kate. “You know you asked me, yesterday, about guns on the loft at Maple Cottage?”
“Sure.”
“Well, the answer's still the same. Not mine... but...”
She faltered, glanced at Martin who said:
“She feels disloyal, saying it. Nathan is a pro, love, let him pick the bones out of it.”
Kate leaned towards me and spoke intensely, hands painting the pictures alongside the words.
“You know in those old cottages, Nathan, yours, mine, yours too Laura; there's always gaps and crinkly bits where the plaster meets the beams, specially in the ceiling?”
I nodded encouragement. “Usually with a draught coming through.”
“Well, one day, about a month ago, I came home from the office, went upstairs to change and noticed stuff on my bed. Bits. Dust and little chunks of plaster. A nail, even. They'd fallen from above. I'd seen it before, bits on the duvet, but never in those quantities. It was like...”
“Like someone had been up there,” said Laura.
Kate nodded. “Like they'd walked about in the loft, disturbed the beams.”
Martin took her hand. “What she means...”
“I know what she means,” I said. “It's so obvious I missed it. Someone else, in that row of cottages, has been using her part of the loft.”
-16-
We got back to Winchendon at about seven o'clock that evening and, with it being Sunday, the village was comatose. I asked Laura to come in and have a scratch supper but she pleaded exhaustion. I said she couldn't possibly be tired, having slept most of the journey back. She denied that she had but if she had it was her unconscious mind's way of ignoring the speed I'd driven at.
We left it there. We were getting good at that, ditching disagreements before they became arguments. However, we usually did so with Laura having had the last word. She drove away at damn near thirty miles an hour and I went straight up to the cabin and dialled a number in South Devon. I should've done it the morning after Jack Langan died but, well ... hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
A voice at the other end answered and, polite as ever, said:
“Yeah?”
“Steve?” I said, masking my voice a little.
“He's not here.”
“Yes you are, Steve.”
There was a pause as he searched the memory banks, trying to put a name to the voice.
“Who is this?”
“You go first.”
“Okay, it's Steve. Who the fuck are you?”
“Nathan Hawk.”
The manner changed completely.
“Blimey, guvnor, you had me going.”
“Did you think they'd caught up with you at last?”
He had a whisky drinker's laugh, kept nice and rough with forty fags a day. “Well, you never know who's about. How are you?”
“I'm fine,” I said. “And if the conversation we've had so far's anything to go by, you're the same as ever.”
His name was Steven Yates. He was forty-five and a Coroner's Officer. Dead bodies suited him. Less back chat. We exchanged news. His kids, my kids; his dog, my Dogge; his new love interest, my ... friend, Laura. In the end he said:
“So what can I do for you, Nathan? I mean we only ring each other when we need something.”
I told him briefly about the two murders and Jack Langan finding shotguns on the loft of Maple Cottage. He agreed to run a check on them for me, to see who they might be licensed to.
“I'm not saying the kids in this squad are careless,” I explained, “but they're pushed, time-wise, number-wise. And they don't do it like, you know ... the phrase we said we'd never use?”
“Like in the old days?”
“Yeah. All I've got are initials, on the box, plus the fact that they're Purdeys. The initials are Juliet Alpha Mike. Jam today. If, on the way, any names crop up they might be one of the following: Waterman, Merriman or Castellone.” I spelled out Bella's surname for him.
“Who's your favourite?”
“At the moment, Merriman. Although the first two initials aren't his, the guns could've been handed down in the family.”
“Purdeys? Moneyed folk?”
“No idea.”
“Right,” he said. “May take a day or two, with using just initials, but it will be done. Be in touch.”

Maybe I chose that time of night to go round to the Langans' cottage because I didn't want Jean to see my face, at least not the fine details of contrition. Even so, I needed a glass or two of Con’s Port to make the journey. Not that cover of darkness or booze made a ha'porth of difference in the end because Jean invited me in and we sat in the neon kitchen where she read every scrap of discomfort in my face. She made it worse by saying:
“Nathan, thank you. I honestly don't know what to say...”
“What are you talking about?”
“You finding Kate, of course. She rang about ten minutes ago, they're at Stevenage, on their way here ... though why anyone would stop off at Stevenage I can’t imagine.”
“Did she mention...?”
“Martin? Yes.” She shrugged. “We can deal with that one later, right now I'm just so glad that she's safe.”
“And, er... you know she doesn't work at Turner's anymore?”
“She kind of mentioned that this morning. It's her life.”
“I didn't really come here for any of this, Jean.”
“No, I know.”
“Do you?”
She smiled. “Course I do. Me and Freddie Taplin, that's where your great long beak is taking you.”
“Nor that, but since you mention it, Stella Taplin hooking up with Jim Ryder I can just about believe, but you and Freddie?”
She looked away, not searching for the truth so much as a polite way of expressing it.
“Stella and Jim. She liked him. He bullied her and she liked him for it. She indulged him to the point of, well, anything he wanted. Booze, coke, trips abroad...”
“That still isn't why I came round.”
She smiled at me, a touch flirtatiously. “Well, I'm all out of ideas, Nathan, so I'll stop guessing.”
“I came to apologise. Things I said about you and Jack. Accused you of. I'm sorry.”
She frowned, pretending to search her memory. “What things?”
-17-
Next morning I drove over to Penman Stables at six in the morning. Given that I'd spent the weekend wrecking any case they had against Gizzy and Tom I thought I should be the one to break the bad news to Charnley’s people.
As I walked up through the trees to the stable, the lights were on inside and I could see Charnley striding back and forth, reading the riot act, underlining various clauses in it with a big fist slamming down on passing tables.
The deer had gone. Butchered and divided up, according to rank, presumably. Best cut to the guvnor, offal to the kids. The pelt was still there though. It had been removed from the carcass almost perfectly by someone who knew what they were doing. It had been pinned up under the veranda to continue drying out.
I could hear Charnley, distinctly as opposed to just the noise of him, from twenty yards away. It was mainly hungover abuse with a hint of genuine grievance.
“...what am I that I'm landed with a bunch of pricks like you lot? We're a fucking fleet, you're all captains of your own boat. One lets us
down we all fucking sink. Am I making myself abso-fucking-lutely clear?”
There was a thump and a pause. Then some muttered agreement.
“Well so far, so good. I am intelligible to you. So, whoever messed up on digging out the sister, Kate Whitely, has cost us time, money and slammed us right back in the fucking drawer marked ground zero, start again...”
The kids’ solicitors, David and Belinda Barclay, had probably phoned him last night and told him about Kate and her status as an alibi. I knocked on the door, though there didn't seem much point, and entered. The place fell deadly quiet, partly with relief, partly in expectation of worse trouble to come. I waited about five seconds, a long time when eyes like that are on you, before saying:
“You heard about Kate, then?”
Charnley came towards me. John Faraday stepped into the space between us.
“We heard,” he said.
I looked past him to Charnley.
“And it all checks out? Her on the phone to Martin Falconer at eleven thirty-five?”
Charnley nodded, grudgingly. “Her at Maple Cottage, him at his farm. His wife says he went out in the yard to make a call, saying he couldn’t get a signal in the kitchen. Is Kate back home?”
“Her car was in Morton Lane, if that's what you mean.”
He turned to members of the squad. “Statements. Drew, Quilter, do Kate Whitely. Bailey, McKinnon, Martin Falconer. My desk here by lunchtime. If it pans out, the kids are free to go. Move.”
McKinnon was the only one I watched. He grabbed his jacket, swung it round over his shoulders before slipping his arms into it. As he passed by me he paused and stared at me. Bailey took him by one arm and steered him out of the stables. I turned to Charnley.
“Was I mentioned in the Barclay dispatches?” I asked him. “As the bloke who did your job for you?”
“There was a passing reference to you but not out of admiration. They need someone to blame if it's all bollocks. Sit down. John, get him a coffee. Me too.”
I took a seat, in the Elvis Presley position, back to the wall and facing the door. Charnley reached down into his cupboard for a bottle of whisky, poured a capful into his coffee. He must have read my look as criticism, not sympathy.
“Irish coffee,” he said. “Thins the blood.”
“Yeah, well, talking of Irish, I've got more news for you.”
He sniggered, leaned back in his chair and flung his feet up on the corner of the table. He sipped his coffee and smacked his lips. For fear that his blood wouldn't be thin enough he added another capful of whisky.
“What is your problem?” he said, after testing the result. “Last count, you'd found someone to keep you warm at nights, so what are you doing, running a one man inquiry?”
“You want to hear or not?”
He motioned me to speak if I wanted to.
“The two guys who did the shooting are Irish, one Belfast, the other Dublin. One's called Billy. They're navvies.”
Charnley pulled a sarcastic face. “Age, address, mother's maiden name?”
I stood up and turned. “Fuck you.”
Faraday the peacemaker was standing in my way, hands pleading.
“Guvnor, there’s a ton of shit poised to fall on our heads, any day now...”
“I can see that, and the worst part of it is a boss who's pissed at six in the morning, right?”
“That isn't fair.” He gestured to Charnley, trying to broker a conversation between the three of us. “You mind if I speak, boss?”
“Be quick about it.”
Faraday gestured for me to re-take my seat and said:
“When you were working cases like this, what did they give you? Men to do the job with, all the men you wanted. Now they give us computers and a squad at half strength. Less. We cut corners. Make mistakes. So no, we haven't found the sodding weapons, no we don't know who fired them and yes, we pulled in the wrong people.”
“I always hated that speech, John.”
He shrugged. “It's been a bad day. Tomorrow may be a better one. Now, let's hear about these two in the pub.”
I took a deep breath and turned to Charnley.
“Navvies. White boots, white trouser bottoms. Chalk would be my guess. These two were traipsing about in it all day.”
“A road,” said Charnley, moving his feet off the table.
“You see, even with blood as thin as yours, you're still able...”
Faraday shrieked at us. “For Christ's sake, can we drop the one-upmanship!”
The sudden outburst came as a shock to all three of us and, no doubt, to whoever else was in the room. Faraday looked away and said:
“I'm sorry, it's just that every time we...”
Charnley didn't want an apology or worse still a lecture. Right now, three weeks into a murder inquiry, his Sergeant knew him better than his wife did: good stuff, bad stuff and everything in between. He wanted all of it kept strictly between the two of them, certainly not shared with me.
“Any big roadworks round here?” he asked.
Faraday thought for a moment. “Well, yeah, but there are roadworks all over.”
“Yes, but there’s a bloody huge one at Wheatley,” I said. “That’s where the car you reckon they used was nicked from.”
Faraday, looked at his boss for signs of enthusiasm. “The new roundabout, just above the M40, and it’s a five minute walk from the road camp to the village.”
“So where does that get us?” asked Charnley.
“Allan Wyeth pranged a car up on The Ridge,” I explained. “The car the killers were driving, he clobbered its front off-side wing.”
Charnley swung round to a filing cabinet behind him. He pulled out a folder and flicked through the contents, eventually finding black and white photos of a burned out car. He spread them out, like a winning hand, on the table.
“There it is!” said Faraday, jabbing at one of the photos.
The car was a small Mercedes, burnt to brown, the windows blasted out. On the front off-side wing there was a dent, the size of a dustbin lid.
Charnley thought for a moment, then said, quietly:
“Worth a look.”
“By the way,” I said, swilling round the last of my coffee. “Who skinned the deer for you?”
Charnley smiled, the first time in a year by the feel of it. “Tommy Templeman. Butchered it too. Made a nice job.”

As I walked down the drive, back towards the Landrover, John Faraday drew up beside me in his car and said:
“I'm off to Wheatley now, guvnor. Fancy the ride?”
I nodded and got in beside him.
We flitted from one neutral subject to the next, ranging from the weather to his sister's children, whom he'd taken to Alton Towers one day last summer and lost. Not permanently, just for half an hour or so, enough to frighten him to death. Like all good kids, they turned up when they ran out of money.
All the small talk on his part was a preamble to what he really wanted to say and as he turned onto the Thame by-pass, he came out with it. He apologised for his boss and invited me to empathise.
“He's disappointed, that's all it is.”
“That he didn't manage to nail the wrong people, you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“And getting me to go with you to Wheatley? His idea?”
Faraday chuckled. “Jesus, old coppers again! His. Believe me, it's the nearest you'll get to a compliment from him.”
“I’ll tell you something else of mine he's taken on board, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Jack Langan's body, it's still down at the mortuary. No release for cremation.”
Faraday smiled. “That's all down to you, is it?”
“Charnley's worried that I’m right about Jack being murdered.”
He smiled and shook his head, not in disagreement but in a kind of comic despair.
“You still don't believe?” I said.
“I only know there
are no footprints, no fingerprints. Richardsons, the firm in Corby? They did phone, to re-arrange delivery of the setts. It's about as No Further Action as it gets.”

We jostled the early traffic heading for Oxford and reached the Wheatley site at around half-seven. The place had been scalped by Irish Apaches, in the name of the car and the lorry. A vast amphi-theatre had been dug out, the good soil carried away leaving a white, lifeless hole half a mile across that would soon take traffic from, or deliver it to, the motorway. Faraday pulled up beside an earth-mover the size of Beech Tree Cottage where three men, in hard hats and the combat gear of road making, stood beside one of its tyres, larger than my log cabin. They turned, all three, with whitened faces, made so by the barely perceptible mist of chalk dust hanging in the air. Their boots were white.
Faraday said to one of them: “Where will I find the boss?”
The bloke smiled. An Irish smile, a Dublin accent.
“There are so many of us, my friend. The big boss, you'll find him on holiday. Florida. Gone to be with his own, the alligators.”
Faraday chuckled. “We'll pass on him, then. Which boss are you?”
“I'm the Site Foreman but I reckon you'll be after the Project Manager.” He gestured towards the edge of the site. “Under the bridge there, just to your left.”
There was no bridge. Faraday pointed the fact out to him.
“Well spotted. When it's built, it'll carry the back road, Wheatley to Forest Hill.” He described an arc with thumb and forefinger, closing one eye to get a perspective. “Just beyond, there’s a camp, scooped out of the cliff. Your man's name is Birch, you'll find him in the first cabin you come to.”
Faraday thanked him and made a U-turn on the rough surface, sending up a plume of dust. The three hard hats went back to the tyre.
The camp was a mixture of pre-fab buildings and caravans, set on a two acre site of worn grass, frosted over with chalk dust. Faraday parked alongside other cars and was, by now, fussing about the long-term damage to his clothes, the chalk working into the weave of the new jacket. I tried to re-assure him that it would dry-clean out.
Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries) Page 20
