He knocked on the Project Manager's cabin and a voice from within, English and rough, said:
“Come back eight o'clock.”
Faraday opened the door and we entered.
The place was a tip. Dead centre of the room was a large desk that had seen better days, with a telephone directory giving extra height to a shortened leg. The desk was stacked high with maps, memos and plans, some in wire trays, others surfing the chaos freely. A couple of filing cabinets were brand new but the stuff they were meant to hold was piled high on top of them with no chance of finding a logical home. There was a hand-basin in one corner. It hadn't been cleaned since the day it was installed. The same was true of a towel, hanging from the pipe work beneath it. I could see Faraday cringing inside at the anarchy of it all.
Birch was a large, bald man with a stationary face. It was the first thing you noticed. Not a muscle moved in it, other than those he blinked or spoke with. He was boiling an egg on an electric ring, perched on an upside down swing bin.
“Did you hear what I said?” he growled.
“We did,” said Faraday. “But it's eight o'clock somewhere in the world. You're Birch, right?”
“What’s it to you?”
A timer rang. Birch turned off the electric ring, scooped out his egg into an egg cup and poured the boiling water onto coffee granules and milk in a mug on the desk. John Faraday was going visibly green around the gills and trying to tough it out. He said to me:
“The guy won't take his salmonella straight, guvnor. He boils it up and drinks it.”
“Safety,” said Birch.
“Oh, yeah, I can see you're a stickler for that.”
He gestured at the electric ring, perched on its plastic tower, right next to the wash-basin.
“You from Health and Safety?” asked Birch, knowing full well what we were. Or at least what John Faraday was.
“We're police,” he said.
“Same sort of manners,” said Birch. “Burst in like you own the fucking place.”
Faraday turned to me. “First impressions, guvnor? I mean above and beyond it being a pig-sty. Are we or aren't we going to get Mr. Birch's co-operation?”
“I think we will.”
If Birch felt threatened it didn't show. He took a bread roll from the filing cabinet, pulled it in half and knifed some butter from a saucer onto it.
“We're looking for two Irishmen,” I said. “Mates we reckon, hard-nuts almost certainly, one from the north, one from the south. The Ulsterman's called Billy.”
Birch grunted. “If I lean out this door and shout Billy, half the workforce’ll turn their heads. So the answer so far is yes, they might've worked here but why should I tell you anything more?”
Faraday turned to me again. “He's got balls, I'll say that much for him.”
“Listen,” said Birch, tapping his egg with a dirty spoon and leaving it to stand while he dealt with us. “I don't mean to be awkward but it's a matter of security, me keeping the old trap shut. If the boys out there think I'm a man who'll share secrets, word gets around. Don't go work for Birch, he natters.”
“You employ villains, then?” said Faraday.
Birch wound up his coffee. “Keeps 'em off the street. I thought that's what everyone wanted.”
I made a contribution: “Listen, this really needn't be difficult. The two we're thinking of will have left here on or about the seventeenth, without giving notice.”
Birch shrugged. “Can't help you.”
“No records?” I said.
“Records or not...”
Faraday said as calmly as you please: “Guvnor, would you mind looking away while I beat the shit out of Mr. Birch here? I don't mind you listening but I'd rather there were no eye-witnesses.”
He eye-balled Birch for a count of three, then drew back a fist. Without the slightest change of expression, Birch said:
“Okay, okay.”
Faraday stayed his fist, back against his shoulder while Birch reached into the other filing cabinet, the one he wasn't using as a larder. He came up with a shoe box marked Personnel.
“Pick your way through it,” he said. “I don't know who's who, or if they give me the right name, but they're all there.”
“I'll say it one more time,” said Faraday. “Two Paddies, on or about the seventeenth. You dig 'em out. We don't want to get our hands dirty.”
Five minutes later we left with two names but no addresses. They'd lived in a caravan on the camp-site. Patrick Steven Grogan, twenty-six years old, curly haired, good worker with a bad temper; and Michael Kenneth MacAteer, known as Billy, twenty-five. They were unique, said Birch, in that they'd both quit with money owing to them.
“We think they found other employment,” I told him. “Better paid. In fact we think they've made a bit of a killing.”

I went over to Hawthorn Cottage just as it was getting dark. Stef and Bella had finished supper, pizza and salad, and Stef had settled with a book on Neapolitan history. Pavarotti was busting a gut on the CD player.
Stef offered me a glass of the Chianti they'd been drinking and I accepted.
I said: “Italian night at the Merrimans, eh?”
Bella giggled. If you could've translated it into English or Italian the giggle would've read please strangle me.
“Since we last saw you,” she said, “we've been doing a bit of thinking.”
There were a dozen one liners I could've used, all of them downright vicious, none of them relevant to why I'd dropped in on them.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Made a bit of a decision.”
I picked up the book Stef had been reading. “Treasure of Naples,” I said, “by Giuseppe Marotta.”
“Short stories,” said Stef. “Ask any Italian to name a book set in Naples, this'll be it.”
“Never 'eard of it,” said Bella.
Stef smiled. “Ask most Italians.”
“Planning a holiday?” I said. “Visit to the relatives?”
“More than that,” he said. “We're upping sticks, going there to live. What do you reckon?”
“In your shoes, I'd have gone years ago. I mean, Christ, they have windows there too, don't they?”
“You're forgetting, Nathan, I've got a teaching certificate, as well as a history degree. I could get a job there tomorrow.”
“More than could,” said Bella, with a determined face. “Will.”
I sipped the wine. It was a decent one, to compliment the big plans, I suppose.
“Sounds to me like you’re in danger of joining the establishment, Stef.”
He winced. “Knocking at their door, maybe. Yet to step over the threshold.”
“Gently does it, eh! “
Bella sat opposite us in one of the grotty armchairs, hooked one leg over the other and let them lean at an angle. She knew they were good legs. It was a pity they couldn't speak, they would have sounded better than the voice in her throat.
As if to prove my point she said: “How much d'you think this place'll fetch, Nathan?”
“Two hundred, two twenty-five.”
“Even though we've done nothing to it?” She glanced at Stef. “Blimey! You were right.”
“When were you thinking of going?”
Stef shrugged. “Spring next year.”
I pulled an anxious face, looked from one to the other.
“Not a good idea?” said Bella.
“I'd say seven or eight years from now, to be on the safe side.”
Bella laughed. Stef cocked an eyebrow, knowing that something was up.
“Safe side?” he asked.
“Well, a life sentence is fourteen years, you could be out in seven...”
He was on his feet by now. “What are you talking about?”
“Murder. What the fuck d'you think I'm talking about?”
Bella was still way behind. “Nathan, you don't half wind people up.”
“I'm serious.”
Stef knew I was.
He leaned back against the books on the far wall, looked up at the ceiling.
“You've got it all wrong,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“The times I've heard that...”
“I know you rate yourself as a big enforcer these days, Nathan, nose into everyone's stuff, but you're way off beam.”
Bella didn't like his sudden change of tone, especially directed at me. “Stefan!”
“Shutup!” he said. And she did. I invited him to continue.
“What happened, Nathan? Did you run out of footpaths to lay, arches to build, trees to plant?” I stood up and he tried to crawl into the shelves with his books. “Oh, yeah, we all know what a hard bastard you are. If that's why you're here, to beat the crap out...”
He stopped and looked at me, no doubt realising that his attitude was that of a guilty man. Maybe he was afraid that the next thing he said would be a confession.
“You hid shotguns on the loft,” I said. “Above Kate Whitely's bedroom.”
He took a sip of Dutch courage without taking his eyes off me.
“Did I?”
“Mahogany box, J.A.M. on it. Yours? Handed down through the family?”
He sniggered and turned away, reached down to a side table and took a cigarette from a packet on one of the shelves.
“We weren't that kind of family,” he said. “We were housing estate, not country estate. The only thing my old man left me was my mother.”
With trembling hands he lit the cigarette, smoked it with his nerves all a-jangle.
“I'm not leaving till I know who owns those guns.”
“Then you won't be leaving,” he said.
“Are you saying he might've killed Jim Ryder?” said Bella, catching up.
“Where's your motorbike, Stefan?”
“Sold it, months ago.”
“That's true,” said Bella.
He snapped at her. “You don't need to back up every word I say!”
“Especially if it's a lie,” I said. “Gizzy reckons you still have the bike, you and Tommy mess about...”
“Okay, so make that a few weeks. I got rid of it a few weeks, ago. Better?”
“The absolute fucking truth would be 'better'.”
“You're not exactly coming clean yourself, Nathan. Why would I want Jim Ryder killed?”
“The two million pounds he spirited away from Taplin Seafoods? Far easier money than you make dealing skunk out of your bedroom.”
He looked at me for a moment.
“Did Will Waterman tell you that?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Bella and she went over to him. She buried her head in his shoulder, the long black hair fell down his chest.
“It's time we got out of this place,” she said, quietly. “You were right. I don't want you back in prison. I couldn't bear it.”
He stroked the hair with his free hand, trying to calm her.
“You've been there before, then?” I asked. “You're as good as back there again. Where are the guns now?”
He eased Bella aside and looked at me, square on. He was scared of something, no doubt about it, but he acted like he had it all under control.
“I'm not saying any more. Do your worst, bring on who you like. But I'll give you this, as a friend, because in the time I've known you I've come to like you, copper or not.”
“Is it a threat, warning, premonition?”
“It's advice. Go carefully.”
He meant it. He was tied into these murders somehow, even if he hadn't done the dirty work or scooped any of the profits. For a second or two I recalled the kid I liked, the free spirit who had bucked the system, albeit to clean windows and deal in dope.
“If you're in trouble,” I said, “I can help.”
He laughed at that. “Oh, can you! With your help, Nathan, Jack Langan was murdered. I'll pass on your kind offer.”

Back at Beech Tree Cottage there was a message to ring John Faraday, on his mobile.
“You want the good news first or the great news?” he said.
“Start with the good.”
“Tommy and Gizzy have been released. Better still, however, at least from our point of view these two Irish boys, Patrick Grogan and Michael MacAteer, are both known to police. GBH, armed robbery. The Garda are knocking on doors, even as we speak.”
I glanced at my watch. “You want a bet?”
“Well, okay, they will be tomorrow morning.”
I wondered if I should tell him about Stef and the guns, his and Bella's sudden decision to leave the country, but I wasn't easy about it. I wasn't quite sure where Stef and Bella fitted in. That, too, could wait till tomorrow morning.
-18-
I wasn't really sure where the Taplins fitted in either. Money has always bought a good defence, I know that much, and not just in the shape of lawyers like David or Belinda Barclay, but in walls like Ashenham Place, foreign villas to jet off to, yachts to get lost at sea in. The real Freddie Taplin had disappeared behind his purchases long ago. From the hair on his head and the teeth in his jaw, to Jean Langan's affections, Koi carp and real estate in the Far East he was now the product of what he could afford. And that was substantial. The young man, who'd set out to make a name for himself in fish all those years ago, was virtually no more.
So why, when I phoned him at six o'clock the next morning and woke him, did I get the sense of an ordinary bloke, starting to worry? I had things to tell him, I said, things to ask him. A man with a clear conscience would've told me to piss off and call back later. Freddie said I should drive down to Ashenham right away. My guess was that he wanted to know if I'd tunnelled into the Taplin stronghold and made off with any secrets.
It was chucking it down as I approached Ashenham Place and the Landrover had sprung a leak in the roof. To be honest it had sprung it six months ago when a branch from the big beech tree by the gate fell on it and cracked the roof trimming. I'd filled in the gap with an assortment of stuff, from putty to chewing gum, but the summer heat had cracked it and here I was, the first real downpour of autumn, sitting in the cab, dodging the drips which fate had aimed right at the top of my head.
I parked under a lean-to jutting out from the side wall of Ashenham and as I got out Freddie Taplin called me from a side door.
“Nathan, good to see you,” he said.
The Great Danes came loping towards me, barking their empty threats. I told them not to waste their breath, they didn't scare me.
“Have you had breakfast?” said Freddie.
“No, have they?” I said. “What's on offer?”
He chuckled. “You reckon this is Gosford Park? Five choices under the silver tureens? It's scrambled eggs, I'm afraid, from my own fair hands. Housekeeper's away.”
“Thanks, I'll just have coffee.”
He showed me into the huge kitchen ahead of him. I guess these magazines which encourage innocent women to overspend on their homes would have labelled it state of the art, not that there's any real art to feeding people and washing up after them. The most I could say for the Taplins' kitchen was that it was big and expensive, from the handmade terracotta floor tiles to the hidden lighting in the ceiling, via an Aga the length of Sweden. The very latest in ludicrous things hung from butchers' hooks in the ceiling. Oversized ladles, colanders, scoops, cast-iron pans and lids were all beautifully lit by spotlights as if at any moment they would burst into song and give the performance of their lives.
The fittings, Freddie soon pointed out, were made from acacia wood. A tree on the slope up to The Ridge had blown over one night, he'd had the wood seasoned and a year later turned into units. I told him he should've gone down to B & Q, they'd have sorted him out in less than a week.
At one end of an acacia table you could've played football on and still had room for the crowd, sat Stella Taplin. A plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs and the toast it was balanced on had been pushed to one side and she was reading a tabloid newspaper. She looked up at me and took
off her glasses.
“You must be Mr. Hawk?” she said. “Why have you swooped on us?”
I tried to smile as if I'd never heard that before.
Freddie poured me coffee and Stella patted the table, an invitation to pull out one of the twenty chairs and sit beside her.
“Mr. Hawk found Tommy and Giselle's alibi, darling. Have you heard anything more, Nathan?”
“They were released last night. Eight o'clock. Older and wiser people, I imagine.”
“Shows what good men can do.” He lowered his voice and flashed his money at me. “Do I owe you anything?”
“No.”
“No offence.”
“None taken.”
My first lie of the day.
Stella said: “Does money frighten you, Mr. Hawk?”
The Map crackled away in my pocket as I turned to her.
“No. The lengths people go to, to make it and then keep it, that frightens me.”
I had her in profile again, just as I'd had her at the traffic lights the day of Jim's funeral. The nose was even sharper close to. It gave her the air of a bird about to hollow out a home wherever she perched which is exactly what she'd done, of course, when she landed on Freddie. Today's plumage was more colourful than last week's funeral weeds, though. She wore a brightly coloured T-shirt, addled with some half-baked thoughts of Kahlil Gibran. The jeans were ten times the price of most women's, though still made of denim.
“You may not believe this,” said Freddie, “but money's not important to me either.”
That was surely his first lie of the day.
Stella folded her paper neatly, then placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on linked hands. A diamond the size of a barley sugar, set in white gold, dug into her jaw. From behind the comfort of it she asked:
“So who committed these terrible crimes, Mr. Hawk? Do you know?”
“Two Irishmen, I think, on behalf of someone who paid them, or at least promised them, a great deal of money.” I looked at the barley sugar. “There aren't many rich people in the slipstream of all this...”
Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries) Page 21
