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

by Douglas Watkinson

  And then say no, I thought.

  “Will you know by then who killed poor Jim and Jack?”

  Yes, well, that was the big question. Would I ever know?

  “Police are no nearer,” I said, “so why should I be? And the reason we're running round like headless chickens is a classic, at least in police terms. No murder weapon.”

  “Are they still around, do you think?” she asked.

  “No one throws away Purdeys.”

  “If that's what they were. You said Jack was drunk when he told you about them.”

  I looked around the kitchen, down at the beautifully laid floor, up at the vaulted ceiling.

  “Was this house refurbished by a man who couldn't see the quality in things? If Jack said they were Purdeys then they were. Jam today. And Jim Ryder got blown to bits by one of them.”

  “These two Irishmen,” she said. “They were hired by someone, you think?”

  “Yes, this third person the Wyeths told me about, after much cajoling. Man or woman? Well, Julie said it was a man who spoke to her in the hospital, hand on her throat. Funny voice. 'Tell me where the money is. Where've you put it?' Could you deepen your voice enough to ask a simple question like that?”

  “Yes, but then I ...” She faltered for a moment, took a gulp of her wine. “I was going to say my voice is pretty deep anyway but I don't really want to join your list of suspects.”

  “Moving swiftly on, then, what do I know about this third person? Not much. They've kept well out of it. They were after the money, I know that because they said so to Julie. The Wyeths knew them, that's why he or she didn't speak to them. They ride a motorbike. Thousands do. They outran me through the corridors of The Radcliffe...”

  She smiled. “And you hate them for that more than anything? What I can't understand is this ... why hire two people in the first place.”

  I shrugged, leaned back in the chair. Dogge took it as a sign that we were on the move. I called her over, stroked her head.

  “Some of the nastiest men I ever met couldn't do their own dirty work. I believe this person was forced to, when it came to Jack Langan - the Irishmen had gone, back to Ireland probably. I believe he or she wanted to kill me as well, that's why they followed me to Chesham, middle of the night. When they caught up, as close to me as you are now, they couldn't go through with it.”

  “Someone you know, by the sound of it. Will they ever find these Irish chaps?”

  “Fifty-fifty chance. They made off with thirty grand, the weekly take at The Plough. It's enough to get lost with, for a month or two, but not forever.”

  “But say they do have the guns, at twenty thousand pounds apiece?”

  “They don't. Jack Langan saw them on Kate's loft, after Jim was murdered.”

  “I say, this is a lot more fun than rheumatism.” I looked at her. “It was the rheumatism clinic today. Onset of winter, most of the panel over eighty. Sorry, you were saying?”

  “Jack phoning me, middle of the night. He'd seen the guns in a case marked J.A.M. Four hours later he was dead, killed because of what he'd seen.”

  “And whoever did it took the guns from the loft?”

  “Yeah, so now I ask who had access to that loft? Everyone living in the Tree Cottages for a start. Will, Prissy. Stef, Bella not to mention Kate Whitely herself. But it doesn't stop there. What about Jean Langan? She had a key, which means Tommy and Gizzy could've got in there as well. And what about Martin Falconer? An affair with Kate, he'll have been in and out of Maple Cottage like a fiddler's elbow, if you’ll pardon the connotations.”

  She shook her head. “All for two million pounds.”

  “Yes, well, you say that and it rings true. Freddie Taplin says it and I cringe. He's always on about money, how much he doesn't care if the odd fortune goes missing. Suppose that's a lie. Suppose he wasn't keen to pay Jim off?”

  “Or worse, suppose Jim had turned him down, said that what he really wanted was for Stella to stand trial for the crime he, Jim, didn't commit?”

  “I like that, mainly because I don't like Freddie. But now ask yourself how a loft in Maple Cottage ties in with a frozen fish millionaire in whose house you could lose the Eighth Army, never mind a couple of shotguns. The closest you get is Freddie fancying the woman whose niece is Kate Whitely on whose loft, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “So you've no favourites on your list?”

  “No one who stays put.”

  She rose from the table and went over to the microwave which had pinged somewhere along the line.

  “You know what I've never understood?” she said. She turned and leaned back against the fridge. “Why did somebody want them killed in the first place. Jim and Julie?”

  “To make it look like a robbery that got out of hand? To perfectly hide this third person? That’s the best I can come up with.”

  “Yes, but if you're stealing money from people, money you think they've squirreled away, surely you need them alive to tell you where it is?”

  She waited for me to answer the point. I couldn't. She opened the microwave.

  “Two lamb chops,” she said. “I was presuming you'd be able to eat one of them.”

  “Well, I didn't mean to put you to any...”

  “You won't be. You'll be peeling the potatoes.”

  “Let me guess where they're kept. Coal scuttle?”

  “Actually, they're still in the ground.”

  “Lincolnshire? I'll be as quick as I can.”

  “Back garden,” she said. “There's a fork at the back door, and a trug. Ground's quite dry. And bring a head of broccoli.”

  “You're a gardener,” I said, with surprise verging on shock.

  “You have to push the back door at the bottom.”

  You did too.

  At the vegetable patch, in one corner of the rounded garden, I glanced back at the house to see Laura watching me from the kitchen window. I must lift these potatoes with style, I thought, as if I were born to the task. I made a mess of it, not just because I'd never lifted a potato in my life but because I was mulling over the question she'd just put to me. It was a good one. It opened things out a bit. Why had someone wanted Jim and Julie dead, if it was just the money they were after?

  

  Laura dropped me and Dogge off at Beech Tree Cottage on her way to the practise meeting.

  Hideki wasn't in but he'd left a note by the kettle. It said, in capital letters, our code for urgent: “Steve phone. You phone him. H.”

  The voice at the other end was typical copper, at least in one sense. Nosey. Not so typical in that Steve came straight to the point.

  “Who's that who answered the phone, then guvnor?”

  “House guest.”

  “Yeah, but who?”

  “Japanese lad. Name of Hideki Takahashi.”

  There was a pause before he said:

  “Daughter, Japan, knows him, sends him to dad for a cushy time. Got it.”

  “Spot on. He's going home on Wednesday.”

  “House back to yourself, then. Listen, guvnor, this shotgun licence check, took a bit of time but there is a Juliet Alpha Mike. He is ... got a pencil and paper? ... Jerome Arthur Mayhew, date of birth 7.8.'37 so he's, what, late sixties. Address: Claybury Court, Bibury, Gloucestershire.”

  “Good work, Steve. Thanks.”

  “The old boy who ran the check for me, he's a miserable old sod, I've known him for years...”

  “Don't tell me we're still doing this stuff by hand.”

  “In theory, no, but TCD, guvnor.”

  “What's TCD?”

  “The Computer's Down, has been for weeks. This old git went back to the archives for me and told me he'd run a similar check, couple of weeks ago, for a D.C. Quilter, working on the Ryder case. Wasn't for Juliet Alpha Mike but for Juliet Alpha November.”

  “Jesus!” I said. “No wonder they didn't find anything.”

  We chatted for another half hour, mainly about how efficient we used to be and how slopp
y the kids are now. Which is all rubbish but it made us feel better. Then Steve's wife called him away to the supper table. He pretended not to care but I've known him too long to be fooled. She spoke, he jumped. We promised each other we'd meet for a drink some day soon. It was a good idea that each of us knew nothing would ever come of but it finished the conversation.

  -20-

  Driving through Burford I realised why I hadn't been down to that part of the world for ages, fifteen years or more. When Maggie and I were going through our waxed anorak phase, The Cotswolds was this isolated, throwback place, where hay was made into ricks and sheep sheared by hand. The churches the wool paid for rose like cathedrals between green, walkable hills. The horizon was always close and perfect, untroubled by masts and pylons. Streams ran clear, with trout for the catching. There was friendship for the asking. Or that's how it seemed, anyway.

  And then the people came. They'd seen the place lauded in Germany, Australia, America, on travel programmes which promised a dip into the rural past of a great nation. They came in coaches to gawp at Museum England. They flattened the hills with their feet, darkened them with fumes from their cars and turned The Cotswolds into one, giant tea room.

  Claybury Court had succumbed along with many other houses in prime positions. It was a stone-built place, early Victorian, once mellow in colour and texture, now grimy, set in its own dip just outside Bibury. A notice at the gate declared that afternoon tea could be taken here, that coaches were welcome. A small meadow to the side of the house had been buried under gravel for them to park in. The day I called on the Mayhews it was empty.

  Catherine Mayhew was in her sixties with white strands of hair on a jet black, unruly mass, pinned down with a tortoiseshell clip. Some of the hair had broken away and fluttered around the once beautiful face, now gouged and thickened and approaching a caricature of its former self. The eyes were dark and sunken, the whites of them bloodshot with tiredness. The hand she offered was cold and rough. It had worked hard for most of its life...

  “Mr. Hawk,” she said, in a polished voice. “So nice to meet you. How are you? How was the journey?”

  “Both good,” I assured her. “How are you?”

  “Much relieved that the season is nearly over. Do come in.”

  She guided me through the panelled hall, hung with portraits of severe looking men, her husband's forefathers.

  “Tea room there,” she said, pointing to a door. “We do bed and breakfast as well, breakfast room there. Kitchen's through there ... Good Lord I sound as if I'm trying to sell you the place. If only.” She stopped at a recessed door marked 'Private' and turned to me with a smile. “This is forbidden territory.”

  We entered her private domain, her retreat from the England she'd mocked up for her visitors. A low ceiling was centrally beamed but not herringboned like Beech Tree Cottage. A French window was the main feature. Small leaded panes, diamond in shape, distorted the afternoon light and made it colour the multitude of books, in a variety of languages, lining the walls. Too much was crowded into the room, Mrs. Mayhew admitted, but where else was she to keep the family favourites?

  She ushered me to an armchair and turned to a middle-aged woman who had entered behind us and said:

  “I'm off now then, Mrs. Mayhew.”

  “Daisy, would you mind doing me one last favour before you go? A pot of tea for Mr. Hawk and myself. Quick as you can.”

  Daisy was not amused. Nor had she the guts to refuse her employer. It had obviously become their style. Catherine Mayhew gave orders dressed up as requests, Daisy conceded to them as if doing her employer a favour. Neither had much option but to bear the other's manner. For Daisy there was no other work in the village; for Catherine there was no one else in the village willing to work for her. And, in spite of everything, she did make a decent cup of tea.

  “You said on the phone that you had a rather delicate matter to discuss with my husband. I wonder what that might be? By which I mean, of course, I wonder what he's been up to now.”

  It wasn't said as a joke. She meant it and it seemed an odd thing to say of your life-partner.

  “I'm not sure he's been up to anything, Mrs. Mayhew. Is he around?”

  “Yes, yes, he'll be somewhere,” she said, as if that somewhere might possibly be China or the High Andes so why didn't I come back in another decade. Or deal with him through her.

  I rose and took my tea over to the window. The garden was mainly lawn interspersed with shrubs and bushes. It had a ... dark feel to it, no doubt made so by the tall pine trees on the Western side where the sun was beginning to dip behind the top branches.

  “I don't mean to sound thoroughly off-putting,” said Mrs. Mayhew, “but is it absolutely necessary that you speak to him?”

  “The world won't stop turning if I don't but...”

  “Ah, well, then” she said, brightening, “ask me what you were going to ask him.”

  “It was about the Purdeys, Mrs. Mayhew.”

  She thought for a moment or two. “I'm not sure we know anyone of that name.”

  “Shotguns. Your husband owned a pair, I believe. I wanted to talk to him about them.”

  She grimaced, ever so slightly. “Yes, that might be slightly difficult because he ... well, he doesn't own any guns to my knowledge.”

  “Did he ever own a pair of shotguns, Mrs. Mayhew? In a mahogany box with a brass plate on them, inscribed J.A.M.?”

  “Possibly, I mean they are his initials. But we've always had secrets from each other and...”

  Her voice had dwindled on seeing my interest in one particular corner of the garden. Set out there, in regimental order, was a collection of ... huts the size of old police boxes, beige in colour but of a similar size. Plastic, rounded, with a full door on each of them.

  “Yes, I know you can't quite believe your eyes,” she said. “There are fifty of them. I thought, to begin with, you might've been the person who supplied them and were wanting payment. I simply want shot of them. Jerome ordered them four weeks ago, they were delivered last Tuesday.”

  “And they are?”

  “Portable lavatories. For the world's press.”

  I turned to her. She was smiling, rather enjoying my bewilderment.

  “You'll have to explain a little,” I said, dutifully.

  “My husband doesn't want the world's press peeing up against the rhododendrons. Indeed, who would. So he ordered the portaloos pre-emptively.”

  She wasn't kidding about this, either.

  “Do the press come here often?” I ventured.

  “They're already here, Mr. Hawk, it's just that you and I can't see them. As for the logistics of it all, we can provide tea for them, we can even do B and B for some but, I quote: If they all want to piddle at the same time we're sunk.”

  “Is that him?” I asked, quietly.

  I was referring to a tall, angular man out in the garden, emerging from the pine trees. His hair was a blistering white and shoulder length, falling around the tweed jacket with its leather patched elbows. The cavalry twill trousers were tucked into heavy socks. The boots had an army look to them. He was talking in an animated fashion, large gestures and plenty of smiles as he made his points.

  “He seems to be talking to someone,” I said, stating the obvious. “But there isn't anyone there.”

  “That is correct,” she said. “But try telling him that.”

  I nodded as if a great fog were lifting. “Who would he be talking to if someone were there?”

  “The foremost television broadcaster of virtually any country you care to name. They're interviewing him, possibly in their own language. He's fluent in eleven and can think in four of them.” She held my gaze for a moment, then she too stated the obvious: “He's mad, Mr. Hawk. Come and meet him. See for yourself.”

  My immediate thought was that Catherine Mayhew and I could sort out the Purdey thing on our own, no need to trouble her barmy husband, but she was already unfastening the French window, top and bott
om.

  Today was a good day for Jerome Mayhew, his wife assured me, in that he wasn't morose or paranoid. Quite the opposite. He was ... well, breezy, would've been the word, I suppose.

  “My dear fellow,” he said, stretching a hand out to me. “Lovely to see you again.”

  “I don't think we've met before.”

  He raised a playful finger. “So you say, but any friend of my wife is a friend of mine, no matter what the two of you have been up to.”

  “Take no notice,” said Catherine, quietly. “It's all a matter of one word following another, regardless of meaning. If you've questions to ask him bear that in mind.”

  She turned to her husband.

  “Jerry, say hallo to Mr. Hawk.”

  He spread his hands, the fingers like talons, and grabbed an imaginary kill.

  “Stop that at once!” she commanded.

  “So sorry. Does he speak English?”

  “Of course he does.”

  “Then good afternoon, Mr. Hawk. Are you a haggard hawk or blood-feathered?”

  “Jerome, I shan’t tell you again,” his wife warned.

  “I’m merely asking how old he is without drawing attention to the fact. But there, you’ve gone and spoilt it.”

  “Blood feathered,” I assured him.

  “Right, then, let's get started on the interview. I don't have a great deal of time, so professionalism is the watchword for you and your crew.”

  He gestured to an empty patch of lawn where, presumably, my crew was standing.

  “How would you like me to conduct the interview?” I heard myself say.

  “With a baton, Mr. Hawk. I do hope you're not one of these modernists who do it with curled fingers and bouncing shoulders. That is not the way to conduct the Bruch violin concerto, or any other piece of music.”

  “Jerome, you're doing it on purpose.”

  “Yes, dear. Why don't you toddle off and do womanly things, like making a sandwich or two. Egg preferably. I'll show Mr. Hawk round the garden.”

  Catherine looked at me and I nodded minimally.

  “No silliness,” she said to her husband. “I mean it.”

  “No silliness,” he echoed, pointing to the pine trees. “This way, I think.”