A moment to worry, my default position as Laura would’ve said. Surely, I was on a hiding to nothing if this was all the effort required to open Blake’s can of worms? If there’d been anything dodgy to find, wouldn’t he have up-graded the locks, fitted an extra alarm, plastered the windshield with security company blurb? And while I stood there, object achieved, just exactly what had I expected to find? Fags, duty unpaid? Booze stolen? Drugs, perhaps? I couldn’t have it both ways. Just because I’d broken in easily didn’t mean that Blake was an angel. I stepped up into the van.
Neat. That was the word that best described the person who owned this vehicle. He was neat and complete, his cargo of bags revealed as a thousand squashed mouths in the light of my pinpoint torch, with similar piled on like, bound with straps into manageable bundles. And there were the nearly names, fake brands with a slipped or distorted letter surely not to fool the punters but to make them feel almost as good as buyers of the real thing for a fraction of the price. There was Guchi, Burberis, Givanchy, Lewis Vitton.
They were stacked from front to back, either side of a narrow aisle which Blake himself could not possibly have negotiated, belly that he had. It needed a wispy Marianne, in spite of what his alibis had told me.
I climbed over into the passenger seat and flipped back the lid of the central glove box, unlocked for all the world to dip into. Again, neatness. Some loose change, Euro and English, and a clipped bunch of receipts for diesel, coffee and sandwiches, toll charges, bistro bills, even the receipt from a guesthouse in Abbeville, doubtless where he holed up for the night. Some were from shops in the town where maybe Blake bought a present for a wife or child or an object that caught his own fancy. SDR was a favourite haunt, visited half a dozen times this year. Paid cash, as he did everywhere. They sold ‘fournitures médicales’ the logo boasted, medical supplies which could mean anything from a cold cure to a fully fitted hospital. I promised myself a more leisurely trawl through their catalogue at a later date.
I went back to the open side door and climbed out. The second lighted room up above had gone dark while I’d been at work. Was that Blake turning in, all smiles, having watched me rifle through his van and find zilch? Or had he snored his way through the whole venture? Either way, I felt insulted. I hunkered down into my anorak and cap and left the car park, resisting the yobbish urge to kick the side of the Transit in my grief.
His neatness had defeated me. This man was either meticulous and left no trace of what he was up to, or - and this was the difficult pill to swallow - he wasn’t up to anything.
***
It stung. I’d tried to alchemise a major crime out of a few suspicions and a stolen watch and hadn’t succeeded. Yet.
But at least it gave me the chance to concentrate on other things, mainly those concerning Laura. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, both doctors, and I couldn’t resist the feeling that in befriending me, never mind sleeping with me in that creaky old bed, she had come down in the world. That’s the snob in me, not her, I hasten to add, but I often wondered what her parents or her late brother would’ve made of our relationship. As for my own parents, my mother would’ve worshipped her for being a doctor, but I often heard my father’s voice urging caution.
In practical terms there was just one thing about Laura that I was having difficulty with, something so small it must surely have been a cypher for a more deep seated problem. It involved the cutlery drawer. Three slots, knives, forks and spoons in that order. Laura preferred spoons, knives and forks and I guess many a divorce has been predicated on such trivial details. I just hoped we could weather it. Besides, we weren’t married...
My kids were still remote, increasingly so - Japan, Nepal, Ireland and ... Hawaii. I pause at Hawaii because still no one had heard from Con and I thought it high time one of us had. His disappearance beneath the family radar gave me a perfect opportunity to open an email dialogue with The Others, the real purpose of which was to ask a rhetorical question that affected their lives almost as much as mine. Strange, then, that having grabbed their attention I managed not to say what I wanted to and created a minor panic instead.
“Not heard from Con, I suppose?” I emailed Fee. “Only he usually copies me into anything he sends you and his Facebook page hasn’t been touched for months. Shouldn’t we be worried?”
It was Ellie, the one who had truly adored him warts and all, who replied first,
“Dad, you’re right. It’s actually been five months. Christ, don’t say he’s back on the devil’s dandruff! Any suggestions?”
I hadn’t meant to raise dragons, certainly not ones to chase, and before the metaphors get out of control I should stress that his drug of choice had been cocaine, not heroin. Take your pick of which is worse. Jaikie joined in.
“Ellie’s right. It’s been five months. Point is, he’s had a thing for Keira ever since he saw Bend it like Beckham. Had a poster up on his wall. I’ve emailed three times saying why didn’t he come to Ireland, meet the real thing? Not a whisper.” His ego couldn’t resist a personal update. “The filming’s going brilliantly, by the way. The director reckons it’s the best work I’ve done. I agree with him. Anyway, what’s to do about Con?”
They were putting it back on me, a revealing change of approach. They’d spent most of their lives telling me what to do, four different suggestions every time I posed a problem.
“Nothing,” Ellie wrote. “There’s nothing you can do.” She sounded like her mother, even on paper. “He’ll turn up. He always does.”
I chipped in with, “I agree with Ellie” and Fee hit the cyberspace roof. The words shimmered off the computer screen.
“Nothing? Since when has nothing been an option in this family? We go to Hawaii, dig him out, and if this Marcie’s the reason he’s gone awol I’ll deal with her!”
No one responded to that for fear of repercussions. Her reaction to the silence was swift and predictable.
“I see. As usual it’s down to me. I’ll see if Yukito can spare me for a few days and I’ll pop over to Honolulu.”
“Fee, with all due respect, the population of Hawaii is one point five million,” Ellie told us, nervously. “And we’ve no guarantee that he hasn’t moved on.”
“Got a better idea, baby sister?” came Fee’s reply. “Dad, are you okay about all this? There’s nothing else going on is there?”
And there it was, a perfect chance to bring the conversation round to me, my plans, my uncertainties, my need for their support - and I chickened out.
“I’m fine. And I think your idea’s a good one. If Yukito’s agreeable, go!”
- 7 -
It’s no great revelation that two events can gel in the mind, one prompting recall of the other. Time needn't be a factor, the incidents can be separated by seconds or years, but for some reason they stand arms linked in your memory. What happened that evening, that night, was life-changing, life affirming, life ending and I can hear Jaikie relishing the melodrama from his Winnebago in Waterford, planting himself at the heart of the narrative, insisting that I gave it a happy, upbeat ending. I wasn’t able to do that.
It began nervously enough, at least on my part. Whenever we were too knackered to prepare an evening meal, Laura and I opted to eat at our local, The Crown in Winchendon and I didn’t tell her we were breaking the habit that evening until I’d locked the front door behind me. The news was critically received.
“I just just think we’re getting a wee bit stale, predictable ... boring,” I said.
“Where are we going that will change all that?”
“The Boot, Bledlow Ridge.”
She sighed, quickly. “If you’d told me earlier I would’ve worn a dress, jewellery.”
“Have I made concessions?” I said, referred to my leather jacket and T-shirt. “Besides, you look good in jeans. You’re one of the few women I know whose backside fits into the pair they’re wearing.”
“How sweet that you’ve noticed.”
Conversati
on en route began with me justifying The Boot. It had been recommended by Martin Falconer, farmer, friend and father to the girl I fully expected to become my daughter-in-law, via Jaikie. It was owned by the village who’d rescued it from bankruptcy, installed a manager, hired a couple of chefs and generally turned the place around.
“It looks a wee bit kitsch,” Laura remarked as we drove onto the car park full of expensive four wheel drives.
“It’s early Victorian, two hundred years old,” I said in its defence.
“Yes, with twinkling lights under the eaves and a large model of a boot by the door. Terribly nineteenth century.”
She was still smarting, the effects of feeling underdressed for the location. I halted and with a genuine sweat breaking out said that if she wanted to go back to The Crown I’d be only too miserable to take her. She slipped her arm through mine, pulled us close together. “Sorry. Tired. Rough old day.”
To some extent, though, she was right. The Boot had had a recent makeover and most of its history had been plastered over or painted beige, the colour you’re supposed not to notice. The tables and chairs were repro, the coat hooks, light fittings and mirror frames were plastic cast iron. In short it lacked the atmosphere I’d gambled on it having. I told myself to press on, regardless.
It was an undeniably friendly place. And popular. I’d had to book the table 4 days in advance and had asked for a quiet spot. Table 14 would be ideal, the voice on the phone had said. In the corner.
The waitress, the first middle-aged one I’d seen for a while, showed us the menu and wine list and left us to study them. I gestured round, inviting Laura’s comments.
“Very pleasant,” she said with an effort. “Good menu, by the look of it, nice wines, tables not too close to each other...” She removed her reading glasses, dropped them onto the table next to her phone and turned her smile on both of us. “For God’s sake, we’re not buying the place, we’ve come for supper. I’m having the trio of lamb - cutlet, shepherds’s pie and fillet. I’m drinking, you’re not, so I get to choose. Pinot Grigio.”
“Have something pricey,” I said, with my left foot. She looked at me suspiciously. “One glass for me. The rest is yours.”
“I’ll have this Bordeaux, then...” she said.
At one stage in the meal Laura asked if I’d had any further thoughts about Tom Manners. She was being polite. There wasn’t much to add to what I’d already told her. He still wasn’t mad, his watch had still been stolen, and probably by a girl who’d worked for Leonard Blake. Heinrich Himmler? Why not?
“And Blake?” she asked.
I managed to smile over my nerves. “As much as I’d like a door to open and reveal Leonard Blake, dripping blood with a 12 inch dagger raised, it isn’t going to happen. He’s just a dodgy market trader.”
“So you’ve got some time on your hands?”
I thought I heard the distant sound of a DIY request.
“Those gutters at Chestnut Cottage? I’ll put them on the list. Does a French company called SDR mean anything to you?”
She thought for a moment, puzzled by their sudden appearance in the conversation.
“Siméon Deroy Robillard, she said, the biggest supplier of medical equipment in Europe. Why?”
I hadn’t told her about my failed break-in to Blake’s Transit and wasn’t about to. And the food had arrived.
It was excellent and very nearly put paid to my contention that anyone can cook provided they can read a recipe and as I worked my way through the roast guinea fowl I must’ve given off those unintentional signs. Twice Laura asked if I was alright, twice I told her I was fine.
I wasn’t, of course. I had none of the props associated with the task ahead of me to hand, the youth, the soft voice, the hair, the ring. The latter would’ve been money down the drain, regardless of her answer, or maybe seen as pressure to get the answer I wanted. As time passed so the single question roaming the room became a herd and began stampeding. Did I really want to marry this woman? Would my children approve? Four mouths, four separate opinions. Almost certainly that’s why I’d failed to ask them. Would people we knew, or others we’d yet to meet, consider the elegant doctor and her fella, the bright-minded trouble-seeker, a seemly match? Or was it a marriage of convenience? Him the lonely widower, her the fading spinster, joined now at the tax breaks? Would the housing of the knives, spoons and forks be forever the catalyst in any disagreement? Would she turn me down anyway? If so, why? Perhaps I should ask that of her before proposing marriage, make it sound as hypothetical as possible: if you and I were to ... should the circumstance ever arise ... just imagine, Laura, a situation where...
She leaned across the table to regain my attention and asked if I was having dessert.
“It depends,” I said, those being the words I expected to take home from The Boot that evening.
As we gave the dessert menu the once over, Laura’s from a love of Eton Mess, mine to show willing, four local men in their mid-thirties, came into the alcove with their drinks and settled on bar stools around a tall table, far enough away to be a separate island, near enough for every word they said to reach me. Very quickly they became my spur to get the main business of the evening over and done with...
They began to relive the high points of a football match they’d seen the previous weekend. And as usual when three or four men are gathered together at a bar, the booze flowed freely, the jokes became more risqué, the laughter louder. Laura occasionally smiled at their liveliness and I seized a moment between their bouts of volcanic laughter, topped up her glass and, drier than the Bordeaux, said,
“I was wondering if ... well, if we shouldn’t make this a more ... permanent thing.”
Understandably, she didn’t know what I was talking about. “You mean come here instead of The Crown? Rain check, I think.”
“That’s no, is it?”
“I didn’t mean that at all. What did you mean?”
I swerved. “You have to admit, the grub’s excellent.”
“But it’s twelve miles from Beech Tree. We can walk to The Crown in five minutes.”
“Right. Plus you don’t get buggers like this lot behind me...”
At another burst of raucous laughter I turned to the four locals, one of whom caught my eye and didn’t like the look in it. Laura tapped my leg with her foot and I turned back to her.
“They’re relaxing, end of day.”
I nodded. “What was I saying?”
“I don’t think either of us is quite sure.”
“I haven’t told the kids yet. I thought it might be pushing it. But it makes perfect sense. Then again life isn’t all about making sense...”
It was the kind of truism that deserved to be left hanging. Her brow furrowed, she took a sip of her wine and put the glass down with extra special care. All I could hear was one of the locals behind me, the joker in the pack, recalling an incident when a naked bloke with a large penis had run onto the pitch, waving the team’s colours. He was hotly pursued by two coppers who, pause for the punchline, didn’t need a truncheon because the streaker had brought his own. Over the storm of laughter Laura asked in a matter of fact way,
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
I pretended to give the question some thought. “Yes, yes, I suppose I am...”
Violins didn’t swell, B & Q candles didn’t flicker and the overriding colour remained beige. Ever the practical minded doctor she said,
“I’ll let you know.”
“When?” I asked.
“When I’ve decided. I’m having Eton Mess, what are you having?”
“Bread and Butter Pudding.”
But as I raised my hand to summon the waitress, so my phone started vibrating and sashayed across the table towards me. Always prepared for a new disaster in one my kids’ lives I grabbed it and stabbed the answer button.
“Yes?” I said, still picking over Laura’s half baked answer.
The male voice on the other end wa
s trying to disguise itself and began classically.
“You don’t know me.”
“That usually means I know you pretty well,” I said. “How can I help?”
“Marianne, that girl you’ve been asking about, hasn’t been seen for three weeks.”
“So?”
“I think Lenny Blake knows where she is.”
And there it was, the adrenalin rush, nothing to do with guinea fowl or a glass of Bordeaux, but a disembodied voice telling me trouble was just around the corner. No longer the romantic lover, seeking the hand of ideal woman, I rose from the table, turned away and stuck a finger in my free ear.
“You know Blake pretty well, then...”
“No, no, I don’t.”
“Yes you do, or you wouldn’t call him Lenny.”
A copper I once knew left the job to do a law degree and followed it with a PhD. He wrote a paper on the subject of anonymous phonecalls. One thing to remember, he said, was that people who make them always tell you more than they intend to - if you handle them properly.
“Is Lenny a friend?”
“No!”
My PhD copper reckoned that if you stop asking questions, they’ll give you answers nonetheless. It’s something to do with hating silence. He also held that, unless it’s a threat or demand for money, the phoney voice flattens out and becomes more itself after about twenty seconds.
“I work for him,” the caller said. “Driver.”
“I thought Lenny was a one man band.”
“That’s what he wants people to think.”
And when details need filling in, you make the caller think he owns the conversation and you’re just being polite.
“There’s driving and there’s driving. Drive where?”
“All over.”
Another given. Having relaxed a little my caller was beginning to think he’d told me too much.
“So, what am I supposed...?” I began.
He ended the call and I turned back to the table. I didn’t know who my caller was, but he’d be forever linked with my proposal of marriage to Laura. What had the man said? she wanted to know. Marianne, she’d been missing for two weeks, and Blake knew why.
Jericho Road: A Nathan Hawk Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Mystery series Book 5) Page 5
