“That woman hates our guts,” said Palmer.
“Because she thinks we’re standing in the way of her ambitions,” said Hogarth.
“Are we?” said Palmer, staring back.
“That depends on what we find. But a cutthroat like her, I couldn’t care less what she thinks.”
He saw the padlock was gone, tried the shed door handle and the door came ajar. Curious, thought Hogarth, but welcome too. From now on, he didn’t fancy dealing with the Grave family any more than he had to. He opened the door and stepped into the damp-woody darkness. The shed was empty and cold except for the detritus Hogarth had seen on his last visit. As his eyes raked the bare wooden floor, he saw something had changed. It seemed as if a wind had blown through the ramshackle structure and blown the plastic plant pots, seed packets, and garden paraphernalia across the floor. Hogarth looked at the muddle and Palmer leaned into the doorway beside him. She could see the mess but saw no hope in it.
“You tried in here before, didn’t you, sir?”
Hogarth’s eyes picking at the mess on the floor. “What? Yes, I looked. It’s where I found the shredded note from the farmer’s planned announcement…”
“Then you probably already found all there was to find.”
“Pretty much,” said Hogarth, his voice trailing away.
Palmer saw the hope was fading from Hogarth’s demeanour. He was turning dour and introspective again. Now it was Palmer’s turn to panic. If Marris didn’t come through, they had nothing at all.
“I’ll look around the garden,” she said. “Maybe bits of the other notes will be out here. There might be a bonfire site or something.”
“The Graves would have mentioned if there was,” said Hogarth.
“Not if the old man kept it a secret. It’s worth a look.”
“Sure. Okay. It’s worth a look.”
Hogarth nodded, and Palmer turned away. Hogarth closed the door when she’d gone. He could see the mess had been spread behind the door too and there was the little bin, emptied. Ransacked. Hogarth bent low and checked the shed floor with his eyes, prodding at the debris for new information.
“Who did this…?” he muttered. “And what were you looking for…?”
Hogarth dredged the floor with his fingers.
“Yow!” said Hogarth as he snagged his fingers on one of the floorboards. A splinter. He sucked on his finger and grunted in irritation. The way things were going, the splinter was all he was going to get out of this case. That and a badly sullied reputation. He wondered what Ali would think of him then. Everything seemed so fragile. But Melford had effectively given him another chance. He couldn’t bear to squander it. Hogarth hurriedly delved into the corners of the shed and started rummaging again. For long moments he found nothing. And then his hand knocked against the edge of a very small slat which came loose and tilted up to expose a thin line of darkness beneath.
“DS Palmer?” said Marris.
The man’s well-spoken voice betrayed his surprise as soon as he answered the call. Palmer paced around the edges of the garden, with her phone pressed to her ear. She was under watch from the windows of the house. But as she looked over her shoulder, Palmer only cared whether Hogarth could see what she was up to. But Hogarth was safely out of sight in the shed.
“So now DI Hogarth has got you to do his dirty work, has he?”
Palmer didn’t answer that one. “I’ve taken the liberty of calling because we’re under a bit of time pressure, Dr Marris.”
“Well, aren’t we all? I’m still the running tests, Palmer. I’m looking at fibres from the car boot, traces of dirt in the driver’s-side footwell of the car and the black stains on the bike handles. If you want me to supply you with anything we could safely call evidence, I need the time to get this right.”
“But are there any?”
“What?” said Marris.
“Clues?” said Palmer.
“Of course not. This is a binary matter. What we’ll find is either evidence or the absence of evidence. There are no grey areas in forensics.”
Palmer sighed. She should have expected Marris to give such an answer. “How long will it take?”
Marris tutted.
“Give me at least another hour. Maybe two. And next time, I’ll call you, okay?”
“Thank you. DI Hogarth is under the cosh on this one.”
“Then it’s good to see he’s so adept at passing it on. I’ll call as soon as I can.”
Marris hung up abruptly, and Palmer was all too glad to get her ear away from an upbraiding.
The possibilities had Hogarth blindly wedging his fat nail-bitten fingers into the slot beneath the floorboard. The loose floorboard was no more than a sliver of wood. A wooden patch to cover a gap where the floorboards barely joined by the wall. But he struggled with the thing, until he realised he didn’t need to yank it at all but slide it back. Then the angle made it pop free. Hogarth looked down into the earthy blackness below the floorboards and guessed there was a good foot gap between the floor and the cold soil. A few desperate strands of grass had tried to break through the floorboards, but failed and yellowed to death. Hogarth wedged his hand down past them, scraping his wrist on the wood as he turned it left and right, searching for anything at all, fearing he’d be nibbled by vermin. The tips of his fingers grazed past something. The edge of a paper sheet? No. Something. His finger flicked past it again – something with a little spring in it. A bent blade of grass? The ear of a bloody rodent. Who knew? It was like one of those absurd segments on the old TV show Game for a Laugh, the guest trying hard to work out what disgusting thing they were touching, eating, or smelling. Hogarth didn’t want to think about it. Then he found it again. This time he snagged it with his little finger and pulled the thing towards him. He lost it, found it again, then tugged. There. The top of a dirty old carrier bag came up out of the floorboard.
“Come on you bugger!” said Hogarth. He pulled the thing free and found the bag was brittle and old – bearing a Co-op logo he hadn’t since his childhood. The bag had been knotted in the middle, leaving the bump of contents beneath. Carefully, he teased the knot open, thinking of the rebuke he’d get from Marris for handling it like this. But he didn’t care. He needed a result, Melford had made that plain. The knot came open and inside he saw an untidy mismatched sheaf of different coloured papers, stained by age, folded, creased, and bent. It reminded him of the mess of receipts his dad used to toss to the accountant every year with his tax return.
Hogarth dropped to his backside and leaned against the rough shed wall. He peeled a note free from the bottom of the sheaf and scan-read the old spidery scrawl. Not much made sense. But some did.
“…Neville is still my son. I’ll always love him no matter his biological parentage…”
Hogarth shifted gears and looked at another note.
“…the very worst kind of alcoholic there is. At this rate she’ll be in an early grave and leave me a very lonely old man…”
“You wish,” said Hogarth.
He raced through the notes, knowing he needed something else, but not knowing what it was.
“Come on, Nigel!” said Hogarth, shaking the papers, speaking to the dead.
Finally, he believed he had found something. But only perhaps. He found notepaper which looked familiar – it reminded Hogarth of the paper shreds he had found before. But this sheet was a hole piece. He couldn’t help a burst of excitement as he started to read.
“I’m no longer sure if she is of sound mind. These days they say the drink diminishes the brain. Actually, the brain shrinks, so I hear. Which comes as a surprise to me. Half her time is spent on the bottle, a quarter of her time spent in a demented trance, the other quarter devoted to the kind of bitterness one associates with an angry old tramp. I know I used to love her once, but now I think I love the memory of her. These days she makes me worry for the future. Neville is the only future here, of course. The only question is which one of us will die first, me or
her. I cannot believe I am able to write such a thing as this. It shows how bad things have become. But the alternatives need considering. I must speak to her, catch her in a moment when she’s sensible – no more than three drinks in – to see if she’d be willing to pass it on to Neville.”
Hogarth flipped the page. The writings turned once more into bland musings, then a shopping list for the hardware store, before they returned to matters of substance. There was a new paragraph.
“I’m coming to a new mind. The boy was right, but not in the way he thinks. Renewal at Grave Farm is about change. But change does not have to mean selling the land, or jumping into bed with a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Perish the thought. And it doesn’t mean wasting money on nonsensical ideas, whosoever they come from. The chipper will become a classic folly, but Neville must be given room to learn his way. But it is my responsibility to help him, and so, after all the deliberations, I have decided. The future of this farm lies in a new crop. It is a risk because any change is risky. But my forebears were not averse to taking risks, as history shows. So with trepidation but certainty of heart, we will tread a new path. We must aim for a modern cash crop. I’ve done the research, and I believe it should pay. Maybe for a generation, maybe for two, I don’t know. But I think it will work…” Hogarth scanned the sheet for the next words, but the sheet ended abruptly. He grabbed the sheaf of papers and flicked through for the page that followed.
“Don’t do this to me now, Nigel…” he whispered. Frantically he picked the sheets apart and dumped the useless ones at his side. As he was in the middle of the chaos, the shed door opened, Palmer walked inside, and she froze as she saw her superior scrabbling about on the floor. Palmer looked down at him like he was a lunatic, but Hogarth didn’t care. He carried on searching until he found another sheet of the same yellow hue.
“Yes!” he said.
“What is it?” said Palmer. But Hogarth held up a flat hand to shush her, and turned his eyes to the page.
“They say soya is the way to go. The weather is changing (global warming?) and the crop is hardier now, so you can grow it in England, and in this part of the country we have the warmest., driest climate available. It’s a crop that pays well. It’ll be hard work at the start, but it’ll work, I’m sure of it. Soya will save my son’s inheritance. And it will save Grave Farm too…”
Hogarth shook the sheet of paper like it was a hard-won trophy.
“You little beauty, Nigel…”
“Guv? What are you doing?” said Palmer. Hogarth near leapt to his feet.
“These are the old man’s musings. Turns out the old man was very wise to keep his thoughts to himself – even after he was dead.”
“Is that his speech?”
Hogarth shook his head.
“No. But someone’s been in here. I think they were looking for that speech, which is worth considering… but these other notes are recent enough to mention the woodchipper, and they talk of a future for the farm. Which means they must be dated in the last six months. Maybe less. And it contains the very plan with which the old man intended to save his farm. He knew what to do, Palmer. He had all kinds of plans. Nigel Grave was the smartest of the lot of them.”
“So, you’ve found his plan,” said Palmer, without enthusiasm.
“Yes.”
“But there’s still no evidence, every alibi is sound. We don’t have a killer.”
“Tempting as it is to wave the white flag, if I do that, Goodwell and Melford will have me lynched. I won’t give up until Marris tells me the scoundrel didn’t do it. I have to believe the evidence is coming. Everything else about this is telling me Goodwell is the man. Marris. We need Marris. Maybe I should call him.”
“No! No. I wouldn’t bother with that,” said Palmer. “I’m sure he’ll come through when the time is right.”
“Fair point,” said Hogarth, checking Palmer’s eyes, before he let it go. He waved the sheaf of papers at her.
“But I’ve got another idea.”
“Please, not another search, guv?”
“Why not? This one paid off, didn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Then let’s try one more. Not a search – a double-check.”
“Double-check? Double-checking what?”
“Our man Goodwell likes his cycling. Racing bikes and all that.”
“So?”
“You ever heard of a time trial, Palmer?”
Palmer shrugged. “It’s a type of race, isn’t it?”
“Yes. One cyclist goes at a time. It’s about who is the fastest over a set distance. It’s basically an all-out sprint, and the fastest person across the distance wins. I think we should do a time trial right now.”
Hogarth grinned at Palmer. “Don’t worry. I’ve not lost it quite yet. And I promise there won’t be any Lycra involved. Come on. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Hogarth led the way back into the cold air, and Palmer followed. The look on Palmer’s face said she wasn’t sure whether her boss had lost it or not. But if the bookies took odds on it, Palmer guessed they would have been shortening.
Chapter Twenty-two
“How are we doing?” said Hogarth. He had his foot pressed to the floor, his sleek Vauxhall saloon swinging around the tight curves of the country lanes, Palmer shunting left and right in her seat with every turn.
“Two minutes twenty seconds, guv.”
“Good. Good,” he said. “It’s not often I get to push this little car to the limit. Not often I can be bothered, to be honest.”
“No,” said Palmer, struggling to keep her decorum.
“But DC Simmons is a proper petrolhead. When I let him drive it he acts as if we’ve turned into Bodie and Doyle.”
“Bodie and who?”
“Come on, you’re not that green, are you?” said Hogarth. He shot Palmer a glance and saw she was blank-faced.
“Damn. Maybe you are. Bloody hell. You’re in your late thirties and you’re making me feel old. There really is no bloody hope, is there?”
“Two minutes forty, guv.”
“Oh. I’d better speed up.”
“You’re well over the limit already!” said Palmer.
“Do you think the killer gave a shit about the speed limit? Neither do I.”
As they headed for the painted roundabout of the Furdon’s Way Industrial Estate, Hogarth judged the oncoming traffic, and made a quick call. He slammed his foot down and shot straight across the roundabout, preventing any other lane from pulling out unless they wanted to crash. A horn blared long and loud behind him.
“Police business!” said Hogarth with a shrug.
He pulled over on the verge opposite the Pradesh Convenience Store and got out quickly. Palmer followed, slamming the door behind her.
“You really think Goodwell would have got to the shop this fast?”
“Tell me. Have you seen any police cars out here apart from ours?”
“No,” said Palmer.
“No. And we saw none on the last trip either. On a clear run, driving at fifty miles an hour in a thirty, yes, I think a man like Goodfellow would thrive on the challenge. He’s the kind of bastard who likes to win at all costs. Come on, don’t hang about,” said Hogarth.
Hogarth jogged across the street. But as soon as he walked inside the shop, he slowed a little. Hogarth walked to the fridge and stared at the different packs of butter. He picked up a pack and put it down. Then he grabbed the other brand and put it down again. The shopkeeper gave Hogarth a strange, questioning look as Hogarth moved back towards the exit door.
“Just browsing,” he explained.
“Browsing? At butter? Wait,” said the shopkeeper. “You’re the policeman…”
Hogarth stepped out of the shop without a reply. Palmer looked back in to answer the man.
“Nothing to worry about, sir, just testing a theory.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the butter in here, I can assure you…” said Mr Pradesh.
Palmer nodded as positively as she could, while withdrawing and closing the door. Hogarth was already halfway across the street.
“How we doing, Palmer?” he called.
“We’re down to four-minutes and fifty-eight seconds to go,” she said, glancing at the stopwatch on her smartphone.
“Get a move on then!” said Hogarth.
They jumped back into the Insignia, and Hogarth pulled out onto the country lane with a wide U-turn that made the tyres screech. He put his foot down and the car lurched away before Palmer had even clunked her seatbelt into place.
“Well, isn’t this exciting?” said Hogarth.
“That’s certainly one word for it,” said Palmer.
Hogarth pulled between the tall red brick columns into Grave Farm with a drastic lurch and applied the brake.
“Time?!” he said looking at Palmer. His eyes were wide, his face tense.
“To be more accurate you would need to drive to the house,” said Palmer.
Hogarth cursed under his breath, before pushing the car down the track towards the side of the house. He pulled up the handbrake and looked at Palmer again.
“Now?”
“Eight minutes forty-one seconds door to door. I didn’t think it was possible…” said Palmer.
“No. Neither did I, but Goodwell must have fancied his chances. I bet he’d thought about it a few times during his cycling tours.”
“But this might not be accurate. You hardly wasted time haggling about the butter.”
“No. But I looked at it. Okay. Knock off another twenty seconds for the butter nonsense. That still gives us two minutes. Start the timer again…”
Hogarth and Palmer got out of the car and walked alongside the great old farmhouse at a clip. Hogarth stalked along like a man on a mission while Palmer kept her eyes on the time. Hogarth walked a tight angle, working to avoid the eyes behind the kitchen window as much as he could, then he changed angle at the last second, risked being seen, and dived into the barn.
The Darkest Lies: A Gripping Crime Mystery Series - Two Novel Boxed Set (The DI Hogarth Darkest Series Boxed Sets Book 1) Page 49
