Deadly Zeal

by Jean Chapman

  We’ll know each other if we meet again, Cannon thought, judging that this man would be very much at home in a company boardroom at the head of the table. Then assessing the expensive dark grey suit, cashmere by the expensive sheen and the way it hung, he mentally amended that the boardroom would be that of a top company listed on the Stock Exchange.

  ‘Good evening,’ Cannon offered tentatively, with the underlying question of ‘What does such as you want here on the dot of opening time? Can I help you?’

  At that moment Hoskins pushed his way through the swing doors into the bar. The man turned to look at him, then back to Cannon. ‘Yes,’ he said positively, ‘I think you can. My gamekeeper told me Mr Hoskins, who he described to me, would be your first customer. My name is Alexander Higham.’

  ‘So …’ Cannon took off the leather apron and hung it behind the cellar door, which he locked (a brief memory of the man who had fallen down those steps and been shot dead like an injured dog by a fellow villain in his mind). He hung up the key as was his wont, and walked around the counter into the bar. ‘What can we do for you?’

  ‘Ford also told me that you were an ex-Metropolitan man,’ Alexander Higham said. ‘Can we talk? I badly need impartial advice and help.’ He glanced from one to the other. ‘And I’m prepared to pay for both.’

  When there was no reaction from either he added, ‘As a stranger to both of you I felt this was my only hope, the one approach I could make.’

  ‘Money don’t buy everything,’ Hoskins muttered.

  Higham’s self-assurance deserted him for a second; he swayed a little, grasped the back of a chair, then pulled it out and sat down. ‘No, believe me, I have learned that the hard way,’ he said quietly, spreading the fingers of his well-manicured hands wide over the small round table, staring down at them as he went on. ‘I am tormented by the fact that a man, who I feel might have been just an innocent bystander, has been murdered on my land.’

  ‘Did you know the murdered man, Niall Riley?’ Cannon interrupted sharply.

  Higham shook his head, ‘But link that with the other things that are happening near my house, I know all this malevolence is aimed at my family.’

  ‘Malevolence?’ Cannon repeated, sitting down beside him and pulling out another chair for Hoskins.

  Higham nodded, looked from one to the other. ‘I need someone who knows my estate and the area like the back of his hand.’ He nodded at Hoskins. ‘And someone with a fresh mind, a trained mind, someone who can think out of the box, and is not fettered by thoughts of expenses and overtime payments. The police here and in other places have been good, diligent as far as their resources allowed, but I have wealth, and I need help, extra eyes and ears.’

  Hoskins sat down.

  ‘So these incidents have not just happened here?’ Cannon asked the question that interested him most. ‘They’re not just local?’

  Higham swung his head from side to side very slowly. ‘I am convinced my family have been targeted in several places. It has been coming to a head for a time, and no one but me seems to see the full picture. When we had troubles at our seaside cottage I overheard a constable say he thought I had a persecution complex.’

  ‘So what happened there?’ Hoskins asked with a grunt of sympathy; his dealings with the constabulary had not always been harmonious.

  ‘One of my wife’s main interests is her gardens. Around our thatched cottage in Kent she had created a picture-postcard garden – roses, hollyhocks, you know the kind of thing. Holiday-makers often stopped to take photographs. One morning we found that from the front gate right up to the cottage, the garden was devastated but in a strange and disturbing way. Near the front gate one or two choice plants had been uprooted and trampled, but the nearer you came to the house the more plants had been destroyed. It was like a wave of destruction rolling towards the front door. It had a most sinister feel, as if some evil was coming.’

  Cannon watched Higham carefully. Surely, he thought, not a man given to an overactive imagination. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘In London I’ve had quite a number of silent phone calls: you could sense someone listening, even hear them breathing, but no one spoke.’

  ‘You can report them things,’ Hoskins said.

  ‘I had the calls traced, but they came from places like St Pancras station, the Royal Academy, Covent Garden market.’

  Cannon was wondering how seriously he would be taking all this? An attack on a perfect garden could be local jealousy. Nuisance phone calls, a daily occurrence, and the murder of a man Higham did not know, which seemed more linked to the trouble in Cannon’s bar than out on this businessman’s estate.

  ‘Anything else?’ Cannon asked. ‘Anywhere?’

  ‘My car was vandalized,’ Higham added, ‘outside my home in Islington.’

  ‘London.’ Cannon wondered how many cars were daily vandalized in the capital but looking at the face of this disturbed man he also asked himself if, in his place, he too would not be adding up the incidents.

  ‘No other vehicles were damaged, and the gouges and scratches were quite …’ An apt description seemed to defeat him. ‘I took photographs.’ Just at that moment they heard footsteps. They all paused to listen, the swing doors were pushed open and the tall figure of Regional Detective Inspector Derek Betterson strode in. ‘I’ll let you see them,’ he added quietly.

  Hoskins got up and went to sit in his usual pew seat near the bar muttering, ‘Evening, all.’

  ‘Evening, Mr Alan Hoskins of this parish, Mr Higham and …’ The DI included Cannon with a nod.

  ‘Think I have a customer well due for his first drink,’ Cannon said and went to the business side of the bar to serve Hoskins. Higham rose, wished everyone good evening and left.

  Betterson took in the empty table. ‘You won’t get rich with too many customers like him, John,’ Betterson said and went to lean on the other end of the counter and mouthed ‘on duty’, adding ‘But I’d like a word.’

  As soon as Liz came from kitchen to bar, John took the DI upstairs to their private sitting room. Betterson, as so many visitors did, went immediately to the window to look at the wide panoramic view, placing one hand on the handsome brass telescope Cannon had permanently mounted there. ‘I always envy you this,’ he said, then turning back to him, ‘Pity you can’t see as far as the Higham estate. I was surprised to see him here.’

  Cannon did not offer an explanation.

  ‘He’s a powerful, wealthy man and not too impressed with the police at the moment,’ he said and left it at that.

  ‘Has there been some development?’ Cannon asked.

  ‘The development is that Spier is still missing. We’ve learnt that he did go home last night, one of the neighbours heard him, and his wife finally admitted he arrived swearing revenge on everyone who was in your bar on the quiz night. He went out again before light, with his shotgun, and has never been seen since. We had no idea he had a gun, his wife dropped that out, then was terrified when she had. Mrs Spier is, well, to say the least, in some state of agitation – not sure whether it’s because he’s missing, or the thought of the mood he’ll be in when he returns.’

  ‘Riley wasn’t shot,’ Cannon commented.

  ‘No.’ Betterson shook his head. ‘And from what we learned from various landlords, Spier’s behaviour here was typical. Too much to say, someone objects, there’s a bit of pushing and shoving, an occasional blow and that’s about it. Unpleasant but not exactly life-threatening.’

  ‘That was my feeling,’ Cannon said.

  ‘And …’ Betterson said heavily, turning his back to the window, ‘there’s something strange about this murder. It seemed from the forensic report that the first blow had caused death, and the rest seemed almost to have been administered as punishment.’

  ‘A frenzied attack,’ Cannon suggested.

  Betterson shook his head. ‘That doesn’t feel like the right description either.’

  Cannon reviewed what he remembere
d of Niall Riley’s body, the head wounds extreme, with much disturbance, deep disturbance, in the sand all around.

  ‘Looked like someone had done a dance around the body,’ Betterson added as if seeing the same picture.

  ‘There would have been the dog to contend with,’ Cannon said.

  ‘And thank God for that dog. I think it’s the saviour for Timmy Riley and his mother, gives them a focus.’ Betterson looked towards the coffee-making machine on a small table the far side of the window. ‘Does that work?’ he asked.

  As Cannon made the coffee the DI went back to the window, where like a theatre fade-out the salt marshes were disappearing into the night. ‘I know Higham feels threatened by this murder on his land but if he came here tonight asking for your help, I’d say be very careful what you are getting into. I don’t like this one, it has a …’ He turned back into the room and gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that I was going all girlie and intuitive about it.’

  Cannon grinned at the idea but knew Liz would have said her partner would be the last one to dismiss intuition as a means to bring the lawless to justice. Sipping his coffee, Betterson suggested that it might be a good idea to let the quiz team and their supporters know the situation with regard to Spier as soon as possible. ‘The super doesn’t want to make a big issue of his disappearance as yet – he feels Spier might be more at risk of doing something completely stupid if he feels hunted, but the more folk are quietly on the lookout for him the better.’

  Later that evening Dick Ford came into the bar, closely followed by Michael Bliss, who waited his turn to be served as Ford handed a small canvas shopping bag over the counter to Cannon.

  Hoskins watched with raised eyebrows. ‘Heard of poacher turning gamekeeper, but not the other way round.’

  ‘Don’t worry, ‘ Ford replied, ‘it’s nothing in your line of business, but I do have a message for you. Mr Higham would be pleased if you would go and see him tomorrow sometime.’ Ford looked at Cannon too as he spoke.

  ‘Ah!’ Hoskins exclaimed ‘And I want to see him about having hidden cameras in his woods.’

  Ford was denying all knowledge of any cameras as Cannon glanced into the bag which was too full to hold just photographs. He noted there was a tissue-wrapped parcel and an envelope, before stowing it under the counter. He then tactfully told Hoskins about Spier. The news spread quietly around the bar during the evening.

  Hoskins lingered on, last customer as always, and he almost tutted as Liz picked up the bag Ford had brought and said she would put it in the kitchen. ‘We’ll get all finished and locked up before you start looking at that,’ she told Cannon.

  ‘Bossy tonight,’ Hoskins commented. ‘She’ll not want you involved, but will you go and see Higham?’

  ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow,’ Cannon said. ‘I’ll take my morning run your way.’

  ‘I’ll have the kettle on,’ Hoskins said.

  Cannon saw him out, watched the red rear light on his ancient bike waver away into the distance, locked up and hurried to complete the usual end-of-day check of his cellar and bar.

  In the kitchen Liz had the tea ready. Her face was set to disapproval and the carrier bag stood centre table.

  Cannon sat down, looked at the bag and exclaimed, ‘I’d forgotten all about that! Let’s see who brought it in?’

  ‘I am not amused,’ Liz declared. ‘You and Hoskins have been itching to know what’s in it all evening.’

  ‘And you might just be,’ he ventured.

  ‘If it meant you would never be involved in anything dicey ever again, I’d ram it into the Aga this second.’

  Cannon pulled the bag to him and took out first the tissue-wrapped parcel. It was, as he had half expected, the doll from the gamekeeper’s gibbet line. Without touching it he turned the doll on the paper, viewed it from all angles, as he told Liz what he knew. As Ford had said, it was an old rag boy-doll dressed in trousers, shirt, tie and jacket, and a string made into a perfectly formed noose was drawn tight around its neck. The burn driven through the breast looked realistically like a shot through the heart at close range.

  ‘That could have been done with something like a heated knitting needle,’ Liz said, sitting down next to him.

  ‘So this is …’ he began.

  ‘A frightener,’ she stated with conviction. ‘A real frightener.’

  Cannon now took up the brown A5 envelope and tipped out two photographs. One was of the near side of a black Mercedes with obvious damage to the front side door. The second was a close-up of that door.

  Cannon felt engraved would be a better word than scratched for the damage that spanned the whole of the panel from window to handle. What had been used must have been extremely strong and sharp for the lines went through to the bright silver body metal of the car. There was nothing random, or ambiguous, about the message being given.

  ‘It’s like nothing so much as a …’ Liz began.

  ‘Stick man, or a cave painting of a hunter stricken by a great blow to the chest,’ Cannon finished. ‘The arms thrown up and back above the circle of the head …’

  ‘And falling backwards, thrown back by the force of whatever’s hit him,’ Liz added. ‘I wouldn’t want to find such a warning on my car door.’

  ‘There’s something else about it, isn’t there?’ Cannon mused. ‘A round head, a series of seven or eight sort of confident lines that depict alarm, a body blow …’

  ‘A fatal blow,’ Liz interjected dourly.

  ‘Practised on paper, perhaps, and done in situ with …?’

  ‘Something with a very sharp, rigid point. There’s nothing vague …’ Liz paused.

  ‘In execution or method,’ Cannon added.

  ‘Have the police seen these?’ she asked, her hand hovering over the doll, then for longer over the photograph.

  Cannon shook his head. ‘They certainly should, but as Alexander Higham sent them here to me …’

  ‘You must see he does.’ She stopped suddenly as if she could have bitten her own tongue off. ‘What am I saying?’ she despaired. ‘No, tell Hoskins to tell him, don’t you get involved.’

  The following morning Cannon took his run to Alan Hoskins’ riverside cottage. The garden was, as always, the picture of good husbandry, some vegetables cleared, runner beans still producing, and inside the kettle was boiling. He arranged to call back at eleven to pick the old boy up and go with him to Higham Grange.

  Chapter 6

  As they approached The Grange, Hoskins said, ‘They reckon Alexander Higham’s up for a title.’

  ‘Do they?’ Cannon said dryly, adding as he took in the façade of the Georgian three-storey manor house, ‘Well, he lives in the right kind of property.’

  ‘Not exactly heaving with life, though, is it?’ Hoskins said as they stood for some minutes after ringing the front doorbell. He had hardly uttered the words when something approaching bedlam broke out. A black Mercedes swung into the drive at speed, barely missed Cannon’s beloved classic Willys jeep, and swung round to the side of the house. It was closely followed by a police car.

  Then there was the sound of several raised voices, concerned and questioning, car doors slamming. Just as Cannon wondered about walking round to see what was going on, the irate and much disturbed figure of Alexander Higham strode round to his own front door, followed by a young policeman from the patrol car, who was having to almost run to keep up with him.

  ‘Well, I hope your superiors don’t think I imagined all that!’ Higham was almost shouting as he acknowledged the two men who stood at his door.

  ‘Nothing imaginary about that accident, unfortunately,’ the constable said.

  ‘Accident!’ Higham exclaimed, clearly beside himself with distress and anger.

  ‘We’ve called your own doctor to come and have a look at you all, and he’s on his way. But it was the car in front of you that really had the accident, sir,’ the constable said with studied mildness, but his pall
or and set features told another story. Cannon thought he had probably left colleagues dealing with something very nasty. ‘Once we know you’re in good hands we can come back for your statements later,’ he added.

  ‘And perhaps we should come back another time?’ Cannon suggested.

  ‘No! No!’ Higham dismissed that idea, and at that moment the front door opened and a smartly dressed woman in outdoor clothes stood shaking her head. ‘We are all fine, Alexander, there is no need for all this fuss.’

  Higham opened his mouth as if to make some heated reply but the small woman, who Cannon guessed might be of Jewish descent and was obviously his wife, added, ‘I suggest we all go inside.’ She included the constable with a gracious nod.

  ‘I’ll wait outside, ma’am, until your doctor arrives, then there’ll be someone come to take statements when you’ve all recovered a little.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said and led the way inside.

  Hoskins and Cannon exchanged glances as Alexander Higham followed his diminutive wife and they brought up the rear of the party. Once in the room Higham turned to his wife as if to question her but she lifted her hands and gently indicated he should lower his level of anxiety. ‘Everything, and everyone, is fine. There was really no need for us to trouble the doctor.’

  Perhaps a blood pressure check for her husband might be a good idea, Cannon thought as Higham interjected, ‘We were taking our daughter, Catherine, to her special school. She was in the car!’

  ‘Yes, and she’s fine,’ his wife was saying as they heard the sound of another car arriving. ‘Probably the doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ll let him in and go up with him. I’ll ask the housekeeper to bring in coffee for you all.’

  An organizer, Cannon thought. The power, perhaps, behind their successful business?

  Once they were alone, Higham first slumped into a chair, head in hands, then rose with all the suddenness of a released spring, strode to the window, then back. ‘The car in front of me was a black limousine; it could have been mistaken for mine.’

  ‘Ah,’ Cannon breathed. Now he understood. Higham was adding this to the list of personal victimizations against his family.