Last Reminder

by Stuart Pawson

  I wasn’t hungry, so instead of tea I settled for listening to a Joan Baez CD. The first song on it was ‘Diamonds and Rust’, straight out of my desert island selection. After that I typed my ethics paper.

  At eight o’clock I rang Annabelle. ‘Have you finished eating?’ I asked, when she answered.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I wish you’d been able to be with us.’

  ‘I, er, thought I might be working late. Did your friends find you OK?’

  ‘Yes, but…’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think they expected you to be here, too.’

  ‘You mean, living with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m open to offers.’

  After a pause she said, ‘Maybe that is something to discuss another time.’

  ‘Right,’ I replied. I liked the way this was going. ‘Have you been anywhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, brightly. ‘Marie and Toby didn’t arrive until nearly two, so we couldn’t go too far. Would you believe I took them to the Sculpture Park? They enjoyed it immensely.’

  ‘Good. I bet they didn’t guess as many as I did.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they, never having been before?’

  ‘I’d never been before,’ I protested in my hurt voice.

  ‘Ha, I’ll believe you. They didn’t even make a passable attempt at poor old St Sebastian.’

  ‘At who!’ I exclaimed, sitting up.

  ‘St Sebastian. Surely you remember him.’

  ‘No, you’ve lost me.’

  ‘The tall one, with the bicycle wheel on his head. That is his halo. He was martyred by being shot with arrows, hence the spiky bits. Didn’t I tell you who he was?’

  ‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘You never mentioned it.’

  ‘Well, now you know. Are you coming for supper, tomorrow?’

  ‘Er, yes, I’d like that.’

  ‘Good. Any requests?’

  ‘No, er, Annabelle, I, er, won’t keep you from your guests any longer. See you tomorrow, eh?’

  We said our goodbyes and I rolled on the floor, holding my head. The martyrdom of St Sebastian. Five yards in, at five yard intervals. That’s where the gold was buried, just over the fence from Davis’s paddock.

  Sparky was at home when I rang. ‘Does Daniel own a metal detector?’ I asked him.

  ‘No. Why?’

  I explained.

  ‘Task force have them,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘I could collect one from HQ and meet you there.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Why not? If we did a search in daylight we’d end up with every gold-hungry nut in the country converging on the place. I could meet you there in less than an hour.’

  ‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘Pay and display car park. I’ll take a spade. See you there, quick as you can.’

  I’m not sure what the courting couple thought when these two dark-clad figures unloaded their cars and set off across the park, but nobody rang the police. Maybe their attention was elsewhere. I led the way across the big field, hoping to find a short cut through the temporary exhibits.

  ‘Waaah!’ Sparky yelled, dropping the detector and throwing his arms around my neck. We’d reached the crowd of headless men.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I hissed. ‘Security will hear you. They’re only statues.’

  ‘Scared the living daylights out of me,’ he gasped.

  The short cut wasn’t such a good idea and we had to retrace our steps.

  ‘What’s that one supposed to be?’ he hissed.

  ‘It’s called Spindle Piece, by Henry Moore.’

  ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘Oh, about half a million.’

  ‘Jesus. We’re looking for the wrong guy.’

  ‘You’re a Philistine.’

  There were no lights coming from the direction of Davis’s house. ‘This is the one we’re looking for,’ I whispered. ‘It’s St Sebastian.’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me.’

  ‘And the fence is about fifty yards that way. I’m presuming they mean five yards in from that.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ He lowered the metal detector to the ground, placed the headphones over his ears and shone a little torch on the controls.

  ‘Do you know how it works?’ I asked.

  ‘They gave me a crash course. It’s set to detect anything metallic, so if I get a buzz in the headphones, you have to dig it up.’

  ‘OK. Let’s go.’

  I paced five yards in from the fence and Sparky wandered away, skimming the head of the machine from side to side, just above the ground.

  Nothing.

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t work,’ I suggested.

  ‘Well, let’s try it on something.’

  I took a coin from my pocket and dropped it on the grass. Sparky found it straight away.

  ‘Did it make a buzz?’

  ‘Mmm. Loud and clear.’

  ‘What’s it like with something bigger?’ I asked, pushing the head of the spade under the business end. He jumped about a foot in the air.

  We tried again, in the opposite direction. Nothing. Then we climbed the fence and tried five yards that side of it, in Davis’s paddock. We found two ring pulls from drinks cans, from the days when they came away in your fingers, an old key and a horse shoe.

  ‘This is fun,’ Sparky confessed. ‘I might convince Daniel that he ought to have one.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Have you tired of his train set, and the radio-controlled aeroplane, and the fishing rod and the mountain bikes and the…’

  ‘OK! I get the message. It’s just that – Charlie! There’s something here! Something big! I think we’ve found it!’

  ‘Where!’

  ‘There! It’s nearly blowing my head off.’

  He pinpointed the spot and I started digging. I removed a square of turf and waved him to have another go.

  ‘It’s still down there,’ he said.

  The world started to revolve around me, as if seen from a carousel.

  ‘They’re back!’ Sparky hissed.

  I turned as the headlights of the Range Rover swung across the paddock, sweeping the shadows of trees and fence before them.

  ‘They can’t see us,’ I said.

  A security light came on, headlights were extinguished, doors slammed. We sat on our heels until all was dark again. ‘Right, where were we?’ I wondered.

  I dug deeper and Sparky checked the hole again. Still there. I widened it and removed several more spadefuls of soil.

  ‘It’s still down there.’

  ‘I’m not happy with this division of labour,’ I puffed as I pushed the spade further down. It came to an abrupt stop.

  ‘I’ve hit something!’ I exclaimed.

  And it was metallic, I quickly discovered, as the spade scraped across it. I removed soil with my hands, revealing a square object, exactly the size I imagined we were looking for. The spade down the side and some applied leverage eventually freed it from its hiding-place. I rose to my feet, holding the heavy metal block as if it were a piece of the true cross.

  ‘Shine the torch on it,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’ve been trying. It’s duff.’

  ‘There’s something embossed on the side.’

  ‘You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, and it’s heavy enough. Bring the stuff, young Jim, lad; we could be in business. Let’s get back to the cars.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The doubts started on the way back. ‘It’s not gold,’ I decided. ‘It’s more like a tin box. You know – a cash box.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a cash box full of gold.’

  ‘Mmm. Perhaps.’

  ‘Well let’s see, shall we?’

  He switched his headlights on and we crouched in front of them, examining our find. When I realised what it was I gave it a hard bang on the Tarmac and a wad of clay came out in a large loaf-sized lump. Exactly loaf-sized. The word embossed on the side of the box said: BREAD.

  Sparky pl
aced his hands over his head, sitting on the floor, and rocked backwards and forwards, making gurgling noises. I hurled the tin over the hedge, far into a copse. It clattered through the branches before falling to earth.

  ‘I think you and I ought to come to some agreement about this,’ I declared.

  He looked up at me, his nose casting a horizontal shadow in the glare of the headlights, the tears from the eye at the illuminated side glistening on his cheek.

  ‘Agreed,’ he replied, nodding and sniffing. ‘I won’t say a word to anyone about tonight…if you promise not to ever mention line dancing again.’

  ‘You got it.’

  We cleaned up as best we could and put everything in his boot. Any disappointment at not striking gold was tempered by the fact that we were enjoying ourselves. My appetite had returned. ‘God, I hope there’s a fish and chip shop still open, somewhere,’ I said.

  Sparky waved an arm in a northerly direction. ‘There’s a good one next junction up. Little restaurant attached.’

  ‘Great! Fancy some?’

  ‘Nah. I had a big tea. I’ll come and let you buy me a cuppa, though. I think I deserve it.’

  He led the way. It was busy with the trade from the pubs, but they found us a little table in a corner. A young waitress gave us two menus and returned for our order after a few seconds. There were no big decisions to be made.

  ‘Haddock, chips and peas,’ I told her. ‘That’s just for one. And could we have a pot of tea for two, please?’

  She scribbled on her pad. ‘So that’s haddock, chips and peas for one, and tea for two?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘And would you like bread and butter?’

  The poor girl blushed to the roots of her hair, wondering what she had said, as two grown men broke down and giggled like imbeciles.

  Sparky left me to it, and I took my time, asking for more hot water for the tea. I felt a lot better with something inside me. When I got back in the car I took the mobile phone from my pocket and placed it on the dash. I don’t remember switching it back on, but I must have done. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have started ringing before I was a quarter of the way home. The road was quiet, so I pulled in to the side.

  ‘Priest,’ I said.

  ‘Charlie, it’s Dave. Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve only been driving five minutes. Why?’

  ‘When I arrived home Shirley said Nigel had been trying to contact us, so I rang him. He said that the APW he put out on K. Tom Davis has borne fruit. Apparently Davis rang Le Shuttle at Folkestone to ask if they could accommodate a Range Rover. They sold him a ticket and he’s supposed to be there at eleven a.m. tomorrow.’

  ‘You mean – the Channel Tunnel?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Hey, that’s great.’

  ‘So what do you want us to do?’

  Good question. ‘Let’s have a think,’ I said. ‘If he’s booked on for eleven, he’ll have to leave home, what, about six hours earlier?’

  ‘At least. And presumably you have to be there an hour before take-off, or whatever, for loading, but apparently you don’t book a place, so he could still go anytime.’

  ‘Could he? But he specifically asked about tomorrow?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  ‘Right. It looks as if the time has come to have Mr Davis’s vehicle reduced to its component parts. That’ll please him. OK, my faithful friend, thanks for telling me.’

  ‘So, what are we doing?’

  ‘Oh, I can manage.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he demanded.

  ‘I might just go back and hang around. Maybe he still has to fit the bullbars, or something. If I see him leave I can follow him and rustle up some muscle to stop him. I’d like to be there to see his face. And I want to talk to him about Lisa, while his defences are low.’

  Sparky said, ‘Right. Where shall I see you?’

  ‘You don’t have to come all this way back,’ I told him.

  ‘I bloody well want to,’ he argued. ‘Why should you have all the fun?’

  I didn’t mind. It might be a long cold wait, so some company would be welcome. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Where shall we meet?’

  ‘And Nigel said he wants to come, too.’

  ‘Nigel? Where is he now?’

  ‘At the nick, awaiting further instructions.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sounds as if you two have it all worked out, so let’s make it a Heckley special. We’ll lift K. Tom ourselves, as soon as he leaves home. You get back here pronto, meet me, oh, remember the sculpture called Spindle Piece?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Meet me there. We might be able to see any lights at K. Tom’s from there and we’ll be able to get back to the cars quick to catch up with him on the motorway. Have you a radio?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll have to use mobiles, then. Nigel won’t know where we mean. Tell him to keep observation at the end of Davis’s lane. Ring us when he’s there. OK?’

  ‘Fine. See you shortly.’

  I spun the car round and headed back to the pay and display. Fortunately, they don’t charge after five o’clock. Different cars with steamed-up windows were parked in the darker corners. There’s a lot of it going off.

  The moon had risen, but spent most of its time hiding behind high cloud. I trudged across the grass for the second time that night, wishing I’d heeded my mother’s constant advice and worn something warmer. An animal, a long way off, gave a blood-curdling scream. Probably a rabbit, meeting its end in the jaws of a fox or a weasel. I made a detour round a flock of grazing Canadian geese, and hoped Sparky wouldn’t blunder straight into them and be pecked to pieces. On second thoughts, I hoped he would.

  It was a privilege to be there. Scattered around me were some of – arguably – the finest works of art in the world, and I had them all to myself. I wandered around, like a visitor to a new, benign planet, as the moon drifted in and out of the clouds. Lighting by God, I thought, putting on a show just for me. I witnessed a little magic, that night, in that park.

  Davis’s house was in darkness. I watched it for a while from across his paddock, wondering if that would have been a better place to meet Sparky. But then we’d have been a long way from the cars.

  He should be nearly here, so I strolled back to our meeting place. ‘Serves you right,’ I told St Sebastian as I passed his contorted outline. Spindle Piece is on a concrete plinth, but it was almost as cold as the bronze. I sat on it for a few seconds before jumping to my feet and doing some exercises to try keeping warm. Interlocking Pieces was about two hundred yards away, up the hill. I sprinted across to it, my legs turning to rubber before halfway, and walked slowly back. Now I felt tired and cold.

  I was sitting on my heels, like an aborigine, when I heard the footsteps. The sculptures are hollow, and I’d thought about hiding inside one and scaring the shit out of Sparky, but even I know when the fooling has to cease. Well, sometimes. I was peering in the direction I expected him to approach from, waiting for the moon, when I realised the steps were a lot nearer than I expected, and behind me. I turned, slowly lowering myself to the ground.

  The bulky outline that approached wasn’t unmistakable as K. Tom, but I was certain it was him, even though his shape was distorted by the long bundle he carried, remarkably similar to the one Sparky had lugged back to the car two hours earlier. A spade and a metal detector, at a guess. He came straight up to the sculpture, the cold night air rasping in his throat as I held my breath, barely ten feet away, with only the Henry Moore between us. I dared to lift my face heavenwards and saw that the moon was well hidden, for the moment.

  K. Tom took about fifteen deliberate strides away from me, heading towards the lights of the television mast on the skyline, and lowered his bundle to the ground. The crafty bastard, I thought. He’s moved the gold.

  He was almost lost against the trees, but I saw what I took to be the swinging motion of the detector. He paused, rem
oved the headphones and reached down for the spade.

  We both heard Sparky’s footsteps at the same instant. Big men are supposed to be light on their feet, but Dave was the exception. He was as graceful as a hippo with bunions. The line dancers probably suffered heavy casualties the night he went along. Davis was stationary, poised in a crouched position. It looked as if we’d have to arrest him, there and then, and finish looking for the gold ourselves. This time I’d bags the metal detector.

  The sickening noise of a pump action shotgun being cocked shattered my equilibrium.

  Shit, I thought, not even a double-barrelled number. He had seven shots. And, just to make it easier for him, the moon came out to have a look, bathing the park in frail light, as if to give the big lighting man in the sky a better view of the drama.

  Sparky was hunched up, hands deep in pockets, his head moving from side to side as if he were whistling or humming to himself. I looked from one to the other, praying that Dave would raise his head and see K. Tom. When the range was less than thirty yards Davis lifted the gun.

  ‘DAVE!’ I screamed. ‘SHOTGUN!’

  K. Tom whirled and loosed a blast off in my direction. The pellets hit Spindle Piece and buzzed off into the night as I dived to the ground. He’d missed me. I jumped up and skipped sideways as he re-cocked the gun, trying to keep one of Henry Moore’s finest between us. I risked a quick glance in Sparky’s direction, but he’d vanished.

  That’s when I realised that Henry Moore’s most famous characteristic was also his big failing. All his works have bloody great holes through the middle. They’re useless for hiding behind from mad gunmen. I dodged one way and then the other as soon as I glimpsed K. Tom to the right or left of the sculpture, or through the middle, and all the time I was retreating, up the hill, putting precious yards between us.

  But that was another mistake, and K. Tom realised it at exactly the same instant as I did. The further I moved back, the more I had to move sideways to keep that great shapeless useless mass of bronze between us. Suddenly, I’d gone off Spindle Piece.

  K. Tom calmly walked round it and levelled the gun at me.