‘With your permission we’re going to carry this out initially from Ingrid’s point of view and that’s why we asked you to dress in rough walking gear,’ Patrick said. ‘You’ve read all the reports, you must know mine almost by heart by now but that only mentions her from the moment of her arrival, bringing her mobile, the short-barrelled Smith and Wesson that she carries with all due permissions, plus our other usual emergency bits and pieces including refreshments in the form of chocolate bars and water purification tablets.’
Sturrock, who was in one of the Range Rover’s back seats and we gathered had had to go home in order to change – apparently she had a flat just around the corner – looked at me. ‘Do you have it, the gun, with you now?’
‘It’s in the locked cubby box between the front seats together with Patrick’s Glock 17,’ I told her, wondering if Patrick’s fingers had been crossed during the ‘all due permissions’ bit. ‘Sometimes it’s in my bag – all my bags smell of gun oil.’
We were still parked at the front of the police HQ, in Sturrock’s own designated space which she presumably did not normally use.
‘Do you intend taking the weapons into this property?’ the DI then wanted to know.
‘You said you wanted to see everything exactly as it happened,’ Patrick replied, turning the key in the ignition. ‘Besides, I carry it for a very good reason – there’s a price on both our heads from the criminal and terrorist fraternities.’
The woman made no further comment about that, saying instead, ‘Water purification tablets? Were they necessary?’
‘Yes, I was half dead with thirst,’ Patrick answered. ‘There was only a stinking water butt and a few drips of rain leaking through the barn roof.’
‘I don’t remember reading that.’
‘Soldiers tend to stick to the details of an engagement, not about themselves,’ Patrick told her absently, coping with the rush-hour traffic. He then said, ‘From the point of view of convenience and authenticity we’ve checked into the hotel in Steyning where Ingrid did first time around. It’s very handy as we can leave the car there.’
It took around another twenty minutes to reach it. I had dressed in almost the same clothing as I had on the first occasion, a short-sleeved dark blue top and matching trousers, over these a lightweight, showerproof jacket made in Wisconsin that has an amazing number of pockets and is intended for the use of those who go game shooting. Along with the other garments it is mostly kept in the Range Rover and, as always, I had replenished all the contents of the pockets. The only difference was that I now put the Smith and Wesson in one of them instead of the shoulder harness I had worn before.
We had just parked the car and got out of it when Patrick’s mobile rang. He apologized to Sturrock and answered it, and I immediately realized that the call was from Greenway.
‘Good or bad news?’ I asked when the call was over.
‘Two things. Sonya Trent’s been arrested at her parents’ house where she’d arrived last night with a female friend she’d fled to. Her mother persuaded her to contact the police, mostly on account of her saying that Hamlyn had raped her. Because of that and the other circumstances, that her husband’s been murdered, she’s being interviewed briefly and will be released on police bail to be with her children.’
‘Thank God she’s safe.’
‘And there’s been a long overdue response from Cannes harbour authority about the stealth boat we saw. Apparently it had been confiscated from someone they did not care to mention but not connected with this case and now belonged to a boat yard, having been in their words, “disposed of”.’
We started walking south and soon came to a crossroads. If we turned right we would have to pass the little cottage where my aunt used to live, the reason I knew the area quite well, having visited her several times in my late teens. But we carried straight on and soon the road began to climb: we were at the northern foot of the South Downs here. A quarter of a mile farther on the road forked, the right one would narrow into little more than a country lane with passing places that crossed the downs and finished up in Sompting, not far from Lancing and Worthing. If we wanted to enter our destination by the main entrance we would go this way. But we did not and took the left hand road.
‘Just to set the scene,’ the DI said. ‘You, Patrick, had somehow got yourself in a car when this gang had abandoned the house where they’d gathered in Bath for a party when their leader realized that the place was being watched by the police from the house across the road.’
‘That’s right. Even the people driving were too drunk to notice a strange passenger.’
‘But when you all arrived here Joy Murphy, the mobster’s girlfriend, recognized you and you were grabbed. She took your Glock and mobile phone away from you and invited two of the gang to help her beat you to death.’
‘Correct. But she didn’t know about my knife.’
‘Do you have that with you now too?’
‘I always have it with me.’
‘I see. You killed these two men with it and then made for the barn.’
‘Yes. She tried to grab me again but only succeeded in pulling out a chunk of my hair. Which she sent, Guaranteed Next Day Delivery, to Ingrid. She wrapped it in a sheet of a local free newspaper, which was her undoing.’
‘You didn’t put that in the report either.’
‘It wasn’t relevant at the time.’
‘Go on.’
‘That’s it really. The rest you know.’
We walked on.
‘A little running commentary would be helpful,’ Patrick said to me.
‘Sorry.’ I gathered my thoughts for a few moments and then began. ‘Patrick had been missing, right out of touch, for over forty-eight hours when I decided to look for him myself,’ I began. ‘By the time I had tracked this place down following receipt of the piece of the local newspaper and other info it was much later in the day than it is now and getting dark. I can remember a lot of white flowers in these hedgerows – it was late summer – which sort of lit my way for a short while. This helped but I had to be very careful of passing traffic as, as you can see, there’s no pavement or verge.’
‘Did you have a map?’ Sturrock asked.
‘No, there had been no time to buy one.’
‘So how did you know this was the right way to go?’
‘I didn’t. I intended to go across country. I had been given rough directions and had worked out that any farm worth its name, that is, with sufficient land, had to be at the foot of the downs with higher pastures on the slopes. It is, as you’ll see.’
After a short while the whole of a shallow, almost secret, valley, a fold in the downs, opened up before us as the ground fell away over to our right. We paused in a gateway for a better view. I knew that all this land, mostly down to pasture and just about as far as the eye could see, belonged to the estate, presumably now rented to local farmers. The farmhouse could just be glimpsed set in the trees at the head of the fold, the barns and other buildings set slightly apart from it.
I continued: ‘It was almost dark by the time I reached this spot and as I stood here a couple of lights came on in the house. I was really worried that someone might be keeping watch with binoculars in case the police raided the place so I decided to walk along this road sheltered from view by the hedges as far as possible. The field with the big clump of trees growing in it which you can see over there to your left seemed to be the best low-risk route to use in order to be unobserved.’
We carried on walking at a good pace, a few spots of rain beginning to fall, the road curving gently around to the right. Occasionally a car went past and once a lorry travelling at a stupid speed, forcing us to flatten ourselves into the brambles. Sturrock got her anorak caught up and we had to help release her.
‘I was running,’ I continued. ‘I had a sense of urgency that I can’t really explain now. I just wanted to get there.’
‘You people must be very fit . . . train all the time,�
� the DI commented, slightly out of breath.
‘I’d had a baby not all that long before and wasn’t that fit,’ I told her, vividly recollecting blowing like a horse.
She stopped dead. ‘Really?’
‘We’ve three children of our own and two adopted.’
Sturrock frowned. Obviously people like us were not supposed to be distracted by having a family.
EIGHTEEN
After what seemed to be a much longer walk, in increasingly heavy rain, than I remembered we climbed over the gate into the field that had the clump of trees in it. These beeches had been planted in an almost perfect circle and even with just the light cover of newly budding leaves would successfully block the view of our progress from the house.
‘I paused here,’ I said when we had reached the centre of the ring. ‘And tried to make a plan but couldn’t think of one.’
‘I have to say I’m a little surprised by that,’ said, or rather puffed, the DI a little sharply. Perhaps her new-looking walking boots were giving her blisters.
‘So I looked up at the stars and prayed,’ I added and carried on walking, heading for the outbuildings over to the left, just as I had done the last time. The house – there were hardly any windows visible from here – was sideways on to me and still slightly uphill now. The boundary hedge was as straggly as ever. I bore left as I had done before when I had thought the hedge might be thinner in that direction. It was but there was also a gate. When I reached it, the others a couple of paces behind me, I stopped. Such was the state of the hedge that we had to force aside the vegetation in order to see clearly.
In an undertone I said, ‘The whole place is on a much bigger scale than I had imagined. It was fairly dark then but I could just make out the roofs of the buildings.’
The yard was huge and remained cluttered with derelict farm machinery. The range of cowsheds and similar buildings plus one large barn and a smaller one were even more dilapidated by this time, the bare roof beams of the latter silhouetted against the sky reminding me again of the broken ribs of some large animal carcass. The large barn’s roof had an even bigger and more ominous sag in it now.
‘Someone was smoking,’ I said. ‘Outside here. I could smell cigarette smoke. Then I saw the tiny red glow as he inhaled. The glow moved jerkily, as if he was nervous. Then he suddenly bolted for the house. I heard shouting in the distance and very shortly afterwards he returned – at least I thought it was the same man – and he had a bottle with him this time. I climbed over the gate.’
The three of us climbed over the gate, very warily as it was wooden and rotting and then walked a short distance into the farmyard, the house not visible from here. Patrick had gone very pale.
I went on: ‘There was deep shadow here on the other side of the hedge which, as you can see, has a ditch at its base and I sensed, rather than saw, that there was something in it, almost at my feet.’
‘It was one of the bodies, wasn’t it?’ Sturrock said. ‘I don’t understand how you could have known it was there if it was as dark as you say.’
‘I can’t explain it either but it might have been because it was still warm.’
Patrick walked quickly in the opposite direction for a few yards and vomited under the hedge. Then remained where he was, his back to us. I wanted to go to him but did not.
‘My first thought was that it was Patrick,’ I continued. ‘And when I discovered that the corpse was that of a bald man I could only think for a moment that Murphy had pulled out all his hair. Then I found that it couldn’t possibly be him as the body had a real right foot.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the DI.
‘Patrick was blown up on Special Operations and eventually lost the lower part of his right leg.’ When, understandably, the DI remained silent I resumed with: ‘Then I found another body and that wasn’t Patrick either. The man who was smoking took a drink from his bottle and belched and from that I knew I was very close to him now. I think there must have been a glimmer of moonlight then as I noticed for the first time the stairs on the barn that gave access to the loft. Someone was coming down them, very slowly. Then whoever it was disappeared, or seemed to, but the water barrel at the bottom of the stairs might have been a little wider. Sometimes when you’re trying to see something in the dark your eyes play tricks with you.’
Patrick was still throwing up.
‘The man with the bottle now seemed to be facing me. He put it on the ground and reached into his pocket. My eyes must have become more used to the dark as I could easily make him out now. He must have seen me. Then Patrick knifed him and the gun the man had been holding fell to the ground. He was put into the ditch with the other two. It was then that I spoke to him.’
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘I know my husband in the dark.’
Sturrock gazed at me disbelievingly. I left her where she was and went over to the barrel.
‘It still stinks to high heaven,’ I called across to her.
She came over.
I said, ‘We went up into the loft – I took some of the water up with me in a fold-up drinking container I had with me and gave it to Patrick in small amounts plus some Kendal Mint Cake and chocolate and he quite quickly started to revive. You know the rest of what happened, before I arrived and afterwards.’
Sturrock wrinkled her nose and moved away a little. ‘Do the tablets take away the smell?’
‘Oh, no, just prevent the stuff from making you ill, probably.’
‘He said these men were attacking this building in twos, threes and even fours.’
‘They were. Come up. Be careful, the handrail’s missing where he chucked a couple of them through it.’
This was the first time I had seen the interior of the loft properly as before I had only risked using the torch for a couple of seconds at a time to conserve the batteries. The mental picture I had created matched almost exactly what was before me now; the low beam towards the far end that one of the mobsters had practically brained himself on, the trap door in the floor that would once have been used to throw fodder down to the animals below and through which a couple of invaders had succeeded in climbing, the pile of logs and larger chunks of wood to one side of the doorway. The door itself was still missing.
‘What are you looking at?’ the DI asked as I peered over the pile of wood.
‘The bloodstains from where he was knifed in the arm. You can still see them. We hid down here when the gun battle started and I phoned for help.’
I then saw that were drips and smears of blood all over this area of the dusty and straw covered floor. The oil drum with which we had weighted down the trap door was still up here, the pickaxe handle I had helped to drive off the mobsters by the side of it. Rain dripped and trickled though the roof in a far corner where an attempt had been made to gain entry by ripping off the tiles.
‘Then,’ the DI was saying, ‘After hospital treatment for him, you drove home as you feared the gang leader and his girlfriend—’
‘Minder,’ I corrected. ‘She killed for fun.’
‘—had gone to Hinton Littlemoor, where you live, to hide in a closed-down pub one of the gang had run as manager. Which they had and you arrested them.’
‘Detective Chief Inspector James Carrick officially arrested them. Patrick was at the point of collapse by then.’ He had delivered a haymaker to Northwood and dragged him into the pub’s office, locking the door. Murphy had fainted when he had sprung the blade of his Italian throwing knife right under her nose, the same knife with which he had killed her two henchmen in the house.
‘I see. I think I have it all straight in my mind now.’ Sturrock added wryly, ‘It must have been the crime scene to end all crime scenes. But the deaths of the three men out there in the yard was still murder. He could have simply rendered them unconscious.’
‘And he also stole a pint of milk and a packet of biscuits for us from the house when he went in to look for his Glock before the police arrived,’ I
said stonily.
We stared at one another and Sturrock dropped her gaze, murmuring, ‘I assure you, there’s nothing personal in this.’
There were footsteps and Patrick came into view at the top of the stairs. I was instantly brought to mind of the way he had stood exactly in that place at the end of it all; bloodied, almost out on his feet, and yet still exuding the kind of authority that had caused Mick the Kick to accord him a grudging respect and then leave, taking his followers with him.
‘I’m going to have a look at the house,’ he said and went away again.
We followed, the rain pattering on the hoods of our anoraks.
There was another gate on the far side of the farmyard, newly erected – it had not been there before – fitted with a chain and padlock. It had a large sign affixed to it that intimated that the Keys Estate was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted. Guard dogs were loose, it warned. As a final deterrent barbed wire had been wound around the top bar of the gate, twice.
‘That’s that then,’ Sturrock said.
Patrick said nothing but went back into the yard and, in the dusk, rummaged. He went behind an ancient tractor and I think was sick again. Returning a few minutes later with half a dozen filthy old plastic feed sacks, he slammed them on to the top of the gate and, with all due care, then pushed them on to the front barbs of the wire, stuffing the ends between the wooden bars. Rinsing his hands in a nearby drinking trough he wiped them on his handkerchief.
‘If you climb over carefully without dislodging it on the other side you won’t get hurt,’ he said, gesturing towards his handiwork.
‘No,’ Sturrock said. ‘We need a search warrant.’
‘I’ve no intention of searching the house,’ Patrick informed her. ‘And bear in mind that this is only a gate to the yard. If you want to leave and not have to go back over the field you’ll have to come this way – the main drive’s just over there.’
‘But the dogs!’
Stealth Page 22
