Exit

by Belinda Bauer

  He stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your help, Hayley.’

  ‘No probs.’

  No probs, said the parrot in Hayley’s voice.

  ‘He’s a right joker, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a bugger,’ she agreed. ‘Does all our ringtones. Drives us nuts. He’s only got to hear something once and he’s off, aren’t you, Nipper?’

  The parrot cocked its head. It regarded Calvin with a gold-rimmed eye and hissed, ‘Little fucker.’

  The List

  ‘John?’

  ‘Geoffrey!’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘How are you ? More to the point, where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home.’

  ‘They let you go?’

  ‘Well, I just kept saying no comment until they ran out of time. Oldest trick in the book.’

  Felix was impressed by Geoffrey’s quiet strength. ‘I must say, you’ve got nerves of steel.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Geoffrey said modestly. ‘They obviously had nothing to connect me to the crime scene, and you and Amanda are lying low, so I knew it was only a matter of time. They’ve taken my files, which is annoying of course, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing incriminating in them because this is not a criminal enterprise. We don’t provide the instrument of death, and we’re waivered up to the eyeballs.’

  ‘Geoffrey,’ said Felix hesitantly, ‘I took the list of Exiteers from your cabinet. And the Cann name tag off the folder. I hope you feel it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘I most certainly do!’ said Geoffrey. ‘Very sensible.’

  Felix was pleased that he’d done the right thing, but he held his breath and waited for Geoffrey to ask about Buttons. He didn’t, though. Probably thought Buttons was off at a neighbour’s and would be home soon.

  And he soon would be . . .

  ‘So . . .’ said Geoffrey. ‘All’s well.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Felix said seriously.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Felix stared at the woodchip, unsure of how to start. ‘Have you spoken to Amanda?’

  ‘Not yet. Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Felix started. Then stopped. Then started again. ‘Well, because I saw her with Albert Cann’s son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Albert’s son. Reggie Cann. I saw them together yesterday at a café in Bideford.’

  There was a stunned silence from Geoffrey before he asked, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I was so surprised that I didn’t say anything. Just walked away before they saw me.’

  ‘That’s not . . .’ Geoffrey said. ‘I can’t . . . Why would she . . . ?’ He kept stopping, like a car turning over in cold weather but never quite catching.

  ‘I don’t know, Geoffrey,’ said Felix. ‘But I have to say, it just felt . . . I just felt as if I’d been . . . well, set up.’

  ‘Set up? What do you mean, set up ?’

  ‘I mean Amanda handed Albert Cann the mask. At the time, of course, I thought it was an accident, but now I’m not so sure.’

  Geoffrey muttered something that Felix couldn’t quite hear, but which could easily have been an expletive. He sounded shaken to his core.

  ‘I assume she was properly vetted,’ Felix ventured.

  ‘Of course! Elspeth checked Amanda out. Just like you. Elspeth’s my most experienced and conscientious volunteer. She’d never have approved Amanda unless her motives were absolutely beyond reproach. I believe she lost her grandmother quite recently . . . ?’

  ‘That’s what she told me,’ agreed Felix. ‘And obviously I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I just don’t understand why she would be meeting Reggie Cann.’

  ‘Neither do I!’ said Geoffrey angrily. ‘Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. What was she thinking? The stupid, stupid girl!’

  ‘I’m concerned that Charles Cann might be in danger too.’

  ‘Why would he be in danger?’

  Felix hesitated. Geoffrey had been so scathing about Amanda’s contact with the family that he had no desire to share the fact that he himself had been back to the house.

  ‘Well,’ he said carefully, ‘if Albert’s death was not an accident then somebody wanted him dead. And that somebody might want Charles Cann dead too.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said Geoffrey. ‘If somebody wanted Albert dead, then that’s what they’ve achieved. In fact, if somebody killed Albert, then they saved the old man’s life to do it. So I don’t see how he’s in any danger now.’

  Felix nodded down the phone silently. Geoffrey’s logic was unimpeachable, but he didn’t have all the facts at his fingertips. Felix didn’t either, but he had more facts than Geoffrey did, and couldn’t shake that uneasy feeling in his gut.

  ‘Nonetheless, Skipper Cann is only alive because we messed things up,’ he said, ‘and Albert is dead for the same reason. So I feel that it’s up to us to uncover the truth.’

  ‘Well, I don’t!’ Geoffrey said – and then he sighed deeply. ‘Trying to uncover the truth would only expose you, John – and if it exposes you, it exposes all of us. In an ideal world you’d be right. But this is not an ideal world and I think we just have to accept that we may never know what went wrong, and move on. Better for you and better for the Exiteers, to be absolutely frank.’

  ‘It doesn’t sit well with me, Geoffrey.’

  ‘It doesn’t sit well with me either.’

  ‘Geoffrey, I . . . I’m not sure I can do this any more.’

  ‘But you have to!’ said Geoffrey. ‘People need us. Obviously I’m no good to them in a hands-on capacity, stuck in this bloody chair, so what I’m really saying is, people need you. What good does it do those people if you go to jail? What good does it do those poor men and women who are going through such torture that they’d rather take their own lives than spend another day with their friends and families? If your search for the truth ended up with your arrest, it would only hurt the very people we’re trying to help.’

  ‘But I killed the wrong man!’

  ‘And never will again because of it!’

  Felix hesitated, then murmured, ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Geoffrey, and Felix could hear the relief in his voice. ‘Now we need to put all this unpleasantness behind us and remember we’re doing very important work. Will you do that for me, John?’

  ‘I will,’ said Felix.

  But he didn’t.

  As soon as he’d put the phone down on Geoffrey, Felix unfolded the list of names he’d taken from his house and called the first of them.

  Connor didn’t answer.

  Felix was relieved – then immediately apprehensive again. He’d barely started. The next name down was Rupert. A man answered after the first ring.

  ‘Good afternoon, Rupert?’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘My name is John. I’m calling from the Exiteers—’

  There was a short silence, then a mysterious clattering sound, and the line went dead. Felix frowned at the handset. Either Rupert had fallen down some stairs, or he didn’t want to talk to him. Almost certainly the latter. Felix thought it very rude – whatever Geoffrey had told them about being wary of strangers asking about their work.

  Rupert’s rudeness only stiffened Felix’s resolve and he called the next name on the list with barely a pause. A woman answered.

  ‘Delia?’ he said.

  ‘Geoffrey?’

  ‘No, this is John.’ Felix spoke fast. ‘Please don’t hang up. I know Geoffrey told us not to speak to anyone but him about the Exit­eers, but I’m an Exiteer and I really need to speak to you.’

  Delia said nothing but didn’t hang up, so Felix ploughed on. ‘This is an odd question, Delia, but when you’ve been on a case, have you ever had anything go wrong?’

 
‘Wrong?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He didn’t want to say how wrong. Not right up front. ‘Anybody who . . . I don’t know . . . Anything out of the ­ordinary? At all?’

  ‘I don’t think I know what you’re talking about,’ Delia said warily.

  Felix sighed deeply. ‘I do apologize,’ he said. ‘I know this is an unsettling call to receive out of the blue, but I find myself in a very strange situation and I just wanted to ask other Exiteers whether they had had any similar experiences and, if so, what they might have done about it.’

  ‘Well, that depends on what’s happened, doesn’t it? And whatever it is, it’s certainly not something I want to discuss over the phone. Where are you?’

  ‘Devon.’

  ‘I’m in Bath,’ she said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said.

  ‘Can you meet me halfway?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Gordano services on the M5. In the coffee shop.’

  ‘When?’ said Felix.

  ‘Wednesday?’ she said. ‘Two o’clock?’

  ‘Two o’clock,’ he said. ‘I’m tall with grey hair.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said.

  ‘Goodbye then.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Felix hung up the phone and adrenaline squirted him out of his chair. He paced up and down the hallway. He’d disobeyed orders. Geoffrey had told him to leave it and he’d said that he would, but he hadn’t. He felt terribly disloyal and anxious.

  And a little bit excited.

  He’d just arranged an assignation in some truckers’ caff with a co-conspirator. Like spies under a town-hall clock! It was heady stuff. He couldn’t stand still, and limped aimlessly from room to room until he noticed that it had started to rain, whereupon he filled a bucket with hot soapy water and went out to the driveway to wash the car so that the rain would rinse the suds away for free.

  When he’d finished, he went inside to find Mabel cowering in the corner of the kitchen, but didn’t understand why until half an hour later when he carried his fish fingers and tea on a tray into the front room and found Buttons reclining on the sofa like Nero.

  Felix set down the tray and picked up the cat.

  It dug its claws into him so hard that he dared not even try to shake it off, for fear it would peel his arm right through his jumper. It was all he could do to stagger through the house, fumble the back door open, flick his arm and shout, Out!

  Buttons hit the ground without a sound, twisted around and jumped lithely on to the kitchen table. Mabel cringed behind Felix’s legs, while he glared at Buttons nervously. Then he remembered his dinner was getting cold.

  He left the back door open, edged past the table with the scuttling Mabel, shut the kitchen door firmly and returned to the lounge.

  But he barely saw Countdown or tasted his fish fingers, so jumpy was he that the cat would suddenly appear in the doorway.

  Somehow in boots, and with a rapier.

  The Ex

  ‘Got the toxicology results on Albert Cann,’ said DCI King.

  Calvin looked up. He was two-thirds of the way through the Exiteer files and was bored to tears. For once, he welcomed a chat about death.

  ‘There was Oxycodone in his system,’ King said. ‘Not prescribed by his doctor.’

  Calvin and Pete exchanged frowns. Oxycodone was a hardcore opioid.

  ‘Does the old man take it?’ said Pete.

  King shook her head. ‘Nope, only morphine.’

  ‘Is it what killed Albert?’ asked Pete.

  ‘No, the nitrous oxide did that. But the fact that he had it in his system at all concerns me. Oxy would certainly have made him drowsy and disorientated.’

  ‘Hayley Pitt said Albert was a big drinker and smoker,’ said C­alvin. ‘Maybe he had other addiction issues.’

  ‘I wondered that, but I called Reggie and he said not.’ King took a jar of olives from her top desk drawer and dug one out with a gallstone scoop she kept for the purpose. ‘Any luck with the dentist, Pete?’

  ‘Still trying,’ Pete sighed. ‘The British Dental Association has nine hundred dentists called Williams on their books.’

  King sighed and put her olives away. ‘Black suits all round on Wednesday for the funeral.’

  Calvin frowned. ‘I don’t have a black suit.’

  ‘That one’ll have to do,’ King said. ‘Got a black tie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get one. It won’t be wasted. Not in this job.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  It was lunchtime so Calvin decided to go and get one now, but buying a black tie in Bideford High Street was harder than he’d thought it would be. Very few of the shops sold anything real any more. There was the bookshop, the newsagent’s and a bunch of charity shops. Finally he bought a tie from Barnardo’s for the princely sum of forty pence.

  Then he popped into the bookies in the hope that Rumbaba had been declared a non-runner. Dennis Matthews would still lose his £500, but at least it wouldn’t be his fault.

  He nodded at Shifty on the step. Inside, Old Greybeard was already at the wall reading the Racing Post. She made space for him, but the only mention of Rumbaba Calvin could see was a brief quote from the trainer who assessed the colt’s chances in buoyant terms. If he comes round the Corner, he’s got a great shot.

  Calvin shook his head. If he comes round the Corner? The Corner at the foot of a steep hill and on a bad camber? The Corner that a three-year-old horse had to be perfectly balanced, bold beyond its years, and insanely lucky to navigate? For God’s sake – Tattenham Corner was the bloody Derby! Horses that swept around it with ease were the only ones with a fighting chance at the business end of the race.

  The trainer of the favourite said the horse was ‘as balanced a colt as I’ve ever seen’ and the owner of the Dewhurst winner said he’d told every lad in the yard to stake a week’s wages on their charge. Yet here was Rumbaba’s trainer with nothing. No revelation that he’d worked the horse down hills all winter. No strategy to keep him out of trouble. No reassurances that the colt was mentally prepared for the most challenging flat race in the world.

  Just a big fat IF. Like some miserable punter.

  ‘. . . zavool,’ muttered Old Greybeard.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Calvin, and she poked the report with a long ­yellow fingernail and repeated, ‘Man’s a fool. Tattenham Corner is the bloody Derby!’

  ‘Exactly,’ Calvin said. ‘I’ve got that at twenties.’

  Old Greybeard ran a finger across Rumbaba’s form and made a noise between a huff and a snort.

  ‘What’s your tip then?’

  ‘Don’t tip no more,’ she grumbled. ‘Not since some fool put silly money on a horse I give him.’

  Calvin raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘What’s silly money?’ He’d seen Old Greybeard’s betting slips. She probably thought silly money was a pound on the nose.

  But she didn’t answer his question. Instead she glared at him. ‘Have the courage of your own convictions, bay. Make your own mistakes. Anything else is just ego and ignorance.’

  Calvin shifted uncomfortably. Ego and ignorance. Did she know about him and Dennis Matthews?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she muttered, ‘you’ll still get poor without me.’ And she shuffled back to her seat.

  Before Calvin could decide what to do next, the door opened and Reggie Cann came in.

  They looked at each other in surprise.

  Reggie had a black eye, a red nose and a split lip.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Reggie touched his nose self-consciously. ‘Had a bump in the car.’

  ‘Everyone all right?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Reggie. ‘Just me, the car and a lamp post. I wasn’t paying attention. Suppose I was distracted by everything that’s going on . . .’

>   ‘Understandable,’ Calvin nodded, but he wondered what the hell Reggie Cann was doing here, looking as jittery as hell.

  As if he’d read his mind, Reggie jabbed a thumb at the door behind him. ‘I only came in to dodge my ex. We broke up. I told her it’s over but she can’t let it go. Keeps calling me. Turned into a bit of a nut, you know?’

  Calvin did know. Shirley had turned into a bit of a nut too, after he’d told her they weren’t getting married. Admittedly, she had been right in the middle of finalizing the wedding invitations, but a week later she’d come to the station to try to embarrass him with a box of porn he’d left in her flat. Calvin had had to set Tony Coral on her: he could bore the pants on to any woman.

  Even now, if she spotted Calvin from any distance, Shirley made a point of glowering at him. And if she were with somebody else, she’d turn to them and say something, and then that person would glower at him too, which made him feel like a bad person – which he knew he wasn’t – so if he ever spotted Shirley before she spotted him, he always just hid.

  Which was exactly what Reggie Cann was doing right now, so Calvin felt joined to him in a sort of brotherhood of avoidance and denial.

  ‘Well, these things take time,’ he said sagely, as if he were wise to the ways of women.

  ‘Because women don’t like to come into the bookies, do they?’

  Calvin glanced over at Old Greybeard. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they don’t.’

  There was an awkward little silence.

  ‘Any progress with the case?’ asked Reggie.

  ‘If you give DCI King a call, she’ll be able to update you,’ said Calvin.

  ‘Sure,’ said Reggie. ‘Of course. Thanks.’

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks.’ Reggie pushed open the door and leaned off the step.

  ‘Who you looking for?’ said Shifty.

  ‘My girlfriend,’ said Reggie.

  Shifty peered off the step helpfully. ‘What she look like?’