The Lady of the Lake

by Peter Guttridge

  Goody mimed applause. ‘Well tracked, DS Heap. I laughed out loud when I read about that escape. The old methods remain the best.’ He saw their looks. ‘That chancer Ronnie Biggs, the least important of the Great Train Robbers, and three others, escaped from Wandsworth in the same way back in the sixties.’

  ‘Could you see Stephen Faber as a killer?’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe I’d be breaking any Marquis of Crimesbury rules to say he’s probably a fucking psychopath. He’s ex-military – not us, Bob, but he might as well have been.’

  ‘I thought before you said you wouldn’t be willing to break the rules,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I’ve reconsidered,’ Goody said. ‘Must be the benign influence of you people. Yeah, Faber has a temper on him. So, let me get this straight. Major Rabbitt, surveying his estate, stumbled on the money and nicked it before Faber could get to it.’

  ‘Actually, we think it was someone else who stumbled on it,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But if you’re anti-violence why would you have Faber in your team? Allegedly.’

  ‘Didn’t realize, did I, until it was too late? Although, actually, he behaved himself, aside from a bit of GBH on a stationary car.’ He saw their looks. ‘Long story. Allegedly. So how did they stumble on it?’

  ‘Very dry summer. The lake unusually low.’

  Goody nodded.

  ‘How many containers had money in them?’ Gilchrist saw Goody’s look. ‘Allegedly.’

  ‘Three. They were with a load of others.’ He looked at Watts. ‘I think the others had been used as support for some kind of Bailey bridge across a wide stream on that side of the lake.’

  ‘A temporary bridge,’ Watts explained to the others.

  ‘So Faber thinks, naturally enough, that Rabbitt, as owner of the lake, nicked our money and kills him in the course of interrogation. Throat slit, I heard.’

  ‘How did you hear that?’ Gilchrist said.

  Goody raised his eyes. ‘I told you. These walls are porous. And crime gangs are putting their own guys into prisons as warders these days.’

  ‘You’re saying that some of the warders here are actually criminals?’ Heap said.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying that,’ Goody said. ‘But it only takes one. So who do you think took the money? That kid in Brighton that got beaten to death?’

  Gilchrist gave a little nod. ‘But he didn’t have it either. He’d sent it to the Bank of England.’

  Goody thought for a moment. ‘But would Faber know that? Is he after someone else?’

  ‘You kept saying Rabbitt owned the lake. He doesn’t. It belongs to Ms Nimue Grace.’

  Goody looked at Watts. ‘You need to get hold of some of those guys in Henfield because, if Faber is still looking for the money, he’s coming for her next.’

  SIXTEEN

  Nimue Grace watched a big, bulky man walk up her garden towards her home. He wasn’t trying to hide. He was quite up front about it, in fact. He didn’t look like a journalist, he looked more like someone who was ex-military.

  His gaze swept from side to side as he came. He saw her watching him through a gap in the curtain at a small window but didn’t respond until he got within twenty yards. Then he stopped and gave a little wave. She didn’t respond; just kept looking at him.

  ‘I’m a security expert,’ he called. Grace didn’t catch the name he gave.

  She opened the window a little. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To protect you.’

  ‘Well, you’re a dollar short and a day late if you want to do that,’ Grace said.

  ‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

  ‘Someone thinks my life is in danger?’

  ‘The police do. They called me as a matter of urgency. I have some friends in the same line of business coming over soon to put a ring of steel round you that nothing will penetrate. Check with DI Gilchrist and DS Heap, if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I can’t – my power is down. The phone is dead. The internet too.’

  ‘What about your mobile?’

  ‘Getting a signal here is really iffy.’

  ‘Bummer. When did your power go down?’

  ‘Ten, fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘Then we don’t have much time,’ the man said, resuming his walk towards the house. ‘He must be here already.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who might be a threat to your life.’ He had reached the window.

  ‘But why would anyone want to kill me?’

  ‘We think he’s after something that belongs to him and you know where it is.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  ‘That’s above my pay grade. If you’d let me in I’d be able to do my job a lot better.’

  ‘Of course,’ Grace said. ‘But, first, I didn’t catch your name and, second—’ she paused to point at his trousers – ‘what is it with the military and ex-military and red trousers?’

  The man smiled for a moment. ‘I can’t speak for the trouser colour, except to say I like it. I’ve got half a dozen more of these. And my name is Jimmy Tingley.’

  Grace gave him a little smile, then dropped the curtain closed. The man stood there, unsure what to do, until he heard movement to his left and a male voice saying: ‘That’s funny. I thought I was Jimmy Tingley.’

  Jimmy Tingley was expecting a fight but Stephen Faber just looked at him and the half dozen hard men from Henfield who were in a semicircle around him. Faber dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged. The back door of the house opened and Sarah Gilchrist and Bellamy Heap stepped out to arrest him.

  In the house, Bob Watts sat with Nimue Grace at the kitchen table. ‘It’s over,’ Watts said.

  ‘Thank you for all you’ve done. Keeping the story out of the papers at least for a day or two. Advising me on suing the force for leaking my private information. And now, bringing your former colleagues to my aid.’

  ‘Sarah and Bellamy are not to blame for the tabloids getting on to you.’

  ‘Of course they are. If they’d been more careful with what I told them, nobody would be any the wiser.’

  Watts shook his head. ‘They were leading a murder investigation so anything you told them which might be relevant – and the things you told them seemed very relevant to the identity of a potential murderer – needed to be noted. Then, they were obliged to share this information with another officer. He is most likely to have been the police source for the tabloids.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have trusted him, then, should they?’

  ‘They didn’t, but they had no choice. They have done their utmost to protect you in every way. And Bellamy may well lose his stripes or face suspension for exacting his own justice on the man who betrayed you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was so angered that you had been betrayed – and he and Gilchrist do feel responsible, even though they shouldn’t – that he confronted the detective sergeant who had sold your information to the tabloids and taught him a lesson.’

  ‘You mean little Bellamy Heap beat him up?’

  ‘Little Bellamy Heap is not unlike my friend, Jimmy Tingley, in that regard. There is much more to him than meets the eye. But, yes, that’s what I mean. Quite what the chief constable will do about that I don’t know.’

  ‘My Sir Galahad,’ Grace murmured.

  ‘Pardon?’ Watts said.

  Grace shook her head. ‘What will happen to the man who did sell my information?’

  ‘The way things can work in the police service he may just get a slap on the wrist. And, knowing the Neanderthal he is, I doubt he will learn the lesson Bellamy taught him. But if I have any say he will be disgracefully discharged from the service.’

  ‘And this man Faber?’

  ‘A ruthless, violent man. He escaped from Wandsworth prison a week before the murder of Richard Rabbitt. Came for the money that he knew was stashed in your lake.’

  ‘He killed Rabbitt, Antonio and Joe Jackson?’

  ‘The firs
t two probably. The third maybe not. The whip marks on Joe’s face suggest a different culprit. But that’s what Sarah and Bellamy will be up to next, ascertaining that.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘Although, as you can see, I often blur the lines, my brief is not operational so, no, I won’t be doing any of that.’

  ‘You blur the lines. You’re not as square as you appear, are you?’

  ‘It’s been my observation, Nimue, that people who appear square rarely are whereas those who try hard to be – what’s the opposite? – hip, although that used to be hep, often turn out to be pretty conventional and old-fashioned. Anyway, I like jazz very much.’

  ‘Me too. But that doesn’t mean either of us are hip.’

  Watts smiled. ‘Jazzers came up with the term square in the 1940s to describe anyone who didn’t like jazz. They equated it to boring old classical conductors rigidly wielding their baton to make a square shape when an orchestra was playing a conventional four beat rhythm.

  ‘But back in the old days – the thirteenth century – square was a good thing. It comes from old French esquire and means someone who is honest and upstanding. That meaning carried on – it gets into phrases like fair and square and a square deal – until the jazzers came along and turned it into something pejorative.’

  ‘Is this Encyclopaedia Britannica stuff what I’m going to have to listen to when we go out to dinner?’ Grace said.

  ‘Are we going out to dinner?’ Watts said.

  ‘Well, I bloomin’ well hope so,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t be for a few weeks, I’m sorry to say. Jimmy Tingley and I have to take a little trip.’

  Grace tilted her head. ‘More blurring of the lines?’

  ‘A couple of things to sort out in Morocco and then on to Canada.’

  Grace’s eyes widened. ‘Said Farzi is in Morocco, I understand. What’s the other thing?’

  ‘A low-life pretending to be a man who needs to be taught a lesson.’

  Grace gave an odd little smile and Watts noticed her eyes fill with tears. ‘Two more knights errant. Is there something in the air round here?’

  ‘There are a lot of decent men in the world, Nimue – I’m talking about Tingley and Heap, not myself – though I admit you sometimes have to sift through a lot of dross to find them. But, actually, for Said Farzi, we’re going a bit mob-handed.’ He gestured out of the window. ‘Those boys out there are bored stiff living off their army pensions in Henfield. There are only so many clay pigeons you can shoot down in a week.’

  ‘What are you going to do to the other one?’

  ‘Whatever seems an appropriate response to his behaviour. Unless you have a view.’

  Grace shook her head and looked down. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  Stephen Faber did a deal. He agreed to name all the men involved in the Hassocks blockade in return for a reduced sentence and the reduced charges of manslaughter. Gilchrist and Heap were fine about the first but insisted to Chief Constable Hewitt they questioned him first to see if they could figure out whether the two, possibly three, killings were murder or manslaughter.

  When they went into the interview room they saw a man who was all angles. Big, thick angles. Big but sharp nose; broad but sharp shoulders; big but sharp knuckled hands. He spread his hands when he said: ‘Ask me what you want. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘You killed Antonio Urraca first. Then Richard Rabbitt. Then Joe Jackson.’

  ‘I only recognize one of those names.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Richard Rabbitt.’

  ‘How do you know that name?’ Heap said.

  ‘It was on a leaflet in Plumpton post office for a magic lantern slide show in the village hall. Whatever a magic lantern show is. It described him as owner of Plumpton Down House and Estate.’

  ‘So you came looking for him.’

  ‘I came looking for the money we’d left in his lake.’

  ‘But first you killed Antonio Urraca.’

  ‘The man with the beard? That was an accident. Urraca was his name? I thought he was a foreigner, especially when he opened his gob. I’d come on him lurking in the wood and asked him if he was the owner of the lake. He was an arrogant bugger. Bit bolshie. Got my goat up, frankly. Anyway, wrong bird as to ownership. I asked him if he’d taken our money. He told me to ask somebody with a foreign-sounding name. Nim-something. I ran out of patience.’

  ‘So you killed him,’ Heap said.

  ‘No, no. To be strictly accurate, the sickle killed him. Bloody lethal weapon, that is. I had it held against his stomach and he suddenly tried to break away from me and the point punctured him and, as he twisted, started to rip his stomach. I thought I’d better finish the job to put him out of the misery he’d caused himself. It was assisted suicide, you might say.’

  ‘How long after that did Richard Rabbitt come along?’

  ‘Which one was he?’

  ‘The man with the dentures?’

  ‘Guy with the dentures!’ Faber laughed loudly and long. ‘That was so fucking weird. I was down by the lake washing off the sickle and I heard a car draw up and somebody get out. I see this bloke, looking a bit the worse for wear, weaving his way past the lake on the drive. I wondered if it might be, whatsisname, Rabbitt? I climb over the wire fencing and go onto the road. He sees me and asks what I’m doing. I says someone is injured and needs help in the wood.

  ‘He says: “a woman?” I go along with that. “Yeah,” I say. “Is she naked,” he says. I go with that too, though why he would think that I don’t know. “Starkers,” I say. So he follows me into the wood and when we get near to the island I point across to the other side to the white containers. “What?” he says. “Where is she?” “Those white containers,” I say. “You’ve had three of them. I want the contents.” Rabbitt squints and, ignoring what I just said, says: “I can’t see her. Where’s Nimue?” And I realize that’s the same name the foreign bloke was saying.

  ‘I persevere. “I want the contents of those three containers back. You’ve stolen them.” He looks at me and says: “You said Nimue had collapsed.” “Who the fuck is Nimue?” I say and I hit him in the Adam’s apple with the webbing between my thumb and my first finger. Not hard. Really, not hard. And this set of teeth comes out of his mouth and hits me in the chest. Fuck me, never seen that before.

  ‘Now this is where I hold my hand up because I persevere with the questions while he’s still choking. I thought he was trying it on. “You won’t tell me?” I says for the third time. He shakes his head more vigorously and I think he’s resisting. It’s only after I realize he’s saying he can’t speak. So my bad that I didn’t twig that and instead I got cross.’

  ‘You killed him.’

  ‘Well, again, kill is putting it a bit strong. I flipped him, sure, and put the sickle to his throat but that fucking sickle! It has a life of its own. He struggled, still gagging, the sickle cut into him.’ Faber shook his head. ‘Blood went everywhere. I was covered after I’d dumped Rabbitt in the water. Then this other man comes along in a tracksuit with Muscle Beach written across his pathetic chest. Real jerk. Whistles while he walks for fuck’s sake. I get out of the way and he strips off totally – which is not a good look for him – then shouts: “Here I come, Nimue,” and wades in. That name again. I steal his clothes, although I leave the woman’s knickers he’s wearing, dump my blood-soaked stuff and the sickle and take off.’

  ‘To Brighton to beat a young student to death.’

  ‘What? No. To find out who the fuck this Nimue is. Turns out she owns the lake. So I head her way.’

  ‘To kill her too,’ Heap says.

  ‘To get the fucking money!’

  Gilchrist and Heap came out of the interview room. ‘He didn’t know about Joe Jackson finding the money. So I think we can stay with our supposition that Joe’s death was down to Said Farzi’s man, Abbas, getting carried away when persuading Jackson to quit his flat.’

  Gilchrist’
s phone rang. Chief Constable Hewitt. Gilchrist smiled at Heap. ‘Good news, ma’am.’

  ‘We’re going to Morocco?’ Tingley said as he and Bob Watts headed towards Gatwick.

  ‘A bit of unofficial police work to do.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘The usual. Shut somebody up, then track someone else down.’

  ‘Shut somebody up permanently?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But we’re off the books?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Good job I’m retired or I’d be getting peeved at not getting paid for my work. So just to clarify, we’re not shutting up this person permanently?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Ouarzazate was a two-hour car journey through the Atlas Mountains from Casablanca airport. Watts found it exhilarating. Tingley sat beside him, occasionally sipping at a hip flask and more regularly glugging water.

  ‘You’ve been here before, I’m guessing, by your lack of interest in this landscape,’ Watts said.

  ‘Many times. Further up in the mountains. Some bad vibes.’

  ‘It’s the snow on the peaks with the hot desert below that impresses me.’ Tingley offered him the flask. Watts took a sip. ‘Nice.’

  ‘So you say this actor takes a punching bag with him wherever he goes.’

  ‘Yeah – sounds like a total idiot, right?’

  ‘A total dick, I think you’re too cultured to say. How was Graham?’

  ‘He was Graham. You ever thought of going to the Dark Side?’

  Tingley looked at him. ‘Are you kidding? I live on the Dark Side.’

  ‘Yes, but not robbing banks and all that.’

  ‘All that is trivial compared to what I do.’

  ‘In a good cause every time.’

  ‘So I tell myself. But I don’t think that’s going to save me.’

  The hotel was like a compound – high walls and, inside, blocks of red sandstone buildings in neat squares. There was a huge pool on a big terrace with a bar. In the corridors there was movie memorabilia dating back to the 1950s. Papier-mâché statues of pharaohs, a balsa wood Roman chariot, huge film posters of sword and sandal epics in many languages.