Thief Taker

by Alan Scholefield

  Click…click…

  “And the money. I mean costs are just shooting up. Take the copier. That’s another thing. Everybody uses the photocopier for private business. They all copy their football coupons. I was sent here to save money. I’m not having it!”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sit down, George.”

  Macrae sat.

  “Anyway, what I wanted to say to you — ”

  At that moment Les Wilson burst into the room. “Excuse me, Kenneth,” he said. “But something’s come up!”

  Scales rose instantly. “What, Les?”

  “It’s about Sergeant Silver.” He turned to Macrae. “Ronald Arthur Purvis. I thought it was familiar. What’s Silver’s girlfriend’s name?”

  “Zoe.”

  “What’s all this?” Scales said.

  They ignored him.

  “Zoe!” Wilson said. “That’s right. And Purvis was — ”

  “Yes!” Macrae said. “He was the little shit who was put away for attempting to rape her. He’s the one that Silver beat…That’s how Silver met Zoe!”

  “Right!”

  “Will someone please explain?” Scales said, coming round his desk between the two men.

  Macrae said, “This bastard, Purvis, had her in a shed. Silver heard her screaming.”

  “Jesus!” Wilson said. “He’s been released.”

  “What’s the problem?” Scales said.

  Wilson filled him in. Scales grew suddenly grave. This was the sharp end.

  Macrae was remembering Silver telling him about the envelope with BOLTOP printed on it that had been addressed to Zoe.

  Would he?

  Some of them did.

  Best make sure.

  Macrae said, “Excuse me.”

  He went to the front desk, gave the sergeant the message sheet and said, “Get bold of this bird’s parole officer. Find out where he’s living.”

  Scales and Wilson followed. Scales said, “I think you should get hold of his parole officer. Find out where he lives and — ”

  Macrae ignored him and went into his own office and closed the door. He picked up his phone and dialled an internal number. “Eddie?”

  “Yes, guv’nor.”

  “Come round as quick as you can.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  “Heigh-Ho, Silver!” Zoe said from the passenger seat of the Golf as they went skimming down the M4 towards the West Country. “This has got to be better than working.” She put her hand on Leo’s thigh and began to stroke it.

  “Don’t touch me there unless you kiss me first,” he said. “You know, I don’t mind now about splitting the holiday. In fact I rather go for it. Two holidays are better than one.”

  “Are you watching for the turn-off?”

  “Naturally. The Chippenham exit. Should be coming up in a couple of miles.” She paused and said, “Leo?”

  “I hear you.”

  “You’re not going to be fishing all the time, are you?”

  “Why not? What else is there to do?”

  “You sod.”

  They turned off the M4 and travelled north for twenty minutes. “There’s the sign,” she said. “Lympton. Eight miles.”

  “Never been here before.”

  She looked at the deserted countryside and said, “Nor has anyone else.”

  “Eddie Twyford would hate it. He hates the country.”

  The sun was pale behind a layer of cloud and there was a slight film of rain on the windscreen.

  “Can you fish in rain?” Zoe said.

  “All the best fishermen do.”

  “Oh.”

  They reached Lympton and Silver slowed down. It was not a picturesque village and would not have appeared in any guide books. It straggled crookedly between dull fields of cereals. There was no redeeming feature: no spire, no manor house, just a collection of buildings in which people either worked or lived or farmed. Puddles of brown water dotted the roadside. Notices said “Mud on the Road”, there was a great deal of cowdung and a ripe agricultural smell.

  “Mmmmm,” Zoe said, taking a deep breath. “Love that country air!”

  Leo ignored her. “That’s just what I was hoping for,” he said, pointing at a narrow brick house with a little blue sign outside it which said, simply, “Police”.

  “The thin blue line,” Zoe said.

  “A country copper. The most dependable bloke in the world. You remember those old Ealing movies? These blokes were always riding around on bicycles keeping the peace and doffing their helmets. Nothing like them. Old England to the letter. I won’t be long.”

  Silver walked up the short front path. There was no garden, the small lawn was rank. The bell did not work. He knocked on the half-open door but there was no reply.

  “Anyone at home?”

  He pushed the door and went in. The small living room was to his right. He put his head in. Two easy chairs covered, in what looked like mock tiger skin, faced a large, shiny television set. On a table beneath the window was the remains of breakfast.

  The sound of voices was coming from the rear of the house and he walked through into a kitchen warmed by a small range. The kitchen window overlooked a larger piece of unkempt grass at the back where a man and a woman seemed to be doing a kind of dance. Then Silver saw that they were holding something between them. It was an oval mirror in a gilt frame.

  Each was struggling to take it away from the other and the woman was shouting: “You bastard! You bastard! It’s mine! It’s mine!”

  Over and over.

  This scene was being watched by a second woman who stood some distance away looking on passively.

  Silver had only been watching for a few seconds when the struggling woman tripped, fell, and brought the mirror on to the ground with a crash. The frame broke. Bits of glass fell into the long grass. She rose on to her knees, stared at it, then before the man could react, she picked up a large rock and ran across the yard.

  “Beth!” the man shouted. “Don’t you bloody dare!”

  She ran towards a white Ford parked in the drive. He tried to block her way. She swung the rock at him. He leaped backwards.

  “I’m telling you, Beth, I’ll — ”

  In two strides she was at the car and had brought the stone down on the windscreen. It crazed and a hole appeared over the steering-wheel.

  “Beth! You bloody bitch!”

  The other woman had not moved an inch.

  Beth dropped the stone and ran up the back stairs of the house. She saw Silver in the kitchen.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  She was in her late thirties or early forties, he thought, with a square face that might once have been handsome, framed by unsuitable ringlets of hair. Her eyes were red from weeping.

  Silver opened his mouth to tell her and she said, “Are you with Evie?”

  “No. No I’m not.”

  “God damn her!”

  She turned and walked out of the front door. Silver went after her. “I’m from London. The Metropolitan Police. I wanted to see — ”

  “My husband. Sergeant Christie. God rot him!”

  She went out of the gate, turned into the road and was lost to sight.

  Silver went back into the house. “What do you want?” the man said.

  Silver identified himself and began to wish Macrae had been with him. Christie was big, bald, and had a kind of sandy quality. The other woman was with him. She was much younger than his wife and pretty in a kind of blousy, bucolic way. Her dark hair was cut in a bang and her breasts were her main feature. They reminded Silver of the second Mrs Macrae.

  “You all right, darl?” Christie said to the woman.

  She looked past him and smiled at Silver. The smile said, “See? I’ve won.”

  Christie said, “Christ Almighty! You can never tell with women. And that’s the truth.”

  He went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of ginger wine and two glasses. “Need something after that.”

&nb
sp; Silver tried to stop him but it was too late. “Here’s to crime,” Christie said. “What can I do for you?” He glanced over at Evie. “Is this confidential?” he said to Silver.

  “No. Not really. “It’s about Chris Nihill. I want to talk to him.”

  “Chris who?”

  “Nihill.”

  “Here?”

  “Is there another Lympton in Wiltshire? Upper Lympton or Lower Lympton?”

  He shook his head. “Only this one.”

  “Well, that’s the name we were — ” A voice inside his skull said, “No, it wasn’t. Nobody had said his name was Nihill.” He tried to recall, as clearly as he could, what Rachel had said. “I know he’s a carpenter,” he said. “Part gypsy.”

  “Mitchell. There’s a Chris Mitchell. He’s a carpenter. The last time I saw him was just before he left for a job near London. That was, oh, months ago. Joinery business, I think.”

  “And horses. He knows about horses.”

  “I’m told he was here the other day with a horse.” He turned to Evie. “That’s right, isn’t it, darl?”

  She smiled again at Leo and this was taken by Christie to mean assent.

  “That’s what they do best. Trade horses.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Well…you know these people. Typical. He’s a wanderer. But unlike most of them he’s not very bright.”

  “How do I find them?”

  Christie rolled himself a cigarette, lit it and then said, “Go straight on through the village. Take the left fork. There’s a big stand of trees. Beeches. Ash. You’ll find them there. The whole bloody tribe of them.”

  Silver thanked him and rose.

  Christie said, “Don’t often get London coppers down here. Never had one — not to my knowledge.” Then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, “What did you want to see him about?”

  “Just want him to corroborate a statement.”

  “If there’s anything I should know about I want to know. This is my patch.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean I don’t want…” His mood had changed to one of veiled belligerence. “I don’t want people coming here and telling me how to do my job.”

  “Never dream of it.”

  Silver said his goodbyes. Christie frowned at him. Evie smiled. He wondered if she ever spoke.

  At the car he held up a hand to Zoe. “Don’t ask. I’ll tell you later.”

  He drove through the village and took the left fork. As Christie had said there was a stand of trees. Among the trees was a group of mobile homes on concrete plinths. In a field nearby there were half a dozen horses.

  Silver turned off the road on to a track and drove into the trees. A man in the field schooling a horse was the only human being he could see. Then, as though conjured up by magic, figures began to appear through the trees. They were mostly men, but some women, arms folded, stood a little distance away and watched.

  There were half a dozen men, dressed similarly in what looked like the trousers and waistcoats of old suits. Most wore hats. One man carried a shotgun. They came up to the car and surrounded it.

  “Woops,” Zoe said.

  Silver got out and identified himself. The hostility instantly increased. He felt he had suddenly entered a foreign country. It had begun with Christie. But at least he was recognisable. These men, with their swarthy faces, did not seem to be part of the English countryside on a spring day.

  One of the men, big and barrel-chested, asked him what he wanted.

  To see Chris Mitchell if he’s here,” he said.

  “For what?”

  Suddenly Silver thought: how would Macrae deal with a situation like this?

  The one thing he wouldn’t do was let them scare him.

  “Are you the boss?” Silver said.

  “What d’you mean, the boss?”

  “You understand English, don’t you?” There was the faintest ripple of reaction. “I mean, you’re the one who’s doing the talking, that’s why I asked. I want to talk to Chris Mitchell if he’s here.”

  “You better take him to Maggie,” one of the men said.

  The barrel-chested man stared at Silver and Silver stared back at him. Then he said, “Come with me.”

  Zoe leapt quickly from the car. “I’m coming too.”

  The three of them walked across a patch of grass littered with pieces of old cars and stopped before the largest of the mobile homes. A few pots near the door were filled with plastic flowers. In the window was a large bird cage in which there was a pair of budgerigars.

  “You wait here,” the man said.

  A few minutes later he came out and motioned them to enter.

  A woman in her late sixties or early seventies, with hennaed hair piled high on her head, dangling earrings and a face that once might have been beautiful, sat in an easy chair smoking a long cigar and reading the paper.

  “What you want to know about my grandson, Chris?” she said.

  Silver absorbed his surroundings. The place was filled with knick-knacks. Outside, the group of men had formed up under one of the windows.

  “What you want with Chris?” she repeated. “If you come about that horse, he got it honest. For work done.”

  “I didn’t come about the horse,” Silver said and began to understand the basis of the hostility.

  “What then?”

  “I wanted to talk to him about the woman he was with. Rachel Nihill.”

  “What about her?”

  “We’re making some inquiries, that’s all.”

  “What’s Chris got to do with them?”

  She fixed him with a pair of black beady eyes and Silver wondered if she carried a knife. In books and movies gypsy women always carried knives.

  “I can assure you, Mrs…Mitchell, is it? I can assure you that we don’t think Chris has done anything wrong. All I want to do is ask him a few questions.”

  She seemed to relax.

  “Did he mention her to you?”

  She nodded. “Said she was mad as a March hare.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Wouldn’t give him his conjugals. Oh, I know they wasn’t married. But if you lives together the man has expectations. I know. I lived with four. I’ve eight sons and three daughters. And twenty-seven…no, I lie. Twenty-eight grandchildren.” She waved an arm at the group outside. “Most of those are mine. You can’t tell me about conjugals.”

  “He told you this?” Silver was surprised.

  “Not him. He wouldn’t like to shock me. No, his brother did. But he told me about the asthma. And how wild she got. Painting and painting.”

  “The red rabbit.”

  “That’s it. Rabbits. Chris couldn’t put up with that for long.

  He’s a good boy but he’s a man, if you knows what I mean. A man expects his conjugals.”

  Silver thought he heard Zoe snort behind him.

  The woman pulled on her cigar. “He done her caravan up and they lives together in every other way. He told his brother she used to get undressed in front of him. Well, I mean that’s more than flesh and blood can stand. They lived together but not together, if you know what I mean. So finally they has a row and he takes the horse. His payment see. He was here for a few days then he went back to the caravan to get his tools.”

  “And now?”

  “He said he was going back to the joinery near London. That’s where you’ll find him.”

  She tapped on the window and the barrel-chested man put his head in the doorway. “They’re all right, Billy,” she said. “You can take them to their car now.”

  They drove slowly out of the encampment, slowly back through the village, slowly past the policeman’s house, and then Silver put his foot on the accelerator and they shot down towards the M4.

  After about five miles he pulled in at a lay-by. Zoe flung her arms around him. “Leopold Silver! You were magnificent!” A small white Mazda passed them but they didn’t notice it. It pulled on to a farm t
rack about a mile ahead of them and stopped out of sight behind a hedge.

  After a moment Silver untangled himself and said, “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “Wow. I thought they were going to lynch us.”

  “So did I.”

  “You’re my hero.”

  “There’s something all wrong with this thing.”

  “No conjugals, that’s what was wrong.”

  “That and a lot of other things. I’ve been unhappy about Rachel since we saw her. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then there was the second interview with her mother. Listen. Let me recap.”

  “You sound like a game-show host. Drive and recap. I’m getting hungry — and thirsty.”

  “OK.” He drove back on to the M4 and headed for the Severn Bridge.

  “Here’s a young woman who hated her parents. ‘Specially her father. Couldn’t wait to get to boarding school. Didn’t want to go home in the holidays. She starts off by being a beautiful child, ends up as a plain teenager with asthma. The moment she gets a chance, i.e. grows up and inherits some trust-fund money, she leaves home permanently. Goes to art school near London, meets a carpenter — probably the first male she’s ever dominated — falls in love, or something similar. Calls herself Rachel Nihill and lets us believe that the carpenter is called Nihill when his real name is Mitchell. Why?”

  “Unless she wanted people to think they were married.”

  “Why not call herself Mrs Mitchell then?”

  “You have me there. Unless it’s part of her wish to dominate him. She makes up a name and makes him adopt it.”

  “Maybe. The police sergeant said he wasn’t very bright.”

  “Go on.”

  “OK, they travel through the West Country with her getting undressed in front of him but the DO NOT TOUCH notices are all over her.”

  “No conjugals.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They fetch up in the Forest of Dean. They have a row about something.”

  “Maybe he didn’t like her paintings.”

  “He takes the horse called Nemo and comes back to Lympton.”

  “Leo — ”

  “Hang on. Nearly finished. So maybe he sells the horse to his grannie or one of his multitudinous relations. Goes back to the caravan to pick up his tools, says goodbye to Rachel Nihill-Healey and goes back to the joinery near London — where he worked before — leaving her with a caravan, lots of paintings and a dead kitten. That’s the story anyway. His disappearance worries me. The timing is just too convenient. Unless he’s on the run.”