Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  Ruth frowned. “Three in the afternoon?” she asked.

  “No, in the morning,” Worley said. “I’m here when he’s here. I lock up after him, and I try to make sure I unlock before him, though he sometimes would start work during the middle of the night.”

  “Did you see him leave?” Ruth asked.

  “No,” Worley said. “As I said, I locked up. When I left, he’d gone. To his bed, I presume.”

  “Did he often stay late?” Mitchell asked.

  “Sometimes he would stay all night, sometimes he’d leave after a few hours. There was a lot of thinking in this job, you see, and he didn’t need to be here to do it. He had a farm, you know? He’d often go back there and take his work with him.”

  “And that was allowed?” Ruth asked.

  “Well, it’s hardly a state secret. That’s the point, don’t you see? A summary of each discovery is filed at the university. We want to share this information with the world, not hide it away where it might be lost again.”

  “How much was he paid?” Ruth asked.

  “A thousand pounds a year,” Mr Worley said. “As well as whatever supplies he wanted for his farm. That was mostly fertilizer and tools.”

  “Really?” Mitchell said. “And was he well liked?”

  “I liked him. He was a nice man. Diligent. Kind. Polite when he remembered to be.”

  “And what did everyone else think of him?”

  “There isn’t anyone else. As I say, anyone who can understand the work he did would be employed at it themselves. I have a secretary, and there are assistants who organise the filing, but I don’t think any of them really knew Dr Gupta. I wouldn’t say he had friends here, but he certainly had no enemies.”

  Mitchell picked up a piece of paper from the desk, and then another. He put them down. “What about ink and toner, is that made here?”

  “Ink? What type of ink?” Worley asked.

  “For banknotes. Do you supply the Mint?”

  “We do. That’s on site, somewhere. I’m not sure where.”

  “I see. Did Dr Gupta have a locker? Or a locked drawer?”

  “No.”

  “Anything that would require a key?”

  “I keep the lab locked when he’s out, but who would want to steal anything?”

  “And if he needed the lab unlocked when you weren’t here?” Ruth asked.

  “A guard would do that, or a secretary or an assistant. As I say, there aren’t any secrets in here.”

  “I see. That’s very helpful. Thank you for your time, Mr Worley,” Mitchell said.

  “Oh. Yes. Will you keep us informed?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t like this,” Mitchell said as the train rattled north, taking them towards the farm from which Dr Gupta’s letters had been sent.

  “Do you think Dr Gupta was involved in the counterfeiting?”

  “We’re meant to think he was involved, I’m sure of that. That alone makes me suspect he was innocent. We’ll inform his relatives because it’s what we should do, and it was what we are expected to do, but it’s a distraction. I doubt we’ll find anything at this farm other than grief. His death has been dangled in front of us, and that makes me wonder who’s holding the string.”

  “You mean the killer?”

  “Not precisely. Dr Gupta’s murder could have been committed by any hired thug. Similarly Turnbull could have been killed by almost anyone in uniform. But there is someone behind all of this, the person who sent us to that house. That’s who I want to find. Dr Gupta seems to be innocent, and unless we bring an end to this conspiracy, more innocents will die. I won’t stand for that. No, I won’t.”

  And the detective was silent for the rest of the journey.

  Away Farm was the largest that Ruth had ever seen and came complete with its own station. On the far side of the platform was a siding at which a string of cargo wagons was being loaded. She watched as a cart was drawn up next to a large metal hopper. The horses were unhitched and led away as a pair of labourers began emptying the cart into the rectangular metal bin. A few feet further along another cart was nearly empty.

  “Full!” a farmhand shouted. A rope was tugged, a pulley squeaked, chains rattled and the full hopper swung up and over the top of the nearest cargo wagon. There was a shouted back and forth of “Left a bit. Right a bit. Lower. Steady her. There.” The hopper was opened, and the potatoes tumbled down into the train car.

  “Let’s see if we can catch a ride,” Mitchell said, pointing to where the team of horses was being led to an already emptied cart.

  “We’re looking for Away Farm,” Mitchell said.

  “You’ve found it,” the driver replied. “It’s not good news is it? Police never come with good news. I can drive you to the house. Get on.”

  “You work there?” Ruth asked as the cart set off down a patched road.

  “We all do. Everything around here is part of the farm,” he said, waving a hand to indicate the fields either side of the road where dozens of people laboured.

  Mitchell gave an encouraging nod of his head that Ruth took to mean she should keep the man talking.

  “How many people work here?” she asked.

  “Technically, the station is run by the railway,” he said. “And there’s a few hundred casual labourers depending on the season. But we’ve got forty-three families living here, along with ninety-seven people on the government scheme. You know the one? You work as a hand for five years and then get the option of a place of your own. No one leaves here though. We just take on more land. Keep expanding, that’s the plan. Always has been.”

  “Well, how big is the farm?” Ruth asked.

  “Depends on how you measure it. There’s the fishing and the hunting, and there’s the dairy herd, though that’s more for ourselves than export. We’ve got some woodland that we’re starting to bring under the axe, but I suppose a townie like you is only interested in what you can eat. It’s over a thousand acres of arable and crops. Wheat and potatoes mostly, but we’ve also got some greens, and a bit of grazing. We feed ourselves, and about five thousand others.”

  “That’s five people per acre?” Mitchell asked. “That’s far higher than the national average.”

  “All told, it’s closer to six,” the driver said, “and we’re aiming for seven by next year’s harvest. Mechanical Mechanisation, that’s what Dr Gupta calls it. You see those markers?” He gestured towards a double row of poles, two feet apart that ran parallel to the road on the other side of a drainage ditch. “We’re putting in a miniature railway as soon as this harvest is done. We’ll get the food from the barns to the station without the need for so many horses. Less feed, you see. And that’s only the start. Dr Gupta thinks we can manage close to twenty people per acre. That’s his target.”

  “And who is Dr Gupta?” Mitchell asked.

  “He’s the brains behind the place. You won’t find him here today. He works in the city half the time, on account of we can’t keep up with him.”

  There was no envy or jealousy in the man’s voice, just pride. From what he’d said, it was justified. The national target was that a hundred acres of potatoes should feed four hundred people for a year. A hundred acres of wheat should feed a hundred. It was around these figures that the quotas were set. Chemical fertilizers helped. Animals could be grazed on land unsuitable for crops, and it was rare for a fishing boat to return without its nets laden. But the export of so much food aid, and the farming targets and rationing scheme that enabled it, were increasingly contentious. There was a saying: one for the farmer, one for the miner, one for the American, and one for everyone else.

  “Why are you here?” the man asked.

  “We’ve come to see the owner of the farm,” Mitchell replied.

  “Well, you’ll want Clementine or Richard, then. Richard will be in the stables. Clementine, you’ll find in the big house.” He nodded towards a gate that led up a drive towards a rambling mansion. “But I’ve got
to go back to the barn. Got to get those wagons filled, and then we make a start on the broccoli.”

  They jumped down from the cart and were halfway up the drive when there was a shout. The word ‘police’ echoed ahead of them until a woman came out of the mansion’s main door.

  She saw them, stopped, and stared as they approached. Her lips moved silently as her shoulders alternately slumped and stiffened.

  “Tell me,” she said, when they were still twenty feet away. Her expression was one of knowing dread, tinged with that impossible hope that for once two police officers had come with anything other than the worst possible news. “Just tell me.”

  “It’s Rahman Gupta,” Mitchell said. “I’m afraid that he’s dead.”

  The woman took the news like a physical blow, staggering back, and reaching for the ornate pillar by the side of the door for support. Her head shook, and she let out a pitiful wail that carried across the landscape.

  “And you’re his brother?” Mitchell asked the man who’d ran out from the barn at the sound of the woman’s cry. The four of them sat at a worn-smooth pine table in the kitchen of the big house.

  “Richard Point. His adoptive brother. Unofficially. We sort of adopted each other back during the first year. That winter. You remember it? Me, Rahman, Clemmy, and… and Jamie. She died. And now Rahman? This world of ours, it grinds away, doesn’t it?”

  “Rahman said he had a plan,” Clementine whispered. “He always had a plan. He didn’t plan for this.”

  “How did it happen?” Richard asked.

  “We’re still investigating,” Mitchell said. “Tell me about him.”

  “Rahman? Like Clemmy said, he had a plan,” Richard said. “That was during the winter. That first winter.” He looked over at Ruth. “You don’t know how lucky you are. Your generation complains about our food going overseas, but if you’d lived through the hunger you wouldn’t begrudge it. Your parents might tell you stories, but you weren’t there. You didn’t see the horror, smell the fear, taste the despair. Believe me, it was palpable. We had to queue for food, and it wasn’t much, and each day it got worse. You had to eat it before your bowl could be stolen from your hands.” He squinted at Mitchell as if trying to work out if he recognised him. Then he shook his head. “Rahman’s plan was simple. There was food in the camp, but not much else. There was no hope. No future. But there would be food out in the fields, growing wild. We left. We walked. We kept walking. He kept us walking until we reached here and only stopped because none of us could go any further. We lived on roots and berries and what animals we could trap. Compared to what we’d had in the camp, it was a feast. Then Rahman made us go back. He had a new plan, you see. That’s how it was with him. One plan after another, and he’d always plan a dozen steps ahead.”

  “He always had a plan,” Clementine sniffed.

  “We returned to the camp,” Richard continued, “and we got more people. Kids, just like us. The ones who’d die if they stayed. That’s how it all started, and it’s how it all grew. Rahman came up with a plan, and we followed it. He read anything and everything. He took old ideas and modern tools and came up with a way to make it all work. Then we needed fertilizer. That was, when? The third year? The fourth? By then, we were shipping food back to the city. He went with it, and went to the lab where they made the antibiotics. He told them how to make the fertilizer. So they did, and they offered him a job.”

  “He refused it,” Clementine said. “He wouldn’t work for them.”

  “But he was working for them now?” Mitchell asked.

  “Not really,” Richard said. “Technically he was a professor at the university conducting research who just happened to have a lab in the factory. That’s the arrangement they settled on. First he was an undergrad, then he was studying for a PhD, and then he was a professor. It was a conceit, really, and it amounted to the same thing, but he refused to work for anyone. It was… it’s complicated. Life wasn’t easy during those early years. You kicked a lot of people out of Twynham. Exile you called it. Where do you think they went? And here was us, a bunch of teenagers with a lot of food.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Mitchell said.

  “It wasn’t your fault, was it?” Richard said. “And we got help in the end. It all got sorted out. But now this.” He shook his head.

  “Do you know what he was working on?” Mitchell asked.

  “Increasing yields,” Clementine said. “That was what he was always working on. He got three tractors working this summer. On biodiesel. He doesn’t like coal. Too dangerous for the miners, and the health… risks… didn’t…” She stumbled to a halt.

  “He said if we really wanted to feed the world we’d need hydro and aquaponics,” Richard said. “Of course, we’d need a lot more electricity.”

  Mitchell glanced up at the bulb hanging from the ceiling. “I would have thought this was too far away from the power station to be on the grid.”

  “We’ve turbines, and a water mill,” Richard said. “And we’d plans for a biogas plant. Or Rahman did.”

  “And we still will,” Clementine said firmly. “His work won’t stop.”

  “But was there anything else, anything he was doing at the chemical works he might have talked about?”

  “Why do you ask?” Richard said.

  Mitchell looked from one farmer to the other. “Rahman was murdered,” he said.

  Clementine took a sharp breath.

  “Why?” Richard asked.

  “I don’t know. Did he have any enemies? Anyone you’ve sacked or—”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Richard said. “Some people do leave here. Not many. Most like the place too much to leave. They can see what we’re trying to do and want to be a part of it. There are a few who just don’t fit, but they probably wouldn’t have ever met Rahman.”

  Mitchell nodded. “One last thing. Do you know what these keys open?”

  “That’s the gun safe,” Richard said, pointing to one. “And that’s the ignition for a tractor. I don’t know about the other three.”

  Mitchell peeled off the key to the safe and the other to the tractor and laid them on the table. “We’ll let you know when you can collect his other possessions,” he said.

  “Do you think you’ll catch whoever did this?” Richard asked. “Honestly?”

  “I will try,” Mitchell said. “I can’t promise you more than that.”

  Mitchell quietly fumed until they were at the end of the mansion’s long drive.

  “We have done all that is expected of us. We have informed the family. We have been to Dr Gupta’s place of employment. We have established that there is a link between him and the counterfeiting by way of the ink. It’s a tenuous one, but what can we expect from someone who thought I wouldn’t notice that crime scene was staged? We have done what is expected of us, now it is time to do the unexpected.”

  “You said, earlier, that we are going to see Isaac,” Ruth said. “How can he help? From what you said, he’s just another criminal.”

  “Quite. He told me he would have news on Anderson today. But as to the rest you will have to wait until we get there.”

  Chapter 13

  Footage

  When they boarded the train, Ruth thought they would head back into town and to the old church where she’d first met Isaac. They didn’t. After about twenty minutes, Mitchell grabbed her arm just as there was a clunking thump of one carriage hitting another.

  “We’re getting off here,” he said as he pulled open the door to the slowing train. “Wait.”

  Saplings sprouting out of untamed undergrowth rushed by at what seemed an impossible speed.

  “Wait, until after the bridge,” Mitchell said. The train slowed, but not enough for Ruth’s comfort. There was a whistle. “Now!”

  She jumped, rolled as she landed, and slipped on a rotting stump, grazing her palm on a jagged road sign half buried in a patch of nettles. Silently cursing the sergeant, the train, and, belatedly, the killer re
sponsible for them being out in the middle of nowhere, she stood. As the train disappeared into the distance, the sound of its engine and rattling wheels was replaced by the living symphony of the forest surrounding her.

  “Did we have to jump?” she asked.

  “The alternative is telling anyone who might be following us precisely where we’re going.”

  “And where’s that? For that matter, where are we?”

  “Let’s see,” Mitchell said, brushing at his knees. “The farm is about fifteen miles to the north, maybe a mile or two to the west. That crashed plane where we found Anderson’s body is about twelve miles to the east. Twynham, or the centre of it, is another fifteen miles down those tracks. Maybe a little further, so we want to go about a mile west.” He looked up, down, and then along the impenetrable thicket blocking their way. “This isn’t quite where I told the driver we’d get off.” He looked north, and then south.

  “You told the driver?”

  “He wouldn’t have slowed the train if I hadn’t. But this is definitely not where I wanted to be.”

  “You’re lost?” Ruth asked.

  “Of course not,” Mitchell said. Ruth wasn’t sure she believed him. “This way,” he said and started walking along the tracks. After a hundred yards, he pointed to an animal track that cut through the undergrowth. Ruth tried to guess which creature had made it because it was something far larger than a fox.

  “Are there wild animals out here?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I mean dangerous ones.”

  “Possibly. But they’re mostly nocturnal.”

  The brief flash of relief vanished when she saw the sergeant’s shadow and realised how low the sun was on the horizon. But her trepidation was almost as quickly replaced with a sudden awareness of how hungry she was. They’d grabbed a baked potato from a stall at the station on their way out to the farm, but it had been a long time since breakfast.

  They reached the end of the track and joined an old road, crammed with abandoned cars. They were a familiar sight, but she’d never before seen so many in one place. She leaned forward, wiped her sleeve over a mud-encrusted windscreen, and jumped back. There were bodies inside, two in the front, two smaller ones in the back. Their mouths lolled open and receding skin exposed yellowing teeth set in mummified heads.