‘No, I most certainly cannot.’ His manner was suddenly querulous and he very upright in his chair. ‘I never met any of them, so I can’t tell you any more about it than that. Even if Barbara had actually mentioned a name, I would be very reluctant to disclose it. She may not have been telling me the truth. People don’t always, you know, even to their Doctors, he said, as if this were almost beyond belief, perhaps even bordering on a sin. ‘Maybe there’s an address book somewhere. You’ll have to look. I’m afraid I really can’t help you with that one. We didn’t know each other quite that well, you understand.’ He stood up, agitated. ‘Not apart from the amateur dramatics, that is. My wife and I didn’t socialise with them, of course. No.’
Marks was anxiously looking at his watch as he spoke, and suggested that they might like to come back later when he had more time.
Saxon rose to his feet and walked to the door, turned and said, ‘No, Dr Marks, next time you come to my office and talk to me. We’ll need a formal statement. I appreciate the information you’ve given us. We will talk again. I’m sure you’ll no doubt remember more as you give the subject further thought.’
Outside his surgery, an elderly man was waiting to see the doctor. He looked startled as he saw the two policemen.
As Saxon and Parker left the health centre, the graceless dragon accompanied them to the door, anxious no doubt to show that her earlier demeanour was reserved merely for common sick people. She held it open for them politely enough, but they felt her hot breath licking the back of their necks as they walked back towards the Discovery. They shuddered in unison but with a shared moment of amusement rather than any real discomfort. Parker was thinking he would tell his wife about Mrs Grace. Saxon was thinking he would tell no one, but that it was exactly the kind of story that once upon a time would have amused Emma.
‘What do you think, sir?’ Parker interrupted Saxon’s brief moment of nostalgia.
‘I think, Parker, that Dr bloody Marks is obnoxious and pompous, and I can’t stand pompous bastards. But on the other hand, he’s given us some useful stuff today. But I’m sure he’s holding something back. First, he tells us that he’s known Barbara Jenner for years, describing her as an old friend. Then later when we probed a bit, he started to disown her – saying that he didn’t really know her that well. Now, call me suspicious, but he knows more than he’s letting on. I want Surveillance and Technical Intelligence to watch him for a few days. We’ve got to find out more about Ms Jenner’s secret life. It’s a new direction for us to pursue I suppose.’
‘However much she kept things secret from her partner,’ agreed Parker, ‘she must have something somewhere that’ll give us a link to these people she meets for “happenings” or whatever.’
‘Sounds a bit 60s or 70s, doesn’t it’, laughed Saxon. ‘She wasn’t that old, was she. Maybe she was a bit nostalgic for the good old days of music, love and flowers, and the decades before the world discovered that there was after all a price to pay for free love.’
‘My mum said the same thing, boss. Said that the whole AIDS thing was retribution for all that sleeping around that people did when she was young.’
‘So she didn’t buy the view that we got it from monkeys in Africa and that it worked its way into the human population and then spread around the world?’ Saxon asked with a smile.
‘Nah,’ Parker answered without hesitation. ‘My mum doesn’t hold with monkeys having anything much to do with human beings, and certainly not having sex with them.’
They got back into the car.
Thursday, May 16, Hazel Lane, Sewel Mill, 10.15AM
In the light of what Doctor Marks had just given them, Saxon decided to search Anvil Wood House one more time. Maybe the voices of the recently dead could give him a few pointers in the right direction. He was sure that if Babs had secret sexual “happenings” with multiple partners, then there was a good chance that she would not have kept their details such as phone numbers in her head.
There had to be an address book. Please let there be a book. He was driving slowly down Hazel Lane towards the house when he became aware of another car behind them, revving loudly and using his horn…The driver beeped loudly again. Parker turned round in his seat to look.
‘Not sure what he thinks he’s going to achieve by that,’ he observed.
‘Perhaps you should ask him, Parker.’ Saxon stopped the Discovery, provoking a prolonged blast on the horn of the Land Rover behind.
Parker was back in less than five minutes, smiling broadly.
‘Name of Pike, boss. Andy Pike. He’s their neighbour, lives up the road in the next house. I told him we’d be along to see him later.’
Saxon started the engine.
‘Apparently he was in something of a rush to get back home, some kind of agricultural emergency,’ Parker went on. ‘But he reluctantly apologised for his behaviour when I flashed my warrant card. Hoped we’d understand, what with all the stress of the last twenty-four hours or so.’
As they pulled away, Saxon looked in his rear-view mirror but he couldn’t make out the driver at all. The old Land Rover was making no attempt yet to move. ‘I can hardly wait to meet the gentleman in more congenial circumstances,’ he said.
They turned into Anvil Wood House, hoping to uncover something, anything, that would tell them whether or not there was a link between the first three killings and those of Babs Jenner and Poppy Field.
Thursday, May 16, The Speckled Cat, Brighton, 10.55AM
Bill Singleton was opening up for the day. The pub did great business at lunchtimes with the office workers and shoppers. In the evenings, it was one of the favourite haunts of the gay population, who referred to it affectionately as the Spotted Pussy.
Thursdays were always good. It was as if people were getting wired for the weekend. He liked the fact that although it was predominantly gay, the Speckled Cat still attracted a fair number of straight clients. Bill had his theories about this.
Well, we all like a little walk on the wild side from time to time. It takes all sorts and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
His only priority was to keep it clean. He saw that as vital for the continuing success of his operation. By that, he meant no drugs and no prostitution, or at least not overtly. Not easy to achieve, but so far there hadn’t been any major problems.
Thursday, May 16, Anvil Wood House, 11.00AM
The forensics team had finished their scraping and vacuuming and were in the process of shifting equipment from the house to a small fleet of white vans.
Saxon waited in his Land Rover until they were finished. He listened to the police radio, impassively taking in all the minor, although probably to the people involved, major, incidents happening in their lives.
The last member of the forensics team walked over to Saxon and handed him the keys to the house and told him the cleaners would be along in an hour or so.
Of course, less upsetting for any next of kin if the bloodstains were removed.
Once inside the house he headed straight for Babs’ office, the room of a thousand secrets, he thought to himself. Or rather, hoped. He was working on the idea that if there were an address book, then it wouldn’t be hidden in the desk, that’s the first place someone would look. No, Poppy could have gone in to tidy up and accidentally found it, the way people accidentally find things when they are really looking – being nosy. It had to be somewhere else. But where would she have put it?
The office was large and filled with clutter. The certificates and photographs that lined the walls showed Babs to be a keen show jumper in her earlier years. Saxon knew that SOCO would have checked behind each one for a wall safe. But he took a look anyway. Nothing.
In the corner of the room there stood a small sofa. He sat on it to lower the level of the springs inside and then plunged his hand down around the back and sides. Apart for some small change, a hairgrip, and a tube of lipstick, there was nothing of a crime-solving nature. Frustration finally won the day and Sa
xon resorted to his questions and answers technique, where he would ask himself questions out loud, and come up with an answer as fast as he could. Sometimes this produced positive results, and sometimes it was just plain embarrassing.
‘Right, Paul, you’re in a room. It’s your room, your office, but your other half is going to be in and out of it from time to time. Now, you’ve got secrets, serious secrets, which are earth-shattering. Or they would be, if your partner were to find out about them.’ He was sweeping the room with his eyes as he berated himself. ‘Having your partner find those secrets will change your life and turn it into hell. So where the fuck are you going to hide these hideous bloody secrets?’
Immediately he replied to himself, loudly. ‘Under the fucking floor, where else, you idiot?’
‘But where under the floor, there’s a bloody great carpet covering it?’
‘In the corner, you plonker, so it’s easy to access.’
Feeling suddenly energised by this exchange with himself and the ideas it had generated, he examined each corner of the carpet. In a few seconds, he found the spot under the front window. When he lifted that corner of the carpet, it was instantly obvious that the spikes on the gripper strip had been flattened with a hammer to make it easy to lift. The floorboard was cut to make a small square trapdoor. And there it was in all its glory, the book of secrets, waiting to be liberated. Now they could come out to play.
Elated by his discovery, but just a bit pissed off that the SOCO guys hadn’t found it earlier, Saxon placed the book in a plastic bag and was about to leave when a thought struck him. The telephone, had anyone checked the telephone?
He picked it up and dialled 1471. According to the logged time, there had been a call at 11PM last night, the night following the murders. Saxon figured the two officers guarding the house would not have heard the phone from their car with the police radio crackling away. There had been a caller, but they had withheld their number.
Two pieces of good luck in a row would’ve been too much to hope for.
Thursday, May 16, Pike’s Smallholding, Hazel Lane, 2.00PM
Pike was sweating again and his hands trembled as he made another cup of coffee. He was trying to reduce the stress in his life, not increase it. Stress was bad for his karma. He could’ve kicked himself for that little encounter with the police this morning. But he kicked Lurch again instead and took satisfaction in the fact that the dog yelped and ran to hide.
He sat down, nursing the mug of coffee and rocked gently in his chair. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was going slowly mad. What with the six-foot rabbit, last night. And then he thought of the sheep. His stomach churned uncomfortably at the memory and his grip on the coffee mug tightened.
Once or twice a month, Pike would go lamping on the farm that backed up to his land. This involved driving around the fields in his old Land Rover, vintage 1963, with a powerful lamp fixed to the roof above the driver. The lamp would be swept around the edge of the field and, if there were a rabbit, its eyes would show up like cats’ eyes on a road. The silencer attached to his .22 rifle ensured the rabbits wouldn’t run off if he missed, as the noise it made was just a dull click. He usually managed up to half a dozen rabbits per lamping expedition, a couple to keep and one or two to pass on for a bit of loose change.
But lamping, or even the thought of lamping, brought him out in a cold sweat. One night, a few years ago, Pike had made a mistake. And it had been a huge and embarrassing mistake. He had accidentally assassinated a sheep. It was a good shot, at least 250 yards, straight between the eyes, nothing wrong with his aim, but it was very definitely the wrong target.
Pike thought of burying the evidence and saying nothing. After all, nobody had seen him. But since the farmer whose land he was clearing of rabbits had proudly told him about “the best seventy-five Kent ewes” he had ever owned, Pike decided to come clean and reluctantly told the farmer. It was probably the hardest thing he had ever had to endure in his fifty years. The shame was almost unbearable. Surprisingly though, the farmer didn’t really mind; the price of sheep had dropped to an all-time low, and anyway Pike kept the rabbit population down to an acceptable level on the farm. One assassinated sheep in thirty years was excusable. And the sheep didn’t suffer. However, if there were a scale of lamper’s mistakes, this would have been a good fifteen out of ten.
But while the farmer wasn’t too bothered about retribution, he didn’t exactly hold back that evening in the pub. It was too good a story. Word soon spread like wildfire of “Lee Harvey-Oswald-Pike”, the sheep assassin, and occasionally someone would “bleat” when he entered the pub.
Pike never fully realised how people saw him, with his uneasy mixture of ancient Barbour and New-Age philosophies, along with the unhappy combination of body odour and furtiveness. Over the years he had become someone who was generally to be avoided and, if that was not entirely possible, to be poked fun at. Pike was generally unaware of the effect he had on people.
His cottage was small but not unattractive, it just was in need of a lot of care and renovation, and fumigating. A great deal of the local vermin hid in the house, probably thinking that it was the last place he would look for them. The land that came with the house was approximately twenty-five acres; some of it a permanent home to wrecked cars that had been there for so long that Pike no longer noticed them anymore. Several fields were dedicated to vegetables and fruit crops, both of which he sold at the gate, and he had also invested in a large plastic growing tent where he raised flowers.
He was an accomplished horticulturist, sufficiently successful that, when combined with a freezer full of rabbits, his green fingers provided him with a steady income and self-sufficiency.
He heard a car arriving outside and his stomach somersaulted again. He was not enjoying today.
Thursday, May 16, Hazel Lane, 2.15PM
Saxon drove slowly into Pike’s car parking area. He and Parker had been going over what was known about Pike and planning out their approach and their line of questioning.
‘Right, Parker, Mr Pike is the nearest neighbour that Ms Jenner and Ms Field had. That’s pretty much our only interest in him.’ He paused. ‘We know he’s a pretty aggressive driver.’ They both laughed briefly. ‘What have we got on him?’
Parker obliged. ‘Not much, boss. He was cautioned a few years ago for discharging his shotgun too close to the road, and that’s all. He lives alone, never been married, keeps himself to himself. He is the owner of a firearms and shotgun certificate. He has a .22 Anschutz rifle and a 12-bore double-barrelled shotgun, both of which he uses for vermin control.’
Parker looked up from the thin file and across at Saxon. ‘We may be less than welcome here, boss. It says on this report of his last weapon security check that he is unhelpful, rude and does not like the police. Surprise, surprise.’
Saxon nodded. ‘Let’s see if we can gently coax anything useful out of him. Chances are that he may have seen something without realising it. These rural types certainly make life interesting, don’t they.’ Parker got out of the car first, putting the file into a briefcase and leaving it behind the seat.
They approached Pike’s cottage, only to be stopped in their tracks as Pike emerged suddenly from the somewhat weatherbeaten front door.
Pike didn’t waste any time. He was expecting some kind of retribution after yesterday’s little encounter down the lane and, judging by his stance, he’d decided that attack was the best form of defence. They had no opportunity to introduce themselves formally. Pike recognised Parker instantly. ‘You’re that fuckin’ policeman, aren’t you? Not that I’d need to recognise you, I can smell police from fuckin’ miles away – what you bleedin’ want anyway? Me guns are all locked up safe, so you can bugger off and stop harassin’ me.’
They barely had time to take in the bizarre appearance before the smell of unwashed body hit them. Saxon read his body language and it told him a lot. Pike was clearly in a very aggressive mood, but he continually turne
d to face the other way, moving his weight from one foot to the other. In Saxon’s experience, as well as in the textbooks, such behaviour is usually a sign that the person is afraid or holding something back.
Saxon opened his mouth to speak. Pike had paused for a second but then went on immediately. ‘You people are always coming out here an’ tryin’ to catch me out so you can take me guns away, but I’m too bloody smart for you, I keeps them safe don’t you worry. They’s always locked up properly when I’m not using ’em.’ He paused for breath and turned his attention to the “For Sale” display, aggressively tidying up his potatoes and carrots.
Having read the file, Saxon guessed that the best way of establishing control over the interview was a return bout of aggression. He visibly lost patience. ‘Mr Pike, listen for just a minute, will you. We are not here about your guns. We couldn’t give a toss about your sodding guns. And what’s the matter with you people out here, are the farmers spraying something on the crops to make you all bloody-minded?’ It worked. Pike stood momentarily silenced and open-mouthed.
‘I’m Commander Saxon and this is Detective Sergeant Parker, we would like to talk to you about the murders at Anvil Wood House.’
Pike tried desperately to regain some appearance of composure. He realised his original approach had been uncalled for. Backtracking quickly, his aggression was now challenged into what passed for wit in the Pike household. ‘Oh, well I never, a commander no less. And what’s a bigwig like you doing out ’ere then, talking to the likes of us peasants then?’ Pike was visibly relaxing as it dawned on him that he was in no immediate danger of being arrested, or losing his guns.
He motioned them to follow him into the cottage. ‘Don’t want to be seen standing out here talkin’ to the likes of you,’ he muttered, as they followed him in. Saxon was still exercising extreme self-control, as he often had to in his job. Parker on the other hand seemed to be finding the whole thing amusing. He was, in fact, toying with the idea of doing an impromptu gun inspection, just for the hell of it. But he stopped seeing the funny side when Saxon caught his eye, and he returned to being a policeman on a murder investigation again. Winding up the Andy Pikes of the world was not on the agenda for today, tempting though the idea was.
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