‘No, we won’t, Gran,’ one of the men bellowed at her, I was not sure which one.
‘Well, your bloody useless father did and we never saw him again. What’s different now?’
Lynn Outhwaite had reported to her boss the destination of my intended sortie. I did not blame or criticize her for this as it was her duty to prevent colleagues, even in the loosest meaning of the term, from coming to harm. There was yet another debriefing in Carrick’s office but it immediately became clear that he had decided against getting really annoyed with me, not for the moment anyway.
‘Did you find out anything useful at the library?’ he enquired of me in a fashion that suggested he did not think I had bothered to go there.
‘Quite a bit,’ I replied, digging out the notes I had made. ‘The librarian found me a book that told me everything I wanted to know. There was a full account of one of the wrecks, the Geldermalsen, which I took particular note of as the ship carried gold ingots. But, obviously, those were all accounted for at the time and safely auctioned off.
‘I don’t know how much you want to hear,’ I went on, ‘but it’s all very interesting. In the eighteenth century, porcelain, and tea, were transported from China’s hinterland to Canton and from there to Java in Chinese trading vessels where they were loaded, the china actually packed into the crates of tea, into ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company. Sometimes the trading vessels caught fire or were hit by storms and sank before they got there or, as in the case of the Geldermalsen, the Indiamen suffered the same fate on the way to European ports, usually Amsterdam. The cargo of porcelain, plus anything else that was in the hold, ended up being buried by a thick layer of sand and tea. There were six hundred thousand pounds of tea on that ship alone, plus a hundred and twenty-five gold ingots, eighteen of which were the very rare ones referred to as Nanking shoes. Several wrecks have been discovered since, including one known as the Vung Tau Cargo that went down off the Vietnamese coast at the end of the seventeenth century. We must find out if any museums or private collections have been raided within the past couple of years and what was taken.’
‘How much did the stuff from the Geldermalsen fetch at auction?’ Carrick asked.
‘Over ten million pounds.’
‘That is not peanuts.’
‘It wasn’t,’ I agreed. ‘The porcelain was just about as valuable as the gold.’
‘Thank you.’ There was a little silence and then he went on, ‘I understand you went to see the Tanners afterwards.’
‘Yes, I did. I showed them the picture of Peter Horsley and they said he wasn’t the man who met them with the van to pick up the coffin.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘Yes, I think so. Vince was all for saying more but Jethro is the one really twitched by some phone calls they’ve been getting. He—’
Predictably, James interrupted with, ‘They’ve received threats?’
‘I was coming to that in a minute.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Vince thought the man they met was older than Horsley. From his voice. They both refused to say whether it could be the same person who’s been making the calls, which have told them not to talk to the police, or else.’
‘They could be making it up.’
‘That crossed my mind too but I think you ought to ask someone to keep an eye on the house. Three women and a child appear to live there as well and Grandma thinks the men’ll do a runner just like their dad did. Oh, and I was followed all the way there and back by someone driving a blue hatchback. I couldn’t get the number – I think it had been partly obscured in some way, or muddied up.’
Patrick, who was present but so far had taken no part in the proceedings, emerged from deep thought: or it could have been one of his most-systems-awake cat-naps that he perfected while serving as an undercover soldier. ‘Where was this vehicle while you were inside the Tanners’ place?’ he wanted to know.
‘I’m not sure. I only realized it was following me on the return journey. I mean, it’s quite common for someone behind you to be going to the same destination on one leg of a journey. So I did a couple of small detours when I noticed it again on the way back and he, or she, stuck with me.’
‘And when you turned into the car park here?’ Carrick said.
‘Just paused and then speeded off.’
‘It was a pity you couldn’t get the registration.’
‘Did you get anything out of Brian Stonelake?’ I went on to ask.
Patrick stretched his long frame. ‘He came clean on the stolen horse harness and other bits and pieces we found in his tractor shed by the house. He admitted eyeing up places where he sold logs or hay, casing the joint as they say in old movies, and either lifting things there and then when no one was looking or returning during the night. A bloke in Gloucester usually took the stuff off his hands but he’s apparently helping the police with their enquiries right now into something more serious and is on remand – he is, James checked – so Stonelake was stuck with the booty.’
Carrick said, ‘But, according to him, he didn’t steal the silverware and equestrian figures and was merely looking after them for someone else. For a consideration, of course. He gave us a name but it means nothing to me or the computer, so until he comes up with something better he’s down for those thefts too. But as far as the murders are concerned, which of course we’re much more interested in, he’s still insisting he knows nothing about them and was not remotely involved.’
‘If it is true that he’s tricked his mother into changing her will so he gets everything, the sooner the place is sold and he can squirrel the money away somewhere,’ I said, ‘perhaps abroad, the better for him in case his sisters find out. The last thing he needs is a protracted murder investigation at the property.’
‘I’d forgotten about that,’ Carrick admitted. ‘But we don’t know if it’s gospel that he’s swindled his sisters out of their share. And, frankly, is it any of our business?’
‘The police aren’t the nation’s conscience but upholders of the law,’ Patrick intoned. ‘No, it isn’t any of our business.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Sorry, just quoting a lecture we raw recruits were given.’ He leapt to his feet. ‘That reminds me!’ He headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ I called.
‘To find out what happened to that dog!’
‘There wasn’t sufficient evidence of cruelty for a case to be brought against Stonelake,’ Carrick shouted at the open doorway.
Patrick reappeared. ‘No?’
‘Apparently the RSPCA vet said that its fur was all matted and dirty and although on the thin side the animal hadn’t actually been starved. It was a bit bruised on its back and one hind leg but that wasn’t enough to prosecute the owner. They did interview Stonelake, who told them that he hadn’t kicked or beaten it but it kept running back to the farm and he thought it had been hit a glancing blow by a car.’
‘He was still going to shoot it,’ Patrick said.
Carrick grimaced. ‘Farmers shoot old dogs all the time.’
‘I gave him twenty quid for it.’
‘He doesn’t appear to have mentioned that.’
‘So what’ll happen now?’
‘Normally it would be put up for rehoming straight away.’
‘But it isn’t going to be?’
‘No, it’s got a problem with a claw that will mean a small op. And they’ll neuter it at the same time as well as make sure its up to date with jabs so it’ll have to stay in the kennels for perhaps a week longer.’
‘I see.’
‘I did tell them that you were interested in having it.’
Patrick came back into the room. ‘I don’t usually do things like this,’ he said and gave Carrick a bear hug.
After all the difficulties this small episode was gratifying. For the moment, being followed by someone driving a blue car faded from my mind.
Eleven
The sense of relief was not to last for long.
It actually existed for about five minutes and was extinguished by the arrival of the Area Crime Prevention Officer in the shape of an intimidatingly large superintendent from HQ at Portishead. Patrick and I were banished from Carrick’s office with a dismissive flick of the great man’s hand, the door virtually slammed on our heels. The ensuing grilling Carrick got on the progress of the murders-case investigation was absolutely nothing to do with the DCI being taken ill that night and admitted to hospital with a serious infection.
‘It’s in the exit wound where he was shot,’ Patrick reported, throwing on his bathrobe. He had taken the call from Joanna and it was very early the next morning. ‘The docs say it must have been brewing for ages and has never healed up properly. I shall go to the nick to do some brainstorming on the cases in hand and if that arrogant bastard who turned up yesterday arrives I’ll interpret the “acting” bit of my title as permission to lop his bloody head off.’
‘Patrick,’ I said, to a breeze as he departed downstairs.
‘Yes?’ This came from somewhere out on the landing.
‘You’re in sole charge of the nick if he doesn’t roll up.’
‘Good, in the army I would have been permitted to command a soddin’ regiment!’
Needless to say the crime, or crimes, did not get solved that day, Patrick having to take time to familiarize himself with everything else that was going on, things with which Carrick had not involved us. There were two phone calls from Joanna during the morning, relaying messages and information we ought to know about from her husband who, characteristically, was fretting about work. He was stable, she told us, but not yet responding to the drugs he was being given.
I spent most of the day in James’s office, answering his phone and reading the case notes in the files on his desk. One useful piece of information did surface late in the afternoon when an email arrived from Interpol, obviously in response to an enquiry that Carrick had made. It related that just over two years previously, a dive boat working on the wreck of a Chinese junk that had gone down in 1746 in the South China Sea off Bunguran Island had been attacked by pirates, one of several raids on shipping in that area. A quantity of recently recovered gold ingots, probably around one hundred and fifty in number and including some of the rare Nanking shoes, plus several small pieces of gold-decorated porcelain had been stolen, the latter thought to have been snatched as souvenirs by the pirates as they escaped back to their boat. The Malayan captain of the dive boat had been killed and another member of his crew wounded in an exchange of shots as they tried to fend off the boarders. To the knowledge of the sender of the email none of the stolen goods had yet been recovered, although undercover sources suggested, tentatively, that criminals, fences, in Holland might have handled the gold en route to the UK.
I emailed back to ask about identification marks and also if, as the items had only just been raised from the seabed, there was a likelihood of tea still adhering to them – if indeed the cargo had been thus packed. An hour later I had my answers; there had been no time to clean it and it had left the dive boat in a wooden box where it had been tossed by the thieves together with sand, seaweed, no doubt a few small dead marine creatures and yes, tea. The pirate vessel had apparently been masquerading as a fishing boat that had, in hindsight, been shadowing the divers for days.
‘That’s one piece of good news,’ Patrick said after I had told him. He had appeared with two mugs of tea. ‘Can’t we identify the gold any further – marks and so forth?’
‘Yes, I’ve just received the answer to that question. There are marks but they wouldn’t necessarily be unique to the stolen ingots. We might get more information by consulting an expert.’
He seated himself. ‘There’s more to running a nick than meets the eye. One thing’s certain though and most people have mentioned it: Carrick’s been under par for a couple of weeks now. Don’t forget that when we saw him last, before starting this lark, was when he was really weak and just recovering. He came back to work far too soon. And because this nick’s still a DI light …’ He reached for the phone. ‘Bugger everything. I’m going to do what I would have done before landing in civvy street – raise hell.’
And he did. Listening to him, politely observing all the protocols, but acidly putting across his points to whoever was the superior officer of the man who had visited Carrick the previous day, I knew that he had found his feet.
‘That’s it,’ Patrick said, having slapped down the phone. ‘We’re getting a temporary DI from Bristol CID as of tomorrow morning, someone whom apparently James knows.’
‘That still officially leaves you in charge.’
‘Only on paper. I’m to confer with him and to take orders if necessary.’
‘If necessary!’
‘I think that’s meant as a substitute for pistols at dawn. But we’ve got to catch the murderer. Pronto. He made it sound as though it’s a condition for my carrying on.’
DI Jonathan Bromsgrove was in his mid-forties, called Patrick ‘sir’ and asked him if he would care to carry on with the murders case while he himself dealt with other outstanding work, assisted by Sergeant Outhwaite. Patrick replied that that would suit him fine but we would consult with him should we need advice and if everything became manic. This arrangement got everything off on a very nice footing.
‘I would like to tackle this in a less conventional way,’ Patrick said to me quietly as we left Bromsgrove to get his feet under Carrick’s desk on the grounds that that room was where all the general information was held, plus the DCI’s computer for which we had asked James the password. He felt weak, he had told us in response to the second query. Lousy, in fact. Bloody horrible, no less.
It was Joanna who later told us that MRSA was suspected but not yet confirmed.
‘Less conventional?’ I repeated.
‘Go sort of covert,’ he whispered as though the walls might have ears and report the heresy.
‘Find the gold, you mean.’
‘We don’t know that there is any gold. It’s all guesswork.’
‘We can’t do as we used to and break into places.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if we broke into crooks’ lairs.’
‘Yes, it would. Because now you have to obtain evidence by above-board means.’
‘OK. But the police do go undercover to try to buy weapons from illegal arms dealers. Or drugs from drugs traffickers.’
‘Entrapment,’ I murmured.
‘Yes.’
‘So you want to pretend to be a dodgy sort of antiques dealer asking around in the wrong places to buy Nanking shoes? Patrick, the gold, if it exists, might not be in criminal hands by now but belonging to perfectly innocent people.’
‘This sting operation – I admit – rests on the supposition that whatever was in the coffin is still being hoarded by the ungodly. First though, before we do anything else, I think we ought to go right back to the beginning and return to Hinton Mill. That’s where it all started. And then perhaps revisit the murder barn.’
In the ground-floor lobby of the mill we came upon an exceedingly tanned and smartly dressed elderly lady carrying in her shopping.
‘Mrs Dewitte?’ Patrick asked.
Laden, she turned with a slight frown. ‘Yes?’
‘Police,’ Patrick said. ‘Do let me take those for you.’
‘Oh God, I haven’t exceeded some ruddy speed limit or other, have I?’ she cried.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ she was told.
He ended up by emptying the BMW’s boot of shopping, mostly designer-label clothes and shoes by the look of the carrier bags, and carrying it all into the flat.
‘You’ve no idea how ghastly it is to come back into this horrible weather,’ Mrs Dewitte declared. ‘I’ve left my husband out there. That’s in the Drakensberg Mountains area of South Africa in case you don’t know already. We’ve a house there. Alastair’s older than me and not very well. But we’ve a buyer for this place so someone had to come home and deal with it. D�
�you want some coffee? I’m dying for a cup. I know I mustn’t offer you anything stronger as you’re on duty,’ she finished by saying with a mischievous smile.
At nine thirty in the morning too.
The coffee was superb, freshly roasted and ground from a grocer’s in Green Street, Bath, which she made a point of recommending to us. ‘So handy, you’ve no idea. You can buy shotguns, lovely fish, the best sausages in the world and coffee all in about ten yards.’ Then she laughed, a big masculine guffaw. ‘So what’s this all about then?’
‘How long have you been back?’
‘Since the night before last.’
‘So you might not have heard that your neighbours directly above you have been murdered.’
She hardly batted an eyebrow. ‘What, Mr and Mrs Misery? No, have they?’
‘And their acquaintance across the landing, Keith Davies. We think they might have been involved in criminal activities.’
‘Well, you don’t have to be terribly intelligent to work that one out. I’ve never seen a more skulking, secretive bunch of no-hopers. Not even in Africa, and we had the Mau-Mau to deal with there when Alastair was in the colonial service. How did it happen?’
Patrick told her, not sparing details. He then followed it up with a short résumé of what had occurred since.
‘But it’s just like a ruddy novel!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, I know whom you mean by that farmer. He’s the one who sells logs, isn’t he? We don’t have an open fire here but the Manleys did – stored them in their garage and trailed all the bits of moss, twigs and mud across the hall and up the stairs. No, I caught farmer chappie trying to peer into one of my windows when he delivered some logs one day. Gave him a real piece of my mind, I can tell you and he took himself off at the double. Mr Brandon across the hall came out to see what was going on and backed me up.’
‘Did you ever see any visitors the people upstairs had?’ I asked. Stonelake had lied about that, then.
‘No, it was like a grave up there, if you’ll excuse the expression. Two of our windows are on the side where the cars are parked so one can’t help but be aware of people’s activities sometimes. I never saw them out there with anyone else who might be a friend or relation. The residents do tend to leave their cars outside in the bit reserved for visitors and not put them away and I suppose I’m just as guilty of that.’
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