Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County.

by John R Goddard

“Francis Ford Coppola though some say Machiavelli and Chinese general Sun-Tzu expressed the same much earlier.”

  He shakes his head to disagree as I cut in, “So how does a hit and run in obscure Ancaster County, the end of the world in known England, affect this august strategy?”

  A lean nose and full face weathered by the outdoors is revealed as he leans forward into the light and speaks passionately, brown eyes earnest.

  “The D'Eynscourte Bank is a major player in that process of buying up assets, influence and control worldwide – but here especially as we are so open. ‘The markets rule’ is our mantra, even above national security.”

  He stares hard at me then, “Anything, big or small, about these particular Chinese, this bank, these English guys in charge, we would like to, need to know.”

  I bet.

  He senses my dismissal even before I reply, “I’m just a simple country copper, investigating what to be honest is not a major crime, should not be in my remit if truth be told, straight forward hit and run.”

  The face is bland but I know he knows there are other facets to it even before he stresses his points, “And the moving of the body after death, the hiding of two senior Chinese bankers’ attendance at the dinner party to the point of illegal obstruction, the various burglaries that must surely be associated with the death of a distinguished film maker and journalist who was observing comings and goings at the D'Eynscourte Bank dinner party.”

  My face is a taut blank. How does, can he, they know this? The same leak in my squad, surely not? Very few knew all this. Perhaps from the bugs if they were put there by MI6? The ACC, perhaps but I doubt it. Jerry was once of their parish, though we never spoke of it then and nor do we now, but he would not pass such information on without at least telling me.

  So, who is keeping MI6 abreast of things and why?

  Neville smiles broadly, enjoying his inside knowledge.

  “Our job to know,” is said quietly but without any arrogance. I like him, a realist doing business, without bullshit. I know we have a leak, he knows I know and does not care.

  Whether the Chinese women are involved in Pippa’s death is of little concern to him at all, he explains bluntly, save as possible leverage if they were responsible. But the project the diners were discussing, the whole range of activities by the bank and the Chinese in the UK and elsewhere, is. He will not detail the Albion House project when I directly ask what it is. He knows I am certain. After today I am too.

  His office can formally ask for details of our investigation, he explains, but he would far rather have my personal take on things.

  Why not? I tell the details of Pippa’s death, exactly as told to Marmaduke. If they compare notes, which is unlikely, nothing will be ‘untoward.’ An eyebrow raises at my saying one of the Chinese women is likely the chief culprit.

  “Irrefutable evidence?”

  I nod.

  “But you do not know which one? Photographs or video?”

  He dismisses the thought, “Surely not, down a country lane in the early hours? A witness or three and the Chinese all look alike to country folk?”

  Is he playing games now? I do not respond as he asks where we are on the burglaries that may be connected. With a smile, he summarises the forensics findings, what has been stolen, what not. I admit we are still in the dark but hope for a breakthrough soon.

  He asks my thoughts on why and how Pippa’s body was moved after death. Two figures, one very large, one small, presumably trying to hide the body forever. Not the Chinese women or their chauffeur. Who then, he asks sharply, disappointed when I say we have no idea.

  After a thoughtful silence his voice is honeyed northern once more as he sits back, his features lost once more in a dappled mix of light and shade, “To business, you have places to go, I know.”

  Little surprises me now as he continues,“Your investigation is your concern - I would just ask if and when you have any thoughts or impressions generally, or suspicions about these two Chinese women, the Hakluyts, their chief of security Adams, their top lawyer Aleister Crowley, even their elusive CEO Robert Greene who never leaves China - would you let me know?”

  A pact with the devil? I neither agree nor disagree. I need to talk with the ACC and Jerry. His two guardians have moved within twenty yards of us now I notice even as the white Frisbee lands at our feet.

  A wren starts up with a staccato alarm call of ‘teck teck’ reeling off the bare, sharp branches above.

  We both watch approvingly as the bird flies off into the sheltering mass of holly in a hedge. Another grateful wren joins it, sharing body heat to ensure life goes on.

  Neville hands the Frisbee quietly to the youngster who approaches nervously, before he says half dreamily towards me, “The noble empresse, ful of grace.”

  I feel myself genuinely smile for the first time this day. He is quoting Chaucer again, words written in 1381 about Nature’s annual cycle, and birds finding love on Valentine’s day. The two wrens are perhaps a little early.

  His voice is clipped and dry once more then, “Nice to have met you DCI Cade, I will ring you next week to see if you will help and then we could have a longer chat next time hey? No one needs to know.”

  A swift dry handshake, a card given for an obscure import-export company and we go our separate ways.

  I am five yards away when Neville calls. I stop, turn and he comes back to me, his bodyguards hovering, sweeping the surrounds as we are exposed now.

  His voice is soft, “I would stress this would be a two-way street. To help your narrative building. Keep an eye on Chuck Adams.”

  I do not react, but somehow he reads my thought as he says, “Ah, you already are, you were a loss to our service indeed.”

  My face is blank as he goes on, voice beguiling now, “As a second gesture of good faith, Shi Yen is actually also Mrs Greene, wife of the D'Eynscourte Bank CEO and global financial wizard for three decades, our very own Brit abroad Robert Greene, and Bai Yen is their daughter. Highly secret fact. May explain a lot?”

  I am astounded. How did we miss this? He answers my unspoken thought, stressing that it is not known or not admitted to outside of China’s highest strata.

  As he leaves once more, guardians to front and rear, one more snippet, “And Greene was your friend Valentine’s guardian through childhood. Still friends today?”

  ***

  Pippa’s home in north London’s trendy and bohemian area of Camden is a delicately lit four-floored, four-bedroom Georgian delight that Bess would love. Elegant furniture, paintings and small statues discreetly present along with vases awaiting filling with flowers as they no doubt often were.

  Yet it is a wreck. All computers, files, documents, photographs, videos have been stolen. In the basement stands a solidly metal Steenbeck flat-bed film editing machine, the marks where the piles of film cans recently stood clear in the thick veneer of dust before they too were carried away.

  The uniform Sergeant from the Met shows me round. This time there is a pretence of it being a real robbery with three televisions, an expensive Sonos sound system, three paintings and some jewellery being taken, according to the cleaner and her inventory.

  Polly rings then. She cannot face visiting her dead friend’s house to discuss what is missing. Would I forgive her? I find I am disappointed. Would I like to have dinner at her apartment nearby tonight though? I apologise. I have another interview to carry out. I feel her disappointment as she rings off. I am surprised that I feel the same even as we both say, ‘Another time.’

  Seeing me out of the door to the imposing front steps and railings, the Sergeant shows me again the latest expensive alarm system involving pressure points, laser beams and internal cameras. Still, it has been easily disabled and switched off, any images deleted, he says, and then set again as the burglars left, presumably with a van for all their loot which no one noticed on Wednesday night when this all happened.

  Would the Rudd trio and Stevenson travel to do this
? Are they capable of such? I increasingly doubt it but will know for sure by Monday morning. If our traps work.

  66

  Lost in the joy of reunion with his wife and children, Mark Castle takes two minutes to notice me at the front door of his compact link house in the middle of a sprawling modern estate. His face moves through surprise then resignation as I show my warrant card and ask for the agreed chat.

  He is not what I expect. A slight man, five foot eight inches tall, fair hair, open ruddy face with an easy smile. His feet are not small but medium size. His two children, a boy aged five, a girl three, reluctantly let go of him and disappear with their mother.

  I do not want to be there; do not want to interview Mark Castle, the chauffeur. Loathe the idea of my bringing the police and trouble down on this normal family. As I saw him arrive by taxi and followed him to the door of their small modern link house, the sound of children’s laughter within was as bright as the Christmas lights and the music of carols within. I envy the man, a simple life with all he craves.

  “I just need to talk to this gentleman, kids,” he says, with the bucolic tang of a Kent accent. “It will not take long, then dinner, a bath and perhaps Nannie and Gramps have sent you a pressie from France we can play with?”

  Castle takes me into a small neatly laid dining room off the kitchen, and then through French windows into a small conservatory at the back. My heart misses a beat as I hear the beginnings of Grace’s beloved picture story ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’ read by the mother in the front lounge.

  According to Gadd’s research the chauffeur has no criminal record of any kind, is ‘a devoted family man’ and was ‘a highly respected and decorated army Sergeant.’ He asks if we can talk tomorrow. When I shake my head, he asks if he can bathe his kids and eat dinner first.

  The rumble of a giant plane looms above even as I hate myself but still say, “We can do this down at the nick sir.”

  Castle sits on a small sofa. I stand facing from two yards away. Looking up at me, the man tells his story with authority and precision in clipped military style. He taught drivers in the army and likes high quality cars. He has been in this present job for five years. It pays very well, means he gets to drive his dream vehicles and crucially seldom takes him away from home and his family for more than the odd night at a time as the alternative of lorry driving would. He usually gets the driving work with Chinese clients as he was stationed in the Far East and has a very basic grasp of the language. He has also driven these two women before, they tip well and hence he accepted this job with them for fourteen days around London and in Ancaster County.

  He is explaining that the women had been in our area, around the Acre, for some days even as I interrupt, “Last Sunday night, Monday morning, Mr Castle?”

  Sitting opposite him now in an easy chair I lean towards him and accuse, “Bear in mind we are sure your silver Bentley killed this woman.”

  Startled, he is suddenly less sure, on edge as he answers. They arrived at Albion House at four p.m. Sunday, six days ago to the minute I realise, the women changing there. Castle parked in a huge barn as directed, polished the car inside and out and enjoyed a fine dinner in the kitchen with the other drivers. A surly police Inspector and some big wig local estate manager sat together in one corner.

  Another plane’s presence is loud above as Castle’s voice is flat now, his eyes dancing around to the darkness through the glass.

  “We drove out around one thirty in the morning and I took the women back to their hotel in Mayfair by five thirty and the car back to our depot at Heathrow, arriving at six thirty. Parked up, did my paperwork, came home by seven thirty in a cab, was here to get the kids up, take them to school then to bed myself.”

  “Anything happen at the end of the Albion House drive as you were leaving, Mark?” I ask quietly.

  There is silence. Castle sits, breathing slowly as he has been taught in the army no doubt, trying to betray neither thought nor emotion even as he is clearly in some turmoil.

  Brutal pressure, spelling out consequences, bringing out handcuffs, may shake it out. No matter the lovely wife and family I have intruded on without warning, and what seems a man trying to live a decent life. If he has done wrong, he needs to own up. If not, just tell me what happened.

  Decision made he says firmly, “I was driving, came out of the Albion House drive, another car was coming in, no lights, I went right hand side of the road to avoid him, hit a fox I think, car went straight on and up the far verge, frozen ground, before I stopped it.”

  My voice is gentle, “You were driving, the two women in the back?”

  The inner tension has not left him as he nods, “We stopped, got out, dead fox in the middle of the road, but the young guy in the other car was really angry, shouting, that he hit the fox because of us, me.”

  He turns wide eyed to me, “Did I hit anything or anyone, not sure but certainly did not see anyone, or feel it – those Bentley’s are mammoth but register major impacts.”

  ‘You’ is the word I stress three times, “You were driving? You hit a fox? You?”

  He nods, keeping a firm grip on himself, as his eyes hold my gaze, “First time I heard about the dead lady in the ditch – call from my manager and then my wife to me too France after you guys rang them both.”

  “So why go to France?”

  The words tumble out, “My father is not well, parents live in France, retired there. Kids and Ange could not come, at school, nursery, work and the Chinese gave me a big tip, that paid for it.”

  I remind him that we will check when the flight was booked, who paid and his father’s health.

  His words rush on, eyes pale on mine, “I paid, it is all true.”

  A pleading tone and look then but whether to me or himself I am unsure, “If I had hit someone I would have stopped, called the police, ambulance, but I did not see anybody before or after we stopped. I swear. On my family’s life. We rang Albion House, they said they would send security to check for the second fox in the morning but we should just go on to London if we could not see it. Nobody mentioned a body, nobody acted as though there was one.”

  Quizzical then, “Why would anyone be on a dark country road in the middle of the night, I just never even thought …”

  He talks on then, relief lacing his voice at getting through the telling of 'his story’, for that is what it is, even as he stares at the floor and gushes out defensive thoughts he has amassed ever since he heard of the death.

  “My two passengers were fine, even rang China and had a right happy chin wag with someone, so they had no idea we might have hit someone.”

  Reflective for a moment, “Hitting a fox did bother them though, almost holy animal, they insisted we look when they heard of the dead foxes but then instructed me to leave. I could see nothing else to do though should have rung the police myself I suppose.”

  A defensive thought and look into my eyes again, “But surely you lot would have laughed at me, calling you out because I had hit a fox? And we would have been stuck there all night.”

  His face is full of appeal once more. Eyes wide.

  I let the silence lay, the repetition of the rhyming couplets - the first ending ‘plum’, the second ‘thumb’ - of the children’s story drifts in as the only sound.

  The children cry happily, “Again, again Mum’ as I crack our room’s eerie silence with sharp words, “It will not do Mark, you were not driving.”

  He shakes his head in protest but without looking me in the eye now, “No, no, I was, I was.”

  I club him down, “We have firm evidence - you were not driving, one of the Chinese women was - which?”

  He is confused by my sharpness, deflated instantly, “What, what evidence can you have?”

  “Footprints,” I say, pointing at his feet, probably twice the size of the driver’s footprints when she got out at the impact point.

  “And irrefutable first hand support that you were in the back of the car, the two women
in the front.”

  He takes his head in his hands then and slumps down even as a Jumbo Jet’s engines roar to slow its giant weight for the heavy landing to come.

  ***

  Silence is often a copper’s greatest helper. I could offer to forget the lies he has just told, and do all I can for him. If he tells me the truth now. Instead I say nothing, am still and close my eyes myself, mesmerized by the sounds that break his resolve: the laughter of his children.

  I come to life as Castle relaxes, shrugs with hands fluttering in surrender. He tells the story quickly and with tangible relief, anxious now to feel clean within himself.

  They had left the dinner party about one thirty in the morning with him driving. The women were happy, smiling, talking rapidly in Chinese about the dinner party and especially ‘Lord Valentine.’ Half way down the Albion House drive they asked him to stop and let one of them drive.

  “Real lookers both of them, young one thirty perhaps, the other early fifties, both, big almond eyes to drown in,” Castle explains “Hard to resist. Asked if they could each drive a little on way back, as they had never driven a Bentley before and both have driving every famous make of car as one of their ‘Thousand Things to Do in Life.’ What was I do to?”

  “And you let them?”

  Castle ignores me, his mind reliving events, “The firm allows clients to drive, accepts, encourages it as common practice with such high rollers. The official contract says they can. I got the ‘on site’ approval form signed by them both saying they accepted the terms and conditions to drive and they were both sober. Neither drink.”

  He hands me a copy of the form; ‘always keep one for myself, one for the office.’ The names are those of the Chinese women. He describes events so graphically that I can almost picture the scene as it flickers through his mind but then I have seen the photographs and video.

  The women were excited at the prospect. The drive was well lit, the roads beyond in total blackness without moon or star.