His spare hand clamps my shoulder like a claw and he spins me round and kneels me down all in one movement, “So let’s see the face of our Peeping Tom.”
The gun barrel is now a yard away, pointing steadily at my head as a small beam of light focuses on my face from his small torch and he exclaims, “Cade? What the hell?”
Before he crumples to the ground and a black figure leans down to remove the revolver from my assailant’s hand.
***
Soft snow falls, lays on the ground, like the fear still frozen on my face. Life was nearly all over. I concentrate on the ‘now’, sending all fearful thoughts off in the wind like coloured balloons. It is a Daniel technique of ‘mindfulness’; to focus purely on the moment, breathing, blood coursing, sounds and colours, on being alive. The technique ensures I feel every ache and pain still lingering from the power conditioning at the gym hours earlier. From ‘The Beast,’ five clapping push-ups, twenty explosive box jumps, ten alternating jumps from back to front foot. Then the reverse, followed by fifteen squats, making every nerve and muscle cry for mercy, the feeling which still reverberates, distracting from any thought of my brush with near death.
My saviour’s hand clasps mine and I wrap Jerry in a thankful hug. At least his dark outfit made him invisible if mine failed totally. He had also been on watch but a quarter mile to my left.
“A good plan,” he whispers, “but this guy is good too. Saw him slip out of the back and creep up on a born countryman like you, could not warn you, sorry.”
I am breathing deeply, carefully, as Jerry steps back and examines the weapon and whispers, “A Beretta Wilson Combat 92G Brigadier, weapon of choice for spooks.”
The prone man stirs and Jerry stoops down like the shadow of death to point the revolver inches from his face, “Hush.”
They say insanity can overwhelm for a moment when death’s touch is upon you. I just long to flee, to walk this mystical countryside, free from care as I once did. Soren Kierkegaard the philosopher says he is ‘so overwhelmed with ideas’ when moving that ‘he could oft scarcely walk.’ It works for me too. Many a case was once solved on my walks abroad at night when sleep failed me even with Bess breathing fragrantly beside me. The Apaches say it best with their notion of ‘intin.’ Life is a path, a trail you have to travel. You can only see where people have trod in life, what has happened to them and been done by them, to them, by tracking their path through places, songs, relics, memories, and latterly documents, photographs, video, ‘whatever’ as modern urban gang members would say.
We hear the soft crack of a house door closing, a car opening and I peer through to see a petite beguiling woman drive away in a black Range Rover.
***
Chuck Adams, the towering muscular Head of Security for The D’Eynscourte Bank of China, struggles to his feet without aid then before tottering to lean against a willow tree trunk. Jerry remains two yards away, pure dark shadow yet the revolver clearly trained on the man.
“A sucker punch. How did you know, Cade?” the dazed voice croaks.
I move to within two yards, barely make out his face while careful not to obstruct Jerry’s line of sight. I only stare, do not explain. How two fleeting but concerned looks between man and woman during the Hakluyt interview triggered a memory from the files that the pair are the same age, both from the Deep South and attended Princeton University together. I do not reveal that I called an F.B.I. man I met at Quantico to quietly research if they had been lovers then. They were, lauded as ‘the couple most likely to change the world’ in the thirty-year-old pages of their final yearbook I was e mailed. Nor do I say that Mellors, the Albion House gamekeeper, revealed to Sam that Adams and his lover were often secretly abroad at night, meeting at an old cottage for a regular rendezvous. There are ultimately no secrets in Ancaster County, an original 24/7 workplace.
Adams has recovered himself sufficient to say weakly, “No need for the weapon, what do you want to know? Off the record of course.”
The threat to reveal the affair is not even needed. His mind has already calculated the end of his lucrative private sector career, a dangerous enemy in Hakluyt and his bank, the upset and perhaps danger for the lovely Rebecca if all were revealed. He will tell us what he feels he can solely to ensure his and her safety and no more, while no doubt throwing in much of no consequence.
Adams knows nothing of bugs being planted in my cottage.
“I would approve if not initiate that for us,” and his voice regains its arrogant condescension, “Truth. You are not important enough Cade.”
Ignoring the barb, my questions continue. He knows nothing of any burglaries of the newspaper office, the school, Pippa’s houses, nor my mother’s.
“Too risky, what gain?”
Adams voice is dismissive as I use my small torch to light his face while I ask about a campaign to harass me once I was close to Pippa’s case.
Contemptuous hostility pours out, “The evil genius, Aleister Crowley’s idea, talked with your loving colleague Odling, who said leave it to him. I heard later they had sent a black pick up out to follow you, tried to organise a fight in a café, framed your friend, stopped a picture going in a newspaper, they were especially proud of setting the boxer on you and seeing the bruises on your face. Well done there by the way.”
Did the Hakluyts know about all that?
He hesitates, weighs up the odds, decides on the straight lie, “No.”
Doggedly Adams distracts then, “Crowley ordered the deletion of our CCTV material of the accident, not sure if it actually showed the woman dying as I never saw it.”
An honest laugh of enjoyment at our minor triumph, “Imagine the consternation when you seemed to have seen the material and told them exactly what was on it? How did you pull that off by the way?”
The body being moved after death? Genuine surprise, news to him. He had sent men out at dawn to look for a second fox but by then Sam and I were in the way.
As if on cue, a fox slinks across the side of the field close to us then, senses our presence and is gone through a bush in a moment. Then come revelations, the man is clearly bored by my stupidity in not figuring it out for myself.
The son, Rocco Hakluyt went out to Ancaster City early evening, rang the house within a few minutes and told Hakluyt there was a woman taking photographs outside the main gates. The two Chinese women overheard this, the name of Langstaffe was mentioned and they got very agitated with each other for some reason. Adams speaks Mandarin well but their dialect words were too rapid even for him, he says, his face regretful in the torch beam. Hakluyt said to ignore the photographer’s presence so they did. A number of people knew Pippa was there. But she was seen as an irritant, not worth any action and certainly not murder? He shrugs while adding it would be stupid, especially so close to Albion.
The perfume is explained with condescension. Hakluyt is a addictive insatiable womanizer. His habit is to send a unique present – a small bottle of special perfume, a miniature Chinese porcelain, even a watch on occasions – to women he has bedded, or would like to. Gary, one of the security team, is detailed to do this. I tense as he mentions the porcelain.
Adams is too lost in his own cleverness to notice the change in me. He explains he checked after my revelation to the Hakluyts, and been mystified to learn no perfume had been sent to Pippa Langstaffe. The man had never met her as far as anyone knew. His employer had appeared genuinely mystified about this at our interview and afterwards even though Rebecca simply did not believe him. So how had Pippa got a bottle of this supposedly unique perfume? A small bottle is missing from the safe where it was kept, Adams says, but nobody knows how.
He chides a naughty schoolboy then, “Recognise reality Cade, real wealth and power always wins, over anyone and everything, especially rednecks like you. Leave it.”
Jerry speaks for the first time, his voice low with menace as his ominous shadow moves forward, revolver held ready to slash the face, “Key thing was to delay the
police until the Chinese women were out of harm’s way, business wrapped up, yes?”
At the first words Adams stiffens, his rising bravado much reduced, contemptuous arrogance gone, suddenly alert and nervous of real danger even as I flick the torch over him to warn not to go beyond his sudden watchful crouch.
The gun is taut, barrel pointing directly at Adams chest once more as Jerry’s words softly bite, “All sounds like work for a Head of Security, Chucky, not a colourless lawyer like Crowley.”
Adams stands impotent, the air crackling with his calculation of his chances of striking back even as Jerry’s shadow waits expectantly. I somehow realise that my friend is ready to pull the trigger without a qualm. ‘Scorch and burn’ is no longer a throw away joke.
The moment passes, Adams settles himself stiffly back against the tree and murmurs, “You would be surprised.”
I ease the tension between the two combatants with mundane questions which he answers, his eyes never leaving Jerry’s dark shade. Adams and Mrs Hakluyt have stayed behind for two days to close down matters here until the family’s return in the New Year. ’The others are deplaned long ago in the States.’ The lovers will follow later after grabbing some precious time together. Did he get this job to be near her? No, the bank’s main office in China head hunted him, only later did he meet Rebecca again. None of us believe that.
***
A cock is crowing, church bells ringing five, sheep bleating in the distance as Adams and I stare at each other through the darkness with only the spark of light from a passing car on the gun showing a third presence.
“Did one of the Chinese women deliberately kill Pippa Langstaffe?”
He pulls his overcoat tight round him, shivering now even as his laugh tries to obscure his real thinking, “I wondered but can see no reason.”
Why does he do the job, after all he was in the military to a high rank and Military Intelligence? The answer is straightforward: money to retire with at first; later, to be near Rebecca.
He will not tell me when I ask what the secret project is that so consumed the dinner party?
Finally, the big question is asked, the drip of melting snow and ice all any of us hear. His sneer disappears as he hears the revolver being cocked for firing and answers with serious rapidity. He knows nothing of the disappearance of my wife and daughter. He is sure the Hakluyts were not involved but agrees he did not start work for them until a few months after it all happened.
He is blunt, “Where is any gain? I cannot see it.”
Then, realising that he might still be harmed at any moment, “A lot of people dislike you Cade, including your own colleagues. First thing I got a handle on. You really know how to piss people off.”
“Find out,” Jerry’s words are hissed menace, even as with dazzling speed and little sound, he deftly disables the revolver and throws it at Adams’ feet, the bullets into the bushes.
We are walking away to Jerry’s car, two black shadows in total darkness now, as Adams calls, “You help me Cade, I might be able to help you.
“Your friend, and SIS’s Neville, will know what I mean.”
72
At home I sleep, convulse as Jerry shoots an unarmed man, hear again his laughter as we left, “I had taken the bullets out long before.”
I dream of that last day with my family, am eviscerated in the void of my nightmare before the phone saves my aching sweat sodden body. It is eleven in the morning.
Gadd rings to report that the other three squad members are still on the murder case with Harry while he is pursuing the burglaries, farm thefts and CCTV footage. And I am wanted at Merian Police station without fail for three.
Daniel is adamant I should just go away and sleep for a day at least. ‘Daede on yer feet man. Neither use nor ornament.’ Catching sight of myself in one of the floor to ceiling mirrors I see what he means, but at least my once yellow-black bruised face is back to just being haggard. When did I last properly sleep? Days, months, years ago?
We compromise. I content myself with jumping rope. It is boxing’s basic introduction: ten minutes, the equivalent of three rounds, building stamina and endurance. I drown in sweat and technique: only jump high enough to clear the rope, knees soft as you rise, land on the balls of your feet, control the rope through the wrists not the arms, begin the jump when the rope is just above eye level. Ingrained basics of thirty years take over for a twenty-minute session before Daniel shoos me to the changing room.
Back home, sweat suit on I run five miles round and around my meadow, enjoying the chill clear air as clouds saunter by in a bright blue sky. For seven years, I ran twice every weekend; already with my new squad that habit has slipped.
***
Gadd has procured us a mid-size television and got it hooked up to an aerial somehow as I arrive in the squad room. Lucinda arrives and pronounces that CNN, Sky, BBC News 24 and Al Jazeera are all running live coverage of simultaneous announcements in Shanghai, New York and sleepy old Ancaster County.
Hunger gnaws at me as we sit around the conference table. Now I even forget to eat it seems. Lucinda is doubly welcome, coming laden with gifts of hot coffee, sandwiches, hot sausage rolls and plum bread with cheese from Bert’s. It seems long ago since I watched Sam devour this last local delicacy in the café itself over a week ago.
Her plummy voice is admiring, “Admirable organisation and news management, and major clout to get on all these channels live – usually only a terrorist attack or outbreak of war, impeachment or assassination guarantee it.”
She explains the event has been carefully trailed overnight for announcements simultaneously on television, radio and social media at three in the afternoon UK time, ten in the morning for the Eastern USA and ten at night in China where their state media will run it as new tomorrow in any event.
She looks sharply towards me, “Any idea what the announcement is for us? Nuclear power station, military factory, what?”
I tell her.
“Is that all? How disappointing.”
The camera pans across Ancaster Acre’s snow covered ancient ruins and rolling landscape of hills and woodlands framing its captivating valley of river and lawn. All pristine in chill sunshine and seemingly untouched by human stain. Sadly then, the great and the good appear on a grand stage, its light red carpeting, contrasting with the long medieval style drapes patterned in subdued yellow and green to make up Ancaster County’s colours.
“Very clever, our county colours, symbolic mise-en-scene, the old and the new, not a trick missed,” murmurs Lucinda to herself as the camera pulls back to show a huge screen at either side of the stage and a large crowd twenty deep of young and old in apparent carnival mood.
The soaring violin melody of Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’ reaches high into the upper register such that it almost whispers as hand in hand four speakers advance to their individual microphones at the front of the stage in a miasma of gently swirling white lights. Valentine, trim in a finely cut grey suit, sparkling shirt and tie, is smiling profusely, accompanied by a demure Rebecca Hakluyt along with the local MP and Junior Minister for Education and Professor Michael Bartlett.
Shimmering strings evoke glorious images of the rolling British countryside as a phalanx of other guests form a semi-circle behind. Here preen the cast from the Albion House dinner party: The Bishop, Bostridge the entrepreneur, the County Council leader and chief executive, all with wives, and lurking in the background, a watchful Chuck Adams and our very own Chief Superintendent Creel.
The lady of Albion House comperes proceedings with aplomb, her face suddenly appearing in close up on our screen with her eyes bewitching as ever. Her southern drawl is warmly welcoming as she introduces herself, the politician and Lord Valentine Fitzroy D’Eynscourte, 23rd Earl.
Silence save for the odd cough as Val begins, “Forgive me, I am all a bits,” and drops into a broad local accent I did not know he was capable of.
Blank incomprehension in the close ups
on the crowd, and then laughter as he goes on warmly, “Ancaster speak for nervous, if not terrified.
“I am a local farmer and businessman, born and bred Ancaster, whose family has been here and on our lands for over five centuries, arguably for a millennium. Through bad times and good.”
His voice tremors, he wipes a tear from his eyes, as he goes on, “Yet today is the happiest day of my life, perhaps the most momentous of even my ancient family’s long proud heritage.
“For we are to fulfil a dream of my forefathers, and especially my own dear Papa who left us these thirty years ago.”
Emotions in check, “A dream enabled by my father’s best friend, Robert Greene of The D’Eynscourte Bank, the British government, the local community and the people of China all in unique unison.”
Only the noise of wind rustling in the trees and the cawing of the odd rook wheeling in the sky is heard as Valentine pauses to gaze ardently round at the ruins around him. The camera follows his gaze to the giant arch and then sparkling low walls and ruins that mark the outline of the monastery, church, assembly room, cloisters and library that I explored once with Sam and Henry many years ago.
“A faix, sorry, more Ancaster dialect, it means ‘My faith in something is rewarded,’ a faix.”
No titter of laughter now as Val is in close up for the major point. Have they even dictated what camera shots are to be used?
“For Ancaster Acre is where our dream will come to pass – a site of learning, scholarship, exploration, creativity and the human spirit in harmony, revered throughout Europe for five hundred years until the Reformation. A mystic place beloved ever since by locals and visitors alike for its special essence.”
He stops abruptly, staring off into the distance again, lost. I fear for my friend, trust he has not got drunk before this ordeal.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 45