by CA Sole
Juliet was sitting in the car when I reached it. ‘I was getting worried,’ she said.
‘Actually, it went well, but I think I’ve trodden in dog poo!’
‘Oh phoof! I suppose you’ve left a trail of doggy-do stamped with your shoe print all the way down the road.’
‘Probably, but it’s too late now. Just think of the fun that forensics could have with your car, identifying the type of dog, the brand of food and ...’
‘You’re disgusting,’ she retorted without any humour. Any attempt at levity in the current state of our relationship was plainly out of the question. I kept quiet after that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was Wednesday morning and the sun was out again. The letter had been delivered and, with a bit of luck, there would be consternation in the Wiggins clan. He was probably not at home, so Mandy would be on the phone to him or to Sandra with the news. There would be heated discussions and possibly a face to face meeting between them, but given that the police were looking for Tony Wiggins, they would probably restrict themselves to the telephone. They would blame me immediately of course, but the possibility that the letter was genuinely from ‘Alice’ could not be ruled out. Or so we supposed.
We had to wait until Friday before ‘Alice’ sent Wiggins an instruction on how to deliver the money. If we didn’t tempt fate by repeating the previous night’s exercise but sent it first class mail instead, it would arrive on Saturday morning, the day we wanted the drop.
There was nothing new about the attack in the morning news on the TV. I went into town and bought a new padlock and some bolt croppers, because Harry Burbage was coming at four to store his stuff in the barn. I bought a newspaper at the same time and flicked through it in the car, but there was no mention of the crime in there either, which was very frustrating. Juliet had stayed at the farm to do a bit of work on her business, she said.
With nothing else to do and both of us needing some exercise, we decided to go for a walk and take a sandwich. I suggested the pillbox, which was stupid; there were too many happy memories attached to it. She vetoed that strongly, so we just sat on the ridge and looked at the view and barely spoke. Tina was happy again, happier than Juliet and I were with the dark cloud of Giles' condition hanging in the air. Would he live, and if he did, would he recover? Would he return to be the same ‘lovely man’, as Juliet had so aptly described him? Awful, unanswerable questions that left huge doubts in our minds and, together with our own problems, dragged us down.
We wandered down into the valley and Tina rummaged around in the bushes and hedges on the way. She would fetch her ball from a throw or became possessive and carried it for ages. When we reached the stream, she dived straight in with a huge splash, ‘grinned’ up at us as if to say ‘Come on in, the water’s fine’ and was totally oblivious to her ball floating away on the current. She was fun to watch, her playfulness the catalyst needed to lift our spirits, and we started to talk again.
As we walked we schemed about our next move, decided on the form of the instructions and whether an eccentric twitcher would lead Wiggins from one possible drop to another to see whether there were any others following. ‘She would if she was Miss Marple,’ said Juliet, thinking of Agatha Christie’s ageing heroine.
‘True,’ I replied, ‘but she was exceptional.’
‘The world is full of exceptions. Let’s do it. Anyway it’ll be more fun.’
‘Given the reasons, none of this is fun,’ I grumbled.
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘and really, I’m angry as hell. Only two things are going to satisfy me: to see Giles well again and to see this bunch in jail for the rest of their lives. But,’ she added in a lighter tone, ‘I can’t help but be stimulated by the action.’
‘Agreed,’ I admitted, ‘and it’s good to be doing something towards a happy ending. I am unhappy that we are bumbling about like a couple of amateurs, though.’
‘Well we are amateurs, but at least we’re trying to do something.’
‘I feel uncomfortable because I want to be more professional, but don’t know how without obstructing the police. Back to Alice - you. If we give Wiggins several legs around the park before he drops the money, it will make it more secure for Alice to pick up the parcel, because if we give them a good run around, we might gain a better idea on the size of the opposition; how many are involved.’
‘And how are we going to collect the money?’
‘I’ve an idea for that, and it includes not doing so. I don’t want you exposed to danger, you need to stay out of sight. I’m not sure that Sandra knows whether you’re here or at home. Let’s go to the park and drive around and see if what we’ve thought about will work. We’ll do that as soon as we’re back, and we can still be back in time to meet Harry.’
‘What’s your idea? Stop being secretive.’
‘Well, either we let the council cleaners collect it and we retrieve it from them, or I dress up like a tramp and fish around in several dustbins as a decoy, eventually collecting the bag. That would be on Sunday morning very early, before dawn.’
Without thinking, we took a route back to the house via the pillbox, approaching it from the front. From a distance we could see the boards that I had installed over the embrasures to try and protect the interior as much as possible. We walked round the back and stared at the new door that I had spent a great deal of time fitting. It was closed, but the heavy padlock I had used was missing. Cautiously we entered, but it was empty and was still clean with the same smell of fresh paint. In fact there was no change inside at all. So, what the hell....? Who had cut the lock?
I called the county council, being shuttled from one department to another until I eventually heard the information I wanted. The dustbins in the park were emptied every Monday and Friday. It was going to be too long from Saturday to Monday to leave a parcel of money in the park for the refuse men to collect so, if it came to it, I’d have to dig out my tramp outfit.
After that we drove into town and stopped at the soccer pitch close to the Wiggins’ house where we had watched the noisy youths. The field was part of the much larger green area of Trident Park. We chose a place for Wiggins to leave the money, and we chose a route that he should take before he did so. We came to see that when you start planning for something like this, you realise that there are so many options to choose from, that picking the least risky is not always as straightforward as fiction would let you believe. There were so many “what ifs?”. It was part of my work to continually ask such questions, so I was able to deal with them rationally. Usually though, I was catering for a hypothetical situation, “What to do if the weather deteriorates to below minima and you, the pilot, are on the wrong side of the mountain in freezing conditions?”, or “What risks are associated with equipment failure when....?” In this case, the situation was real, a potential murderer was staring us in the face, and I was a leading suspect.
Harry Burbage couldn’t contain his admiration for Juliet. He obviously thought she was the best woman he’d seen in a long time, maybe ever. Even when he was talking to me, his eyes kept drawing back to her. After saying hello to us at the house, he drove his van to the barn so he could unload his stuff, and we walked there.
The bolt croppers made short work of the padlock and the heavy door swung open with a loud and prolonged creaking sound when Harry pulled it. We all filed inside, Juliet in the lead. I found the light switch behind the big man’s shoulder and flicked it on. The store was completely bare. It smelt musty, but had a swept-clean look to it and was otherwise perfectly suitable for Harry’s purpose, which he confirmed enthusiastically, adding, ‘Any chance of some shelving, then?’
‘It’s as-is Harry, I’m afraid. If you want to put shelves in here then go ahead, and if you leave them here when you’ve finished, I’ll pay you for them. Here’s a new padlock and two keys. If you don’t object, I’ll hang on to the third key just in case there’s a fire or some other reason to open it in an emergency. Is that fine wi
th you?’
He nodded, ‘That’s OK mate, good idea. I might take you up on the shelves - let y’know.’ He walked back to his van and returned with some oil for the door hinges while Juliet and I were again looking at his cars. We left him working the door back and forth until the creaking went away.
Chief Inspector Carter held another news conference on the television. He said they were following a number of leads and were anxious to interview another person, but he still appealed for any witnesses to come forward. I had a feeling that the investigation had stalled without Wiggins being found. Why didn’t they put his face on the TV and show who they were looking for? Then self-doubt intruded. What if I was wrong and that maybe Wiggins was not involved? What if it was Sandra herself that had attacked Giles? Or even someone unknown to us? I had nothing driving me but a gut feeling based on the wrecking of my house by an unknown person that I automatically assumed was Tony Wiggins. Were we just making a mess of things? If that was the case, then what if Wiggins took the letter to the police?
‘No, you’re right,’ Juliet reassured me, ‘It all fits together, and if Wiggins wasn’t under suspicion why was someone watching his house the other night?’
‘We don’t really know if they were. They might have been there for some other reason, and maybe it wasn’t the police at all. It might have been a drug related thing, anything. All along, I’ve made the evidence fit the situation. I’ve done it with the presumption that it was Sandra and her brother from the start, and made the evidence of their involvement fit. I haven’t looked at it objectively, unlike Carter.’
‘Yours is the most likely scenario. I know I’m looking at this half through your eyes, but I’ve tried to find fault with the reasoning and can’t. I think we’re on the right track. In any case, what harm are we doing by continuing with it? We’ve nothing else to do and neither of us is going to sit back and wait. If Sandra and Tony are really innocent and get upset by this, it’s just tough frankly, because they’re not nice people to start with!’
I had to laugh at that, so I poured us both a malt. She took hers and retreated to perch on a kitchen stool.
On Thursday I called Avis and booked a cheap car for use on Saturday, we did not want to have Juliet’s car seen while critical events were taking place, and mine was out of the question. I printed out the page from Google maps which showed Trident Park, and with that in hand we took another drive to look at the area. There were four cul-de-sacs leading off the road that ran around the outside of the park, and one of them offered an excellent view across it, another was not so good but would do.
To Tina’s delight we went for another long walk, this time returning through the woods. We had our sandwiches at their edge with a good view over the fields and my pillbox in the distance. There was a cool breeze just strong enough to make the trees sway. Juliet shivered, she was only wearing a brown polo shirt over her jeans because it had been warm earlier. I stood up to go and pointed, ‘Look where the pillbox is sited, these woods are well within its field of fire. Any invading Germans hiding in here would have to stay under cover or be cut down.’
‘It’s hard to imagine what this was like during the war,’ she mused, ‘It’s all so long ago, and we just don’t think as they had to to defend themselves.’
The wind was rising and, with a thin cloud layer, the sun had lost its warmth. A branch cracked behind us and, turning involuntarily, I caught a glimpse of movement in the trees before it was gone. A roe deer in its daytime cover of the wood probably, but it gave me a sudden sense of unease. ‘Come on, let’s go. You’re getting cold.’
Our route took us back past the old broken shed. Of course we stopped to look inside again, and at first glance nothing seemed to have changed. The rotten floor still had the same broken planks, the walls had holes, the place stank of damp, and the same litter was collected in a corner; a Fanta can, an energy drink bottle, sweet packets, chip packets, and chocolate wrappers that were so old the colouring had faded away. Something was wrong, though. It wasn’t the same as before, but I couldn’t pin down what the difference was.
‘The rubbish has been pushed to one side,’ Juliet pointed, ‘it used to be strewn all over the floor, and I don’t remember cigarette ends before, they look new. See how the moss has been flattened over there, as if something’s been laid on top of it.’
‘You’re right. Probably kids having an illegal smoke and a bit of fun in the woods.’
‘Maybe,’ she responded, ‘but kids won’t have cut the padlock off the pillbox.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saturday, and the forecast was for rain most of the day. Juliet had called Royal Mail and found that the post was delivered to Willow Street usually between eleven and twelve every day except Sunday, of course.
Alice had instructed Wiggins to be at the one phone box in Trident Park at four o’clock sharp.
“It must only be you because I’ll recognise you. Don’t have your wife do it, because I’m not sure I’ll know her. You, young man, are stamped in my memory,” wrote Alice.
In the morning we drove into town by a roundabout route in case we were followed. Once we were sure that none of the Parsons/Wiggins clan were on our tail, we collected the hire car, a nondescript Vauxhall Corsa. They offered me a red one, but we thought that stood out too much. ‘I hate red cars,’ I commented to the sales lady, ‘I had an accident in one once, my only accident. Have you a blue or black one, or anything else?’
‘Ah, my daughter’s superstitious as well, awfully difficult it can be..... There’s a blue one, will that do?’
‘That’ll be fine, thank you.’
We had left home early and fully equipped for the day. We did not take the hire car back home in case anyone watching the farm could link it to us. Instead, we laid the trail of clues in Trident Park that would take Wiggins on a roundabout route to the spot where he would drop the money. The non-stop drizzle that promised to become heavier as the afternoon approached made the whole exercise miserable, but it did keep curious eyes from watching some odd actions on my part, such as hammering a nail into a tree root.
Juliet had been silent for much of the time. Over a lunchtime pie and without warning, she announced, ‘You’re obsessed with getting to Tony Wiggins before the police do. Just what is that going to achieve?’
‘I’ve a score to settle and a friend in a critical condition thanks to him.’
‘What are you going to do with him? Put him in hospital with an assault? I think you should forget trying to take revenge and let the police handle it.’
‘What are you saying, that we should drop this right here and now?’
‘No. I’m saying that when we see Wiggins you phone Inspector Carter and tell him where he is. Let the system take the lead.’
‘It had occurred to me,’ I replied crossly, ‘but I’ll hand him over when I’ve finished with him. Where is the satisfaction in just putting the police onto him?’
‘Have it your own way,’ Juliet grumbled, ‘but when you’re also arrested for the short lived satisfaction of physically attacking him, you’ll be sorry. That’s if you win, of course.’
We didn’t talk on the way back to Trident Park, each of us wrapped up in our own thoughts. She was right of course, I should phone Carter when we had sight of Wiggins, but I simply could not relinquish the idea of a physical confrontation with the bloody man. At the very least I wanted to be able march him into the police station myself. I was still wrestling with the decision when we reached the park just after two o’clock. We reckoned that if Wiggins’ movements were to be observed by Sandra or Mandy, then their best position would be one from where they could see the whole park, and probably have a second place on the other side so as to cover the area better. One of them would then have the most advantageous position to spot Alice when she picked up the money. We had to leave those locations to them and find another place almost as good and from where we could see where they were likely to be.
Leading away f
rom the park on the eastern side, the land sloped gently upwards. All the streets that led down towards the green were the cul-de-sacs we had seen during our reconnaissance earlier in the week. Of these, Tilbury Close had the best view, so I reversed the car uphill into the adjacent street so that it faced the park, and we waited with an hour and a half to go. I switched on the car radio to help pass the time, but after listening for a few minutes Juliet switched it off. I, the culprit, wasn’t prepared to argue over it, so said nothing and stared out at the increasingly heavier rain.
‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’ I asked after an hour had gone by in uncomfortable silence, ‘I don’t see any danger until after he’s dropped the money. They can’t afford to strike at Alice until they’re sure it’s the right woman.’
‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, but I’ll be thankful for some gluhwein after being soaked in this rain while you relax in the dry warmth of the car,’ she replied without humour and sounding almost as dank as the weather.
Juliet wriggled her way into her raincoat while in her seat and wrapped a heather coloured scarf high up around her face. Nothing happened until about twenty to four, when a silver Ford Fiesta drove slowly down the road that bordered the park. When it was out of sight around the corner, I said, ‘That was it, time to go.’
She leaned over and for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me, but she only put a hand on my arm, and my bubble of hope popped again. ‘Carter,’ she said.
‘Take care of yourself,’ I murmured aloud as I watched her walk briskly away. Her mac swayed with her hips, but her bouncing pony tail was hidden beneath the umbrella. She strode purposefully, no one could think she was an Aunt Alice. She did not look around when she reached the phone box, but went straight inside and shook off the umbrella. I glanced about to make sure I was not being observed and took out the binoculars. Juliet was counting change out into her hand. She opened the directory and flicked to the common name of Jones, where she would stick a note giving him the next instruction. Then, using her change, she apparently keyed the numbers from the directory into the phone, but in reality called me on my pay-as-you-go. It was mainly for the cover, to prove her innocence to a watching Wiggins. ‘The Fiesta is parked in the next cul-de-sac,’ she said, ‘It’s also facing outwards.’