by Nick Oldham
‘Have you spoken to her about it?’ he asked cautiously.
‘I have. She doesn’t remember anything as yet. Maybe she will in time.’
‘Hopefully.’ He told her the police had arrived at the Tawny Owl and that he had given a statement too. He also reassured her about the running of the pub and how efficient he had been. She seemed underwhelmed by that and Henry got the impression she thought he might be blagging her.
They ended the call after a couple of ‘I love you’s,’ and then after checking everything was running OK in the pub – the chef was hard at it on the lunch menu, the barman had landed, the ladies who did all the bedrooms had started work as they became vacant – he set off to see Lord Chalmers in his new car.
Except that he ended up having to use Alison’s huge four-wheel-drive monstrosity, a massive Nissan Navara, because all four tyres on his almost new Ford Mondeo Estate had been slashed.
FIVE
Lord Chalmers was one of the richest men in the country. His wealth was nowhere near the vast riches of his close neighbour, the Duke of Westminster, but the figures published in the Sunday Times Rich List had made Henry Christie’s eyes almost pop out.
Eight hundred million pounds at the last count. Some inherited, but the majority self-generated over the last fifty years from property in London, the north-west of England, New York and Paris and also some very successful dabbling in the steel industry in India and the Far East, or so Henry had read in the little blurb. However he read it, Chalmers was worth more than he could possibly dream about, having been a salaried employee all his life and thinking he didn’t have it too bad.
Chalmers had homes all over the place, but tried to spend as much time as possible in his country mansion on his north Lancashire estate, set under Mallowdale Fell with the tiny River Roeburn trickling through its grounds. There were rumours of politicians and celebrities staying at Brown Syke (named after a small lake up the fells), but Henry had never seen anyone famous passing through, though it was possible they could have landed on the helipad or on the airstrip at the mansion, or via dark-windowed Hummers zipping through Kendleton on the way to the house.
Chalmers was known to keep a low profile. He rarely made the media, though Henry had once read some tittle-tattle about him meddling in high-level politics, a claim that neither interested nor surprised him. People like Chalmers knew people like Chalmers.
With a cloud of uneasiness hovering over his brain as he tried to juggle getting ready to see Chalmers and the discovery of the damage to his car – and trying to get his head around that new development (was he a target too, he wondered, and if so, why?) he drove out of Kendleton and out towards Mallowdale Fell, quickly onto tight roads, some not much wider than farm tracks, some clinging precariously to steep hillsides with sheer drops, hoping he wouldn’t meet anything coming in the opposite direction because he really wasn’t in any mood to give way to any bastard that morning.
Eventually he arrived at the entrance to Brown Syke, a huge double-fronted intricately wrought iron gate with an intercom set into one of the pillars.
It irked him he had to climb down from Alison’s beast and call. He guessed this was usually the job of the chauffeur.
He pressed the buzzer, waited for a response.
‘Identify yourself,’ came a tinny male voice.
‘Henry Christie for Lord Chalmers, from the Tawny Owl.’ As he spoke he glanced up to see a security camera peering down at him from the branches of a tree on the other side of the high wall.
‘Drive up.’ The intercom clicked dead and the big gates began slowly to open. He jumped back into the car, selected drive and released the brake.
Henry half-wondered what he was doing here, but Chalmers’ granddaughter, some flaky London socialite with more money than sense, had once popped into the Tawny Owl on a day he wasn’t there – he had been at the cash-and-carry warehouse, a whole new experience for him, buying sackfuls of peanuts and dozens of tins of food – and the girl had got into a conversation with Alison which included the plans to turn the Owl into a wedding and function venue and the purchase of a huge marquee out the back which would be semi-permanent. The young lady had been so impressed by the quaintness of the place she immediately booked it for her upcoming twenty-first-birthday party on the proviso that the marquee was up and running.
It was due for delivery and erection next week and the said birthday party was pencilled into the diary in a month’s time.
Henry and Alison expected to separate Chalmers from about five thousand of his pound coins, hence his visit today to finalize details and also to take the second stage of the deposit. The granddaughter had already paid £1,000 on her first visit to the Owl, producing the cash out of her handbag.
The big wheels of the Navara crunched on the fine gravel as he headed up towards the house with the River Roeburn on his left-hand side and the well-tended grounds on the right, up to the point where the drive turned sharply away from the river, through a wooded area and then the mansion was revealed for the first time in all its shabby glory.
It looked as though it had seen better days, but that could have been a ploy because as Henry drove closer he saw the outside, clad in creeping holly and other such climbing plants he could not identify, was much nicer close up.
Two cars were parked in the turning area, a grey Range Rover and a red Aston Martin. Beyond a copse of trees he glimpsed a helipad, beyond which was a finely trimmed grass runway.
Henry swerved deliberately to throw up some gravel from his tyres and climbed out, bringing his file on Chalmers with him. He set off towards the front doors – double-fronted and constructed of heavy wood, painted a deep, rich blood red – but he stopped in his tracks when he spotted the pair of Dobermann pinschers sitting side by side on the top step, ears erect, like guardians of an Egyptian pharaoh. He realized they were not actually intricate bronze statues, but real, living, breathing beasts.
Their eyes twinkled with bad thoughts as they surveyed him along their snouts.
‘Shit,’ he said. He didn’t mind dogs he could kick skywards, but not monsters like these, both, he now saw, slavering snot-like dribble from the corners of their mouths.
Fortunately the door opened at that moment and a man Henry recognized as Lord Chalmers, fit-looking but mid-seventies, stepped out, laughed and said, ‘Stand down, lads.’
The dogs came to life and ran towards Chalmers.
He rubbed their heads and called them, lovingly, ‘My boys,’ walking towards Henry as he did, one dog either side of him, eventually getting close enough to reach out a dog-saliva covered hand to shake Henry’s.
‘Mr Christie, I’m Chalmers … that’s what you can call me, just Chalmers,’ he said magnanimously and in a friendly uncondescending manner with no edge to it.
‘You can call me Henry,’ he responded, extending his hand. The men shook and Henry was pleased the dogs did not chew his off.
‘These two fellers will be OK with you now,’ Chalmers promised, giving the dogs another big rub of their heads, then gestured – a flick of the fingers – and they hurtled away down the front steps towards a man Henry had not noticed before, a guy dressed in sporty black joggers and a black hoodie with the hood pulled off, exposing his closely shaved head. He looked very former-soldier-ish to Henry.
‘Security,’ Chalmers said off Henry’s glance. ‘One of two guys I have roaming the place just in case.’
Henry held back from asking, ‘In case of what?’ He assumed rich men were often targets.
‘Anyway, come in,’ Chalmers beckoned. ‘We’ll have a chat about my granddaughter’s party.’
He led Henry through those big front doors, across a vast tiled entrance foyer, along a wide hallway and out to what he called the orangery, basically a huge conservatory, at the back of the house with sweeping views of manicured lawns leading down to the river and beyond, the breathtaking views of the Bowland Fells.
‘My favourite place,’ he said smiling. ‘Pu
ts everything into perspective.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Henry agreed, coming quite late in life to be a big fan of hills now that he lived nestled in amongst them.
He gestured for Henry to take a seat next to an ornate occasional table on which a large pot of filter coffee and a pot of tea on hot rings awaited with appropriate crockery, heavy mugs or delicate china cups.
He sat across from Henry. ‘What’s your poison? Redbush tea from Kenya or Kenyan coffee?’
‘The coffee would be great.’ Henry was still in need of its reviving qualities.
As he poured he looked at Henry’s face and commented, ‘You’ve been in the wars.’
Henry shrugged. ‘Trouble with a burglar in the pub, but he managed to get away.’
SIX
Tod Rawstron’s parents made him attend college to ensure that if all else failed he would have at least some recognized qualifications to fall back on. He attended dutifully if not enthusiastically three days a week but the remainder of his time he spent as a trainee gamekeeper on the Westminster estate in north Lancashire.
He had been born for the outdoors. As far back as he could remember he had always visualized himself as a gamekeeper, but he knew his parents were correct. Not many gamekeepers existed these days and the few who did make a career of it were very lucky and very hard workers with great skills and commitment.
Tod had decided it was his vocation and he would do everything he could to make it happen for him. He had become skilled with a shotgun, worked many hours without pay, did his best to learn the actual job, continually increased his countryside knowledge and tried to become indispensable to the head keeper of the estate. He had been volunteering since the age of twelve – in between stealing cars and other stupid behaviour which landed him in youth custody for some short spells. The head keeper had taken him on with no promises other than he ‘would see what he could do’ provided Tod managed to keep his nose clean, and got professional with it.
The result of these years of graft had been a poorly paid part-time job as a trainee, although he did make huge amounts in tips through the grouse- and pheasant-shooting season from rich people who came north to gun down the birds Tod had helped rear.
That was until yesterday when the head keeper called Tod into his office and, true to his word, offered him full-time work plus free board in one of the tiny en-suite rooms over the stables if he wanted. The other proviso was that Tod had to finish college and pass his courses.
Tod accepted immediately and he was an ecstatic young man with a gun and a dog and a job.
His dreams had come true, his commitment paid off, but he was canny enough to know it was still a job that could disappear at any moment.
He went home after his meeting with the head keeper, broke the news to his parents and thanked them for insisting he went to college and although he still had some time to go before he finished the courses, he had already picked up some low-level engineering qualifications which he’d used to set up a small vehicle-repair business he ran from his parents’ garage specializing in all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) – quad bikes in other words – a business that ticked over nicely because such vehicles were always going wrong.
He had enjoyed a lazy breakfast at the Tawny Owl, probably spending too much time over it, but he was feeling in a celebratory mood. The local cop, Jake, who he’d come to know quite well, had told him about the masked intruder in the pub, but had not gone into great detail. Jake, though, and Henry Christie, had shown interest in the man Tod had seen skulking through the woods with a rifle. Jake wondered if it could have been the same man who had tried to abduct Ginny, so Tod thought he would keep an extra eye out on his travels that morning. He liked and fancied Ginny.
Probably the guy was just another local poacher, but even so he needed to be collared. Tod relished the thought of a bit of a manhunt that morning.
He waved goodbye to Jake, who was still busy at the pub, thanked the chef for a great breakfast, then jumped into his tired old Land Rover and set off for a look around.
Tod knew the whole area intimately. He drove out of Kendleton, west towards Brookhouse, then looped off the road on to a forest track that followed Rushbed Gutter, one of a series of small streams in the area which ultimately fed, via other streams and rivers, into the River Lune, which flowed out through Lancaster into the amazing expanse that was Morecambe Bay.
The track he followed became narrow, rough and eventually petered out to nothing until Tod was surrounded by high, dense trees, their rich summer canopies cutting out much of the morning sunlight. To his right was the bulk of Abbeystead Fell and in the distance in a break in the trees he could glimpse Jubilee Tower, the high viewing point that gave a stunning view across Morecambe Bay, Blackpool and the Lake District.
Tod had actually stopped on the edge of Tarnbrook Fell, very much a part of his beat. Through the woods away to his left, although quite a distance away now and a hard walk, lay Kendleton.
‘Well, Nursey, you up for a stroll?’ Tod asked his loyal wide-eyed Labrador who seemed to smile and almost say yes, she was raring to go.
Tod climbed out, followed by the dog, went to the back of the Land Rover and removed one of his shotguns from the locked metal case. He broke the weapon for safety, made sure it was not loaded, balanced it over the crook of his arm, chucked a handful of cartridges into his jacket pocket and set off into the woods, the dog obediently at his heels.
Henry was surprised that Chalmers was dealing with the matter of his granddaughter’s party by himself, but as they chatted Henry saw how much he doted on the girl who, it seemed to Henry, was a bit of an airhead, but clearly Chalmers loved her to bits.
‘She was absolutely entranced by your little hostelry,’ he was telling Henry, ‘and I said I’d happily fund the twenty-first … not, of course, that it will be her only celebration. She’ll be down in Mayfair, then Ibiza, no doubt, but she wanted to give some of her friends a taste of rural Britain. How many bedrooms do you have?’
Henry told him.
Chalmers did some mental arithmetic. ‘We’ll put all her friends up there for a couple of nights, including her. The older contingent can stay here with the fogies, like me. Would that be in order?’
Henry nodded with alacrity, seeing pound signs leap up before his eyes like an old-fashioned till in a haberdashery. No room bookings had been taken for that weekend just on the off-chance of this business, so the Chalmers clan could have the run of the place. Henry did his own mental arithmetic, not something he was terribly brilliant at, but he liked the look of this ballpark figure.
‘I’m not into the detail of costs,’ Chalmers told him. ‘If we say ten grand for the weekend, would that cover it?’
Henry’s ballpark just got bigger. He tried not to grin as he said, ‘Yes, fine, but it won’t come to that.’
‘That’s what I’m paying … don’t forget, you’ll need to order the best champagne and caviar … the best food, et cetera.’
‘Good point,’ Henry conceded.
Chalmers’ eyes narrowed. ‘I believe you were a police officer once over.’
‘Happily retired, pulling pints now.’
‘A detective superintendent?’
‘I reached those dizzy heights against all the odds.’
‘Not what I’ve heard. I’m told you were good, very good.’
‘By whom?’
‘That doesn’t really matter.’ Chalmers dismissed the question. ‘But if you ever tire of the licensing trade, I’m always on the lookout for good people.’ He raised his bushy eyebrows, asking the question.
‘I’m good, thanks.’ Henry could not have imagined anything worse. ‘Look, what I’ll do is price up the weekend accurately, champers and all, send you a quote and take it from there, if that’s OK?’
It was cool in the trees, dark and not a little mysterious. Tod picked his way quietly through the underbrush with Nursey at his heels, moving with him, not straying. Tod liked this environment, a place he fe
lt he could have been the first human being to set foot and up to a point that was true, for very few people did venture into these woods.
It was almost as if he was the only person alive in the world.
But Tod had also developed a sixth sense as a tracker and suddenly, as a wisp of cool breeze flitted around his neck, he felt he was not alone at all. A strange, unsettling sensation underneath the canopy.
He stopped moving, gave a sharp hand signal for Nursey to stop also.
Then he backed up against a tree, sank slowly to his haunches, laid a hand on Nursey’s head and listened hard, inhaled slowly, as his eyes roved between the foliage.
Just something.
He sniffed in deeply.
Something.
Then, rather like focusing on one of those paintings that, if stared at long enough, if the mind is allowed to relax, the picture reveals something else, and a hidden image appears as if by magic, he saw a hide of sorts. Branches, leaves, scrub, all resting against and covering something between two trees.
A vehicle.
He did not move, just allowed his eyes and brain to fully comprehend what he was seeing. A green-bodied, white-roofed Volkswagen camper van had been driven into the woods and then someone had taken the time to very effectively hide it. Someone skilled and very careful had gone to a great deal of effort.
Tod’s nostrils flared as he sniffed the air again and he found himself to be slightly afraid.
Slowly he rose off his haunches and walked towards the vehicle until he was alongside it. He moved a twig and peered in through a side window, saw cooking utensils and a camping stove on the tiny kitchen work surface, a kettle on the hob with a wisp of steam coiling out of the spout, a mug alongside it.
He held his right hand over his eyes to shade them.
He saw the rifle laid out across the sofa and recognized it for what it was – the weapon of a sniper. Maybe the one he had seen in the hands of the mystery man in the woods.
Ten metres behind him, standing alongside another tree, the owner of the VW and of the rifle watched Tod’s actions, knowing he had to act now to avoid detection and exposure.