That was how the place could be summed up: tarnished. It was also drab, the table I sat at sticky and the man serving behind the bar looked as though a heavy soap and water tax had been imposed upon him. But the place was practically full, they served real ales and everything on the menu was advertised as home-made. It was man-food; the usual assortment of steaks, pies and sausages, not a salad or anything south of Dover in sight.
It was cold and I was famished as it was getting on for two o’clock so I ordered steak and ale pie. I had just done so when, unaccountably, loneliness and misery swept over me. If Patrick were here now he would have that to eat too. We would talk over the case, exchange ideas, plan the next move, in it together. I actually took my phone from my bag to ring him and then put it away again. No, it was selfish to spread unhappiness.
Then it rang.
I stared at it for a moment and then answered it.
‘Hi, I have a new mobile. The other one had died. Matthew went into Bath with Dad and bought it for me. Same number. Hope you’re in the warm, there’s snow forecast.’
‘I am, and just about to have a late lunch.’ Truly, the man must be telepathic.
‘Good. Mother’s feeding me up so it’s been soup and dumplings. Oh, and the doc popped in to take a routine blood test and said that whatever the specialist says she thinks I ought to get up a few times a day this week and move around gently or I’ll stiffen right up. I didn’t tell her I already have been.’
I did not remonstrate, asking him instead how he was feeling.
‘Still worn out – as though I’ve just run a marathon. I just seem to sleep all the time.’
I went on to tell him about my morning’s work. He seemed impressed.
‘You could ask Greenway if they really were Met people doing the surveillance at Park Road. I’m wondering if anything like that is ever farmed out to private firms when it’s just a question of watching a house and taking photographs of who goes in and out.’
‘I’ll do that straight after lunch,’ I promised.
‘We mentioned weekends earlier. It’s Friday tomorrow. Are you coming home?’
‘It depends on what turns up.’
‘You are working with Greenway’s team, aren’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want you going off and acting independently.’
‘I understand that.’
‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ he finished by saying wistfully.
‘Of course I will.’
No lies told there then.
While eating my meal I covertly glanced around. Although not for one moment expecting to trip over Jethro Hulton it seemed logical that his having been seen on these premises, or at least someone who closely resembled him had, that there would be an undercover police presence. I amused myself wondering who it might be – the builder’s labourer, his clothes white with plaster or cement, the city type reading The Times, a man and woman with several bags of shopping? – and if whoever it was would report my presence.
As I left I made a play of searching for the ladies’ toilet, going into the other bar and having a good look round. The place was far larger than the outside appearance suggested and I had an idea that several tiny rooms at the back where a man was shifting beer kegs, the area otherwise used as a general dumping ground, were actually the original building. As it was the loos were situated half below ground in a grim cellar; damp stone walls, tiny barred windows, like a dank dungeon.
I did ask Rundle Patrick’s question when he phoned me a little later with news that the whisky definitely contained barbiturates. This was only a preliminary finding and I gathered that he had given the lab hell until they had made the job a priority. More tests would follow as would those on blood samples taken from the murder victims and, for the present, until he had it in writing, the DCI would not update the case notes.
‘No,’ the DCI said, in response to my enquiry. ‘We don’t use private help for that kind of thing. Some of the personnel are retired police officers who want to keep their hand in for various reasons, mostly financial these days, but otherwise it’s all strictly in-house.’
‘Is the man who was taken ill better now?’
‘Yes, fully recovered, thank you’
‘Does he know what made him ill?’
‘God knows. I haven’t asked him. They live on takeaways you know, and apparently the empty house they were in was filthy.’
‘Chief Inspector, has it crossed your mind that he might have been deliberately poisoned?’
‘Frankly, no.’
‘And then there was a mix-up with the rota and all this co-incided with multiple murders at the house he and others were supposed to be watching where it would now appear that the victims were first drugged with doctored whisky.’
‘I’m fully confident that it was a dreadful coincidence and that my staff are above reproach,’ Rundle said stiffy. He then said that he was very busy and rang off.
Well, I hadn’t actually been accusing anyone of anything.
Greenway had on his desk the report I had earlier given to Andrew Bayley. ‘It’s coming together,’ he said, giving it a tap with a chunky forefinger.
I told him about Rundle’s call.
‘I’m amazed he’s telling you things like this. Great news! It means that it’s certain now that when Patrick entered the house all those people were unconscious.’
‘But we’re no nearer to finding out who pulled the trigger,’ I pointed out. ‘How do I get to talk to the cop who was left on his own and went down with food poisoning? I don’t think Rundle’s generosity stretches that far.’
‘You still think there’s a grey area there, don’t you?’
‘I don’t like thundering great coincidences, that’s all.’
‘No, nor do I. I’ll find out who he was.’
‘Any news on Hilik?’
‘Not yet, but although Andy’s got a lot on he’s sent emails off to various outfits in Serbia.’
‘It’s a very long shot.’
‘They’re something I do like. It’s amazing how often they make a hit.’ Greenway stretched his arms above his head. ‘Going home for the weekend?’
‘You wouldn’t say that if it was Patrick sitting here,’ I remarked tersely.
‘No, but—’
‘Incidentally, there’s a man who works in the cellar in the Cricketers pub. He’s swarthy, thickset and has a beard. It might pay to find out who he really is.’
At which point I felt I had done enough for one day.
The Serbian Embassy is in Belgrave Square. The next morning I spent around an hour in the building assisted by a very helpful young clerk and came away with several pages of paperwork that he had kindly printed off for me. On my way to the tube – parking difficulties and the congestion charge meant that I had left the car in the hotel car park – I kept a good hold on my bag with its precious contents. This time I had left the gun behind as well.
Hilik was notorious, or rather had been. There were even local jokes that something in the water was the cause of it being a bandit factory. My helper, who spoke perfect English, knew quite a bit about the place but was at pains to point out that, these days, things were different. Crunchtime had come around twenty years previously when rival gangs, in effect Mafia-style whole families, had engaged in one last shoot-out. Over thirty people had been killed and the police had arrested most of the survivors. The source of this information even provided a list of the dead.
As this was the Balkans, I reasoned, old feuds would still be simmering below the surface. Like volcanos. Whatever the truth it did appear that I might have a motive for the Park Road murders and duly went to present my findings to Greenway. He was at a meeting so I placed it carefully on top of the stuff in his in tray.
Again, I felt drawn to the crime scene for answers, this time to examine the area to the rear, something I had put off, frankly, because of the teeming rain. This had stopped but the morning was bitter
ly cold, a strong north wind whipping across the wide open grassed space that fronted the road and finding its way down the access lane at the rear of the gardens with a ferocity that was Arctic.
There would be nothing to see after all this time, I told myself, and it was silly to think that the luck I had had with the postman could continue. I found myself wondering why the Met had not tracked the man down and asked questions. The answer had to be that, as far as Patrick’s account of what had happened was concerned, they had hardly believed a word of it.
‘So,’ I said to myself, standing in the back lane facing up the garden. ‘Theory one: someone carried an unconscious Patrick from the first floor of the house and out here where they dumped him down, wiped the murder weapon and placed it in his hand. Why?’
Why indeed? Patrick is six feet two inches tall and weighs around twelve and a half stone. Carrying him with his long legs down the staircase, which was not particularly wide, would not have been easy so if anyone had done that they would have had to be very strong. Hulton was no doubt strong, but why bother?
I walked up the garden path. The whole area was neglected; long grass and assorted rubbish, and any rear boundary hedge or fence had been removed to enable vehicles to pull in on to a makeshift and uneven brick and concrete block parking space. If the murderer intended to blame Patrick for the killings he would hardly have brought him out here with a view to loading him into a car and taking him somewhere.
This was ghastly: I kept coming back to what appeared to be the only answer, that Patrick had shot everyone in a drug-dazed living nightmare, staggered out here and collapsed, having, in his confusion, wiped the weapon before picking it up again.
But what of the person who Patrick had said shot Leanne on the upstairs landing? Another dream? He had, after all, thought he had seen his parents out for a bike ride. But, surely, as with Mrs Goldstein being the Queen, he had merely spotted two ordinary cyclists. OK then, the man on the landing must have existed. This person shot Leanne, having possibly rendered Patrick semi-conscious first, and then went downstairs to kill everyone else.
It occurred to me that my husband may have been trying to escape through the back door after hearing the shots as the others were murdered and having somehow come down the stairs under his own steam. He no longer had his gun, he was in no fit state to do anything, not even to use his knife, the weapon these days strictly for last-ditch self-defence purposes.
‘Knife!’ I practically shouted. ‘Where was it? Where is it now?’
I grabbed my phone.
‘Where’s your knife?’ I blared when a sleepy-sounding voice answered.
‘What? Oh, sorry, must have dozed off. What did you say?’
‘Your knife,’ I repeated. ‘The Italian-made silver-hafted throwing knife from which you’re never willingly separated. Where is it?’
There was a shocked silence and then he started to swear at himself for forgetting about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally admitted. ‘It had completely gone from my mind.’
‘Suppose you factor that in to what you’ve remembered already and have a think.’
‘As I said earlier, it’s Friday. Suppose you come home for the weekend and we can talk about it then.’
‘Look, I’m standing in the back garden of the house in Park Road. Could you please have a little think now?’
‘OK, I’ll phone you back in a minute.’
Approximately thirty seconds later my phone rang again.
‘I might have thrown it,’ Patrick said.
‘Thrown it!’ I exclaimed.
‘It might only be one of the hallucinations. I threw my knife somewhere out in the open. I was being chased by a monster of some kind, an invisible one.’
Hulton, I thought, a monster who had just killed his own daughter.
‘Well, I found the Queen,’ I told him. ‘I’ll have a hunt around and then come home. Oh, and by the way, there’s a man who works at the Cricketers pub in Muswell Hill who answers Hulton’s description.’
‘For God’s sake stay away from the place then.’
‘Yes, all right.’
I knew how far he could throw his knife and how accurate he usually was. There were no trees in the garden but it was surrounded by overgrown hedges that could easily conceal several cannon and a small howitzer, never mind a knife. Working on the theory that even in extremis he would still not miss any target by a lot I began a search of the whole of the rear of the house, up to a height of about eight feet plus the ground directly beneath. I found nothing, nor were there any fresh chunks out of wooden window or door frames. I spread my search to the vegetation nearby and still failed to find it.
Moving the search area farther down the garden I examined every inch of what had once been a lawn, kicking through the rough grass and praying that I would encounter metal. I found nothing. The tangled borders were virtually impossible to hunt through but I reasoned that if someone had been chasing Patrick down the garden then anything thrown, which presumably missed, would be found somewhere within a few feet of the path, which was slightly to one side of the centre of the garden.
Nothing.
I had been looking for over an hour now and was very cold. Disconsolately going back towards the house I suddenly noticed that a small pane of frosted glass in the window of what looked like a downstairs toilet had a hole in it where one corner had been broken. There were no slivers of that kind of glass beneath it although there were what could have been smashed whisky bottles. I let myself back into the house through the front – I did not have a back door key. Truly, I told myself as I quick-marched to the rear, I shall have nightmares for life if I have to enter this literally bloody place again.
What might have once been a ground floor bathroom was now a dingy utility room: washing machine, tumble-dryer, central heating boiler, and shelving on the wall opposite the window that was crammed with old newspapers, pairs of boots and shoes and sundry other items.
Patrick’s knife was buried up to the hilt a couple of inches above the heel of a Wellington boot. I photographed it in situ with my phone and then took it, boot and all, back to SOCA’s HQ.
This was still not proof that he was innocent of murder.
FIFTEEN
It was three days later when I descended a flight of steep and slippery with half melted snow steps to the entrance of The Last Gasp nightclub. It had been difficult to locate but I had finally found it in a dimly lit alleyway just off the main shopping street in Acton. At the bottom of the steps I pushed my way through a very stiff to open door that slammed behind me like the jaws of a gin trap. The third obstacle turned out to be an extremely large gentleman with a mouth also like a gin trap who required to see my membership card.
‘I’m here to see Terry,’ I told him, or rather yelled to make myself heard over the din.
He grimaced and jerked a thumb in the direction of a nearby curtained archway.
It was dim within but for a diminutive spotlit stage upon which, to the deafening racket that some might describe as music, a mostly naked woman writhed her way around a large fluffy red toy snake. My eyes just about succeeded in piercing the gloom and I congratulated myself that I had got it right as far as the rest of the females present were concerned. I can do tart very nicely, something that greatly amuses Patrick. It’s mostly a matter of make-up, hair and deportment but a bosom that threatens to escape from confinement helps.
I was here with Greenway’s blessing, in a way, and my reply to the doorman-cum-bouncer, an undercover policeman, had been a prearranged password. The stipulation had been that I would provide my own minder, something he had probably thought I would be unlikely to achieve. There were SOCA personnel already watching without, and within, the club, and although the Commander had not actually said that none of them could be spared to watch over a female loose cannon that was just about the truth of it.
I did not really mind: I would merely turn up with one of the best.
Terry Meadows had been Pa
trick’s assistant in our MI5 D12 days and could be relied upon to drop everything, in practice his security consultancy business, and help out the person he still jokingly refers to as ‘the governor’. I spotted him almost immediately for he was one of the few men sitting on their own.
‘No thanks,’ he said as I seated myself, a move that co-incided with someone slaying the hi-fi system, the damsel getting her way with the snake, or whatever, both disappearing to desultory applause. He then did a wonderful double take. ‘Ingrid! I didn’t recognize you with –’ his gaze strayed downwards from my face – ‘with . . .’
I helped him out. ‘Big boobs? It’s temporary and just about the only advantage of getting pregnant. But you know that, you’ve two children of your own now. How are they?’
His good-natured features split into a big grin. ‘Fine, but exhausting.’
‘And Dawn?’
‘As gorgeous as ever. What can I get you to drink?’
‘I’d better have orange juice too,’ I replied, eyeing the tumbler that was in front of him. ‘Thank you.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s really good of you to come.’
He asked the question when he returned with my drink. ‘So what are we doing here?’
I gave him a short history of events so far, and, professional that he is, he only refrained from closely surveying those assembled once during my account and that was when I told him that Patrick had to convalesce for three months.
‘Not a chance!’ he said turning to stare at me in surprise. ‘He’ll be off out as soon as he feels better.’
‘He’s a little older and wiser now,’ I countered.
Terry just smiled. He is younger than Patrick by just over ten years, of strong build and has conker-brown hair. Once upon a time I had almost fancied him and he me – we almost succumbed but not quite, ending up by having a very cold shower together instead.
‘Jethro Hulton,’ Terry mused. ‘D’you have any mugshots on you?’
I did, having wrung them out of Greenway.
‘He’s got the boring kind of face that asks to be played around with, so he does,’ Terry concluded, frowning at the three photographs. ‘Sometimes a beard, sometimes long hair, sometimes a moustache. Disguise apart, he probably has an ego problem because he’s so nondescript.’
Souvenirs of Murder Page 17