Souvenirs of Murder

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘I hope I haven’t ratted anything up for you but this is important. Your father’s just received a call from someone he described as a nervous lady parishioner who said there’s people down on the old railway site making a real row dancing round a bonfire. She lives nearby apparently and wants to know if she ought to call the police. Naturally, he came straight through to me.’

  ‘For God’s sake tell him to stay right away from the place!’ Patrick said, not keeping his voice down.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s not even thinking of going down there. I was wondering if it means something else is happening tonight.’

  ‘You might like to come over to where we are,’ Patrick told him. ‘Because something just might.’

  When James found us, having followed Patrick’s detailed instructions, and presumably our footprints we closed the outside door, draped the curtain where it had been, shifted back the van and shut the inner door. Carrick had brought a bigger torch with him and by its light we moved a few of the boxes to give us room to conceal ourselves between them and the wall. But we could not disturb them much, not enough to be really noticeable. Our hiding places were exceedingly cramped and when the torches were switched off it became very, very dark.

  About three million years went by.

  I was endeavouring to rub a bout of cramp from my right calf when I heard muffled noises: feet being stamped with cold or to remove snow perhaps. Moments later the outer door was opened and people entered the coach house. I tried to guess how many of them there were; they were not trying to be particularly quiet. Three or four perhaps.

  Huffing and puffing noisily they then moved the van and, after a longish pause, came through the door. Seconds later the lights were switched on. I already knew that Patrick was close to me, but Carrick was somewhere round a corner out of sight.

  ‘They’re coming home in two days’ time,’ a thin reedy voice I recognized said. ‘So, as I told you earlier, this is the last run. Rip open as many boxes as you can this time and I’ll take a look inside and decide what we take. Just the really good stuff.’

  ‘How d’you know when they comin’ back?’ someone asked.

  ‘I have my sources,’ the first voice, Frank Crosby’s, I was convinced, said pompously. ‘Just get on with it and stop talking or you won’t get your cut.’

  Patrick had already said to James that this was his, Carrick’s, war so he would follow the DCI’s lead. I guessed that he would wait until they had some of the booty actually in their hands before making a move and this is exactly what happened some three or so muscle-racking minutes later.

  ‘Police!’ Carrick suddenly shouted. ‘Stay right where you are! You’re all under arrest!’

  Patrick and I jumped out of hiding. The first thing that became apparent was that it was two to one: there were six of them. The second was that they had no intention of being arrested. Third, five were well-built oafs.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Patrick bellowed, enough to shake dust from the rafters.

  They all moved. Two threw full boxes at James and Patrick. I did not see the outcome of this having gone for Crosby. He kicked out at me, missed and ran out of attack ideas after I’d got him by his jacket lapels and slammed him into a wall a few times. I then tipped him backwards over some boxes and parked him mostly upside down in a corner where he was forced to stay.

  Patrick was fighting off three of them. One came hurtling towards me after a flailing fist had caught him on the jaw so I let his momentum carry him onwards, guiding him over the boxes as well so that he thundered down in a cloud of dust on top of Crosby in the corner. Another left his original target alone when I got him by the hair and lined him up for a haymaker from Carrick who was making like the wild Scot part of him that he calls up in emergencies.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone fleeing through the door. I tore after him, jumped on his back, one arm around his throat, tightly, the other over his eyes. Off balance, he ran straight into the back of the van with me still on board, hitting one of the rear doors hard enough with his forehead not only to dent it, we discovered afterwards, but send it rolling across the coach house to crash into the opposite wall. My mount collapsed sideways and I hit the floor hard. I found my feet, grabbed another piece of rope and tied his ankles tightly together.

  Back in the inner room the war was over; Carrick breathing deeply, rubbing his knuckles, Patrick leaning on some boxes as though absolutely done in. He was.

  But very happy.

  ‘And, not only is your neighbour at the Grange a fence,’ Carrick told us joyfully the following afternoon, ‘It would follow that he’s involved with a gang that specializes in stealing antiques, possibly the boss man. Crosby’s probably nothing to do with the gang – he’s still not talking – but my guess is that he went round to the Grange wearing his good citizen hat doing a charity collection and was told of the impending departure for South Africa. Only time will prove me right or not.’

  ‘What are the Huggins mob saying about all this?’ Patrick wanted to know, the haul having comprised three brothers, one cousin and a son of Carlton, busy with his magic down in the village.

  ‘They’re all singing like canaries. According to them – although, as you might imagine, there are varying accounts, mostly completely exonerating the person actually speaking, of course – Crosby was the brains behind it. Whether the man was invited in next door and saw a few rather nice pieces of furniture, and so forth, and decided to have a snoop around when the place was unoccupied we don’t yet know but the Huggins’ accounts all tally on one point, Crosby already knew the stuff was there. It’s worth a fortune. The Arts and Antiques Squad have hardly started looking at what’s stored in the coach house but we know already that there are even items stolen from National Trust properties.’

  ‘And our new neighbours?’ Patrick asked him with a wry smile.

  ‘They’ll be arrested as soon as their feet touch the ground at Heathrow.’

  ‘Blanche must have found out,’ I commented. ‘But how?’

  Carrick said, ‘He may well have only found out about the people behind the black magic sessions. His note to Barbara only spoke of “rotten practices” if you remember, which is bad enough but doesn’t suggest stealing antiques. If he said something like “I know what you’re up to” to either of the Crosbys they could have thought he knew everything.’

  ‘And lured him to the church that morning on some pretext and killed him,’ Patrick mused. ‘Have you arrested the wife?’

  ‘Too right. I can’t believe she didn’t know what was going on, at the very least. The business of going round to ask Ingrid for the key so she could check the flowers, in effect that Blanche’s body would be found, was merely to divert any suspicion. Oh, and the eldest son of Carlton Huggins, Riley – the one you tackled, Ingrid – has admitted that he and his younger brother, Ricky, were the two who roughed up the rector. Riley seemed to think we were going to make him pull his pants down to show where he still had the bruises where John walloped him if he didn’t own up.’

  ‘And of course you wouldn’t have suggested he did anything so demeaning,’ Patrick said with a laugh.

  ‘Of course not,’ Carrick replied, looking shocked.

  There had been a very strange end to the ‘party’ by the bonfire that had put an abrupt stop to it, hopefully for always. Suddenly – those taking part well drunk, including a few younger ones definitely under age including Matthew’s classmate Clem, his father Carlton Huggins in all his finery invoking the Devil – there had been a flash and a loud bang. Then another, centred on the bonfire. Then when they were all running, a much bigger explosion that had rattled local windows and blown the fire to pieces, sending blazing bits of wood raining down on the fleeing ‘worshippers’ and setting light to Huggins’ robe. He had last been seen jumping into the nearby river.

  ‘Thunder flashes are one thing but a hand grenade,’ I reproached. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re keeping things like that at home.’


  Patrick gave me a Mona Lisa smile. ‘Never. Rest assured any emergency items like that are kept in a very, very secure place.’

  I did not enquire further. No one has yet been convicted of killing Jethro Hulton and I haven’t asked Patrick about that either.