‘Are you all right?’ I enquired urgently, noticing that James looked a bit white.
‘Aye, just jarred myself a bit,’ he gasped.
‘I’ll never forgive myself if you’re hurt again.’
‘Och, no bother, I’ll just have more sick leave.’
We paused for a couple of minutes while he recovered and then made our way towards the carriage drive, or rather where its route should be as, surely, that would make for slightly easier walking and lead us directly to the house. After floundering for a while as there were a lot of bramble thickets that had to be navigated around, we finally emerged from a small copse of birches to find our feet on harder ground. To the right, the house could be seen as a dark rectangle through the greenery.
Trees and shrubs had seeded themselves in the drive but we made good progress and a few minutes later we found ourselves near to what must have originally been the carriage house and stables. The house lay beyond a short distance away. From this angle the state of the building did not seem too bad as the roof, although sagging in places, was mostly intact on this side. But the blackened stonework and missing window frames spoke of a serious fire. Now, this hideous relic of another age seemed to intrude on its peaceful garden that had returned to nature and I found myself thinking that it ought to be demolished. Soon.
In contrast, the stables and coach house were in quite good condition, perhaps because nothing valuable had been deemed to be within by those who had first broken into the house itself. We checked all the windows and the locks on the doors, all of which seemed to be original, none of them forced. Mallory wasn’t here. There were no sinister ghostly vibes either but it was not difficult to imagine all these doors open and hear the clatter of shod hooves on a stone floor, the jingle of harness, the deep-throated sound horses make, like a chuckle, when they see a feed being brought or someone they recognize and like. It was quite possible that the last on these premises had been requisitioned by the army during the First World War and died horribly in the mud of the hell that was the Somme. The gardeners and other workers on the estate may well have been called up, as had happened at the Lost Garden of Heligan in Cornwall, and also never returned.
‘You OK?’ Carrick suddenly asked, startling me slightly.
‘There are memories here,’ I said.
‘Of nightmares?’
‘No. But it’s sad, very, very sad.’
It was then that we heard music. Of a sort. It sounded like the kind of background music hell might have.
‘He’s in the house!’ Carrick exclaimed, automatically speaking quietly even though if we could detect it from around fifty yards away the din indoors must be stupendous.
Feeling no need for a covert approach, we followed the drive. Ahead of us, it curved around the side of the house towards the front entrance. Here, at the rear, there appeared to be at least three entrances, one into what must have been the kitchens and another being a side door into the wreck of a large conservatory. Fleetingly, I mourned the dead plants among the shattered glass that I could see even from a distance, thinking of all those thousands of man-hours that had been spent cherishing orchids, tropical ferns and other exotics when it had been a private house. A third access was through a porch, a Victorian add-on that had survived more or less intact – mostly, I reckoned, on account of its extreme ugliness. As at the main gates there were warning notices everywhere but no sign of the security fencing about which we had been told. Perhaps, like every other damned thing of any value, it had been stolen.
‘Is that Humpleschlacht?’ I asked, the sound ever louder with each of our footsteps and, right now, sounding akin to a percussion instrument factory collapsing during an earthquake. Flocks of birds, no doubt disturbed by the noise, were wheeling restlessly around the rooftops.
‘It has all the … characteristics,’ Carrick responded and then stopped in his tracks. ‘I have to tell you that this bloody racket has bad memories for me.’
‘When you were ill that time after calling on Cooper?’
‘Aye. That and … Catherine’s death.’
‘Did you get home all right?’
He brightened a little. ‘Ah, well, it was in the days when Joanna had resigned from the force and had a private investigator’s business in Milsom Street with a guy by the name of Lance Tyler. Tyler was killed in a road accident shortly afterwards but that’s beside the point. She had a case that had also taken her to the square that night and we sort of met.’
‘You mean you almost threw up over her, don’t you?’ I said, glad that he was talking about it.
‘Well, actually …’ He smiled. ‘Almost.’
‘She took you home and looked after you?’
‘Not a chance. She told me she knew what men looked like who lived on just whisky, followed me home in her car, stood over me while I cooked us both dinner, we ate it – I can’t remember exchanging a word the whole time – and then she went off, leaving me with all the washing up.’
‘You’re a very lucky man.’
‘I know.’
We carried on.
The outside door of the porch was hanging off its hinges as though an attempt had been made to wrench it right off, perhaps to steal it for the heavy and ornate cast-iron knocker and letter box. Judging by the rusting state of these items now it had been an historic event and the thieves had moved on elsewhere. The inner door, a cheap, modern replacement, had however been forced open recently and stood ajar, the wood freshly splintered, every indication being that the attack on it had been a frenzied one. I then noticed a crowbar thrown down nearby.
‘I urge extreme caution,’ the DCI said very close to my ear, the noise at such volume now that it was an attack on the senses. He pushed the shattered door and it swung wide.
The place was little more than a shell, I realized with a shock. I could see right through to the front of the house. Not all that long ago there had been another fire, a serious one, as tiny wisps of smoke were still emanating from a pile of charcoal-black beams a few yards to our left. Some distance away, towards the front of the house, large pillars were still standing but supported nothing in what must have been an imposing entrance hall. The ground – it could no longer be called a floor – was covered in inches, or even feet in places, of roofing slates, masonry and more charred wood. From where we stood I could see right up to the remains of the roof and through the holes in it to the sky. The rest only seemed to be held up by a prayer. It occurred to me that the vibration of this appalling noise could bring it all down.
But we had to go in.
On this ground floor some of the interior walls were still standing, where the kitchen had been possibly off to our left. It was possible to imagine, approaching the front and looking at the gaps where they had been, the doors, left and right, that would have led into a library, dining and withdrawing rooms, and, at one side, the elegant staircase in place before it was plundered and sold, together with the fireplaces and other fittings, to a reclamation yard.
Carrick touched my arm and gestured to the nearest doorway on our left, obviously of the opinion that that was where the music was coming from. It was actually just about impossible to tell as the cacophony was everywhere, the noise booming around, echoing in what was in effect an empty box. But Mallory could not be far away.
And then, there was an abrupt silence. The end of a track or had he spotted us somehow?
We froze and I held my breath for a few moments, listening. Then, in the direction Carrick had indicated there were a couple of clicking sounds and it started up again. This drove him into action and, not being at all careful where he put his feet, he ran over to the doorway. Slipping, sliding and nearly falling on some slates, I followed.
It’s the details you notice first. In a way that reminded me inexorably of Patrick when emotionally affected, Carrick, icy, his body stiff with self-restraint, went over to the CD player, bent down and, after trying several buttons, switched it off. It had started to rain lightly again
, a fine coolness that drifted down through the holes in the roof to glisten on the remnants of what had once been beautiful and were now ruined or destroyed forever. Mallory, ruined and destroyed forever, was already wet – soaked – he had clearly been here for several days and was staring up, pop-eyed, at Carrick from where he huddled, shaking, on the floor like a beaten dog, his sodden clothing like so many rags. Everything he was wearing appeared to be bloodstained.
‘I know who you are, you know,’ he croaked. ‘Have you got a drink?’
‘Sorry, no,’ Carrick replied quietly, and somewhat kindly. ‘But we can soon get help for you.’
‘Karl came here, you know. He wrote my music. It was his refuge. His spirit’s here, so I brought the music so he could hear it again. And then Cooper spoilt everything and came along too.’ Staring right through the DCI as though he wasn’t there, Mallory went on, ‘I hit the bastard on the head with the hammer and he just laughed at me. So I cut his throat and the blood ran out but he was still smiling.’ His voice was slowly rising to a wail. ‘And now he’s here, too. I’ve seen him looking in at me through the windows and the only way I can keep him away from me is with Karl’s music. He never really liked Karl. And now you’ve switched it off he’ll come back!’
‘He won’t come back,’ Carrick assured him. ‘As you know, he didn’t like me either.’
Mallory cheered up a little. ‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘What did you do with the hammer?’
The man shook his head. ‘Can’t remember. Might have chucked it in the river.’
In the end, an air ambulance was called to take Mallory away, apparently collecting quite a crowd of onlookers, and, because of the overgrown conditions within the garden walls and the surrounding woodland, he had to be winched out.
The room, perhaps once a parlour, was the smallest enclosed space in what remained of the manor house, and for this reason I am sure Paul Mallory had chosen it for his sanctuary. Carrick and I and those members of Surrey Police who attended gravitated to it for a debriefing. Also, this part of the house was the most protected from the elements by what roof was left – the rain was heavy now.
The inspector, whose name was Brian Hough, was a square chunk of a man with dark hair that badly needed cutting and dark, worried-looking eyes. I wondered whether he had come purely out of curiosity or had been concerned that his staff might be bullied by a stroppy DCI from the sticks. He was not pleased about the considerable brute force, plus bolt cutters, that there had been no choice but to apply to the main gates in order to gain entry, the keys being God knew where. Carrick, all smiles, had made the point that it would be a waste of time anyone sending the bill in Avon and Somerset’s direction.
The usual proof of identity requirements having been dealt with, followed by a few answers to pertinent questions, Carrick went on to say that someone in his team would need to arrest Mallory at some stage for murder, if and when he was thought fit to plead. I then told Hough that I would leave it up to Commander Greenway to decide whether the suspect was thought sufficiently connected with Nick Hamsworth to charge him with also being an accessory to serious crime. Privately, I thought not.
‘Isn’t that the character who calls himself Raptor?’ Hough queried. And on receiving an answer in the affirmative, said, ‘We saw there was a warrant out for his arrest, of course. He fancies an upmarket lifestyle does that one, according to a reliable source of information we have in Guildford. The whisper is that he runs several clubs in the east of London and one for his chums and the nobs, as it was described to me, somewhere in the Woodford area.’
‘We already knew that,’ I said, not relishing the leery way he was looking at me. At all. ‘Does Hamsworth’s manor really extend as far south as Guildford?’
‘No, but my source’s manor extends as far north as London.’
‘Do you think he would have any idea where Hamsworth actually lives?’
‘He might tell me something if I send him your smiling photo and say it’s for you,’ he replied with a wink, waggling his mobile in my direction in a frankly dirty fashion.
‘And I might send him your photo with your bloody brains blown out if you try it,’ I retorted, omitting the colourful additions with which Patrick would have lavishly sprinkled the reply had he been present. I do try to behave like a lady.
‘Only joking,’ he blustered, having also been on the receiving end of a don’t-mess-with-SOCA look from Carrick. He went away from us, miming that the reception was better outside and those of us remaining, together with a sergeant and a uniformed constable, maintained extremely straight faces.
My irritation was partly caused by an overwhelming desire to leave. Scepticism about ‘ghost-hunting programmes’ apart, this was a horrible place to spend any time and I think I shall never be able to dispel from my mind how Paul Mallory had looked, crouched down, reduced to a state little better than an animal. He had remained where he was, on the floor, shuddering uncontrollably, even with Carrick’s jacket around his shoulders, during the wait for medical help and the police to arrive, occasionally giving his surroundings baffled looks, as though he had forgotten what he was doing there.
Hough returned, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, no, he said he has no idea.’
‘What’s his name?’ Carrick wanted to know.
‘I really can’t tell you that,’ the DI told him. ‘He’s very useful sometimes with bits of info and I don’t want him upset.’
‘Look, I’m not the kind of bloke to pull rank …’ Carrick continued, succeeding in giving every impression that he was.
He received the information, with the addition of a couple of ‘sirs’ and we left, this author especially glad of the added luxury of not having to climb back over the wall. If anything, the rain was heavier now but I turned my face up to the soft grey sky for a few moments, the cool wetness a benediction after that house.
‘How the hell did he get over the wall carrying a CD player and a crowbar?’ Carrick mused.
‘Like a man from a nightmare,’ I muttered, picturing a creeping, dark, Gollum-like something. Truly, I needed to get out of here.
James put an arm around my shoulders. ‘I have you to thank for this, Ingrid. I’m enjoying the prospect of no longer being charged with murder.’
‘Honestly though, d’you reckon you would have been capable of killing Cooper in the fevered state you were in?’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘This business of someone in Guildford with information about Hamsworth is odd,’ James said, ‘if not downright dodgy.’
A hot meal in an Italian restaurant had done us both a lot of good.
I said, ‘Are there professional informers?’
‘Yes, there are.’
‘Perhaps whoever it is has a network of spies but lives a safe distance away, as Hough said.’
‘That’s been known too but it’s usually as a sideline to inform on rival mobsters. But according to Hough this character can usually be found in the Blue Boar in the town centre. He’s hardly keeping a low profile, is he?’
‘He’s made himself untouchable, then.’
Carrick stared at me. ‘How?’
‘I don’t know. And even if we find him there’s no guarantee he’ll give us any more info face-to-face than he did Hough over the phone. He might even have been telling the truth.’
In the end we decided that it was worth a try before we headed home.
As we had some while to wait before the Blue Boar opened for evening trade, we parted company, Carrick saying he would like to search out a computer store, while I headed off intending to browse around the fashion shops, something I very rarely have time to do. He came back with an eye-achingly pink outfit for Iona Flora, and I bought a wildly expensive Swedish log saw for Patrick.
In truth, I would have been quite happy to return to the car park now and go home, but nevertheless we sat ourselves down in a corner of the public bar of the Blue Boar and sipped our orange juice. I had offered to treat
James to his favourite tipple to celebrate as I was driving but he declined, saying he regarded himself as being on duty. Not to mention still having to take pills.
DI Hough had told us that we could not miss ‘Jacko’ as he was a tall man with short grey hair and a thin moustache. He usually sat on a settle near the fire in the winter and at a small table in the opposite corner at other times, both of which the regulars avoided when he was due to arrive around an hour after opening time. He usually stayed for a couple of hours, yarning, but did not drink heavily.
Someone who was unmistakably Jacko duly arrived, on time, and seated himself, not in his summer position but on the settle near the fireplace as someone else, a visitor perhaps, had got to the other seat first. He did not seem to mind. The picture I had built up in my mind of some kind of saturnine and intimidating man of the criminal night was utterly wrong. This man looked like a retired bank manager.
‘I have seen this man, or a photograph of him, somewhere before,’ Carrick murmured and got to his feet. I remained where I was and watched as they exchanged a few words and then James went to the bar and bought him a tot of whisky. He then beckoned me across and I went, taking our drinks. We sat down.
‘This is Jack Masters, one-time Chief Constable of Surrey Police,’ James informed me in little more than a whisper.
SEVENTEEN
‘Hough rang to tell me you’d brow-beaten him into saying where I could be found,’ said Masters with a smile. ‘And congratulations. I understand you got your man.’
‘What’s left of him,’ Carrick replied and then went on to give him a few more details, as he seemed interested.
‘Although it’s a while since I retired I still keep my ear to the ground,’ Masters continued in jovial fashion. ‘People, those on the job, that is, tell me I ought to forget it and retire completely. But it keeps me out of mischief.’
He was indeed older than first impressions had suggested. And recently bereaved? There was a sadness about him.
Dark Side Page 21