Anything For a Quiet Life

by Michael Gilbert

  “The press are bound to splash it.”

  “Shackleton used to be a nice, quiet place,” said Whaley. “A bit of healthy noise in July and August with the summer visitors and the funfair on the Lammas, but nothing to get upset about. But ever since that solicitor fellow arrived from London it seems to have been one thing after another.”

  “Jonas Pickett, you mean. You don’t think he’s behind this?”

  The Chief Superintendent considered the possibility, and shook his head. He would like to have blamed Jonas, but could see no way of doing it.

  “I don’t see how we can tie him into it,” he said regretfully.

  The headline, in the largest type available to the printer of the South Down News, said: ‘black bob lives’.

  Robert Beaufrere, the formidable Abbot of Fyneshade, the man who defied King Henry the Eighth and died in the Tower of London rather than give up the treasures of his abbey to that despoiler of the monasteries, was known throughout the countryside as Black Bob. Can it be a coincidence that when modern vandals threatened to lay hands on the silver and gold and precious stones, to preserve which he suffered on the rack, a modern Black Bob should step into his place and mete out justice to the robbers?

  Inserted here were photographs of the bull in the ring at the Lewes Show, and an engraved portrait of Abbot Beaufrere. Both looked tough customers.

  “Good stuff,” said the editor, “but have we any proof that the country people called the abbot Black Bob? It seems a bit disrespectful.”

  “Not actually,” said his assistant, “but it will be very difficult for anyone to prove that they didn’t.”

  Whaley read the article, but paid less attention to it than he might have done on account of a telephone call which he had just had from Scotland Yard. It came from a Chief Superintendent Morrissey, who was known to him by name as head of the London District Regional Crime Squads, which picked men who dealt with serious and violent crime in the Metropolitan area.

  Morrissey said, “Those dabs you sent us off the man the bull trod on. They belong to a chap called Darkie Haines. He’s got a record as long as your arm. Everything from GBH downwards. A very dangerous character.”

  “He met a more dangerous character that night,” said Whaley.

  “Yes. I saw a copy of the pathologist’s report. Your animal did a thorough job. Pity he didn’t get a chance to stamp on the other two as well. Now this is only a guess. But Haines normally operates with Lefty Summers and Mick Gavigan. They’re both hangers-on of Catlin’s mob. And Lefty’s in hospital with a broken arm.”

  Whaley said, “It seems to add up, doesn’t it?”

  “It adds up,” said Morrissey. “I’m not sure if I like the answer or not, but I’ll send down my number two, Jock Anderson, to have a word with you. And the farmer. He could be useful if he’d agree to play along.”

  “Before he’ll do anything,” said Whaley sourly, “he’ll want to talk to his solicitor.”

  “Why not?” said Morrissey. “They’re not all crooks.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a crook. A chap called Pickett. Used to practise up in London.”

  “You mean old Jonas Pickett.”

  “You know him?”

  “We had one or two encounters in the line of business,” said Morrissey. “He always played straight down the fairway as far as I was concerned.”

  “If your people know him,” said Whaley, “it may make things a bit easier.”

  Jock Anderson turned out to be a young-looking, pleasant-mannered Scotsman.

  He found Mr and Mrs Maggs having tea, and joined them at the table. After eating four of Mrs Maggs’s scones with South Down butter, jam and cream on them, he said, “I would imagine you’ve had a bit of contact with the press lately?”

  “Contact! I’ll say I’ve had contact. It’s got so I can’t hardly poke my nose outside the farm but they’re yammering round asking for what they call a statement. Promising me money for it. One of ‘em, from a London paper he was, he got into the house through the scullery window. I gave him a statement with the thick end of my walking stick.”

  “They’re a pest,” agreed Anderson. “But I wondered if there might be one of them you could talk to. Maybe the lad from the local paper. He wouldn’t be so uppity as the others.”

  “Young Richards,” said Maggs thoughtfully. “He’s not so brash as the ones from London. I expect I could talk to him. But what’s the point of it? I haven’t got nothing new to tell him.”

  “That’s just it,” said Anderson. “I could suggest something which he’d be glad to print. Let me explain what I’ve got in mind.”

  “It seems daft to me,” said Maggs. He had driven down to talk to Jonas.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Jonas. “He wants you to let it out to the local press – preferably accidental like – that you’re so fed up with all this fuss that you’ve decided that the only way to stop it is either to find the abbey treasure, or prove that it isn’t there.”

  “Right.”

  “And the way you’re going to do this is to tell Mr Westall that you’ve changed your mind. He and his friends can start prospecting right away.”

  “Not right away. He was very particular about that. It’s Wednesday today. I was to let him start as early as he liked on Monday morning, and then go on until he’d covered the whole farm.”

  “Not until Monday. I see.” A glimmering of what was in Jock Anderson’s devious mind was beginning to dawn on Jonas. He said, “I suppose that is one way of settling the matter. I’m told he’s an expert with this particular apparatus, and if he brings a party of fellow enthusiasts with him, they ought to be able to cover the area fairly quickly. Of course, we’d have to get him to sign up the sort of agreement he was talking about before he started.”

  “It’s not that part of it I mind so much. It’s the other bit.”

  “Let me guess,” said Jonas. “You’ve to let it be known that after, shall we say, Saturday night, the police will no longer be guarding the farm.”

  “That’s right. And I hope it makes more sense to you than what it does to me. What he suggested was that I’d had an argument with the police about paying for their help. They’d wanted to charge me five pounds an hour for having a policeman on duty. And time and a half for the weekend. So I said, if that’s the way you feel, you can take ‘em away. I’m quite capable of looking after my own fields.”

  “Plausible,” said Jonas, his admiration for Jock Anderson increasing. “And I take it you were to tell the reporter that this was strictly confidential, and not for general publication.”

  “That’s right. But you know how it is. People get talking.”

  “I know just how it is. I admit it seems an odd thing to do, but I’ve got a feeling that if you co-operate, it could be very helpful.”

  “Helpful to who?”

  “To you and the police.”

  “Well,” said Maggs, with a grin which exposed some ill-cared-for teeth, “if you say so. You’ve always advised me right up to now. But I’d like you to be handy, just over the weekend, in case I need you in a hurry.”

  “My dear Mr Maggs,” said Jonas, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’ll be available in my office, or my flat, from Saturday morning onwards.”

  Saturday passed peacefully. It was seven o’clock on Sunday evening when Jonas’s telephone rang. It was Mr Maggs. He sounded more excited than worried. He said, “Could you come along, Mr Pickett? I’m sure I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like you to be here when it does happen.”

  “I’ll drive right up,” said Jonas.

  “Not right up. Arrangements are you leave your car in Joe English’s yard. That’s about half a mile down the byroad west of my place.”

  “I know it,” said Jonas. “What then?”

  “Then you walk. But not along the road. There’s a track that goes through the woods, and comes out near my house. Joe’ll show you.”

  It was dusk by th
e time he reached Maggs’s place. The approach route had been carefully chosen. It ran for the most part through woodland and the lie of the land hid it from observation. Maggs had the door open and whisked him inside as soon as he arrived.

  He and Mrs Maggs seemed to be alone in the house.

  “I saw five cars in Joe’s yard,” said Jonas. “Where are the men?”

  “They’ve moved off to take up their positions,” said Maggs. “All afternoon they’ve been coming in, quiet-like, by twos and threes. They’ve got searchlights with them. And rifles. They’re expecting trouble, no question.”

  Mrs Maggs said, “I liked that young Scottie. Very well spoken, he was. You’ll take a bite of supper, Mr Pickett, I expect.”

  “That would be splendid,” said Jonas. “I guess we’ve a long night ahead of us.”

  “Better comfortable in front of a nice fire,” said Maggs, “than squatting in a damp ditch.”

  It was two o’clock by the illuminated dial on Jock Anderson’s watch when the cars arrived. They stopped a long way short of the field, but he was listening for them, and he heard them. Then there was half an hour of silence. “Playing it cautiously,” he said to the Sergeant, who was in the ditch beside him. “Afraid there may be a trap, but think they can spring it.”

  The Sergeant grunted. He suspected that he was catching a cold and was glad that the moment for action had arrived. “Pass the word to take up action posts, but no lights until I give the signal.”

  There were five men, and they came across the field in a purposeful bunch; the two on the flanks were carrying shotguns. Two had spades, and one a measuring line. There was enough light for the watchers to see them at work. A line was laid down from one of the gate posts in the inner fence, and the digging started.

  It was easy going, because it was clear that the earth at that particular spot had already been disturbed. After twenty minutes’ spadework a halt was called, and one of the men got into the shallow excavation and stooped to lift what was in it. A second man got in beside him to help. Six boxes had been unearthed and laid on the grass when the lights came on from two corners of the field.

  “There are fifteen men here,” said Anderson. He had rejected the loudhailer. His voice was clear, and there was a flat undertone of menace in it. “We are armed, and if there is any trouble, our instructions are to shoot. Drop those guns.”

  When he finished, there was a long moment of complete silence and immobility.

  Anderson said, “In case you might be thinking of making a run for it, I should tell you that your cars have already been taken over.”

  The man standing beside the excavation, who seemed to be the leader, said something. The shotguns were dropped and the police closed in.

  Later, Anderson said to Maggs, who had come up in defiance of orders to the contrary, “I think we’d better leave things as they are until it’s light. We’ll need to take photographs of things as they’ve been left, and then maybe do a bit more digging.”

  “It’s much too late to go to bed,” said Maggs. “So why don’t you come in and have a hot cup of tea, with maybe a drop of something in it?”

  This seemed to everyone to be an excellent idea. Two men were left on guard, and the rest came down to the farmhouse, where the fire was revived, a kettle put on, and bottles produced.

  “Do you think,” said Jonas, “that you could now tell us what it’s all about, and what’s been dug up? Not, I gather, the abbey treasure.”

  “May be more valuable than that,” said Anderson. “I’m not too sure what the price of gold is today, but those six boxes are crammed with gold bars.”

  Light began to dawn. Jonas said, “Of course. The Heathrow robbery.”

  “Lifted from the bullion store fifteen months ago. We were sure it was the Catlins, but we couldn’t pin it to them, for there was no trace of the loot. We kept them under surveillance for months after the robbery. They were laughing. They knew they were safe. I’d surmise they came off the motorway, at the junction north of here, drove along until they saw a nice thick hedge, tunnelled through it, and buried the stuff. Lucky for them the bull was in the lower field at the time. Then all they had to do was wait until the heat was off. Only—”

  “Only,” said Jonas, and the full humour of it was beginning to strike him, “suddenly they read in the papers that the place they’ve buried it is about to be given a going-over by a gang of amateur treasure seekers.”

  “Aye. They had to get it out. That bull stopped them the first time. This time they’d got no option. They may have suspected it was a trap, and they came prepared for trouble.”

  “So why didn’t they put up a fight?”

  Anderson thought about it. He said, “That robbery was a brutal job. They crippled three of the security guards. One of them’s in hospital still. I expect they thought that if they started anything we’d shoot their legs off.”

  “And would you have done?”

  “That question,” said Anderson, in his dominie’s voice, “is what you might describe as academic.”

  At first light they all made their way up to the Top Field. It was whilst the photographs were being taken that the treasure hunters arrived: a party of four men and two girls, equipped with metal detectors, and led by Mr Westall in person.

  He looked with dismay at the open pit and the boxes beside it. He said, “I hope you’ve been very careful when removing whatever you’ve found. Old artefacts can so easily be damaged when handled by unskilled persons.”

  Anderson said to Jonas, “I think you’d better explain it to him, sir.”

  “I’ll try,” said Jonas.

  It took ten minutes. Five of the treasure seekers listened to him. One of the girls had wandered off on her own. A police van had been run up on the path between the fields and the last of the bullion was being manhandled on to it when she gave them a hail. She said, “I’ve never used one of these things before, but it seems to be getting excited.”

  Attention was switched from the open pit to the place where she was standing at the bottom of the field. The other girl said, “I expect you’re using it wrong.” Mr Westall walked over, used his own instrument, and said, “No, there’s definitely something here.”

  He had taken pegs from his pocket and was marking out an oblong site. “Perhaps we could borrow those spades?”

  The police seemed keener on helping than on giving up the spades, and the amateur treasure hunters soon became glad of professional assistance. If there was anything there it was buried deep.

  From time to time Mr Westall encouraged them by announcing a strengthening of the signals. It was when they were fully four feet down and the lifting of the earth was becoming a real physical effort that they heard what they had all been waiting for. A spade struck on something that was neither earth nor stone.

  Mr Westall jumped into the pit with a flurry of anxious advice. “Hands only, now,” he said. “No more spades. We must use hands.”

  Slowly the object in the pit took shape. They could see that it was a box, perhaps six feet long and two feet wide, formed of stout oak planks bound with strips of iron. The wood had stood up to the passage of time better than the metal which was rusted and fragile.

  “Two of you at each end. Lift it very gently. That’s it.”

  The box was laid on the edge of the pit. Mr Westall looked at it proudly. He said, “Really, we shouldn’t try to open it here. It ought to be taken to a place where it can be dealt with properly.”

  He realised, however, that the feeling of the meeting was against him.

  “Well, then,” he said, “we might just look. But carefully. I beg of you.”

  The edge of a spade was placed under one of the planks and the top lifted like a lid. Whatever it was inside was covered with several thicknesses of leather. As Mr Westall peeled them off, everyone leaned forward. The police photographers had their cameras focused. What lay in the box was a surprise to all of them.

  It was an iron crucifix.


  Staring down at it Jonas was aware he was looking at a miracle, created by a master-craftsman, a forgotten genius of the Middle Ages. The face of the man on the cross was in no way formalised. It was the face of a real person. Or of two persons in one: the divine compassion of the man who had suffered the agonies of crucifixion and had forgiven his tormentors; the strength of the man who had died on the rack rather than reveal where his greatest treasure was hidden.

  3

  Vivat Regina

  Mrs Grandfield was standing at the window of her breakfast room. The sun was shining from the blue sky of a midsummer day. It was cheering the hearts of the holidaymakers who crowded into Shackleton-on-Sea during the summer months. They had been disappointed by the bad weather of the previous week; and had now hurried to the beach, the parents to doze in deckchairs, the children to build sandcastles or waste their money at the row of stalls which lined the Esplanade.

  All these people were happy. Mrs Grandfield was not happy.

  The pleasures of the crowd meant nothing to her. Her house, Old Priory Lodge, with its ten acres of garden, its paddock and its meadows, lay nearly a mile from the town on a little-used side road. From where she stood she had a bird’s-eye view of her domain. She could hear the puttering as their gardener-chauffeur, Clegg, drove his motor mower across their smooth lawn. She could see the well-stocked flowerbeds and the neat yew hedge at the foot of the lawn. To right and to left lay her property. Only over the hedge, where the side road moved away from the curve of the hill, was an acre of common land. On it, only too clearly visible, was the cause of her discontent.

  Six gypsy caravans.

  To someone less personally involved the sight might have seemed attractive. They were motor caravans, but their bodywork had been built in the old-fashioned gypsy style with windows and chimneys and, in two cases, an open balcony at the back. Some almost naked toddlers were playing a game which seemed to consist of climbing up and falling off the front steps of one of the larger caravans. In the background two older boys were tinkering with an ancient motor car.