by Peter Helton
‘What was that?’ I dimly heard the man say.
‘What was what?’
‘I thought I saw something behind the door. Like a dark figure.’ A diffused beam of light moved this way and that as the man played his torch across the door and front window. The light came closer.
‘You’re always seeing something,’ said the woman. ‘You saw a dead body in the water on Saturday and that was a bin bag full of rubbish.’
The man did not answer. Instead, he stepped close to the half-glazed door and pointed his torch back and forth. I kept very still. He gave a disappointed grunt. ‘Too much reflection,’ he muttered. ‘This glass wants cleaning.’
‘Come on, Jack,’ said the woman, ‘you promised to make lemonade, remember?’
‘Comin’, comin’,’ he said soothingly and turned away from the door, leaving me once more in the safety of the dark.
Right now it felt a little too safe. The windows didn’t open, the door was locked and the modern double-glazed glass looked difficult to break. By the time I could manage to smash the glass out of a window and climb through it, I might have attracted quite an audience. Moving away from the door, I aimed at the corridor and walked smack into a groin-height photocopier. Having to do all this in Braille might eventually leave me crippled for life. Only when I was inside the corridor did I risk turning on the light on my mobile. On the left were broom cupboard and toilet, on the right one door marked ‘Meeting Room’. I tried the handle; it was locked. But there was light at the end of the corridor – a fire door. This would, of course, open if I pressed down on the metal bar, but it would also activate the fire alarm and bring every boater in the marina running towards me carrying jugs of lemonade to douse the flames.
I dialled Tim’s mobile number; it went to voicemail which was no good to me. I checked my watch – he would probably be home by now – and called his landline, letting it ring and ring. While the phone rang and I pictured Tim’s tiny flat in Northmoor Street, it dawned on me that Tim had a brand-new girlfriend. He might be at her place. Or in the middle of something.
‘This had better be good,’ said Tim as the receiver was snatched up.
‘I can’t promise that.’ I explained my situation, leaving out the whys and wherefores because I could tell from Tim’s impatient ‘ahas’ and ‘rights’ that he was unimpressed with the whole thing.
‘The fire door is your best bet. Take a run at it and don’t stop running until you can no longer hear the alarm bell.’ He hung up before I could thank him. I had hoped for a more technical solution, but he was probably right. I pocketed my mobile, took a run at the door and came barging out the other side, narrowly avoiding some wheelie bins, to the ear-splitting noise of a fire bell. I turned right, ducked past some damp shrubs and ran to the marina’s gate. Had this been a movie, even a B-movie, then someone would have been waiting for me with a speedboat to facilitate my getaway in style, but since this was a Honeysett production, I found the entrance gate to the marina closed, recently painted to a slippery gloss finish and high enough to present a challenge to the less agile type of burglar. With difficulty, and calling on my large and varied collection of Anglo-Saxon expletives, I clawed my way up the metal gate and slid down the other side, landing with an ankle-jarring thump. As I hobbled to my car, I could hear shouts over the now quieter alarm, but I took Tim’s advice and just kept going, scrabbled for the car keys in my pocket and seconds later screeched away from there. The whole thing, I decided, betrayed a certain lack of subtlety and planning.
SEVEN
Annis agreed. ‘Not the brightest tactics, Honeypot. Good result, though. Where do you think she got the money to buy a boat? If people are after her, then she might have pinched it.’
‘“Pinched it” may not be the way to describe it. You pinch a Mars bar from a corner shop, but eighteen grand in cash takes a bit of lifting, and if people are being roasted alive, then I suspect it may be a lot more than that.’
‘You could be right there. But if she opted for early retirement with other people’s dosh, then I’m not sure the boat was such a good idea. If they find out she bought a narrowboat, then they’ll find her, surely. It’s like the movies where people who need to hide try to do it in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The place to hide is in a big city where no one notices you turning up.’
‘That’s what I thought at first,’ I admitted, ‘but I chatted to one of the boaters at the marina. Apparently, once you’re on the water there are three thousand miles of interconnecting canals and rivers you can use, so perhaps it’s not so daft. And boats can be repainted and renamed.’
‘Renaming a boat is bad luck.’
‘Not if you’re being followed by a guy with a petrol can and a big box of cook’s matches.’
‘Point taken. So what’s the plan?’
‘Find her and warn her.’
‘You think she doesn’t know she’s in danger? Looks like she is running away. Or sailing away.’
‘She probably knows about the house fire that killed Joshua Grant in his bedsit, but unless she has telly on her boat or gets the Bath Chronicle delivered by owl post, she might have no idea how far they managed to followed her already.’
‘And you’re going to check three thousand miles of waterways now to see she’s all right?’
‘It won’t be three thousand miles,’ I said optimistically.
‘Hon …’ came the voice of reason.
‘Yeees …’
‘I mean. I liked Verity. She was quite fun, a good model and she said nice things about my cakes, but I thought she was also a bit of an airhead and she obviously must have done something quite stupid.’
‘Your point being?’
‘My point, as if you didn’t know it, is that I think it could be quite dangerous and you’re not getting paid to find her. How are you getting on with the insurance thing? Which you will get paid for – at least if you get a result.’
I told her about my drone-flying. ‘I need to find a new angle on that, but when I sent the footage to Haarbottle, I had an email back saying “Keep up the good work” or something to that effect, so I’m at least keeping them happy until I find out what’s going on.’
‘Well, try; it’s quite a chunk of money.’
‘Talking of chunks of dosh, how’s the painting?’
‘Slow.’
‘You sound quite echoey again. You’re in the boathouse? I mean, pool house.’
‘The pool’s big enough to float a boat on. I’m mainly working on the outside mural because the weather is supposed to stay fine for quite a while, which is great for painting al fresco. I’ll save the indoor mural for a rainy day. I’ve only done preliminary stuff for that.’
‘Preliminary stuff like floating in the pool.’
‘Well, it has to be considered from all angles. And I’ll have you know I’m up to twenty lengths a day now. It’s great – I feel brilliant. I can really recommend it.’
‘I’ll start digging our pool when I get a minute.’
‘Yes, please.’
‘What’s wrong with our mill pond all of a sudden?’
‘Ducks poo in it.’
While Annis was indulging her twenty-a-day habit, I spent the rest of the evening sitting in the armchair by the fire, sipping ten-year-old Laphroaig I had bought in more affluent times, feeling that I had made significant progress that day.
I woke early to warm sunshine. Annis would be in the pool house, no doubt. While I scrambled my breakfast eggs, I imagined the record producer’s factotum swimming across the pool in suit and tie, balancing a cafetière of Blue Mountain coffee to a serenely floating Annis, wearing her new bikini, most of which was entirely imaginary. I had absolutely no plan for how to find Henry Blinkhorn, which was, of course, excellent. It left me free to pursue Verity.
It was now four days since she had bought Time Out and, I imagined, she could not have got too far on it yet. From the marina where she acquired the boat she could have gone in two dire
ctions, downriver towards Bristol where she would hit a dead end as far as navigation with a narrowboat was concerned, or upriver where she was able to join the Kennet and Avon Canal which connected to the rest of Britain’s inland waterways. If you wanted to get out of sight, then that was the way you would go.
On the marina’s website under ‘Boats for Sale’, I found Verity’s Time Out still listed, though with a proud ‘Sold’ banner at the top. I downloaded the photographs in the description. She was an old boat with a black hull, blue sides and a rustred roof and foredeck. It had a ‘cruiser stern’ (apparently) and in the pictures sported flowerpots in the stern and on the roof. There were photos of the interior too – a lot of wood, tired-looking bits of furniture, a galley kitchen and a bathroom tiled with a rose motif. It might have been in need of updating but all the basic facilities were there. There were pictures of the two-cylinder engine, too, which made me even more certain that she hadn’t got very far yet; it looked old and rusty.
With the pictures on my phone, so I might recognize the boat, I boarded my Citroën and drove into town. From North Parade Bridge I had a view of the River Avon towards the horseshoe of the weir below picturesque Pulteney Bridge, a postcard shot beloved of the Tourist Board. This was as far as the River Avon was navigable for narrowboats; a few of them were moored opposite Parade Gardens. I did not really expect to find Time Out here, right in the heart of Bath, but thought I might feel just a bit stupid if Verity’s departure had been delayed for some reason and she was still here, on the River Avon or the canal as it snaked out from the city. The sunshine had brought tourists and Bathonians out in force. The towpath was so crowded with walkers, roller skaters, joggers and a group of amateur painters with their easels that I had to walk up to each boat to make sure it wasn’t what I was looking for. I joined the throng, which was soon thinning out as I left the more picturesque part of Bath behind, and walked all the way from North Parade Bridge to Newbridge, the western end of town, as close to the marina from where the boat came as I dared; Time Out was not here.
My feet hurt. You’d have thought that as a PI I’d be used to trudging about but actually most of the job is done sitting in the car or leaning on lampposts. This was more walking than I had done for many years and it had taken me all afternoon. I was developing blisters on my feet, felt parched and starving hungry, and was now miles away from my car. Even while I congratulated myself on having been thorough in my search and satisfied that Verity had really left Bath on her floating refuge, it brought home to me that finding the boat would involve a lot more work than I had imagined. Being too poor to call a cab, I dragged myself to the nearest bus stop and spent half an hour kicking my heels in what the bus company laughably called a ‘shelter’ until eventually a steaming hot bus took me back to town, but naturally nowhere near to where I had left the car.
When I eventually reached home, my brain had ceased normal operations and flashed only the single word ‘tea’ in front of me until it could actually smell the stuff. Apart from Laphroaig, tea is still the best private-eye restorative. I drank a pot of it with my feet in a bowl of cold water to try to shrink them to their normal size, while I considered the logistical problems of finding Verity. No roads ran along the canals that would allow me to check what floated on it from the car. Access points to the towpaths were often miles apart. I could, of course, park the car, walk to the next access point, then walk back to the car, but by that method, if I was unlucky, I might have to walk not three but six thousand miles. Without someone to pick me up at the next access point, it would amount to one hell of a fitness programme and take forever and a day. I could conceivably take a cab back to my car each time, but that would cost me a fortune. Would a taxi driver even find the place without instructions from the nearest satellite? I went to bed feeling far less optimistic than when I had started thinking about it. There had to be a better way.
It came to me on waking in the morning: bicycle! Not for nothing did the Honda Jazz have hundreds of litres of boot space: it was made for chucking bicycles into the back. And I knew just where to find one. In the outbuildings. Somewhere. Almost certainly. Or quite possibly.
As forecast, it was another sunny day, perfect for rummaging around in the crud that clutters the sheds and woodwormed remnants of a barn. Dust motes floated thickly in the sunbeams that fell through holes in the roofs. I found no less than four expired lawnmowers, two valve radios, a treadle sewing machine, the engine and rear wheels of a small tractor, an electric kettle with a round three-pin plug (circa 1912), a three-legged stool with two legs, a chest of drawers minus the drawers and about fifty empty paint cans in shades that went out of fashion in the 1960s. All of this was covered in leaves, mouldering canvas, ripped tarpaulin and, above all, dust. I staggered and coughed my way through it until I caught a glimpse of what I was looking for: out from the chaos poked the handle bar and rubber hand grip of a bicycle. I spent five minutes patiently digging it out from the other junk until it was half out, then lost patience and dragged, kicked and yanked until the rest of it was free. I owned a bicycle.
Of sorts. Naturally, it was not the ten-speed mountain bike of my mind (things never are). No, it was a rusted boneshaker with a saddle of cracked leather and hand grips of crumbling rubber which disintegrated as I tried to push the thing to the house. Its black frame was spotted all over with rust. The tyres were flat, of course, and as for the gears – I looked carefully everywhere – it didn’t appear to have any. The chain was hanging off and had rusted solid.
Once I had my bicycle standing upside down on the kitchen table, I realized that what I was actually looking at was a typical Honeysett conveyance, only this time I actually knew how to make it go without Jake’s help. Having no gears, I quickly decided, was an advantage; no gears meant there weren’t any to go wrong, and, anyway, towpaths were all level. It involved a couple of trips into town but by next morning I had a working bicycle with fresh inner tubes, a rust-free chain and a slight wobble in the front wheel, which I decided to find charming. It even had a bell whose chime was clearly audible if you put your ear next to it.
With the rear seats of the car folded down, it fitted easily in the back of the Jazz. Having parked in town, I wheeled the bike through the centre and across Halfpenny Footbridge to start my canal cycle adventure at Lock 7, the first lock on the Kennet and Avon Canal. The bike, when cycled rather than pushed, creaked a little under my weight and had an irregular squeak which even the most generous application of Spanish Extra Virgin had failed to eliminate. The plan was to cycle on the towpath as far as the George Inn at Bathampton, stop for a drink and cycle back to the car, a perfectly manageable undertaking for a perfectly unfit cyclist.
Britain’s canals had, of course, been built as the arteries of industry and commerce, transporting every conceivable commodity faster and more cheaply than could be achieved by road. But today and here in Bath you could be forgiven for thinking that the Kennet and Avon had been constructed merely to look pretty. On this stretch the gardens of large Georgian town houses ran all the way to the water’s edge and many of the boats moored along here were beautifully painted and well kept. Unfortunately, I was dressed for walking, not cycling, which I soon found out have quite different requirements. The unseasonably warm weather meant that soon I was steaming with the effort of squeaking along. Only a few walkers were about this morning, and whenever I met one, they were forewarned of my wobbling approach by the rattle and squeak of the bike’s mechanics. Cycling under bridges, of which there were several, I found quite nerve-wracking as the curve of the interior meant having to cycle close to the edge of the canal to gain enough headroom. The water looked uninviting; Annis would have found things to say about it. I cycled as far away from the edge as possible.
I passed a boat hire company that had boats parked three-deep on the water. From time to time I came upon thickets of brambles. Eventually, I stopped at a veritable wall of them, glad to lift my behind from the uncomfortable saddle for a while, a
nd crammed handfuls of juicy if dusty berries into my mouth. A gusty wind had sprung up which was against me as I resumed my pedalling. The canal cut through Sydney Gardens, a small park beside the Holburne Museum. I needed to duck under two more bridges until I reached a more open stretch I recognized; it would lead me nearly straight to Bathampton where the welcoming arms of the George Inn awaited sweaty private detectives and their rusty steeds.
A smudge of black cloud appeared in the sky, driven towards me by the wind. As I cycled towards it and it swallowed the sun, I realized that instead of checking the weather forecast I had relied on Annis’s prediction that a lot of fine weather was ahead, forgetting that she was in the next county. I pedalled faster. Cyclist and rain cloud met halfway to the George Inn. Thunder growled. The heavens opened and a squally east wind chucked refreshing amounts of rain in my face. I stopped to put my jacket back on which I had clamped to the old-fashioned sprung rack, then wiped the wet saddle with my sleeve and resumed pedalling. There were many boats moored on this stretch; most looked shut up, but several showed signs of life: music, running engines or smoke from stovepipes. One looked to me so similar to Time Out that despite the different name – Midnight – I dug out my phone to compare it with the photos. I found it actually looked nothing like it; I still had to get my eye in where types of narrowboats were concerned.
Pedalling against the wind was turning my little outing along the flat towpath into a struggle. When the first cottages, the humpback bridge and finally the pub rose into view through the thick rain, it felt like the end of an expedition.