by H. V. Coombs
‘I’m afraid we’re closing now.’
I looked at the time on the clock above the bar: twelve forty-five. A very odd time to close.
‘If I can have your glasses.’ It was a demand, not a request. Basically an order to get out of the pub.
The old man lifted his pint. ‘No, you’re fine, Tom,’ said the landlord, ‘it’s just these two. I’m sure they’ve got things to do.’ His voice was polite, but there was a menacing tone underneath.
I realised that the public bar, the other side of the serving area, had fallen silent. I suddenly wanted very much to be out of the Greyhound. In prison I’d developed quite a nose for impending trouble. I stood up as did Jess from where she had been squatting down stroking the dog.
I noticed Jess about to speak, she was quite a combative person. I caught her eye and shook my head.
‘Sure,’ I said and finished my drink.
I nodded to Tom and the dog and Jess and I left the pub.
We emerged into the cold, overcast grey of the January afternoon and, as we walked back to the car, Jess said, ‘Well, what was that all about?’
‘I don’t think asking questions about the Chandler’s Ford housing development project is particularly popular. Not in the Greyhound anyway.’
I led Jess into the churchyard through the wooden gate that had a kind of portico above it. The spire was very tall and had gargoyles protruding from it. It was quite impressive.
‘I didn’t know you were religious?’
‘I’m not,’ I replied.
The graves in the churchyard were neat and well kept and the grass short. I quickly found what I was looking for: a fresh grave, fading flowers still heaped upon it. The inscription on the temporary marker read:
Paul Harding, Loved this Village.
Et in Arcadia Ego
His dates followed. He had died in December. He had been sixty-six.
We walked back to the car.
‘Is that the man that Tom told us about?’ asked Jess. I nodded.
‘I guess he asked the wrong questions too,’ I said. That made three dead people, two of whom were linked to the proposed housing development – Whitfield by virtue of the consortium and Harding, for reasons that I didn’t yet know.
As we left the church precincts en route to the car, the door of the Greyhound opened and two men started striding purposefully in our direction. They were swinging their arms aggressively as they approached. I guessed they were the regulars from the pub. Jess saw them too. I don’t think it occurred to her that we might be in any danger. Why should it? In twenty years on this planet I don’t think anything bad had ever happened to her.
Well, it had to me. It pains me to say so, but I’m a slow learner, yet even I am capable of taking things on board. I have, however belatedly, learned to recognise warning signs and I recognised one now.
‘Jess.’
I tried to keep my voice calm but there was obviously an edge to it. I was very fond of Jess and it looked like I was about to get her involved in some unpleasantness. I would have left her behind if I had suspected for one instant that something like this might happen.
‘Could you get in the car please while I have a word with these two gentlemen?’
Jess nodded and did as I asked. I looked around at the two men who were now rapidly approaching.
One of them was sixty if he was a day. He was of middle height with a white Colonel Sanders-style beard and a black hat, the kind a cowboy might wear, if he was the kind of cowboy who wanted to look ridiculous. He was dressed head to toe in black, a Chilterns version of Johnny Cash, but without the charisma, talent, charm or looks. Also, we weren’t in Kansas, we were in Buckinghamshire. That didn’t help. The other one was the trouble, the muscle. He was twenty years younger than his companion, short, stocky, aggressive in his movements, with a sneering kind of face. It wasn’t a sneering look, his whole face was built that way.
That morning, after my Qi Gong breathing exercises, I had meditated for half an hour or so and then read some of the Tao Te Ching. I remembered, as I stood facing these two from the pub, that weakness can overcome hard things: think of water, for example, wearing away a cliff. Equally, if it freezes, it can sink a ship weighing tens of thousands of tons, consider, if you will, the Titanic.
‘Can I help you two gentlemen?’ I asked politely.
‘Can I help you two gentlemen?’ said the short guy in a kind of mincing parody of my voice.
The one with the hat laughed unpleasantly. His function was obviously to act as a kind of cheerleader to the thug, it was all very playground, the school bully and his hangers on.
‘Stay away from our village, and keep your nose where it’s not wanted, ain’t that right, Eamonn.’
Eamonn looked me in the eye. It was not, in the words of ABC, a band popular when I was young, and still very popular on Beech Tree FM, ‘the voice of the Chilterns’, ‘The Look of Love.’ He spat on the ground, ‘Yeah, you bald twat.’ That was me, presumably.
I decided to be gentle, as the Tao recommended.
‘You’re very ugly,’ I pointed out helpfully, in a gentle, caring fashion (think of the water, Ben! I told myself) ‘and spitting only draws attention to …’
I was going to say ‘it’ but Eamonn had screwed his face up for effort and drawn his fist back to hit me. Semaphoring a punch. It wasn’t the best of ideas.
I don’t think Eamonn was an ideas man. He wasn’t very much of a fighter either. But everyone’s an expert …
He seemed woefully slow in his movements. I drove a fist hard into his face. I wasn’t punching his face, I was punching through his face. His head snapped backwards and he squawked with pain and buried his face in his hands.
I hadn’t really thought things through but I stepped forward and hit Hat Man in the gut with a short, hard uppercut.
I don’t think there was much in the way of muscle there and he doubled up in pain. I snatched the hat from his head.
‘Ha!’ I said, mainly for effect. I enjoyed saying it, so I said it again, this time for dramatic emphasis. ‘Ha!’
As I suspected, he was as bald as me but with a kind of side fringe of wispy white hair. I skimmed his hat in the direction of their insignificant river. To my intense satisfaction it soared up like a Frisbee and landed in the water.
A startled duck squawked and flew away.
The hat floated off downstream borne away swiftly by the current.
Eamonn was standing up now, trying to stem the blood that was flowing from his smashed nose. He made no move to challenge me. Hat Man was still bent double, gasping for breath. Well, I thought with satisfaction, the weak have overcome the strong.
I opened my car door. Eamonn swore at me, unpleasantly.
‘Yin and Yang, Eamonn,’ I said, pleasantly, to counterbalance his uncouth language.
I got in the car and we drove off.
As we left the village, the adrenaline subsiding, the euphoria fading, I thought to myself, have I been unbelievably stupid? Whitfield was dead, Paul Harding was dead and they were connected with the development I had just been asking about. Craig Scott was also dead and I was beginning to believe that that was something to do with Chandler’s Ford too. Instead of being ‘gentle’ as counselled by the Tao, I had, I suspected, stored up trouble for myself in the future. I had really gone up to the wasps’ nest and given it a good boot.
I thought, I’ve been very unwise.
Eamonn and Hat Man might be rubbish in a fist fight but they certainly looked mean enough to be able to pull a trigger, or spike drugs. The freshly dug grave in the churchyard and the old man’s reluctance to talk freely to me spoke volumes. I thought, next time they have a go at me they’ll plan it a lot better.
My face must have looked pretty grim. Jess asked nervously, ‘What was all that about?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got a feeling I’m going to find out.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Saturday, 23 Ja
nuary afternoon
‘There’s been a complaint about you.’
It was DI Slattery, who else? I had dropped Jess at her house on the outskirts of the village and driven back to the restaurant. I had also checked my e-mail, no word from any of the official bodies involved in the ‘food poisoning incident’, Public Health and police.
I was now fairly sure that Craig’s death was nothing to do with me. There was nothing that I could do, however, business wise, until I had some form of clearance from the powers that be. I e-mailed the office of Sandra Burke, the EHO, to ask if the toxicology reports were back on my food samples. In Viking mythology a man’s fate is held in the hands of the Norns, shadowy mysterious figures who live at the foot of Yggdrasil. My fate was controlled by shadowy, mysterious lab technicians who lived in Swindon off the M4.
I added Eamonn, Hat Man and the landlord to my suspects list for Whitfield’s death and I wrote Paul Harding’s name down beside Craig’s. I felt I was making progress, of sorts.
Now, here was the long arm of the law, again. I had invited him in, fully expecting some kind of official exoneration, and now this.
‘I’m sorry, what kind of complaint?’
He took out his notebook, although I’m sure that he didn’t need it.
‘Mr Eamonn Farson, from Chandler’s Ford, claimed that you attacked him and his friend, Lawrence “Jacko” Jackson. He says that you broke his nose – he showed a picture at the station in Aylesbury that his friend had taken. It was quite spectacular …You’re very quick with your fists, aren’t you, Mr Hunter?’
I shrugged. ‘It was self-defence; he attacked me, you can ask Jessica Turner, she was there with me. I think you would have to agree that she is a much more reliable witness than Mr Farson. Or his so-called friend.’
It was true and Slattery knew it. I would bet a substantial amount of money on Farson being known to the police.
‘But she works for you,’ said Slattery, with an air of desperation, ‘she might be swayed …’
I laughed. ‘My God, you’re getting desperate, DI Slattery! Have you seen Jess’s house?’ Of course you have, I thought.
‘Of course I have.’
‘I know you have,’ I said, ‘it was a rhetorical question.’
You could hardly miss Jess’s house, it was a vast thing like a mansion, set off the main road from the village. It had a sizeable drive. The idea that the girl, on the living wage, might be financially beholden to me was ridiculous. To his credit, Slattery looked sheepish.
‘And how might I be swaying her, Detective Inspector,’ I said, sarcastically, driving home the point, ‘with my limitless wealth?’
‘OK, fair comment, I apologise.’
Now that was a surprise.
‘So what happens now?’ I asked. ‘About Mr Farson’s complaint? Are you going to nick me?’
Slattery scratched his head. ‘No, nothing so drastic. We’re not going to take any action. He wasn’t seriously hurt, although face it, you do have form for that sort of thing.’ He stood up. ‘I’m here to mark your card, Mr Hunter. As I’ve told you, I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks if you misbehave.’
Another Slattery threat. They were beginning to become meaningless they came so often. I was interested though that he had actually turned up on my doorstep to try to read the riot act to me. I’m sure that if I’d complained to him about Farson trying to attack me, he would have dismissed it out of hand.
‘I’m sure you will,’ I said politely.
‘What were you doing in Chandler’s Ford anyway?’ asked Slattery. This is why you’re here really, I thought to myself. Do you have links with the building consortium, DI Slattery? What do you know about Whitfield’s death? Was it you who got it dismissed as a ‘suicide’ or an ‘accident’?
‘Jess was showing me some of the lovely South Bucks countryside,’ I replied.
‘Is that so?’ Slattery leaned over my work-surface. His solid bulk an imposing threat.
‘It is so, it’s very pretty down there, the river and all.’
He leaned in towards me. ‘I heard that you were asking questions about Arcadian Valley?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Slattery looked impatient. ‘The housing development, Arcadian Valley is what it’s called.’
‘Really? That’s a bit grandiose, isn’t it?’ I looked at him innocently. ‘I can’t see what bearing any question I might or might not have asked has on the so-called assault.’
Slattery leaned forward. I noticed he liked encroaching on personal space.
‘Were you nosing around it? I would hate to think you were involved in some sort of vigilante investigation of the death of Dave Whitfield.’
It was uncomfortably close to the truth. It was exactly what I was doing. I had no intention of admitting it, though. Instead I slipped the punch.
‘I thought Whitfield’s death was an accident?’
Slattery’s face was hard and menacing.
‘You know what I’m talking about, Hunter. Keep out of it—’ he opened the kitchen back door ‘—oh, by the way, I’ve seen the tox report on Craig Scott.’
‘Oh, yes?’
He nodded. ‘Methanol poisoning, so unless you’ve been selling anti-freeze cocktails or setting it in aspic, you’re in the clear.’
‘Methanol?’ I repeated.
‘Yep. Methyl alcohol,’ he said. ‘So this one is going down as suspicious, like I said, watch your step.’
Aspic! So old-fashioned!
He closed the door behind him. ‘Watch your step!’
I had been warned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Saturday, 23 January, night
I’m not good at many things – singing, dancing, formal cake decoration and football are just some of them. Heeding warnings is another. I e-mailed the Land Registry office in Coventry and paid for a copy of the report on the ownership and also details of the flood report for the Chandler’s Ford area where the Arcadia development was situated.
Sod you, Slattery, I thought as I was doing this. Mind you, in fairness, he had backed away from the Farson claim of assault, not that he would have got very far with it.
I also hunted for information about the deceased Paul Harding on the internet. It wasn’t hard but it took a great deal of time. It was the usual problem: an excess of information. It’s a fairly common name and despite trying to refine the search, I waded through a lot of extraneous Hardings. Did you know there is a famous Paul Harding, a Pulitzer prize-winning author? Me neither, but I do now. There are quite a few others too. But I persevered and, in the end, I found what I wanted.
My one, Chandler’s Ford Paul Harding, newly deceased, was a stalwart champion of the community, an elderly, left-wing eco-activist and, reading between the lines, a champion pain in the ass.
He had been active in the Chiltern Society, a tireless fundraiser for local causes and had been given an OBE. That was not his only official recognition. He had also been arrested several times and had restraining orders placed on him banning him from a mile’s radius of three out-of-town supermarkets after vigorously protesting in their aisles and car parks. He hated supermarkets. He was against development of all kinds. There was a wealth of pictorial evidence available.
Harding was into bondage, but not in a sexual way. He loved chains. He had chained himself to trees, lampposts and, one time, a digger. I found photos of him, thin, bald with a fringe of silver hair and glasses, corduroy jacket and tie, being carried away by policemen.
If it was made of concrete, he opposed it. If it had room for a chain, even better.
I found an obituary from the local paper. It mentioned his opposition to HS2, the proposed railway line (or, ‘a dagger through the beautiful heart of the Chilterns’ as Harding put it) but no mention of any other causes he had been championing at the time of his death.
He had been killed by a hit-and-run driver as he walked his dog, a miniature Schnauzer called Cobbett. I thought the chances of Paul H
arding welcoming an executive housing development in the village he lived were infinitesimal. Conversely, the chances of Paul Harding leading a successful protest movement against a housing development on the land were fairly high.
Was it just coincidence? I bet it wasn’t the potential developers of HS2, Balfour Beatty, McAlpine or whoever, who had mown him down in a car and failed to stop.
I spent more time reading on my computer screen. Harding had been killed by a dark hatchback. I wondered what car Farson drove. Well, only one way to find out.
I looked at the clock: six p.m. By seven I was in the car park again at Chandler’s Ford, this time in Naomi’s Audi 3 series saloon which I had borrowed for the occasion. I left my own Volvo at home in case anyone saw it. I suspected that even Farson, maybe not the brightest of men, might well be able to remember the make of car belonging to the man who had knocked him down earlier in the day.
I thought that I stood a fairly good chance of finding him back in the Greyhound at that time of the evening. There was something about Farson that gave more than a hint he was not married. He seemed an unpleasant little thug and at his age, mid-forties I guess, any woman dumb or unlucky enough to have formed a relationship with him would surely have moved out. I assumed he would live alone, sustained by porn and booze. Of course he would be in the pub, where else could he go? Who else would have him?
I parked the Audi by the church and walked up to the Greyhound. I was warmly dressed but I shivered in the cold wind. As if on cue it started raining heavily. There were lights on only in the public bar. How disappointed non-regulars would be, I thought, who might want to enjoy the warm welcome of the landlord in the luxurious and welcoming saloon.
Its car park only held four cars, none a dark hatchback. Well, I wasn’t too surprised. The vehicle must have been quite dented after hitting Harding and it would have been a bit much to have blithely driven round in it afterwards, even in Chandler’s Ford.
I wondered how much effort Slattery had put into finding the car. I wondered again about his proximity to Whitfield and Montfort.