McCall wondered if the watchers were already watching him watching Benwick’s contacts - if they knew about them, that was. The documents Hoare lifted from Ruby’s case file must have an incriminating significance beyond her disappearance. But how did the spooks know Hoare had copies? And why did they burgle his flat when they’d a right of access to them through normal police liaison channels?
Yet if McCall thought the situation sticky now, it would get worse. Hoare’s body must have been discovered. The police were bound to interview his ex-wife and she was equally certain to mention McCall’s visit. They would find his fingerprints - already on file from past misdemeanours - in the caravan.
He’d also removed evidentially relevant pages from the notebook in which Hoare had obviously been writing. The cops might yet ask where they were, why they’d been taken and why he’d failed to notify anyone about the body. He’d have no choice but to go no comment and risk the suspicion that would cause.
He looked up for a moment and saw an elderly woman with a walking stick, struggling with a bag of shopping as she entered Boland Grove. She leaned against a garden wall, as if exhausted. McCall went across to see if she needed help. It wasn’t only Greeks who bore gifts. She’d strength enough to smile and nod. He took her bag and she took his arm.
A minute later, he was in her kitchen, two doors from where the Greens lived. The old lady slumped in an easy chair. He made her a cup of tea and fed her cat. It turned out she was widowed so had no one McCall could ring.
She thanked him for his kindness and wanted him to stay awhile for hers was a life with few friends. By the time he left, McCall knew the Greens were on a walking holiday, had no children, that Mr Green was something to do with computers but was currently overseas on a project for his firm.
Mrs Green called herself a legal executive and they drove a silvery-blue Rover car. Both were in their late thirties and had only lived at number 9 for six-months.
‘Short dark hair, she has. Eton Crop we called it in my day,’ the old lady said. ‘Very private sort of soul, doesn’t go out of her way to make conversation but then, your neighbours don’t these days, do they?’
So what was the connection between this seemingly blameless, provincial couple and a runaway detective being sought as a threat to the State? Like Evan said, we never truly know anyone… least of all, those we’re sure we do.
For the moment, that didn’t matter. The only non-London number called from the Greens’ phone in the days before Benwick went AWOL was 0204 68288. McCall had rung it the previous night. It was the Blackhorse Hotel in Blackrod, a former mining town in Lancashire and - even more encouragingly - the place pictured on the front of Benwick’s cryptic postcard to Hoare.
Here was the joy of McCall’s kind of hackery - digging about in the muck and litter at the side of the road then finally turning up a spraint left by the prey being pursued. McCall booked a room at the Blackhorse and now headed north.
*
For the life of her, Hester could not think who or what might have caused Ruby to be so frightened in Shrewsbury. But she was starting to recognise when it was wiser to retreat than fight. They drove back to Garth Hall. Ruby stared straight ahead during the entire journey. She refused any food and immediately went upstairs to draw some of the buildings her photographic mind had just registered.
Hester busied herself in the kitchen. The phone in the hall rang and she silently prayed it wasn’t bad news about Lexie. She answered and a man with a regional accent she couldn’t place, asked if McCall was there.
‘No, not right now. Who is this?’
‘Just a friend,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to find out where he is for a job I’ve got for him but he’s not answering his mobile.’
‘He could be anywhere. I’m only the housekeeper, he doesn’t tell me his plans.’
‘So you’re all on your own in that rambling old place, are you?’
‘Sometimes - so what?’
‘Don’t take offence but it’s a bit creepy for a woman, isn’t it?’
‘Listen, I’m a bit busy for this.’
‘All those creaks and bumps in the night. Must almost scare you to death.’
‘Just tell me your name and I’ll have him call you if he rings in.’
‘No, don’t worry. You’ve got other things on your mind… better go and make sure all the doors are bolted, hadn’t you?’
Then the man put the phone down.
Twenty-Eight
The name Blackrod derived from words meaning bleak clearing in the language of those from across the German Sea who invaded after the Roman legions left and the Dark Ages began.
In time, forests came to be replaced by farms. Stone cottages were built, women wove fine cloth and men lowered themselves into the earth to dig for coal. The town grew and had a railway to serve its brick works and factories.
But as McCall drove down the Roman road which was now Blackrod’s main street, he saw scant evidence of the industries where those who’d once lived in the long, unlovely terraces he passed had worked.
He noticed a sign for Ros Thorne Photography in a parade of shops. He parked and looked into a window display of joyful wedding pictures and children’s portraits. Ms Thorne was guillotining prints at her counter, a woman of forty summers surviving on the happiness of others.
McCall entered in his lawyerly blue suit, white shirt and dark tie and carrying a leather briefcase. He could be mistaken for anything other than what he was. There was rarely the need to lie when people made assumptions of their own.
He smiled at Ms Thorne and said he’d a reel of film urgently needing to be developed and printed as blow-ups.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t get round to doing that for a couple days at the earliest.’
McCall kept the beguiling smile going through his fatigue and disappointment. He implied this was a delicate legal matter so he’d pay over the odds for any assistance.
‘If it took you a couple of hours, I’d pay for four… in cash, if you wished.’
‘There’s nothing dodgy about these pictures, is there? I can’t afford to get mixed up in anything dodgy, not round here.’
‘You’ll see them for yourself,’ McCall said. ‘And I don’t doubt you’d quickly work out what sort of case this is.’
‘Not a messy divorce, is it?’
‘I wouldn’t be allowed to comment, would I?’
*
It was still warm and the landlady of the Blackhorse opened the pub’s front windows to catch whatever breeze might pass. The night sky was sour with sodium glare from all the street lighting between Blackrod and the distant Pennine Moors.
This had been a tiring day. McCall sat in the bar with a Scotch and much on his mind. But the news from the hospital was encouraging. Lexie was stable.
Hester might have rung him but didn’t so he took it she and Ruby had no problems at Garth. He would home in on Benwick next morning, check the guest book and ask if anyone recognised the photograph he’d taken of him by the reservoir.
Ros Thorne arrived with a large manila envelope as promised. She declined McCall’s offer of a drink. She’d her wedding commission to finish. He went to his room and spread the snatched pictures of Gillespie on the bed.
It was the final shot of him sitting with the other union man and an unidentified male at the trattoria window that made McCall look twice. He stared hard at the blow-up but there was no doubt. Inexplicably, the third man was his very own Deep Throat, Roly Vickers.
*
A car’s headlights cut through the trees along the pot-holed drive to Garth Hall then swept onto the front drive and threw shadows across the bedroom Hester shared with Ruby. Hester stood behind the curtains and looked down.
It was a police patrol car. This made her more anxious, not less. Two uniformed officers got out and walked round to the back of the house.
‘You must stay in this room, Ruby,’ Hester said. ‘Tell me you understand.’
Ruby nodded and car
ried on drawing. Hester went across the landing to the bathroom and watched from there. A sergeant and a constable shone their torches into the stables. It was padlocked but they could see McCall’s Morgan inside. This was what they were after. A few moments later, Hester heard the front door being knocked.
It took some deep breathing before she was calm enough to open it. The sergeant said they wanted to speak to Francis McCall.
‘He’s not here,’ Hester said.
‘But his car is.’
‘Yes, but he’s working away. Why do you want him?’
‘It’s the police in Oxfordshire who want him. There’s been a suspicious death and they think Francis can help them with their inquiries.’
‘How would he know anything about a suspicious death?’
‘It isn’t for us to say but the police down south want to interview him.’
‘Well, if he rings me, I’ll tell him.’
‘Do you mind if we come in and have a look round?’
‘Have you got a search warrant?’
‘No, but we could get one if we need to.’
‘You’d still be wasting your time. Mr McCall’s in London for a few days.’
‘How do we know he’s not hiding inside?’
‘You don’t but he’s not and I don’t tell lies.’
‘So who’s moving that curtain up there?’
‘That’s my bedroom. It’ll be the cat, he sleeps in there.’
‘A cat… really? So what relation are you to Francis, Miss…?’
‘Miss Lloyd and I’m not a relation, I’m his housekeeper.’
‘And you’re stuck out here, miles from anywhere in this big old house with just a cat for protection,’ he said. ‘Not of a nervous disposition, are you?’
‘I was raised in the wilds of Oregon so there’s not much that frightens me. Now, are we done here?’
‘For the time being, yes. But we may well be back.’
Half an hour later, Hester drove to a phone box and rang McCall, not in a panic but unsettled by events beyond her control. She told him how frightened Ruby had been, thinking they were being followed in Shrewsbury.
‘And now the police have just pitched up,’ she said. ‘They say there’s been a suspicious death and you’re involved. You have to tell me what’s going on, Mac.’
‘It’ll be Hoare, the PR man. He’s died but the cops will use his death as an excuse to find out where I am.’
‘But why would they want to do that?’
‘I don’t know but like everything else, it’ll be to do with Ruby’s case. Is she with you now?’
‘Hasn’t left my side nor will she. Will you be back to visit Lexie tomorrow night?’
‘I’ll do my best but cover for me if I can’t.’
Her coins ran out so she and Ruby drove home through the moonlit country lanes. On such a night, as soft and warm as a lover’s first kiss, Hester ought to have been lying in a hammock on the orchard lawn, staring at the stars and questioning all those inner beliefs and thoughts which influenced her outer self.
It was said an unexamined life had no merit - and that wasn’t in Hester’s soul plan for this incarnation. But instead of visualising her universe, she was assailed by fears of kidnap, of menacing telephone calls and suspicious deaths.
All this worldly wickedness swirled around the motherless child at her side. Who could possibly want to harm her? For what reason or purpose? Every door and every window at Garth Hall would henceforth be locked against evildoers. Ruby would be protected by Hester this time.
*
The landlady of the Blackhorse offered McCall a full English breakfast next day. But all his underlying worries caused him to feel nauseous enough without a fry-up.
‘Just cereal and toast, please’.
‘You look quite pale, Mr Sydenham,’ she said. ‘Not poorly, I hope.’
This was McCall’s first outing using the moody name on Cyril Loader’s even moodier driving licence.
‘No, I’m fine honestly, just not too hungry.’
He was queasily aware of the pub’s early morning smells - stale cigarette smoke, last night’s spilt beer, disinfectant. The landlady brought his order then hovered out of hospitable curiosity.
‘You from London, did you say?’
‘Down that way, yes.’
‘All that crime and rushing about there, not sure I could cope with it.’
McCall smiled and had reason to suggest she share his pot of tea.
‘Might as well,’ she said. ‘I’ve no other guests in today.’
He poured for them both. They chatted about the pub trade and the weather before he reached in his briefcase for the close-up he’d taken of Benwick by the reservoir.
‘Don’t know if you can help me with this but do you recognise this man?’
She gave a canny half smile and asked if McCall was a private detective.
‘Not quite but I’m anxious to trace him.’
‘Yes, I know him. What’s he done that you’re after him?’
‘It’s complicated and rather personal but would you tell me how you know him?’
‘Because he’s stayed here a few times. In fact, he only left a couple of hours before you arrived.’
McCall cursed silently. He’d seen only one other name above his in the register - a Mr Terry Boland. There was no address but he should have spotted the clue in the surname, cribbed from the street where the Greens lived.
‘So what brings our Mr Boland up this way so often?’
‘He’s a bird watcher, mad keen on it, apparently.’
‘I didn’t know that. Where does he go round here?’
‘No idea but someone in the bar said they’d seen him a while back on the other side of Euxton, on a golf course up there.’
‘You mean playing golf?’
‘No, watching birds. Got all the right kit, he had. Camouflage outfit, binoculars, even a video camera.’
‘So which golf course was this?’
‘There’s only one that way, Shaw Hill, it’s called. Very posh, got this lovely old house they’ve turned into a country club.’
‘I might head up there and see if he’s still about. What sort of car is he driving now?’
‘They’re all the same to me, love. No idea.’
‘Is the golf course easy to find?’
‘It’s right next to what we call the gunpowder factory round here.’
‘Gunpowder factory?’
‘Where they make the bombs and weapons and such like. It’s all supposed to be top secret and we’re not meant to know what goes on there… but we do.’
So this was where Benwick’s trail was leading. McCall now had even more reasons to be cheerful.
*
Lexie believed herself to be in a field of tulips - vermillion, lilac, violet, apricot, black, white and every shade between. Their fleshy-bladed leaves brushed her bare legs as she passed. But where was this place?
She snapped a flower head off its stalk and put it to her lips to kiss. But within its satin chalice of petals was a heart burned black by passion, all but spent now. In front of her was a clearing and in this space, a million more deflowered tulips, tumbled into a great heap like an unmade bed.
Lexie lay on her back to luxuriate in the waxy silkiness of the blooms against her skin, sank ever deeper into all that rainbow beauty being crushed beneath her spread-eagled nakedness. Then she found her own velvety self as she first had when crossing the border from innocence to experience.
But that is not enough. She called into the silence for a lover and her voice echoed into the past. Who will smile gently now, genuflect before her and offer the sacrament she wants most? Whose back will she mark… McCall’s or Evan’s or one whose name and face she can no longer recall?
A man’s hands cup her breasts. They move over her belly and further down so she reveals herself to him, arches to receive the pleasure he offers. And in that moment, she is entered yet doesn’t feel what was expecte
d.
She was being knifed open. Cut, sliced, ripped apart till her very essence was excised and removed. And the blood seeped from her wounds and discolours the flowers where she lay until all turn crimson and she and they are nothing but flames.
Lexie was no longer female. Her life was saved but lost. They had neutered her. An intensity of white light shone in her eyes so she saw only the wraith-like shapes of strangers floating by.
And she began to weep for the woman she believed she was could be no more.
Twenty-Nine
A boy on a bike is rarely noticed. He is as unremarkable as a tree in a wood or a brick in a wall. Yet he sees much. The world and its ways are still a mystery to him. Each new sight and experience imprints itself on the blank page of his open mind – all the more if what he witnesses is so fearful he is too afraid or too confused to tell anyone else about it.
So it was with Ronnie Stansfield, eleven next birthday and good at mending things like his Dad had been. His Mum sometimes worked late shifts at the gunpowder factory. Then their house felt empty and sad so Ronnie stayed out till all hours on those nights.
On this calm autumn evening, he rode up the country lanes around Shaw Hill golf course. The rosaries of street lights were coming on in the valleys below and only the iron clunk of railway wagons being shunted in the underground chambers beyond the trees could be heard. This was where the munitions his Mum helped to assemble were prepared for dispatch.
Ronnie sneaked his bike through a hedge and rode the rough ground towards Hardfield Wood. His den was here, the place where he was the hero of his own stories and even smoked a cigarette. He’d filched it from a packet left on the mantelpiece by Mr Towner, the neighbour who came for meals now his wife had cleared off.
Smoking seemed manly to Ronnie but out in the open air, the real taste of tobacco made him giddy and sick. No more cigarettes went missing after that. Besides, Ronnie didn’t dare risk his friendship with Mr Towner for Mr Towner was a loco driver and Ronnie was a train spotter.
The Convenience of Lies Page 15