Classic in the Dock

by Amy Myers

  She shrugged. ‘Only asked him if he’d knocked off anyone else between his wife and Hugh Compton.’

  I gazed at her in incredulity. ‘Did you expect his full cooperation, Pen?’

  ‘Yeah. Often works,’ she told me seriously. ‘Go in with guns blazing and you hit something somewhere. Go careful with him, Jack. He’s a strange one.’

  ‘As the pot said of the kettle.’

  She grinned. ‘I mean it, Jack. You mark Auntie Pen’s words. There’s a witches’ brew boiling up nicely in Plumshaw. It’s not over yet.’

  ‘Old or new Plumshaw?’

  No reply. I watched as she marched off to retrieve her ancient motorbike hidden in the bushes, a ploy she sometimes uses when on her special missions.

  Time for my own special mission. The door was shut, but Nan opened it readily enough when I knocked. ‘I thought you’d be coming sometime,’ he remarked as I followed him into the cottage. ‘I reckon you’ve been everywhere else.’

  He didn’t grin exactly, but at least I wasn’t walking into enemy territory without a white flag, although he must have realized that I knew Pen.

  ‘Want a coffee?’ he asked.

  I tried not to think of the foxgloves. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘White, no sugar. Your own coffee beans from the garden?’ I joked.

  ‘No,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘I use ready-ground or instant. Best tell me what you’ve heard,’ he continued without a pause. ‘That’s what brought you, I reckon.’

  I’d never met anyone quite so upfront with his cards on the table. ‘There’s a lot of talk flying round this village about everyone, not just you, Nan.’

  ‘That’s what’s best. Let it all go round and round, and then it never touches the middle, eh? The middle’s what you want.’ A pause. ‘Like them globe artichokes. You peel off all the leaves, get a little bit of flesh on them here and there, but chuck most of them away. Then you get to the heart.’

  ‘The problem with this case,’ I said, impressed, ‘is that I don’t know where the heart is.’

  He chuckled. ‘You’ll get there, see if you don’t. And when you do, you’ll know it. For instance, you working for the police, you know about my record like that woman did. Is that the heart of it? Not for me, it isn’t.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ I said reasonably truthfully. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘A long time ago’s what we’re all made of. Up here.’ He tapped his head.

  How to counter that? ‘You’ve built on that experience, haven’t you?’

  ‘Jane, my wife, was a lovely woman, a good one, and I killed her. Didn’t mean to, but it happened, like things do. I had a tough time in prison, Mr Colby. Very tough and I deserved it. But I had time to think about things. I came out looking tough, but inside I’d turned round. My dad didn’t believe it, but Mum, she saw I’d turned and she taught me all she knew.’

  I wasn’t sure I could believe this. Not that I thought he was lying, but I was forced to consider that life had treated him gently in the last fifteen years and circumstances had not required violence from him. Until, perhaps, now.

  I had to find out. ‘When Hugh Compton told you he wanted you to leave this cottage, weren’t you faced with the same unexpected and frightening situation?’

  The gentle face changed, just for a moment. I could almost see the battle going on within him, as he chose whether to punch the living daylights out of me or answer the question.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Nothing else. I might ruin everything if I said the wrong thing, changing Nan the peacemaker into someone quite different. Don’t speak, I told myself. Say nothing.

  The battle of silence is a hard one, but I won it, and he spoke first.

  ‘You want to know whether it was me killed Mr Compton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I killed once, never again. Where would killing him get me? They wouldn’t let me keep the cottage then, would they?’ Another long pause. ‘To my way of thinking, Mr Hugh can’t have been killed in the barn. Was he killed near the pond?’

  ‘We don’t yet know where. Stories, as you say, go round and round. When did he tell you about the cottage?’

  ‘The day he disappeared, Mr Colby. That would be the Wednesday afternoon.’

  Did I believe Nan? With someone like him it was hard not to. On the other hand, I was aware that he knew that. I drank my coffee, which was amazingly good, in silence, and waited for him to make the running again. It was the only way I was going to get anywhere.

  There was a long pause but, eventually, as I had hoped, he began to communicate again. ‘This cottage is my life, Mr Colby. Home is everybody’s life. I could pack up Mum’s jars, equipment and everything else and find room for them in that place Mr Hugh wanted me to go to. Maybe the family will still pack me off there. It would be the end of me. I don’t know when exactly, because I’d look the same but I wouldn’t be the same. So eventually the me would just die.’

  I didn’t comment and sure enough he continued. ‘I could even take the animals’ cages but I can’t take the garden where Mum used to sit, or the place where I feed the rabbits. And what would the foxes do? Being near the woods, see, they feel safe here, but I wouldn’t be very popular with old Farmer Wild if I started looking after wounded foxes over there. Or birds. They’re fond of a bit of cereal like old Wild grows. Then there’s my dispensary. Not many folks from the village come. They’re too posh today with their antibiotics. Fighting nature they are. They work all right, but they pay for it in other ways. So I heals the animals instead and the birds, who haven’t got no National Health Service. Can’t take all that with me, can I? Besides, this is my home. Have you got a home, Mr Colby?’

  ‘Yes, a farmhouse where my parents used to live. It’s called Frogs Hill.’

  ‘I like frogs and toads. Toads are good at hanging on to homes. They stay where they want to. Wouldn’t want to leave yours, would you?’

  ‘No.’ The pain of that idea tugged at me unexpectedly. I’d spent many years travelling round in the oil trade and it had only been when my father’s health began to give way that I came back to Frogs Hill. Now it was my home. Leave it? Never. It would mean abandoning the Pits for a start, not to mention the Glory Boot. Harry Prince, the local garage magnate, had had his eye on buying the place from me for many a long year, waiting for the day I couldn’t pay the mortgage. So far I’ve scraped through. It’s tight though, and he knows it.

  Nan was watching me with amusement. ‘See? Some places you can’t just up sticks and go.’

  ‘Perhaps Bronte won’t want this cottage, now that she’s split up with young Jamie.’

  I said it to comfort him but I wasn’t at all sure I was right.

  I told myself a hundred times that this was going to be about Giovanni, not about his son, Louise and me. I had seldom felt so nervous in my life. I’d faced tough situations in the oil business with equanimity. I’d faced one or two murderers and a lot of thugs everywhere from Finland to Folkestone. Therefore, I reasoned, one single Italian, however delicate the situation, should present no difficulty. We would talk things over like reasonable human beings and all would be well.

  So why was my stomach churning like a misfiring engine? It was Thursday morning. A working day. A normal day. So why was I pacing up and down in front of the Pits as though a heart operation were going on inside? It was the equivalent in fact, as Len and Zoe were tuning a Jaguar in distress.

  Why my unusual panic? Answer: Ricardo was dropping by for coffee.

  I had with difficulty dissuaded Louise and Maria from attending this notable event. Both of them, it seemed, were anxious to protect Ricardo. Neither of them appeared to think I too might need protection. I comforted myself that that must say something about Ricardo. He must be pretty feeble all round, whereas I wasn’t – not outside anyway. I’m over six foot and present a strong facade to the world, no matter the quivers inside me. I could cope – or so I bravely tried to convince myself.

  And then I
heard a car approaching. The latest Volvo? No. Through the gates very slowly, very carefully came a magnificent yellow 1970s Triumph Stag. Out of it stepped very slowly, very gingerly, a tall, good-looking, slim Italian in his early to mid thirties who whipped off his sunglasses to size me up. He then advanced with great confidence – which did little for mine.

  ‘Signor Colby?’

  I swallowed. I could see I wouldn’t be fighting on equal terms with him, which in the circumstances wasn’t fair. I was the one under attack. ‘Signor Donati?’

  ‘Ricardo, please.’

  ‘Jack.’

  We shook hands and mentally retired to our corners. ‘So you found us then?’ I said heartily, unable to think of anything more intelligent to say.

  ‘It was difficult,’ he agreed.

  Silence. ‘Come in and we’ll have coffee,’ I said more heartily still.

  ‘Grazie.’

  I supposed it must be tough for him walking into a house where he knew the love of his life was now living with this bolshie stranger, but I was more concerned with how I felt and what his plans might be for himself and Louise. I took him into the living room which was less personal than our comfortable farmhouse kitchen.

  ‘Louise …’ I began, thinking I’d set his mind at rest with the assurance that she was not here at the moment, but his face darkened as he interrupted me.

  ‘Business, Jack. Only business.’

  I’d made a false move. To hell with that, I told myself. I had a fifty per cent stake in this conversation.

  ‘Do you live permanently in England?’ I asked, wondering if this could be classified as business though it was of pressing interest to me.

  ‘No, but I come here often. I have a flat in Blackheath.’

  This wasn’t good news.

  My small talk now exhausted, I went into the kitchen to busy myself with fussing over the coffee, wondering where to go from here. I need not have worried. Ricardo took over, marching after me and watching every move I made. Perhaps he thought I was doctoring the coffee.

  ‘I saw my father in prison yesterday,’ he told me. ‘He says you are helping to solve this terrible crime and get him released.’

  ‘I hope to do so. I don’t believe he is guilty.’ That at least – I hoped – was still true.

  ‘Of course he is not. But can you prove that?’

  He was so composed that it threw me off my stride. ‘Not yet.’

  He hitched his beautifully creased trousers most elegantly (bet he used to make Louise iron them) as he took a seat at the kitchen table, so that I was forced to put the coffee tray there and not in the more neutral living room. ‘Tell me everything,’ he commanded.

  I couldn’t do that, especially where the fake murder plot was concerned. ‘Only what I can,’ I told him firmly. ‘I work for the police, so I can’t discuss the case against your father.’

  He banged his cup on the table. ‘Then I am wasting my time.’ He stood up, the image of the affronted Latin.

  We weren’t exactly bonding, yet for Giovanni’s sake we had to, so I made an effort. ‘We’re both finding this meeting hard, Ricardo, but we have to put your father’s welfare first. It’s his life at stake.’ Cack-handed of me, to say the least.

  He looked horrified and no wonder. ‘His life? You still hang people here?’

  ‘No, but a long-term prison sentence would kill your father just as effectively.’ I couldn’t see Giovanni’s ebullient nature lasting long in the prison system whether he served the sentence here or in Italy. ‘You’re close to your father?’

  ‘Who would not be?’ Ricardo relaxed. ‘He is my father so I love him. He is an extraordinary man so I admire him. He did not kill this Englishman and so I know I must try to help you. But it is hard.’

  ‘It’s hard for me too,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Why is that? You have Louise.’ There was genuine anguish in his voice.

  I went softly. ‘No one has Louise. She comes and goes as she chooses.’

  ‘From me she goes,’ he said sadly.

  ‘She went from me too, but she has come back. For how long I don’t know.’

  For a moment our eyes bonded, then he turned away impatiently. ‘I do not understand that woman. I love her still.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps she will go from me too.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Kind of you,’ I retorted.

  He laughed. I laughed. We laughed. And all was OK – temporarily.

  ‘So now we talk only of my father. What do you wish to know?’

  ‘I need to be sure about why Giovanni wrote to ask the Comptons if he could paint the car. Whether it was for just that reason or whether he had more in mind.’

  He frowned. ‘I do not know. Truly, Jack. He told me he had been asked to do so. I will try to find this out, when I see him.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Did I want to be grateful to this man? ‘You knew he was eager to paint it?’

  ‘Of course. He has told you now, I think, that the car used to belong to our family – the Santoro family on my grandmother’s side. My great-grandfather loved it very much.’

  ‘And when Giulio died during the Second World War, his wife would have inherited the car?’

  ‘In those days the word inherit meant little. It was in their possession, but it was taken from them by the Fascists in the spring of 1945 after they had killed Giulio.’

  ‘It was they who killed him? Not the Germans?’

  ‘At that time and indeed until the referendum in 1946 the Fascists remained very powerful in north Italy, and very ruthless. After the armistice and the fall of Mussolini the Germans had moved into the north of the country, rescued Mussolini and the Italian Fascists held power there, and not the new Badoglio government as in the south. The Fascist Militia were worse than the Germans in their determination to root out all opposition, especially from the republicans amongst the Partisans. All those who were not Fascist but of mixed beliefs – they all fight for Italy. At first they fought in small groups mounting sabotage raids wherever they could to tie up the German war machine. Giulio had his own banda in the mountains near Parma and stayed there throughout two winters, very cold ones. Many, many of the Partisans died. While behind the German lines, they faced torture, starvation and betrayal to the Fascists and the Germans while the Allies worked their way up through Italy.’

  ‘Did Giulio Santoro ever meet Peter Compton there?’ Peter’s own account had been in very general terms – perhaps too general, it now struck me.

  ‘That I do not know. I only know about Giulio and his banda. The Partisans were supplied at first only by a staffeta – they were messengers, often girls, who would bring food and information to them in the mountains. But during the snows, this was not always possible, and it was a dangerous time, as the Germans and Fascisti had ski battalions to hunt them down. In the summer of 1944 the British brought in their Special Operations Executive to organize resistance in northern Italy, and it was then more effective for the British supplied the Partisan groups through parachute drops. Giulio’s banda fell at the boundary of the British Mission Toffee area, between the two roads from the port of La Spezia, one to Parma and the other to Reggio Emilia. The banda was near the Parma road and mounted raids on it and also on the railway line where it enters and leaves a long tunnel under the Apennine mountains. On one raid the Fascisti came and Giulio was fortunate to get back safely to their mountain retreat. Not long afterwards in the spring he was betrayed, tortured and shot.’

  ‘Betrayed to the Fascists or the Germans?’

  ‘The Fascisti. Giulio was a brave man. So his car is very important to the family.’

  ‘Peter Compton says he bought it in 1946.’

  ‘That is right. But we know this too: when Partisans were killed by the Fascisti, they killed the families too. In our case, our family was lucky. The Fascisti took only the car, and when the end of the war came in May 1945 the car could not be traced. Later the family was told it was given to or bought b
y an Englishman. As politics began to change, Giulio’s widow, my great-grandmother, asked for it back, but even the republican victory in the referendum did not help, because things do not change so quickly, and in any case the British were demanding Mr Compton’s release. The Fascisti still had some power in north Italy and so the car went with him.’

  ‘So the police could say your father’s motive for killing Hugh Compton was to claim the car back, and that he was killed, perhaps accidentally, when they quarrelled on the issue.’

  ‘My father is not so stupid,’ Ricardo retorted angrily. ‘How could we prove it was not a legal sale by 1946? Some things are not possible. A stolen work of art, perhaps, but this is a car.’

  ‘A valuable one, however.’

  Ricardo said stiffly, ‘My father say that if he paints it, it becomes his in his head and that is enough.’

  ‘Then why,’ I countered, ‘did he not tell us of his relationship to the original owner? Why pretend even to me that it was just the car that inspired him?’

  ‘It is family business,’ Ricardo said flatly.

  ‘What?’ This was beginning to sound a familiar theme.

  ‘Family business,’ he repeated. ‘It is the Italian way. It is not good to discuss such matters outside the family. Already I have told you too much.’

  ‘Even when a murder charge hangs over Giovanni?’

  ‘Especially with a murder charge hanging over him. My father knows he is innocent. He knows that all he wished to do was paint the car. The Comptons cannot prove otherwise because there is no “otherwise” that can be proved.’

  Oh great! ‘And how,’ I asked wearily, ‘therefore, did this friend Umberto Monti at La Casa know about the car? He isn’t family.’

  ‘Umberto? But he is family.’ Ricardo seemed amused.

  I took a deep breath at this revelation. ‘Would you mind telling me how he fits in as both friend and family and why Giovanni didn’t reveal this either to me or the police?’

  ‘Of course.’ Ricardo’s turn for the deep breath. ‘Because the car and Umberto’s connection with it are family business and must remain within the family. It is a question of honour.’