by Faith Martin
‘They’d all lived next door to each other for some time then,’ Hillary said.
‘Oh yes.’
‘It was sad to see Maureen towards the end. Got really bad, she did,’ Gill said regretfully. ‘She started thinking burglars were watching her house. And then she accused Sylvie of killing poor old Sputnik.’
‘Huh. Everyone knows that was down to Paul Quinlan. I always said that daft sod would do some real harm one day, and he did,’ Graham Teign said complacently, draining his mug. ‘More tea?’
‘No, thank you,’ Hillary said. ‘Who’s Paul Quinlan?’
‘Him opposite.’ Gill nodded vaguely across the road. ‘Lives in the cottage facing Sylvie’s old place. Keeps chickens,’ she added, somewhat cryptically.
‘And you think he was responsible for killing Maureen’s cat?’ Hillary said, trying to keep up.
‘Oh yerse,’ Graham answered for her. ‘Keeps chicken, see.’
Wendy clearly didn’t, but Hillary Greene suddenly saw the light. ‘Oh. Got you. He laid poisoned bait to keep the foxes down?’
‘Right. I told him and told him, you just can’t do that. Other things eat it, see. Wild birds, and then they die. A neighbour’s dog that gets out of the garden. Badgers. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together puts down poisoned bait. But would he be told?’
‘Or in this particular case, a neighbour’s cat,’ Hillary said.
‘Exactly.’ Gill nodded, and added a bright red ball of wool to her needles. It contrasted and clashed nicely with the emerald green she had been using. ‘It broke her heart, poor old soul. She really doted on her cats, see. And what with her not being herself … it really sent her loopy. Not even Freddie could console her.’
‘Who do you think killed Sylvia?’ Hillary threw the question out casually, but for once, the Teigns had little to say. Gill looked at her husband, who looked back at her, and then they both looked at Hillary.
‘Sorry, we’ve got no idea, love,’ Gill finally admitted sadly.
‘But I hope you catch the sod,’ her husband added emphatically. ‘She was all right, was Sylvie.’
CHAPTER TEN
Paul Quinlan’s chickens were audible from the moment they opened the garden gate and walked up towards the house. His was a more substantial building than the cottages opposite, being both detached, and taller, with dormer windows and an uncompromisingly solid appearance. It also sat in a larger plot, and around one side was clear evidence of a substantial vegetable patch. The contented clucking of the poultry came from the rear of the property, and Wendy could have sworn that she also heard a goat bleating just as Hillary rang the doorbell.
Paul Quinlan, so the Teigns had informed her, was a bachelor, although apparently ‘not that way inclined’ who worked in the banking industry during the week somewhere in High Wycombe, but liked to live the good life at the weekends. Country-dwellers born and bred probably found the thought hilarious.
‘Makes his own cheese,’ Graham Teign had informed them knowingly, as he showed them out. He might just as well have said that he knitted his own jumpers from dog hair and ate dandelions in his salad, from the way he shook his head.
But the cheese-making probably accounted for the sound of goats, Wendy thought now. Then she had the absurd mental picture of herself attempting to milk a billy goat and tried hard not to start giggling as the door opened, and a dapper little man with a neat moustache and goatee beard looked out at them. He couldn’t have been over five feet tall, and had a patch of bright red on each cheek that told them he’d only very recently just come in out of the cold air.
‘Yes?’
Hillary Greene explained who they were, and Paul Quinlan very carefully inspected both of their IDs before smiling and letting them in. He was dressed in very clean denim dungarees underneath a warm-looking black wool sweater, and was wearing what looked like army-issue boots.
‘You’ll have to come on through to the back if you don’t mind. I was just seeing to the wine.’
Hillary assured him that they didn’t mind at all, and followed him out through a well-appointed kitchen to an out-building, where he obviously made not only his own wine, but brewed his own beer as well.
‘I’ve got the elderberry on the go at the moment,’ he said, going over to a plastic vat and proceeding to stir it with a steam-cleaned wooden paddle. The aroma was heady and Hillary took a step back from the potent blast of alcohol that emanated from the dark, claret-coloured brew. She could only hope that some of the rawness of the alcohol came out during the fermentation period, otherwise one glass would knock you off your feet.
‘This is about Syliva Perkins, I take it?’ Paul Quinlan asked, as he stirred gently. He looked to be in his early fifties, and couldn’t have weighed more than nine stone. Wendy thought that if he ever lost his job in the banking industry, he could always hire himself out as a garden gnome and, again, had to fight back a fit of the giggles.
‘Yes. According to DI Jarvis, you weren’t at home the day she was killed?’ Hillary got straight to the point.
‘No. I was at the bank. I didn’t hear the shocking news until I drove home and saw all the police cars milling about in the road,’ Paul said. ‘It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you. I mean, you don’t expect that sort of thing to happen in a little place like this do you?’
It was a lament Hillary heard too often to comment on.
‘According to your neighbours, you regularly put out poisoned meat?’ she said instead, and the banker stopped in mid-stir. He shot her a quick, penetrating look that slowly turned into a scowl.
‘Yes, that’s true. Since they banned fox hunting, I needed to do something to protect my hens. If you ask me, they should bring it back. But might I ask what on earth that has to do with anything?’ he demanded, his scowl turning more and more belligerent.
Wendy, who’d been wondering the same thing, thought how sweet the little man looked when he was flushed with anger.
‘I understand, around that time, that a cat in the neighbourhood died of poisoning.’
‘Sylvia didn’t keep a cat,’ Paul Quinlan said defensively.
‘No, but her good friend and neighbour did: Maureen Coles.’
‘Oh. Right, the poor lady with dementia? Yes, I heard something about her cat dying. But I thought that it was natural causes,’ Paul said implacably. ‘It was old, I think.’
‘So Sylvia didn’t confront you about it then?’ Hillary said, sounding surprised. ‘Only I heard that Maureen thought her friend was to blame, and since it was common knowledge in the village that it was only you who were in the habit of laying down poisoned bait, I thought Sylvia might have tackled you about it.’ Hillary eyed the banker with a steady gaze. ‘And from what I’ve learned about Sylvia Perkins, Mr Quinlan, she wouldn’t have shied away from making her feelings known and felt. She would have been quite capable of taking you to task for it, on her friend’s behalf.’
Paul Quinlan flushed even more. ‘Well, be that as it may, she certainly never said anything to me about it. And, what’s more,’ he continued, working up a proper head of steam now, ‘I’d have given her a piece of my mind if she had tried to. I lay meat down on my own land, on my own property to protect my own domestic fowl. And if anyone has or had a problem with that – not that anyone ever has, I might say – then that would be their problem, and not mine,’ he finished grimly. And had he not been stirring a vast pot of stewing elderberries with a paddle, he’d probably have crossed his arms across his chest and nodded his chin emphatically just to underline the point.
‘I see,’ Hillary said, then smiled sweetly. ‘So Sylvia never talked to you about it?’
‘No, she did not.’
‘Well, in that case, thank you, Mr Quinlan. I think that’s all for now.’
The banker huffed and puffed a bit, but then seemed to twig that it was now all over, and quickly showed them out before Hillary could change her mind.
Once outside, Wendy couldn’t restrain herself any lo
nger, and began to giggle helplessly. Hillary, walking beside her back to the Mini, let her.
‘You really showed him, guv,’ Wendy chortled at last, slumping behind the driving wheel and wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.
Her mascara and eye-liner, Hillary noted vaguely, had to be the expensive, waterproof kind, or she’d have smeared it everywhere by now, and would look like a demented panda.
‘He was so cute, I wanted to pick him up and take him home,’ the Goth added. ‘I’ll bet he’s worth a bob or two as well.’
‘Fancy a sugar-daddy, do you?’ Hillary asked archly.
Which only set the girl off into another fit of giggles.
‘Come on, sober up,’ Hillary said, smiling herself now. ‘I’m going to interview the scarlet woman next, and you’ve got to write up your notes for the murder book. That should bring you back down to earth.’
Wendy sighed, and asked wistfully, ‘The scarlet woman?’
‘Sylvia’s love rival,’ Hillary said briskly. ‘It’s about time we heard what Ruby Broadstairs had to say for herself.’
‘Oh right, guv. But can’t I come?’
‘It’s Jake’s turn,’ Hillary heard herself say, and wondered why she was suddenly sounding like someone’s mother. Good grief, she thought, just a shade hysterically, has it really come down to that? Was she nothing more than a glorified babysitter now?
‘Where does she live?’ Hillary asked briskly.
‘She’s in a care home now, guv. Witney.’ Wendy named the small market town about twenty miles away, and turned the key in the ignition. With a last, wistful look at Paul Quinlan’s house, she nosed the Mini out onto the muddy lane and drove back towards Kidlington.
Whilst Hillary and Wendy were on their way back to HQ, Jake Barnes was taking an early lunch, and driving to the local branch of his bank.
When he got there, he had to go through the usual checks and rigmarole in order to draw out £20,000 in cash. He’d thought about this long and hard, and in the end, had chosen this amount very carefully. In this day and age, it wasn’t such a huge sum of money that it could actually turn anybody’s head – and certainly not someone like Darren Chivnor. You could hardly retire on it, or buy a house with it.
On the other hand, it was nothing to be sniffed at either. It represented a new car, a modest caravan, a luxury holiday, or a really fancy piece of jewellery. It was, in effect, a nice little sweetener.
Presented in a sea of orange-coloured ten-pound notes and purple twenties, it looked impressive – way more impressive than mere words on a cheque, or computer printout. There was something about slightly smelly, in-your-hand currency that brought out the greed in almost everyone. Or so Jake hoped.
The cashier very helpfully put it into a padded brown envelope for him and he drove straight back to his house in order to deposit it in his safe.
If all went well, once he’d handed it over to Chivnor, he’d never see it again, writing it off to expenses. Its express purpose was to sharpen Darren Chivnor’s mind and get it firmly focused on what he was offering.
And as an opening gambit, he hoped it would do the trick.
Now the only thing he needed to do was to arrange for a way to hand it over without him getting a knife in his ribs for the trouble. At the same time, convincing Darren Chivnor that telling him what he wanted to know would be well worth the risk he’d undoubtedly be taking.
Probably much easier said than done, Jake acknowledged grimly and ruefully, as he drove back to work, swallowing hard around a throat gone suddenly dry.
But there was no turning back now.
If Jake Barnes was feeling less than comfortable as he went back to HQ, the man occupying his thoughts had no such worries.
Darren Chivnor, also in a manner of speaking at his place of work, was standing outside an-end-of-terrace house in Botley, watching as a grey people-carrier pulled up beside him. He nodded at the driver and glanced around once again to make extra sure that everything was all clear. It was. No one was paying them the slightest bit of attention.
A shaven-haired cockney, the driver stayed firmly behind the wheel, leaving it to Darren and the muscle-heavy man who’d been sitting beside him in the passenger seat, to offload the merchandise.
The girls were all in their mid-teens, Darren thought, running an experienced eye over them, and more or less fresh off the boat from the Baltics. One or two looked petrified enough to bolt, and these he kept a very keen eye on as he ushered the string of seven girls to the front door. Most of them looked merely curious and wary, and shied away from the big, silent man who’d travelled down with them. Darren knew him vaguely, and thought he probably worked as a bouncer in one of the seedier clubs where Dale had a half-share, up Leeds way. Not that many of the women found Darren’s presence much more reassuring, but several of them smiled when the door was opened to reveal a slightly chubby, middle-aged woman dressed in faded jeans and an old red sweat-shirt, who welcomed them to their new home.
Darren knew they wouldn’t be deceived by ‘Ma’s’ maternal-like appearance for long though. It was her job to ‘train’ the girls for their proper jobs, and learning to be waitresses or cleaners had nothing to do with it.
Once they were safely handed over, Ma nodded at him with her usual flat-eyed stare, and Darren nodded back mutely. The bouncer climbed back into the van beside the cockney, and the van drove away, keeping carefully within the speed limit.
Dale didn’t like it when his boys broke the law and brought the cops down on their backs, no matter how minor the mis-demeanour might be.
Darren walked a few streets away to where he’d parked his own motor and slipped inside. Dale liked his right-hand men to drive good, middle-of-the-range, and therefore anonymous, cars, and Darren’s was no exception. He was careful never to park it anywhere near any of the knocking shops or chop shops, just in case some nosy neighbours were inclined to make notes of number plates and make anonymous phone calls to the cops.
Not that the area he was in now was populated by people likely to do that. It had been chosen too well. Most of the houses were let to students. This created ideal cover – who was going to notice more teenaged foreign girls amid a multitude of other teenaged students of mixed ethnicity? Perhaps far more importantly, students came and went with monotonous regularity, and could usually be relied upon to be too interested in their own lives to pay much attention to those of their neighbours. And if most students could also be relied upon to regard the police with suspicion anyway, and therefore be less likely to get involved in anything than the usual average member of Joe Public, well, all the better.
As Darren turned the key in the ignition, he reached for his phone and texted the usual message to the usual pay-as-you-go phone to confirm that the consignment had been safely handled.
After shutting down that particular phone, he reached for yet another one, this one his own personal model, but before texting his girlfriend, he paused and stared blindly out of the windscreen ahead of him. His thoughts were not so much on arranging to meet up for a bit of noonday nookie with Lisa, but on Jake Barnes.
Last night, after dropping off his brothers back at his mum and dad’s house, he’d driven back to his flat and promptly hit the Internet. Just as Jake Barnes had predicted, the dot-com millionaire-turned-property-dealer had been well represented.
Darren had to admit, he’d been well impressed. His new mystery friend had hit it big young, but, what’s more, he’d had the good sense to get out before the bubble had burst. He’d seen the writing on the wall with the economic crash, and bought up real estate like it was going out of fashion, and consequently now owned property that would be worth it’s weight in gold bricks now that house prices were on the up again. And with the dearth of letting properties, he must be raking in millions in rental alone.
Darren knew that his boss, Dale Medcalf, who fancied him-self more as an entrepreneur than a criminal, would have been impressed with Barnes’s c.v. as well.
&nbs
p; Far less impressive, of course – not to mention, far more worrying – was the news that Jake Barnes had joined the Thames Valley Police Force, as a civilian consultant bringing his experience and expertise in order to help solve cold cases.
Dale would not have been impressed with that. And he certainly wouldn’t like it, not one little bit, that the plod’s flavour-of-the-month golden boy had been talking to him, Darren.
‘What’s the tosser playing at?’ Darren snarled at the windscreen of his car, and when a woman pushing a baby stroller passed by and glanced inside at him, his scowl sent her scurrying on.
Darren leaned back in the comfortable leather seat of his mid-range saloon car and forced himself to take long, slow breaths. He couldn’t, however, get out of his mind the image of the Porsche Jake Barnes had been driving last night.
The playboy had told him that he owned other sports cars too. A Ferrari for sure, Darren thought now enviously, a bright red one probably. And an Aston Martin maybe – a James Bond special. If he’d had Barnes’s dough, Darren thought dreamily, he’d own an Aston Martin.
He sighed, then rubbed a hand across his bristling scalp. Just what was the tosser’s game? Surely he was smart enough to know that he was playing with fire? If they were seen, if any one of Dale’s other boys saw them together…. The skinhead broke out in a sudden sweat. He wouldn’t even be able to tell the boss just what it was all about because he didn’t know himself. And that was definitely not on.
The smart thing to do now was to drive to Dale’s place and tell him everything that had happened. Admit that Jake Barnes was sniffing around for some reason, explain who he was, and ask him what he wanted Darren to do about it, but there were two problems with that. Darren hadn’t worked for Dale Medcalfe for so long without learning something about how the bloke thought. Dale was a meticulously tidy thinker. Anything or anyone that remotely threatened either his money or his safety, was dealt with ruthlessly. Even if he did come clean about Barnes and offer to tidy up the problem for him, it might not be enough to save his own skin.