Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Sounds normal. Where is it?’

  ‘Somewhere in the Sussex Weald near Horsham. He said he didn’t know any more.’

  ‘Did you believe that bit?’

  ‘No.’

  Greenway sat back in his armchair and went off into a world of his own. I knew better than to interrupt. Finally, he said, ‘I don’t like it that we haven’t heard from Patrick.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘I can understand that at the ungodly hour of the night when this happened he would have been reluctant to call out the cavalry because by the time even a rapid response unit could have got there the gang would have gone.’

  ‘Or seen the cops in their rear mirrors and scattered,’ I added.

  ‘Yes, that too. There’s also the nag that, as James said, he doesn’t trust the law to get it right: too many blues and twos and, again, mob scatters. Would he do that, remain quiet, even if it meant worrying you half to death, in order to undertake some or all of the job himself?’

  ‘Yes, he would.’

  ‘So is that conceit, or what?’

  ‘No, he’d be more worried about cops bursting in there and getting mown down in a shoot-out. These are the people, don’t forget, who committed mass murder in Bath.’

  ‘We must find this place, though – but initially without involving Sussex Police.’ The commander fixed me with intent gaze. ‘When the pair of you were with MI5 did you have any procedures that were put into place when something like this happened?’

  ‘There were three of us then,’ I told him. ‘Terry Meadows was with us. Having ensured that all was safe at home he and I would have conducted a preliminary recce and possibly gone on from there.’

  ‘You and I could conduct a recce.’

  ‘No, you’d be breaking all your own rules. And you’re too valuable. Think of the row if you were shot again – it caused a real stink last time that you’d gone off without proper backup and risked your life on what was regarded as a routine raid.’

  ‘I know who I caught it from too,’ he murmured. Despite the injury he had enjoyed himself immensely. ‘OK, change of plan. I’ll contact Sussex Police with a top priority request for information about run-down rural properties being redeveloped by anyone they regard as dodgy. For all we know they’ve been watching the place for weeks.’

  But Sussex Police had nothing much to report and could only point us to an empty warehouse on an industrial estate in Portslade on the coast being used by drug dealers that they were hoping to arrest shortly, and a barn to the north of Brighton being lived in by travellers thought responsible for local burglaries. This information took three hours to come through, by which time I was at home, my anxiety level now sky high.

  ‘Would this Meadows guy be prepared to give a hand again?’ Greenway had gone on to ask.

  I had said I would think about it before asking him.

  Terry has a wife, who is our previous nanny Dawn, and a young family of his own now. He also has a thriving security business and does not live anywhere near Sussex. After such a long time, several years, he could hardly be expected to have the same loyalty to his one-time boss as he had then, especially taking into account that for quite a lot of the time Patrick had not been all that good to him.

  I rang his number, spoke to Dawn and learned that Terry was in the States on business.

  Another sleepless night went by like a century. I had already informed Greenway of the outcome of my phone call and he had assured me that extra personnel were being brought in to trace the gang’s whereabouts. He intended to contact Sussex Police again first thing in the morning and would go right to the top. He had told me to try not to worry.

  Somehow, I got through Sunday. I could do nothing away from home until I’d taken Katie to the opticians on Monday morning as she needed glasses. Grandma simply would not do in this case as one of the boys in her class had told her that ‘they screw things into your eyes’, a cruel trick that Elspeth was rather impatient about, telling Katie that she should realize he was only teasing. Unfortunately, or not, Katie appears to have her aunt’s imagination and I could fully sympathize.

  The post had been delivered when we returned and there was a thick A5 envelope waiting for me. Always wary – someone once sent me an explosive device hidden in a bunch of flowers – when I do not recognize handwriting, in this case ugly printing in red ballpoint, I thought about donning a pair of thick gardening gloves and then ripped it open anyway. Inside, roughly done up in rolled up newspaper, was a lock of hair. It was almost certainly human, wavy and black in colour with a sprinkling of grey. There was blood on it where it had been wrenched out wholesale that was smeared on to the wrappings.

  If it had been intended that I should scream or faint they had failed for what I actually did was take it in both hands and hold it close; then, the tears ready, I kissed the mauled strands. All at once, in one searing moment, I could understand Patrick’s rare bouts of frightening and almost uncontrollable temper.

  My movements jerky, I found a clean tissue and wrapped the lock of hair in it. This was not a time to send things off to a forensic laboratory. The sheet of newspaper when smoothed out proved to be the front page of an edition of Reasonably familiar with Sussex as I used to have an aunt who lived there, I knew Steyning to be a village, although no longer the tiny rural idyll it used to be, situated at the northern foot of the South Downs inland from Worthing. The place is not all that far from Horsham. I asked myself if anyone of Uncle’s ilk would buy a paper intended for the residents of a small community when residing near a prosperous market town some twenty miles up the road. Then I noticed that it was a free newspaper and leapt for the phone. Half a minute later I had discovered that the paper was delivered by what were described to me as paid volunteers in the village itself, distributed to filling stations, garden centres, stores and post offices for people to help themselves, the remainder being put through letter boxes in the more outlying areas by helpful neighbours.The Steyning Advertiser. It looked to be a very local publication.

  I always keep a packed travel bag in the Range Rover for emergency use and, ruthlessly trying to push what had just happened right to the back of my mind, it was just a case of finding money plus a few other useful bits and pieces, putting the Smith and Wesson into its shoulder harness and buckling it on under my jacket, which is showerproof, made in Wisconsin, has an amazing number of pockets and is intended for use by the hunting and shooting fraternity. It even has a zipped ‘secret’ inner compartment for ammunition. I did not reckon it to be a time for handbags either.

  John and Elspeth were having lunch. I knew Elspeth was worried about me as she had found out, probably from the children, that I had eaten hardly anything for two days. I told them I was off to Sussex and hoped to be back very soon.

  ‘You’re going to look for him?’ she said.

  I touched my jacket where the lock of hair lay beneath in a pocket and found myself unable to reply.

  ‘God speed, Ingrid,’ she whispered.

  EIGHTEEN

  Ihad decided to give Michael Greenway the latest information when I was well on the road to prevent him from clamping down on what I was doing with a big no. This I duly did in the Southampton area but could only leave a message as his phone was switched off, which probably meant that he was in a meeting. He had not contacted me an hour later so I pulled into a lay-by near Midhurst and rang him again, with the same result.

  I called Matthew. I was slightly embarrassed about the length of time he was staying with the Greenways but had been assured that as the boys got on so well it was proving to be an immense help as Benedict, Greenway’s son by his previous marriage, could be ‘difficult’ when he was bored.

  ‘Hi, Mum!’ said the hatching computer genius.

  ‘Is the commander at home?’ I asked when we had had a short chat about what he had been doing.

  ‘No, I think he’s still at work. He works very late some days. Is Dad there?’

  ‘No, he’s w
orking too.’

  ‘Only I wanted to tell him something. I tried to call him but his phone’s off.’

  ‘You can tell me if you like – then I can give him the message when I see him or he calls me.’

  ‘Oh, all right. I rang Grandma and she told me that the pub’s all shut up and people are worried that man might have gone off with the Christmas Club money. When Benny and I were messing around with the files we found out that he – Mr Andrews, has shares – Benny told me what those are – in what must be a business in Sussex. It sounds like some sort of hotel thing. So that’s where he might have gone. We gave all the info to Gerry – you know, the computer guy from SOCA – but it didn’t sound very important at the time and is probably just buried in all the other stuff.’

  ‘Do you have a name for this place?’ I asked, hardly believing my luck.

  ‘I think it’s – hang on, I’ll call Benny . . .’

  I then heard him yelling loudly enough to fetch the pictures off the walls, followed by yells back.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. It’s Lock House.’

  I thanked him from the bottom of my heart, adding that they should give the information to the commander if they saw him soon; otherwise I would.

  Realizing that I had taken the tiny package with the lock of Patrick’s hair out of my pocket – I had rewrapped it in a lacy handkerchief and was clutching it tightly, I replaced it and furiously scrubbed away the few tears. Lock House, concentrate on that.

  It was well into the afternoon by now so I pressed on, not stopping again until I was on the outskirts of Steyning. There were roadworks, a large redevelopment of a corner pub, one-way streets: the place was manic and I had no choice but to find a car park. I then began calling on estate agents.

  No one had heard of Lock House; it was not in Steyning or the surrounding area.

  Finally, when I had exhausted them all – and it was amazing how many there were – the shops were closing and I was famished with hunger. I went back to the car park, put some more money in the machine and headed for The White Hart Hotel. Here, I ordered tea and fruitcake and, on the off-chance, repeated my request for information. Neither the receptionist nor the waitress had heard of the place. When I came to pay another employee of the establishment, a quite elderly woman, crossed the room carrying cleaning materials.

  ‘Hey, Hilda, you’ve lived here for ever,’ called the waitress. ‘This lady’s looking for a Lock House. Have you heard of it?’

  The woman slowly shook her head. ‘Changed its name, p’raps?’ she offered.

  I said, ‘It was described to me as a big place, a large house and farm, all very run down. Someone’s recently bought it to do up as a hotel or something similar.’

  ‘That sounds like the Keys Estate,’ she said dubiously. ‘Yes! Someone must have got the name wrong.’

  ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘Everyone knows the Keys Estate. It’s off the Sompting Road and where the Woodley family lived for hundreds of years. The last Lord Woodley lost all his money in some foreign venture and hanged himself in the stable, leaving his poor wife with a terrible financial mess to sort out. That was at least sixty years ago and although the house has been rented out the farm’s going to rack and ruin. Such a shame.’ She lowered her voice. ‘They say some London businessman’s bought it now but by all accounts he’s got some dodgy-looking friends.’

  ‘That’s only gossip, Hilda,’ admonished the waitress.

  ‘No doubt, but they sent the vicar away with a flea in his ear when he called round.’

  ‘A lot of people are heathens these days.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Hilda sadly and went on her way after acknowledging my thanks with a lift of her hand.

  I took a room – the hotel boasted a car park at the rear – as on no account was I openly driving up to the place. It seemed too much of a coincidence not to be the right place. Perhaps it had been referred to as that deliberately by those in the know in order to keep the real location secret from those who were not.

  I felt I was being too slow and cautious but sternly told myself that Ingrid Langley did not muster complete with flame-throwing tanks James Bond-style. My only goal was to find Patrick; others could apprehend the mobsters. He and I have discussed the possibility of situations like this; we have written scenarios like this and worked out solutions and the watchword is always catlike caution.

  I had a shower and then, against all the odds, a nap. My cursed writer’s imagination was constantly presenting me with one ghastly scenario after another, Patrick being subjected to all kinds of unspeakable violence. They would all be out of their heads on drink or drugs: hell on earth. And all the old nightmares: a body thrown out somewhere, on to an old manure heap, down a well, or buried in a shallow grave. It took me minutes to recover from the thought that the lock of hair was the only thing I would possess of him, for ever.

  At last the daylight began to fade. I had already dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved top and matching trousers and had a hood in one of the pockets of my all-important jacket should I need to be really invisible. My hazy recollections of the area were that the Sompting Road was a sometimes steep and narrow route with passing places that crossed the South Downs. Due to the gradients of the terrain any estate would have to be quite close to the village even taking into account that there might be, and probably were, higher pastures.

  A little later I went out, using the rear door into the car park so as not to have to walk through the reception area as a noisy group of people had overflowed from a side room where there was some kind of function taking place. One never knew who might be present. It was a perfect summer evening, still warm, no wind and, as I knew already, no moon. As I walked south, the geography of the place was coming back to me. Still in the village I came to the crossroads where if I turned right I would pass the little cottage where my aunt had once lived. My father’s sister, she had been very much like him, outwardly conforming and quiet but when you got to know her you discovered her wacky nature and outrageous sense of humour. She had taken one look at Patrick, my intended at the time, and told me that I would either end up famous or in jail. I have managed to become mildly famous by my own efforts but as to the rest of her prophesy time would tell. It might begin to come true tonight.

  The road began to climb and soon I came to a fork, a narrower road off to the left. I took it, even though it would not go right past where I was aiming for. I did not want to use the front entrance, did I? The hedges were quite high, which was very useful to me, the verges thick with wild flowers, the white ones almost luminous in the twilight, something I would have enjoyed in different circumstances and which now ‘lit’ my way.

  My powers of concentration are good – they have to be if you write novels in a fairly crowded household – but I was finding it more and more difficult to focus. My whole being wanted to rush into this place, wildly shooting at anyone who tried to stop me. Usually I have Patrick’s steadying influence to keep me on track as he had been practically pickled in self-control during special forces training.

  ‘He trained me,’ I said out loud. ‘God, woman, you’ve done enough of this kind of thing with him. The only thing I don’t have is a map.’

  But I did not need a map; the whole of a shallow valley was opening out before me as the ground fell away and, through a field gateway, I found myself gazing into a fold in the downs towards an almost secret place: a largish house and farm buildings just visible in the fast-fading daylight. I immediately stepped into the lee of the hedge so I could peep through the outer vegetation without being seen. Was anyone keeping watch on the surrounding countryside? Somehow I doubted it.

  As I stood there, a light came on in the house, and then another. Realizing I should be planning my route while I could see I risked going to the gate again and leaning over it. The field was large and adjoined several others, all down to pasture with a clump of trees in the top end of the farthest one visible. All presumably were access
ible from the lane and I carried on along it, walking more quickly now.

  I reckoned that, once there, if I stayed behind the right-hand hedge of the farthest field I would, initially, be less likely to be seen from the house and could then cut across and head for the cover of the trees, which looked to be only a matter of a hundred yards from the house. But I needed to get off this road before I was mown down by a car; a driver would be unable to see me in my dark clothing.

  Then a car did come along and I flung myself aside into the hedge. It roared past, the driver oblivious. I tore myself free from a long strand of bramble with difficulty and carried on, jogging now. It was still possible to see my way and being the middle of summer I knew it would be quite a while before it became really dark. I had no intention of blundering around in the pitch black.

  After going what seemed to be quite a long way, the lane curving gently to the right before me, I arrived at another gateway. One quick look told me that I was only at the next field to the first one and had much farther to go than I had originally thought. I set off again, running now, wishing I had worked at getting myself back to full fitness after having Mark.

  But when you’re a consultant for SOCA do you really have to run a four-minute mile? Apparently, yes.

  Blowing like a horse, I reached the next field and saw that I only needed to get to the one following. There were more lights on in the house now but I did not pause to look further. Another car approached, from behind me, and I found a thorn-free niche this time.

  Finally, I reached the field and, realizing that I could keep the clump of trees between me and the house for a long way, set off and, having got my breath back, ran again. I had to hold my arms tightly to my sides as the contents of my capacious pockets tended to jingle around. Then I remembered that I had not told Michael Greenway the correct name of the house. It was too late now.

  The trees, unmistakably beeches even in this light, had been planted in what appeared to be an almost perfect circle. I headed for their cover gratefully, now feeling horribly exposed in the open pasture, like an ant on a carpet. At last the dark, cool greenery sheltered me and I stood for several minutes in the cathedral-like calm trying to formulate some kind of plan, failing utterly. There was an open space in the centre of the trees and I walked into it and looked up, the first stars twinkling palely above. I’m not really a religious person but right then I did pray for us.