by Peter Helton
I got the distinct feeling that Tim had done this before. Annis and I dutifully pulled away what he passed out to us and cursed quietly as thorns and prickly leaves pierced our fingers through our gloves.
Eventually Tim backed out again. ‘I’m through. There was a fence in there once but most of it’s rusted away. Who wants to explore?’
‘You guys go,’ Annis whispered. ‘I’ll get rid of the cuttings in the hedgerow and snuffle round the outside a bit more.’
‘Okay, I’ll go with Tim. If you hear any commotion, don’t come in, get away,’ I advised her and got down on all fours. Immediately my hands were pricked by the debris of the cuttings. As I crawled into the dark scratchiness of the hedge I tried not to think of rabbit droppings and to work out instead when I’d had my last tetanus jab. Despite Tim’s pruning expertise my face was scratched by the time I got out the other side. Our tunnel opened on to a long border, five or six feet wide and full of dripping evergreens standing in mud. The house, uphill to our right, showed a diffused glow on the ground floor and the light escaping from the edges of curtains upstairs gave it the impression of a partly obscured glass lantern. Enough illumination spilled into the enormously long garden to see that the upper half had been terraced, with rectangular ponds or pools on each level. Clumps of dwarf conifers and tall grasses looked grey and dispirited, as though no one had told them they were back in fashion.
‘After you, boss,’ Tim invited. I waddled up the slope in a duck walk to the next island bed. Even though I had my hood down in an effort to hear something beyond the drumming of raindrops I couldn’t make out anything apart from the rain slanting into the stone-bordered, weed-choked pool to my left. We made it to the next level of the garden unmolested. My biggest fear was a patrolling Dobermann or two but who would send a dog out in this? We were still at least twenty-five yards from the back of the house. I was just about to waddle on when the garden erupted into ice-bright light. I fell flat on my face and scrabbled backwards to the incomplete shelter of a stand of pampas grass. Tim was already there. ‘We set off the security light,’ I hissed. ‘What now?’
‘I don’t think we did,’ he hissed back. ‘We weren’t actually moving when it came on.’
For a moment it seemed that nothing else would happen. Then I heard faint footsteps. I lifted my head and risked a look. A bulky figure had appeared on the top terrace, pacing first one way, then the other, then it came down the first set of broad stone steps that led to the next level down. When he reached our level I could see he was a big bloke in his twenties, squinting against the rain and looking decidedly unhappy. He made straight for the water feature on the other side of the grasses we were hiding behind. I had a view from below him now as he stood by the pool just fifteen feet away from me. If he didn’t spot us it would be a miracle. But then it appeared he wasn’t really looking any more. ‘Come on,’ he chanted into the rain, rocking on his heels. ‘Come oooooon.’ Eventually the security light went off. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he offered up fervently. In the fresh darkness I could make out his silhouette against the glimmer from the house. He bent down and fished round at the edge of the pool for a moment, then lifted out a bottle. He shook it, uncapped it, took a draught and let it plop back into the water. A noisy sniff, hawk and spit into the pond seemed to complete the ritual since he turned back towards the house, triggering the security light again as he set foot on to the steps to the next level of the garden.
I dared breathe again. ‘That was close. Now what? We can’t get to the house without triggering the lights and bringing one of Telfer’s goons out here.’
‘We don’t need to. Let’s check the pond life instead.’
We squatted by the side of the pool and I did the honours. The water was icy and slimy at the same time. My hand closed on the neck of a bottle and I lifted it up. It was half full. It was too dark to read the label. I unscrewed the top and sniffed. It was vodka, just as I had expected; all secret drinkers imagined that sober people couldn’t smell it.
‘That’s our way in,’ Tim assured me. ‘Put it back where you found it and let’s get out of here the way we came.’
I got thoroughly snagged and scratched on the way out again and was glad when I found myself back in the meadow. Annis was there, apologizing. ‘Sorry about the security light, that was me. I thought I’d found an easier way in when I got to a service gate.’
‘Tut. But we’d only have set it off ourselves anyway and we got away with it. Tim even thinks he knows how to get in now.’
‘Yeah? How?’
‘Well, it depends heavily on me not getting pneumonia so let’s get back to civilization and I’ll tell you.’
Next morning in my kitchen I contemplated how the things that made us feel civilized varied greatly from person to person; with Annis it was going to the theatre, in Tim’s case anything with lots of mayo did the trick. What made me feel civilized was a leisurely breakfast, preferably involving hot croissant, smoked salmon, a five-minute egg and no police. One day I would manage it.
I could hear them crunch their wheels, braking hard in the yard, and knew it meant trouble. Far too early for a friendly chat. Annis hadn’t put in an appearance downstairs yet and I hoped she had the sense to keep it that way. Knowing his way around the place Needham sent someone to every door but the hammering came from the front. No one knocks like the fuzz. You just can’t ignore it, whether your croissants are burning in the oven or not. I did a quick mental check, remembered that my shotgun had been stolen and my handgun confiscated, and walked confidently towards my front door with the traditional ‘All right all right, no need to break it down.’
Apparently there was. It flew open as a large uniformed constable shouldered through. Immediately behind him came a large Needham in Superintendent mode with a look capable of withering any gumshoe wisecracks I might have in mind. As it happened I wasn’t good at that kind of thing before breakfast.
‘Chris Honeysett, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,’ he rattled off. ‘You do not have to say anything but I must warn you that it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. What’s that smell?’
‘Two “all-butter” croissants dying in the oven.’
‘All right: kitchen.’ He waved me on. ‘You don’t touch a thing,’ he warned me off. ‘Constable, get the damn croissants out of the oven, we don’t want them catching fire.’
The constable did his bidding and left the baking tray on the top of the stove. The croissants looked just about edible, I thought, and my stomach growled in agreement.
‘Right, let’s go.’
I took a last hungry look at my breakfast table — cafetière of coffee, a perfectly cooked speckled egg, the smoked salmon waiting for the croissant — and let myself be pushed out of the house.
‘Is this about the old geezer in my car?’ We were being driven by a plain-clothed, plain-faced policeman into town.
‘This is about the murder victim in your car. So save it. Grimshaw still your solicitor?’
‘Do I really need her, Mike?’
‘You’ve just been arrested for murder, Chris, and it’s Superintendent Needham until I tell you otherwise.’ Once, over a few beers, Needham had offered first-name terms and had probably regretted it ever since.
At Manvers Street police station they asked me a lot of questions they knew the answers to already, searched me half-heartedly, took my mobile away and made me wait in an overheated interview room with an elective-mute constable standing by the door. I sat and worked on changing my thirty-a-day habit into a fifty-a-day habit until the door opened and Needham and DS Sorbie turned up with their files and tapes. Sorbie scrabbled the cellophane wrapping off a new tape and did the preliminaries. When the tape recorder stopped bleeping he sat down next to Needham opposite me, told the tape who, when and what, and the ping-pong started.
‘Your solicitor is on her way,’ Nee
dham said. ‘But since you’re happy to start without her. .’
‘What makes you suddenly think it was murder?’ I asked.
‘I don’t suddenly think, Honeysett, the pathologist and forensics tell me. The victim did collide with your car. Whilst riding his electric bicycle. We found the crumpled remains of it hidden under some bushes beside the Lam brook, a few hundred yards from where we found your car. But Prof Meyers’ report says you hit him on the head, then ran him over.’
‘Prof Meyers said no such thing. Professor Earnshaw Meyers probably said something like, “The victim suffered a blow to the head prior to being involved in an accident” or some such carefully worded thing, but did he tell you what killed him? The blow to the head or the accident? Did you find any fingerprints on the bike?’
‘We ask the questions, Mr Honeysett,’ Sorbie suggested with forced boredom in his voice. It wasn’t very convincing. Like this entire arrest thing. Needham on the other hand was a good actor. It was always difficult to unravel his ultimate motives, that’s what made him such a dangerous cop if you sat on the wrong side of the table. Which is where I spent most of my time. But I had the distinct impression that Sorbie’s heart wasn’t really in it. Ignoring him I asked Needham: ‘Have you traced the minicab driver who took me home yet?’
‘Of course not, because there’s no such creature.’
‘There is, but he’s not going to admit to picking up an illegal fare in the street without prior booking. He could get fired or lose his licence.’ Memories of my way home that night were far too hazy to remember what company the cab belonged to or what the driver might have looked like. I couldn’t even remember the make or colour of the car. No minicab driver, no alibi. No alibi, no croissant for breakfast. For an awfully long time. Something had to be done.
The door opened behind me and some kind of signal was exchanged because Needham picked up his file. ‘Your solicitor is here.’
As if to confirm this a clear, precise voice demanded: ‘I’d like to talk to my client alone, if you don’t mind.’
Sorbie did the ‘interview suspended’ palaver for the tape and followed his boss out of the room as my solicitor took a seat opposite me, setting her briefcase beside her on the floor.
There was nothing at all grim about Kate Grimshaw, in fact she was good to look at: she looked a young fifty, had a well-cut face to match her well-cut charcoal grey suit; hair dyed black, red and gold and cut very short; rather forbidding grey eyes, though. Just looking at her made me feel young again. About five, I’d say.
‘All right, Honeysett, start babbling at me like an overexcited infant protesting his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.’
‘You misjudge me, as usual.’ I lit another cigarette to dampen down the hunger that kicked about in my stomach, then I rattled off the whole story: Heather and Cairn’s attempt to hire me; the mysterious men Cairn thought he’d heard threaten to let someone called Albert have an accident; how much of that I’d told Needham; what they had told me and the fact that I had missed out on breakfast. I might have laboured that last point a bit.
‘My heart bleeds for you. Is this the story you want them to believe or me to believe?’
‘It’s what happened,’ I protested.
‘All right then. So no weapon has been found, certainly none with your prints on it. Someone stole your car and used it to run over the old dear, it happens all the time. There’s nothing to link you to the victim apart from the car you reported stolen and the police have been negligent in finding your cab driver. They haven’t got a snowball’s chance of keeping you here. As usual I can’t believe you even talked to the police without me. And for the second time! You really must like it in here. When will you learn? I know you rate Superintendent Needham highly but all the same: say nothing and call me. How often must I tell you?’ She waved my cigarette smoke away irritably.
‘That’s fine for you to say. Has anyone ever told you how much you charge?’
‘You can pay me in paintings,’ she said, dismissing my point.
‘Paintings? Tings? Plural? Your fees have gone up.’
‘A pair, forty by eighty inches, predominantly blue.’
‘Predominantly blue?’ I huffed. ‘I don’t do interior decorating.’
‘And I don’t do charity work. Please don’t go all injured artistic soul on me, Chris, a) you can’t afford it and b) I know you’d happily exchange one of your paintings for a roast turbot if one came along.’
She was right, of course. I agreed and twenty minutes later I went and collected my mobile phone from Sergeant Hayes at the desk while Grimshaw waited impatiently by the exit. The relief of getting out of there must have shown on my face.
‘Don’t know what you’ve got to smile about,’ Hayes grunted as he made me sign for my phone. ‘It’s much safer in here than out there.’
‘Yes, but the tea is lousy.’
‘There is that,’ he agreed and walked off to file the receipt.
Once back outside in the drizzle Grimshaw and I shook hands. ‘Keep me informed of any new developments, will you? Don’t wait until they pull you in again.’ She pointed her key. A racing-green Jaguar in the station car park flashed its sidelights.
‘What makes you think there’ll be developments?’
‘That hungry look on your face, it means you’re off to get yourself into trouble,’ she said over her shoulder.
‘Talking of which, you couldn’t give me a lift to trouble, could you?’
‘Certainly not. There’s a taxi rank around the corner. Take some free advice, Chris,’ she said as she got into her car. ‘Go home. Start painting.’ Then she got into her car and drove off at fifty quid a minute.
It was good advice and free and it was tempting. While I walked I got out my mobile and noted that it needed charging, which almost certainly meant some copper had played around with it while I was in there. I called Griffin’s, the insurers, and asked for Haarbottle.
‘Ah, Honeysett, have you nailed him?’
‘Nailed him? You’re watching too many cop shows. Now, I have followed Lane every waking minute over the past few days,’ I lied, ‘as you will see from my invoice and there’s not the slightest hint that he is anything but genuine.’
‘Rubbish. Keep at it. I know he’s faking it, I can feel it in my waters.’
‘I don’t want to know about your waters. I’m standing in the rain as it is.’ I was grateful I’d never felt anything in my waters. If I ever did I’d see a doctor about it. I had really hoped to rid myself of this job. With DI Deeks interested in Lane and some DC called Howell traipsing after him — and just possibly me as well — this didn’t spell fun. But then there were roofers to be paid. ‘Look, I don’t feel right taking Griffin’s money when there probably won’t be a result at the end. Just how much are you prepared to fork out for this?’
‘Oh no, I’m not falling for that one. I’m not allowed to tell you that, otherwise that’ll be exactly the sum you’ll charge us. Give it another week, then we’ll call it off. Think of something. Be inventive. He has to slip up sometime. I just know it.’
‘Do you realize it hasn’t stopped raining since I took this job? I’m thinking of charging you extra for work in inclement weather.’
‘Get a brolly,’ said Haarbottle and hung up.
At the taxi rank I realized I had no money on me. Well, I’d be able to pay the driver at home.
This time I made mental notes on the make of car (Mercedes), the taxi firm (Sulis) and the back of the driver’s head (square). I wedged myself into the corner of the back seat, absentmindedly took out a cigarette and lit it without even noticing I’d done so until the driver got agitated. ‘Hey, there’s no smoking, all right? Nuff signs everywhere.’
I apologized and chucked the cigarette out of the window with a pang of regret. I’d be smoking in my sleep soon. When we splashed into the yard at Mill House I asked him to wait so I could get enough money to pay the extortionate fa
re. I ran through the rain to the front door. It was locked. I felt for my keys and remembered I hadn’t brought them, so I gave the bell-pull a workout despite the fact that Annis’s Land Rover was missing. I just didn’t want to believe the way the day was going. I made apologetic gestures towards the cab driver and walked round to the kitchen door. Locked. When I got back to the front the driver had got out of the car. Cab drivers hate getting out of the car. ‘Problems?’ he asked.
‘Didn’t bring my keys,’ I explained. ‘I expected someone to be in.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘It’s no problem though.’ If a mere constable could do it then so could I. I took a short run at it and rammed the door open with my shoulder. Just like in the movies, except in the movies no one ever hopped about afterwards rubbing their sore shoulder and cursing like their Tourette’s had just kicked in. Right then. . money. I hunted round in a couple of jackets without result.
The driver was standing in the door, eyeing me doubtfully. ‘You do live here, right?’
In the end I had to pay him in small change scraped together from a gherkin jar full of silver and copper coins I kept on top of the fridge and he was not a happy man when he drove off. At least, should anyone else have got themselves bumped off in the meantime, he would definitely remember driving me home.
In the kitchen I opened the bread bin: empty. There was no sign of my abandoned breakfast. I opened the fridge: no smoked salmon left. There was a note from Annis by the kettle.
Gone shopping, there isn’t a thing to eat in the house.
Chapter Eight
When Annis came back she noisily unpacked the shopping on the kitchen table. While I attacked the groceries armed with a loaded butter knife she slapped down several ominous items. ‘Bleach, toilet cleaner, cream cleanser, Marigolds, Hoover bags.’
‘Hoover bags,’ I repeated in awe. We hadn’t had Hoover bags for months. Our perennial problem was that the somewhat relaxed attitude to housework and the chaotic habits of two painters combined unfavourably with Tim’s eating procedures. There were probably enough crisps and salted nuts down the back of the furniture to see the squirrels and us through the winter. Despite the considerable size of the barn we used for a studio, ‘stuff’ tended to drift down to the house — canvas samples, whole paintings, drawings, sketch books, paint-stained art books, oil pastels and bits of string. It was usually Annis who capitulated first and started making spring-clean noises, having a slightly lower yuk-threshold than me.