Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries)

by Douglas Watkinson

  “Plate?”

  “Plate. With initials on it, J.A.M. Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday but never jam today, I'm thinking.” He chuckled again, no doubt at his devastating irony. “So I open it and inside ... inside there are two ... well, have a guess.”

  “No.”

  “Shotguns.”

  I was suddenly awake. “What?”

  “Purdeys, mate, all silver chasing and polished up a real treat. And they've been used recently, according to the smell.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Still up there.”

  “What does Kate say?”

  “I haven't spoken to her. I mean that's where it gets difficult. How would I put it to her? Here's a shooting last Friday night, here's two shotguns on your loft a week later?”

  “Have you told the police?” I asked.

  “No, should I?”

  “Not yet. Listen, Jack, I want to see these guns. What time does Kate leave for work?”

  “Half seven.”

  “Meet me here, quarter to eight. Meantime, cork on the bottle, get some sleep.”

  “Right, mate,” he said. “I feel a lot better for talking to you. Weight off my mind, know what I mean?”

  “You did the right thing, Jack. I'll see you tomorrow.”

  -5-

  I was woken at six o'clock on Saturday morning by an internal alarm clock which had always known my schedule better than I had. It used to go off, usually as dawn broke, to remind me that Maggie had died. It somehow knew that each night I'd close my eyes and forget that she was no longer with me. It didn't need to do that anymore so I lay there in sleep-wake limbo for ten or twelve seconds, waiting to be told of the early call's purpose. Gradually a pair of shotguns drifted into my mind.

  I ran through the gist of my night time conversation with Jack. He'd found shotguns up on Kate's loft. They'd been recently fired. Jam today. What the hell had Kate got to do with Jim Ryder's murder, I asked myself on the way to the bathroom? What would she gain from having him killed? Did she have some grudge against Jim that had yet to be revealed? As for this wretched draft will that Gizzy had seen, according to her sister, surely the hope that The Plough would pass down to Tom was too obvious a motive even for someone as soppy as him.

  Speculation, of a fairly low order, then, and I only had Jack's three in the morning, pissed as a rat word to go on but it had given me ... expectations. I put a finger to the vein in my neck in case I needed to curb them. I couldn't tell what speed my pulse was doing but at least it was doing it quietly. And all would be revealed shortly after seven forty-five when Jack was due to pick me up..

  I twitched the kitchen curtain and looked across the green to the tree cottages, their facade darkened by a murky sunrise behind them. Stefan and Bella were up. With the aid of binoculars I could see Bella at the kitchen table, sipping her coffee over a magazine. Next door I saw Kate pass from the main room to the kitchen where she switched on a light. She leaned to where she kept the bread. Toast for breakfast. A working day for Kate, then, even though it was Saturday. No slackers in the wallpaper business. She'd be gone by half seven.

  And so she was. A little earlier than half seven, in fact, which nearly caught me on the hop. I watched her slam shut the boot of her car and walk round to the driver's door. One thing jarred. She wasn't dressed up today, in the long summer frock, close fitting, floral in design with high heels and a businessy jacket. That was her usual style. Today it was jeans and a T-shirt.

  I turned and boiled a couple of eggs, toasted a squad of soldiers.

  At seven forty-five, and still eating, I started pacing the kitchen. I was early everywhere and expected others to be. If Jack bowled up now he would merely be on time and find me glancing reproachfully at my watch. By eight o'clock he still hadn't arrived. By eight fifteen I was beginning to wonder if I'd dreamed the whole night-time conversation. The answer to that would've been to wake Hideki but there would have been language problems involving verb declensions we hadn't covered yet.

  I phoned Jack's cottage and got his wife, Jean, just as she was about to leave for work.

  “He's not with you, I take it,” she said. “He asked me to say he was called to the yard dead early, someone delivering granite setts.”

  “But he must still have been pissed?” I said.

  “He said he'd be back soon as possible.”

  “Well, yes. What's dead early, Jeannie?”

  “Six o'clock.”

  “Six? Don't people sleep anymore?”

  “That's what I said, or similar.” She was anxious to leave. “Anyway...”

  “Sorry, Jean. Off you go. He'll turn up, I'm sure.”

  But by nine o'clock Jack still hadn't shown. I phoned his yard, near Ludgershall. It was engaged. I tried again ten minutes later, then started to worry. I decided to go in search of him.

  As I turned out of Morton Lane in the Landrover, a car coming up from my left flashed me. Sure, I'd sprung out into its path pretty sharply but neither of us was going that fast. As I pulled away it flashed me again, longer pulses this time. I stopped. If there was going to be a punch-up it would have to be a quick one.

  The other driver was Sharon Falconer and she was out of her car by now, sailing towards me. I wound down the window.

  “Nathan, good morning. I understand you're at a bit of a loose end, professionally.”

  “They call it retirement,” I explained.

  “Well, I'm sure Petra told you that my bastard of a husband has left me.” She waited for a reaction but didn't get one. “Oh, don’t go all strong and silent on me, Nathan. The whole world knows. I want him found. I'd be willing to pay, of course.”

  I smiled at her. “More than he'd be willing to pay to stay lost?”

  She looked at me and tried to smile back. She must once have been a beautiful woman with that long, chestnut hair, greying now but not overly so, and a tilt of the head that would surely have held any man's gaze. But as age had set in, so the skin on her face had shrunk back leaving only the eyes, it seemed, in their original place. It made her seem forever affronted by the rest of us which must have served her well on the bench.

  “Well?” she snapped, as if talking to a shoplifter, hauled up before her. “What have you got to say?”

  “I've an unrelated question. Those two lads in The Plough, the night Jim and Julie were shot. What did they look like?”

  “Scruffy.”

  “That's the J.P. in you, summing up. I asked you what they looked like.”

  “Can't say I really noticed. Just an impression as I passed by. Of scruffiness. Curly hair, one of them.”

  “The other?”

  “Well, I didn't actually stop and take details. Other things on my mind.”

  I nodded. “Pity. As to finding Martin, I'll give it some thought.”

  We both knew I didn’t mean that. She smiled and went back to her car. I drove out of Winchendon and took the road to Ludgershall.

  Jack's yard was tucked away in a woodland of spindly trees, fronted by chain link gates and a security firm's decidedly un-threatening plate. I knew why Jack had chosen the place to run his business from. It was as quiet as the grave and just far enough away from home to make him unreachable except in an emergency. His nearest neighbour was a charcoal burner called Steggles about half a mile down the lane, a man who had opted for obscurity and, come the rise of the barbecue generation, had found himself making a comfortable living.

  The gates to the yard were open. I turned in and pulled up alongside the train carriage Jack used as an office. Great Western, third class, Jack said. It would've been worth a fortune, a passing railway buff had told him, if Jack hadn't ripped its guts out in order to use it.

  The buildings beyond were closed. Jack kept such machinery as he possessed there. In the larger, modern one, a small digger, a Kangol hammer, a stone cutter. In the other, older building, once a forge, he'd installed a second hand saw, driven by a belt from an ancient generator. Stacked in the ra
fters he kept half a dozen pine tree trunks, seasoning in readiness for next year. Cut pine, a smell you couldn't beat, he said.

  I got out of the Landrover and looked round, immediately aware of the silence. I don't mean the peace and quiet Jack had paid good money for but the utter stillness which overhangs a tragedy, like the holding of breath before a gasp of horror. Here, in a builder's yard there should have been recognisable sounds: saws whining over local radio shows, vehicles coming and going, phones ringing. More to the point there should have been a pile of granite setts, delivered by the early morning caller. It was nowhere to be seen. I knocked on the carriage door.

  “Jack?! Jack, you about?”

  I tapped on one of the windows. Still no answer. I opened the door and peered into the gloom. No sign of life but the curtains had been opened and Jack was meticulous. Every evening, at dusk, he drew the curtains, every morning he opened them as soon as he arrived. I stepped inside and called out again:

  “Jack? Jack? It's Nathan.”

  I glanced round at the homely mess of the place. Nowhere to hide, or fall and be missed. There was a diary on the table, open at today's date. In Jack's scrawl were the words “Richardsons, Corby. Deliver. Setts.” The phone was off the hook.

  I went back out into the yard and walked across to the forge, inventing workaday excuses to explain it all. Maybe Jack had walked into Ludgershall for some milk or cigarettes or something. Did he smoke? Yes, and he drank more coffee than was good for him...

  I pulled back the huge door to the forge and entered, pulling at the light switch.

  “Jack? Jack are you...?”

  I stopped dead. Before me was Jack Langan sprawled across the big, steel saw bench, motionless, face down in a giant's daubing of his own blood. It had sprayed and spattered everywhere - floors, ceiling, walls - as the blade had sliced through his upper body. Flies were already gathered for the feast. I looked at Jack's face. It had been untouched by the blade and in the way of these things it had a peaceful look to it. Asleep, though unwakable. I made a mental note to tell his wife that, in the absurd belief that it would make a ha'porth of difference.

  What was the safety guard doing off? I wondered. Why was it on the floor, with the old drive belt? That was the key to it, he'd been replacing the belt, tested it, slipped and fallen on the revolving blade. And in a split second had become one with it, flesh and metal welded into some grotesque sculpture.

  For some reason I called out again, albeit in a near whisper:

  “Jack? Jack?”

  Again the special silence. Even the birds he used to curse for nesting in his rafters were paying their respects.

  I retreated to the doorway and looked round, trying to make sense of what had happened. Within ten seconds the whole thing was my fault. I hadn't kept my promise to phone him last night. That gave him time to get well and truly pissed so that when he got here this morning he was in no shape to mess with bench saws.

  And then, as I switched off the light, I was forced to accept the truth of the matter. Jack's death hadn't been an accident. Someone had killed him.

  I closed the door on the forge, went to the Landrover and phoned the incident room at Penman Manor stables.

  “Hallo, guvnor,” said an upbeat John Faraday. “How's it going?”

  “John, your boss wanted a double murder,” I said. “He's got one. Only not Julie Ryder but Jack Langan.”

  “Who?”

  “Fucking hell! Surely you know him as a witness. He was in the pub the night the Ryders were shot.”

  There was a pause.

  “We'll be down there in five,” he said. I could hear him scrabbling round for a pencil and paper. “Give me the address.”

  

  I should have waited for the police to show up at Jack's yard and I knew there'd be repercussions for not having done so. I drove back to Winchendon all the same.

  Getting into Kate's loft was no problem. Will Waterman had dropped his key through the letter box before leaving for Devon. I could go up into the loft via his ceiling trap and walk the length of the connected attics. But before hacking around up there I wanted to be sure that I had the place to myself. Kate was away designing wallpaper, I'd seen her leave and, to my relief, Stefan and Bella were out too. The supermarket run, no doubt.

  I let myself into the Watermans' cottage and was freshly amazed by its aspirations to be a stately home. A leather sofa that would seat forty people was matched by a coffee table you could land a B52 on. In the scullery were showers for the goats and, for all I knew, saunas and massage parlours too. Flickering under the stairs was the CCTV command post, the monitor alert to any sign of life that came within fifty yards of Will and Prissy Waterman's castle.

  I went up onto the small landing and, standing on a chair, pushed at the trap door. It hinged backwards and I straightened up, head and shoulders going into the loft. I pulled myself up into the roof space, up into the rib cage of this three hundred year old creature.

  Jack would have loved it, that was my first thought. He would have seen a documentary on how places like this were built, how elm and oak were taken from Penman Wood, brought here by horse and cart to be cut by craftsmen old before their time; how carts of wheat straw would follow and thatchers teach youngsters urgently, lest they depart this world before handing down their skill. Why did that scenario, three hundred years ago, ring with such good order? Why did the men within it seem so contented with their lot? What had happened between then and now to turn all that around? The documentary never covered that.

  Batting aside the drapery of cobwebs, I stooped my way across the beams, past packing cases and cardboard boxes set out on islands of hardboard, to Kate's end. There I swept the torch beam past Christmas decorations, an old computer, worn out rugs, and the odd piece of furniture. No box, no jam today. No guns. In truth, I hadn't expected to find any. I thought it wise, though, to go down and check Kate's rooms.

  I found the trap door, a similar one to Will Waterman's, a simple flap hinging upwards to rest against a cross beam. It was bolted on the landing side. There was no way I could gain access.

  Down in the Watermans' main room my eye was caught by movement on the CCTV. A cat, a great fat tom who lived at Stefan and Bella's, was strolling down the path, unaware that he was being spied on. For some reason his indifference made me smile and, sooner or later, I thought, we'd all be on someone's CCTV given the current market in fear and the assumed malice of strangers. However, when we ventured out, would we behave as this cat was doing, unashamed of a certain truth revealed in our gait, our expression? Or, in time, would we all put on a performance every time we went to post a letter? Would intrusion into the petty moments of our lives serve only to make us guard our secrets better? Who had been up and down that path, in the cat's footsteps, little knowing they were being watched, I wondered? Postman, milkman, paper-girl?

  Just as I began to get intense about the Watermans and their high-tech nosiness, I realised that it might have the answer to an important question: who had brought the shotguns to Maple Cottage. Kate's visitors would have been caught on camera and there were half a dozen videos stacked beneath the stairs. I flicked through them, expecting to find dates on the labels but there were none. I picked a tape at random and loaded it into the player. Within moments the blue screen flickered into black and white life and there, on a dishevelled bed, were Stef the Window Cleaner and Bella the Clerk.

  For a moment I couldn't make sense of it but finally I had to accept the evidence of my eyes. They were screwing. Did they perhaps sell videos of themselves doing so and Will had bought one? Was there a cottage industry here that I hadn't heard about? Transfixed by the sameness of what I was watching, and notwithstanding my high regard for Bella’s physical attributes, surely this was feeble stuff. The most unimaginative of directors would by now have given his audience a change of angle, the odd close-up, an occasional pan? Another two seconds and I realised they were being shot from above, from a camera fixed in th
e ceiling. And without their knowledge, if the lacklustre performance from Stefan was anything to go by. I loaded another tape, then another, and another, all at random. All had the same subject matter. Stefan and Bella going at it, albeit in a somewhat desultory fashion.

  I went back up into the loft, stepped over the beams until I found roughly the centre of Stefan and Bella's bedroom. Five amp cable ran between the joists to feed a light fitting and alongside it ran the sleeker, smoother cable that must surely have powered the mini camera set in the plaster. The cable ran all the way back to a recording device in Will Waterman's CCTV command centre.

  -6-

  I'm not sure what time it was when the phone rang. Hideki answered it and brought it over to where I was sitting in Maggie's Dad's old rocker, creaking to and fro like some Mississippi inbreed. All I needed was the banjo. Not that I could've played it, even if I'd been sober.

  “Is Doctor Peterson,” said Hideki, quietly.

  “It is,” I corrected him. “It ... it is Doctor Peterson. What does she want?”

  “She want you, Nathan.”

  I took the phone, Hideki bowed and retreated.

  “Hallo?”

  “Hi! I'm just phoning to see if you're okay. I mean I know it's a tall order but ... Jack Langan.”

  “Right.”

  She sighed. “Yes, well, you sound much as I'd expected you to. Do you want me to come over?”

  “No, thanks. Who told you about it?”

  “His wife. I was called to her earlier on. She's okay, shocked of course, but spine of steel and all that. What are you drinking?”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “No, be serious.”