She dipped into a box of tissues and dabbed her eyes. I asked again if they knew where Kate might be. Gizzy professed no interest in the matter, Jean had no suggestion to make but was vaguely concerned at this being my second time of asking after her niece.
“You think something's happened to her?” she said.
“I don't know. I rang her this morning, no answer.”
“You don't think...?” Gizzy started. Her fingers went to her mouth, she began to pace in a small square, held there by growing apprehension. “I mean if Jack was killed...”
“Best thing we can do,” I said, “is go round to Maple Cottage and check.”
They agreed. Gizzy went upstairs again, roused Tom, threw some clothes on both of them and Jean took a final look in the hall mirror. She decided against repairing the recent damage.
As we walked, all four of us, the distance to Maple Cottage I ran through what I knew of the Langan family which was more than Jean would be comfortable with, I imagined. One night about six months ago, after a row she'd had with Jack, Jean and I fell into boozy conversation at The Plough. Her old man, she’d told me, had been complaining about them not spending enough time together. What did he expect? Aside from her sales job in Aylesbury, she'd run a home, brought up three kids and somehow managed to be a school governor at Lord Bill's as well as on the Parish Council and a Committee Member of the W.I. She had also devised the car lift scheme for elderly Winchendon residents. She'd won a prize for it, Central Television's Good Friend and Neighbour Award.
I remember commenting that she was indeed a busy lady. She paused for a moment, like many a good villain before the moment of truth, and out it came. Seven years previously, she said, when Megan, her youngest, went off to Cambridge, Jean had felt bereft of a like mind to converse with. The prospect of another thirty years with nothing but Jack, dancing attendance to her every need, terrified her.
Then Jean's sister and brother-in-law were killed in a motorway pile-up and Jean was reprieved. Kate and Giselle Whitely moved in with the Langans and provided Jean with a fresh challenge. She rose to it admirably even though certain aspects of the girls' behaviour tested her patience. Gizzy, for example, railed at fate by shop-lifting Oxford bone dry and Kate by sleeping with every man she could get her hands on.
One of those men was teacher Mike whom Kate married and moved into Maple Cottage with. Jean held her breath until their divorce, five months later, after which there was talk of Gizzy moving in with her sister to help with the rent. The idea foundered last Christmas, when Julie Ryder offered Gizzy a job at The Plough and, shortly after that, Gizzy moved into the attic flat with Tom.
Jean and Julie both disapproved of the two kids living together, albeit for different reasons. In Jean's case it wasn't simply that she'd miss Gizzy's company and have to fall back on Jack's, or that she objected to the kids playing at grown-ups. Far more seriously, Jean believed, Giselle would end up making exactly the same mistake that she herself had made. She would marry the wrong man.
I paused at the front door of Maple Cottage and gestured for Jean to unlock it. As I watched her bony, bloodless hands strain at the simple task I recalled the sight of Jack severed by his own bench saw and accepted that I'd found something to disturb me. By her own admission, Jack had been dull to the point of screaming pitch. And now he was dead.
Inside Maple Cottage, Jean, Gizzy and Tom stood in close formation by the front door while I checked the rooms.
Kate clearly had artistic pretensions, even though they hadn't carried her beyond Turner's the wallpaper people. She had painted almost every wall in the house with a derivative mural. The living room was after Van Gogh, tall sunflowers dwarfing what was already a small enough room. The kitchen paid homage to Cézanne, with apples and oranges spattered everywhere. The bathroom gave Monet and his water a run for their money and lost. There was no sign of Kate herself, however, dead or alive.
“It's okay!” I called down to the others from the upstairs bedroom. “Nothing to worry about.”
It was Gizzy who came to the foot of the tiny stairs and railed at me.
“So, thanks for getting our day off to such a good start!”
“You're welcome,” I yelled back, opening a pine wardrobe in the bedroom. It was empty. I checked the bedside table. It was clear of all the usual knick-knacks.
“You should really get yourself a proper job, Nathan,” Gizzy went on, ignoring the stumbling pleas from Tom to zip it. “We'll be taking staff on at the pub next week, why don't you write in?”
I hurried down the top few steps, ducked under the beam and glared at her.
“Does Julie know that you're taking over?”
“How can she? She's unconscious. Besides, I'm not taking over, but if I don't do something the place'll grind to a halt.” She added, with a touch of pure Gizzy: “So, do you know how to wash up?”
I went back to the bedroom, yanked open a drawer. It was empty, as was the entire chest. The dressing table was bare too, so were the shelves and the window sill. I went downstairs again, checked once more in the bathroom, and then faced them.
“She's left,” I said.
“I think we'd realised that,” said Jean. “Let's go home, shall we?”
She gathered up Gizzy and Tom, both of whom dwarfed her in stature, and ushered them to the door.
“I don't just mean she isn't here. All her clothes are gone, top clothes, underwear, make-up, toilet stuff. She's gone for good.”
And, assuming that Jack hadn't imagined them, she'd taken the shotguns with her.
-8-
I had an appointment with Reg Balfour, the vicar of Winchendon-with-Dorton, scheduled for ten o'clock Monday at the church. Jim's will had asked for burial. A curious wish for a man who boasted that he'd never been inside a church in his life.
I sat on the bench at the west door and tried not to care that I was surrounded by dead people. The view across the valley helped, as did thinking about Kate's disappearance. First reason for it, she was guilty. Of something. There was a link, though I couldn't see it, between Jim Ryder, the guns on her loft and Jack's death and Kate was right there at the heart of it. Stretch it a bit for a second reason. Fear. Say a third party had hidden the guns in the attic, with or without Kate's permission, and Jack was killed for finding them. Maybe she thought she'd be next in line and had run for it. Maybe she'd already been killed. Mind you, you don't normally take your underwear and make-up to the grave with you and their disappearance pointed to a third reason. It was just possible she knew nothing about all this, not even her uncle's death. I'd watched her the other morning, leave for work, dressed casually, jeans and T-shirt. Maybe she'd simply been dressed for running away...
Reg appeared on his moped at around ten fifteen, cassocked and collared, with a touch of rouge in his cheeks and two make-up pencil lines where his eyebrows had once been. He was excited. It was going to be difficult to get much sense out of him. A party of local school kids was due at eleven and after a brief chat about God, Jesus and The Virgin Mary the fun would begin. Teddy bears would be strapped into parachutes and launched from the top of the tower, the highest in Bucks, by two of the church wardens. Teachers and loving mothers would take photos. In Reg's view it was far more evangelical than threatening them with the wrath of God.
He knew what I wanted to see him about, I'd broached the matter with his wife on the phone.
He said: “Thousand years, that's what we're talking about, Nathan...” He always began in the middle of a sentence. It was a trick he'd learned from Jesus, he'd told me, and it always got the crowd's attention. “If I put Jim Ryder into the ground here, what about the other souls, doomed to converse with him for a thousand years?”
“Where do you get this thousand years from, Reg?”
“Random figure, sounds less churchy than eternity but that's what we're talking about. Jim Ryder wasn't the sort of bloke I'd want my parishioners to spend any time with. He served a lousy glass of beer and overcharged f
or the grub.”
“Forgiveness?” I said, feebly.
“Don't change the subject.”
I looked across to the yew trees, dipping their branches in the long grass and stingers at the outer edge of the graveyard. “Well ... couldn't you stick him in a corner, out of harm's way?”
“Corners are full,” he said, unhelpfully.
He took a teddy bear from a Tesco's carrier bag and straightened its fur. He offered me a stroke of it and I declined.
“Man had no family,” I said, as pathetically as I could, “wife's hanging on by a thread.”
“I won't be taking her, either. I don't do heathens. If I were you I'd get onto the District Council, they're obliged to take all comers. I'll do the service if you get stuck. Usual fee.”
He took a set of keys from the carrier bag and went into the church to prepare.

Back at Beech Tree Cottage, John Faraday was waiting for me in his car. He had come to do his boss's dirty work again and I invited him in.
Hideki had left a note under the kettle saying: “Oxford. Go with Liza and Nicky. H.” I offered Faraday a coffee and he refused with a curt shake of the head.
“Oh, for Christ's sake...” I began.
“What the hell were you playing at?” he said. “Jesus, how long were you in the job? You report the man's death by phone and piss off?”
I shrugged. “Your boss told me to keep clear.”
“He didn't say make fools of us, break the law.”
“The making fools of you, John, is an inside job. I hear you reckon Jack Langan's death was an accident?”
“Charnley does. I've got an open mind.”
He signalled that he wouldn't mind a coffee after all. He went over to the biscuit tin, looked in, but there was no shortbread there. He replaced the lid and said, eventually:
“So go on, then. What do you know that we don't?”
I explained about the switch at the door, the supposed call bringing forward the delivery of granite setts. He shook his head all the way, just as Jean Langan had done. It irritated me.
“Look, you asked me to let you know if I 'casually observed any bits and pieces'. Well, here's one. Jack Langan phoned me, early hours last Saturday. He'd been working on his niece's loft where he'd seen a couple of shooters, in their case, recently fired.”
Anger took hold of his every feature, every gesture, but he managed to keep a lid on it as he strode the room.
“So, of course, you phoned us immediately,” he said.
“It was three in the morning when he called me. He was pissed. When I found him dead, I came back here to check his story, instead of waiting around at the yard for you guys to show up. I went up on the loft. Nothing there.”
He stopped pacing and opened his hands to me, pleading to be further enlightened.
“You've got two choices,” I said. “Believe they were there, and were shifted during the night and Jack Langan killed as a result. Or he dreamed 'em up and then fell on his saw.”
He slumped into a chair and looked at me, calming rapidly.
“If I throw this in the pot,” he said at last, “this shotgun on the loft stuff, Charnley will go ape-shit.”
“Why? Because it comes from me? Or is it just an easy life he wants, not the truth?”
“He still reckons the answer's up there in Grendon Prison,” said Faraday, with a hint of despair. “He's got a list, a dozen possibles, all with a grudge against Jim.”
“And of this dozen are any really dirty? Any big players?”
“Not really, but Jesus Christ, we all have to start somewhere.”
“John, this isn't some over the cell wall squabble. There's two million quid floating around out there.”
He didn't have a snap back answer to that.
“Jim Ryder's ill-gotten gains, you mean. Yeah, well, makes no difference you and me agreeing on that, Charnley reckons it went to ground two years ago.”
“Then he's a fool! Money doesn't go to ground. It goes into bank accounts, property, paintings. It stays visible.”
He raised both hands in surrender and then, like a teenager whose attention span had reached its limit, he flopped forward onto the table, chin on the back of his hands.
“I was sent here to give you a bollocking,” he said, eventually. “Can I consider that done?” I nodded. “Great. Now tell me more about these sodding guns.”
“They were in a case. Mahogany, with a brass plate. J.A.M.”
He was digging for a notebook and pen and wrote it down.
“Juliet, Alpha, November?” he said.
“No, M for Mike, jam today. If they're licensed, they can be traced.”
“They sound posh. Like they've been nicked.”
“Purdeys, according to Jack. Twelve grand apiece.”
He smiled. “Any other ... bits and pieces?”
“No.”
He was unconvinced, but untroubled as well. The less he took back to Charnley from me the easier his life would be, I guessed.
“I'll have the guns checked out,” he said. “Get back to you.”
“Thanks.”
I could've checked them out myself, I suppose, gone through a horde of old contacts and suffered news of death, retirement and domestic warfare. God knows how long it would've taken me. Faraday could go back to Penman Stables and get an answer that afternoon.

I spent the next hour trying to persuade the Council to bury Jim Ryder and hit a classic brick wall of disaffected humanity. They were always going to oblige me in the end, we all knew that, otherwise there'd be a pile of bodies on the town hall doorstep humming away like a Welsh choir. But the bloke dealing wanted me to acknowledge that he was important, overworked and unloved. By two o'clock I'd secured Jim plot 47B and rang the undertaker to give him a green light. I told him not to bother with the hand-wringing tone, Jim wasn't a relative, I didn't even like him that much. Then I telephoned an advert to The Bucks Herald, and after negotiating several people's lunch breaks and a host of 'she's in a meeting' brush-offs, I told the world, via a quarter page ad costing seventy four pounds and eighty pence, that Jim would be buried next Tuesday at ten in the morning, Aylesbury Cemetery. It had been like climbing a mountain of treacle.
I put the phone down, only for it to ring immediately. I grabbed the receiver and barked:
“Yep?”
“I've been ringing you for ages,” said Laura Peterson, as if I'd sat on the phone merely to annoy her. “I'm in Oxford for a conference. Lunchtime, I popped round to The Radcliffe. Guess what! Julie Ryder's regained consciousness.”
I don't know why the news set me on edge. I was pleased to hear that she'd pulled through, I just knew that it wasn't the end of her troubles.
“How is she?”
“Slow but talking. Can't remember too much but that's fairly typical. It'll come back.”
“Wouldn’t mind seeing her, pretty soon. Like today. When does your conference finish?”
“Five thirty, allegedly. Why?”
“Well, let’s meet for dinner somewhere. I mean, if you’ve got other plans, that’s fine by me.”
“I should hope so too,” she said. “You know Brown’s?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t we meet there, seven o’clock?”

I was showered and re-shaved long before I needed to leave for Oxford and decided to take the bull by the horns. Since finding the tapes of Stef and Bella I'd been debating with myself, should I or shouldn't I. Should I let them know about this nasty intrusion into their privacy and risk all hell breaking loose? Or should I keep it a secret and let Will off the hook. In the end I decided Stef and Bella had a right to know.
I slipped a tape into my pocket and set off across the green to Hawthorn Cottage. Bella was pulling up, just as I got there.
“Blimey, Nathan, you're looking sprauncy. You off out somewhere?”
“Dinner. Oxford.”
“Oh, I say!
”
“Is Stef in, do you know?”
He called from an upstairs window. “Course he is. This dinner date, she wouldn't be a certain lady doctor, would she?”
“Honestly,” said Bella, nudging me with embarrassment. “He's like an old woman, everyone's business.”
“I'm a window cleaner,” said Stef, laughing. “It's part of the job.”
He slammed the window shut and a piece of putty fell to the ground at my feet. If life is a series of straws on camels backs, I thought, how long would it be before I was woken one morning by the sound of Hawthorn Cottage collapsing into rubble, just as had happened to a place in Cuddington. Central heating, they said. Everything that goes wrong in an old house these days you can safely blame the central heating.
Not that Hawthorn Cottage had central heating but still the outside rendering was falling away in huge patches, taking some of the wychert with it, wychert being the local mud and rubbish most houses in the village were made of. The window frames were flaking and spongy, the stench pipe was leaning at a provocative angle and in one particular spot on the roof, the thatch had fallen in completely and the gap had been tarpaulined.
The front garden was a mess as well, with grass two feet high, thistles and poppies plotting a take-over. Maybe that's why Dogge loved the place so much, it called to her from some wild place in her genetic memory. If we walked past the cottage her tail would go nineteen to the dozen, she'd yap until Bella brought her out a biscuit. I never discouraged her, not with Bella being so good to look at.
The inside of Hawthorn Cottage wasn't much of an improvement on the outside. The furniture was dented and scarred, the rugs clawed feathery by two enormous cats and the place reeked of tobacco, marijuana and old food. Its one salvation was the books, literally thousands of them, lining nearly every wall.
Stef came down the narrow stairs to greet me.
“Hi, Nathan. This'll be about poor old Jacko, right? I dropped in on Jean today. I mean there's not a lot you can do, but...”
Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries) Page 9