Ashes to Ashes

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘I’ve asked for fastest possible DNA results,’ Carrick said, dropping into a chair opposite me and taking one of my hands. ‘And for what it’s worth, I had a look and don’t think it’s Patrick.’

  ‘You’re really kind,’ I said, trying to smile.

  ‘You must try to be positive and wait for the test results to arrive.’

  ‘I will,’ I lied on both counts.

  ‘I’m really sorry but I have to go to this damned meeting. Would you like me to ask Lynn to come over for a while to keep you company?’

  ‘No, I’ll be all right, thank you.’

  He leaned over, kissed my cheek, looked embarrassed and went away.

  For some reason I was suddenly no longer shaky but ice cold inside. I poured the rest of the brandy in my glass – rather a lot – back into the bottle, locked the living-room door and removed the Smith and Wesson and some ammunition for it from the wall safe. There is money kept in there too – an emergency fund. My movements precise and deliberate – it was as though I was two people, one watching the other do this – I took out five hundred pounds in sterling, put it in my pocket and then, wrapping the weapon and ammunition in the nearest thing that came to hand, a cardigan belonging to Katie, I left the room. Pausing only to collect the important things from my handbag and my mobile phone from the study, I went out to the Range Rover. It is fully equipped for instant deployment with bags packed with spare clothing, toiletries and other necessities – seeing with anguish that Patrick’s had gone, something I had not noticed – and we always make sure that the fuel tank is kept more than half full.

  Going back to the house, I knocked and went into the annexe. John and Elspeth were in the living room, he with his arms around her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I – I’m going away for a few days.’

  ‘My dear …’ John began, and then didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’re too shocked to drive,’ Elspeth said, ever practical.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ I told her, and fled before I changed my mind.

  I had reached the end of the drive when my mobile rang. I pulled up, in a real mess, crying. I shouldn’t be driving.

  ‘It’s Joanna,’ she said. ‘James has just rung me with the awful news. But it might not be Patrick.’

  ‘It is,’ I gulped. ‘Ray Collins told us that was what O’Connor was planning to do.’

  ‘James has an idea that you might go and blow the brains out of that mobster, and if so says I’m to talk you out of it.’

  ‘I’m already on my way,’ I said. ‘Going down the drive right now.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’

  ‘You can’t. You have Iona to think of.’

  Roughly, she replied, ‘The nanny’s a much better mother to her than I am.’

  ‘Joanna, you mustn’t. I seem to remember that you have an interview in connection with rejoining the police soon. Tomorrow, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bugger careers. Friends are far more important. And Patrick did once save James’s life.’

  On reflection, more than once. I said, ‘Sorry, the answer’s still no.’

  ‘I’m coming right over. James can collect my car later. The walk’ll do him good.’

  I parked outside the church just around the corner and out of sight from the house, switched off the engine and tried to stop crying.

  ‘James is really sorry he had to leave you,’ Joanna said, climbing into the passenger seat only ten minutes later and throwing a small rucksack into the back. ‘The meeting was about how they’re going to close the nick and sell the site for redevelopment. He reckons he’ll either be working out of a cupboard in Keynsham or have a room in the council offices over the road.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ I exclaimed, aware that she was trying to divert me from my misery.

  ‘No, it’s true.’

  ‘But that’s crazy. Bath’s a city. It needs a proper police presence with all those thousands of visitors every year.’

  ‘Early days yet, apparently.’ She gave me a broad smile. ‘It isn’t Patrick.’

  Yes, I was afraid it was. Collins had said it would be.

  I had to put it from my mind, of course, or would drive the 4×4 into the nearest ditch.

  It was late afternoon when I parked the car in an empty space at Feltham police station. Joanna had insisted that we stop for lunch as she herself was ‘starving’, and also insisted that the driver should have something to eat. I was beginning to realize how valuable her company was going to be.

  DI Janice North was in the building but giving every sign of being about to go out – that is, she was wearing a light jacket over her work clothes and had her handbag under her arm. I introduced Joanna and asked her if she could spare us a few minutes. She took us back to her office.

  ‘I know this isn’t on your patch,’ I began, ‘but I need to know if any kind of in-depth search has been made fairly recently of a local authority housing estate due for redevelopment in Leyton, near Leytonstone. Sorry, but I have no contacts with the police there and this is a very low-key enquiry on my part.’

  ‘Patrick had all the details, though, didn’t he?’

  I related the latest developments and the woman went pale.

  ‘Oh, we’ve all heard of “Jinty” O’Connor, or Patrick O’Leary – his real name,’ Janice said, her voice a little faint. She cleared her throat. ‘Oh, my goodness, how ghastly. I’ll find out for you.’ Switching her computer back on, she looked at me over the tops of her half-moon reading glasses and added: ‘You needn’t explain any further. What the NCA does regarding dealing with most wanteds is their business, not mine.’

  I liked her discretion and choice of words. As far as I was concerned, ‘dealing with’ was a nice way of putting it.

  ‘OK, one DI John Masterson,’ Janice murmured a couple of minutes later, having got the information off the screen. She picked up her phone. ‘Let’s hope he’s still there.’

  A faint but deep grinding noise on the other end of the line indicated that the DI was.

  ‘John!’ Janice cried. ‘Hi. It’s DI North from Feltham. Are you well?’

  The grinding noise appeared to suggest that the DI was absolutely fine.

  ‘I have a bit of a lead, a rumour really, as to the whereabouts of a mobster I want to get my hands on. Just a local boy, you understand. Have you had cause to turn over a housing estate due to be demolished in Leyton recently?… Yes, Shitsville, I do know what you mean … No?… Oh, several years ago … Right … Thanks.’

  ‘They raided the place to get rid of squatters, as you might have heard, several years ago,’ she told us. ‘He reckons it would take an army and if there’s anyone there he’d rather the bulldozers sorted them out.’

  ‘You know him, then,’ Joanna commented.

  ‘Oh, no. But he was in a filthy mood when he picked up the phone. That’s so unprofessional. So, Ingrid, I’m afraid you probably can’t expect any help from him unless you get your boss involved.’

  I suddenly realized that I hadn’t said a word about what had happened to the commander. I would, but not yet.

  I thanked her and we left.

  ‘Shall we find somewhere to stay the night or are you intent on combing this hellhole in the dark?’ Joanna enquired.

  ‘We might as well stay at a hotel here,’ I answered. ‘I know it’s not nearby but we need to be at the town hall in Leytonstone first thing in the morning.’

  Admirably, she asked no further questions.

  To my utter disgust, the planning office at the town hall did not open to the public until ten a.m. I was first through the door, Joanna in my wake, and this was absolutely the right time to use my warrant card.

  ‘How can I help?’ asked a balding man, having glanced at it without comment. He was slightly out of breath as though he had only just arrived. The lifts were out of order so he would have had to climb the stairs, as we had done.

  I said, ‘I would like to borrow a map or plan of t
he derelict estate at Leyton that’s due to be demolished for redevelop-ment.’

  ‘You mean of how it will look? The proposals? That’s still with the planning committee.’

  ‘No, how it looks now.’

  ‘I can give you photographs.’

  I hung on to my temper – almost. ‘I know what it looks like. I need detailed floor plans.’

  ‘You’ll need the archive department for those.’

  ‘Where can I find that?’

  ‘That’s me, too,’ he sniggered.

  Truly, truly, I could have boxed his ears.

  ‘We’ve loads of ’em,’ the idiot went on. ‘From when they were first built. You’re lucky, actually, as we were going to shred most of them this week and just keep a couple for records. One moment.’ He disappeared through an open doorway and then put his head back around it. ‘How many would you like?’

  ‘Two, please.’

  An age went by, probably a couple of minutes, during which I could hear him either talking to himself or to someone else, and then he reappeared. ‘Denise in there,’ he jerked his head, ‘says this is the second request we’ve had for these within the past few days. One of your colleagues, perhaps?’

  The door was marked PRIVATE but I almost barged the man out of the way to get through it. ‘What did he look like?’ I demanded to know, addressing an immensely overweight woman overflowing a chair behind a desk.

  She looked most surprised and snapped, ‘The public aren’t allowed in here.’

  ‘I’m not the public,’ I snapped back. ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘Well … er – yes, I remember now. It was a man. He was quite tall with black hair going a bit grey. Slim. That’s all I can remember about him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I’ll have to look in the records.’

  This turned out to be a battered exercise book of the kind children used to have at school. She flipped through it.

  ‘Last Friday morning at ten forty-six,’ she announced.

  ‘Was he on his own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Back in the outer office I was handed the plans, a rubber band around them.

  ‘Unprofessional behaviour,’ I muttered when we were outside in the fresh air. ‘Patrick was here a week ago doing exactly the same thing.’ Then, even more unprofessionally, I wept, standing there in the street.

  Joanna steered me into a nearby café and sat me down. While she ordered at the counter I endeavoured to pull myself together but did not make a very good job of it. Then my mobile rang. It was Elspeth.

  ‘Is Joanna with you, Ingrid?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Good. That’s all right then. I know she left a message on James’s mobile yesterday and he’s collected her car but you know me, I do worry. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from those forensic people.’

  ‘No, but we’ll probably get any news from James,’ I told her.

  ‘Please promise me that you’ll look after yourself,’ she finished by saying.

  I promised.

  I knew exactly what the findings would be.

  ‘That cop in a filthy mood was right,’ Joanna said a little later when we had cleared the café table of clutter and opened out one set of plans. ‘It’s as bad as it looks and we will need an army.’ She glanced up at me. ‘What would Patrick have done? What did he do? Come on, woman, if you keep bursting into tears like this we’ll never get anywhere.’

  ‘But he’s dead,’ I sobbed.

  ‘How many times have you thought he’s dead and he wasn’t?’

  I blew my nose. ‘Several, actually.’

  ‘What was the worst one?’

  It was churlish not to give it some thought as Joanna was really trying to be helpful. After a few moments, I said, ‘Right in the beginning when we’d just got married again and were on an assignment for MI5. We were in Scotland and Patrick was supposed to be arriving at a country house on a motorbike. A sniper shot the man on the motorbike within sight of the house and it crashed into a wall and burst into flames. I ran down the hillside and there he was, dead, blackened, smouldering. God.’ I put my hands over my face for a moment at the memory, then continued, ‘The woman who owned the big estate, Pippa, picked me up in her car and we sat in it, overlooking the road he had just come along, just sitting there, numb. People were running around and an ambulance was arriving. Then Pippa snatched up her binoculars and shouted, “That’s my Hamish! God help anyone if that pony breaks its knees on the road!” I looked and saw that a man was coming along riding a Highland pony, a garron that are used to carry down the dead deer after a shoot. The pony knew he was coming home and was galloping. If the situation hadn’t been so terrible it would have been one of the most wonderful things I had seen in my life, the way the pony’s ears were pricked, his mane was flying and his big hooves were throwing the gravel on the road in all directions. He was enjoying himself playing the warhorse.’

  ‘And it was Patrick.’

  I nodded. ‘Someone else had ridden the bike up. Patrick had been out in the hills as he had an idea some kind of attack was going to be made and borrowed the pony.’

  ‘Look, please forgive me for saying this, but if you can’t recognize your own husband when he’s been burnt you’re hardly likely to know him when he’s been boiled.’

  I stared at her in absolute horror. And then laughed until I shed a few more tears.

  We studied the plans until one of the restaurant staff asked us if we would be staying for lunch. So we left, but with no real ideas. It was perfectly obvious that we needed an army and there would probably be people on watch which made turning up at all downright difficult. If O’Connor was even there.

  Back in the car – the NCA vehicle pass that meant it could be parked just about anywhere was proving to be extremely useful – I said, ‘I think Patrick would go undercover. Pretend to be a surveyor or something like that and carry a clipboard. Or perhaps dress down, like a drop-out. He’d probably go and live rough in that underpass.’

  ‘One against how many, though?’ Joanna said dubiously. ‘No, sorry, this is us we’re talking about.’

  ‘There’s old stuff bought in charity shops in a kit bag in the back,’ I told her. ‘We can be old slags in no time at all, keep watch and call the police if we see anyone suspicious. Especially if we see O’Connor.’

  ‘You appear to have abandoned filling this man full of lead.’

  ‘I’ll probably have to settle for getting him arrested.’

  ‘You realize we’ll probably be gang raped if anyone’s there.’

  ‘Not a chance; I have the Smith and Wesson and you can carry Patrick’s second-best knife. They’re both in the cubby box here.’ I patted the top of it between the front seats.

  ‘Ingrid, I’ve never carried a knife in my life!’

  ‘You can joint a chicken with something like a Sabatier, can’t you?’

  Wide-eyed, she nodded.

  I drove to somewhere quiet, not easy to find, and finally had to settle for a defunct filling station where, having removed all our make-up, the pair of us raided the kitbag. I ended up with a pair of jeans, split but not where it really mattered, and a man’s large sweater, then bundled my hair inside a curly blonde wig I simply hadn’t been able to resist at a village jumble sale. Joanna settled on another pair of jeans, too big for her, so she had to roll up the legs and wear a belt to keep them up. I saw with a pang that she had hauled out Patrick’s favourite ‘lucky’ one to use in such circumstances that has a brass skull buckle and red glass eyes, but made no comment. The outfit was topped with a holey jumper and she then pulled her lovely Titian hair back into an untidy ponytail, tying it with a short length of string. We muddied ourselves up a bit with water and heaven knew what else from a dirty puddle.

  Where to leave a sixty-thousand-pound-plus car without it being stolen? It would be quite a long walk, but I finally settled for Leytonstone police station, saying nothing, and just left i
t in their car park. The NCA pass said everything necessary and if they didn’t like it they could pick up the phone and complain to HQ.

  When the pair of us were hiking along the road in the direction of Leyton – I had put a few of my things in Joanna’s rucksack and we would take it in turns to carry it – I suddenly woke up to exactly what I was doing. Reckless? Childish? Stupid? All of those.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Joanna asked when I stopped dead.

  ‘Grief and shock have addled my brain,’ I muttered. ‘We have no plan; haven’t the first idea what we’re going to do. I’m risking your life. It’s madness.’

  ‘What would Patrick do right now?

  I felt a surge of irritation. She was now being … irritating. Reminding me. Giving her a look, I said, ‘He would go there and have a quiet recce, I suppose.’

  ‘Shall we do that then?’

  I carried on walking without making a reply.

  A shortish taxi ride can prove to be quite a long trek and it wasn’t as though we were walking through attractive countryside. The traffic was quite heavy, the air thick with diesel fumes, and trains rumbled close by but out of sight behind buildings. A chilly breeze had sprung up and it looked like rain. This place was the utter pits, I thought.

  ‘At least no one’s taking any notice of us,’ Joanna remarked at one point.

  ‘That’s because everyone round here’s a bit off the wall,’ I retorted.

  ‘The trains, the bloody trains. I sometimes have nightmares about being locked in that garage. I convinced myself I was going to die in there.’

  I was being horribly selfish: Joanna did not want to be here either.

  We came to the first of the redevelopment sites where Patrick and I had looked for her. It looked exactly the same. We carried on past it and about ten minutes later arrived at our destination. This looked exactly the same too, from the outside – what was going on within was anyone’s guess. As we got closer it became obvious that most of the rubbish had been cleared away, including the broken-down fencing. There was no sign of anyone, not a movement except for a few pigeons and crows.