by Penny Grubb
TIGER
BLOOD
Copyright © Penny Grubb 2015
The right of Penny Grubb to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher or unless such copying is done under a current Copyright Licensing Agency license. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
TIGER
BLOOD
by
PENNY GRUBB
First Published in 2015 by Fantastic Books Publishing
Cover design by Heather Murphy
ISBN: 978-1-909163-97-3
DEDICATION
To George - natch.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to the editors and copy editors at Fantastic Books Publishing for all their hard work.
Thanks also to the Hornsea Writers for their unflagging critical energy.
Special thanks to Kevin Fitzgerald for an amazing tour of the historic Travellers Club.
PROLOGUE – York: Little green men
The couple sit in their car and wait. She looks away from the red signal – a watched traffic light never changes. Across the junction a mother and child wait on foot. All waiting for green lights … green arrows … little green men.
His fingers tap-tap-tap on the steering wheel as he watches for the signal that will allow them to filter through. She feels irritation that his tapping breaches the silence. She’s tired. He’s tired.
It isn’t silent anyway. The roar of traffic is all around them; grey November air presses down. Dusk pushes in and the rush hour isn’t even at its height.
Tap-tap-tap. His stare is on the blank face that will show the green arrow. She glances up at the main light showing red – stop – to the main carriageway and left lane filter. They’ll both be allowed to set off when that light turns green. But she can look further into the future by checking the side road. It has its own green light allowing the vehicles from the minor road to cross the main artery. Its turn will soon be over. She can’t see its traffic signals full face, but she can see the ghostly green glow. She knows that a couple of seconds after the glow disappears their own green arrow will pop up. It’s only seconds but she’s tired … even this tiny wait gets boring, frustrating. Her attention wanders from the signal to an approaching van. Ha! It slows. It’s too late. It won’t get through. Her eye catches the amber glow and then red. The side road has had its turn.
No, she’s wrong … trick of the light. The van picks up speed … the green glow is as strong as ever.
She feels the roar of the engine under her, turns to berate him. Not yet, don’t jump the gun.
But the arrow’s there. The car is moving. Their counterparts on the main artery surge forward, their lights shining green … green … green.
Her thoughts race … body won’t move … brain says ‘No!’ … mouth can’t open to frame a shout. For a fraction of a second there’s nothing but the roaring in her ears and the ghostly glow of green traffic lights.
And in her line of sight the mother and child across the junction … the woman grabbing the girl, hauling her up in an arc, turning to run, supermarket bags flying, thumping to the ground, spreading their contents.
The screech of tyres …
The clash of metal on metal … a shocking grinding crash.
The squeal of rubber on tarmac goes on and on through the deafening smash. A lone horn blares out a mournful note.
A moment of paralysis. White faces, mouths hanging open. Cars melded … concertinaed … pools of dark liquid spreading out from the point of impact as steam billows.
‘I saw it,’ she says. Her words are shaking like her hands, like her whole body. ‘It flipped red to green … both lights were green.’
PROLOGUE – Holderness: Retired Capt.
Donald Farrar’s unexpected visitor
Donald glanced at the figure opposite, framed by the silky magenta-patterned cushions of the settee, and winced at being asked to recall the specifics from six months ago.
‘I go every year in May, on the 19th.’
He’d told the tale already. Exhausted after the 12-hour round trip, he’d been on the phone as soon as he’d come through the door, while it was still fresh in his mind. That should have put the responsibility for recording the details fair and square on official shoulders.
He’d always known that the trip six months ago was going to be the last time he climbed that magnificent staircase. No point trying to explain to this surly wooden top his son had sent along. He gave a huge sigh and did his best to run through it again.
‘I sat in the Morning Room for ten minutes, then I went upstairs.’
He’d had to stop to rest on the landing, the halfway point where the staircase paused to show off its grandeur, splitting to curve right and left to the first floor. He saw himself pausing there, turning his face towards the portraits that had looked down for decades on ascending dignitaries, but massive as they were, the pictures had blurred into the marbled walls, indistinguishable from the stars that had danced at the edge of his vision. The halfway point. His last ever ascent of the big stairway.
He’d thought back to other bivouacs, ice fields, rocky outcrops. He had a sudden temptation to tell the wooden top, to pass on some of his wisdom. You think you’ll sleep a few more hours and wake refreshed, but you’ll never wake again. Your brain will asphyxiate in the thin air. At his age, simply standing still threatened to rob his legs of enough strength to make the final half flight. Hesitate and you’re lost. He’d pulled in a breath and grasped the hand rail. The air felt thin, but he’d known it was just old lungs labouring. And he’d made it to the top.
‘Someone said, “Good afternoon, Captain,” at the door of the coffee room. A member of staff. And before you ask, I haven’t a clue which one, not with my eyesight as it is. The club’ll have a record of who was there that day, if it matters.’
He’d stepped inside the room and glanced down its length. The cascading diamonds of the chandeliers were as vibrant in his memory today as they’d been six months ago, but it had only been memory that had given him a clear picture. The room had seemed awash with tiny scattered jewels that glinted from every surface, an upmarket camouflage blanket removing the clarity from polished wood corners, chairs and tables. The splashes of colour overlain with the low hum of a dozen conversations had made an artist’s impression of a room full of diners. The consciousness of movement had told him people sat at the club table, but for all he’d been able to see of them, they could have been ghosts.
‘Then a young chap spoke. Reckoned to know me.’
Behind the words he relived the turmoil all around him, the hand slapping his back. ‘Donald! Wonderful to see you. It must be years.’ And how he hadn’t been able to focus on the young man’s beaming face until the commotion had settled. He’d taken the proffered hand.
‘I didn’t know him. I’d an idea I’d seen him somewhere but I couldn’t put a name to him.’
He didn’t have the words to articulate that hint of unease with which he’d half remembered the face.
‘He introduced me to a young lady.’
A tiny slip of a thing she’d been, hair scraped back in a ponytail, handshake limp, her skin cool against his.
‘He didn’t mention his own name.
Assumed I knew him, you see. Her? I remember her as Dr China, but I might have misheard. It was noisy.’
The wooden top murmured, ‘Ah, Dr China,’ but he ignored him. The young man had invited him to lunch and he’d thought, why not? If they turned out to be bores, he’d head for the smoking room after lunch where she couldn’t follow. They’d been seated at a table for three.
His vision had robbed her features of clarity. All he could say was that there’d been nothing familiar about Dr China. And yes, he’d known they had an agenda of their own, but youth attached importance to trivia. His aim had been to keep the custom, enjoy the feel of the place he could no longer appreciate with his eyes.
Dr China had spoken to him while the young man delved in his rucksack. Fidgety. Not the sort they encouraged.
‘She said she understood my son was a Chief Constable in Yorkshire. I told her he wasn’t so exalted. Not yet.’
He heard irritation in his voice at the memory of Dr China scraping the superb dressing from a piece of lettuce before she ate it.
‘She looked like one of those waifs. Never had a square meal in her life.’
And that was a daft thing to say. In all the bustle and glitter of the room, he’d barely seen her at all. He was describing an impression, nothing more.
She hadn’t troubled him with conversation again until the meal was all but over. He remembered watching her cut a neat incision with a fork down the length of her meringue. In his memory the food was so much more solid than either of his companions. He couldn’t be bothered with the detail. Let the wooden top think the conversation was all of a piece. What did it matter?
‘She told me she’d … that her friend had died.’
The memory of the crunchy meringue was sharp, dissolving on his tongue. Her words had been, ‘I lost a friend,’ and he’d said, ‘Mislaid or died?’ which had annoyed her. She’d snapped, ‘Died.’
‘She told me the coroner had said suicide but the note had been unsigned.’
He let out a sigh, weary now, just as he’d been then. He hadn’t needed the rest of the story from her and surely the wooden top wouldn’t need it from him. She hadn’t gone to this trouble for nothing to tell her tale to a stranger. She wanted the information to find its way back to his son. His memory was of running his fork down the snowy peak, and watching the meringue shatter. But even in the memory he could hear the sour note in his voice as he’d asked how she knew John. It had been the first time anyone had run him to earth to get to his son. Even this long after retirement he expected it to be the other way round.
Her head had shot up at his question. ‘John who?’
‘My son. I’m assuming you want me to tell him that your friend’s death needs to be looked into.’
‘Oh … Yes, I see. That’s right. You will, won’t you? Her name …’ He smiled. It had stayed clear in his memory.
‘Pamela Morgan. She died on October 21st 2001, almost a decade and a half ago.’
He’d told Dr China to contact John herself. ‘Ring him up. Send him an email.’ He’d regretted his failing eyesight that hadn’t allowed him to read her discomfort as he’d said, ‘What are you scared of? Did you kill her?’
‘I asked if she’d killed the woman herself. She said she hadn’t.’
The denial had come loud and fast. ‘No!’ Then she’d seemed to deflate and the young man had been at his elbow saying sorry, but there was a phone call.
‘Then I was told there was a phone call for me …’
Dr China had muttered something as he’d pushed himself up out of his seat. Of course the young man had had no idea of the impossibility of that staircase. He’d gone down in the lift.
Downstairs at the lodge, they’d been very apologetic and hadn’t known anything about a call, had helped him back to the mahogany panelled elevator and eased back the metallic grid door.
Upstairs, the chandeliers threw out their great blanket across the room, woven from luminous stars, sewn with shadows and sunlight. Dr China and the young man were gone.
‘… and that’s the last I saw of them.’
The wooden top scribbled in his notebook, then said, ‘But something about the young woman touched you. What was it?’
A lifetime’s training suppressed Donald’s instinctive start of surprise. He took the time to reach for his glasses, took the trouble to look properly. Ah, not a wooden top, after all. Someone had decided to take this seriously. He wondered why. Touched you …? He allowed his lips to curve to a smile. Even in his full account six months ago he’d given away nothing like that.
He paused as her voice echoed across half a year, the tone more memorable than the words. Quiet, sad, spoken almost to herself.
‘She spoke as I left the table. I think she said, “Poor Quinny.” ’
CHAPTER 1
The vehicle sat on ramps, its front end a rusty shell but the rest surprisingly well preserved. Detective Superintendent Martyn Webber remarked on it as he watched, glad to be at the other end of a video link and not in the huge draughty garage space where the car was under examination. The bare concrete walls behind the equipment would be no protection from the hard cold of mid-November.
A tall woman in a blue coverall moved into shot. Her gloved hand held a closed evidence bag. ‘Deep mud at the bottom of the gravel pit,’ she told him. ‘It probably sunk into it as soon as it was dumped. The rear end anyway. The front’s stripped bare, but stuff in the back might have survived. Given what could be in there, we’ve been going carefully with the boot space, getting a camera in first. Something’s sealed it tight over the years. I didn’t want to lose anything in a rush of muddy water.
He nodded. ‘And it’s definitely the car matching the licence plate?’
‘Oh yes. It’s a 1984 Ford Tempo. The VIN matches. You have the details.’
‘And the boot?’
She let out a sigh, tipping her head in a yes-no gesture. ‘The camera isn’t giving us anything dramatic. A lot of plastic sheeting but it’s not clear if there’s anything inside it. I’ll have more when we get it out, but your Chief Super wanted a heads-up.’ As she spoke, she peered at the screen.
‘We’ll let him know,’ said Webber.
‘Are you at HQ?’ she asked.
‘No, we’re in York.’
‘Oh right, not so far from where it was found, then.’
‘The original crime scene’s on our patch, too. Can you get back to me when you’ve got that stuff out? I need to know if we have a case here.’
The woman nodded and turned away as someone spoke behind her. The video link blanked.
Webber looked at the man and woman beside him. ‘Let’s have the stills up on the board,’ he said, adding to himself, even if we’re taking them down again in half an hour. He flicked through the old case file that lay open in front of him.
The woman spoke as she thumbed through the pictures. ‘Guv, what sort of car did she say it is?’
‘A Ford Tempo.’
‘What the hell’s one of those?’ from the man.
‘Not one of Ford’s better ideas,’ Webber said. ‘I think they only made them in the 80s. That model was discontinued after three or four years. And that particular car was bought new by its first and only owner in 1984, then stolen two years later.’
He glanced towards the door at the far end of the wide space. He’d been pulled from his morning briefing and brought across here, couldn’t shake the insecure feeling of having left a station rudderless behind him. The disintegrated front end of the Tempo chimed with the tangled wreckage at the junction last night where every witness claimed their light was green. Someone might have died. He should be working on that current case, not this ancient one.
What had happened yesterday was no random accident, he was sure of it. The anomalies in the witness statements had run a shudder of unease through him. He could feel the flutter of it in his gut right now. Someone messing about with traffic lights this time, a level of sophistication above an incident
just a week earlier. That had originally been put down to kids messing about, blocking the road. A different location, different type of traffic chaos, but something about it resonated with last night’s carnage. They’d just got in the CCTV and started to explore links when the order came to hotfoot it across the city. He’d tried to protest, to have the time at least to tie some loose ends, but the command had come from the Chief Super in tones that brooked no argument. At the very least, he’d expected Farrar to be here to tell him what this thing was all about. He’d dug out the old case file, found himself a makeshift corner to work, and had been through it from cover to cover without unearthing a hint to propel it to these levels of urgency.
‘It was found by divers a couple of weeks ago,’ he told the two DCs as they picked through the old photos and clicked them to the board under magnets. ‘Edge of that site.’ He pointed to where the woman had written the address next to a picture of the carcass of the car. ‘Fishing lakes. They’re expanding into the old gravel pits. They brought us the licence plate. They did the right thing but they weren’t expecting much interest in such an old car. Be warned they’ll be after anyone and everyone for intel on what we’re doing with it. They want to get on with the work.’
He looked up at them, making sure their eyes met his. ‘If you’re offered money, bear in mind it’ll have to cover you for a lifetime’s earnings and a few years inside.’ He didn’t suppose either of them were fool enough to fall for an approach, but nor did he underestimate the growing desperation of a company losing money every day while their development site lay fallow.
‘Unluckily for them, it’s a car we have on record from a robbery on a post office in 1986. It was reported stolen the morning of the crime and clocked as the getaway car later that day.’