Just A Coincidence & Florence (Dave Slater Mystery Doubles Book 1)

by Ford,P. F.

  ‘You know this stuff?’ asked Slater, sounding surprised.

  ‘I used to be a member of the National Trust,’ replied Norman. ‘I’ve been to loads of places like this. You see enough of them, you sort of pick it up.’

  ‘You’re full of surprises, you know that?’ Slater said, grinning and shaking his head as if in wonder.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to bore you,’ Norman said, smiling back. ‘Have you noticed it’s not quite so overgrown here as you might have expected?’

  ‘Maybe he paid someone to clear it back some time.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Norman wasn’t convinced.

  They made their way to the front door which was slightly ajar. Norman gave it a gentle push and stuck his head inside. A large pile of dead leaves had accumulated inside, no doubt blown in by the wind. There was an air of decay about the place and it smelt of damp.

  ‘We need to be a bit careful,’ warned Norman. ‘This place is not far from falling down, so watch where you put your feet and what you hold on to.’

  They poked around downstairs for ten minutes or so, but it was a frustrating exercise as someone had boarded up every window, and their torches didn’t help much in the gloom.

  ‘We need to get outside and take down those bloody boards so we can see what we’re doing in here,’ grumbled Slater.

  ‘Let’s take a look upstairs first.’ Norman led Slater back across the hall to the staircase.

  ‘Don’t trust the middle of the steps,’ he told Slater, with a grin. ‘Keep to the edges, and let me go first – if they can take my weight you’ll be just fine.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ agreed Slater, with a grin of his own. ‘But you be careful. I’m not sure I could carry you out of here on my own.’

  ‘Yeah, right! Thanks for that,’ said Norman. ‘Okay, let’s get on here and see what happens.’

  Gingerly, keeping well over to the left, he started up the stairs. There were a few creaks and groans of protest from the old staircase as he ascended, but it seemed solid enough and he heard Slater begin to follow. Norman reached the floor above and made his way over to the nearest window. Slater was still only halfway up.

  ‘Wow!’ said Norman. ‘Now that is a big surprise.’

  ‘What?’ called Slater. ‘What’s a surprise?’

  ‘Look at this,’ said Norman, pointing out of the window.

  Slater joined him at the window

  ‘Well. I didn’t expect to see that, and look, smoke!’ he said, pointing towards a small clump of trees at the bottom of the garden where a small thread of what looked like smoke spiralled lazily towards the sky.

  ‘Let’s check that out,’ said Norman, leading the way back to the staircase. ‘We can come back here later.’

  They made their way carefully back down the stairs, out through the front door, and onto the drive, where a path curled around the back of the house. Negotiating the side path was difficult as it was overgrown with brambles and more collapsed privet hedging, but they made use of a stack of disused boards to create a makeshift path across the vegetation to the side gate. To Norman’s relief, the gate opened easily.

  Going through the gate was like stepping from a wilderness into another world. Beyond the gate, a weed-free, gravel path led them down the side of the house, past a freshly clipped hedge. Reaching the end of the path at the back of the house, a large, well-kept lawn was revealed, dotted with carefully tended flower beds and shrubs, which ran down to a clump of trees forming a small wood at the far end. A wall ran a good way down one side with a gap halfway down.

  They stopped to take it all in. Neither could claim to have much interest in gardening, but they could both see that someone went to a lot of trouble to keep these gardens at the back of the house in pristine condition. But, who? And, why?

  ‘I bet that’s a walled garden, behind there,’ said Norman, pointing at the wall. ‘I’m betting there’s gonna be vegetables growing in there, and greenhouses and stuff.’

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said Slater. ‘Out here in the middle of a wilderness?’

  ‘Like I said before, I’ve seen these places. Whoever the gardener is, they know what they’re doing.’

  Slater’s mouth had dropped open. He was clearly having a great deal of trouble getting his head around what he was seeing. Norman didn’t blame him – it was so unexpected after the unruly mess at the front, and inside the house. But then something caught his eye and he nudged Slater, nodding towards the small wood. Another tenuous wisp of smoke hovered above the trees before dissolving into the slight breeze.

  ‘Maybe our gardener’s having a bonfire,’ he suggested. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

  A path ran alongside the wall down to the bottom of the garden. Just as Norman had thought, when they looked through the gap in the wall they saw a fully enclosed vegetable garden, complete with greenhouses, a potting shed, and two compost heaps. Being February, the garden wasn’t in full production, but Norman had seen enough of these things to know it was prepared ready for the coming growing season.

  ‘Someone spends one hell of a lot of time working in this garden,’ he said, admiringly.

  ‘I don’t know anything about gardening,’ admitted Slater. ‘But I’m guessing you could feed a family with a vegetable patch this size.’

  ‘Oh, easily. Back in the day it would have supplied the entire household with fruit and veg,’ explained Norman.

  ‘Come on,’ said Slater. ‘I want to know what’s going on here.’

  He led the way on down the path towards the trees. A neatly manicured beech hedge, about six feet tall, separated the lawn from the trees, making it almost impossible to make out exactly what was beyond. Norman could just about see a patch of mixed woodland that stretched across the garden and beyond. He estimated it probably stretched for about a quarter of a mile from side to side, but how far it stretched back was anyone’s guess. In the corner where the wall met the hedge, a small children’s play area had been fenced off. The ancient toys were mostly falling to bits apart from a small roundabout, a slide and a swing which were all obviously well-used and well-loved. As they followed the path around the play area, Norman couldn’t help but wonder whose kids were using it.

  There was a gap in the hedge at the end of the path and they stepped through. If it had been summer and the trees had all been in full leaf, they would have been lucky to have seen much of anything, but at least half the trees were leafless at this time of year. A well-trodden path wound its way through the trees towards a dense clump of conifers. As they approached, there was a clatter from behind the trees and a figure could be made out heading away through the trees. Norman watched as Slater took off in pursuit. Wasn’t that…?

  As Slater charged beyond the conifers, he could see his quarry about thirty yards ahead. It was definitely a man. A tall, thin man, with black greasy hair. Rippon, he thought. How did he get here?

  The man seemed to be following another path, but Slater had made the decision to cut through the trees to try to head him off. As branches slapped at him and brambles tore at his legs, he knew almost straight away he’d made the wrong choice, but if he turned back now he’d never catch his man.

  Rippon, bizarrely, seemed to be pretty fit. Slater was surprised, given how unhealthy he had looked when they had met him previously. He saw Rippon look back at him, a confident smile on his lips. Slater glared at him, and at the very moment he took his eyes from where he was going, his foot caught a thick bramble and he crashed to the ground, the fall knocking all the breath from his lungs with a hearty ‘whoof’. He lay, face down, his hands throbbing from the impact. He climbed slowly to his knees just in time to see Rippon disappear from sight beyond the trees.

  ‘Bugger!’ He sighed, panting heavily. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t catch him,’ asked Norman, when Slater eventually returned, his whole body aching.

  Slater gave him a dirty look.

  ‘Please don’t tell m
e you did catch him and he gave you a good hiding,’ said Norman.

  ‘No I didn’t bloody catch him,’ snapped Slater. ‘And, no, he didn’t give me a good hiding. “We” might have caught him if “we” had both been chasing.’ Slater knew he sounded sulky but was too annoyed to care at the moment.

  ‘Seriously?’ asked Norman. ‘The guy was like a damned greyhound. Anyway, you know I don’t do running.’

  He watched Slater puffing and panting and slowly looked him up and down.

  ‘Did you fall over?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Actually,’ said Slater, his patience wearing thin, ‘I thought maybe it’s time I followed your lead. I’ve merely adjusted my style to match yours.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Norman. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever seen me in torn jeans, and as for that green slime-’

  ‘Enough,’ snapped Slater. ‘I fell flat on my face, alright? But I’m okay, thanks for asking.’

  Norman looked away, but Slater could tell from the way his shoulders were heaving that he was laughing.

  ‘Arsehole,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll catch up with Rippon later. I found out how he managed to get here without a car anyway. The canal’s over the other side of those woods. The old towpath looks as if it leads all the way into town. It’s pretty overgrown, but there’s a definite, well-used path along it, too.’

  ‘Come and see what I found behind these trees,’ said Norman, pointing to the clump of conifers which turned out not to be a clump of trees after all. It was an artfully planted hedge, which hid a small log cabin.

  ‘This is bizarre,’ said Slater. ‘It’s like a gingerbread house in a fairy tale.’

  ‘It’s pretty neat, isn’t it?’ said Norman. ‘There’s even a little wood-burning stove inside. That’s where the smoke was coming from. There’s no-one home, but someone definitely lives here.’

  ‘So who’s living out here in secret?’

  ‘Well, my guess is it ain’t Snow White and the seven dwarves,’ Norman said, smiling. ‘But whoever it is coulda been here for years, and who would have known?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get here,’ said Rippon, with a big smile, when they caught up with him later.

  They were back from Hatton House and had tracked him down to the bar at the Station Hotel. It hadn’t really taken much tracking – the man seemed to live at his corner table in the bar. He’d obviously been back long enough to shower and get changed and he appeared relaxed and refreshed while Slater and Norman were still in the same clothes they’d been wearing at Hatton House. For once, Slater thought, ruefully, Norman looked the tidier of the two.

  ‘Why were you running away from us?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wasn’t running away from anyone,’ said Rippon. ‘I was out jogging along the towpath. I decided to run through the woods and I was just heading back when I saw you. I thought you wanted a race.’

  ‘Come on, Rippon. Cut the bullshit,’ said Norman. ‘You went out there to check out Hatton House. You were there for the same reason we were. You think there’s a link to Mr Winter and his story. But we think this could also lead us to his killer, so wouldn’t it be in both our interests to share what we know?’

  ‘It seems I know a whole lot more than you lot,’ said Rippon. ‘It strikes me I’d be the one doing all the sharing, not you two.’

  ‘You do a lot of running, do you?’ asked Slater, doubtfully.

  ‘I told you I did, but you didn’t believe me.’ Rippon smiled. ‘I do marathons mostly, including London every year, and half a dozen others. I’d never win any medals at the Olympics, but I can usually get round in under three hours.’

  Slater was both surprised and impressed. That was a pretty good time for a man in his late forties. He knew he certainly couldn’t get anywhere near a time like that.

  ‘I thought most London runners do it for charity,’ he pointed out.

  ‘What makes you think I don’t?’ asked Rippon.

  ‘You don’t look the charitable type.’

  ‘Never judge a book by its cover. You, of all people, should know that, Sergeant.’

  ‘Charities like who?’

  ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital when I’m doing London,’ said Rippon. ‘I’ve got half a dozen smaller children’s charities I support, too. If you don’t believe me, look on my website. I don’t make a big deal about it, but you’ll find them listed under my other interests.’

  Slater wasn’t sure he was convinced, and a glance at Norman told him he wasn’t the only one.

  ‘I know.’ Rippon laughed, holding up his hands. ‘It’s hard to believe isn’t it? I pride myself in being a true contradiction. Complete hard-case arsehole at work, but with a soft centre, especially where kids are concerned.’

  ‘So, if there is a soft centre, as you say,’ said Norman, ‘can I appeal to it for help in solving what appears to be the murder of a lonely little old man?’

  ‘I’ll help you, if you help me.’

  ‘But you said know more than we do,’ said Slater.

  ‘At the moment,’ agreed Rippon. ‘But there’s going to come a point where you know more than me. If this is what I think it is, we’re sitting on one very big story, and I want it all to myself.’

  ‘Is this where the hard-case arsehole comes into it?’ asked Slater.

  Rippon smiled an evil smile.

  ‘This is a cut-throat business, Mr Slater. People will tell you I’m a nasty piece of work and I’m selfish. Those people only know me at work. If you want to succeed at this job, you have to be ruthless, and I am. Very. Do I feel bad about that? Sometimes, yes I do. Perhaps helping kids is how I make up for it.’

  Slater had to admit the man seemed to be surprisingly honest, but even so, he had his reservations. He looked at Norman who shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Look. You don’t trust me, right?’ asked Rippon. ‘I can understand that. It goes with the job. I don’t find it easy to trust people myself. So here’s the deal. As a gesture of good faith I’ll give you some of what I know, and we’ll take it from there. What do you say?’

  Slater looked at Norman again.

  ‘We could do with the help,’ admitted Norman.

  ‘I suppose it couldn’t do any harm,’ agreed Slater. ‘Okay,’ he said, turning to Rippon. ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘I haven’t got much more than you lot really,’ he began. ‘But maybe I’m just a bit more observant.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Slater.

  ‘Well, we both think there’s a big story here, and we’ve figured out Hatton House is involved. I’m assuming you know it was an orphanage way back, and that Mr Winter bought it back in the nineties, but did you know he then set up a trust fund to own and maintain it?’

  ‘So that must be where all his money’s gone,’ said Slater, trying to hide his surprise at this news. ‘But I’m not sure I’d say it’s being maintained very well.’

  ‘That would depend on how you define “maintain”,’ said Rippon, quietly.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Slater, puzzled.

  ‘You’re the detective. You think about it,’ said Rippon, sounding irritated. ‘I’m not going to do all your work for you.’

  It looked for a moment as though he was going to withdraw his assistance and stop talking, but then he started again.

  ‘You’re probably also aware he had a sister when he went into the orphanage, but she never came out again, right? So, what happened to her?’

  ‘According to his solicitor, Mr Winter swore she’s still alive, but claimed he didn’t know where she is,’ said Norman.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Rippon. ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘To be honest, we’re not sure what to believe,’ said Slater. ‘But so far, we’ve no reason to think otherwise.’

  ‘He never actually told me anything about his sister,’ said Rippon. ‘I suppose that would have come after he decided to trust me.’<
br />
  He thought for a few moments before continuing. He was obviously trying to decide if he should share any more with them.

  ‘But maybe that was good thing. If I’d known she was supposed to be missing, I might not have made the connection at the funeral,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find the story about sister being missing is a red herring.’

  ‘What connection at the funeral?’ asked Slater. ‘And why is it a red herring?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the little old lady who was hovering around at the funeral?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said Slater. ‘But she’s just a bag lady. I did try to find her after, but she disappeared. I figured she was just being nosey or looking for shelter.’

  ‘She’s very good at that disappearing thing,’ said Rippon. ‘She did it this morning when I found her just before you two arrived.’

  ‘So you’re saying you think she’s the missing sister?’ asked Norman. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure. But it’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? First she turns up at his funeral, then I track her down to a big house that he owns. And she’s obviously been living there for a long time.’

  ‘But if he knew she was there, why does he say she’s missing?’ asked Slater.

  ‘Why do you think?’ said Rippon. ‘It’s obvious. She doesn’t want to be found, and he’s helping her to stay hidden.’

  ‘So how did you find out where she was hiding?’ asked Norman.

  ‘I did what you lot should have done.’ Rippon smiled smugly. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye out for her. I watched where she went and I followed her.’

  Slater felt somewhat chastened. He’d had the chance to follow the old woman, but she had outwitted him and vanished. Yet somehow Rippon had managed it.

  ‘So what did she say when you spoke to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, now that’s where we have a problem. She wouldn’t say anything to me, and she took off as soon as she got the chance. The thing is, she’s probably spent years preparing for the day when someone comes looking for her. She knows those woods like the back of her hands. I bet she’s got some great hiding places right where we were and we’d never spot them in a million years.’