We were interrupted. Dogge heard it first and since this wasn’t her territory she merely pricked up her ears, no bark, no growl. A vehicle was approaching. I glanced at Grogan, gestured for him to stay back, and went out to greet the driver. It was the postman.
He was a short man in an orange anorak, health and safety taking precedence over style and comfort. To my initial surprise he didn’t seem to notice our Fiat parked dead centre of the yard. He got out of his van and strolled over to the back door of the farmhouse, a fistful of mail in his hand, earphones dangling and whatever he was listening to giving his walk a dislocated rhythm. He shoved the mail through the letterbox and turned. That’s when he saw me.
“Morning,” I said at my most friendly pitch.
He stopped dead and pulled out the earphones. I explained my presence there.
“We had a letter from Mr Flaxman about some of the antique machinery. We buy and sell it. You don’t know where he is, do you? Only this was the day we arranged...”
I held my bewilderment at Joe’s absence long enough for the postman to say that Joe was in London.
“O-oh,” I said, long and surprised.
He nodded. “His son’s in court.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
“No, no.”
This was community spirit at work, neighbourhood watch keeping the intruders at bay.
“So you don’t know when he’ll be back?”
“Not today.”
“I wonder if he got my letter. Does he get much mail?”
He was sidestepping back to his van. “No more than most.”
I wanted to ask if any mail came for Mr Flaxman Junior, from Timbuktu, Never Never Land or possibly Ireland, but I couldn’t bridge the gap between antique machinery and wanting a pointer to 15 million quid’s worth of heroin. Besides, even if this guy had known anything, he wouldn’t have told me. He replaced his earphones, got back in the van and drove off. Worst case scenario then was that he’d tell his mates about two middle-aged men he’d seen up at the Flaxmans’ place. They didn’t look like antique dealers so much as ... antique coppers. One of them had a bruised face.
Grogan came over to me. “Nice try, guvnor. The barn next, eh?”
The barn was the least cluttered of all the outbuildings, which wasn’t saying much. The place had once been used for stabling, the far side divided into stalls, the walls hung with tackle: head collars, harnesses, something called an evener, Grogan explained, for spreading the effort when two or more horses were linked together. The actual machinery here seemed less neglected than stuff elsewhere. There was a tractor, a digger, an old planter, all three in working order, I reckoned.
Grogan had found the light switch and an old chandelier hanging from a cruck beam lit up the place, revealing stone steps built into the wall and leading up to the attic. This was where Joe Flaxman had confronted Liam Kinsella and as the latter had made a dash for freedom, he’d shot him. He’d aimed wide and put four pellets in Kinsella’s leg, then knocked him senseless with the butt of his shotgun.
We sent Dogge up the steps to the attic, which we peered into from the hatch. There was no light there, no switch for Grogan to find, but she made her tour and came back apologetically. Nothing there of any interest, not even a rat.
Out in the yard again, Grogan found a second wind, renewed enthusiasm for the job in hand, prompted by a chance to show off his alternative skills: house breaking.
Walking round the outside of the place, we could’ve broken in at any one of half a dozen points. We chose a set of French windows, not unlike some my parents had installed back in the sixties, the very latest in swank. Grogan examined the handle and turned to me, disappointed. The least he’d expected was to use a penknife or to elbow a pane of glass, he said. Instead he slapped the central point where the two doors closed on each other and a pin on a chain the other side fell out of its hole. The handle turned, the securing rod dropped and we entered as if we owned the place.
The house was a psychoanalyst’s nightmare, denying all attempt to clinically describe those who lived here. I could see straight away that Carrie Flaxman wasn’t a hoarder but a sentimentalist. There were none of the piles of frayed and fading magazines which characterise the former, no stashes of coupons, no mountains of wrapping paper. Instead every item might have told its own story, linked its keeper in a flash to some event or person she wanted to recall.
In the room we’d broken into not one object matched another, even when it might have been expected to. The six chairs at the table were all different; the candlesticks on the mantelpiece didn’t match. The serried ranks of ornaments were a mix of old china and modern resins, even plastic: no theme, no preferred colour, nothing that would pin their owner down as a so-called type. Even the curtains weren’t a matching pair.
And so it was in every other room downstairs, yet in spite of its unashamed chaos the place was spotlessly clean, not merely flicked over with an occasional duster. I’d expected the same lack of care we’d found in the outbuildings, where at least rust and dust gave the contents a uniformity.
The pictures on the walls gave little away. In some of the photographs there was a family likeness passing down through the generations on Joe’s side. There was nothing of Carrie until the wedding photo. Before coming to live here, it seemed, she hadn’t existed; on the day of her marriage she walked through the door, founded a dynasty and began to chronicle its history with junk.
The house was arranged on three floors with a ballroom of an attic turned into a storeroom. Much-loved furniture gleamed in readiness for a possible return to use. Boxes, clearly marked, seemed ready to spring open and their contents – china, glass, tableware – pick up where they’d left off. Meanwhile, the beams and floorboards creaked under their weight.
The middle floor contained the bedrooms and bathrooms. The latter were a mix of ancient and modern; copper and plastic pipes jostled with cast iron, even some lead.
Aaron’s room was the only one that offered relief from Carrie’s belief that everything had a value and a place. A pine desk was set beneath the window, bearing a clear indentation where a computer had once been. That was in West London now, along with the Chevy and the Luger pistol.
The walls were covered in posters creating a homage to famous gangsters, just as Blackwell had told me. Strange, though, that when put together in the same room the most evil men in history lost their power to terrify. I wondered what they talked about when the door was closed and darkness fell. What did Bugsy Siegel say to John Dillinger, Al Capone to the Krays, Charles Richardson to Pablo Escobar? Grogan reckoned they discussed who should play them in the movie of their lives. That aside, he shuddered at the notion of parents who allowed posters of thieves and murderers to adorn their offspring’s walls.
The Luger pistol, the bullets from which killed Vic and Freddie, had been found in a cupboard in the corner of the room, along with a host of other militaria. We agreed that it was an odd murder weapon of choice, all too easily traced back to the Flaxman farmhouse. And from what we’d heard, what we’d now gathered for ourselves, anyone could have gained access, roamed the house at will, taken and replaced a Luger pistol with ease.
But for all our agreement, for all the thorough search we had made, we’d discovered nothing of use. The same went for Dogge; indeed the outright cleanliness of the place had bored her and yet, not wanting to let us down, she had trudged dutifully from room to room in anticipation.
The kitchen was where we ended up. It’s where I always end up in situations domestic or professional. The room was a boiled-down version of the rest of the house. Some of the objects were virtually new and must’ve been the stuff Aaron bought for his mother’s birthday: a new cooker, fridge, television, settee. Hanging from hooks along a low beam were mugs of all ages, not a single one matching another; stacked plates sat awkwardly in a pile, not being from the same set; the cutlery gleamed, each item trying to outshine others in the drawer. Some of the pots and pa
ns had been handed down over centuries, others were Le Creuset’s latest.
The central feature was an oak table which bore the marks of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, twentieth-century wear. The chairs around it were original ladder-backs, all shapes and sizes, but each one the genuine article.
On one corner of the table sat the mail, divided into three piles: brochures, letters, brown envelopes. I scooped it up and slumped backwards into the green velour settee, which immediately began to devour me like a Venus flytrap with its prey. I switched on a powerful reading lamp on the table beside me and started skimming through the envelopes. Grogan went to the front door to collect this morning’s delivery and returned with quite a bundle, three or four days’ worth.
“Strange, nothing here for Aaron Flaxman,” I said of the post.
“He doesn’t live here, guv,” Grogan pointed out.
“No, but I still get letters for my kids delivered to Beech Tree: old building society accounts with five bob in them, invitations to old school stuff...”
He nodded down at the pile I’d flicked through. “Someone comes every so often, sorts through it. That’s weird. Nothing here either...” He threw today’s post down on the sofa beside me. “Pity there’s no milk in the fridge. I fancy a cuppa.”
“Black coffee?” I suggested.
He shook his head.
“So who is it, Bill? Who comes to check the mail? I nominate Sarah Trent.”
“You said she’d moved away, no known address.”
“She hasn’t gone to bloody China!”
The sofa was playing hell with my back, had me almost in a squat. I slapped the cushions on either side of me, raising some dust. I reached out and Grogan hauled me to my feet.
“Ex-teacher, so she’s not stupid,” I said. “I’ll bet she also checks his flat, his Facebook, Twitter, e-mail accounts, just to see which way the wind’s blowing. So far there’ve been no hitches. Nobody’s on to the heroin, nobody knows they’re an item.”
He was still po-faced about it, thought I was making a drama out of a few details. “And that gets us no nearer to the drugs or to Sarah, never mind Liam Kinsella.”
I turned back to the sofa. The dust I’d raised from slapping it was still in the air, hovering in light cast by the reading lamp. I froze. It was one of those moments you wish would last. Grogan must’ve thought I’d slipped into some hypnotic trance.
“What is it, guv?”
I’m pretty sure I smiled. “Four hours ago I said by the end of the day we’d know where the heroin is.”
“Five years off your life...”
“So I die at ninety-seven, not a hundred and two. It’s in a sofa!”
He glanced down at the one I’d been sitting in.
“Not this bastard, or Dogge would’ve gone barmy, but the one it replaced. Aaron stuffed the heroin inside it. Six cushions, each one jam-packed.”
He nodded, as if only just catching up, but in fact he was ahead ... future tripping.
“I feel a search of local rubbish tips coming on,” he said, soberly.
“No! It went from here to Scartho Top, 17 Freshney Terrace. Only now it’s moved on, to Sarah’s new house. Wherever that is.”
- 26 -
It was two o’clock that afternoon when we sat down to a meal at The Wragby Arms. Grogan ordered spaghetti meatballs but questioned why Italian food was on the menu in such an English pub. The answer came out to chat to his customers in a quietish moment. He was an Italian chef from Salerno and enquired what I thought of the ossobucco. I told him.
Grogan and I discussed our next move, whether and when to include Blackwell in forthcoming events. Grogan was against it, his reasoning petulant and vengeful. I didn’t admit to such feelings, of course, but if that was what Grogan wanted I’d go along with it.
In a moment of ragged thinking he suggested that we go to The Amethyst and harry Sarah Trent’s new address out of her sister. Almost as he was saying it he spotted the flaw. Emma would get straight on to Sarah and the sofa would be spirited away. If it was still there. If it ever had been. If it was stuffed with heroin. My absolute certainty of two hours previously had ... matured into logical probability.
We went back to the hotel and phoned Marion Bewley. The trial was grinding on, she told me in a return call. The expert witnesses were gone; Sillitoe had just questioned the owner of the shop above which Aaron lived. The CCTV had shown Aaron leaving the flat the day of the murders, but not returning, at least not when he claimed he did. Charlotte Thornton, for the defence, had then lured the owner into admitting the camera had been on the blink for several weeks previously. Could anything it recorded be considered reliable? Was he in breach of his own insurance policy? Would charges relating to dodgy evidence follow? I asked if Sarah Trent had been seen in court since that first day. She hadn’t.
I took a bath and, since Laura had slipped a lifetime’s supply of arnica into my travelling bag, I applied some of it to my fading bruises. I put on fresh clothes, jacket, collar, tie, as agreed with Grogan, and went down to meet him in the bar. The irony of our rendezvous didn’t escape me. He was teetotal, I wasn’t drinking at the moment, and yet the police habit of doing business in bars was a difficult one to break.
Grogan looked ... different in his double-breasted jacket, shirt and tie, as opposed to anorak and sweater. He might’ve been the president of a rugby club, a town councillor about to do battle ... or a retired police officer. I kept my thoughts to myself.
Darkness took its time falling on Scartho Top: something to do with its height above sea level and nearness to the North Pole, Grogan said, unconvincingly. A strip of blue-grey light backlit the horizon, throwing what there was of it into relief and casting a cold twilight across the landscape. It was ideal. As a backdrop to awkward questions, fading light has always been preferable to full sunshine.
We drew up outside number 17 Freshney Terrace, which was clearly empty. An estate agent’s board said it was for rent. I pointed towards number 23, where the lady I’d spoken to lived.
We left the dog in the car and walked up to the front door. I thought of Jaikie as I fumbled with my one and only prop, a leather folder case: to tuck or not to tuck under my arm, that was the question. I dangled it by one corner and rang the bell.
Anne Draper quickly placed me when I asked how she’d got on feeding the tarantula and from that point on she treated me like an old friend. She shuddered. That spider was only the size of a fifty-pence piece, she said, yet she’d dreamed about it ever since, devouring the house, the whole terrace, then marching down to Grimsby for more. She beckoned us in.
“Sarah came back to collect it, then?”
“Oh, yes, she loved it. Tilly,” she added wryly. “Tilly the tarantula.”
Her husband appeared at the living-room door, polo shirt over an extensive belly, trousers held up by braces, socks but no slippers, three days’ growth on his chin. What was left of his hair was slicked straight back over his head. He wanted to know who we were before Anne invited us all the way in.
I reached out to shake his hand. “I’m John Ferris; my colleague here is Peter Andrews. We represent a firm of heir hunters.”
“Like on the television?” Anne said.
“Exactly.”
If it’s been seen on telly and there’s money being given away then ninety-nine percent of the general public will swallow it whole.
“You’d best come in,” said Eric Draper. “How much are we due?”
I laughed. “I’m afraid the subject of our search is a Mrs Sarah Trent, an ex-neighbour of yours.”
He took the disappointment philosophically and we followed him into the chintzy living room, memorable for a carpet whose swirls seemed to constantly rise from the floor and lasso those who walked on it. His wife offered us tea and went off to make it.
Over the next ten minutes I learned more about Eric Draper than I’ve learned about any human being in such a short space of time. We had landed on the doorstep of a man starv
ed of people to bore and became hostages to his life story, starting with his childhood and schooling, moving on to his apprenticeship as a welder, then a life in the motor trade which had wrecked his body. There’d been numerous operations: a new knee, replaced by an Indian surgeon in Manchester; double hernia repaired by a Scot; bad back, physio from a Taiwanese girl, very pretty but didn’t say much. Couldn’t get a bloody word in edgeways, I thought.
His wife entered with the tea. Anne Draper was a neat, precise woman, no more than five feet tall and seemingly unaffected by her marriage to a self-obsessed bellyacher who knew the nationality of everyone who’d come within ten feet of him. She wore her honey-coloured hair close, like a mob cap, probably to keep her head warm. Her skin was reddened by weather and I put that down to her part-time job as a lollipop lady. I’d seen her stop sign and peaked cap out in the hall. She poured tea, adding an invitation to help ourselves to sugar and the biscuits.
“So, how can we help, Mr Ferris?” she asked.
“We wondered if you knew Sarah’s current address.”
She looked at her husband in the way she’d probably done for thirty years, checking their combined knowledge.
“I’m afraid we don’t,” she said, sadly.
“Mr Draper, you offered to help her move some of the furniture, I believe.”
He nodded. “In spite of my back. Still, you don’t go lifting engines out of cars without paying a price...”
“Love, that’s true, but Sarah never said where she was going, did she?”
Was that a genuine or a rhetorical question, I wondered.
He thought for a moment, through the pain of past injuries. “Her dad’s place, I think. Cornwall, Yorkshire, somewhere like that.”
“Didn’t you say she had a friend with her, the day she went?” his wife prompted.
Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 20