Blood Substitute (10 page)

Patrick pulled a wry face. ‘You've lined me up to say that men are bastards and leave their pregnant girlfriends.'

‘I haven't!' I protested.

Stopping in his tracks, he said,
‘
OK then, oh oracle mine. Fulfil your role as my adviser. Ignore the mistaken identity argument and brainstorm.'

My husband was not altogether joking and probably needed his lunch, I surmised, but also stopped and said, a bombshellish idea having just surfaced, ‘You mean if it really is Robert Kennedy and he isn't a sadist and is just out of prison and the man I met is Archie Kennedy pretending to be dead and if I programme in all the other things that happened at the farm and the death of Cliff Morley with the initials RK carved on him and bung in Ross's assertion that Robert was a good sort of bloke in his youth
plus
taking into consideration the good sort of bloke we know James to be?'

‘If you like.' There was gentle amusement now.

‘Then he either faked his own death or lost his memory after being washed up somewhere and is an undercover policeman, or something along those lines, and someone in the gang he's in, or one in London with a connection, doesn't like him or suspects he's a plant. He could be in great danger.'

Patrick's jaw did not quite drop. ‘
What?
'

‘I'm starving, are you?'

Patrick not recognizing as man-fuel tiny artworks of delicate morsels encased in baskets of plaited lettuce in the centre of a fourteen-inch diameter plate decorated with squiggles of rare balsamic vinegar, we went to a pub where the fare was more robust. I had no health fears on his behalf about this as he is, as a result of sheer hard training, as fit and lean as a racing snake. I noticed, with some amusement of my own, that my statement was actually having the effect of taking his mind off the menu.

‘You know what this means, don't you?' he said, laying it aside.

‘It's only an alternative theory,' I pointed out.

‘It's straight out of one of your books,' he continued, almost resentfully, ‘But also has quite a lot going for it. No, it means a change of tactics so we can factor in what you've just said.'

‘Can't we find out though? Surely even deeply undercover policeman can be checked up on by colleagues in other branches.'

‘No, by no means. It's too dangerous. Just one word to the wrong person can be the end of someone. I know of a case where even a man's wife thought he'd died – the family only knew him as an out-and-out crook. It went to the extent of having a funeral. He wasn't dead and resurrected himself to shove a whole gang in the slammer for just about ever. It was all set up by the department he was working for.'

‘It's hardly a family-friendly way of working.'

‘Only a certain kind of person can do it and I understand that it's usually at the end of an operative's career or his stint with that particular branch. They retire, or are transferred and given a new identity thereby disappearing from the dangerous area – together with their nearest and dearest if they're still on speaking terms.'

‘Are you having the lamb hotpot?'

‘Er … yes.'

‘I'd like the Greek salad, please.'

‘No,' Patrick said all at once, emerging from a deep reverie after we had eaten. ‘On second thoughts I don't think we should factor in your theory even though it's growing on me. I remember what it was like when we worked for D12 and someone from another department or the cops crashed into one of my scenarios and ratted everything up. Assuming you've guessed right, or even partly so, I reckon we should allow whoever's running that particular show to get on with it. It's sufficient for the present that we've mentioned his possible involvement in the case to Reece. If Kennedy is in danger – and I also suggest that right now we say nothing of any theories to Carrick – then until anyone asks for assistance we leave well alone. As you say, it's only conjecture and sometimes more damage can be done by the well-intentioned interference of allies than by the enemy.

‘Not only that,' he continued. ‘Robert Kennedy isn't really part of our brief. If we come across him while locating the tall man who might be the king-pin behind serious crime in the Bristol area and perhaps these killings all well and good. The next question, of course, is how do we find
him
?'

‘How did he find Jeffers and Ritter?' I said. ‘Or should one say how did they come to know about him? Paul Reece told us that Ritter worked as a warehousemen for a department store in the city, if only sometimes. Which one? There might be a connection there.'

Patrick ordered coffee and then went outside to phone Reece to ask him. (We have a real thing about people who holler down their mobiles in public places for all to hear.) When he returned there was a quizzical expression on his face.

‘It was one of the last surviving family-owned large retail businesses in Bristol,' he said. ‘A store by the name of Slaterford and Sons and it's been on the same site since the Raj, according to Reece. His great-grandmother used to shop there for flannel to make petticoats in the days when the male assistants wore frock-coats. Somehow, it's survived and although recently taken over is, in his words, still tottering along.'

‘Tottering shops are always interesting,' I said. ‘Lots of bargains. Shall we go and have a nose around?'

Patrick glanced at his watch. ‘You're as bad as Greenway. This is London, the shop's in Bristol several hundred miles away and my expenses don't stretch to choppers. We nose tomorrow.'

The store was situated on a corner in a side street just off the main shopping area, Broadmead. This was not to say that the buildings were inferior, far from it for here was some of the finest and most imposing Victorian architecture of Bristol; the banks, building society and insurance company headquarters, each trying to outdo the other with their titans, chariots and maidens in seemly drapery. It was obvious that the stonework of many of these buildings had been cleaned and netted to keep pigeons away in recent years but this was not the case with Slaterford and Sons, the exterior of which was various shades of sooty-grey, all ledges loaded with bird-droppings. Here, surely, was where the elderly on limited incomes still came to buy the means to keep warm: Chilproof vests, bedsocks, electric fires and small saucepans to heat milk for cocoa. The windows were arranged with a dreary selection of goods; the kind of striped teacloths and towels and candlewick bedcovers that I had not seen since I was a child.

We entered and immediately found ourselves decanted down a few stairs into a bargain basement atmosphere of cut-price silver plate, appalling knick-knacks, ‘gifts', tableware, glassware and artificial flowers, all made in the Peoples' Republic of Eyesore.

‘Next week's jumble sale fodder,' Patrick said wonderingly, waving around a wafer-thin silver-plated tray.

‘Please put it down before it folds in half,' I begged.

We postponed the basement proper – household, lighting, stationery – and wandered up to the first floor to be faced with dowdy dresses, twin sets and other ‘fashion' items and then went up again to furniture, bedding, carpets and curtains. People did seem to be buying but none of it, other than what was on the ground floor, appeared to be particularly cheap.

I seated myself on an artificial leather sofa in the almost deserted furniture department. It was in a hideous shade of congealed blood. ‘Are you going to make any enquiries about Ritter?' I asked.

Patrick flopped down beside me. ‘To learn what, though? The man only worked here on and off – or at least in the warehouse. It might be more profitable to ask a few questions there.'

‘This is a weird place.'

He chuckled. ‘Like a set for a fifties Elstree comedy. Surely all this stuff has to be bankrupt stock.'

‘Do you wish to buy that?' said a woman's voice suddenly and loudly behind us.

Patrick swivelled round to face the speaker. ‘No, I think we can face life without it actually.'

‘Then get off it. This isn't a rest room.'

I too turned. She was stick-thin, dressed in black, all knees and elbows, and if she had had another six legs would have more closely resembled Shelob, the giant spider in
The Lord of the Rings.

Not wishing to risk further venom, we got out of range.

I expected Patrick to go back down the stairs but he ascended again towards the restaurant and accounts office.

‘Something else to add to one's nightmare library,' I commented when we arrived.

‘What is?'

‘That woman. I've already had bad dreams about the tall man resembling a scarecrow.'

‘That imagination of yours is going to jump up and bite you one day,' he said with a broad grin.

‘But at the moment it's earning me quite a lot of money,' I pointed out. ‘Tea?'

‘My typhoid jabs aren't up to date. Are yours?'

‘No, come to think of it, they aren't.'

Even in passing we could see that the restaurant was in fact a drab-looking café with no customers, the dispirited staff standing around like zombies. Travelling purposefully Patrick headed for Accounts, which turned out to be a glass-fronted cubicle, no one on duty within, and then strode down a corridor marked STAFF ONLY. Another corridor joined it at right angles and this had a notice propped up against the wall with the single word PRIVATE untidily hand-printed in marker pen on it. No one was about.

I tried the handle of the door closest to me. It was locked. Running my eye down the corridor all the doors I could see were fastened with padlocks, not just small ones but the kind of thing that would defeat all but the largest bolt-cutters. I silently drew Patrick's attention to this.

Patrick went to explore further but then paused, sniffing the air. He caught my eye and jerked his head back in the direction we had come.

‘What is it?' I hissed but he shook his head and did not reply.

Back by the accounts office he stopped to look at a plaque on the wall, the usual legal requirement of company name, head office address and so forth. It looked new and was smaller than its predecessor, an unpainted strip of wall all the way around it. Then, wordlessly, we retraced our footsteps until we were outside in the street.

‘The head office was listed at an address in Walthamsden,' I said. ‘That's peculiar. Wasn't that where Reece said that London hoodlum who might be a relative of the man running the gang down here was supposed to hang out?'

‘And someone was privately smoking cannabis somewhere in their own private Fort Knox,' Patrick said. ‘Even more peculiar. Shall we come back and have a proper look round tonight?'

‘You no longer have MI5
carte blanche
,' I reminded him, not for the first time. ‘You can't just break into places you think might be iffy.'

This appeared to go in one ear and out of the other. ‘There was a security camera right at the end of that corridor but we were probably too far away for our faces to be recognizable,' he said and then turned to me with a gleam in his eye. ‘When you think about it the shop might have been acquired as a vehicle for money-laundering. What was behind all those locked doors? Stolen property?'

‘And Mr Tall Man was sitting in an office somewhere down that corridor gloating over his loot? I thought I was supposed to be the one with the vivid imagination.'

Patrick merely smiled and, when we were back outside, set off at speed down a narrow lane that separated the shop from the building next door. Grimly, I ran to catch up with him.

There were the usual clutches of fire hydrants, emergency exits, a staff entrance manned by a security man, another wide, dark opening into what I guessed was an underground car park with steel-barred gates across it and, at the far end, a large goods-inwards and outward delivery area fronting partly on to a wider lane that served as access.

Patrick paused, crossed the side road and looked about. ‘There's nowhere we could watch the entrances and exits from without creating suspicion. No, damn it, let's leave, I've just spotted more cameras.'

‘D'you really think the store might be part of a criminal set-up?'

‘You have to ask yourself how such a dreadful establishment survives without some kind of underhand activity taking place. Do they sell stolen goods? The business rates must be sky-high here so if you only tend to sell three cups of tea and a fly-swatter most days …' He broke off with a shrug. ‘No, perhaps I have caught it from you. If there was anything going on here surely the local CID would have sniffed it out by now.'

We had fruitlessly spent most of the morning at the city centre police station talking to anyone and everyone who might have something interesting to say about the store. We had heard only comments along the lines of ‘it was a wonder the place still survived' and how nothing had been done to improve it by the new owners.

I was thinking that the business of not having such a free rein was going to be a real hindrance to this new career when Patrick suddenly removed his leather jacket, thrust it at me and, with a quiet request to stay where I was and keep my eyes open, set off again back in the direction of the main road. Just before he turned the corner there was a transformation into someone else, a stooped, twisted man with downturned head and heavy limp, hands waving around like crabs' claws.

Ye gods, anything could happen now;
anything.

Approximately twenty seconds later the fire alarm within the store went off; bells and a wailing siren, the latter seemingly emanating from the mouth of the underground area. Then the gates to this began slowly to rumble aside, the small wheels which supported them squealing in the metal groove they were slotted into. No one was in sight so I crossed the road again and went inside, my cats' whiskers yelling at me that this was not a good idea at all.