Blood Substitute (11 page)

The concrete surface of what was in effect a curving tunnel sloped quite steeply downwards. I still saw no one, there was no security point here, in fact it was so gloomy that anyone on duty would be hard-pressed to spot an intruder. There did not seem to be any cameras either and, gazing around looking for the existence of these I noticed that there were light fittings but they were covered in dirt and obviously not functioning. But what about heat sensors? And if there were any would anyone notice another alarm with this racket going on?

To save carrying it I slipped on Patrick's jacket and then, realizing that a large dim space was opening out before me, went quickly over to the right-hand wall where it appeared to come to an end and peered around a huge pillar that marked the corner. The siren wailed on.

The large space thus revealed – as far as this was possible in the lack of light, that is – was indeed a carpark and in the gloom people were moving, running, between the vehicles seemingly to reach their own. I slipped round to the right to conceal myself behind a large people carrier for a few moments, praying that I would not meet the owner head-on coming the other way, and then, bending low, hurried along the row of cars nearest to the wall, came to a corner quite quickly, turned left and, cautiously, headed in the direction of where I guessed the pedestrian entrance into the shop was situated. Some of the cars were in motion now, their headlights on, the already stuffy air thick with exhaust fumes. Luckily, all were facing away from me and over on the far side, near the exit to the lane. Reserved spaces perhaps, for senior staff only.

Caution forced me to pause in the lee of a parked van. Ahead, I could see a dimly lit opening, a doorway through which one or two people were still emerging. Then a small group appeared, four men. One of them was very thin and at least six foot six inches tall. He stared about, examining his surroundings as though sweeping the area for danger. I shrank back behind the van. Here was someone who expected danger. When I dared to look again the four had gone and, heart pounding, I moved on in case they had spotted me and had split up in order to perform a pincer movement. The worst thing was not being able to hear anyone's approach. But no one came and shortly afterwards another set of headlights swung out and away in the direction of the exit.

Rats leaving what they thought to be a sinking ship, or what?

‘W
ell, I have to say I've never heard of what one must assume to be senior management doing a runner when a fire alarm goes off,' Superintendent Reece said. ‘Unless they were rescuing their cars. But their real responsibility lay in first ensuring that the staff and customers were safe, surely.'

‘Who all filed out either through the main doors at the front or from the delivery area at the rear,' Patrick reported.

‘I understand there was an official complaint to the local nick from the store saying that the alarm had been set off maliciously,' Reece continued. ‘The culprit had been clearly identified as a man described as severely physically and mentally handicapped who also assaulted a member of staff. The caller wanted him caught immediately and consigned to a suitable care home – only that wasn't quite how he worded it.'

Patrick laughed. ‘I didn't stop at smashing the glass of the first fire alarm I spotted. There was a lumpen security geek just inside the main doors standing by a small desk. Having lured him away from it with a few choice gestures I then heaved him into a display that turned out to be mostly cardboard boxes, had a look at his work station and pressed any number of buttons on a console partly concealed beneath it. Then I made myself scarce. I have to say I didn't expect what Ingrid witnessed.'

‘Was the phone call recorded?' I enquired.

‘Yes, probably,' Reece said. ‘Could you describe this tall man you saw?'

‘I only saw him in silhouette against the poor light in a doorway that must have led into the basement of the store,' I told him. ‘Assuming that the men he was with were of average height he must have been at least four inches taller than Patrick, who is six foot two. I would say he was thin, possibly with slightly rounded shoulders and had a small head – although it might have looked like that because his hair was thin or smoothed flat. Despite his long legs he walks with a short stride, which looks a bit odd, jerky. That's all really – I didn't dare look any longer in case they saw me.'

‘Gut feelings though?' Patrick prompted. This was for Reece's benefit; he already knew what these were.

‘This man is very wary,' I said. ‘The men with him were probably his bodyguards and I got the impression they were being careful too – the manner in which the four moved together makes me think that. Their body language towards him was deferential and they all drove off in the same vehicle. He's the boss and there was something about the way he surveyed the car park before he left the comparative safety of where he was standing that spoke of someone ice cold and ruthless.'

Before Reece could comment Patrick said to him, ‘Don't discount the last bit – Ingrid might write books but her vibes about situations and the people in them are copper-bottomed.'

Gold-bottomed actually for most of the time, I thought. Sometimes they've saved your life.

The superintendent said, ‘The problem is that none of this is evidence – although I have to say the business of all those people bailing out like that was very suspicious. I can't really arrange a close watch on this man on the strength of what you've seen.'

‘And for heaven's sake don't!' Patrick implored. ‘If he is a hardened criminal with an expert set-up he'll be waiting for other Cliff Morleys to show up. One of those buttons I pressed was probably the early warning system of a police raid – or anything that looked like one. They might be twitchy enough to suspect my little incursion as coming from an undercover department of the law. I suggest you let things settle down for a few days.'

‘What about your ruse of us making a phoney arrest?'

‘I think that ought to go on hold as well. It's too risky right now – and not necessarily, on reflection, a good idea.'

Not with an outfit that wasn't MI5 anyway.

‘Meantime you'll get back to your boss?'

‘He'll expect me to tell him what's going on.'

‘We can't have too many cooks spoiling the broth, you know.'

‘Sometimes you have to let the chefs get on with it,' he was bluntly told. ‘By all means investigate Morley's death – that'll be expected of you. Give his colleagues every means and encouragement to catch his killer. You may well find a connection with the man Ingrid saw. But I beg of you to build the bridges properly, by normal methods and by gathering proper evidence, or you'll have more funerals to attend with no results.'

‘Do you have the authority to talk to him like that?' I asked Patrick a little later when we were sitting in the car. Just a little worried, that's all.

He shook his head. ‘No. He probably called me an arrogant bastard when we'd gone but once in a while your conscience forces you to tell it how it is. He's under no obligation to take a moment's notice of me.'

Patrick then rang Greenway whose orders were immediately forthcoming: go and have a good look round that warehouse – without whoever was running Slaterford and Sons knowing.

By any standards this was not going to be easy. All too aware of his urging Reece to let things quieten down for a short while Patrick had told Greenway he would follow his own advice and endeavour to do the job the following Sunday, in two days' time.

‘We don't even know where it is yet,' I remarked.

‘We do. While all the fuss with the fire alarm was going on I went round the back and asked a bloke at the goods-inwards door pretending I had a parcel to deliver there. It's down near the old docks.'

‘You'll need all your
cordon bleu
skills for this one.'

I found myself on the receiving end of a look that was probably more protracted than was strictly safe as he was driving the car.

‘You thought I was being an arrogant bastard too then.'

‘You
used
to say things like that.'

‘Before we were divorced, you mean? No, I'll re-phrase that: before you chucked me out before we were divorced?'

Wondering if it still really rankled I defused any difficulty with a big smile, a real one as it happened, musing on the sheer impossibility of anything like that happening now. Unless he went off with someone else, of course.

‘You're sitting there like the bloody Mona Lisa. Say something, woman.'

‘Where are we going?' I obliged, having got him rattled, obviously.

‘To Hinton Littlemoor. I thought we'd stay with Mum and Dad until Sunday.'

‘Your father will expect you to help at the morning service, or at least to sing in the choir. Then, that evening after dinner, when the routine has always been that you have a chat with him in his study, you're going off to break into a warehouse instead?'

Patrick breathed out hard, or rather, snorted. ‘My planets must be all to hell today or something. No, all right, we'll tackle the warehouse on Saturday night and stay over until early Monday morning. Although you don't have to come with me to Bristol if you don't want to.'

‘Well, yes I do really as it looks a bit strange if you go out on your own.'

‘I wasn't thinking of leaving until getting on for midnight.'

‘I'll come. You might need an extra hand to stir the
consommé
.'

‘I can see I'll never live that one down.'

We had planned to take Elspeth and John out for a meal but as it happened they had been presented with a large oven-ready duck by a local poultry farmer whose daughter John had joined in Holy Matrimony to a gas meter-reader the previous Saturday. The duck, which had only been in the freezer for half an hour, was duly whipped out and prepared for roasting. I was really happy about this as I did not feel like going out again.

‘How's the job?' Elspeth asked her son later when we had gravitated to the kitchen. A slim, still-attractive woman with a keen intelligence, the gaze she fixed him with was as penetrating as his own.

‘It pays the bills,' was his surprising reply, and because of who was doing the asking it had to be an honest one.

‘You really miss MI5, don't you?'

He just performed a little shrug and smiled at her sadly.

‘All the mayhem, explosions, trails of bodies and that kind of thing,' she went on, turning to remove the duck from the oven to check on its progress.

‘Let me do that, it's heavy,' Patrick offered.

She passed him the oven gloves. ‘We do keep in touch with James Carrick, you know. He and Joanna were over here a couple of evenings ago.'

‘And he told you all about the mayhem, explosions, bodies, plagues of frogs and so forth,' Patrick said.

‘No, not in so many words. He couldn't know, could he? He just said that he was glad your energies were directed in a less – well – unorthodox direction. I can distinctly remember having armed men in the onion bed here on more than one occasion.'

As it happened James did know quite a lot of what had gone on. But I was not worried about this exchange for Elspeth was merely delighted to see Patrick and often indulged in this heavy teasing. That she was absolutely spot on was another matter.

‘You'll be telling me next that it was you, someone who was described as a madman, who set off all the alarms at Slaterfords in Bristol yesterday. It was in the
Bath Chronicle.
'

‘
Yes, that
was
me,' Patrick dutifully said, bailing some of the fat out of the roasting tin into a small basin.

Elspeth laughed, unsurprisingly not believing him, and then said, ‘That reminds me. When Fred Hemmings was here earlier bringing the duck as a thank-you he saw the paper on the table. He asked me if I knew that there's a rumour that someone who's on the management side at the store has bought Hagtop Farm.'

‘That's interesting,' Patrick said, his face giving nothing away.

How could anyone forget Hagtop? A huge cattle shed a short distance from the village had been the scene of three stomach-churning murders not all that long ago when Patrick was doing a stint with the local police. He had been peppered with shotgun pellets endeavouring to catch the killer.
I
had found the killer.

‘Only this is the farmhouse itself which, as I'm sure you remember, is about a quarter of a mile away from where the bodies were found,' Elspeth was saying. ‘Fred said that the house has been practically gutted and old barns and tractor sheds are being converted into extensive living accommodation. He says it must be costing a fortune. Goodness knows where the money's coming from, the shop's dreadful.'

‘A truly dire shop,' Patrick agreed.

‘Oh, so you do know it then. Apparently it changed hands recently and is worse, if anything. Your father thinks it belongs to the Mafia.'

‘Why should he think
that
?'

‘Oh, you know John. A bit like you really, thinks it's a government plot when the sun doesn't shine.'

Patrick put the duck back in the oven and left the kitchen. I discovered later that he had run his father to earth in the church where he was polishing the brass. Ladies might wield dusters and vacuum cleaners and do the flowers but John always polishes the brass. I gather that Patrick qualified as a helper to finish the job and the two returned to the rectory quite quickly, possibly on account of the new bottle of single malt Patrick had brought with him now gracing the kitchen dresser.

After dinner Patrick and I went for a walk. I was still unaccountably tired but felt we needed to: it had been a massive main course with all the trimmings – almost like a Christmas dinner – followed by one of Elspeth's celebrated trifles.