Blood Substitute (12 page)

‘I take it your dad doesn't actually have any evidence to back up his suspicions about the store,' I said, wishing I was in bed.

‘Not really, but like us, just asking himself how it can stay afloat in today's cut-throat retail climate. And apparently a local bad boy works there, as a security guard of all things. He did four years for GBH and being in possession of offensive weapons, a knife and a set of spiked knuckle-dusters. I wonder if that was the tattooed barrel of lard I heaved into the pile of boxes. I might need to talk to James about that.'

‘I take it this individual isn't regularly seen in church weeping tears of remorse.'

‘Not a chance.'

I did not have to ask, after following a public footpath across fields we were striking uphill towards Hagtop Farm. It was quite late, the evening fine and dry, and, being the last week of May the sun was only just setting, burning low and redly through the tree trunks of a copse. A small flock of wood pigeons rocketed away, disturbed by our approach.

‘Bang,' said Patrick absently.

We dine well at home during the winter months, on game that he can pot in the garden from an upstairs window of the barn with an air rifle, other people's pheasants occasionally among the casualties. Once a seriously injured roe deer – we thought it had been hit by a car – was put out of its misery with a fine head shot from the Smith and Wesson that was ostensibly helping to protect the pair of us from terrorist attack, our names having been on several such organizations' hit-lists for years. Venison is very good eating. These days he carries a Glock hand gun, which is a better weapon whatever the target. I
know
that the former weapon was handed back to MI5 but had recently noticed that it, or another one, had miraculously reappeared in the wall safe.

The murder scene cattle barn came into view over to the west, roughly halfway up the hill. This, John had told us, had been bought by a local farmer when Hagtop was auctioned off. The rector did not know the name of whoever had bought the house and immediate out-buildings but had promised to try to find out. Patrick had urged caution. His father's response to this, with an ironic grin on his face, had been a robust declaration that it was the incumbent's business to find out who had moved into the district so he could save their souls.

Hagtop farmhouse could be seen on the brow of the hill over to our right and from where we were appeared to be just the same as I remembered it. But as we climbed higher and got closer, crossing a stile into the lane that led to it it was apparent that a lot of work had taken place. As the poultry farmer had said, the house had been almost gutted, the rear part of the roof, the weather side, off with some of the timbers replaced with new wood, all the windows out and the floors between the two storeys just bare joists. The whole place was surrounded with security fencing plastered with KEEP OUT notices and others intimating that it was a hard hat area.

‘No one can be living here yet but perhaps we ought to be careful,' Patrick muttered as we set off to walk around the front of the house, skirting the fencing towards the yard, tractor shed and other buildings. He rounded the corner, stopped dead and quickly went into reverse, almost treading on my toes.

‘Someone
is
living here. There's a caravan.'

We returned to the farthest extent of the fencing in front of the house and followed it around the other side towards the rear. Here, the builders must have run out of the tall wire mesh panels, a final one lashed roughly to a plum tree that had probably at one time been part of an orchard. Now there was just waist-high grass and weeds between piles of rubble and rotten timbers.

Treading carefully we made our way along the back of the house and over to a stone wall at right angles to it, actually the rear of another building. There was an open doorway in it, a light breeze bringing the unmistakable smell of cooking. Patrick signalled to me to remain where I was and went over to look carefully around the door post. Then he came back to me, shaking his head and we went back the way we had come into the lane.

‘Nothing?' I enquired when we were at a safe distance not to be overheard.

‘Nothing, just a bloke smoking outside the caravan while his dinner cooked. I'll follow my own advice and leave well alone for now. We could always come back on Monday morning.'

‘If you wave your SOCA warrant card at whichever estate agent handled the sale you can find out who this place belongs to now.'

‘Good idea. And it was only a rumour. I suggest, just in case, that we go back by another route so we won't be spotted.'

We made our way, bending low and keeping a pile of pallets between us and the house, to a field gate, which was open. We quickly walked downhill in the lee of a thick hedge and after several hundred yards or so – although to me it seemed like miles – picked our way over rough ground, climbed over a stone wall, slid down a steep bank and finished up in a narrow lane. It was now getting dark.

‘I wish you'd said it was going to be this sort of walk and I'd have dressed accordingly,' I grumbled, muddy, extravagantly stung by nettles and with my heart for some reason going like a trip-hammer.

‘I can hardly be expected to know in advance how things are going to turn out,' Patrick observed.

‘You know what?' I shot back at him. ‘It would be wonderful if our life together didn't have to feel like constantly being on manoeuvres.'

The man in my life set off up the lane, saying over his shoulder, ‘Perhaps you shouldn't have joined.'

Tears sprang to my eyes and then, unbelievably, a huge sob surfaced that I was too late in smothering with a hand. Others followed and I discovered that to stand helplessly in a country lane, unable to stop yourself bawling your eyes out is a dreadfully humiliating experience. Almost immediately I found myself taken in a hug.

‘Ingrid, I'm sorry,' Patrick murmured into my hair. ‘I'm a real bastard. I don't know what made me say that. I didn't mean it.'

I fought to get myself back under control and then said, or rather gulped, ‘I'm actually feeling pretty exhausted.'

‘Home then,' he said decisively

I started to walk up the lane with him but again stopped, appalled to find how weak and shaky I was and, worse, had strange ringing noises in my ears. ‘I'm really sorry,' I told him. ‘I must have the flu coming on or something. I feel quite—'

A ghastly stinging sensation hit my nose, throat and lungs and I coughed. Three worried-looking people stared down at me.

‘Thank the good Lord for that!' Elspeth exclaimed, screwing the top back on the smelling salts. ‘Patrick, that was far too far to take the girl for a walk when she was looking so tired.'

‘Ingrid didn't say anything about being tired,' said Patrick.

‘Men!' snorted his mother. ‘I thought she looked fit to drop.'

Realizing that I was lying on the sofa in the living room of the rectory I said, ‘Where all dilapidated Gillards and their family and friends are placed to have their wounds bathed. I'm on hallowed ground.'

Everyone looked worried again.

‘Perhaps you ought to call a doctor, my dear,' John said to his wife.

‘No, I'm fine,' I assured them, sitting up. ‘Just – tired.'

I discovered later that Patrick had succeeded in catching me as I fainted but had then been forced to lay me down in the recovery position in the road in order to call his father and ask him to pick us up. Really concerned as I was showing no signs of coming round – I think I was probably merely deeply asleep by this time – he had then carried me to a road junction to meet John, collecting, I gather, odd looks from passing motorists. No one had stopped and offered to help.

‘Perhaps you ought to go for a check-up,' Patrick said the next morning after I had slept dreamlessly for twelve hours. His gaze became a stare. ‘You're not pregnant, are you?'

‘I could well be pregnant,' I answered, having done a little mental arithmetic the night before. My internal arrangements have always performed like clockwork: as Patrick himself had once put it, to his chums in the mess of course, ‘You could put the moon right by her.'

There was rather a long silence.

Then Patrick said, ‘As you know, after I was blown up in the Falklands the medics assured me that I was firing mostly blanks. Then we tried hard for a baby, had Justin, then Victoria by accident and only bothered with birth control when we thought about it. And now …'

‘I'm getting older,' I reminded him. ‘It's quite likely just a false alarm. And don't forget, Vicky was very premature and almost didn't survive so the auspices aren't good.'

Another silence.

‘Would you be pleased if I was?' I asked.

Ye gods, a soppy smile infused over his face. ‘Of course.'

To be honest I did not know whether I was overcome with joy or not. Possibly … not.

‘Until we know for sure and to be on the safe side you shouldn't come with me tonight when I have a look at the warehouse.'

‘I'm hanged if I'm going to be wrapped in cotton wool!'

‘No, I mean it, Ingrid. I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you – either of you.'

As when husbandly edicts had been previously issued, and aware that once upon a time, a long time ago, I had promised to love, honour and obey, I dissected the wording of this one very carefully. It did, like slightly ambiguous decrees in the past, I decided, actually state an ideal situation. To be on the safe side of course I should not go. But nevertheless I would. This was because Patrick was far more important to me and the four youngsters for whom we were already responsible than a mere question mark.

T
here had been no question of my stowing myself away in the Range Rover or anything silly like that, if indeed it was possible. Even stupider would have been to borrow John or Elspeth's car as I could not explain my reasons without causing them worry. So I had done none of these things, merely having gone out into the garden after dinner to make a phone call on my mobile. Then, later, when the rector and his wife had gone to bed, Patrick left, having mentioned to them earlier that he would be going out for a short while. A little later again I had slipped out of the house and walked the short distance up through the village to the junction with the main road.

‘You're quite sure he's following orders in taking a look at this place?' James Carrick said, ever cautious as far as Patrick is concerned. He had not said so but I knew was pleased that I had brought him up to date with our hunt for the tall man, although obviously I had not mentioned Robert Kennedy's name.

‘Positive,' I told him. ‘I was there when he made the call to Greenway.'

We were walking along one of the old cobbled roads in Bristol Docks, the masts and funnels of the restored
S S Great Britain
silhouetted against hazy moonlight in the easterly sky. Most of the warehouses have now been converted into apartments but original corners with what were once old inns remain, some of these now up-market restaurants, where slaves were once brought in on ships and shackled in the cellars before being taken on to work in the tobacco plantations of the southern states of America. I never feel comfortable here.

James was not comfortable either. ‘I'm still not too sure why he didn't want you along. Is it trouble he's expecting?'

‘I might be, that's all.'

He stopped dead. ‘What? You're pregnant?'

‘I fainted yesterday and there is a slight chance,' I snapped. ‘He always goes off the over-protective deep end.'

‘The man'll kill me.'

‘I'll tell him the truth – that I didn't let on until we arrived.'

‘D'you know where this warehouse is?' he asked after a heavy pause.

‘No.'

‘Does Patrick?'

‘I don't think he knows the exact address – only that it's around here somewhere.'

‘I ken the first thing that'll happen is that we'll bump into
him
,' James said unhappily, and as it happened, with uncanny foresight. ‘I'd better ask in that pub just up the road there or we'll wander around looking for the place until dawn.'

‘Surely it's not still open.'

‘According to my colleagues here these places hardly ever close.'

James had been gone for at least a minute before I noticed though the smoky air – someone had lit a fire of waste wood where a building had been demolished – a certain vehicle tucked almost out of sight in an entrance to a defunct yard right next to the pub. I tore after him, mentally running out cannon and manning the starboard braces. We collided in the doorway to the lounge bar.

‘Patrick could well be in here,' I told him breathlessly. ‘So we might as well make a threesome now.' If I survived the first broadside, that is.

‘He can't be. I had to search for the one waitresss who they said might know where the warehouse is – the landlords are newcomers and most of the staff are Poles. I'd have seen him.'

‘You wouldn't,' I replied tersely. ‘Wait here.'

‘Ingrid, I've been right through the place, the beer garden, bars and all.'

‘OK, you go and look in the gents while
I
wait here.'

He returned quickly, shaking his head.

‘Wait here,' I said again.

As I suspected, Patrick was in the public bar – a nautical nightmare festooned with anchors, mainbraces, Davey Jones' lockers and stuff like that – playing darts, hair all over his face, shirt hanging out of his jeans, a large smear of what looked like used engine oil together with a superior smirk on his face. Whether this activity had anything to do with undertaking in-depth research for his assignment I was not sure but thought not. Does he miss working undercover for MI5? Oh, brother.

I went over to the bar, walking slowly, wiggling my hips, and made an exaggerated play of undoing the front zip of my top a short way – no, quite a long way – in order to take out the ten pound note I had stuffed inside my bra before I left the rectory. Odd, the feeling that you instantly have every male eye in the room fixed on you. Except one, that is: it was his turn to throw and he had his back to me.