Blood Substitute (21 page)

What was worse was that other than saying that they had ditched the idea of Greenway's mock assassination he refused to go into any details about how he intended to undertake the mission. There was a part of me that knew why: on an assignment for D12 when he turned himself into a Hell's Angel he had got himself tattooed and still has the shadowy outlines of those brutal disfigurations on the backs of his hands, more visible in the winter when he is not so tanned. I had wept bitter tears upon seeing them for the first time.

So this then, I reasoned, was bound to be another belt and braces change of appearance. I had to admit it was necessary for there was still the worry that our faces had been visible on video footage of the CCTV cameras at Slaterford and Sons when we had first wandered around the store, and in the side street afterwards before Patrick had gone back and set off all the alarms. Even his removing his jacket and giving it to me prior to re-entering the shop might have been recorded and closely scrutinized.

I went home, taking the car: it was of no use to him. When I arrived I found a huge and gloriously scented tied bouquet waiting for me, amazingly from Michael Greenway. The words on the card were, ‘Don't think that he's on his own. The entire system is behind him.'

‘No, he is and it isn't,' I said out loud, my eyes misting as I put the flowers on the dresser. ‘He's missing a piece of
his
system – me.'

I knew that James Carrick was staying in London for the time being, and was rather hoping that I could count on his sending a few trickles of intelligence in my direction. But over the next few days during which I threw myself into domestic matters, the children, the horses, and a house-to-house charity collection in the village, I heard nothing. Late on the fifth day, a Saturday, I could stand it no longer and rang James's mobile number. All I got was his recorded voice requesting me to leave a message. I did.

Still I heard nothing. I had been at home for almost a week.

My writing had come to a standstill: the idea of producing something dark, Sherlockian and bog-ridden as out of the question now as when I had visited the place where Cliff Morley's body had been dumped. Perhaps I ought to go back to writing romance, I thought dully, and this time not permit the hints of intrigue and lawlessness to permeate and finally take over my novels. Or perhaps go in for humour. For what I needed, surely, was to laugh a bit more.

I cried instead.

On Sunday night I had the nightmare of the scarecrow climbing in through my bedroom window again, so vivid, so
real
,
that when I awoke, sweating and shivering, I told myself that I must be sliding into mental or physical illness. Unaccountably, I then fell asleep again to slumber dreamlessly until six thirty and when I woke up this time I knew, going bananas or no, what I was going to do.

Fortunately, this week was half-term. Elspeth had already suggested I might like to take the children to Hinton Littlemoor but we had put the idea on hold as she had gone down with a bad cold. I knew though that she was disappointed and at just after eight I rang her. Minutes later – she told me was feeling much better – and after telling her the absolute truth that I felt I ought to stay near to home in case Patrick needed my help I had arranged for Carrie and the children to go to Somerset for a few days. Carrie could help with the extra work but would be given plenty of time off, the older children could take sleeping bags to save washing and they would all be right away from Dartmoor and any possible danger.

I hated not being involved with the investigation and for a short while on that Monday morning, when Carrie and the children had left, I contemplated driving out to have a snoop around Sheepwash Farm. Common sense prevailed, mainly because I had no idea what Patrick was planning to do. For all I knew some vastly complicated sting operation had been put into place there and by turning up I would hazard everything.

Common sense held the high ground until the next morning, a bright and sunny one, when, unable to concentrate on writing but loath to completely abandon the basic plot for the book on which I was supposed to be working, I picked up the phone and borrowed a Land Rover.

The Series 3 was old and belonged to a local farmer friend who would lend it to anyone he knew who would top up the petrol tank afterwards, the vehicle, as he put it, always reluctant to pass a filling station without stopping. I had driven it before and although it was noisy and a bumpy ride it stormed up the rutted Dartmoor gradients in jolly and unstoppable fashion that was great fun. More important to me now was that it was a ‘normal' kind of vehicle in this landscape and would not attract attention like our somewhat top-of-the-range Lichfield conversion Range Rover.

To the right of the drive to our cottage is a small pasture field with a ridge down the centre that runs roughly parallel to it where there was once an ancient boundary. Glancing over the hedge as I drove up it on the short journey to the farm I noticed, not far from the gate that opened on to the road through the village, a scarecrow that I could not remember seeing before. You don't put scarecrows on grassland unless it has just been reseeded, surely.

Do you?

‘It's nothing I've done,' had said the owner of the Land Rover, whose field it was. ‘There's a village in Cornwall where I've heard they have scarecrow-making competitions. I expect it's something to do with the school.'

I left the sunshine behind: central Dartmoor wreathed in strange low cloud that enveloped the higher ground and tors like a grey hat, the top of the tall communications mast at Princetown actually sticking out into the sunshine above it. Visibility in the village was not too bad but by the time I was heading for wilder areas it deteriorated until it was down to about thirty yards. I persevered for a little longer and then pulled up in a passing place to mull over the wisdom of continuing. I was just setting off again in order to look for somewhere to turn round, having decided to give up for the day, when my mobile rang.

‘It's me,' said Patrick's voice. ‘Is everything all right?'

He sounded strained. I told him everything was fine and that the children were at his mother's.

‘Where are you?'

Interested in his reaction, I told him, adding, ‘Only I'm going home now; it's too foggy to see much.'

‘I'm glad you are. Please stay away from that area. Sorry, I really can't talk now. I'll try and get in touch later.'

I stared at the phone when he had rung off. Had he rung just to check on my whereabouts?

Whether the mist really did thin a bit then – that's what I told myself anyway – or it was just my own bloody-mindedness I nevertheless started off again and continued along the track. I knew it quite well now but the mist concealed all landmarks, both large and small. I almost hit a bullock that I had assumed was a rock on the verge until it heaved itself to its feet and walked into the road at the last moment. At least I could console myself with the thought that I could not get lost because there were no turnings that I could inadvertently stray off on to.

A little later I realized I knew exactly where I was: on the straight stretch above the mire. I decided that I would drive right by the entrance to Sheepwash Farm, as any farmer going about his or her business might, and make for the gate that led on to the open moor. There I would pause for a few minutes before turning round and heading back. That was if there was nothing interesting to see.

The ground rose and there, ahead on the left, loomed the gateway into the yard. I slowed and glanced over. No vehicles were in sight, the outline of the house only just visible. All looked empty and deserted but I had learned that appearances here could be deceptive. I drove on until I reached the gate a short distance away and saw that there was room to turn without going through it. For a heart-stopping few seconds I got stuck in a boggy bit, engaged four-wheel drive and the vehicle hauled itself out, shedding dollops of thick black mud.

Again I paused as I went past the farm. This time the house was slightly less obscured and I saw that smoke was coming from one of the chimneys. At this point I decided to do as Patrick had requested, that there was someone in residence could be reported when we next spoke. He was hardly likely to divorce me over it.

When I got home the scarecrow was farther away from the gate, closer to the cottage.

It not being anywhere near April Fools' Day or Hallowe'en I donned wellies, walked up the drive, into the field and approached the object in question. I had not imagined it; the scarecrow was now a good fifteen yards from where I had first seen it earlier.

And here it was, constructed around a stake, the no doubt pointed end of which was firmly rammed into the ground. The body was made of a plastic fertilizer bag stuffed with straw – there were bits poking out of holes in it – tied in the middle with string. A straw-stuffed pair of trousers were fixed to this, no boots or shoes, and the jacket it wore, buttoned up, had merely been draped over the top, the sleeves inserted inside a wooden cross-member. The head had been made out of one leg of a pair of tights stuffed with screwed-up fabric of some kind, topped with what looked like a hank of false hair, a party wig perhaps, and an old cap.

I noticed these details afterwards, when I had recovered from the shock. What I saw first was the face, a laminated life-sized photograph of a man who must surely be Steven Ballinger. He smirked at me, the defiant and superior smile of a gangland thug, a murderer, who knew where I lived.

I have an idea I stood staring at this thing for a full two minutes, numb with shock.

Did I leave it here or not? Did I inform the police? Did I mount a watch on it, staying up all night if necessary in order to see who was moving it? I found I was shivering, not able to make any decisions. I could not remember telling anyone about my nightmare other than Matthew. Yes, and Patrick. But where had I mentioned it to him? I remembered; it was in Slaterfords, when we had gone up to the top floor. The whole area must have been bristling with snooping devices.

This female is not the kind to lock herself in a house and allow herself to go down with a monumental attack of the heebie-jeebies. I forced myself to be practical and examined the ground. On the top of the ridge here it was quite firm, certainly not sufficiently soft to show any footprints, mine included. I went back to the gate where it was slightly muddy but could see only the imprints of my own boots. There were no tyre tracks on the grass verge by the road either so whoever had brought it had been very careful not to leave any traces of their presence.

But had they? For what I now had, of course, was this man's photograph, if indeed it was him and any number of fingerprints and traces of DNA on the scarecrow itself. Perhaps it was not a picture of Ballinger. I went back and gazed at him trying to remember the figure I had seen in the underground car park at the store. Surely the head had been smaller than this, narrower, thus ensuring that the eyes would be closer together.

I returned to the cottage – I had decided to stay in the main house as the locks on the doors are stronger than on the barn conversion across the courtyard – for a pair of anti-contamination gloves that I knew were in Patrick's briefcase. Then I went back and carefully detached the plastic-covered print from the head of the figure: it had been clumsily stapled on and I was able to remove these with the pointed blade of a kitchen knife. Back indoors I scanned it into the computer and sent it off with an email to Michael Greenway. Fifteen minutes later he rang my mobile number.

‘Are you armed, Ingrid?' was his opening question.

‘I'm not supposed to be,' I replied carefully.

‘I know, but
are
you?'

‘A Smith and Wesson that I know was handed back to MI5 has turned up again in the wall safe,' I told him. ‘Or another one has.'

‘Get it out and load it.'

‘It is already. Is the picture of Ballinger then?'

‘We still don't know what that bastard really looks like. No, it's Cliff Morley.'

My skin crawled.

They still seemed to be one step ahead of us and someone was watching the house, or at least the drive where it emerged on to the road. There were not many vantage points from where this could be secretly achieved: the cottage was in a dip and there are other houses on the road, one close to the top of the drive itself. Unfortunately, a high hedge screens it from the field so no one would have witnessed what was going on.

I had left the scarecrow where it was, on Greenway's instructions as by moving it I might destroy evidence.

‘I must satisfy myself that your car, and landline, haven't been bugged,' Greenway had gone on to say. ‘I'll phone you back as soon as I've arranged someone to do it.'

But as soon as he had rung off the phone on the dresser rang. It was Elspeth, with the news that the children were well and happy and wondering how I was. I told her everything was fine with me as well but I was stuck on the writing. Still she said nothing about plans to sell the rectory.

‘There's something for one of your stories going on in the village right now. Someone's playing a practical joke with a scarecrow. It started off on the far side of the village green to the rectory and has gradually been moved – at night, no one's seen anyone with it – and now it's just inside the lychgate in the churchyard. People are muttering about black magic, you know what they're like round here, and John gave a couple of them a talking to. The children are all agog that it's going to end up in the garden and I have to say it's making me feel a bit creepy.'

‘Have you taken a close look at it?' I asked, trying to keep my voice normal.

‘No, but John has. He said its face is a photograph of someone. He doesn't know who. I said he ought to remove it now it's on consecrated ground but he didn't want to be thought a spoilsport.'

‘Elspeth, I have to make another call right now. Please stay right by the phone and I'll get back to you,' I said. ‘No, on second thoughts, will you switch on your mobile?'