Cobweb (10 page)

‘I really hope it wasn't Erin,' he said quietly. This latest development had obviously come as a real shock.

‘Not a chance,' I said. ‘Come to think of it, the woman had lumpy legs. The guy had two whole ones, spindly, geekish.'

He gazed at me and the sparks of humour were back in the wonderful grey eyes. ‘I don't have geekish one-and-a-half ones then?'

‘You know you don't. They were the kind of thing you see on blokes who wear very short shorts with a longer anorak and are all hung about with tatty knapsacks, binoculars and OS maps in plastic bags.'

‘Smelling of mildew.' He took a sip of my wine and snitched another tomato.

‘Absolutely.'

His mood changed. ‘I think I'll give Brinkley a ring tomorrow.'

‘Please be careful.'

‘No, sorry, I have no intention of being careful.'

I went to the bar and got a glass of red wine for him. I never argue when he speaks like that.

‘What next then?' I asked when he had taken the edge off his appetite.

‘I think it would be a good idea to shelve du Norde for the present unless his name immediately pops up in other lines of enquiry. As you've probably realized, I asked a few questions here just now and mentioned his name but was given to understand by the manager that the boss is the one who answers those kind of queries and he's not here tonight. Shall we follow your suggestion – concentrate on Harmsworth and talk to his sergeant, whom I understand is still on sick leave? It could well be a waste of time, but who knows?'

We discovered the following morning that Paul Boles and his wife Mandy had taken an early holiday and gone to Sussex, where they were staying at an hotel in Lancing. Boles had had to have hospital treatment for a jaw infection and was still not fully recovered. The neighbour who told us this also informed us that the sergeant had been very shaken by the death of his boss, made worse by the fact that he had been one of the first on the scene of the accident.

‘Reading between the lines, the man might be suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress,' I commented as we returned to the car. ‘You will treat him gently, won't you?'

‘You're assuming that we're going to drive down to the south coast right now,' Patrick said. ‘Should it have priority?'

‘Yes, and we can work on Gray's list tonight at wherever we're staying. I mean, you won't want to come straight back and hit the rush hour, will you?'

Giving me an I-see-through-your-cunning-ruse-to-go-on-a-trip-to-the-seaside smile, Patrick turned the ignition key. ‘I won't be able to claim it on expenses.'

‘OK, I'll pay.'

The hotel where the couple were staying turned out to be on the sea front – in other words, overlooking the busy coastal main road, one's choice of view being either houses to the north or, in the opposite direction, a grey-looking English Channel flip-flopping tiredly on to a narrow pebbly beach. We had already decided that it would not be tactful for us to book into the same place – hardly, in the circumstances, a wrench.

The Boleses were not on the premises so we had a very late lunch and then found somewhere to stay in the north of the town, a little thatched pub at the foot of the Downs. When we returned, the tide had gone out, leaving miles of sand, in the direction of which I enthusiastically towed the man in my life.

‘Shall I go and buy you a bucket and spade?' Patrick enquired heavily.

‘Don't be such an old fogey,' I chided and we duly went for a walk on the damp, rippled sand, Patrick in a world of his own. He had not yet phoned Brinkley and I had an idea that he was drafting what he would say together with brewing up some kind of hideous and spectacular revenge on Hicks.

It was a little before six when we got back to the hotel. Patrick spoke to Mrs Boles courtesy of the receptionist's phone – they were in their room – explaining the reason for our presence and inviting them to join us in the bar for a drink and a chat.

‘Not at all pleased, but she said they'd come down,' he reported.

I immediately came to the conclusion, when they came into view and over to where we were seated by the window in the practically deserted lounge bar, that Mandy was the stronger of the two and it was possible that without her Boles would have refused to see us. His nervous state was manifest even though Patrick, who had made sure beforehand that he knew what the man looked like, had got to his feet with a welcoming smile and waved them over.

‘It's a day off for us,' Patrick began, having introduced me to them as his wife and asked what they would like to drink. ‘So nothing official and for goodness' sake don't call me sir,' he added to Boles.

‘But you are here on business really,' Mandy said to me when Patrick had gone over to the bar. ‘And I have to say I rather resent being hounded when we're on holiday.'

‘They're not hounding us,' Boles said to her quietly. ‘If SOCA was doing that, I'd have been recalled to Woodhill.' He was in his mid-forties, I supposed, and was of medium height, a little overweight and had brown, thinning hair and brown eyes. Not a remarkable face, not a man to stand out in a crowd. He turned to me. ‘Is this about the Giddings case?'

‘Not really,' I replied. ‘But I'll leave the questions to Patrick, he's the one who's had his head in all the files. It's not about anything you might or might not have done, though,' I hastened to assure him.

The man did not look any less tense and miserable.

My point was immediately repeated by Patrick when he returned with a tray. ‘I don't want you to think we're checking up on you, because we aren't. SOCA's been called in to investigate the death of two police officers at Woodhill following the murder of an MP. I'm sure you know who these people are, or rather, were.'

‘He can't talk about it,' Mandy interposed quickly. ‘Anything but that. Please. He'd rather he was in trouble, and that's the truth.'

Patrick took an appreciative draught from his beer and placed the tankard back on the table. ‘Have you received threats?' he enquired of Boles in an undertone.

Boles shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that.'

‘Sure?' Patrick whispered.

‘No. It's just that I was there … when the DCI …' He broke off, realized his hands were shaking and put them out of sight beneath the table.

‘Please leave him alone,' Amanda pleaded. ‘I'm terrified he'll have some kind of breakdown.'

‘Nightmares?' Patrick asked, still addressing the DS, his voice a mere breath now. ‘Flashbacks?'

‘He's going to resign,' Amanda declared. ‘He can't live with it.'

‘That won't make the horrors go away.' Patrick told her. ‘And it'll be a huge waste of a valuable officer –
another
valuable officer.' Attention back on her husband, he continued, ‘If Derek Harmsworth's death wasn't an accident and he was killed by the same hand that murdered DI Gray and their deaths were as a result of investigations they were undertaking …' He too broke off, with a shrug and a regretful smile. Then he said, ‘Didn't you question the circumstances? A car going off a bridge in exactly the same place as another vehicle had two days previously?'

‘Yes, I did but—'

Wisely or not, Patrick butted in with, ‘But everyone expressed sadness and said life's a real bitch sometimes but he was getting on a bit and perhaps prone to senior moments and a second's inattention when you're driving …' An eyebrow quirked.

‘Yes,' Boles said in a choked voice.

‘And Knightly called you all together and said there'd be a collection for the widow and he was sure everyone would be very generous but meantime, chaps, the workload's worse than ever and even though he'd asked for extra personnel everyone should get on with it. Am I right?'

‘I – I really did intend to speak to him,' Boles stuttered miserably after nodding. ‘But he's never had much time for me and sort of steamrollers people he feels like that about out of his way. I knew Inspector Gray didn't believe the DCI's death was an accident, so I suppose I decided to leave it up to him. We were both well aware that the boss didn't drink spirits and questioned why he was on that road in the early hours of the morning. I should have grabbed Knightly when I had the chance and told him what I thought I'd seen. But I didn't, and then my tooth really flared up and I had to go into hospital. I – I feel so terribly guilty now.'

It seemed that he might burst into tears.

‘I'm here to help you,' Patrick said, still speaking very quietly. ‘Please try and relax. Enjoy your pint and we'll talk again in a minute.'

Mandy sat there hating us both, not realizing that her husband had begun to turn a mental and emotional corner.

‘What you thought you saw …' Patrick continued a short while later after fetching small dishes of olives and nuts from the bar. ‘Did you mention whatever it was to Gray?'

The DS had not really recovered his composure. ‘No, because he had a habit of getting in a real lather about things. He was very upset and I thought that if I wasn't careful he'd be in real trouble, as he was getting ready to accuse Knightly of sweeping Harmsworth's death under the carpet. But he still hit the roof, the papers got to hear of it and he was carpeted. I was really anxious that if I added more fuel to the flames, kind of thing, with something I wasn't at all sure about, he'd end up by being the subject of an investigation and chucked out.'

Patrick frowned. ‘Is there any suspicion in your mind, any gut feeling, that somewhere out there is a man, or men, who Harmsworth, and even Gray for that matter, were getting too close to in connection with the Giddings murder?'

After considering for a moment or two Boles said, ‘No, not really. We weren't close to anyone. We hadn't pulled in any suspects for further questioning – in truth the trail had gone a bit cold. I don't think this is anything to do with Giddings at all. But that's only my opinion, of course.'

‘Are you ready to tell me what you saw?'

Boles swallowed hard and stared down at his hands, which were tightly clasped in his lap. Then he shook his head mutely, closing his eyes.

‘Please leave him alone,' Mandy begged.

‘If you don't talk out the nightmares, they try to destroy you,' Patrick said. ‘And if this all comes to a court case, would you be able to testify against any bastard who might have killed your boss?'

There was a long silence broken by Boles, the tears squeezing from beneath his still-closed eyelids, whispering, ‘He – he wasn't quite dead when I got to him. The ambulance was right behind me. There was … a lot of blood … and I shall never forget the horrible way the car was sort of folded around him … as though it was
devouring
him. But, God knows how, he saw me and moved an arm and pointed to the side of his neck, making a sort of jabbing movement with one finger. Then he went limp … died right in front of my eyes.' After another long pause he continued, ‘I think he was trying to tell me that he'd been stabbed.' His eyes flew open. ‘You've no idea what I feel like … filth, that's what I am. For pushing all this to the back of my mind. I've betrayed him!'

Patrick extended his right hand and Boles, bewildered, took it, only to have it clasped by another and shaken warmly.

‘That's hardly true,' he was informed gently, ‘because you've just told me and I've been on this job for only slightly more than a week. Nothing's lost and telling Knightly would have probably got you nowhere. Thank you. Come, man, and have dinner with us and over coffee you might recollect a bit more.'

He did: that it was Harmsworth's left arm he had seen and that his watch was missing.

‘Oh, they said it must have got lost in the crash,' said Vera Harmsworth. ‘You know, the strap broke or something like that. I didn't worry about it – I mean, it wasn't valuable.' She added sadly, ‘Not that I wouldn't have liked to have it.'

It was the following morning and we had called on her straight after arriving back in Woodhill. She seemed a bit overwhelmed by Patrick's presence, forcing him to continue with the softly-softly approach. Truly, I was beginning to fear for Colin Hicks's personal safety when everything finally got unbottled.

‘Can you remember the make?' Patrick asked her.

Mrs Harmsworth gave us the coffee she had made and sat down. ‘I can remember everything about it, as I bought it for him, years ago. I got it from an RAC motoring magazine – it had the logo on it – and had an alarm. That was my little joke, really, as Derek kept sleeping through the alarm clock. Yes, I can see it now – it was silver-coloured, had a blue face and an expanding bracelet kind of strap. Very chunky-looking and robust. You had to wind it up, though – it was in the days before battery ones.'

‘So it must have been quite old,' I said.

‘Gosh, yes, it was at least twenty years ago that I got it for him.'

Patrick said, ‘Mrs Harmsworth, would you have any objection if I requested an exhumation and second post mortem on your husband?'

She went pale. ‘On what grounds?'

‘There's evidence, very tenuous, I'm afraid, that another agency might have been at work in the circumstances of his death.'

‘You mean there's really something to point towards it not having been an accident?'

‘There is, but, as I said, the evidence is very flimsy and I'm really sticking my neck out. I only wish I had something better to go on.'

‘I personally would have no objection, because, as this lady's probably told you, I've had a suspicion right from the start that something wasn't right. But I can imagine my son and daughter being distressed by the prospect of an exhumation order. Still, it's not up to them, is it? They decided to go and live in far-away countries and cut themselves off. They both flew home the day after the funeral, you know, and didn't even ask if I needed help with anything. Yes, please go ahead.'