Cobweb (14 page)

‘So you weren't living here then?'

‘No, it weren't warm enough.'

‘It was, though, wasn't it? – unseasonally hot, with thunderstorms.'

‘I told you: I weren't here.'

‘Where do you live when you're not here?'

‘Mind your own bleedin' business.'

Patrick had wandered away for a short distance – remaining close enough to provide assistance if the need arose – and was looking at the greenhouse, or what was left of it, with interest.

Abandoning that question for now I said, ‘The lady of the house told us that you walk the boundaries before dark. Did you do it on that night?'

‘I can't remember – probably.'

‘And you saw nothing then?'

The man shrugged. ‘Can't say as I did.' He turned to move away.

‘I've not finished yet,' I said. ‘Or would you prefer to carry on this conversation down at Woodhill nick?'

‘I saw and heard nothing!' he shouted in my face.

‘We'll take a walk down to the southern boundary,' Patrick called across to me. And to the gardener, ‘It's all right, we'll find our own way.'

‘I was hoping you'd back me up there,' I said stiffly when we were out of earshot.

‘It doesn't always do to lean too hard on people right at the beginning. Why didn't you insist on an answer to the question about where he lived?'

I thought about it for a moment or two and then said, ‘Because I was worried that he'd get really aggressive.'

‘And shove you over and there's a lot of broken glass lying about. Yes, exactly. So he's someone to keep an eye on then. That greenhouse is made of teak, by the way.'

We exited the walled garden through a narrow gate on the far side and immediately found ourselves in an overgrown semi-wooded area obviously used as the site for bonfires and compost heaps. There was a large pile of wood – broken off branches of trees and so forth that looked as though they had been torn off in winter gales. We followed a path of sorts that wound between the trees, going downhill, the sound of traffic on the motorway getting louder. It did not take long to reach the limit of the property, a brick wall in dire need of repair.

‘Thora probably has no idea it's this bad,' Patrick said musingly, gazing at a broken-down section. ‘Anyone with a mind to could get in through here – or out.' He looked around quickly. ‘Please stay in this area and trample about noisily. I'm going back to have a quick look at Danny's living quarters.'

‘Be careful,' I urged. ‘He's awash with grudges and I'm sure there's a GBH or two in there somewhere.'

He went from sight, leaving me to walk along by the wall, careful not to trip over dislodged bricks, scuffing my feet though the grass and humming softly. It seemed to me that it reflected exactly our efforts so far on the investigations: plodding around on the edges, making noises. Perhaps my own perceptions were flawed and I had made a mistake in persuading Patrick to change tack. Perhaps the oracle should have stayed at home and carried on writing fiction.

We have known each other for almost always, or at least from schooldays, the evening when Patrick arrived to help me with my physics homework. The difference between our ages had been like a chasm up until then and I had only just noticed the new head boy and his somewhat aloof manner, mostly, ye gods, because he had had the temerity to tell me off for taking a short cut across the main hall, forbidden to lowly third-formers. Looking back, even now, I cannot recollect even the trace of a smile on his face as he issued the reprimand. My dad giving me the news several days later of his impending arrival – the two fathers were friends – had initiated a mood of gloom and when Patrick had walked through the kitchen door he hadn't been smiling then either. In short, he had sat and simmered, the unsaid message being that as girls were always lousy at physics, what was the point anyway?

Something most odd had happened to me at that point. I had drawn a neat line under the words ‘Specific Gravity' while somehow undergoing a headlong plunge into womanhood. Here was the man I wanted for ever and ever. But he was not of the kind to be won by flaunting my nascent bosom beneath his nose, then little more than ribs with embellishments. No, there was far more to Patrick Justin Gillard than that.

We soon discovered that we could make one another laugh and after that evening we became involved not with physics but chemistry. All that summer we went for long walks on Dartmoor – both families lived in Plymouth in those days – with the dogs, picnicked, rode our bikes. My parents were delighted with our friendship, for, after all, Patrick had no bad reputation of any kind, his main interests being singing in the choir and going fishing in the Tamar. Then, one afternoon, we had laughed until we cried, hugging one another in the hot summer sunshine. A delicious feeling had gone though me as I had felt his lithe body move beneath the thin material of his shirt. For the first time we had kissed deeply, up until then having greeted one another with just pecks on the cheek. One moment we had been children and the next as close as two people can become. Intense pleasure had come as a huge surprise and for the rest of the holidays we had escaped to the Moor and wrung every moment of it from our young bodies.

We knew we were doing wrong, of course; opinions on such matters were different then and we had both been strictly brought up. I have never forgotten the day not so long afterwards when Patrick had a crisis of conscience and proposed to me and my reply had been that, yes, one day I would, but at the moment I was only fifteen. He had attained a shade of paleness that, up until then, I had thought humanly impossible. But he had repeated the offer, come hell, horsewhips and jail, and I had accepted, on condition that we waited several years and said nothing to our families until we became engaged. After that we had forgone the intimacy: I simply had not had the nerve to approach the doctor for the Pill, as he was another family friend and neither Patrick nor I had wanted a baby as a result of what we increasingly thought of as ‘furtive sex in a damp ditch'. It was not easy – in fact I can remember it being hellishly difficult – but gave our relationship a depth and power that it has never lost.

After a few minutes of strolling slowly along by the wall I began to fret; I always do. Telling myself sternly that Patrick was more than a match for any once and future poacher, grudges or no, I turned and started to walk back the way I had come. Then my eye was drawn to a pile of bricks built up like a cairn but well away from the wall itself, half-hidden by a clump of hawthorn bushes. I went over to it.

It immediately became clear that what I was looking at were items of clothing hastily screwed up together, the bricks piled over them in an effort to conceal. What appeared to be the end of one leg of a pair of jeans stuck out from the bottom, a fold of pale cloth that might be part of a grey sweatshirt was visible from higher up the pile and near the top peeped out a section of cuff. All the fabric was wet, that on the ground muddy, and the cuff material, probably part of the sweatshirt, was blotchy with pale-pink staining. Was it blood almost washed out by rain?

I hurried back to my starting point by the broken-down section of wall. I had not really expected Patrick to be back already and he was not. I did not think he would come back by the same route either: undercover soldiers never forget their training. Nevertheless I jumped out of my skin a couple of minutes later when he silently came up behind me through the gap in the wall and whispered, ‘Boo!'

‘Anything interesting?' I enquired in superior fashion, heart thumping.

‘His hovel is as filthy as he is,' was the laconic reply.

‘How did you get on the other side of the wall?'

‘There are gaps everywhere.'

‘I've found something.'

Patrick surveyed the heap. He bent down, sniffed it in several places and then said, ‘There's a lot more bloody cloth inside here. It's decomposing but doesn't smell rank enough to be from game animals. I think it's human – unless I'm losing my touch.'

Half an hour later Fred Knightly himself was present while Scenes of Crime personnel took photographs and then carefully dismantled the pile of bricks. As I had predicted, the Super did not share our suspicions about the find; in fact, he left shortly afterwards. Patrick, meanwhile, with a constable as back-up, was questioning Danny in the potting shed. I had volunteered to escort Knightly and those with him to the discovery, found myself ignored by all and sundry and was in time, on returning to the walled garden, to see Danny being frogmarched in the direction of an area car.

‘He denied knowing anything about the clothing, which is obviously a lie as we already know he patrols the grounds, and then gave me a mouthful of abuse,' Patrick reported. ‘And now I'm a policeman and not allowed to threaten, or even start, to wring suspects' necks, I've had him taken to the nick for formal questioning. I suppose we'd better tell Her Ladyship that he's helping with enquiries.'

Patrick's wry comment had a bizarre sequel. Danny – or, correctly, Daniel Smith – continued to refuse to answer questions, tried to attack a constable in the interview room, ranted and raved and generally behaved extremely badly. This was not first-hand knowledge as far as Patrick and I were concerned, but information given to us by the duty desk sergeant when we called in at the nick late that afternoon to see if there were any preliminary findings on the items of clothing.

Fred Knightly appeared, looking peevish, obviously searching for someone. His gaze lighted on Patrick, who, even more obviously, was not the one he sought.

‘A word,' he snapped across the reception area. ‘My office.'

Patrick clicked his heels and followed at the double, the oracle trotting to keep up.

‘It's just occurred to me that you must be used to interrogation methods, having worked for the security services,' the Super said, slamming the door behind us. ‘And this little shit of a gardener is a problem that I could well do without. He's a well-known poacher of deer and game on the Essex farms and estates and has been involved with thefts of cattle and sheep. It has to be animal blood on the clothes and I can't be doing with all this rural, cowboy stuff right now, as far more important things are going on – as
you
well know. Is his name on the list Gray made that you keep banging on about?'

‘No,' Patrick said.

‘Question him. I don't care if he trips and bangs his nose on something or walks into a door before it's actually made a formal interview. Pin him for his latest foray into private property armed with snares or a shotgun, have him bailed and get rid of the bastard.'

I went into full preparation mode for Patrick making like a Cyberman and deleting Knightly, but it did not happen. He said nothing, merely gave me a sideways smile and we left the room.

‘He's dangerous, mind,' Knightly shouted after us, perhaps with his conscience twinging. Perhaps, on the other hand, not.

I said nothing in the way of warnings as we made our way, my husband being perfectly capable of perceiving the dangers – several of them.

Smith had been brought back from the cell where he had been banished to cool off and was in one of the interview rooms, where, as a result of Knightly having trawled through those present in the canteen, two burly traffic cops were keeping Lady Thora Trillingford-Apsley's gardener company. Patrick sent them away.

‘Don't bother to swear in front of Ingrid, old son,' he said in disinterested fashion. ‘She knows all the naughty words and might even teach you a few. And you can forget throwing punches, as that won't get you anywhere either. Now, do we have a quiet little chat without tape recorders and all the boring stuff like that
first
or do I do as I've been ordered and beat you to a pulp to get some answers?'

Smith mouthed something obscene and then sat with his arms folded, staring into space, ignoring us.

‘Fag?' Patrick enquired. He took a packet from his pocket and tossed it on the table.

Scowling, the man helped himself to one and I was astounded when Patrick did the same, produced a lighter from the same pocket and lit both. To my certain knowledge he has not smoked for over twenty years except for the very occasional small cigar. Perhaps it was because of the aroma emanating from the suspect – possibly ferrets.

Smith was staring at the lighter that had been put with the cigarette packet. ‘Those are mine!' he bellowed.

Patrick blew out a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘So they are. I used to be in an undercover unit a bit like the SAS – went over all your stuff while you were back in the greenhouse and had an idea I'd be lumbered with interviewing you. So don't lie to me, because I don't need to beat you up. I can make you scream without leaving a mark on you. How long have you been working at your present job?'

Smith visibly decided to co-operate. ‘A coupla years.'

‘Quite a while then. Where d'you live when you're not sleeping over the potting shed?'

After a longish pause Smith muttered, ‘I've got a caravan.'

‘Where is it?'

Another silence. Then: ‘Behind the Blue Boar at Kingsbrook. I help out there too.'

‘What's the name of the landlord?'

‘Joe. Joe Masters.'

‘And you shift casks and clear up – things like that in lieu of rent?'

‘That's right.'

‘I take it the bike in the potting shed's yours.'

‘Well, I can't afford a bloody car, can I?'

‘Those clothes under the pile of bricks – whose are they?'

‘I don't know nothing about them.'

Patrick turned to me. ‘Perhaps you'd better go and then you won't be upset when I get started on him.'

I started to rise.

‘No!' Smith yelped.

‘No?' Patrick echoed.

‘I'll tell yer.'