Corpse in Waiting (14 page)

‘Medium height, broad shoulders, dark receding hair, swarthy complexion, one gold earring and a bit shifty-looking?'

‘Yes, exactly like that. You've obviously seen him.'

‘He was talking to her outside the hotel where she was staying in Bath. She said he was looking for a commercial premises for her.'

‘If it's the same bloke – and it sounds like him – I doubt that. His name's Stefan and she told me he was the odd-job man at the office block where she had her business. She employed him to do extra things like clean her car or even drive it if she was going out for the evening when she stayed in town and wanted to get plastered. I didn't mention her drinking like a whole shoal of fish, did I? No, Stefan's not very bright. I wouldn't even trust him with buying an evening newspaper.'

‘Do you know his surname?'

‘Sorry, no.'

‘I don't suppose you have the address of this agency.'

‘No, not exactly but I know where it is. There's a newish building in what must be the only scruffy street in Kensington. It's in the style someone I know once described as Albanian Slaughterhouse Revival. It's horrible – you can't miss it. Boyles Road.' He smiled and my heart thumped again. ‘The name says it all really.'

I thanked him and finished my tea.

‘Are you staying in Warminster tonight?' Kilmartin asked.

‘No, I'm off home.'

He glanced at my card. ‘Hinton Littlemoor. That sounds nice. Only I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner with me. I've never met a writer before.' He laughed. ‘No evil designs, I assure you. I don't want to be slowly taken apart by your husband.'

I refused as graciously as I could.

NINE

O
n the verge of panic, a youth with red and orange hair and wearing a tee shirt with the words Attack of the Killer Robots printed on the front was staring at me through the opened driver's window. ‘You – you all right, like, Mrs?' he stuttered.

I rather thought I wasn't.

The Range Rover was at quite a steep angle pointing downwards and seemed to be partly inside a small tree. I turned my head a little and saw that the jagged end of a broken branch that had come through the windscreen was about six inches in front of my nose. Glass was everywhere. Automatically, I reached out to turn off the ignition but my arm was either trapped or broken: I could not move it. There was blood on my jacket which seemed to be dripping off my chin. Wriggling round carefully despite being tightly braced against my seat belt, my body feeling strangely numb in places, I turned the key with the other hand.

‘Has someone called the police?' I asked the youth, who was still gawping at me.

‘Dunno.'

‘Do you have a mobile?'

‘Yeah, but there's no money on it.'

Heaven only knew where my handbag had ended up. ‘Please go and find someone who can dial 999,' I asked him, trying to stay calm for his sake.

‘I'll go and see the woman whose garden it is.' He scrambled off up a grassy slope.

Garden? What did the stupid boy mean, garden?

What the hell had happened?

I had had an accident, obviously, but could remember nothing about it.

Without warning the car slid a little farther and I flung my upper body towards the driver's door window just in time before being impaled on the branch. I simply dared not undo my seat belt and try to get out in case the inevitable shift in my weight made the vehicle career down into what might be a deep hole, taking the tree with it, or even flip over on to its roof.

Land Rovers aren't cars, someone had once said to me, they're a legend.

‘So please stay right where you are,' I said out loud.

It slid a little more and then juddered to a halt again.

Time went by. I might have lost consciousness, or even dozed in some kind of stunned apathy, and when I was again aware of my surroundings the car seemed to have moved again, the branch now pressing into the side of my head, forcing it almost out through the open window. The fact that I prefer to drive with it down on a warm day rather than use the air con was paying off in bizarre fashion.

Sirens.

Then, when I was beginning to think they had gone somewhere else there were voices followed by clanking and clinking noises.

The car jerked slightly.

Several people slithered down to where I was, one of whom I knew.

‘Someone said you were
dead!
' James Carrick exclaimed.

‘How are you here?' I said.

‘Because the registration of this vehicle is in my personal database so that it gets flagged up when anything happens to it that shouldn't. The medics are here, Ingrid, and the fire brigade guys have just fixed a winch-line to the tow bar so you don't finish up in the bottom of the valley. You're going to be fine.'

I wanted to believe him.

I could imagine the comments.

‘Women drivers.'
(Sighs all round.)

‘They do get distracted easily and admire the view.'

‘Or be busy fiddling around with the CD player.'

‘Ingrid being a writer does mean she tends to live in her imagination – for days on end actually.'

‘Yes, that must have been it; she was working on the plot for her new novel.'

‘Shame about the car though. What was it, fifty-odd thousand quid's worth?'

‘Nearer sixty by the time we'd had it customized.' (
Groans all round.)

After the paramedics had established that I had no visible major injuries I had been gently eased out of the car and placed on a stretcher, my head immobilized in case of neck injuries. A large splinter sticking out of my cheek had been removed there and then in case it was accidentally knocked and created a larger wound.

What felt like hours later I was checked over in the A&E department of Bath's Royal United hospital. I was staggered to discover that nothing was broken, and I was suffering only from mild shock. That was it, sent home with some painkillers.

James Carrick had stayed with me and seemed to have abandoned work for the rest of the day, not that there was much of it remaining unless he had planned overtime.

‘This is really kind of you,' I said gratefully as he helped me, still shaky, out of his car.

‘I've a professional interest in this too,' he said.

‘How so?'

‘Well, being as the pair of you have worked for state security departments, are on foreign terrorists' hit-lists and you've told me you can't remember what happened
and
no other vehicles were involved I'm regarding your car as a crime scene until I learn otherwise.'

I suppose I gaped at him. ‘No one else was involved?'

‘No, there was no glass, bits of metal, skid marks or any of the other tell-tale signs you get when vehicles collide. So yours is on its way to be gone over with the proverbial fine tooth comb. I've told them I want a verbal report today.'

‘Patrick loved that car,' I said sadly.

‘Och, he'd rather you were in one piece.'

I wasn't too sure about that, murmuring, ‘I must have dozed off at the wheel. I haven't been sleeping too well lately.'

‘Don't beat yourself up about it. I shall want a statement from you if you're feeling up to it.'

We were slowly making our way towards the front door, my arm through his. ‘You're triffically senior to do things like statements,' I remarked.

‘It gets me out of going to a deadly boring late meeting.'

Our eyes met and we both laughed, the aching ribs of the accident victim instantly making her wish she hadn't.

‘You've told Patrick about this, I take it?' Carrick asked casually.

‘No, not yet. He'll only come rushing home and I could do without a husbandly hoo-ha right now. I hadn't mentioned I was going to see Alexandra's ex-boyfriend either.' A memory came into my mind. ‘Oh, I've just remembered, I was followed to Warminster by a black Merc. But I managed to lose it.'

I had given James my keys and he paused in unlocking the front door.

‘When did you first notice it?'

‘Not far from here. Just past the junction with the main road at the top of the village.'

‘Did you get any details of this vehicle?'

‘No, I was too busy getting rid of it.'

‘And where do you reckon you shook it off?'

‘On the outskirts of Warminster.'

‘If it's relevant and not just a coincidence they might have had a good idea where you were heading to by then. And we mustn't forget that someone pretended to be your nanny saying she was ill. Did this man Kilmartin give you anything to eat or drink?'

‘Yes, tea and biscuits. But look—'

Carrick interrupted with, ‘Perhaps we ought to get some blood tests done on you.'

‘But he was
lovely.
He hates Alexandra now.'

He grunted. ‘You did get a threatening phone call from a man.'

‘James, he has no
motive.
He said he wished he could help me. But he did give me directions of how to find the office from which the woman runs her agency.'

‘OK, BUT DON'T GO THERE ALONE!'

Several small people, plus Carrie and Elspeth, then investigated why a policeman was bawling me out in the hall.

I was putting my feet up having given James his statement – although I could hardly remember anything – aware that Elspeth had asked him to stay to dinner as he had mentioned that Joanna would not be at home, attending her Italian evening class. He had thanked her but said he intended to hoover their old farmhouse home while she was out to save her doing it so would leave straight away. I knew he was worried about her having another miscarriage and fully agreed with his intention for if there is one piece of household equipment born with a wish to kill you it is a vacuum cleaner.

Katie put her head around the open door. ‘May I come in, Auntie?'

‘Of course.' I patted the space beside me on the bed and she came and sat down.

‘Is Uncle Patrick coming home now you're a bit hurt?'

‘Probably, but I haven't told him yet.'

‘Because he'll be cross about the car?'

‘Sort of.'

‘He'll be very glad you're not worse though.'

‘That's true.'

‘Did another car hit you?'

‘No, apparently not. I can't remember exactly what happened.'

‘That's quite usual. I read it in a book. In detective stories the bad men do something to cars and people go over cliffs. Only no one would want to do that to
you.
'

I wondered what she had been reading. If she was anything like me at that age it would be stuff that was rather . . . unsuitable.

‘I've been reading your books,' Katie said all at once in the manner of someone keen to get what might be thought of as a transgression off their chest.

‘They're not really meant for people quite so young as you,' I pointed out but feeling ridiculously chuffed. Other writers whom I have met have grumbled that their offspring, without even picking up a volume, regard their work as though engraved on stone tablets, hopelessly outmoded. Either that or ‘difficult'.

‘I read
A Man Called Celeste
. Is he Uncle Patrick?'

‘Yes, he is – with a few small changes.' Ye gods, what had she made of the somewhat steamy love-making?

This question and answer was having almost the same effect on me as driving the car off a road at Limpley Stoke.
A Man Called Celeste
: a tale written when Patrick and I had got together again and I was very, very much in love with him. I suppose delayed shock caught up with me then because I burst into tears. I became aware of a small arm around me.

‘Shall I ask Grandma to phone him?'

I sat up and made a fairish attempt to dry my tears. ‘No, I think I'd better do it, thank you.'

‘Auntie, I know Mum's still alive but . . .'

She is, in and out of treatment for her drug addiction in York. We monitor the situation and recently had not been disappointed to discover that she wanted nothing more to do with her children. At one time she had tried to gain custody of them purely in an attempt to get her hands on jewellery and a very valuable old watch left to them by their father.

‘What, Katie?'

‘Can I, or rather Matthew and I, call you Mum? We feel a bit sort of outside because Justin and Vicky do. And then we'll have a Dad again too. That's if Uncle—'

This was something we had never pushed, not even mentioned, because they had loved their father dearly and his death had been an enormous blow to them.

‘Of course you may,' I replied, giving her a big hug and shedding a few more tears.

‘I'll ask him though,' Katie said decidedly. ‘Not just . . . do it.'

The problem with living with both the young and the getting on in life is that they all worry about you far too much. I increased the dose of the painkillers slightly and discovered after a short while that I could move around fairly normally, using the comparative freedom from aches and pains to shower and wash my hair. I still had not told Patrick what had happened, which was daft of course as he rang shortly afterwards to find out how Carrie was. Elspeth, who was cooking everyone's dinner on her beloved Rayburn in the rectory kitchen, took the call.

‘Ingrid, I think
you'd
better speak to Patrick,' she called up the stairs as I was preparing to descend.

‘What's up?' he asked when I had picked up the phone in the bedroom. ‘What's happened? Mum sort of clammed up.'