Fatlands (7 page)

Nevertheless, the etiquette of our intimacy required that I pretend otherwise. He came back and handed me a cup.

‘So what you doing here, Frank? I thought Arsenal was playing Manchester United?'

‘Saturday, Hannah. They play on Saturday. How often do I have to tell you?' He sat down and put his feet on the desk. ‘Ginny had a Spanish class reunion. There are twenty-three people in my sitting room eating
tapas
and talking
Guernica
. I thought I'd get ahead of the accounts.' He took a swig of the coffee. I probably don't need to tell you that Frank has never been ahead of the accounts in his whole life, but it was nice of him to have such a good excuse. ‘However, since you're here, maybe we should do a little work instead. What do you think?'

‘I think it's better than staying home and crying,' I said lightly, but it still sounded heavy.

He nodded. ‘Good girl. So—d'you want to start or shall I?'

I had more to say than he did, but that was only proof of how little he'd been told about the job in the first place. It had come in at the last minute. 6.15 on a Friday afternoon. By phone. The man said he was Tom Shepherd and there
had seemed no reason to disbelieve him. He was due to pick up his daughter the next morning from her boarding school in the West Country, but some urgent work had intervened. Frank had offered it to me because—well, take your pick. It sounded like girl's work and he knew I needed the money? Or because a football team he liked had something better to do with his Saturday afternoon?

Then I told him my side. He listened, grunting every now and then. And when the telling got difficult he pushed me through the pain with a few brisk questions. And so we got from the crime to the investigation.

‘Big bloke, yeah? Dark curly hair. Not a great bedside manner?'

‘Yeah, that's him. I didn't get his name.'

‘Don Peters. He's one of the graduate whiz kids that's going to wipe out the IRA and still have time for breakfast.'

‘So, it was the Anti-Terrorist Squad?'

‘Who else would it be? The way you tell it someone blew up the car.'

‘Yes, but not the IRA.'

‘Hardly, seeing as the ATS have been made redundant in that area. And even if they hadn't—come on, Hannah, use your brain. You're not that grief-stricken. What's the difference between IRA bombs and the one you saw?'

‘Um … IRA bombs … big, sophisticated, usually made with plastic explosives, imported rather than home grown, Semtex mostly.'

He nodded. ‘See. If it had been a bomb like that, you'd switch on the ignition and boom—one big blast to hell, or wherever they think heretics go. But that's not what you saw, right?'

I tried to think about it without really seeing. ‘No, no … er … there were two blasts. A small one, then a bigger
one to follow. The second must have been the petrol tank.'

‘You got it. And the first was probably petrol too. Fire bombs in the trade. Not the cleverest of devices, but they do the job. They've done it before.'

‘Bristol, 1990,' I said quietly. ‘The owner of the car was OK, but it took off the fingertips of a passing baby.' I remembered it well. Little niece Amy had been pushchair size then, but Kate had insisted on carrying her everywhere in a sling for the next three weeks on the grounds that if they went, at least they'd go together. It had seemed a bit melodramatic to me, but, of course, I couldn't say it.

Frank, meanwhile, was back in police files. ‘Yep, although in that case, interestingly, they used plastic explosives. First time. But the year before, when they went for the university building, it was definitely a fire bomb. Generally works better against property than people. Used in fur shops or department stores, it sets fire to the stock, then wrecks it further when the sprinkler system goes off. Lot of damage to come out of one little cigarette-packet bomb.'

‘And meanwhile Tom Shepherd was too busy with his rats to find time to celebrate his daughter's birthday, ' I said softly, sitting again in a car looking out over sunlit Wiltshire fields.

‘What?'

‘Nothing. Just something she said.' It was funny how neither of us had used the words yet. The love that dares not speak its name. The British obsession with animals gone crazy. ‘You think it's animal rights?'

He shrugged. ‘Animal rights in the shape of the Animal Liberation Front. Who else?'

‘But—I mean, they don't kill people.'

‘They do now. You start putting bombs under people's cars and it's only a matter of time.'

‘But if it was petrol, it would have been connected to the ignition. Wouldn't it?'

‘Maybe, maybe not. You'll have to wait for forensics to tell you for sure. If there's anything left for them to go on. Why?'

I shook my head. ‘I just don't remember her going for the switch. I mean she couldn't drive.'

‘So maybe it was a duff connection. They're amateurs most of these boys. It did the job, anyway.'

‘But why Shepherd? I know he was working on cancer research, but so are hundreds of others.'

‘Did she tell you that?'

I nodded. I was finding it hard to swallow.

‘And did she tell you who he works for?' I shook my head. ‘Vandamed. With the biggest independent cancer research department in the country. Shepherd's head of it. Lot of money, lot of prestige, and a
lot
of animals. Prime target.'

‘My God.'

‘Not only that. He's had death threats before.'

‘What! Christ, Frank, why didn't—'

‘Because I didn't know.' And for the first time I realized how angry he must be too. ‘All I knew was what you knew. A guy rings up wanting his daughter chaperoned. Only possible problem is a deranged wife.'

‘So how did you find out?'

He made a face. ‘Well, not from Don Peters, that's for sure. We never got on, even when I was high enough up the ladder to shit on him.'

He grinned. Only I was too busy to congratulate him. Too busy running it all back, seeing how it ought to have been. How that morning it should have been Tom Shepherd who got up in the dark and walked out to his car, just as I did to mine, with the thought of a two-hundred-mile round trip in front of him. Except his would have proved
to be a longer journey. And that way Mattie would have lost a father, but she would still have been alive. And I would not be nursing this gnawing pain at the corner of my soul. I shook my head. I had to remember whose fault all this was, and not blame the wrong person. So he didn't love his daughter as much as his work. It wasn't a crime. Jesus, what exactly could he be doing to his rats that would make it worth blowing him off the face of the earth? And if they were out to get him, then why the hell hadn't he told us? That one seemed worth following up.

‘You tell me. But I betcha he's been asked the question enough times by now.'

‘Yeah, but not by me.'

We both heard it in my voice. He looked at me for a moment. ‘And what good do you think that would do?' he asked carefully.

‘It would make me feel better, for a start.'

He shook his head. ‘Hannah, nothing's going to make you feel better. That's the point. So he tells you? What do you do then?'

‘Maybe I'll go look for the guys who did it.'

He smiled. ‘Two years catching shoplifters and she thinks she's Inspector Morse.' In other circumstances it's my role to laugh at Frank's Jewish mamma impersonation. In other circumstances it can be quite funny. ‘Hannah, she's dead. The boys don't like animal rights in the first place. So now they've got a stiff on their hands, they're going to be breaking their balls to bust the guys who did it. There'll be a hundred coppers out there, all of them better trained and better informed than you are.'

‘So? I've got you. What they know you can find out too. It was a Comfort job first. They'll understand. You're always telling me about their private codes of justice. If I were animal rights I'd probably prefer to be arrested by me than by them.'

From the way he was looking at me it was clear he thought I was reverting to type. In Frank's book even the best women let it happen to them. Emotion versus reason. Or for that you could read passion versus indifference. He shook his head slowly. ‘Uh-uh.'

‘Frank—'

‘Hannah, I know what you're feeling, but it's too big for you.' He paused. ‘And, believe me, even if it wasn't, it'd hurt too much doing it.'

I stared at him. ‘And how much will it hurt not doing it?' I said quietly.

He sighed and pulled open a drawer. Then he held out an envelope. It was big, brown and fat with soft stuffing. I knew what it was but I asked anyway.

‘It's the money he owes you.'

I took it and flicked it open. A cushion of notes, and they weren't fivers. I'm not as fast as Frank, but even I knew there was a good deal more than there should have been. I looked up.

‘It's a bonus,' he said evenly. ‘From him, not me. It arrived by courier. I think it means the job's over, Hannah.'

And I thought of Mattie's money belt, bulging with crisp little guilt notes. ‘Yeah,' I said quietly. ‘Well in that case it's not enough.'

A
s detecting goes, the first bit was easy. Vandamed's London research centre was in the book and Tom Shepherd's home phone number had been on Frank's notes for the job. When I got through to the flat it was a policeman, but then I expected that. Tom Shepherd wasn't there. He had gone into work. Drowning his sorrows, no doubt. I asked the PC if anyone had claimed responsibility yet, but he clammed up and said I have to talk to DI Peters about that. Good old Frank. Never misses a description.

The research centre was on the other side of London, but the traffic was easy. I even parked in the employees' car park. I didn't expect Reception to let me in, so I wasn't surprised when they didn't. I called from a phone booth across the street and got through to the research offices. It rang a long time. When he answered, the voice sounded anxious, as if he was expecting bad news. Maybe I was it. He didn't want to see me, that was clear enough, but when I told him I was standing outside his window and I'd still be there when he got out, he didn't have a whole load of option.

This time Reception let me in and even gave me my own personal security officer to take me to the research building. Shepherd met us at the lift door.

All I had seen the night before had been a head buried in hands, a stubble of grey-black hair and a halo of grief.
Now I found myself standing in front of a solidly built man in his late thirties, with well-cut features and a day's growth of beard. OK as looks go, but not the stunner his daughter would have turned out to be. Mind you, it was hard to tell with his eyes in that much trouble. He looked like a man who'd been given sedatives and then decided not to sleep. God knows what his waking dreams had been made of.

He led me into a small office and closed the door. He stayed standing. You could see the last thing he wanted was to talk to me. And now it came to it, face to face with his grief I found myself unsure of what I wanted to say.

‘I got the money.' It came out rather abruptly. ‘Thanks, but you overpaid me.' He frowned as if he didn't understand what I was saying. And I could see that he was going to have a hard time stopping himself from breaking down, which was exactly what I didn't need. ‘I came because I thought it might help to meet me. I mean, I thought there might be things you wanted to ask … seeing as I was the last one …'

He shook his head. ‘There's nothing I want to know from you. Thanks.' He added it almost as an afterthought. It was a good voice, dark and precise. I needed to hear it again, to see if I might recognize any of her intonations, her mannerisms of speech. But I couldn't think of anything to say. Except the one thing he wouldn't want to hear. I said it anyway.

‘Well, there's something I want to know from you.'

‘Which is?'

‘Why didn't you tell us about the threats?' He looked at me evenly. ‘The police said you'd received death threats from the Animal Liberation Front. You should have told us. I should have known.'

He stared at me for a moment, and it struck me he might be fed up with emotional women. Certainly I could
feel that somewhere the grief had given way to anger—only when he spoke, none of it showed in the dead voice. ‘And what difference would it have made if I had?'

Oh, not much, only that I would have checked under the car, that's all. Say that diplomatically. I gave it a go. ‘It meant I wasn't looking for the right things.'

‘Are you telling me you would have saved her?' And this time the anger came shining through. Mine as well as his.

‘I'm telling you I should have known.'

He made a fierce little gesture with his hand, as if batting away my stupidity. ‘Do you have any idea how many scientists get threats from the ALF? In this building, for example? Do you know how many people have been leafl eted or insulted at one time or another? Most of them. Multiply that by every research establishment in the country and you've got one hell of a number.'

‘But the police said yours was a campaign.'

‘It was more than one threat, yes, but that hardly registers as a campaign. And there'd been no violence. No bricks through the car window, no razor blades in my personal mail. Nothing special. If you work with animals the ALF is a fact of life. If you let them undermine you, then they've made their point. The reason I didn't tell you was the same reason
I
don't go out every morning and check underneath the bonnet of my car. Because I refuse to give them the satisfaction of my fear.'

It sounded good. Except … ‘Except this time they were serious.'