Rainstone Fall (13 page)
‘Is the safe in here?’ I asked.
Tim snapped on his tiny torch. ‘Fifty quid says it’s behind that yucky painting.’ The yucky painting was a Renoir print of a garden scene in a gold frame, hung at an awkward height that just screamed wall safe.
‘Then get to it, I’ll keep an eye out for the thirsty lady.’ I tiptoed into the hall and stood at the top of the stairs. From here I could see Darren the goon still comatose on the sofa. Clinking of glass was followed by the swish of silk. Mrs Telfer appeared carrying a fresh drink and stood beside the blissed-out sleeper. ‘I can’t believe you managed to get ratarsed so quickly.’ His limbs were splayed wide, one leg resting on the floor. She gave it a half-hearted prod with a slippered foot. ‘You better get your act together by the time Barry comes back. He’ll expect me drunk but he’ll expect you sober.’
I withdrew sharpish as she turned towards the stairs. I closed the office door behind me and hushed Tim, who froze. When I heard the bedroom door close at the end of the hall I signalled to him to continue. As my eyes got accustomed to the dark again I could make out Annis leaning against a filing cabinet, her arms crossed in front of her. The Renoir print had indeed swung back on hidden hinges like a door. Behind it was a disappointingly small grey door with one combination dial and one handle. Tim had the safe wired up with electronic gadgets like a patient having his physical. He was wearing headphones, listening to the innards of the mechanism. One gadget showed a glimmer of red numbers in the dark. Tim spun the dial this way and that, then stowed all his gear in his bag before laying a hand on the handle. If there were unexpected alarm bells to go off then this was the moment. I could hear him take a short breath and hold it. Then he pulled. With a satisfying little click the door opened. I was by his side with my Maglite torch in my mouth. There was no time to sort through the content. Take everything, the voice had said. I emptied it into my bag: a fat, gaping envelope stuffed with fifties; a heavy box file; some slim plastic folders; a lady’s mink fur hat and a small, blue jewellery box. I checked there was nothing left in the darkest recess, then zipped up my bag while Tim closed the safe and swung the painting back into place. The rest was easy. We tiptoed out of the place like comic strip burglars, past the sleeping Darren and down to the pond where Tim took the time to empty and rinse the vodka bottle, leaving it floating in the pond. There was every chance Darren might be found queuing at the Jobcentre tomorrow.
We parted company on the other side of the hedge.
‘I’ll go back in Tim’s car, if you don’t mind,’ Annis said. ‘For purely olfactory reasons of course.’
Okay, I’d definitely have to do something about the smell in my car. While Annis and Tim, who had parked in a side street off Lansdown hill, walked up I walked down through the tufty grass, climbed the by now familiar fence, crossed the little plantation of trees without the aid of a torch and slithered into Charlcombe Lane only a few yards from where the DS was parked. Not bad for a cloudy, moonless night, I told myself.
Annis’s absence in the car allowed me to play a tape of Turkish pop music, which she detested, at nosebleed volume. It was small compensation though and an acidic stab of jealousy marred the satisfaction I should have felt at having the wherewithal to free Louis in a holdall on the seat next to me. I could hardly curb my curiosity as to what on earth, besides the money, could have been so important but sensibly drove off immediately. The money would come to about six grand, I guessed, not an amount to commit kidnap and risk life imprisonment for. The real reason had to lie in the files, unless the little jewellery box contained a very rare bauble indeed. My hand crept towards the bag but headlights appeared over the rise ahead and passing in this narrow lane took some negotiating. I dipped my headlights and slowed, looking for a passing place. The other car’s headlights remained on full beam and it zoomed close so fast I had no choice but to stop completely. Smelling a rat I quickly locked my driver door but by the time I reached over to the passenger door it was being yanked open. Even if the guy in the balaclava hadn’t brandished a nail-studded baseball bat there was little I could have done to stop him snatching the bag, it happened so fast. He slammed the door shut and vanished into the dark. Having all my doors locked would probably only have resulted in having all my windows smashed, since another guy, also dressed in combat jacket, jeans and balaclava and identically armed, appeared between the lights and my car. I checked behind me. Another vehicle with only sidelights showing lurked not far behind. The second guy swung his baseball bat at my near-side front wheel, puncturing it with a nail, then took out my last remaining headlight with an almost casual swipe of the bat. The whole operation was over in seconds. The car in front reversed at speed until it slew around where the lane briefly widened. With the headlights facing away at last I had the fleeting impression of a dark blue car, a Golf or one of its rival clones. The one behind me seemed to have vanished into the night.
For a while I just sat, muttered short and useful words and thumped the steering wheel. What had the voice said? ‘When you’ve pulled it off, we’ll know. We’ll be in touch.’ They’d just been in touch and I had done the one thing I had promised Jill not to do: let the ransom go without seeing her boy safely back first. How was I going to explain this? I was glad now that Annis hadn’t been with me since she might have tried to put herself between the bag and the baseball bat.
When my heart finally stopped hammering against my rib cage I got out and inspected the damage. One very deflated tyre. I dug out my torch and went looking for the car jack and the spare in the boot. There was no car jack. I vaguely remembered using it to prise open a chained-up door a while back . . . My breakdown service had recently sent me a polite letter suggesting I invest in a new car, better servicing or try someone else entirely next time since I had relied rather heavily on their assistance recently. There was only one thing to do: I called Jake. After he had roundly cursed and insulted me and my piece of effing French junk he promised to pick me and the DS up asap. Then I called Tim’s mobile. He answered on the second ring.
‘What’s up, Honeypot? Where are you? We just got in.’
I told him.
‘You’re shitting me. Sorry, obviously not. Are you all right? Did they say anything? Sure they didn’t leave the kid somewhere in the lane?’
‘Not where I can see but then that doesn’t mean much since there’s no street lighting up here. If they had meant to hand over the boy they wouldn’t have snatched the loot armed with clubs but you never can tell. I’ll check the lane while I’m waiting to be picked up.’
‘Perhaps they just wanted to make sure we didn’t have time to study the stuff too closely. Perhaps they’ll just let him go now.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps we’ll never hear from them again and Louis never comes back. Because he’s dead already.’
‘But why would they kill him?’
‘Because they don’t want to be identified? Because the kid saw their faces? Because kidnap and murder carry the same penalty anyway? Because they’re arseholes? How would I know?’ There was silence at the other end. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I’ll have a recce up here while I wait for Jake to pick up this wreck. It’ll give me time to think about how I’ll explain this to Jill.’
‘Do you want us to call her?’ Tim offered.
‘No. No, I’ll go round there myself later.’
‘Oh, okay.’ I could hear the relief in Tim’s voice, which made me appreciate his offer even more. I terminated the call and walked up the lane. My little torch that seemed so appropriate in the confines of a room to be burgled sent only a feeble glow into the vast darkness of the night. I walked as far as the row of little white cottages, then walked all the way back past my car and as far as the next house a few hundred yards along. I was half hoping, half fearing to find the boy, tied up and gagged, perhaps, and waiting to be found and released, but there was nobody, there was nothing. When I could hear the big diesel engine of Jake’s truck I jogged back. Jake was the long-suffering mechanic who had kept the DS running all these years. He worked out of what used to be a small farm between Bath and Chippenham and specialized in restoring classic cars – classic
British
cars, as he never stopped reminding me – and without him the old Citroën would long have gone to the scrapheap.
‘Which is where this thing belongs, Chris,’ he reminded me as he attached the cable to the front under the unkind glare of a massive light fixed to the cab of his truck. ‘It’s a wreck, a disgrace. You think this has street cred? It had ten years ago perhaps when you could still recognize it as a motor vehicle. If you were hoping for the Withnail-and-I look I’m afraid I have to tell you: the missing headlight’s a nice touch but otherwise you really overdid it. Now it’s just junk.’ He engaged the winch and the DS creaked slowly up the ramps.
I really didn’t want to deal with this but it served as a welcome distraction from the other monumental failure of the day. ‘It’s only a flat tyre,’ I whined.
‘Nonsense,’ he contradicted. ‘It’s everything. You don’t think you could drive around in
daylight
with this, do you? The police would have you pulled over in no time.’
‘Can’t you straighten that out? It’s just cosmetic, really . . .’
He put the chocks in place and tightened the straps that secured the DS on the flat bed of the truck. ‘Cosmetic? I would need to use embalming fluid. The bodywork was nine-tenths filler anyway. I can’t go on giving you dodgy MOTs because someone’s going to die in this if it stays on the road.’
If the car restoration business was ever a bit slack he could always try clairvoyance. He pulled his baseball cap off, baring his bald head in mock reverence. ‘It’s had it, Chris. You couldn’t afford to have this restored and I don’t want to restore it. Start thinking about a replacement. Come on, I’ll drop you off at your place.’ He slapped the cap back on his head.
I climbed into the messy cab strewn with pork pie wrappers and empty fag packets and wedged myself into the corner like a sulking kid. The fact that I had just messed up the handover of the ransom sat so heavily on me I could not bring myself to grieve much over the final demise of my DS21. I would have to use the Norton for a cold and windy while and unless I could lay my hands on a useful amount of money soon it might be rather a long while, too. Roofers had to be paid. I owed half of my troubles to one stormy day.
And the other half? There was a hollow where my stomach should be and somewhere in that hollow sat a hard ball of fear, the size of a child’s fist. There couldn’t be even the slightest pretence now that I was still in control of the situation. A woman whose son’s life depended on me was waiting to hear my explanation of how I intended to get him back with nothing to bargain with; the roofs of my house and studio had large plastic-covered holes in them; I had a show coming up and no paintings to enter and a love relationship, the triangular nature of which seemed to be shifting and distorting. To top it all off I just had my means of transport declared as unfit for use as I appeared to be myself.
Jake hustled the big truck along the deserted lane, flaying the hedgerows in the process. ‘And how’s things, apart from car trouble?’
As the hours drained away like molasses from a leaky tin the atmosphere at Mill House became stifled, stale and desperate. No phone call, no message. I gave myself until the morning to abdicate from detective work for ever.
Annis and I had delivered the bad news to Jill at her place in Harley Street in person. There were no tears and no recrimination, just hollow-eyed quiet fear.
She remained implacably opposed to calling the police. ‘I’m too scared. But I’ll call my sister now.’
Back at Mill House nobody slept much. Tim dozed in one corner of the sofa, I haunted the other while Annis stayed curled up in the big blue armchair, the one my father had killed himself in. Ashtrays were full and the sour taste of too much coffee and cigarettes complemented the grinding headache behind my forehead. All night the blustery wind had thrown rain against the blind windows like handfuls of grit. When dawn finally came it was barely an improvement. Dirty clouds rolled low over the valley and the light was feeble. I started the morning rituals of breakfast for form’s sake. It helped me mark the end of the night, the end, I hoped, of our helpless waiting around. Decisions would be made today – one way or another – and we would be released from limbo. Handing round tea and toast felt like the first positive thing I’d done for a long time. It was acknowledged by grunts and mumbled thanks and restored some life into the deadly tableau of the last few hours, yet nobody found anything new to say. A few remarks about the dreadfulness of the weather soon dried up. Everything else had been discussed to death.
It was nine o’clock exactly when the cordless phone that had been lying in the middle of the coffee table like a dead thing gave its electronic warble. All three of us jumped and made some kind of involuntary sound. I grabbed the handset, took a deep breath and answered.
‘You’ve got the stuff then, all of it?’ The voice sounded thin and far away.
Instant sweat formed on my hands. ‘What do you mean? You got it all.’
‘Don’t fuck about, Honeysett. Take down these directions. Bring the stuff, all of it, mind, wrapped in several carrier bags, and take –’
‘Hold it. I don’t have the stuff.’
‘What the fuck do you mean, you don’t have it? I know you cleaned out his safe, the grapevine’s buzzing with it.’
‘And two blokes with balaclavas and baseball bats mugged me for it in Charlcombe Lane five minutes later. I presumed that was you. You’re telling me it wasn’t?’
‘Of course it fucking wasn’t, we had a deal, why should I have to mug you for the stuff? You handed it over? You didn’t even put up a fight?’
‘How do you know I didn’t put up a fight?’ I protested.
‘Because you’re not talking from a hospital bed, you arsehole. You totally fucked this up.’
‘Where is Louis? We kept our side of the bargain, we emptied Telfer’s safe. Someone obviously knew that was going down and only you could have told them, we certainly didn’t. So return the boy. Keep your side of –’
‘Shut up, Honeysett. Do you think I’m going to all the trouble of snatching the kid and feeding him baked beans and Hula Hoops and listen to him whining all week just so I can give him back for nothing? I can’t believe you fucked this up. If I find out you are trying to pull a fast one I’ll make you regret it.’
‘I don’t. I was held up. Baseball bats studded with nails. I wouldn’t do anything to put the boy in danger.’
‘Shut up, now, let me think.’ There was a brief pause. ‘All right, Honeysett. I’ll find something else for you to do. Until you deliver, the boy stays where he is.’ The line clicked dead.
‘Verdict?’ Annis asked after a moment of intense silence.
‘He said it wasn’t him, or them, that held me up in Charlcombe Lane. Someone else knows what’s happening here, but whoever has Telfer’s stuff now isn’t connected with the kidnapping. Something seriously weird is going on here.’ I thought of the man in the hat watching us through binoculars. ‘This all smells somehow of a turf war between rival gangs, everyone ripping off everyone else, with us smack in the middle. The worst thing about it is he won’t hand over the boy until we’ve pulled some other stunt for him.’
‘Did he say what he wants?’ Tim asked, looking worried now.
‘No.’
‘I know you don’t want to hear this, Chris,’ Annis said, ‘but I think it’s time we went to the police. We’re completely at this guy’s mercy and Jill has had about all she can take, not to mention the boy’s –’
‘Save your breath, I agree.’ It seemed obvious now. I had felt defeated ever since I had lost the ransom loot in Charlcombe.
‘You do?’
‘I do.’ It was more than just the logical conclusion of an operation gone so wrong that it could no longer be expected to work out well and it was more than fear for the boy’s well-being. It was a leaden tiredness and a sudden and complete loss of faith in my own abilities. Standing in the middle of the room, uselessly holding on to the phone, with two pairs of expectant eyes on me, I felt like running away. I’m only a painter, I felt like saying, this isn’t my kind of job. Had I volunteered for this? Must have done. Whatever for? Did I really need this much excitement? ‘I’ll take it straight to Needham, personally, no phone calls, it’s safer that way.’ I chucked the phone on to the sofa.
‘You want us there?’ Tim asked.
‘No, you lot stay here.’
Half an hour later I was riding the Norton through blustery wind and rain into town, nearly blinded by the moisture on my goggles. The rain stung my face. I was on my surreptitious way to the police station where I would explain to Superintendent Needham how I had got myself into the biggest mess of my less-than-illustrious career as a private eye. It would not count as betraying a client’s confidence since Jill was by no means a client but it was without doubt an admission of total failure. And trust. What if I was laying Louis open to reprisals? I was no longer sure whether I had to take the death threat seriously. Surely that was just something kidnappers said to frighten you?
Halfway down the London Road I got a bad case of the jitters. I began to feel as though I was caught in the cross hairs in a madman’s rifle sights. I was getting more paranoid by the minute. I checked over my shoulder – the Norton had no mirrors – every few seconds, not knowing what I was looking for.
I parked the bike in the motorcycle bay in North Parade Passage, locked up the helmet and stuffed gloves and goggles into my pocket. I’d try and see Needham privately. I had to arrange for us to talk outside the station where we couldn’t be overheard. I’d make sure though that someone heard me say that it had to do with the Albert Barrington murder, not that I thought that was any guarantee that our kidnapper, if he had an ear in the station, wouldn’t somehow suspect foul play. Foul play . . . Who was I playing foul? The kidnapper? Hardly. But was I breaking a promise to Jill for ‘her own good’ or the boy’s or for my own peace of mind? Did I simply want to abdicate responsibility because I’d had enough? I couldn’t deny that I was planning to heave a deep sigh of relief and hide in my studio for the foreseeable future from the moment the police took charge of this mess.
I was walking along Manvers Street on the opposite side from the police station and slowed down now to check the cars in the car park in front of it. Needham’s big grey saloon was in its reserved space. Traffic was steady. Just as I got ready to dodge across between two buses a voice behind me piped up. ‘Sir?’
‘What!’ I turned around and found myself looking at a young man of perhaps twenty. It was hard to tell because only the small tanned oval of his face was visible as he peered out through rain-blinded glasses from the enormous hooded plastic poncho that covered him and what for his sake I hoped was a rucksack.
‘I’m supposed to give you this.’ He breathlessly held out a folded piece of paper. His accent was antipodean and he might have sprinted from the backpackers’ hostel a few doors down.
It was a lined piece of paper from a notepad, folded into a small rectangle and already damp. I opened it up. It was written in biro in hastily scribbled capitals.
HOPE YOU’RE NOT THINKING OF TALKING TO THE POLICE. TOLD YOU I’D KNOW. TOLD YOU WHAT WILL HAPPEN. WAIT TO BE CONTACTED.
‘Who gave you this?’
‘Some guy.’ He gestured over his shoulder.
‘Where? What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know, only saw him for a moment. Back there at the corner. He wore a hat. Gave me a fiver to catch you up.’ He was already moving on, towards the station.
‘Wait a second, I need a better description than that.’ I tried to hold him back by the arm but he shook himself loose.
‘Look, mate, I can’t stop, I gotta make the fuckin’ train to Heathrow. I’m outa here, your weather’s turned to shit, mate, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
I trotted beside him. ‘What kind of a man was he? I mean was he young, old, tall, short, fat, slim?’
‘Just normal, like. He wore a hat. I only saw him for a second and I can’t see much through wet specs anyway. Rain’s always a pain in the ass.’ He peered at me over his wet glasses.
‘What else was he wearing?’
‘Jeez, if I’d known you’d give me the third degree I’d have told him to forget it. Some coat I guess, nothing so it’d stick in your mind, all right?’
That always depended on the mind, I thought, and let him get on. I watched him weave his way through the traffic between bus and railway station. I looked around, behind me, along Manvers Street, scanned the pavements full of pedestrians pushing hurriedly through the rain in both directions. Where was the dark sinister stranger in a hat watching from a street corner? Where was the threatening soundtrack that always helped TV detectives to know when they were being watched with ill intent? The rain stopped abruptly. A long row of faces in a passing tourist coach looked up; I followed their gaze. The dark clouds were being rolled back by a high wind and bright, broken cloud followed from the west. By the time I had squelched my way back to the Norton the sun had made an appearance. Good, my jeans might dry off eventually. I used my sleeve to wipe the water off the seat, started the engine and rode off towards the unfamiliar sunshine.
There was not much else I could do. I had to be seen to be leaving. Nothing could have better reinforced the paranoid feeling that I was constantly being kept tabs on than the note that seemed to burn acidly in my pocket.
Told you
what will happen
. Go here, don’t go there. Stop, start, fetch.
Wait to be contacted
. The impersonal phrase did nothing to hide the very personal nature of the relationship: I’ve got you by the balls and you will do my bidding. His bidding, his robbing. A man in a hat.
How long would I let myself be blackmailed? Wasn’t it in the nature of blackmail that it never stopped, that the blackmailer never went away? Would it be all over, would Louis have been reunited with his mother by now, if I hadn’t let myself be mugged of the ransom? Who had held me up in the lane after the burglary? All three of us had sworn blind that we hadn’t told a soul. That almost certainly meant that either the kidnapper himself had bragged about it in the pub or he had himself staged the mugging. I was not in a position to steal it back, whichever scenario held true, because I didn’t have the first idea who I was dealing with and I had the distinct impression that shouting ‘Who are you?’ down the phone might not make him give me his name, address and National Insurance number. It was beginning to dawn on me that not only did I have Louis’s abductor on my back but very likely a third party that knew what I was doing and when I was doing it (one which might soon be joined by Mr Disappointed of Lansdown demanding his stuff back, possibly with menaces).
While I was furiously chewing this over and without giving it much thought I’d hustled the bike up Lansdown Road and turned into Charlcombe Lane. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find as I rumbled past the scene of my humiliation and indeed I didn’t see anything that might be of use. But not so much further on stood a cast-iron signpost pointing towards the village of Woolley and the Lam valley where I had strange and unfinished business. I slowed to a less ferocious pace, took the turn and began to enjoy the sun as it dodged in and out of clouds as though desperate to dry the steaming land below. I passed small orderly farms, fields of grazing cows and sheep, yards full of scratching chickens and a herd of alpacas eyeing me as curiously as I did them. In the tiny village of Woolley the Norton’s growl brought children out into the single track lane that connected the small community with the outside world. I turned a corner and immediately a steep descent brought me down to the bottom of the valley where I crossed the Lam brook via a narrow bridge near the old gunpowder mill. Following the undulating lanes I soon reached Spring Farm where I’d met Jack Fryer struggling with his subsidy application. The gate to the yard was firmly closed and there was no sign of life. But the unmistakable smell of several thousand chickens reassured me that he hadn’t yet packed it all in. I shunned the muddy turn-off towards Grumpy Hollow and Gemma Stone’s ramshackle herb farm and rode on along the deserted lane. A horse poked its head over a hedge and snorted. I rode on until I came to a fork in the road and instinctively took the left; it was narrower and the road surface was nearly worn away. After I had passed a long and dilapidated structure made mainly from corrugated metal and girders, the tree-lined road lazily rose and fell for a quarter of a mile. Then it suddenly climbed steeply before broadening out as I approached what simply had to be Lane End Farm. One minor clue of course was the fact that the lane ended here at a high and substantial modern gate set into a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The fence ran up the side of the hill to my left where it disappeared into the trees. A sign fastened to the chain link advertised the fact that there was
24 hour
Security
, illustrated with the drawing of an uncommonly ferocious-looking dog. To the right the fencing seemed to run across the entire end of the valley, which was much narrower here. The other clue, keeping in mind what Jack Fryer had said, was that beyond the fence lay what looked like a mix between junk yard and building site.