Anything For a Quiet Life (3 page)

He said, “You’re new in Shackleton, Mr Pickett.”

“The very latest thing in lawyers.”

“We’re always glad to see a London man opening up down here. Shackleton’s an expanding place. There should be work for all.”

“I hope so,” said Jonas.

“We get a lot of co-operation from firms like Porter and Merriman and the Bledisloes.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Jonas noted the omission of R. and L. Sykes. If they defended in the Police Court there could be understandable enmity there.

“It makes things easier all round. After all, you’re an officer of the court. I’m an officer of the law. We’re both on the same side.”

Jonas thought, he wants something, and is winding himself up to ask for it. Like a clock getting ready to strike.

“The fact is that I’m going to ask you a favour. Rowe came to see you. I gather you were making a will for him.”

“I can’t comment on that.”

“Of course not. Professional confidence. I understand that. I’m not in the least concerned with how Mr Rowe planned to dispose of his property. It’s only” – it came out with a sudden rush – “do you happen to know his present address?”

“I do,” said Jonas.

“Then could you—”

“I imagine there could be no harm in letting you have it.”

“Very kind of you.”

“It is, care of the London and Home Counties Bank.”

The colour in Whaley’s face deepened slowly. He said, “I think you realise, Mr Pickett, that that was not what I wanted. I meant his address in Shackleton.”

“I’m surprised at you, Superintendent. I couldn’t possibly disclose Mr Rowe’s whereabouts without his consent even if—” he paused fractionally, and then said, “even if, as you yourself pointed out, it was not a matter of professional confidence.”

There was a long pause. Then the Superintendent said, “Tell me, why did you change your mind?”

“Did I?”

“What you were going to say was, ‘I couldn’t tell you Mr Rowe’s address,
even if I knew it
.’ Then you stopped because it had occurred to you that this would not be true. From which I assume that perhaps you do know his address.”

“You add mind-reading to your other accomplishments?”

The Chief Superintendent ignored this. He said, “I can’t force you to let me have this information, but I have to warn you. It can prove to be a dangerous piece of knowledge.”

“And what he meant by that,” said Jonas to Claire later that morning, “I haven’t the least idea. If the police are after Rowe, knowledge of his whereabouts might be dangerous for
him
. But why should it be dangerous for
me
?”

“Search me,” said Claire. “If he wants to find out where Rowe’s hiding, why doesn’t he get his chaps to do something about it?”

“Such as what?”

“Follow him home from the tennis club.”

“I don’t know. There’s something about this that doesn’t add up. I think I’ll pay a call on Major Appleby.”

St. Oswald’s Preparatory School for Boys stood among trees in ten acres of smooth Southdown turf. He found the Major in one of the classrooms, correcting exam papers. He said, “You want a word with my caravanner? You’ll find him in the copse behind the rifle range. I warn you, you’ll have to look pretty hard. He’s tucked himself well away.”

Jonas walked through the patch of woodland behind the miniature range without seeing anything but trees and bushes, and had concluded that the headmaster had misdirected him, when, on his return journey, he noticed a small fold of netting among the bushes, between two trees. Looking closer, he saw that a section of camouflage net had been artfully interwoven with bracken at the bottom and small, leafy boughs at the top. Peering through it he could just make out the shape of the caravan.

A voice behind him said, “Can I help you?”

Rowe had come out from a tree behind which he must have been standing. When Jonas spun round, he said, “Well, if it isn’t Mr Pickett,” but there was not much more friendliness in his voice.

Jonas opened his briefcase, and said, “I’ve brought you your will. Perhaps you’d like to look it over. If it’s what you want we could get Major Appleby and his wife to witness your signature.”

Rowe held the will in his hand, without looking at it. He said, “Would you tell me how you knew I was here?”

“The Major’s an old friend. When he called in on me the other day he mentioned that he had been asked to accommodate a caravanner. I guessed from his description that it was you.”

“I see. I hope you didn’t pass on that inspired guess to anyone else.”

“That’s the second time today,” said Jonas, “that someone has suggested that I might pass on information about one of my clients to third parties. I’m getting a bit tired of it.”

Rowe looked at him steadily for a moment, and then said, “No. Naturally you wouldn’t. Stupid of me. Let’s go in and get this business done, shall we?”

The Major was in his study, with a young girl and an elderly spaniel. He said, “My wife’s out, but my daughter Penelope can act as the second witness. She’s over eighteen, and said to be of sound mind.”

Penelope smiled tolerantly, and said to Rowe, “I do believe Shandy is better already.” Hearing his name the spaniel thumped his tail on the floor. “It must have been what you said, one of those nasty corn spikes got between his toes.”

Rowe squatted down by the dog, and lifted the bandaged paw. The dog did not try to pull it away, but licked his hand.

“It’ll be all right now the poison’s out,” he said.

When the will had been signed and witnessed, Rowe said, “If you’d care to come back to my caravan we’ll settle up. Would you like a cup of tea, or is it too early for a drink?”

“Never too early for that,” said Jonas. The caravan was neat and well organised. Jonas said, “I can see you’re an old campaigner. You’ve done a lot of this.”

“A fair amount. Water?”

“Just a drop. What are your plans for the future?”

“A bit indefinite. Ice?”

“No, just water.”

The warning-off was clear. Don’t talk about the past. Don’t talk about the future. It rather limited possible subjects of conversation. In the end it was Rowe who broke the silence. He said, “I don’t know what your methods of bookkeeping are, but could I suggest that you enter this fee that I’m paying under some such heading as ‘Sundries’ or ‘Miscellaneous’?”

Jonas thought about it. He said, “Actually, we haven’t set up a lot of bookkeeping yet. You’re our first client. So I suppose it’ll be all right. Very well. You shall be a ‘Sundry’.”

“Excellent,” said Rowe. The faint smile which hardly seemed to penetrate the mask of his face appeared once more. “I think that Sundry is a very appropriate description of me at this precise moment. As I told you, I shall shortly be moving on. I’ll try to keep in touch with you. If you don’t hear from me after, say, six months, have a word with my bank manager. At the Westminster branch.”

Jonas promised to do this. He had come to St Oswald’s on foot, and as he walked back into the town he was thinking about his first client. Sabrina had called him a legal fiction. He was certainly an elusive character. All that he really knew about him was that he seemed to have a talent for dealing with dogs.

It was market day, and the streets of the old town were crowded with cheerful Sussex farmers, their wives, families and live and dead stock. When he reached the office Claire was getting ready to shut up shop.

She said, “We had another visitor this afternoon. A man.”

“You don’t think—”

“No. Definitely not the sort of man who would burgle the premises. Rather nice, I thought. Tubby and middle-aged. Might have been an army man. Name of Calder. He left his card. It’s on your desk. He said he might call back later, on the chance of finding you still here.”

“Client number two, perhaps,” said Jonas. “We’re looking up. Where’s Sam?”

“He’s gone down to the Post Office. There was a message about some registered packet that’s gone astray. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. Sam’s gone down to sort it out.”

When Claire had departed, Jonas sat for a moment staring at the card. It was not very informative. Middle-aged? Possibly a retired officer. There was the sound of a car drawing up, and footsteps on the flagstones of the courtyard. The newcomer came through into the hall, opened the door of Jonas’s room and came in without knocking.

He was neither tubby nor middle-aged. He was large and thick, and moved with the bouncing tread of an athlete. He said, “Don’t let’s have any trouble. You’re an old man. I could hurt you badly, and I’ll do it if I have to.”

Jonas started to say, “What on earth—” but got no further. The man came round the desk, caught the end of his tie in one hand and the knot in the other and started to throttle him. Jonas plucked at the man’s hands with his own. He might as well have tried to move a steel clamp. He was fighting for breath, and the room was swimming round him. He could see the man’s face in a mist. He thought he was smiling.

The pressure relaxed. The man said, “See what I mean? Now come along.” He picked up the circular ruler from Jonas’s desk. “If you make any trouble, I’ll crack both your kneecaps. You won’t walk for six months.”

He linked his left arm with Jonas’s right arm, and they walked out of the house together. Anyone seeing them would have thought they were very close friends.

They got into the car that was waiting outside. He and the big man sat together on the back seat. Jonas thought it looked like the car he had seen driving away the night before. He had recovered control of his voice, and said, as the car moved off, “I suppose it’s not the slightest use asking you what all this is about.”

“Well, now,” said the man. “I can’t see any reason not to tell you what our intentions are. It might be sensible, really. Save you from doing anything heroic, like. We’re not going to kill you. We’re not even going to hurt you, unless we have to. Turn left here, Danny.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“We’re taking you off to a quiet place, to ask you a few questions. You give us the right answers, we keep you there long enough to check up that you’ve told us the truth. Then we let you go. Understood?”

Jonas understood perfectly. They would ask him where Rowe had hidden his caravan. And he would tell them. No doubt about that. Then one of them would go off to find out if he had told them the truth. If he had, they would let him go. Or would they? He rather doubted it. If they intended to let him go, would they have allowed him to see their faces, listen to them talk, note the number of their car? Jonas was surprised to find that he could weigh up the potentialities of the situation as if it was a legal problem which concerned one of his clients.

By now they had reached the area of small streets between the church and the market. When they swung round to the right, Jonas knew that they had taken the wrong turning. That road was a dead-end, running up to the churchyard wall. There were two women standing on the pavement talking.

The driver said, “We’ll have to go back.”

“No trouble,” said the big man genially. He dipped one hand into his pocket, took out a gun and pushed the muzzle into Jonas’s side so hard that it made him gasp. He said, “You do anything stupid, and I’ll pull the trigger. It won’t stop us from getting away, but you won’t have any stomach left. Think about it.”

Jonas said, “I’m not stupid.”

“Stay that way.”

The driver had got the car reversed. The two women watched the manoeuvre incuriously. They drove off slowly, turned out of the street, and headed down a road which, as Jonas knew, would bring them out near the marketplace.

Market day, too, thought Jonas. They’ll run into trouble there, for sure.

The trouble came as they turned the corner. It was a herd of bullocks, driven by a farmer with a red face. He had been in trouble already with the motorists, whose cars were blocking the end of the street. The bullocks were filtering through this barricade, using the pavement on both sides of the cars. One of the bullocks on the offside pavement had just avoided treading on a baby chair. The woman who owned it was telling the farmer, in pungent Sussex, what she thought of him and his bullocks. A sympathetic claque of bystanders were supporting her. One of the cars in the block ahead had started to move. The driver of Jonas’s car turned down the window and said to the farmer, “Shift those bloody cows over, can’t you?”

There was no hope of backing. A van and a car were already blocking the road behind him. But he had seen that, as the rearmost of the cars in front moved, he could squeeze past the other two by using the nearside pavement.

The farmer, attacked from a new point, swung round and told the driver what he could do to himself. The driver ignored him. He had already started to edge forward. The gap in front of him was widening.

A bullock swerved across his bow. He sounded a blast on his horn.

This was a bad mistake. A frisky Southdown bullock can take just so much and no more. It reared up on to its hind legs, performed a skittering dance, came down alongside the car, and pushed its head through the open window. The big man half-rose in his seat.

Jonas felt the pistol shift away. His left hand was already on the door catch. He tugged the door open and rolled out into the gutter.

By this time there was a crowd on both pavements. Two men helped Jonas to his feet. When he looked round, the car had gone, squeezing past the block in front.

“Well,” said one of the men. “That’s a nice way to treat you. They might have stopped to see if you’d hurt yourself.”

“I think they were in too much of a hurry to stop,” said Jonas. “Thank you. I’m quite all right now.”

A woman said, “Your trousers are going to need a bit of cleaning.”

Jonas wasn’t worried about his suit. He was glad that he still possessed a stomach. When he got back to the office he found Sam, angry at having been sent on a pointless errand. “There wasn’t no parcel,” he said, “and what have you been doing to yourself?”

“It’s a long story,” said Jonas. “I’ll tell you when I’ve had a bath and changed.”

As he was coming downstairs the front door bell rang. To Jonas’s relief Sam was there to answer it. He had had enough of strange callers.