Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (28 page)

Even so, he regretted the futility of any hope of a decent conversation with Poppy about things that mattered (to him): the government, the European Union, potholes in the road from last winter still unrepaired and, until recently, the condition of Key House. But Key House, even in ruins, remained a problem. He wouldn’t put it past young Crown to take himself off back to Portugal and leave the place a ruin. Not, thought Roger grimly, if I have anything to do with it! All this led him to make a decision. There was time before dinner.

‘I’m just going up the road to check on Key House,’ he announced.

This was greeted by silence followed by footsteps and Poppy appeared in the doorway.

‘Why?’

‘Someone should. It’s unsafe. What’s more, it’s a crime scene. It ought to be kept under surveillance in case it’s disturbed, contaminated … or deteriorates.’

‘Who’s going to disturb it?’

‘The same sort of people who got in there before.’

‘They’re not going back now with it in the state the fire’s left it,’ argued Poppy.

‘We can’t be certain. These are not people who think like you and I, Poppy.’

Poppy was looking at him in a way that could be described as exasperated. The old girl was clearly worried for his safety.

‘If you go trampling over it,
you’ll
be contaminating a crime scene,’ she said. ‘The police put tape round it. You can’t go in. As you’ve just said, the walls look very rickety now. They might fall down.’

Roger was uncomfortably reminded of his earlier use of a meteor shower as an example of a fatal mishap.

‘I won’t go on the property, I’ll just check the exterior,’ he promised.

‘It’s dark,’ she said crossly.

‘I’ve got a torch.’

‘Take the car, then,’ advised Poppy, turning back kitchenwards.

As it happened, Roger’s intention had been to take the car. Now he felt bound to declare, ‘I’ll walk!’

‘Suit yourself!’ floated from the kitchen.

Well wrapped up against the chills of a November evening and carrying the largest torch he could find, Roger set off. He had not gone far when a bend in the road cut him off from the supporting glow of light from his own house. It was not only very dark out here but it was cold and it was lonely. Just how lonely he had never appreciated before. The countryside at night was a black hole into which he might be sucked at any moment never to be seen again, or that’s how it felt. Meteors, black holes: he had astronomy on the brain tonight. Perhaps he ought to take it up, buy a telescope, study the stars. Roger glanced up at the sky, trying to remember what he’d been taught as a boy about the Great Bear and Orion’s Belt and all the rest of it. But the night was overcast. He couldn’t see much in the way of stars and even the moon was obscured by scudding drifts of dark grey cloud.

His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. He tried to walk more quietly but found himself tiptoeing along like a blasted ballet dancer. In an effort to counteract that, he began to march along with his feet striking the road surface with the precision of a regimental sergeant major. There ought to be a footpath along here so that he need not walk in the road. If some road hog, imagining that an isolated country road was a racetrack, came roaring along here, he wouldn’t see Roger until far too late. There wasn’t anywhere to jump to safety, only into a ditch or a hedge. Worse, he was passing by a traditional low stone wall edging a field. A footpath was needed. He’d write to the council about it. He’d write about the potholes again too. Roger flashed the torch ahead of him along the surface, seeking out any possible trap. He might put a foot in one of those and go flying, break his ankle. The list of possible calamities was endless.

The clouds moved away from the moon and in the silver gleam of light bathing his surroundings he saw, ahead of him, the stark shape of the walls of Key House, standing up against the night sky like some ruined castle. Relief flooded him. He’d got here. He’d take a quick look round the exterior and then set off home.

He had crossed the road and stepped over the police tape, despite assuring Poppy he wouldn’t, and had begun to play his torch beam over the outer walls when he realised that the beam was shining back at him, like a reflection. That wasn’t possible, surely? No, it wasn’t. It was another torch beam, not his, flickering about over there inside the house.

Automatically Roger switched off his torch. He was sure whoever it was had no right to be there. Poppy was wrong. The druggies or tramps, whoever it might be, had come back. It was one thing to confront them in daylight, quite another to tackle them in the darkness. He couldn’t see how many of them there were. He stood, rooted to the spot, and watched as the point of light within the house disappeared and then reappeared, moving around the internal area like some will-o-the-wisp. For a brief moment he wondered if it could be no more than some natural phenomenon. Marsh gas, it was called, wasn’t it? But it was not marshy hereabouts.

Then he heard a sound. Someone was walking in there, feet crunching on the rubble. Now he heard a voice. He couldn’t identify it, even to say if it had been male or female, but he was sure he’d heard one. The light flickered again and then was abruptly doused. There was a cry and a crash, then silence.

Roger waited. What to do? Go and investigate? He’d come here to check things over and something in there definitely deserved to be checked. He began to move cautiously forward, feeling his way in the darkness, holding the unlit torch on high as a weapon.

‘Anyone there?’ he called.

His voice on the night air quavered uncertainly. He tried again, more robustly.

‘Is anyone in there? Are you all right?’ It might be as well for whoever was there to believe Roger was not alone. He added, ‘We are coming in!’

Something moved in the shadows, but not inside the house now. The shape stood beside an outer wall, blacker in the gloom and without clear definition. It – something, someone – moved.

‘Who’s that?’ The annoying quaver was back in his voice. ‘I – I’m armed …’

Oh Lord, he should have listened to Poppy. He should have stayed home. Why did he trouble himself over a house that didn’t belong to him and now hardly existed at all? He didn’t
care
who was in there. If a whole coven of witches had occupied the place to conduct satanic rites, they could carry on without interference from him.

He thought he heard footsteps, a series of muffled thuds, but further away, retreating from him. Someone was cutting across the field behind the house. First relief and then new courage flooded Roger’s veins. He’d frightened off whoever it had been! Someone had almost certainly been up to no good. Wait until he told Poppy about this! Or perhaps, on second thoughts, he wouldn’t tell Poppy. She’d fuss.

Buoyed by relief and the thought that the other person had fled, Roger switched on his torch again and moved confidently forward. ‘I’m coming in there!’ he announced.

To his horror his words, which he’d been sure would have fallen into silence, called up a response. Not a voice, but another movement. Now, within the house someone was stumbling about on the rubble, so noisily it couldn’t be dismissed as mere wreckage settling. In the empty doorway, a figure appeared. Roger turned the full beam of torchlight on to it and gave a cry.

It was tall, appeared misshapen, black. It staggered forward with raised arms, making for him like an iconic Frankenstein’s monster. Roger let out an involuntary squeal and stepped back. The creature lurched forward and crashed to the ground at his feet to lie still.

His heart beating wildly, Roger remained where he was for a few seconds – though it felt like much longer. At last he moved forward again and asked hoarsely, ‘Who are you?’

The inert figure at his feet did not move. He shone the torch down on to it and saw a face, blackened with soot and unrecognisable. He stooped over and reluctantly stretched out his hand. It touched human hair. Roger snatched his hand away. His fingers were sticky. He shone the torch on them and it picked up dark fluid. ‘Oh, my God, blood!’ he whispered.

At that moment his ear caught the sound of an approaching vehicle. A car’s headlights swept over him. He turned towards them and waved his arms above his head to attract attention and signal help was needed. The car stopped. A door slammed. Footsteps and another figure, tall and thin, coming briskly towards him.

‘What’s the trouble?’ called a competent voice.

‘S-someone’s hurt,’ Roger stammered. ‘I don’t know who he is.’ Nor did he know who the newcomer was. Rescuer or the attacker returned? No, not the attacker who had run away. But someone in league with the attacker?’

‘Badly hurt?’ enquired the new man.

‘B-blood,’ Roger could only babble. ‘There’s a lot of blood.’

‘Roger, is that you?’ asked the voice unexpectedly.

‘Yes. Who is that?’

‘It’s Stephen Layton. Let me take a look.’

No voice and no name could have been more welcome. ‘Thank goodness!’ cried Roger. ‘We need a doctor here!’

Layton had reached him. He stretched out a hand and, wordlessly, Roger handed over his torch. Layton hunkered down over the fallen figure.

‘It’s Gervase Crown!’ he exclaimed. ‘Someone’s hit him over the head.’

‘What?’ croaked Roger. ‘How can it be him?’ (In moments of stress, he afterwards told himself, one does say daft things. Why shouldn’t it have been Crown? It was Crown’s house.) ‘
Blood
,’ he repeated. He wanted to say something else, more sensible, but the word came out of its own accord. ‘Lots of blood …’ Oh hell, he was sounding like Lady Macbeth.

‘Steady on, old chap,’ urged Layton. ‘Nasty shock for you, but get a grip. Yes, quite a bit of blood but head wounds do bleed a lot. Have you phoned for an ambulance?’

‘Er, no,’ admitted Roger. ‘I only just …’

‘I’ll do it.’ Layton handed back the torch and took out a mobile phone. As a background to his thoughts, Roger heard the doctor organising the ambulance and requesting that the police be informed. All the things, in fact, that Roger should have been doing. But Roger’s mind was on something else: that other shape, that amorphous shadow running away from the building. He, Roger, had been alone out here with a violent criminal, probably a murderer. The full horror of it all engulfed him. The apocalyptic figure reeling from the ruins, the mysterious shadow of an attacker flitting away through the night like some great bat, Gervase’s blood on his hands, the humiliation of his own paralysis, uselessness …

‘They’re on their way,’ said Layton. ‘You all right now?’

‘What? I, no, excuse me,’ mumbled Roger.

He took a few uncertain steps away from the fallen man and threw up comprehensively, thereby, as he was miserably aware, contaminating a crime scene.

Jess, Carter and Millie had just about finished their pizzas when the news came through to Jess on her mobile. The ringtone caused both Carter and Millie to look up in interst. Even the shiny black eyes of MacTavish, whose head poked out of a pink tote bag hung on the back of Millie’s chair, seemed to take on an added gleam.

Jess took the call, asked the other two to excuse her for a moment, and moved outside the restaurant to take the rest of it. When she came back, she said quietly to Carter, ‘Gervase Crown has been taken to the General Hospital.’

She hadn’t said it quietly enough to keep the news from Millie’s sharp ears.

‘Is that the man called Gervase you were talking to when Auntie Monica and I found you?’

She was not the sort of child whose questions could be ignored.

‘Yes, I’m afraid he is,’ said Jess. She said it in a way she hoped conveyed that the matter was not up for any more discussion, at least with contributions from Millie.

‘Badly hurt?’ asked Carter calmly.

‘Conscious.’

‘I thought he was the murderer,’ observed Millie thoughtfully. She looked up with renewed alertness. ‘Has someone tried to murder
him
?’

‘I’ve asked for a guard to be put on his room,’ Jess told Carter. ‘They’re still examining him at the moment.’

‘You stay here, I’ll check it out,’ said Carter and disappeared into the street in his turn.

‘I’m interested too,’ complained Millie. ‘You ought not to leave me out. That’s bad manners.’ She was watching her father through the plate-glass window as he walked up and down with his phone to his ear.

‘I know you are, love, but it’s police business and I’m sure you know that makes it private.’ Jess tried to sweeten the rebuff with a smile.

Millie, and MacTavish from his tote bag, regarded her with disgust. ‘According to you,’ said Millie accusingly, ‘everything interesting is private.’

The police constable seated outside the room rose to his feet as Jess came down the hospital corridor towards him. ‘Everything OK here, ma’am,’ he said confidently.

‘Good, have you spoken to the victim?’

‘I stuck my head round the door earlier and asked how he felt,’ admitted the constable. ‘He answered me all right, said he was fine. Well, he don’t look fine,’ the constable qualified Gervase’s claim. ‘He’s got his head all bandaged up and they’ve got him hooked up to a drip. So far no one’s tried to see him. Nurses and a doctor were going in and out all morning, of course, but no visitors from outside and none have turned up so far this afternoon. But I dare say the word won’t have got round yet, will it? That he’s here?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Jess told him.

‘I was told I wasn’t to let any visitors in.’ The constable looked enquiringly at Jess.

‘For the time being, that’s right. I’d rather no one other than the police and hospital personnel see him. But make a note, would you, of anyone else who asks? Name and address. Examine any flowers, chocolates or grapes, anything like that, brought or sent in for him. Oh, and make a note of who they’re from.’

Gervase had few friends so it would be interesting to see who might turn out a well-wisher.

As the constable had said, Gervase’s head was indeed impressively swathed in bandages and a neck brace held his head immobile. He was propped up in bed with his eyes closed, but opened them as Jess came in. He raised a hand in salutation and said hoarsely, ‘Hi! O guardian of the law.’