Cobweb (21 page)

Through increasingly heavy rain I walked back into the town, sat down in the recessed doorway of a defunct shop – it stank of urine – and pondered. It occurred to me with a pang of alarm that Patrick might not be in Woodhill at all. It was utterly feasible that he had had an amazing lead and taken himself off to the Kyles of Bute.

I remembered then that I was close to waste ground I had previously noticed that bordered the railway line where the tracks ran along on an embankment beneath which there were archways. I had spotted what could have been the signs of vagrant human activity: smoke rising from small fires, the glint of glass from discarded bottles. It seemed sensible to search there before it got quite dark. Wearily I got to my feet. No, first I had to have something to eat. Clutching some loose change I had in my anorak pocket I made for a mobile snack bar that always seemed to be parked near the entrance to the station car park.

It was one of those set-ups where the spoon for stirring really was on a piece of string. Having faith in my immune system, I settled for a large mug of tea – you had to pay a fifty-pence deposit on the mug – an equally generously sized sticky bun, and wandered away for a short distance to consume them.

There is something in me that meant I was quite enjoying slumming it – just roaming around what had probably been an old railway siding wolfing down sweet, soft bread and swigging tea. No one was bothered if I licked my fingers, or even burped. No one watched, no one cared. It was a weird kind of freedom. There was the sound of several police sirens in the distance but that did not affect me either.

I took back the mug, pocketed my fifty-pence piece and, deciding on a slight change of plan, strolled back into the town centre. On reflection, the waste ground I had spotted was farther away than I had thought, in the London direction.

For an hour or so I walked, and loitered around, questioned two
Big Issue
sellers and anyone who seemed to live mostly on the streets, and in doing so succeeded in covering most of the centre of Woodhill. No one had seen a man who matched Patrick's description.

The church clock struck eleven and I told myself that I would never be able to live with myself if I failed to look for him on the waste ground by the railway line and that turned out to be where he was and something happened to Erin.

Then I saw a dumpy old bag lady coming towards me, hurrying. She turned through the gates of the church, threw down everything she was carrying and flopped on to the steps. I could hear her gasping for breath.

‘Are you all right?' I asked, going up to her.

She seemed not to hear me for a moment, holding her side as though in pain. Then she peered up at me. ‘I 'aven't – seen you before,' she panted.

‘No, I'm new round here. Are you ill?'

‘The Bill always – make me feel sick.'

I sat down on the steps. ‘Can I get you a hot drink?'

‘No. But there's a bottle – in there.'

In the dim light I had seen the jerk of her head in the direction of one of her collection of carrier bags and duly rummaged.

‘Thanks – 'ave some,' she invited when she had downed what must have been around half a pint of something or other – I could not see what, but it was in a small whisky bottle that the label appeared to have fallen off.

‘No, I'm fine,' I told her. ‘Where are the Bill then?'

‘Down on the old goose field. They're rounding up everyone they can catch and taking 'em there. People like me, travellers, the homeless – you name it. A lad told me it's about that MP what was done in. They've already got someone at the nick an' now are lookin' for 'is accomplice, God rot 'em. I wasn't all that near but I ran this way, I can tell ya.'

‘But they won't be looking for someone like you.'

‘No, but that must still mean you get questioned as to who you've seen, where you've bin and wot you know and they won't be nice about it. You stay right away, dearie.'

‘Where is this goose field place? – so I don't go there by mistake.'

‘Down by the railway line along the London Road past where the cattle market used to be. There's a fillin' station there now. Lots goes on down there, especially in the tunnel sort of arches. Don't never go near the place, dearie, not even when the cops ain't there and yer dyin'.'

I thanked her and, with the same caution as before, gave her some money. Her almost grovelling gratitude haunted me for a long time afterwards.

Hicks, I thought, as I started to run. Hicks doing a clean sweep among the vulnerable and possibly mentally ill in an effort to add a few nuts and bolts to his case against the man he was already holding. I supposed, grudgingly, there was every chance that Brinkley's subordinate sincerely thought he had the right man who, for all I knew, really had knifed Jason Giddings to death. And while I could not imagine for one moment Michael Greenway telling Hicks what Patrick was doing, my real fear was that he did know now. There are few secrets in a nick. Might Hicks use the opportunity to kick around ‘a violent vagrant' who ‘resisted arrest'?

As the directions had suggested, it really was downhill all the way and I soon reached what I knew to be the London Road, no longer the turnpike of its early days but a three-lane carriageway in both directions. The filling station was actually on the corner on the far side and the only way for pedestrians to reach it was through underpasses. I ran on, thrusting aside a drunk who tottered at me from the shadows by the entrance. Then I skidded to a standstill, bawled ‘Patrick?' at him and got a gap-toothed snarl in response.

‘Two crowns but no bridgework, thank God!' I yelled at him and tore on, leaving him tripping over the bottoms of his frayed jeans in my wake.

It was farther than I had thought and I was forced back to a walk until I got my breath back. Ye gods, I could still hear police sirens. There was a walkway and a cycle path and, again, I ran for what seemed to be miles.

It was the same place we had flashed past in the car some days previously and, true to my recollections, it covered several acres. Dropping back to a walk and observing from a distance, I could see that there was a fence of sorts, a chain-link affair that was collapsing under the weight of bindweed and the fallen branches of the trees that were growing against it. The area over by the embankment was brightly illuminated by the headlights of parked vehicles and, as I watched, the lights from a passing train. A patrol car, blue light flashing, was parked by what had once been the official entrance to the area – a one-time goods yard? – and a uniformed constable patrolled nearby. I turned smartly around before he noticed me.

Adjacent to the waste ground was what looked like a council depot of some kind, the gates of which stood wide open. I went in and then around the side of a building – no security lights, thank everything holy – and then could make out in the gloom a row of large vehicles which turned out to be dustcarts. I walked as silently as possible over to them and down the narrow gap between the end one and another building, a shed. The boundary fence here was little better than the one that fronted the road and it was easy to step through one of the gaps. Standing in the heavy shadow of the vehicle nearest to me, I paused to watch what was happening.

Some fifty yards away people moved to and fro, their shadows thrown this way and that by the lights from different vehicles, radios chattered, someone coughed repeatedly. Nothing other than this sort of thing occurred for the next five minutes or so and I began to wonder how I would be able to cross the open space before me without being spotted.

In the end I began to make my way along by the fence, still in the gloom by the shed, in the direction of the railway embankment. There were at least a dozen archways beneath it, some seemingly with doors on, others without. All present activity appeared to be going on in three roughly in the centre. Still in comparative darkness I walked towards the railway as far as I could go before encountering piles of fly-tipped rubbish.

I was now about fifty yards from the first vehicle, an unmarked car of some kind which, unlike most of the others, was parked without lights. Bending low and keeping as close as possible to the stonework rearing high above me, I headed for it, hoping it was shielding me from any surveillance.

As I got closer I could hear voices. Crouching down by the car I peeped around it, saw that a van was parked very close to it and transferred myself to its larger, safer shelter. Then, alarmingly, it rocked slightly. Someone was inside it. Keeping the bulk of the vehicle between me and Hicks's – or whoever's – little circus, I slithered along and swiftly risked a rapid glance into the passenger-side window. The cab was empty.

Moving quickly I opened the door and got in but did not slam it shut. From what I could remember of these suspects', carriers for the use of, as Patrick referred to them, there was a spy window so the inhabitants in the back could be checked up on without opening the rear doors. There was, and I peered through it.

All was pitch-dark inside.

I tapped sofly on the glass and then jumped back, startled, as a face loomed at me. It was not Patrick but a black man. He was crying and began beating on the small reinforced pane of glass and the partition with both hands. Frantically, I made shushing motions, a finger to my lips. He must have been able to see me for he ceased abruptly.

The realization that only the most irresponsible person on earth would release him went through my mind in the split second after I noticed that the van's keys were still in the ignition. No, but that did not mean never. I would find out what was going on first. I somehow mimed at him to wait and then slid out. An abject howl came from within. Someone who needed to be helped rather than easily manipulated into confessing to being an accessory to murder?

It was time for drastic action before the circus hit the road for home. I homed in on a rotund bobby whom I did not recognize as anyone borrowed from Woodhill, raced towards him with a few bloodcurdling screams for good measure and hurled myself at him.

‘You've got my man, you bastard!' I shrieked, pounding with both fists on his ample front adorned with its array of radio, badges, buttons and other bits and bobs. ‘You give him back to me – right now!'

I found myself lifted off my feet in an embrace from the rear.

‘Here's another one, Sarge!' bawled someone right in my ear.

‘Put it in with the rest,' a woman's voice called.

I spat at my first target, to miss, as I was lugged, kicking and struggling, over to one of the archways, which was obviously being used as a holding pen. There, a rickety barrier of wood was pulled open and I was projected within to land on my knees on something soft – actually, a someone. Arms flailed, a fist connected with the side of my head and I went right down.

Luckily, my face landed on a greasy garment of some kind, rather than the earth floor, but it was a small mercy, for the smell was enough to make anyone vomit and I almost did. Stand up or die seemed to be the choice, before the feet kicking at me did real damage.

‘Pack it in!' I bawled, having achieved getting to my feet, my hand resoundingly slapping a whiskery face.

The lights from the facing vehicles were dazzling, but despite that I could see that my companions, around seven of them, were all bigger than me, and almost certainly male.

‘Anyone here called Paddy?' I shouted in some desperation.

No one was.

‘Anyone here
seen
Paddy?'

No one had.

They were closing in on me.

They did not expect it and I fought my way through them, using every trick that Patrick has taught me and not caring one jot that they were undernourished, some of them ill, but all of them with some kind of sexual harassment in mind. Then, back over by the barrier, I turned to face them.

They seemed to have changed their minds, a couple on the ground.

A uniformed sergeant, probably the one whose voice I had heard, was standing on the other side of the barrier, smiling nastily.

‘Whoops,' she said with a careless laugh. ‘We put you in with the blokes by mistake.'

I pulled a face at her that makes Justin shriek in glorious dread, turned, kicked where it really mattered someone who had had second thoughts, and looked back to see that she was walking away. Then I saw that crammed into the corner by the wall was an elderly man. He made a sort of whimpering noise when he saw me looking at him.

‘It's all right,' I told him. ‘I'm quite safe normally.'

‘I'm in a little alcove here. You have it – you'll be out of their way here. This is just – just – awful,' he continued in a whisper when we had changed places. ‘I hope they didn't hurt you.'

‘No, I'm all right, thank you. Do you know who the black man in the van is?'

‘He calls himself Hippo for some reason. He's not safe at all, I'm afraid, and after he made a real nuisance of himself they put him in there out of the way.' He eyed me dubiously for a moment and then added, ‘The trouble is, they've found out.'

‘Who – the police? Found out what?'

He was silent for a moment and then said, ‘That some of us were in the park the night that MP was murdered. There are seats near the entrance where we sit until the lady at the chippy across the road spots us. She's very kind and gives us chips and any fish that's been a bit overcooked.'

Keeping a weather eye on the assembled company I said, ‘What's your name?'

‘Tom.'

‘I'm Ingrid.'

He seemed to come to a decision and said,'You may wonder why we're not all being taken back to the police station. I wondered too, but it would appear that that's too complicated for this man. It's far quicker and easier to knock a few heads together somewhere like this than …' His voice tailed off and he shrugged miserably.

He had an educated voice, but I thought it better not to try to pry into his origins. ‘Were you there – in the park?' I asked.