Cobweb (23 page)

‘But a
jeweller's
. But Erin did say he wasn't what he seemed. Patrick, you must stop her persisting in her lone inquiry – just in case.'

‘I can't, though, can I? I don't have the authority.'

‘So, short of camping out in the betting shop …'

‘I'll talk to Erin. Perhaps she'll agree to a joint effort.'

‘She said she'd go out of circulation so she couldn't be contacted.'

‘In that case she'd be in breach of regulations. You're not allowed to go private.'

But, as the day progressed, that was exactly what Erin appeared to have done.

There was no question of keeping
this
development from higher authority: to have done so would have been wrong even though the DS was not our responsibility. At first Knightly would not accept that there was a problem, especially when it transpired that she had taken three days' leave in order to use up some holiday entitlement carried over from the previous year. Patrick had already contacted Greenway, leaving my name right out of it, and was tersely told to carry on with his mission of finding Brocklebank and ignore any glitches that the regular police might have. They could, he said, look after their own personnel.

‘Sometimes he doesn't seem to get what I'm on about,' Patrick complained, having related this to me when we met, as arranged earlier, at a coffee bar on the edge of town.

‘No, he's just not the kind of guy to overrate the talents of female detective sergeants,' I snorted. ‘But I take it you'll keep an eye out for her.'

‘Of course. Luckily, the girl has two disadvantages in staying unnoticed: her height and the colour of her hair.'

‘And she's stick-thin, so be on the lookout for young people of both sexes wearing veils, big woolly hats or turbans.'

He groaned, pondered silently for a few moments and then said, ‘No, it's no good.'

‘What isn't?'

‘I simply can't be doing with you just on the end of a phone. We're a team and I reckon that, as it doesn't look now as if Brocklebank's going to be found in the filthiest sewers of society, I'm damned if I'm going to work alone. Frankly, today I've been stalling.' He grabbed his mobile.

He got what he wanted. How could Greenway refuse when faced with a threat of resignation?

Erin's name had not been mentioned during Patrick's ultimatum; nevertheless we went straight out to look for her. It had already been established that she was not answering her mobile – actually switched off – nor the phone at home. This turned out to be a rented flat over a florist's shop in the centre of Woodhill and reminded me of the bolt hole I had found when I first left the nest. My beloved father had been in a nursing home suffering from a ghastly creeping disease that would eventually destroy him, my mother being adamant that she could not look after him and, eventually, not wanting a resentful teenager under her feet in the evenings either, my sister having escaped to live with an aunt two years previously. So, in effect, she got rid of all of us. She is still living in the same house and, as yet, I have never been back.

That wonderful scent of carnations, stocks and greenery of which I had used to take a deep breath as I went up the stairs was the same here; we had passed the back room where vases and vases of them were stored. The shop owner where I had lived had observed my appreciation one day and thereafter had always saved a few flowers for me – perhaps with broken stalks, or a couple of petals missing, or just oddments. I am sure she could have used them in wreaths and have always remembered her kindness.

There was no response to ringing the door bell.

‘You're going in?' I said in surprise, seeing Patrick's burglar's keys in his hand.

‘I actually think we have a duty to go in,' he replied. ‘For after all, whatever the girl has said, for all we know she might be lying in here gravely ill.'

But Erin was not at home. Everything was very tidy, with nothing left lying around to give us a clue as to where she might have gone or what leads she might be following. Being very careful not to disturb anything, Patrick opened drawers in a computer desk in the living room while I examined similar storage space in the bedroom. We found nothing useful.

I wandered into the kitchen. There was hardly any food in the fridge but a shopping list was fixed under one of the magnets on the door listing the usual things, so presumably Erin intended to return home soon. When I went back into the living room Patrick was sorting through the contents of a letter rack on the desk.

‘Just a couple of bills, some postcards from friends on holiday, photographs of ditto and some letters,' he reported. ‘I don't think I need to read those.'

‘That's a lovely house,' I commented upon seeing a photograph on a business heading.

‘It's an old manor house that's been turned into an hotel and conference centre,' Patrick said. He went to put the letter back with the rest, but his eye was caught by the wording: ‘“Dear Miss Melrose,”' he read out, ‘“I regret to inform you that we have no suitable staff vacancies at present but with your superior qualifications in mind I am able to give you an undertaking that I shall put your name down on our records for when such a vacancy should arise. Yours sincerely, Jennifer Lister, Catering Manageress.” What on earth is the girl doing?'

‘A change of career?' I hazarded.

‘Surely not.' He frowned. ‘No, definitely not. When we were in the Green Man once she said she was a lousy cook.' He tapped the letter. ‘This, my dear Watson, is a lead that we must regard as important. But there are a few other things to attend to first.'

The Blue Boar at Kingsbrook did not look as though it had had a lick of paint since the Wars of the Roses. I made a note to inform fellow scribes who wrote historical crime fiction of its unmodernized charms so that they could fall on the place and savour every detail of the grime-encrusted oaken beams, the worn church pews that leaned crookedly against the walls of the public bar in lieu of chairs and upon which so many initials had been carved it was a wonder they had not disintegrated, and the strange smell, a cross between wet dogs and something very dead somewhere beneath the floorboards.

‘You are
not
having a pint here,' I told Patrick.

‘It's lunch time,' he protested.

‘The locals will have developed the necessary antibodies,' I said, eyeing the smeary glass tankards hanging on hooks above the bar. ‘You haven't, and you'll be on the loo for a week.' Detecting that right now he was probably regretting having put his job on the line in order to have me along, I added, ‘Oracles have never necessarily said what people wanted to hear. The last thing you need right now is a dose of the trots.'

Nostrils flaring, Patrick slammed his ID down on the bar. ‘Joe Masters?' he demanded to know of the bored-looking individual standing behind it.

‘That's me.' The man had hardly glanced at what was in front of him and gave little attention to the photograph that was now plonked next to it.

‘Seen him in here? He was probably an associate of Daniel Smith.'

Masters shook his head. ‘Nope.'

‘Have a closer look,' he was encouraged, grittily. ‘This was taken some years ago. He might look quite respectable now.'

Masters peered at the photo in the manner of someone whose reading glasses are elsewhere. ‘Can't say as I've seen him.'

‘How long had Smith been living in the caravan?'

‘It's been in the paddock out the back for years and used to be rented by a farmer to house veg pickers. But it started to get a bit too scruffy and what with the health-and-safety bods breathing down my neck already, I decided to get rid of it. But this bloke Smith came along and asked if he could use it sometimes in exchange for doing odd jobs for me. He seemed a bit down on his luck, so I agreed. In fact I said he could have it – so as not to be responsible for it any more, like. But the dirty little bugger ended up living there for most of the winter, did precious little to help; in fact he left his rubbish everywhere and spent far too much time in here making a half last the whole evening. I'm glad he's gone and the caravan's going as soon as you lot have finished with it.'

‘The man's been murdered,' Patrick said reproachfully.

‘He looked the kind who would mix with murderers.'

‘Did anyone ever ask for him? Did you notice him in conversation with anyone on a regular basis?'

‘No, he stank too bad to have real friends,' was the bald reply.

‘We'll take a look at the caravan.'

‘Question,' I said when we were outside and walking around the side of the building towards the rear. ‘Caravans are dreadfully cold and damp things to live in in the winter. It would have been far cosier to have stayed where he did his gardening job for Thora at Buckton Manor.'

‘There's no beer there, though and, don't forget, he only possessed a bike and cycling down to the local on dark nights from there wouldn't have been a joke. I reckon the nearest pub to that place is at least two and a half miles away.'

Men always notice things like exactly where the nearest pubs are, of course.

The ground at the rear of the pub was little better than its interior, the so-called paddock being merely an acre or so of weeds surrounded by a sagging post-and-wire fence, the gate to it flat on the ground a short distance away with grass growing through it. The area might have been a garden at one time, for we almost fell into a pond choked with water plants and there were two or three good trees.

The caravan, set just inside where the gate should have been and surrounded by a walkway of broken paving slabs, was not sealed off, an indication that all forensic testing really had been completed. It was, however, still cordoned off by police incident tape tied to the trees and had ‘KEEP OUT' notices affixed to it. We stepped over the tape and approached Smith's last home. With flat tyres, and greenish-black with mould in places, it gave every impression of slowly and inexorably rotting into the mud.

‘I don't know what we can learn from this,' Patrick muttered, yanking open the door.

I had a sudden and inexplicable stab of alarm and grabbed his arm before he could enter.

‘What's wrong?' he asked.

‘I'm not sure – but please don't just walk straight in,' I said.

‘Look, SOCA have only just completed their stuff. People have been crawling all over it.'

‘Sorry, it's either that I'm all jittery after what happened last time or –' I broke off and shrugged, feeling foolish.

‘Or it's your cat's whiskers and there's been every opportunity for someone else to mess around with it,' he murmured and walked away for a short distance over to a pile of rubbish. Selecting a few bricks and a chunk of wood, he put them all in an old plastic fertilizer sack and tied up the top with a length of rope. Then, carrying it, he came back.

‘Go right over there,' he told me, waving an arm back towards the building.

‘Do be careful,' I pleaded.

Positioning himself carefully a practical distance away, Patrick commenced to swing the sack – actually quite heavy – backwards and forwards until it had sufficient momentum. Then, he released it, putting distance between himself and the caravan as soon as it had left his hand to go hurtling through the open doorway.

There was a loud crash and the floor of the caravan collapsed completely. Moments later there was a flash, an ear-splitting bang and a huge cloud of debris-laden smoke.

I had taken refuge in the entrance to the noisome Gents', dived farther in when the explosion occurred, met someone on his way out and shoved him inside again as things clattered down on to the corrugated-iron roof above our heads. When it petered out somewhat, we ventured outside. Patrick was just picking himself up from behind some low bushes and appeared unscathed, so I sent the man off for a fire extinguisher, as all that was left of the caravan was a raging bonfire and rolling clouds of acrid smoke.

Patrick came over. ‘That's it,' he said in the quiet, flat voice he uses when he is very angry. ‘From now on we're on a war footing with this bastard even if it means I go to prison for cutting his throat all over his own living-room carpet.'

‘I have a horrible feeling that he's watching us,' I said.

Patrick shook his head. ‘No, not in the sense that he's perched up a tree with a pair of binoculars snooping on us in particular. Like the set-up in the flat, anyone could have been injured in that booby trap – even the guys from the council who would have ended up coming to take the caravan away. No, this is a two-finger salute to the police.'

‘But he didn't plant the thing before Scenes of Crime people arrived.'

‘There was probably no opportunity, as it would have been guarded as soon as Smith was murdered and I told them where he lived on and off.'

We had found somewhere to have a bite of lunch that was less of a potential health hazard than the Blue Boar, but it was only a café so Patrick had to settle for coffee with his BLT. He had come off the boil but I knew would now be deeply involved with strategy for the rest of our lunch break. I did not interrupt his thoughts.

‘No, there's nothing for it but to bury our own identities and come up with something that'll put us in a position to be out and about, watching people but without arousing their suspicions,' he said at last, pensively stirring his coffee.

‘Well, we've done fencing contractors,' I replied briskly, ‘– or at least you have – and hell's angels and Irish terrorist plus bimbo and down-and-outs. No, as far as
that
goes I am not living on the streets again. Sorry.'

Patrick brooded darkly. ‘Looked at from another angle, what is this guy likely to want that we might be able to give him that will lure him out of his rat hole? We already know he sometimes bets on horses and enjoys spending money on himself – yes, the chains and rings were for him. That's if it is the same bloke, of course.' He found his mobile. ‘I'll ask Paul Boles if he knows any more about him.'