Cobweb (6 page)

‘One must resist seeing the Mafia behind every bus stop,' I countered. ‘I can't see that it's important.'

‘I agree. But I think I'll ask him all the same.' Patrick reached for his phone.

Du Norde made the expected bleats about client confidentiality and so forth, and it was only after Patrick had again warned him that he would be taken to a police station for further questioning that he came up with the information.

‘Possibly not our man,' he said after mentioning the name of a controversy-ridden nobleman. ‘I'll get our Richard on to that one.'

As well as tending all grapevines Richard Daws is the fourteenth Earl of Hartwood.

‘Did you remember to ask Erin about DI Gray looking into the circumstances of Derek Harmsworth's death?' I said when we were walking back to where we had left the vehicles. ‘You said you would.'

‘No, but I will. One thing at a time.'

Somehow, I curbed my impatience. ‘I was going to have a look at where Harmsworth's car went over the bridge today.'

‘It hardly seems worth your while to drive all the way back to Woodhill,' Patrick said. ‘I know what we decided yesterday, but I'm still concerned that tackling these three deaths as a whole will end up by making everything very confusing.'

‘And as I said yesterday, I'm sure everything hinges on discovering if Harmsworth died as a result of an accident or not. When that is established one way or the other, all the investigations can be properly addressed.'

Patrick thought about it for a few moments. ‘I have my brief and don't know how much I dare get sidetracked. Even if Harmsworth
was
killed as a result of some criminal action, there might not be any connection with the Giddings case.'

‘I just think it ought to be sorted out first, that's all.'

He gazed upon me with a kind of blank expression in his eyes and I realized with a shock that, despite appearing to have come to an understanding the previous evening, the pair of us were actually heading for a very large difference of opinion. I said, ‘As I understand it, my role is to be your adviser, the one you phone up when you're stuck and want a few ideas.' We had actually stopped walking and people were having to go round us on the pavement.

‘Yes. But I'm not stuck. I know exactly what I must do.'

Desperately, I said, ‘Look, you're bloody wonderful at whichever job you tackle, but what happens when I want to give you advice and you don't think you need it?'

‘I probably have to be the judge of that.'

Trying, and probably failing, to make light of the situation I said, ‘There's no override button, then?'

He shook his head and there was a short silence. Then Patrick said, ‘This is stupid. Suppose we go to Woodhill, I take your car and park it at the nick and then you come with me to interview Honor Giddings. We can stop and look at the site of Harmsworth's accident on the way.'

‘Fine.'

‘I also suggest we leave your motor at the nick and I'll drive us both back and spend the night at Maggie's. She might recollect a bit more about du Norde – with a little prompting.'

I accepted this suggestion gratefully but nevertheless wondered if we were only postponing the inevitable. Just because you are married it does not mean there is a marriage of minds, but I was hanged if this new job was going to threaten our relationship. Oh, I could go home to Devon and be on the end of a phone, but my greatest dread when we worked for MI5 had been that one day Patrick would go out of the door and I would never see him again because I hadn't been there to watch his back. It had almost happened once, when I had shot and killed a man gunning for him. We used to be, and almost certainly still are, on several terrorist organizations' hit-lists.

I had expected the bridge over the motorway to carry a main road, but it turned out to be a very minor one that led from Woodhill along a ridge of low hills into the countryside, necessitating us making a detour. Villages could be glimpsed through the trees in the pretty valleys on either side, signposts pointing to Little Mossly, Kingsbrook and others. The road then descended slightly, in a series of hairpin bends, a ruined tower on the left-hand side set on a hillock. Then suddenly it straightened where, obviously, it had been reconstructed on the approach to the bridge.

‘Ah, the place where everyone tries to overtake,' Patrick said, accelerating slightly. ‘But actually, looking ahead, there's a pretty tight bend after you've crossed the bridge, so anyone coming the other way could be faced with several idiots all going like blazes. Badly designed, isn't it?'

‘The local paper said something about a bad bend,' I recollected, gazing as we passed at the replaced tape and netting that was still strung across the gap in the railings. ‘But in which direction was Harmsworth travelling? The report didn't say.'

‘And what about the lorry that went through the railings a couple of days beforehand?' Patrick stopped the car in a lay-by after we had rounded the bend and got out. ‘Shall we walk back?'

This did not prove to be at all hazardous, as there was hardly any traffic. The opposite was true on the motorway, of course, and we stood in silence for a few moments, watching the unceasing rivers of vehicles roaring beneath us.

‘This isn't what I expected,' Patrick said. ‘I thought we'd have a situation where there was an accident black spot on a very busy road, a place where prangs were taking place on a regular basis. Even though there's a warning sign, I'm sure the bend
is
dangerous if people drive too fast and accidents have happened; but for two vehicles to leave the bridge in exactly the same place in the space of forty-eight hours …' He leaned over slightly and looked down. ‘You can still see the marks where they hit the road.'

‘You've changed your mind a bit then?' I said lightly.

He gazed at me and said, ‘It would have been a very handy little gap to shove someone through, wouldn't it? Worth trying to find out if Harmsworth regularly drove this way. Where did he live, in Woodhill itself?'

‘Yes, so he wouldn't have had to come this way home from work. The accident, or whatever it was, happened in the very early hours of the morning. Did he need to work that late or was he on to something important connected with the Giddings case?'

Patrick had a quick look around, examining the ground, but hundreds of cars had passed this way since the DCI's death. Then he said, ‘I wonder if Gray did a lot more investigation into this than he let on and got too close to someone for his own safety?'

We walked back, in silence.

‘Part of my brief is to find out if any more police officers are in danger,' Patrick reminded himself when we were sitting in the car. ‘The rest is involved with discovering any connection between the murders of Giddings and Gray. No, you were right all along: first we must find out about Harmsworth. And while I'm not at all convinced that his death was anything to do with that of Jason Giddings, I don't like the way Gray was done to death as soon as he took over sole charge of the case, having doubted the inquest findings on Harmsworth.'

‘What about Fred Knightly, the Super?'

‘I don't think there'll be much input of a constructive nature from him with regards to any investigation into Harmsworth's death – he's far too busy with having to do most of the work of heading up the Giddings inquiry. There's another individual lurking around who's reputed to be from Special Branch, but they don't even know his name yet. Going back to Knightly: he gets wheeled out and well briefed when there's a press conference and that's about it. He's good at PR. Erin was quite clear on that. Normally spends most of his time filling in risk-assessment forms and attending every government law-and-order-initiative conference he can to get himself out of the building. He definitely thinks Harmsworth ought to be laid to rest.'

Due for retirement? Over the hill? Dead? Did it matter to no one but us?

The village of Beech Hanger, some two miles from Woodhill, was select, as I had expected it to be: crisply clipped hedges, glimpses of very large gabled houses down gated drives, paddocks and rows of loose boxes. The Giddings residence, The Chantry, was at one end of the village street, just past a pretty church.

‘Have you made an appointment to see her?' I asked as we turned into the drive.

‘Yes.'

‘Just as well, as she takes lumps out of people.'

‘You've really got your knife into this woman, haven't you?' Patrick said with a chuckle.

The drive wove through a rather contrived but very beautiful planting of
Betula utilis jacquemontii
, white-barked Himalayan birch, and then straightened on the approach to the house, which, surprisingly, appeared to be very old. Perhaps it incorporated a real chantry, I thought, a chapel where monks had prayed for the souls of the dead.

A woman who was not Honor Giddings answered the door and without introducing herself led us through a hallway to a large, low-ceilinged room on the left. I thought for a moment that the room was unoccupied, but as the door was closed almost silently behind us the widow rose suddenly from a winged armchair that had its back to us facing the fireplace.

‘Patrick Gillard,' she said – a statement of fact, not a question.

Patrick inclined his head slightly by way of response and then said, ‘This is my assistant, Miss Langley, who, if you have no objection, will take notes.'

‘Your sergeant?' queried Mrs Giddings, giving me a hard look.

‘No. SOCA personnel don't necessarily have police rank. Miss Langley is a civilian.'

She smiled coolly. ‘That's fine. I just like to know exactly who is in my house. Do sit down.'

We all sat, Honor Giddings perching herself on the edge of a sofa, and I took out my notebook and without staring at her wrote a short description of her, in shorthand in case anyone tried to read over my shoulder, in other words to enable me to be as rude as I wished. But I had to be honest and admit that she did not fit the mental image I had built up. Even keeping in mind that she had just lost her husband in ghastly circumstances, here was not the gaunt and tight-lipped harpy staring from the pages of the newspapers. Perhaps she just came out very badly in photographs. Wearing a very well-tailored black trouser suit with a white blouse relieved at the neck by a pale-pink silk scarf she looked every inch the professional woman, her dark shoulder-length hair glossy, her complexion fine and clear.

Patrick offered her our condolences and she thanked him.

‘I do realize that you've been interviewed already,' he continued.

‘This is the third time, actually,' Honor Giddings drawled. ‘First by someone by the name of Harmsworth, then I think by an Inspector White – or was it Gray? – who arrived with a girl with red hair, and now you. No, there was someone else – a man who said he was from a department of Special Branch whom I found rather objectionable. It's been a real circus, actually.' The reproof was there.

‘I'm only here because, tragically, the first two officers you mentioned are no longer with us,' Patrick said quietly. ‘But, obviously, you've had other things on your mind.'

‘You mean they're
dead
?'

He nodded slowly. ‘It would
appear
that Detective Chief Inspector Harmsworth was involved in an accident, but Detective Inspector Gray was murdered last week in similar fashion to your husband. My job is to discover if there's a connection and ensure that no other police officers' lives are at risk.'

‘But that's awful. Surely—'

Patrick interrupted her with, ‘Had your husband ever met either of them, do you know? Had he – and I'm sorry to have to ask this – been in any kind of trouble with the law that might have resulted in a visit from the local police? A traffic offence, perhaps?'

I found myself impressed that the lady did not get on her high horse. She reflected for a few moments and then said, ‘I think he had a few points on his licence, but everyone does these days, don't they? There's nothing else that I can think of.'

‘Could he have met them socially? Was he a Mason?'

Patrick told me afterwards that Gray had been, Harmsworth not.

‘No. But he belonged to the local Round Table. And it's perfectly possible that he could have met them at a constituency do. But I must point out that he had very little time for that kind of thing, what with being on committees and so forth. I simply can't believe that there was any kind of real
connection
between my husband and these men.'

‘I understand he was due home quite early that night as you were giving a dinner party.'

‘That's right. Just us and a few friends.'

‘At what time were you expecting him?'

‘Somewhere between six thirty and seven, but it was just an informal affair. There were no important debates that night. Our entertaining has – had – to be on the impromptu side, as I never knew when he would have to stay late.'

‘Was he coming straight home, do you know? Had you asked him to pick up anything for you on the way here? Something to do with the dinner party, for example?'

‘Oh no. Hilary sees to all that. He never went shopping.'

Patrick ignored her snooty implication that the MP had been far too grand to pop into an off-licence, saying, ‘I understand she's your housekeeper.'

‘Yes, but she doesn't clean – someone else does that. And there's other help in the garden.'

‘They've all been interviewed. Do you have any theories as to why your husband was in the park?'

‘Everyone's asked me that!' the woman snapped. ‘No, I don't, not one.'

‘A taxi driver has come forward who picked him up at the station and dropped him at the Green Man at around five forty-five. Did he make a habit of going there for a drink on the way home?'