Dead People (18 page)

It was one of her team. I couldn’t make out the words, but there was a sense of something like panic in the delivery. Tessa reached over and grabbed a coat off of the hook. She looked briefly at me before she went out. All traces of regret had vanished.

I stripped off her sweatpants and pulled on my cold and clammy trousers, which was like climbing into two tubes of wet cardboard. I put my socks and boots on again. The tone of that voice at the door had warned me that any prospects of cosiness tonight had disappeared.

The snow had diminished to a few raggedy stray flakes and was melting fast by the time I got out of the caravan. I walked across towards the light that was coming from the Redshanks enclosure. Tessa emerged just as I arrived.

‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

She was silent for a moment. If she had been trying to control herself it hadn’t worked. ‘You and your fucking investigation,’ she threw at me.

‘What’s happened?’ A dark intimation surfacing.

‘He’s taken Redshanks.’ She flung the enclosure’s flap open. Inside, her assistants parted to let me see the now-empty polythene bubble.

‘Now sort it out,’ she snapped at me. ‘I want him back.’

The ground surface was rapidly turning to meltwater. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Tessa and her crew had scrabbled around and messed things up so much. Gemma, Tessa’s assistant, hadn’t reported seeing him carrying anything, but he could already have taken it and stashed it, ready to carry off when left alone. The bundle would have been awkward, but the weight would have been manageable.

This had to be connected. But why? Why take this risk?

Or was it another obfuscation?

I couldn’t take this to Fletcher or Jack Capaldi. To them it would be the local force’s baggage. To involve them in the theft of an archaeological artefact would only annoy them.

But I had to go through the motions. For Tessa’s sake, if nothing else. I called it in to Emrys Hughes.

‘Can you repeat that?’ he asked, not hiding his amusement. I described Redshanks again. I could picture him noting it down with relish. This was the ultimate zany incomer. A 600-year-old desiccated Scottish warrior.

‘It’ll be one of those kids from Fron Heulog,’ he proclaimed with evangelical certainty.

‘Why?’

‘What use would anyone round here have for something like that?’

Right, I thought to myself, every gang crib in Birmingham has got to have its own thieved archaeological trophy. ‘Just put the word out, please, Emrys.’

I knocked on the caravan door before I left. Tessa opened it. She didn’t invite me in, just stayed in the power position on the threshold, looking down on me.

‘I’m sorry, Tessa.’

‘I’m holding you responsible for getting him back.’

‘I couldn’t have prevented this.’ I tried not to sound too hangdog.

She shrugged that one off. ‘We were doing fine until you brought your investigation into our world. So I blame you. You make it right again and we’ll take it from there.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

She pulled a mean face. ‘No, you won’t, you’ll be too busy chasing after your own bloody skeletons.’

‘Will you pack up here?’

She flashed me a look full of scorn, and almost didn’t reply. ‘The body was only the big physical manifestation. There’s more to it than that. We’re also working on all the peripheral stuff that will hopefully tell us who he was and why he was here.’

‘I’ll find him for you. I promise.’

She shut the door in my face. I took some consolation from the fact that she hadn’t slammed it.

I got back to Unit 13 cold, wet and dispirited. The gossamer illusion of sex and romance had been briefly awakened and trailed in the air, before being transformed into the reality of a sodden pair of trousers and boots that would have made the ideal packaging for trench foot.

I changed into dry clothes and turned the gas heater on in the living area. There was no new-message light on the answering-machine display. I had hoped that Julian Revel might have got back to me by now. I checked my mobile to see if I had picked up any missed calls while driving back through limbo spots. The call log was clear.

It was getting late. But this was important. I decided to try him again.

‘Julian Revel.’ He gave his name a radio announcer’s clarity.

‘It’s Detective Sergeant Capaldi, Mr Revel, I’m sorry to disturb you so late.’

‘Didn’t you get my message?’ He sounded irked.

‘I haven’t had anything on my mobile.’

‘I make a point of not calling mobile phones, they’re too expensive. I left a message on the landline number you gave. I told you that I had nothing to do with Justin any more.’

I glanced at the answering machine again. There was no light indicating a new message.

‘You’re his father?’

‘Yes, but you’re wasting your time. He doesn’t live here, and I have no contact telephone numbers or address.’

‘I desperately need to talk to him about an investigation I’m working on.’

He gave a humourless chuckle. ‘Good luck. And if you do manage to find the ungrateful little sod, you can tell him that I’m still feeding his mangy cat, and I would appreciate it if he could come back for it.’

‘But there must be some—’

He interrupted. ‘Hereford. Art college. That’s all I know, and all I care.’

‘He’s your son, Mr Revel,’ I argued, knowing that it was none of my business.

‘No,’ he responded sharply and with feeling, ‘he’s his mother’s son. He’s not going to be mine again until the day comes when I’m satisfied that I no longer have to worry about getting calls from the police or Social Services, or deadbeats turning up at my door and asking if they’ve missed the party.’

I put the phone down on all that fucked-up family harmony.

Hereford Art College. The first solid lead. But I was not going to be able to do anything about it at this time on a Sunday night.

I frowned, remembering that he had said he had already left a message. Out of curiosity I tried my answering machine.

‘My name is Julian Revel. I am returning the call from the policeman whose name I couldn’t catch. I have no knowledge of Justin’s present whereabouts, so please don’t call me again.’

And a bonus call.

‘Glyn. You weren’t answering your mobile. I’m getting back to you on that information you asked for.’ Mackay’s voice was precise and to the point.

I felt uneasy. The answering machine’s light had been off. I wasn’t supposed to have any new messages. But I hadn’t heard either of those before.

I called my landline from my mobile and left a test message. When I hung up the red light was blinking on the answering machine.

I went back to the front door and checked the lock. There was no way of telling if it had been forced. But it was hardly a serious lock, kids’ lunch boxes were better secured.

I had to assume that someone had already listened to those messages. So that person now knew that I was interested in locating Justin Revel. I was also very grateful that Mackay was professional enough not to leave names on answering machines.

It wasn’t exactly high-tech hacking, but it was effective. It looked like the spectre I thought I had been chasing through the snow had brought the dance back to me. I checked the phone and the room for visible bugs before I made my next call.

‘Hi, Mac, I’m returning your call.’

‘You okay?’ He had picked up on my shaky vibe.

‘Yes, it’s been a weird night.’ I didn’t elaborate.

‘Okay. The two guys you’re interested in were in the Signals Regiment together. Greg Thomas made it to corporal before getting a ticket out on a medical discharge.’

‘How long ago was that?’

There was a pause as he checked his notes. ‘Just under fifteen years. The other one, Owen Jones, made it to sergeant. His time expired five years ago. Sources tell me that he went into specialist private security after that. I heard he was in Afghanistan.’

‘He’s in Nigeria now. If he was in Signals, how come he got into security?’

‘He applied for and got a transfer to Military Intelligence.’

‘Special Forces?’

‘No, the hardware side of spook stuff. Some of the training he would have gone through for that would have made him a good prospect for private security firms.’

‘What were the grounds for the medical discharge?’ I asked, swinging it back to Greg Thomas.

Another pause. ‘Reading between the jargon, I reckon the guy had a nervous breakdown. It was after he’d finished a tour in Northern Ireland.’

‘Were you over there at that time?’

He laughed. ‘That’s strictly on a need-to-know basis, buddy.’

‘Could you find out for me, Mac? See if there’s anything like a big white whale that could account for the breakdown?’ I remembered then what Emrys had told me, about the fight in The Fleece after the funeral, and that this probably coincided with the accidental death of his fiancée. Grief had probably fucked the poor guy up. Still, there would be no harm in Mackay doing an extra bit of digging for me.

‘Anything else, boss?’ he asked sarcastically.

‘Yes.’ I heard him groan, he had not intended to be taken literally. ‘I may need you to look after someone for me for a while.’

I drove to Hereford the next morning under a thin blue sky, with the only remaining traces of snow being the stubborn tonsures on the hill tops, although the quick thaw was still evident in the brooks that were running brown and full.

I had had to leave it to Alison Weir to work through official channels to clear a path for me at the art college. It meant showing my hand, but I knew from past experience that they wouldn’t release personal information if I just waved my warrant card around.

Kevin Fletcher’s call came through before I had even cleared the border.

‘I’ve just had to confirm an authorization for you to access personal information off a database in Hereford.’ He sounded friendly enough, which meant that the bastard was fishing.

‘That’s right, Kev—’ I checked myself. ‘That’s right, boss, I’ve got a potential lead on a friend of Evie’s.’ I instructed myself to keep it vague.

‘You’re stepping awfully close to the demarcation line here, Glyn.’

‘What line is that, boss?’

‘The one that defines my particular area of interest.’ By which he meant he was closely guarding his geography.

‘It’s just the way it’s tracking.’

‘How close a friend?’

‘I won’t know until I talk to them. It’s come down from a third-hand source. So it could be a total waste of time.’

‘Sure it’s not an excuse to get down onto the flatlands and ogle art students?’

I recognized it as a joke and chuckled. ‘Positive, boss.’

‘You’re going to be sure to let us know what you find there, aren’t you?’

‘You bet,’ I chirped enthusiastically, and sublimated my gag reaction by giving the finger to a flock of sheep I was passing.

‘Because if your end of things is slipping down this way, you’ll need to be ready to hand over the information you’ve gathered.’

‘How are you doing down there, boss?’ I asked, heading him off at the pass, so I could swear on record that I’d never actually promised him anything.

‘Not bad. Not bad at all. We’ve got some interesting missing-person reports we’re following up on.’

‘Running into the crackles this end, boss . . .’

My thumb went into atmospherics mode and created the effects of a lousy signal by switching my phone off.

Spring was further advanced in Herefordshire. The trees were greening, the grass was losing its winter fatigue, and the lambs looked bigger. And people were dressing lighter.

A bit too light in the case of some of the students I passed as I walked into the art college. I was bustled through normal reception procedures to an administrator’s office, where I went through a rigmarole to prove that I was the guy they had been told to expect.

And, they told me, in the interests of fair play and data protection they had sent Justin an email to advise him that the police were about to have access to his contact details. They had also tried phoning him to pass on the same information, without success.

I wrote down Justin’s contact details that a scowling administrator read out to me in a disapproving voice off a computer monitor screen that he made sure I couldn’t see. He made me feel like a born-again Stasi operative. When I asked him for directions to Justin’s address, he reacted as if I had just asked him to join me in participating in some particularly messy human-rights abuse.

Outside, a student with hair that looked like it had been cut off the end of a hammock pointed me on the right track.

I just hoped that the college’s email to him hadn’t fucked things up, and that Justin was not now hightailing it for sanctuary. I contemplated whether I should try calling first, to soft-sell myself, but decided that it might just act as another flight-trigger.

The address was not far from the station. A quiet street of three-storey Edwardian red-brick and render semis, most of which had been converted to flats, with small front gardens and the occasional lime tree on the pavement. I parked my car at the end. I liked to arrive slowly on occasions like these, getting the feel for my destination as I approached.

As I got further along I smelled it. That unmistakeable lightning-struck primal forest smell of stale smoke and water. Recent fire damage. I flashed back on all the charred beams I had had to duck under in my time, the ash sludge on the floor, the abandoned dolls, the dead pets. The smell brought them all back.

And I just knew, as I got closer and recognized the fire-investigation unit’s van parked down the street, that I had found the address.

The front garden was cordoned off with incident tape. The first-floor bay window had blown out, and the white roughcast render was blackened where the flames had reached. There was nothing smoking now. And there had been enough time since the incident to erect temporary timber buttress supports against the front wall.

A fire officer came out of the front door. He gave me the pained look the professionals use on rubbernecking ghouls. I held up my warrant card.

‘Gas leak?’ I asked as he approached. I had seen these things before.