Death of a Raven (8 page)

“It was when I first noticed him,” I explained to Mark. “All the girls thought him a real hero and bought him sweets from the tuck-shop.”

Mark was laughing so much that, strictly speaking, he was a hazard to other road users.

“The bike was mainly to appease my mother — she and Dad nearly split up over the belting he gave me.”

“So this guy really made an impression on your young days,” Mark observed. “What happened to him?” 

“He was put away — in a home.”

“I suppose I can laugh about it now,” I said. “But I used to have terrible nightmares that he was after me. He used to hide behind hedges and jump out on us when we were going home from school.”

“Probably quite harmless really,” Patrick said in my ear.

I thought about it. Yes, probably quite harmless, a lonely, flawed man with a child’s mind. But nevertheless, resurrected by someone else in possession of a vivid imagination, had turned him into what Stalky had been to
us
. An object of fear.

“I wish I felt less bad about the other night,” Mark mumbled.

“What can you remember?” Patrick asked him.

“Very little. Eating too much. Drinking too much. I haven’t the first idea how I got home.”

“You drove.”

“Jeez,” Mark groaned.

“You arrived about ten minutes in front of your friends and spent most of that time throwing up behind the stable.”

“Right under your window, I suppose,” commented Mark bitterly.

“No — round by the manure heap. That’s where I took you after you’d tried to climb the stairs and failed.”

The pick-up swerved slightly.

“You had something on your mind but couldn’t even begin to tell me,” Patrick continued. “You were kind of upset about it so I pushed my fingers down your throat and then held you while you suffered the consequences. After I’d ducked your head a couple of times in the horse trough you managed to get out that people were on their way to give me a going over.”

“I can’t remember any of that,” Mark said.

“Just as well,” Patrick said with a sideways smile at me. “I wasn’t exactly tender with you.” 

“You must have come to warn him,” I said. “Was it to make up for asking them to do it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything.”

He became very quiet after this exchange and did not speak until we arrived at our destination. I had an idea that talking about that night had brought some of it into his mind, and how afterwards he had almost fainted from sheer fright upon beholding Patrick in the living room. The finely drawn taunt: “You’ve been sick” had brought from his subconscious what it was like to be handled by those wiry, wringing fingers and thus ensured his complete co-operation.

When we were parked at the side of the road, Mark removed the keys from the ignition and sat still, staring at nothing. Finally he said, “What’s the word? Wimp? Spoiled brat? You tell me.”

“Where did you find them?” Patrick said, speaking rather sharply.

“I didn’t. They found me. In Bob’s Deli.”

“But that’s not where you ate.”

“No. I’d gone in there to buy some sandwiches to take to the trotting races. I knew I’d miss dinner. Bryce came in and asked me to go to Jasper’s Creek with them for a few beers. I didn’t really want to — I don’t usually drink with them other than when they take me fishing. But I did, and it all got out of hand.”

Frowning, Patrick got out of the truck and strolled away from it, hands in pockets. Then, in mid-stride he turned and walked quickly back to rest both arms on the wound down window, staring at Mark penetratingly for a moment. “Tell you what — I don’t believe you bleated to them about me at all.” With that, he commenced an examination of the roadside by the burnt out trees.

“What you must bear in mind,” I said in an undertone to Mark, “is that you encountered the very, very best. Not even trained soldiers can withstand him when he’s after information. The MoD let him loose on people accused of spying.” 

“But now he’s being kind.”

“Oh no, never think that. Patrick is never kind. He gets right to the truth in the most ruthless fashion and doesn’t care if he strips people psychologically naked.”

“Then why did he say that?”

“Because as far as he’s concerned, it
is
the truth.”

“Fair enough,” said Mark, preparing to get out of the cab.

“Of course I’m only speaking about those things that he regards as part of his job,” I said, detaining him with a hand on his arm.

“So where do I really stand, having given him another hiding for imitating Stalky?”

“You’re still confusing the issue,” I told him. “That was duty, and when he’s working he always plays with fire. Getting singed is part of the job.” I couldn’t help smiling at the worried expression on Mark’s face. “Right now, if you want the moon go and ask him for it and he’ll give it to you.”

Young active people always want self defence lessons from Patrick and Mark proved to be no exception. When Patrick had come within earshot he said, “Bryce’ll come back. He’s never run away from anyone. When he does —”

“You’ll keep out of the way,” Patrick interposed.

“You could teach me a few tricks of the trade in case you aren’t around.”

“I’d be court martialled if you so much as bent an eyelash.”

Mark coloured but persevered. “No one need know.”

Patrick took a deep breath. One day, perhaps, he will set up a survival school. In the meantime he is kept very busy teaching nephews, nieces and cousins how to beat off would-be rapists, bank robbers and other law breakers.

“If my leg allows it,” Patrick said. “And if I have the time I might, for a small fee to make it legal as strictly speaking I am free-lance …”

Mark was grinning.

“… teach you the rudiments of looking after yourself.” 

They went away to examine closely the ground at the place where Andy had died. I had seen enough. So I listened to the birds, catching a glimpse of a blue jay dipping and bowing as it scolded the two men slowly quartering the ground. Self-defence lessons notwithstanding, I was pretty sure that the first person whom Patrick or Terry would remove from the battle arena should the Gaspereau brothers arrive waving axes would be Mark.

From their actions I could see that they were trying to reconstruct the accident, if indeed it was such. Following Patrick’s instructions Mark paced the distance from the skid marks that were still visible on the road to the tree that had taken the full impact. They returned in a few minutes dusty and slapping at insects, after hunting around in the undergrowth near where the car had burnt out.

“I’d like to have had a look at the wreck,” Patrick muttered.

Mark said, “They’re kept in a locked compound until the police say they can be disposed of.”

We exceeded the speed limits all the way back into Port Charles.

My sensation of horror returned at the sight of the remains of the car. Inside there were just the bare frames of the seats, the crumpled driver’s wheel. The headlights had gone, leaving holes like empty eye sockets in a skull.

“Surely the police …” I started to say, but Patrick was already right inside the wreck, his shoes crunching on broken glass and rusting metal.

Mark, examining the tyre-less rear wheels, said, “I wouldn’t say, looking at these, that he’d had a tyre blow out and driven along on the rims.”

“What about the front ones?” Patrick asked, intent on the dashboard area.

“I’ve already looked. The left one flew off on impact and wasn’t burnt — it’s over there. Seems all right. The other’s really chewed up. It must have sort of folded up underneath.”

“There were only skid marks,” Patrick mused. “It can’t have folded up there or the suspension would have gouged a hell of a groove in the road, and the car would have probably turned right round in a circle. But it didn’t — it carried on as though the bend wasn’t there. That suggests driver failure to me.” He exclaimed softly and beckoned us over.

“What is it?” I asked, already almost certain that the mark on the left hand side of the windscreen mounting was the result of a bullet having ricochetted off it.

“Murder,” said Patrick. “I would guess that the shot came slightly from behind, through the rear right-hand window. Whether it caused a flesh wound in his face, creased his scalp or only frightened the living daylights out of him the result was the same — the car crashed.”

“Wouldn’t it have been noticeable that he’d been shot? Even after …”

“Not necessarily. If his skull was damaged they might have assumed he hadn’t fastened his seat belt and been thrown forward.” Patrick shot a quick glance in my direction. “I won’t bore you with any details of what happens to the human body in extremely high temperatures.”

But I knew, writers are a fund of that kind of knowledge. Indian funeral pyres, cremation, people trapped inside burning cars … in a situation of intense heat the skull usually explodes.

I went back to the pick-up leaving them to inspect the rear right-hand door. When they climbed back into the cab Patrick told me that there were no bullet holes or other ricochet marks that he could see on any other part of the chassis so it was fairly safe to assume, as he had already put forward, that there had been one shot through the rear right-hand window.

“We’re talking about someone who is an extremely good shot,” he went on. “I’m sure that the decision as to how the job was going to be done was taken right at the last moment. You have to make all sorts of last-minute decisions when you’re going to kill someone. What was the weather like?” he snapped at Mark, obviously regretting the indiscretion.

“Warm,” he replied. “The whole week had been warm. Unseasonably so. It took everyone by surprise.”

“Not so difficult then,” Patrick said. “I suggest we go back and work the area again.”

I helped them search for a while but in the end was driven back to the pick-up by insects; minute black flies that sucked my blood without me feeling them but which left holes from which I continued to bleed afterwards, and mosquitoes that whined and stung.

From where I was sitting I could see Patrick and Mark. Both had raided the forest for sticks with which to probe in the undergrowth. Patrick, I knew, was suffering. On the flat he is nearly as mobile as anyone. Make him walk through thick matted vegetation and, shockingly, he is suddenly a man with an artificial leg. Mark was probably learning some new adjectives.

They found what they were looking for. By the roadside, much further away from the point where the car had left the road than anyone expected, was a patch of grass still flattened, a few ground out cigarette stubs and three empty beer cans.

“I could drink the harbour dry,” Mark said, grimacing as he wiped away the evidence of black fly bites on his face and arms.

“We’ll report this first and then you can dive in,” Patrick told him.

At a little after five-thirty we left police headquarters where no one had offered us so much as a coffee, the entire building apparently bereft of coin-in-the-slot drinks machines.

One hand on the door handle of the pick-up, Patrick slowly removed it to eye Mark narrowly. “If you like we’ll have lesson one in staying alive.” 

“Here?” queried Mark with commendable politeness. “In the car park?”

“Why not?”

“OK,” Mark agreed.

Patrick indicated that I should climb aboard and then got in after me. He spoke to Mark through the open door. “Get in.”

Mark sat behind the wheel. “I’m ready.”

“Drive us home.”

When we had travelled about a mile during which nobody spoke, Patrick reached behind me and clapped Mark on the shoulder. “Well done.”

“I don’t understand,” Mark said.

“Lesson one in staying alive is to do as I tell you, however unreasonable the orders seem … and without asking questions.”

There was to be no opportunity for Patrick and I to discuss anything in private for that evening Paul Rogers was poisoned.

Chapter 9

At first no one realised how serious it was. But after a while, when he was still ceaselessly vomiting, my blood ran cold. It had started with horrible suddenness. One moment he had been joking with Terry; the next doubled over with agonising stomach cramps, his dinner splattered widely across the floor. McAlister and Terry had half carried him to a downstairs cloakroom where he had continued to be devastatingly ill.

I found Patrick with Mark in the basement, interrupting concentration during a deadly
pas
de
deux
to the extent of being responsible for Patrick being upended ignominiously into a settee.

“Sorry,” I said in response to his glower, “but Paul’s been taken terribly ill.”

“Have you called the doctor?” he asked when I had given him a few details.

“Margaret’s doing it now. I told her that I thought an ambulance would be more appropriate but she said that he’s prone to violent bilious attacks.”

Hands on hips, slightly out of breath, Patrick said, “What is your diagnosis?” He was not being sarcastic. All D12 operatives are trained to recognise the symptoms of many illnesses.

“I think he’s been poisoned,” I said.

These five words were sufficient to put into operation one of our rehearsed routines. I didn’t have to be told, it was enough to see him unhook his gun harness from the antlers of a stuffed moose head and strap it on. We mounted the stairs to the ground floor, I to close all outside windows, lock all exterior doors and locate a powerful flash lamp that I knew was kept in the kitchen. This was in case the power supply was cut off deliberately from outside. It is not unknown for a diversion such as a poisoning to be created within a household before armed men break in.

Emma, with a bucket of hot soapy water and a cloth, was down on her knees on her precious polished floor, frantically mopping and half crying with misery and disgust. “Where’s David?” she called when she saw me.

“At the boat.”

“I know he’s at the boat,” she wailed. “Surely someone’s rung the marina by now and left a message that he’s to come home?”

Not surprisingly no one had, so to keep her quiet I did, at the same time making a mental note to tell Patrick that Hartland would shortly be banging on his own front door.

Paul had by now collapsed, barely conscious, complaining that his face and hands were going numb. Between them McAlister and Terry had removed his soiled outer clothing and wrapped him in a blanket. I called the doctor’s number again and spoke to her partner who agreed that the case sounded sufficiently grave to warrant an ambulance.

It made a strange tableau, the blanket-wrapped man lying on the rug in the entrance hall, Patrick crouched by him, gun drawn, the DARE staff back in their hideaway under the stairs sitting on the floor, Terry behind the front door, also with gun ready. Emma stood looking over the bannisters from the living area above, her floor washing completed. She did not seem to have noticed the splashes of vomit on the tiles in the cloakroom.

Patrick’s gun trained quickly when Mark ran in from the dining room, causing him to come to a dead stop.

“Walk — don’t run,” said Patrick softly. 

“What did he throw up?” enquired Mark.

“Everything, I should imagine,” Patrick said coldly.

Paul groaned and writhed, twisting himself partially out of the blanket. I went to him and covered him again. He didn’t seem aware of my presence.

“Oh, come on! Come on!” cried Emma, beating her clenched fists on the bannister rail, but whether she was referring to her husband or the ambulance I was not sure.

Mark had gone into the cloakroom and now came out, rather pale. “Clams,” he said. “It was clams. You can see it was.”

“Mark! Must you?” Emma shrieked at him.

But Mark ignored her, staring at Patrick. “If it was bad clams then he’s a gonner.”

“Surely he wouldn’t have eaten them if they were bad,” Patrick reasoned.

“No!” said Mark angrily. “Shellfish poisoning. Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

“It would seem not.”

“I have,” Terry said. “There’s a minute poisonous plant that the shellfish ingest which makes them toxic. You can’t taste it and cooking doesn’t eliminate the poison. Three people died last week.”

*

Paul was still alive at six the following morning. That was the hour when Terry relieved Patrick at his bedside. Terry took with him the information that an Inspector Le Blek had called with two of his men, one of them a forensic scientist, soon after Paul had been taken to the hospital. Le Blek had questioned everyone briefly while the man from the forensic department had collected specimens.

“Le Blek has to investigate, even if it’s only a straightforward case of Paul eating the wrong clams,” Patrick said, very tired and obviously haunted by what he had seen. “If you’re interested in the scientific stuff it’s a plant called Gonyaulax-Tamarensis. The boffins refer to it as a dinoflagellate, and it produces a poison fifty times stronger than curare.”

He smiled wearily. “I wrote it down. I can always remember things when I write them down. Clams and mussels eat this plant and it makes them pretty deadly, but periwinkles aren’t affected as they graze on larger seaweed. Scallops consume it too but we throw away the poisonous part and only eat the muscle.”

“Does Paul have a chance?” I asked, getting to the point.

“Depends. As Terry said, cooking doesn’t affect the toxin. There’s no antidote.”

“No antidote!”

“That’s what the doctor was careful to impress on me. Another point not in Paul’s favour is that local people can build up a resistance to it. They might be unaffected by a meal that would make a visitor very ill.”

“I don’t understand why Le Blek has to investigate if it’s an accident.”

“Because these plants stain the sea red and clam collecting is automatically made illegal in any area where this is observed. A special watch is mounted in the summer months when the danger’s at its height. And three people died last week, don’t forget — it might just be accidental.”

I broke the silence that followed by saying, “Paul is the real brains of this outfit.”

“He’s also the only one in the team who likes clams so if anyone’s going to be poisoned accidentally it would be Paul. We mustn’t become carried away by thoughts of murder.”

*

I felt quite useless. With no meals to plan and cook, no garden to tend, and quite unable to write a word, I read until my eyes ached — mostly light fiction of Emma’s of the kind that had driven me to writing in the first place, and the better English Sunday papers, available at certain outlets at three times the price at home. The latter probably saved my sanity.

After four hours sleep Patrick went to find Mark, who was spending the week at home as the college was closed for a half-term break. They both disappeared to the basement and neither emerged for nearly twenty-four hours. David and Emma’s disapproval of what they knew to be going on down there settled over the household like a chilly miasma. It was typical of Patrick, however, to give everyone something to think about.

Before he departed he asked me if I was feeling better and I think I answered him truthfully because, when a man is dying, one accords one’s own minor health worries the same sympathy due to a spoilt whining child. But in quiet moments I had to admit to myself that in a vague, unhappy way I felt decidedly ill.

I was glad that Emma kept away from the basement. Not many mothers, even when the fire of maternalism does not burn unquenchable in their bosoms, will willingly witness their son being taken apart and put back together again, no matter how artistic or necessary the ensuing redevelopment. At the end of this time Mark emerged more exhausted than he thought possible and told me all about it. He was surprised that the tuition had not really been about the martial arts but self-control, admitting to losing his temper four times without being touched. The penalty for this was thirty press-ups on each occasion, his mentor all the while lethally demure.

“Chris Fraser’s flying out,” said McAlister to Hartland that evening. “Our managing director,” he elaborated after Hartland had looked at him quite blankly.

“What does that achieve?”

“It’s a gesture of support — that’s all,” Drew replied, surprised.

“To be with us in our time of need.” Hartland spoke slowly, his voice tremulous with false emotion.

Terry walked out, hands clenched.

“Have you been drinking?” McAlister said sharply.

“I might have been,” Hartland observed, and also left the room. 

“Nerves … I hope,” I commented, closing the book I had been unable to concentrate on. The phone rang and was answered on an upstairs extension.

“How’s Paul?” asked Margaret.

“Very weak,” I told her. “They don’t hold out much hope for him.”

“But he’s a fighter,” said Patrick who had entered without any of us noticing.

“Who, Paul?” said Margaret. “I wouldn’t have said so.”

Patrick sprawled on the sofa. “When I was with him — that first night — he was in terrible pain a lot of the time. But I could see just by looking at him that he wasn’t going to give in easily.”

McAlister repeated the news that Fraser was joining us and Patrick pulled a wry face.

“More worry for you?” Drew hazarded.

“He was the one to whom the letters were addressed. Who knows? This might be exactly what somebody wants him to do.”

“Shall I wire him not to come?”

“I’m not sure that I ought to make that kind of decision,” Patrick said. “Is it of practical help to you if he does?”

“Certainly. Paul’s the computer genius, but the project’s all Chris’s brainchild. People tend to forget that.”

Margaret said, “Chris can produce the technical drawings. If you carry on writing the design documentation, perhaps we can borrow a programmer from Nasonworth.”

“That’s fine until we hit snags,” McAlister told her. “But we can work on like that for a while. Chris might decide to send someone else out from UK.”

“That’s it then,” Patrick announced. “He comes.” He frowned as Mark came into the room. “What’s wrong? Have you heard from the hospital?”

“No,” said Mark. “It was Le Blek. He wanted to know if I’d seen Lanny Gaspereau lately.”

“What did you say?” 

“I told him the truth.”

Patrick gave no reaction. “Go on.”

“He asked me if I was aware that he’d served eight years for manslaughter in 1972. I told him no — of course I wasn’t.”

Patrick said, “I’d already mentioned our small fracas the other night. What else did he say?”

“Lanny’s prints were on the cans.”

“Lanny’s prints were on the cans,” Patrick echoed in a whisper. “How interesting. He was the dark-haired one, wasn’t he? The only one of the three who was more muscle than fat. Blue eyes, small scar on the left cheek that was probably a legacy from a knife fight. More intelligent than the others so therefore the most dangerous.”

“That’s Lanny,” said Mark.

Patrick subjected him to an unwavering stare. “Did you tell him everything you know?”

“Of course.”

“Nothing you deliberately left unsaid?”

“What do you mean?”

“I
am
speaking English.”

The basement lessons certainly hadn’t cowed Mark. He met Patrick’s stare defiantly. “I don’t know where Lanny is.”

“I’m not really suggesting that you do.” The human lie detector was well into his stride by now, his expression intent, never taking his gaze off Mark for a moment. It is a side of Patrick that I do not like at all. “Perhaps there’s somewhere he
might
be.”

Mark looked at me for support and I said, “Even if you omitted to tell Inspector Le Blek for the best possible reasons.”

“Leave him alone!” Margaret said. “He’s telling the truth.”

“He’s lying,” Patrick replied. Then, to Mark, “Be warned.” 

“I was going to talk to you in private about it,” Mark mumbled.

Ye gods, even I could see it now. My heart went out to him for I knew Patrick would be utterly merciless.

“Could it be,” murmured Patrick, each word a diamond on glass, “that you were hoping that you and I, Hawkeye and the last of the soddin’ Mohicans, would track him down and bring him back alive?”

I thought for a moment or two that Mark would burst into tears.

“Go and ring Le Blek back,” Patrick said. “Apologise for forgetting to mention the mooring, hut, cabin, hunting lodge, his Aunt Agatha’s or wherever else Lanny might be.”

“That was really cruel!” Margaret cried when Mark had gone. “It was a perfectly natural thing for him to do after all the attention you’ve given him.”

“And I have enough on my plate,” he told her, equally cruelly, “without the complication of hero worship from a teenager neglected by his parents. No, you listen to me,” he continued when she opened her mouth to argue. “Do you really expect me to connive with him in concealing information from the police and then scamper all over the boon-docks looking for some guy who might or might not have thrown three empty beer cans away in Quispamsis?”