Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2) (11 page)

Well, he was going to show Mathew Markham what he was made of. ‘He might think he’s the brains behind this business,’ he said aloud to the trees, ‘but soon he’s going to find out that actions speak louder than good ideas alone.’ He pulled out his phone and called Dominic Green.

Suki cleared away the dinner plates and carried them into the kitchen. It had been remodelled at a cost one of hundred-thousand pounds and leaving no trace of the old country kitchen that had been there for over seventy years. In its place, wall-to-wall Neff appliances in brushed aluminium, a central isle topped with thick, Thai mahogany, a huge cooker, a built-in flat screen television, and a complicated coffee machine, straight out of Designer Homes magazine and the recipient of numerous design awards but would not look out of place in Aeronautical Monthly. Now, it all looked as though it had been hit by a rogue Predator drone.

It was recognised by many of her friends that Suki Markham was a marvellous cook, the culmination of several Cordon-Bleu courses, a former boyfriend who was an expert pastry chef with his own cooking show on television, and a strong affinity for the subject, that meant she had only to use a recipe once and it was memorised. However, even her strongest supporters would have to agree, no matter what food she was preparing, she was guilty of using every dish in the house.

She loaded the dishwasher, piled all the dishes which wouldn’t fit inside, on the worktop and put the leftovers in the bin or if they still looked appetising, in a Tupperware box for another day. The rest could have to wait until morning. She would have made a better fist of the whole thing if she hadn’t drunk so much wine at dinner, but having raved so much about the 2000 Chateau Haut-Brion, it would have been rude to protest when her father opened another bottle.

If only William had elected to stay, as he was partial to a good wine and could drink a bucketful when in the mood, but his horrid wife, Strychnine Stephanie, demanded his presence for Sunday dinner. Instead, her father enjoyed his customary two glasses and she had to drink the rest all by herself.

One of the reasons she liked coming to Ditchling, was to give her liver a rest from the assault it received in the wine bars and clubs of London, but this weekend would go down as a write-off. This was the second night in a row she had drunk far more than she intended, as yesterday morning she received a call from Grace Drake, an old friend from Roedean, the boarding school both girls attended.

Built high up on chalk cliffs on the outskirts of Brighton, the austere stonework and windswept colonnades always reminded her of Colditz Castle, and not Hogwarts School of Magic as kids in the Lower School referred to it. They hadn’t seen one another for many years and decided to meet up.

Using hair extensions and dark glasses to disguise her face from groups of leering lads and peripatetic snappers who might recognise her, they relived Saturday nights from their youth, crawling from pub to pub around the Lanes in Brighton. Too wired to go home, they rounded off the evening with a three-hour dance session at Liquid Space, a sweaty nightclub on the lower Esplanade and only a stone’s throw from the pebbles on the beach.

It felt so good to be able to dance to music she liked and in any way she wanted, without thinking how it would appear the following morning in the Sunday papers, accompanied by catchy headlines such as, ‘Sexy Suki Sozzled,’ ‘Suki Sizzles Sussex’ or the plain nasty, ‘Suki Parties After Dumping Alex’ (or Jon or Caleb). They soon lost track of time and how much they were drinking and by the time she rolled into Ditchling in the back of a taxi at three-thirty in the morning, she was well plastered.

Tonight, she had drunk a fair amount of wine but didn’t mix her drinks, it was a high quality wine, and she drank it over the top of a large Sunday dinner, so even though she did feel tipsy, she felt a whole lot better than she did last night. She walked into the library carrying two strong coffees, a feeble attempt to sober them both up and found Daddy sitting in his favourite armchair, a large whisky in one hand and a book in the other. She placed a cup beside him and took a seat on the settee.

‘What are you reading?’

‘It’s a book by Phillip Jones, the guy who wants to buy the house. It’s called
The Death of Reason.’
He held it up for her to see the cover. ‘I bought it on Saturday after he came round, as I wanted to find out what sort of guy I will be dealing with.’

‘Well, you won’t find it there, for sure.’

‘Why not? I’ve read the biography at the start of the book. I know for instance, which school he went to and what he studied at university and the jobs he did before becoming a full-time author. The main character of all his books, this limping detective, Inspector Rob Gresham, I’m sure is modelled on him, now that I’ve met him.’

‘Daddy, it’s fiction, you won’t find out anything about anybody in there. It’s all made up. I’ve met a few authors and let me tell you, they’re a quirky bunch.’

‘This is what everybody thinks but where does he get his information from? He gets it from here,’ he said tapping the side of his head. ‘He can’t conjure this stuff out of thin air. It must be based on his own experiences, his life, and the people he’s met, but twisted around to make it interesting for people like you and me to read.’

For the next twenty minutes he launched into one of his mini-lectures, this time about literature and its contribution to society, but it could also have been about dogs, wine, or Adolf Hitler. To the unwary who strayed on to one of his favourite topics of modern art, computer technology, or house conversion, they would be there all night.

She kissed him goodnight and climbed the stairs. She undressed, got into bed and picked up her phone from the bedside table. She called her agent, Bethany Myers, who was arranging a photo shoot for her to model an up-market chain store’s new summer range for publication in a well-known fashion magazine. Even though it was eleven-fifteen on a Sunday evening, Bethany would be there as she didn’t sleep well and never put her phone off.

Suki was one of her regular and more lucrative clients and as usual, she charmed her like a long-lost sister with assurances about the photo shoot and telling her she was looking forward to seeing the resultant photographs, as they would be marvellous. Suki didn’t needed such a level of ego stroking and only called to make sure the job was still on, as she knew the photographer they were using, and for the last few weeks he hadn’t been well.

After the call, she put her phone off, as the expensive Bordeaux was making her feel carefree and lightheaded and if she phoned some of the people she was thinking about, she would regret it in the morning. For once, there were no need for sleeping pills as the country air and the wine did the trick and a not long after putting out the light, she fell sound sleep.

She woke with a start. She levered herself up on one elbow and peered at the clock. She looked again; yes it was two-thirty-five. She had been asleep for over three hours, although it felt like only a few minutes. She was about to snuggle under the duvet and go back to sleep, when she heard dull banging coming from downstairs.

Her brain felt fuzzy from the wine but her memory was clear. When she came to bed, she left her father downstairs in his favourite armchair and reading the novel by the guy who said he wanted to buy the house, so why was he making all this noise and more to the point, why hadn't he gone to bed?

She slipped out of bed and reached for the dressing gown, hanging at the back of the door. It was made of black silk with the design of a Chinese dragon on the back and once belonged to her frivolous stepmother, Olivia. While it felt soft and silky and would be ideal for swanning around the bedroom in the middle of summer on those rare nights when the temperature inside the house hovered near twenty-five degrees, it proved little or no bloody use on a cold spring night like this, as the thermometer refused to move above ten.

She padded three doors along to her father’s room and opened the door. It was obvious as soon as she walked inside that it hadn’t been occupied, as not only was the bed neatly made, but the window she opened earlier in the afternoon hadn’t been closed, leaving the room feeling like the interior of the big American fridge downstairs.

She shut the window and for a moment, felt a pang of guilt. She imagined he had fallen asleep on the chair and had woken up to find the house in darkness and the rest of the village in bed, before wandering into the kitchen to fetch a drink of water, and tripping over a piece of detritus she had forgotten to move away. The guilt soon blew away like hot breath on a cold night as she remembered the house had more lights than the London Palladium, and if the old fool was stupid enough to wander around in the dark, it was his own fault.

The thought of getting on her hands and knees to clear up a basting pan full of greasy water, tipped all over the kitchen floor by someone too drunk to open their eyes, almost made her puke and on cue, her head started to throb like a David Guetta soundtrack. She turned around and headed back to her room, walking quietly so as not to alert her father to her presence, as she hoped he would clear up any mess he created all by himself. She closed the door and slipped back beneath the warm duvet.

A few minutes later and on the point of dozing off, she heard voices. She sat up, not sure if it was part of a dream until she heard them again, and now she was in no doubt. She listened hard trying to tune in, trying to hear what they were saying but then they fell silent. She lay there for several moments, her mind beyond sleep and now buzzing with all manner of conspiracies and possibilities.

She jumped out of bed angry, and headed towards the door. If this was the way he was living his life now, with the radio or television blaring out full-blast at three o’clock in the morning, she was going to put a stop to it right now. Retirement was supposed to be relaxing and enjoyable, and wasn’t meant to turn him into a curmudgeon old night owl, listening to aggressive phone-ins with sados, psychos, and loners with nothing better to do with their time than calling a radio station in the early hours of the morning.

She opened the door and stopped in her tracks. The voices were there again but they were not babbling radio or dramatic television voices, they were human voices, someone was in the house. In the early days of the business, her father often invited customers, suppliers, staff, and academics to the house, often after a boozy outing to a restaurant or pub nearby, but he always warned her in advance and in any case, he no longer worked there in any meaningful capacity. He was retired; he didn’t do meetings.

She crept to the top of the stairs and peered over the banister. She was tempted to go down, but the voices were angry and she didn’t like to be around when father was telling someone off. She tried but could not make sense of the words and sounds. In truth, any sounds in this house were alien to her, as she had never lived here. Lavender Cottage, by way of contrast, was the place where she grew up and she knew every squeak and scrape, from the identity of the person moving around upstairs, to the cat trying to sneak in through the back door flap.

Three men appeared in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. They were all dressed in black gear with balaclavas over their heads, and the last one was wiping what looked like a knife or a screwdriver on a handkerchief. They were heading towards the door but before stepping outside, the man with the knife stopped and turned round. She ducked back, cursing her long, blonde hair when it followed on seconds later.

She clapped her hand over her mouth to stop the noise of her breathing, which was coming out in short, rapid pants, the first signs of a panic attack. She tried to think of something to calm her, and thought of her boyfriend Pierre, now tucked up in bed at his parent’s farmhouse in France, far away from her and her father’s strange visitors. When her breathing returned to normal, she started to think about an escape plan. Her phone was still on the bedside table and at the first sign of footsteps on the bottom step, she would make a dash for it and hope she could get there before they worked out which room she was in.

Her senses were wound up tighter than banjo strings and she almost jumped out of her skin when the silence of the night was broken by the noise of car engines starting. It took her a few seconds to realise the men she saw a few minutes ago were no longer in the house and about to drive away. She crept to the landing window, opened the smallest chink of the curtain, and peered out.

Two cars were making their way over the short driveway, through the gap between two pillars where a rusty, wrought iron gate once stood. The first car was a light-coloured, boxy saloon, and the second car, a Bentley, like the one her father owned.

She made her way downstairs. The front door was wide open, the area around it bitterly cold. She was tempted to close it and call the police, but instead she stepped outside. It was pitch black, the moon obscured by thick cloud but enough light to see her father’s Bentley had gone, but her Mini Cooper was still there. She went back into the house and this time slammed the door shut.

She headed straight for the library, but when she looked inside, he wasn’t there. She walked back to the hall and opened the striped-oak door leading to the lounge. She expected to see him fast asleep in a chair and was ready to give him an earful for setting her off on this wild goose chase and disturbing her beauty sleep, but the reprimand would have to wait, as this chair was also empty and cold.

She decided the time for stealth was over and set about switching on all the lights and pushing open all the doors and shouting, ‘Daddy, Daddy, where are you? Those bastards have stolen your car. Your beautiful Bentley has gone. Where the hell are you hiding?’