Rainstone Fall (2 page)
What did I say about morons standing at street corners in bad weather? That’s exactly how I felt: stupid. What a stupid way to earn money. I was sitting in my car, in the Oriel Hall car park, from where I could just make out James Lane’s tiny terraced house in Brookleaze Buildings, where it skulked behind a riot of unchecked vegetation that, along with the National Collection of Broken Kitchen Gadgets, cluttered the tiny front garden. All the houses along the narrow street that faced the infant school and New Oriel Hall had back doors but since presumably he was unaware of being watched I hoped this wouldn’t be a problem. Surveillance of course was really Tim Bigwood’s speciality, Tim being the third member of Aqua Investigations, my small detective agency. I could only just afford to employ him at the best of times. His day job as an IT consultant for Bath University, mixed with his expertise as a retired (or so he says) safe-breaker, made him an excellent addition to the team. Tim’s winning ways with all things locked were very helpful in the detection business, especially if you didn’t mind bending the rules a little, and anything to do with pinhole cameras and sound bugging was a Bigwood job. But if I employed him at the going rate for watching Lane I’d never pay for my roof repairs.
It was cold in the car. I had to open the window to stop it steaming up, which didn’t improve the temperature. ‘Oh,
please
come out,’ I implored. ‘There’s nothing but crap on telly, I checked.’
First upstairs, then downstairs the lights snapped off and Lane’s front door opened. ‘Blimey! It worked!’ Mr Lane negotiated the cluttered few yards to the pavement with the awkward side-to-side movement of someone with a dud leg, using his stick. As he crossed the street and came towards me through the car park I let myself slither down in my seat and closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep in case he saw me. Through the open window I could hear him splish past on the wet tarmac. After a minute I slithered up again, got out and followed. He was wearing a hooded waterproof, faded jeans already darkening with wet at the bottom and black trainers. He looked thinner than he had in the picture taken last month outside the courts. His pace was slow, syncopated by a thin black walking stick in his right hand. I kept well back since he didn’t look like he was about to sprint off. He made his laborious way along quiet St Saviour’s Road and disappeared into the Rose and Crown. Things were looking up. I hung back a while and let several people go in before following inside.
It was only eight o’clock but the place was already busy. I’d always liked the Rosie. The decor looked like it had survived from the 1930s rather than been bought wholesale last year. The heating was on. Someone had had the excellent idea of putting the radiators on the outside of the bar and turning the pipework into footrests so that wet and grumpy detectives could warm themselves. The narrow tables along the walls were fully occupied and it took me a while to locate my quarry. He’d already been furnished with a pint of beer and he had found a wooden chair in a corner near the little fire. Ignoring the music and the loudly talking groups of people around him he pulled a hardback book from under his rainproof, opened it at a marked page and started reading. It was the kind of pub where nobody would dream of disturbing you. In fact there was another lonely book reader perched on a barstool, looking absorbed and oblivious to his surroundings.
I called Tim on my mobile. Mixing business with pleasure had always been my preferred way of working. It took Tim all of ten minutes to get here in his black Audi TT from his tiny flat in Northampton Street. He never needed much encouragement. A gang of girls was noisily leaving just as he arrived and we pounced on their table full of empty Bacardi Breezer bottles.
‘So, an emergency night out at the Rosie? It was short notice but naturally I dropped everything,’ Tim said as he parked himself opposite me with a pint of Löwenbräu and a giant packet of parsnip crisps. I pointed out James Lane, safely engrossed in his book.
‘Oh, him.’ Tim nodded his woolly head. ‘I’ve seen him in here before. Sometimes with mates but mostly by himself, reading. So you think the walking stick’s just a prop?’
‘A walking stick’s always a prop.’
‘A stage prop, you pedant.’
‘That’s what Griffin’s are paying me to find out.’
Tim had been tugging with his broad fists at both ends of his crisp bag which now suddenly yet predictably split open, decorating our table, our beers and our neighbours’ beers with deep-fried parsnip shavings. ‘Help yourselves, everyone,’ he offered.
This was one of several mysteries surrounding Tim. His tiny flat with its dust-free banks of computer hardware and pathologically clean, gadgety kitchen contrasted so sharply with the mess that happened when you let Tim anywhere near food that I’d long suspected he ate in the shower. With the water running.
It was quite a while ago now that Tim and I discovered we had more in common than a love of pubs, food and risky jobs, namely: Annis. Whether Annis was eventually going to own up to sleeping with both of us even if I hadn’t walked in on them one night is another question I never asked her. That she managed to induce us to share her favours rather than make her choose between us is a measure of her persuasiveness. There were certain conditions attached to this arrangement though. One was that ‘Three is Company’. The other one was the kind of discretion that precluded the comparison of notes. We quickly learned to ignore, too, the fact that Annis seemed to make all the decisions in this affair and treated her like a force of nature. A bit like weather, really.
We talked about the weather for a bit – there’d been a lot of it recently – while I kept an eye on Lane. He was so engrossed in his book, he groped around for his pint rather than take his eyes off the print. Tim interrupted his description of how the trees in his neighbourhood had suffered in the storm and tapped my arm. ‘That kid with the black curls has been staring at us, I think he wants to talk to you.’
He looked too young to get served in a pub but took a fortifying swig from a pint of lager as soon as I looked up. He wore the latest evolution of pre-ruined jeans and holey sweater and was being nudged towards us from behind by a bottle-blonde girl in a similar outfit who if anything looked even younger. Both wore expensive trainers which suggested they were in the Rosie by choice, not because they couldn’t afford a night in a more fashionable city centre pub. ‘Okay, okay,’ he complained to the girl over his shoulder, then composed his most streetwise expression and came up to our table.
‘Ehm, hi, ehm, the, ehhhh landlady said you’re a, ehm, private dick . . . ehm . . . tective.’ The girl behind him turned her eyes heavenwards and stuck her studiously bored face into a pint of bitter. I hoped for his sake that they were friends. It would last longer that way.
I nodded encouragingly at him, don’t ask why. ‘She’s right.’ I’d once helped the landlady to find out who was pinching her empty kegs, gas-axing them in half lengthways and turning them into cut-price barbecues. Drinks were still on the house. The boy was blocking my view of Lane so I told him: ‘Why don’t you sit down.’ He did. The girl did likewise, tucked her hair behind her ears, crossed her legs and focused her eyes into the middle distance. Nothing to do with her. The bloke looked at her for help, saw he wasn’t getting any, took a deep breath and said quickly: ‘There’s going to be a murder. Or, or two even. I think.’
‘Tell it properly, tell him what you told me,’ the girl urged impatiently. She took out a blue tin of tobacco hand-painted with stars and moons and proceeded to roll a fat cigarette.
The boy pulled his dark eyebrows together in concentration and stared deep into his pint for inspiration. ‘It was last Sunday, ehm, at night. I was out late and, eh, walking home up the hill and they came out from the footpath. It was dark so they didn’t see me and they were talking and, ehm, one said something about someone called Albert having been “nosing about”. “Just like the old witch,” said the other one, “sniffing around at night.” And then the other one said “Maybe we should arrange for them to have a little accident”.’ He looked up at me, visibly relieved at having finished this long and involved story.
‘Wha eshi-nashy?’ asked Tim through a mouth full of parsnip crisps.
‘What else did they say?’ I translated.
‘Nothing. I mean I don’t know. I just stood and waited until they were gone completely. I didn’t want them to know I’d heard.’
‘Did you recognize them?’
‘It was too dark. They were big blokes though.’
‘Did they have any particular accent?’
‘Didn’t notice any accent,’ he mused.
Probably local then. ‘How old did they sound to you?’
‘Older than me.’
‘That narrows it down to forty million people,’ I complained.
Tim came to his rescue. ‘Older like him?’ He pointed at me. ‘Or older like me?’ he asked smiling, being a comfortable ten years younger than me.
‘Oh, old like him.’ The boy pointed at me. How rude.
‘That
does
narrow it down,’ Tim assured him.
‘Doesn’t matter. And where did this happen?’ I asked distractedly because Lane had got up. But he was only walking to the bar, using his faithful stick.
‘Down the valley, just past the Lane End Farm turn-off.’ He pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Swainswick.
The girl set her pint hard on the table and blew cigarette smoke at me. ‘You’re not going to do anything about it, are you? You’re not really listening. I knew the police wouldn’t but aren’t you supposed to help people when the police can’t be bothered or is that just on TV?’
‘No, no, it’s a bit like that, I guess, though nothing’s quite like it is on TV. Especially murder. So what would you like me to do about it?’
‘If I knew what to do about it I’d do it myself,’ she snapped, suddenly no longer bored. ‘
You’re
the detective, you’re supposed to know what to do in a case like this.’
A case like this? ‘Two blokes talking on the way home from the pub, probably pissed . . . Do you know any Alberts? Who might be nosy? Or a witch?’
‘I don’t know any Alberts but there can’t be that many, can there? It’s an old man’s name, no one’s called Albert any more,’ she pointed out. ‘But I do know an old witch. So does Cairn.’ She nodded in the boy’s direction. ‘Lots of people know about
her
.’
‘Do they now. And what’s her name?’
‘I don’t know her name. We just call her the Old Witch. Actually she’s not
that
old. More . . . old like him.’ She pointed her chin at Tim, who stopped smiling at her.
‘And has she had an accident lately?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? I haven’t seen her for ages. So she could be dead, couldn’t she? No one would know.’ She fixed me with steady gas-blue eyes. Her friend nodded tiny nods.
‘And where exactly is her place?’
‘Give him the map,’ she instructed him.
He half stood up so he could pull a bent piece of paper from his back pocket.
I took it from him and stashed it in my jacket. ‘Next time I have a spare moment I’ll check it out.’ I was planning on not having such a moment for a long time.
The boy looked relieved for a second, then worried again. ‘So that’s it, we hired you? How much is it going to cost?’
‘What? Oh . . . ehm.’ I looked at Tim for help but he just raised one eyebrow, something else I wished I could do.
‘Look, I’ll let you know,’ I said eventually. ‘Don’t worry about it, okay? What are your names?’
‘I’m Cairn, she’s Heather.’
‘There’s some kind of pattern there,’ I mused.
‘Our mum’s Scottish,’ said Heather.
‘Ah, brother and sister,’ I concluded.
‘Wow, you really are a detective then,’ she said drily.
‘No doubt about it. I’m Chris and the big woolly one’s Tim. And now, if you don’t mind . . . we were in the middle of discussing another case . . .’
‘Oh, okay. We come in here quite a lot,’ Cairn assured me.
‘Come on.’ Heather dragged him away.
‘So, are you going to check it out?’ asked Tim when they were out of earshot. He was hunting about for bits of crisp between the bottles on the table.
‘Are you kidding? Not until I find the morning headline screams “Nosy Albert Has Little Accident”.’
James Lane did nothing more interesting that night than visit the Gents at regular intervals. If anything, his reliance on the walking stick seemed to increase with each pint he drank. During one of his toilet breaks I walked over to his chair and pretended to warm myself by the little fire while checking out his reading material. I nudged the book off the chair with my knee so I could pick it up and read the title.
The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303
. Whatever gets you through the day . . .
* * *
Bribery doesn’t deserve all the bad press it’s had. Hey, bribery can be fun! That morning I bribed Annis with her favourite breakfast (hot croissant, quince jam, five-minute egg and a cafetière of freshly ground Colombian coffee) to drive me back to Larkhall where I’d left the DS in the Oriel Hall car park the night before due to a certain degree of inebriation. I’d flagged down a passing minicab and offered the driver the entirety of my cash reserves for a lift home. An expensive exercise since it’s quite a few miles from there to Mill House but anything was better than losing my licence. A private detective without a car was an impossible proposition.
I enjoyed feeding her anyway. She always attacked food as though she hadn’t seen any for a week. Her disposition invariably sweetened while she demolished what you put in front of her and she always had that is-there-any-more look at the end of it.
Annis topped up the fuel in her ancient Landy, always a good idea with a beast that drank more than its fair share of the dwindling oil reserves, then sat fiddling and mumbling behind the wheel. Eventually she persuaded the thing to start.
‘Full moon soon,’ she explained. ‘It’s always temperamental round the full moon.’
I didn’t say a word. I was long used to Annis’s firm belief that the thing was alive and needed to be treated like a slightly batty elderly relative. Secretly I thought it was just a ruse to deter people from wanting to borrow it.
