Rainstone Fall (21 page)
She bounced into bed, took the Laphroaig from me and emptied the glass down her throat. ‘Eeeeyuch! Do you know,’ she asked as she made her head comfortable on my chest, ‘what I like so much about making love in the afternoon?’
‘Do tell me.’
‘If you play your cards right you get to do it again in the evening.’
The sky was a little brighter when I brought Tim a cup of coffee in the morning.
He declared that his back had improved a bit overnight but soon disillusioned me again by explaining that ‘improvement’ meant he no longer had shooting pains in the back of the knee, not that he was about to clamber up the façade of the Victoria Art Gallery. Which made me realize once and for all that it would be me climbing into the museum, and since we had already ruled out getting in on the ground floor that meant I would have to acquire some cat-burglary skills pronto. And did I mention I’m not very good with heights?
I discussed it with Tim while we ate one of our favourite breakfasts of scrambled eggs with coriander leaf and huge dollops of brinjal pickle. ‘What about Annis?’ he asked.
‘She’s worse than me. She’s fearless on the flat but standing on a thick carpet gives her vertigo.’
‘You really are a pair of sissies. You’ll just have to find a way then. The back of the building is the obvious way in. There’s no security guard at night, which should tell you something.’
‘Like what?’
‘That they think nobody would be crazy enough to try it right under the noses of all the cops in Bath. Getting out and away will definitely be the challenge. You’d better come up with something soon, you’ve only got a couple of days until the exhibition ends. And you’ll have to find a getaway car in good time and stash it somewhere safe, not around here where Needham’s boys are likely to turn up for a bit of harassment. If you buy the car, or bike if you prefer, and they clock you on CCTV then they’ll trace it back to you, so you’ll have to steal it. And then you’ll need false plates. Not so easy any more but you can still get them off the internet. Make sure they’ll exactly match the year of the car or you’ll not get very far, the cops are fiendishly clued up on anything to do with plates.’
This was something else I hadn’t quite thought through. It would hardly do to turn up in one of our own cars and drive through the thickly surveillanced centre, if we ever got to drive away at all. ‘We could of course hold up the place and try and get it that way . . .’ I suggested half-heartedly.
‘Now you’re really talking out of your arse. You’d be a little old man before they let you out of jail again. Even if you used a toy gun. I can recommend it only as the best way of getting yourself shot full of holes you don’t require. Think of something else,’ he said vehemently.
‘I didn’t really mean it,’ I assured him.
‘Glad to hear it, Honeypot. I certainly wouldn’t let you involve Annis in a hare-brained scheme like that.’
‘Let me?’ Something about the way he implied that he had any say in what Annis did or did not suddenly got my goat. ‘I doubt you’d have much say in the matter. If she decided to do it then I’d like to see you try and stop her,’ my goat said sharply.
‘You’re probably right,’ he admitted. ‘She’s got too much sense to get involved in anything too crazy anyway. Mind you,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘she hangs out with us two idiots and how sensible is that?’
* * *
Later that same morning I was back on Grand Parade across from the entrance to Victoria Gallery in search of a way inside that wouldn’t end in one of the many disasters Tim had lugubriously predicted. Mindful of the CCTV cameras at every street corner I had left the Norton out of sight in Caxton Court under the bridge and had picked up a different hat in a charity shop on Argyll Street. Looking up at the façade should have been enough to convince me to just keep on walking until I found a friendly policeman to unburden myself to. Yet there was something else apart from my feelings of obligation and guilt that made me amble along in the weak October sunshine and squint up at the rooflines of the adjoining buildings. If I was honest the answer probably lay in a surfeit of Cary Grant movies in my youth. Somewhere the task of getting in and out of a museum at night – and it would have to be night – struck a hopelessly romantic chord inside me. Thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette I ambled along and mingled with the few tourists who had braved this year’s wash-out autumn to admire Pulteney Bridge, Grand Parade with its colonnaded walkway underneath and the river Avon roaring over the horseshoe weir below. For the first time in years the river was in such spate that all boat tours had to be cancelled as simply too dangerous.
I took the cameras more seriously now and tried to behave like everyone around me. On a security tape I would look just like any other visitor, taking only a passing interest in the architecture of the museum and walking in that curiously uncoordinated, aimless way we all acquire as soon as we turn tourist. After ten minutes of hanging around the balustrade on the parade I was none the wiser. I crossed to the other side and walked past the pizza joint, the ladies’ fashion shop, the entrance to the market and the Turkish restaurant. At the corner of Boat Stall Lane was a pub called the Rummer. I was going to stroll past slowly and take only a casual interest in the lane which leads to the car park at the back, but the view that presented itself was so arresting that I stood stock still and stared, possibly with my mouth open. There were no cars in the car park. Instead, a sweating and shouting tribe of workmen were erecting an enormous scaffold covering the entire width of the Guildhall building. Another set of men were just manoeuvring a couple of blue and white portable toilets against the back of the covered market. Three huge lorries seemed to fill the entire place.
I forced myself to walk on, past the Empire Hotel. My first feeling had been one of panic but gradually I realized that scaffolding on the building next door might turn out to be nearly as good as a ladder on the museum wall itself. I walked around the hotel until I came to the porte cochère between Browns and the Empire Hotel. And strolled in. For a while nobody took much notice, they were simply too busy to care. There was a definite hierarchy and pecking order among them. Being actually on the scaffold, even ten feet off the ground, which was how high it reached at the moment, obviously allowed you to shout instruction and insult at the mortals on the ground, whose names appeared to be either Moron or Fuckwit. I circled round between lorries to the right, trying to look like I had some business there. I read the writing on the side of the nearest cab with joy. These were proper roofers, not just a scaffolding firm. The scaffolding would go all the way to the top to allow access to the roof and cupola, where the storm probably did some damage. Another hour or so, I noted with satisfaction, and the only two security cameras would disappear behind the scaffold. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the people responsible for security here would be too lethargic to do anything about it (‘Hey, it’s only for a few days’).
I stood near the back door of Garfunkel’s kitchen and let my eyes run along the roofline of the covered market. I imagined myself scaling the scaffold, then following the skyline to the roof of the museum, where sooner or later I’d be confronted with the large skylights of the upstairs gallery . . . My stomach contracted at the thought. I grabbed the cast-iron railings harder and looked down into what at first sight seemed to be just the basement courtyard of the hotel. Then my eyes travelled further along and down, past silver beer kegs, empty gas cylinders and stacks of plastic crates towards a small cast-iron gate. All I could see beyond it was the swollen turmoil of the river Avon. As I walked back a few paces towards the porte cochère it became clear that this courtyard was in fact an ancient slipway leading in a steady slope from the yard towards the water. At this end it was barred by a larger gate. I tested it casually. It was locked and looked ancient but was obviously in use, so how difficult could it be?
One of the scaffolders shouted and pointed. ‘S’cuse me, mate, but you can’t hang round here, this lorry’s about to move back, all right?’ I just nodded and walked off as the lorry started bleeping his reverse warning, not wanting to give anyone cause to remember me. I left through Boat Stall Lane and without a look back crossed the river via Pulteney Bridge, then clattered down the steps which led to the walkway and the imaginatively named Riverside Café overlooking the weir. I stuck my head through the door and ordered Earl Grey from an aproned waitress, then sat outside in the thin sunlight and peered across at the colonnaded walkway underneath Grand Parade. Even from here I could clearly see the wrought-iron door of the slipway leading on to it. There wasn’t a camera in sight. Access to this colonnaded walkway used to be from Parade Gardens, the little park bordered by the river. Now the walkway was closed to the public, probably to stop kids jumping into the river there or because of ageing masonry. Between the columns ran wrought-iron railings, easily surmounted, and below them an overgrown drop of twelve or fifteen feet down to the water, which would seem like nothing to a man who had just come down from the roof of the museum carrying a Rodin bronze on his back.
It was obvious. I didn’t need a getaway car at all. What I needed was a boat.
The Earl Grey arrived. I slipped a slice of lemon into my tea and raised my cup in salute to the river. There was only a small problem: the Avon was in such spate that all river traffic had been banned until further notice, so it would be complete madness trying to get the sculpture out that way.
Perfect.
Jake’s place had to be one of the few locations where the exhaust note of the Norton remained unremarked upon. At the moment it even remained unnoticed. Somewhere deep inside the workshop an engine was revving freely, unencumbered by any kind of exhaust system at all, judging by the deep shockwaves of sound, and somewhere else the high-pitched scream of an angle-grinder getting purchase on something big and hollow added the top notes to this rhapsody of toil. I left the bike at the entrance and picked my way through the broken landscape of automotive history in the yard.
Originally Jake had bought the farm to breed ponies, but the venture had failed. After that he had changed direction and turned his first love, classic cars, into a thriving business. Restoring and maintaining vintage machinery – as long as it was British and had an internal combustion engine – had made him a modest fortune. You wouldn’t know it though, because the place looked like a scrapyard, with bits of pre-1970s cars and vans lying everywhere, some under tarpaulins, some protected by makeshift roofs, some taking a well-earned rest in the weeds. Despite his financial success Jake was still doing most of the work himself, with only one or two assistants, because that was what he enjoyed. At this very moment he was listening with rapt attention, oily bald head cocked to one side, to the unimaginable racket coming from a huge lump of an engine sitting on a workbench in the main workshop, worrying the accelerator with his thumb. He nodded at me and continued his revving, so I sat on an oil drum outside until he had heard enough of the testosterone symphony and joined me, carrying two tin mugs of tea made with a blow torch.
‘Still on two wheels, then?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m beginning to get a taste for it. But it’s not always practical.’ I blew on my superheated tea. ‘But then neither is any of this stuff.’
‘No, but it nourishes the soul.’
I had to agree. Something went wrong with car design after the 1960s. Too many buttons, for a start. I looked about me. ‘Talking of poor souls, is my DS still around?’
‘Most of it went for scrap, along with other useless crap I had hanging around.’
‘Do I owe you?’
‘I made a few pennies on engine bits, so no, we’re quits.’
‘That’s good, because I’ve a favour to ask.’
‘You surprise me.’
‘Do you remember, a few years ago, you went on this trip down some wild Welsh river in a snazzy motorized dinghy with your then girlfriend?’
‘I haven’t got Alzheimer’s yet,’ he bristled.
‘And she fell out the boat and it took you half an hour to notice and when you finally went back to pull her out she dumped you?’
‘Your point being?’
‘Still got the boat?’
He scratched his scarred scalp with oil-blackened nails. ‘Now there’s a good question. I know where I’ve got the engine – never mislaid an engine yet – but the inflatable . . . It’ll be somewhere, sure, but it might have,’ he made a sweeping gesture at the farmhouse and the endless outbuildings, ‘some stuff on top of it, if you know what I mean.’
I knew exactly what he meant, since I used the same filing system at Mill House.
‘What you want it for, messing about on the river? Just remember what happened with Sally, is all I say.’
‘She did marry you in the end.’
He sniffed. ‘Yeah, but she still mentions it.’
‘I need it for a job. A tricky one.’
‘I won’t ask then. When d’you want it for?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘There’s a surprise. I’m busy now, but I’ll see what I can do later,’ he promised.
Leaving the matter in Jake’s oil-stained hands I rode back towards Bath. The rain had returned in the shape of a depressing drizzle that rendered me half blind trying to peer through the goggles and slowly soaking me, making me seriously consider such stylistic horrors as rainproof trousers. Before I could skid too far down that dangerous road to sartorial oblivion a sudden impulse made me go past my turn-off for home and rumble on through the misty afternoon to the Lam Valley.
Needham hadn’t bothered pulling me in again because, as he had hinted when he came to inspect my pantry, the latest thinking was that just possibly I might have nothing to do with the killing and it had all been some weird coincidence that Albert Barrington had exhaled his soul in the back of my car. But even at my age I still had some problems believing in a random universe where all was coincidence and meaning a matter of personal choice. I sensed method behind all this. Unfortunately it wasn’t my own. At the moment my own style of detection resembled blind man’s buff more than any methodical investigation, but then I was just a little distracted by other events. I didn’t believe in the joyrider theory of how the DS had landed in Lam Valley. Whoever had nicked my car that night hadn’t gone very far in it. It was perhaps less than ten minutes’ careful drive from Larkhall to Blackfield’s meadow, or a five-minute drive at the kind of speed that makes you crash through a five-bar gate and carry on another forty yards up the hill. Not much joy, anyway. Someone had found my keys where I had dropped them that night in my inebriated state or, much more likely, had swiped them off the table at the Rosie while I was away from it, checking out Mr Lane’s reading material.
There was now no evidence left that my DS and the late Mr Barrington had ever met in the dank little meadow. Even the smashed five bar gate had been completely cleared away and replaced with a lot of nothingness. As I came up to it I slowed and stopped. The sudden fall in exhaust noise allowed me to catch a similar noise behind me, like an unwholesome echo. I looked swiftly around and just caught the top of a motorcycle helmet disappear over the rise as someone frantically turned their bike around and hared back in the direction from which I’d come. I heard the bike’s engine accelerate away fast. If I didn’t catch him last time then I wouldn’t catch him this time. The memory of missing Jack Fryer’s enormous tractor by a couple of inches as I screamed round the bend was still fresh enough in my mind not to need refreshing.
The Norton’s noise made a handful of sheep bolt from where they’d been grazing near the lane as I grabbed a handful of throttle and accelerated away. I crossed by the little bridge and turned towards Spring Farm. This time I found the gates closed but I could see light behind the kitchen window. I leaned the bike against the fence and opened the gate. Unfortunately, between me and the front door of the farmhouse stood a large, dark, wet dog who seemed to be as mesmerized by my every move as I was by his. Where had he suddenly come from? He was huge and he sniffed in my direction. Why did people always let monsters like this run around, free to eat harmless visitors? And why had I yet to see a farm with a doorbell? And why was I so scared of dogs? I made a tentative step forward. The dog barked and ran straight at me. His rank smell travelled before him. I stopped and stood, petrified, while the huge wet thing sniffed my boots, my legs, then stuck his snout firmly into my crutch. What was all that doggy sniffing supposed to be for anyway? What if he decided he didn’t like the smell of me? What if he decided he liked it lots and lots?
A face appeared briefly at the window. A few moments later the door opened and Brian, the farm worker, filled the frame. ‘What are you doing standing in the middle of the yard?’ There was genuine puzzlement in his voice.
I didn’t take my eyes off the dog. ‘I’ve come to have a word with the farmer. Mr Fryer.’
‘Yeah, I know that’s his name, no need to remind me. You’d better come in then.’ He stepped aside to let Fryer squeeze out of the low door.
‘What is it, Brian?’
‘It’s that
pri
vate in
ves
ti
ga
tor again.’ I had never noticed my job had that many syllables before.
‘So it is,’ he confirmed. ‘What are you doing here again?’
‘I’d . . . just like a quick word, that’s all.’
‘Well, I don’t really mind the rain but wouldn’t you feel more comfortable inside?’ he asked. By now he must have had little doubt as to what had rooted me to the spot but he made me spell it out for him.
‘You couldn’t call off your dog first, could you?’
‘Call him off? Just push him away, the soft bastard’s not going to bite you, he’s the most useless guard dog on the planet. I’d be better off with one of my chickens patrolling the place.’
‘What’s his name?’ Being on sniffing terms I thought we ought to be introduced.
‘Grot. Though I’m not sure he knows it.’ He disappeared inside, followed by the farmhand. I walked forward, closely shadowed by the dog who did in fact wag his tail now and tried to jump up at me. ‘Make sure the dog stays outside!’ Fryer called.
‘Sorry, Grot,’ I apologized as I squeezed the door shut behind me.
The kitchen, which I’d last seen in the grip of form-filling depression, had normalized to the point where the floor was no longer covered in dirty pots and pans and the big table in the centre was merely cluttered with mugs, newspapers and a crate of gnarled quinces exuding the most delectable perfume. Fryer himself looked less dishevelled and had shaved sometime during the last twenty-four hours. Brian stood by the sink and Fryer on the other side of the table. Both held chipped mugs and began sipping what looked and smelled suspiciously like instant soup. No wholesome stews bubbling on the Aga in this household. No one offered me a mug, so I couldn’t tell them just how revolting I found the stuff. And how much I’d appreciate some.
‘Still sniffing around? What’s it this time?’ Fryer asked, sipping from his mug and pulling a face at the hot soup.
‘Oh, same thing really. I just wondered . . .’ I gave him a description of Cairn and Heather, told him their names. ‘Ring any bells?’
‘Not in my church. You think they have anything to do with the murder?’
‘They might well have. I wonder, have you come across anything strange in the valley lately?’
‘What, apart from yourself, you mean?’ Fryer said drily. Barry guffawed at this as though it was the funniest joke he’d heard for years. Perhaps it was.
‘Apart from me, yes.’
‘No, not really. What do you mean? People?’
‘Someone killed Gemma Stone’s dog up in the wood by Blackfield’s place. Bashed his head in.’
‘Did they?’ He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘That’s not nice. I wonder why.’
I had the suspicion he wouldn’t spend too much time wondering. ‘I think someone’s trying to get to Gem Stone.’
‘Why would they try a thing like that?’ He shrugged. ‘Stone can look after herself. When she first turned up I thought she wouldn’t last three months, down there by herself, no phone, no nothing laid on. But she’s made a go of it, give her that.’
‘Yes, you have to be pretty tough to live down there, I imagine, in a caravan, all through the winter. Lonely at Christmas, too, I should think.’
Fryer shot me a look at that but I returned it levelly, as though I had never heard of his Christmas lunge. ‘Farming’s a lonely business these days,’ he agreed. ‘Not so long ago farms needed lots of labour, there’d be twenty-odd people in a field doing a job one man does by himself with a tractor now.’
I wondered how lonely Fryer himself felt. No woman would have tolerated the state of this kitchen for long, so I assumed he was living alone or with Barry here, who struck me as rather a dour companion. ‘You seen her lately?’
‘Who?’ This seemed rather disingenuous, since we had only just mentioned Gem Stone, so I didn’t elaborate. ‘You mean the Stone woman? Not for ages. Have you, Barry?’
Barry sniffed, shook his head. ‘Nah.’ He turned to rinse out his mug with elaborate care.
I changed tack. ‘I went up to Blackfield’s place the other day.’
‘Oh yeah? Meet him?’
‘Met his son.’
‘That’s who I mean. Dad’s not all there by all accounts since his wife died. Did you ask him what the fuck he’s turning his bit of land into?’
‘Yup, secure storage.’
Both Barry and Fryer guffawed at that. ‘That’s it,’ Fryer said. ‘Secure fucking storage, that’s what he told us at the public meeting, I just wanted to hear it again. Ha. And he got planning permission, can you credit it? Have you seen the mess he made out there, even a bit of road, massive fucking crane and all to shift his tin boxes around. I’d gladly store something securely up his . . .’
I felt we had probably explored that theme as far as it would go and made to leave when I remembered why I had come here in the first place. ‘Oh yeah,’ I asked by the door, ‘do you know of anyone riding around on a trailie in the valley?’
‘Lots of people use trail bikes around here, it’s a good way of getting around. Trailies and quad bikes. We’ve got both. Why the interest?’
‘Do you remember the other day? One must have nearly collided with you in the lane, couple of seconds later I nearly ran into you.’
‘Didn’t see any trailie, all I saw was you carrying an idiotic amount of speed round the corner. You were very lucky not to become a smudge on the side of my tractor.’
I had to agree with him, though just how he could have missed seeing the bike I was pursuing was a little mysterious.
The door slammed unceremoniously behind me as I stepped into the worsening rain. Grot was lying amongst sacks of something or other under a shelter of wood and corrugated asbestos and sensibly lifted no more than his head as I left. As I rode away from the place the gloriously useful heating arrangements at the Rose and Crown insinuated themselves into my mind, irresistible like the mirage of a lake to a man dying of thirst in the desert. Well, something like that, anyway.
Only a few early regulars were perusing newspapers or studying the empty space on the other side of their pints. The landlady wasn’t about. The barmaid, a brawny young woman with blonde hair permed to within an inch of its life, furnished me with a mug of black coffee. I described the Cairn and Heather duo to her. Had she seen them lately?
‘Yeah, they were in last night,’ she confirmed. She yanked open the dishwasher and thick steam rose briefly between us.
‘They come in here a lot then?’
‘Not really, no. What you want with them, anyway?’ She began stacking the glasses on their shelves below the bar top.
