Souvenirs of Murder (25 page)

‘Where are you?'

Where was I? Oh, yes, there.

‘I'm in a studio flat at an end of terrace next to the playing fields, or whatever. Where the police were keeping watch, only they weren't.'

‘Is this at Muswell Hill?'

‘Where else do you know about that has playing fields recently?' I yelled, beginning to get extremely upset about everything now.

‘Please tell me why you weren't able to answer it.'

‘Because he hit me and it's left me feeling a bit weird, that's why. You keep asking the most
stupid
questions.'

‘Who hit you?'

‘HULTON!'

And I hurled the phone right into the large living room where it hit something and skittered along the floor out of sight.

‘Look, I'm sorry but all I was trying to do was take a look at where the surveillance was carried out,' I said to Michael Greenway. ‘That flat seemed the obvious venue as it was empty, or at least looked empty, and was up for sale. Only it was the wrong place.'

He seemed to have aged ten years.

‘And you bumped into Hulton,' he said wearily. ‘I really don't know why you're still alive. And if Patrick hadn't phoned you and then contacted me you'd probably still be in that bedsit walking round in small circles.'

I had left out the bit about telling Hulton Patrick would kill him if he harmed me. Mostly because it was true. I said, ‘I did tell you about the man in the pub. It was him. If he'd been checked out, right under your noses all the time—' I broke off, there was no point in getting angry, again.

It was a little after two the following afternoon and we were in the room furnished with easy chairs next to Greenway's office which he used on the rare occasions when he was able to relax for a while. I had been examined by a paramedic, deemed not to need hospital treatment and someone had taken me back to the hotel. From there, in bed, I had tried to ring Patrick to thank him for alerting people to my plight and tell him that I was all right but for some reason he had not answered, probably in the shower, so had left him a message. Then I had phoned Elspeth just to be sure someone was aware of the state of affairs, making light of events by saying I had tripped and hit my head – which actually seemed to have occurred as I had a lump on the side of it as well as a bruised jaw – but was now perfectly all right. Surprisingly, my phone was fine too. It probably didn't ache all over though.

I had already related to Greenway what had happened during my encounter with Hulton, and written out a report, so there was not a lot more to say.

Greenway said, ‘I don't have to tell you that half the Met's out there now, looking for him, under their own noses as well as everywhere else.'

‘I should have remembered to carry Patrick's gun,' I said.

‘Then you could well have been dead right now. If he'd thought you were armed . . .' Greenway left the rest unsaid and rose to pace the room restlessly, like something caged.

‘I'm really sorry I couldn't arrest him,' I said.

The Commander, who momentarily had had his back to me over by the window, turned quickly. ‘Ingrid, for pity's sake don't apologize! Judging by his past record we'll need a bunch of Royal Marines to bring the man in. I can only assume he thought you were some unimportant clerk, or somebody like that, and there was no kudos to be had in killing you.'

I was alive so had to be grateful. Unless I was now in some kind of parallel universe and everyone was now grieving for me in another one.

‘You're sure you're OK today?' Greenway said worriedly.

I gave him a big smile. ‘Fine.' Perhaps I had had a glassy look in my eyes.

‘We're still no further with this,' Greenway said to himself.

‘What about the knife?' I enquired.

‘Oh, Patrick's fingerprints are all over it. No blood, nothing else. As you said he must have thrown it and missed.'

‘Thrown it at who though? At someone who was pursuing him down the garden, the person who caught up with him, he having possibly passed out, and dumped him in the lane? The murderer?'

‘We might never know.'

I was sensing his reluctance to go any further with the investigation. It was taking up too much of his time, using scarce resources and costing too much money and he was working out how he was going to break it to me gently. A dead sort of feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

‘I don't know what to suggest we do next,' Greenway observed slowly. ‘And until Hulton's caught – and believe me, he will be . . .'

‘What about Rundle?' I asked.

‘
I'll
talk to Rundle. I see no reason why you should hang around in the cold waiting for a dozy DCI to turn up. Meanwhile . . .'

‘You'd rather I went home.'

He shrugged helplessly. ‘Until Patrick's better and I've heard from Complaints – not a word yet, I'm afraid – then I don't see . . .' Again, he stopped speaking.

‘OK,' I said, getting to my feet.

‘But I don't want you to go away thinking that you've achieved nothing,' he said hastily. ‘On the contrary—'

I interrupted him. ‘Will you contact me when there are any developments?'

‘Of course.'

I left.

The word ‘failed' seemed to hammer into my brain at each step I took down the stairs from the first to the ground floor. Failed, failed, failed, failed . . .

Just outside, in thin winter sunshine that was having no effect on the freezing temperature, Elspeth called me.

‘Sorry to ring you during your working day,' she began.

‘Is something the matter?'

‘No, at least, I hope not. It's just that Patrick seems to have taken himself off somewhere. We've been out all morning and have only just got in. I'm not
particularly
worried, it's just that . . .' Her voice trailed away.

‘But . . . but I have the car,' I stammered.

‘Yes, I know and he hasn't borrowed mine or John's, not that he would without—'

‘Was he well enough?' I butted in.

‘Well, look, I don't want to worry you any more than necessary but he might have stopped taking his medication.'

‘
What?
'

‘Early yesterday he said that he was suspicious that whatever some of the tablets were they were the cause of his feeling dizzy and still weak. I said he could hardly stop taking everything just because something wasn't quite right for him. He didn't answer – you know how Patrick does that when he can't agree with what you've just said.'

Did I ever.

‘And he hasn't even left you a note?'

‘Oh, I didn't think of looking. I'll ring you back.'

I went straight into a café nearby, for the warmth, and rang James Carrick.

‘Is there something you ought to tell me?' I said, in the mood for scorched earth policies.

‘I was asked to contact you about now,' he countered after a short pause while he had obviously left whichever room he was in and was now, judging by the slight echo when he spoke, in a corridor.

‘Oh, fantastic,' I said sarcastically.

‘Ingrid, I do
not
argue with that husband of yours when he's got it into his head to do something and starts issuing orders. I called in last night as I said I would and he was ready for off and about to ring for a taxi. He didn't say much, only that he'd had a call from you that had worried him and he'd had to phone Mike Greenway. Are you all right, by the way?'

‘Absolutely fine,' I said.

‘Good. I pointed out that his parents would be worried even more if he just upped and went and he told me he'd already left them a note.'

‘So you drove him to Bath station?'

‘Yes, that's where he wanted to go.'

‘Elspeth says she thinks he's stopped taking his medication.'

‘He might not have done. He went off somewhere and came back with some boxes of pills and chucked them in his bag. He seemed slow-moving and a little low key but otherwise OK, if that's any consolation.'

Well, it was something.

‘Did he say where he was going?'

‘No.'

I thanked him, adding an apology for snarling.

‘Please keep me posted. If things get desperate you know where to find me.'

I fetched myself coffee and a croissant. I had planned to check out of the hotel and go home. What now? Was it necessary to inform Greenway of this latest development?

‘No,' I said to myself. ‘Greenway has just about washed his hands of it.' Very regretfully, the Commander was going to cast off his man from MI5 who, at best, would be sent out into the world with a slur on his character, at worst, and despite anything Complaints might or might not say, arrested and charged with murder.

Elspeth rang me back.

‘The note was in the bathroom,' she said. ‘It doesn't say much, just that there's something he wants to do and not to worry as he's feeling much better. I also discovered that he's been sleeping upstairs after all. I have to say I half expected him not to stick to doctor's orders – mothers just have to lump it, don't they?'

‘Please tell John to carry on being careful, won't you?' I urged, furious with Patrick for causing her this anguish after all her efforts in looking after him. ‘There are still people messing around with black magic and a murderer at large.'

She promised she would.

I almost stuck to my original plan to return to Hinton Littlemoor. But I did not. I went back to the scene of the crime in Park Road and, having given back the keys, used Patrick's.

The cleaning woman's phone number – at least, I hoped it was her, Rosa Jerez – was in a tattered notebook I discovered jammed at the back of a drawer containing a jumble of things in a table in the hall. I wondered why the police had not found and removed it and remedied the omission myself, handling it with gloves and putting it in a plastic evidence bag in my pocket. The Smith and Wesson was in the other pocket and I took it out now and went into every room of this increasingly stinking property in case Hulton had decided to continue thumbing his nose at the Met. I was in the mood to wing him meaningfully and painfully and
then
complete his arrest.

It had seemed too much to hope for that anyone would answer when I rang the cleaner's number and no one did. But, back at the hotel, I became intrigued with other information I had already noticed scribbled down on the crumpled pages. Donning gloves I went through them carefully. There were phone numbers, mostly of what appeared to be the ordinary information a large percentage of the population has to hand: local garages, a window cleaner, a pizza delivery service, the local Chinese takeaway. There were other numbers with just initials alongside. People? Places like shops or stores? Dodgy solicitors? There were also addresses, all of people with foreign-sounding names, and whole paragraphs in German and what I thought was Serbo Croat. There were even diagrams, rough plans of various floors in buildings. I took the notebook down to the ground floor and copied all the more interesting-looking information in the hotel's Internet room.

Obviously, the notebook would have to go to Rundle. But my purpose here, in London, was not in order to hand bits of evidence on a plate to the Met. I was busying myself doing just that while not having the first clue where I was going to go from here. Why had I believed what Hulton had said? Because even the most vicious criminals tend not to murder their own daughters.

I suppose I sat there, in introspective misery, for twenty minutes or so. I had tried ringing Patrick's mobile but there had been no reply. I rang Rundle, damned if I was going to go trotting over to Wood Green again: he could send someone to collect it. He was not in so I left a message, asking whoever it was to get him to phone me back. I had a call almost immediately, a DI Latimer wondering if I could take the notebook to West End Central police station, just off Oxford Street.

Well, yes, I could. And then, perhaps, a cup of tea and something to eat – I did not feel like having a proper lunch even though it was getting on for two thirty – followed by a quick look around some shops. Anything to try to take my mind off the hell that I was living in and postpone making decisions.

The room phone rang and it was a call from reception.

‘Miss Langley, there's a gentleman here who says he's your husband and would like to speak to you.'

‘Please put him on,' I said.

‘Hi,' said Patrick's voice. ‘I've a good tip for tomorrow's two thirty at Ludlow, Cuckoo Spit.'

‘I don't bet on horses,' I said.

‘Plus a dead cert for the three fifteen, Snuggems.'

‘Room 207,' I told him.

I must be really twitchy, I mused, asking for two proofs of identity. No, actually, I was still furious with him.

I let him in and he gazed at me searchingly, angry. ‘How the hell did you manage to run into Hulton?'

‘Calm down and I'll tell you.'

This I did and when I had finished Patrick said, ‘I don't know why you're still alive.'

‘That's exactly what Greenway said. Hulton seemed more interested in how I'd stumbled across him.'

There was a short silence before Patrick said, ‘This is me having one last stab at trying to sort everything out. I simply have to push to the back of my mind what's going on in Hinton Littlemoor and give this priority. Otherwise I'm finished.'

‘You're not well enough to be doing anything,' I countered stonily. ‘I'm surprised you were even strong enough to get on a train.'