Tainted Ground (32 page)

In my slightly other-worldly, and if the truth were known, slow-witted, state it was a shock to realize that war was about to break out but, unlike in the past when we would have neutralized the threat and asked questions afterwards, now, in order to make a case against these people, we would have to wait for them to make any first, illegal, move. I hoped this truth was also going through Patrick's mind but when it comes to threats to his family he was quite likely to mow the lot down before they got to within a yard of the door.

Utilizing the little side paths in the garden Elspeth had created to make weeding the wide beds easier, we went through the garden. Entry to the small courtyard at the rear of the house was gained though an archway in the wall, which would conceal us from anyone standing by the back door.

It was then that Patrick encountered someone else, sort of enveloping them as an octopus might its prey, and I nearly tripped over the pair of them as they sank to the ground. Something was whispered and half the dark shape on the ground stayed where it was.

There were thumps and bangs as someone tried to kick in the back door.

I walked into a low branch of a shrub and received a stinging, and wet, slap across the face. When I had fought my way free Patrick had gone and I was just in time when I peered around the corner of the archway to see a large shape hurtling backwards through the opened doors of the garage. I made all available speed and was just in time to meet William Brandon endeavouring to come out again. A hand flat on his face I whispered, ‘Sorry about being rude,' and shoved him over backwards. Grabbing the doors I shut them, shooting the bolt across. One down, two to go.

No sign of Patrick.

A shotgun roared out from somewhere at the front of the house and the security light came on. My feet were suddenly and unaccountably leaden but somehow I carried on. A woman started to shriek, not in pain, but as she might whilst watching a boxing or wrestling match, something similar, I saw when I arrived, to what was taking place in the drive. She had her back to me and was poised to dart forward, a rock she now snatched up from the ground held high to smash down on Patrick's head.

Another woman shouted out, only in warning, and I had just enough power left in my legs to tackle Marjorie from behind and the pair of us thumped on to the gravel. I wrestled the rock from her hand and knelt on her, taking disgraceful pleasure in boxing her ears when she struggled to rise.

‘Hit him, Patrick!' Elspeth shouted from an upstairs window, pounding the ledge with both fists. John was there too, his shotgun still at the ready.

Patrick did not disappoint her, Brandon the Younger practically doing a backward somersault on to the lawn. Patrick then bent over, gasping with pain, holding his shoulder, which had just taken the full force of a fist. ‘No handcuffs,' he managed to say in my direction.

Elspeth had the answer to that: plastic tree-ties.

James Carrick came into view down the drive in a fashion reminiscent of a Western, on foot, not rushing, not able to, a kind of inexorable but deadly patience emanating from him. His gaze came to rest on the prisoners whom we had garnered together by tying a length of washing line around them a few times and guarded by the one-man surveillance team we had come upon in the garden whom Patrick had told to provide any necessary rear-guard action.

‘Margo Kadovi
ć
,' he said quietly, going right up to her. ‘Fancy meeting you again.'

I thought for a moment that the woman was going to spit right in his face but she refrained, staring straight through him instead.

The DCI moved on. ‘William Kadovi
ć
,' he said. ‘And you …' He paused by Teddy. ‘Out of the same pig pen, by the look of you.'

‘Edward Brandon,' said Teddy. ‘I don't know these people. I'm going to press charges for assault.'

‘You were just passing?' John said derisively. ‘Didn't try to force your way into my house?' He had insisted on keeping an eye on the trio as well, with his shotgun, and they had not even blinked.

‘He's our son!' Margo raved. ‘This was all his idea! He's ruined our retirement with his murderous schemes!'

‘Shut up,' Carrick said. ‘The pity of it is that I didn't interview everyone at the mill myself straight after the murders or I'd have recognized you then. Take them away,' he added to a waiting Bromsgrove and Lynn Outhwaite. ‘Charge them with attempted breaking and entering – that'll do for a start.' He watched them being led away. ‘That woman, she's one of the worst I came across when I was with the Vice Squad in London.'

‘You'll want us to give statements,' Patrick said.

‘I take it you were acting in a private capacity in order to protect your parents,' Carrick said stiffly.

‘Only insofar as we got here, fast, when we realized they were heading in this direction. We'd been tailing them through the village as they looked for the ingots, which, strictly speaking, wasn't up to me right now.'

‘Not in any manner of speaking,' Carrick said.

Determined to see this through but forced to take some more of the ‘bloody elixir', only a sip this time, I said, ‘It was something anyone might have done if they'd spotted the suspicious way they were behaving.'

‘Did anyone find any ingots?'

‘No,' Patrick said.

‘Your whole rationale rests upon the existence of a substantial haul of stolen property.'

Patrick then pointed out to him that it was his, Carrick's, case as well. Things might have become heated but both broke off early hostilities when they saw me going down the drive and hastened after me.

‘Where are you off to?' Patrick asked, sounding concerned. I could read his mind: the woman's reached breaking point and flipped like a pancake.

‘Ingrid,' James said, arriving to hook an arm through mine, ‘I didn't mean to sound so off-hand. It's late and everyone's tired. We'll talk about it in the morning.'

‘Are you still on those wretched tablets?' I enquired truculently.

‘Yes, just for one more day.'

‘Then we won't talk about it in the morning, we'll talk about it another time, when you're back to normal. Meanwhile, I'll find the gold.'

For some reason he did not argue. Patrick then held my other arm and my resolve took the three of us forward. We reached the road.

‘Stay here,' I said. ‘I must do this alone – you're a distraction.'

I went down the road for a little way and stopped. The village was waking, lights on in one or two homes and through the open lighted window of one early bird I could hear a radio. The church clock struck five.

It had struck the evening before last, six.

And something else. Another memory.

I remembered. I had seen John, returning from his walk. I had seen him enter the church, check that all was well as he usually did, the lights switched on for a minute or so, and lock up. Then when he had gone from sight around the side of the building, making for home, I had continued on my way.

I went up the hill, past Patrick and James and entered, for the second time that night, the lychgate. My arms had been breaking so I had dumped the bag down on the low stone wall that ran down the centre, a place traditionally where coffins were rested on their final journey. I paused there now for a moment and then went on. I could hear the men walking behind me.

On the last occasion I had seen the hiding place that I had decided upon but the mist was thicker than ever just here and from where I stood it was invisible. All I had to do though was follow a path that bore off to the left and when I reached the tiny shed where grass-cutting and other tools were kept, the key hidden under a stone by a grave, everything was clear in my mind. Elspeth had once asked me to fetch a pair of shears from here as hers were blunt.

The key was beneath the stone, exactly as I had left it. I unlocked and opened the door, went in and moved aside some plastic bags that were used to collect dead flowers and wreaths from the graves and with which I had concealed the canvas bag. Then my legs gave way and I sat down very suddenly.

I was removed from the shed and seated gently, if hastily, on the wet grass, immediately soaking me right through to my knickers.

‘How the
hell
did you carry this on your own?' Patrick said when the pair of them had lugged it out between them.

W
hether I liked it or not there was a meeting the following morning, at ten thirty, at the Manvers Street police station. It was held not in Carrick's office but in an area I had never set foot in before on the top floor, in a small conference room. Having spent quite some time the previous night writing a report on what had taken place, I had not actually expected to be asked to attend. Patrick, having taken a clinical look at my dilated pupils, had poured the rest of the Essence of Flowers down the kitchen sink saying, ‘You know what's in this, don't you? Home-grown poppies,' so I was having to stick to conventional medicine.

We sat there in an otherwise empty room, waiting.

I eyed up James Carrick when he eventually entered and concluded that even if one ignored the business of his pills the recovery of possibly several million pounds' worth of stolen ingots had not necessarily made this a golden morning for him. With him was the burly superintendent from HQ – I still thought him a real roughneck – who had been introduced to us as a Crime Prevention Officer, something I was now beginning to doubt, and another man wearing uniform loaded with the kind of insignia that suggested he was this individual's god.

Who next, I thought sourly, Master of the Queen's Musick?

They all sat across the table to us.

‘This is Assistant Chief Constable Judd,' Carrick said. ‘You've already met Superintendent Norman.'

Yes, you virtually kicked us out of Carrick's office, my mutinous thoughts went on.

I glanced sideways at Patrick. He alarmed me a little, exhibiting a mixture of boredom and amusement. Then I realized that actually I was immensely proud of him: he was not overawed by this lot. How mean I had been to think that he was a different person now he no longer worked for MI5.

‘I understand you said to Detective Chief Inspector Carrick that you would have preferred to enter as plain constable,' was Judd's opening remark to Patrick, without bothering with any good mornings or sympathy with regard to the piteous state of his partner.

Carrick then, had relayed everything that had gone on and been said, everything.

‘Yes, it would have been far preferable,' Patrick answered quietly.

‘Why?'

‘I'm of the opinion that it's a very clumsy way of doing things. It has a potential to cause resentment among established officers.'

‘It's only a pay scale.'

‘I'm aware of that. Rapid promotion for suitable candidates would be better, especially as by then they would probably have moved on.'

‘Is that the reason why, as far as you're concerned, the experiment failed?'

‘No, of course not. Anyway, it hasn't failed.'

He wasn't calling him ‘sir', though.

‘But you've been suspended.'

‘For all I know you've decided to suspend everyone on the scheme who oversteps the mark to see how they react. I've never got results by sticking to petty rules.'

‘I'm sure it's been made clear to you that working for the police isn't the same as MI5.'

‘Yes, it was. I had practically free rein then.'

Judd shook his head. ‘That's anarchy. And very dangerous.'

‘I had a very dangerous boss.'

‘Would you work directly for me?' Norman enquired, eyes narrowed.

‘No, you're not remotely dangerous – nor sufficiently senior.'

I nearly let out a rude whoop of joy.

‘To whom exactly did you answer?' Judd said, with, did I imagine it, a hint of a smile?

‘I'm not going to reveal his name even though I'm pretty sure he's retired. He's a nobleman, a knight and I respect him tremendously. But he had the authority – reporting directly to the PM – to have me shot if I got it seriously wrong.'

‘I find that very hard to believe,' Norman said.

‘Only on paper. He sometimes had me done over to remind me who was in charge.'

‘And you were happy with that kind of working environment?' Norman said sarcastically.

‘Perhaps I should have said
tried
to have me done over.'

‘You were very successfully beaten up behind a pub in Bristol.'

‘Oh, glory be,' Patrick whispered. ‘Drugs Squad volunteers, were they? They looked filthy enough. They lied through their teeth too. We left six of them on the floor or flushed down toilets and walked away.'

‘We?' Judd said blankly.

‘Ingrid and I. Mostly Ingrid. She's really evil with a bog brush.'

So no one had put that in their report,
either
.

Carrick coughed. ‘I understood we were to talk about the murder cases first, sir,' he said.

‘Yes, we did,' Judd agreed. ‘I've familiarized myself with the gist of it. Bring me up to date.'

The DCI gestured in my direction. ‘Miss Langley has the details. I'm still officially on sick leave and Inspector Bromsgrove is carrying out more investigations at Hinton Mill.'

As arranged with James I had been exceedingly well briefed by my colleague seated alongside me prior to climbing the stairs. Without waiting for permission I began, ‘We have three suspects under arrest, William and Margo Kadovi
ć
, and Edward Brandon, her son by a previous relationship. I'll quickly give you some background information. William Kadovi
ć
is of Serbian origin, entering this country as a juvenile. His parents lived on the proceeds of crime and he soon joined the family firm, becoming involved with vice rings and protection rackets in London. Later, he met and married Marjorie Brandon, a one-time actress, also known as Margo, and together they ran a racket that involved bringing girls from Eastern Europe to the UK on the pretext that good domestic jobs were waiting for them and then forced them into prostitution. That is how DCI Carrick came to hear of them. By this time Brandon had Keith Davies, Christopher and Janet Manley working for him but the exact roles of the latter two, at the moment, are unclear. They can never have come face to face with the Brandons so whatever they did the orders must have been given over the phone. Their furtive behaviour at Hinton Littlemoor suggests Brandon had some kind of hold over them and ruled them by fear. We're assuming Davies provided physical back-up and organized any intimidation that was required.'