Drawing the Line (19 page)

‘Tell you what,’ I said as casually as I could, ‘how about I cook supper tomorrow – well, it’s today, now, isn’t it? At least I’ll have some police protection for the evening.’

Griff had had a good night, the nurse I phoned said, but she couldn’t say officially when he’d be allowed out. I could try again at ten-thirty. No, there was no point simply turning up hoping he’d been discharged.

Ten-thirty – and it was now only seven! No, despite being as knackered as I ever remember, I hadn’t slept well, and had given up when two wood pigeons had stomped around on the roof with their stupid
c’coo-coo
-ing. Why couldn’t they manage a decent song?
C’coocoo, c’coo-coo!
Only six o’clock! Anyway, I had a lot to do. A really nice hot shower started me off: then, with a bit of luck, I was ready for anything. Griff wasn’t very efficient about opening the post or checking calls on the answerphone. I’d better sort everything out so I could report to him later. He’d need a bag packed, too, with enough of his favourite clothes for a week, but only those he could slip on over that wrist of his. And food – Aidan wasn’t much of a cook, as if the kitchen was the place for the lower orders. Griff might have objected to Aidan’s tone, but he was happy to be let loose in Aidan’s designer kitchen. Usually.

So now I had the mixing bowl out. Scones first. Griff loved scones. Mine might not be as good as his, or even as those from the Tenterden baker, but they’d be mine. Bread was already proving in the airing cupboard.

I don’t know whether it was the smells or the stickiness that made me feel better. There’s nothing more gluey than scone mixture and few things more satisfying than taming it with a well-floured rolling pin. This one had belonged, so Griff said, to his grandmother, made
for her by a prisoner of war. Which war he didn’t say and my history wasn’t good enough to work it out. But using something as old and well-worn as that, I felt calm and happy – until the ideas started popping into my head.

What if it had been someone else in the caravan? Griff would have tidied it up, not trashed it. And it wasn’t in his nature not to have left a note. Even knocked silly by that fall – just how many times had he mentioned the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’? – he would have said something about his visit. That box in the carrier bag. What on earth was that doing there? Griff loathed carrier bags, refusing point blank to use them himself. It had taken me weeks of nagging to persuade him that at least at fairs we should have a supply of the standard ones advertising future fairs. As for the shop, I used any supermarket ones coming our way, usually via Mrs Hatch, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand his reservations, and in any case pointed out that what we were doing was true recycling.

And an empty box? Why take an empty box all that way? If he’d taken along a few essentials to replace our supplies, he’d have needed a bigger box.

Despite the warmth from the Aga and the efforts of my arms, I felt cold. What if it hadn’t been Griff and whoever it was had got in not through the door but through a window? I’d never checked they were secure. As soon as I’d sucked and scrubbed my hands clean, I got on to the phone. Farmers kept early hours, and Mr Hardy wouldn’t mind checking for me – and if he did, tough: it was part of his contract.

‘I did hear some banging, like, in the night. Hang on – I’ll have a quick shufti.’

Hang on? It would have made more sense to ring back in ten minutes. Mr Hardy had two speeds, snail and giant sloth. I had to risk leaving the phone to get out the first tray of scones. Even as I slid them on to the wire tray, I could his deep voice, made tinny by the phone.

‘Hi, Mr Hardy. Sorry about that – something in the oven.’ God, not a joke about buns, please! No, I was all right.

‘You’re an early riser, Lina, and no mistake. There’s folks missing the best part of the day –’

Any minute the next tray of scones would be ready. But it was useless to urge him. At long last he declared, ‘So maybe you’d better get up here when you’ve next a minute. Flapping in the breeze it is. That was the knocking I heard in the night, see – that window the far side from me.’

‘I’ll be up as soon as my bread’s ready for the oven,’ I said. Now I had wheels, life could speed up again. I could check the caravan and be back in time to retrieve my loaves.

Blu-tack! Whoever had broken in had Blu-tacked the seal back in place so nothing had seemed wrong. It was wrong enough now. The overnight wind and rain had loosened it, and now I had a soaked carpet to deal with. I stamped the towels on to it, and reported back to Mr Hardy.

‘And with Griff being in hospital I don’t know when I can get it repaired, ‘I concluded, handing over a few
scones as a bribe.

‘You leave it to me,’ he said kindly. ‘Break-ins in my park? Never heard the like.’

Aidan didn’t need to pull rank on me, when we turned up together to collect Griff: the van or his Merc? Not a lot of competition. So I tailed the car, making sure that no one tailed us. He had gates like ours, which opened sweetly as he pressed a button somewhere. They twitched a bit when they saw the van was to be admitted too, but eventually I was in and parked on the side drive of his lovely Georgian house. Even as I lusted after the fanlight over the front door, Griff, terribly pale and clutching my arm very tightly for support, conceded with a thread of a voice that retiring to the sofa with a decent cup of tea might be the most sensible thing he could do.

At first Aidan assumed I would make it, but either because he didn’t trust me in his pride and joy or because he felt guilty at letting me get on with the work (less likely) or simply because Griff had fallen asleep, he eventually joined me. I was unpacking my baskets on his kitchen table.

‘Bread? Scones? Banana bread?’ His voice rose with each goodie I produced. ‘But that’s what shops are for.’ He shook his head in disbelief.

‘There’s some of his jam, too, and his favourite chutney. You know so much more about wine that I thought I’d leave that to you. But he mustn’t drink too much, not with his painkillers. In fact, he ought to cut down on alcohol anyway, Aidan. His liver.’

‘Oh, that must be like leather by now! I wouldn’t worry about that.’

‘I do worry. And so should you, if you care for him.’

‘Don’t start telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, young lady.’ He drew himself up to his full six feet and looked down his nose. No, Duke of Wellington he wasn’t. He hadn’t enough chin for a start.

‘Shhh. He’ll hear you. Now, there’s one more thing I want you to do. That van of ours. It’s become a liability. You’ve got a nice big garage. Can I pop it in there?’

‘A van!’ Not for the first time I wondered why of all his lovely gay friends Griff should have latched on to this particular man.

‘It’s got our name all over it. If the Kitty Gang are targeting Griff, then if his van disappears off the face of the earth, they’ll have to find another victim.’

‘And I suppose you’ll be doing athletic things on a bicycle.’

‘I shall hire a car. It’ll cost an arm and a leg, so I don’t want Griff to know. He’ll worry.’ He’d worry about me if he knew about the caravan break-in, which was a very good reason for not telling him. We still weren’t quite back to our old selves. Neither of us had had the courage to talk about our quarrel, even to mention my temporary absence. So I hadn’t had to talk to him about Lord Elham. I’d have loved to. Fey and camp Griff might be, but he knew his people, Aidan apart, that is, and if I could have brought the two men together, he’d have sussed out the situation in minutes. Even after his concussion, he was fly enough to accept without blink or question the folder I’d brought with me and slid into his
hand. And I’d bet all the china in Bossingham Hall he’d find somewhere to hide it without letting on even to Aidan what it was.

After the big heavy van, it felt quite weird to drive the little Ka I’d hired in Ashford. It was so light and sounded so different – no heavy diesel engine throbbing away, I suppose, though the sound insulation wasn’t quite as good as I’d have expected. As for paying for it, I wasn’t robbing Griff. I was using money from what he insisted was our investment account. Investment? Well, keeping your skin intact might just qualify. I wasn’t so sure about using the van to nip across to Bossingham, though. That seemed a bit dodgy, morally speaking.

But it turned out to be a business trip – of sorts – after all.

Lord Elham greeted me like one of his long lost cousins, if not his daughter. ‘Come in, come in. How’s the car?’

‘I had to hire one. I left it at the end of your track.’

‘Come and have a drink. Have you eaten? Something more traditional? Beef and tomato? Chicken and mushroom?’

‘Is that really all you eat? Pot Noodles?’ Hell, I’d only forgotten the salmon and stuff, hadn’t I? Perhaps his memory was too dodgy to have remembered, too.

I seemed to be in luck. ‘Highly nutritious! Meat for protein, vegetables for vitamins, noodles for carbohydrate. Plenty of variety. No need to cook. Bingo. Spot on.’

I wasn’t sure that Griff or Iris for that matter would agree. ‘Don’t you have a kitchen, then?’

‘Oh, I’ve got a kitchen, all right! Bit of a tip. Quite interesting in its own way, but a bit of a tip.’ He kept us hovering in the entrance hall.

I might as well risk it. ‘I suppose I couldn’t see it? Background, you know.’

Shrugging, he said, ‘Walk this way.’ Oh, the old joke – a weird set of John Cleese funny walks.

I followed more sedately, keeping my eyes peeled. All the closed doors I passed made me feel like that woman who married Bluebeard and made the fatal mistake of asking him to open them. No wonder he didn’t want to ferry his meals this far.

Or – my God – cook them in this kitchen!

This wasn’t the
Country Life
high-ceilinged copper-saucepanned affair I’d taken afternoon tea in. This was a much more ordinary room, with a lower ceiling and furniture and fittings straight from the nineteen forties or fifties: Griff would have known. And it was filthy. I don’t mean someone had forgotten to wipe it down after cooking – the table, stove, draining board and so on. I mean the stove was encrusted. The sink was stacked high with saucepans. Not a single surface was clear either of crockery or of decayed food.

Trying not to gag, I said mildly, ‘I can see why you wouldn’t want to cook in here. Unless it was cleaned up a bit? I mean, as a room it’s pretty interesting.’

‘Don’t let on, for God’s sake!’

‘Who to?’

‘Those English Heritage chappies of course. And chappesses – they were far worse. You know what the miserable bitches insisted? That I open the house to the public! My home. Swarmed over by the world and his
wife.’

Thank goodness I’d kept quiet about my visit. ‘Why did they want that?’

‘Want? Demanded! Said I wouldn’t get the money if I didn’t. For the roof, of course,’ he explained, just as irritated as my maths teachers used to be when equations did my head in.

‘You mean they paid for it?’ No wonder they wanted something in return.

‘Only half of it! I had to fork out for the rest myself! Bloody trustees,’ he added mysteriously. ‘So now I have to have Joe and Josephine Public here all hours of the night and day.’

My recollection was that he admitted them something like four hours a day and not many days of the year. I was about to point this out when I saw a lovely little blue and white egg-cup, standing forlorn amongst all the rubbish. I pounced, cradling it in my hand. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

He peered at it, then at me, as if I’d expressed delight at a dog turd.

I turned it over, pointing. ‘See the mark? Spode.’

‘Filthy.’

‘Easy to clean it up and make it presentable.’ I wasn’t quite sure how, but it was printed with the bird section from the border of the Indian Sporting series, and would more than pay for the day’s hire car.

‘Have it.’

‘I couldn’t possibly. It’s worth too much.’

‘Nothing’s worth anything if you don’t want it and don’t know how to get rid of it. I told you, have it. It’s yours. No argument.’ As I tucked it in my rucksack, he
produced a charming smile. ‘There, that didn’t hurt much, did it?’

‘No, but –’ I swallowed the rest of what I meant to say. I’d make it up to him by getting him a little microwave and introduce him to the slightly more nutritious concept of TV meals for one. ‘You know, you ought to clean this up a bit. Rats. Plus you’d make a few more bob on other stuff you might find.’

‘I could do with a few bob. The DSS don’t give me much.’

‘DSS!’

‘That’s right. How else am I to live? I don’t own any of this now, you know. Now I’ve put everything right, the trustees have taken it on. Bloody kites. Damned hyenas. I just live in this corner, grace and favour, they say. Don’t own anything any more. So it’d be nice to diddle them, wouldn’t it? How, that’s the question?’

‘I might have the odd contact,’ I admitted cautiously. And truthfully. Kitchen stuff wasn’t really our line. But there were specialists who’d dribble at the sight of that enamel bread bin. And the wooden plate racks. They didn’t do anything for me, but who knew what I’d find if I mined underneath all that mouldy rubbish. Black Death, maybe. It’d be a job for gloves and a facemask. Lots of bin liners. Boiling water. I might. I just might. It’d be more satisfying, after all, than cleaning up Griff’s genteel spills.

‘OK. Spot of lunch,’ he announced.

Just being in here and touching the egg-cup were enough to put me off food, even Pot Noodles, until I’d washed my hands. ‘Is there a bathroom I could use?’

‘Of course there’s a bathroom! This is a civilised
country, my girl. Don’t use thunder boxes here, for God’s sake. Out in the yard. No! Hang on. No Joe Public sniffing around today? Right. You might as well use one of the state shithouses. No, not one of the old two-seaters – the ones they keep for visitors. Follow me.’

Not arguing – I didn’t fancy using his loo if it was in the same state as the kitchen – I followed him along the corridor leading to the main body of the house. He tapped in the simplest security code, as if he’d had to humour his trustees by having one but cocked a snook by choosing a doddle any burglar would suss out. Well, 1234 didn’t sound like rocket science, even to me.