Tainted Ground (23 page)

‘Yes, I think a couple of ladies went away for a couple of minutes but I couldn't tell you who they were as I was talking to Maggie Ruislip about our planned trip to London.'

‘What about the rest of the day? Any visitors?'

‘Only the postman with a parcel for John. Oh, and someone selling something he called peat-free, organic compost. I had some last year and it was terrible. It must have been made from unsterilized ground-up forestry waste – I had mushrooms and toadstools coming up in all my houseplants.'

‘I think we're just interested in people who came indoors or might have done so when your back was turned,' Patrick said.

‘No one else,' Elspeth said.

‘Was the front door unlocked for most of the day?'

‘Yes, it must have been. And the kitchen door into the garden. I'm in and out all the time.'

‘It's very unwise when you think about it, my dear,' said John.

‘But we're here for people, aren't we? That's what you've always said. Besides, I've never had a fortress mentality,' his wife retorted crossly.

John put a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of peace. ‘Just within these four walls and no further,' he said to Patrick, ‘I feel I must tell you that Vernon Latimer has a past that isn't quite – well – squeaky clean.'

‘So how is he Chairman of the PCC?' Elspeth snapped.

‘It happened a very long time ago, I understand.'

Patrick said, ‘I'm afraid I do need to know your source of information.'

‘Impeccable. The bishop himself.'

‘Do you have any idea of the nature of this misdemeanour?'

‘He served a prison term for fraud. But it wasn't in this country – out in Malaya.'

Patrick caught my eye. ‘What was he doing out there?'

‘Working, I understand.'

Master-minding pirates? I wondered.

‘W
hat do you think of Latimer?' Patrick asked.

‘He's an efficient chairman,' John said. ‘Good organizer. Works hard. But you have to understand that I would never have him as treasurer – not that he's ever shown the remotest interest in the post. Which, as you know, are all voluntary.'

‘And as a person?'

‘He can be a bit bombastic. Arrogant, really. Doesn't suffer fools at all. To be honest I don't like the man and I don't envy you if you have to go and talk to him.'

‘If he starts to throw his weight about I shall cart him off to the nick,' Patrick promised darkly. ‘People tend to deflate after an hour or so in the cells.'

‘Please be tactful,' his father begged. ‘And I'm talking about everyone else who lives here. Something that people just shrug off in an urban area can have a dreadful effect in a rural community.'

I was listening to this, wondering if Patrick would go and see Latimer straight away and whether there was any need for me to tag along, when I had one of those bombshell ideas that are usually associated with my writing. Not so much an idea perhaps as a recollection.

‘That large granite cattle trough in the barn,' I said to Patrick, interrupting him in the middle of assuring John that he would handle matters carefully, ‘the one we sat on?'

He broke off, obviously irritated with me. ‘What about it?'

‘It was upside down.'

‘That's why we sat on it.'

‘When we were in there shortly after the bodies were found it was right side up.'

‘Perhaps SOCO turned it over.'

‘Why? Besides, it's huge, it must weigh at least half a ton.'

‘Ingrid, it can't be important. It was probably in the way of getting vehicles inside the place.'

Sometimes I can just look at him unblinking and he really starts to listen to what I am saying.

‘No, it was over towards one side, wasn't it?' he mused aloud, staring into space. ‘The side you were working in.' The fine eyes focused on me. ‘You won't rest until I've turned it over to see if there's anything underneath, will you?'

‘No.'

‘You couldn't possibly move a thing like that on your own,' Elspeth said.

‘A few strong blokes with crowbars and a couple of Hi-Lift jacks should do it.' Patrick looked at his watch. ‘Who the hell do the fuzz call in to do that kind of thing – the Royal Engineers?'

‘Farmers with tractors and Land Rovers should do it,' John said. ‘I'll give Roger a ring.'

‘Are you both going out?' Elspeth asked in deceptively off-hand fashion when John had left the room.

‘I'll talk to Latimer in the morning,' Patrick replied. ‘Tonight we'll go and have a look under a cattle trough.' Realizing that she felt safer in his company he added, ‘You can come with us if you like.'

‘But surely it's confidential police work.'

‘No, I'm just humouring Ingrid.'

‘What do
you
think is under it?'

‘A small pile of ten-year-old cow muck.'

The sliding doors of the building were as we had left them, partly open, and now we trundled them wider, the wheels squealing in dirt-encrusted channels, to allow a large tractor to gain entry. This did not belong to Roger, a local farmer, whom John had rung, but to his son, Steven, who farmed the high ground on a ridge above the valley in which Hinton Littlemoor was situated. There, he did not have to contend with narrow lanes and was mechanized accordingly. He was only here now because he had come across several fields, his own property, from the main road, gateways having been constructed with the easy access of combine harvesters and the like in mind.

In the illumination provided by the headlights of the three vehicles – Roger, grinning delightedly, had felt compelled to attend – we pointed Steven in the direction of the granite trough.

‘You don't want it bust, do you?' Steven called down from the cab above the roar of the engine. ‘Those things go for a fortune these days.'

Patrick shouted back that we did not want it so much as chipped as it did not belong to us. It was suggested that we pile a lot of loose straw on the far side of it.

I was feeling very small already and preparing to vanish down a crack in the floor as soon as my silly notion was revealed for what it was. Even though Roger had told us that the tractor was brand new and Steven was itching to try it out on something I was asking myself how much fuel it had used to come here. What important jobs had the young farmer broken off from doing? No, in future I would confine myself to writing novels. And knitting dishcloths.

‘I still loves yer, babe,' said a familiar voice in my ear as the bucket attachment on the tractor edged closer to the trough.

It was decided to hammer in some wooden wedges first at either end to avoid damaging the rim. This took a few minutes and I became more and more miserable. Elspeth, standing a little apart from where the action was taking place in case something nasty was revealed, sensed my mood and grimaced at me sympathetically.

Then, seemingly without any effort on the part of the machine, the trough had turned turtle and rolled over on to the straw.

Beneath it was a very small pile of straw and dried-up manure.

‘I'm sorry,' I said quietly but my whisper was drowned out by the tractor. Steven turned it off and Patrick went over and kicked at the manure in desultory fashion. His foot hit something hard, like a stone. He bent down.

I went over to see him unrolling a filthy rag. From the way he was handling the bundle it was obvious that whatever was inside was heavy for its size. Then, holding the rag by one corner, he tipped out the contents.

‘Well, I never,' said Steven. ‘Is that what I think it is?'

Five gold ingots lay in the straw. Even though I had seen pictures of them in the books in the library and they were not very big, some three and a half inches long by about an inch and a quarter wide, a photograph could not quite capture the wonderful lustre, the weighty, sensuous glow. I understood now how people could become crazed with greed for it.

Patrick straightened. ‘Would you be good enough to keep this under your hats?' he said to Steven and Roger. ‘Even coming over here tonight? Just for a while – until arrests have been made.'

We had been in a close huddle, having forgotten about Elspeth, and I was suddenly aware of her approach.

‘It's not someone's
head
, is it?' she enquired with trepidation before peering over our shoulders. ‘Oh, how lovely,' she murmured. ‘So old, so full of history. I take it the Tanner brothers were lying and opened the coffin. They helped themselves to a few, sealed it up again and hid them in here under the trough using the digger they'd borrowed before taking the coffin to wherever they handed it over to someone else.'

‘It's a brilliant theory,' Patrick said. ‘You ought to be doing this job, not me.'

Before we left Patrick wrapped a few stones in the rag and then asked Steven to put the trough back how we had found it. After a bit of manoeuvring this was done. Patrick then gave the pair of them some ‘beer tokens', as he put it, and the farmers roared away into the darkness together.

‘The Tanners can't have done a runner yet or they'd have collected this little lot,' Patrick said, placing the small hoard in a sample bag he had found in the car. ‘That's if they did hide it here. We need to prove it. But having made everything look the same as it was before I'm reluctant to stake the place out waiting for them to turn up or people might be here for a month.'

‘If they returned to retrieve it you'd have your proof,' I said.

‘I have to think about the cost of manpower. One could still wait around for a very long time.'

‘They'd never be able to sell it – they simply don't have the contacts.'

‘No, but they're stoopid, aren't they?'

‘Nudge them into making a move.'

‘Like what? A thunderflash down their chimney?'

It had been another long day. ‘No, SILLY! They've been getting funny phone calls. Give them a funny phone call.'

‘Ingrid, you keep telling me to stick by the rules.'

‘Who the hell'll know?'

‘Are you going to tell James what's going on?' Elspeth called from inside the car.

‘Of course,' Patrick answered. ‘Right now, in fact. Tell me why I haven't inherited my mother's brains,' he continued in an undertone.

Carrick, in a side ward, had been given special permission to retain his mobile phone. Joanna answered.

‘Yes, he's a bit better, but we still don't know whether it's MRSA or not,' I just managed to overhear her say. ‘He's still feeling pretty rough, though. Is it important?'

‘Tell him we've found some gold ingots,' Patrick requested.

Carrick came on the line straight away and there was quite a long conversation of which I could only hear one side as his voice was quite weak.

‘Did he suggest anything?' I asked at the end of it.

‘Yes, he said send a patrol car with all horns and blue lights flashing to the front of the Tanners' house and give them plenty of time to escape through the back door. You mentioned motorbikes so they'll quite likely do a runner on those. The plodding officers of the law will then pretend to lose contact with them so they'll drop their guard and be feeling all cheerful and superior when they turn up here.
If
they turn up here. If they don't nothing's lost as their descriptions can be circulated and we'll pick them up again anyway.' He got out of the car and continued, ‘Please take Elspeth, and the gold, home. I'll stay here, fix up what James suggested and hide myself somewhere. Don't come back for if they're on their way here too and see the lights of the car they'll smell a rat and scram.'

‘You can't arrest them on your own,' I said.

‘No, I'll make sure the patrol car comes here quietly anyway.'

On the way to the rectory Elspeth said, ‘How on earth would they turn the trough over again?'

‘Pass,' I said. ‘But they are built like elephants.'

She did not mention leaving the house for the night on the way home but when we arrived John was on the phone.

‘That was Neil Makepeace,' he said to Elspeth. ‘To ask how I was. I said we'd had a spot of bother with an intruder today and he's insisting we go over to their place for the night. Really insisting, I'm afraid. In fact he's coming over for us right away. It's very good of them, but—'

‘Wonderful!' Elspeth cried. ‘I'm dying to see their new house.' She dashed upstairs to pack an overnight bag.

Ten minutes later I had the rectory to myself and was feeling just the smallest, teensiest, smidgiest bit ignored. OK, everyone knew that some bug-eyed, tea-trailing monster wasn't going to come looming out of the night to slobber at the windows trying to get in at me, but …

I went out to the car, where the gold was safely locked in a secret cubby-box, found a map, returned to the house and, locking all the outside doors, pored over it. I thought Patrick was being over-cautious as the lanes around the Hagtop Farm area are always busy but respected his experience. I would walk back, across the fields.

During my explorations of the village in between writing I had discovered a public footpath that commenced at a stile set into the churchyard wall and crossed pastures in the direction of the next village, or rather hamlet. It went, if I remembered correctly, quite close to the barn.

I grabbed the map again. There was no point in taking it with me because I did not want to use any lights so I committed the route, actually much shorter than going by road, to memory. The only places where one was likely to go wrong was where the path met another in a spinney and at the point where I would have to leave it close to my destination. Everything like that would be obliterated by snow.

Enough time had been lost. Leaving the house, I ran.

The sky was overcast but because of the whiteness of the snow I found that I could see where I was going perfectly well, and, having crossed the stile, the only hazard appeared to be cowpats. There were some very hairy cattle being wintered in the field. The going was gently downhill and I jogged easily, quite enjoying myself but for the worry of Patrick being on his own awaiting men who would be desperate and possibly armed with shotguns. The Tanners would not worry about the consequences of opening fire, they would think only of the riches brought by something which, in reality, they would not be able to sell, and escape to a country where the law could not reach them when, in all probability, they did not even possess passports.