Tainted Ground (28 page)

Only some kind of sixth sense prevented me from falling over the large stone that lay right on my route just before I got to the end of the building. It was more like a small boulder but I was able to step over it. Making my way, with difficulty, as there were other, smaller stones on the bank I stood on one of them and looked over the wall. Sure enough, I was a matter of a few yards from the hornbeam hedge.

Back on my side of the wall, the bank widened out and there was quite a large pile of stones of various sizes. I suddenly realized that they had been left over from building the wall. There was every indication that the big one I had come upon had been part of the pile until quite recently: the vegetation had been flattened where it had been rolled along the ground. I went back and had a proper look at it.

The stone was slippery from the rain and snow. I put the torch in my pocket for a moment and just about managed to heave it over into the river, the water plants preventing what might, in other circumstances, have been a huge splash. I dug out the torch again, switched it on and found myself gazing at the top of a hammered-in metal peg of some kind which had a thinnish nylon rope tied to it, the other end going over the edge of the river bank and from sight.

Everything was getting just a bit exciting.

I knelt and groped down the rope. It was very taut as though it had something heavy tied to the other end, far too heavy, I quickly discovered, for me to pull it up from the position I was in. How deep was the river?

In the end I worked out that the reeds and rushes were not the kind of plants that grew in deep water and gingerly lowered myself in. Liquid ice spread up to my knees and busily proceeded to freeze me solid. I wasted no time, bent, hauled up what appeared to be a canvas bag and just achieved dumping it up on the bank before all my muscles gave up. Then I had to wade for a short distance before the bank became lower and, shivering, I was able to clamber out. All this I had had to do in the dark for fear of totally immersing the torch. Memo to Patrick: get a waterproof one.

It was an old, albeit small, army kit bag and the rope had been threaded through the metal rings in the top and then knotted several times. It took me what seemed for ever to untie them but I only broke two fingernails in the process and my reward was well worth it: the entrancing gleam of gold.

The little ingots had been roughly done up in bubble wrap and there did not seem to be enough to represent the entire haul stolen from the dive boat, thought to be around one hundred and fifty. This was not to say that Brandon, or whoever (I was forcing myself to keep an open mind on the actual identity of the person responsible), had bought or received all those plundered.

I would go and ring his doorbell. But first of all I spent a little while putting the gold somewhere else.

He opened the front door, eyed me narrowly and said, ‘What the hell do
you
want?'

‘Just a word,' I replied, my arms still aching from lugging the gold. ‘With your wife.'

‘She's not here.'

‘D'you mind telling me where she is?'

‘Yes, I do. Bugger off.'

It was then that I noticed the slick of fresh blood on his shirt sleeve. It was then, if I'd had any sense, I ought to have run like mad.

Brandon was looking at my soaked clothing.

‘It's pouring,' I said. ‘Do you own a shotgun?'

‘No.'

‘I'm sure you do. Was the gold a little private affair in an otherwise fairly routine life of crime and you decided to retire on the proceeds? Even though they might have helped you hide away the ingots you then had the problem of what to do with all the tedious hangers-on, especially the Manleys as you'd only hired him, through Davies, because you thought his security-guard insider knowledge might come in useful one day.'

‘You're not being at all clever,' Brandon sneered.

‘And you thought it was really neat to throw away the murder weapon in Brian Stonelake's tractor shed, being as you'd used his barn as a charnel house. He was the local bad boy and the police were bound to turn the whole place over when the bodies were discovered and find the knife together with all kinds of stolen property. But it was a pure coincidence that Stonelake's father's coffin had ended up being used to hide the gold. I bet you had a really good laugh with Davies about that. Where did that blood on your sleeve come from?'

‘He must have brushed against the steak that's ready for grilling in the kitchen,' said a voice behind me.

I whirled round and the person I really thought he had just done to death stood before me. Not a frail and gently smiling Marjorie Brandon but a wiry, ferocious-looking woman who then struck me with a fist, just like a man might do. Pain exploded in my face and then I was flat on my back on the marble tiling, my head having come into violent contact with a wall. She dragged me inside the flat by my feet, dropping them on the hall carpet. I heard the front door slam.

She was not finished with me and actually pulled me to my feet so she could hit me again. ‘Stupid little cow!' she screamed at me, spraying saliva, as I lay on the floor. ‘People like you are shit! And that husband of yours! If there's one thing I loathe it's holier than thou, Daddy's a vicar, I'm an army officer saving the world and raising money for charity SHITS!'

‘You haven't seen Patrick on one of his bad days,' I told her.

This time she hit me so hard I passed out.

It was a surprise to recover consciousness and realize that I was still alive and not existing as some kind of shade hovering in the roof of the barn watching the blood drain from my lifeless body below. With an effort, for my imagination is formidable and has to be controlled sometimes, I did not decorate this sad little picture with grieving husband, family and friends but slew the whole bloody thing and concentrated on escape.

I was lying on my right side, still on the hall carpet, and although they had tied my hands behind me and my feet together I could feel the heavy lump that was the short-barrelled police-issue Smith and Wesson in my pocket. I had no idea whether they had removed the mobile phone from my other pocket.

These lovely people were having dinner, judging by the tinkling of cutlery on china, the smell of seared meat heavy in the air. I lay quite still, eyes closed, when I heard footsteps approaching and someone walked close by, her, she kicked me as she went by, and went into the kitchen. I heard a bottle crash into the rubbish bin, the fridge door being opened and the distinct squeaky sound of the cork being drawn from another. Were they drinking themselves into a state where they could happily contemplate murder? It did not seem to me that she needed much, if any, artificial help. She was also firmly in charge of everything that went on here.

How long had I been away? How long did I have left? My fiendish imagination presented me with the rectory dining room, the three of them eating, my dinner drying up in the Rayburn while Patrick and his father discussed the village cricket team. I actually banged my head on the floor a couple of times to stop this flight of fancy, making myself nauseated with the pain. Truly, truly, I would stop writing novels and have a brain operation to rid me of this curse.

My sight was blurred but I twisted my neck and looked around. Nearest to me was a bathroom: the door was ajar and I could see inside and next to it another door, also not pulled quite closed. The toilet? If it was a really small room I might be able to …

Moving as soundlessly as possible I started to hump myself along the floor, pausing frequently to listen. They were still eating, talking in low voices. Then I achieved sitting up and, head spinning, reached the door and gave it a gentle push. Yes, a small loo. The door was still slowly moving and then the hinges squeaked.

There was a crash as cutlery was dropped on to plates and in the same moment I hurled myself into the little room, twisted round and kicked the door shut with my feet. Bracing them against it, my back to the toilet, I waited, shivering.

At that moment the doorbell rang.

Someone opened it and I heard Marjorie say, ‘Oh, it's you, Teddy.' They then carried on talking in an undertone.

I really did not stand a chance. The door was suddenly rammed open and it was either move or have my legs broken. A thick-set individual hauled me out, backwards, by my arms and dumped me back down on to the hall floor.

‘Who the hell is she?' he demanded to know.

‘Daughter-in-law of the local vicar,' said Brandon, coming into my line of view, puffing at a cigarette. ‘Playing policeman.'

‘More realistically, from our point of view,' Marjorie said coldly, with a dismissive glance in his direction, ‘she's the wife of the rector's son, who I understand has just started a police career at senior level. He's working on the investigation of our little escapade in the barn.'

‘So we just wring her bloody neck. What's the problem?'

‘Teddy, you really must stop thinking you can solve everything with violence. Someone must know she's here.'

‘Do they?' the bull-necked moron shouted at me.

‘Of course.' My own voice surprised me, slurred and faint.

‘Where's your car?'

‘I didn't bring it.'

I thought for a moment that he might resume where Mother had left off but his fists dropped back to his sides. ‘We'll clear out for a while until the heat's off.'

Marjorie appeared to count up to ten. ‘Teddy, you're not in the US now. The heat, as you put it, won't go off and –' her voice rose – ‘everything would have been perfectly in hand if you hadn't come back and interfered!'

Teddy gave his brain cell a quick trot around his cranium and grabbed the cordless phone from a small table. ‘Here, you,' he said to me. ‘Ring your old man and tell him you won't be home for a while. Say you've been delayed.'

Marjorie groaned. ‘This is not some country plod you're referring to but a man who used to work for MI5! His mother told me and she should know!'

‘You'll have to untie my hands,' I said encouragingly to Teddy.

‘Tell him you've had an interesting lead that you're following up,' Marjorie said after a pause. ‘Say there's no need for him to become involved and you'll be back shortly. Say that, nothing else, or I shall kill you. Right now.'

Teddy took a flick knife from his pocket and sprang the blade, smiling at it. I was looking at the murderer.

I was in no shape to outwit even a bunch of fourth-rate crooks. It took a few minutes to massage the circulation and feeling back into my fingers, during which time the execrable Teddy walked up and down the hallway, thrusting the knife into the woodwork, farting at intervals and carrying on a shouted conversation with the other two discussing where in France they would go for a couple of months when they had collected the gold, there having been a change of mind on Marjorie's part. At last, I could delay no longer and the three of them grouped around me as I sat on the floor.

I rang Patrick's mobile number.

‘Gillard,' said the man I had known for most of my life.

I repeated the message, word for word, not taking any immediate risks by adding any of our code words or changing the tone of my voice. The gun was still in my pocket – I could not imagine why – but I simply did not trust myself to use it there and then against the three of them. My mobile was in my other pocket, I could feel its slim shape against my side with my elbow.

I obeyed all the instructions but after I had rung off everything went black.

O
n two previous occasions, when Patrick and I worked for D12, I have woken up in hospital to see him, and James Carrick, sitting by my bedside, looking worried. This time though I immediately knew that something was different and it probably had something to do with the fact that, for one shocking moment, I had not been able to remember who these two men were.

‘How do you feel?' Patrick asked quietly.

Yes, I reminded myself, he was my husband, but it seemed that I was looking at him for the first time or from a new perspective. He was actually very attractive, I decided, and it was mainly the eyes that did it: grey irises flecked with gold, a darker band encircling them. His black wavy hair tinged with grey could do with a trim but then again it always turned me on when it curled down on the back of his neck like that.

They appeared to be waiting for me to say something. Oh, yes, how did I feel. ‘I don't know,' I heard my voice say.

Carrick was still not well but soldiering on in the way Scots do and right now was gazing at me in a direct sort of way. ‘Why were you walking along the main road, Ingrid?' he asked.

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘Can't you remember?' Patrick enquired, alarm in his tone.

‘I can't remember being anywhere near the main road.'

‘You were hit by a car.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I wasn't.'

‘There are four witnesses,' said James. ‘A couple in the vehicle that hit you and a mother and daughter in another car coming from the opposite direction.'

‘Was anyone else hurt?' I asked, dreading his reply and now aware of the dressings on my head and chin. My mouth felt strange, my head fit to burst.

‘No, nothing really serious. The man's wife has a minor whiplash injury where he braked hard to try to avoid you – you really have him to thank, he really only bumped you over – and naturally they're shaken up. Ingrid, there are no street lights along that road and you were walking along the middle of it wearing dark clothing. That's just asking to be knocked down.'

Patrick said, ‘You phoned me, said you were following up a lead and I needn't bother myself with it, but rang off before I could suggest you came home first as we were about to eat. Do you remember doing that?'

‘How long have I been here?' I asked. Yes, I did have a vague recollection of doing that, it was part of the blur of events in my mind. Some of this had to be real, the rest perhaps just a lurid dream I had had after the car hit me.