The Chinese Takeout (28 page)

I was still about half a mile from home when my mobile rang. Andy! Was he ready for his ten minutes?

‘I’m on to something! Bishop Jonathan commended long walks, so – not unwillingly – I tried the idea. Yours, really, Josie. And I can see why you do it. The spaces, the clear air, all the buds—’

Damn it, I didn’t need a spiritual nature walk! ‘And?’

‘Oh, yes. My walk took me along a road – shall I give you the coordinates? – and this stinking truck overtook me. It was enough to make you throw up. And it was kind enough to leave a trail of drips along the road.’

‘A name?’

‘Just an average pick up. You know the sort. No attempt to cover the remains. Not even a tarpaulin.’

‘Remains?’

‘Dead birds, dead sheep, even. Totally revolting.’

‘Any idea of the colour? The make? Andy, this is important.’

‘Red. And I think it was a Toyota. No idea of the number or the driver or anything. Too busy burying my nose in my hands. Sorry.’

‘So where are you now?’

‘Back at my car – trouble is, I’m not as fit as you and it’s taken – what – half an hour.’

‘And have you called the police? Andy?’

‘Sorry, you’re breaking up. Talk to you later, Josie!’

Breaking up, my foot! Within seconds I was on to Burford, yelling what I could remember of the coordinates as I ran – OK, staggered – as fast as I could back to my own car. Half a mile!

I flung myself into the Fiesta, lamenting my own car and all its extra power. Why hadn’t I kept the Saab on the premises, not left it at the hire car depot? Still, the Fiesta would have to do, and bugger its poor pretty paint.

The stupid, stupid man! Did he think his clerical collar would save him? Had Tim’s?

And unlike my Saab, of course, the Fiesta didn’t have a satellite navigation system. How the hell was I supposed to read a jiggling, sliding OS map and keep both eyes on the road? Not to mention check the rear-view mirror every few seconds and scan the side roads at junctions, either for heavy farm machinery or innocent motorists or even for ambush by white van? No, I was only a little paranoid, but as Tony always said, a little paranoia never did even a sparrow any harm. And they seemed to have four eyes. And could fly.

Between all this, each time I stopped to check the route, I tried Andy’s phone. It was either in a mobile blackspot or switched off.

Then I had a call: Burford!

‘We think we’ve located his car – yes, we’ve got a chopper up there. The pilot will be guiding us.’

And he was guiding me, too, hovering over a hill no more than three miles away. Down went my right foot. From time to time I’d catch Mark Burford’s voice.

‘Josie! Can you hear me? Answer, damn you! Back off. Keep out of this. Just back off.’ And then he’d try again with the same message, or variants of it. Perhaps I should have responded, but doing seventy down a one-in-four track precluded polite conversation.

By now I was on what looked like an old army site – nothing as official as an industrial estate. One or two units were dotted haphazardly near the entrance: there might be more inside the perimeter, hidden by low buildings with semi-circular corrugated iron roofs. There was no sign of the police, chopper apart, or of whichever car Andy had used. A white van – and yes, this number might just be – if you had time to squint – FOWL. A red Toyota pick up? No, no sign of that, but yes, there was a trail of some sort of liquid. I’d have to follow it on foot. I abandoned the car, stopping only to pocket the key. No weapon, only the heavy torch Tony had insisted I transfer to whatever hire car I used.

Hell, the stench, and not only from the trail, either. Gagging, I told myself I’d dealt with game birds crawling with maggots, with overripe venison. There was no time for the delicacy of a tissue over the mouth. I’d lost the trail of matter, as it disappeared into scrubby grass.

Skips; five-foot high drums of something. I didn’t stop to look. And all the time I ran, dragging air into aching lungs, I was straining my ears. For
Andy’s screams? Or simply the purposeful sound of ordinary machinery. Yes, over there. And the trail headed that way too, to a forties building that could have been anything from a Mess to a storeroom.

I tried my phone. No response. But I left it ringing: wouldn’t that help Burford and his mates locate me?

I could pull that door open, and risk making a noise, or try easing it an inch, just enough to see.

Bleach. Yes, I could now smell bleach, a tart overlay on the sweetness of decay. In the everyday electric light, it seemed almost banal to see Chinese figures in overalls a size or so too large, tearing putrid skin from chicken carcases. The birds’ throats and innards were intact: the creatures had died, not been slaughtered. God knew what sort of diseases they could carry into the food chain. There was a high-pressure hose for flensing meat off bones – the resultant grey-brown pulp would find its way into pâté and other processed products. Once I might have bought it. The Gay kids might have been fed on it.

And Tim and Tang had died to stop it being made.

No. That was to make martyrs of them, the wrong sort. Someone had killed Tang so he couldn’t tell anyone where he had committed a crime so bad he needed sanctuary.

Had he committed it here? Had he disposed of the evidence here? It would be easy enough.

They could be disposing of Andy right now. And – if I weren’t careful – I might be joining him. Even as I despaired of his life, I heard myself promising that his DNA would be found, somehow, and the workers here be nailed.

They were worse than nailed. They were shackled.

I mustn’t lose control.

If they were using knives, ten to one there’d be one lying around. And if there was one thing I knew how to use, it was a knife. And – thanks to all those joints of meat I’d prepared – I knew my anatomy. If it was kill or be killed, so long as no one came up behind me, I’d bet on myself.

Evens, anyway.

Boots apart. Walking boots – heavens, had I driven like that in such insensitive footwear? – would be heard even above the thrum of the machines. Should I take them off? And risk slipping on the gory mess of the floor?

I’ll swear Tony tapped me on the shoulder. My eyes found the mains power switch. This wasn’t the sort of place to have automatic generator back up. It’d cause chaos. The Chinese slave gangs wouldn’t go fast anywhere. So who or what might I flush out?

There! The darkness wasn’t complete, perhaps a bonus since I might not need Tony’s torch. There was a wonderful shocking silence, then chattering, like starling in a city. Then decidedly European
voices, swearing in old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon.

My ears strained for voices I might recognise. Suddenly I caught Andy’s. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’

Boots or not, I was on the move. My torch now in my left hand, I grabbed a knife. A good one, by the feel of it, well-balanced, the sort I’d enjoy using in my kitchen, it lay so well in the hand.

‘Police! The place is surrounded!’

No one would be taken in by my hollering, but a couple of Chinese kids pointed to the far corner.

My torch picked out a group. At its centre, naked, trussed like a turkey, Andy knelt at the feet of a big man – European – holding a raised knife he clearly meant to use. All eyes swivelled to me. And I pulled back my knife, and slung it, very hard, so the blade would land first. There was a scream as it sliced through flesh.

The world went black. Not just because I’d dropped the torch. Because someone had crept up behind me and—

Why was my face hurting? Soon I’d be able to open my eyes to find out. Meanwhile, my ears were full of the sound of police voices, those of people officially inured to the sort of mess they found.

I’d rather not have heard what they were saying, as they talked about the case. It seemed that a couple of weeks ago someone had pushed a supervisor into an industrial mincer in a food-processing
plant, and, in the stilted lingo they used, all the evidence pointed to Tang. I tried not to gag. I tried not to laugh. For the image that insisted on presenting itself was of dismembered digits sticking out of the machine and literally pointing towards St Jude’s.

The pain was someone slapping my face. It was the one bit of my body that didn’t already hurt, and here was someone laying into it as if it were steak to be tenderised.

I might as well look. A familiar face swam into view.

‘For God’s sake!’ I spluttered. ‘Lay off, Nick!’

‘She’s back with us. She’s OK,’ he yelled to someone. ‘No, stay where you are, Josie. The medics are on their way. Concussion.’

‘Concussion, conshmussion. What the hell’s going on? Is Andy—?’ I remembered what I’d done and started to retch.

‘He’s fine. He’s in my car finding a rug. He was mother-naked, and modest with it.’ Nick sounded amused, in a dry, Nickish way.

‘And the guy I – I—?’

‘The guy you skewered – you never told me you’d been a circus knife-thrower, Josie – he’ll live.’

I found I was holding his hand. ‘What’s your car doing here? I mean, why are you here?
And where are the police?’

‘On their way too.’

I shuddered. ‘Start with why you’re here. No, start by getting me away from here. And – no, look the other way: I’m going to throw up.’

Bless him, he held my head and then passed me a bottle of water. ‘Better out than in, as my old gran used to say.’ Levering me upright, he propelled me firmly away from the shambles and nattered about Elly and Phiz sending their best and all sorts of rubbish about the football match, so I didn’t even notice we had to pass all that vile mess of dead animal till he propped me against his car. He must have been a good cop in his day, even if he had somehow – mercifully – forgotten all those first aid rules about not moving traumatised patients. Then he stood back and admired the distant view while Andy, kilted in a travel rug, scrabbled out and threw himself into my arms.

Assured he was in one piece, I pushed him gently away. I smelt of sick and he of blood and he had just too much baggage for me to carry just now. Just as I realised what a selfish bitch I was being, some paramedics descended and we were thrust in different directions.

‘The thing is, I’d rather liked her from the start,’ Nick had started by confessing, as he drove me home from Taunton A and E. All I’d got was a lump on my head that I tried to insist no one was going
to get their sticky mitts on but which they X-rayed anyway. The police had insisted they needed all my outer clothes, there and then, and having made all that fuss when Tang’s went missing, I supposed I couldn’t blame them. So here I was tricked out in one of their spare white paper suits.

Andy, transported for some reason in a different ambulance, had had to stay in. They wanted to see how much of all that blood caking his body was his and whether any that wasn’t his might be infected. I’d suggested the bishop as next-of-kin: for once in my life I had to admit to being too weary to be any use to anyone else.

‘So why were you there, Nick?’ I asked, trying to revive some bits of memory while firmly suppressing others. ‘You’re supposed to be ill in Birmingham.’

‘So I am. Was, rather, if not ill. And the operation to intercept bush meat was quite genuine. But Claire Lawton got in touch—’

‘
Claire
Lawton?’

‘DI Lawton to you,’ he flashed back. ‘She was worried about her lack of progress – information not getting passed along, that sort of thing. That’s why she asked to have the MIT replace her. And, since she was entitled to look at other things than the kids’ murders, she decided to check out rumours of a dodgy meat-processing factory—’

‘Factory! That’s rather a posh term for that dump!’

‘Quite. Anyway, she organised a little posse from Trading Standards and the FSA to check out one of the places on file in my office – hence my presence. Almost too late.’

I didn’t want to think about the implications of that. ‘So she’s a good cop, really. And Burford? Is he OK too?’

‘As far as I know. Any reason why he shouldn’t be?’

‘None. Just that – he seems too good to be true.’

Nick snorted. ‘Claire tells me he’s been trying to get in your knickers from day one. Isn’t the feeling reciprocated?’

‘Nope. I was briefly attracted to him, but my heart, good sir, was never engaged.’

He laughed at my Victorian pastiche. ‘So it’s Andy—’

‘Whoever it was must have whacked my head harder than I thought,’ I interrupted him. I’d been tempted to rest my eyes, but feared they’d stay shut a long time if I didn’t open them. And I clearly needed my wits about me. ‘To be honest, I knew Mark fancied me so I just sort of strung him along in the hope of getting this case sorted more quickly.’

‘Which may have worked, whatever the morality of it all.’

‘Oh, don’t you start on morality too!’ I snapped pettishly.

‘I gather there was some sort of problem with Andy?’ he said, with that sort of lift at the end of
the sentence he must have learned from his
post-traumatic
stress counsellor.

But he wasn’t about to counsel me. ‘So why did your Claire think she was losing information?’

‘Because – among other things – you assumed she knew things she should have known. And she wondered why. And suspected a mole in her team.’

I would have hit my forehead in fury, but decided the old head had been walloped enough, one way and another. ‘Who? Hell, Nick, I truly don’t believe it: not that nice kid Bernie? The one who was so helpful? And told me, now I come to think of it, I couldn’t have ID’d the scrotes in the black Beamer.’

He nodded, waiting at a halt sign. ‘Nice little Bernie Downs, a real sweetie, forgetting to tell Claire key things which made it impossible for her to do her job, poor woman. But Bernie messes things up too well, and MIT have to take over.’

‘And Bernie was tunnelling away for whom?’

‘You didn’t see him? In the hangar?’

‘Would I be asking you if I had? OK, give me a clue,’ I suggested, my voice honeyed with sarcasm.

‘Actually, it was a straight question. I wondered if you had seen anyone to arouse your suspicions.’

‘Nope. But then, I wasn’t looking. All I thought about was stopping them slaughtering Andy. Are you sure that that knife didn’t do too much damage?’

‘I wouldn’t give it a second thought, Josie. You saved Andy’s life, at the certain risk of your own.’ He pulled onto the main road.

‘I wonder who clobbered me. I’d like it to be Malins or Corbishley. Or one of Tim’s loathsome parents. The world would be a better place with them all doing a long stretch, preferably together, like in that French play.
Huis Clos
. Hell is other people,’ I explained, when he clearly didn’t pick up the reference. ‘But I can’t see them running an immigration scam. Any of them, to be honest. And Downs surely wasn’t running the whole shebang on her own.’

‘I wouldn’t think so.’ He sounded very restrained, all of a sudden.

‘She was in cahoots with someone I know? One of my catering colleagues? Come on, Nick, I’m a big girl.’

‘I never know how involved you get with these blokes dancing attendance on you,’ he grumbled.

‘First rule of flirting: don’t get involved. And you know how I feel about Tony – he’s still a far bigger player in my life than any of these hunks.’

‘He’s also dead, Josie: one day you’ll have to move on.’

‘I don’t see why!’ I fired. But I could see him preparing to tell me, so I continued, as if there’d been no digression, ‘I’d quite like it to be Rousdon, because he wouldn’t tell me where he got his samphire, but I’ll bet it was Nigel Ho. All that business about getting Tang into custody – where no doubt Bernie Downs would have managed somehow or other to get to him?’

‘Let’s see what Burford comes up with, shall we? Come on, Josie, you know you can trust my driving. Why not have a little snooze while I get us home?’

Why not indeed? But Tony squeezed my shoulder in warning. So I saw why not.

‘Pull over. Now!’

Without arguing, Nick obeyed, every tyre protesting – almost as much as my body, come to think of it.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘I think that’s Michael Rousdon’s car. What would he be doing round here?’

‘Come on, Josie – a man’s entitled to drive anywhere.’

‘All the same.’ I told him about the photos Andy had taken, light years ago now. ‘Mobile!’ I demanded. ‘Have you got DI Lawton’s number in the memory? Oh, call her yourself and tell her to get a fix on him. Just do it, Nick. And tell her to get a reception committee waiting for him. In Starcross, of course. Where he lives.’

I heard Claire’s tinny voice, then somehow Burford’s.

‘That’s very interesting,’ Burford said, repeating the map reference Nick gave him. ‘Because a witness places him in the vicinity of that factory. We’ll get on to it.’

Nick cut the call, ‘Hell, what a shambles.’

‘Curiously enough,’ I said, flailing desperately for
normality ‘you’ve picked on almost the right word. A shambles used to be the street where there were slaughterhouses and butchers’ stalls. There’s a street called that in Worcester to this day.’

‘Wow,’ he said, sounding completely
unimpressed
. ‘Are you sure that bang on the head didn’t do more damage than the hospital picked up? And one of these days, Josie Welford, you can explain why you signed yourself out against their advice.’

All these people interested in my welfare. There were days, more than I’d ever admit, even to myself, when a bit of pampering and spoiling, the odd cup of tea in bed, that sort of thing, was what I craved. But not interference.

‘Now,’ he said, starting the engine again, ‘I’m taking you home. ‘OK?’

‘But Michael Rousdon. We should be tailing him. We should—’

‘Are you sure you should be doing anything, dressed as you are?’

‘Bloody hell. OK, the White Hart it is. I should be getting ready for the evening sitting!’

I called Robin.

‘Pix and I are on to it already. When you didn’t turn up and didn’t answer your phone, we got on to a couple of the better work experience kids we’ve had and offered them real money for real work. Wendy and Lucy are primed. We’ve cut a couple of specials. Don’t worry, Josie: we’re motoring.’

‘I’ll be with you as soon as Nick can get me there.’

Which wasn’t very fast, because every bump in the road hurt my head.

Once Nick had been the most timid of God’s creatures, incapable of saying boo even to the decapitated Samson and Delilah. Increasingly I could see him as he must once have been, and as Claire Lawton presumably saw him most of the time. In my mind’s eye I already had them tying the knot at St Faith and St Lawrence’s, with the most slap-up wedding breakfast at the White Hart it was within my power to give. The only fly in the mental ointment was the officiating clergyman: I’d bet my boots Nick would insist on Andy, with whom he’d got on quite well.

I suppose I must have dozed off during this little flight of fancy, because I heard someone snoring and found it was me.

‘Here we are,’ Nick said, pulling up right by the staff door, bless him, so no one would see my snowman outfit. ‘Get yourself upstairs and I’ll come and make you a nice cup of tea.’