The Midden (22 page)

'Oh, of course it's the weekend,' said Fergus. 'I suppose he's with...Is he golfing
again?'

'I don't know what you mean,' said Ernestine, resuming her hauteur in an attempt to regain
some confidence.

'No, all right, all right,' said Fergus, acknowledging there were some things better left
unsaid. 'Well, if you can get through to him, get him to understand that I'm holding Boskie back
from calling the Commissioner of Police at Scotland Yard personally, but I won't be able to
contain the situation very much longer. Just tell Bletchley that that money has to be found and
repaid. Repeat, has to be. I mean it, Ernestine. This is definitely not a joke. Boskie's sons are
flying home from Detroit and Malaga to '

Ernestine put the phone down and sat in a huddle on the chair. She was not aware of the cold
any more. Presently she picked the phone up and dialled Timothy's number in London. The signal
indicated there would be no answer. In the end she went through to her husband's study and found
a number she had never used before. She dialled and a sleepy woman's voice replied.

'I want to speak to Mr Bletchley Bright,' said Ernestine firmly, 'and please don't waste time
by saying he isn't there. This is an emergency.'

She waited while the message was passed and finally her husband came on the line. 'What in
God's name are you doing?' he demanded angrily.

'You had better come home, dear,' said Ernestine coldly.

'Home? Now? Why? What's the matter? Has someone died?'

'In a way, yes, you could put it like that,' said Ernestine. 'If you want to know more, phone
Fergus at Drumstruthie, but I think it would be better to do it here. I'll wait up for you.' She
put the phone down and went through to the kitchen to make herself a nice...a cup of tea. Nice it
wasn't.

By morning the search for Timothy Bright had begun.

In the old nursery at the Midden Timothy Bright lay in bed staring at the terrible
scratch-marks on the thick wooden door and wondered where on earth he was. And all the time he
tried to remember what had happened to him. He could recall being on the motorcycle going down to
Uncle Victor's cottage, but that seemed a long time ago. Even the ride was isolated from the
events that had led up to it and for a while he couldn't remember why he had gone down to Fowey.
But gradually, as the effects of the drugs and his concussion wore off, he began to get
glimmerings of that awful past. One sudden insight would suddenly lead to a much fuller
recollection so that he jumped back to the casino and Mr Markinkus wanting to be paid in full in
ten days. Then another jump, this time forward, to the man with the cut-throat razor in a wine
bar and borrowing Aunt Boskie's shares. And selling them.

It was at this point that terror intervened to prevent him thinking at all and he lay back on
the mattress almost green with fear. The knowledge that he had sold Aunt Boskie's shares filled
him with greater panic than the threats by Mr Markinkus and Brian Smith. He could see now it had
been the worst thing to do. He could always have evaded those cheap spivs by falling back behind
the ranks of the family. Brights would always take care of their own if things got really
awkward. They did it to protect the family name. But now it was different. He had sold Aunt
Boskie's shares and couldn't give the money back and he would never be forgiven. His panic surged
to such new levels he almost saw himself for what he was before the clouds of self-delusion and
pity closed again and he was poor Timothy who had been hard done by. And what had happened to all
that money he had taken from the bank? It had to be somewhere. Timothy Bright summoned up every
scrap of memory he could to solve the mystery. He had put the money neatly into a big briefcase.
He remembered that. And he had...No, he couldn't be sure he had taken the briefcase down to the
bike. He had the impression that someone had phoned just then...No, something had happened. He
tried the other end of the journey. Had he had the briefcase with him then? He had been so
conscious of the parcel that looked like a shoe box which must have contained money too. In that
case he must have taken the briefcase as well. And it must still be at Uncle Victor's. Oh God, he
had to get down there and...He was interrupted by the arrival of Miss Midden.

'Have you got a surname yet?' she demanded.

'It's Bright. I'm Timothy Bright. Look here, can't you get me my clothes?'

'No,' said Miss Midden. 'You came here naked and you're going to stay that way until I find
out why you came and who with and what exactly has been going on. You can use the towel to make
yourself faintly decent.'

'But I can't stay here. I mean I don't know who you are or where this is and it's terribly
important...' He stopped. He mustn't tell this woman anything more. He shouldn't have told her
his name.

'What's so terribly important?' she asked.

'Nothing,' said Timothy Bright defiantly.

'Which is what you'll be having for breakfast,' said Miss Midden and went out and locked the
door.

Timothy Bright got up off the mattress and looked through the bars at the open fell. There was
no one in sight. Some sheep were grazing by the bank of an old track that ran away over a slight
rise towards some distant blue hills. Far away the sunlight glinted on the water of the
reservoir, but the sight did nothing to stir his memory. Instead another memory had surfaced. It
had something to do with Uncle Benderby's yacht...Oh God, the brown paper parcel! He'd had to
take it to Spain. As the memories, all of them quite dreadful, bubbled up, Timothy Bright became
almost immobilized. At least where he was, in this room, he was safe for the time being. He
didn't want to think any more. He lay down under the bloodstained duvet and tried to sleep.

In his office at Police Headquarters the Chief Constable pushed the report on the weekend's
activities away from him and wondered how he could possibly broach the subject of the anonymous
phone call about the Midden Farm without arousing suspicion that he had made it himself. There
was obviously no way unless...He sent for the Head of the Serious Crime Squad.

'Ah, Rascombe,' he said. 'A splendid bash on Saturday night. My congratulations. Thoroughly
enjoyed it. Did you have any more trouble from the media?'

'The Saphegie brothers took their minds off our affairs, sir.'

'The Saphegie brothers? Are they back in business? I thought they had decided to buy their
time,' said the Chief Constable.

'Oh, they've paid up all right, sir. Keep to the timetable nicely. But knowing the way the
press works, I thought I'd give them the Puddley murder to get their teeth into. Take their mind
off our little business.'

'But the Saphegie boys had nothing to do with the Puddley job,' said the Chief Constable,
groping towards some sort of understanding.

'That's the point, sir,' Rascombe told him. 'It's no skin off their nose to have the press
thinking they do. Enhances their reputation. In the circles they move in it counts, being linked
in with a really nasty murder like that. I had a word with them first. Got them to agree,
like.'

'Very obliging, I must say,' said the Chief Constable.

Rascombe grinned. 'Like they say, sir, there's no such thing as bad publicity.'

Sir Arnold Gonders said nothing. The absurdity of the maxim had never struck him with quite
such force as it did at this moment. However, if the Saphegie brothers, who specialized in debt
collection to the point where it spilled over into a protection racket, wanted to be connected in
the public mind with the battery-acid murder of an entire family, that was their business. Sir
Arnold's interest was quite the reverse. Somehow he had to pin the blame for the intruder on Miss
Midden.

'Nothing else I ought to know about?' he asked, and gave the Inspector a very keen look.
'Nothing out of the ordinary anywhere?'

It was the sort of question and look Inspector Rascombe recognized, and in the usual way he
would have known how to respond. This time he was at a total loss. 'Any particular area, sir?' he
enquired.

Sir Arnold considered for a moment. Rascombe was a good copper, the sort of copper he himself
had been, and anyhow he had enough on him to ensure that the Detective Inspector stayed loyal.
Even so, the Chief Constable hesitated. It was best to keep certain things under his hat. On the
other hand that damned Bea knew and in all likelihood had been party to whoever had dumped the
bugger. The Chief Constable still couldn't get his mind round that problem at all sanely, and
then there was Mrs Thouless. By this time she had probably been down to get the bread and milk at
Solwell, in which case half the neighbourhood almost certainly knew by now. There was nothing for
it. It was time to strike back and at least muddy the waters a bit. 'Ever had anyone try to fit
you up, Rascombe?' he asked.

The Inspector smiled. 'It's been known,' he said, and understood the Chief's reluctance. He
had heard something about Edgar Hoover too, now that he came to think of it. It was difficult to
imagine Sir Arnold Fucking Gonders in drag all the same. Horrid.

'When you were first in the CID, I suppose,' said the Chief Constable encouragingly.

Rascombe wasn't fooled. 'No, they don't give up easy, sir,' he said. 'They like to think that
being on the Force and all that and seeing so many villains make a bit, you know what I mean,
weakens a man's resolve. So they come on again and I suppose sometimes they score. Course, other
times they get their mittens in a fucking rat-trap. That's what my little lot did. Still
wondering what the fuck hit them, as a matter of fact, down Parkhurst. Fourteen and ten they got.
I sometimes think of them at night sitting in front of the telly.' Detective Inspector Rascombe
smiled reminiscently.

'Fourteen and ten?' said the Chief Constable. 'You don't mean Bugsy Malone and the Sundance
Kid tried to fit you up?' The Inspector nodded. 'And you landed "them with two kilos of coke for
their pains? Oh dear, oh dear, Rascombe, and I always thought they'd done it too. Still, it does
you credit. It does indeed. Fancy hanging that lot on them. That is a lovely one. Mind you, they
deserved it for trying to bend a copper. By my book there's nothing dirtier than trying to turn
one of us. Well, I daresay we can see they don't get any parole too. As I always say, a job done
properly is a job worth doing.' And the Chief Constable made a note in his diary to have a word
with a man he knew who was on the parole board for the Isle of Wight. 'Now, where were we?'

Detective Inspector Rascombe decided on a tactful approach. 'About suspicions that someone's
on the move?' he suggested.

The Chief Constable approved. 'Something like that,' he said and came to a decision. 'Just a
word that came my way. Nothing certain, and of course there may be nothing to it.'

'Course. Most often isn't,' said the Inspector encouragingly. 'Still, it's often these little
words that put a major thing our way, I always say. Anyone I know?'

Sir Arnold fell back on discretion. 'No one I know either. That's the bother.' He paused.
'Does the term "Child-minder" mean anything to you?'

'Only the obvious, like,' said Rascombe. 'You wouldn't be thinking of...'

'Could be, Rascombe, could very well be,' said the Chief Constable, 'and if it is, we've got
to stamp it out before it becomes another fucking Orkney. And I do mean stamp. I'm not having
Twixt and Tween go down in history as another place the paedophiles had a ball. That stuff is
horrible.'

'Vile, sir, loathsomely vile,' said Rascombe, having to veer away from the idea that somebody
had been trying to fit the Chief Constable up with a crime. There could be no doubting Sir
Arnold's horror at the thought of a paedophile's ball. 'Have you got any idea where to look,
sir?'

The Chief Constable stared out the window at the city. 'One place you can forget is the Social
Services Child Abuse unit,' he said. 'Breathe a word of this there and it'll be right across the
county in no time at all.'

'Agreed, sir, those do-gooders foul things up something terrible.'

'You can say that again,' Sir Arnold agreed, with the private thought that just about anybody
could foul things up for him, never mind do-gooders. On the other hand the idea of paedophiles
was an excellent one: the very mention of child molesters had an emotional appeal that blinded
people to obvious facts. Muddy waters wasn't in it. And there was something else. A really nice
goodie. Tailor-made for trouble. 'What I want you to look for is any report, anything that
suggests something's wrong. Doesn't matter how insignificant it looks, check it out...And if I'm
right in my hunch, and mind, that's all it is, if I'm right and what I heard has any significance
at all...'

He paused and looked at Rascombe for a moment as though deciding that the Inspector was indeed
the man to handle the issue. 'The words were "up behind Stagstead." He's an old army chap and
he's got this very convenient place for taking the photos of them. That's one source and it was
purely accidental with a crossed line on the phone. In the normal way I wouldn't have taken any
notice of it except that the bloke speaking had one of those voices you can't put a face to but I
could swear that somewhere along the line I'd met him before with a bit of the old nasty stuff,
you follow. I might have put the phone down but I didn't and then the other fellow said something
that did strike me, "Do you think it ought to go in Gide Bleu?" What do you make of that?'

'Guide Bleu, isn't it, sir? Not Gide, surely.'

'Well, of course in the normal way I'd have said he'd been mispronouncing too, except he
sounded too toffee-nosed to make that sort of mistake. But the key thing was the other
slimy-tongued bloke repeated it, "I think they want to keep off any list like the Gide Bleu. Got
to be careful." I lost them after that.'

'That Gide Bleu sounds a bit off, sir,' said the Inspector.