Classic In the Pits--A Jack Colby classic car mystery (24 page)

‘Who will guard the guard?' I enquired.

Jason went pale. ‘I'll pick another at random to join him. You and I can sit in the room opposite this one, Jack. We'll keep the door open, and there's an alarm bell to bring the whole army of them running.'

Basic stuff but valuable, even if Doubler's plan would take this into account. As we left Arthur to establish our temporary domain I realized I was here for the night. I only hoped I'd live through it. Harry Prince might not have to wait that much longer before he could put in his bid for Frogs Hill. Had I been a fool to come here? No way, I told myself. After all, I was leading the Light Brigade.

And then the lights went out.

I rushed to Arthur's room, which fortunately was not yet locked, colliding with the guard and with Jason cannoning into me from behind.

Jason's voice came out of the dark. ‘Give it a few seconds, Jack. The emergency generator should kick in. One of the guards is down there.'

I fervently hoped that he wasn't lying unconscious or dead. Whoever planned this macabre evening would have reckoned on auxiliary power. He'd given Jason full warning after all, and now the show was beginning.

To my relief, Jason was right. The lights came on again, dimmer and flickering, but they held.

‘Where
is
the generator?' I asked.

‘In the cellars.'

‘Door to the outside?'

‘Yes, locked and bolted. No way, Jack, without heavy artillery.'

‘I'll check there isn't any.'

‘Maybe that's what they want you to do.'

I tried not to think that way. ‘You and the guards stay with Arthur.' The second one had appeared by now.

Somehow the enemy – I decided that the less I thought of him as Doubler the better – had to reach Arthur if his plan was to work, so either he was hidden inside the house so cunningly that he had eluded discovery or he had an even longer range weapon trained on Arthur's window than I'd estimated and was waiting for an opportune moment. The other option was that he was one of the guards.

‘How many guards inside the house altogether, Jason?'

‘Two here, one on the main door, two at the rear doors, two at vulnerable windows, one in the cellars.'

‘Chimneys blocked?'

‘Covered by the outside guards.'

‘I'll check the cellars again, then the rest of the house. Could you warn the guards?'

Even though the lights were dimmer now, searching the house wouldn't be as bad as crawling around in the dark or by candlelight. I reflected, however, that it was all very well to say I'd search the whole house but I was one man, Nightmare Abbey was huge and I didn't want to risk being harpooned by an overzealous guard who saw a dark shape creeping along a corridor or coming round a corner and had temporarily forgotten I was on the loose. It was agreed I would yell out ‘Colby' when turning out of or into a corridor and the guard would yell back ‘Jack'. A simple but I hoped effective plan, stupid though I would feel.

It was a strange ritual. I was straining for the least noise that was out of the ordinary. I duly yelled out ‘Colby' at every turn, aware that if one of the guards was the assailant he wouldn't be yelling back and that I'd be walking straight into a bullet. Start at the bottom or the top of the house? Top, I decided. That way I could chase the enemy down rather than up. Or, of course, be chased. I didn't want to find myself jumping from a parapet into a moat that didn't exist.

In this antiquated building it was hard enough even with all the lights on, not to imagine a masked enemy round every corner. Turrets, corridors, bedrooms, bathrooms, storage rooms – each one sent a thrill of fear through me. Suppose I found myself looking directly into the enemy's eyes? The only weapon I had was a torch. The corridors were lined with prints and paintings, few of which I recognized, save for some eighteenth-century cartoons of Nightmare Abbey – Dr Syntax leapt out at me from one such print gloating over my predicament, it seemed. Impassive gentlemen and ladies from the past stared down at me in contempt as I crept by. I checked each room, leaving the door open in case of movement outside. No one came. The atmosphere was heavy but it told me I was alone, save for the guards whose voices dutifully rang out as arranged. Slowly, I worked my way down to the first floor and back to base with Jason.

‘Nothing up there,' I said, ‘except for the guards.'

He nodded but I could see he wasn't reassured.

Down to the ground floor. The lights seemed to be growing dimmer all the time, or perhaps that was my imagination. I went into the dark recording room, with the dimmest of lights. Nothing here but knobs to be turned, buttons to be pressed, instruments to be played. No music tonight.

And then I came to the cellars. No wine of ages here, just another workmanlike studio, storage and a generator. Plus its guard, who looked edgy as I called and then approached him. Every one of my muscles tensed up, in case he plunged us into darkness again or, worse, plunged something into me.

‘Evening, sir,' was all he said, and sat down again, looking as relieved as I felt.

So the threat had to come from outside, and there was little I could do there, so I went to rejoin Jason on the first floor where a tray of sandwiches and drinks had appeared in our chosen base.

‘Arthur okay?' I asked.

‘He's snoring, so yes. What now?'

‘Just you and me, Jason, and the long night ahead. If we're allowed it.'

We drank the hot chocolate, he and I. Jason was a teetotaller after his ‘bad patch', as he termed it, but in any case I wouldn't have touched alcohol tonight. We ate the sandwiches, we talked of cars, we talked of music, of Miranda Pryde, of women in general (a little). We talked of daughters too, he of Hedda, and I of Cara, my daughter in Suffolk. After surviving her own bad patch – in her case with her partner – she had settled down to a rural life, and seemed happy enough to do so.

And so the long night passed until, at three thirty, the first bird began to sing. He had perceived first light, and never had his song been more welcome. We left it another half hour until Jason said at last: ‘Go home, Jack. This has been a wild goose chase.'

‘Unless we were deliberately kept together in this room.'

‘You don't believe that, and nor do I. Arthur is safe and the guards are still at their posts. The night's over and dawn is coming.'

I wanted to believe him right and I did. No one would attack in the light. In summer people rise early. There are cows to milk, fields to plough, harvests to reap. It took the darkness for black clad figures to roam through it with guns.

I drove home in the Gordon-Keeble, past tiredness now, just wondering about life, about Jason and about tomorrow – or rather the day that now lay ahead of me. A day I had been by no means certain I would have when I set off yesterday evening. Time with Jessica? Just the two of us away from Old Herne's? Perhaps.

I reached the lane to Frogs Hill under a silent sky, with dawn barely yet here. The spirits are low just before dawn and I no longer felt elated that nothing had happened. I felt nothing but a great numbness. As I drove through the gates, I decided to leave the Gordon-Keeble on the forecourt. There were no car thieves prowling and the milkman was hardly likely to take a fancy to it so I clambered out of the car and headed for my front door.

And then I saw it.

A rounded long bundle on the gravel not far from the farmhouse door, as though a delivery van had called and merely dropped the merchandise where its courier stood, annoyed at the lack of reply.
Someone
had called … and left something. Even though the security lights were blazing it felt dark and I had a terrible foreboding as to what I was looking at.

The words of Jason's caller came back to me.
Tell Jack Colby if he wants to see the end of the game come to Friars Leas this evening
. He hadn't said that was where the game would be played. The game was with me and it was here.

This
was the game.

A hand was poking out of the carpet wrapping. The delivery was a body.

¹
See
Classic in the Barn

I
had to force myself to go closer. I had to check in case there was still life extant. After all, I could be wrong. It might not be a human body – although I knew it was.

The food I had eaten earlier was on the brink of rejoining me, and I fought to keep it down as I struggled with fingers that wouldn't obey me. A rope needed cutting and I remembered the knife in the boot of the Gordon-Keeble. And then I had to do the cutting. I tried not to think of anything as I did so, but terrible images kept flashing through my mind. Was it Len – Zoe? Was it Jessica?

It was none of them.

It was a face I had only seen once before, but I recognized it immediately despite the staring eyes and gaping mouth. It was Alex Shaw's.

I rocked back on my heels, aware that my face was wet not with sweat but tears, perhaps for Shaw and his family, perhaps out of relief, perhaps because of the bloody senselessness of the way fate has of intervening in what we each see as our own privately arranged destiny. I was punching 999 into my mobile even as I struggled to regain control. Once that was done I felt reasonably back on course and stood up waiting for it all to begin. Brandon, Dave, the endless parade of scene-suited experts going painstakingly about their gruesome tasks. I tried not to think further than that. After the nightmarish night with Jason, I now had to face an equally daunting day ahead. I'd take it step by step – if I could – and not let this tsunami overwhelm me.

I watched as the first police car arrived, then the rest of the vans and cars. I answered questions, I dealt with issues, in the way one can after a night completely without sleep, seeing everything with a detachment and unemotional involvement as if standing behind some invisible screen in one's mind.

Even so, eventually my brain broke through sufficiently to wonder why the farce of the detour to Nightmare Abbey had been necessary. I sleep (usually) during the night, so why couldn't the body have been left here during the small hours without the trip to Friars Leas? The security lights and noise of the car on the gravel would not have presented a problem, as the body could have been deposited and the car be away before I was even downstairs, so why had Jason and Arthur been brought into the picture? A jolt of fear made me realize that perhaps by now they had been. Perhaps they had relaxed their guard with the night past and me gone.

A phone call fixed that worry. A guard answered and told me that Jason and Arthur were asleep. I hardened my heart. I had to
know
, so I insisted on speaking to Jason. I needed to be sure that mayhem had not broken out as soon as I left. It hadn't, and Jason promised to keep the guard going
and
stay up himself.

I supposed the diversion tactic might have been a strike against me personally because of my interest in the Porsche. Frogs Hill was my castle, my fortress, my home and it had been attacked. I couldn't see that scenario working either though – again, why bring Jason and Arthur into it? The name Alex Shaw inevitably resurrected the name of Doubler. There could well be an issue between the two of them, but why me too? And – a sickening memory – why had that red poppy been lying on Arthur's table?

The whole of the forecourt and part of the lane had been speedily cordoned as soon as Brandon arrived, leaving me marooned in the farmhouse, contemplating the peaceful green fields and garden to the rear of my home which contrasted so sharply with the disaster zone in front. It was still only five thirty in the morning, but as soon as was decently possible I would have to ring Zoe and Len, as the Pits was clearly not going to be operating today. A vastly different operation was in progress under the Forensic Management Unit.

I duly gave the police my DNA, my fingerprints online and my shoes, then I rang Len who grunted and said he'd ring Zoe for me. I wasn't entirely surprised when she called me back. ‘We're coming in, both of us. I'm picking Len up.'

My sympathies to Len for his second ride in the old Fiesta. I reminded her of the cordon but she cut me off with a brief: ‘Footpath.'

I realized how sleep deprived I was. There was indeed a footpath passing the end of my garden which led through the fields to access points on the lanes where she could park the car. I watched through the kitchen window until I saw their familiar figures stomping up to my garden gate, both with a backpack, and went out to meet them. Zoe took one look at me and ordered me to bed.

So I obeyed, leaving them in charge of coffee and biscuits for the troops outside. I only slept for an hour and a half but it restored me to a working machine at least temporarily. The working machine then did its best. The first thing I saw when I came downstairs was Doubler's red poppy, not yet returned to him, which focused my mind wonderfully on the subject of Doubler. He must surely be involved in the execution of Alex Shaw – for execution is what it must have been. Somehow Shaw had disobeyed orders. I remembered Doubler's statement that he didn't like being double-crossed. But how did red poppies fit with that?

The second item I saw was Dave Jennings awaiting my arrival. Brandon was outside somewhere, he told me.

‘Payback for the Porsche, Jack?' Dave looked quite perturbed.

‘Why me though? Your team got there as quickly as I did, and I didn't give Shaw any aggro when I went to see him.'

‘Brandon's set on the car theft being connected to Mike's death and your midnight dash to the new owner's place makes that possible.'

‘Nothing happened to the Porsche last night though,' I pointed out.

‘Can't be our Mrs Ansty going on the spree, can it?'

I didn't even smile. Too much effort. ‘Whether it's connected to the Nelson murder or not, Doubler's involved in this, Dave.'