He bent down, forcing Ash to look at him. “Listen to me,” he said, the Welsh accent harsh in his voice. “This is nothing to do with what happened before. Those men didn’t have any news for you. They work for Mickey Argyle. I don’t know what they wanted with you, but take my word, it was nothing good. Nobody wants Mickey Argyle taking an interest in them. If you’d gone with them, they’d have hurt you. Or killed you. Do you understand? They would not have taken you to your family. They don’t know anything about your family. If you’d gone with them, they’d have killed you.”
Finally a little intelligence seemed to creep back into Ash’s eyes. He swallowed, looked down the road in the wake of the vanished car. “Who’s Mickey Argyle?”
Jackson let loose his breath in a gusty, impatient sigh. “Jesus, don’t you know
anything
?” Then, remembering who he was talking to, his tone softened. “No, I don’t suppose you do know much about Norbold’s criminal underworld. You haven’t been getting out much since you came back, have you?”
Ash looked puzzled. “Do you know me?”
Jackson straightened up, offered his hand. “I know who you are.” He introduced himself. “I work for the local paper.”
“Then you know…” Jackson nodded. “It was in the paper?”
“Mr. Ash,” said Jackson patiently, “it was in every paper in the country, for about ten days. Since then … well, there really hasn’t been anything to add, has there?”
“No.” Gabriel Ash took the proffered hand and stumbled to his feet. He looked again in the direction that the car had sped away. “Then … what did they want?”
Jackson shook his ginger head. “I can’t begin to imagine. But then, I can’t imagine what you were doing at the Cardys’ house, either.”
Ash told him. He saw no reason not to.
Jackson felt himself staring, and blinked. “
You
were the—” And there he stopped, mentally editing. In its next edition his paper would use the expression “learning disabled itinerant,” which was ugly to the nth degree but more politic than “thicko tramp,” which is what Jackson wrote when he got the story first thing on Thursday morning, just too late for a stop-press. “The other guy in the cells that night. The police press office didn’t give us a name. They just said Cardy was originally in with someone else before he wandered off.”
He looked across the road at the house he’d come to visit. “Well, I suppose that had better wait. We’ll get you down to the cop shop, tell them what happened.”
As they were walking up to the front door at Meadowvale, Hazel Best was walking down. She stopped at the sight of Ash’s muddy clothes. “Whatever’s happened to you
now
?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Ash said honestly. “I think someone tried to kidnap me.”
“
What?”
“Who’s Mickey Argyle?”
Hazel had heard the name, though it wasn’t engraved on her heart as it might have been if she’d been stationed here for longer. “He’s involved in the drugs trade in Norbold, I think. Why, what have you done to annoy him?”
Ash shrugged, bemused.
“Mickey Argyle
is
the drugs trade in Norbold,” explained Jackson. “He was before Johnny Fountain rode into town, and he will be after he rides out. He’s the one stain on your chief’s escutcheon.”
“And he tried to kidnap Ash?” Any more doubt in her voice would have called him a liar.
“Well, they weren’t driving his car with the personalized number plates, but I’m pretty sure they were Argyle’s gorillas. One of them I’ve seen before—his name’s Fletcher—and the others came in the same boxed set.”
“What did they want?” She was asking Ash.
“They didn’t say.”
Hazel clung on to her patience. “Gabriel, tell me what happened.”
Jackson gestured at the door. “We’re just going inside to report it. Come with us if you want. It’s going to be a matter of public knowledge soon enough.”
“Not that soon,” said Hazel, turning and following them back up the walkway. “The best way to keep a secret—”
“Is to tell it to the police press office.” Jackson nodded. “Not this time. I’m an eyewitness. And a reporter.”
Hazel shut up.
If Sergeant Murchison wondered what it meant that these three people arrived at his desk together, nothing in his expression betrayed him. “Kidnapping,” he echoed, straight-faced.
“Well, attempted kidnapping,” said Ash, to whom accuracy was important. “Then they changed their minds and threw me out on the street.”
“Why?”
“Because they saw me take a picture of them doing it,” said Jackson with some relish. “If anything had happened to him after that, you’d have had a witness and photographic evidence in a murder hunt. They had to let him go. Doesn’t mean they won’t pick him up again another time.”
“Let’s have a look at this picture, then.”
“Flat battery,” admitted Jackson regretfully. “Damn shame, that. It would have gone down a blinder on my front page.”
Ash was still rocking from the last thing he’d said. “
Another
time?”
Jackson was surprised at his naïveté. “You thought that was the end of it? Mickey Argyle wanted to talk to you enough to send his gorillas rather than a deckle-edged invitation, but he was put to rout by a middle-aged reporter with a camera phone? It’s a nice thought, but I wouldn’t stake
my
life on it.”
Sergeant Murchison’s ears pricked up. “It was Mickey Argyle? Did you see him?”
Jackson’s gaze was caustic. “Don’t be silly. If he was that stupid, you’d have nailed him long ago. I think it was his crew. I think Andy Fletcher was one of them. I can’t be positive, let alone prove it, but you’d have to ask yourself who else in Norbold was going to pull a stunt like that. Mickey Argyle is about the only godfather we’ve got left.” He said it as if he rather regretted the passing of the old days.
“What does Mickey want with Mr. Ash?”
“That’s kind of the point,” said Jackson, who’d somehow taken over the interview. “Ash isn’t a client, and he isn’t a rival. You’d have thought he was pretty much below Argyle’s radar. So the next thing you have to ask yourself is, was it anything to do with what happened in the cells here the other night?”
Murchison stared. “How could it be?”
Jackson gave a cheerful grin. “Beats me. But Ash here, who’s hardly been farther than his corner shop for years, was picked up after leaving the Cardys’ house. So either they went there looking for him or they followed him. There was nothing random about it.”
Now Murchison was staring at Ash. “What were you doing at the Cardy house?”
Ash gave an awkward shrug. “I wanted to express my condolences.”
“Did anyone know you were going?”
Just barely he managed
not
to say, “My dog.” He shook his head.
“Followed, then,” said Jackson with unseemly satisfaction.
Murchison put his pen down. “This is CID stuff. I’m going to have to get hold of DI Gorman. I’ll put you in one of the interview rooms while I track him down. Hazel, can you organize some coffee?”
It was like police station coffee everywhere: virtually indistinguishable from the tea, the hot chocolate, and the oxtail soup. The best that can be said was that drinking it gave them something to do while they waited. Hazel showed Ash to the washrooms and he attempted to clean himself up. Jackson ignored the
SWITCH OFF MOBILE PHONES
sign and called his editor.
Sergeant Murchison returned. “DI Gorman’s going to be tied up in court for another hour, maybe more. Do you want to go on home? He’ll call you when he gets in.”
Outside the police station Jackson headed for his office and Ash turned the other way to walk home. But Hazel plucked his sleeve and said, “Come with me. I’ll give you a lift.”
“There’s no need,” he said, surprised. “I’m all right, you know.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I don’t think you should go home alone.”
“Why not?”
“They could be waiting for you.”
He’d spent so long as the invisible man, shut up in his big house behind drawn curtains or wandering the blind streets with his dog, that being the focus of attention came as a shock. He genuinely hadn’t thought of that. He looked askance at Hazel. “Are you armed?”
She laughed out loud, though it wasn’t that funny. “No!”
“There were three of them. They were quite big.”
Hazel thought that the correct response to that was, “I am a trained police officer. Armed with nothing but quick wits and a smattering of jujitsu I am more than a match for three large men armed with anything less than machine guns.” What she actually said was, “I have Meadowvale on speed dial.”
There was no one waiting for them. “They mustn’t know about this place,” said Ash.
“Or else they’ve already been here.”
Ash looked at his dog. “Apparently not.”
Hazel frowned. “What do you mean?”
He glanced up quickly, guiltily. “Patience would be upset if someone had been prowling around.”
The constable seemed to accept that. “I still think you’d be wiser staying somewhere else for a few days.”
Ash gave a tiny, helpless smile. “You know a B and B that takes dogs?”
Hazel shrugged. “Put her in a kennel.”
It was as if she’d proposed something indecent. Both of them, man and dog, regarded her with silent, unblinking disfavor.
Hazel found herself breathing heavily at them. Which was odd, because she’d always rather prided herself on her patience. Something about Gabriel Ash got under her skin. Something about Ash and his dog made her want to bang their heads together. “You haven’t forgotten that this is your safety we’re talking about?”
“Why would anyone want to hurt me?” He wasn’t arguing with her; he just wondered if she knew the answer.
Hazel sighed and lowered herself onto his leather chair, which bore the unmistakable circular impression of a sleeping dog and was still warm. “You made the classic mistake—you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“In the cell with Jerome Cardy?”
“It has to be. Somebody’s worried about what he said to you.”
“What he said made no sense.”
Hazel shrugged. “You must be remembering wrong. Just a little bit—just enough to obscure what he was trying to say. Mickey Argyle has a pretty good idea what it was. Now he wants to know if you’ve worked it out.”
“Worked out
what
?”
“I don’t know,” said Hazel, exasperated. “Something to do with drugs? That’s Argyle’s line of work. Jerome fled the scene of a minor accident he hadn’t even caused—why? Was he carrying drugs for Argyle? Is that why he thought he was in deep shit—because he’d got himself picked up by the police while driving around with a suitcase full of cocaine?”
Ash stared at her in surprise and mounting admiration. It made more sense than anything he’d thought of. “Maybe that’s why he mentioned the sniffer dog. To flag up the drugs connection.” He frowned. “Where does Othello fit in?”
Hazel thought some more, then shook her head. “Beats me. Othello. Strangled his wife because he thought she was having an affair.”
“Jerome was black, like Othello. But his father said he didn’t have a girlfriend.”
Hazel gave him an old-fashioned look. “He was a twenty-year-old student. There must have been someone. Even if he didn’t tell his dad. Maybe it was a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend.”
Ash’s train of thought had turned up a branch line. “They could have killed me with that car. Then anything Jerome told me would have been lost. If this Mickey Argyle’s such a bad lot, that would have been the sensible thing to do.”
Hazel had never heard anyone described as a “bad lot” before. “He could still do it. Perhaps he wants to talk to you first in case it isn’t necessary.”
“What do you mean?” His gaze was honest, uncomplicated by any sense of irony.
Hazel chewed her lip delicately. “How am I going to put this? There’s a general perception around Norbold that you’re as dotty as Dundee cake. Don’t look at me like that—I’m not saying it’s what I think.
“But if I’m wrong and everyone else is right, Mickey doesn’t need to shut you up. It wouldn’t matter what Jerome said to you, it wouldn’t even matter if you’d understood it, because no one would listen to anything you had to say. Argyle would only attract attention by killing you. I think that’s why he wanted to talk to you—to find out if you’re worth worrying about.” She risked meeting his eyes. “Maybe that’s why they threw you out of the car. They decided you weren’t.”
It was hard to take that as a compliment. But Ash’s frown was more puzzled than offended. “Why?”
“You wanted to go with them. You thought something good was happening.”
A faint flush crept up Ash’s sallow cheek. “I suppose that does seem pretty crazy.”
“What was going through your mind?” asked Hazel. “Who did you think they were? What did you think they wanted?”
For a couple of minutes, which is a long time to sit in silence with someone you hardly know, he made no attempt to answer. But she knew he was going to, so she waited.
Finally he said, “Jackson—the reporter—knows who I am. You don’t, do you?”
Hazel shook her head. “Sorry. I’ve only just come to Norbold.”
“Most people who’ve lived here all their lives don’t know me from Adam, either. It didn’t happen here—we were living in London, had been for years. I only came back here afterward.”
“After what?”
He’d been trying to make them a pot of tea. The attempt fell apart in slow motion as he grew increasingly distracted, getting out cups that didn’t go with the saucers, putting them back, getting out mugs, forgetting—and being quite unable to remember, even though he stood there racking his brains—where he kept the teaspoons, his shaking hands struggling with the jar until he dropped it and scattered tea bags across the countertop.
Hazel got up quietly, turned off the kettle, and drew him to the leather sofa, where the white dog was waiting, watching him with concern. “Sit down. Talk to me.”
If she’d known she was asking him to strip his soul, she might not have pressed him. Or perhaps she would have. She was no psychologist, but there are human instincts that we all share, and human instinct was telling her that Gabriel Ash needed someone to talk to. She wasn’t sure what he was going to tell her. She wasn’t sure that it mattered. She thought he needed to talk about what was consuming him before his brain melted.