For several weeks, Curtis had become a fixture at Bailey’s farm, and he couldn’t have been happier about that. But his last visit had been three months ago, the death threats having become so commonplace as to be no longer news. Now, thank God, Bailey had had more explicit death threats, so he was back.
But the really big story was for
Law on the Law
. He didn’t know whether his interest in things criminal had been as a result of his surname, or if some ancestral voice had been calling to him, but it had done no harm to have a name they could play with in the title. Now he was on the brink of the big time. His producer had gone out on a limb for him, spending about forty per cent of the programme’s budget on that story alone, and it really could be his passport to national television, to rescuing
Law on the Law
from its Monday late-evening regional slot and getting it networked in prime time.
He had a false identity, a mobile phone, a hired Jag – the lot. He even had a disguise. The criminal fraternity had a tendency to watch programmes about the police, and though his face was rarely on screen during
Law on the Law
, the make-up department had devised a disguise for him that had worked, albeit briefly, on his mother.
The scam had been his idea – he had thought that the increase in break-ins at premises where drugs were held wasn’t just random, and it looked as though he was right. The rendezvous was tonight, and if it worked, he would hand the cops Mr Big on a plate. The cliché wasn’t his; it was a direct quote from a senior policeman, who had been shrugging off the suggestion that organized crime was behind the raids. So, Operation Mr Big it had become.
The interview with DI Hill and the Baileys had taken for ever; his attempts to interview Bernard Bailey always did. It was odd how someone who said nothing took much longer than someone you couldn’t shut up. He was late already; he should be in Barton now, because he had a busy afternoon’s work ahead of him, getting himself ready for this evening. It could lead to glory, or it could lead to his being found up some alleyway if he was rumbled. They had to be sure that everything was right if they were to avoid the second possibility.
He said he had to go, and Gary packed up, got into his car, wishing him good luck for tonight, and drove off.
‘You look a right prat doin’ all that noddin’ and stuff, you know that?’
The lazy voice was right behind him. Curtis turned and looked at Rachel. She stood smiling at him, her hands in the pockets of the full skirt of a dress which would have been demure, with its long sleeves and its buttons right up to the neck, if she had been wearing a bra, which she wasn’t. He could see her nipples through the rain-dampened silk, and his mouth went dry.
‘I got the keys to the flat today,’ he said, taking a key from his pocket, holding it out to her. He tried to sound casual, but it was hopeless, and he found himself gabbling. ‘ It’s on lease until October – when Mr Big’s all over, it’ll be sitting there empty for weeks, I know it will. I might have to hand them back, so I got copies made. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get away, but I thought if I could ring you when I’ve got an hour or so, maybe if you could give Ber—’
Her mouth was on his. ‘I’ll get there,’ she said, kissing him and talking at the same time. ‘ Just try stoppin’ me.’
She took the key from him, slipping it into her pocket, and now her tongue was pushing gently, irresistibly, into his mouth, sending a shudder of desire through his body.
‘But we got the cowshed right now,’ she said, catching his tie, pulling him gently as she walked backwards towards the shed. ‘Bernard’s gone into Barton. We got most of the afternoon, I reckon.’
He was supposed to be in Barton, getting ready for tonight, but Curtis allowed himself to be led through the doorway of the building, out of the drizzle, stopping dead as soon as he was inside. ‘There’s a cow in here.’
Rachel smiled. ‘You get that now and again in cowsheds,’ she said, leading him into an unoccupied stall. ‘She won’t peek.’
He should be in Barton, he shouldn’t be here, he thought, as he kissed her gently on the mouth, then kissed her face, her neck, his hand caressing her breast through the silk. ‘Oh, to hell with Mr Big,’ he said, drawing her down with him to the soft straw, pushing up her dress. ‘ To hell with everything.’
Rachel drew in her breath, more from the pain an involuntary movement had caused her bruised body than from pleasure at Curtis’s touch. This was the last thing she wanted to do, but she had been given the chance, and Bernard didn’t give her many chances, not these days. If she could do it with Bernard within days of that dreadful beating, she could do it with a few routine bruises and Curtis.
He unbuttoned her top button, and kissed the triangle of skin at her neck. She smiled, loosened his tie, and undid his top button, kissing his throat. The next few buttons; another exchange of kisses. But that was when she realized the implication of what he had just said.
‘What do you mean, ‘‘ To hell with Mr Big?”’ she asked, her voice slow and suspicious. ‘You supposed to be workin’ on that?’
‘Sort of. But the meeting isn’t until tonight.’
His evasive answer didn’t fool her. ‘You said to hell with it,’ she said. ‘ You’re supposed to be doin’ somethin’ now.’ Her eyes widened, as she pieced it together. The meeting. That was what the whole thing had been working up to. ‘Is it tonight you get the drugs, and all that?’
‘Yes,’ he said, tackling her third button.
She smacked his hand away before he got her dress open any further. If he saw the old bruises from that beating now she would never get rid of him, and he was supposed to be in Barton, getting ready for tonight.
He smacked her hand back, in the spirit of the game. ‘Why have you stopped me?’ he asked.
‘You don’t have time for all that. You said that this was the most important part, settin’ it all up. You said if you didn’t do it right, you could get hurt.’
‘I don’t
care
about that.’ His voice was agonized, his eyes pleading with her.
‘You said it was the best thing that ever happened to you.’ Rachel didn’t want him losing this chance. ‘What do you mean, you don’t care about it?’
‘
You’re
the best thing that ever happened to me.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ It was said as sharply as she ever said anything.
‘You
are
the best thing that ever happened to me. And I never get the chance to be with you.’
He never got the chance to screw her, in other words. But Curtis really did think he was in love. And he thought that she was too, come to that, but that was his problem. She had never said she was. She needed him, that was all. And she hadn’t known that his meeting was tonight; that was the last thing she wanted to jeopardize. But she couldn’t just send him away. It had been three months since she’d seen him; she was lucky he hadn’t given up on her already.
‘A quickie,’ she said. ‘Then you got to go.’
Curtis accepted the compromise with alacrity, abandoning the foreplay much to Rachel’s relief. The sooner it was over the better, as far as she was concerned.
Nicola had deposited Nell with the other two dogs, and now she parked in the courtyard, and walked into the cowshed. She heard them before she saw them, in the gloom. And before they saw her.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Rachel, letting her arms fall away from her companion.
He turned to look behind him then, and Nicola could see that it was the TV reporter who was with her, who was jumping to his feet, frantically pulling up his trousers, brick-red with embarrassment.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘ Carry on.’
He fled from the cowshed, but Nicola had seen nature in the raw far too often to let the sight of copulation bother her. Rachel was apparently just as unconcerned; she stood up, her skirt falling back down to cover her bare legs, her blue eyes on Nicola’s.
‘He wanted me to look at a cow,’ Nicola said.
Rachel smiled her slow smile. ‘You’re lookin’ at the wrong one,’ she said. ‘The one you want’s down the bottom there.’
Nicola smiled too, and walked along to her patient, who was supremely unimpressed by the goings-on. But she felt anxious, as Rachel went to restore her boyfriend’s dented dignity. It was none of her business what Rachel did, so she hadn’t said anything, but she was taking a terrible risk.
Nicola thought again of the appalling beating her father had given Rachel, much, much worse than anything he had ever done to her, and didn’t know how Rachel dared. She had begged her to leave him, but she wouldn’t; Nicola had no idea why not. She wasn’t frightened to, not like her mother had been; Rachel was frightened of nothing.
Rachel had come to work as a part-timer in the farm shop, just three months after Nicola’s mother had died. He had at first asked her to look after the house and cook his meals, then he had asked her to marry him. Nicola had told him what she thought of the haste, and of the difference in their ages, a gap much wider than mere years. Her father belonged to another age, another era, possibly to a world known only to writers of Gothic romances. She should have known better than to question her father’s actions, but in the end she was given an explanation, of sorts. ‘She’s got time on her side,’ he had said. ‘She’ll bear me a son.’ Nicola was surprised he drew the line at a boy-child.
Time on her side. He could say that again. She was only two years older than Nicola herself. But Rachel seemed to be working to her own agenda, hanging on as long as she could before she started having babies, and now she was playing around with the TV reporter. Nicola addressed herself to the much less complex problems of the other cow, smiling again at Rachel’s little joke, just hoping that she took more care in future.
Judy had gone home and changed before going back to work. She had got on with what she regarded as more important things until it was time to clear her desk and let it all wait for tomorrow. Then she walked along the corridor, knocked on Lloyd’s door, and went in.
He grinned when he saw her change of clothes. ‘A bit muddy, was it?’ he asked.
‘A bit.’
‘I did warn you that it might be.’
She nodded, and sat down. ‘ There were a few things that you didn’t warn me about,’ she said.
Lloyd looked all injured innocence. ‘ Such as?’
‘Such as there was a television reporter there.’
‘Was there really?’ he said. Are you going to be on the telly?’
He looked as though he really hadn’t known about that. And if he had, he would have gone himself, Judy reasoned, since he was fond of appearing on television. She forgave him very slightly. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Oh, we’ll have to watch.’
‘And such as Bernard Bailey is a complete lunatic who only says one word at a time.’
‘I don’t know Bailey, so I didn’t know he was a complete lunatic who only says one word at a time,’ Lloyd said. ‘Anyway – what’s your plan of action?’
‘I’ve got Alan seeing if we can get any sort of lead on the computer program from the print or the graphics, but he says they all do that sort of print, and they all have a drawing capacity, so he’s not exactly optimistic about our chances of success.’
‘Have you ever known Alan Marshall to be optimistic about anything?’ Lloyd said, mimicking Marshall’s polite Glasgow drawl.
‘I thought they seemed a bit adolescent, but he says he thinks it’s someone trying to make it look like that, so that’s not much of a lead. And even if we do narrow it down to a particular program, ownership of such a program won’t exactly prove anything, will it? I’ve suggested that Alan ask a few obvious hostile factions politely about their computers, and I’ve asked if the area car can put in an appearance up there over the next few evenings – more so that Bailey can see we’re doing something than for any other reason. I doubt very much if they’ll catch anyone in the act. I’ve advised him to think about closed-circuit television.’
Lloyd tipped his chair back. Judy had watched him do that for years, and he had never fallen yet. But she was always waiting for the crash. It was how he thought: gently rocking on two legs of a chair. Sometimes quite useful ideas came out of it.
‘No one else lives in at the farm? Just Bailey and his wife?’
‘No one else. But his daughter has a key to the gate, unlike his wife.’
‘Did you speak to his wife?’
‘Not really, other than to say hello,’ said Judy, with what she felt was positively heroic understatement. ‘I tried to see the daughter, but she was out. I spoke to her husband. Nicola Hutchins does all the veterinary work for her father – that’s where she was when I called at the surgery. He’d hardly give her all that work if there was any bad blood.’
‘Probably not,’ said Lloyd. ‘But families are funny things. What about the foreman? Your notes said he had a key.’
‘Unlike Mrs Bailey,’ Judy said again. She must surely resent that, but it had been very obvious that Mrs Bailey was not to be approached, so she hadn’t spoken to her. ‘I didn’t speak to him directly about the death threats, because Bailey didn’t want me to,’ she said.
‘Could someone’s key have been copied?’
‘No. They’re electronic, and they’re issued under some sort of licence system. Only three were ever issued. But it doesn’t have to be a keyholder. Anyone could be doing it, providing they stay out of sight, which is why I suggested CCTV. You can
leave
without a key, though that’s about the only thing you can do. In effect, anyone could be doing it.
Mrs
Bailey, for instance, which wouldn’t surprise me. Come to that, it could quite possibly be Bailey himself, trying to drum up sympathy.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’
‘Not really. I think he’s scared. The security has to be seen to be believed. But it was all in place before the first lot of death threats, even, so that’s not what he was scared of to start with.’
‘Does Bailey have any theories?’
Judy sighed. ‘You don’t
get
theories from Mr Bailey,’ she said. ‘You get ‘‘aye’’ and ‘‘nay’’ and ‘‘happen’’.’
‘Do I gather that you aren’t exactly keen to head this investigation?’