Stealth (28 page)

I said, ‘Patrick made an immediate report to this officer, giving him a lot of background information about the case as well, someone gave him a temporary dressing for the knife wound in his arm and then I drove him to Worthing hospital as he had lost quite a lot of blood.'

There was rather a long silence broken by Jessica Sturrock saying, ‘I have no choice but to accept your explanation but am nevertheless deeply unhappy about it. When I write my report I shall have to state that due to his illness – he had been suffering from throat cancer for some time and was undergoing very unpleasant treatment – Bob acted in a way that did not promote and reflect the best principles that this force ought to offer. Are you content with that?'

‘Let me ask you a couple of questions,' Patrick said.

‘Go ahead.'

‘Do you expect me to be content with it?'

‘Yes, I think so. Why on earth shouldn't you be?'

‘Then having read all this stuff you not only haven't got the right picture, you have no idea of the sort of bloke I really am. Did this man have a family?'

‘Yes, a wife and two teenage children.'

‘So you're quite happy to publicly blacken this man's character and life's work just to get your report out of the door and make everything all right for you and the force.'

‘Look, I'm sure he thought he was acting in everything and everyone's best interests at the time. And no doubt he was . . . well . . . grateful to you. But you can't expect me to be.'

‘No, and I'd prefer you to write down your first inkling, that I threatened him.'

‘But you said you didn't.'

‘No, of course I didn't. But I'd rather you went for that option than have him blamed for dereliction of duty. I'd survive that, possibly, but his family will have a husband's and father's name blackened for ever.'

‘I can hardly say that if it's not true.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘You've put me in an impossible position.'

‘I suggest you've put yourself in it. All you have to do is reiterate the official findings. You weren't here; no one will expect you to do anything else.'

‘I can't do that, it's slipshod.' The DI got to her feet. ‘Nor can I come to any definite conclusions until I've seen this place for myself – later when I'm off duty as there's no justification for using my time now. And I'm afraid I shall have to insist that you take me through exactly what occurred right from the beginning.'

‘As you wish,' Patrick said tautly. ‘But I feel I must caution you that the property still belongs to an outfit known to have criminal connections. There's every chance that—'

Sturrock interrupted him. ‘We are keeping an eye on the place.' She swept on with, ‘Can you pick me up outside here at six thirty as you know exactly where we're going? Sorry, but there's a late meeting that I have to attend.'

We rose to leave.

‘I do understand that it's the last place on earth you want to be,' the DI said to Patrick with a thin smile.

‘You're very quiet,' Patrick said some time later when we had found somewhere to have a light lunch.

‘There's nothing useful that I can say,' I replied. ‘Really, really nothing useful.'

‘Me neither.'

All the talking about it had been done.

We toured the district to give us something to do in the time available, driving to Bramber where we wandered hand in hand among the tumbled rocks, grassy ditches and mounds of the ruins of the castle. Then we had lunch at a pub in the village: I hardly noticed what I ate. Afterwards we headed for the coast and walked along the beach at Lancing, again hand in hand, the tide right out but on the turn, a muddy-looking English channel creeping in little rivulets ever closer to our feet across the rippled sand and stranded pieces of seaweed. I picked up a few shells and then tossed them aside.

Why did I have this strange feeling? We were only going to talk a Detective Inspector through events when a gang of London mobsters had been apprehended. While it was true that my husband might experience a few bad moments what else could happen?

‘I have to say something purely from the oracle point of view,' I said into the silence.

‘That your cat's whiskers are giving you hell?' Patrick hazarded with a squeeze of my hand.

‘Yes, they are.'

‘I didn't think I had any but mine are too. Must be nerves.'

As if setting the scene for us Nature had erased the early bright sunshine with heavy cloud moving in from the south west. It would get dark early.

‘With your permission we're going to carry this out initially from Ingrid's point of view and that's why we asked you to dress in rough walking gear,' Patrick said. ‘You've read all the reports, you must know mine almost by heart by now but that only mentions her from the moment of her arrival, bringing her mobile, the short-barrelled Smith and Wesson that she carries with all due permissions, plus our other usual emergency bits and pieces including refreshments in the form of chocolate bars and water purification tablets.'

Sturrock, who was in one of the Range Rover's back seats and we gathered had had to go home in order to change – apparently she had a flat just around the corner – looked at me. ‘Do you have it, the gun, with you now?'

‘It's in the locked cubby box between the front seats together with Patrick's Glock 17,' I told her, wondering if Patrick's fingers had been crossed during the ‘all due permissions' bit. ‘Sometimes it's in my bag – all my bags smell of gun oil.'

We were still parked at the front of the police HQ, in Sturrock's own designated space which she presumably did not normally use.

‘Do you intend taking the weapons into this property?' the DI then wanted to know.

‘You said you wanted to see everything exactly as it happened,' Patrick replied, turning the key in the ignition. ‘Besides, I carry it for a very good reason – there's a price on both our heads from the criminal and terrorist fraternities.'

The woman made no further comment about that, saying instead, ‘Water purification tablets? Were they necessary?'

‘Yes, I was half dead with thirst,' Patrick answered. ‘There was only a stinking water butt and a few drips of rain leaking through the barn roof.'

‘I don't remember reading that.'

‘Soldiers tend to stick to the details of an engagement, not about themselves,' Patrick told her absently, coping with the rush-hour traffic. He then said, ‘From the point of view of convenience and authenticity we've checked into the hotel in Steyning where Ingrid did first time around. It's very handy as we can leave the car there.'

It took around another twenty minutes to reach it. I had dressed in almost the same clothing as I had on the first occasion, a short-sleeved dark blue top and matching trousers, over these a lightweight, showerproof jacket made in Wisconsin that has an amazing number of pockets and is intended for the use of those who go game shooting. Along with the other garments it is mostly kept in the Range Rover and, as always, I had replenished all the contents of the pockets. The only difference was that I now put the Smith and Wesson in one of them instead of the shoulder harness I had worn before.

We had just parked the car and got out of it when Patrick's mobile rang. He apologized to Sturrock and answered it, and I immediately realized that the call was from Greenway.

‘Good or bad news?' I asked when the call was over.

‘Two things. Sonya Trent's been arrested at her parents' house where she'd arrived last night with a female friend she'd fled to. Her mother persuaded her to contact the police, mostly on account of her saying that Hamlyn had raped her. Because of that and the other circumstances, that her husband's been murdered, she's being interviewed briefly and will be released on police bail to be with her children.'

‘Thank God she's safe.'

‘And there's been a long overdue response from Cannes harbour authority about the stealth boat we saw. Apparently it had been confiscated from someone they did not care to mention but not connected with this case and now belonged to a boat yard, having been in their words, “disposed of”.'

We started walking south and soon came to a crossroads. If we turned right we would have to pass the little cottage where my aunt used to live, the reason I knew the area quite well, having visited her several times in my late teens. But we carried straight on and soon the road began to climb: we were at the northern foot of the South Downs here. A quarter of a mile farther on the road forked, the right one would narrow into little more than a country lane with passing places that crossed the downs and finished up in Sompting, not far from Lancing and Worthing. If we wanted to enter our destination by the main entrance we would go this way. But we did not and took the left hand road.

‘Just to set the scene,' the DI said. ‘You, Patrick, had somehow got yourself in a car when this gang had abandoned the house where they'd gathered in Bath for a party when their leader realized that the place was being watched by the police from the house across the road.'

‘That's right. Even the people driving were too drunk to notice a strange passenger.'

‘But when you all arrived here Joy Murphy, the mobster's girlfriend, recognized you and you were grabbed. She took your Glock and mobile phone away from you and invited two of the gang to help her beat you to death.'

‘Correct. But she didn't know about my knife.'

‘Do you have that with you now too?'

‘I always have it with me.'

‘I see. You killed these two men with it and then made for the barn.'

‘Yes. She tried to grab me again but only succeeded in pulling out a chunk of my hair. Which she sent, Guaranteed Next Day Delivery, to Ingrid. She wrapped it in a sheet of a local free newspaper, which was her undoing.'

‘You didn't put that in the report either.'

‘It wasn't relevant at the time.'

‘Go on.'

‘That's it really. The rest you know.'

We walked on.

‘A little running commentary would be helpful,' Patrick said to me.

‘Sorry.' I gathered my thoughts for a few moments and then began. ‘Patrick had been missing, right out of touch, for over forty-eight hours when I decided to look for him myself,' I began. ‘By the time I had tracked this place down following receipt of the piece of the local newspaper and other info it was much later in the day than it is now and getting dark. I can remember a lot of white flowers in these hedgerows – it was late summer – which sort of lit my way for a short while. This helped but I had to be very careful of passing traffic as, as you can see, there's no pavement or verge.'

‘Did you have a map?' Sturrock asked.

‘No, there had been no time to buy one.'

‘So how did you know this was the right way to go?'

‘I didn't. I intended to go across country. I had been given rough directions and had worked out that any farm worth its name, that is, with sufficient land, had to be at the foot of the downs with higher pastures on the slopes. It is, as you'll see.'

After a short while the whole of a shallow, almost secret, valley, a fold in the downs, opened up before us as the ground fell away over to our right. We paused in a gateway for a better view. I knew that all this land, mostly down to pasture and just about as far as the eye could see, belonged to the estate, presumably now rented to local farmers. The farmhouse could just be glimpsed set in the trees at the head of the fold, the barns and other buildings set slightly apart from it.

I continued: ‘It was almost dark by the time I reached this spot and as I stood here a couple of lights came on in the house. I was really worried that someone might be keeping watch with binoculars in case the police raided the place so I decided to walk along this road sheltered from view by the hedges as far as possible. The field with the big clump of trees growing in it which you can see over there to your left seemed to be the best low-risk route to use in order to be unobserved.'

We carried on walking at a good pace, a few spots of rain beginning to fall, the road curving gently around to the right. Occasionally a car went past and once a lorry travelling at a stupid speed, forcing us to flatten ourselves into the brambles. Sturrock got her anorak caught up and we had to help release her.

‘I was running,' I continued. ‘I had a sense of urgency that I can't really explain now. I just wanted to get there.'

‘You people must be very fit . . . train all the time,' the DI commented, slightly out of breath.

‘I'd had a baby not all that long before and wasn't that fit,' I told her, vividly recollecting blowing like a horse.

She stopped dead. ‘
Really?
'

‘We've three children of our own and two adopted.'

Sturrock frowned. Obviously people like us were not supposed to be distracted by having a family.

A
fter what seemed to be a much longer walk, in increasingly heavy rain, than I remembered we climbed over the gate into the field that had the clump of trees in it. These beeches had been planted in an almost perfect circle and even with just the light cover of newly budding leaves would successfully block the view of our progress from the house.

‘I paused here,' I said when we had reached the centre of the ring. ‘And tried to make a plan but couldn't think of one.'

‘I have to say I'm a little surprised by that,' said, or rather puffed, the DI a little sharply. Perhaps her new-looking walking boots were giving her blisters.

‘So I looked up at the stars and prayed,' I added and carried on walking, heading for the outbuildings over to the left, just as I had done the last time. The house – there were hardly any windows visible from here – was sideways on to me and still slightly uphill now. The boundary hedge was as straggly as ever. I bore left as I had done before when I had thought the hedge might be thinner in that direction. It was but there was also a gate. When I reached it, the others a couple of paces behind me, I stopped. Such was the state of the hedge that we had to force aside the vegetation in order to see clearly.