Robbie smiled. Shut his eyes and savoured the moment.
Mine, all mine ...
Stemper spent the morning in the vicinity of Compton’s, loitering at one or other end of the street, where he could monitor the comings and goings in relative safety.
The blond man in the Golf returned at just after eleven. Shortly after that, a Smart car with the Compton name on it parked out front. A heavyset man in his sixties carried an armload of stationery supplies into the office.
Stemper made another half-circuit of the block. Earlier he’d called Patricia to pass on Jerry’s news about the locks being changed. Now he rang her again to check on the preparations for tonight.
‘Gordon’s gone into London to fetch the tickets and the other, um, “material”.’
‘Excellent. I’d like our friend kept busy till mid-afternoon. By then he should be thoroughly dejected, and a step closer to mutiny.’
‘What’s Plan B, if he decides to accompany her?’
‘It isn’t something I can spell out now, particularly not on the phone.’
Patricia gasped as though she’d been reprimanded. ‘Goodness, no. You’re absolutely right.’
Jerry rang less than five minutes later. He was panting like an old dog, and sounded even more hoarse than usual.
‘I managed to get closer. Didn’t really get a good look at him, but I heard his voice. It’s him, I’d stake money on it. One of the geezers in the BMW.’
‘And he’s at the farmhouse? In a Citroen Picasso.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, this fucking mutt appeared, nearly tore my arse off. I had to get out of there.’
‘What?’ Stemper was distracted by movement along the road. The proprietor, Teresa Scott, had come out and was lighting a cigarette.
Jerry said, ‘Cool down. I’m parked within sight of the access road. No way he can go anywhere without me seeing.’
Stemper wasn’t so sure about that. But his reaction had to be consistent with the role he would play later.
‘Good work, Jerry. Follow him out, but don’t let him see you. And keep me updated.’
He ended the call, gratified that another of his theories had been proven correct. Meanwhile Teresa Scott took an appreciative drag on her cigarette, then set off in his direction. Stemper casually turned and strolled down the hill, pausing at the next corner, where he pretended to read a message on his phone.
Scott turned left, up the hill towards Queens Road. She had her handbag, but no briefcase, so he guessed this was just a quick excursion, perhaps for lunch.
He set off after her.
****
Midday, and Cate had had no further contact from Martin. That ought to have been cause for relief, but in fact it produced a nagging anxiety. She couldn’t call to see how he was, for fear that her concern would be misinterpreted: then they’d be back to square one. But it seemed like too much to hope that he really
had
gone fishing with his brother.
She thought it might be wise to mention the situation to Guy Thomsett tonight, if only for the benefit of his professional advice. Even there, Martin’s taunt continued to sting her:
Are you gonna go sobbing to your little detective friend ...?
She was waiting to hear from her mother when there was a distinctive rapping on the front door.
Shit
. She had no choice but to answer.
‘Why didn’t you ring? We could have met in town.’
‘I like the exercise.’ Teresa Scott leaned inside, looked upstairs and cocked her head, listening.
‘There’s no strange man in my bed, if that’s what you were thinking.’
‘I live in hope.’ Her mother sniffed, still peering into the house. ‘Looks suspiciously tidy.’
Cate stepped back, swooping her hand in an elaborate gesture of welcome. ‘Check for yourself. I can’t guarantee I’m dust-free, but the washing’s up to date, though the ironing isn’t. And the fridge is fully stocked, I went to Sainsbury’s last—’ She stopped, immediately aware of her mistake.
Her mother was withering, and only partly in jest. ‘You did the supermarket on a Friday night? Oh, my dear girl. What’s to become of you?’
****
Teresa Scott didn’t follow the route that Stemper expected her to take, towards the shops and cafes of Western Road. After crossing Queens Road, she continued up the hill, into a residential district. Perhaps seeing a client?
There were fewer pedestrians up here, so he had to hang back, but she was hard to miss: a tall woman in an immaculate suit, route-marching up the hill at an athlete’s pace. Stemper was able to match her, but not easily. Clearly the cigarettes didn’t hamper her lung capacity.
After crossing Dyke Road next to a vast construction site, she turned along Clifton Terrace, passing a row of gleaming white stucco town houses, most of them four storeys high, offering what must have been an enviable view out to sea. Today that view was obscured by low-hanging clouds; there was a growing threat of rain in the air.
Scott finally stopped at a house in Victoria Street. Stemper, on the opposite pavement, quickened his pace, hoping to draw parallel when the front door opened. He was staring straight ahead, but saw the movement in his peripheral vision and heard an exclamation from inside the house. A female voice, to which Scott responded in a dry tone.
Risking a sideways glance, he saw Scott talking to a younger woman. She was about five six, slim, with shoulder-length dark brown hair and good skin. She was laughing, and the body language between the two women was relaxed, familiar, in a way that suggested a close connection.
He remembered what Indira had told him this morning:
Her daughter’s a lawyer
. He couldn’t be certain, yet, but this woman looked like a good candidate.
She also fitted the barmaid’s description of the woman who’d been with Hank O’Brien on Tuesday night.
It was another half an hour before the builders were done. Robbie occupied himself by wandering around outside, trying not to dwell too deeply on the break-in. There could be any number of explanations that had nothing to do with the man who’d jumped out and photographed his car on Wednesday night.
The original farm had been sold off twenty years ago, with the bulk of the land acquired by a neighbouring estate. O’Brien’s property encompassed nearly two acres of well-secluded grounds, which made it ideal for Robbie’s purposes.
He took a quick look at the barn, which was on the north-west corner of O’Brien’s land. It was maybe sixty feet long, twenty feet wide and about the same height. Constructed on a steel frame, with block walls and corrugated-iron cladding. The traces of an old track could be seen beneath the weeds and grass, leading to a massive steel roller door at the front.
There was also an access door at the side, secured by a padlock. Robbie found a key to it on the set that Cheryl had supplied. He unlocked the door and entered a vast empty space, the air warm and stale and smelling faintly of oil. The concrete floor bore various stains from the dregs of leaking farm machinery, and Robbie stared at them for a long time, mulling over a brand new idea. The interior was relatively sterile. So long as you left the doors open for ventilation, you could burn something in here quite nicely ...
That was fine. The real difficulty lay in convincing Dan to go along with it.
And he needed to check the roller door, in case the mechanism had seized up during Hank’s years of ownership. He pressed the button on the control unit, and the door began to move with a satisfying clunking noise.
Robbie took it up ten feet – more than enough – then dropped it down again.
Perfect.
****
Back at the house, the carpenters insisted on showing him their handiwork before they departed. Robbie tried not to let his impatience show. Finally they were gone, and he was alone.
Time to get to work.
The idea had been brewing since Wednesday night. Once again he had Dan to thank for sowing the seed, with his suggestion that Hank’s life might have been more complicated than they realised. If this was the case, so Robbie’s train of thought went, there should be some indication of that to be found in the house.
He searched methodically for nearly an hour: moving furniture, lifting beds, rooting in cupboards; even checking that the carpets were securely fastened down. He climbed into the loft and nearly put his foot through the ceiling; descended a few minutes later, grimy with dust and sweat, his only reward a bruised knee.
He didn’t find a thing. Dejected, he made himself a black coffee and took it into the room that had served as Hank’s office. The desk drawers and filing cabinets had been emptied, and there were spaces in the dust where a computer had been removed. Nothing left but office crap: pens, staples, paperclips, Post-it pads.
He felt resentful that his time had been wasted, and decided to blame Cheryl. Why had the silly cow let her brother’s employees take everything? She might have inadvertently given them something valuable.
Or perhaps whoever had broken in had already seized anything worth having?
****
Robbie drank the coffee slowly, and worked on his mood. Okay, so he’d been wrong about a consolation prize. But the main attraction here was the location: somewhere to destroy Dan’s car.
The more he considered it, the more he liked the idea. No doubt the good old male fire-making gene was a factor, but it was undeniably a great way to destroy forensic evidence. The smoke should go unnoticed at night, but the flames might be visible to neighbouring properties. That was why he now favoured using the barn. It shouldn’t cause any damage to the building, except maybe a scorch mark on the floor. And who could read anything into that?
He wandered back outside to check the other buildings. First the double garage: it was home to an old washing machine and a 2010 Range Rover Sport. Robbie whistled with admiration, all his disappointment forgotten as he wondered whether he could risk borrowing it for the weekend. Certainly a big improvement on Indira’s Citroen.
Then he imagined Dan’s voice screaming in his ear:
Are you trying to get arrested?
Okay, but maybe he’d speak to Cheryl next week, offer to keep the vehicle in good running order until she was ready to sell it.
Emerging from the garage, he felt light rain falling, the sky to the south-west ominously dark. He almost didn’t bother with the sheds, except that he was in no hurry to talk to Dan. So he strolled over, searching through the keyring to find the right keys.
The first shed he reached was the larger of the two. It was also newer, with heavy double doors and a proper Yale lock. Inside there was a John Deere ride-on mower and all sorts of gardening implements, as well as spare bags of compost and chipped bark: everything clean and neatly stored. Robbie sensed that this was the work of a gardener rather than O’Brien himself.
The smaller shed looked tatty by comparison. Its door was split in places, and it was secured by a cheap rusty padlock. The interior was thick with cobwebs and spotted with mould. It stank of rotting wood, and there were wet patches on the timber floor, and old stains and scuff marks similar to the ones in the barn.
This was the dumping ground for the house. Halfway between fascinated and repulsed, Robbie explored this museum of junk: old televisions and video equipment, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. A food mixer and a kettle like something from the Ark, and crazed crockery piled up on a heavy dresser at the back, which was blotchy with gloss paint where a tin had spilled.
There was a deep, wide bookcase standing against the wall opposite the door, nothing on its shelves except a stack of yellowing newspapers and dozens of dead insects. Robbie peered as closely as he dared and saw headlines about Thatcher and Scargill and Kinnock, names that only vaguely rang a bell.
With fire on his mind, he was seized by the notion of dousing the shed in petrol and razing it to the ground. A nice way to vent his frustration. Unfortunately, it was another idea that the ‘Dan’ voice in his head wouldn’t hesitate to veto.
****
The rain was coming down harder, drumming on the shed roof. Inside, a dripping noise had started up in the corner. Dejected again, Robbie made a dash back to the house, realising halfway across the lawn that he should have locked the shed behind him.
Fuck it. He ran into the house, dried his face, and called Dan. As usual, he got voicemail, and said: ‘Call me, soon as. We can sort out your problem tonight.’
He was double-checking that he’d left no trace of his search when Dan rang back. ‘I got your message. I take it you mean my car?’
‘What else would I mean?’
‘Well, offering to solve my problem, I thought that meant you were going to confess.’
Robbie laughed weakly. ‘No need to be like that. We’re in this together, yeah?’
‘Hmm. Where have I heard that before?’
‘Look, I’ve found a solution. But you’ve got to bring the car over to the farmhouse. Hank’s place.’
Dan’s reaction was exactly what he’d expected: ‘Are you
crazy
?’
‘It’s on Compton’s books now. I’ve got the whole property to myself. It’s the safest place on Earth.’
Now for the tricky part. Robbie needed to keep the truth from Dan until he was here and they had the car in the barn, before revealing that he wanted to smash it up and then set it alight.
Scorch marks
.
Dan said, ‘Supposing I do bring it over, what then? Do you have a repairer in mind?’
‘Sort of.’ Robbie couldn’t concentrate. There was an image in his head. It was important, but he didn’t know why. Something he’d seen just now, in one of the outbuildings.
‘Rob, are you listening to me?’
Something odd. A scorch mark, or something like it. But not in the barn.