‘Never fuckin’ heard o’ him.’
‘Let me show you a picture.’ I removed a carefully cropped photocopy of a Bob Marley album cover from my inside pocket and passed it through the gap to him.
‘You a fuckin’ joke, man,’ he assured me.
‘So you don’t know this man?’
‘I never see him before.’ His teeth were magnificent.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Looks like we’ve been given some bad information. Sorry to have troubled you, Mr Watts. Try to have a nice day.’
As I walked off I heard him call, ‘Hey, you.’
I turned, but it was Sparky he was talking to. They glared at each other for a second before Watts said, ‘Who the fuck he think he is?’
‘We call him Crazy Horse,’ Sparky declared, winking at me as he came away.
I gave Zulu Ninety-nine a thank-you salute and he lifted effortlessly into the sky. Next time, if there is a next time, that’s the job I want. Sparky went to thank the JCB driver and I walked to the back of the next block, where the Sewer Rats were crouched around a manhole.
Van Rees’s two assistants were wearing white coats and looked like a pair of earnest sixthformers.
‘Any joy?’ I asked.
They nodded enthusiastically and gestured towards a row of plastic sample bottles, each containing about half a pint of cloudy water. ‘It looks very promising,’ one of them told me.
It had bloody better be, I thought.
We drove back in silence, Sparky in his morose Yorkshireman mode. ‘Do you?’ I asked, as we approached the nick.
‘Do I what?’
‘Call me Crazy Horse?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ I was disappointed — he was a hero of mine. ‘What do you call me?’
‘Don’t ask,’ was all he’d say.
I rang Van Rees to tell him that the samples were on the way, and Mike Freer to update him.
‘You know what they say,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘If you’re not part of the solution, you must be part of the sediment.’
‘Yeah, very apt. And people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw orgies.’
I wrote, ‘If anybody rings for me, I’m at the CADs meeting,’ on a sheet of A4 and Blu-Tacked it to my window. With luck, I’d be able to hold them off until the results came in.
The clap hit the propeller at about two p.m. A pale-faced DC popped his head round the door and told me that the assistant chief constable wanted me, as soon as possible. ‘He sounded annoyed,’ he added, unnecessarily. I needed a change of scenery. Sparky volunteered to field all my calls and I went for a drive.
I left the car in the Sculpture Park and took a pleasant stroll towards K. Tom Davis’s mansion, about half a mile away by the lanes, but probably much nearer across the fields. Word would soon be around that Goodrich’s death was from natural causes, so I needed to do as much interviewing as possible while everybody was on the defensive. We didn’t have much to go on, just a garbled boast into Joan Eastwood’s shell-like in a moment of alcohol-induced passion, but murderers have been hanged by less. And Mrs Davis had claimed that her husband went all over the Continent with Justin, although Justin said he never saw him. If he didn’t go with Justin, where did he go?
It was a long shot, but I like to keep the pressure on. Maybe the bullion robbers had got clean away with it, but I’d like them never to be free of that dread of the early-morning knock on the door. The same goes for war criminals. May they go to the grave expecting every policeman they see to be the one who puts his hand on their shoulder.
Neither K. Tom nor Mrs Davis was in, which wasn’t my number one preferred case, but I made the best of it. I wandered round, looking in through all the windows, being careful not to trigger the alarm. The conservatory was a beaut. Leisurely afternoons spent inside, catching up on my reading, with an occasional dip in the pool, sounded idyllic. Especially if Annabelle could have been there, too.
No. Only if she could be there. And if she was there, everything else was secondary. Who needed a swimming pool? Or a conservatory? I didn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t have had a swimming pool and a conservatory given. So stuff ’em!
Phew! That was a narrow squeak. Sometimes, middle class values sneak up on you.
I tried the sliding door, not sure what I would do if it opened. But it didn’t. The garage was detached, and designed for two cars, with separate doors that had little diamond-shaped windows in them. I assumed the diamond shapes to be coincidences. Mrs Davis’s VW Golf convertible was inside, but the Range Rover was nowhere to be seen. They were probably out in it.
There was a side door to the garage. Breaking into the garage wasn’t as serious as breaking into the house, I decided. At this point, according to popular fiction, I should have removed my credit card from my wallet and slid it behind the catch. That only worked on the first day that credit cards were invented. On the second day, every lock in the world was modified to make it credit card proof. Besides, I have difficulty extracting money from a cash dispenser with mine.
I have a different technique. I stood, gracefully poised on one leg for a moment, and thumped the door good and hard with the sole of my other foot, close to the handle.
Wood splintered and the door flew open. If doors opened outwards, it would be impossible to do that. Maybe I should tell someone.
I broke off a few pieces of the shattered frame and carefully closed the door behind me, grateful that no alarm had sounded. It was gloomy in there, but I could see well enough. A sit-upon lawnmower stood in the space for the other car, and there was a workbench, with lots of tools, along the back wall.
The Golf was locked, so I turned my attentions to the other stuff. In a corner was a big gas-fired barbecue with a butane cylinder beside it that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an oil rig. Maybe he had the contract for feeding Brent Spar. Under the workbench was a rusty iron gas-ring, standing on three legs, with a couple of ladles and some tongs like blacksmiths hold hot horseshoes with. This man took his barbecues deadly seriously. Hanging on a hook were a pair of thick gloves and some dark goggles.
A motorbike, if you could call it that, leant against the far wall, under a sheet. I uncovered it, revealing a spindly frame and a huge engine, with handlebars that were wider and more threatening than a Texas longhorn. Its smell took me back to when I was a kid, when dope was what you painted model aeroplanes with.
Tyres scrunched on gravel. I threw the sheet back over the bike and tiptoed over to one of the little windows. A car, only half visible, was parked in front of the house. Someone slammed a door. The Davises had a visitor.
I stood back from the shaft of light, peeking out, but my view was limited. Surprise, surprise, nobody answered the door to him. After a few minutes he wandered round the side of the house and I saw their visitor for the first time. That was another surprise.
Spying on people isn’t fair. After a good scout around he relieved himself into a drain, with much shaking-off of droplets, then cross-pollenated his nostrils with an elegantly curled middle finger. He was dressed so cool you could have chilled a sixpack of Mongolian lager on him, but the manner was agitated, restless, which wasn’t really surprising. In a burst of inspiration he removed a portable phone from a pocket and stabbed at the keys. He spoke a few words and looked puzzled, then stared at the instrument and tried again. I’m not the only one who has difficulty with them, I was pleased to see. After another couple of futile attempts he gave that a shake, too, and put it away.
He opened the passenger door of his car and slid in. Shit, he was waiting. Ah, well, I was wanting to be incommunicado for a few hours — Davis’s garage was as good a place as any. He cranked the seat back a couple of notches and settled down. I perched on the lawnmower, facing the wrong way, and watched.
It was a short wait. Ten minutes later the Range Rover swung round the end of the house and parked nose- up in front of the garage door, six feet from me. Davis jumped out, apologising for being late. His wife followed him, removing several carrier bags from the back of the vehicle. There must have been big queues at the Sainsbury’s checkouts.
