The poor girl blushed to the roots of her hair, wondering what she had said, as two grown men broke down and giggled like imbeciles.
Sparky left me to it, and I took my time, asking for more hot water for the tea. I felt a lot better with something inside me. When I got back in the car I took the mobile phone from my pocket and placed it on the dash. I don’t remember switching it back on, but I must have done. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have started ringing before I was a quarter of the way home. The road was quiet, so I pulled in to the side.
‘Priest,’ I said.
‘Charlie, it’s Dave. Where are you?’
‘I’ve only been driving five minutes. Why?’
‘When I arrived home Shirley said Nigel had been trying to contact us, so I rang him. He said that the APW he put out on K. Tom Davis has borne fruit. Apparently Davis rang Le Shuttle at Folkestone to ask if they could accommodate a Range Rover. They sold him a ticket and he’s supposed to be there at eleven a.m. tomorrow.’
‘You mean — the Channel Tunnel?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Hey, that’s great.’
‘So what do you want us to do?’
Good question. ‘Let’s have a think,’ I said. ‘If he’s booked on for eleven, he’ll have to leave home, what, about six hours earlier?’
‘At least. And presumably you have to be there an hour before take-off, or whatever, for loading, but apparently you don’t book a place, so he could still go anytime.’
‘Could he? But he specifically asked about tomorrow?’
‘That’s what they said.’
‘Right. It looks as if the time has come to have Mr Davis’s vehicle reduced to its component parts. That’ll please him. OK, my faithful friend, thanks for telling me.’
‘So, what are we doing?’
‘Oh, I can manage.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he demanded.
‘I might just go back and hang around. Maybe he still has to fit the bullbars, or something. If I see him leave I can follow him and rustle up some muscle to stop him. I’d like to be there to see his face. And I want to talk to him about Lisa, while his defences are low.’
Sparky said, ‘Right. Where shall I see you?’
‘You don’t have to come all this way back,’ I told him.
‘I bloody well want to,’ he argued. ‘Why should you have all the fun?’
I didn’t mind. It might be a long cold wait, so some company would be welcome. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Where shall we meet?’
‘And Nigel said he wants to come, too.’
‘Nigel? Where is he now?’
‘At the nick, awaiting further instructions.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sounds as if you two have it all worked out, so let’s make it a Heckley special. We’ll lift K. Tom ourselves, as soon as he leaves home. You get back here pronto, meet me, oh, remember the sculpture called Spindle Piece?’
‘Yep.’
‘Meet me there. We might be able to see any lights at K. Tom’s from there and we’ll be able to get back to the cars quick to catch up with him on the motorway. Have you a radio?’
‘No.’
‘We’ll have to use mobiles, then. Nigel won’t know where we mean. Tell him to keep observation at the end of Davis’s lane. Ring us when he’s there. OK?’
‘Fine. See you shortly.’
I spun the car round and headed back to the pay and display. Fortunately, they don’t charge after five o’clock. Different cars with steamed-up windows were parked in the darker corners. There’s a lot of it going off.
The moon had risen, but spent most of its time hiding behind high cloud. I trudged across the grass for the second time that night, wishing I’d heeded my mother’s constant advice and worn something warmer. An animal, a long way off, gave a blood-curdling scream. Probably a rabbit, meeting its end in the jaws of a fox or a weasel. I made a detour round a flock of grazing Canadian geese, and hoped Sparky wouldn’t blunder straight into them and be pecked to pieces. On second thoughts, I hoped he would.
It was a privilege to be there. Scattered around me were some of — arguably — the finest works of art in the world, and I had them all to myself. I wandered around, like a visitor to a new, benign planet, as the moon drifted in and out of the clouds. Lighting by God, I thought, putting on a show just for me. I witnessed a little magic, that night, in that park.
Davis’s house was in darkness. I watched it for a while from across his paddock, wondering if that would have been a better place to meet Sparky. But then we’d have been a long way from the cars.
He should be nearly here, so I strolled back to our meeting place. ‘Serves you right,’ I told St Sebastian as I passed his contorted outline. Spindle Piece is on a concrete plinth, but it was almost as cold as the bronze. I sat on it for a few seconds before jumping to my feet and doing some exercises to try keeping warm. Interlocking Pieces was about two hundred yards away, up the hill. I sprinted across to it, my legs turning to rubber before halfway, and walked slowly back. Now I felt tired and cold.
I was sitting on my heels, like an aborigine, when I heard the footsteps. The sculptures are hollow, and I’d thought about hiding inside one and scaring the shit out of Sparky, but even I know when the fooling has to cease. Well, sometimes. I was peering in the direction I expected him to approach from, waiting for the moon, when I realised the steps were a lot nearer than I expected, and behind me. I turned, slowly lowering myself to the ground.
The bulky outline that approached wasn’t unmistakable as K. Tom, but I was certain it was him, even though his shape was distorted by the long bundle he carried, remarkably similar to the one Sparky had lugged back to the car two hours earlier. A spade and a metal detector, at a guess. He came straight up to the sculpture, the cold night air rasping in his throat as I held my breath, barely ten feet away, with only the Henry Moore between us. I dared to lift my face heavenwards and saw that the moon was well hidden, for the moment.
K. Tom took about fifteen deliberate strides away from me, heading towards the lights of the television mast on the skyline, and lowered his bundle to the ground. The crafty bastard, I thought. He’s moved the gold.
He was almost lost against the trees, but I saw what I took to be the swinging motion of the detector. He paused, removed the headphones and reached down for the spade.
We both heard Sparky’s footsteps at the same instant. Big men are supposed to be light on their feet, but Dave was the exception. He was as graceful as a hippo with bunions. The line dancers probably suffered heavy casualties the night he went along. Davis was stationary, poised in a crouched position. It looked as if we’d have to arrest him, there and then, and finish looking for the gold ourselves. This time I’d bags the metal detector.
The sickening noise of a pump action shotgun being cocked shattered my equilibrium.
Shit, I thought, not even a double-barrelled number. He had seven shots. And, just to make it easier for him, the moon came out to have a look, bathing the park in frail light, as if to give the big lighting man in the sky a better view of the drama.
Sparky was hunched up, hands deep in pockets, his head moving from side to side as if he were whistling or humming to himself. I looked from one to the other, praying that Dave would raise his head and see K. Tom. When the range was less than thirty yards Davis lifted the gun.
‘DAVE!’ I screamed. ‘SHOTGUN!’
K. Tom whirled and loosed a blast off in my direction. The pellets hit Spindle Piece and buzzed off into the night as I dived to the ground. He’d missed me. I jumped up and skipped sideways as he re-cocked the gun, trying to keep one of Henry Moore’s finest between us. I risked a quick glance in Sparky’s direction, but he’d vanished.
That’s when I realised that Henry Moore’s most famous characteristic was also his big failing. All his works have bloody great holes through the middle. They’re useless for hiding behind from mad gunmen. I dodged one way and then the other as soon as I glimpsed K. Tom to the right or left of the sculpture, or through the middle, and all
