what he'd done. The house was mock Georgian, with pillars flanking the entrance and windows that would be a bugger to paint. Four bedrooms, two en suite, and what estate agents describe as a minstrels' gallery. They have the monopoly on midget minstrels. It wasn't your average retirement home.
'I can imagine you living somewhere like this, Nigel,' I said, casting my gaze towards the chandelier and flamboyant Artexing as we stood inside the doorway.
'Cheers,' he replied, with a scowl.
The PC showed us the two chairs in the dining room, at the back of the house, where the couple had been tied. Bundles of string lay on the floor between the chairs' legs. 'You cut the string,' I said, bending down to examine it.
'Yes, sir.'
'Good.' The knots were evidence. 'Did you touch anything else?'
'In the kitchen, sir. I took a knife from a drawer. And I found a dressing gown for the lady, from the bathroom.'
'This would be about, what… five thirty?'
'Five thirty-seven, sir.'
'Cut out the sir, please. You make me feel like Mr. Chips.'
'Sorry, er, Mr. Priest.'
'Charlie will do. So Mrs. McLelland was still in her nightclothes?'
'Yes, she was.'
'So they could have been here from, say, eight this morning. Ten hours.'
'It looks like it.'
'How were they?'
'Bad, I'd say. In shock.'
Nigel returned from scouting the rest of the house. 'It's been well and truly turned over,' he announced. 'Just like the others. Stuff lifted out of drawers in a bundle, almost neatly. Mattresses disturbed. Circles in the dust on the sideboards and suchlike. We won't know what's missing until we talk to them.'
I looked at the chairs, imagining two frail people tied to them all day. He'd risen early, perhaps, like he usually did. Made a pot of tea to take to his wife. A little ritual they'd fallen into after they'd retired. He'd have heard the tyres on the gravel drive; maybe thought it was the postman with a parcel. When he answered the door he was bundled aside as they rushed in. They roughed him up a bit terrifying the victim was part of the modus operandi and then one of them would dash upstairs to find his wife. We could never imagine how she must have felt when he burst into her bedroom, masked and armed.
I stood in the doorway to their lounge and let my gaze run round the room. A lifetime's accumulation was there. It wasn't to my taste, but everything was good quality, some of it old, some newer. Mrs.
McLelland's mark was on the place. She liked frills and bows and flowery patterns of pinks and lilacs. His pipe sat in an ashtray on the hearth, within reach of his favourite chair. This was their home.
'We've got to catch them, Nigel,' I said softly. 'Before they kill someone.'
'How do we know they haven't?' he replied, coming to stand next to me.
'All it takes is for someone not to pass on the message. Somewhere, two people might be sitting in chairs like these…'
'In that case,' I interrupted him, 'we'd better give it all we've got.
Why isn't that bloody SOCO here yet?'
Maggie Madison, one of my DCs, had no luck at the hospital. Audrey and Joe were sedated and in no condition to speak. 'Perhaps,' the doctor told her, 'after a good night's sleep…' At least it looked as if they'd survive. They had friction burns from the string on their ankles and wrists, and bruises on their arms from manhandling, but no other damage. No other physical damage. I dismissed the troops and arranged for a full meeting at eight a.m. On my way home I stopped at the fish and chip shop, but it was closing. I settled for a bowl of cornflakes and went to bed.
The meeting was informal, in the CID office, with me at the blackboard making notes on it and everyone else sitting around in rapt attention.
SOCO had found a tyre print where a vehicle had turned round in the drive and run on to the garden. So far all we knew was that it wasn't from Mr. McLelland's elderly Rover which stood in their garage. He'd collected a few fingerprints but it was looking as if they all belonged to the householders. We hadn't expected it to be otherwise. 'The string used to tie them,' he informed us, 'is the same gardening twine as from the Woods End robbery, and the knots were simple over hands three or four on top of each other, as at Woods End.'
'They used clothesline at the first four,' I added, 'but the knots were the same.'
'They ran out of clothesline?' someone suggested.
'Probably,' I agreed. 'The point is, we can assume it's the same gang.' I turned to DC Madison. 'Hospital duties for you, Maggie. Ask if there's any next-of-kin they'd like informed, then if they saw the vehicle. Most importantly, what time did the villains leave and who do the McLellands bank with? Take one of those consent forms with you that we created after the last job, so we can talk to their bank. Find out what you can, but let me know if either of them is fit enough for a proper statement.'
'I'm on my way.'
'Jeff,' I said, looking at Jeff Caton, another of my sergeants. 'Liaise with our neighbours, let them know we've had another and keep them informed. Tell them about the tyre print one was found at the Oldham job, I believe. Collect whatever videotapes Traffic have to offer and have someone look at them. Maggie'll let you know the time frame.
It's a pound to a pinch of snuff they use the motorway.' So did seventy thousand other vehicles, every day, but what the hell.
'It was Oldham,' the SOCO confirmed, referring to the tyre print 'Have you done a comparison?'
'No. We don't have the file.'
'Fair enough, but let's have it done.' I dispatched people to talk to the neighbours and a couple of DCs agreed to have a word with local likely lads on the estates who might have heard something on the jungle drums. They have a system of communication that doesn't rely on wires or radio waves or satellites. It's a hotchpotch of rumour, gossip, lies, wishful thinking and wild imaginings. It spreads like chicken pox through an infant school but sometimes, just sometimes, there's a kernel of truth in it. It's a bit like satellite news.
'And you and me, sunshine,' I said, turning to Sparky as the others grabbed jackets and notebooks and filed out, 'we'll have a pleasant morning talking to the usual suspects.'
We blinked into the daylight and I wondered if some decent shades would help my image. 'We ought to be having the day off somewhere,' Dave said as we walked to his car.
'When we sort this,' I said. 'Big day out. Ingleborough, Hill Inn for a few bevvies, Chinky in Skipton. We'll hire a bus. Long time since we did something like that.'
'It'll probably be raining tomorrow.'
'Nuh-uh.' I shook my head. 'It's set fair for the foreseeable future.
High pressure over North Outsera.'
'Day after tomorrow, then.'
We placed our coats on the back seat and I wound my window down. Dave started the engine. 'Tony's Antiques?' he suggested.
'Good a place as any,' I agreed.
But Tony had nothing to offer us. These days, he claimed, he'd lost contact with the old gang. Things were not the same; no honour any more; too much violence. He was respectable; all his mistakes were behind him; little woman saw to that. Just like he'd told us the last time.
'Sell many of these, Tony?' I asked, turning a twelve-inch bowie knife with a serrated blade in my hands. I held it to the light and saw Made in East Germany etched into the steel.
'Not many, Mr. Priest,' he answered. 'One or two, to collectors. And 'unters, sometimes.'
'Hunters? What do they hunt?'
'Rabbits, that sort of thing. There's a fishing line in the 'andle.'
I pulled the end of the hilt and two yards of tightly coiled nylon line sprang out, thick enough to restrain a playful corgi. I imagined one of Tony's shaven-headed, pot-bellied customers chasing a rabbit across the moors, and
