Most chief inspectors, Banks knew, would have had someone else drive, but he was using his own car, the old Cortina, no longer produced now and practically an antique. And, damn it, he
“Seen enough here?” Jarrell asked.
“I think so.”
“Me, too. Let’s go.”
Jarrell drove them down the road. “Believe it or not,” he said, “this is very pretty countryside under the right circumstances.”
About a mile along the road, toward Princes Risborough, Jarrell turned left onto a muddy farm track and bumped along until they got to a gate on the right, where he pulled up. A hedgerow interspersed with hawthorns shielded the field and its fence from view. Cows mooed in the next field.
The gate stood open, and as Banks and Hatchley followed Jarrell through, they both sank almost to their ankles in mud. Too late, Banks realized, he hadn’t brought the right gear. He should have known to bring the wellingtons he always carried in the boot of his car. Like most policemen, he took pride in keeping his shoes well polished; now they were covered in mud and probably worse, judging by the prevalence of cows. He cursed and Jarrell laughed. Hatchley stood holding onto the gatepost trying to wipe most of it off on the few tufts of grass there. Banks looked at the muddy field dotted with cowpats and didn’t bother. They’d only get dirty again.
In the field, a group of men in white boiler suits and black wellington boots worked around a car that stood bogged down in the mud with its doors open. The air was sharp with the tang of cow-clap.
One of the men had propped a radio on a stone by the hedgerow, and it was tuned to the local breakfast show, at the moment featuring a golden oldie: Cilla Black singing “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” One of the SOCOs sang along with it as he worked. The cows mooed even louder, demonstrating remarkably good taste, Banks thought. They weren’t so far away after all. They were, in fact, all lying down in a group just across the field. Cows lying down. That meant it was going to rain, his mother always said. But it had rained already. Did that mean they’d been in the same position for hours? That it was going to rain again?
Giving up on folk wisdom, Banks turned instead to look at the abandoned Granada, the bottom of its chassis streaked with mud and cow-shit. It had been found, Jarrell said, just over an hour ago, while Banks and Hatchley had been in transit.
“Anything?” Jarrell shouted over to the team.
One of the men in white shook his head. “Nothing but the usual rubbish, sir,” he said. “Sweet wrappers, old road maps, that sort of thing. He must have taken everything of use or value. No sign of any weapons.”
Jarrell grunted and turned away.
“He’d hardly have left his guns, would he?” said Banks, “not now he’s officially on the run. I’d guess he probably had a rucksack or something with him in the car. Look, sir, you know the landscape around here better than I do. If you were him, where would you go?”
Jarrell looked up at the louring sky for a moment, as if for inspiration, then rubbed at the inside corner of his right eye with his index finger. “He has a couple of choices,” he said. “Either head immediately for the nearest town, get to London and take the first boat or plane out of the country, or simply lie low.” He pointed toward the hills. “A man could hide himself there for a good while, if he knew how to survive.”
“We’d better cover both possibilities,” Banks said. “He’s spent time in the army, so he’s probably been on survival courses. And if he heads for London, he’ll likely know someone who can help him.”
“Whatever he does, I’d say he’ll most likely go across country first,” said Jarrell. “He’d be smart enough to know that stealing a car or walking by the roadside would be too risky.” He looked at his watch. “The shooting occurred at about half past twelve. It’s half past six now. That gives him a six-hour start.”
“How far could he get, do you reckon?”
“I’d give him about three miles an hour in this terrain, under these conditions,” Jarrell went on. “Maybe a bit less.”
“Where’s the nearest station?”
“That’s the problem,” said Jarrell slowly. “This is close to prime commuter country. There’s Princes Risborough, Saunderton and High Wycombe on the Chiltern Line, all nearby. If he heads east, he can get to the Northampton Line at Tring, Berkhamsted or Hemel Hempstead. If he heads for Amersham, he can even get on the underground, the Metropolitan Line. Unfortunately for us, there’s no shortage of trains to London around here, and they start running early.”
“Let’s say he’s managed about sixteen or seventeen miles,” said Banks. “What’s his best bet?”
“Probably the Chiltern Line. Plenty of trains and an easy connection with the underground. He could even be in London by now.”
They started walking back to the car. “I can tell you one thing,” said Banks. “Wherever he is, his shoes will be bloody muddy.”
2
In an ideal world, they would have tracked Jameson to this cottage through a check stub or a circled address in an accommodation guide. Quietly, they would have surrounded the place when they were certain Jameson was inside, then arrested him, perhaps as he walked out to his car, unsuspecting, without a shot being fired. For he hadn’t known. That was the stinger; he
As it turned out, they discovered that Jameson was renting a cottage just to the east of Princes Risborough through an Aylesbury estate agent shortly after the office opened at eight-thirty that Friday morning. Policemen were showing Jameson’s photograph around and asking the same questions in every estate agent’s, hotel and bed and breakfast establishment in Buckinghamshire, and the pair of DCs given the Aylesbury estate agents just happened to get lucky. Like Everett and Miller got unlucky. Swings and roundabouts. That was often the way things happened.
Jameson had simply driven off from Leeds on his holidays. Being a lover of nature, he had headed for the countryside. Why the Chilterns? It was anyone’s guess. It could just as easily have been the Cotswolds or the Malverns, Banks supposed.
According to the estate agent, the man had simply dropped in one afternoon and asked after rental cottages in the area. He had paid a cash deposit and moved in. There was no need for subterfuge or secrecy. Arthur Jameson had nothing to fear from anyone. Or he wouldn’t have had, were it not for a weakness for pornography, a fleeting contact with Daniel Clegg’s estranged wife, Melissa, and Sergeant Hatchley’s network of informers. He had either been careless about the wadding, or he thought it was a joke; they didn’t know which yet. It hadn’t shown up as a trademark in any other jobs over the past few years.
Last night he had probably gone into High Wycombe for a bite to eat, lingered over his dessert and coffee, maybe celebrated his new-found wealth with a large cognac, then headed back for the rented cottage, taking the bend a little too fast.
The cottage was certainly isolated. It stood just off a winding lane about two miles long, opposite a small, perfectly rounded tor. The lane carried on, passed another farmhouse about a mile further on, then meandered back to the main road.
From the mud on the floor, it looked very much as if Jameson had been there after the shooting. A bit of a risk, maybe, but the cottage wasn’t far from his abandoned car. In the kitchen, yesterday’s lunch dishes soaked in cold water, and breadcrumbs, cheese shavings and tiny florets of yellowed broccoli dotted
