“What are you thinking, sir?”
“I’ll bloody well tell you what I’m thinking. Are we all even here?”
“Surely you don’t intend to—”
“Pay a little nocturnal visit to the crime scene? That’s exactly what I intend, Sutherland.”
“You can’t be serious. In this weather? At this hour of the night?”
Congreve drained his pint, slipped off the barstool, gathered himself up, and leaned into Sutherland’s face, his eyes alight with something akin to, if not merriment, then certainly mischief. It would not have surprised Ross to see him actually twirl the tips of his waxed mustache.
“Good God, he’s serious,” Sutherland said.
“Never more so. The rain seems to have let up nicely. We’d best be pushing off. We’ll just nip round to your flat and pick up your Mini. Oh, and your murder bag, of course.”
“Nip round?” Sutherland said, glancing over his shoulder at the rainlashed windows of The Crown and Anchor.
It was well after midnight when Sutherland whipped the racing green Cooper Mini S through a roundabout, did a racing change down into second, and then accelerated into a narrow lane leading to the tiny village of Upper Slaughter. Curtains of rain and standing water on these country roads made driving a bit of a challenge, but Ross had every confidence in his car, having raced it successfully at Goodwood and other venues in far worse conditions. A crack of lightning illuminated a road sign as he roared past. Three miles to the village proper, meaning the church would be coming up on his left any moment now. The hedgerows were high and solid on both sides of the lane and Sutherland leaned forward in his seat, looking for some familiar landmark.
“I’m well aware of the fact that you think we’re chasing wild geese, Sutherland,” Congreve said, breaking his silence and peering through the bleared windscreen. “But, now that we appear to be gaining on them, could you ease off the throttle a bit?”
“Sorry. Force of habit.”
Sutherland slowed and Congreve sat back in his seat. He looked over at Ross and smiled. “Sporting of you to do this, actually.”
“Not at all, sir,” Sutherland said, downshifting as they went into a tight right-hander. “You were right about this trip. I feel better about the thing already. No matter what we find or don’t find. Thing is, I keep asking myself, why Vicky? Alex has no end of enemies. But, Vicky? Ach! It’s right senseless then, isn’t it?”
Ambrose Congreve said, “She was shot through the heart with a sniper rifle. At a range where the power of the scope used made the margin of error miniscule. Vicky was the target. It was deliberate and it was meant to hurt Alex as much as humanly possible. I’ve made a list of every single person or entity with reason to inflict such agony on Alex Hawke. You and I are going to go through that list one by one until we find—hold on, here’s your turning just ahead on the left.”
Ten minutes later they were slogging up the muddy hillside in their green gumboots and yellow macs, the beams from their powerful flashlights stabbing through dense veils of rain. Forward visibility was less than five feet and the storm seemed to be gaining in intensity.
“Bloody weather front seems to have beat us up here,” Congreve cried, the two of them having to shout to be heard above the downpour and constant rumble of thunderclaps.
“We’re almost there. It’s up on the brow of the hill, just beyond this graveyard,” Ross shouted back.
An arc of lightning momentarily lit up the little cemetery with stark white light and Congreve managed to avoid a substantial head-stone which would have sent him sprawling. The ground angled fairly sharply upwards now, and Congreve’s torch caught the fluorescent yellow crime scene tape the SOCO chaps had strung from tree to tree. The footing in this porridgy muck was treacherous and it was all a man could do just to stay on his feet.
“I’m sure scene-of-crime officers have cleared away all the land mines,” Ambrose shouted ahead to Sutherland who was leading the way now, almost to the tapes. He was not at all sure. He’d only just recalled that this entire area had been chockablock with antipersonnel land mines the day of the murder. He guessed they’d all been removed; still the thing was a bit dicey.
“Only one way to find out,” Sutherland said. He ducked under the tape, waiting on the other side for Congreve.
“Bugger it,” Ambrose muttered to himself and, slipping and sliding, made his way up to Sutherland who held the tape up for him. He ducked under, having retained all four limbs, and was surprised to find the rain considerably diminished. Looking skyward, he saw the dense canopy of trees overhead and was thankful for the respite. He swung his light in an arc, looking for one particular tree.
“It’s over there, sir!”
“One thing we needn’t worry about,” Ambrose said, picking his way carefully through the gloom of the sodden forest, “Is mucking up the crime scene. This one is already about as mucky as one could ask for.”
“Yes, I believe this is our tree here,” Sutherland said, moving towards the base of a massive oak, his light playing about the trunk. Congreve was running his fingers over the rough surface of the bark.
“Spikes,” he said, his eyes tracking the beam of his torch into the uppermost branches of the three-hundred- year-old tree. “The kind British Telecom linemen and tree surgeons wear. See the trail of small punctures leading up? You can still see the freshly punctured bark.”
He turned from the tree and looked at Sutherland. There was that familiar glistening in the eyes, a slight flaring of the nostrils, and Ross knew the boss had picked up the scent.
“Question. When were the roads into the village sealed, Superintendent?” he asked Sutherland, eyeing the soggy, leafy ground around the base of the tree.
“Twelve noon Friday, the day before the wedding. After that, no one except villagers and somebody with good reason to be here got through.”
“And the date the church location first leaked to the papers?”
“First Sunday of the month.”
“So, he had two weeks to scout the location, pick his spot, rig his mechanism, lay his minefield, and get into position.”
“Surely he didn’t spend two weeks up a tree.”
“What’s on the other side of this hill?”
“The village proper.”
“He spent the last two weeks in the village. Posing as a tourist with a good reason to be in these woods from time to time. Bird-watcher. Watercolourist. Naturalist or something. He’d have binoculars, a sizeable knapsack of some kind. Bring in his gear and explosives one bit at a time. We’ll check all local lodging tomorrow, see if anyone remembers a chap like that.”
“I keep thinking about that high-speed motor,” Ross said. “I mean, why bother with the blooming thing? Why not just spike up and spike down?”
“Speedy getaway, Ross,” Congreve said. “Had all the time in the world to get up high enough for a clear shot. But he’d be expecting a rush up the hillside after the shooting. He’d want to get down that tree in an awfully big hurry.”
Sutherland nodded his head, wiping rainwater from his eyes. Unlike Congreve, who covered his thinning pate with a hat rain or shine and was now wearing an old wide-brimmed sou’wester, he’d forgotten to grab a lid.
“I think,” Sutherland said, “he would have spent that Friday night up there, having hauled the cable up after him. Little chance of accidental detection then, the morning of the wedding.”
“Yes,” Congreve agreed, “He might just. Minimum he’d have gone up well before daybreak. Long, chilly night up there. He’d have taken food, something hot to drink.”
“I know what you’re thinking. But it was a very professional hit. He would have been extremely fastidious.”
“Still, Ross, gravity is frequently on the side of the law. People drop all manner of things when they’re scrubbing the blood out of the bathtub. Chap up a tree all night, well…”
“Scene-of-crime officers will have gone over this bit pretty thoroughly.”
“Crime scene investigators, Superintendent Sutherland, are not to be confused with Ambrose Congreve.”
