Souvenirs of Murder (18 page)

Then, on a bend about a quarter of a mile from a junction of lanes where the left hand turning would take us to the village I pulled up sharply.

‘What have you seen?' Carrick said.

I was looking at the tracks made by a set of wide tyres that appeared to have carried straight on at the bend and headed off into the woodland, here little more than connecting thickets. The ground was wet, the tyre tracks quite deep and saplings and bushes had been crushed into them.

We got out of the car and hurried, following the swathe bulldozed through the greenery and very quickly came to the cause of it, the Range Rover. It had come to rest against a large oak, seemingly gently with no visible damage to either. For some reason I assimilated this irrelevant latter information while yanking open the front passenger door, the driver's side being immersed in vegetation.

Patrick was slumped behind the wheel, his forehead resting on the top of it. I scrambled in – the car was tilted away from me – and undid his seat belt before leaning over to switch off the ignition. As I did so I heard something small fall into the footwell and automatically glanced down. It was his mobile phone, which he must have been holding in his right hand.

Carrick was already calling an ambulance, swore when he could get no signal and ran back to the car. Trying to find Patrick's pulse I heard the crash of gears as the vehicle was turned and then it roared away back in the direction of the main road.

Patrick groaned and with a lot of my assistance sat up, his head lolling against the rest.

‘I'm here,' I whispered. ‘What the hell's wrong with you?'

He tried to say something and then appeared to lapse into unconsciousness. He looked, as he had recently, terribly pale but his pulse seemed fairly normal, though fast: this was not a heart attack. Always aware that our names are still on the hit lists of several terrorist organizations I examined him as well as I could for bullet wounds but there was nothing, not even a scratch. The fact that the air bag had not inflated proved that the car had, indeed, come to a very gentle halt.

There was little I could do but hold his hand – was there the smallest responding grip, or just my imagination? – until help came.

A paramedic was with us very quickly, the ambulance following shortly, and he agreed with my conclusion that there was no obvious cardiac problem. The patient was given oxygen and, after some violence to the blocking greenery, was unloaded from the vehicle and, quite unresponsive now, carried away leaving Carrick and me alone in the bruised glade.

‘You needn't have stayed here,' Carrick said, still a little out of breath after his having dealt with the tree, the remark perhaps a veiled admonishment for my not having accompanied Patrick.

Fear for the life of the man I love gnawing like rats at my insides I nevertheless said, ‘I know it sounds pompous but our personal rules of engagement state that when either partner is out of action but under professional medical care the one remaining should deal with other responsibilities
first.
There's absolutely no reason to leave you here with two vehicles, neither of which belong to you, when you desperately need to get back to work. I must tell Michael Greenway what's happened and can hardly keep it from Patrick's parents. It would be better if I told John and Elspeth personally.'

He said, ‘Are you happy then with my decision that this is not a crime scene and the 4 x 4 should be moved immediately?'

‘Absolutely.'

I got in the Range Rover, retrieving Patrick's phone from the floor as I did so. I switched it on: nothing. Either the battery was flat or it had failed. I thought the car might have done so too but it started first time and reversed from its prison easily – they are, after all, designed for rural adventures – and I carefully backed up to the lane. Carrick leading, we then drove the mile or so to Hinton Littlemoor. I made a point of testing the brakes and steering; nothing seemed to be amiss.

Just outside the village there is a bridge where the old Somerset and Dorset railway line goes over the road. There was some distance between John's car and mine by this time as it does not do to follow too closely in the event of the person in front meeting a bus or some other large vehicle and having to reverse to somewhere wider. Picturing, agonizingly, a still figure on an A and E examination table all I saw was a sudden movement above the parapet of the bridge ahead of me, something dropping and then the blaze of brake lights.

I too came to a dead stop and dashed to the car. The windscreen had been smashed by a rock that had landed partly on the bonnet, denting it, and then bizarrely, bounced off and fetched up on the front passenger seat. James Carrick was plastered in broken glass, frozen with shock. My opening his door roused him into action and he tore past me, leapt over a fence and went up the embankment on to the one-time railway line like a terrier after a rat, leaving a silvery trail of bits of glass. I saw him go across the bridge and then his footsteps pounded off along the track bed into the distance.

Despite everything the thought tripped lightly through my mind: never really upset a Scotsman who plays winger at rugby.

He came back with his man; a portly, balding, blustering and red in the face – although the latter might have been from the exertion – individual whom he kept a firm hold of as they slithered down the embankment and hefted in one, sack of spuds style, over the fence.

‘I'll have you know I'm chairman of the PCC,' shouted the man furiously, brushing himself off. ‘I saw the youth who threw the stone and gave chase. How dare you imagine for one moment that I'm responsible!'

‘Then why didn't you stop when I called for you to do so?' Carrick said impassively, not out of breath at all on this occasion. ‘
And
refuse to give me your name.'

‘Go to hell!'

‘His name's Frank Crosby,' I said.

Mr Crosby then found himself arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Yes, Carrick was that mad.

TWELVE

I had expected bad news but it was still a shock to find that Patrick was in intensive care. This did not prove to be as ghastly as the information suggested for he was breathing unaided and was only, I was told, lightly sedated. There had been blood and other tests, the first results of which were expected at any time, but so far they did not have a clue what was wrong with him. I explained what had happened to him recently and an immediate move was made to send for his records. Being his next of kin I was permitted a short visit.

His colour was no better than when I had last seen him and he was lying there, eyes closed, on some kind of chemically induced cloud ten wired up to any amount of electronic hardware that beeped quietly. My arrival elicited no immediate response so, having drawn up a chair, I sat quietly for a couple of minutes. Then, opening my bag, I found the small bottle of my favourite perfume that I always carry with me and, spraying a little on a wrist, wafted it under his nose.

‘Ingrid, why am I lying flat on my back in the car?' he asked, his voice slurred.

‘You aren't,' I told him. ‘You're in Bath's Royal United hospital.'

‘Shit,' he whispered, eyes still closed. ‘Did I prang it then?'

‘No, you seem to have fallen asleep at the wheel and it trundled off into a wood and stopped when it got to a tree.'

‘Any damage?'

‘A few green smears and one small dent in a wing. You must have braked.'

‘So when do I get out of here?'

‘When they find out why you fell asleep at the wheel.'

‘I could do with sleeping for a month.'

I leaned over and kissed him chastely on a cheek. ‘Then do. I'll come back and see you later.'

‘Can't I have a better kiss than that?'

‘No, go to sleep.'

By now it was late afternoon. I rang Michael Greenway to tell him the latest news and of course he could do nothing other than express sympathy, offer his support and ask to be kept abreast of developments. I wondered if he was experiencing quiet relief that he did not have to worry for a while that a member of his team would act alone against orders.

Trying to behave in a rational manner while a whole range of medical conditions: liver failure, damaged kidneys, brain malfunction, brought on by the drugs Patrick had been administered with raged through my imagination – you suffer if you write – I returned to the rectory. Other than to make sure he was all right I had not pestered James Carrick, leaving him to question his suspect. He had reported that broken windscreen glass could get in some truly amazing places and that Frank Crosby was denying everything. He went on to request if I would ask Patrick's father if he normally drove along that road at that particular time of day.

‘Well, yes,' John answered. ‘If my dear wife had not nagged me into resting today I would have made my weekly afternoon visit to the hospice. I suppose I usually return at around three thirty. And you say that James was driving my car and that someone's been arrested for throwing a stone through the windscreen. How dreadful! Am I allowed to know who it is?'

I decided that I could don my SOCA hat and said, ‘Have you had a real argument with anyone on the PCC lately?'

‘On the PCC! Good heavens! No, at least, only concerning my strong stance against these stupid ceremonies that people have been holding. I was told by a couple of members that such things were a sign of the times, that by railing against them I was being perceived as old-fashioned and out of touch and was thus bringing the church into disrepute. Everyone's entitled to their opinion of course, but—'

Elspeth broke in with, ‘But who, John? Who? That's what James wants to know.'

‘The Crosbys. But they tend to disagree with me about almost everything.'

Elspeth snorted. ‘Has it occurred to you that they themselves might be involved?'

‘No, of course not!' the priest exclaimed. ‘They're devout Christians and work very hard for the church.'

‘It would
appear
,' I said, ‘That it was Frank Crosby who dropped the stone – no, it was a rock actually – when your car went underneath the bridge on the outskirts of the village.'

Understandably, John found this very hard to believe but was much more concerned right now about his son and went away, shaking his head, to phone the number I had given him to find out if he could visit Patrick. A few minutes later he put his head around the door.

‘A doctor would like to speak to you, Ingrid.'

It was the one I had seen earlier.

‘I think your husband's problem is best described to a layman – and I hope you don't mind being referred to like that, Mrs Gillard – as delayed toxic shock caused initially by the drugs illegally administered to him in London. I have to admit that there's a little professional disagreement between me and a colleague at the Nightingale Clinic about what's going on but it's clear that he's completely exhausted by the condition, and also I guess by overwork, and will require bed rest for at least a week together with medication followed by three months convalescence.'

‘But no lasting damage though?' I enquired.

He hesitated for a few heart-stopping moments before replying. ‘No, there shouldn't be. There's slight liver damage but as I'm sure you're aware the organ is capable of repairing itself and Patrick is otherwise a fit and healthy man. I see no real problems. But on no account must he drink alcohol during the three months rest, and only then after I've given him the all-clear.'

I thanked him, asked when the patient could come home and was told in two or three days' time, probably, as they still wanted to monitor him.

I went back into Elspeth and John's living room.

‘Well?' they said in unison.

I said, ‘How am I going to keep him in bed for a week, at home for three months and right away from whisky?'

‘Easy,' said Elspeth. ‘You can't move into the main house yet as the decorators still haven't finished and the place is freezing cold so bring him here and
I'll
wave the big stick. John, you'll have to give up drinking too, otherwise it wouldn't be fair.'

Leaving a little later, I was passing what I still could not regard as my own front door on my way to the car when I had a strange recollection. When Mrs Crosby had come to tell me, just before noon, that the church was still locked on the occasion of the discovery of Melvyn Blanche's body in the vestry I had been in the vicinity of the annex and heard her footsteps approaching on gravel.

I returned to the rear of the house and to the courtyard that will one day be partly given over to a conservatory. The quite short distance entailed walking on flagstones, the only gravel being on the drive itself at the front and the garden paths at the rear. She then, had not come around the side of the house at all but through the wide archway in the far side of the courtyard from the garden.

Why had she come that way? Had she, with or without her husband, just thrown away the murder weapon in the rectory garden? According to the pathologist, Blanche had been killed between ten and eleven. This did not mean, however, that the killer had necessarily disposed of the hammer straight away.

By now it was almost dark. I needed to check the state of affairs at home but was turning right at the end of the rectory drive when I suddenly remembered Barbara Blanche and what she had told me. If she had been speaking the truth and knew the identities of those involved in black magic rites I ought to have another attempt at getting her to reveal who it was, ask her outright if it was the Crosbys. With a heavy heart I drove in the opposite direction.

I parked at the end of the Blanches' drive, which was narrow, overgrown and, oddly, had nowhere to turn, left the sidelights on and went on foot. Blanche might have hated other people's trees but he certainly had borne no ill will against those on his own ground; the whole place was like a jungle, branches seemingly brushing the windows. I remembered from my daylight visit that the whole outside area looked neglected so he must have hated gardening. Perhaps that was it, I mused: jealousy of his neighbour's love of her little wood had been the reason for him trying to bully her into cutting them down. Everything that people partook in or enjoyed had to be controlled. By him.