Souvenirs of Murder (19 page)

Regretting having left the torch in the car and in receipt of one slap on the head from wet leaves already I walked slowly and carefully, eyes trying to pierce the gloom, not wishing to fall down a hole and thus become the Third Riveting Event of the Day.

Up ahead of me there was a sudden thumping noise followed by a muffled shriek. More thumping, nearer, another shriek, farther away. I stopped to listen and half a minute or so later became aware that someone was hurrying down the drive towards me. They were still some distance away but this was closing rapidly; a woman by the sound of the light scurrying footsteps, the pace of someone no longer young enough to run.

She was almost upon me when I politely said, ‘Good evening.'

‘How dare you give me a fright like that!' shouted a voice I recognized.

‘So it was you banging on Barbara Blanche's windows.'

‘Get out of my way!' yelled Mrs Crosby, her voice shaky with the jitters.

‘Do you know that your husband's under arrest for attempted murder?'

‘Of course I do! More police bungling and I assure you we intend to sue. You're the woman with that imitation policeman, aren't you? The rector's daughter-in-law. Well, you don't impress me, Miss Hoity-Toity, and you can—'

I cut in with, ‘I do actually have the powers to arrest you for antisocial behaviour. So, just to make sure that a mistake hasn't been made shall we go and ask Mrs Blanche if there are grounds for a case against you?'

In the dark I got the impression that she drew herself up to her modest height. I was quite expecting her to lash out at me.

‘No. I called round on church business. But she's watching a film on the TV with the sound turned up and didn't hear the doorbell.'

‘But the banging noises were outside. You were hitting the windows with your fists,' I pointed out.

‘So I got sick of waiting!'

The woman then gave me a violent push, which I had been ready for, but I still ended up by stumbling backwards, whacking the back of my head on a low branch. By the time I had regained my balance she had gone. No matter, everyone knew where she lived.

I rang the doorbell, not expecting in the circumstances for there to be any response. There was not so I pushed open the letter box and called through it.

‘Mrs Blanche, it's Ingrid Langley. Please open the door. The person who was banging on your windows has gone.'

After a pause, a light came on in the porch and the door was opened, but on a safety chain. A pair of frightened eyes looked at me through the gap.

‘She's gone,' I assured her. ‘I know who it was. May we talk?'

‘Oh, all right,' she said miserably.

Sagging shoulders, a white face, a woman on the verge of tears told it all. I followed her into the living room where she slumped into a chair and did, indeed, burst into tears. A cup of hot, sweet tea later Barbara Blanche seemed ready to talk about it.

‘Please answer yes or no,' I requested. ‘Is it the Crosbys who are behind unsavoury things going on round here?'

‘Yes, but that's only what I've been told,' was the mumbled reply. ‘I found a note written by Melvyn when I was sorting through the paperwork. He'd left it all tidy you know, all ready if anything happened to him. His will, the insurances, everything.'

Here her voice cracked and she cried again. Me, I was calling myself all kinds of names, like bitch, for example, for prejudging and despising her just because nearly everyone else did.

‘I'm sorry I've been so unhelpful up until now,' Barbara Blanche gulped. ‘Felicity can be a bit unpleasant and had rather brainwashed me into not wanting to talk to the police any more. But I didn't lie to you. I really had no idea Melvyn knew what was going on. I don't know if he spoke to anyone about it or tackled them face to face. I can imagine him doing it, he was like that.'

‘What did the note actually say?' I asked.

‘I'll show it to you.'

The big, bold handwriting executed in a fountain pen was right to the point:

‘The window banging started before I found the note,' Mrs Blanche said. ‘And I was so scared by that time I didn't dare do anything. As it is I can't stay in this house any longer, not now I've shown that to you, nor in this wretched village.'

‘May I give this to Detective Chief Inspector James Carrick?'

‘I suppose you'll have to now.'

‘Is there somewhere you could stay for a few days? With your sister, for example?'

She pulled a face. ‘No, we've fallen out, but I have an old friend who lives in Norton St Philip.'

‘I'll take you there if you can arrange it.'

It was after eleven that night when I got home, having called, guiltily, to see James Carrick at home to give him the latest information. I had also been to the hospital to sit by the side of a perfectly sleeping husband, quite unsedated by this time apparently and no longer under such close observation. He had not even roused when given a much better kiss this time.

I heated up a carton of soup for my dinner and then fell into bed.

‘Blanche wouldn't have been killed on account of just booze money,' James Carrick had said the previous evening. ‘Although if he knew about the goings-on and was about to expose those he knew were involved that might have been an incentive to murder. Crosby's still denying chucking that rock through the windscreen of the car. That was not vandalism but an attack on John Gillard which has to connect, in my view, with the rector's stand against local black magic activities. I can't see how Crosby isn't involved in it but proving it is going to be very difficult unless people start talking.'

‘What about his wife?' I had asked.

‘She's as good as admitted to you to banging on Mrs Blanche's windows, tonight at any rate, but I can't really pull her in on account of that alone. But it would suggest that Blanche had spoken to
someone
of his suspicions about the Crosbys and it had got back to them. I mean, the police have been talking to just about everyone in the village so why pick on her?'

‘No, they must have known Blanche was on to them,' Carrick's wife, Joanna, had offered. ‘And I think, like you, James, that there's much more at stake here than reputations and a few pounds to leave people's pets alone. It has to be something like high-yielding blackmail.'

‘Is she vicious enough to do anything else now?' James had mused aloud, not speaking to anyone in particular.

This was open to question but at least the victim's widow was out of immediate harm's way.

It was at six thirty the next morning as I made myself some tea, that I remembered the name Huggins. Huggins, the boy Clem in Matthew's class at school, who had bragged to him that his father was a warlock and who lived in Southdown St Peter.

‘Which one do you want?' said the DCI two and a half hours later – it had seemed reasonable to give him time to hit his office. ‘There's Darrel: grievous bodily harm and taking away cars without their owner's consent; Shane: attempted murder and affray; and Carlton: demanding money with menaces. They're brothers and their old man died when the getaway car he was driving through a red light at seventy in a thirty limit hit a mobile crane and reduced him to mince and tatties.'

‘The last name sounds promising,' I said. ‘Does that one have a son by the name of Clem?'

The distinct sound of the tapping of computer keys came over the line and then Carrick said, ‘Three sons – Clem, who's the youngest, and Reilly and Ricky. The older two are already in trouble.'

I told him what Matthew had said and finished by asking, ‘Can I have the address?'

‘No, you damned well can't, they're a dangerous bunch. Even his common-law wife has form for assault and being drunk and disorderly. And if he's calling himself a warlock it's only because there's money in it.'

‘According to Clem his father attends satanic meetings here in Hinton Littlemoor.' A little irritated by James's brusque manner – the all-powerful CID boss receiving a report from minion number four, I added, ‘This is SOCA giving you a lead here, James.'

‘Thank you, I'll follow it up. I could do with getting a warrant and giving the house a good going-over for stolen property as I've a lead there too. I actually came across a local bloke locked in a cupboard there once who they were holding to ransom but as he was wanted for murder his family hadn't reported him missing.'

I made a mental note to impress on Matthew that he must not, on any account, go within a mile of the place.

‘John was roughed up by two youths who might have got on the local bus,' I recollected. ‘He landed a couple of wallops on them with his stick so you might look out for unemployable yobbos wearing large bruises.'

I suppose I had been working to try to keep Patrick's promise to his father and it seemed there might be hope of some progress. Now, I had little choice but to leave James Carrick to handle everything and pray that Patrick would not fret, or worse, be driven to defy both medical and Greenway's instructions.

I need not have worried, not at present anyway. But I almost wished the reverse was true for when he was delivered to the rectory, in an ambulance, I was appalled to see that he was so weak he could hardly walk having, typically, refused point blank to be conveyed indoors in a wheelchair.

THIRTEEN

Greenway looked surprised to see me, to be expected really as I had not told him I was coming. But when I just sat there, like a dummy, and said nothing, not realizing at the time that I was as white as the blank page of the jotter pad before him and then, finally, burst into a storm of tears, his emotions were lost to me. I became aware of a strong arm around my shoulders and then a man-sized tissue under my nose. This was followed, when I had calmed down a little, by a large mug of coffee and a biscuit brought in by his secretary.

‘He's that bad?' Greenway asked quietly as the door closed behind her, still sitting by my side on the large squashy sofa.

‘Not really,' I whispered.

‘I expect you know that he rang me the day before yesterday when he got home.'

‘Yes.'

‘He did mention some liver damage but the docs don't reckon it's likely to cause any lasting problems. I am aware that he was deliberately being upbeat – his voice was quite weak. D'you reckon he'll stick by what the medics are telling him to do?' Greenway quickly added, ‘I'm enquiring from the angle of his own safety here, not any of my operational ones.'

‘He will, mostly because right now he's under the strict eye of his mother. But when he starts to feel stronger . . .' I shrugged.

‘When he feels stronger I shall get him on board in some way – hoping meanwhile that we'll either nab this bastard or someone'll come up with real evidence of what happened that morning when all those people were finished off.'

‘That's why I'm here,' I told him. ‘To be on board in some way.'

Greenway surveyed me closely and I noticed for the first time that his eyes, like mine, were green.

‘Surely that'll be more likely to make Patrick move heaven and earth to be here instead of you.'

‘No. I shall tell him that, from your point of view, I'm merely here to give you the benefit of my intuition and so I can relate any progress to him. If I say that I'm also acting as a mole, for
his
benefit, feeding him snippets of intelligence, not necessarily with your permission, he'll go along with it. The man knows he's as weak as water right now and can do little. He's not stupid.'

The Commander nodded slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I welcome your presence on the team but—'

‘I'm not to get involved with anything dangerous,' I finished for him.

‘You don't have your normal minder with you,' he pointed out.

Privately, I had to concede the truth of this, even though Patrick and I tend to mind for each other. I said, ‘Have you verified the report of the Met surveillance man being taken ill, having been, due to a mistake, working on his own and no one turning up to relieve him the next morning, the morning that everything happened?'

‘No, I haven't.' Greenway frowned. ‘Put like that it's three things going wrong in the same place in quick succession, isn't it?'

‘And the neighbours.'

‘Neighbours?'

‘Patrick said that Friday nights were open house and neighbours wandered in and out. Who
are
the neighbours? Could any of them not have been neighbours at all and because everyone was plastered, doped, you name it, someone wasn't spotted as a member of a rival gang or an old enemy?'

Greenway shot to his feet. ‘That's another good point. I'll get someone on to it now.' He headed for the door. ‘God, we don't even know
how
many people were in the house.' And then, from somewhere down the corridor, ‘Please answer my phone if it rings.'

It did.

‘Commander Greenway's very temporary PA,' I said.

‘What did he say?' enquired a well-remembered voice.

‘That you're to stay in bed and do as your mother tells you.'

A sigh.

‘No, all right, he didn't say that. It's fine for me to be on the team and make intelligent suggestions. He's just shot off to get someone to check on Pangborne's neighbours and follow up that business of the man who was watching the house but left on his own and taken ill. I'll get straight back to you if I sniff out anything. What are you doing?'