Souvenirs of Murder (26 page)

He shrugged, not about to respond to points of view with which he did not agree. ‘Sorry if you've been trying to get hold of me – I hadn't charged up my phone properly.'

The man put his weekend bag on the bed, unzipped it and rummaged, presumably for the charger. He glanced at me, then held my gaze, a question in those wonderful grey eyes.

‘Oh, come here,' I said, holding out both arms. After a long, long, silent hug I whispered, ‘Please tell me why you're going against medical advice.'

‘The docs couldn't agree in the first place. The consultant you spoke to on the phone probably only won the argument because he had possession of the patient. I've just been back to the Nightingale Clinic to see the specialist I saw first as he impressed me rather and the pills I'd been given in Bath were making me feel like death and affecting my coordination. One lot of pills, that is. I've been taken off them. He agreed that most of the trouble must have been total exhaustion but still didn't go along with the drugs prescription. I've just about had my week's rest and he wanted me to go back home and carry on taking things easy but I'm damned if I'm going to.' Wrongly putting my silence down to disbelief, he added, ‘That's the truth.'

‘You've never lied to me,' I whispered. ‘But the liver damage?'

‘I had more blood tests and apparently it's not as bad as the other bloke thought and improving already. I'm still strictly on the wagon though and on tablets for that. That's the bad news.'

‘Welcome aboard,' I said, kissing him.

He gently stroked my face where it was bruised. ‘I really hate it when somebody hurts you.'

I slept for three hours, having intended to put my feet up for a few minutes while Patrick had a shower, and when I was woken by my mobile ringing I saw when I had switched on the bedside lamp that he had been asleep by my side.

‘Do you know where Patrick is?' Greenway's voice said, sounding tense.

I could never explain afterwards why I lied. ‘Sorry, no. He should be at home.'

‘No, he's not at Hinton Littlemoor and neither James Carrick nor the rector and his wife knows where he is. Or say they don't, anyway.'

‘Why do you want him?' I asked, ignoring the slur on their characters.

Greenway breathed out hard down the phone. ‘Jethro Hulton has been found hanged. In that flat where you ran into him and I really, really want to talk to Patrick before the Met get hold of him.'

‘Hanged from what?' I gasped. I could not remember anything in the place that would support the weight of a body.

‘Apparently there's a pipe in the bathroom that emerges from the ceiling and then goes through the wall into the kitchen. He'd been strung up by a length of broken sash cord from one of the windows.'

I could do nothing else but express my shock and tell him I would keep in touch.

Patrick was looking at me, wide awake now.

‘Hulton's body's been found strung up at the flat where I ran into him and Greenway wants to talk to you before you're arrested by the Met.'

‘Er, no, he'll want to be seen doing the right thing by handing me over.'

‘That's really cynical!'

‘The man has no other choice and I wouldn't expect him to do anything else. So, it's crunch time then: do I go quietly and hope that the whole thing's sorted out satisfactorily, in other words, that I'm found to be innocent of the shootings, or do I go on the run and sort it out myself, D12 style?'

‘As far as the latter goes are you that confident of the outcome?'

‘No, for the simple reason that I still can't remember what happened. All I have to go on is gut feelings. These tell me that I'm not guilty of their murder.'

I had opened my mouth to speak when there was a thunderous knocking on the door.

‘Open up! Police!'

Without exchanging a word we both got off the bed, I grabbed the gun and car keys from my bag, shoved them in the pocket of my slacks and went over to the door. After pretending to fumble with the lock to give Patrick a few more seconds I opened it, looking suitably apprehensive.

‘What on earth's this all about?' I said to several large coppers.

‘We're looking for Patrick Gillard,' replied the one at the front.

‘But there must be a mistake – we're both with SOCA,' I whinnied.

‘Sorry, but that's my orders.'

I pulled the door wide and they all trouped in. I tripped and then shoved the last one, who had probably positioned himself at the rear on account of being the smallest, and this created a most satisfying domino effect, the man at the front not quite recovering his balance and clouting his head on a chest of drawers on the way down. It only took a few seconds for me to scoop up my jacket and Patrick to commandeer their radios as they floundered around on the floor and then the two of us had run out, slamming the door.

Old MI5 habits had ensured that I had checked the inner workings of the hotel's emergency exits and now led the way to a staircase that, while it might not be an official fire escape route did lead, eventually, to the underground car park. All one had to do was go through a door marked private on the ground floor, descend to the basement by means of a staircase with a staff only notice on it and then go through double doors that I had an idea were alarmed. For obvious reasons I had not tested the system, having merely glanced though the small window in one of them into the gloomy interior of the car park before retracing my footsteps.

They were exceedingly alarmed, a deafening bell commencing to ring as I burst through them. I am also someone who makes a point of remembering, exactly, where she has left her car and headed for it now, at the run, hoping that Patrick was not far behind. In the driving seat, the engine running, I unlocked the passenger door just as he appeared, tossing the radios into a rubbish bin of some kind in a dark recess as he went by.

‘I did glimpse a police car blocking the exit,' he panted.

The much despised stainless steel bull bars on the front of our vehicle are not expressly for maximizing the injuries to any pedestrians one was unfortunate enough to hit, as detractors sneeringly suggest, or for show, but were fitted because they might just come in useful one day. They enabled me to gently shunt the squad car out of the way, the mouths of those witnessing this assuming the shape of large round ‘Os', and then we were away.

‘Where to?' I demanded to know.

‘A safe house I know of in—'

‘I've a better idea,' I interrupted.

‘What?' he snapped.

‘A house I know of in Enfield.'

SEVENTEEN

It was dark by now, nine forty-five, and the roads were unusually quiet. Expecting to come upon a police road block at any moment I stayed well within the speed limits, taking short cuts through side roads where I was familiar with the terrain, driving the big car quietly so as not to draw attention. Patrick let me get on with it, probably thinking, rightly, that I needed to concentrate. To his credit he did not question my choice of destination either. At least, not until we arrived.

‘Rundle!' he exclaimed, having spotted the car parked in the drive.

‘Rundle,' I agreed, yanking on the handbrake and turning off the engine. ‘I have a theory – tentative, I admit – that he has one or two rotten apples in his surveillance squad.'

‘He will try to arrest me.'

‘So we'll talk him out of it.'

‘Do you have anything to go on at all?' Patrick enquired lightly.

‘I've made a little progress, including a list of people killed in a Serbian shoot-out around twenty years ago at a place called Hilik. That had been scrawled in all that mess on the wall at Park Road.'

‘It never occurred to me that anything had been written there.'

‘I also found a notebook today at the back of a drawer in that table in the hall there which I've promised to drop off at West End Central. But we can give it to Rundle now if he's at home.'

‘Anything interesting in it?'

‘Too early to say. I've copied the more fruitful-looking pages.'

‘May I have a look at the list of the dead?'

I switched on the vehicle's interior light and gave it to him. He studied it for a few minutes and then murmured, ‘I've heard some of these surnames before – and not from D12 days. But they might not have been the real names of the people involved.'

‘Who were they?'

‘Criminals,' he replied simply, giving back the list. ‘Thank you, it's changed everything.'

‘How's that?'

‘You'll find out in a minute, when we're inside.'

‘Apparently Hilik produces crooks like some towns make black pudding and meat pies.'

In the somewhat dim light he gazed at me worriedly. ‘It's just occurred to me that you probably shouldn't be driving.'

‘I'm
sure
you shouldn't be.'

We both sighed heavily and got out of the car.

There was a light on in the ground floor front room of the house and another upstairs. I hung back, leaving it up to Patrick exactly how we made the approach. Not particularly surprisingly, he rang the bell. After half a minute or so a bored-looking teenage girl opened the door.

‘Yeah?' she asked, slouching against the door frame.

‘We'd like to speak to DCI Rundle,' Patrick said in his best Sandhurst manner.

‘Who wants him?'

‘It's business,' she was informed quietly.

The girl prised herself upright and drifted off inside. We followed.

‘Dad, there's a bloke to see you,' she called. ‘He says it's business.'

‘Oh, right,' said Rundle's voice from somewhere to the rear of the house. ‘Show him in to the living room.'

But before she could do so the DCI came up the hall and entered the room before us, moving quickly to cross the quite appalling purple and brown carpet to stand by the only other occupant, a woman who was presumably his wife and who had just jumped to her feet.

‘We are both perfectly safe and so are you,' Patrick said serenely, seating himself in one of the armchairs. I followed suit.

‘And why should I believe that, Gillard?' Rundle grated sarcastically.

‘Ingrid's just shown me a list of names of those killed in a shoot-out between criminal families in a town called Hilik in Serbia about twenty years ago. One of those names is Draskovic, another is Horovic. Horovic, or Larovic, are the names Andrea Pangborne appears to have used in her native Serbia. The chef she ran off with was a man by the name of Zoran Drascovic. She killed him when she got fed up with him, having found a much more productive friend, Hulton. A little research might be necessary and there might not be any connection at all between these people but I'm wondering if those particular families were from the same enclave and on the same side in whatever feud triggered this all off, if you'll forgive the pun, or she wouldn't have gone off with him. Another name on the list is that of Mladan Beckovic. This man is obviously dead but I happen to know he has a son who uses his father's name and at home was described as a serious criminal. It's now thought that he's over here, in the UK, but has gone off the map. Mladan junior could well have sworn revenge if Zoran was a friend of his or had a connection with his family.'

Rundle was distractedly endeavouring to shepherd his wife from the room but the lady clearly did not want to go and irritably ducked under his guiding arms to reseat herself in her chair. She appeared to be finding Patrick too interesting to miss.

‘So you're not suggesting that the gun-battle in Serbia had anything to do with the murders in Muswell Hill,' Rundle said, giving up.

‘No, not
necessarily
. But why go to all the trouble of writing the name of the place on the wall?'

‘It's a terribly far-fetched story full of “ifs” and “mights”. And I have to tell you that—'

‘I'm under arrest?' Patrick said. ‘Wouldn't that be the action of a man just carrying on grabbing the first suspect who comes along? We've brought you the list, together with a notebook full of phone numbers and things like that that Ingrid found at the house in Park Road earlier today – that your people had missed. I think you know about that.'

‘Oh,' said Rundle. ‘Yes, I do.'

‘And we want to know who should have relieved the man watching the house on the morning of the killings and didn't, plus the name of the man who should have been on duty with him overnight and didn't turn up. This is probably the fourth time you've been asked for this information. Photographs of the pair would be helpful as well.'

‘I've already emailed this information to Commander Greenway – not that I think it has any relevance.' Rundle opened his mouth to continue but his wife spoke first.

‘Gillard?' she said. ‘Patrick Gillard?'

Patrick gave her a really lovely smile.

‘Not the army major who'd been drafted in from MI5 and saved the life of Prince Andrew from a mad knifeman several years ago?'

He cherishes the solid gold cufflinks with horses designed by Stubbs that were a discreet thank you gift after that particular episode.

‘Only doing my job,' Patrick said in time-honoured fashion.

‘I thought I recognized you. I saw it on the TV news.'

I could almost hear Rundle thinking.

‘By the way, we resisted arrest at the hotel,' Patrick went on to say. ‘Their radios are in a bin in the underground car park.'

I had an idea that Mrs Rundle badly wanted to laugh. But if she did she managed to refrain, saying instead, ‘Surely there's no harm in giving them the information, Harry.'