Ring of Guilt (12 page)

‘I've reached the milk out already. Come with me, my dear one, and I'll brew up.' But he was careful to hold at least one hand as he led the way into the kitchen. I stuffed the other into my pocket. I mustn't let him down. I sat at the table, spreading both hands flat where we could both see them.

Sooner than I could have dreamt, there was a mug between them, comforting me with its heat and also with the smells of chocolate and cream which seemed to float straight into my brain.

Griff sat down opposite me. ‘An official complaint might be in order.'

‘To the police? They stick together like—' It was far too early in the day to say how closely they stuck. I pulled a face.

‘Possibly. But let us not rule out the option entirely. And you might wish to send a solicitor's letter to that louse Habgood telling him that if he repeats his allegation again, you will seek legal redress. But above all, remember that revenge is a dish best eaten cold. Fume a little to me – fume a great deal, if you want – but don't do anything precipitate, especially something you may later regret.'

‘Such as driving hell for leather down to Devon and putting a brick through my dear grandfather's window? Well,' I continued, shuddering as I recalled all the traffic jams we'd sat in, ‘I suppose the A303 would put a stop to any hell-for-leathering.'

‘That's my child. Now, indulge an old man in his whims, but I have a huge desire to find some sea and breathe in the ozone. Mrs Walker is more than competent to watch the shop. Why don't we take in lunch during our little jaunt?'

‘Yeah. Why not?' But even as I smiled to please him, my mind was hunting for the term to describe what he was doing. Diver – digress – some sort of activity. That was it. Displacement activity
.
I'd got the words – a bonus point. Were they the right ones? They could be. But I couldn't ask Griff in case he realized I was on to what he was doing. ‘It's a nice clear day, and you've got those nice new specs – do you want to drive?' That way he wouldn't be worried about my having an attack of road rage.

We found ourselves in Hythe, which shouldn't have been a surprise, given that there's a Waitrose in the middle of the town. We duly had a walk along the sea wall toward Folkestone, overtaken at intervals by Gurkhas running very fast despite backpacks that seemed bigger than they were. The shingle roared and sighed under the incoming tide; fishermen wielded huge rods from the shelter of canvas igloos; across the road golfers hit little balls that changed course in mid-air as the wind strengthened. It was time to turn back. Yes, I could have gone on forever, and at twice the pace, but Griff wasn't as young and still angry as I was, so I stopped.

‘If I listen carefully,' I yelled above the wind, ‘I can hear fish and chips calling. Can you? Back in Hythe?' This time I wasn't using my precious gift, either.

He cupped an ear. ‘You know, I believe I can. I think they're calling from that nice restaurant overlooking the sea.'

They were. As was my mobile the moment two gorgeous platefuls arrived. Will. I switched him to voicemail. Bugger him and his excitable friend.

‘It occurs to me, my love,' Griff said, as we left Waitrose with a bag of his favourite plunder – top of the range, end-date goodies, ‘that our route home could take us past the place where you stopped to tell the police about your body. Would you care to retrace your steps?'

Nodding, I automatically went to the driver's door. Most of my anger had subsided – it was no more than simmering now. Griff probably needed a little doze after all that food – he reminded me that at least the fish gave us lots of useful omega oils – and all that shopping. So there was no way I was going to take my revenge on the human race by driving as if I'd just been let out of hell. Especially as I was still partly in it, if I was honest. So I drove extra carefully, watching out for Hythe's usual population of drivers who seemed to have parked by touch, to judge by the dents front and rear. There was a rumour amongst us dealers that at least one old dear regularly turned up to fairs at Folkestone in a nice Volvo despite being registered blind – anyone who knew her made sure they left their vans nowhere near.

I found my way to the road I'd taken back the day of the auction, and picked my way slowly along. Griff dozed quite noisily as soon as I switched on Classic FM. I'd got as far as the lay-by I'd pulled into to call the police before I realized I'd passed no police tape or anything to show there might have been a crime scene. On impulse, I found the road Winters had insisted was a real road, not a bridle way with no vehicular access. Vehicular
.
I said it out loud. There! If I took it really slowly I could manage the dreaded word. Weird. It was just an ordinary lane. So I turned down it, looking for goodness knew what.

And found nothing. Everything was dead quiet. So was it all wonderful inactivity, or was it all so secret they didn't want to draw attention to it? I pressed on towards Ottinge, which would take us eventually to Elham, and better roads? I sure as hell wasn't going to go left, because what should be occupying the road but a 4x4. Not for the first time wishing we had nice anonymous wheels, I carried on the way I was going. Maybe this car had also been heading that way all along. Or maybe the driver was just curious about why someone else should be on the road. Anyway, he sat behind me for mile after tedious mile. Why didn't he turn off? Very, very slowly – but then, I'd had a big lunch too – it dawned on me he might be tailing me. It'd be nice to be able to get his number, but it was covered with mud – and in any case, reading from a mirror never was my strong point, especially on a road that needed eyes-front attention. I pressed on. What else could I do? A little company might be nice. Elham? What about Lyminge?

If I turned west, I knew there was a garage, preferably with nice husky mechanics to protect me, if that was what was needed. And if the 4x4 shot straight past, I could simply get some fuel and get the number. The rattling and shaking as I pushed the van as fast as I dared woke Griff.

‘Dear child, where on earth are we? What are we doing?'

‘Just heading for Stone Street,' I said, through gritted teeth.

I didn't want to slow, but I knew I'd have to. The next section was narrow, with an awkward corner, and the last thing I wanted was to run full tilt into a car on the school run. Or any other run.

He was five or six metres from me.

I swung on to the forecourt without signalling. Far too fast: I nearly hit a pillar box. He slewed to a stop at the halt sign and turned right, for Canterbury, also without signalling. The rear number plate was just as filthy as the front one. But I did get a glimpse of his profile as he turned. Just an ordinary, common or garden profile. Did I know it from somewhere?

By now Griff had got out, heading for the little shop. He stopped dead. Was it something to do with the notice telling customers there were no public loos on the site?

I needed some fuel anyway, so he'd just have to wait.

‘That's just it, dear one. I can't. Maybe your friend Robin might be in?'

Hell for leather to Stelling Minnis, then. But the rectory was in darkness, and there was no sign of Robin's clerical car, either. Still retreating.

I took a risk. ‘We're only about two miles from Bossingham Hall.'

‘The devil we are!'

‘That's probably exactly what my father will say, if it's any consolation. It's pretty well time for his favourite TV programme and he won't be pleased to see me, let alone you. But at least he'll have a loo you can use. Tell you what – if you can spare a packet of those end-date bikkies and that cake, then at least it will make afternoon tea less like the Mad Hatter's tea party.' Or more . . .

I might have joked, but I actually felt sick with dread as I parked. At least there was no sign of Titus' van – not out in the open here, nothing like so risky, but tucked away in its usual hidey-hole. I fished out my mobile – a bit more polite to warn my father than simply to swan in, though I had my key with me. And somehow I'd never quite managed just to ring the front door bell.

‘Mr Tripp too?' my father observed. ‘Well, well.'

It didn't take him long to get to the front door and open it, with a bit of a mocking bow.

‘Through there to the left, Griff!' I said, pointing, by way of greeting.

‘Ah,' my father said. ‘I quite understand.'

‘I'll get the kettle on,' I said.

‘Do that, Lina. And then hunt for a couple of your miracles. Mr Tripp and I can have a nice little chat while we wait.'

It was clear what they'd been talking about, because as I carried the tea tray in, Lord Elham was busy exploding with rage. ‘A man who claims to be her grandfather tells that sort of tale about her? How dare he! And what would his daughter have said? She must have been a nice filly, Tripp. Wouldn't have laid her otherwise. More to the point, she must have been nice, or she wouldn't have had such a decent offspring, would she? Nothing to do with me, Lina's brains.'

I wasn't so sure about that. My father could finish a fiendish-level Sudoku in the time it took me to work out the instructions. And the fact he'd escaped the notice of the law all these years suggested something about his cunning, at very least. But I wasn't about to interrupt, because he and Griff, a glass of better champagne apiece, were sitting side by side happily shredding Arthur Habgood's reputation. Well, everything about him really. Nothing for it but to park the tea things, leave them to it, and go for my usual wander round the place. Griff would have loved to come too, if he'd known what I was up to. But the sight of all those unwanted, unloved items, whose only function would be to provide Lord Elham with more champagne, might have given him a heart attack. Joking! Griff would have admired some, coveted others, but would have been able to price everything to the nearest pound. What he wouldn't have been able to do was stand stock still in the corridor and feel something calling silently but clearly. I waited. No, it wasn't in the kitchen. It was in one of the rooms on the first floor. In a cardboard box. I had to get at it even though it meant heaving half a dozen other boxes off it. Logically I knew that any one of these might have held half a dozen more valuable or saleable items, but my divvy's instinct told me it had to be that one. The first thing I touched felt like a skull, and since this was a bit of a jumpy day, I nearly screamed and dropped it. But then I realized it was stoneware, not bone – a phrenological head. Why on earth I could remember a term like that, not an everyday one, goodness knows – especially when really useful ones flew out of my mental window. So what was the head lying on? I burrowed in the old newspaper. A chamber pot! What on earth did my divvy's instinct think it was doing?

Another burrow. A lid? A lid. A lid for the chamber pot. Which suddenly doubled or trebled it in value. Staffordshire, I thought. A polish with a bit of newspaper brought up amazing bright colours – why something you'd want to sneak down the backstairs should be so bright was beyond me. But this had a broad blue stripe round most of the body, hung around with swags of pink and green garland. Then there were more stripes, and even more on the lid, which had a matching garland looping round the centre. Griff would take one look and declare it vulgar. My father would look and ask how much bubbly it would bring in.

Well, if the head brought in what I thought, and this pot turned out to be what I thought it was, the answer was quite a lot.

Which was a good job, because when I got downstairs, they'd started on a second bottle and were yelling the answers at
Countdown.
Griff was looking rattled – I should have warned him my father would have to win.

At last the programme was over. They looked at me expectantly.

First of all I held up the head. Lord Elham shrugged.

Griff nodded. ‘A couple of hundred pounds' worth there,' he said, though whether to me or to my father was hard to say. Like me, Griff never used my father's name – apart from when he'd wanted to impress Will, he certainly never
My Lord
-ed him, and yet deep down, I guess, felt it was somehow disrespectful – to whom or what, for goodness' sake? – to use his first name.

Then I produced my find. Pot and lid separately.

‘Do I see Mochaware, my angel? I thought so,' Griff said, taking the lid and examining it. ‘Well done.'

My father peered at it without enthusiasm. ‘Just a po,' he declared.

‘A po worth well over a thousand pounds,' Griff said. ‘With the lid, of course.'

‘A thousand quid's worth of shampoo! Well,' my father said with a grin, ‘bottoms up!'

I
might have driven back to Bredeham very soberly – unlike my father and with Griff, who was now snoring gently, I was stone cold sober – but I did so with anger still seething away in my heart.

I didn't like being tailed. Or at least, being para-something or other enough to think I was being tailed. What if he was just a bad driver? There were enough of those about, many, but not all, of course, in 4x4s. But it did seem to be a bit of a coincidence to come across someone in that particular spot who might want to follow me. Paranoid, that was the word I was looking for.

Of course it was a coincidence. No one could have known I'd be going that way. I didn't even know I was going that way myself. Impulse, that was all.

But he could have chosen another route. More direct. Could have driven in a less threatening way.

If Will ever spoke to me again, I might just mention it. Big if.

Better to think about something else: what we should have for tea; how I could have a tactful word with Dilly (imagine it: ‘Does your husband beat you, especially if you sell precious rings so cheaply?'); what to do about Arthur Habgood. He seemed to be popping up in all sorts of places; the police and Harvey Sanditon – all it needed was Griff's so-called mate Sir Douggie to mention him and we'd have a full house. And why was he so malicious? You'd have thought a man would want to keep his supposed granddaughter's name nice and clean, not imply she was a criminal.