In Vino Veritas (6 page)

‘Spreading alarm among the workers, am I?' Martin took a leisurely look towards the distant, diligent men in the valley below them, and saw Spot Wheeler watching them curiously. ‘Perhaps some of them are a little more realistic about the situation than their employer.'

‘They're no more interested in you and your schemes than I am.' Ogden turned his back ostentatiously upon his unwelcome visitor.

‘I just hope no one causes trouble for you, Tom. Be a shame if they did.'

Ogden whirled back to face him, his weather-beaten face puce now with rage. ‘And what the hell do you mean by that?'

‘I was just thinking this would be a bad time for some mischief-maker to start moaning to the
Citizen
again about you employing foreign labour when Englishmen are losing their jobs all over the locality. Just as we move towards the height of your season, I mean. It would be a real shame if some person like that encouraged people to boycott your fields, now that you've made yourself dependent upon the pick-your-own clientele.'

‘If that happens, I'll know where to come looking for the culprit.'

‘Oh, it wouldn't come from me, Tom, anything like that. I'm hurt that you should think it might. I'm a friendly neighbour, remember. But you can't prevent people talking, and once someone like the
Citizen
or Radio Gloucester chooses to offer those voices a wider public, it's surprising how things can build up. Mass hysteria, someone called it to me the other day. Still, we'll hope it doesn't come to that, won't we? It would be such a shame if you had to sell your land on a falling market.'

Tom Ogden wanted to seize him by the throat, to wipe that silly, gloating smile off his face and see panic there instead. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, felt the fists already formed and trembling. ‘Get off my land, Beaumont! Get off before I throw you off!'

‘I'll go, I'll go!' The viniculturist held up his hands in mock horror. ‘I can see you're not in the mood to listen to reason, Tom. That's a pity, from your point of view as well as mine.'

Beaumont left his words hanging as a threat in the soft spring sunshine and walked unhurriedly towards his Jaguar. He looked over his neighbour's land as he went and smiled an anticipatory smile.

I
t was a quiet Monday morning in Oldford police station. There had been the usual drunken brawls in the centre of Gloucester on Saturday night and the usual half dozen ‘domestics', involving more personal violence. The usual number of youngsters between thirteen and eighteen had left home without any notice of their plans or destination; they would now become official Missing Persons and be added to that melancholy register of misery.

There was nothing of great interest to CID here, and certainly nothing to excite the attention of Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert, who was in danger of becoming bored. He had made his usual report to the chief constable. He had written up his comments on CID officers who were due for their career assessments. He had even made out a detailed case to those faceless financial controllers for the maintenance of his overtime budget, which had not been fully used in the last quarter.

He was fully up to date with his paperwork, a situation which the experienced members of his team recognized as a dangerous one: a bored Lambert asked the questions which a busy one thought far too petty for him. He was roaming the CID area and taking an unhealthy interest in detail. He had even approached Detective Inspector Chris Rushton for instructions in the mysteries of computer science, bravely asserting that old police dogs needed to learn new tricks, if they were to keep abreast with the criminals of the modern technological world.

Rushton found that the chief superintendent knew more than he admitted about the possibilities of the computer, which was a little disturbing. Chris was happier with his picture of the chief as a dinosaur in the modern police world, the chief super who was not happy as others were to direct the investigation of serious crime from behind his desk. The senior man who still insisted on getting out to confront those nearest to the offence and make his own judgements upon them. Yet this morning Lambert was filing away useful information from his discussions with Rushton on how best to use HOLMES, the national police file on serious crime and serious criminals.

Lambert also gave Rushton an item for the station news bulletin:

Chris Rushton smiled at the idea of stolid, reliable Bert Hook joining the fresh-faced and eager young graduates on the accelerated promotion scheme. He was prepared to agree now that Bert knew more about police work than most of these youngsters would ever learn. It had not always been so: Chris had felt at a moral disadvantage with Bert because he knew the older man had turned down the prospect of promotion to inspector years ago, because he preferred his work as a detective sergeant at the crime-face. It is almost unknown for policemen to turn down the chance of higher rank, and although Bert never broadcast the fact, and few people were aware of it, the considerably younger and newly promoted Chris Rushton had felt uncomfortable in the face of such integrity.

Hook himself had been in court that morning, sturdily resisting the attempts of a clever young defence barrister to trip him up and cast doubt upon his evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service had secured its conviction and Bert was back in the police canteen at lunch. He found himself much more embarrassed than he had been in court by the police banter about this new Einstein within their midst. Policemen, even sometimes quite senior policemen, feel more threatened by intellectuals than those in any other calling. When, as in Bert's case, a degree was accompanied almost uniquely by many years of solid work and achievement in feeling collars and putting dangerous men and the occasional woman behind bars, they did not know quite how to react. There was genuine admiration behind all the routine banter and the comments on this new professor in the Oldford ranks.

Lambert seized him during the afternoon and took him into his own office, where he produced the bottle of whisky which rarely left the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and insisted upon a celebratory toast with his old colleague and friend. ‘I never doubted you could do it intellectually, Bert. I just wondered whether your resolution would hold, with the crazy hours we sometimes work and a family growing up around you.'

‘The boys have been a stimulus really, I suppose,' said Bert. ‘Once I'd started, I could hardly give up, in the face of all their comments. And of course, Eleanor's been marvellous. I couldn't have done it without her looking after the kids for long hours on her own, as well as encouraging me whenever it seemed too high a cliff to scale. I expect it's Eleanor who's blown the gaff on me now. I didn't expect to come into a station which was throbbing with the news.'

‘You can blame me for that. I'm the one who told Chris to put it in the station information bulletin. The grapevine then relays it pretty quickly, especially on a quiet Monday like this. You might as well bask in a little glory whilst it's there to be had. You know it will be the centre of gossip for about two days, until something more salacious like an officer's divorce takes over.'

‘I suppose I have Eleanor to thank for you knowing about it.'

‘Christine asked her outright over the weekend. You know what wives are like. You wouldn't have wanted Eleanor to lie, would you?'

‘I suppose not. And as you say, it's probably better to get all the jokes out of the way at once. It won't last.'

‘We could do with a good juicy murder to get everyone's attention back on the things that matter. Not that one wishes ill upon any of the honest citizens who pay our wages, of course.' Despite this routine denial, both of them felt the familiar CID men's lust for a crime that would fully occupy their predatory minds.

On the Thursday of that week, Sarah Vaughan had an attentive audience and was riding upon the adrenalin which came from it. These people were enthusiasts for wine and the work of producing it, anxious to hear what she had to say about the short history of the industry here and the grapes which had been most successful.

This was the second tour she had led this week and probably about her sixteenth during the year. She was confident enough now to take the pulse of an audience. She no longer spoke too quickly in her nervousness, as she was sure she had done when she had begun this work. She hadn't watched her audience's faces as she spoke in those early days. Now she not only smiled back in response to their friendliness, but even made the odd joke which she knew had succeeded before. The trick was to make the joke seem spontaneous, not carefully calculated or rehearsed.

There were a lot of questions at the end of the tour, which she took to be a sign of its success. When she was answering questions about the new reds, she let it drop that they had high hopes of the grape in question and that they were taking a low mark-up on last year's vintage to get the brand established. Two bargain-conscious wine-fanciers among her audience promptly went into the shop and bought cases of red, under the approving eye of Gerry Davies.

It was four thirty when she finished the tour. As usual, she found herself quite tired once the audience had gone and she was alone in her small office. There was a lot of nervous tension involved in being on show before a live audience. She was learning to enjoy the tension, to relish the need to be on her toes in the face of a constantly changing clientele, but it was tiring nonetheless. She had done practice presentations years ago as part of her Business Studies degree, but it was not until this last year that she had undertaken the real thing. It gave her a kick to find that she was reasonably proficient as a communicator, and getting better with practice. She smiled to herself: that was the kind of verdict she might have had from her tutor on the degree all those years ago.

There wasn't much of the working day left. Sarah decided she might allow herself the luxury of an early departure, then remembered that she had taken her car in for a service that morning. She rang the garage and found that the Honda was ready for collection. Gerry Davies would give her a lift into Ross-on-Wye to pick it up, though it would be a good hour yet before he would be ready to leave. But she'd better go across to the shop and tell him that she needed a lift.

She was halfway across the little courtyard when a vehicle drew up at her side, so silently that it made her start with surprise. A glance sideways reassured her; it was Martin Beaumont's 3.8 blue Jaguar. The window beside her slid softly down and her boss said, ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere? I see your car isn't here today.'

‘No, it's in for service at Ross. But Gerry Davies will give me a lift – it's almost on his route home.'

‘No need to bother him – he won't be off for another hour, will he, whereas I can take you now.'

She wondered whether to say that she had work to do, couldn't leave early. It was such an obvious tactic to impress the boss with her work ethic that someone as shrewd as Martin Beaumont would surely see through it. So she said, ‘If you're sure it's no trouble,' and slid gratefully on to the leather passenger seat beside the owner of Abbey Vineyards.

He'd seen her making the tour, had noted the animation of her audience, and now commented approvingly upon it. He didn't miss much, the boss, as she'd quickly realized when she came here to work for him. He said suddenly, ‘It's good to see you in a skirt for a change. All the attractive women seem to wear trousers nowadays.'

‘I usually wear a skirt or a dress for the tours, unless it's cold and blustery. The public seem to like it.'

‘I'm sure they do, when they see legs as attractive as yours, Sarah.'

She was mildly shocked and a little amused. Employers weren't supposed to make comments like that to their female staff nowadays, though she supposed she should regard herself as out of the working environment at this stage of the day.

As if he read her thoughts, Beaumont said, ‘Of course, I wouldn't pass compliments like that at work, but we've finished for the day now, haven't we? And they are very attractive legs!'

She couldn't think of a suitable light-hearted rejoinder. She was willing him not to deliver any more clichés. She resisted the temptation to pull her skirt down a little further over the fifteen denier tights beneath it and said, ‘You won't say that in a few years, when the varicose veins begin to take over.'

They both laughed at that and he said gallantly, ‘I can't imagine you with varicose veins, Sarah Vaughan!'

‘Age catches up with all of us, in the end, doesn't it?' She had learned to bandy clichés with the best of them, she thought wryly. ‘I'm thirty-three already, and I expect the next ten years will fly past even more quickly than the last.' It seemed to her a good moment to remind him that she was not some inexperienced ingénue who would be flattered by the attention of the boss, even though he was probably only engaging in a little harmless flirting.

‘No one would think you were in your thirties,' he said gallantly, swinging the Jaguar round a long left-hand bend. ‘Every time I see you I think what an attractive woman you are.'

‘I think we should change the subject now,' she said firmly. For the first time, she felt a vague fear, not that anything dire was going to happen, but that she was going to have an embarrassing few minutes. He had taken the B road, she noticed, the old road into Ross rather than the M50. Nothing wrong with that; it was the shorter, if not the quicker, way. But she would rather have been on a route which carried more traffic; this road was hardly used at all since the motorway had become available.