Rainstone Fall (22 page)

‘They . . . kind of hired me to look into something for them and I’d like to give them a progress report.’

‘Mm, kind of hired? I thought you’d have enough employment explaining away the dead body in the back of your car.’

‘Does everybody know about that?’ I wondered.

‘Yup.’

A couple of the regulars nodded sagely without bothering to look up.

‘Did you know the man? Albert Barrington?’

‘Never heard of him. Not known in these parts until after his demise.’

The regulars shook their heads. I realized what it was. It was altogether too quiet in this place, there was no music playing yet and not enough customers. Cosy, but perhaps a bit too cosy right now. ‘Do you know where the kids might live?’

She shook her head and continued stacking. ‘Somewhere in the valley perhaps. Not in Larkhall, never seen them around except in here sometimes. Definitely not regulars.’ The regulars shook their heads like a bunch of radio-controlled toys.

‘You wouldn’t know their surname, then?’

She didn’t. I pushed my card across the bar. ‘Could you give me a ring next time they’re in? I’d appreciate it.’

‘As if we didn’t have enough to do in here without . . . yeah, all right, if it isn’t too busy and if I remember and if they happen to be in when I’m in, I only work three shifts now.’ She swiped the card off the bar and stuck it into a pile of papers wedged next to the till. Not much point in me waiting by the phone then.

I finished my coffee and left. I had stuff to do. I dialled Jill’s number, wanting to reassure her that I thought I could pull the museum job off, but there was no answer. Then I armed myself with some cash, rode to the catalogue showroom place on the Upper Bristol Road and bought a large black rucksack, a pencil torch, a bolt cutter, two combination bicycle locks, a padlock and a couple of aluminium fire escape ladders since I had no illusions that I could learn the rope work of abseiling in just a couple of days. In fact the less I thought about climbing the better I was able to suppress the panic trying to bubble up from behind my navel. These long ladders made from lightweight chains and treads, designed to get you out of a burning building, appealed to my low-tech mind.

Back at Mill House Tim was still presiding over the sitting room from his nest on the floor in front of the fire. The paraphernalia of convalescence spilled out around him like flotsam from a shipwreck: painkillers, box of tissues, his phone, his laptop, his iPod and headphones, bottles of Pilsner Urquell (‘I got bored!’), a bag of doughnuts and a stack of Annis’s M.C. Beaton novels.

Since Tim couldn’t join us anywhere else it only seemed natural that headquarters moved into the sitting room. Soon Annis and I added to the chaos by spreading maps and pictures I’d taken of the museum on the floor and dumping other paraphernalia of the forthcoming heist everywhere. Annis and I pored over the large-scale map of Bath. While I had been at Jake’s to scrounge the dinghy Annis had scouted out a place to launch and recover it from. The closest place where we could get access to the Avon upriver from Pulteney Weir was a long way out, opposite Kensington Meadows and the playing fields. Here Annis had found a farmer’s access road to the meadow we could use. It still meant carrying the inflated dinghy and its engine a hundred and fifty yards through the meadow to the water, but we might manage to do it unobserved. That side of the river appeared completely dark at night, especially when viewed from the well-lit Kensington side.

None of this seemed quite real, it felt much more like planning a movie sequence than something we were going to attempt in the real world of police, courts and crowded prisons. Tim’s lugubrious comments didn’t help.

‘Well, it’s been nice knowing you two . . .’

‘Rubbish, we’ll pull it off, no sweat. The more unlikely, the more James Bondian, the better. No one will expect it and we’ll be out of there before they know what’s hit them.’ I didn’t feel any of this excessive optimism. I felt absolutely certain that one day I would write about it from a prison cell, or even a hospital bed en route to a prison cell. Still, all in a good cause . . .

‘They’ll scoop you up and bag you before you’ll manage to lay a finger on
The Dancer
. The whole thing stinks. Somebody, and it stands to reason it was the fuzz, followed me for days. They know something. They know Aqua Investigations is up to something.’

‘I didn’t notice any surveillance while I was out.’ Annis munched thoughtfully on one of the dozens of mini doughnuts she had brought back for Tim. ‘And I really looked, tried to catch them out.’

‘Neither have I.’ I didn’t say that even now I had the distinct feeling an invisible net had already been thrown over us, that whatever I did, wherever I went, someone was watching. The darkening windows suddenly made me feel exposed. I got up and closed the curtains on all of them. I tried to be casual about it, but looked hard into the gathering darkness, looking for any sign of movement beyond the rain. A hopeless thing to do. A whole battalion could hide out there and as long as they weren’t wearing Day-Glo uniforms I wouldn’t see them.

‘The river is so swollen you won’t be able to navigate your little cockleshell. You’ll drown like rats and I’ll lie here unable to get up, and I’ll starve to death. Right, you can’t have any more of these.’ He swiped the family-size bag of doughnuts and stuffed it under his blanket. ‘It’s all that stands between me and death by starvation. They’ll find my emaciated body when eventually they open up the house after your bloated remains have washed up in Avonmouth . . .’

I let Tim witter on because in some weird way it was beginning to cheer me up. ‘You’re just jealous because you can’t come along, dear.’

‘I told you when you first suggested it that it was an idiotic scheme.’

‘You’re just scared that I might find out I can do without your criminal expertise and hand you a redundancy notice.’

‘Ha! Redundancy implies employment. You haven’t paid me for ages. Anyway, you’re scared of heights, remember? Halfway up there you’ll crap yourself with fear and the fire brigade will have to come and fetch you down like a kitten from an apple tree.’

This was so close to the centre of my own fears that I nearly told him to shut up, only I knew that the resulting silence would scare me more. ‘I’ll cope.’

‘You’ll never even get there. You’ll get swept away or your dinghy will turn turtle and you’ll drown.’ Tim was getting into his stride now and obviously enjoying his role as gloom-dispensing oracle. He had even acquired a familiar; ever since he’d settled down in front of the fire the cat hadn’t left his side.

I coughed as I lit yet another cigarette and wondered how long I could stay afloat for. ‘We can both swim.’ Annis nodded her agreement.

‘Not in the weir you can’t. It’s become eroded and the changed shape creates a fierce suction pulling you down to the bottom and preventing you from coming up again. Might be all sorts of bodies already down there. And with the river in spate like this your chances will be zero anyway. You’ll both be dead a couple of minutes after hitting the water. What’s for supper, by the way?’

It was Annis’s turn to cook. While I watched her boil fettucine and drown a few handfuls of prawns in arrabiata sauce straight from the supermarket (‘You didn’t think I was going to knit you a
cassoulet
, did you?’) I called Jill. A lot could go wrong but if it didn’t then it looked as though within a couple of days we might at last be able to exchange Louis for the Penny Black and
The Dancer
. There was no answer.

‘I tried before and didn’t get any answer then either.’

Annis elaborately licked a large wooden spoon, then waggled it at me. ‘Mm, yeah, meant to tell you: I swung round her place earlier after I picked up some of Tim’s stuff and she didn’t answer. I don’t think she was in, I leant on the bell for a while, it would have woken the dead.’

‘I’ll try her again later.’ I slipped the phone back into my pocket and decided to do rather more than that later.

We had just sat down to keep Tim company in front of the fire and begun to slurp fettucine and chase prawns round our bowls when I sensed more than heard a vehicle approach. I wandered off with my bowl of pasta into the dark hall and opened the door a crack, from where I could watch the entrance to the yard without showing a backlit silhouette of myself. Now I could clearly hear the slow, distinctive rattle of a large diesel approaching down the track. A few moments later headlights appeared and soon I recognized Jake’s vintage Land Rover. He was pulling a Rigid Inflatable Boat on a trailer, complete with outboard engine tilted up, into the yard. I turned on the outside light, which at the moment consisted of one feeble light bulb. There was more light coming from Jake’s Land Rover. He climbed from the cab, still in his overalls.

‘Hold this.’ I handed him the bowl of pasta and went to admire the boat. I walked around it, patting its sleek black flanks. It was far bigger than I had expected, a lot more substantial. Surely this would stand up to any amount of current, any kind of weather. ‘Can it be carried? With two people?’

‘Just. Without the engine. It’s a good little boat, that. I’ll leave you the trailer of course. Got anything to pull it with?’

‘Annis’s Landy.’

‘You’re sorted then. Cheers, Chris.’ He handed me back the bowl. Empty.

I stared at it in consternation. This had to be some sort of conspiracy.

Annis had appeared in the doorway but preferred to stay dry in its shelter while Jake unhitched the trailer.

‘It’s got a twelve horsepower engine, I know that doesn’t sound much, but it’s perfectly adequate. I filled her up, you can return her dry though, it’ll only go back into storage anyway. Give us a hand.’

We unhitched the trailer and pulled the boat as far as it went into the incomplete shelter of one of the crumbling outbuildings. The one adjacent to it, with most of its sagging roof still complete, hid Tim’s black Audi, under bits of tarp, carpet and cardboard. Jake spotted it instantly with the trained eye of the obsessive. ‘I won’t ask.’

‘It’s just Tim’s Audi. He’s come to stay for a few days.’

‘Blimey, does he always park like that? Right, gotta go, car to finish.’ He climbed into his cab, waved a goodbye and cranked the Land Rover out of the yard.

In the kitchen I made myself a tuna sandwich, closely watched by the cat who had suddenly appeared out of the ground beside me. How do they know? He was there before I got the tin-opener in. After explaining to him the merits of opposable thumbs when it came to the acquisition of tinned tuna I relented and dropped some in his cat bowl – and where had that come from? – just so I got some peace in which to munch my sandwich.

And think. And the more I thought, the more uneasy I felt. The feeling that my life was controlled by outside forces, that events and people might pop in and out of the ground like a nameless cat, was beginning to get to me. The museum robbery was of course an utterly ridiculous and doomed undertaking, even if the couple attempting it had not been a pair of painters with a fear of heights. Now that I was by myself and I didn’t have Tim’s ridicule to cheer me up the depressing realities of our situation crowded in on me.

Reluctantly I put on my still-damp leather jacket and boots, got on the bike and rumbled through the drizzle into town. The Norton never liked being parked on steep hills so I left it in Portland Place and walked the few yards down to Jill’s little house in Harley Street. No lights were showing. The blinds at the upstairs windows were drawn but I seemed to remember they’d been like that when we came to fetch Jill to Mill House. I checked my watch. It was only half past eight. The doorbell was shrill and remained unanswered, even after the fifth time of ringing. I called her mobile again without success. Bending down I pushed back the tin flap of the letter box. Only the dim glow of the street lights that fell through the doors leading off it illuminated the narrow hall. I hunted round my jacket pockets for my Maglite without success. What I wanted to see was in complete darkness. I turned on my mobile and, using the bright display as a torch, stuck it through the letter box. I had to hold it at an awkward angle and it slid from my rain-slickened fingers and dropped down the other side of the door, emitting a bleep of protest as it hit the large pile of uncollected post on the other side.

That decided it. It was only a Yale lock but my lock-picking expertise, despite Tim’s efforts to train me, was pitiful. The houses next door showed light behind their front room curtains. From the one on the left I could hear snatches of TV sound. I hoped the people on the other side were equally busy and didn’t suddenly decide to leave by the front door. I worked for a nerve-tingling minute, during which several people walked past on the pavement behind me. I forced myself not to look over my shoulder but to concentrate on the inner workings of the lock. At last it clicked open and I pushed through into the hall. The pile of post made it difficult, as some of it slid under the door. I picked up my mobile, closed the door and turned on the light. At my feet lay mainly junk mail, leaflets and takeaway menus and stuff addressed to The Householder, but there were other letters as well, most bearing the name A. P. Downs. Presumably the previous tenant. There was no post for Jill, since she had only lived there for one or two days before tragedy struck. I simply couldn’t see how Jill could have entered her house without sweeping most of the mail to the side as I had done when I opened the door. Unless she had used a rear entrance. I dropped the letters back on the floor and looked into the sitting room on the right. In the orange glow from the street lights I could see that nothing had changed in here, the ashtray overflowing, the half-emptied boxes, the china pigs on the telly. I was still feeling for the light switch when a police car pulled up outside, without siren but blue lights flashing. Two officers jumped out. Now was a good time to find out if there was another way out. One of the officers made straight for the front door, already flashing his torch at the window, the other went to the next door neighbour’s, presumably to cut off any escape from the back.