Tainted Ground (3 page)

‘It really is only a pay scale,' Patrick explained. ‘I have to take orders from everyone above the rank of sergeant. James won't see it like that.' He went off to find a couple of whisky tumblers, one of which he waggled interrogatively in his father's direction before pouring them both a tot from the new bottle of single malt he had brought in with him.

‘This could be another test,' said John reflectively from his armchair, after taking an appreciative sip. ‘This is wonderful – you're spoiling me. To see how you handle such a potentially difficult situation, I mean. They can't be that stupid at HQ as not to realize the state of affairs they're creating.'

‘But most of the difficulty could well be James's,' Elspeth said. ‘Patrick, be so good as to fetch the ladies a sherry – or whatever Ingrid wants.'

‘Sorry,' he said and hastened away to amend the omission.

‘Use those nice large schooner glasses,' she called after him.

‘Well, I think it's really crass,' I said, nevertheless amused at the way she always keeps Patrick on his best behaviour even when he is really put out about something.

‘Or a test for Carrick?' Patrick said when he returned. ‘Or the powers-that-be are a bunch of insensitive thickos?'

‘Ring James,' I suggested.

‘I'll grovel,' Patrick said gloomily and went away again.

We could tell by his face when he came back into the room that the call had not gone well. He told us that Carrick had already complained about the arrangement, which he felt to be untenable, and although he recognized their friendship he felt they could not work together under those circumstances. Patrick, therefore, would kindly stay away until something else could be sorted out. Despite every assurance that Patrick had given him he was of the opinion that the Bath posting stemmed from an unverified supposition by everyone that he was no longer, or not yet, fit for the job.

‘Scottish stubbornness and pride,' Patrick said, taking a fierce swig of his drink. ‘Where do I go from here?'

‘It'll blow over,' Elspeth said soothingly. ‘He'll soon come round.'

Patrick shook his head. ‘I've a nasty suspicion he won't.' He did not burden his mother with the news that Carrick had once taken a broadsword to him following another misunderstanding and there had been a brief but electrifying duel that the inhabitants of a certain Scottish castle are still talking about.

C
arrick's objections were overruled. I was made aware of this before the man in my life heard of it by the rather surprising development of a phone call to my mobile number from Carrick himself on the Sunday morning.

‘Are you free to talk?' he asked anxiously.

I told him that I was, having stayed behind to watch over John as Patrick had accompanied his mother to church.

‘I've been ordered to get on with it and stop arguing, so there's no choice,' he muttered. ‘But I don't need help, I can do my job. I can't face having someone shadowing me around either, learning the job or not and him with a senior rank, whoever it is. Another thing; as you well know, we're not two of a kind, Patrick and I, and we'll be at one another's throats in no time at all. He's always worked to a different set of rules, ways that I simply can't adopt. So he and I will have to keep a distance, work on different jobs, if that's possible. Not that I won't be there to advise him if he wants it.' Carrick paused awkwardly and then continued, ‘I just want you to know there's no ill-feeling, Ingrid, nothing personal, especially as far as you're concerned.'

‘Patrick only asked to be in the West Country because of his father's illness,' I told him.

‘Aye, that's as maybe. And I know that Patrick once saved my life – which makes it worse. I feel a right bastard being the way I am.'

‘How can I help?' I asked when he stopped speaking.

‘You can't. There's nothing anyone can do. We'll have to get by as best we can but I just wish everyone would understand that this isn't helping me at all. But who knows? Patrick might soon decide the job's not for him.'

We rang off and I hoped I had been mistaken about the hint of hope in his voice when he had uttered those final words.

Monday morning arrived and Patrick set off in dark suit and sober tie, the crooked smile he gave me as he went out of the door an indication of his apprehension. Everyone at the rectory was on tenterhooks all day and when he returned, quite early at just before six, and headed straight for the whisky we all imagined the worst.

I left it to Elspeth to ask the question. ‘Well?' she said quietly.

Patrick swirled the golden liquid around in his glass reflectively for a few moments, chuckled humourlessly and then said, ‘It was interesting in many ways. I didn't get to see James, just his sergeant, Lynn Outhwaite, who appears to have been delegated as messenger between us. And despite what I was told it would appear that I take orders from her. That doesn't actually bother me much as she's a nice girl and too busy to make things awkward. Anyway, I spent the first part of the morning touring the station with Sergeant Woods, who, by the way, has been told he can give me orders too but doesn't like to. The pair of us are old enough stagers to get around that. So, yes, we toured the nick, finding out what everyone does, then I was allowed out to do a little checking on a couple of cases; a shoplifting lady who obviously genuinely forgot to pay as her mother had died the previous day and a yobbo, all of fourteen, who'd been arrested for being drunk and disorderly and then made a complaint that the police had roughed him up at the nick making him fall over and hurt his head.'

‘I trust you were very careful,' I said apprehensively, mulling over this potential nest of vipers.

Patrick seemed to have recovered his sense of humour but I doubt it was anything to do with the single malt. ‘Oh yes,' he replied. ‘There was no question of leaning on sonny boy to make him retract. Gone are the days of carte blanche. I just requested politely that he come to the nick, with his mother, who was present at this interview – Daddy's in Parkhurst – to identify the people who had done him over. He said he couldn't remember who they were. I then said that was very likely as a police surgeon who was present in connection with another case had remarked that as the arrested boy was out cold care must be taken to place him so he did not choke in the event of vomiting. Our man then kicked the wall a couple of times. After indulging in what went for thinking in his case, he admitted that he'd made it all up and had hurt his head falling into the gutter
before
he passed out. Would he get into trouble for wasting police time? his mother asked. I said we'd think about it but there was a slim chance he wouldn't.'

‘What about the shoplifting lady?' Elspeth asked. I happen to know that this is one of her horrors; that she will leave a shop, her mind on other things, and completely forget to pay.

‘I managed to persuade the manager not to prosecute.'

‘Oh, well done!' she cried.

‘And the police surgeon?' John ventured.

‘Would you care for another dram?' Patrick asked him solemnly.

‘But as far as James goes …?' I said to Patrick later when we were alone.

‘Never the twain shall meet.'

‘It's really as bad as that?'

‘This was only day one, mind.'

‘But you actually get on very well with one another.'

‘Socially and for most of the time, yes. I just wish the guy would give me a trial run. He ought to realize that I'm not the sort to start throwing my weight about.'

‘What James actually said to me might not be quite the whole truth of it,' I said. I had told Patrick about the phone call.

‘How so?'

‘James is probably worried about the kind of man you
can
be. When you're cornered. When you're
in extremis
. When a man has threatened or hurt me. You've killed and maimed, Patrick. With your bare hands, with your knife, with firearms. When you found James where he'd been left to die inside that old boiler and the men who had done it had followed you … James told me he'd never, ever, seen such filthy fighting tactics.'

‘It was three against one.'

‘Cheerfully,' I said. ‘Cheerfully and with relish, according to James, you dealt out potentially crippling injuries.'

His eyes never leaving my face Patrick said, ‘You've witnessed me—' He broke off.

‘I still have the odd nightmare,' I disclosed. This was probably unfair of me as on that particular, different, occasion he had been fighting for his life following a period of ghastly maltreatment. And another time when he had broken a man's neck. The sound had been akin to that made by snapping a stick of seaside rock between gloved hands. Orders then, though, orders.

‘You're too scary by half,' I said. ‘For Bath, that is. And for someone like James who hasn't quite got over almost dying.'

‘This will fail, then, you think?'

‘Not necessarily. I suggest you stay right out of his way. If your paths do cross, pretend he's Elspeth. Treat him as you would her.'

‘Buy him flowers, you mean?'

‘Don't be pig-stubborn!' I bawled. ‘No, GENTLY!'

Matters did not improve and as the week progressed Patrick's lips became tighter and the look in his eyes more strained. Tactful enquiry elicited the information that extra awkwardness and difficulty was being created by Lynn Outhwaite having to act as go-between. For, obviously, as Carrick's sergeant there was a need for her to be at his side when he left the station to deal with things directly. When this happened and she was required to break off from what she was doing in order to forward instructions and possibly information to someone working on another case it was Carrick himself who began to run out of patience.

On the Friday morning the inevitable happened and the two men met face to face in a corridor. There was no shouting match, the resulting exchange of views being conducted in the privacy of Carrick's office. Patrick assured me that he did not lose his temper, which I believed for I know him well enough to be aware of what it takes to make him lose control.

‘So did you resolve
anything
?' I asked.

‘No, we were interrupted. Lynn called him out and they shot off all bells and whistles. I went back to doing a Health and Safety risk-assessment of the nick.'

We discovered the reason for Carrick's hasty departure later that evening from the local TV news. Three bodies had been discovered by walkers in a disused farm building about two miles from Hinton Littlemoor. Such were the circumstances of the find that two elderly women had been taken to hospital suffering from shock. It would appear, yelled the over-excited young reporter, that the murder victims had been strung up by their feet and their throats had then been cut. The crime was already being dubbed the Ritual Killings.

James Carrick appeared on camera, with Lynn Outhwaite, mobbed by the media and looking a little driven. Questioned, he said merely that the murder victims had not yet been identified and that scene-of-crime officers would be working at the barn throughout the night.

‘No one's said so but it's Hagtop Farm,' Elspeth said when the TV had been turned off. ‘I'd recognize that building anywhere. There was such a fuss when it was erected. The farm's been an unhappy place for as long as anyone in the village can remember. And when foot and mouth struck a few years ago and all the cattle and sheep had to be destroyed it finished off poor old Barney Stonelake, the farmer, as well. They said he died of a broken heart. His son restocked and carried on for a while but when his mother had a stroke and had to go into a nursing home recently he had everything auctioned off and put the place on the market.'

I glanced at Patrick, the acute misery at his rejection tangible. Our eyes met and he put it into words.

‘I should be there,' he said.

‘Then go,' I said.

‘James made his feelings perfectly plain this morning. I'd be accused of making trouble.'

Up until now I had vowed that I would not interfere. For, after all, everything was now different and there was no need for me to become involved in Patrick's new venture. I was discounting the words of a particularly poisonous civil servant, Nicholas Haldane, now in prison, who had once told me that without me Patrick would be nothing. It was untrue. But the female mindset does have its uses.

‘Where are you going?' Patrick enquired as I headed for the door. He sounded a trifle alarmed, as if thinking that I was furious with him and raging off.

I blew him a kiss.

Two police vehicles were parked among others that possibly contained hopeful newshounds at the end of the lane that led to the crime scene, blue-and-white incident tape fluttering everywhere. I spoke to the constable who had flagged me down.

‘Is Detective Chief Inspector Carrick still here?' I asked.

‘Are you from the press?' he wanted to know.

‘No. Would you please ask him if I may approach? My name's Ingrid Langley.'

‘I'm afraid that no one's permitted to—'

‘Please ask him,' I interrupted. ‘It's very important.'

‘To the case?'

‘Yes.'

Of course it was, silly.

I sat, for some reason with heart hammering, while he got on his radio. The answer came quickly and one of the vehicles was moved so I could manoeuvre past it. The lane was very rutted and longer than I had imagined, the brightly lit scene ahead of me looking at first glance grotesquely like the venue for a rave.

The open area around the barn, which was of brutal, modern construction, covered what must have been at least six acres and consisted of sections of concrete with coarse tufts of grass and weeds growing in the cracks between them. There were various police vehicles parked there and other, unmarked, cars but they were reduced almost to toys by the size of the building itself. I could discern no trees or anything that might give a clue that here we were in deepest Somerset: this had been agribusiness, pure and simple.