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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Edge
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Saying thank you must have cost the woman, but she was clearly less disgruntled now. ‘I could, I suppose. There's only Melba toast to make for the pâté. The goulash is simmering for lunch and it's a chilled dessert. I made plenty, if the doctor wants to stay on.'
‘Splendid,' Anna decided, beamed on her and left. Twenty minutes later the front doorbell shrilled. Through the study window Anna saw the housekeeper, wrapped in a burgundy-dyed sheepskin coat, escorted to a waiting taxi by the cabby. This time, it seemed, the gate police had been less rigid in their duties.
All seemed quiet in the drawing-room. Perhaps Dr Abercorn was patiently waiting for Daniel to open up. Anna leaned close to the panelled door and caught the sound of low sobbing. She nodded. It had taken a stranger to get through.
She felt little better herself. It was the same grief: his mother, adoptive father and half-sister dead; her child, her grandchild, poor Freddie. There was always a sense of guilt over the old surviving the young.
From her own soured experience of Jennifer, she knew there'd be plenty the boy must have regretted, however intense his love
for her. Quite early on he'd struck her as almost Oedipal, with Jennifer's behaviour fuelling his obsession. He would never be free of his mother; had even less chance now she was dead, an ever-present ghost to haunt him.
Anna returned to the kitchen to look in on the goulash, a rich brown with little peaks of red peppers, bubbling gently. Perhaps a tad heavy for midday eating, but the aromatic scents should tempt any reluctant appetite. She reached for baking potatoes from the vegetable rack, slit and seasoned three of the largest, ready for the oven.
Again the doorbell shrilled. She opened up and found a lanky figure in shabby brown leathers towering over her. He had a lean, curved, Don Quixote face with shaggy brows and an enormous, limply drooping, reddish moustache. The eyes, assessing her, were a bright blue, clear as a summer sky. Under one arm was a black helmet. Behind him, parked at the bottom of the steps, gleamed an enormous Harley.
‘Ms Plumley?' he enquired. ‘Superintendent Yeadings sent me. I'm known as Charlie Barley, but my first name's really John.'
The bodyguard. She held out her hand. ‘I'll use Charlie, if I may. I'm Anna.'
The gangling figure followed her in, produced ID. A DC taking six months' sabbatical, he explained. She couldn't help wondering why, but wouldn't ask outright.
‘Something smells good.'
‘I wasn't the cook, I'm afraid. You'll join us, of course?' She took his wide grin for assent and went to prepare a fourth potato.
In the event, while Daniel again slunk upstairs, Dr Abercorn made a swift departure. At least as far as his car, where he remained, presumably making notes, then just sitting, staring up at the cloudless sky.
Anna turned from the window and was startled to find Barley looking over her shoulder. He was a silent mover. She stepped away. ‘How well up on this business are you?' she asked.
‘Mr Yeadings briefed me, but I could do with more detail. That was the shrink leaving?'
She nodded. ‘I imagine he'll report back to the superintendent?'
‘Yup. Dr Abercorn's right in there with the team now. He's good. I know him.'
‘You've worked together?'
The droopy moustache quivered, curved up at the ends. ‘He sorted me out.'
Anna managed not to blink at the admission. The fact that Barley could freely offer it meant surely that the other had done a good job on him. Discretion, she warned herself: don't pry. I've known others go through personal hell and come out on the right side.
‘I hope you've an appetite. I'd calculated on Dr Abercorn staying for lunch. Would you care to call Daniel down? He might not hurry for me, but your voice will make him curious.'
The conversation over their meal was mainly gentle probing on Anna's part and a droll recital of ‘funny things that happened in the job' from Barley. Occasionally Daniel showed slight interest. Eventually, as she brought in the cheeseboard, Anna heard him burst out, ‘They're making such a bloody fuss over that bike crash. And the girl. She was only a fucking prostitute, for God's sake.'
‘A life's a life,' said the detective. ‘Has to be followed up.'
‘As if you care. Just a statistic.'
‘Like your family,' Anna ground out, disgusted with him.
It caught Daniel unprepared. He blanched and swung on her, mouth agape. Almost choking, he managed to get the words out. ‘That was a tragedy. God, I'd give everything for that not to have happened.'
‘Can't turn back the clock,' said the man. He was rolling out the cliches with monotonous detachment.
Daniel stared at him. ‘It's nothing to you, is it?' More curiosity than anger now.
‘It's my job. Happens all the time.'
But it doesn't, Anna thought. Murders aren't that common in Thames Valley. Wholesale slaughter almost unheard of. What was the man up to, gutting the boy?
But at least he was getting a reaction. She decided to take a step or two backwards and leave them to each other. ‘Why,' she
suggested, ‘don't you both make the most of the sunshine and take a turn round the grounds while I fill the dishwasher? The housekeeper's got the day off, but I'll serve coffee soon. After that we're going out for a drive. I've something to show you.'
The other two looked at each other. Daniel shrugged, took out a coin from his pocket, flipped it several times in one hand. ‘Uphill or down? Call for the river.'
‘Tails,' said Barley.
‘It's heads.' Daniel held out his hand with the coin in it. ‘Uphill then. We'll go to the woods.'
He pranced to the door, turned, twirled an imaginary moustache. ‘Aha, to the woods, me little darling!' — delivered in a theatrically villainous voice. Then a child's piping treble, ‘No, no! I am only thirteen, sir.' A gruff, ‘This is no time to be superstitious!' A frantic wail, ‘I shall tell the vicar!' Most villainous of all, ‘But I am the vicar!'
A faint flicker moved the detective's own moustache. Anna turned away, uneasy: you try to treat an adolescent like a grownup, and then in an instant he's a child again. Really I am fit only to deal with adults.
‘You'll need stout boots,' she said shortly to Barley. ‘It won't have dried out up there.'
‘These'll do,' the man said.
Daniel went upstairs to change from the clothes he'd worn for the police interview, and Anna appealed to Barley. ‘He has a rather morbid interest in the woods at present.'
‘I guessed he would have. Which is why I bid tails for the river. There are a few double-headed coins about and he was a tad too cocky. I've yet to see a double-tailed one.' At the door, he stopped. ‘May I ask where we're bound for later?'
Anna smiled. ‘I arranged a little treat to distract him.' She explained.
‘That's novel,' he said. ‘It'll be a first for me as well.'
So he would be coming too. Just as well, perhaps. He and Daniel might yet hit it off, man to man.
When the cab dropped Z at Miradec Interiors a young couple with a small boy were just going in. She fell in behind and let Hilary Durham take her for one of the group. He was far too occupied with pleasing the couple to notice, let alone recognise, her. They had come by appointment to view the computerised ground floor layout for an impressive Georgian town house.
Not to the manor born, Z noted, and a later mention of ‘Our Good Luck' was clue to a big National Lottery win or a Premium Bond turned up trumps.
Hilary was earnest and slightly bumbling still, but he knew his stuff. I'd have consulted him myself, she thought, falling instantly in love with the graceful staircase and elegant hall – if I had the money.
The clients loved the layout, but had doubts about the discreet colours. Hilary flicked at the screen, changed them to crude primaries, almost incandescent, and won his point. He passed on to display the state-of-the-art kitchen and the woman was enchanted. The man signed a clip of papers and they were given a copy of the video.
When Hilary saw them out he at last took account of the extra presence. ‘Oh, S-S-Sergeant,' he stuttered. ‘I'm so sorry. I …'
‘Don't be. I'm impressed. Actually I wondered if I'd find Mr Halliwell here.'
‘He was. But he got called away.'
‘So if I wait …?'
Hilary wriggled with discomfort. ‘Actually, I couldn't say. He could be gone some time. It was an emergency.'
‘Then maybe I could be of some help?'
‘You mean as police? No, nothing like that. A friend taken ill at Heathrow. He just panicked and rushed off.'
Z couldn't imagine the urbane and smooth-tongued Justin Halliwell in panic. ‘Was the friend catching a plane?' she asked. ‘Fear of flying can be awful.'
‘No. No, she was coming back. From Disneyworld.'
‘With her family?'
‘Alone.'
Now who goes to Disneyworld alone? Z asked herself. You'd surely beg, borrow or breed at least one child to take along. But Disneyworld meant Florida. Flying out of Orlando. Or even Miami.
‘How ill did she seem?'
‘Just jet lag, I guess.' But at that Hilary clammed up. Any confidence he'd displayed with the clients had totally disappeared. He was frankly in a dither.
Z's curiosity had been centred on cocaine. So did this connect? From Colombia or Cuba illegal immigrants smuggle the raw stuff into Miami by sea. It's picked up there and flown to the UK in innocent-looking tourists' luggage. Or, at worst and sometimes fatally, swallowed.
There was plenty of that going on. Cabin crews on the long haul trip were warned to look for passengers refusing food for fear of defecating too soon. Customs and Immigration at British airports included medical back-up. One of their less palatable jobs was recovery and examination of faeces from stay-over detainees.
And sometimes the plastic containers for drugs, often condoms, burst while still inside. Not a pleasant way to die if you didn't get to a surgeon in time.
‘I think,' Z told him, ‘you'd better give me Justin's mobile number.'
‘I'm not allowed to use it. Except in emergencies.'
‘This is one, believe me. I've other ways of obtaining it, but that could be too late. You know she could die, don't you? And where does that leave you? Responsible.'
She thought then she heard his teeth chatter. He certainly knew of the traffic she'd suspected. His hands were shaking as he leafed through a notebook from his jacket pocket.
‘Talk to him,' she ordered. ‘Tell him the police are already on to it. And not to do anything stupid. He's to stay wherever he is and I'll send emergency services.'
She watched his stricken face as he pressed out the number.
There was a babble of rapid speech at the other end, rising on a note of despair.
‘He's in his car,' Hilary whispered. ‘I think he wants to dump her.'
‘Is she still alive?' Z insisted. She waited while Hilary cut through Justin's torrent of words.
‘Unconscious,' he said.
‘Tell him it's his only chance. He must keep her alive until we can get a surgeon to her.'
 
‘Leave cover to the locals now,' Salmon snarled when she phoned to say Justin's girlfriend was in theatre at Hillingdon hospital having her abdomen explored. ‘You've got a job here, remember? The Boss is expecting you to drive him to Bristol.'
 
Anna steered the Jeep along the twisting lane and in on the rutted track beside a country pub. The usual notice boards had been removed, packed for transport to the Moroccan site, but the wind sock was still flying, indicating a mild blow, south-south-easterly. Daniel, across from her in the passenger seat, appeared not to notice it.
She parked, backing on to a striped marquee, and waved the two men through an opening in the fence. Across the field something bulky was being manhandled off a flat-bed trailer. It was square and heavy.
‘Good, we're in time to help,' Anna said complacently. They both started walking across the coarse grassland, Barley bringing up the rear. Ahead, a bulky metal object had also been unloaded and stood braced on four steel legs. Now, as they approached, an immense length of multi-coloured fabric was being drawn from a cube of wickerwork, like an outsized string of red, blue and orange handkerchiefs produced by a conjuror from a hat. Two men in charge ran out, dragging it behind like a great, gaudy, sloughed-off snakeskin.
‘It's a ruddy balloon,' Daniel marvelled. ‘Are we going up?' He was in there at once, helping pull open the folds, shouting to the others as outsize fans on the ground blew air in and the
near end started to billow.
Again he was that complicated adolescent mixture of fascinated child and know-all male adult tackling technicalities. Anna went across to Jeremy who was testing the burners. He looked up and grinned, ran a hand over his cropped white hair. ‘Good to see you, Squadron Leader.'
‘Likewise,' she said. ‘We've an extra passenger, Jeremy. My grandson's bodyguard. Did Caspar fill you in on the background?'
‘He did. You have my sincere condolences, ma'am.'
DC Barley had drifted over to inspect the equipment. The two men shook hands. ‘You the pilot?' They stood chatting, then together heaved the basket upright from the prone position.
‘That's my section.' Jeremy pointed to the largest of five divisions in the basket, the central oblong. The others were square, forming each corner of the cube. ‘Normally we take two passengers in each section, making nine, including the pilot.'
Barley examined the cockpit with its coloured hanging cords that controlled the upper panels of the balloon. Under the burners there wasn't a lot of space for a pilot, once mounted, because of the gas bottles.
‘Flown before?' asked Jeremy.
‘Just in holiday jets, and the Chiltern chopper. Did a bit of gliding off Booker airfield.'
‘This is different,' Jeremy promised, busy fitting protective spats to the four steel legs of the superstructure. ‘Total silence between burns, no engine, no straining fabric sounds, because we're wind-borne, not resisting the air. Too high even for traffic noise over the motorways. Peaceful, civilised.'
When the balloon was fully bellied and floating, they climbed in, using square toe-holds in the wickerwork to reach the breast-high rim. Anna and Daniel were to one side, the boy directionally ahead; Barley and a crewman on the other. Each in a separate section, balancing weight.
Jeremy ran through the safety precautions, indicated the security loops to be grasped, reminded them he'd repeat instructions directly before landing. ‘You'll see there are no seats.
That'd be a complication if anything went wrong. Which it won't.'
‘OK then, everybody happy? We're off.' A groundsman loosed the moorings.
The burner roared above them. Slowly they began to rise.
Anna turned and smiled at her grandson. His eyes blazed with excitement, his features taut. Then he smiled back, and her heart went cold. Such intensity, almost malevolence.
Dear God, don't let him do anything crazy.
 
Jeremy had said it was peaceful. It might have been so for Barley if he hadn't been uneasy about the boy. Silent it certainly was when, above nine hundred feet, Jeremy cut gas to the roaring burners. The last sound from below had been miniature cows lowing as they crossed unbelievably green pasture, driven towards a toy milking parlour. The River Chess snaked flatly, country lanes wriggled like kinky tape. As they rose still higher motorways began to look just as marked on the map.
They were progressing in a series of leisurely hops, soaring steadily as hot air filled the fabric, then, as the fire's roar was cut, more slowly drifting down until the burners took up again and they rose even higher.
In the late afternoon light, tapestry colours of autumn woods, lush fields and tidy country houses with turquoise swimming pools began to take on a harmonious overall blue haze. Long shadows drew bars across the valleys. The sky alone remained luminescent, immeasurable, with the sun sinking in a pearly silver towards the left horizon.
The DC looked over Jeremy's head as he squatted in the cockpit. Daniel, like himself, was in the forward basket section, on the far side. Out of reach. He was leaning far out, focusing on the chequered fields they were presently passing over. The old lady, behind him and separated by the breast-high wicker partition, was gazing back towards the disappearing village where they had taken off. She was smiling as she turned, leaning forward to speak with her grandson, one arm outstretched.
They were above the sun's level now, the balloon casting no
shadow on a regimented pattern of buildings below. Barley took them for a military establishment, then recalled it would be RAF Halton: maybe a station at which the old lady had once served. Their altitude had wiped out ground contours and he barely recognised the flattened escarpment above the Vale of Aylesbury. Men appeared to be winching up a car upended half-way down the slope.
Fascinated, he could pick out villages he remembered driving through, half-familiar loops of waterways meandering like flat ribbons to lose themselves finally towards the Thames.
A startled cry made him straighten and turn. Across from the cockpit two figures were struggling, the woman's arms clamped about the young man, he fighting to get her off his back. Both out of reach because of the cockpit in between, and Jeremy's hands busy with the burners.
Bloody balls of fire! I should have kept close, the DC knew. Can't do a bloody thing from here. They should have warned me he was this crazy. For God's sake, what was the old girl thinking of to give him a chance like this? Did she want him to leap?
‘Get down!' roared Jeremy, reaching out to grasp Daniel by the shoulder, but the boy swung back an elbow, thrusting him away. Anna Plumley, knocked off balance, gave a little grunt and fell back against the rear wall of wicker, one hand still clutching the boy's jacket which pulled down imprisoning his arms. Savagely he shook her off, like a terrier with a rat.
He reached out with something in his hand. For a brief second he held it over the void, looking down and then, too fast for Barley to be sure what the object was, he'd released it. Falling, there was a flash of metal as the low sun caught it. Then it was gone. Daniel drew back, turned a mocking smile on him. ‘What's the sweat, man? Didn't you ever play Pooh Sticks?'
Jeremy was talking into his mobile, ordering up the truck to meet them, giving location of an emergency landing site. They were dropping steadily now, the fall decelerated with steady, short bursts of burning.
He ignored Anna's attempt to apologise for the scuffle. He repeated the landing instructions to them, twisted round to
check all their grips on the safety ropes, watched them take up squat position for landing, heads below the basket's rim. The ground was getting close now.
‘There will be one slight bump,' he said. ‘Then a second slighter one, and we'll have landed.'
They barely felt a thing, then a little slither on grass, and cool evening air blowing on their flushed faces. The basket stayed upright.
‘So what,' Jeremy asked grimly, facing Anna and her grandson, ‘was all that about?'
DC Barley looked at the boy's closed face. He'd thought for a mistaken moment that Daniel had meant to jump. But it wasn't that. He'd risked killing someone below by dropping a metal object. So what had it been? Something he needed to be rid of? Evidence that hadn't turned up, despite fingertip searches of the murder site?
Like a sharp kitchen knife, or a small handgun? Who the hell was he protecting?
Jeremy was white with contained anger. ‘Everyone out,' he ordered. He swung down and waited while the others clambered over the high edge of the basket.

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