Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Didn’t know you had a cat.’

‘He’s just passing through.’

‘What’s his name?’ He bent down and scratched the cat’s ears.

‘He hasn’t got one.’

‘You could call him Mackerel.’

‘Not a chance.’ Eventually I poured two cups and handed one to Needham, who accepted it with only the faintest hint of a smile and let himself sink on to a chair with a little grunt. ‘You’re a damn nuisance, Chris, but at least you’re a civilized nuisance. You wouldn’t have any sweetener of course?’ he asked while tumbling sugar cubes into his cup.

‘What are you after, Mike?’ Something about this visit was decidedly odd. ‘You’re not looking for blunt instruments, are you? What’s the latest on Barrington’s death? You must know by now it wasn’t me, so why keep harassing me?’

‘Harassing? You feel harassed? You really shouldn’t. Relax,’ he said with an expansive sweep of his arms. ‘It’s all routine. You know the drill.’

I patted my pockets in search of cigarettes and came up with nothing. I made to get some but he was well ahead of me.

‘Sit down, Honeypot, have one of mine.’ He slithered a packet of Camel across the table.

‘But you don’t smoke,’ I protested while I peeled the cellophane off the brand new pack.

‘Took them off an underage kid earlier.’

‘Who happened to smoke my brand.’ Why did I get the feeling he didn’t want me to leave the kitchen while his minions rummaged around my place?

‘You don’t smoke anything else, do you?’ he asked casually.

‘You know I don’t. It bores me.’

‘Well, Albert Barrington didn’t find it boring, that’s for sure. And at his age. Pot-head pensioners, that’s all we need now. Where do our senior citizens go to score these days, what do you reckon? Do dealers hang around their minibuses outside the bingo halls? Or do they grow the stuff down the allotment? A new category for the show bench, I dare say. .’ Needham appeared to be talking to himself and between occasional sips of coffee kept up a leisurely stream of whimsical observations about the changing nature of drug crime on his patch. There didn’t seem to be anything he wanted from me. Though if he really didn’t know who Barrington used to buy his blow from then he and Deeks had to have had a complete communication breakdown. I began to wonder just how good a deal Gem Stone had struck with him that he managed to keep her out of a murder inquiry. The longer we sat around the more fidgety I became, with Deeks and Sorbie crawling all over my place. I lit another cigarette with the stub of the first and poured more coffee. Through the half-glazed kitchen door I saw Deeks trundling past across the meadow, returning from the studio no doubt. I trusted Needham, as a due-process-by-the-book-god-honest copper, but Sorbie was still an unknown quantity and I did now know that Deeks was bent, which made his traipsing round the property without an escort rather nerve-racking. My skin tingled with sweat. Needham didn’t comment but probably hadn’t made Detective Superintendent without having a nose for other people’s fear. At the same time as luxuriating in his coffee break and wittering on about Policing the City of Bath (you could hear the capital letters) as though he was addressing a committee of concerned citizens he seemed to be listening not to my answers but to the house around him.

‘This is just a formality, Honeysett, we must be seen never to leave a tern unstoned, as they say.’ He chuckled to himself. I just hate it when he chuckles. ‘A pensioner getting murdered excites the press for some reason and then the press go and excite the pensioners. Old people feel the most vulnerable to violent crime, even though in reality they’re the least likely to suffer from it. Or any other crime, for that matter. The group most likely to be victims of crime are the fifteen to twenty-five-year-olds, which is the very group that scares the pensioners. But statistics mean nothing and perception is everything.’

‘Oh, quite.’ I didn’t find it easy to join in with this drivel, whether it was true or not. ‘Did you ever find a weapon?’

‘The Good Old Blunt Instrument? No. But we have a notion it might have been a cricket bat that rendered him senseless. Your car then finished him off. Shame you didn’t report it missing earlier, you’d be completely in the clear now.’ He shrugged it off as though it was of little real importance.

‘Cricket bat, how very British,’ I observed.

‘Well, believe it or not our hoodlum fraternity have started trading in their American ash for English willow recently. Ever since prosecutors started asking defendants — who just happened to have baseball bats in their cars at the time of their arrest — to explain the finer details of the game for the benefit of the court. Long faces all round of course, it’s like asking a kid from the Bronx to explain the rules of cricket. Personally I believe as a weapon the cricket bat has the edge. You play at all? Ah, here comes the faithful Sorbie,’ he said, drained his cup and rose. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Honeysett, we shan’t bother you any longer. For now.’ He silently directed DI Sorbie out of the house. ‘Miss Jordan,’ Sorbie said flatly in farewell to Annis. Deeks already stood by his car. We watched as doors slammed and the drivers sorted themselves out, turning their ugly big saloons around in my potholed yard. I was so relieved I barely managed to suppress the impulse to give them a cheery wave as they surged out of the gate.

‘Phew,’ I observed eloquently.

Annis let out a deep breath with puffed-out cheeks. ‘What did they want?’

I shrugged. ‘What could they have been looking for?’

‘Sorbie didn’t say. He didn’t answer any of my questions and never volunteered a word. I annoyed the shit out of him for sure.’

‘Did you see at all what Deeks was up to outside?’

‘No, I couldn’t keep an eye on both. Nothing much to find, though, is there?’

‘That’s not necessarily what I’m worried about.’

‘You don’t think Deeks would plant stuff on us? You’re getting paranoid, Chris.’

‘You’re right. Nevertheless, I’ll have a wander about, see what Deeks saw.’

I pulled on my jacket and made myself walk slowly all over my little realm; I kicked at things rusting and mouldering in the outbuildings, got my trouser legs damp crossing the meadow, stood by the mill pond reflecting the dull lead of the sky. The feeling of being watched was growing all the time and I began to imagine eyes and ears in every shadow. Indeed, if Needham was half as clever as I suspected him to be then he had come here to stir things up so he could watch what happened next.

I made doubly sure that no one was hanging around among the hedgerows. The more I thought about it the less sense the last twenty minutes made. I had seen police searches before and they’d been protracted, painstaking affairs involving many officers and technicians, not a couple of CID types wandering about the place with their hands in their pockets while their superior officer took coffee in the kitchen. But when I found no sign of them anywhere I was just too relieved to worry about it for long.

‘It’s out near Monkton Farleigh,’ I explained to Annis while I topped up the Norton’s tank from a jerry can. ‘Rufus Connabear, at Restharrow.’

‘Hairy, evil-smelling dwarf — ’

‘You know him?’ I interrupted in astonishment.

‘No, restharrow, you twit! It’s a dwarf shrub, grows like a weed all over the place near my parents’ house in Devon, and it stinks. Strange name to give your house but I guess it takes all sorts.’

‘I’ve come to that conclusion myself recently.’

Monkton Farleigh was a pretty one-eyed village roughly halfway between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. As soon as I’d reached the top of Bathford Hill and the road emerged from the woodland I turned left. After barely a mile I came to a row of three cottages on my left where a tall blonde woman cheerfully herded a clutch of kids into her front garden. I resisted the temptation to ask directions to Restharrow. People would surely remember a man on a vintage motorcycle asking questions once the famous Penny Black had disappeared. Instead I simply rattled along, past church, high street, pub and manor, and before I knew it I was out the other side, leaving the village behind. It took me a while, pottering along various narrow lanes bound by hedgerows, until I found what I was looking for. I was lucky that the place announced itself as Restharrow in faded gilt lettering on a rustic wooden sign stuck to the stone wall that faced the lane. It was not what I had expected. I had been certain a wealthy — even if retired — stamp collector would live in a grander place but quickly reminded myself that any period cottage within a certain radius of Bath was now considered to be worth a small fortune. It was a substantial enough place though and somehow dark, almost sinister, standing alone at a fork in the tree-shaded lane, surrounded by a stone wall just high enough to keep livestock out and sheltered by hedges to the north and west at the back. Two enormous walnut trees teeming with squirrels overshadowed house and garden. There was no garage but a covered car port containing a gleaming blue Jaguar.