Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

Apparently all we had was three days. That didn’t leave much time to establish what the man’s routines were, who else might be living here or coming and going on a regular basis. I allowed myself less than a minute in front of the house with the engine idling, pretending to be answering a text message while snapping pictures of the place with my phone. The front garden was lushly overgrown in the kind of extreme laissez-faire style of horticulture I approved of. I was just about to pull away when a man appeared from the passage between the house and the car port. He was a lean man in his late sixties, had sparse silver hair and wore mustard-coloured trousers, a collarless white shirt and bright yellow Marigolds. He was dragging a bulging green refuse bag behind him.

I put away my mobile. It was that movement rather than the sound of the engine which made him look across. Perhaps I could still have ridden off but the way he adjusted his thin gold spectacles on his nose to scrutinize me made me decide it might look suspicious. Instead I pulled in closer to the open double gate on the drive and parked the bike. He let his bag drop now and surveyed my appearance and the motorbike, screwing up his face with the intensity of a man who has missed several eye-tests. The iron gate was the same height as the wall, about four feet and therefore largely symbolic.

‘I’m a bit lost, I’m afraid,’ I ventured.

He didn’t immediately answer, instead he came towards me and after nodding at my tattered jacket rather than me began inspecting the bike. ‘Norton, thought so,’ he said with the croaky voice of someone who hasn’t spoken a word all day. He elaborately cleared his throat.

‘Yes, she’s recently been restored after a crash. They did a beautiful job,’ I explained.

‘Sorry, you have to speak up, I’m afraid I didn’t put my deaf-aids in this morning.’ He tapped both his ears in explanation.

‘Recently restored,’ I repeated loudly.

‘I remember when they first started making this model. I had an Ariel at the time, the 600 cc side-valve.’

‘The side-valve, right. .’ Fortunately nothing more seemed to be required of me. Otherwise I’d have been forced to admit that where you stuck your valves on a bike was a matter of supreme indifference to me.

After spending a few minutes in the golden age of motorcycling he eventually came back to the present. ‘Was there something you wanted?’

‘Just directions, really. I was looking for a scenic route to Melksham and got lost.’

‘Ah, well, you’re not so very lost. I have a map of the area, I’ll show you.’

I followed him to his front door. He snapped off the Marigolds. ‘I try and keep the garden going but I find it a bit of a struggle. My wife used to look after that side of things of course. I’m not green-fingered at all, I’m afraid.’

‘You could perhaps get a gardener to look after it for you. .?’

‘I suppose I could at that,’ he said as though the thought had never occurred to him before. ‘Right, if you wait a minute I’ll get the map.’ He slapped the Marigolds on to the newel post and left me standing by a painted milk urn full of walking sticks while he went upstairs, one hand firmly on the banister. I looked around the gloomy hall. I thought I could detect the so-called female touch in the choice of coloured wallpaper and framed botanical drawings but also sensed a certain edge of neglect in the dirt trodden into the expensive carpet, the layer of dust on everything and even of time slowly running down in the sedate ticking of the longcase clock at the foot of the stairs. Rufus Connabear lived alone and didn’t employ a cleaner or a gardener, I concluded. I tiptoed into the kitchen. This was quite clean and tidy with a simple wooden table playing host to neat piles of letters and other papers, weighted down with clean coffee mugs. Through the window above the sink I could see into the shady garden with its overcrowded beds and overgrown hedge. The old-fashioned back door, I noted with satisfaction, had no security features beyond a simple lock and key.

Back in the hall, while listening for footsteps from above, I peered through the open door into the sitting room. Too many pieces of furniture had been crammed in here; an olive-green three-piece suite, a separate large armchair in a similar colour that nevertheless didn’t quite match. There were underemployed bookshelves on two walls. A sideboard, a small table and several plant stands featuring pots minus the plants completed the clutter. The room had windows back and front, though the back windows were almost completely blocked against the light by the dense foliage of some kind of evergreen outside, making the overstuffed room more gloomy than necessary. Still no sound of footsteps. Now or never. I took a deep breath, crossed the room to the back windows and unlatched the nearest one without actually opening it. Just then I could hear movement above and gained the hall in a hectic bit of tiptoe work around the plant stands as Connabear’s legs appeared on the stairs.

‘Sorry it took so long,’ he said as he descended in a careful fashion. ‘I was sure I could lay my hands on it easily but it proved not to be where I thought it was. I found it in the end, though. Come through,’ he added. In the kitchen he spread out his Ordnance Survey map of the area and pointed out where we were and my best route to Melksham from his front door. It was quite ludicrously simple which made me suspect he had fetched the map simply for something to do, or for a moment of company. Soon he was back on our first subject, telling me more about the development of Ariel and Norton motorcycles than I could possibly hope to remember and laying a papery hand on my arm whenever I made a move towards the door. It was another fifteen minutes until I was allowed outside to mount the Norton again and even then one of his hands remained firmly on the handlebar while he lamented the number of cars on the roads and the discourtesy of today’s drivers. Even though I vigorously agreed with him on this last point I could hardly wait to get out there amongst them once more.

Eventually he let me go and I gave him a cheery wave as I rumbled away down the lane. I would report what little I had found out to Tim and trust to his expertise to get at the stamp, though I hoped I had made things easier for us by opening the latch on the downstairs window. Thanks to Connabear’s directions I was soon back on the A363, returning to Bath. When I drew into the yard at Mill House, however, I could see from Annis’s face as she stood in the door, nodding at what was being said to her on the cordless phone, that we had fresh problems. She handed me the phone.

Tim was at the other end of the line, sounding unusually troubled. ‘I’m being followed. Absolutely everywhere. Go turn your confuser on, I’ll mail the guys to you.’

Up in my attic office I cranked up my computer, then checked my mail. He had sent me three pictures he had taken that day; one, a grainy image probably taken on his mobile of two men, casually dressed, late twenties, early thirties. The location looked like the university car park. The other two pictures were taken with a better camera from Tim’s sitting-room window. They showed the same men on the other side of Tim’s street, about fifty yards to the left. In the first they were sitting in a blue Vauxhall, the passenger with his arm out of the window, adjusting the wing mirror. Both had sharp haircuts and looked wide awake. In the second picture one of them was just returning to the car with a shopping bag from the nearby Co-op.

‘I don’t recognize them,’ said Annis, looking over my shoulder.

I called Tim back. ‘Yeah, I got them but we don’t know them. When did you pick them up?’

‘Oh, they were here when I drove to work but of course I didn’t suspect anything then. When I spotted them again at my lunch break I started to take notice, and when I had to cross the campus in the middle of the afternoon and they were there, waiting, I got suspicious. Took a picture of them on the phone. They followed me home, though to give them their dues I didn’t spot their car behind me, so they know how to follow people. They’re still down there, still sitting in the car, eating. Man, you know you’ve landed a shit job when all your food is triangular and your drinks come in plastic bottles.’