Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Still sniffing around? What’s it this time?’ Fryer asked, sipping from his mug and pulling a face at the hot soup.

‘Oh, same thing really. I just wondered. .’ I gave him a description of Cairn and Heather, told him their names. ‘Ring any bells?’

‘Not in my church. You think they have anything to do with the murder?’

‘They might well have. I wonder, have you come across anything strange in the valley lately?’

‘What, apart from yourself, you mean?’ Fryer said drily. Barry guffawed at this as though it was the funniest joke he’d heard for years. Perhaps it was.

‘Apart from me, yes.’

‘No, not really. What do you mean? People?’

‘Someone killed Gemma Stone’s dog up in the wood by Blackfield’s place. Bashed his head in.’

‘Did they?’ He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘That’s not nice. I wonder why.’

I had the suspicion he wouldn’t spend too much time wondering. ‘I think someone’s trying to get to Gem Stone.’

‘Why would they try a thing like that?’ He shrugged. ‘Stone can look after herself. When she first turned up I thought she wouldn’t last three months, down there by herself, no phone, no nothing laid on. But she’s made a go of it, give her that.’

‘Yes, you have to be pretty tough to live down there, I imagine, in a caravan, all through the winter. Lonely at Christmas, too, I should think.’

Fryer shot me a look at that but I returned it levelly, as though I had never heard of his Christmas lunge. ‘Farming’s a lonely business these days,’ he agreed. ‘Not so long ago farms needed lots of labour, there’d be twenty-odd people in a field doing a job one man does by himself with a tractor now.’

I wondered how lonely Fryer himself felt. No woman would have tolerated the state of this kitchen for long, so I assumed he was living alone or with Barry here, who struck me as rather a dour companion. ‘You seen her lately?’

‘Who?’ This seemed rather disingenuous, since we had only just mentioned Gem Stone, so I didn’t elaborate. ‘You mean the Stone woman? Not for ages. Have you, Barry?’

Barry sniffed, shook his head. ‘Nah.’ He turned to rinse out his mug with elaborate care.

I changed tack. ‘I went up to Blackfield’s place the other day.’

‘Oh yeah? Meet him?’

‘Met his son.’

‘That’s who I mean. Dad’s not all there by all accounts since his wife died. Did you ask him what the fuck he’s turning his bit of land into?’

‘Yup, secure storage.’

Both Barry and Fryer guffawed at that. ‘That’s it,’ Fryer said. ‘Secure fucking storage, that’s what he told us at the public meeting, I just wanted to hear it again. Ha. And he got planning permission, can you credit it? Have you seen the mess he made out there, even a bit of road, massive fucking crane and all to shift his tin boxes around. I’d gladly store something securely up his. .’

I felt we had probably explored that theme as far as it would go and made to leave when I remembered why I had come here in the first place. ‘Oh yeah,’ I asked by the door, ‘do you know of anyone riding around on a trailie in the valley?’

‘Lots of people use trail bikes around here, it’s a good way of getting around. Trailies and quad bikes. We’ve got both. Why the interest?’

‘Do you remember the other day? One must have nearly collided with you in the lane, couple of seconds later I nearly ran into you.’

‘Didn’t see any trailie, all I saw was you carrying an idiotic amount of speed round the corner. You were very lucky not to become a smudge on the side of my tractor.’

I had to agree with him, though just how he could have missed seeing the bike I was pursuing was a little mysterious.

The door slammed unceremoniously behind me as I stepped into the worsening rain. Grot was lying amongst sacks of something or other under a shelter of wood and corrugated asbestos and sensibly lifted no more than his head as I left. As I rode away from the place the gloriously useful heating arrangements at the Rose and Crown insinuated themselves into my mind, irresistible like the mirage of a lake to a man dying of thirst in the desert. Well, something like that, anyway.

Only a few early regulars were perusing newspapers or studying the empty space on the other side of their pints. The landlady wasn’t about. The barmaid, a brawny young woman with blonde hair permed to within an inch of its life, furnished me with a mug of black coffee. I described the Cairn and Heather duo to her. Had she seen them lately?

‘Yeah, they were in last night,’ she confirmed. She yanked open the dishwasher and thick steam rose briefly between us.

‘They come in here a lot then?’

‘Not really, no. What you want with them, anyway?’ She began stacking the glasses on their shelves below the bar top.

‘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.