Ashes to Ashes Page 16

  We hurried, my cap threatening to slip off, while I prayed that Will had been telling the truth.

  A minute or so later, we turned into the main entrance to the car park and my partner immediately commenced to sing. It was a particularly filthy ditty sung, regrettably, slurring the words, to the tune of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Patrick has a rather good tenor voice and, like that of all one-time and present choristers, it carries. Realizing that two drunks are better than one, I joined in with the right words, and, seemingly, a seriously inebriated pair staggered across the car park. We paused halfway across for a lascivious snog, taking the opportunity to have a look round while slowly revolving on the spot, on the point of falling over to anyone watching.

  We both spotted the car, parked in the dimmer area where the lamp had failed.

  Starting on verse two, we reeled a little nearer. Some twenty yards away Patrick fell down flat, laughing like a jackass, and although I was sort of prepared for something like that to happen I went down with him, mainly because he was holding on to me.

  ‘Tyres!’ he said in my ear.

  My speciality. From my prone position I took out the front and rear tyres nearest to me then rolled away in case there was any returning fire.

  A man got out of the driving seat, almost fell out actually due to the car’s suddenly canted-over position. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Armed police! Lie down! Arms outstretched! You’re under arrest!’ Patrick yelled at him, getting up.

  The driver moved to obey and then shouted back, ‘I’ll report you for this! You’re raving mad!’

  Patrick walked forward, holding his Glock two-handed, and suddenly there was no further argument.

  A blonde-haired woman got out of the front passenger seat holding a handgun. ‘We’ve got your Detective Inspector North in there!’ she shrilled, pointing the gun towards the inside of the vehicle. ‘Let us go and we’ll chuck her out a short distance away.’

  ‘You stupid cow, I said to bluff it out!’ bawled her companion from his prone position.

  Bending low, I had quietly moved around the rear of the vehicle until I was feet away from her. Eyes on Patrick, she did not notice me until I spoke.

  ‘Last warning,’ I said. ‘Drop the weapon.’

  When she did not immediately do so, I put a shot into the ground several feet away to her rear. This produced a loud shriek and the gun was flung at me. I ducked, then yanked open the rear door nearest to me.

  ‘Out,’ I said to the man seated within. ‘Keep your hands in my sight or you’ll lose them.’ Truly, I shouldn’t be talking like this. I was merely the consultant to an adviser of the NCA.

  Bloody hell.

  Darkly glaring at me he slowly, and a little unsteadily, got out of the car and both ‘suspects’ were garnered by Patrick and made to lie on the ground with the first man, the woman raving and swearing at us. I was not at all sure she was Anne Peters.

  By this time the sound of the shots had attracted attention and there was a blare of approaching sirens, screaming tyres and flashing blue lights, the entire road show howling past the entrance to the car park.

  ‘Ingrid, do go down there and wave when they come back,’ Patrick said wearily. ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ he went on to ask, addressing the interior of the vehicle.

  ‘Just a bit bruised,’ came the reply from Janice North.

  As I walked away I heard Patrick add, ‘I’ve detained your abductors. Would you like to arrest them?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  Class A and B drugs with an estimated street value of over half a million pounds were found in a hidden wall safe in one of the upstairs rooms of the restaurant, together with several thousand pounds in used notes and sterling, the blonde woman being commanded to open it. Another room, an office of sorts, yielded two handguns with ammunition and several knives. Three of the men detained, including Will Gibbs, were wanted to help with other enquiries, and the man sitting in the back of the car with the DI was an Italian wanted in his home country for murder. The driver of the vehicle had no previous convictions but was charged with being an accessory to the abduction. Whether he was the ‘boyfriend’ of the woman who was steadfastly denying that she was anyone by the name of Anne Peters would have to be established.

  ‘Is that blonde hair a wig, or isn’t it?’ I was driven to ask later the following day when we learned of this. Earlier, having got some sleep at our usual hotel in West London, we had gone back to Feltham to make our statements, hung around at the nick in case we could question her but had been told, ‘Sorry, no, not yet, she’s still being interviewed about last night,’ and were now leaving the building.

  ‘Apparently not,’ Patrick replied.

  ‘Then she must have been wearing one under that ghastly hat when we saw her at the rectory.’

  ‘You’re still convinced it’s her?’

  ‘No.’

  Men have no answer to this kind of female logic so Patrick merely smiled and murmured, ‘I should have said this before – that was good shooting last night.’

  ‘You didn’t have to fire a shot.’

  ‘My right hand was shaking but I would have done so if necessary. That’s why I held it two-handed.’

  ‘It will take a while to recover, you know.’

  He did not answer.

  ‘It’s Friday,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  On Saturday morning, Patrick asked me to ride George, his horse, kept at livery nearby, saying he would go and view the body of the man that had been found in the River Avon and then get on with an emailed report to Michael Greenway. For me, this was a pleasure, of course – a blessing after recent events – and I took Katie with me on Fudge, who was now quite sound. Matthew is having lessons at the same establishment and doing well.

  ‘Dad’s arm looks terrible, it’s all bruised,’ Katie said at one point when we were riding abreast. ‘Is that why he didn’t want to take George out this morning, because it hurt?’

  ‘Partly,’ I answered.

  ‘How did he do it?’

  ‘Someone hit him,’ I told her.

  ‘Matthew and I think he ought to stop doing such dangerous things. Don’t you?’

  ‘He will,’ I replied, deliberately not answering the question.

  ‘When, though?’ she persevered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all I could say. Patrick and I had still not had our discussion about it.

  When I got back, having dropped Katie off at a friend’s house – yes, more ponies – Patrick was nowhere to be seen, but came in from the garden shortly afterwards.

  ‘Janice North is very embarrassed,’ he told me. ‘She regards what happened as a massive failure on her part.’

  ‘How on earth’s that?’ I asked, staggered.

  ‘Yes, quite. I reminded her what the raid had yielded and said she doesn’t have to mention our presence at all, but she’s the sort of person who wants everything to be utterly correct in her report. Anyway, we can have a go at this woman who’s saying she’s not Anne Peters on Monday morning.’

  ‘And the corpse in the river?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for sure as it happened so quickly and the body had been knocked about in the water, but he’d been wearing the same colour shirt as the guy I shot. There’s no identification yet. They found the bullet and Ballistics have borrowed the Glock for a while to see if there’s a possible match. Then we’ll know for sure.’

  A little later, he came to find me in my writing room to say, ‘I’ve just had a call from Carrick to say that Sandra Stevens is recovering well. She wants to talk to us as she’s remembered something. Coming?’

  As might be expected, the woman was terribly pale, but smiled when she saw us. It was humbling when she thanked me profusely for the few flowers I had picked for her from the garden and arranged in a small glass pot. They looked nothing when placed alongside a magnificent bouquet of florists’ flowers already on the bedside cabinet. It w
as a relief to know that she was being given armed protection.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said in a weak voice. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have much information for you. But please, first tell me if those men have been arrested.’

  Patrick said, ‘No, I’m afraid they haven’t. But we know exactly who the man in charge is and a warrant’s out for his arrest. Two of them were shot and we’re ninety-nine per cent sure that one’s dead. The other hasn’t turned up at any hospital in this area so it’s likely he’s in a bad way. They won’t trouble you again.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Shot by who?

  Patrick merely smiled.

  ‘You! I didn’t know you could do things like that.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  ‘No, of course not. It would have been dreadful if they’d got you too.’ Sandra gave him a truly lovely smile back.

  She really did fancy him then. It must be those grey eyes doing their ol’ magic.

  ‘DCI Carrick told me that you’d remembered something,’ Patrick prompted.

  ‘That’s not quite true, but I didn’t intend to mislead anyone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She coloured a little, which actually made her look a lot better. ‘I thought that if I didn’t say something like that nobody would come.’

  ‘Well, we’re here now.’

  ‘You were asking me about the night Hereward went back to Wellow because he’d left his mobile phone at someone’s house.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You must appreciate that I can’t remember anything from the moment I was shot until I woke up here – I’m told it was a couple of days later. As far as real life’s concerned, everything’s a blank. But I’ve sort of had a dream, so what I’m telling you might be just that, a dream. I’ve had dreams in the past and some of them have been found to be, or come, true. But I’m worried that if I tell you something and you act on it and it’s just a load of nonsense …’ She drifted into silence.

  ‘Let me worry about that,’ Patrick told her. ‘How I treat potential evidence is my responsibility.’

  Her brow cleared. ‘Oh, I see.’ Having paused as if to choose her words carefully, she continued, ‘It was horrible, really, as it was as if I was Hereward retracing his footsteps. But a ghostly Hereward, as though he was dead.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Patrick murmured when she stopped speaking, her eyes filling with tears.

  I gave her a paper tissue from a box on the cabinet and after half a minute or so she recommenced talking.

  ‘It was raining and the dream was so vivid that although there was no sense of my actually walking I could feel the drops hitting my head, soaking my hair. He had lovely hair, you know, a bit like yours, Mr Gillard. I, or he, came to a house. That was horrible too, like a witch’s house inside a nasty little wood, with straggly trees with faces in them, like a Disney film. And this was where my dream became really surreal so don’t take any notice of this next bit – I’m just telling you to show I’m giving you the whole story, as it were.’ She gazed in the direction of a jug and glass tumbler on the cabinet. ‘Please give me some water.’

  This Patrick did and, shakily, she drank some.

  ‘There was a cat there,’ Sandra resumed. ‘A big black one. It was beautiful – I adore cats. It spoke to me. It said its name was Henry and I mustn’t go to the house.’

  I think my hair stood on end.

  ‘But I told it I had to as I’d left my phone behind and it ran off in a huff. I went up the path to the house, which seemed to be in darkness, and banged on the door. I knew the bell didn’t work. A woman opened it, a different one from last time, and she looked very angry when she saw it was me. A man with a deep voice called out, “Who is it?” and she replied, “The undertaker again.” I said I’d left my phone behind and she told me to wait and went away. Then she came back and practically threw it at me. I noticed a man standing in the darkness of the hallway just behind her, perhaps the one who had spoken. He was tall, broad-shouldered, had a mass of dark unkempt hair and looked as though he was growing a beard. I left as quickly as I could and all the way back to my car I felt as though he was prowling behind me, but every time I looked round no one was there.’

  Sandra broke off and shuddered. ‘That was it. The next thing I knew I woke up here.’

  ‘A different woman from last time?’ Patrick echoed. ‘How was she different?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I just knew.’

  ‘What about the bell? You knew that didn’t work as well?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Patrick and I exchanged glances. The bell push at the Peterses’ bungalow had actually been loose in the fitting, broken, and as there had been no knocker Patrick had had to bang on the door with his fist.

  ‘I don’t think I’m mad or psychic,’ Sandra said in a small voice. ‘It all must just be coincidences. Hereward must have told me about the different woman and the man with the beard and I’d forgotten about it. I seem to recollect fetching us some wine from the kitchen while he was talking. But it was in my subconscious. The rest’s just silly.’

  The business of Henry wasn’t silly, it was mind-blowing. I said nothing.

  Patrick turned to me. ‘D’you still have that printed-off photofit and the mugshot with you?’

  I did, and passed them over. We had learned earlier that there had been no fingerprints, not even partial ones, on the remains of the handgun I had shot from O’Connor’s grasp. As I had thought, he had been wearing gloves.

  Before Patrick gave them to Sandra one at a time in that same order, he said, ‘Be assured that this man will be arrested very shortly. I don’t want you to be afraid or upset.’

  ‘But my subconscious interpretation of what Hereward told me might be quite different from the real thing,’ she sensibly pointed out before looking at what was in her hands.

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, gazing at the photofit. ‘It’s him. Just about the same as in my dream, hallucination, whatever it was. But—’ She shook her head, baffled, and then studied the other. ‘This is a photo of him when he was quite a bit younger, without the beard, isn’t it?’

  Patrick told her that it was.

  ‘Surely you won’t able to use what I’ve just said in a court of law.’

  No, unfortunately we would not.

  The rest of the weekend saw us being an ordinary family. We took all five children out to a country park on Sunday afternoon – you need a Range Rover for this many, plus a buggy – somewhere the two boys could run a bit wild in an adventure playground. Matthew, I felt, was a bit self-conscious in the company of children mostly younger than himself, but I told him he was Justin’s minder while Patrick and I looked after the two youngest, and that improved matters a lot. Justin needs minding. Hating anything to do with ropes and ladders and, naturally, not counted among the babies, Katie trailed along with us, polite but miserable as there were no ponies. She cheered up when Patrick took her out on the lake in a rowing boat but Vicky refused, point blank, to go anywhere near the water, or even to wave them off, so she and I sat on a seat with Mark, watching them.

  Patrick and I had arranged to devote the evening for our discussion on his future so I gave it some thought in advance now. Would I be happy if my life was like this more often? Would Patrick? It went without saying that he would have to have some kind of job if he left the NCA, as although my writing earnings are healthy I could not support the whole family. And for how much longer would people want to read my books? If it was a less challenging job he would be bored. But we were both getting older.

  I could come to no conclusions and had the feeling that while there was still breath in his body Patrick would want to go after the likes of Jinty O’Connor. Even if he retired from what he was now doing there would be no real let-up. We are still on the hit lists of several criminal and terrorist organizations so he would have no choice but be armed and attend tra
ining sessions. Unless they took his gun away from him, of course. This had not occurred to me before and it was a couple of minutes before the full implications sank in.

  Yes, this man of mine could not countenance being defenceless and would buy a weapon and carry it illegally, even if, as he had jokingly threatened to, he started up a grass-cutting empire. To protect himself, his wife and his family. There would be a risk he would go to prison if found out. Certain policeman with whom he has had differences of opinion over the years would make it their business to find out. We would probably have to go and live abroad, perhaps in the States, where carrying firearms for personal protection is permitted.

  I asked myself if Patrick would already have thought this and several other aspects of the problem through himself. I had an idea he had. Torn between my conclusions and the possibility that my worries were being a distraction to him I decided to suggest on the way home that we postpone all discussions until, one way or another, the O’Connor case was concluded.

  When I did so Patrick hesitated and asked me if I was really sure. I was, and he agreed. I resolved to keep any fears I had to myself.

  As was our habit, we called in to see Michael Greenway when we, or rather Patrick, arrived for work early on Monday morning. I intended to stay in London just for the day and return home the next, and was quite looking forward to the interview with the woman who was insisting she wasn’t Anne Peters.

  ‘Richard Daws wants to see you,’ Greenway said, his mind on something else. ‘Look, as you know, Patrick, I’m not a complaining kind of bloke but d’you think this bloody room is big enough for me to work in without going off my rocker?’

  Patrick eyed it up and then said, ‘For anyone four foot nothing tall and fourteen inches wide it’s absolutely perfect.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the commander, grabbing his desk phone. ‘I’ll tell ’em exactly that.’

  ‘I know you’re expected at Feltham police station later this morning,’ was Daws’s opening remark, ‘but I have a bit of news for you in connection with O’Connor.’

  What didn’t this man know?

  We seated ourselves and had to wait for a few moments while he tidied and put to one side some documents on his desk. I had to admit that this wasn’t a particularly large office either, but then noticed a couple of inner doors, suggesting that the room we were in might be the working area of a small apartment. Perhaps he lived here for part of the week and went back to Hartwood Castle the rest of the time.