Ashes to Ashes Read online

  ‘It’s beginning to sink in,’ the man mumbled.

  ‘Where is he?’ Patrick whispered.

  ‘You still might die. You will, actually. I’ve just decided that I don’t care.’

  He was falling asleep.

  ‘Did you learn about weapons in the army?’

  Collins woke up a bit. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘That’s what the Judd woman said apparently. Only that you were an officer.’

  ‘Tell me where O’Connor is and I’ll do my best to put in a good word for you.’

  Eyes wide, Collins said, ‘You would?’

  Patrick nodded. ‘I looked up your records – you were a sniper, among other things. What went wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. A job’s a job. I’m good at it. I’m not a monster. I don’t go round hurting people for fun or abusing little kids. Look, is that it? I’m really tired.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  Slurring his words, Collins went on: ‘He doesn’t wash very often either. Or clean his teeth. He stinks. God, I hate him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  After a long silence when I would have given up, Collins mumbled, ‘He moves around quite a bit but his favourite place is in … some kind of rat hole in east London … a block of flats due to be knocked down … they’ve made some kind of secret bunker so it won’t be easy … like Hitler did … yes, that’s a good one, just like Hitler.’

  ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘No … No one’s allowed to go there but his closest oppos … We always met in a …’

  His voice drifted away; he was asleep.

  Almost absentmindedly, Patrick checked that Collins still had a pulse and hadn’t died on us. Then we left. Outside in a corridor, he said, ‘It’s bound to be that horrible hole where we found Joanna. You were right.’

  ‘I simply can’t believe that you’ll say there are mitigating circumstances.’

  ‘He was invalided out with severe post-traumatic stress disorder after a tour of duty in Afghanistan where some of his chums were blown up by a landmine. Tell me he isn’t a bit strange in the head after his remark of “a job’s a job” and I won’t do it.’ When I remained silent, he added: ‘Blood’s thicker than water, Ingrid.’

  He meant the army, his life blood at one time. No, come to think of it, it still is.

  ‘If we send in half the Met with armed personnel and dogs and he’s not there word will get round and he’ll never go back,’ Patrick said on the way home. ‘A “secret bunker”, Collins said. That could be anything from a hideaway in the basement of a utility outhouse – there was something like that, if you remember – to a den in the roof. Or they might have done work on one of the abandoned flats and turned it into some kind of fortress.’

  ‘I think you should now leave it to the Met,’ I said, turning the Range Rover into Hinton Littlemore’s narrow High Street.

  ‘Umm.’ Said thoughtfully. It meant no.

  ‘It’s time to let go,’ I urged quietly. ‘You’ve done your bit. And you’ve been promoted – there’s no need for you to risk yourself any more.’

  This was heresy, of course. There were many reasons going through this man’s mind as to why it was important for him to bring O’Connor to justice personally.

  I listed the ones I knew about aloud. ‘But there’s the need to arrest the murderer of your chum David Bowman, your reputation to think of, to prove that your service injuries have had no lasting effect on your efficiency, the thought that senior army officers, past and present, must never be bested by common criminals, that inner torment that you’ve never been able to live up to your father’s expectations, the guilt that you feel about your brother’s death because he was shot by someone who initially had thought he was you – and your professional pride.’

  ‘I’m not proud,’ Patrick said roughly.

  ‘OK, it’s whatever it’s called that makes you want to hand this man over to Daws. I know you really admire him and he was responsible for you getting this job as well as the one with MI5, but he’s completely ruthless.’

  Patrick made no reply and when I had parked the vehicle around the side of the rectory – he never uses the front door as then he’s in full view of anyone armed with a sniper’s rifle – I turned off the ignition and gazed at him.

  ‘I’m not proud,’ Patrick said again, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

  ‘Daws is the one who’s going to get the knighthood when he retires,’ I persisted. ‘And you might just be a flower-covered grave in the churchyard next door.’ I had promised myself I would not get upset but even the best-intentioned promises can be impossible to keep. ‘The kids will grow up knowing that they had an heroic father and will be able to visit your grave next door and tell you how wonderful they think you were. For what?’ I slammed both hands down on the steering wheel, inadvertently sounding the horn. ‘So some filthy bastard of a criminal serves a prison sentence when there are a thousand and one filthy bastards who are criminals out there still to be caught?’

  Knowing that I was about to cry uncontrollably, I flung myself out of the car and ran indoors, all the way up to our room.

  By the time I emerged around a quarter of an hour later, he had gone.

  I found a quickly penned note propped up on the mantelpiece in the living room. He would leave the car in Bath railway station car park with a four-hour ticket. (I had heard it start up some five minutes earlier.) He went on to promise that this was the last time he would go off on his own. Then he must have changed his mind a bit because in the next sentence, he scribbled – ye gods, had he been upset as well? – that he gave me his word he would keep his promise and not work alone and arrange backup. He loved me, he finished with. No signature, just some scrawled kisses.

  ‘You stupid, stupid man,’ I sobbed.

  Matthew came into the room. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  Not wishing to make any kind of fuss or do anything that would cause John and Elspeth to worry, I quietly left the house and, after a ten-minute wait in the High Street, caught the bus into Bath. Luckily there are at least three sets of keys for the Range Rover as I have a horror of either losing them or dropping them down a drain in the road. There was plenty of time left on the ticket so I called in at Manvers Street police station. James Carrick was talking to someone behind the glassed-in reception desk.

  ‘Just keeping you up to date,’ I told him. ‘We spoke to Ray Collins earlier.’

  He smiled a greeting. ‘Come upstairs and have coffee. Patrick said he’d bought a state-of-the-art coffee machine so, not to be outdone, I got one too.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re busy.’

  ‘Never too busy to talk to the National Crime Agency,’ he joked.

  In his office he busily pressed buttons on the gleaming machine, a bigger one than Patrick’s. Glancing quickly at me, he said softly, ‘I ken you’ve been crying.’

  ‘Patrick’s gone off to find O’Connor,’ I told him, trying to keep my voice even.

  The DCI turned in surprise. ‘On his own?’

  ‘He left a note saying he wouldn’t go alone but—’ I shrugged.

  ‘The man seems to have a need to do things like that – to prove himself.’

  ‘I blame Richard Daws. He’s constantly tested him and monitored his activities over the years. We’re fairly sure from something he said to me that he was at Feltham the night the Chinese restaurant was raided and Marlene Judd was arrested.’

  ‘That’s rather extraordinary.’

  ‘Patrick didn’t seem too bothered actually.’

  ‘Patrick told me O’Connor killed a friend of his. I’ve known him long enough now to have an idea that means only one thing.’ Hastily, he added: ‘Not that I mean he’d kill him in cold blood.’

  ‘Reality check,’ I said. ‘He would. Daws knows it too and said he wants him alive. Which is a hell of a lot more difficult than blasting the bastard from the face of the Earth.’

  Carrick gave m
e a worried look and handed over a cup of coffee. ‘Biscuit?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of setting off after him alone.’

  ‘I can’t set off at all. I must think of the children.’

  ‘You have in the past.’

  ‘Yes, but in the past I had Terry Meadows or a man called Steve who worked for MI5 for a while, or even a Scottish DCI not a million miles from here.’

  Carrick laughed and seated himself at his desk. Then he said, ‘And the episode at the farm in Sussex?’

  I love the way he always pronounces it ‘farum’.

  ‘Yes, that was a lone effort.’ I gave him a straight look. ‘Are you trying to persuade me to follow Patrick?’

  ‘No.’

  I sipped my coffee. ‘He’s got to retire. Or change his job.’

  ‘You’re wondrously good at it, hen.’

  What?

  ‘What did Collins have to say?’ Carrick went on to ask.

  ‘It was interesting. In short, he reckons O’Connor, having given him the wrong story about what happened when he shot Sandra Stevens, set him up. He was expecting Patrick to have a broken arm and me to be just … well … a housewife.’

  ‘Get your hitmen arrested or killed and then you don’t have to pay them. O’Connor must be very certain the police aren’t going to catch up with him. Disgruntled hitmen tend to talk.’

  ‘Collins mentioned a secret hideaway, a bunker, whatever, that O’Connor’s got. Patrick has an idea that it’s somewhere in the condemned blocks of flats near Leytonstone where we found Joanna.’

  ‘Didn’t the Met search the place?’

  ‘Probably not. At the time there was no obvious connection mobster-wise between Joanna being locked in a garage there by yobs and the rest of the housing estate. Patrick’s worried that if the Met turn up in force and O’Connor isn’t there then word will get round and he’ll never return.’

  ‘So Patrick’ll go there first.’

  ‘No idea. Not one clue.’

  ‘What else did he say in the note – if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Not at all. Only that he’d left the car at the railway station with a four-hour ticket. I’ll collect it when I leave here.’

  There was a short silence, and then Carrick said, ‘Look, Ingrid, if you hear nothing and feel you have to go and look for him, I’m your man.’

  I couldn’t speak for a moment and then managed to thank him, finish my coffee and leave without getting upset again.

  Almost a week went by. I did not expect Patrick to phone me as he always leaves his own mobile at home and takes a ‘work’ one which has no personal phone numbers in the memory. It could be exceedingly dangerous for everyone concerned if the phone fell into the wrong hands and someone started trying to investigate previous calls.

  This business of a ‘radio silence’ had happened quite often in the past and I have learned to cope. There were people living with and around me who, wittingly or not, relied on me to cope. The children were used to Patrick working away from home and only queried where he was the following weekend. John and Elspeth are obviously aware of a lot that goes on and don’t ask questions, although I know Elspeth worries terribly about her one remaining son when he is away for any length of time. In view of his family responsibilities, she sees no reason why he should continue to hazard himself, and I now agreed with her.

  Coping meant throwing myself into domestic matters, turning out for local jumble sales, doing those jobs that don’t come within the remit of the home help like taking down curtains and either washing them or taking them to the dry cleaners. I baked cakes for tea and for Elspeth’s various fundraising events, freezing some as I had made so many. Matthew and Katie are old enough now to realize the reason for my fevered activities and tried to amuse me, this culminating in an ‘entertainment’ that they put on for all the adults on the Saturday evening, a kind of spoof of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a children’s version of which Katie was doing at school. Justin played the part of one Alf Bottom, completely oblivious of the fact that he was perfect for the part. Even Mark was in it, as an elf. It was so good, so funny, that John made them promise to put it on over Christmas in the village hall, and the youthful impresarios went away to rewrite it more ambitiously with a larger cast. But I really would have to tell them that they must delete the delightful and bitingly accurate caricatures of some of the village residents before it was seen by a wider audience.

  On the following Monday morning I was still in a lighter mood as a result of this and opened the door to the postman in pleasant anticipation, as I had seen through the window that he was bearing a parcel and I was expecting some books I had ordered. But it soon became obvious that it was not what I thought it was as the label addressing it to me was untidily hand-printed, not the kind of thing used by a company.

  I know all about dodgy parcels from MI5 days. Once, I had even been sent a bunch of flowers, very beautiful ones that had originated at a florist, that had explosives concealed in them. There was nothing about this parcel that told me what was in it or where it was from, the Post Office label being difficult to read. Carefully, I weighed it in my hands. It was medium heavy, a little too heavy for the square box that a tear in the outer paper revealed as it was starting to collapse. It was a little damp.

  Gingerly, I sniffed at the dampness on a lower corner. The smell was indescribable but a little like cooking. Like a stew or a stockpot perhaps, but stale as though it had started to go off. Had someone sent me some kind of food parcel? A haggis? A batch of black pudding? Several pounds of sausages? Surely not.

  I took it into the kitchen as that seemed a more suitable place to investigate further, and dumped it into the Belfast sink. Whatever it was, it was leaking. Very lightly, still thinking about those flowers, I began to tear away the brown paper wrapping and then, my cat’s whiskers now registering a freak-out level right off the scale, remembered that I was supposed to be a sort of police officer and fetched a pair of nitrile gloves from my study.

  The lid of the box, which looked the kind of thing office stationery might have once been packed in, was only fixed on with masking tape and, once the light support of the paper had been removed, it started to peel away as the damp cardboard of the box sagged beneath it. I pulled off most of the tape and extremely carefully prised up one side of the lid. The smell of stale cooked whatever wafted upwards and I almost retched. Resisting an impulse to put the whole thing straight in the dustbin, I took the lid right off.

  Nestled under a layer of screwed-up newspaper on more newspaper was a human head and, just before I fainted for only the third time in my life, I saw every last detail.

  It had been boiled.

  All the teeth had been knocked out, the remains of some of them just shattered stumps. Before he was killed?

  What was left of the skin and flesh hung off the skull in grey, greasy folded strips.

  And the sunken, boiled eyes were staring up at me.

  SEVENTEEN

  I choked, stinging fumes up my nose.

  ‘It’s me, Ingrid,’ Elspeth’s voice said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve covered it up. What a ghastly thing to send anyone.’

  I discovered that I was lying on the kitchen floor covered by a coat, my teeth chattering, every limb shaking uncontrollably. Elspeth was kneeling by my side.

  ‘He said he’d boil the flesh off his bones, feed the meat to the dogs and post the rest to me,’ I discovered I was gabbling.

  Elspeth stretched up and put the little bottle of smelling salts on the worktop. ‘Who, dear? No, lie there for a bit longer. You’ve had a nasty shock.’

  ‘A criminal Patrick’s gone after,’ I muttered. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘And you think …’ Aghast, she got up and went over to the sink. I struggled to my feet – it was my turn to be supportive.

  Visibly bracing herself, Elspeth removed the kitchen towel she had flung over the box and its con
tents.

  ‘In the shock of seeing you lying on the floor I didn’t realize this was real,’ she said, gazing at it. She turned to me in desperation. ‘You know, I thought it was one of those stupid Halloween things children get up in.’ She snatched out a lacy handkerchief and held it over her nose. ‘Oh, dear God, it’s real all right. It smells horrible.’

  ‘I have to ask you this,’ I said, an arm around her, my teeth clattering together so much I could hardly speak. ‘D’you think this is Patrick’s?’

  With a huge effort, she forced herself to carry on looking at it. Then said, ‘I really can’t say. I think it’s a man’s because of the width of the jaw but nearly all the teeth are gone or broken so—’ She burst into tears.

  I tossed the towel back over the box, took Elspeth into the living room, sat her down, gave her a little brandy and grabbed the phone.

  ‘James?’ I queried when there was a click as Carrick’s phone was lifted, but no one said anything.

  ‘Sorry, I’m just off to an important meeting at HQ,’ he came on the line to say. ‘You can get me later.’

  ‘It’s Ingrid,’ I gasped.

  ‘Sorry, I thought it was an internal call. What’s wrong?’

  I told him and he swore in Gaelic before promising that he’d be right over.

  ‘No,’ Elspeth said determinedly, having finished the brandy. ‘It isn’t Patrick. No son of mine is going to finish up like that. Besides, it doesn’t look a bit like him.’

  If only I could delude myself too. Patrick was dead. He had probably died horribly.

  The DCI arrived. He was swiftly followed by a van with a couple of members of a forensic team who took photographs of the parcel and its contents in situ and then, having checked that my fingerprints were on record and that no one else in the household had touched it, carefully secured it in a large evidence bag and left. One of them immediately returned and apologized for not requesting something that might have Patrick’s DNA on it, plus a photograph of him. I gave them his comb from the bedroom and one of a couple of recent photographs he had had taken in order to renew his passport. By this time I was hitting the brandy and Elspeth had gone to tell John, who had just come in from taking a funeral service, what had happened.