I wasn’t sure which flower bed I’d parked on last time, so I just steered the mini onto the nearest one available, avoiding the daffodils that seemed to have sprung up everywhere.
In the middle distance I could see somebody working away with a spade, so I wandered round to the side of the house. Catarina was digging the vegetable patch. She worked efficiently and methodically, only partially hampered by the fact that her high heels were sinking into the mud. She paused, swore briefly in what I assumed was her native language, then set to again.
‘Isn’t it a bit early for that?’ I asked.
She looked up at me. ‘Is spade there if you want to help.’
I walked over and fetched the second spade, which had been thrust into the earth a short way off.
‘OK, Cat, what do you want me to do?’ I asked.
‘Dig,’ she said. ‘Then put cocaine in pile by lilac and heroin in pile by azaleas.’
I noticed that there were already two neat little piles on the lawn – packets wrapped in oilcloth and stained with mud.
‘Are you sure this is the right time to harvest heroin?’ I asked. ‘I’m sure my old man used to leave it in the ground until Easter. Said it had a better flavour.’
‘We dig now. By Easter police come back with sniffing dogs.’
Though I like it to remain my little secret most of the time, I do know how to use a spade, having helped my dad on his smallholding many years ago, before I worked out that it was easier to buy it all ready-chopped in plastic bags at Waitrose. After I’d removed a foot or so of soil I struck drugs – the spade made contact with the outer covering of another package.
‘Careful!’ Catarina called across to me, ‘don’t tear fabric. If bag leak, heroin not good for cabbages.’
I dug more carefully and gathered in a fine crop of narcotics. ‘There must be thousands of pounds-worth of stuff here,’ I said. ‘Did you grow it all from seed?’
‘Robin buries it,’ said Catarina. ‘He thinks I not see, but women take an interest in their husbands’ gardens. Is natural.’
‘So, he wasn’t just bringing it ashore, then?’
‘He go out in boat. Bring back packages. Sometimes men come to collect. Sometimes he hide here if not safe to collect straight away. When Robin die, much drug in garden. Too much drug. Police come to house and search. They find nothing. But I think – next time may search garden. So I phone gang boss.’
‘This is your irony?’
‘No, I’m genuinely curious. Life is full of surprises.’
‘Is that your irony?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Yellow Pages. I have number already.’
‘As you do.’
‘Police catch some smugglers. They bring photographs to me and say do I know them? Of course I do not say it – do police think I am some sort idiot girl? – but I know them. And I know who they work for. So, I phone him. I say get your ass round here, moron, or police take all your drugs. He come tonight with white van and man with AK47.’
‘Is this package heroin or cocaine?’ I asked.
Catarina felt it briefly. ‘Cocaine, obviously,’ she said.
‘I’ll put it by the lilac tree, then,’ I said.
Later, over coffee and yummy cakes, Catarina said: ‘Maybe you not tell Ethelred about heroin.’
‘You think he might not approve?’
‘I think not.’
‘I agree. He wouldn’t grass you up, but knowing that he had condoned a felony would trouble him, poor thing. He would lose sleep. Now that the drugs have gone, by the way, do you think that the stories of ghosts in your garden will also stop?’
‘You think I spread ghost stories to keep peasants away from vegetable patch?’
‘Not if you say you spread the rumours for some other reason. Do you mind if I help myself to another cake or two by the way? You can’t get these in London – or at least, I can’t.’
‘You have secretary?’
‘I have an assistant.’
‘You must get her to go out and buy. I give you address of good baker.’
‘What an excellent idea. I’ll do that. Digging certainly gives you an appetite. Did you hear, by the way, that they’d dug up a body in the Herring Field?’
‘Old body. Just bones.’
‘Ethelred thinks it’s an ancestor of Tom Gittings. Do you know why Robin didn’t buy the Herring Field when it was offered to him?’
‘No, but Field is useless. I wonder if he wants field to bury stuff in – much better than garden – police not look there – but maybe too close to path. People walk there and see. That man, Whitelace. He is always there. Watching.’
‘Colonel Gittings apparently said that Robin was the only person it was worth selling the field to. Colonel Gittings wouldn’t have been involved in drugs too?’
‘I think colonel is like Ethelred. Not take drugs.’
‘True, it was only a thought. Maybe he just meant that only Robin had land adjoining it. I know what else I wanted to ask you: did you know somebody named Martina Blanch?’
‘She girlfriend of Robin’s. They have fight. But she come back.’
‘She visited Robin after they broke up?’
‘Yes. Once. Maybe twice. I do not know how often. You cannot watch your man all the time. You try, of course, but is not possible. Even with CCTV. I say to Robin, you not see that woman again. She on make. You screw her again and I kill her.’
‘But you didn’t kill her,’ I said.
‘Not even acid,’ said Catarina tolerantly. ‘I go fetch more cake.’