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“Is that you, Verity?”
Who the heck did KD think it was, answering my phone at twenty minutes to nine in the morning?
“No, mum, it's the parlourmaid. Mrs Farish isn't out of bed yet.”
“Ha! Then I'm obviously paying you too much if you can afford servants. Listen, dear, I've got to go to London for a meeting with my publisher and my agent, so there's no point in you coming in to Bishop Lea today.”
If there is one thing my boss hates, it is going to London for a meeting with her publisher, yet here she was sounding bubbly and excited at the prospect.
“What's up?”
“It's a meeting about translation rights.”
“But your books are already available in umpteen languages.”
“Ah ha! But not Japanese.”
Good heavens! What on earth would readers in Japan make of Agnes Merryweather? I had a sudden vision of hordes of camera-draped tourists scouring the English countryside looking for the fictional parish inhabited by Agnes and her flock, and stopping every roly-poly shaped, chubby-cheeked woman in a long black dress and demanding to know if she were a Church of England vicar.
“Japanese, eh? Ah so!”
“Don't be facetious, Verity, or I'll leave you research to be doing while I'm gone.”
I heard the laughter in her voice, she knew as well as I did that if that was a threat, it was an empty one. She's well aware of how much I enjoy that aspect of my job.
“Is it a day trip?” I asked.
“Yes, it's a lunch time meeting, so I'll be back on the four o'clock train.”
“Have fun, boss, and give 'em hell.”
“Oh, don't worry, I intend to get them for every penny I can. How else can I afford the wages of a lie-abed like you?” She laughed and ended the call.
“Cheek,” I muttered, but I was laughing too.
Determined not to waste my free morning, I read again my notes on the Hapstone Car case, then drove out in search of Talbot and Rudge Engineering, the last known workplace of Josef Dominiczak.
The two-storey building stretched for a hundred yards or so along Cadogan Road, to the east of Crofterton centre. Tall windows and sky-lights at intervals along the roof let in plenty of natural illumination to the upper floor. I pulled up in the visitors' car park and gathered my things together. I had made no appointment, but banked on someone there being prepared to see me, once I'd shown them my ID card and said who I worked for.
I was right and within a matter of moments a young chap led me through a series of quiet offices with men busy at modern computer screens or old-fashioned drawing boards before leaving me in the inner sanctum of the current Design Office Manager, Dickie Harrison.
“Good Lord!” he said, when I explained why I was there. “I remember Jo. His disappearance was the talk of the place for weeks.”
“You were here at that time?”
“Oh, yes. I've worked here for twenty-five years. Ever since I left technical college.”
“I understand his manager was a man named Carruthers.”
“No, no, I don't think so.” The sandy haired man on the opposite side of the desk looked as dry and desiccated as a sheet of old parchment. Two shrewd grey eyes stared back at me from above a button nose and a pair of thin lips that alternately pursed and relaxed as he attempted to recall the correct name. “Carstairs,” he said eventually. “Richard Carstairs was the chap you mean.”
“Thank you.” I made a note on my pad. “Did you know Dominiczak well?”
“No, and I doubt that any one did, not anyone here, at least. He was a bit of a loner who kept himself to himself.”
“Can you tell me anything about him?”
“Not much, but I'll do what I can.”
The picture that emerged confirmed Sofia's description of a quiet man. He did not mix socially with his colleagues, preferring to go straight home and not spend time in the pub after work. Talbot and Rudge had a lively Social Club and fielded teams of darts, cricket, and snooker players. They also held regular inter-departmental quizzes. Dominiczak took part in none of it.
His work had been meticulous, and he had that uncanny knack of all good draughtsmen — the ability to shut out all external distractions and concentrate on the drawing board in front of him.
“It is absolutely imperative, you see, that the blueprints are accurate. One slip of the pen, one moment of distraction could be very costly, and even the tiniest of mistakes could be life-threatening,” Harrison explained.
“Life threatening?”
“Yes, we have some...er...sensitive contracts.”
“Military contracts, for the Ministry of Defence?”
Harrison said nothing, he merely smiled benignly. Why he was being so coy when the fact that Talbot and Rudge had MoD contracts was plastered all over their website, was beyond me, but it did set me thinking.
About to ask him if, as his daughter had reported, Dominiczak had said anything about missing plans or blueprints, I was interrupted by the arrival of the tea lady with her trolley.
“Morning, Mr Harrison. The usual, is it?”
“Yes please, Glenda.” He turned to me. “May we offer you something, Miss Long?”
“No, I'm fine, thank you.” I had dreadful memories of the brown sludge that passed for both tea and coffee the last time I'd worked in an office. I did accept his offer of a biscuit, though. It is not in my nature to resist a chocolate digestive.
“Was Dominiczak popular?”
“Hmm...well, perhaps not in a 'hail, fellow, well met, come and have a drink down the pub' sort of way.” His bloodless lips curved in a rictus of a smile. “It would be better to say that he wasn't unpopular. He wasn't disliked, and I doubt that anyone here would have done him harm, if that's what you are driving at. He was too inoffensive for that.”
“So he had no arguments or disagreements with people?”
Harrison shook his head from side to side.
“What about his boss, Carstairs?”
“Ah!” He finished his tea, put the cup on the saucer and pushed it away from him. “Now, there is an oddity.”
“In what way?”
Steepling his hands under his chin, he took a second or two before replying. “Well, within a few months I think it was, though I could check if you think it's important, not only did Dominiczak disappear in mysterious circumstances, but so did his manager.”
“What?” I goggled at the man. Two disappearances from the same office, an office that drew plans for top-secret military projects, within a matter of months? Surely this was a coincidence too far.
“Oh, yes.” Harrison's grimace of a smile flashed again. “It was quite possibly the most exciting time ever experienced in the considerable history of Talbot and Rudge.”
“I'll say. I bet the MoD were swarming all over the place, weren't they?”
“Strangely, they weren't. Oh, we did our own internal checks, of course, and I assume the old man was in touch with them —”
“Old man?”
“Yes, Nicholson, the then Managing Director.”
“Did he know what had happened to Carstairs?”
“Not as far as I know. Neither did his wife, if the office rumour mill at the time was to be believed.” He sat back, hands laced on his chest, and looked at me as if to say, “What do you make of that?”
At the moment I didn't make anything of it, I was still busy trying to work out the ramification of this new development. I scribbled some notes on the pad on my knee.
“Is Mrs Carstairs still alive, do you know?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Do you have her address?
His brow puckered. “Probably, but I'm not sure if I should —”
“This is police business, Mr Harrison.” I gave him what I hoped was an authoritative look, and when he still seemed to dither, said, “I can get it from other sources, but it would save me an awful lot of time.”
“Well, in that case...” He picked up the phone, pressed a button and, after a brief conversation, put it down again. “Here we are. Eileen Carstairs lives at 38 Brunswick Drive, Claydon.”
Stap me!
“Was that their address before Carstairs vanished?”
He raised his shoulders almost to his ears in an expansive shrug. “Sorry, I can't tell you that. I didn't know them well enough.”
That was understandable. Harrison would have been a lowly draughtsman at the time and unlikely to be hobnobbing with his superior, but if Carstairs had lived there twenty years ago, that put him on the same street as Lionel and Irene Jackson.
I needed space to think about this, and I'd exhausted all the questions I had for Dickie Harrison, so I thanked him and went back to my car. For several minutes I just sat there trying to assimilate all I might have learned and put it in some sort of order. Then I took out my pad and made a list.
Dominiczak had suspected Carstairs of stealing vital and possibly top-secret plans.
Was Carstairs an enemy agent?
The Polish man had confronted Carstairs who'd killed him, stolen a neighbour's car, and set fire to it with Dominiczak's body inside.
Was that a plausible scenario? And what would Becky make of it when we met up — my watch said eleven o'clock — in three hours? Would she be angry that I'd gone to Talbot and Rudge without her? Probably. Unless she'd called in sick again.
I crossed my fingers and checked my phone; there were no messages.
***
A bend in the road caused Irene Jackson’s house to be hidden from the larger Carstairs residence further along Brunswick Drive. Where the former had been shabby and unkempt, the latter appeared well-maintained and cared for, and I thought the same could be said of the woman herself when she opened her door to me.
“Mrs Carstairs?”
A pair of strikingly blue eyes surveyed me warily, scanning me over from head to toe. “Ye...es.”
“I'm Verity Long of Crofterton Police Cold Case Squad.” Again my ID came into play. “I wonder if I might ask you some questions about your husband.”
Her pencilled eyebrows rose. “You'd better come in.”
It felt like stepping into a sauna. The heating must have been turned up high—either that or I was having an early menopause—and a film of perspiration already covered my forehead by the time I unbuttoned my jacket and sat down on a wide leather armchair in the hot and stuffy living room.
“May I offer you a cup of coffee?” she asked in a cultured voice.
On the basis that my hostess would probably serve a better brew than that offered at my last destination, I accepted and, while she was gone, gazed in frank curiosity at my surroundings.
I think it would be true to say that Eileen Carstairs was obsessed by dragons, for the entire room, every surface, every nook and cranny was filled with them. They came in every possible shape and size and a variety of materials, metal and ceramic, wood and paper. Framed paintings of fire-breathing monsters hung on the walls, a cute and cuddly knitted dragon lay draped over the back of the settee and even the rug before the fire had a dragon design woven into it. For one wild moment I wondered if this was the reason it was so hot in there, even the spray of freesias in a dragon-shaped vase drooped in the heat.
Heavy velour curtains that only helped to keep the heat in, hung at the windows and beyond, in the small garden, a number of statuettes peeked out from the well-stocked borders. All of dragons, naturally.
“Ah,” Eileen said, walking back in with a tray bearing two cups and saucers, “I see you're looking at my collection.”
“You obviously like dragons.” I took the proffered cup from her hand.
“Well now, that's because I'm Welsh, you see,” she said in a sing-song voice, all trace of the refined manner in which she'd offered refreshment gone.
“I didn't think Eileen was a Welsh name,”
“It isn't. My mother was Irish. I'm a real mongrel, me,” she said with a laugh, and sat down in the other fireside chair.
Eileen Carstairs didn't resemble a mongrel — on the contrary, here was a woman who took good care of herself and went to great pains over her appearance. She was about KD's age — late fifties to early sixties — and, like my boss, her hair had been expertly cut, coloured and styled. She would probably be grey were it not for the light brown tint and blonde highlights. Her slim figure wore a close fitting cotton dress as if to show it to best advantage, but the most amazing thing about her was her make-up. Not only had it been applied with delicacy, but it was still intact. In this heat!
“So, what was it you wanted to know about Richard?”
“I understand he disappeared about twenty years ago, is that right?”
“Yes, that's right, he did.”
“Can you tell me a little of the circumstances, please?”
She drained her cup and replaced it on the tray. Then she settled back in her chair before asking me a question of her own.
“May I ask what business that is of yours?”
“Certainly. I'm investigating disappearances that happened around that time in connection with an unsolved case. Four people were reported missing around Bonfire Night 1991 —”
“Richard didn't go until January the following year,” she interrupted, hastily.
Which meant he couldn't have been the man in the car. He might still have been involved though, so I pressed on.
“Nevertheless, I'd like to hear about it.”
“Very well. He told me he was going away for the weekend.”
“On his own?”
“Yes.”
“And when was this?”
“One Thursday night in January. He said he'd be back on the Monday, but he never showed up.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, and I didn't ask.”
She seemed remarkably unconcerned about it, I thought, noting her answers on my pad. When Jerry was incommunicado for a few days I was frantic. Despite the overpowering heat, Eileen Carstairs was ice cool.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I had a call from someone at Talbot and Rudge, Richard was the Design Office manager there, asking where he was, and I said I didn't know.”
“Did you contact the police?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Quite frankly, Miss...er... Quite frankly, I didn't care where he was or whether he came back.”
“I see.”
“I should never have got married really. I was nearly forty before I did and I enjoyed the single life. I'm afraid we soon got tired of each other and his disappearance at least meant there was no need for a divorce.”
“Would that have been a problem? It's quite a frequent consequence of marriage these days.”
“I am a Catholic. Like I said my mother, God rest her soul, was Irish.”
“But what if he was dead? What if you had wanted to marry again?”
“In the first instance, the police would have come and told me. And the second was so unlikely, I didn't waste time thinking about it. I relished the freedom, of not hearing the same droning voice around the place, or having to put up with his meticulous little ways, or listening every day to his oft-repeated views on the most boring of subjects.”
Would Jeremy and I ever get like that, I wondered. Over time, would we become so accustomed to each other's company that it would rapidly turn to boredom and the love we had, each for the other, be eroded away, little by little, day by day. I hoped not and, less than a month after our wedding, it seemed an impossible prospect, but who can tell? If I ever got to be as casual and uncaring about my marriage as the woman sitting opposite, then Jerry had my permission to take me out and shoot me.
“So you've just carried on living here, posing as Mrs Carstairs —”
“I am Mrs Carstairs,” she snapped.
“But what about his bank account and life insurance policies? You'd need a death certificate for those.”
“Ha! Thankfully, I didn't need them. I have money of my own.”
Which might be perfectly true, of course, but I was missing something here and I didn't know what. Still, her attitude to her spouse was no concern of mine. It was time to get back on track.
“Did your husband have any problems at work, do you know?”
She gave a start as though surprised by the question. “Not as far as I'm aware, no.”
“He got on with everyone did he? No animosity to, or from, anyone?”
“Again, not as far as I know. Why?”
“A draughtsman from Talbot and Rudge, Josef Dominiczak, went missing six weeks before your husband.”
I swear that for a moment her face clouded over, but she recovered immediately. “I don't recall Richard mentioning that, but it is a long time ago.”
“Well, thank you, Mrs Carstairs.” I got up to go, then fired one last question at her. “Do you know your neighbours, the Jacksons? They live down the road.”
“Jackson...” Her brows came together in thought. “No, I don't think so. I might know them by sight, of course, or by their first names.”
“Lionel and Irene.”
“It doesn't ring any bells,” she said, her hand on the front door.
I thanked her again, and stepped out into glorious fresh air.
Well, that had been interesting, I thought, as I sat in the car and made a few notes. When I'd left Dickie Harrison's office, there had been the distinct possibility in my mind that Carstairs had murdered Dominiczak and stolen the Jacksons' Ford in order to hide his crime. Now, I wasn't so sure. I'd learned little of her husband from Eileen, but his own disappearance from the scene so soon after the Pole was an anomaly that I could neither understand nor explain.
I wondered what Becky would have made of the woman I'd just interviewed and began to think it a shame that she hadn't been with me.
However, while I might accept that the woman in the hothouse really hadn't cared about her husband and was perfectly happy to be single, when it came to his disappearance I was sure of one thing. Eileen Carstairs had been lying through her teeth.
***
I dropped pad and pen on the passenger seat and started the engine. Time was getting on, Becky would be at Fernbank in a little over an hour and I wanted to stop in town and buy a new set of cushions for the living room before I went home.
I parked as close as I could to the small shop I wanted and walked around the corner to a narrow lane off the High Street. Once inside Betty's Home Furnishings, I didn't spend long on my choice, anything that was vaguely the same colour as the wallpaper would do, and walked out five minutes later with a jaunty air, swinging a large carrier bag containing my purchases.
Until my arm was clutched in a tight grip.
“Would you come this way, please, Miss Long.”
“What?” A man in a dark suit loomed at my side, turning me away from the direction of my car. “Let go of me.”
“Just come quietly, please. You won't be harmed.”
What the hell was going off? I struggled to free myself. “Who are you?” I looked up into a face that might have been etched from stone for all the expression it wore. “I shall scream.”
“Don't do that.” He leaned in toward me, mean and menacing. “Our boss wants a word with you.”
“Oh? And who might that be, and why should I want to talk to him?”
“You'll see,” said old Stoneface.
My brain worked furiously as he dragged me along the pavement. This couldn't be happening, could it? Was I being kidnapped in broad daylight or had I unwittingly walked onto a film set and been mistaken for an actor?
Fear coiled in my belly and a trickle of sweat ran down my back. I looked around, glancing back over my shoulder. The streets were deserted, for once there wasn't a soul in sight. Typical! Where was everybody when I needed them? I opened my mouth and his grip on my arm tightened.
“Don't scream, I said. You won't be hurt.”
Up ahead a car with blacked out windows waited by the side of the kerb. I had less than thirty yards to make a run for it.
“Don't even think about it.”
Was this guy psychic? I caught the glint of metal in his hands and something hard pressed into my ribs. Hell's teeth! He had a gun and the thought of that alone robbed me of any action. My knees buckled as the rear door opened and he bundled me inside still holding tight to my bags. Any thought I might have had of scooting across to the other side and getting straight out again was stymied by the man mountain already sitting there.
He wore a similar suit to my captor, the jacket tight across his bulging chest. After a brief look at me, he grunted as if in satisfaction, and turned away again. If this was the boss, my future had just got a whole lot darker and, possibly, shorter.
Stoneface pulled the rear door closed and the car shot off, goodness knew where, with me sitting in the back like the filling in a Men in Black sandwich.
“Where are we going?”
The heavies ignored the question — they ignored me, for that matter — staring straight ahead, stolid and silent, like robots that had been de-activated. Maybe these weren't the Men in Black. Maybe these were the aliens.
“I asked where you were taking me.”
That got me no response either, so I said, “Hello”, and leaned forward, waving my hand in front of the guy's face. He grabbed me at the wrist and forced my arm back down.
“Ow!”
“Keep quiet and you won't be hurt. It's not far now.” His face cracked in what he probably thought was a smile. It was like a fissure opening in rock. “Relax and enjoy the journey.”
I sat back and looked out of the windscreen, trying to work out where we were. Somewhere on the outer ring road, unless my sense of direction had deserted me. In the circumstances that would not have surprised me, but I soon recognised the stretch we were on. We were southbound. Were they taking me to London? Not if Stoneface had been telling the truth about it not being far, the capital was a good two hours drive away from Crofterton.
The trees and shrubs on the banking were yellow, red, and brown, firm in Autumn's colourful grip. I fought the temptation to see my own demise reflected in the dying of the year as my mind tried to work out what on earth this was all about.
What did they intend to do to me? Was I going to be murdered and my body disposed of some place it wouldn't be found? Were they working for a gangland boss, or was my abduction due to my investigation of the Hapstone case? Vivid and terrifying images of my mangled lifeless body flooded my mind and I tried to brush them aside as I fought down rising panic. I took in a couple of deep breaths and clasped my hands tightly together to stop them shaking.
My options were severely limited. As usual, I had omitted to tell anyone where I was going and what I was doing and I doubted my bodyguards would let me phone a friend, so the chances of the cavalry arriving and pulling off a last minute rescue were zero. The thought that I might never see Jerry again brought a sob to my lips and I clamped them shut and clenched my hands into fists, nails digging into my flesh so hard that the palms stung. I would not give my abductors the satisfaction of knowing how terrified I was.
I'd run out of ideas and there was nothing I could do but go along with things, all the while remaining alert to any opportunity of escape from Old Stoneface and his blabbermouth colleague. I might only get the one chance.
The tick-tick of the car's indicator told me we were coming off the ring road. Where to now? A sign flashed past, we were heading back to the centre. Perhaps the driver's satnav was broken or he had an appalling sense of direction. Why not just cut through the centre of town instead of driving miles around the perimeter?
I allowed myself a secret smile when the answer came to me. The roads through Crofterton were littered with traffic lights at almost every junction. Plenty of places where we'd have to stop and I could draw attention to my plight. They really hadn’t expected me to come quietly, but that meant that neither had they underestimated me. I would have to be very careful from here on in.
“Who is your boss?” I asked the silent man-mountain to my right. “Anyone I might know? Someone high up, is he?”
He turned his face, looking over my head at his companion who answered for him.
“I doubt you've met him.”
“I might have done if I knew who he was. So, what is his name?”
“The boss.”
“Oh, come on. No one's name is 'the boss'.”
“The boss,” he said again, like a stuck record.
I gave up trying to get anything out of him and went back to staring out of the window. The car turned right, down St Peter's Way, and into the commercial heart of the town. This wasn't what I'd expected and I gave a start of surprise. I'd had visions of being trussed up and interrogated in some ghastly great warehouse, or a vacant unit on an industrial estate somewhere, not being taken into a set of plush offices inhabited by the sort of men who gathered for business lunches at places like Valentino's wine bar.
We came to a halt in front of a tall building and Stoneface opened the rear door and got out. He reached in and took my arm.
“Time to go.”
He helped me out of the car, never relaxing his grip, and we we were joined by the man who'd spent the journey sitting silently on my right. They scanned up and down the street before walking me across the pavement towards an ordinary office block, indistinguishable from the others around it, apart from a discreet brass plaque screwed to the wall at the side of the plate glass doors. Smith and Smith Limited, it said, and I didn't believe a word of it.
Inside the wide lobby the reception desk was staffed by a blonde girl who didn't look up as I was frogmarched to a bank of lifts lining the back wall. I had given up struggling or trying to protest as Stoneface pressed the call button. My curiosity had got the better of me again and now I wanted to meet the 'boss' of the prize pair of thugs who had kidnapped me, give him a damned good piece of my mind, and tell him he'd got a bloody nerve to treat me like this.
I tried to keep the anger pumping as we got into the lift. For a heart-stopping moment as my captor's pudgy finger hovered over the buttons, I thought they might be taking me to the basement. In my imagination this was a dank and dirty dungeon where unspeakable things would be done to me. When he pressed the topmost button and the lift shot up, I almost sagged against him in relief.
The doors opened onto a small vestibule with a single upright chair next to a single door.
Stoneface rapped once upon it.
“You can go straight in, but don't try anything in there. I shall be right outside here if you do.”
Try anything? What, like smacking his boss around the head with a carrier bag full of cushions perhaps, or overpowering him and smothering him to death with the contents?
I smiled brightly. “Well, nice talking to you both.”
He opened the door and propelled me towards the room's ominous occupant, seated at an empty desk beneath a large framed picture of the Queen.
“Do come in, Miss Long. My name is Dyson and I work for Her Majesty's Government.”
Hell's teeth and a bucket of lumme! What had I got myself into now?