Bola Odunsi slowed as he pulled into Yattendon village. It was lunch time, so would he find the Air Commodore in the pub as before, or should he push on to the house?
Nah, let’s check out the gaff…
He’d find it himself this time, without Collingworth jabbering in his ear. Bola felt more relaxed on his own, much more able to focus. Collingworth would bend his ear later, that was a given, but for now Bola was content to enjoy the moment. Talking of bending – sure, he was bending the rules a little, coming out on his own, but the POI was a septuagenarian, so what was the risk?
He took a right through Yattendon and cruised slowly along the lane. He came to a bend in the road, tickled the brake. There was a circular mirror inset into the hedgerow just on the bend on the opposite side of the road. That meant a driveway.
Sure enough, two mildewed, discoloured stone posts came into view as he took the bend. Blink and you’d miss it – as they had on their previous visit. The name of the house was partially obscured, inscribed on the nearest post. The Willows.
Bola turned hard left and found himself on a once-gravelled drive that was now more dirt than gravel. At the end of the gently curving track a squat, cubic house, whose sunken windows called to mind a stately home Bola had once visited on a school trip, awaited his arrival like a slumbering dog.
Could do with a little TLC, Air Commodore…
He parked adjacent to a double garage, and surveyed the property. The front lawn was wide and the grass was, like most gardens at present, browned by the summer sun and lack of rain. There was a stone fountain in the centre of the lawn, although there was no sign of running water. Perhaps it had been turned off in anticipation of imminent hosepipe bans. Having met the Air Commodore, Bola doubted that such a decision would have been taken by the man himself – more likely some eco-conscious gardener. Or maybe it just wasn’t working properly and no one had seen fit to fix it.
Bola got out and approached the front door, a grand, oak affair with a large brass knocker. Even this was showing signs of neglect. It could do with rubbing down, a coat of linseed oil perhaps. Bola tutted under his breath. If he could ever afford a place like this, he’d make damn sure he looked after it properly.
The knocker produced a sonorous echo from within, and Bola imagined a large, bare hallway behind the façade, suits of armour ranged around its perimeter, portraits of long-forgotten family members adorning the walls, and a butler, perhaps, in full livery, pale, condescending, enquiring as to whom might be calling upon his employer at this hour.
When the door eventually opened, however, it was the familiar figure of the Air Commodore himself who greeted him.
‘Ah, you again. Might have guessed. More questions? Am I right?’
‘I won’t keep you long, sir. Be as quick as I can.’
Akkerman looked him up and down. ‘Very well. Better come with me, then.’
Bola followed Akkerman through the hallway, which wasn’t nearly as imposing as he had imagined, and into a comfortably furnished lounge. Akkerman walked – a little unsteadily, Bola noticed – across the room to a large armchair which he’d evidently just vacated to answer the door. Without inviting Bola to do likewise he settled himself down, folded his hands, and lifted his chin enquiringly. ‘Well, off you go.’
‘Ah. May I?’ Bola pointed to the nearest chair.
‘I suppose,’ Akkerman grunted. There was a cut-glass decanter on a side table next to him, half full of an amber liquid Bola guessed to be Scotch whisky. Akkerman reached out and poured a shot into a matching tumbler. ‘Offer you anything? Suppose not, duty and so on.’
‘Not for me, sir, thanks all the same.’
Akkerman took a slug of Scotch. ‘All the more for me, then. Good show.’
Bola wasn’t sure how to interpret Akkerman’s manner, a curious combination of joviality and irritation.
Half-cut, by the look of him…
Should he begin the interview, or leave it for another day on the grounds of POI inebriation? But how would Akkerman respond to such an accusation? He could hardly say ‘Sorry sir, you’re clearly drunk, so I’d best come back tomorrow.’ And the Air Commodore seemed, if not willing, then at least resigned to answering further questions, so he might as well press on.
‘Sir, can I begin by asking about your son? We’ve been unable to find any record of him following his withdrawal from the Little Hedgehogs nursery in…’ Bola consulted his notebook. ‘April of 1982.’
Akkerman looked into his tumbler, made no reply.
‘Can I ask where he went to school? We can’t trace any record of him at the local schools, either. I–’
‘Had his name down for Worth, the public school, you know. Damn good school, too, if you don’t mind a bit of religion.’
‘Yes sir, but that would have been later in life, I think? Where did he attend primary school?’
‘She wasn’t one for infant schools, his mother,’ Akkerman said, taking another gulp of Scotch. ‘Preferred home schooling.’
‘Ah, I see. So Christopher was home-schooled?’
‘That’s what I said, wasn’t it?’
Bola saw a challenge in Akkerman’s eye, so he held his peace. They hadn’t found a record of the son at either of the two GP surgeries local to Brockford, which was odd in itself, never mind Akkerman’s assertion of home-schooling – a trend that hadn’t caught on until the nineties, surely?
‘We haven’t had much luck finding out much about him at all, in fact,’ Bola told him. ‘Was he registered with a doctor – a GP? That would have been normal, but we–’
‘All family health issues were handled by the medics at Brockford. That’s the RAF way.’
‘I see.’ Bola scratched the side of his nose with his biro. ‘So … did he attend university, college?’
‘Decided to go his own way, that’s all,’ Akkerman stared glumly into his tumbler.
‘Not academic, then, like his sister?’
No response. Bola tried again.
‘Did he begin work somewhere? Near Brockford, or elsewhere?’
‘Can’t say, for sure. Bit of a rebel, Christopher. Unpredictable. Never shared much about his feelings.’
‘But he must have told you where he’d decided to work? He’d have wanted you to know, surely?’
‘Not a fruitful line of enquiry,’ Akkerman said, shaking his head. ‘I’d drop it, if I were you. You’re supposed to be finding the perpetrator of a murder, am I right? Instead of asking a lot of pointless questions about my son.’
Akkerman’s tone had changed to something closer to aggressive. Bola took a moment. How to play this? How could a man be so ignorant about his only son’s life choices? Perhaps it would be best to move on.
‘Can I ask when you moved away from Brockford, Air Commodore?’
‘Oh, around eighty-five, six, as I recall. Wife was poorly by then. Thought a change might do her good, but…’ He shrugged. ‘Made her worse, if you ask me.’
‘And do you remember when Mrs Akkerman was admitted to hospital?’
‘Well, she’d had treatment before we moved, but as an in-patient? That would be around eighty-five.’
‘Was your wife closer to Christopher, would you say, than yourself?’ Bola eased the conversation back to where he wanted it.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Akkerman set his tumbler down and reached for a refill. ‘Mothers and sons. You should know all about that. Of course they were close.’ He drained the last drops of Scotch from the decanter and set it down with a clunk.
‘And would Christopher have confided in her, written to her, perhaps?’
‘Would you excuse me?’ The Air Commodore got up, not without difficulty, and walked unsteadily towards the hall, tumbler in hand. ‘Won’t be a moment.’
‘Of course.’
Bola sat back, breathed deeply. Patience, patience…
A minute passed, then another. A carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the seconds. Apart from this discreet indicator of the passage of time, the silence was almost overpowering. Bola understood the attraction of living out in the sticks, but it wasn’t for him. All the silence, all the nothingness, would drive him nuts. Better to hear the world passing by, feel the rumble of traffic, instead of this stultifying stillness.
Another minute passed. Had the old boy passed out in the toilet? Bola was about to get up to investigate when he heard the returning clump of the Air Commodore’s feet in the hallway. No doubt he’d taken the opportunity to refill his glass.
Bola wet his lips in preparation for his follow-up question, but as Akkerman appeared in the doorway his mouth fell open wordlessly. Akkerman wasn’t carrying a glass.
He was carrying a shotgun, and it was pointing directly at Bola.