Dan paced his office, talking on the phone. Through the window into the squad room he could see team members leaving with equipment. ‘Yes,’ he said, trying not to sound as unenthusiastic as he felt. He frowned. ‘Bourton-on-the-Water? You’ve got it. See you there.’
He rang off and dropped his mobile into a coat pocket. ‘We almost got away clean,’ he told Bill who was still pulling files from Dan’s cabinets to fill cardboard boxes with case information. ‘I thought by coming in early enough we’d avoid diversions.’
‘What now?’ Bill said. He’d changed personalities since last night when they’d booked to stay at the Black Dog in Folly. ‘Why not tell me in the car?’
‘Because you don’t want to wait another second to hot foot it back to the vicinity of your lady love?’
‘Because I want to get on with this stinking case and it’s going to be easier from Folly than here in Gloucester. You keep pushing it when it comes to Radhika and me, but it’s wearing a bit thin and pretty soon you’re going to need a different diversion from reality.
‘You saw the papers. We’ve run out of cover from our very few friends in the press. Maybe we should concentrate on that. Anytime now—probably right now—we are going to be plastered all over every rag. We’ll be those amateurs who haven’t got a lead to our names. Not that it’s true, but since we can’t share any leads while we try to break this thing, they’ll keep on goading us into giving something away.’
‘Which we won’t do,’ Dan said shortly. ‘We’ll come up with a couple of leads to feed to the press, and a better one for someone we can trust to use it well. Now, stand where you are and listen.
‘Alex Duggins called in with a wishy-washy report. A Mrs Gladys Lymer who works at the Black Dog may have gone missing. She left the pub for home around one in the afternoon yesterday and Alex doesn’t know for certain if she’s been seen since.’
The box Bill was holding started to tip and he smacked it down on the nearest surface. ‘So, what does that mean? Missing person or no missing person?’
‘Damned if I know. We’ll go after it when we get to Folly. For some reason that eludes me, our friends at the Dog don’t seem to know either – and Mrs Lymer’s husband isn’t talking.
‘Let’s go. I’ll drive. You let the team know we’ll be scrambling the minute we hit that sumptuous parish hall in Folly. We can’t afford to have a double homicide drag on without any breaks for much longer.’
‘Balls Harding has everything set in Folly,’ Bill said hefting two boxes into his arms. ‘Coffee, tea and snacks arranged from the Black Dog – apparently he thinks his priorities are straight. Spare desks and chairs transported. Computer and communication equipment in place.’
Dan switched over his phone to the front desk. ‘I thought that since our resident upstart has made detective sergeant, we’d drop the “Balls” to avoid questions we don’t want to answer.’
‘Yes, boss, but it slips out. After all, he is about the most ballsy upstart I ever encountered. But I’ll try. Detective Sergeant Harding is very efficient, I’ll give him that. And I haven’t noticed him developing an attitude since he passed his exam.’
‘There’s something else,’ Dan said. ‘We’ve an appointment with Molly Lewis. That was her on the phone. The post-mortems are complete – apart from some long-range lab work that probably won’t make a lot of difference either way to us. Not if we get some irrefutable explanations ahead of that. The exotic tests are almost always about stuff that only interests the boffins anyway. We’re meeting Molly now.’
‘Shit,’ Bill said, with feeling.
The Hill’s plot, Knighton House on the far side of a wide gentle hill, from Winchcombe, impressed LeJuan Harding – just when he thought he’d become blasé about these excessive country piles.
Knighton was old, very old, just how old LeJuan wasn’t sure but he imagined there were more than a couple of hundred years of English privilege cosseted by miles of stone walls backed with yew hedges and dense woods. The house was invisible from any of the surrounding roads, particularly at this time on a snow-cloaked morning. The estate could only be seen from behind and above where the hill rose just enough to give a cloud-darkened view over the trees.
It had been Bill Lamb’s idea that LeJuan and Barry set up in Folly before dawn was even breaking and carry on to Knighton before – they hoped – there was enough activity to catch them poking around without an invitation.
Barry Trafford drove the Jeep they’d been fortunate to purloin from the motor pool that morning and from his silence, Barry was enjoying their ride too much to bother himself with minutia.
‘What did you think?’ LeJuan asked. ‘Like it?’
‘Wouldn’t mind having one of these myself,’ Barry said. ‘Beats the hell out of my old Nissan.’
‘I meant the Hill’s place – the estate?’ LeJuan smiled to himself. They had dropped down to the level of the estate again and taken what was little more than a track around Knighton. ‘Stop here while we figure out how we’ll get to the carriage house without being seen. The Hills made it clear we aren’t invited to wander around their territory, so asking at the main entrance is out of the question.’
Obediently, Barry pulled the dark blue Jeep onto a verge and up close to the dry-stone wall. ‘I know that. Sergeant Lamb looked thrilled to have us leaping from our beds in the middle of the night. But I thought we’d have been told how to approach; instructions about it, I mean,’ Barry said. He was not much of a self-starter but he was a sterling bloke and LeJuan liked him. When the chips were down you could trust Barry to be there for you, whereas a lot of more aggressive officers were always looking for a way to get up a ladder – leaving anyone else behind if it suited their purpose.
‘We did get this from Lamb.’ LeJuan opened a chart across his knees. ‘It tells us more than a long-distance view over the chimneys. This is the house,’ he said, pointing out a large building shaped like an E without a central stroke. The chart showed that the two end bays no longer existed in their original form. There looked to be a flight of steps running the length of the remaining wing with a front door in the middle and rows of matching windows on either side. A porte-cochère broke up the long expanse and in front of that was a large pool. Vehicles would drive in a circular pattern.
‘That was probably where the carriages went in times of yore,’ LeJuan said and laughed.
Barry, his blond head bent over the chart, nodded and said, ‘I’d have liked to see that.’
LeJuan’s black heritage didn’t quite stretch his imagination to enjoying the sight of carriages and fine ladies and gentlemen arriving at Knighton, but he appreciated the history.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’re the whizz at this sort of thing. Where do you think this is? Or should I say, where are we now?’ He pointed to squares that depicted small buildings a distance from the back of the house.
Barry looked up. ‘That’s north. Which means the house faces this way.’ He pointed on the chart. ‘South. And these buildings are north-east and, if the key is right, about half a mile from the back of the house. These are the kitchens, right? And the kitchen gardens if they still keep them up. There’s another wall between the gardens and the out buildings. This says stables. Do you know if they’re used?’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ LeJuan said.
‘Then we may be lucky.’ Barry bent lower over the chart. ‘It seems as if they don’t overlook the out-buildings. Who would live in those?’
‘Wouldn’t have thought anyone did now, but this one.’ He set a fingernail on one. ‘This is the carriage house where our Lance Pullinger had digs when he chose. Apparently, he didn’t choose very often but at one point he had it set up so he could go there when he wanted to.’
‘So where did he go otherwise?’
‘I’m no wiser than you. The house in Winchcombe where the woman was found, I suppose, but if O’Reilly and Lamb know that for sure, they haven’t told either of us. The Hills told our boys Pullinger moved out of the carriage house and the place is under renovation now. The boss said Robert Hill was cagey about Pullinger’s living arrangements. He answered questions but he didn’t volunteer any information. Our job is to get in here—’ he tapped his finger on the carriage house again – ‘and see what, if anything, we can find to help us with the mystery of Mr Lance Pullinger, architect. Hill sidestepped any suggestion of looking at the place. He said there was nothing to see, just building supplies.’
LeJuan scooted down in his seat and crossed his arms. ‘And since we don’t have enough of an excuse for a search warrant we’ll have to try doing this without being seen. But start thinking up excuses, just in case.’
‘I think O’Reilly’s hoping there’s an easy way around the warrant,’ Barry said, frowning and rooting around in his pockets. ‘He’s always liked the element of surprise. Here. You’re better at this than I am.’ He gave LeJuan his lock-picking set.