CHAPTER TWO

‘Noddy gave you sound advice, Alan. You should take it.’ Peter Collins sat back so the waitress could set the roast beef sandwiches he and his cousin, Alan Piper, had ordered on their table.

‘Sound advice that will send my neighbours even further round the bend,’ Alan predicted gloomily. ‘Given what they’ve already done, can you imagine what they’d get up to if they saw a CCTV camera set up between our houses?’

‘Stop stealing your property.’ Peter reached for the mustard, opened his sandwich and spread on a liberal helping.

‘I haven’t thanked you for your help. I’m not sure the community police would have taken my complaint seriously without the statement you sent them.’

‘Revered journalist like you, course they would have,’ Peter teased. ‘I told them I was in shock. You don’t expect a woman – and I use the word loosely – to stalk her neighbours by snaking around the border of her garden using her elbows and knees like a commando so she can eavesdrop on a private conversation.’ Peter cut his sandwich in two. ‘I can still see the look on her face when she looked up and saw us staring down at her. I expected her to at least say “sorry” before running into the house. But she didn’t say a word, not a single bloody word.’

‘That’s not the first time it’s happened. One of my …’ Alan hesitated.

‘Sources?’ Peter questioned.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘I wouldn’t dare. Although I’d give a great deal to know who tipped you off about the White Baron. Not that anyone on the force is complaining. We’ve been after the bastard for years. The amount of crack cocaine and heroin on the streets has halved since he was sent down. Of course there’s always the other half.’

Alan didn’t take the hint. Peter had been a police officer too long to miss the obvious. The villain most likely to shop another was one in direct competition. But the first rule he had learned as a journalist was the identity and anonymity of sources was sacrosanct. Reveal them and it wouldn’t only be the information that would dry up. The blood flowing in your veins might too.

He changed the subject. ‘It’s foul living next door to stalking kleptomaniacs. I’ve caught myself counting the plants in my front garden. If one disappears I’m never sure whether it died or I should go and bang on their front door.’

‘How many paving bricks did they take?’

‘Two square metres.’

‘Two square metres at 19p a brick …’

‘Knock it off, Peter. It’s not funny,’ Alan protested. ‘One day it could be you.’

‘Could be.’ Peter demolished half of his sandwich in two bites. ‘Two minutes after I moved in with the love of my life she started making noises about trading in her flat for a house. It doesn’t help that Trevor Joseph has one, complete with wife, baby, cat and full wedded bliss.’ He referred to Inspector Trevor Joseph, his colleague and closest friend.

‘Take my advice, keep out of suburbia. Buy a place on its own in the middle of nowhere.’

‘That would be a prime burglary risk,’ Peter the law officer recited automatically.

‘I don’t know how much more I can take,’ Alan muttered, obsessed with his problem neighbours.

‘So far, you’ve been the good boy. You’ve done everything by the book, kept a diary, listed their ridiculous complaints about you and everything they’ve stolen from you. The community constable was right, bless him. Put up a CCTV linked to a video recorder and film their movements every time they come near your property. They’ll soon back down.’

‘I wish to God I’d never bought half his garden off him. When he knocked on my door and said he couldn’t afford the mortgage any more I should have let him move into a semi on the estate.’

‘You should have,’ Peter agreed cheerfully.

‘I felt sorry for the kid. His mother had just died, he had to buy his brother out of his share of the house … how was I to know he’d marry the bitch from hell a couple of years down the line?’

‘“No good deed goes unpunished”,’ Peter quoted Clare Boothe Luce. ‘Serves you right for being bloody charitable.’

‘Not that charitable. The land gave Joy and me a view of the woods. She used to love sitting out there in the evening.’

Alan’s wife Joy had died of cancer a year ago and Peter felt helpless every time Alan mentioned her. He wondered if Alan and Joy had been close because they hadn’t had kids. That was something else “the love of his life” was talking about. He knew his reluctance to start a family was down to pure selfishness. Things were so mind-bogglingly perfect between them, he didn’t want to risk what they had by bringing another being into their lives. Especially one that would demand round the clock attention.

Alan managed a small smile, ‘I haven’t been that good. And, I suspect that if I do take the Community Police Officer’s advice and put up a monitor, they’d only chuck a brick at it.’

‘Then we’d charge them with criminal damage.’

‘And they’d end up in a magistrates’ court where they’d get a ticket to a “Support The Misunderstood Criminals group”, a stern “don’t do it again” and remain free to return to their house where they’d tear down more of my fences and steal even more of my property.’

‘There are no guarantees in this life, especially when you’re dealing with lunatics,’ Peter qualified. ‘What do you mean you haven’t been “that good”?’

‘You want to know what they left in front of my garage this morning.’

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Peter said warily. Alan had an odd sense of humour which wasn’t always understood by his friends, let alone his enemies.

‘Journalists move in mysterious ways.’

‘And rarely truthful ones.’ Peter sipped his orange juice.

‘They left an axe – a bloody axe.’

Peter frowned. ‘An axe with blood on it?’

‘Not bloody in that sense,’ Alan replied irritably. ‘One was lying in front of my car this morning. I had to move it.’

‘And you saw them put it there?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know they left it?’

‘Who else would have done it?’

‘Axes cost money. You should have run over it.’

‘And risk damaging my tyres?’ Alan shook his head.

‘Your obsession with these nutcases is unhealthy. Ignore the stupid bastards!’

‘Obsession!’ Alan’s voice rose two octaves. ‘They build a deck overlooking my garden then complain to the police that I’m watching them when they spend all their time on a five-foot platform in view of the patio I’ve used for over twenty years. They build a monstrous shed on the platform and paint it bright blue and yellow …’

‘Everyone’s entitled to express themselves,’ Peter interrupted.

‘In fairground colours?’

‘Perhaps they love cartoons.’

‘If Mickey Mouse was sick he wouldn’t throw up anything that vivid.’ Alan was on a rant and nothing was going to stop him. ‘They stole my paving bricks and used them to raise their pots in their front garden so I could see exactly what they were doing. They tore down my fence, dug up and stole my plants. They took delivery of the flowers Joy’s friends sent her when she was in hospital and kept them for days until they were dead. And to top it all they dug up my gatepost and stole my gate and post, and I was the one who had to fork out for a new fence to make my garden secure. And you lot advise me to pay out even more money to put up a camera linked to a recorder.’

‘Not “you lot”. Community police officers aren’t real officers.’ Peter pulled the lettuce leaves from the other half of his sandwich and discarded them.

‘They aren’t?’

‘They haven’t had their polite gene removed.’

‘Very funny.’ Alan eyed Peter. ‘It’s not a laughing matter.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Peter wiped his fingers on his paper napkin. ‘The idea of your neighbours tiptoeing around in their pyjamas in the dead of night, digging up your gatepost and stealing your gate is hilarious. It’s not even as if it’s your usual sized gate. It must weigh a ton. The locals said they couldn’t believe it when they went around to retrieve it. Or his explanation that he was “keeping it safe for you”. It took two of them to find it, even when he told them where it was. They didn’t expect to find it buried under half a ton of tarpaulins.’

‘So you did check up on the locals’ progress?’

‘The community policing service needed monitoring. I volunteered for the job.’ Peter’s tone was so casual, Alan knew his cousin had made it his business to follow their progress. ‘They acquitted themselves well. I wouldn’t be as restrained as they were in dealing with kleptomaniac lunatics.’

‘You need bigger and heavier community officers.’ Alan sipped his pint. ‘The one who retrieved my gate was terrified they were going to have him for breakfast.’

‘He was the one who told you to get CCTV?’ Peter checked.

‘I told him I subscribed to Robert Frost’s philosophy.’

‘Frost, do I know him?’

‘The writer, you ignoramus. He said, and I quote, “Good fences make good neighbours”.’

‘You have one now.’

‘Only after I paid a builder more than a month’s wine bill to erect one.’

‘Moan, moan, moan. And don’t plead poverty to me. You journalists coin it with syndication rights. I’ve seen your work in six or seven nationals in the last couple of months. That White Baron piece alone must have made you enough to buy a summer palace.’

‘Not after tax. I have overheads.’

‘Fine wine, dining, cigars …’ Peter held up the cigar Alan had given him so the landlord could see it from behind the bar. ‘Not that we’re allowed to smoke them in this pub.’

‘It’s no good complaining to me about the law, Sergeant Collins,’ the landlord chipped in.

‘Suppose not,’ Peter conceded.

‘But if you have one spare I could enjoy it upstairs when I shut up shop,’ he hinted.

‘I couldn’t afford this one. It was a present.’ Peter raised his glass of orange juice in the direction of the landlord.

‘This is the first time I’ve seen you drink anything soft at lunchtime – or any time come to that. Missus curbing your lifestyle?’ Alan enquired maliciously.

‘Meeting this afternoon. New female broom upstairs doesn’t like officers smelling of alcohol.’

‘That must cramp your and Trevor’s style.’

Peter deliberately moved the conversation on from the personal. ‘You put up your CCTV yet?’

‘No.’ Alan sank half his pint of beer.

‘You’ve no intention of taking good advice?’

‘As I said, I haven’t entirely been a good boy. I had a better idea.’

‘What?’

Alan tapped his nose. ‘I’m waiting on results. Soon as I get my patio back, you and your lady love – Rose?’

‘Daisy,’ Peter growled.

‘Must come round for a barbecue.’

‘What have you done?’

Alan glanced at his watch. ‘Tell you next time.’

‘And which innocent character is the emperor of the gutter press assassinating this afternoon?’

‘Haven’t made my mind up – yet.’ Alan hesitated. ‘Off the record …’

‘Isn’t everything always off the record with you?’

‘What do you know about that missing girl?’

Peter narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘What missing girl?’

‘The beauty queen who disappeared after winning the competition. “Miss Eco-friendly” or “Miss Alternative Lifestyle” …’

‘If you mean, “Miss Green Earth” I know jack shit,’ Peter answered. ‘Why? Do you know more?’

‘Just asking.’

‘I know you. You never “just ask” about anything. You’ve had a tip-off?’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘No?’ Peter queried sceptically. ‘Because if you have, and kept it to yourself, you could be charged with withholding evidence.’

‘It wasn’t worth mentioning.’

‘Then why mention it? Stay silent and it could be construed as perverting the course of justice,’ Peter warned.

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘A pound to a penny if you stretch out your tongue it will be black.’

‘Grow up. We’re not six years old any more.’

‘You’re behaving as if you’re a fully paid-up member of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven.’

‘All right.’ Alan moved his chair closer to Peter’s. ‘I had a call this morning from someone who said they know where she is and why she’s in hiding. They want to meet so I can print her side of the story.’

Peter pulled out his notebook. ‘What story?’

‘If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t need to meet them.’

‘When and where?’

‘You expect me to tell you that so you and your colleagues can tramp in with your size fourteen boots? No way. Besides, it might be nothing.’

‘And, it might be something.’

‘If it comes to anything, you’ll be the first to know,’ Alan assured him.

‘Man or woman?’

‘What?’

‘Who phoned you, man or woman?’ Peter pressed him.

‘Don’t know. They used one of those electronic voice changer things.’

‘Phone number?’

‘They rang the office switchboard and asked to be put through to me. And don’t suggest I look at the records. That phone rings off the hook. We get up to 500 calls an hour.’

‘In other words you didn’t try to trace it.’

‘No.’

‘Record it?’

‘You think I have time to record every crank call that comes in?’ Alan left his chair. ‘Like I said, if anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.’

‘It’s not every day a beauty queen goes missing or you read unsubstantiated articles about them being sold into white slavery on the North African coast.’

Alan held up his hands in mock defence. ‘Not one of mine.’

‘This week,’ Peter sniped.

Alan checked his watch again. ‘I have to file a piece before I meet my snitch, or not as the case maybe.’

‘Piece on what?’ Peter asked.

‘Police incompetence,’ Alan joked.

‘Spell my name right.’

‘Don’t I always?’

‘Unfortunately.’ Peter picked up his coat and followed Alan out the door.

Alan filed his report, on the abandonment of a rape trial, by three forty-five. He left the office, bought a box of chocolates and drove out of town via home so he could pick up a sleeping bag in case his contact wanted to move on and it would turn into an all-nighter. He dropped the chocolates into a neighbour’s house as a combination “thank you and sorry for being insensitive” gift.

Back in his car he headed for a B-road that wound through the hills. The motorway would have been faster but he’d heeded the caller’s warning not to use it. He had to concede it was easier to spot a second car or a tail if you were watching a country road. Twice he heard helicopters overhead and wondered if whoever had phoned him could afford to rent one.

Deciding he was paranoid, he turned off the road and on to a lane that led to a well-known beauty spot. After nine miles of winding track he pulled into a picnic area. He drove slowly around the perimeter to check it was as deserted as it appeared to be. Eventually he parked beneath a tree at the furthest point from the entrance because it gave a clear view of both the area and the approach road. He turned off his ignition, gazed blindly at the rain-sodden scene and mulled over the telephone call that had brought him here. After a few minutes he opened his briefcase and pulled out one of the notepads that was never far from his side.

‘You want a scoop?’

‘Every journalist wants a scoop.’

‘I know where the beauty queen is.’

‘Where?’

‘Not in a rich Arab’s harem.’

‘I never thought she was. So, where is she?’

‘You think I’ll tell you on the phone.’

‘How do I know you’re not a crank caller?’

‘Because she has a birthmark on the top of her right thigh.’

‘You can see it on every photograph of her taken during the swimsuit finals.’

‘Can you see the one that runs into her pubic hair?’

There was no way of checking the information, as the caller undoubtedly knew. It was every journalist’s dilemma. A story he was ninety-nine per cent certain was crap, but the one per cent dangled like the promise of a lottery win – with about the same odds.

‘You want a scoop you have to pay for it.’

‘You get nothing until I know your information is genuine.’

‘Meet me at the picnic spot on the north side of Connor’s lake. You know it?’

‘Why not somewhere closer?’

‘Because that is close – for me. Take the scenic route not the motorway.’

‘You want me to drive on B-roads?’

‘I need to know no one is following you. I’ll be there between seven and nine tonight. Don’t look for me; I’ll find you and if I see the police or anyone else besides you there, you won’t see me.’

Alan closed his notepad and reached into the back of the car for the sleeping bag. He unzipped it, threw it over himself, snuggled down in his seat and waited … and waited … and waited …

Alan woke with a start. It was pitch black and hailstones were thundering on the roof of his car. Shivering, he peered into the darkness. He could make out nothing beyond the white blur hitting the windscreen. He switched on the ignition and his headlights. The car park yawned back at him, shadowy, empty and iced with white frost. He turned on the fan and heater and looked at his clock – nine thirty. The peculiar robotic voice echoed in his head.

‘I’ll be there some time between seven and nine tonight. Don’t look for me; I’ll find you and if I see the police or anyone else besides you there, you won’t see me.’

‘Bloody lunatic!’ He wasn’t sure if he was cursing himself or the hoax caller. He allowed the car a few minutes to warm up before driving slowly around the picnic area again. Reluctantly he pulled away the sleeping bag and tossed it onto the back seat, fastened his seat-belt and drove away.

The hail and rain had stopped and a full moon was shining, pale and waxy when Alan drove down his cul-de-sac at eleven o’clock. When he and Joy had moved in some thirty-five years before, they’d taken the trouble to get to know the neighbours, but most of the friends they’d made had long since moved on, and he’d lacked the will to make the acquaintance of the families who had replaced them.

Without realising it, he had become more and more isolated within his own street. Driving from house to work and back, spending what little free time he had with colleagues, work contacts, police and “sources”. Since Joy had died, the house had become no more than a place to eat, sleep, and get drunk in after a day’s work. And, given his immediate neighbours – an increasing source of irritation.

The light was switched on outside the garish shed his neighbours had erected on their monstrous oversized deck. It had been deliberately placed to shine directly into his living-room, necessitating yet more expenditure on thicker blinds and curtains. He parked his car in front of his drive. Since he’d erected a five-foot fence between them, he rarely bothered to open the wooden gates and put his car in the garage.

He stepped out, locked his car and went inside, heading straight for the kitchen and the fridge-freezer. Taking a can of lager from the fridge, he opened it, poured it into a glass and walked up to the woodland patio he and Joy had sat out on almost every spring, summer and autumn night – until their neighbours had built their edifice overlooking it.

He tried to ignore his neighbours’ deck as he walked down to the fence that backed on to the woods but it proved impossible. The halogen lamp glared, blinding him. He recalled all the summer evenings he and Joy had sat out here, sharing a bottle of wine and watching the wildlife in the woods. No foxes or badgers would go near that light. It was as though the idiots next door were hell-bent on despoiling and tainting everything around them. Petty, ugly people leading petty ugly lives.

He looked at the illuminated decking in front of the shed his neighbours grandly referred to as a “summer-house”. There was a pool of red on the planking. It stood proud, in glaring contrast to the blue and yellow painted wood. Something was lying on it, something pale … white … tendrils of dark hair spattered with black and red globules … an axe …

The images knitted together forming a picture. He reached for his mobile and dialled 999.