George got up immediately and held her by the arms. She leaned against his shoulder sobbing. “Do you know exactly where she is?”
She pressed herself away from him. “Yes—we let out a lot of our land to a farmer. He found her by the entrance to his fields.”
“Has an ambulance been called and the police?”
“Yes both.” She lifted her arms from her sides. “Look, I’m shaking. Could you drive me there please? It’s all paved roads on the estate so no problem for the car.”
“Of course.” They all went out and Gladys took the wheel with Maisie crouched beside her, giving her directions away from the Hall and the outbuildings surrounding it and out alongside farmland interspersed with fences and trees. The side of an ambulance came into view ahead of them parked on a circular tarmacked area. A bent, misshapen bike was visible beside it together with a small group of people bending and kneeling. Gladys bought the car to a halt and with a cry Sarah tore the door open and hurtled towards the group. The others all got out but George put out a hand to prevent them from following. “That may well be a crime scene,” he said.
He spotted a man in a brown jacket and matching cap standing nearby and he walked round the side of the field towards him. “Hallo,” he greeted him. “We were visiting the Hall when we heard the news and brought the lady here. Did you call this in?”
The man nodded. “Yes, I farm this land here as a tenant of the Hall. I saw it all happen. I was over the other side of the field there.” He pointed behind them. “The car deliberately hit the bike.”
“The car?”
“Oh yes—a dark coloured saloon it was, an Audi I think.”
“It couldn’t have been an accident?”
“No way. There’s an entrance there which we use for deliveries and for me to get my tractor in and out. The car came in fast, went straight for the bike and then drove out turning left towards Oxford. Sarah goes biking up that track most days. They must have been watching her and knew her routine. I came running over and called the ambulance on my way because I could see she wasn’t moving. When I got to her she was alive but in a lot of pain. I held her head up until the ambulance arrived here and tried to staunch the blood.” He showed his hands which were streaked with red. “The bastards could well have killed her. I started running and shouting straightaway. They must have seen me and took off before they had the chance to run over her again. I got part of the number plate.”
As he finished a police car with its siren screaming slewed to a halt by the ambulance. The crew were in the process of loading a stretcher into the back of the vehicle. There was a short conversation before the ambulance with its own siren at play took off at speed. Two police officers started to examine the bike. “You’d better go over there,” George urged the farmer. “They’ll want to talk to you.” He watched him go before he went back to join the two women. His face was grim as he related to them what the farmer had told him. “This is the Grouper Junior’s handiwork for sure.”
“But why?” Gladys asked. “For heaven’s sake, why?”
“So that whatever we find, she wouldn’t be around to provide the details, I guess. She’s the only one who would know chapter and verse about the tenants. The Grouper must have been tipped off that we found the house. We need to get our hands on that piece of paper, the list.”
Cynthia patted her handbag. “In here—and I took a picture of it on my phone in case you told me to put it back.”
“No, I’m not going to do that, but we must hand it in to the police as soon as we can. And we should go back to the house to replace that file where we found it.”
“I still don’t get it—the name Iqbal on the list.”
“Neither did I at first—but Helena Ahmed was an Iqbal, wasn’t she, before she married?”
**
When they got back to the house, they found the front door open. The file was still on the kitchen table where they’d left it and George closed it up before he took it back down into the cellar. There was no sign of Mrs Cavendish or anyone else.
“Just a moment before we go,” George said. “I want another look in the study at the golden lion.”
The study door was ajar and he cautiously pushed it open. They looked over at the desk. The golden lion had vanished. George searched around on the floor and shifted files on the shelves. There was no sign of it. “Where’s it gone?” Gladys asked.
“It was taken by the same people who crashed into Sarah Richardson’s bike.” George’s expression was grim.
“But we all saw it.”
George nodded. “Yes, and I took pictures of it, the lion itself, the base and the position on the desk where it was.”
Cynthia peered down at the desk. “You can see where it was,” she said. “Look—there’s a bare patch in the dust.”
George leaned over and snapped again with his phone. “We’ll have that as well.”
“Why do you think it’s so important?”
“I don’t know at the moment but I know where I’ve seen another which is exactly like it. I couldn’t place it at first but then I remembered. That sign on the Gonzalez building…”
Cynthia clapped her hands. “Yes, of course. And it’s on the hand-out he gave you. So this suggests a connection between Sarah Richardson and Pennington’s bank.”
“And maybe a motive for trying to get rid of her. Come on, we need to get out of here.”