So he took an upper as well.
But Max Harrison didn’t actually live in what there was of Grewelthorpe. He lived somewhere on the outskirts. It was almost dark by the time Hoffer made his approach to the farm. Foresight had warned him to bring a torch, and he stuck it in his pocket after killing the engine. There was no other sign of habitation, and Hoffer had stopped the car half a mile from the house. He was going to walk that final half mile... Or was he? If Harrison had already heard or seen him, then why make himself an easy target? Better to arrive wrapped in steel than leave wrapped in a coffin. He turned the ignition back on and drove sedately up the track and into the yard.
He killed the engine and looked around. There was no sign of life. He sounded the horn tentatively, but got no response. Maybe the guy was a real farmer, out somewhere with his favourite sheep or cow. He opened his door and eased himself out. He couldn’t hear any animals, not even a dog.
‘Hello, anyone home?’ he called. Only the wind whistled a reply. Hoffer walked to the house and peered in through a couple of windows. He was looking into a large clean kitchen. He tried the door and it opened. He went inside and called out again.
The house didn’t feel empty. There was a television or radio on somewhere. He touched the kettle, but it was cold. He came out of the kitchen into an L-shaped hallway. At the other end of the hall was the front door of the house, obviously not much used. A rug had been pushed against it to stop draughts. Halfway along the hall were stairs up. But the sounds were coming from behind a door in the hall. There were two doors. The first was wide open, leading into an empty dining room. Three chairs sat around a four-cornered table. The second was closed, and must presumably lead to the living room. Hoffer’s fingers tightened around the butt of his gun. Harrison couldn’t have fled: where was there to go? Just the barns or the fields beyond. But he could be hiding. He touched the door handle, then turned it and let the door fall open.
Max Harrison had been beaten to a pulp.
His face was almost featureless, just a mess of blood and clots and tissue, like red fruit after a kid had been playing with it. Barney had told him Harrison was suffering from face cancer. A sort of cutaway plastic mask lay on the floor, and there was a large blackish hole cut deep into one of Harrison’s cheeks. Sure, beat up a dying man, why don’t you? Hoffer felt rage inside him, but then Harrison wasn’t his problem.
He was seated on a dining chair in the centre of the room. His hands had been tied behind him and around the back of the chair, and his feet had been tied to the chair-legs.
‘Hey, you Max Harrison?’ Hoffer said.
The room was messy too. There’d been a fight here, or some serious ransacking, or more probably both. A lot of broken ornaments and glass were lying underfoot. Hoffer went over to the chair to take a pulse. As he touched the body, the head rolled from the shoulders and fell on to the carpet.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Hoffer roared, half-turning his head to spew up tea and cake and scones. He spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I paid good money for that meal.’ He coughed a couple of times and turned back to the headless corpse. He was no pathologist, but he’d seen a few autopsies during his time on the force. The dead man’s throat had been cut through so deeply and thoroughly that practically nothing had been holding it on. Whoever had left Harrison sitting like that had known what would happen when someone finally touched the corpse.
‘Nice touch, dude,’ Hoffer muttered. He thought of his own knife: it wouldn’t do to be caught here by the police. He had some quick thinking to do. He took another look at the corpse, then around the room. He couldn’t glean much here, so headed upstairs. Could it have been the D-Man’s work? Maybe the gun dealer had double-crossed him in some way, and the D-Man had murdered him.
The first bedroom Hoffer walked into belonged to a man. There were no women’s things lying around, no dresses in the wardrobe. But there were a lot of framed photos, mostly of a man Hoffer assumed to be Max Harrison with a girl Hoffer took to be his daughter. There were photos of her as a baby, and all the way up to what looked like her twenties. Not a bad looker either. Fair hair, prominent cheekbones, beautiful eyes.
There were two other bedrooms, one of them obviously a guest room, which didn’t stop Hoffer looking around for any signs of weapons. The other belonged to a woman, a young woman judging from the magazines and make-up and a few of the cassette tapes lying around.
So Harrison’s daughter lived at home...
‘Whoa!’ Hoffer said, sitting down on the bed. ‘Hold on there.’ He was thinking of the description he’d been given of ‘DC Harris’, the D-Man’s accomplice. He went back to Harrison’s bedroom and picked up the most recent-looking photo. Too close to be coincidence.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he said quietly.
This changed things. Because if the D-Man had killed Harrison, then he’d also taken the daughter with him. Had he taken her under duress? If so, then she was hostage rather than accomplice, which would make a difference when it came time to confront the assassin.
Harrison’s bedroom showed no signs of having been searched, and the daughter’s bedroom was tidy too. There were paperback books on a shelf above her bed. Hoffer opened one and found her name written in the corner of the prelim page: Bel Harrison. Bel, short for Belinda. Hoffer spent a little more time in her room, trying to find out more about her. She hadn’t taken away many clothes; her drawers and wardrobe were more than half full. As he usually did given access to a woman’s bedroom, he lingered over the underwear drawer. You could tell a lot about a woman from her underwear. They should turn it into a police discipline, like psychological profiling. He picked up various items, sniffed their detergent smell, then put them back.
There were no posters on the walls, no clues to any hobbies. Her room gave away less than most. He looked under the bed and even under the carpet, but didn’t find any dope. There didn’t seem to be any contraceptives around either.
‘A clean-living country girl,’ he said to himself. ‘Except, sweetheart, that your daddy dealt in illegal firearms, and now you’re running around with the enemy.’
Downstairs again, he checked the cellar. It contained a few bottles of wine and spirits, plus a deep freeze and some DIY tools and materials. He selected a bottle of Scotch and brought it up to the kitchen. He poured from it, then wiped it clean with a cloth, and he held his glass with a piece of kitchen towel. After he’d had the drink, he went around wiping the doorhandles and all the other surfaces he’d touched with his fingers. Then he switched on his torch and headed for the outbuildings. He found the indoor range straight away. From the length of it, it could be used for both rifles and handguns. He still hadn’t found any weapons. There had to be a cache somewhere. If he could find it, he could help himself. He looked for twenty minutes without success, and returned to the kitchen.
He had another drink and sat down at the table. The extravaganza in the living room was not the D-Man’s style. The D-Man liked to keep his distance. He’d never killed at close range. And for a skilled shot suddenly to revert to a knife or a razor or whatever had been used... No, it hadn’t been the D-Man. Which left two questions. Who’d done it? And what was Bel Harrison doing with the D-Man?