‘The Good Old Blunt Instrument? No. But we have a notion it might have been a cricket bat that rendered him senseless. Your car then finished him off. Shame you didn’t report it missing earlier, you’d be completely in the clear now.’ He shrugged it off as though it was of little real importance.
‘Cricket bat, how very British,’ I observed.
‘Well, believe it or not our hoodlum fraternity have started trading in their American ash for English willow recently. Ever since prosecutors started asking defendants — who just happened to have baseball bats in their cars at the time of their arrest — to explain the finer details of the game for the benefit of the court. Long faces all round of course, it’s like asking a kid from the Bronx to explain the rules of cricket. Personally I believe as a weapon the cricket bat has the edge. You play at all? Ah, here comes the faithful Sorbie,’ he said, drained his cup and rose. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Honeysett, we shan’t bother you any longer. For now.’ He silently directed DI Sorbie out of the house. ‘Miss Jordan,’ Sorbie said flatly in farewell to Annis. Deeks already stood by his car. We watched as doors slammed and the drivers sorted themselves out, turning their ugly big saloons around in my potholed yard. I was so relieved I barely managed to suppress the impulse to give them a cheery wave as they surged out of the gate.
‘Phew,’ I observed eloquently.
Annis let out a deep breath with puffed-out cheeks. ‘What did they want?’
I shrugged. ‘What could they have been looking for?’
‘Sorbie didn’t say. He didn’t answer any of my questions and never volunteered a word. I annoyed the shit out of him for sure.’
‘Did you see at all what Deeks was up to outside?’
‘No, I couldn’t keep an eye on both. Nothing much to find, though, is there?’
‘That’s not necessarily what I’m worried about.’
‘You don’t think Deeks would plant stuff on us? You’re getting paranoid, Chris.’
‘You’re right. Nevertheless, I’ll have a wander about, see what Deeks saw.’
I pulled on my jacket and made myself walk slowly all over my little realm; I kicked at things rusting and mouldering in the outbuildings, got my trouser legs damp crossing the meadow, stood by the mill pond reflecting the dull lead of the sky. The feeling of being watched was growing all the time and I began to imagine eyes and ears in every shadow. Indeed, if Needham was half as clever as I suspected him to be then he had come here to stir things up so he could watch what happened next.
I made doubly sure that no one was hanging around among the hedgerows. The more I thought about it the less sense the last twenty minutes made. I had seen police searches before and they’d been protracted, painstaking affairs involving many officers and technicians, not a couple of CID types wandering about the place with their hands in their pockets while their superior officer took coffee in the kitchen. But when I found no sign of them anywhere I was just too relieved to worry about it for long.
‘It’s out near Monkton Farleigh,’ I explained to Annis while I topped up the Norton’s tank from a jerry can. ‘Rufus Connabear, at Restharrow.’
‘Hairy, evil-smelling dwarf — ’
‘You know him?’ I interrupted in astonishment.
‘No, restharrow, you twit! It’s a dwarf shrub, grows like a weed all over the place near my parents’ house in Devon, and it stinks. Strange name to give your house but I guess it takes all sorts.’
‘I’ve come to that conclusion myself recently.’
Monkton Farleigh was a pretty one-eyed village roughly halfway between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. As soon as I’d reached the top of Bathford Hill and the road emerged from the woodland I turned left. After barely a mile I came to a row of three cottages on my left where a tall blonde woman cheerfully herded a clutch of kids into her front garden. I resisted the temptation to ask directions to Restharrow. People would surely remember a man on a vintage motorcycle asking questions once the famous Penny Black had disappeared. Instead I simply rattled along, past church, high street, pub and manor, and before I knew it I was out the other side, leaving the village behind. It took me a while, pottering along various narrow lanes bound by hedgerows, until I found what I was looking for. I was lucky that the place announced itself as Restharrow in faded gilt lettering on a rustic wooden sign stuck to the stone wall that faced the lane. It was not what I had expected. I had been certain a wealthy — even if retired — stamp collector would live in a grander place but quickly reminded myself that any period cottage within a certain radius of Bath was now considered to be worth a small fortune. It was a substantial enough place though and somehow dark, almost sinister, standing alone at a fork in the tree-shaded lane, surrounded by a stone wall just high enough to keep livestock out and sheltered by hedges to the north and west at the back. Two enormous walnut trees teeming with squirrels overshadowed house and garden. There was no garage but a covered car port containing a gleaming blue Jaguar.
Apparently all we had was three days. That didn’t leave much time to establish what the man’s routines were, who else might be living here or coming and going on a regular basis. I allowed myself less than a minute in front of the house with the engine idling, pretending to be answering a text message while snapping pictures of the place with my phone. The front garden was lushly overgrown in the kind of extreme laissez-faire style of horticulture I approved of. I was just about to pull away when a man appeared from the passage between the house and the car port. He was a lean man in his late sixties, had sparse silver hair and wore mustard-coloured trousers, a collarless white shirt and bright yellow Marigolds. He was dragging a bulging green refuse bag behind him.
I put away my mobile. It was that movement rather than the sound of the engine which made him look across. Perhaps I could still have ridden off but the way he adjusted his thin gold spectacles on his nose to scrutinize me made me decide it might look suspicious. Instead I pulled in closer to the open double gate on the drive and parked the bike. He let his bag drop now and surveyed my appearance and the motorbike, screwing up his face with the intensity of a man who has missed several eye-tests. The iron gate was the same height as the wall, about four feet and therefore largely symbolic.
‘I’m a bit lost, I’m afraid,’ I ventured.
He didn’t immediately answer, instead he came towards me and after nodding at my tattered jacket rather than me began inspecting the bike. ‘Norton, thought so,’ he said with the croaky voice of someone who hasn’t spoken a word all day. He elaborately cleared his throat.
‘Yes, she’s recently been restored after a crash. They did a beautiful job,’ I explained.
‘Sorry, you have to speak up, I’m afraid I didn’t put my deaf-aids in this morning.’ He tapped both his ears in explanation.
‘Recently restored,’ I repeated loudly.
‘I remember when they first started making this model. I had an Ariel at the time, the 600 cc side-valve.’
‘The side-valve, right. .’ Fortunately nothing more seemed to be required of me. Otherwise I’d have been forced to admit that where you stuck your valves on a bike was a matter of supreme indifference to me.
After spending a few minutes in the golden age of motorcycling he eventually came back to the present. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
‘Just directions, really. I was looking for a scenic route to Melksham and got lost.’
‘Ah, well, you’re not so very lost. I have a map of the area, I’ll show you.’
I followed him to his front door. He snapped off the Marigolds. ‘I try and keep the garden going but I find it a bit of a struggle. My wife used to look after that side of things of course. I’m not green-fingered at all, I’m afraid.’
‘You could perhaps get a gardener to look after it for you. .?’