‘As they say: tell it to the judge.’ Needham was in suspiciously high mood which led me to conclude that he was once more lacing his cop shop coffee with the sweet white poison.
‘Deeks and his woman conned me. I believed I was saving a boy’s life. Isn’t that moral coercion or something like that?’
‘Why don’t you ask your solicitor?’
Which I did. Grimshaw gave a withering speech but it was me she was withering. For having failed to inform at least my solicitor before embarking on such imbecilic etcetera etcetera.
Those imbecilic etcetera became less likely to send me to prison when the Rodin was recovered from inside the van as it was pulled from a ditch a mile and a half from the Hollow. There was no sign of Deeks or Jill.
The Rodin Museum got their sculpture back, though were embarrassed when for insurance reasons they had to admit that it had only been a copy they had sent to Britain. I paid for the damage to the museum’s skylight and thus found out that they cost an absolute fortune. In the end the only one who had been robbed was myself, since Deeks had made off with the Penny Black for which I had written a cheque, though to this day Rufus Connabear hasn’t thought to cash it.
The real loser was Albert Barrington, who had died from being knocked over with my car after an attack by Blackfield, who had bumped into him while inspecting his fence one night. Blackfield had also disappeared.
It was shortly after Annis, Tim and I were acquitted of all charges, like obstruction, perverting the course of justice, resisting arrest and littering (deliberately sinking the dinghy), leaving me owing Grimshaw a wealth of paintings, that another piece of the jigsaw fell into place, and again in the Lam Valley.
It was a bright and deceptively mild November day when a microlight plane ran into engine trouble while circling the area. The plane crashed into a shed on Spring Farm and the injured pilot was rescued from the wreckage by Jack Fryer and farmhand. The pilot turned out to be no other than James Lane, whose balance problems, according to him, didn’t affect him in the air. He later admitted to defrauding the insurance company in order to finance a correspondence Open University degree in British and European History. Summing up, the judge suggested he might find it easier to concentrate on his studies in a prison cell. The crash left Lane walking with a real limp.
Late December, and a rare snowfall had dusted the Lam Valley, softening the edges of farmhouse roofs and adding an insulating blanket to the cloches, polytunnel and glasshouse down at Grumpy Hollow. Annis and I had delivered a load of logs, cut from the branches shed by the trees at Mill House during the October storm. We had stacked it under a tarp and now Gemma served scalding coffee in her caravan. The little wood burner, moved into here from the badly damaged shepherd’s hut, singed the air around it. I gratefully wrapped my hands around a steaming mug.
‘I have a couple of things for you,’ Gemma announced.
‘Presents?’ I mumbled something about how it really wasn’t necessary.
‘Found objects, really, and a bit of a mixed bag, I’m afraid.’ She reached up into the cupboard space over the bed alcove and produced two metal items which she set in front of me, one of which I instantly recognized. It was the big lump of my Webley.38 revolver.
‘I found that in the mud when the foliage of my coriander collapsed in the frost. I cleaned it up, it was filthy.’
‘Deeks must have thrown it there. Probably wise, Jill might have accidentally blown his head off with it one day.’ I cracked it open. It held a full complement of rounds.
‘And this?’ Annis picked up the little blue tin, hand-painted with stars and moons. ‘Tobacco tin.’ She shook it. It rattled. She prised the lid open. Inside, among the dregs of hand-rolling tobacco and cigarette papers, nestled the missing keys to the DS.
Gemma nodded her head at it. ‘I found that when I was collecting cob nuts in the hedgerows, on the opposite side of the valley from where Albert died. I thought of giving it to the police, but I’ll leave it up to you. Your call.’
Annis handed it to me and I slid it into my coat pocket. The teenage girl who had lost it was probably better at riding trail bikes than handling left-hand-drive classic Citroëns. Cairn and Heather, rightly assuming that I had really no intention of looking into their story, had pinched the DS and driven it deep into the Lam Valley to make sure I would eventually go there. Irony pushed into their path the very man whose life they thought they were helping to save, stumbling about after having been hit by Blackfield.
I shut the tin and pocketed it. I would take it out later in a quieter moment and think very hard about whether anyone would benefit from Cairn and Heather being dragged in front of the courts.
Gemma walked us through the crunching snow to the Land Rover. Annis performed her arcane start-up ritual and despite the cold the engine started first time.
‘I meant to ask,’ Gemma said, sticking her frozen nose in at the driver window. ‘What name did you give the cat in the end?’
Both women looked expectantly at me.
‘Derringer,’ I said with only the faintest hesitation. ‘The cat’s called Derringer.’