He snapped his shears together irritably. We stared at each other for a bit.
“Oh well,” I said. “If that’s the way you feel. It’s just that I thought we might be able to make a fresh start.”
“All this means nothing to me.”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
“I’m in regular touch with the police, you know, McClure.”
“Yeah? That’s nice.” I made a mental note to ask Teri Brooker about him. Somebody had been talking about me, isn’t that what everybody said? Just at the moment, I couldn’t think of anybody more likely to go around bad-mouthing me than the Born Again Accountant. “I suppose you have a lot to talk with them about, Councillor? People you’ve seen dropping cigarette packets in the street? Old ladies whose wheelie bins are obstructing the pavement? Or have you hit the big time and nailed somebody with their telly on too loud?”
Welsh began to work the blades of his shears violently, as if decapitating flowers that had dared to bloom in the wrong place. The clack of the blades punctuated his words.
“I know...” Clack. “Things...” Clack. “About you...” Clack. “McClure.” He lunged past me with the shears and slashed off the head of an inoffensive hydrangea. The shears looked pretty sharp, all right. “And I’m not afraid...” Clack. “To stand up and be counted...” Clack. “In the cause of justice.” Clack, clack, clack.
I backed away towards the car, fearing some accidental pruning of my personal twigs and branches.
“He’s not on the right bus, that bloke,” said Slow Kid, eyeing Welsh Border as he stood snapping his shears in the graveyard.
I don’t know why I equated Welsh Border with the likes of Moggie Carr and Mick Kelk. But I knew he could talk, and I was covering all the options. I wanted word to get around that Stones McClure had his eye fixed on a target. I was hoping somebody would get worried. I wanted them to feel they needed to know what I was up to.
We went back to the Cow and had lunch. Dave would have fainted otherwise. While we ate, I tried to detect any changes in the atmosphere around us. I listened for whispering, any sudden silences. I watched for curious glances, a knowing tilt of the head. But there was nothing that I couldn’t honestly put down to pure paranoia.
Eventually I took Slow Kid with me and we drove the Subaru under the viaduct, heading out of Medensworth. It was Sunday after all, and I made it a rule to visit the Sunday market every week, just in case.
We’d crossed the A60 at Cuckney and were winding our way towards the Derbyshire border before I realised we were at Langwith. Here, Goff’s Restaurant is set back off the road in a converted mill overlooking a pond.
“Pull in a second, Slow.”
We parked across the road and I examined the car park. I couldn’t make out Cavendish’s Range Rover among the BMWs. In any case, it was after two o’clock. Surely they’d be long gone from their business lunch. Unless it involved more than business, of course. I dialled Lisa’s home number, but the phone rang and rang. Maybe she wasn’t quite home yet. Maybe she had some shopping to do. Or possibly she was just avoiding answering the phone, in case it was me.
But if she was with Cavendish, at least she should be safe. In a way.
At the Sunday market, the same bloke in the blue suit and short haircut had the usual admiring housewives gathered round his demonstration.
Ernie and Stella were still busy. “What can I sell you?” said Ernie. “Nice leather waistcoat?”
The brothers, Carl and Vince, weren’t so busy. Watches and jewellery weren’t the choice today. “It’ll build up for Christmas, I reckon,” said Carl, hopefully.
Marlene had three or four kids with her today. They were okay too. But it was Marky Benn’s stall I wanted to see.
Marky watched me sideways out of his blotchy eyes as I poked about among the radios and hair driers, electric alarm clocks and toasters. And CD players. Although he was dealing with a customer, I could feel his eyes flicking towards me as I picked up boxes and turned them over to look at the serial numbers and names of manufacturers.
“All right, Stones?” he asked. He had other customers browsing further down the stall, but he wanted to know what I was doing. Was it my imagination, or did he look worried? Who could tell with eyes like that?
“Where did these CD players come from, Marky?”
“What?”
“These CD players. French make, aren’t they? Where did they come from?”
“Can’t remember, Stones. They’d be in a batch I got off your lot, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t think so, Marky.”
He shrugged. “I get most of my stuff from you, Stones. You give the best deal.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what keeps you in business, Marky. If you had to pay full whack, you’d never make a profit.”
He glanced nervously at the women fingering some heated hair curlers.
“You sure the CD players didn’t come from you, Stones?”
“I’m so sure I can smell it.”
“I’d have to look it up in the books, then.”
“Do that, will you, Marky? And let me know. Give me a ring, or have a word with one of the boys. Don’t make me have to come round and ask you again.”
I picked up Slow Kid down the end of the aisle, where he’d been lurking near a display of conservatories.
“Just Jean to check on, then we’re off, Slow.”
“Brill.”
The smell from Jean’s stall was overpowering. Her perfumes and cosmetics were getting sampled big time. But Jean had something she wanted to tell me.
“There were two blokes, Stones.”
“What? Only two? You must have had more customers than that.”
“No, I mean... you know. Blokes. They were hanging around, asking questions like.”
“When was this, love?”
“Earlier on. They went over towards Marky’s stall.”
“Yeah?”
I looked towards Marky Benn’s pitch, but he was busy re-arranging his stock.
“What did these two look like, Jean?”
“One was big, balding. The other was younger. I didn’t like the look of the young one at all, Stones. A nasty bit of work, if you ask me. I’ve seen ’em around before too. Last week they were hanging around. I thought you ought to know.”
“Ta, love. You’ve done the right thing.”
“Rawlings and Lee?” asked Slow Kid as we walked away.
“Sounds like it.”
“You want to go looking for ’em?”
“Not now. Not here.”
Halfway across the parking area, I stopped suddenly.
“What’s up now?” said Slow.
“There, look. The dark blue saloon with the alloy wheels.”
“A German job, I reckon.”
“Not a German job. The German job. It’s the same registration, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s a good trick that, Stones, remembering registration numbers.”
“It comes naturally,” I said, as I stepped closer to the car. Actually, I’d only remembered part of the number. But I was almost sure it was the same one — the blue car that I’d seen Rawlings and Lee in outside Peter Malik’s, maybe the one that had followed us from the Dog and Ferret, and the one that had been hanging around Top Forest. I walked round the front and saw the dent in the nearside wing that had been hastily knocked out and touched up to stop it rusting. Somebody didn’t have time to get it repaired properly after clattering it into the joy riders’ Peugeot on the heath.
“There’s no alarm in it,” I said, squinting through the window at the dashboard. “Can you lift it, Slow?”
“How? I’ve got no tackle on me. We can’t go putting the window in here. It’s too public.”
“Isn’t this an old model? You know, with the vacuum thingy in the lock?”