I didn’t get back to Maybank until nearly one o’clock in the morning. I was feeling exhausted, but pretty pleased with myself. Having dinner with Laura had succeeded in pushing Samuel Longden and all those Buckleys completely from my mind for a while. I was tired, but bursting with self-satisfaction.
It was a feeling that wasn’t to last long, though. The good things never do.
I saw the lights of the police car from Gaia Lane before I even turned the corner. It was parked in my driveway, and there were lights blazing, not only at number four but at my house as well, though I’d left it locked when I set off that morning.
A policeman intercepted me as soon as I pulled the Escort in behind his car.
‘Would it be Mr Buckley, sir?’
‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Nothing to worry about, sir. You’ve had a bit of a break-in.’
‘You’re joking. What have they taken?’
‘Not very much, it seems. Your next-door neighbour disturbed them.’
‘Rachel? Where is she?’
‘Having a cup of tea. She’s a bit shaken up,’ he said complacently.
‘Was she attacked?’
‘Nothing serious.’
‘It may not be serious to you, mate.’
‘I quite understand, sir,’ said the policeman, unruffled.
He watched me as I walked through the garden and stepped over the fence to number four. ‘CID will be here shortly, sir,’ he called. ‘They’ll want you to go through your house with them to see if anything’s missing.’
‘Sure.’
Rachel was sitting at her kitchen table clutching a mug of tea, with a female police officer sitting across from her. The first thing that struck me was that the policewoman had taken her hat off, and it lay on the table between them like a chequered tea cosy. The second thing I noticed was that Rachel had been crying, and she had a bruise developing on the side of her face.
‘Rachel — are you all right?’
‘Chris, I’m sorry,’ she blurted.
‘What are you sorry for? They tell me you chased off some burglars.’
‘Hardly. If I’d thought a bit quicker, I could have phoned the police straightaway, and they might have caught them.’
‘It would be better to do that next time,’ said the policewoman. ‘We don’t usually encourage people to have a go.’
Rachel touched the red patch on her cheekbone and smiled nervously. ‘I suppose I was a bit silly.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I’ll make another pot of tea, shall I?’ asked the policewoman cheerfully, edging aside to let me sit down. She wore a thick, ribbed sweater and her waist was hung with an awkward assortment of equipment that clattered as she moved.
‘Well, it was a few minutes after twelve,’ said Rachel. ‘I was looking out of the front window, watching... well, I was just looking out of the window, when I thought I saw something moving near your car port. I couldn’t make out what it was, because the street lights don’t reach that far. You really ought to get an outside light, you know.’
I noticed the hesitation when she’d almost admitted why she was at the window at midnight. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that she’d been watching for me to come home, wondering why I was so late and trying to guess what I’d been doing.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I said.
‘Anyway, I went to the back window, in the kitchen here. I thought perhaps you’d come back without your car, that you’d broken down somewhere and had to walk. I waited a few minutes, but I didn’t hear your door, and no lights came on. I started to think I was imagining things, or that it was only a cat I’d seen. But then I heard a noise.’
She took a swallow of her tea, and her eyes grew worried as she remembered the next few minutes.
‘What sort of noise was this?’
‘A sort of cracking noise. Not metal or wood. I couldn’t place it at all, but I knew it just didn’t sound right.’
‘It turned out to be your kitchen window,’ put in the policewoman, pouring me a mug of tea. ‘Neat, professional job it was.’
She sounded almost admiring of the burglars. But I suppose the police see all sorts of break-ins that aren’t neat and professional. You hear horrendous stories about the kind of gratuitous damage that hooligans and drug addicts do when they get into a house looking for money or small items to sell.
‘But surely you didn’t go out to see what was happening?’
‘Well, yes, that’s exactly what I did,’ said Rachel. ‘Stupid, wasn’t it?’
‘You could have got badly hurt.’
She touched the bruise again. ‘I realised that too late, of course.’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t get a good look at him,’ said the policewoman.
‘He was halfway through the window,’ Rachel told me. ‘Just his legs and his back half showing. I shouted out when I saw him, I think. He panicked a bit and started kicking out.’
‘You surely didn’t grab hold of him?’ I said, looking at her bruise.
‘No, he lashed out with his feet and caught me in the face. Then he kicked me again and I fell down. The next thing I knew, he was out of the window and running off. He was much too fast for me, and he’d vanished before I even knew what was happening. I suppose I was a bit dazed.’
‘You ought to get medical attention,’ I said. ‘She ought to get medical attention,’ I repeated to the policewoman.
‘We did want to call a doctor,’ she said.
‘I refused,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s only a little bruise.’
The policeman from outside stuck his head through the door. ‘Mr Buckley? CID would like a word, if you don’t mind.’
I went out and walked round to my side of Maybank. A woman was standing looking at the broken window. She turned to look at me as I arrived, and I recognised her.
‘It’s DC Hanlon, isn’t it? I didn’t expect to see you again.’
She gave me a curt nod. ‘I had the bad luck to be the duty CID officer tonight, that’s all.’
‘And what have you detected so far?’
She carefully ignored the sarcasm. ‘It sounds from what PC Fenwick tells me that the burglar didn’t have long in your house. He was already coming out when your neighbour saw him. But he might have had an accomplice inside. You never know.’
‘I, er...’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘PC Fenwick and his colleague have made sure there’s no one still in there. They’ve even put the lights on for us. In any case, you’ve got me here to protect you.’
It didn’t take long to see that the contents of the house were undisturbed. At least, the TV, stereo and computer were still there, which were the only things I had worth stealing, and there were no drawers pulled out or cupboards emptied. The only damage was the hole in the window.
‘We’ll get someone along later this morning to see if they can get any prints off the window frame,’ said Hanlon. ‘But frankly, it’s unlikely.’
‘I’m glad you’re taking it seriously, anyway. I’ve always thought there were so many burglaries these days that the police hardly bothered with them.’
She gave me a thin smile. ‘To be honest, it’s the assault on Mrs Morgan we’re concerned about. We always take violent crime seriously. A broken window is trivial in itself, but any evidence we could find to help us identify the perpetrator would be useful.’
‘I see. So what do you do now?’
‘I’m going to take a statement from Mrs Morgan.’
I waited in the front room, nursing a bottle of whisky, until I saw the police car leave, shortly followed by Hanlon’s Renault. Then I nipped back round to number four and knocked on the back door.
‘Are you all right, Rachel?’
She looked a lot better. Her eyes were brighter, with no sign of tears now and a bit of colour back in her face so the red mark didn’t stand out as much. I sniffed the air, suspecting that she might have been at the whisky bottle herself.
‘Come in a minute,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘They’ve all gone.’
‘I know. I wanted to thank you properly.’
‘What for?’
‘Well, you were defending my property, weren’t you? That was real good neighbourliness.’
She smiled. It was very quiet in the kitchen, almost cosy, now that the police had left and there were just the two of us. There’s something about the early hours of the morning that makes you feel the rest of the world has disappeared.
‘Did the burglar take anything then?’ asked Rachel.
‘We checked the usual stuff. All present and correct. I was rather hoping he’d have taken the old carriage clock, but he even left that. You obviously copped him before he got started.’
She looked steadily at me, and I felt she could see straight though me, that she knew exactly where I’d been that night and what I’d been doing.
‘Never mind all that,’ she said.
I gave in. ‘Yes, you’re right. The blue folder has gone. Great-Uncle Samuel’s manuscript is missing.’
‘Oh, no.’
I started trying to persuade Rachel to go to bed. She didn’t argue too much, as she was clearly suffering from the same overwhelming tiredness that I felt, though from a different cause.
But first she started rambling about how lucky it was that Samuel’s notes and the canal owners’ box had been in her house, not mine. She seemed particularly concerned about the safety of the box. But that was ridiculous. I began to wonder whether she’d got a crack on the head after all. Concussion can do strange things to the brain, and the worst effects can sometimes be delayed. Who would even know about the box, and why should they go to the trouble of breaking into my house to get it?
‘I suppose I’ll have to re-create the entire manuscript from scratch,’ I said.
‘Not quite,’ said Rachel. ‘I still have the first chapter.’
‘William Buckley and the canal proprietors? Well, it’s a start anyway.’
‘Did you tell the police the folder had gone?’ she asked, reading my face again.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said.
I thought about it for a while, but my weary brain couldn’t even analyse my own motives. ‘Like DC Hanlon said herself, the attack on you is more serious.’
Rachel accepted this with a curiously pleased smile. She disappeared from the kitchen for a moment, then came back with the file and the box. The wooden surfaces had been painstakingly polished, so that it gleamed like bronze.
‘They’ll be safe in your house now,’ she said.
At last I managed to escape without too many more questions and went back to number six to fix an old piece of board over the broken window, until I could get a glazier in. I was sure Rachel was right — I was safe from another break-in now, since whoever had searched my house had already got what they wanted.
Rachel’s concern over the box made me wonder about the keys, though. I had two of them now, thanks to Samuel. Did someone out there have the vital third key, the one that would enable the opening of the box? I resolved to keep the keys separate from the box, just in case. I knew it didn’t make sense. The thing was plainly empty in any case.
Seeing the box had reminded me of the keys that Godfrey Wheeldon had given me. There were two of them on the ring, but it had been obvious when I pulled them out that neither of them was anything like the two already in the locks. I tried them anyway. They didn’t go anywhere near fitting. It had been far too much to expect.
I picked up the box and shook it. It was still empty, and no amount of imagination could convince me it wasn’t. I shrugged my shoulders with weariness, pushed the box back into its place under the sideboard, put the keys away in a drawer, and went to bed.
I hardly seemed to have fallen asleep when I woke with a start. It was already half past eight, and I was going to be late for work. But then I remembered that I didn’t have to go to work any more. It occurred to me that I knew this perfectly well and hadn’t set the alarm. And finally, it dawned on me that it was the phone making all the noise.
‘Chris? It’s Sally Chaplin. I’m sorry to ring you so early.’
‘That’s all right.’ Even in my groggy condition, I could tell from her voice that she was upset about something. ‘What’s wrong, Sally?’
‘It’s Frank,’ she said, as if the two words explained everything. In a way, I thought, they did. But how much did Sally know?
‘He’s gone missing,’ she added.
‘How do you mean, missing?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘It’s only half past eight in the morning. When did you last see him?’
‘Last night. He stayed up watching TV after I’d gone to bed. He said he wanted to see the late film. It wasn’t unusual for him to do that. I’m often asleep by the time he comes to bed. I think that might be the aim, really. Only this time, he wasn’t there when I woke up this morning. He’s gone, Chris.’
‘Have you looked everywhere?’ It sounded stupid, but it was the sort of thing people say, and my mind wasn’t at its most original.
‘I’ve looked all over the house twice. I thought he must have had a heart attack or something, but I couldn’t find him. Then I drove out to the reservoir. That’s where he goes, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘But he wasn’t there either. I walked around for over an hour. Then I came back to ring you.’
‘Why me, Sally? I don’t know where he is.’
‘You came to see him again, didn’t you?’
I sighed. No point in lying. ‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask him.’
‘I don’t know what it was, but he was upset after your visit. I could tell. Did something happen between you?’
‘Not exactly. I arrived at the wrong moment, that’s all.’
She was quiet for a while. ‘I see,’ she said miserably. ‘You know, then. You know what he does at the reservoir.’
‘He didn’t think you knew.’
‘Oh, I’ve never seen him in action, but I don’t need to.’
‘I can’t help you. I can’t imagine where he’s gone.’
‘You didn’t threaten to... expose him, did you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m worried what he’ll do. Something frightened him. He’d been reading in the paper about the canal restoration, some event at Fosseway. Did you talk to him about it?’
‘No, nothing like that. In fact, I didn’t really get to talk to him about anything.’
‘Well, there’s something that frightened him.’
By the time Sally hung up, I was completely awake and already sweating as if I had had a hard day. Frank wasn’t the only one who was frightened. My imagination was filling me with an irrational fear, a grey, amorphous terror that had no source and no meaning, and certainly no escape. Somewhere out there, it seemed, danger was lurking.
There were several cars pulled onto the grass verge at the Fosseway Wharf site. Normally there would have been no one working there today. But it was a special day when Lindley Simpson MP was visiting to see the site for himself. The restoration group wasn’t likely to let an opportunity pass to get publicity from a visit by a government minister.
Simpson hadn’t arrived yet, and six or eight restoration group members were standing around with that anxious air of people expecting things to go wrong. I waved to Andrew Hadfield and one or two of the others I knew, and had a quick word with the chairman. He assured me the MP was on his way, though he was running a bit behind schedule. They’d had a call from his mobile, and they expected him in five minutes. The chairman seemed most concerned about the two photographers from the local papers, who were standing by their cars with their camera bags, looking impatient. They were on tight schedules, and needed persuading about the importance of the occasion to make them wait.
I took my own camera with me and went to have a look at how the restoration was progressing. The lock was complete, with its new walls and brick arches, and there were a few inches of water in the bottom.
Passing the bottom gates of the lock, I walked along a short stretch of cleared towpath to where they’d started work on Fosseway Wharf. The trees on either side were thick, and the wharf was out of sight of the road. A ‘scrub bashing’ party had been clearing undergrowth from the central area, where the basin itself had been filled in with hardcore and a layer of top soil over the years. On the eastern side, the remains of some brick buildings could be made out, and the sides of the wharf were emerging under the assault of shovels.
The big excavator stood nearby. It had already made headway on the mammoth task of digging into the countless tons of earth and rubble that filled the basin, exposing a muddy bottom churned into deep, oozing ruts. For today the excavator had been lined up ready to dig into the debris on the wharf side. A corner had been chosen close to the remains of the bridge, where there was less solid rubble to shift. In fact, with the weeds and undergrowth removed, the earth looked strangely white, as if it contained more lime than soil.
Andrew had been nominated to drive the excavator and was executing a few practice scoops with the shovel. For a while, I admired his skill in manoeuvring the huge machine, backing and spinning it round, steering it to within inches of the bridge abutments, even when it was loaded with a mountain of dirt and debris.
‘He’s here!’ called somebody from the roadside.
There was a flurry of movement, and everyone gathered to greet the party that got out of the big black car. There were four of them altogether. A driver in a dark suit and white shirt got out and stood by the car. A tall man with watchful eyes cast a sharp look over the waiting crowd. Everyone seemed to get a once-over, including me, but especially the press photographers. He watched vigilantly as the other two men walked towards us. Lindley Simpson strode out confidently, clad in a stylish grey overcoat that toned with his hair, with a red and yellow tie the only splash of colour about him. Staying close at his side, heavy-shouldered and unsmiling, was Leo Parker.
For several minutes, Simpson listened carefully while the chairman pointed out the features of the restored lock to him. The little group posed self-consciously in suitable spots, moved on and re-formed into another pose, allowing me and the other photographers to get our pictures. The artificiality of it depressed me, and I soon decided I’d got enough.
As I was putting the camera away in the car, I heard a sound that sent a tingle of excitement up the back of my neck. It was a sudden, racking cough, deep from the lungs, and it carried clearly across the site. I turned quickly and ran my eye over the figures scattered around the wharf and lock. But the spasm had passed, and I couldn’t identify the cougher.
Lindley Simpson was gesturing with one hand as he stood talking with the chairman of the restoration group. Leo Parker seemed to be questioning Andrew about a detail of the construction. They stood with their heads down, nodding in unison. There were other restoration group members standing in twos and threes, and nearest to me was Simpson’s driver, who was leaning against his car, his gloved hand covering his mouth as if stifling a yawn. I looked around for the tall, watchful man. He was lurking to one side, standing on a mound of soil where he could keep the whole area in view. For a moment, his eyes met mine and something passed between us, cold and suspicious.
And then, in the background, there was another figure I hadn’t noticed before. He stood on the far side of the wharf, just beyond the area where the undergrowth had been cleared. His hair stirred in the breeze, and his pale face was caught by the sun. I waved urgently.
‘Frank!’
The tall man on the mound stared at me, then followed my gaze and saw the new arrival. He took a couple of determined steps towards him, but that was enough to make Frank look terrified and vanish into the trees.
I ran down the towpath and scrambled up on the stones of the bridge pier. But I knew it was useless — Frank was long gone.
‘Who was he?’
I turned to find the tall man had followed me. He was right at my elbow, peering into the trees. ‘Somebody I know. A sort of relative.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘That I don’t know. He seemed to be watching something.’ I looked around the restoration site, where people were throwing us curious glances. ‘Or watching somebody.’
A few minutes later, everyone gathered back into a small crowd to see the excavator start up. Andrew climbed into the cab, while another of the group took charge of the dumper truck and a few others donned hard hats and stood around to direct operations. The aim was to unearth a token section of wharf to symbolise the next phase of the restoration.
It was another staged scene for photographs. One of the pressmen had already left, and I decided that it was time for me to call it a day as well. The trust had their own pocket cameras to record the event for their society newsletter.
As I climbed into the car, I was aware of some excitement among the party on the wharf, but I assumed it was just a minor earth collapse, or the dumper stuck in the mud again. I didn’t wait to see what the latest mishap was, because I wanted to get back to Stowe Pool Lane and phone Sally.
So it wasn’t until I read the front page of the Lichfield Echo on Thursday that I heard about the human remains they’d unearthed at Fosseway Wharf.