Present Danger

43

The rain was streaming down the jacket of the policeman who opened the National Trust gate and waved their car through. The gatehouse seemed to have become a temporary police post. If there had been visitors staying there they must have been sent packing. Further up the drive two patrol cars were parked and as their car swung round to park on the gravel apron in front of Piggott’s house, a sergeant came out to greet them.

‘We’re inside, sir,’ he said to Binding, as they moved quickly, heads down against the driving rain, to the front door. ‘There’s no one here except the housekeeper.’

‘Have you got a warrant?’

‘Yes. We’re going room by room now, but so far nothing unusual has shown up. I’ve got two men searching the grounds as well. The housekeeper claims she hasn’t seen Piggott for over a week. She’s rather an old lady, sir.’

Liz was surprised by how almost unnaturally clean the inside of the house was. On the ground floor a large sitting room ran the full length of the front of the building, its tall, oblong windows giving a dramatic vista of the shore. The sea was rough, filling the bay with white-crested waves, which came crashing onto the beach of the little cove.

Across the hall was a dining room with a large oak table and matching chairs and behind it a small room with a modern desk in one corner. Its drawers had been forced open but they seemed to have contained nothing more exciting than a telephone directory. If this were Piggott’s study, he certainly didn’t use it.

Upstairs, more policemen were combing the three bedrooms. All were pristine, decorated in the antiseptic style of a chain hotel, and so devoid of anything personal that it was impossible to make out in which of them Piggott slept.

When they came downstairs they found the sergeant in the kitchen, where the elderly housekeeper was sitting at the table drinking a mug of tea, seemingly oblivious to the comings and goings of the policemen.

Binding, showing his frustration, asked, ‘Anything?’ But the sergeant shook his head.

‘Is there a cellar?’ asked Liz.

‘Yes. There is. But there’s nothing down there. Do you want to see? ‘He led her down a flight of stairs by the back door into a small, empty room, with a rough cement floor and cold brick walls.

‘Not even a rack for wine,’ said Binding, who’d followed them down.

Liz was looking round at the walls. ‘There’s something weird about this room,’ she said suddenly.

‘What?’ asked Binding.

‘When do you think this house was built?’

Binding shrugged. ‘Not that long ago. I’d have thought the land was part of the estate, then got sold to someone who put a house on it. I don’t know – maybe thirty, forty years ago. Why?’

‘Well, an old house would have a cellar – a wine cellar, cold rooms for storage, that sort of thing. But if you built a cellar in a house this age, surely you’d make it a decent size, wouldn’t you? Why go to the trouble of digging it out just to make a tiny little room like this. What’s the point of it?’

‘You’re right, Liz,’ chipped in Peggy, who had joined them in the little room. ‘You’d make it a basement, like the Americans have. Rooms you could use.’

‘Meaning what?’ asked Binding.

‘Meaning we’ve been looking for even one room that showed signs of Piggott using it, and there haven’t been any. So maybe there’s another room. Hidden. One that we haven’t found yet.’

Binding’s lips tightened, but he said nothing.

‘What do you think that’s for?’ asked Peggy, pointing to a metal box on a bracket halfway up one of the brick walls.

The sergeant poked at it, trying to open it. ‘It’s locked. There’s no sign of a key anywhere here. Perhaps the housekeeper has it. I’ll go and ask her.’

‘Don’t bother with her,’ Binding ordered. ‘Break it open.’ And five minutes later, with the aid of a crowbar from the boot of one of the patrol cars, the small metal door was off its hinges.

Inside was a switch, like the switch in a fuse box. It was up. The policeman looked questioningly at Binding, who nodded. ‘Here goes then,’ said the policeman, and pulled down the switch.

Immediately a low grinding noise came from behind them, and the entire far wall started moving on tracks, opening to reveal a room on the other side.

Liz moved forward slowly, taking in the comfortable furnishings. On the desk lay a neat stack of files; she picked up the top one, then showed its label to Peggy who was standing beside her. Fraternal Holdings Q4. This must be Piggott’s office.

The sergeant was pointing to something in the corner of the room. ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘It’s a folding bed, miss.’

Binding said, ‘Surely Piggott didn’t sleep here.’

‘I suppose he might have done. Or possibly,’ Liz said grimly, ‘it’s where they kept Dave.’

Just then a young constable came running down from the kitchen, his shoes clacking loudly on the stairs. ‘Sarge,’ he said, panting breathlessly, ‘they’ve found something in the grounds. Can you come?’

‘What is it?’ asked Binding.

The constable hesitated, and looked to his sergeant for guidance. ‘Go on lad,’ said the sergeant. ‘Spit it out.’

The constable nodded. ‘It’s graves, sir. Two of them. They said you’d want to know right away.’

Liz counted seventeen people, all of them male, including two pathologists and a deputy superintendent of police. Three hours had elapsed since the youthful policeman had run down the stairs to the cellar, time that seemed endless to Liz as she waited for what she felt was certain to be bad news.

The wind had dropped and the rain had turned to a steady drizzle as she and Binding and Peggy stood huddled together under one of the tall oaks. Someone had produced coffee in plastic cups and they warmed their hands as they waited for news in the fading light. Not fifty feet from them two white tents had been erected over the graves – temporary morgues. Inside them the grisly work of disinterment proceeded. There had already been a leak to the press – they’d heard that several reporters had arrived, but were being held at the police post in the National Trust gatehouse.

At last a policeman beckoned and Liz went forward. Binding touched her arm, but she shook her head – she’d do the identifying, since she was more likely than he to recognise the second body. They would all be able to identify one of them, she thought grimly.

She stooped down to enter the tent and was momentarily blinded by the dazzling light of the halogen lamp hanging from the top pole. A curious, sickly, chemical smell hung in the air. The pathologist looked eerie in his white suit and surgical gloves and beside him a constable in uniform stood looking. A sheet covered the body on the ground.

‘Ready?’ asked the pathologist.

Liz nodded, taking a deep breath, trying to prepare herself for the worst. The constable pulled back the sheet and she looked down.

She allowed herself to breathe out. It wasn’t Dave. A young man with dark hair lay on his back, looking startlingly peaceful. He could have been asleep, were it not for the black hole in his temple. The bottom of one of his trouser legs was darkly stained, as if it had been soaked in ink.

‘Do you recognise this man?’ asked the constable.

‘No,’ said Liz quietly, and saw out of the corner of her eye that Michael Binding had come into the tent. ‘But I think I know who it is. Tell me how tall he is. I can’t judge, looking down at him like this.’

‘Between five six and five seven,’ said the pathologist.

Liz turned to Binding, who was still blinking as his eyes adjusted to the harsh light of the overhead lamp. ‘It’s almost certainly Sean McCarthy. He was the gunman who shot Jimmy Fergus. Jimmy hit him in the leg when he fired back at him. He described him as short and dark-haired.’

Binding nodded, looking stunned. Liz took another deep breath. ‘Right. Now let me see the other one.’

They followed the pathologist and the constable in a sombre procession, outside through the drizzle and into the adjacenttent. Again, a sheet covered a disinterred corpse lying on the ground. And the same sickly smell hung around.

Liz felt sick and as she stepped forward she gritted her teeth to prevent her gorge rising. Why had Dave been so stupid? And why hadn’t she rung from Paris, or London? Anything to avoid this. She waited as the police officer reached down to pull back the sheet, bracing herself for how the familiar features would look. She only hoped it had been quick for Dave at the end.

‘No!’ she shouted as the sheet went back. For the face that stared up at her with dead blank eyes was not Dave’s. Someone else lay on the ground. A much older man than Dave. But the face was familiar.

‘What is it, Liz?’ Binding demanded, seeing her astonishment.

‘This is Dermot O’Reilly.’ Her voice trembled with a mixture of relief and horror. ‘It’s Dave’s informant, Brown Fox.’