Rainstone Fall

Chapter Seventeen

Jake’s place had to be one of the few locations where the exhaust note of the Norton remained unremarked upon. At the moment it even remained unnoticed. Somewhere deep inside the workshop an engine was revving freely, unencumbered by any kind of exhaust system at all, judging by the deep shockwaves of sound, and somewhere else the high-pitched scream of an angle-grinder getting purchase on something big and hollow added the top notes to this rhapsody of toil. I left the bike at the entrance and picked my way through the broken landscape of automotive history in the yard.

Originally Jake had bought the farm to breed ponies, but the venture had failed. After that he had changed direction and turned his first love, classic cars, into a thriving business. Restoring and maintaining vintage machinery — as long as it was British and had an internal combustion engine — had made him a modest fortune. You wouldn’t know it though, because the place looked like a scrapyard, with bits of pre-1970s cars and vans lying everywhere, some under tarpaulins, some protected by makeshift roofs, some taking a well-earned rest in the weeds. Despite his financial success Jake was still doing most of the work himself, with only one or two assistants, because that was what he enjoyed. At this very moment he was listening with rapt attention, oily bald head cocked to one side, to the unimaginable racket coming from a huge lump of an engine sitting on a workbench in the main workshop, worrying the accelerator with his thumb. He nodded at me and continued his revving, so I sat on an oil drum outside until he had heard enough of the testosterone symphony and joined me, carrying two tin mugs of tea made with a blow torch.

‘Still on two wheels, then?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m beginning to get a taste for it. But it’s not always practical.’ I blew on my superheated tea. ‘But then neither is any of this stuff.’

‘No, but it nourishes the soul.’

I had to agree. Something went wrong with car design after the 1960s. Too many buttons, for a start. I looked about me. ‘Talking of poor souls, is my DS still around?’

‘Most of it went for scrap, along with other useless crap I had hanging around.’

‘Do I owe you?’

‘I made a few pennies on engine bits, so no, we’re quits.’

‘That’s good, because I’ve a favour to ask.’

‘You surprise me.’

‘Do you remember, a few years ago, you went on this trip down some wild Welsh river in a snazzy motorized dinghy with your then girlfriend?’

‘I haven’t got Alzheimer’s yet,’ he bristled.

‘And she fell out the boat and it took you half an hour to notice and when you finally went back to pull her out she dumped you?’

‘Your point being?’

‘Still got the boat?’

He scratched his scarred scalp with oil-blackened nails. ‘Now there’s a good question. I know where I’ve got the engine — never mislaid an engine yet — but the inflatable. . It’ll be somewhere, sure, but it might have,’ he made a sweeping gesture at the farmhouse and the endless outbuildings, ‘some stuff on top of it, if you know what I mean.’

I knew exactly what he meant, since I used the same filing system at Mill House.

‘What you want it for, messing about on the river? Just remember what happened with Sally, is all I say.’

‘She did marry you in the end.’

He sniffed. ‘Yeah, but she still mentions it.’

‘I need it for a job. A tricky one.’

‘I won’t ask then. When d’you want it for?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘There’s a surprise. I’m busy now, but I’ll see what I can do later,’ he promised.

Leaving the matter in Jake’s oil-stained hands I rode back towards Bath. The rain had returned in the shape of a depressing drizzle that rendered me half blind trying to peer through the goggles and slowly soaking me, making me seriously consider such stylistic horrors as rainproof trousers. Before I could skid too far down that dangerous road to sartorial oblivion a sudden impulse made me go past my turn-off for home and rumble on through the misty afternoon to the Lam Valley.

Needham hadn’t bothered pulling me in again because, as he had hinted when he came to inspect my pantry, the latest thinking was that just possibly I might have nothing to do with the killing and it had all been some weird coincidence that Albert Barrington had exhaled his soul in the back of my car. But even at my age I still had some problems believing in a random universe where all was coincidence and meaning a matter of personal choice. I sensed method behind all this. Unfortunately it wasn’t my own. At the moment my own style of detection resembled blind man’s buff more than any methodical investigation, but then I was just a little distracted by other events. I didn’t believe in the joyrider theory of how the DS had landed in Lam Valley. Whoever had nicked my car that night hadn’t gone very far in it. It was perhaps less than ten minutes’ careful drive from Larkhall to Blackfield’s meadow, or a five-minute drive at the kind of speed that makes you crash through a five-bar gate and carry on another forty yards up the hill. Not much joy, anyway. Someone had found my keys where I had dropped them that night in my inebriated state or, much more likely, had swiped them off the table at the Rosie while I was away from it, checking out Mr Lane’s reading material.

There was now no evidence left that my DS and the late Mr Barrington had ever met in the dank little meadow. Even the smashed five bar gate had been completely cleared away and replaced with a lot of nothingness. As I came up to it I slowed and stopped. The sudden fall in exhaust noise allowed me to catch a similar noise behind me, like an unwholesome echo. I looked swiftly around and just caught the top of a motorcycle helmet disappear over the rise as someone frantically turned their bike around and hared back in the direction from which I’d come. I heard the bike’s engine accelerate away fast. If I didn’t catch him last time then I wouldn’t catch him this time. The memory of missing Jack Fryer’s enormous tractor by a couple of inches as I screamed round the bend was still fresh enough in my mind not to need refreshing.

The Norton’s noise made a handful of sheep bolt from where they’d been grazing near the lane as I grabbed a handful of throttle and accelerated away. I crossed by the little bridge and turned towards Spring Farm. This time I found the gates closed but I could see light behind the kitchen window. I leaned the bike against the fence and opened the gate. Unfortunately, between me and the front door of the farmhouse stood a large, dark, wet dog who seemed to be as mesmerized by my every move as I was by his. Where had he suddenly come from? He was huge and he sniffed in my direction. Why did people always let monsters like this run around, free to eat harmless visitors? And why had I yet to see a farm with a doorbell? And why was I so scared of dogs? I made a tentative step forward. The dog barked and ran straight at me. His rank smell travelled before him. I stopped and stood, petrified, while the huge wet thing sniffed my boots, my legs, then stuck his snout firmly into my crutch. What was all that doggy sniffing supposed to be for anyway? What if he decided he didn’t like the smell of me? What if he decided he liked it lots and lots?

A face appeared briefly at the window. A few moments later the door opened and Brian, the farm worker, filled the frame. ‘What are you doing standing in the middle of the yard?’ There was genuine puzzlement in his voice.

I didn’t take my eyes off the dog. ‘I’ve come to have a word with the farmer. Mr Fryer.’

‘Yeah, I know that’s his name, no need to remind me. You’d better come in then.’ He stepped aside to let Fryer squeeze out of the low door.

‘What is it, Brian?’

‘It’s that private investigator again.’ I had never noticed my job had that many syllables before.

‘So it is,’ he confirmed. ‘What are you doing here again?’

‘I’d. . just like a quick word, that’s all.’

‘Well, I don’t really mind the rain but wouldn’t you feel more comfortable inside?’ he asked. By now he must have had little doubt as to what had rooted me to the spot but he made me spell it out for him.

‘You couldn’t call off your dog first, could you?’

‘Call him off? Just push him away, the soft bastard’s not going to bite you, he’s the most useless guard dog on the planet. I’d be better off with one of my chickens patrolling the place.’

‘What’s his name?’ Being on sniffing terms I thought we ought to be introduced.

‘Grot. Though I’m not sure he knows it.’ He disappeared inside, followed by the farmhand. I walked forward, closely shadowed by the dog who did in fact wag his tail now and tried to jump up at me. ‘Make sure the dog stays outside!’ Fryer called.

‘Sorry, Grot,’ I apologized as I squeezed the door shut behind me.

The kitchen, which I’d last seen in the grip of form-filling depression, had normalized to the point where the floor was no longer covered in dirty pots and pans and the big table in the centre was merely cluttered with mugs, newspapers and a crate of gnarled quinces exuding the most delectable perfume. Fryer himself looked less dishevelled and had shaved sometime during the last twenty-four hours. Brian stood by the sink and Fryer on the other side of the table. Both held chipped mugs and began sipping what looked and smelled suspiciously like instant soup. No wholesome stews bubbling on the Aga in this household. No one offered me a mug, so I couldn’t tell them just how revolting I found the stuff. And how much I’d appreciate some.

‘Still sniffing around? What’s it this time?’ Fryer asked, sipping from his mug and pulling a face at the hot soup.

‘Oh, same thing really. I just wondered. .’ I gave him a description of Cairn and Heather, told him their names. ‘Ring any bells?’

‘Not in my church. You think they have anything to do with the murder?’

‘They might well have. I wonder, have you come across anything strange in the valley lately?’

‘What, apart from yourself, you mean?’ Fryer said drily. Barry guffawed at this as though it was the funniest joke he’d heard for years. Perhaps it was.

‘Apart from me, yes.’

‘No, not really. What do you mean? People?’

‘Someone killed Gemma Stone’s dog up in the wood by Blackfield’s place. Bashed his head in.’

‘Did they?’ He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘That’s not nice. I wonder why.’

I had the suspicion he wouldn’t spend too much time wondering. ‘I think someone’s trying to get to Gem Stone.’

‘Why would they try a thing like that?’ He shrugged. ‘Stone can look after herself. When she first turned up I thought she wouldn’t last three months, down there by herself, no phone, no nothing laid on. But she’s made a go of it, give her that.’

‘Yes, you have to be pretty tough to live down there, I imagine, in a caravan, all through the winter. Lonely at Christmas, too, I should think.’

Fryer shot me a look at that but I returned it levelly, as though I had never heard of his Christmas lunge. ‘Farming’s a lonely business these days,’ he agreed. ‘Not so long ago farms needed lots of labour, there’d be twenty-odd people in a field doing a job one man does by himself with a tractor now.’

I wondered how lonely Fryer himself felt. No woman would have tolerated the state of this kitchen for long, so I assumed he was living alone or with Barry here, who struck me as rather a dour companion. ‘You seen her lately?’

‘Who?’ This seemed rather disingenuous, since we had only just mentioned Gem Stone, so I didn’t elaborate. ‘You mean the Stone woman? Not for ages. Have you, Barry?’

Barry sniffed, shook his head. ‘Nah.’ He turned to rinse out his mug with elaborate care.

I changed tack. ‘I went up to Blackfield’s place the other day.’

‘Oh yeah? Meet him?’

‘Met his son.’

‘That’s who I mean. Dad’s not all there by all accounts since his wife died. Did you ask him what the fuck he’s turning his bit of land into?’

‘Yup, secure storage.’

Both Barry and Fryer guffawed at that. ‘That’s it,’ Fryer said. ‘Secure fucking storage, that’s what he told us at the public meeting, I just wanted to hear it again. Ha. And he got planning permission, can you credit it? Have you seen the mess he made out there, even a bit of road, massive fucking crane and all to shift his tin boxes around. I’d gladly store something securely up his. .’

I felt we had probably explored that theme as far as it would go and made to leave when I remembered why I had come here in the first place. ‘Oh yeah,’ I asked by the door, ‘do you know of anyone riding around on a trailie in the valley?’

‘Lots of people use trail bikes around here, it’s a good way of getting around. Trailies and quad bikes. We’ve got both. Why the interest?’

‘Do you remember the other day? One must have nearly collided with you in the lane, couple of seconds later I nearly ran into you.’

‘Didn’t see any trailie, all I saw was you carrying an idiotic amount of speed round the corner. You were very lucky not to become a smudge on the side of my tractor.’

I had to agree with him, though just how he could have missed seeing the bike I was pursuing was a little mysterious.

The door slammed unceremoniously behind me as I stepped into the worsening rain. Grot was lying amongst sacks of something or other under a shelter of wood and corrugated asbestos and sensibly lifted no more than his head as I left. As I rode away from the place the gloriously useful heating arrangements at the Rose and Crown insinuated themselves into my mind, irresistible like the mirage of a lake to a man dying of thirst in the desert. Well, something like that, anyway.

Only a few early regulars were perusing newspapers or studying the empty space on the other side of their pints. The landlady wasn’t about. The barmaid, a brawny young woman with blonde hair permed to within an inch of its life, furnished me with a mug of black coffee. I described the Cairn and Heather duo to her. Had she seen them lately?

‘Yeah, they were in last night,’ she confirmed. She yanked open the dishwasher and thick steam rose briefly between us.

‘They come in here a lot then?’

‘Not really, no. What you want with them, anyway?’ She began stacking the glasses on their shelves below the bar top.

‘They. . kind of hired me to look into something for them and I’d like to give them a progress report.’

‘Mm, kind of hired? I thought you’d have enough employment explaining away the dead body in the back of your car.’

‘Does everybody know about that?’ I wondered.

‘Yup.’

A couple of the regulars nodded sagely without bothering to look up.

‘Did you know the man? Albert Barrington?’

‘Never heard of him. Not known in these parts until after his demise.’

The regulars shook their heads. I realized what it was. It was altogether too quiet in this place, there was no music playing yet and not enough customers. Cosy, but perhaps a bit too cosy right now. ‘Do you know where the kids might live?’

She shook her head and continued stacking. ‘Somewhere in the valley perhaps. Not in Larkhall, never seen them around except in here sometimes. Definitely not regulars.’ The regulars shook their heads like a bunch of radio-controlled toys.

‘You wouldn’t know their surname, then?’

She didn’t. I pushed my card across the bar. ‘Could you give me a ring next time they’re in? I’d appreciate it.’

‘As if we didn’t have enough to do in here without. . yeah, all right, if it isn’t too busy and if I remember and if they happen to be in when I’m in, I only work three shifts now.’ She swiped the card off the bar and stuck it into a pile of papers wedged next to the till. Not much point in me waiting by the phone then.

I finished my coffee and left. I had stuff to do. I dialled Jill’s number, wanting to reassure her that I thought I could pull the museum job off, but there was no answer. Then I armed myself with some cash, rode to the catalogue showroom place on the Upper Bristol Road and bought a large black rucksack, a pencil torch, a bolt cutter, two combination bicycle locks, a padlock and a couple of aluminium fire escape ladders since I had no illusions that I could learn the rope work of abseiling in just a couple of days. In fact the less I thought about climbing the better I was able to suppress the panic trying to bubble up from behind my navel. These long ladders made from lightweight chains and treads, designed to get you out of a burning building, appealed to my low-tech mind.

Back at Mill House Tim was still presiding over the sitting room from his nest on the floor in front of the fire. The paraphernalia of convalescence spilled out around him like flotsam from a shipwreck: painkillers, box of tissues, his phone, his laptop, his iPod and headphones, bottles of Pilsner Urquell (‘I got bored!’), a bag of doughnuts and a stack of Annis’s M.C. Beaton novels.

Since Tim couldn’t join us anywhere else it only seemed natural that headquarters moved into the sitting room. Soon Annis and I added to the chaos by spreading maps and pictures I’d taken of the museum on the floor and dumping other paraphernalia of the forthcoming heist everywhere. Annis and I pored over the large-scale map of Bath. While I had been at Jake’s to scrounge the dinghy Annis had scouted out a place to launch and recover it from. The closest place where we could get access to the Avon upriver from Pulteney Weir was a long way out, opposite Kensington Meadows and the playing fields. Here Annis had found a farmer’s access road to the meadow we could use. It still meant carrying the inflated dinghy and its engine a hundred and fifty yards through the meadow to the water, but we might manage to do it unobserved. That side of the river appeared completely dark at night, especially when viewed from the well-lit Kensington side.

None of this seemed quite real, it felt much more like planning a movie sequence than something we were going to attempt in the real world of police, courts and crowded prisons. Tim’s lugubrious comments didn’t help.

‘Well, it’s been nice knowing you two. .’

‘Rubbish, we’ll pull it off, no sweat. The more unlikely, the more James Bondian, the better. No one will expect it and we’ll be out of there before they know what’s hit them.’ I didn’t feel any of this excessive optimism. I felt absolutely certain that one day I would write about it from a prison cell, or even a hospital bed en route to a prison cell. Still, all in a good cause. .

‘They’ll scoop you up and bag you before you’ll manage to lay a finger on The Dancer. The whole thing stinks. Somebody, and it stands to reason it was the fuzz, followed me for days. They know something. They know Aqua Investigations is up to something.’

‘I didn’t notice any surveillance while I was out.’ Annis munched thoughtfully on one of the dozens of mini doughnuts she had brought back for Tim. ‘And I really looked, tried to catch them out.’

‘Neither have I.’ I didn’t say that even now I had the distinct feeling an invisible net had already been thrown over us, that whatever I did, wherever I went, someone was watching. The darkening windows suddenly made me feel exposed. I got up and closed the curtains on all of them. I tried to be casual about it, but looked hard into the gathering darkness, looking for any sign of movement beyond the rain. A hopeless thing to do. A whole battalion could hide out there and as long as they weren’t wearing Day-Glo uniforms I wouldn’t see them.

‘The river is so swollen you won’t be able to navigate your little cockleshell. You’ll drown like rats and I’ll lie here unable to get up, and I’ll starve to death. Right, you can’t have any more of these.’ He swiped the family-size bag of doughnuts and stuffed it under his blanket. ‘It’s all that stands between me and death by starvation. They’ll find my emaciated body when eventually they open up the house after your bloated remains have washed up in Avonmouth. .’

I let Tim witter on because in some weird way it was beginning to cheer me up. ‘You’re just jealous because you can’t come along, dear.’

‘I told you when you first suggested it that it was an idiotic scheme.’

‘You’re just scared that I might find out I can do without your criminal expertise and hand you a redundancy notice.’

‘Ha! Redundancy implies employment. You haven’t paid me for ages. Anyway, you’re scared of heights, remember? Halfway up there you’ll crap yourself with fear and the fire brigade will have to come and fetch you down like a kitten from an apple tree.’

This was so close to the centre of my own fears that I nearly told him to shut up, only I knew that the resulting silence would scare me more. ‘I’ll cope.’

‘You’ll never even get there. You’ll get swept away or your dinghy will turn turtle and you’ll drown.’ Tim was getting into his stride now and obviously enjoying his role as gloom-dispensing oracle. He had even acquired a familiar; ever since he’d settled down in front of the fire the cat hadn’t left his side.

I coughed as I lit yet another cigarette and wondered how long I could stay afloat for. ‘We can both swim.’ Annis nodded her agreement.

‘Not in the weir you can’t. It’s become eroded and the changed shape creates a fierce suction pulling you down to the bottom and preventing you from coming up again. Might be all sorts of bodies already down there. And with the river in spate like this your chances will be zero anyway. You’ll both be dead a couple of minutes after hitting the water. What’s for supper, by the way?’

It was Annis’s turn to cook. While I watched her boil fettucine and drown a few handfuls of prawns in arrabiata sauce straight from the supermarket (‘You didn’t think I was going to knit you a cassoulet, did you?’) I called Jill. A lot could go wrong but if it didn’t then it looked as though within a couple of days we might at last be able to exchange Louis for the Penny Black and The Dancer. There was no answer.

‘I tried before and didn’t get any answer then either.’

Annis elaborately licked a large wooden spoon, then waggled it at me. ‘Mm, yeah, meant to tell you: I swung round her place earlier after I picked up some of Tim’s stuff and she didn’t answer. I don’t think she was in, I leant on the bell for a while, it would have woken the dead.’

‘I’ll try her again later.’ I slipped the phone back into my pocket and decided to do rather more than that later.

We had just sat down to keep Tim company in front of the fire and begun to slurp fettucine and chase prawns round our bowls when I sensed more than heard a vehicle approach. I wandered off with my bowl of pasta into the dark hall and opened the door a crack, from where I could watch the entrance to the yard without showing a backlit silhouette of myself. Now I could clearly hear the slow, distinctive rattle of a large diesel approaching down the track. A few moments later headlights appeared and soon I recognized Jake’s vintage Land Rover. He was pulling a Rigid Inflatable Boat on a trailer, complete with outboard engine tilted up, into the yard. I turned on the outside light, which at the moment consisted of one feeble light bulb. There was more light coming from Jake’s Land Rover. He climbed from the cab, still in his overalls.

‘Hold this.’ I handed him the bowl of pasta and went to admire the boat. I walked around it, patting its sleek black flanks. It was far bigger than I had expected, a lot more substantial. Surely this would stand up to any amount of current, any kind of weather. ‘Can it be carried? With two people?’

‘Just. Without the engine. It’s a good little boat, that. I’ll leave you the trailer of course. Got anything to pull it with?’

‘Annis’s Landy.’

‘You’re sorted then. Cheers, Chris.’ He handed me back the bowl. Empty.

I stared at it in consternation. This had to be some sort of conspiracy.

Annis had appeared in the doorway but preferred to stay dry in its shelter while Jake unhitched the trailer.

‘It’s got a twelve horsepower engine, I know that doesn’t sound much, but it’s perfectly adequate. I filled her up, you can return her dry though, it’ll only go back into storage anyway. Give us a hand.’

We unhitched the trailer and pulled the boat as far as it went into the incomplete shelter of one of the crumbling outbuildings. The one adjacent to it, with most of its sagging roof still complete, hid Tim’s black Audi, under bits of tarp, carpet and cardboard. Jake spotted it instantly with the trained eye of the obsessive. ‘I won’t ask.’

‘It’s just Tim’s Audi. He’s come to stay for a few days.’

‘Blimey, does he always park like that? Right, gotta go, car to finish.’ He climbed into his cab, waved a goodbye and cranked the Land Rover out of the yard.

In the kitchen I made myself a tuna sandwich, closely watched by the cat who had suddenly appeared out of the ground beside me. How do they know? He was there before I got the tin-opener in. After explaining to him the merits of opposable thumbs when it came to the acquisition of tinned tuna I relented and dropped some in his cat bowl — and where had that come from? — just so I got some peace in which to munch my sandwich.

And think. And the more I thought, the more uneasy I felt. The feeling that my life was controlled by outside forces, that events and people might pop in and out of the ground like a nameless cat, was beginning to get to me. The museum robbery was of course an utterly ridiculous and doomed undertaking, even if the couple attempting it had not been a pair of painters with a fear of heights. Now that I was by myself and I didn’t have Tim’s ridicule to cheer me up the depressing realities of our situation crowded in on me.

Reluctantly I put on my still-damp leather jacket and boots, got on the bike and rumbled through the drizzle into town. The Norton never liked being parked on steep hills so I left it in Portland Place and walked the few yards down to Jill’s little house in Harley Street. No lights were showing. The blinds at the upstairs windows were drawn but I seemed to remember they’d been like that when we came to fetch Jill to Mill House. I checked my watch. It was only half past eight. The doorbell was shrill and remained unanswered, even after the fifth time of ringing. I called her mobile again without success. Bending down I pushed back the tin flap of the letter box. Only the dim glow of the street lights that fell through the doors leading off it illuminated the narrow hall. I hunted round my jacket pockets for my Maglite without success. What I wanted to see was in complete darkness. I turned on my mobile and, using the bright display as a torch, stuck it through the letter box. I had to hold it at an awkward angle and it slid from my rain-slickened fingers and dropped down the other side of the door, emitting a bleep of protest as it hit the large pile of uncollected post on the other side.

That decided it. It was only a Yale lock but my lock-picking expertise, despite Tim’s efforts to train me, was pitiful. The houses next door showed light behind their front room curtains. From the one on the left I could hear snatches of TV sound. I hoped the people on the other side were equally busy and didn’t suddenly decide to leave by the front door. I worked for a nerve-tingling minute, during which several people walked past on the pavement behind me. I forced myself not to look over my shoulder but to concentrate on the inner workings of the lock. At last it clicked open and I pushed through into the hall. The pile of post made it difficult, as some of it slid under the door. I picked up my mobile, closed the door and turned on the light. At my feet lay mainly junk mail, leaflets and takeaway menus and stuff addressed to The Householder, but there were other letters as well, most bearing the name A. P. Downs. Presumably the previous tenant. There was no post for Jill, since she had only lived there for one or two days before tragedy struck. I simply couldn’t see how Jill could have entered her house without sweeping most of the mail to the side as I had done when I opened the door. Unless she had used a rear entrance. I dropped the letters back on the floor and looked into the sitting room on the right. In the orange glow from the street lights I could see that nothing had changed in here, the ashtray overflowing, the half-emptied boxes, the china pigs on the telly. I was still feeling for the light switch when a police car pulled up outside, without siren but blue lights flashing. Two officers jumped out. Now was a good time to find out if there was another way out. One of the officers made straight for the front door, already flashing his torch at the window, the other went to the next door neighbour’s, presumably to cut off any escape from the back.

I turned off the hall light and ran to the small kitchen at the rear. A narrow, half-glazed back door led to a tiny garden. It was locked. There wasn’t the time to try and unpick the lock. I lifted one of the wooden kitchen chairs, hoped it was solid enough to break through the glass, took a good swing back and spotted a key hanging on a hook in the door frame. I put the chair down and tried the keys. Behind me the front door was being rattled, then a powerful torch beam, aimed through the letter box, jumped about on the kitchen furniture. The lock disengaged, I pulled. Bolted. I released the top bolt and pulled. I swore and released the bottom bolt, which was stiff because the wood had warped. At last I managed to get the door open, only to see a police constable’s head bob over the fence to the right. The fence was overgrown with brambles and the copper was looking for a way across without getting shredded. I ran straight down the middle of the strip of garden, cracked my ankle against something in the dark but kept running.

‘Halt! Police! Stop right there!’ The authority of his voice was subtly undermined by the quieter addition of ‘Shit.’ I took a run at the fence at the back, ignoring the padlocked door, and scrambled over it. It landed me in the narrowest of alleyways full of crud. To my right a puffing police officer rattled at the high back gate of the neighbour’s fence. It was topped with rusted barbed wire. I jumped over what looked like a collection of empty paint cans and sacks of rubbish and ran past him uphill. It was a dead end. The back-to-back gardens of Harley Street and the much posher Northampton Street converged and soon I found myself at the bottom of an eight-foot sandstone wall. Fortunately someone had neatly piled large sections of a dead fruit tree under it for me to climb up. Behind me the constable crashed through the pile of paint cans, getting awfully close. I clambered up the pile of logs, which began to move precariously. It seemed to take me forever. When I got one leg on the top of the wall I gave the wood pile a good kick with the other one. I didn’t wait to check the results. I dropped down between a brick barbecue and a glass greenhouse into the sudden glare of a security light high above on the back wall of the house. This was a much larger garden, belonging to the last house on Northampton Street. The light was helpful, though. I spotted the door to the car port on the other side and when I got there found it open and squeezed through the two cars to freedom. No time to hang about. The Norton was parked twenty yards up the road. When I reached it I was so out of breath I wanted nothing more than to bend double and throw up. I worked the kick-starter instead. One of the constables was back in the street in front of Jill’s house and, seeing me frantically trying to start the bike, began running uphill towards me.

The Norton never did like the damp. Only on the fourth attempt did the engine come to life. Realizing that he wouldn’t reach me in time the officer changed his mind and ran back to his car. With the thunderous noise the fifty-year-old bike emitted I had no chance of giving him the slip quietly and I certainly couldn’t outrun him. I pointed the bike left and roared along Portland Street straight at a large complex of council flats. I squeezed the bike past the beam that barred the car park and rode the few yards to the pedestrian underpass. Blue flashes of the police car’s beacon pulsed on the wall above me as I negotiated the metal barriers designed to stop people from driving through it. It was an agonizingly slow squeeze through it but once on the other side I was home free. For a couple of seconds the Norton’s exhaust noise was ear-splittingly amplified in the short tunnel, then I hustled the bike up the curved tarmac path to the top where it spat me out on to Lansdown Road. I turned left uphill and opened the throttle all the way. There was no sign of pursuit, even when I reached the long straight on top of Lansdown.

Taking the long way home along dark and deserted country roads allowed my adrenalin levels to readjust themselves and gave me time to subdue my paranoia. The arrival of the police at Jill’s house had nothing to do with the kidnapping or our planned robbery; someone had watched me spend ages breaking the lock and sensibly called the fuzz. If they’d been after me personally, they’d have been CID.

The much more important question was now: what had happened to Jill? I hadn’t had the chance to search the house but it seemed obvious that no one had been there for a while. Quite apart from the evidence of the junk mail pile what had convinced me that Jill hadn’t been back for a couple of days was the smell. The place smelled uninhabited. Nobody had smoked there for a while and Jill was a heavy smoker.

Had she decided she needed company after all? Had she gone to her sister’s? She said she didn’t know anyone in Bath; had she gone to Bristol, perhaps even back to her ex-boyfriend?

In the valley I approached the turn-off to my house from the east instead of the usual west. I hid the Norton as best I could by the side of the road and walked the last quarter of a mile, this being the approximate distance the bike’s engine sound travelled at night. I was thoroughly wet and tired but kept on my toes by a brain feverishly trying to compute all the possibilities, all the alternatives, any exit strategies or plan Bs. If I found the yard full of police the answers would become painfully obvious. If not, then our plans had to be put into action as soon as possible. I cautiously crept along the last bit of track, darting from tree shadow to tree shadow. The outside light was on, there were no police cars in the yard.

If it was still empty by tomorrow night, I would go and steal a Rodin.