Denied to all but Ghosts (38 page)

He was driving in the right hand lane as he
drew level with the incline to the station and impulsively stood
hard on the brake pedal, bringing the car to a screeching, slewing
halt.

The car behind had no chance of avoiding him
and smashed into the rear of the Galaxy, rendering the overcast
Bristol street with the expensive resonance of crumpled plastic and
metal. Cavendish’s forward impetus was checked by the seat belt as
the rear bumper furrowed under the impact of the following Range
Rover. The Galaxy was shunted forward a further three times, as
Cavendish fashioned a four-car pileup.

He clumsily grabbed his coat, revolver and
anything else that came to hand and jumped frenziedly out of the
car, oblivious to the remonstrations of the barrister who had
driven into the Cavendish roadblock. The irate barrister fell
silent as he watched in amazement as the tall blonde vaulted the
central barrier and staggered onto the opposite carriage way, his
hand raised optimistically Canute-like against the oncoming rush of
traffic.

An approaching black Lexus swerved left to
circumvent hitting him and slammed forcefully into the side of a
white Transit van, which veered off at forty-five degrees to face
the central reservation before shuddering to a halt. The German was
impervious to the rush hour traffic carnage he had brazenly
fashioned as he dashed recklessly across the road and ran for the
incline leading up to the station entrance, where Beckett had
collected him after his stay at Flash Seminary. His tour of England
had come full circle.

Cavendish sprinted pell-mell into the station
main entrance and barged his way obliviously through the milling
crowd, condemning one unfortunate suited man to the ground.
Ignoring the ticket desks, he turned right for the platform where,
before reaching the gates, he frantically glanced up at the
departures board. The next train for Plymouth due to arrive in the
next ten minutes.

Realising that time was against him; he
stopped and ran his right hand through his unkempt hair as he blew
hard to regain his breath and control his shaking body. He stared
forlornly at the ever-growing queue to buy tickets and wondered if
he could purchase a ticket on the train. He decided he could not
take the risk and headed for the ticket kiosk.

“Hey you, you ruined my suit!” said the
balding middle-aged man who Cavendish had collided with and sent
headlong to the grubby station floor. The man hurriedly walked over
to confront Cavendish.

“My apologies, sir, a most unfortunate
accident I can assure you,” said Cavendish distractedly as the man
halted in front of him.

“Well, don’t do it again,” said the man
pointlessly as he prodded Cavendish in the chest. The sudden
contact instantly refocused Cavendish's anarchic mind. The balding
man then took his first proper look at the foreign-sounding
transgressor and instantly regretted being so hasty and saying
anything at all, let alone the provocative poking.

He would normally have known better but this
morning he was late and really hated the thought of travelling to
the capital. The foreigner had a feral look about him and anyone
with such a scarred face was hardly going to be a choirboy. As an
overweight salesman, he was hardly set in the mould of an action
hero.

“Good,” smiled Cavendish contritely, “no harm
done then.” The salesman made the mistake of breaking eye contact
with the fearsome tall stranger and looked down at the rolled up
coat the man was carrying. Protruding from the wrapped coat was the
handle of Cavendish’s revolver. The man looked slowly up towards
the scarred face, noting Cavendish’s enquiring smile. The colour
drained from the salesman’s normally ruddy cheeks and his mouth
fell agape as he peered reluctantly into the austere reptilian eyes
of the Untersucher.

“Well?” asked Cavendish. The plump man slowly
shook his head; he had no wish to tangle with this perilous looking
man. “Good call,” said Cavendish and with closure impatiently moved
on to buy a ticket.

Strolling brazenly to the front of the queue
at the ticket desk, Cavendish waited anxiously for a window to
become free. He was tapped insistently on the shoulder by the young
woman he had supplanted at the front of the queue and snapped his
head to look enquiringly down on her.

“There is a queue you know!” The woman’s eyes
raged piercingly yet the tone of her voice, although indignant, did
not convey the full fury of the affront. He watched with an air of
delicious mischief as the people behind her made their feelings
known to each other with varying degrees of severity; however no
one else dared to challenged him. The Untersucher smiled cynically
at their very British reaction to his egocentric exploit before
returning his attention to the wrathful young traveller.

“Do you know, the mountain peaks are
particularly beautiful at this time of year, you would look very
beautiful scantily clad as a young shepherdess as she cajoled her
flock to the fresh spring pastures.”

The woman stared at Cavendish in a befuddled
fashion and ceased her remonstration. He had addressed her with his
best impersonation of a Bavarian accent and had thrown in a good
deal of Bairisch dialect, local to the mountain regions of Bavaria
and Austria. His incomprehensible utterance was sufficient to quell
the angry protestations of the queue, allowing him to buy a railway
ticket for Plymouth.

Houghton smiled as Blanch returned with the
Audi having dropped off Beckett and Emily at Flint House. She read
the smile as one of approval for her actions, not realising that
his mind was considering the strange world of Marchel Cavendish.
The inquisitor had not warned him of any relationship between
Beckett and Spelman and he found it troubling.

Cavendish was perhaps the most deliberate and
precise person he had ever met and Houghton found it confusing that
Cavendish would allow Beckett to become emotionally involved with
his chief suspect. Yet, he supposed, Cavendish was a paradox
himself. Sometimes Houghton wondered how the hell he put up with
the machinations of an organisation like the firm.

It still troubled him how he was going to
tell his sergeant of their connection to the firm. His previous
sergeant had been fully cognisant and Houghton had remonstrated
with his superior for his friend and confident to be retained
following his suspension over the Cavendish’s dog case but had
failed to win his argument. Now he had to groom a new sergeant, his
orders from Sir Fletcher Dobson had been to break her in gently to
their bizarre world, yet he was struggling even to broach the
subject.

“Come on, Sergeant; let’s take a quick shufti
around the place.”

Houghton and Blanch carefully sifted through
rooms for anything that could be of relevance concerning the
missing man without trying to contaminate the scene. He had
concluded his search and sat at the foot of the stairs. They had
amassed a paltry collection of documents that may or may not be
pertinent to their enquiries. Houghton was not even sure what his
brief was anymore. Of the few conversations he had with Cavendish,
the focus had been on Dr Spelman, it was assumed that Slingsby
would be around, or was it? This was Cavendish’s investigation; he
was only here to see that things were carried out smoothly, at the
behest of the firm.

He was struggling to control Blanch, quite
understandably, she wanted the background on the two people in the
house and he was beginning to resent her nagging presence. His
thoughts were broken by the sound of shattering glass emanating
from the kitchen followed by a loud expletive. Moments later Blanch
strolled into view from the kitchen.

“Sorry, Sir. Smashed a glass vase.” There was
no hint of apology in her voice, she sounded flat and more that a
little fed up. “Any idea where there might be a dust pan and
brush?”

“Try under the stairs, Sergeant,” suggested
Houghton condescendingly. Beneath the stairs was a white wooden
door, to which Blanch now walked without enthusiasm.

She could not believe her luck when she had
been offered a posting to London and the Met. She had not applied
for the position; the position had found her. Her new job carried
the rank of detective sergeant for a department she had never heard
of, the ‘Regulatory Facilitations Unit’. She realised, with the
benefit of hindsight, that she had foolishly accepted the position
without really establishing the role she was expected to play. She
had been naively seduced by the attention and by her unexpected
promotion and salary increase. Having only just finished her
induction into the Met, she had been summoned by her new boss and
swept away to this remote part of Norfolk.

She had tried to impress her chief with her
keenness and effort but since their arrival she had become
increasingly perplexed by his operating methods, the way he allowed
the strange European to dictate proceedings back at the house and
the way she had to play second fiddle to some moronic civilian. She
tried to dispel the notion that her boss was taking bribes. They
had conducted a pointless search, a meaningless quest, for she had
no idea what was pertinent to the enquiry. She did not even know
what the enquiry was.

As she approached the door, her temper
fraying to breaking point, she resolved to have words with the
potentially corrupt chief inspector. What the hell, she could
always go back to traffic in Birmingham, couldn’t she?

Blanch opened the cupboard door and her
thoughts were refocused immediately on what lay before her. It was
if she had opened a door upon a secret world. Instead of the
expected cupboard space, she found herself looking down a flight of
steps that descended into darkness.

“Sir, I think you’d better come take a look,”
she said. Houghton noticed that the apathetic tone of her voice had
vanished.

“What is it, Sergeant?” he replied as he
wearily stood up and walked slowly to see what she had discovered
amongst the cleaning equipment.

“Well I’ll be buggered, Blanch. Well done!
Shall we take a look?” He smiled at Blanch and she grudgingly
reciprocated. Thumbing the light switch, Houghton cautiously
descended the stairs to stand in the utilitarian laundry room.

Maybe it was his police training, maybe it
was instinct, whatever the reason, Houghton headed directly for the
chest freezer and cautiously opened the stiff lid. He was not
shocked at what he found; he had seen too many violent deaths. He
had become desensitised, inured to the grim reality of seeing one’s
own mortality reflected back from the lifeless obscenity of a
corpse. He was acutely saddened and disappointed. No, he was angry,
furious that a trite theft and potential loss of money had resulted
in the death of a man. It bore all the hallmarks of a Cavendish
enquiry.

The train rolled out of Temple Meads station
only seconds after Cavendish had frantically climbed aboard. He was
passing through his third carriage when he spotted the man he was
looking for.

Zach Asimov sat alone at a table seat on the
right hand side of the carriage and the seats on the opposite side
were occupied by a lone teenage girl. She was listening to music
via her mobile and seemed oblivious to the world around her as
Cavendish took the vacant forward facing seat opposite her. On the
empty seat to his left, he carefully placed his overcoat, hiding
the shoulder holster, and made a big show of making himself
comfortable as he looked across to his right. He remained staring
until the man in the seat across the aisle turned to glance at him.
Cavendish smiled gently and after a moment of brief hesitation,
Asimov returned a nervous, fleeting smile. Cavendish studied the
man.

Asimov appeared younger than the photo Bethan
had sent him suggested. He dressed in the style that Cavendish
would have described as ‘student chic’. His long narrow face was
topped by a thatch of thick straw-coloured hair, which had
seemingly not seen a comb this side of Christmas. Cavendish nodded,
shifted in his seat and peered aimlessly out of the window.

The train glided through the hotchpotch of
dwellings that comprised the Bristol suburbs before speeding up as
it reached the countryside of Somerset. The weather remained
frustratingly overcast, not that Cavendish cared, for it reflected
his mood. It was to be a two-hour run to Plymouth and Cavendish
instinctively looked at his watch, the train had departed
punctually at a quarter to nine.

So far, his only lead to the theft of the
Romanov items was Asimov, he glanced again at his watch, by now he
suspected Beckett and Houghton would have made a move on Spelman
and Slingsby. He wondered briefly if he should contact Beckett, it
would soothe his shredded nerves to hear his voice, yet he knew
that the idea was impractical.

He had noticed that Asimov carried a
backpack, which he kept within arm’s reach at all times, and he
surmised, well hoped, that the Romanov articles were contained
within. At some point, he had to decide when and how to confront
Asimov.

At just after quarter to eleven the train
pulled into Plymouth station. Cavendish timed leaving his seat to
coincide with that of the painfully thin Asimov; they collided
abruptly in the aisle.

“Sorry,” smiled Cavendish as he leant his arm
against Asimov for support. The desire to make physical contact was
compelling and lent him the notion of empowerment over the thief’s
future. He had no idea where Asimov might be heading but the simple
physical act reassured him that Asimov wasn’t going to elude him.
Asimov said nothing; he looked worried and preoccupied.