Fatlands (16 page)

‘Haven't I? Then I suppose you can explain why I found Mattie in your study before she died going through your filing cabinets. And I have to tell you she certainly looked as though she'd found what she was looking for.'

Only now did his defences really crumble. He looked across at me and his face was ashen. He got up slowly and turned away, moving slowly, like a man who has suffered some kind of stroke. He stood with his hand on the back of a chair to hold himself up. I began to realize just what I had done.

‘Did she say anything?' The voice was hoarse.

‘No, nothing. Listen, Dr Shepherd, I don't mean to cause you pain, but if you'd just tell me what it is you're
trying to hide, I promise you I'll find the men who killed her.'

And I meant it. He turned. And for the first time he looked like someone I might have been able to talk to. Except he still didn't want to talk to me. ‘I … I need some time on my own right now. If you don't mind.'

I sat for a moment, hoping my stillness might change his mind, but he already seemed to have forgotten I was there. I got up slowly and gathered my things. At the door I turned. ‘Dr Shepherd, I don't believe that Mattie set out to hurt you. But whoever put that bomb under your car did. And if you don't tell me what it is you know, then I really think it's possible they might try again.'

Well, it was a good line. It would have made
me
listen. But he was beyond hope. Now, too late, I felt sympathy. Bad timing. Life's full of it. I closed the front door behind me, making sure the locks slipped into place.

I walked slowly towards my car, past the spot where she had become my future as well as my past. I wanted to get as far from it as possible, but once in the car I found myself paralysed in the driving seat. I looked back up to the house. A light went on in the study. Tom Shepherd following in his daughter's footsteps, checking the files for what he might have lost. He had his guilt, I had mine. In that same room I had interrupted the phone call between Mattie and her activist. And so she had put down the receiver too quickly, taken the car keys and walked out to her death. Not all my fault. But how many people can one blame for a single action? Shepherd was standing in the window. He was holding something in his hand. I got out of the car and walked across the street to get a better look. He didn't notice me. He was too busy talking on the telephone.

I went back to the office. After the elegance of Maida Vale, it looked even tattier than usual. It always does
after I haven't been there for a couple of days. Neither had Frank from the look of it. It was getting on for one o'clock. Either he was out on a job, or just out. If it was the latter, he wouldn't be hard to find.

He was sitting in a corner with a half-pint in front of him, the mobile on the seat next to him. I wondered if he was depressed. I can usually tell the signs, but then I hadn't been looking recently. I know that sometimes he misses the Force. But the one time I asked him about it he waxed lyrical about the freedom of the self-employed. Even after nearly three years I don't feel I know him well enough to probe any further. But being needed usually makes him feel better. And need him I did. I sauntered back from the bar with a pint, a Scotch and two packets of crisps. Beads and trinkets. I slid them on to the table. He looked at the glass, then up at me.

‘What d'you want?' he grunted.

‘What makes you think I want anything?'

‘It's a pint, isn't it? Costs twice as much as a half.'

That's what I call a fair cop. ‘All right. How about five minutes of your time?'

‘You know, you disgust me, Hannah. You call yourself a feminist, then shamelessly play up to members of the opposite sex.'

‘Frank, it's your brains I want, not your body.'

‘I tell you, you should be careful. Not all male egos are as buoyant as mine. Remarks like that in the wrong company will get you a fistful of fives one of these days.'

I smiled and drew up a chair. ‘Thanks.'

‘You got this much information, with a multinational offering to pay you for it, and you call it a problem?'

I shook my head. ‘I don't want to work for them.'

‘I know. They were nasty to a gay couple, shocking, isn't it?' I made a face. ‘Or is it the amount of profit they
make every year? I know how hard you take such things, Hannah. But I've told you before, detective work brings only suffering and disillusion. This may be the case where you have to accept that the good guys are not automatically the bad guys.'

‘Oh, come on, Frank. They were way too nice to me.'

‘You're a private eye. They're always too nice or too nasty. Like the police, it's a reflex action.'

‘And that's it, is it? I mean that's the analysis I paid one pound seventy pence' worth of beer for?'

‘Yeah, well, you should know better than trying to bribe an ex-copper. OK. You're sure it was him?'

‘No. He was a fair distance across the car park, and the photo wasn't exactly a give-away. But it certainly looked like him.'

‘But “him” wasn't Malcolm Barringer?'

‘No. That I am certain of.'

‘Hmm. Doesn't fit, though, does it? I mean if he was who you say he is, then why should he still be hanging around?'

‘Well, if no one knows who he really is, then why not? Maybe he likes to live dangerously. I'm getting the impression he's that kind of guy.'

He looked at me quickly. ‘Getting to know him, eh?'

‘A little, yes.'

‘Better watch your step. Nick'll get jealous. So? What do you think you've got? A rebel with a cause, or something nastier?'

I thought about it. ‘I don't know yet.'

‘But you do know Shepherd had something to hide—something worth killing him for?'

I thought about Shepherd's face, so sunken and pursued. Hard to sort out the grief from the guilt. But not impossible. ‘Yes.'

‘Well, of course, you claim to know more about these
nutters than I do. But from where I'm sitting it's hard to see what exactly he could have done that made him worth blowing to smithereens. I mean how bad can a pig feel? I suppose you're sure it is the pigs?'

‘Frank, to be honest I'm not sure about anything.'

‘Hmm. Course, you could always give it to the police. They'd be delighted to find out how much more you know than them.'

‘Thanks.' He looked at me, and waited. I took it more seriously. ‘I know you think I'm withholding evidence.'

‘Not
think
, Hannah.
Know
.'

‘Listen, Frank, if I give it to them it's not mine any more. And I'll always be the one who let her walk out to the car.'

He shook his head. ‘In my experience it's only worth blaming yourself for things you get wrong. She was fourteen years old. She asked you to let her go out and get something from the glove compartment. You weren't to know the car was booby-trapped.'

I closed my eyes. When Tom Shepherd had said it, it had made me mad. Now it just made me bereft. I shook my head. ‘I still should have been there.'

He smiled. ‘Determined little tick, aren't you? You know, when you first came to me I only took you on because I felt sorry for you. Well, that and the fact that you'd been on that computer course. But you've not done bad. For a girl. Well, I don't have any miracle answers for you. Looks like loverboy's still your only trump card. Why don't you give Maringo a copy of the photo. Maybe some of the moderates will recognize him and sell him for thirty pieces of silver.'

I shook my head. ‘I can try, but I don't think Maringo's the kind of man to name names.'

Frank shrugged. ‘Even if he took the Fifth Amendment you'd know you'd got something. Other than that, I
think it's a question of buying more beer. I mean if it was him coming out of that pub, then someone has got to remember him.' I had got there without him, anyway. But it always helps to have your judgement confirmed. ‘But, Hannah. Be careful, all right? If this guy is animal rights, then he's more IRA than Sinn Fein. And by now it sounds like that's what half the farmers around Vandamed think you are, anyway. There'll be a lot of bad feeling after her death. Watch out you don't get your high heels caught in a cattle grid. They might be tempted to leave you there till the cows come home.'

I had thought about that one, too. But in the middle of a London day with the sound of traffic all around it just seemed like paranoia. ‘Don't worry.' I grinned. ‘I'll wear Doc Martens.'

He nodded and drained his beer. ‘If you wait till the weekend, I'll come with you, if you want.'

It was, I think you probably know, far above and beyond the call of duty. That more than anything else made me realize just how worried he was. But it also gave me an idea.

‘Thanks, but—well, they'd have you down for a copper the minute you walked into the place. And you'd hold it against me forever if you missed Arsenal.'

‘Chelsea.'

‘Chelsea. Anyway, I've already got a man.'

T
he weather came out to greet us, for once behaving according to the season. It was the last official day of winter. Soon the clocks would move forward an hour and the light would make everything seem possible again, until another summer disappointed. Nick and I had set off on Saturday afternoon and stopped for lunch as soon as concrete turned to country. By the time we hit East Suffolk he was driving and I was navigating. It was a good team. A voyage of discovery, for one of us at least.

‘Why Suffolk?' he had asked when I told him.

‘I found some lovely country when I was there on Wednesday. And according to the guide book this particular hotel is spectacular.'

‘You sure you can find it?'

I had the map upside down on my lap. I find this helpful, having the real roads and the map roads going the same way. Most of the men I know think it is indicative of women's lack of direction. ‘They gave me impeccable instructions. OK?' I said primly.

‘OK,' he mimicked, glancing my way. ‘You look good.'

‘Do I?'

‘Yes. I don't think I tell you that often enough.'

Well, certainly not recently. Of course it didn't make me feel any better hearing it now. You think I'm a slime-bag, right? Using my boyfriend as a cover for work. Well, you may be right. But he would never have come if I'd told him, and who said it was all going to be hard grind?If the hotel was anything like the brochure, then breakfast in bed could last until dinnertime, with the briefest of visits to the local pub in between.

We had just passed it on the left. According to the map the hotel was about half a mile away, up the hill and then off to the right. We were coming to the turn-off when we spotted a funeral cortege ahead of us—two big black limos piled high with flowers and a motley collection of cars behind—creeping its caterpillar way along the country lane. We slowed down and crept too, waiting patiently until it turned off into a tiny churchyard overlooking a long, rolling sweep of country. As final resting places go, it would be more inviting than most. Burying the dead. Such ceremony. If we did as much for every leftover animal carcass, there would be no room for humans. Maybe that would make us think a little more about the nature of slaughter. Although I suspect it would depend on how hungry we were at the time. I was so heavily entrenched in shoddy philosophy that I missed the turn-off.

‘Right.'

‘What?'

‘Right. You should have gone right.'

‘You mean the one we just passed?'

‘Yes.'

‘Great navigating.' He slammed on the brakes and backed into a field. Across the hedgerow I saw the first car after the hearse stop outside the church and a middle-aged woman get out, pulling her black coat around her. Strange how when it's not your grief it all seems so far away. In the field behind the graveyard a couple of cows looked up
from their pasture, then down again. Another meat-eater bites the dust. They didn't seem that interested.

When we got there, it looked even better than the brochure: neat, formal, and very Georgian, with an avenue of small trees leading up to it and apple blossom everywhere. Out of all the weekends in the year we'd picked the right one.

Nick drew up outside the front entrance and turned to me. ‘Well, the girl done good,' he said softly and leant over to kiss me. Serious stuff. I registered it as a slow burn—the rush of sex, or the adrenalin of betrayal? What is it they say about infidelity? That it's one of the more piquant arts.

Our room overlooked the gardens, a snooker-table lawn fringed by beds of spring flowers sloping down towards a well-stocked pond. It was here the carp, according to the blurb, lived and died for the guests. They were lucky it hadn't been fire-bombed by fish freedom-fighters. I threw open the windows and looked out. It was still and utterly silent. If I wanted, life could be like this always. Take a different kind of job, earn a different kind of money, meet a different kind of person. You can do that. I know people who do. Would it really make me so boring and complacent?

Nick had been snooping round the bathroom, testing out the water power. He came up behind me and linked his arms round my waist. ‘You still thinking about work?'

‘Uh-uh.' And for once it was true.

‘Good. You know, you got a great ass.'

I smiled. ‘That's
my
line.'

He ran a finger down from the edge of my chin towards my breasts. ‘Do you want to go for a walk?'

‘Where to?'

‘How about the bed?'

To be honest, the anticipation proved somewhat better
than the act. Sex. However far it takes you away from yourself, you still have to come back alone. Makes you wonder if it's worth the journey. Or maybe I was still feeling guilty. We lay for a while, watching the shadows move across the ceiling. By rights, this should have been the quiet place in the story where the private eye recharges the batteries ready for the last big push towards the summit of the plot. Once again the reality fell miserably short of the myth. All I could think of was Mattie, of all the beds she would never lie in, and all the men she would never lie next to. Maybe I should have been grateful that at least there had been one. Let's hope he had a good body underneath those gardening overalls. A good body and great technique. Now, now, Hannah. Remember what Frank said. Getting to know them is one thing, fantasizing about them is another. I climbed off the bed, kissing my lover as I went. Just like the movies.