Rat Poison (5 page)

‘What difference would it have made?' I retorted.

I think he was taken aback by the vehemence of my reply for he said nothing for a moment. Then, ‘Does Commander Greenway know you carry it around with you?'

‘Yes.'

Awkwardly, he then said, ‘I'm sure you saved my life.'

‘In such a blind panic he would probably have missed again. My regret is that I had no time to warn him.'

‘
That
would have made no difference,' he pointed out.

We dealt with the immediate aftermath, DI Black arriving to volunteer to take charge so Carrick would be free to carry on with the main investigation. The house was searched but no one else was found. Jessop and his brother – who someone, with suitable backup, had already gone to arrest – were known to Bristol CID for committing football hooliganism offences. Billy was found having a blazing row with his girlfriend, who wanted to call an ambulance, and was duly taken to hospital, where his neglected wound led to septicaemia from which he almost died. It went without saying that neither of the Jessops was fit for police questioning.

I had an idea Carrick would have a problem explaining why I was carrying a firearm as, strictly speaking, Patrick is the only one of us permitted to do so for personal protection reasons, as explained already. What was supposed to happen when his wife was on her own had never been addressed.

As usual, he rang that evening.

‘Oh, you know, the usual routine stuff,' I said in answer to his query about my day. ‘Armed raids on suspects, that kind of thing. I shot a bloke and saved James's life.'

Patrick laughed.

No one laughed when, the following Saturday morning, Matthew and Katie were caught breaking into the Ring o' Bells. It was not the manager who phoned to tell me what had happened but Jenny, who works in the kitchen at weekends. Needless to say I went straight over there.

The manager, whose name I seemed to remember was Colin Andrews, a tall, lanky and quite smartly dressed individual, was standing outside. ‘I caught them red-handed!' he called in his rather high-pitched voice as I approached. ‘They were probably after alcopops and crisps. I've called the police and insisted they're dealt with.'

‘Where are they now?' I asked.

‘In my office. And they'll stay there until the police come.'

‘There's no need to involve the police. It can be dealt with between us.'

‘Not a chance. I want this to be a lesson to all the other kids in the village who fancy free booze.'

‘My children don't drink, Mr Andrews. You have no power of arrest. Kindly let me see them.'

‘Sorry, they're staying right here.'

I began to lose my temper. ‘You have no right to lock up children on your premises, no matter what you think they've done.'

It is doubtful whether this would have ended without everything going on to a war footing had the police not then arrived.

‘What's going on?' James Carrick demanded to know, adding, ‘I was on my way home and heard the call.'

‘You a cop then?' Andrews said.

Carrick showed him his warrant card.

‘Oh, splendid,' Andrews chortled. ‘A Detective Chief Inspector, no less. That'll please them.' He turned and went towards the back entrance, the establishment being at present closed. He had an odd, floppy way of moving, like a puppet whose strings are not quite right.

‘He didn't recognize me as one of his customers,' Carrick said out of the corner of his mouth as we followed.

‘He hasn't been here all that long and doesn't normally serve behind the bar,' I whispered back.

There was no time for any more exchanges. We went in, Carrick having to lower his head as the doorway is at least three hundred years old and people were smaller then. We caught up with Andrews after taking a right turn in a dark passageway as he was unlocking another door. With a flourish he flung it open and went in. I was right behind him.

Matthew and Katie were standing, almost to attention, in a far corner of the room, which was not large, the pair of them pale but defiant. I expected a dash towards me and floods of tears from the latter but she just stood there, at Matthew's side. It was I who almost wept.

‘Found them in the storeroom,' Andrews was saying. ‘As I said just now, after the alcopops and crisps.'

‘They were holding some then?' Carrick said.

‘No, but—'

‘So how do you know they were out to steal?'

‘Well, what the hell else could they have been in there for?'

Carrick turned to the children. ‘What
were
you doing in there?'

‘Nothing,' Matthew said. ‘The door was open so we just took a look inside.'

‘I'm not sure what you were doing being anywhere near this place,' was the DCI's not at all friendly response.

‘Tell the truth!' Katie said to Matthew, giving him a hard nudge.

He said nothing for a moment and then blurted out wildly, ‘Well, we were a bit hungry and thought there might be something sort of lying around. Perhaps a few leftover chips. But there wasn't.'

To Andrews, Carrick said, ‘I shall deal with this. Is that satisfactory to you?'

‘I want them charged,' Andrews said. ‘To set an example.'

‘They're only guilty of trespass and that's a civil not a criminal offence – which doesn't mean they won't get into trouble, though. They don't appear to have actually broken in. Was the outside door unlocked?'

‘Er – yes.'

‘Can you confirm that nothing's been stolen?'

‘I haven't checked.'

‘Then check. I'll come with you.'

The pair went. Still the children stood there, defiant.

Then Matthew whispered, ‘Dad'll kill me.'

They have only recently asked to call us Mum and Dad: they had loved their real father dearly.

‘Of course he won't,' I said, my tears ready and waiting. ‘But you will get a real talking-to.'

‘The soon-to-be horribly stroppy teenager,' Matthew said, shocking me with the bitterness of his tone. ‘That's what it'll be and a criminal record before I've even left school. I mean, it's normal these days, isn't it?' He lapsed into silence and I was further shaken when it appeared that it was he who was about to cry.

A few minutes later we left, Andrews having refused to withdraw his complaint in lieu of a police reprimand from Carrick, and it was a sad little procession that wended its way across the village green towards the rectory, Katie crying now, my arm around her shoulders. I had expected James to leave the problem with us but his car turned up in the drive a couple of minutes after we got home.

‘Can we talk with them somewhere private?' he asked when I had let him in.

‘You'll have to come upstairs,' I said on a sigh. ‘They bolted for their rooms.'

‘If you'd rather I left it for—' he began.

‘No, please. Let's do it. Then at least I shall know what to tell Patrick.'

I knocked on Matthew's door. ‘May James and I come in, please?'

It was opened by a wan, red-eyed Katie who went to perch on the window seat. Matthew was sitting at his computer but closed it down at our entry. My heart turned over: his face had an expression on it that made him look exactly like Patrick when in a tight corner.

‘So,' Carrick said, seating himself on the bed. ‘What's the real story?'

The two exchanged glances.

‘Look,' Carrick went on, ‘I've known you two for a long time now and you don't go in for pinching things, not even cold chips. What's the real story?'

‘You won't believe us,' Matthew said.

‘Try me.'

‘Mum didn't.'

‘What didn't I believe?' I said.

‘That there's a fiddle going on over there. Only it's worse now.'

‘They have an investigation enterprise,' I explained to Carrick.

His brow cleared. ‘Oh, I see.'

‘We told you
ages
ago,' Katie said to me. ‘The wholesale butcher's delivery man goes in the pub with a load of meat and comes out with bottles of whisky and stuff like that. It's a racket going on. He's pinching the meat from his employer and swapping it for drink at the pub. And now—'

‘This is a new angle,' Matthew broke in with.

‘And now there's another man taking in stuff from a van in boxes and coming out with drink,' Katie continued after giving her brother a withering look. ‘And it's far too much for one person to drink. That's what we were looking for – evidence.'

‘All this must have a perfectly logical explanation,' Carrick said when she had finished speaking.

‘That's exactly what Mum said.' Katie sighed.

Carrick leaned forward and spoke earnestly. ‘Look. Even
I
have to get a warrant if I want to search someone's private property. You mustn't do it. It's trespassing. Not only that, if there had been a guard dog there you could have been badly bitten.'

Silence but for Katie sniffing.

‘I thought
you'd
believe us,' Matthew said.

‘What I do believe is that these things are happening exactly as you describe but for different reasons to the ones you've read into them. And please take my advice when I tell you that if you go in there again you'll be in real trouble.'

He got up and left the room.

I followed him down the stairs to let him out.

‘You might tell them that the police are far too busy to haul kids in front of them for playing detectives,' he said over his shoulder. ‘I just thought I'd let them sweat for a bit. By the way, we can now interview the woman who was injured in the shootings. But I might have a helper by then – I'll let you know.'

Whether the stubborn Gillard genes really kicked in then I do not know but the result was that Matthew climbed out of his bedroom window at around ten fifteen that night, shinned down the wisteria and carried out some more surveillance at the pub. Someone did have a dog, which discovered him, and in the resulting scramble to escape the young intruder caught Andrews with a flying fist, blacking his eye. This time it took three of them to lock Matthew in the office and when the police arrived after what must have been a longish wait he was removed, beside himself by now, and taken to Bath's police station where he was put in a cell to cool off. Andrews had been livid and Matthew was to be charged with assault.

When someone rang to tell me about it, belatedly, just before midnight, I felt I had definitely become embroiled in something with which I could not cope and called Patrick. He promptly got in his car and drove home, breaking every speed limit to arrive at around three. Extremely tired, worried, and worse, coming up to some kind of boil of his own, he found me in the kitchen where I was making myself a mug of stay-awake coffee.

‘I've just come back from Manvers Street,' I told him.

‘They're not keeping him there, surely.'

‘They're worried he might run off again and would prefer to release him into the care of both parents.'

Patrick turned to go. ‘Then let's get back there.'

‘You'll have to be very careful – not blow your top.'

‘He's behaved abominably.'

None of the children, thankfully, has ever seen Patrick really lose his temper. I went, dreading what might happen.

Matthew was sitting hunched up on the bunk bed, clutching his knees. He looked up when Patrick and I entered and then jumped to his feet as if poised to flee.

‘I knew you'd be mad at me,' he said tautly to Patrick.

‘You've deliberately disobeyed just about everyone and injured a man,' Patrick replied quietly. ‘Do you expect me not to be?'

‘No.'

‘I've driven all the way back from Manchester to deal with this.'

‘Thank you,' was Matthew's surprising whispered reaction, meeting what I knew to be a look of seething suppressed fury, something not many people succeed in doing.

Patrick let out a gusty sigh and subsided on to the bunk. ‘Please sit down so we can talk about it.'

Matthew stayed where he was. ‘There's nothing to talk about, end of story. No one believes me – us. I really thought James would. He said he's going to coach me when I start playing rugby at school and yet he doesn't believe what I'm telling him. People think I'm just a stupid interfering kid so I went there to try to prove that I'm not. That man at the pub came at me as though he was going to kill me tonight and I hit out in a bit of a panic. His chums rammed their fists in my ribs to get me into that room. But no one will believe me, they'll believe
them.
I've got a criminal record now and it'll be with me for always.' His voice had broken recently and as he uttered the last words it slid up into the childish treble.

It appeared that he was really was going to cry now, from sheer mortification.

Patrick said, ‘I understand you want to learn a few self-defence moves.'

Matthew blinked quickly a few times and then stared at him. ‘Er – yes, please.'

‘And you rather fancy the job I do and one day would like to do the same kind of thing.'

The boy's chin came up. ‘Yes.'

‘To the extent of following me to Bath a couple of times, having presumably overheard a conversation as to where I proposed to hang out to give James a hand.'

‘I wasn't eavesdropping,' Matthew hastened to say, going pink. ‘I – I just happened to hear as I walked past an open door. Why, did you—?'

‘Yes, I knew you were there. I saw you the first night as you trotted off back towards the bus station and had an idea you were somewhere around on the third when I nabbed those two muggers. I could smell the kind of stuff someone had put on a cut on your wrist. Never be upwind of anyone you're watching. Now please come and sit down.'

Matthew sat alongside him on the bunk and then murmured, ‘Please help me. I don't want to have a criminal record.'