The Chinese Takeout (21 page)

Andy smiled. ‘So we’re on our own, then?’

I took it that he referred to our amateur sleuthing, rather than the absence of a third party from my flat. Having Friday breakfast together we might be, but that was because he wanted to make an early start to our combined hunt for the chicken plant, not because of any joint nocturnal activity.

Despite the seriousness of it all, the weather was glorious enough to impart a holiday air; had I not been on duty for lunch, I’d even have suggested we take a picnic and do the thing properly.

‘How ill is Nick?’ he pursued.

‘He’s never one to underestimate his illnesses,’ I said. ‘Except when they’re truly serious, like a stomach ulcer he insisted on neglecting. Like most men, I suppose. Tony would worry about gangrene when the tiniest splinter punctured his skin, but he was stoicism itself when confronted by cancer.’ And then I remembered Andy’s wife and her illness, and stopped short.

He was too preoccupied with his full English
breakfast to argue. I treated myself occasionally, especially when, as today, I wanted to try a new type of sausage. I loved extra-meaty sausages for the dinner menu, but worried that they’d be overpowering at any other time. They weren’t. And they were gluten-free, a real bonus for my poor allergy sufferers. As for the bacon, that was organic, traditionally dry-cured – none of that white gloop in the pan, and a piece of shrunken something or other on your plate that tasted of nothing but salt. Organic eggs from my neighbour. Bread baked in my own kitchen. A feast.

‘First of all,’ I continued, ‘we’ll pick up a hire car in Taunton. It’s booked – won’t take a minute.’

‘A hire car?’

I wilfully misunderstood. ‘All the choppers are booked on Fridays.’

He shook his head dismissively. ‘But we’ve got two perfectly good vehicles outside.’

‘There aren’t a lot like mine round here – look how easy it was for our two friends to pick up our trail the other day. And they may have noted yours when I dropped you off. So we’ll go incognito. I wonder if it’s too warm to wear my party wig? And if you don’t mind my saying so, I know your shirt’s a nice blue, but the dog-collar gives the game away. So you could try this.’ It wasn’t just nighties I’d found in Taunton the previous day. I’d had to guess at the size, of course, but any taking back was my job: there was no way he’d discover the price.
Before he could argue, I continued. ‘If it fits, you might want to iron out the creases. The ironing board’s in the kitchen. Now, give me five minutes to brief the lads, and we’ll be off.’

‘A nice anonymous silver Fiesta,’ I said, patting it affectionately. ‘The only trouble is, it’s towards the bottom of the range, so it won’t have as much poke as I like. Still, I can use the gear box to get us out of trouble.’ He was looking at me sideways. ‘Well, you’ve got the navigating skills.’

‘Dare I ask how you learned to drive?’

‘I don’t see why not. One of my husband’s getaway drivers. He’d learned in the Met. Now that’s one thing I don’t like – a bent policeman.’

Our eyes met.

‘You don’t suppose—’ He coughed. ‘Didn’t Nick say these people smugglers might have infiltrated the law enforcement agencies? That could explain the police’s singular lack of obvious progress.’

‘I wonder… They’ve changed the investigating team. Which may or may not be a good thing.’ He didn’t need to know about the mild flirtation Burford seemed to be initiating. But Andy, chic in that new shirt, which he’d ironed, to do him justice, very well, was still distinctly more intriguing. Largely, I suppose, because he wasn’t attempting to intrigue. ‘Have they updated you regularly?’ I pursued.

‘No. But I don’t really have any rights.’

‘More than I do. His parents?’

‘As you know, they refused to have a family liaison officer. If they have had any information from the police, I can’t imagine either of us being
persona grata
– popular enough—’

‘It’s OK. Tony had GCSE Latin, although I never quite got round to it.’ I might have added that I didn’t take the exam because he’d had to put the frighteners on me for embarking on an unsuitable affair.

He flushed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to patronise you. My parishioners were always telling me they didn’t understand the Latin and Greek tags I kept using.’

‘You can use Greek if you want to baffle me. As one of the hoi polloi,’ I added, with a twinkle. Dear me, he could be so uptight. I knew of only one cure for the condition, but I’d probably ruled that out even before Annie dropped her hint, hadn’t I? ‘Anyway, let’s return to our
moutons
.’ Thank you, Tony’s A level French. ‘Which site do you want to check out first?’ I’d better let him think he was in charge, hadn’t I?

‘As I said when I went hunting on my own, if a business looks legitimate, it probably is. You aren’t going to go round in a van blazoned with the firm’s phone number and address, are you?’

‘So it’s white van territory we’re searching for, those anonymous bullies of the road. OK. Hang on: just in case.’ I donned sunglasses, and silently
passed him a pair. And then I pulled on my wig. Patting the white blonde bubble curls, I asked, pouting my lips and slapping on cerise gloss, ‘How do I look?’

This time his flush must have hurt, and he dropped his eyes. I adjusted the mirror. ‘Hell’s bells, I look like a tart! Well, thank goodness you don’t look like a vicar!’

We’d parked in a lay-by on a gently winding B road, the trees greening nicely and the verges already plumping up. It carried so little traffic that in any other part of the country it would never have been classified. Off it to our right, about a mile away, we thought, lay our first yard. What I saw in my rear-view mirror made me fling myself at him as if in a passionate snog. Repeat:
as if
. Bowling merrily up behind us was a van bearing a name I recognised: that of my samphire-pickling colleague Michael Rousdon, from Starcross. Now what was he doing so far from home? Before Andy could gasp, ‘Goodness, I didn’t know you had feelings for me,’ or words to that effect, I had the car in gear and pulled out, ready to tail him at a discreet distance.

‘Shouldn’t you be a bit closer? Following him, I mean? You might lose him.’ Top marks for realising what I was up to.

‘Think ex-Met instructor,’ I said. ‘And trust me.’

Andy snorted with laughter. ‘I think that’s asking
a bit too much of me! Look, he’s turning. Into that farmyard.’

‘I’m going to drive past slowly. Mark it on the map. I’m not going to risk getting in close. I know him, you see. A fellow restaurateur.’ One who still appeared to carry a torch for me, and I’d briefly fancied enough to contemplate sex with. Did I regret not indulging? No: I really hoped my taste hadn’t been bad enough for me to fancy a possible criminal. And then I thought of Tony, and it was my turn to blush. Painfully.

I pulled into a gate.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Andy demanded.

‘Going for a quick shuftie.’

‘Uh, uh. You say he knows you. You may have – considerably! – changed your appearance, but you still walk and talk the same.’

In spite of myself, my chin went up. ‘You want a bet?’

‘No. This one’s my call. I shan’t take any risks. And my camera’s less obtrusive than that huge phallic symbol of yours.’ He flourished a snazzy mobile phone. ‘Why, I could just be trying to get a signal in this benighted place. And if necessary, I can take a pee in the hedge.’

I didn’t argue. Instead, as soon as he was out of the car, I edged it nearer the road and prepared for a rapid exit. Had the road been wide and straight I wouldn’t have stood a chance of outrunning
anyone; in fact, I’d increase the odds by taking to the real lanes. The OS map showed a satisfactorily winding, narrow track first left: I’d plunge into that. Of course, that risked our being entirely scuppered should a heavy vehicle or a flock of sheep be heading our way.

Through the mirror I could see Andy returning at a leisurely pace, apparently doing up his flies. Once out of sight of the farm, however, he broke into a canter and flung himself breathlessly into the car.

‘They may have seen me. But I don’t think there was anything to worry about. It all looked legit. Want to see the photos on my new toy?’

‘Only when we’re well clear. Just in case.’

For no reason but that it seemed attractive, I took the lane I’d planned, pulling at last under a tree. ‘Let’s see.’

‘I only hope I’ve got it right. The guy at the shop said it was foolproof, but that might mean foolproof if you’re under twenty. Wow. Look!’

‘Well done. Next?’

He thumbed his way through a pretty series of shots, all including cars with nice clear plates and people’s faces.

‘That one there – could you bring it up a bit?’

He ostentatiously crossed his fingers before applying a thumb to the pads. ‘So long as I don’t lose it – no, there we are.’

‘Nope. Sorry to raise your hopes, but it doesn’t ring any bells. I hoped for a minute it might be one
of the other night’s visitors, but he’s much younger. But maybe you should send it through to my computer anyway?’ I paused while, breathing heavily, he pressed buttons. ‘Is there another place within range?’

For reply he checked his watch. ‘What time do you have to be back?’

‘Twelve fifteen latest.’

He refolded the map and traced a route with his index finger. ‘The next place is over here – see? Half an hour on these roads. So it’d be cutting it a little fine. Tell you what, there’s the most marvellous little church in the next hamlet. I’d love you to see it.’

Well, he had a day job, too.

He opened the door as shyly as if he were a lad bringing home a girlfriend. Now wasn’t the time for brash remarks. Nor indeed was it the place. The graveyard was one side of a deep lane, the church the other. Even smaller than St Jude’s, St Peter’s in the Combe was so dark inside it took long moments for the eyes to get accustomed.

‘No, no electricity,’ Andy said, in an ordinary unhushed voice. ‘I could light an oil-lamp? But it’d ruin the effect of the sun on the stained glass. Very early medieval.’

By now I could move forward. ‘That screen!’ I breathed. It was carved wood, black with age. ‘Look at those little figures! It must be – what? Fourteenth or fifteenth century?’

‘Exactly. Have you ever seen anything like it?’

‘I think you’re about to tell me I couldn’t have.’

He laughed, the sound ringing through the tiny space. ‘I am. There’s a better known one of a similar age at Buckland in the Moor – Dartmoor, that is. But nothing quite like this. There, you can see the pike marks in the wood – here and here – where the Roundheads tried to chop it down, but for some reason they just stopped in mid-attack. And the glass, apart from that corner there. A miracle. And though they hacked at several of the statues, the locals repaired them – see? The trouble is,’ he continued, setting us gently in motion to look at aged monuments, ‘the present parishioners simply can’t afford to maintain it. Look at that damp.’

An ominous stain spread across the roof. Come to think of it, there was a sickly sweet smell that wasn’t incense. It wasn’t a corpse either, but dry rot. Worse than death.

‘English Heritage? A Lottery grant? Even that lovely Restoration programme on TV?’

‘I couldn’t co-opt you on to the fundraising committee, could I?’ he laughed. But he waved his hands as if cutting a camera shot. ‘No! Please don’t think I brought you here with that in mind. I didn’t. I promise you, I just wanted you to see it.’

‘Before it falls down,’ I concluded for him. Actually I believed him. ‘I don’t usually do committees, Andy. But I’d stop this place collapsing if I had to take a course in masonry myself.’

Afraid for a moment he might want to seal our ambiguous bargain with a kiss, or – more, to the point, that I might – I busied myself translating the Latin valediction on a seventeenth-century memorial tablet. No, it was no good: I could only manage about one word in five.

At last, thinking he’d want to have a word with his Employer, I withdrew quietly to the back pew to wait. There was enough to feast my eyes on, for goodness’ sake. To my amazement, he sat quietly beside me, simply bowing his head. No genuflecting, no breast crossing, no nothing. Tim would have been disconcerted, maybe even outraged by the lack of display.

When he was ready, we left as quietly as we had come in.

‘I noticed,’ he said, replacing the key under the fallen headstone where he’d found it, ‘that you didn’t take Communion the other day.’

Why had it taken him so long to raise that? ‘I don’t. Not christened.’

‘You could be – only we’d call it adult baptism.’

My normal response was to tell anyone talking religion that mine was my own business and something I never talked about. You couldn’t say that to anyone who’d just shown you St Peter’s in the Combe, could you?

He took my silence as my reply. ‘Well, if ever you change your mind, I’d… I’d… Nothing would give me more pleasure.’

‘There’s only one problem.’ I fended him off. ‘Getting confirmed afterwards and having that creep Bishop Jonathan lay his greasy mitts on my head.’

To my surprise Malins and his wife were some of the first lunchtime customers. I greeted them as if we were simply fellow churchgoers with no history; he responded in much the same way. Clean consciences all round then.

At least until I brought them their bill.

‘Actually, I was expecting to see the rural dean here,’ he said, looking ostentatiously around the room.

‘He might be in the snug,’ I said, off-hand but seething. In fact I had offered Andy lunch, but he’d had a call from a sick parishioner – it seemed he did his deaning as an unpaid extra to being an ordinary parish priest, the Church’s coffers being so empty.

‘He’s around here a lot,’ he pursued, to a casual listener not quite insolently.

‘He spent a lot of time with Tim’s parents.’ Anyone knowing me better would have been worried by the quietness of my voice.

‘Whom you accommodated here.’

I personified reasonableness. ‘Where else could they have stayed? The rectory isn’t just as cold as charity, it’s as miserable as sin.’