‘And what has Mrs Ryan said about it all?’
‘Nothing. She’s not talking. And the police haven’t enough on her to hold her. So she’s back home.’
Liz went on. ‘Danny Ryan works at the Davis Hire agency at the airport. He was in charge the night Milraud’s car was returned, and apparently he signed it off. Finally, it was he who handed me the keys of the car I drove when I first arrived. The one that had the blowout. It’d been in their car park for several hours before I collected it.’
‘Oh God, Liz, are you still going on about that? They might have killed Dave by now, and you’re still obsessed with a flat tyre.’
This was the last straw; Liz found it impossible to restrain herself any longer. ‘How dare you?’ she said angrily, rising from her desk, her voice loud and clear. ‘My close friend and colleague has disappeared, and you have the nerve to imply I’m being paranoid? Do you actually think I care more about a flat tyre as you call it than what has happened to Dave?’ She looked at him incredulously. Peggy shifted in her seat but said nothing.
Binding stood up and just for a moment Liz thought he was going to explode. She tensed, but then, to her relief, his fists slowly unclenched, and his whole frame seemed to relax. He sat down again and slumped in his chair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, barely audibly. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest –’
‘Forget it,’ said Liz dismissively. ‘I have already.’
Binding nodded – not graciously, but it was still a nod. ‘What should we do next?’
Liz sat thinking for a moment, gnawing gently at the side of one of her fingers. ‘It seems to me that everything points to Piggott. Think about it: Dave’s informant Brown Fox – O’Reilly – worked for Piggott; Milraud was doing business with Piggott; and I’d bet my bottom dollar that when we track down Danny Ryan we find there’s a connection there as well.’
‘But you can’t find Piggott. Or any of these other people.’
‘A4 has Piggott’s flat in the city under twenty-four-hour surveillance. And the police have been to his house in County Down.’
‘Where is that?’ asked Peggy.
‘It’s about thirty miles south of here. On the coast.’
‘On the coast?’ repeated Peggy.
‘That’s right. Why?’
‘Well,’ said Peggy hesitantly. ‘It’s just that if all these people have gone to ground, maybe they’re not still here. And they haven’t got a natural place to hide, have they? I mean, an old IRA hand like this Brown Fox guy must have all sorts of old ‘comrades’ – here or in the Republic – who would put him up almost indefinitely. But not Piggott, and certainly not Milraud. I wonder if they’ve left Ireland altogether.’
‘We’ve checked all the obvious possibilities,’ Binding said. ‘Airports, trains to the Republic.’
Peggy was nodding vigorously. ‘Yes. But what if they’ve gone out by sea? In a boat. Has Piggott got a boat? That would have been the easiest way out.’
‘I should have thought of that,’ said Liz. ‘I think we need to have another look at the County Down house.’
‘I was just about to suggest that,’ said Binding importantly. The entente cordiale had been too good to last. But if they’d gone by sea, thought Liz, what had they done with Dave Armstrong? She could only pray they had taken him with them. The alternative was too awful to imagine.
43
The rain was streaming down the jacket of the policeman who opened the National Trust gate and waved their car through. The gatehouse seemed to have become a temporary police post. If there had been visitors staying there they must have been sent packing. Further up the drive two patrol cars were parked and as their car swung round to park on the gravel apron in front of Piggott’s house, a sergeant came out to greet them.
‘We’re inside, sir,’ he said to Binding, as they moved quickly, heads down against the driving rain, to the front door. ‘There’s no one here except the housekeeper.’
‘Have you got a warrant?’
‘Yes. We’re going room by room now, but so far nothing unusual has shown up. I’ve got two men searching the grounds as well. The housekeeper claims she hasn’t seen Piggott for over a week. She’s rather an old lady, sir.’
Liz was surprised by how almost unnaturally clean the inside of the house was. On the ground floor a large sitting room ran the full length of the front of the building, its tall, oblong windows giving a dramatic vista of the shore. The sea was rough, filling the bay with white-crested waves, which came crashing onto the beach of the little cove.
Across the hall was a dining room with a large oak table and matching chairs and behind it a small room with a modern desk in one corner. Its drawers had been forced open but they seemed to have contained nothing more exciting than a telephone directory. If this were Piggott’s study, he certainly didn’t use it.
Upstairs, more policemen were combing the three bedrooms. All were pristine, decorated in the antiseptic style of a chain hotel, and so devoid of anything personal that it was impossible to make out in which of them Piggott slept.
When they came downstairs they found the sergeant in the kitchen, where the elderly housekeeper was sitting at the table drinking a mug of tea, seemingly oblivious to the comings and goings of the policemen.
Binding, showing his frustration, asked, ‘Anything?’ But the sergeant shook his head.
‘Is there a cellar?’ asked Liz.
‘Yes. There is. But there’s nothing down there. Do you want to see? ‘He led her down a flight of stairs by the back door into a small, empty room, with a rough cement floor and cold brick walls.
‘Not even a rack for wine,’ said Binding, who’d followed them down.
Liz was looking round at the walls. ‘There’s something weird about this room,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’ asked Binding.
‘When do you think this house was built?’
Binding shrugged. ‘Not that long ago. I’d have thought the land was part of the estate, then got sold to someone who put a house on it. I don’t know – maybe thirty, forty years ago. Why?’
‘Well, an old house would have a cellar – a wine cellar, cold rooms for storage, that sort of thing. But if you built a cellar in a house this age, surely you’d make it a decent size, wouldn’t you? Why go to the trouble of digging it out just to make a tiny little room like this. What’s the point of it?’
‘You’re right, Liz,’ chipped in Peggy, who had joined them in the little room. ‘You’d make it a basement, like the Americans have. Rooms you could use.’
‘Meaning what?’ asked Binding.
‘Meaning we’ve been looking for even one room that showed signs of Piggott using it, and there haven’t been any. So maybe there’s another room. Hidden. One that we haven’t found yet.’
Binding’s lips tightened, but he said nothing.
‘What do you think that’s for?’ asked Peggy, pointing to a metal box on a bracket halfway up one of the brick walls.
The sergeant poked at it, trying to open it. ‘It’s locked. There’s no sign of a key anywhere here. Perhaps the housekeeper has it. I’ll go and ask her.’
‘Don’t bother with her,’ Binding ordered. ‘Break it open.’ And five minutes later, with the aid of a crowbar from the boot of one of the patrol cars, the small metal door was off its hinges.
Inside was a switch, like the switch in a fuse box. It was up. The policeman looked questioningly at Binding, who nodded. ‘Here goes then,’ said the policeman, and pulled down the switch.
Immediately a low grinding noise came from behind them, and the entire far wall started moving on tracks, opening to reveal a room on the other side.