There’s nothing wrong with just shoving pheasant in the oven as long as you drape some streaky bacon over it to stop it from drying out but I felt I needed a serious treat. After a shower and a change of clothes I grabbed the big oval casserole, browned one of the birds in oil and butter on top of the stove and flamed it with a good splash of brandy. Then I chucked in some herbs from our straggly herb garden by the kitchen door and ladled in a couple of pints of stock. Some double cream, just a criminal amount, would finish it off nicely. I stuck the lid on and shoved it on the back of the stove to simmer. Then I poured myself a brandy, put my feet up on another chair and tried to relax while listening to the pot bubbling on the Rayburn. It didn’t work.
Dead bodies, especially bloody ones, can have that effect on me. So who was the dead old boy in the back of my car? How did he get there? What had killed him? I could leave that question safely to Prof Meyers. But should I have told Needham about Albert, about Cairn and Heather’s attempt to hire me? Should I have told him about ‘the witch’ and the conversation Cairn overheard? It would have sounded like I’d made the whole thing up and I’d probably still be at Manvers Street answering useless questions. I sat up again and gulped my brandy. It didn’t have to be Albert, did it? No. It was the same area Cairn had been talking about. So what? And even if it was the aforementioned Albert what was I supposed to do about it?
I exchanged my empty brandy glass for a bottle of Pilsner Urquell and started wandering restlessly about the house. I continued the discussion with myself since I had the not unreasonable suspicion that I was going to have to give this talk for real in the near future. By the time I’d climbed all the way up to my cluttered little office in the attic my Accumulated Guilt Quotient had reached a seasonal high. It’s the only explanation for what I did next. When the phone rang again I answered it.
Chapter Five
‘Hello? Can I speak to Mr Honeysett? Please!’ It was a female voice, tearful and fluttering with nerves.
‘Speaking.’
‘They’ve got my son, they kidnapped my son, you have to help me. They’ll kill him if you don’t!’ the voice rushed at me.
‘Is this a wind-up?’ I asked, despite my instant bad feeling that it wasn’t. I just wasn’t ready for another dose of trauma.
‘No, you must believe me, please, Mr Honeysett. You can save him, make them give Louis back. I read about you. You brought that woman back that everyone thought was long dead but you stole her back from the kidnapper. You must get Louis back for me.’
And here was the problem. A while back I had stumbled on a woman being held prisoner in a disused railway station and ever since then my phone hadn’t stopped ringing; people wanting me to find all the stuff missing from their lives, anything from a brother lost in World War II to a iguana called Knut. But until now no one had asked me to bring back a kidnap victim, which was just as well because I hadn’t a clue how to go about it.
‘You have to go to the police, Mrs. .’
‘Farrell, Jill, my name’s Jill. But I can’t tell the police. .’
‘Only the police can deal with abductions safely and professionally,’ I said firmly. ‘They have specialists for this kind of thing. Even if the kidnappers told you not to go to the police you still have to do it. I really cannot help.’
‘But they said to call you,’ she said, crying now. ‘They told me to call you!’
‘What? Rubbish. Who did? The police?’
‘No! The people who took Louis! I got a letter through the door. It says, I’ll read it, it says We have your . .’ Her voice wavered, then recovered. ‘. . son. If you want to see him again alive do exactly as we tell you. Do not call the police. Involve them and he dies. Here is what you will do. You will arrange a meeting with Chris Honeysett, a private investigator, and tell him to expect my instructions. If he refuses to get involved the boy dies. Speak to nobody else. And then there’s your number. I called your number all day.’
‘And what’s the demand?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. There isn’t any. I don’t have any money, Mr Honeysett, I only just got a part-time job, starting next week. We’ve been living off benefits. I don’t know what they want. Perhaps they took Louis by mistake, maybe they got the wrong child, perhaps when you tell them I don’t have any money they’ll let him go. You must tell them that. They must have made a mistake. Please say you’ll help. Can I at least meet you? We only just moved here from Bristol, I don’t know anyone in Bath yet.’
This couldn’t be happening. My stomach turned over, my hands were sweating. And I felt like I’d had a long day already. I rummaged round my desk drawer for some cigarettes. Nothing. I’d given up and thrown them all away during an uncharacteristic fit of optimism.
‘Where are you? Are you somewhere safe?’ I asked.
‘Where is safe? I’m at home. I rang your number all day, I left messages on your machine, I — ’
‘And where is home?’
‘Harley Street. Please say you’ll come, Mr Honeysett. I don’t know what to do, I’ll go mad if you don’t. They’ll kill him.’
‘All right, I’ll come and have a look at the letter. I’m not saying I’ll go along with this but I’ll come over. Now, I might not be alone when I arrive, I might have one of my associates with me. Don’t open the door to anyone but us. I’ve shoulder-length hair, grey-green eyes and I’ll be wearing a leather jacket, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I won’t be long. Just sit tight. What number are you?’
I wrote it all down and hung up with a heavy heart. This needed the woman’s touch. I hammered down the stairs and was going to run up to the studio but Annis was already in the kitchen in her paint-encrusted work gear making tea, adding a few more paint smudges to the kettle. ‘Hiya,’ she said tiredly, then did a double-take. ‘You look. . terrible. What kind of a day have you had?’
‘Well, they found my car.’
‘Oh good.’
‘With a dead guy in the back.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘They didn’t charge me with anything.’
‘Oh good.’
‘Just now a woman called.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Her son’s been abducted.’
‘Oh shit. Seriously? Abducted? And she’s calling you?’
I widened my eyes at her.
‘Yeah, of course she’s calling you, everyone remembers you found Nikki Reid. You told her to go to the police? You did tell her to go to the police!’ Her fingers tightened around her mug as though she was getting ready to throw it. We’d gone through quite a few mugs recently.
‘Of course I did. She’s not having it. It was the kidnappers who told her to contact us.’ I thought I’d slip the ‘us’ in there early.
‘The kidnappers? Us? What, as go-betweens?’ Her grip on the mug relaxed. ‘That’s really strange.’
‘I know. You’d have thought they’d have preferred someone helpless and panicked. I said we’d be over straight away. She’s all by herself.’
‘Damn, damn, damn. I’ll get showered and changed. Sod tea, make me some strong coffee. Quick mug and we’re on our way.’
I made a cafetière of very black mocha. Once Annis had emerged damp and shiny from the shower we gulped some of it standing up, then rushed across the muddy yard to the Land Rover and rumbled off into the rain. We peered through the two minuscule arcs cleared by the wipers on a windscreen otherwise blind with gunk and rain.
‘Where to?’ Annis asked, cranking the wheel this way and that, avoiding the biggest holes and ruts on the track more by memory than sight.
‘Harley Street.’