This Thing of Darkness by Harry Bingham Read Free Book Online Page B

because the Crown Prosecution Service was too wimpy to bring a case in the face of political hostility. My most recent case of note also had some local rich guy at its heart, but I don’t know who. I never got a name and I saw him only the once, a distant figure on a far-off hill. Evans knew Rattigan, knows Prothero, and – I’d bet my sweet little Alfa-Romeo, complete with petrol, road tax and dangly cardboard air-freshener – he also knows the man who was my target that dark morning.
    I tell Ollie about Rhod and Mike. Their ease in climbing the corner.
    Ollie looks up, says, ‘Up there? Wow.’
    ‘Do you have a ladder?’
    He does. Finds a groundsman, or someone, to haul a ladder from an outbuilding. I climb it. The light, never great, is murkier now, but I’m able to view the cornice from above.
    Mike was right. The actual horizontal part is very scanty. Five millimetres at the most, but this is eighteenth-century stone which has seen the weather of centuries. Some bits of that top edge look crisp and sound and certain. Other parts, not so much. A black lichen lines the crevice where the cornice meets the wall.
    I come down and call Mike on his mobile.
    ‘Fiona,’ he says, ‘hold a moment.’ A pause, then, ‘OK, you’re on hands-free.’
    ‘Are you climbing ?’
    ‘No, Rhod is. I’m belaying.’
    ‘Quick then. If someone used a skyhook on that edge, what marks would you expect to see? I mean, assuming there was something there to take an impression.’
    Mike’s attention is mostly with his climbing partner, and there’s a yelled conversation between them about some issue to do with the way the ropes are moving, or not moving. Then, hurriedly, ‘Basically a skyhook is just a pointy metal hook. So if you’re lucky you’ll find a line of pointy metal hook marks.’
    ‘And that climb – up the corner and along to the window – how hard is it? I mean, you and Rhod had crash mats underneath you, but would you have been happy to attempt the climb without protection? If there was four hundred grand at the end of it?’
    Mike’s attention absents itself, then returns. There’s a booming noise in the background, which is, I realise, the sound of waves.
    ‘Me, no. Rhod, maybe.’ Then he corrects his answer to, ‘Rhod, probably.’
    I want to ask more, but there’s a shout of ‘Watch me!’ and a sudden jingle of ropes and metal. The sound of something soft hitting something hard.
    I say, ‘Shit, Mike, are you OK? Is Rhod all right?’
    There’s a short pause. An ocean fretting against silence. Then, ‘Yeah, fine. Look, can we finish this tomorrow?’
    I say yes and hang up.
    Go up the ladder again to see if I can see a line of pointy hook marks. I can’t. Say thank you to Ollie and the groundsman.
    Drive home, radio silent, still hearing the ocean roaring in my ears. And the sound of something soft hitting something hard.

 
    7
     
    Home, that place of uncertain welcome.
    Magnolia walls and undrawn curtains. I open the fridge and say hello. Eat a tomato. Find some grapes and eat them.
    I’d vaguely been intending to flip through my policing manuals again – my exam is tomorrow – but get diverted by an internet search for academic researchers in criminal forensics. Someone at the University of Kent is interested in lichens. I’m interested in lichens too. I whack off an email.
    Smoke a joint. Have a bath.
    Then, dammit, remember my exam, but it’s raining, I’m in a dressing gown, and the manuals are still in the back of my car. I peer out at the rain and send my manuals some positive vibrations through the bedroom window. They vibrate positively back.
    Those positive vibrations carry me through to what was once a spare room, now rather grandly renamed the ops room.
    Computers. Lists. Photos. Data.
    Lots of work. Not much product.
    Fiddle around with a current interest of mine, Ned Davison. Once an accountant, now a general purpose ‘business consultant’, whatever that means.
    Davison had