Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries) Read online

  Haggard Hawk

  A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery

  

  Douglas Watkinson

  COPYRIGHT

  978-1-78003-642-7

  © Douglas Watkinson 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  www.douglaswatkinson.com

  Dear Reader,

  I used to be a high-ranking English copper until my temper got the better of me and I broke a fellow officer’s jaw. I was ‘required to retire’ as the British police so delicately put it.

  I should’ve learned fromB the experience but no, I still blow the odd fuse or ten. When my wife was alive she used to rein me in, but since her death there’s been no one to do that.

  I’ve got four grown up kids, by the way, who live thousands of miles away - Nepal, Japan, Haiti and Los Angeles. They’re all impetuous by nature and they worry me, usually with good reason. Thanks to modern technology it often feels like they’re in the same room with me. Is that good or bad? I’m not sure...

  When I first came to live in this truly beautiful English village I thought early retirement would be a breeze. Wrong! But, as you’ll see, just as I was about to go mad with boredom a neighbour did me the courtesy of being murdered and suddenly it was ... like the old days. Without the paperwork. Without rules. Without a boss telling me to be careful.

  Hawk

  Before I came onto the scene…

  Julie Ryder came into the kitchen and said to her husband:

  “The sea bass for table seven? And the fish cakes?”

  “Behind you, my love, ready to go. The Falconers, I think you said? May she in particular choke on it.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Julie took the plates from beneath the muslin hood and went. Jim checked the next order. Fillet of lamb with the asparagus tips, broccoli and sauté potatoes. Quite a change from the stuff he'd been dishing up at Grendon Prison for the past eighteen months. No matter how hard he'd tried to pep them up a little, shepherd's pie and cauliflower cheese hadn't unleashed his creative flare. Very little in prison had.

  Not that life inside had been unbearable. In fact, after a few weeks of settling in and then a spell in re-hab, he'd begun to think of his prison sentence as a well-earned rest as opposed to the well-deserved punishment the judge had meant it to be. He still wasn't sure why the jury at Aylesbury Crown Court had found him guilty, of course, but conducting his own defence probably hadn't helped. The prosecuting counsel, a witty and spiteful woman in her late thirties, had torn him to shreds on a daily basis. While working for Taplin Seafoods, she claimed, Jim had led a sales drive in Europe which “had cost a bomb and failed to deliver so much as a sparkler”. Over a period of five years, fees to bogus consultants, money for advertising and public relations, had simply disappeared. There was close to two million pounds unaccounted for.

  It was a crime Jim would gladly have committed had he thought of it, had he been certain he could have got away with it. Somebody else thought of it, somebody else got away with it and Jim paid the price. He was given three years for something he hadn't done.

  However, instead of descending into bitterness during those early weeks at Grendon he'd begun to think of ways to turn the whole business to his advantage. He'd be out in eighteen months, dry in the alcoholic sense of the word, de-toxed of speed and cocaine and he would track down whoever had fitted him up. He would sue the police for wrongful arrest. He would sell his story to the papers, he would write a book, go on lecture tours. He would make a fortune.

  He used to lie in the bath on Fuller Block just before bed time and dream of how he would spend the money. Nothing fancy or risky, he promised himself, just good old-fashioned self-indulgence and security. In the early days of his sentence that had meant a house in the South of France with blue chip shares back home to provide an income. Then for a while he considered a hotel in Portugal until he discovered. that two of his less than amiable fellow prisoners had had the same idea. Finally, with parole in the offing, he turned to the travel sections of the Sunday papers for inspiration and settled on a vineyard in Tuscany, offering as it did the three essentials of life: sun, wine and dusky women. Which begged a question. Would he be going there with or without Julie?

  Julie came into the kitchen again and started dusting off a bottle of Jacob's Creek.

  “The Falconers,” she said. “They'd like a bottle after all.”

  “Don't tell me they're making up again?”

  She shook her head. “He just wants to get her into soft focus, I imagine. What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  Although Julie had lost weight and generally taken good care of herself while Jim had been inside, the ugly truth was there for all to see. She would soon be the spitting image of her late mother whom Jim referred to as Mrs. Tiggywinkle on account of her being round and prickly. Tuscany without Julie, then.

  Jim being in prison had rather suited Julie too. It had given her chance to do some of the things she had neglected over many years. She had got her figure back, for a start, or as much of it as she had a right to retrieve at her age. She had dyed her hair Autumn Chestnut. She had begun to read again too, the romantic novels she'd missed out on as a girl, travel books about places she still hoped to visit, a few biographies of people she would rather have been. More importantly, with no husband to persuade her otherwise, she had proved that she was the most capable woman she knew. Three years ago The Plough was a murky little pub with a slipping thatch, rats in the cellar and half a dozen regular customers. A re-thatch, a few hanging baskets and a first rate restaurant had improved the look of the place. Adverts and glowing articles in the local press had brought in the punters, ready and willing to spend.

  Certainly Jim had played his part in all that. When they first arrived here, refugees from the charges against him, Julie's name went above the door as licensee and he ran the kitchen, earning high praise from people who knew about food. Julie wasn't impressed, though. She believed that anyone who could read a recipe could knock up a decent meal. Believing also that her husband would soon be taking his well-earned rest she got him to teach her nephew, bean-pole Tom, from the very book Jim himself had used as a bible: Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book. It proved Julie's theory beyond a shadow of doubt. By no means the sharpest knife in the box, nor come to that a fluent reader, Tom's fish cakes were, said Sharon Falconer, a dinner to die for. Sadly for most people who knew Sharon it was a compliment not a declaration of intent.

  At the Falconers’ table Julie uncorked the bottle wondering just how bad things were between them. It was common knowledge that Martin loathed his wife but had hung in there for the sake of the children. The children were now nineteen and twenty. Time for the parents to move on, perhaps, under the watchful eye of the Winchendon Gestapo.

  She went to pour Martin a taste and he gestured for her not to bother with such niceties. She filled their glasses.

  Martin was really quite a good looking chap, she thought, for a farmer. She especially liked the soft blue eyes, made all the more inviting by his boyish haircut. There were no signs of weather-broken veins on his face yet, no leathery hardness to his hands, no stoop to the shoulders. If he ditched his wife he'd have no trouble finding another. In fact he could start his search for one right here with Julie herself.

  She he
aded towards the bar pausing only to whip up two of her teenage staff. They had an untidy habit of leaning at the cash till in moments of inactivity. Giselle Whitely did so in a manner made all the more provocative by the length of her legs. Beautiful legs, Jim had said the first day she came to work at The Plough. Beautiful girl, lovely body...

  Julie's angry recollection nearly surfaced into words. Soon, when weekend leave matured into full-blown parole, her self-regarding fool of a husband would return home to ogle the waitresses, bombard them with double entendres and, yes, occasionally touch them up. And if he wasn't doing that you'd find him at the bar lecturing customers on everything from global warming to rheumatism via family values, foreigners and food. Anything you cared to name, Jim Ryder had a view on it and would share it with you against your will.

  Why had that bloody judge given him such a paltry sentence? Didn't two million pounds merit chucking the key away? She broke off from her inward tirade unable, for one reason and another, to be too self-righteous about the missing money...

  At the bar she retreated into the warmth of her long term regulars. The poshing up of the place, maintained Uncle Elvis, hadn't sent him elsewhere for his nightly pint or five. No, sir. This was the pub for him so long as Julie ran the place. Jack the Wood still showed his face here after a hard day. So too did Stef the Window Cleaner, when his partner allowed it. Tonight he was well and truly off the leash and had a set of fishing rods with him to prove it. The local angling club was holding a night match down at the river. If he caught that pike he'd been after for a year, Julie would gladly pay him the market price for it.

  Yet for all the welcome she gave her regulars they knew their status had diminished. Once, when Charlie Brigham held the license, they had been its only visible means of support. Today, perched on rocky stools, living sculptures each with his own plinth, they were mere examples of local colour to brighten the lives of wealthy punters who came to eat in the restaurant.

  “Good week, Jack?” Julie asked him.

  “Not bad,” he answered. “Not bad at all.” Nothing was bad in Jack Langan's world. “Jimbo been given a release date yet?”

  “Four weeks come Monday.”

  “Be good to have him home, I expect,” said Stef.

  She gave him an all purpose smile and then, as a means of steering the conversation away from her husband, she nodded across at the table in the corner.

  “Who're those two? Any idea?”

  Uncle Elvis turned to where two men in their twenties sat chain smoking from a packet of cigarettes, open before them in the launch position.

  “Dunno,” he said, “but I 'spect they're in the Guinness Book of Records. For making a pint last.”

  The taller one with the dark, curly hair and thin face must have heard the remark for he looked up and challenged Elvis's affable smile with a hard stare. His squarer, tougher looking companion, clearly recognising the signs of impending trouble, laid a hand on the other's wrist.

  “Chill,” he muttered.

  The thin face heeded the advice. He took a breath, looked away from Elvis and he and his companion went back to whatever they had been talking about.

  

  As usual, Uncle Elvis was the last man standing, if only just, after his five pints. As Julie urged him out of the door he protested undying love for her, promising to step in should her ponce of a husband ever do the dirty. She thanked him and said she would think about it.

  As she bolted the door she watched Elvis through the quarter light weave his way across the car park and climb the slight hill past the terrace of thatched cottages. Odd to think that such a robust and powerful man, fifty years old at least, was now going home to his mother. How did they get on, Julie wondered, how did they talk to each other? Just as they had done forty years ago? Can I go out tonight? As long as you're back by...

  The echoes flooded back to her, her own voice drowning out her mother's. Why do you treat me like a child? Why don't you like my friends? What have you got against them? Then finally her mother's voice surfaced. It's not all your friends we dislike. Just James Ryder.

  The clock in the restaurant chimed half eleven as Jim emerged from the kitchen, shaking out his whites. He folded them neatly, even though they would be going into the wash the moment he reached home.

  “Drink?” he asked, quietly.

  It was meant, for the umpteenth time this weekend, as a kind of shorthand for thanking her. She chose to hear only its literal meaning.

  “I thought you'd given up.”

  He smiled. “Well, special occasion...”

  “Maybe at home.”

  He watched her at the cash till as, with practised fingers, she scooped the coins into a bag then rolled up the notes and snapped an elastic band around them. She clipped the cheques and credit card slips together and put them in her bulging shoulder bag.

  “The stuff in the safe?” Jim asked.

  Julie patted the bag. “All done.”

  She really had come into her own, he thought. She could manage the staff, the suppliers, the bank, the bills, the bolshie customers.

  “How much are we turning over?” he asked.

  “In a week? Twenty to twenty-five. Can we go now?”

  He led the way back through the kitchen. Spotless. Not a knife out of place, not a ladle facing the wrong way, pans shining, hobs ready for use tomorrow lunchtime. Jim hadn't always been that fussy. In that regard, prison life had changed him for the better, Julie thought. Living in small spaces meant you had to be clean and well organised.

  She called up the spiral stairs to the bed-sit above, her voice piercing the low hum of a football match on television.

  “I'm off now, Tommy. If you're short of things to do in the morning, Gizzy, run a duster over those pictures in the restaurant.”

  There was no reply, just the swell of applause as somebody scored a goal. Julie took a deep breath, preparing to shout again and changed her mind.

  She double locked the kitchen door behind them and led the way to her car. There were only splinters of mist tonight, breaking away from the stream which ran beside the beer garden. The air was still, the sky above starlit to the same magical degree as any night in one of those books she'd been reading. The kind of night people said they remembered...

  As they drove out of the village and began the journey home, Jim tried again.

  “You've done well, girl,” he said. “Bloody well.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “What I meant was ... what I mean is ... thank you. Home to come back to, business to be part of, most of the guys I'm with ... eye teeth.”

  She reached out and patted his leg.

  “You're welcome. Not that I did it for you. I did it for me.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “And just so as we understand each other it's still my name over the door.”

  There was a long pause before he found the courage to say:

  “You don't want me back, do you? You've enjoyed it, being on your own.”

  She turned and smiled at him, often her way of expressing agreement.

  He said: “All I can promise is ... I'll try.”

  They reached Winchendon Castle, so-called for its crenulations, but in truth a rich man's folly set with ammonites he had pilfered on his travels. They stared out from the walls of the beleaguered ruin, once a mark of Victorian wealth, now a dumping ground for old fridges and the like, standing forlorn at a crossroads. Julie turned out of the village and began the gradual climb up to The Ridge.

  Jim switched on the radio and found a local news programme and began to talk back at it. Who, at this time of night, he asked, gave a damn for Councillor Stuart's campaign to remove the bollards from outside the Crown Court? The interviewer certainly didn't. You could hear him sipping coffee in the background as the Councillor waffled on. Jim knew that court well. He had turned up at it every day of his trial, convinced that the jury loved him and would find him not guilty.

  Julie tensed u
p as the road began to weave its way through Penman Wood. It belonged to Penman Manor whose vast, lumbering house dominated the south side of The Ridge. The wood unsettled her for some reason, perhaps because its one time good order and formality had been allowed to run wild. With Jim in prison she drove this part of her journey home without a glance to right or left, at the mercy of her imagination. Suppose the car ran out of petrol, or broke down, or a tree fell across the road, what would she do? Would those pillared pines, tall as a church and holding up between them their canopy of branches, beckon her in? Would she go, despite her fear, walk in among the Gothic shadows and be lost forever?

  “Steady, girl,” said Jim. “Bit fast for this road.”

  She slowed down as the final bend, marked by a lone chevron, came into view.

  Once, and only once, she had stopped, right here, to test her resolve. She'd switched off the engine, wound down the window, expecting to hear sounds of the night. An owl, perhaps, a twig breaking beneath some nocturnal creature. There was only silence.

  As they came out of the bend Jim asked in a puzzled voice: “What's all this about?”

  Julie braked sharply, coming to a halt ten yards or so from a car slewed across the road, blocking the way completely. Its headlights were full on, the beam returned by the trees in its glare.

  “He's been going too fast,” said Jim. “The back's broken away.”

  “Where are the people?” Julie asked.

  “We should see if they're okay.”

  Clearly, he didn't want to. There was something uncomfortable about that car, its position across the road, not touching either verge. No damage.

  “Be careful,” said Julie.

  Jim nodded and reached under the driver's seat for the tyre lever which Julie kept there. Tapping it nervously in the palm of his other hand he walked towards the car.