Strict and Peculiar (The Falconer Files Book 7) Read online

When Carmichael got home that night, he was still feeling a little emotional, when Dean, now a robust seven-year-old, and Kyle, a grown-up eight, came up to him with serious faces, and asked if they could ask him a question which was very ‘importenant’.

  ‘Of course you can, boys,’ replied Carmichael, wondering what was coming, and whether he’d have to call Kerry to help him deal with it.

  ‘Will we still call you Daddy Davey when the baby’s borned,’ asked Dean, his thumb rising to his mouth without thought, and showing that this was something very ‘importenant’ indeed to both of them.

  ‘If you want to. Why?’ replied Carmichael, not quite aware of where this conversation was going, now that it had started.

  ‘What will the baby call you?’ asked the elder of the two, looking worried.

  ‘Why, Daddy, of course.’

  Both their faces fell, and Dean looked like he was going to cry.

  ‘Whatever’s up with you two? I don’t understand,’ said Carmichael softly, now totally out of his depth.

  ‘C-c-can’t we call you Daddy, too?’ whispered Dean, tears forming in the corners of his eyes, and threatening to spill down his cheeks.

  Carmichael gathered them into his arms and hugged them close. ‘Of course you can, you silly sausages. I’ll always be your daddy. Of course you can call me Daddy. I’d like that very much. It would make me very happy!’

  A small sniffling on his shoulders indicated that the boys wished to be released, and he let go his hold of them reluctantly.

  They were all smiles now, Dean wiping his eyes and nose enthusiastically on the cuff of his jumper.

  ‘Thanks, DADDY!’ they cried out in unison, and skipped off to the kitchen to tell their mother of the momentous event that had just occurred. Carmichael, with all that had happened lately in his own family, was completely overcome, and had to make a dash for the bathroom where he could dry his tears without witness. That they were tears of joy was unquestionable, and a rush of love for his family overwhelmed him as he hid away from its other members for a few moments.

  Chris could hardly believe his luck. Not only had Elspeth spilled the beans about the ‘inner circle’; the advanced discussion group, but she had also invited him along for its meeting tonight, provided he came to her place first in the halls of residence because there was some preparation to do before they could be seen at the meeting.

  He hadn’t a clue what she meant by preparation, but he was too elated to worry about little things like that, and presented himself at her room at ten o’clock, having left a note for his mother that he probably wouldn’t be in before midnight.

  She had let him through the outside door and was very circumspect, leading him up to her room. ‘We’re not supposed to have gentleman callers after ten,’ she whispered in explanation, before yanking him through her door by the arm with quite a determined grip. He’d have to watch her, he thought, as he assessed her strength. If he wasn’t careful, she might take advantage of him, and that didn’t bear thinking about. How would he ever live that one down?

  Fumbling under the single bed, she pulled out a medium-sized suitcase, and opened it to reveal the monk’s habit he had seen the other day on the seat of her car. Underneath it was another one, identical. ‘These are what we wear for the meetings,’ she informed him, ‘but we’ll have to get changed in the car when we get there. I don’t want anyone here seeing us. You’ll just have to keep absolutely silent till I introduce you, otherwise there might be a bit of a ruckus. All right?’

  ‘All right!’ he agreed, feeling the atmosphere of secrecy and conspiracy flowing off her body in waves. ‘I won’t say a word, until you tell me it’s OK.’ Oh, boy! This was really the business. It looked like he was going to penetrate right to the centre of the group suspected of defacing the chapel in Steynham St Michael. What a triumph that would be for him!

  ‘We’ll go now,’ she suddenly announced, lifting the suitcase ready for departure.

  ‘You mean that I only came up here so that you could collect a suitcase?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘I could have met you outside, if you’d just come down alone with that thing.’

  With an embarrassed glance at him, she made for the door without a word, and Chris realised that she had probably never had a man in her room before, and had taken the opportunity to at least have one step over the threshold in her conversations with others, when it offered itself.

  ‘I’ll follow you in my car,’ he announced, realising that tonight he would witness whatever high jinks they got up to, although he realised, with a twinge of chagrin, that there was unlikely to be an orgy on the agenda.

  In bed that night, Carmichael wept again as he told Kerry what had happened earlier, with the boys. ‘I think they thought I might love the baby more than I loved them,’ he told her, between heaving great sobs that shook his entire body.

  With her arms round him, she reassured him that she believed that would be impossible. ‘They came to the kitchen to tell me, but I knew something had really happened,’ she said, ‘when I heard them call you Daddy, when we were eating our supper. And when I put them to bed, they had such grins pasted on their faces, I suspected that something had made them more than usually happy. They really love you, Davey, and so do I, for that matter.’

  Carmichael’s fit of weeping gradually tailed off, and he laid there, his head on Kerry’s shoulder, wondering afresh at how his life had changed over the last year and a half.

  Chapter Ten

  Thursday 4th November

  Falconer arrived in his office the next morning to find several messages waiting for him. One was a report of a not quite sober phone call, late the evening before, of the presence of hooded figures in Steynham St Michael, but as this was from Amy Littlemore, he didn’t put visiting her at the top of his priority list.

  The second message had been from Chris Roberts’ mother, reporting that, although Chris had left a note declaring that he would not be back until midnight or so, he hadn’t come home at all, or phoned, and she was worried about him. He wasn’t answering his mobile phone, and his car was still not back.

  The third was a report of a car found burnt out in a field, about a mile north of Steynham St Michael. It had not been recovered yet and therefore not identified, but it was thought to be a Mini, colour, possibly green. There had been no reports of stolen vehicles, and this, together with Mrs Roberts report, made Falconer feel very uneasy.

  A fourth message was from Monica Raynor, who reported that her husband Quentin had not come back home the night before. She had no idea where he was, and wanted to report him as a missing person. It looked like the misadventures of ‘Mr Spliffy’ would have to be put on hold while he sorted out this tangled web of events.

  He was not given a moment, however, to collect his thoughts, because his telephone rang and, on answering it, he found that a doctor from the local hospital was on the other end of the line, informing them that they had a patient in a very bad way, admitted in the small hours, having suffered what appeared to be a very severe beating. The man had no clues to his identity on him, and they wondered if the police would care to take a look at him, to see if they could solve the mystery of his identity.

  ‘Prioritise!’ he thought. The mysterious hooded figures could wait, as they were probably only a symptom of DTs, brought on by an over-active imagination on the part of Amy Littlemore, off on another of her frequent alcoholic binges.

  The burnt-out car could also wait, although he was aware that DC Roberts drove a green Mini. Quentin Raynor had probably stayed out all night with one of his frequent ‘lovelies’, if he was currently playing his wife at her own game.

  The patient in the hospital was a different matter, however, and his sudden feeling of impending disaster was compounded by the fact of that burnt-out car.

  As Carmichael swept into the office, Falconer instructed him, ‘Don’t bother to take off your coat. We’re off to the hospital to visit a chap who was badly beaten last night, and hasn’t been i
dentified yet. I’ve got a bad feeling about today. I feel as if we’re on the brink of disaster, and if I were superstitious, I’d probably be touching wood like mad by now.’

  As they left the officer, Carmichael did lean over and touch the wooden frame of an old upright chair. It wasn’t that he was at all superstitious. He just liked to cover all possibilities.

  A Dr Singh conducted them to the ITU, and over to a bed where a figure was covered to the neck with just an arm outside the sheet, showing the needle where medication dripped into the body from several bottles suspended from a metal stand. The head was swathed with bandages and, for the moment, a ventilator was breathing for it.

  ‘This is the man I telephoned about,’ announced Dr Singh, indicating the figure in the bed. ‘He had nothing on him from which we could identify him.’

  Approaching the bed apprehensively, Falconer and Carmichael became aware that they did recognise the figure, and that it was DC Chris Roberts, last seen going undercover at the college.

  ‘It’s all right, Doctor: we know him. I’d like to know all you can tell me about how he came to be admitted, and what his current status is, medically,’ Falconer informed the slightly-built man in the white coat standing beside him.

  ‘Why don’t you come along to my office, and we’ll see what sort of story we can patch together,’ suggested Dr Singh, and they followed him out through the double doors on the tortuous journey to his designated office.

  Once sat down, Dr Singh pecked at the keyboard of his computer until he was satisfied that he had gathered all the information that was available, then turned his attention to the two whey-faced policeman, who stared at him anxiously from the other side of his desk.

  ‘It would seem,’ he started, as Carmichael remembered to get out his notebook, ‘that the gentleman was admitted by ambulance about 2.30 a.m. His body seems to have been dumped by the side of the Steynham St Michael to Market Darley road, and left for dead.

  ‘A passing driver noticed it and stopped, then immediately dialled 999 to summon an ambulance. He had a blanket in his car, fortunately for the patient, with which he covered him, or he might have died of hypothermia. It was a very cold night last night, and we don’t know how long he’d been lying there.’

  ‘Do you have a record of who reported it?’ asked Falconer, wondering who the passing Samaritan might have been.

  ‘Unusually, yes we do. It was a Dr Philip Christmas, whom I believe is known to you. He said he’d been called out to a patient about one o’clock, and was on his way home.’

  Falconer turned to Carmichael. ‘Did Doc Christmas meet DC Roberts or not? I can’t remember. My head’s in a complete spin.

  ‘I can’t remember either, sir,’ Carmichael replied, mirroring the anxious expression of the inspector.

  ‘Even if he had met the patient before, it’s possible he wouldn’t have recognised him,’ Dr Singh informed them. ‘Our staff have made a good job of cleaning him up, and what with the lack of light, and the lateness of the hour, I don’t think that his own mother would have recognised him. He looks considerably better now, even though the swelling is, naturally, more pronounced than it was.’

  ‘But how is he?’ Falconer asked. ‘What are his injuries, and have you any idea how they were caused?’

  ‘I expect an opinion from an expert like the uniquely-experienced Dr Christmas would answer your second question with more accuracy than I,’ he replied. ‘And, as for his injuries, he has several broken ribs, a broken wrist, a small fracture of the skull, and severe bruising all over his body. We hope he will be able to be taken off the ventilator in the next forty-eight hours, but a lot depends on his head injury.

  ‘He’ll be going for a CAT scan within the hour, so that we can see whether there is any bleeding or swelling to the brain, and we’ll just have to take things from there. I’m sorry I can be of no further help to you, gentlemen. A lot depends on the scan as to how we assess his chances of making a full recovery.’

  After thanking the doctor for his time and trouble, they left his office in a somewhat subdued mood, Falconer announcing that he would give Doc Christmas a ring as soon as they were outside, and ask him if he could call in to see Roberts after his morning duties were completed.

  The drive back to the station was accomplished in complete silence; Carmichael again counting his blessings and contrasting his life to that of the poor figure that was inhabiting that hospital bed in the ITU; Falconer, because he knew he would have to break the news to Mrs Roberts. DC Roberts was, to his knowledge, an only child, and his mother was widowed, she herself recovering from a stroke. What would her life be like without her son? he wondered. And he knew he’d have to be the one to visit her, because he was the one responsible for her son being undercover as a student. In essence, it was his fault that Chris had been so badly beaten, and he’d just have to take his lumps – though not physical, like the ones Chris had suffered – and get on with it.

  When he got back to the office, he found that the landlord of the Ox and Plough, Mike Welland, had phoned. Apparently his German Shepherd had wanted to go out to conduct some ‘private business’ at about eleven o’clock, and he had taken it down Tuppenny Lane to use the bit of waste ground next to the now-closed library.

  As he turned down Tuppenny Lane and passed the chip shop, he could have sworn he’d seen a cowled figure drifting through the graveyard of the chapel. It had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up at the time, because the weather had developed into a freezing fog, which made the scene appear supernatural.

  He soon pulled himself together, however, and, keeping a tight rein on the dog, went to investigate. When he reached the chapel, though, there was no one to be seen, and he had dismissed it at first as a figment of his imagination, then changed his mind as his dog began to growl, its hackles rising.

  That was enough for him, and he dragged the poor animal straight back to the pub, where it was subjected to the indignity of having to do its ‘business’ at the back of the pub, for Mike to clear away and dispose of. He had then heard about Amy’s ‘hallucination’, when she came in for a quick snifter before she opened the craft shop in the High Street, and began to wonder if what he had seen had been real.

  That was when he had decided to report it. They’d found a dead body in that chapel, and if he could be of any assistance in finding the workman’s murderer, he would do anything he could to achieve that end.

  That afternoon, after his very distressing visit to Mrs Roberts, Falconer informed Carmichael that they were off to Steynham St Michael again. ‘We need to have another look at that chapel, and the graveyard, to see if there are signs of anyone having been there as recently as last night, and we need to have a word with both Mrs Littlemore and Mike Welland from the Ox and Plough about what they reported they saw. And I suppose we’ll have to call in on Monica Raynor, to see if Quentin’s shown-up, no doubt looking shame-faced and acting very apologetically,’ he informed his sergeant.

  ‘How did Mrs Roberts take it?’ asked Carmichael, somewhat tactlessly.

  ‘How do you think she took it, Carmichael? I turned up on her doorstep, and informed her that the son, who had come down here from Manchester to help look after her while she recovered from a stroke, had been beaten almost to death and left for dead by the side of the road. She took it very badly, if you really want to know, and I had to fetch in a neighbour to sit with her. That’s how it went, Carmichael, thank you very much for asking.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ apologised Carmichael, who had become aware of his faux pas just an instant after the question was out of his mouth, his brain being a bit slow today after all the emotion of the day before.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it,’ Falconer replied. ‘It’s only natural curiosity. It’s just that it was a very uncomfortable visit, and I suppose I’m a bit edgy after it. I’m sorry I snapped at you.’

  ‘No worries, sir,’ said Carmichael, in complete understanding.

  Their
first visit was to Badgers Sett in response to the call from Monica Raynor but, getting no answer from the house, they moved up the Market Darley Road to the estate agent’s office, wondering at her going into work when Quentin had, to all intents and purposes, disappeared into thin air.

  The windows of the outer office were fogged with condensation, the building not yet possessing double glazing, and their minds were set at rest immediately when they discerned two figures, both sat at desks, one on the telephone, the other with its eyes glued to a computer screen.

  After entering, Falconer waited for Monica to put down the phone, before he allowed his temper to show itself. ‘I see the wanderer is back, Mrs Raynor. You might have had the courtesy to let us know, before we set a manhunt in motion.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Inspector,’ she replied. ‘I meant to phone as soon as he came wandering in, an hour after I phoned the station, but he was so distressed and cold that I completely forgot about it.’

  ‘So what happened, then?’ asked Falconer. ‘He looks perfectly OK, now,’ he added, reining back his displeasure for long enough to hear her story.

  At this point Quentin took up the tale, seeing as he was the sole protagonist in it. ‘I went out to measure up a house just north of Market Darley,’ he explained, ‘and as it was brass monkeys outside, and the house was empty and unheated, I decided to drop into the pub in the town, and get warm, before I drove home – The Royal Oak it was, just opposite the main post office.

  ‘Well, one thing led to another, and I decided to stay on for a bite to eat. The next thing I knew, it was closing time, so I thought I’d better get on my way, or Monica would be worried about me. I only got just over a mile, though, when the ruddy car broke down.

  ‘I had a look under the bonnet, but I don’t know a thing about cars. I checked the oil, and that seemed all right, and I checked the petrol, and it wasn’t that, so I didn’t know what to do. That was when I found out my phone battery was out of juice. I was going to phone Monica, and have her come out and fetch me, or get the AA to come out to sort it out, but I couldn’t contact anybody.