Monday
Further questioning did not elicit more information from Ian
Bailey. There was no reason to think that he had anything to do with what had
now become the Bailey case, and absolutely no reason to think that Brad was
being protected by Ian.
“Satisfied?” said Ian after Gary had told him they were satisfied
that Brad Bailey was not hiding out there.
“We have to check everything, Mr Bailey.”
“I understand. I should have told you about the phone call.
Sorry. And I should have told you about Phil, but it did not occur to me. Phil
has been gone a long time.”
“Where can I reach you for the rest of the day, Mr Bailey?”
“At the office or at home. Nothing else planned.”
“OK. My assistant will see you out.”
***
As soon as Nigel and Bailey had left, Gary contacted Greg,
who was theoretically in charge of the case as head of homicide. At Gary’s
request, Greg organised a forensic search of the Bailey farm in Lower
Grumpsfield.
Two hours later the farmhouse had been searched, as had the
outhouses, except for a small, derelict croft about a hundred meters away
across a meadow, which had once presumably been the farmhouse and now provided
shelter for the sheep when there were any. The grazing land had once belonged
to Paddy Kelly’s farm, but there was no livestock on it.
***
The small team of searchers, accompanied by Greg who thought
he should join them, did not get that far. Lying face down on the field between
the two buildings was Connor Bailey. He was unconscious and severely injured.
“What the hell…?” said Greg. “I’ll call for an ambulance. He
looks as if he’s been shot. Is he alive?”
“Who is it?” one of the patrol team searchers wanted to know
as he gingerly turned the victim over far enough to check his condition.
“He’s alive, but only just,” was the verdict.
“It’s probably the farmer,” said Greg, who did not want to
reveal that he had immediately identified the injured man.
The paramedics arrived a few minutes later, carried their
stretcher across the field to where Bailey lay, and dealt with him as best they
could, wrapping him in a metal thermal blanket after stemming the blood that
was streaming out of a shoulder wound.
“He’ll probably live to tell the tale,” said one paramedic.
“The attacker did not aim well enough, but we’ll have to get to the hospital
fast.”
“No doctor with you?”
“Dr Mitchell is down with the mumps,” said one of the
paramedics. “No one else was available. There’s been a big pile up on the A49.
Lorry overturned and all that. People driving too fast on narrow roads. Aquaplaning.
There’s a lot of that around on country
roads.”
“Lucky we got you then,” said Greg.
“We missed the A49 call because we already had a case –
delivering a baby, if you want to know.”
“Jack of all trades,” said Greg.
“Are you implying…?”
“I’m full of admiration.”
“No need to be sarky, Cop!”
Greg bit his lip. He was genuinely impressed.
“Finished filming, or do want me in it?” said the other
paramedic.
Gary had taken copious photos of the scene, but he was
pushed out of the way as the paramedics struggled with the stretcher over the
rough ground.
“Not good for wheels,” said Greg. “Want me to help?”
“We’ll cope,” said the offended paramedic. They went off to
the hospital as fast as they could. Forensics would examine the area, but the
best evidence was probably the bullet lodged in Bailey’s shoulder.
***
“OK guys, your job’s over for today,” Greg informed the
searchers when the ambulance had departed. “You aren’t armed and presumably the
assassin is, apart from which it’s getting too dark to see anything.”
“He’s probably scarpered,” said one of them. They were
traffic police from HQ Middlethumpton called to help out and did not like
Greg’s attitude to those paramedics. “Want a lift?”
“Just get going yourselves,” said Greg. “I came in my car.”
“OK. If it’s like that...”
“But thanks anyway,” Greg added, now conscious that he had
been rather unpleasant with everyone.
***
His phone-call to Gary moved Gary to order a team of armed
searchers who would arrive as soon as they could get there. The HQ in Oxford was
better staffed and equipped than Middlethumpton. Cooperation from the Oxford
guys was a luxury, though there was no time to search before dark. You can’t
floodlight a whole county.
In yet another phone-call, Greg told Gary that the injured
person was definitely Connor Bailey, who was due to be questioned the following
day.
Gary put two and two together. He was sure that it must have
been Brad Bailey who had reappeared to confront his father and hoped that Greg
had not identified Bailey to those present, but he sensed that Greg was not
doing too well on the case anyway and the patrol cops either knew Connor Bailey
or could not care less who he was. Either way, it made no difference.
“Want me to help you with the case, Greg?” he asked.
“I’m a big boy now, Gary. It’s time I got something done by
myself.”
“No man’s an island,” Gary retorted.
***
As time went on, he had to ask himself if Greg was the right
man for his old job. They seemed to be on different wavelengths. It made the
separation of the Superintendent in charge of crime job and Head of Homicide
seem a waste of resources. Cleo would say he wanted his old job back and Gary
would have to admit that he did.
***
Nigel had listened in to the calls with Greg, but he
refrained from commenting on Greg’s rudeness and apparent nervousness.
“You should take over Greg’s job. You sit around too much as
superintendent,” said Nigel.
“You have a point, Nigel.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“If I’d just shot my father, I wouldn’t hang around,” Nigel said.
“That’s maybe what the guy wants us to think,” said Gary.
“We have to search the area just in case. I almost hope we don’t find him.”
“Isn’t that Greg’s job?”
“That’s as maybe, but if we don’t act fast, there’s a
potential killer running round armed. Who knows what kind of a mood he’s in if
he left his father for dead.”
“Always assuming it was Brad.”
“Let’s get the office routine cleared up and go home,” said
Gary.
“Not me. There’s Henry’s mail to see to.”
“Sorry I let you in for all that.”
“No need,” said Nigel. “I’m getting to the end of the
turmoil. I’d like to know what happens next.”
“That auditor will tell you on Friday,” said Gary.
***
An hour later, the Oxford searchers arrived at HQ and were
directed the farm. They looked around and declared that they did not expect to
find anyone, even with their searchlights – or because of them? They soon gave
up and packed their equipment away again. Greg had not detected any enthusiasm
for the task and it was already very dark. He was glad they reached the
decision to leave since his interest was also was at rock bottom.
“We get calls like this every week,” one of them explained.
“We usually find the runaways dead.”
“Do you want us here tomorrow?” another of the crew,
presumably the captain in charge, asked, evidently bored with the whole
situation. “I don’t think the guy will have waited for us to come back, however,”
which was as good as saying it was a waste of time.
“I’ll call HQ and ask the boss,” said Greg thinking that
Gary should be given the chance to take over completely.
“I wouldn’t bother,” said the captain. “As I said, whoever
it is will have gone by tomorrow.”
“Or be dead in a ditch,” commented the previous team member.
“Cheerful, I must say,” said Greg.
“Facts of life, chum,” he said.
Greg was grateful not to have been patted on the back.
It did not take the official searchers long to get going.
***
Greg called Gary again and reported the current progress, or
lack of it, now the search group had arrived from Oxford and set up their powerful
searchlights so that anyone anywhere near could make a fast escape, before
making it plain that the search was pointless.
“Leave it till tomorrow, Greg,” Gary advised. “They’re doing
what they usually do. You can’t hunt for him by yourself, and neither can I, so
we are at the mercy of the professionals.”
“Do you want to deal with them?”
“Don’t you, Greg?”
“They’ll need to be notified.”
“Let’s sleep on it, Greg.”
***
“What if Brad takes a pot shot at Ian Bailey? Gary mused
later that evening, as he and Cleo recovered from the day’s stress in front of
their log fire. He felt responsible for what was happening though that was
nonsense, Cleo said as she served steaming hot mugs of coffee. The chat ritual
was not going well. Gary was imagining all sorts of scenarios.
“When you delegate, you must let go of the reins,
Sweetheart.”
“I can’t help the feeling that Greg is not getting it
right.”
“How do you know that?”
“He sounded frustrated.”
“Maybe he just had indigestion or hated the searchers from
Oxford or people were rude to him or his love-life is not functioning.“
“Deep down he is still a patrol cop stopping drivers
exceeding the speed limit. He never offers anything original. Going with the
flow in a bad mood is not the right way forward,” said Gary.
“He is not an intellectual, Gary. He knows you are and that
makes him feel inferior, which he hates,” said Cleo. “Don’t expect so such of
him.”
“Dorothy usually had about five scenarios to choose from.”
“Some of them were hare-brained.”
“Want to hear about mine?”
“if you want to tell me.”
“One: Brad Bailey is hiding in that croft behind the
farmhouse; two: he’s in the woods; three: he has left the area and taken a
train somewhere; four: he has gone to the Bailey villa in the Oxford road and
five: he has gone to back his brother’s place.”
“You forgot six: he’s dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“I don’t think that’s an option.”
“It would be if his father had shot or otherwise injured
him. We don’t know whose gun it was, do we?”
“Greg did not mention seeing a weapon at the scene of
Bailey’s shooting and the photos he sent are gruesome but devoid of a weapon,”
said Gary. “So Brad and his father could have struggled, the gun went off, Brad
took it off him and left. That’s why he’s now an armed gunman on the run and
that’s how we know that his father must have started the argument.”
“It sounds a reasonable explanation, but Brad could still
have died in a ditch, even taken his own life.”
“That’s option seven, but maybe I should put a guard on Ian
Bailey’s house, just in case,” said Gary.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Cleo. “Why don’t you just sleep
on it and let Greg handle things as they happen?”
“Ian Bailey should have told Greg or me about that
phone-call from Brad and about that third brother.”
“You have nothing on Brad except that he left home. That’s
not punishable. And that other brother had gone abroad and not kept in contact.”
“I’d like to know why Brad came out of hiding if not to
harass his dad.”
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“OK. I’m being overdramatic. Let’s get some sleep while the
little ones are in the land of nod. Breakfast seems to get going earlier every morning.”
“There are a couple of items we have not yet discussed,”
said Cleo.
“Do we have to do that now?”
“Yes. If Brad was originally hidden by the Nortons and maybe
out of the country so out of circulation, for instance, couldn’t he have gone
back to that arrangement?”
“He might have a had a good reason for cutting loose,” said
Gary.
“Or he was sent by the Nortons’ to deal with his father, the
rival.”
“You have a point. I’ve moved so far away from the priory
case that it is no longer under consideration. It was a scheme by the Gates
brothers who enrolled a phony archaeologist, as far as I was concerned, and
it’s solved but for the nitty-gritty.”
“But not conclusively. We still don’t know how the Nortons
knew about the corpse,” said Cleo.
“If they knew that Brad Bailey was mixed up in it, they
could have jumped to conclusions,” Gary suggested.
“It would tie everything up, wouldn’t it.”
“With Sloane an unwitting catalyst?”
“Sloane probably had no idea what was really going on. If
the Norton Brothers had been able to get their hands on those ancient treasures,
they could have sold them outside the UK and made a lot of money.”
“But there was Bailey to contend with,” said Gary.
“That’s where Brad comes in.”
“How?”
“He knew where those bones were buried because he or his
anthopophagous friends put them there,” said Cleo.
“But no one knew about those ornaments, Cleo.”
“Sloane had a theory.”
“So how did the Nortons find out about it?”
“The way they seem to know about everything that goes on in
this district,” said Cleo. “Ask them?”
“Let me sum up first, please.”
“Sure.”
“Sloane tells someone about treasure he suspects to be at
the priory. He is an amateur archaeologist with a holiday dig or two in Egypt
to support his claim. The Nortons hear about Sloane, approach him and tell him
he will be well-paid for finding the treasure and handing it over. Since Sloane
is interested in finding treasure, but is also hard up, he agrees. Sloane gets
permission to dig from the priory ruins owner – you – and gets to work. He
hires the Gates brothers to take the treasures away – we don’t know if the
Gates brothers were connected to the Nortons or even Bailey.”
“So we need to find
out, don’t we?”
“They are up for trial for hoarding the treasure in their
garage,” said Gary. “I’ve no idea if we can hang anything else on them that is
relevant to this case.”
“They may be small time now, but hired by the Nortons the
Gates brothers can probably make more money than with their tree-felling and
odd transport jobs,” said Cleo.
“Right, Episode 2: Albert puts a spanner in the works by
finding a corpse whose identity had still not been established now we know Brad
Bailey is still alive,” said Gary. “Brad might have confessed his cannibalistic
involvement to the Nortons after the bones were dug up, though he himself was
not part of that plot. The Nortons were justifiably horrified and threw him
out.”
“Which means that Brad did not know who the victim of
cannibalism was,” said Cleo. “And we don’t know who the others in that unholy sect
are.”
“With the help of people who saw them or think they did, we might
find out,” said Gary.
“That’s awesome, but unlikely.”
“So where does Bailey come into all this apart from getting
his son out of the limelight?” Gary said. “During those two years out of the
limelight, Brad found out about his father’s other activities and wanted to
challenge him, so he came back and sought an opportunity to do that.”
“It might explain why they met outside in that field,” said
Cleo. “But why would Brad try to kill him? That would not solve anything.”
“Maybe he did not get the answers he wanted. He got angry, attacked
him and the gun went off.”
“We’ve been through all that,” said Cleo. “Whose gun was it?”
“We’ll have to wait for forensics to identify the bullets.
Only then will we have a chance of finding out whose gun it was,” said Gary.
“Brad is now on the run with that gun. He’s a public
danger,” said Cleo.
“Can we go to bed on that note?”
“Yes. In the key of D for danger.”
***
“It’s mind-boggling how brain-storms work,” said Gary as he
snuggled under his side of the duvet. “I’m feeling much more positive about it
than I did this morning.”
“Can I join you?” said Cleo. “We could discuss the next
mystery under our duvet.”
“It’s a pity to waste a good D for duvet on shop-talk,
however,” said Gary.
“Any other idea?”
“Nothing starting with a D.”
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