Chapter 7 Connections
Charlie Smith had been so incensed with Christopher and Amaryllis - mainly with Amaryllis, because he knew she must have been the ring-leader - that he could see his junior officers watching him anxiously for signs of a stroke or heart attack. At least one of them was likely to be listing the signs and symptoms of each of these in his or her head in case they had to call an ambulance.
But as he finished the phone call he was smiling. ‘Where’s that list of stuff from the safe in the jeweller’s? I need to check something out.’
‘It’s back in the office,’ said Karen Whitefield, still apparently anxious about his welfare. ‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’
‘I’m fine, and I’ll be even more fine if one of you goes and gets me the list instead of standing about staring as if I had two heads,’ said Charlie. ‘And by the way, who was it that told an elderly woman she’d have to wait until the morning before we’d go and look for her equally elderly husband in a snowdrift at the side of the A985?’
The assembled officers shuffled their feet and muttered. But he wasn’t going to press the point now. Better to follow up this lead while there was still a chance of getting out there this evening. After all, if Christopher Wilson could do it, then surely he could. Even without the company of a best friend who was a retired spy.
Karen brought him the list and he glanced down it.
No, he hadn’t been imagining things. There it was, in black and white, listed unobtrusively among Rolex watches (query fake) and diamond pendants: one gold peacock richly decorated with diamonds, emeralds and turquoises, purchased by private sale during the summer from the collection of Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill. The jeweller had added a note explaining that the egg was waiting to go to an important client in the Middle East and that he thought it was an antique one made by Fabergé for some Russian aristocrat.
Charlie had intended to visit Old Pitkirtlyhill House to question Lord Murray about this piece of jewellery. It seemed to him, although he wasn’t an expert in the field, that a Fabergé animal must be equal in worth to quite a number of Rolex watches, and he had a suspicion that it might have been stolen and was being fenced, unintentionally or otherwise, by the jeweller, although that did seem slightly far-fetched in a place like Pitkirtly and in that case the jeweller could just have left it off the list. Perhaps it didn’t really exist at all but was part of some sort of an insurance scam. But he was reasonably sure the thieves had probably just worked out for themselves that the most valuable stuff would be in the safe, so had concentrated their efforts on that.
He hadn’t really envisaged trekking to see Lord Murray through several feet of snow, but if he was going to have to go out to rescue Amaryllis, Christopher and possibly Dave Douglas too, he might as well justify the trip in terms of more useful police work. He didn’t actually want to go out into the wilds in this weather. On the other hand he couldn’t in all conscience send another officer, perhaps into danger. He frowned.
‘I’m going out,’ he said to Karen Whitefield. He felt like adding ‘I may be some time,’ but he wasn’t sure she would get the joke, such as it was.
‘Better take somebody with you,’ she said.
‘But I don’t –’
‘Take Constable Burnett, sir. And make sure you’ve got your mobile and your radio and a torch and some blankets…’
It could be against the rules to allow a junior officer to mother you, but Charlie found himself quite liking it, more so when she made up some cheese and tomato sandwiches for him in the small kitchen, and gave him a Mars bar from her own personal chocolate stash. Maybe she was feeling guilty for not immediately volunteering to come out with him. But he certainly wasn’t going to allow a woman officer to go out in these conditions. He could hear the wind buffeting the flimsy prefabricated walls of the police station. It had been built in a hurry following a minor crime wave in Pitkirtly. Not long after Amaryllis’s arrival in town, needless to say.
He was checking out the police Land Rover, which they didn’t often use because the police over at Kincardine were very territorial about it, but which fortunately had been left at the station by some oversight, when Constable Burnett, almost unrecognisable in a parka over which he wore a hi-vis vest, materialized by his side.
‘Sir?’ he said. ‘Sergeant Whitefield says you’re going out on your own?’
His voice held an accusing undertone.
‘Don’t tell me she’s made up sandwiches for you too,’ said Charlie, noticing the package in the constable’s hand. ‘Well, you’d better get in, I suppose.’
‘Sir? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to wait till morning?’
‘We’re an emergency service, constable, not a team of accountants. We could be too late by then. Dave Douglas must be seventy-five if he’s a day. God knows why nobody’s stopped him driving before now. He’s dangerous enough at the best of times, never mind in a blizzard with six inches of solid ice under the wheels. If something’s happened to him, we’re not going to leave him lying overnight to die of hypothermia – we can still get to him in time if we go now.’
‘But is there any chance of getting through?’
‘There’s always a chance,’ said Charlie, finishing the basic checks and looking to see if there were any thermal blankets in the back seat.
‘Do you want me to drive, sir?’ said the constable, sounding terrified.
Charlie sighed. He didn’t really fancy driving in these conditions, but he didn’t necessarily trust a young tearaway like Keith Burnett either.
‘I’ll have first go, Keith,’ he said. ‘When I’m reduced to a gibbering wreck by the sight of whirling snowflakes you can take over.’
‘That was very poetic, sir,’ said Keith Burnett, and got into the passenger seat.
The snowflakes were indeed whirling all round Charlie’s head, and if anything they were whirling faster and thicker than they had been five minutes before. There was an increasing danger of drifting, especially on higher ground. He knew all the stock phrases. The Met Office had already issued a severe weather warning, and the police were advising people not to travel unless their journey was absolutely necessary. He knew without even checking with a higher authority that it was no use expecting a rescue helicopter to take off tonight. They could be Dave Douglas’s only chance, not to mention Amaryllis’s and Christopher’s as well. He set off into the blizzard with a huge weight of responsibility resting on his shoulders.
The windscreen wipers were only just powerful enough to clear most of the falling snow, and even so there were small drifts building up in the corners. He didn’t look forward to the time when he would have to get out of the Land Rover and sweep them away manually.
The radio crackled.
‘Earth calling Chief Inspector Smith,’ said Sergeant McDonald’s voice, his accent distorted by the transmission into something much stronger than usual.
‘Don’t tell me Dave Douglas has turned up?’ said Charlie Smith, steering into a skid as he had learned at police driving school. They landed on the pavement, facing the wrong way. He hoped he had imagined Constable Burnett’s terrified gasp.
‘No, sir, I’m afraid not. It’s just to say the Met Office have issued another severe weather warning specifically for the West Fife coast. It’s for gale force winds and driving snow, sir.’
‘You must be joking!’
‘No, sir. You’ll hear the same on any radio station just now.’
‘Hm,’ said Charlie, turning the Land Rover back to face the right way along Sunk Causeway. He might as well go for it and try to get up the hill out of Pitkirtly before it got any worse. Not that it looked as if it could get much worse. On the other hand, surely freshly fallen snow must be that bit easier to drive in than snow that had been compacted down to ice by other traffic. On the other hand again, he reasoned, it would be worse if it blew into drifts all over the place and blocked the roads. Oh well, there was no point in worrying about it. Either they would get thro
ugh or they wouldn’t.
‘Onwards and upwards,’ he said to Keith Burnett as he pointed the Land Rover’s bonnet right at the hill and drove at it like a maniac.
‘Or sideways,’ said a small voice beside him as the vehicle lurched drunkenly on to the grass verge.