Page 98 of Ticket Out

“Police,” he said. “You’ve been on the property?”

The man driving blew out a relieved breath. “Glad to see you, ’n’ all. Gary and me didn’t know what to do, like.”

“What to do?” He forced down his impatience to get moving, because there was something going on here. The two men were rattled.

“Lady threw a chair through a glass door,” the man said. “Like, that’s not normal. And this chap—not Mr. Devenish, some mate of his, apparently—he comes out and says how she’s on drugs or sommat.”

“And there’s the leg.” The second man in the van leaned over.

“Pipe down, Gary. There wasn’t a leg.” The first man shook his head.

“There was a leg. I saw it just before that chap told us we could knock off early. In the pond.” Gary was not budging.

“We’ll take it from here.” James turned to Hartridge and he reversed the car back so the van could get past them.

“Cheers,” the driver said. “Weight off my mind.”

They drove off.

James and Hartridge exchanged a look.

“The Hampstead nick said they’ll send some bobbies, but I don’t see them now. And we don’t have time to wait.” Gabriella was in there. The sight of Mrs. Crane’s body kept creeping into his thoughts, and he had to swallow. Hard.

He drove up the long drive, noted the Bentley parked near the front door.

He got out, went to the back of the Wolseley and opened the boot.

He took out a truncheon, handed it to Hartridge, then chose a piece of metal pipe he had somehow inherited with the car. It had a nice, hefty feel to it.

“Do we go in the front door?” Hartridge asked, his voice a little unsteady. Nerves and excitement, James guessed.

“They said a woman smashed her way out of the house through a glass door in the back. Let’s go see.” He headed around the side of the building and caught a sudden dart of movement, as if someone had ducked around the corner.

He adjusted his trajectory, moving away from the wall, and alerted Hartridge that there was someone there.

When he came around the corner, fast and with pipe raised, there was no one there. Whoever it was had retreated into the house, and at a fast run.

“She used a chair to smash through,” Hartridge said, admiringly.

The chair lay in the garden, just outside the door, and James moved it aside. A shard of glass stuck out from the door frame, and on it was a smear of blood and a wisp of white cotton.

He didn’t know that he had ever been so terrified and angry in his life.

Beyond the door was a well furnished formal lounge with leather couches and a big fireplace. The drug trade had obviously been kind to Devenish. Until he’d been murdered for it, that was.

James stepped inside and heard Hartridge behind him.

There was noise coming from deeper in the house and he jogged out of the lounge into the entrance hall, then went left, pipe loose in his hands.

The noise was clearer now.

Shouting. The sound of things being thrown.

He stepped into a kitchen, a large room with an old-fashioned Aga range to one side, and nearly tripped on a tin can lying on the floor.

A man stood to the side of a pantry door, knife in one hand, gun in another, shoulder slightly hunched as another tin can flew out at him.

He glanced at James, and the sudden malevolence that crossed his face sent a chill down James’s spine.

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