Innocent Blood by David Stuart Davies

spectacles.
    ‘Frigging hell,’ he moaned again as he rummaged inside his variety of jacket pockets in search of his reading glasses. As he placed them on his nose, they steamed up, misting his vision. This prompted another oath.
    The atmosphere inside the phone box was rank. Amos thought of it as a mixture of cat wee, dog shit and sweat, and now the small panes of glass were all steamed up so that he really felt he was in some noxious cell, forever trapped in this foul-smelling coffin.
    ‘Let’s get the bloody thing over with,’ he said as he lifted the receiver and dialled.
    ‘Hello, hello,’ he said imperiously when the call was answered at the other end. ‘It’s about that thing in the paper. That thing about the van you’ve been after. I know where it came from. I know who owns it. You want to know, don’t you? This is the police I’m talking to, isn’t it?’
    Paul Snow and Bob Fellows sat tentatively on the edge of the settee in Amos Rawcliffe’s sitting room. To Snow’s mind, the place had probably not seen a tidy, a vacuum cleaner or a duster since the war. How could anyone live in such chaos? Looking over at old Amos, sitting back in the shabbiest armchair he had ever encountered, cradling a cup and saucer in his lap, it was obvious that this ragged old fellow could. In fact not only did he seem quite content in his surroundings, but he appeared completely oblivious of the squalor that surrounded him. He slurped his tea contentedly. Snow and Fellows had not been offered refreshment, which to Snow was a relief. Who knew exactly what the old man was drinking and how long it had been lurking in the kitchen?
    ‘He called himself John Hall,’ Rawcliffe continued, ‘and paid me ten pounds a week for the use of the land to park his caravan on it. He was no bother but I thought there was something shifty about him. I was a school caretaker in my time and I came across a lot of wrong ’uns in them days. I prided myself in being able to spot ’em. Little bastards with mischief on their mind. I felt a bit the same about him, this John Hall. He never quite looked me in the face. Avoided my glances. Still I never questioned where he’d come from or why he’d landed up here. None of my business as long as he paid up regularly, which he did.’
    ‘Can you describe him? What did he look like?’ asked Snow.
    Rawcliffe screwed up his face in an act of recollection. ‘He was a sturdy bloke, not fat, just sturdy. In his fifties, I should guess. He had a beard and longish hair and sometimes he wore glasses – those big horn-rimmed things.’ He paused and screwed his face up further. ‘He was from round here, I reckon. You could tell that by his accent. There was really nowt special about him. You’d pass him in the street and not notice him.’
    ‘How long ago did he come here?’
    ‘Oh, about two, three months maybe. To be honest, I didn’t see much of him, but I made it a point to go round every Thursday night for the rent and I’d inspect the place to see everything was OK, like. You can see the caravan from that window over there. It’s parked on that patch of ground just beyond the wall. It was my allotment once upon a time when my Cheryl was alive and me legs worked properly. It’s been idle for eight years or more. When this Hall chap came and asked if he could park there, I thought why not? Forty quid a month will do me very nicely.’
    Instinctively the two men rose and moved to the window and gazed out. As described, just beyond the old stone garden wall was the rusting caravan.
    ‘I’ve not seen him for a couple of days now. His van’s not been parked up since Tuesday. I reckon he’s done a bunk.’
    ‘I reckon you’re right,’ muttered Bob Fellows, more to himself than to Rawcliffe.
    Snow nodded at his colleague. It was clear that the old fellow was not a crank and it was possible that this was a serious lead. ‘We’d better get the SOCOs up here pronto,’ he said. ‘They should