Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’D BEEN TOLD that the Brands had moved into a converted chapel shortly after they were married and spent most of the last two years re-decorating. The following afternoon I drove there through a light misty drizzle that was more like solidified vapour than actual rain.

  I wanted to talk to Tara. I couldn’t carry on investigating the murder of her husband without her knowledge – it felt devious. On the other hand, I didn’t know what exactly I’d say to her. Rory had said she was involved in a plot to sell his company from under him. Is that what I wanted to tell Tara Brand to her face? And still expect her to keep me on the job? I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect.

  The chapel was closer to country than town, beyond the suburban sprawl and into the gentle hills and valleys of the Cheshire hinterland. The traffic was thin out here, where you began to move away from the Victorian manufacturing centres still reeking of steam, grime and industrial architecture, and were forced to engage with the secretive beauty of the Cheshire plain. In the failing afternoon light I was aware of the slight rise and fall of the fields around me, like gentle waves in a calm sea.

  Stone pillars topped by blue china vases stood as elegant sentries at the entrance to Rory’s drive. The vases were empty. The house itself wasn’t immediately visible until I’d navigated a couple of bends and crested a small rise, but then it sprawled towards me—a double garage, an outer building that looked like a small office, and finally, facing me head on, the converted chapel itself, with a large wooden door and arched stone windows either side and above. It was made of pale Cheshire stone and was at least a hundred and fifty years old, judging by the wear and tear. The stone-chip drive sparking beneath my wheels gave way to hard-packed earth with the occasional paving slab showing through, and ran out immediately in front of the buildings where small beds of Virginia creeper and ivy sprouted and began their long crawl up the stonework and on to the complicated roofs.

  Two cars were parked up against the chapel, both of them facing towards me as though for a rapid exit. One was a large Toyota 4x4 with muddy wheels, the other a square BMW X5 with tinted windows and black bodywork. Red security lights winked inside both vehicles. I reversed into a space at right-angles to them and walked up to the heavy front door, where there was a large brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, but no bell. The sound of the knocker boomed through the house as if through a tomb, but after a minute no one had replied. I lifted it again and let it fall. The silence this time was even more pervasive.

  The two parked cars and light showing in three windows convinced me that Tara was probably in, so I went to the side of the chapel and began to pick my way down to the rear of the building. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but I thought there might be a back door or some way of attracting their attention.

  The view from here was breathtaking, wandering over fields and past the occasional picturesque farmhouse towards a dim, tree-lined horizon. The air was heavy with mist and the smells of mulching leaves, and the barren trees surrounding the chapel gave off a smoky odour like a natural incense.

  Through the silence I felt the presence of people in the house. It was as though I could hear them through the walls, which were clammy and cold to the touch. I pushed myself past hawthorns and ground-hugging plants that tugged at my ankles as I made my way down the side of the house. Now the dark smell of animals and earth fought with the woody burning aroma that issued from the chimney directly overhead.

  When I reached the back of the house, I saw that a new conservatory extended out from the brickwork and stretched along the whole length of the rear elevation, attached to the solid, deep-rooted edifice like a flimsy afterthought. I could hear the voices inside the house, though they were still indistinct. I reached out and grasped the wooden sill of the conservatory, then gingerly felt my way around the corner where the ground was a morass of clay and brick shards.

  Then I stopped.

  I drew back from the conservatory windows. There were two human shapes in the room that backed on to the conservatory. They stood in shadow, facing each other, and were talking animatedly. I stood still and strained to hear. One shape was Tara—her posture and the way she moved her head as she spoke was still familiar after all this time. The other shape was taller, and male. Their voices were not raised but neither was their speech calm. They seemed to be arguing, one cutting off the other before they were finished—it wasn’t the steady to and fro of normal conversation.

  The discussion got louder and more excited. I caught some phrases but still couldn’t hear properly. The couple moved away from the conservatory and deeper into the house, and their voices became more muffled. I stood silently for half a minute, waiting to see if they returned. My fingers were getting tired and I felt my heart-rate increase and heard my breathing growing shallow. I didn’t like being exposed like this, especially when I didn’t know what was going on inside. I’d half made up my mind to go back to the front of the house when I heard the hollow boom of the front door, followed rapidly by a car door slamming. An engine roared into life.

  I turned and raced down the side of the house, leaping over broken bricks and blocks of wood, my arms and legs snatched and hooked by hawthorn briars. I arrived at the front just in time to see the BMW vanishing over the rise in the driveway. The tinted windows did their job and hid the driver from view.

  Feeling outwitted, I stood and thought about what I’d just seen. A heated conversation between the widow of my client and an Unknown Person, male. Followed by a swift exit by the unknown man … someone more suspicious than me might have come to some rapid and unsavoury conclusions.

  The air was still, the silence broken only by the sound of my lungs drawing in deep breaths and letting them out. Sam Dyke, athlete. Despite the deep intake of air, my thinking skills didn’t improve. I couldn’t guess who was in the car. But I thought maybe Tara would tell me herself. I turned to the door, lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall.

  This time she answered immediately. Perhaps she thought it was her visitor returned. Her mouth was half-open and her face was strained and irritated, but she caught herself and said, ‘Hello, can I help you?’

  ‘Hello, Tara. It’s me, Sam.’

  Her red hair was tangled and her make-up blotchy. Beneath it was still the twenty-year-old I’d known in a seedy boarding house in Leeds, visible now as if seen through a smudged window that added worry, despair, grief and loss to the once-clean outlines of her eyes and delicate nose. Her pinched lips grew even thinner and her expression hardened.

  ‘Oh not you,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

  Then she shut the door on me so firmly that the brass knocker gave a small celebratory leap.