“I thought I must have. You say he called? Did he say what he wanted?”
“No. Just that he wanted to talk to you. And that he’d call later. Are you coming home?”
There was a pause. “I’m not sure.”
“Please, Mum.” I broke in before she could say anything. “I really think you should. Because the police want to talk to you.”
“The police?” There was an edge to her voice I couldn’t quite identify. “Why on earth would they want to talk to me?”
“They want to talk to anyone who saw Tanya yesterday.”
“But I didn’t see her yesterday. I haven’t seen her since she moved out on Friday.”
“Anyway, Dad told them that you were out, doing a bit of mobile hairdressing this morning.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I suppose he didn’t want anyone to know that he didn’t know where his wife was.” I didn’t want to tell her that Dad had thought, however briefly, that she might have something to do with Tanya’s death. Things were weird enough between them at the moment, without adding that little gem into the mix.
“So, are you coming home?” I prompted.
She didn’t answer.
“Mum?” I tried another tack. “I’ll just give the police Grandma’s address then, shall I? I bet that’ll please her when the Blues and Twos rock up to her door.”
“Well, I suppose…”
“Please, Mum? It’s – it’s really creepy here right now. First Margot, now Tanya. It makes you think there’s a serial killer on the loose.”
She sighed. “Really, Katie. You and your vivid imagination. Look, I’ll be home in time for lunch. I take it your father’s gone to work?”
“He’s getting ready now,” I said. “Do you want to speak to him?”
“No. Not at the moment. Tell him – tell him I’ll talk to him this evening.” I heard her take a long, shaky breath. “I think it’s about time your father and I had a proper chat.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dad was pacing the kitchen like a caged bear all the time I was speaking to Mum. He pounced the second the call ended.
“Well?” he growled, his face creased with anxiety. “Is she coming?”
I nodded. “She’ll be home by lunchtime. And she says that she wants to have what she called a ‘proper chat’ with you this evening. That’s Mum-speak for don’t take yourself off to the pub on your way home from work.”
“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” he said, which was clearly a lie, seeing as he stopped in at the Winchmoor Arms every evening for what he called a ‘quick one’. He took his work coat from the hook on the back of the door, shrugged himself into it. “Did she say what this ‘proper chat’ was about?”
“Afraid not. She sounded pretty serious, though. Are you off to work now?”
He stood there, jingling his car keys. “Better had. We’ve got an urgent job to finish this week. Need to crack on while the weather holds.”
“And I can’t let Elsie down,” I said. “So it’s carry on as usual, eh?”
He attempted a smile. “Something like that, love.”
He drove off and I got ready to go and see Elsie. I was, as always, there on the dot of 10.30am. Any later and she probably wouldn’t have let me in.
I’d been wondering how much to tell her about Tanya’s murder. But I needn’t have worried. I should have realised she’d know more about it than I did. And she couldn’t wait to pass it on.
“Hit over the head, so I heard,” Elsie said. “With a blunt instrument.”
“How do you know that?”
“Never you mind.” She gave a furtive, sideways glance, as if she suspected the room might have been bugged. She’d obviously been watching those old reruns of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy again. “I have my sources.”
“But what I don’t understand is what Tanya was doing out on Long Moor in the first place,” I said, as, under her eagle-eyed supervision, I flicked a feather duster with extreme care over the framed pictures of Devious Danny. “It’s not as if the road goes anywhere, except in a great big loop that ends up eventually in Glastonbury. And even so, there are easier ways of getting to Glastonbury from here than across the moor. And it’s not like there’s anything along there. So what was she doing?”
“Nothing out there except that falling-down old barn half way along,” Elsie said. “It belonged at one time to some man who used to grow cannabis there, until the police raided it. Apart from that, it’s nothing but farmland.”
“She must have taken the wrong turning. Then, when she got out on the moor, found there was nowhere to turn around. Or maybe that was the way her satnav sent her.”
Elsie snorted. “I don’t hold with all these sack-nab things, or whatever they call them.”
“Satnav. It stands for satellite navigation.”
“Whatever. It’s all spy in the sky stuff and shouldn’t be allowed. Folks should take the trouble to learn to read maps, like they used to in my day.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “I saw Tanya in the pub car park yesterday afternoon. She didn’t see me because she was talking on her phone. Tossing her hair back and chattering away like she does…” I broke off as I remembered to use the past tense. “I mean, like she did, when she was excited. I thought at the time she looked like someone fixing up a date. I reckon she went to Long Moor to meet someone. After all, it would be a perfect meeting place, wouldn’t it? A scarcely-used road, with no one around apart from a few sheep and cattle.”
Elsie looked unimpressed with my theory. “Doesn’t sound very likely to me. Particularly for a townie like her. She’d be more likely to opt for one of those trendy coffee bars that are everywhere these days. Talking of which, where’s that other cup of tea I asked for about half an hour ago? Folks could die of thirst waiting for you to stop gossiping. Doesn’t do for us oldies to get de-hibernated. And you’ve dusted that particular picture of Danny at least four times now. But I’ve already told you, he’s spoken for. So there’s no point mooning over him.”
What? Me, mooning over him? No way. But there was no point telling her that. I’d just be wasting my breath.
I went into the kitchen to make her a second cup of tea, and was still so rattled she could think I was remotely interested in her money-grabbing grandson that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing. Which was how I came to open the fridge without thinking.
Now, there was a knack to opening Elsie’s fridge. As you pulled the door back, you had to put one hand out to keep the plastic rack that holds the milk and other things in place in the door.
Only that particular time, I forgot. Before I could stop it, the plastic rack flopped down, tipping the milk, a carton of orange juice and a partly-used tin of baked beans on to the floor.
Luckily, the milk carton stayed intact. But that was as far as my luck went because the orange juice and baked beans did not. They pooled across the floor in a sticky orangey beany mess. It was touch and go as to whether I reached it before Prescott.
Prescott won. He hoovered up the beans without taking a breath. Although he passed on the orange juice.
I then had to wash the kitchen floor for the second time that day and promised Elsie I’d bring some superglue with me tomorrow to see if I could fix the broken rack.
***
Because of having to re-wash the kitchen floor, there wasn’t enough time for the dog’s preferred walk up to Pendle Hill and back. Usually I walked him away from the village as quickly as possible, as his habit of barking at everything that moved (and lots of things that didn’t) was embarrassing and annoying.
But that morning I only had time for a quick circuit of the village. Though it wasn’t that quick, given that Prescott insisted on stopping at every lamppost. But at least I managed to steer him away from the churchyard compost heap this time.
As we passed the pub, I noticed the door to the public bar was open. I tied Prescott to a fence post, told him I wouldn’t be long an
d went inside.
Mary was putting some mixers in the chiller cabinet behind the bar. She straightened up as she saw me, and sighed.
“What can I get you?” she asked wearily.
You know how some publicans smile and greet you warmly when you go in to their pub? That wasn’t Mary’s style. No friendly, ‘How are you today? Good to see you.’ Mary didn’t do warm and friendly.
In fairness, she’d never asked for this job. She’d been a barmaid for more years than she could remember and had been happy enough doing that, if a bit on the snippy side with the customers when the mood took her, which was most of the time. She’d retired about five years ago and had been acting as relief landlady for the brewery, covering holidays and so on when called upon. Which, given her unfriendly disposition, wasn’t that often.
“I haven’t come for a drink,” I told her. “I suppose you’ve heard about what happened to my aunt, Tanya?”
Mary’s round face darkened. “Poor soul. And to think, this time yesterday she was sitting where you are, chatting away to me like she didn’t have a care in the world.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” I said. “I saw her when she was leaving and she was on her phone to someone. I don’t suppose you happen to know who it was?”
She scowled at me. “Of course not. I don’t listen in to my customers’ telephone calls. And I’ll thank you not to go around inferring that I do, young lady.”
“Oh no, no, I didn’t mean that,” I said in a desperate attempt to smooth her ruffled feathers. “It’s just that, well, sometimes people shout when they’re talking on their phones, don’t they? And you can’t help hearing what they say.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said firmly, as she closed the chiller and turned her attention to the glass washer. “And what’s it got to do with you, anyway? You’re not going to put this into that scandal rag you write for, are you?”
The Chronicle? A scandal rag? If I tell you that last week’s lead story was about the theft of a load of washing from a launderette in Dintscombe, you’ll understand the sort of paper The Chronicle is. And the biggest scandal we’ve had in Much Winchmoor in recent years (apart from the odd murder or two, obviously) was when the captain of the Winchmoor Arms skittles team was accused by a team from the pub in the next village of ball tampering.
“That’s not fair to call it a scandal rag,” I murmured, feeling the need to defend the paper. “The Chronicle gives very good local coverage.”
“Tell my sister that,” she sniffed. “She’s got this pug and was not well pleased to see herself featured last week in your report on the Dog Show.”
“Oh.” I felt my cheeks getting hotter. “I’m sorry about that.”
Suddenly she smiled which, for Mary, was a very unusual occurrence.
“Don’t be,” she said abruptly. “My sister gets right on my nerves. As for that silly dog of hers… Your write-up gave me the best laugh I’ve had in a long time. So I’ll answer your question, although this is strictly off the record, you understand.”
“Of course. I’m not doing this for the paper. Tanya was my aunt. I – we are all anxious to know what happened to her.”
Mary took a couple of glasses from the washer and hung them on the rack above her head.
“She did have a phone call while I was in the bar. And she seemed very pleased and excited about it. Ended up saying that she’d call whoever it was back. Then she asked me where Long Moor Drove was and how to get there. I told her that it was – pardon my French – the arse end of the universe and that she didn’t want to go there. ‘Ah now, but that’s where you’re wrong, Mary,’ she said, looking very pleased with herself. ‘I want to go there very much indeed. And as far as I’m concerned, it could well be the end of the rainbow.’”
“So I was right,” I breathed. “She was going there to meet someone. But who? Did you hear her mention any names?”
“If I had, I’d have told you,” Mary said, back to her normal snippy self. “And is that your damn dog making all that noise out there?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, that’s Elsie’s dog, Prescott. I tied him to your fence, knowing you don’t like dogs in the pub.”
“I don’t like dogs anywhere,” she growled. “And if that dog has damaged my fence, there’ll be the devil to pay.”
“Ok. I’ll sort him out. Don’t you worry. And thank you, Mary.”
She grunted. “I didn’t tell that nosy young policeman what I’ve just told you. Like I said, I don’t gossip about my customers, even to the police. But I liked your aunt, for all her airs and graces. She treated me like a human being, you know, not just someone who works behind the bar.”
“Perhaps you should tell the police what you’ve just told me,” I said.
“Indeed I will not,” she said. “Any more than I’ll tell them that Tanya told me why she wanted a room in the pub.”
“Oh?” I began to feel uneasy. “What did she say?”
“Some nonsense about how your mother had threatened her with violence. But, of course, I didn’t believe that for a moment. So I’ll not be passing that on either.”
I thanked her, let her get back to hanging up the glasses, and went to sort out Prescott.
But he stopped barking before I reached him. And when I got to the car park, I could see why.
He was lying on his back in the middle of the car park, paws in the air, a blissful expression that I’d never seen before on his pointy little face. He was having his tummy tickled. By Will.
“Will? What are you doing here?” I asked.
Prescott leapt up at the sound of my voice and tried to pretend that he hadn’t been behaving like a great big softy, and that he really was a big, fierce dog with attitude.
“Calming your dog down, for a start,” Will said. “Another couple of minutes and he’d have dragged the fence from one end of the High Street to the next. So, what’s this?” He pointed to the pub door. “A bit early in the day for you, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be daft, I haven’t been for a drink. I was just seeing Mary about something.” My heart sank. “Oh, Will, you haven’t heard about Tanya, have you?”
“Yes, I have,” his face clouded. “That’s why I’m here. I went to your house but there was no one there. Then I realised you’d probably be walking this little monster here. Jeez, Kat. I’m really sorry about your aunt.”
He pulled me into his arms. I made no attempt to resist, but sank into him. It was like coming home after you’ve been away and you’re cold, tired and hungry. And then you’re home and all you want is to be there. Just standing there, safe and warm. Back where you belong.
But safe and warm wasn’t enough for long. I raised my head and looked up at his dear, familiar face. Saw his eyes darken. Felt his breath quicken. Heard him give a little half-sigh, half-groan as he bent his head.
The touch of his lips on mine was as soft and gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. Something inside me melted. My hand snaked around the back of his neck, pressing him closer. Wanting him. Needing him. Closer. Closer.
“Oh God, Will, ” I groaned as I remembered where we were and tried to pull away. “We shouldn’t—”
But I got no further. “You talk too much,” he growled as he kissed me again.
So I stopped talking. Stopped caring about where we were or who might see us. Stopped thinking about anything except the joy of being in his arms.
No thoughts of murders or of Mum and Dad having a ‘proper talk’ which would probably involve the word ‘divorce’. Above all, there were no worries about pretty young blonde vets. Just me and Will. And his dear familiar scent.
And, of course, Prescott, whose lead was looped around Will’s wrist.
Which was why it was suddenly yanked away from me as Prescott spotted the huge tabby with a chewed ear who lived in the pub. The cat’s favourite sport was sitting by the sign that said ‘no dogs allowed,’ then sending smug looks at any passing dogs as he stalked, tail erect, into the
pub. Or, and this is probably what had set Prescott off in the first place, prowling up and down the pub fence, as he was doing now, particularly if there was a dog tied to it.
By the time Will had regained control of his wrist and the dog, the moment had passed. And sanity had returned.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The dog’s a maniac, and I haven’t had time to give him his proper walk today so he’s got a bit of surplus energy.”
“So I see,” Will said. “I heard you up on Pendle Hill yesterday. Why didn’t you come in?”
I felt my face burn. “You heard me?” I said playing for time.
“I heard you calling the dog. Quite a lot. Not very obedient, is he?”
“I – um, well, as I went down the lane, I saw the vet’s car in your yard and assumed you had some sort of emergency going on. I knew you and your dad would probably be busy.”
“One of the young heifers managed to get herself entangled in some barbed wire and needed stitching.”
“Is she ok now?”
“She’s fine. I can’t say Dad was, though, having to call the vet out on a Sunday. He’s still whingeing about it now.”
“I’ll bet.” And then because my head was all over the place, thanks to Prescott’s intervention, I said the first thing that came into my mind. “I bet you didn’t whinge, though. Seeing as the vet was the lovely Anna. ”
Will’s eyebrows shot up. “What?” He looked at me and grinned. “Are you jealous?”
“Of course not. Should I be?”
He shook his head. “Nah, she’s way out of my league. ”
And I’m not, I suppose? I stared at him, wondering if he even realised what he'd just said. So, what was I? Third Division South? Certainly not Premier League, that was for sure.
“I’d better get this dog back before Elsie accuses me of dog-napping and calls the police,” I said, taking Prescott’s lead from him and preparing to walk away.
“I’ll come with you, if you like. There’s something I want to talk to you about. It’s about—” he began but at that moment, my phone rang. It was Mike.
“Sorry,” I said to Will. “It’s Mike from The Chronicle. I’ve just sent him some background stuff, nothing about the actual murder, of course. But I do need to take this.”
Rough And Deadly (A Much Winchmoor Mystery Book 2) Page 16