A Thoughtful Woman

by K T Findlay

  Emma indicated the map again. ‘You’ll have to come in from the west, on the road from Ipington. That’s a long commute each way.’

  ‘It is if I actually go to Ipington,’ Sally agreed, ‘but what if I take Bleak Road across the top of the Moor? Look, it runs between the Ipington and Little Dimpton roads and it’s not even a fifth of the distance.’

  Emma looked doubtful. ‘It’s a pretty narrow, twisty road. Do you really want to tackle that four times a week, especially if the cloud’s down, or it’s raining? It’ll be a nightmare!’

  ‘Having to drive all the way to Little Dimpton and Ipington would be worse I think.’ Sally pointed out. ‘And in any case, I enjoy driving. It could be fun.’

  Thus it was they found themselves in the Range Rover, feeling their way forward along Bleak Road on a miserable, late February morning.

  ‘Did you choose this weather on purpose?’ demanded Sally, squinting through the heavy sleet.

  Emma giggled. ‘Told you so!’

  But Sally was still able to keep up a decent turn of speed despite the weather and by the time they reached Little Throcking she was happy with her choice.

  It was about a third of the way back along the same route that Emma spotted a familiar sign. ‘Look! There’s the other end of the Widow Maker.’

  Sally pulled to a halt. ‘Didn’t you tell me it’s a drover’s track at this end, for moving cattle around the place?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Yep. You can see that for yourself. You could take the Range Rover down there easily. Hey! I didn’t mean now!’ she cried in alarm as Sally pointed the car’s nose down the hill. ‘It’s muddy! We’ll get stuck!’

  Sally laughed. ‘You’ve never been off road in one of these things before, have you? They’re amazing things, real go anywhere machines. Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘Back home with my walking shoes!’ snapped Emma. ‘How the hell am I going to walk out in these things if we get stuck? I thought we were just going for a drive!’

  Sally was relentless however and pointed out that there wasn’t yet anywhere she could turn around, so they had to go on really. And go on they did. And on and on and on. Emma felt they’d driven halfway to Little Throcking before Sally finally spotted a farm gate in a hedge, about a hundred yards from the end of the drovers part of the track.

  ‘That’s a relief!’ Sally said. ‘I figured there must be a gate somewhere, I just wasn’t expecting to have to go so far to find it!’

  ‘Well you can get out to open the gate.’ said Emma flatly. ‘It was your choice to come down here, so go ruin your own shoes!’

  This made Sally laugh again, and she hopped out to do just that. The mud squelched up over the tops of her shoes and soaked her feet, but the sleet had slackened off and the wind had dropped so it wasn’t so bad. She sized up the field as she manoeuvred the Range Rover in and out of the gate and by the time she’d closed it, she’d formed a plan.

  ‘You said the Widow Maker carries on back down to the main road and comes out opposite the first bit we explored, the bit with the pool, right?’ she asked.

  Emma nodded. ‘That’s right. It’s a bit scary in places, but nothing like so bad as the bit downstream by the pool.’

  Sally rubbed her chin. ‘Well then, I think we’ve got our escape route. We can get out far quicker this way using the Range Rover, than on any of the other tracks just using a bike. Good! Now, about Bob Harland’s favourite drink…’

  ‘Sally!’ complained her exasperated friend. ‘No, I’m not playing. You do it if you want to, but I’m not helping.’

  Bob Harland was a lot more difficult to watch than Thomlinson. He seemed to be in casual work, and there was nowhere she could hide that overlooked his house. So, knowing he was a drinker, Sally timed some of her cycle runs into Wesser Bech so she could have lunch at the pub, but when he didn't appear, the weekend it was. Spending a Saturday night in a crowded, smoky, noisy pub was Sally's idea of hell, but needs must. She sat in a corner sipping a sherry, pretending to read her book and swatting away the attentions of the men who wanted to buy her a drink. When one particularly persistent admirer came back for the third time, Sally decided she'd had enough and left. But she’d got what she wanted. Bob Harland liked Guinness, and plenty of it.

  The following Saturday, she was back just before closing time to see if Harland was a creature of habit like Thomlinson. She drove past the pub to the end of the road, turned around and parked with the lights off, waiting for it to empty. Bob Harland was amongst the last to leave. Just as she’d expected, he walked towards her and took the steps up to Larkin Road. A week later she repeated the exercise, and so did he.

  That left Holmes, who turned out to be the easiest of all. On a cool evening towards the end of March, she cycled through the lanes to the back of Ornamental Estate. The ordnance survey map indicated there was some kind of trail that went up the back of the steep hill, through the trees to the top of Cardin Drive. It took her a while to find the overgrown entrance, but just 10 minutes later she climbed out directly opposite the rear of Holmes's house. She waited for the evening to darken a little more, then slipped quietly across the road and into his garden. Keeping to the lawn as much as possible to minimise the noise, she crept toward the slightly ajar lounge window.

  'Here you are sir.' said a man she didn't recognise. ‘Laphroaig, your favourite.'

  'Thank you Algy. Much appreciated." said Holmes.

  'Well!' thought Sally. 'That was quick!"

  Feeling no need for further verification, she ghosted her way back to the bike.

  ◆◆◆

  Sally spent April touring England, stopping regularly to paint, and slowly acquiring bottles of Laphroaig single malt and Maker’s Mark Kentucky Bourbon, buying one bottle at a time and always paying with cash. In Birmingham she went out of her way to find the biggest locksmith’s she could and acquired her own key to the flying fox padlock using the code number she’d copied down at the time. This too she bought with cash.

  In Shrewsbury she stumbled across a shop that sold fine wigs of genuine human hair, which prompted her to start creating her disguise. She’d called her alter ego Selina, imagining her to be a mature university student doing a sociological study of the adult entertainment industry.

  After much thought, she chose for Selina a beautiful blonde wig in a pageboy cut, under which she was able to completely hide her own hair. As soon as she put it on, Selina began to come to life in Sally’s mind.

  Back in her hotel room, she played around for a full two hours with the cosmetics she’d bought, until a very pale, delicate looking woman stared back at her from the other side of the mirror.

  ‘Hello. I’m Selina.’ she said in a voice slightly softer than her own, with a BBC accent.

  ‘Welcome Selina. Welcome indeed.’ she murmured.

  A few days later she was in London. She made herself up as Selina and went shopping for clothes. At first she felt as if there was a big sign above her head that shrieked ‘WIG!!’ and was incredibly self conscious. But as the day went on and nobody commented about it, or even glanced at it, she began to forget about it too. This might just work.

  With her escape route so central to Sally’s thinking, she bought a specifically chosen escape outfit in a mainstream chain store. She chose some tough but smart brown slacks, a blue blouse with sleeves to the wrist, a smart white jumper, sneakers, a green, warm, waterproof jacket, and a blue beret. Then in three other towns, she took note of the addresses of the same chain store so she could get Emma to buy her own identical versions.

  Lastly, to avoid having to leave fingerprints at Helen’s, she bought a supply of beautiful white cotton gloves, and two more pairs in kid leather, one white, one black. She planned to claim that she had allergy issues with eczema, and had to wear gloves at all times to protect her hands.

  Feeling that she’d got the human side of things sorted, Sally set to work on her vehicles. She went to a cycle shop and bought spare front
and rear wheels for her bike, making sure to specify the same gears at the back and insisting on another brand of tyre with a different tread pattern to those already on the bike.

  Finally, on her run for home she dropped into a vehicle scrapyard and bought a set of old Range Rover wheels with chunky dirt tyres.

  She had to put up with a lot of sexist banter from the idiot in charge of the scrapyard, but because she wanted to remain relatively anonymous, she just sucked it up with good humour. It was much more important not to give him the slightest reason to remember her, than it was to be her normal feisty, independent self. And besides, as he was so considerately loading the wheels into the back of the car, she helped herself to a clutch of number plates off a pile he had stacked around the corner from his office.

  The following day she set to work to build a large cupboard in the double garage, where she could hide Selina’s wig and clothes, the spare wheels, the plates, and all the booze, which by now included a couple of dozen Guinness. It took up an entire wall of the garage from floor to ceiling, and stole about two feet from its width. She made the whole new wall the door, hinged at the garage door end and supported by a soft rubber wheel at the other so it swung freely, and the whole thing cleverly wallpapered to hide the hinges and the lock.

  Standing back to admire her work, the smell of wallpaper paste filling her nostrils, she thought there was just one piece of the puzzle missing. Selina's car. What on earth was she going to do about that?

  First of all, it couldn't be just any car. It would have to be a van of some kind, so she could carry and dump the bodies. A sedan would be useless. She'd never be able to lift a corpse over the lip of the boot.

  But the real problem was administrative. Cars have things like number plates and tax discs, things that enable the car and its owner to be identified and tracked. So she couldn't just go and buy a vehicle. What were her options?

  She could steal one, but that would be reported and the police would be actively looking for it while she was trying to use it. So that was no good.

  She could buy a vehicle, and perhaps steal number plates from a similar car but again that would be reported, and in any case wouldn't match the tax discs etc.

  In theory, she could find out how to engage the criminal fraternity. This might provide her with everything she needed, but it would also provide her with direct connections to a group of people she had no wish to be connected to. She thought of Peregrin's disapproving expression and abandoned the idea.

  For once Sally didn't have the answers. But that didn't mean they wouldn't come.

  6 Your carriage awaits

  'There are three strands of your own hair in front of your left ear.' said Emma.

  Sally shook her head in frustration. 'Man! It's so easy to get something wrong! I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be able to pull this off.'

  Emma smiled. 'I thought girls could do anything?'

  Sally growled. 'Damn right! I'll get there. It's just hard.'

  Three times a week for the next two months, Emma helped Sally practise being Selina. It took two weeks to stop making the silly mistakes that might allow Helen to see through the disguise, and four weeks beyond that before Sally eliminated all the errors in her speaking voice. Finally, in the last two weeks of July, she didn't make a single mistake and felt ready to approach Miss Helen.

  And by then, she had Selina's car.

  They say some people are born lucky, but luck is only useful to those who can both spot the opportunity and are in a position to take advantage of it. Sally got her break in the first week of July as she and Emma were further exploring the trails around the Gelt river, east of Wesser Bech.

  They'd driven the Range Rover down the steep four-wheel-drive track that they’d discovered months earlier, taken the bikes off the back and cycled upstream along the river bank. About a mile up and after crossing the coast road, they found themselves going round a peninsula with the river on their right, and a neatly planted curving line of trees to their left.

  Looking through the trees they could see a beautiful house surrounded by fields that fell gently down to the river on all sides. In the field between them and the house, was a Mini van with its rear doors open. In it they could see two bales of hay. Much to their surprise, the bales seemed to tumble out of the van on their own accord.

  Sally spotted how it was done. The rear of the van had a floor plate hinged at the back by the doors and something was raising the other end to create a slope, allowing the bales to slide out. Then to her astonishment, the rear doors closed on their own without anyone touching them.

  'That's the car for me!' she whispered to Emma.

  Both car doors opened. A woman got out of the driver's side and a man from the passenger’s.

  'I'm really thrilled with that Tom.' they heard the woman say. 'That's a really good piece of engineering.'

  'Well, I'm glad you're pleased Mrs Prendergast.' said the man. 'It'll certainly make it easier for you to drop things off around the farm.'

  They saw the woman nod. 'I’m almost sorry we’re going to Italy for a year. I want to play with her! Ah well, she'll still be here when we get back. Now, are you happy with all the arrangements we've made for you to be able to look after the farm while were gone?'

  'Yes Mrs Prendergast. I've got the keys to the sheds and Mrs Phipps has the keys to do the housekeeping. I don't need the Mini. It can stay in the garage.'

  'Well, we’ll be off on Saturday, but I’ll be in touch once a week just to check if you need anything. You know how to contact us if you need to?'

  'Aye, I do. And I will.'

  Sally gave Emma a grin and a big thumbs up.

  They carried on up the river bank until they hit the main road to Dalton, then worked their way back south to the Range Rover via the country lanes, looking for the entrance to the house.

  ◆◆◆

  A week later they were back, parked in the entrance to Elbow Lane. Sally looked at her watch. ‘Okay, it’s 9 PM. Tell me the plan again so we’re sure we’re on the same page.’

  Emma smiled. ‘To fill in the time, I drive the Range Rover to Dalton, but make sure I’m back over this way at the Gelt bridge on Dalton Road at 10 PM. If you’re unsuccessful, you walk up the riverbank to meet me and I give you a lift. If you’re in the Mini, you’ll flash dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot, and we drive separately back to your place.’

  ‘Perfect.’ said Sally, sliding out of the passenger seat. ‘See you in an hour!’

  She walked quietly up the narrow tree lined road, feeling more than a little nervous without her disguise. Sally had thought long and hard about that, but in the end decided she couldn’t take the risk of Selina being seen in the Range Rover.

  At the end of the tar seal, she hopped over the fence onto the grass to avoid crunching the gravel, and walked quietly and carefully past the small cottage to the left where she believed Tom and his wife lived. A flicker of light from a television lit up the two trees near the cottage’s windows and she could hear the canned laughter of an American sitcom. That was good. It would help to cover any noise she might make.

  The main house was about another hundred and fifty yards into the property, with a stand alone garage off to the left. The garage door was a solid one piece, with a lockable T-bar handle in the middle. She knew that on the other side would be a rod attached to two simple wires, one from each side of the door that pulled back the sprung bolts to let it open.

  From her backpack she pulled two hooks, which she'd fashioned from high tensile wire. She lay down on the gravel and worked the first one under the rubber seal on the left side. Once the body of the hook had passed under the door, she was able to rotate and twist the wire into different positions.

  It took her about three minutes to successfully hook the door’s internal wire. Leaving the hook in place, she did the same on the other side. Gently she pulled her two wires towards each other and tugged the door bolts free.

  As the right bolt popped c
lear, the whole door lurched and twisted, smacking loudly into the door frame.

  Sally froze. The noise seemed to echo unbelievably loudly amongst the buildings and trees. The damned thing must have a warp in it!

  After thirty seconds with no sign of anyone coming from the cottage, Sally allowed herself to relax again. She eased her fingers under the door and pulled the bottom towards her. It opened quietly, with just a soft rumble from the guide wheels, and no squeaks from the springs.

  ‘Thank God for people who maintain their properties!’ she murmured.

  Sally unplugged the trickle charger, opened the driver's door of the Mini, and wound down the window.

  No key!

  A bit frustrated, she searched along the walls to see if it was hung up anywhere. Nothing. Then a thought struck her, and she lifted the carpet on the driver’s side. Voila, one key.

  ‘Not exactly sophisticated.’ she thought to herself.

  She took the handbrake off and closed the door again. With one hand on the wheel, and the other pressing against the A pillar, she pushed the Mini out onto the drive. When it was clear, she retrieved her hooks, quietly closed the garage door and pushed the car gently down the drive.

  One hundred and fifty yards is nothing to walk, but it's a long way to push a car on a gravel drive. It was sorely in need of more gravel, with patches of earth showing here and there, but to Sally, the scrunching seemed so loud that she couldn’t believe Tom and his wife wouldn’t hear it.

  By the time she reached the tar seal, her heart was pounding so hard she could hear the blood flowing in her ears, yet she kept going for another hundred and fifty yards. Only when she was sure she was out of earshot of the cottage, did she catch her breath and start the car.

  Gently she drove to the end of the lane and went to meet Emma by the bridge. After they’d exchanged signals, Sally cruised around to give Emma a five minute head start before slowly following. She didn't want the two cars to be linked should anyone see them both and to make doubly sure, she took the Mini up Wick Lane, her “private road”, instead of going through Throcking itself.