by Rebecca Tope
Thea was sharing the disbelief, at the same time as processing what must have been Bobby’s own infidelity two years or so ago. ‘And you confronted him?’
‘I tried to. He turned it all around, saying it was payback for Ollie, and how did I like it. It all blew up last night, and we were up for hours going over it. He was so calm, as if it didn’t matter. So I got hysterical and said I was going to leave, and he said just try it, and then it all started again this morning. The kids must have heard some of it. So I texted you, and just walked out of the house. Hours ago.’
Connections and suspicions were firing in Thea’s brain, as she constructed a mental network that incorporated all these new revelations. ‘Did Artie kill Ollie, then?’ she asked baldly. ‘Is that what you’ve brought me here to say?’
Before Bobby could reply, Thea’s phone jingled. It was Stephanie, ‘Thea?’ came a breathless little voice. ‘I don’t want to stay here any more. Can you come back for me?’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’
‘She’s crazy. She’s gone upstairs and left me on my own. She’s laughing. It’s horrible.’
‘Okay. I’ll be five minutes. Maybe make it ten. Soon. Maybe you should go and open the front door, just to be on the safe side. Then you can run outside if you need to. But it doesn’t sound as if she’s going to do anything to you.’
‘She’s crazy,’ said the girl again. ‘Stark raving mad. All I said was that the Quakers aren’t too keen on the idea of confession and the easy forgiveness of sins …’
‘Don’t tell me now, Steph. Let me have another minute or two here and then I’ll come for you, okay?’
‘Be quick, then,’ said the child on a stifled sob.
Bobby was waiting, like another forlorn little girl in need of Thea’s attention. As soon as the phone call was ended she said, ‘I think he might have done. He was so dreadfully jealous, you see.’
‘Of you and Ollie, you mean?’
‘No. Of Millie and Ollie. She adored him, you see. And she wouldn’t stop talking about him.’
Thea remembered the scene in the town square, and fitted another piece into the picture. Her immediate feeling was of anger towards the insensitive young man who had allowed the daughter of his former lover to befriend him. Such crassness almost made her feel he deserved to be murdered. ‘But nobody deserves to be murdered,’ she said aloud, answering her own outrageous thought.
‘No,’ said Bobby. ‘But then, hardly anyone liked Ollie. He really wasn’t a nice person.’
‘What about Vicky? His girlfriend?’
‘What about her? Just another addict he picked up somewhere.’ Bobby actually shrugged the reference away. Vicky was beneath her contempt, it seemed.
‘Except she wasn’t. An addict, I mean. She’s got leukaemia. She might be dying.’
‘Rubbish. Who told you that?’
‘She did and I believed her. The whole drug story is wrong. All lies. There never were any drugs.’
‘Of course there were.’ Bobby’s eyes flickered in panic. ‘There must have been. Everybody said so. Lucy, Kevin, Hunter – all of them.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ said Thea.
‘But we’re not finished.’
‘Go home. Be nice to your children. Wait for someone to come. Are you scared of Artie?’
‘No. Not at all. That’s what’s so insane. He’s the last person in the world you’d ever think capable of murder.’
Thea was barely listening. It would only take two or three minutes to get to Lucy Sinclair’s house. Nothing was going to happen to Stephanie in that time.
Was it?
You had to go out onto the A40, turn right, proceed for a short distance and then left into the western fringe of Northleach. A tractor was in front of her, turning onto the main road, which seemed to Thea to be a personal insult. A lorry came up quickly behind it, blocking Thea’s exit, and then two more lorries came from the right. Suddenly there was dense traffic, making her wait for long seconds for a chance to get out of the little road from Hampnett. Almost bursting with frustration, she was tempted to lean on the horn and make everything disappear. Not that they would, of course. But there was already a stream of vehicles coming from her left, piling up behind the oblivious tractor. She was never going to get out at this rate.
The only solution was to turn left instead, go up to the roundabout where the A40 intersected with the A429 and turn right and right again into Northleach from its eastern end. Which took three minutes. Which meant it was at least ten minutes since Stephanie’s phone call before she arrived at the house.
The door was open and Thea ran in, expecting to find Stephanie just inside. Instead, there was Lucy, sitting on the stairs, her head in her hands. ‘Where is she?’ Thea demanded.
‘I scared her away. Sorry. It all got too much. She’ll be all right. She’s just out there somewhere.’
Thea went back to the pavement and looked all round. No sign of a solitary girl. ‘Where?’ she demanded of the impossible Lucy. ‘What happened? What did you do to her?’
‘Other way round, dear. It was all her doing. I might have known, I suppose.’
Taking a deep breath, and telling herself to stay calm, Thea extracted her phone from her pocket and called Stephanie. It was the first time she was glad they’d given the child her own mobile. As she listened to it ring, she wondered briefly how anybody had ever survived without one.
‘Hello? Thea?’ came the blessed reply on the third ring. ‘Where are you?’
‘Here. At Lucy’s house. Where are you?’
‘By the church. With a lady.’
‘What lady?’
‘Here. You can talk to her.’ The phone was evidently handed over and a new voice said, ‘Mrs Slocombe? This is Priscilla Heap. You should come here as quick as you can.’
‘Half a minute,’ said Thea, and covered the ground with two seconds to spare.
It was too much to process. An avalanche of revelations and events threatened to overwhelm her sanity. Odd phrases and images kept sparking each other off – Artie and Faith, Bobby and Ollie, Lucy spilling the beans, Stephanie getting religion – Priscilla Heap coming to the rescue, of all people. A woman who had known Thea in another village, and seen a little too much of her less admirable side for comfort.
‘Sorry!’ was all she could pant. ‘Oh God, Steph – I am so sorry.’
Stephanie frowned at her. ‘Why are you sorry? You haven’t done anything. It was me. It’s all my fault, not yours.’
‘I met her running up to the church,’ said Priscilla. ‘And I thought perhaps I should see if I could help. I had no idea she was yours.’ She laughed. ‘Although I suppose I could have guessed.’
‘I couldn’t think where else to go,’ said Stephanie.
‘But what on earth happened?’ Thea burst out. ‘I was only gone for half an hour.’ The church clock chimed midday, as if in direct correction of this assertion. ‘Well, less than an hour, anyway.’
‘I told you. We were talking about Quakers, and that of God in everyone, as Mr Shipley says. It all seemed all right, and I was telling her how Mr Shipley said it was something everyone should keep in mind, even when it was somebody really awful. And she said, “What about murderers?” and I said I expect there was often a reason for it, and Quakers were very keen on prison visiting and redeeming people. Redeeming,’ she repeated, savouring the word. ‘And then she said was it enough for the person to confess their sins, and I said I thought there might be more to it than that, and they couldn’t just go free and think everything was all right, because a person was dead and that was very serious and terrible. And she started laughing and crying and being … just crazy. She went upstairs and that was when I phoned you.’
‘Echoes of Raskolnikov,’ said Priscilla Heap obscurely. Thea and Stephanie looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Crime and Punishment,’ she explained. ‘It’s all in there. Everything you ever need to know about guilt, redemption, the sheer horror behind every murder.
’ She almost smacked her lips. ‘Lovely stuff,’ she added.
‘Well, it sounds horribly upsetting,’ Thea said to the child, shuddering at what Drew was going to say and not really listening to Priscilla. ‘And now I suppose we ought to call a doctor or something, and get Lucy seen to. It must be some kind of breakdown.’ She took out her phone, but didn’t activate it. Priscilla was making small tutting sounds, as if she’d committed some sort of mistake. Thea looked up. ‘I think I know who killed Ollie Sinclair,’ she said. ‘That’s why Bobby wanted to see me. I should probably call Caz first and tell her.’
‘Take the child home,’ Priscilla urged. ‘Never mind all the rest of it. It can wait.’
‘No!’ said Stephanie. ‘We should stick to the plan. I’m hungry, and I want to just … talk. I’m not upset, exactly. Just – it was too grown up for me.’
‘You are a very wise child,’ said Priscilla. ‘I am very pleased to have met you.’
Thea was feeling gauche and out of step. ‘How did you happen to be here, anyway?’ she asked the woman.
‘I came to the church service. I’d stopped to talk to the vicar and was one of the last to leave. It was a splendid service, I must say. First class. One can never be quite sure what to expect these days.’ She smiled at Stephanie. ‘So you’re a Quaker, are you, dear?’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘I’m not. But I’m friendly with a man who knows a lot about them. They’re called Friends, you know. The Society of Friends. There’s a Meeting House where we live. I’ve never been inside it,’ she finished wistfully.
Thea felt reproached, and in turn decided that Drew had been very remiss in not giving more attention to the little chapel and its small group of worshippers. But who could ever have anticipated this turn of events? Wouldn’t any parent feel annoyed or offended at their child being indoctrinated without their knowledge? They were going to have to speak to Mr Shipley.
‘We can go to the pub and have lasagne,’ she said. The whole family was in agreement that by far the best pub meal was lasagne. ‘If they do it on a Sunday,’ she remembered to add. ‘We might have to have roast meat and potatoes.’
‘What did Bobby say?’ Stephanie asked. ‘Did she tell you who killed Ollie?’
‘Wait a bit and I’ll tell you – some of it, anyway.’ She looked at Priscilla. ‘Will you join us?’
‘Oh, no. I have to get back. I’m walking this afternoon. It’s a nature ramble. The hedgerows are just getting interesting, don’t you think?’
Thea was distracted by the thorny problem of how much she could safely convey to Stephanie about love affairs and children born with the wrong father and the oddness of the whole story. Not very much, she concluded – which would make things difficult.
The square was almost deserted and had been throughout the conversation. A man was walking a dog along the pavement past the bus shelter, and another was going into a house in the south-west corner, having thrown a few curious glances at the little group. Nobody had been there to rescue Stephanie, except for the providential Priscilla. There was no real safety in a small Cotswolds settlement, as Thea had discovered on previous occasions.
‘I’m desperate for the loo,’ said Stephanie as if only just noticing the urgency.
‘Pub, then. Quick,’ said Thea, who had never entirely learnt that even quite small children could control their bladders pretty well when they had to. Her sister Jocelyn had often laughed at the way Thea got into a panic over it with Jessica. But Jocelyn had five children and knew how far she could push them when necessary.
The Sherborne Arms was irritatingly full, but Thea and Stephanie found half a table near the lavatories and staked their claim. ‘You go to the Ladies and I’ll call Caz,’ said Thea. ‘Then we’ll get some food.’
The phone call was awkward, made at a table already containing two strangers. ‘This is impossible,’ Thea realised after half a minute. The police detective was listening patiently, but there was no way the necessary words could be uttered in such surroundings. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I chose a bad time – and a bad place. I’ll try again in a few minutes.’
‘Where are you?’
The pub was noisy. Thea had to shout – or felt she did. On reflection, it was obvious that Caz could hear her far better than the other way around. A whisper would have been quite enough. She named the pub and said she would be there for an hour or so.
‘I’ll come,’ said Detective Sergeant Barkley. ‘I think that would be better.’
‘I think so too,’ said Thea, with a long exhalation of relief. ‘It really is a case of “developments” this time.’ And she remembered the first time, with Millie Latimer bawling out her grief for Ollie, to a father who seemed more than likely to have been the person who killed him.
Chapter Nineteen
The A429 ran beautifully from Cirencester to Northleach, with barely a kink – although there were undulations as it passed through Fossebridge. The distance could easily be accomplished in ten minutes. Even so, Thea was startled when Caz appeared before the pub kitchen had produced her lunch. ‘That was quick!’ she gasped. ‘Where were you?’
‘At the station. There’s nowhere to sit. Hello Stephanie.’ She took another look. ‘Are you all right?’
‘We’ve had rather a morning,’ said Thea.
‘We can’t talk here.’ All three eyed the couple at the table accusingly, which was most unfair as they had been there first. Sharing tables was uncomfortably un-British anyway. Nobody could speak freely, and the dilemma as to whether or not to acknowledge the others’ existence was seldom properly resolved. Very belatedly, Thea understood that this was the pub that featured in This Country – thereby attracting telly addicts who believed there was something magical about putting themselves in a setting that had been immortalised on film. Such a silly business, Thea thought, complacent in her own superiority.
The food then arrived, which made everything even more complicated. But then the inconvenient sharers of the table gave up and decided they’d finished. ‘Here you are,’ said the man to Caz. ‘And welcome.’
‘That’s good of you, sir. You didn’t have to leave. It’s not your problem.’
‘It never used to get so crowded in here,’ said the woman. ‘Spoils it, really.’
And they got up to go. Caz and Thea immediately spread themselves out, to deter any newcomers, leaving Stephanie on a chair at one side of the table, while the women occupied a bench against the wall.
‘Steph – we’re going to talk business for a bit, okay?’ said Thea. ‘Some of it isn’t really suitable for you to hear, so I’ll talk quietly. It’s going to seem a bit rude, but don’t take it personally. Is that all right with you?’ Thea smiled. ‘At least you’re right in the middle of things – like you wanted.’
‘That’s okay. I can listen to my phone.’ She produced the mobile and a miraculous earphone, which she plugged into herself and the gadget, with a smug grin. Then she looked down at her lunch. ‘This lasagne’s huge. I’ll never manage all of it.’
Thea laughed. ‘Yes you will. Take it slowly.’ She turned to Caz. ‘Do you want anything? A drink?’
‘I suppose I should. It looks bad otherwise. I’ll go and get myself something.’
The detective’s relaxed demeanour and the inexorable passing of time both made Thea restless. Things could be happening out there, just down the street, which the police ought to know about. It was already nearly an hour since she had left Bobby Latimer – what would she be doing now? Where would she go? Her disclosures had been cut short by Stephanie’s phone call, with nothing decided. Had she really been trying to say that her husband was a murderer?
And what about wretched Lucy Sinclair?
At last, after what felt like an endless delay, Caz was sitting close beside her, listening to the report of the Hampnett rendezvous. She asked few questions and made no notes, despite the convolutions of marital infidelity and neighbourly spying.
‘So,’ Thea summarised, ‘Bobb
y thinks Artie was jealous of Ollie and probably killed him.’ It sounded almost ludicrously stark, put like that. And for the first time, the absolute lack of evidence raised its annoying head.
‘But didn’t he take revenge on her by having an affair of his own?’ Caz said. ‘Didn’t that make it quits? And when did he first know about Ollie and Buster? Sounds as if it was never much of a secret – so why now?’
‘Because of Millie. She’d got close to Ollie, who seems to have threatened to replace Artie as her favourite man. He was much nearer the normal age to be her father, after all. And if he’s already Buster’s dad, then that would make it seem more natural – in the family, so to speak.’
Caz raised an eyebrow at this, and said nothing for a moment. ‘Maybe not from Bobby’s viewpoint. It all sounds rather crowded, don’t you think?’
Thea blinked. ‘You’re not suggesting it was her, are you?’ She tried to think. ‘It would make some sort of sense, I suppose. She’d have as much motive as Artie, or nearly. But she must have feelings for him, surely – the father of her child and all that?’
‘It looks to me as if there are other people with motives that go back a bit further and a bit deeper. I told you, didn’t I, that I’ve been digging into Kevin Sinclair’s background? Well, there’s quite a lot to dig up. He doesn’t come out of it smelling of roses, not by a long way.’
Thea glanced at Stephanie, who was making a very obvious demonstration of not listening to the conversation, eyes focused on nothing as she listened to whatever was on her playlist. The sheer competence of the child was impressive. Thea had never got round to compiling a playlist of her own, or even being entirely sure how it might be done.
‘Oh!’ she said to Caz’s remark. ‘Then the plot really does thicken, doesn’t it?’
‘Did something happen to your daughter?’ Caz went on. ‘She looked a bit shell-shocked when I came in.’
‘Yes, that’s a whole other thing you ought to know about, I suppose. I left her at Lucy Sinclair’s this morning—’ But she got no further than that. They were loudly interrupted by DI Jeremy Higgins marching into the pub and calling ‘Barkley!’ so loudly that every head turned to stare at him. The man at the bar and some others showed obvious signs of knowing who he was and being excited and intrigued as a result.