by Guy Sheppard
‘Do what, for heaven’s sake?’
‘You want to get out of here, don’t you? Hurry up and help me find our Ration and ID Cards. That’s goes for Raoul’s, too.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Since the burglary she had been a total bag of nerves. Her brain was bursting and her limbs were all at sea, as her heart raced at the abrupt apparition of the half-seen. What was that? The brume remoulded everything in blurry shapes and shadows. Now this maddening fog made a mockery of every step Jo took in the cathedral garth – she could not see to put one foot in front of the other past its murky veil.
But it was just another rose bush in the former monastery garden.
‘Bella? Do NOT go near the well.’
The presentiment of danger strained her every nerve. She listened to the beat of her boots on a path that cut diagonally across the courtyard. There, she fumbled damp, cold walls in a corner to find a door, but not before she felt a total fraud.
‘How can I possibly scare myself half to death in my own place of work?’ she said aloud and staggered back into the cloister walk with its familiar fan-tracery ceiling. ‘Just because someone stole my notebook I’m paranoid, or what?’
Next moment a hand gripped her shoulder. It was John, his shiny black shoes scraping the stone floor quite loudly.
‘There you are! I’ve been searching for you everywhere.’
‘I had to let Bella have a wee before Dean Drew goes to Morning Prayer.’
‘You all right, Jo? You’ve gone very pale.’
‘Did you see anyone come and go through here just now?’
‘This weather is enough to put off even the Dean.’
‘I could have sworn I saw…’
‘You worried about something?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘In that case follow me. I have news for your ears only.’
‘What? That bad, eh?’
She had not been in this part of the former monastery before, Jo realised, when John suddenly opened a door to a large, white-roofed chamber off the cloisters’ east alley. The room’s ancient ashlar walls were largely screened by long beige curtains as she and Bella crossed its threshold of slippery black and brown tiles. Monks might no longer gather here to listen to someone read a Chapter of the Rule of St Benedict or conduct the internal business of the abbey, but it was hard not to feel that their spirits lived on.
She admired the towering, stained glass window whose coloured panes commemorated the Gloucestershire men who had fallen in the South African War – their names were lovingly recorded on panels below – and sat down on the edge of a dais. Above her, an elaborate lierne vault with carved bosses formed the roof above the bay. She was squatting in what had once been a twelfth century apse, apparently. Meanwhile Bella sneezed at the carpet.
‘So, John, tell me your bad news.’
‘You want to know if James Boreman really is as crooked as you think he is?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘Just to warn you, the Dean has made it absolutely clear that he doesn’t want us asking awkward questions about ‘our man’, not when he donates so much money to cathedral funds.’
‘What of it?’
‘Officially, he’s a dead end. I’m the verger, so I should know.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it. Noah said that Boreman’s men steal timber from the Forest of Dean, which suggests a link to Sarah’s death.’
‘You can’t say that for sure.’
‘So what can we say?’
‘Again, why?’
‘Because I don’t like to think that a bloody spiv like him can get the better of me.’
‘For a start, it turns out that a lot of the business Boreman does is legitimate. Right now he’s building concrete roads for the army at their new base not nine miles from here in Ashchurch. This includes access to eleven very large rectilinear vehicle storage and repair buildings, plus roads to a sizeable rail terminus. His company has also concreted large areas around the sewage works.’
‘For which he needs a docile workforce to do the arduous and monotonous work.’
‘What’s the betting it’s the same sort of labour you saw in that factory in Lydney?’
‘That’s to say, waifs and strays. What else?’
‘Just to warn you that he and his sister Tia are as thick as thieves. For a start, they own two restaurants in Gloucester. Again, everything appears to be above board, if you discount how they treat their staff. She has very good taste in clothes, by the way. You wouldn’t mind her Cuban heels. Sorry, I forgot you two have already met. Her speciality, though, is sixty or so residential properties mostly in Bristol.’
‘Bristol, eh? So brother and sister hide in plain sight? I suggest you hop on a train. ASAP. Check it out. Someone, somewhere, must be willing to spill a few beans.’
‘….?’
Jo lit herself a cigarette, the one good reason for seeking such a quiet retreat in her opinion.
‘What?’
‘You know you can’t smoke in here.’
‘Like, that’s what matters.’
‘What about the baby?’
‘I’m feeling so sick every morning I need to knock him or her out with something strong. Besides, I’m saving the cigarette cards for Sam. They’re all pretty, green railway engines. I think he’ll like them, don’t you?’
‘With fags the price they are I’m surprised you can afford any. Everyone else I know is trying to give up smoking to save money. Me, included.’
Jo interrupted.
‘Bella? What do you think you’re doing? Don’t bite the carpet.’
Bella desisted, but not before she shot everyone a quizzical look. That smell on the floor had a hint of ash all right. She had already detected in the cloisters a whiff of Fine Shag tobacco. Whoever had been smoking his pipe in the cloisters had first smoked it here, too. They’d been waiting and watching.
*
John finally succumbed to temptation and pulled out a packet of Capstan Navy Cut. Such medium strength cigarettes had been all he could find in the local shop, so they’d have to do.
‘What’s up with Bella?’
‘Never mind her, what’s Boreman’s background?’ said Jo, looking daggers at John and dog. ‘Did you even think to dig up his private life?’
‘Did I say I didn’t? It turns out that James and Freya move in well-heeled business circles. Before the war, they and some friends drove cars all the way to Cannes in France and the year before that they all went skiing in the Tyrol in the Austrian Alps. That new house of theirs in the Forest is pretty swanky, too. They just held a big house-warming party. I took a sneaky look. James is particularly proud of his new kitchen and newly turfed lawns.’
‘Anyone can create a false show of happiness by spending money. Anybody can be just as lonely in a big house as a small one.’
‘Do I detect sour grapes? Then get this. Boreman attended a well-known private school near Cirencester paid for by his parents who farmed two thousand acres at a place called Notgrove.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘People say it’s the coldest place on the Cotswolds. James learnt to drive tractors when he was ten. He taught himself to shoot pheasants and foxes and also rode out with the local hunt every Christmas with his mother, whose branch of the family once owned Dene Abbey in the Forest of Dean. James was hated and respected in equal measure at school, not least because he couldn’t help boasting that his home had seven staircases. He excelled at sports, but he once cracked open a boy’s eye socket with a cricket ball.’
‘Wow, that’s unpleasant.’
‘The stairs or the ball?’
‘What can I say? Maybe he hoped to score a six?’
John pursed his lips and blew a ring of blue smoke high in the air.
‘However you look at it, he and his sister wanted for nothing when they were very young. Both rode their own ponies. It must have been
idyllic.’
Jo again ordered Bella to stop digging holes in the carpet; she called her to heel.
Bella gave a growl.
‘What is up with her?’ asked John again.
Jo shot Bella a look.
‘You know what dogs are like. They get ideas. So James and Tia still have an interest in the family farm, I presume?’
John drew heavily on his cigarette again.
‘No, they don’t.’
‘They walked away from their well-heeled upbringing? Why would they?’
‘It’s a family tragedy. According to an old lady who cleans the station master’s house at Notgrove railway station, Mr Boreman senior worked all hours of the day to look after his sheep. Thomas spoke more to his dogs than his family. Nearly died twice in snowdrifts. As I said, it can be pretty damned cold that high on the hills. That left his wife Annabelle to do everything else. For instance, it was she who rode out with the children when they went fox cubbing. She was also an exceptionally good cook. Annabelle was the cornerstone of the whole operation, no doubt about it. When she died suddenly of blood poisoning at forty everything fell apart. The publican of the Plough Inn in Cold Aston, a few miles from the farm, told me that Thomas began drinking heavily. He became violent. Couldn’t cope. As a result, the farm soon went totally to pot.’
‘Don’t tell me he turned on his own children?’
‘Thomas did a very bad thing to them. James was seventeen and Tia was only twelve when they found him hanging from a beam in the hay barn. That was the day before the farm was to be auctioned to settle mortgages and loans. Socially, it was a disaster. All their so-called friends cut them dead. It left brother and sister very close.’
‘Oh bloody hell.’
‘I didn’t want to believe it, either.’
‘Do we have any idea how they think about it all now? Perhaps they feel they have something to prove?’
John wriggled uncomfortably inside his coat.
‘Christ, you don’t give up, do you? Honestly, Jo, I don’t know what you hope to achieve with all these questions. Is this about our friend Sarah or is it something else, because you’re becoming really obsessed with the wrong people? You haven’t been right since you found Sam lighting those candles in the cathedral.’
‘I’m more than curious, I must admit. Fact is, Sarah was for a long time part of the Boreman’s social circle, was she not? Basically, she knew everyone he did? Reveal a few secrets about him and she could finish him off. It would be the total disgrace of his father’s suicide all over again.’
He gave her a hard look.
‘Reveal what secrets exactly? We can rule out a bit of black marketeering. No one’s going to shop someone like James when he can source them a crate of booze or a nice pair of silk stockings. The rumours of looting are more to the point, I must admit, but we know he takes care to distance himself from all that. It would have to be something more damning still. Closer to home.’
‘Like murder, for instance.’
‘Be serious, Jo. I know their type. The sad loss of the farm has imbued brother and sister with a sense of entitlement. They’re spoilt brats who feel cheated out of their inheritance. They’re nasty, but that doesn’t make them killers. Basically, they’ve got it in for the rest of us because their parents let them down.’
She winced. John was absolutely right. You never imagined your family could be gone from your life until they were. From that day on you felt certain that, had you shown them just a little more loyalty, they might have been here for you now when you needed them most, because without family what were you?
She should have fought harder, been more courageous despite the flames.
But that’s not what she had done, was it?
She had failed them.
Did that make her a coward?
That’s what she still needed to know.
One day.
Did it even matter now?
Three years ago the Bristol Evening Post had called her a hero.
Keep telling herself that.
She saw the fog crowd the chamber’s large, coloured window again; it pressed against the glass as though it were some living thing. It suggested itself like a face. Peered in. That mist was a physical embodiment of a creeping silence.
‘As a matter of interest, who raised James and Tia after their father died?’
‘Grandma Agatha. When she passed away a few years later, Dene Abbey went to another part of the family, but she bequeathed brother and sister a large amount of cash that kick-started their various commercial ventures.’
‘I’d like to believe it.’
‘You should. They’ve clawed their way back from the abyss.’
‘You can say.’
‘We’re talking about someone who has it all,’ said John, dusting ash off his new grey trousers. Since it was nigh on impossible to buy anything with turn-ups due to the shortage of cloth, he had bought his latest suit in a size too big and sewn the overlong legs into turn-ups himself. He couldn’t do a thing about the awfully skimpy lapels, though. ‘James keeps a fleet of cars, from a Bentley to a Riley, in his newly built garages. Tia drives a SS Jaguar 100.’
‘Give me my Brough Superior, any time.’
‘So now this is personal?’
‘Okay, so that brings me to James’s wife. How would you describe her role in the great Boreman business empire? Any clues yet? Is she a criminal, too?’
‘Freya Boreman is a bit of a mystery, I must admit. I tracked down a picture of her looking stunning in Country Life Magazine, which recently featured her former, historic home at Drake’s House on the River Severn, but she’s somehow ‘not there’. Perhaps it’s because she’s never smiling.’
‘I wonder what bubbles beneath all that immaculateness and self-control?’
‘You don’t know me very well,’ replied John, looking smug. ‘Did I mention that Freya employs a cook-cum-housemaid called Betty? She can be quite the mine of information for five bob. Which reminds me. You owe me.’
‘And?’
‘Freya’s brother Simon was killed in the 1942 Easter raid on Gloster Aircraft Factory. By then he’d worked there for a year building Hurricanes. She was very fond of him, as was Sam. The boy has been grieving for him ever since, which might explain those candles in the cathedral?’
Jo scratched her withered ear somewhat sceptically.
She’d lit candles for the dead, too.
It hadn’t done any harm.
Not at all.
She didn’t see how it could.
‘But Freya must help run her husband’s businesses, shady or otherwise?’
‘I’ve consulted Companies House in London, but she’s not listed as a director of Boreman Properties, or anything else for that matter.’
‘In a way, I’m relieved.’
‘Unlike Bruno Smith.’
‘What? No, that can’t be?’
‘A recent entry confirms that James and Tia recently voted Bruno off the board. Which is strange because both men went to the same private school I just mentioned. Also, he and James both married much younger women who were old friends.’
‘Bruno might have told us!’
‘Finally, Sarah left Boreman Properties to train as a nurse some time in 1940. But you’re right, everyone kept in touch socially until a couple of months ago.’
‘You think it was James’s child she was carrying?’
John looked alarmed.
‘No reason to have her bumped off, surely?’
‘The way I see it, James Boreman won’t tolerate anything that’s bad for business,’ said Jo, beginning to think they might be going round in circles. It was like that fog outside the window. ‘Think about it. We know James’s second-in command Kevin Devaney and Sarah both worked for James before war broke out, so there’s a good chance she always suspected that he did his boss’s bidding, no questions asked? Maybe that’s the reason she left
Boreman’s employment – she refused to take part in the black marketeering, unlike, say, her husband Bruno? So why go to the bother of photographing the timber thieves in action now, when she could presumably have shopped them to the police long ago? Why wait two or three years? She was a person of principle. So what triggered her sudden change of mind? If we’re going to get to the truth about James Boreman we need to dig deeper. How does he manage to curry favour with all the right people?’
John stood up to go.
‘This war is ruining most people but it’s making a few huge fortunes. You have to hand it to him, Boreman is a bit of a star.’
‘Is that how he looks to you?’
‘Admit it, he looks wonderfully successful.’
‘Wouldn’t you be if you owned a small army of slaves?’
‘So what do we do next?’
‘I need to follow up on my visit to that factory in the Forest of Dean.’
‘Then can I please, please, please go back to being cathedral verger?’
‘Not promising anything.’
‘And I did think this investigation would be a doddle.’
‘I suppose you have a better idea?’
‘Wait, I’ll go with you.’
TWENTY-SIX
Sam dared not utter a single sound – he was too wide awake for that, ever since he first heard all the snorting and squealing. He should call his mother right away. Instead, here he was frozen in bed, trying to put substance to darkness.
All that gobbling and grunting he could only describe as uncannily human. The noises struck him as grotesque but not necessarily revolting.
Yes, they did.
He was alarmed and confused, not simply by what he heard, but by the great physical strength and energy it suggested – something or someone was digging at the very foundations of his new home in the Forest?
They might destroy it.
Not yet, but soon.
Still he could not bring himself to scream, but how was it that everyone else remained deaf to this terrible assault just below his window?