Slaughter in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  The two men were against the hedge, as far as possible from the road. Still shouting, one was standing upright, pumping a leg as if inflating a car tyre with a foot pump. Not until she had got right off the road did Thea see the second man lying prone. ‘Hey!’ she called, feeling intensely self-conscious. ‘What’s going on?’

  The upright man lifted his head and looked at her. Then he gave a final pretend kick to his victim, and turned to run away. But where should he run? To obey a natural instinct to leave Thea/ Emily as far as possible behind, he would have to go up the road towards the hotel. Across the road was a substantial hedge that even a determined goat would hesitate to try to penetrate. If he came back, past the interfering woman, she would get a good look at his face, which was not a good idea.

  The fourth option was to get over the hedge into the field beyond the layby. Beside the oak tree there was a gap, with nothing more than a few strands of wire fencing blocking it. With a thoroughly out-of-role slump of the shoulders, he made towards it, looking as if he hoped somebody would stop him before he had to climb over. He and Thea both knew that there were watching police officers at various points, but not one was visible.

  Thea left him to it and walked hesitantly towards the figure on the ground. ‘Hello? Are you all right?’ she stammered. His head was imaginatively draped with a bright red piece of cloth. ‘Oh, my God!’ she squawked. ‘Help! Oh, God. Where’s my phone? Listen – can you hear me? I’ll go and phone for help.’

  She knew she ought to kneel down and touch him, turn him over, listen to his final gasps, but she could not bring herself to do it.

  She hovered for a few more moments, expecting instructions that never came. Then she went back to the car at a trot, remembering to sound the horn. Except the horn only worked if the engine was turned on, and that seemed too big an effort, in the circumstances. She waited uncertainly, with little idea of what she ought to do next. Not a single car had passed since the role-playing began. The whole exercise began to seem futile at best and a stupid waste of time at worst.

  Her policeman rejoined her. ‘Very good!’ he approved. ‘Except you didn’t sound the horn.’

  ‘No – because it seems to me now that she’d have done it early on, if at all. When she very first got out of the car and heard the shouting. She’d be in too much of a hurry afterwards. You have to turn the ignition on for it to work.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said, with an intelligent little nod. ‘That’s very helpful in itself.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, feeling strangely alarmed.

  ‘So – what else seemed peculiar to you? I noticed you didn’t actually kneel down by the body. Your sister certainly did. Next time, I must ask you to do it.’

  ‘Next time?’ She’d known there’d be a repeat, but she quite badly didn’t want to do it again.

  ‘In twenty or thirty minutes, yes. But first, have you got any feedback?’

  ‘Well – there didn’t seem to be anywhere for him to run, did there? Which way does Emily say he went?’

  ‘She didn’t. She said he just ran off into the dark. She says she didn’t watch him go.’

  ‘It wasn’t dark enough just now. I said it wasn’t, before we started,’ she accused. ‘We’ve been wasting our time.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s all going very well, actually. The DI’s going to be very pleased.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ she said with a flicker of sarcasm. She was realising how very much she was not enjoying herself.

  ‘So why didn’t you kneel down?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to get dirty,’ she said feebly.

  ‘Right. And last week, that whole area where he’s lying was a mud puddle about an inch deep. Your sister’s clothes had more mud on them than blood.’

  ‘So I imagine. I guess when it’s the real thing, you don’t worry about anything like that.’

  He smiled understandingly. ‘We can put something down for you to kneel on. And while you’re there, have a look round, as if searching for help, OK? In the hope that there’ll be a car coming along soon.’

  As he spoke, a car did finally appear, the sound of its engine warning of its approach some seconds ahead. The driver, a young man, glanced curiously at the two people standing by the car in the gateway, but barely slowed down.

  ‘In the dark, people probably wouldn’t notice us,’ Thea said. ‘Or the car.’

  ‘Who can say?’ He smiled again, infuriatingly serene.

  The second time, she sounded the horn earlier in the proceedings, and then knelt by the body, laying a hand on its shoulder and trying to imagine how it would have been in reality. Terrifying, she concluded. The killer might not actually have run away at all; he might be right behind her, ready to shatter her skull as well. It was much darker this time, shadows thickening into swathes of dense black in the lee of the hedge. With something close to genuine panic, she looked wildly around for assistance, only to realise that the road was not visible from where she crouched. The intervening bank shielded them from the road completely. Even if a car had passed, she would scarcely have had time to stand up and attract its attention. Emily had said nothing about a torch, nothing to make herself visible. And it had been bloody raining.

  It was well past nine o’clock when Jeremy finally joined her in the gateway, and thanked her for her trouble. He carried a notebook in which she could see he had made a lot of jottings. ‘Has that taken things any further forward?’ she asked him.

  Before he could respond, another car could be heard, its engine sounding low and powerful. This time the driver came to a sudden halt just past the gateway, and stuck his head out of the window. In the murky twilight, Thea could not see his face. But she knew who it was. Henry Galton.

  ‘Problems?’ he said.

  Chaz interposed himself. ‘Good evening, sir. I wonder whether I could ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Fire away,’ Galton invited.

  ‘Are you local, sir?’

  ‘About as local as you can get. I live a mile from here.’

  ‘And were you by any chance passing this point at the same time last Saturday evening?’

  ‘Oh – I get it. How slow of me. You’re talking about the killing. No, no. I was nowhere near here last Saturday, officer. In fact, I’ve already been asked that question, some days ago. You’ll find my alibi is all in order.’

  ‘Could I have your name and address, sir, just for the record.’

  Galton gave it, his tone and manner steadfastly relaxed. Then he said, ‘Do you mind if I have a word with Mrs Osborne now?’

  Chaz stepped aside slowly. Thea wanted to assure him that Galton would never have killed Sam Webster, that he had never been a candidate for the role of murderer. Even without knowing he had an alibi, she could not begin to believe it of him. How odd, she thought now, realising the idea had never taken root, despite his size and demonstrable capacity for rage.

  ‘When will you be finished here?’ he asked her.

  ‘I think we’re done,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we Chaz?’

  ‘Well—’ the constable looked at the Detective Inspector, who was chewing the end of his pencil and staring at the sky where a few stars had just appeared. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What? Oh, sorry. Mrs Osborne, thank you again for all your help. I’ve got a great deal to think about, now. Shall we say ten tomorrow, at the station, for a proper debriefing?’

  She blinked at him. ‘Debriefing?’

  ‘That’s right. I need to know how it felt, what you noticed. We could do it now, if you’d prefer, while it’s fresh in your mind. But—’ he glanced at Galton, ‘if you’re busy…’

  ‘Tomorrow’s fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m likely to forget anything.’

  ‘Do you need a ride back to the farm?’ She looked at Galton, still with his head and elbow hanging out of the car window. ‘I think I’ve got one, thanks.’ How presumptuous, she thought. He could be going off to see a lady friend or to join a group of men f
or some serious drinking.

  ‘You have,’ he confirmed. ‘Get in.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  She never found out where Galton had been going. He turned round in the layby, a deft sweep in one end and out the other, and headed back towards Hawkhill. ‘Your place or mine?’ he asked, as he drew level with the entrance.

  She giggled, never for a moment thinking he was suggesting the usual practice behind that line. ‘Yours, if you like,’ she said. ‘It’s a much nicer house.’

  ‘Won’t your dog miss you?’

  ‘Yes, but she’ll manage. So long as I’m home by midnight.’

  ‘That’s a promise,’ he said, still almost alarmingly relaxed. And yet she was not alarmed. She trusted him to be offering nothing more than a listening ear and a glass or two of wine. There was something unhurried about Henry Galton, and although she had seen his capacity for passionate rage, she somehow knew his other passions were dormant, and it would take more effort than she was inclined to make to awaken them.

  She hadn’t meant to talk about dark laybys and dead men, but it was all too fresh in her mind to ignore. Besides, Jeremy had wanted her to hold onto the details until the next morning, and wouldn’t that be easier if she talked them through now, to anchor them in her memory? Only later did she permit herself to see that she had been using Galton as if he’d been Phil Hollis.

  She was supplied with a glass of rich red wine, and a bowl of interesting nibbles that turned out to be spicy broad beans, coated in some sort of crisp brown powder. ‘I’d never have guessed,’ she laughed. ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘Some outfit over the border in Herefordshire. They started with potato crisps and branched out into this sort of thing.’

  ‘Locally grown, of course.’

  ‘Actually, no. They came from Singapore.’

  She pouted sceptically. ‘Tut tut – isn’t that an air mile problem?’

  Galton raised an eyebrow. ‘I should have known you’d be an eco-freak. Actually, I agree with you. I’m wondering whether to turn some of my land over to growing beans and peas. Everything’s changing so fast, and there’s no money in sheep any more. But it would cost a fortune to set it all up, and the marketing’s a nightmare.’

  ‘You’d relish the challenge, I bet.’

  ‘I might,’ he admitted.

  She sipped the wine and felt a slow relaxation flow through her. The sofa was leather, creased and squishy and old. She thought it might be one of the three most comfortable sofas she’d ever encountered.

  ‘Where were you going?’ she asked, aware that she had aborted whatever plans he might have had.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When you passed the layby and saw me and the police. You must have been going somewhere.’

  ‘Where does a divorced forty-something man go on an August Saturday evening? I’ll let you guess.’

  ‘The pub, I suppose.’

  ‘Right. Nobody’s going to miss me. You saved me from a few hours of tedium.’

  ‘You are so different from when I first saw you,’ she blurted. ‘I still can’t get used to it. Red in the face and shouting, waving that gun about. You were terrifying.’

  ‘All part of a farmer’s repertoire,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘You can take my word for it that just about anyone with sheep would present exactly as I did, under the same circumstances.’

  Present? What a surprising word to use. As if he’d trained in psychotherapy or personnel management. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘So – did they solve the mystery? Do they know who killed that Oxford bloke?’

  ‘I doubt it. It was all a waste of time, as far as I can see. The weather being so different made it pointless from the start.’

  ‘I have to confess I haven’t been following the story. I never read the papers, and try to avoid the news as much as I can. But I do know your sister’s involved, and the dead man was the vicar’s brother. Coincidences all round, in fact.’

  ‘And the police hate coincidences.’

  ‘I can imagine. How do you tell a coincidence from a clue?’ He blew out his cheeks to suggest it was too large a puzzle for him.

  ‘It isn’t so strange when you boil it down to basics. The only real surprise is that Emily knew Sam Webster, who happened to be staying the night in a hotel a mile away from where I’m house-sitting. And Emily knows hundreds of people, so even that isn’t as odd as it might seem.’

  ‘And why wasn’t Emily there this evening?’

  ‘She’s too upset to face it. According to her husband and our mother, she’s going through some kind of breakdown – if that’s what they call it these days. I think it’s because our father has just died. She came here last Saturday to talk to me about him. Then she got lost trying to get home again, and ended up witnessing a murder.’

  He looked at her with an expression she’d seen in his eyes before. It took some moments to remember that it had been when he told her that Freddy and Basil almost certainly had been guilty of sheep-worrying. It was a look of patient sympathy, a look that told her that he knew more than she did, and she wasn’t going to like it when the knowledge was shared.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  He gave himself a little shake, and smiled. ‘Oh, nothing. What do I know about it? As I said, I haven’t even been following it in the news.’

  ‘There’s hardly been anything to follow,’ she said, a little too loudly. ‘Just that they arrested Peter Clarke and then let him go again.’

  ‘Poor bloke. I don’t suppose that was much fun.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  Galton shook his head. ‘Never met him. He’s not been here long, I gather. I rather tend to steer clear of vicars. They carry disagreeable associations for me.’

  She assumed he meant his wedding to the incomprehensible wife who had deserted him, when she ought to have counted her blessings every day of her life. ‘I don’t expect you’d like him,’ she said. ‘Phil doesn’t.’

  ‘So tell me about the reconstruction of the crime, if that’s not breaking police confidentiality.’

  She went through it slowly, aware that this was a practice run for her debriefing the next morning. It made a short and simple story, a piece of drastic violence in the Cotswold countryside, which was, when it came to it, no stranger to slaughterings of every kind.

  ‘There was mud and blood all over everything when it actually happened. I had to try to imagine it this evening – they wrapped a red cloth round the pretend victim’s head. It worked quite well, oddly enough. I couldn’t bring myself to kneel down and touch him, the first time we did it.’

  ‘Your sister was probably very wise to duck out of it. I don’t expect they have the power to force her to take part, even if she wasn’t too – upset.’

  ‘She really is in a state,’ Thea assured him. ‘Her husband’s quite worried about her. Not that it takes much to worry him. He’s one of those men who like life to stay predictable and calm.’

  ‘I know a few women like that, as well,’ he said, mildly reproachful.

  ‘Oh, yes. Emily’s the same, of course. She lost her first baby, and I guess that’s made her excessively protective and controlling of the ones she’s got.’

  ‘How many’s that?’

  ‘Three boys, thirteen, fourteen and sixteen. They’re turning out rather well, considering. I’d have expected them to stage spectacular rebellions by now, but they seem to be toeing the line perfectly happily so far. Except that the big one wants to get his nipple pierced. Emily wouldn’t stand for that.’

  Galton winced. ‘Give them time. They might leave it until they go away to college, if she’s that rigid. But it’ll definitely happen eventually. It has to, you see, if they’re to achieve any sort of maturity.’

  ‘You sound as if you know a lot about it.’

  He tipped his head in a small bow of submission. ‘I thought you’d catch me out eventually.’

  She put
her fingers over her mouth, sifting out the clues. ‘No, I’m not there,’ she said, giving up. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m a counsellor for Relate. I finished the training five years ago. I do six sessions a week, which isn’t as much as they’d like, but I’m a bit busy here, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Good Lord. I’d never have guessed.’ But she might have done, she realised, with only a few more clues. ‘Although I don’t think I’ve ever met a counsellor before, so I wouldn’t know what to look for.’

  ‘They’re pretty much the same as everybody else. But my special interest is in the formative years of life, and how parents behave with their babies. I read research reports like other people read novels.’

  She could think of nothing to say that sounded even remotely intelligent. She knew nothing about the latest theories of baby management, and cared hardly at all. ‘My sister’s got five children,’ she offered, daftly. ‘The other sister, that is.’

  ‘Aha – don’t tell me – you’re the middle one.’

  She nodded, showing no surprise at what felt like a party game in the making. ‘Except there’s an older brother at the top.’

  ‘Poor chap – three younger sisters.’

  ‘Mm.’

  To his credit, he quickly detected her lack of interest in his favourite subject. Just as he detected a cooling generally. ‘Uh – oh,’ he said.

  She smiled wistfully. ‘I should go. I expect I’ll be able to see to walk. It isn’t far.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I’ll come with you. After all, isn’t there a crazed killer on the loose out there?’

  ‘I don’t expect there is, is there?’ she said. ‘Not after a whole week.’

  ‘Well, I’ll come with you anyway. I like walking at night, especially this time of year. I can scare away a few foxes, and watch out for barn owls. Funny, the way we celebrate some predators and abhor others.’

  Everything he said felt loaded with meaning. She knew she should be playing his game, working out what he was trying to tell her, seeing the world through his eyes. But she didn’t want to. She did not want to spend time with somebody who saw layers and layers of significance in every small remark. She did not want to talk about how she felt all the time, or make uncomfortable connections with the way her mother had once given Jocelyn two sweets and her only one. She did not want to be constantly struggling to catch up, to understand something that he already knew and was patiently waiting for her to grasp. No wonder his wretched wife had left him.