Wychwood--Hallowdene

by George Mann

  Well, he’d show them.

  He turned, scrabbling for one of the pokers he kept in a bucket by the fireplace. It was a gas fire, but like all the other furnishings here, he’d brought these with him from the old house, too attached to them to let them go.

  Behind him, the door creaked open.

  “Without grace or remorse.” The voice was an eerie whisper, right in his ear.

  Panicked, he started to turn, brandishing the poker, but his attacker was too quick, and they were on him within seconds, gloved hands reaching around his throat from behind, squeezing so hard that stars burst before his eyes.

  He kicked and punched, tried to swing the poker, but his assailant was simply too strong, and he was too old. The last thing he saw was a woman on the television screen, pole-vaulting over some impossibly high bar.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Usually, she didn’t mind the cold, but tonight it was bone deep, the sort of chill that set in and wouldn’t let go, no matter how much she stamped her feet, or blew into her cupped hands. She wished she’d brought her scarf along, or worn more than a jacket over her T-shirt, but it was early summer, and it was supposed to be warm.

  Daisy exhaled, watching her breath plume before her face, as if the air itself was trying to leach the warmth from her body. Around her, the shadows were deep and long, liquid-like, pooling amongst the brambles and the trees. She thought how easy it would be to lose herself in that inky blackness, to disappear into the night. She’d been tempted to do it before, to just up sticks and run, to get away from this little town, with its small-minded people and oppressive air. But she supposed there were things keeping her here, for now. She’d just have to stick it out. She wasn’t about to let it crush her spirit. She wasn’t the type to give in.

  Still, tonight she was dog-tired. The shift at Richmond’s had been a trial in and of itself. Not only had she had to deal with Nicholas Abbott and his disgusting advances, and Geraldine Finch getting all pernickety about the size of her scone, she’d had Sally and Christian at each other’s throats for most of the afternoon. She could have cut the tension in that place with a knife, and the customers had noticed it too.

  What Daisy couldn’t understand was why Sally seemed so insistent on defending Lee Stroud. His outbursts had become a regular occurrence, and Daisy had started to wonder if it was turning into some sort of dangerous obsession. Was he the sort that was just going to flip one day, and stagger in with a shotgun or a kitchen knife? She certainly got the sense that he wasn’t all there, that he’d been damaged in some way.

  Daisy supposed it demonstrated a streak of naivety in Sally, but Daisy could never see that as a fault. Sally had been there for Daisy when she’d needed someone, and she’d always be grateful for that. She’d taken her in when Daisy had lost the house, letting her sleep on the sofa bed for a couple of months, giving her a job at the café, offering her moral support. She’d even paid the deposit on Daisy’s little rental cottage, and bought her art supplies to keep her going. She owed the woman a lot.

  Christian didn’t see it that way, of course. He couldn’t understand how his mother could lavish all of this attention on others, while paying such little heed to him, her only child. Daisy didn’t think it was like that, of course, but she knew that was how Christian saw it; she’d overheard enough arguments in her time to piece it all together.

  She turned the corner, passing down Hulston Lane. Here, the solitary glow of a single street lamp cast a weak pall over the rooftops. Everything seemed still. In the distance, she could see the light was still on in Nicholas Abbott’s new cottage. The dirty old bastard was probably still up watching porn.

  She walked a little way along the road, her fingers drumming a nervous beat on her left thigh. The hairs on the nape of her neck prickled. Was there someone there, watching her?

  She sensed movement behind her and turned, but the street was silent, empty. Around her, window blinds and curtains were pulled shut. The village was asleep, its people dreaming.

  She shrugged and carried on her way.

  “Without grace or remorse.”

  Daisy turned on the spot, her heart hammering. The whispering voice had been right in her ear, so close that she was certain she’d felt the person’s breath on her cheek. There was no one there.

  “Hello?” she said. Her voice was tremulous, loud and rude in the absolute silence. “Who’s there?”

  She scanned the road in all directions. Had someone ducked behind a garden hedge, keeping out of view? It had been a woman’s voice, clear and insistent. She bunched her hands into fists. “I know you’re there. If this is some sort of joke, it’s not funny. Come out where I can see you.”

  Silence.

  Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, feeling the adrenaline coursing through her system, the metallic aftertaste, the heightened senses. Whoever it was must have gone. She wondered whether she’d simply caught the tail end of something spoken on a television or radio show in one of the darkened houses. But even she was far from convinced.

  She hesitated to turn her back on the road again. She was nearly home now, though. Just a few more streets.

  She turned and hurried off, quickening her pace into a near run.

  “Grace. Remorse.”

  This time the words felt as though they were inside her head. She stopped, panting for breath, leaning against the lamp-post with one hand. Her head was spinning. She retched, choking back a stream of bile. The world was spinning. She clutched at the lamp-post, trying to anchor herself, to hold on as the world seemed to shift all around her. The darkness swam in, as if the shadows themselves were alive, swirling like liquid, embracing her.

  Her vision shifted.

  She was standing in the woods. Around her, the trees loomed; ominous silhouettes, branches like scrabbling limbs. She gulped for air, heady with the aroma of damp earth and mouldering leaves. She realised a light sheen of sweat had formed on her forehead and cheeks. Her legs felt tired, lactic acid causing a dull, deep ache in her thigh muscles. Had she run here? What the hell was going on?

  She felt the dizziness returning, and fought to hold it at bay, leaning forward, hands on her knees, drawing ragged breath.

  She was in the woods.

  One moment she’d been standing in Hulston Lane, by the lamp-post. The next she was here, somewhere deep in the Wychwood, alone in the gloom.

  For a moment she wondered if she was dreaming, if she’d passed out on Hulston Lane, and this was her mind attempting to make sense of what had happened to her. Some kind of seizure, perhaps? Something about it felt too real, though.

  Daisy looked up, trying to catch sight of the moon through the canopy of leaves, but the light was diffuse, the shadows all-pervading. She thought about her phone, and scrabbled to find it in her jeans. It was still there. She flipped open the case. The light of the screen seemed so bright that she had to squint, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. The time flashed up in big, white letters: 2.46 am.

  She’d lost nearly two hours. Had she been walking all that time, stumbling out here alone, delirious?

  She checked the battery – 76 per cent left. She could use it as a torch. That would have to be enough. She could find her way with that. How far could she really have come? She was probably on the outskirts of the village, where the farmland gave way to the woods and everyone walked their dogs in the nice weather.

  She glanced again at the screen, thumbing through her contacts. It was no use calling anyone. How could she explain what had happened? Besides, she didn’t even know where she was. It wasn’t as if Sally could drive over to pick her up. She’d only worry everyone unnecessarily. She’d also have to explain what she’d been doing out so late, wandering the streets. That certainly wasn’t a good idea. No – she’d have to make her own way home. Maybe in the morning she’d be able to make more sense of it all.

  She heard a rustle of leaves and looked up. At first she thought it must have been a bird or a badger, ferreting in the un
dergrowth, but there, standing beneath the twisted bough of an oak tree, was the silhouette of a person, picked out in a silvery spear of moonlight.

  Daisy couldn’t quite make out their face, but she guessed from their size and build it was a woman, wearing what appeared to be a thick overcoat. Had someone heard her and come out to see if she was okay?

  “Hello?” she said, her voice cracking. “Can you help me? I think I must be lost. I need to get back to the road…” She trailed off. The figure hadn’t moved, hadn’t even acknowledged she’d spoken. “Hello, can you hear me?”

  “Grace in death.”

  The whispered words were like a short, sharp punch to the gut, and Daisy wheeled, thrashing at whatever had spoken them in her ear. She lurched into the darkness, and the world seemed to unbalance again. She went down, throwing her hand out to catch a tree stump, scraping her palm on the jagged end of a broken branch. She hit the ground, sliding forward on one elbow down a short incline, scoring a slippery path through the thick moss.

  She came to rest with a loud sob, tears running down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with muddy fingers, wincing at the bloody gash on her palm. What was happening to her? Her mind reeled in confusion. Were the voices in her head? Somehow, the thought of that seemed even more terrifying.

  She remained there for a moment, lying on the ground, catching her breath, and steadying her nerves.

  After a moment, she felt strong enough to sit up. Her hands were shaking. She could see her phone, lying in the moss a few feet away, back up the incline.

  “Thank God for small mercies,” she mumbled, echoing one of Sally’s oft-used phrases.

  Slowly, she picked her way up the mossy bank to retrieve it. She looked around for any sign of the woman, but she was gone.

  Perhaps she’d simply been a figment of her imagination, Daisy considered, or a malformed tree trunk, caught at just the right angle to appear like something it was not. She repeated this to herself as she used the light from her phone to pick her way through the woods and back to the road.

  She was still repeating it as she staggered to her bed a short while later, hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Well, as much as I hate to speculate, the contusions around his throat suggest the poor bastard was choked to death from behind,” said Dr Nijjer. “Of course, I’ll know more later, once I get him back to the lab.”

  “Thanks, Raf. Are we looking for a ligature, a rope, a garrotte?”

  “It doesn’t look like it. From the pattern of the bruising and the marks on the throat, I’d say the killer was wearing gloves, and throttled him with their hands.”

  Peter nodded. They were standing in the living room of Nicholas Abbott’s small cottage at the end of Hulston Lane. It was the last in a row of similar cottages on the east side of Hallowdene village, close to the communal green with its large children’s play area and its imposing village cross, supposedly erected in the fourteenth century by monks from a nearby priory. All that was left of the priory now was a lumpy field full of foundation stones, and a single gothic arch which stood on the hill, looking down upon the village and marking the border of Raisonby Wood. He guessed the main building was probably destroyed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

  The cottage itself was pleasant enough, but not exactly the sort of thing he’d have expected for someone of Nicholas Abbott’s standing, a man who’d spent his entire life walking through the ancient surroundings of Hallowdene Manor, surrounded by opulence and his own extensive lands.

  Men like Abbott, Peter knew, tended to have a skewed perspective on life. Abbott had probably never had to worry about money, never feared how he was going to pay the next electricity bill, or been forced to save for months on end to treat himself to some minor luxury. People envied that lifestyle, that freedom, but what did it really amount to? Isolation, recalcitrance and a lack of empathy for others, in Peter’s brief experience. He’d dealt with Abbott’s type before, had to put up with their arrogance, their assumption that they were somehow above the law that governed others.

  But then Nicholas Abbott had sold up and moved here, to a small cottage close to the heart of the village. What did that say about him? Was he somehow trying to make amends for his past behaviour? Was he trying to prove something? Or had someone been leaning on him, slowly edging him out of the house? He’d have to look into Abbott’s affairs more closely to find out.

  With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the room, unconsciously rubbing his throat. The room itself was cluttered with furnishings that looked as if they belonged in a house three times the size of the cottage. Which, Peter conceded, they probably did. By all accounts, Abbott had left as little as possible up at the manor house, squeezing much of the furniture in here, including an ungainly jardinière – along with accompanying dead houseplant – and an antique oak sideboard that dominated the entire rear wall of the room. God only knew how the removal men had managed to manhandle the thing into place.

  He’d evidently been a man with a taste for the finer things in life – three portraits on the wall looked like seventeenth-century originals, and an impressive skeleton clock sat under a glass dome on a nearby side table, quietly counting away the seconds. Everything about the room spoke of such refinement, a man who’d enjoyed his luxuries, and had the money to indulge such tastes. Which made it all the more pitiable that he had died face down on the rug before the fireplace, surrounded by the detritus of his microwaved meal.

  Dr Nijjer had returned to examining the body, down on one knee, leaning so close that his forehead was nearly touching the dead man’s chin. Abbott looked as if he’d known someone was coming for him. An iron poker, its surface gnarled and tarnished through age, lay on the rug just a couple of feet from Abbott’s lifeless hand. He’d evidently grabbed it from the bucket on the hearth to try to defend himself. It seemed unlikely he’d been quick enough to retaliate, however – if his attacker had grabbed him from behind, there would have been little he could do to fight back. Analysis of any skin or hair beneath the fingernails would help, but Peter didn’t hold out much hope.

  Nor was there any evidence of forced entry. The SOCOs would dust the place for fingerprints, of course, but from what he’d already heard from Nijjer, it looked as though the killer had worn gloves.

  He made a mental checklist. His first job was to identify anyone who might have had a grudge against Abbott, a motive for wanting him dead. He suspected it would be a relatively healthy list.

  He’d start by looking into the family while the PCs did a door-to-door; see if anyone witnessed someone entering the house yesterday evening. He’d already questioned the housekeeper, who’d discovered the body that morning – Chambers could deal with her formal statement. She’d had a key, but claimed to have found the door unlocked when she’d arrived. She’d also given a reasonable alibi for the previous evening, which Chambers could check out with a quick phone call. Peter didn’t think it likely she was involved, but he couldn’t rule anyone out just yet – it wouldn’t have taken much to overpower the older man. The killer could have been a man or a woman.

  “Any chance you’ve got a time of death for me, Raf?” he said.

  Nijjer shrugged. “It was warm in here, so the body’s taken longer to cool. If you twisted my arm, I’d say sometime between 10 pm and 4 am, but don’t go quoting me on that.”

  A six-hour window, right in the dead of night. Someone on this quiet street must have heard something?

  His phone trilled in his pocket, and he took it out, glancing at the screen. He thumbed to accept the call, and made a beeline for the door.

  Outside, a couple of PCs had set up a cordon, but so far, the only onlookers were the people in the neighbouring houses, concerned faces peeking out from behind twitching curtains.

  “Ellie,” he said.

  “I’ve just heard.” Her voice was tinny on the other end of the line.

&n
bsp; “Heard what?”

  “Nicholas Abbott’s been murdered,” she said.

  “Jesus, that got around quickly.”

  “The housekeeper called her sister. You know how it is,” said Elspeth. “I’d expect the usual circus within an hour or two, as news spreads.”

  A pause.

  “Look, I can’t get you onto the scene, Ellie. It’s more than my job’s worth. You know what happened last time…” DCI Griffiths had come seriously close to demoting him, following his somewhat flexible approach to his partnership with Elspeth during the Carrion King investigation. If it hadn’t been for the result he’d achieved, and the killer’s subsequent conviction, then he suspected all current talk of promotion would have been a distant dream.

  “Don’t worry, that’s not why I’m calling,” she said, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  “Then what’s up?”

  “It’s just… I saw him yesterday, at Richmond’s, the tearoom in the village. It’s probably nothing, but there’s something I thought I should mention.”

  “What is it?”

  “I saw him grab hold of one of the waitresses. A young woman called Daisy. He put his hand on her behind. She told him if he did it again, he’d pay for it. He made some filthy comment and I intervened, threatening to call the police. In the end, she threw him out, saying he’d better leave before she did something she’d regret.”

  “So you think she might have something to do with his death?” said Peter.

  “I don’t know. It seems unlikely… I just thought it was worth looking into. If nothing else, it tells you a bit more about what he was like, why someone might have held a grudge against him. She didn’t seem like the type who would seek him out and murder him in his home.”