by Rebecca Tope
CHAPTER NINE
There was more snow during the night, but it made little impact on a world already uniformly white. Thea’s footprints across the yard and paddock had filled in to roughly half their previous depth, but were still clearly visible. There were no fresh ones to alarm her, she noted with relief.
It was Sunday, she remembered. A week since she had walked up to the church and met Janina. A quarter of the way through her house-sitting commission. Apart from the little matter of a vanishing dead man and record-breaking snowfalls, things weren’t going too badly. So why did she have such flutterings of anxiety in her midriff? Why was there such a strong sense of impending disaster hanging over her? Knowing there was a capable woman close by ought to be enough to remove the sense of isolation and burdensome responsibility. But it didn’t. There had been something challenging about Kate, as if she expected Thea to fail and come crawling to her for rescue. The effect of her visit had been to bolster Thea’s determination to manage by herself, and refrain from asking favours. She could walk to Northleach, as she’d said – although not on a Sunday. Tomorrow – she would find a big shopping bag and go out for milk and cake and a bottle of wine, and not request any helping tractor to get her there.
Sunday was also a day for contacting family and friends and catching up with the news. After her conversation with Jessica on Friday, she was unsure whether or not her daughter was eager to hear more about the mysterious footprints in the snow. She had been unusually cavalier about it at the time, when her normal stance was to express concern at her mother’s repeated escapades during the house-sitting commissions. But might she not have heard about the much more mysterious body, and the fruitless visit from the police? Wouldn’t that make a story good enough to reverberate around the various local stations?
But, she reminded herself, Jessica wasn’t with the West Midlands force, but was finishing her probationary period in Manchester, well beyond the scope of any gossip concerning the Cotswolds. She should hear about it at first hand from her mother. She might even have a credible suggestion as to what might have happened.
And then, when it came to it, Jess’s phone went unanswered, and her mobile was turned off, so Thea decided to leave it until later in the day. Instead, a little voice whispered, she could try Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis, who had until recently been her significant other, her lover and boyfriend and partner in detection of murderers. She and Phil had gone cool on each other, awkwardly giving permission for other relationships to develop, but promising to remain on friendly terms. Phil respected her judgment when it came to understanding malign motivations, or noticing revealing details concerning events in the Cotswold villages. He would believe her when she insisted the man in the field had been dead. And more and more, it seemed important that somebody should do that. It was forty-eight hours since the body had vanished, and the worry of it was increasingly debilitating. If the man had crawled away to shelter, wouldn’t he have really died long since, out in the cold? Phil would know what the police were doing about it, if anything. He would tell her why there seemed such a complete absence of activity, when common sense suggested that a concentrated search ought to be under way.
She tried, over and over again, to see the whole business through official eyes. A woman, known to be rational and even helpful in past investigations, had reported the discovery of an apparently dead man. When sent to investigate, the police team found nothing but ambiguous tracks leading to a patch of woodland. Snow had fallen all day, making any effort at following tracks difficult. Nobody had been reported missing, and no questions had been asked in the local area, as far as she knew. Possibly the connection with the freelance photographer, who lived in the area, had reassured the authorities that nothing was amiss in Hampnett.
Still, she concluded, there should have been some effort made to check. Somebody ought to have at least gone as far as the woods, to make sure the man wasn’t lying under the trees. Where was the caring spirit, the safety net of police concern that should have followed up her discovery and ensured there was nothing to worry about?
It had been that doctor, and his whining about the cold, that made them turn back. The sergeant and constable had not been senior enough, or committed enough, to pursue the matter. There had not been enough of them to effect a thorough search – and she wondered whether the presence of a small herd of Hereford cattle had been another deterrent. They would have gone back to the warm Cirencester station, filed their report stressing the absence of any meaningful evidence, and persuaded themselves that there was nothing more to worry about. Some other more urgent urban crisis would have arisen to distract them, and the whole thing would have been shelved – at least until the snow melted away, or somebody was reported missing. The police were only human, and nobody was going to relish slogging through deep snow on a hunt for a wild goose.
The day stretched ahead in the familiar Sundayish way that Thea hated. It ought to be that the high level of social interaction the previous day would carry her over, giving her plenty to think about – but the opposite seemed to be the case. She wanted to return to Janina’s household, and chat more with her and Simon. They were nice people, and it would be interesting to find out whether Bunny had come home yet. Plus there were other absentees, apparently. The beloved George and the sneezing Tony had also disappointed young Nicky. From sheer idle curiosity, Thea would have liked to hear the next part of the story.
But a far more compelling story was hanging in limbo on her very doorstep. She remembered a convoluted dream where the body she had found was in the same corner again, frozen solid with ice on his eyelashes and lips. Then he was gone and she was searching desperately for him, with Hepzie digging insanely in a snowdrift, and five large Hereford cows watching thoughtfully. The sense of obligation remained with her now she was awake.
Could she face another trudge across the fields to the patch of woodland which had struck her as significant on Friday? She could go and look for herself, just in case the man had managed to get himself there. She needed, for her own peace of mind, to have a look. If the man had reached the woods unaided, he had probably eventually got himself home and warm and sober, forgetting the whole embarrassing episode. That would be absolutely fine with Thea, and she held the thought close, like a talisman. But there were insistent connections forming in her subconscious that made her afraid that the reality would be quite otherwise.
* * *
She waited until late morning, pleased to see a weak sun filtering through hazy clouds. No risk of further snow, then, and surely some scope for optimism that a thaw was on the way? Old Kate’s aged father could be wrong. Everybody knew – didn’t they? – that those times were over when snow could last for weeks, and great freezes take hold of the country. Now it was never more than a few days, and then the worries would all be of flooding caused by the rapidly melting snow.
She debated with herself as to whether to take Hepzie with her, and concluded that it was a bad idea. The dog would be a distraction, liable to get lost and probably useless in tracking someone from two days ago. Making sure the doors were firmly closed, she set off alone, wearing hat, scarf and gloves as well as Lucy’s fleecy coat.
The novelty of the snow had long evaporated. It had a different feel under her boots – the surface crisp and crunchy, but beneath that it was much less dense, turning to crystals with spaces between them, collapsing at the impact of her feet. As if equally fed up with the alteration of his world, Donkey had emerged from his shed, and was walking with great deliberation round his perimeter fence. His route coincided with Thea’s at the bottom gate, and it seemed to her that he was gazing rather wistfully towards the trees where she was headed. For a crazy moment she imagined riding him through the snow, giving him some work to do for once in his life. But there was no harness, and even though she was small and light, and he was bigger than many donkeys she had met, it seemed like an unfair exploitation.
The tracks were still visible, but
the fresh snow of Friday afternoon had softened and blurred them. The Herefords were still milling around aimlessly. They had been given a quantity of hay, she noted, in a large circular metal cage some distance away. Their coats were shaggy, their breath steaming in front of their faces. Thea paused to admire them and the picture they made with their red coats vivid against the white snow.
It was relatively unusual to leave cattle outside all the year round – only the hardiest older breeds could withstand this sort of weather, and even they would need a lot of supplementary feeding. The workload for Kate had to be greatly increased by the snow, and yet she had not seemed unduly strained by it. It was a lifestyle that Thea could scarcely begin to imagine, despite her brief forays into the world of animal husbandry.
She brought her attention to the events of Friday: the timings especially. It had been about ten-thirty when she found the body, ten forty-five when she’d called the police. They had arrived at the barn not long before twelve-thirty, by which time the body must have gone. If the man had indeed been dead, then someone must have moved him during that time. Thea would not have seen anything, because she was at the back of the house, and besides, this hollow was invisible, even from upstairs in the barn. It all seemed entirely reasonable, as she stood in the snow and thought about it.
She puzzled determinedly as she headed for the fatal spot. Small tentative clues were offering themselves to her, along with theories: the cattle might have been deliberately driven over the place to obscure evidence with their footprints; someone might have been watching her from the woods, seeing her discovery and waiting for her to go away before they ran down and dragged the dead man away. Doing her best to behave like a detective, she examined the fence itself for shreds of fabric or hair or blood, only to find nothing at all. It was a well-made barrier, the wire forming squares, firmly fixed to quite new-looking posts every ten yards or so. But there lacked the usual strand of barbed wire along the top, much to Thea’s relief. Even if it might have yielded evidence, the damage to her own skin and clothes as she climbed over it would not have been welcome.
The patch of woodland was the only viable cover, and even that was far enough away for the idea of hauling a dead body over the snow to it to seem doubtful. The ground sloped upwards in that direction, and somebody stumbling along dragging a corpse would leave a trail impossible to conceal. Even so, she was resolved to investigate. Doggedly she trudged across the field to the patch of trees.
The trees were bare, standing proud of the snow and making a clean stark picture that Thea paused to admire. She could imagine it as a striking photograph or oil painting. Even better as a woodcut, with William Morris-like overtones, tendrils and holly leaves poking through the enveloping snow. I’m delirious, she thought. They’ll find me curled up dead in the cold, at this rate. She turned and looked back the way she’d come, able to see the roof of Lucy’s Barn but nothing more, despite being on higher ground than the natural bowl where the body had been. It looked a dauntingly long way off.
There were two strands of wire between the field and the woodland, which looked old, but still effective in keeping out the cattle. Thea ducked between the strands, managing to avoid falling over. Only when she had straightened up and looked around did she wonder if this barrier was enough to cast mortal doubt on her hypothesis. How would anyone get a dead man over it, without again leaving telltale signs? Under the trees, the snow was only a few inches deep, but enough to be noticeably disturbed by the kind of activity she had in mind. There were brambles and dry stalks of bracken and other undergrowth to negotiate. There was no sign of a path.
And then she saw, in startling clarity, a trail. Deep grooves carved in the snow, about two feet apart, beginning seven or eight yards to her right and leading away from her in a northerly direction. Between the grooves was a line of footprints. She stood staring at it for two full minutes before she worked out that it could only have been somebody dragging a sledge. Somebody had loaded the dead man onto a vehicle with runners, and dragged it towards the village. She was rather pleased with herself for arriving at this deduction. How many times did such a thing happen in modern England? It conjured old Christmas cards, or rural life in the frozen north.
OK, she reasoned carefully, I was right all along. She went to the place where the track began, and found the wire sagging, and a jumble of animal footprints on the field side. Somebody had somehow carried the body across the field into these woods, and then put him on a sledge and towed it towards… She tried to work out where the tracks would lead if they continued in the same direction. The village centre, near enough, came the conclusion.
She easily followed the trail to the far side of the wood, and out into a field that was almost level for a change. The marks were less easy to see out in the open, where the most recent snowfall had almost filled them. But the weight must have been considerable, and the runners had made grooves of sufficient depth to show through as slight indentations. They ran alongside a hedge, heading more or less north. At this rate, Thea mused, she would emerge onto the road – and who would have risked dragging a sledge containing a dead body along the public highway?
The answer came at the far end of the hedge. The marks turned at a sharp right angle, along the lower side of another hedge, through a conveniently open gateway and on in the same direction, running roughly parallel with the road leading into Hampnett itself.
She had lost all sense of distance, despite frequent backward glances to monitor where she was in relation to Lucy’s Barn, but knew she’d been walking for at least twenty minutes. It came as a surprise to see the tower of the church ahead of her, only a few hundred yards away.
Again the same question arose – wasn’t it impossibly risky to take a dead man into the centre of the village? Perhaps, she thought doubtfully, she was merely following the tracks of an enterprising wood collector. Someone who had gone to the clump of trees to gather dead boughs and take them home for the open fire.
But she carried on with her quest, following the parallel lines in an almost hypnotic state of mind. Her nose was cold, and even through her gloves her fingers had gone numb. Her legs felt heavy, the muscles down the back of her calves complaining at the weight of her boots and the clogging resistance of the snow.
And then she was onto a paved road, with well-tended hedges on both sides, signs of a few walkers and animals under her weary feet. The snow was still very evident, but there were signs that a car had turned around on the spot where she stood. It was a cul-de-sac, with a scattering of houses on either side. But it was not until she saw the church tower directly ahead that she understood that she had emerged into the very heart of Hampnett.
She walked on a few yards, still following the marks of the sledge. Abruptly, she found herself beside a small opening to the left, a little gate standing open, revealing a virgin patch of garden in front of a very small cottage. There, miraculously, were the sledge tracks again, with the footprints between them, heading right up to the front door along a pathway between two areas of garden.
It must have been somebody scrumping firewood, then, she thought with a pang of disappointment. Nothing to do with the dead man, after all. She was no further forward, and had just wasted a lot of time getting cold and lost for no good cause.
But then she noticed the door was ajar, which seemed strange in this security-conscious time and place. And the sledge was nowhere to be seen. And she could hear voices that sounded for all the world like young children.
Cautiously, she approached the little house, listening intently. She pushed the door wider and went in, transfixed by the scene in front of her in the shadowy room.
CHAPTER TEN
There was a jumble of humanity on the floor which took a few moments to distinguish. A body was on its back, legs drawn up, hands clutched in front of its chest. Two smaller people knelt on either side of it, and Thea slowly recognised Benjamin and Nicholas. Then she saw a straggly beard, and narrow shoulders, and made two distinct d
eductions. This was the body she had seen in the field, and the body was of the man she had met in the road, over a week before.
‘What happened?’ she cried, in a state of appalled surprise.
The boys looked at her as if an angel had arrived to save and terrify them. ‘It’s George,’ said Nicky. ‘He’s frozen dead.’ The older boy simply stared at the lifeless face, his mouth open, his skin a greenish white.
Thea approached the tableau gently, aware of a host of conflicting imperatives. ‘Where’s Janina?’ she asked, desperate at the idea that these young children had discovered a body all on their own.
To the boys this was entirely irrelevant. ‘It’s George,’ Nicky repeated, with the exasperation of a child being wilfully misunderstood by a stupid adult.
It unquestionably was the same man. Thea had established that in the first glances. The beard, the narrow shoulders and long legs were all entirely familiar.
‘You two have to go home, right away,’ she said with gentle authority. ‘I’m going to telephone the police and they’ll take him away. Has your mum come home yet?’
Benjamin made no move from where he knelt. His mouth was working, but no words came out. In contrast, the younger boy was hyperactive, jumping up and trotting to the door, turning back and jigging on the threshold.
‘Ben?’ Thea coaxed. ‘Get up now. I need to take you home.’
Not until she laid a hand on his shoulder did he move, and then it was more of a flinch than a genuine response.
‘Where’s Janina?’ she asked again.
‘Gone for a walk,’ said Nicky.
‘And Daddy?’
‘He’s on the phone.’
It seemed futile to enquire again after their mother. If she had indeed returned, then wouldn’t she have been with her children, after so many days of absence?