by Rebecca Tope
Thea sighed. ‘I can’t remember exactly. There was too much coming and going. I’m getting Thursday and Friday confused in my mind, now. On Thursday, he hadn’t been out. The snow was completely untouched everywhere. Then on Friday I saw the human footprints, and they freaked me out. I didn’t take much notice of the donkey, I was in such a state. He must have gone out eventually, although his floor was a mess – he’d mucked in there, instead of coming outside which he usually does. He seemed to be just as glum as he was on Saturday. That’s all I can remember,’ she repeated, helplessly.
‘Well I don’t suppose it matters what his movements were. But it seems a bit strange that he would walk directly down here and back unless there was something to attract his interest.’
‘True. And his normal pattern is just to patrol the upper part, closer to the house. I’d never seen him down here during the four days before it snowed, I must admit. But since the snow, he’s been down here a few times. He made quite a path for himself, look.’
Gladwin gave the trampled snow a brief glance, looking back over her shoulder at all the other sites that Thea had indicated. ‘I can think of a few scenarios which would fit what you’ve told me,’ she said, ‘but they’d all be theories with very little prospect of proof. People, cattle and a donkey walked about in the snow, between the donkey’s paddock and those woods. Then you found the marks of a sledge and followed them to George Jewell’s house.’
‘Where his dead body lay on the floor of his living room. Right.’
‘Even if somebody used the donkey to move him, that doesn’t help us much.’
‘You’re looking for a link to the other body,’ Thea suddenly realised. ‘Where is it now? What’s the procedure for identifying her?’
‘They’ll be moving her about now, I should think.’
‘It always takes so long,’ Thea burst out. ‘Why don’t you move them more quickly?’
‘Because we never get a second chance to understand the context. And there’s no hurry, let’s face it. Plus, it’s sometimes a good idea to let word get around, so the local people can make a contribution. More often than not, some crucial information will emerge in those first hours, while we’re doing all the initial scene-of-crime stuff. Somebody will say something, on the edge of the crowd.’
‘That’s why you tell the media so quickly,’ Thea said. ‘To give people fair warning, and get them to come out and talk.’
‘Something like that. You get a lot more on the spot than pulling them in for questioning.’
‘So you think someone who knows her will show up?’
‘I’m hoping.’
They walked up the hill, which Thea found uncomfortably steep, combined with the exhausting process of striding through the snow. It was close to a foot deep and clung in claggy lumps to her boots, weighing them down. Pausing at the shed to throw the donkey his afternoon ration of hay, while Gladwin watched, she felt totally worn out. Her feet were almost numb with cold. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she grumbled. ‘I’ll never like snow again.’
‘Maybe this is the last we’ll see,’ Gladwin suggested. ‘With global warming escalating the way it is, it might never happen like this again. It’s just a last freakish gasp before we forget snow ever existed.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Thea. ‘But it’s rather a pleasing thought.’
When they got back, they found that the stalwart Robin had made wondrous progress with his shovel. Thea’s car had a clear run for a good fifty yards, up a slight incline before the track levelled out. ‘You might find you can get out to the road from there,’ he told her proudly. ‘If you take it slowly, in first gear, it’ll cope OK, I think. It’s worth a try, anyway. Do you want to give it a go while we’re here? We can give you a push if you get stuck, then.’
Thea was cold and tired. She didn’t really want to go anywhere, despite the shortage of milk and easy-cook food. But it would be churlish to refuse the offer. ‘All right,’ she nodded. ‘Thanks very much.’
The car was clammy inside, and the door wouldn’t close properly. ‘The catch is frozen,’ Robin explained. ‘The handbrake might be as well. Run the engine for a bit to warm it up.’
It took them half an hour, but they managed to get to the end of the track. Gladwin rode next to Thea, because Robin said extra weight would help, and he walked behind, only needing to push twice. The track had become visible thanks to all the coming and going over the weekend, but it was almost dark by the time they emerged onto the road. ‘The shops are going to be shut,’ moaned Thea.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Gladwin. ‘They’ve got an hour or more yet.’
The police car was parked tidily, a few yards away, and the two officers went back to it, leaving Thea feeling bereft. Knowing she could drive out from Lucy’s Barn ought to have reassured her, and she tried to imply this in her effusive thanks to Robin – but in reality she felt little better. She still had to go back and take charge of all the animals through the long winter night. She had to drive back along the track in the dark, unsure as to whether further snow might fall to block her in again.
‘Leave the car up here,’ Robin told her. ‘Then you can walk out to it any time you like – whatever happens.’
She smiled weakly. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ she said.
* * *
She couldn’t bring herself to go out again after all that, opting to postpone the shopping until the following morning. The sky had grown thick and dark and ominous. ‘Oh, God, Heps, it’s going to snow again,’ she sighed. ‘Where will it all end?’
Jimmy and the rabbits had been overlooked in the visitation from DS Gladwin, and Thea hurried to see to them. It was only half past five, but felt much later. It made her aware of how shielded from the natural rhythms of light and dark people had become, even those living in semi-rural surroundings, as Thea did when at home. Her little house in Witney was in a row, neighbours on either side, and a street light shone until midnight. Now she was thrust back to primitive times when night began at five in the winter, and morning didn’t start till after eight. The real surprise was how easy it was to slide out of the twenty-first century, with the help of a bit of extreme weather. What must it be like on Dartmoor, or the Peak District, when snow descended? She could hardly imagine it, suspecting that only the most stoical of old farmers ever ventured out to see. Anybody who could would stay close to home, or rely on their four-wheel-drive vehicles to get them along the roads.
The lurking nervousness that never quite went away had been manageable while Gladwin had been there, but now it returned in full force. She couldn’t remember ever having felt so acutely aware of danger before. Fear had been associated with arguments, loss, something unfamiliar. Now it was much more physical. The whole outside world was frightening, in this isolated snowbound barn. There was nothing to protect her, despite the improved state of the lane. A police car could reach her if she summoned it – but how long would it take? And she still hadn’t discovered precisely how close Old Kate’s house was, despite having glimpsed it away to the south. Not far on a dry, sunny day; quite a bit further in deep obstructive snow.
Two people had died since she arrived in Hampnett. One was definitely local, and the chances were that the second was, too. Something was going on – even with almost no clear facts available to her, she could feel it through her fingertips. There had to be a connection – which may or may not include a third person: the one who had dragged the dead body of George Jewell half a mile over snowy fields. Could that possibly have been the dead woman, who had somehow decided to kill herself after making the trek with George’s body? It wasn’t too difficult to conjure such a scenario – the discovery of his death by someone who loved him; the struggle to return him to his rightful home; the onset of misery and exhaustion which sent her into her own distant corner of a hidden field, where she too lay down to die in the cold. It made a satisfying kind of sense, and Thea clung to it as a consoling explanation that need contain no threat to
her whatsoever.
But Gladwin had been unambiguous in her assertion that the second body had been murdered. She had been searching for signs of that third person, or so it seemed to Thea now. She had created complications where none had existed before, with her focus on the gate at the bottom of the paddock and the suggestion that somehow the donkey had been involved. Did she think the donkey had pulled the sledge bearing George’s body? Was that a possibility that Thea had overlooked? Could she have missed the hoofprints that would surely have been made?
There were people around, she reminded herself, as she turned up the radio that she had begun to see as her main companion. She could phone any one of a dozen friends or relations, too, and indulge in an hour of gossipy chat. Not something she did often, but always an option. The fear was irrational and unnecessary, and had to be confronted. She found herself listening for a knock on the door, which would turn out to be a friendly face, bringing reassuring laughter.
But no knock came. Instead there was a phone call from a distraught woman whose son’s computer had died without warning. ‘He has to have it for the weekend,’ she insisted. ‘What’s he going to do without it?’
‘How old is he?’ asked Thea, not averse to prolonging this snippet of human contact.
‘Nine.’
‘Hasn’t he got anything else to play with? Or a book to read? Or friends to go outside with?’
‘He has to have the computer,’ repeated the woman, as if speaking to a mental defective.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but Lucy will be away for quite a while yet. I’m sure you’ll be able to find somebody else.’
She gave the conversation some thought, afterwards. A nine-year-old boy apparently deeply addicted to a machine, which connected him to an unreal world of fantasy and potential exploitation, with the full collusion of his mother. From what she could glean, this was the norm nowadays. Mothers seemed to welcome the way their male children remained safely indoors, hunched over games where cars were stolen, people dismembered by explosive devices, and immensely long chase scenes culminated in savage violence. When the computer died, the real world intruded unbearably. Thea could see that it might come as a shock to actually have to find something three-dimensional for the boy to do.
All around the barn was silence. When she looked out at seven, there was a light snow falling; small indecisive flakes that could surely not increase the depth on the ground by very much at all. The donkey was snug in his shelter, the rabbit and her babies – which she had almost forgotten for most of the day – were warm in the delicious bed of soft fur. It was still only Monday – almost three weeks to go before Lucy came back. It seemed impossible to continue here for so long: the time stretched infinitely ahead, each day an ordeal of worry and trouble. But she had to do it. She had promised, and Lucy had paid her half her fee in advance. There was absolutely no choice about it, and besides, it could only get better from here on. Couldn’t it?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tuesday arrived after a restless night, in which the silence had seemed deeper and more terrifying every time she woke. Without the spaniel on the bed with her, she didn’t think she could have borne it. She spent a whole hour, between three and four, listening for some sound, however faint. She heard one motor engine – or so she told herself – out on the main road, less than a mile away. But there was no fox or owl or cat out on such a night. Hepzie was disturbed by this unfamiliar wakefulness, and kept crawling up to lick her mistress’s face and thump a consoling tail on the duvet.
The snow had not perceptibly deepened, but it had a fresh whiter appearance, with the footprints and tyre marks blurred and partly filled by the new sprinkling during the night. There was no sign of anything alarming or different, and Thea went out with her shoulders squared, determined to shake off her foolish fears, and behave like any unimaginative farmer.
The baby rabbits were alive, their mother and aunties all seeming eager for their breakfast. The long hair that grew between their ears and sideways from their cheeks made them look raffish and carefree, as if life was too short to keep hair under control. They fell on the carrots that Thea gave them, nibbling one each, in identically neat patterns from the middle outwards, which was very entertaining to watch. ‘Simple pleasures,’ Thea murmured to herself, thinking she ought to take some photos of these odd-looking creatures.
The donkey needed more water, and she lugged two full buckets across the paddock for him, puffing and panting from the effort. He was standing peacefully in his byre, the hay all gone from the previous afternoon. Remembering the questions from Gladwin, Thea gave him a close examination, wondering whether he had ever been required to work in his life. Had anybody ever ridden on his back, or harnessed him to some sort of equipage? There was no sign of rubbed hair on his back or head; no traces of a bridle or straps. Except, she belatedly noted, on his chest. As she stroked a hand down his neck, she encountered a rough patch on the breastbone. He flinched when she touched it, and she found a scabbed abrasion when she parted the winter coat for a better look. It proved nothing, she told herself. He could have done it to himself in any number of ways. But the picture of him pulling a sledge containing a heavy body would not leave her mind. All the pressure would be exactly on that spot, and a careless buckle might easily scratch him and make just such a sore place. But a harness would surely have been found with the sledge and raised just such questions.
The need for essential groceries had become urgent, so the moment she had completed the morning work, she took the dog and headed for the car at the top of the lane. The snow was increasingly friable, the top crust turning to ice, the lower parts growing hollow. It was briefly entertaining to step onto those areas which had not yet been trampled, and feel the initial crunch, before her foot went through into nothingness. No wonder that some communities had several different words for snow: this stuff was nothing like the dense chalky substance of the first day or two, where a spade could carve through it like a cake knife through thick icing sugar. Now it was little more than brittle white ice.
Her car started obediently, and she turned towards Northleach and its well-stocked shops. She drove slowly, taking note of the long street of modest terraced houses before coming into the market square, watched over by the big Cotswold church. Another over-large display of affluence, financed by profits made from wool. Profits, perhaps, so embarrassingly big that they had to be donated to the clergy to assuage some lurking sense of guilt.
The air was less hostile than it had been, and she took her time, walking around the square to view it from all angles. Even so, there was little to detain her. She could go into the church, which she could see had a handsome stained-glass window that could only be appreciated from inside – but the prospect did not much appeal. So she returned to the car, where the dog waited for her, wondering whether liberation was imminent.
Two men were standing near the war memorial, their backs to her. They were not speaking, and seemed to have no motivation to move. This was oddly unusual and, her attention caught, Thea paused to watch them. One moved a little way, and she recognised the profile of Simon Newby. From there it took no time to grasp that the other man was his brother – the photographer, Tony.
It did not occur to her to continue on her own business as if she hadn’t seen them. The presence of even faintly familiar people was a cause for celebration, and she trotted over to them without a thought.
‘Hello, you two,’ she said. ‘Remember me?’
The bright tone, the smile and little laugh, all died away as they both turned to face her.
They were clearly brothers. Of precisely the same height, with similar hair and stature, they stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at her blankly. ‘The house-sitter,’ said the photographer, eventually, in a slightly husky voice. ‘How’re you doing?’
Only then did she begin to understand that they were not doing well at all. Simon gave her a look that was like that of a drowning man. ‘I’m all right,’ she said slowly. �
�Has something happened?’
‘Bunny,’ said Tony, the younger brother. ‘We’ve just been to identify her.’ He glanced at Simon, as if for permission to say more. When there was no reaction, he added, ‘She was frozen in a field.’
‘My God!’ She knew instantly that they were talking about the second body, that the mother of those two little boys was dead. That Simon had been widowed, and the shock was still so fresh that he had not learnt any of the expected responses or reactions. ‘I heard about it on the news yesterday. I’m terribly sorry.’
The fact that she had undergone the same annihilating experience herself made it no easier to come up with useful words. All she could think of were questions, and she did vaguely recall that these could become burdensome very quickly.
‘We had to go and talk to Ben’s teacher,’ he continued. ‘Funny, the things that take priority.’
‘Those poor little boys,’ Thea uttered, entirely in agreement that their needs must come first. ‘What a dreadful thing.’ The dreadfulness was beyond her imagining, until she remembered that their mother had been absent for several days already, without any undue trauma, as far as she had been able to see. ‘Will Janina stay on longer now?’ The Bulgarian girl was suddenly crucial, surely – the mother substitute that couldn’t possibly be dispensed with now.
‘Somebody killed her,’ said Simon, speaking for the first time. ‘They murdered my wife. How is that possible? I thought she was in Bristol.’
Thea experienced a painful jumble of emotions at this. A surge of anxiety, just when she’d begun to think there was nothing to fear; pity for Simon and his boys; weariness at the prospect of the investigation that would now ensue and which she would probably find herself involved in. She thought of DS Gladwin, and that other body in the snow.
‘So…George…’ she stuttered, unsure of what she was trying to ask.