by Rebecca Tope
She remembered being with her father on a drive to Leicestershire, when she had been six or seven. He had often taken just one of his children along for the ride when he had to go on one of his trips. The ostensible purpose had been work related – something wrong with a machine, he would say, vaguely, leaving nobody much the wiser. But this time, he also planned to pay a surprise call on a cousin he hadn’t seen for years.
The cousin’s name was Lancelot Jones, which helped considerably when it came to finding him – necessary because he had moved house and nobody had thought to keep a note of the new address. All they’d had to do was call in at the post office in the small town they remembered he had gone to, and within moments a full set of instructions had been provided by the delighted woman behind the counter. No hesitation, no suspicions that Dad was a hit man or someone set on long-harboured revenge. Probably the presence of a small girl made a difference. In any case, Lancelot had been happy to see them, and gave them sandwiches with oily fish in them that Thea could never remember without feeling sick.
The Internet had replaced the post office in recent times, but with much the same levels of usefulness. Anybody called Lancelot Jones would almost certainly jump out, with email address, or even a landline phone number. People wanted to be found, on the whole – especially if they had a service to offer or something to sell.
And so she finally got herself there. Forsythia Cottage was readily located at the end of a short row of houses; small, neat and set back some way from the road. Without pausing to consider how intrusive her sudden appearance might seem, she walked up the path and rang the doorbell. It was almost eleven in the morning, on a Thursday, and most people would be at work. If Simon hadn’t mentioned that Tony was laid up with his chill, she might never have taken such a step.
But it turned out to be justified. The man she remembered from the main street of Northleach, telling her that his sister-in-law had been murdered, was standing in the doorway, the door only partly open, wearing a red dressing gown. His feet were bare. ‘What do you want?’ he said, making no effort to conceal his awareness of who she was and where he had seen her before.
‘I heard you were poorly, so I came to see whether I could do anything for you.’ It remained an oddly Victorian notion, even now she was here. ‘I would have brought you some calves’ foot jelly, if I’d known where to find it.’
He did not laugh, or even smile. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘What am I to you?’
‘A distraction,’ she flashed back.
Still no smile, but he did roll his eyes in an exaggerated way. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well I guess I’ll have to let you in.’
The interior of the house was bare of any superfluous decoration. Unlike most dwellings, it seemed larger on the outside than the inside. A main living room evidently served for eating, relaxing and working. Thea sought in vain for displays of the photographer’s work. The only area of untidiness was a large computer desk with an expensive-looking A3 printer standing next to it. Catalogues, packs of paper, ink cartridges and several cables formed a small pool of chaos in an otherwise pristine room.
‘I’m not especially ill,’ he said, as he offered her a place on a cream-coloured two-seater sofa. ‘I just didn’t think I should go out again in the cold for another day or so. I’m working.’
‘Any more police commissions?’
He went very still, and looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not doing that any more.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ she assured him. ‘Not when you might have to take pictures of your own dead sister-in-law.’
‘They wouldn’t have let me, anyway. I’m too closely related.’
‘Oh.’ Of course, he was effectively part of the Newby household. Hadn’t he been taking care of his wretched brother when the news of Bunny’s death had emerged? Hadn’t she discussed him with Simon? And yet, all along she’d imagined him as detached, on the outside of the intimate circle of the bereaved. This had to be because her first encounter with him had been as a member of a police team – she associated him more with Gladwin and Phil than with the murder victim.
‘So…coffee?’
‘Thanks,’ she nodded, beginning to feel slightly foolish. ‘But listen…exactly where was Bunny found, do you know?’
He reared back, chin high, revealing a thin vulnerable throat. He was very pale, she noticed, with long fingers and narrow shoulders. ‘What’s it to do with you?’ he spluttered.
‘Well, nothing, officially. But I did find George Jewell’s body, and then the detective superintendent came to see me, and I have got rather attached to sweet little Nicky. I just want to help,’ she finished weakly.
‘I don’t know the precise answer anyway,’ he said. ‘She was hit, I think, and then dumped in a ditch just down the lane from the house.’
Thea’s head began to buzz. She had envisaged a spot rather further away. ‘You mean somewhere near that clump of trees, where I thought George might have gone?’
‘So it seems. There’s a path that runs the other side of the trees from where you’re staying. It connects with the road they live in. The snow had covered her almost completely, as I understand it.’ He spoke hoarsely, steadfastly avoiding Thea’s gaze.
‘Did she die before or after George? That seems really important, don’t you think?’
He shrugged tightly, edging slowly towards a door she assumed led to the kitchen. ‘Not my problem,’ he said. ‘They’re both dead – isn’t that enough?’
‘Did you know George?’
‘Of course. He lived next door to my brother.’
‘Yes, I know he did. I’ve been in the house, remember.’
‘Have you?’ He frowned at her.
‘Yes,’ she said with patient emphasis. ‘I followed the trail back from where I saw him in the snow, and it led to his house.’
The adam’s apple in Tony’s throat bobbed and dipped as he digested this information. ‘Oh,’ he said, still trying to escape to the kitchen. ‘Nobody told me that.’
She frowned, trying to untangle who knew what, and whether she could trust Tony to be telling the truth.
‘That seems quite odd,’ she said. ‘After all, you must have been there since they found Bunny. You were with Simon on Tuesday in Northleach.’
‘Be quiet,’ he ordered her fiercely. ‘Stop telling me things. Isn’t this bloody mess bad enough without some ghoulish little house-sitter making everything worse?’
It was an accusation she had heard before, and it always touched a nerve. She said nothing more as he finally got out of the room and started noisily to make coffee. At least he’s not so angry he’s throwing me out without a drink, she thought ruefully. She might be a ghoulish little house-sitter – it was the little that rankled most sorely – but he seemed prepared to endure her presence for a while longer.
She always hoped that she could resolve nagging questions simply by asking people to supply the answers, and was generally disappointed. Either somebody volunteered an important fact without prompting, or they told lies. Or they just remained silent and tried to keep out of her way. It made her tired to realise that she would have to be devious and clever with this man if he was to disclose pertinent details – assuming he knew some. Perhaps he was a mere onlooker with a cold and a very ordinary horror of death, violent or otherwise.
Except he had applied for the position of police photographer, and that suggested a stronger stomach than that possessed by an ordinary person. So maybe he was lying, after all.
He came back five minutes later with two mugs of instant coffee. She was surprised by the speed, and the downmarket beverage. Should she detect a subtle insult in his failure to make something better? She sipped it with a display of satisfaction, and sat back on the sofa.
‘Did you believe me?’ she asked, chattily. ‘On Friday morning? What did they say about me afterwards?’
‘I…I couldn’t see why you’d invent such a story. But I thought you’d got it wrong – th
at he was only sleeping or unconscious, not dead. The others said the same.’
‘They had to believe that, didn’t they – to justify not carrying out a proper search for him.’
‘The sergeant wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to order up a search party. But they got a call, at the top of your lane, about a big accident near Stow. You probably heard about it.’
‘No,’ she said absently. ‘Did it take the full team to deal with, then?’
‘Obviously not. But the weather created quite a bit of chaos. Two plods were off sick, and one couldn’t get his car out. Usual sort of thing, never enough bodies for the work.’
‘You seem to have picked it all up very quickly. I thought Friday was your first assignment?’
He flushed, showing some colour for the first time. ‘I was in the force for a bit, ten years ago. I packed it in.’
‘Really? My daughter’s a probationer, you know. I keep expecting her to call it a day, but she insists she loves it. She’s coming here on Sunday,’ she remembered. ‘For a visit.’
‘Women and gays still have a hard time,’ he said, as if repeating a line that had the truth of a well-worn platitude.
Thea looked at him, slowly understanding that he had just told her something. ‘You’re gay?’ she queried.
‘Yup. Not that it makes a lot of difference to anything – not had a partner for years now.’ A flicker of sadness crossed his face, a contraction of his features, and a slow intake of breath. ‘Did you get a good look at his face?’ he continued in an apparent non sequitur.
‘Who? George?’ Tony nodded. ‘Well, not really. Hardly at all in the field, but a bit more in the house. Long grey hair and a straggly beard.’
‘He had beautiful eyes, and a glorious voice. Deep, with a creamy Oxford accent.’
‘Ah.’ The story was shifting, expanding into some new revelation that sat at odds with what had gone before. ‘Well…no, I’m afraid I didn’t get any sense of that. Although I think I did see him a fortnight ago, when I first got here. Tall, and somehow loose. I thought he might have been a ghost, which is quite weird, given what happened afterwards.’
He looked at her with the first sign of genuine interest since she arrived. ‘Good God,’ he said.
‘I know it seems like idle curiosity, and an almost rude interference, but I really care about what happened to him.’ She clutched the mug with both hands. ‘And Bunny.’
‘You never met her, did you? What can you possibly care about her?’
‘I’ve met her children, and Simon and Janina. I care quite a lot about them, especially Nicky.’
Tony snorted cynically. ‘Yes, you would,’ he spat. ‘Everybody cares so immensely about that kid. Just because he has long eyelashes, everyone worries for his emotional welfare. Not Ben, you notice. Nobody ever talks about Ben. It was just the same with me and Simon – everybody favoured him because he had nice eyes.’
‘You’re right,’ she said contritely. ‘I’m sorry.’ She clutched at a faint notion that she was missing something, that Tony had obliquely told her more than he intended, if she could only interpret it.
‘Well, I should get dressed,’ he said pointedly, when the coffee was finished. ‘I’ll have to go out later to get some milk and a paper.’
A phone began to trill, playing a rapid version of ‘Jingle Bells’ and they both looked round the room for it. Thea’s eyes landed on the mantelpiece, over a tiled fireplace, where two mobiles sat side by side.
Tony grabbed one of them, and thumbed a small button, causing the phone to fall silent. ‘Not answering any calls today,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing that won’t wait.’ She was reminded of Lucy’s agonised computer customers, desperate for someone to repair their beloved machine. But she supposed that a photographer could turn away work without too much resulting disappointment.
She looked at his narrow body, wondering whether another man would find it any more alluring than she did. There was something melancholy about him, living in his little cottage all alone.
‘Thanks for talking to me,’ she said, as she left. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.’
His answering smile was brief and superficial. ‘I probably ought to thank you for your interest. I’m not sure of the protocol for a situation like this.’
‘There isn’t one,’ she said. ‘You just have to make it up as you go along.’
It wasn’t until she was almost back at the barn that the obvious parallels between Tony Newby and George Jewell struck her. Both men lived on their own in small Cotswold cottages, keeping themselves neat and apparently quiet, carrying an indefinable whiff of failure about them. At least, George’s failure had been more overt, relying as he did on the charity of Kate’s father. How unusual for a property to be squatted, as it effectively was, if she had understood correctly. Tony had hinted at feelings for George, with his eulogy about the man’s eyes and voice. Had George also been gay, then? Presumably not – otherwise why wouldn’t Tony have made advances to him? For the two of them to get together would surely have solved several problems. Tony was in his thirties, and George in his fifties; would such an age difference matter? Perhaps Tony did reveal his feelings and received a rebuff. The hypotheses multiplied in her fertile imagination, until she dismissed them all. The only thing that she had really gleaned was that Tony had a closer involvement with what had happened than she had first appreciated.
Yet there had still been no elucidation about Bunny, other than the location of the discovery of her body. With the distances so much shorter than she had first assumed, a wholesale revision of the timescale seemed to be called for. The two bodies had effectively been on either side of a relatively small patch of woodland – probably well under half a mile apart. As soon as she got back indoors, she grabbed the ubiquitous Pathfinder map, and checked her mental picture of how the points were related.
She had been right – it was about a third of a mile from the spot where she had first found George to the place where a path led up to the northern side of the trees. On a dry summer’s day, the dumping of either body would have been impossibly close to habitations, with walkers and dogs certain to see them within hours. So…had the snow been a fortunate accident, making everything easier for the killer, or had it been an integral part of the whole plan? In the case of George, it had been the means of his suicide – but a sharp frost would have served the same purpose.
* * *
Had it been a foolish mistake to go and talk to Tony? Would he immediately report her snooping to his brother, or another person Thea had never met – a person known to Tony as the probable killer of Bunny? It seemed all too possible that connections existed between local families that she could never hope to unravel. Even more possible that her transparent interest in the events of the past week had been noted, rendering her unpleasantly vulnerable in the isolated house where nobody would ever hear her scream.
Without thinking any further about it, she called the mobile number that Gladwin had given her. She had no opening line ready, no pretext for disturbing a busy detective, other than a need to hear a competent voice. She could think of no one else who might satisfy that need.
The phone was answered by a recorded voice telling her to leave a message. Doggedly, Thea told the machine her name, with a request that DS Gladwin get back to her. ‘It isn’t really urgent,’ she added, ‘but I would like to speak to you.’
Then she prepared herself an omelette for lunch, spending extra time on sautéed potatoes and peas to go with it. The cat, increasingly friendly with every passing day, sat on the kitchen table watching closely. At one point, as Thea passed it carrying the empty eggshells to go in the compost bin, the animal reached out a deft paw and swiped a shell onto the floor. A sharp claw snagged in Thea’s cuff, and for a moment the two were linked. ‘Hey, let go!’ she told the cat.
It seemed the claw would not retract easily, and she had to detach it by force. Spirit hissed at her, and the moment the paw was free, gave another
swipe, this time catching the bare skin on the back of Thea’s hand.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ she protested. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Flicking its long black tail, the cat jumped down from the table and left the room without a backward look. Thea sucked the beads of blood from the scratch and wondered about the odd behaviour of other people’s pets.
It was – as far as she could recall – the first time an animal in her care had deliberately hurt her, and it added to her sense of insecurity, here at Lucy’s Barn. Danger seemed to be in the air, hanging over her, waiting to pounce. Awful things had happened already, but she could not shake the conviction that something even worse was about to strike.
Forcing the omelette down, against her body’s inclination, she contemplated the afternoon ahead with a profound lack of enthusiasm. She could clean out the donkey and give him a fresh new bed of straw. She could inspect the baby rabbits, and perhaps even pick one up for a cuddle. She could sit with Jimmy and talk to him, communing with a creature that appeared to share her current frame of mind. Indeed Jimmy was a permanent example of melancholy. Perhaps it was his presence in the house that was doing such damage to her own mood; a lowering reminder that life could go dreadfully irreversibly wrong at any moment.
But then, Jimmy had been rescued, and Thea too had begun to function again a year or so after the abrupt death of her husband.
She got up and went back to the living room, followed by her own dog, who also seemed rather subdued, only to see the front door opening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was a weird horror-movie moment, despite the fact of it being broad daylight. She had left the door on the latch, never for a second thinking to lock herself in, despite her gathering anxieties. In the tiny moment before the intruder could be identified, Thea’s natural optimism asserted itself and she found herself expecting to see Lucy Sinclair, home early for some unfathomed reason.