A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  As she drove into town, she had to stop at a T-junction. The traffic was heavy – tourists mostly, she noted – and she had to wait some time. Then a police car turned from the main road into the one where she waited, and she recognised Den. Without thinking, she waved hard at him, anxious to catch his eye. At the very last moment, he saw her, and she could see every step in the process by which he remembered their last encounter. Then he braked, a few yards back from where she was, and leant out of his open window.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’ he called. ‘Pull in for a minute, will you? I’ll just turn round.’ He indicated a farm entrance a little way ahead as his intended turning place.

  Easier said than done, she thought. Several cars were behind her, all wanting to get out into the main road. What was she supposed to do? As a gap appeared in the traffic, she pulled out, turning left, and drew in at the roadside, fifty yards beyond the junction. Someone hooted at her, and she almost drove off again. Everything seemed difficult, confused. Cars whizzed past her, and she felt frightened and breathless.

  Then he was at the passenger door, leaning down from his immoderate height, smiling through the glass at her. He was in uniform, his smartness making him seem important and reliable. ‘I can’t leave it here,’ she said helplessly. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  He opened the door. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to flummox you. But I wanted to see you and it seemed too good a chance to miss. Are you in a rush to get somewhere?’

  ‘Not really. Sort of. It’s not important.’ His long face was the epitome of patience. He gentled her, sensing the tension.

  ‘Drive round to the car park, then. I’ll meet you there. Is that okay?’

  ‘I’ll never get out into this traffic again. Look at it!’

  ‘Allow me.’ He stood up straight, and went round behind her car. In a state approaching disbelief, she watched while he stepped into the road, and held up one hand. The closest car ignored him, but the next one hurriedly drew to a halt. Fumblingly, she started off, jerking the clutch and steering an amateurish arc as she got under way.

  He took her to a small backstreet café for coffee, and gracefully folded himself into the cramped seat. He asked her how she was feeling and whether things on the farm were still under control. She watched him, knowing he had something more to say. The sun had caught his cheeks, roughening the skin. Again she remembered how she had admired him as a schoolgirl.

  He began talking as soon as they had their coffee in front of them. ‘Amos is doing well,’ he said. ‘They think he’ll make a good recovery.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. Though it’ll never be the same for him, without Isaac. I don’t suppose he’ll want to stay in the house, by himself. Poor old chap. He looked so awful, staggering down the field to get help, covered in blood.’

  She was prattling, much as she’d done that morning with Sam. Talking helped, she’d discovered. Just stringing words together, letting them pour out to anyone who would listen, was comforting in a strange way.

  Den nodded briskly, and stirred his coffee, even though he hadn’t put any sugar in it. ‘Don’t you want to know what he’s been saying?’

  ‘What? Has Amos been telling you about the attack? Gosh, that’s progress, isn’t it. Was it somebody he knew?’

  ‘Well, he’s talking properly at last. And he’s given a bit of a description of the attacker. But it isn’t a lot of help, really.’

  She frowned at him. ‘Is this some kind of test? You want to see if I’m nervous of what Amos might tell you? Surely you wouldn’t be that devious?’

  He laughed, showing no sign of embarrassment. ‘No, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I just thought you’d be keen to know, for your own purposes. I mean, aren’t you scared that there’s some maniac loose in the neighbourhood, hiding out somewhere, ready to kill again?’

  She smiled. ‘You’ve been reading too many tabloid headlines,’ she said, feeling older and wiser than him. ‘My Dad would call this typical police scaremongering. You know – every time there’s a child killed or woman raped, some police person comes on the telly and says every woman and child should stay indoors, and behave with great caution. Making it our problem.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t get it. Whose problem should it be, then?’

  ‘I don’t mean problem, exactly. Almost our fault. Blaming the victim. You’d have to hear Dad on the subject to follow the argument. He was brilliant at putting the other point of view. And he brought us up to be sensible. It’s no good – you’re not going to make me believe in some monster hiding in the bushes.’

  ‘Then who killed Isaac?’ He leant forward, staring her in the face. ‘And who killed your father?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied carefully. ‘But I think it must have been someone who hated him, or who would benefit from his death.’

  ‘And yet when it happened we all thought it was an accident. There are quite a few red faces over that, I can tell you. And I haven’t come out of it smelling of roses, by a long way.’

  ‘Why, what should you have done?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t look very thoroughly for marks where he might have skidded. We didn’t ask ourselves why he was so far from the edge – I mean, why did he go so far in? Lots of little things. The slurry wasn’t all that deep, really. He could have stood up in it. I’ve had a right telling-off, to be honest. Letting Sam move things about and clean up, not examining it right at the start. We just filled in the G5 and more or less left it at that. The post-mortem just confirmed what we assumed.’

  ‘We all felt sure it was an accident, then,’ she said. ‘It never occurred to anybody that it might have been anything else. It must happen all the time – I mean, murder isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when a person dies, is it? If the Grimms hadn’t been attacked, we’d probably still be talking about an accident. Although—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think I could ever really believe that. Dad wasn’t the type to have accidents. I keep saying that, don’t I? He just wasn’t, though. He always had everything under control. And he didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke or anything, according to that Coroner’s man. Somebody must have pushed him in, and then I suppose held him down.’ She shuddered. ‘What a terrible thing to do.’

  ‘And the inquest is next week.’ He spoke as if this was the real point that he had to discuss. Lilah waited for what might come next.

  ‘It’s sure to be embarrassing,’ he explained. ‘Foul play now looks much more likely than it did to start with, but there’s scarcely any evidence available to indicate what happened. Coroners don’t like that kind of set-up. It’s messy. “Unlawful killing by person or persons unknown” is what he’ll probably say. And nobody likes that. It puts a lot of pressure on the police, and makes the whole thing very public.’

  ‘There’ll be an inquest for Isaac as well, I suppose?’

  Den nodded. ‘That’s much more straightforward. And everyone’s hope now is that we’ll find this gypsy—’

  ‘What? Who said anything about a gypsy? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, Amos’s description. Sounded like some vagrant. Rather what we’d been thinking. Given that there’s nobody in the world could possibly have a proper motive for smashing that poor fool’s head in.’

  ‘Wait, wait. This isn’t making sense. You think this tramp or whatever went from Redstone to the Grimms’, randomly killing Daddy and Isaac, for no good reason, and now that Amos has told you what he looks like, you’ll just stumble across him one day and arrest him for a double murder.’ She raised her eyebrows at him, feeling again the sensation of her father somehow inside her, projecting his own clear-sighted cynicism onto the matter.

  Den grinned uneasily. ‘Well, not quite like that. But you must admit it fits the facts.’

  ‘It doesn’t fit the people. It doesn’t fit with real life and what makes people do things. Surely you can see that?’

  ‘Okay, Miss Freud. Tell me wher
e we’re going wrong.’

  ‘I already have. I don’t believe in psychopaths lurking in the bushes, killing for the sake of it. It’s fairytale stuff. I know it would be highly convenient for all of us if it was true, but it’s too bloody easy. Something’s going on, right here amongst people we know, and you’re supposed to be figuring it out. You haven’t been asking the right questions. Oh – this is so frustrating.’

  She wriggled on the plastic seat, gripping her hands together in a double fist. ‘This is unreal,’ she blurted. ‘You and me – we were at school together, for heaven’s sake.’

  He laughed, and leant back, stretching out the long legs that had been folded up uncomfortably to fit beneath the meagre formica table. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he said. She grinned back at him.

  ‘Nothing, really. It’s just – here we are, trying to make sense of two horrible deaths and you’re just Den Cooper, who used to be on the school bus. It doesn’t match up.’

  He looked hard at her, his gaze flickering slightly, as he focused alternately on her two eyes. It made her feel very thoroughly inspected. She could see him thinking again.

  ‘I’d forgotten that feeling,’ he said slowly. ‘The job does that to you. You see crime and death and awful misery, even in this little place, and you forget what ordinary life is like. To me, everything is ordinary now. They call it being desensitised.’

  She tried to get a sense of what he meant. What, anyway, was ‘ordinary’? She had seen unborn lambs that had to be cut up alive in order to be delivered; she had seen a cow die of bloat and countless rats and rabbits killed by the farm dogs and cats. She had watched television news reports of carnage and unspeakable distress. She hadn’t been especially sensitive herself. And yet—

  ‘Then why do you look so queasy now?’ she asked gently. ‘Is it because you’ve never had to deal with a murder before?’

  The word hung between them, threatening and alien. Each one of them leant back slightly, away from the very idea.

  Den shook his head. ‘The first week I was in the job, a chap stabbed his wife eighteen times. I knew her and identified the body. But this is different. Too much mystery, too few clues, and whatever anyone says, there is undeniably a killer out there somewhere, and I for one don’t feel the least bit happy about that.’

  ‘Then ask me some questions. Pursue your enquiries. After all, I must surely be a suspect, officially speaking.’

  ‘Okay.’ He was abruptly businesslike. ‘How’s this? Was your father’s life insured?’

  For a moment, she just stared at him. Then, ‘Heavens, I don’t know. Nobody’s said anything. Probably not, knowing Dad.’

  ‘Did he leave a will?’

  ‘I think so, yes. The solicitor is supposed to be sending it to Mum any day now. He wanted her to go and see him, but she said it could all be done by post.’

  ‘But you don’t know what’s in it?’

  ‘No, Mum’s in charge of all that. Except – Daddy did once say the farm would be mine when he died.’ She looked at a shiny chromium urn behind the café counter and paused before adding wistfully, ‘He probably didn’t mean it.’

  ‘But you believed him?’

  ‘I think I did, yes. But I thought it wouldn’t happen until I was at least forty.’

  ‘But it could only be yours if he specifically willed it to you. Otherwise, it’ll have to be divided between the widow and his children …’

  ‘All his children?’

  ‘That’s right. Why, are there others we don’t know about?’ His laugh died when he saw her nod.

  ‘Two. I’ve got two grown-up half-brothers. Mum thinks I’ve forgotten about them – she hasn’t even mentioned them since he died – but I haven’t. I’ve been thinking about them quite a lot lately. Do you think we’ll have to share Redstone with them?’

  ‘Probably not. He’ll have covered all that in his will, presumably. We’ll want to check, of course. They didn’t come to the funeral, did they?’

  Lilah shook her head. ‘They seem to be completely out of touch. I suppose it’s something you should explore.’ She wanted to go, sensing deeper chasms ahead, too deep for her to confront right now. ‘I think I’d better be moving,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’ He looked relieved, and she felt offended. He slid his long body out from the cramped seat, paid for the coffees and left without waiting for her to accompany him.

  Like someone in need of fresh air, she thought, as she gave him a little wave.

  Father Edmund watched the little car disappear from sight, and stood without moving for another half-minute. He became aware of the muscle at the hinge of his jaw bulging rhythmically as he ground his teeth. It was a habit he had possessed for thirty years. It went with deep and uncomfortable thought.

  That girl looked so – blithe. Her hair bouncing, a red T-shirt carelessly thrown on. It was all wrong. Where were the signs of suffering that there ought to be? Hadn’t the wretched creature had any feelings for her father? Was life held so cheap these days that a bereaved daughter could swan half-naked round the countryside only days after burying her father?

  He considered the wisdom of paying a visit to Miranda, knowing that she would be alone … The boy had gone back to school, he knew: more than one villager had reported seeing him on the bus that morning. A pastoral call, it would be – a humble enquiry as to the welfare of the widow, now that life was slowly pulling itself back to normal. Besides, it would perhaps help her to unburden her anxieties regarding the coming inquest. That, surely, must be weighing heavily upon the whole family; it was a matter that surely must require the support and encouragement of the parish clergyman.

  The villagers were divided about the inquest. As far as they could determine, there would be no progress made on discovering the identity of Guy’s killer. It was horribly exciting to have a double murder committed in their midst, and yet the lack of an obvious culprit was deeply disconcerting. Several of them were rendered very nervous by the events at Redstone and the Grimsdale place. Parents were keeping their children under firm surveillance. Nobody went for country walks in the Redstone direction. The taint of mystery and suspicion was deepening; Father Edmund had heard certain individuals clearly state that they wished there’d never been such a family as the Beardons.

  Yes, he decided: he would drive himself up to Redstone and offer his services to Miranda Beardon. It was the very least he could do. It was the right and proper duty of any conscientious priest, redolent of former times, when his parishioners might have depended on him. The idea that it required a certain amount of courage on his part only enhanced the project in his own eyes.

  * * *

  He found her in the small patch of garden at the front of the house – if front it could be called. Like many farmhouses, the entrances were modest and could be termed neither ‘front’ nor ‘side’ nor ‘back’ with any certainty. People entered through any of them wearing dirty boots, carrying muddy lambs. He approached the straggly area, noting the nettles amongst the shrubs and the skeletal stalks of long-finished tulips, and stood waiting for Miranda to acknowledge him. He knew she had seen his car come into the yard, and must have realised who was visiting. The deliberate snub in the way she continued to wrench at the buttercup roots did not go unnoticed.

  At last she stood up straight, thin and defensive in a baggy shirt and denim shorts. ‘Hello,’ she said, looking directly into his face. ‘We don’t see you here very often.’

  He put his hands behind his back, trying to look priestly, half wishing he had worn his cassock instead of the thin grey suit.

  ‘I came to see how you were getting along,’ he lilted, honeying his words like any undertaker. ‘I saw your daughter a little while ago, and she put me in mind of you.’

  ‘Oh, well, you know …’ she feebly answered his question. ‘Life has to go on. The work keeps us going. No time for brooding.’ She laughed a little, mocking herself.

  She isn’t going to invite me in, he realised. Sh
e doesn’t need me. Blast the woman. Blast this idiotic anachronistic job of work. Wasting my time. Every day more futile than the last …

  ‘And how is young Roderick? I understand he’s gone back to school.’

  ‘That’s right. He’s got his GCSEs. We want him to take them, as planned, even if all this means he gets lower grades than he should. They’re really important to him. He’s got all sorts of ambitious ideas about a career.’

  ‘I’m sure you did what was best. He’ll have time for his grieving once term time is over. Boys are unpredictable in that respect.’

  Miranda shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ Clearly, she was reluctant to discuss her son with him. Father Edmund wanted to scream at her. Don’t you care? Your husband is dead, woman! You seem to have forgotten all about that little fact. But he said nothing, merely bounced slightly on his toes, and devoted some attention to the spiritual quality of his smile. He cast his gaze obliquely towards the murderous slurry pit, which was obviously much too close to the buildings. Sooner or later, there’d be a man round from the Council to tell them to fill it in and dig another one further off. In normal circumstances, Guy would have been fined for contravening the regulations so blatantly.

  Frustrated by the growing silence, he knew he’d soon have to go. First, though, he had to penetrate the blandness of the woman he’d come to see. He wanted to get under her skin.

  ‘Everyone has been wondering, of course, just how it was poor Guy came to such a terrible end.’ He kept his tone silky and overwhelmingly sympathetic. ‘They’ll be very interested in the outcome of the inquest next week. It’ll be an ordeal for you, I’m sure. Just tell me if I can offer you any assistance.’