by Rebecca Tope
‘I mean, Giles is still missing. And he could still be dead somewhere. Couldn’t he?’
‘His mother—’ Pritchett began. ‘I only came to you because she wanted it. She’ll be all right now you’ve set our minds at rest. Please, Hollis, just forget I ever approached you. He’s got nothing to do with any of this business. I ought to have trusted my own judgment from the start. I knew all along – well, never mind that now.’
‘Well, all right,’ said Phil reluctantly. ‘But at least put him on the missing persons register, if only for your wife’s sake. Any news must surely be better than none.’
‘That’s true,’ Pritchett said softly. ‘You know, sometimes I don’t even feel sure that I ever had a son. I can’t picture his face any more. But other times I know he’s out there, not too far away. I can feel his presence, if that doesn’t sound too airy-fairy for you.’
Phil closed his eyes, and the features of his own dead daughter floated vividly before his eyelids. Always smiling, with that flickering mischief that had been her trademark, hair never quite tidy, waist as slim as a pencil. Surely it would never be possible for the picture to fade from his mind?
‘Well, think about what I said, and don’t be shy of reporting him missing.’
Pritchett cleared his throat, suggesting embarrassment to Hollis, even down the phone. ‘Look, old chap – the fact is I haven’t been completely straight with you. He hasn’t been missing for as long as I said he was. We did get word of him once in a while, up to last Christmas. He sent us a card, as it happens. But you know what it’s like now – no proper postmarks any more. We couldn’t see where it had come from. But it was enough to ease our minds. But that was six months ago, and Trudy’s getting desperate.’
Phil shifted in his seat, trying to placate the grumbling from his spine. ‘So she thinks he could have been killed sometime this year and buried under a tree? Why tell me he’d been gone for two and a half years then?’
‘Well, it was true, in a way. That’s when we last saw him. And besides that, I thought you wouldn’t listen otherwise. Why should you go to the trouble?’
‘Well, we like to have any theories about identity when a body turns up. It wouldn’t make any difference how long your son had been gone, if you thought there was a chance he was the victim.’ Phil’s mind was thick with puzzlement. This solid member of the community, Freemason and senior doctor, was playing the sort of game with the police that was more typical of a petty criminal. ‘You could have been a lot more straightforward about it, surely?’
‘What I told you about our betrayal of the lad was true. We don’t intend to make the same mistake twice. All we need to know is that it’s not his bones you unearthed yesterday. What’s so strange about that?’
‘It’s strange that you should ever think it might be him. The usual procedure when somebody dies is to have a death certificate and a marked grave and announcements in the paper. You actually believed your son could have been murdered and buried a mile from his own home, with nobody knowing anything about it. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?’
He heard a long sigh of frustration coming out of the phone. ‘Things are strange here,’ he said. ‘I thought you might have realised that.’
Phil felt this as a put-down, and wanted to give a riposte that reminded the man that he was a senior police detective, a person to be taken seriously, with powers to make life uncomfortable for anybody he chose. But he clamped his lips together until the urge had passed.
‘Well, I’ve given you the news, such as it is,’ he finished. ‘Now we just have to hope there are other people around who can be of more assistance to us.’ A thought struck him. ‘I don’t suppose you have an idea who the dead man is – given that it isn’t your son?’
There was a long silence. Then a low ‘No’ came through, before Pritchett put down the receiver.
It was lunchtime and Thea had concocted an appetising meal from the items bought in the village shop. The sun was relentless, turning the day into something almost frighteningly hot. ‘More like Greece than Gloucestershire,’ said Phil. He had removed all clothes from his upper half, and periodically fanned himself with a magazine he had borrowed from Miss Deacon’s collection.
‘Be careful with that,’ Thea had warned him. ‘You shouldn’t take it out of the house.’
‘I know, but it’s so fascinating, I can’t put it down.’ He read her a paragraph from the June 1912 issue of Country Life, describing a garden party held by a certain baronet and his wife. ‘It’s a completely different world,’ he sighed.
‘That’s right. Now can you see why I get so excited about history? And that’s a primary source you’ve got there. There’s nothing so thrilling than delving about in primary sources.’
Phil looked thoughtful and slightly pained. ‘But yesterday you just waved it away as if you couldn’t care less,’ he reminded her.
‘Oh, did I? Sorry.’
‘Emily used to do that. Just when I thought I’d got to grips with what interested her, she’d roll her eyes and tell me I’d got it all completely wrong. Very unsettling it is when women can’t be consistent for two days together.’
Thea’s reaction to the mention of Phil’s dead daughter was subtle. She nodded, and pressed her lips together and said nothing. What could she say, after all? Phil knew he was allowed to talk about Emily any time he liked, and there had been one or two long evenings when he had indulged in an orgy of grieving memories, weeping into Thea’s shoulder as he described the child he had seen all too little of, as he worked up the ladder of police promotion. He would always blame himself for her death, for not spending more time with her. He had believed it was enough simply to adjure her to abjure drugs, rather than sit down and debate the issue properly. He had never accepted the peer pressures, the need she must have had to find a substitute for her absent father. She had thrown herself into a wild social life and had died stupidly from taking too many Ecstasy tablets, ignoring her body’s warnings. For a time, he had thrown himself passionately into a war against all drugs, only to come slowly to understand that Em had been a rare exception, that Ecstasy very seldom killed anybody, and that random luck was the major factor at work in what had happened.
Thea had helped him to see this, little by little, along with her own stalwart daughter Jessica, who never minced her words.
But he had inwardly winced when Stephen Pritchett had mentioned drugs in connection with his missing Giles. He would always wince at any reference to a dead or missing youngster associated with substance abuse. He wanted to prevent any parent enduring what he had endured, but even more he wanted to avoid enduring it again himself. Which he did, vicariously, every time the subject came up.
He set aside the painful memories and kept his mind on Pritchett. ‘He’s been playing some sort of game that I can’t get a handle on,’ he said to Thea. ‘Obviously the village rumour-mill got going as soon as the police showed up at the beech tree – and it’s not surprising that somebody let slip there’d been a body found. A phone call to Pritchett and he’s onto me five minutes later. The question is – how much do the local people know about what happened? When I think of the way Janey and her friend were this morning, it feels very much as if they’ve already agreed amongst themselves not to talk about it.’
‘A conspiracy of silence,’ said Thea in a melodramatic voice, refusing to be repressed. ‘You’ll have to apply to the Home Office for permission to torture the truth out of them.’
‘Thea!’ His warning was seriously meant, the limit of his patience finally reached. ‘Sometimes you really do go too far.’
‘Sometimes,’ she flashed back, ‘you don’t know how to take a joke.’
‘I can promise you there isn’t a police officer in the country who would find that comment funny. Not a single one.’
‘Well that just proves my point,’ she said obscurely, and walked off into the house.
Phil refused to shout after her, despite a desperate urge to do jus
t that. She would be back in a little while, the whole thing forgotten. One of the things she had taught him over the past year was how to let bad feelings go. She never sulked or harboured a grudge. Despite their differences over the politics of law enforcement, their feelings for each other always resurfaced undamaged. Or they had done so far. Always, there was a lurking anxiety that this time it might change. This time one of them might find it impossible to fully forgive and forget.
He forced his mind back to the subject of Pritchett and the other villagers, visualising them standing in a circle around the unearthed bones, every one of them potentially implicated in a murder. He mentally listed the possible scenarios that had been suggested by what he knew of the place and its people. An ancient family by the name of Temple, connected, apparently, to the renowned Knights who had owned land on this very spot. It was likely, surely, that they would fight to protect the name and all its associations. Secondly, there was a strange club devoted to keeping alive the memory of obscure saints by re-enacting parts of their stories. Stories which were almost always violent. Saints tended to meet gruesome ends, their martyrdom comprising much of the attraction, as he understood it. Thirdly, another family, named Pritchett, whose son was lost, and whose patriarch denied any knowledge of who the dead man under the tree might be. Finally, an unexplained visitor whose name embraced both local families and who spoke as if he existed in a time warp. It amounted to a hazy sense of bygone times still exerting a powerful influence. Tucked away in these folded hills, funded by activities largely conducted in a virtual reality, the people he had so far encountered appeared to have the time and freedom to pursue their passions uninterrupted by the usual contemporary constraints. They did not rush for early trains to London, or juggle childcare and shopping and housework and aged parents like most people did these days. They spent a few hours at a computer keyboard, made a few phone calls and money fluttered down on them from the sky. Property deals, futures, currency trading, even buying and selling goods on eBay – it all brought in cash with almost no physical effort. Phil found the whole business bewildering and close to offensive. This, at least, was a point of agreement between him and Thea.
* * *
Thea did come back, her usual sunny self again, and they sat for a little while in the flickering shade of the willows. The subject of Stephen and Giles Pritchett refused to go away. ‘So,’ Thea summarised, ‘for all we know Giles is still alive and well somewhere. And you don’t have any proper grounds for trying to find him.’
‘That’s right.’ Phil sighed. ‘It’s a familiar feeling – the nagging sense that you know where the explanation lies, but you can’t follow it up because there’s no hard evidence to justify it.’
Thea nodded, with a small crinkling of her brow. ‘And it’s Gladwin’s case, not yours,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget.’
DS Hollis smiled in genuine amusement. ‘She’s welcome to it,’ he said. ‘But unfortunately it doesn’t quite work like that. I’m involved, whether I like it or not. I’m here on the ground, and people are going to talk to me every time I show my face outside this house. And Gladwin’s at even more of a disadvantage than usual. She’s new, and there’s much too little back-up for her, with all this ricin business taking up everybody’s time.’
‘Chances are it’ll turn out to be a tramp that nobody missed, when it comes to it,’ Thea said. ‘Killed miles away and randomly dumped here. Nothing to do with the good people of Temple Guiting after all.’
‘Even if it is, it still has to be thoroughly investigated. They’ll be going through all reports of missing persons, trying to match him up. Tedious business. And of course you can’t trust anything anyone says about events five years ago. We might never have an identity for him.’ He paused. ‘But Pritchett’s given the game away, don’t you see? By coming to me as he did, he more or less told us he thinks it’s a local matter. Something must have been going on here, bad enough to involve murder and secret disposal of the body.’
‘Oh, well.’ She tossed her head, the long hair flying lightly, her expression sceptical. ‘Why don’t we go out somewhere before we have to be at Janey’s? Can you cope with a drive, do you think?’
‘I can if it’s in a good cause. Where did you have in mind?’
‘Naunton, or maybe the Slaughters. Both if you can stand it. I thought I might take some photos.’ She fished for her new digital camera and brandished it. ‘I told Jocelyn I’d try to get some shots that she can use for her folksy cards. She’s really getting into it this summer.’
‘Folksy,’ Phil repeated. ‘Is that your word or hers?’
‘Oh – mine. She thinks they’re fine art. She’s being ever so clever with montage or collage, or whatever she calls it. I can email the raw material to her, and she plays with it on her computer. She’s got some amazing software.’
‘And people buy the result, do they?’
‘Evidently. She’s got a contract with three or four places, including one of the London museums. You know how people always buy cards, if nothing else, in those gift shops.’
Phil liked Jocelyn and worried about her. Thea’s younger sister, she had five children and a tormented husband who behaved very badly at times, although the last Phil had heard there were signs of real improvement. It was pleasing that she had found an outlet that sounded both absorbing and mildly lucrative.
‘Good for her,’ he said. ‘I suggest we do Naunton first and see how it goes. Backwise, I mean.’
‘OK – but I would like to make a little detour to Lower Slaughter, if there’s time. Did I tell you I had an email yesterday from somebody wanting a house-sitter there in the middle of August? There’s several animals and the house is medieval.’
Phil groaned. ‘No, you didn’t tell me. I suppose you’ve already said yes?’
‘Well, I told them I was probably free,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
Phil spread his hands speechlessly, and found himself thinking that with Thea’s track record, a place called Slaughter was probably very appropriate.
His slipped disc behaved moderately well, with only one seriously agonising moment when he turned too quickly to follow Thea’s line of gaze. Naunton was unarguably lovely, in the hot afternoon sun. Shadows were deep, and he was impressed by Thea’s skill at using them in her compositions. ‘Waste of time, really,’ she said when he commented on one of her efforts. ‘Joss can remove them completely if she feels like it. It’s like what you said about five-year-old memories – you can’t trust the camera remotely these days. Nothing is as it seems in the finished picture.’
‘Except I don’t suppose she can create shadows where there never were any, can she?’
‘I’m not sure. Probably.’
‘You should send her some shots of that snake. That’d add an exotic element,’ he suggested.
Amicably, they mooched around the little settlement of Naunton in the sweltering heat. They encountered scarcely any other people, and not a single dog. ‘They’ve got more sense than to be out in this,’ said Phil. ‘I’m glad I brought my hat.’
‘I love it,’ Thea said, as if slightly surprised at herself. ‘It’s exactly right for a holiday.’
‘Except you’re not on holiday – you’re working. And I’m on sick leave. We shouldn’t be enjoying ourselves.’
She stared at him, trying to read the level of seriousness behind his words. They shared a thread of puritanism which made them uneasy if life was proving too enjoyable. ‘I’m sure it won’t last,’ she said eventually. ‘It never does, does it?’
They drove slowly eastwards the few miles to the Slaughters, and found themselves behind two well-filled charabancs. ‘Touristy here,’ Phil commented. ‘Much less peaceful.’
‘Well, that would make a nice change then,’ said Thea determinedly.
* * *
Janey Holmes lived in a handsome Georgian house standing on elevated ground overlooking the Windrush. ‘My God!’ Phil breathed. ‘Does she have all this to herse
lf? I thought she was just – well, certainly not landed gentry. Look at this place – it’s incredible.’
‘She was married,’ Thea remembered. ‘She told me that on Sunday. Must have been his.’
‘And got to keep it as part of a divorce settlement?’ Phil was sceptical. ‘Who was he – MD of British Aerospace, or what?’
‘We’ll have to ask her, won’t we?’
Again they had used the car to cover the mile between Hector’s Nook and Janey’s house. There were two cars standing with their noses to a high stone wall, wisteria cascading along it, the mauve flowers almost finished. ‘I’ve seen that one before,’ Phil observed, frowning at a big red Mitsubishi.
‘Isn’t it Stephen Pritchett’s?’ Thea suggested ingenuously.
He smiled. ‘Doing my job for me again,’ he acknowledged. ‘Where would I be without you?’
‘I got a better view of it than you did, that’s all.’ How could he not love someone so casually generous, so uncompetitive and honest, he wondered fondly.
Janey let them in, quickly declaring that Stephen Pritchett was a fellow visitor. ‘I gather you and he have already met,’ she added.
They followed her through a large square hall that contained the stairway. The ceiling was two storeys above their heads, light flooding through a window that Phil suspected might be termed a ‘solar’. There was a seductive scent of summer flowers and beeswax. Everything gleamed as he looked around at the solid antique furniture and two bright modern paintings hanging on the wall above the stairs.
‘Lovely house,’ he said, in all sincerity.
‘And gorgeous things,’ contributed Thea.
‘Yes,’ said Janey. ‘I’m very lucky.’ Her tone implied that she felt rather otherwise, but was uttering the words expected of her.
Phil had the word bovine nudging at his mental tongue, but it actually didn’t fit Janey at all. For all her weight and bull-like neck, she was not slow moving, nor slow thinking. Bovine only in the sense that a Cape buffalo was bovine, he corrected himself. The most murderous animal on the African continent, which could eye you thoughtfully, chewing a rhythmic cud, and then casually blast you into Kingdom Come with a sudden thump from the horn across its brow. Phil liked Cape buffalo a lot, and conjectured that this Janey Holmes person might demand the same sort of respect. But she was too fat to be seriously respected, his politically incorrect self insisted. Her body was her, when it came right down to it. It was within her power to alter it to something more acceptable. He found himself engaged in a circular internal argument which grew more and more uncomfortable as he walked behind the woman, marvelling at the sheer quantity of flesh. He could hear the mocking voices of male colleagues, the carelessly unkind things they would say about Janey if they saw her, the crude jokes about her as a potential partner in bed. However strenuously the arbiters of behaviour might try to outlaw the very word fat, he knew there would never really be a better way to describe her.