by Ann Granger
He’d arrived at the outskirts of Weston St Ambrose. He couldn’t help noticing how much it had grown in the short time he’d known the place. When he’d arrived in his present post, the village had become a shadow of what it had once been, little more than a name on the tourist trail. But over the past couple of years there had been significant changes. New businesses had opened. There was even a small supermarket. Weston St Ambrose was on the up. Perversely, most of the older inhabitants disliked all the new changes. Monica Farrell was one who had accepted them joyfully. ‘Fresh blood!’ she had declared enthusiastically.
The lights glowed in Monica’s cottage. As Carter walked up the short path to the door a small, dark shape darted across in front of him, right under his feet. It nearly tripped him up before it vanished into the bushes. One of Monica’s cats, he thought, setting out on its nightfall patrol. ‘Watch out for Mr Fox!’ he warned it, before raising his hand to the polished brass knocker. But his arrival had already been marked. The car’s engine had probably been heard.
Monica, small, sturdy, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, opened the door. The enticing smell of the casserole drifted towards him. ‘Come in, come in!’ Carter bent his head beneath the low lintel of the door and allowed himself to be chivvied into the hall at speed. ‘Don’t let the cold air in! We’re waiting for you.’
We? Foreboding gripped his heart. Monica was already pushing him towards the living room, where a comfortable chaos reigned and heat blasted from a wood-burning metal stove that had been installed in the hearth. Sitting by it, at her ease in a cretonne-covered chair, was his ex-wife.
‘Hello, Ian,’ she greeted him, and smiled up with a hint of triumph.
He’d been a policeman for too many years not to be able to deal with the unexpected. And he could have expected this, he thought. But Monica should have played fair and warned him. Had she thought he wouldn’t come if he’d known Sophie was staying?
Still smiling and still enjoying having played a winning trick, Sophie raised her head to receive his greeting. He planted a chaste kiss on her cheek. She was looking extremely well, he thought, positively blooming.
‘I hadn’t realised,’ he said aloud, ‘that you’d already arrived. I didn’t have a date for your coming over from France, only the info that you were on your way.’
Monica had disappeared into the kitchen to see to the casserole. There was a distant rattle and clang. A second cat, disapproving of an additional intruder, jumped down from an armchair and scurried away towards the sound of food being dished up. Carter slapped the cushions a couple of times in the vain hope of clearing away any cat hairs, and sat down.
‘Good trip?’ he asked politely. ‘Did you fly?’
‘No, I drove, using the Eurotunnel shuttle. I need a car here to get about.’
‘Rodney well?’
‘Fighting fit, thanks.’
Yes, he would be. When had Carter ever seen Rodney other than glowing with health and well-being?
‘Seen Millie?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ she admitted. Seeing the disapproving look on his face, she added hastily, ‘I’ll be driving up to the school at the weekend before going on to take a look at the house. I’ve got an appointment with the letting agency. I’ll call back at the school again before I return to France.’
‘What’s the problem with the house?’
Sophie stretched out her long, elegant legs. ‘A neighbour emailed us to say the tenants are giving wild parties. The house is full of people every weekend, and some of them bring dogs. The terms of the lease forbid the keeping of dogs in the house.’
‘They will argue that the dogs are temporary, belonging to the visitors,’ Carter suggested.
‘They can try,’ said Sophie, with the steely serenity he remembered so well. ‘So, how are you, Ian? Still got that red-haired girlfriend?’
He felt himself flush and hoped it would be put down to the heat from the stove and not to anger. ‘If you mean Jess Campbell, and I suppose you do, then she is not, and never has been, my girlfriend. She’s a colleague and, I like to think, a friend. There’s a difference.’
Sophie’s smile was positively smug. ‘Not according to Millie.’
‘Millie’s got it wrong.’ He hadn’t meant to sound so sharp.
But Sophie’s smile had gone from smug to seraphic. ‘You brought Jess here, I believe, when Millie was spending the day at Monica’s, that time Millie was staying with you because of the asbestos in the school ceilings. You brought Jess along with you here so that Millie could meet her.’
‘No! I brought Jess here that evening so that she could meet Millie. It’s not quite the same thing.’
‘Same difference, as they say.’
He didn’t want to defend himself, because why the hell should he? But he couldn’t do otherwise. ‘Unfortunately, at that time, I couldn’t take time off, so yes, while I was at work, Millie came here to Monica. And it wasn’t just about asbestos being found in the school roof! If you recall, the reason I hadn’t had any warning of her visit was because you and Rodney had suddenly decided to go to New York! Out of the blue, you asked me to take Millie.’
‘I thought you’d be glad of extra time with your daughter,’ said Sophie, making it sound as if he hadn’t been.
‘I was!’ he growled.
‘Well, Monica liked your Jess, too.’ Sophie rose from her chair. ‘That’s all I meant. I must go and give Monica a hand.’
Alone, Carter suppressed the urge to rampage round the room throwing cushions at the walls. ‘Don’t let her do it to you,’ he warned himself. ‘She likes stirring it up. You ought to know that by now.’
Monica appeared to usher him into the extended kitchen, where the dining table was located, and they sat down to eat. Carter had a sense Monica was feeling a little guilty. She gave him surreptitious worried glances from time to time while Sophie chattered on about the house in France she and Rodney had bought, how well Rodney was doing in business, how well Millie was liking boarding school in England, and so forth. It wasn’t until Monica’s special chocolate cheesecake arrived that it struck Carter that more surreptitious glances were being exchanged, this time between Monica and Sophie.
Something’s up. I knew it! Even as he told himself this, Carter was casting about feverishly for whatever it might be. He’d been set up. OK, that was obvious now, but what kind of bombshell was going to be dropped on him?
Sophie liked to tell people that she and he had had ‘an amicable divorce’, whatever that meant. It had been a bitter and miserable period in their lives, as Carter recalled. They’d tried to hide it from Millie, but Millie was bright enough to know what was going on, so she had suffered, too.
On the other hand, in his working life, Carter had seen enough cases where relationships had broken down and one or other of the parties had taken up a kitchen knife to express feelings, leaving the ex-partner in a sea of blood. Even if it hadn’t come to murder, they went in for criminal damage on a truly ingenious scale. They cut up clothes, or poured bleach over them, vandalised cars and other property. In one case he recalled, the deceived spouse of a keen gardener had dug up and burned prized roses, before breaking every pane of glass in a greenhouse. Compared with all of that, their divorce had, yes, been a highly civilised affair. As if to confirm that, here they sat, eating cheesecake and behaving as if everything was hunky-dory. Only, it wasn’t.
After the meal, Monica ordered them both out of the kitchen. ‘I have my own system for stacking the dishwasher and I always wash the wine glasses myself by hand. They’re very old and rather fragile. You two go and chat. Help yourself to a whisky, if you’d like one, Ian.’
They obediently trooped into the sitting room and retook the chairs they had been sitting in before supper. Sophie drew a deep breath, but Carter had decided to take charge of the conversation this time, if he was allowed to.
‘So, what is it, your news? You haven’t come over from France just because someone brought a dog into your hous
e on a weekend visit!’
A flash of annoyance showed in her eyes. She had planned how she would inform him, and the plan had been ruined.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said aggressively.
He’d thought how well she looked. How old was she? He did a lightning calculation.
‘I’m forty-one,’ she said, knowing full well what he was doing.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Have you told Millie?’
‘I’ll be telling her when I go up to the school this weekend.’
‘All right,’ he said.
She looked surprised. ‘Nothing else to say?’
‘What should I say? My only concern is for Millie. I don’t want her to feel she’s been elbowed out of your half of her family.’
‘She won’t be!’ Sophie snapped.
‘Then I hope everything goes well for you and Rodney and the new addition. Will you have the baby in France or return to the UK?’
‘We’re thinking of having the baby in France. They have excellent maternity services.’
When he didn’t say anything further, she added, ‘What are you thinking about now?’
‘About how your new family situation will pan out. I’ve got a case at the moment . . . well, the details won’t interest you. But two of the people concerned in the matter are – were – stepbrother and sister. They weren’t linked by a common parent, as Millie and your new baby will be. It was a question of a marriage between two people who already had a child each, quite different.’
Sophie sighed and said, quite sadly, ‘Do you really know why our marriage didn’t work out? It was because of the dratted police work. It got into everything! Even now, you see, when I’m telling you my news, you don’t ask how I feel about becoming a mum again, or how Rodney feels about becoming a dad for the first time, a flesh-and-blood dad, not a step-parent. No, you link it to some case you’re investigating and see my news filtered through that. Have you any idea how much I resent that, how I always resented it?’
There was a silence. Carter said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t know whether she believed him, but it was true.
‘Is it a murder case?’ she asked after a pause.
‘Yes, it is. It took place around here, as it happens. Not in Weston St Ambrose itself, but in some woods not far away. Crooked Man Woods, they’re called.’
‘I know Crooked Man Woods,’ Sophie said unexpectedly. ‘Who was murdered?’
‘Someone called Carl Finch. He lived in London but had come down to visit his stepsister, who lives locally at a house called the Old Nunnery. Do you know that?’
‘I know where it is. I never knew anyone who lived there. Monica might have done. Do you want to ask her?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not tonight.’
Despite everything, the rest of the evening passed off quite pleasantly. Monica followed him out to his car when he left. She whispered an apology for the surprise he’d had on finding Sophie there.
‘I know I should have warned you, Ian, but Sophie asked me not to. She’s been worried about telling you her news, about the baby. So I went along with her wish. I hope you’ll forgive me.’
‘Don’t worry about it, honestly, Monica,’ he told her. ‘It was a surprise to see her, I admit, and her news was a thunderbolt. Perhaps it was a good idea to combine the two shocks.’ He stooped to kiss her cheek. ‘But I should know by now to expect the unexpected from Sophie!’
‘Come and see me again, after she’s gone back to France,’ she said.
He promised her he would, and set off back through the dark, twisting lanes. It was only when he arrived home at his cheerless flat, later that night, that the full impact of her news really came home to him. Sophie had not only made a new life with Rodney, she was starting a new family and had a full future ahead of her. He, on the other hand, was stuck here amid odds and ends of furniture, because he still hadn’t got around to decorating and furnishing the place properly. It was like living in a theatre props room, all the bits and pieces to replicate a real home but nothing assembled, and no cast members to people it if it ever did get assembled. He must try and sort something out before Millie’s next visit, make the place more welcoming. In the meantime, he had no wife, his child was away at school, and Jess was entirely taken up with the sorrows of young Palmer these days. Or so it seemed. He wanted suddenly, more than anything, to talk to her.
But it was too late to phone now. She might be at Palmer’s place, still listening to him grouse, or be watching something interesting on the telly, or out with someone else. More likely, she was asleep. It was late, and he should turn in, too. But he didn’t feel like sleeping, even though he was tired. He remembered the advice, often handed out, that a hot, milky drink at bedtime encourages slumber. But when he looked in his fridge, there was no milk. He’d intended to pick some up earlier, before going to Monica’s. He’d have to have black coffee at breakfast. He did find in a cupboard a half-empty jar of instant chocolate drink, for which, the label promised him, he only needed boiling water. So he mixed that up but somehow got the amount wrong, or the jar was so old its contents had lost its chocolatey flavour. All he got for his trouble was a hot, sweet, lumpy brown sludge. He poured it down the sink and had a whisky instead.
Jess had arrived home earlier from Tom’s and wondered if it was too late to phone Ian Carter. There was no real reason for doing so, other than that the conversation with Tom had both tired and irritated her that evening. She had never realised how self-centred he was. No wonder Madison had taken off for Australia. It had been tricky, too, not being able to tell him about the figure Biddle had seen, apparently searching Sally as she lay unconscious in the ditch. She just wanted to speak to someone else, someone she could talk to freely, even if it was just about work.
But a call to Ian went unanswered, and she remembered belatedly he had spoken of going out to Weston St Ambrose that evening to see Monica Farrell. She had no message to leave. She hung up.
Chapter 13
‘There is nothing like shovelling muck for taking your mind off things!’ Tessa Briggs muttered to herself, as she vigorously swept the floor of the loose box she had just mucked out. She’d risen at six that morning and been at work since seven-thirty. Outside, in the yard, a pile of gently steaming straw and manure bore witness to her diligence. The three horses were out in their paddock. The morning sun had now cleared the frost from the grass, and its watery beams brightened the scene. That was how the countryside looked first thing in the morning, fresh and pure, as if newly washed. Misty, the grey, was feeling skittish and cantering around by himself, kicking up his heels like a youngster. Yet, of the three animals, he was the oldest. The other two ignored him, nibbling the scarce grass. Stubbs had painted scenes like that and, out here in the English countryside, not a lot had changed from his day.
Fred was sniffing around in the far corner of the yard. Tessa suspected something had passed through during the night, a fox, probably. This was a lean time of year for Reynard and he called by to raid the bins, if he could knock the lids off. She’d given up keeping chickens because of the foxes. The deciding moment had been when one had burrowed his way into the henhouse and somehow squeezed up between loose floorboards to wreak bloody havoc. Hearing the commotion, she had rushed in her night attire with Hal’s old shotgun, ready to blast the invader to kingdom come. But he had already got away, leaving nothing but blood and feathers and dead fowls. Foxes liked killing. They killed more than they needed, if they got the chance, just for the hell of it.
Yesterday, thought Tessa, had been lousy. What with that couple of troublemakers who’d turned up from London to throw accusations around, then the police poking their noses in at the Old Nunnery yet again. Poor Hattie was still in a dreadful state, and Guy Kingsley not there when he was wanted. When was he ever?
But this morning things didn’t look so bad, at least not here. She’d ring Hattie later and hear how matters stood at the Old Nunnery today. The situation there wasn’t getting an
y better, of course, and was even likely to get worse. The police wouldn’t go away. Who knew what else might emerge from Carl’s chaotic past? Natalie and Henry might prove the tip of the iceberg. Tessa paused and leaned thoughtfully on her broom handle. What to do next, that was the problem. Everything was in such a damn awful muddle. But just sitting and waiting for the next piece of bad news was like waiting for a thunderstorm to break.
The sound of a car engine was growing louder. She raised her head to listen. Someone was coming down the narrow road that led to the Old Farmhouse and nowhere else. It was early for a social caller. Hattie would have phoned ahead if she’d intended dropping by. Tessa wasn’t one for praying, but she did utter up an involuntary muttered request: ‘Please don’t let it be that ruddy police sergeant again!’
The car stopped. The gate across the entry to the yard creaked and groaned as it was dragged open. Whoever it was, they weren’t waiting to be invited in. She leaned her broom against the wall and walked out of the loose box into the yard, putting up her hand to shield her eyes against the sun’s glare. She didn’t recognise the car. But she did recognise the outline of the figure pushing the barrier shut and fastening it by dropping the metal loop over the gatepost. It wasn’t Sergeant Morgan. It was someone even less welcome.
It’s like those African wildlife films on the telly, she thought. The scent of a kill brings every carnivore to the spot, gathering to fight over the scraps.
The man had fixed the gate and turned to face her. He was a tall figure with thick, sandy hair, leavened with white, and was wearing an Aran sweater with corduroy trousers. The bulky sweater added to his already chunky build. And to think, when she’d first met him, he’d been as slim as a beanpole, thought Tessa, in a burst of nostalgia.