Narrow is the Way

by Faith Martin

  ‘Ma’am?’ a diffident voice interrupted her musing, and she glanced up, expecting the police photographer or another SOCO to hoick her out of it, but it was a fresh-faced uniformed officer who nodded down at her.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, I was told you wanted to speak to me.’

  Hillary thought, I did? Then nodded. Right. ‘You must be the local man I asked for.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Dennis Warner. I live at Duns Tew, just across the way.’

  Hillary nodded and stood up, trying to pretend her back didn’t ache as she did so, and slowly walked away from the body. Once outside in the dark, wet air, she took a deep breath, promptly wished she hadn’t, and nodded towards the lane. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ The sweetly corrupt scent of cattle was beginning to make her feel sick.

  Dennis Warner grinned. ‘You get used to it. Living out here.’

  Hillary supposed you did.

  ‘So, what can you tell me about the farm?’ she asked.

  ‘Ma’am. It’s owned by a man called Owen Wallis. Local, born and bred. The Wallises have owned Three Oaks farm for yonks. Don’t quite go back to the Doomsday Book, but you get the picture. Back in the 1500s, the Wallises were “Sirs” and the like, but they lost the title somewhere down the line. They still own several small properties in Steeple Barton though. Used to be for the workers, now they rent them out to city folk for weekend places and such. Makes a tidy sum from rent alone, I reckon.’

  Hillary nodded. Most senior investigating officers would be chivvying him along by now, but she’d never found that having good background gen, even stuff that couldn’t possibly be relevant, had ever hurt an investigation.

  ‘Resented for it much in the village?’ she wondered aloud.

  Dennis shrugged. ‘Not so’s you’d notice. Nowadays, half the village is made up of strangers. It’s not as if the farm employs that many. And those they do don’t seem to complain. I reckon they’re as happy to buy a council house on a mortgage as the rest of us.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Big family?’

  ‘Not any more. Just old man Wallis – well, not so old, he’s in his fifties, I suppose. Owen Wallis, his wife, Wendy, and the one lad, Michael. It’s their silver wedding anniversary – that’s what the shindig’s for.’

  Hillary nodded. It was unusual to have a big party on a week night; most people tended to opt for a Saturday. Any particular reason for the Wallises to do it this way round? ‘So, what do you know about the son Michael? He’s got a girlfriend?’

  ‘Yerse, local girl. Michael’s been away at agricultural college, only coming home during the holidays. Seems happy enough to do his bit and eventually take over the farm.’

  ‘It’s in good financial shape?’

  ‘Not as good as it was before the foot-and-mouth,’ Dennis said quickly.

  Obviously, Hillary thought, that particular disaster still cut deep. ‘Oh? Did the Wallises loose their herd?’

  ‘No. They were lucky. But still, the Wallises aren’t quite the force they used to be. Rumour has it Owen Wallis is coming up with some sort of scheme to refill the family coffers. Nobody quite knows what it is, but it is said that Theo Greenwood is involved.’

  ‘Greenwood?’

  ‘He owns the Hayrick Inn, up on the main road. Probably heard of it?’

  Hillary had. A big old coaching inn, catering to the Oxford to Banbury trade. A deeply attractive, creeper-covered inn, which had just had a big new annexe controversially built at the back of it. Doing a roaring trade with high-end conferences and the local elite.

  ‘They recently hired one of those nearly-famous TV chefs, right?’ she prompted.

  ‘Right. The owner was at the party tonight – him and his son, Roger.’

  They’d been walking steadily down the side of the muddy track, and were now approaching the gate. Wordlessly, Hillary turned and slowly began to walk back again.

  ‘What do you know about the victim, Julia Reynolds?’

  ‘Lived in Kirtlingon, ma’am, in one of them council house cul-de-sacs just off the road that leads to Bletchington,’ Dennis said promptly. ‘She runs her own travelling hair-styling business.’

  Hillary raised an eyebrow. ‘She seemed pretty young to be doing that.’ Usually girls interested in that sort of thing went straight from school at sixteen to do some course or apprenticeship, and then into a hair-dressing salon where they swept the floors and answered the phone, learning the job from the ground up, and only progressing from hair-washing to the more interesting stuff much later.

  Dennis snorted. ‘Julia was never one to hold back,’ he said flatly. ‘Not that I knew her that well, mind,’ he added hastily, in case Hillary Greene began to wonder. Dennis, who usually worked out of the Bicester nick, didn’t know much about Thames Valley Headquarters personnel, but he, along with every other copper in Oxfordshire, knew about Ronnie Greene all right. And that his widow, so scuttlebutt had it, was as decent a copper as he had been bent. Rumour also said that she was highly rated as a detective (not always synonymous with SIOs) and that it was always a treat to work on one of her cases. So the last thing he wanted to do was get thrown off the case because he was deemed to be too close to the victim.

  ‘It’s just that we all went to the local comp, and one of my mates went out with her for a few months.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘So, what’s her rep?’

  Dennis paused and looked up, noticing for the first time that the misty drizzle was rapidly turning into fog. ‘Well, she was always one of those girls who was gonna go places, you know?’ he began, after a thoughtful silence. ‘Always had big ideas, big plans. And she was a looker, so nobody laughed when she said it. It was typical of her to go independent, for instance, and nobody would be surprised to find out she was making a go of it. She got on well with people, and she knew how to use her looks, like. I mean, not just with the men – although there were always plenty of them – but with women, too. You know, all these old dears she permed and primped, probably took one look at her and thought that she could turn them into an Evangelista overnight, and Julia would play up to that.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘So, what was she doing at the party tonight? She a friend of the Wallises?’ On the face of it, that didn’t seem likely. What did a working-class hairdresser (albeit one with charm and ambition) have in common with landed (if impoverished) gentry?

  ‘No, ma’am, I don’t think so. If I had to guess, I’d say she was almost certainly brought here by a man. It’d be just the sort of thing Julia would like. You know, so she could go to work tomorrow and tell all her old biddies that she’d been up at Three Oaks farm at the shindig of the season. That’d be the kind of thing that would give her a real thrill. To be in with the country set, so to speak.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘But she won’t be going to work tomorrow, will she, Constable Warner? And all her old biddies will be gossiping about her, instead.’

  Although she could understand why the young constable was excited to be working on his first murder case, and wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t feel alert and eager to help, it never hurt to be reminded that, for the victim, life, in all its variations, was now over.

  Dennis gulped audibly and uncomfortably. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said woodenly.

  ‘So, did she have any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I don’t think so.’

  ‘All right. I want you to prepare a list of any friends you know she has, and give it to DC Lynch. Anything else you know about her that you think might be useful?’

  Dennis Warner wondered how he should respond to that. He was well aware that he’d just been mildly reprimanded, and was reluctant now to speak ill of the dead. OK, if he was honest, he’d deserved it. He had sort of forgotten that the poor girl was really dead, and all that that meant.

  ‘I won’t bite,’ Hillary Greene said in the darkness, her voice definitely sounding as if it was smiling.

  And Warner suddenly remembered, with relief, that Hillary Gree
ne wasn’t said to be one of those moody sods who could snap your head off or pat you on the back for no particular reason, just as the fancy took them.

  ‘She was said to be a party girl,’ he began cautiously.

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘More likely booze. She liked a drink, liked to get really rat-arsed. And she’d been known to keep two or more men on a string, when it suited her.’

  ‘Right. So, by eleven, eleven thirty, she was likely to have been at least well on the way to being merry,’ Hillary mused. ‘Was she the sort who became more malleable, or more strident, when she got drunk?’

  ‘Dunno, ma’am,’ Dennis said frankly.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Right, see if you can find out. Well, that’s all for now. You might like to join my team at the farmhouse, help out with witness statements if you like. I’m sure you know the drill.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Dennis said, and left her, retracing his steps back down the rutted path. So that was the famous DI Greene. All things considered, he thought he’d come off very well.

  Back at the cowshed, Hillary approached a platinum-coloured Mondeo which had its interior light on, revealing two dark-haired people sitting in the back seat. Unless she missed her guess, Michael Wallis and his girlfriend. A uniformed PC was sitting in the front passenger seat and he jumped when she tapped on the glass. He was one she didn’t know, so she showed her card and, as much for his passengers’ benefit as himself, said, ‘Detective Inspector Hillary Greene, from Thames Valley, Kidlington. I’m the senior investigating officer here.’

  She indicated with a jerk of her head to the uniformed officer that she wanted him to get out, and murmured quietly, ‘Michael Wallis and Jenny Porter?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘They been talking much?’

  ‘No, ma’am. The girl’s a bit upset, and been crying like. Then small chit chat. Nothing about the vic. Or the circs.’

  Hillary nodded, then slipped into the passenger seat, turning around to face the young couple behind her.

  Jenny was a rather plain-looking girl, with long dark hair and small, light-coloured eyes. She was dressed as Little Bo Peep, with cute, puffed sleeves of white, with a navy-blue and white pinafore dress. Her shepherd’s crook, made of balsa wood, lay across both her lap and that of her companion. She also held a daisy-covered bonnet in her lap, twisting it compulsively this way and that. Hillary hoped it wasn’t a rented costume, because she’d have to pay for the ruined hat if it was. In contrast, Michael Wallis was something of a looker, and was dressed as a pirate. He even looked a bit like Johnny Depp from that pirate movie. Even sitting down in the back seat, Hillary could tell he’d be tall, at least six feet, and he had heavy, slightly wavy dark-brown hair, high cheekbones, and big dark eyes that would give even his father’s cows a run for their money. A black eye patch, pushed up to the top of his forehead now, gave him a rakish air. She wouldn’t normally have put these two together. It just goes to show, she thought. Never judge a book by its cover.

  ‘Jenny, isn’t it?’ she said, giving a small smile and thrusting her hand between the two front seats. The girl took it quickly and smiled, visibly relaxing. ‘And Michael?’

  ‘Right.’

  Again, hands were shaken.

  ‘So, what can you tell me?’ She kept the question deliberately vague, and her eyes on Michael. She’d often found an open-ended question could produce more information than ones that could simply be answered either yes or no. Especially if asked of a man, in front of a girlfriend in obvious need of protection and succour. Some of Hillary’s best interviews had been conducted in situations just like these. If either Michael or Jenny had something to hide, she’d have willingly bet her next month’s salary that it would be right here and right now that she’d find out about it.

  ‘Well, not much really.’ Michael Wallis spoke with neither an upper class nor country yokel accent, which would no doubt serve him well in his chosen career in land management. ‘Mum and Dad are having this big party for their twenty-fifth. Most of their friends are around their age, and to be honest, I expected it to be a bit of a bore, and it was.’

  Jenny Porter giggled unexpectedly. Then she looked shocked and put a hand over her mouth. Hillary was fairly sure it was down to nerves, rather than to her being a natural giggler.

  She smiled back. ‘Don’t worry. I know – it’s just the shock. Don’t worry about it.’ Nobody looked less like a giggler than the plain and unpretentious Porter girl.

  ‘Thanks,’ she whispered back.

  ‘So, Michael. Go on,’ Hillary prompted.

  ‘Well, it’s because it was so boring that me and Jen decided to cut loose for a little while, and came up here.’

  Hillary glanced out of the window pointedly. The cowshed didn’t look any more salubrious for being festooned with the bright yellow and black police tapes being set up around it.

  ‘I wanted to see the cows,’ Jenny Porter said defensively, and in direct response to the police woman’s obvious disbelief. ‘I know that sounds silly, but I did.’ Her chin rose in half-hearted belligerence, but Hillary merely nodded. In truth, she’d heard less unlikely things.

  The trouble was, when you were paid to have a suspicious mind, it was sometimes hard to believe even the most believable of explanations. Over the years however, experience helped you sort the wheat from the chaff, and she was perfectly willing to believe that a plain young girl with a surprisingly good-looking and well-to-do (by most people’s standards, at any rate) boyfriend, would be perfectly willing to go and look at cows, if it meant spending some time alone with the object of her desire. It would be better with a full moon and haystack, perhaps, but a cowshed in the rain would do if you were desperate enough.

  ‘So you came up here and … what? Just found her?’ she asked, letting a touch of scepticism creep into her voice now.

  ‘But that’s just what we did,’ Jenny jumped right in, sounding just a little aggrieved. ‘We walked up the path, talking about next year’s summer holidays - we want to go somewhere nice, Corfu maybe, or somewhere in the Caribbean.’ Jenny paused for a breath. ‘And we came in here, and Michael pointed out what made a good milker,’ she paused for another breath whilst Hillary hid a smile, ‘and …well, we kissed for a little bit, and then Michael said he could see something further down the barn and hoped one of the cows hadn’t got out. We walked down … and Michael used his lighter and … there she was. This big white blob.’

  Jenny Porter began to cry. Hillary handed over a tissue from the box of Kleenex she’d spotted on the car’s dashboard.

  As his girlfriend sniffled, Michael took up the story. ‘I could see at once that things were bad, so I got Jenny out of there, and told her to wait, whilst I ran back to the house and phoned you lot.’

  ‘You didn’t have a mobile?’

  ‘Not on me.’

  ‘And did you go back inside whilst you were waiting, Jenny?’

  The other girl shuddered. ‘Oh no. I didn’t want to go back in there.’

  ‘Did either of you see anybody when you were walking up the track?’

  They looked at one another then shook their heads. ‘Did you hear a car start up, or did one pass you by as you walked out the house?’

  ‘No, it was too early for the guests to start leaving,’ Michael said.

  ‘Did you recognize her?’ Hillary asked, and saw Michael Wallis tense. He’d obviously been expecting the question, and Hillary was interested to see how he’d tackle it.

  ‘Yes. Her name was Julia. She came with somebody. The son of one of Dad’s cronies, I think. I’ve seen her around sometimes. I think she’s a local girl.’

  Hillary didn’t miss the quick, worried look Jenny gave her lover. But was that just a plain girl’s insecurity, or did she have some other reason to think that Michael’s off-hand admission was just a shade too casual? Hillary made a mental note to find out if Michael Wallis had ever been one of the men Julia Reynolds had liked to lead around on her string, then n
odded.

  ‘OK. You can take Jenny home now. But someone will be in touch to take a proper written statement.’

  Michael nodded. He didn’t look exactly thrilled at the prospect.

  Hillary climbed out of the car and went back to the cowshed. SOCO were still going about their quiet business, whilst two men waited to remove the body to the mortuary. She had no doubt that she was looking for a man, probably a jealous lover or would-be boyfriend. When a beautiful young girl, not known for her monogamous ways, ended up strangled at a party, you didn’t have to be Hercule Poirot to figure it out: one of Julia Reynolds’ men had turned from a lover to a killer.

  Now all she had to do was put a name to him.

  chapter three

  Hillary awoke to the sound of arguing starlings. She fumbled from the narrow bed, grabbed a twenty-second shower and dressed. Living on a boat made drinking and washing water especially precious, but she’d long since become expert at using the least possible amount of everything, including the batteries and the calor-gas cylinders.

  She boiled the kettle (enough water for one cup exactly) and glanced at her watch, debating whether to head for the HQ or go straight back to Three Oaks Farm. She slung her bag over her shoulder and duck-walked up the iron stairs to avoid banging her head, and absently padlocked the doors behind her.

  Over on Willowsands, her neighbour, Nancy Walker, was listening to something weird. Probably some ‘new age’ tape her latest conquest had given her. As a forty-something widow, Nancy trawled the male student body around the environs of Oxford like a killer whale on the lookout for seals.

  Once in the car, she decided she’d better check in at the office, and was glad that she did. The moment she stepped inside, the desk sergeant nobbled her.

  ‘Here, looks like your new super has just arrived,’ the sergeant, an all-knowing, all-wise veteran of twenty years, tipped her the wink before the door had even shut behind her.

  ‘And?’ Hillary asked, veering off to the desk immediately. As any green flat foot soon found out, if you ever wanted to know what was what, you asked the desk sergeant. His knowledge was all knowing and indiscriminate – from who was boffing the tea ladies, to the latest gaffe to issue forth from the lips of the chief constable’s good lady wife.