by Rebecca Tope
‘What sort of time is this to pay me a visit?’ Her attempt at a lightly flirtatious tone was not a great success. Already she was asking herself how in the world he knew where to find her. And the effort required meant that this must be something serious; something professional to do with a crime. ‘Come in, anyway.’
Hepzie seemed to remember him – but then she did the same scrabbling at legs and frantic wagging with every man she met. She was a man’s spaniel at heart. Thea wondered whether she still missed Carl, who had known and loved her for the first few years of her life.
Higgins wasted no time. He stood in the hallway and said, ‘You met a man called Jack Handy yesterday. Is that right?’
She nodded, waiting with increasing foreboding.
‘What time would that have been?’
‘Afternoon. He gave me a lift because it was raining. We got back here around half past four.’
‘Did you ask him in?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘Did he talk to you?’
‘Yes, a bit.’ She was beginning to feel defensive of the farmer, for no good reason other than he had been cheery with her, and went out of his way to drive her home. If Higgins was thinking of him as a murderer, she wanted to show him the error of his thoughts as soon as she could, even if she’d entertained the same possibility herself not long before.
‘What about?’
‘Something to do with a field he’s trying to sell and how people are making objections. Listen, Jeremy – he was a perfectly nice and polite man. What’s all this about?’
‘You know I can’t tell you. Even if you and I do have a history, you still have to answer like an ordinary witness. Okay?’
‘A history? Is that what you’d call it?’ She and Higgins had never entertained a moment of mutual romance, as far as she was aware. She had been the lover of his superior, Phil Hollis. She had cried on him a time or two. He had rescued her from awkward situations. History was a fair word for all that, she supposed.
‘He says he was with you for half an hour or more, from four to half past.’
‘He’s right. You have to tell me why it matters.’
‘We’re trying to establish people’s movements between two and five yesterday.’
‘Because somebody died then? The man in the quarry? Who else can it be? I was there beside the quarry at about half past three. I didn’t see anything unusual.’
‘Which side of it?’
‘Um, the west, I suppose. The little lane joining Itlay to the road the map calls Welsh Way. There’s a viewing place. I stood there and looked down.’
‘He wasn’t far from there.’ The detective inspector rubbed his cheek and stared into the middle distance for a moment. ‘Along the northern side, actually.’
Thea tried to visualise it. ‘Off the Welsh Way, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘There are trees alongside it, and a steep drop.’
‘And you don’t think he just fell, of his own accord?’ There was an inevitability to his answer that she found depressing. She realised how much she had wanted this death to be a simple accident.
‘There’s plain evidence that he didn’t.’
‘But if you didn’t find him until today, how can you be sure of the time of death?’
‘We can’t. But there are indications …’ He stopped. ‘I’m telling you far too much.’
‘Okay. Sorry. But it sounds as if I was around at the crucial time. So were lots of people. The protesters, for a start.’
‘Which protesters?’
‘A couple of young women. And then another one – the dead man’s fiancée, actually.’
He closed his eyes and rubbed the flesh under his chin. It was developing into quite a dewlap, she noted. ‘How can you possibly know that? How long have you been here?’
‘A day and a bit. I just happened across them and heard them talking. I saw a few more of them today. People tell me things,’ she finished simply. ‘It’s not my fault.’
‘Nobody ever thinks it’s your fault,’ he said tiredly. ‘You’re like Typhoid Mary. It wasn’t her fault, either.’
Her heart lurched. ‘Don’t say that! That’s a terrible thing to say. It never has anything to do with me – as me. You know what I mean. Besides, you can’t generalise. They’ve all been so different. Until now I thought this one was an accident, anyway.’
He shook his head. ‘So did we, for about twenty minutes. But then we had a closer look at his injuries and … well, let’s just say the quarry was nothing more than a place of disposal.’
Thea frowned. ‘He was dead before he got into it?’
‘Looks that way. Signs of a scuffle, as well. Blood splashes. Nothing very subtle about it.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose I’m not really surprised. Strong young men don’t just fall into quarries on a calm Saturday afternoon, do they?’
‘Why do you call him strong? Did you meet him as well?’
She put her hands up. ‘No, no. But he sounds very capable and outdoorsy. Doing something with badgers. He can’t have been anything else but strong.’
‘He weighed ten and a half stone, and was five feet nine. Well nourished, apparently. Not exactly a bodybuilder, but capable of putting up a fight, I’d say.’
‘How did you establish the time of death?’ She was pressing him, hoping he hadn’t noticed that he was revealing a lot more information than he was supposed to.
‘He was in the Bathurst Arms in North Cerney until two o’clock. So it must have been after that. And he didn’t show up for a date with his girlfriend at five, so we assume he was incapacitated by then, if not dead. She was expecting him and he never showed at the time agreed.’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’
‘She spoke to us. Making a fuss, demanding to see the body. The name got out much too soon.’ He rubbed his neck again.
‘They listen in to police radio. They’ve got an app.’
‘Names aren’t sent over insecure radio frequencies, for that very reason. I think they must have been watching through binoculars from the other side of the quarry. The victim was wearing a distinctive cagoule type thing. I imagine they recognised it and ran with it. They operate like MI5, you know. There’s a whole big network of them – more so since the badger thing. You can’t hope to keep track of them. It’s terrorism,’ he finished darkly. ‘They run rings round us.’
‘And they’re all quite respectable citizens most of the time. With jobs and houses and cars and money. Tricky for you.’ Looking at him, Thea wasn’t at all sure where her sympathies lay. The police were handicapped by so many rules and regulations, so vulnerable to accusations of bias and heavy-handedness. No wonder they spent so much time staring at computer screens, trying to catch villains that way. It was far less likely to lead to trouble.
‘Yeah. Anyway, there’s a problem with this chap’s identity. Or there would have been, if the girlfriend hadn’t barged in and told us who he was. Nothing on him to give a clue as to who he might be.’
‘Fiancée. She’s his fiancée,’ Thea corrected. ‘Nella something.’
‘Fenella, actually. Fenella Davidson, she’s called. And he’s Daniel Compton. She says his parents are working in Dubai. Still married, apparently, with a younger brother who’s at school there. Haven’t traced them so far.’
As if poked in the back, Jeremy suddenly stiffened, lifting his chin. ‘Hey! I’m not meant to be telling you all this, damn it. You didn’t hear it from me, right? All I want from you is confirmation that you can account for Mr Handy’s movements, for at least part of the afternoon.’
‘Because somebody told you he was the most likely person to bash Danny over the head and chuck him into the quarry? All I can say is, he didn’t look like someone who’d just done a murder. He was angry, in a general sort of way, but also rather nice.’ She thought about the man, and what she had just said. ‘Although he was very cheerful at first. As if something pleasing had just happened. Maybe it was relief to be
rid of a pest.’ She laughed. ‘Ignore that. It’s not evidence, is it?’
‘It’s helpful. Anything that adds detail to the picture comes in useful. Well, that’s it for now. How long are you here?’
‘Two weeks. How did you find me, by the way?’
He gave her a patient look. ‘Jack Handy told us, of course. We questioned him two hours ago.’
‘That was quick.’ She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I suppose you’ve been interviewing people all afternoon.’ There was something unsavoury about the whole idea of a hasty police investigation with the intrusive questions and horrible suspicions.
‘Sooner the better,’ he nodded. ‘I expect I’ll be seeing you again.’
And he left. She hadn’t even asked him to sit down, she realised. They’d been standing in the hallway for fifteen minutes and Higgins hadn’t made a single note of what she’d told him.
The regular encounters she’d had with the police over the past three years still left her hazy as to the details of how they went about a murder investigation. The body would not have been properly examined by a pathologist yet – that much she was sure of. So they had no conclusive evidence as to cause of death … except it did sound as if the fatal injury was of such a nature as could not possibly have been inflicted by a fall down a steep slope lined with trees, to land on sharp-cornered rocks at the bottom. She tried to imagine the various likely scenarios – the most credible that there was a large hole in his head, caused by his killer, who hoped it would look like damage from the fall. Or perhaps he had been stabbed or shot, with the killer making no attempt to conceal how the deed was done. So, as Higgins had already indicated, the quarry was more or less incidental. Somewhere to hide the body, or a final vicious shove for good measure, sending him over the edge.
She recalled DI Higgins promising that he would see her again soon. With a sigh, she braced herself for further involvement in the violence and mayhem that never failed to accompany a murder.
Chapter Eight
Monday dawned fresh and breezy. Thea enjoyed two minutes of slow awakening before the trouble started. Downstairs, Gwennie began to bark. Not the one-note yap which said I’m awake, so you should be too but an urgent string of throaty sounds that suggested there was actually something to be worried about.
Thea got up and went to the bedroom door. ‘What’s the matter?’ she called down the stairs, hoping to quell the animal simply by letting her hear a voice. Instead she heard an odd sizzling sound, which was quickly followed by a bang and the smell of smoke.
‘Hey, Hepzie, come with me. Something’s burning.’
The spaniel eyed her from the foot of the bed and remained where she was. ‘Come here,’ grated Thea, grabbing her by the collar. ‘Do as you’re told, will you?’
Gwennie was still barking, and there were crackling sounds at the bottom of the stairs. Still half asleep, Thea dragged her dog down the stairs after her, to discover a pool of flame in the narrow hallway. A coat hanging near the door seemed to be on fire, but otherwise it was not spreading. Muttering half-remembered instructions about keeping oxygen levels low and getting everybody outside, Thea dragged Hepzie past the all-too-close flames and smoke, and into the kitchen, where Gwennie was standing with her muzzle in the air, barking and sniffing and making small agitated leaps. ‘Come on, both of you. Out into the garden,’ Thea ordered. She bundled them outside, and went back to the hall. Probably she could smother the flames quite easily with a thick blanket, without the hassle of calling the fire brigade, who would cause much more damage with their overenthusiastic water hoses.
For a moment she stood staring at the fire, which was emitting some nasty black smoke, before remembering a red canister on the wall beside the cooker. Returning to the kitchen, she found a fire blanket, with a metal loop ready to be pulled. When she did so, a rectangle of white material emerged, and she took it back to the fire. It wasn’t big enough, but when she threw it over the centre of the flames, it gave her a sense of control, at least. She had bought herself a bit of time and reduced the smokiness. Reaching carefully over the smouldering coat, she unhooked another garment and threw that over the surviving flames beyond the edge of the blanket. ‘Hasn’t done the carpet any good,’ she muttered, standing a yard or so away from the conflagration. It was all now subsiding, the smoke swallowed up by the coverings. She’d have liked to stamp out the small tentative flames she could still see, but her feet were bare. After a minute or two, in which she assured herself that it wouldn’t spread any further, she ran upstairs and threw on some clothes and shoes.
Downstairs again, she congratulated herself on her efforts. The fact that the Fosters’ hallway was empty of furniture, and the carpet probably flame-retardant, helped considerably. But if she hadn’t been there, the fire might easily have crept towards the stairs, by way of the coats and the open door into the living room, and perhaps along skirting boards and banisters, until the whole house was engulfed.
She stamped every last flicker into submission and went to find a brush, with the vague idea of restoring some sort of normality to the scene. But then she stopped. This was not an accidental blaze. It was nowhere near a power point or an electrical gadget. It was quite obviously a deliberate act of arson. Something had been pushed through the letter box, containing petrol or similar, and Gwennie had heard it all. If Thea had run through to the front bedroom and looked out of the window, she would very likely have seen the culprit.
‘A Molotov cocktail,’ she said to herself, unsure of exactly what such a thing was, nor whether it would fit through a letter box. Didn’t it involve a bottle, for a start? She gingerly lifted up the coat and fire blanket, and stared at the awful black mark on the pale-grey hall carpet. In the middle was a misshapen lump of melted plastic, impossible to miss. And she could smell petrol faintly.
Reluctantly, regretfully, she dialled the number for the Gloucestershire police, that was already in her mobile, and asked to speak to Detective Inspector Higgins.
Higgins wasn’t there, and the person who took the call was cautious about putting her in touch with him. She wanted to know name, purpose and level of urgency. Thea paused. She didn’t need Higgins in person, did she? Any police officer would do. She was required to report the fire if only to gain the due paperwork for the Fosters to make an insurance claim. ‘Somebody tried to set the house on fire,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ve put it out, but it was undoubtedly a crime, which I am now reporting. It’s Galanthus House in Daglingworth. Jeremy – sorry, DI Higgins – was here last night, so he was the first person to spring to mind. But it needn’t be him, of course.’
‘That’s all right, madam,’ said the girl inanely. ‘I’ve taken down those details, and somebody will be with you this morning.’
‘Thank you.’ So she would have to stay in, waiting for the visitation which could be hours away. Inevitably there would be a shortage of available officers, given the fact of a murder investigation. She couldn’t even clean up any more of the hallway, because that would be interfering with evidence. She had probably already done too much.
She let the dogs back in, but confined them to the kitchen. ‘All clear,’ she told them. ‘More or less. Well done, Gwennie – you did exactly the right thing.’ The corgi wagged its few millimetres of tail, which made Thea feel sad. Docking tails was something she deplored profoundly. She gave them some biscuits and a drink, and tried to eat some toast herself. To her surprise, she couldn’t swallow it. Her body was operating on a stubbornly independent track, insisting that the past half hour had been a serious trauma that she would be foolish to deny. Taking more notice than before, she found her heart was beating heavily and quickly, her hands were shaking and tears were gathering behind her nose. The more she noticed, the worse it got. Hepzie came to her side and pressed her soft head against Thea’s leg, which worsened things by another notch. A sudden storm of uncontrollable sobs shook her, and she put her head down on her arms and gave way to it.
Then somebody was kn
ocking on the door. Blearily, she went to open it, finding a man in a fireman’s suit standing there. He introduced himself with great formality as Fire Officer George Kemp. ‘There’s been a fire here?’ he asked, already looking past her at the mess on the hall carpet. She stood back and pointed. ‘Blimey!’ he said, which she thought considerably more human and pleasingly unprofessional. All defences falling away, she leant towards him, blindly hoping for a hug. ‘Are you all right?’ He peered down at her face and tutted gently. ‘Looks a bit like a shock reaction to me.’
‘You just missed being cried on,’ she choked. ‘I’m all right really.’
‘Sweet tea,’ he prescribed. ‘I can make it for you, if you like.’
‘Go on, then. Mind the dogs.’
He stepped around the blackened patch and let himself into the kitchen, chirping at the dogs. Thea drifted after him, feeling useless. Everything had gone weak – legs, voice, mind. She dropped into a chair. ‘It wasn’t very bad, really. I don’t know why I’m in such a state.’
‘It’s the might-have-beens,’ he explained. ‘That’s what hits you.’
Deftly, he produced a mug of tea, finding things in the strange kitchen like magic. Then he went back into the hall and started a close examination of the after-effects of the fire. ‘Not a very subtle attack. I gather the cops are on their way. They’ll want to give it a really thorough look. Could go down as attempted murder, if they knew you were in the house. Is it just you here?’ He eyed the coats hanging by the door, as if working out the family structure from them.
‘It’s not my house. I’m just the sitter. I’m looking after the dog – as well as the house. They’re not going to give me a very high score, are they?’
‘They can hardly blame you.’ He licked his teeth ruminatively. ‘And the chances are, surely, that it wasn’t you, but the usual people who were being targeted. Looks as if they’ve upset someone, and this is their idea of revenge.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘They could have thought the people were away and the house was empty. Where’s your car?’