by Rebecca Tope
‘What the hell do you want? And how dare you bring dogs in here?’
‘Sorry. I wanted to see the church. I didn’t know you were here. The dogs won’t do any harm. I daren’t let Gwennie out of my sight. Sorry.’ She was babbling.
‘Go away.’
‘Listen – I know how you must be feeling …’ She felt the usual flicker of complacency as she said this. It really was the case that she understood the shock, rage, despair and sickness that came from a sudden death. ‘My husband was killed four years ago, without warning. I know how mad it can make you.’
‘Mad?’ Nella looked at her across the rows of pews in the small ancient church. ‘As in angry, or insane?’
‘Both. And a lot more.’ She tasted again the acid that had remained at the back of her mouth for weeks after Carl died. The gall of helplessness and misery. The inability to construct a coherent thought. ‘You wonder how you can possibly set one foot in front of the other.’
But as she spoke, she was aware that Nella Davidson showed every sign of functioning a great deal better than Thea herself had done. She had, after all, joined with Sophie and Tiffany in making direct threats against her, Thea. She might not have said a great deal, but several times she had formed sentences and appeared perfectly focused. Had that been a sort of autopilot, that was now being overtaken by real emotion? Was the truth finally sinking in? And how unusual, these days, for a person in such a state to seek solace in a church!
‘Leave me alone,’ the girl said quietly. ‘I mean it. You can’t say anything that would help.’
‘That’s probably true. But don’t be alone too much, okay? You’ve got friends. What about family?’
Nella turned away without answering. Thea hovered another minute, holding the subdued dogs close. They both seemed to find the church atmosphere oppressive, their heads and tail drooping. ‘Come on, then,’ she said to them. ‘We’ll go home, shall we?’
Just before closing the door, she took another look at Nella. The angular figure was bent forward, head in hands, rocking slightly. Thea’s heart gave a heavy thump of helpless sympathy. She hoped that something she’d managed to say would bring at least a crumb of comfort.
Completing the circular walk by going down to the small crossroads at the centre of Daglingworth and turning right to get back to Galanthus, Thea gradually realised that she now had a credible reason to visit the Whiteacres. She could express concern about Nella, ask whether there was any family available to support her, and offer any help she could for the short time she expected to be in the area. She could be open and innocent and direct, staying well away from dangerous topics and completely overlooking the unpleasantness of the previous evening. It all looked entirely feasible, as she examined the plan.
But it was a weekday. People would be at work, school or college. It was just past three o’clock and Thea fancied a cup of tea. The day had been far less eventful than the previous one, but all the same it had yielded enough food for thought to keep her mind occupied for a while. A moment of honest self-awareness suggested that she really could do no good at all by calling in on the Whiteacres or anybody else. Her role was as nothing more than silent bystander, with moments of engagement that led nowhere. Would she never learn to stay clear? Following Nella just now had been a stupid intrusion, unkind and unnecessary.
Indecision and self-doubt filled the next ten minutes, to be interrupted and dispelled by DI Higgins himself coming to the door.
‘“Possible little clue” I think you said,’ he began, standing as before just inside the threshold, one foot on the blackened patch of carpet.
‘What? Oh – the text. Yes. Look, come into the kitchen and I’ll make some tea. I didn’t expect you to turn up in person.’
‘We learn from experience, I hope, Mrs Osborne. And experience suggests that such a message from you is best not ignored.’ He followed her into the kitchen, and sat down heavily on one of the chairs.
She filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’m not sure how to take that,’ she said frostily. It was back to the same old accusations, she thought, with a sinking stomach. Gladwin would have made a joke of it, but Higgins was too direct, and in too much of a hurry, for that.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean anything. So …’ He waited.
‘Oh. It’s probably nothing. But you know I brought Mr Handy’s dog back here last night? Well, today I found this—’ She proffered the plastic bag that had been left lying on a worktop. ‘In the dog’s bed in the garage. I wondered if she’d torn it off the jeans of the man who hit her master. She was coughing in the car, and I think it might have been stuck in her throat. She must have expelled it during the night, poor thing. Something like that, anyway. It is a bit disgusting.’ Leaving it in his hand, she moved away to make the tea. Two tea bags in two mugs, milk and a spoon was the unceremonious method she used. ‘Do you want sugar?’ she asked.
Higgins tentatively fingered the shred of material through the plastic, and then gave her a look. ‘No sugar, thanks. This could be anything,’ he said. ‘How do you expect us to make use of it?’
‘I don’t know. It might match something, somehow.’ The vagueness was a deliberate attempt at self-protection. ‘And I didn’t like the way Mr Handy was so scornful of his dog,’ she added crossly. ‘When she might have been doing her best to protect him.’
Higgins held her gaze. ‘Explain,’ he invited.
‘Before he blacked out, he said something about her being useless. Said she just ran round in circles – although he added that she grabbed one of the men by the hem of his trousers, as well as a chunk of ankle. I defended her. She’s a sheepdog, for heaven’s sake. Bred not to bite man or beast. If she did bite someone, the marks on his leg will help make a case against him, won’t it? She sounds quite brave to me.’
‘You won’t have heard the latest news, then,’ Higgins observed.
‘No. What?’
‘He came round – Jack Handy, that is. We don’t need any special forensics to identify the people who attacked him. We’ve already got quite a few names and addresses. He poured it all out this morning. Couldn’t be more helpful.’
‘Oh.’ She frowned, and drank half the tea. ‘So why did you come here, then?’
He sighed. ‘I came here because there is still a murder investigation ongoing. Or had you forgotten that?’
‘It had rather faded in significance,’ she said carefully. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Well, he definitely was Daniel Compton. We were starting to have a few doubts, the way he covered his tracks so well. The parents have confirmed it’s him.’
‘Did they come back from Dubai?’
Higgins shook his head. ‘We did it electronically. Wonders of modern science. They’re in the middle of some highly important survey of migrating birds, apparently, and insist their son would wish them to carry on with it, instead of dropping everything to come and cry over his dead body.’
‘Sounds as if there’s a family commitment to ecology.’ She thought she quite approved of such dedication, on the whole. ‘Besides, he’s got his fiancée here to do all that, hasn’t he? I saw her today,’ she added. ‘She’s absolutely grief-stricken. I hadn’t thought so until now.’
The detective cocked his head in a familiar gesture that said Here we go again – you obviously know things that we don’t.
‘Oh?’ he said.
‘She was in the church, clenched with misery. She told me to go away. Not for the first time, actually.’
‘Explain.’
‘Well, she was here last night, with her two friends. They weren’t very nice, to be honest. Told me I was interfering, and to stay away from them.’
‘They threatened you?’
‘Sort of,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t think they meant anything too awful. Tiffany for one, is really quite sweet. I mean – her heart’s definitely in the right place.’
‘They’re vigilantes,’ he snapped. ‘Something the police force regards in a very
bad light.’
‘Why buy a dog and bark yourself?’ said Thea fatuously.
‘Something like that. But more along the lines of ordinary citizens jumping to conclusions and doing a great deal of needless harm.’
‘They said none of them was there yesterday, where Handy was attacked. Did he name any of them?’
‘Can’t tell you that. Best for you if I don’t.’
‘Are they wrong, then, to think Jack Handy killed Danny?’
‘Too soon to say. He fits in a lot of ways, but there’s no evidence worth mentioning. And his manner … it’s not professional, I know, but he doesn’t strike me as a killer. He’s too … outraged. Looks you in the eye. The fact is, the protest group make enemies everywhere they go. They’re an irritation and an embarrassment right across the whole region. And they were getting a lot worse. Harassment on a major scale, disruption verging on terrorism at times. The badger thing really escalated their methods to whole new levels. That gives us a wide selection of suspects for the killer of one of them.’
‘Handy’s got two thousand hens packed together in a barn. I saw them this morning. When I asked his stepmother what the protesters thought of that, she wouldn’t say.’
The head cocked again. ‘Mrs Handy? You’ve met her?’
‘I had to take the dog back, remember? She showed me around and gave me some eggs. But she didn’t like me very much,’ she ended regretfully.
‘What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing. Honestly – nothing you could possibly object to. I had to go, didn’t I?’ The defensiveness was automatic, born of a growing sense that she was seen as trouble by almost everybody. She gave herself a determined shake. ‘Do you know she’s called Sandy Handy? I’ve been wanting to say that out loud all day.’ She giggled. ‘People do have daft names, don’t they? But she must have really loved the old man to saddle herself with that. Or she could have kept her original name.’
Higgins smiled tightly and drained his mug. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘It’s been nice to chat.’
‘But you don’t rate my little clue very highly, do you? Will you take it with you?’
‘Oh yes. You never know. It just seems a bit unlikely the dog would have carried it all the way here? You think she was choking on it, do you?’
‘I told you – she was coughing. I don’t know any more than that, but I can’t see the Fosters having such a thing in the garage. They’re not obsessively tidy, but it was fairly neat and brushed.’
He shrugged. ‘Anything useful that might have been on it will have been sucked off, then.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed patiently. ‘But the material itself – you could tell where it was torn from, if you had the jeans or whatever. It would put their owner at the scene.’
They were on the doorstep, and he had turned to go back to his car. Then he hesitated, and rubbed a finger across one eyebrow as if chasing a thought. ‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘Right. Thanks.’
‘Bye, then,’ she chirped at him in her brightest voice. ‘Thanks for coming.’
He flipped a valedictory hand and got into his car.
She closed the door, feeling genuinely pleased by his visit. He had passed some time, bringing her nightly call to Drew that bit closer. Soon she could feed the dogs, take them into the garden, close the curtains and find herself something to eat. All that would take them to nearly six, if she did it slowly and cleaned the kitchen up thoroughly after herself. She also had quite a lot to think about. The pleasant task of ordering her account of the day for Drew’s benefit gave a little spring to her step and found her humming softly now and then.
The fact that Jack Handy had regained consciousness brought mixed implications. He presumably wasn’t going to die, which meant nobody would be prosecuted for his murder. But despite Higgins’s gut reaction, Handy was highly likely to find himself under suspicion once again for the killing of Danny Compton. It was a strange balancing act, and she wondered what the local people made of it. What degree of popularity did the Handys enjoy in the area? Did everyone go to the farm for their eggs? Were there sheep on the land, as well? The presence of a collie suggested so. In which case, who was overseeing the lambing? Her thoughts drifted sideways into a slew of questions to which she had no answers. She remembered Higgins’s reproach that the first and unambiguous murder had slipped out of sight with the attack on Handy.
And – a new thought zinged somewhere in the middle of her head – what if Handy himself had been meant as a diversion, a new victim in the form of a callous red herring designed to dilute the quality of attention the police devoted to Danny’s death? She had no idea where the idea had come from. It made no sense, given what everyone already believed. If not Handy, then some other outraged Cotswold resident – most likely a farmer – had taken his chance to slaughter one of the most prominent and annoying of the protesters, by breaking his head and then throwing him into the quarry. His friends had drawn their own conclusion as to who had done it, and taken their revenge, worried that there would be insufficient evidence for a prosecution. The notion that this might be a deliberate smokescreen was ridiculous. She couldn’t think what could possibly have sown the seed of any alternative explanation in her mind.
Chapter Eighteen
The phone call that evening to Drew completely ruined her mood. ‘Sorry, love,’ he panted. ‘I can’t talk now. It’s utter chaos here this evening. Timmy had an accident at school, and spent all afternoon in A&E. I had a funeral, so Maggs went to sit with him. I had to call on an extra mourner to carry, which didn’t go down very well. Stephanie got sent off to a little friend’s house, and that went down even less well. You get the idea.’
‘Is Timmy okay now?’
‘Cracked his elbow. Hurts like hell, poor little chap. Not a lot to be done, other than leave it to mend. He’s got a sling, but can’t wear it in bed. Says he can’t find a way to lie that doesn’t hurt. There – hear that?’ A distant wail came down the line.
‘Just about. You must go, then. Give him some kisses from me.’
‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’
She could hear his need for an affirmative reply. ‘I’m absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about at all. Good luck with everything. I’ll call again tomorrow.’
He groaned. ‘I don’t promise it’ll be any better. If Maggs doesn’t get over being sick all the time, she’s not going to be much use at funerals.’
I need to be there, Thea wanted to say. But too much stood in the way. Not least her obligations to Mr and Mrs Foster.
‘She’ll soon be over that,’ she said confidently. ‘Any time now.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ he said gloomily.
Poor Timmy, Thea repeated to herself throughout the evening, crushing down the threads of resentment at the wretched child and his carelessness. She had an awful feeling that there had been a similar hint in Drew’s voice, too. Timmy should be seen as an innocent victim of circumstance, not a cause for irritation. From what she had gathered, his conception and birth had been unplanned and not particularly convenient. His mother’s injury, followed by a prolonged malaise and eventual death, had blighted his early years. A vulnerable male child, perpetually compared to his infinitely more robust sister, never getting his needs met, was unlikely to grow up confident and secure. He would be a withdrawn, antisocial adolescent. He would perplex his teachers and disappoint his family. A dropout, addicted to the comfort and predictability of computer games, he would become fat and unfit and sociopathic. There were plenty of examples of just such a scenario amongst people Thea knew. The raising of boys was a far more complicated and demanding task than that of girls, she was convinced. Girls recovered. They went out and met people. They found the whole business of education much easier and more congenial than boys did.
‘Poor Timmy,’ she sighed aloud. She had no relish for the prospect of becoming a substitute parent to him in his most difficult years. But love Drew, love his kids, she admitted to herself. Only the saddest of
people reached the age of forty with no baggage, after all.
Meanwhile, there was Gwennie and the tortoise. It occurred to her that the creature should have a name, but it had not been disclosed to her. If it woke up and showed some character, she would have to call it ‘Torty’ or something equally unimaginative. Idly, she turned on the television in the hope of hearing a weather forecast. Watching TV news had become a slightly nerve-wracking exercise during some of her house-sits. Local events could sometimes find their way into national headlines, and although it was desirable to keep abreast of developments, there was something awful about seeing your own temporary home village on camera. It never looked right, and the people looked fatter and more tanned than they were in reality.
On this midweek evening, however, there was not a word about any crimes committed in the West Midlands. There was, however, something every bit as alarming.
‘A large police operation in Manchester got off to a bad start when a young police constable was injured early this morning during a raid on a house in Bowden. Her arm was broken, but no further information is yet available.’ Footage was shown of a generic breaking-down-the-door in a typical street, which added nothing to the story.
It wasn’t Jessica – of course it wasn’t. Somebody would have phoned to tell her. She’d checked the phone for messages and found nothing. But even so, the police activity was almost certainly connected to the operation her daughter had told her about the previous day. It had been scheduled to start early that morning, and Jess was to be part of it.
She grabbed the phone out of her bag and checked again for a text or voicemail. With nothing to see or hear, she keyed her daughter’s number.
There was no reply, and she was directed to voicemail. ‘Hey, Jess – I just saw your operation on the news. At least I assume it’s the same thing. Do you know the girl who was hurt? Can you call me sometime and let me know everything’s okay?’