by Rebecca Tope
She had fed the dogs and visited the tortoise. Outside it was almost dark. Very little traffic passed the gate, even at the time of day generally regarded as busy. Anybody coming home from work in Gloucester or Oxford or Stratford would use the main road and come off at the roundabout. Only those from the Cirencester direction might choose the smaller road via Stratton. Presumably there were barely a handful of commuters living in Daglingworth anyway – nowhere near enough to constitute a rush hour. She had seen nothing of the people living either side of Galanthus House, their properties strung out sufficiently for there to be no unavoidable contact. I’m in limbo, she thought, with a wave of self-pity. Nobody was going to come and cheer her up. She’d be lucky to get five minutes’ chat with Drew, with all the other calls on his time. Jessica had told her to keep away, and Gladwin was on holiday.
So she did what she hoped would earn her some sort of cosmic brownie point and called her mother.
It was a year and a half since her father had died, and all the old balances and alliances in the family had shifted as a result. Maureen Johnstone had spent very little time in lonely grieving and even less waiting for attention from her children. She had picked herself up, made new friends, reminded herself of her former interests and abilities and given everybody a series of surprises. But she continued to live alone and to make it clear that she expected to be kept closely apprised of all family news. She was aware of Thea’s attachment to Drew Slocombe, but had not yet met him. Damien was the most dutiful, and Thea probably the least when it came to sustaining good-quality contact.
‘Maureen Johnstone,’ came the familiar voice, businesslike and very slightly suspicious.
‘It’s me.’
‘Thea? Or Jocelyn?’
It was always irritating to be confused with her younger sister, and always her own fault for not announcing her name. ‘Thea,’ she said.
‘You’ve heard from Damien? Talk about a surprise. I’d completely given up on them. Of course, it could still go wrong. She is terribly old for a first one.’
‘He sounds pretty confident. You’re well, then, are you?’
‘Same as usual. Where are you? Not at home, I’ll be bound.’
‘It’s a very small village called Daglingworth.’
‘Anywhere near Winchcombe?’
‘Not really.’ Her mother had joined her at a housesit in Winchcombe the year before, having originally introduced her to the homeowner. She had shown little interest in subsequent commissions and even less approval. Somewhere under the surface there was always a flicker of disdain at the whole business.
‘I hope there hasn’t been any trouble?’
‘Well …’ Already she was asking herself why in the world she had made this call. What had she been thinking?
‘Thea! What is it this time?’
‘Nothing to worry about. It’s all sorted out now, anyway. Jessica came to see me on Tuesday. We had a nice pub lunch.’
‘How is she? I haven’t heard anything from her for a long time.’
Thea swallowed down an urge to defend her daughter. How she related to her grandmother was her own business, and a long time might easily be a mere two or three weeks. ‘She’s fine,’ she said, crossing her fingers. Until that moment, she hadn’t grasped quite how unfine Jessica might be. The girl had been anxious, uncomfortable, trying to say something that never quite emerged as a lucid account.
‘Good. There was a thing in Manchester, wasn’t there? A young policewoman got hurt. I saw it on the news.’
‘So did I. Nothing to do with Jess. I called her to check.’
‘You know something?’ Maureen burst out. ‘I don’t like the police. I don’t trust them. They tell awful lies when it suits them. They think the end justifies the means. Nasty people. She shouldn’t ever have joined them.’
‘Blimey, Mum! Where did that come from? You of all people.’
‘My friend Annie – you remember her? She’s got a grandson with long hair and tattoos. He was stopped and searched, for no reason at all. When he complained, they just made up a story that was totally untrue. What sort of a society is it, where that can happen?’
‘I know,’ Thea agreed vaguely. She did know, on some level. But it wasn’t anything she could hope to tackle. Like most people, she more or less believed that justice would prevail in the long run. ‘Although there are some very decent police officers. I know a few, after all. In fact,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know a single bad one. Some are rather thick, but that’s a different thing.’
‘Too thick to know how to behave with integrity,’ said Maureen sourly.
‘Anyway – it’s exciting about Damien’s baby.’ She changed the subject determinedly. ‘Something to look forward to. Especially a girl. A girl’s going to cope much better than a boy would.’
Her mother laughed. ‘I agree with you there,’ she said. ‘We’ll all have to make sure she’s not too brainwashed.’
‘Right.’
They parted with promises to meet up soon and Thea felt the glow of having done a good thing. There were times when she and her mother argued, where the essence of their relationship slipped back into criticism and self-defence, uncomfortable truths and a bitter feeling of falling short. But that seemed to have faded away almost completely now. It gave her hope that from that point on, she and her mother would become closer, more affectionate and of much more mutual support.
But there had been elements of the conversation that niggled, too. There was a sense that she had been lazy and evasive in her consideration of the place of the police in society, given that she often had dealings with enforcers of the law. It had been a shock to hear her mother state so flatly that she did not trust them, because Thea herself had never reached such a point of cynicism. Thinking of Phil Hollis, Jeremy Higgins, Sonia Gladwin, and her own brother-in-law, James Osborne, she knew she would trust any one of them with her life. Literally. The police in general might be defective, but the individuals of her acquaintance were remarkably decent.
She filed the whole matter away, to be given further attention. It did matter, she was sure. It connected with everything that had been happening in the past few days, but not in any way that she could properly distinguish. She would think about it when she went to bed, when she felt warm and safe and relaxed.
Meanwhile, she dithered about phoning Drew. An ill-timed call could cause stress and irritation, and if the children were still awake and wanting him, it would put her in the role of importunate girlfriend, wanting attention that rightfully belonged to Timmy and Stephanie. It would pull him in two directions, which could in no way be a positive thing. She could text him instead, but she wasn’t sure he would see it. He had never fully acquired the mobile phone habit, apart from keeping a dedicated number for the funeral work and never straying out of earshot of it ringing. Thea was not privy to that number.
Then Gwennie yapped, and the doorbell rang, and the clock in the living room struck seven.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was Tiffany Whiteacre, looking smaller and paler than Thea remembered. ‘Can I come in?’ she said. ‘It’s raining.’
‘Is it?’ Thea peered out in surprise. ‘After such a lovely day?’
‘Drizzle, anyway. I didn’t bring a coat.’
Thea threw the door wider and ushered the girl inside. ‘Have you walked, then?’
‘I rushed out. I’ve never done that before. I thought it was only people in books. But I couldn’t help it. It was like being blown by a fierce wind. I had to get away. I just ran.’ She was almost crying, her voice broken and breathless. ‘I didn’t bring a phone or anything.’ She seemed amazed at herself, reporting her actions with an air of wonderment.
‘What happened?’
‘They arrested Ricky. They say he killed Danny. My mother’s gone berserk. She’s trying to phone the MP. She kept shouting at me, asking about a thousand questions. My head was exploding with it.’
‘Why come here, though?’
‘You must have friends around here, who’d be more help to you.’
‘Not really. You know more about it all than anyone else.’
‘How can you say that? That’s ridiculous.’ The anger took Thea herself by surprise.
‘I mean, apart from Sophie and Nella and another girl called Polly. She’s away, travelling.’ She sniffed and looked around the room for somewhere to sit. Thea had led her into the living room without thinking and now waved towards the sofa where she sank down like a collapsed puppet.
‘Your parents will be panicking about you. Wasn’t it terribly thoughtless to add to their worries, when everything’s in such chaos about Ricky?’
‘Nobody understands,’ Tiffany burst out. ‘Except I think you might. Ricky didn’t kill Danny. Why would he? They liked each other. Danny was trying to get the group to accept Ricky as a full member, even though they weren’t sure.’
‘For a start, I don’t understand that at all. Is Ricky in the group or isn’t he?’ She remembered something Steve had said on the subject. ‘And how come he nearly killed Jack Handy?’
‘He didn’t mean to hit him hard.’
‘So perhaps he didn’t mean to stab Danny to death, either? Maybe he doesn’t know his own strength.’
‘Stop it. Let me try to explain.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Well – Ricky and Nella were … together for years before Danny turned up.’ She held up a hand to stop Thea’s automatic response. ‘Yes, I know that sounds as if there’d be reason for Ricky to hate Danny, but it wasn’t like that at all. They’d already split up and Ricky had a new girlfriend. He was glad when Nella got somebody else as well. She’s terribly intense, as you might have noticed. But very sweet and clever and everything, as well. It was magic the way she and Danny just clicked from the start. I don’t think he ever meant it to happen. He kept his distance for weeks before it all got too strong for him. And then it was all-consuming and he proposed and it was really lovely.’
‘Okay. Got that. So – Ricky,’ Thea prompted.
‘Ricky’s got a job with the canal people. CRT, they’re called. They do rivers as well and they’ve got a project connected to the Churn. You know it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Doesn’t matter. But there’s a tributary that joins it not far from Bagendon, and that runs through Mr Handy’s land. He’s been polluting it with his chicken shit and causing all sorts of trouble. They’ve got to take him to court over it, but he’s making everything as difficult as he can, and Ricky’s the main person dealing with him. He went for him on Tuesday. They didn’t want me to know about it, but I found out anyway.’
‘Why can’t he just tell all this to the police?’
‘I suppose he will, but they’re still going to think he killed Danny. It suits them, doesn’t it? Gets everything nicely sewn up. That’s what my mum says.’
‘And mine,’ said Thea ruefully. ‘It’s not my experience.’
‘Steve says your daughter’s a cop. You’re biased.’
‘I don’t think so.’ But she wasn’t able to inject complete conviction into her words. Jessica herself had hinted that the truth might be otherwise at times. ‘Anyway – what do you want me to do? I can drive you home, I suppose.’
‘Drive me to Sophie’s,’ Tiffany said impulsively. ‘She might not have heard about Ricky yet.’
‘Unlikely. It was hours ago now. Why haven’t you told her already?’
Tiffany blinked. ‘How do you know when it was?’ She pressed herself back into the cushions. ‘You’ve been spying on us for the police, haven’t you? Sophie said you had. Right from that first time we saw you in the woods. Said you were following us and listening in to what we were saying.’
‘If you believe that, wasn’t it rather stupid to come here now?’
‘I didn’t believe her. She gets a bit paranoid at times. There’ve been a few incidents when the police already knew what we were planning and where we were going. Nella and Danny said it was just coincidence, and most of our targets were obvious all along.’
‘And you probably put everything on Facebook anyway.’
‘No, we don’t. And we don’t send emails or texts, either. Not when it’s something important. I mean – those men culling the badgers aren’t funny. They’ve got guns. We had to be cleverer than them, if we had any hope of disrupting them.’
‘And did you? Disrupt them, I mean?’
‘Sometimes. Not enough.’
Thea sighed. She did not want to take the girl to her friends, even though she was undeniably hooked by everything Tiffany had to say. On the face of it, there did seem to be good reason for arresting Ricky – and how reliable would a sister’s protests be, anyway? Of course she would insist on his innocence. She thought of another topic she wanted to discuss. ‘You know you said Jim Tanner was the one who set fire to this house,’ she began.
Tiffany nodded slightly, with a befuddled look.
‘Well, he didn’t. He came here to tell me. Mrs Foster was quite wrong in reporting him to the benefits people. His back is incurably diseased. He was in agony when he was here.’
‘So?’
‘So you get things wrong. People get things wrong. You might well be wrong about Jack Handy, Ricky, Danny – the whole lot of them.’
‘How could anybody be wrong about Danny? He was an active and committed member of our group. He worked with us for a year. We all knew him and liked him.’
‘Like a brother,’ Thea murmured.
‘What?’
‘I thought you were going to say you knew and loved him like a brother.’
‘Well – yes, we did.’
‘And see what brothers can do.’
Tiffany scowled. ‘Except he didn’t. There’s no way Ricky could stab somebody. Especially not somebody he liked.’
‘Okay.’ They were going round in circles, Tiffany’s mind in a single track like a toy train. ‘So what now?’
‘I told you – I want to go and see Sophie. She’ll know what to do. She’s got a friend who’s a solicitor.’
‘I expect your parents are better placed to see to that side of things. Where does Sophie live, anyway?’
‘Cirencester. The south side. Well, it’s Siddington, actually.’
‘Where there’s another stretch of abandoned canal? I’ve heard of it, but never been.’
Tiffany waved this away as altogether irrelevant. ‘Will you take me?’
It was time to be decisive. ‘No. Sorry. I’ll take you home, but nowhere else. You’re too young to get any further involved than you are already. I wouldn’t trust Sophie to keep you safe.’
‘That’s stupid.’
‘Very likely. But I’m not risking it. You should call your parents right away and tell them you’re okay. It’s mean of you to cause them any further worry, on top of the business with Ricky. I should have made you do it the moment you got here,’ she realised. ‘Or done it for you. They’d have come and collected you.’
‘I’m not twelve. I can go where I like.’
‘You sound twelve when you talk like that.’
‘Okay, then. Give me a phone and I’ll do it.’
Thea produced her own mobile and handed it over. The girl keyed in a number and waited. ‘Hey, Mum – it’s me,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, I’m with the house-sitting lady in Daglingworth. Can you come and get me, do you think? She said she’d drive me if necessary, but I don’t think she really wants to … yes, that’s right … I know … good … fine. It’s fine … see you in a bit, then. Bye.’
‘She’ll come?’ asked Thea.
‘Ten minutes or so.’
‘They must be furious with you.’
‘Not really. Can I use the loo, do you think?’
The original cupboard under the stairs had been converted to a tiny downstairs toilet, which Thea carelessly indicated. She was feeling flat and superfluous, unsettled by the sudden arrival of the girl and her own failure to behave as a fully responsible adult. As always, her primary motive had been to glean information, fitting more pieces into the puzzle and jumping to some imprecise but persistent conclusions.
Back in the living room, with both dogs reacting to the minutes of waiting as if they were centrally concerned, Tiffany perched on the edge of the chair closest to the window. When a car horn softly hooted, she leapt up and headed for the front door.
‘Thanks!’ she called, and pulled it open.
‘Mind the dogs!’ Thea called after her.
Hepzibah always regarded an open door as an invitation. This one was no different, especially as it had been a pretty lazy day as far as she was concerned. Far too much sitting around for her liking. She ran between Tiffany’s legs and shot down the driveway.
Thea grabbed Gwennie before she could follow, and bundled her into the kitchen. ‘Sorry, old girl,’ she panted. ‘But I need to keep you safe, okay?’ Then she shouted after her own disobedient animal, which had vanished from sight. ‘Catch her, will you?’ she yelled at Tiffany.
But Tiffany had already reached the car, and was opening its back door. Thea could see three heads inside it. Three? Even two would be a surprise. She dashed down to it, getting there just as Tiffany was pulling the door shut again. ‘Hey! Wait a minute!’ Thea yelled. She wrenched the door wide and peered into the car.
The driver was Sophie Wells. Next to her was a woman Thea had never seen before, and on the back seat was Steve of the big ears.