by Clare Curzon
‘Please,’ she said and motioned them towards twin sofas to each side of a log fire giving out the scent of apple wood. Over it hung a full-length portrait of a ballerina in a white tutu. She was an ethereal creature, slim and erect, possibly some thirteen or fourteen years old. Not the daughter, then. Perhaps there were other children. He should have enquired into that before coming.
Mrs Jay followed the direction of his eyes and nodded. ‘I was crazy about dancing then, but I was growing too tall. Just never stopped. My father, an Ulsterman, said he should have put a turf on my head.’
Yeadings smiled. He’d heard that expression before.
‘And my second love was cattle. So when Clifford came along and married me I grasped the opportunity. He indulged what he considered my whim. You may know I run a farm now. Friesians. They’re amiable beasts.’
She was talking to keep off the subject he’d come about. A way of keeping him at bay. But he’d meant to offer comfort, however empty.
She caught the sound of a door opening and tensed. Then as the maid brought in a tray with tea things she gave a nervous laugh and settled to making room on a low table beside her. There were cups and saucers for three.
‘Is your husband at home, Mrs Jay?’ Yeadings asked.
‘No. He – he’s busy in town. Some urgent case that’s come up. He left yesterday.’
Left her to deal with grief on her own.
‘I think he blames me for letting M-Monica go for a sleepover. She’d done it before, with other school friends. She’s a popular little girl.’
Yeadings found himself liking the absent husband less every moment. On an impulse he decided to unburden himself.
‘I’m finding this difficult. You must forgive me if I seem utterly useless. In other cases there has always been some hope left, when I can promise we will do our utmost to find a missing child. But this time it is too late. All I can do is swear we will hunt down whoever has done this appalling thing, and bring him to justice.’
She shivered, staring into the blazing logs. ‘That at the very least.’
‘But it’s never enough. I can’t say how very much I feel for your loss. If it’s any solace to you, Monica knew nothing of what happened. She was asleep.’
‘You have children of your own.’
It was a statement, needing no reply. She started busying herself with pouring tea, and her two visitors drank without tasting it, knowing they should already have left. As soon as he could politely withdraw, Yeadings stood and offered his hand.
‘You will let me know of any progress?’
‘Certainly.’ He noticed she had said ‘me’ and not ‘us’. It sounded as though the marriage would not long outlast this devastating blow.
Catherine Jay sat on for some twenty minutes while her tea grew cold. Then she rose and left the house by the kitchen, crossing the cobbled yard, past the row of stables to the distant milking parlour. The stockman was just herding her cows in.
She waited until Shula was opposite, then ran her hand over the velvety muzzle, drawing the great black and white body to her, breathing in her hay-scented breath.
‘I’ll see to this one,’ she called, and guided the cow into a nearby stall. Not the impersonal, efficient Alfa-Laval system tonight. For Shula there should be hand-milking.
No, not for Shula: for herself.
The cow had a full, rounded udder, smooth like pink soap. The woman found a stool, pulled it alongside and sat, laying her cheek flat against the warm, sweat-greased flanks for solace. As she reached with both hands to squeeze out the sweet milk her tears began to flow. She remembered then that she had never been able to breast-feed Monica as a baby. It had left her feeling deprived. But nothing like now.
Her weight against the warm, breathing flanks, she milked and sobbed until both she and Shula ran dry.
‘God, that’s fabulous! A Granannavan!’
He leaned forward to clear the misted car window with his sleeve and peer out as Z braked and drew alongside the rear of the manor. Despite his protests they had brought him home. Anna had been adamant, Z doubtful, but the hospital had been happy to see him go, because of the hordes from national and local press who were finding ways of eluding the overloaded security system.
Almost as soon as the car started moving the boy had fallen asleep, his head lolling on to his grandmother’s shoulder. Through her driving mirror Z had watched the woman draw him closer, resting his head on her ample breast and stroking back the wayward lock of hair that flopped over his forehead.
He slept all the way until they reached the gates to Fordham Manor where a half-dozen paparazzi, forewarned by phone, had gathered with a battery of cameras. Flashes lit the gloomy afternoon as they jostled to get a view of the car’s occupants. There was even a TV van and a couple with furry mikes, one brandished on a boom and thrust at the driver’s window.
‘Police,’ Z snapped, stopping while the duty constable operated the gates. ‘There’s no admission.’ They drove through unimpeded and the gates were closed behind them.
Waking to recognise the close hedgerows and the windings of the lane, the boy had pulled away from his grandmother. A sound that was between a whispered groan and a whimper escaped him.
‘You’re going to manage fine, back among your own things,’ the ex-Squadron Leader commanded. Z was doubtful, wincing as the woman went on, ‘We’ll go in by the gun room. I’ve brought the spare key.’
How could she be so unfeeling? But then Z recalled that the room had not been used to store guns for decades. It was more a dumping ground for garden furniture, golf umbrellas and muddy Wellington boots; as an entrance, probably more homely to the boy than most other parts of the house. But the name was unfortunate.
That had been the moment he saw the Jeep and the caravan. In an instant he was alert and fascinated.
‘Mine,’ Anna admitted shortly. ‘I’m the peripatetic house guest, not always sure there’s a welcome under my would-be hosts’ roof.’
He flashed her his pathetic half-smile, there and gone in a second. And of course he knew what peripatetic meant. ‘We’ve got two guest rooms,’ he offered. ‘There’s beds for both of you.’
‘Rosemary?’ Anna raised a suggestive eyebrow. ‘Like to stay on?’
‘Thanks,’ said Z, turning in her seat to face him, ‘but I’m local, more or less. And anyway, Danny, you should know I’m police. Sergeant Zyczynski, CID.’
He stared back at her, eyes wide in an ashen face. It was anything but welcome news. She was aware of a new barrier going up between them.
‘It was an accident,’ he said weakly. ‘A fox darted out and I skidded avoiding it.’
‘That’s Ascot’s business,’ she told him. ‘Nothing to do with me. As your grandmother said, I’m here to help her in any way I can. But there’s someone else who needs caring for. Your friend Charleen. We must get in touch with her folks. Do you know where they live?’
He continued to stare, his mouth slack.
‘Did you give the Traffic officer her address?’
His reaction was delayed, but as he started to talk the words fell over themselves. ‘She lives alone. It was a flat over a shop; number 7A, I think. I don’t know the name of the road. It was dark when we got there and we had to get in out of the storm.’
So he didn’t know her at all well. Probably a pick-up in some bar he’d risked entering, confident he looked older than his true age.
‘This would be on Friday?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was your first meeting?’
He was young enough to blush. ‘She seemed friendly; lent me change for the phone. I’d left my mobile at home.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, I had to stand her a drink, didn’t I? Actually we had one or two. She was funny and we got on really well together. When I told her the camp had been cancelled she said I could come back with her; spend the weekend there.’ There was a brief hint of cockiness there, while his expression stayed un
sure.
‘I was a bit doubtful at first, only by the time I’d given her a lift home she said I shouldn’t be riding farther after what I’d drunk. So I said I’d stay.’
‘And who did you ring?’
‘Ring?’
‘You borrowed change from her for the phone.’
‘Oh, that was earlier. Yes. I rang home. Only there was no reply. The answerphone was switched on. They do that when everyone’s gone to bed. To avoid being disturbed.’
‘What time would that have been?’ Her voice sharpened.
He looked vague, switched his gaze to his grandmother who was staring down at her hands. No help from that direction. What had he expected her to do – beg that the questions should stop?
‘I don’t know. It’s all a bit foggy. Late, anyway.’
‘Before the pub closed?’
‘Of course.’
‘So which pub would that have been?’
She caught a flicker of something like anger in his eyes. He wasn’t used to being cross-questioned. His voice, when he answered, was superior, putting her in her place, a mere policewoman. ‘Oh, the Swan or the Falcon or some such bird.’
‘In …?’
‘Slough. I’d gone there to pick up my friend’s bike. He was away that weekend on TA training.’
‘Without his bike?’
‘They’d sent him a rail warrant. To Bodmin. God, it’d have been really shitty out there on the moors. If the storm reached that far.’
‘I guess so,’ she conceded and managed a smile. No need to ruffle his feathers further. All he’d told her could easily be checked. ‘Let’s go indoors, then.’
‘It should have warmed through by now,’ Anna encouraged. ‘I turned the heating up before I left.’
They all got out, Daniel hopping between the hospital’s aluminium sticks while Z retrieved his kitbag from the car’s boot. The women waited for Daniel to join them at the door. His face was chalky white and Z had further misgivings about bringing him home so soon. They filed through into the hall. As Anna turned on the lights he stared wildly around, his eyes drawn at once to the police tapes denying access to the dining room. Instantly he crumpled to the floor, his gasping cry followed by the clatter of metal sticks on the tiles.
‘Out like a light,’ Anna observed, whipping off her car coat and bundling it under his head.
There was the sound of rapid feet descending the stairs. ‘The housekeeper,’ Anna explained. ‘She arrived just before you picked me up.’
Mrs Pavitt appeared. ‘I heard your car. Oh God, it’s Daniel. You’ve brought him back!’ She sounded appalled.
She ran and knelt beside him, loosening his collar and chafing his hands between her own. ‘We must get him to bed.’
‘A sofa in the drawing-room,’ Anna decreed. ‘Rosemary, will you take his feet?’ She stood back while the other two carried him through.
‘Some water,’ Alma Pavitt demanded, waving a hand at Z who disappeared into the kitchen.
‘I think he’s discovered a taste for something more bracing,’ said his grandmother. ‘Stop fussing and give the lad some air. You can get him a whisky when he comes round. Better still, make that three.’
Mrs Pavitt hesitated, darted an unfathomable look at the dragon, then walked stiffly from the room as Z returned with the water.
Anna took the tumbler from her and poured half its contents on to a potted aphelandra by the window. ‘Mrs Pavitt is bringing us some scotch. There must be a kitchen supply. But I think he’d better not take his neat.’
In Swindon DCI Salmon had difficulty in finding the right house his quarry had been taken to. The M4 was clogged with traffic and he was twice held up at roadworks in sheeting rain which made his windscreen wipers almost useless.
His ballpoint pen had reached the blobby stage, and since he’d jotted down the address rain on his hands had smudged the end of each line. So he’d gone for Meldrun Road, been redirected to Meldrun Avenue and eventually located Mrs Bellinger’s refuge at Meldrun Walk. The detour had not improved his social skills.
The retired hotel-housekeeper was matchingly foul-minded at having been deserted by her guest at a point when she needed a certain amount of physical assistance. The only bright relief was that Salmon could indulge her appetite for gruesome details of the crime that required Alma Pavitt’s recall.
The DCI at his best was not effusive. At his surliest, as now, he saw information as totally one-directional. He made it clear that an officer in his position could not indulge a witness’s morbid curiosity. Mrs Bellinger’s jaw set stubbornly. Deprived of stimulating details of the Hoad family’s disaster, she went mute as a clam. It was not until Salmon asked about her connection with somebody called Bertie Fallon that she perked up and demanded, ‘Who?’
Challenged to provide info himself, Salmon resisted, simply repeating the name.
‘Weel, I’m not sure,’ the woman tempted, exaggerating her Lowland Scots accent. ‘Now what would the mannie be looking like?’
Partially defeated, Salmon admitted that apparently he was of medium height, with medium dark hair, medium everything in fact. Then he conceded that the man had been a metallurgist locally.
‘Eh? Would that be some kind of alternative therapist?’ she enquired, cupping her ear as if slightly deaf.
Near explosion point, he was obliged to explain.
‘Ah,’ she said finally, after some thought, ‘there’s a lot of foundry workers around these parts. Not the sort of people I’d have any occasion to mix with, Sergeant.’
He wasn’t such a fool that he mistook what she was about, so he didn’t attempt to dispute his rank. If what she’d said was true there could be others much better qualified to give him some background on Fallon. He’d only to contact the local police and they could steer him towards men who shared Fallon’s interests.
Better still he could leave it with them to follow the matter up, get himself a meal and be on the road home within little more than an hour.
Chapter Eleven
Yeadings sat grim-faced through the debriefing. For days uniformed men had combed the area round Fordham Manor for clues but it became increasingly unlikely that anything useful would come to light; a point the national press was having a field-day with. Neither the missing gun nor the knife had been found.
House-to-house enquiries in the village had produced no witness to any visitor to the estate on the night of Friday – Saturday. Who would be crazy enough to be abroad in that ferocious storm? Now, despite the outrageous nature of the crime, Superintendent Challoner was demanding his uniform men back for routine duties.
Salmon, the Boss had to admit, was doing nothing wrong. But he was getting nothing right either. He couldn’t be blamed for not being Angus Mott, but surely by now there should be some spark of light in the general obscurity.
As the meeting broke up, ‘My office,’ he commanded, nodding to his two sergeants and signalling the DCI to follow.
‘Now,’ he said as they found places to sit, Beaumont cross-legged on the floor between desk and door, ‘let’s start all over again. Forget any pattern the investigation has followed so far. We need fresh eyes. What exactly is this wholesale slaughter about? Come on, tell me.’
‘A total nutter.’ Beaumont broke the sombre pause. ‘Who else would rush from room to room killing anything that breathed?’
Yeadings grunted. ‘There’s no report of any such person loose in the vicinity.’
‘He had to get inside the house, and he left without leaving a trace,’ Z reflected. ‘That took some organisation, which must rule out anyone truly demented, however crazy he went over the actual killing.’
‘Someone known to the family, because there was no break-in. He was either there by invitation or they let him in on trust.’ This was Beaumont’s next contribution.
‘One of them went suddenly crazy.’ Salmon sounded unsure. Invited to break new ground he made a wild leap into fantasy.
‘Four dead,’ Yeadin
gs reminded him patiently. ‘That way the killer would have to survive his three victims and then dispose of himself. The children were asleep. No way could Hoad have shot himself with a sporting rifle while discharging a shotgun. And the rifle’s missing. The woman certainly never half-strangled herself, and much of the stabbing was proved to be post-mortem. You can’t deny there was another person present in the house. We have to discover who. But what I actually asked was – “what is it all about?”’
They all stared back, unwilling to offer a theory.
‘Why all that mayhem? You’ve an open choice. Even a lunatic must have some kind of motivation,’ he prompted.
‘Bloodlust,’ Z said simply.
‘Possible. Anything else?’
‘Hatred. Revenge.’
‘Gain.’
‘Sex.’
‘Any of those,’ Yeadings agreed. ‘There’s also fear. Fear of exposure or of actual harm. We have to consider each of the victims in the light of those options. One at least of them could have brought about the need to be killed.’
‘But to wipe out everyone …’ Z looked away in horror.
‘Perhaps that wasn’t the intention,’ Yeadings suggested slowly. ‘Suppose the intention was to kill only one of them, but something went wrong, and the whole thing escalated out of control. It may have been Hoad or his wife. I think the children can be left out of this, but once something unexpected happened the killer panicked, had to finish off any possible witnesses.’
‘Even – children – asleep?’ Beaumont ground out in protest.
‘Yes, in an almighty panic. We all know how obsessives, driven far enough …’
They sat in silence, unsure where consideration of a single intended victim could lead them. ‘We’ve already been working on Hoad’s background,’ Salmon defended himself.
‘We need to dig deeper. And the same for his wife. Had she a lover? What do we know about her business dealings? Even the missing son, Daniel. Suppose he was the intended victim but just happened not to be there.
‘Because Hoad was the first to be killed, it doesn’t mean he was the intended victim. Perhaps that was where it went wrong; right at the beginning. An intruder caught wrong-footed. All we know for sure is that someone removed another firearm from the locked steel cabinet and, confronted by Hoad with a shotgun, discharged it into him. The rest could have happened in a red mist. A simple scenario is often nearest to the truth. What’s against it?’