by Granger, Ann
He didn’t believe the person he’d been going to meet had done the dirty on him, because there’d be no reason for it. But someone else, who’d known of the proposed meeting; that was the most likely. Damn it, he’d sworn the other to secrecy and had thought they were of a mind on it. It was in both their interests. Surely no third party . . .
He took out his mobile phone, scrolled down the list of names in the address book, and pressed a number.
‘It’s me,’ he said briskly when the call was answered. ‘Are you alone? Then listen. Our association is over. Yes, over! There was a dead body at that farm. No, I’m not bloody drunk! Why the hell did you pick that place? I walked into some sort of a barn and there was a stiff. Yes, I’m sure! How should I know who it was? Sooner or later it will be found and the cops will be all over the place. I never went there, all right? You and I never agreed to meet there. That’s the story and the way it stays. We’re merely acquaintances with no personal history. Yes, that’s what I said, just acquaintances; and we’re going to stay that way . . .’
The person at the other end of the call broke in with vigorous protest.
‘Shut up!’ snapped Lucas. ‘Now then, I wouldn’t like to think I’d been set up . . .’
More vigorous protest.
Lucas overrode it. ‘All right, I’m not accusing you! But if not you then who was it? Have you blabbed? Well, have you said anything? Let slip some hint, left some piece of paper lying around with my name or phone number on it, or the name of that blasted farm? Has anyone had a chance to overhear when we’ve been talking on the phone?’
A pithy response to this.
‘Well,’ said Lucas. ‘I don’t like coincidences and I don’t like being dropped in it. I do think I was set up – perhaps we both were – and I want to know why and by whom! You can take it from me, I’ll find out.’
When Jess got home late on Friday evening, a crumpled envelope with an unfamiliar stamp greeted her on the mat just inside her door. She stooped to pick it up with surprise and pleasure. Simon had found time to write. Letters from her twin were few and far between. He was a doctor working for a medical charity in various world hotspots. The areas he found himself in were remote and dangerous, communications uncertain and vulnerable. He had no free time. So this letter, scribbled at night probably by the light of an oil lamp, was a rarity.
She tucked it in her pocket to be read at leisure and savoured later, and back-heeled the door closed behind her.
Her flat was small but it suited her because, for one thing, it was low maintenance. Something she didn’t have time (or the inclination) for was vacuum cleaning and dusting. On the other hand, she was by nature tidy and disliked living in a tip. So the flat was carefully furnished with essential pieces only and no ornaments except a framed family photo taken when she and Simon had been about twelve, in the garden of a rented holiday cottage in Cornwall.
The pair of them, their red hair glinting in the sunshine, grinned at the camera. Jess had both arms wrapped round the neck of the family Labrador. They had always taken him with then because no one could accept putting him into kennels. Not until he had gone to dog heaven, accompanied by a funeral elegy over his grave in their back garden, spoken by their father, had the family ventured abroad on holiday. It didn’t mean they were untravelled. Her father had been in the Army and when she was a small child they’d all lived for a time on a NATO base in Germany. It was another reason, she supposed, that her parents had felt no need to brave the airports or ferries at holiday time. Perhaps it was also the reason both she and Simon had chosen unsettled adult lives. Simon did more travelling than she did but a CID officer hardly worked nine to five. Like today, the unexpected was always ready to pounce.
Jess smiled at the snapshot and tried to recall who, since they were all four in the picture, had taken it. She couldn’t remember.
She walked into the bedroom and stripped off her damp, muddy clothing. When she’d showered, washed her hair and dressed in clean jeans and a T-shirt she felt a lot better. Her earlier tiredness had sloughed off with the Cricket Farm mud. Revived, she went back to the living room and switched on the local radio programme. There had been no sign of the press at the farm and possibly word hadn’t yet reached the media. There was nothing on the local programme. She’d watch the TV news later; the regional bulletin might have got wind of the ‘corpse in the cowshed’ by then. There was a quirkiness about the location that might appeal to the compilers of the evening news slots. Tabloid headline writers would hail it as a dream.
In fact, she’d prefer it if the media didn’t get hold of the news until the weekend was over. Later, if they couldn’t identify the victim, they’d need media help, but at the moment she didn’t want a camera crew scrambling around Cricket Farm. A judiciously released photo of the farm might jog the public’s memory later.
More particularly, she didn’t want reporters besieging Eli Smith this weekend. Jess was sure Smith was a deeply worried man. Anyone who found a corpse on his property wouldn’t be happy about it. But Smith was jumpy. He was also a loner and he wouldn’t deal well with intrusive questioning by eager reporters.
It had been arranged that Smith would come in and make his statement at ten tomorrow, Saturday. Phil Morton could take care of that. Theoretically Jess herself wasn’t due at work until Monday morning, but she couldn’t just let it all go over the weekend.
For one thing, early days in any murder investigation were the most important. Second, and no less important, Superintendent Ian Carter was due to take up his duties on Monday and they’d have to have something to show for a weekend’s investigations.
They knew little about the new man. He came to them from the other end of the country and they had no idea why he had chosen to relocate or been relocated. An acquaintance, a retired senior officer, had informed her Carter was a very experienced man. ‘I think I played rugby against him, years ago,’ said the same informant. She hadn’t even seen a photo and her imagination had served up a large tweedy ex-rugger player, fighting a losing battle with his weight.
Her plans for the next morning, therefore, ran something like this: get up early and go for a jog. Come back and snatch some breakfast and then go over to HQ to see what was going on. Later, drive out to Cricket Farm and make a careful exploration of the area. There had been some kind of stables lower down the hill, past that little wood. They needed to interview anyone who had been there at all during the past week.
She had time to make supper before the evening news. She went into her kitchenette, put pasta on to boil and when it was ready stirred in a small tin of tuna and a jar of pesto. Then she settled down in front of her TV with her dinner on a tray, and Simon’s letter spread out on the coffee table in front of her. She didn’t own a dining table. Who would sit at it?
Eli Smith had a table. Phil Morton had been right and his home was an isolated one. Smith’s cottage was one of four former labourers’ cottages belonging to the farm and dotted about the landscape. Two formed a semi-detached couple and had fallen into too much disrepair to be habitable. The other two, single cottages three quarters of a mile apart, were still in reasonable shape. He lived in one and the other was rented out to Penny Gower. Technically she was his nearest neighbour but at a distance that meant he saw little of her, unless he went over to the farm. Then he’d sometimes drive down the hill and check she was all right at the stables.
He also liked to see the horses. They’d had plough horses at the farm when he’d been a boy. They’d later been replaced by a tractor. Modernisation, they’d called it. He’d been sorry to see the plough team go and he fancied his father had regretted saying goodbye to them. It was a rare occasion when he and his father had been in harmony. But the plough horses, Dolly and Florence by name, had grown old. There was no room for sentimentality in farming. Certainly there had been no trace of any such emotion at Cricket Farm.
Eli had his ‘workshop’ at the back of his cottage. It consisted of a corrugated-iron she
d to which an electric cable was strung from the house. He could make as much noise as he liked in it. No one could hear. No one likely to raise any protest, anyway. Nor was anyone likely to come round and ask what he was doing out of curiosity. He couldn’t abide Nosy Parkers. That was something else he’d learned in his childhood. Now the coppers, they were real ones for sticking their noses into everything. So, reasoned Eli, there was no cause to tell them more than they needed to know. Like, they’d needed to know there was a corpse in the cowshed. But that was it: no more, no less.
That evening Eli sat at the rectangular pine table in the kitchen with his family. He’d realised they’d know what had happened and would turn up, so he wasn’t surprised. His father sat down at the other end facing him; his mother to the left and his brother to the right of him.
They didn’t always join him but they’d come once or twice a week. When they did, he accepted their presence as one does accept visiting relatives. Thus, he wasn’t particularly pleased to see them; but on the other hand they didn’t make tiresome conversation. Fair enough, you wouldn’t expect the dead to be chatty.
He much preferred their present taciturnity to the constant bickering and recriminations that had characterised these gatherings when they’d all been alive. Although even now, even silent, they still managed to needle him.
His brother, for example, insisted on attending wearing a rope round his neck. That annoyed Eli because it wasn’t just tactless, it was inaccurate. Nathan had used his pillowcase, torn into strips and knotted together, to hang himself in his prison cell. Where would he have got a proper rope like that one? Typical of Nathan: always making out he was smarter than he was.
His mother sat sullenly, alternately glowering at the uncleaned cooker (Eli was blowed if he was going to clean it just to please her) and mopping at the bloodstain on the bosom of her frock with a tea towel.
His father stared down the table over Eli’s shoulder and out of the window behind. There was blood all over his shirt, too, but he didn’t bother with it. Eli fancied his mother kept patting at her frock with a cloth because she sat opposite Nathan and wanted to remind him of what he’d done. But Nathan, he just sat there grinning with the rope halter round his neck.
‘I don’t know what you’ve got to look so blasted smug about, Nat!’ said Eli to him. ‘Anyhow, there’s been another killing, so you aren’t the only murderer up at the farm. See? You’re not so special!’
Nathan fingered his rope collar and smirked. You never could tell Nat anything. He always knew better.
His mother turned her sullen gaze from the cooker to him. She always did blame him for anything that went wrong at the farm. But he hadn’t been the problem, had he? It had been Nathan. As for his father, he just carried on staring over Eli’s shoulder, out of the window. But he’d heard the news. He’d screwed up his face in that way he’d always had.
‘It’s not my fault them coppers are going into the house!’ Eli defended himself. ‘I told ’em no one had been in there since Nat done what he done. But they had to have the keys. It’s no use you blaming me.’
But they always did ruddy blame him.
‘Clear off, the lot of you!’ snapped Eli, tired of their wordless company and moved to rebellion by the unspoken but unremitting criticism.
They obligingly did so, fading into the grubby wallpaper with its design of Chianti bottles. Damn silly design for a wallpaper, thought Eli, even in a kitchen. One of these days he’d get round to scraping it off and painting the walls.
‘Better not, though,’ he said to his elderly tabby cat, which had walked in. She didn’t care for company, always shot straight out the door into the backyard as soon as they turned up. ‘Better not change anything. They wouldn’t like it and it’d only give them something else to glare at me about.’
The cat was prowling cautiously round the kitchen, making sure they’d all gone. She’d jump up on his lap in a minute, squeeze her head up between him and the table, and try to steal scraps off his plate.
Eli wondered whether, in time, the dead girl in the cowshed would join them at the table. After all, she’d been found on their farm. It made her sort of family.
Still, he reflected as he tucked into yesterday’s leftover boiled potatoes fried up with bacon, now the family had buzzed off. He and old Tibs (she’d smelled the bacon and was getting ready to spring) had the place to themselves again . . . for the time being, anyway.
They’d be back.
Chapter 5
Saturday morning, Jess realised immediately, wasn’t a good time to arrive at a busy stables, especially one that offered riding lessons as well as livery. She got out of her car and surveyed the two rows of dilapidated wooden loose boxes, their corrugated-iron roofs in need of some attention. When it rains here, she thought, it must make a hell of a noise. I suppose the nags are used to it. The space between the loose boxes formed a sort of yard, containing an old bath that had been converted into a horse trough, a stack of hay bales and a midden, the last steaming gently. At the far end several vehicles were parked and beyond them, Jess could see a paddock dotted with some low jumps.
She was early but work here had begun even earlier, since the aptly named ‘mucking out’ was already done and added its own particular warm odour to the acrid smell of horses. These appeared to be mostly out in the yard. A group at the far end was being tended by people Jess took to be the owners. They would be the livery animals. A very small girl whose arms only just reached up to the animal’s withers was energetically brushing one of them, a stout pony. The two nearer animals were saddled up ready to be ridden out and a tall spindly young man was hoisting himself awkwardly aloft. The horse, sensing inexperience, put back its ears and stamped a hind hoof. The sturdy woman holding the bridle stroked its neck and uttered reassuring words, first to the horse, then to the rider.
‘Steady, steady . . . All right there, Mr Pritchard?’
‘Yes, fine, Lindsey!’ he replied too cheerfully.
Lindsey released the bridle and Mr Pritchard’s look of apprehension increased.
Jess moved over to her.
‘Good morning, are you the owner?’
Lindsey turned a freckled face towards her. ‘No, that’s Penny, Penny Gower. She’s in the office.’ She pointed to the end of the row of loose boxes behind her. ‘Is it about riding lessons or hiring a hack? Because if you haven’t booked . . .’
‘No,’ said Jess, taking out her ID and holding it up.
‘Oh, right . . .’ said Lindsey. ‘It’s about that rotten business up the road at Cricket Farm, then?’
The unease that had entered her voice was picked up by the horse carrying the novice rider, Pritchard. It stamped its feet again and moved backwards.
‘Whoa! Steady!’ gasped Pritchard.
‘It’s all right, Mr Pritchard, smooth the neck!’
Pritchard leaned forward slightly so that he could just reach the horse’s neck and patted it nervously.
Somehow, thought Jess, I don’t think Mr Pritchard is going to progress to Horse of the Year Show.
‘And you are?’ Jess asked the young woman.
‘Lindsey, Lindsey Harper. But I can’t help you,’ she added quickly. ‘I was here Friday but only because Mr Pritchard was coming for a lesson. We didn’t ride anywhere near the farmyard, just across the fields over there.’ She pointed into the distance. ‘I don’t go past it on my way home, either, sorry.’
‘I’ll go and find Ms Gower, then,’ Jess said. She gestured at the other horses. ‘Are those the owners tending them?’
‘Yes, those are the livery animals. Most of the owners get out here at the weekend. Penny and I manage during the week. We also keep a couple of riding animals belonging to Penny. This is one of them.’ She indicated the horse Pritchard rode.
Lindsey turned to the other saddled horse and put a proprietorial hand on its mane. ‘And this is my old fellow. I keep him here and he makes himself useful, don’t you, eh?’
The ho
rse swung its head towards her and stretched it out to nudge its owner’s shoulder.
‘He’s getting impatient,’ said Lindsey tactfully.
‘Sure, don’t let me hold you up.’ Jess smiled up at Mr Pritchard as she walked past on her way to the ‘office’.
Mr Pritchard, responding to the smile and outside interest, held the reins nonchalantly in his right hand, put his left hand, left elbow turned out, on his thigh and struck a pose usually shown by cavalry officers in old illustrations. His attempt to look dashing was less than natural but he was trying, give the man credit. Anyway, he wasn’t really trying to convince Jess: he was trying to convince himself.
When Jess reached the office she heard voices. She wasn’t the first visitor and whoever was there ahead of her was female and sounded strident. That the office had previously served as a loose box was shown by the stable doors, both halves hooked back against the wall. Jess avoided the dented bucket lying on its side by the entrance and tentatively knocked, before stepping inside.
After the bright light outside it was dark in here. There was no window; the only light came from the yard behind her, so that she was temporarily blinded and stood there blinking like a mole. Her nostrils filled with a mixed odour of leather and sweat.
When the shadows cleared she saw that three people were already in the small room and her arrival made it crowded. As the ‘office’ obviously doubled as tack room, there was little enough room to begin with. One of those present was a young woman of much her own age, attractive in a very English and slightly ‘horsy’ way. Her untidy long light brown hair was tied back with a scarf. Another was a man Jess judged to be in his late thirties or very early forties. He leaned against the far wall with his arms folded. He wore riding breeches and boots and a pullover over a check shirt. He didn’t look like a customer of any kind. His manner was too ‘at home’. The remaining person, the nearest to Jess, was a woman of indeterminate age and of what Jess unkindly termed to herself a ‘shrivelled’ appearance. She was weather-beaten and carried not an ounce of superfluous fat. Her hair was wiry and unkempt, her clothing well worn. She stared at the newcomer in an imperious way, challenging the interruption.