There wasn’t a lot more he could say to that, so with a few more words of reassurance, he rang off.
‘You think that will make her a suspect?’ Naomi asked him.
‘Not a serious one. Chances are, once they’ve established a time of death, she’ll have a good alibi, most likely backed up by all the locals at The Lamb. Probably by us too.’
‘So we’re back with the mysterious visitor. Hopefully, there’ll be fingerprints on the mugs.’
‘And he’ll have a record.’
‘That too. So what do we do next?’ Naomi asked.
Alec frowned. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.
ELEVEN
Kevin Hargreaves had, of course, heard about Eddy’s death, but it had not quite clicked that the night the older man had died was the night Kevin had visited late. In fact it wasn’t until he was getting his pack ready for a weekend out with his detector that he remembered, and that was only because of the shirt and jeans Eddy had washed for him.
He stood, holding the clothes in his hands and trying to come to terms with the fact that he, a grown man who prided himself on being, well, just a bit of a macho type, was crying like a flipping baby.
‘Whatever is the matter with you?’ His mother stood aghast. ‘Are you sick, boy?’
‘No, I was just thinking. I seen Eddy, you know, just before he had that fall. I’d stayed there one night.’
‘I remember you did, weekend before.’
‘Right, well I left my stuff there, went straight to work from his place, didn’t I? When I went back to pick it up, he’d done me bleeding washing for me, hadn’t he? One of the last things he did, wash me mucky jeans.’
‘Oh, stop it now. He was a nice old boy.’ She patted his arm. ‘You got all the stuff you need in there?’
‘I think so. Best check.’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and upended the pack, tipping the contents on to the bed. Compass, maps, various historic references he used to make sense of where he was and what he might find. Spare socks, thick and thin. Underwear. He always had more than he needed and some of it stayed in the pack from one week to the next, unused, just regularly checked and then returned to the depths of the bag. It was a habit he’d developed in childhood when he’d gone out with his dad on the weekends he’d spent with him after his parents divorced. It had been the one thing he and his dad really had in common, and by the time Kevin had grown up, there really wasn’t even that any more. He and his dad drifted apart, but the hobby remained and the habits that went with it.
‘What’s that?’ his mum said, pointing to a bundle she didn’t recognize.
‘Don’t know,’ Kevin said. He picked the bundle up, noting the blue linen and scruffy white lace. ‘Looks like a pillowcase. Or a bit of one.’ He unwrapped the bundle and laid the contents out on the bed.
‘Where did it come from?’
‘Eddy’s place. It has to have. I’ve not been anywhere else.’
‘But how did it get there?’
Kevin picked up the little book. It was pink and floral and locked up tight with a brass catch and tiny padlock. The word ‘Diary’ was emblazoned across the front in curly letters.
She took it from him. ‘Locked,’ she said. ‘Hang on a minute.’
She left the room and Kevin picked up the other documents. Two notebooks filled with close written script that he recognized as Eddy’s handwriting. He recognized the books, too. Eddy kept logs of all his finds, buying batches of the same dull-red exercise books he had used when he was still teaching. Kevin scanned the pages, puzzled. He was sure he knew about most of what Eddy had found; the two of them regularly shared their successes and their failures over the odd pint or a cup of tea and ‘kiddy biscuits’ as Eddy called their mutual choice of creams and chocolate fingers.
Kevin was sure he didn’t recognize most of these items.
He looked more closely, realized that not every entry recorded finds. Some appeared to be references to books or documents or parish registers – Kevin recognized the way Eddy annotated them. His mother returned and took the diary. She fiddled with something and then opened the little book and handed it to Kevin.
‘There. I knew I had a hair grip somewhere. You can do it with a paper clip, too; any bit of tough wire really.’
‘You got it open.’
‘Of course I did. So what is all this stuff?’
Kevin sat down on the edge of the bed, flicking through the pages. Two hands had written these pages. The first was clearly young. The letters round and exuberant and, somehow Kevin felt, enthusiastic. The second was Eddy’s familiar, tight lettering.
Kevin read a little of the first pages. He knew it to be intrusive and yet felt compelled, as though the voice of his old friend was telling him it was all right to look.
‘I think this was Karen’s,’ he said. ‘His daughter’s diary.’
‘She died, didn’t she?’
Kevin nodded. ‘Yeah. Eddy told me about her. He said she was seventeen and killed in a car crash. When I first met him he told me he’d had a kid; she died when she was my age, then. He hardly ever talked about her, like it hurt too much.’
‘How long ago was it? When she died?’
Kevin shrugged. ‘Dunno. I forget. Twenty years ago mebbe. But this is her book, must be.’ He closed the book. ‘What should we do with it, Mam? I mean, he must have put it in the bag. What did he want me to do with it?’
She took the diary from him and turned the pages slowly, pausing to read extracts. Kevin watched, seeing her lips move as she examined the words. ‘Looks like she wrote this in the few months before she died,’ she said. ‘Look at the dates.’
She sat down beside him on the bed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Eddy trusted you with this, so you’ve got to figure out why. It was his girl’s book, so it was precious to him someway.’ She frowned. ‘What night did you go back to pick up your bag?’
Kevin thought about it. ‘Oh, must have been Tuesday,’ he said. ‘I went to show him what we’d found up at Bakers Field. Them coins, you know. Mam, what’s wrong?’
His mother had turned very white.
‘Don’t you see,’ she said. ‘You were there the night he died. What if some damn fool of a policeman thinks you might have been involved?’
TWELVE
Somehow it had seemed more natural for Mrs Hargreaves to go to Susan for advice, rather than straight to the police, and it had seemed equally natural for Susan to go next door to the farm and fetch Alec back to the still-closed pub.
They sat around what had been Eddy’s table – that, too, seeming natural – and Alec and Naomi listened to what Kevin and his mother had to say.
Explains the key, Naomi thought, reflecting that quite a bit of potential evidence seemed to have walked from the scene before anyone realized Eddy had been killed rather than just fallen.
Alec listened carefully to what Kevin and his mother had to say. Kevin, he learned, was twenty-two and had known Eddy well. Like Susan, Alec realized, Kevin had a real affection for the old man. His mother, a dark-haired woman who showed every one of her forty plus years – forehead lined, hair showing more grey than brown – was clearly anxious.
‘They’ll think he had something to do with it, won’t they? Because he was there. The police will think he done it.’
‘Aw, Mam. Everyone knows I wouldn’t hurt Eddy.’
‘The police don’t know that, boy. How can they possibly know that?’
‘What time did you leave?’ Alec asked.
‘Not sure. I got there at half ten, eleven, maybe. Eddy was in his dressing gown but he let me in and sent me through to the kitchen.’
‘Late for a visit,’ Naomi commented.
‘That’s what Eddy said. I told him I didn’t think and he said I never did, but he weren’t angry or anything. I often called round late. I’d been at Brian’s. We’d been playing computer games and I had to come home past Eddy’s so I thought I’d drop in. I’d found some coins when we were
together at the weekend. Eddy couldn’t find them in his books so I’d popped in to see Dr Matthews on the way to Brian’s home. Mam, I told you I was going to do that.’
She nodded confirmation.
‘Dr Matthews?’
‘Local archaeologist,’ Susan said. ‘He helps run the portable antiquities scheme. You know, where people report what they’ve found and if it’s valuable they get the money for it.’
‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ Kevin protested.
‘Well, we’ll come back to it,’ Alec intervened. ‘So you went to Brian’s. At what time?’
‘Be seven-ish. We ordered takeaway. I left maybe ten fifteen, ten thirty. News was on. I was passing Eddy’s door so I stopped off to get my stuff and tell him what Dr Matthews had said about the coins.’
‘How long does it take to get from Brian’s to Eddy’s?’
‘Ten minutes, maybe. No more.’
‘Not the way you drive.’
‘Mam!’
‘So,’ Naomi said. ‘If you left when the news was still on, that finishes at half ten. You couldn’t have arrived at Eddy’s any later than, say twenty to eleven. And you stayed, how long?’
Kevin had clearly been thinking about it. ‘I went through and put the kettle on and he went upstairs. He was gone a few minutes. I’d made the tea by the time he got down. He’d said use the big pot, so I knew he wasn’t annoyed about me coming late. If he’d wanted just a quick cuppa, to be polite, and then wanted to get to bed, he’d have said to use the blue pot. That only holds enough for a couple of mugs.’
Susan laughed. ‘Eddy had a complete code wrapped up in his tea making,’ she said.
‘Like the pink stripy mug,’ Kevin agreed.
‘Stripy mug? Never mind, tell me all about it later. Let’s get the timeline established, shall we?’ Alec had slipped into work mode. ‘So, you drank tea.’
‘Ate biscuits.’
‘Talked about the finds. How long would all that have taken?’
‘Maybe an hour. I think it was no more than that. Eddy liked his bed. I’d not have kept him up past midnight anyway.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Certain. I heard the kitchen clock strike eleven, but I’d left before it struck twelve. Certain.’
‘That’s the clock on the mantelpiece,’ Susan chipped in. ‘Eddy was fanatical about keeping that one wound.’
‘And you saw no one. Heard nothing?’
Kevin shook his head. ‘On that road at that time of night there’s no traffic. I’d have noticed anything. I drove home, got in about half past twelve, I suppose. Stopped for petrol at the all night place at the supermarket.’
‘Supermarket?’
‘In Glastonbury.’
‘Do you have the receipt?’
Kevin shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’ll be in the car.’
‘He should be on their CCTV,’ Naomi suggested.
‘And when do they think Eddy died?’ Susan asked.
All eyes turned on Alec and he could feel the pressure, their keenness that he let Kevin off the hook. ‘Because the body wasn’t found until the day after, probably a full day after, and because there were no suspicious circumstances at that point, no liver temperature was taken. And because the post-mortem wasn’t carried out for several days it’s all a bit approximate,’ Alec said. ‘Best estimate, and it is only an estimate, is anything between midnight and five in the morning. They may be able to narrow that.’
‘So they’ll still think it might be me.’ Kevin was disconsolate.
Alec thought about it, wondering what words of comfort he could offer. Wondering, too, if this young man was a better actor than he appeared to be.
‘The teapot and mugs, were they still on the table when you left?’ Naomi asked.
‘Yeah. I offered to wash up but Eddy said it would only take a minute. Then he was off to bed.’
‘So you left and Eddy didn’t get to tidy up. For some reason, he went upstairs and, if we’re logical about it, that has to have been pretty much straight after Kevin left, but we know he wasn’t going to bed because he’d not washed the mugs. So, did he hear something?’
‘Maybe he just wanted to use the bathroom,’ Susan suggested. ‘There’s a downstairs toilet, but it’s outside, next to the old coal hole. He’d not have used the outdoor one, that time of night.’
‘Whatever the reason, he went upstairs and someone killed him. It could have been accidental, of course. The indications are someone gave him a shove, he hit his head, and then he fell. It was smashing his head on the tiles in the hall that actually killed him, but . . .’
‘But whoever they are, they were responsible.’ Susan was adamant.
‘But it wasn’t Kevin,’ his mother said.
‘Of course not. We’ve just got to make sure the police know that.’
‘Do we have to go to them?’
Alec could hear that Kevin was scared, out of his depth.
‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. ‘Better to get it over with. But, in the meantime, Susan, do you have a photocopier here?’
‘Well, there’s one of those all-in-one printer copier things in the office. Why?’
‘I’d like to copy the diary and the exercise books before we hand them over to the police, that’s all. I know it’s not strictly my business but . . .’
‘No, but it’s certainly ours,’ Mrs Hargreaves stated flatly. ‘Eddy gave those things to Kevin for a reason. If you can help us work out why, then that’s what Eddy would have wanted us to do.’
They spent the next hour copying the diary and the closely written text of the books. Naomi took the copies back to the farmhouse while Alec left with Kevin and his mother, having called ahead to make sure they would be met by Sergeant Dean. Susan had phoned the solicitor that handled Eddy’s will – ‘just in case’, as she put it – and he was arranging for someone to meet them at the police station, should they feel the need for legal counsel. Naomi, saying goodbye to Alec, knew they’d be gone for a much longer time than Kevin or his mother expected. Kevin was the first lead the police had in the case, and they would be glad to have something, anything, positive to report, even if that something turned out to be a false dawn. She and Alec had been in the same position enough times to know how they’d be thinking.
Had Kevin had anything to do with Eddy’s death? Instinct screamed no, but instinct also told Naomi, and she knew it would be telling Alec the same thing, that Eddy had been expecting trouble. He had hidden the diary and the books and the key and the photographs for a reason. He might not have expected to be killed, but he knew something was wrong, that he was in trouble.
Why, then, had he not confided in anyone? Or had something happened on that day to make him realize that the situation was escalating? And, if so, had he seized the opportunity to hide those papers when Kevin had so unexpectedly turned up? He’d clearly been reluctant to involve his friend before, so what had happened on that day that had caused him to change his mind and use Kevin?
The other conclusion she had reached was this. Whoever had killed Eddy, accident or not, had not discovered where Eddy had hidden those papers. If they had, then Kevin or his mother would have been targeted, Naomi was sure of that.
Had they searched the house after Eddy had died? If so, then it had been a tidy search, but had anything else been taken? Susan had mentioned nothing, but then, when she’d gone there with Alec, they had been focussed on looking for evidence of relatives, not on finding something they hadn’t even known existed.
Susan should go back, see if she noticed anything out of place or no longer there.
Was the house still a crime scene or had the officer left?
Making up her mind, Naomi turned around and let a puzzled Napoleon lead her back to The Lamb.
‘We need to go back to Eddy’s house,’ she said.
‘Why? Won’t the police still be there?’
Naomi shook her head. ‘I doubt it. They won’t waste resources like tha
t. The house will be made secure and that’s that.’
‘But go back, why?’
‘Just a feeling,’ Naomi said. ‘Susan, you weren’t looking for anything that might be missing last time. You and Alec were focussed on one thing, not on the bigger picture. If Eddy felt he had to hide those documents, then they must have been important to him. If whoever killed him came looking, then they might have searched the place before you and Alec did and there’s just the possibility they might have removed other things.’
‘I’m not happy about going back there.’
‘Napoleon and I will come.’
‘You think it’s important?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘OK, then. We’ll do it, but I’m sure we didn’t miss anything. OK, let me take your arm and we’ll get my car. Napoleon can go in the back.’
‘You’ve still got your key?’
‘I’ve still got the key,’ Susan confirmed. ‘And I’ve just sort of realized. Once everything’s gone through it’s not going to be Eddy’s house any more, is it? It’s going to be mine.’
THIRTEEN
‘Careful of the mud,’ Susan said. ‘Now, there’s a shallow step. Just let me get the door undone.’
In the end she had decided to leave Napoleon behind. At The Lamb, this time, the lunchtime staff having started to arrive just as they were leaving. Harness off, so he knew he was off duty, Napoleon had been enjoying the adulation of the chef and the bar staff as Naomi departed.
‘So, describe the place to me,’ she said, standing in the hall and aware of the smooth surface beneath her feet and the chill of a house that had not been heated for several days.
‘OK, right, where to start. Stairs ahead of you to the left, the hall carries on into the kitchen. On the right there’s a door to the living room, and to the left there’s what was the dining room when Eddy could be bothered, but mostly he used it as a study cum storage cum junk room.
‘There’s a little table just near the front door with the telephone on it and the door is wood and has glass in the top part with a sort of coloured glass fleur-de-lis thing in the middle. Black and red and white tiles on the floor. Edwardian or Victorian, I suppose. There’s a mat near the door, but no rug. He didn’t like putting rugs down, said people slipped on them, but I think when the old one wore out he just didn’t bother replacing it. And just now, there’s black and grey powdery stuff everywhere. You’d think he never cleaned.’
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