Blood Ties

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘You felt all right about it earlier. Besides, we both needed a break. It helps with the thought processes. Besides, again, you’ve finally let me in on your plans – and, might I say, it’s about time. I’m only your wife, after all.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I really don’t think it had crystallized properly before. No, it just suddenly washed over me. Not the wanting to go back to uni; just the feeling that I was getting left behind, that we should be chasing harder. I don’t know, you know that feeling you get sometimes, when things start to fall into place at the back of your mind and you know there’s something there but you can’t quite pull it into focus.’

  ‘I remember that,’ Naomi said. ‘OK, so we go and see if Kevin’s fine, we see to Dog – and Susan – and then we see what Eddy felt was so important he had to hide it from everyone. You know what’s a bit odd though? The way he hid the key, like it was going to stop anyone who found the diary from looking inside.’

  ‘Well, it might have stopped the casual snooper.’

  ‘But he, presumably, didn’t keep it where the casual snooper would have seen it. No, what I mean is, you can open those little locks with anything. Kevin’s mother used a hair pin but anything would do. The lock was there because it made the diary feel a bit special but I don’t think anyone really took the secret bit seriously. No, it’s almost like it was symbolic. The key with the article and the photo.’

  ‘Unless we’re completely wrong and the key was for something else? Your first thought was a suitcase or a briefcase. Maybe we got it wrong.’

  ‘Well, Blezzard has the diary now. We can hardly go and ask him if the key fits, can we? Not being as you’ve failed to mention taking possible evidence from the house. Incidentally, why haven’t you told anyone about the key and clipping and photo?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘I don’t count. I’m now an accessory. But seriously, why?’

  Alec sighed. ‘Seriously? I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it to Susan on the day or why I’ve stayed quiet about it since. Just something, instinct maybe, telling me it’s important, but I don’t know why. Look, maybe I’m losing it here. I’m so used to seeing deceit and conspiracy and evil intent that I can’t believe a sad and lonely old man might not have had his own agenda. Maybe she always kept that key in her dressing gown pocket, and maybe the photo was the newest one he had of her, and so maybe it seemed appropriate for him to wrap all three items into a little bundle and hide them in his daughter’s room.’

  ‘OK, well as long as we’ve got that clear in our heads. Actually, what keeps bothering me is that Eddy and his wife broke all contact with their families. Why would that be? What was he running away from?’

  ‘Oh, now who’s overreaching?’ Alec said. ‘Lots of people lose touch with family. I quite like mine, but I don’t see them much. If I didn’t like them and I’d moved away, I probably wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘Not even when your wife and child died? Wouldn’t you even think that they might have a right to know about it? The right to mourn?’

  ‘I don’t know. If they hadn’t got involved when my wife and child were still alive. If they’d maybe not approved of my choices, then I guess not. I might decide they’d forfeited that. Anyway, we’re assuming it was Eddy that made that choice. Martha was ill for two years; if she’d wanted to get in touch with her family and make her peace there was plenty of time for her to do that. Wouldn’t that have been the natural thing to do?’

  ‘Maybe she did,’ Naomi objected. ‘Maybe they rejected her.’

  ‘Well, unless someone turns up claiming to be a long-lost distant cousin, we may never know. The way I see it, Susan looked after him so she deserves what Eddy left to her. But that’s not what you meant, is it?’

  Naomi shook her head. The car had stopped now, Alec waiting to check for traffic before making the sharp turn out of the narrow lane and back on to the main road. ‘What I meant, I suppose, is: what if someone from Eddy’s past finally caught up with him?’

  ‘Surely they’d have found him long before now. When Karen died it made the television news, apparently, and the papers. Four teens dead in a mysterious car accident? That would have been quite a splash. Which actually begs another question. Why did Eddy choose to keep that clipping and not others? What was it about that particular report? Anyway, surely if anyone was looking for him they’d have found him then. Edward Thame isn’t exactly a common name. Karen Thame would have made people wonder.’

  ‘Unless he changed his name.’

  ‘No. People trying to disappear call themselves Smith or Jones or Pritchard, not Thame.’

  ‘Pritchard? Why Pritchard?’

  ‘I don’t know; it just came to mind. Look, maybe we’re getting too complicated here. Back to bare facts as we know them. Eddy let Kevin into the house at about half past ten. He left just over an hour later, called to get petrol, so there’ll be a record of that. He was home by twelve thirty. In all likelihood, if we take notice of the unwashed mugs and teapot, Eddy was killed just after Kevin left, which seems to imply that the killer was either in the house or very close by. Either way, he would probably have been aware of Kevin and maybe even delayed his approach because Kevin was there. I mean, Eddy wouldn’t have stood much chance against an attacker, not being on his own, but with Eddy and Kevin together, things could have been very different.’

  ‘I thought we were tracing facts, not speculating,’ Naomi reminded him.

  ‘True. OK, so, it’s likely that Eddy died just after midnight. Next day, when he fails to occupy his usual seat at The Lamb, Susan gets worried and goes to check on him. She says that was about eleven forty-five, after The Lamb closed for the night. She finds him dead, calls the police. Rigor mortis was already well established, according to Sergeant Dean, and the time of death, according to the preliminary report, is anything between midnight and five, largely based on how advanced the rigor was and the absence of any body temperature data. No doubt they’ll be able to hone that a bit, but it still leaves plenty of time for Kevin to have gone back or even for Susan to have visited and hit him over the head.’

  ‘Why would she?’ Naomi said. ‘Oh, if she knew what was in the will, I suppose. So, we’re back to those damned mugs. Look, maybe he got tired, thought sod it, I’m leaving things tonight, went off to bed.’

  ‘He still had his dressing gown on; his bed hadn’t been slept in,’ Alec said.

  ‘True, which supports the idea that he was killed just after Kevin left.’

  ‘Which leaves us with a mysterious stranger either knocking at the door or breaking in and surprising him.’

  ‘What if he thought Kevin had come back for something?’ Naomi suggested. ‘He closes the door, goes upstairs, someone knocks on the door again, he thinks Kevin forgot something and he opens the door to his killer.’

  ‘Who then has to go upstairs, with Eddy, in order to push him against the wall and then have him fall?’

  He had a point. Naomi thought about it. ‘OK, so the visitor asked to use the toilet. Logical.’

  ‘Which implies it was someone Eddy was happy to let into the house. Yes, that would work, except, why would Eddy go up with him? The other option, which we will check out once it’s light, is that the killer got in through an upstairs window and Eddy heard them moving about.’

  ‘Or that Kevin did go back. Straight back,’ Naomi said.

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Neither do I, but other people will. Other people would have no difficulty with that.’

  ‘People like Blezzard and Sergeant Dean.’

  The reception at the police station was blindingly light after the dirty, sodden darkness outside. Alec had run in, splashing through the puddles that had collected in the dips and hollows of the car park. He had left Naomi in the car, listening to the radio. Napoleon was snoring gently on the back seat. Alec had promised to go back for them if it looked as though he’d be a long time.

  Alec blinked, wi
lling his eyes to adjust. The stark light from the fluorescent tubes threw sharp shadows across the grey tiled floor, illuminating the scuffs from years of feet and the mud everyone that day had trailed in with them. The rubber-backed mat just inside the door was sodden and no longer even attempting to do its job.

  The desk sergeant recognized him. ‘Inspector Blezzard came through a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Shall I let him know you’re here?’

  Alec thanked him and stood impatiently in the centre of the reception area as the desk sergeant stuck his head around a half glazed door behind him and spoke at some length to someone.

  ‘He’ll not be long,’ he said finally and dropped his gaze back to his paperwork.

  Alec studied the posters on the long pinboard hanging on the wall of the reception area. Official directives rubbed shoulders with adverts for lost cats and Christmas fairs, tourist brochures and even a bus timetable. Here, it seemed, the police station was certainly the hub of the local community. Assorted chairs stood in regimented lines against the walls, and a small table had been piled high with magazines and the odd newspaper. Alec was put in mind of a rather downmarket dentist’s waiting room.

  Idly, he picked up a newspaper from the top of a pile and flicked through it, noting that the same people seemed to be killing one another as they had when he had left Pinsent twelve days before. He had lost the daily habit of newspaper reading since being down here and not really missed it. He dropped the paper back, noting that the one below was of local news. He’d seen it at the B&B. He flicked through that as well, growing steadily more impatient with the length of time Blezzard was requiring him to wait.

  An item on the seventh page caused him to pause and look more closely.

  ‘Murder of a gentle man’, the headline said, and it seemed to Alec that the header itself was unusual. A picture of Eddy, holding a pole while some children, standing on boxes, peered into or at a theodolite, told him who this gentle man was.

  Eddy, it seemed, was well known in the local area for visiting schools and showing his finds. For spinning great yarns that captivated the local kids. Tales of the Pitchfork Rebellion, led by the Duke of Monmouth and defeated by the king’s men. Of buried treasure and the little finds that kept seekers like Eddy going year after year. One of the teachers called him inspiring. A Dr Matthews – the history guy, Alec reminded himself – noted him as a major influence in local groups. The picture, it seemed, showed Eddy helping out a group of archaeologists who had invited fifty schoolchildren to a dig site and were explaining everything from initial surveying techniques to washing the mud encrusted finds. The children in the picture were laughing, clearly excited, and Eddy was smiling. A very different Eddy to the one Alec had seen in The Lamb.

  ‘He talks,’ Susan had told him. Once you started him off, he talked for England. Only in The Lamb did he prefer to just listen to the company, to be the quiet man sitting alone with his treasure maps and endless speculations.

  Alec glanced at the byline. The tone of the article suggested that the writer, Adam Hart, knew the old man well. He folded the paper and tucked it into his coat pocket just as the door to the inner sanctum opened and Blezzard came back through.

  ‘You can give him a lift home, should you want to. I imagine his brief will be heading back to Bristol. He’s costing someone enough already without him charging for being a taxi service.’

  ‘You’re letting Kevin go?’

  ‘For now. For what it’s worth, we’ve seen the CCTV footage from the petrol station. If he’d just killed someone then he’s a damn good actor or he’s so cool he’s a bloody psycho. He chats for a good five minutes to the cashier; seems they were at school together. Then he leaves and turns his car like he’s going home and we pick him up again when he passes the bank in High Street. He could have gone back, of course.’

  ‘But you no longer think so?’

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind. Take him home to his mother. If I want him back, I’ll know where to find him.’

  Kevin was brought through by his solicitor a few minutes later. He looked pale and tired and shaky and touchingly glad to see Alec, a man he’d not even known before that day but who now seemed to be regarded as his agent of salvation.

  The solicitor nodded to Blezzard, shook hands with Alec and patted Kevin on the arm. Then glanced at his watch and was gone.

  ‘I wanted a word with him,’ Alec said.

  ‘Can’t we just go too?’

  ‘Of course. Naomi’s in the front with me, so you’ll have to share the back seat with Napoleon. Hope that’s OK.’

  ‘You could have a full sled team in there and I’d happily squeeze in. I just want to be home.’

  Alec nodded his farewells and led Kevin back to the car, moving the big black dog over and seating Kevin inside. It was still pouring with rain.

  ‘Was the solicitor helpful?’ he asked as they drove away.

  ‘Mr Tolliver seemed to be doing a good job for me, but I wouldn’t know a bad job. I’ve got nothing to compare it to. Hope I never have anything else to compare it to, neither.’

  ‘Blezzard says he’s keeping an open mind, but you’re off the hook so far as he’s concerned, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I hope so. I’m not cut out for this. He kept going through stuff in the diary, like I knew what he was talking about. Reading bits out and such. That and the notebooks. I mean, I knew some of the stuff that was in the notebooks, so he made a big thing about if Eddy found something and I wanted it, but I told him, if we found anything good, any of us, we’d be knocking on Dr Matthews’ door like a flash.’

  ‘So, how does this work, this small finds thing?’ Naomi asked, joining the conversation.

  ‘Portable Antiquities Scheme,’ Kevin said proudly. ‘Well, it’s like this. You’re meant to catalogue all finds. Most of us photograph them, and Eddy and me and a lot of the others, we use GPS as well, so anyone will know where and when we’ve found anything. It’s got to have a context, you see. It’s no good just picking up a musket ball or a bit of harness and not knowing where it comes from, cos then you won’t know how it might have got there or who it belonged to. The real value is in the context, that’s what Eddy taught me.’

  ‘And most of what you find, you get to keep, yes?’

  ‘Sure, we record and report and make it available for research, but Eddy had a collection and so do I. It’s good, cos then you can compare, you know? Then you know if what you’re finding is more of the same or something more exciting. I go field walking too, with a local group. Eddy came along some of the time.’

  ‘So, that’s a sort of surveying, right?’

  ‘Yeah. We do it in winter or when there’s nothing growing in the fields. Just after ploughing is good. The machinery turns up new finds every year.’

  ‘And these entries in the books, you said you didn’t recognize them?’ Naomi enquired.

  ‘Not all of them, no. And the way he’d annotated them? It wasn’t like he usually does. It wasn’t using the GPS, but he knew he could always borrow it if I weren’t there. Instead, he did it the old-fashioned way, taking a compass bearing off what he could see round him, like trees and church spires.’

  ‘So, he didn’t borrow the GPS and he didn’t tell you he was going out,’

  ‘No, that’s right.’

  ‘So, back to this, what did you call it, Portable Antiquities Scheme.’

  ‘Right. If we found gold or silver, precious metals, we’d report it, and if there was any value to the find then it gets sold and the proceeds split between finder and landowner. It means, if any of us find something that might be worth money, we’d go to Dr Matthews.’

  ‘And you don’t think Eddy would keep anything like that secret.’

  ‘No. Not from me, any road.’

  ‘But he didn’t talk to you about the books,’ Naomi pointed out.

  ‘But he would have done, if he’d found anything. I know he would. Eddy were like that, honest as the day, and he knew I’d have to
ld him. Straight away. That’s why I went to see him that night, tell him what I found in Bakers Field. We’d been up there together and when I went back I struck out.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Coins. Well, not really coins, more like medallions that’s been struck to commemorate something. Two – one silver and one gold – and I reckon there’ll be more. Dr Matthews thinks so too.’

  ‘Commemorate what?’ Naomi asked.

  Kevin laughed. The first time that day he had shown any emotion other than despair or fear. ‘That’s the thing, you see. They commemorate something what never happened. Dr Matthews reckons as how the Duke of Monmouth had them made to celebrate his victory, but of course he never had a victory. The king won, everyone was hanged or worse, and that was that.’

  Alec frowned, recalling something he had read in the pamphlets on the battle of Sedgemoor. ‘I thought Monmouth’s lot were short of money,’ he said. ‘That they couldn’t afford to pay their army or provision it properly.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the odd thing. Why spend money getting medals struck when you could be paying for more troops? Eddy and me, we talked about it and we reckon it was a sympathizer round here that had them made ready. When it started going badly, maybe he sent the medallions to the Duke so he could fund the invasion. Gold is still gold and silver is silver. He could melt it down, do what he liked with it, but it never got to him. Either that or Eddy reckoned they might have hidden it after the battle, when they knew Monmouth had lost. It’s not the kind of thing you want to be found with.’

  ‘Eddy’s treasure?’ Naomi asked.

  Kevin laughed again, sadly this time. ‘No, it weren’t the hoard he were looking for,’ he said. ‘That was part of a different story, but I think he’d have settled for this ’un. It would have been a nice end to his story, wouldn’t it, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been looking for? Better than he got at any rate. Much better than he got.’

  SIXTEEN

  It was three or so hours later by the time Alec managed to get on to looking at Eddy’s notes. They had dropped Kevin off, had had to explain to his mother what was going on, then had briefed Susan and fed an increasingly huffy Napoleon before getting an evening meal for themselves. Speculation in The Lamb had been rife, and Alec and Naomi had listened as Eddy was discussed and his life and death dissected. They had gratefully escaped, only to be waylaid by Bethan and Jim, understandably anxious and curious.