by Fay Sampson
‘But she wouldn’t know who we were,’ Millie objected.
‘I went to the funeral,’ Suzie said. ‘Clive saw me watching the burial. He obviously suspected me of something. Maybe he thought I knew more about his affair with Eileen than I did.’ She frowned, trying to remember what happened next. ‘He might not have known about her will then. John Nosworthy would have been in touch with him after the funeral to tell him about the codicil. I think he was genuinely shocked last night when we told him about the gold. But I was so busy being scared of him, it never occurred to me that Gina Alford might have recognized me too.’
‘So it could have been then that she found out who the photographer was,’ Tom said, realization dawning in his face. ‘And since nobody had questioned her, she figured Dad hadn’t yet spotted what he’d got and gone to the police. But any day now he might look back over his pictures and find her. It might not be too late for her to stop the only guy who could link her to Saddlers Wood.’
‘Yes, but where does Bernard Summers fit into all of this? Why would she kill him?’
A pause. ‘We don’t know that she did,’ Suzie said. ‘It could have been a genuine accident. Those moorland streams run fast. People do slip on the stones. It begins to make sense.’ She straightened up from the computer with a renewed sense of dread. ‘Idiot! That phone call came from Clive Stroud’s office, not from him. Why didn’t I think that it had to be her? I was so sure it was Clive behind it. She lured Dad out on to the moor. Somehow, she got him to go to the Strouds’ house, so that Clive would get the blame. She must have been waiting to meet Nick outside. Unless the Strouds know more about this than I think they do.’
‘And then what?’ Millie snapped. ‘The only thing that matters is where is Dad now? What did she do to him?’
The worst possibility of all was waiting at the bottom of Suzie’s mind for someone to voice it.
It was Millie who answered her own question in a small, scared voice. ‘If she killed Eileen Caseley, could she be mad enough to kill Dad too, to stop him from finding that photograph?’
Suzie turned and walked out of the study, trying to shut Millie’s words out of her head. Wouldn’t she know in her heart if Nick was dead? She felt a terrible fear, but it was not certainty. It was still possible, wasn’t it, that DCI Brewer might arrest Gina Alford in Moortown and force her to confess what she had done with Nick? It might still not be too late to save him. She had to believe that.
She found herself standing in front of the conservatory windows, looking out at the pageant of summer colour that was Nick’s flower garden. A cascade of yellow roses tumbled over trelliswork at the side of the house. The rich dark red of Bishop of Llandaff dahlias glowed from across the lawn. This was what would remain of him. His creation.
No! She must not let herself think like that. She should be praying. For Nick, for the police. Even for a softening of Gina Alford’s heart.
Was it too late for that?
Sooner than she expected, the doorbell rang. She wondered if it was a well-meaning friend, come to offer sympathy, or Alan, the minister, again.
‘Mum,’ announced Millie, ‘it’s the police. They want Dad’s camera.’
By the time she got to the study, Tom had already disconnected the leads and was handing the Canon over to a fresh-faced constable. Suzie was given a receipt to sign.
‘This is what you need to be looking at.’ Tom wrote the number of the image on a slip of paper. The constable left.
‘All the way from the police HQ to pick it up,’ Tom said scornfully. ‘Have these guys not heard of email?’
‘Maybe they need to have the camera to prove the source,’ Millie suggested.
Suzie knew in her heart that, however the police laboratory enhanced Nick’s photo, it was unlikely that it would be good enough to get a positive identification that would stand up in a criminal trial. And even if it did, what would it prove? That Clive Stroud’s agent was in Saddlers Wood two days before Eileen Caseley’s murder. That would hardly make her guilty beyond reasonable doubt. She felt the heaviness of despair threatening to overwhelm her.
‘What do you suppose they’re doing now?’ she asked out loud. ‘DCI Brewer and co.’
‘It sounds as though they’re taking you seriously,’ Millie tried to comfort her. ‘That has to be good, doesn’t it? Your police sergeant latched on to the idea that they’ve got to get to Moortown and find this Gina Alford. If only they can make her tell them what she’s done with Dad!’
Suzie turned away. Though she tried to control it, her voice came muffled. ‘They wasted all that time searching around Fullingford. Of course she wouldn’t have left him there. It was too obvious. He won’t be in Moortown either. He could be anywhere.’
‘Our only hope is that they can scare her into believing they know for certain she did it. She might confess then.’ Tom’s fists were clenched. He was as tense as she was.
Suzie wandered back to the computer. Tom had saved Nick’s photographs on the hard disk. The screen was showing that idyllic scene: cob walls, hung with ivy, drifts of fireweed, pink in the sunlight, the wall of trees across the brook. Suddenly, with piercing clarity, she knew.
‘That’s it! It’s got to be! Where it all started. Where she found them together. The reason all of this happened.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Millie asked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I know where Dad is. He has to be. She took him back to Saddlers Wood.’
She was already in the hall, grabbing her shoulder bag and the borrowed car keys.
‘Mum,’ Tom was saying, ‘it’s just a guess. You can’t be sure.’
‘Have you got a better one?’
He shook his head.
She was running towards the drive. ‘Thank you, Mike!’ she murmured as she unlocked the Nissan.
Millie and Tom were behind her. She tried to ignore the looks they were giving each other.
‘At least tell DS Dudbridge what you’re doing,’ Tom pleaded.
She passed him her phone. ‘I’ve keyed in his number. You do it.’
She didn’t protest when Millie climbed into the back and Tom took the passenger seat beside her.
It took all her concentration to steer them safely through the city and up the long hill that would take them out to Moortown and Saddlers Wood.
At the roadside below Saddlers Wood stood a new placard. GRAZING TO LET.
So Matthew had taken possession.
This time Suzie did not park the car on the grass verge, but drove on up the rutted track towards the farm.
‘Do you really think she’s here?’ asked Millie in a low voice, as though someone in the woods around them could overhear her.
‘I shouldn’t think so. She’ll be back at work today, acting the part of Clive Stroud’s faceless assistant. Just as she did when she made that phone call to Dad’s office.’
They parked in the empty farmyard.
‘I wonder what happened to the dog,’ said Millie, climbing out.
‘What now?’ Tom asked. He was watching Suzie closely. She felt that he did not completely trust her, but would come with her anyway.
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, looking around.
Images from the past were all about her. This would be the same farmhouse where Richard Day’s employer had lived, back in the 1850s. Richard must have crossed this yard thousands of times in the course of his work. He would have mucked out these byres, fed and harnessed the horses in these stables, drawn water from that well in the corner. But none of it gave any clue to where Nick – or Nick’s body, a cold voice said – might be now.
‘We were in the clearing by the cottage when Nick accidentally snapped her,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe that’s where she took him.’
They began to walk back down that path.
The clearing opened up before them. The woods cast longer shadows now in the early evening sun. The yellowish cob of crumbling walls glowed between the smothering creepers
.
But now Suzie could not waste time on memories of the past. She plunged into the deepening shadows of the ruined walls. With her bare hands she was tugging away the brambles and ivy that shrouded its corners, in the vain hope that there might be a body, bound and unconscious, hidden under them. This small hope was overshadowed by the dread of what she might really find.
Outside, Millie was down by the brook, peering into the water.
Tom was combing the ground more widely. ‘No sign of any recent disturbance in the ground here,’ he called.
Was that what they were looking for? Suzie wondered. Not a prison, but a grave?
‘We’re wasting our time,’ said Millie, suddenly appearing behind her. ‘She couldn’t have carried him here by herself, could she? And there were no marks of car tracks.’
Tom and Suzie turned to her.
Before Suzie could answer, there came the blare of police sirens. Not one but several vehicles were approaching fast along the road. They turned in at the cart track. The noise was mounting towards the farm, deafening now.
The Fewings broke into a run.
THIRTY-FOUR
The farmyard was crowded with vehicles and police. Suzie’s eyes, swiftly searching, came to rest on one group that made her heart constrict. Handcuffed to a uniformed officer was a woman, undistinguished-looking except for the frizzy brown hair that bushed around her bespectacled face, in spite of her efforts to tie it back. Suzie fought to break through to her to demand answers, but another policeman blocked her way with arms outspread. Others were setting up yellow tape around the yard.
‘Why aren’t you searching the place?’ she said angrily to the officer in front of her.
‘They are,’ Tom told her quietly. He nodded to a corner of the yard.
This was not the widespread search she had envisaged, with police spread out in lines, combing the yard for clues, entering the farmhouse and the outbuildings to examine every hiding place.
Instead, a knot of figures, some in uniform, some not, were clustered around that single place in the yard which Tom had gestured to. Even from the back she recognized the tall figure of DCI Brewer.
Slowly the knowledge took shape in her mind of what it was they were surrounding. She had stood in this yard not half an hour ago, imagining her great-great-grandfather at work here. Drawing water for the horses from that same well.
‘No!’ she whispered. ‘No!’
She made to rush forward, to break through the tape. This time it was Tom who held her back. She could not see what they were doing. She thought she glimpsed an officer in overalls clambering over the low brick wall that surrounded the well. She imagined all too vividly the rope around his waist, the dark shaft into which he must be descending. The cold water at the bottom. She could not bear to think what he might find there.
Tom was standing in front of her, his hands firm on her shoulders.
Beyond him, there was more activity now. The surrounding officers were not just onlookers. They must be hoisting that other officer out. Or raising something else. She strained against Tom’s restraining hands, but he stood his ground, blocking her view.
Another siren screamed into the hush that had fallen over the yard. This time it was an ambulance that came rocking into sight to stop on the concrete farmyard. Two paramedics jumped out and went running towards the well. Suzie’s fingernails were digging into her palms as she prayed in desperation. She knew it must be too late, but her mind would not accept it.
She turned her head and saw Millie, white-faced, beside her. Suzie reached out and took her daughter’s icy hand.
It seemed an age that the group around the well remained largely hidden from her by Tom’s shoulders. There were murmurs of unease and sympathy from the rest of the officers spread around the yard. To one side, Gina Alford stood defiantly still, handcuffed. Suzie tried to shut out from her mind all the vengeful things she would like to do to her. Nothing was more important now than the overwhelming grief she felt for the wounded body of her husband which they must now be hauling out of the depths.
Millie gripped her hand tighter.
There was new movement across the yard. The ambulance was creeping forward towards the well, turning, stopping again. Its back doors were open. A little party was carrying a stretcher towards it. Too far away to see the details of the dark burden it bore. Past Tom’s arm she saw them loading it into the ambulance. The paramedics boarded their vehicle again. The ambulance moved off, through the quiet ranks of watching police officers. Past a silent Gina Alford.
‘That was Dad, wasn’t it?’ Millie said softly as the chequered vehicle disappeared down the track.
Suzie hugged her wordlessly.
Someone was coming towards them. The beanpole figure of DCI Brewer. Suzie tensed, waiting for the reprimand which would tell her she should not be here.
The Chief Inspector’s grim face unbent slightly.
‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘Just.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Suzie’s heart leaped with a mixture of joy and panic when she saw Nick next morning. All night she had sat in the hospital waiting room, while he was treated for hypothermia, X-rayed, plastered. They had allowed her a brief glimpse of him in the intensive care ward, sedated and asleep.
Even now, only his head showed, propped up on pillows in a hospital bed. A white bandage swathed his black hair. His face beneath was deathly pale. There was a mound beneath the covers near the foot of the bed. She came hesitantly forward and touched him tentatively, as if she was afraid he might break.
He managed a ghost of a smile, though there were creases of pain and weariness around his darkened eyes.
‘Not too long,’ the charge nurse warned. ‘It’s been touch and go.’
Suzie bent to kiss him lightly, then drew up a chair beside him. ‘How are you?’
It sounded a trite thing to say, but it was all she could think of. She took his hand, and was alarmed at the slightness of pressure with which he responded.
‘Tired,’ he said. ‘My head aches.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
She touched his face tenderly, marvelling that she could still do this. That she was listening to the voice she had thought she would never hear again.
‘I was an idiot. Going to meet her like that. Thinking I’d arranged to see Clive Stroud.’
She pressed his hand in sympathy.
‘You couldn’t know.’
‘I was going to give him a piece of my mind for frightening you. That’s why I rang him, or tried to. Instead I got her, and walked right into a trap.’
‘You phoned him?’ Suzie exclaimed. ‘Not the other way round?’
‘No.’ He closed his eyes and lay back. ‘I was going to tell him that you knew nothing about the murder, or about him and Eileen. That he should stop scaring you. She rang me back to say she’d fixed up a meeting.’
‘And you didn’t tell me? Just said you wouldn’t be home for tea?’
‘Well, I wasn’t, was I?’ His pale face creased in a half smile.
‘And you didn’t realize it was her you’d got when you were taking photos in the wood?’
‘Photos? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘You don’t know? Of course you don’t. It was Millie’s idea. We went through the photos on your camera you’d taken that Saturday in Saddlers Wood. And there was a flash of light through the leaves on one of them. Tom enlarged it. And there she was. Just the blur of her face and those horn-rimmed glasses. But it was enough. I knew she must be the one we’d heard in the wood. And she had to have been there for a reason. The only thing that made sense was that she was spying on Clive and Eileen. And if it meant that much to her, then it could have been her, not Philip, who shot Eileen. And used his gun to do it.’
Nick’s eyelids closed again. ‘Sarah Lund has got nothing on you lot.’
‘The police were searching for you around Fullingford, after they found your car. You drove there, didn’t you?
’
Nick’s forehead creased again. ‘I don’t really remember what happened. But they tell me someone cracked my skull. After that …’ A long shudder shook him. ‘I came round up to my neck in cold water, with the grandmother of a headache and a broken leg. Apparently I’ve cracked a vertebra as well. It was as black as hell. And cold like you wouldn’t believe. I thought no one would ever find me …’
‘I know. They told me.’ Her hands squeezed his, trying to put warmth into it.
‘It was a miracle I landed the right way up. And that there wasn’t room for me to fall flat. As it was, my face was only inches from the water.’
‘Thank God it hasn’t rained and the groundwater’s low.’
They sat in silence, holding each other.
‘I thought I was going to die there. They only found me because you told them it was Gina Alford.’
‘I take back everything I’ve said about DCI Brewer. She conned Gina into thinking they had more proof than they did. Just one fuzzy detail in a single photo.’
‘My photography’s not as bad as that. I’d have used a zoom lens if I’d known.’
‘It was a bluff. But it worked. Brewer convinced her it could help her if she told them where you were.’
‘Time’s up,’ said the charge nurse, returning. ‘You can come back this afternoon.’
‘Can I bring Tom and Millie?’
‘Give it till tomorrow. He needs to rest.’
Suzie leaned over and kissed his face.
There would be another morning for them. Nick had a fractured skull, broken bones from the fall, hypothermia. But he was alive.
Tears of joy were running down her face as she left the ward.
‘I never thought I’d see this day.’
Nick looked round at Tom and Millie. He was sitting in a chair in a sunny courtyard outside his ward. His leg was in plaster, his head still bandaged. But Suzie’s heart warmed to see that colour had returned to his face.