Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder

by Ann Cleeves

  Laurie’s mother was in the kitchen, supervising the serving of breakfast. Mrs Oliver had worked at Gorse Hill since the hotel had opened and her mother had worked there before, for Eleanor’s parents. Helen had always been intimidated by the woman. She was stern and humourless and – helped by a couple of teenagers from Sarne – it seemed to Helen that she did most of the work in the kitchen. Eleanor and Veronica planned the menus and added elegant finishing touches but it was Nan Oliver, her face red from the heat, who chopped and kneaded and stirred according to their instructions. Helen wondered if Laurie had told his mother that they were meeting. If he had, Mrs Oliver made no comment, and only watched as Helen packed cold meat and salad into containers, helped herself to cakes from the tin in the larder.

  On her way out of the house she met her father who was coming out of the office. He was a tall man, with a long face, like a horse’s, and thinning sandy hair. It seemed to Helen that he looked strained and tired. It was a busy time of the year, the start of the season, and he did all the bookings and accounts, all the buying.

  ‘You don’t look very well,’ she said. He was so quiet and dependable that they took him for granted.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’ He looked at her rucksack, at the thin jacket she carried over her shoulders.

  ‘Will you be out all day?’ he asked. ‘ You know it’s the Wildlife Trust Open Day tomorrow. Your grandmother will expect you to be here to help.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m going for a walk on the hill.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘No,’ she said and could feel herself blushing. ‘With a friend.’

  ‘Enjoy yourself,’ he said. ‘Really. Have a lovely day.’ He smiled at her. ‘ Stay out as long as you like. Eleanor will have to manage without you.’

  She had arranged to meet Laurie by the barn where the footpath started. The grass around the building was long and mixed with clover and buttercups. Before they had moved to Gorse Hill her father had run his own photographic business in Sarne and they had come to Gorse Hill every Sunday for lunch. She remembered picking huge bunches of clover and buttercups to take home to the town with her and being disappointed because they died in the car. She reached the footpath before Laurie, and sat on the grass where they had arranged to meet and waited for him. Everywhere there was a sickly scent of gorse.

  Perhaps she had fallen asleep for a moment or perhaps she was just dazed by the unaccustomed heat and the sunshine, because she did not hear him approach. She felt his hand on her shoulder and turned to face him, so shocked that she had no time to prepare the way she looked or to say the things she had planned. He had never touched her before. They had talked for hours but they had never touched. He stood above her, blocking out the sun. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with a Greenpeace slogan on the front. In those few moments she thought she saw everything about him in sharp detail. Perhaps even then she knew that she would want to remember it all clearly and write it all down. She stood up.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ he said. It occurred to her for the first time that he might be as nervous as she was.

  ‘You should have known that I would,’ Helen said.

  He took her hand and they walked together up the footpath. It was well worn, used by ramblers looking for Offa’s Dyke, eroded in places to the bare rock. He knew more about birds than she did and pointed out meadow pipit, skylark, lapwing. Away from the field around the barn which had once been cultivated, there was only bracken, rough grassland and a few sheep. The path was very steep and soon they were high above Gorse Hill looking down on the roof of the house. She was lightheaded with the effort of climbing and the heady scent of the gorse.

  ‘Does your grandmother own this land?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All the way to the top of the hill. But she lets the grazing to a farmer.’

  ‘Well,’ he said gently. ‘Where’s your peregrine eyrie?’

  The footpath flattened, crossed the face of the hill before reaching the summit and led into the next valley, but above them the hill became more sheer and rocky. It might perhaps have been possible to climb there without a rope. There were buttresses and shady slopes and crevices where there were still grass and birch saplings, but from where they were standing that seemed impossible. Halfway up the cliff, in a narrow fold in the rock, was the eyrie. With the naked eye they could only see the white stain of dropping and an indistinct grey shape which might have been the female, but Laurie seemed not to mind.

  ‘It’s terrific,’ he said. ‘ What a beautiful view she must have right over the valley. Next time we come we’ll try to get some binoculars.’

  ‘My grandmother has some,’ she said. ‘I’ll borrow hers.’ She did not want to appear too excited about his plans for future visits to the eyrie. Perhaps he was only interested in the falcons and she was deluding herself that he liked her.

  They found a place to sit just below the path, behind a big, pink smooth boulder. They were hidden from the path there and looked down over Gorse Hill and the town. It was, Helen thought, their own eyrie. He put his arm around her bare shoulders and kissed her. His lips and his face were warm.

  They spent most of the day there. They shared the picnic and talked and kissed and lay on their stomachs to look at the view. A group of racing pigeons flew over and the small male peregrine appeared from nowhere, separated one brilliant white pigeon from the crowd and killed it from below. It was over so quickly that she might not have noticed what was happening if Laurie had not pointed it out to her.

  ‘How do you know so much about birds?’ she asked.

  ‘My dad was keen,’ he said. ‘ He used to take us out when we were kids.’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone about the nest, will you?’ she said suddenly. ‘My grandmother’s afraid someone’s going to steal the young.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘ Who would want to steal them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘ Falconers I suppose.’

  ‘Why does your grandmother think they’re in danger?’

  ‘She said there was a van she didn’t recognize parked at the end of the lane near the barn on two evenings last week. It was an old blue van with a registration number from outside the area.’

  ‘Did she contact the police?’

  ‘I don’t know. She might have done. She seems suddenly to be obsessed by the birds. She never bothered much when Grandpa was alive and he was the one with the real interest. Now she’s trying to persuade us all to take turns at guarding the eyrie. My parents think she’s going loopy.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something’s happening. She’s usually so cool and proper. She’s been secretary of the Sarne Wildlife Trust for ages but I thought she enjoyed the social events and that she wasn’t really committed. The Trust is holding its Open Day at Gorse Hill tomorrow. She’s making herself very unpopular with the other members because she’s trying to persuade them that all the money they raise at the Open Day should go to pay a warden to protect the peregrines.’

  ‘I’m coming tomorrow,’ he said quietly. ‘To the Open Day. The Trust has asked the Folk Club to do some music. I’ll be singing. You don’t mind?’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘ Of course I don’t mind.’

  ‘I was afraid,’ he said, ‘ that your parents might not like me.’

  ‘Of course they’ll like you,’ she said, then added: ‘Besides, it’s not them that matter. It’s Grandmother.’

  She returned to the hotel to find it transformed. A marquee had been erected on the lawn and a man with patched jeans was testing a public-address system. Fanny was in disgrace because she had eaten six meringues which had been prepared for the following day. Eleanor was directing operations and the committee of the Wildlife Trust were gathered around her. None of that mattered. Helen sat by the open window, listening to the unfamiliar shouting and noise in the garden below, then dressed for work in the dining room. All
the time she dreamt of Laurie.

  Laurie walked home. His pleasure in the day was spoilt by an unease, a peculiar sense of threat, because an old blue van had been seen near Gorse Hill. His father had driven an old blue van and he had hoped never to see his father again. It was not even that he thought his father was in Sarne. It was that the memory of the van had brought back memories of his father and they made him feel angry and depressed. His father always lingered at the back of his mind as an unresolved and troublesome problem. He tried to bury the memories again and to think instead of Helen.

  He had not let himself believe that Helen would meet him. What could she have in common with him? Her parents were rich, she spoke well, passed every exam she sat. He had not come across her in school until they were both in the sixth form. He had spent most of his childhood in Wolverhampton and by the time he arrived at the high school most of the friendships were already established. He mixed in a different group. She seemed aloof. He had heard of her of course from his mother, but he suspected she would look down on him. They had first become friends the Christmas before during the rehearsals for the school play. It was The Good Woman of Setzuan by Brecht. He was arranging the music. Helen had a small acting part. They sat in a corner of the hall while the others rehearsed and they talked – first about the play and his music and then about other things. He could not think of her without remembering the smell of the varnish on the floor of the hall and of the rubber gym mats piled in the corners where they sat.

  He had come to like her very much. She represented everything he had ever wanted – strength, a real family. He thought about her all the time until he was nearly ill and his mother asked him sharply what was the matter with him. In the end he knew he would have to ask Helen to go out with him even if she turned him down. So the day had been special, unbelievable, until the mention of the old blue van had reminded him of the differences between them.

  He lived on a small council estate on the low damp ground near the river. In the winter the river flooded the opposite bank so that the line of pollarded willows there stood in water, and though the houses had never been flooded it smelled of the river and the walls were damp to the touch. Most of the houses on the estate were well looked after, with neat gardens. Only the Llewellyns, tinkers who had a huge number of children all with lousy, matted hair, had a house in a worse state than theirs. Although his mother complained about the Llewellyns, the piles of scrap in the back yard, the wild and smelly children, Laurie thought she was secretly pleased that they were there. It would have hurt her pride immensely if she had had the untidiest garden in the street.

  At the end house in the crescent he stopped and opened the door with his own key. The house had been his grandmother’s and even after her death was too small for the family. There was a smell of polish and vegetable and fried food so familiar that it smelled only of home. His mother had just come in from work and was sitting on one of the low chairs in the lounge, rubbing her legs which were swollen and marked with varicose veins. She had been busy at Gorse Hill, and it was all standing. Besides her usual work Mrs Masefield had ordered special cakes for the Open Day. Then she had had to walk back to town. She had a wide face and her eyes were narrow so she looked Mongolian or perhaps like a fat Eskimo. She looked very tired. He sat on the arm of the chair and put his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Make me a cup of tea,’ she said.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep track of you all. Steve is in, I think.’

  There were seven children, five still at home. They had all done well. They were a credit to her. Even when their father was still at home the responsibility for raising them was hers alone. Paul and Tony had good jobs, Laurie and Heather had better than average reports from the high school, Carol and Michael, still in primary school, were polite and well-behaved. Only Steve was unemployed. He was her favourite, a worry to her.

  Laurie went into the kitchen to make the tea. He was tempted to ask her if she had heard from his father, but he knew it would only worry her and make her suspicious. It was a coincidence, he thought. He was being silly. The van had been clapped out years before when his father left. It wouldn’t still be going now.

  She shouted to him from the living room. Her voice was still different from theirs. She had been born in Sarne and kept the border accent with its hint of Welsh all the time she was away. They still spoke Black Country like their father. They had lived in Wolverhampton, where his work was, until their mother had decided she could tolerate him no longer and they had moved back to live with Grandmother.

  ‘What have you been doing today?’ she shouted, a trace of accusation in her voice. ‘You promised you’d mend that back fence.’

  He poured out the tea and carried a cup in to her.

  ‘I went for a walk,’ he said lamely. ‘I’m sorry.’ He did not want to tell her about Helen. He could imagine her sneering disapproval. She thought the girls at Gorse Hill were lazy and spoilt.

  ‘You’ll have to do it tomorrow,’ she said. She was angry. He was old enough to be working, to be bringing in a wage. He took his freedom for granted.

  ‘Not tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’m playing at the Open Day at Gorse Hill.’

  ‘You should help more,’ she said, the tiredness making her petulant. ‘I can’t be expected to do it all.’

  ‘You should ask Steve,’ Laurie said, stung at last by the injustice of her criticism. ‘He’s at home all day.’

  ‘It’s not his fault he can’t find work.’

  She drank her tea, sighed, and the disagreement hung between them.

  The door opened and Heather came in, bright and unaware of any tension. She had a Saturday job in a café in the town. She was carrying a wicker basket full of pies and cakes and bread which would be too stale to sell on Monday. She was reliable, good-natured, with her father’s dark hair and eyes.

  ‘No need to cook tonight, Mom,’ she said. She took the basket into the kitchen and immediately started laying the table there for tea. ‘I saw Carol and Michael on the swings. I told them to come in for their tea. I don’t know what Mike’s been doing. He’s filthy. I’ll put him in the bath after.’

  It’s not fair, Laurie thought. She’s fourteen. She should be out enjoying herself on a Saturday night, not looking after them all. I should help more. Steve should help more.

  The younger children ran in from the street, squabbling, their voices still pitched for the playground. The door banged behind them. They turned on the television. It was very noisy – the plates banging in the kitchen, the children’s voices, the television. His mother sat in the middle of it, still rubbing her legs.

  ‘I’ll take a cup of tea up to Steve,’ Laurie said, hoping to restore himself to his mother’s favour and to escape the chaos. He would have liked peace, time alone, to think of Helen.

  Steve was in their bedroom, listening to a tape on the stereo system their father had bought them one Christmas in a last desperate gesture to buy their affection or at least to pay for their complicity in his absences.

  ‘That’s a new tape,’ Laurie said. He sat on his bed, put the cup of tea on the window sill. ‘I thought you were broke.’

  ‘I was.’

  Steve was only a year older than Laurie and they understood each other. Laurie had made the observation about, the tape casually but something about Steve’s reaction made him press the point.

  ‘Where did the money come from?’ he asked.

  Steve shrugged. He pulled four ten-pound notes from his jeans pockets and pushed one towards. Laurie.

  ‘Dad’s back,’ he said. ‘He gave it to me.’

  Laurie was not as surprised as he should have been. It seemed now that the whole day had been leading up to the news of his father’s return.

  ‘You should give it to Mum.’

  ‘It’s payment,’ Steve said aggressively. ‘ I’m going to work for Dad.’ Of all of them. Steve had been the most, willing to
believe their father’s stories and accept his presents.

  ‘What sort of work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It hasn’t started yet.’

  ‘Where’s Dad staying?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Steve stood up, his hands thrust into his pockets. Laurie knew he was lying. ‘He’s promised me money,’ Steve said. ‘ Lots of money. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  He raged out of the house without telling his mother where he was going and did not return until Laurie was asleep.

  In the comfortable disarray of her room Fanny lay on her stomach on the unmade bed and watched a game show on the portable television. Her parents had bought the television to prevent some of the arguments between Eleanor and Fanny and now the child spent most of her free time in her room. She preferred children’s cartoons but would watch anything.

  Although Fanny had pretended that she was unmoved by Eleanor’s public rebuke for eating cakes from the kitchen, she brooded about the episode. It was just like her grandmother to cause a scene to make her look small. What a fuss about a couple of meringues! She would never have known if Mrs Oliver hadn’t gone to her, telling tales.

  The incident had made Fanny more determined than ever to have nothing to do with the preparations for the Open Day. She would not be seen to help Eleanor in any way. It seemed especially unfair that the event was to be held on a Sunday – the only day that she had her parents to herself. On Sunday afternoons the three of them would go out together in the car. If it was fine they would go for a walk – not a long walk because Fanny disliked rigorous exercise – then they would stop somewhere for tea and Fanny could eat as many cakes as she wished without Eleanor staring disapprovingly at her. Even her father, usually so quiet and formal, let his hair down on Sunday afternoons and told jokes like other people’s dads. She liked to pretend that she was nearly adult but the Sunday-afternoon treat was a return to the security of her childhood before Gorse Hill, when nothing mattered to her parents but her own happiness. She longed passionately for a time without her grandmother.