by Rebecca Tope
As he walked into the reception area, intending to collect the keys to a pool car, Den came face to face with Lilah. The shock was none the less for knowing her involvement with Dunsworthy. He looked down at her familiar features and all the old feelings returned, like a tsunami. He had to clench both fists rigidly at his sides to prevent himself from wrapping his arms around her.
‘Hi,’ he said warily.
‘Don’t you hi me,’ she snarled. ‘I know what you’re doing. I’ve come to demand you release Gordon this minute. You know as well as I do this isn’t about him – it’s your revenge for me dumping you!’ She spoke shrilly and at least three police officers heard every word.
Den hovered between anger and embarrassment. The former took momentary precedence and he clamped one hand tightly onto her shoulder, turning her towards the outer door. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered. ‘We’ll talk about this outside.’
She resisted at first, but when his grip only tightened, went with him, a mulish expression on her face. Outside, he backed her against the rough stone wall of the building and leant his face close to hers. ‘Listen to me,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve told the DI all about the situation at Dunsworthy. There’s nothing you can accuse me of that will cut any ice with him. There isn’t going to be the least little bit of prejudice in this investigation. Because of you, in fact, it’s going to have to be the most thorough for a long time. If your Gordon is guilty, by the time I’ve finished, it’s hardly going to be worth the defence’s time showing up at the trial. But they will. If he pleads not guilty he’ll have every chance to defend himself. And what’s more, he’s just been told he’s free to go home, having helped us with our enquiries. Everything’s been done by the book, so you’d better just sit back and let the law take its course. If ever there was a fair investigation and trial, this is going to be it.’
She wrenched herself free, eyes blazing back at him. ‘Fair!’ she spat. ‘When you’ve already got a completely closed mind about Gordon? Don’t make me laugh. Let me tell you this, once and for all – Gordon did not kill that man. Gordon would never, ever do a thing like that. He simply isn’t capable of it.’ Tears filled her eyes and she dashed them away impatiently. ‘This has ruined everything,’ she complained with alarming bitterness. ‘And you talk about fairness! If anything was ever unfair, it must be this. Why can’t I just get on with a nice normal life for once?’
Den’s anger was ebbing slowly, leaving space for the pity that had been edging in as he listened to her. ‘Since when was life fair?’ he asked gently. ‘But I know you’ve had a raw deal and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve this.’
‘Don’t be nice to me, for God’s sake!’ she said. ‘We’re enemies over this, Den. If you’re going to try to prove that Gordon’s a murderer, that makes you my adversary, and I’ll do everything I can to stop you. Someone else killed Sean O’Farrell and I’m going to find out who!’
The pathology report was faxed through to Detective Inspector Hemsley, giving the actual cause of death as exsanguination from a ruptured aorta, resulting from a puncture wound. There was also severe damage to liver and spleen caused by two of the six wounds discovered on the body. The fatal wound was one of the upper row, although such was the damage to the other organs that it was probable that death would have resulted from them even without the injury to the aorta. The most acute pain would have come from the lower injuries. It was estimated that death would have occurred barely one minute after the attack, but that it would have been feasible for the victim to walk or even run a short distance within that time, despite substantial loss of blood from several of the wounds.
‘Nasty,’ said Danny, on the mobile to Den to relay the salient points of the report. ‘But mercifully quick.’
‘A minute probably seems a long time if you’re in agony,’ Den replied, trying not to imagine how it would feel to die in a barn with only five lame cows for company.
‘Where are you, by the way?’ Hemsley asked. ‘We’re going to have to keep close tabs on you today. Don’t go wandering off on some tangent without calling in first.’
‘I’ve just pulled up outside Mrs Watson’s house. I’ll be with her for about an hour, I would think. Then I’ll go to Dunsworthy and speak to Ted Speedwell. I also told Mrs O’Farrell we’d want to speak to her again. And there’s the old granny at the big house who’s the only other person we know for sure was around the place when the killing happened. Someone ought to see her.’
‘There’s no need for you to do it all yourself. Young Mike’s looking for something to do. I’ll send him over to talk to the granny now. Then he can meet you at the cottages at … say, eleven or just after?’
Den felt his usual reluctance to share an investigation. Although he was happy to solicit opinions and suggestions from colleagues at the briefing meetings, be believed the actual interviews with witnesses were most effectively done by the same person. This had been the main reason why the DI hadn’t pulled him off the case, he assumed. Nobody else would now be able to interpret those early, often subliminal, impressions, as well as Den could. So, in essence, Den Cooper was now the central investigating officer in the Dunsworthy case. The connections and contradictions, the nuances and nervousness, all created a picture that would never come together if different people tried to assemble it. But he supposed Granny Hillcock could be delegated more readily than anyone else.
‘Okay,’ he conceded.
‘Right,’ Danny snapped back. ‘As soon as we have an ID for the fingerprints on the fork, I’ll phone it through. It might affect how you approach the Speedwell chap.’
‘If they’re his, then it might,’ Den agreed with scant enthusiasm, thinking of Lilah and how triumphant she’d be if that turned out to be the case. Thinking, too, that it wouldn’t actually comprise hard evidence. Speedwell worked on the farm – it might be his fork. On its own, such a finding wouldn’t incriminate him.
Den could see Deirdre Watson standing in the open doorway of her house, watching him, wondering, no doubt, why he hadn’t yet got out of the car. ‘I’d better go now,’ he said and disconnected the phone.
Deirdre Watson lived in a good-sized stone house, which must have once been at the centre of a farm. In the upheavals of recent decades, it seemed that the land had been sold off and most of the outbuildings demolished, leaving only a half-acre garden and a couple of sheds.
‘You got the message that I’d be coming, then?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Good of you to warn me,’ she said warily. ‘Come on in.’
As he settled in her warm kitchen, he had to force himself to attend to the matter in hand, while looking around the room for any distraction that might offer itself. Why did he feel as if the forthcoming interview was no more than a formality? The explanation was obvious, he realised. These interviews were merely designed to pre-empt any challenge to his objectivity. He was already convinced that Gordon Hillcock had killed his herdsman. He knew from the man’s demeanour, and from something even less tangible. Forget Ted Speedwell and Deirdre Watson and any assorted hypothetical ramblers or nutters – sitting here now, Den could taste his certainty.
But he had to keep his mind open. He had to satisfy Hemsley that all the stones had been overturned. He declined the woman’s offer of coffee and sat up straighter, notebook open in front of him.
‘How long had you known Sean O’Farrell?’ he began.
‘Five years. Since I started recording at Dunsworthy.’
‘How did you feel about him?’
She sat at an angle to him, so they faced each other across a corner of the big pine table. Her face seemed flushed, her breathing a trifle shallow.
‘He was all right,’ she said, briefly meeting Den’s eye. ‘Efficient. Reliable.’
‘Did you ever meet him outside the farm? What do you know of his personal life?’
‘I would guess I’ve seen him three times in five years, off the farm. And then only to say a quick hello. I know he has an invalid wife and
a daughter. He seems to have belonged to some sort of farming action group, as well. They meet at a pub somewhere. He talked about it a couple of times, while he was milking.’
‘Action group?’ Den echoed, writing the words in the notebook.
‘I don’t know what it’s about, really. They all seem to be farm employees, worried about the way things are going in the dairy industry. Everybody’s concerned, of course. To put it mildly. It’s a permanent state and lots of them have decided to do something. Just as BSE’s out of the way, we’ve got TB to worry about. It’s just one awful thing after another. From what Sean said, it’s mainly TB they’re bothered about at the moment. There’ve been a lot of reactors in the latest round of tests.’
‘On Dunsworthy as well?’
‘Bound to be – or so Gordon seems to think. It’s too soon to say for sure – the second test is due this week. Sean was full of it last month, but it wasn’t mentioned yesterday. Dunsworthy’s in a non-culling area, you see, though it’s only a mile away from the experimental area. Lots of people think the diseased badgers will just shift over here and spread TB even more than it is already.’
‘You’ll have to explain some of that to me.’
‘Surely you know about the Ministry tests? They divide the whole county into areas, and cull all the badgers in one area, while leaving them alone – protecting them, in fact – in another. Then, if the culled areas become free of TB, they’ll assume the disease is carried by badgers and act accordingly. The trouble is, some farmers are already convinced of the link and if they’re in a non-culling area, they don’t like it. And there are studies that suggest that culling only increases the spread of TB. The whole process is viewed with contempt, quite frankly. The Ministry don’t help, either, by being so secretive about it. You can never get a straight answer out of them.’
‘Seems a daft sort of set-up to me,’ Den agreed.
‘Try explaining that to them,’ she sighed.
‘So, what was Sean’s line on all this? And Hillcock’s?’
‘Sean automatically despised anything the Government did, on principle. He just wanted farmers to be left alone to get on with the job. Not very realistic, to say the least.’
‘And Hillcock?’
She tightened her lips and stared at the table in front of her for a moment. ‘Gordon’s more complicated,’ she said. ‘More intelligent, too.’
‘Would you say they disagreed a lot?’
She laughed. ‘All the time. I think it was the only way they could communicate, through an everlasting argument. It was quite entertaining at times.’
‘Did you ever see it get nasty?’
She shook her head. ‘I very seldom saw them together,’ she explained. ‘Just for a couple of minutes in the morning sometimes, at the end of milking. Sean disobeyed most of Gordon’s orders – or he said he did.’
‘And got away with it?’ Den was struggling to get the picture.
Deirdre heaved a sigh. ‘Remember I only saw them once a month. Usually it was Sean doing the milking, so I very rarely got Gordon’s side of the story. And he was much less forthcoming, anyway. You need to understand what it’s like. Milking’s a lonely business, so they mostly take the opportunity of talking their heads off when it’s recording. A lot of what they say is rubbish – just letting off steam to someone they think is uninvolved, impartial. From the things he said to me, I’d put Sean down as sullen, resentful and worried about his job. Most of the herdsmen are the same around here.’
‘And the farm owners?’
‘They’re worried too. Money is running down the drain and most of them have given themselves a cut-off date. If things aren’t better by then, they’ll have to sell up. Dairying isn’t financially viable these days.’
Den had been aware of the crisis in the industry, as had everyone living in rural areas. ‘And that wouldn’t make for a very relaxed atmosphere,’ he suggested. ‘Have you been expecting Dunsworthy to go out of milk?’
She shook her head again. ‘Not this year. Although I have often been surprised by farmers packing it in, with almost no warning. If they have got TB, there’ll be compensation, and they can buy in new cows from the south-east, where things are even worse commercially and animals are going for a low price. And they have nothing like the same levels of TB. I must admit, I see Gordon as one of the survivors.’
‘So would you say there’d been anything new or different at Dunsworthy recently? Any change in either Hillcock or O’Farrell?’
She pondered over the question. ‘Not that I can think of,’ she said at last.
Den also pondered, thinking about the body on the mortuary slab, the damage to it, both old and new, the sense he’d picked up of someone neglected, unloved. ‘What was he like to work with?’ he asked, tapping his pencil against efficient, reliable, the words she’d used about Sean, knowing they couldn’t be taken as positively as they seemed on the page.
‘Look,’ she began, betraying some agitation, ‘the way different herdsmen treat their cows is fundamental. Not one of them is sentimental about it, but there are those who are gentle by nature, and nearly as bovine as their animals. Even they will hit out, or shout, and to anyone from a town, it might look cruel. Especially these days, when the world’s gone so soft. But Sean wasn’t bovine. He wasn’t patient, either, not really. You never knew where you were with him, that was his trouble. The cows didn’t know, either. One minute he’d be gentling them and crooning to them, and the next he’d be laying into a heifer for trying to kick him. I’ve seen him do real damage. His fists were like iron.’ Pain crossed her face and she put a hand to her side; Den became alarmed at the implication.
‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘Of course he didn’t. But when he punched a cow in the ribs, in some crazy way I felt it myself. It’s very intense in the milking parlour, you know. You’re enclosed with the man and the animals, as if the world outside didn’t exist. Everything’s heightened – you feel every little thing. It’s difficult to describe. But Sean was not my favourite man to work with, by a long way.’
Den made more jottings, finally feeling that the picture of Sean O’Farrell was coming into focus. But it was still full of contradictions. ‘And yet he seems to have been such a good husband to his sick wife.’
Deirdre sighed, as if in relief. ‘That was easy,’ she said. ‘She’s been like that for years now. So long as he kept her happy and listened to her moaning, he didn’t need to worry about her. And it made him look good – just as you say. I think he lived his real life well away from Heather and the cottage. It sounds daft, and it took me years to understand it myself, but her illness was really quite liberating for him.’
‘Are you saying he had other women?’ Den felt a new twinge of alarm at the thought of outraged husbands.
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Nothing as obvious as that. But he had a lot of empty time. That’s probably why he took up with the protest group.’
They were silent for a moment. Den examined her more closely: a substantial woman, tall, with wide shoulders and generous hips, her hair carelessly gathered back in a wide rubber band, she seemed to have herself well under control. There was some kind of invisible layer around her, something protective that kept her at a slight remove from events going on around her. Her features were masklike – there were no lines on her face, neither from laughter nor frowns. She moved her hands more than her mouth or eyes.
It was clear to Den that she didn’t really care that Sean O’Farrell was dead, or, probably, that Gordon Hillcock might be charged for murder. She was detached, taking the role of observer, and Den found this both useful and unsettling.
‘Let me just run through the timings again,’ he said. ‘Did Hillcock leave the parlour at all, during the milking?’
‘Definitely not for long enough to commit a murder,’ said Deirdre dryly.
‘Would you have seen Sean in the gathering yard when
you parked your car – what was that? Two o’clock? – if he’d been lying there?’
‘It was ten past two, I should think. I can’t be exact to the last minute. And no, I never go wandering around the yards. They’re always muddy or slippery, apart from anything else. The gathering yard is at the far end of the barn where we found him. You’ll have worked that out, of course. I wouldn’t have any reason to go in the barn or the yard.’
Den thought quickly, and jotted No need to conceal the body? on his pad. It was a point he had not yet discussed with the DI. He pressed the point with Deirdre. ‘Not even if you were looking for Hillcock to ask him something?’
She paused. ‘Well, then I might,’ she conceded. ‘In fact, I did walk round there this morning, when I heard the tractor. I wanted to know who was doing the milking – if Gordon had come home.’
‘So who was it?’
‘Lilah Beardon – Gordon’s girlfriend.’
Den kept his face expressionless. ‘Was she on the tractor?’
‘She was scraping down. Rather beyond the call of duty, if you ask me.’
Den let a small silence draw a line under that subject. ‘Did you see Mr Hillcock when you arrived yesterday afternoon?’
She nodded. ‘He popped his head round the office door, to say hello, just for a few seconds.’
‘And did you see which way he went after that?’
‘No.’
‘What was his mood like yesterday?’
‘A bit tense. On edge. I wasn’t in the best of moods myself, so I just thought we’d both struck a bad day. It was cold, and we were keeping our heads down and getting on with it. My computer died, which was an extra annoyance. But, really, everything’s an endurance test this time of year.’