A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘But Mr Hillcock and Sean didn’t always get on together, did they?’ Den prompted.

  Ted Speedwell looked sideways at the floor, indicating an unwillingness to commit himself on that point. Den squared his shoulders. ‘Mr Speedwell, I shouldn’t need to remind you that we’re here to investigate a vicious murder. Mr O’Farrell died here, just a few yards away, after a violent attack. What do you have to say about that?’

  The little man looked up and met Den’s look full on. ‘I say, more fool he. I say, ’e ’ad it comin’ to ’im. I never met a man in my whole life more provoking than Sean O’Farrell. But I’ll tell you another thing – ’ee won’t find no blood from Sean on any of they clothes ’ee took last night. I can tell ’ee that for nothing.’

  Den exchanged a long, thoughtful look with Young Mike before speaking. ‘So – who did he provoke, Mr Speedwell? Who would you say killed him here yesterday?’

  ‘Why,’ the man’s eyes widened, ‘how would I know that?’

  Den and Mike walked back towards the car, comparing impressions. ‘Dashles?’ Mike queried.

  ‘Thistles, I think.’

  ‘Ah. So what d’you reckon?’

  Den glanced over his shoulder. ‘Reckon we’re nearly there,’ he said.

  ‘But Speedwell hasn’t got an alibi. How do we know it wasn’t him?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Den, feeling irrepressibly cheerful. Mike went back for another look at the assumed scene of the killing while Den called in his report to Danny. ‘I’ve seen Ted Speedwell, sir,’ he began. ‘His wife isn’t due back from work till two. Mike’s had a chat with the granny. Any idea how we should use the time till two?’

  ‘Hillcock’s there, is he?’

  ‘He is, yes. Business as usual, as far as I can see.’

  ‘What about your girlfriend? Is she lending a hand?’

  ‘Ex-girlfriend, sir,’ said Den stiffly. ‘No sign of her at present. She’s got her studies, you see …’

  ‘Right, right. Well, keep clear of her if you can. It’s only going to complicate matters if you start going at each other’s throats.’

  ‘So where to now, sir?’ Den repeated, ignoring the coded reference to that morning’s encounter with Lilah.

  ‘I suggest another word with the widow – and what’s happening with the daughter? Has she been tracked down?’

  ‘Yes, sir. She was driven home this morning. She’s with her mum now, having a day off school.’

  ‘Go and see them. Keep it shortish, then treat yourself to a bit of lunch. Go back just after two. Talk to Mrs Speedwell when she gets home. I take it the Hillcock women are both out?’

  ‘Hang on, sir.’ Den leant out of the car and called to Mike. ‘There’s only the granny in the big house, right?’

  Mike nodded. ‘Right,’ he said, and began to walk back across the yard. From his thoughtful expression, Den suspected something was bothering him.

  ‘As you say, sir. They’re both out,’ Den told Hemsley.

  ‘Then play it by ear after you’ve seen the widow. Oh – and Cooper?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Forensics tell me they’ve found blood on Hillcock’s clothes. Not a lot, mind. But they’re analysing it now. It’ll only take a little while to make a preliminary comparison with O’Farrell’s. An exact match’ll take longer, of course. But if it’s a totally different blood group, we’ll have to think again.’

  It wasn’t exactly excitement that Den felt – more a sense of closing in on his quarry; another potential avenue of escape sealed off. He had no doubt that the blood would be of the same group as Sean O’Farrell’s. ‘Come on,’ he said to Mike. ‘We’ve got to go back to the cottages. Might as well walk. Time to have a proper talk with the wife and daughter.’

  They walked down the farm track without speaking. Den was becoming increasingly impressed with Young Mike’s ability to remain quiet when appropriate; for the moment his own thoughts were more than enough to occupy him. He was struck by the way nobody seemed particularly upset at Sean’s death. Nobody behaved as if they thought it was unduly horrific, or even unexpected. Deirdre Watson, Ted Speedwell, Hillcock’s wife and sister – they had all seemed almost unmoved by what had happened to the herdsman. They had all behaved with a peculiar kind of resignation.

  Only Lilah, probably because she was new to Dunsworthy, as well as because of her involvement with Gordon, had shown any real emotion. And that had been rage against Den and fear for what might happen to Gordon. Even she showed no feeling towards Sean O’Farrell.

  He decided to run his theory past Mike. ‘Notice something odd?’ he began.

  ‘I was just going to say …’ came the ready response. ‘We’re not assuming that only a man could have done it, are we?’

  ‘Well, there’s the Watson woman. She has to be in the frame.’

  Mike spoke with animation. ‘Right! Because I think a woman could have done it. Say she pushed him over first, and then jabbed the fork into him while he was lying flat on his back. That wouldn’t take too much strength, would it? Not through the fleshy parts of the body, anyway.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Den slowly, remembering what the pathologist had told him. ‘Did you have anybody in mind, apart from Mrs Watson?’

  ‘Young Abigail’s a strong girl. You’ll see for yourself in a minute.’

  ‘So I will,’ agreed Den. ‘Actually, that wasn’t what I meant by “something odd”. Doesn’t it strike you that nobody’s particularly sorry that the man’s dead? I mean – he obviously died in agony, but we’ve yet to come across anybody who’s shown much pity for him.’

  Mike sucked his teeth for a few seconds. ‘Maybe we just haven’t spoken to the right people yet,’ he suggested.

  They waited on the doorstep of the O’Farrell cottage for a full minute before the door was opened to them. A round-faced teenage girl stood before them, holding the edge of the door defensively, head turned away as she shouted back along the passage to the living room. ‘Okay, Mother – I’ve opened it now.’ There was resentment and impatience in her tone. She stepped out of the way of the men without looking at them. Den noticed smudges on her cheeks and traces of eyeliner around her eyes, apparently left over from the day before. She looked tired and hungover.

  ‘Me again, Abigail,’ said Mike amiably. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Cooper. He’ll probably let you call him Den.’

  ‘Nng,’ said the girl without a flicker of a smile.

  Not waiting for direction or invitation, Den led the way to the living room where Heather O’Farrell, invalid, wore a thick, all-enveloping dressing-gown, a rug over her knees for good measure. She looked like the inmate of a nursing home. She sat almost exactly as she had the previous evening, huddled in the big armchair. Abigail flopped down on the couch and started picking at her fingernails, oblivious of where the policemen might want to sit. Mike opted to share the couch with her and Den collected an upright dining chair from a far corner of the room and carried it closer, to complete the little circle round the hearth. There was a frowsty smell, far from unpleasant, suggesting self-indulgent winter days of childhood, snuggled in bed for a long lie-in while Mum cooked lunch downstairs. Except there were no cooking aromas in this house.

  Abigail sniffed noisily from time to time, while Den began his questions. ‘I hope we’re not intruding,’ he smiled, routinely. ‘We’ll try not to take long.’

  The woman nodded patiently at him. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what I can to help.’ She spoke breathily, as if making a noble effort in the face of great constraints. Den felt like a brute for forcing her to cooperate.

  ‘Thank you,’ he nodded. ‘We have the basics, of course, from last night. What we’re hoping for now is a bit of background – trying to get the wider picture, if you like. For example, if Sean was having the afternoon off yesterday, what would you have expected him to be doing with his time?’

  She frowned and fixed her large moist eyes on his face. ‘Didn’t I tell you abo
ut that yesterday?’ she said weakly. ‘If I’d thought about it, I’d have assumed he was cutting logs – we needed more. Gordon lets him have as much dead wood as he likes from the copse. Though I think he said he was going back to the yard. I don’t think I bothered much about where he was. I was asleep. I told you.’ The petulance and self-pity were almost tangible. Den heard Abigail emit a small sigh.

  ‘Did he say he was cutting up logs?’

  She frowned irritably. ‘I don’t know. He might have done. I can’t remember anything exactly, after such a dreadful shock.’ She put a hand to her throat, in an attitude so stereotypical Den almost laughed. This woman was a throwback to some Victorian age where no one was surprised if a lady went into a decline and spent her short life languishing on a chaise longue. There was definitely something farcical in the situation. Then he reproached himself for his lack of sympathy. For all he knew, the woman was genuinely ill, perhaps with some rare condition the doctors couldn’t identify. It certainly wasn’t for him to make snap judgements about other people’s health.

  He turned to Abigail. ‘Were you here at all yesterday?’

  ‘In the morning, yeah. I got the bus to school and went straight to my friend’s house in Tavistock afterwards. I stayed the night there.’ She suddenly glared fiercely at her mother. ‘Nobody even bothered to tell me what was going on here! My dad lying in the muck, and me fetched from school by the police, and missing some really important lessons. Why didn’t anybody tell me yesterday?’

  ‘That was mostly our fault,’ said Den ruefully. ‘We decided it was better to leave you in peace until this morning. Sorry if we did the wrong thing. You’d have missed the lessons anyway,’ he added, with a firm look. ‘There’s no way you’d have gone to school today.’

  Abigail sniffed again. ‘Now she says I can’t see him.’ She exploded into fury, punching the cushion beside her. ‘I can see him, can’t I? When my mate’s gran died, they let her go and visit and leave a note in the coffin.’

  ‘Nobody can see him until all the examinations have been done,’ Den explained calmly. ‘But after that, there’s no reason—’ he glanced at Heather and modified what he’d been going to say, ‘—your dad will go to the undertaker’s and they’ll be able to talk to you about what’s best.’

  ‘When’ll that be? I want to see him now. Last I saw him, he was perfectly all right, and now you blokes come along and say he’s dead …’ She lapsed back into silence, as if her allocation of words had come to an end. Her mother made an exasperated clicking sound with her tongue.

  ‘You’ll have to do as they tell you,’ she said with something close to complacency. Den badly wanted not to be seen to be on her side.

  ‘When was that, then?’ he asked Abigail. ‘When you last saw him?’

  ‘Monday night.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Around ten. Bedtime in this house.’ She grimaced mockingly. The frown deepened and Den could see the battle against tears. ‘I never said goodbye.’

  Here, then, at last was someone who was grieved at O’Farrell’s passing. He looked in fading hope at the mother. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said feebly.

  Abigail got up with a single movement and made for the door, one hand over her face. All three adults let her go without a word. Den observed how solid she was: her shoulders broad and well-muscled under her sweatshirt, large hips and strong-looking legs. Mike was right – she was a robust young thing; but Den had the greatest difficulty in imagining her driving a fork into her father’s body.

  ‘What were Sean’s hobbies?’ he asked the widow, after a few moments. ‘What did he do in his spare time?’ He remembered Deirdre Watson’s suggestion of a separate life, lived by Sean O’Farrell well away from his family.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Heather seemed to have been wandering in a world of her own since before her daughter’s departure from the room.

  ‘Fishing? Darts? Horse riding? Bird watching?’ Den suggested. ‘Anything like that?’

  ‘He had mates,’ she said. ‘They go shooting together sometimes. Rabbits, pigeons, mainly. Didn’t get much spare time, working here.’

  ‘What can you tell us about the incident where the dog attacked him?’ Den dropped the question without warning.

  Heather stared at him. ‘Dog?’ she echoed foolishly.

  Den spread his hands and smiled apologetically. ‘It sounded nasty,’ he prompted. ‘Mr Hillcock’s animal – an Alsation, I understand.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she dismissed. ‘That was his own fault. It mended clean enough.’ She paused. ‘Abby was upset about it, though. Heard the poor thing howling when it died, and got herself in a real state over it. Soft about animals, is Abby.’ She cocked her head towards the area behind the house, where the little menagerie was.

  Den stuck to his point. ‘Who do you think poisoned the dog?’

  Heather sighed. ‘Good thing Abby isn’t here – she wouldn’t even let us talk about it. If anyone even mentions the name Fergus, she gets in a strop. She goes on all the time about badger baiters and that stuff – it’s her age. They’re all up in arms about animals, these days.’

  ‘Do you think Sean might have poisoned the dog?’

  She worked her shoulders minimally. ‘He might have done,’ she admitted.

  Den said nothing. Mike caught his eye, conveying a question; Den remembered that he hadn’t been told about Fergus.

  ‘Let’s just make sure we’ve covered everything,’ he resumed. ‘Sean was here for the lunch hour, but not for the rest of the day. Even though it was an unscheduled afternoon off, he still stuck to his usual hour’s break and was then outside somewhere. Have I got that right?’

  Heather nodded. ‘Sounds funny, put like that,’ she realised. ‘But that was his habit. He didn’t like to hang about in the house, at least not when the weather’s dry. He’d make sure I was all right first, of course.’ Her lip began to quiver ominously and Den understood that they’d been lucky to have had twenty minutes free from tears. He felt a pang of alarmed sympathy for Abigail. Was she going to be sucked into replacing her father as reliable provider of soup, tea and firewood?

  ‘So you never really knew what he was doing? You didn’t go out with him on his days off?’ What he wanted to know was: What do you do all day, cooped up here with your mysterious illness?

  ‘Not very often,’ Mrs O’Farrell confirmed. ‘He talked a bit about the farm, of course. He was very committed to the cows. He takes them to shows in the summer, you know. Took, I mean,’ she added pathetically.

  Den thought he understood how it had been. She was far too self-absorbed to waste much attention on the activities of her husband or daughter. So long as she was warm and fed, she wasn’t going to let herself fret. Like a big lazy cat, he thought, or a pampered sheep. But what had been in it for the devoted Sean? Some idea of martyrdom, he supposed, remembering Deirdre Watson’s comments.

  On the face of it, Sean O’Farrell sounded almost inhumanly patient and conscientious – but only towards his wife and daughter. To everyone else he was a sullen or provoking individual. Den had seen it before, of course. Men who showed one side of themselves to their family and something completely different to the outside world. It was almost a commonplace. Except, he suddenly realised, that it was generally the other way around. Most men presented themselves as polite and charming to their neighbours and workmates, whilst wreaking havoc at home. Street angel, house devil. Sean O’Farrell turned that on its head.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lilah arrived at Dunsworthy just as Den and Mike were leaving the O’Farrell women to their grief and heading for lunch at a local hostelry. She had been to a morning lecture at college, the first of the new term, and thus not to be lightly missed, but she had sat through it unheeding, turning over and over in her mind all the reasons why Gordon could not possibly have murdered Sean, and what she might be able to do about it.

  The drive back had gone as unnoticed as the lecture, the car somehow managing to g
et her from college to farm without any conscious effort on Lilah’s part. She wanted to join Gordon in the house, when he went in to get himself and Granny some lunch. If she got the timing right, there’d be half an hour for sex before he went out again to get on with the jobs. Sex with Gordon was Lilah’s highest priority, and had been for the past three months. She kept wondering when the novelty would wear off, when they could settle into something less frenzied and more ordinary. She kept hoping it wouldn’t be for a long time yet.

  The sight of Den turning out into the road, as she reached the entrance, jolted her into the here and now. She noticed, as she always had, how his head reached right to the car roof, so he had to tilt it forward. She remembered, while irritably trying to quell the memory, how this had always amused her. His height had been a source of wonder to her, and an odd kind of pride. She had never succeeded in forgetting how concerned and kind he’d been when her father had died, how she’d sheltered in his protective tallness, and how he’d been injured in the process of catching the killer. The only way she could deal with it now was to stoke up her anger with him. Originally, anger at his naked suffering for the past three months; but now, a gratifying and much more righteous rage at what he was doing to Gordon.

  She reminded herself of the awful things Den had said about Gordon when she’d first told him he’d been displaced. That old womaniser! he’d shouted. You’d better watch yourself, then. He’ll give you some foul disease if you’re not careful. That had been the one she’d been unable to ignore. Nobody of her age, even in the remoter reaches of Devonshire, could entirely dismiss the threat of HIV. Mustering her courage, she’d murmured her worries to Gordon, who had smiled in the sweetest way and assured her there was no need to worry. He’d padded over to his big oak bureau, and produced a piece of paper that gave a negative blood test result, dated six months earlier.

  ‘Just as if I’d known you’d ask,’ he’d laughed at her. ‘I’ve been having routine tests like this for quite a while now. And—’ he’d look at her with complete openness, ‘I haven’t slept with anyone else since this was done.’