A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  Unless Gordon was in prison, of course.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Deirdre Watson had a tendency to dislike Sundays, whatever the season. In winter they were especially unsatisfactory. Moving restlessly around the house, she was aware of how dusty and cobwebby much of it was, and how untidy from the residue of Christmas. Pine needles from the tree were still scattered on the living room carpet and screwed-up wrapping paper that had missed the Boxing Day collection lay behind chairs and in odd corners. Dabs of Blu-tack on the ceiling showed where Sam and Matthew had fixed the decorations, and not scraped it off properly when they took them down again. The open fireplace was choked with ash under the grate, and there were nutshells underfoot on the hearthrug.

  ‘This place is a mess,’ she announced to nobody in particular.

  She received no reply. Robin was reading the sports section of the Sunday paper and Matthew had all his attention on the kung fu game he was involved in on his Play Station. At least, Deirdre guessed it was kung fu. People seemed to be kicking each other a lot and turning backward somersaults. As far as she could tell, Matthew played this same game about five hundred times a day.

  Tension in the household was high since the police had interviewed Sam. Her daughter had told her nothing of what had been said, but she was subdued and irritable afterwards, going up to her bedroom and firmly shutting the door. This had made Deirdre resentful. In fact, more than mere resentment burnt in her breast. She was desperate to know what Sam had been asked and how she had replied. ‘It’s all wrong,’ she had repeated. ‘I’ve got a right to know what they think. This is a murder inquiry.’

  ‘That’s right, Mum,’ Sam had snapped back. ‘Exciting, isn’t it.’

  ‘Don’t be so cheeky,’ Robin had warned his daughter, before lapsing back into a silence that Deirdre judged to be sheer cowardice.

  Sam had gone out immediately after lunch, taking her mother’s car and refusing to say when she’d be back. ‘I can’t stand any more of your prying into something that’s none of your business,’ was her parting shot.

  None of my business? Deirdre had repeated to herself. When I detested Sean O’Farrell so violently and made little secret of the fact? When that policeman is bound to think I’m in some conspiracy with Gordon?

  Matthew’s head was pushed forward, his gaze unwavering on the screen in front of him. Deirdre watched him, savouring the long lashes, the curly hair. He’d always been a handsome boy; as a baby he’d been far more beautiful than his sister. People had made the predictable comments: Such looks, wasted on a boy. He’ll have all the girls after him when he’s older. He’d never caused her or Robin any serious anxiety, until recently. Now, suddenly, he seemed to be unbearably vulnerable, prey to forces and proclivities that she perceived as wholly malign. Her arms twitched with the desire to clutch him to her protectively. Silently she prayed that the danger had passed.

  She sighed noisily and Matthew glanced up at her. ‘What’s the matter, Mum?’

  ‘Oh – just Sundayitis. You know how I hate Sundays.’

  She stood close to him, where he knelt on the carpet, the game console in front of him. ‘The only things I can think of to do are boring old housework. It’s all right for you men, with your papers and games.’

  ‘You can play if you like,’ he offered with a grin. ‘You can be Mighty Magnus – he always wins.’

  She was tempted. After all, why not? But she’d watched enough to know that two minutes would be the limit of her attention span. ‘No thanks,’ she declined. ‘It’s not really my thing.’

  ‘Okay,’ he accepted easily. Another rush of fear for him engulfed her. He was always so easy, so accommodating, not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings. She wanted to tell him to stop being so nice, to stand up for himself and be a bit more … well, manly.

  It had to all be her fault. She’d let him play with dolls and dress in girls’ clothes when he was small. She and Robin had encouraged him never to fight his way out of difficulties, but to negotiate and compromise. They’d been happy with his obvious awareness of how other people were feeling, his willingness to hug and touch at an age where most boys avoided physical contact. Now it seemed it was backfiring on them.

  Robin discarded the newspaper abruptly. ‘These dark afternoons are enough to depress anybody. Roll on spring, I say. We should all hibernate like bears and skip January altogether.’

  Deirdre managed a laugh. ‘It won’t last for ever, I suppose. I’ll go and make us some tea, shall I?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Robin approved.

  Den missed Lilah most forcibly on Sundays. On this one, with a murder inquiry rapidly running into the sand and nobody sympathetic to talk to about it, he was feeling profoundly sorry for himself.

  Danny Hemsley had been right to chastise him for failing to keep his mind open from the very outset of the case. From here on, as the investigation started to go cold and desk work on the forensics became the default focus of attention, he was resolved on a renewed and detailed exploration of any and every possible candidate for prosecution.

  Doodling on a sheet of paper, he compulsively listed names. Ted Speedwell, Eliot Speedwell, Heather O’Farrell, Abigail O’Farrell, Jilly Speedwell, Deirdre Watson, Sam Watson, Claudia Hillcock, Mary Hillcock. Then he crossed them all out again, one by one. Either they had excellent alibis or they just didn’t make credible murderers. Even though he had first-hand experience of unlikely killers – people you could never imagine would do such a thing – once the story was laid out logically, it was plain to see how the situation had arisen. He saw very little prospect that this same reasoning would apply to the Dunsworthy murder.

  Ted Speedwell had to be the first person to consider. He couldn’t prove his whereabouts and his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon. If he were to be charged now, the case for the prosecution would be almost as good as that against Hillcock – which is to say they would both be hopelessly weak. It would never reach the courts. Den found himself feeling rather glad about that: the idea of Ted in prison made him shudder. Even Hillcock, proud and independent, accustomed to taking control of his own life and organising his own time as he saw fit, would probably not survive a long sentence other than as a mental and physical wreck. It gave Den pause to think about it. Did he hate the man enough to want that to happen to him?

  One day, Den knew, he would let slip just what his real feelings were towards custodial punishments for criminals. With every month that passed, his ambivalence became more acute, despite his stern self-admonishments. A year and a half earlier he had begun attending Quaker Meetings every five or six weeks, and had slowly become aware of their thinking on the subject of prison. They didn’t like it. They believed it to be counter-productive, barbaric and wasteful. It cost the state ridiculous sums of money and turned out people who were simply more determined and skilful miscreants than before, as well as addicted to drugs. Den could not argue with any of this. But it’s my job, he insisted to himself. I’m paid to locate and capture lawbreakers, and when they’re caught they get sent to prison. What happens after that is none of my business.

  Murderers, of course, were different. They’d put themselves beyond the pale and nobody – not even Quakers – would seriously suggest they should not be sent to prison; people had to be protected against their violent impulses. It was a commonplace that those prisoners serving time for murder were the most interesting. They often made constructive use of their time inside, and even sometimes showed remorse. So why was he getting himself in a stew over Gordon Hillcock all of a sudden?

  He returned to his list. Deirdre Watson had aroused Hemsley’s interest largely thanks to the anonymous note, which Den suspected had come from Lilah. The report on the interview with Sam Watson had highlighted the issue of badger culling, lamping and baiting, as well as other sorts of animal exploitation. How or even whether these concerned Mrs Watson was still unresolved, apart from her membership of Compassion in World Farming. Den couldn’t see her as a
killer, try as he might. Hemsley had reminded him of his own comments on how calm she had been at the scene of the murder, and how shocked Hillcock was by contrast – and still Den was not convinced.

  Lilah’s inflation of the rumour that Matthew Watson was gay and prey to Sean and Eliot had already been discounted as troublemaking.

  He nibbled his pencil and then circled Jilly Speedwell on his list. She had freely admitted to having been at home at the relevant time on Tuesday afternoon. She could have gone up to the yard unobserved, and got into conversation with Sean. If something he’d said had enraged her, she might have snatched up the fork and thrust it at him – twice. Then she would have had time to get back to her cottage, wash herself and her clothes, calm down and be sipping tea when Ted came in from wherever he’d been before darkness fell.

  A familiar sense gripped him of being in possession of only the most scattered fragments of the complete picture. It wasn’t only that he was missing something that had been pushed under his nose, it was that some facts were so completely absent that he couldn’t hope to understand how these people all fitted together. Police detectives were handicapped more or less by definition. Even knowing the right questions to ask, focusing in on hard evidence and using past experience to assess probabilities, it all came down in the end to lucky breaks. Some crisis or tragedy from the distant past might surface to explain the passions that made no sense otherwise. Or, more likely, they would not surface, and the whole thing would crumble into a condition of stalemate for lack of this crucial comprehension.

  Lucky breaks did happen, of course, quite frequently. People became careless or they cracked under the strain of the fear of discovery. Information filtered in from suspicious friends and relatives. Or the killer was forced to commit further crimes in an effort to remain safe from detection. Or, less often, Forensics finally unearthed incontrovertible evidence. But even apparently rock-solid physical evidence tended to fall apart when attacked by skilful defence lawyers.

  There was no human blood on Hillcock’s clothes, or on Speedwell’s. The marks and fluids in the yard had told a story of a swift and violent attack, followed by the dying victim’s dragging himself, or possibly being dragged, into the barn. The stark scenario explained nothing.

  In gathering gloom, both actual and spiritual, Den concluded that the case was definitely sliding out of their grasp. It wasn’t going to end in a successful prosecution of the person responsible for Sean O’Farrell’s death. The thought of returning to Dunsworthy to ask more questions of Jilly Speedwell or Claudia Hillcock or the others struck him as futile. It didn’t matter that Sean had been cruel to animals. It didn’t matter that he was inconsistent by nature – kind to his wife, patient with his daughter, yet disliked and mistrusted by just about everyone else who knew him. Most people were inconsistent once you started to delve into their personalities. Even if everyone who knew him had wished him dead, there was still almost nothing that comprised a viable line of enquiry.

  Moodily, he tossed his notebook onto the chair beside him and got up to make himself some cheese on toast. It was still only five o’clock and there was nothing watchable on telly. He’d always thought it pathetic when people claimed to have nothing to do; it could only mean an empty head and an empty life. Now it had happened to him. The evening stretched blank and boring; the wind was getting up outside, and nobody he could think of would welcome a phone call or visit. Nobody, if he was honest, that he wanted to see or speak to, anyway.

  Nobody, that is, except Lilah Beardon.

  Despite his reluctance, Den returned to Dunsworthy on Monday morning, in time to catch Jilly Speedwell before she went to her job at the school. She answered his knock quickly, her frizzy hair seeming to stand out horizontally from her head, her fleshy shoulders and forearms filling the bright blue sweatshirt she was wearing. She sparked with impatience.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Just a few more questions, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Waste of good time and money,’ she asserted. ‘Everybody knows who ’twas who did that to Sean, without all this circus.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘’Tis plain as can be. Gordon Hillcock’s temper has got the better of’n before now. And Sean never knew when to keep un’s mouth shut, dozy sod. Wouldn’ take much these days, with milk prices so bad and calves being shot, and the whole place falling round our heads, for it to lead to this.’

  ‘You’re telling me that you believe Gordon Hillcock murdered Sean O’Farrell?’ Den said formally. ‘Have you any evidence that this is what happened?’

  ‘Evidence!’ she scoffed. ‘Us never saw it happen, more’s the pity. But ’tis right, all the same. But ’ee won’t get a confession out of’n. Not like on the telly, where the chap breaks down and tells the whole story. This be real life, and real life is messy. Sean’s dead and his wife as weak as a rabbit and his girl going off with some boy like an alleycat. An’ us stuck here with a man who could kill my Ted any time ’un likes. So pampered he is, by that houseful of women.’ She stopped abruptly, clamping her lips together, as if belatedly aware of saying too much.

  Den took a deep, careful breath, acutely conscious of the web of history and emotion that he couldn’t hope to fully disentangle. Conscious, too, that Mrs Speedwell was echoing many of his own thoughts of the previous afternoon. ‘Perhaps I could come in?’ he suggested.

  ‘I leave for work at half past,’ she warned him.

  ‘I won’t take long.’

  ‘Can’t tell ’ee any more than I said already.’

  ‘I’d just like to go through it again. We’ve got the picture a bit clearer now, the sort of man Mr O’Farrell was, how people felt about him …’

  ‘Talked to Eliot, did ’ee?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to worry us. Not that we’d worry, really. Us knows he’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘But he was Sean O’Farrell’s friend?’

  She smiled thinly. ‘Funny pair, you be thinking.’

  ‘Hard to see what they had in common, maybe.’

  ‘Plenty they had in common,’ she flashed. ‘Growing up together all those years, like brothers at one time.’

  A missing jigsaw piece suddenly became apparent. ‘When exactly did Sean come here?’

  ‘Born right here,’ she said. ‘His mum and dad had the cottage, and Old Man O’Farrell before them. Sean’s granddad, he was.’ She let her gaze wander to the untidy garden beyond the window. ‘None of them made old bones, in that family. Least of all Sean,’ she added with a grimace. ‘What be poor Heather a’gwayne to do now?’

  ‘And Abigail? Does she talk to you? She seems a rather lonely girl.’

  ‘Abby be fine, with her beasts and that boyfriend. ’Tis Heather’s the worry.’

  ‘How did Abby get on with her father?’

  Jilly smiled again and Den could see a revelation coming. ‘Do ’ee mean her father – or Sean?’

  Two years earlier, Den would have quivered with excitement at the implication. He would have snatched at the fact of a child fathered outside the marriage. But now he knew better. If Jilly Speedwell was in on the secret, it was likely to be a leaky one.

  ‘I meant Sean,’ he said coolly. ‘But if you have information about the girl’s parentage, I’d be happy to hear it.’

  She kept her eyes on the garden, speaking slowly. ‘Funny the way time changes things. Heather was a lovely young thing, outside all day, singing and laughing. Must’ve been high summer when she fell pregnant with Abby. Us knew it could never have been Sean – more like a brother than a husband to her. Happy enough, seemingly, and he took the little one as his own.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘Us all believed ’twas Gordon’s.’

  How dim-witted Den felt he’d been, not to see it coming. Who else, after all, could it have been? A roll in the summer hayfields, the young master and wife of the impotent herdsman, starved of physical affection and doubtless happy to have her own baby
. An image of the scene, with Lilah’s face and body in place of Heather’s, filled his mind. Sixteen years or so had done little to change Gordon Hillcock: even in the grey stretches of January he was at it, indulging his appetites on young women who by rights belonged to somebody else.

  He lost all will to continue the interview and took his leave a few minutes later, unable to shake himself free of thoughts of Lilah. He had little doubt that she was intent on protecting Gordon Hillcock from prosecution for murder – or that she had every chance of success. She had three months’ start on the police; she knew his temperament and at least some of the background of Dunsworthy and its residents. He wondered how far she would go. Would she merely content herself with attempting to obliterate any indicators of Hillcock’s guilt, gossiping to police officers and sending anonymous letters? He didn’t think Lilah fully understood how widespread was the belief in Gordon’s guilt. Mrs Speedwell had had no hesitation in fingering him as the killer. Try as he might, Den could find little consolation in this.

  His interview reports were getting scrappier by the day, despite the flurry of new leads that had been made following the arrival of the anonymous note about the Watsons. Danny Hemsley wasn’t slow to point this out when Den returned to the station. ‘It’s worrying me, Cooper, I don’t mind telling you. How about we start a new tack? Find the unanswered questions, right?’

  ‘Unanswered questions,’ echoed Den, dully.

  ‘Points of contention, things a defence lawyer would home in on. Like, why did O’Farrell struggle into the barn when he only had seconds to live?’

  ‘I thought we’d covered that one, sir. He was trying to get to the phone in the office. It’s the quickest way.’

  ‘Tunnel vision, Cooper. Throw some more guesses at me.’