by Rebecca Tope
‘Maybe she has a huge American family who come over twice a year.’
It was almost eight when they had everything settled. The children were distressed at the absence of their toothbrushes, and Timmy’s bedtime teddy bear was a major omission. Nor were there any children’s storybooks. Drew explained patiently that they were being travellers, and that meant being adaptable and managing without their usual routines and possessions. Stephanie eventually embraced the idea with enthusiasm, but Timmy was severely unsettled. ‘I can’t get to sleep without Mr George,’ he whined. ‘I know I can’t.’
‘And I know you can,’ said Drew, his patience thinning. ‘After all that running about you’ve done today, you must be exhausted. Everything’s perfectly all right, Tim. I’ll be in the next room, and in the morning we’ll have a great big breakfast. And you know where the bathroom is – I’ll leave the light on for you so you can find it if you need the loo.’
‘But what about Mummy?’ This question was the one Drew had least wanted to hear.
‘I’m going to phone her now and tell her we’re having a lovely adventure, and we’ll see her tomorrow.’
‘And Miss Bagshot? What will she say? You’re only allowed to miss school if you’re poorly.’
‘I’ll explain it to her. It’s all right, I tell you. Stop making it difficult, OK?’
The child subsided sulkily, but apparently slightly mollified by the tone in Drew’s voice. Being shouted at by his father was more familiar than all this business of sleeping in a strange bed in a strange house without Mr George.
‘Night, night, Daddy,’ murmured Stephanie, the undisguised favourite. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘Night, night, Steph.’ He kissed her soft cheek, and left the room.
The problem of what to do with the children was no less troublesome next morning. ‘We’ll just have to take them with us,’ said Thea. ‘I expect it’ll be all right.’
‘This is turning out just like last time, isn’t it?’ he said, his eyes sparkling. ‘It’s amazing how powerful it is when you do something unexpected.’
‘What? I’m not following your logic.’
‘It isn’t exactly logical. I’m just feeling as if it’ll all work out right, because of us taking the initiative. Most people don’t. They wait for things to happen.’
‘Mm.’ She had not slept well, listening for wakeful children blundering around the gallery in search of the lavatory. The dog had been restless, too, no doubt taking a lead from her mistress. The promised big breakfast had not materialised, either. There was no bacon or sausages left, so she prepared scrambled eggs for the visitors and ate nothing herself. When she tried to recall all that she and Drew had concluded the previous evening, it made very much less sense than before.
‘We don’t have much of a plan,’ she pointed out. ‘Just drive there and ask if you can do the funeral – is that it? Before you even know whether you’ve got the permission for the burial ground to start operating. What time is the meeting, anyway?’
‘Two o’clock. I can’t wait until after it’s over.’
‘What did Mummy say?’ asked Stephanie, as soon as she woke up. Drew had been surprised that it wasn’t Timmy who wanted to know, but his son seemed to have abandoned all resistance and was happily jumping on the springy bed, tangling himself comically in the big T-shirt Thea had found for him to wear.
‘Nothing much,’ Drew said. ‘Everything’s fine.’
This was only partly true. Karen had finally answered the phone at nine the previous evening, sounding oddly groggy. ‘Yeah, all right,’ was all she said when Drew told her she would have a night without her family. ‘No problem.’
‘Are you all right?’ he demanded. ‘You sound funny.’
‘I fell asleep in front of the telly. I’m all out of sync now. When are you coming home? What about school?’
The questions reassured him. He admitted that he was behaving very irresponsibly, but that it seemed daft to drive home and back again. ‘It’s exciting news about the burial ground, Kaz. We might have a whole new branch opening sooner than we thought.’
‘Good,’ she said vaguely. ‘So long as we don’t have to move house.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Probably about six, all being well.’
‘But Timmy hasn’t got Mr George,’ Karen remembered. ‘You’ll never get him off to sleep.’
‘He’s off already. I wore them out climbing up hill forts. It’s great here, you know. Beautiful scenery.’
‘Good,’ she said again. ‘Very good.’
Her voice somehow faded away before he finally rang off, and he was left with a nagging worry that pervaded his dreams, mixing with the dead man Donny Davis and the meeting of the Council Planning Committee. In one dream he was standing on the edge of a high cliff, a child in each hand, and a long row of open graves waiting for them at the bottom. The powerful sense of dread remained with him when he woke, until he managed to suppress it by going into his children’s room and waking them with kisses, as was their home routine.
‘So – we drive to the Hobsons’ farm and take it from there, right?’ Thea said, unsure about deferring to him when it came to making their plans. ‘Is that what we decided?’
‘It is. Jemima Hobson is the only person who can arrange his funeral.’
‘I can’t quite envisage how it’s going to go, that’s all. Wouldn’t it be better to phone first and say we’re coming? Less confrontational, for a start.’
‘No, because she might tell us not to come. Then we’d be back where we began. Better to just drop in.’
She grimaced ruefully. ‘The trouble is, I was more or less thrown out of there on Saturday. They’re not going to be very pleased to see me again.’
‘So you stay in the car with the kids. Or take them for a walk. Leave it all to me.’
‘I hate to miss the excitement, though.’
‘You can’t have it both ways,’ he said reasonably.
‘Oh, I’m sure I can, if I think hard enough.’
They had to use his car, because of the child booster seats that were a legal requirement for anybody up to the age of twelve. Thea made a few caustic remarks about the impossibility of spontaneity in the present world, adding that she well remembered her own mother piling four children haphazardly onto the back seat, threatening them with all kinds of punishments if they didn’t stop sticking their feet out of the windows as she tried to drive.
‘OK, you navigate,’ he ordered.
‘Ah. Yes. That could be tricky. I got a bit lost last time. It’s near Sheepscombe, which is off to the right, and then left at the little crossroads. I think. It’s one of those situations where it’s almost quicker to walk, because there aren’t any direct roads.’
‘Hardly,’ he said.
‘Look for yourself,’ she invited, awkwardly opening out the large map. ‘Needless to say it’s on a fold.’
He peered at the maze of small yellow roads, forced to admit that there was no simple direct way from one village to the other by car, whereas the footpaths did follow a more obvious route. ‘Except you’d be sure to get lost in those woods,’ he pointed out. ‘The path veers all over the place once you get there.’
‘All designed to fox the unwary traveller,’ she said. ‘But we can probably manage it between us.’
He tried to conduct an organised plan of action for when they arrived. Various strategies were considered and rejected, until Thea pointed out that they were within half a minute of arriving. ‘I’ll go and pick strawberries,’ she said quickly. ‘Me and the kids. While you go and talk to Mimm.’
‘Sounds OK,’ he said. ‘I can phone you if I need you.’
She was still very doubtful as to the wisdom of the plan. Drew’s idea that by broaching the subject of Donny’s funeral he might somehow force a revelation as to just how he died seemed feeble in the light of day. The scraps of suspicion, the inconsistencies and sheer lack of credibility in the story thus far were nothing lik
e enough to build a proper case. And, as often seemed to happen, the parallel investigations conducted by the police were hopelessly obscure. Thea had learnt not to obstruct the police in their workings, but simply to find the gaps and subtly poke away at areas they failed to notice. More often than not, she could cause a small avalanche of revelation or panic which led to the truth being exposed. As far as she could understand it, Drew possessed something of the same knack.
But when they drove through the gates of Hobsons’ farm, at least one of their ideas fell to dust. ‘Closed for Fruit Picking Today’ said a large sign.
‘Drat!’ said Thea. ‘Now what shall we do?’
On the seat behind her, the children had been strangely quiet. ‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ came Stephanie’s voice, picking up on the uncertainty in Thea’s voice. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going to this farm,’ said Drew determinedly. ‘I need to speak to the lady.’
‘They’re probably always closed on a Monday, after the rigours of the weekend,’ Thea realised. ‘We should have thought. I expect they’ve all gone out.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Look over there.’
She followed his gaze to an area beside the house, where a big open-sided barn was surrounded by a sea of white animals. ‘Sheep,’ she said. ‘They’re shearing them.’
Two associations struck her almost simultaneously. The first was an experience she had two years earlier, when terrible things had happened during sheep shearing in Duntisbourne Abbots. The second was more recent, and more oblique.
‘Let’s go and watch,’ she said, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘I don’t expect they’ll mind.’
‘But …’ Drew’s protestations were half-hearted, or so she told herself.
‘Come on. What do we have to lose?’ she demanded dramatically. ‘We can’t go back now.’
‘But …’ he tried again. ‘I can’t talk to people about funerals when they’re shearing sheep.’
‘Forget about the funeral for a bit, will you? Just let’s go and see who’s here.’
He parked the car close to a wooden fence and they all got out, Thea urging them impatiently. ‘It’ll be interesting, you’ll see,’ she told the children, who were obviously bewildered.
‘But I want strawberries,’ insisted Timmy. ‘I don’t like sheep.’
Thea was trotting ahead of them, scanning the scene, trying to see the faces of the few people milling about amongst the animals. ‘There!’ she cried. ‘Come on.’
The shearing was taking place inside the barn, two clattering machines operating the clippers. Along with the cries of the sheep, it was all too noisy for normal conversation. It was evidently early in the proceedings, only a dozen or so finished ewes walking confusedly into a field, wondering why everything felt so light and cool. It was not a particularly warm day.
Thea approached a man on the other side of the temporary barrier that had been erected. ‘Toby,’ she said. ‘Hello. Remember me?’
He glanced distractedly at her, most of his attention on another man who was trying to direct the flow of sheep, to maintain a constant supply for the shearers. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I thought of something I wanted to say to you.’
‘What – now?’ She was moving gradually away from the noise, hoping he would follow. ‘I can hardly hear you,’ he complained. ‘And I’m busy.’
‘Funny work for a college lecturer,’ she said.
‘They need as many hands as they can get. They want it all finished by lunchtime. Three hundred and twenty ewes. It was meant to be done last week, but it rained.’
He had automatically followed as she drifted along the line of hurdles. She glanced around for Drew, who was ushering his children closer to the action, showing little interest in what she was doing. Of course, he still thought it was Jemima they were aiming for, Jemima who had suffocated her own father because she couldn’t face the long years of caring for him and arguing with him and dreading whatever might come next.
Right motive, wrong person, Thea thought in a moment of total clarity.
‘I think they’re managing all right without you,’ she said to Toby. ‘That man seems to have things under control.’
‘No, they need me,’ he said, still not fully attending to her.
‘Can you shear sheep, Toby?’ she asked.
‘Never tried.’
‘But you can shave people, can’t you? You shaved Donny, didn’t you? On Monday night. I expect he preferred you to do it, out of all his friends and relations.’
He was slow to grasp the import. He might even have missed one or two words in the general clatter. ‘What?’ he said, with only the smallest dawning of alarm.
‘When I saw him on Monday afternoon, he had about five days’ worth of stubble. But when I saw him again, dead on his bed, he was clean-shaven. I thought Edwina did it, but she said not. And he wouldn’t let Jemima do it. I should have realised days ago, but it only just struck me that it must have been you. There just isn’t anybody else,’ she added simply.
He looked around, apparently to ensure that nobody could hear them. ‘Shut up!’ he said fiercely. ‘Mind your own business.’
‘Sorry, but it is my business now. I know it was you, Toby. It all fits. Why don’t you just face it?’
He looked at her, the sun glinting on his ginger hair. He seemed an unbearably sad figure to Thea. She wished for a debilitating moment that she’d left well alone, days ago.
‘You think you know, but you don’t really.’ He glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that nobody was paying attention. Sheep milled and pushed, the machines continued to rattle.
‘So tell me,’ she invited. ‘Please. I don’t think you can go on pretending for much longer.’
He sagged and closed his eyes for a few seconds. ‘He wanted to die,’ he said quietly. ‘He’d wanted it for a year or more. What did he have to live for?’
Despite her feelings of sympathy, she could not deny the surge of anger elicited by his words. ‘Quite a lot, I think. Didn’t he struggle at all? Or argue? Or plead with you? Did he drink that muck you gave him willingly? Didn’t he notice how vile it tasted?’
‘Only after it was too late. And then he was too zonked to struggle.’
‘How quick was it? How long did he take to die?’
‘Stop it!’ His jaw clenched tightly, his face hardened. ‘He took a few minutes, instead of the years it would otherwise have been. Who did he think was going to take care of him? Who had he already handed his wife over to, who had all the right skills, all the time in the world, all the debts of gratitude? Right! So I was supposed to devote the best years of my life to the same stinking routine I’d got out of when Cissie died. I want a life!’ he shouted. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘You murdered him,’ said Thea, with quiet clarity. ‘Because you didn’t want the burden of looking after him.’
‘I helped him to kill himself because he had nothing to look forward to. And that’s the way the law’s going to see it. I shaved him, and settled him into bed, and brought him the drink he asked for. I was gentle and kind and caring. He and I came through a lot together, with never a cross word between us. And nobody is ever going to prove otherwise.’
Thea felt breathless under this onslaught. Could he be right? Had things reached such a point where he just might be? She forced herself to think. ‘So why did you tell the police that Edwina killed him?’
His jaw, hitherto clamped tightly closed, fell open. ‘What do you mean? I never did that.’
‘Somebody did. A man called Gloucester police on Tuesday afternoon, only a few hours after we found Donny.’
He closed his eyes, and uttered a deep sigh. ‘Silas. It would have been Silas. He’s always had a down on Weena, because of his mum.’
‘But he’s in Africa.’
‘So? They have phones in Africa, don’t they?’
‘Toby!’ a man’s voic
e shouted. ‘Watch that ewe, will you?’ A sheep was baulking at being funnelled into the noisy barn, making a bid for freedom in a perceived gap between two hurdles. Toby turned and grabbed it by the long wool around its neck. ‘Go away,’ he told Thea, over his shoulder. ‘Go away and leave us alone.’
She could see no option but to do as bidden, with a heavy sense of anticlimax hanging over her. Drew and the children were still reaching through the fencing to touch the sheep, and generally behaving as if at another farm park.
‘Come on,’ she called to them. ‘We’re finished here.’
They joined her with questioning expressions. ‘What happened?’ Drew asked her.
‘We can go, we’re done here,’ she repeated. ‘Is it too early for lunch?’
‘Ten forty-five,’ he said with a kink of an eyebrow. ‘You’ve got to tell me, Thea. Stop messing about.’
History repeated itself. Slowly, inexorably, she stepped towards him, rested her face on his chest and burst into tears. Once again he rubbed her shoulders and made no effort to push her away. As before, she pulled away with stammered words of apology.
‘Is she hurt?’ asked Timmy.
‘She’s sad,’ concluded Stephanie. ‘Big people cry when they’re sad, not when they’re hurt.’
Thea smiled weakly. ‘You’re right, Steph. Absolutely right.’
Chapter Twenty
That afternoon, Thea was engaged in three telephone conversations, two long and one very short. The first she initiated, taking several minutes to catch up with DI Jeremy Higgins.
‘Toby Brent murdered Donny Davis,’ she said, without preamble. ‘But you’ll never be able to prove it.’
‘Explain.’
‘He admitted it to me this morning. He gave him the sedatives and then taped the bag over his head. Against Donny’s will. It was planned in advance and carried out without mercy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he expected to have to care for the old man for the rest of his life, and he’d had enough of caring.’