by Rebecca Tope
Back in the house, she sat down to think things through one more time. She had to watch and react and stay in control, without safety nets of any kind. She wondered whether it had been wise to omit her brother-in-law from the exercise, or any other members of the police. As her anxiety level rose, she reached for her laptop, and quickly connected the modem.
James, I did go to Joel’s funeral. Very sad. Everybody was there. Odd groupings.
I’m only here a few more days. It feels like I’ve been here a lifetime. I’m going to have one last try at solving these murders for you, starting this morning. Nothing ventured, or something. Hollis came over on Saturday – I expect you’re up to speed with what we found? We have a murder scene now, which seemed to please him.
Love
Thea.
At least it hinted that she was planning something, which made her feel more resolute and slightly more secure. There were times in life when one’s behaviour diverged from the ordinary routines, and took a plunge into stuff much closer to the edge. Thea’s experience to date had not ventured far into these peripheral regions, but she had always known they were there. She knew because her brother in his youth had twice been arrested for using cocaine and once for having sex in a car in broad daylight. She knew from once seeing a young woman jump off a high bridge, as she, Thea, drove across it. She knew from reading ordinary daily newspapers. The edge was much closer than anybody would admit, and to cross it and fall over into the underworld of violence, madness, law-breaking and chaos was much easier than the normal world liked to pretend. Thea was deliberately marching towards this frontier, heart pounding as she went.
The heavy duty thinking she had done the previous evening had produced two large areas of confusion and concern, which became so closely linked in her mind that she began to wonder if they were the same thing. Firstly the network that Lindy had inadvertently mentioned, centred on Fairweather Farm. Secondly, the scattered allusions to young people hooked on drugs. Tied in with this was the pale-faced silent Monique, and the invisible Paolo, as well as the strange young couple she had encountered that first weekend and never seen again. In a further flight of fancy, Muriel’s daughter Daisy was slotted into the picture, too.
But Lindy had said the network was why her father and uncle had died. That they wouldn’t have anything to do with it, which made them outsiders, victims, a threat of some kind. One disconcerting conclusion to draw from this was that just about everybody had risen up and slaughtered the brothers from a collective outrage at their non-participation. But Thea couldn’t credit that idea for long. She would have heard more commotion outside her window, and even Hollis’s imperfect SOCOs would have noticed a dozen sets of footprints in garden and field.
The first stage of the plan was inevitably to explore the scene again, this time with no dogs and no distractions. She would conduct the re-enactment that had never really happened when June had come for her one-week follow-up.
She began at the garden pond, which PC Herring had taped off, and which had been left drained and desolate by Sunday’s white-overalled men. Then she went through the gate into the field and cut diagonally across to the burrow under the hedge. It was not easy to locate. After several minutes she got it and, with a strong sense of unreality, she dived through it, once again falling three or four feet into the deeper ditch on the other side.
Picking herself up, she looked around, knowing she was trespassing. This field was empty of livestock, and seemed to have been neglected for some time. ‘Set aside,’ she muttered to herself, only dimly aware of what that actually entailed.
In full daylight it seemed smaller than it had on the evening of Lindy’s appearance. The side bordering the road was a curving wire fence, with clumps of untended grass and other things growing up on the field side. A good-sized oak tree had been circuited by the fence, and used as a support for it, staples hammered into the bark. The wire seemed to sag just there. Carefully, Thea examined it all. Not until she looked up did she begin to understand the parts of the story that Lindy had omitted. The tree had a fork, only eight or ten feet above the ground. About halfway between the ground and the fork was a block of wood nailed to the tree, projecting about three inches, not immediately useful for anything. Perhaps only a lifelong tree-climber would understand its purpose.
Placing a foot on the sagging fence, she hoisted herself up. Instantly the block of wood became an obvious foothold, and Thea used it. That gave her access to a stout branch with which to haul herself easily into the fork in the tree. From there she could see a scuffed area of bark, a foot or two out along a main limb. This, she suspected, was a well-used vantage point from which to spy on Fairweather.
Wishing she had brought binoculars, she scanned the view before her. The first thing she noted was a long low green-topped building, some distance from the main buildings of Fairweather Farm, but clearly on their land. A track ran up to it from the house. ‘Just as I thought,’ she murmured to herself.
The distance was hard to gauge, but it had to be two or three hundred yards. It would not be possible to see faces without the assistance of binoculars. But anyone wanting to monitor comings and goings without being seen could very easily do so.
Below her the road passed just beyond the fence. In winter a spy sitting in the tree would be visible to anyone glancing upwards from a car – but probably only to a passenger. Drivers seldom looked at trees, especially on a bend in a small country lane. Wearing dull-coloured clothes and keeping very still would probably be all that was needed to remain undetected.
Had Paul Jennison sat here, as well as Lindy and Joel? Why would they? What did they expect to see? Lindy’s story about the delicious Paolo had sounded convincing, but now Thea wondered. Paolo had been a transitory element, the way she’d heard the story, whereas this network business had struck her as more permanent and far-reaching.
Had Joel been sitting up here the night he was killed? Had he been discovered and pursued back to Brook View’s garden? Had he been lured there by someone he thought was a friend? Had he been on his way to the tree, and been intercepted? The possibilities were legion and Thea felt weary before she’d properly started.
She remembered the scarf, caught in quite a different tree, and the barrel-cleaning cloth. Would their part in the story ever be fully understood? Was it ever possible to assemble scraps of evidence and supposition and create a complete picture – even if you found the killer and forced a confession from them? Wouldn’t there always be discrepancies and omissions?
She sat there, letting random thoughts come and go, hoping to trick them into supplying connections and insights of their own accord. But nothing made much sense without understanding the nature of the network, and the goings-on at the Staceys’ farm.
A movement caught her eye, and she focused more carefully on the green-roofed building. A vehicle was driving up to it, along the track she’d missed during her last visit there. It looked like a minibus and, as she watched, it stopped and several people climbed out. She counted seven, as they stood in a ragged group, apparently waiting for something. Frustrated by the distance, she tried to work out what was happening from their body language. There was something unusually passive about most of them, contrasting with one figure which carried an energy and purpose in the way it marched to the door of the building, threw it open, returned, and apparently spoke. An inescapable conclusion formed in Thea’s mind. Surely these had to be illegal immigrants, or desperate asylum seekers? People who had travelled far, weary and drained of all initiative. Packing them away into a building that looked like a hostel, out of sight of the road or the main farm buildings, was an obvious clue. It would be reasonable to refer to such an enterprise as a network – although why the whole community should collude in something that was surely anathema to the comfortable residents of the Cotswolds was less easy to explain. And the sense she had had of a rather flimsy police interest in the whole business was at odds with her conclusions. The government was genuinely
agitated by the issue of immigration, and the police would not lack persistence when it came to any hint of such activity. What’s more, Lindy had insisted that the network was not conducting any illegal business.
And another inconsistency nagged at her: Joel Jennison had not struck her as a man to jeopardise this sort of endeavour. If he was threatening to report the network, then Thea believed – on the basis of a ten-minute encounter – it was because it was doing something he couldn’t stomach.
She spent a little time considering this angle and chastising herself for jumping to such a conclusion. What, after all, did she really know about Joel? She recalled his use of the words ‘even now’ when referring to Hepzie’s long tail. An implication, which had struck her at the time, of a man not fully integrated into his time and place. A vein of disapproval at the ways of mankind, which persisted even now, when the general view was that all was well in the world – or at least in Duntisbourne Abbots. So, Joel was uncomfortable, unsettled. Helen had described the whole family as obsessively clean-living when it came to social behaviour. The mucky farmyard clearly didn’t count as decadence or depravity, whereas much of modern human activity probably did. She caught herself up – almost all of this was groundless supposition, sparked by two insignificant words.
She climbed lightly down from the tree, and retraced her steps to the house. Things were coming together, and the next step had to be planned carefully. Resisting the powerful urge to phone a long list of witnesses, to plead with them to tell her all they knew, she continued with the strategy of examining and checking for herself. It was, at least, safer this way, and much less embarrassing. The previous evening’s reflections had shown her that she was not a good interrogator, anyway. She had at least twice forgotten important details when in conversation. The worst of these was her failure to mention the network to DS Hollis, so distracted had she been with the way events had unrolled during his visit. She had a butterfly brain, she concluded, and any diversion sent all her thoughts flying off in every direction but the right one.
But there were things she had to check, and the only way to do that was by asking questions. Or was it? A flash of inspiration led her to the laptop, and the wonders of the internet. Her hands were shaking with excitement as she booted it up, and connected the modem.
She began with the local paper, keying in Jennifer Reynolds as the first search, remembering the odd message left on the telephone during her first day at Brook View. It popped up effortlessly, the whole story.
‘Mrs Jennifer Reynolds was booed when she spoke at a public meeting last Wednesday at the Duntisbourne Abbots Village Hall.
The meeting had been called to discuss the renovation of local footpaths, and the proposed resiting of the path leading into the village from the southern side. Mrs Reynolds is said to have raised a different matter in the course of the meeting, which led to impassioned debate on all sides. The exact nature of the issue has not been reported, but when contacted, Mrs Reynolds (47) would only say that she did seem to be at odds with village opinion, at least for the moment.’
Scrolling backwards, Thea ascertained that the story was on a page entitled Village News Round-Up, sent in by local contributors. She wondered at the undercurrents, the something-and-nothing of the report as it appeared, and the mischief implied. Why had the contributor mentioned the disagreement at all, if its subject couldn’t be given? Was it too fanciful to think that he or she secretly agreed with Jennifer, and wanted to raise the profile of the whole thing?
Another thought came out of the blue. The phone message would still be saved in the 1571 facility. She ran to listen to it again, jittering impatiently at the measured tones of the recorded woman listing dates and times, which seemed to go on forever.
The voice, when it came, was now almost familiar. The estuary English of Martin Stacey was loud in her ear, both actual and remembered. Martin had phoned to sympathise with Jennifer Reynolds. Thea had no idea what to make of this, but it filled another hole in the picture.
She went back to the laptop, eager to find more background. She keyed in Helen Winstanley then Fairweather Farm, followed by Lionel Jennison, Paul Jennison, Joel Jennison, Harold Richmond and finally for good measure DS Philip Hollis.
Some bore fruit, and others did not. She followed red herrings and false trails. It all took a long time, as she copied sections of text and pasted them all into one Word file. She had not brought a printer with her, so she noted down the most salient details on the jotter pad that the Reynoldses had placed beside the telephone.
It was both exhilarating and appalling just how much information could be gleaned about ordinary village folk, who now and then happened to get their names included in one thing or another.
When she’d finished, she did not have her murderer, or a picture of any great clarity. But she was close. She understood a great deal more than she had before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She spent the rest of Tuesday on the project. She was still up at midnight, absorbed in it all. The last thing she did before crawling up to bed was to forward the Word file as an e-mail attachment to her brother-in-law James.
She awoke on Wednesday morning with patterns and guesses and intentions still whirling around her brain. The sense of urgency persisted, but with it came a loud warning to proceed with caution. There were still several points at which she could make a wrong assumption, and the course of action open to her was by no means obvious.
The answers to most of the remaining questions lay firmly at Fairweather Farm, and Thea felt simultaneously reluctant and inclined to walk over there and investigate. But the mixed feelings were paralysing. Weighing up the arguments, she recalled the unfriendly manner of Isabel Stacey. Whatever the reason for it, Thea felt there was little scope now for a civil exchange between them. She had utterly failed to endear herself to the woman, and saw little prospect of changing her attitude. Another factor on the negative side was a niggling suspicion that her earlier thoughts about the Jennisons still had some mileage in them. Thoughts centred upon old Lionel and his unmistakable pain; the obvious fact that by slaughtering his sons, somebody had been at best careless of his wellbeing. Perhaps it would be a better idea to turn right at the front gate, towards Barrow Hill, and follow up a hunch that something would manifest itself as a result.
June had implied that Lionel was naturally curmudgeonly, but Harry and Joel had both given him a rather better character assessment. There were a lot of people making excuses for each other, Thea noted. A network of loyalties and affections that tinted the whole sorry story with something surprisingly warm and good. She had not expected that at all. Her researches implied that there was one and only one malevolent individual pretending to be part of the universal fellowship that she had unearthed. Someone who nursed grievances or psychoses, unsuspected and unobserved. Motives traditionally stretched back into the past, but this wasn’t always the case. Hot revenge, sudden alterations, opportunism – all produced flashes of violence without premeditation.
Abandoning any attempt to understand motivation, she did not argue with the inner prompting that made her leave the house, without the dogs, and turn right at the front gate.
The track down to Barrow Hill farmyard was becoming familiar.
The thistles in the fields, the grey stone house positioned to escape most of the day’s sunshine, the weedy corners and pungent smells all reminded her of the first time she’d visited. The afternoon when she’d skirted the yard because of the muck, and met June and Lindy in the first shock of their bereavement, vividly recurred to her.
But today there was a dramatic difference. The yard, hitherto thronged with bullocks, was now dense with sheep, all making indignant noise. May 10th, she remembered. The day Joel had told her was scheduled for shearing. The day Clive’s little flock were also meant to be having their fleeces removed, God damn it. Well, how was she meant to remember that? It was extraordinary that the Jennison sheep were actually being done, in the circumstance
s. Who was in charge? How was it being organised? She had to find someone and ask if they would fetch Clive Reynolds’s sheep, before it was too late.
There was a faint sound of a motor running in the large barn, and a loud voice somewhat closer. Thea took the plunge and dived amongst the heaving hot woolly beasts, heading for the sounds across the yard. The voice she could hear seemed unnaturally angry. Why would shearing sheep give rise to rage, Thea wondered, with a flicker of amusement at the mysteries of agriculture.
There had to be two or three hundred sheep. Smaller than those at Brook View, they also seemed much wilder and more terrified of human beings. Penned in by a complex arrangement of gates, they were being funnelled into the barn. Expecting to find the source of the angry voice, she pressed on, noticing a lot of naked white sheep in a field beyond the yard. Clearly the shearing was well under way.
There were two men just visible in the shadowy interior of the barn, one bent over a captive animal, one standing by, holding the next victim. The shearing machine was clattering, the sheep were bleating. It seemed unlikely that the men could hear anything going on outside. It was quite evident that these were not the shouting people. Thea skirted the barn, moving along the side of the house, beginning to feel that something important was going on.
She came upon a tableau of violence that startled her into rigidity. The old man, Lionel Jennison, standing crookedly, one arm raised. In the uplifted hand was some sort of metal weapon, a curved blade that chopped downwards as Thea watched. Its intended goal was plainly the head or neck of a woman, crouching against a low stone wall, hands defensively wrapped around her face.
But despite the hidden face, it was obvious from the first who she was. The bright red hair gave her away. The weapon found its objective, but only the tip made contact, striking the protective knuckles of Susanna’s right hand, the wrist of which was still bandaged from the injury sustained in the car accident of the previous week. She screamed, and scrambled further away. Blood began to trickle from the cut, a much deeper red than that of her dyed hair.