Through a Narrow Door

by Faith Martin

  Janine nodded. Jenny Cleaver was wearing an iron-grey raw-silk pants suit that she would kill to own, and the jade and silver pendant hung around her neck was nice too.

  ‘So you have no idea who might have wanted to kill him?’

  Jenny Cleaver shook her head. ‘It’s horrific, isn’t it? I don’t feel safe in my own home anymore. Darren and I have seriously discussed moving, I can tell you.’

  ‘I see,’ Janine said. Self-absorbed or what? She didn’t seem to care at all that a boy was dead. But Janine, who was nothing if not honest with herself, knew that she was probably just feeling bitchy because Jenny Cleaver had it all. The good-looking husband, the ideal home and garden, the gorgeous wardrobe and glamorous job. ‘Well, if you remember anything you think I should know …’ Janine was fiddling in her bag for her card. Finally she found a rather dog-eared one and handed it over. ‘Give me a call. I don’t suppose you saw Billy on Tuesday, the day he died?’

  ‘No, I have a 6.30 a.m. start when I’m working in town.’

  Poor you, Janine thought savagely, smiled and left. In the outer office once more, she was just in time to see the Joanna-wannabe slip her bum back into her seat. What was the betting that she’d been standing with her shell-like ear glued to the boss’s door?

  Janine smiled blandly. ‘Busy lady,’ she said pleasantly.

  ‘And might be even more so, if “Holy Orders” gives her the promotion.’

  ‘Huh?’ Janine said, wondering if her ears were full of wax. ‘Holy Orders?’

  The receptionist giggled. ‘Sorry, Mrs Orbison. We call her “Holy Orders” around here ’cause she’s a strict Jehovah’s Witness. She’s our boss. Well, our boss here. And if Jenny wants to get the jackpot she’s hankering after, she’ll need Mrs Orbison’s recommendation.’

  ‘Oh, yes, her husband mentioned she was in line for promotion. Be working out of London permanently then, I guess.’

  ‘Phwar, London be blowed,’ the Sloane Ranger drawled. ‘New York more like. Elite are international you know.’

  Janine managed another smile and left the office feeling slightly sick. Why did some women seem to have it all?

  Then she thought about the shell-shocked face of Marilyn Davies and abruptly stopped feeling sorry for herself. She made a mental note crossing the Cleavers off her list and headed back for the car.

  Maybe she’d pop in and see Mel after getting back to HQ. Just to say hello, like. Maybe take him up on that offer for lunch. It didn’t hurt to stay friendly with the boss, right?

  chapter nine

  Hillary turned off the engine of her car and sat for a few minutes, simply letting her head clear. It was nearly seven, and the sun, although not yet setting, was giving out a softer, more golden glow. She was back in Aston Lea, parked on the side of the road and feeling just a shade depressed.

  Her case seemed stuck in a go-nowhere groove.

  Through the open window of her car, she could hear a blackbird singing sweetly. Then a group of swifts came streaming low over the hedge, like black arrows fired from a crossbolt, screamed their way over a field of barley, and she felt the gloom begin to lift. The first, early dogroses were beginning to bloom amidst a blackthorn hedge, and somewhere in the hamlet in front of her a dog barked. Although she had worked out of Oxford in her youth, Hillary couldn’t understand people who preferred city life.

  Sighing wearily, she climbed out of the car and walked slowly to the allotment gate. A waft of something cooking, maybe barbecued meat, swept past her on the evening breeze and her stomach rumbled. If she’d had any sense, she’d be home on the boat now, cooking dinner for herself. She knew the uniforms had interviewed all the allotment holders, and had come up empty.

  She’d also read all the other interview notes, and knew that Lester Miller was safely accounted for in a class when Billy had died, and that his girlfriend, Heather Soames, had been hanging around with friends on the tennis court, during a ‘free’ period. At some point she was going to have to re-interview Heather Soames herself, and Mel would probably have said that she had higher priority, but something was drawing Hillary back to this place.

  The scene of the crime.

  What had Billy Davies seen in his final moments? Who had he been talking to? Had he arranged to meet someone here, or had he been surprised by someone? Had he known his killer? Had he been afraid, or surprised, in those final moments, when he felt the cold blade slip between his ribs?

  A victim’s final moments weren’t something she often dwelt on. It only hurt her, and it served no good purpose. But tonight, on such a lovely spring evening, it was hard to ignore the ghost of the dead boy, here, where he’d died.

  Suddenly she had the sensation that she was being watched. It was not something that frightened her. A country girl born and bred, she knew the eyes probably weren’t even human. Anything could be watching her, finding her presence intrusive and wishing she’d leave. A young rabbit, out in the wide world on his own for the first time. A hunting stoat, with his eye on the rabbit. Maybe even a cat from one of the bungalows. Once, when she’d been about thirteen or fourteen, she’d been sitting under a tree, totally alone and deep in the countryside, eating an apple, and quite happy until she’d felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up; but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t see the cause of her alarm. She’d been by a river, but there were no river birds or voles, and there were no grazing sheep or cattle in the fields surrounding her. She was beginning to get seriously alarmed until she’d thought of looking up – the one place she hadn’t tried – and discovered a pair of barn owls staring down at her.

  Now, Hillary slowly straightened up from her leaning position on the top of the five-barred gate and looked around. This time, however, her audience was definitely human – an old man, to be specific, standing in the midst of a patch of what looked like sweet william’s and pumpkins. He was leaning on a hoe and, in deference to the heat, was wearing a pair of wide shorts that highlighted comically thin, white legs, pocked-marked with the odd, red, angry-looking bite. That was the trouble with heat. It brought flies with it.

  Hillary opened the gate and walked in. The old man watched her as she walked up the grass path bisecting the plots towards him, then nodded as she smiled a greeting at him.

  ‘Nice evenin’. Won’t last though,’ he said obligingly.

  Hillary shrugged. ‘I can do without the heat myself,’ she said. ‘Especially if it turns sticky.’ There were very few disadvantages to living on a narrowboat, but excessive heat in the summer months was one of them. Sometimes the inside of the Mollern could feel like a sauna.

  ‘Arr, it’ll end in a thunderstorm no doubt. You the woman in charge of finding out who killed young Billy then?’ he added, deciding they’d had enough pleasantries.

  Hillary nodded. It didn’t surprise her that he knew who she was. But she was in no hurry to get down to the nitty-gritty. Sometimes witnesses opened up more if they liked you. ‘This your patch?’ she asked unnecessarily, surveying the neat rows of mounded-up potatoes, the tangle of peas curling their way up sticks, and a patch of rhubarb that was ready for pulling.

  ‘Yes, ’tis,’ the old man acknowledged. He was going thin on top, and his dome shone red where the sun had caught it. ‘Want some onions? Spring onions, I mean. I need to thin them out.’

  Hillary grinned and shook her head. She knew how hot they’d be. Her father, before his death, had kept two chains of allotments, and she remembered the kick his scallions had had. ‘I was hoping you could help me,’ she said instead. ‘I’m finding it hard getting to grips with what Billy was doing here on the day he died. I’ve heard he hung around here sometimes, but nobody seems to know why, exactly. His mother said something about him taking photographs?’

  The old man looked at her for a moment, then scratched his no-doubt itching head and shrugged. ‘He always had a camera slung around his neck, I’ll grant him that,’ he said at last. ‘And now and then he’d take some snaps, like. If the weat
her was funny. We had a snowstorm last winter. Right queer it was. Only lasted five minutes and we had a bit of a rainbow with it too. It was eerie, for a minute or two, I can tell you. A bit scary even. I was out here checking on the Brussels, making sure I’d have some for Christmas, and I nipped in my shed quick. Saw Billy then, snapping away. His dad reckons he won some sort of prize for one of ’em, in one of them geographical or nature magazines. The ones that bang on about the glory of nature, and all that.’

  Hillary nodded. Well, here at least was independent confirmation of Marilyn’s evidence. Her son might have been fond of the place. And yet, there was something hesitant about the old man’s attitude that made her linger over it.

  ‘Still, the day he was killed, it was just another hot spring day,’ she pointed out. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was anything to interest him here. Especially if he wasn’t well.’

  The old man grunted. ‘I wouldn’t take much notice of that,’ he advised, then added as she raised an eyebrow in question, ‘Him being ill, I mean. Little bugger had a very convenient constitution, you ask me. Any time he wanted to skive off school he’d come down with something.’

  Hillary smiled. ‘Yes, I got that impression. So you see, I’m still puzzled as to what he was doing here. Did you ever see him meet anyone here?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘Not that I can recall,’ the old man said after some thought. ‘If I saw him here at all, he usually headed straight for his dad’s shed. You checked it out I suppose? No dirty magazines in there?’ His face creased into wrinkles as he smiled slyly. ‘Young lad that age … well, you gotta wonder.’

  Hillary smiled and shook her head. ‘First thing we thought of,’ she said, not altogether untruthfully. She imagined SOCO had gone over the shed with hiding places in mind. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Ahh. Well. You know, I often saw him slip through the back, like. But I can’t see no harm in that.’

  ‘Out the back? Back of where?’ Hillary asked sharply, glancing over at the Davies allotment, and the still taped-off shed.

  ‘That bit of derelict land behind the shed,’ the old man pointed. His fingers, she noticed, were yellowed with nicotine stains. ‘Used to belong to old man Humphries, kept the forge. Used to let his old horse roam around there. Kept a pig, too, in a stone-built pigsty. ’Course, it’s all thistles and dock now. Too small to rent out to a farmer for sheep, too inconvenient to get to for anybody to build on. It’s just a mess of elder and stuff now. Can’t think what mischief the lad could have got up to in there. Reckon he was just curious, like. Either that or he was photographing stuff. Spiders, or whatnot. Bird’s nests. Plenty of them in there, bound to be.’

  Hillary recalled admiring one photograph hanging on Billy’s bedroom wall – a spiderweb, with morning dew on it. It seemed to be hanging from two, blackened thistle stems. Could have been taken back there. It made sense. But she was sure there’d been no mention of a camera being found in the vicinity in the SOCO reports she’d read. And his digital camera had been in his bedroom that first night they’d interviewed his parents. So unless Billy had a second camera, and one that his assailant had stolen from him, it didn’t seem likely Billy had been here pursuing his hobby. And if he didn’t have a stash of porn, or something even more unhealthy in the shed, why had he been here at all, if not to meet his killer?

  ‘Well, thanks,’ Hillary said. ‘Can you point me in the direction of your fellow allotment owners?’

  ‘Sure. Phil and Glenys live in the second bungalow on the left, and Pete the one next door. And the Coopers live on the first one over on the right. They took over the Warrenders’ old plot.’

  Hillary, who’d just lifted one foot, intending to swivel around and walk away, put it slowly back down again. ‘The Warrenders? I didn’t know they had a plot.’

  The old man guffawed. ‘They don’t, not now. But they asked for one as soon as they moved in. I reckon they had some daft idea of growing their own veggies and living the good life. Soon found out it was more hard work then they bargained for. Plot went to weeds within a week. Next year, the allotment committee agreed to give it to the Coopers.’

  Hillary nodded. Was that so? So the Warrenders would be familiar with the allotments. And Billy Davies wouldn’t be particularly alarmed or surprised if one or the other of them had approached him.

  ‘Well, thank you Mr …?’

  ‘Ferris. Nigel Ferris. Anytime. Want some rhubarb?’

  Hillary, who rather liked rhubarb, let him pull some for her and deposited it on to the back seat of her car before walking on into the hamlet to interview the others.

  It was getting dark by the time she pulled in to Thrupp. As she’d thought, none of the other allotment keepers had been able to help, but two of them did confirm Nigel Ferris’s statement that they’d seen Billy either going into, or coming out of, the derelict land behind the shed.

  Now, as Hillary pulled into the pub car park, she supposed at some point she was going to have to check out the land herself. Make sure she was wearing her oldest clothes and trousers that tucked into some sturdy boots. Stinging nettles and six-legged things that bit would no doubt be the order of the day, and she was damned if she was going to pick up ticks, even in the line of duty.

  She parked and locked up, and hefted her bag over her shoulder. From Willowsands she heard the sound of music; a familiar tune that, as she drew closer, she identified as Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson from the film, The Graduate. It made her chuckle. Only Nancy had a sense of humour that wicked.

  She walked on by and hopped lightly on to the back of her own boat, already reaching into her bag for the padlock key. When she’d first moved on to the boat, she’d just left Ronnie after finding him out in yet another extra-marital affair. It had been the final straw. Her uncle had bought the boat in a fit of over-exuberance on his retirement, only to find out, after a few trips, that his wife wasn’t that keen on living ‘out of a pencil box’.

  It was a sentiment that Hillary had at first shared, but since Ronnie had been careful to put the house in his own name, and wasn’t about to be generous in any upcoming divorce, it had been the boat or nothing. Then he’d died in a car crash, and some crazy animal liberators had tried to commandeer his assets, including the house, and what with one thing and another, she’d found herself still living on the boat when she’d been shot a few months ago.

  It had been during her recuperation that she’d finally admitted that life on the canal suited her, and she’d bit the bullet and bought the boat outright from her uncle. The housework it needed was minimal, it was convenient for work, and the rhythms of the water and the reliability of the seasons had worked some sort of magic on her. Now she couldn’t imagine living in a brick-and-mortar house that didn’t bob about occasionally, and couldn’t be moved whenever the fancy took her.

  She stepped inside (automatically ducking her head so that she didn’t bang it on the metal frame) and turned on the light. She went straight through the narrow corridor to the prow of the boat, where the galley was. A glass of wine and some salad, and an early night. Not very exciting perhaps, but …

  She tensed as she heard a thud and felt the boat move, ever so slightly, beneath her. She knew what that meant. She turned, alert but not yet alarmed. A kitchen knife lay in the rack on the sink.

  ‘Hello on board? Mind if I come down?’

  Hillary bit back a groan and hurried forward. ‘Not at all, sir. Please, mind your head.’

  ‘Call me Paul,’ DCI Danvers said, bending in half as he came down the stairs. He was wearing a pair of silver-grey trousers and a pale blue sports shirt. His arms were tanned, as was the v-shape under his neck. His blonde hair was fast turning silver as the heatwave continued, and he grinned a white smile at her as he reached the bottom.

  ‘You’ve redecorated since I was last here,’ he said. He’d been on the Mollern only once before, when Hillary had still been but a lodger. Since buying the boat, however, she had lightened the paint scheme,
added a few shelves, and some watercolour sketches an old friend from her college days had painted for her. She’d also bought some mint-green covers for the armchair and her bed, and matching curtains.

  ‘Only a bit,’ she agreed. ‘Drink? I’ve only got tea or coffee in,’ she lied. She didn’t want to do anything that would encourage him to linger. Or get ideas.

  ‘Fine,’ Danvers said. He moved forward, following Hillary as she retreated back to the galley. Apart from her bedroom and the tiny shower room, the Mollern had an open plan, and the galley also housed a bookcase and a single armchair, a fold-down table and a small portable telly. Danvers glanced out of one of the windows, where a waxing moon shone ripples of light on the dark canal water.

  ‘I can understand why you like it here, Hillary. It’s hard to believe Kidlington is just a half mile up the road. It’s like a different world out there.’

  Hillary smiled and pointed to the armchair. ‘Please, have a seat.’ She reached for a folding deckchair beside the sink and opened it out for herself. As the kettle began humming, she talked about the Davies case, and he listened closely.

  ‘Any progress on the drugs angle?’ he asked, when she’d finished.

  ‘I’m waiting for Tommy to get back to me. Melanie Parker won’t hang about. If there’s something there, we’ll know it soon.’

  ‘And the family’s in the clear?’

  ‘As much as they can be,’ Hillary said neutrally, ‘given that husband and wife, and eleven-year-old daughter all alibi each other.’

  ‘Get any vibes there?’

  Hillary blew out her lips. ‘I don’t think either of them were under any illusions about their son,’ she said at last. ‘I got the impression they were doing an ostrich act. But they’re not completely off my radar yet.’

  Danvers nodded, then watched her make the coffee. He accepted his with a brief smile. ‘Mel seems to be settling down in his new job OK.’