Head Count

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Or maybe the wall will make the neighbour move out,’ I said, my smile a mere ghost because she’d put into words what I’d tried to suppress.

  ‘I’ll think of something else that might,’ she said with a smile that might equally have been impish or enigmatic.

  With term starting on Monday, I couldn’t afford the luxury of spending the afternoon worrying about my potential home. I can’t say I achieved much, but just going through the routine of last-minute preparations was strangely soothing. To my delight Tom arrived halfway through the afternoon; it was good to see my deputy taking his role so seriously.

  ‘Losing your roof must be the worst way to start the school year,’ he said with a shrewd glance at my face. ‘Here, sit down and I’ll make some green tea – too hot for coffee. My wife even gave me this.’ He produced a lemon, cutting off a couple of slices. ‘There. Nice and refreshing.’

  We sat. We sipped.

  ‘I take it you’ll be going into Episcopi tomorrow?’ he said.

  ‘Have to.’

  ‘Look, if you don’t mind an early start, I can give you a hand. I mean, really early. Sevenish. Six-thirty if you wish. But I need to be away by nine-thirty absolute latest.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ A man with an overworked wife and a demanding family.

  ‘Absolutely. Especially the prompt departure.’

  My phone chirruped.

  ‘Go on, take it.’ He got up, picking up my checklist and comparing it to his.

  It was only a text from Ed. More umpiring tomorrow? He was only asking because the opposition umpire was stuck in France in the midst of rioting migrants. And our usual man didn’t feel up to umpiring at both ends.

  I texted back: Try everyone else you can think of, because I can only do it if you’re truly desperate.

  Blow me if it didn’t chirrup straight back: We are. Pick u up from Mondiale@12.30? xxx

  Xxx indeed! I didn’t think I was on those terms with him. No, thanks – I’ll get myself there. X. Just the one.

  Putting aside the Saturday Guardian, and gathering up my belated breakfast things from the garden table, I was just thinking that it might actually be quite pleasant to spend the afternoon umpiring my favourite game, even though rain was forecast for later. A lot of it.

  A phone call from Paula broke my cheerful mood.

  ‘You need to get out to your new place, Jane. Now. I’ll see you there.’

  End of call? Just like that?

  I wasn’t the first there. Three police cars were parked in the narrow lane, already clogged with a fencing contractor’s vehicle and a PACT van. The promised security fence was in place, but someone was decorating it with police tape. Some of what had been my garage was now in a skip; the rest was disappearing behind a police tent.

  Mrs Penkridge erupted as soon I appeared. ‘So that was the source of the smell all along!’ she said, jabbing at my chest with a venom worthy of Dennis Paine. ‘Fine neighbour you’re turning out to be!’

  Paula inserted herself between us in the unobtrusive but unarguable way I use when dealing with warring ten-year-olds. ‘Let me take you over to Will Bowman, the DS in charge here: it’s not good news, Jane, but you need to hear it.’

  She led me to the officer checking all the comings and goings: the area was now all too clearly a crime scene. I waited as a white-suited figure squatting by the shrubbery, now even more shambolic, of course, was summoned. He got up in one fairly easy move, and approached me with a very formal smile. He was about my age and about my height, good-looking in a rather beaky way – it was the face of an academic, perhaps, rather than a law-enforcer. He didn’t appear to have spent as much time in the summer sun as most people round here.

  ‘Jane Cowan,’ I said, with a similar smile. ‘I’m the owner.’

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ he said without preamble.

  ‘I’m happy to supply you with all the answers I can.’

  He looked over my shoulder at Mrs Penkridge, still rubber-necking. ‘My car, I think.’

  I said crisply, ‘Sergeant Bowman, if you want somewhere quieter and cooler, it’s only three minutes’ drive to my rented place.’

  ‘When I’ve briefed my DI – here she is now – I’ll join you. Half an hour or so.’

  Bowman looked longingly at the walled garden, attractive in the sun as a French Impressionist’s sketch, but I decided not to indulge him. ‘That’s OK if you want the workmen in the next garden to overhear everything we say. And it might be cooler inside, if I can get a through draught. Elderflower cordial with ice?’

  We sat down opposite each other in the living area; I waited.

  ‘Tell me about your house and garden.’

  ‘You probably know more about it already than I do,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’ve scarcely been in the place since I bought it. It’s not ideal, and it’s not in an ideal position, but at the time it was the only one I could afford. The theory was I’d get the work done this summer holiday so I could move in before term started. However, the builder scheduled to do the work went bankrupt, and for various reasons none of the other firms I approached was able to take it on. I’m just grateful that PACT has agreed to do the work as an urgent priority.’

  ‘And you’ve made no attempt to clear the garden?’

  ‘The landscape gardener I’d booked to do everything said it made more sense to wait until the structural work was done, so that newly planted beds and so on wouldn’t be damaged. Neither of us ever imagined it would take so long before work could begin properly. However, after considerable pressure from me he’d promised to do something with my jungle even before your colleagues started work on it. What did they find, by the way?’

  ‘We’ll talk about that later. One of your neighbours said she was forced to complain to you about the state of the place.’

  I was about to rage at a woman who didn’t deserve it. I wouldn’t have wanted to live next to my place in its present state. ‘Mrs Penkridge. She was. She also told me she’d seen a couple of lads scarpering across my garden. I should have kept a better eye on everything, but visiting it only made me feel more impotent and frustrated: making the house habitable was too big a job, with more radical work needed, for me even to imagine doing myself. I rather lost hope when time after time a local builder would turn down what I thought would be a lucrative gig. Plus, I have been busy recently.’

  His stare was cold. ‘I thought you teachers had long holidays.’

  ‘That’s what everyone thinks. What people think isn’t always backed up by facts.’ A fact such as Tom, who was only volunteering out of loyalty anyway, being at Episcopi by six so that he could leave on time for a last weekend with his family. I got back to some facts of my own. ‘It was only when I spoke to Paula from PACT and then this place got damaged that my hopes were raised. Absentee landlords …’

  ‘I learnt about them in history lessons a long time ago. So you rarely visited the place—’

  ‘Except in the company of an occasional unenthusiastic builder, who’d give the place the most cursory of glances and then walk away. So I never noticed that my garage had been hijacked. But I think the tyre tracks leading up to it are fairly recent. Maybe my uninvited guest or guests haven’t been there long?’

  ‘Forensics will give us more information, but probably not.’

  ‘Just long enough, I assume, to die when the garage collapsed.’

  ‘That’s what you’re expecting me to tell you?’

  ‘It would explain the smell … I thought I had foxes or something. But I wouldn’t get a DS and a DI and police tape for the odd fox or badger.’

  He flashed a smile all the more amazing for the context: ‘Not unless it had TB. Yes, I’m afraid we’ve found a body. I’d like to know what you think about the garage door still being padlocked when it collapsed. From the outside, Ms Cowan.’ His eyes were icy again.

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. ‘Someone – you mean that someone locked a person … a hu
man being … in there and left them to die?’

  ‘Someone locked a young man in there.’

  ‘And he—My God! In a place I own. I could have – should have – checked.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the privilege of ownership means the responsibility of ownership.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m not apportioning blame, Ms Cowan. That’s for the Coroner and ultimately the courts. I take it you’d deny putting a man we think is an Afghan in there and locking the door on him.’

  ‘I can’t think – I can’t begin to imagine …’

  ‘I’ll take that as a negative, then. So can you imagine,’ he threw my verb back at me, ‘who did?’

  It was as if shaking my head vehemently triggered a thought, not necessarily coherent yet. ‘Let me just get a few things as straight as I can. An unoccupied house. A garage the far side so it’s not overlooked. A gravel path.’ I looked up. ‘You have a colleague – PC Lloyd Davies. He’ll vouch for the fact I’m not usually batty.’

  He looked me in the eye. ‘I met a guy called Pat Webber, too, Jane. When he was on secondment. I’d say you have a good track record.’

  For a moment that threw me. But with no more than a heartbeat’s hesitation I said, ‘Towards the start of this long summer holiday, I took up cycling. At one point I was run off the road. An elderly couple – brother and sister, Harry and Doreen – helped rescue me and took me to their house. When I went to thank them it was completely locked up. It has been every time I’ve passed. It too was remote, though far more distant from anything passing as civilisation than mine! No neighbours, even. Detached. Free-standing garage at the rear – twice the size of mine. Deep tracks in the gravel. Probably made by a vehicle larger than a car. Oh, and there’s an extraordinarily long washing line. Funny how that detail sticks here.’ I touched my forehead. ‘I mentioned it to Lloyd – but only in passing. They helped me, for goodness’ sake. I didn’t want – I don’t know – to think anything odd about them. Just for them to have some flowers.’

  He made a little rewinding gesture. ‘The vehicle that hit you.’

  ‘I never saw it. But from the very garbled and mutually contradictory descriptions Harry and Doreen gave it sounded like a Ford Ranger or something like it. Possibly black, possibly blue. Definitely with tinted rear windows. And there are, of course, quite a number of beasts fitting that sort of description.’

  His gaze implied complete disbelief, and why not? ‘Are you making a connection with the vehicle and the tyre tracks at both the houses?’

  ‘That’s the frustrating thing: I told you, I never, ever saw it. You don’t see much except sky when you’re lying flat on your back on a very prickly hedge. Oh, I’m wise after the event: I have a helmet camera now. Look, I’m just feeding you odds and ends because you have the resources to make connections. Possibly,’ I added, ‘given the state of public spending and the cuts to essential services like – well, you people, of course.’

  ‘Quite. Any other snippets, connected or not, you may remember?’

  I shook my head. ‘This is a long shot, and goodness knows she has no reason to love me, but Mrs Penkridge looked to me the sort of person to be far-sighted enough to have her own CCTV system. Is it worth asking her? After all, if she has, it’s just possible it may have caught the vehicles she mentioned. And I’d really like to know if one of them is a blue SUV with tinted windows.’

  ‘We’ll certainly be talking to Mrs Penkridge, and not at your behest either. A serious crime has been committed, Ms Cowan, and if she has evidence she’ll be required to reveal it, even if she doesn’t think her neighbour deserves consideration. We’ll be searching the entire property this afternoon—’

  ‘Paula thought someone might have been sleeping in the larger of the back bedrooms—’

  ‘We won’t be trusting to her intuition, believe me – we shall be subjecting it to a full forensic examination. Where will we be able to find you?’

  ‘On the school field here in Wrayford, Mr Bowman. Right in the middle. I’m umpiring a match.’

  ‘During the school holiday?’

  ‘It’s a league match. Wrayford CC against—actually, I’m not sure who the opposition are yet … Yes, I’m a qualified umpire.’

  He looked at me with what seemed genuine admiration. ‘Not just children – women too?’

  ‘And men, as in this afternoon’s match. At least it means,’ I said with a dry smile, ‘that I won’t be spending the afternoon watching my potential garden being the horticultural equivalent of strip-searched, and the house having its DNA taken.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The first person I saw as I walked towards the school playing field was Justin Forbes, the Churcham umpire, looking as dapper as before in a traditional straw trilby.

  ‘What a good idea, the school and the cricket club sharing the field!’ he said, kissing my hand, much to my bemusement.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said: it was nice to be appreciated.

  Still holding my hand he stared; then he dropped it abruptly. ‘Whose idea was it, then?’

  I don’t do blushing bashfulness. ‘Half mine. As I recall Diane, the licensee of the Jolly Cricketers, appropriately enough, was bemoaning the loss of the original cricket field, and I was able to persuade our governors to offer Wrayford the regular use of this: it benefits both the players and the pupils, as you can imagine.’

  He looked entirely nonplussed. ‘I … I do apologise. I thought the notion was Ed van Boolen’s and Brian Dawes’.’

  What a surprise; the only question was whether the two Wrayford men had claimed the idea or whether Justin, as an alpha male himself, simply assumed that only other alpha males could have had it. ‘The important thing is the end result,’ I said graciously, though I hated myself for being so damned appeasing. ‘The downside for the teams and indeed the spectators are that the facilities are all junior school sized; the up is that there are indeed facilities. Unlike some clubs where I’ve had to change in someone’s garage and beg to use their outside loo.’

  ‘Does the school have showers?’

  ‘Next year, school budget and club fund-raising permitting. Symbiosis,’ I said. It was time to talk about matters in hand: ‘Now, Justin, the weather forecast for this evening is awful – and I can see the clouds already starting to build.’ It was, as Pat would have said, black over Bill’s mother’s. Sometimes I borrowed the expression, but not this time. I’d clearly shocked poor Justin Forbes to the bone. He might not survive such an onslaught on his preconceptions of what people he no doubt thought of as ladies should do – and talking Black Country was almost certainly not one of them. ‘Should we have a word with the captains and see if they’re prepared to play a reduced number of overs in order to get a result or if they’re desperate for a meaningless draw …’

  In the event, though both teams agreed a much shorter match and a result, the weather closed in before Wrayford, batting second, could complete their overs. Although no rain was actually falling, it was simply too dark for the batsmen to see, and already lightning was playing round the horizon. Justin and I could have done complicated calculations using the impenetrable Duckworth–Lewis method to award the game to either side, but I suggested a tactical dash to the Jolly Cricketers where the skittle alley might provide a place to decide a notional result.

  For some reason, Justin insisted on paying for the players’ first round; I’d have to do the same for the second. After that it was up to them. Again he surprised me: no humble half-pint for me, but bubbles. None of your prosecco, either: Diane’s finest champagne. I had a nasty feeling that, after snubbing Ed over his lift offer, I’d have to schmooze up to him to escape Justin’s courtly attentions. Ed might, of course, need to hear what was going on at my new place. However, when, halfway down my fizz, I turned to look for him, he was returning his glass to Diane. He managed a quick wave in my direction, but didn’t pause as he swept out into the rain.

  Drat. Justin was claiming my attentio
n again. ‘I was never able to show you the lights of France, was I?’

  ‘No indeed. Only the magnificent storm. Do you get many, in such an exposed position? You’re pretty much the first port of call, after all.’

  What had I said? He narrowed his eyes, but only momentarily. ‘Ah … for the weather.’

  And also for those unlit boats I’d seen running for the safety of the bay. Another image clicked into place. In a similar bay, though in much more benign conditions, when we’d been to Marcus’s barbecue, another boat was slipping in unlit. The night I’d quoted Matthew Arnold and succumbed so publicly to that virus.

  But I ought to be saying something that didn’t constitute a request for an invitation. ‘It must be a heavenly place for birdwatching,’ I extemporised.

  ‘I suppose there are people who enjoy that,’ he said doubtfully.

  I beamed, saying with almost perfect truth, ‘One of the first things I shall do when I can at last move into my new home is have a mega bird-feeder: one that will hold everything: fat balls, nuts, niger seeds, sunflower hearts – I want the lot.’

  ‘And mealworms for robins – don’t forget them.’ Our huge opening bowler, the one I’d seen snogging our wicketkeeper, chipped in. Des. I could have hugged him.

  ‘Of course. And half-coconuts.’

  ‘Hmm. Pretty well everything has to be in squirrel-proof dispensers round here. You might want to try …’

  Even I was wearying of his list of recommendations, but Justin’s eyes were pretty well glazed over. That suited me. I ought to be mixing with the rest of the teams: most were very decent men, and even those who weren’t would be less likely to yell obscenities at me if I gave what they thought was the wrong decision when we’d shared jokes and the plates of chips Diane was circulating. Even the wicketkeeper, Mike, whose vocabulary was startling – yes, the wicketkeeper I’d seen with—