by Jill McGown
A pick-up truck rumbled into the yard, and Bailey’s wife returned with the man Judy had seen taking the cow into the cowshed. ‘This is Steve Paxton, our foreman,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Judy. I’m—’
‘Test th’alarms,’ said Bailey, and Paxton nodded, walking purposefully off somewhere. ‘Get in t’kitchen,’ he said to his wife. ‘Make thissen useful.’
Mrs Bailey smiled at Judy, and went down the hallway, and through the door at the end.
Judy was still trying to work out the Bailey relationship when suddenly the air was filled with deafening noise, which Bailey allowed to continue well past tolerance levels before he finally opened the box, cancelling the alarms, and let the lid hang open once more.
Paxton came back as Judy’s hearing was returning to normal, grinning at her. ‘I was leaning on the fence,’ he said. ‘ That’s what happens if you put any real weight on it. Happens if anything higher off the ground than a cat crosses the infrareds, too.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, her ears still ringing.
‘They can hear them for miles,’ Paxton went on. ‘We get complaints from the neighbours when we test them like we’ve just done.’
Judy could believe it, though their only neighbours were a mile away. At night, they would seem louder.
Paxton left them then to go about his more usual duties, and Judy turned to Bailey. ‘Whoever it is might be—’
The entryphone buzzed as she spoke, and Bailey reached past her to answer it. ‘Aye, all right,’ he said. ‘If tha must.’ He hung up, and went back outside, sitting down at the table on the veranda.
Judy followed him out. ‘Whoever it is might be slipping in on foot through the gate as someone leaves,’ she said doggedly. ‘Then wait until after dark, put the threats up, and then just leave by the gate again.’ She explained as tactfully as she could that it needn’t be someone with no right to be there. Someone on the premises legitimately could do the same thing. ‘I don’t know if you—’
Bailey left her in mid-sentence as a small hatchback drew up, going down to the car, and taking something from its woman driver after a brief conversation. The car drove off, and he came back up the steps and sat down again.
‘I don’t know if you want us to speak to—’
The entryphone interrupted her again, and he got up to answer it. ‘Right, lad,’ he said, pressing the button, and came back out.
‘Would you like me to have a word with your employees?’ asked Judy.
‘I can do that missen,’ he said. ‘Don’t need a lass to do it for me. I want t’bugger caught. That’s what I need thee for.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ Judy told him honestly. But he was fond of security, she thought, and he clearly wasn’t short of a bob or two, so she would advise some more. ‘ You might want to consider closed-circuit television,’ she said, feeling as though she were advising Heathcliff to bug Cathy’s bedroom, so little did Mr Bailey appear to belong to this century, but he seemed to know what she was talking about. Mrs Bailey reappeared with a tray, and poured two mugs of coffee, handing one to Bailey. ‘A camera over the—’
An elderly coupé arrived, followed by an estate car, and Judy had once again lost her audience, as a vaguely familiar young man emerged from the former, greeting the Baileys by their first names.
‘Police,’ Bailey said to the young man, with another nod of his head in Judy’s direction.
‘I’m Curtis Law, Aquarius 1830,’ the young man said to Judy. ‘You must be DI Hill. Bernard said you’d be coming. You will give us an interview, won’t you?’
That was where Judy had seen him. He was on the telly. He reported for the local news at half past six, and he had his own series on policing in the region, called Law on the Law. He wasn’t over-complimentary about the constabulary, and if she refused to be interviewed, he would say that the police had declined to make any comment.
‘Of course,’ she said, and turned back to Bailey, determined to finish what she was saying before she was drawing her pension. ‘A camera positioned over your gate would let you know exactly who was coming in and going out,’ she said. ‘ Its presence might stop the threats altogether. But if it doesn’t, you should be able to catch whoever it is on video, since they have to leave by the gate. I can give you the address of a place in Barton, if you like.’
He didn’t reply. She wrote the address on a sheet of paper from the unofficial notebook which she took with her everywhere to compensate for the unreliable memory that had almost halted her CID career at the outset. She tore out the sheet and handed it to Bailey, who pocketed it in silence.
‘Closed-circuit TV is that?’ said Law. ‘I could give you a hand setting it up, if you want.’
Bailey nodded. Aye,’ he said, setting down his mug.
‘I would like to interview you and Rachel after the inspector, if I may,’ Law went on.
‘Nay. I’ve dog to tek to t’lass. Afore lunch.’
‘Well … perhaps I could interview you all together?’
‘Suits me.’
Law turned to Judy, his eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t mind,’ she lied. She was under orders to offend no one, and she had probably already offended Bailey. She had better not offend Law as well. She was nervous, and trying not to show it. She was totally unprepared. She knew that she looked as though she had been pulled through a hedge backwards, because she had been, several times. And now she was to be interviewed standing right next to Rachel Bailey.
It seemed interminable, with stops and starts all the time, before Law and his sidekick had decided that they had got enough. Law asked if they could do some general shots of the farm, then come back to do a few reaction shots; Bailey agreed that they could, to Judy’s surprise, and they walked off.
‘If tha’s done, tha can see thissen out,’ Bailey said to her, taking his wife’s arm by the elbow.
Judy watched, intrigued, as Mr and Mrs Bailey went into the house, and the old, heavy door closed behind them.
Some puzzles weren’t really puzzles at all, she thought, as she thankfully drove off. There were gaps in even Bailey’s overkill security. But how Bailey had ended up with a wife like that – that was a puzzle. One look at the car and clothes, and she could see what his attraction was for her, but Bailey didn’t seem to have married someone twenty years his junior for the usual reasons. She doubted if he even knew what a gorgeous creature he was harbouring.
Bernard kept an iron grip on Rachel’s elbow as he locked the front door, and pulled the office door shut, leaving the hallway lit only by the high skylight in the roof. No one could see in, no one could hear anything through the thick stone walls. Rachel knew what that meant, had known ever since she had seen the Land Rover pull on to the road behind her, that she would be getting what Bernard called a hammering. She had thought she could get back before he’d finished with the policewoman; she had been wrong.
‘I just had to get your lunch, that’s all,’ she said, her tone conciliatory and quiet and slow. ‘ You were busy. I wasn’t gone long. Didn’t think a half an hour’d hurt.’
A short, hard, back-fisted blow to her ear made her cry out with pain, and for the next few moments, punches landed on her head and back as Bernard administered swift, practised, painful punishment for her disobedience.
‘But it does hurt,’ he said quietly, releasing her. ‘Doesn’t it?’
She furiously blinked back tears, her hand covering her ear, waiting to be told she could go. But without warning he caught her wrist, pulling her hand from her ear, twisting her arm up her back, so that he was behind her, and her heart gave a dip of fear. This wasn’t routine.
‘Tha went sneakin’ out to t’chemist, didn’t thee?’ he said quietly, his mouth at her still-throbbing ear.
‘No,’ she said. He couldn’t know. How could he? She supposed even paranoid guesses must sometimes be right.
‘Liar. Tha’s not come off pill. I told thee what would happen.’
; ‘I’m not on the pill.’ She spoke with the same, slow, delivery she always used, though her voice shook with apprehension. ‘ I’m not usin’ nothin’, Bernard. I told you last time. I swear to God, I’m not.’
He dangled something right in front of her eyes. ‘ Tha lost this while tha was out,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘June Archer saw it fall. Couldn’t catch thee up, so she followed thee back here with it. Tha lost it in t’chemist.’
It took her a moment to focus on it in the dim light, and then she could see, swinging gently from his fingers her gold pendant. Her hand went to her neck, where it should have been, and wasn’t.
‘So what did tha want wi’ chemist that tha had to lie?’
She swallowed the sob that rose to her throat as her arm was twisted further. It still wasn’t right from last time. ‘Tampax,’ she said. ‘I left them down in the barn ’fore I drove up here.’
Bernard let the pendant fall to the floor. ‘Pick it up,’ he said, letting her go.
She might have got away with it, she thought, rubbing her shoulder as she knelt to retrieve her pendant, when his foot between her shoulder blades sent her sprawling face down, and a second kick just missed her as she desperately rolled away from him, into the stair wall. She got to her knees, rolling herself into a ball for protection.
Bernard reached down and dragged her arms away from her knees, holding them high above her head as he prodded her stomach painfully with the toe of his shoe. ‘Tampax – pill. It’s all t’same,’ he said. ‘Tha’s no use to me while there’s nowt happening in theer.’ And he drew his foot back to deliver a kick.
‘There might be somethin’ happenin’!’ she shouted desperately.
He froze, his foot still poised.
‘I’m late,’ she said, her eyes never leaving his. ‘It might be your son you’re goin’ to lay into this time.’
‘Then what would tha want wi’ tampons?’
‘Just in case.’
For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t speak, as he thought about what she had said. Then his eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘ Does tha still tek me for a fool? It’s nobbut ten days sin’ tha said it were tha time o’ t’month.’
‘It was. Didn’t say I’d come on.’
‘Then tha’s a lying bitch,’ he said softly. ‘One way or t’other.’
Her heart was pounding, her voice unsteady, as she desperately fought the tears. ‘Maybe I am,’ she said, her eyes still on his, her tones still measured, despite the fear. ‘But I’m late, all the same, and you better stop this right now if you want your baby born in one piece.’
He held her there for a long, long time, as his eyes searched hers. Then he let her go, and his forefinger extended from his clenched fist, his head shaking a warning. ‘Tha’d best be pregnant,’ he said. ‘Or God help thee.’
‘I just said I was late.’ Sobs of relief were overtaking her. ‘I can’t promise nothin’.
‘I said.’
He reached over to the telephone table, and picked up his jacket, shrugging it on. ‘Don’t cook owt for me. I’m going into Barton, see about this closed-circuit TV. I’ll get summit out: He went to the door, unlocking it. ‘I’ll likely not want supper neither,’ he said, and nodded. ‘Happen I’ll go to this do tonight, after all.’ He turned, and looked down at her. ‘Get up, woman. There’s nowt wrong wi’ thee.’
She got slowly to her feet, holding on to the banister railings, her legs shaking too much to support her.
Bernard looked at the dusty, dried mud on her clothes, and down at the floor. ‘And get this cleaned up afore I get back,’ he said. Then he opened the door, whistled for the dog, and walked away.
Rachel clung to the railings, and watched through the tears as Nell jumped into the back of the Land Rover, and Bernard swung himself into the front, driving off. When she felt she could let go, she picked up her pendant, went into the kitchen for the mop and bucket, and washed the floor. Upstairs, she made herself stop crying, showered, changed, and went back downstairs, out on to the veranda. Their cars were still there, and she went down the steps, crossing the courtyard to the cowshed.
The surroundings were really quite comfortable, considering they’d been designed for cows to sleep in, she thought. Today, there was a tenant, but she was at the far end, and there was clean straw in the other stalls, ready for the rest of the small dairy herd. The walls and ceiling were insulated against the weather. She’d lain down in a lot worse places in her time, not least of which was Bernard Bailey’s bed.
Bernard was desperate to have a son, and for good reason. He had inherited the farm from his grandfather, but the bulk of the inheritance would be paid over if and when Bernard’s first son was born, providing that he was Bernard’s natural son, legitimate, and Bernard still owned the farm in its entirety. The old man had made a fortune on the stock market, and that fortune had been earning interest for almost twenty-six years while Bernard Bailey had been desperately trying to have a son.
His first wife had died, and he had asked Rachel to become his second. Once she had given him a boy, he had said, he would give her a divorce, and he had promised to pay her more money in settlement than Rachel had ever dreamed of having in her most extravagant fantasies. But she hadn’t been so dazzled by this prospect that she had lost her common sense. She might have half a dozen kids before she had a boy, she had said, and he had said that in the meantime she could have anything she wanted for the house, for herself. What if something happened to him before she had given him a son, she had asked, and he had said that he would make a will, leaving everything to her. On these mutually acceptable terms, she had married Bernard Bailey.
To start with, things had been all right. She had found Bernard hard going, but she had thought that if all she had to do to be financially secure for the rest of her life was to keep house and endure his silent thrustings until a son was produced, she could live with it. And he had kept to his part of the bargain; she had had a free hand with the interior decor, getting ideas from magazines and watching the modest little house blossom under her direction. It had been full of workmen and tradesmen who couldn’t do enough for her, and it had been fun.
But the first punches had landed six weeks into the marriage, and her crime had been her failure to become pregnant. She had always been almost as regular as the moon itself, and when she had found herself overdue, she had thought that with her mother’s fecundity she had conceived straight away. She had told Bernard, but it had turned out to be a false alarm. He had said she had lied to him, and the punishment for that imagined lie had lasted seconds, and had left her black and blue for a week.
She had been going to leave him there and then, until she had sat down and considered her position. She had no money of her own, no home to run back to. All she had was a pendant that she could pawn when the going got rough, and she hadn’t been convinced that the going had got rough enough. She was bound to get pregnant soon, she had told herself.
But the very regularity that had caused her to believe she had become pregnant had been, in Bernard’s obsessed mind, grounds for suspicion that she was on the pill, that she was milking the arrangement, taking all she could from him before she had to start giving him babies. So almost anything she had done or said had constituted an excuse for yet another short, sharp reminder that she was supposed to be giving him a son. She had learned from experience not to fight back, not to utter aloud the names she called him under her breath, not to leave before she was dismissed, because that prolonged the proceedings. He’d hammered obedience into his lass, and he’d hammer it into her, he would tell her as the vicious little punches landed, and to some extent, he had. Because she hadn’t left him, unwilling to give up on her fortune. She might he married to a raving lunatic, but he was going to be an incredibly rich raving lunatic, and she was on a percentage.
And as summer had approached, she had finally missed a period, but she hadn’t told Bernard, by that time unsure of what she intended doing. Bernard had been expec
ting a visitor, and she had been sent up to the bedroom as she always was when business was to be discussed; she had been giving long, hard consideration to her future, had decided that she would have to leave, when she had heard the voices.
At first they had baffled her, scared her, apparently coming out of thin air. Then she had realized, from the monosyllabic responses, that one of them was Bernard’s, and she knew where they were coming from, and why she had never heard them before. It had been the first day since she had moved in that there had been no fires lit in the non-centrally heated farmhouse. And it had been eavesdropping on that one-sided conversation, floating up through the chimney breast from the empty hearth in the office into the empty hearth in the bedroom, that had determined Rachel’s course of action.
It was someone called McQueen who had come to see him; Bernard had told him to get out, but he had stood his ground. Men could; Bernard wasn’t so brave with men. And McQueen had said that he knew why Bernard had let most of the crops go and had concentrated on animals; which had, as things had turned out, been a wrong move, with the beef ban.
She had already known that Bernard was having a difficult time of it with the export ban produced by the beef health-scare; half his profits had gone at a stroke, and the cows weren’t being auctioned at anything like their proper price at home. He had had to slaughter some of the cattle, and was still waiting for compensation; he had been told he might have to slaughter a whole lot more. Nothing had been settled about that, and he was having to feed and water them until it was. Couldn’t sell them, couldn’t do anything with them.
What she hadn’t known, what she had found out, was that Bernard had risked almost all his capital in some financial venture; not long after his first wife died, it had failed, and he had lost it all. That when the beef ban had come along, he had had nothing to fall back on, and had borrowed money, then more money, then more, until now one missed payment on the loan meant repossession of the farm. That he was paying it back with money he didn’t have, living on credit that he couldn’t repay. That despite the impression he gave of solid wealth, the truth was that he was broke, and the farm couldn’t carry on for more than a few months longer.