by Jill McGown
‘Yeah, all right. But don’t get in the way,’ said Finch, and walked off.
Curtis hadn’t realized it was that simple. He had to remember that he was here as a journalist.
Nicola drove towards the farm, urging the old car to go faster. Gus sat beside her, trying to calm her down.
‘What else did she say?’ Nicola asked.
‘Nothing else. Just what I’ve told you. She walked in this morning, and found him dead on the sofa.’ He put his hand on hers where it rested on the steering wheel. ‘You don’t have to go so fast, Nicky,’ he said gently. ‘Slow down. Look – stop. Let me drive. You shouldn’t be driving.’
She braked, and brought the car to a halt, suddenly in tears. Gus was holding her, rocking her like a baby, saying all the things you would say to someone who had just lost her father.
But that wasn’t why she was crying, and she couldn’t tell Gus. She couldn’t tell anyone.
Chapter Four
Lloyd had arrived back at Stansfield to discover that this Monday morning had yet more in store for him.
‘Bailey’s been what?’ he said, when Case told him.
‘You heard. Stabbed several times, according to Inspector Hill.’
Poor Judy. She always seemed to get the bloody ones.
‘And,’ said Case.
Here we go again, thought Lloyd. If he hadn’t asked for no calls while he considered how he intended approaching his colleagues tomorrow, Judy’s message would have come through to him. Now he was going to be given lengthy Case notes. But these turned out to be very short indeed.
‘He was found by his wife, who called us. But Curtis Law and his cameraman beat us to it and went in there all cameras blazing.’
Lloyd stared at him. ‘How did that happen?’ he demanded.
‘Combination of circumstances. They were a lot closer than we were, and they heard about it at more or less the same time. And they’re still there, covering the story, obviously. Finch tore them off a strip, but we can’t actually stop them reporting the murder. Look, Lloyd, if you don’t—’
‘Don’t say what you are going to say.’
Case sat back. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. If you think you can handle it. But don’t lose your temper, Lloyd. We don’t need any more adverse publicity. And the man was receiving death threats, remember. Law told us that if someone could get in to leave threats, they could get in to kill him. He’ll be gunning for us over this as well as the other business.’
And Lloyd had thought that today couldn’t get any blacker. ‘I’ll be on my very best behaviour,’ he said. His quick temper and injudicious tongue had got him into trouble with everyone from very senior officers to innocent bystanders, but he could keep his cool when it was important that he do so. He hoped.
He arrived at Bailey’s farm at the same time as Freddie, who was standing by his elderly, beloved, open-topped sports car, negotiating with whoever was manning the entryphone.
‘No – I’m the pathologist.’ He sounded it out, syllable by syllable. ‘Look – is Chief Inspector Lloyd there? Or Inspector Hill? Just tell one of them that Freddie’s here – all right?’
Lloyd watched, unobserved.
‘Freddie,’ Freddie repeated. ‘Never mind the last name – she’ll know who you mean. It’s a Polish name, you wouldn’t—’
The gate said something which to Lloyd was unintelligible, but Freddie understood it, having been conversing with it for some time, evidently.
‘I’m the pathologist, for God’s sake! I’m supposed to be at the crime scene!’ He turned and saw Lloyd laughing. ‘ Who the hell have you got manning this thing?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Lloyd. ‘ I’ve just got here. But you’ve cheered me up, Freddie – not something you often do, and something I would have thought impossible today.’
‘Sorry, Freddie,’ said the gate, now with Judy’s voice. ‘Hello, Lloyd.’
Lloyd realized that there was a camera high on a post, and smiled weakly at it. He had so many things to tell Judy that he had no idea where to start, and now it was all going to have to wait. The gate swung open, and he and Freddie got into their cars and drove through, arriving together in the courtyard, where Freddie parked beside the BMW, and leaped out over his pride and joy’s low door. Lloyd got out of his car to see an estate car with Aquarius Television painted on the side, and a camera pointing at him, but Curtis Law wasn’t evident. He joined Freddie, who was admiring the BMW.
‘Not a traditionalist, then, our Mr Bailey?’ he said. ‘This is not your average farm vehicle.’
‘It’s his wife’s,’ said Lloyd, with the knowing look that irritated Judy.
‘Ah. Cherchez la femme? What’s your theory this time, Lloyd?’
‘No theories,’ said Lloyd, truthfully, for once. ‘All I know is that he’s dead, he’s wealthy, and he has, in Judy’s words, a drop-dead gorgeous wife. And she is drop-dead gorgeous – you wait till you see her.’
‘She’s certainly got a drop-dead gorgeous car,’ said Freddie, patting it the way other people patted Labradors. ‘Ah, well. Let’s go to work.’
Lloyd followed Freddie up the steps, into the house. The scene-of-crime people were working in an office, where there was a safe with its door standing open. Perhaps Bailey had been robbed. Lloyd didn’t know if that would be good or bad. He ducked under the tape, going into the room, where the smell was awful, the stifling heat was unbearable, and the body was a far from pretty sight. Lloyd found a photographer, another scene-of-crime woman examining the sofa, and Judy, looking green. Freddie was greeting her effusively, as ever, as he took out his tape recorder.
‘No lovely assistant with you today?’ she asked, manfully joining in Freddie’s banter.
‘No. She’s off sick. I’m not going to be able to fit Mr Bailey in until Wednesday morning, I’d better warn you. I’m going to be away almost all day tomorrow, and there’s no one else to do it.’
‘Life was pronounced extinct at eleven-fifteen,’ said Judy. ‘The FME left some notes.’
‘Good, good,’ said Freddie, smiling at the SOCO as she went off to join her colleagues in the office and informed him that Mr Bailey, was all his. He told the photographer what angles he wanted, and stayed out of the other man’s way until he’d got his shots before beginning, as ever, with an eyes-only examination, noting the position of the body and the circumstances in which he had been found, speaking into a tape recorder. ‘Deceased smells strongly of alcohol, and there is evidence of vomiting round the mouth, on the deceased’s clothing, and on the carpet,’ he said happily. ‘One, two, three … four visible wounds to chest … some bleeding has occurred, but haemorrhage very unlikely to be cause of death. Respiratory failure a possibility.’
He began taking temperatures then, and Lloyd waited until he had noted the second lot, fifteen minutes after the first. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Rigor is quite advanced,’ Freddie said. ‘A very rough estimate would be six to twelve hours.’
Lloyd looked at his watch. Seven minutes past twelve. It was now Monday afternoon, he told himself comfortingly. The worst Monday morning of his life was over. And he supposed Mr Bailey had had a worse Monday morning even than his, because some time between midnight and six a.m., he had lost his life. Lloyd had only lost his DI, a measure of his not inconsiderable self-esteem, and in all probability, come the reshuffle, his job.
‘Could it have happened at, say, seven o’clock this morning?’ asked Judy.
‘Well, the body temperature doesn’t entirely preclude its being as late as that, but the heat in this room will have affected the cooling rate considerably. I have to take his temperature a few more times before I can work anything out from that.’
‘Do you think the radiators were put on to confuse the time of death?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Could be, could be. Then again … perhaps Mr Bailey felt cold.’
‘In this weather? It was a very warm night.’
‘I don
’t think he was quite himself, even before he was stabbed, do you?’ said Freddie. ‘Was he on any sort of medication, do you know?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Judy. ‘But I’ll ask his wife. Could it have been as late as seven?’ she asked again.
‘Rigor’s a very unreliable guide,’ Freddie said, ‘but as a general rule, its onset is six hours after death. With a heavy build like Mr Bailey’s, I would actually have expected it to take even longer than usual, so if it had happened as late as that, I wouldn’t have expected to find rigor at all, whereas, as I said, it is quite well advanced. But I might be able to give you a better estimate once I’ve opened him up. I certainly won’t know how he died or what he died of until I do. It’s an odd one.’
Alarm bells rang in Lloyd’s head with Freddie’s final, almost throwaway, remark. Odd ones he could do without.
‘Why seven o’clock?’ Freddie asked Judy.
‘That’s today’s paper,’ said Judy, indicating The Times. ‘ It’s delivered at half past six, and the crossword’s half done.’
‘You see, Lloyd?’ said Freddie. ‘That’s a real detective for you. No theorizing. Just facts.’ He opened Bailey’s shirt, slowly, carefully, and examined the wounds.
‘What sort of weapon?’ asked Lloyd, ignoring Freddie’s teasing. How he could be cheerful in these dismal circumstances was beyond him.
‘You want me to tell you that from some cuts in his chest? How should I know? Wait until I’ve had a proper look.’
‘If you’re not doing the post-mortem until Wednesday, it would help if we could have some indication of what we’re looking for out there,’ said Lloyd, looking out at the small team of people going over the ground. ‘It looks as though someone might just have picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed him – is that possible?’
Freddie relented. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At least, it was something with a blade, not a screwdriver or anything like that. Broader than that. Say half an inch wide at the point to which it penetrated. But not very sharp. Whatever it was didn’t go in cleanly.’ He grinned. ‘But the apple could be a red herring, if you see what I mean. It needn’t have been cut open in here.’
Lloyd knew that. He glanced at Judy to find that she had retreated as far as she could from the foul-smelling body, and he could see that she had already spent more than enough time with it. ‘You carry on with the interviews,’ he said to her. ‘ I’ll catch up with what’s been going on when we’ve finished here.’
She smiled her thanks. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘ I think it’s time I had a word with the widow. She’s supposed to have been away, and came home to find him like that.’
The drop-dead gorgeous Mrs Bailey. ‘Could a woman have stabbed him?’ Lloyd asked Freddie.
‘Before I’ve had a chance to see the depth and force of the wounds, as far as I’m concerned, anyone could have stabbed him. He was a big, powerful man, but he might not have been awake, or even conscious. My guess is that he was lying in this position when he was stabbed. There are no defence wounds, so I expect he knew nothing about it.’
A domestic? That had to be the simple explanation. And simple explanations made life simpler all round. Because although Judy had been, unlike him, extremely diplomatic when interviewed, she had indicated that the death threats were not something that she believed would result in Mr Bailey’s death. The man had even received another lot after he had put in the cameras. He would die if he didn’t sell, cameras or no cameras, they had said. Cameras might be watching his property, they had said, but the writer was watching him. He hadn’t sold; McQueen had indicated on Friday that he would be taking the other route; Bailey had died on Monday morning. Was that just coincidence? The press wouldn’t see it like that.
His money, for the moment, was on Rachel Bailey having come home to someone who had drunk so much that he had made himself ill before passing out on the sofa. She had picked up a knife, and stabbed him, for reasons which would probably become clear. Simple.
But he had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be that simple.
Rachel had hung everything up in the wardrobe, or consigned it to the washing basket, and now she was going through them all again. She had emptied what was left in her weekend bag on to the bed; she had been through everything. She had known that the clasp wasn’t reliable – why hadn’t she had it seen to?
‘Come in,’ she said distractedly to the knock on her door.
The woman who had seen Bernard about the death threats came in, looking considerably more elegant than she had then.
‘Hello – I don’t know if you remember me. Detective Inspector Judy Hill – I’m with Stansfield CID.’
Rachel straightened up. ‘ Bernard’d been draggin’ you all over the farm last time I saw you,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘ How are you feeling?’
‘I’m all right. Don’t know why I carried on like that. Got a shock, that’s all. The blood and everything. Then they came in filmin’ everythin’, and Steve started fightin’ with them. It just got to me.’
‘How did they get in?’
‘I let them in. Didn’t care who it was. Just wanted someone with me. And … and I know Curtis and Gary from when they came here before.’ Rachel shook the empty bag, felt in the pockets. Why hadn’t she packed herself? She felt tears coming again, tears of bewilderment.
‘Mrs Bailey? Are you all right?’
She unzipped compartments, feeling in them, pulling the lining out. Maybe it had fallen into one of the shopping bags. She picked one up, tipping it out, tears streaming down her face, then picked up the next and did the same. Where was it?
‘Mrs Bailey?’ The inspector sounded alarmed, and came to her, taking the empty bag from her. ‘ Rachel? What’s wrong? Are you looking for something?’
Rachel looked at her. ‘A pendant,’ she said. ‘ I’ve lost a pendant.’
‘Well – just take it easy,’ she said, sitting her down on the bed.
‘I know what you’re thinkin’.’ She wasn’t going to pretend. Not to anyone. ‘You’re thinkin’ all she’s worried about’s losin’ a pendant. You’d think losin’ her husband’d be more import—’ She was unable to control the huge, shuddering sob that had welled up.
‘I’m not, Rachel, believe me.’
The inspector put her arm round her as Rachel shook with the sobs she had been holding in since she had found Bernard. At last, they subsided, and there was a few moments’ silence before the inspector spoke again.
‘I’m very sorry about your husband,’ she said.
‘Are you?’ replied Rachel, dully. ‘ I’m not.’
Inspector Hill didn’t look surprised. She looked concerned. ‘Aren’t you?’ she asked, her voice slightly disbelieving.
‘Why should I be?’ said Rachel. ‘You knew him ’bout as well as I did, ’cept he didn’t fuck you all the time.’ She coloured up as soon as she’d spoken. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’ She began to cry again. ‘ I’m sorry.’
It was this room, this bed. That was all it meant. Bernard silently and sullenly mounting her, thrusting into her, grunting when he came. She had told Curtis she hadn’t minded it, and that had perhaps been the only real lie she had ever told him. She had hated it, dreaded it. On the only occasion she had refused he had just held her down and done it anyway.
‘It’s all right,’ Inspector Hill said. ‘I’ve seen grief affect people too many ways to take any notice of what they say.’
Grief? No. She felt bewildered. Lost. Frightened. The inspector thought she was still in shock. And perhaps she was right, Rachel conceded, because she still couldn’t get the scene downstairs out of her mind. Her system hadn’t recovered, which was why everything seemed so hopeless.
She blew her nose, shook her head. ‘He married me because he wanted a son,’ she said. ‘I married him because I wanted a big house like this and money to spend on clothes and …’ She waved a hand round the room that she had tra
nsformed. All this.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘I’m not goin’ to pretend I loved him,’ she said. ‘Nobody’d believe me if I did. That pendant means more to me than he ever did.’
The inspector nodded, reminding Rachel of Curtis doing all his serious nodding to the camera after he’d finished an interview. She wanted him here, not some policewoman who thought she understood and didn’t, could never, understand.
‘It was my mother’s,’ she went on. ‘Only thing she ever owned that was worth anything.’
‘Are you from Devon?’ asked Inspector Hill. ‘Is that where your family is?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘Not from anywhere in particular,’ she said. ‘I’m Cornish, really, but we travelled all round Devon and Cornwall.’ She looked at the other woman, wanting to see her reaction. ‘My family are travellers,’ she said. ‘Tinkers. Gypsies. Whatever you want to call them.’
There was no reaction. Just polite interest.
‘Didn’t ever like it. People callin’ you names, movin’ you on, not lettin’ you into shops nor pubs.’
‘How did you end up in Bartonshire? It’s a long way from the West Country.’
‘Usual way.’
A man?’
Rachel nodded. ‘ He was in Torquay on holiday with some other folk, and we got together. Saw my chance to get out, took it, came here, moved in with him. Forgot to tell me he had a wife. She moved back in, threw me out. Always checked after that. Never took nothin’ to do with the married ones. More trouble than they’re worth.’
‘What did you do after you got thrown out?’
‘Well, I wasn’t goin’ back to travellin’. And there’re plenty of farms round here. I can do anythin’ on a farm,’ she said. ‘I can bale hay, I can drive a tractor, I can pluck chickens, dip sheep – I can even milk a cow without a machine, to help me, which is more’n Steve Paxton can do.’
She looked down at the clothes-strewn duvet, and her finger drew little circles on an empty bit. ‘I was workin’ on a farm, saw they needed people for the shop here. Had to be better’n muckin’ out, I thought, so I went after it, got it. Then …’ She shrugged a little, looked up. ‘ He asked me to marry him. But he didn’t love me or nothin’. Never said he did. Just – just wanted to breed from me.’ She explained the terms of Bernard’s grandfather’s will. ‘I said I’d do it. But it was a mistake.’ She looked up. ‘He never spoke to me, never said nothin’ to me that wasn’t an order. Never even called me by my name. Just tried to get me pregnant near every night in life, and never said a word then, neither.’