by Jill McGown
‘Please,’ said Curtis. ‘Do you want to go over the ground before we start?’
‘Well, I’m prepared to say that he was found with knife wounds, and that we’re treating it as murder. The usual stuff. And that any information will be treated in the utmost confidence, in view of the use to which these secluded lanes are put now and then,’ he added. ‘Nothing too specific, but you wouldn’t expect me to be, not at this stage. At the moment we need all the help we can get.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know how the police managed before television,’ he said.
Curtis smiled inwardly at the irony of that remark.
‘And we might want volunteers to help us search for the weapon.’ Lloyd waved a hand in the general direction of the fields. ‘There’s a lot of land to cover.’
‘You might never find it,’ said Curtis.
‘If it’s here, we’ll find it. You can be sure of that, Mr Law. We’ll find it, whatever it is, wherever it is.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Inspector Hill, and walked off in the direction of the old brown estate car that was pulling into the courtyard.
Curtis was barely aware of the visitor, his mind still on what Lloyd had just said. Was it his imagination, or had that conversation turned a little sinister? Probably his imagination. He realized then whose car the inspector had gone to meet, as he saw Nicola Hutchins disappear into a crowd of police and reporters. ‘ We’ll want a shot of her,’ he told Gary, running forward. ‘The dark-haired one. That’s the daughter.’
They got their shots, but she hadn’t said anything. Curtis prepared to begin his interview with Lloyd, glancing up at Rachel’s bedroom window.
He hoped she was all right.
Nicola had been startled to see the number of police vehicles there, as they had got out of the car. What seemed like a dozen cameras were pointing at them. Why all the media? She supposed it was because her father had become something of a local celebrity.
‘That’s the inspector that called about the death threats,’ said Gus, as a woman approached them, and saw them safely through to the other side of the cordon.
Inspector Hill said hello to Gus, and introduced herself to Nicola. ‘I’m very sorry about your father,’ she said, leading them up the steps to the house.
‘Thank you,’ said Nicola, a little uncomfortably. ‘How’s Rachel?’
‘She’s been seen by her doctor,’ said the inspector. ‘ I think she just needs to rest a little.’
Nicola was sure Rachel wouldn’t be in mourning for too long, and neither would she, come to that. But she would miss him, in an odd sort of way. She felt a little as though an ugly factory chimney that she passed every day had been demolished; she was glad to see it gone, but it would take her a while to get her bearings now that it wasn’t going to be there.
Inspector Hill took them into Bernard’s office, and Nicola didn’t want to be in here. Why were there so many police? The inspector sat behind the desk, and indicated that Nicola should sit on the other chair. Gus perched on the safe, closed for the first time Nicola could remember. She swallowed hard. Could she weather this?
‘You called on your father at about ten to eleven last night, is that right, Mrs Hutchins?’ asked the inspector.
The closed-circuit television, of course. Nicola nodded.
‘Was it usual for you to call on him that late?’
‘No. He’d rung me earlier. About a sheep.’ She supposed they had to ask questions. It didn’t mean they suspected her of anything.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘You’re the vet, of course.’
‘He rang at about half past ten. He said a sheep had got on to the road and been badly injured.’ She noticed that Inspector Hill was writing down what she was saying, and became a little self-conscious. ‘ He wanted me to deal with it.’
‘Wouldn’t a sheep getting out set off the alarms?’
Oh, God. There was no sheep. There had never been a sheep. ‘Yes, but the alarms weren’t on, for some reason,’ she said. ‘He told me where to find it, but when I got there, there wasn’t any sign of a sheep. I thought he must have given me wrong directions.’
The inspector looked a little puzzled. ‘Wrong directions?’ she queried. ‘ I would have thought your father knew every inch of the land round here.’
‘He does. Did. But he’d had a lot to drink.’
She looked interested. ‘Was that unusual?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He always had a whisky at night before he went to bed, but that was it. Just one. He never drank the rest of the time. Well – not unless something had really upset him.’
‘Would you have any idea what might have upset him?’
Nicola hesitated, then said, ‘Not really.’
‘Which means you have,’ the inspector said.
Her voice was gentle, but it held a slight warning, and Nicola reacted to that automatically. ‘Well, I don’t know for a fact,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t really know at all. I just think that he must have been upset to have been drinking so much.’
‘And you think you know what might have upset him,’ Inspector Hill persisted, her voice quiet, sympathetic, but somehow remorseless. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola reluctantly, horribly aware that she was not going to get off the hook until she told her. ‘ I … I think he may have had a row with Rachel.’
‘Did he often have rows with her?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, uncomfortably. ‘Yes,’ she said, when the inspector still hadn’t spoken. ‘I think he probably did.’
‘What makes you think that?’
It was a reasonable question. Nicola sighed. ‘I just think it’s a possibility,’ she said. ‘It didn’t strike me as a match made in heaven.’
‘Where did he say you’d find the sheep?’ asked Inspector Hill, changing the subject completely, much to Nicola’s relief, even if it was to the non-existent sheep.
Nicola hadn’t thought about any of this. She had thought she would find Rachel, and maybe a couple of policemen. Not swarms of them. They were searching the grounds. Why? And why were they asking so many questions?
‘On the road just behind the farm,’ she said. ‘When I couldn’t find it, I came on up to the farm. And when I got here I saw that the alarms weren’t on.’
‘Was the front door locked?’
‘No.’
‘Did that surprise you?’
‘Not really. He locks up when he goes to bed, I think. And he hadn’t gone to bed. He was out.’ The inspector wrote that down, too. Word for word. ‘ I don’t know where he was,’ she said. ‘I thought …’ She changed her mind about what she had been going to say. ‘I thought perhaps he’d gone to meet me, but I’d gone to the wrong place, so I thought I’d better wait.’
‘Was the Land Rover here?’
‘I don’t know. He locks it up at night ever since the vandalism, so it might have been. Or he might have taken it out – I don’t know. I didn’t look. When he didn’t come back, I left.’
‘You waited for over an hour,’ said Inspector Hill.
‘Yes.’
‘Were you worried about him?’
Nicola shook her head.
‘But he’d had a lot to drink, and you thought he might be driving. He’d left the house open, the alarms off – didn’t that bother you?’
‘I … I thought it was odd, that’s all.’
‘Did you switch the alarms back on when you left?’
‘No. I wasn’t going to interfere with them. I just left them the way I found them. Look – why are you asking all these questions?’
Inspector Hill’s eyebrows flickered in the tiniest of frowns. ‘Mrs Hutchins,’ she said carefully, firmly. ‘Your father has been found dead, with several stab wounds to his chest. I think we do have—’
Nicola stared at her. ‘He was stabbed?’ she said, uncomprehendingly.
‘What did you think had happened, Mrs Hutchins?’ she asked, her voice quiet, sympathetic.
&
nbsp; Nicola swallowed. ‘I just … well, I thought … No. It was silly. I just thought he—’ She was gabbling. She had to say something, for God’s sake. Something sensible. But nothing sensible came out. ‘It was just, with the drinking and everything, I just—’
‘Take your time.’
Nicola took the inspector’s advice, and waited for some moments before trying to speak again. ‘Gus said that Rachel had rung, said that something awful had happened, that my father was dead. But I – I thought he’d, well … killed himself. I had no idea—’
‘Killed himself?’ Inspector Hill looked up from the notebook in which she was writing. ‘Was he suicidal?’
Oh, God. She appeared to be writing down every single word Nicola was saying. Weren’t they supposed to caution you or something? Maybe she should refuse to say any more until her solicitor was present. No, no. You didn’t stab him, for God’s sake, she told herself, trying to gather her wits while the intelligent brown eyes watched her, and her patient, polite, persistent interrogator waited for an answer to her question.
‘No, I just—’ Nicola pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘ It was just that the last time he got drunk was just after my mother died.’ It had the merit of being entirely truthful, unlike some of her other answers. ‘And, that time, he did make a sort of suicide attempt.’
A sort of suicide attempt?’
‘I think it was just a melodramatic gesture, like everything else he ever did. He shut himself up in the barn with the Land Rover engine running. It would have taken him about three weeks to die, and he’d have had to keep going out for petrol.’
Inspector Hill smiled. ‘ So what happened?’
‘Someone heard the engine, opened the barn door and found him sitting there. Nothing wrong with him at all. But he was very drunk. I thought he might have got the same idea this time, and succeeded. I had no idea that he’d—’ She stopped talking.
Inspector Hill nodded. ‘ I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I assumed you knew what had happened.’
Nicola waved away the apology.
‘What made you think he had committed suicide?’
‘I just thought … I thought he’d had a row with Rachel,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘No reason. I just don’t think they got on very well.’ She wished with all her heart that the interview would stop, and perhaps she had sold her soul to the devil last night, because her wish was immediately granted.
‘One more thing,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘You might find this question a little odd, but I need to know. Did your father do The Times crossword at all?’
Nicola almost laughed, not only at the unthreatening nature of the question, but at the very idea. ‘No, he never did a crossword in his life.’ She frowned. ‘ Why?’
‘Just checking something,’ said Inspector Hill. There was a tiny pause. ‘Why did you believe that your father had had a row with Rachel?’
It was for all the world as though she hadn’t asked the question before; Nicola pushed her hair behind her ears as the silence that followed it went on and on, and the inspector waited for an answer.
‘I didn’t mean a row, not really.’
‘What did you mean?’
With considerable reluctance, Nicola answered. ‘I thought he might have been hitting her again.’
‘What?’ said Gus. ‘Bernard? I’ve never seen him lose his temper with anyone.’
‘He didn’t lose his temper.’
‘Well, then. What makes you think he hit her? Did she tell you that?’
Nicola shook her head. ‘I know he hit her.’
‘And you think that this would be a fairly regular occurrence?’ asked the inspector.
‘Yes,’ sighed Nicola, turning back to her, away from Gus’s bemused look. ‘ He did it all the time.’
‘If he did it all the time, that wouldn’t be what you thought had made him get drunk,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘Or that he might have committed suicide. Why did you think that?’
Nicola shook her head.
‘Mrs Hutchins,’ said the inspector.
‘Once,’ Nicola said slowly, reluctantly, ‘he gave her a terrible beating. I mean – really, really terrible. I had to take her to casualty. I thought he might have done that again, or tried to, and she’d got away from him.’
‘What made you think he might have done it again?’
It was still none of her business what Rachel had got up to in the cowshed. Nicola didn’t want to answer her, but she knew she would, sooner or later, and it might as well be now. ‘ I … I think Rachel may have been—’
‘Think I may have been what?’ asked a lazy, almost unconcerned voice behind her.
Nicola turned quickly to see Rachel in the doorway. ‘ Oh, Rachel,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s all right.’ Rachel smiled slowly, a little sadly. ‘ Can’t tell no one where to get off, can you, Nicola? Reckon he hammered all the guts out of you.’
Nicola felt tears pricking her eyes.
‘Nicky?’ said Gus. ‘What does she mean?’
‘And you just come gutless, didn’t you?’ Rachel said to him. ‘Or you’d’ve been helping her out, ‘stead of lettin’ folk walk all over her.’
Nicola burned a painful red.
Inspector Hill looked up at Rachel. ‘Is Mrs Hutchins right?’ she asked. ‘Did your husband hit you?’
‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘He didn’t hit me. Any more’n he hit Nicola. He took his fists to me. Gave me what he called a hammerin’, every time he felt like it, just like he gave Nicola ever since she could walk. Did it to me ’cos I hadn’t given him a boy. Did it to her ’cos she wasn’t a boy.’
Tears streamed down Nicola’s face as she looked at Rachel, praying that she would stop. But Rachel’s voice went on remorselessly.
‘Lasted seconds, hurt for days. Wasn’t even anger,’ she said. ‘He knew what he was doin’. Knew where it’d hurt the most, never left no marks where you couldn’t cover them up with clothes. But we all got to take our clothes off sometime, right, Nicola?’
Nicola saw Gus’s horrified face; he got up, pushed past Rachel in the doorway, and left the house, the front door banging shut behind him.
‘You didn’t mention any of this when I spoke to you earlier.’
‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘I didn’t. Because you would’ve thought what Nicola thought. That I’d had enough of it. That I’d stabbed him.’
‘I didn’t think that!’ said Nicola sobbed. ‘Truly, I didn’t.’ She hadn’t had time to think of any explanation for it at all.
‘I told her this morning,’ Rachel said, nodding over to the inspector, her voice made all the more attractive by being slightly hoarse, ‘and I’m tellin’ you, and anyone else who’s interested – I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I didn’t kill him. I left here on Friday morning, and I didn’t get back until ten this morning.’ She looked across at Inspector Hill. ‘And I don’t know nothin’ about dead bodies,’ she said, her voice as slow as syrup. ‘But he looked like he’d been one for a long time ’fore I got back.’
Nicola wiped the tears. Oh, God. This was getting messier by the minute. She really hadn’t thought that Rachel had stabbed him, but now … now, she didn’t know what to think. Her knuckles were white with tension, and she had to talk to Gus. ‘Can … can I go, please?’ she asked.
Rachel looked over at her. ‘You got to start doing what you want to do, Nicola,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to ask nobody’s permission. She can’t stop you leavin’ here.’ She looked at Inspector Hill. ‘Can you?’
‘No. You can leave any time you like, Mrs Hutchins.’
‘See?’ said Rachel. ‘Bernard’s gone, Nicola. He can’t do nothing to you any more.’
Nicola got up. Rachel held her eyes for a moment, then moved aside, and Nicola went out to find Gus leaning against the railing of the veranda, staring ahead of him. He didn’t turn round. He didn’t speak. She went down the steps to the car, getti
ng into the passenger seat. It was a long time before he left his contemplations at the rail, and joined her, driving her home in silence. They pulled up in the little surgery car park.
‘Is it true?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Gus got out of the car and slammed the door.
‘Sergeant Finch, Stansfield CID,’ he said, holding out his warrant card, which Mike had already seen, when the waves created by Stansfield CID’s recent, much-publicized arrest of an acquaintance of his had lapped disagreeably round his feet.
‘I remember you,’ he said. Fortunately, he had been astute enough to bury his less than ethical dealings under so much legitimate stuff that they could prove nothing, except that he had some dodgy friends. ‘Come in,’ he said.
He showed Finch into the study, invited him to sit, but he said he would stand. Mike sat. His legs were shaking. This might be more questions about backhanders to town councillors, or unsecured, unrepaid loans to backbench MPs, but he doubted it.
‘I believe you called on Mr Bernard Bailey yesterday evening,’ the sergeant said.
Mike’s eyes closed, as his fears were confirmed. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his voice almost failing him, and opened his eyes.
The young man frowned. ‘ Were you expecting something to happen?’ he asked.
‘I … I just—’ Mike broke off, and made himself calm down. ‘Policemen don’t usually enquire into people’s business unless something’s happened,’ he said. ‘ The last time you had arrested a friend of mine. What’s happened this time?’
‘Would you mind telling me what your business was with Mr Bailey?’
‘I’m trying to buy his land.’
‘But Mr Bailey already knew that, sir,’ said Finch. ‘Could you tell me what your particular reason was for calling on him yesterday?’
No, he couldn’t. It had been the stupidest, most reprehensible thing he had ever done in his life, and there was no way that he could discuss it with Sergeant Finch. The repercussions had already come about, and he didn’t know if he could bear this.
‘A last-ditch attempt to make him change his mind,’ he said. ‘No particular reason. Just … hoping I could talk some sense into him, I suppose.’