Fair Game

by Sheila Radley

  ‘Another beer?’

  Will Glaven gave a long shuddering sigh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, releasing the dog and reaching for the proffered can. ‘Good boy, Boris – lie down.’

  ‘Don’t let us stop you from cleaning your tack,’ said Hilary. Will sighed again, this time with more composure, and took another drink. Then he got up to collect a tin of saddle soap, rags and brushes, and began to work on a sweat-dark bridle. As he worked, he talked.

  ‘Hope was actually afraid of Boris, you know. Can you believe it? He’s such a soppy dog, with the gentlest mouth for picking up pheasants, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. And when I brought her down to the stables, she wouldn’t even come into the yard.’

  If the situation hadn’t been so tragic, Hilary would have laughed at his puzzled incomprehension. For a detective, encounters with stenches are part of the job; in comparison with a decomposing body, say, she found the smell of the stables positively healthy. But their ammoniac reek was powerful, and it was hardly surprising that Hope Meynell hadn’t wanted to linger.

  ‘It sounds as though she simply wasn’t used to animals,’ said Hilary tactfully.

  ‘I s’pose not,’ Will conceded. He sighed once more. ‘Every girl I’ve ever known has loved animals. I grew up with Joanna Dodd, who exercises my mare for me when I’m away, and she’s passionate about dogs and horses. She’s the kind of woman I expected I’d eventually marry. I never imagined I’d fall in love with someone who knew nothing at all about country life. But Hope was so beautiful, you see … I wish to God I’d never taken her to that bloody shoot.’

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ said Quantrill mildly, ‘why did you take her to the shoot? Wasn’t it a bit hard on the girl?’

  ‘It was my father’s idea, not mine. I brought Hope here for the first time at Easter, and Dad and I had a row about her afterwards. He had nothing against her personally, of course, but he said she wouldn’t be right for Chalcot.’

  ‘Wasn’t that fair comment?’ said Quantrill, with fellow-feeling for a beleaguered father.

  ‘At the time, yes … but I was sure she’d fit in when she got used to our way of life. Anyway, I was in love with Hope, so it didn’t matter what the old man thought. As it happened, when I told him I was going to marry her he was surprisingly reasonable. He invited her for this weekend, and said he’d arrange a shooting party so the neighbours could meet her. I agreed to it just to humour him.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you that a shoot might put Hope off country life for good?’ said Hilary.

  Will Glaven took a swig of beer while he considered the matter.

  ‘Not really,’ he said with baffled honesty. ‘I thought she’d accept it, you see, just as I was sure she’d eventually get to like the animals. I knew Hope was worried, yesterday, but I thought it was because of the problem over her mother.’

  ‘Her mother?’ Quantrill was puzzled. ‘I understood she was dead.’

  ‘Yes. Hope told me, before I met her father, that her mother died last year. No details. But on the way here on Friday, she said there was something she wanted me to know before we became engaged. Apparently her mother had some kind of mental illness, and she died in a psychiatric hospital. Hope hadn’t told me before because she was afraid I’d be frightened off. Not that I was, of course –’

  Hilary quickly intervened.

  ‘I used to be a nurse, before I joined the police,’ she said. ‘I spent six months on a psychiatric ward. Hope was brave and honourable to tell you, but mental illness is much more common than she probably realised. There’s no stigma attached to it now.’

  Will gave a bleak laugh. ‘My father wouldn’t have seen it like that. Not that I had any intention of telling him, because Hope and I …’

  He paused, his eyes tightly closed and his fist pressed hard against his mouth. His other hand, going out to grip the edge of the bench, knocked over the half-empty beer can. It fell to the floor with a clonk and the remains of the beer frothed out, washing the bricks and carrying dusty debris in runnels along the cracks between them.

  Will swallowed his emotion. ‘We both very much wanted children,’ he continued in an uneven voice. ‘If my father had known about Hope’s mother, he would’ve assumed her illness was hereditary. He’d have made one hell of a fuss about our getting married, and I wasn’t going to put up with that.’

  ‘The news must have come as a bit of a shock to you, even so,’ said Quantrill.

  ‘It did threaten to put a cloud over the weekend,’ Will admitted. ‘But only because Hope wouldn’t be convinced that I truly wasn’t bothered by it. She was so …’

  The handsome contours of his face crumpled, ageing him instantly. ‘Oh God … I can’t understand how she came to be shot. If she had to bolt anywhere, the woods behind us ought to have been perfectly safe. We had a new Gun with us, of course …’

  Then his frown cleared and he stood up, the well-mannered cavalry officer surfacing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said: ‘Martin Tait’s one of yours, isn’t he?’

  He hung the cleaned bridle on a hook and set to work on his saddle. ‘I’m not trying to blame Martin,’ he said, ‘or anyone else. I should have been looking after Hope, and I failed her. I blame no one for the accident except myself.’

  ‘Your father says the same thing,’ said Quantrill. ‘That he blames himself, I mean.’

  ‘Of course he does,’ said Will Glaven.

  He used the superior everybody-ought-to-know-it tone that never failed to annoy Quantrill when Tait used it. But coming from the heir to the Chalcot estate, it had an authentic ring. Will’s response was simply an inbred acknowledgement that privilege entails responsibility.

  ‘I ought to have been watching Hope’s reaction,’ he said, ‘instead of trying to impress her by shooting high pheasants. I didn’t realise she’d bolted, until she was half-way to the wood. I should have gone after her, of course. But I saw young Laura deliberately putting herself in danger and I knew I had to stop the firing. Is the child all right, by the way?’

  ‘As far as we know,’ said Hilary quickly. Will Glaven had enough grief already, without being burdened by Laura’s disappearance.

  When they returned to Quantrill’s car, his radio indicator was flashing. The operations room was trying to contact him with a message.

  Two police officers, driving along the minor road that skirted the Chalcot estate on their way to join the search team, had found a woman’s bicycle. It was an old model, propped up against the wall of the estate not far from a gap which had once been blocked by barbed wire. The wire, though, had been cut and pushed back.

  Fastened behind the saddle of the bike was a sports bag containing clothes and a few personal possessions. And written on the bag with a green felt-tipped pen was the name Laura Harbord.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was no longer a kindness to conceal Laura’s disappearance from Will Glaven.

  Quantrill returned to the tack room to tell him. Will – instantly anxious, and as glad as his father to have something positive to do – volunteered to help in the search. He took Quantrill up to Belmont wood in one of the estate Landrovers, while Hilary drove the chief inspector’s car to Darren Jermyn’s house.

  Up at Belmont, the search for Laura was under way in the waning light of the November afternoon. Vehicles of every kind were parked in the muddy ride, and the line of searchers included police officers, estate workers, and yesterday’s beaters with their dogs.

  They were working from the far end of the ride, where the saboteurs had made their entry, and taking in the places where Laura had last been seen. The line extended from just inside the woodland edge, down through the bushes to the open grass of the ride. Movement was necessarily slow. Progress was marked by curses from searchers snared by brambles, the eruption of flocks of fieldfares disturbed yet again while they were feeding on berries, and an occasional exasperated kurr-kuk from a harassed pheasant.

  Will Glaven immediately joined the line of sear
chers. His father was there already; so was Martin Tait.

  Martin had asked to be kept informed, and Quantrill had rung home to let him know that he was setting up the search. He knew that Martin would join him, if only to avoid the after-lunch tedium of keeping Alison company in the presence of her mother.

  What Quantrill had expected was that as soon as Martin arrived, he would be his usual exasperating self and rehearse the role of deputy head of the county CID. But it seemed that he’d done the man an injustice. Martin was greatly concerned for young Laura, and was now fighting his way anxiously through the bushes with the rest of the searchers. And alongside Martin was Quantrill’s lanky eighteen-year-old son, Peter.

  He’s only trying to notch up a bit of credit, thought his father irritably. Molly had always spoiled the boy, and more so since the motor-bike accident that had smashed his legs and nearly cost him his life. In Quantrill’s experience, any offer of help from Peter was a signal that he was about to ask for something, usually money. He’ll be wheedling a tenner out of Martin before the afternoon’s over.

  But though he wouldn’t admit it, he was both pleased and touched to see his son giving up a free afternoon in order to join the search. Peter was handicapped in the rough by his reconstructed legs, but he was struggling gamely to keep up with the others. Perhaps, conceded Quantrill, it wasn’t only Martin he’d done an injustice to.

  The uniformed sergeant in charge of the search joined him to report: as yet there was no sign of Laura.

  One of the problems was that the undergrowth at the woodland edge, and in the ride, had already been disturbed during yesterday’s shoot. The beaters, having worked their way through the wood during the drive, had emerged from it when the shooting stopped and had pressed on through the bushes to reach the open ride. There had been a lot of trampling about, all over the area.

  Today, said the sergeant, the gamekeeper had been in no doubt when he’d pointed out the place behind a tree where he had seen Laura with Darren Jermyn. But then, he knew the woods inside and out. There was certainly enough in the way of broken twigs and crushed vegetation to indicate that someone had been in that place. But there was no evidence to link it with Laura.

  The search would soon be halted because dusk was already gathering among the trees. Out in the ride, though, there was still enough light for Quantrill to cross to the other side and take a thoughtful look at the place where Hope Meynell had fallen.

  Was it simply a coincidence that one girl who was staying at Chalcot House had been shot yesterday, while another had disappeared? Or was there some possible connection between the two incidents?

  Certainly there had been a lot going on at that shooting party. It seemed to have drawn together a great many people – approaching fifty in total, by all accounts – with a diversity of aims and intentions. And that in itself was curious, considering that it was a private party held on a small estate in deepest Suffolk.

  It was the presence of the protesters that puzzled Quantrill. Hunting, whether of fox or hare, is liable to attract saboteurs because the date, time and place of every meet is published in the local newspaper for the benefit of genuine followers. But shoots are always private occasions and are never publicised.

  Perhaps some of the young protesters, the idealists, were friends of Laura Harbord. But if she’d asked for their support, why hadn’t they joined her when she ran out in front of the guns?

  As for the saboteurs Martin Tait had encountered, Laura was most unlikely to have known them. But this shoot had been arranged at only two days’notice, so how else had they heard about it?

  Someone connected with the Chalcot estate must have spread the word. But was it done purely out of concern for wildlife – or out of malice? And did the invasion have any bearing on either the shooting of Hope Meynell or the disappearance of Laura Harbord?

  The only way to get any answers would be to interview everybody who was present at the shoot. And that meant not only the Guns and beaters and pickers-up, but every single protester and saboteur as well.

  Sergeant Lloyd, meanwhile, had driven to Darren Jermyn’s home in Brocklesford, a village on the other side of Breckham Market.

  The Jermyns lived near the village centre, in one of a haphazard row of dwellings dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. After what must have been a great deal of hard work they had modernised their home so that its age and original construction were completely obscured, and they were clearly proud of the result.

  Both of Darren’s parents worked in the town, Mick Jermyn as foreman at a builder’s yard, Brenda as a check-out operator at Sainsbury’s. When Hilary arrived, the two of them had just returned from a Sunday morning visit to a car boot sale. The smell of crispy roast duck, fried rice, sweet and sour pork and beansprouts wafted out of the living-room as soon as Mrs Jermyn opened the front door, indicating that they’d come home via Breckham Market’s Chinese takeaway.

  A homely couple, with no reason to think that their youngest son was not at Chalcot, they had just settled down to eat their late lunch in armchair comfort. Mick, trying to conceal his vexation at being disturbed, stopped eating and muted the television programme as soon as his wife brought in their caller. But they were both so rattled by the news that Darren hadn’t returned to his lodgings the previous night that Mick put aside his tray, with its foil dishes and beer can, and got up to switch off the set completely.

  Hilary saw no point in alarming them at this stage, and suggested that Darren had probably stayed overnight with a friend. She was looking for him, she said, simply as a possible witness to an incident on the Chalcot estate.

  ‘Please don’t let me spoil your meal,’ she added, accepting Brenda’s offer of a mug of tea and a piece of prawn cracker. ‘There’s nothing worse than a cold Chinese, is there?’

  Between mouthfuls, the Jermyns explained that they hadn’t seen their son for at least a month. But that hadn’t worried them, said Brenda, because Darren’s temporary gamekeeping job kept him hard at work seven days a week. And no bad thing, either, Mick pronounced. Far better for him to be doing an honest job rather than mooching about the streets unemployed, like a lot of boys his age.

  Darren had been lucky, too, in being found lodgings in Chalcot village. They’d visited him there a couple of times, and though it wasn’t exactly comfortable – his landlady was a terror for tidiness – he was being looked after well enough. A bit of discomfort would do him no harm, said his father; make him appreciate his home.

  He was a good lad, but not where keeping in touch was concerned, so his mother rang him once a week. She’d last spoken to him the previous Sunday evening. He hadn’t said anything to her about planning to visit a friend.

  But then, what with working so hard and being stuck out at Chalcot with only his mountain bike for transport, he hadn’t much chance of seeing his mates. To tell the truth, he hadn’t bothered with them since last spring, when he’d found a girlfriend. Yes, Laura Harbord. He’d brought her home once or twice during the summer, and she seemed a nice girl.

  They were much too young to be serious, of course, but there: they were in love, the pair of them. Darren was so taken up with her that he’d stuck photographs of her all over his newly decorated bedroom. When he left home he’d pulled off the photos and ruined the emulsion, and his mother had told him sharply that he needn’t think he could do that kind of thing at his landlady’s.

  It was solely on Laura’s account that Darren had wanted the job at Chalcot. Brenda didn’t know what, if anything, had happened between them after he’d gone to live there. Darren usually sounded depressed when she rang him, but she’d put it down to hard work and homesickness. He didn’t tell her much, except what a slave-driver the old gamekeeper was.

  He did like the pheasants, though. He certainly sounded happier when he talked about them. And he seemed to enjoy going after pigeons and carrion crows with the shotgun he’d been given for his work. But his mother hadn’t liked him having a shotgun at his
age, and she’d told him to be careful what he was doing with it because accidents could so easily hap –

  Mick Jermyn looked up, a forkful of crispy roast duck halfway to his mouth. ‘I’d forgotten about that blasted shotgun,’ he said slowly.

  They stared at each other, appalled by their imaginings. Hilary stared too, equally appalled, though for a different reason.

  Brenda rose to her feet, clutching her tray for support. She was totally unconcerned that her plate slid off it and deposited soggy beansprouts on the carpet.

  ‘If my Darren is missing,’ she said to Hilary, her voice rising with panic, ‘he could’ve been in a shooting accident. He could be lying out there in the woods, now, bleeding to death!’

  Hilary stood too, and put a reassuring hand on her arm.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘Darren is safe. There was a shooting party at Chalcot yesterday, but he was seen after the shooting finished. It was stopped by a crowd of young protesters – perhaps he knew them and decided to go off with them. He’ll turn up in his own good time. Don’t worry about him, I’m quite sure he’s unharmed.’

  But that, thought Hilary as she left, was more than she had reason to feel about Laura Harbord.

  Sergeant Lloyd went straight back to Chalcot village, where Darren Jermyn lodged in one of the grey brick Victorian dwellings that had been built for workers on the estate. Mrs Flatt, his elderly widowed landlady, was disapprovingly concerned when she heard that the boy was missing. Hilary reassured her as she had reassured his parents, and then asked if she could take a look at Darren’s room.

  The afternoon had almost gone and Mrs Flatt had to switch on the light, which was provided by one shaded bulb dangling from the high ceiling. The room was grudgingly heated, and furnished with more emphasis on polished wood than comfort. There was very little evidence of occupation except a portable television set, which could well have been brought by Darren himself.

  ‘It’s very … tidy,’ said Hilary. She was looking for some evidence of an obsessive affection for Laura, but there was nothing at all on display, let alone any photographs of the girl.