Green and Pleasant Land

by Judith Cutler

  The terrible road conditions delayed Mark so much that he stopped to phone Joe Swallow to apologize. Swallow’s immediate suggestion made sense: that he head straight to the pub where there was already a table booked for them. The Vine. All Mark had to do was follow the road round the village green and take a left when he saw the sign.

  And what a village green. A huge green flat open space, with idyllically placed tennis courts – though perhaps a little too public for someone at his level. A cricket pitch too. And there was still some room to spare. In fact if anyone had sat down to design a perfect village, Wombourne might have been the result; he was passing more perfect old houses, a lovely mixture of ages and types. The far side of the green hosted a run of local shops, including a Co-op. A church. A library. Signs to the Leisure Centre.

  The Vine was all Joe promised it would be, an authentic village pub. For some reason, the inn sign featured a badger, something none of the friendly bar staff was able to explain. They offered to make phone calls, to email people who might know, but Mark waved away the offers with a laugh: in the great scheme of things, explanations about pub signs came pretty low. Equipped with a half of the guest beer, he settled himself at the table reserved in Joe’s name.

  He’d hardly had time to scan the paper a waiter handed him when the door was opened by a man his height, broad-shouldered and erect. He shook the worst of the rain from his brolly, leaving it in the bucket provided. Though he used a stick it was with obvious disdain, not surprising since he wouldn’t be much more than ten years older than Mark.

  ‘Gammy leg: hip replacement a couple of months back,’ the man announced by way of greeting. ‘Can’t wait to see the back of this damned thing. Makes me feel like Methuselah.’ He thrust his spare hand in Mark’s direction. ‘Joe Swallow. You’ve brought the rain with you, I see. Shame. And I guess you’ll be needing to drive back while the roads are still navigable.’

  ‘It’s going to be that bad?’

  ‘Maybe if I were you I’d take the M5 rather than risk the Kidderminster road. But that’s for later. Have you had a chance to look at the village?’

  ‘Only as I drove through. It looks like retirement heaven.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Swallow declared. ‘All the shops you need at my age; a choice of pubs; the church – and look at that cricket pitch. OK, it’s a bit waterlogged now, but imagine sitting out there – or even at the front window of my flat – and spending your Saturday afternoons watching a mixture of up and coming lads and wily old stagers battling it out down there. Birmingham and District Premier League. I used to play for West Bromwich Dartmouth when I was free. Wonderful club. Players like Roly Jenkins in the old days. Sorry, you’re not here for a nostalgia trip, are you?’

  ‘I wish I was,’ Mark said sincerely. ‘But as I told you when I phoned, I’m working on the case of Phil Foreman’s wife going walkabout. And I gather from Roy – and what a good lad he is! – that you had a great deal to do with West Brom back then, not just as match commander but socially, too.’

  ‘Oh, ah.’ The accent, which had been elusive, became decidedly Black Country. ‘Look, we might be best ordering now; we can talk while we eat …’

  Marion Roberts looked Fran up and down. ‘Tell me, what can be gained by dragging up stuff from twenty years ago? Why not let sleeping cases lie?’

  Fleetingly Fran was forty years younger – more! – being quizzed by her headmistress. But she managed a serious smile. ‘That’s a question I always ask when they find another Nazi war criminal. After sixty years might one assume he’s atoned for his evil youth? But my whole training has taught me that all I do, in current or cold cases, is uncover what I believe is the truth. It’s up to others to decide what to do with what I’ve found.’

  ‘You sound like Pilate, absolving himself of blame. Are there any cases you wish you hadn’t pursued?’

  Fran wandered across to the sink by the window, which looked down the broad, elegant street. ‘I can think of one or two I wish I’d pursued with even more fervour, when I knew there was something wrong. But my bosses pulled me off – budget, usually, or a more urgent case – and I always felt someone had got away with something. Often it’s rich nasty people who get away with the most. Not always. But I was always appalled that people thought East End villains romantic or amusing. It even shakes me that people admire vicious men way back in time.’ She gestured at the town. ‘Think of all the power struggles a historic place like this has seen. How much violence.’

  ‘I’ve always found it a remarkably serene town. John Betjeman for one deeply admired it,’ Marion Roberts countered. ‘But you’re right. Might has long equalled right.’

  ‘Absolutely. Think of William the Conqueror, aka William the Bastard. Think of all the people who didn’t like his invasion who got killed most horribly. Sorry, I’ve been reading too much history since my retirement.’

  The older woman was laughing. ‘You sound remarkably anti-establishment for an ex-policewoman.’

  ‘I tell you, the Poll Tax Riots, the anti-war marches – they tore me apart. Professionally I had to do my job; personally I’d have been out there protesting. Anyway, back to truth and justice. There may be other people involved in Natalie’s disappearance. That’s why I want to find out the truth.’

  ‘And if the truth could hurt her?’

  ‘That presupposes she’s still alive, doesn’t it? Marion, if there’s anything you know …’

  ‘I know nothing. Nothing. Apart, of course, from what everyone knows, which is that no remains have ever been found. But I was worried when the police assumed that she and her son had disappeared into the woods to the left when I’d seen the footprints towards the road. Nothing I could say would make them think anything else. Not the senior officers. One or two of the younger ones tried to support me, but they were overruled by people with rank and age on their side. They thought I was just a silly old woman. Goodness knows what they’d think of me now.’ After making tea and setting the pot on a ready-laid tray, she led the way back into the living room.

  ‘I can’t speak for anyone else, but you can count me as one of your fan club. Tell me, what’s your background? It’s a very eclectic mix of books you’re got there.’

  Over his next half, Joe was at last talking about what Mark needed to hear. ‘As the man in overall charge of the ground – yes, more important than the referee, only no one would agree with that – I got to meet the chairman after matches for drinks in the directors’ lounge. There was more alcohol flowing round in those days than now, I dare say. All very friendly. You’d talk over the match, pick up gossip – and some hard facts.’

  ‘Any gossip about Foreman?’

  ‘And some hard facts. Which would you prefer? Any road up, twenty years back and more, I know the chairman was worried about Foreman’s habit of picking up red and yellow cards – had the club doctor talk to him at one point. I never got to hear the outcome of that. Confidential, of course. Well, you don’t want a potential buyer to get a whisper that the player might have health issues.’

  ‘Health issues? You mean mental health?’

  The older man made a rocking motion with his right hand. ‘For whatever reason Phil was soon put on the transfer list. Baggies weren’t at their best in those days, but the club he fetched up at was even worse. Which was it? It might have been Millwall. I’ve an idea he didn’t hang about too long there, either.’

  ‘I can check that. And any other clubs he went to.’

  Joe nodded sadly. ‘There’s usually a downward trajectory once a player hits thirty. And if he’d got a bad disciplinary record – I mean, what good’s a man to his club if he’s constantly being suspended for games? – then it gets steeper and steeper.’

  ‘Any idea what happened to him eventually?’

  ‘No. You’ll have to check on that too. I’ve an idea that the Professional Footballers’ Association holds the medical records of all club players. I don’t know if they’d let a retired bloke like you see the
m because they’re all confidential, of course. But there must be someone in West Mercia with sufficient clout? Hey up, I must be going soft in the head. I know someone who knows the club inside out. The guy who runs the Supporters’ Club. Hang on a bit: I’ll give him a bell …’ One of the old school, he walked stiffly to the door and made his call out in the porch, returning to the room with a satisfied smile. ‘Alan’ll meet you at the ground on Saturday. He’s always there on match days, and other days too. He’ll answer any questions you’ve got and maybe find you a couple of tickets – though they’re like gold dust, I have to tell you. As are parking spots, but he’s managed to do me a huge favour …’ He overrode Mark’s thanks. ‘Look, I see our food is on its way.’

  EIGHT

  Fran and Paula saw no reason not to stay in Cleobury for lunch, fetching up at the King’s Arms – they must have been very royalist in the area during inn-naming times – and tucking into bacon and Brie baguettes.

  ‘All this on our doorstep,’ sighed Paula, gesturing at the view from their window seat. ‘And we never get here. It’s all work for me, and looking for work for Gav, and running the kids hither and thither each and every weekend. And I don’t begrudge them, don’t think that for a minute, not even a second. But a breather like this – Fran, I could bottle it.’

  ‘I could too. In fact, I might stretch out our breather a little longer and take a peep in that church. Look at that spire: all twisted. It’s like the one in Chesterfield, isn’t it?’

  But Paula was less interested in church architecture than her tablet. ‘I might as well take advantage of this free Wi-Fi and check my emails.’

  Fran nodded. She needed to look up a number and make a quick call, too.

  But she didn’t get that far. Paula gasped, grabbing her wrist. ‘Sorry, Fran: it looks as if visiting the church will have to keep. Look at this.’ She turned the tablet so Fran could see a news headline that trumped everything.

  Mark, ever conscious of cholesterol and all the other things the devil would insist on putting his way, tucked into his salmon with a virtuous salad; Joe, pointing out that he couldn’t be bothered with cooking fancy things for one, had opted for the fish pie. They sank their halves in perfect harmony. Ideal for a man who didn’t have to work. He bit back the thought that they really could have done everything over the phone.

  The reason for his journey came in Joe’s next words.

  ‘If you’ve got half an hour and don’t mind a bit of rain,’ he said wistfully, ‘I could show you summat of the town. There’s lovely walks along the cut – that’s canal, to you soft southerners.’

  For all this was a dream village, Joe might be short of company, at least old cops like himself with whom he could have a decent chinwag. Mark resolved to be patient: it might not be too many years before he wanted the same himself. He even smiled at Joe’s next question.

  ‘Tell me, Mark, how on earth do you manage without a proper football side down in Kent? I mean, you’re OK for cricket, but Gillingham – well, it’s not a team going to challenge Chelsea, is it?’

  ‘A lot of my mates used to play hockey. I didn’t have time for anything much to be honest. But I’ve taken up tennis recently. Andy Murray I’m not, but it clears the head.’ His phone warbled. ‘Sorry. A text from my wife – do you mind if I just check? Bloody hell! Joe: I’m afraid the canal – the cut – walk must wait. I’d better head south. Now. Police work,’ he added, getting to his feet and grasping Joe’s hand. ‘I can’t thank you enough. Meanwhile, watch the local TV news tonight.’

  ‘Keep in touch!’ Joe said.

  ‘Of course I will,’ Mark promised. How else could he react to that hint of pathos? But it didn’t stop him running to his car and driving faster than was strictly sensible.

  ‘Rubberneckers – remember how we used to hate them at our crime scenes?’ Fran said, coming up behind Mark and slipping her arm into his.

  ‘I might have known you wouldn’t be far away,’ he said with an affectionate kiss. ‘Hi, Paula. This is a bit of a turn-up for the books, isn’t it? Who’d have thought a bit of rain would bring something this exciting?’

  The three of them edged towards some of Paula’s uniform colleagues guarding a comparatively minor landslip on the Severn Valley line, just north of Bewdley. It’d be the work of hours rather than days to dig out, were it not for one thing – the fall had exposed what the plastic tent now concealed. Already someone from one of the media had put a helicopter up; no doubt the adjacent field would soon sprout the inverted mushrooms of satellite dishes.

  ‘Not just one skeleton but two,’ declared a voice behind them. Stu. ‘So this could be the end of our investigation before it really got up and running,’ he said sadly. ‘The Major Incident Team’ll be all over this like a rash and it’ll be thank you and goodnight to you and back to basics for us. Can’t win them all.’

  Paula sounded equally bitter. ‘They’ll want every last crumb of what we’ve found and never a thank you.’

  Mark and Fran exchanged a glance: how many of their junior colleagues had been disappointed when the interesting case they’d thought their own had been hijacked by the big boys? How many had hated Fran for marching in and demanding all their research, with the authority of Mark to back her, of course?

  ‘You might find a bit more; doing so won’t harm your prospects. Take as many photos as you can, but do it very unobtrusively. It’s the crowd you want. People’s reactions. OK?’ She patted Paula’s arm. Whatever photos she got, it was better for her to be doing something to occupy her; she didn’t want the poor woman to have a rerun of the morning’s emotions.

  Almost of their own accord, Fran’s feet drifted her away from Stu and Mark. The spurious authority of the ID she’d stuffed in her pocket after their meeting with Marion Roberts might come in useful. She fished it out, hanging it round her neck so that the words on the lanyard would be visible but not the card itself, which would betray her with the magic word VISITOR. She was committing fraud, of course. Worse still, impersonating a police officer. But all she wanted to do was talk to people. Most of all, to listen. On second thoughts, it might be better to hide the whole lot, just in case anyone would prefer to voice their thoughts to Josephine Public, and not someone who might want to take them down and use them in evidence.

  A new gust of wind and rain – the two seemed inseparable – slapped her face. Putting up her hood might mean she missed snippets. On the other hand, in this wind, using an umbrella was an act of folly or Mary Poppins bravado. She’d just get wet. Safe in the knowledge that there’d be no trains coming along for a day or two, she plodded along the track, greasy and slippery though it was. That was where little knots of people were gathered, after all.

  She tried the cocktail party technique of hovering on the edge of a group until she found herself included. It happened much more quickly than she’d expected.

  ‘You were saying something about a body?’ she prompted a woman about her own age, sporting a Severn Valley Railway cap in an attempt to keep her flying coppery hair dry.

  ‘Ah. Two on ’em,’ she declared in a ripe Midlands accent. ‘But why should anyone want to put a body here? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘You tell me,’ said another, much smaller woman, shifting slightly to shelter in the lee of the tall women.

  ‘They’re not bodies, they’re skeletons,’ one of the men in the group said over his shoulder.

  The Lizzie Siddal lookalike raised expressive eyebrows: ‘You have to be one before you become the other, don’t you? Stands to reason.’

  ‘What he’s saying,’ the smaller woman said, ‘is that they’ve been there some time. But how long? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Quite,’ Fran put in, thinking that something was expected of her. And indeed, it was exactly what she wanted to know too. Suddenly she didn’t want to be paid off and sent back to the comforts and pleasures of their Kentish rectory. She wanted the impossible, to be part of the investigative team.
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  ‘They had some cottages up there before the line was put in, didn’t they?’ the oldest man in the group said. Another, even stronger accent, almost like Lenny Henry’s, but not quite. ‘And no one could have put anyone in that bank as long as the railway’s been running, or folk might just have noticed, like,’ he added drily.

  All of which would no doubt be debated in slightly more formal terms in the MIT incident room this evening. Without her.

  ‘How long do you think the line will have to be closed?’ she asked everyone but no one.

  ‘Not as long as last time, please God. That was major. Back in ’08, wasn’t it?’ Small Woman said.

  ‘No. It was in 2007,’ Lizzie Siddal insisted. ‘I was on duty. Remember that rain like it was yesterday. Well, actually it was like yesterday. And today. And what do we get? More bloody interruptions to service.’

  ‘Well,’ began Lenny Henry man portentously, ‘since it’s winter we’re only running a skeleton service anyway. Gerrit?’

  They fell about laughing. And why not?

  ‘Was you hoping for a trip, then?’ Lizzie Siddal asked Fran.

  ‘My husband brought the grandchildren in the summer – they loved it. He wanted another trip for us grown-ups – with fewer purchases in the shop, maybe.’

  ‘No, you’ll have to take them a couple of souvenirs, won’t you?’ Lizzie Siddal crowed. ‘And you’ll want summat for yourself, I’m sure. Even if you can’t go on the train this time.’

  ‘I’ll be back, don’t worry,’ Fran declared. And meant it.

  She drifted away, this time spotting a big bear of an old mate. It was a long time since Hugh Evans and she had got mildly drunk together at a jolly for senior officers and forensic pathologists, and had, indeed, a bit of a moment. He’d married, she’d married, of course, but they’d liked each other enough to keep in touch with Christmas cards and the odd email when an interesting case came up. She flapped a hand, grinning. He shed his police escort and headed over, giving her a hug and double kiss, clearly not the sort of greeting a frustrated train traveller would expect. She hoped none of her new friends was watching.