‘Why wouldn’t it have shown up before now? Has no one done a background check?’
‘Of course, so I don’t know why that hasn’t featured. We’d better find out, hadn’t we?’
Andy nodded. ‘Mac said he was going out to the farm. Think he’ll still be there?’
Frank turned into the narrow lane leading to the farm. Mac’s car was visible, parked up near the gate. ‘Looks like it,’ he said. ‘I wonder if she got the bedroom window repaired.’
Hilly closed the front door and then stood in the hallway, listening to the sound of the car engine as the two officers left. She kept expecting the engine to be cut, to hear the footsteps coming back down the path. To hear Frank Baker’s voice telling her, Hilly, you’ve not told me everything, have you?
But it didn’t happen. The car drove away and there was silence in the lane once more.
She retreated to the living room. Toby, remote in hand, was busy flicking through channels.
‘Put that damned thing down and talk to me.’
‘About what?’ He pressed another button, settled for a moment on a shopping channel selling boy’s toys and then moved on.
‘You know what about.’
Toby sighed and muted the television. He’d settled on some seventies cop show and kept his eyes fixed on the screen, avoiding hers.
Hilly sat down. ‘Toby, you’re not hearing me.’
‘Of course I am. I just don’t see what more we can do. She never said. Not really. I’d have put money on it being that brother-in-law of hers. That’s what I said to her, wasn’t it?’
‘And she said that so far as she knew he was still halfway round the world in New Zealand. Toby, you saw her face that night. Terrified, she was.’
Her husband glanced sheepishly in her direction, then shook his head. ‘I asked her who she thought it was, she didn’t say.’
‘She hinted, though. She didn’t deny it when you said. We know she’d been seeing him. You should have told the police.’
‘Told them what? That she’d hinted at trouble with a boyfriend but she’d laughed at me when I’d suggested … no Hilly, I’d be wasting their time. Let the police figure it out, that’s what they’re paid for. We did all we could and that’s that.’
He unmuted the television and Hilly sighed, knowing he’d say no more about it. For a few moments she thought about picking up the phone herself and summoning Frank Baker. Then she let the idea slide. Instead, she took the tea tray through to the kitchen and set about clearing the dishes away.
FOURTEEN
William Trent lifted his gaze from the book and removed his glasses. His eyes were sore and tired from trying to make out the small, crabbed script that covered every inch of the flimsy page. The writer had used an old, prewar diary, reusing the pages so that this new set of entries often overlapped with notes in another hand. April 26th, Albert’s Birthday. June 2nd, Ian and Ruby’s wedding anniversary. The new writer had taken this little book, originally from some seven years earlier, so far as William could tell and had converted its discarded contents into a treasure trove of detail and commentary.
William had known from the moment he first noticed it that it was important. He’d not realized quite how important.
‘Can I borrow this?’ he’d asked.
She had shrugged. ‘William, you know how she feels about this stuff. I shouldn’t really have shown it to you. I had a hard enough time getting her to let me read it. I practically had to swear a blood oath!’
‘Does she have to know? Ellen, I think this is something special. Something unusual.’
‘I thought so too. I thought you’d be interested, but I still feel bad. She trusts me.’
‘And I won’t betray that trust. Look, she knows I’ve at least seen this stuff. I’ve asked her about it enough. I was here that day she brought it round. Ellen, it seems to me that Vera … secretly … despite what she says … wants someone to share all this with. She wants to share it with you. Given a bit more time and a little persuasion, I think she’ll come round to sharing it all with the rest of the world. People deserve some acknowledgement for all they went through, don’t you think?’
He remembered the way she had frowned, not totally convinced, but he had also understood that Ellen, despite her intelligence and her usual wisdom, had not really grasped the importance of this little diary and the scatter of other items that now lay on her kitchen table. To her they were simply curiosities; to him they were pure gold.
‘Please, Ellen. Just for a few days.’
He remembered that she’d sighed and glanced up at the kitchen clock. The kids were due home from school any minute and she’d not want the added complication of their curiosity or the possibility that they might, inadvertently, say something to Vera about the book and the tape and the letters.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘if you think it’s worth taking up time with. Take anything you like but get it back to me by Friday. That’s when I’m seeing her next. You know what she’ll be like if she thinks something of the precious family history has gone missing. It’s been hard enough to get her to let me look at this stuff as it is.’
‘I don’t want to cause problems.’
She had laughed then, but he could hear she was still uneasy. ‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her I suppose. Just keep it safe. I don’t want any more upset.’
That had been on the Tuesday and Ellen had made him promise to bring everything back by the Friday morning. But that hadn’t happened. By the Thursday afternoon Ellen had been dead.
William rubbed his eyes again and replaced his glasses. He’d moved his chair right up to the low window, making the most of the daylight and laying his notebook on the arm of the chair so he could annotate particular passages in the diary as he went along. It was slow work and he had this strange feeling that whatever he did was just scratching the surface. Trent read the scratchy, spider words: ‘Three came back this time. For an operation like that, three is a good result. We raised a glass to those that had passed and then moved on to planning the next move, though I fear that Teddy, poor, poor Teddy will have to be retired this time. I see it in his eyes, even when he tried to laugh at Alfie’s bad jokes. If I send him out again then I know beyond doubt that I’ll be numbering him among the dead. Worse, he’d be a liability to his team. He will hesitate and there is no time for hesitation.’
His eyes hurt. Reluctantly, William laid the journal and notebook aside and accepted that he had finished working for the day. He wondered who had been the last to read this diary. Vera obviously knew what it contained, but when had she last looked at it? Had she read it once and then tucked it away? A secret to keep, a link with a past she treasured because it linked her to a father she could hardly have known. This book that, in truth, should never have been written and certainly never have been kept. But he was beginning to get a feel for the man who had written it. Small references to place were exciting, though, and Trent was starting to have suspicions as to where these people, spoken about in the diary, had been based. If he was right, then it cast a whole new light on the airfield and so-called tin huts in Frantham.
He pottered through to the kitchen and made a cup of tea, glancing up at the clock and trying to decide whether or not to go for a walk, take another look at Ellen’s farm and see if the police activity had ceased. He grimaced. It was only a matter of time before the police lost interest. He doubted they would progress with the investigation. He had little faith in the modern police force, for all their forensic resources and, he supposed, commitment.
‘Oh, Ellen. The world may not miss you after a while, but I will.’
He supposed that her children would too … but they were young, William thought. They would survive and probably even heal.
Setting his tea cup down, William went back through to the tiny living room and slipped the diary into his jacket pocket. Not that he intended reading more of it today, but because now he had found such a treasure he liked – needed – to
keep it close, though in more sober moments he reminded himself that there were unlikely to be more than a dozen or so people in the entire world who would be as excited as he was by its contents.
Then, donning his overcoat against the autumnal chill, William Trent set off again for Ellen’s farm.
‘The window wasn’t properly repaired,’ Andy noted. ‘Someone’s cut up a square of plastic and glued it in with what looks like car body filler. It’s not putty, that’s for sure.’
‘Maybe she wanted to get it fixed up before the kids came home,’ Frank speculated. ‘You’d probably not notice it unless you were looking. The edge of the curtain would have hidden it most of the time.’
Andy nodded. He straightened up and followed Frank back down the stairs and into the living room. He surveyed the room thoughtfully. Frank waited. As he’d said earlier, a fresh pair of eyes was a useful tool and Andy was observant. The room had been searched and the photographs of the room as it had been before the forensic teams disturbed it had been laid out on the window sill and a small table. Items had been replaced more or less where they had come from but Andy now picked up a couple of the photographs and compared them to the present scene. Following the younger man’s gaze, he noted the photographs on the mantelpiece, the books and cheap ornaments on bookshelves. Children’s drawings propped up on display and a couple of pretty, handmade bowls. A basket of beach pebbles. The sofas were old but prettied up with cushions and bright throws. It was a comfortable, homely room. Nothing expensive or even new – even the television was a heavy, ancient looking thing set on a pine stand which also housed a video recorder and DVD player. The family computer had been set on a small deal table in the corner behind the television stand. Only the screen remained, the tower unit having been removed and taken for forensic examination, but as far as Frank knew, nothing interesting had turned up.
‘Internet?’ Andy asked.
‘Village down the road got cable about three years ago. Not sure if it got this far. The Richardses are still on dial up. We know Ellen and her sister emailed regularly and the kids used it for homework. There are some bits and bobs printed out from websites in the drawer. Just school projects from the look of it.’
Andy nodded and, picking up another set of photographs, wandered over to the bookcase. Mostly, the shelves housed cheap paperbacks and a stack of hardbacks that looked as though they’d been there for generations and a part set of encyclopedias that Frank knew dated back to the nineteen fifties. The contents of the shelves tracked the history of the Tailor family, accreted over time and undisturbed.
‘It’s like it’s a veneer,’ Andy said thoughtfully. ‘Like she put a veneer of hers and the kids stuff over the top, but couldn’t quite manage to put all the past stuff aside, you know?’
Frank nodded. He’d not thought about it before, but now he saw that Andy had a point. What was the point of leaving Victorian novels and useless, out-of-date encyclopedias on a shelf that could have been used for new, more personally relevant items? He noticed now that the children’s drawings were propped against these older items as though to impose a new structure; a new veneer, as Andy put it, over the established. The ornaments and pebbles and knick-knacks that this new family had acquired were similarly placed in front of older photographs, a mantle clock with frozen hands, green vases, decorated with elaborate flowers.
‘Like she was on holiday,’ Andy said. ‘A long holiday, so you wanted your own stuff around, but you didn’t like to disturb anything that belonged to the real owners, you know?’
Frank nodded. ‘I’d not thought of it, but maybe you have a point.’
Andy laughed. ‘And maybe I’m letting my imagination run a bit too much, I don’t know. How long had she lived here?’
‘The boy, Jeb, he’s thirteen. So at least that. Her husband died five, no, nearly six years back .’
‘And she still knows she doesn’t belong,’ Andy said. ‘It must be hard, moving into a family home when the family isn’t yours.’
‘And when they resent you being there,’ Frank added. He nodded. ‘My money’s still on a family dispute,’ he said.
‘Some dispute. There are members of our family me mam can’t stand, but I doubt she’d get a shotgun to solve the problem.’
Frank, who had known Mrs Nevins for longer than her son, wasn’t so certain of that. She was, Frank reckoned, a tough cookie and capable of anything if one of hers was threatened. He was saved from the requirement of giving an opinion by Mac. He’d been making calls, following up on what the Richardses had told Frank and Andy about the two possible intruder incidents.
Mac perched on the arm of one of the sofas and flicked through his notes.
‘Right. On August the twenty-third, a call was routed to a local patrol. A possible intruder had been reported at Low Ridge Farm – that’s the official name of this place – and a request for a welfare check. The caller, who identified herself as Ellen Tailor, said she was alone and was sure she could hear someone creeping around outside. She made a second call about ten minutes later saying it was a false alarm. An old friend had come to call, couldn’t find his way up the lane in the dark and had trouble trying to find the door.’
‘Probably went round the front,’ Frank commented. ‘No one uses their front doors round here.’
‘Well, the officers, one PC and one community support officer, decided that as they were on their way they’d take a look anyway. So they arrived about five minutes after the second call and found Ellen Tailor and a man called Philip Soames. According to their pocket books, the officers say that the man and Ellen both apologized profusely, said that Philip Soames was a friend who’d not been to the farm before and he’d fallen over some equipment in the yard, made a noise and scared Ellen.’
‘And so—’
‘The officers were satisfied, stopped for a cup of tea and a chat, just to make sure there was nothing untoward, then got a call to another location and that was that. They reported a false alarm to control, wrote it up in their pocket books but—’
‘But no further action, so it disappeared into the system.’
‘It wasn’t flagged, certainly. It’s on the system as a call from Low Ridge Farm. Like I say, that’s the official name of the place, but as everyone and his wife calls this Tailor’s farm or Tailor’s patch …’
‘When did it become Low Ridge?’ Frank asked. ‘I’ve never heard it called that.’
‘Apparently, when Ellen sold up a big chunk of it just over two years ago. I spoke to the mother-in-law, Daphne Tailor, and she claimed to know nothing of the incident or of this Philip Soames and when I mentioned the name change, well let’s say I got a very frosty response. She claimed that Ellen had no right to change the name. That this was family property.’
‘And Ellen was not family,’ Frank finished. ‘So much for her protestations of affection for her daughter-in-law when I spoke to her.’
‘The two officers that came here,’ Andy began.
Mac was ahead of him. ‘Were not local. They came to the address via the post code in their satnav. They wrote this up as an incident at Low Ridge Farm, so nothing showed up on the system until we cross-referenced the incident with a date and a time and managed to track it from there.’
‘And this Philip Soames?’
‘I’m hoping Ellen’s sister might be able to throw some light. But I’m going to try and separate her from the herd, as they say. Get her away from the influence of Daphne Tailor. I think she might be a little more likely to give me a straight answer if Daphne Tailor isn’t around. I’d also like to talk to the children without their grandmother being around.’
‘That might be tougher to manage,’ Frank said. ‘Maybe the sister could take them out somewhere and we could arrange a meeting.’
‘We’ll have to see,’ Mac said. ‘I want to talk to them but I’ve no wish to cause more pain than I have to.’
‘Nothing’s going to hurt more than finding their mum like that,’ Andy said.
<
br /> And Mac nodded. He was probably right.
On the way out, Andy went into the kitchen to view the scene. Mac encouraged him to look around, see if he noticed anything new. Andy had no expectation of doing so, but he liked the fact that his boss thought he might.
The kitchen wasn’t fitted. Old pine dressers and a nineteen fifties cabinet stood against the walls. The main work top was beside the sink and the big table probably served as another, Andy thought. The table was now stained with Ellen’s blood and the floor had been marked to indicate where she had fallen.
The most modern things in the kitchen were the chest freezer and the fridge. Andy wandered over to look at the drawings and notes fixed by magnets to both surfaces. He opened the fridge. It was well stocked with milk and cheeses and veg and little pots of yogurt. The freezer contents were a mix of bought-in frozen and home-baked. Andy poked around, but he knew the freezer would already have been examined. He glanced at some of the labels on the pies and pasties.
‘Anything strike you?’ Mac asked.
‘Not really. Um, rabbits,’ he added. ‘Bet they’re a pain round here. She must have got someone to bag a few for her.’
Mac nodded. ‘There was no shotgun here so she must have done.’
Andy closed the lid and scanned the kitchen for a last time.’ I bet this was a lovely place,’ he said. ‘Homely, you know?’
Mac nodded. He wondered if anyone would ever live here again.
FIFTEEN
William Trent looked down at the farm from his vantage point on the ridge. That policeman, the inspector who had come to his cottage, he had returned and was prowling around again. William was careful to keep well out of sight; he had no wish for more awkward questions.
The inspector was accompanied, this time, by a young officer in uniform and an older man that Trent vaguely recognized from visits to Frantham. He watched them as they circled the farmhouse, inspecting windows and gesturing in the direction of the lane and the ridge and the little path that crossed the Tailor farmland and the fields beyond.
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