by Issy Brooke
Ariadne shot her a strange sideways look. They’d never been close and until the recent crisis they’d not even spoken for a number of years.
None of that mattered now.
“Thank you,” Ariadne said.
Cath waited for a moment before turning and peering at them both through the gap in the front seats. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Not yet. Why not stay in the car?”
“I will have to identify the body at some point,” Ariadne said. She squared her shoulders and Penny felt her hand flex under her fingers. “And I want to be sure the man is dead.” She added an expletive that, under the circumstances, was justified on many levels.
Cath nodded. “Come with me. We’ll take it steady and if, at any point, you want to come back, we will. I am pretty certain they won’t let us near the scene, anyway; we’d contaminate evidence. I’ve just spotted the photographer’s vehicle, so they’re still doing official stuff. You’ll have to do the formal identification later on, I’m afraid.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just want to … be here. I don’t know why.”
“Okay, then.”
Cath went up to the uniformed officers who were standing around the cordoned-off area. Ariadne stopped. “I’m all right,” she said before Penny could ask. “I just need to … absorb all of this. I’m scared and relieved and confused and … everything. And sad, which is silly, because he caused me so much pain for so many years.”
“It’s not silly at all,” Penny said decisively. “All death is a sadness.”
They fell silent, and Penny looked around. She felt the curious eyes of the protesters watching her. There were about half a dozen vehicles drawn up on a scrubby patch of land by the road, and eight or nine more tents. There weren’t as many dreadlocks and tie-dyed tunics as she’d imagined, and range of ages was vast – not at all the twenty-something dropouts of popular assumption.
She looked at them, and they looked at her, and one or two of them inclined their heads in unsmiling greeting.
They presented as a group, standing close, but for one man who was very definitely off to the edge. He had close-cropped hair and was wearing a dark tee-shirt and dark cut-off jeans, and could have passed unnoticed through any group of people. Well, if he didn’t have a prominent and emerging black eye. There was also an angry fresh cut on his upper cheek.
Penny made a mental note. That man had been fighting. She was about to take a step toward him when a car drew up alongside the man in black, and a familiar man’s head poked out of the window to speak to him.
She recognised Ed Montgomery. He led the local ramblers’ group and was active in local environmental issues. It made sense that he’d be connected to the protestors’ camp.
He said something to the man in dark clothes, but she couldn’t hear what it was. The man didn’t smile in return. He shrugged, almost angrily, and then stalked around to the passenger’s door, slid in and hunkered down. Ed drove away.
Impulsively, she approached the wary protestors, and searched amongst them for the friendliest looking person. A few smiled at her but no one spoke until she did.
“Hi! Um, who was that man that just drove away?”
They exchanged long glances between themselves. One or two muttered “Don’t know” and someone else said, “Nothing to you.”
“Gaz,” a grey-haired woman said at last. “Just that Gaz, but that’s all I know.”
“That’s all we know,” someone else said. “Are you with the police?”
“No, no.” She wasn’t sure what else to say. “Thank you.”
She returned to Ariadne’s side. Cath made her way back to them, bringing a heavy-set police man with black beetles for eyebrows and every feature of his face over-large yet somehow fitting together.
“Ariadne, this is Inspector Travis. Sir, this is Ariadne Jones. The deceased’s wife.”
“Widow,” she said instantly, but her hands were shaking.
It takes longer to adjust than fifteen minutes and a pizza, Penny thought, her heart aching in sympathy.
Inspector Travis nodded. “We would rather you didn’t come up to the scene,” he said.
“Of course. How did he die?” Ariadne asked. “I know he liked a drink…”
And a fight, Penny added in her head.
“We will check for alcohol and other substances in his blood,” Inspector Travis said. “Obviously we need to talk to everyone that was here. Did I just see one of the protestors get driven away?” He turned and waved frantically to a uniformed constable. “Davis, get over there and start talking. Names, addresses, everything. What are you playing at, man? You did get the registration of that vehicle, didn’t you?”
Davis reddened. Rural police were more used to tractor theft than murder. Penny stepped in. “The man was called Gaz, and that was Ed Montgomery that picked him up.”
Inspector Travis glared at Davis until he set off towards the protestors. The Inspector turned back to Ariadne, and spoke gravely. “Right. So yes, we’ll be ordering toxicology reports. But on first glance, now I’m no specialist, but it appears that he was crushed by a vehicle.”
Ariadne and Penny both stiffened in shock. The area that was blanked off by large white screens and a hastily-erected tent was about twenty feet away from Owen’s old van.
“By which vehicle?” Penny asked. “His own?” She pointed to the van which had its side door slid wide open.
“Potentially,” Inspector Travis said. “He might have been doing some work on it, and the handbrake failed; these things happen.”
“But he’s over there,” Penny said, pointing at the tents and screens.
“He may have … crawled.”
Ariadne made a strangled sound of distress. Inspector Travis cleared his throat. “It is nothing that we need to discuss right now. We will talk to you tomorrow, all right?”
“Okay.”
Cath nodded at her boss, and stepped forward. With Penny and Cath either side of her, Ariadne was cocooned and they walked her back towards Cath’s car.
Penny couldn’t resist peeping into Owen’s van as they passed it by. There was blue police tape over the doorway. She walked in an arc, leaving Cath to steer Ariadne, so that she could get a closer look.
But Ariadne was glued to her side, and followed, and they both saw the piles of banknotes at the same time. There must have been hundreds of pounds scattered across the floor and table, in amongst opened cans of food, empty drinks bottles and torn newspapers.
“What on earth…?” Ariadne whispered, crumpling against Penny who put out her arm to steady her sister.
“Come away,” Penny said. She had a dark sense of foreboding. How dare Owen have so much money, when his wife had to go without food to ensure her children could eat? Cath saw the cash, and took Ariadne’s elbow, pulling her back towards the car.
“We can’t go in there,” she said. “Not yet. I am sure this will all be sorted out as a tragic accident, and then it will all be over.”
“Over?” Ariadne allowed herself to be manoeuvred back to the car. “This is Owen we are talking about. No, not even will his death be the end of it, not if he can help it. He won’t let me off this lightly.”
Chapter Three
No one got much sleep that night, and the following day, a family liaison officer called early to talk to Ariadne and the children. Penny decided to give them all some space, and after a flurry of text messages with Drew, she had enough of an excuse to make her way up to the hotel with a packed lunch for him.
She’d taken up baking bread recently. Her initial attempts had been solid affairs, more like potential murder weapons than actual sustenance. The children had laughed, but Wolf came to her later with a ream of science that he’d found on the internet, and soon she was managing to create loaves that people would choose to eat rather than use as doorstops. She carved out a ham and salad sandwich, and walked through the small town, her head buzzing with thoughts that slowed and unravelled as she relaxed.
>
Ariadne had been pensive all night, and they had cried a lot. But this morning, as they waited for the liaison officer, she had surprised Penny by saying that she was going to move out. At first Penny had thought she mean she’d go back to the family house in Leicestershire, but Ariadne said not. Shyly, tentatively, she suggested she might stay in the area, and then watched her older sister carefully for a reaction.
Penny was stunned, but found herself smiling. “It sounds good. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for somewhere suitable.”
* * * *
Her chilled mood was destroyed the instant she walked up the wide stone steps of the hotel’s main entrance, and was accosted in the reception area by a man so polished he had probably been created in an advertising agency. He was like a greased snake in a smart suit.
His letterbox mouth revealed perfect teeth as he greeted her. “Good morning! How are you today?”
He spoke as if he knew her well, and for a moment she was stymied. Most people in rural Lincolnshire welcomed a close friend with a terse and standoffish muttered “Now then” so this man’s apparent joy at her existence was unexpected.
She bit back her instinctive sarcastic urge to describe the recent events; poor taste, she reminded herself. “I’m fine, thanks. I’m looking for Drew.”
The man thrust out his hand for her to shake. “Ah! Our wonderful Drew, man of the woods and all-round last boy scout. I’m Brian Davenport. Welcome to the Arches!”
“Thank you.” His handshake was firm and dry – she had expected him to be slightly sticky – and she had to pull her hand free as he held on for a fraction too long. “Where might I find him?”
“Perhaps you’d like to wait in our bar area,” he said, oozing up to her side. “And who shall I say is waiting for him?”
Bleurgh, she thought. He wants me in the bar so I might spend some money. But then, she countered, he is a businessman and that’s his job; making money. She smiled thinly and allowed herself to be escorted from the reception into the plush and empty bar. The hard tiled floor gave way to deep, comforting carpet. “I’m Penny.”
“And what do you do, Penny?”
“I run a small business making and selling unique crafts and gifts,” she said. “Mostly online.” She had a sudden urge to sound more impressive, though she hated herself for her pride as she added, “I’ve semi-retired from London where I was a television producer.”
“Oh, how marvellous!” he said, waving her to a bar stool. He clicked his fingers at a tall young man in a crisp white shirt who was polishing glasses. “Steven…”
She ordered a glass of lemonade and resented feeling manipulated into it. Her resentment turned to embarrassment as Brian Davenport then refused to let her pay for it.
“No, no,” he said smoothly. “It’s on the house. What sort of smarmy weasel would I be, if I pressed you in here and then insisted that you pay?” He laughed lightly. “And a friend of Drew’s is a friend of mine. He is one of my most valued employees.”
She glanced up at Steven and Brian caught it. “Oh, and so is Steven! My bar manager is going places, aren’t you, lad? All my staff are excellent, excellent. I am very lucky.”
Steven smiled but his dark eyes were narrow and he didn’t look at them. “Agnes hasn’t even washed the floors yet,” he muttered down at the bar towel he was holding.
“Oh.” Brian straightened up. “Penny, what a delight to meet you, but please do excuse me. Where did you see her last, Steven?”
“She hasn’t even come out of the staff house, actually,” he said.
“Right. Good day, Penny. I shall send word to Drew and I am sure he will be here directly. It was, once again, a pleasure to meet you.”
Brian strode away, pulling a walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket as he passed through the doors from the bar to the main hall.
Now Penny felt even more awkward, sitting alone in the darkened room, cradling a glass of lemonade between her hands. She rested her arms on the bar, and looked around, but she could have been in any comfortable country house hotel the length and breadth of Britain. Only the local views, as framed prints and photographs, gave any clue they were in Eastern England. Otherwise, it was the standard hotel fare of red plush padded seats, dark wood tables, with a smattering of shining brass plates dotted here and there.
“So, uh, you staff all live on site, do you?” she said to the young bar man, clutching at straws.
“Yeah.”
There was more painful silence. Then Steven spoke again. “I mean, we could hardly afford to rent around Glenfield.”
Penny had bought her house with her savings, and hadn’t looked into the rental market. “Is it expensive? My sister is looking to move here.”
He snorted. “Is she rich? Nobody on the minimum wage can rent around here, and that’s if there were places to rent, which there aren’t. There’s no flats to rent, at any rate. A couple of houses come up from time to time. Some cottage has just come up on River Street but that one was…”
He tailed off and picked up another glass to polish. She waited for him to fill in the gaps again, but he seemed to have decided he’d said enough. River Street was where she lived. She was about to ask for more information, when a hearty voice hailed her.
“Hey, Penny May!”
It was Drew, at last, standing in the doorway and nearly filling it with his broad shoulders. He was dressed in a plain blue tee-shirt and black cargo pants, and the mud on his boots made Steven hiss. Drew heard it, and looked down, raising his hands in apology. “Ahh, my fault, sorry. Penny, great to see you! Come outside before Steven shivs me with a broken bottle.”
The look on Steven’s face suggested that it was a very real possibility. On their way, they passed a slight young woman with blonde hair in a short and retro bowl-cut. She was carrying a mop bucket and she, too, tutted at Drew.
“I’m sorry, Agnes, I didn’t think,” he said. “Penny brought me sandwiches and I couldn’t focus on anything else.”
Unlike Steven, Agnes had a sense of humour. “You and your stomach. Go now, go, before I put this water on you.” She had a strong Polish accent. She pulled the mop out of the bucket and waved it at Drew, dropping water on the tiles of the foyer.
“Quick, run,” Drew said, pulling Penny with him. “I’ll make it up to you, Agnes! I’ll teach you more rude words later.”
“I know all the words,” she said, and began to prove it as they retreated.
* * * *
They wandered around the back of the hotel, towards a converted stable block that now served as offices. Drew told her that he had a large space to himself, but they chose to sit on some picnic benches in the pleasant sunshine.
“I can’t stay long,” he said, almost as soon as they sat down. “I really appreciate you bringing me food, though. I don’t think I’ve seen much of you lately. What’s new?”
She only had time to fill him in on the latest developments, while he wolfed down his sandwich and made appreciative noises alternating with suitable expressions of sympathy and shock.
Then his mobile phone beeped a reminder at him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m really going to have to dash. Great bread, by the way. I know I’m busy all the time but I will make it up to you. Things should get quieter as the weather turns.”
“It’s fine!” She wafted him away, and didn’t stop smiling until he had disappeared. Then she sighed and began to pack up the remnants of the impromptu picnic. Her own phone buzzed with a message from Ariadne telling her that the family liaison officer had gone, and as she was reading the message, she was startled when her phone sprang into life with an incoming call.
“Hi, Cath!”
“Now then,” Cath said. “I’m on my way down to Glenfield. There’s been a development in the case and I’ve got some news to share with Ariadne. Are you with her at the moment?”
“No, but I’m just on my way back,” Penny said, crumpling up a plastic bag and pushing it into her tote with one hand. “I
’ve been having a picnic with Drew.”
Cath missed her chance to press Penny for juicy relationship gossip. “Good. I think she might need you with her. I’ve got business to attend to at the scene, but I’ll be over as soon as I can, this afternoon.”
By this time, Penny was walking briskly around the hotel and onto the pavement that ran by the road, all the way back to Glenfield. “Oh my goodness, why? What’s happened?”
Cath sighed. “Forewarned is forearmed,” she said. “The surgeon has confirmed that Owen Jones was crushed by a vehicle. But he was killed in the spot that he was found, and it was a Range Rover that did it, going on the tyre prints and the … uh … pattern left on the body. And it’s a Range Rover that we haven’t yet traced…”
* * * *
Penny flew through Upper Glenfield, ignoring the greetings of the people she passed. She needed to get back to Ariadne. She wanted to tell her about the possibility of a cottage to let, further down River Street, yes, but the most important thing was the information from Cath.
Everything now pointed to foul play, surely, she thought. It might still have been an accident, but as soon as the perpetrator left the scene, it became – at the very least – a very serious case of hit and run.
Which meant, she reflected sadly, that things could drag on for a lot longer before they got closure, and that would cause more pain for Ariadne and the children.
When she crossed the road and began along the dead-end street of long, low terraced cottages, her already-fast pace quickened so that she was half-running.
Who on earth is that? There was a stocky, fleshy man standing on the pavement outside her house and he was shouting in fury up at the front bedroom window.
As she grew closer, she could hear Kali barking, the kids shouting, and the litany of profanity bursting from the red-faced, unhealthy-looking man. He was beaded with sweat, and out of breath.