Low Copsley was a pretty, quiet village with a fourteenth century church, a pub called, aptly enough, the Forester and a modest supermarket which housed the post office. Swift parked the car by the small village green which had a covered well and two wooden benches. Mid-week and mid-morning, there seemed to be no one around. He checked that he had a bottle of water in his pocket and looked at a signpost, turning left out of the village for The Yew Grove. After about half a mile, he took a turning to the right, branching onto a forest track. The trees in this part of the woodland were mainly beech and hornbeam, their trunks abundant with moss and lichens. Autumn leaf fall added to the quiet hush around him and his own footfall was muffled. The thick canopy above filtered the sunlight into a greenish, watery haze. It was soothing, calming. Swift stopped and listened. London was close by, yet there was no sound but his own breathing.
He passed across open, bracken-covered ground by a pond. A small sign told him that it had been formed by a Second World War bomb. Here sunlight glanced in golden drifts off the water and the thick reeds growing by the edge. Another twenty minutes along a further path brought him to a branching, smaller track. As he walked along it, brambles tore at his legs and there was a strong scent of wild garlic.
The track opened suddenly into the grove. Twelve huge, ancient yew trees stood in a circle. They were massive and stunning. Swift felt their power and his own insignificance. He walked to them, placing a hand on reddish brown, scaly bark. It was cool and rough. He walked around the outside of the circle. The yew trunks had deep furrows and ridges. A couple had wide cavities near the base, showing internal roots. Their leaves were long and narrow, like lances, and there were red berries hanging, attractive but poisonous.
Swift walked into the circle and stood, looking up at the dense, almost closed canopy. Then he sat on the rough earth, which lack of sunlight left bare except for ivy and leaf mould. In the deep shade, all was still. The silence was intense. It seemed like a green wilderness. He thought how easy it would be to come here and sense enchantment, the spell of ancient things, the magic of tranquillity. He pictured Teddy, setting out that day in hope, eagerly seeking his Otherworld. He had travelled here because it was a spiritual place of safety but someone had come from behind one of these trees. They had anger in their heart and a rock in their hands. What they had done was a kind of sacrilege. Swift closed his eyes for a moment. The sudden call of a bird roused him and he shivered in the dim light. He wanted to be back in the sun and the open. He picked up a piece of wood, as was his right, and put it in his pocket as a memento.
Two horses and their riders passed him on the way back to the village, nodding greetings. He was glad of the sun’s warmth on his back as he strode quickly and glad too that he had come here. It had helped him get a better picture of Teddy. In the Forester he ordered a ploughman’s lunch and coffee. He was the only customer.
‘It’s a quiet place,’ he said to the barman, an older man with a florid complexion.
‘This is a dead time, mate. Commuter territory now, this village. We get busy at evenings and weekends when the city workers are back from town or Londoners come for some fresh air.’
‘Have you always lived here?’
‘Moved here from Walthamstow when I was six, so pretty much. What are you doing out this way? Exploring the forest?’
‘Sort of. I’m a private detective. I’m looking into an attack that happened at The Yew Grove fifteen years ago. I wanted to have a look at the scene.’
The barman propped his forearms on the bar. ‘I remember that. Young lad, wasn’t it? We had reporters in here. Didn’t they get anyone for it?’
‘No. His father would like some answers.’
‘Well, you can understand that. He still alive, that lad?’
‘Yes, but very disabled.’
The barman straightened and wiped the spotless counter with his sleeve. ‘Terrible, what happened. I’ve never liked that place. Those big old yews give me the willies. Too dark and cold. They remind me of graveyards. I always told my kids not to go there.’
‘Do people hold ceremonies there?’
‘Sometimes. Druids and the like. You know, solstice and that sort of stuff. New age, I believe they’re called. Never any trouble from them, I have to say. They’re very polite when they come in here.’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Druids rioting.’
The barman threw his head back and laughed. ‘That’s a good one, mate!’
Swift smiled. ‘Did the police ask you if you’d seen anything suspicious at the time?’
‘They were in here, yeah. I couldn’t tell them anything. Tell you what, they were good for business, propping up the bar at all hours.’
Swift took his lunch to a table by an open fire. He was never hopeful regarding pub food; too often it consisted of stale bread, slimy coleslaw, limp lettuce leaves and ageing potato salad. This ploughman’s was a delight, the bread was fresh, the cheese strong and tasty and the pickle home-made, with delicious chunks of gherkin and cauliflower. He savoured every mouthful, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the view of the village green outside. He glanced at the TV screen at the side of the bar, then turned away as pictures appeared of helpless refugees floundering in the Mediterranean. His appetite had vanished suddenly. He finished his coffee. As he left the pub he heard the barman chuckling to someone about rioting Druids.
* * *
At seven that evening Swift was sitting on his sofa with his laptop, drinking a glass of Shiraz and reading more about Druids and Celtic beliefs. He was particularly absorbed by an explanation that the Otherworld was not always used to refer to a place where the dead went. It could also be a place or state that was visited during earthly life and attained through meditation, trance or dreams. He was interrupted by a ring on his doorbell. He found Simone outside.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on the off-chance. I was in the area so I decided to stop by.’
He was surprised and a little wary; he hadn’t been aware that she knew his address. He invited her in and led her through to the living room. She put her briefcase down and ran her hands through her hair so that her curls stood out like a burnished halo.
‘This is lovely, so cosy and comfortable. I love the Art Nouveau style.’ She ran a hand across a ladder-back chair. ‘Is that William Morris wallpaper?’
‘It is. Mary calls the look “shabby chic.” I haven’t changed the décor since my Aunt Lily died. I thought about it but decided I like it the way it is.’
‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it?’
‘Something like that. Would you like a glass of wine? Red or white?’
‘Whatever you’re having.’
Swift fetched another glass from the kitchen and brought the bottle of wine through. Simone had settled herself in an armchair, her elegant legs crossed. Her pale blue dress and jacket looked businesslike.
‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ she said, gesturing at his laptop.
‘That’s okay.’
He handed her a glass of wine and sat opposite her, closing the laptop. He sipped his wine, leaving a silence as she glanced around, smoothed an ankle and settled her hair behind her shoulders.
‘There was something I wanted to say to you. It’s concerning what we talked about when you came to dinner, mine and Mary’s wish to be parents. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, I hope you have.’
‘I have thought about it.’
‘Okay, good. Have you come to any conclusions?’
‘Yes.’
She drank some wine. ‘It’s so important to us, you see, and as we said, we need to make a start as soon as we can. I find that I’m thinking about it all the time. I suppose wanting to be a mother can affect you like that. Now I know what women mean when they talk about feeling broody! We would love if you could see your way to helping us.’ She looked at him.
‘You and Mary explained that to me.’
‘So, will you let me know wh
at you’re thinking?’
‘No.’
‘Pardon?’ She made a little surprised movement with her head.
‘I want to speak to Mary first.’
She looked annoyed, and bit her bottom lip. ‘Ty, we are a couple, you know. I realise that you and Mary are close but this is about more than your friendship. I have to say, given how crucial this is for us, I’m finding your attitude difficult to understand.’
He felt anger rise and suppressed it. ‘I didn’t invite you here, Simone. I won’t be pressurised. I understand how important this is to you. I can only repeat that I want to speak to Mary, then I’m happy to talk to you both.’
She looked down, clasped her hands together and took a breath, then a deep gulp of wine.
‘Look, I came here because I wanted to say . . . if the clinical aspect of it all bothers you, you know, donating sperm — and I do understand it might seem a bit cold and impersonal, then . . .’ She stopped, a bright flare of red blush appearing on her neck and travelling up to her cheeks, then rushed on, ‘I would . . . we could, you know, actually have sex and see if I can get pregnant that way. We could be business-like about it, couldn’t we? I’d be happy to get on with it now, if you like.’
Swift stared at her. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, probably a lengthy lecture about child-rearing and blood ties. He put his wine glass down.
‘Simone, you’re gay. You don’t want sex with men. With me.’
She rubbed at her neck. ‘You’re not “men,” are you? This would be — it would be . . .’
‘The means to an end.’
‘Yes, if you like.’
‘And if I agreed to this, how would that make Mary feel?’
‘Would she need to know? I mean, we could still say we’d gone through with the donation and she’d believe it had happened that way. Other people come to this kind of agreement and if it achieves the desired result there’s no harm done. Ty, I want a baby. We want a baby!’ She started to cry quietly.
Swift rose and passed her a box of tissues, then closed the curtains while she composed herself. Had he ever had a stranger proposal? He could see what it had cost her to make it and he felt an exasperated compassion.
‘I know you want a child and I understand that the hoops you have to jump through are hard and demanding. I do realise that this is an emotional time for you,’ he told her. ‘I think I understand what’s made you come here and say this, make this offer to me, but I won’t consider it and I think you’ll regret making it. I’m amazed that you thought there was any chance I would agree. I want you to go home, Simone. Neither of us will ever mention this visit to Mary and we’ll forget you came here.’
She leapt up and in one fluid movement, threw the remains of her wine at him and smashed the glass to the floor. He wiped flecks of the drink from his face as she ranted.
‘Oh, it’s all very well for you with your comfortable, well-ordered life! Don’t tell me what I’ll regret or what I will or won’t say to my partner. You’re so insufferably measured and composed about everything! Don’t you ever get so emotional you could explode? I’m sure your life has never felt topsy-turvy. Bully for you! Where’s your bathroom?’
He indicated the way. She crunched glass as she left the room. Swift fetched a cloth, dustpan and brush and swept up the broken glass. When she emerged from the bathroom he saw her out. She left without speaking and he too remained silent. He finished cleaning up, washed his face and changed his shirt. He sank back on to the sofa and stared up at the ceiling for a while, shaken and furious. Simone’s assumptions about him were offensive. No doubt she would have liked it if he had told her all about Ruth and the torment he had endured when she left him. She belonged to that tribe who enjoy hearing about and dissecting the drama of other people’s lives. He might enjoy reading pulp fiction but he had no intention of living it. He would prefer never to see her again but that wasn’t possible. He finished the bottle of wine and emailed Mary, asking if he could meet her in the next day or two.
* * *
Fairacres School was a two-storey, sprawling building with a sign outside informing Swift that its fairly obvious purpose was Learning for the Future and it had been rated as Good in its recent Ofsted report. The school day had ended and the building was quiet, the air inside smelling of cheap sweets and something sharp and indefinable that Swift decided was probably adolescent hormones. He followed the sign to the head teacher’s office, expecting to be snubbed by the icy receptionist but saw a tall man in a silver tracksuit standing in the doorway.
‘Mr Swift? I’m Deaven Harrow. Do come in.’ A massive hand grabbed Swift’s and gave it a firm shake.
It was a small office and Harrow dominated it. He pulled out a chair for Swift and sat at his side of the desk, which was covered in yellow post-its, files, an open bag of Brazil nuts and another of dried fruits.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ Swift said.
‘My pleasure. Apologies for the informal garb but I’m playing in a charity rounders match at five, an ongoing inter-schools fixture that Fairacres is winning at the moment.’ His voice was a smooth baritone with just a trace of Caribbean accent. He was a fine-looking man with round, luminous eyes and deep acne scars on his left cheek.
‘I’ll try to keep this brief, then. You know I’ve come about Teddy Bartlett?’
Harrow nodded. ‘Yes, although not why.’
‘I did give a brief explanation to your receptionist. I assumed she would have told you.’
Harrow rolled his eyes and shrugged. ‘She is something of a martinet and a law unto herself as you probably gathered. I inherited her from my predecessor and as with many inheritances, there are unlooked for complexities.’
Swift smiled sympathetically. ‘Mr Bartlett, Teddy’s father, has returned recently from Australia and has asked me to try to establish what happened to Teddy and who perpetrated the crime.’
‘I see. Well, I was Teddy’s form teacher. I also taught him English. He was an avid reader.’
‘You must have been shocked when you heard about him?’
‘Yes, of course. Although I wasn’t in London around that time. My father had died back in Jamaica and I’d gone to Kingston for the funeral. I had a month’s compassionate leave so I was away until the end of September. A colleague rang to let me know about Teddy.’
‘So presumably you’d last seen Teddy in that July?’
‘That’s right, when the school year ended. The father had left the family, I recall, another continent, another marriage. Would you like some of these? They’re good for energy, you know.’
Harrow offered the bag of Brazil nuts to Swift, who said he would pass. He tipped some into his hand and ate them as Swift continued.
‘You’re correct about Mr Bartlett. He’s retired now and back in the family home. I’ve spoken to him and his two other children and their aunt. I have a picture of an odd, disturbed family.’
Harrow put his hands behind his head, rested his right foot on his sturdy left knee and chewed thoughtfully. ‘All three children attended this school. I didn’t teach Sheila or Tim but I remember them because they all presented certain challenges in the classroom and were sometimes the subject of discussion at pastoral care meetings. Tim had outbursts of anger, Sheila was suspected of occasional theft and caused problems by telling lies about other girls. Teddy . . . he was the opposite kind of problem — withdrawn, difficult to engage with. Bright, though, wrote beautifully.’
‘Did his writing reflect the Celtic mysticism he was interested in?’
‘Sometimes, although I think he was more into drawing symbols. The triskele covered most of his exercise books. I remember when we were studying Macbeth he got caught up in whether or not the witch’s cat, Graymalkin, was drawn from Celtic lore.’
‘Did he talk to you about his home life?’
‘No. Teddy didn’t say much unless you asked him a direct question, and then he would speak so softly it was hard to hear him.’
/> ‘How did his classmates get on with him? Did they find him peculiar?’
‘The boys tended to leave him be. Although he might have seemed a suitable soft target for bullying, he had a kind of self-possessed manner that kept them at bay. Teddy might have been diffident but he wasn’t a pushover. There was a silly rumour that he knew ancient spells that he could use as curses. I’ve no idea how that started but it played its part in protecting him from the school bruisers. Some of the girls liked him, probably because as well as being intelligent, having a charming smile and waif-like appearance, he didn’t tease or harass them. I wouldn’t say that he had many friends as such.’
‘That’s what I’ve been told. It seems to have been true of the whole family.’ Swift glanced at the clock and saw that half an hour had vanished. He focused on other information he needed. ‘Sheila gave me the names of two girls Teddy knew: Imogen Thornley and Judith Saltby. I’ve confirmed that the police spoke to them at the time. I’m hoping to contact them.’
Harrow shifted in his chair. ‘Sadly, Imogen was killed in a car accident when she was eighteen and Judith went to Ottawa for a while. I believe she married a Canadian. I still see one of her other friends occasionally and if you like, I could ask for Judith’s current location.’
‘Thanks. That would be a help.’
Harrow made a note on a post-it and stuck it to his phone. ‘About that family being troubled. We referred them to an educational psychologist at one time because we were worried about the children’s behaviour and the home situation but she got nowhere, as far as I can recall. The mother wouldn’t cooperate and attempts at meetings failed. Then a round of cuts came and the services were “realigned,” meaning they pretty much vanished . . .’ Harrow sighed and checked his watch.
BLOOD SECRETS a gripping crime thriller full of suspense Page 7