by Rack, Ruin
‘You’d better take the rest of the day off and go home as well, Phil,’ Carter said. ‘I’ll interview Sneddon. Where’s his wife now, Jess?’
‘In an interview room downstairs. Bennison is with her. I was on my way to get her version of Alfie’s story when Pete Sneddon passed me in Toby’s Gutter Lane. He was driving wildly but I didn’t then know for sure that it was Sneddon, nor that he’d taken off for the garage.’ Jess grimaced. ‘Rosie had decided confession was good for the soul and told him about her affair with Pascal. It set the whole thing in motion.’
* * *
Rosie sat huddled on a wooden chair with an untouched cup of tea in front of her and DC Bennison for company. When Jess appeared, Bennison switched on the tape recorder and announced, for its benefit, ‘Inspector Campbell has just come in.’ Bennison glanced at her wristwatch and added the time.
‘All right, Rosie,’ said Jess, taking a seat. ‘Do you feel up to telling me in detail exactly what happened?’
The woman looked at her wretchedly. ‘What will they do with Pete?’
‘I can’t tell you that yet. Why don’t you just tell me all about the events leading up to it?’
‘It was like I told you already,’ Rosie said nearly inaudibly.
‘Why don’t you drink some of your tea?’ suggested Bennison, leaning forward, braids bobbing. ‘You’ll feel better. A cup of tea always bucks you up.’
Rosie obediently sipped at the cup and then set it down again. But when she spoke, her voice was louder and firmer.
‘It was really stupid of Seb and me to think we could keep it secret for ever.’
‘What do you mean by “it”?’ Jess asked.
‘The affair, I suppose you’d call it.’ Rosie looked bewildered. ‘Funny thing, when you say “affair” it sounds sort of glamorous, doesn’t it? But this wasn’t. It was quite ordinary, really. Not at all romantic.’
‘How did the affair start?’ Jess asked sympathetically.
Rosie gave a despairing shrug. ‘I don’t really know. It was about six months ago. Pete’s a good man and a good husband. Good father, too. We’ve got two girls, both married now. How am I going to tell them?’ She spread her hands. ‘I didn’t want to hurt Pete, or the girls. I don’t love Seb. I love my husband. It’s just that it’s lonely at the farm, now the girls have gone. Pete’s out all day in the fields or doing something away from the house; and when he gets indoors of an evening he’s tired out and you can’t have any kind of conversation with him. I wanted company. That’s all it was, really. It wasn’t about sex; it was about company and a bit of excitement. Getting away from the farm for an hour from time to time, kicking over the traces. I suppose you’d call it a bit of middle-aged madness. I’d never done anything like that before. I never thought I would. But then it – it just happened and it was so easy.’
Rosie snuffled and wiped away the tears that had started to roll down her cheeks with the heel of her palm. Bennison handed her a fistful of paper tissues. Rosie took them and mopped her tears.
‘I’d got to know Seb quite well over the years I’ve bought my petrol at his place,’ she whispered.
‘Can you speak up a little, Rosie?’ Jess asked.
Rosie nodded. She cleared her throat and began again, ‘He’s fixed my car a couple of times, too. We always exchanged a few words, just sociable, you know. I got chatting to him one day, much as usual. I’d been into the minimart to pay for the fuel I’d filled up with. When I came out, Seb was standing there just watching the road. That horrible boy, Alfie, wasn’t around. Seb and I got into conversation. While we were talking, Mr Monty lurched past on his way to town, poor old chap. Seb drew attention to him and said he’d offered to drive Mr Monty in, from time to time. But Mr Monty wouldn’t have it. He was an obstinate old bugger, that’s what Seb said.
‘I said, we all worried about Mr Monty – Pete and me and the Colleys. We’d known him all our lives. He lived all on his own in that great rambling house and he never bothered to lock the front door during the day.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Then Seb said, we could meet at Balaclava House, while Mr Monty was in town. It shook me when Seb suggested it. I hadn’t thought about any such thing. I refused. I was really indignant. I’d never given Seb any encouragement. Or I didn’t think I had. Seb said, well, think it over.
‘That evening at home, Pete came in dog-tired from working all day. He just sat there, eating his evening meal and not saying a word. I tried to talk to him a bit but he just grunted and nodded. I thought, “Is this it? Is this the rest of my life? I deserve better than this!”’ She looked up in sudden defiance.
Bennison was nodding in a way that indicated Rosie had touched on some shared experience.
Rosie fell silent and drank some of the tea. She put the cup in the saucer and sat staring at it for a minute or two. ‘It must have been a week or two after that, I told Seb, well, all right. But we’d have to be very careful. I’d given it a lot of thought. It would be as easy as anything for someone to burgle Balaclava House one day and it had always worried me that would happen. There’s lots of old stuff in there and antiques fetch a good price these days, don’t they? I watch those television programmes about it. Some of the values they put on old stuff, really ugly old vases and grandfather clocks that don’t work, it’s a real shock. But it made me think that, if Seb and I used the place and left our fingerprints everywhere, and if one day the place was burgled and the police came…’ Rosie looked at them helplessly. ‘Well, they’d find our fingerprints and think it was us who did it!’ She raised her eyebrows in enquiry.
‘You’d certainly have put yourselves in a very awkward situation,’ Jess agreed. ‘So you were careful to wipe all surfaces in that room before you and Seb left. You did do a pretty good job cleaning up after you. It puzzled us and, I can tell you, you gave us quite a headache. We didn’t know who’d been using the room. We didn’t know when the clean-up took place.’
Rosie nodded vigorously. ‘I used to take an old sheet down with me . . .’ She blushed. ‘You know… I’d read about DNA. We put a blanket – Seb brought that – on one of the beds and then I put the sheet over it before we – you know. I took the sheet home with me, folded up small under my coat, and washed it, every time.’ She looked down at the cooling cup of tea. ‘Every time I did that, I thought how sleazy the whole thing was. Like I said, it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t even much fun. I began to think I really must get out of it, tell Seb it was too risky. I was always scared we’d be caught; that Mr Monty would come home early, or that someone else would show up. One day, someone did. We nearly did get caught.’
Jess sat bolt upright. ‘What? When did his happen? Who came?’
‘It was about two months ago,’ Rosie said, frowning. ‘I can’t give you a date, but it was about then. You can ask Seb. We heard a car draw up outside and a door slam. Then we heard footsteps outside. The room we used looks out over the gardens, at the back. Whoever it was had walked right round the house to the back and was under our window.’ Rosie swallowed. ‘I was near petrified, I can tell you. But Seb went to the window and peered out, really carefully, from behind the curtain. He said there was a bloke outside, a stranger. He was acting very oddly, so Seb reckoned. He was looking through the window of the kitchen downstairs. You know, his face pressed up against the glass and his hand shielding his eyes to cut out the sun, like you do when you’re trying to see into a place from outside.’
Jess and Bennison both nodded.
‘The next thing was, Seb said, the man had left the window and was exploring the grounds, that’s what it looked like. So I got up the courage to take a peek myself. Sure enough, there was this fellow I’d never seen before, any more than Seb had. He was a biggish chap, in his forties perhaps, or a little bit younger, very well dressed and set up. Not someone who’d come to do a manual job of some sort, that was for sure. I did wonder, just briefly, if he was an estate agent. Perhaps Mr Monty was thinking of selling up?’
‘Do y
ou remember how he was dressed?’ Jess asked.
She nodded. ‘Oh, he was quite a gent in a nice brown jacket and pale-coloured trousers. The jacket looked like leather. He was taking a really good look round. The gardens are overgrown, a really terrible mess, like a jungle. You’ve seen them. So we’d keep losing sight of him among the trees and bushes. Then he’d reappear. He was a good fifteen minutes hunting round out there. Goodness knows what he was looking for.
‘I whispered to Seb…’ Rosie gave a sheepish little smile. ‘I don’t know why I whispered but I remember I did. It was knowing we shouldn’t be there, I suppose. I said, “What do we do if he comes into the house?” Seb said, “We ask him what the hell he thinks he’s playing at?”
‘I said, well, he could ask us that! But Seb said no, he wouldn’t. Because Seb reckoned this fellow was up to no good. He believed the house was empty and he was unobserved. “If he finds us,” Seb said. “It’ll give him a bigger fright than it’ll give you or me, Rosie!”
‘I wasn’t convinced and I still thought the man might try and get in. I remembered my old fear about burglars. Perhaps this was a burglar, even though he didn’t look it. There was something really furtive about the way he was snooping round out there. Or a dodgy dealer? There are people who go round looking in the windows of empty houses and so on, checking out any antiques, aren’t there? Then they turn up at the door and badger old people into selling them things cheap. It happened to Pete’s auntie. This bloke could be one of those.
‘Well, anyway, eventually he came back and walked round the house to the front. We heard the car door slam again and then the sound of the car leaving. I was so relieved, my legs turned to jelly. I couldn’t stand up. I just sat there on the bed, shaking like a leaf.’
‘Did you ever see this man around Balaclava again?’ Jess asked. ‘Or did you see him anywhere else? Did Seb see him anywhere else? Did he ever call at Seb’s place for petrol, perhaps?’
Rosie was shaking her head vigorously. ‘No, I never saw him again. No more did Seb, because I asked him about that. Seb was sure the bloke hadn’t been to the garage because he had been looking out for him. It was a couple of weeks before we met again at the house. The whole thing had given me such a fright I couldn’t go back there straight away. I think the incident had shaken Seb, too. He tried to act casual but he was jumpy and kept looking out of the window. We should have called it a day, then, stopped meeting like we were. It was a warning. We should have heeded it.’
Rosie was growing distressed and near to tears.
‘All right, Rosie,’ Jess said soothingly. ‘I know how difficult this is. But try and take it easy and just tell us what happened next.’
‘Sorry…’ muttered Rosie, fumbling for more tissues from the box on the table.
‘You’re doing fine. Now, I want you to think about the day the body was found at Balaclava House.’ This was the question that, if any, was going to send Rosie into a blind panic. Jess held her breath.
Rosie looked terrified and half rose to her feet. ‘Seb and I never had anything to do with that!’
‘All right, I’m not saying you did. But were you and Seb at Balaclava House that day? Did you meet there, as you had before?’
‘No, no, we didn’t, and thank goodness. We’d have got caught up in it all.’ She leaned across the desk. ‘It would have served us right if we did. It was all wrong, what we were doing. When I heard about the dead man my first thought was that we were being punished, somehow. It’s a silly thing to have thought and selfish, but I was feeling so guilty. It was Seb told me. I’d gone down for petrol as usual and I saw, when I drove past Balaclava, that there was a police car there. I told Seb and asked if he knew what was going on. He told me all he knew, how he’d seen Mr Monty drive past in Mrs Harwell’s little car. How he’d rung Gary Colley and been told about a body being found there. I nearly went all to pieces! I said to Seb that the police were bound to find out all about us. Seb told me to keep my head. There was no reason the police should find out. We’d been careful to clean up the place after us. Even if they found a fingerprint or two, they didn’t have Seb’s prints or mine to compare them with – and there was no reason why they – I mean, you,’ Rosie nodded apologetically to Jess, ‘why you should ask for our prints. We were quite safe.
‘But I wasn’t sure. I just kept thinking how horrible it was, the body being found, and how we could so easily have been there, Seb and I, when it happened, whatever it was. When that poor man died, I mean. I knew we couldn’t ever meet there again. Truth to tell, I didn’t want to meet Seb again anywhere else, ever! I think Seb knew it, too. We’d sailed very close to the wind and we’d nearly got mixed up in something really bad.
‘Then there was the boy, Alfie. I was sure he was on to us. He came up to talk to me one morning when I was at the garage and Seb not there. I didn’t need more petrol, but I went down just hoping to see Seb and find out if he knew anything more. Alfie was trying to find out what I knew, too. He wouldn’t go away. He kept grinning at me, like he already knew something and thought it was funny. He more or less said he knew I’d only come to see Seb. I knew there was only one thing to do, besides put a stop to the affair. I had to tell Pete about it, confess the lot. It would be hard to do and Pete would be so upset. But it would be worse if he found out from someone else. That Alfie, he might make trouble. The more I thought about it, the surer I became that Alfie had found out. He might try and blackmail Seb or me. I know he’s been in quite a lot of trouble. Maureen told me about it. Alfie is her nephew. Even she says Alfie is a bad lot.’
Rosie sighed, ‘So, I did tell Pete…’ she finished her story lamely. ‘I knew he’d be angry and hurt – hurt more than angry – but I didn’t know he’d go crazy and grab the old shotgun.’
* * *
A girl with straggling blond hair and a metal pin through one eyebrow was operating the till for the petrol station/minimart when Carter walked in. She was taking money from a motorist and there was no sign of Pascal. Carter stared up at the plastic sheet taped over the hole in the ceiling while he waited for the customer to leave. He wondered if Pascal was there or if he was too afraid now to step into his own place of business, even though they still had Pete Sneddon in a cell. The farmer would appear before a magistrate later and the case would certainly be referred to a Crown Court. Whether Sneddon would later be given bail was another matter. Given his responsibilities to his farm and the animals, he might. They’d confiscated his shotgun. At the moment the unfortunate Rosie Sneddon had to run the place alone with the help of a retired farmer who lived in the area. Nobly he had creaked out of his comfortable bungalow and peaceful retirement to take up a working life again, plodding about in mud.
The motorist left at last and Carter approached the counter to show his ID and enquire if Pascal was there. The girl first stared at the ID blankly and then, just as unresponsively, at him. At last, with great effort, she said Seb was in his office.
‘I’ll just go and find him, then,’ said Carter, thinking that Pascal must be desperate to put this girl in charge of anything, let alone a till.
Mild panic crossed her face. ‘It’s private,’ she said.
‘I’m on police business,’ said Carter as clearly as he could.
‘I dunno about that,’ said the girl.
‘I do,’ said Carter.
Pascal received his visit with a look of doleful resignation touched with not a little nervousness.
And well you might be nervous! thought Carter. It’s no thanks to you that Phil Morton isn’t gravely wounded or even dead.
As if he read Carter’s mind, Pascal asked, ‘How’s the other chap, the sergeant?’
‘He’s OK,’ Carter told him briefly.
‘I didn’t know Pete was going to come storming down here looking for me with a ruddy shotgun!’ Pascal’s nervousness gave way to whining defiance. ‘I don’t know whether the insurance company’s going to pay for that hole in the ceiling out there, either.’
>
Carter ignored this and, indicating the girl outside in the minimart with a jerk of his head, asked, ‘That young woman isn’t Mrs Wilson, I take it?’
Pascal looked even glummer. ‘No, Maureen’s handed in her notice. She says she can’t imagine ever working here again. She wouldn’t feel safe. I told her, look, Pete’s locked up at the moment and the cops have taken away his gun – and it’s not like he was trying to rob the place. It was purely personal. But she wouldn’t have it. I’ve had to take on someone else – in a hurry,’ he added, in justification for any poor opinion Carter might have formed of his new staff member.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Carter. ‘It was a very hairy moment. We’re fortunate no one was hurt.’
Pascal, his mind still running on his staff shortage problems, observed wistfully, ‘Perhaps Maureen will change her mind when she’s had a bit of time to get over her fright.’ He didn’t look as if he had much faith in his optimistic forecast.
Carter, in any case, had no interest in Pascal’s staffing problem. ‘You and Mrs Sneddon,’ he said briskly, ‘have been using Balaclava House for a series of meetings while the owner, Mr Bickerstaffe, was away from the place.’
‘Yes – and I’d like to know who put you on to us!’ Pascal rallied, prepared to defend his actions.
‘Information received,’ said Carter expressionlessly.
Pascal glowered at him. ‘Who from? Nobody knew. Well, one of the Colleys might have seen us, but they wouldn’t go to the police.’ He chewed his lower lip. ‘It was that bloody useless nephew of Maureen’s, young Alfie, wasn’t it?’
When Carter made no reply, Pascal went on. ‘You don’t have to tell me. It had to be him, spying on me most likely. I only took him on because Maureen asked me. She told me he’d been in trouble and she thought if he had a steady job, he’d mend his ways and make something of himself. But you’ve picked him up again, haven’t you, for selling his happy pills and hash? He hasn’t dared to show his face here again. Still, I’ll catch up with him. He lives in Weston St Ambrose, same as me. He can’t avoid me for ever!’