by Kim M Watt
“About nine months ago, BelleVue put on a bit of a do for investors and local councillors. Swanky cocktail party type thing. I noticed it, because it wasn’t that long after I’d heard about the whole deal with the country house. I managed to get in, and they were basically selling off-plan plots for a development on the far side of town.”
DI Adams picked her phone up, and he shook his head.
“Don’t bother. It’s there. Or the site’s there. In nine months all that’s happened is a few holes have been dug.”
“So it’s a scam.”
“Or a cover for something else. A way to legitimately make contact with all the councillors. Maybe get them to influence planning. You know how these things go.”
DI Collins snorted. “It sounds pretty far-fetched to me. There’s not exactly a culture of corruption emanating from the town hall.”
“Stranger things have happened, Detective Inspector,” Ervin said. “Sometimes it’s just a bit of wining and dining to get applications to move quicker, or discounts and gift baskets to make sure certain contractors are used. But it happens everywhere.”
“Once you start talking about murder, though, it’s a bit more extreme than that,” Collins said.
DI Adams tapped her pen off her notepad and got up. “Thank you very much for your cooperation, Mr Giles.”
“That’s it? After all this exclusive and potentially vital information, just run along?”
“We don’t have anything to give you right now.”
“You said you’d make me a cup of tea, at least.”
“Collins is right, I’m terrible at tea.” She shepherded him toward the door as he got up.
“You could buy me one.” He turned the full force of his dimples on her, and she heard Collins snort with laughter behind them.
“I could. Doesn’t mean I’m going to.” She manoeuvred him out into the station and closed the door in his face before he could protest, then hurried back to her desk. Collins was frowning at his computer, and Dandy was snoring faintly. He hadn’t touched the rice cake she’d dropped on the floor. “Fat lot of good you are,” she told the dog, then said to Collins, “Do you think there’s anything in it?”
“I’d like to say no, but it puts an interesting slant on things.”
“Thoughts?”
“Wright had a cardiac event, probably brought on by the truly spectacular amount of cocaine in his system, despite his husband saying he never touched anything harder than ibuprofen. Gavin Peabody also came up positive for cocaine, although not as much. He did have a history of heart problems, though, and he was spending the evening with three rather younger ladies at the time. It did look very much like an accident.”
“And could still be.” But it didn’t feel like an accident. She rubbed her fingertips together, feeling the tingle of the case making connections.
“It could. But his lady friends said that he was more or less a regular, and, unlike some clients, he might have a couple of drinks, but he never touched anything more than that.”
They considered it for a moment, then DI Adams said, “We’re going to need to look at the council more closely, see if anyone’s suddenly splashing cash.”
“What about BelleVue?” he asked, nodding at his screen. “They’ve got offices in Manchester. We could go talk to them.”
“We’ve got nothing to point us at them, other than that cocktail party. We don’t want to scare them off.”
“Fair point. I’ll get the tech to check on the emails and so on again, see if the name pops up, but I imagine they’re more careful than that.”
DI Adams tapped her password into the computer. “Nothing on the phone records?”
Collins shook his head. “Wright got texts and phone calls from two different pay-as-you-go numbers on the day he died. He’d been in contact with one of them previously, but they’re both inactive. We haven’t been able to recover the messages.”
They sat in silence for a moment, then DI Adams said, “We don’t want to question the other councillors too pointedly.”
“No. We’re going to have to tread carefully. We don’t know who’s involved.”
DI Adams sighed. “Dammit,” she said. “We’re going to have to use her, aren’t we?”
“She’s kind of put herself in the perfect place.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Me either.” DI Collins rubbed his hands over his head and sighed, then added, “Did you say you had proper biscuits? I need proper biscuits if I’m about to ask a senior citizen to gather info on potentially homicidal property developers.”
DI Adams opened her desk drawer, threw a chew to Dandy, and handed a packet of Hobnobs to Collins.
“Not chocolate ones?”
“They’re better than rice cakes.”
“Well, there’s that.”
She picked up her phone and dialled Alice. It went to voicemail again, and she flung the phone down on the desk with such frustration that both Collins and Dandy looked at her in alarm. “Fancy a drive?” she asked them, and Dandy leaped to his feet and bolted for the door, sending bits of paper flying off the desk in his wake.
“Weird,” DI Collins announced.
11
Miriam
By the time they left Bryan tucked up in bed with the TV on and a large cup of tea, it was getting on for dinner time, and Miriam was strongly regretting not having some of the cottage pie. As she climbed into Alice’s SUV she said, “Come to mine and I’ll make a salad. I have some nice quinoa left from last night that’ll go very nice mixed in with it.”
Alice wrinkled her nose in a way that suggested she wasn’t so keen on quinoa, but said, “That sounds lovely, Miriam.”
Miriam tried to think about whether she had any feta left, and not to fixate too much on the fact that they were wrapped up in an Investigation. Alice hadn’t said anything more since Bryan had told them about Thomas’ suspicions, but it was obvious she was planning something. It was in her thoughtful silence and the way her fingers tapped on the wheel as she drove. All Bryan’s talk of bribes and accidents had just served to get her more interested, not less. As they rumbled through the village Miriam gave up on thinking about feta and burst out, “Alice, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why don’t you step down? Just tell the inspectors what you know and leave it to them.”
“But I don’t really know anything, dear.”
“You know what Bryan told you!”
“Which is just second-hand guesses and hearsay. It’s no help to anyone.”
Miriam pressed a hand to her mouth. “People are getting killed.”
“We don’t know that. They could still be accidents.”
“But it doesn’t sound like it.”
“No,” Alice said, skirting the village green with the police tape still strung between the trees. “Which is why I need to find out more.”
Miriam took a deep breath. “But what if … you could …”
“I won’t.” Alice patted her hand. “And you don’t have to have anything to do with it. In fact, I want to keep the whole W.I. well away from it all. It’s far too delicate a situation.”
Miriam snatched her hand away. “Of course I’m going to have anything to do with it! Something. Everything.” She waved vaguely. “You know what I mean. I’m your friend! I’m not just going to sit back here and let you wander off into … into political intrigue and assassinations and suchlike!”
Alice touched her mouth, and Miriam suspected she was trying not to laugh, which was simply rude. “Miriam, dear—”
“No! I shall be your secretary. I’m going to all the meetings with you.”
“I don’t think that’s actually allowed.”
“In which case, I’ll go to the hall with you and wait outside.”
“That might look a little suspicious. And you do have to give whoever it is a chance to actually contact me, otherwise the whole exercise will be rather pointless.”
“I guess I can’t, at that,” Alice said, and gave Miriam a long, appraising look that made her ears go hot. “You’re remarkable, you know that?”
“And you’ll be the death of me.” Miriam sniffed.
“Well.” Alice pulled into Miriam’s lane. “Miriam?”
“Yes?”
“Do stop watching those American political thrillers. I think you’ve got quite the wrong idea about how exciting politics are.”
Miriam straightened her sleeves. “Says the woman trying to catch a murderer.”
Alice parked outside the gate and Miriam led the way around the house to the kitchen door, wondering if she’d spoken rather hastily. Not that she had any intention of letting Alice go into this horrible mess on her own, of course, but she was a little worried that she might have given the impression she was feeling very brave about the whole thing.
And she was not.
She was actually feeling rather the opposite, and when she rounded the corner of the cottage and saw the kitchen door standing ajar she stopped so suddenly Alice walked into her.
“Miriam?” Alice asked, startled.
“Someone’s here,” Miriam whispered, and grabbed the first thing to hand, which happened to be a glass sculpture of a bumblebee. She put it back and picked up a couple of skinny bamboo stakes she used for supporting her tomato plants.
“I don’t think they’ll be much good,” Alice said.
“Shh! What if they hear us?”
“Why on earth would anyone be in your kitchen, Miriam?”
“It could be the you-know-who.”
Alice looked at her for a moment, then said, “You really do need to stop watching those TV shows.” She marched forward and pushed the kitchen door open, calling, “Hello?”
Miriam ran after her, still holding on to the bamboo, and reached the door just as Beaufort appeared on the doorstep and boomed, “There you are! We thought we’d lost you.”
Miriam lowered the stakes. “Is that smoke?”
Beaufort shifted slightly. “There may be a little.”
“What on earth have you been up to?” Alice asked, peering around the High Lord into the kitchen. Miriam craned to look over her shoulder and saw Mortimer holding a frying pan with a melted handle and what appeared to be a small scorched sponge in it. He gave them a tiny wave, his tail tucked close to his hindquarters.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I was watching quite closely enough when you made those cheese toasties, Miriam.”
Miriam looked at her ruined pan for a moment, then shrugged. “They can be tricky to get right,” she said, and went to dig some more bread out of the freezer.
The quinoa was excellent, if Miriam did say so herself. Mixed up with mint and basil from the garden, pocked with cherry tomatoes and yellow peppers and peas, then topped with a little feta and a light dousing of lemon juice and olive oil. Of course, she’d have enjoyed it a lot more if there hadn’t been two dragons sticking their claws in it and saying things like, “Keen-wha? It’s very fiddly. You can’t even chew it. What’s meant to eat keen-wha? Is it for birds, really?”
To be fair, it was really only Beaufort doing the quinoa poking, although both he and Mortimer had eaten a decent portion of it. Miriam had plenty of bread but not much cheese left after Mortimer’s attempt at cooking, so she’d only been able to make the dragons three toasties each, which was a rather paltry amount by dragon standards. Mortimer had apologised so many times Alice had been quite sharp with him, and he’d apologised for apologising then gone a rather sickly yellow and retreated to the rug in front of the old green Aga stove. He seemed to have recovered somewhat, though, and was sitting with a toastie in one paw and the quinoa packet in the other, declaring that it couldn’t possibly be pronounced keen-wha. Miriam was feeling a bit exasperated with them both.
Of course, a large part of the exasperation was the fact that Beaufort was adamant that they needed to go for a jaunt, which just sounded like another word for Investigating to her.
“It’s hardly the time for a jaunt,” Alice said. “Miriam and I have had a lot on today.”
“I don’t know what it is about jaunts,” Mortimer whispered to Miriam. “I think he read about it somewhere.”
Miriam nodded and pulled away as politely as she could. Dragon whispers are hot, and she checked surreptitiously to make sure none of her hair had melted.
“This is important,” Beaufort said.
Alice looked like she wanted to argue, but eventually she nodded. “Alright. Where are we going?”
“We need to visit a farm.”
“I see.” Alice nodded, her face expressionless, and Miriam remembered Bryan saying, He was dropping by a farm. “What for, exactly?”
“We need to know if there’s anyone on it.”
“At this time of year?” Miriam asked. “Always. It’s terribly busy.”
“Only it’s not,” Beaufort said. “No tractors. No people. Not even any livestock.”
There was a pause, and Miriam tried to remember the last time she’d really seen a sheep. They were so much a part of the landscape that you stopped noticing them after a while, like the grey stone walls that cut the fields. They were just there. “But that’s not possible,” she said. “They can’t just be gone.”
“That’s what we want to check,” Beaufort said. “Mortimer and I can’t exactly go and knock on the door.”
“No,” Mortimer said, and spilled some quinoa on the floor.
Alice nodded. “That really is most unusual. You’re quite right, Beaufort. We shall go and take a look.”
“Is that a good idea at this time of day?” Miriam asked. “You know, with dragons?”
“If we wait until it gets dark it’ll be too late for knocking on people’s doors,” Alice said. “I think we’d best go see what we can find.” She stood up and took her plate to the sink (Miriam noted with some satisfaction that it was empty), and added, “Cake will have to wait until we get back.”
Mortimer visibly deflated, and Miriam patted his shoulder as she got up. “I’m sure we won’t be long.”
Alice put the back seats down in the SUV and spread out a blanket to let the dragons recline comfortably, peering out the tinted windows at the countryside. It was suspiciously perfect, and as they headed out of the village Miriam said, “Did you buy this car for the dragons?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alice said. “What an odd thing that would be to base a purchase on!”
“It works very well, though.”
Alice sniffed. “My poor old Prius was utterly devastated by following Thompson all over the place last Christmas. I just wanted something a bit more robust.”
Which wasn’t far from saying dragon-friendly, really. Miriam settled back into the seat and concentrated on counting sheep.
At first, as they left Toot Hansell, things were just as could be expected. There were sheep in the fields, and with the windows down (Alice scolding Beaufort for putting his head out where anyone could see him), they could hear a tractor working late, somewhere out of sight behind a rise. But as they looped around the village, heading northwest, things got quieter. Desperately so. The fields stood green and empty, the grass already growing long and pocked with wildflowers, and it seemed to Miriam that even the sky had become still, devoid of birds and abandoned. Alice followed Beaufort’s directions off a skinny road and onto the track to the farm, rumbling over cattle grids and splashing through puddles left from the last rain. The sky felt lower and gloomier than it had that morning, and Miriam couldn’t tell if it was real or just real to her.
There was a final gate into the farmyard itself, and Miriam got out to open it, looking automatically for dogs. There weren’t any. There was nothing. Flowers still bloomed in hanging baskets by the farmhouse door, although they looked a little parched, and someone had left a co
uple of tea towels on the washing line in the yard, but there was no movement in the sheds, no lights on in the windows against the fading day. Miriam rubbed her hands together nervously. One disadvantage of being Sensitive was that one tended to be sensitive about everything. Maybe all she was feeling was the changing weather, or the disappointment of a bad lambing season. Although that still didn’t explain the sheer emptiness of everything.
She pulled the gate wide and let the SUV through into the farmyard, securing the gate behind them even though there didn’t seem to be anything about to either escape or break in. Alice pulled up by the farmhouse and opened the back door of the car.
“Stay here until we know it’s clear,” she told the dragons, and sat on the back to swap her shoes for wellies.
“I don’t see anyone,” Beaufort said.
“It doesn’t mean they’re not here,” Alice said.
Miriam examined her flip-flops and deemed them practical for all conditions. “There’s no cars.”
“Or any livestock,” Alice said, getting up. “I’ll knock on the door if you check the sheds.”
“On my own?”
“The dragons need to stay out of sight until we’re sure no one’s around.”
That wasn’t what Miriam had meant, and she also noticed Alice was carrying her black cane with the silver dragon’s head on it. She felt somewhat at a disadvantage, and picked up a rake that was leaning against the fence. “Alright,” she said, slightly reassured by the worn wooden handle. Alice smiled, and let herself in the little gate that led to the back garden.
With the rake hefted up and leaning on her shoulder, Miriam sidled up to the first shed. The door was ajar, and she peeked inside cautiously. “Hello?” she called. “Anyone about?”
There was no answer, and she slipped inside, standing peering into the dark until her eyes adjusted. It was empty except for a couple of pallets against the back wall, shrink-wrapped so thoroughly she couldn’t tell what was inside them. She let herself out again, skirted an outbuilding that was nothing more than scorched stone and blackened shards of rafters, and moved on to the barn. Both the side door and the big main doors were locked with shiny padlocks on rusty hasps. She frowned at them, then crossed to the last shed, convinced for a moment she’d find something perfectly dreadful inside, that maybe it would be like a scene in a Western after the cattle rustlers have gone through— she stopped before she could scare herself out of going in entirely, and pulled the door open. Hurrying in, she tripped over a coil of fat hose, crashed to her knees in fragrant dirt, cracked herself on the head with the rake, and scrambled to her feet again, brushing off her skirt.