The Company

by Sally Spencer

‘And what has she hired you to do?’

  Marie shook her head, and her glorious curls wafted gently from side to side. ‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ she said.

  ‘It’s something to do with Paul Taylor, isn’t it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘There’s an ongoing police investigation, for God’s sake!’ I exploded.

  ‘Then I’ll have to tread very carefully, won’t I?’

  ‘You could go to gaol. You realize that, don’t you?’ I reached in my jacket pocket for my cheque book. ‘Look, if you want money, you know you only have to ask me.’

  Her eyes flashed with real Irish anger.

  ‘If I need money, I’ll work for it,’ she said. Then a smile crept on to her face. ‘Don’t worry, Rob. It’ll all work out for the best.’ She checked her watch. ‘It’s getting late. Time I was going. Thanks for the drinks.’

  She stood up and walked towards her car.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ I called after her.

  She turned and gave me one last smile. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  I watched her drive away in a state which was something close to shock. Why, I asked myself, had she agreed to work for Lydia? And even more to the point, what had been Lydia’s purpose in hiring her?

  As I walked up the path to my late brother’s home, I remembered the night I had peered in through a chink in the curtains and seen my sister-in-law locked in the arms of Paul Taylor, and I felt my anger rising again.

  I hammered on the door with my fist and heard the sound of high heels clicking on the polished wood hall floor. Then the door swung open and Lydia was standing there. She had changed out of her widow’s weeds and was now wearing tan trousers and a yellow blouse which was perhaps a little tight across her firm bosom.

  She didn’t seem very pleased to see me standing there.

  ‘I’ve already said all I needed to say to you, and now I’d like some time to come to terms with my loss, Rob,’ she said, making no sign of inviting me in. ‘I would have thought you’d appreciate that, without having to be told.’

  ‘Did you hire Marie O’Hara?’ I demanded.

  ‘Whether or not I hired Miss O’Hara is really none of your business,’ Lydia said, speaking slowly and carefully.

  ‘It is if it’s anything to do with my brother,’ I answered hotly.

  Lydia threw back her head and laughed so hard that I almost reached out and slapped her.

  ‘What’s so bloody funny?’ I shouted.

  Lydia calmed down a little. ‘You are,’ she told me. ‘It’s funny that, though you’re pretending to represent John’s interests, that isn’t why you’re here at all.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Then why am I here?’

  ‘You’re here because of Marie O’Hara. You’re doing your big protective man bit, aren’t you? And the reason you’re doing it is because you’re in love with her.’

  I could have denied it, but I was quite sure that my face had already given me away.

  ‘Yes, I am in love with her,’ I admitted.

  ‘And do you think that she’s in love with you?’ my sister-in-law asked nastily. ‘Or is her interest in you nothing more than camouflage for her interest in the family as a whole?’

  I had not been expecting her to say that – or anything like it – and the whole idea hit me like a bolt of lightning.

  ‘Her interest in the family?’ I repeated, to give me time to recover.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I said. I’ve only talked to her on a couple of occasions, but it was perfectly obvious to me, right from the start. You’ve been seeing her for some time. You must have noticed.’

  ‘I noticed it,’ I said reluctantly, because now I thought about it, it was not so much a case of me wanting to talk about the family, but Marie encouraging me to. ‘But if she has shown any interest in the Conroys, that may be because we’re so different from her own family.’

  Lydia laughed again. ‘That sounds so weak and feeble that you don’t even believe it yourself,’ she said.

  She was right, of course. It was feeble, and I wondered how I could have gone so long without questioning why Marie seemed to take such an interest in us. But the answer was obvious – I didn’t question her because I was frightened of what she might say.

  ‘Do you want to know why I think she’s so interested?’ Lydia asked.

  No, something inside me screamed. No, I don’t want to hear it at all!

  And yet there was a part of me which said it was time – finally – to face the truth.

  ‘By all means tell me your theory, Lydia, if that’s what you really want to do,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure you’re strong enough? After all, you were in the nuthouse for two whole years the last time you lost a woman.’

  She was paying me back for what she thought I’d put her through in Philip’s study, I suddenly realized. Now she didn’t need anything from me anymore – and I still had no idea what it was she had needed me for earlier – she was taking her pound of flesh.

  ‘Come on, let’s hear it,’ I said – praying that her theory would be so ludicrous that I could just laugh it off.

  ‘I was going to tell you, but now I don’t think I will,’ Lydia said. ‘After all, I worked it out for myself – and I’m not even from the village. It should be much easier for you.’

  ‘Why would it be easier for me?’

  Lydia shook her head in mock dismay. ‘You’re a clever man, Rob,’ she said. ‘In fact you’ve probably got more brains than the rest of the Conroys combined. But you’ve never really understood what makes other people tick – and I don’t suppose now you ever will.’

  It was her parting shot, and with it she turned her back on me and closed the door.

  It was only when I was halfway down Smithy Lane that I realized how completely she’d outmanoeuvred me. By skilfully steering the conversation towards my relationship with Marie, Lydia had managed to keep well away from any discussion of what her relationship was with Marie – and I’d let her get away with it!

  So what was I left with – apart from the ashes of my own failure to take command of the situation?

  I knew that Lydia was employing Marie, and I was almost certain that the work was somehow connected with Paul Taylor – but that was about it.

  It was then that I had the revelation that brought me to a complete halt.

  ‘You bloody fool, Marie,’ I groaned.

  Paul Taylor wasn’t missing at all – at least, as far as Lydia was concerned. She knew exactly where he was, but she didn’t dare contact him herself, in case the police were watching her. So she was using my Marie as a go-between – to deliver messages and keep his spirits up.

  ‘Why, Marie?’ I asked the empty lane. ‘Why, in God’s name, did you ever decide to run such a risk?’

  I had to do something to save her from her folly, and the only thing I could think of was to find Paul myself – find him and bribe him not to mention Marie’s name when I handed him over to the police.

  Yes, that might work. The problem was that I had no idea where to start looking.

  I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind. If I were in Lydia’s shoes – if I were doing my best to keep Marie out of the hands of the police – where would I choose to hide her?

  Not in Bristol or some other large town that neither of us knew our way around, that was for certain. No, to hide her effectively, I would have chosen familiar territory.

  Oxfordshire would have been my first thought, but it would have been the police’s first thought, too, and it wouldn’t take them long to track her down. And once I had eliminated the place where I lived, there was only one possibility left – the place where I used to live.

  I would hide Marie in Cheshire – and Lydia would be hiding Paul somewhere in Lancashire!

  TWENTY-TWO

  By eight o’clock on the morning after the funerals, I had already put a dozen miles between me and the village and was heading north on a desperate mission to save m
y Marie from her own stupidity.

  As I turned on to the M6, I ran through the logic of my argument one more time. If Lydia was hiding Paul, she would have chosen somewhere she knew well – and the place she probably knew best of all was a village in Lancashire where she was brought up.

  Of course there might not be any such village, I cautioned myself. She said she came from a Lancashire village, but she could have been lying about that as she seemed to have lied about much else.

  But I didn’t think it was a lie, because though she mainly spoke with the lazy drawl of the county set, her accent did slip occasionally, revealing traces of the Lancashire twang that she normally kept hidden.

  ‘You’re looking for a needle in a haystack,’ said a mocking voice in my head. ‘Worse than that – you’re looking for a specific needle in a stack made up of nothing but needles.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as that,’ I said aloud, to encourage myself.

  And it wasn’t – quite.

  My task would have been considerably easier if I’d known the name of the village, but I didn’t, and if one thing was certain, it was that Lydia herself wasn’t going to tell me.

  The Lancashire telephone directory offered no leads, either. There was not a single listing under the name of Hornby Smythe in it – though since Lydia had told me she was the last surviving member of the family, that fact was hardly surprising.

  So given that the obvious avenues were denied to me, I would have to go about things another way. From my study of the ordinance survey map, I had discovered there were seventy-five villages – some almost big enough to be described as small towns, others barely justifying the title of hamlets – within the county boundaries. It would take one hell of a long time to visit them all and conduct the necessary enquiries – perhaps too long if the police came up with the same idea as I had – but it seemed to me to offer the only chance I had.

  There was no more than a narrow track running along the south end of the mere, which made the journey from the road to the edge of the water – across a ploughed field – somewhat difficult for the police Land Rover, the three patrol cars and the ambulance.

  By the time Flint arrived – steering the Ford Escort he’d borrowed from the police car pool along the tracks previously gouged out by the earlier vehicles – the area had been cordoned off, and uniformed constables were posted around the boundary to discourage the sightseer ghouls who were already starting to appear.

  Flint got out of the car and walked over to the sergeant who seemed to be in charge.

  ‘Where’s the man who found the body?’ he asked, showing the sergeant his warrant card.

  The other man looked uncertain about how to handle this situation. ‘Since you’re from another force, sir, I’m not sure I can …’ he began.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got full clearance from your chief super,’ Flint assured him.

  The sergeant nodded. ‘In that case, sir, he’s in the Land Rover – him and his dog. Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No,’ Flint said, ‘I think I can handle it on my own.’

  The man – who looked to be around fifty – was sitting in the passenger seat of the Range Rover, and the dog – a black Labrador – was sprawled contentedly over his knees.

  ‘You’re Mr Willets, are you?’ Flint asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how are you feeling?’

  ‘I was a bit shaken at first,’ Willets confessed. ‘Well, anybody would be, wouldn’t they? But one of the constables gave me a flask of hot sweet tea, and I’m feeling much better now.’

  Flint nodded. ‘What I’d like you to do, Mr Willets, is tell me the whole story, starting at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out, however trivial it might seem. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Off you go, then.’

  ‘I’m a teacher,’ Willets said. ‘As a matter of the fact, I’m the headmaster of the village primary school.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know why I said that – it’s probably of no interest to you at all.’

  ‘Don’t go editing yourself on my account,’ Flint told him. ‘Just say whatever comes into your head.’

  ‘Unless the weather is really terrible, I always bring Lucy down to the mere before school starts. It’s her favourite walk, because she gets to splash about in the water.’ Willets paused again. ‘Have you seen where I found the body?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Flint admitted. ‘I thought the most important thing was to talk to you, while everything was still fresh in your memory.’

  ‘In that case, if what I’m going to tell you is to make any sense, you’ll need to know a little about the physical geography.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘On most of this side of the mere, the field slopes down to the water, but there are a few points where there’s an overhang, so you can’t actually see the beach from the path, and those are the points where most courting couples go.’

  ‘Got it,’ Flint said.

  ‘So I’m walking along, and Lucy’s paddling in the lake, and when she comes up the bank, she’s got what looks like a piece of cloth in her hand. I tell her to bring it to me, but, of course, she doesn’t. What she wants is for me to chase her, though we both know I’ve no chance of catching her. But it’s early in the morning, and I’m not quite as awake as she is, so I offer her a bribe, instead.’

  ‘A dog biscuit,’ Flint guessed.

  ‘A dog biscuit,’ Willets confirmed. ‘So she drops the bit of cloth at my feet, and I can now see it’s a pair of underpants – and not the sort of underpants a lad would wear, but the kind you buy when you’ve finally decided you’re an adult. Anyway, I had a quiet chuckle to myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the fact that he’d taken his underpants off meant that he was down there for sex, and any grown up who has sex on a damp beach, rather than in a comfortable bedroom, is only doing it because he doesn’t have any other choice.’

  ‘In other words, he’s conducting an extra-marital affair,’ Flint said.

  ‘Exactly. And I had this mental picture of him going home and telling his wife he’d had to work late at the office, then taking off his trousers and realizing – at the same time she does – that he’s not wearing underpants.’

  ‘When did you realize it was something much more serious than that?’ Flint asked.

  ‘Lucy ran down the bank again, and when she came back, she was carrying a shirt in her mouth, and it struck me that while a man might forget to put on his underpants in a post-coital haze, he wasn’t going to forget his shirt. So I backtracked a few yards to where the slope was gentler and went down to the beach – and that’s when I saw him.’

  ‘Describe what you saw.’

  ‘He was naked, and he was lying in the shallow water, facedown. I grabbed him by the ankles, pulled him out and turned him over. I could see he was dead even before I checked his pulse, but what really shook me was that he wasn’t a stranger – he was someone I saw nearly every day.’

  I waited patiently in line at the small sub-post office in the village just on the Cumbrian border, and when it came to my turn to be served, I made sure of winning the cooperation of the old woman who ran the store by ordering enough provisions for the bill to come to at least twenty-five pounds.

  It was as I was handing over the money over to her that I produced a photograph of Lydia.

  ‘I’m looking for a friend of mine who used to live around here,’ I said earnestly. ‘I’ve somehow lost contact with her, but I thought that if I could find some of her relatives, they might be able to give me her address.’

  The old woman behind the counter squinted at the picture. ‘What’s her name?’ she asked.

  ‘Lydia,’ I said. ‘Lydia Hornby Smythe.’

  The postmistress sniffed – disapprovingly. ‘Pretty posh name for anybody living round here,’ she said.

  ‘But does she look familiar?’ I persisted.

  The old woman examined the picture ag
ain, then handed it over to a man with a red face, who was waiting to be served.

  ‘Do you know this girl, Tom?’ she asked.

  The red-faced man studied the photograph. ‘Never seen her in my life,’ he said decisively.

  ‘Same here,’ the old woman agreed. ‘I don’t know where this friend of yours comes from, but it’s certainly not from these parts.’

  I thanked the two of them for their help and left the shop. Back in my car, I put a neat cross through the name of the village on the map and worked out which one I was going to visit next.

  I looked at the two plastic bags sitting on the passenger seat, filled with soap and shampoo, tins of baked beans and tubes of shoe polish. I’d have to dump them before I buttered up another shopkeeper by buying a similar amount, but if I did that in the village, I’d only be drawing attention to myself.

  And that was the last thing I needed.

  I turned the ignition key and slipped the car into gear.

  Owen Flint and his sergeant stood at the top of the bank, watching the activity on the beach below. The whole of the area around the mere had been sealed off by police security tape, and in the field which led down to the water, at least two dozen uniformed constables were carrying out a painstakingly careful search for clues. A police frogman had just emerged from the water and was shaking his head, while Inspector Hawkins and the local top brass were talking seriously, close to where the body had been found.

  ‘I see problems,’ Owen said, popping an Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball into his mouth.

  ‘What kind of problems?’ asked Sergeant Matthews, who had arrived in Cheshire only an hour earlier.

  ‘Territorial problems,’ Owen replied, after running his tongue around the edge of the black sweet. ‘Up to now, the Cheshire police have been quite happy to have us do all the investigating, because the murders took place on our patch. This new death could change everything.’

  ‘No doubt it is murder, then, sir?’ Matthews asked.

  Flint shook his head. ‘The police surgeon who examined the corpse says he’s got a contusion on the back of his skull as big as a duck’s egg. It’s too early for him to finally commit himself, but he thinks the murder weapon was a flat piece of metal – possibly an iron bar. So, like I said, the boundaries between us and local coppers are suddenly quite blurred.’