by Amy Myers
‘Yes. I heard your name, so I decided to poke my nose in. Unless of course . . .’
He didn’t need to continue. She understood. ‘Unless I’m involved in it. And the answer’s no. I just found him.’ The use of ‘him’ was important. It would be so easy to think of the body as ‘it’, an impersonal object now that life had been taken away.
‘Alone in the churchyard in the evening? Walking a dog, were you, Georgia?’ Mike prompted her.
She supposed it must sound strange. ‘Peter’s sister Gwen lives up there—’ She waved in the direction of Badon House. ‘I’m staying with them overnight. Not a case, or not one yet, to be more precise. They sent me here to meet someone who was doing the church flowers. No sign of her when I arrived.’
‘Which was when?’
Of course. He needed every detail. This wasn’t just a chat between her and Mike. She was a witness like any other.
‘I came down the footpath from Badon House and got here at about seven-thirty. The church was already locked up, and in darkness. I was going away again when I saw something poking out behind the gravestone. I thought it was litter, so I came to pick it up.’
That sounded not only weak, but imbecilic. But how could logic explain all the hundred and one things she and anyone else might do without any apparent reason or judgement – and usually without finding a dead body at the end of the mission?
‘Did you touch him? Touch anything else? Gun?’
‘No gun. I touched his hand, and then tried for a pulse. I’ve never been too good at that. I couldn’t find one.’ How stupid. Of course she couldn’t. He was dead.
Mike nodded as though she’d said the most natural thing in the world. ‘We’ll take fingerprints, and DNA and firearm-residue swabs from you. That should clear you.’
‘I hope so,’ she managed to joke, although it didn’t emerge like one.
‘Who was it you expected to find in the church?’
The crime tent was up now, and figures were moving purposefully in and out. The outer-cordon tape was being strung round, and white-clad figures would begin to crawl over the ground like giant slugs, devouring every possible clue in their allotted path.
‘I’ll be back,’ Mike said, as he was summoned away by the pathologist. ‘Don’t move.’
No problem. She couldn’t, much as she wanted to be away from this place. It was ten minutes before Mike returned.
‘Do you know who he was?’ she asked.
‘No. Do you know Wymdown, Georgia? He’s probably local. No sign of car keys or credit cards.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve only been here once. To a wedding two weeks ago. Peter’s sister Gwen.’
‘Did you see anything at all as you walked through on the way to the church? Did you have any sense that you weren’t alone? Did you hear anything?’
‘Nothing. Certainly not a shot. Not even a bird.’
‘Nothing was changed on this scene while you were checking the body? You’re sure you touched nothing else?’
‘Yes. I knelt down on the ground, then retreated to make the call. I wanted to see a woman called Maureen Jones in the church to ask her about her mother, Venetia Wain. She was a long-distance sailor—’
‘Taking it up, are you?’
‘No again.’ Georgia managed a smile, conscious he was trying to help her. ‘Peter wanted to check something out.’
Mike groaned. ‘This case that isn’t one yet. Have you two been stirring up enough trouble for it to have any conceivable connection with this?’
‘No stirrings at all,’ she replied firmly. ‘It’s only an idea which will probably come to nothing, and even Peter acknowledges that. And it has nothing to do with this death.’
‘You’re sure you’ve never seen this poor chap before?’ Mike indicated the corpse, now thankfully shrouded from her view.
‘Yes. He’s a stranger to me.’
‘I’ve seen him,’ volunteered a SOCO, who had arrived with some slip shoes for Georgia while they took prints of her shoes. ‘In a pub.’
‘Helpful,’ commented Mike mildly.
‘This pub,’ was the hasty reply. ‘Wymdown. He was a barman in the Green Man.’
‘Name?’
‘Pass, sir. Sandy, I think I heard someone call him.’
‘Georgia!’ She could hear Terry’s shout in the distance, and realized he was being barred from entry into the crime scene.
She looked at Mike, who nodded. ‘You can go. You will stay overnight, though? We’ll need a statement tomorrow.’ Arrangements made, she made her way back to the churchyard gate, gave her name to the PC on guard for his clipboard, and fell into Gwen’s arms. She’d always been such a comforting aunt, especially during Georgia’s childhood tantrums, and a quarter of a century later she still was.
‘You gave us a fright, Georgia,’ Terry said anxiously. ‘All those police sirens. We thought it was you.’
She was appalled. That hadn’t even occurred to her, and she was immediately remorseful. ‘Only a witness. The police want me to make a statement tomorrow, Gwen, so I’ll be hanging around for a while.’
‘Stay tomorrow night too,’ Gwen said immediately. ‘Terry’s rung Luke.’
More trouble, Georgia thought. She should have rung him, but she didn’t care now. All she wanted was to be away from here and back in the haven of Badon House. And then she remembered Terry’s reference to pot-shots, and had to force herself to ask him about them.
He looked surprised. ‘It could have been in this direction – let me think. It was while I was fetching the torch from the car. Sevenish, maybe.’
‘We should tell them.’ Georgia’s heart sank. She saw Gwen’s glance at Terry.
‘Not we. Me,’ he said firmly. ‘You and Gwen get back to the house.’
Luke arrived almost as soon as they reached it. ‘There was no need—’ she began, as she opened the door to him.
She saw a mixture of emotions cross his face from anger to relief, as he came in. ‘I would say there was every need.’ He gave her a long hug, then said grimly, ‘Never, never, leave me out again.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised. Why had she, she wondered. It had seemed important at the time, but now only stupid and selfish, and she was overwhelmingly glad to see him. Mike would have rung his wife to say he was on a case. Why on earth hadn’t she rung Luke?
She couldn’t wrestle with this now. She was too tired, and now hungry, she realized. It was well past nine o’clock, and Gwen’s dinner was busy spoiling in the oven. It tasted good nevertheless, after first Terry and then the food itself arrived. No one mentioned the body, and it was some time before she realized they must be longing to know its identity. She would, in their shoes, and so she told them.
‘But we knew him,’ Gwen exclaimed in dismay. ‘You know, Terry, that young exotic-looking young man who didn’t understand what bitter was when he first came. You had to explain beers to him.’
‘Yes. Wouldn’t trust him further than I can—’
‘Terry!’ Gwen said warningly, and he laughed.
‘Throw a dart,’ he finished. ‘But I’m sorry he’s dead. Drugs? Gang fight?’
‘In Wymdown?’ Georgia asked incredulously. Surely this village was picture-postcard territory. ‘Do you have gangs here?’
‘Sure. Nowhere’s immune now. Still, the churchyard seems a bit out of the way; it’s normally a punch-up behind the pub. My money’s on drugs. Perfect place. Sure you didn’t hear a car, Georgia?’
‘No.’ That wasn’t so surprising, since if the shot Terry had heard had been from the churchyard the murderer, if in a car or on foot, would have left well before her arrival. But where was Maureen Jones? She could only recently have left – unless she failed to turn up, of course. And, it occurred to her, the fact that it was a regular job for her rather put the kybosh on its being a drugs rendezvous. Poor timing, if it had been.
She had just finished helping Gwen with the washing-up when Mike arrived. He looked tired, and Gwen quic
kly made him some cocoa, when he turned down the offer of coffee. ‘Have you finished now?’ Georgia asked.
‘For today at least. The SOCOs haven’t, of course. They’ll be here for another day or two. I thought you’d like to know that Sandy from the pub was in fact Sandro Daks, born in Estonia to an Estonian family, and now living in Budapest. He was over here to do an art course of some kind at Canterbury and doing pub work to help out. This was his evening off.’
‘Had the pub any ideas on why he could have been killed?’
‘No, but that’s nothing unusual. We’ll know more after the autopsy. No obvious signs of injection so far, anyway. No rumours of drugs at the pub, but that’s not surprising either.’
‘And none in the village, so far as I know,’ Terry put in defensively. ‘He was a nice lad, even if he did have an eye for the main chance.’
‘A wicked smile,’ Gwen said reflectively.
‘Wicked as in evil?’ Georgia asked.
‘No. Wicked as in I wish I was forty-odd years younger, but I’m glad I’m not. The sort one falls for at seventeen.’
‘This,’ Terry joked, ‘is our honeymoon. I feel seventeen again. By the way, Georgia, what happened about Maureen?’
‘She wasn’t there. Everything in darkness.’ Georgia had forgotten they didn’t know, and she quickly remedied this. ‘I still need to see her,’ she finished. Her own mission still had to be completed, regardless of what had happened tonight.
‘So,’ Mike pointed out gently, ‘do we. And we come first, Georgia.’
*
‘Do you have to stay another night?’ Luke asked later as she hopped into Gwen and Terry’s guest bed. ‘I’ll have to get back tomorrow morning. Saturday or not, this week the oast house calls.’
Georgia hesitated, but this was Luke, whom she loved, so she should give some explanation. ‘I’d like to stay here rather longer, go to the pub perhaps.’
‘There’s a good pub in Haden Shaw.’
No help for it. The real reason was necessary. ‘It seems like running away from Sandro Daks’ body if I leave too soon,’ she confessed.
‘In that case,’ Luke said practically, ‘it’s a good job you’ll have a warm one next to you tonight to remind you of what you’re missing.’
Georgia laughed. ‘I’m in complete agreement.’ After all it was only one more day and after that not only Sandro Daks, but Lance Venyon, King Arthur, and the rest of the round table could surely be laid to rest for good.
Rest, it appeared, was denied to her, however. Sleep did not come easily.
‘Are you awake?’ she heard Luke whisper later that night.
‘Yes. I can’t sleep properly for nightmares.’
‘Worrying about Sandro Daks?’
‘About death and Sandro Daks.’ The nightmare that rolled round her head taking her over, threatening, retreated as she framed it into words.
‘It comes with the territory,’ he murmured, turning over to hold her tightly.
‘What territory?’
‘Your job. Peter’s job. Even my job.’
‘Don’t good things happen in it too?’
‘You know they do. They just get crowded out once in a while, and need to be hunted down again to make themselves felt.’
They did, and his hands and body assured her of it, first gently, then possessively until pleasure took over mind; eventually mind rejoined it to reassure her that Luke was right. Given its chance, the positive always won. It was merely that in today’s world it usually had to play the waiting game.
*
Next morning, while waiting for Luke to finish in the shower, she found herself at the window, looking over the garden to the field that Jago Priest had so intensively scoured for traces of King Arthur. She would surely soon be free of golden goblets and Lance Venyon; she could return to Medlars and the project file, which now appeared not frustrating but as a treat in store. Peering to the right, she could see figures moving around the churchyard, early though it was. In the lane the mobile incident van would be set up, and that thought returned last night’s horror to her in full force. That too would be over today, so far as her role was concerned. She would give a formal statement and that would be that, except for perhaps giving evidence at an inquest or trial. Her duty to Sandro Daks was nearly over, she told herself. She only had Maureen Jones to think about, whom she hoped she could meet some time during the day – and with luck Elaine too. Then she could take Terry and Gwen to dinner at the pub tonight . . .
Yes, and better, she could have lunch there herself. She might learn more by being on her own. Not even Mike, she told herself, could prevent her from taking a pub lunch in the Green Man. Then she caught her own faulty logic. So her duty to Sandro Daks was nearly over, was it? Why then was she intent on going to the Green Man? Because of Sandro himself? Just because she had found his body? No, she realized with dismal certainty, it was because of that churchyard and more particularly that corner of it. The rank smell of evil stemming from it made it seem almost as if Sandro Daks had wandered into it by chance, rather than caused it by his death. And that was why she felt the need to rid her mind of it, to convince herself that she had been mistaken – if that were possible.
*
For a weekday lunchtime the pub was surprisingly packed with customers; then she realized that it was the obvious place for the village to gather for discussion about the crime, especially since the pub was the heart of the tragedy.
Should she join in and establish her street cred as the person who found the body? Georgia decided against it. She was a stranger. Everyone would clam up, glad of a chance to see her as Public Scapegoat No. 1, instead of one of their own. Instead Georgia ordered some food and waited. She seemed to be the only one eating, which suggested whoever brought her order to her might have more time to chat than the bar staff. She was rewarded when her ploughman’s arrived courtesy of a good-looking, if sulky, young girl who peered at her unenthusiastically from behind a dark screen of hair falling over her face.
‘Thank you.’ Georgia waved aside the proffered extra chunk of bread in the interests of an opening gambit. ‘I’m not that hungry, not after last night—’
‘Last night?’ The girl stared at her as though she were bragging about an orgy.
‘I’m the person who found Sandro’s body.’
‘You?’ A suspicious look.
‘I’m sorry,’ Georgia said sincerely. ‘It’s always a shock when death strikes so close, no matter whether you’re close to the person or not.’
‘Everyone liked Sandy. He was fun. We had the police here this morning and last night.’
‘It was a terrible thing,’ Georgia mused.
‘He was shot, wasn’t he? Did you see it happen?’
A touch of the ghoul was appearing, and it was a hopeful sign that she was at least asking questions. Georgia expanded on what she had seen and not seen. ‘Were you his girlfriend?’
‘In a way, see?’
Georgia thought she did. The girl who announced herself as Karen would have liked to have been Sandro’s girlfriend was her translation of this reply.
‘He’d been here eight months. He liked Wymdown, he said.’ Karen managed to make it sound as though she were the entire reason for this. As, for all Georgia knew, she was.
‘Did he live in the pub?’
‘Rented a room somewhere.’
‘Was he a clubber? Wymdown seems a quiet place for a student of his age.’
‘Nah. He liked sketching and that. He went clubbing in Canterbury or Dover.’
‘Did he have a car?’
‘If you can call it that. A beat-up old wreck. Yeah. What you interested for?’ Karen asked belatedly.
‘I don’t know,’ Georgia replied truthfully. ‘I suppose it’s because I found him. I felt I needed to know more. Were you working here when he arrived?’
‘Yes.’ This seemed to encourage her to open up. ‘I thought he was gorgeous, but Tom, my boyfriend, said he’d wallop me
if I went out with him.’ Some pride here, Georgia thought. A century of women’s rights had apparently passed Wymdown unnoticed. ‘“What’s he here for, if not you?” Tom asked,’ Karen continued. ‘So I said he’s got family here, he says, wants to look them up.’
‘Family?’ Georgia picked up. ‘From Hungary?’
‘Or friends. Dunno. He was asking after someone called Lance Vennon or something like that.’
‘Venyon,’ Georgia corrected automatically, in shock at this innocent thunderbolt.
‘Whatever.’
Karen disappeared leaving Georgia looking bleakly at her ploughman’s. It seemed she was not going to be able to wipe Wymdown and King Arthur from her mind as quickly as she’d hoped. Peter would never let this vanish into thin air now that even Georgia had to admit there were questions here to be answered. Lance was linked not only with her bête noire, King Arthur, but worse, with a corpse that she herself had discovered.
After she had imparted this news to Peter on her mobile, he announced that he was coming over. Now – in case she was in any doubt. ‘We’ll have to tell Mike,’ he added.
‘Of course.’ Georgia did not relish the thought of it, though. Mike would not be pleased that his case, picked up through personal concern for her, might have become caught up in one of the Marshes’ whimsies, as he called them – generally, she conceded, when he was exceptionally irritated.
She was right, but he’d calmed down by the time he arrived at Badon House. ‘I suppose I can’t blame you,’ he said grudgingly, after she’d explained exactly where they were, or weren’t, with Lance Venyon.
‘No,’ Georgia agreed. How could she possibly have guessed that Sandro Daks had known about Lance Venyon? ‘Unfortunately,’ she continued, ‘Karen, the girl at the pub, doesn’t seem to have enquired any further about Lance. She wasn’t sure whether he was family or friend.’
‘You said Lance Venyon died in 1961. That’s a long time to remember someone without having any news,’ Mike commented.
‘Estonia, where the Daks family stemmed from originally, was part of the Soviet Union until it split away in 1990,’ Peter pointed out. ‘It wasn’t too easy to conduct correspondence and there was no chance of travelling to the West out of the Eastern bloc.’