A Cotswold Ordeal (24 page)

He groaned with some melodrama, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘This is getting worse by the minute. Bring the damn dog, why don’t you. Just promise me she won’t bark or want to pee at the critical moment.’

‘Absolutely,’ Thea promised, with an inward tremor.

She sat in the front passenger seat of the Mondeo, with the spaniel on her lap. Within moments they were driving down a narrow track with dense trees on one side. ‘Where are we?’ she whispered.

‘Only a few hundred yards from the barn. Nobody’s going to see you here.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Listen,’ he told her. ‘I won’t have time to say this twice. You’re to stay in the car unless I expressly tell
you to get out. If that happens, you’re to take the dog and run for the nearest trees or long grass or woodpile – anything you can find that’ll hide you. Stay down until I come calling for you. However long that takes.’

Thea giggled in spite of herself.

‘It’s not funny, love. As far as we know, nobody’s armed. This is all meant to be very calm and low key. But there are still uncertainties, and I don’t want anyone to take any risks. Understand?’

Thea hadn’t really heard anything beyond that sweet-sounding
love
, but she murmured assent, anyway.

‘I’ll leave the key in the ignition, so you can open the windows if you want.’

Then he was fishing in his pocket for a mobile phone. Thea had a disconcerting image of another one ringing loudly just outside the barn and betraying its owner to the killer inside. Then she remembered that they could be set to vibrate silently instead of ringing.

‘Jack?’ Hollis muttered into his phone. ‘I’m in place now. Can you talk?’

Apparently Jack could, as Hollis listened intently for a few seconds. ‘Right. Good. Give me two minutes.’

He opened his door delicately, whispering to Thea, ‘We’ve got them under surveillance now, in the barn.’

‘Good luck then,’ she said. An irritation was settling on her, compounded of disappointment and weariness. The man was playing silly games when all she wanted was his arms around her.

Hollis leaned back into the car. ‘Be very quiet!’ he ordered. ‘This is important.’

‘Good luck,’ she repeated, meaning it this time.

She waited in the car, annoyed with herself, but still sensing something ridiculous in the situation. Why hadn’t she just gathered up the dog and gone home the day she found the body? The ensuing week had been an ordeal of painful frustrations, with Jocelyn to cope with and Hollis simultaneously seductive and unavailable.

Slowly she began to doze, with Hepzie curled warm on her lap. Images flickered in her head, making little sense. She wished for a cushion, or permission to play music. Even a Radio Four play would have been welcome company. Outside the light was fading, the trees losing detail, all the more so for the steaming up on the inside of the windows as she and Hepzie breathed.

A man’s voice brought her awake, and without thinking, she wound down the window beside her, the whirr of the electric motor sounding loud in the twilight.

‘They’re at the barn now, look,’ said the man in a low voice.

‘I said they would be. I don’t know why we had to come and make sure, when it was never in any doubt.’

‘Stupid buggers.’

A second voice replied. A voice that was more familiar to Thea. ‘They’re after the Innes boys, just like Frannie said. She’s a clever girl, is my Frannie. This is all thanks to her, you know. She’s really led them up the garden path with her stories of feuds between the lads. Lucky for you, mate.’

The first man laughed. Thea wondered how they could possibly not have noticed her, only a few feet away in a whacking great car. She tried to locate them, using the wing mirror, but could see nothing. Cautiously, she turned, sticking her head a little way out of the window.

There were footsteps and more conversation. ‘We can’t stay here,’ said the second man, who had to be Robert Craven from the voice. ‘We ought to get back. We’ve seen enough to know what they’re up to.’

And then Thea saw them, and they saw her. She pulled her head back, too late. ‘Flora!’ cried the man who wasn’t Robert. ‘Darling, what are you doing here? They said you were with Maggie.’

He ran to the car and pulled the door open. Hepzie raised her head and grinned. Thea met the man’s eyes and knew who he was at last.

‘Good God – Desmond Phillips,’ she said.

‘You’re not Flora,’ he realised, his jaw slackening. ‘Who are you?’

‘This is your house-sitter,’ said Robert, with a hint of amusement. ‘She does look a bit like Flora in this light, I suppose.’

‘But—’ Desmond was evidently thinking fast. ‘She’s seen me,’ he stuttered. ‘She knows I’m here.’

‘Bad news,’ Robert sympathised.

‘What did you hear just now?’ Desmond demanded of Thea. Even as he spoke she could see him working out that it was an ill-advised question. She tried to remember precisely what she had heard, and what it had implied.

‘You killed Nick Franklyn,’ she said, before grasping just how very stupid her own words were. ‘Everybody thinks you’ve been in Ireland all week. You’ve scarcely been mentioned or thought of.’ She lowered her head, hugging the spaniel to her. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Now what?’ muttered Robert. As a henchman, Thea was beginning to judge him sorely inadequate.

‘Get in,’ Desmond ordered. ‘Back seat.’ He ran round to the driver’s side and threw himself into the car. Before Thea could make a move, he had started the engine and was reversing down the track. Surely, she thought, Hollis would hear them and give chase? But she could see no other headlights, or even torchbeams, in the gathering darkness. Hollis was busy with his cat and mouse game, with no attention to spare for the woman and dog waiting obediently in his motor.

She had never taken the time to wonder what it would be like to be held captive, under any circumstances. In a car with two men, it was turning out to be entirely terrifying. A car supplied complete freedom to go anywhere. They could drive to the north of Scotland or the centre of London. Even if word went out to the police across the country, the procedure for identifying and intercepting them was bound to be cumbersome. But that was the rational part, which was crowded into a small corner by the more primitive dread of being separated from her familiar life. Even though her precious dog was with her, she still felt like a small child snatched from the pram in the garden by wicked fairies.

‘We’ll have to dump the car,’ Robert urged from the back. ‘They’ll find it in no time.’

Desmond made an inarticulate sound of rage and indecision. He smacked the steering wheel, before
swinging it violently, manoeuvring the car into the country lane that led back towards Frampton Mansell.

‘Des,’ Robert repeated. ‘Leave it, and we’ll walk.’

‘She’s got a dog,’ Desmond snarled, as if only just realising this fact. ‘A bloody
dog
.’

Thea hugged Hepzibah tighter and said nothing. She was searching her memory for useful information from films or books that might help her to cope. All she could come up with was how unreal such depictions were. The victim would whine and plead for a few minutes, before gathering her wits and asking for details as to how and why the murder had been performed. This sort of behaviour was well beyond Thea’s capabilities. Her insides were cramping, hot and tight, making her fear for the security of her bowels. People on films never soiled themselves – or if they did it was soldiers under ferocious bombardment, and never a female person. They were far too dignified for such appalling loss of control.

She glanced at Desmond’s face, trying to reconcile it with the tall smiling husband and father she had seen a week before. Now it was taut and damp with sweat. His hands were claws, his voice thick with panic. This, unlike the half-hearted Dominic of Thursday morning, was the real thing. This man could kill. The difference was that between a tiger and a hamster, a Cape buffalo and
a newborn fawn. Her bowels surged more powerfully, and she struggled to contain them.

The women in the movies would start by accusing. ‘How could you kill that innocent young boy?’ Then they’d bargain. ‘I promise I won’t say a word, if you’ll just let me go.’ Then they might threaten. ‘You can’t possibly hope to get away with it, you know.’ None of these tempted Thea. They all seemed designed to further enrage her captor. But one strategy did seem viable, and she twisted slightly in her seat.

‘Robert?’ she croaked. ‘Please – Robert.’ Full sentences were beyond her.

‘He thought you were Flora,’ Robert explained superfluously. ‘That’s why he showed himself.’ He seemed to be wondering at the way events had turned. ‘The sort of thing you couldn’t possibly predict,’ he went on. Thea began to doubt Robert Craven’s sanity, despairing of him as a potential saviour.

‘She’s like Flo, though, isn’t she,’ Desmond said, joining in the wonderment. ‘You couldn’t blame me.’

‘Nobody’s blaming you, Des. Just dump this bloody car, will you.’

The headlights had finally been turned on, as they put a half-mile or so behind them. Thea made no attempt to work out where they were going.

‘Leave it at Sapperton,’ Robert said. ‘We can walk back from there.’

Desmond made another wordless gargle, which could have been agreement. Thea’s body began to misbehave in another direction. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said. And before anybody could react, she was. Even as it was happening, she managed to acknowledge that it was marginally preferable to losing control of the other end.

Vomit seemed to fill the car. It went on Hepzie, the seat, the floor, and Desmond’s trousers, as she leaned helplessly towards him. Somewhere behind her Robert was half laughing, half registering disgust. When it was over, Desmond was still driving, but much more slowly.

‘Urgghh,’ said Thea.

‘Now we’ll
have
to dump the car,’ said Robert.

The next hour was full of the stuff of nightmare. A strange dark route led downhill through fields and then into woodland. The men took an arm each and marched her along, ignoring stumbles. They complained about the smell of vomit at first, but soon all three of them grew used to it. But the worst thing, by far, was Hepzie. She had been left behind in the car, and when Robert had pointed out that she would bark and bring notice to the vehicle, Desmond had wrapped a white handkerchief tightly around her muzzle. The dog’s shocked response to this piece of violence had broken Thea’s heart. ‘She’ll suffocate,’ she
had wailed. ‘She’ll die of thirst.’

‘I’ll kill her now then, shall I?’ Desmond had flexed his strong tense hands. ‘That might be a better idea anyway.’

Thea had gone silent then, and ice cold. ‘No, no,’ Robert had protested lightly. ‘No need for that. Don’t get carried away, like you did with the damned cat.’

For which mercy, Thea was already eternally grateful to Robert Craven, whatever he might do to her in the coming night. Learning that it had been Desmond who had run over the Siamese was shocking in itself, but not on her immediate list of things she had to think about.

The nightmare became even more unreal when they reached their destination. A waxing moon combined with the last moments of daylight was giving enough illumination for Thea to recognise where they were, just before she was pushed down into squelchy sludge that reminded her all too vividly of the accident in the lock earlier that day. ‘It’s the tunnel!’ she said, surprise jolting her into lucid language. ‘The canal tunnel.’

‘Right,’ confirmed Robert. ‘And I can promise you nobody’s going to find you in here.’

A new thought hit Thea. Hepzie would find her. When she was eventually released from her prison, she would detect her mistress’s scent and lead the police directly to her. But the hope this generated
was tainted by dread that the spaniel would be intercepted and strangled by Desmond, before anybody could stop him. And in any case, it would be hours and hours before that could happen. The car had been tucked into a gateway, where it could remain unseen for days. The dog could die before anybody found her. Virtually all the fleeting hope drained away, and Thea slumped between her captors, not caring if she fell in the stagnant mud.

The clinging remnants of vomit on her clothes made Thea abhorrent to herself. Her body cringed inside the besmirched garments, struggling to get away, to shrivel into a smaller protective shell. She was stiff with the effort, hardly knowing herself in these extremes of fear and dread.

Inside the tunnel, to a distance of some twenty or thirty yards, a platform had been erected, stretching across the whole width. It was raised only a foot above the floor, giving enough headroom to stand up, although Desmond had to crouch slightly. It smelled of rotting vegetation and mouldering stone and was almost completely dark. ‘They’ll never find us here,’ said Robert again. There was a boyish glee in his voice, a pride at having discovered the perfect hideaway.

‘Quiet,’ said Desmond.

Thea watched the pewter flickers of light on the watery mud at the mouth of the tunnel, miserably aware that their footprints had already
disappeared. It was, as Robert had said, a very good hiding place.

Slowly she grasped that the next phase had not been planned. The men had no idea what to do with her. She was a spanner in the works, and nothing more than a panicky instinct to hide had brought them here. Although, she suspected, this must be where Desmond had spent the greater part of the past week. Had he been here when she and Jocelyn had come to look at the tunnel? The thought exhausted her with its implications and ironies.

She tried to conjure Hollis, the concerned professional, who would institute an efficient search unclouded by emotion. He would find his car – of course he would. He would have patrols out searching at this very moment. It wasn’t late – not much after ten. Things could not possibly be as desperate as they seemed.

Robert spoke, his voice echoing in the closed space. ‘I’ll have to get back. Frannie’s going to worry. I told her I was only going for a drink. If she thought I’d been with you—’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Desmond grated.

‘Come on, Des.’ The forced lightness did not quite conceal the nervousness beneath. ‘Frannie isn’t going to take much more of this. She hasn’t liked it from the start. If she knew what had really—’

‘Shut up,’ Desmond snarled. ‘Frannie’s not my problem.’

Thea edged up against the dank brickwork, curling herself into a small huddle of misery. When this was over, she thought, her account of how she’d behaved would be deeply unimpressive. She imagined Jocelyn’s disappointment in her. ‘Didn’t you give them a good telling off, like you did with that Dominic?’ she’d say. The idea made her shudder, and once begun, she found she couldn’t stop. Her whole body began trembling violently.

Desmond detected the vibrations. ‘You’re not going to spew again, are you?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t think so,’ she stammered. ‘I’m just cold.’

‘Can’t you phone her?’ Desmond returned to Robert and his troublesome wife.

‘And say what? How do I explain a quick pint turning into being out all night?’

Desmond gave up arguing. ‘Well I want you here. No more to be said.’

‘Why, though? What good’s it going to do? We can’t stay here forever.’

‘Let me think.’

Thea kept her eyes on the mouth of the tunnel, willing someone to come, ready to scream at the slightest sign of anyone. Desmond’s uncertainty had given her a fleeting sense of possibility, if only she could get her brain to work. But not being able to see the men’s faces was a severe handicap. They sat on the platform, shifting their weight from time to time, but moving little. She had no idea what
provisions there might be, although she’d felt a piece of fabric as they’d lifted her into place, which suggested some sort of mattress or bedding. A dark shape at the further end was just visible, which could possibly be a box containing food or drink. Or guns, knives, ropes…

‘Listen,’ Desmond ordered. ‘They’ll have arrested the Innes lads by this time, and have them charged with killing Nick. Once that happens, they’re not going to worry about any more investigations. They still think I’m in Ireland anyway. I can get away tonight, and disappear.’ He spoke tightly, forcing the words out through rage and the panicked frustration of the fugitive.

‘Disappear,’ Robert echoed. ‘Big change of plan is that, Des.’

‘Thanks to this bitch,’ Desmond snarled, thumping Thea in the ribs. ‘I ought to throttle her and leave her here. They’d never find a body behind the landslide further up the tunnel.’

‘They might,’ Robert warned. ‘For God’s sake, don’t make things any worse.’

‘I thought it was Flora,’ Desmond grieved at his own fatal mistake. ‘She looked like Flora.’

‘Right. She did. I thought it was her as well. Especially—’

‘Especially what?’

‘Well, being near the barn. I mean, that’s where Flora would go, isn’t it.’

‘That bastard!’ Desmond’s voice went high with hatred. Thea heard the passion of the killer and her shivering increased. ‘I’d do it again, Rob. Knowing what he was up to with Flo – he deserved what he got.’

‘Yeah,’ Robert endorsed. ‘’Course he did. Her being so young, what else is a dad meant to do?’

Thea barely registered that she’d just heard the explanation for Nick’s killing. That hadn’t mattered to her for quite some time now.

‘Okay, here’s the plan.’ Desmond inhaled shakily. ‘We stay here till midnight or a bit after. Tie this cow up and leave her here. You can go home and explain to Frannie – say you got playing cards in the upstairs room or something. I’ll have to—’ Thea could hear the sudden understanding in his silence. She knew what he had done. With her alive he would never be safe. Given that he trusted Robert never to reveal the secret, he could have reappeared as if returning from the Ireland holiday, and simply carried on his normal life. Working on the assumption that the police would persist in prosecuting Dominic and Jeremy, even if they were eventually acquitted, the lapse of time would remove both evidence and urgency from the case. It was shaky, but probably worth the risk.

‘Jesus!’ Desmond exploded. ‘I’ll have to kill her. You see that, don’t you?’ Thea wasn’t sure whether he was addressing her or Robert, and couldn’t see
that it mattered. She’d worked it out ahead of him, anyway.

‘Wait,’ Robert urged. ‘She might not talk. Explain it to her. She’ll see it your way. Nick Franklyn was a slimy little pervert, no good to anybody. You did the world a favour. She doesn’t have to go running to the police.’