A Death to Record (28 page)

She hadn’t wanted to find him. She hadn’t been following him or spying or anything. She’d just been minding her own business, last summer holidays, looking for somewhere shady to sit with her Game Boy, because Mum was driving her mad in the house. She’d gone to her pets’ area, where she could watch the rabbits and other animals all getting on so nicely in their big cages
that Dad had made for them. There was a copse of trees behind the cottages, down in a bit of a dip with a brook running through it. When she was little, Abigail used to spend hours down here on her own, paddling in the water and making dams and mud pies. She regarded it as almost her own private property, Dad should have known that. He shouldn’t have been there at all, never mind doing what he was doing.

It had been horrible, the awful sounds and the dreadful violence of it. After that she hadn’t been able to feel the same about him, even though he’d been her same old dad around the house. She knew something was different, even when she managed to push it out of her mind.

But she had never wanted him dead. He hadn’t deserved that –
nobody
deserved that. Even though she could already see that he wouldn’t really be missed, not even by her mum, and that without him there was a new sort of relief – still there was no way anyone should have killed him like that. She wanted to see him dead in his coffin and give him the special secret letter she’d written to him, and that she carried round with her, terrified that somebody might read it if she let it out of her sight. She wanted him to know that she knew what he had done, but it wasn’t going to be any use because what she really wanted was her
old
dad back, from before last summer. The dad she
remembered when she was little, who played and sang with her and laughed at the things she said and took her round the farm with him, talking about how lucky they were to live in the country where there was space to be free and nobody on your back all the time telling you what to do. The dad who let her keep a collection of stray animals, even though Gordon would have a fit if he knew about the badger.

Dad hadn’t always been rough with the cows, either. Only if one seemed to deliberately go against him did he lose his temper and punch it with his hard fist, or pull its tail up until it really hurt. Abigail knew that must be agony – the cow would moan and try to get away. Once a new heifer, brought in for the first time for milking, collapsed when Dad twisted her tail like that. Abby was twelve then and she never went back to watch the milking again, from that day on. She had trudged back to the cottage crying at the cruelty of it.

And now he’d been dead for nearly a week and already she could hardly remember his face. She had a horrible scary feeling that he had been a stranger who’d just happened to live in the same house as her. Gradually over the past few years he had become more and more unknowable. Even before the thing in the copse, she had felt a yawning gulf opening between them and she had
let it happen without doing anything to stop it. Parents, she had concluded, were only for when you were little and helpless. After that they were useless, and you had to find other people to love and talk to and share your secrets with.

Like Gary. They’d been going out together for a year now, and she knew it was one of those great romances that last for a lifetime. They’d get married when she was seventeen or eighteen and they’d always tell each other everything and he would be the best dad in the world, as well as a sweet lover and a fantastic friend.

She might even tell him one day what she’d seen Dad doing with Eliot Speedwell in the copse.

Lilah was feeling a lot less optimistic and powerful than she had a few days ago. Den knew she’d sent that letter; her whole gay triangle scenario, ludicrous now she thought about it, had crumbled to nothing almost before it started. Her only hope was that enough seeds of suspicion had been sown for Deirdre Watson to remain under police scrutiny. Lilah still thought Deirdre was a credible suspect. Maybe the woman had found out about Sean’s illegal calves – after all, it was part of her job to keep track of them all, with a proper ear-tag number for every single animal. Maybe she had tackled him about it and it led to a fight, with the recorder grabbing Ted’s fork.

And then there was the badger baiting. Nobody
seemed to doubt that Sean had been involved in that and Deirdre Watson definitely wouldn’t have had any stomach for that sort of thing. Nor would Davy Champion and his animals rights group. There was still hope, Lilah concluded. Just.

After a few more phone calls to old acquaintances, Lilah had discovered that Jeremy Page had apparently taken extreme offence at his girlfriend’s being the object of police interest, and shouted his mouth off in the pub about it on Saturday night.

‘I’m going to see Gordon again tonight,’ she told her mother. ‘I don’t expect I’ll be back till later in the week. I’ll take a few clothes and shampoo, so I can go direct from there to college. Okay?’

Miranda nodded doubtfully. ‘Looks as if I’m going to have to get used to living here on my own,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s time to think about selling the place,’ Lilah said for the hundredth time.

‘I’ll wait for prices to pick up,’ came the routine rejoinder.

‘Which they’re never going to do. They’re already umpteen per cent lower than when Daddy died.’

‘A blip. People are always going to want land. Besides, I’m not in any hurry. I quite fancy
another summer here without the cows. I’d never find anywhere as nice as this.’

‘It’s nice everywhere in the summer. But it’s not my problem. You do what you want.’

‘Right,’ agreed Miranda peaceably.

Outside, the Redstone farm buildings were decaying, rain and wind finding the weak spots; nettles and brambles growing up the sides of barns and sheds. Both the Beardon women knew that anyone buying the property now would probably raze everything but the house itself to the ground and start afresh with stables and looseboxes, or acres of glasshouses, and the whole character of the place would change beyond recognition. Neither was in any hurry for that to happen.

‘Gordon’s probably sorted out a relief milker by now,’ Lilah said. ‘He’s been talking about it for days.’

‘You don’t think he’ll use this as an excuse to get out of milk? Everybody else seems to be selling their herds.’

‘Shush!’ said Lilah with mock ferocity. ‘Don’t ever say that in his hearing. He’d rather die than sell his cows. They’re descended from the ones his father bought a million years ago. He might get sick of milking them, but he’s fantastically proud of them, all the same. He thinks he’s going to buck the trend and be the last dairy farmer in Devon, the way he talks.’ She frowned. ‘Though
he hasn’t been quite so sure of himself these past few weeks.’

Miranda sighed. ‘These men and their cows! Oh well – good luck to him, I say. I must admit he’s been clever, combining old-fashioned tradition with modern methods. Reminds me of somebody.’

‘Daddy, you mean. I had noticed, you know.’

‘Well, they do say everybody marries their mother. Looks as if you’re the exception.’

Lilah flushed. ‘Nobody mentioned marriage,’ she said, fearful of tempting fate.

Den was itching to bring Hillcock in for more questions.
Let me put it to you, Mr Hillcock, that you killed your herdsman last Tuesday. You drove a heavy fork into his body, twice. Why did
you do that, sir?
He wanted to watch the man’s face as he observed Den’s certainty of his guilt.

He made his feelings known to the DI. ‘What exactly do you want to ask him?’ Hemsley enquired.

Den gave him a diluted version.

‘Wouldn’t do any good,’ the Inspector opined. ‘He’s told us his story and he’ll stick to it. He’s not stupid; he knows we haven’t got anything firm enough to warrant charging him. All he has to do is watch himself, and live with himself, and he’s safe. If you bring him in and start bullying him,
you’ll just strengthen his resolve. Assuming he’s the one, of course. Which I’m still quite inclined to doubt.’

‘So what do we do now, then?’

‘More interviews with the people lower down the list. Firm up some more of the detail. You didn’t fool me about that fork, for one thing. I want sworn evidence that it was always next to the silage. Go and see the O’Farrell girl again, if you can do it delicately. Kids notice things, overhear conversations … get her on her own. She might have things she’d like to tell you, but not in front of her mum.’ Den refrained from mentioning that there were draconian rules about interviewing underage girls, and that anything she might say would comprise inadmissable evidence. He knew all too well that there was a mile-wide gulf between the rules and what actually took place.

Abigail seemed paler than before, when he caught up with her. She had the defiant air that typified the modern teenager; self-sufficient youngsters, accustomed to their mothers being out all day at work, and yet over-protected and supervised by teachers and childminders to within an inch of their lives. Abigail was an exception to this pattern, with her invalid mother, and father only a shout away, but she had managed to conform to the general appearance.

Den sat in his car and watched the girl walk a few yards from the bus stop, towards the cottage. Already it was getting dark, Abigail’s face white in the fading light.

He got out to meet her, trying to make it look like a coincidence that he was there at all. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you! Had a good day?’

She dipped her chin wordlessly, but her eyes were on his and he thought he detected a flash of hope in them. Either that or something very nearly as positive. She certainly didn’t seem sorry to see him.

‘Are you in a hurry or could we sit and chat in the car for a minute?’

She followed him without protest and they got into the front seats. ‘Haven’t you arrested Gordon yet?’ she demanded. ‘He killed again on Thursday, you know. He’s a bastard!’

Den shifted sideways, his long legs folded uncomfortably under the steering wheel. He could see the likeness to Hillcock, now he knew of her parentage, in the way her eyes were set deep in her skull and the jawline bowed out at the lower edges. But if Jilly Speedwell had kept quiet, would he ever have noticed? ‘What happened on Thursday?’ he asked. ‘Nobody reported anything to us.’

She laughed sarcastically. ‘They wouldn’t, would they? Not when thousands of badgers are being killed all across Devon.’

‘Gordon Hillcock killed a badger?’

‘Not
a
badger.
My
badger.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘He shot him.’

Den was genuinely saddened. ‘Oh no – not the one we fed for you the other night?’

She nodded. ‘Bodgy. He got out.’

Den’s stomach lurched. ‘We didn’t leave his cage unlocked, did we? Me and Mike?’

She shook her head. ‘Lucky for you, no. It was me. I was doing them in a rush, after school. He was clever, you know. If you didn’t push the stick right in, he could wriggle it out again and open the door.’

‘Did Gordon know it was yours?’

‘He says he didn’t. Dad told me to keep it secret. Gordon thinks badgers carry TB, so he’s stupid as well as a bastard. Even if he doesn’t agree with the cull. A cow can’t catch TB from a badger just by being in the same field as a badger – even if that badger has got it. It’s passed by droplets in the breath. You’d have to be about a millimetre away from it for ten minutes to stand any chance of catching anything from it. They’re all idiots, the government and MAFF and all those stupid scientists. And they’re criminals. It’s genocide.’

‘What did your dad think about it? Did he agree with the boss?’

She turned her face away abruptly. ‘Sort of,’ she muttered.

‘Abigail, I shouldn’t really be here with you. It’s not the proper way to do an interview, but I thought you might prefer to talk to me without your mum listening. You can get out and go, any time you feel like it – okay? I’m trusting you as much as you’re trusting me. Do you understand?’

‘Course I do. I know about girls shouting rape. I won’t do that. It’s stupid.’

‘Good. So tell me a bit more about your dad and what you first thought when you heard someone had killed him.’

‘I obviously hadn’t been
expecting
it, but somehow I wasn’t surprised.’ She looked at him with big eyes. The gathering darkness blurred the detail, making it somehow safer to talk. ‘You know about Fergus?’ she said suddenly.

‘The dog. Yes.’

‘Dad poisoned him.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I saw him mixing the stuff and putting it in some dog food. I tried to pretend to myself it was something else – medicine maybe, or vitamins, something that wouldn’t hurt him – but I always knew really. You know how you can fool yourself over things?’ She threw him a brief sideways glance. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so,’ he said slowly. ‘Sometimes things are too horrible to seem real.’

‘Right,’ she agreed forcefully. ‘Like the time …’ she paused.

‘I’m listening,’ he murmured. ‘The time—?’

‘I saw him in the copse, with Mr Page’s dog, Brewster. Another man was there, too. And another dog – a smaller one. He was making them fight, even though the little dog hadn’t got a chance. I wanted to make him stop them, but his face – he was
loving
it. He was all, you know, red and grinning. It was like a different person. I pretended it
was
a different person. You know – possessed. I thought an evil demon had got inside him, making him do it. And I don’t know where the little dog came from. I’d never seen it before. I think it must have died.’ She wiped a hand across her nose. ‘Why are men so horrible?’ she asked with a whimper.

‘I don’t think I can answer that,’ breathed Den. ‘Who was the other man?’

She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. He was walking away when I saw him. I think he was upset. His hand was over his face, like this.’ She put her fingers over her eyes.

They were silent for a moment, before Abigail spoke again. ‘It’s worse, being on a farm. Farms are killing places. Cows, sheep, rats, badgers, dogs, calves – the poor little calves …’ she faltered. ‘Even Dad was upset about them.’ Den blinked before remembering the dead bull
calves in the yard the first evening he’d come to Dunsworthy.

‘And now people,’ he offered.

‘It isn’t much different,’ she confided. ‘I’m as sad about Bodgy as I am about Dad. Is that terrible of me?’

Den paused. ‘You know, sometimes two sadnesses can get muddled up,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Remember when Princess Diana died and everybody started crying about it, even though they never even knew her? Well, I think that’s probably because they all had someone they really did love who’d died or gone away, and they had that sadness stored up inside them. So when the news was all about the tragic princess, with the flowers and the prayers and everything, that worked as a sort of unplugging – it opened up the feelings they’d already got inside them. Does that make any sense?’

‘Not a lot,’ she admitted. ‘Or not the way you think. I was already sad about Dad before he died. Because I couldn’t love him any more.’

Den made no comment. She looked up at him in the near darkness. ‘Last night I dreamt he was still alive,’ she whispered. ‘And when I woke up and remembered, I was
glad
. That’s the truth. I’m glad he’s dead.’

You and everyone else
, thought Den.

It wasn’t until he was driving back to the
station that he remembered the gun. Hillcock’s gun was still securely in police custody, waiting for such time as it might be deemed safe to return it to its owner. So how had he managed to shoot the badger?

The final encounter with the DI that day was brief, but shocking. Den’s report on the Sam Watson interview was on the desk. ‘I think we have to bring Deirdre Watson in first thing tomorrow,’ the Inspector said. ‘There’s too much against her now; at least as much as we had against Hillcock when we brought
him
in. She’s got to give us some answers in a formal interview.’

Den was struggling not to show his feelings. He clenched his fists in his jacket pockets. ‘You’re not arresting her?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘But
everyone
thinks it was Hillcock.’

‘Take it easy,’ Hemsley advised. ‘Trust me, okay?’

Den’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, then,’ he said.

On Tuesday morning, Den and the DI interviewed Deirdre together. There was no doubting that she was nervous; much more nervous, in fact, than she had been in the aftermath of finding Sean’s body. Den was struck by how much she had changed in a week.

‘As you might expect,’ Hemsley began, ‘we’ve uncovered a lot of information about Mr O’Farrell and the people who knew him, in the course of our investigation. In a number of instances, your name, or that of one of your children, has been mentioned. All we’d like to establish this morning is just how this comes about.’ He spoke softly, both hands on the table in front of him, no trace of anger or accusation in his tone. Deirdre sat on the edge of the chair, elbows tight against her sides, breathing in shallow gasps. She nodded rapidly, to indicate her willingness to cooperate.

‘We understand that O’Farrell was consistently inhumane to the animals on the farm,’ he said.

Deirdre twisted her hands together. ‘I can see you think I have reason to object to Sean’s activities,’ she said. ‘And I admit I didn’t tell the sergeant everything when he came to question me last week.’

‘Could you tell us now – honestly – what your feelings towards Sean O’Farrell were?’

‘He sickened me.’

‘And from what I hear, you’re not easily sickened?’ Hemsley suggested.