A Grave in the Cotswolds (33 page)

I lowered myself once more to the wet grass. ‘Jeremy – you’re in awful trouble. You know that, don’t you?’

He smiled painfully. ‘Not bothered,’ he asserted. ‘That lady said I shouldn’t be upset.’

‘Thea? You mean Thea? Surely she doesn’t know—?’

‘That I cracked his head open with a spade? Course she doesn’t. She thinks it was Ma and Dad.’

‘A spade?’

‘Yeah. The one I used to help here, after the funeral. I never gave it back to the old bloke. He went off and left me on my own. Said he’d collect it another day, if I wanted to finish off. Nice old man, talked to me about bodies and souls and stuff.’

‘And you came back the next day, when I was here arguing with the man from the council?’

‘Couldn’t hear all of it, but it was obvious what he wanted. Then that woman showed up in her car…’

I had to think. ‘Jessica! She’s Thea’s daughter. She’s in the police.’

He shrugged. ‘She was a nuisance. But I had the bike, and waited till you’d driven off – it was for Carrie, d’you see?’ Much of his bravado had slipped, and he sounded close to pleading.

‘When did Thea tell you not to be upset?’

‘At the co-housing place. She told Harry to have a word with me, saying I ought to come back here today because something important was happening. Tricked me, didn’t she?’ He spoke wryly, and I thought I could see a shadowy grin on his face.

‘And have you told Carrie what you did?’

He nodded. ‘Had to talk to someone. She’s ace on the mobile – texts me the whole time. I sent her a picture of the bloke – not too close up – the blood didn’t really show. But she told me I did the right thing. She said the grave was the only bright thing in her life, thinking she’d be lying here next to Auntie Greta for ever. I sent her pictures of that as well.’

‘I expect you did,’ I said, thinking that Carrie Talbot’s phone was all that would be needed to convict young Jeremy of premeditated murder.

While I was wondering whether he would accompany me quietly if I made a citizen’s arrest, and if so, where we would go without any transport, his telephone warbled at him.

He answered it without hesitation, its little screen lighting up in an eerie glow. ‘Yeah?’ he grunted into it. Not sweet sister Carrie, then, I concluded. ‘Yeah, Ma, I’m OK. What d’you want?’

He listened for a moment, heaved a long sigh, and said, ‘Whatever,’ before closing down the call. I was left very little the wiser. The only immediate consequence was that I remembered that I too had a phone, and could call for assistance whenever I chose.

‘We have to go,’ I said. Clouds had obscured the moon, so I reached out and switched the lantern Harry had given me to its lowest setting. ‘Turn it off,’ growled Jeremy, but I ignored him.

‘We’ll need it to find your bike,’ I said.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he spoke softly, distractedly. ‘I’m not going anywhere. This is my place now. Mine, and Carrie’s and Auntie Greta’s.’

I was unforgivably slow to react. He had taken a knife from his pocket, pushing a catch to produce a vicious blade that glinted in the soft beam of the lantern, before I had any notion of what he intended. Perhaps, subliminally, I couldn’t believe a person could kill himself, leaving his last word to his mother a laconic
Whatever.
That simply could not happen.

But it did. He turned away from me, facing his aunt’s grave, and drew the blade firmly across his own throat, starting just below his left ear.

Without thinking, I flicked the light to full beam, watching in horror as the unnaturally purple fountain gushed from the boy’s throat.

He couldn’t die. This single thought shouted itself at me, over and over. The carotid artery was severed – one of the quickest and most certain ways to bleed to death. It was extremely difficult to stem the flow, to find the right pressure point. But failing a highly trained paramedic, I was a good person to be on the spot. I knew about this stuff.

In the darkness, my clothes soaked by the spurting blood, I found the right place, and exerted the right pressure. I murmured soothingly, hoping to slow his heart rate from the high panic mode it was liable to be in. It would be working overtime to keep his brain and lungs supplied with oxygen. But instead it was sending the precious blood uselessly out into the open air.

I had no idea of the passage of time, but it seemed quite a while before people came running to my side with bright torches. I ignored them, never even asking myself how they knew to come when I hadn’t made any effort to summon them. ‘What did he do?’ asked a man, repeatedly. ‘What’s he done?’ They shone their lights onto Jeremy’s neck and made appalled noises. Nobody tried to elbow me aside until eventually I caught sight of a blue flashing light out in the road, and then there was a woman with an equipment case and needles, and finally a stretcher.

‘Don’t let him die,’ I pleaded. ‘He’s only seventeen.’

‘You did the right thing, mate,’ said a man. ‘The flow’s slowed right down already. He’ll survive.’

I was too shaky to even try to stand up. Everything was sticking to me, the terrifying hot smell of blood all around me. The lights were all on me, so I couldn’t see who was holding them, couldn’t make out the voices as coming from anybody I knew. There was, in truth, only one voice that I was listening for.

It came, at last. ‘Come on, Drew, we can go now. You were amazing. We never
dreamt
– I mean, it didn’t occur to us that he’d do something like that. That is – we were expecting one of his
parents
to follow you, not Jeremy.’ She sounded almost as shaky as me.

‘Were they watching us, then? Listening to what he said? We were under
surveillance
?’ The idea enraged me beyond all reason. After all, they would feel perfectly justified, the clever way the whole thing had been set up, the satisfactory outcome. They’d claim, no doubt, that they’d saved the boy’s life by being on the scene so quickly.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘And you
knew
about it?’

‘It was my idea,’ she said proudly.

I staggered to my feet, walking stiff-legged from the clotting blood that seemed to coat me from head to foot. I had to fight off tears that had gathered at the back of my nose. I felt no sense of achievement, no pleasure at being exonerated from Mr Maynard’s murder. I felt sick and sad and defeated.

‘He did it for his sister,’ I muttered, when I was in Thea’s car, making a terrible mess of her upholstery. ‘Carrie. He did it for her.’

‘They’ll have got it all on tape,’ she said, as if that was some sort of consolation.

‘He’s only seventeen.’ This was another persistent thought that I couldn’t shift. ‘And he wanted to die.’

‘He couldn’t see any other way out.’

‘That wasn’t it. He wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to be with his aunt, and maybe blazing a trail for his sister. That field – it was much more important to them all than we realised.’

‘So why didn’t Mrs Simmonds check more carefully as to who owned it?’

I sighed. ‘Because she trusted me to make it all right.’

We had nowhere to go. Thea had been driving through the lanes for ten minutes before I started to wonder where we were heading. It was one in the morning, and I needed a hot shower more than I ever had in my life. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Cirencester,’ she told me, as if it was obvious.

‘Why?’

‘The police have got a flat ready for us to use. We’re VIPs now. They’ve pulled out all the stops for us.’

I was too traumatised to argue or enquire any further. Nothing seemed to matter very much.

I slept deeply for about three hours, and then woke while it was still dark. My first thoughts were about the spring equinox, the perfect balance between night and day, the subtle delight in the slowly lengthening evenings, the burgeoning life in my vegetable plot, the discarding of bedcovers and warm clothes. And then I reproached myself for this escape into the cosmic when individual people were suffering so badly. Nothing was actually concluded – Judith Talbot burnt herself into my consciousness: the twice-bereaved mother, with her dying daughter and murdering son. She was an ordinary inoffensive woman, capable of the normal range of emotions, guilty of nothing more than an inability to watch her girl disintegrate before her eyes. Charles and Jeremy both seemed to feel she was a coward, a failed mother, because she carried on with her life and let other people cope with Carrie.

And Helena Maynard – would she understand why her husband had died? Would it separate her from Charles Talbot, or would they grow closer now that both were free and available? It would be a neat recompense for the miserable times ahead.

Because I knew, better than most, that the bad times were still in front of them. Jeremy would recover, only to be charged with murder and confined in some special prison for minors until he was eighteen. They would live with the stigma for ever.

And the grave. What was the future for the grave?

Thea came into my room, wearing a large green dressing gown that looked as if it would wrap around her two or three times. She carried two mugs of tea, and put one down carefully beside my bed.

‘Morning,’ she said.

I looked at her for a long moment. She was pale, with mauve shadows under her eyes. She hadn’t brushed her hair and it stuck up in funny places. There was a slightly dusty smell about her, that I thought must come from the dressing gown. ‘Morning,’ I replied.

‘Drew…’ she began, and I spotted one of those exhausting female conversations about to begin. One of those analytical, emotional speeches which said far too much. I gave her no invitation to continue.

‘I’ve been lying awake all night, thinking,’ she went on. ‘Trying to analyse myself, mostly. Things could have gone dreadfully wrong last night, all because of me. I wasn’t fair to you, letting you get into such a horrible situation.’

I hauled myself more upright, wanting to get out of bed, but belatedly aware that I had fallen into bed after the hot shower wearing nothing whatsoever.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You had my best interests at heart, I’m sure.’

I had no reason to absolve her from her manipulative ways, apart from her obviously good intentions, and her disarming apology.

‘I did,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t actually any of my business, was it?’

‘Go,’ I ordered her. ‘Take your tea and leave me alone.’ Then I remembered I had no clean clothes, other than a shirt – if my bag had somehow miraculously caught up with me. ‘What am I going to wear?’

She pointed to a cupboard in the corner. ‘There are things in there. It’s all very well equipped.’ She spoke almost normally, just a tight little catch in every other word betrayed her.

‘The police will want to talk to us.’

‘I expect they will.’

‘Where’s your dog?’

‘On my bed, where she always is.’

‘And where did you say we are?’

‘Cirencester.’

‘Oh. I’ve never been to Cirencester.’

‘Well, I can show you around, if you like. It’s got a very splendid church.’

‘Just what we need,’ I said, with heavy emphasis.

She laughed, and went downstairs.

We were debriefed by DI Basildon, who had evidently fallen for Thea pretty heavily. What man wouldn’t, I asked myself.

The news about Jeremy was as reassuring as possible, in the circumstances. He would survive with no permanent physical damage. There were no loose ends left to tie – the Talbots were miserable, Mrs Maynard was mildly apologetic, Harry Richmond was energised by his role in Thea’s plan, returning to the co-housing group with quite a tale to tell. I reviewed Thea’s part in the whole business in small stages. She had kept so much concealed from me, either not trusting me to remember my lines, or still very slightly unsure as to whether I had indeed bashed Mr Maynard to death. Or had she believed herself to be protecting me? That, when I thought of it, seemed the most convincing explanation.

The solicitor who had handled Mrs Simmonds’ affairs contacted me – rather late, it seemed to me, on reflection – and offered to conduct a legal battle to secure ownership of the house.

‘What about the field?’ I asked.

He paused. ‘I’m only guessing, but I suspect there wouldn’t be much objection from the council to selling it for a fair figure.’

‘But I don’t have any money,’ I protested.

‘You have assets,’ he corrected me. ‘I think you’ll find it feasible, once all the excitement has died down.’

The excitement turned out to be considerable over the next few days. The story made headlines in several local newspapers, and was mentioned in the nationals in their turn. The boy who only wanted to save his beloved aunt’s grave was given a cautious approval, despite his arrest for murder. Even I could see that Gloucestershire Council might be reluctant to have any more to do with the infamous grave. I began to view it from a more businesslike angle. Maggs, when she finally grasped the complete story, was loudly enthusiastic.

‘There’ll be
loads
of people wanting to be buried there!’ she crowed, with a highly premature delight.

‘But we have to
live
there,’ I objected. ‘How do you think that’s going to work?’

‘It’ll work,’ she said confidently. ‘And when that boy comes out of prison, he can join us.’

A whole new life offered itself temptingly to my gaze. Perhaps I could move to the Cotswolds, start a new business, leaving Maggs to run everything in Somerset. It might just work, given enough luck and goodwill. I dreamt this seductive dream for all of five minutes before the complications crowded in and I felt weak at the prospect of so much change.

I went home, and spent a week strenuously chasing up business, sending out leaflets, even approaching a few groups such as Probus and Inner Wheel with a view to doing one of my talks, which had fallen into abeyance after Karen’s injury.

Thea Osborne phoned me after a week or so, asking how I was feeling, and whether I’d made any long-term decisions.

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘It’s far too soon. How about you?’

‘I’ve agreed to do another house-sit in Cranham, in July,’ she said. ‘It’s in a lovely old manor house, apparently. I’ll go and see them next week. I’m really looking forward to it.’