Country Pursuits (44 page)

Long after the party had finished and the drama died down, Jed and Camilla consummated their relationship back at No. 5 The Green. The passion was certainly there, but it was also so tender and loving that it felt like Jed's first time with a woman. The detached, self-fulfilling need he'd had with Stacey, and all the girls before her, had gone. As he lay there afterwards and kissed every inch of Camilla's body, he told her he loved her.

Looking at his naked, muscular body, Camilla couldn't quite believe how sexy he was. Her body was still trembling from the blissful orgasm Jed had brought her to five minutes ago. They were so different, yet so in tune with each other. ‘I think I love you, too,' she whispered back, her hand edging down to find his perfect cock again.

THE NEXT DAY
there were some extremely sore heads round the village. Freddie woke up in bed next to Angie, naked apart from a diamond tiara on his head, and spent all day ringing round frantically trying to track down the owner. Angie, who felt nearly as hungover, managed to stagger out of bed at a reasonable hour to get over to Fairoaks. The previous night, in her euphoric drunkenness, she had promised Clementine she would help her add up the money they had raised overall.

As she walked up the path, Angie realized she was feeling rather sick, and it wasn't just to do with her hangover. What if last night had just been a wonderful dream? What if they didn't reach the target?

But as soon as Clementine flung the front door open, Angie knew it was good news. When the older woman took her into her study, showed her all the sums and finally told her the amount, Angie went weak at the knees and had to sit down. Her hands only stopped shaking when she took the first glug of an extra strong G and T, hastily mixed for her by Brenda.

The final amount was a staggering £16.6 million.

‘Enough to buy the Meadows
and
have change in our pockets!' cried Angie. She leapt up and did a little jig of joy around the room. ‘Sid Sykes is never going to match it. Hurrah!'

For the first time, Clementine felt confident she was right. She had just finished a phone call with Humphrey from the county council office. ‘You know I would never say something I didn't mean, old bean,' he had told her. ‘But I really do think you've got it in the bag. Fifteen mill really is top whack for that place. No one else has that kind of money to throw at it, not even Sykes.'

Clementine smiled at Angie. ‘My dear. As one would say, I do believe we have got it in the bag.'

Over at Bedlington police station, Detective Inspector Kevin Rance was about to have one of the most extraordinary days of his career.

He was alone in the office, having just finished an extremely boring traffic-accident report. Sighing, Rance pushed his chair back and gazed up at the ceiling. For someone who lived, worked and breathed the job, he couldn't remember a time when he had felt more disillusioned. The Revd Goody murder inquiry had ground to a complete halt. Most of the team had been pulled off the case to work on other, more pressing matters, and only Rance and PC Penny were left to go over old ground and wait in vain for new lines of inquiry to materialize.

Not that they were going to at this rate. Earlier that morning, Rance had got an astonishing phone call from Sir Ambrose Fraser to inform him his
daughter Harriet had turned up safe and well. As much as Rance could understand Ambrose's delight, the other half of him wanted to go down to Gate Cottage and give Harriet Fraser a piece of his mind. Surely one bloody phone call home to tell everyone she was alive and well wouldn't have been too hard? Rance didn't pause to consider why the considerate and home-loving Harriet might have acted in the way she did, or the complexities and traumas that Fraser family life entailed. Facts, figures and results were all that mattered to Rance. Some stupid Hooray Henrietta buggering off to find herself – probably on daddy's credit card, he thought savagely – did not.

Penny came rushing into the room, eyes more bulbous than ever, face red with excitement.

‘There's someone outside I think you should see, Guv!' he gasped.

‘Cheryl from Girls Aloud?' asked Rance grumpily. Then he realized he'd never seen the young constable quite so het up, and sat up straight.

‘Who is it, Penny?'

PC Penny could hardly get the words out. ‘It's . . . it's a man who says he was with the Reverend Goody the night he died!'

Rance was out of his chair now, bounding round to the other side of the desk.

‘This bloke says the Reverend wasn't murdered, that they were playing some kind of sex game!' squeaked Penny. Rance stopped in his tracks. ‘The Reverend was gay?' he asked, astonished.

‘Too right! This bloke met him in some internet chat room and the Reverend invited him over to the
rectory for some hanky panky or something. Apparently they were into some pretty kinky stuff . . .'

Rance hitched up his trousers grimly. ‘Let's get to the bottom of this – no pun intended – right away.'

They were in interview room two. The man sitting across the small square table from DI Rance looked like he wouldn't say ‘boo' to a goose. Average height, he had short thinning dark hair, a round, slightly petulant face, and rimless half-moon spectacles which he kept taking off and polishing nervously with his shirt sleeve. He had just told them his name was Gareth Hebdon and he was a 34-year-old librarian from Birmingham.

‘I can't live with it any longer!' Gareth wailed, small mole-like eyes filling up with tears. ‘I wanted to protect Arthur, and all I've done is let him down! My poor Arthur!' Gareth burst into snorts of noisy tears.

Penny was instantly there with a Kleenex, waving it solicitously in front of him. Gareth accepted it gratefully. ‘Th-th-thank you,' he said from behind the tissue.

Rance wasn't so sympathetic. He leaned over Gareth ominously.

‘Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?'

It took twenty tortuous minutes, punctuated by sobs, before the whole sorry story was out. By the end of it, DI Rance wanted to grab hold of PC Penny's baton and shove it somewhere where the sun didn't shine. He couldn't believe this bloody bloke!

It transpired that the two men had been conducting a secret affair for six months. They had indeed first met on an internet dating site, and after a clandestine meeting in an Oxford library they had begun a full-blown love affair. Gareth claimed he was sick of hiding in the closet, and wanted to leave his wife and come out to the world as the Reverend's other half.

‘Is that where you've been all these months, then?' barked Rance. ‘In the bleeding closet?'

‘You're
married
?' squealed Penny.

‘Arthur begged me not to tell the truth! He said he'd dedicated his life to the church and it would ruin everything. I told him not to be so stupid, that there are more gay vicars around than you can shake a cassock at these days . . .'

At this particular revelation Penny's eyebrows shot into his hairline.

Gareth carried on, ‘Arthur wouldn't listen to me. He said if we were to go on seeing each other, it would have to be in secret. No one else knew about us. That was the only way Arthur wanted it.' He sniffed loudly. ‘I loved him so much, I went along with it.'

‘Would you like to tell me what happened on the night the Reverend died?' asked Rance grimly. Gareth went pale and seemed to baulk at the memory.

‘It was awful. I decided to go and have a bath and left him listening to Radio 4. When I came back, he was dead.' Gareth shuddered. ‘He was just
hanging
there from a hook on the door with the scarf round his neck.' He burst into loud, noisy sobs again. ‘I've had auto-erotic asphyxiation experiences
plenty of times and it's never gone wrong before!'

‘Auto what?' asked Penny, clearly baffled. What was this bloke talking about cars for?

‘Auto-eroticism Penny,' Rance informed him. ‘It's a sexual practice when people strangle themselves to reach orgasm. Something about cutting off the blood supply to heighten the senses.'

This time, Penny's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

‘I – I came back and when I saw poor Arthur there, I panicked,' said Gareth. ‘I went over to revive him, but he was obviously dead.' Gareth's pudgy bottom lip wobbled. ‘I was in a state of shock, but eventually I untied him from the door and dragged him over to the bed. I couldn't bear to leave him just lying there for the world to see. People would have put two and two together and our – his – secret would have been out. I know what it's like, people would have made his life sound sordid, and he wouldn't have been there to defend himself.' Gareth blew noisily into his sodden tissue.

‘Even if what you say is correct, you
did
leave him there, didn't you, Mr Hebdon?' barked Rance. ‘I don't need to tell you you're in
very serious trouble
. A possible murder suspect, perverting the course of justice, wasting police time . . . Don't you watch the news, man? We've had a full-scale murder hunt going on!' Rance exhaled angrily. What a cock-up.

‘Don't you think I've wrestled with my conscience every day!' wailed Gareth. ‘I haven't been able to eat or sleep, I've left my wife because I couldn't go on living a lie. Every time I went to phone the police, I'd hear Arthur's voice saying: “We can never tell anyone.” ' Gareth wiped his nose
on the back of his sleeve. ‘It was horrible to let people believe Arthur had been murdered, but I thought anything was better than the truth. I wanted him respected in death, as he was in life.' He looked at the police officers through red-rimmed eyes. ‘You do understand, don't you?'

The months of hard slog and frustration had come to a head. Rance slammed his hands down on the desk, making Gareth and Penny both jump.

‘No, I bloody don't understand!' he roared. ‘We've been running around here like blue-arsed flies for the past five months while you've been living in cloud bloody cuckoo land!'

‘I'm here now, aren't I?' Gareth said plaintively. ‘I'm a law-abiding citizen y'know.'

‘Ha!' shouted Rance. ‘I don't think so. For all this sob-story malarkey, may I remind you that you are under suspicion for the killing of the Reverend Arthur Hillary Goody!'

At this, Gareth went into meltdown, wringing his hands. ‘I'm not a murderer, you've got to believe me!' he shrieked. ‘I know I should have come forward earlier, but I was in turmoil!' He put his face into his arms and started sobbing violently.

Rance studied the man caustically. He'd seen enough crocodile tears in interview rooms to spot them a mile off, but he didn't believe Gareth Hebdon was a cold-blooded killer. Self-obsessed and highly-strung as he was, the guy just didn't have it in him. Not that Rance was going to tell him that just yet.

‘You, Mr Hebdon, are not going anywhere until you answer a few more questions,' Rance told him. ‘Let's get on with this, shall we?'

Penny had heard that tone of voice before. He looked at the snivelling witness in front of him, and knew his day was about to get much, much worse.

Caro and Milo ended up staying at Clementine's on the night of the ball. When she cautiously returned to Mill House the next day, having waited to give Sebastian enough time to pack his belongings, Caro's heart was in her mouth at the thought of what she might find. Perhaps he would have gone ballistic and taken everything with him; or maybe he'd have trashed the place out of spite. Even worse, he might still be there, simply refusing to leave. As she put the key in the front door, Caro's heart sank at the thought of another confrontation.

Instead she was greeted by silence. It should have been a horribly isolating moment of realization, but Caro took a deep breath and felt only relief. She made her way up the stairs and into their bedroom. Sebastian had gone. It wasn't the empty wardrobe or the absence of face serums and pore strips in the bathroom that told her this. All the tension and misery in the place seemed to have evaporated. Even when Sebastian hadn't been at home, he had somehow managed to distil negativity into the very bones of the house. But today it felt welcoming and happy for the first time. It was almost like an exorcism had been performed, driving away Sebastian's nasty spirit.

Caro looked in the mirror above the fireplace and smiled at her reflection tentatively. The smile felt natural and good.

‘I think I'm going to be OK,' she said aloud.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR RANCE
was furious again. In fact, he was completely boiling. It was two days after the ball and he'd just been summoned to Chief Inspector Haddock's office. After Gareth Hebdon had come forward, a second pathologist had been ordered to go through the Reverend's post-mortem results one more time. She had come back with conclusive evidence that the death was not suspicious. If the original pathologist, Bernard Trump, hadn't been several sheets to the wind that day in the mortuary, he would have arrived at the same conclusion. Trump was promptly hauled up in front of a disciplinary hearing, with rumours of an immediate retirement and a trip to a drying-out clinic in the West Country.

Despite this farrago, Rance had been ready to slap several lesser charges on Hebdon, including failure to report a death. Then Haddock had called him in and ordered him to let Hebdon off. Muttering on about too much bad press around the case, and the police looking like a laughing-stock, Haddock had said he wanted the whole furore to die down naturally. When Rance had tried to object,
his superior officer had angrily informed him that he could like it or lump it, before adding in a scathing tone that, under the circumstances, Rance should be thankful he still had a career in the police force. ‘Can't believe you didn't realize her passport was missing, man.'

Furious at Haddock and even more furious at himself, Rance stormed down the corridor, flinging open the door to the main office. DS Powers, head buried in the sports section of the
Bedlington Bugle
, looked up in bemusement. ‘Don't ask, Powers, just don't ask,' Rance growled, and threw himself down in his chair.