Fear in the Cotswolds (19 page)

‘So…coffee?’

‘Thanks,’ she nodded, beginning to feel slightly foolish. ‘But listen…exactly where was Bunny found, do you know?’

He reared back, chin high, revealing a thin vulnerable throat. He was very pale, she noticed, with long fingers and narrow shoulders. ‘What’s it to do with you?’ he spluttered.

‘Well, nothing, officially. But I did find George Jewell’s body, and then the detective superintendent came to see me, and I have got rather attached to sweet little Nicky. I just want to help,’ she finished weakly.

‘I don’t know the precise answer anyway,’ he said. ‘She was hit, I think, and then dumped in a ditch just down the lane from the house.’

Thea’s head began to buzz. She had envisaged a spot rather further away. ‘You mean somewhere near that clump of trees, where I thought George might have gone?’

‘So it seems. There’s a path that runs the other side of the trees from where you’re staying. It connects with the road they live in. The snow had covered her almost completely, as I understand it.’ He spoke hoarsely, steadfastly avoiding Thea’s gaze.

‘Did she die before or after George? That seems really important, don’t you think?’

He shrugged tightly, edging slowly towards a door she assumed led to the kitchen. ‘Not my problem,’ he said. ‘They’re both dead – isn’t that enough?’

‘Did you know George?’

‘Of course. He lived next door to my brother.’

‘Yes, I know he did. I’ve been in the house, remember.’

‘Have you?’ He frowned at her.

‘Yes,’ she said with patient emphasis. ‘I followed the trail back from where I saw him in the snow, and it led to his house.’

The adam’s apple in Tony’s throat bobbed and dipped as he digested this information. ‘Oh,’ he said, still trying to escape to the kitchen. ‘Nobody told me that.’

She frowned, trying to untangle who knew what, and whether she could trust Tony to be telling the truth.

‘That seems quite odd,’ she said. ‘After all, you must have been there since they found Bunny. You were with Simon on Tuesday in Northleach.’

‘Be quiet,’ he ordered her fiercely. ‘Stop
telling
me things. Isn’t this bloody mess bad enough without some ghoulish little house-sitter making everything worse?’

It was an accusation she had heard before, and it always touched a nerve. She said nothing more as he finally got out of the room and started noisily to make coffee.
At least he’s not so
angry he’s throwing me out without a drink
, she thought ruefully. She might be a ghoulish little house-sitter – it was the
little
that rankled most sorely – but he seemed prepared to endure her presence for a while longer.

She always hoped that she could resolve nagging questions simply by asking people
to supply the answers, and was generally disappointed. Either somebody volunteered an important fact without prompting, or they told lies. Or they just remained silent and tried to keep out of her way. It made her tired to realise that she would have to be devious and clever with this man if he was to disclose pertinent details – assuming he knew some. Perhaps he was a mere onlooker with a cold and a very ordinary horror of death, violent or otherwise.

Except he had applied for the position of police photographer, and that suggested a stronger stomach than that possessed by an ordinary person. So maybe he was lying, after all.

He came back five minutes later with two mugs of instant coffee. She was surprised by the speed, and the downmarket beverage. Should she detect a subtle insult in his failure to make something better? She sipped it with a display of satisfaction, and sat back on the sofa.

‘Did you believe me?’ she asked, chattily. ‘On Friday morning? What did they say about me afterwards?’

‘I…I couldn’t see why you’d invent such a story. But I thought you’d got it wrong – that he was only sleeping or unconscious, not dead. The others said the same.’

‘They had to believe that, didn’t they – to justify not carrying out a proper search for him.’

‘The sergeant wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to order up a search party. But they got a call, at the top of your lane, about a big accident near Stow. You probably heard about it.’

‘No,’ she said absently. ‘Did it take the full team to deal with, then?’

‘Obviously not. But the weather created quite a bit of chaos. Two plods were off sick, and one couldn’t get his car out. Usual sort of thing, never enough bodies for the work.’

‘You seem to have picked it all up very quickly. I thought Friday was your first assignment?’

He flushed, showing some colour for the first time. ‘I was in the force for a bit, ten years ago. I packed it in.’

‘Really? My daughter’s a probationer, you know. I keep expecting her to call it a day, but she insists she loves it. She’s coming here on Sunday,’ she remembered. ‘For a visit.’

‘Women and gays still have a hard time,’ he said, as if repeating a line that had the truth of a well-worn platitude.

Thea looked at him, slowly understanding that he had just told her something. ‘You’re gay?’ she queried.

‘Yup. Not that it makes a lot of difference to anything – not had a partner for years now.’ A flicker of sadness crossed his face, a contraction of his features, and a slow intake of breath. ‘Did
you get a good look at his face?’ he continued in an apparent non sequitur.

‘Who? George?’ Tony nodded. ‘Well, not really. Hardly at all in the field, but a bit more in the house. Long grey hair and a straggly beard.’

‘He had beautiful eyes, and a
glorious
voice. Deep, with a creamy Oxford accent.’

‘Ah.’ The story was shifting, expanding into some new revelation that sat at odds with what had gone before. ‘Well…no, I’m afraid I didn’t get any sense of that. Although I think I did see him a fortnight ago, when I first got here. Tall, and somehow
loose
. I thought he might have been a ghost, which is quite weird, given what happened afterwards.’

He looked at her with the first sign of genuine interest since she arrived. ‘Good God,’ he said.

‘I know it seems like idle curiosity, and an almost rude interference, but I really care about what happened to him.’ She clutched the mug with both hands. ‘And Bunny.’

‘You never met her, did you? What can you possibly care about her?’

‘I’ve met her children, and Simon and Janina. I care quite a lot about them, especially Nicky.’

Tony snorted cynically. ‘Yes, you would,’ he spat. ‘Everybody cares so
immensely
about that kid. Just because he has long eyelashes, everyone worries for his emotional welfare. Not Ben, you
notice. Nobody ever talks about Ben. It was just the same with me and Simon – everybody favoured him because he had nice eyes.’

‘You’re right,’ she said contritely. ‘I’m sorry.’ She clutched at a faint notion that she was missing something, that Tony had obliquely told her more than he intended, if she could only interpret it.

‘Well, I should get dressed,’ he said pointedly, when the coffee was finished. ‘I’ll have to go out later to get some milk and a paper.’

A phone began to trill, playing a rapid version of ‘Jingle Bells’ and they both looked round the room for it. Thea’s eyes landed on the mantelpiece, over a tiled fireplace, where two mobiles sat side by side.

Tony grabbed one of them, and thumbed a small button, causing the phone to fall silent. ‘Not answering any calls today,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing that won’t wait.’ She was reminded of Lucy’s agonised computer customers, desperate for someone to repair their beloved machine. But she supposed that a photographer could turn away work without too much resulting disappointment.

She looked at his narrow body, wondering whether another man would find it any more alluring than she did. There was something melancholy about him, living in his little cottage all alone.

‘Thanks for talking to me,’ she said, as she left. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.’

His answering smile was brief and superficial. ‘I probably ought to thank you for your interest. I’m not sure of the protocol for a situation like this.’

‘There isn’t one,’ she said. ‘You just have to make it up as you go along.’

It wasn’t until she was almost back at the barn that the obvious parallels between Tony Newby and George Jewell struck her. Both men lived on their own in small Cotswold cottages, keeping themselves neat and apparently quiet, carrying an indefinable whiff of failure about them. At least, George’s failure had been more overt, relying as he did on the charity of Kate’s father. How unusual for a property to be squatted, as it effectively was, if she had understood correctly. Tony had hinted at feelings for George, with his eulogy about the man’s eyes and voice. Had George also been gay, then? Presumably not – otherwise why wouldn’t Tony have made advances to him? For the two of them to get together would surely have solved several problems. Tony was in his thirties, and George in his fifties; would such an age difference matter? Perhaps Tony did reveal his feelings and received a
rebuff. The hypotheses multiplied in her fertile imagination, until she dismissed them all. The only thing that she had really gleaned was that Tony had a closer involvement with what had happened than she had first appreciated.

Yet there had still been no elucidation about Bunny, other than the location of the discovery of her body. With the distances so much shorter than she had first assumed, a wholesale revision of the timescale seemed to be called for. The two bodies had effectively been on either side of a relatively small patch of woodland – probably well under half a mile apart. As soon as she got back indoors, she grabbed the ubiquitous Pathfinder map, and checked her mental picture of how the points were related.

She had been right – it was about a third of a mile from the spot where she had first found George to the place where a path led up to the northern side of the trees. On a dry summer’s day, the dumping of either body would have been impossibly close to habitations, with walkers and dogs certain to see them within hours. So…had the snow been a fortunate accident, making everything easier for the killer, or had it been an integral part of the whole plan? In the case of George, it had been the means of his suicide – but a sharp frost would have served the same purpose.

Had it been a foolish mistake to go and talk to Tony? Would he immediately report her snooping to his brother, or another person Thea had never met – a person known to Tony as the probable killer of Bunny? It seemed all too possible that connections existed between local families that she could never hope to unravel. Even more possible that her transparent interest in the events of the past week had been noted, rendering her unpleasantly vulnerable in the isolated house where nobody would ever hear her scream.

Without thinking any further about it, she called the mobile number that Gladwin had given her. She had no opening line ready, no pretext for disturbing a busy detective, other than a need to hear a competent voice. She could think of no one else who might satisfy that need.

The phone was answered by a recorded voice telling her to leave a message. Doggedly, Thea told the machine her name, with a request that DS Gladwin get back to her. ‘It isn’t really urgent,’ she added, ‘but I would like to speak to you.’

Then she prepared herself an omelette for lunch, spending extra time on sautéed potatoes and peas to go with it. The cat, increasingly friendly with every passing day, sat on the kitchen table watching closely. At one point, as
Thea passed it carrying the empty eggshells to go in the compost bin, the animal reached out a deft paw and swiped a shell onto the floor. A sharp claw snagged in Thea’s cuff, and for a moment the two were linked. ‘Hey, let go!’ she told the cat.

It seemed the claw would not retract easily, and she had to detach it by force. Spirit hissed at her, and the moment the paw was free, gave another swipe, this time catching the bare skin on the back of Thea’s hand.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she protested. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

Flicking its long black tail, the cat jumped down from the table and left the room without a backward look. Thea sucked the beads of blood from the scratch and wondered about the odd behaviour of other people’s pets.

It was – as far as she could recall – the first time an animal in her care had deliberately hurt her, and it added to her sense of insecurity, here at Lucy’s Barn. Danger seemed to be in the air, hanging over her, waiting to pounce. Awful things had happened already, but she could not shake the conviction that something even worse was about to strike.

Forcing the omelette down, against her body’s inclination, she contemplated the afternoon ahead with a profound lack of enthusiasm.
She could clean out the donkey and give him a fresh new bed of straw. She could inspect the baby rabbits, and perhaps even pick one up for a cuddle. She could sit with Jimmy and talk to him, communing with a creature that appeared to share her current frame of mind. Indeed Jimmy was a permanent example of melancholy. Perhaps it was his presence in the house that was doing such damage to her own mood; a lowering reminder that life could go dreadfully irreversibly wrong at any moment.

But then, Jimmy had been rescued, and Thea too had begun to function again a year or so after the abrupt death of her husband.

She got up and went back to the living room, followed by her own dog, who also seemed rather subdued, only to see the front door opening.

It was a weird horror-movie moment, despite the fact of it being broad daylight. She had left the door on the latch, never for a second thinking to lock herself in, despite her gathering anxieties. In the tiny moment before the intruder could be identified, Thea’s natural optimism asserted itself and she found herself expecting to see Lucy Sinclair, home early for some unfathomed reason.

She was at least right about the gender. Janina, the Bulgarian nanny, came flying into the house, bringing cold air and hot panic with her. ‘Quickly!’ she cried. ‘You have to help me. It’s Ben.’

Ben? For a second, Thea could not remember who that was. Instead, she heard it as Nicky, the little boy who had a habit of wandering off and getting himself involved in situations where he had no business. ‘Ben?’ she said. Then she got it – the other boy, Nicky’s brother. Of course.

‘The school called, and said I should fetch him. I did, just now, and tried to take him home. But he screamed and said he couldn’t go into the house ever again. He is crazy, like I never saw before. And strong. He is six, and I cannot manage him. So I came here. I thought perhaps Kate would help, but no – you are better.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the car. Just here.’

‘Should we take him to a doctor? It sounds like a sort of breakdown.’ Did six-year-old children
have
breakdowns, she wondered?

‘Listen to me. I am trained in child psychology. I know him better than a doctor would. I believe he must be obeyed in what he wishes. His house has become horrible to him.’ She was agitatedly swaying in and out of the house as she spoke, staring back at the car, which she had driven across the slippery yard, almost to the door. ‘Come now, will you please?’

Thea had nothing on her feet but socks. Her boots were at the back door, and she could not remember where she’d left her shoes. It seemed
an insuperable problem. Her dog had gone out, and was jumping up at the car, trying to get a good view of the child inside.

‘Let me find my shoes,’ she said, struggling to remain calm. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Her trainers were in the kitchen, and she fought her way into them, tempted just to get them half on, the laces undone and the backs trodden down, but a small voice of good sense told her she might need to move quickly, and loose shoes would be a real hindrance.

‘What did the school say exactly?’

Janina shook her head. ‘They said a child ought not to be sent to school so soon after such a trauma. That he was emotionally unstable and could not stop crying. He has not cried before today. That is quite normal. He is not able to understand what has happened, not fully. It is better to keep quiet and still, and wait for everything to make sense again.’

‘But that isn’t what’s happening to him, is it?’

‘Maybe it is. But I have to find him somewhere warm and safe, before I can work out what he’s feeling – and thinking. He is afraid of something.’

Join the club, thought Thea.

They persuaded the little boy into the barn relatively easily. He looked around suspiciously, his face smeary with tears and mucus. He really was so much less appealing than Nicky, Thea
noted. It had to affect the way people treated them. As if reading her thoughts, Ben muttered, ‘Is Nicky here?’

‘No, no. He’s still at nursery,’ Janina assured him. ‘He’s there all day today, remember?’

Ben gave an uninterested twitch of his shoulders, but seemed relieved to be the only child present.

‘Shall I get you a drink or something?’ Thea asked. ‘Have you had any lunch?’

He shook his head. Janina sat close to him on the sofa. ‘It was lunchtime when the trouble started, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Can you say what happened?’

A firmer shake of the head.

‘Was it about your mummy?’

‘No!’

Janina took a deep breath, and threw Thea a look of despair. Thea responded cautiously. ‘Ben, did somebody say something? I remember when I was at school, there was always some silly person who would upset me by being rude about somebody I loved. Usually it was my little sister, Jocelyn. They used to say she was fat – well, she was, quite – and that made me so angry.’

It was moderately successful. The child was watching her face, listening to her words. ‘Yeah,’ he said heavily. ‘People say things.’

‘Was that what made you cry?’

He nodded reluctantly. ‘They said George was a tramp.’

Aha! The two women exchanged triumphant glances, despite their surprise. ‘You’re upset about
George
?’ echoed Thea. Then she remembered that both children had seen their friend’s dead body, whereas they had no actual evidence of their mother’s permanent loss. It made sense that the first death would make the greater impact.

‘Yes, that is dreadfully sad,’ she sympathised. ‘And he was your friend – is that right?’

‘Yeah,’ muttered Ben. ‘He was our friend.’ The words felt hollow, mechanical, repeated for convenience rather than from any sincere feelings.

‘George was kind to the boys,’ Janina supplied. ‘Especially Nicky.’

A bad mistake. A look of revulsion and rage crossed Ben’s face. ‘
I
was his favourite,’ he said firmly. ‘Not Nicky. Nicky’s a baby, can’t keep a secret.’

Thea’s heart thumped. Surely
secret
had to be one of the great buzzwords of the age, when associated with children. Dark suspicions came crowding in, alien thoughts that Thea had so far successfully kept at arm’s length.

‘You mean going to see Granfer Jack, don’t you?’ said Janina, leaning forward, pushing her face urgently close to Ben’s. ‘We were supposed
to keep quiet about that, because Mummy would be cross with me and George. Nicky didn’t tell her, did he?’

The little boy slumped, as if under a great weight, his head drooping hopelessly. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘That’s right.’

Janina wouldn’t drop it. ‘But
did
he? Did Nicky tell her?’

Ben shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t let him. He just said he was George’s favourite – when he
wasn’t
.’

Janina showed no signs of the same dawning suspicions that Thea was experiencing. Perhaps the paranoia in Bulgaria was directed somewhere else entirely. More likely, Thea hoped, she knew the people concerned and had every reason to be relaxed. Except, she was not relaxed at all – she was still pushing herself too close to the child, as if trying to control his very thoughts.

‘Where’s Simon?’ asked Thea, from a growing sense that Ben needed additional protection. From the little she had seen of his father, there were no grounds for thinking he would fail in this duty. Other than his habitual absences, of course, his job removing him when he was most urgently needed.

Janina flapped a hand, brushing away the man she had characterised as lazy and useless, nearly two weeks ago.

‘So what happens now?’ Thea persisted. ‘He’ll have to go home eventually. And you have to collect Nicky, I presume?’

‘Not till five. Simon is at his work. They had a problem.’

‘Good God…aren’t there rules about bereavement leave or something?’

Janina rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose so, but he says they cannot manage without him, and he cannot afford to lose his job, and he has no choice in the matter.’

Again, the way Janina had described Simon sat totally at odds with Thea’s impression of the actual man. How could he be lazy, if he could hold down a job that demanded constant vigilance, attention to detail, control of a large staff and a dozen other necessary talents? It also, she supposed, required a lot of play-acting. You had to be polite and cooperative to an endless parade of fools and hysterics. Hotel guests were famously unreasonable and capricious, and the management had to smile and apologise and rectify, whatever they might be feeling inside.

‘I wouldn’t think they’d be very busy this time of year,’ said Thea.

‘There is a conference this weekend,’ Janina told her. ‘They cannot manage without Simon.’

Thea wanted to be useful and involved. She was worried about both the little boys, and
increasingly concerned that they were not being adequately cared for, given the circumstances. Benjamin’s ‘breakdown’ had demonstrated how needy they were. ‘Are there any other grandparents?’ she wondered aloud.

‘Oh yes,’ said Janina nastily. ‘In South Africa and Spain.’

‘So what about getting Granfer Jack to pitch in? Or Kate?’

Ben squirmed, uneasy at losing his place at the centre of attention. But at least Janina had backed off a little way, and his tears had dried up.

‘It is not for me…’ Janina sagged slightly in the face of her limitations. ‘I have no authority…’

‘No. Except you did bring him here. Why not carry on down to the farm, where they know him?’

‘They are strange people. I cannot understand their minds. You are easier. And nicer,’ she added disarmingly.

And unlikely to be busy with animals and barn roofs and mangel worzels, thought Thea.

‘So let’s all have a drink, and a biscuit, and see what’s what,’ she offered brightly. ‘Things are going to start looking better after that, I’m sure. Do you know, Ben, I have a motto. Shall I tell you what it is?’

The child frowned at the unfamiliar word. ‘Motto?’

‘Yes…something I say to myself when things get difficult or sad. It’s a bit long, compared to most mottoes, but it does work.’ She sat up straight and declaimed, ‘If you’re all right now, this very minute, then you’re all right, full stop.’ She laughed. ‘Well, it varies a bit, but that’s the basic idea. It’s all about the present moment. The thing is, you’re almost certain to be OK at any given moment. It’s worrying about what comes next that brings you down.’

‘But I’m not OK,’ he said, as if this was perfectly obvious. ‘I’m
desperate
.’ And he burst into fresh tears, turning to hide his face in the cushions behind him.

‘Oops,’ muttered Thea. Maybe all that had been rather too grown-up for him. Janina gave her a look of reproach.

‘Come on,’ coaxed Thea. ‘I’ll go and get that drink. Do you like milk?’

‘Noghh,’ came the muffled response.

Janina snorted. ‘They are not allowed milk. Do you have fruit juice – without any E-numbers, of course.’ The habitual scorn was back, presumably directed somewhat callously at the deceased Bunny.

‘Pineapple juice?’ Thea offered. ‘I brought some with me that I haven’t opened yet.’

Janina shrugged. ‘OK. Or water. Do you want a drink, Ben?’ she asked, her voice raised.

Thea remembered the warm drink she had given Nicky after his chilly morning in the church. Warm drinks was something she could do.

There was no response, and Thea hesitated. She was reminded of the younger boy, shivering after a morning in a cold church, every bit as pathetic as his brother. The ghastly glaring fact that their mother was dead hit her with fresh force, rendering futile any attempts at reassurance. You couldn’t say,
There, there, everything’s going
to be all right
– because it wasn’t. They would be marked for life, not only because of the loss, but because of the ineradicable taint of murder. And if it turned out that their father had been the killer, then their fate grew even darker. She felt chilled at the prospect ahead for them. Foster care, boarding school, adoption – anything was possible once their parents left the picture.

‘Poor little boy,’ she murmured. ‘No wonder he’s desperate.’

Janina was hovering, more and more agitated as the lack of decision expanded. Neither woman had any idea what to do, each wrestling with a jumble of resentment, pity, and helplessness. Thea still made no move to fetch drinks, anticipating that Benjamin would simply ignore anything she offered.

And then an unlikely rescuer came slowly into the room.

‘Jimmy!’ Thea exclaimed. She moved to intercept him, afraid that he would repeat the performance of a few days ago, and soak another rug with malodorous urine. But he pushed against her when she laid a hand on him, evidently intent on his goal – which was the sofa on which the snivelling child huddled. Thea backed away, some instinct telling her she should trust him.

The cold nose found Benjamin’s hand, and he raised his head to see what it was. With an inarticulate cry, he stared at the scruffy animal as if at an angel. ‘Oh!’ he cried.

The dog wagged his tail slightly, and nestled his face against the boy. Ben gently stroked him with both hands, following the line from neck to shoulder to ribcage, then back to the top of the head. Jimmy made a noise of contentment and hauled himself up onto the sofa, where he curled himself around the child.

‘My God!’ squawked Janina. ‘What is that?’

Thea braced herself for a struggle if the au pair chose to try to remove the dog. But it seemed that Jimmy’s force of character had affected her as well.

‘That’s Jimmy,’ she said. ‘He was a stray, and Lucy rescued him. Now I think he might have rescued Ben.’

‘Jimmy?’ crooned Benjamin. ‘Are you
Jimmy?’ He looked up at Thea. ‘Why’s he so thin?’

‘That’s just the way he is. He’s half greyhound, and they’re always thin.’

It hadn’t actually resolved anything, of course, but it brought considerable relief to have Ben no longer crying about his own desperate situation. She remembered how Ben had petted Hepzie on their first encounter, and Janina had said something about a special liking for dogs. Why hadn’t the spaniel had the sense to cuddle up with the kid, twenty minutes ago, instead of remaining antisocially in the kitchen, where she had established a favourite warm corner during the daytime?

‘Ben,’ said Janina, aiming for a firm tone, ‘we have to go home soon. Daddy will be back any time now, and then Nicky. It will be the same as always.’

‘I don’t want to talk,’ said the child, hugging the dog to him. ‘I want to stay here with Jimmy.’

‘You don’t have to talk. And you can come and see Jimmy again at the weekend. But we must go now.’

Benjamin pouted exaggeratedly. ‘Nicky will talk and be annoying.’

It had all become much more normal, Thea realised. Whatever dreadful terror had seized him had withdrawn again, leaving the far more
manageable sibling antipathy. ‘I will tell him not to,’ said Janina. ‘You can be in the playroom by yourself, if you want.’