Too Much of Water (15 page)

Ian looked at the car. There was no man in it. But there were two children, about five or six, their round, fearful faces pressed against the back window of the car. This woman would want to get away as quickly as she could, before the kids got more upset. ‘Too bloody fast, you were going, or you'd never 'ave 'it my beast. You bain't from round these parts, or you'd 'ave more sense.'

‘I'm from Bristol, visiting my old aunt in Cinderford. Look, I don't want the poor creature to suffer. Is there anything to be done for it?'

He looked from her to the car, then over to the trees where the sheep had leapt for cover. ‘Wait 'ere. Don't you drive away! I've got your number, see?'

He went away into the bracken, found the sheep licking its hind leg among its fellows. It was a spindly ram, not much meat on it. He felt the limb quickly, watched the animal bound away with an alarmed baaing beyond a copse of birches. The leg wasn't even broken; the animal would certainly survive, with or without a limp. And anyway, it certainly wasn't one of his.

He went back to the road with a face like thunder. ‘Poor thing'll 'ave to be put down. In agony, 'er is. One of my best beasts too. I was looking forward to 'er lambs in the spring.'

She looked fearfully up and down the road as she stood before this angry-looking man in the stained clothes. His face seemed to be dominated by the scar on his temple. ‘I'm sorry. I really didn't have much chance—'

‘In agony, 'er is! 'Er'll need to be put down, right away, save 'er from further suffering.' He looked past her towards the two round white faces. ‘You got room to take 'er in your car?'

‘No! No, I couldn't do that! Not with the children, you see. They'd be terribly upset if they had to—'

‘Shoulda thought about that before you ran the poor beast down, shouldn't you? I've lost one o' my best sheep, and now I'm going to have a vet's bill for putting 'er down on top of it.' He shook his head wretchedly.

‘Look, I want to make whatever retribution I can. I haven't got much money on me, but I've got my cheque book in my bag.'

He mumbled and grumbled a little to disguise his elation. They settled for a hundred pounds for the sheep and twenty for the vet's bill to have the animal put down. He looked at the cheque doubtfully and said he'd rather have had cash, and she assured him that it wouldn't bounce.

Ian Walker stood perfectly still at the side of the road, watching the children's faces pressed against the rear window of the car until they passed slowly out of sight beneath the trees at the bend in the road. Then he flung a V-sign after his victim and threw his head back into a guffaw at the stupidity of city folk. He spat his satisfaction into the dusty grass beside him and turned back towards the caravan and the can of beans which would be his Sunday dinner.

The caravan smelt foetid in the hot sun. He opened the door and the one window he could still open without its falling out of its frame. The man who owned this land had told him he'd have to move on in the autumn if he couldn't tidy up the van: said it was lowering the tone of the place. He'd explained that he'd let things go because he was expecting delivery of a new one in a couple of months. Fat chance of that! The sheep weren't bringing in much at present. Criminal, the price of lamb was.

Still, he'd get back to his other business, as soon as this hornets' nest over the death of Clare had died down. Trust his bloody wife to interfere with his welfare, even when she was safely out of the way.

Ian Walker took two slices of bread from the wrapper and put them into his ancient toaster. They were a bit stale, but that wouldn't matter, when they were toasted. He put the can of beans by the pan, ready to open, then sat down with a can of lager on the chair outside in the sun. He'd let the van cool down for a bit, let the draught flow through it. Besides, he deserved another drink, to celebrate the cheque in the pocket of his shirt. He patted it contentedly and smiled again at the woman's credulity.

He turned to the sport in the
News of the World
. Hereford had lost again. Daft buggers! He belched a little after a couple of swallows from the can. A pleasant, relaxed, near-silent sort of belch. You learned to enjoy the simple pleasures, when you lived as he did. His head fell forward onto his chest and the newspaper slipped to the grass beside him. A couple of minutes later, a gentle, irregular snoring overtook him.

He did not hear the visitor arrive. The man came on silent, careful feet and stood for a full minute with his shadow over Walker's face, taking in the man and his surroundings, wondering if there was anything to be learned, any secret to be gleaned, from this squalid scene before the man at the centre of it was alerted to his presence.

The man in the flimsy garden chair was a countryman, despite his excesses, and presently the absence of the sun upon his face woke him from his doze. He started, feeling his vulnerability to the tall figure above him and so near to him. From his position near the ground, the figure against the sun looked immensely tall, black as night in its silhouette against the bright blue of the sky behind it.

As his vision slowly restored itself to something near normal, Ian realized that the shape was not black at all, but a dark blue for the most part, with the smart short-sleeved shirt a lighter shade than the sharply creased trousers below it. Ian struggled upright, setting the half-empty can down carefully upon the newspaper beside him. ‘And who the bloody 'ell are you?' he said automatically.

The man did not move; he continued to stand very close to Walker, looking down coolly upon the dishevelled figure who presented such a contrast to his own neat appearance. Then he moved his hand unhurriedly down to his trousers, aware that a sudden movement might be misinterpreted as aggression by a man like this. ‘Detective Inspector Rushton, Oldford CID.' He waved the warrant card swiftly across the unseeing eyes of the man in front of him. ‘Here to ask you a few questions in connection with the murder of your late wife, Clare Mills.'

‘I didn't kill the cow,' said Walker automatically.

‘Glad to hear it, Mr Walker. With your record, I'll need to be convinced of that, though.'

‘You coming in?' Walker moved automatically towards the caravan, needing to get further away from this man, whose closeness seemed to present a physical threat to him.

Chris Rushton's look took in the sordid scene he could see through the open door, with the slices of curling bread peeping from the toaster and the can of beans upon the tiny stove. ‘I don't think so, Mr Walker. I wouldn't want to interfere with your domestic arrangements.'

‘Suit yourself. I've nothing to tell you about bloody Clare, anyway. I've said everything I 'ave to say about 'er.'

‘Not quite, Mr Walker. Not by a long chalk, perhaps. You've been telling us lies. Not a wise thing to do, that.'

Ian glared at him sullenly, wanting to hit him, knowing he mustn't. ‘I told you what I knew. Told it all to those other buggers I saw on Friday. I 'adn't spoken to the bloody cow for six months.'

Rushton looked at him with undisguised distaste now, hating his lack of grace, despising a man who could speak like this about a murdered wife, however fractured their relationship had been. He savoured the blow he was now going to deliver to him. ‘That's not what her mobile phone says, Mr Walker.'

Ian's glance flicked automatically towards the door of the van and his own mobile in the jacket within it. ‘Whad'yer mean?'

‘When Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook spoke to you we didn't have Clare's mobile phone. We have it now. It shows that you rang her on the night before she died.'

‘I didn't speak to her. Didn't get through.'

‘Her phone has a memo option. You are listed under “Received Calls”. You got through to Clare all right. What did you say to her?'

He glowered at this cool adversary, cursing modern technology and his own ignorance of it. Probably they even knew what he'd said. Probably this smug sod was just letting him tie himself in knots. ‘I asked her to meet me.'

Rushton was too old a fox now to show in his face how excited he was. ‘When?'

‘Saturday night.'

‘The night she died.'

‘Yes. Except I didn't meet 'er, see?'

‘And why not?'

‘She wouldn't see me. Said she didn't want to meet me. That we'd nothing to say to each other.'

At least that last phrase sounded like one the dead woman rather than this lout might have used. But of course it might have been on any one of numerous previous occasions, not as a rejection of his request to meet her on that fateful Saturday. Rushton smiled grimly. ‘But you saw her nonetheless. Saw her and killed her on that Saturday.'

‘No! She wouldn't see me, like I told you!' Ian sought desperately for something which would deny the man's statement, and found nothing.

Rushton looked at the sheep-badger, this man whose life was such a contrast to his own carefully ordered existence, and did not trouble now to disguise his distaste. ‘You have a vehicle.'

Ian tried to force his racing mind to work properly. He'd told the other two pigs, the lanky superintendent and his country-bumpkin sergeant, that he didn't have a vehicle, but this clever sod seemed to know he did. Better not deny it, then; at least the van was taxed and insured now. ‘Yeah. I got a van. You need a van, to move your sheep about. People thinks we just take advantage of the free grazing, but there's—'

‘I want to look at that van. Now.'

Well, you won't find anything, if you do, smart-ass. Not now. Aloud, Ian said, ‘Invasion of privacy, this is.'

‘Maybe it is, Walker. So sue me, if you like. You going to show me this vehicle?'

‘It's down there. Behind the house.' Ian gestured with his head, then turned and walked out from where the caravan was parked among the birches. He led the way down the slope to the van, parked a hundred yards away, behind the house by the lane. Rushton looked from the scrawled note on the windscreen which said that the tax was in the post to the apprehensive face beside him. Ian Walker said, ‘Tax disc will come tomorrow, I expect. I got the insurance certificate and the MOT in the caravan, if you want to see them.' Technically, it wasn't taxed at all, yet. He'd asked for the tax to run from the first of July, day after tomorrow; it hadn't seemed worth paying a month's tax for a couple of days. Good job the tax hadn't come yet, then: this pernickety sod would no doubt have picked him up on a little detail like that.

Rushton walked all round the van. It was white, or it had been, an ageing Fiesta diesel with a thick covering of grime and lines of rust around its seams. He touched the front offside tyre with the toe of his immaculate shoe. ‘Surprised you got an MOT, with a tyre as bald as that.'

Ian looked at the dust around the wheels of the van and said nothing. Both of them knew that this was no more than a prologue, part of the initial softening-up process, prior to the inspection of the inside of the van which was the point of this visit.

Rushton said, ‘Open the rear doors of the vehicle, please.'

Ian did that unhurriedly, trying not to smirk with the confidence he felt about this.

Chris Rushton peered into the interior of the van, shielding his eyes against the sun. It could hardly have presented a greater contrast with the exterior. It was spotlessly clean, its white metal gleaming softly, mockingly, in the shadows. There was not even a rug or a rag on the metal floor of the carrying space; they were a hundred yards away under the caravan, where Ian had carefully placed them with the brushes when he had finished the scouring.

‘You've cleaned this out. Recently,' said Rushton. It was the nearest he could muster to an accusation.

‘Couple of days ago, I should think. That was the last time.' Ian nodded, trying not to sound too truculent. He'd made the copper look a fool, but they could come back at you, these buggers.

‘And why did you do that?'

‘Routine procedure,' said Ian airily. He enjoyed that phrase: might have come from a pig itself, that might have.

‘Not like the outside,' said Rushton.

‘Outside don't matter. Inside's what matters, when you're moving sheep about,' said Walker, with the air of one educating a child.

‘Smells of carbolic,' said Rushton, as if that in itself was a charge.

‘Strong carbolic,' agreed Ian. ‘Hygiene, you see. You need strong disinfectant, case of any diseases among your sheep. Don't 'spect you'd know about that.'

‘You'd need to clean it out if you'd had a body in there, too. If you'd been transporting a body to dump in the Severn.'

‘'Ere, you'd better watch what you're saying, you know. Can't go round accusing people without evidence, even when they're 'umble sheep-badgers like me.' Ian knew he mustn't enjoy the moment too much, but he couldn't resist taunting this smug sod, who'd so obviously expected to catch him out.

‘And how do you clean it?' asked Rushton.

Ian felt a spurt of alarm. Best be careful here. ‘Plenty of disinfectant and a good stiff brush. Then I mops it out with old rags.'

‘I'll need to take those away for analysis. Our forensic laboratory will be most interested to examine them in detail.'

‘Rags have gone. Straight into a dustbin bag and away with the collection. Gone yesterday. Only use things that are ready for the rubbish tip, see. And I 'aven't got the brush: borrowed it from a mate, other side of Coleford. Don't know where it would be now. But it will have been used again since I cleaned the van. He works in the abattoir, see? Be all kinds of other things on it, I expect. But they put them under the 'osepipe, when they've finished, I should think.'

He enjoyed piling on the detail. The stiff brush was lying underneath his caravan, but this man couldn't know that.