Evil Never Dies

by S M Hardy

  ‘What? Dan?’

  He nodded and I fell in step beside him as he carried on down the steps towards his car. ‘She was out riding with him when the horse apparently got spooked and bolted. The vet’s taking a look at the creature now.’

  ‘They can’t be thinking of putting her down?’

  The doctor managed a small smile. ‘No, not at all.’ He stopped beside his car, pulling the keys from his pocket. ‘Crouchley was worried about the mare. He said she wasn’t herself.’

  I frowned, trying to digest what he was telling me. ‘If that’s the case, why did he let Laura ride her?’

  Doctor Bell opened his car door and leant inside to heft his bag onto the passenger seat, then straightened and moved in close to me. ‘Speak to Crouchley,’ he repeated. ‘Alone.’

  I must have looked confused as he leant even closer. ‘He couldn’t say much, but he gave me the impression it wasn’t an accident.’ I stared at him and I knew my expression had become mean as he nodded, seeing he’d made his point. ‘If Miss Simmons should experience any ill effects give me a call,’ he said before getting into his car and, with a flip of the hand in farewell, drove off, leaving me standing on the drive silently simmering with anger.

  I immediately strode around the side of the house towards the stables. A tall, gangly, sandy-haired man in green wellies, who I assumed to be the vet, was in the yard talking to Donald Walters and Dan. ‘Is this really necessary?’ I heard Donald Walters say.

  ‘Yes,’ Dan said, ‘it is.’

  Donald rounded on him. ‘I wasn’t asking you.’

  The vet looked embarrassed. ‘She clearly isn’t right, Mr Walters,’ he said.

  ‘She’s scared, ’tis all.’

  Dan gave a snort of disgust. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see her.’

  ‘If you’d been doing your job …’

  Dan’s fists clenched and, from the flush colouring his cheeks, there was a chance if the groundskeeper said one more word the bloke would flatten him. I hurried over to join them.

  ‘I hear Miss Simmons took a tumble,’ I said, putting myself between the two men.

  ‘Something spooked Angel and she bolted,’ Donald said, more or less repeating what the doctor had told me.

  Dan crossed his arms and kept his eyes down.

  ‘Was she on her own?’

  Donald couldn’t quite stop his lips curling into a sneer. ‘He,’ he said, jerking his head Dan’s way, ‘was with her.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a word with you in a moment.’ My attention turned to the vet. ‘Is Angel all right?’

  ‘She’s calmer,’ he said, ‘but she’s not her usual self. I’ve taken blood for testing, just to make sure there’s nothing wrong.’

  I nodded. ‘If you’re finished, I’ll walk you to your car.’

  ‘There’s no—’ Donald started to say and I fixed him with a stare, which had him stuttering into silence. Satisfied he’d got the message, I walked with the vet around the side of the house to the drive. ‘What are you going to test for?’ I asked.

  ‘Viruses – that sort of thing.’

  ‘How about drugs?’

  He gave me a look. ‘That’s what young Crouchley asked me to do.’

  ‘And will you?’

  His eyes met mine. ‘Most definitely.’

  I just about managed a smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m Derek Davis, by the way,’ he said, extending a hand.

  ‘Jed Cummings.’ We shook and I reached into my top pocket and pulled out one of my cards. ‘If you wouldn’t mind giving me a call once you have the results, I’d quite like a heads-up.’

  He thought about it for maybe a second. ‘Can’t see why not.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again.

  I watched him go as I gathered my thoughts before returning to the stables. As I expected, I found Donald and Dan almost at each other’s throats.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

  Donald’s lips pressed together in a bloodless line and Dan, flushed of cheeks, glared at his boots.

  I glanced at Dan. ‘You and I need to have a little talk,’ and to Donald I added, ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  With one last glare at Dan, Donald bobbed his head to me and strode off towards the kitchen. I gestured with a jerk of the head towards the inside of the stable block and marched off leaving Dan to follow behind. I stopped outside Angel’s stall and pulled out a packet of sugar lumps I’d purloined from the pub after lunch. I put one on my palm and held it out to her.

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ I said.

  She lifted her head and it didn’t take an expert to see that her eyes were not quite as they should be. They had a scared and slightly wild look to them. She sniffed my hand and it took a lot of gentle words and persuasion before she eventually took the sugar between her big soft lips.

  ‘She’s not right, is she?’ I said over my shoulder to where Dan was loitering. When I turned to face him, his expression was angry. ‘The good doctor seemed to think you had something you might want to tell me,’ I said. ‘I sort of guessed you wouldn’t want to say anything in front of Walters.’

  His whole body relaxed, but he was still a long way from smiling. ‘I think she’s been given something,’ he said without me asking. ‘She was all right when we started off, but then Miss Laura said she was starting to act a bit skittish and before I could take a look there was a gunshot and Angel bolted. Then there was another, real close by, and she reared and Miss Laura … Miss Laura came off.’ He stopped to take a deep breath and slowly exhale. ‘For a moment … For a moment I thought … I thought she was dead.’ He looked at me with pain-filled eyes.

  ‘The doctor says she’ll be fine.’

  He managed a small laugh. ‘Hard-headed woman that one.’

  ‘I’d keep out of Donald Walters’ way for a while, if I were you.’

  He gave a sort of half-hearted nod. ‘Once the police have sorted out everything here, I might move on,’ he said.

  I didn’t say anything to dissuade him. It would be a shame, but it’d probably be for the best. He and Donald clearly couldn’t stand each other and being the lower in the food chain it could be his days were numbered in his employ here anyway. Better to go with a reference than without.

  I looked at my watch. ‘I have to get moving,’ I said. ‘I was meant to be taking Miss Simmons to see her uncle, but I guess she won’t be feeling like it now.’ I hesitated. ‘Dan, you said you heard a second gunshot.’

  He grunted. ‘Yeah, I did and it was close – very close.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but then I was chasing after L—Miss Laura and then she was on the ground and I was too concerned about her to worry about some darn fool with a gun.’ He dragged his fingers through his mop of hair. ‘Thing is, nobody should have been out there shooting. This is a private estate and with none of the other Pomeroys in residence there’s no one here other than Walters who would be.’

  ‘A poacher perhaps?’

  ‘Huh, we don’t stock game birds any more. Maybe a hundred or so years ago, but not recently.’

  I looked him in the eyes long and hard. ‘You think it was deliberate.’

  He met my gaze. ‘I guess we’ll know once the results come back from the veterinary.’

  ‘I guess we will,’ I said as I walked away.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ I said. ‘Not if you’d rather stay and keep an eye on Laura.’

  Emma shrugged on a cardigan. ‘She’s adamant she’s fine and doesn’t want to be fussed over. It’s bad enough Mrs Walters going into mother-hen mode without me as well.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘She didn’t have to. The rolling of the eyes every time Mrs Walters left the room was enough for me to get the message.’ Emma laughed. ‘Anyway, it’s poor Simon who’s really been in the wars.’

  I stood and wrapped her in my arms.
‘I must admit I could do with the company, and to be honest I’d rather not leave you here alone.’

  ‘Well then, it’s settled. Did he want you to take anything in for him?’

  ‘No, apparently Donald Walters dropped off a bag of his things when he was first taken in.’

  ‘Perhaps we can get him something from the hospital shop while we’re there.’

  I dropped a kiss onto her forehead. ‘Who’s playing mother hen now?’

  We left early and were soon flying along country roads flanked by green fields and sometimes desolate moorland or stretches of bluebell-blanketed woodlands.

  ‘Carry on like this and you’ll be able to investigate the hospital shop to your heart’s content.’ I should have touched wood: no sooner than the words were out of my mouth I wished I could have taken them back.

  We turned into a fairly narrow country lane, which was a cut-through taking at least fifteen minutes off the journey, and practically straight away joined a queue of traffic. I stuck my head out of the window to peer past the two cars in front trying to see the problem. It wasn’t very difficult. A Range Rover, which now had a crumpled front wing, had apparently skidded onto the wrong side of the road and the horsebox it was towing had come to rest, jackknifed at an angle, blocking the thoroughfare. Beyond it a white van, belching smoke, was hanging askew into a ditch. It couldn’t have happened at a worse spot. It was possibly the narrowest stretch of lane, with no passing points on either side for a good hundred yards or more.

  ‘Damn,’ I said, looking back over my shoulder hoping it was possible to back up. There was no chance. Another van, the size of a small bus, had pulled in behind me, practically nudging my back bumper. I slumped down in my seat and switched off the engine. We were stuck here for the duration.

  ‘Do you think we should see if there’s anything we can do to help?’ Emma asked.

  Through the windscreen I could see the two drivers, red-faced and yelling at each other. ‘I don’t think so, Emms,’ I said. ‘It’s probably best we stay out of it.’

  A tall, horsey-looking woman in jodhpurs was apoplectic with rage and I thought at any moment she would lurch for the van driver’s throat. He was a big bloke with a sneery, supercilious attitude and a limited vocabulary, which consisted of words mainly beginning with ‘F’. At one point he lit a cigarette in a deliberately provocative manner and a cheer went up from the car in front when she ripped it from his fingers and ground it into the tarmac with the heel of her boot.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Emma asked, leaning across me trying to see.

  With a nonchalant twist of the lips, the van driver once more took out his cigarette packet and flipped the lid open. With an almost visceral snarl the woman snatched the carton from him, threw it on the ground and trampled on it.

  ‘The beginning of World War Three I’d imagine.’

  Sure enough, the van driver flipped and the yelling shot up several levels. On and on it went. Several times I thought it was coming to an end and one of the two combatants, usually the woman, would start to walk away, then the other would launch into another stream of verbal abuse more vitriolic than the last and it all kicked off again.

  Then abruptly it was over. The woman gestured heavenwards with her hands and, turning her back on her adversary, strode back to her car with a face like a slapped arse, the van driver’s derisive obscenities following her. With an over-the-top slam of her door, excessive revving and a bit of tricky manoeuvring, she straightened the car and horsebox and drove off with a screech of wheels, leaving the man in a flurry of pebbles and a cloud of dust. The rest of us started our vehicles and gradually filtered past him. No one had any sympathy for his plight, we had all been an involuntary audience to his posturing for nigh on twenty minutes.

  The hospital car park was packed solid and there was a line of cars steadily circling searching for places. Eventually we found a bay, on the opposite side of the hospital to where we wanted to be and a five-minute hike away. My only real comfort was this time I knew where I was going. Then, when we arrived at the ward it was to find an empty, freshly made bed and no Simon. I forced down the rising tide of panic. If something had happened to him, surely the hospital would have phoned us – wouldn’t they?

  Emma’s eyes jerked from the bed to me. ‘You don’t think …?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘If you’re looking for Mr Pomeroy he’s been moved into a private room,’ a nurse interrupted, squeezing past us. Then I remembered – he had said something about going private.

  Emma visibly relaxed. ‘We didn’t know. Can you tell us where he is?’

  While Emma obtained directions, I glanced around the ward. Three of the old boys were asleep and the fourth had his earphones plugged in and was doing a crossword. The young man across from him was still hanging on in there, his partner clinging to his hand. Maybe it was working and she was hauling him back from the brink. The shadowy figures surrounding him had faded to a translucent pale grey and their expressions had lost their grim resignation.

  ‘We need to be on the other side of the hospital,’ Emma explained as we started off on yet another trek through the maze of corridors.

  The private rooms were in the newer part of the building, the paintwork fresher, the decor brighter. Looking out through the corridor windows as we hurried along, I could see the difference in location: this end of the hospital looked out over fields of yellow rapeseed and rolling green countryside. We were entering the domain of the well-heeled.

  Halfway along the final corridor the doors ahead swung open and a woman strode through, walking in an exaggerated supermodel strut, giving the impression she was moving in slow motion even though she was covering ground pretty fast. She reminded me of a big cat, a jaguar perhaps. Tall and slender, she had a dark and predatory look to her. Deep red lips with eyes lined in kohl and hair cut into a shiny black bob she exuded sensuality and she knew it. She was smiling as though life was one big joke and the joke was on everyone else. As we drew almost level her eyes fleetingly met mine, her smile faltered, and I had to swallow back a small hiccup of fear. Then the moment was over, and she walked on past us, gathering speed and leaving me with an anxious tightening in my chest.

  I glanced over my shoulder as she disappeared through another set of doors. ‘Come on,’ I said, and I began to run.

  As we reached the doors an alarm went off in the passageway ahead and nurses appeared from all directions, racing towards the last room in the hallway.

  I stopped, stepping to one side to get out of their way while Emma pressed her back against the wall opposite.

  A flurry of activity and then, as if by magic, the corridor was empty except for remote voices and urgently shouted instructions from ahead of us.

  ‘Jed?’ Emma said, stepping towards me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said and, with some trepidation, I started towards the room at the end of the hall.

  Inside, people all acting with coordinated purpose, grouped around the bed. There was an air of controlled panic as everyone went about their business and in their midst was Simon. His eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, and his mouth gaping. A nurse pulled open his pyjama jacket and a doctor stepped forward.

  ‘Clear,’ he shouted and pressed paddles to Simon’s bare chest. His body jerked and then fell limp.

  I felt a hand slip into mine as Emma’s shoulder pressed against my arm.

  ‘Clear.’

  A nurse looked up and, seeing us hovering by the door, hurried over to gently steer us away and along the corridor to some seats. She sat us down and told us she’d get someone to come and speak to us shortly.

  We sat there for a long time, Emma’s hand in mine, silently waiting while Simon fought for life and, it was while we waited, my mind turned to the woman we had seen and how there was something familiar about her. She raised strange feelings inside me. I was both attracted and repelled. An overtly sexual female, she was perhaps the ultimate femme fatale.

  Then I saw myself s
itting in our bedroom, scanning two sheets of photographs. I hadn’t seen her face in the photos, and in the Polaroids she’d been mostly a misty blur, but I was pretty sure the femme fatale was the same woman with whom DI Brogan was having a very steamy affair. I slumped back in the chair. If this was the case, who on earth could we trust? Certainly not the detective inspector.

  Eventually the door at the end of the corridor opened and tired and gaunt-faced nurses began to file out. No one needed to say a word, defeat was etched into their features. The nurse who had guided us to our seats was one of the last to leave. In earnest conversation with a young doctor, she looked our way and he followed her glance. After a few more words he made straight for us and I rose to my feet.

  ‘I am Doctor Rani. Please sit,’ he said and pulled a chair over so he was sitting facing us. ‘Mr Pomeroy is family?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m an old family friend,’ I said.

  His expression became grim. ‘I am terribly sorry. I’m afraid Mr Pomeroy suffered an unexpected episode and we couldn’t save him.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Was it a heart attack?’

  ‘I can’t say at the moment. We’ll carry out tests, of course. It was totally unexpected and …’ he hesitated, ‘strange.’

  ‘Strange?’ I asked.

  He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘He was recovering well from his head injury. A nurse had been in to see him only fifteen minutes or so before it happened to check his blood pressure and take his temperature. Everything was normal. Then’ – he made a vague gesture with his hand – ‘his heart just … stopped. She raised the alarm when she popped back in and found him.’

  Emma and I shared another glance. ‘What would have caused it to happen?’ I asked.

  He grimaced and shook his head. ‘I won’t know until I get the test results.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Emma said as we climbed into the Jag. ‘I thought he was getting better.’