‘All right, fine,’ said Christopher, raising his hand in what might have been a conciliatory gesture or a goodbye wave.
If Keith was so keen to see the back of him, there must be some secret Ashley could give away. Christopher wondered if getting Jemima and Dave to ask a few questions would count as asking them himself. He headed on down to the café as quickly as he could. Surely Keith wouldn’t arrest two elderly people who were just out of hospital – would he?
Chapter 15 Questions and answers
Jemima ordered another scone to pass the time.
‘We might as well give up on this,’ said Dave.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, we’ve only been here an hour. Christopher’s had to wait in the street all this time. It isn’t very warm for August, either. And the weather forecast said there might be scattered showers later.’
‘All right, but I’m not going to be able to drink any more tea just now,’ grumbled Dave. ‘Can we go down to the Queen of Scots for a pint when we’ve finished?’
‘Not for a pint,’ said Jemima firmly. Fond though she was of Dave, there were times when she thought he acted like a whining toddler. But then, at the end of the day men were all a bit like that. She was just lucky to have somebody to share the trials of old age with, she supposed.
Dave sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better see if they’ll toast me a tea-cake, in that case.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Jemima whispered. ‘It’s the grumpy one on today.’
‘Here’s your scone,’ said somebody, slamming a plate down in front of her. ‘And by the way, that table’s reserved from eleven o’clock onwards.’
‘Thank you!’ Jemima called after the woman. ‘Do you think she heard me?’ she asked Dave.
He rolled his eyes.
At that moment the bell jingled on the café door and Christopher came in. He smiled at them, and went to the counter to place his order. They saw the grumpy woman point at their table and tell him something.
‘Apparently this table’s reserved from eleven,’ he said as he came up to the table in the window.
‘We know that,’ said Jemima. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can easily move before then. We only sat here in case Ashley came past.’
‘She might still do,’ said Christopher.
‘Have you seen her?’
‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘Keith warned me off talking to her, so I won’t be able to ask any questions.’
‘Oh, we can do that,’ said Jemima confidently. ‘He wouldn’t do anything to us.’
‘She might not say anything, though,’ said Christopher.
‘It all depends on how you ask,’ said Jemima with a nod. ‘Just you wait and see.’
They didn’t have long to wait. Just as the grumpy waitress was putting Christopher’s coffee and scone down – with a great deal more care than she had handled Jemima’s scone – the bell jingled again and Ashley came into the café.
Well, at least they hadn’t had to dash out and accost her, Jemima thought. But there was something unsettling about the way the girl’s eyes scanned over them. It was almost as if...
‘So this is where you’re all hiding,’ said Ashley, coming across to them. ‘I thought I might find you all together like this.’
‘We’re not hiding exactly...’ Christopher’s attempt at denial fizzled out in the face of her steady gaze.
‘Keith warned me about you,’ said Ashley. ‘He said you’d try to trick me into telling you something I shouldn’t. Well, I’m just not going to speak to you at all, so you might as well not bother.’
The girl almost lost her usual pallor when she was angry. And her eyes sparkled, or maybe that was just the ray of sunlight that had unexpectedly shone in through the window right at that moment, illuminating the dust on the cake shelf as well. For the first time Jemima realised what Keith Burnet saw in her.
‘Can I just ask you one thing about the garden centre?’ said Jemima. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’
Ashley hesitated. ‘I can’t really say anything.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the – what happened. It’s just to settle an argument. Dave and I were talking about it the other night. He said he thought he’d heard music in the background when we were up there that day – just before he was taken ill. I said maybe it was angelic harps playing...’ At this point Dave nudged at her foot with his under the table. She couldn’t look at him in case it made her laugh. She carried on regardless. ‘But he thought maybe you had recorded music playing in there. You know – that background music they play in shops... The worst thing is when they start the Christmas songs up in August...’
Ashley looked bemused. Maybe she had forgotten the question. Jemima worried for a moment that she had overdone the rambling. She opened her mouth to try again, but Ashley spoke at last.
‘We’ve got a customer announcements system and we sometimes play music over it, but I don’t think we would have had it switched on at the time you were up there...’
‘It’s all right – maybe it was angels and harps after all,’ said Jemima hastily.
‘Oh dear, I hope I haven’t given anything away,’ said Ashley. ‘Keith did say I wasn’t meant to speak to you at all. He said you have ways of getting answers out of people.’
Jemima forced herself to laugh airily. ‘Don’t worry. It was only us being nosy.’
‘I’d better go now, anyway. Don’t tell him I even spoke to you.’
Ashley cast one worried, suspicious glance at them over her shoulder as she left. Jemima only felt slightly guilty. It was all in a good cause, after all.
They gave her time to get well clear, and then left the café together. They wandered back up the road. Jemima had decreed that Dave should have a rest, because she had relented about letting him drive, and that afternoon they were planning to go for a run along towards the new road bridge to see how the construction was progressing.
‘Well, that answers the question, then,’ said Christopher. ‘If only we knew more about how the sound thing worked, we might get a bit further.’
‘Maybe Charlie Smith will know,’ Jemima suggested.
They were approaching the police station. There was a flurry of activity in the doorway, and Amaryllis burst out.
‘Thanks, Kenny!’ she called back over her shoulder.
‘You haven’t escaped, have you?’ said Christopher. ‘Who’s Kenny?’
‘No. Not exactly... It’s Sergeant Macdonald. Don’t you think he looks like a Kenny?’
‘How did you get out, then? Have they put one of those tracking bug things on you so that you can lead them to some vital evidence?’
‘No. Guess again.’
‘There’s been another death,’ said Jemima sombrely.
They all turned to look at her.
‘How did you know?’ said Amaryllis.
Jemima gasped and put one hand to her throat. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she said, not really making sense even to herself. ‘I never wanted this to happen.’
Chapter 16 Orphans of the storm
Amaryllis had only found out about the second death by accident. Sergeant Macdonald had been signing her out after the Chief Inspector said she could go, when there was a phone call. Keith had come through to the front desk to take it, and hadn’t noticed her, because she was crouching down behind the partition to get a stone out of her shoe before heading for freedom.
‘Where was this?... Yes, I know the place. Just about opposite the garden centre. Patch of old woodland... The what? Can you spell that, please?... Got it. We’ll send a car up. Is there anything else you can tell me just now?... Uhuh. Hold on to that for us, please. Have you got somewhere safe you can wait – in your car? Great. Thanks.’
She heard the click of the receiver being replaced and, still crouched down, part of his conversation with Sergeant Macdonald.
‘I can’t believe this, but that was a member of the public – she’d been walking the dog, in that patch of woodland across from the garden centre and t
he place where they keep the alpacas, and the dog came across another body.’
‘Another one? What sort of state was this one in?’
‘Well, she said it was a woman, so it can’t have... What the hell are you doing here?’
Amaryllis glanced up and found Keith leaning across the desk just above her. He didn’t seem all that pleased.
‘I’m just going,’ she said. ‘There was a stone in my shoe.’
‘You shouldn’t have been listening to all that!’
‘I didn’t hear a thing, honestly.’ She spoiled the effect by laughing as she left the police station, throwing a careless, ‘Thanks, Kenny!’ back at Sergeant Macdonald because she knew it would annoy Keith even more than the discovery that she had been eavesdropping.
Jemima seemed unreasonably upset by Amaryllis’s revelation.
Christopher, on the other hand, was more or less resigned to this kind of thing.
‘There’s always more than one,’ he sighed. ‘It’ll either be a murder and suicide thing or somebody on a killing spree.’
Jemima shivered. ‘Goodness me, I hope not... Come on, Dave, we’d better get home for your rest.’
Amaryllis and Christopher stood staring at each other.
‘I don’t suppose you’re up for a walk in the woods,’ she said.
‘No, of course not!’ he snapped. ‘Haven’t you been in more than enough trouble with the police already this lifetime?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I must say, I didn’t think Sarah would lock up her own left winger.’
‘I didn’t think you were all that left wing,’ he said.
‘No, it’s a hockey term.
‘Ah, I see.’
They were walking away from the police station when Keith Burnet came out and called after them. ‘Just a minute!’
‘I thought you’d finished with me,’ said Amaryllis.
‘I have,’ said Keith. ‘For now. It’s Mr Wilson I want – just as well you were just passing. It’s saved me a trip to your house to pick you up.’
Amaryllis enjoyed the range of expressions that gradually moved across Christopher’s face, starting with his normal ‘I told you so’ when she had done something he disapproved of, changing to mild surprise and from there to cold fear.
‘Um,’ he said, taking a step away from Keith, who laughed.
‘Don’t panic,’ he said. He lowered his voice. ‘This is highly irregular...’
‘Aren’t most things around here?’ said Amaryllis brightly.
‘I wondered if you might just have time to pop up to the woods and help us with an identification? Or not, as the case may be.’
‘Identification?’ said Christopher.
‘It would only be a preliminary one, of course,’ said Keith. ‘It’s more a case of eliminating a possibility. I shouldn’t really ask you, only I know you’ve seen this kind of thing before. And then maybe you can give us a hand with the animals.’
‘Animals?’
Really, thought Amaryllis, Christopher always managed to sound like some sort of idiot in these situations. If only he would stop repeating odd words from what Keith said.
‘Yes, you’ve had a bit of previous experience with them, I understand. It’ll take us a while to find an expert, but we can’t leave them roaming around up there.’ He glanced at Amaryllis. ‘You can come too if you want, but only to help catch them. You can’t do anything else.’
‘There’s no need to sound so stern,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of interfering with a crime scene.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s partly why we need somebody to get the animals out of the way.’
They went round to the back and got into a police car with a driver already in it.
‘Looks like rain,’ he said, making a tricky reverse manoeuvre much too quickly. Amaryllis noticed Christopher clutching the edge of the seat. He didn’t let go of it as they made the next turn and shot up the road.
‘Here, cool it,’ said Keith. ‘There’s no rush, and we don’t want to get caught on the speed camera – we’d never hear the end of it.’
‘We need to get there before the storm,’ said the constable, stubbornly refusing to ease off on the accelerator.
‘A minute ago it was just rain,’ said Keith. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Just then they turned a corner and saw a massive dark grey cloud hovering ominously overhead – a bit like an alien spaceship waiting to rain down terror on Pitkirtly, Amaryllis thought fancifully. It would be worse than when the darts team came along from Charlestown that time and went on an improvised victory march through the town, causing a near-riot.
‘Thunder cloud,’ said the constable.
‘All right, all right,’ said Keith. ‘You don’t even know if it’s coming this way or not.’
‘That’s the direction thunder always comes from around here,’ said the constable. They were nearly at the hotel already. An alpaca was sitting on the grass verge just ahead, chewing amicably.
‘Is that the same one?’ said Amaryllis.
‘I don’t know – I’m not an expert,’ said Christopher.
‘Yes, but is it the same colour?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘You’re not going to be much use to the police, are you?’
‘Well, at least I won’t get under their feet and annoy the neighbours for miles around,’ said Christopher, retaliating at last.
The car stopped.
‘Maybe we can pick this one off right away,’ said Keith eagerly. He got out of the car and approached the alpaca. It waited until he was about two feet away and then got to its feet in a leisurely way and wandered off across the road. ‘Maybe it’ll go straight home,’ he said to the others.
Amaryllis had always known Keith was too optimistic for his own good.
There was another car parked further up the road. A woman got out of it, holding back a large brown dog with white patches. It was wriggling about in her grasp as if trying to get away. It began to bark.
‘Sorry!’ she called. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute. I don’t want him frightening the alpaca.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Black, you just take your time,’ Keith told her. He leaned into the car and said to the constable, ‘You get that animal under control before it causes an accident. We’ll go into the scene with Mrs Black. There are suits in the back.’
‘Now remember,’ he said earnestly to all of them once they had put on the white suits and were walking cautiously forward into the woods, ‘nobody’s to touch anything. Except if you get the chance to grab an alpaca... How many did you say there were, Mrs Black?’
‘Oh, at least five,’ she said. ‘The one out there and four more. The dog flushed them out of the undergrowth. He’s very good at that. It’s what they’re bred for, you know.’
They passed one alpaca before they got very far, but it was too fast for them. It dashed ahead, deeper into the woods.
Mrs Black came to a stop. ‘It – she – she’s over there. In among the rhododendrons – nasty foreign things. I don’t know why the Council haven’t cut them back this year.’
She stood back with Amaryllis while Keith led Christopher forward.
Amaryllis heard Keith telling Christopher to take his time and think hard before he spoke. Hmph! No need to tell that to Christopher, of all people. The amount of time he usually spent thinking, it was a miracle if anyone got any speech out of him at all.
There was a pause. She couldn’t see them past the tallest rhododendron, a monster of a shrub that must have stretched for at least eight feet in all directions, so she didn’t know if Christopher had nodded or shaken his head. He hadn’t said anything. Perhaps he was still thinking.
Mrs Black, next to her, stirred uneasily. ‘It’s taking them a while. I don’t think there’s any doubt about her identity. I found her bank card, you know.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Amaryllis, keeping her voice low and trying her best to sound as if she wasn�
�t all that interested.
‘Yes – it’s Jane Blyth-Sheridan. She owns the alpacas. I don’t know her by sight, but my husband heard her give a talk at the last Rotary Club dinner, all about how she came to run the rescue organisation.’
‘So she rescues alpacas?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Oh, yes, it’s quite unusual, isn’t it?’
‘No worries,’ Keith was saying as the two men came back. ‘We’ll see if we can work it out another way.’
An alpaca passed within reach at that moment, and it wasn’t until she had caught it by the mane – if that was what it was called – and wrestled with it a bit that she saw the expression on Keith’s face. He was downcast. He must have expected Christopher to be able to identify the woman, but Christopher had failed.
The rain started, in that sudden way it always did at this time of year, straight from nothing to huge drops cascading down through the trees. If they had been out in the open it would have been like standing under a waterfall.
Keith spoke quickly on his mobile, asking for urgent backup, and a doctor, and all the rest.
Amaryllis said to the alpaca, ‘Let’s get you back in your pen, and see if we can find your friends.’
It wasn’t like her to talk to the animals, but she felt the circumstances were exceptional.
Chapter 17 Failure
Christopher didn’t know why Keith had expected him to be able to identify the victim. He had been happy to help, more or less, and very relieved to see that the body had evidently not been lying there for days or anything. But he had definitely never seen the woman before in his life.
He did wonder about the alpaca connection. But he didn’t have long to think about that before he realised that Amaryllis was leading one of the animals out of the woods, and that another one had just walked past him, and Keith would want him to try and catch it.
If they had had ropes or any kind of harness with them, it might have been possible. As it was, they just had to try and grab whatever part of the animals they could reach and attempt to steer them back towards their own garden. The security gates stood open, but he didn’t feel that helped very much, as the alpacas displayed quite a bit of reluctance to go through them. Maybe something had scared them away from there. Or maybe they were just making some sort of point.
Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10) Page 9
