by Rebecca Tope
‘So you’re suggesting we go off to a farm somewhere and talk about this?’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Course it is. Whatever makes you happy.’
‘Den Cooper, I love you,’ she shouted, flinging her arms round him, standing on tiptoe, but still only able to reach as far as his elbows. ‘Bend down, so I can hug you properly.’
He obliged, his long arms wrapping around her, pulling her close, and lifting her off her feet.
Drew was indeed sitting beside the phone, that Saturday, when it rang in the living room. He hadn’t been waiting for a call, though. He was helping Timmy with a wooden construction toy, the child perched on his lap and the pieces lined up on the arm of the sofa. For several seconds, he didn’t have a hand free to reach over and grab the receiver.
‘Oh, hello,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘This is Julie Grafton again. Sorry to call at the weekend.’
‘No problem,’ Drew said, struggling to shift his little son onto the cushions beside him. Timmy stubbornly resisted. Before he could start protesting, Drew relaxed and let him stay where he was. ‘How can I help?’
‘I’d like to come and see you. Today.’
‘Ah. Well, yes, that’s fine. When exactly?’
‘In about forty minutes? Is that too early?’
‘No, that’ll be all right. Although I’ve got my children here. I’d have to see you in the house, not the office. I’m in charge this morning.’
‘It’s not about the funeral,’ she added. ‘At least – not really.’
Drew almost laughed. ‘Not about the funeral? What then?’
‘I’ll tell you when I see you. I don’t mind about the kids. Except, do they have to be in the same room?’
He felt himself bristling with irritation, a sudden wash of it over-laying the polite concern he’d felt at first. ‘We’ll have to see,’ was all he said to that.
She arrived in less than forty minutes, her face pale and flat as she got out of the car. Drew felt a return of his former pity for her, combined with curiosity and a slight sense of dread. He’d been here before, more than once. Distraught women, intent on explaining to him the reasons for their loved one’s sudden death, throwing themselves on him for support, assistance, elucidation. If the dead person had been murdered, then Drew was the person they turned to. It was his fate, his destiny, now that his reputation as an amateur detective was so widespread. A reputation he really didn’t feel he deserved, when he thought back over his erratic career. A succession of lucky accidents, stubborn argumentativeness, help from Maggs and Karen and a deplorable tendency to become emotionally involved with distraught women was mostly what it came down to.
He met her at the front door, putting out an arm to stop her coming in. ‘We can go round the back, to the garden. I’ve got the kids playing out there, and we can probably get out of earshot, if we need to. I don’t think they’re likely to be interested, actually.’
‘OK.’ She seemed to be holding herself carefully, as if afraid that something would break or overflow if she moved suddenly.
He led her round the path at the side of the house, where Karen’s garden, bigger every time he looked, stretched away to their right. Turning left, they found themselves in the smaller area, which was almost entirely lawn, strewn with playthings and featuring a climbing frame. Stephanie and Timmy were splashing their hands in a bowl of water, in a game that looked particularly mindless. They’d get cold before long, Drew realised, as the water soaked into their clothes. It wasn’t a very warm day.
He sat himself and Julie Grafton on white plastic garden chairs, and encouraged her to speak. She needed very little urging.
‘I’ve been thinking about who must have killed Peter,’ she said breathlessly. ‘At first I never even asked myself that. I couldn’t get past the fact that he was dead. Do you understand?’
Drew nodded.
‘But the police kept coming back with questions, and I had phone calls from the Food Chain people, and various friends, and they all kept on and on about who could have done it, until I woke up. I mean, now I really need to know. Obviously, I suppose. How could anybody do that? Just shoot him with no warning? It’s … barbaric. Wicked. A terrible thing to do.’
Drew nodded again. ‘Of course it is,’ he agreed. ‘There can be no excuse for that.’
‘Excuse!’ she echoed, her voice rising to a squeak. ‘Of course there isn’t.’
‘I didn’t mean—’ He stopped. Something was nudging him, some perception that he’d almost missed. What was she really trying to say?
‘Anyway,’ she pressed on. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I lay awake all night, going over everybody he knew, everybody he’d ever annoyed or disagreed with. Racking my brains about crossbows, and whether I’ve ever seen one round here. Trying to find who might want to kill him.’
‘And—?’ he prompted.
‘I couldn’t think of any particular person, but it made me see things about Peter that I hadn’t wanted to face up to before.’
Drew glanced at the children. They’d tipped the bowl over, and were mixing the water into the ground, turning a perfectly good patch of lawn into a quagmire. Well, he mentally shrugged to himself, it was only a very small quagmire, and he remembered very well how delicious the sensation of mud between the fingers could be.
‘That’s a good first step,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, not just for finding who killed him, but to get a clearer idea of who he was, what sort of marriage you had, that sort of thing.’ He found it easy to talk like this, from his occasional work as a funeral officiant. He could home in on the reality behind the blank faces, venture into sensitive areas that would send most men running. And he’d discovered that if people were ever going to tolerate this ‘real’ talk, it was at a time of great crisis. Some of their protective layers fell away and they could be addressed in terms that you’d never use in normal daily chitchat.
‘There was nothing wrong with our marriage,’ she flashed. Drew waited passively.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she added more calmly. ‘But he did have a life apart from me. Things I wasn’t involved in. We thought it was healthy – you know, two well-rounded individuals choosing to be together, not because we were dependent, but because we loved each other.’ She sniffed moistly, but there were no tears.
‘So I think this killing was something to do with the apple juice,’ she said. ‘Because he wasn’t actually organic, you see. Not that he pretended he was, but some of the others disapproved. They didn’t like his using so much technology. And,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I’ve been out there, looking at his paperwork, talking to Patch.’
‘Patch?’
‘The boy who helps Peter. He’s been trying to keep it going, bless him, even though he’s only sixteen. He comes in after school. It couldn’t all just stop, anyway.’ She sighed. ‘Patch had no idea what Peter was planning. At least, so he says …’
Drew waited. The story was clear enough without any need for further questions.
‘He’d been approached by SuperFare,’ she hurried the words out. ‘They were interested in taking the juice, you see. I found several letters from them. They wanted him to expand, guarantee the right quantity, consistent quality, all that sort of thing.’ She gave Drew a penetrating look. ‘I knew nothing at all about it,’ she said, and he felt her anger, despite it being under tight control.
‘And how would you have reacted?’
‘I’d have been disgusted,’ she spat. ‘It’s a betrayal of everything he said he believed. Treachery. There really aren’t the words for it. And if I think it’s so terrible, there are others round here who’d feel even more strongly.’ She chewed a corner of her mouth. ‘Don’t you think I might have discovered a motive for his murder?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Drew couldn’t wait for Karen to get back. He wasn’t too sure where she’d gone; she’d rushed out of the house after breakfast muttering about Food Chain bus
iness and having to catch somebody. ‘You’re OK with the kids, aren’t you?’ she’d thrown over her shoulder.
‘Yes,’ he’d agreed. ‘So long as we don’t get a removal.’
‘Pooh! You never get removals these days,’ was her parting shot. The uncomfortable truth of this had put him in a sour mood for a good ten minutes.
She still hadn’t got back at midday and he was beginning to think he ought to call her mobile and find out where she was. Except she never switched the darn thing on, and she wouldn’t like him chasing after her, even if he got through. He found some salad things and threw them together for lunch, including a few pods of early peas that seemed ready to eat. He and Stephanie both preferred them uncooked, scattered amongst the tomatoes and radishes of the salad.
Julie Grafton’s disclosures had made him realise he hadn’t been keeping up with the activities of the Food Chain group. He helped Karen load the van when she had a stall, and arranged his own schedule so as to manage without the van, but that was about as far as it went. He didn’t go to the meetings with her, barely knew Geraldine from Hilary, and nearly always experienced a stab of disappointment when she told him how much money she’d made.
The fact that the murdered man had been a stallholder at the market had made Drew more uneasy than he cared to admit to himself. Something was going on that he would rather his wife were not involved in. Something dangerous and incomprehensible. The bomb in the supermarket had been the first signal, one that shook him up badly. A murder only three days later did nothing for his peace of mind. Then there had been the odd evening visit from Geraldine Beech, and the sporadic comings and goings which he hadn’t properly followed. Although he could see cars arriving at the house from the office window, he was often out in the burial field, or busy on the phone, too distracted to worry about his wife’s activities. Whatever Karen did during the working day was her own business, and he seldom consciously tried to monitor her.
Suddenly Karen was there, bursting through the front door, her hair all untidy as if she’d been combing her fingers through it. ‘Hey!’ she said, coming to find him and the children in the kitchen. ‘Guess what!’
He shook his head apprehensively. ‘What?’
‘The police have arrested Mary Thomas. I was there! It was amazing. She ran out into her orchard and they had to chase her. They think she planted the bomb in the supermarket. But – this is the really mad part – she swears blind she wasn’t there. How can she say that when I saw her? I spoke to her. It’s her word against mine.’ She ran out of breath then, slumping onto one of the kitchen chairs, and running her fingers through her hair yet again.
‘You were there? At her house?’ Drew said. ‘Why?’
Karen didn’t answer. ‘It’s such a funny feeling. Someone telling an outright lie, like that. You know in films, where the main witness takes the police back to the place where she’s seen some sort of clear evidence, but when they get there, it’s all been repainted, and the doors moved and nothing remotely as she remembers? Like that. You doubt your own sanity. If it wasn’t for Geraldine, I’d be thinking I’d dreamt the whole thing.’
‘Kaz, calm down will you,’ Drew urged her. ‘We’re having lunch.’
Stephanie and Timmy were both eyeing their mother uncertainly. ‘Daddy picked some peas,’ Stephanie said.
‘What? Oh Drew, you didn’t, did you? They won’t be ready for at least another week.’
‘Only a few. And they are ready. Just as we like them, eh, Steph?’
‘They can’t possibly be. But never mind now. Is there anything left for me?’ She scanned the table. Part of a home-baked loaf remained, and a scattering of salad in the bottom of the bowl. ‘Cheese?’
‘Loads of cheese. Some of that coleslaw, too. In the fridge.’
She ate absentmindedly, obviously still reliving the events of the morning. Drew hustled the children out to the garden before returning to the conversation.
‘They must be fairly sure, if they’ve really arrested her,’ he remarked.
‘I don’t know. She didn’t do herself any good by running away. God knows what she was thinking of. But it took them a few minutes to find her. She was in amongst her cherry trees.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Out in the road by then.’
‘Can you tell me the whole thing again, slowly?’
‘There isn’t anything else, really. I went on a whim, because she’d been so off with me on Wednesday, and I couldn’t let it rest. She didn’t let me in, just kept me talking on the doorstep. Then when the police car showed up, she took one look and started galloping down the orchard, leaving me standing there. I felt a real fool.’
‘Had you said anything about the supermarket to her?’
‘Not really. I was just getting around to it.’
‘But you heard what the police said to her?’
‘Yes. I was out in the road, and they brought her right past me, to their car. They were saying they wanted to question her about the supermarket, and she gave me a most peculiar look and said right out that she hadn’t been near the supermarket for months, and they’d never prove otherwise.’
‘Gosh!’
Karen shuddered, clasping her arms tightly round herself. ‘It was horrible, really. But the main thing is, I’m so terribly cross with her. How dare she tell such a lie!’
‘Had it occurred to you that she might have a good reason?’ he ventured. ‘And that look she gave you, might it not have been something like “I know this is wrong of me, but please back me up”? Something like that?’ He smiled boyishly. ‘Just guessing, you understand. I don’t even know the woman.’
‘No, that didn’t occur to me,’ she admitted. ‘I drove home full of visions of the police questioning me again, and thinking I was mad, or had some sinister reason for insisting she was there. It’s very likely, you know. It’s sure to be because of me that they nabbed her in the first place.’
‘Do you think she did it? Planted the bomb, I mean?’
Karen paused and gulped. ‘Drew, why haven’t I thought of these questions for myself? I’m so stupid, honestly I am.’
‘Not at all. You’d have got there in a while. But do you?’
She thought about it. ‘It looked as if she’d only just got out of her car, when I bumped into her. But it was all rather confused. Steph and I were fooling about, almost running back to my car. I didn’t take very much notice of what she was doing. But I suppose I don’t think she did it. How could a sensible woman like that possibly do such a thing?’
‘You were running?’ Drew’s mind seemed to change gear, flickering over all the different strands of the story. ‘Did Mary see you running?’
‘Probably. Why?’
‘Let me run something past you,’ he said. ‘How about if Mary thinks you planted the bomb? So everything she did today, everything she says, is designed to throw them off the scent. Does that make sense?’
‘No it doesn’t. That’s the sort of convolution that Maggs would have come up with. I had Stephanie with me, remember? Nobody plants bombs with their small daughter alongside. Anyway, Mary couldn’t hope to protect me like that. The police know I was there; I presented myself like a good citizen. She could have kept quiet about the running, and still have told the truth about being there. And there’s sure to be other people who saw us. For heaven’s sake – nobody would suspect a woman with a little girl. We were just playing. Except …’ She faltered. ‘Except we hadn’t actually bought anything. We just went in and came out again, pretending Steph was going to be sick. Bloody hell, I hope nobody remembers to report that.’
‘On the face of it, it’s rather a surprise they’ve opted for Mary,’ Drew said grimly. ‘If I’d been them, I’d have had you banged up long since.’ He laughed, but the joke was too thin for any real humour.
Karen stopped trying to eat any lunch. ‘This is actually quite scary,’ she admitted.
It was with a sense of surrender that Drew accepted t
hat he was from here on involved in the violence of the past week. As if to ratify this, as well as divert her fears into another channel, he told Karen about his conversation with Julie Grafton that morning: the fruit juice contract with SuperFare in particular.
She heard him out without much reaction. ‘The police said something that fits with that,’ she nodded, when he’d finished. ‘That the juice production was much more hi-tech than they’d have expected. I wonder whether Geraldine knows anything about this?’
‘Doesn’t she do some kind of inspection before she lets people have one of her stalls?’
‘She didn’t do one on me. I doubt if she does. She’d take it on trust. And anyway, there are only a few rules. You have to make or grow the produce yourself, and live within 25 miles of the market. He qualified on both those.’
‘Julie thinks it’s a motive for killing him – the business with the supermarket contract.’
Karen shuddered again. ‘Has it got to such a point as that?’ She hugged herself tighter. ‘I guess it has, if the bomb’s anything to go by.’ She remembered something else. ‘And Geraldine told me, quite plainly, that the two things were connected. And I think she was saying the connection was Mary Thomas.’
‘We’re jumping to conclusions here,’ he warned. ‘Quite a few of these points have at least two interpretations.’
‘Have they?’ she said bleakly.
The phone rang, and there was a frantic scrummage while they searched for the walkabout receiver which hadn’t been replaced on its cradle. ‘Bloody thing,’ Drew panted, finally locating it underneath the sofa. ‘Hello?’
It was a nursing home, eighteen miles away. They had a body for removal, preferably by teatime. ‘Are you sure you want me?’ Drew asked, as he often did. Customers for his burial ground generally made themselves known to him before they died.
‘“Drew Slocombe, Peaceful Repose Funerals”. That’s what it says here. Apparently a friend of hers is with you – if you see what I mean. Buried in your cemetery. She’d like to go alongside, if that’s possible.’
