A Market for Murder

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Have it under a coat? Pretend to be turning and looking as well?’ Drew felt himself become fully engaged in the conversation. He could visualise the scene as he spoke: the scene from another angle, for a change. His flashbacks and re-livings had so far all been an image of Karen falling, her head whipping back from the impact of the bullet. Now he mentally scanned it from all sides, trying to capture the entire scene.

  Maggs waited a few seconds, then said, ‘It’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it? I mean, that someone could do that, and nobody else notice? I think there must have been at least two of them. One to shoot and the other to stage some sort of diversion – make sure everybody looked the wrong way. Something so clever that we can’t remember it now.’

  ‘The obvious answer,’ he said slowly, ‘is that it was the three women. You know, Hilary, Geraldine and Mary.’

  ‘The three witches.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what the village people call them, apparently. Den’s been to see all three, since Thursday. He’s worked his little socks off, bless him. He knows all about them now.’

  ‘And does he think they conspired to murder my wife?’ His voice thickened. ‘She thought they were her friends.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He told his Inspector Hemsley all about them, and he agrees. They do have strong feelings, but not that strong. They all genuinely liked Karen, he’s convinced.’

  ‘He can’t know that for sure. They’ve got means and opportunity, for Grafton’s killing as well. And some sort of motive to do with food politics, I suppose.’

  ‘There’s something odd about Mary,’ Maggs remembered. ‘She’s the one he isn’t really sure about.’

  ‘The supermarket,’ Drew said, with another wave of ice washing through his veins. ‘Karen was there …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing, Maggs. It’s just—’

  She read his mind instantly. ‘Drew, you don’t believe she had anything to do with that, do you? I admit the thought did occur to me, and then I remembered she had Stephanie with her. That in itself should tell us she’d never have been involved with setting a bomb off.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, feeling miserable and relieved at the same time. ‘But I realise now that she hasn’t been talking to me about the market stall and the whole food business for a long time. I’d rather lost interest in it, if I’m honest. I feel quite bad about that.’

  ‘Has she been taking an interest in Peaceful Repose?’ Maggs flashed back. ‘Come on, you idiot. That’s the way it goes. You and Karen are a great couple, with great kids and independent lives. You’re beating yourself up for nothing. It’s good that she’s got something of her own to do.’

  Drew sighed. Maggs was twelve years his junior, but she’d always felt it part of her duty to lecture him on life, relationships and feelings. He sometimes had a vision of her taking the same role with her long-suffering parents, from the moment they adopted her as a small child.

  ‘I want to be doing something,’ he said, gathering what scraps of dignity and energy he could manage. ‘Have you any ideas?’

  ‘You should get back to Julie Grafton,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Talk to her, but keep in mind that she could have done it. And Sally, too. She was at the funeral, and hanging back, as I recall. You could give her a ring.’

  ‘But she couldn’t have shot Peter Grafton. Karen said she was right next to him when it happened.’

  Maggs made a cynical sound. ‘Maybe she’s just very clever,’ she said. ‘Or maybe she has an accomplice.’

  ‘Which is where we began,’ he reminded her. ‘And all that theory does is make for a lot more very confusing permutations.’

  ‘Well, now you’re on the case, we’ll unravel it in no time,’ she said robustly.

  Despite Maggs’s advice, Drew did not phone Julie or Sally Dabb. The mere act of bracketing them together made him uncomfortable.

  Peter Grafton’s two women, in effect, in some kind of unwholesome relationship that he was not keen to explore. And if he was going to talk to them about the attack on Karen, then he would also have to ask about Grafton’s shooting, and that could lead down paths he’d prefer to avoid.

  Settling down to watch a video with the children, he tried to create some mental order out of the scraps of knowledge concerning Karen’s activities. She had taken her lead from Geraldine Beech, right from the start. Geraldine had advised her on what to grow, how to prepare it, what to charge for it, and what to say to her customers. She had encouraged Karen to attend the Food Chain meetings, and bullied her into showing up at a few local schools to talk about their initiatives. Karen had shown every appearance of wholeheartedly endorsing all the opinions, practices and ideologies of the people in the group. Drew could not long entertain any theory that involved Karen being a traitor to the cause.

  There were, however, several uncomfortable ironies attached to Karen’s evolution as an ecological proselytiser. Drew, after all, had been the one to establish Peaceful Repose Burial Ground, making the disposal of the dead as natural a procedure as he could. Drew had called for biodegradable containers, shallow graves and new trees. He and Maggs had given talks to groups across the region, sowing the seeds in receptive minds, to the effect that cremations were not merely lacking in spiritual content, but they were bad for the environment. When he arrived in North Staverton, it was to a deafening lack of reaction amongst the local people. They had continued with their own lives for quite a while before the significance of his service dawned on them.

  And it had been Geraldine Beech who called in one day, with no other motive than curiosity. She who had eyed the burial field with favour, but who had become really excited when she noticed Karen’s burgeoning vegetable plot. This, Drew felt, was where the ironies began. Suddenly it was Karen who joined the mainstream of village life, with her involvement in Geraldine’s Food Chain organisation, and her awakening to the potential of her home-grown produce. Although people referred routinely to ‘the Slocombes’ as both being in the forefront of the newly energetic environmental initiatives, Drew could never avoid the suspicion that he’d been usurped in some way by his wife.

  And this feeling, if he was honest with himself, went some way towards explaining why he took less of an interest in what Karen was doing than he could have done. He and Maggs were the true pioneers. They were the ones who had made people think, and who had struggled for years with minimal reward and numerous setbacks. They had endured the active hostility of Plant and Son, the undertaker in Bradbourne who stood to lose business to Peaceful Repose. They had been treated with mockery and suspicion at times, forced to defend the shallowness of the graves and the simplicity of their practices.

  But Geraldine had clearly seen things differently. She had talked as if she was the driver of the bandwagon, the leader of the wagon train, and everyone else was falling in behind her. Pleased to have her support, Drew was nonetheless irritated by her.

  Now, there was a sense again of being usurped – this time by Den Cooper. Maggs had implied that Den was now actively pursuing his own investigation into what had happened to Peter Grafton and Karen, and discovering leads and connections that Drew knew nothing about. Handicapped by the needs of his children, as well as having to keep the business going at least on a minimal basis, he wasn’t going to have time to keep up. Even if Maggs related everything that Den told her, it would all be too pre-digested to make him feel directly involved.

  And besides, his rightful place was with Karen. His stoical wife, who worked so hard, and seldom complained and tolerated his pathetic income and unsocial working hours. The mother of his children, the person he most enjoyed talking to. He conjured the image of her lying there in hospital, her face oddly unrecognisable on the white pillow. She never lay like that, flat on her back, chin up. She curled on her side, chin tucked down, hair all messy. The real Karen liked brightly coloured pillowcases, and a duvet that would wrap itself tightly round her by morning. The thought, that he
had until now managed to keep at bay, finally thrust itself through, causing him to clutch both children tightly to his sides. What if she never woke up? What if that familiar Karen was lost forever?

  ‘Daddy!’ Timmy complained, wriggling crossly.

  But Stephanie seemed to read his mind. She huddled herself closely to him, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes fixed unseeingly at the television screen.

  Den was not thinking about Drew at all. He was aware of no competition between them, no reason why Drew should feel resentful. After all, any success that Den might achieve would only be good news for the husband of the injured Karen. Maggs, who might well have understood the sensitivities, was too excited to lend them her attention.

  ‘It’s got to be about the supermarket connection!’ she insisted. ‘Grafton signs a deal with SuperFare to sell his fruit juice to them. The Food Chain people get to know about it, and decide he has to be stopped. He’ll undermine the whole shebang, if he goes on like that. Terrible publicity, dreadful betrayal of all they hold dear. Maybe someone talks to an activist – one of their sons, even. Haven’t they got four or five sons, between them? So, he sneaks into the gents behind the farmers’ market, sticks his crossbow out of the window and does the deed. But Karen sees too much, somehow. He knows she’ll eventually twig, and go to the police. Can’t risk it. So Karen has to be stopped.’

  Den held up both hands, as if to arrest an oncoming juggernaut in full flight. ‘Whoa!’ he pleaded. ‘Hold your horses.’

  She laughed. ‘Keep up,’ she said. ‘Where did you lose me?’

  ‘Crossbow. Gents. Son. Karen.’ He ticked them off, finger by finger. ‘Who says anybody’s sons would be interested?’ Then he remembered. ‘Ah! Mary Thomas’s twins. Humphrey’s an animal rights activist, or something. Did I tell you that?’

  ‘More or less,’ she confirmed. ‘Except I thought he was against GM crops.’

  ‘Right.’ Den nodded. ‘That’s what I meant.’

  ‘Didn’t they teach you to get the details right? Surely accuracy was quite important for police work?’

  ‘Shut up. I wasn’t on a police investigation, was I? I just chatted to the woman, and tried to remember all the stuff she told me.’

  ‘But now you’re supposed to get it right, because Inspector Hemsley wants to know everything you find out.’

  ‘Only because he’s short of men, as usual, and wants me to provide him with some free assistance. Not a lot of people fully grasp that the vast majority of police investigations are resolved thanks to information received from members of the public.’

  ‘Come off it. Stop sounding so pompous. Anyway, of course people know that. It’s obvious.’

  ‘Only when you stop to think about it.’

  ‘Maybe so, but don’t forget you went to him. You’re dying to be part of the whole thrilling business again.’

  He shook his head in defeat. ‘I can’t see that it really matters, anyway.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ She waved an impatient hand. ‘Let’s get on with it. You said yourself the public loos were probably the place the killer fired from. Seems fairly obvious to me.’

  ‘It isn’t obvious at all. It’s one of about ten possibilities.’

  ‘But it fits really well. Windows at the back, all along that wall, facing the market stalls. Chap goes in, with the crossbow under his coat, shuts himself in a cubicle, fires out of the little window, replaces weapon under coat and walks away, in completely the other direction from where people will be looking.’

  ‘What if there was someone else in the loo? They might have seen him.’

  ‘Obviously, the killer would wait till there wasn’t anybody.’

  ‘They wouldn’t know if someone was next door, in the Ladies.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t matter. A crossbow makes hardly any noise. That’s the beauty of it. I wonder why they didn’t use it again at the funeral?’

  ‘Probably because it’s even more difficult to hide than a gun.’

  ‘Just as easy to aim from waist level, though. Or so I would think.’

  ‘It might not have been the same person,’ Den reminded her. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘I’m not. I know it could be two different people, with two different motives. Maybe it was Genevieve Slater, still after Drew and wanting Karen out of the way. You remember I told you about her? We buried her mother’s old friend this week.’

  ‘Yes I remember,’ Den laughed. Despite himself, he was impressed by her endless inventive enthusiasm. Her mind moved so quickly and competently, it was like watching sunlight flickering over water. ‘What we still don’t have is proof – any sort of proof,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Well, we’d better try to find some then, hadn’t we?’

  Den didn’t know quite how she proposed to accomplish that, but he acknowledged to himself that he was really looking forward to finding out.

  Karen could feel herself emerging slowly from the gluey state she’d been in. So slow and fragile was the sense of return that she was afraid to give it her attention, in case it changed direction and plunged her back. There was a new touch on her hand, a dry firm grasp very different from Drew’s gentle stroking. ‘Karen?’ came a low gentle voice. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Karen made no attempt to move or speak. It was far, far too soon for that. And besides, when she did re-emerge into the world of the living, she wanted it to be Drew who welcomed her.

  But the person was insistent. She was doing something to Karen’s hand, lifting it, and placing it inside her own. ‘Wiggle your finger if you can hear me,’ came a clear instruction. ‘Just tickle my palm.’

  She couldn’t ignore the order. It was such an easy thing to do. Without noticeable thought, she let her forefinger flicker. It was as if it had wanted to, from the start.

  ‘Good girl!’ applauded her visitor. ‘Very good indeed. You’ll soon be better. Right as rain in no time, you’ll see. But now, I want you to help me. Karen – did you see the person who shot you? Do you know who it was? Wiggle your finger if the answer’s yes.’

  Karen’s finger twitched again, as the face returned to her inner eye. That face, staring at her, full of cold intent. Oh yes – Karen knew who her would-be killer had been.

  ‘Excellent!’ breathed her interrogator. ‘Thank you, dear. Now, I could run through a list of names, and you’d probably reveal to me which was the right one, but I don’t want to tire you, or upset you. You’ve told me all I want to know for now. I’ll leave you to gather your strength.’

  And it went quiet again, except for something ticking rhythmically somewhere in the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sally Dabb was very much behind with her pickles. May was an awkward month at the best of times, with little or no fresh produce available for her usual range. Although she did have a few dozen jars remaining, she was worried that they’d all sell during the next few weeks. Geraldine had suggested some new lines – mint jelly, something with elderflower or even dandelion. ‘Why not try something herbal, too?’ the organiser had said. ‘Feverfew grows like crazy around here. Can’t you concoct some sort of headache remedy from it?’

  Sally had not been keen. It felt like quackery to be selling folk medicines without proper testing. Besides, she wouldn’t have the first idea how feverfew should be presented. She knew her mother had been in the habit of nibbling the leaves to assuage a migraine, now and then, but Sally had never really believed it worked.

  She had planned to design some new labels and try them out on her computer, but Archie was doing his accounts and she couldn’t get near the machine. Anything that risked upsetting Archie these days would be a very bad idea.

  She knew, though, that she absolutely had to keep busy. If there wasn’t something to occupy her mind, she’d go back to thinking about Peter, and that would lead to tears and Archie would notice and get angry again.

  He had known all along that she was very fond of Peter. They’d all been at school together, and even
now, fifteen years later, it was fresh in everyone’s minds. Peter Grafton had been the most handsome boy in the school. Ridiculously handsome, at about sixteen. His skin always seemed tanned, his golden hair burnished. He walked with a rare grace and smiled indiscriminately. All the girls had adored him. One by one they had wangled dates with him, triumphing over their sisters during those brief weeks of glory. But somehow nobody ever managed to keep him for long. It was simply too much hard work, they agreed amongst themselves, afterwards.

  He hardly spoke, he passively agreed to any proposals as to where they might go, and seemed to forget just which girl he was supposed to be going out with, from one date to the next.

  Julie Grainger, who he eventually married, had not been a local girl. Her family lived in Yorkshire, and Peter had met her during his time at university. He had married her and brought her back to Bradbourne a month after they graduated. As far as anybody could see, she suited him very well. Over the years he changed from the beautiful dumb schoolboy to an assured man, gradually losing his looks. The more ordinary he became in appearance, the nicer his character seemed to be. Sally and others observed this with mixed feelings.

  And then there he’d been, a fellow stallholder at the farmers’ markets, and such a very appealing person. He had been fulsome in his delight at meeting her again. He had admired the pickles and preserves, helped her arrange them, questioned her closely on what went into them. He was clearly converted to the whole business of local food production, zealously running off leaflets for Geraldine and showing up at all the meetings.

  Then someone had killed him. Right there, inches away from Sally herself, so his blood splashed her and his dying gurgle echoed in her head. The police had wanted to know every tiny detail, making her describe it again and again. They had wanted the whole story of her relationship with him, obviously believing the gossip that she and Peter had been having an affair. And Sally wasn’t daft enough to miss the implication that her husband was one of the very few people with an identifiable motive for the murder.