by Rebecca Tope
The police, Sally discovered, were very poor at grasping the complexities of human interactions. They seemed unable to deviate from the blinkered scenario: Married woman having affair with fellow stallholder; husband discovers this, is jealous and shoots lover. Simple. Happens all the time. Though Sally did wonder whether they regarded Julie Grafton with the same degree of suspicion. And if not, why not?
In any case, the police line was wrong on about a hundred details. Firstly, she and Peter were not in any official sense having an affair. They had not in fact had full penetrative sex together. They had kissed and cuddled a lot, in the back of Peter’s van. There had been skin contact and much use of hands. But in a court of law, she was fairly certain she would be found innocent of adultery. Peter had insisted on this, from the start. ‘We’re just good friends, having a friendly cuddle,’ he said, more than once. And indeed, Sally found it a relief to retain a clear conscience. What she most enjoyed was their conversations, anyway. He made her laugh, he understood her feelings, he inspired her with ambition and optimism, with his vaulting visions of the future.
Furthermore, the police had shown no curiosity as to the nature of Sally’s own marriage. They had taken details of Archie’s work, and where he was on the morning of the shooting. And they had been forced to conclude that his alibi was sound, and he could not have been the killer. At that point they drifted away, leaving Sally oddly frustrated and resentful. Didn’t they owe it to her – and somehow to Peter, as well – to pay a bit more attention? Funny, she realised, how urgently she wished she could disclose the truth about her married life.
Finally, the threesome did get together for a long overdue comparison of findings and hypotheses. Maggs and Den drove to North Staverton at seven thirty that evening, and helped Drew put the children to bed. Stephanie had monopolised Den as soon as he arrived on the scene, and regularly complained that she didn’t see him as often as she would like. Timmy seemed to have embarked on a campaign, almost from the moment of his birth, to seduce Maggs into adoring him. He seemed to think he was making progress, as time went on, albeit slowly. Den and he were thus in a kind of alliance, each seeking to discover the best way to please her, each basking in the moments of success. There were even times when they seemed to be teaching each other how best to achieve their goal.
The bedtime developed into a kind of muted party. The hospital had phoned Drew with their end-of-day bulletin, cautiously revealing that Karen was now in a far lighter coma, with a lot of flickering eye movement and healthier brain scan read-outs. He had agonised about whether to drive back to see for himself, but the sister had assured him it was still too soon for any real excitement, and they’d phone the moment anything substantially changed.
This came as a relief on a number of levels. Despite – or perhaps because of – his experience working as a nurse, Drew did not like hospital wards. His heartbeat accelerated and he felt itchy and hot, every time he walked into the building. Sometimes he felt sick, too. Good old-fashioned fear, he told himself. A perfectly rational response. But it was not something anybody would willingly put themselves through if they could avoid it.
So he threw himself into enjoying the company and good sense of his friends, encouraging the children to relax and be indulged. It was a warm evening, and Timmy was grubby from playing outside. Drew organised a complicated bath routine, with Stephanie’s favourite Den given charge of water and bubbles, and her special story afterwards, while Maggs rolled up her sleeves and ensured that Timmy was entirely clean in all departments. It seemed, Drew noted, that everybody was more than happy with their allotted roles. Certainly the noise was all shrieks of laughter followed by murmurs of sleepy contentment in a surprisingly short time. He withdrew downstairs, and having already raided the freezer, slid three sirloin steaks under the grill and a quantity of chips into the deep fat fryer. A bottle of organic red wine was already on the table.
It was with a sense of defiance that he called upstairs, ‘Ready in five minutes!’ What if one of Karen’s market friends came to the door now? They wouldn’t be able to fault his choice of menu, but they might raise their eyebrows at the fact of a dinner party at all, with his wife struggling for life in a hospital bed.
But it wasn’t really a dinner party. It was the gathering together of investigators into who and how and why – the history, motives, methods and intentions of whoever had shot Peter Grafton and Karen Slocombe. A gathering that they all knew should have taken place some days earlier.
The steaks were tender – local pure bred Hereford cattle, killed in their own field, hung for three weeks and expertly butchered. The chips were made from Karen’s own potatoes, and the vegetables were last year’s broccoli and french beans. ‘It’s a feast!’ Den declared.
‘I sometimes think our meals are a trifle repetitive,’ Drew mused. ‘We never have rice these days, or anything with noodles or even much in the ways of pies. Just plain meat and veg.’
‘That’s the simple life for you,’ Maggs said. ‘You never have chicken, either. And hardly any fish.’
‘There’s a whole pig just gone in the freezer,’ Drew agreed. ‘Masses and masses of chops.’
‘Wonderful!’ enthused Den. ‘Don’t knock it, you fool. Most people would change places with you like a shot.’
‘And a head,’ Drew continued, after a small wince at the metaphor. ‘They make you have the head as well. In fact, there are now three pigs’ heads in there, because Karen’s not really sure what to do with them.’
There was no answer to that. Den and Maggs met each other’s eyes, and silently agreed not to venture any suggestions as to how to deal with a pig’s head. Neither had any recollections of mothers or grandmothers being called upon to resolve such a dilemma.
‘You live well,’ Maggs said, after the pause. ‘Everybody around here lives well.’
‘Thanks to the three witches,’ Den added. Drew’s stare of total incomprehension served to focus them all on the matter in hand. ‘You don’t know what we know about the three witches,’ Den realised. ‘Time I filled you in, then.’
Drew listened with complete attention as the former police detective lucidly recounted everything he’d learnt over the past week or so. The steaks disappeared magically, Den talking with his mouth full, and Maggs let him have the limelight while she enjoyed her meal. The wine was soon consumed, and Drew wished he’d provided a second bottle.
For afters, he produced a bowl of peaches, bottled in a heady syrup laced with brandy. ‘Sally Dabb made these,’ he said. ‘We’ve had them since Christmas. I think you’ll like them.’
Den’s tale was told by this time and Drew was trying to digest it all. ‘We still don’t really know as much about these people as Karen does,’ he worried. ‘She’s been working with them, going to meetings, dropping in for coffee, for a year or more now. She’s the real expert.’
‘Which is probably why she’s also the victim,’ said Maggs, with a sturdiness born only minimally of her alcohol intake. ‘She knows something that would incriminate the person who shot Peter Grafton. That seems obvious.’
‘It’s an assumption,’ Den corrected her.
‘I know it is,’ she frowned. ‘Because I’ve already thought of at least one completely different scenario.’
‘Which is?’ Drew prompted.
‘That Karen was the intended victim the first time, too.’
‘What?’ Drew’s heart lurched at the idea. ‘But why? What possible …’
‘Maybe to do with the supermarket bomb,’ Maggs interrupted. ‘She was there. She saw Mary Thomas. She might have seen something else, without realising it.’
From nowhere, another idea hit Drew. It was like a barbed missile, smacking him in the face, attaching itself to his mind, making him desperate to shake free of it. He didn’t think he could utter it aloud.
‘What?’ demanded Maggs, seeing it clear in his eyes.
‘Stephanie was there, too. And she was right beside Karen on Friday morning.
’
‘No, Karen was holding her. She was in Karen’s arms.’ Maggs was keeping up magnificently. ‘Their heads were almost level.’
‘But she wasn’t there on the Tuesday, when Grafton was shot,’ said Cooper, wide-eyed. ‘Nobody would deliberately shoot a little girl.’
‘They missed her by inches when they shot Karen,’ said Maggs. ‘And if the gun was concealed under a coat or in a bag, the aim wasn’t likely to be very accurate. It’s hard to believe they really cared who got hit.’
‘We’ve got it completely wrong,’ Drew said. ‘I’m all for some brainstorming, and looking at it from every angle, but this one makes no sense.’ He put down his spoon without finishing the peaches. ‘It’s sickening.’
‘Right,’ agreed Cooper. ‘But nobody’s asked Stephanie for her view of what happened, have they? She knows some of these people, too. She’s a witness.’
‘You don’t interview four-year-old children in a murder enquiry,’ said Drew stiffly. ‘It’s been bad enough for her as it is.’
‘Well, actually, sometimes they do,’ Den corrected. ‘Plain clothes WDCs, in special rooms, made to seem like home. Usually only when they’re directly involved, though. Their evidence isn’t usually admissable in court if they’re only four.’
‘I should hope not.’ Drew was cold to his bones. ‘You can’t call her a witness. It’s bad enough that she’s been involved in the first place.’
‘Relax,’ Maggs ordered him. ‘Nobody’s going to upset her any more than she is already. But she’s a tough little thing. Always has been.’
Stephanie had spent much of her early life playing more or less contentedly in a corner of Peaceful Repose’s office, while Karen continued working as a teacher. Only when Timmy’s birth was imminent did Karen abandon work and become more available. Stephanie had somehow absorbed the realities of death and grief, just by being in its presence, or so Drew sometimes thought. He had seen her studying the faces of the newly bereaved, as they came to make arrangements for the burial of their loved one, and wondered how much she was understanding. It seemed now that she had learnt something of the deeper aspects of life and death, at that time. She was a serious child, compared to her brother. Stoical, in many ways, but alive to the emotional undercurrents, too. He found himself dreaming of how she would be at fifteen, or even twenty-five. What a friend and companion she might become. How proud he’d be of her, how uniquely understanding she was going to be, after the rich upbringing they were giving her. Stephanie, in short, was destined to grow up as somebody very special and infinitely cherished by her father.
‘We’re running ahead of ourselves,’ Den reminded them. ‘We should be sticking to facts, trying to see patterns. We should be assembling every scrap of information we have, between us, which the police might have missed. After all, they’re completely dependent on what people tell them. They’ve interviewed all the stallholders, everyone who was at Grafton’s funeral, shopkeepers close to the market site in Bradbourne. And I get the impression they’re floundering. Sally Dabb’s husband has a solid alibi, and no reason to shoot Karen. There’s vague talk about past alliances and present politics, but nothing to warrant committing murder. Our only hope is that between us we’ve got a much more complete picture than we realise.’
‘Past alliances, present politics,’ Maggs echoed. ‘That sounds very grand. What does it mean?’
‘Back to the three witches,’ Den said. ‘I can’t help thinking it’s all tied up with them.’
‘And they’re the three women who were teenagers together,’ Drew put in. ‘But were there only three? I think Della – who minds our kids – had a mother who was at school with Geraldine. Presumably that means she was one of the gang as well? Or at least knew about them.’
‘It was Della who first told me about the threesome,’ Den said. ‘I don’t think she mentioned her mother.’ He frowned, trying to remember.
‘She’s dead,’ Drew said. ‘Died a year before we came here. Della keeps saying she’d have loved a grave in our field, if only we’d arrived a bit sooner.’
‘We need to list absolutely everybody, and check them all for means, motive and opportunity,’ said Maggs. ‘We need some sheets of paper. Then we can add everything we know about them.’
The two men both looked at her like children receiving instruction.
The exercise was duly carried out. In spite of Den’s interviews and Drew remembering various encounters with the locals over the years, essential facts were hard to ascertain. ‘I’m beginning to understand why the police find it so hard,’ said Drew, ruefully. ‘It’s so difficult to force people’s complicated lives into any sort of shape, when you know so little about them.’
‘It’s good, though,’ Den insisted, rather to Drew’s surprise. ‘I’m getting a better feel for it all.’
‘Are you?’ The others both pushed their lips out in sceptical expressions.
‘Look.’ Den flourished a hand over Maggs’s scribbles, which had acquired arrows and underlinings and question marks galore. ‘There are two distinct strands. One – the Food Chain thing. People getting all ideological about where their cabbages come from. Supermarkets, secret deals, treachery. And two, there’s the personal stuff. Adultery, jealousy, the usual things.’
‘But it’s massively more one than the other,’ Drew objected. ‘The only personal stuff takes us back to Sally Dabb and her husband, and we already decided they’re in the clear.’
‘Not quite,’ Den gazed at the jottings on the sheet of paper. ‘I think we’re missing something else along the same lines. All these women – they fall into two clear groups. One lot are sixty, known each other all their lives. And there’s another lot, look – all early thirties, some with little kids. I’m not saying I can see the whole story, but I’m thinking we should look a bit more closely at the younger lot, and not get distracted by the three witches.’
Maggs blew out her cheeks. ‘You’re just saying that because they’re almost all women. You think women are only capable of jealousy.’
‘I don’t think that at all.’ Den was indignant. ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘I must admit I don’t really follow your logic,’ Drew put in quietly.
‘I’m not saying there is any logic.’ Den smiled. ‘But I am saying I think we’re looking for a woman here. None of the men in the story seem to feel very strongly about anything.’
When he woke on the Sunday morning, to the sound of Timmy laughing, and the sun streaming in through the window, for a second, Drew felt that all must be right with the world. But the empty bed beside him brought a rapid return to reality. I should get up he thought urgently, without moving a muscle. Slowly he turned onto his back and stared at the sunlit patterns on the ceiling. Timmy was still chuckling and Drew supposed that Stephanie was entertaining him. Good sweet Stephanie, so clever and independent already, such a source of pride. She’d been at close quarters to a bomb and a bullet in rapid succession, had seen her mother in a coma and suffered Drew’s shameful state of numbness that immediately followed. Now she was keeping her little brother happy while her useless father lay in bed, apparently unable to summon the will to move.
‘You’re being too hard on yourself again.’ He could almost hear Maggs saying it, as she had many times in the past few days. He had always been inclined to take the blame for anything going wrong, and when a child died under his care during his time as a nurse, the habit seemed more than justified. Despite an official ruling that there had been no negligence on his part, he knew he would never cease to feel responsible. In some part of him, he still expected retribution to fall, and now he had his own children, it seemed only logical that his punishment should fall via them. Although not obviously overprotective, he and Karen both knew how much he worried about their welfare and how easily he could slip into agonising about the dangers they would have to face.
Now it was Karen herself who’d been hurt. Karen who had faced the ultimate danger, in the shap
e of an unknown malice firing a gun. How was that possible? The realisation struck him as if for the first time, that somebody had deliberately made a decision to kill Karen. Someone who knew what was involved, since they had supposedly already killed Peter Grafton. It took a dedicated killer to perform the same deed twice. Was it, he wondered for the first time, perhaps a paid assassin, lurking behind the lane hedge, and not one of the mourners at the funeral after all? That would be easier to swallow. A stranger doing it for money. A cold heartless professional, who had done it so many times there were no finer feelings of remorse or pity left. But that was too easy. Even if true, then somebody they knew must have hired the killer, given instructions and paid over the cash. In the end, it wasn’t so very important who actually pulled the trigger.
There had to be treachery involved. Everybody who had come to Grafton’s funeral had been known to Julie, and almost all were known to Karen. She considered them her friends. She lived close to them, worked alongside them. They would all have smiled and greeted her if they met her in the post office. Drew experienced the bitter mixture of helplessness and outrage that the victims of treachery endure. Shock and loss of trust in the world at large were there, as well. And a lurking sense of being made a fool of, for missing the signs that must surely have been there.
And so he continued to lie in bed, savouring the many unpalatable emotions that this Sunday morning was dumping on him. Only the fierce pride of parenthood shone through the murk.
It was some time before Stephanie ventured into the room. ‘Daddy?’ she whispered, from the doorway. ‘Are you awake?’
‘Mmm,’ he mumbled, pretending to be just rousing.
‘We’re hungry,’ she went on, with a hint of apology. ‘I think it’s breakfast time.’
It was quarter past ten. Even for a Sunday, this was very late. ‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘I’d better get up then, hadn’t I?’
