‘Perhaps,’ said Delilah, lips twitching, ‘it would help if you had a description of Ralph when he disappeared?’
Samson nodded. ‘Mr Knowles? Can you give a description?’
‘A description?’ The farmer scratched his head. ‘Short. Stocky. But not fat, mind.’
Samson relayed the answers to the policeman before turning back to the farmer. ‘What was Ralph wearing?’
The question was met with a frown from Clive Knowles and what sounded like a hiccup from Delilah, her hand flying to her mouth.
‘Wearing?’ asked the farmer, glaring out from under his cap.
‘Yes. What did he look like?’
‘The usual.’
‘Which is?’ Samson bit back his exasperation.
‘White body, black face, white rings round his eyes. And,’ he turned to the old lady next to him, ‘excuse me, Mrs Shepherd, for saying so, but he’s well hung.’
‘Sorry?’ Samson’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. ‘What did you say?’
The farmer shrugged. ‘He’s well hung. That’s the most important bit about him. How else do you expect him to service all those yows?’
The laughter coming from the other end of the line was audible not just to Samson, and he saw Delilah’s lips curving into the smile she’d been suppressing.
‘What?’ asked Mr Knowles, indignant at the humour in the face of his predicament. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Ralph . . . I thought . . .’ Samson stuttered, reassessing the entire conversation. ‘Isn’t Ralph your father?’
‘Father? What the heck would I be talking about Father for? He died some ten years back. No, lad, this is far more important. Ralph’s a Swaledale prize-winner. Paid seven grand for him, so I bloody need him found!’
‘Ralph’s a sheep?’ Samson asked, as his image of a disorientated old man wandering the hills was shattered by laughter from Delilah, Mrs Shepherd and, with the strangled sounds coming down the line, Daniel and half the police station. ‘A bloody sheep?’
Mr Knowles shot to his feet. ‘A prize tup is what he is, missing right in the middle of mating season. And I want you to find him!’
Samson sank back onto the desk. Whatever he’d imagined when he’d decided to come home, it wasn’t this.
‘How was I to know it was a bloody tup he was talking about?’ grumbled Samson as he carried the tray of empty mugs up to the first-floor kitchen, his prospective clients having finally left the building.
From the landing above, Delilah laughed. ‘Everyone in Bruncliffe knows Ralph. Certainly most of the women, anyway, as he’s all Clive Knowles talks about when he comes to the speed-dating events.’
Samson shuddered. He’d had first-hand experience of one of the Dales Dating Agency’s speed-dating evenings, one of the businesses that Delilah ran from her upstairs office. While he hadn’t been as scarred by the episode as he’d expected, it wasn’t something he was in a hurry to repeat. And he pitied any woman who’d had to endure four minutes of Clive Knowles leaning across a table with his bad breath and farmyard aroma.
‘Still,’ continued Delilah, ‘it’s a job. He’s hired you.’
Samson nodded wearily. It was a job and he badly needed the income. But looking for a missing ram in a landscape littered with sheep was a long way from the excitement of his former life. Suddenly he had a pang of nostalgia for London, with its anonymity and its vibrancy. As well as the danger.
‘And what about Alice Shepherd? Are you going to follow up on what she said?’
‘Are you serious?’ Samson paused on the top step, eyebrow raised. ‘She’s clearly muddled. She couldn’t even get her accusations straight, telling me one moment that her watch had been stolen and then that it hadn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t take money from her. It would be wrong.’
‘Perhaps. But it wouldn’t hurt for you to go up to Fellside Court and have a look around, would it?’
He glanced over at Delilah, her face the picture of innocence. ‘And visit my father while I’m there?’
She shrugged. ‘Why not? Kill two birds with one stone – if that’s not too inappropriate, given Mrs Shepherd’s fears. When did you last see him, anyway?’
‘What’s it to you?’ he asked, the words sharper than he’d intended.
His relationship with his father was a sore point. It was also a topic Bruncliffe could never get enough of. The O’Briens, father and son, left widowed and without a mother when Samson was only eight, the idyllic life they’d known on Twistleton Farm at the far end of isolated Thorpdale wiped out in the space of a couple of months. Then the drinking had started. By the time Samson was in his teens, he was skipping school to tend to the sheep and to his father, dragging him from the pub where every penny the farm brought in was spent on beer. Or whisky. Or anything Joseph O’Brien could get down his throat that would put him into an alcoholic stupor.
Growing up as Boozy O’Brien’s son had marked Samson out as different; quick to defend his family name with fists if need be, he’d been a cynical child and a belligerent teenager, wary of everyone. Having an Irish father and a mother from a distant dale was a further stigma in a town filled with people who could count back generations within a radius of five miles. No wonder then that this lad, although born in the district, was forever branded an offcumden: a stranger, not of these parts. No surprise, either, that he was viewed as trouble.
That Samson had left the town in a blaze of disgrace when he was twenty only added to the saga of the O’Briens, latterly of Thorpdale, now of no fixed abode. It had been the year of foot-and-mouth, the area already stressed by the outbreak that was tearing farms apart and destroying livelihoods that had existed for centuries. In the midst of all that tension, Samson had snapped, and at the christening of Delilah’s nephew Nathan, he’d got into a fight. With his father. As far as the local grapevine was concerned, by attacking his father and then tearing off into the night on a stolen motorbike, the young O’Brien had merely lived up to the reputation he’d been building for years.
But then the good people of Bruncliffe didn’t know about the shotgun that had been pointing at him when he’d returned home that evening. Or about the argument that had caused father and son to fight in the first place. Samson wasn’t about to enlighten them now.
Nor, after a mere seven weeks, was he about to place his trust in a man who’d done so little to earn it in the past. Even if his father did claim to be sober.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, brushing past Delilah to reach the kitchen. ‘Touchy subject.’
‘So I gather,’ she said. ‘But Alice Shepherd was obviously worried enough to come down and see you. She even tried to hire you. The least you could do is call in and help put her mind at rest.’
Samson didn’t reply. He knew she was right. He just didn’t want to admit it.
‘Well, if you change your mind, I’ve got at an appointment at Fellside Court tomorrow morning—’
‘For the Dales Dating Agency?’ Samson was grinning now. ‘Are things getting that desperate?’
The punch came out of nowhere. A straight-arm jab into his right shoulder that almost made him drop the tray, his arm numb in its wake.
‘That’s for being so disrespectful! To me and to the pensioners of this town. They have a right to a love life too.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Samson with another grin, making sure he stepped back beyond her reach. ‘What are you organising? A not-so-speedy speed-dating session?’
She laughed. ‘No. It’s nothing to do with the dating agency. I’m in charge of the website and it needs a bit of upgrading, so I’m meeting the new manager to discuss some changes and to get her photo. She’s been hard to pin down but I’ve finally got a meeting with her. And talking of websites . . .’ She looked at him expectantly.
Delilah Metcalfe. He still couldn’t get his head around the idea that the scrawny kid who’d followed him and Ryan everywhere had evolved into this multi-talented woman. Not only did she
run a dating agency which seemed to be going from strength to strength – despite a rocky patch the last few months, thanks to a deranged killer – but she also operated a tech company, designing and maintaining websites. From what he’d heard, she was good at it too.
‘Are you going to take me up on my offer?’ she asked.
He turned away and busied himself with loading the mugs in the dishwasher. As he’d refused payment for his time helping her uncover the identity of the person murdering her clients, Delilah had volunteered to build him a website for his new business, the Dales Detective Agency. She was keen. Kept running ideas past him. And she couldn’t understand why he kept stalling.
How to explain? That there was trouble coming in the next few months. Trouble from his past life in London which would mean his time in Bruncliffe would be over. Trouble that might see him spending time in jail.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he muttered. Feeling the need for fresh air, he headed back down the stairs, grabbed his jacket and helmet and left through the rear porch, cursing as, not for the first time, he tripped over the trainers and hiking boots that were strewn across the floor. His father’s scarlet-and-chrome Royal Enfield Bullet was waiting in the yard. It was the same one Samson had fled the town on fourteen years before. He was pretty confident he’d be fleeing on it again before long.
Alice Shepherd was afraid. She’d done her best to put on a brave face at young O’Brien’s. Such a strong lad and just like his mother, with those sharp blue eyes and masses of dark hair. But would he be willing to help her? He’d said he’d let her know, but she’d sensed hesitation in him.
It was the confusion. She knew she’d made a mistake somewhere. Something she’d said to him had left that familiar look on his face. The sideways glance people gave her now, as though weighing up the merit of her words. As though she couldn’t be trusted with the truth.
But she knew what she’d seen. That flash of blonde hair passing under the light in the corridor during the depths of night. There was no mistaking that. It hadn’t been just the once, either. Trouble was, she couldn’t remember exactly when it had happened. Had it really been the same days as the small disappearances – the cufflinks, the scarf, her watch? Even she didn’t trust herself any more.
She walked slowly towards Fellside Court, the front of the two-storey building set at an angle from the road. Behind it, two wings protruded, forming a U-shaped cluster of flats. Or ‘apartments designed to promote independence’, as the developers preferred to call them.
They weren’t supposed to promote fear.
Heartrate picking up, she passed the double doors of the main entrance, choosing instead to walk down the side and around the back to enter through the courtyard. Enclosed on three sides by the building, with a scattering of benches, chairs and tables and a couple of young cherry trees, the space was a sheltered oasis for the residents. On a morning like today, it was a suntrap and one of the things that had attracted her to the complex.
That and the glass wall.
It towered above her, linking the two wings of the building in a sheet of brilliance, the blue skies and the fells reflecting back off it, making the views seem endless. Stretching from the ground all the way up to the roof, the seamless window allowed light to flood in along the corridors, turning even the dullest day a little brighter.
All that glass. Letting the sunshine in. Letting the secrets out.
A sharp rapping noise to her left pulled her attention to the residents’ lounge, which ran the length of the ground floor on that side: more long windows looking out across the courtyard. It was already busy, people stretching and flexing ready for the morning aerobics class. Arty Robinson was inside, tapping his watch and beckoning her in.
Arty. Lovely Arty. A retired bookmaker, he still lived life as if it was one long gamble with the odds in his favour. She let her gaze drift up to the right to Arty’s flat, tucked into the corner of the glass wall, his balcony protruding, the tips of his precious rose bush peeking over the edge. Did he see things, too? His apartment was directly opposite hers, one of six that overlooked the space below. Eric Bradley was next door to her, in a large two-bedroomed place; across the courtyard and next to Arty was a guest suite for overnight visitors; Rita Wilson was in the ground-floor flat below that; and next to her was the second of the guest apartments. Without the views of Bruncliffe the front of the building offered or the dramatic vistas of the fells the outer flats had, the two inner-courtyard apartments that Alice and Arty occupied had been a lot more affordable. Which had been the reason she’d chosen the one she had, above the residents’ lounge. She suspected it was the same for Arty, the pair of them cloistered here because of finances.
Until recently it hadn’t bothered her. She’d liked living in her small home above the courtyard, socialising with the other residents who’d become friends. And if she angled her chair just so in her lounge, she had a view up onto the fell that rose behind as good as that from Eric’s.
But in retrospect, perhaps it had been unwise. She could see too much, right across to the other apartments and through the glass on the corridor that joined them.
That was the problem. That glass. And the flash of blonde hair at night.
Another rap on the window made her start. Arty, mouthing at her to hurry up. She entered the building, turned left along the corridor and headed for the lounge where Vicky Hudson, the care assistant, was already introducing the fitness session.
‘Now, no overdoing it,’ Vicky was warning with a smile, the ends of her dark bob catching the dimples in her cheeks. ‘And if you don’t feel up to a particular exercise, just sit and relax until the next one. So, if you’re ready, let’s begin with a gentle warm-up . . .’
Alice slipped through the throng at the back of the room to where Arty was waiting for her.
‘You took your time!’ he whispered. ‘Here, stick your bag on that chair or they’ll all be taken, and then nip up and change.’
‘Thanks, Arty,’ she said, passing him the bag, her room keys in her hand. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
She was smiling as she left, thinking about the word ‘nip’. She wasn’t sure she’d nipped anywhere in the last five years, a hip replacement having seen to that. But she was still able to use the stairs. She climbed them steadily, reaching the first floor slightly out of breath. Pausing at the top to calm her pulse, mindful of all that the doctor had said, she turned right down the corridor and entered her flat. The first thing she saw was the view of the courtyard and the slice of fellside behind the building opposite. The second thing she saw was the open bedroom door.
Had she left it like that? She tried to recollect her movements but a familiar haze of confusion veiled her mind, punctured by sharp slices of her youth. Herself on a bike out past Horton. The feel of her grandfather’s hand holding hers. Memories from more than seventy years ago as clear as the present, yet the events of this morning remained shrouded in a deep fog.
Telling herself it didn’t matter, she crossed the thick carpet to the wardrobe. Then she saw the stripes of colour on the bedside table. Her pillbox. How had that got there? Hadn’t she put it in her handbag this morning, after she’d taken her medicine?
She couldn’t remember. The irrefutable presence of it, here and now, seemed to taunt her failing wits.
Hand shaking, she picked it up, staring at the piece of yellow tiger’s eye that designated Wednesday. She lifted the lid. Two tablets stared back at her from a space that should have been empty. A space she’d been sure she’d left empty this morning.
3
‘That’s where he was. Where he should be. But he’s not. And I need him back, servicing this lot.’ Clive Knowles flicked a grimy hand at the field filled with ewes, their white bodies merging with the limestone rocks scattered across the scraggy grass.
It was poor land, dropping down to the river on one side, rushes and tussocks in abundance. Samson could see how Mire End Farm had got its name. Even allowing for the win
ter weather, it was wet underfoot. Behind him, across the rough track that served the property, the fields climbed steeply, the unmistakable flat top of Pen-y-ghent rising above them. Not much better grazing up there, either. As for the farm itself . . .
About eight miles north of Bruncliffe, out past Horton off a narrow lane that twisted and bumped along the side of Pen-y-ghent, the Knowles’ farm was a collection of buildings in various states of disrepair. Two barns stood sentry at the entrance, the roofs pockmarked with slipped slates, the doors rotten, the paint long since flaked off. At an angle to them was the farmhouse. Or what was left of it.
Once it had been an imposing home with three windows spanning the front, but neglect had taken its toll, allowing the elements to attack. The wind had been first, flipping up a loose slate or two or three, until the roof was pierced and the rain that battered the Dales in the winter months gained access. Seeping down through the rafters, the damp had got into the walls and eroded the mortar, loosening the stones and causing a large section to fall away below the level of the gutter, exposing the block-work of the inner wall. With some of its support removed, the top left window now slumped perilously in its frame, in danger of falling out. It wouldn’t be long before the rest of the wall followed it.
Samson had deliberately parked his Royal Enfield at the opposite corner of the yard, the scarlet-and-chrome motorbike bright against the gloom cast by the barns. He’d found Clive Knowles round the back of the house in amongst a tangle of old cars, rusting machinery, a pile of discarded tyres and an abandoned trailer from an articulated lorry that was being used as a makeshift chicken coop. Hens picked futilely at the muddied yard and an ageing sheepdog lying on a bale of hay lifted his head to give a half-hearted bark at Samson’s approach. The farmer had held out a grease-covered hand in greeting, and together they’d walked down to the site of Ralph’s disappearance.
‘I can’t afford to lose him,’ muttered the farmer, leaning on a rickety gate which was listing under his weight. ‘I can’t afford another bad year.’
Date with Malice Page 2
