Death at Rainbow Cottage

by Jo Allen

  Only for the sake of a human voice, because she’d never hear Claud’s voice again, she answered it, fishing her phone out of her pocket and clamping it to her ear as she headed towards the village. A walker gestured to her, an imaginary phone in his own hand and a scowl on his face, but she ignored him. What was another law broken?

  ‘Natalie,’ the detective said, as calm as she’d have expected of so cold a man. ‘It’s Jude Satterthwaite here. I’m calling to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m perfectly all right.’ She would never be all right again. At some stage, later, she’d understand the implications of what she’d done and it would break her, but for now she cherished the strange moment of calm that always followed the madness of self-destruction and, latterly, the destruction of others.

  ‘Where are you?’ He kept his tone even.

  ‘Oh, just out for a run.’

  ‘Are you driving, Natalie? In town?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Natalie? We’re at your house. I’d very much like to talk to you. Where are you?’

  More silence. She’d driven out of Temple Sowerby and could just see the low roof of Rainbow Cottage on the far side of the A66. It would be so easy to turn round and hand herself over. Then she thought of Claud and the pain of his interest in people other than herself, and drove on.

  ‘We’ve found Claud, Natalie. I need you to be sensible, here. I need you to give yourself up. So I want you to drive to the police station, or tell me where you are and I’ll come and find you. You have to do the right thing.’

  ‘The right thing? What’s the right thing? I hate people, Chief Inspector. I want to love them. I want to be good to them. But they let you down. They’re liars and they’re cheats.’ Like Claud. And then the people who loved them — genuinely loved them — were left with nothing but a broken heart. ‘They all deserve to die, you know that? Because I only had Claud and they would have taken him away from me.’

  ‘Who deserved to die?’ There was an edge to his voice.

  ‘All of them,’ she said, sharing her voice rising to a wail. She was going mad, and the recognition was relief. She could do whatever she wanted to ease the pain of jealousy and loss. When you were mad, no laws or morals bound you. ‘They all deserved to die. They tried to come between me and Claud. They’ll all pay. All of them. Even DI Dodd. Such a lovely man. So kind.’ And Claud had been so so taken with him, bland and ordinary as he was, so that surely he must have felt an attraction to him that he didn’t feel for her. ‘I hate him, too. I want Claud back. I only want Claud.’

  ‘Natalie. Tell me where you are, and let me get you some help.’

  She flicked the phone off and dropped it in the foot well. Inspector Dodd and Len and Gracie and George. Faye Scanlon, too, all over Claud, all those cosy little tête-à-têtes in her office. She hated them all.

  She turned into the estate. Detective Inspector Dodd lived in one of the new houses on the edge of Temple Sowerby, behind the medical centre. She’d seen him a couple of times, driving out of the new estate, but she wasn’t entirely sure which house it was. Being a detective wasn’t so difficult after all. His car, or one very like it, was parked up on the drive outside one of the houses. It would be easy. He was as tall as she and much stronger, of course, but so had Len Pierce been, and George Meadows. It was the element of surprise that had proved fatal. She would ring the doorbell and before he had the chance to react she’d plunge the knife, still wet from Claud’s slaying, into his heart. It had worked so well with George. Push him inside, shut the door and escape. Then the superintendent, who was responsible for it all. She knew where she lived, too. Natalie had dropped a document off for Claud one evening on the way past on her run.

  She watched as DI Dodd moved about inside, straying occasionally to the window as if he was expecting someone. If he saw her, her chance would be lost. He’d be bound to look twice, bound to raise an eyebrow and, now the secret was out, to call for help.

  With that in mind, she drove the car to the far end of the estate. She shouldn’t have mentioned the man to Satterthwaite. The first thing he’d do would be to send a car round.

  A car drew up outside the house and the policeman who’d taken charge in the churchyard got out. He walked up the path and rang the bell. DI Dodd answered the door, ushered him over the threshold. They hugged, and the door closed.

  A wail of a siren alerted her. Natalie flung the car into gear and shot out of the estate without looking, turned right, turned left and dived up a side road, and down a farm track. When the blue lights had turned up towards the estate and a second and third car had headed up towards Rainbow Cottage, she drove out of the farm track and began to thread her cautious way through the network of narrow country lanes towards Penrith.

  Chapter 25

  Faye lived in a tall sandstone terrace in Brunswick Square, a location Ashleigh noted with a certain degree of discomfort. It was halfway between her house and Jude’s, so that when she moved between one and the other she’d have to be prepared to bump into her boss.

  Once she’d done what everyone had gone on at her to do and cleared the air, there would be no need to care about it. Nevertheless, her courage wavered. A bird sang in the trees and an early and confused butterfly hunted for scant pickings, a bright spot in the dull greys and greens of a flower bed. Nothing scares me, she reminded herself, but it wasn’t true. What had always scared her was her own capability for screwing up every relationship that mattered and Faye, through the part she’d played in the final rift with Scott, had precipitated the ruin of the most important one of them.

  But it was done. Her marriage had already been on course for the rocks. All Faye’s intervention had done was give Scott another grievance and make Ashleigh feel foolish when she preferred to think of herself as smart, modern and intuitive. With that thought in mind, and the knowing images of her tarot advisers in her head, she pushed open the gate and walked up the short path.

  Faye must have been as much on edge as Ashleigh herself, and let her sweat for a moment on the doorstep. Her footsteps inside the house were slow and deliberate, and the blurred signs of movement visible through the opaque glass pane in the door showed her crossing the hall and back again before she answered. When the door creaked open it did so without welcome. ‘Ashleigh, hi. Come on in. Sit down.’

  It was an unsettled house. Ashleigh glimpsed piles of plates and lines of wine glasses on the table in the dining room and when Faye showed her through to the living room it was overflowing with boxes of books piled up next to empty bookshelves, with pictures stacked up against the skirting board. Faye’s taste in art was mainstream, good quality prints of well-known landscapes and the books that showed themselves on the top of the boxes were paperback fiction and hardback popular history.

  Ashleigh sat on the edge of a hard, new sofa and tried to look as if she was comfortable. ‘Thanks for finding the time to see me.’ As if she were a supplicant.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Faye, an offer which begged refusal since there was already a steaming mug by the armchair opposite the television.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Faye sat down, lifted her mug, prolonging the pause until it generated tension, exactly as Jude sometimes did with a reluctant witness. ‘Tell me what you want.’

  She always cut straight to the point. That was something, at least. ‘This interview that was in the paper. It’s nothing to do with me. You’ve nothing to fear from me.’

  Faye raised an eyebrow. ‘I should hope not.’

  How had she ever found this woman sympathetic. ‘Can we clear the air?’ That was what she’d come for. ‘Right. We had an affair. We both thought it was a mistake. It’s over, but it happened. Let’s not pretend it didn’t.’

  ‘I’m pretending nothing.’ That was a twisting of the truth. ‘But I prefer not to talk about it.’

  ‘Me, too. But that’s not the same as hiding from it. That makes us look guilty of something. We aren�
��t. At least, I’m not.’

  ‘Ashleigh.’ Faye turned the mug in her hands. If it was hot enough to hurt, she gave no sign. ‘I’m in a senior position. I can’t afford to compromise it by having people talk behind their hands. Gossip does nothing but damage.’

  But people never paid any real attention to gossip, and Faye herself could hardly have listened to a word of the ill-fated workshops she’d insisted would make them all kinder and more inclusive. In the office, her behaviour towards Ashleigh had come closer than Claud would have considered acceptable to bullying. ‘Claud’s quite right. It doesn’t matter. If we hide what we are it’s tantamount to being ashamed of it.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of anything.’

  Her attitude was cold, her tone clipped and hostile. ‘Nobody cares what we did in bed.’

  ‘If nobody cares, why are you here?’

  It didn’t need to be difficult but Faye would make it so. It was in her interests to set up a situation in which one partner was subordinate to the other. Ashleigh fidgeted with the cuff of her shirt. ‘Let’s at least admit we knew each other before we came here?’ That would have been the easy option, in the first place. ‘Someone will find out about it.’

  ‘I know you’ve told your boyfriend,’ said Faye, freezing her with a look.

  ‘I’m entitled to tell him.’

  ‘You aren’t entitled to tell anybody my private business.’

  God, the woman was even more stubborn than Ashleigh had given her credit for. ‘I should probably tell you. The journalist who ran that article.’ A ridiculously trivial article, too, in the end, not worth the trouble. ‘She did call me before she wrote it.’ She raised a hand to stop Faye’s intervention. ‘I refused to speak to her. I’ll do the same if she rings back. I just thought I’d tell you.’

  ‘I wondered. She called me, too. I didn’t ignore it, but I told her I had no comment. Except for my standard response about trying to improve the tolerance of our force for those of different ethnicity, gender and sexuality both within the force and in the wider community, etcetera, etcetera.’ For a moment, Faye exhibited a trace of humour.

  ‘It’s so hard,’ Ashleigh burst out, impulsively. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. When everything goes pear-shaped in your life you do stupid things. And when it comes down to it, it was the same for both of us, wasn’t it? We were both lonely and we both needed help. It’s not weakness to admit it.’

  ‘I’m trying to make a new start.’ Just like Ashleigh herself had done. ‘The last thing I need, at this stage in my life, is a newspaper coming in and looking for something sensational.’

  ‘But it’s only a local paper.’

  ‘It’s a local force and we work in the local community. So yes, local matters.’ Faye reproved her.

  ‘What they printed was nothing. Even if she does come back with more it’ll be a flash in the pan and the next week people will be talking about the plans for the roundabout or whether they should allow any more houses to be built, or anything. They might even be talking about Claud’s Rainbow Festival and how wonderful it is. And at the end of it, people will respect you for the job you do.’ Faye’s defences were up. It was obvious. There was no point in wasting any more time.

  Pointedly, Faye looked towards the door. ‘I hear what you say, Ashleigh. thank you.’

  Ashleigh got up. Faye was trying to shame her into apologising, but she wouldn’t. Honesty was the only thing if they were to work together, and she wasn’t going to be the one to give up and move on if it all went wrong. If Faye was going to make life difficult for one of them, it would be for herself. ‘Goodbye, then.’

  ‘Thank you for calling round.’ It was enough of a concession. ‘I’ll see you in the office.’ Faye got to her feet and shepherded her to the door, as if she couldn't be trusted to pick a safe route through the teetering piles of boxes and bags still unpacked.

  ‘Ah, damn. I’m sorry.’ As she reached for the door, Ashleigh’s bag caught on the small side table in the hall, sideswiping the contents to the floor. She swooped to pick up what she’d knocked over. A picture in a clip frame, a younger Faye with two small children clinging at her knees and a bespectacled, slightly older man staring down at the three of them in adoration. She handed it back.

  ‘Get out,’ Faye said, and slammed the door behind her.

  *

  The door to Faye Scanlon’s house opened and closed, and Ashleigh O’Halloran, in a scarlet shirt and blue trousers and with her blonde hair loose and blowing in the wind, stepped down the path and onto the pavement. Turning sharp left, she headed away from the house and up the hill.

  Faye Scanlon and her bloody workshops. If her enthusiasm for equality hadn’t been so strong, the equal to Claud’s, he might have spent less time enthusing about this woman’s capabilities and behaved differently towards the wife who only wanted him to love her. Shivering, Natalie reached out her hand for the knife, slid it out from under the passenger seat and put onto the seat.

  She didn't enjoy killing, but there was no other way to purge her life of the poison that had taken Claud from her but to rid the world of all the others Claud might have grown to love.

  Time was her only ally now she’d given herself away to Jude Satterthwaite. She drew her finger along the edge of the blade, the knife that Claud had used to cut the meat the night before. Her blood mingled with his and dripped down onto the seat of the car.

  She got out, concealing the blade inside her coat, and paused for a moment in the empty square. The wind whipped against her face and a bad-tempered cloud passed overhead, spitting rain upon her. She turned her face up to the sky, and a rainbow slipped down from the sky and hovered over the house that Ashleigh had just left.

  As if she’d needed a sign.

  *

  Before she was at the top of the hill, Ashleigh knew she’d given up too easily. She’d been humiliated and there had been tears pricking at the back of her eyes as she left, but in reality Faye’s mistakes weren’t all that different to her own. It was the picture that had given her away. Chris had said something about Faye’s husband having thrown her out in the aftermath of the affair and that was what Ashleigh herself had done to Scott, still regretting the bitter necessity of it. A mistake like theirs, a joint lunge into misery and self-pity, could cost you the earth but you healed it only by confronting it.

  I never took it out on Scott, she reminded herself. I ended it cleanly.

  It was the injustice that got to her. Jude would counsel caution, with any action going via the proper channels if Faye’s behaviour in the workplace verged on intimidation, but that wasn’t enough. Faye still loved her husband, perhaps, just as Ashleigh loved Scott, but you moved on.

  For a moment she’d thought she’d got through, and there was still something that nagged at her in Faye’s face, as if the woman had been desperate to be persuaded to do the right thing and Ashleigh had failed to give her the nudge in the right direction. Faye had children. Did that make a difference? She turned and headed back down again, in time to see Natalie Blackwell get out of her car and stand for a moment on the pavement, staring up at the sky, with one hand inside her coat.

  Always alert to the unusual, Ashleigh reached for her phone. ‘Jude.’

  ‘Ashleigh. Good.’ His voice was terse. ‘Glad to hear from you. Where are you?’

  ‘I went down to see Faye. I’ve just left. But I’ve just seen something really strange. It’s Natalie. She’s here. Not running.’

  ‘Here?’ He almost snapped at her. ‘Where?’

  ‘Brunswick Square. Outside Faye’s house.’

  He turned away from the phone and she heard him issuing muffled instructions to someone. ‘Don’t approach her. Unless you have to.’

  Fifty yards away, Natalie stood erect, staring at Faye’s house from the other side of the street. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘She’s killed Claud, and it looks like she killed the others, too. I spoke to her on the phone and she mentioned Doddsy
and Faye before she cut me off.’

  ‘Is Doddsy—?’

  ‘He’s fine. Can you see if she’s armed?’

  Moving as carefully as she could, Ashleigh manoeuvred herself so that she got a better view of Natalie. ‘She’s got something under her coat.’

  She almost heard him groan. ‘Call Faye, if you can, and warn her. Tell her not to answer the door and then get somewhere safe as fast as you can. I’ve got someone on the way, and I’m coming along myself. Ten minutes, with the blue lights.’

  Natalie waited, still staring at the sky, her brows concentrated into a caterpillar of thought. Above Faye’s house a rainbow intensified, its vibrant colours deepening against a bruise-grey sky. Aware of Jude’s warning, aware of the danger and the close presence of an unbalanced mind, Ashleigh nevertheless sensed that the woman cared for nothing except what was behind the front door of the house. She moved along the pavement towards her, as casually as possible. Her fingers slipped on her phone as she dialled. Impatiently, she swiped the number and dialled again.

  Thirty yards away, Natalie still stared at the sky. Ashleigh checked her watch. Ten minutes? One, maybe two, of those had already ticked away, but would Natalie really stand staring the sky for all that time?

  As she paused, her pulse racing, the rainbow spread to a double bow, throbbing with light. The phone rang and rang and went to voicemail. ‘Faye. It’s Ashleigh. Natalie’s outside and she might be armed. Don’t answer the door.’ Would she pick it up, or ignore it?

  She was beginning to type a text when Natalie gave up on the rainbow, strode up the path and raised her hand to the door.

  Over Faye, she’d have the advantage of surprise. Over Ashleigh, she would not. And against the two of them, she had less chance of doing whatever her unbalanced mind intended. Ashleigh dialled again. For God’s sake, Faye, answer!

  In her hand, the phone rang and rang and flicked to voicemail. Faye must have seen her number and chosen to ignore it.