A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Where have you been?’ she’d demanded. ‘I called and called.’

  ‘Oh, did you? I never heard you. I must have been too far away.’ She hadn’t noticed his evasiveness at the time, but something strange in his manner had made the incident memorable. It would have been the simplest thing in the world for him and Miranda to have spent an undisturbed hour in bed together, she now saw. Yet this thought was at least as hard to accept as was the one that Sam had killed her father. Now even she could see that here, as any detective would say, was a firm and obvious motive.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned to Roddy. ‘This is too much. You’re right – let’s just concentrate on keeping the farm going. That’s all I can cope with.’

  They sat self-consciously in the pub, surrounded by smoke and the disbelieving glances of the regulars. It was made worse by the presence of Hetty Taplow behind the bar; she nodded to them in a parody of politeness which did nothing to conceal her astonishment at seeing them there.

  Roddy drank Coke, feeling young and completely out of place. Lilah ordered a pint of scrumpy, in an attempt to fit in. It came on draught, cloudy, the palest beige colour, like dilute urine, and tasted sharply acidic. She forced half the glass down, and then stopped, convinced that she’d be sick if she had another drop. Glumly, she watched the men ranged along the bar. She and Roddy were silent, unable to think of anything innocuous to say. Any words they uttered would be clearly heard by everyone present.

  They knew the men by name, in most cases. Middle-aged workers for local businesses, and a solitary farmer, they were rough in every respect. Their language was full of expletives, their skin reddened with drink or weather. Most of them coughed and one or two spat. They talked loudly about the Lottery, their cars, the weather. They laughed exaggeratedly, which Lilah suspected was for her and Roddy’s benefit.

  ‘You two waiting for someone?’ Hetty called, eventually.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Lilah returned, trying to sound blithe. ‘We just thought it would be nice to get out for a bit.’

  ‘Nothing better to do on a Saturday, then?’ one of the drinkers chimed in, giving her a suggestive grin. ‘No boyfriends?’

  She forced a smile, and shook her head.

  ‘That’s a shame. First time I ever saw any of your family down here, and that’s a fact.’ As one, they all turned the full beam of their attention on the brother and sister, no longer feeling any need to be surreptitious about it.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Roddy retorted, his tone defensive and loud.

  ‘First time for getting your dad bumped off, and no mistake,’ muttered Pat Brown, a slightly younger drinker. Everyone heard him.

  Lilah took a deep breath. She knew now why she’d decided to come here: it was to test the mood of the village concerning the fate that had befallen Guy. Would they be treated as outcasts, or be given sympathy and support? Always balanced on the edge of the community, regarded as aloof and somehow peculiar, she understood that there had been scant grounds to hope that the latter response would prevail.

  ‘That might be so,’ she answered, her voice bell-like in its clarity. ‘We miss him very much. He was our father, after all.’ The final words quavered a little as emotion overcame her.

  ‘Course he was, love,’ placated Hetty. ‘You’re bound to miss him. Whatever others might have thought of him, you would have seen his best side. That’s the thing with girls and their dads, isn’t it.’

  Lilah searched for hidden meaning, narrowing her eyes. But the words were simply true, and she decided to take them at face value. ‘Well, yes, I think that’s right,’ she said, very solemnly. ‘It’s kind of you to say that.’

  Hetty was clearly encouraged. ‘And what about poor old Isaac Grimsdale? You reckon ’twas same person done both killings?’

  ‘You tell us, Hetty,’ suggested Pat Brown. ‘Tell’un your notions on that subject, why don’t ’ee?’

  Hetty chewed her lip doubtfully and shot sideways glances at Lilah and Roddy. ‘Go on,’ said Lilah. ‘It’s all right. We’d be interested to hear what you think.’

  ‘I’m not saying as this is gospel true. ’Tis gossip brings things together. It came to my mind what I was thinking, now who could have killed old Isaac?’

  ‘They wanted to kill Amos as well,’ Lilah pointed out. ‘It wasn’t just Isaac.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Hetty was triumphant. ‘And it came to my mind, that time, eight, ten years back, when Mrs Westerby’s young’un had that accident.’

  ‘You mean Sylvia’s little girl? Ruth? That was when we’d only just moved here.’

  Hetty nodded her agreement. ‘Amos had got that new tractor from the money your Dad gived’e for the land. ’Tis the point, see. The ambulance couldn’t get past that bugger of a tractor; got caught in a line of grockles, an’ by the time it reached the house, the kiddie had bled to death. ’Tis my belief that woman never forgave they Grimsdales. That’s all I be saying, mind. Your ma must remember it. She was a godsend to poor Mrs Westerby, cheering her up when the worst of it was done with.’

  ‘Have you told the police about this?’

  Hetty shook her head. ‘Clean forgot about it till a day or so ago,’ she said.

  The exchange stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Roddy pushed his glass to the middle of the stained table and met her eye. ‘Ready?’ he asked. She glanced down at the abandoned cider and nodded. Together they stood up, smiled vaguely at the grouped men, and left. Outside, it was still not dark, though almost ten.

  ‘That was awful,’ said Roddy.

  ‘It was interesting, though,’ she assured him. ‘We have some idea what they think of us now.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Well, they obviously don’t like us much. They resent all the trouble we’ve brought to their peaceful little village.’

  ‘Well, we knew that anyway.’

  ‘Mmm. But they’re scared of us as well. That never occurred to me before.’

  ‘You’re barking, Li. Mad as – a mad thing.’

  She slapped his arm, with a little laugh, and said no more. It was eerie, walking along the narrow lane in semi-darkness. Only a few days earlier she’d cheerfully crossed twilit fields after the Mabberley barbecue, but now it felt as if there were shadowy things waiting behind the hedges, evil people intent on harm. With Roddy beside her, she felt relatively safe, but nothing would have persuaded her to go out alone at night now. What precisely had changed her? she wondered. The encounter with the love-making couple? All the talk of murder? Den’s warnings? Or did she truly believe that Sam had killed her father, and might therefore have some strange, twisted reason for killing her as well?

  Miranda was waiting for them, curious as to what the pub had been like.

  ‘It was dire, Mum,’ Roddy burst out. ‘They just stared at us for a long time, and nobody said anything. Then they were patronising, and sort of nasty. Not really rude or anything. But it was like being in a foreign country, being stared at by a lot of hostile locals. Hetty was the only one who tried to be nice.’

  ‘Hetty! Good God, I forgot she works there on Saturdays. She must have been surprised to see you.’

  ‘She was,’ Lilah confirmed. ‘You know she’s got some theory about Sylvia hating the Grimms? She says their tractor got in the way of the ambulance when Sylvia’s little Ruth died and she blames them. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Sylvia always seems so rational.’

  Miranda went pale and put a hand to her cheek. ‘What a thing to bring up after all this time. It was such a horrible injury – there was nothing the ambulance people could have done. The child’s leg was sheered almost off. The artery was completely severed. Such a stupid thing to happen – no wonder Guy was always on at you two to be careful. Farms are lethal places.’

  ‘What did happen, exactly? You never did tell me properly.’

  ‘I thought it would give you nightmares. Ruth was climbing on an old grasscutter, and slipped onto one of the blades. Her brother tried to get h
er out, and just made it worse by turning the blade and twisting her leg somehow, so she was really jammed. He was dreadfully upset, poor kid. And then Humphrey left them, soon after. An avalanche of disaster. That’s the way it seems to go – fate suddenly notices a normal, happy family and decides to torment them for a bit.’

  ‘According to Hetty, you were a good Samaritan where Sylvia was concerned.’

  ‘I did my best. Isn’t that what friends are for? She’s being just as good to me now.’

  They went to bed within minutes of each other, each making sure the doors were locked firmly and the landing light left switched on. Miranda had replaced the bulb without any prompting, the morning after the Mabberley barbecue, and without discussion, all three had been careful to leave it burning every night since then.

  Lilah slept well, despite a lingering acid in her stomach from the scrumpy. So when it came, the appalling shock of a gun being fired just outside her window sent her heart thudding with a violence that paralysed her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The double gunshot rang out, deafeningly loud, as was the scream that followed it. Lilah couldn’t remember afterwards exactly how long it must have been before she and Roddy crashed down the stairs together to investigate. It seemed at the time that she lay in bed, utterly paralysed, for an immense age, praying for a sign that it was all something perfectly normal after all. Guy had used a shotgun on foxes and pigeons from time to time; perhaps Sam was just warning off some predatory creature. But no – the gun had gone missing. When she remembered that, she knew something terrible had happened.

  Then she and Roddy were outside in the yard, looking and listening with a mixture of fear and desperation for something to explain the shots. The complete silence made her aware that the dawn chorus had stopped. The shock must have sent all the birds winging across the fields to hide.

  She was wearing only the T-shirt and pants that she slept in. Roddy had taken the time to wriggle into a pair of jeans, she noticed, as they both stared towards the empty slurry pit, where it seemed the noise had come from. For them both, the sense of history repeating itself was overwhelming.

  At first there was nothing to see in the yard. Nothing moved or made a sound. Then one of the yard cats ran out of the office, scarcely touching the ground in its arrowlike flight. It seemed to Lilah like a living embodiment of acute fear. Yet she felt certain that there was nobody in the little room. Perhaps the animal had gone in there to hide when the shots rang out.

  She and Roddy stood bewildered, in the middle of the yard. On three sides there were farm buildings, and behind them stood the house. Gates and openings led to fields, and to the approach lane, down from the main road.

  ‘Where’s Sam?’ said Roddy. The door of Sam’s room was standing open, as it did for much of the day. But at five in the morning, it should certainly have been closed.

  Lilah understood then that she had known from the start who it was who had screamed. She knew that it was Sam she had come outside to find. A glance into his room arose more from a deferment of the inevitable than from any hope of seeing him.

  ‘He’s here somewhere,’ she said determinedly, and began to make for the side of the milking parlour, a short weed-infested path to a little-used area between the parlour and the tractor shed. Roddy followed close behind her.

  ‘Why are you going this way?’ he demanded.

  ‘The scream came from this direction. At least—’ She slowed her pace and looked around. Old paper sacks and empty cans were often dumped there, as well as useless tyres and broken tools. Tall stands of nettles grew between the junk piles.

  Her first thought when she found Sam face down in the nettles was that the stinging must be unbearable. But of course, the stings weren’t worrying him, any more than the slurry all over his face had worried Guy. Her second thought was that she herself could endure no more, and she cried out, a low-pitched, groaning cry of pure anguish. Roddy put both arms clumsily around her, squeezing her, shaking her, wanting her to stop.

  ‘Not again,’ he said.

  Lilah’s moans turned to hoots of frantic and ghastly laughter. What was she supposed to do now? Make another telephone call to the police, rouse her oddly absent mother, persuade Roddy to get himself stung all over whilst examining Sam for signs of life?

  They stood together, helpless children, staring at a thick patch of blood on Sam’s back. It seemed to glisten and quiver like something alive that had landed on him from above and behind.

  A car engine roused them, as a vehicle drove into the yard. A great terror filled Lilah. The man with the gun had come back, and was going to shoot her and Roddy as well. She screamed, a single high note this time, and Roddy jumped away from her. A door slammed, but they still had no idea who the visitor was, out of sight in the yard. Torn between running away and hiding amongst the tractor and trailers, or risking her life on it being some blessed rescuer, Lilah stood unmoving.

  ‘Hello?’ called a familiar voice, ‘Sam?’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ she gave a long sigh, and turned to run to the friendly arms, when her mother’s voice came from the house.

  ‘Jonathan? What on earth are you doing here? What’s going on?’

  ‘I thought you’d be able to tell me. Cappy heard a noise, like a shot, and she thought she also heard a shout or scream, from this direction. She sent me to investigate.’

  To Lilah, still concealed, his voice sounded different. Stilted, almost rehearsed. But then, if he was afraid he’d come on a fool’s errand, he would have practised his explanation in advance, wouldn’t he?

  It was Roddy who acted. He ran around the corner into the yard, shouting, almost babbling, as he went. ‘Jonathan, we’re here. It’s Sam. He’s been shot. Amazing you hearing it all the way to your place! It was loud, though. I was almost deafened. He’s in the nettles, and there’s a horrible lump of blood …’

  ‘Where’s Lilah?’ demanded Jonathan, striding up to Roddy, and putting a hand on his shoulder. The boy looked up at him with something close to adulation, so great was his relief that a grown man had appeared on the scene.

  ‘Here,’ she muttered, showing herself. ‘It’s this way.’ Like a guide at a tourist attraction, she outstretched an arm in invitation. ‘We haven’t touched him.’

  ‘Lilah? Lilah!’ shouted Miranda, still in the kitchen doorway, ‘What did you say has happened?’

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ snapped the girl, suddenly shaken by rage. How did her mother always manage to avoid the worst of these moments, when everyone else was having their world turned inside out?

  The woman hovered helplessly, in bare feet and a flimsy silk kimono clutched around what Lilah knew was nakedness beneath. In unison, the three turned away from her, and went around the side wall to view the unbearable.

  If Roddy had expected Jonathan to take manful charge, creating reassuring order from chaos, he was disappointed. Their neighbour simply stood staring at Sam for what felt like several minutes.

  Sam was wearing a khaki-coloured cotton shirt and a pair of old faded trousers which he favoured in warm weather. The belt was unfastened and the buckle end of it flopped loose, just visible through the leaves and stalks of the nettle patch. He had sunk further into the nettles since Roddy and Lilah had first found him; some of the plants had begun to spring back to their former position, partly hiding him from view.

  ‘It is definitely Sam, is it?’ said Jonathan at last.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Roddy was impatient. ‘We have to do something.’

  ‘We were told off last time for doing too much,’ Lilah reminded him. Last time left a ghastly echo in her head – it was halfway to assuming that there might yet be a next time as well.

  Belatedly Miranda joined them, her feet floundering in Guy’s old wellingtons, making her look clownlike. ‘I’ve phoned the police,’ she said briefly, not looking at Sam, turning her head awkwardly away. ‘God knows what they’re going to think.’

  ‘Who cares what they th
ink!’ Roddy burst out. ‘This is Sam and he’s dead.’

  ‘Easy does it, Rod,’ soothed Jonathan. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘It won’t though,’ said Lilah, her voice too loud in the fragile morning. ‘We’ll really have to sell the farm now.’

  ‘What?’ Miranda queried, faintly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Think about it,’ said the girl, harshly. ‘How can we possibly manage?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Jonathan told her. He seemed to have decided that his most useful role was as a calming influence in the midst of all the horror. All he succeeded in doing was irritating both Roddy and Lilah, who were beginning to realise that his presence was contributing nothing at all.

  Three policemen came this time, which everyone immediately understood was unusual. Den was not amongst them, and Lilah crazily assumed that he had been forbidden to come because of the personal connection. She was sure he’d told her he was on duty today. Only later did she realise that his shift probably didn’t start until eight or nine a.m. The three men had extremely serious faces. They walked all around Sam, and one of them pushed gingerly through the nettles to examine him, his hands raised to avoid stings. ‘Has anybody called the doctor?’ he demanded. One of his colleagues grunted an affirmative, and watched impassively as the more intrepid one felt Sam’s neck for a pulse, and gently turned him to look at his face, befoe letting him roll back to his original position.

  Jonathan’s presence felt intrusive to Lilah now. An outsider, nosing his way into their trouble, breaking the boundary that would have kept this new death strictly in the family. Thank God, she thought, that he didn’t bring his dog.