A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  Guy had always slung calves across his shoulders and marched along as if they were featherweights. Lilah could never balance them, and her instability caused panic in the passenger, whose kicking and struggling made it impossible. Instead, she preferred to hold them to her chest, the four legs bunched together, and the head hanging free. It wasn’t easy, but at least they kept still that way.

  ‘Come on, my lad,’ she grunted, getting hold of him. The heifer protested softly, only a few feet away. ‘Oof, you’re a heavy one!’

  At least it was downhill. Most of the fields sloped down towards the yard, in its natural hollow. Taking it steadily, Lilah managed to get across the first field. The heifer followed her, nosing at the calf once or twice, and mumbling at Lilah in a low voice, trying to make her put the baby down.

  She had to drop him, to rest her shoulders and get her breath back. She thought she might try driving them for a bit, although it was famously impossible to persuade a bull calf to do anything you wanted. Neither pushing nor pulling would work. But every few yards they covered would be a gain, and she didn’t think she could carry him again for a while.

  When Den came into view from the next gateway, she could hardly believe it. She had never, ever, been so pleased to see anyone, and the grin that spread across her face must have been visible a mile away.

  ‘Can I help?’ he said, once in earshot.

  ‘You certainly can. Do you think you can carry this little chap? He’s a bit heavy for me.’

  ‘I might manage him. I’m beginning to get used to your calves. This one looks rather cuddly.’

  ‘He’s clean and dry, anyway. And he doesn’t struggle, like some. We don’t get fond of the bulls, though. They’re not with us long enough.’

  ‘Sad.’ He hoisted the calf onto his shoulders, as Guy had used to do.

  ‘Is this a social call?’ she asked, as they began to cross the field. The heifer continued to trot behind her calf, but kept more distance now the man was carrying him. Lilah also had to trot to keep up with Den’s long strides.

  ‘We have someone in custody,’ he said, without any preliminaries. Lilah could hear the excitement in his voice, and looked at him searchingly.

  ‘It’s early days, but we’ve taken fingerprints, and they match the set on the gun that we couldn’t identify. And there’s been a confession, for what it’s worth. And the clothes – it seems they were hers.’

  ‘Hers!’ said Lilah, feeling the thrum of a host of strong emotions. Sylvia! ‘Who?’ she demanded. ‘Who are you talking about?

  Den huffed a little, and shifted the calf into a better position. ‘This isn’t how I’d imagined telling you,’ he said wryly, his face pink and boyish.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Lilah exploded. ‘Tell me, will you!’

  ‘Elvira Winnicombe,’ he said flatly. ‘When I left, she’d already made a full confession. I didn’t stop to hear all of it, but we’re sure. There isn’t any doubt about it. Elvira killed your father and Sam Carter.’

  ‘But—’ Lilah’s head was whirling. Now that the moment had come, it was dreadful, being told like this that a particular person, someone she knew, had deliberately murdered her father. There was no satisfaction to it. She stopped in her tracks, gazing around at the woods and hills, and down at the farmhouse, the slurry pit, the barn. Nothing made sense. Her head rang with the madness of it. ‘But why?’ she said fiercely. ‘Why on earth would she do that?’

  ‘That’s where we’re stuck, for the moment,’ he said mildly.

  The effect of his tone was twofold. One part of her wanted to lie down and drum her heels and scream and scream. But his forbearance also reminded her that he was sharing information with her that she was not yet entitled to. She owed it to him to behave rationally. She should be grateful.

  ‘Were you there?’ she asked him, after a minute or two. ‘When they arrested her?’

  ‘Yes. I chased her through the woods. She was very fast for her size. But we caught her soon enough. She didn’t have any shoes on. She began jabbering away, when we interviewed her at the station, although it didn’t make much sense at first. In the end, she told us quite easily. She couldn’t have known what she was doing, poor thing. Seemed quite pleased with herself, as if she’d been really clever.’

  ‘It sounds horrible. I mean – Elvira! She was on the school bus.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But Sam. How could she have shot Sam? How could he let her?’

  Den shook his head minimally, hampered by the calf.

  ‘Can you really believe her?’ Lilah said, after a while. ‘Is she fit to make a proper confession? Somebody might have put her up to it.’

  ‘There’s evidence. We don’t have to rely on the confession.’

  ‘She has a boyfriend,’ Lilah suddenly remembered. ‘A lover. I saw them together. So did Jonathan, I think.’

  ‘Yes. And I have a feeling he was there when she shot Sam. Otherwise, as you say, it doesn’t seem credible. Who is he? That’s what everyone wants to know now. She thinks he’s going to marry her.’

  ‘I have no idea. I saw them when it was dark. I didn’t see his face.’

  Carefully, he took her hand, holding the calf unsteadily with the other one. Behind them the heifer made anxious noises. ‘When this is over …’ he began. ‘Do you think—?’

  ‘What?’ She felt a mixture of impatience and submission. ‘What will we do?’

  ‘Forget all this. Be ordinary.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Does that sound good?’

  She nodded. ‘I think it will, one of these days. When I can dare to feel hopeful again.’ She wriggled against his protective arm. ‘But, God! Elvira!’

  A sound drew their attention back to the farmyard. A bright red car drove through the gates. ‘Heavens! That must be Terry,’ she said.

  ‘Terry?’ He spoke sharply, suddenly all attention. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘My half-brother. He’s taking Mum to see his mother in Nottingham. The two Mrs Beardons want to meet each other.’

  ‘Have you told anybody about this?’

  ‘What do you mean? Who would we tell?’

  ‘Us, you fool. The police. She can’t just go off like that.’

  ‘Oh, I think she did say something to that Dave chap. Nobody’s going to stop her, surely. It’s only for a day or two.’ Suddenly, for no reason, she felt scared. ‘Come on. I want to meet him. He is my brother, after all.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Den urgently. ‘But we’ve got a few minutes. If it is him, they’ll take a minute to load up, won’t they?’

  ‘Probably. Even so, I think we should get a move on.’

  From halfway down the field, they gained a clearer view of the yard, perhaps three hundred yards away. Lilah could see the car already turned round, ready to leave; beside it was her mother and Amos and a man whose face she couldn’t see. Miranda paused halfway between the house and the car, and went back to Amos. Lilah could see her speaking earnestly to him, patting his arm. He began to walk away from her, his head bowed. His direction was roughly that of his own house, across one of the other fields. As Lilah watched, now jogging ahead of the burdened Den, she saw the man open the car door and help Miranda in. There seemed to be something forceful in the way he did it, an unnatural haste. He slammed the door shut and began to walk round the back of the car to the driver’s side. Everything was getting closer. She could call out now, and her mother would hear. She would soon be able to see the man’s face clearly …

  ‘Den!’ She stopped. ‘There’s something wrong.’ She felt her world slowly collapsing around her, like a castle built of toy bricks. In that instant she knew who and why and how, vividly, as if the truth had been punched into her.

  Den started to run, the calf still around his neck, and the startled heifer also running to keep up. ‘Stop!’ he yelled, in a deafening voice. And then again, even louder, ‘Stop, I tell you!’ The man in the yard looked up. Lilah wondered later what he made of the immensely tall man charging along wi
th a calf on his back and a cow cantering alongside.

  However extraordinary it may have looked to him, he didn’t hesitate. He leant over Miranda in the passenger seat; she seemed content to sit there at his bidding. Den paused, to set the calf on the ground. Lilah was moved, even in that moment, by how carefully, how tenderly, he did it.

  Then he resumed his charging run, reaching the car in seconds. Terry met him, something long and apparently heavy held in both hands. Like a baseball player, he swung his club, making contact with Den’s head before the policeman could do anything. Lilah, frozen, clenched inside with horror, half expected to see the head go soaring across the yard. Instead, Den simply dropped on the spot, folding up like a collapsing deckchair. Terry ran round the car to the driver’s seat, jumped in and set the car quickly in motion, taking Miranda away. Lilah saw her begin to turn back, her mouth open, her eyes wide. The car engine seemed violently loud. She half noticed Amos coming back again, at a shambling run, almost exactly as he had run down to Redstone on the morning of Isaac’s death. Somehow she knew that Amos too had understood in those moments exactly who, and why and how.

  The next sound was the strangest of all. A terrible broken screaming came from somewhere, as Den lay there on his back, the side of his face already disfigured and purple. It took Lilah nearly a minute to understand that she was making the noise herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Lilah’s next thought was for Roddy. A searing terror flashed through her that the killer had found her brother and killed him. Where was he, otherwise? And Tim? Why hadn’t they been there, to save Den and Miranda? She gazed at Amos, who stood looking after the car, as if unsure whether it had really existed. His helplessness only fuelled her sense of panic. Den’s gurgling moan brought her back to reality and she cautiously approached him; one eye was open and focused on her, but the other side of his face was a mess she could hardly bear to look at. The crowbar had caught him at an angle, smashing his cheekbone and jaw.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he mumbled, the words thick, but audible. ‘It gives me a headache.’

  ‘Just don’t move,’ she ordered him. ‘You’ll damage your brain if you do.’ A snort from Amos triggered a rising hysteria.

  ‘Same crowbar he used on me,’ he said. ‘Didn’t damage my brain so much.’

  She wanted to say something about Isaac and the permanent, terminal damage done to him, but restrained herself. Then she realised that she should go and call for help. The prospect of dialling 999 yet again from the Redstone phone was too much for her. It was like living in a time warp. Kneeling next to Den, she stroked ineffectively at his hair.

  ‘Ought to fetch someone,’ Amos observed.

  ‘Go and see to it, then,’ Lilah snapped. ‘I’m not leaving him.’

  Then everything happened at once. Jonathan’s Land Rover came charging down the Redstone lane like cavalry in a western. Before it could properly slither to a stop, Tim came tumbling out of the passenger seat, looking oddly different. Immediately taking charge, he knelt beside Den and began to examine the wound. Lilah looked to Jonathan, bewildered, and saw Roddy, white-faced on the back seat, making no attempt to leave the vehicle.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ asked Tim.

  ‘She’s gone. With that man – Terry, I suppose. It was him who attacked Den.’

  ‘Are you sure? Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes, I saw everything. I saw them driving away. He was kidnapping her. Go after her, Jonathan. Please. He’ll murder her next.’ Her voice had risen to another scream, all control lost in the face of total nightmare. Den started to gurgle again, but Tim waved a hand to hush him. Then he addressed himself to Lilah.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘There’s a whole lot of police officers waiting at the top of your drive, with two squad cars. They’ll catch him.’

  ‘How on earth did they miss him just now, then?’ she demanded. ‘He’s only been gone a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Longer’n that,’ said Amos reproachfully.

  ‘Pity they didn’t stop him on his way in,’ Lilah snarled. ‘What makes you think they’ll manage it now?’

  Tim frowned. ‘They’re bound to realise …’ Interrupting himself, he extracted a phone from his pocket and made a hurried call. ‘He’s in the car that left just now,’ he said. ‘Don’t lose him.’

  Lilah stared at him for a long moment, and then gave up. ‘Where have you been, anyway?’ she demanded of her brother.

  Roddy leant his head out of the Land Rover. ‘The police phoned, trying to get hold of Den. We told them he’d gone up to see you, and left his phone in the car.’ For the first time, Lilah noticed the police car parked unobtrusively beside the barn. Roddy went on: ‘They said they wanted him to phone back. Tim and I were going to go up the field and get him, but then Jonathan phoned and told us what had happened with Phoebe and Elvira. He said we should keep Amos here, and he’d come round and drive him into town, because he had things to tell the police.’

  ‘God, Roddy, get on with it,’ Lilah shouted in frustration. ‘I don’t care about all this stuff.’

  ‘Well, basically, we haven’t been anywhere,’ he retorted loudly. ‘We were running after that red car with Mum in it, when Jonathan came down the lane, and we came back here with him.’ Roddy glared at her, still pale, his lips shaking. ‘Satisfied?’

  The explanation fitted almost nothing that Lilah thought she had witnessed. The time frame seemed entirely wrong. ‘Well, what do we do now?’ she cried, looking round at the three standing men, and back to the prostrate Den. ‘We’ve got to help Mum.’

  ‘There’ll be an ambulance here in a minute,’ said Tim, holding his mobile telephone in one hand.

  Lilah turned her attention back to Den, in an agony of indecision. ‘I can’t leave him. But I have to be sure that Mum’s okay. She might be dead as well by this time. We have to follow the red car.’

  Jonathan looked to Tim for an answer. ‘Come on,’ she screamed. There was a moment of hush, as the men seemed to commune silently.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tim, at last. ‘It might be dangerous.’

  ‘Might?’ she demanded, increasingly hysterical. ‘After all this?’ She swept an expressive arm to embrace the entire farm, and finished by looking down at Den, lying on the ground, wounded and in pain.

  In the car, Miranda faced the man who was abducting her. ‘You killed Isaac,’ she accused, her glance darting to the crowbar, wedged between the front seats. She could hardly speak for terror. ‘Why? You didn’t even know him.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he snapped, his voice unexpectedly Irish. ‘Why should I tell you anything?’

  ‘And Guy. You were involved in killing Guy, weren’t you? Even if you didn’t do it yourself.’

  ‘I said shut up,’ he repeated.

  The bulging eyes and chewed lips warned Miranda that he was on the edge. Anything could happen. Her mind was blank, apart from a desperate need to understand. The car was going much too fast, swinging her painfully against the door, and then forcing her to brace herself to avoid falling onto him. She had undone her seatbelt, in a futile attempt to be ready to jump out of the car if it stopped or even slowed sufficiently.

  Something forced her to keep up the questions. If he was going to kill her anyway, surely he owed her an explanation first? Wasn’t that always what happened – the murderer revealed everything, on the assumption that his hearer would never live to share the secrets?

  ‘Did you want Guy dead? Your own father?’

  It didn’t work. He merely turned to her for a second, and sneered. ‘I won’t tell you again. If you say one more word, I’ll bash your head in as well.’

  The high hedges, flashing pink and white with the summer flowers, skimmed past as he kept the accelerator hard down. There was a junction less than half a mile ahead, with a sharp bend just before it. They would be lucky to avoid disaster if he didn’t slow down.

  She wished she could see him better, and confirm the impres
sion she’d had that he was uncannily like Guy to look at. But the reckless pace kept her gaze fixed mainly on the road ahead, willing it to remain clear. At least he was in no position to carry out his threat to bash her, so she risked further speech.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  He made no reply. She asked again, and he shook his head rapidly, side to side, as if shaking water from his hair; it was the craziest gesture he had made so far.

  ‘You don’t know,’ she interpreted, dully. ‘You haven’t got any idea. Not to see your mother, I assume?’

  ‘She’s got nothing to do with this.’

  ‘They’ll catch you. You’ve killed someone.’

  ‘Let them try.’ He took the next bend faster than she could have imagined, and she reproached herself desperately, while clinging tightly to the door handle, shouting at him to slow down.

  Jonathan and Tim were saved from more of Lilah’s wrath by the strangely exciting throb of a helicopter engine coming rapidly closer. Everyone looked up. The panic died in Lilah and she sqautted beside Den, passive and wooden, waiting for the next impossibility to happen.

  Somehow, the injured policeman was taken up into the deafening machine. When it lifted slowly, magically, up into the sky, she held her flying hair away from her face and watched.

  She looked around yet again at her home, then up into neighbouring fields where the heifers galloped frantically to escape the terrifying noise in the sky. They’ll slip their calves, she thought, and the idea seemed unbearably sad. In a rush, great hot tears began to run from her eyes at this final piece of destruction. For a few minutes, she couldn’t see anything, but when she looked again, Tim and Jonathan were joining Roddy in the vehicle, and she followed automatically. They paused to speak to Amos.