A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

‘Go home, old chap,’ said Tim, kindly. ‘When this is over, someone’ll come to see you’re all right.’

  Amos nodded submissively. Lilah wondered whether he had any idea what was going on. She couldn’t remember where he fitted into the story, had no idea why he’d come to speak to Miranda. She felt no curiosity as to what might happen next. Her powers of reasoning seemed to have died. Huddled on the back seat of the inexplicably fast-moving Land Rover with Roddy, she let the tears flow. Everything was over now, the whole matter was at an end. If the helicopter fell out of the sky onto the Land Rover, it would be no more than fitting.

  But gradually she became aware of how very rapidly they were travelling.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, in the little-girl voice she’d sometimes used with her father.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Tim threw over his shoulder. ‘This guy is really something. Do you know him? Terry, you said his name was?’

  ‘He’s my half-brother. Mine and Roddy’s.’

  ‘Good God.’ Jonathan whistled, then went quiet. After some thought he said, ‘This is all very strange. There’s something going on that I can’t fathom out. Did this bloke kill Guy and Sam? Or what? And where does Elvira fit in?’

  ‘He killed Isaac, I suppose,’ said Lilah. ‘But Elvira’s been arrested for killing Daddy and Sam. Den just told me that.’ In spite of herself, Lilah was reviving. ‘Roddy looks as if he’s going to be sick.’

  As they left the village, heading towards town, she saw two police cars on the steep road some distance ahead of them, driving much too fast, one behind the other. She heard Jonathan say, ‘They must have lost him.’

  The view was patchy, but the road snaked for some distance between the hedges, destined to meet a much larger and busier road just over the brow of the hill. Everywhere felt oddly deserted to Lilah. Just two incongruous police cars, chasing madly after an invisible quarry, and themselves in the jolting Land Rover gaining on them all the time.

  ‘Where the hell is he?’ snapped Tim.

  The inexorable climax built as she waited with a cold, numb horror. On the main road, they could see the police cars ahead, lights flashing. There was no traffic, making her feel again as if they were in a time warp, or some different reality altogether. ‘They’ve stopped the traffic,’ Tim said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  They came upon the final scene with devastating abruptness. The road dipped gracefully down into a shallow valley and up the other side, visible for a good distance, giving the occupants of the Land Rover a panoramic view of events. Halfway up the opposite side, a tractor was toiling along, evidently oblivious to the drama unfolding behind it. A red car was closing rapidly on it, and began to pull out to overtake it, just as the tractor itself began to make a right turn.

  It was obvious that the car was travelling too fast to stop. For two or three seconds, Lilah was transported into her mother’s body, seeing the whole encounter through Miranda’s eyes, feeling the breathless, tingling fear that went with speed and that terrible sense of knowing that an impact was inevitable.

  Afterwards, they concluded there must have been a moment of telepathy, which caused Miranda to duck her head and protect it with her arms, pressing herself against the firm side of the car and closing her eyes tightly. When the car swerved and then pitched and rolled, grinding through a thick hedge and plunging into a bramble-filled ditch, she gave herself up to it and simply waited for the sickening motions to stop.

  The next part was lost to Lilah, the car obscured by a large beech tree, which it had mercifully avoided hitting. She saw the tractor driver climb down and walk unsteadily to the hole in the hedge, staring uncomprehendingly as first two police cars and then a Land Rover pulled up in the road. Overwhelmed, he stood passively, an insignificant bystander.

  Lilah wanted to curl up tight and close her eyes, avoiding any further misery or responsibility. Would she have to watch her mother being lifted unconscious or dead from the car?

  ‘Everybody out,’ ordered Tim, urgently. ‘You might be able to help.’ Lilah and Roddy fumbled in unison with door handles, clumsy and slow, neither in any hurry to witness their mother’s fate.

  Tim held out a hand to each of them. Lilah took one, blinking at the strangeness of it. Surely Tim had desk-bound, white hands, with slim fingers and narrow wrists? This was the arm of a very different individual. She looked hesitantly into his face, almost afraid that he would peel off a latex mask to reveal someone wholly other underneath.

  In a way, that’s what he did. His eyes, formerly so casually friendly and eager to please, were now full of a mature intelligence, combined with a kind of apologetic understanding. His whole bearing had changed in one smooth transition from an unfit yuppie to a lean military professional. Lilah felt simultaneously betrayed and relieved. Meekly, she waited for him to assist her to her mother.

  The door of the crashed car on the passenger side was now open, the angle it made transforming the car into some monstrous alien machine, a metal contraption with no purpose other than to crush its occupants. The door was being propped open by one of the policemen, and Miranda’s legs in tight blue jeans began to emerge, apparently of their own volition.

  Concerned male hands and arms caught her as she unfolded from the capsized seat and pushed herself up and out, like a strange birth from an experimental new species. With a curiously awkward wriggle, she stood upright, breathing deep and squaring her shoulders. Lilah watched, tense with apprehension, as her mother lifted first one foot, then the other, walking on the spot as if to test her legs. Three men hovered round her, hands fluttering, ready to catch her if she fell.

  Lilah knew then that she had been doubly blessed. ‘She’s all right!’ she screamed, alarming herself and Roddy at the force and volume of her words.

  Miranda gave a little shrug. She was paler than Lilah had ever seen her, with strange mauve smudges under her eyes. She was gripping herself by the upper arms, as if cold, and kept glancing at the car quickly, then away again.

  Lilah turned to the numerous policemen. ‘She’s cold,’ she said accusingly, nodding towards her mother. One of them caught her eye.

  ‘Right,’ he said, as if receiving an order. ‘John, there’ll be a blanket in the back of your car.’ Another man headed vaguely for the gap in the hedge and the parked cars.

  Lilah realised that the apparent inactivity was because everyone’s attention was drawn to the proceedings in and beside the car. They seemed tensely coiled, waiting for some climax yet to come. The siren of an ambulance preceded the vehicle along the lane, but nobody turned away from the man inside the car. With Miranda out of the way, two of them were able to crawl in and assess his condition. He’s sure to be dead, thought Lilah, dispassionately.

  But slowly, a second miraculous birth was being enacted. Inch by inch, feet first, he was being extracted from his metal womb. As a pair of clean blue trainers appeared, a new sound filled the void: an eerie, despairing shriek from the emerging man. Not so much pain, Lilah felt, as misery and failure and fear.

  All in a moment there was a man lying on the ground, moaning and cursing, blood on his face and head, and something seriously wrong with his right shoulder. Two men knelt beside him, two more approached. One of them dangled a pair of handcuffs. ‘How is he?’ he demanded, his tone impatient and gruff.

  ‘He’ll live,’ somebody said.

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ growled the man. Then he took a breath, and intoned the police caution, familiar from countless television dramas. And Lilah tentatively stepped closer for a proper look at Terry’s face.

  He was younger than she’d imagined, looking no more than twenty-six or seven, and his face was shockingly, agonisingly, familiar.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Miranda had received a letter from Barbara, which she showed to anybody who might be interested. ‘That’ll explain it, I expect,’ she said to Sylvia, who had remained by her side throughout Sam’s funeral. She pulled the blue envelope from her bag a
nd handed it to her friened. She knew the contents off by heart, and recalled it as she watched Sylvia read.

  My dear Miranda,

  I hardly know what to say. It feels just now as if the whole world has collapsed about our ears and I know you must be thinking the worst of me and my son. The truth is that Terry always had a bee in his bonnet about his dad. Guy became a sort of bogeyman to him, to blame for every bad thing that ever happened. He’s been spying on you for a year or two now, thinking he could have the farm for his own. He hung around your village, using the vicar as a pretext. Maybe you didn’t know that Edmund is a good friend of our man here, who is a special companion of mine. Small world, as they say.

  I tried to talk sense into him, truly I did. I said we’d do better to get things into the open, make friends with you. When Guy died, I did believe it was an accident. Terry swore to me he had nothing to do with it. Then the man Sam was shot, and I suppose I knew what must have happened. So I tried to turn a terrible situation into something good, which was why I wanted to meet you. But it all got beyond my control, and the rest you know better than I do.

  Spare a thought for me, dear, if you can. Terry’s in for a life sentence, and that’s a heavy thing for a mother to bear. You have your son and your daughter alive and well. We all have to get through it the best we can.

  Believe me, after all, your friend.

  Barbara.

  Tim Rickworth also had a letter, which he showed to Jonathan. He had found it on the kitchen table when he finally got home after the great chase.

  That’s it, chum. I put up with lies and deceit for too long, never knowing where you were or what you were really doing. Well, your cover’s blown now, and serves you right. What happens now? That’s your problem. I’d love to be able to say I was running off with … well, there isn’t anybody. I’m just leaving. Please address all communication to my solicitor, as per card attached.

  Lilah made her apologies to her mother as they left the churchyard and Sam’s grave. ‘I promised I’d go and see Den this afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ Miranda acknowledged. ‘I thought you went every afternoon, anyway.’

  ‘I do,’ smiled the girl. ‘Shall I give him your love?’

  Sylvia glanced from mother to daughter, surprised at the banter. ‘You two seem remarkably happy,’ she commented. ‘In the circumstances.’

  It was early afternoon before Lilah located Den in his new room, lying in a high metal bed. She leant over him; the side of his face was covered now, from temple to jaw. He was awake, staring at the ceiling. Then his eyes turned to her, and she watched a smile dawn. She reached out a hand and found his. ‘Does it hurt?’ she mouthed, not sure whether any voice came through the choking emotion in her throat. He shook his head, making the slightest movement, and winced. The contradiction seemed amusing to her, and she grinned.

  Then he winked at her, the self-consciousness of it making him appear boyish, vulnerable. To her, he wasn’t any longer a policeman, but a valued ally in the insanity that had exploded all around them. And more than that, he was someone who had nearly died, because of something rotten in her family, and for whom she now felt responsible.

  ‘How was the funeral?’ he asked.

  She grimaced. ‘It was horrible. But I’d say the case is now closed, apart from a few lingering questions.’

  ‘Don’t ask me for answers,’ he whispered. ‘I’m meant to be resting.’

  ‘Just one thing, if you’re up to it.’ He waited. ‘What’s happened to Tim Rickworth? He’s turned into a completely different person.’

  ‘That’s an easy one,’ he said. ‘He used to be in the SAS – still on the payroll, as far as I know. It makes him good in a crisis.’

  ‘Are you saying that the police asked him to come out on the farm? As a security thing?’

  Den nodded and grinned crookedly. ‘Good idea, eh?’

  Lilah pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘I’d rather you’d told us,’ she said. ‘But yes, it was quite a good idea.’

  On the day after his capture, Lilah had obtained permission to visit Terry, escorted by a policeman. He was in the same hospital as Den, kept under twenty-four-hour guard. He had a smaller facial dressing than Den’s, and his arm in a rigid splint.

  ‘I’m Lilah,’ she told him. ‘Your half-sister. I wanted to meet you and try to understand what you’ve done.’

  He stared at her through furious brown eyes, set in their sockets exactly as Guy’s had been. His mouth went thin, pulled straight at the sides, so that he looked just as Guy would look when enraged by a disobediant farm animal.

  ‘I didn’t touch your old man,’ he snarled. ‘I wasn’t even in the county that night, and I can prove it.’

  She stared at him. She had thought she was ready for anything, but it was a bad shock to find that he was stupid. Guy would have tolerated almost anything but stupidity in his children.

  ‘We know you didn’t kill him,’ she said coldly. ‘It was Elvira. Hasn’t anybody told you she confessed?’

  Terry’s face went blank, and then he began to try to sit up, wrestling with the bedcovers. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded. ‘What have they done to her? I told her to stay safely in the woods.’

  His concern was another surprise. ‘They found the hideout,’ she said, a spark of pleasure igniting at his panic. ‘That all happened yesterday. She’s been charged with killing Daddy and Sam. She confessed. The police are assuming that you were with her when she shot Sam.’

  The policeman sitting near the door cleared his throat. When she looked at him, he shook his head. ‘Er—’ he said, worry puckering his face, ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Oops. Sorry.’ Lilah said unapologetically. She turned back to her half-brother. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you. They probably didn’t know that I knew, come to think of it.’

  Terry continued to struggle. The policeman opened the door and called a nurse. ‘Calm down, lad,’ he admonished. ‘There’s not a thing you can do about it.’

  Terry threw himself back against the pillows, knocking his head on the metal bedhead. ‘Elvira!’ he moaned in anguish.

  ‘I saw you together,’ Lilah told him. ‘You make a funny couple, I must say.’

  ‘She’s a darling,’ he said, the Irishness of his voice making the word rich and warm.

  Oh my God, he really loves her, Lilah realised. The desire to hurt him dribbled away. He’d made enough mess of his life already, without any help from her. But she had more to say yet, and despite a nagging sense of wrongness, she blurted it out.

  ‘He was a good father to us,’ she said. ‘Though he had his faults. I can understand that it wasn’t like that for you. I know you got Elvira to kill him for you, which makes it your crime at least as much as hers. He didn’t deserve that. I hope they put you in prison for a long time, for what you’ve done to me and Roddy. However bad things were, you’ve only made it much worse.’

  He stared at her, his mouth twitching, and said nothing. She could see no remorse on his face.

  ‘I’m going in a minute,’ she said quietly. ‘But first I must ask you – why Sam? That still doesn’t make any sense to me.’

  He closed his eyes and she thought for a moment he might refuse to answer her. But then his eyelids snapped up, and the look of hatred was there again. ‘That should have been me,’ he spat. ‘Me living on the farm, being his son. Leo never wanted any of it, but I did. I remember that Sam when I was little, when Dad lived with us. It was always Sam Carter’s ten times brighter than you’ll ever be. I hated him for as long as I can remember. Then, when I knew he was going to run the farm, that finished it. He remembered me, too. Said I looked just the same.’

  ‘So we were right – you were with Elvira when she shot him.’

  He shook his head slightly. ‘Got more sense than that,’ he said. ‘Made sure of an alibi, like the last time. I visited your precious Sam a week or two after the old man’s funeral. Told him not to say anything. Showed him a pictur
e of his boss the way I remembered him. Told him I’d get you and your little brother too, if he said a word about me visiting. Scared stiff, he was.’

  All Lilah could do was turn away in sorrow.

  Father Edmund wondered whether he was the first person to fit the whole puzzle together. Motive, opportunity, means. His inadequacy had lain in failing to convince the police when he had taken Amos to speak to them two days earlier, although at that point the truth was still partially obscured. He had needed to speak to Phoebe before the veil was ripped away completely.

  She had been sitting on a garden chair on the scrubby patch of grass outside her cottage when he arrived. She barely even looked at him.

  ‘They have Elvira,’ he said, to show her that he knew. ‘I’m sure they’ll treat her gently, a girl like her.’

  ‘They’ll be saying she’s evil, to do what she did. They don’t understand that she can’t tell right from wrong. That’s your department, isn’t it, Father? Can you explain it to them? That she was just a pawn in that man’s hands?’

  ‘Of course,’ he assured her, more robustly than he really felt.

  ‘He told her he’d marry her. That they’d be rich with her inheritance from Amos. You know the man I mean?’ She was clutching herself, with both hands, and her face was grey.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘I know him and I know his mother. And I see it all now.’

  He went to call at Redstone that same evening. When Miranda answered the door to his knock, limping from a bruised leg, he walked in before she could refuse him entry. ‘You might be interested in what I have to tell you,’ he said.

  Together they went into the living room, where Lilah and Roddy already sat, watching something mindless on television. ‘Switch it off,’ said Miranda, and invited the vicar to sit down in Guy’s armchair.

  ‘Hello, Mr Larkin,’ said Lilah with unconcealed hostility. ‘What brings you here?’