by Rebecca Tope
Thea seemed to like this idea. ‘You mean – drop clues in front of her and let her think she found them all by herself? Like helping a child win at chess?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘More like – let her do it all on her own, and stay out of the whole business.’
Chapter Nine
‘I think it’s time I met that snake,’ Phil said, as the evening started to feel a trifle long. It was nine o’clock, too early for bed, too late to start a game of Scrabble. ‘I feel it’s a hurdle I have to jump.’
She looked at him. ‘What? Are you scared? You kept that well hidden, I must say.’
‘Not scared, just – apprehensive. It sounds so dreadfully big. And Gladwin was right, you know. It’s an awful business, keeping these wild animals shut up in cages, thousands of miles from their rightful homes.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘But it’s here now, and probably doesn’t know what it’s missing. At least it’s got the right sort of weather. I expect it’s as happy as a snake can be.’
‘And we have no idea how happy that is,’ he laughed. ‘Funny how seldom one hears that word these days,’ he added. ‘We all seem to have got so miserable over the past few years. Or is it just me?’
‘It’s your job,’ she assured him. ‘All that violence and greed. You get a distorted view of the world.’
‘Right,’ he nodded. ‘I see a violent and greedy world out there, no mistake about that. But it’s also terribly sad.’ He stroked an invisible beard reflectively, and searched his mind for some reason to be cheerful.
The snake looked peaceful enough, coiled untidily in a far corner of the generously sized cage. There were stones and hunks of wood to deceive it into thinking it was in its rightful habitat. The scales were large and symmetrical and very decorative. He couldn’t see its head.
‘Not much of a life,’ he said. ‘Not much of a pet, either, as far as I can see.’
‘Archie takes her out a lot and lets her ride on his shoulders. She weighs something incredible, though, so I doubt if it lasts for long.’ Thea put her face close to the fine wire mesh. ‘You can see her breathing, look. Don’t you think she’s gorgeous?’
‘Handsome,’ Phil conceded. ‘Definitely handsome. And very boring. I can’t imagine anyone being scared of something so placid.’
‘Nor me.’
‘You exaggerated, though. There’s no way that creature could swallow Hepzie. I expected something much bigger.’
‘I wouldn’t like to put it to the test.’ Thea frowned consideringly. ‘You can see there’s a lot of slack skin, look. Just waiting to stretch around some tasty little mammal.’ She frowned more deeply. ‘I hope she’s warm enough. They like it really hot and humid. I’m supposed to spray her every now and then, as well.’ She indicated a plastic bottle with a trigger device at the top. ‘But she’s been drinking her water very nicely, so I thought she was probably OK.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a big responsibility, you know, making sure she’s just right. You don’t think she could get cold, do you?’
‘Thea, it’s been close to thirty degrees here today. It isn’t possible to be cold in this weather. It must have been sweltering in here with the door and windows shut.’
It was a new wooden shed, with two windows, and an airlessness that Phil was finding uncomfortable. ‘In fact, I think you ought to open a window for her. She’ll suffocate otherwise.’
‘Not in the night, though? Doesn’t it get chilly at night?’
‘Do it first thing in the morning,’ he instructed, wondering why he was allowing himself to get involved. He leant against the doorpost, fighting the growing pain in his back. Unassisted standing was still difficult, and he let the post take his weight, pressing his upper spine against it, in an attempt to relieve the lower muscles.
Thea noticed the odd stance and raised her eyebrows. ‘Too much standing,’ she diagnosed. ‘Bye bye, Shasti. Sorry to disturb you.’
But the snake showed no sign of caring whether they were there or not.
They finished the day with a sense of much achieved, Phil’s back having cooperated magnificently with everything he demanded of it. ‘We could go out again tomorrow,’ he said bravely. ‘And on Friday. The forecast says this weather is just going to go on and on.’
‘Last year it ended in a thunderstorm,’ Thea recalled. ‘But that was later in the summer. I can’t ever remember a June like this.’
‘It’s not natural,’ he said in a tone of mock doom.
‘Don’t start that again,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed.’
Thursday morning dawned red and fiery, but by half past eight there were streaks of cloud approaching from the west and a sudden breathy wind that fluttered the willows in Miss Deacon’s garden. The horses seemed restless in their paddock and Phil reported a night much interrupted by the relentless gurgling of the fish tanks. ‘I want to sleep upstairs with you,’ he whined. ‘I’m sure I can manage it now.’
‘You might manage the stairs, but you won’t like the feather mattress,’ she reminded him.
‘Well, we could take the fold-up bed and put it beside yours. At least we’d be in the same room.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘That would be nice.’
His heart leapt with boyish optimism. ‘It would, wouldn’t it!’ he agreed.
* * *
His disturbed night had been filled with interwoven thoughts of Gladwin and Thea and the bones he’d found and the significance of ancient history to modern Temple Guiting. There was a powerful duty on the investigating team to identify the body and how it died, and a lesser duty to establish what had become of young Giles Pritchett. It was possible that there was no connection apart from the accident of location, but he was increasingly sure that there was, especially after the way Janey had behaved the day before.
‘Tell me about St Kenelm,’ he invited, having settled himself back into the garden chair under the willow trees for another sunny morning. ‘Isn’t that the Saint of the Month for July?’
‘Goodness, you have been paying attention,’ she congratulated him. ‘But I’m sorry to say I know nothing whatever about him.’
‘He’s got a well near here, for a start.’
‘Has he? How did you know that?’
‘It’s at the end of St Kenelm’s Way. It’s a long distance footpath. There was some trouble at the Worcester end a year or two ago.’
‘We could invite Janey over and get her to tell us.’
Phil put up his hands. ‘No, no – please no!’ he begged melodramatically.
‘But she’ll be full of useful local information.’
‘In which case Gladwin can have her. She’ll have spoken to her already, I shouldn’t wonder, what with it being her who called the fire brigade to move that tree.’
Thea was quiet. ‘What are you thinking?’ he prompted.
She wriggled her shoulders. ‘Oh, something about villages and what they can tell you about people through the ages. Just the way the houses are positioned, and the boundaries drawn can conjure up whole social systems if you know how to look at them. Even now, I suppose, we’re revealing things we don’t realise.’
‘Oh?’
‘That new wall, for example – did you notice it? A perfect, handmade dry stone wall in bright yellow. On the way here. On the face of it, it’s in perfect vernacular, maintaining traditions, keeping things looking the same. But dry stone wallers are highly paid experts now. The landowner isn’t doing it himself, or getting his sons to gather the stones. He’s paying a fortune for somebody else to do it. It’s artificial. There won’t be any animals behind that wall, unless they’re highly bred and utterly useless horses. There’s a complete loss of integrity to the whole thing.’ Her eyes opened wider, as a new thought struck her. ‘That’s what bothers me so much about the Cotswolds. I’ve only just managed to put it into words. Nothing’s genuine any more. It’s all done for appearances.’ She sighed. ‘And yet it’s all so amazingly beautiful. Even the air is lovely.’
> ‘Right. And I’m not sure what the alternative might be. What should they do instead of that wall? Wire netting? A wall is still the most durable and effective barrier there is. Besides, there are still small working farms around here. There’s one just the other end of the village.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘It probably isn’t as bad as I think. When the stock market bubble bursts, as they generally seem to do, I suppose all these second homes will be sold to people who need somewhere to live, and the place will come to life again. It’s all just being kept on hold at the moment.’
‘Preserved in aspic,’ he smiled. ‘Which has to be better than letting it all go to ruin.’
‘That’s all right then,’ she grinned back at him. ‘Now what else can we put right in the world?’
He shifted gingerly, and was sufficiently free of pain to hold out his arms to her. ‘Come here,’ he invited. ‘It’s time for a hug.’
It was mildly embarrassing to realise they were being watched, five minutes later. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t make you hear me,’ came a female voice from the edge of the lawn. ‘This is rather nice, isn’t it?’ She scanned the scene, bathed in bright morning light, and extended her arms as if to savour the warm air on her skin. ‘I hate to say it, but if I didn’t know better I’d think that bad back was just a fib to gain a bit of extra holiday.’
Thea extricated herself gracefully and laughed. ‘You’d better believe it,’ she said. ‘The back is bad enough to cast quite a shadow. I still haven’t forgiven him for going up to look at the tree on Tuesday. It made everything worse by about a million miles.’
Sonia Gladwin pulled a rueful face. ‘Some people just don’t know when to leave well alone,’ she agreed. ‘And now we’ve got the oddest murder investigation I’ve ever met. Do you mind if I talk to him about it for a bit? To be perfectly honest—’ she threw a worried glance over her shoulder as if seeking for hidden listeners, ‘I’m already rather out of my depth.’
‘Help yourself,’ Thea said. ‘I’ll go and find some refreshment.’
Phil understood that things had to be badly getting to the new DS if she had been driven to swallow her pride and intrude on him like this. It was barely nine o’clock, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept since he’d first met her forty-eight hours before. He felt no irritation with her, and he had detected none in Thea. The woman was only trying to do her job. Besides, as everybody kept saying, Phil had brought the whole thing on himself to begin with.
His only unease stemmed from the knowledge that Pritchett had told him things that he had yet to pass on to the Senior Investigating Officer. This was quite out of order, and only felt worse for his lack of any good reason for the omission. He hoped it wasn’t because Pritchett and he had both been on the square, many years ago, and the old loyalties and concerns still held a grip on him. Freemasonry was a brotherhood that bonded more strongly than was generally realised. Even Phil, a refugee from the seamier aspects, could not escape entirely.
‘We’re held up waiting for all the forensic reports,’ she said. ‘We made rather a mess of the scene, between us. It’s impossible to say now just where he was buried, and how deep.’
‘Not your fault,’ he said. ‘The tree threw everything up in the air, more or less literally. Plus the chainsaw gang must have trodden all over the show before any of us got there. Anyway, I’m not sure it matters, does it? There’s such a thing as getting too bogged down in the detail. Isn’t it enough to know he had his head bashed in and the body dumped? Having a date is the crucial factor, surely?’ He was being deliberately deferential, according her the seniority, granting her the case on a plate, with as little interference as he could manage. He found it wasn’t difficult.
‘How are you feeling, anyway?’ she asked, leaning forward slightly. ‘I should have asked that first. I know how crippling a bad back can be – my father had one for years.’
‘I’ll survive,’ he said lightly, doing his best not to compare this moment of real sympathy with Thea’s cavalier treatment. ‘It’s a lot better than it was.’
‘Well, it’s good of you to let me pick your brains, just the same,’ she said.
‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides, I owe you a rather large apology. I’ve been withholding information from you.’
She cocked her head, unsure how to take this. ‘Oh?’
‘A man named Stephen Pritchett has been talking to me. He thought it might be his son – Giles he’s called – buried under that tree. It turns out from your description that it can’t be him after all – which is why I didn’t confuse things by telling you about it.’
‘When did he tell you this?’ She seemed unsurprised by the revelation, almost expecting it, if that made any sense.
‘Yesterday. Oh, and Janey Holmes let drop that she thinks Giles is alive and well. In other words, Giles Pritchett is probably a red herring, and nothing to do with the case at all.’
‘Is Stephen Pritchett a friend of yours?’
Hollis shook his head. ‘I met him once, years ago, that’s all. It’s a small world around here.’
‘Not as small as Cumbria, believe me,’ she said. ‘I heard something about Pritchett last night, as it happens. There’s a family of them. The name of Giles has come up more than once already. That’s your man’s son, I take it? Early twenties and very tall? Last known address here in the village, but that was a few years ago now.’ She was consulting a strange-looking electronic notepad.
Hollis nodded. ‘That’s the one.’
‘So, you haven’t kept back anything we didn’t already know,’ she summarised, sitting back more comfortably in the canvas chair. ‘God, this weather’s nice, isn’t it? I can’t get used to it – it feels as if every day’s a holiday.’
He inspected her chestnut hair and freckled skin, which didn’t look unduly susceptible to sunburn. ‘You’ve got the colouring for it,’ he said, and was disconcerted when she blushed.
Deftly she returned to the subject under discussion. ‘We’re trawling through all the missing persons reports, of course. Three or four names have come up which might be worth looking into. But the pathologist – what’s his name? Peter?’ Phil nodded, and she carried on, ‘He’s raising some questions about the cause of death. He thinks the damage to the skull could have happened post-mortem, after all. He’s sending slivers of bone from around the wound to the lab for microscopic analysis, but he thinks we might never be totally sure. There aren’t enough traces of blood and tissue to work on. You can understand the difficulty,’ she smiled, with a flash of typical police humour. ‘Every bit of the brain’s been gone for a while now. Must have been a feast for an army of creepy-crawlies.’
‘So, a stone or tree root or something might have made the hole after he was buried? Is that what he thinks?’
She shrugged. ‘There’s no exit wound, which might have helped to work out what happened.’ Phil remembered Thea’s reference to Jael and the tent peg and nodded.
‘But it’s still a crime, of course,’ Gladwin went on. ‘You can’t just dump a naked body under a tree and leave it, even if you haven’t killed it first. And there are anomalies. Some of the long bones are broken.’
He looked at her acutely. ‘That sounds interesting.’
‘We’re not sure what happened, yet. I won’t say anything until we are – if that moment ever comes, of course. I hope that’s OK.’
Again he felt put down, sidelined. She was treating him like an unreliable amateur, not a highly experienced superintendent. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ he demanded.
‘It’s not that. Of course it’s not. But without you being in on all the briefings, it’s not so easy to keep you up to speed with the details. If I tell you something now that turns out to be wrong, I’ll have to be sure to correct it later on. You’re here, amongst the people who are likely to be most closely involved. That’s really useful, especially if they get talking on a friendly basis. But it’s my case.’ She gave him a st
raight look. ‘I have to have everything at my fingertips, and keep track of who knows what. I’m not keeping any secrets from you, Phil. I’m just trying to avoid telling you something that hasn’t been fully confirmed. OK?’
‘OK,’ he smiled. ‘Very professional.’
‘Thank you. Now – has anyone else told you anything that might be relevant?’
He recounted the visit to Janey’s home, the Saints and Martyrs Club and the trust which financed her lifestyle. Gladwin wrote with an electronic pencil on her fancy modern gadget, recording everything she was being told. Hollis found himself fully engaged with the process of recalling each and every detail. His back forgotten, it was ten minutes before he paused and realised how fiercely his mind had been working, and how much more than mere facts he had relayed. He had listed avenues of enquiry, ranged across such hypotheses as family feuds over property and other issues, neighbour disputes, drugs and jealousy.
Gladwin looked up and smiled. ‘You enjoy your work, don’t you,’ she remarked.
He half closed his eyes. ‘It saved me, a while back,’ he admitted. ‘When my personal life imploded, it was work that kept me going.’
Again she cocked her head, eyeing him like an intelligent bird. ‘Not the other way around then?’ she probed. ‘I mean – personal life usually implodes for a copper because of the work.’
‘There was an element of that,’ he conceded. ‘How could there not be? But I’ll always be grateful for the job. It literally gave me something to live for.’
‘Your daughter died,’ she nodded matter-of-factly. ‘Of a drug overdose. Can’t have been easy.’
‘You looked me up? Found it on my records?’
‘Nope.’ She shook her head. ‘Three different people told me about it within two hours of my arrival on Monday. Does that surprise you?’
His eyes closed all the way, as he held the feelings in tight check. ‘Not surprised,’ he said. ‘But not particularly pleased. Do they think that’s what defines me, even now? Does it make me vulnerable? Unreliable? Or what?’
