by Rebecca Tope
‘Plus it’s Friday,’ said Thea with a knowing smile.
‘So?’ Gladwin shrugged. ‘Weekends don’t mean a lot in this job, you know.’
It was a scratchy moment. Phil understood that Thea had been trying to convey that she was aware of the stresses of the working life, even if she wasn’t personally involved. Gladwin’s perception of her was probably as an idle, freeloading female, and it was unlikely they would ever find much common ground. ‘My daughter’s in the police,’ Thea said calmly. ‘So I do know something about it. What I meant, actually, was that I realise that Fridays and Saturdays are worse than any other days. There’ll be more distractions and interruptions.’
‘Oh, yeah, I see what you mean,’ Gladwin sighed. ‘Plus my kids always seem to think I should be around at the weekend.’
‘How many have you got?’
‘Two. Twin boys, seven and a half.’ She sighed again.
‘Twins!’ Thea’s eyes lighted with interest and a flicker of mischievous glee. ‘I bet that came as a shock.’
‘Right,’ nodded Gladwin, looking ever more drained.
Phil made an incautious move, from some vague notion of rescuing his new colleague from further unprofessional diversions. His back brought him up short and he expelled an involuntary groan. Furious with himself, he overrode the pain with gritted teeth. He would not continue to let these women regard him as a useless wreck.
‘Thea, if you’re not going to Janey’s it would probably help if you drove me to Cirencester soon, so I can give a full report of what happened this morning. Would that be OK?’
Thea nodded. ‘Of course. I’d rather do that than offer myself as counsellor to Janey Holmes. If she’s got something to do with you almost being killed, then I’m not sure I ever want to see her again.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘And it’s nice to know you still trust me to drive, after last night.’
Gladwin heard this, and cocked her head. ‘Did something happen last night? Is it anything I should know about?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Thea quickly. ‘We don’t have to tell you every move we make, do we?’
Phil uttered another small groan, this time from a very different cause. ‘Tell her,’ he ordered.
Thea told the story in very few words, waving away any suggestion that it could be relevant to Gladwin’s enquiries. ‘They seem quite old-fashioned people,’ she said of Robin and Soraya. ‘A bit awkward in company.’
‘Hmm,’ was all the DS would say to that.
Chapter Fifteen
It took some minutes to transfer Phil to Thea’s car and set out for Cirencester. There had been indecision as to what to do with Hepzie, given that they didn’t know how long they’d be. ‘I hate leaving her,’ worried Thea. ‘Who knows what might happen?’
‘Bring her then,’ said Phil.
‘But it’s too hot to leave her in the car. She’ll have to be with me the whole time, and that might not be allowed. If you’re ages, I’ll want to go and get a drink and a sandwich somewhere.’
‘You could go to Painswick and visit Linda and my boys,’ he suggested. It felt like a sudden brainwave. He had been worrying about Claude and Baxter, abandoned for so much longer than usual. Even when he was working on a demanding case, he almost always made time to go and see them and take them for a quick walk every second or third day.
‘Yes, I suppose I could,’ said Thea without enthusiasm. She had met Linda twice, and found that they had almost nothing to say to each other. Phil’s sister was divorced and childless and not very happy. She had lost a job she liked, five years before, and never found another one. ‘She never will now,’ Phil had predicted. ‘She’s lost her nerve. She finds the world altogether too alarming. She never was very brave.’
Letting her take care of the dogs was at least partly meant as a sort of therapy. Linda was a lost soul, he had long ago realised. She had been born out of her time, unsuited to the competition and corruption that mainly comprised the world of work. Diagnosed with a vague ‘anxiety disorder’, she received state benefits and lived in a small house partly financed by her brother. He regretted the fact that Thea had been slow to understand how much help she could be in the matter of Linda. ‘She sees you as family,’ he tried to explain. ‘And the thing Linda loves best is family.’
‘I know,’ sighed Thea. ‘It’s just that I find her such awfully hard work. She makes me feel I have to hide my own modest talents, for fear of making her feel intimidated.’
‘Well, it’s just a suggestion. Hepzie would like to have a romp with the boys.’
‘All right,’ said Thea. ‘Now, let’s get going, shall we?’
She drove steadily, the accident of the previous evening having made no discernible dent in her confidence. Phil did his best to relax the muscles of his back, surprised that they weren’t more painful after the trauma that morning. But he knew better than to permit any real optimism to blossom. Anything other than slow upright walking was still to be avoided.
They passed the end of the road containing the village shop, and Phil glanced idly down it. ‘There’s Pritchett,’ he noted. ‘And a woman that’s probably his wife. You’d expect them to be at the hospital, wouldn’t you? At Giles’s bedside. What are they doing here?’
‘Maybe they’ve been thrown out while he has an operation or something. Do they live down there? I never worked out exactly which is their house.’
‘Nor me. I suppose it is hereabouts. Oh, look at that! Isn’t it magnificent!’ He was staring ahead at Temple Guiting Manor, the façade of which looked down at the road they were on.
Thea slowed the car and peered up the gently rising driveway. ‘Lovely,’ she agreed. ‘Like a mansion in a fairytale. Or a horror story, more like. It must have seen some adventures. What a comedown to be rented out to groups of tourists for their stag parties. Do you think the original furniture’s still there?’
‘I’m sure it is. It’s not stag parties, but fat cat stockbrokers having a break. Or groups of awestruck Americans who can’t believe the plumbing. But I agree it’s not what it was intended for.’
‘Was it here at the time of the Templars, then?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Surely it can’t be as old as that? Thirteenth century?’
‘You know more than I do about dates, but no, I suppose it can’t be earlier than the sixteenth.’
They left the Manor behind them and pressed on to Cirencester. Phil mentally relived the encounter with Giles, trying to make sense of the man’s behaviour, wondering how he could possibly have warranted such rage simply by finding the scattered bones of a human skeleton. The obvious explanation was that the bones were those of a man killed by Giles himself, or by somebody Giles cared about. But it was wildly irrational to punish the messenger in such an extreme fashion, especially when it would so obviously bring such oceans of trouble down on his head. Presumably he had thought he could calmly shoot Phil and then disappear again, with nobody ever guessing who had done the deed. It was a fragile theory, demanding a level of stupidity or insanity that Giles had not manifested. His whole being had been consumed with a rage that transcended any that Phil had previously encountered. Rage, he mused, was very often born of frustration – the apoplectic tantrums of a thwarted toddler; the blind fury of a jilted lover; the vicious punishments handed out by an extreme control freak when disobeyed. None of these fitted what he had seen of Giles Pritchett, but the idea that he had somehow been frustrated still seemed to be viable. There had been a sense of being punished, he remembered. He had done something that put him beyond anything Giles found acceptable – deserving, in fact, of the death penalty.
‘I wonder what it was I did,’ he murmured aloud.
‘Sorry? What did you say?’ Thea had evidently been lost in her own thoughts.
‘What was it I did to enrage him so badly?’
‘Who knows? He’s probably just bonkers.’
‘I don’t think so. I think he really believes I brought it all on myself, with something I did to rock his b
oat when I found the bones.’
‘I thought we’d already decided all this?’
‘Except it doesn’t make sense,’ he sighed. ‘The more I think about it, the less sense there is.’
‘It seems logical enough to me,’ she said. ‘You put the cat amongst the chickens, as my sister would say. And made Giles very cross in the process.’
‘He was certainly that,’ Phil agreed, with a feeling of giving up. Combined with that was a sense of free-floating guilt. He had done something, he must have done. And if it had been serious enough to make a man want to kill him, then he really wanted to know for sure what it was.
The session at the police station had a surreal edge to it. DS Phil Hollis was in the witness chair, at least metaphorically, while at the same time battering his brains to make sense of the whole tangled story that had been emerging since Tuesday morning. He reported everything he could remember of Giles Pritchett’s words, while openly speculating on just how his actions connected with the murder investigation.
‘It has to do with families and bloodlines,’ he concluded. ‘Stephen Pritchett effectively said as much.’ He repeated all he could remember of Pritchett’s words on his first visit to Hector’s Nook. ‘Then Janey Holmes is of the Temple line, as is her brother. But only she has Pritchett blood, according to Rupert. Do we know how her father is related to Stephen and Giles Pritchett, by the way? I assume there has to be a connection.’
DS Sonia Gladwin, looking very jaded, consulted a file on the table in front of her. ‘They’re first cousins. Janey’s father is called Bernard, aged sixty-eight, married to Jacqueline. They spend most of their time in Tuscany, and have not been back to England since February last year. Stephen Pritchett is forty-nine, married to Gertrude, known as Trudy. She has nervous trouble and seldom leaves the house. They’ve all been questioned and insist they have no idea of the identity of the dead man, given that it is not Giles Pritchett, who went missing two and a half years ago after some family trouble. The disappearance was never reported, and he is not listed as a missing person.’
‘Have you looked into their finances?’ Phil asked. ‘Is there anything about property inheritance, dependent on pure blood? Rupert said there was a case ongoing, to do with his paternity.’
‘We’ve asked for sight of the trust documents, just in case – but we’re on very shaky ground. Mrs Holmes already refused to let us have a DNA sample. She’s quite within her rights to object to us investigating her at all. The only link between her and the body is that she reported the fallen tree. And that’s no link at all when you look at it rationally. All I’ve been going on is guesswork. But now Giles has reappeared so dramatically, we’ve got more of a link.’
Phil frowned, trying to collect his thoughts through the blocking effects of his back and the painkillers. ‘If only we had an identity for the dead man,’ he said irritably. ‘It would all make sense then. But the frustrating thing is that nobody from this group we’re looking at seems to be missing. I keep running into that like a brick wall.’
‘It might yet turn out to be a homeless vagrant, of course.’
‘We’ll have to hope there’s a result with the DNA comparisons, then,’ said Phil doggedly. ‘I’m convinced there’s something going on between the families that will explain the whole thing.’
‘It’s tempting to think so, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure it makes any real sense. If one of them had been killed, it could never have been kept quiet for so long.’
Phil blinked slowly. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘What if it had been Giles? Nobody ever reported him missing. If there was a collective agreement to keep quiet about his disappearance, then why not somebody else’s as well? These people stick together, don’t you see? They all tell the same story, a story they’ve rehearsed for just this eventuality.’
Gladwin nibbled her lower lip. ‘We can only guess until we get the first of the DNA reports. There’s no actual evidence of anything.’
Phil put a hand to his fuddled head. ‘I’m not being much use, I know. I can’t think properly. Thea’s doing a better detective job than I am.’
She treated him to a soothing smile. ‘You’ve had quite a day, one way and another. Quite a week, in fact. Nobody could expect you to be operating at full capacity. But I agree with you about the main point.’ She tapped the file in front of her. ‘We won’t get anywhere until we know who those bones belonged to. Which is why I’ve got all my hopes pinned on the DNA results.’ She gave him a challenging stare. ‘Even though I still think it’s impossible that any of the local families could have lost somebody without the story getting out.’
‘To lose one son might be careless, to lose two is beyond credibility – or whatever it was Oscar Wilde said.’
‘Right. But it’s all we’ve got. Besides, it might turn out to be the answer. We’d look very silly if it does turn out to be another Pritchett, wouldn’t we?’
Phil had a thought. ‘So the entire population of Temple Guiting’s going to find itself on the DNA database permanently,’ he said. ‘Seems a bit like overkill, don’t you think?’
‘Not the entire population. Anybody currently under five is exempted, plus those who have moved here during the past five years. And we are meant to be collecting as many individual samples as we can, remember.’ They exchanged the usual long-suffering glance which police officers everywhere permitted themselves when the subject of the national DNA collection came up. The prospect of sixty million people all registered permanently on a gigantic computer system, susceptible to having their DNA compared with samples taken from crime scenes forever after, sounded a lot more seductive than they all knew it would be in practice. There would be mistakes, corrupt files, contaminated samples, endless appeals and challenges. Careless female police officers would face prosecution for violent rapes, because their own mitrochondria would have accidentally mixed with someone else’s. Everyone knew it was one of those too-good-to-be-true Government ideas that would explode in the face of the police force before much longer.
Meanwhile, every DNA test cost money, often with no discernible benefit. ‘Oh, well,’ sighed Phil. ‘I can see you didn’t have much choice, once the dental records got you nowhere.’
‘Meanwhile we have to hope young Pritchett pulls through and explains himself,’ she corrected. ‘Last I heard he was too groggy by far to be interviewed. Don’t you hate it when your main witness is half-dead in hospital and you’ve got to keep a 24-hour guard on him?’
‘Main witness?’ Phil repeated. ‘I hadn’t thought of him like that, but I suppose he is.’ He rubbed his head again. ‘Giles must know the whole story, then.’ Suddenly it seemed too easy. ‘Maybe we won’t even need the DNA after all.’
Gladwin pursed her lips. ‘Or maybe I’ll let him think we already know exactly who the dead man is. That might just bounce him into splurging what he knows, don’t you think?’
‘That’s up to you,’ said Phil carefully. ‘It might be better if I don’t know what you’re planning in that respect.’ Lying to witnesses in order to convince them that they may as well reveal all was a time-honoured practice which had no overt prohibition on it, but Phil never liked to do it. It could rebound painfully, as he had discovered. But sometimes it could work, and he knew better than to try to teach Gladwin her job. ‘Of course, the glaringly obvious answer is still that Giles is our man, even if he was only fifteen at the time.’
Again Gladwin manifested disagreement. ‘I thought so at first, but it doesn’t really work. If it was Giles, why didn’t he simply stay missing presumed dead?’
‘Good question,’ smiled Phil, beginning to tire of the need to conciliate this woman. ‘Now, if we’re finished, I think I need to get back to my sick bed. This chair isn’t doing me any good at all.’
He phoned Thea, who promised to be with him in twenty minutes. The time passed swiftly in a shuffling visit to the lavatory and a word with DI Jeremy Higgins, who was evidently fighting to hide his disapp
ointment that his superintendent wasn’t returning to work for some time to come. ‘We’re managing,’ he said bravely, ‘but it’s never the same without you, guv.’ The ricin drama, it seemed, had subsided to an easier level, thanks to the media’s attention having diverted to a story about the state of school lavatories. Children were wrecking their bladders and bowels, it seemed, by refusing to go to the loo during the school day. Long may it last, thought Phil, heartlessly.
Chapter Sixteen
Thea’s account of her brief visit to Linda and the dogs was less than enthusiastic. ‘She seemed to wonder what I wanted,’ she reported. ‘As if she thought I was spying on her.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Phil reassured her. ‘Linda’s always a bit funny with people.’
‘The dogs weren’t much better,’ Thea said. ‘They weren’t at all pleased to see Hepzie. You know how she gets – all waggy and ingratiating. They just sneered at her, the beastly things.’
‘At least you tried,’ said Phil, watching the road ahead with some nervousness. Gradually he relaxed, having persuaded himself that there was no chance of a repeat of the accident the previous evening.
For somebody so woefully lacking in historical knowledge, he often surprised himself by his liking for the Roman roads in the area. The Fosse Way, striking north-east from Cirencester, was his favourite. ‘I love this road,’ he told Thea, as they sped along the straight miles. ‘It feels so determined.’
‘I hate it,’ she said calmly. ‘The traffic goes much too fast, and there aren’t any interesting views from it. I can’t wait to get off it and into the winding narrow lanes. The Romans had no souls.’
‘Hmm,’ was all he said to that. Then, in an effort to engage her again, he went on, ‘I suppose Janey’s saints would have known these roads. The Dark Ages came after the Romans were here – even I know that. Maybe St Kenelm walked along this very stretch.’
