by Ann Granger
She hunched her shoulders. ‘I suggested to Carl we meet in the woods so that Guy wouldn’t know. Guy would insist on being there and they’d both fly into a rage. Carl would insult Guy and then . . . oh, you know how they are. They were, I mean,’ Harriet amended her words miserably.
‘Insulting Guy isn’t difficult,’ replied Tessa mildly. ‘I insult him all the time, even though he is your husband.’
‘He doesn’t mind you insulting him. He quite likes it. Carl is – was – a different thing altogether. Look, let me finish before he comes wandering down here looking for me. I thought Crooked Man Woods would be perfect, because at this time of the year there’s seldom anyone there during the week. We could have a good shouting match and no one would be any the wiser. I’d had enough of him sniping away about Dad’s will. But now it isn’t about the will or the house, it’s about Carl doing such a dreadful thing. He must have been so desperate, Tess, and I feel so guilty.’
The reality of it almost overwhelmed her. Harriet muttered, ‘It was horrible. He’s seated on the ground with his back against a felled tree trunk. Shotgun lying across his body, just this awful empty, scarlet hole where his nose, mouth and chin should have been.’ She put her hands over her face again and stifled the sob that threatened to break out.
She was enveloped in her friend’s long arms and pressed against Tessa’s sweater, which always smelled of horses and dog. ‘Don’t crack up, sweetie. Listen to me. You have to tell the police. You can’t just find a body – a dead body – and drive off without saying anything. Was there anyone else in the woods?’
‘I didn’t see anyone, hear anyone. But there was a car . . . an SUV, silver. As I drove away from the woods it passed me on the road. I was driving like a mad creature and I forced the other car right over and nearly into a wall. He’ll remember me.’
‘All the more reason to report this. It’s got to be done. Eventually, the body will be found.’ Tessa scowled, her nose wrinkling and her lips pursed. ‘But it doesn’t have to be reported by you!’ she said suddenly. ‘Look, go on back to the house and say nothing. Where in the woods is this felled tree trunk and – and Carl?’
‘Just down the blue footpath.’
‘Fine. I’ll drive down there with Fred. No one will think it odd if I walk him in the woods. I do it often. I’ll find Carl, or whoever it is, and I’ll phone the police and report it. You could still be wrong about it being Carl. At any rate, you don’t have to be involved. This other driver, he didn’t see you at the woods, only on the road, right?’
‘He might have been going to the woods.’
‘Much more likely he was taking the back road into town. Right!’ Tessa, mind made up, was not going to hear any more quibbles. ‘Let’s fetch my crazy dog and I’ll be off. You go indoors and act normally.’
‘I don’t feel normal. I’m shaking inside.’
‘Tell Guy you think you’re coming down with something. There are all sorts of bugs going around at the moment. Wait until I’ve had a chance to get there and take a look.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You’re very shocked, sweetie, but you’ve got to listen to me and remember what I say.’
Harriet nodded, her eyes fixed on Tessa’s face.
‘When I find him, whoever he is, I’ll phone the police like a good citizen. I’ll have to wait there until they come. Then I’ll make my statement and leave. I’ll come back here and, if I don’t think it’s Carl, I’ll tell you.
‘If I agree that it is Carl, I’ll seek out Guy and tell him first, and suggest we tell you together. He’ll probably want to be the one to break the bad news, but I’ll insist on tagging along. All you need to do is act shocked when we give you the news. The state you’re in, that shouldn’t be difficult. The main thing is, don’t give any hint that the news isn’t a complete surprise. Guy won’t suspect you were ever there, not unless you tell him! No one need know you were there. You’ll have heard the bad news from me – and Guy.’
Harriet said in a very small voice, ‘I’m very grateful, Tessa, but I can’t let you do it. Can’t we just wait until someone else finds him?’
‘And if no one goes down there for the rest of the day? We can’t just leave Carl sitting there stiffening. The police have to be informed. Let me handle this, OK?’
Tessa pushed her out of the car. ‘Go on, in the house with you! Fred!’
Chapter 3
‘You’re either prone to catching colds, or you’re not,’ the family doctor had informed Tom Palmer’s mother. Or so his mother had always insisted. His mother had had great faith in the medical profession. That her son had later chosen to study medicine had been, for her, the pinnacle of achievement – hers.
Tom didn’t remember the doctor saying the words. He had been ten years old at the time, red-nosed, red-eyed and sniffling, with no interest in anything other than getting out of the surgery as fast as possible. The doctor had clearly wanted him out of the place, too.
He could, through the haze of memory, picture the doctor: a tall, spare man with thinning hair. Young Tom had supposed him very old. Possibly he had not even been middle-aged.
‘Probably,’ croaked Tom, staring at the mirror, ‘the same age as I am now.’
An older version of that wretched ten-year-old was reflected back to him, red-nosed and resentful beneath the untidy mop of black hair. Tom was running true to the medical’s man’s prediction.
He had a cold and it was a stinker.
Mindful of his duty, he had gone to work the previous day. His colleagues had received his arrival much as the family doctor had done all those years ago. They’d all spent the rest of the day trying to persuade him to go home.
Inspector Jess Campbell called by at the morgue in the afternoon with a query and joined in the chorus.
‘Look,’ she said to him briskly. ‘You’re just spreading your germs around. The clients you’ve got here can’t catch it, but everyone else can. You’re not helping yourself! For goodness’ sake, at least take some time off. Stay in bed. Drink lots of fluid. Take vitamin C.’ She’d added: ‘You’re a doctor, you ought to know better.’
So Tom had gone home early, interpreted ‘plenty of fluids’ as a couple of large whiskies and gone to bed. To be fair, he’d slept like a log. But he’d awoken that morning with a thumping headache – and still with the cold. His fingers scrabbled for his smartphone on the bedside cabinet. He peered at it. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Automatically, he checked his messages. There was one from Jess, hoping he had taken her advice and was at home. She would call by that evening. The other one made him wonder for a second or two whether the cold had affected his brain and he was imagining it.
It was from Madison in Australia. Well, that was turn-up for the books and no mistake! He hadn’t heard from his former girlfriend in six months. He had not been expecting to hear from her again, ever. But there it was, brief and to the point.
Hi, Tom! Hope you’re OK. I’m coming home at the end of the month. Looking forward to seeing you and catching up.
‘Oh, are you, indeed?’ growled Tom at the screen. ‘What’s up? Had enough of the sunshine? Year’s research up and temporary work permit expired? Whatever love life you found hit the buffers? Coming back to dear old England and steady old Tom, are you?’
A hot shower made him feel slightly more human but didn’t dispel the feeling of baffled rage Madison’s text had left simmering in him. He pulled on some clothes and stomped morosely into the cramped nook described by the estate agent as a ‘fully equipped kitchenette’. There were two eggs in the fridge, enough milk for a couple of cups of tea, and some dried-up ham. He tried a cupboard. Tea, soggy cornflakes, two tins of beans and a tin of tomato soup. He took down the soup and poured it into a pan. The bread bin yielded up a dry end of loaf. It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so from these poor offerings he managed to conjure up a sort of brunch. He retired with the tray, laden with soup and brittle toast, to his living room, where he switched on the television.
An American lady judge was lecturing the defendant in some case. The defendant was putting up a spirited rebuttal to all charges, but the wretch hadn’t a chance. The whole thing put Madison back in mind and set him reflecting on their relationship.
Tom did occasionally wonder if his early experience of doctors’ waiting rooms had contributed to his adult decision, once suitably qualified, to concern himself with investigating those already dead. His mother had certainly never understood it. ‘I suppose,’ she had said to him eventually, ‘they give less trouble than patients who are alive.’
This was not necessarily so, but he had left her happy with her explanation. Certainly, the dead didn’t complain, and they were always interesting. Tom liked the exactness of the discipline of investigating causes of death, the hunting-down of elusive clues and unexpected discoveries. Bodies couldn’t speak, but it was amazing what they could tell you, even so. True, when he told people what he did for a living, they tended to look alarmed and, thereafter, conversation veered between the stilted and the unhealthily curious. Several young women had freaked out.
The two exceptions in recent memory were Jess – because she was in CID and thus able to consult with him on professional matters but, in private life, still maintain a separate friendship. The other exception had been Madison.
Jess was a friend, though none the less valued for being only that. Madison had been much more. She carried out research into exotic diseases and so hadn’t worried about dating someone in his line of work. They had other shared interests. They liked the same kind of music. They had belonged to the same walkers’ club. It really had seemed that things were working out very nicely. They’d even discussed, tentatively, moving in together. Not in his place (too small), or in hers (even smaller), but perhaps somewhere larger, conveniently situated . . .
But the offer of a year’s research scholarship in Australia had proved a stronger lure than shared domesticity. Hikes across hill and down dale, or a concert or two, certainly didn’t compete. Madison had departed for the other side of the world, and the subsequent infrequent contact had given him the impression she wasn’t interested in coming back again.
But something, apparently, had changed all that and now Madison was buying her ticket for a flight home.
‘If she thinks,’ said Tom hoarsely to the lady judge, ‘that she can waltz in here and we’ll pick up from where she dumped me . . . she’s got another think coming!’
The toast scratched his sore throat so that he had to soak it in the soup to get it down, and that made it squashy and disgusting.
He didn’t feel well. He wasn’t well. But being cooped up in his flat, brooding on the Madison problem, was only adding to his woes. He went to find his walking boots and weatherproof jacket. When faced with any kind of personal problem, walk.
Just being out in the countryside helped his mood enormously. He drove carefully through back roads and winding lanes. Cresting a hill, he saw the valley spread out below him like a hand-worked rug, patches of dull, wintry green, brown trees and grey farmland awaiting the urge for spring growth. Beyond, the terrain rose gently and trees crowned the high point. They marked, he knew, the limit of Crooked Man Woods. They covered the whole far side of the hill, and when he crested the summit the mass of them appeared to his right, swooping down to the valley.
He’d met no other traffic so far. But as he began the descent, he met an oncoming car. The road was narrow here and Tom’s SUV took up room. But the other vehicle was larger, a Range Rover. If both drivers took care and slowed down, they should be able to pass without too much trouble. But the driver of the Range Rover careered straight towards him and swerved only at the very last moment. Tom was forced almost into a low stone wall.
‘Oy!’ he croaked, twisting in his seat. ‘Bloody idiot! What do you think you’re doing?’
The Range Rover roared away, and the driver, Tom was pretty sure, was not ‘he’ but ‘she’. He had caught a glimpse of long, fairish hair surrounding a grimly set face. Despite having nearly caused an accident, she did nothing to acknowledge the other driver. It was as if she hadn’t even seen him. In his mirror, he watched her career over the hill and disappear from sight.
‘And thank you, too, madam!’ growled Tom.
He drove on, rattled by the encounter and by unabashed reckless driving on the part of another motorist.
To get to the woods you had to turn off down a gravel track leading to a visitors’ parking area. There were no other cars there; only, Tom saw, a bicycle. Its owner had chained it to a fence post, but there was no sign of the rider. Tom parked, got out, and checked the side of his car to make sure it hadn’t suffered any scratches. All was very quiet, and his footsteps, crunching on the gravel surface of the car park, sounded unnaturally loud.
The paintwork was unblemished. He heaved a sigh of relief and made for the kissing gate into the woods. A display panel alongside it provided useful information for visitors.
‘This is ancient woodland and protected,’ he read. ‘There are varying explanations for the name. Foundations of a Saxon settlement were discovered nearby, when fields were ploughed in the late 1890s. There are indications of a later medieval boundary bank on the southern perimeter of the woods. Arrows (red, blue or yellow) indicate routes through the trees. Don’t light fires, leave litter or remove wild plants or flowers. Respect your countryside.’
Tom manoeuvred himself through the gate and set off down the red route. In less than a minute he was out of sight of the car park and the trees closed around him. He felt they were watching him. It was as if he had walked, unannounced, into a roomful of people and they had all turned their heads without leaving their positions. Traditionally, woods and forests had always been the haunt of magical creatures (mostly sinister) and real creatures (also unfriendly) in the form of outlaws and robbers. He stopped to listen. The air was full of faint but myriad sounds he couldn’t identify: a crackle here and a snap over there. Birds rustled above in the bare branches and dead leaves fluttered down around his head. He peered into the ranks of the trees to either side, as into the nave of a dark Gothic church, its aisles marked by receding pillars. In warmer months the undergrowth would be too dense even to see that much. He had a momentary, illogical impulse to flee, a sense of being a trespasser.
He told himself not to be daft and set out again. It had rained recently and underfoot the terrain was sodden and squelchy, his boots making deep imprints that immediately filled with water. Some creature scuttled away into the shrivelled, frost-blackened tangle of blackberry spines to his left, its flight marked by an almost imperceptible movement of the mass. It might have been a rabbit. There was a large burrow on the far side of the woods, in the meadow there. At this time of year they were more often active at dusk or in the early morning, and they were not, strictly speaking, woodland animals; but perhaps this one had been driven by hunger from its snug burrow and the frosty grass. More likely, it had been a rat.
Tom was more at ease now. The woods had accepted him. His cold symptoms had abated. He breathed more easily. His eyes didn’t itch. His throat was still sore but it didn’t seem to matter so much. He really did feel better. Even Madison’s impending return had slipped out of his mind. The near-miss with the other car still niggled, but he thrust it resolutely from his thoughts. He’d come out here to feel better: and better he was determined to feel!
Tom was not the only person wandering about the woods that morning. An hour earlier, Sally Grove had cycled here from her rented cottage just outside Weston St Ambrose with the intention of taking some photos of a possible subject for a watercolour painting she was planning. Sally belonged to an informal group calling itself ‘Countryside Artists’. They were none of them professionals, of course. Gordon Ferris might dispute that, because Gordon had spent his working life teaching art and crafts in various educational institutions; even, briefly, to prison inmates. Some of the cons had been surprisingly talented, but Gordon had not felt at ease in
their company and he’d relinquished that project. But he missed having a group to whom he could demonstrate his knowledge of the subject and his artistic skills and so had formed Countryside Artists.
As students, Gordon had at first found them unruly and apt to question his advice. But once they’d all settled down, shed their inhibitions and found their preferred medium and subjects, things had worked out well.
None of them felt at ease working en plein air. Gordon occasionally set up his easel in promising spots but disliked passers-by stopping to scrutinise his oeuvre and offer unsought comment. So he took his sketchpad and scoured the countryside for subjects then took the results back to his studio, a converted shed. After all, he argued, it’s what Constable had done. Not that Constable had worked in a former garden shed with odds and ends left over from its former use scattered about.
Sally did not aspire to do as Constable had done. She liked trees. Each tree, she saw as an individual. They were survivors, every twisted branch and knot in the bark telling a tale. She took her mobile phone out with her and snapped possible subjects to work up later in paint in the comfort of her kitchen.
Having a free morning, she’d cycled out to Crooked Man Woods. It wasn’t the first time she’d come here and she’d always been perfectly happy wandering about. But today was different. From the very beginning, as soon as she had set foot among the trees, she had felt a presence. She was not superstitious. She put her unease down to lingering indigestion working on her imagination. She shouldn’t have reheated that week-old lasagne last night. It had been in the fridge, but the fridge wasn’t working as well as it should and she would have to replace it when she had scraped together the money. Also, the sound of a gunshot had unsettled her. It had come from the far side of the woods and she had heard it while chaining up her bike in the car park on arrival. It was not permitted to use guns in the woods but sportsmen or farmers occasionally took potshots at pigeons out in the fields behind the woodland. Then there was the clay-pigeon range; you heard a racket from there from time to time. But that was behind her, way over to the left, and you didn’t hear single shots. Sally put it out of her mind and doggedly snapped away with her phone camera at anything offering a likely subject.
