by Rebecca Tope
I don’t want to cope! Thea silently screamed. I want a nice easy life where nothing like this ever happens. ‘I expect I will,’ she said.
She made tea for her daughter, and added sandwiches made from cheese and pickle, insisting she needed something before the long drive. Slowly the events of the day fell into a more manageable pattern, leaving her with nothing demanding her attention except for Rags. Even that responsibility felt lighter, once she’d let the dog out of her car and taken her for a quick walk outside, firmly attached to a lead. She then fed her with some of Hepzie’s biscuits. It was a mild evening, so she constructed a nest in a corner of the garage, made of the old blanket and piece of carpet she kept in her car boot. ‘You’ll be all right here,’ she said firmly. ‘But you’ll have to stay tied up.’ The lead was short, so she replaced it with a length of thin rope she found on a shelf in the garage. It was long enough to allow the dog to go to the front of the building for a pee if necessary. It was a bare concrete floor that would easily survive such usage. At least the animal wore a collar, which made things easier.
The fact of a muddy sheepdog tethered in the Fosters’ tidy garage was incongruous. If it barked all night, there would be complaints.
Jessica finally left just after six, looking rather more frazzled than Thea was feeling. ‘What a day!’ she kept saying. ‘I expected a nice peaceful walk in the country, and instead I landed up as witness to an assault. I need to give all my attention to my own work, from here on. Compared to that, all this Cotswold stuff is peanuts.’
‘Big peanuts,’ said Thea mildly. ‘You’ll have me imagining conspiracies to murder Prince Charles at this rate. Or blowing up Manchester Cathedral. I’m starting to think I definitely should be worrying about you.’
Jessica glanced upwards, in muted exasperation. ‘Don’t start that now. I’ve got to go. I’ll try to text or something in a day or two. Keep me posted, right? And give my love to Drew.’
‘I will.’ The evening phone call to Drew was very much at the forefront of her mind, as she waved her daughter off. There was, after all, a great deal to tell him.
Chapter Thirteen
But the phone call to Drew was delayed by visitors. At seven o’clock, the dog outside set up a warning bark that was enthusiastically taken up by Hepzie. Even Gwennie joined in, with a bewildered wolf-like howl. ‘Quiet!’ Thea ordered, with little effect.
Three people stood crowded together outside the front door. ‘Hi again,’ said the shortest, youngest one. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but we’d like to talk to you.’
It was a deputation at best. The mere fact of the number was intimidating; all the more so when the events of the afternoon were taken into account. ‘What for?’ she asked warily.
‘Don’t worry. We won’t hurt you,’ said the tallest, thinnest one. ‘We thought we should try to explain a few things, that’s all.’
‘You really don’t need—’ Thea began, but Sophie cut her off.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You must have got a terrible idea about us, with everything that’s been happening. This was Tiff’s idea. She said her mum was a bit short with you, when you were there today. They all feel bad about that, you see.’
‘All?’ Thea shook her head in puzzlement. ‘Who do you mean? Sheila was fine. She doesn’t have to worry. She told me what I wanted to know.’
‘All my family,’ Tiffany explained. ‘Look – we understand how it must seem to you. And when we heard about the fire as well, we thought you were probably feeling a bit vulnerable, here on your own. I mean – Daglingworth is probably the quietest safest place in the world, but even so …’
‘Two men have been attacked, in the past two days,’ Thea finished the thought.
‘Three days, actually,’ said Nella, who looked gaunt and ill. Her voice was low and croaky, as if she had a sore throat.
‘Can we come in, then?’ Sophie persisted. ‘Just for a few minutes?’
‘I suppose so.’ Thea was reluctantly curious as to what they might wish to say to her. Were they going to confess to assaulting Jack Handy? Were they going to make another attempt at recruiting her to their campaign, whatever it might be?
She led them into the living room and invited them to sit down, but made no offer of drinks. In other people’s houses, the usual laws of hospitality were in abeyance, she had long ago decided.
‘We really do want to explain things to you,’ Tiffany repeated. ‘Ricky wanted to come as well, but we said that would be too much.’
‘Your brother,’ Thea nodded. She sat forward on the chair and examined each face with care. Tiffany seemed very young; consumed by a need for a good outcome. She had been the one, Thea recalled, who sympathised with Nella’s desire for a quick wedding to the murdered Danny. Sophie looked strained and fearful. Of the three, she appeared to have the clearest grasp that things had become alarmingly serious. Sophie did not strike Thea as a very trusting person. That long list of reasons to protest and campaign came back to her. Sophie apparently disliked almost everything about the world as it stood, and saw it as her role to put as much as possible straight.
Her short flat hair suggested regular wearing of a balaclava; her straight back and direct look made it easy to imagine her striding the countryside with a stick or a whistle – all the paraphernalia of harassment and disruption. There was something implacable about Sophie.
And Nella was simply ravaged. Her jaw was working, as if swallowing back tears or screams. She would not meet Thea’s eyes, but stared at a point on the carpet and kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
‘Okay, then. What did you want to explain?’ Thea encouraged.
‘You found Jack and called the ambulance and police,’ said Sophie. ‘That was … unlucky.’
‘Who for? Me or you?’
‘Everybody. Steve’s told us all about it. You got in the way, you see. He was supposed to do it all, not you. He’s related to him,’ Sophie added.
‘Yes, so I gathered. He’s Jack’s nephew.’
‘Not exactly, but close enough, I suppose. That doesn’t matter, anyhow.’
Thea was doing her best to follow the implications, her head starting to throb gently with the effort to understand. ‘But what do you mean – he was supposed to do it? Do what?’
‘He knew there were plans to show Handy a lesson, warn him off. But Steve couldn’t be part of it, could he? Because Handy knows him and there’d be obvious difficulties with the family connections. So we told him to go to that field and watch, without being seen. We thought that made sense. Handy wasn’t supposed to be killed or anything.’
‘Although he almost was. He might die yet. His skull was broken. Who hit him, anyway?’ She looked straight at Tiffany. ‘Your brother, was it? It all points to him, doesn’t it?’
But the girl did not react, and when nobody replied, Thea ploughed on. ‘But he knows all of you. What made you think he wouldn’t tell the police who attacked him?’
Nella spoke up. ‘He wouldn’t dare. Not after what he did to Danny.’ She reached out a hand, which was grabbed by Tiffany and rubbed warmly.
‘So you beat him as punishment for killing your fiancé?’ Thea summarised brutally. She had dwindling patience for this trio of self-righteous women. ‘Is that it?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Sophie. ‘You think any of us was there? That’s quite wrong. Tiff was at home. I was at work. And Nella …’ She looked worriedly at her friend.
‘I was in Cirencester,’ said Nella shortly.
Thea felt herself floundering. ‘But you persuaded others from your group to act for you – is that it? People Jack doesn’t know. Except, surely he knows Ricky?’
‘Stop talking about Ricky,’ ordered Sophie. ‘You’ve got no idea what actually happened. Jack Handy got what he deserved. The police questioned him and let him go. Apparently there’s not enough evidence that he killed Danny. That made a lot of people very angry.’
‘So you’re vigilantes,’ Thea accused.
‘Taking the law into your own hands.’ She sighed. Hadn’t the whole group of them been doing just that already, disrupting badger culls, bullying landowners? ‘As usual,’ she finished.
Sophie took a deep breath and held it for several seconds while she sat rigidly upright. Her jawline was sharp, and the look in her eyes held nothing soft or yielding. ‘We do what we have to,’ she said, eventually. ‘Once you really look into things, and see the depths of corruption and greed, you have no choice. Everything becomes simple and obvious.’
Thea felt limp in the face of such stark fanaticism. ‘But Jack Handy isn’t corrupt, surely? All he did was to sell a small plot of land. There will be any number of regulations to make sure the house that’s built there will be perfectly in keeping with the area. How can it be worth all this trouble?’
‘It’s not,’ said Sophie. ‘We weren’t too bothered about that. One or two of the group raised token objections, on the grounds that it’s yet another example of fat cats getting the cream, with nothing of the slightest use to people who really need a home. But it’s not housing we care most about.’
‘What then?’ Something had slipped out of any remotely logical track. ‘Why do you think Jack killed Danny, in that case?’ She was hanging on desperately to the theory at the core of the whole business.
‘He’s the obvious one,’ said Nella, still husky. ‘And not just because of his building plot.’
‘It’s wildlife that matters most,’ said Tiffany loudly. ‘That’s our main concern. Sharing the planet. Leaving them some space and letting them live their natural lives. The cull is barbaric. Anyone involved in it deserves all they get.’
‘And that includes Jack Handy?’
Tiffany groaned. ‘You still don’t understand. It’s not just one thing. Handy hasn’t kept the marksmen off his land, but he’s fairly neutral about the cull, because he isn’t in dairying. We didn’t do the night calls with him.’
‘Night calls?’
‘We phone them every hour or two, through the night,’ said Sophie. ‘Legal and effective. Makes them think twice.’
‘Don’t they just unplug their phones?’
‘Only for a while. Most people are afraid to miss important calls. We used their mobiles mainly, anyway, and nobody turns them off for long, do they?’
‘Harassment like that must be against the law,’ Thea objected.
Sophie shrugged. ‘Not unless it becomes threatening. Even then, it’s not high priority. The police have better things to do than keep tracing phone calls and trying to make a case.’
‘Better things like catching a murderer,’ said Thea. ‘I’m surprised you seem to have forgotten that your own friend – your own fiancé,’ she addressed Nella directly, ‘was killed. Maybe you’ve all got alibis for the attack on Mr Handy, but you were there in spirit. You know people who were there, and what they did to him. You know quite well who it was that used the man’s own stick against him.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We work together. The act of any individual isn’t important.’ It was Sophie again, sounding as if she were quoting from some Little Green Book.
Tiffany lifted her chin and spoke bravely. ‘I know you think it was my brother. I can face the truth. Besides, he says he didn’t hit him at all hard,’ she added childishly.
‘It’s never a good idea to hit a person on the head,’ said Thea. ‘A lot of skulls have thin spots that break easily. He might die, you know. And then what will you do? How will you feel about being involved with a violent killing? Your brother will go to prison. The police don’t share your ideas about collective responsibility.’
‘I wasn’t involved!’ Tiffany cried. ‘I wasn’t even there.’
‘But your friends were. He said there were several girls, pushing him.’
Nella jerked forward, her eyes bulging. ‘“He said”? Who? When?’
Thea regretted her careless words. ‘He was conscious when we found him. He told us what had happened.’
‘Did he give names?’
‘I don’t think I should tell you that.’ Suddenly she felt frightened. These three could easily hurt her if they wanted to. The veneer of middle-England, middle-class respectability had already been shredded during their first encounter. Sophie, at least, was not a civilised person. She could not be trusted to follow any of the normal rules. Nella was hardly any better. Only Tiffany seemed to retain some fragments of sympathy for the casualties of their actions. And even that was probably wishful thinking, Thea supposed. ‘It’s all in the hands of the police now,’ she concluded, hoping to surround herself with an aura of official protection. ‘And you would be wise to expect some serious trouble. Even if you’re right – and I doubt very much that you are – in thinking Jack killed Danny Compton, it was undeniably criminal to assault him. Whose idea was it anyway?’
Nobody answered that, but the threesome exchanged meaningful looks which made Thea feel even more alarmed. She remembered the rude awakening she had had a day and a half earlier. ‘Did you try and burn this house down, as well?’ she blurted, knowing the accusation was foolish, but hoping to divert their attention.
It worked. ‘What?’ said Sophie. ‘Of course we didn’t. What do you mean?’
‘I’m sure you’ve heard by now that somebody pushed a petrol bomb through the letter box, early yesterday. Tiffany’s mother showed up when the police were here.’
‘We saw the scorched carpet,’ said Nella, noncommittally. ‘And it smells of fire out there. I had no idea it was done deliberately.’
Sophie shook her head slightly and reached out to touch Nella’s arm. ‘Tiffany and I knew about it. You’ve been too distracted … you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah,’ muttered Nella, with a sniff. ‘Right.’
‘Well, anyway – we thought it must have been those Tanner people,’ said Sophie confidently. ‘Taking their revenge.’
‘Of course!’ endorsed Tiffany, almost gleefully. ‘It’s the sort of thing they’d do.’
‘Who?’ demanded Thea. ‘Who are they?’
‘Oh, it’s an old story, really,’ Tiffany explained. ‘Mrs Foster reported them for deceiving the benefits people. The husband has been claiming disability benefit for years, when there’s nothing wrong with him. He was prosecuted a week or two ago and given a prison sentence. It was a huge amount of money he swindled out of the government. Of course, it’s ruined all their lives. He’s got three children and a useless wife. They’ll have to move away, to a cheaper area. There are two boys, mid teens. Most likely they did the fire.’
Sophie made a soft tutting sound. ‘You’ve exaggerated the whole story,’ she told Tiffany. ‘They’ll get over it soon enough.’
Thea was justifiably curious. ‘How did they know it was Mrs Foster who shopped him?’
Sophie took over from her friend. ‘The stupid woman told people she was going to do it. Everybody knew. She was terribly righteous about it. And of course it was a totally dishonest thing for him to be doing. Most local people didn’t know what to think about it. They don’t believe Mr Tanner was being deliberately criminal – he just sort of got into the habit. He probably did have backache at some point. And they do make it terribly easy, don’t they? The social services, I mean. Or they did, before it got tightened up a bit.’
The ethical morass became painfully apparent to Thea and she thought again of her conversation with Drew, who had done something similar. It took courage, obviously, to report a neighbour to the authorities for such a transgression. It was also perhaps suggestive of arrogance and other not-so-nice aspects of character. It didn’t altogether chime with what she had seen of Mrs Foster. ‘Where do they live?’ she asked. ‘The Tanner family?’
‘Stratton,’ said Tiffany. ‘Not far from us.’
‘How did the Fosters know them, then?’
‘Everybody knows them. And she’s just retired from being a social worker. She was in child protection, I think. She couldn’t do anything while she was working, but now she’s f
ree to say what she likes.’
‘Most people join a bridge club and have long lunches with their mates,’ said Thea. ‘She must have really let this family get under her skin.’
‘I think the real problem was that they were so blatant about it. It was a sort of challenge.’
‘So now, surely, everybody will know it was them who tried to burn this house down.’
‘Sort of,’ Tiffany agreed. She frowned. ‘Stupid, when you think about it.’
‘Very much so. Just as bashing Jack Handy was stupid, because it’s obvious that your people must have done it.’
‘We only wanted to make him admit to killing Danny,’ said Sophie. She reached out to take the hand of Nella, who sat next to her on the sofa. ‘We all felt we owed Nella that much.’
‘But you didn’t have the courage to be there yourselves,’ Thea pointed out angrily. ‘And do you feel any better now, knowing he’s fighting for his life in hospital?’
‘I’m not going to answer that,’ said Sophie. ‘I told you – we never meant him any serious harm.’
‘You’re implicated, anyway, even if you weren’t there yourselves. You’ll all be prosecuted.’
‘Bullshit!’ Nella’s eyes were sparkling. ‘That’s the strength of a group. Safety in numbers.’
‘Right,’ confirmed Sophie. ‘Everyone loved Danny the same as Nella did.’ Her face darkened.
Tiffany chipped in. ‘We all feel the loss of Danny, and we all want to make sure his killer is punished.’ She did indeed appear to be in the grip of genuine shock and grief as she spoke. All three were pale and looked exhausted.
‘You’d be much better off helping the police, then.’ Thea sounded pompous to her own ears, but the sentiment was sincere.
‘Which brings us to our reason for coming,’ Sophie said, with a self-mocking smile at the realisation that this had taken so long. ‘Tiffany’s mum reckons you’re quite in with the cops – which we never clocked when we saw you on Saturday. The way they dropped everything to come here when the fire happened shows they think you’re someone special. And now you’ve got yourself in position as a witness to what happened to the Handy bloke, whether on purpose or by accident. We’re not sure how you’re doing it, but it looks to us as if you’ve been sent deliberately to watch us.’
