In a Cottage, In a Wood

by cass green

  She’s going to bloody well find out what has been going on in this house. And then, only then, can she think about what to do next.

  She eyes the pile of post that she picked up on the first day, still sitting on the kitchen table. It’s as good a place to start as any.

  It’s mainly junk mail.

  There is a letter in a brown envelope, addressed to ‘Isabelle Aster Shawcross’ about an overdue smear test from a surgery in Truro. Neve moves on to look at the small number of Christmas cards. She is about to throw these away – it’s too morbid to see cheery greetings to a dead woman. But then she decides she ought to open each one, in case they contain any useful information at all.

  None of the cards seem to have messages beyond the most basic greetings and she quickly tosses them to one side. The final one is thicker, and when she opens it a news cutting falls out.

  The card reads:

  Dear Isabelle,

  I hope this card finds you in good health. You know what Bob is like about things like this but I think you have become friends in this last year and I thought you might like to see this. He’s far too shy to show you himself! We are all rather proud of our hero. Hope to see you after the holidays.

  Love from us both.

  There is one of those address stickers neatly attached on the card that says ‘Bob and Linda Dyer’ and an address in Sherborne, Dorset. There is a telephone number.

  Neve opens out the newspaper cutting and flattens it so she can read. It is from a local newspaper called The Western Gazette.

  LOCAL TEEN ESCAPES DEATH PLUNGE

  A fifteen-year-old from Yeovil was saved by a Sherborne man after the cliff at West Bay subsided onto the beach.

  Jade Murphy from the Summerlands area of Yeovil was walking along the clifftop when the cliff face began to crumble.

  Retired policeman Robert Dyer of Westbury, Sherborne, was passing at the time and thankfully was able to pull the young woman to safety after she was carried over the side of the cliff. The ex Detective Inspector said, ‘I could hear someone crying and realized what had happened. I was able to lie down and slowly help Jade back up.’

  Jade said, ‘It was so scary. I thought I was going to die.’

  West Bay is a popular tourist spot and was used as the setting in the television drama Broadchurch, which caused a spike in visitor numbers according to the local Chambers of Commerce. A spokesman said, ‘We have been aware of the serious erosion affecting the cliff for some time and the whole area will have to be made safe. It may be some time before the walkway is open again and we apologize for any inconvenience.’

  Neve looks at the picture and something pings in her brain. She holds it closer to her face and stares at the middle-aged man who is smiling shyly at the camera.

  It’s him, she’s sure of it.

  It’s the man who was lurking around the house on that first morning here – the one who dashed away in such a panic.

  She sits back and picks up the card again.

  I think you have become friends in this last year.

  Why would a woman of Isabelle’s age and background make friends with some old policeman? And why was he hanging around so furtively?

  She lets out a long, slow breath.

  It has to be connected with the prison visits. It fits, but she has no idea how.

  Neve is aware she is breathing faster now. She reaches for her phone and taps it against her thigh, thoughtfully.

  Then, before she can talk herself out of it, she picks up the card again and presses in the telephone number printed on the sticker.

  It rings three or four times before being answered.

  ‘Hello?’ The middle-aged voice is clear and friendly.

  ‘Uh,’ says Neve, realizing she has no idea where to begin. ‘I’m, uh, I’d like to speak to Robert Dyer please.’

  There is a long pause.

  ‘And who is it speaking?’ The woman’s voice has tightened now.

  ‘It’s …’ Neve hesitates and then finishes in a rush. ‘I’m a friend of Isabelle Shawcross.’

  She can hear the woman’s breathing on the other end before she says, ‘Please wait a moment.’

  Neve waits. The woman calls, ‘Bob!’ in an urgent tone and then there are threads of a whispered conversation she can’t quite hear in the background. This seems to go on for some time and she is about to call out to remind them she is still there when a deep male voice finally answers.

  ‘This is Bob Dyer.’

  Neve takes a breath. Where to start? She doesn’t want to screw this up.

  But the words are coming out before her brain has given them the proper clearance.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, ‘My name’s Neve Carey. You don’t know me, but I’m the person living in Petty Whin Cottage now. You were here. You drove off before I could speak to you. Look, I need to talk to you.’

  There is another long pause.

  ‘Hello?’ she says. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Look, Miss … Carey was it?’ says Dyer. ‘We are all very upset about what happened to Isabelle. But I don’t think there is anything to discuss now.’

  ‘No, but I just want to—’

  But he interrupts her.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye.’

  The phone goes dead.

  ‘What the hell?’ Neve lets out a long breath of exasperation.

  She sits there for a few moments, simmering with irritation, and then she punches in the number again.

  ‘Hello?’ The woman answers this time, wary and cold.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to be pushy,’ says Neve in a rush. ‘But I only wanted to ask your husband a few things. I don’t want to intrude or upset him. It’s just that she left me this cottage and I don’t know why and there are some odd things going on and … well, I just want to know, that’s all.’ Her words ebb away.

  ‘Look.’ The woman’s voice is quiet now, intimate in her ear. ‘Bob’s devastated about what happened to Isabelle. He thought he was helping. Doing the right thing. And now all he thinks is that it’s his fault. So please.’ The woman’s voice trembles. ‘Just leave him alone.’

  She hangs up before Neve can say another word.

  30

  Neve sits, simmering and perplexed, for a few minutes before getting up and pacing around the kitchen. Glancing at the window there she tries to ignore the feeling that the fast-falling snow outside is a shroud that will seal her inside the cottage.

  It feels like she is back to square one. The dog makes a small sound then and she guiltily remembers she didn’t even get round to sorting out his bed with the blanket.

  Squatting down to his level, she murmurs soft words and strokes his velvety head. A long shudder passes through him and he begins to pant, his long pink tongue lolling to the side.

  Worriedly, Neve quickly starts to touch him all over and quickly finds that he is hurt on the left side of his ribcage.

  ‘Oh you poor doggy,’ she murmurs. Jarvis thumps his tail a few times in a game attempt to look lively. Neve leans down and kisses him on the top of the head. ‘What am I going to do, Jarvis?’

  She gets up and begins to pace up and down the kitchen. Living in the middle of nowhere like this without a car is almost impossible.

  But if it is her fault that the dog is injured, then it’s her responsibility to do something, isn’t it? This has to be her immediate priority.

  ‘Shit,’ she says out loud and reaches for her iPad again.

  A quick search reveals that the nearest vet is in Truro. Neve makes an appointment then looks for a taxi number, wondering if she’ll get the same bloke who brought her here.

  She carefully checks all the windows are closed and the back door bolted, while she waits.

  Half an hour later she receives a text message to say the taxi is in the lane and she helps Jarvis to his feet. The dog whimpers again and resists but with gentle coaxing she is able to get his lead on and get him to the door.

  It’s a different driver this tim
e, a thin, Asian man with a small moustache. He gives a friendly smile as she climbs into the back. But then he notices the dog and his expression changes.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ says Neve forcefully. ‘I have to take him to the vet.’

  The taxi driver sighs with exaggerated forbearance and gets out to find a blanket, which he lays on the back seat.

  Neve thanks him and is about to close the front door when she has a thought.

  She hurries back to the study and picks up the laptop.

  ‘Is there a computer shop in Truro?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, not far from where you’re going.’

  ‘Great.’

  Neve climbs into the taxi and coaxes a reluctant Jarvis onto the back seat. As they drive down the lane, with flakes of snow fluttering against the windscreen like white butterflies, she feels a powerful urge never to come back.

  Neve sits now in the noisy reception of the vet’s office, chewing anxiously on a nail and worrying about what this is going to cost. She’s never owned a pet but aren’t vets notoriously expensive?

  There are several dogs, some of which are barking with eardrum-piercing intensity. Other people sit with cat cages at their feet, or huddled protectively on their laps. A small, pinched-face woman darts nervous glances around at the other waiting people as if she thinks someone might steal her cat/guinea pig/rabbit.

  Neve sighs and tries to distract herself by looking at her phone. She has used up almost all her storage according to a persistent message she has been ignoring for weeks. She spends some time now deleting photos and apps she no longer uses. She notices several she doesn’t remember adding: a time-saving app, a kids’ game and one she’s never noticed before that seems to have something to do with navigation. She is about to delete them when her name is called out.

  The vet is a young woman with a high, dark brown ponytail. After a friendly enough start, the temperature in the room seems to change. She glances sharply at Neve, then continues to probe expertly around Jarvis’s body, the dog panting with nerves but otherwise meekly accepting her ministrations.

  Neve shifts from foot to foot and waits for the verdict.

  Finally, the vet looks up, her eyes somewhere to the left of Neve’s face.

  ‘I think the dog has injured ribs,’ she says. ‘I could x-ray but if you don’t have pet insurance that’s going to be very expensive.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Neve. ‘If it’s not essential then I’d rather you didn’t. He’s not even my dog,’ she says, blushing a bit. ‘What do you think happened? How did he do it?’ She has given the vet a half-baked version of the story, too ashamed to admit she allowed the dog to be lost.

  For the first time the woman looks at Neve directly. Her expression flat.

  ‘I think the bruising is indicative of a kick, if you want my honest opinion.’

  Neve gasps and covers her mouth with both hands. Tears spring to her eyes.

  ‘Oh God, poor Jarvis,’ she says, stroking the dog’s head.

  ‘Do you have any idea how this happened?’ The vet’s voice is slightly less icy now and Neve quickly mumbles out the story of Jarvis being lost, her shoulders rounded by the shame.

  ‘Okay,’ says the vet. ‘I’m going to give him an oral dose of Tramadol for the pain and you need to rest him for a few days. But when his owner comes back he should bring him in to see us. We can sort out whether he has insurance and see if he needs more meds or an x-ray.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Neve in a small voice and strokes Jarvis some more. ‘Poor, poor dog.’

  Who kicked him? Could it have been Matty? But why? He was helping by bringing the dog back to her, wasn’t he?

  When she is given the printed bill at reception Neve has to stop herself from yowling, like a hidden cat in one of the baskets in the waiting room.

  The consultation and medicine together have come to £97. Neve hands over her bank card with a sick sensation in her stomach. That’s the money she will earn from looking after Jarvis wiped out then, and more. This jobless situation cannot go on much longer.

  Next she heads to the computer shop, a sleepy Jarvis dragging along reluctantly.

  Inside the shop, a young bearded man in a T-shirt that says Normal People Scare Me taps expertly for a few moments and then tells her that the laptop has been formatted.

  ‘But some data can be recovered if you can leave it with us?’ he says.

  ‘How much will it cost?’

  He shrugs. ‘About forty-five pounds, I reckon.’

  Neve hesitates. She can’t afford this. But it might help her to understand Isabelle a little more.

  ‘Okay, yes please. Go ahead.’

  She gets a different driver on the way back, a middle-aged woman with dyed black hair and a throaty smoker’s laugh, who chats to her about dogs (the driver has three) most of the way back to the cottage.

  Neve’s spirits fluctuate between a satisfaction at having sorted out some important things, which also included sending a card to Miri, and despair about how much money she has had to spend in the last day. The small pot of her inheritance is shrinking so much that soon she will have nothing left.

  A quick calculation tells her she has about £180 to her name now. No job. No prospect of a job.

  But she does have a house in a touristy county. And Sally’s daughter might want to buy it.

  She just hopes it can be done quickly when the time comes.

  But not yet. She’ll never be able to live with taking that money if she doesn’t find a way to shed light on this darkness that shrouds the cottage.

  The snow has stopped but the world outside the window in the greying light of the afternoon is still otherworldly and beautiful. She strokes the sleeping dog’s head as the car gets ever closer to the place she doesn’t want to be.

  As she pays the taxi driver and thanks her, she tries to shrug off the sensation she is returning to a tomb.

  Jarvis is sleepy from the medication and she has to encourage him to walk with her from the lane to the cottage. When she arrives at the front door she looks down at the ground and freezes. There are large footprints, which seem to go from the lane around the side of the property.

  Heart seeming to ricochet in her ribcage, she follows the footprints and sees that they go to the back door and then towards the woodpile.

  Something is wrong about what she sees, in the bright, unearthly glow cast by the snow. Something that doesn’t add up.

  And then, with a bolt of electric shock blasting through her, she realizes.

  The axe that was there before.

  It’s gone.

  31

  Neve runs back to the front of the house, dragging the sleepy dog, who seems to be twice as heavy as usual. Her shoulders are hunched, as though this will ward off a blow, and her eyes dart around wildly. All she can picture is a large figure looming out of the fringes of the garden, axe held aloft before it crashes down onto her, splitting her in half. Whimpering with terror she manages to unlock the three bolts with shaking, cold hands and she and the dog almost fall into the cottage.

  She slams the door behind her and quickly locks it again. Jarvis, awake now, sits neatly in the middle of the hallway, regarding her with a wary expression that unnerves her even more. Even the dog has stopped feeling like a comfort now; he is an added vulnerability.

  Neve begins to slap on every light she can reach without walking across the dark room. She hurries into the kitchen and grabs the knife that had been under the bed. She holds it aloft, her back to the sink, and breathes heavily.

  She looks around. After a few moments she registers something surprising.

  Her uppermost emotion right now is not fear, but total, white-hot fury.

  She will not be reduced to a gibbering wreck, hiding in a cupboard.

  No.

  ‘Right, you bastard,’ she says, voice obscenely loud in the still room. ‘Just try it. Just see what happens.’

  Jarvis yawns and climbs into his bed. Neve reaches into her
pocket for her phone.

  Her hands are shaking as she taps in 999. She feels time telescoping and taking her back to that bitter night on Waterloo Bridge, when all this began.

  She doesn’t care if they patronize her. Bollocks to them.

  When the operator puts her through to the police, she’s asked what help is required.

  ‘Someone is trying to scare me,’ she says. As soon as the words leave her mouth, she realizes how lame they sound; not like a proper emergency at all.

  The woman on the other end asks questions without any apparent judgement and gets Neve to talk her through what has happened at the cottage to frighten her. Neve tells her about Jarvis going missing, cringing as she does so, because she knows how it sounds, then in a bolder voice she describes the footprints and the axe now having disappeared.

  The controller tells her a patrol car will call in some time this evening.

  Neve hangs up and a strange thought from childhood drifts into her mind. When she had been told off for something, or if she felt she was being ignored, she would say, ‘You’ll wish I was still here if I was dead.’

  Combined with her scrunched fists and determined frown, it used to make her parents laugh indulgently. Now though, all she can think about is the police car rolling up hours from now and her mutilated corpse waiting inside the cottage.

  She moves tentatively to the kitchen table and sits down, still holding the knife, and tries to think this through.

  Could it be a mistake? Could someone have borrowed the axe without telling her? Is that the sort of thing people did in the country? She itches to call Sally but is aware how needy and pathetic this is. Their son has already had to deliver back the dog she failed to look after properly.

  But her mind keeps ping-ponging between two places.

  What, though, if someone really had got into the cottage this morning and let Jarvis out? That might mean that they have a key and all the locks she is currently relying on are useless.

  Neve’s eyes dart to the back door. There is a stiff, rusty bolt at the top of the door which doesn’t look as if it has been used for a while. No one can undo bolts from the other side, can they …?