by Rebecca Tope
‘You think the father gave her some maintenance? The bank would have the details, surely?’
‘She hasn’t got a bank, just a post office account that doesn’t do electronic transfers. She lived very much like a peasant – if we’re allowed to say that. Grew her own food, wove her own blankets, mended her own fences. The house is rather nice – simple, fairly clean, like something from the 1930s.’
‘As different as possible from this place, then,’ said Thea ruefully. ‘You’ve seen the clutter.’
Gladwin nodded. ‘Are you meant to be keeping it dusted?’
‘She said I didn’t need to, but I suppose I will. There’s not much to do, after all. She’s got two cats, which pretty much sort themselves out.’
Gladwin asked the inevitable question. ‘So why pay you to be here at all?’
Thea shrugged. ‘Scared of burglars, I guess, or intruders who’d break the things. She does seem very timid. Did I tell you she just chickened out when she saw where Victor was living? Rushed off to gather her courage and tried again next day. He thought she was lost, when he phoned me.’
Gladwin frowned more deeply. ‘I don’t think I’m fully understanding all this. Can you start again from the beginning?’
Thea recounted everything she had gleaned from Yvonne, ending with a laugh. ‘I don’t know why we’re wasting time on her. She’s got nothing to do with anything.’
‘She has, though,’ Gladwin corrected. ‘A body was dumped outside her house. You’re her house-sitter, and you met the dead child and his mother the same day.’
‘Yes, but she was away.’
‘So she says. We can check road cameras for her car, maybe. Just to make sure she was where she said she was.’ Her voice was slow and thoughtful, her eyes flickering from side to side, as she followed ideas and connections.
‘You don’t want to think it was Gudrun, do you?’ Thea challenged. ‘You’re grasping at any other straw you can think of.’
‘I’m just being thorough,’ Gladwin sighed. ‘There’s a chance the unknown father wants the kid out of the way for some reason. Or it might be he was some kind of psychopath and Gudrun was scared Stevie would grow up to be like him, and did the only thing she could to prevent it.’
‘That’s impossible,’ argued Thea. ‘It doesn’t fit at all with how she is.’
Gladwin was holding a small screen on which she made a note with a plastic pointer. Thea recognised it from an earlier encounter. At that time, only a year or so ago, it had seemed futuristic and slightly ostentatious. Now it was barely worthy of remark. ‘Mm,’ the detective said vaguely. ‘But I’m still going to check any sightings of Mrs Parker’s car.’
Thea said nothing, accepting her ambivalent position in relation to the police force. Gladwin had become a friend, which led to a greater sharing of her suspicions than was strictly professional, but Thea had no direct influence over her. Nor would she have wanted to. She did, however, feel free to express her own ideas. ‘I still can’t see how it could possibly work that Yvonne had anything whatsoever to do with it.’
‘We’ll have to see. I can think of one or two scenarios that would implicate her. If Stevie was in the habit of slashing her roses, and probably other invasions as well, she might have planned to dispose of the little swine, and worked it all out meticulously, giving herself an alibi and everything.’
The phrase little swine made Thea wince. You really shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, who could not defend themselves or set the record straight. It led to a fleeting thought about Drew and his graves and his absolute decency in all matters involving the bodies he buried.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said mildly. ‘Vonny Parker just hasn’t got what it would take for all that. And whatever Stevie did to the flowers, it couldn’t possibly be bad enough to make her want to kill him. Besides, I gather he made far more mess of the garden across the road. That Janice is a lot taller and stronger than Yvonne.’
Gladwin drained her tea and doodled on her electronic pad. ‘There are too many gaps,’ she complained. ‘As usual. Presumably Stevie never got to see his dad, even if he knew who he was. If there’d been visits, the neighbours would know about it. You know what villages are like.’
‘I’m not sure about this one. From what I’ve seen of the Cotswolds, people don’t snoop on each other as much as you might think. And they might have met on neutral ground, in a leisure centre somewhere or a park.’
‘We’ll have to speak to the school, see if he said anything in class. It would have to be the holidays, of course.’
‘Medea,’ said Thea softly. ‘Isn’t that the story of the mother who kills her children and makes them into a stew to feed to their unfaithful father?’ She shuddered. ‘The most gruesome story of them all, by a long way.’
‘Does that mean you’ve come around to thinking it was Gudrun, then, after all?’
‘No, not really. It’s just that I guess we shouldn’t underestimate what people are capable of, especially if they’re feeling wronged,’ said Thea, thinking of Maggs. ‘I’ve forgotten Gudrun’s surname,’ she added, out of the blue. ‘Not that it matters, I suppose.’
‘Horsfall. Without an e. Good old Anglo-Saxon name, I suppose.’
‘Probably descended from Hengist and Horsa.’
‘Were they Saxons?’
‘If I remember rightly, yes they were.’
‘Pity,’ said Gladwin. ‘It would fit better if they were Vikings. Gudrun’s one of the most Viking women I’ve met for a long time.’
Neither of them laughed.
Chapter Ten
Monday afternoon drifted to a close, with the feeding of the cats the only real task. Both animals were considerably more approachable by this time, and permitted a few moments of fondling on Thea’s part. Their dense coats were sleek and warm and slightly dusty, from a day spent on a sunny window ledge in the main bedroom upstairs. They spent their nights on Yvonne’s bed, curled together, as far as Thea knew – the cat flap in the back door only allowed them free range in the daytime. Hepzie ignored them, thanks to a judicious separation in feeding stations on Thea’s part. She shut the dog out in the hall with her feeding bowl, and let the cats have the freedom of the kitchen.
She had no firm plans for the rest of the day. She could find more information on Snowshill and decide whether or not to visit the Manor. She even contemplated the alarming idea of walking up to the pub and buying herself a glass of wine, in the hope of falling into conversation with one or two locals. Now that the news was out that a local child had been murdered, there was likely to be plenty of discussion on the subject. If she could cleverly elicit the identity of young Stevie’s father, that would earn her a big gold star from DS Gladwin, and make her feel her time wasn’t being wasted.
But she couldn’t face it. She might be expected to account for herself, to describe the discovery of the child’s body, to risk being identified as the house-sitter who had found herself in the midst of a number of violent crimes whilst homeowners were away. She felt shy at such a prospect, reluctant to put herself in a situation where people knew more about her than she realised.
She opted to call her daughter for an update on the state of her emotions.
Jessica answered quickly, breathlessly. ‘Oh, Mum – it’s you,’ she said, covering the disappointment well.
‘You sound much better,’ Thea said.
‘Do I?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Not really. He’s texting me, really nasty stuff. And he’s putting things on Facebook about me. I’m trying to ignore it, as I’m sure you’d advise, but it’s not easy.’
‘Good God! Can’t you report him? It must be completely against regulations.’
‘He’s not breaking any laws. It’s not specific, just general abuse. God, Mum, how could I ever have thought I loved him? What sort of fool have I been?’
The outburst had tears in it, and Thea’s heart swelled with helpless rage. ‘He’s trying to make hims
elf feel better, I suppose,’ she said, knowing this was far from what her daughter wanted to hear.
‘What do you mean? You’re not defending him, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not. But he’s not a total monster. He must have some reason for behaving like this.’
‘He says I showed him up in front of his friends, made him look stupid. It was one time, when he didn’t know who Lloyd George was, and I teased him about it. He never did history, apparently. I mean – there are millions of things I don’t know that he does. He surely must realise that.’
‘Fragile male ego,’ murmured Thea.
‘What about my ego? He’s mouthing off about me to all my friends, he dumped me without having the decency to face me in person, and now I’m starting to think all men must be the same, and I’ll never find one I can trust.’
‘It’s good that you’re angry about it. You know he’s got his own problems, really – whatever they might be. Nothing to do with you, except you’re too good for him, and he’s finally come to that conclusion. It’s not your problem.’
‘But I have to work with him.’
‘Ah. Well, yes, that’s going to be difficult, I can see.’
‘And don’t say it was always going to be a bad idea to take up with somebody from work. I never meet anybody anywhere else. What choice do I have?’
‘Maybe he’ll ask for a transfer, or get promoted or something.’
‘Maybe he’ll be given the boot. The way I’m feeling, that would suit me very nicely. Except it’s never going to happen. He’s quite a good detective, apparently. But not enough to make inspector for a good few years yet.’
‘All you can do is brave it out, then. Stay dignified and do a good job. You know what they say?’
‘What?’
‘The best revenge is to live a good life. Show him you’re better off without him.’
‘Right,’ said Jessica doubtfully. ‘Except, I’m not sure the others are going to see it that way. They all think he’s wonderful, and that I must be a cow to have made him act like this.’
‘They’ll soon realise. Nobody really approves of malicious postings. They always rebound on the person writing them, in the end.’
‘I hope so. Anyway – how’s it going with you?’
‘Fine,’ said Thea bravely, knowing from the question that Jess had no idea about events in Snowshill, and determined not to compound her worries by mentioning it. ‘Now go and have a nice hot bath and read a soppy book, and then sleep tight.’
Jessica laughed feebly. ‘It’s not even seven o’clock yet.’
‘So watch a DVD for a bit first.’
‘Yeah. I might do that. Thanks for calling, Mum.’
After that, it was easy for Thea to follow something approaching her own advice. She took the dog out into the garden, staying well clear of the flower bed where the hornet had attacked her, and listened for sounds of life. A plane flew high overhead, a solitary bird sang in a tree across the road, and no traffic passed. She focused on her breathing, and small details of her surroundings. Death had left no long-term physical trace. The grass went on growing, the stone walls would stand for centuries to come. Nothing, in the long run, actually mattered. It was a mantra she had adopted after Carl had died, finding it both a consolation and grounds for despair. And it wasn’t true. It did matter every time a life was cut short. It couldn’t help but matter, whatever words a person might repeat to herself.
There was not a breath of wind to stir the treetops. The stillness began to feel ominous, something waiting to attack, some wickedness biding its time. ‘Come on, Heps,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and find a radio. There must be one somewhere.’
Chapter Eleven
In North Staverton, earlier that same day, Den Cooper went directly to see his friend Drew Slocombe after he and Maggs got back from Broad Campden. He had been doing the same thing for the past month, two or three times a week, aware that his employer in Bradbourne was on the brink of losing patience with him as a result. Today he had not gone in at all, setting out with Maggs for Drew’s new burial ground before nine that morning. But an irritated employer was a price he had no hesitation in paying, given the circumstances. Drew was struggling, his health threatened, his children silent with worry. The fear about Karen was like a deep trough into which they were all inexorably sinking.
Karen herself seemed to Den to have given up. In the years since her original injury, she had very slowly faded away, becoming physically smaller and weaker, and mentally detached. Personality seeped out of her: reactions slowing, emotions evaporating. Doctors scanned and tested her damaged brain and professed themselves at a loss. It could only be shock, they insisted – something intangible and unreachable had happened, which ought to rectify itself merely through the therapeutic influence of daily life. Her physical brain was fine – as far as they could see.
Except it wasn’t. Something deep inside had failed, or burst or blocked in a vital spot and Karen had lapsed into deep unconsciousness. She could breathe without mechanical assistance, and her skin reacted to pain by flinching, but she seemed deaf and blind and infinitely remote from the people who needed her.
Maggs refused to regard any of this as hopeless. She avidly collected stories of people who had emerged from far deeper comas than this, to live many normal years. She pointed to Karen’s response to pain as proof that she was still functioning, and would wake up in her own time. Where the men and the children adopted quiet stoicism as their coping strategy, Maggs went wild. She shouted and argued, spent hours at Karen’s bedside talking to her in an endless urgent monologue and fiercely defended Drew from any needless bother.
Which was obviously why she had been so awful to that poor woman in the Broad Campden field. They had not discussed it during the drive back. Instead, Maggs had aired her thoughts about the floundering plans for the second burial ground. ‘He won’t be able to keep it going,’ she said. ‘I told him all along it was too much. I never understood what he thought he was doing.’
‘Expansion would have been good business sense,’ Den observed. ‘Especially as it fell in his lap, more or less. He’d have been daft to refuse it. Besides, you were all for it, a few months ago.’
‘Well, things have changed since then. He’ll have to give it up. He can barely keep North Staverton afloat as it is.’
Den knew better than to argue. Maggs based all her assumptions on the expectation that Karen would survive, and be in need of long-term care. If – when – she died, things would look quite different and Drew might well be glad of the distraction involved in setting up a second strand to his business.
Drew’s home and office were all part of the same building in the quiet little backwater that was North Staverton. He had been there for seven years or so, filling his land with graves, until the Peaceful Repose cemetery had begun to look as settled and permanent as any churchyard. The graves were not arranged in straight lines. The plot itself was an odd shape, with sections devoted to animal graves and ashes plots, the paths between them running in curves, adding to a sense of freedom to use the space as imagination dictated. There were few rules at Peaceful Repose. No sooner had Drew decided to put a limit on memorial trees or stones than Maggs or a persistent customer persuaded him to change or abandon it. There were quick-growing silver birches, one or two patches of graceful bamboo, a lot of spring bulbs and a riot of flowering shrubs. In total there were two hundred and ten graves, which over the seven-year period had yielded Drew, Maggs and Karen a very meagre income indeed. Karen had worked as a teacher, originally, but stopped when Timmy was born. She had saved money by growing vegetables and scarcely ever buying clothes. She had been part of a collective that ran market stalls and celebrated a lifestyle that depended as little as possible on money.
Drew had been in demand as a secular officiant at funerals in crematoria, creating personal and meaningful ceremonies as people shook themselves free of the church-based rituals that had less and less significance for
them. He gave talks, and signed people up for prepaid burials. He also buried them on their own land, now and then – which had happened with Greta Simmonds in Broad Campden, and led to a situation which Maggs at least regarded as unsustainable and troublesome, given the appearance of Thea Osborne on the scene. All these activities raised additional income, but it still amounted to all too little.
Den found his friend in the office, idly sorting through a small stack of papers. ‘Hi,’ he said, from the open doorway. ‘Nice day again.’
‘Oh, hello. What time is it?’
‘Two-fifteen. Have you eaten?’
Drew shook his head. ‘Somebody phoned. Maggs has gone to see them. We’ve got a burial tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I know. Mr Anderson. Half past two.’
‘Right.’
‘Kids okay?’
‘Not really. Timmy wet the bed again. Steph got into a fight yesterday with a girl in the park, who said Karen was going to die. I can’t believe how vile children can be, how they seem to actually want to hurt each other.’
‘They’re just testing the boundaries, to see what happens. They have to work out what the consequences are of various behaviours.’ Den had taken a course on child development not long ago, thinking he might turn to teaching as a career move. ‘They don’t mean it maliciously.’
‘I think they do,’ Drew disagreed.
‘Oh, well.’ Den had no wish to argue. ‘It’s good that Steph reacted.’
‘It would have got her into trouble, though, if it had happened at school. They won’t tolerate any violence these days.’
‘Where did Maggs go? Who was it that phoned?’
‘The hospice. Somebody wants to make arrangements. She won’t be very long.’
‘She lost it this morning – did she tell you? In your Broad Campden field.’
‘What? Did you go with her? Did anybody tell me that? Why weren’t you at work?’
‘Come on, mate, keep up. I don’t work Mondays any more. It’s gone down to a four-day week. The writing’s on the wall, we can all see it. I’ll be lucky to hang on till Christmas.’
