by Rebecca Tope
A painful expression flooded Gudrun’s face, and she shook her head. ‘Stevie didn’t get on too well with creatures,’ she muttered. ‘Wasn’t really safe …’
Thea turned away to hide the horrified look she couldn’t avoid. If that boy was so out of control and violent that he would harm or terrorise animals, then maybe … well, maybe things were a lot worse than she had yet grasped.
‘Gudrun – you know I asked whether there was something the matter with him? I know it was rude of me, and I was angry – but what you just said. Well, it doesn’t sound very good, does it? What exactly did the school say about him? There must have been reports or statements or whatever they call them.’
She tossed her head as if to shake away the whole business and clear herself some mental space. ‘They never said he wasn’t right. They talked about his behaviour being unacceptable. That’s the favourite word these days. And then they did accept it, daft idiots. Couldn’t do anything else. In the old days, they’d have taken a stick to him and taught him better.’
‘But you never—? How did you keep him in order?’
‘I never hit him, if that’s what you mean. Shouted, bribed, nagged. Usual stuff. Worked well enough, mostly. Him and me – we were together, just us.’ She dissolved into inarticulate gasps, the tidal wave of loss and grief submerging her. She struggled back to the surface long enough to add, ‘It was only outside he was bad. Sweet as pie when we were indoors.’ The defiance melted away as she added, ‘Well, mostly, he was. So long as he had something to do.’ The gasps turned to sobs and Thea’s heart contracted with the pity of it all. She waited for the storm to subside before speaking again.
‘It must have been difficult, all on your own. Didn’t the father ever help? With money, at least?’
Gudrun’s upper lip curled in a sneer. ‘He tried to force me to have an abortion. Shocked rigid he was when I told him. Said he couldn’t go through all that again.’
‘Again? What does that mean?’
Gudrun shrugged. ‘Seems I wasn’t the first. Never asked him for names. It wasn’t difficult to guess, but I never said anything. Never heard that it got out, either. Men like that – they ought to be castrated, for everybody’s sake.’
‘So … he washed his hands of you?’
‘No!’ Her head came up, and she met Thea’s gaze with reddened eyes. ‘It was me – I told him to forget all about it, that I’d got what I wanted from him and he could go back to his wife.’
‘Ah.’
‘Not that he’d ever left her. They don’t, do they?’
‘Were you in love with him?’ It sounded crass, even in her own ears. She smiled awkwardly. ‘Sorry – that’s a daft question.’
‘We were good in bed, that’s all. I was over forty and wanted a kid. He never thought to do anything to prevent it and I let him think I was taking care of all that. Easy. It was so easy, I thought it must be meant.’
‘But it wasn’t easy for long?’
‘Everybody thought I’d been on the game, making a business of it. I was a looker then, in spite of my age. Men fancied me. They thought I’d got caught, and decided to go through with it because it was my last chance. Not far wrong, either. Except I didn’t go to bed with just anybody. Do you know’ – again the proud look as her eyes met Thea’s – ‘I’ve only slept with four men in my whole life. I married at nineteen, the first boy I ever had anything to do with. He ran off in the end, don’t know where he went to. Never even got a proper divorce, as far as I know. Then I took up with a couple of older blokes for a bit, nothing very definite. Tried to make me go and live with them, wanting somebody to cook for them, mainly. First one, then the other, and now I can hardly remember which was which.’ She spoke flatly, reciting her history as if reading from a page. ‘Never got pregnant in all that time – thought there must be a blockage or something. Always did like babies, though.’
‘And his wife never found out? Stevie’s father’s wife, I mean.’
‘Seemingly not.’ A watery smile flickered over Gudrun’s mouth.
‘And did Stevie ever meet his dad?’
The woman shook her head ambiguously, leaving Thea none the wiser. It was more a warning not to pursue such questions than a specific reply.
But there was more she wanted to know. ‘How did you manage for money?’
Gudrun blinked. ‘Hasn’t anybody told you? I was a competitive swimmer – youngest in the national team – and got a bronze medal at the Olympics when I was still in my teens.’
Thea focused on the muscular shoulders and thought she could still see the powerful athlete Gudrun had been. ‘Gosh!’ she said. ‘I had no idea. So you went professional?’
‘Not exactly. There were a lot of ways of earning some cash as spin-offs, and then I taught for a bit. People wrote stuff about me and I got a share of the proceeds. Then I broke my shoulder and got a lot of compensation. It’ll last me out if I’m careful.’
‘That was before you had Stevie?’
The reminder came as a visible blow to the bereaved mother who had for a minute forgotten her loss.
‘Ten years before. I’d got a few little jobs since then, but my confidence was gone. I didn’t dare dive again, not even from the side. My arm’s always going to be stiff.’
‘So you bought your little cottage and dropped out?’
‘Something like that,’ agreed Gudrun thickly. ‘It was my cousin’s before me, and I got left a quarter share of it when he died. I bought the others out. Didn’t leave me with much, but I grew up around here and it’s home. I can’t stay here now, though. Not now they’ve taken my boy away from me.’
It was far too early to ask her about any plans for the future. Instead, Thea led her up the stairs, and without a qualm offered her the use of Yvonne Parker’s bedroom, knowing from her own experience that sleep would be a capricious disrupted luxury in these first days of horror. The fact of the bedroom’s rightful ownership seemed a minor unimportant detail. The niceties of home ownership and authorisation had ceased to apply in this most terrible crisis. Gudrun needed a haven where nobody would find her or bother her.
She crawled onto the bed fully clothed and closed her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
The agony of the present moment was all-consuming, the temporary distraction of Thea’s questions barely scratching the surface. But she wasn’t quite ready to fall silent and leave the woman alone. ‘Who exactly do you think it was?’ she asked from the doorway.
Gudrun flapped her hand vaguely towards the window and the road outside. ‘Them. The people he annoyed. Out there. They ridded themselves of a nuisance, as if he was a fox or a badger they didn’t like.’
‘No!’ The suggestion of ancient remedies for a timeless problem brought a stabbing sense of fear to Thea. Fear and horror. It was simply not possible that a respectable property-owning community could take such a step. She shook the idea away as ridiculous. ‘No, that isn’t possible. You think they conspired to do it?’ She put a hand to her own throat. ‘In cold blood, to kill a child they all knew? Absolutely impossible.’
‘Somebody did it,’ Gudrun murmured. ‘We saw him there, dead. And he didn’t strangle himself, did he?’
At some point during the past hour Thea had become completely convinced of something immensely important: Gudrun Horsfall had certainly not killed her own child.
She went downstairs quietly, her mind blank. Gudrun’s agony was beyond words, the coming days of endurance likely to be made worse by police suspicions. A sense of doing the most that anybody could, by giving the woman a bed and a listening ear, did little to satisfy her, but it was something.
Her phone warbled as she pottered around the kitchen idly tidying up, the bright screen telling her it was Drew. A pity, in a way, that technology insisted on spoiling almost every surprise in life, good or bad. ‘Hello,’ she said, unable to conceal a certain wariness.
‘It’s Drew.’
‘Yes. How are you? I mean, how’s Karen?’ She for
ced her thoughts onto him and his troubles, sitting down at the table, speaking softly.
‘Much the same. Listen, Den’s just told me how awful Maggs was to you this morning. I’ve spoken to her about it, if that’s any comfort.’
‘Well …’ There didn’t seem to be anything she could say, apart from an insincere assurance that she hadn’t minded. She felt a flash of embarrassment.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you she’s sorry. We’re all under strain here. That’s the best I can offer as an excuse.’
‘She meant well, I suppose. She’s obviously terribly fond of you. And Karen. Especially Karen.’
‘We are very close. It’s a family, really, the four of us. Six, with the children. But I wanted to ask you about the murder. Den told me a little boy was killed in the village you’re in. Is that right?’
‘I found the body,’ she said, with a sad little laugh. ‘Again. I’m afraid I’m very much involved.’
‘No!’
‘It was rather horrible.’
‘Obviously. A child is the worst.’
‘Yes. It’s completely different.’
‘Had you seen him before? When he was alive?’
‘Actually, yes. He wasn’t a very nice kid, which somehow makes it worse. Well – maybe not exactly worse, but you can’t help worrying when there’s ill will floating around. I don’t think anybody liked him, except for his mother.’
‘Den says she must be the one who did it.’
‘Wait a minute. Let me shut the door.’ She went to push the door closed, hoping there were no peculiar sound-carrying crevices up to the main bedroom. When she spoke again, it was in little more than a whisper, despite the need for emphasis. ‘No! No, she wasn’t. I’m convinced of that.’
‘Why are you whispering?’
‘Because she’s here, in the mistress of the house’s bed.’ She snickered at her own description of Yvonne. ‘She arrived an hour or so ago, and couldn’t face going home. Her house is very near here.’
Drew kept to the main point. ‘So who did it?’
‘Somebody in the village who’d had enough of him, I suppose. Just saw red and tied a length of washing line round his neck to shut him up. Then they dumped his body outside this house, behind my car. I expect it was just a horrible coincidence that I happened to be here.’
‘Was he an only child?’
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘That’s pretty much it, yes. Makes me realise how precious Jessica is. Who, by the way, is also unhappy just now. That beastly Paul dumped her.’
‘Did he? Just as well, in the long run, I imagine. We didn’t really like him, did we?’
Thea closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the surge of pleasure the we evoked in her. Here was somebody who understood, who had shared enough time with her to know what she thought and what he could say to her. Dear Drew, she sighed inwardly. What a good friend he was.
‘No, but she did, and it came as a complete shock. He sent her a text.’
‘I thought he had a cruel streak. Probably never occurred to him that it would hurt so much more than telling her properly.’
‘I don’t think she’ll take long to realise what she’s escaped. But it’s a pity they work together. It makes everything much more embarrassing for her.’
‘We are a sad lot these days, aren’t we?’ he said, audibly losing interest in the Snowshill murder. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can go on like I am. I can’t be away from the phone, in case they call about Karen. Even if I go out with the mobile, I have to stay within a few miles of the hospital. And the kids need me even more now they’re not at school. Luckily Karen’s mother has come here for a bit. I’d be totally sunk otherwise. As it is, the days fly past with nothing done, nothing changed. I’m in no state to officiate at funerals. I turned down two last week.’
‘I heard Maggs and Den talking about it. I got the impression he thinks there isn’t much hope left, but she was insisting Karen might yet recover.’ Was there another person in the world to whom she could speak in this way? Not her mother, certainly. Possibly her sister Jocelyn. But Drew deserved unvarnished remarks. He even invited them, in some way.
‘Nobody knows one way or the other. Maggs is setting us an example, being so positive, I suppose. I know I shouldn’t give up, but I can’t see how it can turn out happily, now. When she was injured originally, she was only unconscious for a day or two. This has been weeks and weeks, and I can’t see anything of the real Karen there any more. I feel as if she’s already gone far beyond recall. I think the children feel it, as well.’
‘She’s young, though. That must give her a better chance than some. And they still haven’t precisely identified the cause of the coma, have they?’
‘They assume there’s a bleed somewhere deep in the brain, but it doesn’t show on the scans. It’s been happening slowly but surely over the past three years, like a dripping tap, draining away her energy and personality. Bullets do appalling things to soft tissue over a wide area. I think some incurable shock was inflicted at the time, and it’s finally caught up with her. Such an awful waste. She had so much to offer, before all this.’ His voice was tightly controlled, and she had an impression that he had been searching for a chance to say these things.
‘Don’t give up,’ she urged him. ‘Maggs is right. There has to be some hope, or how can you bear it?’
He made a wordless sound, close to a moan. ‘Hope’s so exhausting. People don’t realise. And it’s like a cage, or a prison cell. I’m getting worn out with hoping.’
‘Oh, Drew,’ she soothed helplessly.
‘It’s nice to talk to you. And I wish I could come and help you cope with this dreadful murder. I suppose the police are all over you, if you found the body?’
She snorted, remembering Drew’s hapless encounter with the police in Broad Campden. ‘Not quite. It’s my friend Gladwin, thank goodness. She and I get on extremely well. She’s blessedly unprofessional when she’s with me. Says the most outrageous things. But she’s amazingly good at the job, for all that.’
‘Always gets her man, eh.’
‘Pretty much, yes. And she’s sane and decent and energetic. You’d never guess she was a top detective.’
‘I must meet her sometime,’ said Drew forlornly. Then he seemed to rally. ‘Tell me about the suspects,’ he invited.
‘Blimey! How long have you got?’
‘I don’t know. If there’s an incoming call I’ll have to go. The little light’ll flash at me if that happens. So fire away.’
She told him everything, from the first sighting of Stevie on Saturday. She told him about Blake Grossman and his bisected garden; Mark Parker and his sister; Janice and Ruby across the road; Clara Beauchamp and – for good measure – Charles Paget Wade, who was possibly a local ghost. ‘And hornets,’ she concluded. ‘There’s a hornets’ nest in the roof.’
‘Janice and Ruby,’ he said. ‘They sound interesting. If I’ve got it right, they’d have means, motive and opportunity galore.’
‘That’s true. But they’re very nice ordinary women. I can just imagine Janice strangling the boy in a fit of fury, but not dumping the body and keeping quiet. She’d call the police and own up.’
‘People panic. And she’d have to go to prison, even if she confessed. Nobody wants that.’
‘Funny how it always keeps coming back to a woman having done it.’
‘It’s because it generally is the mother,’ he said. ‘Although I can see how that doesn’t really fit in this case. Why would she move the body?’
‘Good question.’
They talked for forty minutes, before Drew seemed to realise the time and decided he had gone on too long. ‘Thanks for all that,’ he said. ‘You’ve distracted me very effectively. It’s just what I needed – something else to think about.’
‘Any time,’ she said lightly.
* * *
The house phone rang next, just after nine,
and a male voice barked, ‘That the house-sitter again?’
‘Yes, this is Thea Osborne. Can I help you?’
‘Victor Parker. Vonny not back, I suppose?’
‘No.’ She wanted to add Lost her again, then? but controlled the urge. She could also have told him that Yvonne had expressed an intention to go to France to join her sister, but did not. If he didn’t know, then she must assume his wife – ex-wife – didn’t want him to.
‘The woman must be mad, that’s all I can say. She was here for half a day and then disappeared off somewhere before we’d had a chance to settle anything. The thing is, she left her car just up the road here, so I can’t work out what’s happened.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, sure it’s her car? That sounds very strange.’
‘Of course I’m sure. I bought the bloody thing five years ago. I told her it was time she got another one, and she said she couldn’t afford it. Pleading poverty, as if I’d swallow that nonsense.’
‘Well, perhaps she didn’t want to risk losing the space, if she’s popped into the West End or something.’
‘Gone to a movie or something, you think?’ His tone was less forceful as he gave this his brief consideration. ‘Has she said that was what she’d do? The car’s been there since yesterday, though. I don’t know where she spent the night.’
Thea made an impatient sound. ‘Mr Parker, I hardly know her. I certainly don’t keep track of her movements. If you think she’s come to some sort of harm, then you’d better report it to the police. Otherwise, I don’t think I can help you.’ Was she being excessively discreet, she wondered? Should she just tell him the woman was probably on her way to France by now? ‘Did you part on bad terms?’ she asked.
‘Not really. Not that I noticed. She just went off without a word. Now I’ve got Belinda raging at me, for good measure.’
‘Your daughter,’ Thea noted, with a flash of pride. ‘She phoned me as well. And Mark came here this morning.’ She might choose to protect Yvonne from him, but she didn’t see why she should conceal the movements of his children. ‘None of you seem to know what the others are doing.’
