by Rebecca Tope
‘I’ll go in a minute. They might be looking for me,’ the woman said.
Thea did not enquire who they might be. She assumed it could only be the police. ‘No, they won’t,’ she said. ‘I told them you were here.’
Gudrun’s sunken eyes met hers with a flash of anger. ‘You reported me?’ she accused.
‘In a way, I did,’ Thea agreed. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Not really.’ Gudrun’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’ll have to get used to it, won’t I?’
Thea understood that it meant a whole great mass of stuff far beyond the attention of the police. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked gently.
‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’ said Gudrun with a stoicism that Drew Slocombe would have found admirable.
She had not heard anything from Gladwin since leaving the message from outside Victor’s house, but assumed that she would, before long. There was no sign of Janice, from across the road, who had agreed to rescue the spaniel if Thea hadn’t got back by four o’clock. In the absence of any further excitement, she decided to reward her patient dog by taking it for a walk.
Snowshill was quiet. The pub appeared to be having a rest, the Manor behind its protective wall ignoring the village as usual. A few cars passed on the upper road, and a black dog pottered illegally across the churchyard. ‘How did that get in there?’ muttered Thea. For reply, the animal leapt effortlessly onto the boundary wall and then loped away without a backward glance. ‘Long legs,’ said Thea to Hepzie. ‘I bet you couldn’t jump that high.’ In fact, the spaniel was a competent jumper, given the incentive.
They circled the church, with Hepzie on the lead, before Thea decided to walk along the road out of the village and investigate the Manor grounds, as far as she was permitted with a dog. The road had no verge or pavement, but offered no real danger from the traffic. They passed a small car park, and at the last moment, Thea noticed a small gate leading from it, with a sign announcing that this was a footpath to the Manor.
‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘This looks like a better way.’
It was a ludicrously long walk in the wrong direction, considering that the manor house was behind them. The National Trust in its wisdom had opted to send visitors several hundred yards out of the centre of Snowshill, whether on foot or driving, before admitting them to the grounds. They then had to walk all the way back, leaving their cars in a tastefully tree-dotted area – five hundred yards according to a note on a board she’d seen. By then, hardly anybody realised that they were in fact back where they started, literally next door to the Snowshill Arms where they might well have had their lunch. The walk of nearly half a mile was probably good for them, but the nannying implications were irritating.
No Dogs it said, as she found the entrance, including shop, café and toilets.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Thea in resignation.
A vehicle slowed alongside her as she emerged from the same small gate into the same small car park, fifteen or twenty minutes after leaving it. ‘Hello again,’ came a female voice. She pulled into the entrance to the park, leaving the road clear.
It was Clara Beauchamp in a chunky red Subaru, looking down from the driver’s window. ‘I’m searching for my dog. He’s run off again, after some bitch somewhere, I suppose.’
Thea had been thinking about murdered children and dying wives, and barely focused on the woman speaking to her. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen him? Black. Long legs. Floppy ears. He’s part collie and part saluki. Runs like the wind.’
‘Oh! Actually, yes. He was in the churchyard about half an hour ago. He seemed to know where he was going.’
‘So he might, but there are people around here who disapprove of loose dogs.’
Thea had very painful experience of the risks that such animals ran when they escaped their confines, and nodded sympathetically. ‘Maybe he’s home again by now.’
‘Let’s hope so. How are you getting on, anyway?’
‘Well enough, considering.’ She remembered that she and Clara had discussed young Stevie Horsfall only an hour or so before she found his body. Clara’s dislike of the boy had become one facet of the whole business, representative of the general attitude of the village towards him. ‘It’s so awful about poor Gudrun. She’s utterly heartbroken.’ The word seemed too weak for the torment the woman was enduring, but Thea had a resistance to the overused ‘devastated’ and could not bring herself to utter it.
‘I know. Everyone feels terrible about it. And of course, we’re all eyeing each other, wondering if it was somebody local who finally flipped. I think almost everyone has threatened to kill the bloody kid at some point – including his mother. But you never really mean it, do you?’ She shuddered, and added, ‘Just imagine actually doing it. It’s hard enough to put a dying lamb out of its misery, let alone a strapping great boy like Stevie. He’d kick and scratch. You really would have to mean business.’
Thea’s eyes widened at this straightforward talk. Even she had not allowed her imagination to go into quite such harrowing detail. ‘He didn’t really look as if he’d struggled,’ she said carelessly. ‘His clothes weren’t messed up, or anything.’
‘Really?’ Clara leaned avidly towards her, as far as the car window would allow. ‘You do surprise me.’ Quite which detail she meant was obscure.
‘You knew it was me who found the body, I assume?’
‘I did hear something,’ said Clara warily.
‘But you haven’t seen Gudrun?’
‘Me? God, no, of course not. It only happened two days ago. Besides, what would I say to her? I can’t pretend I didn’t loathe the little beast.’
‘You could say you’re sorry for her pain.’
A look close to exasperation crossed Clara’s face, and Thea felt a sudden pang of acute loneliness. People were so prone to reacting badly to comments like that, and yet she had taken this woman for an exception. Hadn’t she herself started it, with her talk of kicking and scratching? ‘She wouldn’t believe me,’ she said simply, thereby somewhat redeeming herself in Thea’s eyes.
‘Oh. Didn’t anybody like him?’
‘Not to my knowledge. There was a teacher, I believe, when he was seven or eight, who made a bit of progress with him. If you ask me, it’s karma.’
‘What?’ Clara Beauchamp was the archetypal Cotswolds character: rich, confident, impatient, doggy, horsy, healthy and educated. Words like ‘karma’ did not fit the stereotype at all. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, as I told you on Sunday, the kid never should have been born. She was too old, too peculiar, to be entrusted with a child. It was never going to work out.’
‘She told me she stole him,’ Thea remembered. ‘Funny word to use.’
‘Right. That’s what she always says. Waylaid some drunk in Cirencester one night and had her wicked way with him, to get a kid, is one version of the story. Dishonest, I call that.’
‘Brave, though, if that’s really what happened. Plenty of women dream of doing it, but not many go through with it, do they?’
‘Don’t ask me. People like Gudrun Horsfall are closed books to me. It’s all a bit sordid, don’t you think?’
‘The way you tell it, yes. But that wasn’t quite the picture I got. And men – well, they don’t often turn it down, do they? They probably rather like to think they’ve got unknown offspring scattered around the countryside.’
‘Like my dog,’ laughed Clara. ‘But the pigeons come back to roost in the end. We had an irate woman turn up with a boxful of mongrel pups, a year or two ago. Her bitch was a prize breeding golden retriever, and we’d cost her thousands in lost income, or so she said.’
‘She should keep her dog indoors, then,’ said Thea, thinking she could never have managed it herself. If Hepzie hadn’t been spayed, there would probably have been three or four unplanned litters by this time. Besides, she had only recently come across a mismatched litter of pups in Cranham, and had
a sneaking liking for such disobedience on the part of the dogs. They might be ‘slave animals’ as some would say, but they did get their own way sometimes.
‘She says she did, and Boris jumped in through a window. Anyway, we digress.’
‘Yes,’ Thea agreed reluctantly. She would far rather discuss dogs than the wretched Gudrun. So she chose another subject. ‘How well do you know Yvonne?’
‘Vonny? Oh, not very. She works all the time, never seems to have a minute to spare. Teaching must be grim, don’t you think? All that bloody paperwork. She strikes me as a bit lonely, no real friends that I know of.’
‘Have you seen all the stuff she’s got in the house?’
‘A couple of times, yes. Very old-fashioned way to carry on. Must be worth a bit, I imagine.’
‘I doubt it, actually. It’s mostly just cheap knick-knacks. It’s as if she can’t bear to see a clear surface. The garden’s the same.’
‘Don’t go psychological on me,’ begged Clara. ‘We’ve all got our quirks.’
‘You seemed to know where she’s gone and why, when we talked before. Did you know Victor?’
Clara rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I knew Victor. Self-important little braggart was Victor. Vonny’s much better off without him. Did they get Belinda’s wedding sorted out, then?’
Thea shrugged her ignorance. ‘Their son came here yesterday morning, saying something about his mother, worried that she’d gone missing. She doesn’t seem to have kept him and his sister very well informed.’
‘Oh, Mark. Take no notice of him. He’s as daft as Gudrun. Seems to think he’s Oscar Wilde most of the time.’
‘Oh – is that who he was being? I never did manage to work it out.’
Clara laughed cheerfully. ‘Well, better go and catch that damned dog before he gets himself shot. Who’d have them, eh?’ She eyed Thea’s docile spaniel with something like envy. ‘Though yours seems okay.’
Thea bent down and stroked the soft mottled head of her pet. ‘Yes, she’s very good,’ she said. ‘Although she’s had her moments.’
Gladwin still hadn’t called back by the end of Tuesday afternoon, an omission that Thea felt was slightly insulting. Not that she could say with any real justification that Victor Parker was actually of any significance to the Gloucestershire police in their quest for the killer of Stevie Horsfall. Even so, she did think she had grounds for insisting that somebody check up on the violence she had heard, having presented the gift of the London address where it had presumably happened.
There was a growing accumulation of anomalies surrounding Victor and his family which ought surely to be of interest to the police. Perhaps other things were developing quickly in the investigations, with DNA analysis under way or key witnesses providing hard evidence of somebody’s guilt. She assumed she would only hear about it afterwards, if so. That should, by rights, come as a relief, but instead she felt unfairly sidelined.
It was time to feed the cats when she got back, and then find something for her own supper. Julius and Jennings were waiting for her and she gave them their Felix on the kitchen floor. Hepzie stood back, making much of her own obedience, liquid eyes bulging with the effort, one or two soft squeaks emerging from her throat. ‘Okay,’ Thea told her. ‘Yours is coming.’ She filled the bowl they always carried with them, mixing the meat and milk and biscuit to just the right tempting consistency, and gave it to the dog. The simple satisfaction of providing for domestic pets never palled. There was something reassuring about their dependence. While you had a dog, you had to get out of bed in the morning. You could not sink into depression or ME or general inertia. You owed it to your animal to continue to function. Farmers, of course, took this to crazy extremes, with hundreds of beasts just waiting to die if you neglected them for a moment. Everybody knew that farmers got up at 5 a.m. because otherwise they would never get everything done.
It was a cloudy evening, the light outside uninviting. Indoors the usual obstructions to any sense of relaxation presented themselves. She could phone Jessica; watch television; read a book; send texts to Drew. None of these options felt right. Jess would probably prefer to make the call at a time of her own choosing. Television was seldom very engaging. Books were for bedtime and Drew was off-limits.
Passing through the hallway, heading for the kitchen, her eye fell on the bureau tucked in beside the foot of the stairs. She remembered the drawer she had hurriedly pulled open when looking for Victor’s address, which had been full of notebooks. It wouldn’t hurt to have a quick look to see what they were. The drawer wasn’t locked, the bureau not hidden away in a bedroom. It was undoubtedly an intrusion, but no harm would be done by it. At least, no further harm – she had already discovered the key to the bureau flap on a hook by the telephone and opened it to discover Yvonne’s car documents. That was intrusive by many people’s standards. Now she would merely be compounding a felony already committed. Besides, she would put everything back exactly as it was, and Yvonne would never know. Was there a house-sitter in the land who would resist just having a little peep?
The packed desk drawer called to her, once everything was finished in the kitchen. She had no sense of solving mysteries or unearthing secrets. She merely wanted to take a closer look at the contents of the books. ‘Lesson plans, probably,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Or account books.’
The covers of the notebooks had been the initial attraction. Brightly coloured swirly designs suggested bright and interesting material inside as well. Carefully, Thea removed the top left book, ascertaining that there were three more in the pile, with another five similar piles – twenty in total. Perhaps they were unpublished novels, or poems. She could well imagine Yvonne Parker writing reams and reams of bad poetry.
The first page revealed a diary. 10th March 2000. My forty-fifth birthday. Victor gave me a bracelet. Mark gave me a clock. Belinda gave me a pair of slippers. I went to work as usual, and bought a cake for the staffroom. None of the children knew about my birthday, of course. Young Isaac Simpson played up again and I sent him to the head. Victor and I went to the pub in the evening and had steak.
Hmm, thought Thea. Just as you’d expect. A dull woman with a dull life. The slippers were almost ludicrously dull. Isaac Simpson would be into his twenties by now and probably couldn’t speak a word of French. She flipped through the book, the handwriting consistently small and neat, some entries extending to half a page, but never more. There was something for every single day, as far as she could tell. The final page read: 19th December. Bought the turkey, fresh from Mr Gordon. Finished the last of the cards, just in time. Term ends tomorrow, thank goodness. Victor’s mother phoned from Lerwick, saying the weather’s lovely there. Pouring with rain here. Belinda’s boyfriend dumped her last week, she’s just told us. Mark’s results abysmal. Victor shouted at him. Had a letter from Mary saying Daniel’s left her.
Poor Belinda and poor Mary, thought Thea. Unkind men on all sides, it seemed. The scanty lines with their near-complete absence of emotion nonetheless managed to conjure ordinary family life. So ordinary, in fact, that there was very little sense of transgression in reading them. It was simply a record of daily events, with potentially useful details such as Victor’s mother being alive and apparently well in Lerwick, that particular December.
She put the book back, just as she had found it, and selected the top one from the adjacent pile, thinking there had to be a more stimulating way to spend an evening.
9th Feb 2006. Letter came for Victor, with a printed letterhead. He wouldn’t let me see it, but it’s obviously very bad news. I thought he was going to be sick or cry or something. Looks as if it might be something medical.
Flood in the girls’ toilets at school. Lexie Jones slipped and bruised her hip.
Had estimate for new boiler – £2475.
This came halfway into the new notebook. Did Victor have gonorrhoea or something, Thea wondered wildly? Did they get the new boiler? 2006 was surely close to the date when Victor left home.
Had it been connected somehow to this letter? Did Yvonne find it, discovering something terrible about her husband in it, and kick him out of the house?
The suddenly interesting entry nudged her conscience. She really ought not to be prying into secrets. It was none of her business, by any reckoning. If the roles were reversed and she learnt that Yvonne had been reading her diaries – not that she had any – or emails, she wouldn’t like it. It was an indecent thing to do. Firmly she replaced the book and closed the drawer. Intimate as the position of a house-sitter might be, given the freedom of somebody’s house and trusted with their cats and keys, the boundaries were clear. You definitely did not read people’s personal diaries containing suspicions about their husband’s state of health.
The warbling of her mobile came to her rescue. She wouldn’t think any more about Yvonne and the volumes of her daily life. ‘Mum?’ Jessica’s voice was thick with emotion. Thea’s heart lurched.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded.
‘Paul. He’s been attacked.’
‘Attacked?’ The word summoned ferocious mad dogs, or a horde of cartoon savages with spears tearing into the man’s body. ‘How? What happened?’
‘A bunch of BNP morons, or something. Nobody seems to know for sure. They stamped on him. His pelvis is shattered.’ The words came in breathless jerks.
‘My God!’ She had no notion of what to say or how to feel. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘No. It was racist, Mum. They did it because he’s black. He’s probably going to be crippled, for nothing more than his skin colour.’ Sobs clouded the last words.
‘He won’t be crippled,’ Thea assured her recklessly. ‘It’ll heal up.’ But already she could visualise the crushed kidneys and testicles, the complex pelvic area never fully functioning again.
Jessica rallied enough to voice her rage. ‘It’ll be on the news, any minute now. The whole of the north-west is going to be doing overtime until they catch the bastards. They’re not going to do it to anyone else.’
