The Work of a Narrow Mind

by Faith Martin

  Hillary smiled a thank you as Lily reached down for a cake tin, and produced what was obviously a home-made Victoria sponge. She got out plates and a knife and looked at them with an eyebrow raised in question. Hillary declined, but she gave the nod to Wendy to accept a slice, knowing that it would make the other woman feel better.

  No doubt her parents had ingrained in her at an early age the importance of offering hospitality. And, unlike her sister, Lily had no reason to see the police as her adversaries. She knew from reading DI Jarvis’s notes that all three of Sylvia’s children had airtight alibis, and Lily, at least, had no son in the frame for her mother’s murder.

  ‘So, then, what can I tell you about Mum? Or that awful day?’ Lily asked, taking the third chair and making it squeak slightly as she lowered her considerable bulk onto it. ‘I’m sure I told the police all that I could right after it happened.’

  ‘Just routine, really, Mrs Barnard,’ Hillary said with a gentle smile. ‘We’re trying to build up a picture of how it must have been for your mum, and her way of life. My colleague here went to Caulcott this morning, and she tells me that it feels very isolated. Did your mother ever worry about living alone?’

  Lily rolled her eyes and smiled. ‘Tell me about it. I was glad to leave, I can tell you. But it suited Mum and Dad. And no, she never worried about that sort of thing at all. She always said that it was cities and towns that were dangerous, because that’s where the people were, but that there was nothing out in the countryside to hurt you. She said she had nothing to fear from foxes and the dark. Just goes to show how wrong you can be, doesn’t it?’ Lily said grimly. ‘But you can’t really blame the village, can you? Bad things can happen anywhere, I suppose. And Dad was born there, you see, and Mum had always lived in a village as well, although not one as small as that. But they were both country-mice, no two ways about it. Mum never even liked it much going into Oxford.’

  ‘She never felt lonely?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘She never mentioned it, no. But then, she had neighbours on either side of her who were always popping in, so I don’t suppose she did feel lonely.’

  ‘Oh? Which neighbours were these?’ Hillary asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, Freddie and Maureen mostly. Although I think Maureen, towards the end was going a bit….’ Lily tapped her temple significantly. ‘You know … just a touch senile, like. Sad, but there it is. But Mum and Freddie looked after her, made sure she ate, did her shopping, helped her out with her housework and generally humoured her whenever she kept maundering on about the war, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Freddie?’ Hillary said, her radar picking up. She’d heard about the Forget-me-not Club Lothario, but this was the first time she’d heard about a second man in the case. ‘He was your mother’s boyfriend? Or this Maureen’s, perhaps?’

  ‘What?’ Lily blinked and looked at Hillary as if she’d just grown another head, and then suddenly burst out laughing. ‘Oh, sorry, no. Not that kind of a Freddie. Sorry, I meant Mrs de la Mare – Freda. She was the neighbour one door down from Mum on the right hand side.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Hillary smiled.

  ‘I’ve got her down on my list of interviewees, guv,’ Wendy murmured helpfully. ‘Unfortunately, Maureen Coles has since passed on.’

  ‘Oh no! Did she?’ Lily Barnard said, sounding genuinely sad. ‘She was a lovely old lady, I remember she used to make proper toffee apples. When we were kids, we used to bring her apples, and she’d make them for us. She was always dotty about her cat, I seem to remember. She never married – well, she was one of those maiden old ladies who you just could never imagine married, you know what I mean? But she always kept a cat – a big ginger tom, never any other sort – and doted on them like they were her children. I used to think it was the same cat until I realized that it would have to be about forty years old! Oh, I’m sorry to hear she’s gone too.’

  ‘Did your mother ever mention having any trouble with her neighbours?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘Oh no. They all looked out for one another, like I said. The only one in the village she had no time for was Randy Gibson, the farmer. And, by extension, his wife I suppose. You know how she felt about him, right?’

  ‘Yes, your sister said. She didn’t call you in the days before she died? She never mentioned anything that struck you as odd or funny?’ she pressed on hopefully. ‘Now that you’ve had so much more time to think, was there anything at all that she said that you didn’t mention to DI Jarvis because it didn’t seem relevant, but now strikes you in any way as being out of the ordinary for her?’

  Lily frowned in concentration, then sighed. ‘No. I wish there were. Believe me, I want to do anything I can to help. But the last time I spoke to her she was all excited about some up-coming trip or other with her old-folks’ club. It was to see some sort of show. I can’t remember what it was now – something to do with old-style music halls or something. Anyway, she seemed happy and cheerful, the way she always did. Oh, except that she did say something about Maureen’s cat dying, and how she was taking on about it.’

  Lily took a sip of coffee, then nodded. ‘Oh yes. And that she was going to have to start thinking about buying a new car, because the old one was getting past it, and she wasn’t looking forward to going through all the hassle and expense of finding and buying a new one. I told her that Dave – he was my husband at the time – would help her out if she wanted a man to go with her. You know, some garages see an old woman coming and think they can sell them any old rubbish, but they won’t try that on with a man, will they?’

  ‘No, not usually,’ Hillary agreed drily. ‘So you can’t think of anyone with a reason to kill your mother?’

  ‘No,’ Lily said grimly. ‘I still can’t really believe it ever happened.’ She twisted her mug of coffee restlessly about in circles on the table. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to find out this time around who did it?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘We’ll certainly do our best,’ Hillary Green promised gently.

  Lily nodded, swallowed hard, and took a tiny sip from her coffee mug. Her lower lip was wobbling precariously. ‘Good,’ she said simply.

  Once outside, Wendy shivered a little inside her puffa-jacket and rammed her hands morosely into her pockets. ‘It never goes away, does it?’ she said, walking slowly beside her boss back to the car.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Hillary said quietly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Jake Barnes negotiated the Banbury Road round-about that evening, thankfully going against the rush-hour traffic queuing up to try and get out of the city of Oxford, he was feeling pleasantly tired. In spite of expectations, he was actually enjoying working for the CRT.

  He drove a few hundred yards down the busy road, then indicated to turn into one of the many impressive big houses that lined this prestigious northern part of the city, his E-type Jaguar attracting the usual smiles or envious scowls from his fellow motorists.

  Far from feeling particularly smug, Jake appreciated both the envy of his car and the desirable piece of real estate where he lived. Unlike others who’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth, Jake had earned his own way in the world, and consequently actually enjoyed – and noticed – the good life he was living. After having grown up on a large estate in the poorer end of the nearby market town of Banbury, he was by no means blasé about what it now meant to live in a six-bedroom, white-painted, detached villa in one of the swankiest parts of Oxford.

  As he parked and swung his lean, six-foot frame with easefrom the low-slung car, he couldn’t help but smile at the thought of how the little kid that he had once been would have been impressed with the iconic Jag. Ever since he’d seen the film, The Italian Job as a seven-year-old, it had been his dream to own one, and the car had been the first thing he’d bought with his new-found wealth.

  Jake knew that he’d been lucky enough to be blessed with more than his fair share of brains, and although the comprehensive schooling he’d received had bee
n no more than just about adequate, computers had come along at just the right time. Because he also had the kind of brain that had adapted well to the IT boom, and had the good luck to meet the right set of people, at the right time, they’d formed their own dot.com business on a shoestring budget.

  Nevertheless, the company had managed to produce a few good best-selling products, including several popular apps for a mobile phone company, as well as that essential all-important one that had taken off and made them all multi-millionaires.

  Unlike his fellow directors, however, he’d sold out his share just before the dot.com bubble well and truly burst and, consequently, had been the only one to come out of it ahead. Although he told everyone who asked that he’d seen the writing on the wall, and hadn’t allowed himself to be blinded by greed, in reality, he’d simply never really believed his good luck could possibly last. Instead, he’d been beset by the typical, working-class boy’s longing for financial security that only actual money in a real bank account could provide. Being a multi-millionaire in cyber-space or in a virtual reality had never been enough to satisfy him.

  Since then, he’d invested that money very wisely, largely in buying up property like there was no tomorrow when the banks broke the economy and the housing market bottomed. So, now, he not only had a mass of long-term, safe-bet stocks to make the Chancellor of the Exchequer very happy, he also had a large letting business that others ran for him, and the revenue from which alone would see him through to his old age, even if he never touched his capital, or made another investment in his life.

  He wished, sometimes, that his father had lived to see his only son succeed so well, but he’d died when Jake was just five and, in truth, Jake could now barely remember him. He only had old photographs to remind him of what he’d looked like. His mother, who now lived in a very nice part of Banbury, thanks to her son, had remarried a man named Curtis Paviour, a year almost to the day after becoming a widow.

  Curtis had moved into their council house with them. He shared custody of his only child, Jasmine, with his former partner, Judy. They had broken because of Judy’s drink problem, which in turn led on to a drug problem. So, by the time Jake was ten, the seven-year-old Jasmine had moved into their already cramped council house on a permanent basis.

  But instead of feeling jealous or resentful, Jake had been won over by her – largely, it had to be said, because the little girl clearly worshipped him: vanity had always been his biggest weakness.

  As Jake let himself into the pleasant hallway of his home, he noted absently that the original William Morris tiles on the floor had been buffed to a nice shine by his regular cleaning lady. Not that he’d ever have known what they were if it hadn’t been for ex-wife, Tash, who’d been into design, and had taken it on herself to educate him in such matters, before leaving him for a personal fitness trainer.

  The wooden panelling that lined the staircase smelled pleasantly of lavender furniture polish. He slung his briefcase somewhat carelessly down, and from the top of a reproduction Sheraton hall table, collected his mail where his daily had left it.

  His heart picked up a beat as he recognized the logo on a large, padded, A-4 brown envelope, but he resisted the urge to rip it open there and then. Instead, he carried it through to the kitchen, and put on the coffee percolator for a much-needed brew. Like his boss, Hillary Greene, he was slightly addicted to good, well-made coffee.

  He opened the fridge and surveyed the contents thoughtfully, selecting a cold chicken breast and making a Caesar salad with it, before sitting down on a stool at the marble-topped breakfast bar. He ate quickly however, all the time with one eye on the envelope. He finished his meal with a piece of brie, a slightly over-ripe pear and a handful of walnuts, and then took the envelope, along with a second mug of coffee, into his study. This room faced the back garden. In summer, the grounds outside became a lovely sun-trap, filled with flowering shrubs, and garden birds flocked to the feeders he’d put up whatever the weather.

  He now pulled the curtains against the dark, dank November night and sank down in a buttoned-leather armchair. Finally he opened the envelope, taking out the latest, neatly typed report from Crimmins & Lloyd, the private investigators he’d hired to dig up all they could on Dale Medcalfe.

  And tonight, in particular, on one of his employees named Darren Chivnor.

  Jake read the report quickly but avidly, then went back to the beginning, taking it more slowly now, and making handwritten notes as he went. Normally, he’d use a computer, but he thought it wise, given that computers could be hacked, to do it the old-fashioned way just this once – even though a keyboard felt far more familiar to him than a pen.

  As he worked, he glanced up at a framed photograph on his desk. In it, his 15-year-old self gazed back, his mother on one side, his stepfather on the other, and in front, her head tucked under his chin, a young Jasmine, at twelve, just blossoming from childhood to teenager.

  When he’d left to do an IT course at a minor university near Birmingham, Jasmine had been a typical, gawky, 14-year-old adolescent, mad about some boyband or other, and typically rebellious. She’d just had a tattoo of a ladybird done on her shoulder, against the expresses wishes of both her father and stepmother, and was in the dog house, and vowing to have an eyebrow stud if they didn’t get off her back.

  Jake had, as usual, found himself the recipient of all her secrets and woes. She’d moaned about how unfair life was, and how nobody understood her, and how it was all right for him, he was escaping to Birmingham, which, whilst not London, had to be a vast improvement on where they were.

  Jake, who secretly agreed with her, could only commiserate, and advise her to be patient. Soon she’d be sixteen, and could start doing the hairdressing and beautician course that she’d been raving about ever since he’d bought her her first Barbie.

  And then he’d gone off blithely to uni with barely another thought about it. Or her. It wasn’t until later, much later in fact, when he’d come home in his second year for the Easter vacation, that he’d realized just how off the rails things had become back on the home front.

  He’d been aware, vaguely, for some time that whenever he’d asked after Jas, his mother had tended to become evasive, but it wasn’t until he was actually back in the family home that he understood why.

  The nearly 16-year-old Jasmine was totally out of control. He could still remember the moment when he’d realized, with a jolt of shock, that his baby sister was drunk.

  It was the very day he’d come home, when he’d volunteered to make his world-famous macaroni cheese for dinner. He’d been in the kitchen boiling the pasta when his sister had grabbed him around the waist and welcomed him home with a smacking kiss on the back of his neck, and he’d smelt the waft of alcohol on her breath. Her words of greeting were slurred, and her giggles had far more to do with inebriation than the girlish good spirits he’d always associated with her.

  Perhaps because of her mother’s troubles, she’d always been a needy kid who craved love and attention, and Jake had never resented giving her both.

  Later that night, when he’d angrily and self-righteously confronted Curtis and his mother about it, they’d confessed that Jas had been in trouble with her school for some time, both for being disruptive in class and for playing truant on far too regular a basis. The boozing was relatively new, however. They’d tried to keep her in at night, and monitor her friends and where she went, but she was growing to increasingly resent the curbs on her freedom and was threatening to run away if they didn’t pack it in.

  Appalled, Jake had demanded that they make her see a counsellor, and had been roundly told that that was already in hand. They’d also made sure that she was seeing a school guidance worker, and monitored her internet use and mobile phone time.

  Their hurt anger had been enough to make him felt slightly ashamed of himself for trying to tell either of them how to be good parents, especially since he’d always known that his mother had done a fabulous job, un
der the circumstances, in raising him, and he never doubted that Curtis too, cared deeply for his daughter.

  So he’d gone back to uni to finish his degree with a certain amount of optimism.

  Optimism, it soon became clear, that was sadly misplaced.

  The first hint that things were going from bad to worse was when his mother told him that Jas had left school without doing any exams or even applying for a place on the beautician’s course. Worse was to come when, at seventeen, Jas moved into a squat with several of her so-called ‘friends’ who were the despair of Curtis and his mother.

  By the time Jake had got his degree and had set up the company and was beginning to make serious money, Jas had developed a drug habit.

  Curtis, perhaps not able to cope with the guilt, furiously blamed Jas’s problems on her mother, Judy. Growing up with an alcoholic junkie as a mother was bound to screw up a kid, he’d argued. And no matter how much they’d put their foot down, once they had legally lost control over her, their efforts to help her became all but impossible.

  Just before her nineteenth birthday, she had defiantly told them that she was off, and had simply vanished.

  Jake had finally tracked her down to a squalid bed-sit in Luton when she was twenty-one, and had paid for her to go into rehab, but it hadn’t taken.

  She became pregnant shortly after that, and perhaps that experience frightened her into sobriety for a while, because the doctors found several serious defects with the foetus during a scan, and had told her she’d probably miscarry, which she subsequently did.

  This time, the second round of rehab worked. For a while.

  By the time she was twenty-three, however, Jasmine was gone again, and this time Jake was unable to find her. Not that he’d ever stopped looking, since Curtis and his mother were both desperate for news of her. So he’d paid a number of PI firms to try and track her and, finally, a year ago, the last one had got lucky.