The Work of a Narrow Mind

by Faith Martin

  ‘Thanks,’ Steven said, with a friendly smile, and headed for the stairs. As he jogged up lightly, he wondered what Inkpen had made of Steven’s appointment. After all, once the promotion became permanent, as DCS, he’d be the big cheese around here, with all the usual expectations that went with it, resting firmly on his shoulders, demanding that he get results. If the resident man was going to be hostile, it would only make matters harder.

  As he tapped on the door, however, his mind was not so much on his new job, the new office, the new staff or the burdens or rewards of a new promotion: he was thinking, instead, about Hillary Greene. It was something that was becoming a very common, and not unpleasant occurrence in his life of late.

  Just how long was she going to leave him dangling and waiting for her answer? It hadn’t been easy working up the nerve to suggest marriage. Although she rarely spoke about it, he knew how much the disaster of her first marriage had scarred her. But he was sure he hadn’t misread the signs – any of them – which had been there, almost from the first moment they’d met.

  The attraction had been instant and mutual. They were well matched, and he’d never tried to hide from her just how much she meant to him. He simply felt it in his bones that they could be good together. And he was pretty damned sure that she felt the same way.

  That, in itself, wouldn’t necessarily have been enough to make him think that he was in with a chance with her. He was no green youth who thought that love could conquer all. And he was well aware of all the strikes against them – bloody Ronnie Greene being only one of them. There was the fact that he was six years younger than she was – not that it worried him, or her, he believed, but it was there. Then there was the fact that she was no longer technically in the job, and he was, and moreover, about to be promoted onwards and upwards. She must, at some level – if only subconsciously – feel a little resentment and envy.

  But against all of that, he had just felt that she might at last be ready for a new start. That she might, finally, have managed to get out, emotionally and psychologically, from the shadow of her past traumas and feel capable of trust again. Be ready to admit that, at their age, this might be the last chance they’d get at finding some sort of lasting relationship that was worth the effort and commitment required.

  But what if he’d got it wrong? What if she was just thinking of a way to let him down gently? As a voice called out, summoning him to meet his new colleague, Steven Crayle was not at all sure just what the hell he was going to do if that turned out to be the case.

  But when Superintendent Ryan Inkpen rose from behind his desk to meet his new boss, he saw only a tall, good-looking, elegant man, with calm intelligent eyes, who smiled at him confidently and with his hand held out in greeting.

  Hillary could see why Wendy had not been taken with the small hamlet of Caulcott, although she herself could see its charms. But then she was not a twenty-something, who thought civilization depended on traffic lights and street lamps.

  ‘There are actually two farms within the settlement, guv,’ Jake Barnes told her, as he drove his E-type down the narrow lane, trying not to notice the mud and muck that was probably being splattered up the sides of his beautiful baby’s racing-green paint work, even as he spoke. ‘But Gibsons’ is the biggest. They don’t do cows—’

  ‘Cattle,’ Hillary corrected absent-mindedly and automatically.

  ‘… Cattle,’ Jake repeated amicably, ‘only sheep. And they’re mainly crop growers – the usual wheat, barley and oil-seed rape. The other farm’s a dairy outfit, but they also grow crops. Between them, they own pretty much everything as far as the eye can see.’ He shot a quick glance around at the flat, winter-bleak landscape that seemed to stretch for miles, and probably did.

  ‘Right – I’ve got the picture.’

  ‘This is the Gibsons’ place just ahead, guv.’ He indicated to turn into the courtyard of a rather handsome, traditionally built farmhouse of the local stone which stood square and solid and dared anyone not to be impressed by its simple, Georgian-inspired proportions. Hillary looked at the front door painted a cheerful bright green, and placed squarely in the middle of the building, with a window on either side. A slate, inverted V-shaped porch perched over it, providing shelter when needed, from the prevailing wind and rain. An old black and white sheepdog was standing in one of the many outbuildings, watching them, its tail wagging spasmodically, as if it wasn’t sure whether to bark at them, or come to them for some petting.

  Chickens actually wandered about the courtyard pecking for who knows what it was that chickens pecked for. But there were no picturesque cobbles to complete the chocolate-box scene, only, for the most part, dirty concrete. One barn was full to the brim with straw, whilst another held rusting agricultural equipment. Hillary thought she recognized some sort of threshing machine, or flail, but wouldn’t have bet money on it.

  They walked to the door, unmolested by the dog, who’d disappeared back into the warmth and dry of the outbuilding, and knocked on the door.

  The woman who answered their summons would have been classically beautiful when young, and was still very handsome even now, possessed as she was by high cheekbones, a fine nose and well-shaped mouth and jaw. She had a mass of platinum-silver hair, which she kept up in a classic and classy chignon. She wore warm black trousers and a tunic-style, gold top with some metallic threads in it that glinted even in the dull light of the November day.

  She could have been aged anywhere from sixty to eighty, for she had that certain timelessness about her that Hillary could well believe caught the eye of men, and probably made most other women feel vaguely inadequate.

  Perhaps even the young Marigold, all those years ago, had sensed that she would never be able to compete with one such as this, and had instinctively resented it.

  ‘Mrs Gibson?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘Yes?’ the older woman said, looking uncertainly from Hillary to Jake, as if trying to place them. Hillary noticed, without surprise, that her pansy-brown eyes lingered longest, and with definite feminine appreciation, on Jake, and it was his ID that she inspected first.

  So score one for Marigold, Hillary thought, with amusement. The woman definitely had an eye for male beauty, and Jake, with his wide green-grey eyes, classically handsome, square-jawed face and lean build, was definitely worth any woman looking at twice.

  ‘Police? Has something happened?’ she asked, frowning a little as she looked over their shoulders, as if expecting to see flashing blue lights, or an ambulance, or some other harbinger of disaster, speeding up behind them.

  ‘Civilian consultants to Thames Valley Police,’ Hillary corrected and quickly explained what CRT was all about and what they were doing there.

  As she spoke, she saw the other woman force a smile. ‘Oh, so it’s about Sylvia, I expect? I see, I thought all of that was over and done…. Well, never mind. Oh, please, come in. I’ll put the kettle on. I hope you don’t mind cats, only we always seem to acquire a plethora of them in this place. Randy keeps insisting that they’re to keep the rats down in the silos, but I think he’s just a cat man. They’re always sitting on his lap, anyway. Personally, I can take them or leave them.’ As she spoke, she led them past a narrow hall, where muddy wellingtons and raincoats lined both walls and through into a large, attractive farm house kitchen. It came complete with a black range, a square-shaped, well-scrubbed oak table in the middle of the room, and Welsh dressers lining the walls.

  There were also five cats scattered about – two black ones, a lovely tortoiseshell, a mainly white one with a single patch of ginger in the middle of its back, and something that looked vaguely Siamese, which stared at Hillary arrogantly through slightly crossed, china-blue eyes.

  None of them deigned to get down from the window-seats next to the room’s radiators where they were curled up.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes please,’ Hillary said. ‘Mrs Gibson—’

  ‘Oh good grief, please call me Vanessa. I always
think of Randy’s mother whenever anyone calls me that. She was a bit of an old trout, though, to be honest, so it makes me shudder every time someone does it!’ She laughed as she worked, but Hillary sensed a certain high-tensile edge to her.

  She was nowhere near as relaxed or as nonchalant as she was making out which didn’t necessarily signify anything sinister, Hillary knew. Some people, even the most innocent and blameless, seemed incapable of acting normally around police officers.

  ‘Please, sit down. Would you like some cake?’ Without waiting for a response, she produced a delicious looking fruit-cake from a tin, and placed it in the centre of the table, and cut large portions which she transferred onto china plates. Since it was nearly lunchtime, Jake accepted his with a genuinely happy smile and forked a bite immediately. ‘Delicious,’ he said, raising his fork in salutation. ‘You can tell it’s homemade. You cook wonderfully.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vanessa Gibson said, giving him a radiant smile that revealed strong, white teeth. ‘Here, let me cut you a piece of cheddar to go with that.’

  Hillary watched the two of them flirting mildly, and thought that she could understand, now, what Marigold Perkins had seen, all those years ago. Vanessa Gibson was the sort of woman who was probably incapable of doing anything other than flirt with any man who happened to be in her orbit, regardless of his age or physical attractiveness. In fact, she would be surprised if sex, in any real meaning of the word, had anything to do with it at all.

  She was not a psychologist, and wouldn’t dream of consulting one without having her arm twisted behind her back, but Hillary would have bet anything that somewhere, probably in her childhood, something had happened to Vanessa Gibson that had made her come to rely on her looks and charm. Had she had very clever sisters who had made her feel intellectually inferior? Had her father or mother dressed her up as a princess from the age of three, and drummed it into her head that pretty girls, or good girls who acted nicely, got whatever it was that they wanted? Or had some man hurt her too badly, and at too young an age, leaving her determined that it would never happen again. How better to ensure that, than to always keep the upper hand by dazzling and controlling their libidos?

  She caught Jake’s eye, thought she read a hint of amusement, and realized he was playing up to Vanessa on purpose.

  Hillary gave the slightest of nods back to acknowledge the ploy. There was, when she considered it impartially, quite a lot to like about her young assistant – he was bright, intuitive and helpful. Once she could figure out exactly what it was that he was up to, he might even prove genuinely useful. Providing she didn’t have to nab him for something and have Steven arrest him, that is.

  Once the farmer’s wife had poured the coffee, Hillary got down to work.

  ‘So, Mrs— Vanessa. What can you tell me about Sylvia Perkins? Were you surprised when you heard she’d been murdered?’ She began with a general question, designed to get the witness talking; pinning her down to specifics came later.

  ‘Well of course I was!’ Vanessa Gibson sank down on a chair opposite them, cradling her own mug in her hands. It was a telling gesture, Hillary thought, indicating that her hands had gone cold and she was looking to warm them up, even though the room, with the range and radiators, was more than warm enough. Perhaps their arrival on her doorstep had come as something of a shock to her, especially when, as she’d already indicated, she’d thought the whole Perkins affair was over and done with.

  On the other hand, Hillary mused with a mental smile, the woman might just have poor circulation.

  As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Hillary saw that Vanessa’s hands were now busy working, restlessly turning the mug in circles on the table in front of her, another bit of body language that indicated stress. Although she wore several gold rings, each set with diamonds and either a ruby or sapphire, her rather knobbly knuckles gave away the truth of her advanced age. Hillary guessed that it was probably a cause of serious discontent that, short of wearing gloves, she couldn’t hide this small distraction from her otherwise impressive charms.

  ‘It was teatime of that day, I think,’ Vanessa began to talk quickly. ‘Yes, because Randy came in from the fields at his usual time, and told me that the police cars were swarming around Sylvia’s cottage like wasps around a jam pot. It didn’t take long for us to find out why, of course. News gets around the village quicker than anything on the internet, I can tell you.’ She gave what was supposed to be a mock-rueful laugh, but which came out as slightly bitter.

  And Hillary could guess why.

  How often must this woman have been the butt of the rumour mill around here? She couldn’t see the lesser female mortals in the small hamlet taking kindly to Randy Gibson’s attractive spouse.

  ‘And you were shocked and surprised?’ Hillary put in smoothly.

  ‘Oh of course I was. You don’t expect it, that sort of thing, do you?’ Vanessa’s wide brown eyes widened even further. ‘I mean, in a sleepy, out-of-the-way place like this? In the cities, well…. You see the news and read the papers. But here? I mean, here? Of all the places you’d think it was boringly safe….’

  Hillary nodded. She could have told the woman that nobody was safe, anywhere, anytime, but who liked a Jeremiah? ‘Being such a very tight-knit community, I’m sure that everyone had a theory as to who could have done it. And why?’ she said craftily instead.

  ‘Well, yes. And no,’ Vanessa Gibson said, shuffling a little uneasily on her seat. ‘I mean, our cleaning lady was convinced that it was the same gang of thieves who were responsible for some thefts over Rousham way. That’s another village, the other side of the valley. A couple of months prior to Sylvia … dying … a group of men in a big van were responsible for hitting several empty cottages and getting away with all sorts of stuff. Furniture, jewellery, televisions, that sort of thing. Rousham’s a farming community like ours, and there were a lot of empty places about during the day, and nobody to see them at it, or stop them.’

  Hillary nodded. She’d read about this incident in DI Jarvis’s report. ‘But that gang were later caught, and it was proved that they hadn’t been anywhere near Caulcott at the time,’ she reminded her gently.

  Vanessa nodded a shade impatiently. ‘Yes, we heard, but that all happened much later on. A few months later, I think it was. At the time it was the most popular theory around and we all thought it, pretty much.’

  ‘Even though nobody had seen strangers around, or reported a strange van or car?’

  Vanessa looked away uneasily from Hillary’s enquiring eyes, and shrugged, taking a sip of her coffee.

  Hillary let it ride, although she’d have bet a month’s salary that Vanessa, for one, had never believed in the gang of robbers for one moment.

  ‘But there were other theories too, I expect?’ Hillary pressed on, careful to keep her voice light and pleasant, taking a sip of coffee and behaving as if they were two new friends having a chat at a coffee morning. ‘Human nature being what it is, and all,’ she added guilelessly.

  ‘Oh yes, some of them more off the wall than others,’ Vanessa agreed, again with an unconvincing laugh. ‘The postman – I think it was the postman…. Or maybe it was Stan Barber … anyway, the postman thought that a member of her family must have killed her. He said that nearly every murder victim turned out to have been killed by either their spouse or a close family member. Is that actually true?’ she asked, her eyes giving lie to the throw-away nature of the question.

  Unless Hillary was much mistaken – and she usually wasn’t – there was a certain hint of strain in her voice, a shade too much tension as she spoke, that convinced Hillary that Vanessa was desperate to hear the answer.

  ‘Statistically that’s probably true,’ Hillary agreed carefully. ‘So called stranger-murders are rarer, and usually involve muggings gone wrong, or are the result of sexual attacks or drug-related, gang violence. The last two of those scenarios don’t apply in this case of course, and since nothing was stolen from Sylvia�
�s house …’ She let herself shrug. ‘The first doesn’t seem likely either.’

  ‘So it was one of the family?’ Vanessa asked, again a shade too eagerly. Perhaps she realized it herself, for she flushed a little and took a gulp of coffee to cover it.

  ‘We’re not saying that, Mrs— Vanessa,’ Hillary said, a touch sharply. ‘But we’re certainly not ruling out the idea that Sylvia knew her attacker. We’re working on the assumption that Mrs Perkins let the perpetrator in, since there was no sign of a forced entry. And she’d hardly have been likely to let a stranger into her house, would she?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that, if I were you,’ Vanessa contradicted stubbornly. ‘She never kept her doors locked, you know. None of them did. So anybody could have just walked in, if they’d thought to try the door.’

  ‘None of them?’

  Vanessa shrugged carelessly. ‘All the old biddies who live around here. There were quite a few of them – Sylvia, that dotty cat woman, Freddie de la Mare, and so on. They’re all much of that same generation, which grew up in an age when it was safe to walk alone at night, and you could just pop round to a neighbour’s house for a cup of tea and leave your door wide open.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hillary nodded. ‘Well, we’ll be talking to her friends and neighbours soon enough,’ she said peaceably. ‘So, what did you think of Sylvia?’ Hillary zeroed in suddenly and without warning. Beside her, she could sense Jake suddenly tense up. ‘I understand she wasn’t particularly fond of your husband,’ she added quietly.

  Vanessa Gibson didn’t actually jump, but after a frozen moment, she gave a brief, slightly grim, smile. ‘No. I know she wasn’t,’ she admitted openly. Then she sighed heavily, shot a quick glance at Jake, who pretended to be interested in his slice of cake, and shook her head. ‘She blamed poor Randy for Joe dying in the saddle, so to speak. But everyone knew that was unfair,’ she added, unable to keep the aggrieved exasperation out of her voice even now, years after the event. ‘Joe practically begged Randy to let him carry on working. If you ask me, he just wanted an excuse to get out of the house. I mean, how could it be Randy’s fault, really? Joe should have said if he wasn’t feeling well. But he seemed fine that morning. And heart attacks are notoriously sudden, aren’t they? They just hit you out of the blue and there’s nothing anyone can do. But Sylvia just wouldn’t have it.’