A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ Den continued, ‘but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to fetch me the clothes you were wearing this afternoon. We’ll need them for laboratory analysis, you see. And please show me any firearms you have in your possession.’

  The Speedwells stared at him in utter bewilderment. Ted looked down at himself. ‘But … these is them. I mean, I’ve still got ’em on. And us’s never had no gun.’

  The wife brayed a sudden horrified laugh. ‘You think my Ted killed Sean O’Farrell?’

  ‘At the moment we don’t know what to think,’ Den said stiltedly. ‘But unless you can tell me that you were off the farm all afternoon, with witnesses to back you up, I’m afraid we’ll have to include you in our investigations.’

  Gently setting the cat onto the hearthrug, Ted finally struggled out of his chair. Den could see clear signs of an arthritic hip and a stiff shoulder, both on the same side. He took note of the garments and let the man limp upstairs to change out of them, without supervision. He could see no trace of blood or mud or muck on trousers or jacket, and with a faint sigh he asked Mrs Speedwell if he could quickly look through her unwashed laundry while they waited.

  ‘Why’d you want to do that?’ she asked, before comprehension dawned. ‘Oh, I see now. You think he might have had Sean’s blood on his trousers and put them in the wash. Come on, then,’ she invited, her tone long-suffering.

  She took him into a small scullery behind the kitchen, where an ancient twin-tub washing machine was tucked under a cream-coloured draining board. A red plastic basket contained items waiting to be washed. None of them could conceivably be construed as Ted’s working clothes. While it was possible that incriminating garments could have been removed and disposed of since the attack on O’Farrell, Den had no jurisdiction to search for them. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘What about me?’ she asked him. ‘Don’t you want to know where I’ve been all day?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ he said severely.

  ‘Good. Well, I was out at work. I’m a dinner lady at the little school, the one on the corner as you get onto the Tavistock road.’

  Now why doesn’t that surprise me? Den smiled to himself: Mrs Speedwell had to be the most typical dinner lady in the whole world. ‘What time did you get home?’ he asked her.

  ‘Quarter to three,’ she said. ‘Had to wait for a lift, so I was a bit later than usual.’

  Mindful of his colleague and their suspect freezing in the car, Den kept his visit short. As soon as Ted returned with the clothes, he bagged them up, labelled them, and made his departure. ‘You’ll be seeing me again in a day or two, I expect,’ he warned them, as he left. ‘Please don’t leave the neighbourhood without informing us.’ He handed them a card and left, fully aware of the disruption his visit had caused.

  ‘Okay, Mike, hit the road, mate,’ he said, slamming the car door.

  They drove as fast as the twisting lanes with treacherous icy patches would allow. Den felt the presence of Lilah’s new lover behind him like a gun trained on his spine. He felt queasy being in the same car as the man. Resist as he might, he couldn’t evade the images of the two together. Lilah had been his. She had been his future wife; they had had special private jokes together, plans and dreams constructed jointly. He wondered whether the sensation of being dropped over a very high cliff would ever entirely go away. It still made no sense to him, even after three months. Some stupid cosmic mistake had occurred, and one day soon everything would come right again.

  Perhaps that would be sooner than he had ever dared to hope. If Gordon Hillcock was in custody awaiting trail for murder, for instance, things might come right quite quickly. And if he was tried and found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years or so in prison, everything would come very right indeed.

  Deirdre described the events at Dunsworthy to her husband over a late supper.

  ‘More than I bargained for today,’ she began. ‘I was at Dunsworthy – you know, Gordon Hillcock’s place.’ Robin worked for a company selling gates and fences, and therefore had a working knowledge of most farms in the area.

  ‘Mmm,’ he answered, with his back to her. He’d had his own supper hours earlier, and was now tinkering unprofitably with a broken radio on one of the kitchen worktops. ‘You’re certainly very late. Did you have to help with a calving again?’

  ‘Just the opposite, actually.’ Her tone filtered through to him and he turned to face her.

  ‘Something died?’

  ‘Someone, as it happens. Sean – the herdsman. Gordon found his body while I was there. I called the police.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ He stared at her in shock. ‘What happened? Heart or something, I suppose?’

  ‘Much more dramatic than that. He’d been attacked. Covered in blood. Been scrabbling about in the barn with some lame cows. It was horrible, Rob. And I was so cool and calm, I scared myself.’

  ‘You’re always like that,’ he said distractedly, still trying to grasp what she was telling him. ‘Like when Matthew fell off the swing and blacked out.’ It was a famous family story and Deirdre smiled weakly. Robbie’s attention was now fully on her. His questions continued, ‘What do you mean, he’d been attacked?’

  ‘It looked like he’d been stabbed. Or possibly shot, though the police didn’t seem to think that. In his stomach. There was blood everywhere.’

  ‘So you said.’ He blinked and rubbed a hand over his bald patch. ‘This is going to mean real trouble for Dunsworthy. Are you going back in the morning?’

  She put her fork down, and laid both hands flat on the table. It was a gesture of sudden trepidation. ‘I’ll have to, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But I admit I don’t fancy it, not if Gordon’s milking. I don’t know how I’ll face him after the way he behaved this afternoon.’

  ‘Why? What on earth did he do?’

  She hesitated. ‘He went to pieces, basically. Completely turned to jelly. It was me who had to phone the police and organise everything.’

  Robin looked into her face reproachfully. ‘He’d just found a body covered in blood,’ he said. ‘Isn’t he entitled to go into shock? I know I would. Not everybody’s like you, remember. Shock does all sorts of weird things to people. I don’t see why it should make you think worse of him.’

  She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t just shock. He was – horror-struck. He didn’t know what to do with himself.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, before bursting out, ‘I think he did it, Robin. I think Gordon killed Sean. I mean – he must have done it. There’s no one else. And it fits with how he was and what he said. At first he was very white and sort of ghastly, but I think that was because he hadn’t expected to find Sean in the barn. The policeman thinks he was attacked outside somewhere and staggered in there, pouring blood, and died in the straw. There was blood smeared on the door. They were talking about taking him in for questioning, when I left.’

  Robin leant hard on both hands, facing her across the table. ‘But you like Hillcock. Much more than you like – liked – Sean. Did you say all this to the police?’

  She shook her head. ‘They didn’t really ask me. Not whether I thought he’d done it. But I expect they thought the same as me.’

  ‘What a thing,’ her husband murmured, shaking his head. ‘Just shows, doesn’t it – you never know what’s going on behind closed doors.’

  ‘Not closed doors exactly,’ she corrected him. ‘But out of sight, yes. It all feels so unreal. Anyway, if the police have got Gordon, I don’t think they’ll let him go. He did seem rather … unpredictable.’

  ‘So he’s not likely to be doing the milking in the morning, is he?’ said Robin reasonably.

  ‘But someone’s got to.’

  ‘They’ll call an emergency relief person. In which case, you’ll be very useful. But surely there are other people living there? I thought it was one of those places with three or four houses dotted about.’

  ‘There’s a tractor driv
er chap, Ted, who I hardly ever see. I don’t think he’s ever milked. And neither of the Hillcock women seem interested. And on top of everything else, my computer packed up on me. I’ve brought everything home so I can enter the weights on the parlour sheets. Bloody nuisance, that is. Not that Gordon’s going to care about not getting his printout.’ She frowned at her husband. There was such a lot she needed to tell him, to make him understand. Fortunately his attention was thoroughly caught, and he showed no sign of wanting to make his usual quick exit. ‘Except,’ she went on slowly, deliberately, ‘he told me he wanted it done. Hinted he might have to sell up after this. At least that’s what I took him to mean. It’s no good – I’ll have to go back and see what they’ve got organised.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d be desperate to go back and find out what’s happening,’ he grinned feebly at her. ‘Nosy cow like you.’

  ‘Very funny,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s not a joke, Rob. It was all a very nasty shock.’ She stared down at her hands, which had begun to shake. ‘Look!’ she drew his attention to them. ‘I’m shaking.’

  ‘Delayed reaction. It was bound to catch up with you. Go and have a bath and get to bed early,’ he advised. ‘I really don’t think you should go back tomorrow.’ He scratched his head. ‘Can’t you ask Carol what to do?’

  Carol was the Area Field Manager, to whom Deirdre was responsible. She tried to imagine what she would say in the phone call, and decided it was not a good idea to call her. Word would get out soon enough, and Deirdre would have time to hone her account of how it had been at the scene of a murder. She would gladly tell the story a hundred times, once she was good and ready. But for the moment, she preferred to keep her own counsel.

  ‘I’m not phoning Carol tonight,’ she decided. ‘I’ll just turn up as usual in the morning. They start at five-thirty, which isn’t too bad. I’ll just enter up these yields and then go to bed. Okay?’

  Robin blinked at her, typically non-committal. Whatever Deirdre decided to do, there was nothing he could usefully say about it. She never asked for his permission, or even took much account of his preferences, when deciding on a course of action. He nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and be quiet when I come up. Is Sam in tonight?’

  She winced, trying to suppress the surge of irritation at the question. She’d only been home half an hour, while Robin had been there since six. How should she know what Sam was doing? An eighteen-year-old daughter was very much a law unto itself, and Deirdre had given up trying to monitor her movements. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said tightly.

  The slamming of a car door outside answered the question for both of them. Their daughter had come home. A few moments later, the kitchen door opened, with a swirl of cold air, and a muffled figure appeared.

  Nobody spoke, other than the usual murmur of greetings. Deirdre acknowledged the habitual loosening of tension at the knowledge that the girl was safely home, but made no attempt to speak. It was a mild surprise when Sam plonked herself down at the table, without removing coat or scarf. ‘We found a dead otter on the road. Down by the river.’

  Robin hissed an inarticulate gasp of sorrow, which Deirdre recognised as expressing a deeper grief than he had shown for Sean O’Farrell. ‘Don’t they hibernate in winter?’ he asked with a frown.

  ‘Not really,’ Sam informed him. ‘They still have to eat.’

  ‘Did a car hit it?’

  ‘We’re not sure. Jeremy’s taken it for examination. We think it’s more likely they’ve been lamping again. Like the badgers last week.’

  ‘Lamping otters?’ Deirdre echoed. ‘How horrible.’

  Lamping was a growing practice, receiving media attention for the first time in history. It was a quick and easy way to kill wild animals – assuming you could find them to start with. Just shine a bright light in their faces and shoot them while they freeze in bewilderment. Not very sporting, by any reckoning – merely an effective means of destruction, and one which drove conservationists to a frenzy.

  ‘A lot of country people don’t like otters any more than badgers,’ said Robin.

  ‘I know that, Dad,’ Sam said, with exaggerated patience. ‘What do you think the group’s trying to do? We spend more time than anything else, talking to people, persuading them there’s room for wild animals as well as farm stock. But it’s all going crazy just now. It’s total war out there. The cull’s the final straw.’

  ‘I’m very sorry about the otter,’ Robin said placatingly. ‘Now, your mother’s had a nasty experience today, and she’s going to bed. No loud telly, okay?’

  Deirdre waited in vain for Sam to enquire about her nasty experience. After a minute she left the room to fetch her boxes of pots from the car, wondering whether Robin would tell Sam the story. She filled in the yields in the small jumbled back room that they used for various hobbies, and then went up to bed.

  When she got the recording job, she’d suggested she should sleep in a separate room because of the disruptive hours, but Robin wouldn’t hear of it. To his credit, he had never complained at the alarm going off at three and four in the morning, twelve times a month. Less to his credit, he still hadn’t mastered the technique necessary to get himself to bed two hours later than his wife, without waking her.

  Robin did not tell his daughter about Sean O’Farrell’s death. She didn’t enquire, and he was unsure of how the narrative should be pitched. Deirdre had seemed upset, as anyone would, but he found himself wondering at certain aspects of the way she’d behaved. He’d watched her hands, as he often did, marvelling at their sinewy strength. They were her best feature, somehow revealing more of her character than her rather immobile face. Even before the milk recording job, she’d been deft at anything practical – needlework, rug-making, gardening. She’d erected fences, tinkered with car engines. She was quick and sure in her movements, often reducing Robin to little more than a passive observer.

  When she’d drawn his attention to the shaking, he’d already noticed it. And also that her hands had been perfectly steady only seconds before.

  In the Dunsworthy cottages, Sean O’Farrell’s death was naturally the sole topic of conversation. Mary Hillcock listened patiently while Heather O’Farrell bemoaned her fate in a repetitive litany of self-pitying complaints. At least, Mary made a show of patience, which belied her real feelings. Although Heather showed no sign of wondering who had killed Sean – which was bizarre in itself – Mary’s head was throbbing with the inescapable impression that it had been her brother’s work.

  ‘We’ll have to leave here, won’t we?’ Heather was saying. ‘How long have we got, do you think? Mary, will you ask Gordon to give us until the summer? Where will we go? I’m never going to be able to work, not like this. And Abigail – she’s got her GCSEs next year. I can’t make her change schools now.’ The questions piled up without pause for an answer, the voice tinny and jarring on Mary’s ear.

  ‘I’m sure everything’s going to be all right,’ she said, her tone brusque in spite of herself. She got up to put another log on the fire. ‘You’re covered by the law, anyway. We can’t just throw you out into the cold, even if we wanted to.’

  ‘Not you,’ Heather protested, eyes widening. ‘I don’t mean you, Mary. Everybody knows that Gordon runs the farm and you’ve got your own work. I hardly even think of you as one of the Hillcocks.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mary, unable to ignore the irony. She wanted to thrust her face into Heather’s and scream What about me? What about my mother? If Gordon’s sent to prison, what are we supposed to do? But she didn’t. She lapsed into another silence and let Heather carry on moaning.

  Next door, Ted and Jilly Speedwell were sitting side by side on their sagging old sofa, taking no notice of the television that was trying to interest them in the amusing antics of king penguins. ‘Poor old Sean,’ Jilly sighed, for the third time. ‘Whoever would have thought it?’

  Ted made no comment.

  ‘The police had Gordon in the car with them,’ she continu
ed – another remark she had made several times already. ‘So who’s going to do the milking tomorrow? You?’

  Ted shrugged. ‘Haven’t milked for eight, nine years,’ he muttered. ‘Not since the old man died.’

  ‘I know what – they’ll have phoned that girl, Gordon’s new girlfriend. She’ll know how to do it. She comes from Redstone, where they had the Jerseys until a year or so ago.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Ted.

  ‘It’ll be all round the district by tomorrow,’ Jilly marvelled. ‘And in the paper. Telly too, probably. Devon Farmer Charged With Murder. What’ll happen to us, Ted? What’ll happen to Dunsworthy?’

  Ted closed his eyes. ‘Who knows?’ he said miserably. Jilly heard the fear in his voice, and gave him a sharp look.

  ‘What? What’s worrying you?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ he demanded, suddenly angry. ‘Why’d they take my clothes like that? What if Gordon can prove he was somewhere else all afternoon? Who’ll be main suspect, then?’ He stared at her, a hunted look in his eyes.

  Jilly reached over and patted his knee reassuringly. ‘They must be thorough, my lover. They don’t know anything about us, after all,’ she said. ‘They’ll see soon enough that it could never have been you. Don’t you go worrying about that.’

  ‘You can’t be sure,’ he insisted, and she saw that he wasn’t entirely easy with her ready dismissal of the idea, as if she’d demeaned him with her implication that he wasn’t capable of killing. She smiled a little at the irrepressible male ego that felt the need to be judged up to the job, even when it was murder.

  ‘So,’ she continued, a little anxious now, ‘where were ’ee this afternoon, then?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘I was mainly around the yard. The muck spreader needed a new tailboard and Sean helped me put it on – that was before dinner, and then we changed the filters on the tractor. After dinner we only saw each other for a minute, then he went off somewhere. Gordon had swapped the milking, see. It was an afternoon off for Sean, and he said he was going to make sure he spent it doing something he’d been wanting to for a long time.’