A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  The meeting was opened: a local activist made an impassioned speech, stating the obvious. The NFU man strove to tread a middle path, throwing all possible blame onto Brussels and not the national government. Individual farmers got up and told their individual stories, often heartbreaking in their accounts of expenditure exceeding income, month after month and perfectly good cows costing more to keep than they could ever hope to bring in with their milk.

  Gordon said nothing, but he was glad he’d come. He was amongst peers, men who shared his lifestyle and who had no difficulty in understanding what was important. If they thought he’d murdered Sean O’Farrell, they weren’t losing any sleep over it, and they certainly weren’t going to break ranks and try to ostracise him for it. It was as if they’d nodded an acknowledgement of Sean’s death, with fleeting regret, concern, puzzlement, and then moved on. They lived for the here and now. This, anyway, was how Gordon Hillcock chose to see it. At the end of the meeting he voted for a petition calling for special urgent recognition of the situation, to be handed in at Downing Street, with renewed efforts to get serious media coverage. But a picture came into his mind of Arthur Scargill and his distraught miners in the eighties, and he knew it was all futile.

  He got home in the early afternoon, after a pleasant lunch with his colleagues, feeling for the first time that life just might settle back into the old groove, in spite of Sean’s death. His mother and sister were at home, and Lilah’s Astra was in the yard, although she was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked his sister.

  ‘There’s been something going on outside,’ Mary told him. ‘It’s just one bloody thing after another these days.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. Apart from that wretched badger the other night, I’ve been doing a very good job of staying out of the action. I promise you, that’s how I prefer it.’

  Gordon’s mood took a nose dive. ‘But where’s Lilah?’ he asked again.

  ‘I told you,’ Mary shouted at him. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And you don’t bloody care a toss, either, do you?’ he shouted back. ‘The whole place could burn down and you’d just stand there making cakes and taking no fucking notice.’

  She faced him squarely. ‘Why the hell should I care? I’ve got no stake in the farm. All it is to me is a great black hole swallowing up practically everything I earn – and for what? The whole thing’s finished, can’t you see? Didn’t they tell you that at your meeting this morning? We’ve got two years at most, the way things are going. Everybody knows it, why can’t you admit it? Without Sean, it’ll probably be less.’

  Gordon’s eyes bulged. His younger sister had always known how to enrage him, how to press the button that ran straight to his nerve endings. One of the very few people in the world who wouldn’t be afraid to confront him with unsavoury truths, she always chose her moment unerringly.

  ‘What the hell difference would Sean have made?’ he blustered. ‘There’s about five hundred redundant herdsmen out there, all looking for work. I just have to snap my fingers and any one of them would start work tomorrow.’

  ‘So why haven’t you?’

  He sneered in her face. ‘That question’s too stupid to bother answering.’

  ‘Hey, you two – what’s all this about?’ Their mother was in the living room doorway, the usual detached expression on her face. Both her offspring had learnt decades ago that it was useless to appeal to her in such circumstances for protection or arbitration. ‘Sort it out for yourselves,’ was her usual line.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gordon muttered, and went into the kitchen, intending to make himself a cup of tea. The oak table was stained with spills from the past forty years, the grain embedded with grey streaks. He traced a finger along the decorative edging groove, as he’d done since early boyhood, sulky and defensive now as he had so often been then.

  ‘Gordon thinks I ought to take more interest in the farm,’ Mary said. ‘He doesn’t think it’s enough that I pour almost all my money into the place.’

  Before Claudia could make any attempt at a conciliatory reply, the back door banged and Lilah came in through the scullery. She was wearing thick socks on her feet, and unzipped her jacket as the family watched her.

  ‘Gordon,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were back. Did they tell you what’s been going on here?’ She looked round the three faces, eagerness and self-importance making her seem impossibly young to them all.

  Gordon shook his head.

  ‘Den came back to speak to Ted, and they found a lot of dead calves down in the tractor shed. Sean must have been keeping them for himself – a little sideline. No ear-tags, of course.’ She paused, suddenly aware of the prickly silence in the room. ‘We told him there was no way you could have known about them,’ she faltered.

  Gordon got slowly to his feet. ‘Dead calves? Where did they come from?’

  ‘They must have been yours. All those bulls, born in November, remember? He must have pretended to shoot them and kept them on stolen milk, locked away. When he died, they all starved. Except one. Ted’s trying to save it, but it’s pretty far gone.’

  Mary was the first to notice Gordon’s mounting rage. Even she, his brave sister, took a small step away from him.

  ‘And that police boyfriend of yours saw them?’

  Lilah refused to be baited. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘So now I’ve got another reason to have wanted Sean out of the way. Didn’t that occur to you?’

  She gazed at him in bewilderment. ‘But you didn’t know about it. If you had, you’d have made him get rid of them, or tag them, wouldn’t you? Nobody in their right mind could think you’d kill him just for that.’

  Without further warning, Gordon brought his fist down on the table with such force that the extending flap screeched against its sliding mechanism and a plate at the other end crashed to the ground. Claudia gave a cry of alarm and Lilah went white. ‘You’ll frighten Granny if you do that,’ said Mary calmly. ‘Pull yourself together, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’ he demanded. ‘With all this going on, it’s one bloody thing after another.’

  From upstairs, they heard Granny Hillcock knocking on the floor with a stick. ‘There – I told you,’ said Mary. ‘You can jolly well go up to her and explain. And don’t come back until you’re in a better mood.’

  With no further argument, Gordon did as she ordered. The three women breathed sighs of relief at his departure. Lilah attempted a giggle. ‘He’s just like my father used to be,’ she said. ‘I guess that’s farmers for you.’

  Mary glowered at her. ‘I can’t think what you see in him. All he does is throw his weight about. Great big bully.’

  ‘He’s not,’ said Claudia softly. ‘He’s being pushed too far by this business with Sean. It must be terrible knowing you’re under suspicion for such a thing. You shouldn’t needle him, Mary. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Since when was anything around here fair?’ Mary demanded; nobody made any effort to reply.

  Gordon came back within ten minutes and Lilah went to him, as if drawn by a magnet. He sat in a wide carver’s chair and she leant against him, inhaling the strong smell of his skin and hair. The presence of his mother and sister mattered little to her in these moments. Gordon raised his head and put his arm tightly round her waist. She met his gaze steadily, seeking to rekindle the sexual passion that had been so strong between them only days before. She put out a hand to grasp his and then let him draw it to his cheek in an old-fashioned gesture of intimacy. Her whole body throbbed at his touch. She cupped his jaw in her palm, rubbing the scratchy stubble. Gordon only shaved every two or three days and his abrasive chin was highly sensual. His blue eyes, deep-set beneath arched brows, were fixed on hers. But the knowledge of the events of the past days lay between them. Lilah imagined she knew the circles his thoughts were whirling around in, the guesses and suspicions that preoccupied him. Does she really think I di
d it? Will people think we did it together? Will anything ever be the same again?

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Mary chided them, clearly embarrassed. ‘Let’s have none of that.’

  ‘You sound like an old maiden aunt,’ Gordon told her, looking around Lilah at his sister. ‘Go get yourself a boyfriend, why don’t you? Maybe that’d loosen you up a bit.’

  The unkindness, following so quickly on his noisy violence, disturbed Lilah and she withdrew from him. He’s just upset about the calves, she assured herself. He isn’t usually like this.

  ‘I don’t need loosening up, thanks very much,’ Mary responded tightly. After a moment’s clattering at the sink, she wiped her hands roughly on a towel hanging over the Aga and left the room, her face averted awkwardly. Claudia remained in her own chair for a moment, and then slowly got up.

  ‘I’d better get some notes written up,’ she murmured. ‘Can’t sit here all day.’

  Lilah and Gordon let the door close behind Claudia before indulging in a long, hungry kiss. Lilah felt the split between mind and body as a painful conflict. If only we could leave it all to our bodies, she lamented to herself. Instead, she spoke her mind. ‘You’ve made Mary cry,’ she said. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘She always was a cry-baby.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad I never had a big brother, if this is what they’re like. Poor Mary, with you still on at her, at her age.’

  ‘She knows what she can do about it.’

  ‘Except she can’t, because you need her money to keep this place running,’ Lilah rashly reminded him. The scowl that greeted her words made her heart thump painfully, for two or three fearful beats. But she stiffened her spine and resolved not to be afraid of him, just as she’d done with her father. This was the man she had chosen, and everything was going to be all right. She faced him steadily. ‘It’s the same for everybody these days. Farming isn’t self-sustaining for anyone. It’s bound to get better, though. It goes in cycles. We did history of agriculture last term, and you should hear what it was like in the 1880s!’

  ‘It’s a bloody mess at the moment,’ he agreed, relaxing into a more familiar gloom. ‘But never mind that. Come here.’ He tightened his arm, drawing her closer, and she moved irresistibly into his embrace. After a moment she sat on his lap in a conjunction they often adopted. Gordon had substantial thighs and a broad chest. Lilah was slight and fitted his contours very neatly. She closed her mind against a sudden image of Den, ten inches taller than her, wrapping himself around her in a very different way.

  ‘What happens next with the police?’ she asked him suddenly.

  He drew back his head to focus on her face, eyebrows raised. ‘We don’t have to talk about that, do we?’

  ‘We do,’ she insisted. ‘What do you think’ll happen?’

  ‘If they think they can find enough evidence to bring a charge against me, I’ll probably be held in custody until it comes to trial. That would be months.’ He shivered and leant his head on her shoulder. ‘And that’d be the end of this place.’

  ‘That should be part of your defence,’ she said eagerly. ‘You’d have to be crazy to risk wrecking everything here in a moment of anger.’

  He huffed a cynical laugh. ‘I don’t think murderers often consider the consequences of what they do. It’s a pretty stupid career move, whoever you are.’

  ‘They won’t charge you,’ she assured him. ‘It’s only Den being so jealous that’s got you listed as chief suspect. If they had more manpower, he’d never have been allowed on the case at all. It’s quite unprofessional, as it is.’ She thought a moment. ‘But he’s not going to invent evidence, however jealous he is. So I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the long run.’

  ‘Poor old Den.’ Gordon smiled strangely. ‘He must hate my guts. I know I would in his place.’

  Lilah wriggled. ‘These things happen,’ she said softly.

  Briskly he pushed her off his lap and patted her bottom. ‘Come on. Ma’s right, there’s work to be done. Ted’s not supposed to be doing anything today, and I left him all the yard work when I went off to that meeting. I’ll have to make up for it this afternoon, before milking.’

  ‘Do you want me to stick around? I don’t have to be anywhere.’

  ‘Are you staying the night, then?’

  ‘If I’m invited,’ she said primly. For invitation, she received another deep kiss, his tongue thrusting thick and solid into her mouth, his hands large on her back. As he let her go, he cupped one breast, holding it tight for a moment, hurting and inflaming her in equal measure.

  Den wrote up his report on the dead calves after a snatched lunch. He tried to get a grasp of the suspected scheme that Lilah had described, wondering just how Sean could have hoped to get away with it or indeed make any money out of it. With bull calves worth nothing, it seemed an odd sort of scam to be operating, but he assumed there must be some expectation of profit. Although not acquainted with market prices for veal or beef, he supposed that a bullock of a year or so in age, reared on rich Devon grass, would fetch a few hundred pounds. Given that there’d be no need to buy fodder for it, this would be clear profit and no doubt worth the risk involved in keeping such animals hidden from sight.

  ‘But why not be upfront about it?’ he wondered aloud, talking to the pad in front of him. ‘Would anybody have stopped him, if he’d asked Gordon for some milk and a shed to keep them in?’

  ‘Talking to yourself?’ Danny Hemsley put his head around the office door.

  ‘Look at this,’ Den invited him, showing him the report.

  ‘I bet Hillcock would have made him pay for them,’ he said, after reading it quickly and asking a couple of questions. ‘But you’re right – it seems a funny sort of trick to pull, right on the boss’s doorstep. Surely he never meant to keep them until they were grown up? How would he hide them?’

  ‘Beyond me,’ Den admitted. ‘And whatever he thought he was doing, the poor little beasts died a very nasty death.’

  The DI examined a stubby fingernail, thoughtfully, clearly not satisfied that the matter could be dropped. ‘How would you say this fitted with O’Farrell’s murder?’ he asked.

  Den shook his head slowly in defeat. ‘I can’t see that it does. Only if Hillcock knew what he was doing, and was so disgusted by it, it drove him to homicide. But if he had known, he would have fed the calves after Sean was dead, so he can’t have known. And if he didn’t know, it can’t possibly be a motive for the killing.’

  ‘What if someone else knew about it?’

  ‘Ted Speedwell, you mean? I’d swear by all that’s holy he had no idea.’

  ‘Not necessarily him. There’s all those women around the place. Four of them, if you don’t count the old granny. Five if you count the girlfriend.’

  ‘I can’t make it fit, whichever way you look at it. How could keeping illegal bobby calves have any connection with O’Farrell’s death?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the DI in exasperation. ‘But I think you should do everything you can to find out. There might be something you’ve missed. This case is going to slip through our fingers at this rate. I can feel it – these local farm crimes are always messy. Things are hardly ever what they seem, and even if they are, it’s the devil’s own job to prove it. If we went by your gut feelings and brought Hillcock in and charged him, he’d get off. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Den.

  Lilah was in bed before Gordon, waiting with naked openness for his attentions, committed in every cell to whatever sensations he chose to inflict on her. Despite the slight awkwardness arising from the presence in the house of Claudia and Mary, Lilah felt no embarrassment in sleeping in Gordon’s bed. It was a generous queen-sized double, abandoned by Claudia when widowed and it made for luxurious sexual activity. The thick mattress was unfashionably soft, and the many woollen blankets took all the sting out of winter nights in an underheated house.

  Gordon always slept naked, his broad, hairy body gi
ving off heat which drew Lilah to him even in her sleep. She curled up against him, loving the round fuzzy contours of his belly. He was liberally covered all over with hair – arms, legs, back, as well as chest and stomach. Even his pubic hair was thick and bushy. Much of it was beginning to turn grey, while some remained dark brown, giving him a mottled appearance that she had labelled ‘brindle’ – the multi-coloured hue of some dogs. To lay her hands on Gordon’s naked body – which never seemed really naked because of the hair – was a simple but powerful pleasure for her.

  He had silvery puckered scars under the hair on his stomach, which she had found on the first time in bed together. ‘What happened here?’ she had asked in concern.

  ‘Oh, just some childhood thing,’ he replied airily. ‘They removed my spleen. It all settled down in no time. I never even think of it.’

  ‘But …’ She’d tried to remember what role the spleen played, what the implications might be of not having one. Gordon had put his large hand across her mouth.

  ‘I was fourteen,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never missed it. Don’t I seem healthy to you?’

  He did, of course, and she obediently thrust the whole thing from her mind.

  He was sixteen years older than she was, an age gap almost exactly the same as that between her own parents. Gordon had a past; he could remember things from long before she was born, and he had the compelling power of the mature man. Gordon Hillcock’s body was the thing that mattered most in the world to her. It was like having a secret source of wonderful food, or like having a million pounds hidden away in a hollow tree. She could go and tap into this joyous elixir any time she liked.