A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  Gordon would be finishing off outside within the next half hour, and coming in for his breakfast – assuming all the usual routines applied. Lilah knew she hadn’t the courage to face him, had nothing coherent to say to him. But neither could she remove herself from the scene entirely. There seemed to be only one option left and she got her coat and walked out, heading for the road. She would spend all day walking round the fields, if necessary, waiting for something to happen.

  Her thoughts were unfocused, no longer trying to find another person to blame for Sean’s murder. The actions and conclusions of the police seemed irrelevant now, impossibly far behind the reality of what was happening. They worked on a different plane, where facts outweighed emotions and there was always an eye on the legal convolutions ahead. None of that mattered to Lilah now. She couldn’t even contemplate the implications for her own future, beyond the terror she felt at the imminent confrontation with Gordon. In her mind he loomed like a massive barrage balloon, his face close to hers, full of rage and pain and pleading. He was lost, that boy who’d been in hospital for six months with some sort of cancer and could surely never have been the same again afterwards? She knew enough about psychology and childhood trauma to understand that suppression of the experience had undermined and corrupted the whole Hillcock family for the past twenty-five years.

  She grieved for that boy, who she had frequently glimpsed beneath the skin of the adult Gordon. She had been right to love him; right to defend him against other people’s uncomprehending scorn. She had even seen, without realising it, the lurking death wish, the abiding suspicion that he should have died in his teens and that his survival was some kind of oversight. Granny had shone a light on this, and more, with her willing recollections. It had been as if she had just been waiting to be asked, all these years.

  There was a light on in the O’Farrell house. As she approached the road, she saw the school bus arrive and pause, evidently to collect Abigail. Heather would be alone in the house, preparing to face another day. Some sense of sisterhood drew Lilah towards the light and the unlocked front door. She didn’t even think to knock, but just pushed it open and walked in.

  Heather was in the kitchen, washing up, standing straight-backed, her chin high. ‘Hello,’ said Lilah in a small voice.

  Heather turned round smoothly, appearing neither surprised nor afraid. ‘Yes?’ she said, as if Lilah were a travelling salesman.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’

  ‘If you must. I was going out shopping. There’s no food in the house, and I’ve had enough of sitting around, letting my life run down the drain.’

  ‘You look a lot better.’

  Heather laughed. ‘Well, so I am. It’s the relief, I expect.’

  ‘Relief?’

  ‘Knowing they’ve caught the one that killed Sean. Funny what a difference it makes.’

  Lilah wished she could muster her thoughts and then keep them under control. She could barely remember how everyone had been reacting before the events of the night. She spoke hesitantly, groping for words. ‘I was talking to old Mrs Hillcock just now. She remembers when you had Abby. She said she used to come and play with her.’

  ‘Poor lady. She lost two of her own, you know. She never really got over it, after all these years.’

  Lilah forced herself to think of Sean. Strangely he didn’t seem important any more. ‘When I came to see you before … you were trying to tell me that Sean wasn’t Abby’s father, weren’t you?’

  ‘Sean never could cope with sex,’ Heather supplied readily. ‘Didn’t like anything to do with bodies. Touching, letting himself go. We only tried it a few times.’

  ‘Did you mind?’

  The woman’s features drooped, returning her to the semi-invalid that Lilah recognised. ‘It was the pretending, mainly. He forced me to pretend we were just like other couples. Said he’d leave if I told anybody. He couldn’t stand the shame of it. And he said it wasn’t unusual, lots of married people never had sex. And you get used to things,’ she smiled wanly.

  ‘Well it doesn’t really matter now,’ Lilah said. ‘But please tell me, now it can’t make any difference. Is Abigail Gordon’s daughter?’

  Heather leant heavily against the kitchen worktop. ‘All these secrets tumbling out,’ she breathed. ‘They say it happens when a person dies. It takes your breath away, it does really.’

  ‘Is she?’

  Heather shook her head, a teasing smile forming. ‘No, Abby is not Gordon Hillcock’s child,’ she said. ‘She’s his sister.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mary Hillcock spent a distracted day at school, unable to focus on the work. ‘Hey, Miss!’ called Peter Stevens from Year Eight. ‘My mum says your brother never killed that bloke after all. Is that right, Miss?’

  She closed her eyes for three long seconds. ‘I hope you never listen to idle gossip, Peter. It doesn’t get you anywhere, mark my words.’

  ‘But it was on the telly, Miss. Last week, local news. They said your brother had been taken in for questioning. That wasn’t gossip, was it Miss? And last night they said a woman was likely going to be charged.’

  ‘We’re not discussing it now. I want you to do the exercises on page forty-six. I’m timing you, so I don’t want anybody wasting any time. If you can’t do a question, leave it out and I’ll go through it with you afterwards.’

  She sat back and gave her thoughts a moment’s freedom. For the past week she’d gone over everything she knew about her brother, and tried to assess whether or not he was capable of murder. She had only reached a conclusion when the news came through of his innocence.

  She didn’t believe it. She had watched his face as Ted told him about Deirdre’s arrest and listened to him telling Lilah the next day, and she had doubted him.

  She remembered the anger he’d been capable of in his younger years. Over the weekend, she had looked back through her own girlhood diaries, reminding herself of how life had been for the Hillcocks at that time. The diaries were brief but they represented a daily record for seven years and through their pages she achieved something like total recall of certain scenes.

  She remembered Gordon as a thin youth, barely half the size he was now. She remembered him being the object of their grandmother’s adoration, while Claudia blew hot and cold, ignoring him at one moment, expressing acute anxiety about him the next. She remembered when Heather had arrived on the farm and how pretty she had been, with a shy, dimpled smile and cheerful, willing ways. She’d helped with the harvest, fed the calves, picked apples and made elderflower wine. It all felt like a long lost idyll now, in these dark winter days.

  At last the school day ended and she set out for home, glad to have the use of the car for once, because Claudia wasn’t working that day. She drove fast, hoping to be back soon after four, leaving time to think through what must be done. The coming storm was scary, but preferable to carrying on as they were. She and Claudia, and probably Lilah, were going to have to lock horns with Gordon and force him to face reality and admit the truth. Deirdre Watson was being charged with the murder of Sean O’Farrell and Mary for one needed to be completely convinced that this was a just conclusion to the inquiry. She needed her brother to assure her, with absolute sincerity, that he wasn’t the one who should be in the prison cell. From the look of Lilah that morning, Mary believed she felt almost exactly the same.

  But above all Mary wanted an end to the uncertainty over their future. Farming had been sickening her for a long time now: the exploitation, the grinding, inexorable demands of all those animals, the downward spiral into poverty and failure. When Gordon’s dog, Fergus, had died in that horrible way, she had listened to his screams and wept, alone in her bedroom. She had cursed Sean, who everyone believed had poisoned the creature, and wished him a similar agony in return. She had other reasons, too, for hating Sean O’Farrell and regarding him as a loathsome piece of vermin inflicted on Dunsworthy by a malign fate.

  Ten years ago, married t
o Mark Fordyce and quite contented with her life, Mary’s equilibrium had been rocked by Sean O’Farrell. Befriending Mark, Sean had taken him along to one of the secret badger baiting sessions in a remote barn somewhere, initially, she supposed, as a sort of dare. Mark had been curious, and seduced by the forbidden mystery of it. From what she’d been able to glean, he’d actually quite enjoyed it. Eventually the shame nagged at him and he told his wife about it.

  It would be too much to claim that this alone had broken up their marriage. But Mark changed, in her eyes, overnight. She didn’t think she could live with a man who came home sweating and lustful thanks to his presence at a scene of primitive depravity. He knew well enough that it was a horrible thing they did, and yet he couldn’t stop. He tried, once, to explain it to her.

  ‘It hooks into something old and deep, that’s almost disappeared from the way we live now. There’s bullfighting still left, and that’s about it. It’s on some other level of being; the animals are doing it for us, in some way. We’re so civilised and cerebral, it’s like being half asleep all the time. Teeth and blood and pain – they’re fantastically real by comparison.’

  She had listened and even half understood, but she couldn’t accept. She’d spent all her life trying to get to grips with blood and pain, with sheep dying at lambing time and dogs getting tangled up with lethal farm implements. She knew that world existed and that there was no escape from it – but she couldn’t go on living with a man who sought it out for a thrill.

  So when someone killed Sean O’Farrell, with plenty of pain and blood in the process, she had not been sorry. At first she had harboured a secret satisfaction that justice had been done. Only slowly, as the bald truth crystallised in her mind, did she find herself unable to go on sharing a house with the person she strongly suspected had done the deed she might have performed herself if she’d had the courage.

  Neither Lilah nor her car were anywhere to be seen when Mary arrived home. Claudia was in the sitting room, a log fire blazing, the cat on her shoulder. ‘Had a good day?’ Mary asked her. It was inconceivable that things could be as calm as they seemed.

  Claudia appeared to be half asleep, looking up blearily at her daughter. ‘I haven’t seen Gordon all day,’ she frowned. ‘I don’t think he came in for lunch. But he’s milking as usual. All he ever does these days is milk the damned cows.’

  ‘So where’s he been since this morning?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. That’s what I’m saying.’

  Mary recognised the note of detachment in her mother’s voice. Claudia knew only too well that something was profoundly wrong, but she was still apparently hoping she could avoid facing it. Mary clenched a fist and banged it lightly on the arm of the chair. ‘We’re going to have to tackle him this evening,’ she said firmly. ‘It can’t go on any longer. I expect Lilah will turn up soon and have her say as well.’

  Claudia’s eyes darted from one corner of the room to another, and the tendons of her neck showed prominent above the collar of her jumper. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  ‘You do, Mother. You most definitely do.’

  Lilah came in at five-thirty, looking pale and cold. ‘Where have you been?’ Mary asked solicitously.

  ‘I drove down the road a little way and fell asleep in the car in a lay-by.’ She moved towards the fire as if unable to resist its allure. ‘I just wanted the time to pass until you got home.’

  ‘Not long now,’ said Mary. She couldn’t fail to notice that the girl was shaking, and she didn’t think it was due to the cold.

  They drank tea and found some dry fruitcake to nibble, but nobody felt hungry. Claudia made a poor show of reading. Mary drifted out to the kitchen and Lilah simply huddled close to the fire and let the time pass as it would.

  When the slam of the back door finally ended their vigil, they waited like timid Victorian spinsters for their lord and master to come into the room.

  Den had taken Thursday afternoon off, although Danny had asked him to drop into the station at five to cast his eye over the duty sheet for the following days. Den knew that the DI wanted to keep an eye on him through the climax of the Sean O’Farrell case, to ensure he didn’t do anything to rock what felt like a very fragile boat.

  The weather outside was improving and he wondered if he should go outside and enjoy it. Clear, sunny days in January were rare enough not to be wasted.

  But he didn’t really fancy it. His tall frame was familiar to all his neighbours and most of the shopkeepers in town. People would know the story of Lilah and Dunsworthy and there would be looks. Some would sympathise and some would disapprove. Either way, he didn’t want it. The whole business had slipped messily through his fingers and he didn’t want any reminders of it. Hillcock would go free, Lilah would marry him and get fat and matronly and complacent with a gaggle of little Hillcock babies around her feet. They’d joke about the way Den had tried to angle his investigation to make it seem that Gordon had killed his herdsman. He imagined that some of the jokes were already starting – and they wouldn’t be confined to Dunsworthy, either.

  But it was impossible to get the case out of his mind. Deirdre Watson was everything a murderer was not. Organised, focused, not at all the type to lose physical control, despite her intemperate words in public. Surely she would never launch a murderous attack in a farmyard without warning. And she was a woman. Den simply could not believe that a woman, however strong or angry, would kill in such a way. He couldn’t think of any precedent. Deirdre was solid and mature. She’d raised two children and stuck with the same husband for twenty years. She wasn’t addicted to drugs or alcohol or fast cars or guns. She was decent, for Christ’s sake.

  There was no way, no way, she had killed Sean O’Farrell. Was there?

  Danny Hemsley said she had and he was fast putting together a case to prove it. The animal cruelty element was powerful, and after watching O’Farrell’s insensitive treatment of the cows, it was just – just – possible to believe she had flipped. But Den couldn’t credit it, and anyway Sean had not been milking that day.

  In a last forlorn hope of proving Hemsley wrong, Den had spoken to Forensics again, before leaving the station, and had been told rather curtly that there was nothing more to say than was already in their report. Den had then had another look through the pathologist’s findings, noticing the extraordinary comprehensiveness of it, as the post-mortem had taken Sean apart, inch by inch.

  He forced himself to stop thinking about it. There were jobs around the flat to catch up on: a load of washing, some bills to pay, and he spent half an hour giving them his attention. But at the end of that time, it was still only three o’clock and the hours ahead stretched emptily. Inevitably Lilah came to mind again. Why was it that everything had gone so wrong for him since she left? It was as if all the laws of nature had been overturned. If she could leave him, then maybe Deirdre Watson could commit murder. Maybe Sean O’Farrell could torture cows in her presence and bait badgers for amusement and then boast about it. Maybe Gordon Hillcock could be a good hard-working farmer, with a long run of bad luck with women keeping him a bachelor for so many years. Maybe it was true love and he should wish Lilah every happiness. Maybe Den Cooper was the worst judge of character in the entire police force and he couldn’t tell black from white, or murder from dodgy parking.

  What he needed, and needed very badly, was a new woman. It was stupid to let month after month go by waiting for Lilah, who obviously was never going to come back to him. He tried to think who the possible candidates might be, out of all the women of his acquaintance. He’d grown up around here, gone to the local school, only left for the time it took to get his degree in Plymouth and complete his police training before coming right back again. Which meant he knew every likely female between twenty and thirty in the whole area.

  One name floated up as he applied himself to the question: Alexis Cattermole. Nearly two years before, Alexis’s sister had died, followed a few days later by t
he murder of her boyfriend. At the time, Den had been with Lilah and not susceptible to any other woman’s appeal. But he had seen Alexis a few times since and noted how strong and cheerful she always looked. And somebody strong and cheerful was just what the doctor ordered.

  He remembered the phone number, as he remembered scores of others; he’d always been good with numbers – better than with words.

  Alexis answered the phone and he felt a sudden clutch of panic. What in the world was she going to think of him?

  ‘Hi!’ he breezed. ‘Den Cooper. Remember me?’

  ‘Good God! Lilah’s Den, you mean?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Oh, sorry. You split up, didn’t you? I forgot, for the moment. Well, Den Cooper, what can I do for you?’

  ‘To put it bluntly, I’m going mad here with nobody to talk to and I decided I need to get out. I don’t suppose there’s a chance in a million you’re free this evening, are you?’

  ‘You’re asking me out? Why me, Den? I haven’t seen you for ages. Must be eight or nine months.’

  ‘Old times’ sake?’ he offered, with a self-effacing laugh. ‘No, that’s not really it. I promise not to mention Lilah. I’m not looking for a shoulder to cry on. Nothing heavy. I just thought it would be fun.’

  ‘It’s a great thought,’ she conceded. ‘The problem is, I’m seeing someone new and we’re booked for the movies this evening.’

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘Anybody I know?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s quite new to the area – a property developer, actually. The lowest of the low, to some people’s minds. But we seem to get along quite well and I can’t go on like this for ever. My biological time bomb is ticking, as they say.’

  ‘Okay. I’m pleased for you. I hope it all works out. Give Martha my regards, and the rest of the family.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’ He heard in her voice an echo of the shared misery and confusion that had followed her boyfriend’s murder. It had been one of the saddest cases he’d worked on since joining the CID and he had no illusions as to the permanent damage it had caused.