Ring of Guilt

by Judith Cutler

  ‘If it means seeing her again, I’m sure he will be,’ Griff said, squeezing my shoulder lightly. ‘Smitten is the word, I fancy,’ he added. Was it? Perhaps he was just trying to boost my poor battered ego a bit. He continued, in a fake-confidential tone, something else that was news to me, ‘I suspect from the way Lina blushes every time I mention him that it might be reciprocated.’

  This was the first sentence Penny heard as she stepped into the room, which was either Griff’s perfect timing or – less likely – good luck. While she was fiddling with the pushchair, I ought to say something useful myself. All I could manage was a simple statement. The truth. ‘I feel trapped. I just don’t know where to start.’

  Penny picked up the sleeping Leda, leaving Mrs Walker to bustle into the kitchen. Griff got up to follow, probably to point out it was more than time the shop was open again. Fishing out his noisy mobile, Morris looked at the display, and stalked out to respond.

  Penny brought Leda to sit opposite me. ‘I was heading for post-natal depression,’ she said, out of the blue. ‘Because I could see all these things needing to be done – and done by me. And I just didn’t know where to start. Like you. Then a friend dropped round and said, “You can’t hope to do everything. So prioritize. Choose one thing above everything else and that might shake things into perspective.”’

  I stared helplessly; the problems of a new mother weren’t much like those of a single girl sensing tigers everywhere. But I nodded, as if she was making sense.

  ‘Is there anything you can fix with a simple phone call?’ she began.

  A simple solicitor’s letter, maybe. On the other hand I’d rather speak to Habgood in person.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Come on – what about this Will who fancies you?’

  ‘He has a friend who thinks I’m next best thing to a grave robber.’

  ‘But you’re not, and maybe you should tell Will you’re not. And if he’s as keen on you as Griff said . . .’ She grinned. ‘Not to mention your being keen on him.’

  ‘He’s a policeman,’ I said dismissively. And then realized that saying that was a good reason not to trust him wasn’t the most tactful thing in the world. I looked left and right. ‘Just between the two of us, some antiques deals aren’t always the straightest in the world. Or the dealers. Or do I mean the other way round? My last boyfriend was a dealer who turned out to be as crooked as a corkscrew. It made it really hard, being friends with Morris. But please, please, please keep that to yourself.’

  ‘Are all your friends bent?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Very few. But you can’t have chunks of your life you mustn’t talk about to someone you want to share your life with, can you?’ I was talking about me and Morris; maybe she knew.

  She shook her head. ‘We’re not talking about this Will being your life partner, Lina – we’re talking about being nice to a guy you fancy and who might want to help you.’

  I wrinkled my nose – only for a second, but she noticed.

  ‘You know, Morris was right,’ she laughed. ‘You really are one of the most moral people on this earth, aren’t you? How about a clergyman for a boyfriend? At least he’d just regard your shady cronies as sinners needing forgiveness.’

  Was she just making a joke or had Morris mentioned what he saw as his rivalry with Robin?

  ‘I do know a drop-dead gorgeous one,’ I said cautiously, ‘Adam’s apple apart, that is. It bobbles dreadfully.’

  ‘He’s no good then,’ she declared, starting to giggle. But she was soon serious again. ‘If your Griff has been talking to Will already, I think you need to see him yourself, Lina. Really, truly. Seeing him could be the thing my friend suggested – the one that puts everything else into perspective.’

  Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone like her as a friend? But with Morris in the picture . . .

  At this point he came back in, talking to Griff. He turned to me. ‘We were talking about this Dilly Pargetter’s pendant. Know what I’d do? I’d send her a receipt – only I’d make sure it got lost in the post. By not posting it, of course! You’ll have a copy on your system, that way. And I’ve got your email on my system, printed off and dated, before you ask. It’ll be a bait, Lina. But just make sure something too big doesn’t try to swallow it.’

  SEVENTEEN

  At long last, we waved off our visitors. I didn’t especially want to talk about them or their doings, so, attack being the best means of defence, I asked Griff what on earth he’d been doing in Kent Police HQ. ‘I thought you’d gone down to Winchelsea to return Dilly’s pendant,’ I added. ‘That was what I was really worried about.’

  ‘At least we have expert advice on that matter,’ Griff said. ‘Not to mention a really good sale.’

  He was better than I was at changing subjects. But I wouldn’t bite. ‘Whatever. But talking to Will? Why?’

  ‘It occurred to me that a little friendly colloquy was in order after the way in which he and his colleague departed. Were told to depart,’ he corrected himself. ‘And I thought he might be too stiff-necked to call you.’

  ‘Might have been me that was stubborn,’ I admitted. ‘I switched a call from him to voicemail and forgot to pick it up. Mind you, when I did get back to him, I had to leave a message he didn’t respond to. Tit for tat.’

  ‘So I was right to hie me to Maidstone. But a great shame we had time to exchange no more than pleasantries.’

  Did I believe him for one minute? ‘Hmm.’

  ‘At least he had time to tell me he really needed to talk to you. Preferably over in Maidstone,’ he added with less confidence.

  ‘Police HQ!’ The very thought made my hands sweat.

  ‘While it reeks of security and officialdom, my love, it’s not quite as bad as a police station. And Will did say I could come with you if you preferred. Not with any great enthusiasm, however, I admit.’

  So next day, much as I’d have liked to hold his hand, I went on my own, to find Will waiting to escort me through all the checks. He kept blushing and stuttering, but then so did I. After all, we’d parted on pretty poor terms. There was an awful lot of after-you-ing, and, when we’d got to a room that looked horribly like the interview rooms where I’d spent a great deal of time when I was young, offers of tea and coffee and more comfortable chairs: anything not to get down to a proper conversation. I wasn’t a hundred per cent surprised. He owed me a serious apology, or at least Winters did. But since I had something to offer I broke the ice.

  ‘I know this isn’t really your bag,’ I began, ‘but DC Winters and I didn’t exactly hit it off, did we? So I didn’t fancy calling him. The thing is, I may have remembered a bit more about the body I saw,’ I said cautiously. There was no need to mention Morris’s involvement. And especially not Titus’. ‘I had to drive near the site the other day—’

  He frowned. ‘Had to?’

  ‘My usual route from Hythe to Bossingham, where my father lives,’ I said, with a nasty feeling the conversation might not flow after all. ‘In any case,’ I continued, with a great show of coming clean, ‘I was puzzled when you said there wasn’t a bridle path, just proper roads. I wanted to find why my memory had got it wrong. And I still don’t know why, because a road is a road, even if it’s a pretty narrow one.’

  ‘Even if someone’s put up a bogus road sign, which might have happened, I suppose. Look, give me five minutes. I could see you and Bernie weren’t soul mates. I’ll go and get the latest for you.’

  ‘Not Winters – I really don’t think I could be very polite to him.’

  ‘Just an update. Promise. Will you stay here, please?’

  ‘If I say no, you lock me in, right? OK, I can see you don’t want folk wandering round getting lost,’ I said, although I was seething.

  ‘Quite. I could bring some coffee, too?’ he added, suddenly reminding me of a dog hoping for walkies.

  I nodded. Rules was rules, I suppose, and I’d much rather have him on my side than not.

  I d
idn’t have to wait very long. He’d actually got proper cups instead of the paper ones I’d expected.

  ‘Not quite up to your and Griff’s standards,’ he said, mopping some of the coffee he’d spilt on a cardboard file he’d brought along. ‘Look, I never worked out why Griff came to see me yesterday. He was oozing fury. Then he checked his calls and disappeared. Just like that. Weird.’

  I decided to answer the second point he made. ‘An old friend turned up out of the blue. DI Morris, of the Fine Arts Squad, actually. Wanted to buy his new wife a ring. I’m sorry if Griff was rude.’

  ‘Not so much rude as confusing. But at least he passed on the message that you wanted to talk to me.’

  Did he, indeed? What message, Griff?

  ‘Well, now I have. About the road signs?’

  ‘They were swapped – at least that’s what my colleagues on that case assume. Certainly the forensic team told them that someone had tampered with the signpost. They’ve no idea why at this stage.’ By now he could manage a cautious smile.

  ‘And I’ve no idea why what happened next happened,’ I said, knowing that Griff would have winced at the ugly sentence. I did myself, come to think of it. ‘Suddenly, out of nowhere, this 4x4 appeared, and seemed to object to my being there. He tailgated me all the way to Six Mile Garage.’

  A couple of lines appeared between his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were heading for Bossingham.’

  ‘After a couple of hundred yards of that treatment I wanted to go somewhere with people and CCTV,’ I said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Makes sense. So you pulled over—’

  ‘Suddenly, without signalling. Nearly hit their little postbox. And he shot past, and turned towards Canterbury, also fast and without signalling.’

  The lines deepened. ‘So he could just have been a bad driver.’

  ‘A bad driver with a profile that seemed awfully familiar.’ I fished out my mobile phone and flashed the original photo I’d taken.

  After all those frowns, he managed a grin. ‘I can do better than that. We had the image enhanced by experts.’ At last he opened the folder.

  I know I was meant to be impressed, but actually it wasn’t much better than the version I’d downloaded on to our computer. Since we were supposed to be enjoying a truce, I’d better make some sort of intelligent comment. ‘Are those his footprints or someone else’s?’ I asked, pointing.

  ‘According to Forensics, they might be his. Look, you can see a pattern on the sole of that shoe. It seems to match that track there.’

  ‘Sorry. It was a pretty stupid question. If he walked there, it had to be his, didn’t it?’

  ‘But if someone else carried him, he might have worn the same type of shoe,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Unlikely for two people to be cavorting round the countryside in footwear and clothes very much designed for the town. I mean, that suit looked pretty good . . .’ When he raised his eyebrows sharply, I explained. ‘Griff’s partner – other sense – always wears terrific clothes. Something to do with the cut and the cloth?’

  ‘And the money you spend on both.’ Will tugged a jacket I’d seen in M and S – washable. Still, I suppose if you were a cop investigating crime scenes you might just want to pop things in the machine at the end of the day. ‘Now look at this image,’ he said, leafing through his file and passing me an A4 print. ‘See, they’ve made his face look as if it’s facing us, not the sky. And here’s another giving just what you were talking about – profiles.’

  ‘Wow! This is clever. Just like real life police mug shots,’ I added grimly.

  ‘Precisely. Now, without thinking too hard about it, does the profile still seem familiar?’

  ‘You’ve got a rabbit you’re dying to pull out of your hat, haven’t you?’ This time I managed a grin.

  ‘Something like that. A computerized facial recognition system that picks out possible suspects from faces we’ve got on record.’

  ‘But that would only work if he’d been in trouble.’

  ‘True. But it came up with these people – none an exact match, unfortunately.’ He passed me two pages covered in photos. ‘See what you think.’ He really wanted me to pick one out, didn’t he?

  I’d have loved to, and peered at each new face with hope. In the end I had to shake my head. ‘None I could swear to. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Between you and me they were long shots. But if you saw someone with this face driving round the Kentish countryside, then it’d rule him out anyway.’

  ‘Not able to drive around anywhere? Inside? OK. Well, I suppose you don’t get bits of DNA lying round in a field?’ I said, trying to be helpful.

  ‘There are all sorts of clever techniques for lifting information from all sorts of surfaces. I don’t begin to understand how. But you need some evidence of a death. A few bones, for instance,’ he added, grinning again. ‘Which is more my area.’

  I felt this huge blush coming up from my navel. I tried to hold on to it a bit longer. ‘Winters mentioned an ulna.’ That might have been pretty mature and measured. Pity the next bit wasn’t. ‘Will, you’re going to kill me, but I actually went for a walk through those woods. I know, I know – but they are public footpaths, and I didn’t cross your tape, honestly, or try to break into that archaeological site. I promise. But I did see something . . . I told myself it was only roots in a badger’s sett.’ At least Titus told me, but I’d keep him – and the coin he’d found – out of this. ‘But I have the most awful feeling it was – the bones of a hand. It’s probably my imagination. But you ought to know.’

  He looked at me with a mixture of anger and something like approval. ‘Take me there? Now?’

  I looked down at the neat trousers and top I was wearing. My jacket was my better one, too – not my pushing through thorns and mud one. ‘I’ve got some wellies in the van,’ I said, trying to sound keen on the adventure.

  ‘And I’m sure I can lay hands on a paper suit to protect your clothes.’

  This time leaving the van where I’d parked it, I travelled in style, Will rather showing off his driving skills. Praying there was no sign of the wellies Titus had wanged into the hedges, I pointed out where I’d parked. Like me, Will kept two wheels on the road.

  ‘You look like a snowman!’ I crowed, as he pulled on the suit.

  ‘And you!’

  Blow me if we weren’t both singing the Aled Jones song. So we seemed to be getting on at last. But we didn’t hold hands and there was no floating through the air.

  I didn’t have Titus’ knack of detecting invisible tracks, but set off slowly along one that looked right. There was no sign of any badger activity and at last I stopped dead.

  ‘The ground was all lumpy, like a miniature moonscape,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think it was this far. Oh, dear.’ I surveyed the unappetizing spot.

  ‘There was that path sixty yards back . . .’ Will said doubtfully. ‘Maybe I should have brought a dog handler – you know there are some specially trained to find corpses. Dogs, I mean.’

  My shudder was genuine. What if Titus’ patterans came to light? I fell in behind him as we marched back. The path he’d seen was more of a track – but then, that was exactly the sort of thing Titus had chosen. So I set off hopefully. It didn’t take long to realize I’d got us hopelessly lost.

  ‘You said you’d not crossed our lines, or got into the site. Did you see the hand before or after?’ Will asked, in the tone of a man just about keeping his temper.

  ‘Before. I think. Yes, before. Definitely.’ I crammed all thoughts of Titus’ weird behaviour into the back of my memory, and hoped that not even his name would pop out. ‘Walked along; saw the setts; saw the bones or roots; headed fast to the police tape.’

  ‘All very intuitive,’ he said dryly.

  ‘All very panicky! I wasn’t staying near the bones, not for anything.’

  ‘You didn’t think of turning tail and running back.’

  I lifted my chin. ‘I’m not as good at running away
as I ought to be.’ Chew on that.

  We pressed on, and at last I pointed. ‘There – that’s the track. All oozy and yucky.’ And fortunately with a lot of confused footprints, not just two sets. ‘Let’s see – the road’s over there. On our left. So we need to turn right.’

  Only about thirty yards away was the sett. ‘A bit further on. Slow down . . . Shine your torch over there. No. Look, give it to me.’ Just as Titus had done I played the beam backwards and forwards, and then, recognizing where Titus had found his coin, shone it directly into the sett mouth. And although it was dead repetitious, I screamed again.

  And lost my coffee in a nearby bush.

  So there I was, stuck in the middle of nowhere with a gorgeous bloke who was so busy trying to get a signal for his mobile phone I might not have existed. Eventually it dawned on him that my teeth were chattering so hard I couldn’t speak. What I needed was a good comforting hug. What I got was a suggestion that I went back to his car, but there was no way I was wandering about on my own. Not that I could say so. After all, officially I’d done exactly that a couple of days back.

  I turned my head to a tree trunk and sobbed.

  At last when he’d established that a team would come out, he turned and put an arm round me. ‘I’d suggest we both went back now, but I’d never find it again. Here, what are you doing?’

  Tears still dripping down my face, I was trying to tear little shreds off my paper overall. I hung a couple on bushes. ‘Making patterans,’ I managed. ‘Leaving a trail.

  ‘Come on, Lina,’ he said, as if it was just dawning on him that something was wrong. ‘Here.’ He burrowed in a pocket and produced a packet of tissues. ‘This isn’t like you.’

  I was so taken aback I asked, ‘What isn’t like me?’

  ‘You’re so feisty, so gutsy—’

  ‘So guilty! I saw this man alive and did nothing. It was my fault he died and rotted in an animal’s lair. Hell, I could have saved him if I’d had any guts at all. I left him lying in a wet field and . . . and . . .’ I pointed to the bones.

  He turned towards the road. We could hear emergency vehicles. Several of them.