‘I believe we’re all actors now, Fran, whatever our gender. Tell me, how and why are you here?’
‘I found you. Me and Paula, the forceful young officer who’s talking to your nurse there.’
‘Found me? Darling, as I told … Paula … there are a few minutes absent from my memory. You may have to refresh it.’
‘Of course I will,’ Fran said, taking a seat. ‘Just what did you tell the officer who was talking to you earlier?’ She was too old a hand to put words – or false memories – into Edwina’s mind.
‘That I’d followed my usual routine. I’d loaded the dishwasher, but not set it off. I’d run the duster and vacuum round the dining room. I’d been out – I like to go into the village to collect my paper every morning; they save it for me. Some idiot drove too close to me and soaked me. Someone stopped and asked me the way. I went home.’ Using both hands, but clearly irritated by the drip attached to her left, she gestured that from that point her mind was blank.
‘You’ve no recollection of answering the front door to someone? Or the back door?’
‘Ah, you found the key.’
‘Key?’
‘There’s one under a flower pot.’
‘Paula had to ask a neighbour for one.’
‘I know there’s one there. I always check.’ Her hand fretted the sheet.
‘Something or someone encouraged you to step outside, where you were socked on the head and left in the rain. Personally I believe your memory will recover as you get better. And don’t forget, Edwina, that the greatest healer is sleep, so I shall leave you to your zizz.’ She got up and prepared to tiptoe off.
Edwina’s eyes snapped open. ‘You’ll be staying at the cottage tonight? No charge, darling, I do insist.’ She managed a smile. ‘In fact, I should pay you in your new role of caretakers.’
‘Or not,’ Fran said, repeating the conversation to Paula. ‘And there was a key. And it’s gone. You must know a decent locksmith who’ll get out there immediately? I’ll pay, of course, and have one key. Oh, and someone must make sure Edwina can get back into her own home when she’s released.’
‘I’ll make sure a key’s left with that neighbour of hers.’
‘Thanks, Paula – I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
But Paula was already tapping into that damned phone.
FIFTEEN
Fran had never enjoyed meetings late on a Friday afternoon; though she’d been long inured to ignoring weekends and all the pleasures associated with days off, she always felt others were paying more attention to their watches than to the matter in hand. Not real active officers, to be fair, but administrators – and Webster was an administrator if ever there was one, unlike Mark, who’d much rather have been actively solving crimes. On the other hand, if Webster was desperate to get away, perhaps they’d be able to railroad through a few days’ extension to their contract, particularly as they would both swear that they were getting somewhere.
If Mark ever turned up, that is. He’d texted to say he was leaving Downs, and had phoned a couple of times to report that he was caught in traffic, rather than floods.
She stared at the box of carefully bagged and labelled evidence on the incident room table, but didn’t open it. She’d have somehow felt she was betraying a tacit trust, like eating the best chocolates from an extravagant present. What would it tell her of Natalie’s life as filtered by her mother? After all, it was only what her parents had chosen, not all that she’d left behind in her old home, a choice she as a non-parent couldn’t be expected to understand. If pushed, she’d have said she’d expect to see an old teddy bear, first shoes, baby-teeth. She was just about to break her promise to herself and test her theory when Paula came in, just putting away her phone.
‘Come on, Paula – it’s POETS day.’
Paula jumped violently. ‘Sorry? I was miles away. Oh, of course. Yes, I know it’s Saturday tomorrow and I know people piss off early. But I’ve had a word with the scene of crime officer who looked at Edwina’s house.’
Fran stiffened. ‘I thought you said there was no damage.’
‘There wasn’t. To the bulk of the house. But there was to one room.’ Paula hesitated, as if reluctant to say something. ‘That cottage you rented: you said it had been flooded. Well, I did a spot of double-checking, on the basis of the SOCO’s report. It seems that the cottage letting agent officially reported that some gully or other had been deliberately blocked.’
‘I’ve got some snaps on my camera if you want to look for yourself. Frankly, Mark and I just didn’t have time to check if someone had it in for the owner. But I’m glad young Alex, the letting agent, took it seriously enough to report it. And it sounds as if the SOCO found something interesting? The room that was trashed wouldn’t happen to be the guest room – ours?’
‘I’m afraid so. Of course,’ Paula added quickly, ‘the intruder might not have had time to do any more. In fact, we could have disturbed him ourselves, couldn’t we?’
‘Could we?’ Fran wasn’t sure of the logic behind such deductions. ‘It means whoever did it must have pushed Edwina out into the rain and left her there while he started rifling through the house – pretty callous behaviour. Though not, of course, impossible. And when I say he, I really should have said “he or she”, shouldn’t I?’
‘A woman?’
‘Who knows? Anyway, is there evidence that the intruder took anything? Or would you need Mark and me to check? The trouble is, we’re due with the ACC any moment now – me solo if Mark can’t fight his way through the traffic. And then we’re out to supper. Not just a jolly evening but a meal with someone involved in the original enquiry.’
‘I’ve an idea that this ought to take priority over one of them. I’d like to say cut the ACC—’
‘But such words would never pass your lips. On the other hand, active crime investigation ought to trump a review meeting any day of the week. Let’s see what Mark has to say when he gets here.’ Fran covered her mouth with both hands, wincing. ‘I never thought I’d say that. I spent all my life taking decisions, sometimes big ones, deliberately avoiding referring them upwards. And now listen to me: that’s what nine months’ retirement does to your brain. So if you don’t want to end up like me, take yourself off home now.’
‘But—’
‘I can’t give orders, Paula, but if I could …’
In the event, the ACC’s secretary cut the Gordian knot. It seemed that Webster was going to front a press conference in time for the Channel Four News. The metrocentric media had finally realized that there might be news in these country bumpkins’ rain, and the troubles of the Severn Valley were finally being brought to the public’s attention. Who better than Mole to represent West Mercia? Fran snapped her fingers in irritation: Rat, of course, or even Otter, though she had no one to share the idea with.
So she phoned to divert Mark straight back to Ombersley; she herself gratefully accepted a lift with the officer in charge of the break-in case. She tried to pretend she was simply Josephine Public, humbly accepting police help. Weird or what?
Sergeant Cole, known, he said, as Andy, a tubby man not many years from retirement, drove with sensible caution; in fact Mark had already parked when they arrived. Parked in a small torrent, sickeningly similar to the one that had pulsed past Snowdrop Cottage.
‘Looks as if the floodgates have given way. Best stay here, ma’am,’ Cole said, reaching past her for the wellies stowed behind the passenger seat.
‘Uh, uh. I can smell a rat.’
Cole grinned. ‘Probably a water vole, ma’am – though they say all these swollen rivers will have a terrible effect on the poor little creatures. Flood their little burrows, and maybe if the torrents are fast enough drown them.’
Fran was prepared to be sentimental about nature about ninety per cent of the time. This was one of the other ten. ‘We certainly need to know what evil little rodent caused this. Personally I’d suspect it has two legs. What a total bastard
. Let’s go – hang on, I can’t move till you’ve passed me my wellies from our boot.’ She passed him her car keys. ‘Thanks. Now there are all poor Edwina Lally’s treasures to rescue.’
In a sad reprise of the work he’d done in Snowdrop Cottage, Mark had already ferried as much as he could upstairs. But all of the old house had been spared. It was only the new extension, where Edwina had housed them, that had suffered, largely because someone had managed to open the patio door – unlock it from within, they suspected, because there was no obvious sign of damage – that opened on to the once pretty rear garden. Now it was a muddy mill-race. The bedroom was ruined, with water surging into the bathroom. The passageway between the house and their room was still unaffected, but would make a good escape route for the water.
Now there were three of them, knee deep in water in the garden, they could force the door shut, and then reinstate the sandbag dam – except they needed to do far more than reinstate it. Something or someone had cast the bags to all corners of the garden. But at last they had a decent wall, and had the pleasure of seeing the water heading away.
‘You and Edwina mentioned floodgates as well as sandbags,’ Fran said. ‘Shall we take a look?’
‘Don’t you want to check your belongings first?’ Cole asked.
‘Not if we can stop the water doing more harm.’
But nothing they could do would close the floodgates. Apart from the sheer weight and force of the water, something seemed to be stopping the great toothed wheel from moving even one notch.
‘God knows what repercussions this will have downstream,’ Cole yelled above the roar of the water. ‘I’ll get straight on to the Environment Agency and warn them. Meanwhile, it’s not safe for civilians here – back to the house, please.’
Civilians. But that was what they were. Two no longer young civilians, to be herded from danger. Exchanging a sadly ironic smile, they did as they were told, holding hands tightly.
Mark, who’d collected Edwina’s key from the neighbour, gave them all a few seconds’ panic when it wasn’t in the first pocket he tried. This time they didn’t bother to kick off their boots in the porch: there was enough mess already, and they needed to get to the annexe corridor to open the door leading to the front garden, letting the built-up water flow away.
‘Funny,’ said Fran, as they checked that the sandbag wall still held, ‘that at the last place we were driven out by floods someone caused by blocking a culvert; here someone seems to have done the opposite.’
Cole, more out of breath than either of them, ended his call and looked at her sharply. ‘Last place?’
‘We were supposed to be staying at Snowdrop Cottage, about a mile away.’
‘That’s the holiday let? Safe as houses, that.’
‘Until the culvert was blocked. Then it was decidedly unsafe.’ Fran stopped: could the lack of gas and other welcoming necessities have been part of the scheme – or was she being paranoid? She showed him the photos on her phone.
Cole narrowed his eyes: ‘Are you saying this flood business is directed at you?’
‘Not in so many words. I suppose it’s just possible that Mrs Lally might have an enemy? And the previous incident could be focused on our landlady, whose name slips my mind. But the letting agent, Alex, has notified your colleagues – he seemed a bright, switched on young man.’
‘I don’t like coincidences,’ Cole muttered, reaching for his phone again.
Meanwhile, they stared at the sodden mess on the floor. At least it was simply river water, with no evidence of any sewage. ‘It looks as if someone emptied the contents of our cases and anything in the drawers or wardrobe that might be ours before they let the waters rip,’ Fran said. ‘Andy, this does feel personal, you know.’
He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m beginning to think you might be right, ma’am. But it’ll be hard work proving it, won’t it? Not that we won’t try,’ he added, without managing to sound positive. ‘Now, is anything of yours missing? Are you sure? No portable electronics?’
‘Neither ours nor Edwina’s – that nice TV of hers is still in place. And we had our mobiles and iPad with us.’
‘Jewellery?’
‘Apart from what I’m wearing, I didn’t bring any on account of Mark’s having hocked my tiara.’
‘If this has happened twice … goodness knows why they’re picking on you.’
‘There might just be a reason,’ Mark said slowly, reluctant to complicate matters for a purely local officer. ‘Someone doesn’t like us digging up the past,’ he explained.
As he suspected, their investigations were news to Cole, but he cottoned on quickly. ‘I gathered you were ex-police. And all we knew was that you were poking round in something or other – no one was quite sure what. So someone might be trying to deter you … want you to give up … Do they think it’ll be sufficient to – I don’t know – send you back to Kent to get fresh socks?’ he added with a pleasant gleam in his eye.
‘Put that way, it doesn’t sound very convincing as an explanation,’ Mark agreed.
Cole got back into his stride. ‘Or maybe there’s a simpler explanation. That there’s some local vandals. And this was a burglary gone wrong: Mrs Lally interrupted the intruder, hence he assaulted her.’
‘And dragged her outside hoping she’d either drown or die of hypothermia. A bit extreme for your average housebreaker, Andy?’
He nodded, sucking his teeth. ‘According to the medics, by the way, she’s well enough to give us a statement now: I shall be heading for the hospital as soon as I’ve finished here.’ He shifted his feet. ‘I don’t suppose you could look out some clothes for her, ma’am: those she was wearing will have been bagged up … but you’d know that, wouldn’t you? That’d be very kind … Sir, would you mind giving me a hand ripping up this carpet?’
‘Sure. So long as you drop this sir and ma’am business. As you say, we’re just civilians now. Mr and Mrs Joe Public.’
‘And as such entitled to a bit of respect.’
‘Thanks. Let’s tackle this carpet – hell’s bells, it weighs a ton.’
Fran gathered up the piles of sodden clothes and stowed them in the washing machine. That was as far as she got. Mark was the domesticated one: maybe he’d work out how to use it.
It was only as the laundry whirled round obediently that Mark said, his voice low even though Cole was busy at the far end of the house, ‘Downs has made extraordinary allegations against that commissioner woman. I told him I wanted evidence.’
‘You’ll have to talk as we drive: we’re due at Gerry Barnes’s place in an hour. And we can’t exactly turn up like this.’
‘Of course we can’t. OK. Let’s go and buy something dry and decent.’
SIXTEEN
They might never know what preconceptions Gerry Barnes might have had of his dinner guests and their clothes. But Fran would have offered good odds that he wouldn’t have expected them to turn up in brand new Sainsbury’s gear designed for the younger and decidedly shorter. It might work well on Paula, but Fran felt all legs and arms, her situation not helped by the fact that Gerry’s wife Caroline was both petite and exquisitely dressed.
‘Why didn’t you bring everything here? We could have washed and dried it for you,’ Gerry said, pressing G and Ts into their embarrassed hands as Mark gave a potted history of their peripatetic problems. ‘Did you bring your overnight things? Of course not. But we can surely—’
‘You’re very kind. But we promised Edwina we’d look after the place while she was in hospital: we’re just decamping into another bedroom,’ Mark told him, noticing that Caroline didn’t add her voice to her husband’s.
The number of guests had been sharply depleted by the floods. In fact, it was now just Mark and Fran who’d grace their table, using china and lead crystal finer than any Fran had used in any home but their own; you couldn’t live, they’d agreed from the outset, in a listed Georgian building and still use IKEA. So, much as she’d have liked to be inv
olved in the police gossip already occupying the men, still infuriatingly dividing the conversation on sexist lines, at least she and Caroline had topics they could share – Royal Worcester porcelain and Stourbridge crystal.
But the hands passing her specimens from a display cabinet to handle and admire were not the manicured and polished ones Fran expected. The nails were as short as Fran’s own, and the skin decidedly under-moisturized. Caroline clearly had other interests, other occupations. Of which cooking wasn’t one. The plates might be a delight to the eye; what landed on them didn’t tempt the taste buds at all. In her situation Fran might have cheated – equipped herself with loads of M and S or Waitrose easy-cook meals.
The initial four-way conversation over an under-seasoned soup was banal enough, and the main course was equally bland until Caroline dropped out that she’d been a SOCO with West Midlands Police, and was now, post-redundancy, retraining as an archaeologist. Suddenly it was sleeves-rolled-up, elbows-on-table time. Gerry was transformed from a genial host to a tough-looking cop with attitude.
‘It was you who invited us to look at the case, Gerry,’ Fran said bluntly. ‘You must have felt this particular case warranted looking at again.’
‘And it was me who got made redundant,’ he said. ‘I’m not complaining, not with the size handshake I got.’ Clearly he was.
‘Are you implying there’s a causal relationship?’ she pursued. ‘But I’m jumping the gun. You may already have told Mark why you wanted to look at cold cases, and this one in particular, but I’ve been enjoying moments with Dr Wall and some of my other porcelain heroes.’ She grinned at Caroline, who murmured, ‘I’ll show you the rest of my collection while we have coffee. Cheese, anyone? I’ve got this lovely Shropshire Blue.’
Gerry spread his hands expansively as she brought it in. ‘I don’t like loose ends, any more than I suspect you do. It was you who was in charge of cold cases, wasn’t it, Fran?’
Green and Pleasant Land Page 15
