by Clare Curzon
The sky was crowded with low, dark horizontals of rain cloud, and as he drove from the garage the first drops began to fall, plinking on the bonnet and darkening the tarmac with large black circles. By the time he reached Fordham Village it was a regular downpour and the windscreen wipers were clunking away, one stiffly screeching. For a week now he’d meant to have it replaced.
The lane to the Manor and farm was narrow, first dipping and then rising with twists between high banks with winter-bare hedges, their breaks allowing occasional glimpses of chimneys and roof beyond. When he emerged into the open there were bollards with yellow crime scene tapes masking the pillared gates. The three-gabled house with its extended frontage glowered darkly behind. It looked empty. There was no guard on the front door.
Yeadings drove over puddled flagstones to the rear, to find Anna Plumley, in a hooded, shiny yellow waterproof, sitting out in the rain on the caravan steps and smoking a small cigar.
‘Morning, Superintendent,’ she greeted him, rising. ‘Your young man’s inside. I bullied him into taking cover. And a hot drink. So I’m standing guard in his place for five minutes.’ She dunked the cigarillo on the wet step beside her and trod it flat as she rose.
Yeadings got out and followed her into the caravan’s warm interior. ‘I doubt there’ll be any assault on the house while this torrent continues,’ he allowed. He’d meant to cancel the duty, but that could leave the elderly woman vulnerable.
‘How do you feel about moving into the house, once I’ve arranged for the housekeeper to come back?’ he asked.
‘To keep an eye on things? Why not?’ She had to shout above the noise of rain drumming on the caravan roof.
The young constable had risen, embarrassed, from his place at the table. He was in his shirtsleeves. The odour of wet dog blankets came from his tunic drying out in front of the stove. ‘Sir,’ he said, his face flushing scarlet.
‘I’ll give you a lift back,’ Yeadings said evenly. ‘When you’ve finished your drink you can wait in my car, while I have a word with Mrs Plumley.’
‘Always look after the ranks,’ the lady said chummily when the two of them were alone.
‘Quite so,’ Yeadings agreed. ‘Thank you.’
‘It was only soup,’ she said. ‘Nothing stimulating. But I do have a single malt if you would care …’
He thanked her again and declined. Alcohol was still off-diet and it was too soon after his late breakfast. He hadn’t risen that morning until after Nan took the children off to school and nursery class.
‘Any developments?’ she asked. ‘That is, if you think I should know.’
They were seated opposite each other at the table. He faced the frank gaze of the concerned, tawny eyes. There were deeper ditches under them today. She’d spent a restless night. Would anything he had to say deepen her grief? Or could it offer needed distraction?
‘I had a phone call from the forensics lab last night,’ he confided, and explained how initial analysis indicated that Angela shared neither Hoad’s nor Jennifer’s blood group. Did Mrs Plumley know if she’d been adopted?
‘No. She’s Jennifer’s all right. I visited her in hospital when Angela was born. So, surely with DNA you can later discover who the father is, if that’s of importance. As I told you, Freddie proved to be impotent. With that as an excuse, Jennifer granted herself a loose rein.’
‘I see. But also arising from blood analysis – Angela’s and her little friend, Monica’s – an unexpected level of alcohol was found.’
‘So the children had been drinking.’ It was statement, not question.
‘Sherry, a good one. We found the bottle. Part of a secret midnight feast, the evidence of which was hidden under Angela’s bed. Judging by the amount missing it’s almost certain they’d have known nothing of the attack on them.’
She was silent a moment, head bowed, before facing him again. ‘Thank God, then, for kiddish pranks.’
‘Amen,’ said Yeadings.
He left soon after, promising to ring her mobile with information on Alma Pavitt’s intentions. Certain rooms in the Manor must remain sealed for the present, until the professional cleaners saw to them, but as soon as Mrs Pavitt returned to her top floor a guest room could be made available for Mrs Plumley’s use.
Turning from the driveway into the village lane, he came face to face with a lumbering refuse lorry. Instead of reversing as the scowling driver’s gestures demanded, Yeadings braked and got out. He produced his warrant card and waved it up towards the open cab window. ‘Detective-Superintendent Yeadings, Thames Valley Major Crimes,’ he announced. ‘Haven’t you received instructions not to call here?’
‘Nothing on me shift schedule, mate,’ said the driver.
‘Well, it’s a restricted area. That’s what the yellow tape means. I’ll let you past to reverse. Inform your line manager when you get back.’
He backed into the courtyard and waited while the oversized van made a five-point turn and re-entered the narrow confines of the lane, its sides brushing against twiggy hedges. When it was out of sight he phoned Area from the car and asked to be connected with SOCO.
‘Who dealt with all refuse from the Fordham Manor case?’ he asked after identifying himself.
He listened while enquiries were made and a name was offered. ‘Put me through to him.’ He waited until the connection was made.
‘Did the Hoads use recycling bins? They did? Good. I’m interested in the paper and cardboard collection … No, that’s not enough. I need to see for myself Get it together. Then shall I come to you or …? You will? Splendid.’
He snapped his mobile shut. They would deliver the recyclable paper to him at Area. At risk of turning his office into a rubbish dump, he believed he’d a chance of finding some lead there.
A civilian accountant was working through material retrieved from the two filing cabinets in the study, but there’d been little unusual paperwork discovered in Hoad’s desk or waste paper basket. Maybe because it had already been dumped in the bin for recycling. And but for Yeadings running into the refuse van just now, it might well have missed his personal, meticulous examination. There was a point after all in abandoning the desk and taking to the field. Yeadings guessed that scavenging was one small area of interference which Salmon wouldn’t eventually begrudge him.
DCI Salmon re-read Z’s notes on the Hoads’ housekeeper and decided she deserved a visit. He summoned Beaumont to drive him to the Fletcher’s Rest. It stood a couple of miles to the far side of Fordham village and the same distance short of Fordham Green, an upmarket development of detached executive houses set amongst thin woodland in a central, triangle-shaped clearing.
He found Alma Pavitt smoking over a tabloid newspaper in the inn’s cosy sitting room. His brusque approach endeared him to her as little as did her dismissive attitude towards him. No, she hadn’t any identification on her beyond a driving licence. Surely that was enough for most purposes.
‘Passport; marriage certificate; National Insurance number; Inland Revenue receipts,’ he rumbled. ‘Where do you keep all these then?’
‘Some at the bank, but most in a drawer in my sitting room at the Manor, which apparently is out of bounds,’ she told him distantly.
He stared rudely back, disliking her translucent, frilled blouse and the coal black hair with its widow’s peak above strong, dark eyebrows threatening to meet over a slightly hooked, authoritative nose. Her mouth was mobile, twisting into a sardonic smile from a trout-like droop. He admitted that with those high cheekbones and hypnotic eyes some would call her handsome. For himself she had no attraction. Early fifties, Z had assumed. The woman looked younger, although well worn. Doubtless the hair was dyed.
She continued lounging in an easy chair while he stood over her, checking himself as he realised he’d started rocking on his heels. The questions he fired at her received a drawling response, always grammatical, but with that slightly un-English intonation Z had remarked on. He wondered if she’d been
a more recent immigrant than she’d claimed, and marrying a man so much younger as a way of getting British nationality.
He learned nothing new about the Hoads. Once she moved back into the Manor it would do her good, he decided, to get a bit of disciplining from the ex-RAF lady. Her opinion of her dead employers was too guarded to be of any value, and she had left the house even before the daughter returned from school on the Friday afternoon.
She had no suggestions as to where Daniel might have gone once the weekend camp was cancelled. With a free afternoon, he was actually packing for it when she left, and had raided the freezer for provisions to take with him. No, she didn’t know if his father intended driving him or someone would come to pick him up. As for the other little girl, that visit must have been a last-minute arrangement. She hadn’t been consulted. The spare twin bed in Angela’s room was always left made up.
‘The Hoads’ private life wasn’t my business,’ she said finally. ‘I rather pride myself on being discreet. It’s part of the job, if actually I still have one. However, if the old lady wants to move in, I’m happy to go back there, as a sort of guard dog or whatever.’
Dogsbody, Salmon thought to himself with some satisfaction. He hoped the old lady would prove plenty demanding.
There was still no news of Daniel. That was what Anna had hoped – dreaded – that Yeadings’ visit would be about. When the superintendent had left she remained seated inside the rain-buffeted caravan, staring from the streaked window, up-meadow towards the dark, cumulus outline of the wood on the hill.
She had never been there. Always, with the children, on her distant, rare visits, they had walked downhill over pasture with grazing cattle to the water meadows and the river. Her last, regretted, visit had been four and a half years back, when Daniel was about eleven and Angela celebrating her sixth birthday. Regretted because, despite her own efforts to be amiable, Jennifer had been even more withering than before.
Anna had never properly understood what made her daughter so inimical; but guessed at a long-held grudge from childhood. The distance then between single parent and only child had been one forced on them by the requirements of her service career. Jennifer, growing up ever full of expectations, could never accept the need to discipline her in her wilder moments, when Anna insisted no exceptions should be allowed by others for her rank.
Perhaps too there was something inherited. Could Anna’s own distaste for her parents’ way of living have actually passed into her genes? The grotesque idea made her smile.
She had come here that last time partly out of feeling for poor Freddie, the overlooked provider, the case-study example of woman’s inhumanity to man. She’d felt a need to assure him there was someone out there who held him in esteem, because he got short shrift at home, the children constant in their selfish demands, the wife flaunting her glorious independence.
She could forgive Daniel and Angela, self-centred as all children are at the start. It takes a few years to rub the sharp corners off, learn consideration, finally compassion. Now they were cut off before the process could be completed; unfinished souls. It gave her a burning sorrow inside.
There was still hope that Daniel could have escaped total destruction. She needed that much of herself to survive. Her grandson, her genes; but also a person in his own right.
She remembered how they’d walked down to the river, and the meadow grasses, whipping at their knees, were thick with wild flowers: buttercups, centaury, white campion, poppies and sorrel. It had been high summer: Daniel bare-chested in cut-off jeans; Angela in a white tank top, and proud of her new fuchsia-coloured cords. When she lay face down, spread-eagled by the stream, sunlight had dappled their velvety surface in a jigsaw pattern of pink and purple.
She was flipping the water with a forked hazel twig, to tease the darting minnows. Under the overhanging trees the stream shone like dull pewter. Occasional rocks cut and tilted the surface to resemble overlapping slates with little foamy edges. Daniel waded out to sit cross-legged on a flat-topped rock, trying to look wise; superior to his sister’s childishness. For Anna it had been an afternoon of lazy fondness.
The scene was crystalline, preserved forever in her memory. But now one grandchild was gone, the other at least transformed by the years between. And another little girl lost too, one she had never met. Over time Anna had grieved for crashed fliers, spoken with bereaved parents, devastated widows. She wondered about the family of the child who’d been invited for a weekend that abruptly closed her life. Should she get in touch with them? Something perhaps to consult the superintendent on.
A new silence told her the rain had ceased. She looked out as a few pale streaks of sunlight lit the wet grass. Emerging out of the dark wood on the hill appeared the burly shape of a man, with a dog at his heels. She watched him come closer, skirting the trees until he was forced into the open. There was a rough shiftiness about him. The sack he carried seemed weighty. What she’d taken at first to be a wrapped shotgun under his arm turned out to be some other kind of object, probably a spade. Intrigued, she let herself out on the far side from him and waited until he was almost level.
‘Good day,’ she greeted him, stepping out into view and smiling broadly in welcome. ‘That was quite a downpour. Really caught us on the hop, didn’t it?’
He halted, suspicious, but careful not to give offence. ‘G’day, ma‘am. Takes more’n that to keep me from me rabbits.’ He indicated the sack where a dark stain had begun to gather at the lower seam.
Ah yes, the honest poacher act. Not that he’d have shot them. More likely used snares. But then she doubted the sack bulged with rabbits either. Something larger, a single, much heavier shape.
‘I could be a customer for some wild bunny,’ she encouraged, holding out a hand.
‘They’re bespoke,’ he said. ‘You’d need to order in advance, like.’
She was watching the sack as the bulge stirred slightly; a dopey – perhaps stunned – creature coming back to life. The snorting grunt that issued was a sound she was accustomed to by night. ‘Come in and rest yourself. I’ll be making us a hot drink.’
He was anxious to be gone. She put a hand on his arm, and the dog – not a farm collie but a muddy Jack Russell – pricked up its ears, showing sharp teeth in a snarl.
‘That’s enough, you,’ she addressed it.
She turned back to the man. ‘I insist. You wouldn’t want me blabbing about you digging out a badger’s set, I’m sure.’
She laughed, making herself sound broadminded, patting his shoulder as she ushered him towards the caravan’s door. ‘My name’s Anna Plumley, by the way.’
He hesitated, reluctantly deciding that, although gentry, she wasn’t a bad old girl. Country-born at least. Knew the way things were. ‘Ben Huggett,’ he admitted.
‘So tell me about the wood,’ she invited, once indoors and hefting the ever-boiling kettle over his mug. He had opted for Bovril, and the salted beefy scent reminded her she’d eaten nothing since last evening. ‘I heard tell from locals that it’s haunted or something.’
‘Bewitched,’ he said with relish. ‘There’s all sorts of devilish things goes on there by night, especially full moon. Dancing and wicked feasting and casting spells. No one in their right mind will venture there certain times.’
Very convenient for such as him, she thought. He doubtless did his fair share of building up the superstitions.
Outside, the terrier had started yapping, dancing round the tumbled sack and darting in for little nips, then dancing free. One corner of the sacking showed a triangular tear where a heavy, vicious-clawed foreleg waved as the badger fought to free itself.
‘Best let it go,’ Anna advised. ‘It’ll be more trouble than it’s worth now it’s coming to.’
‘That bloody downpour held me up,’ Huggett complained. ‘The clout’s had time to wear off.’ He slid a choke-chain over the dog’s head and dragged him clear. Then, in high dudgeon, the man gave a surly nod and made off, towing the d
og behind.
Anna left it to Brock to free himself, then consigned the bloodstained sack to her rubbish bin.
At least that was one of God’s wild creatures that wouldn’t be baited to death. She hoped that Huggett would regard her presence as good reason not to repeat the venture for a while.
Chapter Nine
‘Miff’ Smith, patrolman and outrider for Traffic Division, was an impressive figure, standing six feet five inches in his black leathers and biking boots. He wasn’t unaware of the flutter he caused on entering Ward 5 to interview the now-conscious RTA case.
‘Jeff Wilmott’ the note told him: identified by his driving licence, a provisional one. So his bike should have had L-plates. Which it hadn’t. Not that it was a powerful beast like his own Kawasaki, but a pootering little two-stroke.
Now that the lad was coming round Miff was prepared to make things uncomfortable for him. Particularly since his pillion passenger, the girl in ITU, wasn’t offering much hope of recovery.
‘Right then,’ he said, seating himself in the chair a nurse had whipped under him. ‘Let’s hear all about it.’
‘Everything’s a bit fuzzy,’ the patient complained. ‘We were going along this lane, on the way home. No traffic once we’d left the main road. Then suddenly this fox darted out …’
Miff’s pencil was poised over his notebook. ‘A fox?’
‘Well, it could have been a dog, I suppose. It happened so quickly. Anyway I managed to miss it, but skidded. Greasy road in the rain.’
‘And hit a tree instead, side-on.’
‘Yes. How about Charley? Is she going to be all right? Nobody tells me anything.’
‘She’s in another ward. Maybe you can see her later. We’ll get this straight first.’
‘Well, that’s all I know. I must have passed out. I don’t remember anything else.’
‘You can start with your address. We have to inform your family. How many Ts in Wilmott?’
‘Two, I suppose. Why? What’s that got to do …?’
