‘I just hope this won’t lose support for our venture,’ he said, already ten years older than when we landed this morning. ‘It’s one thing having the church fall down slowly for lack of maintenance, another to have it knocked down about our ears.’
‘Don’t start looking like Eeyore in search of his tail,’ Dave said, trying to straighten his face. ‘It all depends where they install the safe. Put it on the outer shell of the building where someone can just drive up to it and frankly you’re asking for trouble. Install a few reinforced bollards, or in St Dunstan’s case some Norman buttresses, and you should be OK. As for the church plate—’
‘That’s safe in Canterbury Cathedral treasury,’ Theo said. ‘So people can look but not touch. The plate we use now is EPNS – and I fancy the silver plating’s wearing off.’
‘It is. I tried polishing it when the regular cleaning rota seemed to have a hiccup. So what’s in the safe in the nave floor?’ I asked.
Theo blinked. ‘What safe?’
‘It’s under the carpet that covers the De Villiers brasses. I should imagine that Ted and George have the keys, assuming Mrs Mountford let them slip from her hot little hands. Come on, I’ll show you. A bit of fresh air won’t do you any harm,’ I said pointedly as he looked at his watch. ‘Dave’ll hold the fort.’
‘No! You can’t leave the house! What if …? All this secur-ity and you want to show yourself in public?’ Theo added more coherently.
‘I’m not going to be a prisoner.’ I found I couldn’t add, in my own home. Because it wasn’t, was it? Not yet.
Before we could leave, however, a call came through for me. From Dilly Pound, of all people.
‘That story about JCBs and post offices reminded me of our conversation the other day, Jodie. I just wanted to say I did make enquiries, but I’ve heard nothing yet.’
‘We might have the worst sort of news,’ I said gently, remembering her reaction to the thought of dying alone. ‘A body was found not far from here. On the Downs. It’s not yet been ID’d, but I’m terribly, terribly afraid …’
‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry.’ She sounded it. ‘Oh, Jodie, keep me up to speed, won’t you?’
The sun, though not as hot as yesterday’s in London, was pleasantly warm. Dave adjourned to the garden, leg propped up on a decaying bench that just about took his weight. Although he had War and Peace on his lap, I had an idea he was hoping to engage in conversation with some of the workmen as he waved us off on our walk.
I thought it would do Theo’s heart good if I set a spanking pace and took us the long way round. It might be safer too, come to think of it. Theo heard what he thought was a sky lark. There were no cuckoos – too early in the year, he explained – but the hedges were alive with avian building activity.
‘Oh, to be in England, Now that April’s here! Not that it is quite April, but the clocks go forward on Saturday, which always makes me feel full of the joys,’ I said.
‘And makes me terribly likely to be late for eight o’clock Communion,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to rely on you to find a way to wake me up.’
And yet I had a sense that both Theo and I were being as cheerful as we could so that neither knew how badly the other was suffering. When he flagged a little, I chivvied him: ‘Don’t forget, you should just be able to speak, so you might as well tell me the feedback from our adventure this morning.’
‘Not sure … if it’s possible … to laugh … at this speed.’
I slowed obligingly. ‘It’s not often you get to laugh down here, darling, so here’s your chance.’
He didn’t pick up on the reference to down here. ‘Most people – especially people like Violet and Alison – were delighted. Thought it was the best thing to happen to the village for ten years. Elaine wasn’t so sure, I don’t think, but she said nice things about improving your image and so on.’
‘La Mountford?’
‘She was so upset she had to take some of her pills.’
‘Serves her right for dragging you out so early. I just wish I could ask you what for.’
‘If you did I could tell you: it wasn’t really pastoral business at all.’
‘OK: what for?’
‘To moan about the disaffected youths hanging round the village. I referred her to the police, or to the county council, who were, as I told her, the ones who closed the youth club. But she seemed to think that a youth club was a waste of public money anyway.’
‘Not exactly a meeting of minds.’
He groaned. ‘She’s such a demanding woman. Sometimes it’s hard not to tell her so to her face.’
‘Being good’s hard work, isn’t it?’ I remarked flippantly.
His forbearing half-sigh made me wish I hadn’t. He changed the subject. ‘What did Ted Vesey have to say about the helicopter? I was afraid it would blow all his beautiful windows in.’
I slapped my head in irritation. ‘Of course! That was what was wrong with his morning visit: he didn’t mention the chopper.’
‘Perhaps he’d been away for the night too.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’ But I wasn’t.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ Theo began, kneeling to roll back the carpet, ‘that even after you mentioned them I’ve never been to see the brasses. And as for the safe, I haven’t a clue where the key might be. Or rather the combination,’ he said, sitting back on his haunches and inspecting what looked to be a remarkably solid mass of metal sunk flush with the stone paving that helped make the church so cool today – or so cold most of the time.
‘I suppose if the churchwardens know, then there’s no need for anyone else to,’ I said. ‘You could always ask one of them. Why not give George a bell now?’
‘Because he, like Ted, does such an enormous amount in behind the scenes admin, I wouldn’t want to disturb him.’
‘Well,’ I persisted, cocking an ear, ‘why not go and interrupt him in one of his behind the scenes jobs? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you interrupted his strimming.’
Nor did he. He took the precaution of grabbing a kneeler before he joined Theo and me on our knees as if we were praying that the safe might open itself. It didn’t.
‘I don’t like being in the dark,’ George said, reaching for his mobile, ‘so I’ll give Ted a call. If he doesn’t know the combination, I’m sure Ida Mountford will. She makes it her business to know everything else, so I can’t imagine she’d forget a secret like this. Otherwise it must be written down in one of those dusty tomes in the vestry no one ever gets round to reading. Leave it to me, Theo. I’ll get back to you.’ He smiled as we hauled him to his feet. ‘Thanks, Jodie. Oh, the joints aren’t what they used to be. They’ll welcome a little break from the graves.’
Since neither the safe nor its possible contents were really any of our business, Theo responded to a phone summons to a distant part of the benefice with the promise he’d be there within the hour. So it was another brisk walk home, but the more direct route, so he could pick up the car.
Waving him off, I reflected that perhaps mowing the lawn was a job I could accomplish without ruining my hands. I stared at the battered-looking machine in puzzlement, eventually summoning Dave to hobble round to see what was vexing me.
‘I can’t see a cable point. Or an on-off mechanism,’ I wailed.
He patted me kindly on the shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t, Jodie, would you? It’s like your dad’s remember – push and pull. Golly, he was so proud of the stripes on his lawn, wasn’t he? Remember when I got it out again after he and my dad had nipped out for a snifter down the pub and I mowed the lawn the other way?’
‘And it came out chequered like a chessboard? You got the hiding of your life, didn’t you!’
‘And no Social Services coming after Dad either. Times have changed a bit since then, Jode, and not necessarily for the better. Look, this thing’s so old Noah probably chucked it out of the Ark. Heaven knows when it was last serviced.’
‘Serviced? Like cars?’
�
�The blades sharpened and reset, and the whole lot oiled. You could try it on the grass,’ he added doubtfully, ‘but it won’t do that back of yours any good.’
‘My back’s fine,’ I objected.
‘Used to be. Until you started to grow a permanent hunch. Look at yourself in a mirror, sideways on. It must be affecting your running times. Anyway, I give you ten minutes max with this mower. You’ll be at a garden centre in thirty flat.’
After twenty minutes’ gruelling effort, the lawn looked worse rather than better. The garden centre beckoned. But not before one of the workmen, coming to tell me their job was done, also told me that safety cameras or no safety cameras, he wouldn’t want to sleep in the rectory at night. ‘Not with the wiring in this state,’ he added. ‘Insulation rotten, fuse board years out of date. You want to get it sorted, sooner rather than later, too. Before it burns down round your ears.’
Another faculty? Or dare I get someone in on my own authority? I propped a note on Theo’s desk.
A nice new shiny electric mower in the back of the Audi, I was tootling back through the village when I saw Alison Cox walking hard.
‘Can I offer you a lift?’
She got in, arguing. ‘George is up at the church and I can’t get him on his mobile. He probably can’t hear with that damned strimmer of his, but all the same.’
‘All the same,’ I agreed, ignoring the speed limit.
The strimmer lay abandoned against the hideous Victorian tomb. Hadn’t he left it there when he came to look at the safe? I ran into the church. George had keeled over where we’d last seen him. But it wasn’t the heart attack I’d always feared for him that made me dial nine-nine-nine; it was the raw head wound. Someone had knocked him out. In a man that age, the blow might well have killed him. It hadn’t – yet.
Seeing her husband like that might well have killed Alison, too. But she took charge, pointing out even as we got him into the recovery position that she was a trained first-aider and had seen far worse than this during her stint in the prison service. It wasn’t until the paramedics loaded him into an ambulance and the first police vehicles were arriving that she allowed her voice to quaver, but by then I was bundling her into the Audi. ‘I’m taking her to A&E, Officer,’ I declared to my old adversary, the sergeant, who clearly couldn’t quite place me with the new hairdo and the flour-free trousers, ‘and then I’ll be back to make a statement. Doctor Harcourt, remember. The rectory.’
George Cox was still alive when Alison and I arrived at Ashford’s William Harvey hospital. Clearly she wasn’t going to leave him, so I promised to collect the list of things she hoped that he’d need. Insisted he would need. I wouldn’t argue, though I thought a few prayers from Theo might be in order, as I told him when I phoned.
Poor George wouldn’t be needing a shaving kit or his reading glasses and Kindle for a few hours, so I headed not to their cottage but to St Dunstan’s. Despite Dave’s bitterness, despite my anger at their treatment of the Burns family, I still felt a frisson of gratitude at the sight of blue and white tape and a couple of white-suited women looking calm and efficient.
The hostile sergeant, whose name I at last discovered was Carl Masters, passed me grudgingly to a young constable called Lily Glover, a name that seemed to suit her high-coloured prettiness.
‘When I left George, he was about to make a couple of phone calls,’ I told her. ‘The first was to be to a man called Ted Vesey, with whom he shared churchwardens’ duties. Incidentally, Mr Vesey’s got a key to the church and will no doubt lock up if you ask him to.’ I pointed out his cottage across the green. ‘If Ted didn’t have the information George needed, he’d have made a second call to Mrs Ida Mountford, their predecessor in the role.’
Lily smiled ironically. ‘One woman does the job, she leaves, it takes two men. Typical.’ She settled more comfortably on a table tomb, swinging her legs like a kid skiving off school. Deciding not to correct her impression of Mrs Mountford, I joined her. The sun felt good on our heads, calming and reassuring after all the drama. ‘So why should he phone them?’
‘To ask for the combination to the safe he was kneeling by when I found him. The floor safe. In fact, of course – I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight – he may have got the information from the first call and not had to bother with the second. There was no sign of the mobile when I found him. I assumed he’d made his calls and pocketed it before he was attacked.’
‘Big assumption,’ she countered, clearly not one to be told her job by amateurs. ‘More likely a visitor to the church saw him by the safe and tried to coerce him into opening it.’ Her eyes rounded at the prospect. Then she tried a more banal theory. ‘Or perhaps they saw him using the phone and chanced their arm. Lots of opportunist mobile phone thefts.’
‘George’s mobile was so old it would have reduced a thief to tears of pity. Its rightful place was in a museum.’
‘Even so, there are a lot of disaffected youngsters round here. Hey, there’s one by your car right now!’
Dropping her notepad, she started down the patch. Even though I’m no sprinter, I overtook her comfortably.
‘Hi, Jodie, you been bending your plastic again? Bosch, eh? Burble will— would … He would have …’ Mouth working, he turned away.
I hugged him. Hard. Poor, poor kid. No doubt his gut told him, as mine did, that the corpse on the mortuary table today was his mate’s. At last, wiping his snotty nose on the sleeve of his hoodie until I produced a paper tissue, he said, ‘I just thought – you know – maybe lighting a candle or something. Theo being the vicar and that.’
‘A candle would be a great idea,’ I said, though I suspected they did more for the living who lit them than for the dead, ‘but as you can see the church is closed just now. I found George Cox laid out cold inside.’ And I knew the instant the words left my mouth I shouldn’t have been saying them.
‘Isn’t that Malcolm Burns?’ Sergeant Masters demanded, elbowing Glover to one side. ‘You again. And no fancy lawyer this time. What do you know about this, then?’ He pointed back towards the church with all the understatement of Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.
‘Only what Jodie told me,’ Mazza said innocently. ‘I was just admiring her new mower, like.’
Masters turned to jab him in the chest. ‘Get a good price for that, would you?’
‘Jodie’s a good friend … of my mum’s,’ he said, thinking on his feet for once. ‘And she’s been good to me and my kid sister. I’d cut off my right hand sooner than harm her. As for George, he’s a decent guy. Tried to teach me how to bowl once.’ To my delight he limited his expletives.
‘Got his phone, have you? Come on, George’s phone!’ He made give me gestures.
Meek as a lamb, but clearly seething, Mazza turned out his pockets without even being asked. Along with a battered pack of condoms, some fags and a lighter, his mobile gleamed in the sun.
‘Ah!’ Masters was ready to pounce but found my arm in the way.
‘Show them the pictures you took for the website, Mazza,’ I said quietly, putting my hand on his wrist. ‘That’ll speak louder than any protests that you’ve had it a long time and that it’s certainly not George’s.’
In fact the first he showed them was me going base over apex over Ted’s dog’s lead.
‘Whoever’s that?’ demanded Lily. ‘Whoever it is doesn’t like you much, does he?’
‘That,’ I said, wishing I didn’t have to, ‘is the churchwarden George said he was going to call when I left him earlier. Ted Vesey.’
NINETEEN
On impulse, having packed and delivered bags for both George and Alison Cox to the hospital, I stopped by St Dunstan’s again. I wanted to talk to God on his own territory about poor unconscious George. The church door stood open, guarded by a community support officer. I’d hardly opened my mouth to ask if I might go inside when Theo drove up, greeting me with a weary smile as he walked up the gravel path. The PCSO crossed himself and genuflected as Theo approached him.
It was easy to persuade him that Theo’s idea of getting his own key and locking up was a good one.
I asked if I might put the strimmer in the vestry for safe-keeping. PCSO Blue Band thought it better if he did, if only he knew where the vestry might be.
Supper was a spread of excellent curries, all cooked by Rosemary. I suspect she’d fed us so royally because she knew none of us would have much to say: we were, after all, waiting for a call from the forensic photographer, not to mention the results of the post-mortem.
She and I did our best with an animated discussion about the best source of spice. Theo looked as if he was sucking lemons and Dave pulled steadily on the lager intended to accompany, not replace, the meal. There was a great deal left over. There was a great deal of evening left over, too – more than I could have believed. Perhaps there’d be something on TV, or maybe everyone liked card-games.
When the house phone rang it might have been a funeral bell tolling, but as it dawned on us all that anyone calling Rosemary or Dave would use their mobiles, everyone sat back in relief. Except me. Rectory receptionist, of course. The kitchen fell silent. Maybe it was best to take the call on the phone in the hall.
Alison! My stomach somersaulted. ‘George?’
‘Is still unconscious but improving, they assure me. I just thought you’d want to know. And I wanted to thank you for all you did today – well above and beyond the call of duty. Now, all being well I will take up your kind offer to collect me tomorrow morning. Good night and God bless you, my dear.’
To my shame, I didn’t even remember having offered her a lift, but I was embarrassed to admit that to myself, let alone anyone else.
When I got back to the kitchen, Rosemary was just closing her phone.
The faces told me it wasn’t good news. Theo pulled out a chair for me. I sat.
‘We were all expecting this,’ Rosemary said quietly. ‘DNA comparison confirms it was Burble. He died, in layman’s terms, of a broken neck. It looks as if he tripped and fell.’
Death in Elysium Page 17
