Head Wound

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Zunaid’s sure it was a scream. I suppose I could have suggested it was just a vixen on heat but didn’t want to confuse the issue … So you weren’t aware of anything amiss, Pam?’

  She put down her slotted spoon, wiping her hands on a towel she’d tucked into her apron pocket. ‘Didn’t hear a thing. But he tugged my hand in exactly the same place as he did last time, and I tell you straight, Jane, I’m worried. Either he’s having flashbacks to Syria or he’s hearing something real. Maybe a fox. OK, it probably was. Nasty stinking creatures – they should bring back hunting, that’s what I say.’

  That was one discussion I wasn’t entering into. ‘But it’s in the same place as he heard this woman talking Romanian … I was thinking about telling the police, but I don’t think Zunaid needs any sort of official cross-questioning, just when he seems to be settling in so well. Not without cause, anyway. So let’s just find exactly where you were when he heard the shouts and screams. Just you and me, perhaps? This is one of the nights when he has to go straight back to his foster home, isn’t it? So after school? We can drive past it and then I’ll drop you off at yours.’

  ‘But it’ll be dark.’

  ‘It was dark when he heard the women. It’s not a matter of shoving our noses in anywhere dangerous, Pam – but I want to pinpoint the location exactly before I can talk to Lloyd Davies about it.’

  She gave me a searching look. ‘So, you’ve changed your mind about the police and Zunaid?’

  I returned the look. ‘Only if we see anything amiss.’

  But once I’d screamed and maybe people thought it was just a fox.

  With Pam in the car beside me, I did no more than stop and register the site. If I had to do any scrabbling round in the brambles not knowing who or what was the other side, I’d rather do it in daylight. And no, of course it wasn’t my job: it was the police’s. But with Lloyd still ill – genuinely ill, according to his wife Jo – there was no one else I could bother with simple hunches. Oh, I’d phoned 101 to have the information recorded, but the call handler was clearly unexcited. Still, if there was somewhere to poke a nose in, mine would be one of the first there. Which might explain why, with a pile of work to be done, and absolutely no time to make any commitment to a cause even as worthy as stopping petrolhead idiots systematically ignoring the village speed limits, I turned up with Joy at the initial Speed Watch gathering at the Jolly Cricketers.

  Our local road safety police officer – I didn’t even know that such a role existed – was one Eoin Connor, according to his name badge. He was a spring-loaded young man with not an Irish but a south London accent who bounced around the large room usually reserved for wedding receptions filling us all with zeal and commitment. He made it clear – and kept repeating the caveat – that we had no powers of arrest, and were there mainly as a deterrent. Then came a minimal amount of paperwork with our personal information. Then operational details – that sounded a remarkably technical term for speed guns, safety jackets, responsibilities, including the fact that we always worked in threes, safety precautions. Oh, and we’d get the chance to practise tomorrow afternoon. We couldn’t fire the speed gun till we’d been trained. So I fell at the first hurdle – on Saturdays, despite the weather, I’d still be training our women’s cricket squad.

  ‘Can you come a little earlier? I’d hate you to miss out,’ Eoin assured me, eyes as appealing as a red setter’s. ‘It only takes five minutes but it’s the law and there you are. Go on – one-thirty?’

  How could I resist that smile? And resist smiling back – not to mention hanging back at the end of the meeting and asking Eoin if he had other responsibilities besides hellhound motorists? After all, he’d been eye-contacting me all through his talk.

  ‘I’ll only be able to judge that if you sit down and tell me the problem over a drink,’ he said. ‘I’m parched after all this talking. And school’s out tomorrow.’

  ‘So it is. But I can’t drink, Eoin – I’ve not eaten and—’

  ‘Now there’s a coincidence: neither have I. And I gather Diane does wonderful food.’

  ‘She does. But I’ve got a friend staying with me …’ How would Joy react to playing gooseberry to our sudden little flirtation? Or would she go off in a huff, since she’d pretty well dragged me along? ‘And she’s got far more information than I have about our problem,’ I declared truthfully.

  ‘In that case it would be a pleasure to invite her along too,’ he said. His eyes said something else, however.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you enjoy a nice moment with a handsome young man?’ Joy demanded later, as Eoin headed to the Gents’ loo.

  ‘Because only yesterday I was sitting holding another young man’s hand?’ Metaphorically, at least.

  ‘Will’s. Will who’s in a persistent vegetative state. If he’d died outright, Jane, last autumn, would you be worried about flirting? Well, I suppose you might, but what you’re worrying about is a whole lot of might-have-beens that might well not have been at all. Sorry. Too much gin. When we’ve walked him round the close I shall retire to bed with my earplugs in. Understand?’ In an unaccustomed gesture she reached across and patted my hand.

  How she felt about being treated as Eoin’s aged grandmother as he helped her down kerbs and manoeuvred her round badly parked cars, I’d no doubt learn later. But he listened carefully to our joint narrative, occasionally interrupting to clarify points and muttering under his breath when he learnt, apparently for the first time, about calls to 101.

  ‘If it’s not something they can deal with online no one bothers,’ he chuntered.

  Then I pointed to the blackouts in the brightly lit room. ‘They’re like studio lights.’

  ‘Now that’s very interesting, isn’t it?’ His enthusiasm was probably genuine.

  Joy agreed. ‘I was talking about it earlier today to Ken, who says one of his friends has a studio in one of the bedrooms. And an old-fashioned darkroom too. No, not here – not this one.’

  Suddenly Eoin said, ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good thing for you two to be seen walking round with a cop in uniform. Take yourselves off home, now, and I’ll catch up with you in just five. Number fourteen – right?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Let’s do as he says, Joy, and I’ll get the coffee brewing.’

  Far from keeping her promise to head for bed, Joy insisted on making hot chocolate for us all, even producing the biscuits she’d made the other day. Was she being deeply ironic or simply assuming that sugar was better for us all than a massive ingestion of caffeine? Or perhaps she was simply responding to my anxieties – about myself as much as anything else. Whatever the reason, the chocolate was beyond good. So good she made us all a second mug.

  Eoin was content, it seemed, to charm us both, with hardly any reference to what he might have seen.

  Then Joy jumped in. ‘Did you know Will Bowman? One of Jane’s friends – a detective?’

  What on earth was she doing?

  Eoin’s face turned from a mask of comedy to a mask of tragedy. ‘I still do know him. Inasmuch as anyone can know him. If I could, I’d add, “God rest his soul” – but maybe it’s too early. Who knows? How do you know him, Jane?’

  Joy again. ‘She goes to visit him quite regularly – such a strain.’

  ‘A strain for all his friends, isn’t it?’ I asked Eoin directly. ‘We became friends when he was dealing with a murder at the house I actually own – not this one.’

  Before I knew it, Joy was off again, telling him how she’d alerted me to the problem.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, cutting across her, quite rudely, I suppose, ‘there’s another potential issue. Shouts and screams in woodland near Wray Episcopi. The shouts were in Romanian. And maybe there’s an international language of screams.’

  ‘You heard them when?’ Eoin’s smile faded. He was all attention.

  ‘Not me. But someone whose word I’d trust absolutely.’

  Joy leant forward. ‘Aren’t you going to take him t
o see where it was?’

  Something random dawned in my head with creaking slowness: Joy wasn’t sober.

  Now I came belatedly to think about it, I wasn’t either.

  What about Eoin?

  But she’d asked me a question. ‘Not at this time of night. We need broad daylight. And I’m beginning to think – I do apologise, Eoin – that I might have had more to drink at the Cricketers than I realised. I’m so sorry. Long day. Long week. All rounded off by that wonderful soporific hot chocolate.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be the Amarula,’ Joy declared beatifically. ‘I always put a really good slosh in hot chocolate – a trick I learnt on one of our trips to South Africa.’

  Eoin’s smile was back. But it was a little grimmer. ‘How much of a slosh, Joy?’

  She shrugged as if it was a ludicrous question.

  Eoin was on his feet. ‘I’d best call a cab, then, and leave the car here. Thank God it’s unmarked. Jesus, you know the ABV of that lovely stuff?’ He was already tapping his phone.

  Poor Joy – far from freeing up our inhibitions, she’d inadvertently locked me in a chastity belt.

  It didn’t take long for a cab to appear, minutes Joy filled with artless gossip. As Eoin headed for the front door she kissed us both goodnight, though, and tottered off upstairs.

  Eoin and I merely nodded to each other, embarrassed by our tipsiness.

  A fox grinned at us from the end of the drive, apparently heading to cock his leg against a rear wheel, but shrugging when the car drew off.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Eoin’s car disappeared from the drive early next morning before I was even up, a note on the doormat telling me he’d talk to me about my information when I turned up for my speed gun training. A short conversation was fine by me, backed up by a map I’d downloaded and marked with a time-honoured X. No. I deleted that.

  All very efficient.

  The speed gun training was easy: the speed of an approaching car was shown on a nice clear screen. Eoin drove towards me at a variety of speeds. After six or eight passes, he pulled up, getting out of the car. ‘There you are – a fully accredited member of the team. Now, I can see you’re all ready for your cricket – but in this weather, for God’s sake?’

  ‘In the school hall. Ball skills. Just to keep the muscle memory alive.’

  ‘Of course. Anyway, one more question: who gave you the information about the screams and why didn’t they come straight to us? OK, so that’s two.’

  ‘Which can share an answer. The person who told me was one of my pupils, a five- or six-year-old. No, don’t look at me like that. He’s got ears like radar scanners. And he knows a scream when he hears one. Somehow or other he escaped from Syria.’

  ‘Poor little bugger.’

  ‘Zunaid also heard shouts in Romanian.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s Romanian?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be. But he is. His best friend’s Romanian – the son of seasonal fruit-pickers – and Zunaid’s got an amazing ear for languages. A real gift. And I trust him.’

  ‘Even so, hardly someone we could ever use as a witness.’

  I could feel his interest ebbing. ‘You’ve got to find what made the woman scream before you’d need him to be that?’

  He nodded. ‘How long does this cricket business last?’

  ‘An hour. No more.’

  He checked his watch. ‘That’d give us an hour of twilight: I’ll pick you up at the school hall.’

  ‘I’m surprised you keep visiting Will Bowman,’ Eoin said, by way of a greeting, as I fastened my seat belt a hectic hour or so later.

  ‘He was a good friend. That’s what you do when a friend needs you.’

  ‘Do you think he still needs anyone? It’s a shame he was ever saved, if you ask me.’

  ‘Not a day goes by without my wondering if I’d been wiser not to do that mouth-to-mouth. But all I could do at the time was my best.’

  ‘It was you? My God. Sorry if—you know.’

  ‘I told you, with the gift of hindsight I dare say I’d have done better to hold his hand as he died. So having kept him alive …’

  ‘You’re doing your best to get him back to life. Sorry to sound brutal, but if there was a power cut at the hospital, I’d be thanking God. Let the poor bastard die.’

  I didn’t argue. Couldn’t.

  We pulled into the side of the road opposite the lay-by Pam had indicated. We got out and walked across, but Eoin gestured I wasn’t to step on to it, even though it was tarmacked, like the road. ‘Though countless people will have done, I suppose. And parked and dropped their rubbish and driven off. Christ, if you knew how I hate litter.’

  I looked round thoughtfully. ‘There’s no sign of any here – isn’t that weird in itself? Though we did have that high wind – perhaps it all got blown into someone’s garden. There’s nothing in the mouth of that bridleway either. Or the other one.’ I pointed to the two paths running off the lay-by – the one directly in front of us wide enough for one man and his dog, the other, at a forty-five-degree angle, a metre or so wider.

  In silence we walked five hundred metres or so up the narrower one, and then, returning with nothing except muddy boots for our trouble, we agreed to explore the other one. We set off very slowly.

  We’d barely gone fifty metres when he said, ‘You’re quiet.’ As if he wasn’t.

  ‘I have a terrible sense of déjà vu, that’s why. It was on a track like this I found what remained of Will.’

  ‘Ah. I can’t imagine we’ll find anything like that, but with the light going like this I’d say there’s no point in upsetting yourself by going any further. Another time, maybe. Do you think it’s worth talking to the little lad again? Or to that woman Pat?’ he added, heading back downhill.

  ‘Pam. We could see if she’s in, but I’d bet that if she’s well enough – she’s got a vile cold – she’ll be in Canterbury with Zunaid’s foster family. She’d love to adopt him if she can. But you know what officialdom’s like.’ Hearing a horse behind us, I stopped short, turning back up the path. ‘Lulabelle!’

  ‘Good afternoon, Ms Cowan.’ She looked down at me from her pony, which seemed quite large for a child her age. The flowing locks were invisible under her hard hat, and the girliness had been replaced by jeans and a unisex top and a hi-vis waistcoat. She touched the peak of her hard hat in a neat salute.

  As if she was an adult I introduced her to Eoin, whose title I used.

  ‘Police?’ she asked, suddenly lisping like a very little girl. ‘Has someone done something wrong?’

  ‘We don’t know, Lulabelle,’ Eoin said seriously. ‘You’ve got a better vantage point than we have – have you ever seen anything unusual. Heard anything?’

  She grimaced. ‘Actually, I’m not supposed to be here – you won’t tell, will you, Ms Cowan? Dad’d kill me.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he’d want to do that?’

  ‘Oh, he keeps on about not riding on my own in case Snowflake puts a foot in a rabbit hole and throws me. And stuff about never talking to strangers.’ She looked with cool, amused eyes not at me but at Eoin. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the same from every dad.’

  ‘And every dad – and every mum, for that matter – is absolutely right to tell their sons and daughters about the dangers of what they’re doing,’ he said, not amused at all.

  ‘Snowflake’s like totally sure-footed. And if anyone tried to talk to me I’d just gallop away.’

  He stuck his hands on his hips. ‘You might—’

  I sensed that Eoin was about to argue – pointlessly – about the practicalities, so I interrupted him. ‘Have you heard any strangers talking – not necessarily to you, but to anyone else round here?’

  Before she could answer, a quad bike hurtled up the hill. Snowflake moved uneasily but Lulabelle quelled any attempt to bolt. The bareheaded driver yelled, ‘And what the hell are you doing out on that bloody nag and talking to a pair of random rustics when I told you not to? Bloody get
down now and walk him home. Understand? And I’ll deal with you later. As for you two, you should be ashamed of yourselves.’

  ‘Dad, they’re—’

  ‘Do as you’re bloody told! Now!’ he screamed, grabbing the bridle with one hand and her arm with the other. ‘Off. Walk. Now!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Best go, Lulabelle,’ I said quietly, smiling with more kindness than I’d ever felt for her. I could hear the sniffed-back sobs as she obeyed. ‘Mr Petrie, I’m Jane Cowan, Wray Episcopi’s head teacher.’ And we ought to have met before: how on earth had he slipped through the parents’ evenings net? ‘And this is PC Eoin Connor.’

  Eoin flashed his card. Why Petrie had chosen to ignore his uniform I wasn’t sure.

  But he wasn’t about to apologise. ‘Well, you should know better than to encourage her, that’s all I have to say to you. And stick to the footpaths; don’t go trespassing on my land.’ The bike disappeared in a smelly, muddy cloud.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if his brakes failed?’

  ‘So long as he didn’t go flying across the road and smash up my car.’ He turned to follow him, more decorously, of course. ‘Well? What are we waiting for?’ He started walking.

  I was actually wondering what it was that Petrie didn’t want either his daughter or us to see. But the light was fading fast, and any attempt to turn back might be construed as an attempt to return to last night’s brief flirtation, which was long dead.

  He said nothing about my being involved any further, indeed said very little about anything on the way back to Wrayford, where he pulled up on my drive just long enough for me to get out. He was off before I got the key in the front door.

  I just hoped that the second rental option that Joy’s insurance company came up with was better than the first, which even I’d have found cramped. Predictably I’d been pressed into service as an adviser, a role to which I was probably suited, given my nomadic experience. But I could think of much better ways of spending a Sunday morning than driving round in drenching, unremitting rain. Actually, I could think of one worse one – showing Eoin round more miserable woodland paths, had he invited me to, that is.