A Cotswold Ordeal

by Rebecca Tope

  She opened the driver’s door, savouring the leathery smell that greeted her, and the well-balanced mechanism of the hinges, which screamed quality and money and magnificent workmanship. The bundle on the back seat wriggled slightly.

  ‘Come out,’ Thea ordered. ‘I can see you. Stop playing games and show us who you are.’

  Nothing happened, and feeling more irritated than apprehensive, Thea located the catch to tip the driving seat forward, before climbing in with the stowaway. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Whoever you are.’

  She scrabbled at the sleeping bag, unsure which was the head end, until an edge came free. She pulled, and a tousled dark head emerged. A sullen female face was almost lost amidst the disordered hair.

  ‘Oh!’ said Thea. ‘Aren’t you…’ she groped for the name. ‘Yes – you’re Flora. What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Jocelyn at her elbow. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Flora. She lives here. I’ve got her room.’ Thea stared at the girl in utter bewilderment. ‘But – you’re in Ireland,’ she said stupidly.

  ‘No, I’m here,’ said the girl with some dignity. ‘I’ve been here for days.’

  ‘Well, come into the house and explain what you think you’re doing,’ Thea ordered. ‘And don’t try to run away.’

  ‘Not much danger of that,’ Jocelyn remarked. ‘She’s like a chrysalis in that sleeping bag. You’ll have to help her out of it.’

  Awkwardly, the girl was extracted from the car and the bag until finally she stood rumpled and scowling before them. She was pretty, Thea noted, with the same shape head and style of hair as her own. She was also barefooted, which Thea hoped reduced the chances of a bid for freedom. Already she was wondering how she could possibly hope to restrain her if Flora decided to go.

  ‘How’ve you managed for food?’ she asked. ‘And why? What’s going on?’

  ‘I got stuff out of the freezer,’ the girl shrugged. ‘Apples and things.’

  ‘Have you been into the house?’ Jocelyn wanted to know. A thought struck her. ‘Did you write that stuff on the wall?’

  The girl stared insolently at the beams overhead, ignoring the question.

  ‘Of course you did,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘You know what happened here on Monday, don’t you?’ Thea demanded, too cross to be kind or sensitive. ‘You being here like this looks really suspicious. I’ll have to call the police and tell them.’

  ‘Thea!’ Jocelyn expostulated. ‘For heaven’s sake.’

  Flora narrowed her eyes, looking from one sister to the other. ‘Do what you like,’ she muttered.

  ‘Come into the house,’ Thea ordered, ‘and have some food. We can decide what to do with you after that.’

  ‘We’ll have to call your mum,’ said Jocelyn. ‘She must be worried sick about you.’

  The effect of this attempt at a sympathetic approach was completely unexpected. Flora’s eyes grew three times bigger, her head came forward like one of the defensive geese in the yard, and she almost choked on the passion behind her words. ‘Don’t you dare phone my mum. And besides, if you mean Julia, then she isn’t my mum anyway. My mum’s in Liverpool and can hardly get out of bed. So get your facts straight. And don’t phone anybody, right? What’re you trying to do? Aren’t things bad enough as it is?’ She kicked wildly at the sleeping bag, on the floor beside her. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you. You dozy cows are in the way – why don’t you just go and leave us to sort it all out?’ She waved at the words on the wall, in a gesture that left no doubt that they were her handiwork.

  ‘I told you,’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘But why do you want us to go?’ Thea persisted. ‘Why did you come back?’

  Flora closed her eyes tight, and shook her head. ‘I couldn’t tell you, if I wanted to. People would get into trouble if I did. And I wanted you to go so I could sleep in my own bed. See? Simple!’

  Thea tried to think things through. ‘If you’ve been here since Monday morning, then you’re probably a witness to what happened, and the police will want to speak to you. If that happens, then one of your parents – or step-parents – will have to be with you while you’re being questioned. This is very serious, Flora. Surely you understand that.’

  Flora evidently found silence impossible to sustain for long. Words burst out of her. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What did happen on Monday? I didn’t get here until late, and everything seemed normal enough then – except Pallo not being in his stable.’

  ‘She doesn’t know, Thea,’ Jocelyn said urgently. ‘You can see she’s telling us the truth.’

  ‘So tell me,’ Flora demanded.

  ‘Darling,’ said Jocelyn, ‘this might come as a shock. Somebody was killed.’

  ‘All right then – tell me,’ invited Flora sturdily. ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘One of your Rural Warriors – the leader, if I’ve got it right. A boy called Nick Franklyn.’

  They both watched her closely for a reaction. Flora didn’t flinch, but her face went a greenish-white. ‘Something happened to Nick?’ she repeated.

  ‘He was murdered and I found him here on Monday morning,’ said Thea.

  Flora’s jaw bulged where she ground her teeth. Her mouth puckered as she fought to remain silent. She would not meet either woman’s eyes, but stared out at the sunny yard. Her thoughts were impossible to read.

  ‘So you see,’ Jocelyn continued patiently, ‘we have to make sure you’re safe. You’ll have to stay with somebody responsible. And your parents will have to know you’re here. It’s not open to discussion. That’s how it’ll have to be.’

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Flora snarled at Thea, before checking herself. ‘Except—When did you say it was?’

  ‘Monday morning.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Flora, in a disturbingly adult way. ‘I was too late then.’

  ‘You came back to try and stop it happening?’ Thea felt she was getting close to hearing something vital to understanding the whole mystery.

  ‘None of your business,’ Flora retorted. ‘You can do what you like, I’m not telling you anything.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ Jocelyn asked, with impressive patience.

  ‘Stay here. The car’s fine. I like the car.’

  It occurred to Thea that the girl might have been in the habit of using the car as a hideaway, even before the holiday. She gave Jocelyn a look, full of helpless questions about what happened next.

  ‘You did hear what Thea just said, didn’t you?’ Jocelyn asked. ‘You can’t just ignore it and hope it’ll all go away. Obviously we can’t let you stay here in the car, either.’ A thought struck her. ‘How did you get back from Ireland, anyway?’

  ‘On the ferry, of course.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  Flora chose not to answer that one, merely shrugging wordlessly.

  ‘They’ll be terribly worried about you,’ Thea persisted. ‘They’ve probably reported you missing by now. You’ll be wasting police time.’ This echo of Valerie Innes’s accusation only made Thea all the more bad-tempered. ‘You stupid girl,’ she added for good measure.

  ‘Nobody’s reported anything,’ the girl said. ‘They don’t know I’m here.’

  ‘No – but they know you’re not with them.’

  Flora sighed melodramatically at the idiocy of adults. ‘It’s not like that. They’re not together. Julia thinks I’m with Dad, and he thinks I’m with Julia. Simple.’

  ‘What day did you come back? And how did you get here from Swansea or wherever the ferry docked?’ Thea’s questions seemed to be breeding in her mind, one leading to three or four others.

  ‘There are such things as trains.’

  Jocelyn was still in full maternal mode. ‘Flora, you’re obviously very shocked and upset about Nick. You must see that we have to phone your mother – stepmother – right away.’ She looked to Thea for support. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘
Definitely,’ confirmed Thea, privately acknowledging that she was not in fact able to do any such thing. The only phone number she had was Desmond’s mobile, and if he was still fishing in the mountains, she was unlikely to get hold of him.

  ‘If you phone anybody, I want it to be my dad,’ Flora said, struggling to maintain the hard persona. ‘But you won’t reach him. I tried all yesterday and he’s not answering.’

  ‘Let’s see if we’ve got this right, then,’ Thea pressed on. ‘You left Julia and the others, saying you were going to join your father in the mountains. But instead you went back to Cork and got the ferry. Nobody missed you. You expect us to believe they haven’t communicated by now and discovered you’re not with either of them? It isn’t going to work, Flora. The story’s rubbish, and you know it.’

  ‘It’s not rubbish,’ snapped Flora. ‘You don’t understand. Dad never knew I told Julia I was going with him. He won’t be thinking about me at all.’ She wrapped her arms around herself in her agitation. ‘But if you force me, I can phone somebody. Except I’ll need to borrow a mobile. Mine’s run out of credit.’

  ‘Who do you want to call?’ asked Thea.

  ‘My boyfriend, if it’s any business of yours.’

  ‘I’ll have to know his name and address before I let you go to him.’ Thea’s anger had evaporated in the face of the girl’s courage and self-control. There was a tragedy here that she had scarcely glimpsed until now. She craved the strong professional shoulder of DS Hollis, wondering how it was that she’d failed to call him minutes ago. She realised she’d been misleading the girl as to what might happen next. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but you really will have to speak to the police, first.’

  ‘What for? Do they think I killed Nick? How could I, if it happened on Monday? I didn’t get off the ferry till evening, and it took hours to get back here.’

  Flora had something clear in her mind, that much was obvious. And she was not inclined to disclose much of it to these two officious women who had taken over her house.

  ‘Well, come and have something to eat,’ offered Jocelyn. ‘And a proper wash. We can decide what happens next when you’ve got over the shock.’

  ‘What shock?’ demanded Flora with a heartrending effort at bravado. ‘What makes you think it’s a shock?’

  Hollis, when told of the new development, was almost as much at a loss as Thea and Jocelyn had been. ‘What are we going to do with her?’ he muttered. ‘How old did you say she is?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Well, first thing, we tell her mother where she is. Then she’ll have to answer some questions. Do you think she knows anything useful?’

  Thea gave this a moment’s consideration. ‘I think she probably does – I get the impression she came back hoping to prevent some sort of violence.’

  ‘But she hasn’t told you anything specific?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll have to find somebody to watch out for her.’

  ‘You wouldn’t expect me…?’

  There was a silence. Then, ‘I s’pose not,’ followed by more silence.

  ‘She has a real mother, in Liverpool,’ Thea offered. ‘She’s ill, apparently, but might be useful. And she says there’s a boyfriend she wants to speak to.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I’ll send somebody round in a few minutes. It won’t be me. Try to hold on to her till then.’

  Flora sulked and refused to eat, but she did not try to escape. She picked at her fingernails, brow furrowed in thought, her face still very pale. Thea had not told her the news that the police were on their way, despite a strong sense of treachery at having crept upstairs to use the phone in the master bedroom. Both Flora and Jocelyn seemed to be paralysed. Silence felt like the only option, when words only led to more lies and hurt feelings.

  A car arrived containing two female uniformed officers. Thea met them at the door and took them into the living room. Flora gave one startled look before lapsing back into her torpor. ‘We’ll look after you, pet,’ said a smiling black policewoman with a Yorkshire accent. ‘Give you somewhere comfy for the night, eh?’

  Flora smiled briefly at a secret joke. ‘Taking me into care, are you?’ she said flatly. ‘I’ve always wanted to be taken into care.’

  Thea was left with a sense of having dodged a responsibility and ducked a duty, and a realisation, an hour and a half too late, that she was meant to be watching the six o’clock television news.

  Jocelyn shrugged wearily. ‘We’ll have to catch it at ten, instead.’

  The news had them focused unwaveringly on the television screen. After the national stories of wars and politics and the latest medical miracle, came the regional headlines. The discovery of Nicholas James Franklyn hanging in a stable in a small Cotswold village not far from Stroud was the main item.

  ‘Mr Franklyn’s family have elected to make a public appeal less than twenty-four hours after learning of their son’s death. The police are treating his death as suspicious, and his parents have given the following news conference. This took place earlier today, in Cirencester.’

  Then came a short video of a middle-aged man and woman, flanked by people who must have been police officers.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ said Thea.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That man. The father. I’ve seen him before. He’s the one who came to the door here, on Sunday, when it was raining. The one who drove past again, the next morning.’

  ‘He can’t be,’ Jocelyn protested.

  Thea’s gaze didn’t waver from the screen. ‘It is, it’s definitely him.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell the police,’ Jocelyn urged her.

  ‘Shh.’ The bereaved parents were talking, first one, then the other.

  Nick was a wonderful son. He was doing well in his studies, and was hoping for a place at Nottingham University. He had all sorts of plans. We just can’t believe he’s gone. Please, everyone, help us find out what happened to him.

  That was the mother, a crumpled woman with pale ash-blonde hair and a carefully-pressed blouse.

  The father patted her arm, his eyes still on the camera. A very fine boy. Strong social conscience. Popular. He seemed to utter the words by rote, their meaning blurred by the fixed blankness of his features.

  Then the police took over, the camera shifting to a middle-aged man with clean reliable looks. If anybody can provide us with any information as to why Nicholas was in that particular area, or any unusual vehicles or movements, anything at all, please call the Cirencester police on this number.

  ‘Usual sort of stuff,’ Jocelyn commented cautiously, when she was sure it was finished.

  ‘Strong social conscience,’ Thea repeated. ‘That’s the bit about him being an environmental activist, I suppose.’

  ‘That father doesn’t like it. You could tell.’

  ‘Could you? He looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy to me, just saying stuff he’d rehearsed in advance.’

  ‘Most of it, yes, but not that part. And why mention it at all?’

  Thea stared at the screen which had moved on to the weather forecast. ‘It’s extremely odd, though – him being here at the same time as the boy died. His own father.’

  ‘Does he know you saw him on Monday?’ Jocelyn looked worried.

  ‘I’m sure he did, even though he was wearing a pair of goggles.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Goggles. Like old-fashioned aeroplane pilots. He had the top of his car down.’

  ‘But he saw you? He saw you seeing him? In which case, you might have something to worry about.’

  ‘Only if he’s the murderer. Do you think he might be?’

  ‘Well, don’t ask me. Get on to your new boyfriend and chew it over with him.’

  Thea knew she must do precisely that. Her reluctance stemmed mainly from the impression of hysteria given by two panicky phonecalls in one evening. And the man had sounded embroiled in work, in hard thinking and urgent claims on his time, when she’d called ab
out Flora. Could it perhaps wait until morning? Hadn’t he said he wanted her kept at a distance from the whole murder enquiry? And hadn’t he also said she should watch the television news?

  She picked up the phone.

  But when she finally heard his voice, and gave him her news, he barely responded. ‘Oh yes, we know,’ was all he said.

  ‘And you never told me?’ The whining reproach was inexcusable, but unavoidable.

  ‘I wanted you to see for yourself. It’s better that way. I didn’t want to sow any seeds.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Your description of the car, mainly. We made the connection yesterday, but he hasn’t mentioned being at the scene. It’ll all come out in his questioning.’ Hollis spoke slowly, everything about him sluggish and drained.

  ‘You sound dreadfully tired,’ she said, realising for the first time that she knew nothing of his home situation, what his bedroom looked like, whether anybody made him a hot chocolate when he finally crawled back from work. He existed in her mind as a free-standing figure, with no contextual clutter. Except, Thea remembered, with a thumping shock, three months ago she had been told by her brother-in-law James, who knew Hollis quite well, a piece of personal history so significant that Thea wondered at her own sanity when she realised she had forgotten all about it.

  Hollis, according to James, had had a daughter, who died after taking Ecstasy at a rave, not so many years earlier. If she had got it right, that had been the reason for the failure of his marriage. The sudden knowledge made her feel self-absorbed and foolish. Did Hollis know that she knew? Was he waiting for her to mention it? Trawling back over the past three days, she thought with relief that there had been no conversation about daughters. Time enough, then, to confront the man’s family tragedy.

  ‘Yes, I’m tired,’ he was saying. ‘I’m in a tiring line of work.’

  She brought her attention back with an effort. ‘Is this Franklyn man suspected of the murder?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. Now, goodnight, Thea. Sleep well, and keep the doors locked.’

  She woke with a sensation of withdrawal, of needing to stay under the duvet, keeping out of other people’s troubles. She and her dog would be fine if other people would only leave them alone. Then she woke up properly, opened her eyes, and saw her sister standing in the doorway, with a man’s arm tightly around her throat.