by Rebecca Tope
Chapter Ten – Thursday
They had only been there a few seconds, she concluded. The dog hadn’t even noticed yet. Jocelyn’s eyes were bulging, and her fingers plucked feebly at the shirtsleeve clamped between her chin and chest. Her captor’s head was only half visible above and behind hers, his eyes on Thea, glittering with tension. He wore a hot-looking woollen balaclava.
‘Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?’ Thea sat up, acutely aware of her state of undress. She put a hand on the spaniel, pressing her into the bedclothes. ‘Stay, Hepzie. Stay there,’ she ordered.
‘We’ve told you to go,’ the man said, his voice rather high and clear. ‘What do we have to do to persuade you?’
‘We?’
‘You’re in the way here. We don’t want trouble. It’s nothing personal. Just pack your things and go, will you?’
‘No trouble?’ Thea laughed scornfully. ‘What about Nick Franklyn?’
‘Never mind Nick Franklyn.’
‘What about the pony and rabbits and guinea pigs? I’m being paid to look after them. I’m staying another week. Let Joss go, will you. Stop playing idiotic games.’ Joss’s eyes bulged even further, but Thea was into her stride. There was no discernible knife or gun, and the man’s voice did not suggest an intention to harm. He was tense but not psychotic. And he was young enough to be her son.
‘I’m telling you, you’ve got to leave this place. It’s not safe for you. Do yourselves a favour, you silly cows.’ His arm was loosening visibly. Thea tried to see his eyes more clearly, already aware that she would want to identify them again. They were brown, thickly-lashed and clear. And something familiar about his words snagged at her.
‘You’ve been talking to Flora, haven’t you?’ she said, out of the blue. ‘She called us silly cows as well. She daubed that writing on the wall. You must be her boyfriend.’ The sudden transparency came as a bracing wave of relief. ‘How did you get in?’
Jocelyn began to splutter. She, like Thea, seemed to be more indignant than frightened. ‘He climbed through my bedroom window,’ she said thickly. ‘Bloody cheek.’
‘Let her go!’ Thea ordered, in the voice every son would recognise. ‘Just do as you’re told, will you.’
It worked brilliantly. It was as if she’d activated some trigger that controlled him against his own will. Or perhaps he had simply realised that he couldn’t go on standing there with his captive in an armlock for much longer. Jocelyn pulled free, and turned angrily to face him.
‘Why aren’t we safe here?’ Thea asked, staring intently at his face. ‘What are you planning to do?’
He averted his gaze, a failed attacker, an embarrassed intruder. Thea pressed her advantage. ‘What’s this all about anyway?’
‘Mind your own business,’ he growled. ‘You’re in the way, that’s all.’
‘Did you kill Nick Franklyn?’ Thea asked, almost casually. ‘Because I think Flora thinks you did. I think she was totally paralysed by that belief, when we told her Nick was dead.’
‘Me?’ The shock seemed genuine. ‘Of course I didn’t. He was on our side. Nick was everybody’s friend.’ His voice thickened and Thea heard tears lurking. ‘It’s all turned into a shitty mess, because of this place.’
‘Hang on.’ Thea was intent on grasping his meaning. ‘Are you against Julia and Desmond for some reason? Flora’s parents?’
‘Shut up about Flora. She’s got nothing to do with it.’
‘Hasn’t she? You know who she is, though, don’t you? You know she came back here by herself, a child of fourteen, and hid out in the barn for two nights. Did she phone you last night, from wherever they took her? Is that why you’re here now?’
‘You’re guessing all wrong,’ he said with scorn. ‘I’m not Flora’s boyfriend.’
‘Then who is? Jeremy Innes? Simon?’
‘Simon’s a baby. And Jemmy’s not her type.’ His scorn had turned to sulks. Thea recalled her brother Damien at this age, tormented by the fickleness of girls. Flora, it seemed, was a pivotal figure in this tangled story.
Jocelyn was gently massaging her throat. ‘You assaulted me,’ she said, her voice still croaky. ‘You’re in big trouble, you know. What can be worth it? What’s so important that you need to frighten us into going away?’
Thea answered for him, convinced she was on the edge of an explanation. ‘They want to damage this house,’ she suggested. ‘Burn it down, or at least wreck it. They’ve got something against the family here. And they’re very decently warning us about it first. Isn’t that right?’ she asked the intruder.
‘We don’t want you hurt. Nor your dog. You’re a complication – that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Well, forget it,’ Thea advised him. ‘You can’t hope to get away with it. We know you’re linked with the Rural Warriors.’
Jocelyn turned to look into his eyes. ‘And I think I know exactly who you are.’
‘Go on then,’ he challenged. ‘Who am I?’
‘I think you’re the oldest Innes boy. You called Jeremy by a pet name, you’re impatient of Simon. Believe me, I know about the way brothers and sisters are with each other. And, for the record, you have my sympathy over your stepmother. You might even use her as a mitigating circumstance when this all comes to court.’
‘Dominic,’ Thea remembered. ‘That’s it. Your name’s Dominic.’
As the man struggled to assimilate this abrupt change of direction, and Thea waited for his reaction, all three of them slowly noticed the reality of the situation. Nobody had physical hold of anybody else, and nobody seemed likely to achieve a firm control at that stage of the proceedings. ‘You can’t keep me here,’ said the intruder, in summary.
‘And you can’t make us leave,’ Thea flashed back at him. ‘You haven’t got what you came for, so just go, why don’t you. And behave yourself, you idiot. Don’t get involved in whatever it is.’
‘You’d better leave,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours, and then things are going to turn nasty. Really nasty.’
‘I hope not,’ said Thea. ‘Have some sense, for God’s sake. Now we know who you are, the police’ll be looking for you. You’re in trouble, Dominic, and you’d better face up to that.’
‘Stop calling me Dominic like that,’ he snarled. ‘You don’t know who I am.’ His baffled frustration increased, and Thea felt a flicker of sympathy for him. In the books and films and video games, a woman with an arm around her throat became a passive yowling creature – unless she was Lara Croft and impossibly expert at martial arts. He had not reckoned on the instinctive authority that had taken hold of first Thea and then Jocelyn. Men were stronger, in the world he thought he’d entered when he laid violent hands on Jocelyn; they were a frightening element of the culture, and could do what they liked. Next time, she felt like advising him, carry a really big sharp knife. That way, you might get things to work out better. Instantly appalled at herself, she looked into the brown eyes, that were, now she thought about it, very much like Jeremy Innes’s.
‘Thank you for the warning,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid you’re too late. The police are too close now and you’ve been extremely stupid to come here like this. We’re not going to try and keep you here, because somebody might get hurt, but that’s what we ought to do. So just go, and let me warn you that if anything at all happens here, you’ll be the obvious suspect. You might run away and hide out in the back streets somewhere, but that’s no way to live. Go away and have a good think. And never never do anything like this again. It’s a very stupid game, and no campaign or protest group is worth it.’
She drew a deep breath, and suddenly saw herself, hectoring a young delinquent in her nightwear, one arm around a bemused spaniel, and her sister slumped against the wall turning a nasty shade of pale green.
Fortunately, it worked. The man took one long backward stride, and then ran along the landing and down the stairs. They heard him scrabbling at the barricaded door and then slamming it behind hi
m.
‘What time is it?’ asked Jocelyn feebly and inconsequentially, and then ‘Oohhh,’ before Thea could answer her, or leap from the bed to catch her as she fainted.
It lasted barely a minute, and when she revived she seemed more embarrassed than traumatised. ‘Fancy fainting!’ she chided herself. ‘What a wimp!’
The tension dissipated, and they spent half an hour on Thea’s bed, talking it all through repeatedly. ‘We should call the police,’ said Jocelyn. ‘We’ve had an intruder and he laid violent hands on me. They don’t take these things lightly, you know.’
Thea was mindful of Hollis’s exhaustion the night before, and never even considered speaking to a different officer. ‘We’ll call them at eight. It’s too early now.’
Jocelyn had clearly not kept up. ‘They don’t just work in office hours, you know.’
‘I know. But they’re busy with more important things.’
‘No, Thea, they aren’t. This is the important thing they’re busy with, remember? It’s obviously got a whole lot to do with the murder, and sitting here is just letting that bloody boy get away.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Thea said, aware of an odd paralysis when it came to using a phone, beyond her protective feelings towards the Superintendent. Once she’d made the call, there would be cars and men and questions and effort. ‘You can do it, if you like.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Because you’re the one he assaulted.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Neither do I. Useless pair, aren’t we?’
‘At least he isn’t likely to do it again,’ Jocelyn said. ‘Do you think?’
‘He seemed to have every intention of burning this house down,’ Thea reminded her.
‘It was Dominic, wasn’t it? Don’t you think?’
‘Yes, but we can’t prove it. There might be a dozen other lads like that intent on stopping progress. That barn conversion, as well as the canal. Any new building.’
‘I don’t get it,’ groaned Jocelyn. ‘What’s become of them? Where are their motorbikes and flick knives? Why don’t they move to the towns where they belong?’
Thea laughed weakly. ‘Maybe they’ve bred a mutant race down here,’ she suggested.
‘Although when you think about it, they’re just as bad. What they’re doing is a kind of terrorism.’ She frowned. ‘Like the animal rights people, intimidating and attacking anybody they think is involved in vivisection.’
Thea nodded. ‘That’s probably where they get their methods from. I expect they’re stalking the canal restoration people and sending them hate mail.’
‘We have to phone the police,’ Jocelyn repeated. ‘They’ll be furious with us as it is, for dithering all this time.’
‘We’ll tell them you fainted, and I had to administer first aid, before doing anything else,’ Thea suggested. ‘They’ll give you top marks for that. They like a girl to be properly overcome in a situation like this.’
‘I’m furious with myself. I don’t know what came over me. It was the sudden waking up, with his hand over my mouth, I suppose. It made my heart go funny.’
Thea made the call to Hollis’s personal number, and recounted the events briefly. ‘We’re perfectly all right,’ she insisted. ‘I know you’ll think we should have called you sooner, but there didn’t seem much point. I can give a fairly good description of him and his clothes. We think he must have been Dominic Innes. He wasn’t a very competent criminal, I must say.’
‘I can’t come now, but I can send somebody. How about DC Herring? You know her.’
‘No, no. She must have better things to do. It isn’t really important. Except he said something’s going to happen within the next twenty-four hours. At least – they want us to leave by then. Listen, Phil. The Rural Warriors were followers of Nick Franklyn. That means it wouldn’t have been them who killed him. His death has made something more urgent for them – that’s the feeling I got.’
It was the first time she’d used his Christian name and they both knew it. But he was not put off his stride.
‘Why do you want to defend them? After what they’ve just done?’
‘Good question. We’ve been asking ourselves the same thing. I suppose it’s something to do with them being some mother’s sons. And – well, it’s a nice change to see young people feeling strongly about something.’ It sounded crass in her own ears, and Hollis’s scornful laugh made it clear that it sounded crass to him, as well.
‘These early mornings are getting to be a habit,’ said Jocelyn. ‘What are we going to do today, then?’
‘We could have lunch at Daneway with Cecilia Clifton,’ Thea suggested. ‘It’d be fun to see if she remembers you. And I want to go there anyway, to see the tunnel entrance.’
‘Better than hanging around here waiting to see if we’re going to be burned in our beds,’ Jocelyn agreed.
‘I wonder what they’ve done with Flora. I still feel a bit responsible for her. I was a fool not to take a number for Julia, when she phoned. Maybe I could try Desmond’s mobile. Put his mind at rest, in case the police have upset him.’
‘Stop it,’ Jocelyn ordered. ‘None of this is your problem. Whatever mess they’re in, it’s up to them to sort it out. And Julia can phone you if she wants to. All you have to do is feed the pony.’
Thea phoned Cecilia, who agreed to meet them at the Daneway Inn at midday. ‘We had breakfast rather early,’ Thea explained. ‘So an early lunch would be nice.’ Then to Jocelyn she suggested they leave an hour or so beforehand and explore the tunnel first. Jocelyn shrugged accommodatingly, her mind evidently elsewhere.
‘We could walk from here,’ Thea said wistfully, knowing the response she’d get.
‘Not today,’ said Jocelyn firmly.
They parked on the patch below the Daneway pub, which had a sloping garden devoid of drinkers at ten forty-five on a Thursday morning. Thea’s map marked a footpath where the original towpath had been, as well as showing the famous Daneway House, on rising ground behind the pub. Unfortunately, dense woodland rendered it invisible.
‘I definitely came here when I was a student,’ Jocelyn remembered. ‘We were shown around Daneway House, because William Morris used to live there.’ She was gazing around, as if trying to find something familiar. ‘I don’t remember all this, though. There’s no sign of the house now.’
‘I think it’s up the hill, behind the pub.’ Thea was impatient. ‘Come and see the tunnel. You said you were interested.’
‘Did I? That was careless of me.’
Thea walked ahead, without replying, keeping an eye on the dog as she left the path for forays into the long grass on their right. They climbed a stile and proceeded along a path which appeared to lead nowhere. ‘Jolly overgrown,’ grumbled Jocelyn, pulling free of a grasping bramble.
‘It’s been quite well used, though, like the one I walked with Phil the other day.’
‘Oh, it’s “Phil” now, is it?’
‘That’s his name,’ said Thea coldly.
‘Somebody needs to come along with a scythe.’
‘Don’t fuss. It’s really perfectly easy to walk along.’
Jocelyn snorted and followed a few paces behind her sister. ‘Where’s this tunnel then?’ she demanded after half a minute of walking.
‘Not far. About a quarter of a mile, I would guess.’
They found it with little warning. An arched opening, with fanciful crenellations along the stonework above it. A flimsy-looking wooden gate made a token attempt to prevent access into the tunnel itself, strangely situated eight or ten yards inside the mouth. There were only two or three inches of water on the bed of the canal.
Jocelyn was unimpressed. ‘Anybody could get in there,’ she said. ‘And I still don’t understand why you think it’s got anything to do with anything.’
‘Did I say it had? I just wanted to see it for its own sake. Except—’ she remembered something. ‘That man – the father of the Frankly
n boy – he wanted to know the way to Daneway. And he was soaking wet.’
‘He was wet before he came here,’ Jocelyn pointed out. ‘If he ever did come here at all.’
‘No, no. What if he just used that as a pretext for talking to me? For finding out if there was anybody at Juniper Court. He just said the first thing that came into his head, and it was Daneway because he’d just come from here. He’d been into the canal for some reason and got himself all wet.’
‘Thea, this is pure fantasy,’ Jocelyn laughed. ‘You’ve added two and two and made seventeen.’
‘But there’s nothing here except the tunnel,’ Thea insisted, bending forward as far as she dared, trying to peer into the gloom. ‘Why else would anybody want to come to Daneway?’ There were atmospheric echoing dripping sounds as water seeped through the brickwork at the top of the tunnel. She wondered whether her trainers would be totally ruined if she jumped down and started walking into the darkness.
‘The pub. The William Morris house. Somebody else’s house,’ Jocelyn suggested. ‘After all, if he was up to something sinister, he’d already know the way, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t expose himself by asking how to find it. He’d have said some other place – Mishyhampton or Hyde or some other stupid backwater. And not everybody’s as obsessed with canals as you are.’
Thea sighed. ‘That all sounds perfectly logical. I just have a feeling he was in pursuit of his son, and the whole business concerns the canal. It’s gorgeous, though, isn’t it,’ she diverted herself with a rapturous contemplation of the miniature castle effect over the entrance to the tunnel.
‘It shows how proud they must have been of their achievement,’ Jocelyn conceded. ‘Is it the same at the other end?’
‘Not at all. Flamboyant in a completely different way. You could get into it, from that end as well, if you didn’t mind getting wet.’
