by Rebecca Tope
‘We’ll explain it all to you tomorrow,’ Thea had told him, jumping in before Jocelyn could speak. ‘Don’t worry, darling. Just let’s get everyone to bed for now, okay?’
Little Roly, Jocelyn’s pet, had approached his mother warily and put a finger to her cheek. ‘Does your elbow hurt?’ he asked, with huge concern.
‘It does rather,’ Jocelyn agreed, with a damp smile. ‘Off you go to bed now, angel. Auntie Thea might read to you if you ask her nicely.’
It was after ten before Thea returned heavily down the stairs, remembering her own mistreatment and wondering if she’d ever feel normal again. Then she reminded herself that she was an old hand at surviving disaster, and things would one day be sweet again.
‘What did you decide?’ she asked.
Jocelyn was on the sofa, her feet up, her eyes red. ‘As you see. He’s gone,’ she said. ‘With you here there isn’t a spare bed, and I can’t endure him in with me.’
‘Where did he spend last night then?’
‘Here,’ Jocelyn nodded at the sofa.
‘But he hasn’t gone because of me? The kids could bunk up if they had to. You could have one of them in your bed.’
‘Obviously.’
‘So?’
‘So I don’t know. There isn’t going to be anything neat and tidy about this, however much we might want it to be. I can’t tell you anything, except I’m already glad he’s gone and I want to go to bed.’
‘Right. Me too. But tomorrow we’re going to have to explain things to the kids.’
Jocelyn moaned. ‘God knows how, when I can’t even explain it to myself.’
‘I’ll help,’ said Thea.
* * *
She kept her promise, sitting with Jocelyn and the whole family overflowing the living room, with solemn faces and flurries of tears. They gave no false assurances, Jocelyn admitting her own uncertainty. ‘We’ll just have to struggle through a day at a time,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing – I’m bloody glad it’s the holidays.’
Toni, a slender child with dark eyes and careful manner, considered this. ‘Why?’ she said.
‘Because if it wasn’t we’d have to keep Auntie Thea here for weeks, washing your school clothes, walking you to the bus, getting you to bed on time.’
Toni turned her gaze to Thea. ‘But now you’ll have to cook all our food and find us things to do,’ she said. ‘That’s probably going to be worse.’
Thea couldn’t help feeling there was meant to be a laugh somewhere in this exchange, but she couldn’t readily identify it. ‘Just you wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve got about fifty ideas for holiday activities.’ Nobody laughed at that, either.
But she did organise a selection of projects, remembering how her father had done the same for his large brood. ‘Don’t you remember?’ she chided her sister. ‘All that nature study he made us do. No wonder I married Carl, with his environmental enthusiasms.’
‘I remember,’ nodded Jocelyn. ‘But there isn’t much scope for that sort of thing round here. I haven’t seen a rosebay willowherb for years.’
‘You can’t have looked, then. I saw a clump of it at the edge of the Sainsbury’s car park only this morning.’
‘Well, I’m not sending Roly out there, even for you. Besides, they’re not allowed to pick wild flowers these days.’
‘Nor collect birds’ eggs. I know. But we can’t just let them watch daytime television or play ghastly alien-zapping games the whole time. It’ll rot their souls. Don’t they make things any more? Don’t they ever go outside?’
‘Noel does. He goes to cricket club and he says he’s going sailing later on. I forget who with. And no, I don’t think making things features much these days.’
‘I hadn’t realised. Remember all that Blue Peter stuff with cereal boxes and pipecleaners.’ Thea sighed her nostalgia.
‘I was never as interested as you were.’
Thea gave the matter some serious thought, and came up with a list of ideas for constructive play which the children greeted with suspicious interest. First was a theatre, to be constructed from scratch, with a set, curtains, actors, and a play to perform.
‘My God!’ groaned Jocelyn, privately. ‘You were born a hundred years too late, d’you know that? You’ll be making us all play charades next.’
‘Good idea,’ said Thea, pretending to write it on her list. ‘You have to admit, though, they’re intrigued.’
‘I admit it. My worry is having to sit through the finished product at the end of the week.’
‘I’ll pretend you never said that.’
The subject of the killing of Nick Franklyn took a while to emerge. Thea had a startlingly horrible dream on the Tuesday night, and couldn’t refrain from relating it to her sister next morning. ‘Desmond Phillips was holding me down in the sludge at the bottom of the canal, and when he forced my head below the surface I saw Nick’s disembodied head snarling at me. It was so real.’ She shuddered.
‘Post-traumatic stress,’ Jocelyn diagnosed. ‘You’ll get flashbacks as well, I expect.’
‘Thanks very much. I wonder why Phil doesn’t call. The story isn’t really finished yet. What if they never catch Desmond? I’ll spend the rest of my life frightened that he’ll turn up one day.’
‘You could call him,’ Jocelyn suggested. ‘He might be waiting for exactly that.’
‘He’ll be busy. I don’t want to disturb him.’ She sighed, and missed Jocelyn’s next remark. ‘Sorry?’ she said, belatedly aware of an expectant silence.
‘You’re lovesick,’ Jocelyn accused with a teasing grin.
‘Shut up.’ Then she softened. ‘But it would be nice to hear his voice.’
* * *
The anticipated voice was finally heard the next morning, along with its owner’s face and body and full physical presence. Noel was the first to announce him. ‘Auntie Thea! A man has just parked outside. Come and see!’
She met him a few feet short of the front door, and faced him without touching. They spoke simultaneously, with very similar sentiments, to the effect that both looked a lot better than they had on Sunday.
‘Amazing what a good sleep can do,’ he said, adding, ‘How’s Hepzie? And Jocelyn?’
‘They’re fine. The kids won’t leave Hepzie alone. Jocelyn’s going to have to get a dog when I leave.’ Her voice lowered. ‘Alex has moved out. It’s all a bit grim, to be honest. And I’m having nightmares.’
His gaze locked onto hers. ‘Well, I might be able to do something about that,’ he murmured. ‘I thought you might want to hear it in person.’
‘That sounds encouraging. Come in. Have some coffee. Meet the family.’
Thea’s theatre project was in its final stages of completion on the dining room table, when she went to find Jocelyn. Her sister was using her good hand to hold the end of a tape measure for Abby, who wanted to ensure the proscenium curtains were precisely the right length. ‘Having fun?’ said Thea.
‘The little beast has cut up one of my shirts for a costume,’ Jocelyn pouted.
‘Mum! You said we could!’ Abby protested.
‘Only under torture. Actually, it did have a hole in it, and I think I bought it in 1979, so it hasn’t done too badly.’
‘Phil’s here.’
‘So I gather. Hi, Phil.’ The detective had followed Thea into the room and was scanning the contented activity with disbelief.
‘What’s going on here?’ he said.
‘Oh, this is Thea’s influence. She’s really missed her vocation.’
‘School teacher?’
Jocelyn shook her head. ‘Blue Peter presenter.’
The laughter was just loud enough to betray the tension still below the surface. Even the children joined in, while passing quick looks between themselves.
Thea made coffee and took a cup to Jocelyn before settling in the kitchen with Hollis. Jocelyn had indicated with a sisterly look that they could have all the privacy they could wish for, for as long as th
ey liked. ‘You released the Innes boys, I suppose?’
‘On bail. They’ve been charged with a few minor infringements, but they’re not killers. You were right about that.’
‘Their mother must be relieved. What infringements?’ She found her brain was slow to get into gear, to summon the faces of Jeremy and Dominic and all the other people she’d come into such close and unwelcome proximity to. ‘Oh, yes. Silly me,’ she rushed on. ‘You mean Dominic’s intrusion. Everything else is sorted, then, is it?’
‘All but a few details. It’s been keeping us up late, but we’re more or less there.’
‘And I was right, wasn’t I? Desmond Phillips killed Nick because Robert Craven told him Nick was having sex with Flora. And all along, it was Robert who was abusing her – he lied about Nick.’
Hollis nodded. ‘Flora confirms all that, more or less, but she won’t agree to testify against her father or Craven. You were right there, too. She’s hopelessly in love with the bastard.’
‘What about Cecilia? Is she as powerful as she seems?’
‘She won’t say anything, either. But everything appears to lead back to her. She’s quite a woman. Two years ago she appeared in a Planning Appeal hearing, doing all the legal work for a group of local protesters, rather than spend thousands on a barrister as most of these groups do. Her side won, needless to say. Since then, she’s been in demand as a sort of unpaid consultant for a whole range of conservation groups. She runs an internet service, as well. And her biggest enemy is Angus Innes.’
‘Father of Jeremy and Dominic?’
‘And Planning Officer for the county. Inclined to give permission for a large number of developments that Cecilia finds unacceptable. She has clashed with him countless times.’
‘And delighted in turning his sons against him? Nasty.’
‘More or less. If the boys could be implicated in the Rural Warriors, seen as breaking the law and opposing perfectly legitimate projects, it could reflect badly on the father. My DI is convinced that she wanted to get Innes removed from office, due to divided loyalties.’
‘But she loved them, in her way, despite what she told us about students.’
‘Huh?’
‘She used to teach Jocelyn – didn’t we tell you? She said she never liked the students much.’
‘Jeremy and Dominic aren’t students, though, are they?’
‘True. And I still don’t properly understand why she moved the body.’
‘I think it was mainly panic, trying to shield the boys. In a way, it worked against her own interests. It would have sullied the whole Innes family, given the barn such a terrible image that nobody would ever want to live there if it was converted. All things that she probably wanted.’
‘And how on earth did she know Nick had been killed, anyway?’
Hollis reached across the table and took hold of her hand. ‘We’ve examined the record for Phillips’s mobile phone,’ he said. ‘He made a call at 4 a.m. on that Monday morning to Cecilia Clifton. Ten minutes later he phoned Robert Craven’s mother, Lottie.’
Thea went blank. ‘So?’ she muttered, trying to see the significance.
‘Try this. He could have disguised his voice to Cecilia. If he simply said something like Go to the Innes barn right away. The Warriors need you urgently, that might have had the desired effect. She rushes over there, finds the body, realises how bad it would look for the boys and decides to move the body and try to make it look like suicide.’
‘But why would Desmond phone her like that? He wouldn’t know what she’d do.’
‘Just to get a witness to the time of the murder, to make best use of his alibi. Otherwise, Nick might have lain there for days, for all he knew.’
‘But could she do it all by herself?’
‘You forget. Phillips also phoned Lottie Craven.’
‘What? And said the same to her? Why her, though?’
‘I’ll come to that. She buzzes over to the barn as well, finds Cecilia and the body, agrees with the suicide idea, and helps drag poor Nick into the car and over to Juniper Court.’
‘You’ve got evidence for this?’
‘Hairs, blood and flakes of skin in Cecilia’s car,’ he nodded. ‘She had it cleaned, but not well enough.’
‘But why Juniper Court?’
‘Probably a matter of convenience. Plus the Phillipses were one of the few local families not involved with the Rural Warriors. It seemed like a good idea at the time. They hung about on the side road for hours waiting for you to go out, apparently. Amazing that nobody saw them.’
‘If they did, they wouldn’t have thought it odd. Cecilia’s a familiar figure. People would just give her a wave and forget they’d seen her.’
‘Probably. Anyway, that’s more or less it.’
‘Except Lottie. Why did Desmond phone her?’
‘To give himself a lever over Robert, we think. Robert was the only person who knew the whole story about the Irish alibi. He was a danger to Desmond – so by implicating his mother, he made it less likely that Robert would ever betray him.’
Thea stared at the floor, absently rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. ‘It doesn’t feel as if it’s finished though – not while Desmond’s still on the loose.’
‘As it happens—’ he began, before his phone trilled in his pocket. With a little smile, he answered it.
‘Thanks,’ he said after a lengthy silence spent listening to his caller. ‘That’s made my day. Well done. Oh, and Jack – try not to call me again today, okay?’
He turned to Thea. ‘Where were we? Something about Desmond being on the loose?’
He wasn’t fooling her. ‘You caught him,’ she crowed. ‘How?’
‘That was Jack. We had to play a little trick on our friend Phillips, I’m afraid. You’d probably call it entrapment.’
She ducked her head, in an exaggerated apology. ‘I don’t care how you did it,’ she said. ‘You could shoot him in cold blood and I’d be perfectly happy.’
‘Luckily for us, his wife feels rather the same. We had to involve her, to make it work.’ He shivered. ‘The capacity women have for treachery never ceases to appal me.’
Thea laughed. ‘What did she do?’ She realised she’d almost forgotten about Julia, the bumptious, high-flying, careless stepmother.
‘She set him up in the simplest way. Told him she’d have killed Nick Franklyn herself if she’d realised what had been going on with Flora, and Desmond got so sucked in, he openly admitted it to her. What he didn’t know was that there were two plain-clothes officers listening to every word.’
Thea hugged herself, wondering why she didn’t feel happier. ‘And that counts, does it? It’s proper evidence?’
Hollis held up a finger. ‘Belt and braces,’ he said. ‘Remember? Our people approached him there and then, replaying the tape recording they’d made, and scaring him so badly he went along to the station and made a full confession. That was what Jack just called to tell me.’
‘And Julia—’
‘When she heard the whole story, and caught up with Flora, she couldn’t do enough to help us.’ His face grew serious. ‘To be honest, she scared the life out of me. I’m still not sure what made her so enraged. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘He ruined everything for her, humiliated her, embarrassed her,’ Thea supplied. ‘And committed a murder because of what he thought was happening to his daughter. Her reaction sounds fairly normal to me.’
Hollis made a thoughtful face, sucking in his lips as if tasting the argument. ‘Am I missing something?’ he said eventually.
‘Jealousy,’ Thea explained. ‘Julia’s jealous of Flora. If Desmond had killed to defend her honour, she’d feel completely different.’
‘I see,’ he said doubtfully.
Hollis stayed for lunch and then suggested to Thea they go out for a drive. ‘I’ve got an idea I’d like to run past you,’ he said. ‘And I think we’ve already exhausted your sister’s patien
ce, hogging the kitchen for so long.’
She agreed with enthusiasm, the heady sense of relief at Desmond’s capture colouring everything. The air felt sweet and balmy, the future a sunny landscape. Only Jocelyn’s predicament tainted her sense of optimism, and even that could yet turn out to be salvageable. Already her sister was making references to Alex which seemed to imply some mellowing.
With Hepzie on a lead, she followed him out to his car. Only then did she realise it was already occupied. On the back seat sat a large black and tan dog, with a domed head and floppy ears. Peering closer, Thea saw a smaller yellow dog flopped beside the first one.
‘You left them out here in the sun,’ she accused. ‘Poor things.’
‘I parked in the shade, and the windows are open,’ he defended. ‘They’re fine. Let me introduce you.’
He opened the car door, saying ‘Stay!’ in a firm manly voice. The dogs looked at him, then at Thea, then at Hepzie who had jumped onto the seat and was cavorting seductively around them. ‘Claude and Baxter,’ said Hollis. ‘Baxter’s the big one.’
Thea watched the well-trained setter and corgi turn with total dignity away from the undisciplined spaniel. ‘Hello boys,’ she said. ‘Come here, Hepzibah, before you make a bigger fool of yourself.’
Settled in the front seat, the spaniel in her usual place on Thea’s lap, they drove off. ‘Where are we going?’ Thea asked.
‘To the nearest beach that allows dogs. I think I know the very place,’ he said. ‘It’ll take forty minutes or so.’
‘Plenty of time for you to explain this big idea, then,’ she said comfortably. ‘And don’t try to put me off until we get there. I want to know this minute what it is.’
‘Well…’ He kept his attention firmly on the road, not venturing the briefest of glances at her face. ‘I’ve got a week’s leave in October. And it so happens that an aged aunt of mine died at the beginning of this year, leaving me as her last surviving relative in this country. She had a cottage in a village called Cold Aston, not far from Stow-on-the-Wold, and I’ll have to go and sort out the contents and then sell it. I should have done it ages ago, but it kept getting put to the bottom of the list. It’s quite a task – she was a real old hoarder, poor thing. Now, what I was wondering – and tell me if this is out of order – is whether you’d like to come with me? I think the place will still be habitable – a local woman goes in and airs it now and then. I had the electricity and phone disconnected, that’s the only thing. And I would insist on taking my dogs. It’s their holiday as well.’
