by Jane Holland
There’s a police car outside the vicarage, sun glare bouncing off its rear window. The gate is open and so is the front door to the vicarage. It’s hard not to be curious about what’s going on in there. Perhaps someone has been stealing the vicar’s gnomes, I think. Or sneaking into his garden at night and moving the little fellows into suggestive poses.
Just after the vicarage, I glance along the back path into the woods. There are several police cars still tucked onto the grass verge there, and the track past the graveyard has been cordoned off with a Police Line Do Not Cross tape.
I halt the scooter and let it idle, watching a young policeman in a white short-sleeved shirt load equipment into the open boot of one of the police cars. One of the items is a heavy-looking metallic case and he’s sweating; I guess he must have carried it all the way up that steep slope.
The old green school bus is just leaving as I carry on slowly down into the main part of the village. It takes almost an hour for the bus to make the full round of stops, dawdling through all the tiny villages and hamlets beneath the moors. A few local kids clamber down, blinking at the sunshine, then the bus pulls away in a little puff of exhaust fumes, heading up the hill to its next scheduled stop, the next village about three miles on through winding lanes.
I turn and look back at the police car, still parked at the side of the road near the vicarage.
The vicar has come out and is talking to the policeman through the car window. He’s wearing his dog collar today. He looks formal and untouchable, on official business. I expect he’s furious about all this. It can’t be very good for the reputation of the church, having police permanently stationed outside his vicarage. Though a murder always sends people to church, they say. Guilty conscience, I guess. Or there but for the grace of God ...
As I watch, the Reverend Clemo straightens and looks over in my direction. He’s still talking to the unseen police officer in the car. He seems to lift his arm.
Is he pointing at me?
A cloud passes across the sun. The top of the village turns dark and sullen, lying in shadow, and suddenly it’s a different place. It’s uncanny the way weather can change the look of this valley in a matter of seconds. But that’s what comes from being so close to the high moors; the weather systems are unpredictable and fast-changing, winds sweeping in and shifting us from bright sunshine to driving rain in the space of a few minutes.
I remember the early mist rising as I plunged into the woods that day, sunshine falling dappled through the tree canopy. The crack of twigs from somewhere above me, that creepy sensation of being watched. And when I burst out of the bushes behind the church that morning, the Reverend Clemo had been standing there, startled but not surprised, smoking his cigarette.
Almost as though he had been waiting for me.
There’s a note pushed under the door when I get back to the cottage. I recognise the handwriting before I even see the final initial.
Come and see me. We need to talk. C.
Hannah’s car is gone, so I assume she has either gone to work for the night or is out with one of her other friends. She likes to take off occasionally without saying anything, always a bit of a free spirit. And I expect she’s been shaken by recent events and is probably in need of a break from this place. Beautiful as our little cottage may be, it’s also very isolated. Not the most comfortable place to be with a murderer creeping about the place.
I leave Connor’s note on the kitchen table. Upstairs, I change into denim shorts and a yellow sun top, smooth on some sun cream, and head out across the fields.
I’m not in the mood to take the scooter out again, and besides, this weather is fantastic. I need to feel the sun on my face and shoulders, and to get hot and sweaty, to enjoy the fresh air and countryside before wet weather sets in again. Because however sunny it becomes in Cornwall, I know the mist and rain are never far away, waiting to sweep in from the sea or the high moors …
It’s just over a mile cross-country from our cottage to the farm where Connor and Tristan live, slightly further by road. I walk it comfortably in about fifteen minutes, stopping several times to navigate the stream which passes the path at various points in the valley bottom. I try to leap from stone to stone without getting my feet wet, but it’s not easy and I dunk my foot in the cold water more than once.
Eventually I find myself within sight of the farmhouse. There are sheep grazing between me and the house who raise their heads as I follow the footpath round the edge of the field, staring with slanted, demonic eyes. A few sheep bleat at me balefully, others continue cropping the grasses without much interest. They belong to Connor’s new herd, their woolly backsides spray-painted with a distinctive green mark. Like the signature tag of a graffiti artist. Some of them have tiny counterparts on wobbly legs. Ewes with newborn lambs to look after, I realise, and keep as far from them as possible.
I check my phone in case Tris has been released. I’ve been texting him all day. Thinking of you. Let me know when they let you out. But there’s no reply to my numerous texts yet. There’s no signal either though, so even if he has texted me back, I won’t be able to pick up any messages until I get home.
I look up suddenly, hearing a high song in the blue. There’s a tiny black dot above me. I squint up into the sunlight for a moment, then smile. A skylark. Too high to be anything else.
Hill Farm is a ramshackle collection of buildings clustered around one central farmhouse. They have no money to keep up with repairs, so there are gaps in the roof where slates blew off last winter and were never replaced, and a few broken windows fixed up with black tape or hardboard. When their father died a few months back, he left the farm jointly to both brothers, treating Tris no differently just because he was adopted. But of course sheep-farming is not easy, and he probably knew it would take two men to keep the farm afloat. They’ve already lost sheep to bad weather and illness, animals they haven’t been able to afford to replace.
Meanwhile the bills keep coming in every month. So the farm barely makes enough to pay off the remortgage their father took out on it a few years back, simply in order to keep going.
I know Tristan was hoping he could get away from the place after he finished school. Go to university and get a proper job, one that did not involve getting up at dawn or struggling through rain and mud every winter. But his father had made him feel too guilty to leave, and now the old man was gone, his departure would probably mean selling the farm, because Connor could not possibly run it on his own.
So far they don’t seem to have argued about it, but I know that day can’t be far off. Tris has become more and more restless since his father died, and though he claims it has nothing to do with any wish to escape, I know something is eating at him. Something that has left him pale and withdrawn, and with a haunted look in his eyes.
I jump over the wall into the farmyard. The house is standing silent and empty. The back door, usually left wide open during the day for the dog to trot in and out, is shut and locked. There’s a shiny new padlock on the garage door, but otherwise the place looks unbearably rundown. On the far side of the farmyard are a few mangy-looking hens, pecking in a depressed fashion at the dirt. But their sheepdog is nowhere in evidence, the car is gone, and the mud-spattered quad bike is parked under a lean-to next to an ancient dog kennel.
I knock at the back door, loudly, thumping with my fist against the soil-flecked wood. Nothing is clean here, not even the door.
No reply.
I knock again. ‘Connor? It’s Ellie.’ I pause a beat, head down, thinking. ‘Tris? Are you in there?’
I go to one of the narrow kitchen windows, rub a small port-hole in the grime, and stare inside. There’s no one moving inside. I take a few steps back, staring about the place. I should have called Connor before setting out, of course. His note seemed so urgent though, I assumed he would be here when I arrived.
But perhaps Tris has been released, and Connor has driven over to the police station to collect him. That
would explain his absence.
I scramble up the rough bank of earth behind the house and look out over what they call the Long Field. It’s a peaceful scene. Short grass and clumps of young thistles ripple in the breeze, stretching gently uphill to a line of trees in the distance. When their father was still alive, the land nearest to the house was always dotted with white sheep. This field contains nothing but wild rabbits, judging by the white tail-flashes as they scattered across the grass at my approach.
I wonder how many sheep they’ve lost this year. Too many, by the look of it.
It’s a lonely place, out on the fringe of the village. Not another house in sight from where I’m standing. And so quiet. Only barren moorland stretches beyond the next hillside, and there’s nothing much after that until you reach the yard of grey brick and cobblestones that is Jamaica Inn at the steep village of Bolventor. You can’t even hear the busy A30 from here, a black ribbon winding over Bodmin Moor only a few miles to the north-east.
I stare out across the rippling fields again. Whenever the wind drops, the air becomes oddly hushed, like in a church or library; a voice might carry for miles out here on a still day. But there’s something just on the edge of my hearing. A new sound above the rustle of trees, above the soft baas of far-off sheep, and the distant barking of a dog in the wooded valley below.
I scramble down from the bank of earth, ready to admit defeat. Connor is not here and I have wasted my time coming out to the farm.
Then I realise what I’ve been hearing. The sound of an engine in the distance, growing louder now as it negotiates the abrupt turns, dips and slopes of the narrow lane between here and the village.
It could be anyone. Anyone with a diesel engine, that is, who has business this far out on the edge of the moors. Not Connor; his car runs on petrol. The postman, then? It’s too late for the post, but maybe a special delivery?
But it’s not the postman. A familiar white delivery van bumps into the yard less than a minute later, Woods Valley Garden Centre in bold green lettering on the side.
Dick Laney is at the wheel, looking surprised to see me. No sign of Jago. He’s probably back at the garden centre, playing the boss while his dad’s out. I fold my arms, suddenly cold despite the sunshine. Like someone’s walking over my grave. Such an odd expression, I’ve always thought. Today it feels unpleasantly apt.
I recall the framed school photograph I saw in the office at the garden centre, Dick Laney’s arm round my mother’s shoulders. That odd look in her eyes. I still can’t put my finger on what it means. But why did Dick choose to put up that photo now? He must have had it lying around for years, yet I’ve never seen it before.
I’m abruptly aware of the remoteness of Hill Farm, and realise I left no word with anyone where I was going. Though Connor’s note is still on the kitchen table. Would that be enough of a clue for Hannah if I were to go missing?
Dick pulls up in the yard with his window open, Radio Cornwall blaring. I recognise the jingle as he turns the engine off. He leans a tanned and tattooed forearm on the window frame, shirt sleeves rolled up, and stares out at me.
‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books.’ His voice is level, but I can tell from his expression that he’s not in a good mood. ‘What are you doing all the way out here?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘I’m visiting Connor and Tris.’
‘Tris?’ His eyes narrow, looking searchingly from me to the empty farmhouse. ‘Thought that boy was in the nick. On suspicion of murder.’
‘Tris hasn’t done anything wrong,’ I say sharply, and take a step towards him. ‘The police wanted to ask him some more questions, that’s all.’
Dick Laney shrugs, looking unconvinced. ‘Whatever you say. Is Connor in, then?’
‘Nobody’s in.’
‘That’s a pity. I’ve got a delivery for him from the garden centre.’ Dick jerks his head towards the back of the van. ‘But I suppose it won’t matter if he’s out. I’ll leave it outside the garage as usual.’
He turns off the radio and gets out of the van, his frizzy hair wilder than ever. Now the radio is silent, the farmyard feels quieter and lonelier than ever before. Again that sense of unease prickles down my spine, and I begin to wish I had indeed called Connor before setting out. Then I would not be here on my own with Dick Laney.
‘Help me with it, would you?’ he asks in that thick Cornish accent, not looking at me.
It’s only thanks to my dad that I don’t sound the same as him and Jago, I suppose. His family came from the Midlands, so I grew up with a flatter accent than the rest of my friends. ‘Never quite proper Cornish,’ Hannah calls it.
‘It’s not heavy,’ he adds, ‘just awkward to lift on my own. I prefer to get Jago to come with me on a two-man delivery job. But there weren’t no one else to shut up shop for us. So I’m on my lonesome today.’
He throws open the back doors of the van, then looks back round at me with a slow, crooked smile as though well aware I dislike feeling so vulnerable. ‘Well? You going to help me or not? I thought you feminists didn’t mind getting your hands dirty?’
I meet his eyes, then nod. ‘Of course I’ll help.’
With a consciously nonchalant expression, I step round to the back of his van, and hope a spanner to the side of the head isn’t waiting for me.
I immediately see the reason for that knowing smile. Besides his tool box and a pair of soiled gardening gloves, there’s nothing inside but a vast roll of thick wire fencing. I don’t know what I expected. Duct tape, perhaps, or a length of rope. The kind of thing you find in most serial killers’ vans.
Dick nods towards the garage door, locked with its shiny new padlock. ‘We’re heading over there with it. Can you take that end?’
I don’t have much choice. ‘No problem.’
Together we wrestle the unwieldy roll of wire fencing out of the van and carry it across the yard, depositing it on the cracked concrete in front of the garage.
Dick nods, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘Ah, thanks, that’ll do nicely. I told Connor I’d be delivering it after work today, so I expect he’ll be back soon enough.’
‘But what does Connor want all this fencing for?’ I ask, perplexed.
‘He said something about a vegetable plot over at the old mill. Wants to keep them thieving rabbits out, I should imagine. He had a few sacks of sand and topsoil delivered a few weeks back too.’
‘The old mill?’
Dick Laney scratches his sweating forehead. ‘Not much left of it now, I would suppose. It was a tumbledown ruin last time I saw it. Must be fifty years at least since anyone worked the mill wheel.’ He waves vaguely across the open fields behind the house. ‘There’s a footpath down past those trees. It was sold with the farm here when his dad bought it, a job lot. I expect he’s trying to make a go of the land, get some profit from the old place. Maybe do it up and resell to some filthy-rich Londoner for a second home. That’s the way to make money round here. You should tell your dad to do the same. No point him hanging on at Eastlyn Farm if he isn’t going to finish those renovations.’
I look at him with distaste. ‘I’ll let him know.’
‘Ah, you do that.’
I look across the fields at the gnarled trees he pointed out. Could there be a path there? I remember some talk of an old mill in the village, but never realised it was this far along the stream.
He looks at me, his crooked smile back, one gold tooth showing. It’s the face he uses at the garden centre when he’s trying to be friendly to a wealthy customer. ‘It’s a long walk back in this hot sun. I’ll give you a lift in the van, if you like?’
My skin crawls at the thought of being alone in the van with him. ‘No thanks,’ I say quickly, ‘I’ll take the footpath back the way I came. It’s only a fifteen minute walk, and I like the sunshine.’
Dick shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. Causes cancer though. Nasty death, that.’ He looks at me oddly. ‘Pete Taylor died of cancer. They say he wei
ghed less than a sack of potatoes at the end.’
Pete Taylor. He must mean Connor and Tris’s dad. I’m not sure that I ever knew his first name.
Without another word, he climbs into the van, backs it up with Radio Cornwall blasting out at top volume again, and a moment later he’s gone, leaving a cloud of dust behind as he accelerates out of the yard.
My fingernails are digging into my palms. I relax them slowly, surprised by myself. Strange reaction. Dick Laney can be creepy, but he’s not exactly dangerous. I doubt he’s done much more exercise than lugging sacks about for the past ten years. I could take him in a minute. Seconds, even. No contest.
I wait until I can’t hear the van engine anymore, then tread round to the back of the garage.
He said something about a vegetable plot over at the old mill. Wants to keep them thieving rabbits out, I should imagine.
Connor and Tris are born defrosters. They don’t eat fresh vegetables; they open a can or throw a ready meal in the microwave. The idea of Connor on a health kick, breaking his back to grow his own veg, makes me grin. No way, no way in hell.
I clamber through overgrown brambles to peer through the back panes of glass, which are filthy. Through the darkened window I can see old sacks on the concrete floor, some still fat, others empty. Chicken manure? Topsoil? Dick Laney mentioned delivering a few sacks of that recently. The garage interior is surprisingly clear of junk, though the wall shelves and the workbench are both in disarray, pots and debris tumbled everywhere. A broken-looking lawnmower stands next to two old bikes, both rusting, one with the chain hanging off.
No spades. No sign of gardening equipment: seeds, labels, garden twine, potting compost, bamboo stakes. But maybe Connor’s storing it all down at the old mill. That would make better sense than lugging it back and forth every time he wants to do some gardening down there. Trouble is, I don’t know what I am looking for, nor even why.
