The Village Fate

by William Hadley

  “Tish says she needs a volunteer, and as we’ve worked so well together, I thought I would be best suited,” Maggie smiled. “Now I must admit to having had a tiny little bit of work done; and to tell the truth these,” pointing at her breasts, “were a present from Angus on my birthday a couple of years ago when I turned thirty-six.” Did I hear laughter she thought, they must like me. “But you don’t have to go to the best plastic surgeon in Harley Street for a better bust line. Tish and I will show you a few simple exercises to do at home.”

  For the next twenty minutes the ladies of the W.I. followed Tish’s instructions. They swung their arms from side to side, they reached up high and bent down low. Their efforts to touch their toes were accompanied by groans and giggles. They got as close as they could before standing upright again and returning to the arm swings.

  Most followed the instructions out of politeness to the stick insects at the front of the hall, but everyone was relieved when Mrs Short called a halt and announced that tea and cakes were now available, - as well as a defibrillator for those who needed it.

  I wish I’d made a couple more of those special cakes, Claudilia thought to herself as she got a coffee and biscuit. It would have been fun to see those flexible friends stuck on the loo for thirty-six hours.

  Mrs H came over to where Claudilia was standing and took her by the elbow. She steered her away from the group to a couple of seats by the wall. “I thought you might like to have this,” she said, slipping a fishing reel from her coat pocket and into Claudilia’s handbag. “Mr H was out with his ferrets on Sunday afternoon when he saw a man fishing in the river. It wasn’t anyone he knew so he asked if he had permission,” she continued. “Anyway the fisherman told him to F-off and leave him alone. He said he’d fish wherever he liked. If Mr H didn’t like that he’d get a thump for his trouble.”

  “So what did he do, said Claudilia, still shocked by what she’d been given.

  “He went back to working his ferrets up the hedgerow until he saw someone swimming in the river, coming down from the old boatshouse.”

  “Yes,”

  “The swimmer got close to the man fishing and they seemed to be talking, Mr H couldn’t hear what was said but he stepped out further into the river.”

  “What else did he see Mrs H,” said Claudilia keeping as much composure as she could muster.

  “Jasmin and Sapphire, his two ferrets chased a rabbit out of its hole and into a net, he had to finish it off, by the time he looked again the fisherman was gone. The swimmer was going back up stream towards the boat house.”

  “So he didn’t see what happened, if anything did happen.”

  “No, just the swimmer, going along in the sunshine.”

  “What did Mr H do then?” Claudilia asked.

  “Well he must’ve had some kit with him thought Mr H. So he collected Jasmin and Sapphire and walked back down to the river where he had a good look around. He found a catch net and a rucksack as well as a coat. Mr H walked downstream a way and could see the rod stuck in the reeds. He waded out and picked it up. He brought it all back to me at the house.”

  So that’s why the police didn’t find anything thought Claudilia, relieved but still a little worried.

  “Where are these things now Mrs H?”

  “We took a good look through it all. There was a smelly old coat, a rod and net as well as his box with knives and hooks and things. None of it was very special and we had some rubbish to get rid of so it all went on the fire with a few cardboard boxes and some garden trimmings. It burned down to nothing, but that’s a nice reel so we thought you might like to have it.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Claudilia, giving Mrs H a hug. “And thank Mr H for his thoughtfulness, tidying the riverbank like that.”

  “I will, but he did ask me to mention that he’d forgotten his fishing licence this year and could you let him have one please. He wouldn’t like to be caught without one because the penalty’s quite harsh.”

  “I’ll drop one off at the cottage, but you can tell Mr H he is welcome to fish on the river whenever and wherever he likes, licence or no licence.”

  Mrs Short’s voice broke into their conversation. “Ladies, if we can come back to our meeting for a few moments, Mrs Macintosh has an announcement.”

  “Now that we’ve all warmed up and had a bit of a practice,” said Maggie when the chatter had died down, “here’s a signing up sheet for the weight management class. I’m putting my name down first, though I’ll really just be there as an assistant for Tish, and Claudilia I’ll put yours down too shall I. We’ll be using my gym at the Manor, and from time to time we might use the pool. It’s big enough for eight or ten to exercise without bumping into each other, so let’s have some names on this list. I’m sure it’ll be very popular but it has to be first come first served.”

  A shadow of hatred crossed Claudilia’s face, but generations of breeding had installed in her the ability to show almost none of her true emotions. Mrs Macintosh …Mrs Muck, damn it! had seriously overstepped the mark this time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When Josie Robinson arrived at the Rother Street station it was late and the day and shift were going home. She went straight to the suite used by the information officers and found Simon Weeks, a pleasant man of twenty-eight and Josie’s favourite I.O. He worked diligently on his tasks, and he’d often dig up nuggets of information which had been overlooked by other officers. Ten years earlier, Josie had been photographed topless on a Spanish beach by a boyfriend who turned out to be a scumbag. When they split up he’d posted the photos on the social media site Myspace, and sent the link to all his mates. Josie had often wondered if Simon could find the photos and delete them.

  “Simon, I’m interested in a place called Wimplebridge. it’s out towards Warwick, and a family called the Belchers live there. I’ve got nothing specific but I wonder if you can find me some background about them and the village. There’s no great hurry, it can wait till the morning if you like.”

  “Isn’t that where the guy went swimming in concrete on Friday night?”

  “That’s right, and that fisherman who drowned, we think he went into the water just outside the village. There doesn’t appear to be anything connecting them, I just want to know more about the place.”

  “I’m off home now but I’ll have a look in the morning. I’ll see how much houses are selling for too, I can just see you in green wellies with a Labrador.”

  So long as that’s all he can see, and not me with my bits out on a beach, thought Josie as she thanked him. Then she went back to her desk, logged out and went home for the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Day Eight. Wednesday

  “Hubert, you’re up to something,” said Claudilia on Wednesday morning. He was sitting at his desk in their shared office, tapping away at his keyboard and humming. Hubert never hummed unless he was in a particularly joyful mood.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. You’re humming and you have that look about you.”

  “Can’t a man look happy on a nice spring morning.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know what I mean. You only look like that if you’ve had a night of eye popping sex, …and according to Marie that hasn’t happened in years. Don’t be so shocked reader, we girls do talk you know, or if you’re up to something. Like when you arranged to buy the pub without telling me. So what are you up to?”

  “It might have been a night of great sex.”

  “I can call Marie and check?”

  Hubert sighed. “Okay, I might have run into Angus yesterday evening when I was out walking the dog. We dropped into the Belcher’s Arms, the pub I bought to stop the brewery from closing it down. The one we own, the one we returned to profit and now pays us a nice chunk of change each year. So not all my ideas are bad, are they?”

  “Stop changing the subject, you met Angus and w
ent to the pub. That’s not enough to make you hum.”

  “And then I went home to my loving wife.”

  Claudilia picked up the phone and started to dial the number for the house.

  Hubert blushed. He loved Marie very much, but these days their sex life couldn’t be described as rampant. They had their moments of course, but in truth their love life would be better described as comfortable. She knew what he liked, he thought he knew what she liked, and they satisfied each other with the lights off about once a month, twice if someone had a birthday.

  “All right,” he sighed, “put the phone down.”

  “Now” said Claudilia, “you were at the pub with Angus. What then?”

  Hubert pushed back his chair, crossed one leg over the other and started to talk. “We got talking about this new digester he wants to build. The one for food waste. It all made good sense and I asked what he needs to do next. Well it turns out he needs to buy a big grinding machine called a macerator. It breaks down the solid matter into much smaller bits so it gives off its gas more easily. There’s a few different models on the market, one’s about seventy grand and it’s the bee’s knees of macerator, another is about fifty thousand but he’s not sure it’ll do the job. Anyway, it’s made by the same people who made our wood chipper and I talked to them this morning. It’s pretty much the same machine, just bigger.”

  Claudilia was listening so Angus pressed on. “When he told me what it does I realised that it was the same process as when we’re chipping wood, so I thought we could help. I’ve agreed to put some of the kitchen waste through our chipper as a test. We can place it next to the hopper their feedstock is forked into, We’ll adjust the funnel so it sprays the chopped up stuff straight into the tank with the silage. Then all we need to do is put some waste through and see what happens.”

  To Claudilia it made sense, and so long as it didn’t damage the chipper there was no harm in trying. “Where do you get the material to test it,” she asked. “There isn’t enough locally and we can’t just go out and order a few tones of manky old vegetables and chicken bones.”

  Hubert smiled. “Actually we can. Angus called before you got here. He’s talked to his contact at the council and they’re delivering a skip full of the stuff later in the week. It’s been going into a landfill till now. They’ll just divert some here instead.”

  Claudilia was still not sure. “So what else did you talk about over your beer last night?”

  “Well, you remember I asked to have a look at the accounts, they haven’t come yet by the way but I said that in principle, and depending on what we see in the figures, we’d be interested in funding the rest of the digester and taking a share in the company.” Hubert sat back and waited for the explosion.

  “I knew it,” she groaned. “Hubert Edward Belcher you’re not safe to be out on your own. I leave you to ponder a project that we might be interested in, and overnight you blow ten years hard work on a chewy-up machine and a pile of potato peeling.” Claudilia hadn’t raised her voice, she’d talked in the calm monotone she reserved for when she’s angry. And she’d used his full name, Claudilia only ever used her brother’s full name when she was really pissed off with him.

  “You don’t mind too much then,” Hubert asked trying to defuse the moment.

  “No I don’t mind, not really. It’s not as if you’ve signed anything yet. You haven’t signed anything have you? It’s sensible for us to find out a bit more. So long as the figures look right, and so long as it’s not going to overstretch our other activities, then maybe we should get involved. But really Hubert, you should’ve talked to me first. No, that’s wrong. You shouldn’t be allowed out on your own. You should be kept on a leash, there’s times when Max is more responsible than you.”

  Hearing his name, the dog yawned, Max was lying in the middle of the office carpet, his usual spot where he could see everything and get in the way of everyone. Now awake, he pulled up his back leg and scratch his ear a few times before burying his head between his legs and using his tongue to clean his bits.

  “I wish I could do that ” Hubert mumbled.

  “If you give him a biscuit he might let you,” said Sally as she walked in with a tray of coffees.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In Stratford, Josie spent the evening talking to Mark about Wimplebridge, a village he’d not heard of before the weekend and one she couldn’t get out of her head. She told him about the suspicious deaths, which weren’t really suspicious, they just seemed a bit odd, and she told him about the Belcher family.

  After she’d given the kids their bath and put them into bed Mark read them a story. She took a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses into the lounge They sat together on the sofa and looked at the village on the internet. Rightmove showed that houses were seldom for sale in the village, and when they were they attracted a premium price. They visited the church website which had not been updated in a year, and then looked at the two pubs. The Belcher’s Arms had the better menu and the rooms had five star reviews. The Bridge Inn looked more lively and most weekends they put on live entertainment.

  In the morning Josie arrived at Rother Street and looked through the overnight reports. She was pleased to see nothing new involving builders or fishermen, and no mention of Wimplebridge anywhere. Apart from a few idiot drivers blowing positive for booze and a handful of domestic disturbances, it had been a quiet eight hours for the night shift. She checked her email and found nothing pressing, Josie logged out of her computer and went to the canteen for coffee. By eight thirty most of the civilian staff had arrived, Josie walked along the central corridor checking the latest safety notices, missing persons posters and adverts for rooms to rent. Confident that Simon would be at his desk by now, she pushed through the door labelled Digital Information Suite, and crossed the room to his work station.

  Half a dozen I.O.’s shared the open plan office, and most were already working. These were not serving police officers but they wore a similar uniform to that of a PC, their polo shirt was blue rather than black and carried no epaulettes to identify their rank. While some of the older Police officers were scornful of their importance, Josie recognised their contribution to modern policing. What they gave was background knowledge, they accessed social media, looked at known associates, they read the local press and other public records. Their job was to build an impression of a person or group of people. It meant that when a uniformed officer smashed through a door at five in the morning, he or she would have a much better idea of what was waiting on the other side.

  Right now Josie just wanted to know a little more about the village she’d spent so much time in, and there was nobody better than Simon Weeks at putting that knowledge together. “Okay Simon, what have you got for me?” she asked, pulling a chair over to beside his desk.

  “Hi Josie,” said Simon looking up from his screen. “I’ve had a quick look and the good news is that there’s a lovely little three bed for sale on the outskirts of the village. It’s within the catchment area of a nice school, it’s got a conservatory and a large garden as well as a separate garage for two cars.”

  “Very funny,” said Josie, taking a note of the property.

  “Well actually there is not much more to tell. I looked at the Belcher family, Marie and Helen have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, Claudilia and Hubert are on Linkedin and Twitter but their stuff is mostly professional, or to do with horses. It looks like Marie’s got family in Australia and she follows some groups over there. Helen is her oldest daughter and most of her activity is pretty normal for a seventeen year old girl. None of them have turned on high level privacy settings. It’s allowed me to get a pretty good picture of the family.”

  Simon took a sip of his coffee and continued. “I looked at local papers and Helen appears in a few pictures on horseback, she’s into her riding and she’s won some local trophies. The family bought a pub in the village to save it from closing and it’s got a great menu. They own quite a
few farms in the area and a timber yard. Their website is a bit dated, I could do better, but it tells you who’s who, how to contact them and what they sell.”

  “And you got all this from a quick look,” said Claudilia. “What would you get from a long look?”

  “Patience you must learn young Padawan, more knowledge for you I have,” said Simon in his best Yoda voice. Josie groaned. She’d forgotten he was a Star Wars geek, she should have been reminded by his Darth Vader mug with the slogan “I like my coffee from the dark side”, and the millennium falcon screen saver.

  Simon looked at his notes and continued. “Next I looked at Companies House and pulled a credit report on the business. Belcher Estates Ltd seems to own about half the county, there are only two shareholders, Hubert and Claudilia. They’re shareholders in the village shop and the pub too. They’ve made money every year and lots of it.” Simon leaned back in his chair, he was pleased with his work. “I’m telling you Josie, these people are minted. They’re old money to start with but they’re making good use of it, and generating more of the stuff every year.” Somewhere behind Josie a printer began to hum. “I’ve put the main points down in a report and it’s printing out over there.” He waved his hand towards the noise. “I’m also printing the incident reports from the area too. like I said there hasn’t been much if you ignore the builder and the fishing chap. An old fella drove his car into the river about a year ago, toxicology showed he was about twice the blood alcohol limit and it was an ancient car which he serviced himself. It got filed as an accident - no further action.”