A Death in the Woods

by M B Vincent

  ‘Sorry.’ The Judge turned his chair. ‘Lost in thought.’

  ‘There’s a lot to think about.’ Jess took a step onto the rug. The golden rug with the blue flowers across it. It felt good beneath her toes.

  She wished the curtains were drawn. The dark outside was too big. It was designed for the crack of a gun, the sound that haunted her since the trance.

  ‘David,’ said her father.

  ‘Eh?’ said Jess. She was tired. It was a sudden swerve.

  ‘You want to know. And you deserve to know. Just like David deserves the truth.’

  Jess sank to the carpet. She waited. And waited.

  ‘Talking about such matters was your mum’s territory,’ said the Judge eventually. ‘I don’t really know how . . . ’ He sighed. Collected himself. ‘Life was hard for David. None of us knew why. Everyday things that came easily to the rest of us proved too much for him. People. Places. Things. It didn’t matter how well-loved he was, David just didn’t fit in. He lurked on the sidelines. Parties, cricket matches, pub crawls. They all held terror for him.’

  Such forensic observation was unlike the Judge. He stuck to broad strokes as a rule.

  ‘Did you get on with him?’ An innocuous question, the closest Jess could get to asking if her father loved David.

  ‘I was David’s senior by a couple of years. Iris used to pair us off so there’d be someone looking out for him. I assumed the role of older brother, so to speak. He made me smile. The hopelessness on the rugby pitch, never knowing which way to run. I took it upon myself to jolly David along, involving him in things. Thought it might help.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’ The Judge fiddled with a letter opener. ‘One time, when David was only about sixteen, a crowd of us went rock climbing. Cheddar Gorge. He was terrified, of course. We pretty much winched him all the way. At one point he let go of the rockface and simply dangled there. He hadn’t lost his grip. He just . . . let go. We all laughed as he spun like a top. He threw up, of course. I thought of that day after he died. I’ve thought of it often, since. In answer to your question, yes, Jessica, I liked David enormously. One couldn’t do otherwise. He was so charming, and so modest.’ The Judge smiled. Just a small one. ‘By having me chaperone David, Iris was looking out for her boy, but she was helping me too. Encouraging me to have some empathy.’

  For Jess, the words ‘Dad’ and ‘empathy’ were not natural partners. . As a teenager she’d joked that he’d like to bring his own gallows to the courtroom. Since Harriet’s death, she’d noticed a softening of attitude. He’d helped with piecing together support for Squeezers’ mental illness. He’d even betrayed a degree of pride in Jess.

  Not to my face, natch.

  The Judge said, ‘All David really wanted was to lose himself in the library at Kidbury Manor and roam art galleries. On his own. He was one of life’s loners.’ Here he looked at Jess. It was pointed, that look, and she squirmed a little on the rug. ‘The title held no interest for him. Knowing he’d be a lord weighed on him, I think. David had a skill I’ve never seen in anyone else.’ The Judge poured a shot of dark liquid from the half-empty bottle. ‘He was useless at riding, useless. But show him a frightened mare, and he’d sidle up to it, and in no time at all she’d be calm. He’d hug her, as though she were an old friend. Total trust. The same with dogs. And children.’ The Judge took a sip. ‘Where adults were concerned, David was lost. I kept trying to make him something he wasn’t. David and I grew up on different planes. He lived in his head, whereas I got stuck in out here in the world. I showed him archery, rowing, shooting. I set up targets. Tin cans, sacks of flour. He hated all of it. Especially the shooting. Couldn’t hit a barn door. That didn’t stop me from giving him my shotgun for his twenty-eighth birthday.’

  They were beyond mere recollection. The Judge was reliving something. He had time-travelled back three decades.

  ‘David died the day after his birthday. He left the manor house before sunrise. Not on a horse, Jess. That’s just a story we made up, for reasons that don’t seem sensible now. David went on foot. When he didn’t return for lunch, a stable boy was sent to look for him. He had no luck. I remember little Josh crying for his father to play with him, like he always did. I went out with some others in the afternoon. Eventually we found him.’ Her father’s voice was spare, as if bleached. ‘David had walked across to Blackdown Woods with my shotgun, found a quiet spot under an oak, put the gun in his mouth, and shot himself.’

  Outside the wolf circled, slowly eating up the light. Inside the fire in the grate was dying. Jess stared at the embers. Nobody had heard the gunshot that killed David until she heard it in Abonda’s kitchen.

  She said nothing. What was there to say? She would have liked to inch over and lean back against her father’s legs, crawl back to that time of safety, but she daren’t.

  The knowledge that Jess had run from in her trance, had found her at last. It wasn’t loud and horrific; it was soft and terrible and breathed its poison into each generation.

  ‘Every November, on his birthday,’ said the Judge, ‘I rise before dawn, and go to that oak tree in the woods. David’s tree. I leave flowers for him. Your mother used to come with me. Now I go alone.’ That extravagant bouquet hadn’t been for Patricia, after all.

  ‘Who in the family knows, Dad? Apart from you and Iris?’

  ‘Nobody. There’s nobody left who knows.’

  ‘Not even Josh? He doesn’t know how his father died?’

  ‘It was such a burden. We tried to protect you all.’

  ‘And you were ashamed.’

  ‘No!’ The hasty word died on the Judge’s lips. ‘Yes. And now,’ he said, ‘I’m ashamed of being ashamed.’

  CHAPTER 14

  TARNKAPPE

  Monday 9 November

  Jess couldn’t find a perch to sit on and eat her fried egg sandwich. The kitchen was full of policemen, some of them on their second breakfast of the morning, one of them with Mary on his lap.

  ‘You’re good boys isn’t it,’ said Bogna, doling out ketchup and brown sauce.

  Jess needed the carbs; she was shaken.

  David had taken his own life, with maximum violence, in a wood that he owned, next to the manor he’d inherited and which housed his wife and infant son. Even with Iris’s unconditional, clear-eyed and high-quality love, David had found himself unable to carry on.

  For a while, Jess had been unconsciously twinning herself with the dead, forever young David; the similarities had turned chilling. There was a voice she needed to hear, a reasonable voice that would tell her to dial it down a notch or two and pooh-pooh the gunshot she’d heard in her trance. But Rupert was in Edinburgh and wasn’t picking up.

  So, she ate. Because I’m discombobulated. Jess ate when she was unhappy. And when she was happy, or any state in between. Jess just ate.

  A newcomer cleared his throat at the kitchen door.

  Sarnies were put down and Mary was evicted from the protection officer’s knee. ‘Sir,’ said a medley of deep voices.

  ‘Working hard, I see,’ said Eden.

  It was odd to see him out of context. Jess didn’t bother with a greeting. ‘The pattern’s broken,’ she said.

  Before Eden could answer, Bogna took his arm and drew him to the table. ‘Brekkie, that’s what you need,’ she said.

  It appeared she was right. Between mouthfuls, as his men slunk away to their posts, Eden brought Jess up to date. ‘I’m casting my net wider. Dotting all my I’s.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Jess, ‘to cross your T’s.’

  He ignored that, as he ignored so much of what she said. ‘Come back to the station with me. I’d welcome your input on Abonda. We’ve brought her in.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Jess. She would press murder into her wound and it would help, as ever.

  ‘Don’t say roger that,’ said Eden.

  ‘Sorry, Sarge.’

  ‘And don’t call me Sarge.’
>
  ***

  Jess and Moretti shared a bag of Gummy Bears in the video room.

  ‘Hang on, Abonda and Gillian Cope are being interviewed today? They can’t both have done it.’

  He seemed amused. ‘Police work isn’t just about following one lead to the exclusion of all others, Jess.’ Moretti took the last Gummy Bear. ‘Besides anything else, we have to be seen to be doing everything we can.’

  ‘Or else your uncle, the big bad DI, will slap a few botties.’

  ‘Don’t call him that. At work he’s DI Phillips, not my uncle.’ Moretti was stern; it didn’t suit his puckish features.

  ‘Soz,’ said Jess. On the screen, a man was shown into Interview Room 1. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘The sarge had no choice. If you give an interview to the local rag about how much you love ice skating and then a victim’s stomach turns up on an ice rink . . .’

  ‘I guess so.’ The grainy, foot-high version of the TV chef looked disgruntled. ‘Let’s listen in,’ she said. ‘This should be good.’

  ***

  ‘Just a formality,’ Eden was saying.

  ‘Doesn’t feel like a formality.’ Lasco bristled. ‘I’m a celebrity, Mr Eden. Can you imagine what the papers would do with a picture of me in this place?’

  ‘As I say, just a question or two and you can be on your way.’

  ‘The Jolly Cook project’s on a knife edge, as it is.’ Lasco seemed unware of his pun. ‘Are you seriously suggesting I have time to run around the countryside, chopping people up?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Eden was slow and deliberate. He was impervious to fame; Jess, watching from the next room, knew that, but Lasco seemed unable to grasp it. ‘The sooner we begin, the sooner you can be back at work.’

  ‘Yeah. Well.’

  ‘According to the Kidbury Echo, you were given a guided tour of the Richleigh Ice Arena last Wednesday.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Moretti, beside Jess, laughed to himself. ‘He’s fuming,’ he said.

  ‘What a plank,’ said Jess.

  Lasco was easy to dislike.

  Eden said, ‘We haven’t made this public, but the ice rink figured in our investigation of the death of Jean Paul Barreau. He was murdered the day after your visit.’

  ‘So? And?’ Lasco’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re not seriously . . .’

  ‘I’m just asking about your fondness for ice rinks, Mr Lasco.’

  ‘I like skating. I’m good at it. I learned how to do it for Celebrities on Ice,’ said Lasco.

  ‘I’m not aware of Celebrities on Ice. Is that a TV show?’

  ‘Ouch!’ hooted Moretti.

  ‘It regularly attracts seven million viewers!’ Lasco bridled again.

  ‘I’m not one of them, I’m afraid.’ Eden stagily referred to his notes. ‘When we spoke to the manager of Ice Arena, he said you seemed particularly interested in the behind-the-scenes areas of the rink.’

  ‘I wasn’t interested in any of it,’ said Lasco. ‘It’s just PR. The guys at Jolly Cook have all sorts of arse-achingly boring events lined up for me. I was being nice.’

  ‘Him?’ said Jess. ‘Nice?’

  ‘Look,’ said Lasco. ‘I also visited the Castle Kidbury museum and Richleigh’s bowling alley. I made out I was keen on them too. If somebody gets killed behind the display cabinet of Victorian bonnets, will you drag me in again?’

  ‘I do hope we didn’t drag you, Mr Lasco.’ Eden wrote something on his notes.

  ‘I’m happy to help, you know that. I love you boys in blue. It’s just that bad publicity makes or breaks careers like mine and . . .’ Lasco looked at his watch and didn’t seem to like what he saw. ‘I have to collect my son and I’m late. I can go, I assume?’

  ‘You can indeed.’

  In the video room, Moretti stood and stretched. ‘Waste of bloody time,’ he said.

  ‘Lasco’s no murderer,’ agreed Jess. But he could be a victim. If Norris wasn’t the only contender, if somebody else was out there in the Blotmonap twilight, then Lasco’s son made him vulnerable. Fathers were dropping like flies in Castle Kidbury.

  ‘Look!’ Moretti elbowed Jess, and she looked at the screen again. ‘The greatest love story never told.’

  Lasco had exited. Knott had entered. ‘Somebody saw Norris, sir,’ she said to Eden.

  His body language changed. Every part of him perked up. ‘Where? Who’s on it?’

  ‘Only it turned out to be a very large dog.’ Knott held out a mug. ‘For you, sir.’

  Eden stared at her. ‘Knott, sometimes . . .’ He took the mug. ‘Yes?’ he asked, as she continued to stand there.

  ‘Try it.’

  ‘Try my tea?’

  ‘It’s a special tea.’

  Eden sipped. ‘Very, um, nice,’ he said.

  Jess winced. Moretti giggled. Knott had never learned how to read a room; still she lingered.

  ‘That Norris is spooky, isn’t he, sir?’ She was casual, musing, as if discussing her mother’s legs with a stranger at the bus stop. ‘We’ve searched everywhere that could give him cover – twice – and he’s disappeared. Just like that.’ She clicked her fingers.

  That hit home in the video room. Jess was kept awake at night by Norris’s talent for evading the police. As if he wears the Tarnkappe. Of course, the Viking cape of invisibility was only a myth, but where was Norris laying his head at night? How was he able to brazenly trot up to Harebell House and leave his gruesome presents?

  ‘There’s nothing spooky about it.’ Eden was terse. ‘Norris is human and he makes mistakes. That’s when we’ll catch him.’

  ‘I only hope,’ said Knott, her smudged little face grave, ‘that Judge Castle is still alive by the time we do.’

  ‘Jess, we—’ began Moretti, no longer giggling.

  ‘Doing everything you can. I know.’

  ***

  ‘Interview with Gillian Cope at Castle Kidbury station. Time is eleven-o-four. I am Detective Constable Peter Moretti.’

  ‘You look about twelve years old.’ Gillian was being Peak Gillian. Her shoulders were padded and her face was thunderous. ‘Can’t I be interviewed by an adult? Do you have any actual women in this place? Or do women make the coffee and bear the brunt of the sexist jokes?’

  ‘This shouldn’t take long. I just want a bit of background on your relationship with Jolly Cook. You almost went into business with them at one point, is that right?’

  ‘Until they changed their mind. Wouldn’t know a brilliant bastard idea if one sat on their face. They belong on the scrap heap, with C&A and Woolworths. National treasure, my arse.’

  ‘Didn’t work out, then?’

  ‘Deal was as good as done. Then they go quiet. Next thing, I hear that cocky bastard Nic Lasco is revamping Jolly Cook.’

  ‘That must have been disappointing.’

  ‘Disappointing? I wanted to castrate every last one of them.’

  ‘That’s why we have to look at your alibis. These murders took place on Jolly Cook premises, after all. Now, you say you had a dinner party on the thirty-first of October.’

  ‘I assume,’ said Gillian, ‘all my guests confirmed that.’

  ‘They did. Promptly. Efficiently. Almost as if they were expecting a call from the police.’

  Watching in the video room, Jess saw Gillian’s face tighten. As if the woman had realised, rather late, that she should take care around Moretti. Jess unleashed her emergency Twix.

  ‘An all-female guest list for a dinner party – isn’t that a bit odd?’

  Jess winced at Moretti’s ham-fisted question.

  ‘Might be odd to a man,’ said Gillian. ‘Any woman would understand that sometimes it’s a relief to be away from you lot with your manspreading and your opinions and your cheap aftershave.’

  Ooh, that’s a low blow. Jess was protective about sharp-eyed, easy-going Moretti. True, he moved in a pea souper of aftershave, but it wasn’t cheap.

  ‘You must admit it’s an
unlikely collection of characters.’ Moretti glanced at his notes. ‘A lawyer, a sex worker, a WI chairwoman and a clown. Didn’t know they did lady clowns.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. They do lady everything these days.’

  ‘I’m trying to see the connection. All ages, all walks of life. The only common thread is you’re all women. What would you have to talk about?’

  ‘We don’t all chat about husbands and babies, you know. We have lives.’

  ‘Tell me about it. You should meet my missus. Won’t let me anywhere near the TV remote.’

  Is he trying to annoy her? Or was Moretti genuinely so dismissive of women? Jess couldn’t tell.

  ‘The thing is . . .’ Moretti sucked his lips. Pretended to think. ‘You said yourself, in front of witnesses, that you were out and about on Halloween.’

  Gillian’s face didn’t move. Not one muscle.

  ‘You went further, Ms Cope. You said you were, and I’m quoting, “being scary”. Specifically, that you were scaring men.’

  ‘I don’t recall saying that. It must have been offhand. A silly joke.’

  ‘Would you say you make a lot of silly jokes, Ms Cope?’

  ‘It’s killing you calling me Ms, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s your preferred title.’

  He never gets rattled. Jess sat forward. This was better than Eastenders.

  ‘I intimidate you, don’t I, Peter Moretti?’

  ‘Would you like to?’ When he didn’t get a reply, Moretti said, ‘Those Skype calls you made last night. They were from a laptop.’

  ‘They might have been.’

  ‘They were. I checked. They were spaced out. Enough time in between to attend to other stuff.’

  Gillian looked hard at him. Then she said, ‘I may have made a mistake about the date of the second murder. Did you say it was the early hours of November sixth? I was actually at an award ceremony. West Country Female Entrepeneur of the Year at the Guildhall in Bristol.’

  ‘Did you win?’ asked Moretti.

  Jess laughed.

  Gillian ignored him. ‘You can check the guest list. I was there until about two a.m.’