A Dirty Death (23 page)

‘I think you’d better consider moving out – all of you – if we can’t pin anything on Amos. Get someone to do the milking for the time being, and go and stay in town. Nobody would expect you to go on sleeping here after all this.’

‘It’s not just the milking. There are calves, and heifers in the fields. And there’s hay to cut. It won’t all just
stop
, however much we might want it to.’

‘Send the calves and heifers to market, and forget about the hay,’ he suggested in a sensible, rational tone. He was totally unprepared for her 
response. Her face tightened, and then suddenly she exploded into loud sobs. She didn’t even try to explain to him the anguish that he had triggered with his words. She had faced the idea of moving away from the farm permanently, and selling off the stock, earlier that morning, but it had been an idea for the future and a mildly appealing one. It had spelt freedom from work and worry then. But to think of her own calves, reared largely by her, known intimately by name and character, being driven round a noisy market ring with red-faced farmers bidding casually for their lives, was intolerable. It was as if Den had suggested she take them out one by one and shoot them.

Silently, he handed her a large paper tissue, and waited for her to subside. ‘Sorry,’ she sniffed.

‘It’s too soon,’ he said. ‘I should have known.’

‘No, it isn’t. I’m okay, really. It’s just … sending young animals off to slaughter is always dreadful.’

‘They wouldn’t be slaughtered, though. Someone would buy the heifers to join another milking herd, and the calves would be reared, just the same as they would here.’

She gave him a wordless look of respect at his easy knowledge of dairy farming. Even at school, she had had to explain to most of her friends how it all worked.

Den went on, ‘And whatever happens, at 
least you’d be safe. The whole force is taking this seriously now. You’ll be given five-star protection now, if you want it.’

‘That sounds awful. Armed guards at the door.’ She shuddered.

‘Not quite. Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I’m going back to the station now, to see how they’re getting on there. I’ll phone you as soon as there’s any news. And I haven’t forgotten about taking you out. I’d make a date now, but I have a feeling life is going to get pretty busy over the next few days.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she said, with a weak little smile.

He turned his car in the yard and set off up the drive in second gear, thinking about the Beardons and their avalanche of trouble, trying to imagine what it must be like living in the middle of something so cataclysmic. He only noticed the figure of Sylvia Westerby on a bike at the last minute, where she was leaning into a bush to give him space to pass. She looked innocuous enough, waving cheerily at him, and pushing off again as soon as he was past her. It was interesting, he mused, how often she seemed to turn up and how close she seemed to be to the Beardon family.

Sylvia came cycling into the yard like a racer, glancing curiously at the few remaining police officers and the vivid tapes they’d stretched around the nettle patch. She went into the house without knocking.

‘My God, what’s all this?’ she demanded of her friend. Miranda was sitting at the table, a cold mug of coffee beside her. ‘The village is buzzing.’

‘It’s just like living in a nightmare, Sylv. Thanks for coming. I didn’t hear the car.’

‘I came on the bike. I thought the yard might not take another vehicle.’

She spoke quickly, slightly breathless. Miranda barely responded.

‘I gather it’s Sam. What happened exactly?’ 

‘Somebody shot him. They think it was Amos Grimm. Why, Sylv? Why would Amos – or
anybody
– do that? It just makes no sense to me. I thought he might kill himself, when I realised he’d taken Guy’s gun. But I couldn’t say anything – how could I? I didn’t even dare to be nice to him, because he’d think I was trying to seduce him again.’

‘So you were horrible to him, were you?’

‘Not at all. Just – neutral. He seemed all right. With so much to do, and being in charge. I thought he was coming into his own. It was all looking fairly manageable, these past few days.’

‘So why think he’d kill himself?’

‘Oh, well – it seems so stupid now. This was definitely murder. You can’t shoot yourself in the back, even by accident.’

‘Tell me.’ Sylvia moved a chair close to Miranda’s and sat sideways on it, only a few inches away. Miranda kept her gaze on the table.

‘I was an idiot. I came to the conclusion, you see, that Sam killed Guy. It seemed obvious – there wasn’t anybody else. At least …’

‘At least nobody else you could bear to consider,’ finished Sylvia softly. She put a hand lightly on her friend’s arm. Miranda moaned.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Sylvia reassured, leaning forward and taking Miranda’s hand. ‘They’re being terribly thorough out there.’ She glanced 
through the window towards the yard, almost nervously. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Lilah’s got very friendly with one of the policemen. He’s a nice boy, I think. He seems to be helping her. I hope it makes her feel safer, anyway.’

‘Come on, Em. You’re not in any danger.’

‘How can you say that? Let me tell you, it feels very much as if we’re being picked off one by one. I don’t know how we’ll get through the next few nights, if it turns out they’re wrong about Amos. And I can’t help feeling they are. I mean –
Amos
. He wouldn’t hurt anybody, surely?’

Sylvia pursed her lips and gazed out of the window. After a while, she said, ‘Do you want me to come and stay with you? I could manage it for a bit.’

‘No, don’t be silly. You can’t leave all your livestock. That’s the trouble with both of us – all these damned
animals
hanging round our necks. You know what Lilah said, when we found Sam?
We’ll really have to sell the farm now
. It’s always the first thing she thinks about – the farm.’

‘She might be right, though,’ Sylvia commented. ‘You certainly can’t go on like this, even if some of us organise a rota to come and help you for a bit.’

‘Who would be prepared to do that?’

Sylvia made a sweeping gesture. ‘Oh, several people, I should think. They’ll all be curious to 
see what’s going on up here, for one thing. You’re celebrities now, you know.’

‘Oh.’ Miranda was flat again. ‘You mean Hetty, I suppose. She’ll be around again for Sam’s funeral, no doubt.’

‘Not Hetty, no. Me, for one. And Jonathan.’

‘And Wing Commander Stradling for good measure? And the vicar? God, I’d rather we just sent all the cows to market tomorrow than that.’ She noticed Sylvia’s recoil. ‘Oh, sorry, love. I didn’t mean it like that. I’d be thrilled if
you
came to help – of course I would. But I can’t think about it yet. Not with all those policemen under our feet, and the children having to cope with everything. Poor Roddy – what’ll this do to him? I’ve been sitting here all morning, totally useless, with all these thoughts coming at me. Every few minutes there’s a whole new lot. Things I’ve got to decide and do. And there’s nobody I can turn to about any of it.’

‘There’s
me
, Miranda. I keep telling you. I can milk cows as well as anybody.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Miranda, as if defeated. ‘Yes, I’m sure you can.’

Amos had given up any attempt to understand what was happening. Nothing made any sense. The policemen, who wanted him to say he had killed Sam Carter and Guy Beardon, and would 
probably be ecstatic if he’d confess to the murder of his brother while he was at it, were kind to him, so he could find no cause for complaint there. They brought him tea and biscuits and scrambled eggs. They gave him a little bed with warm blankets, and took him to the lavatory when he asked them to. They let him sleep until well after sunrise next morning. In many ways, it was preferable to hospital, apart from the talking, which hurt his head in a worse way than the bashing it had received. This time, it hurt deep inside, where he tried to understand why anyone should think he was a killer. He got the impression that the police thought he was daft, when surely everybody knew that had been Isaac, not him.

They showed him the gun, and asked if he’d ever seen it before. He shrugged. A gun was a gun. It wasn’t his. He’d had one, years ago, but had thrown it away when the barrel got wobbly, and any shot would be liable to hit him in the face if he tried to use it. This one was Beardon’s, they said. And it had his, Amos’s, fingerprints on it. How did he explain that?

He couldn’t remember ever touching the thing. He never went to Redstone, until that morning, a few days back. He hadn’t seen the gun then. He stared at the floor, clutching his head between his hands, trying to remember. It didn’t help that these men kept talking, nagging at him, never 
shouting, never bullying, but just going on and on, encouraging him to own up to something he surely hadn’t done.

Just when he felt he might recall something, they switched to Beardon. Amos had pushed him in the slurry, hadn’t he? Drowned him in the stuff.
Why? Why did you do that, Mr Grimsdale
?

He spread his hands, as if inviting them to find slurry on them. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, eyes wide. ‘It’s daft to say it was me.’

He lost any sense of time. They talked at him on the first day, and then put him to bed. Next day a man turned up who said he was a solicitor, and would advise him what to say. And then
he
started asking questions and talking, just as bad as the policemen. And then, soon after, they brought him a bag of clothes, covered in dried-up flaking muck.

‘Have you seen these before?’ they asked. He looked. There were trousers of some sort, very mucky, and an anorak, not so bad. And a shoe. He could see it was nothing like any shoes he’d ever possessed.

‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘I truly haven’t.’ And it seemed to him that the policemen believed him. They sighed and shook their heads, and didn’t ask him anything more for a while.

Den Cooper had always been interested in forensics. It had been his initial ambition to 
concentrate on that side of police work, and he spent as much time as he could watching their activities. The clothes that Jonathan Mabberley had brought in were a godsend, in all sorts of ways. Den had been told to get them to the lab people right away, and wait for whatever information they could give him on an early examination while he waited and watched.

‘Women’s stuff,’ they said, after barely a minute. ‘Tracksuit bottoms. Size sixteen. The anorak could be either sex, but look – there’s a long hair on it. And another. Could be a chap, but unlikely. The collar isn’t greasy. The shape’s female – see how it’s a bit baggy at the front? A woman with big bazongas, by the looks of it. The trainer’s size seven. Small for a man. Big for a woman. But see how it’s worn down at the heel. Women walk like that more than men do.’

Den went back to his superiors at top speed. ‘A woman!’ he said. ‘Guy Beardon was killed by a woman.’

‘Steady on, lad,’ was the reply, or words to that effect. ‘All this shows is that a woman was in that slurry at some point. No certainty that she did the farmer in.’ They were fairly committed to the idea of Amos Grimsdale being the answer to everything at that point.

‘What? Even Isaac?’ said Den, when he realised. They sucked their teeth a little at that. 
After all, Amos had been hospitalised himself. And he had run bleeding down the fields to get help from Redstone.

‘Could be,’ they nodded. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Den, rudely.

The file on the Beardons became unwieldy. Secretaries rattled away at keyboards, producing transcripts of interviews with Lilah, Roddy, Miranda, Jonathan, which were added to those already produced after Guy Beardon’s death. Isaac Grimshaw had his own much thinner grey folder, but on almost every page there was a cross-reference to someone at Redstone. ‘Might as well amalgamate them,’ said one of the detectives, leafing through the sheaves of paper yet again. ‘They’re obviously the same case.’

‘And yet, they’re very different,’ demurred his mate. ‘Totally different
modus operandi
, as they say. Completely different
feel
.’

‘Connected, Dave. Definitely connected. Nobody’s going to tell me that two neighbouring houses can be the scene of violent death within a few weeks of each other, and
not
be connected.’

‘Course I’m not saying that. After all, we’ve got the chap from the one place about to be booked for knocking off two victims from the other place. Except these clothes don’t help. If it
was
a woman 
– well, a woman’s not going to bash two old chaps over the head with a crowbar, is she?’

‘It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, Dave. Not these days. You get some very violent women these days. And see what Cooper’s put in these notes. Sylvia Westerby, for example: she’s tough and strong – tall, too. Half the women in the area work outdoors, lugging hay bales up and down ladders, lifting trailers on and off towbars. Got good muscles, most of them.’

‘We’re not getting far, here, are we? I mean, it’s close. I can feel it getting close. But we’re not
there
yet. It isn’t hanging together.’ He banged the flat of his hand down on the bulging file. ‘In fact, when you really think about it, we’re making quite a pig’s ear of the whole messy business. No motive, not much evidence. The long-shots have got cast-iron alibis. That son of Beardon’s, the grown-up one – Terry; ten thousand witnesses could say he was at the Cup Final the day his dad was killed. His brother lives in France – we’ve checked he hasn’t been over here for the past three months. We’ve been thorough there. And look at the women we’d have to bring in – that Mabberley lady, for a start – not to mention the Westerby lady. Can’t see either of them making a quick confession.’

The detective shook his head. ‘If it has to be a woman, I’d go for Beardon’s wife. Striking to look 
at, a fair bit younger than him, up to something with the workman …’

‘Where did you get that from? That’s not in the file.’

‘The vicar let something drop, early on. Wasn’t a formal interview. Just chatting to him.’

‘It ought to be in the file. It’s pertinent.’

‘You’re right, Dave. Good word, that. Very possibly, it’s pertinent.’

They went back to Amos. The legal chap was making noises about letting him go if they weren’t going to charge him; muted noises, however, since somebody had killed three people, and it wasn’t good policing to let a prime suspect loose on the community. If necessary, they could hang on to him for a while yet.

‘Women,’ said Dave, before they went back into the interview room. ‘Let’s get him talking about women.’

So they asked Amos what he felt about the Beardon ladies, mother and daughter. He squinted at them warily and made no reply.

‘Nice looking, both of them,’ said Dave, casually. Amos recalled his long hours of television viewing with their good cop/bad cop routine, and was unmoved. His feelings for Miranda had nothing to do with these youngsters and their clumsy obtuseness. Torture wouldn’t persuade 
him to speak about her. There was only one woman he would be prepared to talk about, and that was with a view to saving himself from further intimidation. But it wasn’t easy to introduce her name into the conversation. Especially as they seemed so intent on Miranda Beardon.

‘You must have seen quite a lot of her, over the years,’ one of them said. ‘Got friendly with her too, I dare say?’

Amos shrugged. ‘Not specially,’ he muttered. ‘Hardly spoke to her.’

‘But you went to visit her last week. What was that all about? She said you were in quite a state about something.’

The small betrayal stung Amos. Could Miranda have been cruel enough to tell these men about his tears? Had she had any idea what had caused them? Surely not, since he scarcely understood it himself. He merely shook his head at the question.

‘Are you acquainted with Mrs Mabberley at all? Or Mrs Westerby, next door to the vicarage?’

Amos stared at them, impatience rising from chest to throat, so he could barely speak. ‘I see the Mabberley woman now and then. She gives me a lift to the shop once in a while. Mrs Westerby blames me and Isaac for her little kid dying, years ago. Haven’t hardly spoken to her from that day to this. Her’s best friend with Miranda.’ He shook his head again slowly. 

The men exchanged glances; one jotted down a note. ‘Miranda? You know Mrs Beardon as Miranda, do you?’

Impossible to explain, without admitting too much. He kept his eyes on the table in front of him, and said nothing. He
thought
of her as Miranda, of course he did. But he would never say it to her face.

The man prompted. ‘Mr Grimsdale? Could you answer, please?’

‘It’s a pretty name,’ he mumbled. ‘I tell you, I hardly ever spoke to her. Just a bit of a wave over the hedge, if she came to the top field. Which she didn’t often do. Blackberrying, maybe. Mushrooming. She didn’t do much farmwork, that I could see.’