Beside a Narrow Stream (11 page)

Madge took another angry puff on her cigarette. ‘I wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you. Well, when I left, I just drove around the corner and waited. Sure enough, about ten minutes later, he goes out and I followed him.’

Hillary’s eyes gleamed. ‘To Heyford Sudbury?’ she said softly.

Madge nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, to the outskirts of it anyway,’ she qualified. ‘I didn’t realize he’d spotted me, but he pulled up on to the side of the road and got out and waved me down.’ She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t be any good as a private investigator, I can tell you. Still, I was daft to try it really, especially in my own car. I managed to keep traffic between us for most of the way, but once we turned off the main roads on to the country lanes, I suppose I stuck out like a sore thumb.’

‘What did he say? When he pulled you over I mean?’ Hillary asked curiously.

Madge Eaverson flushed an ugly red. ‘He was really nasty. I’ve never heard him so mean. I just drove off. That’s when I decided to evict him from the cottage. I was being spiteful I know but … well, there’s a limit to what I’m prepared to take.’

Hillary sighed. ‘So you didn’t see where in Heyford Sudbury he went?’

‘No.’

Hillary leaned forward slowly. ‘All right, Mrs Eaverson. But please, don’t leave Deddington for any length of time without letting us know.’

Madge Eaverson nodded, but she looked relieved. Hillary watched her go, then said flatly, for the tape, ‘Mrs Eaverson has left the interview room.’ She turned off the recorder and looked over her shoulder at the uniform. She nodded her head, and the man silently left.

If he promised Gavin that they’d get a bigger place, Keith Barrington was thinking, maybe even rent a house somewhere, he could probably persuade Gavin to stay. But it would have to be out in the sticks somewhere. He couldn’t risk anyone he knew figuring out he was sharing a house with another man. If …

‘Constable Barrington.’

The voice, cold and hard, instantly recognizable and yet in an awful way, totally unfamiliar, made his blood suddenly run cold.

His head came up and around in a jerk.

Hillary got up slowly from the chair and walked around to the side of the table to face him. Once there, she leaned forward, resting her weight on her fists and bringing her face close to his. ‘If I can’t have your undivided attention in an interview room, when questioning a prime suspect on a murder case, exactly when
can
I have it?’

Keith swallowed hard. ‘Sorry, guv.’

‘Not good enough. I already have one piece of dead weight on this team that I’m obliged to carry – as you’ve no doubt already guessed, his name is Frank Ross. But I don’t have to carry
two
. Do you understand me?’

Keith swallowed again. ‘Yes, guv.’

‘I gave you a shot at interviewing Madge Eaverson because I’ve been pleased with your progress so far. I thought you were ready.’

Keith felt himself cringe inside his clothes. Back at Blacklock Green, his old nick, he’d been used to being dressed down by his sergeant. The man had it in for him, and getting a right rollicking was almost a daily event. Keith had despised and loathed him, and felt not a shred of respect for the man.

But so far, since coming to Thames Valley, he’d never been on the carpet. And getting a reprimand from Hillary Greene hurt. It hurt because he knew, this time, he deserved it. And he’d let her down. He’d let himself down.

‘I’m sorry, guv,’ he said again, miserably.

Hillary straightened up. ‘No point apologizing to me,’ she said dismissively. ‘Think of it as a game of snakes and ladders, Constable. For the last six months you’ve been steadily climbing ladders. Now you’ve just slipped down a ruddy great snake. If you want to regain lost territory, I suggest you start climbing again. But it’s no skin off my nose, either way. If you don’t shape up, I just ship you out.’

Keith blanched.

‘Right. Now that’s clearly understood, you can start by
finding out where Frank Ross is and get him to help you make up a profile for me. Of Heyford Sudbury. I want to know its layout, the name of every person in every house. I want to know if anyone has form, if anyone’s been in trouble with the tax man, if there are any old or new scandals associated with the place. I want you to go through the census, check with the council offices, check out any old newspaper reports wherever the village is mentioned – in short I want to know everything about that village. And in particular, I want to know who has the most money. And if anyone who has it is a female by the name of Annie. And make sure Frank Ross pulls his weight. Is all that clear?’

‘Yes, guv,’ Barrington said crisply.

Hillary nodded and walked out of the room. She left behind her one seriously worried man.

Once outside the interview room, Hillary turned, not left and towards the stairs, but carried on straight across the main lobby to the main doors.

Outside, she walked across the baking car park to her car and undid all the doors and windows again.

She was confident that the fire she’d lit under Barrington would do its job. He’d come to Thames Valley as a last resort to begin with, under a cloud, after thumping his old sergeant. He’d been wary at first, but had quickly settled down, and Hillary knew he’d come to like and respect her. More than that, he’d begun to realize that, on her team, he was not only in an ideal position to learn the job, but would, if he did it right, receive promotion in due course. She didn’t play favourites, and she wasn’t power-hungry. All her previous team members had left for bigger and better things, and she’d made it clear to him that he was going to be no exception, as far as she was concerned.

Now all that was in jeopardy. Or so he thought.

In truth, Hillary didn’t really know how serious the problem
was, and would cut him some slack. He was having trouble with his love life – well, who wasn’t? The fact that he was gay was more problematical. OK, in this enlightened day and age, it was supposed to be different, and the police force even had a gay rights movement. But in reality, she could understand why he was in the closet.

And she thought he was wise.

If the likes of Frank Ross ever found out about him, for instance, she’d never be able to keep him on her team. Ross would make his life intolerable, and Barrington himself would be back in the same position he’d been in back in London – namely, on his sergeant’s shit-list. He’d have to be transferred yet again, with two strikes against him.

Her phone rang and she answered it automatically, not realizing that she’d sighed deeply until Mike Regis’s voice said cheerfully, ‘You sound about as fed up as I feel. Case not going well?’

Hillary sighed again, then laughed. ‘No, just the usual office problems. Nothing I can’t handle. What’s up?’

‘Does there have to be something up for me to call? I just wanted to see if you could make dinner tonight. My place, I’ll cook.’

His place meant staying over. Another offer to make room in his wardrobe for her gear. Another conversation about taking their summer holidays together this year – getting away to somewhere hot and exotic. Fiji maybe. She could almost see the entire evening mapped out in her head. Regis was a fair cook – it would be something with red meat in it. Her favourite. He’d have bought a bottle of wine. Maybe flowers. Later, of course, sex in a large, comfortable double bed. No excuses for her to slip out in the middle of the night.

And what was wrong with any of that?

Nothing at all.

So why wasn’t she already saying yes?

‘I can tell it’s a bad time,’ Regis said, and Hillary swore
softly as she suddenly realized how insulting the long silence must have been.

‘It’s just that I think the case is about to break,’ she said. ‘We’ve got something, a nibble, if not a lead, that’s got that feel about it. You know?’

Mike did know. And he knew her well enough to tell she wasn’t lying. Nevertheless, as he said something cheerful, and got from her a promise of ‘meeting up soon’, he hung up feeling morose.

Hillary slipped her phone into her bag feeling guilty. Then she got behind the wheel and shook her head. Hell, here she was, being all wise and superior about Keith Barrington’s love life, when she couldn’t even handle her own.

Angrily, she thrust the keys into the ignition and gunned the engine.

Puff the Tragic Wagon growled tragically, coughed and died.

Hillary sighed heavily, and tried again, more gently.

Nearly three-quarters of an hour later, she stood in front of Heyford Sudbury’s church and admired the spire. There was a lot to admire in Heyford Sudbury. The graveyard, for instance, was recently mown, and even the oldest stones were free of ivy. The iron gates had been recently painted black. There was not a scrap of litter to be seen in the immaculately clean streets. Nearly all the mellow Cotswold stone houses sported a plethora of hanging baskets, and front gardens frothed with spring colour. Even the old-fashioned telephone kiosk had been newly painted a dazzling scarlet.

A letter on the village notice board informed all proudly that the village had been short-listed for ‘The Best Kept Village award’ again that year, which probably explained it all. No doubt the WI had regular marches around the place to make sure no malingerer or backslider was allowed to ruin their chances.

The village was old, dating back to somewhere around the
time that William the Conqueror first dipped his toes in the English Channel, and one or two buildings looked Elizabethan. Most cottages were of that pale lemon coloured stone, so beloved of the area, with grey-tiled roofs and porches. Windows were mullioned, oriel, and honeysuckle-festooned.

There was a lot of money here, no doubt about it. She didn’t need to see the Jaguars and top-of-the-range four-wheel-drive vehicles parked outside the local pub to know that.

Eyeing the pub thoughtfully, Hillary made her way over. In most English villages, the pub, the church, the vicarage and the manor house, were all cobbled closely together. There was a good reason for that. In the old days, the lord of the manor and the vicar liked to keep an eye on the peasantry to make sure they all went to mass, and the publican liked to keep an eye on them as they all came out. That way, attendances in both establishments could be relied upon.

Heyford Sudbury was no different. As she turned from the church and headed towards the pub, she saw, off to her left, a large set of wrought-iron gates, and an expanse of gravel. Somewhere behind the high walls, she suspected, was the village manor house, and as pretty a piece of prime real estate as you were likely to find.

And the pub was the best place to find out who owned it.

Inside the Three Horseshoes it felt almost chilly, and her eyes blinked in the relative gloom. It was late, nearly closing time, and she made her way over to the bar quickly to order a lemon and lime.

‘Like ice with that?’ the barman was a youngish,
sandy-haired
man with a winning smile and very white teeth.

‘Swimming in it please,’ she replied, hitching herself on to the barstool. ‘It’s baking out there. Still, brings out the tourists I suppose.’

‘You said it. The place would be dead without them.’

Hillary took a long sip and sighed in satisfaction. ‘Nice village though.’

The barman smiled. ‘Nice if you can afford it. Me, I share a three-bed old council house with two mates in back-of-beyond Burford. We’re buying the place together. Only way we can afford a mortgage. Who the hell knows what we’ll do if ever one of us wants to get married and have kids.’

Hillary grimaced. ‘Know what you mean. Me, I live on a narrowboat. Only thing I can afford,’ she lied.

The barman nodded thoughtfully. ‘The canal, huh?’

‘Mind you, even they’re getting pricey nowadays,’ Hillary warned him.

He sighed. ‘I hear you. Still, it’s a thought.’

Hillary grinned. ‘I wouldn’t mind living in that big house next door,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even see it from the road, but I know I want to live in it.’

The barman laughed. ‘Heyford Court. Yeah, it’s choice. A bit run-down now though. Could do with renovating, know what I mean? One of those big barns of a place, nearly three hundred-years-old.’

‘A young family living there?’

‘No, which is a shame. Could have done with some
youngsters
to cheer it up. No, there’s just the one bloke living there. Lucky sod. Still, it’s often the way, isn’t it? I think his family’s been there for donkey’s years, but he’s the last of his line. Sad in a way. There’s no place for the likes of them in this world now. Everyone’s waiting for him to get married and have a few kids, but he’s in his fifties, so he’d better get a move on, if he’s going to.’

‘Sounds to me like some woman should have snapped him up by now,’ she said craftily.

‘Oh, I expect a few have tried,’ the barman smiled, checked that the man sitting down the other end didn’t want another drink, and turned back to her. He smiled flirtatiously.

‘You might be his type. Care to give it a go?’ he asked, flashing that white grin at her.

Hillary gurgled over him lemon and lime. ‘Too old for all that.’

‘Never!’ he said gallantly. ‘Mind you, he’s not there at the moment anyway. Left suddenly a few days ago. According to the lady who “does” for him, he went abroad for a holiday. Must be nice for some, huh? To just swan off whenever the fancy takes you.’

‘Who knows? Perhaps he’ll come back with some dusky young Polynesian bride?’ Hillary mused. ‘So, what about you? Surely there’s some rich matron
you
can marry, who can whisk you away from that three-bed semi of yours?’ She blinked her big brown eyes at him and he laughed.

‘I wish! But nah, nothing doing. All the birds around here are already married to their sugar daddies and wouldn’t give a jobbing bartender a second look.’

‘What? No sugar mummies around here at all?’

‘Nope. Well, not unless you want to count the countess,’ he laughed at the unintended pun. ‘She’s one of those Germanic types. She’s available – lives in the big barn conversion at the bottom end of the village. Trouble is she’s eighty if she’s a day.’