Death of a Friend (26 page)

‘I didn’t know we were in a competition.’ The
resulting sulk had lasted at least an hour.

So he gave her the task of passing on the sad news, hoping it would make her feel connected and important. He phoned later in the evening to ask how the High Copse family had taken it, and to check that she was as tired as he was and wouldn’t be coming over.

‘Martha said a really cynical thing. “He chose the right day for it.” I suppose she means Good Friday.’

‘She’s probably had all she can take, without worrying about Charlie’s family.’

‘I had rather a rotten day myself,’ Lilah changed the subject lightly.

‘Me too. That phone call this morning was just the beginning. It’s been one thing after another ever since.’

‘You can’t think of anything but this stupid murder, can you?’ she snapped. ‘Aren’t you allowed to have a life apart from your job?’

He grunted as if she’d hit him. ‘Lilah, I saw a man die today. That’s what happened to me. It doesn’t make any difference that I was working at the time. It happened to
me
, Den Cooper. And tonight I can’t think of anything else, even if I want to. If you can’t bear with me until this is sorted, that’s up to you. And if I can’t share my bad times with you, then that’s a great pity. It isn’t my problem if you can’t accept what I do for a living.’

‘Okay,’ she said, her voice deceptively soft. ‘Point taken. I’ll go now. It sounds as if I’m more of a nuisance than anything else.’

He had a natural proclivity for the truth; anything else always seemed to result in trouble, sooner or later. ‘Not a nuisance,’ he corrected. ‘But a bit more than I can deal with just now. Good night – and I’ll see you on Sunday.’

‘Night night,’ she said with a catch in her voice.

Now I’ve made her cry
, he thought despairingly as he put the phone down.

It was dark when Barty White heard the knock on his door. He was already halfway down the hall, thanks to the alarmed barking of his dogs. Nobody visited Barty unannounced. He threw the door wide and allowed the three terriers to surge out without restraint, to assess the acceptability of the visitor. The barking quickly diminished, to be replaced by rumbling growls. A man then, Barty concluded, trying to focus on the silhouetted figure in front of him.

‘I’m sorry to come round so late,’ came a strained voice. ‘It’s been a bad day and I haven’t been able to get on top of things.’

‘But—’ Barty was bewildered. He lived in a quiet valley some miles from Chillhampton;
spontaneous visits after dark were unheard of. ‘On top of things?’ he queried, picking the least comprehensible part of the remark.

Clive laughed, sending shards of alarm through Barty. ‘Well, can I come in?’

There was no choice. Barty stood aside and gently moved the dogs away with his foot, clearing a path for the Meeting House Warden.

Having been shown into Barty’s living room, Clive took a seat gingerly. The bungalow was generously proportioned, built on a plot of Barty’s own land, across the lane from the original farmhouse where he’d lived all his adult life. His son was there now, while Barty enjoyed retirement with his Jack Russells.

He switched on the overhead light, making Clive blink and cringe.
He’s off his head
, Barty thought with detachment. He could imagine no conceivable reason for the visit; he had no business with Clive Aspen apart from the running of the Meeting House and the shared Sunday morning meetings. And Hotspur. Surely the fool hadn’t come about a horse at this time of night?

‘I want to talk to you.’ He frowned fiercely at Barty. ‘Something has happened to me and there’s no one else who’ll listen.’

‘Well …’ Barty began, bemused.

‘Things are getting so complicated,’ Clive said earnestly. ‘You know – what Charlie Gratton
said to me about following the hounds.
You
understand, don’t you? You let me borrow your horse, after all.’

Barty shook his head despairingly. ‘What brought this on?’ he asked, unable to keep a certain briskness out of his tone.

‘Charlie,’ Clive said in a whisper. ‘He saw me at the hunt. I never thought there’d be protesters there that day. I thought they’d go after the mid Devon lot. I thought it would be safe just to follow, anonymously. It’s such a good ride, you know. Well, of course you know – I borrowed your horse. And he behaved like a lamb. After that stupid girl got herself knocked out—’

‘Killed,’ said Barty. ‘She was
killed
.’

‘Well, yes, she was. And Charlie was wailing and carrying on like a banshee. But he’d seen me, before it happened. He gave me such a filthy look …’ Clive shuddered and put his hands over his face. ‘I didn’t know how I’d face him after that. So I went on a long ride. A gallop. Couldn’t disappoint poor Hotspur, could I? We had a great time. And you know you said I could use him whenever I liked. So I borrowed him again, on Sunday afternoon … and something happened.’ He stopped speaking, glancing sideways with a horrible glint of excitement in his eyes.

‘I still don’t see—’ Barty began, wishing he’d had the sense to keep the chap on the doorstep.
The dogs were arranged comically in the doorway of the living room, watching Clive with great attention. Barty was glad of their presence. ‘I don’t see …’ he tried again, before realising that he
did
see. Or he thought he did. And if he did, it was a vision he’d much rather not have been burdened with.

Warily he moved towards Clive, one hand outstretched. ‘That’s enough, Friend,’ he said soothingly. ‘Don’t say anything more. It was good of you to come and see me, I don’t get many visitors these days. Everybody’s always so busy. One thing about Friends, they look after their own. This trouble with Charlie – it should bring us all together. Nobody’s going to worry now about you being at the hunt. I’ve known Friends do much worse than that.’ The nonsensical words were flowing with little conscious thought: just so long as they calmed and reassured the man enough for him to decide he’d done what he came to do, and leave without any trouble.

Barty felt at a real disadvantage; the younger man was so much bigger and stronger than him. If he said the wrong thing, he had no confidence that Clive would remain harmless. However loud he shouted, however much his dogs barked, still nobody would come. His son, Paul, was accustomed to a lot of noise from the dogs and would ignore it, even if he heard anything.

He tried not to think about what Clive had just told him. It had sounded horribly like a confession to murder and Barty felt deeply ill-equipped to deal with such a situation. The man was unhinged, barely responsible for his words and actions. And then there was the wretched Mandy to worry about. Could Barty allow himself simply to pack the man off, knowing the state he was in? Slowly the implications crowded in on him, and he knew he must make a series of painful decisions. The first had already formed, without his realising it; he could not let Clive depart to wreak whatever damage he might.

‘There, there,’ he said fatuously, reaching a tentative hand out and patting Clive’s shoulder. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and talk this thing over, shall we? You make yourself comfortable and I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

The phone was in the hall. He closed the door firmly behind him and stretched the instrument as far away from the living room as he could. Then he dialled 999, his heart thumping like a sledgehammer.

Unable to sleep, despite the early start and the avalanche of events which had kept him frantically busy that day, Den found himself – much to his own surprise – obsessively reconstructing the
death of Nina Nesbitt, of all people. It was now just over two weeks since it had happened; he hadn’t yet given himself time to relive it in full and precise detail. Other things had forced themselves in front of it, overshadowing it, but never wiping it from his mind.

He had been too closely involved in trying to breathe life into the dead woman to observe very much of what took place in the crowd. The hunt itself had been cancelled, with reasonably good grace. The appalled and appalling wails of grief coming from Charlie Gratton had merged with the general background noise as people shouted instructions and attempted to dismantle the complex assembly of horses, hounds, followers and protesters. One or two isolated images stood out: Clive Aspen on a dark-coloured horse with a red ribbon tied around its tail; the arrival of a Land Rover containing Richmond, Clem and Hugh from High Copse – summoned, as he subsequently learnt, by Val Taylor on her mobile phone. But above all, Nina’s limp body, her face unbruised – evidence in itself that the blow had killed her instantly, before the flesh could react in the normal way to violence. She had looked like a sleeping princess in a fairytale, albeit in jeans and donkey jacket, and there seemed to be no reason to prevent her children from coming near. Clem had frowned, puzzled, not yet anywhere near an
understanding of what had taken place; Hugh, more knowing, had pushed a fist into his mouth, his face contorted. There had been a long wait for a police doctor to arrive, the ambulance men withdrawing, shaking their heads and explaining that this was no longer a job for them.

And Den remembered Hermione Nesbitt striding forward, the crowd parting automatically to let her through. She had seized both boys, gripping them tight, one under each arm, and pulled them away from their mother. ‘You’ve seen enough now,’ she’d said, in a voice startling in its gentleness. ‘You can come home with me.’ Gradually the scene had emptied. Undertaker’s men took Nina to the hospital mortuary for a post-mortem which seemed to Den like a desecration of that perfect, unmarked body. More damage would be done in the interests of law and science than had occurred when she died. He knew it was foolish to care so much.

Charlie Gratton had been almost the last person to leave. He had not approached Nina’s body close enough to touch, but hovered nearby, gasping and quivering with grief or shock or possibly even guilt. Nobody had gone to his aid, which in retrospect struck Den as strange. He stood in an island of distress, arms wrapped around himself tightly. A few children stared at him openly, but the adults averted their gaze. So
much pain, so nakedly displayed, was more than they could take.

Pressing his face into the pillow, fighting to banish the disturbing images from his mind and fall into the oblivion of sleep, Den felt dampness around his eyes. Such a waste of vibrant life! No wonder it had been followed by a sequence of events hardly less shocking and senseless. He felt himself caught in a web of old secrets and new grudges, perpetuating misunderstandings and a profound shame. Lilah’s self-absorbed complaints made little impression. Things would settle down again between them, he assumed – and if they didn’t, then he’d manage as best he could without her.

News of Bill Gratton’s death was slow to circulate. When the ambulance had come and gone outside the cottage on Friday morning, not a soul in the village had noticed. The Grattons’ cottage was out on a limb, more than a hundred yards from its closest neighbour. One or two might have dimly heard Frank’s angry hammering on the door, but could never have imagined that it presaged anything so dramatic as death.

Hannah had asked the police to tell Silas, and Lilah had made the call to the Cattermoles as Den had asked her to. Silas had no desire to pass the news to anyone else. Val and Polly assumed that
if
they
had heard about it, then everybody had.

And so it was, on Saturday morning, when Dorothy Mansfield went to call on Hannah, on a routine visit with no real purpose, she was completely unprepared for what she would find.

Usually, she would open the front door, and call out if there was nobody visible. This morning, the door was locked. Dorothy rang the bell, which made a throaty croak, betraying how little it was used. When nothing happened, she moved to the front window and peered in. Bill was almost always to be seen in his chair by the fireplace. The sight of it empty was disconcerting. More curious than worried, Dorothy followed the brick path round to the back of the house. Surely the kitchen door would be standing open, and Hannah would be found hanging out washing or putting in some early potatoes.

The back door wasn’t open, but neither was it locked, so Dorothy was able to gain entry. ‘Hannah?’ she called. ‘Where are you? Is everything all right?’

A wordless reply came from above her head. Dorothy hurried to the foot of the stairs. ‘Hannah?’ she called again, her voice more urgent now.

The faint sound was repeated, more firmly, and the visitor mounted the stairs.

Hannah was in bed, her face a caricature of
her usual soft features. Dark patches, like bruises, marked her cheeks, beneath each eye; harsh grooves outlined her chin, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. There were scratches along one jawline. ‘My God!’ Dorothy gasped, holding onto the door frame. ‘What in the world’s happened to you? Have you been mugged? Where’s Bill?’

Hannah’s blue eyes looked hot and sore. She stared at Dorothy with a deep frown. ‘He’s dead,’ she said.

Dorothy looked around foolishly for the body. ‘Dead?’ she echoed.

‘Yesterday. The police were here when it happened. He had another stroke.’

‘But – what about
you
? Have you been here all night on your own?’

‘Obviously. Why not? There’s nothing to hurt me now.’ The words came dull and dead.

Dorothy kept one hand on the door frame, and formed a fist with the other. She sucked air through a narrow gap between her front teeth. Then she spoke. ‘I won’t ask all the obvious questions,’ she said. ‘You can tell me whatever you think I should know. But you’re going to get out of bed, now, and pack a bag with enough things for two or three days. Then you’re coming home with me. No arguments.’

‘You won’t want me in your house when you know the whole story,’ said Hannah, making no
move. ‘Nobody will want to speak to me again.’

‘I’m absolutely certain that that isn’t true,’ said Dorothy. ‘There isn’t anything you could have done that would make it true. Even if you did something truly terrible – killed Charlie, for instance – and I can’t really see how you might have done that – but even if you did, then I’d still be happy to speak to you. I’m a Friend, Hannah. I hope that counts for something. Wash your face and get dressed.’

Hannah managed a weak smile. ‘I didn’t kill Charlie,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I suppose you could say I kept him alive. I’m just so terribly sorry that I couldn’t go on protecting him.’ Tears filled the new grooves in her face, as if they’d previously carved them out, like canyons. As Dorothy watched, the gentle Quaker formed claws from her own hands and deliberately drew them down her cheeks, digging with all her strength. Blood welled slowly as pale ridges formed around the wounds. Dorothy was horrified.

‘Stop it!’ she screamed. ‘Hannah, you mustn’t do that.’ She knew now that something more dreadful than Bill’s death must have taken place. She gripped her friend’s hands and pulled them away from her face. Both women were shaking.

‘Come on,’ Dorothy crooned, as if to a suffering animal. ‘Come with me, my dear. It’s all over now.’

Hannah relaxed; her hands dropped out of Dorothy’s grasp. ‘What shall I bring?’ she said helplessly.

Dorothy maintained a trickle of comforting chatter as she found a few essentials and put them into a bag. Already she was feeling less afraid; a warm feeling of righteousness washed through her. Curious she might be, but curiosity was unworthy, and its suppression was virtuous. It might be difficult to accept whatever grim truth eventually emerged, but she knew she would be able to forgive the weak souls who’d committed whatever evil acts had led to Charlie and Bill’s deaths. Indeed, Dorothy silently concluded, this was the kind of challenge she’d always longed for. A real test of her Quaker faith. Something robust stirred within her; something exhilarating. ‘I’m going to keep you in my sight until you feel better,’ she said firmly.