Fear in the Cotswolds (8 page)

The track was dark, shadowed by overhanging trees, some of them evergreen. Without Hepzie, she wondered whether she would ever have had the courage to keep on. The spaniel, however, had a reassuringly clear idea of where they were going, and was in some hurry to get there. Perhaps it was Jimmy who called to her, or simply the prospect of a warm house and dry feet. They plunged down the middle of the track, which was tolerably passable thanks to the passage down and back by the four police people, as well as Thea’s own upward trek. At least she could be fairly confident of avoiding any unexpected pitfalls, so long as she stuck to the tried-and-tested pathway.

The house was in complete darkness, and Thea reproached herself for leaving it for the best part of the day. She would have to feed the donkey and rabbits by torchlight, and give Jimmy a chance for some exercise in the yard.

Without warning, Hepzie made a lunge, squeaking with excitement. Holding tightly to the lead, Thea was dragged towards the front door of the barn, protesting, ‘Hang on, damn it. We’ll be there soon enough. What’s the rush?’

And then something strange was happening.
Hepzie was on her hind legs, scrabbling at something hidden in the shadows close against the barn wall. ‘Hey, hey,’ came a strong female voice. ‘That’s enough of that. God, woman, what kept you so long?’

In a confusion of unlocking the door, spluttering half-sentences of introduction, and Hepzie’s excessive hospitality, the two women got themselves into the house and the lights switched on.

‘I’m from the farm further down the track,’ the visitor managed to explain, at last.

Old Kate! Thea had forgotten all about her. But this woman wasn’t old. Mid fifties was Thea’s instant guess. Despite the weathering on her cheeks, her hair retained its colour and her neck was smooth. ‘Oh!’ was all she could manage. ‘I’ve got to do the donkey,’ she added distractedly. ‘He’ll be waiting for his hay.’

‘He can wait a bit longer. My need is greater than his, I promise you.’

‘Oh, all right. Are you stranded by the snow?’

‘Me? Of course not. I’ve been going in and out through the top road, same as I always do. I never thought of you until this afternoon, so I came to see if you were managing. When I found it all locked up and dark, I thought you must have deserted your post.’

‘I did, I suppose,’ Thea smiled ruefully. ‘I was at a birthday party.’

‘Oh…that must be young Nicky. You’ve met that family already, have you?’

‘I bumped into Janina last weekend, and then again this morning. They very kindly invited me. Sorry to have been away, though. It gets dark so early – there never seems to be time to get things done in daylight.’

Kate shrugged. ‘Well, you’re here now. The point is, would you like me to bring up the tractor and clear your way up to the road?’

‘Oh…well, if it isn’t too much bother. I mean – maybe the snow’ll melt in a day or two, anyway.’ What would Lucy have done, she wondered? It was awkward not knowing the protocols, and whether the offer was to be regarded as normal neighbourly behaviour.

‘No chance. There’s more due later tonight; haven’t you heard?’

‘Oh, God, there isn’t, is there?’ Thea felt weak at the prospect.

‘Never good to have snow in January – there’s no strength in the sun, so it hangs around for weeks. You ought to hear my dad on the subject. He’s like a pig in muck, with his weather stories.’

‘Does he live with you?’

Kate huffed a brief laugh. ‘Oh yes. That was never the plan, but he came for the New Year, two years ago, and hasn’t got around to going home again yet. He’s eighty-nine, and remembers back to the 1920s as if it was last week. Gets tedious, I can tell you. He’s been poorly over Christmas. I knew from the start he’d never go back – after all, it was his farm all his life. We got him a nice little cottage to retire into, but it was never going to work.’

Thea’s eyebrows lifted at the thought of a ‘little cottage’ standing empty for years. Little Cotswold cottages were worth very serious sums of money. ‘What’ll happen to the cottage?’ she asked.

‘It’s got a tenant in for the time being. If you can call him that, when he doesn’t pay us anything.’ The woman’s expression suggested that she was not inclined to discuss the details of the family properties, for which Thea could hardly blame her.

‘You must be busy,’ she said. ‘There’s no hurry for the tractor, if it’s a nuisance. I walked out to the road today – I can get to Northleach on foot if I need some shopping.’

‘Trust Lucy to go off like this. Fine thing, ducking out of it when things get tricky.’

‘She was quite open about it, and she’s paying me well. I knew what I was doing.’ And only then did she remember the dead man in the field, who was already acquiring a dreamlike quality in her mind. Had it really happened at all? Should she say something about it to Kate? It seemed to follow, in some back-to-front way, from what she had just said. ‘Although I hadn’t bargained for a visit from the police yesterday.’

Kate’s eyelids came down warily. ‘Oh yes?’

‘You haven’t heard, then? I found a dead man yesterday in the field below the donkey’s paddock. Or I thought I did. When I took the police back to the place, he’d gone.’

The woman avoided Thea’s eye, and chewed a bottom lip. Her colour changed to a lighter hue. ‘Mmm. I heard a commotion.’

‘Did you? When?’

‘I don’t mean it was noisy. But I had to take hay to the Herefords, and could see there’d been people trampling about.’

‘Didn’t the police contact you? It is your field, after all.’

Kate shook her head vigorously. ‘Why ever should they? Can’t have been anything to worry about, if he’d got himself up and away.’

‘I was certain he was dead. I think somebody moved him.’ Short of a direct accusation, she could hardly say any more. It suddenly seemed inescapably obvious that Kate was the person in question.

‘Well I hope you don’t think it was
me
,’ the woman said sharply, picking up the unspoken thought. ‘I’ve got better things to do than mess about with dead bodies, let me tell you.’

‘And you didn’t see anybody there? What time did you take the cattle their hay?’

‘Don’t you go questioning me.’ Kate’s eyes narrowed. ‘If I tell you I saw nothing, then that’s the truth of it. It’ll all get explained soon enough, without either you or me having to worry. Leave well alone, that’s my advice.’

‘But—’ What was she missing here? How bizarre was this apparent lack of concern? ‘I mean, he might be injured or ill, and still out there in the snow somewhere. Nobody seems to realise that.’

‘I doubt that. What did he look like?’

‘I couldn’t really see. Grey hair, fairly long. A beard, I think. His face was almost buried in the snow, and I didn’t move him.’

‘Well, if you ask me, he can’t have been
really dead. Surely you’d have checked pulse and breathing? Anybody would.’ The defensive fury seemed to have passed, Kate’s tone back to something more normal.

‘I was convinced he was dead. I touched his shoulder and it was stiff. The snow wasn’t melting on him.’ She felt as if she was doomed to repeat these lines for the rest of her life.

‘So what? Snow doesn’t melt on a coat when you’re outside, does it? Even a living body isn’t warm enough to melt it through three or four layers of clothes.’

‘He was dead.’ Thea spoke with greater certainty than she felt. ‘Somebody moved him.’

Kate shook her head, still pale. ‘The police obviously don’t believe you. They know better than anyone that you can’t just leave a dead man out for the birds and foxes to dispose of.’

‘Right. I hope you’re right. But I still think there should be a search party.’

‘Maybe there would be if it wasn’t for this weather. Everything’s different in this snow. But you’re right – there should have been a search for him.’

Somehow they’d reached a fragile understanding, for which Thea was grateful. The brief glimpse she’d had of Kate’s steely temper had not been reassuring. Far better to stay on the right side of her, if possible. But what did the
woman
really
think had happened? How much had she already known? There was an uneasy sense of being humoured, lurking somewhere.

A brief silence followed, and Thea took the opportunity to try to assess her temporary neighbour’s credibility. She was tall, straight-backed and decisive. It was easy to visualise her driving a tractor or striding across the hillsides after a large flock of sheep. But beneath that there was a kind of camaraderie that Thea found appealing. She had met a number of well-intentioned women during her spells in the area, and this seemed to be another to add to the list. The temptation to take her at face value and make use of her as a friend and helper was almost overwhelming.

But there had been others, Thea reminded herself, who had not been what they seemed. There had been women capable of murder, habitual liars, their rage concealed beneath amiable exteriors. And Lucy had spoken of a violent temper. ‘There was a bottle beside him,’ she offered. ‘That disappeared as well. I think it was empty.’

Kate merely nodded, as if enough had been said on the subject. In the silence of Lucy’s big living room an antique clock ticked loudly. ‘I really must feed that donkey,’ Thea remembered. ‘And the rabbits. And take the dog out. He’s
been in since the middle of the morning.’

‘Jimmy,’ Kate said. ‘That poor creature. How are you coping with him?’

‘He’s easy enough,’ Thea shrugged. ‘It was noble of Lucy to take him in.’

‘She’s like that,’ said Kate, flushing slightly. ‘I wouldn’t have the patience.’

It occurred to Thea that Kate could have done the job she was doing – popping up to the Barn twice a day to feed and exercise the animals. Was it possible that anybody could be too busy for such neighbourly tasks? But even as she thought about it she remembered that Lucy was away for a whole month, and that Kate was probably lambing – and it had snowed. And Jimmy would be left, hour after hour, in his lonely conservatory.

Which prompted her to waste no more time before attending to him, after which she had to slog across the paddock to the donkey’s shed and throw him another slice of hay. Kate readily accepted that her visit was over, but on the doorstep she said, ‘You never told me whether you want me to bring the tractor up.’

‘Not much point if there’s going to be more snow. Leave it until tomorrow, and we can decide then.’

It had not been the correct response. ‘I wasn’t proposing to come this evening,’ came a snappy
reply. ‘I’m not sure how much free time I’ll have tomorrow, after the way you kept me hanging about this afternoon.’

The injustice burnt in Thea’s breast, but she resisted the urge to argue. ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ she said with dignity.

‘That’s right.’ She gave Thea a long assessing look. ‘Seems to me you’ve taken on a lot, here. I wouldn’t like you to get into any trouble. You know where I am – come down to the farm any time, if you need to.’

‘Thanks,’ mumbled Thea, feeling horribly small and young and feeble.

There was more snow during the night, but it made little impact on a world already uniformly white. Thea’s footprints across the yard and paddock had filled in to roughly half their previous depth, but were still clearly visible. There were no fresh ones to alarm her, she noted with relief.

It was Sunday, she remembered. A week since she had walked up to the church and met Janina. A quarter of the way through her house-sitting commission. Apart from the little matter of a vanishing dead man and record-breaking snowfalls, things weren’t going too badly. So why did she have such flutterings of
anxiety in her midriff? Why was there such a strong sense of impending disaster hanging over her? Knowing there was a capable woman close by ought to be enough to remove the sense of isolation and burdensome responsibility. But it didn’t. There had been something challenging about Kate, as if she expected Thea to fail and come crawling to her for rescue. The effect of her visit had been to bolster Thea’s determination to manage by herself, and refrain from asking favours. She could walk to Northleach, as she’d said – although not on a Sunday. Tomorrow – she would find a big shopping bag and go out for milk and cake and a bottle of wine, and not request any helping tractor to get her there.

Sunday was also a day for contacting family and friends and catching up with the news. After her conversation with Jessica on Friday, she was unsure whether or not her daughter was eager to hear more about the mysterious footprints in the snow. She had been unusually cavalier about it at the time, when her normal stance was to express concern at her mother’s repeated escapades during the house-sitting commissions. But might she not have heard about the much more mysterious body, and the fruitless visit from the police? Wouldn’t that make a story good enough to reverberate around the various local stations?

But, she reminded herself, Jessica wasn’t with
the West Midlands force, but was finishing her probationary period in Manchester, well beyond the scope of any gossip concerning the Cotswolds. She should hear about it at first hand from her mother. She might even have a credible suggestion as to what might have happened.

And then, when it came to it, Jess’s phone went unanswered, and her mobile was turned off, so Thea decided to leave it until later in the day. Instead, a little voice whispered, she could try Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis, who had until recently been her significant other, her lover and boyfriend and partner in detection of murderers. She and Phil had gone cool on each other, awkwardly giving permission for other relationships to develop, but promising to remain on friendly terms. Phil respected her judgment when it came to understanding malign motivations, or noticing revealing details concerning events in the Cotswold villages. He would believe her when she insisted the man in the field had been dead. And more and more, it seemed important that
somebody
should do that. It was forty-eight hours since the body had vanished, and the worry of it was increasingly debilitating. If the man had crawled away to shelter, wouldn’t he have really died long since, out in the cold? Phil would know what the police were
doing about it, if anything. He would tell her why there seemed such a complete absence of activity, when common sense suggested that a concentrated search ought to be under way.

She tried, over and over again, to see the whole business through official eyes. A woman, known to be rational and even helpful in past investigations, had reported the discovery of an apparently dead man. When sent to investigate, the police team found nothing but ambiguous tracks leading to a patch of woodland. Snow had fallen all day, making any effort at following tracks difficult. Nobody had been reported missing, and no questions had been asked in the local area, as far as she knew. Possibly the connection with the freelance photographer, who lived in the area, had reassured the authorities that nothing was amiss in Hampnett.

Still, she concluded, there should have been some effort made to check. Somebody ought to have at least gone as far as the woods, to make sure the man wasn’t lying under the trees. Where was the caring spirit, the safety net of police concern that should have followed up her discovery and ensured there was nothing to worry about?

It had been that doctor, and his whining about the cold, that made them turn back. The sergeant
and constable had not been senior enough, or committed enough, to pursue the matter. There had not been enough of them to effect a thorough search – and she wondered whether the presence of a small herd of Hereford cattle had been another deterrent. They would have gone back to the warm Cirencester station, filed their report stressing the absence of any meaningful evidence, and persuaded themselves that there was nothing more to worry about. Some other more urgent urban crisis would have arisen to distract them, and the whole thing would have been shelved – at least until the snow melted away, or somebody was reported missing. The police were only human, and nobody was going to relish slogging through deep snow on a hunt for a wild goose.

The day stretched ahead in the familiar Sundayish way that Thea hated. It ought to be that the high level of social interaction the previous day would carry her over, giving her plenty to think about – but the opposite seemed to be the case. She wanted to return to Janina’s household, and chat more with her and Simon. They were nice people, and it would be interesting to find out whether Bunny had come home yet. Plus there were other absentees, apparently. The beloved George and
the sneezing Tony had also disappointed young Nicky. From sheer idle curiosity, Thea would have liked to hear the next part of the story.

But a far more compelling story was hanging in limbo on her very doorstep. She remembered a convoluted dream where the body she had found was in the same corner again, frozen solid with ice on his eyelashes and lips. Then he was gone and she was searching desperately for him, with Hepzie digging insanely in a snowdrift, and five large Hereford cows watching thoughtfully. The sense of obligation remained with her now she was awake.

Could she face another trudge across the fields to the patch of woodland which had struck her as significant on Friday? She could go and look for herself, just in case the man had managed to get himself there. She needed, for her own peace of mind, to have a look. If the man had reached the woods unaided, he had probably eventually got himself home and warm and sober, forgetting the whole embarrassing episode. That would be absolutely fine with Thea, and she held the thought close, like a talisman. But there were insistent connections forming in her subconscious that made her afraid that the reality would be quite otherwise.

She waited until late morning, pleased to see a weak sun filtering through hazy clouds. No risk of further snow, then, and surely some scope for optimism that a thaw was on the way? Old Kate’s aged father could be wrong. Everybody knew – didn’t they? – that those times were over when snow could last for weeks, and great freezes take hold of the country. Now it was never more than a few days, and then the worries would all be of flooding caused by the rapidly melting snow.

She debated with herself as to whether to take Hepzie with her, and concluded that it was a bad idea. The dog would be a distraction, liable to get lost and probably useless in tracking someone from two days ago. Making sure the doors were firmly closed, she set off alone, wearing hat, scarf and gloves as well as Lucy’s fleecy coat.

The novelty of the snow had long evaporated. It had a different feel under her boots – the surface crisp and crunchy, but beneath that it was much less dense, turning to crystals with spaces between them, collapsing at the impact of her feet. As if equally fed up with the alteration of his world, Donkey had emerged from his shed, and was walking with great deliberation round his perimeter fence. His route coincided with Thea’s at the bottom gate, and it seemed to her that he was gazing rather wistfully towards the
trees where she was headed. For a crazy moment she imagined riding him through the snow, giving him some work to do for once in his life. But there was no harness, and even though she was small and light, and he was bigger than many donkeys she had met, it seemed like an unfair exploitation.

The tracks were still visible, but the fresh snow of Friday afternoon had softened and blurred them. The Herefords were still milling around aimlessly. They had been given a quantity of hay, she noted, in a large circular metal cage some distance away. Their coats were shaggy, their breath steaming in front of their faces. Thea paused to admire them and the picture they made with their red coats vivid against the white snow.

It was relatively unusual to leave cattle outside all the year round – only the hardiest older breeds could withstand this sort of weather, and even they would need a lot of supplementary feeding. The workload for Kate had to be greatly increased by the snow, and yet she had not seemed unduly strained by it. It was a lifestyle that Thea could scarcely begin to imagine, despite her brief forays into the world of animal husbandry.

She brought her attention to the events of Friday: the timings especially. It had been about ten-thirty when she found the body, ten forty-five
when she’d called the police. They had arrived at the barn not long before twelve-thirty, by which time the body must have gone. If the man had indeed been dead, then someone must have moved him during that time. Thea would not have seen anything, because she was at the back of the house, and besides, this hollow was invisible, even from upstairs in the barn. It all seemed entirely reasonable, as she stood in the snow and thought about it.

She puzzled determinedly as she headed for the fatal spot. Small tentative clues were offering themselves to her, along with theories: the cattle might have been deliberately driven over the place to obscure evidence with their footprints; someone might have been watching her from the woods, seeing her discovery and waiting for her to go away before they ran down and dragged the dead man away. Doing her best to behave like a detective, she examined the fence itself for shreds of fabric or hair or blood, only to find nothing at all. It was a well-made barrier, the wire forming squares, firmly fixed to quite new-looking posts every ten yards or so. But there lacked the usual strand of barbed wire along the top, much to Thea’s relief. Even if it might have yielded evidence, the damage to her own skin and clothes as she climbed over it would not have been welcome.

The patch of woodland was the only viable cover, and even that was far enough away for the idea of hauling a dead body over the snow to it to seem doubtful. The ground sloped upwards in that direction, and somebody stumbling along dragging a corpse would leave a trail impossible to conceal. Even so, she was resolved to investigate. Doggedly she trudged across the field to the patch of trees.

The trees were bare, standing proud of the snow and making a clean stark picture that Thea paused to admire. She could imagine it as a striking photograph or oil painting. Even better as a woodcut, with William Morris-like overtones, tendrils and holly leaves poking through the enveloping snow.
I’m delirious
, she thought. They’ll find
me
curled up dead in the cold, at this rate. She turned and looked back the way she’d come, able to see the roof of Lucy’s Barn but nothing more, despite being on higher ground than the natural bowl where the body had been. It looked a dauntingly long way off.

There were two strands of wire between the field and the woodland, which looked old, but still effective in keeping out the cattle. Thea ducked between the strands, managing to avoid falling over. Only when she had straightened up and looked around did she wonder if this barrier was enough to cast mortal doubt on her hypothesis.
How would anyone get a dead man over it, without again leaving telltale signs? Under the trees, the snow was only a few inches deep, but enough to be noticeably disturbed by the kind of activity she had in mind. There were brambles and dry stalks of bracken and other undergrowth to negotiate. There was no sign of a path.

And then she saw, in startling clarity, a trail. Deep grooves carved in the snow, about two feet apart, beginning seven or eight yards to her right and leading away from her in a northerly direction. Between the grooves was a line of footprints. She stood staring at it for two full minutes before she worked out that it could only have been somebody dragging a sledge. Somebody had loaded the dead man onto a vehicle with runners, and dragged it towards the village. She was rather pleased with herself for arriving at this deduction. How many times did such a thing happen in modern England? It conjured old Christmas cards, or rural life in the frozen north.

OK, she reasoned carefully, I was right all along. She went to the place where the track began, and found the wire sagging, and a jumble of animal footprints on the field side. Somebody had somehow carried the body across the field into these woods, and then put him on a sledge and towed it towards… She tried to work out
where the tracks would lead if they continued in the same direction. The village centre, near enough, came the conclusion.

She easily followed the trail to the far side of the wood, and out into a field that was almost level for a change. The marks were less easy to see out in the open, where the most recent snowfall had almost filled them. But the weight must have been considerable, and the runners had made grooves of sufficient depth to show through as slight indentations. They ran alongside a hedge, heading more or less north. At this rate, Thea mused, she would emerge onto the road – and who would have risked dragging a sledge containing a dead body along the public highway?

The answer came at the far end of the hedge. The marks turned at a sharp right angle, along the lower side of another hedge, through a conveniently open gateway and on in the same direction, running roughly parallel with the road leading into Hampnett itself.

She had lost all sense of distance, despite frequent backward glances to monitor where she was in relation to Lucy’s Barn, but knew she’d been walking for at least twenty minutes. It came as a surprise to see the tower of the church ahead of her, only a few hundred yards away.