Revenge in the Cotswolds (8 page)

Thea nodded again.

‘They must have assumed it was empty, surely? They’d never have done it if they thought you’d be trapped. And the
dogs
.’

‘Gwennie raised the alarm. She was a hero.’

‘Your people must have done something to annoy somebody, then. Something rather awful, I’d guess.’

‘
Madam
,’ thundered the policeman. ‘Speculation at this stage is very unhelpful. If you have any information that you think would help, please come to the police station and make a statement.’

‘No, I haven’t. I don’t know the people who live here. But I think I might be allowed to express some normal human sympathy.’ She addressed Thea again.
‘You know you’re always welcome to come to us. If you lose your nerve, I mean. I’m sure
I
would.’

‘Thanks,’ said Thea. ‘That’s very kind of you.’ She resisted a strong urge to just pack up and accept the offer. ‘My daughter’s coming tomorrow. I’ll see what she thinks. But I’m not scared to stay here. I don’t think the fire-raiser knew I was here. And I’m quite sure he won’t be coming back. Nobody would be that stupid.’

‘True.’ Sheila nodded decisively. ‘Well – the offer remains.’

‘Thanks,’ said Thea again.

It was one o’clock when she finally had the house to herself again. She was hungry, thirsty and unsettled. There was a real risk that the Fosters would feel so agitated and bewildered that they’d decide to fly home after the wedding and abort her fortnight in Daglingworth. But hadn’t they made it clear that nothing whatever would be allowed to do that? Wasn’t it more likely that they would content themselves with police assurances that nothing further could be done, and their house-sitter was willing to carry out the original commission?

She found herself hoping they wouldn’t be in any rush to come back. Why did she hope that, she wondered? What possible reason did she have to want to stay in a place where people were committing vicious acts of violence? She concluded it was more
that she did
not
want to go home to Witney. Doing that would make it impossible to avoid a host of implications, financial, romantic and professional. Everything hinged on everything else, the consequences of one decision spreading across all areas of her life. And she felt unequal to deciding anything without a contribution from Drew.

It was much easier to concentrate on events in the Cotswolds that centred on other people’s lives. Even thinking about Damien and his baby, or Maggs and hers, was preferable to estimating how much money her house might be worth and which items of furniture she ought to dispose of. It made her feel like a retired person downsizing, instead of a woman in her prime, with many decades ahead of her.

The dogs ought to be given some attention, she decided. Gwennie was still glowing from her small act of accidental heroism, turning her cloudy eyes up to Thea’s face every few minutes in a show of affection. Hepzie was plainly bored and unimpressed, making a big show of her feelings by jumping on and off the sofa and sighing.

‘Come on, then,’ said Thea. ‘We’ll go and look at the church again.’

It was a short, easy walk, either by road or footpath, already proving perfect for Gwennie’s limited capacity. It was possible to turn it into a circular stroll, which would take well under half an hour to complete. As always, there were public paths in all directions, and
for a moment she was tempted to lengthen the walk southwards, where the map showed a dotted line running directly into the famous Cirencester Park. ‘We’ll do that another day,’ she decided. At the back of her mind was the idea that she ought to stay close to Galanthus House for the rest of the day, either as guard, or simply to be available in the event of further police visits.

There were no people about. Nobody jumped out at her to ask why a fireman and two policemen had called at the house early on a Monday. The few scattered neighbours who might have noticed something had probably been off down the motorway to work, or glued to their computers in a back room. The sudden appearance of Sheila Whiteacre began to seem rather odd, the more she thought about it. Had she perhaps been planning to call in for a chat and been deterred by the police officers? Did she have news about the dead Danny, or even questions for Thea about her encounters on Saturday?

Which set Thea thinking all over again about the body in the quarry.

To distract herself from futile speculation she went into the church, which she came to from the east along a track which suddenly opened out into a wide area with car park and large houses. She tied the dogs to the porch gate, and pushed open the big wooden door which she faintly recalled as being five hundred years old or thereabouts. Inside there were three Saxon stone carvings which she knew were renowned for their powerful simplicity. She gazed at them for a while, thinking how impossible it was to recapture the passions and motives of the people who made them, a thousand years before. The figures were out of proportion, as if drawn by a child, and it was hard to imagine that they had inspired reverence at any stage of their existence. The main source of awe, she found, was that they had survived for so long. Similar
amazing survivals had been preserved in numerous small Cotswold churches, their origins essentially mysterious. The scenes depicted were amusing, more than anything else, in this sophisticated age. Spiritual inspiration or encouragement was very far removed after so long.

Outside again, she felt a sudden chill from an easterly breeze and thought how typically March it was. It would be nice to light a log fire and spend a cosy evening with a book and warm dogs. Although any thought of setting a fire going gave her pause.
Don’t be silly
, she scolded herself. It would be very inconvenient to go through the rest of her life afraid to strike a match.

She caught herself counting the hours before she could phone Drew again. Despite breaking the rule the previous evening, she knew she mustn’t do it again. Nobody could blame Stephanie and Timmy for objecting to their father spending an hour on the phone instead of reading them their bedtime stories or supervising their bath time.

She took the dogs down the little road to the junction where the appealing herb garden beckoned. No traffic passed, and she let the dog leads droop loosely from her hand. But she was careful not to let them go altogether. A painful lesson had been learnt in Lower Slaughter about the hazards of escaping dogs. Gwennie might well have hidden energies, capable of making a dash for it if the whim seized her. Old
dogs could take you by surprise, as she knew from experience.

As Galanthus House came into view, she felt a strong disinclination to go back into there. ‘Where
do
I want to be then?’ she muttered to herself. The answer was so obvious that she smiled. Drew’s little house, with its burial ground full of saplings and bulbs and pieces of stone and wood, was her favourite place in the world now. Time spent away from it was simply a waste, a sort of treading water that left her feeling detached and unemotional. The shock of the fire was an exception; the discovery of a dead man in a quarry was not. She found herself really not caring very much about Nella and Sophie and their fellow protesters. They didn’t seem particularly pleasant people, anyway. Only Tiffany and her parents had got through to her, charming as they had been. As for Jack Handy, she rather wished she had not accepted his offer of a lift and thereby got herself peripherally involved in the whole business. Whatever possessed the dratted man to give her as some kind of alibi, when it was obviously not enough to clear him of suspicion?

Jeremy Higgins probably hadn’t even heard about the fire at Galanthus House. He would be spending every minute on interviewing witnesses, reading background information on the victim, and searching for evidence to incriminate a murderer. Thea had been close to many such investigations over the past
three years, but still had a shaky grasp of precisely how the police arrived at their final conclusions. So often it turned out that somebody unexpected gave the game away, or the truth emerged sideways, associated with something else entirely. This line of thought took her to a very unappetising idea: what if the fire she had been faced with that morning was connected to the death of Danny Compton two days before? However hard she tried, she could not see how this might be, unless some idiot thought she had killed him and was wreaking revenge. That was laughably unlikely. Danny had definitely been murdered – as Higgins had confirmed – and probably it was because of his activities as a protester. He had driven somebody beyond the point of reason. It ought not, she thought, be too difficult to pin down the individual concerned.

She found herself looking forward intensely to seeing Jessica again and running everything past her. There were so many questions hanging in the air and the wait for answers was paralysing. What would the Fosters do about the fire? Were the police going to question her again? How much should she tell Drew about it? However hard she looked, she could find no certainty in any direction.

She made herself a mug of tea and a small stack of cheese sandwiches when she got back indoors, thinking that her eating habits were becoming rather odd. There was a randomness to the timing that
some people might think eccentric. The prospect of a substantial pub lunch the next day with Jessica began to gain appeal and she consulted her map to find a likely venue. The Bathurst Arms in North Cerney looked the most accessible. They might even walk to it if the day was fair.

And then DI Higgins himself was at the door again, with a female person slightly behind him. Thea assumed it was a new young detective she had not yet met. ‘This is DC Gordon,’ he introduced. ‘She’s only just started in CID, so she’s observing, that’s all.’ He looked as if the presence of the observer was something of a trial to him.

‘Come in, then,’ Thea invited. ‘You’ll have come about the fire, I suppose.’

‘Not really. That’s all in hand, as far as I know. It’s more of a long shot about the victim in the quarry.’

‘Danny Compton,’ she agreed. ‘What about him?’

‘Just wondering whether you’ve heard any more about his background. Seeing the way you get people to talk, I thought you might know more than we do about it.’

‘Not a murmur,’ she admitted, with a pang of regret. ‘Sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got all we need from the girlfriend, when it comes to it. There’s not really a problem – just that it seems a bit odd the way the parents don’t seem too bothered about him.’

‘Don’t they?’

He rubbed his brow. ‘Actually, I’m not sure they’ve been told the full facts. There’s been some trouble getting to see them face-to-face. We get the feeling there’s some sort of rift.’

‘Awkward,’ Thea sympathised. ‘I suppose lots of people don’t speak to their parents.’

Higgins nodded and chewed his lip. ‘Right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But when there’s a murder, we need to find out as much as we can about the victim. Friends, relatives, employers. All the obvious stuff. Miss Davidson told us almost every detail of the past year of his life, took us to his flat, and explained all about his freelance job. Not entirely useful.’

‘What was the job?’

Higgins grinned. ‘He’s a locksmith, specialising in cars. Makes new keys when people lose theirs. Goes all over the country, apparently. Not been doing it long. Set up for himself, with all the gear.’

‘So what’s the issue? Assuming there is one, or why would you be here?’

‘Just a feeling there’s something missing. Something we’re not being told about him.’

‘He’s a protester, remember. It comes with the territory, keeping a low profile.’ She found the whole idea of avoiding leaving much of a trail rather exciting, already impatient to tell it all to Drew. ‘What else would you expect to find?’

Higgins looked uncomfortable. ‘Phone, car – for a start. The car’s registered in the girlfriend’s name. She
said it was an insurance thing, because he already had the van full of locksmithing stuff. And the phone’s a pay-as-you-go thing. Anonymous.’

Thea shrugged. ‘Doesn’t sound very unusual to me, especially the phone. I’ve seen the way they use them – they’d be daft to advertise where they were, and who was using them. They do break the law, I imagine, quite a lot of the time. They
harass
people in the night.’

‘So I understand. Not that any of them would say anything about that.’

‘Loyal,’ murmured Thea. ‘So what do you want from me?’

He went back to his original point. ‘Just checking that you didn’t catch anything that might help from the girls you met on Saturday. We know you, Mrs Osborne, and your skills at getting people to chat. Did they talk about this bloke at all?’

She cast her mind back. ‘They were discussing him when I first came across them, as it happens. How he was dragging his feet about fixing a wedding date. He and Nella got engaged recently, but that’s as far as he’d go, apparently. It didn’t sound especially unusual to me, but Nella was impatient to get planning the whole thing.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Something about badger setts in Itlay. He was meant to be checking them, or counting them.’ She paused to think. ‘Actually, they said he was camouflaging
them somehow to stop the culling people from finding them.’

‘Not my problem,’ said Higgins. The trainee detective, sitting at a remove from them, made a little sound of disapproval, which he ignored. ‘That’s it, then, is it?’

‘More or less. Nella said she’d been taking the car for its MOT, and was supposed to meet Danny at the church in Bagendon. I guess he never showed up.’ She shuddered at the closeness of death, on an afternoon that had felt perfectly normal.

‘MOT? On a Saturday afternoon? Where?’

‘No idea. Doesn’t it show up on your searches?’ For some reason, Thea looked to the new detective for an answer. Perhaps she automatically assumed that it would be a junior like her who made that sort of computer check. DC Gordon was late twenties, dark-haired and solid. She did not smile and only fleetingly met Thea’s eye. She appeared anxious and tense.

Her mentor rubbed his throat in the familiar way and sighed. ‘I’ll get somebody to have a look when I get back. Don’t suppose it matters.’

‘I don’t think I’ve helped,’ Thea said. ‘The fiancée must be distraught, poor thing.’

‘Right. Angry as well, actually. Saying all kinds of things about locals – farmers, to be precise. Blames them for all the ills in the world, not to mention murdering her beloved.’

‘That Sophie is a ranter as well. There’s a lot of it about.’

‘Sophie Wells,’ he nodded. ‘She wasn’t much help, as far as I can see. It wasn’t me who interviewed her.’

‘Is Farmer Handy off the hook?’

He gave her a warning look, and said nothing. Belatedly, Thea understood that the junior tagging along with him could possibly be seen as a spy, reporting any deviations from procedure that he might commit, wittingly or otherwise.

‘Well …’ She was at a loss. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she finished feebly, assuming they’d be much too busy to accept.

‘A quick one might be nice,’ he nodded. ‘You can tell us about the fire.’ He’d already spent half a minute staring at the blackened hall carpet and the smudges on the wall. ‘Must have been scary.’

‘I was shaking. The fireman made me drink sweet tea. It really does work.’

‘Never fails,’ he smiled. ‘There’s a team working on it, obviously. Funny you’ve got your name connected with two different investigations. Must be a record.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she pleaded. ‘You don’t think they could be linked, then?’

‘Can’t imagine how. Even if both crimes are due to some kind of grudge – which they do seem to be – we can’t find a connection.’

‘Except me,’ groaned Thea. ‘Which is quite a nasty feeling.’

‘Don’t think of it like that. You’re not involved in the quarry thing. Not really.’

‘Nice of you to say so.’ They laughed gently together, excluding the solemn-faced Detective Constable. Higgins was a straightforward man, thorough, well intentioned. Sandy-haired and undeniably overweight, he would work methodically through a case, seldom losing his calm demeanour. Thea had not known him to show any great brilliance or insight, and he harboured much the same unthinking prejudices as most police officers, but she liked him. There was hardly anything not to like.

They all drank the tea quickly, with DC Gordon making some careful notes on a reporter’s pad. Higgins rolled his eyes at Thea, but made encouraging remarks to the young woman. Then they were gone, and it was four o’clock and the day’s end almost within reach.

She phoned Drew at eight, and he was a long time answering. ‘Sorry,’ he panted. ‘Stephanie’s got a sore knee and she’s been milking it shamelessly ever since she got home. And now the evenings are lighter, she’s not so keen to go to bed at the usual time. Says all her friends stay up until nine. I always thought they should go at the same time as their age.’

‘Um …?’ Thea was slow to understand.

‘You know – seven o’clock for seven-year-olds and so on. Of course it soon stops working.’

‘She’s eight, isn’t she?’

‘And three quarters, nearly,’ he said glumly. ‘Practically grown up.’

If only she was
, thought Thea.
Everything would be a lot simpler
. ‘So what’s happened about that nursing home, if anything?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing yet. Give them a chance! It won’t be one single act of vengeance. It’ll just be a slow reduction in business, when the word gets round that it was me who blew the whistle. Every nursing home in Somerset is going to be wary of me and think I’ll report the slightest little thing.’

‘But the choice of undertaker isn’t always down to them, is it?’

‘It is, mostly, unless the deceased has already signed up with a particular one.’

‘Talking of vengeance, it looks as if my employers have upset somebody themselves.’ And she told him, lightly and quickly, about the fire.

He was not deceived. ‘Lord, Thea. You might have died. Was it very smoky? Did you see a doctor?’

‘It was a very small patch of burning carpet. A very amateur arsonist must have done it. But it’s a rotten thing to do, even so. The police are trying to contact the Fosters, and I suppose they might come home early.’

‘What about the other house? In the other village?’

‘What about it?’ She hadn’t given it a single thought all day.

‘Well – if it belongs to the same family, might that not be vulnerable to something similar as well?’