Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) (4 page)

Penny pushed it from her mind. She was hanging a picture
from many years ago. She’d painted it herself, in watercolours. It showed a
mountain ridge with a cloudy sunset behind it, and it was one of the first
paintings that she’d been so pleased with that she had had it professionally
framed.

She stepped back and considered it. Yes, she still liked
it. It was calm but the mountain had an air of potential menace; in the winter
it would be deadly.

She remembered the art student she had been. She’d been
lively and yet relaxed, curious and confident, eager to grab life and run with
it. Of course, younger folk never really thought they’d ever get old and that
time would run out. She’d fallen into the television production world through
the design side of things, proved herself a good and capable organiser, and
somehow … somehow her career had taken over, and she had pursued it, thinking
that’s what she had wanted all along.

But when she’d achieved everything, the status and the
money and the swanky flat in central London and the car – and the overpriced
parking space to go with it – she felt oddly bereft. Now what?

She was startled from her reverie by the ringing of her
phone and she darted through to the kitchen to fumble around in her bag. She
retrieved it while it was still ringing but shoved it to her ear before she
really registered who was calling.

“Hey, Penelope. How’s country life?”

Francine? What was
Francine Black
doing, calling
her? Penny had hoped she’d been left behind in London. Francine was the one of
the few people Penny hadn’t given her phone number to. The ditzy woman meant
well, but goodness, she seemed to see the world as a place of brightly coloured
flowers and fluffy kittens. Penny couldn’t help but say, quite bluntly, “Oh. What
do you want, Francine?”

“I couldn’t wait to hear from you! How are you doing? Oh my
gosh, it’s all so exciting! Leaving the rat race, wow. I’m so pleased for you. What
is your cottage like?”

Penny rolled her eyes at Francine’s stream of childlike
enthusiasm. She had been a rival television producer and they had sometimes
worked together and sometimes in opposition. While Penny had embraced corporate
life and culture with studied seriousness, Francine had blithely drifted
through her career, giggling and bouncing and being everyone’s friend. And
somehow, it hadn’t done her any harm. She was the least professional person
Penny knew.

Maybe, Penny acknowledged, she resented Francine’s natural
exuberance.

But good heavens, the woman was like an over-excited
teenage girl with a new set of sparkly shoes. Pink ones, obviously.

Penny leaned on the small kitchen table and gazed out of
the window, the phone clamped to her ear. “My cottage is small and sweet and
quiet. Er, so how did you get my number?”

Francine tutted and laughed with delight. “Bob Channings
who was dating that ferocious Liza woman, no, wait, Lisa, Liselle, I can’t
remember. The one with the ears.”

“Everyone has ears.”

“No. The
ears
. Different sizes. Once you saw it, you
couldn’t unsee it.”

“Lisbeth,” Penny said with a sigh. Oh yes. Those ears.

“Yes, Lisbeth! She had your number. I knew you’d moved.
Leicestershire, is it? Nice cheese. Have you had the cheese?”

“Lincolnshire. They have bread with plums in, and some
strange ham with bits in called haslet, and sausages … also with bits in.
Basically, Lincolnshire food is normal food but with extra bits in it.”

“It sounds yummy!” said Francine. In a more serious voice,
she said, “But who on earth moves to Lincolnshire? It’s the sort of place you
come from, not go to.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here. So people don’t bother me,”
Penny added pointedly.

“What are you doing with your time? Have you joined masses
of clubs? Are you bored? Have you learned to knit?”

Penny thought if she rolled her eyes much more, they’d roll
right out. “No, I am not bored. I have a dog and a cottage and I’m getting
involved with local activities…”

“Such as? Women’s Institute, that sort of thing? You,
making jam, how wonderful. I’d love to make jam. I tried once but it stayed
runny.”

“There are shops here. There’s no need to make jam. And
there’s lots to do. Yesterday I found a dead body.”

That stopped the conversation in its tracks. Penny smiled
to herself. You weren’t expecting that, were you?

Francine cleared her throat and said, “Are you joking? It’s
a sick kind of joke.”

Penny felt guilty. Poor bubbly Francine. Why did happy
people bring out the worst in Penny’s nature? “I’m sorry. No, I’m not joking. I
found a dead man out in the fields. I called the police and everything.” She
was about to ramble on, but she stopped herself. Suddenly, Penny was struck by
the lack of people she could talk to. She wanted to spill the details she’d
heard about the poor man, and his brother, and how he hadn’t been to darts and
that must mean something… but she couldn’t say all that, not to Francine.
Francine was so keen and eager to be her friend and somehow, it just put Penny
off.

But it was nice to talk to someone from her past. She had
to acknowledge that.

“Are you all right?” Francine asked with genuine concern at
the news and the sudden silence.

“Yes, yes, of course I am.” Penny was surprised and
slightly embarrassed to hear a catch in her voice. She cleared her throat and
repeated it. “I am fine. I coped.”

“You always cope with everything!” Francine said in
admiration. “I wish I was like you. I don’t cope. I have a big blow-up with
stress, and then carry on.”

Maybe that was the way, Penny thought. She was about to
answer when she heard Kali erupting into barks from the other side of the
house. She could hear Francine asking about the noise, and she made her hasty
excuses to finish the phone call.

“Thank you for calling … I really have to go … the dog, you
know…”

I should have asked her about her life, her job, her mood,
Penny thought as she went to find out why Kali was so upset. It turned out to
be a moth battering itself against the window. Penny rescued it carefully and
let it fly free in the back garden. Then she stood at the back door, leaning
against the frame, looking at the rapidly growing grass. Kali came out to sniff
the bare flower borders.

Now she’d shaken Francine off, she illogically wanted to
talk to her again.

I must be going daft, she thought. I never wanted to talk
to her in London. She was too loud and silly and flippant.

Too much like the person I once was … that I want to
recapture.

I’m jealous.

* * * *

The call from Francine would have upset her equilibrium
except Penny had to acknowledge that she had precious little equilibrium to
start with. When it got to five o’clock she decided to take the dog out for a
walk again. She had soon learned, moving out of the city, that in this rural
area, the evening meal was eaten earlier than London, and it wasn’t called
dinner. No, five o’clock was teatime. Sometimes it was six, depending on where
family members worked. But things certainly seemed quieter on the pavements,
even if the roads were busy, and she wanted to see if it would be a better time
to walk Kali.

She snapped on the lead and gave the dog a pep talk in the
hallway before leaving. She knelt down and stroked Kali’s shoulders. “You must
behave,” she told her. Kali hung her head. “You need lots of exercise. How can
I give that to you, if you lunge after every dog, barking like a monster? It’s
no good. I don’t want to look like a terrible dog owner. So are you going to
behave?”

Kali licked her lips and turned her head away. Penny
narrowed her eyes. Dogs couldn’t feel guilty, so what was she trying to tell
her?

I need to find a library and learn some dog body language,
she decided. She stood up and peered out of the front door. It was cloudy and
overcast. It was daft, but she welcomed bad weather. It made it far less likely
that she would encounter other dogs and their owners.

“We had better get this sorted by the summer,” she said to
Kali as they left the cottage and walked briskly along River Street. She turned
right, heading south again. She felt restricted in where she could go, but it
was too risky to turn left and go through town to find the footpaths on that
side of the settlement. It would take too long, exposing her to too many
potentially unexpected dogs. So, south it was.

They went past the Spinney and continued to follow the
road. On her left were the farmlands that she had trespassed on, where she had
found the dead farmer. She couldn’t help wonder how he had died. It was a funny
place to commit suicide, and how had he done it? There had been no gun near
him.

Kali was keen to be out and she felt a pang of guilt that
she wasn’t letting her run off-lead. But she hadn’t had her long enough to have
built a proper bond, and she had no idea if Kali would come back if she called
her. And though she regretted taking the dog on, she didn’t really want her
running off and never coming back.

They walked on, until she came to a path that left the road
and wandered along a field margin. It was marked with a green sign, so she
followed it, and slackened the lead so that Kali could ferret about in the
hedge to her heart’s content.

The path was well-trodden and she began to feel nervous as
it disappeared around a stand of trees up ahead. Her palms were clammy and her
head began to feel like it was in a tight vice as she imagined thirty-two dogs
appearing and charging at them, and Kali ripping them all to bits, and Penny
ending up in jail for lack of control, and dying alone in a cell.

Her heart was thudding and she realised she had stopped
walking. Kali was staring up at her in concern.

“On my gosh, I am so sorry,” she said in a rush to the dog.
She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment, repeating some calming
mantras to herself. She’d been sent on a business-related “de-stress” event
once, and now she was making use of the very things she’d once laughed at. “I
am calm. I am an ocean of light and peace. Good energy in” –she breathed in
deeply– “and bad energy out.”

And this worked well until a male voice startled her,
making her shriek and choke. “Now then. Are you all right? Meditating or
something?”

Her eyes flew open. She still wasn’t used to the way the
local people used “now then” as a way of greeting, and she certainly wasn’t
used to tall, sandy-haired strangers appearing on lonely footpaths while she
was fighting off what felt like a panic attack.

“I! Oh! Yes!” she blurted like she had landed from an alien
spacecraft. “No!”

“Good evening to yourself, too,” the man said. “What a
lovely looking dog. Is she a Rottie?”

“Yes. The rescue centre
had
said crossbreed,” she added,
giving Kali a hard stare, as if she had been in disguise. “I think they thought
it would be harder to rehome her if they admitted she was actually a
Rottweiler.”

“What a beauty. Can I say hi to her?” The strange man kept
his distance while he spoke, letting his gnarled hands hang by his sides. She
noticed that although he was complimenting her dog, he wasn’t looking at the
dog directly, which she thought was strange. He was dressed in faded jeans and
a fisherman’s jumper that was threadbare in places and hairy in others. It had
seen better days. Possibly in the previous century.

“She seems to like people,” Penny said. “In that, she
lunges towards them, wagging her tail.”

“Tail wags aren’t always a good thing,” the man said. He
turned to one side and cocked her head, glancing at the dog and then looking
away. He yawned. How rude, Penny thought.

Kali looked at him, then up at Penny. Penny’s stomach
lurched. Was the dog asking for permission?

Or reassurance?

“Go on, then.” She nodded at the man. “Say hello.”

Kali walked forward and sniffed at his feet, and then his
legs. After a few seconds, he patted the side of her neck very briefly, then
stopped. Kali leaned against him for more, so he patted her again. “There’s a
beautiful girl. What’s her name?”

“Kali. And I’m Penny. I’ve just moved into a cottage in the
town.”

“Hi, Penny. I’ll not shake your hand – forgive me – I’m a
bit grubby.” He showed her his dark-stained palms. His hands were wide and his
knuckles very knobbly. “I’m a blacksmith, mostly, with other stuff, you know.
Sorry, names, ahh. I’m Drew.”

She liked his broad grin, and said, brightly, “Hi, Drew.
It’s lovely to meet you.” Lovely to meet someone who isn’t creepy or dead, in
fact. “So, tell me, where does this path lead to?”

He turned and waved towards the trees. “Around there it
splits into two, but you wouldn’t want to take the left hand path. It leads up
to Farmer Hart’s land and he’s a … he
was
a stickler for the old ‘get
orf my land’ stuff. He, ahh, sadly he’s just…”

“Yes, I know. I found the body, actually.” She heard a
strange tone in her voice. Was that pride or something? How awful. She tried to
compose her face into something serious and respectful.

“You did? It was you? I heard talk. So you’re that woman
from London. Oh. That must have been traumatic.”

“It was strange. I think it would have been worse if I had
known him, you know?” She had to add, after a moment’s pause, “And what do you
mean, ‘
that
woman’? It sounds a little … ominous.”

Drew simply grinned more widely. “Welcome to a small town.
We know everything about you already. You were taking a risk being on his land,
you know. Well, obviously you didn’t know.”

“I might be a soft London type but I am pretty sure you
can’t just randomly shoot people anymore.”

“No, but you can shoot dogs if they might worry the sheep. They
don’t even have to be attacking. The dogs, I mean. Not the sheep. Not that many
trained attack sheep around here. Anyway. David Hart got rid of his sheep a few
years back and went over to arable. Still, he’s put up electric fences
absolutely everywhere.”