The Crow Trap (35 page)

They couldn’t see as far as the horizon. The hills were black smudges.

There was a hazy moon.

“That’s all right,” he said. “You’ve been under a lot of strain. But rumours like that could do me a lot of harm.”

“I know.” She continued carefully, “But you were here on the afternoon Bella died, weren’t you?”

He didn’t reply.

“Peter?”

She thought he was going to lie but he saw sense, probably realizing there would be more credit in telling the truth.

“Yes, I was around that day.” “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you before?”

“Because it was none of your business.”

“Of course it was my business.” “No,” he said. “This time it wasn’t.”

“Why were you walking?”

“I’d been in the office all week, sitting around, eating lunches with clients. I needed the exercise.”

“That much exercise? Walking all the way from Langholme?”

“I didn’t walk from Langholme. I’d parked the car up the track into the forest and walked through to Black Law that way. I came back over the hill.”

“The inspector thinks Grace’s attacker parked his car there.”

“Well, I didn’t kill Grace. I couldn’t have done. For Christ’s sake I was in a meeting with you at the time.” She didn’t answer and he asked roughly, “Are you satisfied?”

“I want to know what you discussed with Bella.”

“Business, Rache. That’s what I’m about now. Not conservation.

Business.” He turned so his back was almost facing her. “So I can afford the pretty wife and the nice house.”

“Don’t you dare blame Amelia,” she shouted. A startled coot scuttled out of the reeds and flapped over the water.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, that wouldn’t be fair.”

She felt herself being seduced again by his sadness. She had to fight the urge to comfort him and tell him she’d make everything all right.

What is wrong with us? she thought. Why do we do it? Is this how Bella felt about her little brother? Men turn pathetic and we step in to sort things out.

“I have to know what you said to Bella.” She kept her voice firm. “I have to know if anything you said made her kill herself.”

“Of course not. What do you take me for?”

“What was it all about, Peter?” “I’ve told you. Business.”

“Did someone send you there?”

“What?” The question shocked him.

“Whose business were you discussing? Yours? Godfrey Waugh’s? Or were you there on behalf of Neville Furness? Doing his dirty work?”

Peter didn’t answer. He stood up and pulled her to her feet, then faced her with his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve got to leave this alone,” he said. “It’ll make you ill.”

“No.”

“You’re a mate, but sometimes you’re too fucking serious.”

He took her hand and set off down the hill. She followed, laughing despite herself, and they ran, hand in hand, Hansel and Gretel towards the lights of the cottage.

Chapter Forty-Three.

The next morning, after an early count, Rachael went to Black Law farm.

She wanted to tell Vera Stanhope that the survey would be finished in a week’s time. It was reassuring to have this time limit. A deadline for them all.

She tapped on the kitchen door and walked in. The kettle was humming.

It bubbled to a boil then switched itself off. In another part of the house a door shut. She didn’t hear footsteps but suddenly Neville Furness appeared in the doorway. The way he walked softly on the balls of his feet made her think of a big cat. Rachael recovered from her surprise first.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was looking for Inspector Stanhope. I didn’t realize … “

“She’s not here.” She couldn’t tell what he felt about the invasion by strangers of what was now his home. “Nor the sergeant. They left early this morning to go to Kimmerston. They should be back at any time.” “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll try later.” She was already backing out of the door.

“No! Please.” His voice was urgent. “I was just going to make some coffee. I suppose the police must have coffee in the place.”

“In the cupboard next to the sink.”

She stayed because she was curious. As he moved with a controlled energy about the kitchen, reaching up for mugs, squatting to lift milk from the fridge she tried to work out how old he was. Mid thirties but very fit. No grey in the dark hair. He wore jeans and an open-necked shirt. He turned suddenly to offer her a biscuit and saw her staring.

He smiled and she felt herself flush as if she was in the middle of a lecherous fantasy. There was a down of dark hair on the back of his hand and black hair curled from the cuff of his shirt. He smiled again. His teeth seemed very white.

Not a cat, she thought. A wolf. And I’m Red Riding Hood.

“Come through to the other room. It’s more comfortable.”

What big teeth you have, Grandma.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll not bite.”

He led her into the room with the French windows overlooking the overgrown garden and the view of the hill. Neville seemed too restless to sit still and after a moment got up to stand in front of the huge painting of the old mine workings.

“My mother did this,” he said.

“I know, Bella told me.”

“Did she?” He seemed surprised, pleased.

“We were good friends.” She wanted to stake an allegiance.

“I’m glad. She must have needed friends. It can’t have been easy looking after my father. All that work and no response.” “There was a response,” Rachael said sharply. “There still is … He understands more than people realize.”

“Oh?” He was polite but disbelieving. Perhaps it was an attempt to hit back at him when she asked, “Do you remember your mother?”

But he seemed delighted to have the opportunity to talk about her.

“Not very well. Nursery rhymes sung at bedtime. Some games. She loved dressing up. And they fixed a swing for me in the barn. I remember that. Swinging into the sunshine and back into the shadow.

Gran fussing because she thought I’d fall and my mother laughing. There was one party I was taken to at Baikie’s too. It must have been nearly Christmas, very frosty and cold. It was supposed to be a great treat, but Connie was so enormous that she terrified me. One of the smart ladies was wearing a fur coat and I cuddled into it, hiding. They all laughed.” He paced to the French windows and looked out over the hill.

“It’s not much, is it?”

No. But more than I’ve got of my father, she thought bitterly, and made up her mind that this time she would have to pin Edie down. She deserved to know her father whatever he was like. She’d put up with enough evasion. She’d have it out with Edie before they left Baikie’s.

As Anne had said, this was a good place to get it sorted. Neutral ground. It would be another deadline.

“I’m sorry.” She realized that he’d been speaking. “I was miles away.” “I said that Dad was heartbroken when my mother died. He didn’t take any interest in anything. I mean, he carried on with the farm work but I suppose that was some sort of release. It would tire him anyway so he could sleep. But he couldn’t take an interest in me. It was too much of an effort. Emotional, I mean. He’d given everything he had to my mother. I could tell even then. Kids can, can’t they? So I tried to keep out of the way.”

She had a picture of a boy, creeping around the house, shrinking into shadows, making no noise, and found it hard to reconcile with the image of this successful, energetic man.

“And your gran came to look after you?”

“Ivy, yes.” He turned from the window to face her. “Did Bella tell you about that too?”

“About you and Dougie and Ivy living together. Yes.”

“They were good times. We weren’t a conventional family but it worked OK. Dad found it easier when I was old enough to help on the farm. We had things to talk about then.” “Neutral ground,” she said, echoing her thoughts about her and Edie.

“Something like that.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I left first to go to school. It’s too far to travel from here to Kimmerston every day, especially in the winter, so the council run a hostel where high school kids can board during the week. I was lonely at first but I suppose it made me independent. Then I went away to college. Like you, I suppose. It’s what young people do.”

“Weren’t you tempted to come back?”

“Not then. I had other ambitions. Something to prove perhaps. Later, when Dad was ill and it would have been natural to take over the farm, Bella was here, doing at least as good a job as I could.”

“Did you resent her taking over?” It was an Edie-like question but he seemed not to mind. “A bit, I

suppose. Only natural, isn’t it? But I’d not have had the patience to care for him like she did. As I said, we weren’t that close. Because of Mum dying he could never be a touchy-feely sort of dad, even if it had been in his nature in the first place. I couldn’t imagine doing all those intimate things Bella took in her stride -feeding, bathing, you know. And I couldn’t imagine Dad wanting me to do it either. I suppose I could have taken over the farm, but I don’t think it would have worked, the three of us together. Now though … ” He had been talking almost to himself and, realizing suddenly that he had an audience, stopped abruptly.

“You’re not thinking of farming Black Law yourself?” She was astonished. The whole encounter had been a surprise. She had thought of Neville Furness as a businessman. Ruthless, ambitious. Working first on the Holme Park Estate and then for Slateburn Quarries, he was, so far as she was concerned, one of the bad dies who ravaged the countryside. A cartoon villain. It had been easy to blame him for Bella’s suicide, even to suspect him of Grace’s murder. Yet now he was talking so diffidently about his father, with such affection about the farm.

Watch out, girl, you’re being conned, she thought. What big teeth he has. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“It has crossed my mind to move back,” he admitted. “It’s either that or sell it and I don’t think I have the heart to do that. But I’ll have a look at the figures. Perhaps I’m not being realistic.”

“What about the quarry?”

“Oh, the quarry would go ahead without me. Or not, depending on the outcome of the inquiry.”

“I suppose you’d sell access to the site across Black Law land,” she said. “It would make more of a profit than sheep.”

“At the moment anything would make more of a profit than sheep.”

“Would you come to an arrangement with Godfrey Waugh?” she persisted “I don’t know. I still love this place. It wouldn’t be the same, would it, with a main road past the kitchen door, articulated trucks rolling past every hour of the day and night.”

Don’t be naive, she thought. Don’t get taken in. They all tell you what you want to hear. Remember Peter Kemp.

“Do you have any idea why Bella killed herself?” she asked suddenly.

“I feel responsible in a way.”

“Do you?” It was the last thing she had expected.

“I should have realized it was all getting too much for her. Looking after Dad, the farm. Something must just have given. At least … ” “At least what?” she demanded.

He shook his head. Some expression of distaste on his face prompted her to complete the sentence for him. “You were going to say that at least the violence was directed at herself and not at your father?” “Yes,” he said. “All right.”

“You knew about her conviction?”

“Of course.”

“When did you find out?”

So it was you, she thought. You made her kill herself. Somehow you found out and you couldn’t bear the thought of her looking after your father. But again his reply surprised her.

“It was years ago, before they were married. I was invited to tea.

This room was just the same. We sat here, drinking tea and eating walnut loaf and she said, “I think you should know. I’ve a conviction for manslaughter.” Quite calmly, as if it was a bit of news she’d picked up at the mart.

“Then I remembered the case. It was when I was a kid but it was all over the papers and they talked about it at school. Charlie Noble had been a pupil there a couple of years before. She’d told Dad the night before, had offered to leave at once if he wanted her to. Of course he said she should stay, but she insisted on telling me too.

“I said it was up to them, their lives. That was what they expected and I’d have wanted the same response from them if it was the other way round. But it wasn’t easy. I thought she was after a meal ticket.”

“She wasn’t like that.” But Rachael wondered how she’d feel if Edie took up with an ex-con.

“No. I realized that later. I’d have found it hard to like her anyway at the time. She wasn’t my mother. And my father seemed happy with her. Much happier than I’d ever been able to make him. I was probably glad of an excuse to disapprove.” He smiled. “I came to terms with it when my father was ill. It would have been churlish then to keep up the icy formality. I started to visit, to stay overnight occasionally.”

So Neville’s room really was Neville’s, Rachael thought.