A Market for Murder (15 page)

‘Funny, when you think about it – how cut off and remote farms are. I’ve got no real idea
about what goes on here, on a daily basis.’

‘Karen,’ Hilary interrupted. ‘Do you have any theories about who killed Peter Grafton?’

Karen shot a worried glance at her daughter, but Stephanie was being bossy with Timmy, trying to force him to eat some yoghurt, and did not seem to be listening.

‘Absolutely none,’ she said frankly. ‘Have you?’

‘Not at all. It seems crazy. Here we are, more than a week later, and it all seems to have gone cold. What are we supposed to make of it?’

‘I suppose it’s most likely to have to do with this supermarket contract. You know about that? He was going to supply fresh apple juice to SuperFare.’

‘Yes, I knew that,’ Hilary nodded. ‘I think we all did, one way or another.’

‘I didn’t.’ Karen felt fleetingly resentful.

‘Ah. Well, he didn’t exactly broadcast it, knowing how we felt about it all. But somehow we all got to know about it.’

‘Drew and Den are both interested in solving it,’ Karen laughed self-consciously. ‘That sounds odd, I suppose. Drew’s been involved in murders before, one way and another, and Den was a police detective, so he takes a professional interest. Or, rather …’ she paused in confusion.

‘The interest of an ex-professional?’ Hilary
suggested. ‘I suppose that makes sense. He must be feeling a bit left out.’

‘You know him, do you?’

‘Sort of. I know he’s with your Maggs. I haven’t ever spoken to him, as far as I can remember. He came to the market an hour or two before Peter was killed. I noticed him.’

‘People do, with him being so tall,’ Karen nodded. ‘Anyway, there’s not much teamwork going on,’ she continued. ‘Drew’s busy, and Maggs seems a bit distracted these days. We all seem to know different bits of the story, and never get together to pool it all. Basically, I think we’re just playing at it this time. And yet, I
knew
Peter. I feel I ought to be making a lot more effort.’

‘And Drew’s doing his funeral,’ Hilary put in quietly.

‘Yes. Tomorrow. He’s seen Julie, and Sally. Geraldine had a word with him, too.’ She munched on yet another bread roll. ‘It’s all arranged, I think. At least it means the cause of death was straightforward.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Oh, letting them have the body for burial. They wouldn’t do that if they thought there was any risk of somebody’s defence lawyer wanting another post-mortem.’

Hilary held up both hands to stop her. ‘Defence lawyer?’ she queried.

‘When the murder comes to trial,’ Karen explained. ‘When they catch who did it.’

‘You think they’ll catch him, do you?’

Karen nodded, scarcely pausing to think. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘They’re sure to catch him in the end.’

‘I admire your confidence in the forces of law and order,’ said Hilary.

Karen heard the irony. ‘No you don’t,’ she smiled. ‘But let’s not worry about it.’

‘We really do have to get together, all four of us, and pool our findings,’ said Maggs. She was with Den in the car, on Thursday morning. ‘I’m going to tell Drew the same thing.’

And she did. ‘Can we have a proper meeting this evening?’ she persisted. ‘Is Karen going to be in?’

‘I think so,’ he agreed. ‘But she might not feel very cooperative. I get the impression she’s rather sick of the whole business.’

‘Well, then, the sooner we clear it up the better,’ said Maggs.

‘We’ve got the funeral before that,’ he reminded her. ‘Busy, busy.’

‘Right boss,’ she said.

Elsie Watkins was buried that morning, at ten thirty, with minimal ceremony. Despite their
best efforts, Drew and Maggs could not prevent their attention from returning repeatedly to the oncoming funeral that afternoon. Peter Grafton was going to be their most famous interment so far. His murder had made the national press, albeit not as headline news. There would be reporters, police, curious onlookers and
shell-shocked
relatives. There would be Sally Dabb, Julie Grafton and even Della Gray. All the women – as far as they knew – who had harboured fond feelings for him. There would be Geraldine Beech and Hilary Henderson, and perhaps Mary Thomas to complete the threesome of local witch-women.

Maggs chattered animatedly to Drew over their snatched lunch. ‘We haven’t really been very good in keeping our promise to Sally Dabb, have we?’ she said. ‘We told her we’d try and scotch the rumours about her, and I for one haven’t mentioned it to a soul. What about you?’

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t really seen anybody,’ he said.

‘It’s a lonely life you lead,’ she sighed unsympathetically.

‘Shut up,’ he said.

But Maggs was irrepressible. ‘Who else do you think will come? Is the vicar going to say the right things? Is it the usual organist? I hope he doesn’t
leak.’

Leaking was a particular hazard with natural burials. The conventional undertakers used endless quantities of white plastic sheeting to line coffins and wrap bodies, to prevent just such an eventuality. Peaceful Repose Burials were environmentally sensitive, and that meant not using plastic. Instead they made the best of hessian, shredded paper and in extreme circumstances, wood shavings. Anything absorbent and lightweight.

‘He won’t leak,’ said Drew. ‘And the organist is Eileen Hopworthy, as always. Why are you so agitated?’

She crossed her arms over her front as if cold. ‘I don’t know,’ she shivered. ‘Premonition?’

Drew gave a melodramatic sigh. ‘Don’t get into that,’ he said. ‘It’s bad enough as it is, without you seeing into the future.’

They had a checklist of details in the
run-up
to the funeral. The two of them, plus Peter Grafton’s brother and a neighbour, were carrying the coffin in and out of the church. They had decided against using any vehicles, as was often the case. The church was three hundred yards up the road, so the entire gathering would follow it from Drew’s office to church for the service, and back again for burial. It worked well enough, although rain made for complications, and Drew could never quite reconcile himself to the
inclusion of a church service at all. His ideal was a pagan or humanist ceremony at the graveside, where everybody who wanted to freely expressed their thoughts and feelings, saying goodbye in their own ways. The intervention of a minister of religion never failed to offend him.

But Maggs persistently reminded him that some people were actually Christian as well as environmentally sensitive. And for a Christian, the presence of a vicar was essential. So it seemed was the case with Peter Grafton.

The service was due to begin at three. Fifteen minutes beforehand, Julie Grafton arrived, in a small blue car driven by a man who Drew recognised as the brother who was to be a bearer. He went out to meet them.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come again to view him,’ she said composedly. ‘I decided against it. I hope you weren’t waiting for me?’

‘We were ready for you, but it’s not a problem,’ Drew assured her. ‘Do you want to wait out here? I’m afraid we don’t really have a waiting room.’

‘I thought I should be a bit early. Then I can welcome people as they arrive.’ She wore a pair of smart black trousers, and a long black tunic, making her seem much taller and slimmer than Drew would have thought possible. Her face was 
pale, but she was carefully made-up and her hair looked as if it had just been freshly washed and styled. A woman acting the part of a new widow for all it was worth, he judged. Some women seemed to confuse funerals with weddings, which he supposed was not too hard to understand.

Somewhat to his surprise, the next to arrive, on foot, were Della and Bill Gray. Mentally, he checked the day, and whose turn it was with the kids. Thursday – Karen. Right.

Della almost threw herself at Julie, her face crumpling. ‘Oh, Jules! How on earth are you coping? How can you
bear
it?’

Drew watched in trepidation for Julie’s reaction. Almost anybody would give way under such an approach, he thought. But the widow was serene. She pushed Della away slightly, with a flicker of distaste around the mouth. ‘I’m surviving,’ she said. Then she looked past Della to Bill, as if asking him to remove his annoying wife. He appeared to get the message, and took hold of Della’s arm.

‘It’s good of you to come,’ Julie said to him.

‘Peter and I were old mates,’ Bill said. ‘I’m going to miss him.’

Cars began to draw up along the lane outside Drew’s hedge. Maggs always put a sign out to indicate where people should park.

‘Looks like quite a turnout,’ she reported, at
 five to three. ‘Some members of the press, as well. I’m going to tell them to move their cars further down, to leave room for the proper mourners.’

Drew watched in admiration as she marched off, in her smart black funeral outfit, to issue her instructions. It seemed she was sufficiently authoritative: three cars moved jerkily down the lane in reverse to the spot she indicated.

Drew mobilised the bearers, and they carried the cardboard coffin at a respectable pace down the leafy country lane. Overhead were larks and rooks, chaffinchs and even a distant curlew. The bright green leaves of early summer filtered the sunlight onto the procession, and a sense of timelessness descended for a moment. Mixed as his feelings were towards the undue ritualisation of death, Drew enjoyed a pang of satisfaction at the way it was going.

The church service lasted a brief twenty minutes, with one hymn and a eulogy. Julie had elected not to speak, and nobody else had come forward. The vicar had at least known Peter, and much of what he said was apposite. A man of strong ideals, a go-ahead innovator, a pillar of the community and popular with everyone. That just about covers it, thought Drew.

Then they shouldered the coffin and retraced their steps. The procession behind seemed to straggle a little more this time, and the coffin
felt considerably heavier. The people from the media were behaving well, hanging back and refraining from taking premature photographs or questioning the mourners. They’d probably get a bit more pushy when it came to the actual interment, Drew supposed. His natural burials still attracted considerable interest.

As they rounded the bend, Drew saw Karen and the four children in her care standing in the garden, watching their approach. His first reaction was to sigh inwardly with irritation. He’d
told
her he didn’t want the children in evidence during a funeral. But then he remembered that Karen would have liked to attend the service, and had been prevented by Della’s firm insistence that her boys were not to be in the main part of the action. Della would probably be considerably more irritated to see them there now, witnessing the latter part of the funeral.

If anything, the sun seemed even brighter as it began its slow decline to the west. They were sideways on to it, and Drew felt his arm and leg getting warm in the dark clothes, on that side. He heard again a lark over a grass field close by.

He glanced at Maggs sharing the front end of the coffin with him, wondering whether she was struggling with the weight. She seemed to have a knack of perching the corner on her shoulder in
such a way that she could walk freely and balance it with only the lightest hold. She met his eye and winked. Behind them, the two volunteers were rocking the coffin slightly, as they fell out of step for a moment. Drew often thought it would be much safer for him and Maggs to take the rear, since there was less chance of the whole thing being dropped that way – but he also felt he should lead the procession, which meant being at the front.

It was impossible to look back. Sally Dabb had arrived late, and sat at the back of the church. Geraldine Beech had gathered her friends about her, and sung loudly. Drew could hear her voice now, three or four people back in the procession, but didn’t know who she was talking to.

They were nearly there. Karen had come forward, almost hanging over the small gate from their front garden to the road. Stephanie was perched precariously on the garden wall, her head slightly lower than Karen’s, and only two or three inches distant from it. Timmy was peering through the bars of the gate, but Finian and Todd were nowhere to be seen.

And then, without any ceremony or warning or fanfare, it happened. There was an explosive crack, from somewhere very close, and Karen gracefully keeled over backwards, releasing the gate as she did so. A silence that seemed to
last forever was finally broken by Stephanie’s scream.

‘Mummy!!’

Ridiculously, Drew found himself unable to move. He couldn’t just let go of the coffin. He couldn’t put it down without the cooperation of the other three. He couldn’t go to his wife, and yet it was the most absolutely necessary thing he had ever had to do.

Maggs took over. She twisted round to address the two men at the rear corners. ‘Put it down!’ she ordered. ‘Now.’

Somehow they did it without turning the whole thing upside down. All around was a babble of confusion, but the only sound that Drew could hear was his daughter, wailing over and over, ‘
Mummy!’

Karen could hear her child’s screams, as if from a very long way off. She seemed to have somehow condensed into one small point of awareness, in which the image of one person’s eyes was still before her, as well as Stephanie’s frantic voice. The person who had shot her had first made eye contact with her, cool and unemotional and utterly treacherous.
 

There was no pain, no light or dark, no fear. She couldn’t think or feel. She didn’t say to herself, I must be dead, or even, I must go to
Stephanie. It was a place beyond reach, beyond all control, that she had retreated to. But she could still see those eyes and hear the screams.

Drew was almost as detached, in his own way. He folded Stephanie tightly into his arms, letting her cling to him, but wanting terribly to be with Karen. He still had no clear idea what had happened. All around people swirled and chattered, calling out and asking questions. He looked briefly for Timmy but soon gave up when the child was not immediately visible. The sky seemed to have gone dark, and he was cold. He hugged his little girl for warmth, and tried to force his mind to function.

Someone had shot Karen, but where was that person? Where was the gun? How could they not be standing there, unmistakable, in a cloud of black smoke, evil grin on their face? And yet nobody stood out. They just milled and pushed. Somebody took a flash photograph, which Drew felt as a searing blow both physically and emotionally.

Maggs seemed to be everywhere. She shouted at the photographer, who lowered his camera but didn’t move away. Then she was kneeling beside Karen, and speaking loudly to someone. She pushed a woman away, and reached a hand to a different person.

‘It’s a head wound,’ he heard her say. ‘She’s been shot in the head.’

And then, very strangely, there was a loud noise in the sky, and a sudden wind. Stephanie stiffened in his arms, turning her head this way and that. ‘Helicopter!’ she whispered.

Drew looked, then. ‘Yes, helicopter,’ he confirmed automatically. He still didn’t know quite why, or how, but he felt something click into place inside him. He knew he wasn’t to be allowed the luxury of paralysis. He was needed too urgently for that. He stood up with Stephanie still in his arms.

‘Is she alive?’ he asked Maggs.

‘Oh yes,’ came the sturdy reply. ‘Breathing quite normally, and pulse not too bad.’

‘But she’s unconscious.’

‘Yes.’

The crowd straggling along the lane and circling the abandoned coffin came to his notice. ‘Oh, God – the funeral!’ said Drew. Stephanie wrapped her arms around his head in consolation.

‘That can wait,’ Maggs asserted. ‘They have to get Karen to hospital first. Lucky there was a helicopter on standby. Lucky we had somewhere for them to land.’ She flashed him a reassuring smile and showed him her mobile phone, tucked into the waistband of her smart black trousers.
Even in the midst of catastrophe, Drew knew she’d scored a point.

‘What happened, Maggs?’ He had moved to stand beside Karen, but couldn’t touch her because of his daughter. ‘Wasn’t there a shot?’

Maggs nodded again and swept the onlookers with a single gaze. ‘One of them must have done it,’ she said unemotionally.

‘But they’d have to have had a gun on them. They’d be easy to spot.’ It sounded completely foolish in his own ears.

‘So you’d think,’ she nodded. ‘But it probably isn’t as simple as that.’

Some of the crowd were in easy earshot. Julie Grafton was squatting beside her husband’s coffin, one hand resting on it protectively. Della and her Bill had retrieved their children already. Drew thought he remembered seeing them both running from his back garden where Karen must have sent them to play. Almost absently, he saw that his own Timmy was holding Della’s hand, as if content to let her be his mother in Karen’s absence. Geraldine Beech was alongside Julie, as was the brother-in-law and the neighbour. Hilary Henderson and Mary Thomas were both in the same general area. The volunteer bearers seemed to think their role had been transposed into guardians of the coffin. Another twelve or fifteen people had retreated slightly, as if to
differentiate themselves from the main players. Staring at them all, Drew focused again on Mary Thomas, with her long skirt. Something clicked inside him.

‘Mary Thomas!’ he gasped. ‘It’s her! It must be.’ He looked at Maggs, eager to have her understand, but she’d gone.

Two men in odd uniforms were kneeling beside Karen, and Maggs had withdrawn to give them space. ‘Husband?’ one asked.

‘That’s me,’ Drew supplied.

‘What happened?’

‘Someone shot her. Maggs said it was in the head.’

‘Mummy,’ Stephanie whimpered, heartbroken. Drew thought he’d preferred her screams.

‘Mummy’s going to be all right,’ he assured her. ‘They’ll take her to hospital in the helicopter and make her better.’ He almost believed it himself as he said it.

Deftly the paramedics produced a stretcher and lifted Karen onto it. Then they trotted briskly back to their air ambulance. Drew stared after them. ‘Where will they take her?’ he asked nobody in particular.

‘I’ll ask,’ said Maggs, setting off in pursuit. The helicopter’s engine was still idling, the rotor blades now motionless, but Maggs bent over, just the same. People always bent over when they were
near a helicopter, thought Drew inconsequentially.

‘What about the funeral?’ came Julie Grafton’s voice, the words bursting out as if no longer content to wait.

Drew turned to her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Can we do it ourselves?’ asked the brotherin-law. ‘I mean – you’re not going to be in any state, are you.’

‘Where are the police?’ Drew demanded, then. ‘There’s just been an attempted murder. We ought not to touch anything. Everybody should stay where they are.’ A sudden surge of rage swept through him. He wanted the person who’d done this to be caught and tortured and reviled and then executed very painfully. ‘Who was it?’ he shouted. ‘Who did this to my wife?’

The sound of a car door slamming was followed quickly by two more. As if conjured by his words, uniformed police officers materialised from along the lane. And then another car engine became audible: one that Drew thought he recognised. Two minutes later, the tall figure of Den Cooper came into view.

‘Den!’ called Drew, thankfully. ‘Oh, Den, it’s good to see you.’

Maggs came stumbling back over the field and garden from the helicopter, evidently feeling
exactly the same. Neither she nor Drew paid any attention to the policemen trying to make sense of the scene before them.

Den eyed the air ambulance, as it noisily lifted into the air, and then the coffin on the ground at his feet.

‘Somebody shot Karen,’ said Maggs. ‘Somebody here. One of these people did it.’

‘Hey! Steady on,’ said Peter Grafton’s brother. ‘You don’t know that. It could have been someone hiding behind the hedge, or one of the cars. With this crowd, you can’t possibly know exactly what happened.’

‘And where’s the gun?’ said the neighbour. ‘There hasn’t been time for anyone to dispose of a gun. We’d have seen them if they’d thrown it over a hedge. How could anybody do that without being
seen?
’

‘Well, somebody did,’ said Maggs flatly. ‘Because Karen’s got a bullet hole in her head. Unless you think it somehow fell out of an aeroplane up in the sky, or came from a gun with a range of half a mile.’

‘Everybody’s still here, I assume,’ said Den. The two police officers were moving deftly from person to person, taking down names and addresses and brief statements. ‘You’d have seen if anybody drove away.’