Blood Ties (10 page)

For the first time that afternoon, Sergeant Dean seemed hesitant. ‘Well,' he said. ‘I didn't like to go trampling about upstairs. I checked the scene downstairs and made sure it was all secure, but the paramedics and then the ambulance was there and it all seemed very straightforward at the time, you know?'

‘There were no open windows when I went there with Susan,' Alec said thoughtfully.

‘Well, then. Maybe that visitor he had. The mugs were still on the table when I let SOCO in today. Did you touch them, either you or Susan?'

Alec thought. ‘No,' he said. ‘I'm almost sure not.'

‘Well, if you could drop in, we'll make sure we've got your prints for elimination.'

Alec nodded. ‘So the cottage is a crime scene now.' He wondered if anyone would bother to go into Karen's room, or if they would, as he had done, just stand on the threshold. Would anyone notice the pocket of the dressing gown? Should he mention it?

‘You said this would be common knowledge by evening?'

‘Papers,' Dean said. ‘It'll be in the evening news.'

Alec felt oddly deflated as they drove back to see the farm. They had promised to give Susan a ring after Sergeant Dean had spoken to her – he was planning on taking a female officer with him and had declined Alec's offer to be there with a slightly affronted tone.

‘You wish you could get involved, don't you?'

‘A bit of me does,' Alec admitted. ‘A part of me feels annoyed that I was right. I'd have been happy enough to be told that Eddy died of a freak accident and the world isn't really full of people doing unpleasant things to other people. Sometimes it feels like you can't get away from it, however far you go.'

Naomi's burst of laughter seemed inappropriate but she couldn't help it.

‘What?' he said.

‘However far? Alec, we've driven a couple of hundred miles, not crossed continents.'

‘You know what I mean.'

She choked back the laughter. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. But it's not
our
investigation. It's a local matter and you can't get involved. Not unless Susan still wants your help tracking down relatives or something.'

‘Oh, I doubt they'll need looking for, not when this makes the news. They'll be turning up in droves, wanting to know what the old man left and if they're entitled. When they find out they're not, they'll be looking for compensation for mental anguish or some such.'

‘My, we are feeling jaundiced, aren't we?'

‘Well, yes. One of us is anyway.'

She reached out and touched his arm. ‘They might not hear about it,' she said. ‘We can be pretty sure that Eddy and his wife and daughter travelled a long way from their family, in metaphorical terms at any rate. Who knows how far they came in real miles?'

Evening brought pictures on the local news of Eddy's cottage and a lone policeman standing outside. SOCO, it seemed, had been and gone, and just a pathetic band of white and blue tape now defined the scene. The lone officer had been left there to keep press and public at bay and to take the inevitable flowers from friends and strangers who, now they knew the cause of Eddy's death, needed to express their additional grief.

Alec had spoken to Susan on the telephone. She was deeply upset; understandably so. And guilty. What if she had encouraged Alec to get more involved? Would they have already known what had happened? Would they have already caught whoever did this to her friend?

Alec thought that unlikely. He'd had nothing to go on – nothing but a vague feeling based on the presence of an earlier guest, who may, or may not, have had something to do with Eddy's death.

She would not be reassured.

‘Have you spoken to the solicitor at all?' he asked her, and her response helped him to understand this additional guilt.

‘He'd made a will,' she said. ‘Left a few bits and pieces to friends. He's left the house and everything else to me. Alec, I don't know what to do. I had no idea.'

‘Look,' Alec said gently, ‘you obviously meant a lot to him. He'd known you a long time and you'd always looked out for him. I suppose he felt he'd like to return the favour.'

‘But I feel so bad. What if the family turn up and contest?'

‘What did the solicitor say?'

‘That the will was watertight. That Eddy made his feelings very clear and no one can contest it and have a hope of winning, but Alec—'

‘Take it,' Alec said. ‘You'd become his family. Say a big thank you and honour what he wanted.'

She was silent for a moment but then, ‘Thank you, Alec. That's what the solicitor said. I just wish it had all come about differently and I was finding this out in twenty years' time or so. It just doesn't seem fair.'

There wasn't a lot more he could say to that, so with a few more words of reassurance, he rang off.

‘You think that will make her a suspect?' Naomi asked him.

‘Not a serious one. Chances are, once they've established a time of death, she'll have a good alibi, most likely backed up by all the locals at The Lamb. Probably by us too.'

‘So we're back with the mysterious visitor. Hopefully, there'll be fingerprints on the mugs.'

‘And he'll have a record.'

‘That too. So what do we do next?' Naomi asked.

Alec frowned. ‘I don't know yet,' he said.

ELEVEN

K
evin Hargreaves had, of course, heard about Eddy's death, but it had not quite clicked that the night the older man had died was the night Kevin had visited late. In fact it wasn't until he was getting his pack ready for a weekend out with his detector that he remembered, and that was only because of the shirt and jeans Eddy had washed for him.

He stood, holding the clothes in his hands and trying to come to terms with the fact that he, a grown man who prided himself on being, well, just a bit of a macho type, was crying like a flipping baby.

‘Whatever is the matter with you?' His mother stood aghast. ‘Are you sick, boy?'

‘No, I was just thinking. I seen Eddy, you know, just before he had that fall. I'd stayed there one night.'

‘I remember you did, weekend before.'

‘Right, well I left my stuff there, went straight to work from his place, didn't I? When I went back to pick it up, he'd done me bleeding washing for me, hadn't he? One of the last things he did, wash me mucky jeans.'

‘Oh, stop it now. He was a nice old boy.' She patted his arm. ‘You got all the stuff you need in there?'

‘I think so. Best check.' He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and upended the pack, tipping the contents on to the bed. Compass, maps, various historic references he used to make sense of where he was and what he might find. Spare socks, thick and thin. Underwear. He always had more than he needed and some of it stayed in the pack from one week to the next, unused, just regularly checked and then returned to the depths of the bag. It was a habit he'd developed in childhood when he'd gone out with his dad on the weekends he'd spent with him after his parents divorced. It had been the one thing he and his dad really had in common, and by the time Kevin had grown up, there really wasn't even that any more. He and his dad drifted apart, but the hobby remained and the habits that went with it.

‘What's that?' his mum said, pointing to a bundle she didn't recognize.

‘Don't know,' Kevin said. He picked the bundle up, noting the blue linen and scruffy white lace. ‘Looks like a pillowcase. Or a bit of one.' He unwrapped the bundle and laid the contents out on the bed.

‘Where did it come from?'

‘Eddy's place. It has to have. I've not been anywhere else.'

‘But how did it get there?'

Kevin picked up the little book. It was pink and floral and locked up tight with a brass catch and tiny padlock. The word ‘Diary' was emblazoned across the front in curly letters.

She took it from him. ‘Locked,' she said. ‘Hang on a minute.'

She left the room and Kevin picked up the other documents. Two notebooks filled with close written script that he recognized as Eddy's handwriting. He recognized the books, too. Eddy kept logs of all his finds, buying batches of the same dull-red exercise books he had used when he was still teaching. Kevin scanned the pages, puzzled. He was sure he knew about most of what Eddy had found; the two of them regularly shared their successes and their failures over the odd pint or a cup of tea and ‘kiddy biscuits' as Eddy called their mutual choice of creams and chocolate fingers.

Kevin was sure he didn't recognize most of these items.

He looked more closely, realized that not every entry recorded finds. Some appeared to be references to books or documents or parish registers – Kevin recognized the way Eddy annotated them. His mother returned and took the diary. She fiddled with something and then opened the little book and handed it to Kevin.

‘There. I knew I had a hair grip somewhere. You can do it with a paper clip, too; any bit of tough wire really.'

‘You got it open.'

‘Of course I did. So what is all this stuff?'

Kevin sat down on the edge of the bed, flicking through the pages. Two hands had written these pages. The first was clearly young. The letters round and exuberant and, somehow Kevin felt, enthusiastic. The second was Eddy's familiar, tight lettering.

Kevin read a little of the first pages. He knew it to be intrusive and yet felt compelled, as though the voice of his old friend was telling him it was all right to look.

‘I think this was Karen's,' he said. ‘His daughter's diary.'

‘She died, didn't she?'

Kevin nodded. ‘Yeah. Eddy told me about her. He said she was seventeen and killed in a car crash. When I first met him he told me he'd had a kid; she died when she was my age, then. He hardly ever talked about her, like it hurt too much.'

‘How long ago was it? When she died?'

Kevin shrugged. ‘Dunno. I forget. Twenty years ago mebbe. But this is her book, must be.' He closed the book. ‘What should we do with it, Mam? I mean, he must have put it in the bag. What did he want me to do with it?'

She took the diary from him and turned the pages slowly, pausing to read extracts. Kevin watched, seeing her lips move as she examined the words. ‘Looks like she wrote this in the few months before she died,' she said. ‘Look at the dates.'

She sat down beside him on the bed. ‘Right,' she said. ‘Eddy trusted you with this, so you've got to figure out why. It was his girl's book, so it was precious to him someway.' She frowned. ‘What night did you go back to pick up your bag?'

Kevin thought about it. ‘Oh, must have been Tuesday,' he said. ‘I went to show him what we'd found up at Bakers Field. Them coins, you know. Mam, what's wrong?'

His mother had turned very white.

‘Don't you see,' she said. ‘You were there the night he died. What if some damn fool of a policeman thinks you might have been involved?'

TWELVE

S
omehow it had seemed more natural for Mrs Hargreaves to go to Susan for advice, rather than straight to the police, and it had seemed equally natural for Susan to go next door to the farm and fetch Alec back to the still-closed pub.

They sat around what had been Eddy's table – that, too, seeming natural – and Alec and Naomi listened to what Kevin and his mother had to say.

Explains the key, Naomi thought, reflecting that quite a bit of potential evidence seemed to have walked from the scene before anyone realized Eddy had been killed rather than just fallen.

Alec listened carefully to what Kevin and his mother had to say. Kevin, he learned, was twenty-two and had known Eddy well. Like Susan, Alec realized, Kevin had a real affection for the old man. His mother, a dark-haired woman who showed every one of her forty plus years – forehead lined, hair showing more grey than brown – was clearly anxious.

‘They'll think he had something to do with it, won't they? Because he was there. The police will think he done it.'

‘Aw, Mam. Everyone knows I wouldn't hurt Eddy.'

‘The police don't know that, boy. How can they possibly know that?'

‘What time did you leave?' Alec asked.

‘Not sure. I got there at half ten, eleven, maybe. Eddy was in his dressing gown but he let me in and sent me through to the kitchen.'

‘Late for a visit,' Naomi commented.

‘That's what Eddy said. I told him I didn't think and he said I never did, but he weren't angry or anything. I often called round late. I'd been at Brian's. We'd been playing computer games and I had to come home past Eddy's so I thought I'd drop in. I'd found some coins when we were together at the weekend. Eddy couldn't find them in his books so I'd popped in to see Dr Matthews on the way to Brian's home. Mam, I told you I was going to do that.'

She nodded confirmation.

‘Dr Matthews?'

‘Local archaeologist,' Susan said. ‘He helps run the portable antiquities scheme. You know, where people report what they've found and if it's valuable they get the money for it.'

‘There's a bit more to it than that,' Kevin protested.

‘Well, we'll come back to it,' Alec intervened. ‘So you went to Brian's. At what time?'

‘Be seven-ish. We ordered takeaway. I left maybe ten fifteen, ten thirty. News was on. I was passing Eddy's door so I stopped off to get my stuff and tell him what Dr Matthews had said about the coins.'

‘How long does it take to get from Brian's to Eddy's?'