Blood Ties (5 page)

‘He's fallen down the stairs,' she said. It was only after she laid the receiver back on its cradle that she realized she had not told the operator Eddy was already dead.

SIX

N
aomi and Alec got the news of Eddy's death the next morning at breakfast.

‘He fell down the stairs. That's what the police reckon. Susan says she was forever warning him about that worn carpet.'

‘That's very sad,' Alec said. ‘He seemed like a nice old man.'

‘Oh, he wasn't that old, not really,' Jim said. ‘Late sixties, early seventies I suppose. That's no age these days, is it? No, but he'd had a lot of grief and I suppose that does add the years.'

‘Grief?' Naomi asked.

‘Lost his wife and then his daughter. She, the wife, died of cancer. I don't recall about the girl. Car accident, wasn't it?'

‘Right,' Jim confirmed. ‘Group of them out, one just passed their test. Wet roads and driving too fast, I suppose, and . . . well. You can guess the rest.'

‘There are some difficult roads round here,' Alec agreed.

‘Oh, it wasn't nowhere here,' Jim told them. ‘I don't recall where it was, but it was somewhere else. Visiting, she was. A relative, I suppose. The wife came from up north somewhere, I do believe.'

‘Sad,' Bethan said. ‘He never really got over any of it. Then someone gave him that metal detector thing and it seemed as though he spent all his time digging up the fields after that.'

‘Susan said he had a bee in his bonnet about a treasure,' Naomi said.

‘Oh, he's not the only one. There's rumours a plenty about landowners who buried their goods rather than let the crown get a hold of it or that Jeffries. An evil bastard, that one. Didn't care if you were innocent or not, so long as you could pay him off. Thousands of pounds people paid, just to avoid the gallows or worse.'

‘I'm sorry?' Alec was at a loss.

‘Judge Jeffries?' Naomi said.

‘That'll be the one. People round here have long memories. Folk would be queuing up to dance on his grave if they could get near it. Hundreds he killed, and the king, such as he was, just let him have free rein.'

‘And Eddy really took the stories seriously,' Alec mused. ‘I saw him at The Lamb, all his maps and such. Did he actually find anything?'

‘Oh, the usual stuff they find round here.' Jim was dismissive. ‘Musket balls, harness fittings, the odd button. I don't know of anyone that found much more and they've been at it long enough, the detectorists and the archaeologists, and the fields round here are ploughed often enough you'd expect anything there was to find to have made its way to the surface by now.'

‘Oh there's still copses and water meadows,' Bethan said. ‘And wells and graveyards. That's what I'd choose. A graveyard. No one bothers much once a body's planted. I reckon there's some mileage in the stories, but I don't see the likes of poor Eddy getting lucky. Some people just don't find the luck, do they, and it strikes me Eddy was one of them.'

The Lamb was closed that night as a mark of respect and also because Susan had been up all night with ambulance and police and then neighbours who had come to investigate the sirens and lights. She had returned home late morning, called all her staff to explain and assured them they would still be paid, thinking – as she put the phone down on the last of them – that it was a promise she could ill afford. She had then gone to bed, not expecting to sleep, but had woken at six that evening, with no memory of falling asleep or of dreams that may have come.

She called the officer, who had attended Eddy's house the night before, on his mobile, knowing he would have gone off duty long since.

‘Looks like a simple accident,' he said. ‘I'm really sorry. I understand you were a good friend?'

‘I'd known Eddy just about all my life. No,' she added in response to his enquiry. ‘I don't know of any family. I have a vague idea his late wife had a brother. Yes, I'll take a look and let you know if I can trace anyone.'

She sat staring at the phone for several minutes after ringing off, reflecting that she had looked after Eddy in life and had always had this vague inkling that she'd be the one sorting out his affairs after death. She'd not expected it to be so soon, though, or so dramatic.

Susan glanced around the tiny flat that had been her home since the divorce and division of spoils a couple of years before. She'd chosen to sink everything into getting a place of her own and, though it was tiny and cramped, she had never regretted the decision. She wasn't even sure if Eddy actually owned his house. Didn't really know about other family of his, either; Eddy didn't like to talk about the past. Not the recent past, anyway; he was fine with anything a couple of hundred years or so distant, but more recent events were off the list so far as conversation went.

Sighing, she wandered through to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea, dunking the bag in a mug and pouring boiling water on top. Eddy always used a proper pot. He had little ones for when he was alone and large ones for company, a whole array of them lined up on a shelf in the kitchen with a weird and wonderful assortment of mugs hanging on hooks beneath.

Susan splashed milk into her own rather plain mug and then leaned back against the counter, tea clasped between her hands for as long as she could bear the heat. She blew on the surface of the still-scalding liquid and took stock of her own little kitchen, deciding that whoever the next of kin turned out to be, she'd make a point of rehoming Eddy's teapots and mugs. She could visualize them all, each having its own place in the map of Eddy's world. There were china mugs that an elderly lady had given to him. A souvenir from Scarborough. One that was dark green and had a toad sitting at the bottom, ready to startle the unwary drinker. A large, pink striped vessel that Eddy awarded to anyone he wasn't really sure about. A sure sign that he had a stranger or a not yet proven friend sitting in his kitchen was that they were drinking from the pink striped mug. It had once served the same purpose, both functional and symbolic, in her mother's kitchen, and Susan found she could not recall the exact route of its migration to Eddy's.

Well, they would all be brought back to hers, have pride of place hanging beneath a shelf she didn't yet possess but which she would go out and buy first thing in the morning.

Abruptly, Susan set down her own as yet untouched tea, thumping the mug on to the counter hard enough that the contents slopped over the side. Suddenly she was crying. Hard, retching sobbing tears such as she could not remember shedding since her own parents had died, also far too early, far too abruptly five years before.

There was no justice, no fairness in life and certainly none in death.

When Eddy was a much younger man he'd had a brother. They had never been close, Guy being the flamboyant one who stole hearts and got the attention while Eddy waited for the fallout to happen – and sometimes benefited when Guy's conquests rebounded
.

By his mid thirties, though, Eddy had long since stopped waiting for bouncing lovers; he'd found one of his own and married her and they were desperately happy. One day Martha had confirmed that, at last, she was pregnant, and Eddy thought nothing could ruin the way he felt
.

Guy, of course, had other ideas. It wasn't, Eddy thought at the time, that Guy deliberately upset even the best of moments deliberately. He was far too self-centred, and to assume that he meant to hurt people was actually overestimating his capacity to take account of feelings. When Amy Clark came to Eddy and confessed that she was pregnant and that Guy was probably the father, Eddy knew that the chances of his brother stepping up to take responsibility were so minimal as to be non-existent
.

Worse, Amy was engaged, to a man she loved and who loved her. Guy was a mere fling born of sudden panic that this really was it, her days of being free and single were definitely numbered
.

And, besides, Eddy knew how persuasive Guy could be. He saw no reason why decent people should suffer. Guy could never have been described as decent
.

And Guy never did
.

Seven months later a baby girl was born and Eddy's child with Martha arrived shortly after that. Amy and Dan named their baby Susan, and Martha and Eddy called their daughter Karen, and Eddy made it his business to always look out for his brother's child until the time came when their roles reversed and Susan became the one to take care of him
.

SEVEN

O
ne lazy day had been enough. In fact, they hadn't quite managed even that. Somehow the news of Eddy's death had darkened the mood. Naomi and Alec had returned to their room after breakfast and had, indeed, dozed for a while, watched the assortment of antique and house renovation based programmes on morning television and grown truly restless around lunchtime.

Napoleon in tow, they had driven to Somerton in search of lunch and more antique shops and spent the afternoon wandering the pretty little market town, snooping in galleries but without the impulse to buy, and then, for no better reason than that they had not yet stopped there, they decamped to Bridgewater for their evening meal, Bethan having warned them that The Lamb would be closed.

‘This was where it all ended,' Alec said as they sat waiting for their meal in The Wharf.

‘Where all what ended? Oh, you're in Eddy land.'

Alec laughed. ‘I suppose I am.'

‘So?' Naomi waited. She was aware that Eddy had been on Alec's mind all day.

‘It took a bit of time for the King to get his act together and his army mobilized, but when he did they pushed Monmouth's troops back hard and they retreated here. I think it was July the third, or thereabouts, when Monmouth got here, expecting there'd be reinforcements waiting for him, but Churchill had attacked from the south and cut them off. So, Monmouth and his crew were alone and pretty much cornered.'

‘What sort of numbers are we talking about here?'

‘Between three and four thousand, I think.' He shook his head. ‘Sorry, I just skim read the leaflets back at the cottage. You know, we should go and walk the battlefield tomorrow. The weather's supposed to be better and Napoleon could do with a good long hike.'

‘Suits me.' She reached out cautiously for her wine glass.

‘Left a bit,' Alec said.

‘OK, so what's really getting to you? It's sad about the old guy, but he slipped and fell down the stairs, Alec. Nothing sinister, so switch the policeman head off. You hardly knew him, anyway.'

‘True, but that's never stopped me, has it? Not stopped either of us really. We spent our professional lives getting involved in the problems of people we didn't know or had hardly met.'

‘True, but—'

‘Oh, you're right. I suppose I was just hoping that I could get a break from all the dark and dismal, you know? But it seems to be following on behind like some—'

‘Accident,' Naomi reinforced gently. ‘It was an accident. They can happen anywhere. You are not attracting bad things. Alec, you've been really happy and relaxed these past few days. Don't let this spoil it. It's sad, but it's life.'

‘Death in Eddy's case. No, I know. I'm sorry. You're right, I'm letting everything get to me lately.'

‘It happens, we both know that.'

‘Which one of you is the beef Wellington?' the waitress asked.

Alec confessed that it was him, the plates were set down, and the waitress was assured that there was nothing more they required and that they would, indeed, enjoy their meal.

Naomi felt for the cutlery. ‘Careful,' she said. ‘Plates are red hot. So, tomorrow we do the Battlefield Walk and we see if we can find out more about this uprising that Eddy was so stuck on. There's bound to be books for sale and stuff.' She grimaced. ‘Doubt there'll be anything audio available so you'll have to do the reading. Now, eat and relax and after we've had the day out tomorrow you can have a talk to Susan, put your policeman head back on and see if there's anything more than a frayed carpet to investigate. Deal?'

She could hear the smile in his voice as he told her, ‘Deal, then. God, it's not only the plates that are hot. Good though. I wonder if they do lunches here?'

Beneath the table Napoleon's tail thumped a contented beat, and Naomi tried to convince herself that for the rest of their holiday they could fall back into the pleasant rhythm of recent days, but in her heart of hearts she knew that opportunity had passed and gone.

Susan had been to Eddy's house many times at night, but always he had been there. The lights had been on, the fires lit, the atmosphere brightly melancholic, as Eddy himself had always been, his words cheerful but that sense of all-pervading sadness lurking just behind the eyes.

She let herself in; she had kept the key from the night before, then hesitated before switching on the light, almost afraid that she would see again the crumpled body of her friend at the foot of the stairs.