Blood Ties (6 page)

The hall light seemed harsh this evening, the bare bulb – Eddy was not a fan of shades on account of the fact they blocked out half the brightness – stark and ugly. Slowly, Susan made her way through the house, touching nothing, feeling oddly like an intruder. She'd come with the intention of starting the search for any family Eddy might have had. People to take over the funeral arrangements, to inherit, she supposed, to continue Eddy's story now that the old man was gone. Instead, she just wandered, room to room, recalling, as she looked out through the kitchen window, hot summer evenings sitting in the garden with a beer. Christmases when she had helped him deck out the tree with all the little ornaments he and his wife had bought and the paper angels his little girl had made so long ago that the glitter had flaked from their now crumpled wings. Long chats, sitting around the kitchen table, either just the two of them or, more often, with others from the metal detecting community. She'd never really thought about it before, but she realized now that Eddy had been at the heart of a large if disparate group, most of whom had converged on Eddy's cottage at some time or another. If they all came to the as yet un-arranged funeral, she'd need to organize a sizeable buffet at The Lamb. Eddy might have lived alone, but he would certainly not go to his rest unmourned.

Somehow, that made her feel better, but it also increased the sense of puzzlement that had begun to coalesce. Eddy was liked; loved, even. He was known by so many people from so many different branches of local and not so local society and yet no one from his wider family had ever visited him, to Susan's knowledge. Not even when his wife had been alive and her family could have reasonably been expected to show up, even if Eddy's had not. Now that she thought about it, Susan remembered her parents commenting on that very fact. When Eddy's wife had died, the local church had been full to bursting, as had the crematorium. The wake had gone on for hours. When his child had been taken, the funeral party had been swelled by her friends from school, but at neither event could Susan recall there being family. It was as if Eddy and Martha and Karen, that little unit, had existed in glorious isolation.

More because of the feeling that now she was here she should be doing something, she went back into the hall and took the red-bound phone book from beneath the telephone. A quick flick told her that the book contained numbers for his detectorist friends, the local doctor and optician, that sort of thing, but no family. She tucked it into her bag anyway, thinking it would help her to contact friends who would want to be at the funeral, then she turned off all the lights and let herself out, feeling even more deflated and confused than when she had arrived.

From
Roads to Ruin
by E Thame:

News of Henry Kirkwood's arrest reached Catherine when she and Elmer stayed for the night at an inn just outside of Bristol. The disguise they had taken was that of a gentleman farmer and his wife, off to visit relatives. She rode pillion, respectably behind her husband, and a second saddle horse was used as a pack animal. Her maid, she told the innkeeper, had been taken ill, and they'd proceeded alone, the male servant who had attended her husband having returned with her to the farm
.

It was not a good story and not very convincing cover, but they paid their money and were given a bedroom for the night. I think we must assume that keepers of seventeenth century inns were as used to the Mr and Mrs Smiths of the world then as they are now – a sorry state for the genuine Smiths who are destined, one suspects, always to be viewed with a suspicious eye
.

Catherine's letters in the Lorenz collection tell us that she heard the news that night. They had been travelling for just less than two days
.

Why they eventually did turn back towards home we can only speculate. Perhaps she wanted to be as close to her father as possible once he was sentenced; perhaps the King's lines were too tightly drawn for them to cross. We do know, from the Lorenz records, that by the end of July they were finally heading north after a long detour, which took them into Wiltshire and to the White Horse Vale. That they did head south and did hide the remainder of the Kirkwood hoard is not in question. Finds in Bakers Field point to the cache being in that area and it is significant that only items immediately identifiable as being from the Kirkwood estate or otherwise tied to the rebellion have been discovered. We have to assume that anything else of value went north with Catherine and Elmer
.

EIGHT

T
he Lamb reopened the following night but the mood was subdued and quiet. No one sat in Eddy's seat, and Alec was somehow unsurprised when one of his usual suppliers of beverages bought an extra pint as usual and set it on the table, as though in silent salute.

‘I heard,' he told Susan. ‘We're really sorry.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘He's going to be missed.'

Alec nodded, was going to turn away, having done his condolence duty and painfully aware that he was only a visitor here, among people who actually knew the old man, when Susan called him back.

‘Mind if I ask you something?'

‘Sure, what's bothering you?'

‘Well, it looks as though it's down to me to, you know, sort things out. I think I know who his solicitor is, or at least, who he went to to get his will drawn up, but as to next of kin . . . I'm a bit lost, really. We all knew Eddy for a long time but I don't think anyone really knew about his family, not before they moved here.'

‘Maybe the solicitor will know. If he made a will then that implies there was someone to leave his possessions to.'

Susan nodded. ‘I suppose so, but I know, because he told me, that most of his stuff was left to friends who'd appreciate it. His books, his detecting gear, all of that, and I'm not sure if he owned the house or what. I never asked. It was just, you know, Eddy's house. It wasn't the sort of thing we talked about.'

Alec set his beer back down on the bar, feeling that this was going to take longer than he had first thought. ‘What
did
you talk about?' he asked.

‘Oh, what he'd found, the state of the world, art. He loved paintings. The books he'd found rummaging in the second-hand stores. His garden. Oh, we'd talk. Talk for hours. I know you only saw him here, sitting all quiet like, and he loved to listen, we all knew that. But get him on his own, on his own turf, and he'd talk.' She glanced around as if for confirmation, was supported by nods and mutterings that Eddy was a good talker once you'd set him off.

‘But not about family?' Alec found he was now addressing the wider company.

The agreement was no, not about family. Not after Martha died, or even before, not really.

‘So, I kind of wondered if . . . if you'd got any advice. I don't know where to start, I really don't. I went to the cottage last night but it all feels so . . . intrusive, you know? And you being a policeman, you must be used to dealing with stuff like this?'

Alec nodded. He was suddenly aware that he was the focus of general expectation. ‘OK,' he said. ‘If there's anything I can do, I'd be glad to help out.'

He could almost see the weight of overwhelming responsibility lift from Susan's shoulders and he felt a sudden urge to move away from the bar before it changed direction and settled on his. By the time he returned to Naomi he had agreed to go with Susan to Eddy's little house, take a look around and see what they could find out about his wider family. He wondered how well that would go down with Naomi.

‘I heard,' she pre-empted him. She sounded amused. ‘Look, it's OK, I can amuse myself for a couple of hours. You'll be miserable as hell if you don't do your bit.'

Alec chuckled softly. ‘You're right, as ever,' he said. ‘I suppose I would be.'

Susan arrived back at her flat and pulled into her designated parking space. A familiar car was already occupying one of the visitors' spots and Susan sighed deeply as she noted who it was. That was all she needed.

Reluctantly, she got out of her car and the man in the visitors' spot left his, hesitating before coming over as though not sure he was welcome.

Good, she thought. Because he's not. Her ex didn't bother her very often, but even that was too much in Susan's view. He'd been a mistake, she'd realized that quickly enough; had spent the next five years trying not to believe it, before she'd finally left. The solicitors had dealt with the rest, not exactly amicably.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘I heard about Eddy. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.'

She hadn't expected that for an opening gambit. ‘I'm fine. It was a shock, finding him like that, but I'm fine.'

‘So, what happens now, funeral and that? You'll be organizing it?'

‘I expect so, unless family turn up, which is unlikely.'

‘He had much family, did he? I don't remember you mentioning any.'

‘That's probably because you stopped listening to me once you had a ring on my finger.'

He looked away and in the yellow of the security light she could see the flash of anger as it skimmed his face. He was good looking, she'd give him that, and he was also aggressive and unpredictable and selfish and . . .

‘Look, if there's nothing else, I've had a long day. If there is something else, say it quick or send a letter to my solicitor.'

He laughed harshly. ‘You really are a piece of work, aren't you? I just came to offer my condolences, ask you if you maybe needed a friend. From what I remember, friends were kind of thin on the ground after we split.'

That, strictly, had been true. He had systematically removed her from any old friends or associations he had deemed unsuitable. What had been left had largely been
his
friends,
his
family,
his
 . . .

‘Thanks, but no thanks,' she said. ‘Just go away, Brian. If I wanted a friend I'd call one up, and you wouldn't even be on the list.'

She turned away and keyed the code into the door lock, careful that he didn't see. She wouldn't put it past him to try and follow her inside. He didn't move and she opened the door just enough to slip through, shoved it closed behind her, annoyed that he'd know, that he'd see just how much he still got to her.

Looking down from the window of her tiny flat she could see him in the car park, leaning against the bonnet of the car, and she was glad she hadn't switched the light on, knowing that was what he was waiting for. He'd never been inside her flat, never even been inside the block. He didn't actually know which window was hers and she was happier keeping it that way. She stepped back from the window, just in case he saw her shadow, and waited until she heard the car engine fire and her ex drive away. Only then, after another quick glance just to be sure, did she risk turning on the light.

Eddy had been against the marriage right from the get go. He'd said it was her decision but that Brian was a bad lot. He'd known people like him and they were good for no one.

Of course, she hadn't listened. Didn't women always think that they were the one? The catalyst by which such men changed their ways?

But she'd been wrong. She'd sunk her savings into the house they'd bought and had had the devil's own job getting anything out again. Eddy had advised her then; he'd directed her to his solicitor and she'd let them handle it. To her surprise, Brian had been forthcoming with her money and she'd been able to get a mortgage on this little flat.

One thing was for sure, he'd never set foot inside.

The following morning, Alec duly set off to meet Susan at Eddy's house, leaving Naomi alone for the first time since they had come on holiday. Despite what she had said to Alec, she felt oddly bereft and rather more isolated than she'd anticipated. She could now find her way around the B&B without too much trouble and had been outside into the farmyard alone. She had also accompanied Alec down to what Jim and Bethan called the cut, the place at the perimeter of the kitchen garden through which one of the many dykes flowed – not a major one, Bethan had told her then; rather, one of the many offshoots from the main rhynes. It was a pleasant place even in the depths of winter and Naomi, with Napoleon in his harness, followed the narrow stone path through the garden and down to the little jetty Jim had built so that their grandchildren could sit and fish for tiddlers in the summer.

The change of surface from stone to wood told Naomi they had arrived and she felt for the wooden railing she knew was there; finding it, she perched, Napoleon flopping down at her feet. The silence at first seemed profound but as her ears grew accustomed to the lack of ordinary noise – the occasional car, domestic noises from kitchen and farmyard – she began to hear what made up this new soundscape. The slow drip and slap of water beneath the jetty. The occasional plop of some small creature entering the dyke. Wind in the reeds and withies that Alec told her occupied the opposite bank. Every place had one, Naomi had discovered. Its own way of sounding – and, for that matter, smelling and feeling – and she wished she had paid more attention to those other senses when she'd still had her full quota. It had been a standing joke in Naomi's family that the first thing she put on in the morning and the last thing she took off at night had been her specs. Short-sighted from childhood, and basically nosy from birth, Naomi could not bear to miss anything. When she had been blinded, everyone had been terribly anxious that she wouldn't cope, even to the extent that the doctors had put off telling her that she wouldn't see again. But Naomi was also a pragmatist at heart; what you can't change you learn to make the best of, and she was actually very proud of the way she had adapted and fervently grateful to all the people who had helped her get there.