Slaughter in the Cotswolds (3 page)

She increased her pace, letting the dog have more freedom on the extendable lead. The pretty river did its rivery thing, twinkling tidily between trim stone embankments and beneath charming little bridges. The slough after which the villages had been named was firmly channelled and drained and long forgotten. The essence of the Cotswolds was thriving here, everything safe and predictable and lovely.

She bought an ice cream at the shop, wishing it sold wine and olives as well, and turned back to Schloss Angell, alias Hawkhill Farm. The first
thing she did on arriving was to go to the utility area beyond the kitchen and open the chest freezer. Two plucked and prepared pheasants caught her eye. She would cook them for her sister. Somehow they seemed just right for the occasion.

Emily arrived at three, pausing in the gateway as if unsure that she’d come to the right place. Thea was on a rickety garden bench, which had small patches of lichen growing on it to give witness to its extreme age. She sat outside because it was August, and she wanted to watch out for Emily, but it was a chilly vigil, with clouds gathering in the west and a spiteful little breeze blowing.

Along with the Angells’ bored dogs, she watched her sister park the shiny new car and emerge in a fluid elegant movement. Emily was superficially like Thea, but four inches taller. Jocelyn, the youngest, was much fairer and heavier, plucking her genes from the Johnstone
grandmother, rather than Maureen’s slighter, darker, father, Grandpa Foster, a man they barely remembered, but who was immortalised in Emily, who was said to look exactly like him.

‘Don’t sit here,’ Thea warned. ‘It won’t take two. Every time I move it threatens to collapse.’

‘Hmm,’ said Emily. ‘The place seems a bit ramshackle.’

‘By local standards, it is – definitely,’ Thea agreed. ‘I quite like it.’

They went in through the front door and Thea instantly saw the house through Emily’s eyes. It was dusty; the windows weren’t very clean; the rugs and stair carpet had endured spillages and damage that left indelible marks. The curtains at the front window were ragged at the edges where the parrot had climbed up them countless times.

Ignatius was intently aware of a second intruder. ‘Lock the doors, Daddy! Lock the doors!’ it screeched, with impossible clarity. It was the first time Thea had heard him speak.

‘My God!’ said Emily faintly. ‘I see what you mean. It’s terrifying.’

‘That’s nothing,’ said Thea with relish. ‘There was a great big
bat
in my bedroom last night.’

‘No!’

‘I always thought I liked them until then. But it’s all true what they say – you get a real horror that it’ll tangle itself in your hair. I can’t think
why, when they absolutely never do that, at least according to Carl. They move so irrationally, darting and swooping, and you know they can’t see you and don’t know what you are.’

Emily shuddered. ‘I would have run right out and driven home on the spot.’

‘Well, I can’t do that, can I? Whatever happens, I have to stay here for a fortnight.’

‘Well, you’re a lot braver than me, that’s for sure. And braver than your dog, by the look of it.’

Hepzibah was circling the parrot’s cage, eyes fixed on the bird, small squeaks emitting from her. ‘Lock the doors,’ said the parrot again, on a quieter note, sending the dog into further whining confusion. Distress was clear in every nerve.

Thea laughed. ‘Come on, silly. It won’t hurt you.’ But Hepzie continued her patrol, thoroughly bewildered, but convinced she had some sort of protective role to play. Thea dragged her into the kitchen, where she made tea and engaged her sister in the conversation she had come to conduct. It wasn’t long before they ventured onto the main topic – the death of their father and their mother’s future. It ebbed and flowed, as they moved from kitchen to living room, and then outside to feed the dogs and ferrets. Thea spent half an hour in the kitchen, forbidding Emily from joining her as she set the pheasants
simmering in a casserole, with carrots and onions and herbs. They were still slightly frozen, but she hoped that a couple of hours in a moderate oven would see them tender and toothsome. Emily called through from the main living room, every few minutes: ‘Surely I can do something to help?’ and ‘I came to talk to you, not sit here twiddling my thumbs.’ But hard experience had taught Thea that to invite Emily to share cooking was to consign yourself to a barrage of corrections and scathing comments about your technique. Nobody sliced carrots to Emily’s satisfaction, and the idea of her discovering that the birds were not fully defrosted was too terrible to contemplate.

‘I’ll be right with you,’ she promised. ‘We can have an hour or more of quality time before I have to get some potatoes on.’

The conversation had already verged on the overwrought at times. Awkwardly, Emily had voiced her sense of disconnection after the funeral, only the day before. ‘I’ve been trying to carry on as normal, especially with Grant going off to sixth form college in a couple of weeks. He needs all sorts of books and clothes, and I can only do it at weekends. I should be sitting him down and making a proper list, not falling apart here.’

‘You’re not falling apart, don’t be silly,’ Thea argued. ‘It wouldn’t be very realistic to think you
could just pretend nothing had happened. What sort of message would that give the boys? They’ll be missing Dad as well.’

Waiting for the pheasants to cook, they doggedly forced themselves to stay with the painful subject of bereavement. Emily seemed determined to confront what she saw as an imperfect relationship with her father, dating back to her failure to adopt his values or interests. ‘He always wanted me to make better use of my brain,’ she said. ‘To go into science and do some good in the world.’ She sniffed. ‘And I could never rid myself of the notion that most of the world’s problems are rooted in science. I made him so
angry
.’

‘You didn’t do it on purpose.’

‘Maybe not, but he thought I did. And then you married Carl, who was the embodiment of Dad’s ideas. All that ecological stuff – it was wonderful for him. It left me even further out of the magic circle. My husband’s a financial consultant, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Dad didn’t mind,’ Thea insisted. ‘You’re projecting too much onto him. He wasn’t at all judgmental. He
liked
Bruce and he adored your boys.’

‘Not as much as he liked Carl and Jessica. Oh, Thea – I feel so bloody
guilty.
I thought there’d be time to put it all straight and earn his
approval. And now it’s too late. It feels so
awful
.’

It made quite a lot of sense to Thea, as she meditated on the family history as she remembered it. ‘You just have to go with it, I suppose,’ she said vaguely. ‘Wait for it all to settle down again.’

Emily twirled a strand of hair around a finger, like a fifteen-year-old. Outside, heavy rain had set in, thundering loudly on the tin roof of the barn. A glance at the clock told Thea it was high time she peeled some potatoes.

The meal was a modest success. ‘Could have done with another hour on a slow heat,’ said Emily. ‘I’d have told you if you asked me. I did pheasant a few weeks ago for a dinner party. The flavour needs to come out with long slow cooking.’

‘Thanks. I’ll remember that for next time,’ said Thea lightly. ‘At least it’s edible.’

‘It’s really quite nice,’ said Emily graciously. ‘Much better than I expected. Though it’s a pity there’s no wine.’ She ate quickly, and in half an hour it was all over, including an apple and coffee.

‘I think the Angells are teetotal,’ said Thea. ‘And it didn’t occur to me to bring any booze with me.’

‘Just as well, I suppose, since I’ve got to drive.’

‘Look at that rain!’ said Thea. ‘You’d much
better stay the night, instead of setting off into that. It’s getting quite dark.’

‘No, I’m not staying the night,’ said Emily. ‘I can’t face the idea of that bat. I don’t want to put you off, but I don’t like the atmosphere in this house. There’s something
dingy
about it. Cobwebs and things going rusty and inches of fluff under the beds. It’ll give me asthma if I try to sleep here.’ She put a hand to her bronchial area. ‘I can feel it already.’

‘OK,’ said Thea, trying to suppress the disappointment. It didn’t seem very fair of her sister to invade like this and then abruptly leave again, with no thought for the effect she was having. Thea had not wanted family business to intrude on the Lower Slaughter job, especially so soon after getting there. Emily’s feelings towards their father verged on the critical at times, which Thea found surprisingly upsetting. As far as she was concerned, he’d been perfect, and her sister had no right to jeopardise that comforting belief. After all, Emily herself had been a scratchy and even downright arrogant daughter at times. She’d always been a poor listener, disinclined to take the other person’s feelings into account, argumentative and sometimes uncharitable. Thea suspected that if the conversation had lasted much longer, she might have been tempted to say some of this, with ghastly consequences.

So it was with more than a little relief mixed into the simmering resentment that she waved her sister out of sight, standing in the doorway only long enough to watch the car begin to move. The rain was bad enough to raise flickers of anxiety in the breast of anyone who had experienced floods over the past few years. This area, Thea remembered, had suffered severely. She wondered briefly whether the little river running through Lower Slaughter ever misbehaved badly enough to threaten the houses alongside it. It might be interesting to go for a look in the morning. As far as Hawkhill was concerned, it appeared that any run-off water had been efficiently directed into ditches and channels well clear of the house. There was no sign of rivulets or even large puddles in what she could see of the yard.

So she closed the front door, went back into the living room, and tried to settle down on the sagging sofa. But she was soon up again, prowling around the room in search of diversion. The television’s remote control didn’t work, there was no DVD player, and the only light in the room was a rather dim energy-saving bulb, apparently bought when they first appeared and living up to its promise of lasting for fifty years. There were few books in the house, but she did find a stack of big jigsaws in one corner. Somehow Babs Angell had struck her as too
busy for such fripperies, but when she examined them it was plain that they had all been used. Something about the afternoon she’d spent with Emily, the references to childhood and family life, made jigsaws seem entirely appropriate. She selected one depicting a small flock of sheep in the snow, with a lot of twisty bare tree branches, and resolved to try to finish it before it was time for her to leave Hawkhill.

The light was better in the kitchen, and a radio sat on the windowsill. The view was over the fields and farm buildings at the back. The table could be used for the jigsaw, with plenty of space left over for one person to sit and eat at one end.

There was a play on Radio Four, involving a Victorian governess and the younger son of the house, which kept her pleasantly diverted as she methodically sorted out all the edge pieces. Hours passed. Hepzie was curled on a muddy sheepskin in front of the Rayburn. The parrot was quiet and rain continued to thunder on the roofs outside. She made herself more coffee at one point, and wondered whether she should try phoning her daughter. It was Saturday night – Jessica ought to be out with friends, and Thea preferred not to know if the girl was alone in her flat, swotting for the next test in her police training. The absence of anything resembling a serious boyfriend was beginning to nag at Thea,
however sternly she might reproach herself for it. At Jessica’s age, Thea was firmly married and six months pregnant. So was Jocelyn, come to that. Early marriage and motherhood was a pattern in the Johnstone family, and while she had no conscious desire for her daughter to follow suit, there was a subliminal expectation that would not be shaken.

At half past ten, she went upstairs and checked that there was hot water available for a bath. The Rayburn evidently saw to it that this was never going to be a problem. So long as the thing was kept alight, all would be well. With a sigh of anticipation, she went into the bedroom to find her nightshirt and book, preparatory for a long indulgent soak.

The bat was there again! The moment the light went on, flittering wingbeats stirred the air around her head. This time, she was angry. She shut Hepzie out, opened the window, and snatching up a towel, she flapped determinedly at it. It took five minutes to steer it outside, but it was accomplished eventually. Could bats cope with rain, she wondered briefly. Had she consigned it to a miserable death by drowning? Just at that moment, she didn’t care if she had. She only knew she never wanted to see it again.

Hepzie scratched and whined at the door throughout the chase. Then, as Thea went to
let her in, the whine turned to a yap, and the dogs outside started barking. Before Thea could go downstairs to investigate, there was a loud banging on the front door, which Thea had locked behind her sister.

Emily was standing there, pale and large-eyed, her mouth oddly tight. She was wearing peculiar shapeless clothes, and her wet hair was straggling around her face instead of neatly tied back as usual. ‘Let me in,’ she said.

‘But – what?’ Words failed her, her mind still on the battle with the bat.

‘I’ve just witnessed a murder,’ Emily shouted. ‘I saw the whole thing. I’ve been at the police station. It was horrible. They took my clothes and my shoes. I can’t face driving home now. Let me in.’

Thea had already let her in. Of course she had. But she found herself wishing that she didn’t have to.

The story took a long time to tell, mainly because Emily repeated everything three or four times, with little logical sequence. It seemed that following the arrival of the police after she’d dialled 999, she had been subjected to extensive questioning. That was clearly the part she found the most traumatic. She went over it obsessively.

Piecing the story together from the beginning, Thea understood that Emily had taken a wrong turning immediately after leaving Hawkhill and found herself in a maze of small roads beyond Upper Slaughter. Realising her mistake, she had tried to turn around in a gateway, managing to graze the rear bumper of the car in the process.
‘It was only a little way from a big hotel – not out in the wilds or anything. I could see it only a few yards away. But there was nobody about. I switched the engine off, and got my torch out, and had a look at the map. I was doing all the sensible things,’ she wailed, as if expecting blame for irresponsibility.

‘Why didn’t you use your Sat Nav thingy?’

‘What?’ Emily’s eyes turned even wilder, if that was possible.

‘You know – the thing that tells you where to go.’

‘Oh. I didn’t think I’d need to. I didn’t think I was
really
lost.’ She smiled weakly. ‘But the truth is, I don’t like it. It spooks me, that voice telling me what to do. Sounds daft, doesn’t it.’

‘A bit. I thought this would be the obvious situation where it was useful.’ But this was Emily, she remembered. The big sister who could never abide to be told what to do.

She still hadn’t got a coherent grasp of the story. ‘What happened after that?’

‘Then I got out to see what I’d done to the car, and how best to get back onto the road without any more damage. That’s when I heard the shouting. A man yelling his head off. He sounded crazy – off his head with rage.’

‘Scary,’ Thea agreed faintly.

‘So I crept along to see what was happening.
They were in a layby. The shouting man was kicking and bashing at another man on the ground. I could hear the awful noise of his head cracking when the murderer
stamped
on it. He had a big stick or something. It was
frenzied
. So I yelled something, but he didn’t hear me. I ran towards him, and finally he saw me, and with a kind of crazy yelp he just dashed off. I hadn’t a hope of catching him.’

‘No,’ said Thea faintly.

‘So then I did 999 on the mobile, and had a look at the poor chap on the ground.’ At this point Emily choked and clutched her damp head in both hands, as if transforming herself into the injured man. ‘It was so
horrible
. I knelt down beside him. There was mud everywhere, and puddles, the rain just
poured
down. He was lying in water. I got filthy. They had to find me these clothes. Look at them!’ She swiped a disgusted hand down the baggy tracksuit. It was just about the last outfit Emily would ever have worn. Thea had to suppress a giggle at the incongruity of it.

‘Weren’t you scared the madman would come back?’

‘What? Oh, a bit, I suppose. He ran away – why would he come back?’

It seemed the story had dried up for the moment. Emily sat on the sofa, hands clutched together, eyes on a far corner of the room. Her
head tilted sideways, her ear almost touching her left shoulder. It was a strange childlike stance, oddly pitiful. Thea felt her own heart pounding at the ghastly story, the impossible thing her sister – already in an emotional state – had been witness to. ‘You poor thing,’ she said, reaching out to press Emily’s arm.

‘I should have stayed here,’ her sister moaned. ‘Why didn’t I stay here?’

‘You were scared of the bat,’ said Thea. ‘With good reason. It was back again just now.’

Emily’s eyes lost all focus. ‘It’s all the fault of that bat, then. Isn’t that ridiculous.’

‘Well, the man would still be dead,’ Thea pointed out.

Emily stared at her for a moment, and then seemed to sag. ‘Yes. But I wouldn’t have been involved, would I?’

It was typical, of course. So typical that Thea barely noticed the way her sister always put herself at the centre of every story. Now, she could hardly fail to see it. A man had been murdered, while Emily looked on. Which person warranted centre stage in that scenario? But she made no remark. What would be the use?

‘The police were very kind,’ Emily said, as if holding onto the single piece of light in a black story.

‘That’s good. They’ll need you, of course, as the only witness. They’ll want to look after you.’

‘Yes,’ Emily sighed.

Thea felt the unstable bog of despair under her feet. Why on earth did Emily have to get herself lost so stupidly? Why did it have to be raining so hard? Why could life never be easy and calm and
boring
for once? And why did she already have a dawning apprehension that she herself was going to attract some limelight over the coming days, because of her sister, and her relationship with DS Hollis?

A stillness came over them both, as the shock worked its way through their systems. Finally, Thea did her best to summarise, forcing herself to sound calm and businesslike. ‘Well, as murders go, this doesn’t sound a very difficult one to solve. It’s obvious they knew each other, if the killer was so enraged. There must have been an argument or fight to get him into such a state.’

‘Or it could have been somebody with mental problems, not taking his medication,’ said Emily, valiantly adopting the same tone. ‘He did seem completely mad.’ She was shaking gently, her teeth chattering, despite the mug of sweet tea that Thea had made her.

‘So – what did the police say would happen next? Where did you tell them you’d be?’

‘Home. I gave them my address, obviously. I couldn’t remember what this place was called, anyway.’

‘Did you say anything about me?’ Thea’s relationship with the Detective Superintendent had raised her profile with the Gloucestershire police. And not only because of Phil: she had been involved in a number of murder investigations over the past year or so. The ramifications of this had escaped Emily, however. She stared at her sister in bewilderment.

‘Why would I?’

‘Because of Phil.’

‘I thought he was still off work with his back.’

‘It isn’t as simple as that. For one thing, he is working as much as he can – desk stuff. The back’s getting better.’

Emily wasn’t interested in Thea’s boyfriend. She had only met Hollis once, and they had not found much common ground. Phil’s damaged back reminded the whole family of Rosie, wife of Uncle James, another Detective Superintendent. Over the years Rosie’s invalid status had become a permanent part of the picture, something to be factored into every gathering or outing. Always the centre of attention, her pain a kind of force field impossible to ignore, she was nonetheless a lovely person, sweet and stoical. When Phil Hollis joined the same club there had been jokes and groans and advice to Thea to drop him immediately. Instead she had spent a fortnight in his Cirencester flat, nursing him through
the most immobile stage of the injury.

‘If you gave my name, there’s a chance he’ll pick up on it tomorrow. He knows I’m in Lower Slaughter – that alone is going to ring a bell with him.’

‘I don’t care. I just wish I’d never come here. This is the last thing I need. It feels as if there’s no escape from death and dying.’ This was more like the old Emily – cross at being thrown off course, resentful at the way the world could trip you up, however careful you were.

‘It’s not very nice for me, either,’ muttered Thea. ‘If you hadn’t got involved, I could have gone through my stay here in blissful ignorance.’

‘So why don’t you? Stay out of it. I’ll go home first thing in the morning, and you can feed your ferrets in peace.’ Emily squared her shoulders as if some fresh decision had fortified her.

‘Because it’s not in my nature. Like it or not, I’ve quite a bit of experience of this sort of thing. Now there’s Jessica as well – she’s going to want to hear all about it. The best hope is that some blood-stained character will get himself caught before another day goes by. If he’s a nutcase like you say, he’s probably boasting about it to his mother as we speak.’

‘And she might hose him down and burn his clothes and never say a word about it.’ The brave words sat oddly on the white face and bloodless lips.

‘That’s true.’ Thea forced a smile. In spite of herself, she was glad to have another person in the house, and Emily was certainly in no state to go driving off across Middle England at midnight. ‘Have you phoned Bruce?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, ages ago. I played it down a bit, of course. Only told him the bare bones. He won’t need to hear the worst of it.’

‘Protecting him, as usual,’ Thea commented.

‘Don’t start that.’ The warning came as a low snarl that Thea found genuinely alarming.

‘Sorry – but it’s true, all the same.’

‘So what if it is? You think I ought to describe a shattered head, with the brains and blood all seeping out into a muddy puddle to him and the boys, do you? I should tell the whole family and all my friends that I got covered in filthy slime and bits of bone when all I wanted was to get the car started and drive home? What bloody good would that do?’

Thea shook her head. All she could think was that if it had happened to her, she would have wanted everybody to know about it. But she was not Emily. She could even see some nobility in her sister’s effort to keep it to herself. ‘At least I agree with you about the boys,’ she offered. ‘It isn’t something you’d want them imagining.’

Except, as far as she understood it, adolescent boys already spent most of their time fantasising
about smashing skulls and disembowelling nameless enemies, and making cyber-vehicles crash endlessly into each other.

As for Bruce, he was what he was, and Emily seemed happy with him, which left little more to be said. When she had first elected to marry him, both her sisters had made cautious attempts to point out his limitations. Not, as their father had, to cast aspersions on his profession, but to query his ability to manifest an acceptable range of emotions. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Emily had insisted. ‘He’s funny and competent and highly intelligent. He’ll be reliable and there won’t ever be any rows. Don’t worry, girls – he’s going to be fine.’ It had been a sign of her confidence that she hadn’t been the least bit angry with them for their impudent suggestions.

It seemed she had been right. The marriage was entering its twentieth year with little or no sign of strain. The three children, after an unpleasant miscarriage in the first year, had been reared methodically, with old-fashioned discipline. Sent to a fee-paying school, they seemed to be finding life rather more agreeable than did many of their peers. If Thea could somehow never quite find the right things to say to them, then perhaps that was her failure and not theirs. And although she preferred the noisy chaos of Jocelyn’s big family, she tried to keep quiet about it.

They went to bed suddenly, well after midnight. Or rather, Thea did, and Emily snuggled down on the accommodating sofa, with a pillow and a blanket from the airing cupboard. ‘I still don’t like this house,’ she said, eyeing a dusty cobweb directly over her head. ‘I just know there’ll be mice and spiders running over me as soon as I go to sleep.’

‘Of course there won’t,’ said Thea. ‘But if you insist, I could change places with you. Then you’ve only got a bat to worry about.’

‘Don’t be silly. There’ll be even more mice and spiders upstairs. There always are. Especially in the spare room – you’re invading their territory.’

There was no sign of any return of the bat, much to Thea’s relief. She and Hepzie quickly settled down and fell asleep for a pleasantly uninterrupted night.