The Woodcutter (27 page)

He shook the pain from his head and refocused on his daughter. From the direction she was taking across the garden he guessed where she was headed. Nothing to be done about it, he thought as she vanished into the wood.

Nothing that ever could be done about it.

Half an hour later, Imogen was standing on the far edge of the forest looking out at the back of Birkstane Farm. The boundary wall was tumbledown here and she stepped easily over the moss-wigged stones. Through the kitchen window she glimpsed movement. She was not a woman who hesitated action and she went straight up to the back door and pushed it open without knocking.

Her face rarely registered surprise, but it did now.

It wasn’t Wolf Hadda she found sitting at the kitchen table but a slim black woman with high cheek bones and fine shoulder-length hair of a curious ochrous shade that didn’t look artificial.

Imogen said, ‘Hello.’

The woman replied, ‘Hello.’

Imogen’s gaze moved round the room. Unwashed dishes in the sink, one cup, one bowl, one plate. Wolf, alone, never washed up after a meal, always before the next one. So breakfast for one.

She said, ‘Wolf not home then?’

The black woman said, ‘Evidently not.’

‘You’re waiting for him?’

‘For a while.’

Imogen liked the non-aggressive way she refused to initiate an exchange of information. At the moment, in the unspoken contest to establish who had the greater right to be in Wolf’s kitchen, honours were pretty even.

In the fireplace paper and kindling had been laid and several dry logs were stacked ready on the hearth.

She said, ‘Too nice a day to waste indoors, but if you’re going to sit here long, I’d put a match to the fire.’

Then she turned and left, not bothering to close the door behind her.

11

You should have closed the door, thought Alva Ozigbo.

She’d known this was Hadda’s former wife as soon as the woman stepped into the kitchen, and not merely because her files on the man contained photographs. In fact, to identify her from the photos wouldn’t have been easy. They all showed her in urban mode, elegant, composed. The figure that stepped through the door in her boots and ancient jacket, her face flushed from walking fast in the cold air, and with bits of twig and bark in her hair from ducking under low branches, was very different. But Alva had recognized her at once. Perhaps it was the composure. That was still very much there.

But she hadn’t closed the door behind her. Probably because she did not want to risk even the suggestion of a slam.

They must have made a magnificent couple, thought Alva. Both tall, strong-featured, blue-eyed, blond-haired, with the poise that comes from physical athleticism and psychological certainty. Both qualities vanished in Hadda’s case, but from this one brief glimpse, as present as ever in his ex-wife.

She glanced up at the old bracket clock hanging on the wall.

Half past three. She’d wait another half hour, she decided. Luke Hollins had said that if Hadda was out and the Defender was in the barn, that meant there was a good chance he’d be back before dusk, which began to fall about four o’clock this time of year.

She looked up and he was there, standing in the open doorway.

‘You should have lit the fire,’ he said.

‘That’s what your ex-wife said.’

He showed no surprise but moved across the kitchen with that slow limping gait she remembered so well, stooped over the hearth, struck a match and set it to the paper. Behind him a dog paused in the doorway to study her, then, growling softly in its throat and never shifting its gaze, padded across to the fireplace and lay down.

‘You knew she’d been here?’ she said.

‘I saw her leaving.’

‘But you didn’t speak?’

‘No,’ he said indifferently. ‘For the time being, I’ve nothing to say to her. Anyway, I can’t manage a conversation with two women at the same time and I wanted to talk to you first.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I saw your car at the end of the lonning.’

‘You saw a car. How did you know it was mine?’

‘I saw you in it outside of the prison, remember? Grey Fiesta, very anonymous, a real psychiatrist’s car. Hollins tell you not to try to bring it all the way up?’

‘Yes. He said there were ruts you could lose a sledge team down.’

Hadda smiled.

‘Nice turn of phrase for a parson. I keep telling him he ought to dump that Dinky he drives, but he says he can’t afford a four by four.’

‘Perhaps you could loan him the money. I gather you’re quite flush at the moment.’

She saw no reason to dance around the reason she was there. If he’d worked out that Hollins must have been responsible in some way for her visit, then he must also suspect – or have deduced from some trace the vicar had left of his search – that the money box had been discovered.

‘Perhaps I could. I feel guilty that the poor devil has got to carry my groceries the last quarter mile. So what did you and Imogen find to talk about?’

If this was evasion, he disguised it very well as indifference.

‘Absolutely nothing. We didn’t even introduce ourselves.’

‘No need,’ said Hadda. ‘Clearly you recognized her. And she’ll be able to find out everything she needs to know about you.’

‘How?’ asked Alva, puzzled.

‘Striking black woman arrives at vicarage then drives out to Birkstane. Every detail will have been noted and analysed by the locals. Hollins and his wife will be quizzed. No need to tell you how much can be given away by even the most noncommittal of answers. Add to this your car. Even anonymous psychiatrists’ cars have numbers. When Imogen left she headed out up the lonning so she’ll have had a good peer around it too. Did you lock it?’

‘I’m not sure. No, I didn’t. Somehow, leaving it out here . . .’

‘. . . in the middle of nowhere, it didn’t seem necessary,’ he finished her sentence. ‘You’ll learn. Leave anything lying around in there?’

Alva said, ‘My case is in the boot.’

Hadda whistled.

‘Hope you didn’t pack it with confidential files. So you’re not staying at the vicarage?’

Very quick, she thought. Perhaps his emotional turmoil during most of their later sessions in the prison had obscured just how sharp his mind was.

‘Mr Hollins did ask, but I’d booked a room at the village inn. Only, when I got there, it turned out there’d been a mix-up. The landlord said he was sorry, it must have been the girl who took my order, but they were full.’

‘That would be Jimmy Frith, better known as Froth,’ said Hadda. ‘Big fat man, in his sixties, sharp intake of breath when he saw you, smiled a lot as he told you to sod off?’

‘Are you suggesting he lied because I’m black?’ said Alva. She’d suspected it herself, but couldn’t be bothered to make a fuss.

‘Hard to prove,’ said Hadda. ‘For a start, it’s against the law, and you need to get up very early in the morning to catch our Jimmy breaking the law.’

‘Then perhaps someone ought to get up early in the morning,’ she said, irritated at what seemed a rural complacency in the face of prejudice.

‘Maybe somebody will,’ he said, smiling. ‘So you didn’t head back to the vicarage to take up the padre’s offer?’

‘No, I thought if I came straight out here, maybe I could take a good step south this evening.’

He said, ‘You can stay here if you like.’

The offer took her by surprise.

She said, ‘Thanks, but I don’t think . . .’

‘It’s all right, you don’t have to brush up your transference theory, I haven’t taken a sudden strange fancy to you,’ he said. ‘It will be getting dark soon, the mist will be rising, the frost falling, and you don’t want to be driving round our narrow roads in those conditions.’

‘It’s not dark yet,’ she said.

‘No, but it will be by the time you interrogate me about the money,’ he said.

I was right, she thought. He knows exactly why Hollins contacted me. This is not a good start!

He went on, ‘Also you’d be doing me a favour.’

‘How so?’

‘Imo won’t come back if she thinks you’re still around and, to be honest, I don’t think I’m ready yet to meet her face to face.’

This was indeed honest. One thing you learned to distrust in patients like Hadda was a show of honesty.

Delaying her decision, Alva said, ‘But having me here one night wouldn’t be much help. Surely she’ll be staying at the castle for the entire holiday?’

He said, ‘Someone more suspicious than me might think you were fishing for an invite to spend all of Christmas at Birkstane.’

‘Someone couldn’t be more wrong,’ she said. ‘My parents are expecting me.’

‘And you want to spend Christmas with them?’ He sounded genuinely curious.

She said, ‘Certainly I do.’

‘Touching,’ he said, regarding her expectantly.

Why am I delaying this decision? she asked herself. She knew it ought to be
No.
But she also knew it was going to be
Yes.

She said, ‘Thank you, I will stay here tonight.’

‘Great. Off you go and get your case. I’d offer myself but you’ll be twice as quick. And lock the car this time. Oh, hang on a sec.’

He went out of the kitchen and returned with a couple of heavy blankets.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take these.’

For a moment she thought he was inviting her to make herself a bed on the kitchen floor, or out in the barn. Her uncertainty must have shown for he grinned and said, ‘Drape them over the bonnet of your car. It’s going to be a bloody cold night and we don’t want your radiator to freeze up, do we?’

She took the blankets and left the house. When she returned, she saw he’d been busy. Logs had been piled on to the kitchen fire, the washed dishes were draining by the sink, and an electric kettle came to the boil and switched itself off as she entered the room.

He must have heard her come in. From somewhere above, his voice called, ‘Up here.’

She left the kitchen and went up a steep flight of worn stone stairs.

Sound and an open door led her into a bedroom where she found Hadda shaking a fresh white sheet out over a bed.

‘Tuck that side in, will you?’ he said.

She obeyed. As she helped him with the second sheet, she noticed a pile of bedding on the floor by the door.

‘This is your bedroom,’ she said.

‘That’s right.’

‘But I can’t move you out of your own bed,’ she protested.

‘No problem. There are two other rooms with perfectly good beds in them,’ he said, swiftly and efficiently piling blankets on top of the sheets. ‘But they’ll need a bit of airing.’

‘I’d be perfectly happy . . .’

‘I wouldn’t,’ he interrupted. ‘I can guarantee your virtue is safe under my roof, but I can’t do the same for your respiratory system if you don’t use this room.’

‘But what about you?’

‘You forget where I’ve spent most of the last decade,’ he said. ‘Her Majesty’s hospitality either wrecks you or leaves you with the constitution of a polar bear. The speed I move, I’ve had to develop highly efficient heat-conservation circuits. There, if you need more blankets, you’ll find them in that chest. I’ve laid a fire in the grate to take the chill off the air. There should be plenty of space in the wardrobe unless that bag of yours holds a lot more than it looks to.’

He stooped to set a match to the fire as Alva put her bag on the bed and unzipped it. Then she went to the wardrobe to check if Hadda’s notion of plenty of room matched hers.

It did, though the wine box on the wardrobe floor might impede the hang of the one long dress she’d packed – not in any expectation of needing it but because her actress mother had taught her what she claimed as an old touring adage,
When packing, try to anticipate the extremes which are, sleeping on your dressing-room floor or dining with a duke.

‘Yes,’ said Hadda behind her. ‘That’s the secret booze hoard I’m sure Hollins has told you he chanced upon. And seeing as you know about it, we might as well spare ourselves Tesco’s cut-price Shiraz.’

He stooped down and drew out a bottle.

‘He told me he chanced upon your money chest too,’ said Alva.

‘Is that how he put it?’ said Hadda. ‘Well, if like a timid old maid, you check under the bed before you get into it, you’ll work out that he must also have chanced to get down on his knees, pull it out, turn the key and raise the lid.’

‘I might have done the same, out of curiosity,’ she said.

‘So you might. But you are my guest and this is your room, and therefore you have certain rights of access.’

Then he laughed and said, ‘But don’t worry, I’ll practise what I presume Hollins preaches and forgive him. Now, have you got everything?’

‘I think so. Let me see . . .’ She looked around. A stack of books on the deep sill of the small window caught her eye. ‘. . . Yes, even bedtime reading. Hello, I thought I recognized that lurid green jacket . . .’

She went to the window and picked up a copy of
Curing Souls.

‘Now this is very flattering,’ she said lightly. ‘What happened? You got a psychic message that I might be coming, so thought you would try to impress me?’

‘Something like that,’ he said, smiling as he took the book from her hand.

‘At least let me sign it.’

‘Later perhaps,’ he said firmly. ‘Oh, one thing I forgot. Bathroom is first left. Water pressure is pathetic, hot water is in short supply, but don’t be put off by the faintly brown tinge, it makes a lovely cup of tea which will be awaiting you when you’re ready to come down.’

He left her.

She thought of only unpacking what she’d need for tonight to make a statement. But it would only be a statement if at some point he came into the room to notice.

She unpacked everything. As she hung her clothes up, her thoughts kept turning to the box. Should she open it or not? He’d more or less given her permission. More or less. In any case, no need to admit to opening it. Unless there was some way he could tell if it had been touched, some little trick he’d picked up in prison, a hair across the lid, for instance . . .

This is silly, she told herself. Open it, and if he asks, admit to it.