A Cotswold Ordeal (23 page)

Valerie behaved as if Thea had not even spoken. ‘I came, actually, to warn you,’ she said, with an air of adult forbearance in the presence of a hysterical child. ‘If you’re thinking of staying here alone tonight, my advice is, don’t.’

‘Why? What’s going to happen? Why do people keep talking about a crisis that’s going to happen here?’

‘You’d better ask your nice friendly policeman about that,’ said Valerie, before she strode away.

Centuries ago, Thea remembered, before she and Joss had embarked on their ill-fated walk, Hollis had said something to the effect that he expected the whole murder investigation to be resolved before the end of the day. That didn’t leave him much time. Or had the two accidents – to Franklyn’s knee and Jocelyn’s elbow – set the whole
thing back? Or had he shelved it in favour of a rendezvous with Thea, alone at last, when they might drink wine, and tell stories about their lives…her insides turned warm and liquid at the thought.

Instead, the sound of an approaching engine caught her attention and she paused on the doorstep. Other traffic did pass the gate, of course, and she was no expert on the sounds of differing types of vehicle, but something made her think it was Alex bringing Jocelyn back to collect her things.

And she was right. ‘Here they are,’ she said to Hepzie, before they’d even turned in through the gate.

Jocelyn’s arm was in a sling, bound tightly to her body, remarkably disabling. ‘And it really isn’t broken?’ Thea asked for a second time. ‘Why do you need all these bandages, then?’

‘It’s
chipped,
I told you,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It needs to be kept in exactly the right position, so it can heal over properly. Elbows are very complicated,’ she added importantly. ‘If I started trying to use it, it could grow a spur, or something. It’d lead to trouble later on.’ Thea refrained from querying this typical vagueness.

‘How long is all this for? And what about the ankle?’

‘Ten or twelve days, they think. It’s not like being in plaster for six weeks. I have to go and have another X-ray before they take the bandages off. And the ankle’s only sprained. They’ve bound it up tight and it hardly hurts any more.’

‘Well, you won’t be able to drive,’ said Thea.

‘Or cook or wash up or change sheets or about a million things,’ said Jocelyn with some smugness. ‘It’s worse than having no arm at all, in a way. They told Alex I had to be treated like a porcelain doll.’

Thea glanced nervously at her brother-in-law, who was sensibly keeping his distance, much to Thea’s relief. Having to cope with the response of a violent husband to his wife being likened to a china doll was an irony too far, under the circumstances.

‘Shall I make us something to eat?’ she offered, hoping they would decline. Surely they were eager to get home, see the kids, relieve the babysitting grandmother of her duties? But it seemed not. Jocelyn and Alex both responded enthusiastically to the suggestion.

Suppressing a sigh, Thea listed the options. ‘There’s sausages and bacon, and some frozen fish – though I’m not sure we ought to eat that. It looks a bit special.’

‘Sausages will be fine,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Somebody will have to cut them up for me.’ She giggled.

‘And eggs,’ Alex added. ‘Could you find us some eggs?’

Jocelyn snorted. ‘The place is overflowing with them, thanks to all those birds outside. More than we know what to do with.’

Jocelyn had become a different person in the presence of her husband. She was tense and self-effacing. When he spoke, she flinched. Thea scanned her memories of recent visits to them, wondering if she’d failed to notice this changed behaviour. After half an hour she was almost ready to punch her sister herself.

The question was, had she become like this because of the violence, or had the way she acted provoked the assaults? Surely it could only be the former. Which left the same bewilderment as to what exactly had motivated Alex in the first place.

She told them about Valerie Innes’s visitation, just for something to say. But Jocelyn had evidently withdrawn all interest from the murder investigation, and when Thea attempted to run a few theories past her, she waved them away as if they were annoying insects. Alex showed a polite attention, but it was clear that his own thoughts left little space for evildoing in a remote corner of the Cotswolds. Hepzie, mindful of her bath and the
trauma in the woods, kept her distance, turning her back on human beings until they saw the error of their ways and apologised.

But Thea could not ignore the rising crescendo of excitement inside her. Hollis was going to spend the evening with her. She would have him to herself at last. Even if they spent the time discussing the killing of Nick Franklyn, they would be learning about each other, joking, smiling, and possibly even touching. Her emotions leapt from anticipation to anxiety, through impatience, self-mockery and a nameless sense of falling away from promised light back into the grey flat place she had inhabited a year ago, because anything else was too much to expect or hope for.

‘We’d better go,’ said Jocelyn, the meal concluded. ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Come on. Don’t be like that. Lover Boy’s probably hiding down the lane, just waiting to see us leave.’

‘Who?’ Alex frowned at them both. ‘Has Thea got a boyfriend?’

Jocelyn closed her eyes for two long seconds. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘It’s the chap in charge of the murder inquiry.’

Thea desperately wanted to ask Jocelyn if
she
would be all right. Parting from her was suddenly much more difficult than expected. Something vital
was missing between her and Alex: the spark that linked married couples, despite the usual frictions and frustrations of ordinary life. They weren’t looking at each other and kept a space between them. When Alex hovered beside her, conscious of the injured ankle, trying to help her, she cringed away from him. It seemed blatant to Thea now, and horribly important. How they could sleep in the same bed, or even ride in the same car, was beyond her.

‘I’ll phone you tomorrow,’ Thea said. ‘To see how you are. And I’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out here.’

‘Yes,’ said Jocelyn. ‘You do that.’

They finally left at eight o’clock. Jocelyn’s car remained at Juniper Court until arrangements could be made to retrieve it. The sisters hugged gingerly, paying due regard to the damaged arm.

‘I’ll phone you in the morning,’ was all Thea could manage to say.

‘At last!’ moaned Hollis when she phoned him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Tired,’ Thea admitted. ‘It’s been an extremely long day.’

‘Poor you. Well, give me ten minutes. I’m afraid the day isn’t done with yet. And keep the doors locked, will you? Don’t let anybody in except me.’

She laughed and promised to comply.

He was there in nine minutes, enfolding Thea in his arms the moment she’d opened the door. It felt like two pieces of jigsaw finally interlocking, settling down in their allotted places after a long frustrating series of setbacks. They clung and sighed and rocked for a whole long minute.

‘Hello,’ she said, eventually. ‘What happens now?’

‘What happens now is that I pull myself together, remember who I am and what I’m meant to be doing this evening. I’ve got a whole team of officers out there, waiting to make a move, all relying on me for their instructions. And everything’s been held up because of your highly annoying sister.’

‘Surely not? Why is she so important?’

‘Because I need to get you out of here, without attracting any notice.’

‘I see,’ she lied.

He smiled down at her and her heart went soft and light, and she had to swallow down the yearning simply to take him to bed and never let him go.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Why’s this so difficult?’

‘It’ll be fine. We’re almost there now. Just a few more twists and turns through the maze and we’ll be out in the sunlight.’

‘Lord, don’t tell me you’re a poet!’

‘No danger of that. I just have an unfortunate liking for metaphors. Look, we’ll have to go.’

‘We? Go?’

‘Yes, I told you. I can’t leave you here, it isn’t safe. I shouldn’t be telling you anything, by rights, but I can just say we’ve set up a sort of ambush at the barn. There’s almost enough evidence for a conviction, but my orders are to go for belt and braces.’

She watched her expectations shrivel, leaving her drained and passive. ‘Why can’t I just stay here and wait until it’s all over?’

‘Because there are a few unpredictable elements. We still can’t work out why Franklyn’s body was brought here hours after the killing. There’s some sort of message there, and one reading of it is that it’s a warning to anybody at Juniper Court.’

She was reminded of the Phillipses. ‘Have you contacted Julia again? Is Desmond answering his phone? Is it right that Flora’s been sent to Liverpool?’

He pulled a face. ‘Mrs Phillips is in serious trouble. She’s checked out of the hotel where she was staying with the three younger children, and didn’t leave word as to where she’d be. The Garda have been looking for her all day.’

‘She can’t be that hard to find, surely? You’ve got the number of her car, haven’t you?’

‘Ireland’s an easy place to lose yourself. They will be found, but it’s annoying, and time-consuming.’

‘And it looks bad,’ Thea agreed. ‘Maybe they’ve
just gone to join Desmond. He’s off fishing in the mountains somewhere, isn’t he?’

‘So it seems. He’s certainly a dedicated fisherman.’

‘So they don’t know about Flora? She said she told each parent she was with the other one. Maybe Julia’s set off to try to find her, with Desmond not picking up his phone messages. That would make sense. It’s bound to be perfectly innocent.’

Hollis smiled forbearingly. ‘I’m not sure anything in this case is perfectly innocent,’ he said.

He explained briefly that the burden of suspicion for the murder of Nick Franklyn lay squarely on the Innes brothers, who were known to be part of the Rural Warriors, with Nick as leader. That there had been friction in recent weeks over the prioritising of campaigns. When questioned by the police, Frannie Craven had freely acknowledged her own involvement, and had described meetings where tempers had flared – in particular between the Inneses and Nick. She had listed nearly twenty local people who were either active members or regular sympathisers, including Cecilia Clifton, Flora Phillips, the landlords of both the nearby pubs and the Master of Foxhounds. But not Desmond or Julia Phillips.

The barn, owned by the Innes family, was one of the meeting places, where some of the more sensitive equipment was stored, including balaclava helmets, climbing equipment, placards and leaflets.
When Valerie Innes, owner of the barn, had been questioned, she professed to have left her sons to their own devices, having been assured by them that they would not break any laws.

‘Did she know Nick was actually
living
there?’

‘She called him an illegal squatter, so I guess she did.’

‘But that husband of hers would have evicted him, surely? It must have been a direct ploy to stop him converting the barn.’

‘Too risky. If the media got the story there’d be a lot of sympathy for Franklyn and not much for Innes. It suited him better to bide his time and do things in his own sneaky way.’

‘But it gave you the idea that his sons could have had mixed feelings about Nick,’ Thea realised. ‘Family loyalty in conflict with their protest activities. And Jeremy’s basically a law-abiding lad, with a lot to lose. Plus a mother you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. Does she know they’re your chief suspects, by the way? And what about the influential husband? What’s he saying?’

‘He’s tying himself in knots, pulling every string in Gloucestershire to protect them. He forced us to release Dominic before we wanted to. He’s got a top lawyer standing by to thwart every move we make.’

‘Hence the belt and braces,’ Thea realised.

‘Precisely.’ Hollis spoke with relish. ‘And we’ll get them, you see.’

‘But I still don’t think they did it,’ she said, surprising herself with this abrupt certainty.

‘Oh, don’t you?’

‘I can see the logic, from your point of view, and all the evidence and so forth. But we know they were all in the barn together on Sunday night, plotting their strategy. So there’s sure to be traces from Dominic and Jeremy anyway. Why them, incidentally, and not one of the others?’

‘There are only two others who ever met at the barn, and they can prove they were at home all Sunday night.’

‘What about Nigel Franklyn? You believe his story now, do you?’

‘I do, as it happens. It’s vague enough to be credible. And there’s no trace of him at the barn. He swears he didn’t know anything about it and I believe him. The client at Bisley backs up his story and says he was quite calm and focused. If he’d just killed his son and then hanged his dead body from a stable roof, I think he’d be in rather a state, don’t you?’

‘You’re saying the same person killed him then hanged him here?’

‘Actually, we’ve still got an open mind about that.’

‘And how many hours between the two events?’

‘Impossible to say for sure, but it must have been after midnight when he was killed. Possibly as late
as three or four in the morning.’ He looked hard at her. ‘But you don’t believe I’m right?’

She shook her head. ‘It feels wrong to me. With all those people on Frannie’s list, it’s too simple to just dump everything on Jeremy and Dominic. It leaves too much out – like why take the body to Juniper Court?’

‘To divert attention from the barn. They must have hoped we’d never discover that Nick was dossing there.’

Thea wondered about this. ‘That would work if the suicide idea had stuck,’ she nodded. ‘They must have underestimated the intelligence of the police, in that case.’

Hollis grimaced. ‘Most people do,’ he said. ‘Sometimes with good reason, to be honest. If things had been busy, and the killer just slightly more clever, it could have worked.’

She nodded. The same set of thoughts went around yet again: that somebody had brought Nick’s body from the barn to Juniper Court, hiding somewhere until Thea left for her walk, and then lugging the corpse up into the loft. ‘But it’s so
horrible
,’ she shuddered. ‘I keep imagining the dead weight of him, being winched up like that.’

She heard her own words.
Winched up
. She had not in fact visualised it happening like that until now. She’d imagined the killer on the upper level, holding the rope and pushing the body over the
edge with the noose around its neck, the roof beam taking the weight. Now she realised the body could have been at ground level, the rope slung over the beam, and hauled steadily up to where she had found it. ‘Could one person have done it alone?’ she wondered.

‘We re-enacted it,’ he said unemotionally. ‘It would be awkward, but possible.’

‘It sounds as if you’ve opted for the simplest explanation,’ she said. ‘A falling-out amongst the protesters. Dominic and Jeremy strangle Nick, and then leave him here as a warning to Desmond not to go ahead with his fish farm idea. Simple. Nick’s father maybe heard there was trouble brewing, which is why he was suddenly so keen to find him. Valerie’s such a control freak, she thinks she can just bully everybody into doing what she wants – is her husband as bad as her?’ She frowned. ‘That would be unusual. Women like that generally have wimpy little husbands.’

‘He’s not a wimp,’ Hollis smiled. ‘He’s a big noise in the Planning Office, as it happens.’

‘Heavens! That must make for some good old family rows.’

‘That’s where your theory might hold water. It seems he doesn’t discuss his work with anybody. He’s a Freemason, as well. Friends in high places. And a very nice slice of old money, inherited last year from his father.’

‘Those boys didn’t do it,’ said Thea again.

‘You mean, you’ve looked into their eyes and judged them to be pure?’

‘Pretty much that, yes,’ she said, meeting his gaze full on. ‘You’re taking Dominic’s attack on Jocelyn as indicating he’s capable of violence. But actually, it’s just the opposite. He was very uncomfortable with it, none of that craziness you’d have to have to kill somebody.’

‘But the method. Coming up behind his victim and grabbing them by the neck.’

‘Is that how it was with Nick?’

‘Must have been. A length of strong cord was pulled tight from behind him. No signs of any chance to defend himself. Not a bruise on him anywhere. Just quick and probably completely unexpected.’

‘Premeditated, then.’

‘Looks like it.’

They were still in the hall, talking fast, watching each other’s faces, aware of snatching time before Hollis got on with his job. Now he went to the front door, waving her to accompany him. ‘We should have left ages ago,’ he tutted.

‘But – how do you know they’ll be there? What are you going to do? Won’t I be in the way?’

‘We have information,’ he said inscrutably. ‘They’re meeting at the barn, and then there’s talk of making some sort of attack on Juniper Court, for reasons we still don’t understand at all.’

‘Something to do with Flora,’ Thea said. ‘Jeremy hinted at something when I saw him today. He was going to say more when one of his mates stopped him.’

‘Well, we won’t let it get that far. You’re going to sit tight in the car until it’s all over.’

‘And what about Hepzie?’

‘What?’

‘If it isn’t safe for me to stay here, then it isn’t safe for her. I’m really sorry, but I can’t just leave her. Not after what happened at Duntisbourne. Do you understand?’