A Dirty Death (27 page)

‘Only me!’ she called, the moment she cycled into the yard. Miranda waved a brief welcome. Lilah sighed.

The visitor came and stood in front of them, hands on her hips. ‘This isn’t what I expected to see,’ she commented. ‘You’re supposed to be rushed off your feet.’

‘We are,’ said Lilah. ‘You see us collapsed from exhaustion.’

‘It’s all go at my place, too. The goat’s kidded already, and one of the cats looks as if it’ll die any minute. It ought to be knocked on the head, really. And everyone else seems to be rushing about, too – crazy on a day like this. I passed young Tim just 
now, driving much too fast for these lanes. The Wing Commander’s taken Mrs out for a spin, as well. They are funny. More of a menace than Tim, if anything. She can’t sit up properly any more, and he rams her into the front seat like a doll. Then he drives with one hand supporting her. This whole village is a madhouse these days. Redstone seems quite a haven, by comparison.’

Miranda gave a grunt of derision. ‘Yes, we must be. We’ve just got muck and murder and—’

‘Misery,’ finished Lilah. ‘Which reminds me – I haven’t phoned the vet about poor Particular yet.’ She went to get up.

‘I did that,’ said Miranda. ‘He ought to have been here by now. Sorry, I forgot to tell you.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Sylvia, and the whole story was recounted to her. ‘Poor thing,’ was her brief response. ‘Now, surely there are things I could be doing?’

‘Just talk to us,’ said Miranda. ‘Just at this moment finding work for you is almost as exhausting as doing it ourselves – eh, Li?’

Her daughter looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. Miranda was exactly right. Finding work for Sylvia felt wrong, in a number of ways. Her mother’s friend’s role was as confidante and consoler, not farm worker. Until the vet arrived, everything could wait. She sipped again at her tea and thought about the things she and Roddy 
had said about Sylvia. Now the woman herself was here, it all seemed sillier than any game; the product of fevered imaginations and too much horror.

‘Oh, and I forgot the biggest news of all,’ Sylvia continued. ‘They’ve released poor old Amos. I saw him being driven home in a police car. Looked rather green, I thought. Somebody should go and see that he’s all right.’

‘Well, it isn’t going to be me,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ve a feeling he’s been nursing some sort of crush on me, ever since we moved here. Though don’t tell anybody I said so.’

‘And it isn’t going to be me, either,’ said Lilah. ‘I nominate the vicar.’ Their laughter brought Roddy from the house to stare at them in disgust.

Amos had very mixed feelings about being returned home, especially as he had been forced to promise not to leave the immediate area of the village without police permission. ‘You still think I did it then?’ he said bitterly. ‘Just can’t find enough proof, I suppose.’ He had grown bolder during his days in custody. It seemed to him that there was less and less to lose, as time went on.

His house was different again. There had been a renewed police examination, since he had become implicated in the Redstone murders. Silvery powder marks showed where they had taken fingerprints, and his bed was not at all as he had left it. ‘Don’t suppose you found anything,’ he said. The policeman wouldn’t meet his gaze. 

‘Will you be all right, sir?’ he asked, for form’s sake. Amos felt like telling him no, of course he wouldn’t be all right. There was no food in the house; he had the ghost of Isaac on one hand and the threat of Phoebe on the other; and that murdering thug somewhere out there, planning God knows what. He just nodded, with a surly scowl, and shut the door firmly behind the constable.

He had no idea of the date, and wasn’t even sure what day it was. His old van, which he and Isaac had used for their infrequent journeys further afield than the village, was very unlikely to start, which meant he’d have to walk to the local shop for groceries. With something like yearning, he gazed down at Redstone from his bedroom window. They’d have milk to spare. He had a passion for hot chocolate made with full-cream milk, and more than anything, that was what he craved now. Something sweet and warm, to assuage all the pain and confusion of the past weeks. They’d given it to him in hospital, though watery and tepid, but at the police station all he’d been offered was tea.

What would it be like down at Redstone now? he wondered. With Sam Carter dead, they’d be struggling. He could go and offer them some help. But he remembered that he was suspected of killing Sam, and possibly Guy Beardon too. Miranda 
would look at him with suspicion, perhaps even revulsion. He wouldn’t be able to abide that.

But neither could he abide hanging about here, scared of every sound, shaking with the fear of unknown attackers. And known ones. Someone had come into his house and clubbed his brother to death. That was real, although he still couldn’t fully believe it. His own head had been broken, too. Slowly, standing there at his upstairs window, watching the sweep of fields down to Redstone, and then up again beyond, to woodlands and moors in the far distance, his fear turned to rage. What had Isaac ever done to deserve that? What had either of them ever done? His conscience was clear as a bell. Neither of them had ever hurt a fly without good reason.

There was no movement in the picture he contemplated, beyond the swirl of a group of birds on the edge of the far woods. Amos had excellent eyesight and the light was good. A pigeon on the roof of Redstone was clearly visible to him. Pity he hadn’t been standing here that morning when Guy Beardon was pushed into the slurry.

With a sigh, he turned away and restlessly paced the room, trying to think what to do next. Something had to be done to settle this murder business once and for all. None of it made sense to him, except that there was a natural urge for revenge taking root in his mind. There didn’t 
seem to be much prospect of the police catching anybody. Their daft questions had shown how lost they were. Well, then, he’d have to get out there and see what he could find out for himself. Rather than continuing to be scared of Phoebe and her mad ways, he decided to tackle her head on. She had to be at the back of it all somehow. Why else would she turn up after all these years and take over his house? He thought again of those eyes, glaring at him through the grey woollen slit of the balaclava. Was it possible that it had been Phoebe herself and not a man at all? How could he be sure of his description, when he’d been woozy with sleep and terror and bewilderment? If Isaac hadn’t been dead, Amos could easily have convinced himself now that the whole thing had been nothing more than a dream.

And yet he could not imagine why Phoebe should want him and Isaac dead. Nor could he credit the idea that she had somehow induced a young vagrant to do the deed for her. Even Phoebe Winnicombe would need a powerful reason for such an act and Amos knew of nothing in the world to account for such a theory.

Just the same, she had said and done enough crazy things in the past days to warrant his going to see her. If he didn’t do so, he thought the questions pounding at his head would drive him mad.

He went to the top drawer of his tallboy where 
he’d always kept a stack of cash, and pulled it open, half expecting it to have gone. But it was all there, in the pink plastic bags that the bank had given him. Five-pound notes were rolled up tightly together and secured with an elastic band. Deftly Amos took three from the roll, and replaced the rest. Then he took down his canvas shopping bag from its hook on the kitchen. Amos had a deep aversion to plastic carrier bags and would never accept one with his shopping.

There were a few lettuces in the garden, just starting to bolt. He pulled one up and shook it clean. Discarding a few outer leaves, he began to eat it, there in the garden, until it was all gone. It had a refreshing effect, but did little for his nagging hunger. Without bothering to lock the door, he set off towards the village, the shop and Phoebe’s cottage.

She had lived here all her life, just as Amos and Isaac had always done. Thinking back, as he walked, Amos could remember the first time he’d noticed her. He had been twenty-five and she was ten or twelve. A smiling child, with skin like honey and long black hair. She had always been loud, shouting orders at the village boys, arguing, complaining. Her parents had been half-gypsy, though seemingly not inclined to travel. She had not been trained in any of the usual conventions; the cottage had no hot water, no bathroom, no 
heating. It stood high on a bank, halfway up a stony track beside the churchyard which led nowhere. The cob walls were always stained with damp, the window frames ragged with rot. Phoebe had had a young sister, who died one winter, as everyone watched helplessly. That had all been forty years ago, but only the superficial things had really changed.

Phoebe had done poorly at school, like Amos. Nobody cared, at that secondary modern, whether they stayed at home to help with digging potatoes or carting hay. They had grasped the basics of reading, and could write neatly when required to do so. But even now, in a world gone mad with writing and reading, there was precious little necessity for it in their daily lives.

The cottage was in a better state now. In the long, slow years of her life, Phoebe had enjoyed some success and made herself some money by being an expert in more than one field. Nothing so obvious as basket making or herbal concoctions, with the inevitable twee stalls at craft fairs calling for gingham decorations and fancy labels. Phoebe was, or had been, the best thatcher in the area. She could also lay a hedge as fast and straight as anyone in the county. Such skills were rare, and the payments for them high. Her cottage now had a new damp course, weatherproofing and central heating.

Amos had been taken with the young Phoebe, 
and watched her grow, year by year. He heard her pour scorn on men and their ways, and announce to the world that she would never marry. That suited him nicely; his mother had decreed that he should never marry, either. He had Isaac to care for. That was his child, his family. He had submitted with little sense of outrage or deprivation.

So it was that he and Phoebe had a history, and as he came close to her cottage, knowing somehow for sure that she was in, waiting for him, it seemed that he must finally confront her with it, and take hold at last of the consequences.

He had no need to knock. The door stood open, the weak sun, obscured by a layer of cloud, casting a soft shadow across the threshold. He stepped into the living room, which lay immediately beyond the door, paused, and cleared his throat. ‘Hello?’ he said, in a normal tone. ‘You there?’

He braced himself for the worst – a sudden leap from behind the door, a knife poised to stab him; a torrent of cruel abuse and contempt; tears; insanity. There was movement in the room beyond the one he now stood in. He heard a voice whispering. ‘Phoebe,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

Some scuffling and another spate of whispering preceding a flurry of female bodies, and then there were two of them standing side by side, across the room, looking at him without expression. One 
of them nudged the other, who grinned foolishly. Then she said, ‘Hello, Daddy.’

He had, of course, come across Elvira from time to time, over the years. She had never seemed to be any of his business. Like her mother in appearance, although much heavier, with a wide, pale face, she trudged around the lanes, her gaze mostly downcast. She appeared always to be in a world of her own, often intent on some incomprehensible matter of her own, sometimes muttering to herself. She carried a basket, and gathered berries and mushrooms. As far as anyone knew, Phoebe was a satisfactory mother, keeping the girl clean and fed in somewhat better fashion than her own experience had been. Nobody had the slightest idea who Elvira’s father might be.

Amos stared stupidly at the two women. Something crumbled inside him, some walled-up knowledge that he had not so much struggled to deny, as simply forgotten about. Elvira must be somewhere over twenty by this time, he supposed, though an exact calculation was beyond him. The years were all so alike, there was nothing he could find to pin down dates with any accuracy. The girl’s simple mind was forever fixed in childhood, so that it made little sense to count the years. He had known, in a vague way, that he could technically be her father. And the knowledge meant scarcely anything to him. A pang of shame, a tweak of pity 
would perhaps grip him on a wakeful night when the thought of a wife and child came warm and inviting to his lonely bed. To be followed all too swiftly by the awareness that only one person in the world could ever be that wife, and she had vowed never to marry. But though she remained steadfastly single, Phoebe would never have permitted Amos to marry another woman. This he knew for certain, without ever needing to be told.

‘Wh-what?’ he stuttered. ‘What did you say?’

‘She’s your girl, Amos,’ Phoebe clarified, her voice like broken glass. ‘And ’tis time you confessed it.’

He stood up taller, the anger slowly returning. ‘When have I had a chance of that?’ he demanded. ‘Confess, is it! Seems I’m to spend my days confessing, just now.’

The words were muddled, but the feeling was clear. All his life, this woman had played with him, spoilt everything for him. She had taunted Isaac in their younger days, whilst having her own daft girl, even worse in the head, some might say.

‘I am not in your debt,’ he said. ‘Too late now, Phoebe, to try to make out that I am.’

‘Time has no meaning in this,’ she said, taking her daughter’s arm. ‘This is your rightful child. And you’ve always known it to be so.’

‘She could have been once,’ he said, suddenly sad and soft, thinking of the might-have-beens. ‘But you 
kept her for your own. You, Phoebe Winnicombe, always so strong and proud. People said you’d found her in the churchyard or stolen her from a pram. Or that you got her from some passing stranger who never knew what he’d done. If you say it was me, then that’s just words now. The time has long gone when I could have cared about her.’

‘No! All you ever cared for was that useless brother. Now he’s gone, and Elvira’s to take his place. I’m decided.’

Amos felt a derisive laugh struggling to burst out. But he dared not laugh at Phoebe. Something was becoming clear in his mind, a terrible thing, which he did not want to face. He struggled against it, insisting to himself that he must be wrong. Whatever she might say, however harshly she might say it, he still would not believe that she had had Isaac killed.

He remembered again the murdering figure with the mask across his face, swinging the crowbar. There had been nothing familiar about him, in his youth and the blaze of his dark eyes. It had been a look of purpose, an intentness to finish an unpleasant job.

And yet. Whereas before there had been no motive as to why Isaac should die, now something was forming in his mind as he observed his one-time lover and her daughter standing there before him, and it changed everything.