A Dirty Death (29 page)

Then, as if to confirm her hesitation, a car drove into the yard. She didn’t immediately recognise the sporty red model, and even took a moment to identify the young man who jumped out with remarkable energy. Then she realised who he was: young Tim Rickworth, the husband of Sarah, the overworked computer whizz kid who did little but dash hither and yon in his fast red car.

Bewildered, she went to meet him at the door. ‘Hi!’ he greeted, as if he regularly paid her a visit. ‘How’s it going?’

She expelled an expressive sigh.

‘Just as I thought,’ he trumpeted. ‘Well, sigh no more, fair lady. Sir Galahad is here at last.’

‘Er—’ She’d heard that Tim and Sarah were both on the unpredictable end of the spectrum. She wondered now whether he might be seriously unstable.

‘Sorry,’ he grinned, dropping the medieval act. ‘It’s simple really. I finished a contract yesterday, and have promised myself a whole month off. I did book us a farmhouse in the Dordogne, actually, but Sarah’s refused to go, so that’s off. It’s an ill wind – because I honestly would love to come over and lend a hand, if you think I’d be any use. No strings, no need to pay me or 
anything. I guess it’s just a romantic gesture on my part – reading too much Laurie Lee, if you like. I like cows, especially your sweet little fawn ones with the long eyelashes. If someone can just give me a couple of lessons in milking, then I’m your man. No hour too early, no task too mucky. Well, within reason.’

‘Gosh!’ said Miranda. ‘Don’t pinch me. I don’t want to wake up from this one.’

Tim’s laugh was a little forced. ‘So?’ he said, after a moment. ‘What do you say?’

‘I’m tempted to say I don’t believe you, but that might be rude. I think we’ll have to find Lilah, and see what she says. She’s really the boss around here, these days.’

‘She’s over there, look, doing something manful with those bales. Hey, Lilah, put that down. Let Sir Galahad shoulder thy ponderous burden!’ And he ran across to where she was struggling with some hay and took it from her. Astonished, she could only stare at him, mouth wide open.

Cappy had left the house just as it got light, to the sound of hectic birdsong and Jonathan’s gentle snores. Summer mornings were magical to her, coming as she did from northern latitudes where the light was something precious, to be celebrated extravagantly. It was also a time for secret activity, unobserved by others. A time to defy the senseless laws of her adopted country, and pursue her own ends undisturbed.

In a remote corner of the great Mabberley woods, Cappy had cleared a piece of ground, tilling it and letting in the sunlight. Then she had planted a forbidden herb and kept her seedlings safe from potentially marauding deer or squirrels with cleverly camouflaged netting and sheets of 
polythene. It was a minor indulgence, a small-scale business, which occupied little of her time. But it accounted for her presence in the woods, and how she came to notice the hidden camp in the bracken. It had not taken long for her interest to be diverted to the goings-on there.

This morning, she crept silently along the invisible path, until she could see the hideaway. There was a canvas bag on the ground beside the fire circle, and a pair of Doc Marten boots. Someone was at home – and unlikely to stir for some hours yet, she assumed. Squatting out of sight, she considered her alternatives, slowly and methodically. It was beginning to worry her that this camp existed; it seemed now that it had to be connected to the Redstone murders, and was therefore sure to implicate her and Jonathan in some way. It would suit her very well for it to be gone and the people driven well away. And now that she knew the identity of one of them, she could take steps to orchestrate their removal.

Elvira had always fascinated Cappy. A great lumpen girl, with striking black hair and a meaningless grin, she had seemed to hang about the village doing nothing for as long as Cappy could remember. Phoebe, her mother, was an alarming woman, snappy and independent, seldom responding to Cappy’s friendly waves and smiles. Together the pair resembled something 
from an old English novel: a Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens. But they were only too real, and when Jonathan had mentioned seeing Elvira with a strange young man, showing every sign of being her boyfriend or lover, Cappy had worried. And Cappy did not like to worry. She actively sought serenity, smoothing out wrinkles in her life almost before they happened. Jonathan’s regular pleadings for a child was one of these wrinkles, the biggest of them all. Knowing how disorganising and unpredictable children were, she shuddered at the idea. Knowing her own paradoxical nature, harsh in many ways, but unduly sensitive in others, she shuddered even more. And the presence of this camp in the bracken was another source of the anxiety she tried so hard to avoid.

She wanted them gone for her own selfish reasons. Yet now that she knew that one of the campers was Elvira, she was also anxious for the girl’s welfare. She had to do something
now
, this morning, before the turmoil inside her became unbearable, although doing it would in the short run only create more turmoil. With a deep sigh, she stood up, and carefully trod the zigzag route back to the main path through the woods.

It was a mile and a half to the village, where she now had to go. Taking the car would wake Jonathan, so she would walk. She was still too early, anyway. The path came out onto a stretch 
of road leading to the village, past the northern boundary of Redstone’s land. The Redstone buildings could not be seen from there, but the Grimsdales’ house could, on the crest of the opposite hill. There was no high hedge on either side of this road, it having been widened in recent years, and the great banks bulldozed away, to be replaced by an ugly fence of posts and wire. Nobody, it seemed, had been willing to pay for a new hedge to be laid. Not Guy and not the Council. Pity, thought Cappy, not for the first time. It would have been several useful months’ work for Phoebe.

It was still twenty minutes or so short of seven o’clock when she reached her destination. The door of the cottage, high on its bank, was firmly closed, and there was no sign of life. No whistling kettle or mumbling radio. She tried the door, confident that it would not be locked.

Inside the living room, she walked to a door in the corner, and unlatched it. It opened onto a flight of stairs, steep and uncarpeted. She went up, not caring that she made a noise.

Phoebe was asleep under a great heavy eiderdown, surely far too hot for a June night. Her badger-striped hair was all that Cappy could see. There was a sour smell, tinged with something offensive: rotting meat, thought Cappy, glancing round the room for some clue as to its origin. She 
went to the bed, and laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder, under the bedcover.

‘Phoebe. I want you to come with me,’ she said.

The woman turned over, her eyes immediately locking onto Cappy’s. She showed no surprise. ‘What did you say?’ she grumbled.

‘I want you to come and get Elvira. She’s not safe where she is.’

Phoebe sighed, and sat up, in a great heaving motion like a walrus bursting out of the sea. She was naked, and Cappy suddenly found the source of the smell. Phoebe’s right breast was at least twice the size of its partner, ulcerated and discoloured. ‘Oh God,’ said Cappy.

Phoebe glanced down at herself, and gave a little shrug. ‘Yes. It’s going to get me pretty soon now, the bloody thing. That’s why—’ She stopped abruptly, staring suspiciously at her visitor. ‘And don’t say it. Just don’t.’

‘You underestimate me,’ replied Cappy quietly. ‘I’d do exactly the same in your position.’

‘Ah. I might have known.’ She swung herself out of bed, stomach flat, legs muscular and lean. Cappy felt a pang of admiration. And sorrow. She couldn’t remember when she last felt such sorrow, and it made her angry.

‘Come on,’ she urged, brusquely. ‘You still have to think about Elvira.’ 

‘Don’t I always think of Elvira,’ said Phoebe, suddenly savage. ‘It’s all I ever fucking think about. What’s her trouble now?’

‘I’ll have to show you. Have you got something we can drive?’

‘I’ve got the van. Can’t promise it’ll start, though.’ She pulled on a pair of jeans, and then turned away to bind her swollen breast in a kind of modified bra, which kept it close against her body. She sprayed herself with something perfumed, which struck Cappy as grotesquely incongruous, then a T-shirt followed, and a baggy sweatshirt, and Cappy could see why nobody would guess at Phoebe’s cancer.

The old van started first try, and Phoebe drove it jerkily down her rutted track, and out into the road leading through the village square. Nobody was about. Cappy directed her to the edge of the woods, next to the opening used by picnicking tourists, and ordered her to turn off the engine. ‘We have to walk from here,’ she said.

Phoebe sighed. ‘Trouble, is it?’ she said, sounding achingly tired. ‘Can’t pretend I didn’t know it’d come in the end. Though nobody can say I didn’t do my best. Lead on, then.’

Amos hadn’t slept well that night, running again and again over the kaleidoscope of events of the previous day. The vicar had taken charge, driving 
him to the police station, standing over him while he explained about Phoebe and his suspicions concerning her and Elvira. They had written some of it down, nodding and shaking their heads, sucking their pens, exchanging glances.

‘I hope you’re taking this seriously,’ the vicar had said to them, sternly. ‘This is extremely important information – you do realise that.’

‘It could be, sir,’ they said. ‘But we’ll have to take care how we approach it. It isn’t as if you’ve produced any hard evidence here, is it?’

‘
Motive
, man!’ Father Edmund had shouted. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t realised there is now a motive.’

‘I’m not quite sure I follow you, sir,’ said one of the detectives. Amos had been amused by the vicar’s exasperation. It hardly mattered to him now, whether the police believed him or not. He knew in his own mind what this whole miserable business had been about, and that was all that really mattered.

The vicar had spelt it out. ‘Phoebe and Amos are Elvira’s natural parents. She always rebuffed any approaches from Amos in the early years, until he assumed that she wanted nothing from him – if he was indeed the girl’s father, which he often doubted. Now, when Elvira is too much trouble, and she thinks an easier life might be nice, Phoebe suddenly remembers that Amos has 
money in the bank, and wants it for her girl. She told him as much – didn’t she, Amos?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Sort of,’ he agreed.

‘So,’ went on Father Edmund, ‘she had to arrange that Isaac was put out of the way, so Elvira could take his place, and live with Amos, as housekeeper and acknowledged daughter.’ He faltered, realising that his imagination was running away with him. He caught the look of amused contempt on the policeman’s face.

‘Are you telling me, sir, that Phoebe Winnicombe killed Isaac Grimsdale?’

‘No, ’twasn’t her,’ said Amos more firmly than he felt. ‘But could be she put someone up to it.’ He stared at the wall, trying to convince himself that this was the case. ‘But he tried to kill me, as well,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s a facer, now isn’t it?’

The conversation had become increasingly disjointed after that, the police repeatedly trying to glean some hard facts and the vicar shouting one minute, and stammering over some silly notion the next. In the end, he’d been taken home again. They told him that the new information had been ‘very useful’, but they’d have to process it first before taking any action.

Now, on this early morning, with the pigeons having long, burbling conversations right outside his window, and from somewhere the annoying sound of a returning cat mewling for food, Amos 
abandoned any further attempt to sleep and got out of bed.

As always, he went to his window, and looked out to check the weather. There wasn’t a single cloud to be seen, just a thin haze above the Mabberley woods opposite. A fine day, then. A good day for getting back to something like normal, checking on the neglected beasts and deciding on how to proceed from here. If one of Isaac’s cats had escaped from its new home and come back, perhaps that was not such a terrible thing, after all. It could at least catch a few mice.

Then a movement in the distance caught his eye. Someone was walking along the road, below the woods, alongside the new fence. A tiny figure, moving at a comfortable walking pace. It seemed to him it must be a woman. And whoever it was, he knew for certain that it meant trouble, and another day of chaos, vexation and fear.

He could think of no suitable action, other than a continued vigil at the window. Scanning Redstone, he could see no movement at all. The pale-yellow cows were slowly beginning to cluster at the gate of their field, away to the right, but it would be half an hour or more before anybody got up to milk them. His mind reran, yet again, the whole course of events since Isaac had died. Then he went back to the killing of Sam Carter and his own subsequent arrest. And something 
new occurred to him; something which gave him a momentary sense of gladness.

Sam had been in the barn tinkering with some machinery when Amos had gone down to Redstone. He hadn’t been very friendly, Amos remembered; so that when Amos had accidentally kicked over a shotgun left carelessly propped against the barn wall with a pull-through rag next to it, he’d quickly stood it up again without saying anything. It had all been over in a second, and Sam hadn’t even seen what happened.

He wiped a hand across his brow, lingering over the lump on his temple, which was still tender. The blow had affected his memory; he was sure of that now. The days before Isaac’s death were a blur to him. And, so it would seem, some of the things that happened since then were also slipping about in his head, loose from their moorings. Hadn’t something strange happened to him in hospital one night, for example? Or had that just been a dream? An old woman crawling about on the floor did not seem very probable.

He sat there, forgetting where he was; forgetting the time of day, watching a succession of images from his memory and imagination; a waking nightmare in which he lost all sense of his immediate surroundings.

But his eye was alert for activity outside. A van went speeding along that same woodside road, 
and Amos thought he knew whose it was. The colour was distinctive: a light mustard hue which had been in his own yard not many days before. It brought him out of his reverie. If he was right, and Phoebe was driving around the countryside at this hour, then perhaps things really were finally coming to a head.

The van slowed, just at the point where his view was obscured by a high old hedge, and passed out of sight. Perhaps, after he’d had some breakfast, and attended to that persistent cat, he’d walk over there, towards the Mabberley place, and see if he could discover what might be going on.

Jonathan was not at first alarmed when he woke to find Cappy’s side of the bed deserted. She did this often, and would usually appear at about seven with a cup of tea for him. It was only seven fifteen now. No reason to be concerned.

But as he lay there, he realised that there was no sound of movement from downstairs, which
was
unusual. He got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs to listen more carefully. Nothing.

It hit him then that she had gone back to that camp in the woods. And something must have happened there, because she would not have stayed out so long, knowing he’d worry.

Okay
, he admitted to himself.
I’m worried. Now what do I do?
He realised that although 
she had told him about the camp, he had no idea where it actually was. If he went looking for her, he could spend all day searching and still not cover more than half the whole area of woodland. Unless there were some helpful noises, like gunshots or screams.

‘Damn it!’ he said aloud. ‘This is getting beyond a joke.’

With a strong sense of doing the wrong thing, he lifted the telephone receiver and pushed the 9 button twice. Then he quickly put it down again. No, that very definitely wasn’t right. He should find the number of the local station and call them direct. That would be better. Why hadn’t those stupid men given him a card with the number on it? He flipped through the directory, peripherally aware that his sight was now bad enough to need glasses for something like this. He had to hold the book at arm’s length to read the ‘Police’ entry.