Burying the Past (15 page)

As they joined the straggling queue waiting to pay their entrance fee – goodness, were elasticated waistbands
de rigueur
for Sunday National Trust visits? – Mark made his first bold move. ‘First up,' he said, ‘let's sort out our phones.' He held out Dave's, expecting his son to produce his. Perhaps expecting was too strong a word.

‘Sorry – I brought the other.' He flashed the expensive one. ‘In case I wanted to take photos, of course. Yours doesn't seem to be working, by the way.'

‘It wouldn't. We're required to notify security when we even mislay our phone.'

‘So that woman grassed me up!'

‘I did, Dave.' It wouldn't do any harm to fillet out a bit of the truth.

‘You contacted the police!'

‘I
am
the police, Dave. It's our policy. I had no choice. And as for making it personal, forget it – I just said I'd left it on a train. Mark's a silly old duffer, and so on.'

‘Fucking hell! What about that woman? She sounded very suspicious too.'

‘If you cut either of us, you'd find POLICE written inside. I followed procedure, son, no more and no less. But I'd rather you didn't refer to her as
that woman
again. She's Fran. My future wife. And a very good woman. Your mother was very fond of her. Now, the best place to start is up the tower – you can see all the grounds laid out at your feet.' How about that for fatherhood above and beyond the call of duty? There was an awkward step without a handhold at each point the circular stairs met a landing. He always made a point of offering his hand to older ladies here – but he admitted secretly it might be as much for his benefit as for theirs. As for the top of the tower itself, it actually had quite a decent parapet, but even so he preferred to let others jostle for the best view and lurk towards the middle.

‘Did my mother know you were having an affair?' Dave demanded as they joined another queue to climb the dreaded stairs.

‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' Mark laughed, as if there really might be some humour in the situation. ‘There was no affair for her to know about, Dave, I promise you. In fact, when she'd come back from university – she did a course without any support from us, to our shame – Fran was seeing some badminton player. She's county standard, you know. Was. The only thing – only! – that kept me away from you kids and Tina was the job. Pure and simple. Climbing the promotional ladder. And if you ask me if it was worth it, I'd have to say it probably wasn't.' Remembering Fran's advice, he added: ‘I'm sorry I was such a bad father. Very sorry. You don't even like me, and Sammie – well, I haven't been able to have a conversation with her for weeks. Ah! Up we go.'

Dave turned, and it seemed to Mark that he looked at him for the first time. ‘Are you really coming? You always used to chicken out when we did anything like this. Scared of heights, aren't you?' It seemed he couldn't resist a jeer.

‘Shit-scared, since you ask. But needs must.' He set off up the stairs. All the same, he was glad to stop at the first room and feign an interest in the contents.

Dave looked at him again. ‘I'll catch you on the way down.'

As Mark opened his mouth to protest, Dave was up and away like a greyhound. But he wouldn't be written off. He'd do it if it killed him. And then he remembered Fran's face when he made jokes like that. What did he have to prove? That he cared enough about Dave to overcome his fear? Stolidly, he set off – one step at a time.

He'd just reached the quasi-safety of the top when his new phone rang. ‘Fran?'

‘I'm about ten minutes from Sissinghurst. Where are you?'

‘Up the Castle tower with Dave.'

‘Idiot. Brave idiot, but idiot all the same. I shall get our colleague Inderjit here to drive me up in state to the front gate. Actually, shall I see you in the White Garden? We can't miss each other there.'

He noticed Dave was staring as he put his phone away. ‘What on earth are you doing up here?'

‘I just wanted to spend time with you, son – and I'm buggered if vertigo is going to stop me.' But he waited till he'd got down safely before he asked, ‘How come you got the wrong phone, Dave? Really? And why didn't you bring it today?'

Something in the garden claimed Dave's attention. He said, over his shoulder, ‘Forgot – I just picked up this one.'

Why had he bothered with such a stupid detectable lie?

Mark said, trying to sound reasonable, ‘Which is far classier than mine – and your new one. What's up, son?'

‘Nothing's up, for Christ's sake! I bought a phone. You took it by mistake.'

Suddenly, Mark could see the little tea-stained table on the up platform at Maidstone East. It had only one phone on it, the one he naturally took, since it was identical to his. Why didn't he dare point this out? At least he asked another question: ‘So why bring that sexy iPhone with you today and not mine? Sorry to go over it again, but none of this makes sense to me.'

‘For God's sake, we'll go back to my hotel and pick it up – right? Before or after I take the photos you want me to take?'

God, he was a spiky teenager again. Surely there must be a way of breaking these patterns.

But now Dave was pointing, with a hand apparently shaking with rage. ‘And now who's putting in an appearance? The fragrant Fran. God, you can't spend ten minutes apart. You're fucking pathetic, the pair of you!'

‘Body. Decomposing nicely in this heat,' Fran greeted them, as if one of them had asked how she'd spent the last couple of hours. But it was clear from their faces that neither was interested; she got the strong impression that more problems had erupted, with the original ones still unresolved. ‘Have you explored yet?' she asked, ambiguously, to her ears at least. ‘Or could you fancy a cup of tea?'

‘I'm finished here,' Dave said, so angrily that a couple of people leaning heavily on sticks looked at him in apprehension, as if he might suddenly kick their supports from under them.

‘But I've not even started,' Fran said, heading for the more open ground of the orchard. She didn't look to see if the men were following; when she walked like this, they better had. At last, she turned, arms akimbo. ‘Dave, I should imagine you're pretty angry about this phone business.' What on earth was Mark signalling? That it had been he who'd grassed up Dave? She'd best continue in neutral terms, then, though she'd much rather have told the whole truth. She kept her fingers crossed that she didn't slip up. ‘I'm sure he's told you that anyone losing one has to follow policy he himself set in train.' She waited in vain for a response. She opened her mouth to find it was saying things she'd wanted to say for some time. Why now, though? But out the words came. ‘When we first met, you thought I'd be some painted Jezebel – right? But now you can see I'm not, you still have a problem. I think it's to do with what Sammie's been telling you. And I also think you came here to see if you could help sort out a silly family mess.' This wasn't wholly true, but it gave him a chance not to lose face, didn't it? ‘We should be allies in this, not a trio of grown-ups behaving like toddlers. Now, what's your take on the whole thing? What do you think Sammie's afraid of? And what problems does this cause you?'

‘Why should I talk to you?' His lip jutted; if he'd been younger he'd have kicked the ground.

‘Because life is far too short to waste time on inessentials.' She took a deep breath which threatened to become a sob. ‘That young man whose body I saw today might have had a row with his girl and thought he'd sort it out later. And – phut! – he doesn't get a chance. I'm sorry . . . it's bad enough when the victim's old, but a young man in his prime . . .' She turned away, convinced for a few seconds by her own narrative. If what Cynd had said was even halfway true, the corpse was that of a raping scrote, but the truth would hardly appeal to this self-righteous prick of a man. But she still affected grief and brushed Mark away when he touched her arm, no doubt in sheer disbelief.

Suddenly, to her horror, the emotion became real. Her former protégé, Simon, was dead, wasn't he – a waste of a life if ever there was one. And they'd been too worried about investigations and Police Standards and even the damned cuts to reflect on it. He'd become an irritation, not a human driven to despair. While she was sure Human Resources had done all that was proper, neither she nor Mark had been able to offer words of comfort to his family lest their words be construed as an incriminating apology which would open the service up to compensation claims. In her own garden a man had once died, and she had seen his remains at best as a fascinating case, at worst as a damned nuisance. What had happened to her? What was happening now? All those tears, all this sobbing, in a public place? But she could no more have stopped than she could have flown to the top of that tower.

‘A
t least you've got your phone back,' she said, getting in Mark's car after possibly the most embarrassing hour of her life.

They'd hustled her straight back to the car park, despite her utter longing for a quiet cup of tea, even one of those wonderful looking cakes in the Sissinghurst restaurant, and thence to Dave's hotel, where the phone, but still no tea, made an appearance. Hardly any words were exchanged. If she'd hoped, by showing she was human, to get Dave to open up, she had failed miserably. Clearly, the two men were equally embarrassed, though Mark might well have been as scared as she'd have been had the situations been reversed. Every time one surge of emotion subsided, another took its place: having no proper home, having a dear friend with a life-threatening disease, Mark's crazy lifestyle and the risks he kept taking . . .

‘I'm sorry. I'm all right, really,' she managed at last.

‘Like hell you are. Dr Stagg for you first thing tomorrow.'

‘Can't. I'm taking Janie to hospital for her breast cancer op. And then it's all systems go at the self-store. And a briefing meeting later today, actually – but just this once I might let someone else take it. I'm so hungry I'm light-headed. I used to be able to do this meal-skipping-who-needs-sleep thing – but suddenly I'm bone tired and desperate to eat and drink. Age, maybe.'

‘Even so . . .'

‘If I'm like it again, march me off to the funny farm. Meanwhile, do you know anything about Simon's funeral?'

‘No. Hey, where did that come from?'

‘I knew him before he became a management flunkey, remember. When he was human. Have you been questioned, by the way, about Simon? I've hardly spoken to you this week, what with one thing and another.'

‘Fortunately, I was on record as saying that even if Caffy was prepared to take risks with her safety to entrap him, I wasn't. It constituted too grave a risk. Mr Management, you see. I wanted his room checked and every movement watched on CCTV. Dear old Adam – it seems strange not being able to call him the chief, doesn't it? – said it violated the man's privacy. Look, there's a pub over there doing cream teas: do you fancy one?'

‘I feel so much better now,' Fran said at last with a sigh. ‘All this wonderful cholesterol and refined sugar and bad carbohydrates. Lifesavers. But I'm sorry we got no further forward with Dave. How was lunchtime?'

‘OK – just – if we kept the conversation strictly neutral. Tell you what, I'll take you home for a nap and we'll eat out again tonight, provided the village pub serves grub in the evening. I have a strong yen for a few carbs and a dose of cholesterol myself. And enough alcohol to send me off the scale of any breathalyser.'

Fortunately, the landlord of the Three Tuns was on duty, and though officially there was no food, he managed to rustle up a ploughman's platter apiece. ‘Since you're locals,' he added, with a grin. ‘As from Thursday, was it? Have to take my hat off to you taking on that old place. Throwing a bit of money at it, aren't you? But that motorhome – brilliant idea. Ollie,' he said, shoving a hand across the bar.

‘Mark and Fran.' They exchanged handshakes in turn.

Had they struck gold at last? ‘Did you know the woman who owned it before?' Mark asked casually, pausing to draw on his Spitfire ale, as if it was nectar itself.

‘Not me. Heavens, how old do you reckon I am? But my dad did. Why? Leave something behind, did she? Apart from a body, we hear? And aren't you police?'

‘You hear right,' Fran said, deciding to skim over the second question. ‘No idea whose, yet, of course. I don't suppose it was a local, or you'd all remember someone going missing.'

‘Village of two hundred souls, you'd notice if you were one short,' the barman agreed, accepting a half himself. ‘They say she was a fine woman, that Dr Lavender. No, some other herb. Not a medical woman, you understand, but a teacher.'

‘So we hear. But we'd really like to know more about her – after all, not many people leave all their money to badgers. That's all the solicitor told us when we asked.'

‘They say she used to go badger-watching down Stelling Minnis way. I'd have thought she'd prefer to find setts closer to home. It all started when she rescued one that had been run over, they say – she'd have liked to start a colony on her own land, but you can imagine what the farmers had to say about that.'

‘Bovine TB,' Fran agreed, with a sad shake of her head. ‘So she was a bit eccentric, was she? According to your dad,' she added quickly.

Ollie looked at her sideways. ‘Now, are you asking as neighbours, like, or as police?'

Fran smiled apologetically. ‘Technically, I'm in charge of the team working on the skeleton. But since you might say my loyalties are divided, I'm not actively involved. I just set the budget of those who are.'

‘But you're still asking questions.'