Cherringham--Death on a Summer Night (3 page)

What did he make of all of this?

She saw Jack’s eyes locked on Terry — someone they knew from when his father died in a tragic fire.

Terry now walked as straight as he could, right at the man waiting for his beer that never came.

And when he was about four feet away, Terry said: “Tim Bell. You’ve got a damned cheek walking in here.”

Terry looked around the room as if seeking the support of all the on-lookers.

And that name
.

Tim Bell.

For a second Sarah couldn’t place it.

Familiar, but how …?

And Tim Bell turned to face Terry.

“I wanted a pint,” he said.

Which is when Billy from behind the bar finally spoke. “You won’t get one here. You can just get the hell out of my pub!”

And Terry added: “You heard the man. Now get out of here before—” and Terry looked back at his table, at his burly mates, their arms folded, looking as if waiting for a signal to stand up and throw this man out.

Tim Bell.

Still — nothing.

Then she remembered.

The name.

What he had done.

The terrible thing that he had done so long ago.

“Not sure I like this,” Jack said, his smile gone.

Sarah guessed he’d be alert in a situation like this. The possibilities, the danger.

Bell looked around the room, as if taking in all the accusatory eyes locked on him. All those set faces.

“I have a right to get a beer if I want.”

Which is when Terry took another unsteady step closer. On cue, his drinking buddies stood up as well.

“And we have a right to throw a murdering bastard like you right out on the streets.”

Then other men took steps as well, creating a circle around the man.

Which is when — with Sarah not even noticing the move — Jack stood up.

And after a moment, he walked straight to the bar.

Seeing Jack walk into the mob surrounding Tim Bell scared Sarah, now that she finally had placed the name.

Tim Bell had been in prison for twenty-five years. And Sarah had heard rumours that he had been released just a few weeks ago.

She had been barely eleven or twelve when the thing happened, all those years ago. It was soon after she and her parents had moved to Cherringham, after a lifetime of living on RAF bases around the world.

And it had put a sinister shadow over her first few months of living in the English countryside.

One of the older girls from school — Dinah Taylor, just sixteen — had disappeared.

And the last person to see her was Bell.

There had been enough evidence — blood, bit of a dress — to send him away to prison, with the mystery never solved. Everyone assumed he had killed her. There were stories of drugs, a late night, a terrible fight.

But he denied it all.

Who wouldn’t?

And now, Sarah could feel the hatred in this room. As if they might drag Bell outside, and hang him from the nearest tree.

Some of these men had probably known him back then, known Dinah. And here he was — back, bold as brass, and demanding a beer in the local pub.

She was afraid that Jack was in over his head.

“Hey,” he said turning to look at the crowd. “Maybe we all better calm down here, hmm?” He looked at the man who was the focus of the mob. “And maybe this isn’t the night for a beer?”

It seemed like a stand-off, Jack becoming part of it without knowing what he had walked into.

But Sarah could guess one thing:
he didn’t like the odds
.

“Don’t you tell us, Jack … don’t you
bloody
tell us you’re going to defend this bastard, after what he did?”

Jack shook his head. “Not defending anyone, Terry. And,” — with another look at the man — “I don’t know what he did. But I think, on a hot night like this, we could use some cooler heads. Maybe everyone takes a breath, huh?”

Still no movement.

And then the Ploughman’s door opened. And Alan Rivers, in uniform, walked in.

Sarah was never so glad to see the police show up.

Probably summoned by a text from someone here,
she thought.

Arriving just in time to defuse the situation.

Or … Sarah hoped he could defuse it.

“All right, everyone. Settle down.”

With the arrival of Alan, Jack walked back to Sarah, some of those eyes locked on him, angry at him for sticking up for this returned killer.

“Mr Bell, perhaps you and I should take a walk outside. Let everyone get back to their drinks, shall we?”

Jack sat back down and he and Sarah watched to see if the man would move.

For a second, nothing. Then a nod.

Right,
Sarah guessed.

Bell had to be on parole, just released. And if a police officer asks you to do something, you do it, if you want to stay free.

Then Bell moved through the circle of men, pushing past them, while Alan, just behind him, gave the mob a warning glance before following.

And then everyone started talking at once.

*

It didn’t take long before Terry wobbled over to Jack.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that, Jack. None of your business.”

Jack nodded, then smiled.

“Probably right, Terry. Just looked a little dangerous to me, you know?”

“Too right! That man there, he’s a bloody killer, Jack. And dangerous?”

Terry looked around the bar, “You bet it’s gonna be dangerous for that one if he hangs around this village much longer.”

There were mutters of agreement from nearby tables.

“Good thing then that Alan has his eyes on him,” Jack said.

The reference to the police straight after Terry Hamblyn’s drunken threat made him go silent.

Sarah knew that Jack was pretty clever at pushing buttons
.

All that practice on the streets of New York.

And as Terry nodded, wheeled around unsteadily, and went back to his neutral corner, Jack took a sip of his beer.

“Maybe we should go,” Sarah said.

But he smiled, and shook his head.

“Think we can enjoy the rest of our beer, yes?”

Not one to run either.

“And maybe you can tell me who that guy was, and why so many people here seem to want him dead?”

*

Sarah told him what little she knew of Tim Bell and what happened all those years ago.

“So you mean … that though there was no body ever found, he was still convicted?” he asked.

“Yes. I think our law here is different than yours. I was only a kid of course, but I remember it was in the news for weeks, the search for Dinah Taylor, then for her body.”

“Never found. And now the man who was sent to prison for that disappearance, that murder, is back.”

“Yes.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why would he come back here?”

“I know. With the people here … all of them remembering.”

Jack nodded to Terry and the other men. “Back home, we’d call that bunch a lynch mob. But … I can only think of one reason he’d come here, now that he was free.”

“And what’s that?”

“Maybe he has something to prove. I don’t think a guilty man would have done what he did. Walk in here, let everyone know he was back.”

“But what could he be trying to prove?”

“Don’t know that. But a guess? If I did twenty-five years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, I’d have a lot of anger built up.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Well — none of our business,” Jack said.

But when Sarah looked at him, she wasn’t so sure.

Something made Jack stand up like that.

Had he seen things like this before, a mob, a lone man facing them?

Then — as if clouds were clearing — he smiled.

“Hopefully Alan will give the guy some advice.”

“Such as?”

“Get out of Dodge. Or in this case, Cherringham.”

“He didn’t look like he was ready to take any advice.”

“You might be right. And could be things are about to get hotter in Cherringham.”

Sarah finished her beer.

“Time we went.”

“Think the patrons here will hold it against me, what I did?”

Sarah looked around. Some of the men might look at Jack differently. But a lot of people liked him, respected what she and Jack had done, helping people in the village.

She doubted that that respect could go away.

And the villagers who knew Jack … she guessed they’d take the view that what had happened was just “typical Jack.”

Standing up for people at difficult times.

I think,” she said smiling, “you’ll be fine.”

“Great — hate to lose drinking privileges at the Ploughman’s or my standing ‘biscuit’ order at Huffington’s.”

Sarah stood up. She did feel eyes on them.

Some people here — not too happy.

But she guessed Jack could handle that.

“I dread heading out into that heat,” she said.

“I know! I think I might sleep on deck tonight. Has to be better than in my cabin. Riley has already gone for that option.”

“Smart dog.”

Jack nodded as they headed out of the pub to the still hot pavement outside, the night air doing nothing to cool things down.

“Wish his owner was as smart sometimes,” said Jack as, with a wave, he turned and headed down the road towards the river.

She laughed. “Night, Jack.”

And with that, Sarah went to her car for the quick drive home.

Jack leaned against the hood of his Healey Sprite, sipped his coffee, and looked around the sunlit market square in the centre of Cherringham.

Even at this time, just eight-thirty in the morning, the place was busy. Last week of the summer holidays, blue skies forecast for weeks to come; he could see the tourists were already out in force.

Soon the coaches would arrive and the shops and cafes would fill up with visitors from around the world looking for the genuine “Cotswolds experience.”

“
Come in November,”
he always felt like telling them. That’s when you’ll see this place at its best.

Having lived here for a couple of years now, he knew that the fall was when Cherringham was at its most beautiful: wood-smoke in the air, mist down on the river, the warm stone and the falling leaves blending together, the tea-rooms softly lit, and roaring fires in all the pubs …

But now, this heat was really getting to people — Jack included.

Even though he’d lived through plenty of torrid New York summers, last night was up there with the worst of them.

After getting back from the pub, he’d slept fitfully on the deck of the Grey Goose — all night long he’d been unable to shake off the events of the night before.

Tim Bell: killer — or wrongly accused? Why had he come back? Especially to face all that hatred?

And most importantly — how could the guy have been convicted without a body ever being found?

Habeas corpus
not apply here?

Jack had finally fallen into a deep sleep around two, then woken suddenly at five gasping, dreaming that he’d fallen in the river, the water closing over his head …

Over breakfast Jack realized he wanted to find some answers.

Which is why he’d braved the crowds of a Cherringham summer weekend this morning. From here, just across the square, on the ground floor of the Village Hall, he could see the public library.

He knew from past cases that it had a big local history department. But the library also kept every copy of the local paper for the last hundred years.

And Tim Bell was bound to be on the front page of many of those copies. He’d thought about telling Sarah what he was up to. After all, by nine-thirty — even though it was a Saturday — she would be working in her office just over the road from where he stood now.

And they always worked cases together.

But this one was sensitive. Feelings running high.

And he didn’t want to pull her in unless there really was something to investigate.

Jack heard the bell of St. James chiming.

Nine a.m.

He tipped the dregs of his coffee onto the pavement, dropped the crushed cup into a trashcan — and crossed the road to the library.

*

Two hours later he knew why Tim Bell was such a figure of hatred in Cherringham.

But he had no idea — on the evidence revealed in the papers — why a jury had convicted him.

When he arrived, he hadn’t told the young librarian at the desk what he was looking for — just asked to see the newspapers for 1989 and 1990. She’d taken him to the microfilm reader at the back of the library, given him the key to the storage cabinet, and then instructed him on how to work the machine.

He’d listened patiently — in truth this was one piece of old-school tech he could operate in his sleep, having spent thousands of hours at NYPD headquarters on identical machines.

Then he’d found the fiches, loaded up the machine with files starting in August ’89, and got to work.

The first “missing” reports appeared in the paper a day after Dinah Taylor hadn’t returned home from the fair.

Dinah, the reports mentioned, was well-liked in the village. Sixteen years old, pretty and confident, she helped out at various charities, worked in one of the local stores, supported the church …

But she was also apparently an amazing violinist, a school star pupil destined for a London conservatoire and a glittering future.

There was speculation that maybe the pressure had got too much for her and she’d just taken off somewhere — “give it a few days, she’ll be back with her tail between her legs” as one of her teachers put it.

But a week later … and notions that she’d done a teenage “runaway” were replaced with hints from the police that her disappearance was now being treated as suspicious.

The army was brought in to search the village and scour the surrounding fields. A murder squad from Oxford took up residence at the police station. The river was dragged. Countless interviews were conducted. Heartfelt pleas to “whoever knows where she is” were made by Dinah’s distressed parents and friends.