Cold in the Earth (24 page)

The door had small glass panes in the top half and as she crossed towards it she flicked the switch for the outside light and saw that it was Conrad Mason who was standing there. Her face cleared and she opened the door.

It was raining again, soft, persistent, wetting rain, forming a misty halo round the light. He was wearing a thick navy jacket but his curly hair was starting to cling to his head.

‘Goodness, you’re wet!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come in quickly!’

He stepped inside, shaking himself like a wet dog. ‘Drookit,’ he agreed. ‘And that’s just coming from the car. Still, we should be used to it by now. Just remember to check your feet every night to make sure you haven’t started growing webs between the toes.’

Laura laughed. ‘There’s a peg there for your coat. Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Thanks. I just came to see that you’d settled in all right and that no one had found your hideaway.’

‘No, I’ve had a wonderfully peaceful afternoon. Would you like one of Mrs MacNab’s scones?’

He sat down at the table. ‘Can you ask? They’re famous locally. Women at coffee mornings have been known to come to blows for them at the baking stall.’

The kettle was boiling now; she made tea in a little blue pot and brought it across with a couple of mugs and the celebrated scones, then sat down herself opposite.

‘I don’t suppose you’re allowed to say anything much,’ she said hesitantly, ‘but can I ask you what’s happening now?’

He made no attempt to conceal his anger and bitterness. ‘Oh, I’m not permitted to know what’s happening in the corridors of power at Kirkluce Police Headquarters. I’m a suspect, you see.’

‘A suspect?’ She shouldn’t have been stunned, but she was. That was Max again; somehow his certainty had fixed in her head the notion that the shadowy Jake was the killer. But naturally, Conrad must be a suspect, and Max too, and Scott Thomson, and even, she supposed, Conrad’s mother who had quarrelled with her sister. Suddenly there was a very cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ he laughed shortly. ‘You’d think they’d know—’

The hammering on the door was such a shock that they both jumped. ‘What the hell,’ Conrad exclaimed, jumping up, then, ‘Oh God, Max! I might have known.’

The outside light was still on and they could see him clearly, wearing a rakish wide-brimmed rainproof hat and a brown caped Drizabone coat. Laura opened the door to let him in.

He ignored her. ‘“I’m just going back to Kirkluce now” – oh, sure! I knew this would be where you were going, you lying bastard,’ he greeted his cousin, scowling. He took off his hat, throwing it down on a chair as if it were a gauntlet.

Conrad had a considerable advantage in height; he used it now to look down contemptuously at the shorter, slighter man. ‘Oh, I think it counts as mere courtesy, Max. The lady didn’t want people to know where she was, so how could I betray her confidence? If I’d known you were following me I wouldn’t have come here. But what took you so long? Missed me turning off, did you? That would be typical incompetence.’

Max coloured but said only, ‘She didn’t mean me, did you, Laura?’ He put the question with a brief, sideways look towards her but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Laura’s
my
friend. So why don’t you butt out instead of elbowing your way in, trying to ruin everything for me, the way you’ve always done?’

‘I shouldn’t think she’ll want to be “your” friend, after this display. Most women have a preference for adults, not spoiled children who haven’t grown past the toddler tantrum stage. You’ll bear me out in that, Laura?’

‘You don’t know what he’s like, Laura. If you did, you’d tell him to sod off—’

It was almost funny. Almost, but not quite. Even when they were addressing Laura, they weren’t looking at her, confronting each other with their eyes locked like dogs sizing one another up for a fight. The threat of physical violence was thick in the air.

Defusing explosive situations had been all in a day’s work in the Women’s Refuge in New York; she’d never had to do it in her own sitting-room, though, and she would prefer not to have to do it now. With some resentment, Laura deployed her professional skills.

She stepped between them, breaking the locked gaze with her body so that no one had to lose face by yielding. ‘Let’s take this calmly, shall we?’ she said, her voice quiet but steely with authority. ‘This is my space and I don’t choose to have it used for “who blinks first” contests.’

It worked. She saw the rigidity of the men’s bodies relax at the same time and Conrad half-turned in a classic ‘de-escalation of threat’ movement. Max, being the physically weaker, was slower to abandon his defensive pose.

‘I’m sorry, Laura,’ Conrad said smoothly, meeting her eyes this time. ‘
I
should have known better.’

The faint, mocking emphasis on the word was deliberately provocative and Max was provoked. ‘That’s so like him, Laura, the apology that isn’t—’

It was unbelievable. They were kids who hadn’t left the nursery; they didn’t need a psychotherapist’s skills, they needed Nanny.

‘Be quiet, both of you,’ Laura snapped. ‘Go and sit down and neither of you say another word. It’s my turn now.’
And no kicking each other under the table or I fetch the hairbrush,
she was tempted to add. They sat down, looking sheepish.

‘You’re both suffering from arrested development. You come in here and behave as if I was some toy you were squabbling over. I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you that I’m not a thing for someone to possess. I’m a person. I decide. I choose. And at the moment I choose neither of you.’

She had expected them to be chastened; she didn’t expect them to be shocked. Max had turned pale and Conrad’s face was slack with astonishment as they stared at her.

‘What’s wrong? What did I say?’

‘How – how did you know?’ Max stammered but Conrad was quicker to regain his composure.

‘You said what she said. In almost so many words.’

Shaken in her turn, Laura sat down heavily on a dining-chair. ‘Why? Why should she say that?’

The men exchanged glances, almost conspiratorially, as if they found themselves however unwillingly on the same side. It was Conrad who said at last, ‘It got a bit torrid, when Di was around. She sort of played us off against each other so we didn’t know where we were. If she’d preferred one it would have been better, but she didn’t. Or if she did she didn’t tell us. We were all round the table during the morning break – me, Max, Jake and Scott Thomson – and somehow it all blew up out of nothing.’

‘You said—’ Max interrupted, but Conrad silenced him with a look.

‘Whatever. Anyway, she exploded. Set about us all, gave us our characters and then at the end said just what you did.’

‘I hate to agree with him but it’s true,’ Max said. ‘That was the problem.’

Laura seldom lost her temper but she lost it now, seized with a protective fury for a twenty-year-old put in a position like that. ‘And you felt she was obliged to choose one of you? What did you think you had – a sort of collective
droit de seigneur
? Didn’t it occur to your fat, swollen heads that she didn’t want any of you – that your attitudes made you totally repellent?

‘Or did it occur to you? Did it so affect one of you that you had to go out and kill her as punishment?’

She found she was crying again. ‘Get out, both of you.’ She snatched up the mobile phone which was lying on the table by her laptop and stood up. ‘For some reason, I don’t feel particularly safe in your company. If you don’t leave now, I’m going to call for police protection.’

They rose too, Conrad putting his hands up in a placatory gesture. ‘Of course we’ll go. But may I say one thing? It’s not like that. I was just going to tell you before Max came. I don’t know if they’ve talked to him about it, but they’ve discovered something that could explain it all.’

Max nodded fervently. ‘That’s right. The bull. Let Conrad tell you about it, Laura.’

She was still clutching her phone. ‘All right. Briefly.’

‘The path lab report says she was gored by a bull. She wasn’t afraid of them – probably wasn’t scared enough – and my guess is she tried bull-running with Satan, our champion bull. Very vicious, very cunning, could turn like a polo pony. So he killed her, OK? Then my uncle found her. He’s never been balanced about that animal; he’d have had to have Satan slaughtered if this got out. He couldn’t do anything for Di; she was beyond help and she’d always said she had no family so he took a huge gamble and buried her. If it hadn’t been for the foot-and-mouth, it would have paid off.’

It was so unexpected that Laura was having difficulty taking it in. Max was backing him up now. ‘It all figures, Laura – I can see it happening.’

‘And this – this is the official position?’

‘Oh, who knows?’ Conrad’s bitterness surfaced again. ‘Big Marge Fleming has it in for me and at the moment she’s just enjoying watching me twisting in the wind. But she’ll have to accept it eventually – it’s just so bloody obvious.’

‘It’s exactly the sort of thing the Minotaur would do,’ Max urged. ‘Bull worship, with everything including your own family sacrificed on the altar. Nothing else ever mattered.

‘Well, it’s all going to be so-o-o different in the future. Farm prices may be depressed at the moment, but they’ll pick up before long. When I sell it – sorry, Conrad, when I sell my half—’

‘
What?
’ It was a bull’s bellow. ‘You can’t do that, you slimy little sod.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find I can. If the Minotaur would just be obliging enough to give up the unequal struggle—’

‘Bastard!’

Laura had her hands over her ears. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Get out, now, and have your puerile family squabbles elsewhere. Go and kill each other, if you like. Just don’t do it here.’

Shaking with fury, she went to the door and held it open. Max shrugged and left. Conrad, as he passed her, paused. ‘Laura—’

‘No!’

She shut the door behind them, locked it and secured it with bolts top and bottom, then drew its red gingham curtain across. She went round the room, shutting out the night and the men who had so disturbed her hard-won peace.

Could what they had said possibly be true? From what she knew of Dizzy, it was far from impossible, and there was some comfort in thinking of her death as an accident rather than the result of a deliberately evil act. Laura knew, too, about obsession, knew how it could distort someone’s judgement and even perception of reality.

On the other hand, the sick scenario which had emerged this evening was precisely the breeding ground for the heightened emotions which could lead to murder. And it was a volatile family situation; she’d seen that just now with her own eyes.

It was suiting them very well too that the person to be blamed was unable to speak and was soon, judging from what Max had said, likely to die and take the secret of his actions with him to the grave.

If they were his actions. Even if it was true that Dizzy’s killer was now dead, waiting for disposal in a heap of all the other carcasses, who was to say who it was who had buried her?

Suddenly, she remembered the first row between the cousins, in the bar the night she had arrived. Max had been perfectly calm about the proposal to dig up the field where they had found her sister’s body. It had been Conrad who was so violently opposed to it. She shuddered.

The sound of their voices outside had stopped and a moment later she heard the car engines starting up. Then silence shrouded the house once more.

Marjory Fleming set the phone down with a sigh. Bill had been monosyllabic, brusque almost to the point of rudeness, and unspecific about when the farm might be declared free of infection. His voice was flat and listless, almost unrecognisable as belonging to the man she loved.

When she had mentioned her fears about suicide to Superintendent Bailey at the start of all this he had been dismissive and she had accepted his point – that Bill wasn’t selfish enough to do that to her and the children. But Bailey had been talking about the Bill he knew, not this man with the toneless voice and the reluctance to communicate.

She had been worried enough to phone Hamish Raeburn, at a neighbouring farm which had so far escaped the slaughter, to ask him to get in touch with Bill to see if he was all right. She had a cool reception; he phoned Bill regularly, he told her, and had met him at their mutual boundary on the day of the slaughter. Yes, he was depressed. They were all depressed. Only an idiot would expect anyone not to be at a time like this.

It was a brief conversation and perhaps she was being paranoid in thinking he had substituted ‘idiot’ for ‘policewoman’ for the sake of courtesy. Still, there was nothing she could do about it until she got back to the farm, and that, please God, would be soon.

She had enough to think about without that. Bailey was away at a meeting today and she wasn’t sorry to have the chance to sleep on Conrad’s theory before she presented it to him. There was little doubt in her mind that the Super would seize on such a neat, swift, cheap outcome; all it would take was a carefully worded statement to the Press and the heat would be off. The file wouldn’t be closed but it would be NFE’d, with orders to keep a watching brief rather than to pursue enquiries further.

Unless another body turned up. The diggers had managed to make a serious mess of most of the field without result; there was still one corner remaining which they would tackle tomorrow. And what were they to do after that – dig up the whole farm?

If Rosamond Mason wasn’t two feet under, where was she? The appeal had gone out for her to get in touch and there had been a photograph in the national newspapers. It wasn’t a very good one, unfortunately; she’d be sixteen years older too, and a woman could change a lot in her middle years, so perhaps it wasn’t sinister that as yet no one had come forward.