Keep Me Alive (29 page)

There was no sign of any aeroplane and, from where she
stood, she couldn’t see anything that looked especially like an airstrip, but this was the place to which she’d been directed, and it had plenty of empty fields. It wasn’t a farm; more an enormous orchard. There was no sign of any animals, although she could hear the ubiquitous chickens clucking somewhere.

Some of the outbuildings had open sides and protected various tractor-like machines. Others were closed and might easily contain a small aeroplane.

Trish clicked the computer shut and locked it away in the boot, before making her way round to the front of the farmhouse. There was no answer to her knock at the door, so she took that as an invitation to explore.

A frenzy of barking stopped her before she’d done more than put her hand to the double doors of a building that looked like a stable. She turned hurriedly to see a wild bunch of red-gold fur careering towards her, its ears flying. The noise of its warning was indescribable, and its bottom waggled in a frenzy of excitement. All Trish knew about dogs was that a wagging tail meant the animal was friendly, but this one seemed positively aggressive in spite of its tail. That the barks were warnings, threats even, was obvious.

She put her back to the stable doors and called encouraging, breathlessly friendly comments to the animal. It didn’t touch her, but it stopped only a foot away, still barking. Its ears were back now, and its yellow teeth were bared.

‘Boney!’ came a stentorian shout from the far side of the buildings.

Trish leaned more comfortably against the wooden doors.

‘Boney!’

The dog didn’t move, but it stopped barking more than two or three times a minute. A man came towards her, wearing a blue checked shirt tucked into torn cream corduroys, which were themselves stuffed into knee-high dusty gumboots. His
sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. His forearms looked tanned and powerful.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so. I’m looking for Timothy Hayleigh.’

‘I’m Hayleigh.’ He smiled. ‘Have we met?’

‘No. But I need to talk to you.’ She looked at the dog, and told herself there was no reason to be frightened of either of them. She smiled yet again.

He was looking puzzled but not at all worried. ‘What about?’

‘Jamie Maxden.’

‘Oh, God!’ The exclamation was out before he could control it. He bent down to pull the dog nearer his leg and stroked its head. ‘I knew someone would come one day.’

Trish didn’t think she would have much trouble getting him to talk.

‘You’d better come in. What did you say your name was?’

Trish didn’t answer as she followed him into a drawing room that couldn’t have been altered in fifty years, and he didn’t ask again. Bulging sofas covered in thick cretonne stood either side of a logless fireplace. A vast Edwardian carpet in shades of blue, beige and pink covered most of the parquet floor, and there were china lamps with pleated silk shades on dusty mahogany tables all around the room. Dim watercolours, hung much too high, decorated the plain cream-painted walls. A glass-fronted cabinet on little bow legs stood against one wall, displaying flowered china behind its foggy panes.

‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make some tea,’ he said.

‘Thank you, but there’s no need.’

‘It’s no trouble. I won’t be long,’ he said, clumping out in his boots. The dog made to follow him. ‘Stay, Boney.’

Trish sat in a stiffly uncomfortable wing chair beside the cold ash-heap that almost filled the fireplace and spilled forwards on to the cracked hearthstone. She heard chinking sounds in the distance, then an oath. Trish smiled at the dog, who glared at her. The tea-making seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time.

At last, the drawing-room door opened, pushed aside by the corner of an old-fashioned wooden tray. Tim Hayleigh had changed out of his boots, which might have explained some of
the delay. He fussed about pouring tea, then sat in the chair opposite hers. She waited for him to speak, but he simply sat, looking as though he expected her to hit him.

‘A copy of a film Jamie Maxden shot of your farm one night has come into my possession,’ she began.

‘Only a copy?’ he said quickly, leaning over his corduroy-covered knees and grabbing hold of the poker.

Trish saw it had an enormous brass knob at the handle end. She stared at it, then up at his face. His black eyebrows formed one continuous line across his frowning forehead.

‘What?’ he said, more puzzled than aggressive.

‘I just thought you might put the poker down,’ she said, measuring the distance to the door. She did not think he was about to start belabouring her with the poker, but she had to be sure before she said anything that might trigger an outburst of temper.

‘Oh, sorry. Yes.’ He laid it back in its brass rest, beside a matching hearth brush and a set of bellows. ‘Boney!’

The dog ambled to his side, looking like a friendly rug. Trish wondered how she could ever have been afraid of it. It sank down by his chair, front legs stretched ahead of its pointed face. But its beady black eyes stared at her, as if warning her not to take too many liberties. Hayleigh’s hand rested on its head.

‘Who else has copies?’ he asked.

‘Quite a few interested parties, all of whom know where I am.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘It wasn’t difficult,’ she said, editing out all the memories of the miles she’d driven down unidentified roads to farm after farm, finding nothing. ‘Just as it wasn’t hard to find out about the carcasses from Smarden Meats that you fly out to Normandy.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ His voice throbbed. ‘You’ve got to get out of here.’

‘I can’t go yet. We’ve a lot to discuss.’

‘You don’t understand.’

Trish saw that he was no longer looking at her, rather over her head towards one of the long windows. She could hear an engine, too, and tyres crunching over gravel.

‘Who is it?’ she asked quickly.

‘You don’t want to know, and he mustn’t find you here. Oh, Christ! It’s too late for you to get away and he’ll see your car.’ Hayleigh flung himself over to a door in the wall behind the log basket.

He opened it, revealing a small study, with a battered desk and piles of paper all over the floor. There was another door in the far corner, and a long window overlooking what must once have been a formal garden but was now a mass of weeds and wildflowers.

‘Get in here and keep quiet. I’ll think of a story to explain the car.’

They heard a door slam.

‘Come on.’

The terror in his face made her move. Pressed against the wall, keeping out of sight of the window, Trish breathed in mouthfuls of dust.

You stupid cow, she thought. Just because
he’s
not dangerous himself, that doesn’t mean the rest aren’t. He must have phoned one of them while he was making the tea neither of us wanted. Oh, sod it!

The dust was making her throat tickle. She knew she could neither cough nor sneeze. Her mouth was drying out and her eyes leaking all the moisture her throat needed. Now, if ever, was the time to exercise the self-discipline she’d forced herself to learn over so many years.

‘Ron,’ she heard Hayleigh say through the door. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘What’s that car doing in the drive? Whose is it?’ The new
voice had a thick country accent. It did nothing to disguise the sharp note of aggression.

‘A woman. God knows who she is. Knocked on the door all polite to ask if she could leave it there while she took her dog for a walk. Didn’t want to risk leaving it on a road as narrow as this.’

Good, Trish thought. That’s a good story. Well done, Tim, but what is it he’s setting me up for?

‘How long ago?’

‘Twenty minutes, I suppose. She said she wouldn’t be more than an hour.’

‘OK, so we’ve got a safe margin of twenty minutes. What do you want that’s so urgent you’ve left me all these messages? People are beginning to talk.’

‘It’s the money.’ Tim sounded hopeless. ‘I’ve told you over and over again that I need it. I had to come to you because Bob won’t talk to me.’

‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘The police have got him.’

‘Oh, God. No. How? Why?’

‘Because the stupid, violent arsehole killed Mandy. I can’t believe you don’t know anything about it.’

Trish sagged against the wall behind her. Fear was replaced by a vast upswell of relief that made her head sing. Will hadn’t done it. Will wasn’t a killer. Her drunken drive through London had been as unnecessary as it had been stupid. Suddenly the wall felt as soft as her expensive goose-down pillows. She didn’t really care about anything now.

‘Who’d tell
me
?’ came Hayleigh’s voice through the door. ‘Neither of you have answered any of my calls, and there’s no one else. I don’t get the papers any more.’

‘Stop asking so many sodding questions. There isn’t time. Bob found out she’d been seeing someone else.’

‘But she was your girlfriend, not his. Why would he worry?’

‘Shut the fuck up and listen. He thought I hadn’t been keeping a close enough eye on her, so he phones one day from the meat works to offer her a lift home. They tell him she’s already there, with a migraine. So he goes round to see if she was telling the truth, and …’

‘Why wouldn’t she tell the truth?’

‘He thought she’d changed sides. He didn’t believe she was only bonking this other bloke because I’d asked her to, so that we could find out how much he knew.’

‘What? What other bloke?’

‘He came to the pub one day and was asking the customers all about the meat works and Ivyleaf. It was too much of a coincidence. I knew he knew something, so I had to find out how much. After I’d given him directions to Ivyleaf, I phoned ahead so that Mandy was ready for him.’

‘Your own girlfriend?’ Tim’s voice wasn’t nearly as disgusted as Trish’s would have been.

‘Oh, Mandy was up for anything that would help us. Or I thought she was. But Bob thinks she’d fallen in love and started telling all. He claims that when he questioned her, she confessed that she’d given this bloke the address of the French farm. I still don’t believe it. But that’s Bob’s excuse for hitting her. You know what he’s like when he starts in on someone – it gets out of hand. The fucking bastard killed her.’

Trish wondered if it could have been Tim who’d spotted Will at the French farm and hidden the fact from everyone else. He didn’t interrupt Ron.

‘Then the other bloke comes roaring into the cottage and gets into a fight with Bob. They both end up in hospital, with the police watching the pair of them.’

‘But don’t you …?’

‘Listen. They’ve let the other bloke go, so they must know more than they’re saying. Bob’s bound to go down for Mandy’s
murder, and he’ll try and take us with him. So we’ve got to shut down everything. Now. That’s why I came. You’ve got to make sure that plane of yours doesn’t show you’ve been flying across to France. And when they come asking questions, deny everything. Can you do that, Tim? It won’t be long before they tie the journalist’s death to Bob, so you could do a lot of time too, if you don’t keep your mouth shut. Can you? Come on. Think about it. Can you do it?’

‘Christ! I don’t know. I’ll try. But I need my money.’

‘You won’t get that for a long time.’

‘But I
need
it, Ron. That’s why I—’

‘Get this into your thick head. If they believe Bob’s story, they’ll come looking for the cash. So if you haven’t got any, that’ll be one more reason for them to believe your denials. Got that?’

‘But I need it, Ron, to keep the place going.’

‘Tough. Now, keep quiet; look stupid when they ask questions; and don’t try to find me. You’ll get your money in the end. When it’s safe. And don’t go letting any more strange women park on your land. That’s just stupid.’

Boney started barking again, furiously, as though picking up a threat.

‘Ron, she’s …’

Trish pressed herself against the papers. The words ‘you fool, you fool’ beat in her head like a metronome as she waited for Tim Hayleigh to pluck up the courage to betray her.

‘Keep that animal quiet; don’t let it follow me. And don’t look so frightened. If they see you looking like that, they’ll know it was you.’

‘Ron!’

No, shrieked something in Trish’s head. Don’t call him back. Let him go.

There was no answer. Holding her breath, Trish heard footsteps on gravel. At least she thought she had, but then there
was silence. She couldn’t hear anything from the room next door. Had Tim Hayleigh gone and left her here? Had he run out after the man he’d called Ron to get him back?

An engine sounded, then gravel spurted from under rubber tyres. Trish waited. Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. A wave of dizziness warned her she hadn’t breathed for far too long. She let herself fill her lungs again, then felt her throat clutch into a spasm as the dust choked her.

She wrenched open the door, but she couldn’t see anything through her streaming eyes. When her vision cleared, and the coughing had stopped wrenching her throat and chest, she looked at Tim Hayleigh.

He was sitting in the wing chair, with the dog in his lap, both arms wrapped round it, rocking to and fro.

‘What’ll become of me?’ he asked.

‘First tell me where I can get some water,’ she said, one hand still stroking her throat. ‘Then we can sit down again while you tell me exactly what has been going on. I’ll give you whatever help I can.’

‘You must have heard what he said.’

‘I did. Is that why you phoned him? So
you
wouldn’t have to make any kind of confession to me?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He had his head buried between the dog’s ears now. Trish thought he looked pathetic, but she needed his information too much to let that get in her way. She was no longer in the remotest bit frightened of him. ‘Tell me where the kitchen is.’

He told her and she left him to his canine comforter. The kitchen was the most disgusting place she had seen in years. The floor was covered with linoleum so old it had been worn into holes, in which she could see fat and crumbs and mouse droppings. The sink was full of dirty crockery, and plates of half-eaten food were dotted about all round the room. Ancient cobwebs hung from the yellowed ceiling and brown stains and
drips disfigured every vertical surface. If anyone were to get food poisoning, it should have been the owner of this place.

A row of oily glass preserving jars stood on a shelf beside a streaked can and a glass bowl of what looked at first sight like maggots, but which proved to be white string wicks. Clothes were draped over the back of every chair and thick socks hung on the rail in front of the range. The smell was gross. Trish decided her throat could heal itself without any water that had come anywhere near this room.

She looked round and saw that Tim had followed her.

‘You need a doctor,’ she said.

‘I need a cleaner. But I can’t afford one.’

That was probably true, but she thought no adult who was not suffering from clinical depression could have allowed any part of his home to get this bad, however poor or busy he might be. Some of her other feelings slipped away in a wave of sympathy.

‘Let’s go back to the drawing room. Have you got a pen and some paper?’

Looking dazed, he nodded.

‘They’re for you,’ she said, when he offered her a dusty pad and a biro with a chewed end, ‘to write down exactly what has been happening, starting with Bob and Ron.’

‘They’re brothers. Bob’s the elder and the leader.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course. Ron’s hopeless. Lazy. He just does what Bob tells him, when he’s not working the pub, that is. Bob’s a skilled slaughterman. Ron just pulls pints, and helps us out when Bob needs an extra pair of hands to load the plane.’

This wasn’t the moment to talk about the commanding tone of Ron’s voice or his assumption of absolute authority over Tim.

‘OK,’ Trish said, smiling her best client-soothing smile, ‘then when you’ve put that down, write what you know about the carcasses Bob took from the abattoir.’

‘It wasn’t stealing.’ He gazed at her, looking like David when he was afraid she was going to reprimand him for a bad school report. ‘They were only going to be made into pet food.’