Rainstone Fall (15 page)

‘Oh, Albert. Yes.’ She returned her attention to the pipe.

‘So he was one of your clients? Why didn’t you say so?’

‘Who do you think you are?’ she said sharply. ‘The police are bad enough, then you turn up, uninvited, asking me questions. Every other day, I might add. I don’t have to tell
you
anything.’ Shooting me a resentful look was difficult with only one working eye but she managed it quite well. ‘Yes, he bought herbal remedies from me, he was a regular customer.’

‘But you didn’t tell the police that either.’

‘How much d’you think I want police traipsing all over this place, looking for murderers under the flowerpots?’

‘Not a lot,’ I agreed.

‘Too right. I don’t pay tax much, I’m not a trained herbalist, and anyway, no one is licensed to dispense the kind of herb I was supplying to Al. He had bad arthritis and smoking pot alleviates the symptoms. Everyone knows that but it’s illegal nevertheless.’

‘I’m aware of it.’

‘Well then. Nearly a third of this tunnel is given over to growing cannabis. Harvest is over now,’ she gestured down the tunnel, ‘but there’s enough evidence around the place to put me away any time.’

‘So Albert had been here the day he was murdered to buy a supply of pot?’

‘No. Never got here.’

‘But you were expecting him?’

‘He hadn’t made an appointment or anything. He’d just turn up on his electric bike at fairly regular intervals. I did think he was due around that time, that day or the next.’

‘I thought you didn’t like people just turning up.’

‘People like
you
. But Al was all right. We met at the Bath flower show, I had a stall there selling herbs one year.’

‘And you’d been to his place.’

‘Once or twice when he was too bad to even use the electric bike. He’d send word through the chicken lady who brings him eggs that he couldn’t come, which meant he was more desperate than ever, so I’d go round, see what I could do for him. When you mentioned Albert I got worried and drove over.’

Chicken Lady, Pot Lady . . . Perhaps it was worth finding out what other ladies there might have been in his life and if they too had reasons not to come forward. ‘Okay, so far so good. Now explain why you seem to be completely invisible to DI Deeks. It’s a trick I would pay money to learn.’

‘Deeks is an arsehole,’ she said flatly. ‘You’d do well to stay away from him.’

‘That’s common knowledge but not an explanation.’

‘I’ve known him for years. He picked me up for possession once, ages ago. We came to an understanding. He has a pretty good idea of what goes on down here at Grumpy Hollow. Too good an idea.’ She put down her pipe which had gone out, then picked up her mug of tea and took a sip, which she instantly spat out again in an arc across the path. ‘Eargh, cold tea. Yuch.’ She got up and walked off down the path. ‘I’ll need to make some fresh.’

‘Hey, wait a second.’ I went after her. ‘You mean to say you managed to bribe Deeks into turning a blind eye?’

‘Managed to?’ Stopping beside a cucumber plant she produced a curved pruning knife, liberated one of the fruits and carried on. ‘You don’t have to try hard with Deeks, he’s as corrupt as they come.’ She walked up to me and tapped my chest with the smooth-skinned cucumber. ‘Now
I’ve
got a question: how come you knew it was Al who’d died in your car when the police didn’t?’

‘I was coming to that.’ And not before time. ‘A couple of kids had told me they thought they’d overheard two men threaten to arrange a little accident for someone called Albert.’

‘Oh? Did those kids happen to say who made the threat?’

‘No. It was dark and they didn’t see who it was.’

‘And you think –’

‘Wait, there was more. In the same breath they also mentioned something similar might happen to
the old witch
snooping around at night
.’

‘So . . .?’ She managed to put considerable challenge into the one syllable.

I squirmed around. ‘Ehm, well, I thought that perhaps, you know, they might have been referring to you, in which case you might be in consid—’

‘The old witch? The
old
witch? And you think they were talking about me? I’m thirty-eight! Ouch!’ She dabbed her lips; one of her cuts had torn open. ‘Well okay, I feel a hundred and eight today but really!’ She flashed me a one-eyed rebuke. ‘Do
you
think I look like an old witch?’

Always the hard questions. I wisely ignored this one. ‘You’re not taking this seriously,’ I said instead.

‘
This is serious
. Just because I work up to my neck in muck half the time in the aptly named Grumpy Hollow doesn’t mean I’m completely beyond caring. So?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Course not what?’

‘Of course you don’t look like an old witch. Though you appear to have inherited your wardrobe from one.’ It just slipped out, you know how it goes.

She took a slow deep breath. ‘Says the bloke who rides around dressed like a crashed Spitfire pilot. Ha. Now I
really
need more tea.’

I followed her back to the caravan. ‘And you’re not worried?’

‘For the old witch?’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But look around you, what would you have me do? If someone wants to hurt me who’s going to stop them?’ When we reached the caravan she squinted at the bottom hinge of the door. ‘Had a good look around inside then, did you?’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I left a dried lentil behind the hinge, it’s on the ground now. No matter. Come in, I might even make you a mug of tea.’

I sat at the table while Gemma lit the gas under a whistling kettle on the stove and cleared away her breakfast debris. ‘You know how they say it’s a small world? Well, you’ve no idea how small until you’ve tried living in a caravan. Now, let’s see.’ She stood on tiptoe to rummage in a cupboard fitted into the curve of the roof above the bed. From there she produced a shoe box, set it opened on to the table and almost reverentially folded back the tissue paper to reveal a pair of tiny, shiny, insubstantial-looking shoes, black, strappy, open-toed with three-inch heels. She lifted them out and placed them on the table, then turned them until they pointed accusingly at me. ‘And how far do you think I’d get in those? I wouldn’t even make it to the car. No, no, no, wait.’ Another dive into the cupboard above my head. This time she produced a bundle wrapped in tissue paper. She opened it and let the content unwind in front of her: a little black dress, bias-cut, black beads shimmering around the neckline. ‘Do you know when I last wore that?’ She rolled it up again, quickly, angrily. ‘I don’t. Can’t even remember. Oh, yes I can, Christmas two years ago. Jack Fryer had invited me for Christmas dinner at Spring Farm. When I got there it turned out I was the only guest. He had too much Christmas cheer and lunged at me over the roast chicken. I stuck a fork in one of his paws and drove myself home. Ever since then, usually around the full moon when he’s had a skinful, he comes round here to apologize and tries to
make it up to me
, if you know what I mean. I keep a special fork for him in my drawer,’ she concluded and carefully put away the shoes before seeing to the kettle which had begun to whistle like a steam train.

‘Couldn’t you get a more aggressive dog to help guard this place?’ I suggested tactlessly when two mugs of tea steamed between us.

She shook her head. ‘Not while Taxi is around,’ she said, looking out of the window.

‘I have bad news, I’m afraid.’

Gemma put her mug down. She understood instantly. ‘Oh. Poor Taxi. I had him for ever, it seemed. He went walkabouts some time yesterday. I was afraid that in this weather . . . Where did you find him?’

‘Just a bit further up the valley.’

‘You mean near Blackfield’s place?’

I nodded.

‘Any sign of how he died?’

‘Not really. Hard to tell, I’m not a vet, you know.’

‘So he wasn’t run over or anything obvious like that. Probably old age, he was ancient, and the weather has been lousy. But I always hoped he’d just lie down by the stove and fade away, not out in the cold. But he always liked to roam. Come on, drink up, show me.’

‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea . . .’

‘Rubbish. Can’t let him just lie there. I thought you loved animals. We’ll go and bury him.’ She walked out, leaving me little choice but to gulp my scalding hot tea and follow her. With spade over her shoulder, pointy hat and scabbed and bruised face, she appeared to have stepped out of some medieval tapestry, the kind where people lie about with arrows stuck in their eyes. She chucked the spade into the cluttered back of the Volvo and we got in.

‘How’s Al’s cat settling in with you?’ she asked as she propelled the car up the slope.

‘Oh, he’s fine, still sniffing out the place. He can open doors, did you know that?’

Gemma stopped so I could get out and remove the rope from across the entrance. ‘Have you decided what to call him yet?’ she asked when I got back in.

‘Not yet.’

‘He’s a cute cat. You could call him Widget.’

‘No chance.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She took the ford of the brook as though it was open road, just briefly flicking the windscreen wipers on and off. Once up in the lane she cranked the big Zeppelin of a car round the corners in grim, high speed silence and eventually powered it up the hill so fast I thought she was going to drive smack through the locked gate on to Blackfield’s land. Instead she stopped a couple of inches short of the chain link, jumped out and got the spade.

‘Go on, show us.’

‘Actually, I think he did have some kind of accident. It looked as if . . . someone might have hit him.’

‘Hit him,’ she repeated flatly.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. Her face was set in a rigid scowl. We walked on in silence. It didn’t take long to reach the point where I had turned down the hill. I slithered through the leaf litter with Gemma at my heels and found Taxi’s corpse easily.

Gemma stood motionless in front of it, gripping the spade like a weapon. ‘The bastards. They didn’t have to do that.’

She obviously had some idea of the who and why but an odd rasp in her voice made me think that this wasn’t the moment to quiz her about it. My own list of suspects was very short. Eventually she dragged her eyes away, sniffed. ‘I changed my mind, I don’t want to bury him here,’ she said, looking towards the fence. ‘I’ll bury him at the Hollow. Can you give me a hand? He’s quite heavy.’

Despite the cold, flies buzzed as we lifted the cold body. Gemma carried the front of the animal, oblivious to the blood and gore of the broken skull. We walked awkwardly up the slope, nearly fell twice. My mobile chimed as we reached the top. I shifted the weight on to my left arm and answered it.

It was Annis. ‘At last, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages but it said your mobile was unavailable. What’s going on, where are you, what are you doing?’

I sighed. There was some kind of liquid draining from the dead dog on to my clothes. I could feel ants crawl up my sleeves. A fat fly buzzed insanely around my head. ‘I’ll explain later.’

‘Sooner rather than later. He called again and he seems furious, demanded to speak to you. He has another job for us but he wants you on the phone when he calls again at . . . well, in less than an hour from now. Can you get here?’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said simply and rang off.

We found space among the crates, buckets and tools in the crowded back for the dog and I closed the door with all the reverence I could muster. When I got in myself I noticed several bluebottles had made it into the car. Gemma reversed down the hill like she’d been driving backwards all her life, stuffed the back half of the car into the track-side weeds by the barn at the bottom and cranked the wheel around with furious efficiency before propelling us back towards the Hollow.

Digging a hole large and deep enough to bury the dog turned out to be surprisingly hard work. We dug the grave on the side of the slope, away from the springs, taking turns with the only spade. The ground was wet and heavy. When we had laid the dead animal at the bottom Gemma picked up the spade and without ceremony began the task of backfilling. I went off to wash my hands at the spring. By the time I got back she had nearly finished.

‘Thanks for doing that. Can you go now, please?’ she asked without looking at me.

I ignored the request. ‘Do you ever go to those woods?’

‘Of course I do. I go mushroom picking there for a start.’

‘But it’s private property? Blackfield owns it?’

‘Yeah, they own it, so what. Blackfield’s a complete bastard and wants no one near his property, he doesn’t give a shit for the few mushrooms I take away. Perhaps he got a few threatening letters or something when he started up that business with the containers and that’s what turned him into a paranoid antisocial bastard, that’s my most charitable theory anyway. We had words about me collecting wild herbs and mushrooms around there before he started with the containers though.’

‘And you do that at night?’ I was thinking about ‘the old witch snooping at night’.

‘Yes, some plants are best collected after nightfall. Or so it says in some of my old herbals and I have no reason to doubt it. Anyway, I like walking at night, it’s peaceful.’

Albert Barrington hadn’t found it so peaceful, though you could argue he’d found peace in the end. ‘Blackfield, is he the big guy with a shaved head? Dresses like a Hollywood mercenary?’

‘That’s Tony’s son Jim. I think you’ll find it’s him who’s in charge now. He went off for a few years, no interest in farming whatsoever. Can’t blame him, he saw his parents work themselves into the ground for no reward. Mind you, if he’d stayed they wouldn’t have been so shorthanded in the first place. Small mixed farm. Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth, it doesn’t take much, the margins are so small. Then Tony’s wife died, cancer I think, not sure, the Big C’s still only whispered around here. Jim came back, took over, got rid of the last animals. I think Blackfield senior never recovered from losing his wife. Apparently he still keeps three chickens and only talks to them. Sounds like depression if you ask me. And when he looks out the window he sees a sea of containers rusting in his fields. Cheerful. You met his son then.’