Scaring Crows (6 page)

They both noted that she displayed no curiosity as to why they were there.

Joanna tried again. ‘May we come in?'

Hannah Lockley barred the way. ‘Is it poachers again? I've told your lot before. I'm not interested. They can go to blazes for all I care. Let them have the bloody rabbits.'

Joanna frowned. This was a waste of precious time. ‘You are Miss Hannah Lockley?' she asked formally. ‘Who wants to know?'

‘I'm Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy of the Leek Police. Miss Lockley, I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you. May we come in?'

‘No you can't. Whatever you've got to say you can say out here on the step.' She gave a fond glance around the small garden and beyond to the wide panorama of endless green fields and her voice softened. ‘There's no one around to hear, at least no one who matters. Just animals, birds and insects, Inspector.'

Mike stepped forward. ‘It would be better if we came in, Miss Lockley.'

‘And if I don't invite you?'

There was a brief pause, a battle of wills during which Joanna gained the distinct impression that on the old woman's part it was not done without humour. But as for Mike ...

‘Is your niece here, Miss Lockley?'

A veil dropped over the open, country face and the aggression seemed to melt away. ‘Ruthie?' she said. ‘No. Ruthie isn't here.'

‘When did you last see her?'

The hostility was back. ‘What's it got to do with you?'

Incredibly still no alarm was registering. ‘We've just come from the farm, Miss Lockley. Hardacre Farm. Now please, let us come in. It really would be easier.'

Hannah Lockley shoved her hands into her trouser pockets like a rebellious teenager. ‘Easier for you, mebbe.'

‘Please.'

Muttering under her breath and without an invitation to follow, Hannah Lockley strode back into the house, throwing behind her a few choice epithets.

They followed her to the kitchen at the back. This too was old fashioned but neat and what had been left unchanged had now returned to vogue. Painted fern green, with a Belfast sink and scrubbed pine cupboards. It was a kitchen to tempt
Homes & Gardens.

They faced her over a square, stripped pine table.

‘Well as you're here,' she said grudgingly, ‘you may as well sit down.'

Joanna was struck by sudden curiosity. How would Hannah Lockley take the news? She seemed tough, unemotional. But there had been flashes of sentiment too.

Miss Lockley must have picked up on her thoughts. ‘You needn't be careful of me,' she said steadily. ‘I'm not afraid.'

Joanna gave Mike one swift, despairing glance before she plunged in. ‘This morning, at around ten, a discovery was made, at Hardacre Farm. The milk-tanker driver found two bodies in the sitting room. They'd been shot. I'm sorry.'

The old woman stared straight ahead. But Joanna knew she had heard by a slight tic at the side of her mouth.

‘They were the bodies of two men,' Joanna continued. ‘They have been initially identified as Aaron and Jack Summers, who I believe to be your brother-in-law and nephew.'

Hannah's pale eyes flickered. ‘So,' she said painfully slowly, ‘the idiot son went berserk in the end.'

They had all jumped to the same conclusion.

‘There isn't any question that Jack Summers killed his father,' she said. ‘They were shot by someone else.'

Miss Lockley's eyes were very shrewd. ‘How do you know?'

‘A forensic pathologist has examined both bodies and the scene of the crime. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a shotgun has a very long barrel. It isn't possible that Jack shot his father before turning the gun on himself.'

Hannah Lockley was still incredulous. ‘You're sure?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘And was it their gun that was used?'

‘We can't be positive until we've run some ballistics tests on it but at the moment we think so.'

‘Then what do you think happened? Who would have ...?' She ran out of words abruptly.

Mike's dark eyes fixed on the woman's face. ‘We wondered if someone had called Aaron back after he'd started bringing the cows in from the field. They were loose,' he added.

Hannah gave him a withering look. ‘Aaron never would have left the cows wandering. They're valuable animals besides being his livelihood. He wouldn't have done that.'

Joanna pursued the point. ‘Then can you think of another explanation why the cows were out of the field and loose in the yard?'

‘I can't. But there has to be one. You've got your facts mixed up somewhere, young lady.' The look she gave Joanna was reminiscent of her old headmistress. Severe, critical. It put Joanna firmly in the wrong.

Mike pushed on. ‘From the scene of the crime it appears as though Jack was upstairs when his father was shot. We think he heard it, came down and ...'

‘He got hit too.' There was something cynical in the woman's face. ‘But then Jack always was the fool.'

Again both the detectives knew there was another dimension to the story. ‘It appears,' Joanna said cautiously, ‘as though the person stood in the doorway and shot both of them from the same spot.'

‘And they are both dead?'

‘Yes. I'm afraid so.' Joanna had learnt one could not express regret too often in situations like these. ‘Tell me, Miss Lockley, the gun ...'

‘I told them it was a bad idea leaving it stood in the porch.' A glimmer of humour softened the hard lines. ‘And if your lot had seen it there doubtless you'd have taken his licence off him.'

‘We certainly would,' Mike said firmly.

‘Was it kept there loaded?'

‘Oh I don't know. I don't know about such things. I have no interest in guns.'

The bones of her knuckles were creamy white as she kneaded her hands. Joanna waited for the old woman to mention her niece. Eventually she did. ‘And Ruthie?' Again that indulgent, sentimental note.

‘We can't find Ruthie. We'd hoped you might know where she is.'

‘We've searched the farm,' Mike said.

Hannah's gaze altered. ‘But you haven't found her?'

Something brought back to Joanna's mind the girl's bedroom, dead flowers in the vase, water long ago dried up, the flowers themselves desiccated, rattling dry. And the memory set alarm bells jangling in her head. ‘Do you have any idea where Ruthie might be?' She might have pointed out the obvious fact that if Ruthie was alive and well she might be able to explain the facts surrounding the deaths in her family, but Hannah Lockley was still looking too bewildered to assault her with this.

‘I don't understand,' she said, ‘where the girl's got to.'

‘We thought you would be able to help us find her.'

Hannah looked blank.

‘Could she be staying with friends?' Mike suggested helpfully.

‘Or other relatives perhaps?'

‘Staying in the town?'

The old lady's eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps the shocking news had finally penetrated. She made a couple of false starts before completing her sentence. ‘You don't ... you don't really see it, do you?' She looked from one to the other searching for some comprehension or empathy. ‘None of them. Not Aaron, Jack or Ruthie. They never went anywhere. They never went out except to the market. There is no need for any of us to go out. Except to get our food we stay here.'

‘But she isn't here,' Mike pointed out cleverly.

‘No she ...'

‘And you haven't seen her for ...?'

‘A while.' She was almost afraid to ask the next question. ‘Do you think ...?' Joanna desperately wanted to deny that Ruthie Summers might be lying somewhere in the fields, shot too, but she wasn't sure the old lady would have believed her.

Hannah's fingers seemed to have formed lives of their own, twisting and knotting. ‘Maybe she's on a holiday.'

‘But you just said—'

‘I know what I said.' There was something wild in her face. ‘But I can't think where else ... Unless.' Her face was unbearably bleak. ‘The Landrover,' she said. ‘Is it there?'

‘Parked outside.'

‘So she hasn't gone out in that.'

‘No, Miss Lockley.' Joanna felt a surge of sympathy for her. ‘At the moment Ruthie Summers is officially classed as a missing person. If you can think of anything – anything that might help us find her, that might help us work out what happened we'd be very grateful.'

She nodded then sat silent for a moment before her pale eyes found Joanna's face. ‘Was it that Art Person?' she asked fiercely. ‘Was it him?'

‘Who do you mean?'

‘That Art Person,' she said again. ‘We've all noticed how things have been different since he's come. I told Aaron at the time it was a big mistake letting him rent the Owl Hole. I warned him. I told him these city types don't belong here. Money. That's all it was. Just money. He waved a few twenty pound notes in front of Aaron's greedy long nose and that was that. What Aaron couldn't see was that he was mocking us. Mocking us country types, laughing at our ways of doing things. But Aaron always did worry about money.'

Joanna pictured the emaciated body of the farmer and understood what Hannah Lockley meant. Even in death her brother-in-law had looked worried.

And now Hannah had decided to talk it was as though flood gates had burst open and as Joanna listened the picture of the inhabitants of Hardacre Farm grew steadily clearer. ‘Aaron was always complaining about the milk cheque and his bull going missing. Said he was having trouble keeping the farm going. Three mouths to feed and the price of hay awful after last year's rain.' Hannah Lockley's mouth twisted in wry humour. ‘Trust him to go and die before gathering the best harvest we're likely to have for the rest of the century. That farm would have been fine, properly managed. That was what it needed, to be properly managed. But from the minute that Art Man came he brought nothing but trouble in his wake. Oil and water, I said to Aaron. Oil and water. The day they mix will be the same day those sort of city folk see eye to eye with us. How can they understand us?' She appealed to the two police officers. ‘They are so different. We are different. Put them out here and it causes nothing but trouble.'

Mike licked his pencil and repeated Joanna's question. ‘Who are you talking about?'

‘I can't remember his name,' Hannah said impatiently. ‘Some silly art name.'

‘And where will we find this person?'

She looked even more irritated. ‘I told you. He's at the Owl Hole. It's one of the outlying farm buildings. Was used as a grain store once. He got hold of it at the end of last year and messed it up but he does pay rent,' she finished grudgingly. ‘Though what Ruthie will do with him when she takes over the running of the farm I don't know.'

Joanna was startled to realize that Hannah firmly believed her niece to be still alive, and if alive – innocent. But she let the subject pass unchallenged for now and allowed Hannah to continue. Maybe it was a means of releasing her grief. And maybe she would let something slip that would help them find out who had shot Aaron and Jack Summers.

‘Place used to be full of Barn Owls years ago.' She gave a sour grimace. At least
they
were some use. Used to keep the mice down.
He's
done it up like a birthday cake. I don't think he's quite all there.' She gave a scornful laugh. ‘He hangs coathangers from the trees.'

Joanna gave Mike a startled glance. ‘Who exactly is he?'

‘One of these daft, London people,' the spinster said with all the prejudice of country born and bred. ‘One of these people who
escapes
to the country bringing their daft London ways with them. Fashion.' She almost spat the word. ‘They like to make monkeys out of us. Calls himself a modern sculptor.' Somehow she had managed to modify her Staffordshire burr to a high-pitched, mincing tone with all the affectation of a society ball.

‘But you don't know his name?' Mike's pencil was still poised.

‘Titus Mothershaw,' Hannah said reluctantly. ‘
Titus
. What sort of a name is that?'

Joanna smothered a smile and addressed Mike. ‘We'd better go and see him.'

‘Arrest him, you mean,' the old lady said spitefully. ‘It's obvious to me if it isn't to you. Oil and water, you see. And there's your motive.'

Joanna stood up. ‘Nothing's so obvious to me, Miss Lockley. And until it is we won't be making any arrests. Now if you do happen to make contact with your niece I would like you to tell her we are
very
anxious to speak to her.'

Mike hesitated before he spoke up. ‘As far as you know did Aaron or Jack and this sculptor man have any arguments?'

‘Not that I'm aware of,' the old lady said sulkily.

‘In fact you said that Aaron was
glad
of the money. And Mr Mothershaw, I suppose,
liked
living in the Owl Hole.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.' Said even more grudgingly.

‘So there would be no point in him shooting either of the Summers, would there?'

Hard eyes met his. ‘They might have argued and I not known. Maybe Aaron had seen sense at long last and had given him notice to quit. He wouldn't have liked
that
after all the work that he's done there.'

‘This is pure conjecture,' Joanna said.

‘Oh, you think so, do you?' the old lady said. ‘Well what would you think of someone who builds obscene sculptures in the garden. He's a monstrous man.'

Joanna couldn't make up her mind to be amused at the old lady's prejudice or to take it seriously. But then this was a murder investigation. Everything must be taken seriously. She tried to uncover the facts. ‘You can't think of any specific reason why this “monstrous man” might want to shoot his landlord, can you?'