Shadows in the Cotswolds (9 page)

Oliver Meadows had begged for a police safe house. ‘Witness protection,’ he said. ‘I need to feel safe.’ He looked out at the busy London street and shuddered. ‘I never feel safe in London.’

The reaction had not been favourable. ‘I don’t think the situation calls for that, sir,’ said the liaison officer he had been allocated. ‘We’re not dealing with drug barons, after all.’
And besides, aren’t you just an old nonentity, who nobody’s going to care about enough to offer any threat?
was the subtext.

‘But my testimony is going to ruin a man’s lifelong reputation. A pillar of the community, almost literally. He won’t take it quietly.’

‘Indeed not, sir. But don’t you think that if he was going to attack you, he’d have done it before now? Just get yourself a little room in an anonymous
hotel – one of those near Paddington would be ideal – and nobody’s going to find you.’

Oliver could see the sense in this, but the tariff of seventy pounds a night gave him pause. Nobody had mentioned anything about covering his expenses. He had volunteered himself as a witness almost a year earlier, and assumed this meant he’d have to pay his own way. The trial could last for two weeks, he had been told – possibly more if there were absences and delays, as very often happened in the legal system. He might be asked to remain within call for much of that time. He pined for his birds and the fresh country air. London gave him a headache. On arrival at Paddington the previous afternoon, he had booked himself into a hotel chosen at random in Norfolk Square, telling nobody at all of his whereabouts. He would hole up until Monday morning, using the time to steady his nerve.

It was Sunday afternoon, and he was due to present himself the following day. The trial had been going for three days already, with tedious introductory detail that he had not been permitted to attend. His input would be significant, but not exclusively so. There were others, of all ages, finally finding the courage to speak out. It was by far the most terrifying experience of his quiet reclusive life – that is, since the original crime against him, sixty years before.

The hotel room was very small, designed for the use of tourists who would be out all day seeing the
sights. It had a bed, table, mirror, wardrobe, television and minute shower room. His suit was hanging on the rail in the wardrobe and a carrier bag of food sat on the table. He had been to the Marks & Spencer in the Paddington Station complex and bought a pork pie, two apples, mixed salad, a carton of milk and a bottle of wine. He could make tea and coffee with the tiny paper packets provided by the hotel. In the morning they would give him as big a breakfast as he could eat for no extra charge.

He turned on the television, braced for it failing to work. The night before, it had flickered and faded unbearably, the colour turning to monochrome at sporadic intervals. But today it seemed to have recovered, and he anticipated a soothing episode of
Countryfile
with something approaching satisfaction.

He was early. They were showing the news. The news was reporting a murder in a small town in Gloucestershire called Winchcombe. A murder of sufficient interest to find a slot on the national news, on a quiet September Sunday, it seemed. He watched with a sense of totally detached disbelief as his own front gate appeared on the screen, followed by the woman he’d employed to feed his birds. He knew it was her – he recognised the dog, as final confirmation. He had been worrying about that dog.

He also recognised his brother Fraser, at which point his detachment turned to extreme rage. He had taken consolation from the idea that he could keep
his Winchcombe life quite separate from the sordid events in London. Now, it seemed, they were set to collide, thanks to his blundering brother. He should have known better, he thought furiously, than to agree to a house-sitter already known to Fraser.

The whole country, it seemed, had been watching the news that evening. The sheer caprice of it annoyed Thea the most. Some arbitrary decision by a television editor had turned what would normally have been a fleeting local story into a national headline. The fact that the victim was a pretty young woman made all the difference, of course. Thea already knew the consequences of a child being murdered and had no illusions as to the persistent power of the press, but this came as a surprise.

The stroll around Sudeley Park had taken just over an hour, spent arguing over tree identification and letting Hepzie run loose. Somewhat to Thea’s amusement, her mother had collected a pocketful of conkers from beneath a huge chestnut tree. ‘They’re for Noel,’ she said defensively.

‘I don’t think they let them play conkers any more,’ Thea said.

‘Maybe not, but he can plant them and grow new trees, can’t he? That’s what he does. He’s got a proper little copse established already, didn’t you know?’

‘Has he? Where?’ Her sister’s garden was modest in size, and her five children had ensured that nothing
but the most robustly prickly plants would grow in it.

‘He keeps it a secret. It’s common land, apparently. He gets them started in pots and then puts them in the open ground. According to Jocelyn, he’s got an amazing success rate. Noel is an amazing child,’ the fond grandmother added happily.

‘You’re not supposed to have favourites,’ Thea said sternly.

‘Too late. As the youngest of six grandsons, I think it’s permissible, anyway. He’s liable to get lost in the crowd.’

There was little that Thea could say to this. In truth, young Noel was her own favourite of all the nephews and nieces, as well. Carl had similarly favoured him. ‘If we could order one like him, I’d be tempted to have a try,’ he said, with a wary smile. He had accepted that it was for Thea to decide on the size of their family, but sometimes he let slip his hope that one day it might swell to two children, rather than one.

‘Me too,’ she’d replied lightly. ‘But we’d just get a bad-tempered girl who wanted everything in her life to be pink.’

‘That would indeed be dreadful,’ her husband had laughed.

Conversation on the walk was fragmented and inconsequential. Fraser strolled slightly apart, hands clasped behind his back, eyes mostly on the ground in front of him. He seemed neither cheerful nor miserable, but content to let events swirl around him,
without any active involvement on his part. The fact of a large park practically on the doorstep gave Thea a sense of obligation. Whatever happened, she ought to make the effort to enjoy it. The towering trees, with the edges of some leaves crimped with the first signs of autumn, had clearly been there for at least a century. The general layout was reminiscent of even earlier times – she had read that there had been a deer park around the castle since at least the fourteen hundreds. The usual complicated history of destruction and rebuilding made it impossible to pin down precise dates, but she could very well imagine Jane Austen’s contemporaries taking the air on these very swards of well-kept grass, pausing on the same stone bridges for brief flirtations.

Queen Elizabeth I had visited, even earlier. Then it had come to grief during the Civil War and languished until Victoria’s time. All this Thea dredged from her sporadic researches into the history of the Cotswolds, finding scraps of knowledge she had scarcely known she possessed. Whatever fate had befallen the castle, it seemed clear that the park had survived, if much diminished in size. The familiar sense of continuity struck her – the idea that human feet had walked the same spot for more than a thousand years. The fact that those feet might have belonged to Good Queen Bess, and other monumental figures, gave her a frisson of excitement.

‘Can’t we see the castle properly?’ her mother asked.

‘Apparently not. Just the roof, I think. There’s a wall round it. You have to book a tour if you want to see inside. I think it’s only weekends.’

‘Today is Sunday,’ her mother reminded her. ‘Can’t we give it a try?’

‘Feel free,’ Thea said. ‘But they won’t allow dogs. I’m not really in the mood for it, to be honest.’

‘You have to book in advance,’ said Fraser, with authority. ‘They call it a connoisseur’s day, or some such thing. I’m with Thea. We can come back some other time.’

Maureen shrugged and accepted defeat. They walked on, past even bigger and more exotic trees. By the end of an hour, Thea could see that her mother was limping slightly, one knee starting to ache. Various friends had mentioned the possibility of a replacement joint, which filled Maureen with horror. ‘It’s nothing like bad enough for that,’ she protested, and made every effort to conceal the inexorable degeneration of the bones. When she bent to collect the conkers, she did it from the hip, making an angular figure, feet apart and the effort of straightening considerable. Thea could hardly bear to watch.

When they got back, her phone had accumulated four missed calls, all of them from more or less predictable people. The realisation that she had already appeared on television and been recognised came as a shock. The callers all said it was their reason for phoning. They were, in order, her friend Celia in
Witney, from whom she had drifted away in the past few years; her brother-in-law James, from whom she had also felt very distant recently; her daughter Jessica, who never watched television, but had happened to be at a friend’s flat when it was on; and her sister Jocelyn. Against her inclination, she called them all back to assure them she was fine, that the police had finished their questions, and she would remain in Winchcombe for at least another week.

One person had not phoned: a person she knew watched a lot of television with his children, who would recognise her from the most fleeting glimpse. There was no message from Drew Slocombe.

Oliver’s landline was busy, too. It rang five minutes after they got back to the house. Unsure of the protocol as to who should answer it, Thea left it to Fraser, who seemed unsurprisingly reluctant. ‘This is a nightmare,’ he groaned. ‘What am I supposed to say?’

In the event, he had no difficulty. ‘Oh … Mo,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so … What? For heaven’s sake, don’t even think of it. There’s no space here for you to stay.’ He cast a wild look at Thea, who tried to retain a neutral expression. ‘Well, if you must but there’s absolutely no need … That would be better, I suppose … What does it have to do with him, anyway? He doesn’t even
know
Oliver … Yes, yes, I know you are. You’re very kind, dear. I’m sure you’re awfully busy …’ The conversation tailed off
into monosyllables and he replaced the receiver. ‘That was Mo. She wants to come and see for herself what’s going on.’

‘When?’ asked Maureen. ‘Not tonight, surely?’

‘Fortunately not. First thing tomorrow. With Jason, God help us.’

Thea felt the familiar sensation of being at the mercy of whoever chose to call at her appointed house-sit. She was a captive, forced to remain at her station and endure whoever might come and harangue her. There was, however, more than a flicker of curiosity about this Mo, this child of a Spanish mother who had been named for Maureen Callaghan, as her own mother had once been called.

But before she could worry about the next day’s intrusions, there was a knock on the front door that gave her good reason to concentrate on the day in hand.

Two people and a smiling young dog stood there. The golden retriever and its people, she realised. The man was much the same as he had been in the pub garden: insincere smile, calculating eyes. The woman’s hair was all Thea could recognise of her. The dog seemed much as before. ‘Hello,’ said the man. ‘Reuben Hardy – remember? And this is my wife, Jenny.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘We’ve just caught up with what’s been going on, probably the last people in the Cotswolds to realise. We’re
horrified
, quite honestly. We came to see if we can offer any help, in any way. I mean – we only live two hundred yards away. We feel
involved
.’

‘It’s a bit more than that, Reu,’ his wife corrected him. ‘We’re in the silk mill building, actually,’ she addressed Thea. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve seen it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Thea, still resisting any pressure to admit them into the house. ‘I was intending to explore properly today. Only—’

‘Of
course
,’ gushed Reuben, and Thea began to wonder whether he might be a minister of religion or something of the sort. He had the same unusual delivery and assumption of a kind of entitlement. ‘We
do
understand.’

‘I don’t expect you do,’ came Thea’s mother’s voice from behind her. ‘It has been a long day for us all, and we were hoping for a quiet evening. Exactly what you think you can do is a mystery to me – especially as you appear to have a dog with you.’ The animal was rubbing noses with Hepzie, amidst a lot of tail-wagging and sideways jumps. It was distracting, to say the least. Thea gave her mother a long admiring look. Plainly encouraged, the older woman continued, ‘The police have everything under control, and I’m sure you understand that we have been strongly discouraged from gossiping with anybody about the details of the terrible tragedy.’ She was improvising magnificently, since she had not exchanged a single word with a police officer, as far as Thea could recall.

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s so, but you must be feeling very much under siege. And being strange to the area, and so forth …’ The man was babbling, and Thea began to wonder about his sanity.

‘We were settling down to a quiet evening, hoping
not to be disturbed,’ her mother repeated relentlessly. ‘There’s nothing we need to know about the area, thank you.’

At least we haven’t let them in
, Thea thought grimly. Once inside, she doubted they would ever leave. There was something very unsettling about them, with the woman at her husband’s shoulder, as if urging him on. Thea took a deep breath and took over from her mother. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You haven’t explained why you’re here, you ignore our requests for privacy. What do you
want
, exactly?’

‘We want you to know how vulnerable you are,’ said Reuben earnestly. ‘We were
worried
about you. That girl must have thought she’d be perfectly safe walking through the woods, when all the time …’ He swallowed painfully, and his eyes seemed to sink back into his head.

Behind him, his wife nodded agreement. ‘The poor thing,’ she said. ‘Poor innocent creature. Just minding her own business.’

‘Well …’ Thea struggled to voice her unease at this assessment. ‘We don’t really know, do we?’ she finished feebly.

‘Know what?’ The question was uttered with
wide-open
eyes and a slight smile.

‘What she was doing in the woods. Where she was going. Who she was meeting.’

‘Was she meeting somebody, do you think?’ Jenny
had somehow taken over from her husband, stepping forward into the light, while he faded out of it.

‘She said she was, yes.’ Thea felt tricked into revealing something she should not have done. ‘At least, I think she did. I only met her for a few minutes.’

‘Of course, there are evil people everywhere. That’s what we wanted to come and say to you. You have to be careful. Whoever killed that poor girl Melissa might still be out there, waiting to do it again. He’s probably mentally ill.’

‘Well …’ Thea floundered even more deeply. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ she managed.

‘We’re worried about you,’ said Reuben softly. ‘That’s why we came.’ His manner seemed to have changed slightly, from the brashly grinning person he had been to a more nervous individual. ‘It’s a terribly shocking thing, after all,’ he added.

‘Yes,’ endorsed his wife. The puppy, which had been sitting watching Hepzie, suddenly jumped up and pawed at its mistress. ‘Oh, Blodwen, all right. You’ve been a good dog,’ she said, laying a loving hand on the animal’s head. ‘A very good dog.’

Reuben seemed to sigh, and Thea wondered whether the animal might have replaced him in Jenny’s affections. It wouldn’t be very surprising, if so, she concluded wryly.

Could it be true that the couple really did have their welfare at heart? Were she and her mother being outrageously churlish in their reactions? She looked
back into the house for Fraser. As the closest person to the owner of the house, he had a right to be heard. But he was nowhere to be seen.

‘It’s kind of you to come,’ she told Reuben. ‘But honestly, we’ll be perfectly all right.’

‘Let me give you our numbers,’ he said. ‘I’ve written them down, look.’ He proffered a piece of paper with three telephone numbers on it. ‘Landline, and both our mobiles,’ he explained.

Thea took them automatically.

‘I expect we seem a bit pushy to you,’ said Jenny. ‘The thing is, we’ve recently taken over the Neighbourhood Watch – chair and secretary – and we want it to have some bite. If we can’t take a serious role when there’s been a murder, what use are we? That’s all it is. Obviously, we’ve never been faced with a situation like this before and we’re probably doing it very badly. But we honestly do feel worried about you.’

It was a seductive speech and Thea for one was seduced. ‘Oh, gosh,’ she breathed. ‘Now I understand. I’m sorry we were so frosty.’

‘Think nothing of it. You must be terribly shocked and confused. I mean – just who
was
the woman who got herself killed? That’s what everybody’s asking.’

‘I’m sure they are. Now if you’ll excuse us …’ Thea’s mother took control and began to close the door. The Hardys stepped back uncertainly, and Thea called a
final ‘Goodbye and thank you’ and they disappeared from view.

‘Mother! Weren’t you rather hard on them?’ she hissed.

‘Hard on the Hardys? Possibly. But I don’t trust them – do you? They wanted something, and I don’t see why we should give it to them. As far as I can see, they’re just ghouls, wanting to hear all the dirty details. That Neighbourhood Watch nonsense was just a fabrication, I bet you.’

‘It did come as a bit of an afterthought,’ Thea said slowly, disliking the implication that her mother was a substantially better judge of character than she was herself. ‘He was pretty obnoxious at the pub, wasn’t he?’

‘Exactly. You seemed to forget that.’

‘I did,’ Thea admitted. ‘But I liked her yesterday in the park. She was perfectly friendly. And that was before there was any hint of a murder.’

‘Oh well, they’ve gone now. Where’s Fraser? What’s he doing?’

Fraser was in the back room, looking confused. ‘Why does it seem so empty?’ he asked Thea. ‘There was more in here.’

‘The murdered girl’s boxes,’ she said readily. ‘The police have taken them all. There’s a good chance they’ll find something to identify her. I shouldn’t wonder if they know just who she is by now.’

‘Was,’ he corrected huskily. ‘Poor girl.’

‘Right. Plus they probably have the whole attack captured on film, so they’ll know at least what her killer looks like. And then they’ll find her car, which will tell them a lot more about her.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ The old man sighed and drifted back into the main living room. ‘What a dreadful day it’s been.’

‘I suppose Reuben’s right there, at least. We are all suffering from delayed shock, I expect. We should go to bed early and see if everything’s better in the morning.’

‘Bed?’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s only seven o’clock!’

‘I didn’t mean
now
. We have to have some supper first. I can make something with the bits and pieces there are here. We could open a tin of soup or beans and add some eggs and potatoes. But I suggest we disconnect the phone and see if we can get a decent sleep.’

‘Thea!’ gasped her horrified mother. ‘We can’t do that! What if something important happens? You can’t just disable the phone.’

‘We’ve got mobiles. You can leave yours by the bed, if you like.’

Bed! They still hadn’t settled where everyone was to sleep. Thea felt weak at the prospect of reorganising all the rooms. ‘Um …’ she began. ‘Fraser – I don’t think that bed in the third room is going to be useable, is it?’

‘What?’ He frowned at her in bewilderment.

‘Sleeping arrangements,’ she said. ‘How are we going to work it? Who’s having Oliver’s room?’

‘Maureen is. The sofa turns into a bed. I’ll have that. I’ll get up early and put it all back before either of you are up.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She felt foolish for worrying when there was such a simple solution. ‘Thanks.’

‘Mo’s coming in the morning,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m not sure that’s anything to look forward to. She can be rather hard work, I warn you.’

‘Not to mention Jason,’ Thea laughed. ‘I know it’s awful of me, but I can’t help visualising a truck driver or bricklayer, with a name like that.’

‘You’re not far wrong. He runs a caravan park in the Chilterns. He’s decent enough, from what I can make out. I’ve only met him a few times. But he’s what they call a rough diamond, all the same. All those faceless people coming and going, up to God knows what – it’s a strange way to make a living.’

‘And things are a bit turbulent in the Chilterns these days,’ Thea remembered. ‘With that stupid new railway going through.’

‘Stupid? Is that what you think?’

‘Of course. Don’t get me started. I haven’t heard a single credible argument in its favour.’

Fraser put up his hands. ‘Let’s not squabble over that,’ he begged. ‘Although I’m not sure Jason would share your views.’

‘I suppose he thinks he can provide accommodation for the navvies who build the thing,’ she said sourly. ‘Short-term profit and long-term devastation.’

‘Something like that,’ agreed Fraser mildly. He glanced again at the empty room with a little frown. ‘It’s what they’ve been saying about the Pilbara for a while now. I must admit, they have made a pretty fine mess of it.’

His work in Australia, she remembered, thinking how very far away and irrelevant it must seem to him now.

Thoughts of supper were the next preoccupation, and Thea constructed an acceptable meal from available provisions. Fraser went out to his car and returned with a bottle of red wine. ‘The police are out there again,’ he reported. ‘Checking the cars, I imagine.’

‘And door-to-door enquiries,’ said Thea knowingly. ‘Now that people are back from their days out.’

Her mother shivered. ‘It’s very horrible, isn’t it? All that police business going on out there, without us knowing about it.’

‘That isn’t what’s horrible,’ Thea disagreed. ‘What’s horrible is that somebody is dead when they shouldn’t be. Although when you think about it, there are all kinds of ordinary little killings happening all the time.’

‘Ordinary killings?’ Fraser repeated. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh – don’t you ever think about all those animals out there, getting on with their lives regardless of us? Foxes, birds, rats, even cats – all busily fighting and breeding and hunting, while we remain completely ignorant of what’s happening.’

‘You sound like my brother,’ he said.

‘You mean with his birds? That’s why he sets the camera going. So he can know something of what they do when there’s nobody watching. I can well understand how fascinating that must be.’

‘His fascination starts and ends with the birds. My brother prides himself on his ignorance. He has no desire to involve himself in anything beyond his four walls – apart from the birds. The birds are safe, you see. And I suppose everybody has to take an interest in
something
.’

Thea concentrated on the food for a few moments, trying not to think about anything else. But when the silence became too much, she burst out, ‘Safe? Your brother needs to feel safe, does he?’

Fraser shrugged. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘Not the way you seemed to mean it, just then. As if he’s usually frightened.’ She thought about the man she had met so briefly. Had he seemed timid or nervous? She found it impossible to judge. ‘And why won’t you tell us where he is?’ she demanded again. ‘What’s all the mystery?’

‘He asked me not to. Besides, I honestly don’t know where he is at this precise moment. I do know where
he’ll be tomorrow, and I told the police where that is. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think that’s all I’m required to do.’

‘He’s right, Thea. You shouldn’t be so curious. It isn’t your business,’ said her mother, not especially gently.

Thea took it graciously. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m just a nosy cow. Everybody says so,’ she laughed. But there were two burningly inescapable questions at the forefront of her mind:

Who was waiting for Melissa in the pub, the previous evening? And what was on that memory stick?