Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) (10 page)

“Yes, I have. But listen, I haven’t told my sister Ariadne.”
Penny quickly outlined the events of the previous night.

Drew’s expression was hard and angry as he listened. His
knuckles whitened as he clenched his fists. Penny felt an odd flutter in her
stomach as she watched him transform into a protective caveman.

But she didn’t really want him to launch into full-on
superhero mode. She said, as she finished her recount, “It could easily have
been an accident. The police said that to me. People lean down to grab their
phones, or drop a cd, or whatever, and the car swerves. It could have been
that. They might not have even known I was there.”

“And do you believe that?” Drew said.

“Maybe. I think it’s a possibility.”

“Hmm.”

“Or if it was deliberate, it is likely to have been
mistaken identity.”

“Hmm.”

“Drew, please. Don’t look so worried.” She waved the bottle
of whisky in the air. “Fancy a tipple?”

“No,” he said, still very serious. He sighed. “Okay, at
least you reported it. But please, we’ve got a killer on the loose, and now
this … don’t go walking around at night on your own again.”

She wanted to say, “You’re not the boss of me,” but she
didn’t. It was nice to be cared about. Instead, she nodded. “You’re right.”

He regarded her for a long moment, his dark eyes narrowed
in contemplation. Eventually, he said, “You are special to me, you know.”

She swallowed. “Yes. I mean, sorry, no, thank you. I mean,
you are to me. Special, I mean. Oh, bother.”

It broke the tension. “Now then,” he continued, finally
smiling. “About this badger watching. Shall we try again? When are you free
this week?”

* * * *

She decided not to take her camera out on the badger
watching session. She felt it would be unnecessary clutter. She wanted to focus
on the possibility of seeing the shy creatures, and also on the still-new joy
of spending time with Drew.

He collected her as darkness fell in the late afternoon.
Once again, he spoke the caveats he’d mentioned before; the badgers might not
be around, that if they were, it could be too dark, and so on.

She didn’t mind. She was well wrapped up and had some
portable hand-warmers in her pockets. The night was warm for the time of year,
with no frost, and the sky was half-covered in light clouds. Even as full night
fell, they could still see the shapes of the trees in the gloom.

“Are you okay?” he asked as they tramped into the woods,
their pace slowing as their feet had to do the seeing as much as their eyes
did.

“Yes, fine. Nice and warm.”

“I meant, about being out and about after that possible …
attack.”

“I thought we’d decided it was an accident.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But I know what you mean,” she said. “And yes, I’m fine. I
still can’t quite accept I’m a suspect in the murder case, though.”

“You’re a minor one.”

“By that token,” she said, “all of us are just minor
suspects. No one stands out as obviously the one to have enough motive to have
killed Clive.”

Drew stopped suddenly and flung up his hand in warning.
Quietly, he said, “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. It will probably turn out
to be someone the police haven’t even considered. Don’t they say that it all
comes down to love, money or power in the end?”

“Clive was all about power.”

“Maybe it will turn out to have been a spurned mistress or
lover or something exciting like that.”

Penny giggled but swallowed it. She reminded herself that a
man was dead. “I hope it all gets sorted soon.”

“Are you not tempted to step in and find the murderer this
time?”

“Always. But I have to admit that the police have
technology and resources. All I have is a nosey nature and a mind that is prone
to making leaps of fantasy.”

Drew grabbed her in a hug for a moment and held her close.
She leaned into him, and with her face pressed up against his chest, she said,
“What’s this for?”

He pressed a kiss onto the top of her head. “I just want
you to know that I really admire and appreciate your nosey nature and leaps of
fantasy, that’s all. And your resilience and your openness to try new things.”

She smiled though he couldn’t see it. “Thank you. Thank you
for supporting me and being there for me.”

They stayed still for a moment, lost in the thoughts and
feelings that they shared.

He released her. “But now … badgers. I think I hear some
snuffling up ahead…”

They went on, creeping into the darkness, and after two
hours of crawling and waiting, she was at last rewarded with a distant sighting
through some night-vision goggles of a badger’s retreating bottom.

* * * *

The carol singing began that week. They were now halfway
through the Advent period, and even the most curmudgeonly person was embracing
the festive cheer. The carollers, Penny included, toured the local and district
nursing homes and were plied with far more boozy mince pies than they should
have had, although the alcohol certainly helped the singers’ enthusiasm even if
it affected their harmony. They sang in the various local churches and at the
inter-faith group. They also went from door to door, raising funds to be split
between funding the Christmas lights and market, with a proportion of the money
going to the stray dogs’ home.

Their biggest night out was to be Friday. That evening, the
carollers started at the High School, and worked their way through the back
streets of town, with the eventual aim of finishing at the market square. Most
people opened their doors and windows to hear them, and soon their collecting
tin was rattling nicely. It was lovely to bring smiles to everyone’s faces.

The air was crisp and Ginni kept saying that it smelled as
if it was going to snow. It hardly ever snowed in Lincolnshire, Penny had been
told, so that would be an exciting and unusual event.

They worked their way along a row of terraced houses, and
Penny saw a skip up ahead. The man next to her muttered something about the
lack of mandatory yellow and orange beacons because it was on a public road,
and Penny realised they were near to Haydn’s house. They were approaching it
from an unfamiliar direction.

She wondered how many houses he owned in the area, and why
he wasn’t getting contractors in to do the work for him. Perhaps he was an
embryonic wannabe property developer, expanding his empire on a shoestring. She
peered at the house as they approached.

The door next to Haydn’s house opened, and a family peeked
out. The carollers stopped, gathered on the pavement, and launched into a fine
– and rather loud – rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

The three small children were wide-eyed as they watched the
singers, but Penny thought it looked unusual because the parents were dressed
in the bright, colourful clothing of India or Pakistan. The woman had a red and
yellow scarf over her black hair, but they all applauded when the singing
finished, and the husband came forward with some money for their tin.

“It reminds me of school,” he said in the distinctive
accent of Birmingham. “I went to a Catholic school, because my parents wanted
me to have a religious education, and there weren’t any Muslim schools back
then. Happy Christmas.”

“Oh … thank you very much,” the woman holding the
collecting tin said. “Merry Christmas to you too!”

The kids waved and were ushered back inside.

The group turned to the left, but their way along the
pavement was impeded by the skip which was partly blocking their path.

The woman with the collecting tin was called Karen. She
thrust the tin at the nearest person, and fished out her mobile phone to take a
photo of the offending skip.

“I’m reporting this to the council,” she said.

“No point, love. I reported it two weeks ago and nothing’s
been done,” someone else said.

“Hey, what’s going on here?”

Haydn skidded up to them. He was on his bicycle, a road
bike with dropped handlebars and a terrifying array of lights across the front
and back. Some were flashing, some were blinking, and altogether he was giving
Blackpool Illuminations a run for its money.

“Your skip is in the way,” the woman with the camera phone
said as she snapped away from various angles.

“It’s temporary. Hey, stop taking photos! And anyway,
what’s stopping you from simply walking around it? You’ve got legs, haven’t
you?”

“It’s illegal,” someone else said. “You need a beacon on
it. Hey, just swap one of your lights from your bike! That would work.”

“I don’t think so,” Haydn snapped back. “Do you know how
much these lights cost?”

“Probably three times as much as your bike,” the man
quipped. “That looks like a proper classic, that does. And by
classic,
I
mean
ancient
. Ha ha.”

“It’s vintage,” Haydn said defensively.

“Nah, don’t get me wrong,” the man continued, moving
forwards to peer at Haydn’s bike more closely. “It’s all right, like. Steel is
real and all that. Did you restore it yourself?”

Penny felt like she, and the rest of the carollers, were
somehow excluded from the strange turn the conversation had taken.

Haydn was saying, “I did, yeah. I sourced all the authentic
parts.”

“I like the frame pump,” the man said. “Nice touch. Isn’t
it heavy, though? Don’t you fancy a nice new carbon-fibre thing?”

“What, bike or pump?”

“Well, both. I’ve got a carbon bike and I don’t ever use a
pump any more. No, I’ve moved onto those CO2 canisters. They’re brilliant.”

Ginni coughed very loudly and deliberately. “We need to
move on towards the market,” she said.

The door to a house a few doors down opened and an old lady
called out, “Can you sing We Wish You A Merry Christmas? I do love that one.
I’ve got some brandy snaps for you all.”

“Mrs Lacey! Of course we can. Come along, everyone…”

They shuffled around the skip and arranged themselves in
front of Mrs Lacey, and launched into the carol. Penny was at the back and she
noticed that Haydn hadn’t gone into the house yet. She inched back towards
where he stood with his bike.

“Are you staying there in that house?” she asked in a quiet
voice.

He frowned. “Why?”

“Sorry. I was only curious.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m so stressed right
now that I just bite people’s heads off for no reason. Yeah, I’m spending a few
days here to get the tiling finished, then I can let it out to some new tenants.”

“I know what you mean about the stress,” she said. “I’m up
and down myself. The questioning … ugh. I don’t know what to think any more.”

“Yeah. Cycling helps me,” he replied.

“I used to ride a bike,” she said, looking at it with a
strange and unexpected feeling of longing. “Is there a club around here?”

He snorted with laughter and a few of the carollers turned
around and tutted in between their verses. “There’s a road club,” he said.
“It’s not really for … women like you.”

That set off all of Penny’s alarms. And their conversation
had been going so well, too. He seemed programmed to ruin everything. She took
a deep breath and said, very calmly, “Oh, do tell me more about
women like
me.
”

Haydn seemed to miss the edge in her voice. He waved a
gloved hand. “It’s not a social club. It’s heads down, bottoms up, no
chatting.”

“And why would you assume that a woman could not do that?
And why would you assume that a woman wants to chat?”

Finally it dawned on him that he was about to step out into
a crocodile-infested part of the conversation.

He paused, and stepped right into it anyway.

“Well, that’s women, isn’t it? I’m not being funny. I’m
just saying like it is. I mean, there’s no female Tour de France, is there?”

The carol singers had stopped. Someone was handing out some
throat sweets to try to unclog the crumbly brandy snaps from their throats, and
they were making ready to move on.

But Penny had an argument to finish. She stepped closer to
Haydn and told herself to be restrained, calm and logical. Yes, it would be
easier to just bash him over the head with something, but that was not the way
forward. She had to approach a debate in a mature and reasonable manner. She
said, evenly, “That’s entirely down to sponsorship and money and has nothing to
do with female ability. We’re designed to be endurance creatures. Look up Annie
Londonderry. Do your research. As the distance increases, we actually
outperform men. And don’t even get me started on equal pay for sportspeople. I
was reading an article last week which said–”

“Penny! Come on!” Ginni called.

It was going to be quicker to smack him on the head,
especially as he was grinning.

“Well,” she finished lamely, “it said you were wrong. Anyway,
I’ve got to go.”

He laughed, as if he had won the discussion. Penny was
torn, but she saw that the carol singers were waiting for her.

She flounced away from Haydn with as much panache as she
could muster. She was simmering inside. The man blew so hot and cold, and was
too quick to anger.

She didn’t like him.

“I was off it and then I was on it and now I’m off it
again,” Cath said. “Because of you.”

Penny and Cath were sitting in a café that was in one far
corner of the indoor market in Upper Glenfield. It was a cheap and cheerful sort
of place, the rickety tables jammed close together so it became an elaborate
dance to ease one’s way from one end to the other. The chairs all seemed to be
slightly wobbly, and the table-tops were sticky with old ketchup and vinegar,
in spite of the ministrations of the woman in the checked apron who came and
wiped everything down regularly. It was possible that she was actually wiping
the tables down
with
ketchup.