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Authors: Angela Dracup

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BOOK: The Killing Club
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Ruth jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll see you out.’

He smiled. ‘No need.’

She followed him anyway. ‘You will let me know of any developments, won’t you?’ she asked, her previous determination appearing to revive.

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Hartwell, I’ll keep you in the picture.’ He shook her hand with some warmth.

He had the feeling it would not be long before he was back at the
Old School House
.

 

Following Swift’s departure, Ruth cleared the table and carried the cups and saucers to the sink. She ran water from the tap, squeezed out some liquid soap and picked up a dishcloth.

Harriet watched her, the old sensations of affection and irritation rising in equal amounts. ‘I’ll buy you a dishwasher for Christmas,’ she said.

Ruth turned around, her smile wistful and wary. ‘Thank you.’

‘Would you use it?’ Harriet asked. ‘You’re such a cheapskate you’d probably begrudge buying the detergent and squandering electricity.’

‘I might use it,’ Ruth countered mildly.

Harriet was looking around the kitchen: the old pine units, the ugly plastic worktops and the ancient wood-burning stove which must have been a relic of the 1950s. ‘This place must be more eco-friendly than a bunny’s burrow,’ she commented.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Ruth said, but her daughter’s throwaway remarks were hurting.

‘Why was a detective chief inspector here?’

Ruth dipped her hands into the warm sudsy water. ‘It seems Christian’s death wasn’t an accident. The police aren’t completely sure yet.’

Harriet pondered, but not for very long. ‘Oh, God! That’s not good news.’

Ruth didn’t reply.

Harriet got up and leaned against the sink so that she could see her mother’s face. ’So the police are involved? They think his death was suspicious … is that the terminology.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re encouraging them in this belief?’

‘I’m assisting them with their enquiries,’ Ruth said firmly. ‘Why would Christian simply fall off a cliff?’

‘Because he was a madcap Hotspur who never really grew up.’

‘He had a lot to look forward to,’ Ruth said, resting her dripping hands on the edge of the sink, ‘and he wasn’t a suicidal type.’

‘Sometimes people just have accidents,’ Harriet pointed out.

Ruth nodded. ‘The police are considering foul play, or even murder,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘I can hardly instruct them to halt their enquiries.’

‘So, what’s in this for you, Mother?’ Harriet demanded, appearing not to have registered her mother’s mild protests. ‘Are you concerned about Christian’s good name? Is it vital to you that he must be shown to be neither suicidal nor careless enough to take a tumble on a country walk? Or are you doing this in some kind of sentimental homage to his dead mother?’

‘Harriet, calm down,’ Ruth said quietly, although she knew she was whistling in the wind.

‘Or maybe you’re just bored. You haven’t exactly got a lot to do, have you?’ Harriet flung at her.

Ruth began to dry her hands on a tea towel, noticing for the first time that it really was disgracefully ragged around the edges. ‘If you mean shopping and travelling and socializing, no, I don’t. But there are other things in life.’

‘Is that a dig at me and Charles?’

‘Of course not.’ Ruth said evenly. ‘I’ve got plenty of faults, but being critical of other people’s choices isn’t one of them.’

‘OK, fair enough.’ Harriet ruminated for a time. ‘Mother, you do realize that if the police start digging, it’ll all come out – the fiasco in Algeria.’

‘Yes, and I’m sorry about that. But isn’t it possible that what happened then could possibly be connected with Christian’s death?’

‘God! That was all sorted out years ago,’ exclaimed Harriet with some force. ‘We can really do without all this. Charles is up before the selection board next month, Director of Surgery. It’s rather important.’

Ruth bowed her head. ‘I’m sorry, Harriet.’

‘No, you’re not. You’ve no compunctions whatsoever about putting your concerns about Christian before Charles’s career and thus my happiness. Me, your only child. And there’s Jake to think of too.’

Ruth’s face softened into a smile. Jake was her only grandchild. He was nine and she loved him unreservedly, and he was still young enough to love her back on the same terms. ‘I personally don’t think the Algeria incident has any bearing on Christian’s death, but I do agree that Chief Inspector Swift might do some digging, as you call it. And I think that is justified.’

Harriet let out a snort of irritation.

‘I also believe he’ll keep quiet about anything he considers irrelevant to the case.’

‘Aah!’ Harriet was being driven to the very limits with her parent’s possibly sound but infuriating line of reasoning. She took in a long breath and put up her hands in a gesture of truce. ‘OK, OK. Have you got this Swift person’s contact number?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘His card is on the table.’

‘I’ll go and see him and put
my
cards on the table,’ said Harriet.

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Ruth said.

‘Well, it’s better than lying low and giving him the impression that I’m harbouring information which has to be dragged out of me. And he’s bound to follow up on me, given that I stupidly half spilled the beans by talking about secrets.’

‘You have a point,’ Ruth said, sensing a slight easing in the atmosphere now that her daughter had made a decision. ‘There’s wine in the fridge,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you open it? We could do with a glass.’

‘Good idea. What are you cooking?’ Harriet asked, eyeing the Rayburn.

‘Boeuf bourguignon. With dauphinoise potatoes.’ Ruth shot her daughter a brief glance containing a degree of mischief and challenge.

‘Wow!’

Harriet’s look of amazement gave Ruth a stab of gratification. ‘I thought it was time I expanded my cooking repertoire. I got a book from the library and I’m working my way through the recipes.’

Harriet laughed. ‘I’ll say this for you, Mother, you can never be accused of being boring.’

 

When Harriet Brunswick had called Swift later on to request a meeting with Swift he had not asked her what she wanted to talk about, even though it was seven in the evening and she would have a forty-five minute drive to reach his cottage. The urgency of her tone was enough to let him know that what she had to say was likely to have an interesting bearing on Christian Hartwell’s death. He switched on the lights at the front of the house, to help her find her way down the long path. He saw the headlights of her car swing over the horizon and dissolve into the soft darkness as she swung the door open and shut. The stony nature of the path did not seem to impede her progress; she was very soon at the front door and tapping on the wood with firm knuckles.

Following his welcoming gesture, she moved purposefully through to the sitting room as though she had been to the cottage many times before.

‘Tea? Coffee? Wine?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine thank you.’ She tossed her coat on the sofa and sat down crossing her legs. She was wearing slim-fit black jeans and high-heeled shoes with bright scarlet soles. Diamonds twinkled in her ears and her shiny sable hair swung like a silk curtain as she moved her head. ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said. ‘I’ll get straight to the point, as the last thing I want to do is waste your time.’

She spoke as though she was chairing a conference, bringing the various participants to order so as to begin the proceedings promptly. She was tensed, wound like a spring.

‘I’ve plenty of time,’ he said.

‘Obviously this has to do with Christian,’ she said. ‘I know my mother has told you about the way in which he came to be a part of our family – a rather unconventional arrangement to say the least.’

He gave a slight nod, made no comment.

‘The whole set-up of our household was pretty unconventional,’ she said. ‘My father was a chaplain at Wentworth Prison and a great sympathizer with the criminal classes, the poor and the great unwashed.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an evil fascist, but when you’ve shared your home with the odd child molester, alcoholic and thief in your tender years, you tend to become somewhat hardened and cynical. I didn’t really mind it all that much when I was a child – I suppose I just accepted it as normal – but as I got to be a teenager, the time when you have a need and a duty to rebel from your parents’ ideals, I really didn’t like it much at all. Why couldn’t we just have our tatty old house to ourselves? Why did we have to take in other people’s rejects?’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Swift said.

‘I didn’t mind about Christian being around, though. He was bright and engagingly naughty and altogether quite good fun. One day after he’d been in a spot of bother for pinching some apples from a neighbour’s garden he climbed up on the roof of the house and refused to come down, sending my parents into a state of panic. In the end, my father suggested that my mother fry some onions. He said it always worked with prisoners who decided to take the same line as Christian. They just couldn’t resist the lovely smell. My mother was never much of a cook, so it was rather a novelty to have this enticing smell wafting from the kitchen. Quite soon Christian gave in and came back down again, hungry enough to eat a horse.’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry, I’m rattling on. This isn’t really relevant, is it?’

‘As regards any further investigation into Christian’s death, any background information is useful,’ Swift said, in neutral tones. And you’ve certainly conjured up an interesting picture, he thought.

‘Yeah, well, you see, Christian had the ability to do that. I’ll bet his forthcoming book will be quite an interesting read.’

‘Do you think you’ll make an appearance in it?’ Swift enquired.

‘God! I hope not.’ She ran her fingers through her curtain of hair, and took in a long, determined breath. ‘Right, I’ll get to the point. When Christian and I were nineteen we went with some friends on a field trip to Algeria. There were four of us altogether, the other two being my future husband Charles and his friend Hugh. The trip was Hugh’s brainchild: he was studying geography and he wanted to do some research on sand dunes for his PhD.’

‘So Hugh was a postgraduate, older than you and Christian?’ Swift asked.

‘He was twenty-three, as was Charles. He was a final year medical student at that time.’

‘Hugh fixed it all up and got approval from the Algerian government to do his research in a place called In Salah in the middle of the desert. He borrowed an old Land Rover from a relative and off we went. The trip was all to do with finding out what made sand dunes form and shift, which apparently no one had ever researched fully before. Just imagine, a gang of young people in a Land Rover in the middle of the Sahara, living in a tent and spending their days counting grains of sand.’

Swift thought it sounded like a vision of hell. ‘Why did you go, then?’

‘I went because Charles was going and we were already an item. And Christian went because it sounded like a totally off-the-wall project and therefore likely to be good fun. Oh, to be young and foolish again.’ She gave a rueful smile and then the smile gradually faded.

‘But it wasn’t good fun?’ Swift said.

‘Too right. We got sick, we got diarrhoea, we got infestations in our hair and sand in our eyes. And we quarrelled. Christian and Charles didn’t really get on. Christian was very laid back and all for letting things take their course, but Charles likes to be more proactive. Charles and Hugh clashed all the time. It got so bad they could hardly bear to speak to one another. And then Hugh got killed.’

‘I see. And what did Charles and Hugh quarrel about?’ Swift asked, beginning to have an understanding of Harriet’s motivation in coming to see him.

‘Just about everything; they were both very strong minded. But the main point of contention was about the rota Hugh devised for carrying out his research. He’d worked it out that we needed to make observations round the clock. We each had an allotted span of time out on the dunes. Charles argued that it was dangerous to go out there singly – especially for me as a woman on her own. And it was true that I attracted a good deal of attention from the Algerian men, with my pale skin and my habit of wearing shorts. Anyway, Hugh insisted that we went along with his plan, because if we doubled up it would take twice the amount of time to get the data we needed. Well, of course, we all gave in; the idea of being stuck in that arid, burning hell hole for a minute longer than necessary simply wasn’t on. But, in the end, the worst happened. Hugh didn’t come back from his shift one afternoon and when we found him he’d been beaten over the head with a stout stick and left to die out in the sun.’ Her face screwed into a grimace of recalled pain as she spoke the words.

‘Had anything been stolen from his body?’ Swift asked, snapping into automatic investigative mode.

‘His watch and his camera. The digital recording machine we’d used for collecting data was still present and correct.’

‘Did the police become involved?’

‘Yes. It was Charles who took charge of everything. He has that ability to shut his emotions down and simply get on with doing what needs to be done. I suppose that’s a quality that has helped to make him such a successful surgeon. Anyway, he persuaded me and Christian that we should drive Hugh’s body to the nearest
gendarmerie
ourselves and that we should contact the British Embassy in Algiers to advise us further. Which turned out to be a smart move. Without the consul, we’d most definitely all have ended up in jail as suspects. At least Charles and Christian would; the police didn’t seem so suspicious of me – maybe as I was the one who dealt with all their questions in a mixture of halting schoolgirl French and English with gestures.’

‘Or maybe their culture isn’t happy to regard women as proactive enough to carry out a killing?’

‘Possibly,’ she agreed.

‘Were you able to provide any relevant information about the killing?’ Swift asked.

She nodded slowly. ‘We had a very strange but true story about an irate Arab on a donkey. It’s the crazy sort of story you’d tell at a dinner party, making the most of the exotic oddness of people in a foreign country in order to get a laugh. Except we never have told it, of course. The circumstances of Hugh’s sudden death were so horrific the very thought of the furious Arab sends prickles across the back of my neck.’

BOOK: The Killing Club
8.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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