The Price of Butcher's Meat (32 page)

“Nice of her. You like Charley?”

“She’s great. She’s going to marry my uncle Sidney, you know.”

“Is that right? No, I didn’t know that. She known him a long time?”

Minnie considered then said, “Not
very
long. And it’s a secret, so maybe you shouldn’t say anything just yet.”

Novello, recalling that Charley had only been here a week and that by her own account her acquaintance with the Parker family only extended another three days beyond that said, “This one of those secrets even Charley and your uncle Sid don’t know about?”

“Maybe,” said the girl.

“Then I’ll definitely keep it to myself. Okay, so you watched the storm. And then?”

“Then when it was over we went down to Mum and everyone went outside again and then people started yelling ’cos they’d found Big Bum . . .”

“Sorry?”

“Lady Denham, I mean. Is it true she was roasting alongside the pig?”

“More or less,” said Novello, who thought it was better for kids to 2 3 0

R E G I N A L D H I L L

get some kind of grisly delight out of horrors rather than nightmares.

“You see her at all?”

“No. I wanted to take a look, but Mum dragged us away straight off,” said the girl regretfully.

Novello gave her a poke and said, “I mean earlier, dummy.”

“Only when we arrived.”

“How did she seem?”

“She was really nice.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Well, she always makes a big fuss about seeing me and the others when she comes to the house, but it only lasts a few seconds, then she forgets all about us.”

“But this time . . . ?”

“She seemed really happy to see us, to see everyone.”

“What sort of happy?”

“You know, like adults get when they’ve had a couple of drinks, or done sex.”

Trying to shock me? Impress me? Or is she really as laid back as she sounds? wondered Novello. Anyway, this wasn’t a road to go down outside of a properly constituted juvenile interview.

“So who did you see after you came back from the beach?”

“Lots of people. Everyone was rushing around to get sheltered from the storm.”

“Can you be a bit more specific? I mean, can you remember anyone in particular?”

“I know what specific means,” said Minnie resentfully. “I saw Teddy Denham. He was in his trunks too, but he hadn’t been swimming. Not with us anyway.”

No, thought Novello. I know what he’d been doing.

“Anyone else?”

“There were a lot of men, from the council, I think, ’cos the mayor was with them in his chain. And they were grabbing bottles and glasses from the bar to take inside, then Mr. Hollis from the pub T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 3 1

arrived and said he’d take care of that. No one seemed to be bothering with the food and I wanted to stop and get some ’cos we hadn’t had any yet and swimming always makes me hungry, but Charley said no, let’s get you all inside.”

“So Charley was in charge of you by then? What happened to the other adults?”

“Mr. Jebb was there with Tony, and Mr. Heeley was looking after the twins. Didn’t see Miss Lee. She sort of vanished when we got to the top of the cliff path. Anyway, when we came out later all the food was spoilt. I think it was Clara’s fault, she usually looks after all that sort of thing at the hall, and I expect Big Bum, I mean Lady Denham, would have given her a right rollicking if she’d seen all that food gone to waste.”

The phrase and the intonation suggested she was quoting something overheard.

Novello glanced at the car clock. It was time to be on her way.

She said, “Then, after they discovered . . .”

She paused in search of a euphemism and Minnie said impatiently, “The corpse.”

“That’s right. Did your parents take you straight home?”

“Yes. I wanted to stay and see what happened next, but you know what adults are like.”

Slightly flattered to be included as a non- adult, Novello said,

“Yeah. I work for a couple of adults and they can be a pain.”

She reached across the girl and opened the passenger door.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s fine. Thanks a lot.”

“Are we finished?” said Minnie, sounding disappointed. “You don’t want to hear about the others?”

“What others?”

“The ones I saw out of the window while the storm was on.”

Oh God, thought Novello. I really should have kicked Minnie out of my car straight off, belled Wield, told him about her and the other kids, left him to set up proper interviews.

2 3 2

R E G I N A L D H I L L

On the other hand, having got this far, if I dig up something really useful, then any bollocking I get will probably be token.

Probably.

“Tell me,” she said.

The girl screwed up her face in the effort of reconstruction. Or construction. Novello recalled her own childhood confessions when her keenness not to disappoint Father Kerrigan had caused much blurring of the boundaries of fact in search of significant sin. With pubescence the blurring had continued but the motive had completely reversed.

“I was looking out of the window watching the storm and down at the bottom of the lawn I saw Miss Denham—”

“Hang on,” said Novello. “Everyone says it was black as night and the rain was sheeting down and there was a gale filling the air with leaves and stuff. You must have very good eyes.”

“Yes, I have,” said Minnie somewhat complacently. “And when the lightning flashed, it was as bright as anything.”

“So during a flash of lightning you saw . . . what exactly?”

“I saw Miss Denham. Why won’t you believe me?” insisted the child angrily.

Novello replied very quietly, “What I believe’s not the point, Minnie. It’s what you really believe. Just remember what we’re talking about here. It’s something really horrible. It isn’t a game. So tell me again what you saw.”

The homily had its effect.

The girl said, more hesitantly now, “I really did see someone, and I think it was Miss Denham. At least, it could have been, and there was someone with her . . . a man . . .”

“Who?”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “He looked sort of familiar, but I couldn’t really say who it was. They were coming out of the shrubbery between the lawn and the hog roast . . .”

Novello tried to recall the configuration of house, lawn, and hog roast.

T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 3 3

“That would be about three hundred yards. Looking obliquely.

That’s sideways.”

“I told you I’d got good eyes,” said the girl.

“And you saw this in one lightning fl ash?”

“Yes. When the next one came they were gone.”

It was time to fi nish here, thought Novello. She’d gone a lot further than testing the water. If taken to task, it would have been good to be able to point to some significant discovery, but what she’d got was, in the vernacular, neither owt nor nowt.

She said, “Anyone else see these two people—your brother or Miss Heywood, say?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And did you mention what you saw to either of them?”

“No. I mean, I didn’t know it was important then, did I?”

“Kid, you don’t know that now,” said Novello. “Right. Thanks. Off you go.”

“Don’t I get to sign something? And shouldn’t you have been getting all this onto tape?” demanded the girl.

“Later,” said Novello. “You may have to go through all this again, with either your mum or dad present. Then you’ll probably do the recording and signing thing. Think of this as a sort of rehearsal, okay?”

“Okay,” said Minnie, not moving. “So where are you going now?”

“What’s that to you?”

“Maybe I could come with you. I know all the shortcuts round here.”

“Come on! A town this size, everything’s so close, who needs shortcuts?” said Novello, who was an urban animal and rated any settlement with a population of less than fifty K a village. “Anyway, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“I’ll be ten next birthday!” declared Minnie indignantly.

“So what do you want? A telegram from the Queen? Go go go, or I may have to arrest you.”

She saw the girl’s eyes light up at the possibility and gave her a 2 3 4

R E G I N A L D H I L L

push that sent her sprawling through the open door onto the edge of the lawn.

“See you later,” Novello called, dragging the door shut, starting the car, and sending it racing down the drive in a single gravel-spewing movement.

In the mirror she saw the girl had got to her feet and was running after the car, shouting indignantly.

Receding fast, she was difficult to hear and impossible to lip-read.

But she thought she made out the words, “You’ve got a big bum too!”

9

“You have arrived,” said Posh Woman’s voice confi dently.

“You’re a bloody liar,” said Edgar Wield.

He had been impressed as Posh directed him along a skein of un-classified byways mazy enough to confuse a Minotaur hunter, but she’d failed him at the last. The building he had halted beside bore a sign saying Lyke Farm whereas what he wanted was Lyke Farm Barn.

Time for human contact.

He climbed off the Thunderbird and banged on the oak door with a lion’s-head knocker.

He had his ID open and ready. Normally he expected folk to take him as they found him, but in remote spots the combination of his leather riding gear and forbidding features sometimes required immediate reassurance.

The door opened and the doorway was filled by a huge red-faced man who didn’t look as if he’d have been much bothered to fi nd the devil himself on his doorstep.

“Detective Sergeant Wield,” said Wield, just to be on the safe side.

“Oh aye? It’ll be about the murder. You’ll be wanting young Fran, I daresay.”

Wield wasn’t surprised. The speed with which news traveled across miles of empty space in rural Yorkshire would fill Bill Gates with envy.

“That’s right. Mr. Roote,” he said. “I’m looking for Lyke Farm Barn.”

2 3 6

R E G I N A L D H I L L

“Well, you’ve not looked hard enough. Back along the Sandytown road a quarter mile, lane end on your left just afore the dead oak, and there’s a bloody great sign for them as can read.”

Wield did not feel reproved. He’d lived in a remote Yorkshire village for a few years now and knew that such apparent aggression was the equivalent of familiar domestic intercourse in metropolitan areas.

“Thank you, Mr. . . . er?”

“Sedgwick. Wally Sedgwick. You’ve not got him yet, then?”

“Got who?”

“Him as did for Daph Brereton, of course.”

“No, we haven’t. Do you see a lot of Mr. Roote?”

“When he calls to pay the rent. My missus sees a lot more, keeping the place tidy for him like she does.”

“You own the barn then?”

“Oh aye. Got it done up a few years back when this bloody government started making it impossible to make a living by honest farming.

Diversify, they said. Tek in lodgers, mek cream teas. Bugger that, I said. I’m not having a bunch of strangers clogging up my bathroom.

But we got a grant to convert the barn to a holiday cottage.”

“But Mr. Roote lives there permanent?”

“Got a lease for a year, renewable. Didn’t think it would work when I saw the state of him, but it’s all on one floor and he forked out for a few changes. He said he wanted somewhere quiet so’s he could work at his writing. And my missus said it ’ud be a lot easier than having someone new there every week during the summer, then the place sitting empty when the bad weather came. Think she felt a bit sorry for the lad, and he’s got a sweet tongue on him when he talks to the ladies, no denying that! So we agreed a price plus a bit more for her doing the cleaning and a bit of cooking sometimes, so everyone’s pleased all round.”

“Aye, sounds nice and cozy,” said Wield. “Bit of cooking, you say?

Does a lot of entertaining, does he?”

T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 3 7

“Shouldn’t think so. What Maisie does is casseroles and such for Mr. Roote hisself. Puts them in the freezer. Of course he’s well se-cluded, so I suppose he could be having wild parties every night, but the only folk I’ve ivver noticed ganging up that lane is Tom Parker and yon Denham lad on his bike.”

“Sir Edward, you mean?”

“Aye. Rides like a maniac. Yon things should be banned, that’s what I say.”

He didn’t except present company, Wield noted, as he said thanks and climbed back onto the Thunderbird.

A couple of minutes later he slowed down as he spotted the skel-etal outline of a huge dead tree against the evening sky. There was the lane end. And Farmer Sedgwick had been right about the sign too, though perhaps not in every particular, thought Wield as he toed aside some veiling nettles to reveal a lump of granite with lyke farm barn painted on it in flaking white gloss.

An ancient gate, attached to an even older flaking sandstone gatepost, barred entrance to the lane. It moved smoothly enough on its rusty hinges but it still must be a bloody nuisance to a guy in a wheelchair.

He rode carefully up the lane. Its surface was rutted and pot-holed, fine for a tractor or four-by-four perhaps, but day after day it couldn’t do an ordinary car’s suspension any good. When it rained, it must be a quagmire. After a hundred yards or so, above the roar of his own engine he heard another engine start up, and as he rounded a bend that brought a building into view, a motorbike came hurtling toward him, moving at twice his speed, with the black-leathered rider crouched low over the handlebars. For a second, collision seemed inevitable. Wield came to a halt and prepared to abandon ship. Then the other rider leaned sideways and swept past close enough for him to feel the wind of his passing.

“Wanker!” yelled Wield.

It had all happened too quickly for him to get the number, but at 2 3 8

R E G I N A L D H I L L

a guess he’d have said the bike was a Buell Lightning, the long- base model.

He set off once more. Soon the track ran into a cobbled yard where a blue Kangoo was parked before the converted barn. Long and low and covered with cream-colored pebble dash, it showed little of its origins except perhaps for a disproportionately wide front doorway, which must be very useful to a wheelchair user.