Trouble in the Cotswolds (The Cotswold Mysteries) (7 page)

She was interrupted by a violent sound erupting from somewhere outside. Glass had broken. ‘What was that?’ asked Thea.

They both peered out of the window, Cheryl bending awkwardly over the sofa to do so. Thea, some inches shorter, had to actually kneel on it to get any kind of a view. There was nothing at all to see, except for a woman standing very still on the other side of the street. She was looking intently in their direction. ‘What on earth
was
it?’ Thea asked again.

‘I can see glass,’ reported Cheryl. ‘A window must have broken, I think.’

‘Where?’

‘Next door. I’ll go and see.’ She was gone before Thea could climb off the sofa again. The Great Dane remained on the hearthrug which it had adopted with an injured air. Thea had a feeling the dog didn’t really like its mistress very much. Her joints were complaining
as she tried to follow Cheryl outside – knees especially.

Two more people had appeared by the time she got outside. They were all staring at some shards of glass on the ground beneath a large window at the front of the next house. ‘It’s been broken from the inside,’ said a youth, who looked like a student home for the Christmas break. Thea could hear a TV or radio from inside the broken window.

‘So somebody
is
in there,’ said Cheryl, with a triumphant glance at Thea. ‘Hello?’ she called loudly. ‘Are you all right?’ She went closer, and put her face to the broken pane, peering through the hole. Then she screamed. A short, low-pitched sound of alarm; a kind of howl, in which Thea heard horror and disbelief and sheer astonishment.

‘What?’ said the youth and joined her, nudging her aside for a look. ‘Fucking hell. Is that
blood
?’

Cheryl staggered away. ‘Call the police,’ she gasped. ‘Quickly. Her attacker might still be in there.’

Thea blinked. ‘Obviously somebody is. Why – what have you seen?’

The youth stepped away and spoke to Thea. ‘It’s Natasha Ainsworth, covered in blood. I think she’s dead,’ he said.

‘But who broke the window?’ Thea asked the question for the third time, of nobody in particular. Chaos had quickly developed, with Dennis Ireland summoned back only minutes after he’d gone into his house, to help the student and another man break down the front door, in case there was still hope of saving the injured woman’s life. People emerged from houses up and down the length of the main street, and asked the same questions over and over. Someone had been holding a mobile phone, inevitably, and had called 999. In the intervening fifteen minutes before an ambulance arrived, there was noise and confusion, with people wantonly trampling blood and glass in and out of the house, as they made clumsily noble attempts to revive the woman. ‘No, don’t,’ Thea bleated vainly, as she realised what a mess they were making of what
could be a crime scene. ‘You shouldn’t go in there. You shouldn’t touch anything.’

‘But she might not be dead,’ Dennis Ireland paused to explain, with some indignation. ‘The first priority is to save life.’ Drama had rendered him even more pompous, it seemed.

Thea had not managed to catch a glimpse of the victim. It was of course feasible that she was alive, and should therefore be resuscitated if remotely possible. If there was no one else in the house, then she must have been the one who broke the window, and that required animation. But a second person might have done it and then made a hasty exit through the back of the house and over the garden wall.

The ambulance men added more trampling, taking what appeared to be an almost perverse satisfaction in covering themselves in the woman’s thickening blood. When they emerged from the house to be confronted by the crowd, they were shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, expressing defeat and a belated admission that they had been dealing with a murder victim. They were paler than they had been when they went in. The police car that arrived at that moment was greeted with serious looks and muttered information that had a galvanising effect. Onlookers, some of whom had caught the words ‘foul play’ and ‘knife wound’ and repeated them loudly to others further back, were told to go away. Blue tape was strung across the doorway and Thea braced herself
for the questions that must inevitably follow.

Except – why should they? She had nothing whatever to do with it. Cheryl, yes. Cheryl had banged on the door, peered through the broken window, and then fetched Dennis Ireland from his house. Cheryl had taken charge and authorised the demolition of the front door. It might even have been she who phoned the emergency services. All Thea had done was stand limply on the doorstep of the Shepherds’ house and ineffectually try to warn people not to contaminate any evidence.

None of which would count for anything once DI Higgins or DS Gladwin got to hear about it. They would assume she was involved, if only as an unusually observant bystander. Or failing that, they would want to take her into their confidence, as a sounding board while they tried out various theories as to precisely what had taken place.

But I’m poorly,
she whined to herself. Her headache had come back worse than ever, and her thoughts were sluggish as a result. Standing up became more and more difficult, not only because of the aching knees but the bouts of shivering did something to her balance. Besides, it already seemed self-evident that the person who had killed Natasha-the-girlfriend must have been Marian-the-wife. Far from being friends, as Higgins had surmised, they must have been arch enemies throughout. When Natasha threw the funeral party, Marian’s rage and humiliation must have driven her to
a frenzy, the result of which was a savage knife attack on her rival.

‘But who broke the window?’ asked Thea again, as she automatically went back into the house with Cheryl. The woman made no reply, but focused on her legs in dismay. ‘I’ve got blood on my trousers, look. How horrible.’

‘The whole thing was absolutely terrible,’ said Thea, trying to summon the rightful levels of horror and outrage. ‘Did you kneel by the body, then?’

‘No, but I suppose I did get quite close. I knew her, of course. She was well liked. Quite young.’ Her voice was fading, and Thea couldn’t decide whether Cheryl was choking with shock or she herself was clouding over with flu.

The expected visit from a senior police detective did not take place. Somehow it was five o’clock, and dark. Cheryl had gone home, leaving instructions about keeping up fluid intake and not taking too many pills. She had settled Thea on the sofa with the television on, having fed the dogs and rats. More than that could not possibly be demanded. But instead of a promise to return next day with further succour, she dropped the bombshell that she was due to take a train to Exeter the following afternoon, where her sister had invited her to spend Christmas. This detail had been withheld until the final doorstep moment, and Thea experienced a pang of something like resentment. How soon she
had allowed herself to become a helpless patient, she realised miserably. ‘Well, thank you for all you’ve done,’ she murmured. ‘I hope the police will let you go as planned.’

‘What? Of course they will. Why shouldn’t they?’

‘They’ll want to get a proper statement from you about Natasha. I expect they’ll do it in the morning.’

‘I’ve already told them everything.’ She stared at Thea aggressively. ‘Why would they want me again? They never said anything.’

‘I’ve probably got it wrong then.’ She wasn’t up to an argument about it. Besides, she couldn’t say for certain what was in the official mind. She couldn’t even say for certain that Natasha had been murdered. She might have deliberately slashed herself with broken glass, for all Thea knew. ‘Thank you very much,’ she managed, with a wan smile.

‘I’ll leave my details for you, shall I? Just in case.’ Without waiting for a reply, she had found a notepad by the phone and written on it. ‘Here,’ she proffered the result.

Thea glanced at it, barely registering the address, having focused on the first name.
Cheryl Bagshawe. Old Mill House, Wood Stanway.
‘Oh – it’s Cheryl with a C. Fancy that. I thought it must be an S.’ Somehow it made a difference to her view of the woman. Cheryl was at least a real name, whilst Sheryl was not.

‘You think I should pronounce it Cheryl?’ said the woman, hardening the
ch.
‘Most people in this country
do, I know. I think it’s an awful name, either way, quite frankly.’

‘I rather like it,’ said Thea woozily. ‘I was just confused about the spelling.’

Her visitor left Thea in the living room and finally departed with her dog. Thea watched them pass her window, a coat folded over the woman’s arm, as if she felt too warm to wear it, and the dog’s short lead grasped firmly in the other hand. Thea breathed a sigh of relief. The television was trying to impart the alarming news that the flu statistics were reaching new highs, with many millions of people affected. Whilst not an especially threatening strain of the virus, with reassuringly few deaths reported so far, it was debilitating, and the number of people failing to turn up for work was causing difficulties. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was Christmas, and therefore a slack time for most industries, the consequences for the GDP might have been a lot worse. Dozing fitfully, Thea took some solace from knowing that she was one of millions. There was official advice not to bother the doctor, who could do little but offer the standard advice to keep warm and stay away from crowds. The severe headache that was a feature of this particular virus was unpleasant but not dangerous. Aching joints, fever, and mild depression were all to be expected, and would pass within a few days. Anyone in a normal state of health would be very unlikely to suffer lasting damage. A forced cheerfulness on the part of the newsreader
appended a laughing injunction to just lie back and make the most of it. Think of all those wonderful old films being shown on TV over Christmas, he said fatuously.

The day would have been distressing and exhausting even without being ill. The trouble with her car alone would have put a blight over everything. And Cheryl Whatnot had not exactly been an ideal companion for an afternoon. Bossy, argumentative, abrupt – any kindness had been obscured by her manner. What’s more, Thea belatedly realised, Cheryl had given away virtually nothing about her own life. An ex-husband, a married son and a sister, scattered around England – that was all she’d revealed. What was her job? Who were her local friends, if any? What had impelled her to chase after Thea, anyway, having seen her in a police car? What was so alarming about that? Had it been simple concern, or something more sinister? Over the past few years, Thea had learnt that it was unwise to take anybody at face value. There were depths of past history and dark resentments that a newcomer couldn’t hope to fathom on one brief encounter.

Because there really had been a murder in the house next door. The high level of police activity in the street and the house itself made that very obvious. Surely Higgins should have come to see her by this time? He would want to ask her whether she’d seen the victim alive, and if so when. All the usual questions would have to be asked and answered. But perhaps he felt he
knew the answers already, from their encounter earlier in the day. She had not known who Natasha was, and had never even glimpsed her. All she had seen was the Callendar widow and her sons in the funeral cars, fleetingly, without knowing who was who. Natasha, presumably, had walked to the church and hijacked some of the mourners afterwards. The police already knew the basic facts of the two women in the man’s life, from normal local gossip.

There had been blood; that much Thea knew. The people who broke into the house had it smeared on them when they reappeared, including Cheryl and Dennis, who had both patted worriedly at themselves. The ambulance men looked almost as pale as the neighbours, when they came out shaking their heads and muttering about massive blood loss. A severed artery, perhaps, gushing like a fountain with every struggling beat of the woman’s heart. Drifting in and out of sleep, unsure of what was dream and what was real, Thea’s imagination constructed several possible explanations as to what might have happened. It all seemed remote from her own immediate concerns. She was ill. Her body hurt. If she tried to stand for long, she folded up and landed on the floor. She couldn’t face food. She hadn’t got her car, and it was now only two more days until Christmas. Christmas Day loomed like a grinning monster, demanding a set of behaviours that it was almost impossible to avoid. You had to speak to all your loved ones; eat a lot of food;
drink a lot of alcohol; be nice to everybody; listen to carols and Bible stories on the radio and watch the same old movies on TV. It was all preordained. But Thea was ill, and was not expecting to obey a single one of the ordinances.

Despite the temptation to simply lie there on the sofa for the whole night, she did eventually drag herself upstairs, having made another Lemsip and let the dogs out for a final pee in the garden. Both animals were subdued, and when Blondie was shut into the kitchen for the night, she gave a single low protesting moan before flopping onto her bed. ‘Sorry,’ Thea told her. ‘I’m doing my best. It won’t be for long.’

Hepzie went upstairs with her, as always, and curled quietly at the foot of the bed, adapting herself to Thea’s legs in the soft, warm way that endeared her to her mistress more than anything else. But Thea’s feverish tossing and turning proved an impossible trial to the dog, so that after an hour or so, she jumped down and made a nest for herself on a sheepskin rug by the bed. Thea’s dreams were horrible: threatening winged creatures that came right up to her face and then shrank to pinpricks, teasing and tormenting her in unpredictable waves. She was hot and threw the duvet aside. She was thirsty and reproached herself viciously for forgetting to provide herself with a bedside glass of water. She was at the back of the house, and all was dark and silent. She imagined a ghost next door, dripping dark blood
and smashing endlessly at the window, in an eternally futile attempt to get help.

Eventually it was morning. For a minute, she thought it was Christmas already and her father would be coming any moment with her bulging stocking that had been filled downstairs overnight by Santa. All four children would have to wait patiently until their father fetched them from the fireside, and delivered them solemnly to their recipients. Nothing else throughout the year came close to the euphoric anticipation, the unique atmosphere of love and mystery and delight. The rest of the day would generally slide into a slow anticlimax, once all the presents were opened and the turkey demolished. The afternoon wreckage would stay in Thea’s mind’s eye for several weeks, from the age of about eight. The new toys became familiar and shabby, but that moment when the stocking was delivered never palled.

When she dragged herself out of bed, she could smell a sour sweat on her pyjamas that carried associations of old people and unwashed clothes. Her head was throbbing painfully, exacerbated by movement. Her eyes hurt when she turned on the bathroom light. ‘I thought these things were always better in the morning,’ she muttered. Hard as it was to admit, the fact was that she was significantly worse than the day before.

Who would come to help her? Panic washed through her with the stark truth that there was nobody. The Dennis man was going away, as was the Cheryl
woman. Her mother was otherwise engaged. Her sisters were entirely occupied with their own concerns. Her daughter was frightened of rats. There was Damien, though. Her big brother, who lived not so very far away and had no children. Nobody would ever take him for a nursemaid, with his annoying proselytising, but he would come if asked. Until that moment, it had not for a second occurred to Thea to ask him.

His number was in her phone, but she could not properly see the buttons or the writing on the screen. Frowning fiercely, she forced it to do her bidding. There he was, in the list, D for Damien. She didn’t think she had phoned him for at least the past three years. Not since Carl had died and there were ceaseless phone calls to and from everybody, in a crazy surge of emotional conversations, plans, and a simple need to maintain contact. The phone wanted to know for sure that it was her intention to make a call. She blindly pressed the same green button, wishing it would just get on with it.