Beneath the Soil (15 page)

The phone in her shoulder bag signalled an incoming message. Suzie made a grab for it, forgetting that John Nosworthy was still standing watching her.

She read the message with a relief so powerful it almost had the force of a shock.

‘
Sorry. I'm on my way.
'

‘Your husband? Is he all right?' The young solicitor's voice sounded concerned.

‘Yes.' Suzie managed a weak smile for him. ‘I could kill him. Taking off for three hours without telling me.'

‘I'm glad he's safe.'

He sounded as though he meant it. He must have picked up the undercurrent of her fear.

‘Look, Suzie,' he said awkwardly. ‘Sorry, is it OK if I call you that? If I can ever be of any help …'

She looked round from returning the phone to her bag in surprise. ‘Help? How?'

He looked embarrassed. There was, she thought, a shadow of doubt – or was it fear? – in his eyes. ‘Oh, nothing. Just … well, you might as well have my card too.'

He reached as though for a familiar jacket pocket, then realized he was in his casual weekend wear. He looked even more flushed and uneasy than before.

‘Sorry. Idiot. My office is next door to Frances's, but the telephone numbers are different, of course.' He seemed to hesitate. He looked over his shoulder, then back at her. ‘Do you want to take my mobile number down?'

Suzie was growing more intrigued. Why should Eileen Caseley's solicitor feel the need to give his mobile number to a woman who had apparently been working with his cousin to strengthen the case for Philip's innocence?

Unless, the thought screamed at her, he too believed the police had the wrong man in custody. If not Philip, who else?

She looked at John Nosworthy with renewed interest. She had been so caught up with her concern for Nick that she had regarded his arrival with the money-bag as an intrusion. Even now, her eyes were going past him, looking for Nick to come walking across the square. But she made an effort to concentrate on the man in front of her. Younger than herself, she thought, by a good ten years, Thirtyish. Fair hair. An air of neat orderliness about him, even in his weekend clothes. What was it about solicitors?

But she was becoming increasingly aware of his uneasiness. He was starting to look around him nervously. At the close of the afternoon, the two of them were standing isolated on the dais of the market hall. Suddenly he looked as though he no longer wanted to be there.

She got out her diary. ‘The number?'

‘Oh … yes.' He was startled back into remembering he had offered to give it to her.

He reeled off the digits. ‘Look, I've got to go.'

He was already making for the steps when Suzie called after him on a sudden impulse. ‘Frances? Is she OK?'

He threw her a brief look over his shoulder, which she was almost sure was scared. ‘Frances? Yes, sure. She's as right as rain.'

He sped off across the square, leaving Suzie strangely unconvinced.

‘Hey, there! I'm really sorry. The prodigal returns.'

Nick's voice made her spin round. She was torn between a desire to throw herself into his arms and the urge to vent her fury on him.

‘Where have you
been
? Three hours! And not even a text message, until five minutes ago.'

‘I know.' He held up his hands in mock surrender. In spite of herself, she was captivated by the laughter in his bright blue eyes. So like Tom, with that teasing,
‘You're not really angry with me, are you?'
smile. ‘But you'll never believe what I've found out. The guy I was talking to was a nutter, though. Paranoid. When he saw me getting my phone out, I was afraid he was going to hit me, or at least clam up tight.'

‘Never mind who you met! You were supposed to be looking out for me. Didn't you see who was here in the market hall with me all afternoon?'

‘Clive Stroud, wasn't it? The MP for Moortown? I saw his car coming into the square. That was just before I met this guy with the fossil stall.'

‘Fossils?' she said incredulously.

‘It's a long story. I was just idly looking over his stuff …'

‘But didn't you
see
him? Clive Stroud?'

‘Only from a distance. Big, bald. Why?'

‘Just that he's the man in the photograph. The one who was lurking behind a cross in the graveyard at Eileen Caseley's funeral, but staring at
me.
'

Nick blinked, recalled from the beginning of his own story with a shock.

‘Clive Stroud? Are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure. That face is burned on my memory ever since you brought the enlargement home.'

‘It was only a profile.'

‘It was him, Nick!' She almost stamped her foot.

‘OK. Steady on.' He put his hand on her arm. To her dismay she found she was trembling. She wanted nothing more than to bury herself in his embrace. But this was too public a place. She struggled to get control of herself.

‘And as if that wasn't enough, he gripped my hand really hard and told me he was sure I'd have no further business in Moortown. He was warning me off, Nick. Why? What have I done? I don't know anything about the murder, but people keep acting as though I do. And then you went off, and I didn't hear a thing for
hours
.'

She was very near tears now. Nick had his arm round her. He was steering her down the market hall steps.

‘I think we need to find ourselves somewhere where we can talk this over. You haven't heard my side of the story yet.'

N
ick steered her into the Angel Inn. The pub was almost deserted at the close of the afternoon. They found a booth sheltered by oak partitions. Nick bent his head towards Suzie and spoke softly.

‘Look, love, I'm really sorry for leaving you. I had no idea. You looked perfectly OK up there in the market hall with hundreds of people looking on. I didn't think anything bad could possibly happen to you.

‘As I said, I drifted around looking at what the stalls were selling, and I came upon this guy with fossils and amber and stuff like that. I got talking to him and it turned out he's a really keen geologist. Almost too keen.' He gave a rueful smile. ‘Once he saw he'd got a captive audience he was away. Told me more than I really wanted to know about the Jurassic Age and the local rock formations. And yes, your tungsten deposit just outside Moortown came up. Seems he was advising the local opposition group about the risks. But at the same time you could see he was fired up about the idea of finding something really valuable on his home patch.

‘Well, to cut a long story short, the conversation got round to Saddlers Wood.'

Suzie was startled out of her indignation that Nick seemed more concerned to tell her what had happened to him than with her own scary experience with Clive Stroud.

‘Saddlers Wood? So there really is some truth that someone is interested in prospecting there?'

‘Yes. This guy – Bernard Summers is his name – he says he's thought so for a long time, but no one would take him seriously. To be honest, he comes across as a bit of a nutter. The Ancient Mariner syndrome. Buttonholing anyone who will listen to him and pouring out his theories. And yet, at the same time, he's a guy who sounds as though he may know what he's talking about. I'm no geologist, but he was reeling off facts and figures like an encyclopaedia.

‘I was beginning to think I ought to get away from him when he nobbled a mate of his and asked him to look after the stall while he took me home to show me what he'd found in Saddlers Wood.'

‘Oh, yes?' Suzie felt her indignation returning. ‘And how far away was “home”?'

‘Not that far, really. Down the other end of this street and round the corner. He's got a little shop selling fossils, and a flat over it. Honestly, you looked all right, and I was sure I'd be back before the proceedings in the square were over. Be fair. You and Tom had got it into your heads that something fishy was going on in Saddlers Wood. And here was a guy who might be able to tell me what it was.'

His voice was rising. Suzie looked up. A group of men had come into the pub and settled themselves at the bar. One of them looked over his shoulder at the Fewings. They were not far away.

‘Keep your voice down. I'm not sure this is the right place to be talking about this.'

Nick followed her eyes. Was it just because her nerves were on edge that she thought there was something hostile in the way that more of the men were now looking in their direction?

‘If they're local,' Nick said more quietly, ‘they may have heard this before. Bernard Summers made out like he was telling me a state secret, but I'm not sure he's the sort of man to keep his ideas to himself. I got the impression that he'd bend the ear of anyone rash enough to get within firing range.'

‘But you fell for it.'

‘What was I supposed to do? This is all about Saddlers Wood, isn't it? I reckoned you'd want me to find out what I could.'

Suzie was acutely aware that the men at the bar were still observing them.

‘Look,' she murmured, ‘I really think we should do this somewhere else.'

Nick finished his beer and stood up. ‘OK, if it makes you feel better. I think you've got yourself worked up into a bit of a state about this Clive Stroud guy. Now we know he's the MP for Moortown, there's a perfectly good reason why he should have been at that funeral. The Eileen Caseley murder was a pretty explosive case for a small place like this. Lots of public interest, press, TV. He's a politician. He'd have wanted to show his face.'

‘That doesn't explain why he was looking at me like that, does it?'

‘I'd look at you, if I was him.'

‘Nick. I'm being serious. You weren't there.'

‘OK, OK. Let's find somewhere quieter to talk.'

She led the way to the door. Outside she hesitated.

‘We could go back to the car,' Nick suggested.

But Suzie headed across the street to a narrow lane that led down to the small river which flowed through the town. At the lower end was a water mill, its wooden wheel silent now. There was a bench at the bottom, beside the water.

‘Right,' she said, sitting down. ‘So you've fallen into the clutches of the local nutcase who wants to tell you his pet theory about the geology of Saddlers Wood. And somehow you think this is going to explain why everybody round here seems to be looking at me as though I've got leprosy.'

His hand closed over hers as he seated himself beside her. There was no one else about on the riverside path. The sound of the rushing water made a screening background to his words.

‘I told you this guy is a keen geologist. Well, in his spare time he wanders around the place testing out his theories. He's been up on the Caseley farm dozens of times. And he's convinced Philip Caseley has something worth exploiting on his farm.' He looked at her keenly, as if expecting her to guess what it was.

‘Go on, then. Spit it out.' She had still not entirely forgiven him.

His eyes sparkled. ‘Not tungsten, though that's pretty valuable … Gold.'

Now she did turn to him with her full attention.

‘Is that possible? … Yes, I suppose it is. Didn't they find gold in the Leigh Valley a couple of years ago? And I seem to remember reading that when Prince Charles married Diana the wedding rings were made of Welsh gold. Though, come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about that Leigh Valley find since. Maybe it turned out not to be in commercial quantities, after all. Or perhaps it wasn't really the Leigh Valley. The press was going wild over this secret location. The name could have been a bluff.'

‘Look, do you want to hear about Saddlers Wood or not?'

‘Sorry! I was just wondering how important it was, if it's true. I don't know anything about mining. I mean, we talk about “striking gold”, but I wouldn't know if finding it is really more valuable than finding tungsten nowadays.'

‘I can assure you Bernard Summers thought it was. He's picked up traces of it in a stream running down off Caseley land.'

Suzie had a sudden vivid memory of racing for a bus. She had hared after the two boys over rough ground and nearly fallen into a deep-carved gulley. It had been a packhorse trail leading down to the road, but hadn't there been a stream flowing alongside it over the stones?

‘The funny thing is that, although he could talk the hind legs off a donkey, he really doesn't seem to have spread this around. I may have been doing him an injustice about that. At one point I got out my phone to tell you where I was, and suddenly he pulled up short. All of a sudden, the atmosphere turned very nasty. He seemed to think I might be a reporter, or something. Even working for the other side.'

‘What other side?'

‘What indeed? Anyway, it was a complete turnaround. Instead of bending my ear like the Ancient Mariner, he suddenly became threatening. Made it clear that all sorts of ugly things could happen to me if I told anyone what he'd just said.'

Suzie found herself remembering what had happened only minutes ago. That sense that a group of men at the bar were taking a keener interest in her conversation with Nick than was really healthy.

‘You said this Bernard Summers was a nutcase who rammed his theories down the throat of anyone within earshot. And he really hadn't told anyone else about this? Why you?'

Nick grinned ruefully. ‘Guess I'm just a sympathetic listener, though it was the Saddlers Wood thing that got me hooked. He's obviously not used to finding a victim who genuinely wants to know what he thinks. And he
did
tell someone else, of course. Philip Caseley.'

‘And Philip was dead set against any mining in this area. That's what that woman on the bus told me. Though presumably she didn't know what he'd got beneath his own soil. She certainly didn't mention gold. I suppose we all assumed any other find would be tungsten, like that other one.'