Beneath the Soil (28 page)

‘Must have scared her off. She never realized she'd be photographed,' Millie said.

‘She?' asked Suzie and Tom together.

‘Of course it's a woman. Didn't you see her hair?'

Tom clicked back. Those twin flashes of light reappeared. He enlarged the detail again. Suzie frowned. She felt that if she stared at it long enough, she could believe that Millie was right, that there was a cloud of darkness surrounding that indistinct face. Something more crinkled than the texture of the leaves it melded into.

‘Do you suppose Dad noticed it?' Millie asked.

‘I doubt it. He would have said so, wouldn't he? We only saw it because we were looking for something out of the ordinary. Something whoever was there that day didn't expect us to see.'

Suzie was still staring at that blur of a face with what must be quite a large pair of glasses. Horn-rimmed. Where had she seen a pair like that?

Suddenly she jumped, so violently that she knocked Tom sideways on his swivel chair.

‘Yes! I'm almost sure it's her! Those glasses!'

‘Who?' Tom and Millie demanded.

‘Oh, what was her name? … Gina Alford! Clive Stroud's agent.'

‘A
re you sure? You can't really recognize her from this blurry photo, can you?' Millie asked.

‘Of course I'm not sure. How can I be? I corresponded with her, but I only met her once, at the tractor pull. But she does have big horn-rimmed glasses like that.'

‘I bet the police have got the kit to enhance this better than we can,' Tom said.

Suzie's mobile was already in her hand. She dialled DS Dudbridge's number, her thumb clumsy with haste. To her relief, she got through.

‘Mrs Fewings? Still no joy, I'm afraid. We're not giving up, though.'

‘We've found something. On Nick's camera. This could be the person he was meeting.'

She poured out their discovery, and their attempts to distinguish the face.

‘I can't be a hundred per cent sure it's Gina Alford, but it fits.'

‘I'm coming over.'

‘No. Don't waste time. If she knows where Nick is … if she's got him, you have to find her.'

‘Point taken. I'll send someone round to pick up the camera. We can probably get a better identification than you could.'

Suzie put down the mobile. Her brain was working overtime, trying to disentangle all the implications if what she guessed was right.

‘But what would Clive Stroud's agent be doing in Saddlers Wood?'

‘Spying on him?' Millie suggested. ‘We said that he might have had an assignation with Eileen that day, and Philip found out. They had a row, Philip fired his gun, and then came storming out when we met him.'

‘What's that got to do with this Stroud guy's constituency agent?' Tom asked. ‘What he does in his spare time is his own affair.'

Suzie thought back to that sunlit afternoon in Moortown square. Gina Alford, possessively aggressive. Scorning Suzie's ability to have set up everything right for her MP. Even then, Suzie had sensed that the frizzy-haired, bespectacled agent's demeanour was more than professional jealousy.

‘I think she's in love with him.'

‘You mean …?' Millie was rapidly working out the consequences. ‘It might not have been Philip who shot Eileen because she was having an affair with Clive? It could have been this Alford woman taking out a rival who looked as if she was getting too serious.'

‘If she overheard an almighty row, and knew that Clive really was thinking of divorcing his wife, and Eileen was going to leave Philip, she might have felt driven to stop her, yes.'

‘So,' Tom said slowly, ‘she goes back on Monday, gets hold of Philip's gun and does the deed. But she's worried because she remembers there was this family in the clearing on Saturday taking photographs, while she was on her way back to wherever she'd hidden her car. She knows there's a chance that this guy with the camera might have caught her in one of them.'

‘But she wouldn't know who we were,' Millie objected.

‘I went to the funeral,' Suzie said. ‘Clive saw me watching the burial. He obviously suspected me of something. Maybe he thought I knew more about his affair with Eileen than I did.' She frowned, trying to remember what happened next. ‘He might not have known about her will then. John Nosworthy would have been in touch with him after the funeral to tell him about the codicil. I think he was genuinely shocked last night when we told him about the gold. But I was so busy being scared of him, it never occurred to me that Gina Alford might have recognized me too.'

‘So it could have been then that she found out who the photographer was,' Tom said, realization dawning in his face. ‘And since nobody had questioned her, she figured Dad hadn't yet spotted what he'd got and gone to the police. But any day now he might look back over his pictures and find her. It might not be too late for her to stop the only guy who could link her to Saddlers Wood.'

‘Yes, but where does Bernard Summers fit into all of this? Why would she kill
him
?'

A pause. ‘We don't know that she did,' Suzie said. ‘It could have been a genuine accident. Those moorland streams run fast. People do slip on the stones. It begins to make sense.' She straightened up from the computer with a renewed sense of dread. ‘Idiot! That phone call came from Clive Stroud's
office
, not from him. Why didn't I think that it had to be her? I was so sure it was Clive behind it. She lured Dad out on to the moor. Somehow, she got him to go to the Strouds' house, so that Clive would get the blame. She must have been waiting to meet Nick outside. Unless the Strouds know more about this than I think they do.'

‘And then what?' Millie snapped. ‘The only thing that matters is where is Dad now? What did she do to him?'

The worst possibility of all was waiting at the bottom of Suzie's mind for someone to voice it.

It was Millie who answered her own question in a small, scared voice. ‘If she killed Eileen Caseley, could she be mad enough to kill Dad too, to stop him from finding that photograph?'

Suzie turned and walked out of the study, trying to shut Millie's words out of her head. Wouldn't she know in her heart if Nick was dead? She felt a terrible fear, but it was not certainty. It was still possible, wasn't it, that DCI Brewer might arrest Gina Alford in Moortown and force her to confess what she had done with Nick? It might still not be too late to save him. She had to believe that.

She found herself standing in front of the conservatory windows, looking out at the pageant of summer colour that was Nick's flower garden. A cascade of yellow roses tumbled over trelliswork at the side of the house. The rich dark red of Bishop of Llandaff dahlias glowed from across the lawn. This was what would remain of him. His creation.

No! She must not let herself think like that. She should be praying. For Nick, for the police. Even for a softening of Gina Alford's heart.

Was it too late for that?

Sooner than she expected, the doorbell rang. She wondered if it was a well-meaning friend, come to offer sympathy, or Alan, the minister, again.

‘Mum,' announced Millie, ‘it's the police. They want Dad's camera.'

By the time she got to the study, Tom had already disconnected the leads and was handing the Canon over to a fresh-faced constable. Suzie was given a receipt to sign.

‘This is what you need to be looking at.' Tom wrote the number of the image on a slip of paper. The constable left.

‘All the way from the police HQ to pick it up,' Tom said scornfully. ‘Have these guys not heard of email?'

‘Maybe they need to have the camera to prove the source,' Millie suggested.

Suzie knew in her heart that, however the police laboratory enhanced Nick's photo, it was unlikely that it would be good enough to get a positive identification that would stand up in a criminal trial. And even if it did, what would it prove? That Clive Stroud's agent was in Saddlers Wood two days before Eileen Caseley's murder. That would hardly make her guilty beyond reasonable doubt. She felt the heaviness of despair threatening to overwhelm her.

‘What do you suppose they're doing now?' she asked out loud. ‘DCI Brewer and co.'

‘It sounds as though they're taking you seriously,' Millie tried to comfort her. ‘That has to be good, doesn't it? Your police sergeant latched on to the idea that they've got to get to Moortown and find this Gina Alford. If only they can make her tell them what she's done with Dad!'

Suzie turned away. Though she tried to control it, her voice came muffled. ‘They wasted all that time searching around Fullingford. Of course she wouldn't have left him there. It was too obvious. He won't be in Moortown either. He could be anywhere.'

‘Our only hope is that they can scare her into believing they know for certain she did it. She might confess then.' Tom's fists were clenched. He was as tense as she was.

Suzie wandered back to the computer. Tom had saved Nick's photographs on the hard disk. The screen was showing that idyllic scene: cob walls, hung with ivy, drifts of fireweed, pink in the sunlight, the wall of trees across the brook. Suddenly, with piercing clarity, she knew.

‘That's it! It's got to be! Where it all started. Where she found them together. The reason all of this happened.'

‘What are you talking about?' Millie asked. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I know where Dad is. He has to be. She took him back to Saddlers Wood.'

She was already in the hall, grabbing her shoulder bag and the borrowed car keys.

‘Mum,' Tom was saying, ‘it's just a guess. You can't be sure.'

‘Have you got a better one?'

He shook his head.

She was running towards the drive. ‘Thank you, Mike!' she murmured as she unlocked the Nissan.

Millie and Tom were behind her. She tried to ignore the looks they were giving each other.

‘At least tell DS Dudbridge what you're doing,' Tom pleaded.

She passed him her phone. ‘I've keyed in his number. You do it.'

She didn't protest when Millie climbed into the back and Tom took the passenger seat beside her.

It took all her concentration to steer them safely through the city and up the long hill that would take them out to Moortown and Saddlers Wood.

At the roadside below Saddlers Wood stood a new placard.
GRAZING TO LET
.

So Matthew had taken possession.

This time Suzie did not park the car on the grass verge, but drove on up the rutted track towards the farm.

‘Do you really think she's here?' asked Millie in a low voice, as though someone in the woods around them could overhear her.

‘I shouldn't think so. She'll be back at work today, acting the part of Clive Stroud's faceless assistant. Just as she did when she made that phone call to Dad's office.'

They parked in the empty farmyard.

‘I wonder what happened to the dog,' said Millie, climbing out.

‘What now?' Tom asked. He was watching Suzie closely. She felt that he did not completely trust her, but would come with her anyway.

‘I don't know,' she said slowly, looking around.

Images from the past were all about her. This would be the same farmhouse where Richard Day's employer had lived, back in the 1850s. Richard must have crossed this yard thousands of times in the course of his work. He would have mucked out these byres, fed and harnessed the horses in these stables, drawn water from that well in the corner. But none of it gave any clue to where Nick – or Nick's body, a cold voice said – might be now.

‘We were in the clearing by the cottage when Nick accidentally snapped her,' she said at last. ‘Maybe that's where she took him.'

They began to walk back down that path.

The clearing opened up before them. The woods cast longer shadows now in the early evening sun. The yellowish cob of crumbling walls glowed between the smothering creepers.

But now Suzie could not waste time on memories of the past. She plunged into the deepening shadows of the ruined walls. With her bare hands she was tugging away the brambles and ivy that shrouded its corners, in the vain hope that there might be a body, bound and unconscious, hidden under them. This small hope was overshadowed by the dread of what she might really find.

Outside, Millie was down by the brook, peering into the water.

Tom was combing the ground more widely. ‘No sign of any recent disturbance in the ground here,' he called.

Was that what they were looking for? Suzie wondered. Not a prison, but a grave?

‘We're wasting our time,' said Millie, suddenly appearing behind her. ‘She couldn't have carried him here by herself, could she? And there were no marks of car tracks.'

Tom and Suzie turned to her.

Before Suzie could answer, there came the blare of police sirens. Not one but several vehicles were approaching fast along the road. They turned in at the cart track. The noise was mounting towards the farm, deafening now.

The Fewings broke into a run.

T
he farmyard was crowded with vehicles and police. Suzie's eyes, swiftly searching, came to rest on one group that made her heart constrict. Handcuffed to a uniformed officer was a woman, undistinguished-looking except for the frizzy brown hair that bushed around her bespectacled face, in spite of her efforts to tie it back. Suzie fought to break through to her to demand answers, but another policeman blocked her way with arms outspread. Others were setting up yellow tape around the yard.

‘Why aren't you searching the place?' she said angrily to the officer in front of her.

‘They are,' Tom told her quietly. He nodded to a corner of the yard.

This was not the widespread search she had envisaged, with police spread out in lines, combing the yard for clues, entering the farmhouse and the outbuildings to examine every hiding place.