Blood in the Cotswolds (23 page)

‘Janey,’ he said, with a quick glance at Thea. ‘How do you get on with your brother? He obviously comes to the village quite often, because he told us so. He drops in to see Miss Deacon, and we’ve seen him nearly every day this week. Does he come to visit you as well?’

Janey’s frown deepened and she obviously thought hard before answering. ‘Rupert and I own this house, you see,’ she said. ‘That is, the trust has to keep everything fair between us. Grandaddy said so. I need Rupert to be here, to keep everything running.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Phil lied. ‘And you and he are good friends, are you?’

‘He’s my brother,’ she said. ‘But he wasn’t very nice about the Saints and Martyrs. He said some very nasty things about the Club, you know.’ She met his gaze briefly. ‘That was a long time ago, but it really wasn’t very nice.’

Thea was still clutching Janey’s hand. ‘Some people don’t like Rupert much, do they?’ she said.

Janey pulled her hand away. ‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Stop talking about nasty things. I told
you before – I like to keep everything polite and happy in this house. We don’t have arguments or bad temper here. It’s a rule.’

Phil sighed softly to himself. The woman was plainly unreliable as a witness. The rich voice has turned into the simpering tones of a little girl, visibly regressing as he questioned her. Also, he was sure she was concealing something. She was being careful not to speak without thinking first. He was on the verge of giving up and persuading Thea to leave.

‘Well—’ he began. ‘It’s been good of you to talk to us. We should go now and leave you in peace.’

Janey cast him a look that carried flickers of panic. ‘Oh, no, don’t go,’ she said. ‘You could have some lunch. Fiona’s never here on a Saturday, you see. And when Sammy phoned – well, I didn’t know what to say.’

Phil looked again at Thea, with a minute flick of his head, indicating that they ought to leave. But Thea was giving all her attention to Janey.

‘Sammy?’ she repeated. ‘Who’s Sammy?’

Janey opened her mouth to reply, but the words never passed her lips. A shattering crash interrupted her, and all three of them turned in
panic towards the window, which had imploded all around them. Janey had a hand to her neck, and Phil, wrestling yet again with the anguish of his back, was slow to notice that there was blood between her fingers.

‘Oh, my God!’ howled Thea. ‘There’s glass everywhere.’ Then she noticed Janey. ‘What—?’ she choked. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’ve been stabbed,’ said Janey, eyes wide. ‘Look, I’m bleeding.’

‘Phil! Quickly – she’s got glass in her neck.’

Already he had his mobile out and was tapping keys with his thumb. A closer look at Janey had reassured him that no major artery had been severed. The blood was not jetting across the room, merely trickling steadily over the woman’s ample shoulder, and down her fleshy front. ‘Press something over the wound,’ he ordered Thea. ‘Unless the glass is still in there, of course.’

‘Let me see,’ Thea told Janey, her own lips drawn back in distaste. Glass crunched beneath her feet as she moved. Janey withdrew her hand an inch or two, to reveal a gash about an inch long, but not especially deep. ‘It hurts,’ she whined.

‘Ambulance, Temple Guiting,’ Phil was telling
his phone. He gave the address, and then got himself patched through to a special police number, where he made it clear that the incident was part of an ongoing investigation. Much of what he said was automatic, virtually coded, intended to prevent ignorant uniformed officers clomping blithely across a scene that could be rich in much-needed evidence.

Thea peered at Janey’s neck for signs of lurking shards, and deciding it was all clear, pressed a pale blue antimacassar to the wound, having snatched the makeshift compress from the back of an armchair. Phil hoped it wasn’t too imbued with bacteria. It certainly looked clean enough.

‘That’s what did it,’ he pointed at a large grey stone sitting in the middle of the floor. It looked innocent, if out of place. Almost all the glass had fallen between it and the window, but he could see a few pieces further into the room. ‘Thrown with quite some force,’ he added. ‘Glass is lethal stuff – we could all be bleeding to death in here.’

‘Am I bleeding to death?’ Janey asked in a small terrified voice.

‘No, no, of course not. Look, it’s nearly stopped
already. Nasty thing to happen, though.’

‘Not too good for the carpet, either,’ Janey giggled, valiantly trying for the customary British reaction to a crisis even in her traumatised state. ‘We’ll never get all this blood out of it.’

‘It’s not half as bad as it looks,’ Phil said.

‘But who did it?’ Thea asked wonderingly, looking around at the devastation. ‘Do you have any idea, Janey?’

‘Oh yes,’ came the muffled reply. ‘I expect it was Sammy.’

‘Not Rupert?’ Phil queried.

Janey laughed, a gurgling sound of amusement mixed with pain and confusion. ‘No, it wouldn’t have been Rupert,’ she said.

‘Where’s that ambulance?’ Thea chafed. ‘They’re taking ages.’

‘About four minutes so far,’ said Phil. ‘I’d guess we ought to allow at least twenty.’

‘Well, thank goodness we’ve got you to keep the murderer at bay,’ said Thea, who appeared to have abandoned any attempt at discretion or even common politeness.

Janey had remained in the chair, despite being showered with shards of glass. Now she began to struggle to stand up. Her manner was much
more adult, as if the former childlike demeanour had fallen away like a coat. ‘I feel silly now,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got a cut on my neck. I don’t really think I need an ambulance at all, actually. I can’t abide hospitals.’

The others made no reply to this. Phil was trying to peer outside through the shattered conservatory window. ‘Not double glazed,’ he noted with interest. ‘I didn’t think that was allowed any more.’

‘It is if you’re Listed,’ said Janey. ‘That glass has been here for two hundred years or more.’ She stared at the broken pane in obvious distress. ‘Doesn’t it look dreadful,’ she moaned.

‘Double glazing would have kept that stone out,’ said Phil. ‘Probably.’

Janey ignored him. All three showed signs of impatience, the unreal suspension of time as they waited encouraging nothing more than small talk, despite Phil’s strong compulsion to ask again who Sammy might be. But he wanted DS Gladwin at his side – it was her case, she ought to hear any important testimony. Anything Janey might say to him now would only have to be repeated under proper conditions. It would comprise nothing useful by way of evidence otherwise. But
Thea was less inhibited by protocol. ‘Giles,’ she said into the silence. ‘Tell us about him.’ It was an order, that Phil suspected was less easy to defy than if he’d given it.

‘Rupert’s little friend,’ Janey responded. ‘Ran off when somebody said something he didn’t want to hear. He was always a bit of a fool.’ Her voice was strained, her attention more on her neck than what she was saying, her attitude partly hostile, partly clinging.

‘Rupert must be twenty years older than he is,’ said Phil, who continued to have difficulty keeping all the ages under control.

‘You do know he tried to shoot Phil, don’t you?’ Thea demanded, when Janey simply ignored Phil’s comment. ‘Giles, I mean. What was he so angry about? Where has he been all this time?’

‘Stop it,’ Janey pleaded. ‘It isn’t fair, questioning me when I’m like this. It’s harassment.’

She was probably right, thought Phil.

Phil went in the ambulance with Janey, since nobody else had materialised and he doubted the wisdom of letting Thea go. Her habit of asking important questions with no formal cautioning could wreak havoc with any subsequent prosecutions. Even though he might commit the same indiscretions, he would know better how to deal with the consequences.

Nobody from the police had yet manifested themselves, which struck Phil as rather dilatory after his urgent direct call. Thea was left with the conundrum of how to take two cars back to Hector’s Nook. He handed her the keys of his and told her she’d work something out. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said crossly. ‘Aren’t you
worried that I might get stoned as soon as I step outside?’

‘Stay inside, then, until the police arrive. They can’t be long now,’ was his callous reply.

The truth was, he had lost his hold on what Thea was thinking and planning. The last conversation he had had with her had been all about Fiona as murderer, and a determination to prove it. Since then, his thoughts had run through endless hoops, until he was almost sure she was deliberately misleading him. ‘Stay here and tell them everything that happened,’ he ordered her. ‘And stay close to Gladwin if you can. She’ll make sure you’re all right.’

A ginger-haired female paramedic had inspected Janey’s neck and decreed that there could be residual glass to be washed out, and some delicate stitching called for. Phil had the impression that there was another quiet day in Cirencester Accident and Emergency.

Janey was not enjoying the attention. ‘I hate hospitals,’ she moaned. ‘They don’t listen to you – and at some point I’m sure to get a lecture about my weight.’

Phil nodded sympathetically. They called it preventive medicine, when they nagged people
about their habits so relentlessly. No doubt Janey would be offered a ‘programme’ with counsellors and nutrition experts, poor woman.

‘So, did Thea say anything to you about Fiona?’ he asked rashly. The need to resolve the issue was too strong to resist. ‘I believe her thinking was along the lines of Fiona having killed Graham Bligh as a kind of favour to you. It did make a sort of sense when she first explained it to me.’

Janey frowned in utter confusion. ‘Graham Bligh? My mother’s old boyfriend? He isn’t dead.’

‘Oh, yes, he is. That’s who the bones belonged to. I mean – it was his body buried under that tree.’

She was lying flat on a fixed trolley, her bulk overflowing the sides, the flesh of her arms and cheeks vibrating slightly as the ambulance traversed the small country lanes. Phil could see her thinking hard, and wondered again just what level of intelligence there was beneath the rolls of fat.

‘Who told you that?’ she asked.

‘They matched the DNA,’ he said. ‘They’ve got your whole family on the database, you see, because of your father’s legal case.’

‘And they think those bones are Graham’s?’

‘Well, yes. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that, because there must have been some mix-up. But yes, that’s what they think.’

‘Then they’re stupid,’ she said flatly.

‘Oh?’

‘They’ve got it so wrong, it makes me feel tired,’ Janey said. ‘What you just said is pure nonsense.’ She exhaled a
huff
of frustration. ‘I won’t talk to you any more. If you’d just left things as they were, everything would be all right. It’s all your fault.’

‘That’s what Giles Pritchett said.’

‘It’s what
everybody’s
saying.’

‘But I didn’t make the tree fall down. Isn’t that where it all began?’

‘You didn’t need to go crawling all over it. Robin was going to cover everything up again when he’d finished milking. But instead, you had to go and stick your nose in. It’s all your stupid fault.’ And she closed her eyes, saying no more. Tears started trickling down her cheeks and running into the papery covering of the trolley. The paramedic, who had been watching over Janey with an air of disapproval, said ‘Hey! You’re not meant to make her cry.’

Phil held up his hands in apology and shifted a few inches along the plastic bench they’d allocated him. The ambulance was driving fast but smoothly, his back no more than a dull ache. He thought about what he knew of Janey Holmes.

He had once heard a theory that very fat people are trying to draw notice to themselves, often after a childhood spent being ignored. Perhaps a twin would feel this need more strongly than most. Or a middle child in a big family. Or somebody consigned to a day nursery from their first few weeks. Distractedly, he thought he might have suddenly stumbled upon an explanation for the epidemic of childhood obesity – but he brushed it to one side.

‘We’re nearly there,’ he noted. ‘We ought to call somebody to come and be with you, and take you home again. I doubt if it’ll take very long to deal with your neck. In the olden days, they’ve have sent a GP out to the house to patch you up.’

‘The good old days, eh?’ she said, with a brave effort at maintaining her aplomb. He wondered at her flurry of tears. Who was she weeping for?

At the hospital, Phil phoned Thea and ascertained that she was well protected by two uniformed officers, and was trying to explain to them just what had happened. ‘It isn’t much of a story,’ she said. ‘All I can think to say was that a stone came crashing through the window and a shard of glass got Janey in the neck.’

‘That’s about it,’ he agreed. ‘Which is why I didn’t think I’d be needed there as well. Plus—’ the full truth of this only now became clear to him ‘while I’m here I’d better talk to Giles, if he’s well enough.’

‘Officially or unofficially?’

‘Both,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t think there’s any real distinction.’

‘You think he might confess to the murder?’

‘Unlikely. As I see it, he’s never really been on the list of suspects.’

‘I could have been right about Fiona, you know,’ Thea said stubbornly. ‘It did make sense.’

‘We’re a long way from closure yet,’ he said.

‘Closure! Please!’ Thea begged. ‘I thought we’d agreed that was on the banned list.’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, quelling the irritation at her continuing flippancy. ‘Look – I’m going now. I’ll try to keep you posted.’

‘Are you phoning from inside the hospital? You know that’s against the rules.’

‘Not any more. They gave up trying to enforce it a year ago. Bye, love. See you soon.’

Giles Pritchett looked young and very poorly. From the chest down, he was a mass of technological enhancement – tubes, monitors, dressings. It was dreadful to witness the consequences of just one bullet fired into a man’s abdomen. ‘Hello?’ Phil said quietly. ‘Giles?’

The eyes opened blearily, and took some time to focus. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a frown. ‘What do you want?’

‘Just a quick chat.’ He kept his voice light and friendly, trying to erase any implication that he had come for recriminations. He need not have worried.

‘Your people
shot
me,’ the young man whimpered. ‘I could be dead now.’

‘That’s true,’ Phil nodded. ‘It’s what happens, I’m afraid, when you come at a police officer with a gun. The rules change quite a lot from what you might regard as normal. You must have known you were doing something absolutely unacceptable. I don’t think you’re stupid.’

‘I was blind with rage,’ said Giles, his voice thin and breathy. ‘Blind with rage.’ It was a phrase he must have opted for at an earlier point – it came off his tongue almost as a single word.

‘But
why
? I still don’t understand what made you so angry.’

‘I
told
you. You put everything back to how it was when… How it was a few years ago. You brought it all up again, just when it might have been safe to go back. I missed my mum, you know. Those pills have turned her into a zombie.’ They both glanced around the room, as if they might find Trudy Pritchett huddled in a corner.

‘Well, you’re back now anyway.’ Phil was as puzzled as ever. ‘What exactly happened two and a half years ago, when you ran away?’

A sly look came into the reddened eyes. ‘I had to keep myself safe. If I’d stayed at home, he might have got me as well. They didn’t trust me to keep quiet.’

‘Who might have got you? As well as who?’ Phil leant forward urgently. ‘Are you talking about the man who killed Graham Bligh and buried him under that tree?’ Something was
wrong in the question, he knew, but sometimes getting the facts wrong was an effective prompt to a witness.

‘Not Graham Bligh, you fool,’ Giles suddenly snarled, showing a brief burst of energy. ‘Nobody cares a shit for Graham Bligh. Besides, he isn’t even dead.’

‘So people keep telling me. But at the moment, that’s the official identity of the murdered man. They’ve done a DNA test…’

‘Oh well, that proves it then, doesn’t it? A hundred people seeing him and talking to him. But the lab says he’s dead and DNA can’t be wrong, can it?’

Phil had enough doubt of his own to take this attack calmly. ‘OK. So when this man was killed, whoever he was, you were afraid you might be next? So you went into hiding. Wouldn’t it have been possible to send at least an email to your parents, telling them you were still alive? Your mother’s been worried out of her head.’

‘They never really believed I was dead. That was just a stupid panic when they heard what you’d found. I sent them a card at Christmas. That’s more than a lot of blokes in my position would have done.’ He was weary again, a lost
boy. ‘And then you mucked it all up.’

‘It makes no sense to blame me,’ said Phil angrily, belatedly remembering that Pritchett Senior had mentioned the Christmas cards. ‘Why does everyone keep doing that?’

‘It does though. If anyone local had found those bones, they’d just have covered them up again and kept quiet.’

Phil sat stiffly back in his chair, staring at the white face and thinking about the words that had just echoed what Janey had said to him in the ambulance. ‘Oh,’ he said.

There were a dozen urgent questions he wanted to ask, and almost no time to choose the most important one. Fiercely he forced his brain to work. ‘Soraya,’ he said. ‘She was your friend. She knows what’s been going on, doesn’t she?’ Giles said nothing, his gaze on the blank TV screen on the wall facing him.

‘Did you know she’s going out with Rupert Temple-Pritchett?’ Phil said, following a hunch that had no immediate logic to it.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ came the languid response. ‘That’s impossible. Even if it could be true, Robin would kill them both.’

A nurse told him he must stop tiring the patient. In the corridor outside he met Stephen and Trudy Pritchett, walking slowly, holding plastic carrierbags of shopping. Stephen lifted a hand in greeting, but Trudy ignored him. Her head was shaking slightly, and Phil wondered whether she might have Parkinson’s Disease, as well as all her other problems.

Phil’s back was a constant distraction. It made every move an ordeal, the urge to simply find a sofa or even a bed where he could stretch out and relax was growing stronger by the minute. He could call Gladwin and pass on the message that Soraya Wheeler might be at risk from her irate father. He didn’t have to do everything himself. He just needed to sit down and think, anyway, after all the scraps of information he’d gathered that morning. The dead man was not Graham Bligh. That much seemed certain. In fact, the obvious implication was that it must be Rupert Temple-Pritchett after all, as the DNA said, which meant the man he and Thea had spoken to, claming to be Rupert, was somebody else. But who? And where did that leave Soraya who was in love with the man who claimed to be Rupert? And who was almost certainly loved in
return, because surely nobody could have faked that look of adoration he and Thea had seen on the man’s face? Why would he, anyway? He hadn’t known he was being watched. If he was intent on seduction, perhaps, he’d enjoy working on the girl’s affections first – but that sounded very old-fashioned. It hadn’t looked as if there’d been any resistance from Soraya, although that could simply indicate a successful outcome to the overall plan, of course.

In any case, regardless of his growing anxiety, there was no way he could march in (march in
where,
anyway?) and order the man to leave the girl alone.
Janey Holmes might inhabit a world where knights on white chargers dashed to the rescue of damsels in jeopardy, but the reality of the twenty-first century was altogether different.

He needed to speak to Gladwin. That was the priority. Parallel investigations were obviously stupid, neither knowing what the other was doing. She would not thank him if he had discovered more than she had and never deigning to share it with her. He tried to review the hours since he had last compared notes with her, and the facts he had gleaned in that time.

Not a lot of facts, he admitted to himself. A
whole heap of hints and arguments and wild theories, but scarcely a single fact. And yet he did feel much nearer to –
closure
. The word fitted, whether Thea liked it or not, and he felt a bubble of defiance against her implacable scorn for such words. He did his best to speak plainly to his officers, to give clear instructions and set them tasks with real goals – but jargon was inescapable. Sometimes it was useful, anyway. It avoided premature judgements and prejudicial attitudes. It did actually sometimes make people stop and think.

He was stranded, he realised, although it would be easy enough to get a taxi to the police station and see what was going on. And from there it was only a couple of minutes to his flat – which had seemed so far away all week. Confined to Temple Guiting, he had felt cut off from his own familiar world, he realised now. He had missed his dogs and his colleagues, and the normal pace and pressure of work. Now, he could simply call a cab and be transported effortlessly to his own firm bed, where he needn’t worry about Temples or Pritchetts for at least the rest of the day.

He brought these thoughts up short. How could he be thinking along such self-indulgent
lines? What about Thea, valiantly striving to keep so many balls in the air? Miss Deacon’s house, for a start. And the various residents of the village, creating a maelstrom of confusion and violence – she had let herself be sucked right into the heart of it and nothing was going to persuade her to climb out again until all questions were answered. He couldn’t just abandon her at this stage. One more day, that was all. Tomorrow Archie would arrive and he and Thea could be excused. Gladwin would pursue the murder investigations in her own capable way, and Phil could rest his back with a clear conscience.