Blood in the Cotswolds (3 page)

‘Three months!’ Phil’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘Can I work during that time?’

‘Depends what you want to do. No lifting, straining or bending.’

‘Do I have to stay in bed?’

‘Absolutely not. Though you might want to stay reasonably still for the rest of this week. Find a comfortable position on a firm surface and let your body do the rest. Make the most of it, is my advice. With this lovely weather, you could be outdoors. Try an airbed in the garden.’ The smile widened. ‘Try to treat it as a well-deserved rest.’

Phil sighed and rolled his eyes, catching Thea’s thoughtful glance. The implications of the situation were obviously starting to dawn on her.

‘Can he drive?’ she asked. ‘I mean when the worst of the pain has gone.’

‘Probably. Give it a go, and see how it feels. We advise people to be as active as they can after the first week or so. Walking, swimming – that sort of thing.’

‘And is there any treatment?’

‘You could try an osteopath, if you like.’ The tone was unenthusiastic. ‘That can sometimes reduce the pressure on the nerves, which helps. It doesn’t actually hasten the recovery process, though.’

‘Meanwhile I have to get him home again,’ Thea realised.

‘It’ll be better now he’s had the painkillers,’ the doctor assured her, and a few moments later was gone in a flick of the white coat.

Phil and Thea looked at each other carefully. ‘Home,’ he said. ‘Where’s that then, I wonder?’

‘It’s up to you. I’ve got to stay and mind Miss Deacon’s house. You’re welcome to be there with me. Or you can go back to your flat and take your chances. Is your sister a good nurse? Because I warn you, I meant it when I said I wasn’t. I’ll probably shout at you.’

‘You can’t be worse than Linda,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to phone her,’ he realised. ‘And ask her to keep the dogs until I’m better.’

Thea said nothing.

‘But that mattress will have to go. And I can’t face the stairs while I’m like this.’

‘There’ll have to be some rules,’ said Thea. ‘Number One – no complaining. Number Two – no self-pity.’

‘Aren’t they the same thing?’

‘Well spotted. All the other rules are on the same theme. Now, let’s go before those painkillers start to wear off.’

She settled him on the sofa in Miss Deacon’s front room, and got to work creating a lavish lunch to compensate for the lack of breakfast, having found him his mobile with which to make his excuses at the station and inform his sister of her extended dog-minding duties. She heard his tone from the kitchen, though not the words, and surmised that he was having difficulty convincing his colleagues that his injury was genuine. ‘Well,’ he was shouting as she carried a tray into the room, ‘you’ll just have to manage without me. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘Problems?’ she asked sweetly, when he’d finished.

‘Not really. Fielding calls from the Home Office seems to be the main preoccupation at
the moment, with this terrorist scare. They don’t need me for that.’

‘Although, if they did, you could probably do it from here,’ she suggested rashly. ‘After all, you can still talk – and think. And read,’ she added. ‘You’re not completely useless.’

‘I have to be on the spot,’ he said sullenly. ‘How can I keep abreast of everything from here?’

She put the tray on a low table, and leant over him, kissing his forehead. ‘Poor old Phil,’ she crooned. ‘It’s a horrible thing to happen. We’ll have to think of some games we can play. Or perhaps we could find you a wheelchair and I could push you around the village.’

‘Don’t you dare! I’m not going in a wheelchair for anybody.’

‘Why not? It would give you an insight into life as a disabled person.’

‘I had plenty of that last year when I broke my leg, remember. Hobbling around on a crutch for weeks was no fun. And this is even worse.’

‘Ah, ah!’ she admonished. ‘Remember the rules. We are going to make the best of this, Phil Hollis, if it kills us.’

He rolled his eyes and reached for a sandwich.

By late afternoon, Phil had eaten a hearty lunch, had a little sleep in the garden, and persuaded himself that there was something to be said for enforced idleness. Thea had walked Hepzie through the village and back, and was lying contentedly on the grass with a book. ‘This is the life,’ she sighed. Then she shook her head. ‘Though I can’t quite believe it. It reminds me of Frampton Mansell when Jocelyn stayed with me. It was sunny then, as well, and we lazed about in the garden, while everybody around us was killing each other.’

‘Not a whisper of any killing here,’ he assured her. ‘Unless you let that snake out and it terrifies somebody to death. You did say it wasn’t poisonous, didn’t you?’

‘I can’t remember what I said, but it’s quite harmless. I think it’s even quite affectionate in a reptilian sort of way.’ She sighed. ‘I do love snakes. Isn’t it funny how some people are so paranoid about them?’

‘Not at all funny when you consider that more people in India die of snakebite each year than any other cause.’

She gave him a stern look. ‘Is that really true?’

‘Absolutely. It makes more sense to be scared of snakes than of spiders or bats or wasps, and all the other things that freak people out.’

‘I wonder whether dogs are frightened of them. Snakes, I mean. I haven’t shown Shasti to Hepzie yet.’

‘Shasti? Is that what you said?’

She nodded cheerfully. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

Phil merely sighed, and went quiet for a few moments. Then he voiced his thoughts. ‘I hate to say this, my darling, but I can’t help thinking we’re going to be horribly bored by about Thursday at this rate. I mean – a day can be a dreadfully long time when you’re not doing anything.’

‘Not to worry,’ she breezed. ‘You’ll be walking
by then. That doctor said you had to keep active once the pain subsided. We can go out and about and do some local history studies. Won’t that be fun?’

‘I remember it a bit differently. I remember him saying I should rest for a week or so.’

‘You will be resting – between short spells of gentle activity, like walking. He said it was good to walk, I know he did.’

‘You never ask me how I’m feeling,’ he noted.

‘Sorry. Do you think I should? I can tell, more or less, by looking at you. And I didn’t want to draw attention to it. I work on the theory that distraction is the best cure for almost any ailment.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s quite refreshing, in a way. But if I may, I’d like to just mention that it feels easier now. There hasn’t been any of that stabbing agony of this morning. And I haven’t had a pill since lunch.’

‘Good,’ she nodded. ‘You’ll be better in no time at this rate.’

‘I’ll have to sleep downstairs, though. Lucky there’s a loo on the ground floor, or I don’t know what I’d have done.’

‘Use a pot, I suppose,’ she said carelessly.

Phil laughed; even when the tremors revived the pain in his back, he went on laughing. ‘Thea Osborne, I love you,’ he choked. ‘I love you, I love you.’

‘Good,’ she said again.

Although the day had drifted by slowly, looking back on it, Phil felt it had been far from wasted. His declaration of love had marked a deepening of his union with Thea, despite her apparently unconcerned reaction. He tried to examine his feelings towards her, forcing his mind to the unfamiliar task. He concluded eventually that she made him a better person than he might otherwise be. Not only the veto on self-pity, but the very straightness of her. She had occasionally caught him out in small moral lapses associated with his work, and never let him escape reprimand. She reminded him of his mother, who had been equally uncompromising over ethical issues. ‘Either a thing is true or it isn’t,’ she had been wont to say. ‘It’s not something that can be bent or stretched.’

His life experience as a police officer had demonstrated to him many times that his mother had been wrong about that, but Thea made him
understand that he wished she hadn’t been. Thea taught him that cloudy morality was a cause for regret, and the best people were those who stepped across the grey swamps of laxity without getting their own feet dirty.

Besides, she was lovely, and funny and clever and sweet. She was more than he deserved, but he was resolved to improve himself and earn her love. He smiled daftly to himself, as he watched her putting away the Scrabble board and taking their wine glasses into the kitchen. Only Thea, he thought, could have turned a day that began with such pain and panic into the one where he determined once and for all that this was the woman he wanted to devote the rest of his life to.

But things felt somewhat different when she kissed him a solicitous goodnight and left him alone on the fold-out bed she had found in a corner of her bedroom. She had lugged it down to the front room and made it up with a sheet and a light summer duvet. Wistfully, he watched her disappear with her dog, wondering whether it had even crossed her mind to remain downstairs with him, perhaps on the sofa.

The house-sit was certainly not arduous. There was still a day to go before the snake needed its frozen mice, and the fish seemed content with a pinch of dry food and an occasional check on their water temperature. The horses had each other and seemed to be pleasingly self-sufficient. Remembering earlier commissions, where Thea had been employed effectively to guard the house against unwanted intrusions, he shuddered. Perhaps the slipped disc was a blessing, ensuring he stayed to watch over her until Miss Deacon’s brother arrived to take over. Despite there being every sign that this was to be the easiest, most relaxed of all her experiences as a house-sitter to date, he was still very glad to be there with her.

They had learnt almost nothing about the village since arriving. Left to himself, Phil would not have seen this as anything to reproach himself for, but Thea had insisted that she wanted to find out as much as she could of the history of all the places she found herself in. Frampton Mansell and the Cotswold Canal; Blockley and the strange story of Joanna Southcott; Cold Aston and the Notgrove Barrow – they had all been of the most vital interest to Thea, despite the wide range of historical periods and
the peculiar people who conceived passions for their little bits of local history. When the name ‘Temple Guiting’ had first been mentioned, Phil had paused to wonder just what it might have tucked away in its past that would ensnare his girlfriend’s attention. It had not crossed his mind until she mentioned it that the Knights Templar might be involved. And, if he had, he would not have been very pleased. The Templars had links with the Freemasons, and since the episode in Cold Aston, Phil Hollis had striven not to speak or think again about that particular organisation.

His back felt tender and battered, as if he had been viciously kicked. Turning over was still frighteningly painful, in spite of the bedtime painkiller. He tried to force himself to relax, to simply let himself float away into sleep, where nothing would hurt any more and he would awake in the morning to a dramatic improvement. Instead he found himself listening to sounds outside – an owl close by, and the intrusive cry of a fox. Nasty things, foxes, he mused – the more so now they were so prevalent in towns, raiding dustbins and keeping whole streets awake. His Cirencester flat suffered badly
from them and he had conceived a profound dislike for the whole species. He remembered Thea’s first ever house-sit, over a year ago, in Duntisbourne Abbots, and the cry she had heard in the night. That cry had, as it turned out, brought the two of them together. His leg had been in plaster at the time.
Am I destined to hurt
myself every year from here on?
he wondered muzzily.

First light began to dawn around four, and when Phil next opened his eyes, he could discern the beginnings of the day. The fish tanks were gluggling rhythmically on the other side of the room, but another sound had woken him. He could hear a voice, outside the open window, speaking at a normal level.

‘His car’s still here. That’s odd. She said he’d be away again by now.’

‘So?’

‘So, he can join in as well. Not a problem.’

The first voice was the melted-chocolate-and-double-cream of Big Janey, unless he was much mistaken. And, although there was no suggestion of threat or subterfuge in the calm tones, he felt at an acute disadvantage. His back had
stiffened during the brief sleep he’d managed, and he flinched at the prospect of having to stand up or walk. What’s more, his bladder was painfully full, which presented him with a new distraction.

‘Thea!’ he called, as loudly as he could. ‘Are you awake?’

Of course she wasn’t awake. It was still the middle of the night to her. But he felt justified on at least two counts in doing his best to rouse her. There were people outside, for heaven’s sake! ‘Thea!’ he yelled.

The curtains had not been closed the previous evening, and now, in the thinning darkness, he saw a face pressed against the glass. The heavy jowls of the woman he had met when he first arrived made inhuman pink shapes against the glass. ‘Can I come in?’ she called, flapping a hand towards the front door. He tried to remember whether the door had been locked before Thea went to bed. He knew her careless habits, her resistance to keys and burglar alarms, and he could not recall any discussion of the matter.

‘If you can get in,’ he said to the face outside. ‘It might be locked.’

‘So get up and open it,’ she suggested, eyebrows raised.

‘Easier said than done,’ he confessed. ‘And—’ he tried to sit up, but only succeeded in making the flimsy bed wobble alarmingly. ‘What are you
doing
here? What time do you think it is?’

‘Didn’t she tell you? I explained it all to her on Sunday. It’s the Festival of St Yvo today and your lady friend said she’d like to come.’

‘Saint Eevo?’ he queried. ‘What’s that?’ He shook his head tetchily on the pillow. ‘Thea!’ he called again.

‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ came another female voice. ‘We’re wasting time. Janey, I don’t know why you have to recruit total strangers all the time. We don’t need any more people.’

At last, Thea must have stirred. He heard a thud at the top of the stairs and claws clattering on the stone steps. Hepzibah scratched at the closed door of the dining room and whined. At least the dog had finally decided to investigate, Phil thought dourly. Some guard she was. But then who ever selected a cocker spaniel with a view to being guarded?

Thea’s head appeared around the side of the door, her hair wild and her eyes half shut.
‘What’s the matter?’ she slurred. ‘What time is it?’

‘Your friend’s here,’ Phil said. ‘I need the loo, and it’s just after four a.m.’

‘Mmm,’ she scratched her head and yawned. ‘I was having a lovely dream. There was a white bird, with fluffy feathers like fur… You shouted,’ she accused. ‘Really loud.’ She reached out and switched on the light, which changed everything.

Thea looked towards the window, where Janey was no longer visible. Outside had returned to darkness in reaction to the electric light. ‘Friend? What friend?’

Then there was the sound of a door opening, followed by footsteps, and Janey stood in the doorway of the room. ‘Hiya!’ she trilled. ‘Have you forgotten about St Yvo?’

‘How did you get in?’ Phil demanded. ‘This is like a bad dream.’

‘Charming,’ chuckled Janey. ‘Listen, I’ve got Fiona with me, and she’s getting impatient. We have to be at the top of the hill by five at the latest. I did tell you all about it,’ she said to Thea. ‘I thought you were genuinely interested.’

Thea showed signs of dawning recollection,
along with the start of a headache. She rubbed the side of her face. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Tuesday already, is it? That was quick. The trouble is—’ she waved towards Phil, ‘things have changed a bit. I won’t be able to come after all. I’m really sorry, because it sounded so interesting. Come back later and tell us how it went, if you like.’

‘Is he ill?’ Janey suddenly seemed to perceive Phil properly, and to take in the fact that he was lying on a temporary bed in the main living room.

‘Hurt his back. Not exactly what we had planned.’ Phil wondered whether he had missed a woman-to-woman wink at the end of Thea’s comment. Something in Janey’s strangled response suggested he might have done.

The other woman, Fiona, was almost obscured from view by the massive Janey, rather to Phil’s relief. Two strange women were effectively in his bedroom, putting him at considerable disadvantage. He watched as a hand was laid on Janey’s bare arm. ‘We ought to go,’ urged Fiona’s voice. She moved into view, looking intently into Janey’s face. ‘I did say…’ She glanced at Thea, ‘…it’s better without new people. You
will
keep wanting to bring them in.’

Janey waved a hand in a generalised gesture of apology. ‘I can see it was a bad idea now,’ she said. ‘We’ll go. Fiona’s going to be cross with me otherwise.’

Phil caught a look of exasperation on Fiona’s face. She was like a collie rounding up an errant bullock which was suddenly diverted by a patch of lush grass. ‘come
on
, Janey,’ she urged. ‘We’re already late.’

And they were gone, leaving Phil feeling foolish as he clutched the duvet that was all he’d had to cover himself.

Phil never fully understood the nature of Janey’s festival, and who St Eevo might be. Hagiography not being his strongest subject, he felt at something of a disadvantage. Thea’s temper had been badly affected by the dawn summons, and once she had organised the shuffling trip to the loo and back, she returned to her bed with an injunction against any further demands until eight at the soonest. Phil was left on his narrow precarious bed to try and get some more sleep, hoping in spite of himself that Thea would be lying equally wakeful upstairs. He had taken two painkillers, which worked well enough for
him to shift position without anything more than a dull twinge.

Tuesday, he reminded himself. Nearly thirty-six hours since he had hurt his back. Jeremy, his best detective inspector, had said all the right things about his unscheduled absence, during a second phone conversation the previous evening. ‘Give it a good rest,’ he’d advised. ‘That way, you’ll be back all the sooner.’ Phil had not troubled himself to report the doctor’s words about being as active as possible once the worst of the pain was over. He knew that by the end of the week he would be itching to catch up with what was happening, and chafing at missing new cases that he ought rightfully to be overseeing. By then, the main panic about the ricin thing would surely have died down and something else would have moved to the top of the heap. The West Midlands was a volatile region these days, with tensions between the three main racial groups keeping the enforcers of the law on their toes. People tended to forget the large population of non-Muslim Asians: the Sikhs and Hindus, who were getting tired of being tarred as potential terrorists by the hopelessly ignorant whites. Sometimes Phil suspected that it wasn’t
really ignorance at all, but something much darker. It was as if the whites had been looking for any excuse to release their pent-up bigotry, to attack anybody with a brown skin on the grounds that they looked like Muslims and were therefore fair game. Phil had a neighbour in Cirencester whose parents came from Goa. They were staunch Roman Catholics, but that didn’t protect the family from the same scattergun abuse that every Asian was currently vulnerable to. Why, the feeling went, should anybody go to the trouble of sifting out the different groups, when essentially they were all Pakis?