Death of a Friend (14 page)

‘And the kids’ father. He must have got back by now.’

‘Oh – did you hear what Jane unearthed? About the airline? We were going to make sure you got it.’

‘No. What?’

‘He was on a flight – Qantas, I think – days earlier than he claims. He landed at Heathrow in the early hours of Monday morning. They’d given him a special seat – one of those reserved for people rushing home for funerals and suchlike. Paid two thousand quid for it.’

Den’s mouth dropped open. ‘
Monday!
’ he echoed. ‘Then he could have …’

‘Exactly.’

‘So where was he? They had a phone call from him on Wednesday, saying he was still in Singapore.’

‘Why should they doubt him? He could have been anywhere.’ Phil’s expression contained a patient reproach, thick with implication that Den was being very slow. ‘They phoned him midday on Friday, our time – nearly midnight where he was. He set off right away – let’s say – and was in Singapore by sometime on Sunday, easy. Onto the Qantas flight and bingo! We didn’t follow his steps from Vietnam to Singapore, though we might yet have to.’

‘Two thousand quid,’ Den muttered.

‘And the rest. That’s just the return ticket from Singapore.’

‘Return?’

‘Open dated. Any time in the next six months.’

‘Bloody hell. What does the DI say about it?’

‘He says it would be useful if you could go and talk to him, without letting on what we know of his movements. He was going to see you himself, in about ten minutes’ time, but I doubt he’ll have to now. He thinks you’re well up to the task. Watch the bloke’s face, when you ask him about times and dates and addresses and so forth.’

Den’s mind was reeling. Was this not clear evidence that Nev Nesbitt killed Charlie? Should there not be a carful of officers preparing to go and arrest him? ‘Why so softly softly?’ he asked.

‘It’s not adding up to the DI’s satisfaction, seems like. All those Quakers and horses and animal rights, muddying the water. Nobody liked the Gratton chap very much, but nobody
hated
him, as far as we can see. The Quakers look too meek and mild to be true—’

‘Not Clive Aspen,’ Den interrupted. ‘Nor Bartholomew White. And they both ride big, strong horses. Smith’s right – we can’t give up on the Quakers just yet.’

‘Very wise. But all the same, the Nesbitt chap looks the favourite now. Strikes me it went like this – he hears the news about his missus, sees red, breaks all records getting home, blaming Charlie for the whole thing. Grabs himself a horse from somewhere – didn’t you say his mother’s a keen
hunt follower? – and then rides the poor chap down. Then off again for a few days, pretending he’s waiting for a flight in the Far East. Fits like a dream.’

‘Wouldn’t he know we’d check the flights?’

Phil shook his head. ‘I bet you he’s never given it a thought.’

On his drive to the farmhouse, Den passed three horse riders, each strolling in solitary splendour along the roadside. Acutely sensitised to them by the murder inquiry, he made every effort to observe their faces. All three were women, astride large, well-muscled horses, and clearly in absolute control of their mounts. Any one of them looked as if she could ride down a pedestrian with no trouble at all. Two of them looked to Den as if they’d rather enjoy the novelty of so doing. Both these were in late middle age, wearing hard hats and regulation jodhpurs, apparently going nowhere, simply ‘out for a ride’. The futility of it struck Den for the first time. Of all life’s more pointless activities, this must rank right up there with golf and collecting postmarks.

The third rider was less forbidding. In her twenties, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, she didn’t even sport a hard hat. Briefly Den wondered if there was a law against going
bareheaded on the open highway whilst in charge of an equine mode of transport. He thought there very probably was. But at least he could get a good look at her face, and be assured that it was nobody he recognised.

A stranger met him at the front door of High Copse Farmhouse. A lean, long-haired individual, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. As Den drew closer, he discerned the sweet smell of cannabis, with very little surprise.

‘Hi,’ said the man, easily. ‘Nobody’s here but me. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m Detective Constable Cooper,’ said Den. ‘I’m investigating the death of Charlie Gratton.’ Involuntarily, Den glanced to his left, where the field and ditch were located. Between the house and the field lay Nina’s grave, its flowers still bright under the sheltering oak tree.

‘Aha!’ the man responded. ‘I should have known.’

‘And you are—?’ He knew, of course, what the answer would be. He was busily trying to establish a sensible sequence of questions for the man who suddenly looked like the prime suspect.

‘Nev,’ came the anticipated answer. ‘Nevil Nesbitt, if we’re being official. Husband of Nina, father of Clem and Hugh. I got back on Saturday. They didn’t wait the funeral for me.’

‘So I understand.’ Den cleared his throat. ‘I was there when she died. It was a terrible accident. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘Yeah.’ Instead of inviting Den in, Nevil came out, closing the door behind him. ‘It’s a nice day,’ he said. ‘We can chat out here. The kids’ll be back soon. It’s weird being here on my own, rattling around in this great big place. The house is usually full of people. I still expect the old lady to show up – when I first lived here, she was still very much in charge.’ He sighed and looked up at the house behind him. The upstairs windows seemed to look back at him sadly.

‘Do I understand that you and Nina were separated?’ Den wasn’t sure whether he was making small talk or pursuing his investigation. Nev had a dreamy manner, manifesting little sign of grief or anxiety over the events of the last week, not at all the standard police interviewee.
Den was halfway to deciding he didn’t really like the man.

‘Separated?’ Nev repeated. ‘No way – except by distance. I travel, see. It’s what I do. She came with me a few times. No, no, not
separated
. I was always going to come back.’

‘This travelling – is it part of your work? How long had you been away?’

‘It’s what I do,’ Nev repeated, to Den’s irritation. ‘I’d gone out last year – September, October – I don’t remember. Vietnam. Ever been there?’ Den shook his head. ‘You should, man. It’s magic. Upcountry, away from the cities, it’s another world. Amazing people. You know – after that obscene war, and the chemicals and napalm and stuff – they just laugh about it now. Get on with their lives, go with the flow. Time passes, the rice grows, the babies get fat. They work – don’t get me wrong – but they’re into some amazing rhythm. I can’t get my head round all this hassle here. People battling over fox hunting and sentimental bullshit like that. Totally futile.’

‘Sentimental?’

‘Absolutely. Marshmallow for backbones. And that includes Nina, up to a point. She knew how I felt about it, what my take on her protesting was. Never thought it’d kill her though.’ He shook his head. ‘There’ll never be
another one like Nina. Christ knows what’ll happen now.’

They had strolled across the stretch of gravel in front of the house, and were now leaning on the rail fence which divided the car parking area from the rather neglected lawn and garden, which sloped downwards to the two fields still attached to High Copse. To their left the approach drive also sloped away, down to the road at the foot of the hill, where Den assumed the school bus would deposit the sons of the house in due course.

‘We’ll be needing a bit more detail on the timings of your flight,’ Den said as firmly as he could. ‘Just to check you got back into the country when you say you did.’ Watching Nev’s face, he felt momentarily ashamed of the deception. Fear was unmistakable in the grey eyes. ‘And an address in Vietnam, just in case,’ he added desperately.

‘Shit,’ said Nev. Den waited. The tension slowly deepened until Nev broke it with a boyish smile. ‘Well, I’d better confess then, hadn’t I,’ he said, holding his arms away from his sides, as if waiting to be frisked. ‘Is there any hope you’ll keep it to yourself and not tell Martha or Alexis?’

‘For now,’ Den nodded. ‘But if it comes to court …’

‘I got into London about six on Monday morning,’ Nev told him. ‘Stayed with a friend
there until Saturday. I know it looks bad, but Christ, I couldn’t face all this—’ He indicated the direction of Nina’s grave. ‘I didn’t want to be here when they buried her. I phoned them, and they were nagging at me to hurry up. Just like it used to be – ordering me about. So I took my time. That’s all.’

‘Could you give me the address in London?’

Nev rolled his eyes up to the sky. ‘I’ll never live this down,’ he groaned. ‘It’s a girl, if you must know.’ He breathed deeply, then grinned sheepishly. ‘Look – surely you can see that if I’d killed Charlie, I’d have gone to more trouble to cover my tracks? And I can’t see where you think there’s a motive. He was my mate. Our mothers were friends for years.’

‘I’m just collecting the facts for now,’ Den said stiffly. ‘If you could let me have the address and your flight times, that’ll be it for the time being. Except I’ll need to speak to your mother, too.’

‘She’s going to love that,’ Nev remarked. ‘She can really go to town, telling you what a disappointment I am. She might even go along with the idea that I killed Charlie. It wouldn’t surprise me. I could have borrowed that bloody horse of hers – which I expect you’ve heard all about?’

Den tried to think and drew a blank. ‘There are
a lot of horses around here,’ he replied carefully.

‘You said it, mate,’ Nev sighed. ‘Come on, then, and I’ll fill you in on the details before the boys get home. You won’t be arresting me just yet, will you?’

‘I’ll need an undertaking that you won’t leave the area without informing us. There’s a good chance you’ll be invited in for questioning when I’ve reported what you’ve told me today, and when we’ve checked all the facts.’

‘I like
invited
,’ said Nev, and added, ‘The boys would probably be rather pleased if I was thrown into jail for a few years. They’d know where I was then. Always moaning about the way I go off, they are. You should have heard Hugh on Saturday, telling me off for not getting here sooner.’

‘One more thing,’ Den remembered. ‘Charlie’s brother is your godfather – have I got that right?’

Nevil blinked and put a hand flat to his own chest as if in pain. ‘Frank …’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose he is, yes. Although I should think he’s forgotten all about it by now. He was never much good at it. He sent me birthday cards and one or two nifty presents when I was little, but that’s about as far as it went.’

‘And Charlie started a relationship with Alexis last year. Did you know about that?’

Nev nodded. ‘I was here when it happened.
It was weird. It seemed almost like incest. At least—’ He paused and rubbed a finger between his eyes. ‘That’s not really right. More like two brothers marrying two sisters. It used to happen a lot you know, in country areas like this.’

Den cut him short. ‘The addresses?’ he said. Nev dictated the three he needed – a small Vietnam village, a flat in Bayswater and his mother’s house a few miles away, alongside the river Tamar.

‘Go carefully with her,’ he advised. ‘She’s really upset about what’s been happening. Whatever she might think of me, she’s crazy about the boys.’

Den remembered Richmond’s comments about the boys’ ancestry; something about aristocracy on both sides. Nev added further comment, as an afterthought. ‘She loathed Nina, of course. And it was mutual.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah. Because of the hunting. My mum’s a demon for the hunt. I gather she fell off a few days ago – the day before they buried Nina – she wrenched her shoulder. Used it as an excuse to miss the funeral. But she’s a devoted grandma – has the boys for most of the summer holidays. They get up to all sorts of adventures.’

Den cast a sweeping glance across the unpeopled hills and fields before him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Can’t they get up to adventures here?’

Nev laughed. ‘Course they can. The little buggers are spoilt rotten.’

Den waited just long enough to witness the two boys returning home, and greeting their father with an enthusiasm that contained an air of desperate relief, as if they’d half expected him to have disappeared again before they reached home. Den felt for them. He could imagine the insecurity of never knowing when their sole remaining parent might wander off to some godforsaken corner of the world and simply forget all about them. He sat in his car for a minute, making notes on his pad, trying to control the excitement he felt at having extracted such an easy admission from Nev that he had lied.

At the foot of the drive, he met Richmond, in his four-wheel-drive vehicle. They had to manoeuvre carefully past each other, and Den gave a polite wave, to indicate that he had no wish to speak to the man again just now. He saw Richmond shrug and shake his head slightly, before driving quickly up to his house, in low gear.
Like a bull at a gate,
thought Den.
Or a horse ridden deliberately at someone it was going to kill.

Den found an excuse to pass close by Redstone Farm that afternoon and decided to call in. Lilah would probably be out in the fields, planting
some crop or clearing out a ditch, but he might still manage to snatch a few words with her. She was running the farm these days with very little help, and with extreme financial constraints, thanks to a succession of government moves – or failures to move. Her mother had taken on an outside job which brought in just enough to keep destitution at bay. For a girl in her early twenties, Lilah was performing miracles, but Den wondered how she could possibly hope to keep it up.

He liked to imagine himself living here with her, helping with the animals on his days off, and enjoying the country life. He liked the friendly little Jersey cows and the ancient rhythms of the seasonal work. He even fancied the idea of driving a tractor, throwing bales around, attending the births of lambs and calves. He wanted to see Lilah in context. But she seemed reluctant for him to come to the farm, as if she felt it an invasion of her personal territory. She preferred to visit his flat in the evening – often staying the night as well. All he could do was to make unscheduled visits and hope she’d be available and glad to see him.

But he knew, as always, it wasn’t going to be easy to find her. He drove down the familiar lane, with its ruts and sharp bends, into the muddy farmyard, relieved at least to see Lilah’s
car standing in its usual place beside the small front garden. She had rebuffed Miranda’s suggestion that they share a car when they sold the unsuitably large vehicle that had belonged to Lilah’s father. Miranda had got herself a cheap hatchback and the consequent independence now seemed to both of them an absolute necessity.

As he stood quietly listening for the sound of a tractor or anything to indicate where his fiancée might be, he found himself pondering his murder investigation once again. This farm was nothing like High Copse where Charlie had died, but it was enough to remind him of how it must have been to die in a ditch, your head smashed in by a heavy iron horseshoe. He tried to visualise exactly how it might have happened – the horse first rearing up to knock the man to the ground and then trample him. Would the animal have been blindly obedient? Or was it more likely that it had been afraid, nervous, resisting this terrible act it was being asked to commit? Had it first been made to chase Charlie across the field, so they clashed unavoidably when they reached the hedge? The forensic people had traced the horse’s progress part of the way, surmising that it had been travelling at some speed shortly before the encounter with Charlie. It was a heavy animal – a hunter or a
hack – the sort of horse a full grown man would ride, not a riding school pony or a
delicately-bred
Arab.

He smiled to himself, remembering Lilah’s words.
Give me a cow any day
. But even cows would attack, given the right circumstances. He recalled a recent story of a woman killed by a herd of highly protective cows with calves, which had taken exception to the presence of her dogs.

There was no sound coming from the outbuildings, or the closer fields, and he had just decided to give up when a voice accosted him from the direction of the milking parlour. ‘Den? What are you doing here?’

It was Roddy, Lilah’s younger brother. He wore rubber boots and ragged jeans, and Den noticed how much he had grown in recent months. He was never going to be as tall as the police detective, but he had overtaken Lilah by two or three inches.

‘I could ask you the same thing. Shouldn’t you be at school?’

‘It’s the Easter holidays. We’ve got an inset day. Most people finish tomorrow.’

‘And then you’ve got your A levels, right?’

‘No, that’s next year. I’m taking an AS this year and a couple of extra GCSEs. It’s all a bit complicated. You looking for Lilah?’

Den nodded. ‘I was passing and thought I might catch her.’

‘She’s discing, in the far field, that way. It would take you ages to get there. Aren’t you working today?’

‘Meant to be, yeah.’ He pushed an indecisive hand through his hair. ‘I’d better get on with it. By the way, did you know Charlie Gratton?’

Roddy shook his head. ‘Not at all.’

‘But you know Martha? What about Nina?’

‘Steady on,’ Roddy protested. ‘Don’t come the detective with me. I’ve had enough people die around me. This one isn’t my problem. Lilah started talking about it this morning and I shut her up. From now on, I’m sticking with the living.’

‘Sorry. And of course you know Martha – she’s still teaching English, isn’t she?’

‘Yeah, but I’ve never been in her group. Lilah’s her pet, not me. I tell you, Den, you can leave me right out of this one. I’m not even going to play guessing games with you.’

‘So you’re not thinking of a career in the police force?’

‘Not bloody likely!’ The boy’s eyes widened in disgust at the idea. ‘There’s no shortage of jobs to suit me. Computers, accountancy, retail, even teaching …’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘The careers office is throwing out new
suggestions every day at the moment.’