Death of a Friend (20 page)

Den received a worrying phone call at the police station next morning. ‘Are you going to be busy this evening?’ Lilah asked him. ‘We need to talk.’

He felt the familiar lurch of anxiety that men everywhere experienced at these words.
She’s going to finish with me
, he thought, in a strange mixture of panic and resignation.

‘I can’t say for sure, but I think I should be free by eight at the latest. Is that okay?’

‘It’ll have to be. Let me know if you can make it any sooner. I’m here all day.’ She sounded friendlier now, and his heartbeat slowed slightly.

‘Will do.’

‘I’ll see you, then.’

A small black cloud remained with him
all day, thanks to the call. He knew what he’d done – he’d suggested he move into Redstone permanently – but he didn’t know why he was being punished for it. He didn’t see what was so terrible about the idea. But from the sound of it, he was soon going to find out.

Detective Inspector Smith’s briefing that morning lasted precisely seven minutes. Phil Bennett had gone back to Gerald Fairfield’s place to question the two men employed as farm and stable hands. He hadn’t gleaned anything useful from either of them.

‘It would have been too obvious, anyway,’ muttered Den, when Phil’s lack of findings was revealed.

‘There’s still all the other hunt people,’ said Phil defensively. ‘It’s still the most credible motive – and they had the means. No shortage of opportunity, either, come to that.’

WPC Jane Nugent, invited to join the briefing for the first time, spoke up. ‘I’ve got a few interesting connections on the computer, and a bit of background on the Grattons,’ she offered. She went on to flesh out a few details concerning Charlie’s family. ‘Frank Gratton, born nineteen fifty-two. Mother Eloise, then aged twenty-two, father Bill, twenty-four. Married for fifteen months when the baby arrived. Charles born nineteen sixty-seven. Eloise died two years later.
Possible suicide. Bill’s sister Hannah was called back from some sort of missionary work in Africa, moved in to replace Eloise. Frank moves out less than a year later and maintains very little contact. Silas Daggs is first cousin to Hannah and Bill. The family have been Quakers for generations. No sign of trouble, no police records, no obvious gossip. You probably knew all that, anyway,’ she concluded humbly. ‘I just printed off everything I could find.’

‘
Possible
suicide?’ DI Smith queried. ‘Where did you find that?’

‘Local newspaper report, sir. The woman drowned in a pond behind their house. It was never explained how she came to fall in. The inquest called it accidental death, but one person testified that she’d been in a disturbed frame of mind ever since Charlie was born.’

‘Postnatal depression?’

‘Very likely, sir.’

‘Who was it that said that?’

‘Silas Daggs, sir.’

‘Cooper?’ Smith fixed his searching gaze on Den. ‘We have an interview report on Mr Daggs, don’t we?’

‘Yes, sir. I couldn’t find anything of significance in what he had to tell me.’

‘Go through it again,’ Smith invited. ‘Just in case we missed something.’

Obligingly, with the aid of his notepad, Den recalled as much detail as he could of his interview with the man he’d heard referred to as ‘curmudgeonly’. Silas Daggs had a Dickensian name and lived in a suitably Dickensian fashion. ‘But he’s not so much a Mr Smallweed as an elderly Joe Gargery,’ Den suggested, not sure how well up on Dickens his listeners might be. To his relief, all three of them chuckled at the image conjured up. ‘The house was clean and tidy and the old man himself was dressed in a suit with collar and tie,’ Den recounted. ‘But I don’t think he’d put on his Sunday best for the police. I got the impression that was how he always dressed.’

In a flash of total recall, Den was transported back to the interview. He had been invited to sit on a small, uncomfortable sofa with a carved wooden back and sagging red upholstery. Although no expert, he suspected that it might be an antique of some value. A grandfather clock stood incongruously at the bottom of the stairs – the only space with sufficient headroom to hold it.
Another valuable heirloom
, Den had noted.

Silas appeared to be about seventy and he suffered conspicuously from arthritis. His hands were warped into tight claws and walking was clearly painful. He let himself drop heavily into an upright chair and leant down briefly to pat the head of the corgi sitting patiently beside him.
Den had savoured the little tableau the man and dog presented and described it fully now for his audience, to lukewarm response.

‘Sounds as if you weren’t in any hurry to get started,’ Smith remarked. ‘Don’t make a meal of it, there’s a good chap.’

‘I asked him what he knew of Charlie, including his early life,’ Den quickly proceeded. ‘He didn’t have much to say. Certainly nothing to suggest the mother killed herself. Not that I pressed him,’ he admitted.

He’d asked Silas about the Quakers, and had been rather moved by the simple statement of commitment to attending every Sunday Meeting. ‘It’s obviously very important to him,’ Den said. ‘Probably the most important thing in his life. But he did say it wasn’t the same as it used to be, with “the new young people changing the way things are done”. I assumed he meant the Aspens – they’re young compared to him – but there was Charlie and Val Taylor and Polly Spence as well. All the animal rights crowd.’

‘What about the famous Quaker tolerance?’ put in Phil.

‘I think it’s still there. He didn’t say anything against them – just regretted the way things are changing. Like any old person would, really.’

‘So he didn’t hate Charlie?’ prompted Smith.

‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ Den said firmly. ‘In fact I
got the distinct impression that he dislikes Clive Aspen far more than he ever disliked Charlie.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘“Clive Aspen is no Quaker. Say what you like, that’s my opinion.” I wrote that down. It seemed quite a strong thing to say. He went on about George Fox—’

‘Who?’ Smith frowned. ‘Have we spoken to him?’

Den suppressed a smile. ‘George Fox – the founder of the Quakers, three hundred years ago. They quote him a lot. Silas doesn’t think he’d approve of Clive Aspen. Clive’s rather too keen on dragging new people in, apparently, whether or not they can sit still for an hour or even understand what it’s all about. They don’t stay long.’

Smith was visibly losing interest. ‘I think you’re right. Nothing of significance in any of that.’

‘Except to confirm my hunch that Clive had no affection for Charlie, and vice versa. Silas didn’t spell it out for me, but I couldn’t miss the basic point.’

‘So Silas was on Charlie’s side.’

‘I’m not sure about that. He treated me to a speech about animal rights. “God gave us animals to be used” was one comment he made. Seemed to think Charlie was a bit cracked, even if he was family.’

Smith held up a hand and stopped him. ‘It might be an idea to go back and ask him a bit more about this mother of Charlie’s. Eloise. Keep it as casual as you can, but say you’ve spoken to everyone else and he’s the only one who can help. Something like that. Flattery usually works.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Den dispiritedly. What was the point of pursuing a death that happened over thirty years ago? ‘I’ll get on to it right away. But, sir, we still haven’t been to interview old Mrs Nesbitt. Something always seems to get in the way. Don’t you think—?’

‘Quite right, Cooper. Fortunately for you, the day is yet young. Silas Daggs first, and then Mrs N. Don’t let
anything
stop you.’

‘
Anything
, sir?’

‘Anything short of a second murder. Or a confession to this one.’

Silas did not feel particularly flattered at being singled out for more police attention. Den therefore decided to go for the frank approach. ‘To be honest, Mr Daggs, we’re not getting anywhere with this inquiry. Your cousin Charlie seems to have been an irritant to a lot of people, but nothing worse than that. We haven’t found anything close to a motive for murder. All we can think of is to have another look at his early life and see if anything emerges from that. I
remember you said when I last visited you that you remember his mother.’

Silas wouldn’t meet Den’s eye, but nodded briefly. ‘Plenty who remember her besides me.’

‘But you saw quite a lot of her? Living so close by, I suppose you must have done.’

‘She came to chat with me now and then,’ Silas admitted. ‘’Specially when she had Charlie. She liked to have another person around, after he was born, and Bill never seemed to be there when she wanted him.’

‘Why? Was Charlie a difficult baby?’

Silas shrugged. ‘Not ’specially. She was just a bit thrown by having him after such a long gap. Seemed to send her out of true, if you know what I mean.’

‘I understand she died when he was very small?’

Silas leant down and patted the corgi at his feet, in a gesture Den was coming to recognise as habitual. Then he slowly extracted a very large white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose. Finally he nodded. ‘She did,’ he said.

‘And then Hannah came back from abroad to look after Bill and Charlie, and the older boy, Frank.’

The gnarled hands reached for each other, forming a tangled double fist that looked like a
complex wood carving. ‘She did,’ he said again, almost in a whisper.

‘Did you see much of the family at that time?’

‘We all went to Meeting every week. All except Frank, that is. He stopped going as soon as he could. Must have been nine or ten the last time he went. Some youngsters are like that – they just never settle to it. Never see what it’s all about.’

‘That must be difficult. I mean, families generally want their children to follow their own faith, don’t they?’

A slight shake of the head. ‘Wanting and getting don’t always match up.’

‘And when Mrs Gratton died – had she been ill?’

The old man closed his eyes as if against a sharp pain. Tears leaked out from under the lids. Den felt the emotion in the room, his own eyes prickling slightly at the obvious distress. He’d seen this before in old people – a story from thirty, forty, fifty years ago recurring as if it was last week, along with all the feelings associated with it, as fresh as a May morning.

‘She was … ill, aye,’ came a low whisper. ‘Though none of us would admit it. I was as bad as the rest of ’em, pretending nothing was going on. In the end, she just couldn’t go on living. She just couldn’t. It was like trying to force a bat to live in the glare of the light, or a butterfly to
live under a stone. It went against nature.’ He tightened the grip of one hand on the other. ‘We lived with the shame of it for many a year.’

Den knew he had to proceed with extreme caution. ‘What would you say was the matter with her? Some sort of postnatal depression?’

Silas rejected the modern term. ‘My old mother would have called it soul sickness. That’s all I can say about it. She never went to a doctor for it.’

‘But she did go to Meeting.’

Silas nodded bitterly. ‘She did and we failed her. Just like we failed Charlie and others in between.’

‘
Failed
him?’ Den asked gently. ‘How did you fail him?’

Silas shook his head and was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke softly. ‘We left him too much to himself, thinking Hannah would ask if she needed our help. We could see how it was – they sent him to boarding school in the end, which made it easier.’ He was making little sense to Den, who concluded that Charlie must have been a troubled adolescent. It was with considerable inner violence that he asked his final question.

‘Mr Daggs, I must ask you this, painful as it’s bound to be. Did you ever believe that Charlie’s mother, Eloise Gratton, took her own life?’

Silas exhaled, part annoyance, part relief. He met Den’s eye at last, with his own red-rimmed gaze. ‘It was as plain as can be,’ he said. ‘But you won’t get a soul to say it but me. Now, that’s an end to your questions, however hard you press me. There’s things you don’t need to know, police or not. If you must keep axing about it, you must go to Hannah for your answers. I’ve said all I’m going to.’

Den believed him. ‘I accept that,’ he said formally. ‘And I’m very grateful to you for giving me so much of your time.’

Silas guffawed. ‘Got plenty of that these days,’ he said bitterly.

Hermione Nesbitt lived close to the immensely scenic A384, a road which scarcely earned its appellation of the letter A, leading insignificantly from Tavistock to Launceston; a mere thirteen miles of existence. A road which Den presumed almost nobody outside west Devon would ever have cause to notice. And yet it was as beautiful as many a more famous stretch of highway. As it approached the river Tamar, it rendered views guaranteed to suspend a person’s breath.

He had intended to emerge onto the road a few hundred yards from the bridge over the Tamar, but a wrong turning sent him too far east and he found himself enjoying the full glory of the vistas to the south. For a few moments he
forgot where he was going and why. Fancifully, he imagined he had wandered into a forgotten land, where nothing had changed in a thousand years.

It was a short-lived interlude. As he climbed a long gradient, his car phone began to warble and he slowed a little to answer it.

‘Cooper?’ The voice was crackly and indistinct, as usual; it was no longer feasible for local police stations to call their officers directly on the phone and everything was relayed through a central point near Bristol. ‘Where are you?’

Den hesitated. ‘On my way to an interview for DI Smith,’ he said. ‘Five or six miles south of Launceston. Why?’

‘You’re needed at a place called … er … High Copse Farm? It’s between two little villages. Let’s see … Chillhampton, I think. That’s one of them …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Den furiously. ‘I know where it is. What’s happened?’

‘There’s a child gone missing. They asked for you particularly.’

‘Oh Christ. I’m on my way.’

He jammed on the brakes as he drew level with a field gateway, and slammed the car into reverse. Before he had fully turned round, he realised there must be a shortcut through the lanes, if only he could find it. Otherwise, he would waste
precious minutes going via Tavistock, with all its slow-moving traffic in the town centre.

But the lanes were treacherous. Narrow, meandering, half of them not even marked on the maps. You really had to know what you were doing. Helplessly, he dithered, wasting precious time.
Clem – it must be Clem,
he thought.
Whoever murdered Charlie has snatched the little boy, afraid he’ll talk. Clem knows who the killer is.
At this very moment the child might be suffering – strangled or knifed –
Oh, God!

He jerked the car forward, heading back the way he’d come. He would risk the lanes. High Copse was north-east of where he was. Before long, the familiar outline of Brentor would appear to guide him. A Devon man, born and bred, he should be able to navigate by instinct. And so he did. Some invisible hand guided him, some sixth sense alerted him on the two occasions on which other vehicles surged towards him around blind bends. He reached High Copse almost sobbing with relief and anxiety.

There was nobody in sight as he pulled up alongside a police car on the gravel in front of the house. A quick scan of the two fields and the orchard showed nothing. Rising above the apple trees was the copse crowning the hill – doubtless another favourite haunt of the boys. The view downhill from the house was no longer
an uplifting sight. Now it merely represented countless square miles in which a small boy could lose himself – or be deliberately concealed.

‘Hello.’ The voice came from behind him, almost too quiet to carry across the parking area. Den swung round to see Hugh standing in the doorway of Richmond’s office. ‘They told me to wait here, in case anybody phoned, or …’

‘Or Clem came home?’ Den suggested. The boy was very pale, his eyes glittering. He nodded.

‘Everyone’s still looking for him, then? How long has he been missing?’

Hugh didn’t move, but seemed to be thinking. ‘Since about two o’clock. Not long really.’

‘And haven’t you any idea where he is?’

Hugh shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. He looked wretched.

‘You know, people almost always turn up again quite safe and sound, and as you say, he hasn’t been gone very long. He knows his way around these parts well enough.’ Den paused. ‘Has he ever done this sort of thing before?’

‘What sort of thing?’ The boy frowned.

‘Going missing. Does he go off on his own when he’s upset? Has he got a special secret place?’

Hugh wriggled his shoulders impatiently. ‘They already asked me all that. I don’t know where he is, okay?’

So what am I supposed to do now?
Den wondered.
Search the house, orchard, warehouse …?

Another car came racing up the drive, rattling alarmingly. ‘It’s Mrs Aspen!’ said Hugh, clearly astonished. Den peered through the windscreen as the Mini skidded to a stop, and recognised the driver.

‘So it is,’ he said, loping to the car with his long strides.

Mandy tumbled out, her face pink with excitement and concern. ‘Clem,’ she gasped, as if she’d run up from the road, rather than driven. ‘Are you looking for him?’

Den’s mind clicked and whirred into action. A picture of Clive Aspen performing depraved and cruel acts on the lost boy came into his mind, with the helpless Mandy taking the only action she could think of. But almost immediately he realised this notion made no sense. ‘Yes we are,’ he said. ‘Clem’s missing. Why?’

‘I saw him, half a mile away. He was walking along the road. I stopped and called his name, but he must have ducked into a hedge or through a gateway, because he disappeared. Anyway, he looked ever so upset, so I decided to come up here and tell somebody.’

‘How did you know where we lived?’ Hugh asked her coldly.

‘Oh,
Hugh!
Everyone knows High Copse. I gave Charlie a lift here once, just to the bottom of the drive. I think you ought to hurry,’ she said to Den. ‘He could be quite difficult to find if we leave it too long.’

‘Come with me,’ he told her, waving towards his car. ‘Hugh, can you stick to your post here? Tell anybody you see what’s going on. Can you do that?’

‘Of course.’

Mandy hopped quickly into Den’s passenger seat and he turned the car round with some difficulty in the cluttered forecourt. She directed him to turn left as they reached the road and then tried to identify the exact place where she’d seen the child. It was barely half a mile from the house. Den parked on a grass verge, leaving scant space for other vehicles to pass, and got out of the car. ‘You can stay here if you like,’ he told Mandy. ‘Hoot the horn if you see him.’

‘No need,’ she said triumphantly. ‘There he is, look.’ She pointed into the nearby field, which contained a jumble of large round silage bales wrapped in black polythene and left out since the previous autumn. Clem was sitting on the ground with his back against one of them. He seemed to be rubbing his face with one hand.

Den ran to him, a distance of roughly two hundred yards. Clem looked up and twisted
away for a moment, like a hunted animal, before slumping back against the bale. Unhesitatingly, Den picked him up and turned back to the car. Clem struggled. ‘I can
walk
,’ he protested. ‘I’m not hurt.’

‘Okay,’ Den panted. ‘Keep still a minute and we’ll have a proper look at you.’ He deposited the wriggling burden safely onto the back seat of his car and knelt beside the open door. ‘What were you doing?’ he asked. ‘Everybody’s out searching for you. They’re terribly worried.’

‘Wasn’t doing anything,’ Clem muttered. ‘Just wanted to get away.’

‘Your face is scratched,’ Den observed. ‘And you’re very muddy.’

‘I climbed through the hedge when
she
saw me.’ He ducked his chin defiantly at Mandy, who was twisted round in her seat to look at him. ‘How did you know who I was?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t know you.’

To Den’s surprise, Mandy flushed a deep red and gave no answer. ‘Doesn’t she work at your school?’ he asked, his mind still fuzzy at the speed of events. The child shook his head. Den raised his eyebrows at Mandy, but she maintained her silence. ‘Never mind,’ said Den. ‘First things first.’ He shut the car door and went round to the driving seat, reaching in for the radio phone. ‘Let’s send out a message that you’re okay, shall
we? I know a lot of people who’ll be very glad about that.’

Clem made an inarticulate sound, which Den interpreted as disagreement. He glanced back at the boy. With bowed head and gently shaking shoulders, the child was crying.