Malice in the Cotswolds (22 page)

But she couldn’t forget Drew Slocombe. He was beginning to feel like a constant, despite their geographical separation.

It was 1.15, time for lunch, and she always tried to maintain at least some sort of daily structure designed around meals. Too much free time and too few distractions could lead to very sloppy habits, especially in someone else’s house. She made herself a sandwich, with some slightly stale sliced bread and cheese. ‘We can go shopping later on,’ she told the spaniel. ‘There’s hardly any food left.’

Ever since Belinda had gone, there had been a growing sense of waiting for a report on what had been found at Victor’s flat. How long did it take to drive to Crouch End? She had asked herself the same thing on Saturday, when Yvonne failed to turn up as planned. She went out to her car and brought in the road map, plotting the most obvious route.

Initially, she had assumed that this led down to the M4, then around the M25 to the M1 and down into north London that way. But then she realised that the A44 took you to Oxford, and then the M40 connected to the M25 not far from where the A4 did. And that would almost certainly be quicker. Two hours could do
it easily, if there were no hold-ups. And Belinda loved the A44. Whatever her mother might have decided, Belinda would take the latter route, and might well be in Crouch End already. It had been eleven when she left Hyacinth House.

What would she find when she got there? Suddenly it seemed hugely important to know. No further theorising could be fruitfully entertained until Victor’s whereabouts were established. Except that theorising came to Thea as naturally as breathing, and the more she tried to curtail it, the more it persisted. For example, if Belinda’s idea of his being Stevie’s father had any basis in fact, then he might have been in the habit of making secret visits to Gudrun and the boy. He might have done so on Sunday, having only pretended that Yvonne had stayed all morning at his flat. He might have had some reason to want the child out of his life. Financial claims, jealous new girlfriend, family complications … but that would give Mark and Belinda motives of their own, as well. Suddenly the very suggestion of Victor’s paternity brought oceans of implications, involving just about everybody Thea had met.

She realised she was fitting puzzle pieces together that might well belong to a completely different picture. Poor old Blake, for one. He showed no sign of having any reason to kill Stevie. Unless … The more she considered, the more unsure she became about him. A whole list of possible motives came unbidden
to her mind. She knew so little of the background history, of how Blake and Yvonne really felt towards each other, where Eloise fitted in, and what any of them truly thought about Gudrun Horsfall. Gudrun was a single woman with an obvious passion for life. She herself admitted to a wholly groundless local reputation as a loose woman, to give it an old-fashioned characterisation. She had also denied it in extreme terms, claiming to have had the most minimal of sex lives. Perhaps she had been lying. Perhaps Blake lusted after her, but saw Gudrun’s boy as an impediment.

‘This way madness lies,’ she muttered to herself, after fifteen steamy minutes spent mentally slandering half a dozen people. ‘Where are the
facts
?’

There were very few hard facts. Stevie had lost a shoe, around the time he died. Again the image of him kicking out as he was being strangled forced itself into her mind. Had Gudrun killed him in her own house, then? That was apparently what the case against her would claim. The murder weapon had been cut from a length of washing line, the remainder found in Gudrun’s garden shed, despite her firm assertion that she had never owned that sort of washing line. Was that another element in the plot to frame her? Stevie had been essentially out of control, his mother inevitably blamed and criticised for her failure as a parent. Nobody had yet admitted to having liked him. And Gudrun had steadfastly refused to reveal who
his father was. Furthermore, Belinda’s suspicion on that subject could be wholly illusory, based on a few seconds of biased observation.

The house phone rang at 2.45, just as Thea had finally settled down in the garden, despite the cloudy weather. She had been to Broadway for some supplies, including two books from the bookshop there. The expedition had taken just over an hour – much less than intended, but the sense of restless waiting had not abated, and she felt she was being neglectful in moving out of earshot of Yvonne’s phone. Too few people had her mobile number – not Belinda or Blake, anyway.

‘It’s me. Belinda,’ came a strained voice. ‘It’s just struck me that you’ll be wondering what happened.’

‘Yes, I was. How thoughtful of you.’

‘Not at all. The police will be after you soon, anyway. I’m going to tell them what you did yesterday.’ The tone had hardened into something like accusation.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s
dead
. That’s what I mean. My father – stabbed to death. I
found
him. There’s blood everywhere.’ For a woman who had screamed at the sight of a mouse, she sounded amazingly calm.

Thea herself was stunned into silence. She tried to think. It could be barely two hours since the woman had made her ghastly discovery, and here she was phoning her mother’s house-sitter? ‘Where are you now?’ she asked.

‘At a police station. Waiting to be interviewed. I’m going to tell them all about you,’ she repeated.

‘That’s okay. I’ve got nothing to hide. I tried to tell them myself, but they didn’t seem very interested.’

‘You
heard
it, for God’s sake. You heard the whole thing as it happened. Dad’s mobile is on the floor beside him, with a dead battery.’ Hysteria was now audible, and Thea’s own heart rate began to accelerate painfully.

‘I did my best,’ she blustered. ‘I told Gladwin and she asked the London people to go and check. But they couldn’t find him.’

‘You found the house yesterday. Why didn’t you try to get in? You just walked away, with nothing accomplished. How do you explain that?’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Thea hopelessly. ‘I’m not sure I do myself. I
was
worried about Victor. And then that nanny girl seemed to think there was nothing to worry about, so we just came home again.’

‘Who’s
we
?’

‘Me and my friend Drew. He’s not relevant.’

‘Everybody’s relevant now,’ said Belinda darkly. ‘This is a terrible murder.’

A double murder,
thought Thea, remembering Stevie Horsfall.

Even as she was speaking to Belinda, her mobile began to ring. ‘I expect that’s Gladwin now,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘The local CID superintendent. She’ll have heard what’s happened. Listen, Belinda – I’m terribly sorry about your father. It’s dreadful. Tell the police your end everything I’ve said. I’ll help in any way I can. And your mother – she’s going to have to be told as well.’

‘Never mind her,’ said Belinda hollowly. ‘It’s Mark that worries me most. This is going to destroy him.’ Her voice broke with emotion, as Thea grabbed the mobile and took the call.

‘Bye, Belinda. I have to go now,’ she said, switching ears like someone in a farcical office comedy. ‘Hello?’ she said into the mobile.

‘Thea? I’ve just had the Met onto me. About Victor Parker.’

‘He’s dead. I know,’ she said. ‘His daughter just called me.’

‘This is bad, Thea. For the police, I mean. I have a logged call here to say you heard violence occurring at 9.00pm on Monday while speaking to Mr Victor Parker. Two days later, his daughter finds his body. In the meantime, you actually went to the house in question.’

‘But the house isn’t registered in his name. He rents a flat in it – or his girlfriend does. How could anybody have found him?’

‘You did,’ said Gladwin flatly.

But Thea did not respond.
Girlfriend
was echoing in her head. ‘Where is she? The woman he was living with? Why didn’t she report the attack?’

‘What?’ said Gladwin.

‘She must have been the one who screamed. She must have been in another room when it happened. After the killer had gone, she came out and found him. Why in the world didn’t she call the police or an ambulance?’

‘Thea, you were on the end of a phone. You couldn’t see what was going on. She must have been the one who did it. Do you know her name?’

‘I can’t remember. Something fancy. Like Floella, but not. Ask Belinda.’

‘They’ll have done that. It’s not my case. Except …’
she tailed off miserably. ‘Thea Osborne, this is a bloody horrible mess, and I can’t help thinking I should blame you.’

‘Feel free,’ Thea invited. ‘I have much the same feeling myself. Although I
did
—’

‘Yes, yes. You told me you’d heard something. And I told the Met. And they couldn’t find him. All nicely logged into the bargain. But he’s been lying there for two days, damn it.’

‘Nobody reported screams?’

‘Nope. Look – you’ll be needed for a statement.’

‘In London?’

‘Probably not. Just don’t go anywhere, okay.’

‘Don’t worry. Belinda says he was stabbed. Is that right?’

‘Belinda? The daughter. You know her?’

‘Only since this morning. She called in for coffee.’

‘God, Thea, it’s impossible to keep pace with you. You told her about the cries you heard, right, and she went to investigate?’

‘Precisely. I assume she had a key to the flat and just walked in on her dead father.’

‘It
must
have been the girlfriend. Do you know where she’s from?’

‘The Philippines, I think. Somewhere like that.’ Gladwin made the wordless
chhssk
of disgust that wives across the land expressed at such relationships.

‘I know,’ said Thea. ‘Apparently it’s on the increase.’

‘We can talk about that another time. I suspect it’s
our own fault – we’ve made too many demands on the poor dears.’

‘But she
screamed
. I don’t think it was her who killed him.’ Regret flickered through her. It would be all too comfortably neat if the girlfriend could be found and prosecuted for killing her sugar daddy. But it simply did not fit with everything she knew.

‘At least we know Gudrun didn’t do it. She was here with me at the time.’

Gladwin’s bewilderment was palpable, even down the phone. ‘What? Damn it, Thea – why in heaven’s name would she kill him?’

‘There’s a suggestion that Stevie was Victor’s child. You could do a DNA test to prove it either way.’

‘We can
ask
her. That might be quicker, and definitely cheaper.’

Thea chuckled, enjoying the detective’s wit, as always. ‘Maybe she still secretly loved him and paid somebody to go and murder him.’

‘Stop it. Nobody does that sort of thing.’ Uncertainty now filled her voice. ‘This is turning complicated, just when I thought we had it all sewn up. You’re not thinking that possibly
Victor
killed the boy, are you? That Gudrun realised, and got him killed in revenge?’

‘It did occur to me, about half a minute ago. But you’ve got the shoe evidence, haven’t you? How would that fit in?’

‘They could have done it together. A pact to dispose
of their impossible kid, who was making their lives unbearable.’

‘No,’ said Thea emphatically. ‘That’s going too far.’

‘You’re right. I think. Although … Listen, I’ll have to go now. But you have to make a full statement, with every tiny detail of that phone call. The Met are going to want it. Victor Parker was a wealthy businessman, you know. This one has to be big. The papers are going to love it. Anything involving these Asian babes makes great headlines. There’ll be columns giving every angle on it. Look at the way you and I are so keen to talk about it. It’ll be the same for everyone. They’ll assume he met her on the Internet and shipped her over to be a sort of sex slave.’

‘He’s got a cleaning lady already.’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘I
told
you. I spoke to the nanny from across the street. There’s a whole network of them, all related or friendly. I suppose they get jobs for each other. It’s like the mid-nineteenth century all over again.’ The historian in Thea was beginning to find some fascination in the modern version of the
upstairs-downstairs
scenario.

‘Slow down. Look, there’s a message just come through from London about your statement. Can you be here by three-thirty?’

‘Barely. You mean Cirencester, I assume?’

‘No, of course not. We’ve set up an incident room in Broadway. Didn’t I tell you? We were going to take it
all down today, but there’ve been a few delays. Maybe just as well, as it turns out.’

‘Where in Broadway?’

‘There’s a little school. Turn right and then left. You’ll find it.’

‘I was in Broadway only an hour or two ago,’ Thea complained.

‘Sorry,’ said Gladwin unapologetically.

The fact of a violent and mysterious murder in London was a lot less viscerally distressing than finding a child’s body only yards from the house she was occupying. It was more of an intellectual puzzle than anything else. She examined her conscience and found it to be relatively clear. After all, she had dutifully reported the alarming phone call to the police, and, for good measure, done her best to check for herself that nothing too terrible had happened. Nobody could have done any more. She had even conveyed her worries to Belinda at the first opportunity. It was very much thanks to her that the body had been found – although presumably the cleaning lady would eventually have shown up and made the discovery. She must be very much part-time, she concluded, sharing Victor with a number of other clients.

She had to go through the centre of Snowshill to get to Broadway, passing the pub and the church and the Manor and all the lovely little cottages. Within minutes she was passing Broadway’s church on her
left and turning into the main street that so many tourists found irresistible, but which left Thea rather unmoved. The only part of Broadway she admired was the cul-de-sac at the eastern end of the high street, where the houses were seriously gorgeous and historic.

The road took her round a bend to the left, and to the school where Gladwin was waiting for her.

The interview was recorded, and although everyone was perfectly friendly, with the detective superintendent the same as always, there was a subtle atmosphere of wary reproach. Why, she could hear them wondering, did this woman always know so much? Was she a witch? Or the cleverest possible arch-criminal? What amazing skill did she possess, whereby she landed herself in the midst of one murder investigation after another, all too often identifying the villain ahead of everybody else?

Thea herself had asked these questions many times. In Cranham, the glimmerings of an explanation had begun to emerge. The laws of cause and effect were working in the reverse direction from that which people assumed. The presence of a house-sitter acted as an enabling element in the minds of those plotting a crime. The normal systems were disrupted, leaving a gap for evildoing. It was a realisation that brought some shock with it. Taken to its logical conclusion, it would spell the end of her career before very much longer. The police would start to follow her from in front, as it were, staking out anywhere she
was in charge of, in the expectation of a murder. No self-respecting householder was going to stand for that. Even with the positive spin she had managed to put on it – whereby she did at least help to catch the killer and restore order – the stain never quite went away. In Frampton Mansell and Temple Guiting, as well as Cold Aston and Cranham, she had been instrumental in blackening a few characters whom nobody had suspected of anything at all illicit.

And now, in Snowshill, it seemed to be worse than ever before. She was right in the heart of the murders, virtually witnessing them as they took place. Anybody but Gladwin might have harboured serious suspicions as to her culpability.

‘Is there anything else?’ the DS asked her, after twenty minutes of questions. ‘Even if it’s only guesses.’

Thea pondered, trying to review the five days since she arrived in Snowshill. Fragmentary images were viewed and dismissed: the long-legged black dog in the churchyard, the ghosts in the Manor and the pub, Janice and Ruby fretting over their garden and the feeling of being under siege, Yvonne’s ridiculous clutter, Gudrun winning international swimming races, the surreal dead mouse in her pocket … ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said, before adding, ‘You’ll speak to Blake Grossman, I suppose? He says he was in Ankara on a trade delegation.’

Gladwin looked away quickly, as if caught off guard by mention of the name. But she instantly recovered,
with a wry smile. ‘Don’t worry. We’re speaking to
everybody
– again.’

‘Especially Gudrun,’ Thea suggested with an unhappy shiver. ‘Do you think this throws doubt on whether she really did kill Stevie?’

Gladwin pursed her lips and said nothing.

‘I’ll never be able to believe it,’ Thea said. ‘In spite of the evidence, I can’t imagine her doing it. You didn’t see her when I did. It feels almost criminal to accuse her of such a terrible thing.’

‘You’ll make a great witness for the defence,’ said Gladwin glumly.

‘How is she? Is anybody looking after her?’

The DS raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s in custody, of course. Solitary, for her own good. She obviously isn’t happy, but I’m not sure that being in a cell is making it very much worse than it was already. She’s shown a few fits of temper, I gather.’

‘I’m not surprised. If somebody had killed her only child, you’d expect her to be out for revenge.’

‘It’s not that sort of temper. It’s directed at us, “for being such fools”, to use her own words.’

‘Poor Gudrun.’ Thea’s throat was thick with the sympathy she felt. ‘I’m tempted to agree with her, to be honest, even if you do think you’ve got damning evidence against her. I think she was framed.’

Gladwin glanced uneasily at the tape machine, still running. She held up a hand, and dictated, ‘Interview terminated at 4.04 p.m.’ Then she switched it off.
‘Sorry – I should have done that five minutes earlier. That’s going to lead to a few awkward questions.’

‘Oh?’ Thea frowned in puzzlement.

‘You mentioned the evidence against Gudrun. You’re not supposed to know about that.’

‘Oops!’

‘It’s my own fault. Don’t worry – I can swing it … probably. You didn’t go into any detail, luckily. It depends on how this whole business turns out, of course.’

Thea glanced around at the school hall where they were sitting at a small table, with makeshift screens erected for a degree of privacy. She had seen these ad hoc incident rooms before, set up in any local space large enough to accommodate computers, whiteboards, telephones, and a team of dedicated police officers. Ideally this one would be in Snowshill itself, but nobody was going to expect the National Trust to accede to the use of their precious Manor, and the pub was hardly suitable.

What was happening in Crouch End, she wondered? Maybe there was a similarly empty primary school, although she doubted it. There would be busy holiday clubs and urgent staff meetings, probably throughout the summer holiday. Even in Somerset, Drew had said there was an activity week coming up shortly, which his children were signed up for.

‘Can I go now?’ she asked.

Late afternoons had always been Thea’s least favourite time of day. The long evening still stretched ahead, with its limited options, the events of the day bringing strands of emotion that had to be processed. Summarising the day so far, the word ‘surprise’ seemed to be pre-eminent. Surprise that first Blake and then Belinda had come to the door of Hyacinth House, and something bigger and nastier than surprise at Belinda’s subsequent discovery in Crouch End.

But there was also surprise at her own responses. The suggestions and implications that perhaps Gudrun was after all innocent of killing her boy brought hope with them, and some flickers of excitement at having a new mystery to think about. It was shameful, surely, to feel anything positive in the face of such dreadful happenings. She ought to be deep in sympathetic misery for the losses endured by the survivors. The trouble was, she realised, that at that precise moment she had no idea which survivors were deserving of her compassion. Somebody had done wicked and terrible things, and it might well be one of the people she had spoken to during the past week.

It was five o’clock when she finally allowed herself to phone Drew, after ten minutes of inner wrangling. It was an unequal contest – of course there was no earthly reason not to update him on the news, after his involvement the previous day. With luck Maggs would have gone home, and so not catch him
speaking to his forbidden friend. He might be getting tea for his children, or watching them play outside, or finalising the business of the day. She had only briefly glimpsed his burial ground and the house and office that formed part of the same property, but it was enough to be able to imagine him in a variety of activities.