The Accidental Time Traveller (16 page)

‘A student? Good family?’ I looked at Billy.

‘Jeremy Cavendish?’ he asked, looking back.

‘That would explain why she did the deed in Friars’ Mill, wouldn’t it? Right on his doorstep. Who was the girl? Can you remember her name?’

Billy frowned. ‘Amy something. Amy … Amy … She was a farmer’s daughter, lived the other side of town, I think. Oh,’ he banged the desk in frustration, ‘if only I could remember her name!’

Today at
The News
of course you’d just type ‘Amy sixteen-year-old suicide’ into a computer search engine, and the story would flash up in front of you in seconds.

Not in the 1950s.

Billy started rifling through the big bound back copies that lived on a shelf at the end of the newsroom. He was turning pages swiftly, searching. Meanwhile, I ran up to the library. This consisted of shelf after shelf of brown envelopes packed with curling cuttings. First go I grabbed a fat envelope marked ‘Friars’ Mill’ and shook the cuttings out onto a desk. There were cuttings about garden parties at The Grange, about archaeological digs, about the leek show, the spring fair, an overturned milk lorry and the WI planting daffodil bulbs. But absolutely nothing about a sixteen-year-old girl ‘accidentally’ falling into the river.

‘Rosie!’ Billy was running up the library stairs. ‘I’ve remembered. She was Amy Littlejohn, and her father has a small farm about two miles from Friars’ Mill.’

‘A farmer would have a gun, wouldn’t he?’

‘Yes. Of course we could be barking up completely the wrong tree here.’

‘Of course we could,’ I agreed. ‘But it does seem to fit. So what shall we do?’

‘Phil’s the reporter on night shift. He’s already in. We could send him up to have a look around. Or …’ and he grinned. My heart lurched. It was a real Will grin, ‘Or we could borrow his motorbike and go ourselves.’

‘Just to have a little look around, of course,’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘What are we waiting for?’

Five minutes later, I was perched on the back of the borrowed motorbike, my hands gripping Billy’s shoulders, and we were roaring out of
The News
yard in search of the story.

It was a long time since I’d been on the back of a motorbike – not since I briefly had a rocker boyfriend when I was about fifteen – and it’s amazing how vulnerable you feel without a helmet. And uncomfortable, too, when you’re wearing a skirt and stockings. The draught…

As we roared around bends and along the narrow country roads, I wanted to wrap my arms around Billy, hold him tightly, bury my head in his shoulder. Instead, I just hung on as lightly and as distantly as I could, sitting upright, rather primly I thought. Think Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday.
OK, maybe not.

The roads were getting bumpier now and Billy was driving more slowly, searching through the gloom. ‘Right, I think that’s it.’

We got off. I was already feeling stiff and cold. Billy tucked the bike in a gateway and pointed across the road. ‘I think that’s Littlejohn’s down there.’

A short, steep, muddy track twisted down into a hollow where there was a small farm. Even in the fading light it looked grim. The house had once – long ago – been whitewashed, but was now dirty and mottled, as if it had some nasty disease. The windows were dirty and the curtains drooped. A heap of logs lay scattered across the mud-covered yard along with bits of machinery that seemed abandoned rather than functional. The whole place reeked of neglect and despair.

As we stood silently gazing I suddenly heard a huge cough a few feet away from me. I leapt and gave a little yelp. ‘What’s that? Who’s there?’

Billy was laughing. ‘It’s only a cow,’ he whispered. ‘Haven’t you heard a cow cough before?’

‘You know, I don’t believe I have.’

But Billy was by now wriggling his way through the fence, which wasn’t so much a fence as a few rusty old iron bedsteads roughly pushed into position. ‘Come on. We’ll have a better view from here.’

He took my hand – it was wonderful to feel his hand on mine – and guided me into the field. My feet squelched in something disgusting. ‘Ugh!’ I said, not liking to think what it could have been. Down below we could hear a dog giving a few muttered barks.

‘Look!’ said Billy suddenly.

Below us, tucked into the shelter of one of the barns, was a van, a small grey van. ‘Coincidence?’ said Billy drily.

‘The inspector said small grey vans are ten-a-penny.’

‘Maybe, maybe.’

‘So what do we do now? Should we tell the police?’

If only I had my mobile, I could have rung them. Easy peasy Instead, I was stuck in a field in the dark, with possibly a murderer and a kidnapper down below me, and one foot covered in cow shit. Great.

Something was happening in the house. We saw a movement in front of a window and then a light went on, a soft, dim glow. From an oil lamp, I realised. Someone was carrying it across a room, and for a second I saw two shadows. A very big one and a very small one. The small one had pigtails…

‘Oh God, Billy, that must be Susan. He’s got her there. What shall we do?’ I hissed.

Billy was calm, rational. ‘It could be a perfectly normal farmer and his daughter or granddaughter. We have no reason to think it’s Susan. Only a string of coincidences. On the other hand, if that
is
Susan, we can’t abandon her. God knows what Littlejohn will do. But we need to get help. There was another farm about half a mile back. They might have a phone. You go there and call the police. Tell them the story. Let them come and see.’

‘Can I take the motorbike? Then if there’s no phone I can get to town quickly.’

Down at the farm, the dog began his muttered barking again.

Billy gave me a quick look. Even in the dark I could see his grin. ‘Can you ride a motorbike?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well be careful, girl. Here.’ He handed me the key and I turned to go back up the slope to the rusty bedstead and the road. As I did, I slipped again and – stupid woman – gave a small yelp. The dog went mad. It was as if he were saying I
thought
there was someone up there and now I know. I could hear his chain rattling. He was barking so furiously and trying so hard to get to us he was practically choking himself. It was a dreadful sound. I prayed that chain would hold.

Then the door of the farmhouse was pulled open. In the doorway, the light of the oil lamp behind him, stood a man, a giant of a man. In his hands he had a shotgun. He was pointing it up the slope towards us.

‘Who’s there?’ he yelled. ‘Whoever you are, show yerself, before I set the dog on you.’

We stood stock still, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, though my heart was thumping so loudly I was sure the world could hear it.

‘Run!’ hissed Billy at me. ‘Run!’

I turned to go, but with that the farmer came out into the yard and started striding up the slope. For a big man he moved quickly, confidently, easily. And now he could see us clearly.

‘No you don’t,’ he said, his gun up at his shoulder, ready to fire. ‘Don’t you go anywhere. You just stay where you are.’

I turned back down the slope and stood next to Billy. I could smell the damp grass and the cows. And there was another smell I couldn’t identify – possibly my own terror. By now the farmer was just a few feet away from us. He was a huge man. More than six foot tall and nearly as wide, though his clothes hung on him. He wore a big tweed jacket that flapped around him. ‘Get down,’ he said, pointing at us with the gun, ‘get down to the yard.’

Billy held a hand up, warning me to be quiet. We slithered down the slope. The farmer motioned us into the house and stood behind us with the gun. The dog ran towards us, growling deep down in his throat. It was a terrible noise.

We stumbled into the house. It stank. Absolutely stank. We were in the kitchen, but the big range across the far wall was dead and cold. In the dim light of the oil lamps I could see newspapers heaped on a chair, bits of sacking and rusty buckets littered the floor. A bit of machinery lay in pieces on the filthy table. Beside it was a heap of cartridge cases and an almost empty whisky bottle. And in the corner, just where the circle of light faded into black, huddled up on a wooden settle sat a small girl with blonde pigtails, shaking with sobs.

‘Susan?’ I asked. ‘Susan?’

The little girl looked up at me, terrified, and then back again, clutching her knees.

‘Will you shut that bloody row!’ yelled the farmer.

‘She’s frightened,’ said Billy, in a reasonable, noncommittal sort of voice, as if he were commenting on the weather.

‘Well she’s no need. I won’t hurt her.’

‘She’s cold too.’ Billy was taking off his jacket. ‘Can we just put this around her? Just to warm her up a bit? It might stop her crying.’

The farmer grunted. Billy took this as assent and threw the jacket at me. Quickly and not daring to look at the farmer with his gun – I ran over to the settle and wrapped the jacket around Susan. She clung to me and I sat down on the settle next to her. I could feel her trembling. I wrapped my arms around her, partly to comfort her, partly to keep her warm, and partly to stay her sobs so she wouldn’t annoy Littlejohn any more.

Whatever the reason, her sobs quietened. I could still feel her trembling as she huddled right up to me, but the crying had almost stopped. It somehow made it easier for all of us to breathe.

Billy was standing there in his shirtsleeves. He wore braces. He looked relaxed, in control. It was an impressive performance. ‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’ he said to Littlejohn. ‘She’s only a little girl after all. Why did you bring her here? Why the gun?’

The farmer was still pointing his gun at us. I was scared to move, apart from to stroke Susan’s back through the rough tweed of Billy’s jacket. It was like trying to calm a horse or a frightened dog. I knew I was trying to calm myself as much as the little girl. Littlejohn seemed so angry, so unpredictable.

‘She saw me.’

‘Saw you?’ asked Billy, still in this calm, it-doesn’t-matter-if-you-answer-or-not sort of tone. ‘Saw you? Did that matter?’

‘She watched me coming down the track from the woods. She saw the van. Anyway,’ he suddenly jerked the gun back up again so it was pointing straight at Billy, ‘who are you? What are you doing here?’ He peered more closely at Billy.

‘I know your face. I’ve seen you before. I know! You’re the reporter from
The News.
You were in the court, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right, Mr Littlejohn, I was. It was a very sad occasion. I was very sorry for your loss.’

‘She was a good girl, you know. A good girl. Ever since her mother died…’

‘Was that a long time ago?’

‘Amy was only nine when Megan went. She tried to look after her, tried to look after me…’

He was still looking towards Billy, still pointing the gun at him, but his eyes and his mind were elsewhere.

Somehow, sometime, a long time ago, someone had tried to make the kitchen homely. The curtains, now drooping, were made of pretty flowered material. The cushion on the settle I was sitting on was filthy and ragged, but it had once been brightly coloured patchwork. Some woman had sat here, maybe by the range when it was polished and warm, sat here in the light of the oil lamp making a cheerful cushion for the family kitchen.

Most of the dresser was given over to bits of machinery and papers, but from the hooks on the top shelf there still hung some jugs and mugs. Among them was a Coronation mug for Queen Elizabeth. Amy must have put that there, years after her mother died, when she was trying to keep the home going.

‘Megan had cancer,’ the farmer said, as if trying to make Billy understand. ‘She was a long time dying, a terrible long time. If she’d been a beast I’d have shot her, put her out of her pain. But I just had to watch and do nothing.’

‘It must have been a terrible time. For you as well as her.’

Littlejohn gave Billy a sharp look. But Billy seemed quite open, honest and straightforward.

‘So then it was just you and Amy?’ asked Billy, his eyes never leaving Littlejohn’s face.

‘Ay, and she did her best. I wasn’t much good, I know that. The girl needed her mother. There was too much to do, and it was hard. She was a young woman, I didn’t realise.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Billy soothingly. ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’

Littlejohn nodded dumbly.

‘And then I looked at her one day. She was bending over, putting coal on the range. And she looked just like my Megan did when she was carrying Amy. I knew then.’

‘That she was expecting a baby?’

Littlejohn nodded.

‘So you were angry with Amy?’

Littlejohn looked astonished.

‘No, not with Amy. Ay, she’d been foolish right enough, but plenty more have been no wiser. No, I wasn’t angry with her. Not with her. But with that stuck-up cowardly lad she’d got involved with, that namby pamby boy with his la-di-dah accent and his college scarf. I was angry with him. And when he said he wanted nothing to do with Amy, nothing to do with his baby. That he didn’t want Mummy and Daddy to know because it would upset them – upset them! – then I was really bloody angry.’