The Fox in the Forest (6 page)

Farr went into a small pantry near the back door and emerged with a double-barrelled shotgun which he almost tossed into Hook’s hands. They gave it a token inspection, but Lambert was more interested in its owner. “You said the Reverend Barton wasn’t your type,” he said. With the shotgun now back in Farr’s hands, it seemed an appropriate moment to return to the shop-owner’s assertion.

Farr acknowledged the thought with a mirthless smile. “I’ve no time for organized religion. Perhaps he was just the representative of that. I’d nothing against Barton personally.” He said it as though it was an admission of weakness rather than anything to his credit.

“But you like Mrs Barton.”

Tommy Farr shrugged his wide boxer’s shoulders, pulled briefly at the distorted lobe of his flattened right ear, and put the gun unhurriedly back into its place in the pantry. “I’m not sure I said that. I think I said I fancied her. That’s different. I could do her a bit of good, if she’d let me.” He smiled in lubricious speculation, but his amusement was for himself, not his audience.

Lambert, watching him closely and refusing to react, said, “You live here alone, Mr Farr?”

He looked at them suddenly then, for the first time since he had brought them into his own quarters. “Yes, unless you count Kelly.” He went over and fondled the dog’s soft ears; it wagged its tail and lifted its slim, powerful head towards his hand after he had stopped caressing it. “And to save you asking, my wife walked out. Fifteen years ago. I haven’t seen her since.”

He said it aggressively, as though he expected them to pursue the matter with further questioning, but Lambert merely nodded, almost absently. Farr, with his air of barely suppressed energy, did not seem a man who would find it easy to sublimate his sexual instincts. If he regretted his unguarded reference to the vicar’s wife, he had carried it off forcefully enough, in line with the terms in which it had been couched.

Lambert looked through the small window beside the rear door towards what now seemed the brooding presence of the forest. The nearest trees were scarcely two hundred yards away. He said, “I suppose you see most of the people who go into the forest from your shop.”

“There are other ways than the lane in front of my shop — footpaths across the fields. And anyway, I have a business to run; I’m too busy to watch all the comings and goings.”

“Nevertheless, you would no doubt be aware of most of the people who regularly go into the woods.”

Farr weighed the thought of denying the suggestion, then decided that was not possible. “There’s plenty. Most of the children go in there sometimes, especially now they’re on holiday. Like those kids who found Barton.” He seemed to find this a convincing demonstration of his argument, but they said nothing to encourage the notion. Farr said, “I go in there myself, nearly every day, with Kelly. Do a mile or two, I suppose.”

“And who else do you know who goes in there regularly?”

Farr paused, whether in a genuine attempt to give them the best information or in a consideration of how best to conceal something, it was impossible to say. Perhaps he was conscious of this ambivalence, and pleased by it. He smiled as he said, “There’s young Charlie Webb, of course. He takes a short cut through there on his way to work at the Electricity Works.”

Hook raised his eyebrows. “Long way for him to walk, even with a short cut.”

“He doesn’t walk.” Farr was delighted to expose their naivety. “He takes his motorbike. Pushes it under the barrier. Easy done, that is.” His South Welsh accent came out more strongly in his contempt for their ignorance.

Lambert said, “You say you go into the woods yourself on most days. Did you go there yesterday, and the day before?”

“Yes. I told you, I walk Kelly in the forest most days.” He had not even hesitated. Probably he had anticipated the question from the moment when he first heard the news of the shooting.

“And did you see or hear anything which now seems significant in the light of the Peter Barton’s death?”

“No.” Farr paused, preparing to make the maximum impact with the piece of information he had known from the start that he would have to reveal to them when the time came. “I saw a tramp in the forest though, the day before that.”

Lambert had to control both irritation and excitement. “Where was he sleeping?”

“In the forest, I think. He had a little tent with him. Ain’t no haystacks for tramps, nowadays, I suppose.”

Lambert said heavily, “You’d better show us just where. Bert, there’s a 1:25,000 map in the car. Would you —”

“I can do better than that. I can show you the place, if you’ve got half an hour. It’s ten minutes into my dinner-hour already. The shop should be shut.” Tommy Farr had decided to help the police. He didn’t want to shop anyone, but murder was murder. And he’d made one mistake in mentioning Clare Barton like that, and another one in letting on about the murder being done with a shotgun. He was in need of a bit of credit with the police.

The entrance to the forest was under police guard, though Lambert reflected wryly that it must be impossible to cordon off the whole of the perimeter and deny the possibilities of entry and exit where no tracks ran. The young uniformed constable did not know Lambert, but fell back when he heard the exalted rank like a footman before a duke.

Kelly moved ahead of them, seemingly a dog who knew exactly where he was going. They matched Farr’s brisk marching pace for a mile, then ducked after him under low branches, down a side-track which was so overgrown that they would not have known it was there.

They moved a hundred yards at least before Farr hesitated. “It was around here, I’m sure. It was Kelly that found him.” Because his mind was on other things, his pride in the dog leaped out at them like that of a small boy, catching him as well as them unprepared for it.

The dog had moved a little to their left, and Hook, following it, called a little breathlessly, “There’s been a fire here, and a tent, I think.” They pushed through behind him into the tiny clearing. There was a small rectangle of flattened ground, a trace of ashes where earth had been roughly spread over the remnants of a fire.

Lambert had turned already towards the way out of the forest and the investigative team he should be heading. Over his shoulder to Farr, he said, “We’ll need a full description.”

9

A murder investigation exposes many secrets, most of them unconnected with the death. Clare Barton would find this in due course. For the present, she was in shock. Even the sight of her husband’s pale features had not seemed real; the voice which calmly confirmed the identification to the pathologist had seemed to come from someone else; the explanation that this was necessary for something mysteriously called ‘continuous evidence’ seemed to be meant for other ears than hers.

Now she trod the carpets of her house on limbs that seemed hardly hers. Once she looked for the imprint of her foot in the plain deep-pile carpet of the lounge, as if in search of some tangible evidence that a real creature trod here and was experiencing all this.

Her elder sister watched her anxiously, wondering how much of this was shock and how much evidence of the sedation the doctor had given her. It was a bad time for this to happen, she thought, rebuking herself for her selfishness. She must get Clare out of this house and back home with her: that much was obvious, despite her sister’s protests. But she could not be other than a damper on Christmas for the children. She was not a very natural aunt at the best of times, and with this behind her…

At least she was not hysterical. Indeed, she was as docile as a small child on her best behaviour; Barbara, who was eight years her senior, could recall many happier occasions in the past when she could have wished her sister as easy to control. She busied herself in the small kitchen, salvaging what she could from the food Clare had prepared so diligently on the previous day and never eaten.

Clare came obediently to the dining table when she was asked to do so. She was waiting there, sitting bolt upright, when Barbara carried the two bowls of soup in from the kitchen. She did not touch the food as it steamed in front of her. Barbara felt guilty that she should be so hungry herself. She waited until she was halfway through her own helping before she said, “Clare, love, you’ve got to eat. That’s good chicken soup; it’ll pick you up a bit.” The banalities reminded her of her dead father, who could never bear to see anyone fast.

Clare did not look at her, but she began to take her soup. She spooned it into her mouth slowly, but with a regularity which became dreadful. It brought back to Barbara a long-buried image of a glass-cased mechanical model in an amusement arcade, lifting a spoon to its plaster mouth in mechanical response to children’s pence.

The impression was fostered by Clare’s doll-like appearance. Her yellow hair had not moved since she had combed it to go to the mortuary several hours ago. The warmth of the house and the sedative from the doctor had restored her colour, so that her cheeks were almost unnaturally red, with a patch of high colour at the top of each cheekbone. Her light blue eyes might have been made of glass, so unblinkingly did they stare past her sister towards the abandoned Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Barbara felt that if she bent the stiff upper body backwards, those eyes would close automatically at some point, like those of her favourite childhood doll.

Yet the food seemed to have some effect. Clare refused anything else after the soup, but she drank most of the coffee which Barbara brought to her, sinking gradually towards a more relaxed position in the armchair which seemed far too large for her slender frame. Barbara was relieved when she looked in from the kitchen. She began to think about Christmas Day again. She would ring her husband in a little while, after she had persuaded Clare to talk.

The phone was quite near to Clare’s armchair, but for a moment she did not know where the sound came from. She had picked it up by the time Barbara reached the door, and she waved an airy acknowledgement that she would deal with this. It was a reassuring, even an amusing gesture to her sister, who took it as evidence of a return to something like normality. She shut the door carefully behind her when she saw that Clare was coping; eavesdropping had never been one of her faults.

Clare listened for some time without speaking, not taking in all of what the voice on the other end of the line said. “So you see,” it concluded desperately, “it’s vital for both of us that you don’t say you were with me at that time. I’ve got too much to lose, you see.”

“I see. Yes.”

“And so have you, really, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” She spoke like an automaton.

“I’ll go now, then. Look after yourself. It will be better if we’re not in contact for a while. So make sure you don’t ring me. Leave it to me to get in touch in due course.”

The line went dead. She stared at the mouthpiece dully for a moment before she put it carefully back in its holder. She felt cheated: she had wanted to tell him that he was never to ring again.

***

A hundred yards away in the block of council houses, Charlie Webb was thinking also about a telephone call. In his case, it was a call he needed to make.

They had no phone in the house, but it was not far to the public box near the Crown. He wanted an excuse to escape his gran’s watchful eye, and his store of invention was almost exhausted. It was his day off. It had seemed a good idea at the time to tack it on to Christmas Day, but now he would much rather have been at work. He ran his hand rather desperately through his thick dark hair.

It was cut quite short at the front, in the current spiky fashion of the young. Old Mrs Webb, who was pretending to read her tabloid newspaper, said, “Mind you don’t scratch yourself on that hedgehog!” and cackled with satisfaction. She had made the joke many times before, but was delighted to catch her grandson in the gesture when he thought himself unobserved.

“So who killed the vicar, then?” she said for the third time. She was fascinated by the violence of the killing, so that her unpredictable old mind kept coming back to it. She was almost housebound now; a dramatic event so close at hand brought a touch of sickly glamour into her home.

Yet death in the village always worried her, reminding her as it did of the death of her son and the fragility of all life. It meant that even young Charlie had but a tenuous hold upon it, and he was the only one she had still to lose. She watched him now as he moved restlessly about the house, stooping to look for the twentieth time through the window of the living-room towards the centre of the village.

Just when she thought he had ignored her question, he said with rough affection, “How the hell should I know who killed Reverend Barton? We never had anything to do with him, did we?”

“No time for it,” she said promptly. The impersonal pronoun embraced all religions and their representatives. Her spiritual world had been demolished piece by piece with the death of her loved ones; since the death of her son ten years ago, she had reviled all clergymen as the representatives of an institution that had cheated and deceived her. Unable to venture out, forbidding entry to her house to Peter Barton, she had remained proof against the charm the young vicar seemed to have exercised over the rest of the village. She dismissed reports of his achievements as so much more evidence that the world was populated by credulous nincompoops.

“The police will find who did it,” said Charlie. He had seen two large men going from church to pub earlier in the day; they had looked like plain clothes men to him. He was not sure, but he thought he had seen them leaving the village when he was in the back garden, walking with Tommy Farr and that damned dog of his. If he was right, it was probably safe to go to the phone-box now. He had no wish to be observed, least of all by them.

“His wife will be at the bottom of it, somewhere, you mark my word,” said Gran. She spoke it into her paper, as though it were a reflection not meant for him, but she was delighted when he reacted. Sometimes the generations fell away and they were like husband and wife, with him making the necessary punctuations in her monologues.

He grinned. “Why on earth should you think that, Gran? You don’t even know the woman.”

“Too pretty for her own good, that one!” said Mrs Webb, nodding as though she had produced the most convincing possible argument. “Blonde hussy!” All blondes were hussies to her; the notion had an obscure origin in her youth, when the cinema had brought impossible excitement to country towns and Jean Harlow had been followed by Veronica Lake.

Charlie knew the script and delivered his next line with impeccable timing. “But what about Grace Kelly?” he said.

“Princess Grace, you mean,” she corrected him loftily. “She was all right, so they killed her.” She made haste to relate this irrefutable logic to the particular local event. “I’m not saying that Mrs Barton killed him herself, mind, though she might have. But she’ll be involved in it somewhere.” She ceased her pretence of perusing the paper, folded it upon her lap, and rocked slowly back and fourth on her chair, gazing contentedly into the fire. Hollywood scenarios with poor Clare Barton as a
femme
fatale
began to seep into her delighted imagination.

Charlie was never sure how seriously she entertained the wild speculations she retailed to him. Perhaps they were all part of an elaborate comic world she created to compensate for her lack of mobility. He scratched his long nose and threw back his narrow shoulders: if he was to feature in one of her fantasies, it had better be as the handsome hero. “It’s still fine,” he said. “I think I’ll go for a little spin on the bike. I’ve put a new plug in this morning.”

“Damned Japanese rubbish! Always breaking down: I tried to warn you,” she said with immense satisfaction.

He was quite relieved. There wasn’t a lot wrong with the old girl’s brain if she could switch her ideas as promptly as that. “But the Japanese make the best bikes now, Gran.”

“Triumph was good enough for your Dad. Norton’s still the best in the world. Got to be.”

For a moment he saw her as Supergran on the telly, astride her machine like a dark avenger. He went and started up the Honda and rode it slowly through the village. He had thought he might ride over to Ashbridge and use the phone-box there, but there was a police road block where the lane from Woodford joined the road to the next village. He turned the bike in the space where a five-barred gate led into a field of winter barley and rode slowly back to the village, feeling as though a net was being drawn tighter about him.

Tommy Farr was back in his shop; the lights glowed gold in the gloom of the afternoon. As he stopped his bike and took off his helmet, he toyed with the idea of going in and trying to find what Tommy had been doing when he saw him with the police. But he knew he would be unable to do it casually. Tommy had that way of looking straight through you and seeing what you were really thinking. He treated Charlie with the amusement of an adult dealing with an inexperienced child, and Charlie felt himself grow more gauche even as he tried to shrug it off.

He went instead to make his phone call. For a moment, he thought there was going to be no answer. Then the connection was made and he said, “Dave? It’s Charlie. Listen, don’t forget I didn’t ever leave work that night…I know…I know our arrangement…I know you wouldn’t. It’s just that it might be more vital than usual this time. So remember, if the police come asking questions…the police, yes. Just tell them I was there the whole time, all right? I’ll explain when I see you.”

He took the bike home and wheeled it into the shed at the bottom of the garden. Out of the view of his gran, he began to clean every particle of mud from the treads of its tyres.