Tragedy at Two (13 page)

“Time you started calling me Lois. And yes, even I can lose it,” Lois said, smiling broadly now. “Douglas is probably biting his nails and waiting for you to ring. So you might as well do it now.”

“What, right now?”

“Yes, right now.” Lois got up and led Susie into her office, sat her down and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Back in the kitchen, she told Gran that Josie would be coming round. Floss was free, and would be taking over the shop as soon as she could get there.

“Perhaps we should get Josie and Susie together,” Gran said dryly. “Shut ’em up in the sitting room with a big box of tissues and see what happens.” Then she retracted, and said that Josie’s grief was a lot more serious than Susie’s, and she’d better start making a chocolate cake for her favourite granddaughter.

“You’ve only got one granddaughter,” Lois said.

“Exactly,” said Gran, and began to assemble her baking things. After a good half hour, Susie emerged from Lois’s office.

“Problem solved?” Lois said. She need not have asked. Susie was all smiles.

“I think we love each other more than ever,” said Susie, in a soppy voice.

Lois and Gran exchanged glances, and then Lois said she was very pleased, and was sure that Susie would want to be off now, back to work. She suggested a meal out somewhere for the two of them this evening.

“Douglas has already booked at the Vine House. Isn’t he wonderful?” Susie said softly. She gave Lois a peck on the cheek, and then another for Gran, and disappeared with her head in the air.

“Next,” said Lois. “Or is that three? No, four. Cowgill, new client, Josie and Susie. Should be quiet for a bit, then. Ah, there’s Josie,” she added, seeing her passing the kitchen window. “If only we could work the same magic for
her,
Mum.”

Gran nodded, and beat the cake mixture with extra fury.

 

 

COWGILL STOOD IN HIS OFFICE, STARING OUT OF THE WINDOW AT the traffic and passing shoppers on Tresham’s main street. He had returned from talking to Lois and Derek with his heart in his boots. He had never seen her so set against him. They had such a good relationship—he the patient, adoring policeman, she the feisty cleaning woman, independent and cheeky—no, insulting would be a better word—but always with an affectionate good humour behind it. Or so he hoped.

His telephone rang, and he snatched it up. It was one of his team, asking what he considered was a totally unnecessary question. “For God’s sake, man!” he answered. “You don’t need me to tell you that. If you can’t deal with that, you’re in the wrong job!” And he cut the man off midsentence.

His attention was drawn to a gang of youths standing outside the boarded-up Woolworths shop on the opposite side of the street. Grey hooded sweaters, heads down and causing a block on the pavement so that shoppers had to step into the street to walk around them.

“Right outside the station!” he shouted. He lifted his internal phone and barked instructions into it, then returned to the window to watch. In seconds, a constable was there, but not fast enough. All but one disappeared into the crowd, but the one left was frog-marched back into the station, out of Cowgill’s sight. His phone rang. “Well?” he said.

“Usual, sir. Swapping downers and uppers and God knows what else. Got one of them down here. Shall we carry on, sir?”

Cowgill was about to agree, but then hesitated. Time to do a spot of proper policing, he decided, and said he’d be down in ten minutes. “Be nice to him,” he added. “Don’t want irate parents on our doorstep too soon.”

Before he went in to see the boy, his assistant handed him details. Mark Brown, he read. Blackberry Gardens, Long Farnden.

“Very nice development, sir. Executive dwellings, luxury interiors, all that.”

“Makes no difference, does it?” Cowgill replied. “Sometimes I think they’re the worst. Done all the preliminaries?” He walked slowly into the room where the unattractive teenager sat, biting his nails.

ALF SMITH WAS STILL ASLEEP AND SNORING. HIS WIFE EDWINA had been awake since half past five, worrying about the gypsies. She was, as always, angry with Alf for allowing them to stay. When did it start, this silly obsession with his ancestors being gypsies? Just because Smith was a common tinker name from the time when they were tinsmiths. Not all people called Smith were gypsies, for God’s sake. If only she and Alf had had children, he’d have something else to think about.

She was stiff now from trying not to move restlessly and wake Alf. Early mornings were not his best time of day. She reached for her watch on the bedside table and saw that it was still only half past six. Maybe if she slid out of bed quietly, she could grab some clothes and go out to the chickens without disturbing him. The cockerel was crowing, so they were ready to be out and about.

Alf did not wake, and Edwina crept through the house and out by the back door without a sound. She walked up to the chicken run and stood stock still, horrified at what she saw. Carcases everywhere, half-eaten and strewn about the run. Fox! Edwina had kept chickens for years and knew the signs. The fox would kill for the pleasure of it, and then take one or two back to his hungry family. It was like a madness that got into them. Like those college kids who ran amok with a gun, spraying bullets without caring who got them. Enjoying it. And then shooting themselves as they came to their senses. But the fox had no such conscience. He was all instinct, and now would be gone to his earth.

But how had he got into the chicken house? Easy enough for him to dig through to the run, Edwina knew that. But she was absolutely sure she shut up the house itself last night. So somebody came after her. She forced back tears. Should know better than that, she told herself. You’ve been a farmer’s wife for long enough.

Turning her face from the carnage, she walked out of the run and up the track that led to Junuddle. It had begun to drizzle, and she had no coat. But she walked on, oblivious of the wet grass soaking her slippers and the mist that shrouded the hilltops.

She came out of Junuddle and took the path towards the copse where the gypsies were encamped. Why, she had no idea, except perhaps some vague desire for revenge. Of course, it had been them. Alf had been absent during the fire, dealing with a difficult calving in the cowshed, and they’d have noticed, blaming him for not helping. Oh yes, their friendship was quickly dissolved. In any case, they knew she did not share Alf ’s ridiculous notions, and they were her chickens.

She stopped at the edge of the copse and stared through the sparse trees. They’d gone. Nothing at all remained, except for a heap of bulging black plastic sacks left neatly near the roadside. The ashes of the fire had been raked, and, but for the flattened, scorched grass, they might not have been there at all.

As she stood, her thoughts whirling, she heard footsteps behind her, and turned in alarm. It was Sam Stratford, and he stood beside her in silence. After a minute or two, he took her hand.

“That’s all right then,” he said, and they turned back, walking side by side until they were in sight of the farmhouse.

 

 

WHEN HE HAD GONE ON HIS WAY, SAM THOUGHT ABOUT EDWINA. They had been at the village school together. He’d been there three years when she started, and on her first day she had been brave and refused to cry when she dropped milk down her new dress. He had been told to take care of her, and she was his first love. They had been partners for country dancing, practised in the playground to old Miss Truscot’s creaky gramophone, and then performed at local fetes. Gathering Peascods, Strip the Willow: he could still remember the steps. Edwina had been a skinny, lively little thing, and could dance rings around the rest of the small elephants in the infant class. He smiled, remembering how he had raided his mother’s garden for a paper bag full of green gooseberries, which he had presented to Edwina with a proposal of marriage when they were grown up. When he went on to the next school, the romance had come to an inevitable end.

She was still an attractive woman, he thought, and chuckled as he climbed on to the quad bike, which was his preferred mode of transport round the villages. What had she seen in old Alf Smith? Land? A family farm to inherit? It couldn’t have been Alf ’s physical charms. He was an ugly, boring old bugger, with his ridiculous obsession with gypsies.

Ah, well, his precious tinks were gone now, and it had not been all that difficult to get rid of them.

“Breakfast ready?” he said to Sheila, as he opened the kitchen door. A good smell of frying bacon answered his question. Sheila said nothing. She did not even turn to look at him.

“Still sulking?” he said crossly.

“Did you have anything to do with it?” she asked, at last looking him straight in the eye.

“O’ course not,” he said. “What d’you think I am? Some bloody vigilante? I won’t say I didn’t want to see the back of them. I did. But I know the right way to go about it. I’ve not been on the parish council for years without learning a trick or two, you know.”

“Mm. Well, better get on with your breakfast. I have to be over at Fletching by half past, so you’ll have to stack the dishes. Are you home for dinner?”

“Don’t know,” muttered Sam. “I can get me own, anyway.” He washed his hands at the sink and sat down in front of a plateful of eggs, bacon, fried bread and black pudding. As he watched her retreating back, he thought that maybe he hadn’t done so badly in marrying her. After all, Edwina hadn’t had no kids, and it’s not a real family without kids.

 

 

SAM AND EDWINA HAD NOT, AS THEY THOUGHT, BEEN UNOBSERVED. Deep into the thicket, the battered old caravan had remained. The two brothers and their bull terrier, now muzzled to keep him quiet, had holed up without appearing for the duration of the fire. They’d kept out of sight while tents were erected, and distant gypsies arrived in assorted lorries to help move Farnden’s encampment on to pastures new.

They had emerged to see the tail end of the procession as it departed quietly. Harry brooded on the rotten sods who had gone without a word to the brothers. Nobody said “See you at Appleby.” And nobody wished them luck, which was no surprise to either of them. Their faces were black with dirt and rough weather, and their hearts were black with anger, resentment and hate.

They had not really belonged to the rest. Old Athalia Lee had allowed them to pitch on the edge of her circle, but they knew it was a fragile thing. That bloody wimp from the village shop getting done over had been the beginning of the end, they knew. The minute they heard about it, they knew they would be blamed. In fact, each blamed the other. They had gone off in different directions that night, and neither of them knew where the other had been. Conversation was always sparse between them, and limited to essentials. The only thing they loved, and they were agreed on this, was the dog. Buster, they called him, and he was everything to them.

Now they sat in silence on the caravan steps, idly teasing Buster with a rabbit skin rolled into a ball.

“Gone, then,” Harry said. His brother nodded. “What shall we do?” Harry continued.

“Stay here,” answered Sid. “We got to think. Keep out o’ sight for a bit.”

“We could use what we just saw. Them two havin’ a smooch,” Harry said.

Sid stared at him. Always the clever bugger, Harry, he thought.

“Alf might like to know about his missus holdin’ hands with Stratford. We could ’ave a word with ’er. What d’yer think?”

“I don’t. You do the thinking,” said Sid.

SOON AFTER LOIS SETTLED IN HER OFFICE AT HOME TO CATCH up on neglected paperwork, she heard the front door knocker and the bell at the same time. Somebody in a hurry! She sighed. Then she heard Gran’s steps coming up the hall and knew she could rely on her to open the door, find out who was there and what they wanted. For once, Lois hoped Gran would keep all comers at bay.