Authors: Rebecca Tope
They walked down the farm track without speaking. Den was becoming increasingly impressed with Young Mike’s ability to remain quiet when appropriate; for the moment his own thoughts were more than enough to occupy him. He was struck by the way nobody seemed particularly upset at Sean’s death. Nobody behaved as if they thought it was unduly horrific, or even unexpected. Deirdre Watson, Ted Speedwell, Hillcock’s wife and sister – they had all seemed almost unmoved by what had happened to the herdsman. They had all behaved with a peculiar kind of resignation.
Only Lilah, probably because she was
new to Dunsworthy, as well as because of her involvement with Gordon, had shown any real emotion. And that had been rage against Den and fear for what might happen to Gordon. Even she showed no feeling towards Sean O’Farrell.
He decided to run his theory past Mike. ‘Notice something odd?’ he began.
‘I was just going to say …’ came the ready response. ‘We’re not assuming that only a man could have done it, are we?’
‘Well, there’s the Watson woman. She has to be in the frame.’
Mike spoke with animation. ‘Right! Because I think a woman could have done it. Say she pushed him over first, and then jabbed the fork into him while he was lying flat on his back. That wouldn’t take too much strength, would it? Not through the fleshy parts of the body, anyway.’
‘Hmm,’ said Den slowly, remembering what the pathologist had told him. ‘Did you have anybody in mind, apart from Mrs Watson?’
‘Young Abigail’s a strong girl. You’ll see for yourself in a minute.’
‘So I will,’ agreed Den. ‘Actually, that wasn’t what I meant by “something odd”. Doesn’t it strike you that nobody’s particularly sorry that the man’s dead? I mean – he obviously died in
agony, but we’ve yet to come across anybody who’s shown much pity for him.’
Mike sucked his teeth for a few seconds. ‘Maybe we just haven’t spoken to the right people yet,’ he suggested.
They waited on the doorstep of the O’Farrell cottage for a full minute before the door was opened to them. A round-faced teenage girl stood before them, holding the edge of the door defensively, head turned away as she shouted back along the passage to the living room. ‘Okay, Mother – I’ve opened it now.’ There was resentment and impatience in her tone. She stepped out of the way of the men without looking at them. Den noticed smudges on her cheeks and traces of eyeliner around her eyes, apparently left over from the day before. She looked tired and hungover.
‘Me again, Abigail,’ said Mike amiably. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Cooper. He’ll probably let you call him Den.’
‘Nng,’ said the girl without a flicker of a smile.
Not waiting for direction or invitation, Den led the way to the living room where Heather O’Farrell, invalid, wore a thick, all-enveloping dressing-gown, a rug over her knees for good measure. She looked like the inmate of a nursing home. She sat almost exactly as she had the
previous evening, huddled in the big armchair. Abigail flopped down on the couch and started picking at her fingernails, oblivious of where the policemen might want to sit. Mike opted to share the couch with her and Den collected an upright dining chair from a far corner of the room and carried it closer, to complete the little circle round the hearth. There was a frowsty smell, far from unpleasant, suggesting
self-indulgent
winter days of childhood, snuggled in bed for a long lie-in while Mum cooked lunch downstairs. Except there were no cooking aromas in this house.
Abigail sniffed noisily from time to time, while Den began his questions. ‘I hope we’re not intruding,’ he smiled, routinely. ‘We’ll try not to take long.’
The woman nodded patiently at him. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what I can to help.’ She spoke breathily, as if making a noble effort in the face of great constraints. Den felt like a brute for forcing her to cooperate.
‘Thank you,’ he nodded. ‘We have the basics, of course, from last night. What we’re hoping for now is a bit of background – trying to get the wider picture, if you like. For example, if Sean was having the afternoon off yesterday, what would you have expected him to be doing with his time?’
She frowned and fixed her large moist eyes on his face. ‘Didn’t I tell you about that yesterday?’ she said weakly. ‘If I’d thought about it, I’d have assumed he was cutting logs – we needed more. Gordon lets him have as much dead wood as he likes from the copse. Though I think he said he was going back to the yard. I don’t think I bothered much about where he was. I was asleep. I
told
you.’ The petulance and self-pity were almost tangible. Den heard Abigail emit a small sigh.
‘Did he say he was cutting up logs?’
She frowned irritably. ‘I don’t know. He might have done. I can’t remember anything exactly, after such a dreadful shock.’ She put a hand to her throat, in an attitude so stereotypical Den almost laughed. This woman was a throwback to some Victorian age where no one was surprised if a lady went into a decline and spent her short life languishing on a chaise longue. There was definitely something farcical in the situation. Then he reproached himself for his lack of sympathy. For all he knew, the woman was genuinely ill, perhaps with some rare condition the doctors couldn’t identify. It certainly wasn’t for him to make snap judgements about other people’s health.
He turned to Abigail. ‘Were you here at all yesterday?’
‘In the morning, yeah. I got the bus to school and went straight to my friend’s house in Tavistock afterwards. I stayed the night there.’ She suddenly glared fiercely at her mother. ‘Nobody even bothered to tell me what was going on here! My dad lying in the muck, and me fetched from school by the police, and missing some really important lessons. Why didn’t anybody tell me yesterday?’
‘That was mostly our fault,’ said Den ruefully. ‘We decided it was better to leave you in peace until this morning. Sorry if we did the wrong thing. You’d have missed the lessons anyway,’ he added, with a firm look. ‘There’s no way you’d have gone to school today.’
Abigail sniffed again. ‘Now
she
says I can’t see him.’ She exploded into fury, punching the cushion beside her. ‘I
can
see him, can’t I? When my mate’s gran died, they let her go and visit and leave a note in the coffin.’
‘Nobody can see him until all the examinations have been done,’ Den explained calmly. ‘But after that, there’s no reason—’ he glanced at Heather and modified what he’d been going to say, ‘—your dad will go to the undertaker’s and they’ll be able to talk to you about what’s best.’
‘When’ll that be? I want to see him
now
. Last I saw him, he was perfectly all right, and now
you blokes come along and say he’s
dead
…’ She lapsed back into silence, as if her allocation of words had come to an end. Her mother made an exasperated clicking sound with her tongue.
‘You’ll have to do as they tell you,’ she said with something close to complacency. Den badly wanted not to be seen to be on her side.
‘When was that, then?’ he asked Abigail. ‘When you last saw him?’
‘Monday night.’
‘What time?’
‘Around ten. Bedtime in this house.’ She grimaced mockingly. The frown deepened and Den could see the battle against tears. ‘I never said goodbye.’
Here, then, at last was someone who was grieved at O’Farrell’s passing. He looked in fading hope at the mother. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said feebly.
Abigail got up with a single movement and made for the door, one hand over her face. All three adults let her go without a word. Den observed how solid she was: her shoulders broad and well-muscled under her sweatshirt, large hips and strong-looking legs. Mike was right – she was a robust young thing; but Den had the greatest difficulty in imagining her driving a fork into her father’s body.
‘What were Sean’s hobbies?’ he asked the
widow, after a few moments. ‘What did he do in his spare time?’ He remembered Deirdre Watson’s suggestion of a separate life, lived by Sean O’Farrell well away from his family.
‘What do you mean?’ Heather seemed to have been wandering in a world of her own since before her daughter’s departure from the room.
‘Fishing? Darts? Horse riding? Bird watching?’ Den suggested. ‘Anything like that?’
‘He had mates,’ she said. ‘They go shooting together sometimes. Rabbits, pigeons, mainly. Didn’t get much spare time, working here.’
‘What can you tell us about the incident where the dog attacked him?’ Den dropped the question without warning.
Heather stared at him. ‘Dog?’ she echoed foolishly.
Den spread his hands and smiled apologetically. ‘It sounded nasty,’ he prompted. ‘Mr Hillcock’s animal – an Alsation, I understand.’
‘Oh, that,’ she dismissed. ‘That was his own fault. It mended clean enough.’ She paused. ‘Abby was upset about it, though. Heard the poor thing howling when it died, and got herself in a real state over it. Soft about animals, is Abby.’ She cocked her head towards the area behind the house, where the little menagerie was.
Den stuck to his point. ‘Who do you think poisoned the dog?’
Heather sighed. ‘Good thing Abby isn’t here – she wouldn’t even let us talk about it. If anyone even
mentions
the name Fergus, she gets in a strop. She goes on all the time about badger baiters and that stuff – it’s her age. They’re all up in arms about animals, these days.’
‘Do you think Sean might have poisoned the dog?’
She worked her shoulders minimally. ‘He might have done,’ she admitted.
Den said nothing. Mike caught his eye, conveying a question; Den remembered that he hadn’t been told about Fergus.
‘Let’s just make sure we’ve covered everything,’ he resumed. ‘Sean was here for the lunch hour, but not for the rest of the day. Even though it was an unscheduled afternoon off, he still stuck to his usual hour’s break and was then outside somewhere. Have I got that right?’
Heather nodded. ‘Sounds funny, put like that,’ she realised. ‘But that was his habit. He didn’t like to hang about in the house, at least not when the weather’s dry. He’d make sure I was all right first, of course.’ Her lip began to quiver ominously and Den understood that they’d been lucky to have had twenty minutes free from tears. He felt a pang of alarmed sympathy
for Abigail. Was she going to be sucked into replacing her father as reliable provider of soup, tea and firewood?
‘So you never really knew what he was doing? You didn’t go out with him on his days off?’ What he wanted to know was:
What do you do all day, cooped up here with your mysterious illness?
‘Not very often,’ Mrs O’Farrell confirmed. ‘He talked a bit about the farm, of course. He was very committed to the cows. He takes them to shows in the summer, you know.
Took
, I mean,’ she added pathetically.
Den thought he understood how it had been. She was far too self-absorbed to waste much attention on the activities of her husband or daughter. So long as she was warm and fed, she wasn’t going to let herself fret. Like a big lazy cat, he thought, or a pampered sheep. But what had been in it for the devoted Sean? Some idea of martyrdom, he supposed, remembering Deirdre Watson’s comments.
On the face of it, Sean O’Farrell sounded almost inhumanly patient and conscientious – but only towards his wife and daughter. To everyone else he was a sullen or provoking individual. Den had seen it before, of course. Men who showed one side of themselves to their family and something completely different to the outside
world. It was almost a commonplace. Except, he suddenly realised, that it was generally the other way around. Most men presented themselves as polite and charming to their neighbours and workmates, whilst wreaking havoc at home. Street angel, house devil. Sean O’Farrell turned that on its head.
Lilah arrived at Dunsworthy just as Den and Mike were leaving the O’Farrell women to their grief and heading for lunch at a local hostelry. She had been to a morning lecture at college, the first of the new term, and thus not to be lightly missed, but she had sat through it unheeding, turning over and over in her mind all the reasons why Gordon could not possibly have murdered Sean, and what she might be able to do about it.
The drive back had gone as unnoticed as the lecture, the car somehow managing to get her from college to farm without any conscious effort on Lilah’s part. She wanted to join Gordon in the house, when he went in to get himself and Granny some lunch. If she got the timing right,
there’d be half an hour for sex before he went out again to get on with the jobs. Sex with Gordon was Lilah’s highest priority, and had been for the past three months. She kept wondering when the novelty would wear off, when they could settle into something less frenzied and more ordinary. She kept hoping it wouldn’t be for a long time yet.
The sight of Den turning out into the road, as she reached the entrance, jolted her into the here and now. She noticed, as she always had, how his head reached right to the car roof, so he had to tilt it forward. She remembered, while irritably trying to quell the memory, how this had always amused her. His height had been a source of wonder to her, and an odd kind of pride. She had never succeeded in forgetting how concerned and kind he’d been when her father had died, how she’d sheltered in his protective tallness, and how he’d been injured in the process of catching the killer. The only way she could deal with it now was to stoke up her anger with him. Originally, anger at his naked suffering for the past three months; but now, a gratifying and much more righteous rage at what he was doing to Gordon.
She reminded herself of the awful things Den had said about Gordon when she’d first told him he’d been displaced.
That old womaniser!
he’d shouted.
You’d better watch yourself, then. He’
ll
give you some foul disease if you’re not careful.
That had been the one she’d been unable to ignore. Nobody of her age, even in the remoter reaches of Devonshire, could entirely dismiss the threat of HIV. Mustering her courage, she’d murmured her worries to Gordon, who had smiled in the sweetest way and assured her there was no need to worry. He’d padded over to his big oak bureau, and produced a piece of paper that gave a negative blood test result, dated six months earlier.
‘Just as if I’d known you’d ask,’ he’d laughed at her. ‘I’ve been having routine tests like this for quite a while now. And—’ he’d look at her with complete openness, ‘I haven’t slept with anyone else since this was done.’
She refused to meet Den’s eye, as their cars passed within inches of each other. Looking straight ahead, she bounced her Astra through the puddle at the farm entrance and sped up the farm track.
Bugger Den Cooper,
she repeated to herself, five or six times.
Gordon was washing his boots under the tap outside the back door when she found him. ‘Perfect timing,’ she boasted. ‘What’s for lunch?’
He looked her full in the face, without smiling. His eyes were more shadowed than usual, and there were lines she hadn’t seen before around his mouth. ‘Wrong,’ he said lightly, but with the
controlled anger just audible. ‘Perfect timing would have been if you’d got here half an hour ago, and had something waiting on the table for me.’
‘Ha!’ she responded, choosing not to notice that he was serious. ‘You should be so lucky. After I did the milking for you, too!’ She moved towards him, tucking her hands under the fleecy jacket he wore. ‘Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see me.’
He kissed her lingeringly on the forehead, working his lips against her skin. A slight moan told her she’d achieved her goal; the power of her effect on him was intoxicating. Her own body was responding, too, the familiar throb building up.
‘Never mind lunch,’ she whispered, nestling into his chest, feeling his heat under the rough layers of clothes. ‘First things first.’
There was a greed to their lovemaking that had been completely new to her. A confusing sense that they could have as much as they wanted, and yet never really have enough. All her previous experience now seemed prim and miserly: snatched nights with Den in their first year together, with his job and her farm responsibilities distracting them. It had very quickly become routine, secondary to the plans they kept making and the discussions of daytime matters. With
Gordon, there was much less conversation and much more direct bodily contact. There were never any plans, no references to the future.
She hadn’t known it was possible to be so aroused. She felt perpetually on the edge of orgasm whenever Gordon was in sight. He had taught her an infinity of practices, which she felt frightened and foolish not to have discovered before. Frightened, especially, at the knowledge that, if she’d stayed with Den, she might never have discovered this secret world. Gordon used parts of their bodies she had never previously imagined could be given a sexual role. He rubbed her armpits hard with his nose, he massaged her inner thighs with his heel. Introducing her to sensations she might have gone to her grave never having known.
From the start, he had demanded that she avoid all contraception. ‘I won’t make you pregnant,’ he’d promised. ‘I’ll make sure of that. You have to trust me. That’s why I have those tests – so you needn’t worry about infections.’
This had been a shock initially, and for a few minutes she had to fight down the panic that came with it. ‘But why can’t we use condoms?’ she’d asked him. ‘What difference does it make?’
He’d given a self-conscious little smile, and shrugged. ‘It’s a thing with me,’ he said. ‘I like sex to be unimpeded.’
‘But the Pill …’
‘Is very bad for you,’ he’d reproved her. ‘And it damps down your responses. You’ll have to believe me – it’s much better my way.’
And he’d been right. At twenty-five, Lilah’s body was screaming to reproduce in any case, and the danger of knowing he could lapse from his promise and ejaculate inside her sent her insane with irrational excitement she didn’t even try to control. She found herself employing all kinds of tricks to make him do just that, and many times believed he had. It didn’t seem possible that he could last so long, driving her to frenzy, and still withdraw in time to come all over her belly, thrilling her with his final abandonment of control. It made her feel powerful, that he could be so helpless, if only for these few final seconds.
She was impressed, this lunchtime, that he could perform at all, after a night in police custody and with the threat of arrest hanging over him. But the sex was not as abandoned as on some previous occasions, and there was a moment when she was sure he wasn’t going to pull away – a long, hovering, crescendo of a moment, when his eyes met hers and she saw him almost decide to stay where he was. She flinched involuntarily, and he withdrew, flopping onto her with a groan.
She was increasingly aware that Gordon was predominantly a physical being. He went through
his daily routines, he read farming magazines and completed endless government forms, he balanced his accounts and instructed his employees – and all the time he was only half alive, until he took his clothes off and became his true self. Lilah felt she’d been handed a uniquely precious gift, that she had discovered the elixir of life, the secret of true bliss. The idea that all this might be snatched away from her was unendurable. She would fight to the death to prevent it from happening.
Because Lilah had already – silently but definitely – made a number of assumptions about the future. She would marry Gordon and move into the house, living with him and his mother and sister – and grandmother. She would have babies with him, but that wouldn’t impede their sex life. Nothing could do that. She’d help on the farm, and use her horticultural skills to augment their income, diversifying into fruit and vegetables, where a substantial sum could still be made. Her mother could sell Redstone, and move to a house in town, where she’d settle down and be quite happy. Farm prices were rocky, but at worst there’d be some hundreds of thousands of pounds in equity after such a sale. Roddy would make his own way in life – Miranda could keep it all and indulge whatever whims she liked. To Lilah it had all seemed so obvious, so easy. Until yesterday.
The two of them stumbled shakily down the stairs again at ten to two, Gordon muttering about keeping Granny waiting for her lunch, surprised she hadn’t started ringing the bell or banging her stick by now. Lilah spread Flora on slices of granary bread while Gordon shaved thin slivers of cheese onto a plate, and then cut two tomatoes carefully into slices almost as thin as the cheese. ‘Just how she likes it,’ he boasted. ‘Plenty of black pepper, and it’ll be perfect.’ Lilah watched his big square hands deftly arrange the filling in the sandwich and smiled. Gordon’s affection for his granny was one of the things she found most sweet about him.
‘What are we having?’ she asked. ‘More of the same?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever you like. There’s some leftovers at the back of the fridge. One of Mary’s crumbles, and a wodge of cottage pie. I never had any supper last night, so they kept it for me to have today.’
‘We’d have to heat it up, and there isn’t time. I’ll just do a couple more sandwiches, shall I?’
But Gordon had gone, carrying a small tray with Granny’s sandwiches and a glass of orange juice on it. He appeared five minutes later, and picked up the conversation as if there’d been no interruption. ‘Fergus used to love cottage pie,’ he said, scratching an eyebrow absently. ‘I always tried to save him a bit.’
‘Fergus? Oh – the dog.’ She spoke carelessly, still savouring the recent lovemaking, still tingling, hot in some places and cold, almost raw, in others.
‘He was a dog in a million.’ The intensity of his tone made her freeze. She worried that she’d been flippant, dismissive of something important to him.
‘Oh, I
know
,’ she said with deliberate sincerity. ‘We had a dog just before Daddy died – Lydwina, of all dopey names. She got kicked to death by a heifer. It was terrible. I’ve never seen Roddy so upset.’
‘I remember your dad. A lot of people thought he was a bit round the twist. Calling a dog Lydwina can’t have helped his reputation.’
‘He was just unusual,’ she said loyally. ‘Didn’t want to be seen as a thick Devon farmer. Actually it worked very well, as a name. You can sort of sing it when you’re calling.’
‘Sean killed Fergus, you know,’ Gordon said quietly. ‘Poisoned him.’
Lilah’s blood stood still. She could feel veins of ice forming deep inside her. ‘What?’
‘At least, I thought he did,’ the farmer amended. ‘He denied it. Said he’d never do such a thing. But Fergus attacked him, ripped his ear half off – I wouldn’t blame him really.’ He spoke in a dull voice, as if it really didn’t matter.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she queried. ‘It might be a good idea to try and keep that story quiet, though. I mean, the police …’
‘They’ll see the scar. They’ll ask what happened. Heather’ll tell them, if no one else does.’
‘Gordon—’ She finished cutting up the sandwiches, and put the knife down. But she didn’t go to him, remaining out of arm’s reach.
‘What?’ He leant over the breakfast bar and helped himself to a sandwich. ‘I hope you’re not going to ask me whether I killed Sean?’
‘No. Of course not. I know you didn’t. Obviously you didn’t.’
‘But it isn’t obvious, is it?’ he demanded, staring into her face, the aftermath of their lovemaking still in his eyes, on his lips. ‘What’s obvious is that I had ample opportunity, a whole farm full of means, and maybe a motive as well. Revenge for Fergus. Everybody knows how much I loved him, how proud I was of what he’d turned out like. He went everywhere with me. He could read my mind.’
Lilah became aware of an unexpected emotion rising from somewhere in her chest.
Jealousy!
She realised.
I’m jealous of a dead dog!
Out of nowhere – or so she supposed – came the suspicion that she had been a mere replacement for Fergus. A playmate, a companion who would
feed Gordon’s ego, be something to be proud of.
He laughed, still watching her face. ‘I can read you like a book,’ he chuckled. ‘Every thought is plain on your face. Don’t worry, little girl – I never got round to fucking my dog.’
It was a sluice of cold water and she almost drowned in it. She floundered like a swimmer out of her depth, at the glimpse of the person she had taken up with. He was so … unknowable. She felt so young and naïve in comparison to him. She was insubstantial and ignorant, inexperienced and ingenuous. He had seen and done dark things, he could make jokes about bestiality and murder. But much worse than all this, she suspected that he regarded her as nothing more than a sexual plaything.
Well, she’d show him. Forcing a smile, she picked up one of the sandwiches, as casually as she could. ‘I never thought you did,’ she said, with her mouth full. ‘I shouldn’t think you were ever that desperate. And – well – it’s not as if it was a
female
dog, is it?’
Gordon put up one hand in an odd kind of salute, and said nothing. The gesture said,
Well done, kiddo. Good to see you’ve got some gumption.
Too right I have
, she silently responded. She knew now what she had to do. Her bridges were well and truly burnt – there was no going back.
And Gordon had thrown her a challenge she couldn’t ignore:
Take me as I am, face up to the person I might turn out to be, and you won’t be sorry
. It was like that terrible moment, poised at the pinnacle of the highest of all rollercoasters, knowing pure terror as it tips you over into the abyss. Knowing that when it’s all over, you’ll be proud and thrilled and relieved.
‘We’re going to prove you didn’t kill Sean,’ she said with sudden force. ‘We’re going to make sure there’s never going to be a case against you. It won’t even come to trial.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ he smiled. ‘I was hoping that’s what you’d say.’