Authors: Rebecca Tope
Forcing his attention yet again onto the man rather than his animals, he tried to make an objective assessment of Gordon Hillcock, without allowing the thought of Lilah to intrude. He resolved to be friendly:
The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief
, he reminded himself. It had always been a pleasing thought.
Hillcock manifested self-confidence. There was nothing to indicate that this was a killer, seen barely twenty-four hours after taking another man’s life. But Den knew how people could conceal their own guilt from themselves as well as others. He had seen bereaved parents appear at news conferences to appeal for public help in catching the killer of their own child – only to turn out to be guilty of the crime. Hillcock was following an everyday routine, every move for which was familiar to him. He wasn’t being asked to explain himself, or to demonstrate his innocence. It would be more surprising if he suddenly did or said something that would incriminate him.
Den made a big show of writing down every move, with timings. Gordon left the parlour three
times, and Den forced himself to ask him exactly what he’d been doing, on each occasion.
‘Checking the tank isn’t overflowing. Making sure the gates are right for them to go back into their stalls. Having a piss.’ He was gone for less than a minute, two minutes, and ninety seconds respectively. If this was typical, there was clearly no opportunity to commit a murder during milking. And Den had a strong suspicion that the piss would not normally require a removal from the parlour. If the cows could do it all over the floor, he saw no reason why the man shouldn’t, if he was sure of being unobserved.
‘Does it take longer to milk them when it’s Recording Day?’ he asked, when the ordeal was finally over and the last cows had been released.
Gordon nodded.
‘How much longer?’
‘Ten, fifteen minutes. Longer to set it all up, too. Have to put sixteen meters up.’
‘How long does that take?’
‘Ten, fifteen minutes,’ he said again.
‘When did you do it yesterday?’
‘Around one-thirty.’
‘Before Mrs Watson arrived?’
Gordon nodded again.
Den wrote it all down, but he knew there were glaring gaps. In his mind’s ear, he could hear Gordon’s defence lawyer making a mockery
of their case.
Nobody to say whether or not Mr Hillcock was in the yard at the relevant time
…
The nature of the buildings could easily conceal
…
Why, why, why
…
Is this the likely behaviour
… Phrases designed to throw doubt and confusion into the minds of a jury, to highlight the complexity of a modern farm and the numerous comings and goings that could take place unobserved. Den gritted his teeth and avoided Hillcock’s complacent gaze.
‘I have to interview your relatives,’ Den announced, when the milking was well and truly finished. ‘Including a quick word with your grandmother,’ he said, on a sudden whim; the brief flash of alarm on the farmer’s face was profoundly encouraging. ‘I know my colleague spoke to her this morning, but I have one or two further questions for her.’
‘She’s a very old lady,’ Gordon objected. ‘Surely she has a right not to be brought into all this? I doubt she even knows who Sean O’Farrell is, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I won’t upset her, I assure you. Your sister led me to believe she’d be quite glad to have someone to talk to.’
‘Did she now,’ Gordon snorted dismissively.
Den had noticed one lighted window on the upstairs floor of the farmhouse, the previous evening, as he and Mike had driven away from Dunsworthy with Mary and Gordon in the back. A corner room looking out obliquely over the gathering yard where Sean had been found. Something told him that the Hillcock family would not be inclined to leave lights on in empty rooms. It was probable, then, that this was Granny’s room – and what more likely than that the old lady would spend her afternoons sitting by the window, looking for anything unusual that might be going on outside? Young Mike had gleaned very little from her, beyond the fact that she had indeed been sitting near the window, but Den hoped this was only because he hadn’t asked the right questions.
‘I’ll be out here for another half-hour at least,’ Gordon told him. ‘My mother and sister’ll be home by now. Why don’t you go and make a start? They’ll be grateful you haven’t disrupted them at work, I’m sure.’
Den hesitated, trying to assess Hillcock’s tone. It was cooperative, even considerate. It was obvious that he habitually gave some thought to other people’s needs as well as his own. His handling of his cows had been deft, gentle, compassionate. And yet to Den it all felt like a
façade – as if Hillcock’s real thoughts and feelings were happening somewhere else; somewhere much deeper and darker.
The ramifications of the situation were beginning to snag at Den’s smouldering and instinctive dislike of Hillcock. There was Lilah, and the acute awareness that they had shared intimate knowledge of her body. There was the shadow of Sean’s dead body in the adjacent building. And there was the looming, threatening void that was Hillcock’s future. It wasn’t possible that the man was unafraid. Den could feel it himself, somewhere just below his stomach – a sharp acid turbulence, when he thought of how it must be inside Gordon Hillcock.
Dunsworthy farmhouse was solidly built, with large square rooms, high ceilings and quarry-tiled floors throughout much of the downstairs rooms. The house had been designed for airiness and space, with a dairy, pantry and generous kitchen. Some of its original furniture was still in place – a great oak dresser, a set of straight-backed chairs and a strange piece comprising nine drawers, kept in the former dairy for the storage of all kinds of assorted oddments. Claudia’s mother-in-law had introduced an Aga, and Claudia herself, in her first weeks at the farm, had bought a handsome oak table to replace a rickety predecessor. The
living room was well filled with three unmatching armchairs, a large sofa and a big mahogany writing desk. An old carpet was almost invisible under a varied collection of handmade rugs, mostly the work of Gordon’s grandmother.
There was another large ground-floor room, which the family rather eerily referred to as Daddy’s Room. In it were two glass-fronted cases containing the best china; a filing cabinet used by Mary for her school paperwork; and a large polished walnut writing desk.
Den had assimilated some of this information on his first visit to the house, an hour or so after the discovery of Sean O’Farrell’s body. He had described it to himself as comfortable, well-kept, unpretentious, traditional. There had been few shocks or surprises – no unclean corners or signs of unusually messy indoor animals. He had in his line of duty encountered pet lambs, incontinent puppies and even a Vietnamese potbellied pig, all making free with every downstairs room in a succession of houses. Nothing so uncouth met his gaze here. Dunsworthy was not obviously a farmhouse at all.
It had been dark for well over an hour already, and the sky was bright with stars. A sliver of new moon was rising over the fields, and the air was biting. Twenty-four hours ago he had just arrived here, summoned to a sudden death,
holding himself in a state of suspension until he knew whether it was Gordon Hillcock who’d got himself killed. What a lot could happen in a day, he sighed.
‘More questions for you, I’m afraid,’ he said, when Mary opened the front door to his knock.
She looked as if there were a number of questions she’d like to ask
him
, but she couldn’t quite find the words. After all, what could she say?
Are you any nearer to proving my brother’s a murderer?
wouldn’t have been acceptable, in the circumstances.
The two Hillcock women had changed dramatically from his previous encounter with them. Claudia was unsmiling, monosyllabic, subtly hostile; Mary looked tired and anxious. ‘What happens now?’ she asked. ‘With Sean, I mean? I said I’d drop in on Heather again this evening. When will she be able to go and see the body?’
‘That’s a matter for the Coroner’s Officer,’ Den told her. ‘And the undertaker. It’ll be a few days yet, I would think. It’s good of you to be so concerned about her.’
‘The woman’s ill, for heaven’s sake. What else would you expect me to do?’ Den glanced at the mother, sitting stiffly beside the kitchen table, a large glass of white wine close to her hand. The bottle, already half-empty, stood nearby.
‘I’d like a few more words with you both, as well as with Mrs Hillcock senior,’ he said firmly. ‘Perhaps I should start with the old lady? I won’t keep her long, but there are one or two things I’d like to clarify.’
‘Have you been here all afternoon?’ Claudia asked suddenly.
Den nodded. ‘I wanted to see what went on during a typical milking.’
‘My God! Three hours of uninterrupted tedium, I should think. I don’t suppose Gordon was very chatty either.’
Den retained his dignity with only minor effort. ‘It’s surprising how fast the time passes,’ he smiled. ‘Now would one of you kindly show me up to the old lady’s room? And then I’m afraid I’ll have to speak to each of you separately, for half an hour or so.’
Mary unlatched a door opening onto a staircase that turned and turned again, so that Den had to look back and check that he still had his bearings. The room they went into was the first on the left, as they moved along a short landing. Yes, it would be the one over the downstairs living room – the one to the left of the front door. The corner room, where he’d seen the light.
The old lady was in bed, sitting up against a pile of pillows, a large fluffy cat snuggled against
her side. The bed was facing the window, but some distance from it; Den doubted that she would be able to see much activity outside from where she was. But, more promisingly, there was a Parker Knoll armchair closer to the window, with a
good-sized
round oak table beside it. A jigsaw was laid out, half-finished, alongside a pile of thick books that he thought might be photograph or stamp albums. A good-sized television occupied another corner, visible from either bed or chair; it was switched off. The room was far from overheated, which Den found surprising.
Mary moved to close the velvet curtains across the window. ‘Chilly this evening, Granny,’ she said. ‘Shall I get you an extra blanket?’
The old woman shook her head vigorously. ‘Can’t abide to be too hot,’ she said firmly.
Mary smiled. ‘It’s the secret of her long life,’ she told Den. ‘Isn’t it, Granny?’
‘Not ’ealthy to be too hot,’ came the confirmation.
A pair of dark brown eyes stared keenly at him from beneath straggling white eyebrows, as he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, the ceiling only a few inches above his head. Her hands lay on the covers, brown and bent and mottled. She was shrunken and fleshless, but an energy radiating from her filled the room. ‘’Oo be thiccy?’ she demanded, her voice high and reedy.
Den noticed that she appeared to have no teeth at all; it plainly affected her speech, giving her words a lisping fuzziness that was rather endearing.
‘This is one of the policemen I told you about this morning,’ Mary said. ‘One of the men got killed yesterday – remember? They’re asking a lot of questions about it.’
Granny Hillcock narrowed her eyes, and looked shiftily from one side of the room to the other. Apparently Mary knew the significance of this. ‘It’s all right, Granny. You probably don’t remember.’
‘One of my colleagues came up this morning to speak to you,’ Den ventured. ‘Your grandson brought him up, about coffee time.’
‘She doesn’t drink coffee,’ Mary interrupted. ‘You’ll just muddle her saying that.’
‘Do it be zupper time?’ the old woman asked.
‘Another half an hour. Gordon’s not in yet,’ Mary said. ‘I’ll go and get it ready, and you can talk to the man.’
Den let Mary go with a sense of helplessness. ‘Mrs Hillcock—’ he began, approaching to within a foot of her and speaking much louder than normal.
‘I can yere ’ee,’ she interrupted. ‘I idn deaf.’
‘Do you sit over there in the afternoons? Where you can see out of the window?’
She nodded, frowning slightly. ‘That be my chair. Can’t bide in bed all day.’
‘Quite right,’ he smiled. ‘So do you watch Gordon out there working?’
A repeat of the eye movements, darting to left and right like the evasive glance of an uncooperative child. It was a disturbing trick. ‘What should I watch ’un vurr?’ she said slowly.
‘Oh, I don’t know. For interest. Do you know Sean O’Farrell? The herdsman. The one who does most of the milking?’
She tucked her chin down tightly into her neck. ‘They cows is proper mucky,’ she observed. ‘Dan’l’d have zummat to zay bout that.’
Den found some encouragement in this; she obviously did glance outside now and then. ‘Is that Sean’s fault, would you say?’
‘Nasty sod,’ she spat suddenly. Den couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘What be ’ee laughin’ at?’ she demanded. ‘Dog got un. I zaw it. Screamin’ fit to bust, and Gordon just standin’ there. Serve ’un right, the boy zed. ’Twill end in trouble, I thunk – zee if I weren’t right, eh?’
She fixed him with a look of such intelligence that it took his breath away. A deep, limpid glance, completely at odds with her previous demeanour as a confused old woman. ‘Was he teasing the dog, then?’ he asked her.
‘Made it vair mazed with teasing,’ she confirmed. ‘Nasty sod.’
‘Well, yesterday, somebody killed him,’ Den
said slowly. ‘Out there in the yard.’ He walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked down. The corner where the worst of the bloodstains had been found was lit up by one of the high-wattage outside lights. ‘You can see it from here.’
‘I zeed ’un teasing the dog,’ she repeated.
‘That was a long time ago,’ he told her. ‘What about yesterday?’
‘’Tiz all the zame to me,’ she grinned. ‘But tid’n our Gordon you be wanting. Us’d never get by wi’out the boy. You leave ’un be. They be going vur to make me a great-granma, ifn ’ee leaves ’un be.’ A smile was followed by a sudden frown, as if she’d remembered a disconcerting truth that gave the lie to her words.
It took a second for the import to make itself clear to Den. When it did, he clenched his jaw tight enough to crack his molars. The effort brought a stinging suggestion of tears to the place behind his eyes, as he remembered that Mike had reported a similar remark.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think that’s all for now. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you.’
She raised one hand briefly, in a queenly gesture of dismissal. ‘Nasty sod,’ she muttered, and Den hoped it was still Sean O’Farrell she was alluding to.
Mary Hillcock sat comfortably on the big old sofa in the sitting room, facing Den as he took the most formal chair in the room, balancing his notebook on one knee. He began by superfluously verifying her name and age, and her whereabouts on Tuesday afternoon. She answered him steadily, unsmiling, watching unblinking as he wrote down her replies. Her manner seemed to be everything he could ask for in a witness – concerned, attentive, thoughtful. Why then, he wondered, did he get a strong sense that he couldn’t trust her?
‘I’d like to get a bit of background,’ he said. ‘I understand the farm’s been in the family a long time?’
‘I was born here,’ she nodded. ‘So was Gordon. My father was about twelve, I think, when his parents moved here. It was during the war – they came from Hampshire.’
‘And is there a mortgage on the property?’
She shook her head. ‘Daddy paid it off about five years before he died. It must be worth around fifteen hundred times what they paid for it. Frightening, really.’
Den blinked. From the sound of it, someone had done the calculation quite recently. He supposed a farm of Dunsworthy’s size – two hundred acres or so – would have fetched about five thousand pounds in the 1940s. Possibly less.
Now they were thinking in terms of
£
750,000, if the sums were right. He agreed with Mary – the idea really was frightening.
‘But nobody’s doing too well in farming these days?’ he suggested.
‘Too right,’ she nodded emphatically. ‘It’s only me and Mum that’s keeping it all going, at the moment. It’s very hard for poor Gordon, working such long hours, and not even breaking even most months. They’ve just put the price of cattle cake up again, you know, at the same time as milk prices are dropping. It’s a complete scandal.’
She spoke placidly, like somebody repeating words that had become so familiar they’d lost much of their meaning.
‘Could you tell me anything about the other families living here? The Speedwells and O’Farrells? How long have they been with you?’
She pursed her lips. ‘The O’Farrells came at the same time as my grandparents. Ted and Jilly came quite a bit after that. You’d have to ask them the precise dates.’
‘The Speedwells have a son, is that right? Did he grow up here?’