âI'm not under-age,' said Cheryl. âI know what I'm doing. It's my business and no one else's, right? Mine and Norman's. You can't touch us.'
âI can!' snarled her mother. âWhen I've finished with Norman, he'll wish he'd never been born!'
âWho's Norman?' asked Pearce.
âNorman Stubbings. He runs the pub, the Fitzroy Arms.' Cheryl paused to remove a putty-coloured wad from her mouth, survey it frowning and look round for somewhere to put it. Holding indicated the ashtray on the table. Cheryl dropped her gum into it. âHe's my boyfriend.'
âNo, he isn't,' argued her mother. âHe's a married man and you ought to know better.'
Cheryl ignored this. âI used to work there evenings, washing up glasses. I live in Lower Stovey. It isn't half a dump,' she added in parenthesis. Pearce wondered whether there was
anything and anyone other than the absent Norman that Cheryl didn't despise.
âEvie, that's Norman's old woman, she doesn't like me. She was always picking on me. She kept snooping round trying to catch me with Norman. Norman didn't want her making trouble with the brewery. So I started working up at the Drovers' Rest, on the old way, instead. It's nice up there. You get interesting people, cyclists, walkers and that and they've got a dishwasher. I was sorry not to see so much of Norman, of course.'
âWouldn't you think,' demanded Mrs Spencer, âthat a girl her age â she's only just turned nineteen â would find a young man and not go wasting her time with someone old enough to be her father and married, at that? You silly slut!' she admonished her daughter.
âOh, give over, Mum. You don't know Norman.'
âDon't I? Then that's just where you're wrong, my girl! Norman Stubbings was in the primary class when I was in the top class at the old school. Nasty, sneaky little kid with a runny nose, always standing by himself in the corner of the yard because no one would play with him. I remember his mother, a real old besom. Hardly ever sober. She used to stand outside the school and shout at the teachers. We always reckoned she was barmy.'
Holding cleared her throat as a hint. Cheryl obligingly took up her tale. âNot working at the Fitzroy Arms any more, it was difficult for me to see Norman, like I said. Then he had this really good idea. See, the pub's opposite the church. The church is open most of the day but no one goes in it much. Norman, he'd got the keys. He could go in there any time.'
âWhere did he get the keys?' Pearce asked, startled.
âHe'd always had them. Well, they were his dad's. Ages ago when it was a proper church and had a vicar, it had a bell-ringing team and Norman's dad was the captain. He had the keys so that they could all get in there and practise. When it stopped being a proper church, there was no more bell-ringing, but no one asked Norman's dad for the keys, so he kept them. When he died they were among his stuff and they'd been lying round in a drawer at the pub for years. One of the keys lets you into the tower. There's a little room at the top. So when I wasn't working at the Drovers', he'd give me a call on my mobile, and I'd slip over to the church and wait for him there. As soon as he could get away from Evie, he'd come over and open up the tower and we'd go up there. At first it was really cool.'
âIt was downright disgusting!' said Mrs Spencer.
âWhen?' asked Pearce. âWhen was the last time you and Stubbings rendezvoused in the tower?'
Cheryl was nonplussed by the term ârendezvous' and enquired if that meant having it off?
âIn your case,' said Pearce, âit probably does.'
âOoh, sarky!' retorted Cheryl. âIs that why they made you inspector? Because you knew some long words?'
âStick to the point, Cheryl,' advised Holding hastily.
âThe last time I met Norman in the church â
rendezvoused â
was before that old woman got stabbed. At least two weeks before that. We'd stopped using the tower. Evie had got so suspicious, he found it harder and harder to get away. He said we should vary our routine, that's what people should do if they're being watched, and he said we shouldn't go there again. I didn't mind because by then I'd gone off being in the tower. It was fun at first, you know, exciting. But after a bit I got fed up
with hanging around in the churchyard with all those graves, and when I could get inside, it was worse. It's not much fun being on your own in an empty church with all those stone carvings looking at you. I didn't mind it when Norman was there with me. But on my own, it gave me the creeps. Norman said not to worry, he'd think of somewhere else.'
âAnd did he?'
âYeah, Norman's clever, he thought of the old shed at the back of the car park.'
âWhich,' said Mrs Spencer, âwas where I found them last night. I knew that girl was up to something. I heard her muttering on that mobile phone of hers. She's always got it glued to her ear. I knew she was up to no good from the sound of her voice, whispering all excited. I followed her and I caught 'em at it. Norman, the little toad, he ran off. I made our Cheryl tell me everything. In the church, I ask you. Then I reckoned we ought to come and tell you, because you've been investigating in that church. Evie, she's a spiteful cow, not but what she's got good reason for it. But she might go telling you she'd seen Cheryl going in there. Just to get her own back, see?'
âYou did quite right, Mrs Spencer and you, Cheryl.'
Cheryl took a fresh stick of gum from her pocket and unwrapped it. Popping it in her mouth, she observed, âNorman's not going to like this.'
Mrs Spencer assured them in bloodthirsty tones that you bet Norman Stubbings wasn't going to like it, not one bit.
Pearce went back to Markby and gave him the news that the mystery of the tower's visitors had been solved and it didn't appear to have anything to do with Hester's death.
âBy the time Hester was killed, Stubbings and the girl had given up meeting in the tower. They were using some old shed. That Mrs Spencer's a real old battleaxe. If we find Norman Stubbings with a knife sticking out of his back, we'll know who did it!' Dave concluded.
He then drove out to Lower Stovey and proceeded to give the landlord a wretched half-hour.
It was always nice when one could tie up loose ends and Pearce went home happy. Tessa, also in a good mood, proved surprisingly obliging when asked if she'd like to make a few discreet enquiries of her sister regarding Becky Jones. In fact, she was alarmingly keen to do a bit of detective work, as she put it. Pearce was afraid she might get carried away and watched her depart for a visit to her family with some trepidation. He wished the superintendent appeared more interested in who had murdered Hester Millar and less in catching the rapist after twenty-two years. Pearce still doubted the offender had remained in Lower Stovey, if he'd ever lived there. He certainly didn't believe the Potato Man had come out of retirement after so long simply to stab Hester Millar.
Tessa, while her husband was meditating on these things, was sitting in her sister's bedroom. She had listened patiently to a long tale of Jasmine's dramatic break-up with her latest boyfriend, and now that Jaz had got that off her chest, Tessa made her move.
Staring in the dressing-table mirror, she tugged at a strand of her long, pale yellow hair and announced, âI'm thinking of dyeing it red.'
âWhat, your hair?' asked Jaz, momentarily distracted from her broken heart. âWhat for?'
âFor a change. Why not? It might suit me.'
âDave wouldn't like it,' said Jaz sapiently.
âDon't see why he shouldn't.' Tessa clutched her hair and piled it on top of her head. âI want a new look.'
âMost people want to be blonde,' said Jaz enviously, studying her own mousy locks, reflected over her older sister's shoulder.
âBut there are fewer red-heads,' argued Tessa. âHow many girls at your school have really red hair or ginger hair? I bet, not many.'
Jaz considered this and said, âMichele King has and she hates it. She's got the freckles that go with it and she can't sunbathe or anything. She goes bright red. When her family goes on holiday to Spain, she has to cover right up, long sleeves and everything. She wore a bikini one year and she said she ended up looking like a lobster.'
âBut I haven't got that sort of skin, have I? Anyway,' said Tessa, ânot all red-heads have that problem. Isn't there another kid in your class, Becky something or other, with reddish hair?'
Jaz frowned. âThe only Becky is Becky Jones and she hasn't got red hair. It's light brownish, sort of a bit like mine.'
âOh, right, I'm thinking of someone else, then. Anyway, I think I'll have my hair cut really short.'
âYou're barmy,' said Jaz.
Markby was on a trail of his own. Among the photographs on Old Billy Twelvetrees' mantelshelf stood one of the late Mrs Twelvetrees and three children. He'd seen Dilys. Sandra he'd no idea where to find and wasn't much bothered. He was interested to find, if possible, young Billy Twelvetrees, the eldest of the trio of glum infants in the picture. Dilys was of an
age with Ruth, who was, he knew, fifty-seven. Young Billy must now be in his early sixties. Which meant that twenty-two years ago, he'd have been just on forty. But there was no record of an interview with him in the file on the Potato Man. Since every other man in the village had been quizzed, how had they missed Young Billy? If he hadn't been in the village, where had he been?
Tracking down Young Billy wasn't difficult, as things turned out. The surname was unusual and its owner hadn't moved far. He lived in Bamford. The house was a narrow terraced one with a pocket-sized front garden which was obsessively neat. Everything in it was to scale, that is to say, small. The principle, Markby supposed, was that you thus could get in everything a bigger garden might have. Bonsai-sized shrubs surrounded a tiny square of grass in the middle of which was a stone basin not bigger than a large dinner plate, filled with pebbles over which dribbled an amount of water you'd be pleased to clean your teeth with. A row of miniature red tulips stood like toy guardsmen in a strip of earth which could hardly be called a bed. It looked more like a tyre-track. On one side of the front door was a Grecian pot the size of a milk saucepan in which was planted a miniature rose. On the other side of the front door crouched a small stone frog, painted green. Markby felt like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.
The door was opened, unsurprisingly, by a small neat woman without a hair out of place. William, she told him, was in the back garden. Markby was invited to just walk through.
By now as curious to see the garden and the gardener, Markby walked down the narrow hall, through the pint-sized
but amazingly tidy kitchen and out on to a patio. At least, he supposed that was what it was meant to be. The back garden wasn't much bigger than the front one but obviously designed by the same hand. Thus the patio was four small paving stones long and three wide. On it stood two tiny uncomfortable-looking white plastic garden chairs. The rest of the back garden was laid out in immaculately-hoed square plots, each handkerchief-sized. In each a label announced what kind of vegetable would shortly be poking its head above ground, except for one which was laid out mathematically with onion sets. At the furthest point from the house, reached by Markby in half a dozen strides, a man was carefully arranging six bamboo canes in a wigwam shape.
âFor my beans,' he informed Markby as the visitor came up. âWhen I get 'em planted. I got âem under glass at the moment, waiting for 'em to shoot.'
Markby supposed âunder glass' referred to a shoebox-sized cold frame. Even the enterprising Young Billy â or William, as his wife preferred â hadn't yet found a way to squeeze a greenhouse in this garden. Give him time and he probably would. It was odd to be thinking of a man of sixty-one or two as âyoung' but Markby could see why people found it necessary. Young Billy bore a remarkable resemblance to Old Billy, being short and square. He was still muscular whereas his father's muscle mass had atrophied, and still had a countryman's weather-beaten skin. It looked as though whatever jobs he'd held in life, they'd all been out of doors. A battered flat cap was wedged on his head, a fringe of white hair showing round it. He wore an aged but clean showerproof bomber jacket over a hand-knitted pullover. His
hands, deftly securing the canes, were large and knotted.
âGood idea,' said Markby of the bean seedlings. He held up his ID. âMind if we have a chat?'
Young Billy squinted at the ID and said, âI ain't got my glasses. You'll have to tell me what it says.'
âIt says I'm Superintendent Markby. I'm from the Regional Serious Crimes squad.'
âOh, ah?' Young Billy was engrossed in winding string round the bamboo canes.
âYou come from Lower Stovey, I understand, Mr Twelvetrees.'
âOh, ah. When I was a boy. I ain't lived there for more than forty years.'