Blood Ties (11 page)

‘Ten minutes, maybe. No more.'

‘Not the way you drive.'

‘Mam!'

‘So,' Naomi said. ‘If you left when the news was still on, that finishes at half ten. You couldn't have arrived at Eddy's any later than, say twenty to eleven. And you stayed, how long?'

Kevin had clearly been thinking about it. ‘I went through and put the kettle on and he went upstairs. He was gone a few minutes. I'd made the tea by the time he got down. He'd said use the big pot, so I knew he wasn't annoyed about me coming late. If he'd wanted just a quick cuppa, to be polite, and then wanted to get to bed, he'd have said to use the blue pot. That only holds enough for a couple of mugs.'

Susan laughed. ‘Eddy had a complete code wrapped up in his tea making,' she said.

‘Like the pink stripy mug,' Kevin agreed.

‘Stripy mug? Never mind, tell me all about it later. Let's get the timeline established, shall we?' Alec had slipped into work mode. ‘So, you drank tea.'

‘Ate biscuits.'

‘Talked about the finds. How long would all that have taken?'

‘Maybe an hour. I think it was no more than that. Eddy liked his bed. I'd not have kept him up past midnight anyway.'

‘You're sure of that?'

‘Certain. I heard the kitchen clock strike eleven, but I'd left before it struck twelve. Certain.'

‘That's the clock on the mantelpiece,' Susan chipped in. ‘Eddy was fanatical about keeping that one wound.'

‘And you saw no one. Heard nothing?'

Kevin shook his head. ‘On that road at that time of night there's no traffic. I'd have noticed anything. I drove home, got in about half past twelve, I suppose. Stopped for petrol at the all night place at the supermarket.'

‘Supermarket?'

‘In Glastonbury.'

‘Do you have the receipt?'

Kevin shrugged. ‘Maybe. It'll be in the car.'

‘He should be on their CCTV,' Naomi suggested.

‘And when do they think Eddy died?' Susan asked.

All eyes turned on Alec and he could feel the pressure, their keenness that he let Kevin off the hook. ‘Because the body wasn't found until the day after, probably a full day after, and because there were no suspicious circumstances at that point, no liver temperature was taken. And because the post-mortem wasn't carried out for several days it's all a bit approximate,' Alec said. ‘Best estimate, and it is only an estimate, is anything between midnight and five in the morning. They may be able to narrow that.'

‘So they'll still think it might be me.' Kevin was disconsolate.

Alec thought about it, wondering what words of comfort he could offer. Wondering, too, if this young man was a better actor than he appeared to be.

‘The teapot and mugs, were they still on the table when you left?' Naomi asked.

‘Yeah. I offered to wash up but Eddy said it would only take a minute. Then he was off to bed.'

‘So you left and Eddy didn't get to tidy up. For some reason, he went upstairs and, if we're logical about it, that has to have been pretty much straight after Kevin left, but we know he wasn't going to bed because he'd not washed the mugs. So, did he hear something?'

‘Maybe he just wanted to use the bathroom,' Susan suggested. ‘There's a downstairs toilet, but it's outside, next to the old coal hole. He'd not have used the outdoor one, that time of night.'

‘Whatever the reason, he went upstairs and someone killed him. It could have been accidental, of course. The indications are someone gave him a shove, he hit his head, and then he fell. It was smashing his head on the tiles in the hall that actually killed him, but . . .'

‘But whoever they are, they were responsible.' Susan was adamant.

‘But it wasn't Kevin,' his mother said.

‘Of course not. We've just got to make sure the police know that.'

‘Do we have to go to them?'

Alec could hear that Kevin was scared, out of his depth.

‘I'll go with you,' he said. ‘Better to get it over with. But, in the meantime, Susan, do you have a photocopier here?'

‘Well, there's one of those all-in-one printer copier things in the office. Why?'

‘I'd like to copy the diary and the exercise books before we hand them over to the police, that's all. I know it's not strictly my business but . . .'

‘No, but it's certainly ours,' Mrs Hargreaves stated flatly. ‘Eddy gave those things to Kevin for a reason. If you can help us work out why, then that's what Eddy would have wanted us to do.'

They spent the next hour copying the diary and the closely written text of the books. Naomi took the copies back to the farmhouse while Alec left with Kevin and his mother, having called ahead to make sure they would be met by Sergeant Dean. Susan had phoned the solicitor that handled Eddy's will – ‘just in case', as she put it – and he was arranging for someone to meet them at the police station, should they feel the need for legal counsel. Naomi, saying goodbye to Alec, knew they'd be gone for a much longer time than Kevin or his mother expected. Kevin was the first lead the police had in the case, and they would be glad to have something, anything, positive to report, even if that something turned out to be a false dawn. She and Alec had been in the same position enough times to know how they'd be thinking.

Had Kevin had anything to do with Eddy's death? Instinct screamed no, but instinct also told Naomi, and she knew it would be telling Alec the same thing, that Eddy had been expecting trouble. He had hidden the diary and the books and the key and the photographs for a reason. He might not have expected to be killed, but he knew something was wrong, that he was in trouble.

Why, then, had he not confided in anyone? Or had something happened on that day to make him realize that the situation was escalating? And, if so, had he seized the opportunity to hide those papers when Kevin had so unexpectedly turned up? He'd clearly been reluctant to involve his friend before, so what had happened on that day that had caused him to change his mind and use Kevin?

The other conclusion she had reached was this. Whoever had killed Eddy, accident or not, had not discovered where Eddy had hidden those papers. If they had, then Kevin or his mother would have been targeted, Naomi was sure of that.

Had they searched the house after Eddy had died? If so, then it had been a tidy search, but had anything else been taken? Susan had mentioned nothing, but then, when she'd gone there with Alec, they had been focussed on looking for evidence of relatives, not on finding something they hadn't even known existed.

Susan should go back, see if she noticed anything out of place or no longer there.

Was the house still a crime scene or had the officer left?

Making up her mind, Naomi turned around and let a puzzled Napoleon lead her back to The Lamb.

‘We need to go back to Eddy's house,' she said.

‘Why? Won't the police still be there?'

Naomi shook her head. ‘I doubt it. They won't waste resources like that. The house will be made secure and that's that.'

‘But go back, why?'

‘Just a feeling,' Naomi said. ‘Susan, you weren't looking for anything that might be missing last time. You and Alec were focussed on one thing, not on the bigger picture. If Eddy felt he had to hide those documents, then they must have been important to him. If whoever killed him came looking, then they might have searched the place before you and Alec did and there's just the possibility they might have removed other things.'

‘I'm not happy about going back there.'

‘Napoleon and I will come.'

‘You think it's important?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘OK, then. We'll do it, but I'm sure we didn't miss anything. OK, let me take your arm and we'll get my car. Napoleon can go in the back.'

‘You've still got your key?'

‘I've still got the key,' Susan confirmed. ‘And I've just sort of realized. Once everything's gone through it's not going to be Eddy's house any more, is it? It's going to be mine.'

THIRTEEN

‘
C
areful of the mud,' Susan said. ‘Now, there's a shallow step. Just let me get the door undone.'

In the end she had decided to leave Napoleon behind. At The Lamb, this time, the lunchtime staff having started to arrive just as they were leaving. Harness off, so he knew he was off duty, Napoleon had been enjoying the adulation of the chef and the bar staff as Naomi departed.

‘So, describe the place to me,' she said, standing in the hall and aware of the smooth surface beneath her feet and the chill of a house that had not been heated for several days.

‘OK, right, where to start. Stairs ahead of you to the left, the hall carries on into the kitchen. On the right there's a door to the living room, and to the left there's what was the dining room when Eddy could be bothered, but mostly he used it as a study cum storage cum junk room.

‘There's a little table just near the front door with the telephone on it and the door is wood and has glass in the top part with a sort of coloured glass fleur-de-lis thing in the middle. Black and red and white tiles on the floor. Edwardian or Victorian, I suppose. There's a mat near the door, but no rug. He didn't like putting rugs down, said people slipped on them, but I think when the old one wore out he just didn't bother replacing it. And just now, there's black and grey powdery stuff everywhere. You'd think he never cleaned.'

‘That'll be the fingerprint powder,' Naomi said. ‘Try not to touch any of it. It's a swine to get out of your clothes.'

‘You think we should be here?'

Probably not, Naomi thought. She had the strongest feeling, now, that the CSI would have to come back, but she couldn't say why, not yet. It was just a feeling. She wanted to ask Susan if the house felt ‘right'. If it felt as it had done last time she was there, if it still felt like Eddy's house, but she knew that would sound foolish. Though she knew too, beyond doubt, that the answer would be ‘no'.

‘OK.' Naomi focussed on her mental picture. ‘Which rooms did you know the best?'

‘Living room and kitchen, I suppose. I only went into the study occasionally. It was the one messy room in the house.'

‘Messy?'

‘No, that's not fair, really. Eddy used to pin stuff to the walls, have stacks of his research notes laid out, that sort of thing.
He
knew what it was all about, but it made no sense to anyone just glancing in. Looked just like a big mess.'

‘I think we'll keep that for last. Did you go in there when you'd got Alec with you?'

‘Well, briefly. To be honest I wasn't happy about even being there. That was Eddy's private room and it didn't seem right. I had a quick look for any address books or letters he might have kept there, but didn't find anything, so we left it. I think we'd both had enough by then.'

‘So, if we do the kitchen first?'

‘OK.'

Susan led her forward, taking her hand as the hall narrowed. Naomi let her free hand trail against the wall. Wooden panels clad the space beneath the stairs and she felt the latch of a door. ‘Cupboard under the stairs.'

‘Hoover, ironing board, laundry basket. That sort of thing. OK, come into the kitchen. Right, we've got the quarry tiled floor, table right in front of you. Not much in the way of worktop, so Eddy used it for preparation too. The stove is to your left, in a sort of alcove. On the right there's a fireplace. It has its own chimney. The one in the living room links up with the old, closed off ones in the bedrooms. I know that because I had to find him a chimney sweep a couple of years ago. Sink under the window so he could see out into the garden.' She paused. ‘What else do you want to know?'

‘Anything that might be different? Take a look in the drawers and cupboards too.'

She stood still, listening to Susan opening doors and drawers.

‘No,' she said. ‘It's just as I remember it. I mean, not that I went through the drawers or anything. The clock's stopped,' she added sadly. ‘Eddy used to be so careful about winding it.'

Naomi heard her cross the room towards the fireplace. ‘What kind of a clock is it?'

‘Oh, nineteen thirties. One of those wooden things with the round face. Nothing special, but he liked it, and it kept good time, considering. Maybe I should take it with me, keep it wound. What do you think?'

‘I don't see why not. What else is on the mantelshelf?'

‘Right. Well, it's a high wooden shelf and the fire has a tiled surround. On the shelf there's, well, the clock, and the brass pot where he kept the key. I think it's made of an old shell casing he got somewhere. There's a couple of candlesticks: one brass, the other pewter. He kept them handy. They're a bit prone to winter power cuts out here. A photo of his wife and— Oh.'

‘What?'

‘There
should
be a picture of his wife. It was in a pretty silver frame, and one of Karen too. One each side of the mantelpiece.'

‘Would he have moved them?'

‘I don't see why. They stood up there all the years I knew Eddy. Why move them now?'

‘Anything else missing?'

‘Not that I can see.' Susan sounded tense now, anxious.

‘Where did he keep other family photos?'

‘In the living room. He had an album and a couple of pictures on the shelf.'

Together they went through to the living room and Naomi listened as Susan rummaged in the sideboard, which was where she was certain Eddy kept the albums.