Revenge in the Cotswolds (11 page)

‘It’s nearly half past three,’ Jessica said in alarm,
ignoring any concerns about the dog. ‘It’ll be midnight before I get home at this rate.’

‘More like about seven,’ said Thea. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I need a good night’s sleep. I
told
you. There’s a lot going on. We’re all meant to be on top form.’

‘Better than that dozy pair we just met, then.’

‘Stop it. Who are these White-what’s-it people, anyway?’

‘A very nice family who I met on Sunday. I told you about them, remember? They’ve got five children and two dogs. They seem to know all the local characters, and Sheila turned up just after the fire yesterday. She’ll be wanting to know how I’m getting on. I think I can find the house again. It’s Baunton. That’s left here, on the main road, look.’

‘I can’t get the geography straight,’ Jessica admitted. ‘I don’t know how anybody managed before there were satnavs.’

‘Maps,’ said Thea shortly, thinking that Carl would have been horrified at his daughter’s remark. He had taught her how to work a map when she was about six.

‘Right. Hey, you two – settle down.’ Both dogs in the back were standing up and jumping about, in a dance that was not entirely friendly. They gave Jessica mutinous looks. ‘Behave yourselves,’ she ordered.

‘What are they doing?’ Thea asked, trying to see them in the mirror. ‘If they start fighting, I’ll probably crash the car.’

‘They’re not happy. Why do your adventures always involve troublesome dogs?’

‘They don’t. Sometimes I don’t have any dogs at all to worry about. Except Hepzie, of course, and she’s no trouble when she’s on her own.’

‘That Steve person,’ Jessica said slowly. ‘Have I got this right – he’s one of the eco-warriors or whatever they are? And Mr Handy said they were the ones who attacked him? So Steve must have known them. That must be why he made himself scarce instead of waiting for the ambulance. But he knew we’d seen him.’

‘Right.’ Thea was still worrying about the dogs.

‘It was a crime scene, in that field. They’ll have to go over it – and the Land Rover. And if he stays unconscious, we’re the only ones who’ve got any idea what happened to him. That’s awkward,’ she concluded. ‘
Very
awkward, if he doesn’t wake up soon and tell the story for himself.’

‘He won’t
die
, will he?’ The idea had not occurred to her up to then.

‘Probably not. The John Radcliffe’s pretty good, isn’t it?’

‘Famously so. But it’ll take them half an hour at least to get there. He might die on the way.’

‘They have a whole mass of machines and stuff in the ambulance. He’ll be okay.’

‘It must have been a sort of vigilante thing. Taking revenge, because they don’t think the police will ever charge him for killing Danny,’ Thea mused. ‘But it’s
odd that it’s a weekday. They’ve all got proper jobs, according to Sheila. They only do the protesting and campaigning at weekends.’

‘Lunch hour,’ Jessica suggested. ‘
Stop it
, you dogs.’

The sudden shouted order had some effect and things quietened down on the back seat. ‘Nearly there,’ said Thea. ‘It’s one of those, if I remember rightly.’

Two large houses stood on opposite sides of the road, and Thea pulled up outside the one on their left. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous!’

‘Looks as if they’re in.’ Three cars were parked in the generous driveway, forcing Thea to stay out in the road. ‘You go, and I’ll stay here to keep order,’ Jessica suggested.

‘Okay.’ Feeling overloaded and mildly resentful, Thea walked up to the house. She rang the doorbell and waited.

After a lengthy silence, the door opened and Tiffany was there, looking pale and puzzled. ‘What do
you
want?’ she asked.

It was difficult to tell the story succinctly, standing on a doorstep, but she thought she did it rather well. ‘Jack Handy has been attacked and he’s been taken to hospital. I’ve got his dog. I need to take it home, but I don’t know where he lives.’

‘Mum!’ shouted the girl, into the hallway behind her. ‘Can you come here?’ She turned back to Thea. ‘I don’t get why you’re involved in it. Why can’t you just mind your own business?’ She spoke softly, with a
furious cat-like hiss. Her eyes widened and her lower jaw jutted. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing, have you?’

Thea had been spoken to in similar ways many times. It always struck her as very unfair. She
would
mind her own business, if people gave her the chance. Speechlessly, she reran the events of the afternoon, in an effort to justify herself. Surely nobody would simply have driven past that gateway without looking to see if there was a problem? Any normal person would have stopped as she had. Except, she admitted to herself, they probably wouldn’t and hadn’t. Most people assumed that it was not their concern, that whatever was happening could happen without them. ‘It was your friend Steve,’ she blurted. ‘He saw something, and I thought we should have a look as well.’

Then Sheila Whiteacre was standing beside her daughter, both of them significantly taller than Thea anyway, and even more so from the extra height of the doorstep. ‘Where does Jack Handy live?’ she asked wearily. ‘That’s all I want to know.’

Sheila smiled uncertainly. ‘Why?’

‘She’s got his dog,’ said Tiffany.

‘All right. I’ll see to it now. You get back to your homework,’ Sheila ordered her daughter, giving her a solicitous stroke on her shoulder. She smiled again at Thea. ‘She’s didn’t go to school today. She’s too upset about Danny.’

‘The dog,’ Thea prompted, after a small nod of
sympathy. ‘Will there be anybody there? I mean – he’s been taken to hospital. Has he got a wife or somebody? I can’t really take it to the Fosters’, you see.’

‘Sorry – I don’t see at all. What happened to him? Why have
you
got anything to do with it?’

Don’t you start
, Thea wanted to say. ‘It’s a long story. I really wish I hadn’t been there, just at the wrong moment. I can leave the dog here, if you’d rather.’ This last came with a spurt of exasperation at all the questions.

‘He lives in North Cerney. I thought you knew that. It’s a farm a little way along the road to Woodmancote. Three or four miles from here, that’s all.’ Sheila spoke in a calm, deliberate tone, spiced with reproach. She made Thea feel foolish and oddly tainted, as if she had brought something unwelcome onto the doormat.

‘Thank you,’ she said and turned to leave.

‘Wait a minute – you won’t find it without more help than that. It’s got a cattle grid across the entrance, and you can just see the house at the end of the track, with a big barn and masses of sheep everywhere. He lives with an older woman – I think she’s his stepmother. She doesn’t go out much. Hospital, did you say?’ The belated reaction was almost comical. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Ask Tiffany,’ said Thea abruptly. ‘I’ll have to go. It’ll be getting dark before long, and then I’ll never find his damned farm.’

‘You’ve got at least two hours of daylight. Come
and see me tomorrow, when you’ve calmed down, and tell me the whole story.’

‘Sorry.’ Thea almost wept. ‘It’s been a difficult week so far – and it’s only Tuesday. I’ve got my daughter in the car. Thanks for the help.’

She slumped back into the driving seat and heaved a great sigh. ‘Back the way we came,’ she announced. ‘All the way to North Cerney and beyond.’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ Jessica protested. ‘That’s ridiculous. What if there’s nobody in when we get there?’

‘What else can we do?’

They were saved further argument by Jessica’s phone. She answered it eagerly, and there ensued a conversation that Thea quickly understood was with a police person. The important details of their adventure were conveyed, and then Thea’s own name was mentioned. ‘She’s at a property called Galanthus House in Daglingworth,’ said Jessica. ‘Oh – right. Of course. There was a fire, yes … I suppose so. I really need to get back to Manchester … and there’s a dog. No, no, I understand. We’ll be there in five minutes. Okay, then.’

She pressed the red button and looked at Thea. ‘They’re coming to interview us. The dog will have to wait.’

‘When? Now?’

‘More or less. Oh, and I meant to tell you – while I was sitting here, two men came out of the shed, just
there.’ She pointed to a good-sized building beside the driveway with a door standing open. Inside, a lawnmower, stack of firewood and jumble of tools were all visible. ‘I had the window open, because of all the dog breath, so I could hear what they said. They were arguing. I think they were father and son.’

‘Did one have a beard?’

‘They both did, actually.’

‘Probably Ricky and Mr Whiteacre,’ Thea guessed. ‘So what about them?’

‘The older one said “For God’s sake, don’t let Tiffany know about this. If you and her so-called friends want to go beating up local farmers, that’s bad enough, but I’m not having her involved.” That was more or less exactly what he said.’

‘Did they know you’d heard them?’

Jessica grimaced. ‘Probably,’ she said.

It should have taken barely two minutes to drive the straight road from Baunton to Daglingworth – a speck of time which saw Thea’s mind so thronged with implications and worries that she was confused to find herself back at the complicated junction with the A417. ‘Where do I go now?’ she faltered. ‘This isn’t right.’ She recalled a left turn at the church which she ought to have taken. It led directly to Galanthus House. Instead, she would have to do a near-circle to reach it.

‘Over there, and then left,’ ordered Jessica. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘About a thousand things,’ she snapped back. ‘I missed the turn. I’ve already almost been burnt to death. Now the Whiteacres know that I know that their Ricky attacked Jack Handy. They’ll come in the night and shoot me.’

‘No, they won’t, because they’ll know we’ll have told the police. They’ll deny the conversation ever took place. They’ll have worked out an alibi for Ricky. And if Mr Handy wakes up and names him, then that will be that, and you won’t be relevant at all. Calm down, for heaven’s sake.’

‘How can I?’ Her mind continued to race over everything she’d learnt. ‘I really
liked
the Whiteacres,’ she wailed. ‘I thought they’d be people I could go to if anything else happened.’

‘You can go to the police. Or pack up and go home. Maybe the owners will come back in a day or two, anyway. They won’t be able to relax once they know somebody tried to burn their house down.’

‘And these
dogs
,’ Thea went on. ‘I can’t just abandon poor Gwennie, can I?’

‘You can hand Rags over to the police when they come. It’s their job, anyway.’

‘Stop saying
anyway,
as if that makes it all less important. The Fosters won’t come back, for a start. I’ll have to stay here for another ten days.’

‘Can’t Drew come at the weekend and do it with you?’

‘Him and two children, you mean? I hardly think so.’ Her voice caught on a choke of frustration. ‘What did I do to get myself into all this?’

‘I don’t know. But I expect it was something.’

They were at the Fosters’ house, where Jessica’s car
sat waiting in the driveway. Thea drove past it and into the garage, without thinking.

‘You’re assuming you won’t have to go out again, then?’ said Jessica.

‘Hoping,’ Thea corrected. ‘Rags can stay in the car for the time being. If she’s staying overnight, I can shut her in the garage with an old blanket for a bed.’

‘Probably her idea of four-star luxury.’

They took Hepzie into the house, and went to find Gwennie. The corgi was on the sofa, fast asleep. For a terrible second, Thea thought she was dead, seeing no sign of breathing, but the panic soon died as she approached and laid a hand on the thick golden coat. The colour was officially known as ‘red’, she believed – which was miles away from the reality. Gwennie raised her nose slightly and sniffed at the sudden hand. ‘She’s fine,’ said Thea. ‘What a good dog.’

Jessica came into the room and looked at the scene. ‘She’s got a nice coat,’ she said. ‘Must keep her lovely and warm.’

Thea fingered the dense hair of the white ruff at the back of the dog’s neck. ‘She’s very sweet-natured. Makes you think her owners must be kind and patient with her. She’s a sort of canine barometer of the kind of people they are.’ Then she thought of the big placid Labradors at the Whiteacres’ and wondered if the theory was already collapsing.

‘Yeah,’ said Jessica dubiously. ‘Oh – here they are,
look.’ From the front window they saw a car draw up and a man get out. ‘Is that your DI chap?’

‘Higgins,’ Thea confirmed. ‘Looks as if he’s on his own.’

It was obvious that Jessica thought she should do all the talking. She stepped briskly to the door and had it open before Higgins could ring. She almost pulled him inside, introducing herself and waving him into the living room. Thea remembered the way she’d kept him standing in the hallway the day before, and blushed gently as she realised he remembered it just as vividly.

‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘Has he come round yet?’

‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘One thing at a time.’

‘Yes, but that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? You don’t need me and Jess if he’s telling you the whole story for himself.’

Higgins sat back in a soft armchair and exhaled. ‘No, he hasn’t. He’s in a deep coma. They’re operating on him any time now. So all we know of what happened will have to come from you.’

‘And Steve,’ said Thea, without thinking. ‘Steve saw him as well.’

‘He didn’t hear what he said, though,’ Jessica pointed out. ‘That was mostly me.’

‘I heard it all as well,’ Thea objected. ‘I was right there.’

‘Ladies!’

The effect was impressive. Mother and daughter
fell silent and waited for him to take charge.

Higgins extracted a notebook from his pocket and opened it. ‘Can we please go back to the very beginning? If just one of you could speak at a time, that would be helpful. Any disagreements or corrections will obviously be listened to, but it would be very much easier to get the main facts from just one of you.’ He looked at Jessica as he spoke, and Thea tried not to feel resentful.

The young police constable squared her shoulders and gave an admirable account of the events of the afternoon, none of which gave Thea any reason to argue or correct. What had seemed like a painful muddle was now laid out clearly. It only took a few sentences to explain the essential facts. ‘He actually told you who attacked him?’ Higgins queried. ‘Did he give names? What were his actual words?’

‘No names. He said it was a gang of protesters, made up of at least one man and a number of girls. He said a man hit him with his own stick and the girls pushed him around.’

‘Some stick,’ muttered the detective inspector. ‘Did he have any idea why they did it?’

‘Revenge for what happened to the chap in the quarry – what’s his name?’ Jessica looked to her mother.

‘Danny,’ said Thea.

‘They were shouting accusations at him as they attacked him,’ said Jessica. ‘He definitely said that.
And since then I’ve heard a conversation that suggests an identity for the attacker.’

‘And don’t forget about Steve,’ Thea insisted.

Both the others gave her a look of irritation. ‘What about him?’ snapped Jessica. ‘I’ve already said it was thanks to him we stopped in the first place.’

‘He called the farmer “Uncle Jack”, remember. And they look rather alike.’

‘All right, but let me get to the part about Ricky Whiteacre.’

Higgins held up a finger. ‘Hang on a minute. Let’s make sure we’ve covered everything at the scene first.’ He checked the details through again and then invited them to cautiously speculate on what seemed to have happened.

Jessica gave Thea a little wave of invitation. ‘Go on – you’ve met most of these people,’ she said.

‘I can’t add anything useful. The campaigners must be assuming Jack Handy killed their friend Danny Compton, and they were punishing him for it. Maybe they think the police are letting him get away with it. But it does seem rather idiotic of them, doesn’t it? Letting him see them, and attacking him in broad daylight. Unless they meant to kill him,’ she finished uneasily. ‘That’s terrible, if so. Those girls – Sophie and Nella and Tiffany – they’re all perfectly ordinary respectable people. And Ricky,’ she added. ‘Although I’ve never met him.’

‘Ricky?’ Higgins looked at his notes. ‘Now, tell me about him.’

‘He’s the son of Sheila Whiteacre. Tiffany’s brother. Jessica heard him talking about it with his dad, just now. We went there to ask for Mr Handy’s address, so we could take his dog home.’

‘Dog … yes, there’s a note about the dog. Where is it now?’ He looked around as if expecting to see it.

Thea wrestled with a renewed surge of impatience. ‘In my car, in the garage. She can’t stay there for long. Apparently there is somebody at the farm to look after her.’ She sighed tiredly. ‘I suppose I can take her – except it’ll be dark soon, and—’

‘There is a female relative, but she’s gone to be by his bedside in Oxford,’ said Higgins. ‘She doesn’t drive far after dark if she can avoid it, so we sent a car for her.’

‘How kind.’ The sarcasm was muted, but still unmissable. ‘So what am I meant to do with Rags?’

‘Normally we’d find a place for it in a rescue or kennels somewhere. I’m sure she’d be happier staying here with you, though. She can go home tomorrow, in any case.’

‘Are you sure? What if this stepmother or whatever she is decides to stay by the bedside for
days
? People do,’ she finished gloomily.

‘She’ll be fine for a night in the garage,’ Jessica interrupted impatiently. ‘That’s just a detail.’ Even she seemed to be eager to get to the important part.

‘Pity she didn’t bite any of the attackers,’ said
Higgins. ‘They’d probably have to go to hospital and we’d get a report.’

Jessica had mentioned Mr Handy’s disdainful remarks about his dog, in her account of the incident. ‘She might have torn a garment,’ she surmised. She had also confirmed that there had been no estimate of the number of protesters involved. ‘Four or five, at least, the way he was talking,’ she concluded. ‘Now, can I tell you about what I overheard? It’s extremely important.’

‘Go on, then.’

It was accomplished in seconds. Higgins made a note. ‘Hearsay,’ he pointed out. ‘Not very useful as evidence.’

‘Maybe not, but it gives you a strong lead, doesn’t it?’ Thea was all too familiar with the slippery business of hearsay evidence. In reality, it seemed to her that the great majority of murder investigations relied on it very heavily indeed.

‘Funny they were all around on a weekday,’ mused the detective.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Thea. ‘Plus there’s Steve and Tiffany. Her mother said she was at home all day.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that Steve,’ Jessica offered. ‘We wondered whether he’d been meant to take part in the attack, and deliberately hung back because it was his uncle. Or maybe he was told to stay clear for that reason. But he might have known it was going
to happen, and gone along to check that Mr Handy wasn’t too badly hurt.’

‘He looked utterly horrified,’ Thea remembered. ‘I saw his face in the mirror.’

‘I think he knew where to look. We’d never have realised there was anybody lying in the field, without him behaving as he did.’

‘I imagine they had some sort of group message sent round, arranging it amongst themselves,’ said Thea, feeling clever. ‘So they all gathered in the lunch hour and savaged the poor man en masse.’

‘Please!’ Higgins called, holding up both hands liked a determined traffic cop. ‘You both know better than this. All I want is a dispassionate description of what happened. No wild speculation or accusation. Just facts and sensible hypotheses.’

‘You started it,’ said Thea. ‘Wondering how come it happened on a weekday. Implying they’re just weekend campaigners, with proper jobs the rest of the time.’

‘It’s all very
vague
, though, isn’t it?’ said Jessica. ‘Do you actually know the names and details of everyone in this group, whatever it is? Have they been breaking any laws?’

Higgins merely shook his head and closed his notebook. He closed his eyes too for a moment, and then said, ‘Mr and Mrs Foster. We contacted them about the fire. They were very alarmed and upset and wanted our assurances that you were all right.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Thea. ‘Weren’t they worried about Gwennie as well?’

‘Who?’

‘The dog. The reason I’m here in the first place.’

‘Oh – I think they were, a bit.’

‘Did you speak to them personally?’

‘No, actually. But it was all written down. They really don’t want to come home early, especially as they’d have to pay some enormous amount for emergency seats on a flight. We told them there wasn’t that degree of urgency, if they could just try and think why it might have happened.’

‘And did they?’

‘As a matter of fact, they were very helpful.’

Thea waited impatiently. ‘And?’ she prompted.

‘We’re following it up. I can’t say more than that.’

‘Am I in any further danger? At least tell me that much.’

He smiled. ‘I would say the only danger you might get into would be as a result of any further reckless involvement in local crimes. Just stay out of the way and you’ll be fine. Leave that garage open, or park in the driveway, so everybody knows you’re here – although I imagine they’ve worked it out by this time. The story of the fire will be public knowledge by now, and when we’ve completed our interviews, there could well be an arrest, which will probably make the local TV reports.’

‘Wow!’ breathed Thea admiringly. ‘You haven’t wasted much time, have you?’

‘Murder, arson and GBH since Saturday, all within a mile of this house. We’ve had to cancel all leave and shout for reinforcements from Gloucester.’ He laughed. ‘Never a dull moment when Mrs Thea Osborne shows up.’

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I’m the victim here, remember.’

‘I know you are,’ he agreed, suddenly serious. ‘Some of us think you’re very brave to keep on with this house-sitting malarky at all. There always seems to be some unforeseen hazard.’

‘Stop it,’ she said again, feeling uncomfortably weak and vulnerable. ‘Just catch these baddies, okay? Are the Fosters going to call me?’

‘Probably. We did downplay the damage somewhat, though, and told them you were completely unharmed.’

‘Thanks,’ she muttered. ‘I think.’

‘Ma – I’ve really got to go,’ Jessica interrupted. ‘It’s well after five. I hate to leave you with all this chaos, but I suppose you can cope. It won’t be the first time, after all.’

I don’t want to cope!
Thea silently screamed.
I want a nice easy life where nothing like this ever happens.
‘I expect I will,’ she said.

She made tea for her daughter, and added sandwiches made from cheese and pickle, insisting she needed something before the long drive. Slowly the events of the day fell into a more manageable pattern, leaving her with nothing demanding her attention except for
Rags. Even that responsibility felt lighter, once she’d let the dog out of her car and taken her for a quick walk outside, firmly attached to a lead. She then fed her with some of Hepzie’s biscuits. It was a mild evening, so she constructed a nest in a corner of the garage, made of the old blanket and piece of carpet she kept in her car boot. ‘You’ll be all right here,’ she said firmly. ‘But you’ll have to stay tied up.’ The lead was short, so she replaced it with a length of thin rope she found on a shelf in the garage. It was long enough to allow the dog to go to the front of the building for a pee if necessary. It was a bare concrete floor that would easily survive such usage. At least the animal wore a collar, which made things easier.