Revenge in the Cotswolds (17 page)

The phone call that evening to Drew completely ruined her mood. ‘Sorry, love,’ he panted. ‘I can’t talk now. It’s utter chaos here this evening. Timmy had an accident at school, and spent all afternoon in A&E. I had a funeral, so Maggs went to sit with him. I had to call on an extra mourner to carry, which didn’t go down very well. Stephanie got sent off to a little friend’s house, and that went down even less well. You get the idea.’

‘Is Timmy okay now?’

‘Cracked his elbow. Hurts like hell, poor little chap. Not a lot to be done, other than leave it to mend. He’s got a sling, but can’t wear it in bed. Says he can’t find a way to lie that doesn’t hurt. There – hear that?’ A distant wail came down the line.

‘Just about. You must go, then. Give him some kisses from me.’

‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’

She could hear his need for an affirmative reply. ‘I’m absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about at all. Good luck with everything. I’ll call again tomorrow.’

He groaned. ‘I don’t promise it’ll be any better. If Maggs doesn’t get over being sick all the time, she’s not going to be much use at funerals.’

I need to be there
, Thea wanted to say. But too much stood in the way. Not least her obligations to Mr and Mrs Foster.

‘She’ll soon be over that,’ she said confidently. ‘Any time now.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said gloomily.

Poor Timmy
, Thea repeated to herself throughout the evening, crushing down the threads of resentment at the wretched child and his carelessness. She had an awful feeling that there had been a similar hint in Drew’s voice, too. Timmy should be seen as an innocent victim of circumstance, not a cause for irritation. From what she had gathered, his conception and birth had been unplanned and not particularly convenient. His mother’s injury, followed by a prolonged malaise and eventual death, had blighted his early years. A vulnerable male child, perpetually compared to his infinitely more robust sister, never getting his needs met, was unlikely to grow up confident and secure. He would be a withdrawn, antisocial adolescent. He would perplex his teachers and disappoint his family.
A dropout, addicted to the comfort and predictability of computer games, he would become fat and unfit and sociopathic. There were plenty of examples of just such a scenario amongst people Thea knew. The raising of boys was a far more complicated and demanding task than that of girls, she was convinced. Girls recovered. They went out and met people. They found the whole business of education much easier and more congenial than boys did.

‘Poor Timmy,’ she sighed aloud. She had no relish for the prospect of becoming a substitute parent to him in his most difficult years. But love Drew, love his kids, she admitted to herself. Only the saddest of people reached the age of forty with no baggage, after all.

Meanwhile, there was Gwennie and the tortoise. It occurred to her that the creature should have a name, but it had not been disclosed to her. If it woke up and showed some character, she would have to call it ‘Torty’ or something equally unimaginative. Idly, she turned on the television in the hope of hearing a weather forecast. Watching TV news had become a slightly nerve-wracking exercise during some of her house-sits. Local events could sometimes find their way into national headlines, and although it was desirable to keep abreast of developments, there was something awful about seeing your own temporary home village on camera. It never looked right, and the people looked fatter and more tanned than they were in reality.

On this midweek evening, however, there was not a word about any crimes committed in the West Midlands. There was, however, something every bit as alarming.

‘A large police operation in Manchester got off to a bad start when a young police constable was injured early this morning during a raid on a house in Bowden. Her arm was broken, but no further information is yet available.’ Footage was shown of a generic breaking-down-the-door in a typical street, which added nothing to the story.

It wasn’t Jessica – of course it wasn’t. Somebody would have phoned to tell her. She’d checked the phone for messages and found nothing. But even so, the police activity was almost certainly connected to the operation her daughter had told her about the previous day. It had been scheduled to start early that morning, and Jess was to be part of it.

She grabbed the phone out of her bag and checked again for a text or voicemail. With nothing to see or hear, she keyed her daughter’s number.

There was no reply, and she was directed to voicemail. ‘Hey, Jess – I just saw your operation on the news. At least I assume it’s the same thing. Do you know the girl who was hurt? Can you call me sometime and let me know everything’s okay?’

It was all she could do, she told herself. There was no possible justification for calling the very senior police officer who happened to be her brother-in-law, and who also happened to be part of the same force as
Jessica, thanks to a recent transfer that he insisted had not been due to Jessica at all. The fact that she had the same surname had worried them both at first, but it seemed there had been no cause for concern. After all, many families had a strong tradition for police work, with uncles and brothers, fathers and cousins popping up on all sides. James had been both sensible and conscientious, keeping an eye on his niece without ever causing her embarrassment.

And yet she very much wanted to know where her daughter was and whether she was all right. It was a little after nine o’clock, much too soon to go to bed, however early the morning start might have been. So why didn’t Jess answer her phone? Plenty of rational explanations came to mind. The operation, whatever it was, might require long hours of complete focus, with personal phones kept off for whole days at a time. There would be briefings, reports,
de
briefings and actual work out there in the real world. Thea could not properly imagine any of it, but she knew enough to understand there was no place for reassuring conversations with one’s mother.

The world so quickly turned hostile and dangerous. She was aware of an association between her vulnerable daughter and Drew’s injured Timmy; an association which expanded outwards to the unborn offspring of Damien and Maggs. Everybody became a hostage to every kind of disaster, once they had children.

But it wasn’t so simple, of course. Danny Compton
had parents who sounded as if concern for his death was secondary to their passion for birdwatching. Jack Handy had sons who had failed to rush to his bedside. Not everybody accepted the full burden of the parent/child relationship. Even Thea herself had been less than perfectly attentive at times.

She was saved from further gloomy thoughts by her phone ringing.

‘Mum? Just got your voicemail. You’ve got it all wrong.’ Jessica sounded irritated, if not downright annoyed.

‘Have I?’

‘Yes. That thing on the news had nothing whatever to do with what I’m working on. You ought to know better.’ Her voice lowered to a hiss. ‘I should never have said anything about it. It’s
covert
. Do you know what that means?’

‘More or less. So – what was I meant to think?’

‘Don’t think
anything
. Just forget I ever said what I did. It’s going to be hard enough as it is, without you …’ She tailed off, apparently speechless with frustration.

‘Okay, okay. I get it. You’re right – I was panicking for no reason. Not like me, you have to admit.’

‘Right. Which is why I’m calling. Don’t do it again. I might have to use this phone – oh, I can’t go into all that. But just for a bit, please forget all about me. You’d soon hear if there was anything to worry about. No news is good news, remember. Now I need to get to bed. Have you got it, Mum? Don’t call me. Don’t
email, either. I’m disappearing for a little while.’

Thea kept a firm grip. ‘Sounds terribly exciting,’ she said.

‘Now you just sound like Granny. Oh – what happened to that man, by the way?’

‘He came out of the coma, so he can tell the police the whole thing for himself. I met his stepmother. Everything’s still very up in the air.’

‘Well, you stay out of it. Just … you know. Walk the dogs or something.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Must go now. Bye, Mum. I’ll let you know when things are normal again.’

‘Bye, sweetheart.’

All the legions of devoted mothers through the centuries crowded in on her. Mothers of serving soldiers; mothers of unhappy sons and daughters – wringing their hands and gaining approval from society by so doing. She did not want to be like that. Worry was not a virtue; it was a waste of time and energy. The object of the worry was burdened by it, rather than supported and reassured. She felt fierce and defiant and very slightly in the wrong, for reacting in such a way. Jessica was an adult, and had made the position very clear. This was not some back-to-front game where what was said meant the opposite. Until further notice, Thea was to remain quiet and unworried.

Okay, she promised herself. She could do that. Except she still felt concerned about little Timmy Slocombe.

And she was still eager to know who had killed Danny Compton, too. She found herself very much not wanting it to have been Jack Handy, for reasons she could not pin down. She had not especially liked his stepmother, whose story of how she came to the farm, and who else might lay claim to it in the future was not entirely trustworthy. She had married a man who had been nearly twenty years her senior and effectively ejected the woman who had been mistress of the house until then. Her account of events had been dispassionate with a small hint of complacency. She showed scant signs of distress at her stepson’s injury at the hands of local people. Rightly or wrongly, Thea had mentally fitted the woman into a pattern she was constructing to explain the people and events of Daglingworth and Bagendon and adjacent settlements. She could draw it, if requested; Danny at the centre, with Sophie, Nella and Tiffany ranged above him; Ricky and Steve joined them on one side and Jack Handy on the other. At a remove were Sheila Whiteacre and her husband. A satellite cluster comprised the Fosters and the Tanners, with the arson attack linking them. Nothing joined the two crimes, as far as she could see. The police had shown no sign of thinking there might be a connection. Even Thea herself could hardly qualify for that role, she silently insisted.

After all that thinking and patterning, the Whiteacre family persistently remained at the forefront. The house itself had appealed to her so strongly that she hated to think she might never see it again. Perhaps she would brave it the next morning, clinging to the flimsy pretext of checking that they were aware of how unhappy Nella was. Perhaps by then she would have found something persuasive to say that would allow her over the threshold, despite the repeated warnings to do no such thing.

All was well with the dogs, at least. The weather forecast predicted a mild day to come, which was encouraging news for the tortoise. There were elaborate instructions for transferring him into the much larger living space that Mr Foster had called a ‘vivarium’. It had temperature control, which was designed to avoid any confusion brought about by fickle English weather. ‘After all, it can snow in April,’ Mr Foster had said. ‘And once he’s woken up, he won’t go back into hibernation, whatever happens.’

Thea had been distracted by the notion of snow in April, at the time, and given less attention to the tortoise than she ought. The main point she registered was that Mrs Foster called the creature ‘she’ and her husband referred to it as a male. Now Thea resolved to make up for her defective attention by ensuring the transition from death-like sleep to revival and animation would go smoothly.

She went to bed early, reviewing the day with some relief. She might well decide to stay close to Daglingworth the whole of the next day, simply pottering around the lanes, or enjoying spring sunshine in the garden. Everybody from Jessica to Higgins, via Sophie and her associates, had told her to stay clear of whatever crimes and misdemeanours might be taking place. Obviously she should quell her own instinctive nosiness and do as they advised. And equally obviously, she wasn’t going to.

Her final thoughts, as usual, were of Drew. Drew was the exception. He would understand how difficult it was to just remain quietly unobtrusive in a stranger’s house. He himself was driven to question and probe into matters that were not directly his concern. He liked to set things straight and restore order, just as Thea did. It was this shared urge that had first forged the bond between them.

Drew was never going to tell her to keep away and avert her gaze when something terrible was going on.

Thursday exceeded even the optimistic predictions of the weatherman. Sunlight streamed through the open curtains onto Thea’s bed. The room was on a corner of the house, with windows in two walls. One faced north and the other east. Between them, they gave her a good view of much of Daglingworth, despite the presence of a lot of trees. She could see the church, and a handsome barn conversion, as well as the little road into the heart of the village, with its raised walkway for pedestrians. The buds on the bushes and trees all seemed to have grown fatter and greener overnight.

Throwing on some clothes, she skipped downstairs to awaken Gwennie and take her outside. Her spirits were suddenly much higher than they had been for weeks. The sight of the burnt patch in the hall did nothing to lower them, nor did the events of the past few days.

The corgi seemed glad to participate in whatever rite of spring her temporary mistress had in mind. She snatched her breakfast biscuit and raised her pointed snout in a plea for more. ‘You are a pretty dog,’ Thea told her. ‘Such a lovely coat.’

Hepzibah wagged competitively, and pushed past the older dog to be first into the garden at the back of the house. It was a routine Thea had performed several times in numerous house-sits, and she watched the animals with half an eye as she debated what to have for breakfast.

She should, she knew, keep a closer watch on her own dog, who had something of a record for volatile behaviour in recent times. Sudden excitement could spark a moment of madness that had at least once led to expensive and embarrassing damage to another animal. But calmly mooching about under old apple trees was unlikely to set her off. The two dogs were ignoring each other, anyway, sniffing around in different parts of the garden.

It would be pleasant to walk once more down the pathways and over the fields to the house in Bagendon, for a final visit. The people were due back late the next day, which would mark the halfway point in Thea’s occupation of Galanthus House. She thought of the Fosters in Australia, surrounded by relatives and enjoying the exotic wildlife and vegetation. She never did hear exactly how they responded to being told by the police that their house had been fire-bombed – but
assumed they were suitably mollified by assurances that no real harm had been done.

It was a shame that Gwennie couldn’t manage such a long walk. She was obviously happy to be out in the sunshine, and had doubtless benefited from the gentle circular stroll around Daglingworth the day before. It was plainly Thea’s duty to take her for a similar outing again today.

A slice of toast and a mug of coffee were quickly consumed, and then she clapped her hands decisively. ‘Okay – a short walk to start with, then Gwennie comes home and we go off for the rest of the morning.’ She addressed her spaniel. ‘And this time, we won’t accept any lifts back. It’s not far – we can easily do both ways.’

For a change she kept along the road leading to a different church, standing beside the junction with the road through Stratton – the place where she and Jessica had missed the turning, thanks to the drama of Jack Handy’s troubles. It was probably a mile each way, if she went the whole length, which was far too much for the elderly corgi. ‘We’ll turn back in ten minutes,’ Thea promised.

The road was quiet, but there was no proper pavement and when cars did pass by, they moved quickly. The dogs had to be kept close on their leads, which Hepzie found thoroughly frustrating. ‘I should have left you behind and just taken Gwennie,’ Thea muttered crossly.

The next car to appear was coming towards them. The driver ducked his head to get a better view of Thea’s face, and she met his eyes. It was the same bearded young man, and the same car, that she and Jessica had met two days before, in the gateway to a field where a man lay bleeding. Without thinking, she flapped a hand at him, but he was already pulling to a stop.

Twisting to get a view from the rear window, he reversed the ten yards or so to where she stood. One of his big ears was visible, and Thea wondered foolishly why he kept his hair so short. It only emphasised the less-than-attractive feature.

‘Steve,’ she said, through the open passenger window. ‘We meet again.’

‘Yeah. I knew you were staying along here somewhere.’

‘Were you looking for me?’

‘No way! Why’d I want to do that?’

Good question
, she thought. ‘So …?’ she invited.

‘Just wondered how you were doing. And that girl – your daughter, was she? Must have been a bit of a shock for her.’

Thea put her head through the window and gave him a straight look. ‘You drove off without waiting for the ambulance. The man’s your
uncle
, or so you said. You didn’t know if he’d live or die, and you just drove off. What was that all about?’

He returned the look, completely unabashed. ‘I got
a phone call. So I had to go. I knew he’d be okay. I saw the ambulance on its way. I called in later and gave them my name and address and all that.’

‘Who called you?’

His face darkened. ‘None of your business. Anyway, he’s getting better now. Panic over.’

‘You could have taken the dog. I had to keep it all night, and then find out where she lived and take her back the next day. Why should
I
get all that hassle?’

He left a beat before replying, his eyes on hers. She could read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d shouted them. Hadn’t she asked for it, pushing in where she wasn’t wanted, concerning herself in other people’s business? Any hassle she got landed with was entirely of her own making. ‘Looked to me as if you fancied a bit of hassle,’ he said. ‘Must be boring, watching out for someone’s house day after day. Nothing like a bit of violence to brighten the day – ain’t that right?’ He laughed nastily. ‘You think you know such a lot about us, after five minutes, don’t you? And you haven’t a bloody clue, really.’

If it had not been such a lovely day, she might have responded in kind. As it was, she found it almost easy to deflect the abuse. ‘You’re probably right. So why did you stop to talk to me?’

He laughed again, with more genuine amusement than before. ‘Good question. They told me you were different. I can see what they meant now.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘The girls,’ he said vaguely. ‘Listen, if you’re not doing anything, we could go and have a bit of a chat. Set you straight.’

It dawned on Thea that he had heard a report of the visitation on Tuesday evening, with accompanying doubts as to how effective the warning to stay clear had been. Perhaps this Steve was trying again, along a new tack. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Back to yours? It’s closest.’

‘It’s not
mine
,’ she corrected. ‘And I thought you said you didn’t know which house it was, anyway.’

‘I don’t. But it’s along here somewhere. You can’t have walked far with that dog. Looks as if it’d drop dead if you made it go more than a quarter of a mile.’

He couldn’t see Gwennie, where she was sitting patiently almost under his car. Hepzie was more restless, even jumping up at the window to get a glimpse of the man inside. Thea supposed that Steve had got a good look at both dogs as he drove towards them.

‘That’s true,’ she agreed, maintaining an affable manner despite small flickers of anxiety somewhere inside her. Would it be utter madness to let him into the house, when there had been so much unexplained violence going on?

‘So?’

‘Can we have a lift? Or do you want to crawl along behind us?’ There had been no passing traffic at all
during their conversation, but now a fair-sized lorry came up behind Steve’s car and hooted. ‘You’ll have to move.’

‘Jump in, then. Put the dogs in the back.’

The lorry waited with poor grace while she bundled Gwennie onto the seat and suffered Hepzie to sit on her lap, contrary to Steve’s instructions. ‘She won’t stay in the back,’ she said, knowing that this was a lie. She felt faintly protected by the spaniel, which was ludicrous. Hepzie had no concept of protection. She was soft and brainless and not entirely predictable.

It took less than two minutes to reach Galanthus House. Steve left the car at the bottom of the drive, effectively preventing any other vehicle coming in or going out. ‘Nice day,’ he said fatuously, as they walked up to the door. ‘We could sit out here if you’d rather.’

It was a tempting idea. ‘I suppose that would be nice,’ she said. ‘The dogs can come in and out as they like.’ She assumed that Gwennie knew better than to escape into the road. There was no gate across the entrance, which for the first time struck Thea as unusual. Most Cotswolds properties made it very clear where their boundaries lay, and just how they regarded potential intruders. The openness of the Fosters’ house was an appealing detail, and another way in which it was very different from the one in Bagendon.

‘I can’t stay long,’ said Steve. ‘As you’re probably pleased to hear.’ He plonked himself down on a wrought-iron seat positioned to one side of the small
lawn. Thea saw no alternative but to sit beside him, but she hesitated.

‘Shall I get some coffee?’ she asked him.

‘Don’t bother. I’ve just had some. Let’s get on with it.’

‘You’re going to set me straight,’ she nodded.

‘Sit down and listen, then.’ He waited a moment while she obeyed. ‘Okay – for a start, let me tell you about our group. All you’ve got so far is what Sophie’s said, by all accounts. And Sophie’s the extreme one. You can’t take her as typical.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘We’re a big collection of like-minded people, mostly young, but not entirely. We’ve
activists
. That’s the word we use. We use direct action where everything else has failed. But we’re mostly trying to change minds with reason. Most of the time we’re blogging and tweeting and putting the case for better environmental awareness. We don’t hurt people.’

‘Jack Handy was hurt,’ she objected.

He paused and closed his eyes. ‘You think that was us?’

‘He
told
us it was. We’re fairly sure it was Ricky Whiteacre who hit him.’

‘Uncle Jack doesn’t know who’s who. He’s never bothered to learn anyone’s name or ask them what they want. He’s always been on the defensive, ever since his dad died. He thinks everyone’s talking about him and out to get him. Those hens of his – he
knows it’s wrong. And selling that field was deliberate provocation. The whole village was against him doing it. But those aren’t things we get concerned about.’

‘He knows you, though.’

Steve nodded. ‘Only because I was at school with his boys and spent half my time on his farm. That was when he was milking. Ages ago now.’

‘So what are you saying? You think it wasn’t Ricky?’

‘Ricky Whiteacre is a law unto himself. He’s not properly with us, never comes to the meetings.’

‘His father knows it was him. We heard them talking. You’re just trying to keep me from knowing the truth. Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it? Jack’s going to tell the police it was Ricky. Even if he doesn’t know names, he can describe them. He said there was a gang of girls pushing and punching him.’

‘All I know is it wasn’t Tiffany or Nella or Sophie.’

‘So they tell me.’

‘It’s true. Nella and Sophie can both prove they were nowhere near that field. So can Tiffany, come to that. She was at home. If you must know, that was the phone call I got. Sophie was calling to ask if I was coming or not. I was late, see.’

She nodded slowly. ‘But you’d already stopped by that gateway. You’d seen Jack and were horrified. That’s why I stopped – the look on your face.’

‘Right. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, I suppose. Except – why were you there, at that very spot, and just the right moment? And then it
still strikes me as very odd the way you disappeared – as if you didn’t want to get involved with the police.’

‘Right,’ he repeated. ‘What’s surprising about that? We’re not on good terms with the cops. And, as I told you already, I didn’t see there was anything I could do. There were two of you, and that girl seemed pretty capable.’

‘My daughter. She’s a police officer.’

‘Yes, you said at the time. So why would you need me?’

‘Didn’t you
care
about him? He’s a relative, isn’t he?’

‘Distant cousin. What can I say? I didn’t think he was badly hurt.’

‘I’m still confused. Who
were
those people, then? Why would they attack him like that?’

‘As you just said, he can tell us himself, now he’s woken up. Someone’s going to get a knock on their door – if they haven’t already.’

‘The assumption is it’s most likely to be revenge for the death of Danny Compton,’ she said. ‘Everyone seems to think Jack Handy killed him.’

Steve said nothing for a minute, simply staring thoughtfully at the road beyond his car. Then he forced an artificial cough, as if the silence had to be filled somehow. ‘Everyone liked Danny,’ he said after another minute. ‘He was everyone’s friend. Willing, cheerful, capable. All the girls fell for him.’

‘And he chose Nella,’ Thea nodded, thinking the
bony, sharp-spoken young woman was an unlikely selection.

‘He did. They were mad about each other. They were getting married.’

‘I don’t suppose I’ve seen her at her best.’ Then she remembered that when she first saw Nella and the others on Saturday, nobody knew Danny was dead. She tried in vain to recall her first impression of the dead man’s fiancée. ‘I heard Tiffany saying that Danny was dragging his heels about a date for the wedding and Nella was cross about it.’

‘What man doesn’t drag his feet in that situation?’ Steve laughed. ‘He was just being sensible. They didn’t have anywhere to live, for a start. And there was something weird about his parents. He left home very young and hardly ever saw them – something like that.’

‘Must have had some money, though – with that nice car.’

‘Yeah. We did wonder about that. He said he got it at a massive discount somewhere. Never did hear the full story. We used it for off-road operations. S’pose there’ll be no more of that now. Unless Nella gets to inherit it.’