Revenge in the Cotswolds (22 page)

‘What do you think? You know what she’s like.’ Sophie spoke coldly, lacking all emotion. ‘She asked me to make sure she had enough time.’

‘Call an ambulance,’ Thea ordered Sandra. ‘Come on, Steve – we’ve got to stop her.’

‘It’s okay – I didn’t have the nerve when it came to it.’ A voice spoke from just beyond the door, which opened before she’d finished speaking. ‘And why
should I let the bastard wreck my entire life, anyway? He’s done enough damage as it is.’

Nella entered the room with her head held high. Dark shades ringed her eyes, and grooves joined the corners of her mouth to her nose. ‘You must be his wife,’ she greeted Carol. ‘I thought that was going to be me, you see.’

‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ said Sandra, much too brightly. ‘I guess I don’t have to call an ambulance after all. Should I make it the police instead?’

Nobody answered for a long moment. Then Tiffany broke into loud sobs and threw herself at her friend. ‘Oh, Nella! You poor, poor thing! How did you discover what he was doing? I’d have stabbed him myself if I’d known. Oh, Nell …’

‘I saw his texts to his wife,’ Nella said hollowly. ‘He kept a special phone just for her, but he forgot to hide it one night. Just one little mistake. It wasn’t even as if I didn’t trust him. I just automatically picked it up, and was going to use it, and there were all his messages to and from his
wife
. He never even had the sense to delete them.’

Again a silence, before Steve said, ‘I find that rather hard to believe, actually. It would be an instinctive thing, covering his tracks.’

‘You’re right,’ said Carol. ‘He never kept any messages.’

‘More likely, you googled him, found his picture somewhere,’ Steve went on.

‘Shut up. I
did
see texts. Why should I lie about it?’ Nella’s jaw clenched tightly. ‘I’m not going to tell any more lies. There’s no point now.’

Thea was still trying to grapple with the details of how the whole business worked. ‘Was he using a different name?’ she asked Carol.

‘His name was Daniel Compton,’ Carol confirmed. ‘As far as I know, that’s the only name he ever used. It gets too complicated to change it, I suppose. Car registration, bills …’ She shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t really know the reasoning behind it. Someone’s bound to explain it to me before long.’ She rallied and looked from face to face. ‘It was a dirty business. Isn’t that enough for you?’

Thea was still breathless with anxiety for her daughter. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but no, it isn’t quite enough. For a start, did the Gloucester police know who he was? Did he report to them?’

‘I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t think so. It would be too likely to get out, if they gossiped to wives or girlfriends. I didn’t dare approach them to ask about him, in case he was all right, and just needing to stay quiet for some reason. I had no idea until last night that he was
dead
.’

‘Wasn’t his name on the news?’ Thea wondered.

Everyone shook their heads at that. ‘It was kept pretty low-key,’ said Sophie. ‘Never made the national headlines at all.’

‘So how did you find out?’ Thea asked Carol,
thinking the woman was manifesting a surprisingly low level of shock.

‘I googled him and got the online version of the local paper here.’ She grimaced. ‘After going into meltdown, not knowing who I could talk to, all I could think of doing was to come up here and see for myself and the first thing I found was one of your leaflets’ – she looked at Sophie – ‘with your mobile number on it. Those leaflets are everywhere,’ she added. ‘And there was a poster in the library.’

‘Makes you wonder why anyone thought there was a need for undercover work, then,’ said Sandra dourly. ‘Now – do you want me to call anybody?’ She held up her mobile questioningly.

‘I’ll go and hand myself in,’ said Nella. ‘Get it over and done with.’

‘Somebody ought to go with you,’ said Steve, suddenly gallant. He was almost as pale and drawn as Nella herself.

‘I’ll go,’ said Thea, decisively. ‘I have things I want to ask the detective inspector. And I know the way to the police station. We can probably walk it from here.’

‘It’s about two minutes away,’ said Nella with a grim smile.

‘But they close at five,’ said Sandra. ‘I have reason to know that for a fact.’

‘So they do.’ Thea smacked herself lightly on the head. ‘So what happens now? If I had my phone I
could call Higgins. I’ve got his direct number. But I can’t remember it.’

A sudden howl filled the room, freezing everyone in place. To Thea it felt as if everyone then became crowded together, bonded by a sort of cosmic magnet connecting them all into one amorphous body. An arm brandishing a poker flew out and impacted on Nella’s head. ‘You bitch!’ screamed a voice. ‘You
killed
him, and now you’re
smiling
about it.’ The poker struck again, and blood began to pour down Nella’s face.

‘Stop it!’ Another raised female voice rang out, full of authority. The poker was wrenched away, and Carol bundled across the room by Sophie and Steve. Tiffany and Thea found themselves cravenly clinging together, pressed against the table.

‘
Now
shall I call an ambulance?’ said Sandy Handy.

It was midnight when she got back to Galanthus – much too late to speak to either Jessica or Drew. She had no great wish to do any further talking, anyway. There had been hours of explaining and questioning, going round and around in maddening circles. Nella’s head had consumed all official attentions for far too long, given that it was not very badly hurt. There was blood, admittedly, and the paramedics were very much insistent on taking things one at a time. The policemen who turned up were equally slow to allow any other subject past their ears. Only when DI Higgins was finally summoned, ages later, did sense slowly start to filter in.

Then there was a search of Nella’s house; concerted efforts to ensure that Carol was safe and not liable to go into premature labour; tight-lipped blushes at repeated
questions concerning undercover police work – and a whole lot more. It was all utterly exhausting.

Both dogs had peed on the kitchen floor, and regarded her with full-on reproach when she finally returned to them. ‘Sorry, girls,’ she sighed. ‘Not your fault.’

Weighing her down like a stone in her chest was anxiety over Jessica. It was irrational and inconsistent, but knowing that didn’t shift it. The fact that a police officer working undercover had been killed in the Cotswolds inevitably suggested that the same thing could happen to Jess. This simple idea screamed and shouted at her unbearably – all the more so because she could do nothing about it. Even if she could reach the girl and speak to her, that wouldn’t help. Her operation, whatever it was, would probably last for weeks, with no guarantees of safety or a good outcome in all that time.

‘Serves me right,’ she muttered. What were those daft ideas of a few days ago about the uselessness of worry? Fate had taken its revenge on her for such hubris. Worry was like being trapped in a treadmill, with no way out. Jessica’s career choices were beyond her control. All she could do was wait and watch and hope.

She crawled into bed, convinced that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, after all the dramatic events of the evening. There were still a lot of unanswered questions, too. And she planned to rehearse an
account of the whole business for Drew, next day.

Instead she fell into a deep oblivion fifteen seconds after switching off the light and closing her eyes.

When she woke up, it was half past seven and sunny. She rolled out of bed with a sense of extreme urgency that lacked all shape or plan. Her phone! She needed to find her phone, for a start. She needed to feel connected and involved. To be kept in ignorance felt like the worst possible position to be in – which was another irrational development, she realised. And anyway, who was going to contact her? Who among all those people cared tuppence whether the house-sitter knew what was going on? She ought not to have been included in the first place. None of it was remotely her business.

Gwennie brought her down to earth by whining and scratching at the back door. When Thea let her out, she began to run as fast as her little legs would permit towards a corner of the garden. Hepzie followed for a half-hearted few yards, before losing interest. A big ginger cat jumped onto the fence, leaving the corgi bouncing and yapping five feet below. ‘Stop it, Gwennie!’ Thea pleaded. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack.’ The dog ignored her, much as the cat was ignoring the dog.

It was all reassuringly normal. Whatever might have been going on a few miles away, with a tangle of betrayal and vengeance and ultimate violence, all
was simple and predictable here at Galanthus House. It was a view she did not often entertain: that her house-sits might be seen as a series of sanctuaries, somewhere to draw breath and catch up with books and films and plans for the future. Instead, she often found them boring and repetitive. That way lay her downfall, as she had gradually become aware. ‘We can’t go on like this,’ she muttered to her spaniel.

A yap from Gwennie alerted her to a muted clatter at the front door. When she went to look, a letter was lying under the flap, face down. When she picked it up, she saw it had no stamp, and simply said ‘Thea’ on the front.

Thea wasn’t sure what to make of this. She almost termed it a
billet doux
to herself, given the opening lines. Sandra’s phone number was at the top of the note, suggesting she really would appreciate a call.

It was at least contact from a friendly local, which was liable to have some value over the coming week. It was proving difficult to adapt to the abrupt cessation of drama, and the inescapable isolation of the coming day.

But some of this self-pity evaporated when she found her phone. It offered her two messages. One of them was from the man in Farmington who had enquired about house-sitting. He suggested three weeks in July, caring for five Siamese cats. A well-behaved dog might
just be acceptable as companion to the house-sitter. Thea suspected he had tried to find somebody else, minus dog, and failed. Thea had the advantage of not belonging to an agency, and therefore making lower charges. She smiled ruefully. Three summer weeks in yet another contender for Most Lovely Village in the Cotswolds was hard to refuse. And perhaps Drew could join her with the children, if it ran into the start of the school holidays.

The other message was from Jessica.

She sat down on the sofa with a thump. Did Jess mean she’d been suspended? Or the job was prematurely aborted? Or what? Slowly she recognised the way her feelings were mutating from worry to curiosity. That was better! Curiosity was, after all, her default emotion. Curiosity was warm and alive and buoyant and, above all, under her own control – at least partially. She did not even try to resist the compulsion to phone for further information.

Jessica sounded sleepy, but comparatively cheerful. ‘Mum? Did you get the text?’

‘Yes. What happened?’

‘It’s a long story, but basically Uncle James had to rescue me. I was in over my head. I make a rubbish spy.’

‘They wanted you to spy for them?’

‘Not really. I had to tell a lot of lies and try to win the trust of some bad people. I knew I’d be useless and I was.’

‘You don’t sound too sorry about it.’

‘Well – Uncle James pointed out that being a good liar wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.’

‘He’s right. But are you in trouble? What happens now?’

‘Too soon to say. It’s still ongoing. What about you? How’s the murder going?’

‘All sorted. I think.’

‘Thank goodness. And what about the firebomb?’

‘Gosh, I’d forgotten about that. Apparently it was some people whose child was removed by Mrs Foster being unduly officious. That’s what the original suspect told me. Mrs Foster has just retired as a social worker, and she’s made a lot of enemies, or so I gathered.’

‘Pretty extreme revenge, though – burning her house down.’

‘True,’ said Thea, thinking of all the ways a person could be violently killed, and how dangerous life could feel at times. Then she shook herself. ‘Anyway, everything’s okay now. I’ll ring you again in a day or two, when we can have a nice long chat. I can’t say too much for now.’

‘Okay, Mum. Bye, then.’

Which left the unanswered questions concerning Nella and the Handys and the wretched Carol
Compton. The way she had risen up like an avenging angel made a lingering image that Thea guessed would stay with her for a very long time. She had seemed so together, explaining what she knew and how she’d traced Sophie, until some small thing suddenly triggered the attack on Nella. Nobody could blame her, of course. And nobody did.

But nobody quite blamed Nella, either. After the protracted explanations and statements at the specially opened police station, Thea and Steve and Tiffany had gone to a pub, where they sat until nearly midnight, debriefing each other and obsessing about the whole story. Sophie went miserably home to Siddington and Sandy drove off with yet another quip. ‘What a weird woman!’ Thea had burst out, the moment she’d gone. ‘Doesn’t she take anything seriously?’

Neither of the others replied.

‘You ought to get home,’ Thea told Tiffany. ‘They’ll be missing you.’

‘Past my bedtime?’ challenged the girl.

‘No, no …’

‘They’ll be much too taken up with Ricky to bother about me. I’ve told them where I am. You can take me home when we finish here.’

They talked mainly about Nella, with Tiffany shedding tears and Steve sighing a lot. ‘She really did love him,’ Tiffany insisted. ‘Imagine how she must have felt when she discovered what he was doing. I
mean – that’s betrayal on so many levels. Not just her, but the whole group.’

‘Sandy was right,’ said Steve. ‘We should have clocked him ourselves. It’s almost a cliché, isn’t it? Undercover bloke gets it together with one of the girls in the group under surveillance, to give himself even better cover. Happens all the time.’

‘But
Danny
,’ Tiffany wailed. ‘He was such a lovely man. Always cheerful and helpful and ready for anything. Nobody’s ever going to convince me he didn’t care about the badgers. Out there in the rain, night after night, checking on them. How could any of us ever have guessed? And he
proposed
to Nella. He didn’t need to do that, did he? Surely he must have loved her a bit? How could anybody
pretend
like that?’

Steve fidgeted. ‘You mean sex, I suppose. It’s not so difficult, actually. And Nella’s attractive.’

‘Is she?’ said Thea. ‘I’m not sure I can see it.’

‘You didn’t see her as she really is.’

‘I saw her at about three o’clock on Saturday. Had she killed him by then, I wonder? Was she putting on an act, leaning against that great big car, as if nothing was worrying her?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that too,’ said Tiffany. ‘I think she must just have come from doing it. There were probably bloodstained clothes in the car boot. If you stab someone, there’s lots of blood, right?’ She shuddered. ‘And what we all thought was grief was really
guilt
at what she’d done. I still can’t believe it.’

‘I think she must have gone and done it after you were together at the church,’ said Thea. ‘When did you leave her?’

‘Five minutes later. She said she’d have to go and find Danny, because she was sick of waiting. Maybe that’s more likely. I hope it is,’ she finished. ‘That sounds silly, I know.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Thea. ‘And you’re right about the blood. She’d have had to go somewhere for a wash, and I can’t see she would have had enough time. And if it had already happened, I might have seen something. I was walking down that road, just before I caught up with you and Sophie in the woods.’

‘But how
cold
. And calculating. She’d have to wait until she was sure nobody was around – no traffic coming. Then just stab him and push him into the quarry.’

Steve coughed. ‘Get him into a clinch, do the business, and heave him backwards. Even if someone saw them, they wouldn’t understand what was happening.’

‘They’d remember afterwards, though. When they heard he was dead,’ said Thea.

‘What you said about grief and guilt,’ Steve said to Tiffany. ‘Don’t you think it could have been both together? Each making the other worse.’

Thea thought about the scene in the church, with Nella so clenched and inward-looking. ‘I think you’ve got that exactly right,’ she told Steve.

Much more along similar lines was voiced, the lines becoming circles and spirals of speculation and gradual acceptance.

‘But what about the people in Dubai?’ Thea asked at one point. ‘They can’t really have been his parents, can they? Or they’d have told Nella about Carol.’

‘It wouldn’t matter, though, would it, once he was dead?’

This called for some serious thinking. ‘But they’d never talk to Nella about the funeral and everything, would they? They’d want to know why it wasn’t Carol. And then they’d call Carol, right away, and she’d have known he was dead days earlier than she did.’

‘Right,’ nodded Tiffany and Steve slowly. ‘You’re right.’ Thea could tell that Steve especially was finding it an uphill struggle to follow all the implications of the story. For him, the mere fact of Danny’s betrayal was a giant boulder in the way of any further understanding.

‘Might they have been planted somehow, by the police, then? The Kent police, that is. Just voices on the end of a line, acting a part? That would be easy to arrange. If Nella asked, Danny could just let her think they really were two middle-aged people on a birdwatching project. And another thing – the Kent police must have provided him with that locksmith’s van, full of equipment, to give him a credible source of income. They really thought of everything, so that Nella had no reason to doubt him.’

‘She
did
doubt him, though,’ Steve insisted. ‘As I said at the house – she must have been checking up on him. That stuff about finding texts on his phone can’t be true.’