The Sting of Death (22 page)

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him and he can phone you back for more details.’

‘And if he wants to take that young partner of his, I’d be more than happy,’ Roma added. ‘That girl’s a real asset, isn’t she?’

It had been a while since Karen felt jealous of Maggs, Even now, it wasn’t exactly
jealousy
she assured herself. More a slightly wistful
might
have been
. ‘She’s a marvel,’ she said flatly.

Drew wasn’t sure how he felt about this latest twist in his involvement in Roma’s life. He kept
coming up against the fact of Penn being Karen’s cousin, when his strong inclination was just to drop the whole thing now that Georgia had been found. It had all turned very sour, with no comfortable outcome any longer possible. Penn had forfeited his loyalty by disappearing the way she did, leaving everyone to run around like headless chickens. Or, more accurately, stunned zombies. The full implications of the little girl’s fate still hadn’t really been absorbed. Drew hadn’t heard any more news of the child’s parents, but he assumed they were deep in grief and recriminations. He was intrigued by Justine and hoped she hadn’t been responsible for Georgia’s death. He was uneasy about Karen’s disposition, which could take a downturn at any moment. But here she was now, urging him to maintain his involvement and return Roma’s phone call as quickly as possible.

‘It sounded as if she didn’t want Justine to know what’s happening,’ she said briskly. ‘So if she’s funny on the phone, that’ll be why.’

‘Couldn’t she just have told you the whole thing?’ he grumbled. ‘Save all this messing about.’

‘Don’t be silly – she needs to speak to you. She doesn’t know if you’ll do it. I think we really should try to find Penn, if my opinion counts for anything. She started all this; it’s irresponsible
of her to just go off and leave everybody else to pick up the pieces.’

Drew wholeheartedly agreed with that, at least. He supposed he could give up a Saturday to do what he could to bring the whole sorry business to a conclusion, if that was possible. It seemed too much to hope that Penn would just calmly explain to both Drew and the police exactly what had happened to Georgia, and when and how and why, but nothing would happen without her. The glaring problem was that Roma should disclose what she guessed about Penn’s whereabouts to the police, and not to a totally unwarranted local undertaker. It would not sit at all well with Cooper and his team when they inevitably found out that their investigations had been deliberately obstructed.

Roma was indeed circumspect when he phoned. ‘Is Justine listening?’ he asked. ‘Karen thought you might not want her to know what you’re proposing.’

‘It’s not that. I just don’t want you to jump to any premature conclusions. Approach with an open mind. I truly don’t know where Penn is, but I do have a strong hunch. I could be making a stupid mistake.’

‘Do I get my petrol paid?’ he joked.

‘Only if it turns out to be a wild goose chase. If not, you get the satisfaction of solving another
case. Drew Slocombe, amateur detective, can add another notch to his notebook.’

‘Ha, ha,’ he said.

He noted down the few hints she could give as to where she wanted him to go, and agreed to set out early next morning with Maggs.

‘I’ll let you know as soon as we have anything to report,’ he promised.

Maggs was puzzled but willing. ‘Why doesn’t she go herself?’ she asked.

‘Karen wondered the same thing. It’s delicate, apparently. But all we have to do is find the Elmcroft Hotel in Bournemouth, walk in and ask for Penn Strabinski. Simple as that.’

‘What if she’s using a different name? What if she sees us and does a runner? Wouldn’t it be better to stake the place out and wait for her to show herself? She’s not likely to stay stuck in some dreary seaside hotel all day, is she?’

‘Maybe we could go and have lunch there. It’s probably open to non-residents.’

Maggs pulled a face. ‘She might be having fish and chips on the seafront and we’d have wasted all that time and money. We’d better wait till we get there and decide then.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed, feeling suddenly cheerful. ‘At least it sounds fairly easy to find.’

Putting the phone down, Roma closed her eyes and remained very still for a full minute. However you looked at it, she admitted, she had interfered. She had broken a confidence and that felt like a violent thing to have done. Worse than that, she would have to wait for several hours before she knew the outcome of her action. Waiting, for Roma, was very like being in hell. She would have to find some compelling distraction to pass the time.

From habit, her thoughts turned to the bees. All the honey had been taken off, the hives were clean and in good order; there was little danger of swarming and little hope of a new swarm turning up out of a clear blue sky, so late in the year. But seeing as how she was in an interfering sort of mood, she decided on a close inspection of the frames anyway. The weather was not ideal – a heaviness in the air that tended to make the bees tetchy – but that didn’t worry her.

But before she could climb into her protective all-in-one suit, the phone rang. ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Millan? You don’t know me, but my friend saw the card you put up in the Pitcombe village shop. About bees? I’ve been at my wits’ end, trying to find somebody to take ours away. They were my husband’s, you see, and he died last month. I don’t have any idea what to do with them.’

‘Wasn’t he in a club? Haven’t you got any
beekeeping friends to help you?’ Roma was incredulous. Normally people turned up in their own version of a swarm when they heard of a colony going begging.

‘No, no. He was too ill for that. But he loved the bees. The thing is, the neighbour’s little boy got stung yesterday and they’ve been saying some very nasty things. So in desperation I wrapped a blanket round them last night so they can’t get out. Now I don’t know what to do. My friend Irene came round to help and she remembered seeing your card. We were waiting on the doorstep of the shop this afternoon waiting for it to open after lunch, so we could get your number. Oh, do you think you can do something?’

Roma didn’t hesitate. ‘Give me your address,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll come right away.’

Transporting bees wasn’t as dangerous as it sounded, but it did have to be done properly. It should be done around twilight, or slightly later. But Roma was not inclined to wait, especially as the poor bees were already wrapped up and likely to suffocate if left much longer. Grabbing another thick blanket of her own, some rope, a thick wad of foam rubber and her suit and veil, she left the house without bothering to explain to Justine where she was going. She merely shouted up the stairs that she would be out for a while.

The woman met her at the gate of her house, hands worriedly clasped together. ‘Can you manage?’ she bleated. ‘Will you need any help?’

‘Well …’ Roma paused. She wouldn’t be able to lift a full hive into the back of her car without assistance. ‘I’ll need someone to help me lift them.’

‘I’ll do that,’ the woman said, as if it was obvious. ‘I’m not afraid of them. I just don’t know what to do with them – and they seem to cause such a lot of trouble.’

‘Have you taken off any of this summer’s honey?’

The woman shook her head. ‘I haven’t touched them since Teddy died at the end of June. He’d been ill for a month or more, so nothing’s been done to them in all that time.’

Roma felt a thrill at the prospect of a great quantity of honey just waiting for her, as well as real concern for the consequent weight of the hive.

From the bundled shape of it, she couldn’t be sure of the type. ‘Is it a National or a WBC?’ she asked. The response was a blank stare. ‘What colour is it? The hive, I mean.’

‘Oh. Sort of brown. It’s not one of those that looks like a clapboard house.’ Roma considered this before understanding the analogy. A WBC hive comprised an inner set of boxes, one on top of another, with a casing of ‘lifts’ sitting in tiers, their lower edges slightly fluted. A WBC
hive was almost always white. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a National. Much less complicated to transport.’

Wearing the suit, and advising the woman to see if she could find one for herself, Roma delicately pulled back one edge of the enveloping blanket to locate the bees’ entrance. If she could work quickly, very few of them would notice what was happening and escape through the briefly unobstructed opening. She pushed a strip of foam rubber into the orifice and pulled the blanket down again.

Then she rearranged the covering, tying it tightly with rope, hoping there was still enough air getting in to keep the bees alive.

The woman came back wearing a peculiar assortment of gabardine overall, battered bee bonnet and gardening gloves. ‘This is what Teddy used to wear,’ she announced. ‘He hardly ever got stung.’

‘That’s fine,’ Roma approved. ‘They won’t get out now, anyway. Do you want your blanket back when I’ve finished?’

‘Not really.’

‘We’d better be quick. They haven’t got much air. I hope you’re strong.’ She hadn’t been able to get her car closer than about thirty feet, the hive being in a far corner of a small back garden. Neighbouring houses clustered on all sides and
Roma could see why there’d been difficulties. In a busy summer there’d be twenty thousand bees coming and going all day long. Nobody could fail to notice that much activity.

The hive, when they lifted it, was disappointingly light.

‘You’re sure there are bees in here, are you?’ Roma demanded.

‘Oh yes. Definitely.’

‘It doesn’t feel as if they’ve been working very well. Never mind – I’ll see what’s what when I get them home.’ The fleeting thought that she might be introducing a diseased colony into her own apiary was firmly dismissed. She wasn’t going to abandon the project now.

They carried the bulky bundle awkwardly between them, walking crabwise. The car’s hatchback was open and waiting, and they gingerly tilted their burden to get it in. Roma knew it was possible – she’d chosen the car with this very procedure in mind – but it was a tight fit. The relief was palpable when they had it securely wedged in.

The woman was effusive. ‘Oh, it’ll be so wonderful to be rid of them. I know Teddy loved them, but it was always a worry. I swell up terribly every time I’m stung.’

Roma stared at her. ‘But you’re not afraid of them?’

‘Oh no. I always think it’s such a shame that they die when they sting you. I mean, when you think of that, you can’t really complain, can you?’

The logic gave Roma some pause. She’d never looked at it like that before.

‘But you’ve just helped me carry a hiveful. What if we’d dropped it?’

The woman smiled. ‘Don’t you find, dear, that it’s never the obvious danger that strikes? It’s always something you couldn’t have foreseen or protected yourself against. I suppose I’m more likely to be stung now, with the bees gone, than I was before. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it.’

There were elements of this philosophy that chimed with Roma’s own viewpoint, but it sounded odd on another person’s lips. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said. ‘Thank you, anyway. I should pay you for them, by rights. The hive alone is probably worth quite a lot.’

‘No, dear. I think I should pay
you
. You’ve just done me a great service.’

The drive home was uneventful, although Roma experienced a strong temptation to pick up a youth she passed who was trying to thumb a lift. She imagined telling him, just as he got out of the car, that she had a hive full of bees in the back. When she remembered that she would need someone to help her lift them out of the car,
she almost went back for him. But she thought better of it. Justine would have to do it.

It was not easy to persuade her daughter. Only by letting her wear all the protective clothing did she manage it, first having fussily prepared a stable base for the new hive in a carefully selected position. As soon as it was in place, she sent Justine back into the house to take off the suit and pass it over to Roma. Then she ignited her smoker and embarked on an examination of her new acquisition.

The colony was in better condition than she’d feared, although not very numerous. There could be a variety of explanations for this: an old queen recently dying and the new one not yet properly into her stride. Varroa was a possibility, of course, although the departed Teddy had presumably treated them the previous autumn. The stop-start spring they’d had, coinciding with Teddy falling ill, might have meant short rations for the bees. All in all, she was pleased. There was still time before winter for them to gain in strength and numbers, with the help of sugar syrup and varroa medication. It was a sturdy, well-maintained hive, too.

And best of all, she had not given a thought for hours to Penn or the Rentons or even her errant husband. 

As it turned out, the hotel was very difficult to find. The only map of Bournemouth they had was a sketchy one in Drew’s road atlas. ‘East Cliff,’ Maggs kept repeating, as if she could conjure the area merely by saying its name. They eventually noticed a sign to that effect, on a road they were sure they’d already traversed, only to find themselves in a maze of leafy streets, rows of hotels tucked retiringly behind every tree. They drove slowly up and down, reading the name on every entrance, until Drew was furious with Maggs, Bournemouth and the world in general. Taking a turning at random, and then another, they suddenly found it, sitting smugly obvious. ‘Elmcroft Hotel!’ Maggs crowed. ‘Can’t miss it.’

‘About bloody time,’ Drew snapped. They’d used Karen’s car, instead of the van, making good time until this last frustrating struggle slowed them down. It was ten forty-five when they pulled up in the street outside and considered what to do next.

‘For a start, it’s got two entrances,’ Maggs pointed out. ‘One here and one round the corner. We can’t watch both of them unless we split up. And that means one of us will have to hang about in the street looking conspicuous.’

‘So why don’t we just walk in and find her?’

‘Maybe we could. Even if she won’t come with us, we can say we’ve seen her.’

‘Roma wants us to talk to her. She wants us to take her home with us. We can’t let her run off.’

‘So how’s about if I stick out my foot and trip her up, and then you do a flying tackle and pin her to the ground? Then we’ll tie her up and bundle her into the car before she knows what’s hit her.’

‘Like she did with Justine, you mean?’

‘So you believe her at last?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘But I do know it’s nice to have you paying attention again. I thought for a minute I’d lost you, yesterday.’

Maggs flushed dark and gave him a quick punch. ‘Don’t tease,’ she ordered. ‘It isn’t nice.’

‘Sorry. So we’re going in, are we? Of course,
we don’t know she’s here at all. She might be in Aberdeen or Aberystwyth all along.’

‘I bet she’s here. I’ve got a feeling.’

‘Just don’t trip her up until I give the signal, right?’

They left the car where it was and walked side by side through the hotel car park and in through the front door. A small reception desk was positioned on the right, immediately inside. There was nobody behind it. Drew gripped Maggs’s elbow and pushed her onwards, towards a collection of open doors at the end of the hall. A cursory inspection revealed a lounge, bar and dining room respectively. Almost without hesitation, Drew steered them into the lounge.

Three of the deep armchairs were in use, although the room was in silence. Three grey heads could be seen over the tops of newspapers. As the newcomers stood there, wondering what to do next, a copy of the
Independent
was slowly lowered. Drew met the eyes of the man behind it and the mutual gasp of recognition attracted the notice of the other two residents.

‘Laurie Millan,’ Drew exclaimed. ‘My God!’

With an expression of suppressed exasperation, Laurie folded the paper. ‘I might have know she’d send someone,’ he muttered.

Maggs was looking from one to the other in
bewilderment. ‘Who?’ she hissed at Drew. ‘Who did you say he was?’

‘Laurie. Roma’s husband,’ he told her.

‘Ah,’ she said, as if this made perfect sense.

Drew went closer to the armchair, and smiled down at Laurie. ‘Actually, she didn’t say you had to come home,’ he began. ‘In fact, she didn’t …’

The flurry of another person hurriedly coming into the lounge interrupted him. ‘Laurie …’ it began, in unsuitably ringing tones, attracting exhalations of disapproval from the other loungers. ‘I thought I might …’ She caught sight then of Drew and her jaw dropped. ‘Drew!’ she said faintly.

‘Hello, Penn,’ he greeted her. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

There was no need for Maggs to employ her tripping-up strategy. Penn sat down composedly in a chair close to Laurie’s and waved Drew and Maggs to complete the circle.

‘I assume Roma worked this out,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think she would.’

‘Neither did I,’ put in Laurie. ‘I find it strangely pleasing.’

‘So what happens now?’ Drew wanted to know. ‘Everybody wants to ask you a lot of questions.’ He addressed Penn almost apologetically.

‘I expect they do, but they’ll have to wait a bit. I’m not coming back yet.’

‘She’s missing me, is she?’ Laurie asked wistfully. ‘I’m quite ill, you know.’

Drew examined him closely. He did look drawn and weak. ‘Is it something serious?’

‘Oh, yes, quite serious. Roma can’t cope with illness, as you’ve probably realised. It’s a completely taboo subject with her. The pretending gets quite draining after a while. I came away to try and get some strength back for another bout.’

Drew recalled the conversation he’d had with Roma, less than a month earlier. She’d revealed something then of her feelings on the subject, causing Drew to feel a cocktail of emotions towards her: admiration, pity, protectiveness and a dash of impatience.

‘It’s not as if there’s anything the matter with me,’ she’d laughed weakly. ‘But I know it’ll happen one day and it horrifies me.
Really, really
horrifies me. I haven’t had a single night for months now where I haven’t woken up and seen death staring me in the face. Stupid, isn’t it. I know why it is, too. It’s because I’ll soon be sixty. Exactly the same thing happened ten years ago. And there isn’t a thing I can do about it, except to find someone like you to talk to. Do you know how rare a character you are, Drew Slocombe? How lucky I am to find you.’

Drew had held her hand lightly in his,
saying little, but conveying his exceptional understanding.

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Maggs now protested. ‘What happens when you can’t pretend any more?’

‘Who can say?’ Laurie spread his hands.

‘I think I can,’ Penn offered. ‘She’ll punish you for it. She’ll get angry and accusing and tell you you’re doing it on purpose. That’s how she was with Justine when Sarah was ill.’

Everyone waited and Penn had little choice but to elucidate. ‘Justine had a little girl, Sarah, who developed acute myeloid leukaemia when she was only two. The doctors wanted to try a bone marrow transplant, but – well, it didn’t work out.’ Penn looked at the floor for a moment, chewing her lower lip, before continuing. ‘It’s more likely to match if you’re a relative, of course. Roma refused to be tested. She said it was modern medicine gone mad, that it would only prolong the child’s suffering and she would either recover of her own accord, or …’

‘Or what?’ Maggs demanded.

‘Or everyone should accept the inevitable and let her die in peace. Which is what happened, but not without a lot of terrible fights. Justine blamed her mother for not doing more to help. Roma felt misunderstood. They haven’t spoken since.’

Maggs narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘Where were you?’ she asked.

Penn smiled tightly. ‘I was in Poland,’ she said. ‘I only heard about it when I got back, a few months later.’ She swallowed, as if something had stuck, and then changed direction. ‘I gather Justine’s shown up at Pitcombe now?’

‘We fear those we hurt,’ Maggs murmured, ignoring the last remark.

‘What?’ Drew asked.

‘It’s a quote I picked up from somewhere. It seems to fit, don’t you think?’

‘It’s very true,’ Laurie confirmed quietly. ‘Roma’s a very fearful person, deep down. She knows she tramples on people’s feelings and then she steers clear of them – as she did with Justine. But the thing she fears most, of course, is death. Not like most people, in that
let’s-not-think-about-it
sort of way. Real in-your-face terror. I think it’s with her all the time – she can never understand how other people live so easily with it. She wants to force them to share her fear and they won’t.’

‘So why not do everything possible to save poor little Sarah from dying?’ Maggs asked.

Laurie sighed. ‘I wasn’t there, but it’s something about her associated loathing for the medical profession. She thinks they cover their own fear of death by telling lies and giving false
assurances. She never thought Justine’s little girl could hope to survive, whatever anybody did.’

‘She’s crazy,’ Maggs concluded.

‘Not at all. I first met her a few weeks after Sarah died, and she was in an awful state, but she wasn’t crazy then and she isn’t now. Poor Roma,’ he finished sadly.

Yes
, Drew silently agreed.
Poor Roma
. He watched all three faces, wondering why Roma hadn’t made an opportunity to speak to Laurie as she had spoken to him. Did she know, he wondered, how well her husband understood her?

‘Poor Justine, more like,’ Maggs protested.

Drew patted her arm. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The world would have been on Justine’s side. And the child probably would have died anyway, as Roma said. No, I think my sympathies are with Roma. It’s not her fault that she can’t fool herself like practically everyone else manages to do. There’s something terrible about being forced by your own clear-sightedness to confront the unbearableness of death, every single day. You ought to understand that, working with me,’ he added lightly.

A sniff from Penn alerted them to her distress. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed weakly, dashing a hand across her eyes. ‘It’s been a pretty horrible week and now it’s catching up with me. I’ll have to go
to my room for a bit. You’re not rushing home again, are you?’

‘Stay for lunch,’ Laurie invited expansively. ‘They do a very good grilled trout here.’

‘Yes, do,’ urged Penn. ‘But count me out. I’ll go and have a bit of a lie-down and see you later. After lunch.’

Drew understood that he wasn’t being given any option, and nodded, keeping an eye on Maggs at the same time. ‘See you down here at about two, then,’ he suggested to Penn.

Den Cooper wasn’t working that Saturday. He got up late, put a load of clothes in the washing machine and grilled himself some bacon. Then he did what he had wanted to do for days and composed a text message for Maggs.

Been thinking of u. Free tomorrow? Can talk shop or not as u like
. Den

After all, she
had
given him her mobile number. She surely must expect that he would use it, despite her coolness on Thursday. He wished he’d been more inventive with his message; it was a weird means of communication that he still hadn’t entirely got the hang of, but it did have advantages over a phone call. If she had changed her mind about him, she could simply ignore the message without having to make excuses. At least he’d tried. With a sigh, he admitted to himself
that this didn’t really count for very much.

For want of anything else to occupy him, his thoughts turned to the strange death of the child at Gladcombe Farm. Late the previous afternoon, a fuller pathology report came through, with blood analysis, description of clothing, and absolutely no signs of defensive wounds (even a small child would fight back, given the chance, it seemed), no petechiæ haemorrhages in the eyes, pupil dilation, lacerations, puncture marks. A long list of negatives, in fact. Only one small item seemed to be of interest: there were three wisps of hay attached to the clothes, and two in her hair. Little Georgia had, perhaps, been playing in one of the farm buildings on the day she died. Time – even date – of death had been impossible to pinpoint accurately, but the Ready Brek in her stomach clearly suggested that she had recently eaten breakfast.

Den ran through what he knew of the Renton family’s normal routine, as well as what they’d originally told him about the Thursday on which they last saw their daughter. She wasn’t going to her day nursery because Justine was taking her camping. Sheena Renton had left for work at seven forty-five, leaving her husband to give the child breakfast. She claimed to have seen Penn Strabinski driving through the farmyard at that same time. Then Philip had taken Georgia to
Justine’s cottage while he got on with some work on his computer. It seemed that from Georgia’s point of view it had been a break from routine in almost every respect.

Den wished he had asked more probing questions.
Where did Georgia think she was going – her Grandma’s or camping with Justine?
Did
she not talk to her mother about it?
But then he remembered that Sheena had freely admitted that she had little time for conversation with her daughter. The change of plan had been effected without consulting her and seemingly without arousing any suspicions.

Neither parent could adequately describe the clothes the child had been wearing that morning. Philip had thought it was a green thing, a sort of light cotton dress. Sheena had shown no embarrassment in admitting she had no idea.

‘She usually just chooses her own clothes,’ she’d shrugged. ‘If it’s completely wrong, I make her change, but it’s usually something OK.’

Den had made a mental note – promptly forgotten – to ask Bennie whether it was usual for a three-year-old to dress herself.

There were numerous holes, not just in the story, but in the police investigation as well. It had been slow to get going, slow to take the matter seriously. And then, almost before they could get started, Roma Millan, of all
people, had found the body. There were loads of unasked questions; now probably never to be asked, because to judge from the
post-mortem
findings, it was never going to be a murder enquiry anyway. Even if Georgia had been dropped out of an upstairs window or killed while riding in a car that stopped too suddenly or placed on the back of a wild pony that had then bucked her off – any number of similar ideas started bubbling up as he let his mind range free – there was never going to be any evidence to prove it.
Something and nothing
came the phrase again. She hadn’t even been stung by any of those bloody wasps, he sighed impatiently to himself.

The inquest, of course, was going to demand a lot more detail than a child with a broken neck left in a ditch for a week. Even if it concluded Death by Misadventure, as was perfectly likely, there would have to be a concentrated police investigation to discover just how she got into the ditch and why. And it remained more than possible that this aspect alone would be enough to tip the Coroner over into a verdict of Unlawful Killing. Den sighed. He wanted very much to abandon the whole thing here and now. If Justine Pereira had accidentally killed the child, then she must already have suffered agonies of remorse. If Penn Strabinski had
been responsible, Den doubted whether anyone would ever get the truth out of her. Even if a local paedophile had got hold of the kid, she’d died before he could assault her. It didn’t seem worth all the hassle, in Den’s opinion. But then nothing seemed worth the hassle to him at the moment.