‘Fair enough. And George says Jared’s straight enough, at any rate … all the same, we’d better have a word with this Mrs Osborne, but check beforehand to see if she’s licensed to own a gun,’ Mayo advised, annoyingly stating the obvious.
‘If it
was
a gun Cleo Atkins saw,’ Kite said.
‘Oh, George thinks it was. He says Cleo wouldn’t make a mistake about a thing like that.’
‘Wouldn’t she?’ Kite looked doubtful. ‘OK, but a gun wouldn’t be all that surprising. The old girl used to be a farmer’s wife and she’ll be used to having them around the place. Living out there at the back of beyond, maybe she thinks it a good idea to keep one handy.’
‘In a drawer?’ Abigail asked, frowning.
‘The ground floor had just been flooded, furniture and other stuff carted upstairs, I don’t suppose anybody bothered too much about what was put where, that’s why she’d got excited about it. Maybe it’s a relic of her husband’s – which she knows she isn’t entitled to keep, without a shotgun licence. Especially since it wasn’t locked up, as it should have been.’
‘We’re not talking shotguns, though. It’s a pistol we’re looking for – and if it was in the drawer, we’re not going to find it, now, are we, not after somebody’s seen it?’
‘Check, all the same,’ Mayo said tersely, bringing the discussion back to the point. ‘If only to eliminate … especially with this latest development. We’re looking for a gun that maybe killed both victims – which means whoever used it knew, or was targeting, them both. So it’s important – and so is any possible connection Wetherby may have had with Kyneford. It wasn’t chance the woman was found where she was. Given the choice, there must be hundreds of better places to dump a body than
where it was left. And don’t forget to check on the Bysouths at the pig farm. Grand job for one of you – a ride out, lovely breezy day like this, what more can you ask?’
Kite, looking unusually spruce in his best dark suit, donned especially to impress the jury later that afternoon, looked pointedly at his watch and grinned beatifically.
Abigail groaned. ‘Why do I always draw the short straw? Reuben Bysouth sounds a real sweetheart, another who’s been belting his wife around. I can’t wait. Never mind. I’ll take Jenny with me, but later this morning. I’d like to have a word with Cleo Atkins before I give myself the pleasure, and I have people to see at the school first, as well.’
‘Leave the Assistant Bursar to me,’ Mayo said. ‘Riach, isn’t it, John Riach?’
He could never properly focus his mind on a case until he’d seen all the important witnesses at least once. Riach no doubt fell into this category, since he had worked alongside Wetherby for many years, and could almost certainly tell him as much about the Bursar as anyone. The more you knew about the victim, the closer you got to the killer was a basic rule to work by, but as yet no one had been able, or willing, to tell him just what sort of man Wetherby had been. While he didn’t seem to have been actively disliked – his wife and Sam Leadbetter apart, perhaps – nobody seemed to have cared for him overmuch. Certainly no one seemed particularly distressed at his demise. He’d led an apparently ordinary and uneventful life, no different in substance from many another man who kept the real state of his marriage and his domestic affairs to himself. So why had he been shot through the head? Murder didn’t normally happen without cause.
Cleo had decided, after all, that there wasn’t much point in rushing down to see her father, now that she knew why he’d wanted to speak to her. It would only upset Val’s arrangements for MO and interrupt the unexpected run of work at her father’s office: if Daphne had gone in to work, it was unlikely that the discovery of her boss’s body had upset her too much. She rang George instead at ten, when Muriel had said he would be in, and he told her with a resigned sigh that going in to work was probably the best thing for Daphne … she’d no doubt taken
charge and was organising everybody there, it would be good therapy as far as she was concerned.
‘Come round and have some supper tonight,’ Cleo suggested, ‘It’ll have to be a takeaway but I can’t wait for Mum to see what the front room looks like now.’
George said they’d be delighted. He’d cause for a celebration of his own, he said. He’d landed an assignment to act on behalf of a leading insurance company to investigate some dodgy car accident claims, work enough to keep him busy for months – and what was more, he’d found Sara Ruby.
‘You have? Great!’
‘It was pretty much as I thought.’ Predictably, there’d been a quarrel that Mrs Ruby had omitted to mention to him, over Sara’s choice of boyfriend, and Sara had flounced off to live with the said young man. George hadn’t been able to persuade her to return home, but at least she’d promised to ring her parents and reassure them she was all right.
After Kelsey Road, Cleo and Sue were expected at a house where the mother of four children under five had recently given birth to another. Cleo had been sent there with Sue the day before, to make a start, and wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance, but it wasn’t a task she could opt out of: she was, she’d gathered, the last desperate end of Val’s resources as far as Mrs Bristow was concerned, the only one of the MO personnel apart from Sue who hadn’t refused to enter the house again after their first time. Cleo couldn’t blame them. The house was a tip, the children – twin boys, a girl of three and a toddler who wasn’t potty-trained – were like wild animals, while the mother remained serene and calm in the middle of it all, feeding her new baby while reading or marking student sociology papers for the Open University, sublimely unaware or uncaring of the mayhem going on around her. Mucking out the monkey house at the zoo, with the monkeys in it, would’ve been preferable.
It had to be around here, it was somewhere on the rough end of Victoria Road, Abigail had been told. She had parked her car in a side street and was now searching for George Atkins’s office, which, knowing George, she half expected to be some sort of dump above a launderette or a betting shop. She was pleasantly
surprised to see the freshness of the newly painted exterior standing out amid the dismal surrounding shops. The interior decor continued the welcoming theme, gave promise of careful attention to detail, though all this was somewhat marred by the familiar sight of a cluttered desk and a battered typewriter glimpsed through an open door which, however, told her she’d found the right place. George couldn’t be far away.
‘May I help you?’ A small, elderly woman with iron-grey hair had pushed her knitting quickly, though not quite quickly enough, into an open drawer and picked up a Bic, looking attentive. A dachshund, curled in a basket under the kneehole of her desk, sniffed around Abigail’s shoes with interest and growled softly when she moved them away. ‘Quiet, Hermione!’
‘I’ve really come to see George – Mr Atkins. I’m one of his old colleagues, Abigail Moon.’
‘Oh, I’ve heard him speak of you – but I’m sorry, he’s out. He should be back any minute, though,’ she added, looking at her watch. ‘I’m Muriel Seton. Do have a seat. Tea or coffee?’
‘Well, thanks, tea please, if he’s really not going to be long …’ Abigail was spitting feathers, but adding to her guilt-load by drinking yet another of the coffees she ought to cut down on was something she didn’t need.
‘Earl Grey, Lapsang, peppermint, or rosehip and strawberry?’
‘Oh – er – just ordinary tea will do, I’m not fussy,’ Abigail said, bemused by the choice. ‘No milk or sugar.’
‘I see you know how tea should be drunk. Ordinary tea? It had better be George’s Indian, then.’
Muriel Seton disappeared through a door into a back room and Abigail bent to stroke Hermione, changing her mind when she saw the little dog’s lip curling alarmingly. What was the point of pets when they were so disagreeable? She didn’t object to dogs but she’d never been inclined to get one herself, notwithstanding her lifestyle, which didn’t adapt itself to the idea. If ever she’d been tempted, the monster black dog that lived at the end of her lane and terrorised everyone who approached her home, including herself, would have stopped her.
‘Well,’ said Hermione’s owner, coming back with a tray laid with Royal Albert china and apostle spoons in the saucers. A
traycloth,
for goodness’ sake! She put it down on her desk with an expression that said, We May Be Small, But We Don’t Let Our Standards Slip. ‘I see they’ve had a murder up at the school, then?’ she commented as she poured.
Abigail sighed. She was expected to pay for her tea, after all. She nodded and avoided further comment by saying, ‘Actually, it’s not George I want to see, not specially, I just thought he could tell me where I might find his daughter.’
‘Oh, I can give you her home address, but better still, if you want to speak to her quickly, you can get in touch with those contract cleaners she’s working for. Val Storey will tell you where you can get hold of her.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners in disapproval, whether of the cleaners or the job itself wasn’t clear.
Just as Sue was about to start up the van after she and Cleo had finished at Kelsey Road, a car drew up behind them and a woman with red hair jumped out of the passenger seat and ran towards the van.
‘Hold on a minute, I’d like a word, please. Are you Cleo Atkins?’ she asked, peering around Sue’s rotund form to where Cleo sat. ‘Oh, good, I’m Abigail Moon, Lavenstock CID.’
‘Well, we’re just on our way somewhere else, and we’re on a tight schedule,’ Sue replied sharply, putting the van into gear, immediately jumping to the conclusion that Cleo would want to avoid having that word.
‘Wait! Cleo, I used to work with your dad and Muriel Seton put me on to Mrs Storey, who told us you’d be here. I only want a quick few minutes. How about you getting in the car with us and we’ll follow your friend to wherever you’re going next? You can talk to me on the way.’
‘We-ell … OK. It’s all right, Sue, I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Cleo told Sue, hoping she hadn’t, but not having a clue what this was all about. ‘I’ll see you when we get to Mrs Bristow’s.’
‘Sure?’
Cleo nodded and climbed into the back seat of the car, as instructed by Inspector Moon, who introduced her to the other
woman detective, Jenny Platt, the one doing the driving. ‘Nice to meet you, Cleo,’ said Jenny. ‘Where to?’
‘It’s Corby Avenue. Number 5, the one with the clapped-out Mini and all the kidditoys in the front garden.’ And, she thought but didn’t add, the smeary windows, which she’d tried without much success to clean yesterday of all the muck left by sticky fingers and snotty noses pressed against them. ‘What do you want?’
‘George has told us you saw a gun at Wych Cottage, Cleo,’ said Abigail Moon. ‘Can you describe it to me?’
‘Well, it was just a gun.’ Cleo was taken aback, wondering why her seeing it should suddenly have assumed such importance as to warrant her being questioned by CID officers. ‘I only mentioned it to Dad because it was such a funny place to see it and an odd thing for someone like Mrs Osborne to have.’
‘Just a gun. The sort with a long barrel?’
Cleo gave her a steady look. ‘It wasn’t a shotgun. I don’t know much about guns, but I can recognise the difference between a shotgun and – and the other kind.’
‘A handgun,’ Moon supplied. ‘A revolver or a pistol.’
‘I suppose that’s what they are, but I wouldn’t be able to recognise either.’
‘Could it have been a replica?’
‘If I can’t tell one from the other, I wouldn’t know that, would I? Anyway, I thought that was the whole point of a replica? That it looks exactly like the real thing.’ Realising she was beginning to sound belligerent, she added, ‘I only got a glimpse, but anyway, I don’t know how you’d tell.’
‘With difficulty,’ Abigail said. ‘Only on close inspection. Even professionals can be fooled otherwise.’
‘Then that’s maybe just what it was, just something to scare away intruders. I’d be inclined to have one myself if I lived out there.’
Abigail nodded. ‘Especially as she’s a dealer.’
‘What?’
‘Antique furniture, porcelain and so on. We’ve done our homework on Mrs Osborne.’
‘Oh.’ So that’s what Mrs Osborne had meant when she said she’d occupied her life with other things than being a farmer’s
wife. ‘For a moment there, I thought –’ She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’d be all that surprised, even so.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Abigail asked sharply.
‘It was a
joke
. She might look like the Queen Mum, but she isn’t your typical sweet old lady.’
‘That was your impression?’ Abigail asked, looking thoughtfully at Cleo. ‘Was that why you mentioned seeing the gun to your father?’
Cleo thought about it. ‘Not really. I just meant that she’s
shrewd
. She’s still got all her marbles – and her reaction surprised me, as much as anything, otherwise I’d probably just have forgotten it.’ She added worriedly, ‘She’s not going to get into trouble, is she? She was very nice to us.’
‘Oh, there’ll be some satisfactory explanation, I’m sure.’
‘So you’re going to ask her about it?’
‘Probably.’
Cleo said suddenly, ‘It’s to do with that woman they found in the river, isn’t it? You
can’t
think Mrs Osborne did that!’