‘It’s not Lucy’s fault,’ a gruff voice from the darkness said.
I swung the torch. ‘Nick Thomas!’ The beam must have hurt his eyes. After a moment I shifted it. ‘What are you doing here?’ If I’d expected anyone to be needing a bed it might have been Tom Dearborn’s girl, Sharon. So why hadn’t she come? I must phone Tom. ‘The candles are under the bar, this end, Lucy. And matches.’ I pointed with the torch.
‘Orphan of the storm,’ he said, his clothes dripping on to the flagstones. Had he been swimming? He couldn’t have been wetter. ‘And Lucy said she was sure since you did B and B, you’d put me up for the night.’
Lucy returned, looking like Lorna Doone in the glow of a pair of candles she’d had the sense to put in pint glasses. As if in role, she almost curtseyed. ‘I was just making up one of the en suite rooms.’
‘Good girl.’ I smiled, but seethed. It wasn’t me but my predecessor but one who’d put up the B and B sign. I didn’t know how he’d dared. I’d hung up a ‘No vacancies’ notice, but someone had absconded with it and I hadn’t got round to replacing it.
The rooms were in a very poor state, and I didn’t like to charge for them. I had nowhere to offer a guest breakfast – you could cut up the stale air in the bar and carry it out in chunks. This might pass as rustic atmosphere if you were downing a lunchtime drink but wouldn’t go with cereal and skimmed milk. On the other hand, if I offered Nick free accommodation, it might put us both in an awkward situation.
‘Leave one of those candles down here,’ I said, passing her the bundle of bedclothes. ‘Good girl. Careful how you go.’ She was half way up the stairs when I realised something was wrong. ‘Where’s Lindi?’
The poor kid said awkwardly, ‘She phoned to say… she couldn’t come tonight.’
Did she indeed? ‘Well, it was considerate of her to warn me. And to have the gumption to phone you. Off you go.’
Nick didn’t watch her up the stairs. Brownie points for that, at least – unless he was afraid I’d throw him out if he did. ‘The campsite’s flooded. I waded over to get out as much as I could, but then the caravan just floated away, boxes and all.’ He was taking great pains not to let his voice break.
All those little things he couldn’t bear to leave in store. If I was kind, he might weep. I was brisk. ‘Clothes?’
You could see the deep breath, the brace of the shoulders. ‘Got a rucksack full. And some photos and things. But most of it’s gone.’ He swallowed hard.
I couldn’t help myself. ‘You poor bugger. Go on, upstairs with you. Lucy’ll run you a hot bath and then I’ll rustle up some food for you. No, leave all those wet things down here – I’ll stow them in the boiler room. Oh, for God’s sake, man – don’t you think I’ve seen a man in the dark in his knickers before?’
At which point the lights came back on.
The really wet stuff still dripping in the boiler room, and his shoes stuffed with yesterday’s Guardian, I’d ended up putting all the stuff in his rucksack through the tumble dryer. Though I drew the line at ironing it myself, I was happy to provide him with the wherewithal. I set up the board at one end of my own kitchen, and busied myself starting the living room fire – not so much to keep us warm as insurance against another power cut – and then preparing vegetables. He’d have to eat what I was going to eat, which was not necessarily stuff I served in the bar. Not that there were any clients tonight. If any was fool enough at this stage to venture out for a drink, Lucy could call me. Otherwise she could sit in front of the fire and do her homework uninterrupted, which may have been the reason she volunteered to take Lindi’s shift. As for getting her home, I supposed I’d better chauffeur her. Usually she was happy to walk, on the understanding that her dad would meet her halfway, but I didn’t see him leaving his fireside just for my peace of mind. His line was that Lucy was used to being on her own. He regarded as downright eccentric my city take on girls wandering solo down lonely lanes.
‘The funny thing,’ Nick said, resplendent in my black silk kimono, ‘is that the far end of the village – you know, the shop end – is dry.’
‘OK, not actually flooded. The stream’s fuller than you said it was earlier, but certainly not to overflowing. Whereas this end, where you’d have expected it to be flood-free, the lanes are like sluices.’
‘Not funny at all if someone rearranges the watercourse,’ I said. ‘Which is what I bet your nice Mr Bulcombe was doing when I saw him.’
‘Why should he want to do that?’ A rare smile told me I was interesting him.
‘Come on, you’re the copper – work it out. Either he doesn’t want other people to know that the stream’s running pink, so he sends the water another way. Or he’s found out what you really do – and not, before you ask, from me – and he wants you out of here.’
‘You sound like a cop yourself,’ he said, taking the hanger I passed him.
‘You spend as long as I did with a man the wrong side of the Law, you learn to think like a cop. Studying the opposition’s tactics, you might say.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘So who knows you’re with the Food Standards Agency? No, don’t tell me – Fred Tregothnan. Well, you were a fool to tell him.’
‘I didn’t tell him. One area of our work is meat hygiene. He’s the vet responsible for checking a food packing company’s premises near Barnstable.’
‘Which you had to check out?’
‘In a friendly sort of way, I told him I’d be paying a visit in the next few months.’
‘If that was the conversation I saw you having last Friday morning it didn’t look very friendly. Watch your iron, Copper! That’s a decent shirt.’ So he was rattled, was he? Any moment now I’d find myself offering. ‘Was he upset enough to do a bunk?’
‘What the hell do you mean?’
I passed him another hanger. ‘Only that Fred’s gone walkabout – and the police have logged him as a Missing Person.’
His reaction was much the same as mine had been. ‘Misper? But he’s a grown man – they don’t usually start worrying this early.’
‘Perhaps they know things about him we don’t. Or I don’t?’
He concentrated on the next shirt, taking great pains with the right sleeve.
‘Come on, Copper, any moment now your little pals’ll come knocking on the door asking what you were arguing about –’
‘Why? Who’ve you told?’
‘All those years married to Tony, and I tell anyone anything I don’t have to? But it stands to reason, doesn’t it – if I saw you, half the village will already have blabbed. They’re probably after me, too, because Fred and I had a pretty audible row about five hours after yours. He was groping young Lindi.’
‘Which might explain why she didn’t turn up tonight and Lucy filled in?’
‘If she’d been upset. She seemed more anxious about my yelling at him than about having his fingers up her bum. Tried to say it was only a bit of fun,’ I added in a Lindi-bleat.
‘Did she mean it or was she afraid of offending Tregothnan?’
‘She made me sound like a spoilsport,’ I admitted. ‘How much more ironing have you got to do? When the end’s in sight, I can start on the supper. While it cooks, I’ll run Lucy home – I’ll put you in charge of the bar while I’m off.’
‘Honoured, I’m sure. Wouldn’t it make more sense,’ he said, putting the iron on its heel and switching off, ‘if I took her? Hell, Josie, don’t look at me as if I’m some bloody paedophile. She’s younger than my own daughter.’
‘I’m sure that’s what they all say.’ I reached for my keys.
‘I was hoping,’ he said, suddenly as bright-eyed as the kid policeman I’d once thrown my stilettos at, ‘to try out my new toy. You probably didn’t see it. It’s parked at the front, because I wasn’t sure how big your yard is. Or how big the toy is.’
‘Not another one with a bloody gas-guzzler! Jesus, you people! Have you no idea how much pollution they push out?’ Not nearly as much as my chopper rides, truth to tell, but no one knew about those.
His face fell.
I might have gratuitously smashed a kid’s train set. ‘But at least you have the excuse that you need it for your job,’ I conceded without waiting for him to plead, ‘not just for the school run. And presumably you know how to drive the thing – unlike all the mothers round here who think they’re giant dodgems.’
His smile was bleak. What nerve had I touched this time? ‘It’s the greenest I could find,’ he mumbled.
‘Well, why not give it a spin?’ I checked my watch. ‘There won’t be any customers now. If there are, tough. I’ll just give Lucy a shout.’
‘Will you be doing the cooking for this restaurant of yours yourself?’ asked Nick, now fully dressed again in garments so drab I almost wanted to tell him to slip the kimono on again. He broke a five minutes’ silence. He leaned back from the table, dabbing his lips with the linen table napkin, smug as a paterfamilias at his board.
Double-damask linen tablecloth. Silver cutlery. Bone china. Well, the food deserved it. As for the decorative candles in silver candlesticks, they weren’t meant to be romantic – they were there in case of another power failure.
‘Some of the time,’ I agreed. ‘After all, I do pretty well everything now.’
‘I should think you’re guaranteed a regular clientèle, then.’ He managed a smile.
‘Local fresh vegetables, local free range chicken cooked in good quality wine –’
‘Local?’ He must be feeling better to try teasing me.
‘My preference is New Zealand. It’d be hard not to make a meal taste good,’ I said, clearing the dishes on to a tray – I’d never been good at clever waiting with plates stacked along my arm, especially with my own china.
When I returned from the kitchen, he asked, ‘So you’ll be going for a niche market?’
‘For the restaurant. And as good as I dare for bar meals. You’ve barely touched that wine.’
‘Best on a full stomach,’ he said, drinking quite deeply. ‘You neither, actually.’
‘Best for a flat stomach. But I wouldn’t object to another glass. There are times I’d love to go on a bender and eat and drink a whole week’s worth of points in one sitting.’
‘Why don’t you?’ He was topping up my glass, but paused to look at me.
‘Because you don’t lose as much as I’ve lost without a good deal of will power. And there’s another stone to go. And it’ll take even more will power not to pile it all on again. I’ve seen it dozens of times. The scales. The panic. The diet. And then you get bored or upset or plain greedy and on it all goes again. And then it’s the scales, the panic and the whole lot all over again. Which is why I don’t just diet, I exercise. Which is why I saw the pink water and the barbed wire on the footpath and Bulcombe armed with a spade. You’re in a better position than I am to find how all these are connected. But I’ll start you off. Your first weekend here, you found yourself flattened into the hedge. By a large, unlit lorry, Sue said. Which road, Copper?’
‘The obvious one. The one leading directly from here to the campsite.’
I stood up to reach out my large-scale ordnance survey map, spreading it on the table in front of him. ‘I can’t see anything on here to attract large unlit lorries. Can you?’
He looked furtive, then embarrassed. ‘Not without my reading glasses, I can’t.’
‘Go and get them then. That’s how you’re singing for your supper tonight – by helping me work this out.’
I’d loaded the dishwasher by the time he returned, clutching a swish-looking laptop, plus his reading glasses. He installed himself at the dining table again, checking for a place mat to go under it before I could even yell.
‘I use this for the job,’ he said. ‘It’s not got just large-scale maps, you can enlarge whole sections. And there’s another programme that gives you aerial views of everything. Want to see?’ He vacated his chair so I could look at the screen – I’ve never worked out why you can only see from one angle. Something to do with the plasma, I suppose.
‘So you need aerial views for your work?’
‘Hardly. But I do need the maps. And a handy in-car guide to where I am and how to dodge traffic jams. A manor this big, I can justify a few bells and whistles.’ He paused. Was he waiting for me to apologise? He ought to have known by know that Josie Welford didn’t do apologies.
‘“People muthst be amuthsed”,’ I muttered.
He looked at me sharply. ‘Orwell?’
‘Dickens. So this is the White Hart, God’s eye view?’
‘Right. And here it is’ – he leant across me – ‘on the OS map. And this is how you enlarge it. See?’
‘Clever,’ I conceded. ‘Tell me, does that chariot of yours have one of those on-board computers to say if you’re parking safely?’
‘Yep. And it changes out of four-wheel drive when I don’t need it.’
‘So it’s got more whistles and bells than the Last Night of the Proms,’ I said, amused and almost approving. ‘And your campsite is here? And the road runs here. So what we need to look for is where your road intersects with my path. Right?’
‘Right. Which would be –’ he put a hand on the back of my chair and peered – ‘there.’
‘But there’s nothing there.’
‘Officially. So let’s change programmes and look from the air. Do you know about grid references? Because that’s what you need to type in.’
His turn for the chair.
‘Explain as you go: I’d rather learn to fish than be given one.’
‘If you can read a map you’re halfway there,’ he said. ‘This is how it works…’
Apt pupil I may have been, but I soon reached out the Laphroaig and a couple of crystal glasses. ‘So we’re no nearer knowing what’s there.’
‘Only because these aerial photos may have been taken before the whatever it is was built.’
‘I thought you said it was constantly updated by satellite or something.’
‘Or because your path leads to another path that intersects with the road. No whisky, thanks.’
‘Water? Plenty of that, after all.’
‘Not even that, thanks.’ He oozed embarrassment. ‘Do you want to do another scan?’
‘Not tonight, thanks. I need my beauty sleep. I don’t yet run to a residents’ lounge, but you’re welcome to sit in the bar as long as you want. Or here, of course,’ I added, not wishing to sound too offensive.
‘All that swimming’s left me weary, thanks very much.’
The lights flickered and died.
I lit two of the dining table candles from the dying fire, giving him one and keeping the other for myself. ‘Did Lucy leave you plenty of blankets? What kind of landlady am I? I should have checked!’
‘She left enough for an army. I suspect the towels she found were yours, by the way – they rather stood out against the utility tiling. And she’d found a kettle and tea bags from somewhere, even some little pots of milk.’
‘She’s got her head screwed on, that kid. Right: do you want a morning call or was your alarm clock amongst the things you rescued?’