It was one of those bright March days that God had spring-cleaned especially for me. Now with my own pilot’s licence, I had my usual Friday morning session, but without the services of Piers. He’d had his uses, not least as a repository of photos, many of which were logged as evidence when Luke Greville’s case at last came up before Exeter Assizes. All the roads had led to Greville, him and his duplicitous mother. Police research – how nice to have someone else doing the dirty work – had shown that Wetherall had been one of a chain of once quite legal rending plants right across the country stretched to capacity and beyond so they could undercut competitors and force them out of business.
After seeing all those overflowing, leaking, stinking vats, I could never look at a vitamin capsule or a new lipstick quite the same way. The illicit Kings Duncombe abattoir had been a bonus for Wetherall, springing up in response to food standards legislation all but small, hard-pressed beef producers could see was entirely sensible. And beef consumers, of course, who were unable to pay the sort of prices I felt were justified for organic meat. And the national minimum wage, as Robin pointed out, which was all most of the villagers earned, if that, didn’t run to much in the way of organic anything. He’d stayed, and was rubbing his hands with glee at the sight of the new staff accommodation, though Lindi had never returned. Rumour had it she was working as a picker on a mushroom farm near Weston-super-Mare, which saddened me: she could have done better than that. Lucy was doing just as well at school as she had before her father’s death, and Nick was settling into the role of favourite uncle. Both men had of course been strictly vetted officially, and I kept my beady eye on them all the time. Just in case. You never knew with officialdom. Especially as Lucy was rapidly flowering into a quite lovely young woman.
Any day now my gourmet restaurant would open, with lots of nice media coverage, thanks to Nicola and her friends, who were now regulars. The villagers goggled from behind twitching curtains, and women were herding their menfolk to the new snug in the hope of their getting autographs. In any case the snug, clean but with the antique pub furniture I’d acquired, had started to attract back the men who’d once huddled round the fire to the exclusion of everyone else. Reg Bulcombe wasn’t doing any huddling, not in the pub, anyway, though maybe wherever he was being held pending his trial. It was his fertiliser that had taken Gay to kingdom come, and although the police believed he’d mixed it with the other bomb ingredients on Greville’s orders, doing what you were told was no excuse in law.
Sue had been promoted to another parish, in the time-honoured way in which big institutions deal with troublesome but useful staff. The paperwork she’d produced – and that it turned out she’d planted in my outhouse – made it clear that Fred Tregothnan had been dabbling in a variety of drugs for which he’d forged prescriptions, so he’d have been struck off by the RCVS if his activities had been made known. I don’t know what they’d have made of his visits to hardcore porn sites, but the police wouldn’t have approved. The grass? Bulcombe, for my money, though he was currently denying all knowledge. Sue had been replaced temporarily by a lad who looked about sixteen, who trotted round the parish in his cassock, Adam’s apple a-bobble, demanding to be called Father.
Neither Tregothnan’s Land Rover nor Nick’s rental four-by-four had ever been found, despite my inevitable photographic evidence. The trouble was, as I’d once told Nick, Somerset was a big county with lots of remote farms on which a car could be disappeared.
It wasn’t quite by chance I was circling over Exmoor now. I didn’t like loose ends. Never did – any more than Nick does. He’d still love to run to earth Tony’s fortune, which I suspect is on reason why we’ll never progress far beyond our shared-home-but-not-shared bedroom status. Another is the fact that though he now has occasional flashes of colour, he’s still only a pale, washed-out shadow of a man. Like a man who’s spent too long in gaol, maybe. No, he can’t help it. That stabbing incident made him more of a prisoner than my Tony ever was.
I can almost feel Tony now, telling me to stop musing and get on with something I can’t do every day of the week – enjoy my flying.
Yes, it’s just like it is on TV. All those fields, with little dark patches where the clouds scud between them and the warm spring sun. The early crops are greening the fields, and Easter lambs are busy preparing themselves for my organic table. But there – yes, down there – is what looks like a graveyard for giants. There they lie, side by side – Gog and Magog, maybe.
Hang on: they were further east. So what on earth would be buried in this corner of an English field, where the tilth merges with the moor? A couple of enormous horses? Or – yes! – a pair of big vehicles, one not missed by its owner, the other still the subject of endless insurance haggles.
I take a couple of snaps, and buzz for home, breathless with delight. Home? To hell with that. I’ve got another ten minutes before my time is up, and I never was a woman to waste anything. I whirl over Barnstable bay, singing aloud. Yes! God’s in His Heaven, all’s well with the world. And I know of a very good way to celebrate my find. The moment I land, I call up Mike Evans. Get yourself back to your flat, I say, and get that champagne on ice.