Dave Pearce stood before the bathroom mirror, his mouth opened as wide as was physically possible, and performed a series of stretches and contortions in an effort to inspect one of his own teeth. The mirror was inconveniently placed, not high enough for him. Tessa insisted that fixed any higher, it would be too high for her. It meant he had to half-crouch in an attitude hard to maintain. The light wasn’t good enough. If he approached the mirror any closer, his breath steamed it up and he couldn’t see at all. He hooked a finger into his lower lip, pulling it down, and wrenched his head sideways producing one more face which would have won him any girning competition. The tooth looked all right to him. So why, then, when he ate anything on that side, or drank anything very hot or cold, did it suddenly feel as if someone had jabbed a redhot needle in his jaw?
He gave up the attempt and finished shaving. He supposed he could stop off at a dentist’s surgery on the way to work and
make an appointment. He clattered down the stairs. As he reached the hall, the front door opened and Tessa appeared, flushed of face, hauling a reluctant brindled lurcher in her wake.
‘I’ve walked Henry,’ she said in a voice which held layers of meaning.
‘I said I’d do it,’ offered Pearce lamely.
‘Saying’s not much good, is it? I didn’t think you were ever coming out of that bathroom. I’ve just run round the playing field with him. But tonight you can walk him. It’s your turn!’
‘All right, I’ll walk him!’ Pearce’s temper began to fray. Henry collapsed on the floor, put his head on his paws and rolled his eyes upward, watching his owners with interest.
‘I know why you were so long up there!’ announced Tessa, arms akimbo. ‘It’s that flipping tooth. I told you to make a dental appointment.’
‘I will, I’ll make one,’ he promised.
‘Yeah, like you promised to walk Henry. You put everything off, David.’
He knew he was in trouble when she called him David.
‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘that some time today, if I’m not too busy, I’ll ring the dentist’s and fix an appointment. And when I get home the first thing I’ll do is walk Henry.’
‘I’m going to be late for work,’ she swept on effortlessly to a new grievance. ‘You’ll have to drop me off.’
‘It means going out—’ Pearce began but didn’t finish. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Get your skates on or we’ll both be late.’
‘Get my skates on? You know, Dave, for someone with such a responsible job as you’ve got, you’re not very good at taking responsibilities at home. You can’t just switch off, you know,
like a – a telly. One life inside the box, another out. I mean,’ Tessa became aware that her simile was leading down a complicated path. ‘Of course, I don’t want you to bring your work home. I don’t bring my work home, do I? I get loads of hassle at the building society. But I don’t leave my sense of responsibility behind when I leave at the end of the day, either. Now you—’
‘For crying out loud, get in the car!’ exploded Pearce.
‘There’s no need to shout. You’re not arresting me, you know. I’ve not some yobbo with a skinful of lager. If you’ll just hang on a moment, I’ve got to change my shoes.’
‘Can’t you change them in the car?’
‘I wouldn’t have to change them at all if I hadn’t had to walk Henry. And I wouldn’t have had to walk Henry if you hadn’t been stuck in the bathroom messing with that tooth. If we’re running late this morning, David Pearce,’ Tessa finished this tour de force of logic, ‘it’s because you’re scared of going to the dentist. So there,’ she added.
Sometimes, thought Pearce, police work was a doddle compared with domestic life. He sighed.
Henry groaned in sympathy from the carpet.
Alan Markby sat at his desk. He’d been there since early morning, arriving while the cleaners were still at work. Yet when he’d picked up the phone he’d found that someone had arrived in Records, though the off-hand tone with which the phone was answered suggested whoever it was had just got in and was taking off his coat.
‘What is it?’ asked the voice curtly. It added loudly to someone else, ‘Yeah, you can bring me a cup of coffee and a bacon sarnie.’
Markby identified himself and was mildly amused by the change in attitude and tone.
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, Mr Markby, didn’t know it was you. I just got in. What can we do for you?’
‘You can look out an old file for me,’ said Markby. ‘It was a serial rapes case, unsolved, and the perpetrator was nicknamed the Potato Man.’ He gave the date and location of the rapes.
‘Get it up to you directly,’ promised the voice.
Markby walked down the corridor and helped himself to a brew from the machine there. He presumed it to be tea because he’d pressed the button marked ‘Tea’ but without this clue, anyone could have been misled. Though normally he didn’t take sugar he selected the sweetened version because it masked the usual taste of burnt cocoa which seem to dominate any beverage provided by this dispenser.
He carried it back to his office, his footsteps echoing in a building still half-empty. Back in his office, he stood with it in his hand, staring from the window, not seeing the asphalted parking area, the moving cars below like so many shiny beetles, and the ant-like clusters of men and women. He saw Stovey Woods.
Occasionally his gaze drifted from the scene outside to the top of his desk and the crumpled package lying there. He murmured, ‘Who are you?’
Just bones? Or bones which could still speak to them? In the days before X-rays, a skeleton had been the symbol of mortality, the intricate and unlikely framework of the human body, only
seen once its owner had long gone, dust to dust. It pranced, grinning, along the façade of many a medieval cathedral in a danse macabre, reminding the other revellers, the monk, the lady, the knight, the peasant, of that end to which all must come. That symbolism had faded in the glare of scientific advance. Yet perhaps true awareness of reality lay not with modern scientists and their machines but with the sculptor of long ago. Even the sad little collection on his desk represented a living, breathing being. Flesh had clothed those bones once. That jaw had moved up and down in speech, chewing food, singing a popular song, and he had to put a name to him or her. The necessity was like a nagging pain. It wouldn’t leave him, the question would never cease to plague him morning, noon and night. Was he looking at the mortal remains of the Potato Man? Or at the pitiful remnants of one of his victims? Or, indeed, someone else altogether? He mustn’t let himself become so convinced that the bones related to the old case that he ignored other possibilities.
Though the bones were few, they contained the lower jaw and that, in turn, contained something which might be the invaluable key to identity. He’d already been on the phone to his own dentist, confirming his suspicions. Expensive dental work ought to be traceable, especially that kind.
Markby allowed himself a wry smile. It wasn’t the kind of dental work that a Lower Stovey villager might have been able to afford, all those years ago. If the jaw was that of the Potato Man, it suggested that the rapist had been from outside the village, after all, as the Reverend Pattinson had always insisted.
He sipped his tea, winced and sighed. He should have gone up to the canteen but his appearance there, so early in the day,
would disturb things. From the window he saw Dave Pearce arrive, park his car, and stride purposefully towards the building. Dave looked a bit out of sorts.
Markby went into the outer office. ‘Inspector Pearce is just on his way up,’ he said. ‘When he gets here, tell him I want to see him at once, will you?’
Pearce, the message received, made his way to Markby’s office, wondering what was up and half welcoming a diversion which would take his mind off his own problems. Along the way, the tooth twinged, letting him know it wasn’t to be forgotten so easily. After the detour to deliver Tessa to the building society, he hadn’t had time to stop off at the dentist’s.
He found Markby standing by his desk, staring down at a creased sheet of paper on which lay some not unfamiliar objects.
‘Bones,’ observed Pearce with professional detachment. Inside, he was feeling far less sanguine. Was that what this call to Markby’s office was all about? That crummy collection of oddments? He wasn’t going to be asked to make something of them, was he? Yes, he probably was. With a note of resignation in his voice, he added, ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
‘Yes, Dave, and yes, bones. They were found in Stovey Woods at the weekend by a hiker.’
Pearce drew nearer and studied the gruesome collection unenthusiastically. ‘Old,’ he opined. ‘And pretty chewed about. Found in the woods? Then the damage will be down to foxes, most likely. Is that it? No more?’ Even Markby couldn’t expect him to conjure up a miracle of identification, surely, from this little lot?
Oh, yes, he did
‘Not as yet. The woods will have to be searched.’
Pearce drew a deep breath. ‘It’ll be quite something to organize. Those woods cover a fair area. You know we’ve got a bit of a manpower problem. Oughtn’t we get the bones to a boffin first? They could be donkey’s years old.’
‘And you’re obviously hoping they are. I’m hoping they’re not, not relating to a time out of living memory, anyway.’ Markby poked the bones with a long thin forefinger.
Pearce clearly resisted the urge to ask why, realising the danger that any information might result in yet more work. He stooped to low cunning. ‘If animals are involved, the bones could’ve been carried from somewhere else.’
‘Then check Lower Stovey churchyard,’ suggested his boss mildly. ‘See if any old graves have been disturbed. No one ever goes there and a disturbance mightn’t be noticed. I was there myself at the weekend,’ he added contradictorily
‘Why?’ asked Pearce, genuinely curious this time and putting a hand to his jaw without being aware of the gesture.
‘House-hunting. No, not in the churchyard. We looked at the old vicarage next door to it.’
‘Any good?’ enquired Pearce, suddenly seeing the faint hope of deflecting Markby from the bones.
‘I’d say it’d got possibilities,’ Markby told him. ‘But it’s on the large side.’ He caught at the paper and rustled it. ‘Without having had an expert look at these, I’d judge them to have been lying around for twenty years at least. But that, Dave, is still recent enough to interest us!’
‘It’ll be some old tramp, died of hypothermia,’ Pearce persevered in the face of certain defeat.
‘We can’t assume that!’ Markby told him severely. ‘Take a look at the jawbone.’
The last thing Pearce needed was to study a set of rickety teeth. He picked up the jawbone gingerly.
‘Notice anything?’ the superintendent was asking.
Which meant there was something to notice, Markby had already seen it and Pearce had better see it quickly. He saw it.
‘Some fancy dental work here. I’ve not seen anything like it.’ Nor did he like the look of it, or the thought of it. Implanted in the jaw was a discoloured piece of metal resembling the popular image of a Christmas tree. He sighed, seeing his hope that the remains were historical vanish. Nor did tramps usually have mouths filled with expensive dentistry.
‘It’s called a blade implant,’ Markby informed him. ‘This type is called a Christmas tree implant. I know this,’ he explained, ‘because before you came in, I rang my dentist and described the thing to him.’
Pearce wondered what time that morning Markby had arrived in his office. Very early, by the sound of it. Pearce had worked with Markby over several years. He knew that this early morning eager-beaver stuff usually meant Markby was dissatisfied about something, not necessarily to do with police work, and having another problem to worry at, got the dissatisfaction out of his system. It was probably the house-hunting, thought Pearce, not without sympathy. He and Tessa had suffered similarly before buying their house. He just hoped that domestic frustrations didn’t lead to Markby pushing everything that came their way under his, Pearce’s, nose. Especially, if it had anything to do with teeth.
‘What’s more,’ Markby was saying, determined, it seemed,
to talk about teeth and nothing else. ‘About twenty years ago – assuming that to be the age of the bones although that can only be guesswork at the moment – such dental work was comparatively rare and carried out only in a few places. So, we might be able to trace that particular effort. The metal piece has some sort of mark on it.’
‘Oh, yes …’ Pearce, forgetting his personal aversion, peered at the blade. ‘Like a hallmark.’
‘Manufacturer’s mark, most likely. Get on to it, Dave.’
Just like that. He was going to be busy all day. Which meant, Pearce decided, he wouldn’t have time to ring his own dentist about his own teeth. He gathered up the mystery bones. ‘I’ll get ’em over to the experts,’ he said.
But Markby had something else for him. He picked up a file from the desk. It looked to Pearce to be a pretty old one. ‘You might,’ Markby said casually, ‘like to read up on this old case. It might have some bearing.’
Pearce added the file to the parcel of bones in his arms. ‘Right you are,’ he said and edged towards the door before he could be burdened with anything else.
Someone else was having a frustrating morning.
‘Hello again!’ said the young man breezily.
He wore a white shirt and garish tie. His jacket hung on the back of his chair. He had one of those well-fed and well-pleased with life faces topped with hair cut and gelled in the fashionable spikey style. Meredith was pleased to note that, despite his age which was probably a good ten years younger than she was, he
had the beginnings of what was popularly known as a beerbelly.
‘Hello again,’ she echoed, taking the chair opposite him.
He leaned his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘Well,’ he said cheerily. ‘Did you go and look at the Lower Stovey property?’
‘We did. Mr—’ Meredith glanced at the plaque on his desk. It read simply ‘Gary’. ‘Gary,’ she began again. ‘We went to see it. Tell me, have you seen it?’
He blinked. ‘No, I don’t think I did the valuation on that one. Let me see.’ He shuffled papers. ‘No, Cindy did that one.’
And how old is Cindy? Nineteen? snarled an inner Meredith.
‘But I can tell you,’ Gary was breezing on. ‘That my colleague was very impressed by the property. Very impressed indeed.’
‘By colleague you mean Cindy, I suppose,’ said Meredith icily and without waiting for his acknowledgement, went on. ‘Just as a matter of interest, what impressed Cindy in particular about the Old Vicarage, Lower Stovey?’
‘It’s unique,’ he said solemnly. ‘A quality residence on a practical scale.’
‘It’s huge. It has five bedrooms without counting the maids’ rooms up in the attics.’
‘The attics could be turned into a super recreation room. Snooker, ping-pong, a gym …’ He beamed. ‘Cindy thought you could get all that up there, lovely place. Enough room for a bowling alley.’
‘I don’t need to play snooker at home or bowl. As for a gym, I’ve got an exercise bike and it takes up very little room. I’m not so much bothered about space, in any case, more general
condition. You know the central heating system is out of the ark and broken? I hate to think what the electrics are like.’
‘It does need some modernisation,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘But that is reflected in the price, Miss Mitchell.’
‘The kitchen is out of Dickens.’
‘But a lovely size.’
‘It’s got sash windows which stick.’
‘Period features.’
‘A garden which is completely overgrown.’
He had his answer ready. He beamed at her. ‘I understood that Mr Markby is a very keen gardener! Plenty of scope for him there! Grow all your own vegetables,’ he added, inspired. ‘Organic, natural, full of flavour.’
‘And Lower Stovey is totally cut off, down a road which leads nowhere, only to some woods.’
He jabbed his index finger at her. ‘Got it. Entirely secluded and …’ his voice rose in triumph … ‘no risk of further development. The old drovers’ way runs just behind the village and right through the woods. It’s protected. It’s, you know, historic. No one’s going to put a motorway through there, are they? Or put up two hundred starter homes. Believe me, a location like that doesn’t come on the market every day.’
Meredith sat back in her chair and heaved a sigh. ‘Haven’t you got anything else on your books?’
‘Yes, lots,’ he nodded. ‘But not what you’re looking for. Three bed semi? No problem. Detached with garage and room for extra parking? Show you two or three. Nice little bungalow?’ He shook his head. ‘But you don’t want any of those, do you. You and Mr Markby, you want character. You want period charm.’ He leaned across the desk and added in a hoarse
whisper, ‘You want to go up-market.’ He made it sound like the last word in degeneracy.
‘How about a biggish cottage?’ she asked desperately.
He spread his hands. ‘At the moment, not a chance. Wouldn’t I like to be able to show you one? Of course I would. But they’re like hot cakes, they are. Hardly touch the books. Word gets out one is for sale and I’ve got prospective buyers tripping over one another trying to get through that door first.’
‘But they’re not tripping over one another to offer for the Old Vicarage?’
Gary folded his hands. ‘I’m sure,’ he said confidentially, ‘that Mrs Scott, the owner, would accept any reasonable offer.’
Meredith, although she knew it was a mistake, heard herself ask, ‘How reasonable?’
He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll talk her down a bit.’
‘Hang on!’ Meredith protested, knowing she was being outmanoeuvred here. ‘Let’s leave Lower Stovey on the back burner for the moment. We’re bearing it in mind.’ She got up. ‘In the meantime, we’ll look further.’
He rightly interpreted this as meaning they were going to consult the books of a rival firm.
‘Don’t be hasty. Let me talk to Mrs Scott. While you’re waiting …’ he cast about and brightened, ‘you could go and take a look at Hill House. It commands spectacular views over unspoilt countryside. Mind you, it’s been empty two years and about a year ago there was a bit of trouble when some hippies broke in and camped in it for a month or two. Since then it’s been boarded up. But it’s a beautiful late Georgian house.’
‘Forget it,’ said Meredith.
‘You let me talk to Mrs Scott,’ he urged. ‘And why don’t you go and take another look round the property? I can tell you, once word gets out—’
‘They’ll be tripping over one another in your doorway, I know.’ On the other hand, Hill House sounded immeasurably worse. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said.
Meredith was still thinking about the lack of success she and Alan were having house-hunting as, the following morning, she journeyed up to London by crowded commuter train and packed Tube to her Foreign Office desk. Gary, she decided, had only told her about Hill House to make the Old Vicarage sound positively desirable.
At lunchtime a friend, Juliet Painter, rang. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages, Meredith. I was thinking, if you haven’t got to rush off home after work today, we could have a bowl of spaghetti together somewhere.’
‘Where’s Doug?’ Meredith enquired.
‘Don’t ask me. Working.’ There was a touch of annoyance in Juliet’s voice.
‘That’ll teach you to date a copper,’ said Meredith unsympathetically. As Juliet was finding out and Meredith had already learned, policemen, like doctors, were apt to be called out at inconvenient times. ‘Where do you want to meet?’ she said more kindly.
The restaurant Juliet had in mind was in Soho, off Dean Street.
‘Because,’ she said, when she and Meredith were settled at a table, ‘it’s lively down here. You can watch the street life through the windows. See?’ She pointed through the glass at the thronged pavement. ‘Doug and I like it.’ There was a touch of defiance in the last words, Meredith thought.
‘This is getting very serious with you and Superintendent Minchin, isn’t it?’ Meredith studied Juliet. ‘There’s something different about you. Where are your specs?’
‘Got contact lenses.’ Juliet took one of the two menus a waiter was holding out to them. Her tone was suspiciously airy.
‘I thought you couldn’t get on with them.’
‘They’ve got new types now. I’m managing better.’ Juliet tilted her chin and tossed her single long plait of hair. ‘It’s not because of Doug, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re not that serious, thank you. Not as serious as you and Alan.’ She was getting her own back.
Meredith glared morosely at the menu. ‘If that’s what I am. Alan’s serious.’
‘Hey, getting cold feet?’
‘I suppose so,’ Meredith admitted.
‘It’s all this talk of marriage,’ said Juliet firmly. ‘Look, I can understand your jitters, even if Alan can’t. It’s because he’s been married before and he thinks in those terms. He must be forty-five now and it’s a funny age. He wants to settle down. Now you and me, we’re used to our independence. But life’s got to move on. You’re what, thirty-seven? Does Alan want kids?’
‘I’ve never asked him! In any case, I don’t think he’s marrying me because he fancies sitting at the head of the table, gazing down at a line of scrubbed little faces. I should bloomin’
well hope not. Anyway, I’m too old to start a big family. One child or two, I might – might! – be able to cope with. I’m not even sure about that. I’ve never had anything to do with babies. I’m an only child. Right now it just appears another complication and marriage, to me, already sounds complicated enough. I’ve never even lived with anyone, not under the same roof for any length of time. Whether it’s been Alan or earlier relationships I’ve had, I’ve always insisted on my own space. When I was overseas with the Diplomatic Service, of course, I got my own flat as part of the job.’
She sighed. ‘I did love my time overseas. For ages after I got back I tried to get posted out somewhere, anywhere, again. Now I know that’s not going to happen and I’m stuck at a Foreign Office desk until pension day. I’ll be honest. I did resent that. It made me very dissatisfied for a long time and poor Alan bore the brunt of it. It’s been difficult for him. I can see that. I can also see that those years living abroad weren’t the absolute good thing I thought they were. They cut me off from normal life. I was living a very satisfying, but distinctly peculiar, artificial life. It made me into a peculiar sort of person.’
‘Who isn’t?’ asked Juliet.
‘You know what I mean. This setting up together which everyone else seems to take for granted makes me feel odd. Look, Alan and I did try living together in his place whilst mine was being fixed up, but it just didn’t seem – seem natural. To be frank, after years of a nomadic life, even the idea of putting down some real roots terrifies me.’
‘You’d manage fine if you were married. You’ve just got to take hold of your courage and go for it, Meredith.’ Juliet smiled brightly at her.
‘It’s all right you talking like an agony aunt,’ Meredith defended herself. ‘I love Alan, I do! It’s just the idea of always being under one another’s feet … Every evening coming home and asking, “How was your day, dear?” Having to check with someone else before you accept even a casual meal out with a friend, like this. Being, being beholden to someone. You see, that’s Alan’s idea of domestic bliss.’
‘Give the poor guy a chance. He wants to look after you.’
‘But I can look after myself, thank you very much, and I’ve been doing it for quite a while now. The habit’s hard to break.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sure Alan suspects I’m deliberately dragging my feet over the house-hunting. But honestly, we’ve yet to view any house that makes me feel that I can really live in it — with or without Alan.’
The waiter arrived to take their order.
‘The spinach and ricotta cannelloni,’ said Meredith.
‘For me the pollo milanese,’ said Juliet. ‘And a bottle of the house red. It’s very good here, Meredith. We can manage a bottle between us, can’t we?’
‘The way I feel I could manage a bottle on my own!’ retorted Meredith as the waiter left them. ‘Juliet, in your line of business, don’t you know of any nice houses which would suit us?’
‘I’m not an estate agent,’ Juliet reminded her. ‘I’m a property consultant. I look out for houses for the rich and famous and sometimes for the even richer who take good care not to be famous. If I knew of anything, I’d tell you. But you want to be in the Bamford area, don’t you? There aren’t that many houses of the type you’re after around there, not in good condition, anyway.’
Meredith told her about the Old Vicarage and, for good measure, about Hill House.
‘Forget Hill House,’ advised Juliet immediately. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s as near derelict as makes no difference and would cost a small fortune to put right.’
‘That rules us out, then!’ said Meredith in relief.
‘But this Old Vicarage place, that might be a possible. I think you ought to take another look. As for worrying about all those bedrooms, you haven’t thought it through. Look, five main bedrooms, right? One you’ll turn into a study for you so that you can work from home sometimes, everyone does. Another Alan will turn into his den. That just leaves three of them for sleeping in which is only what you’d have with a semi.’
‘There are another five or six cubbyholes up in the attics! Apparently, Cindy, who works at the estate agent’s, thinks someone might build a gym or gamesroom up there.’
‘Cindy’s got the right idea. Look, if Mrs Scott is keen to sell and if the central heating is on the blink and the windows stick and all the rest of it, she can’t hold out for top whack. Hey, you can do business!’
‘All right, then,’ Meredith agreed, bowing to the force of Juliet’s enthusiasm. ‘I’ll take a couple of days off next week and go and take another look.’
‘If it’s still on the market,’ Juliet had a caveat.
‘Believe me,’ Meredith assured her, ‘I’ve every confidence it’ll still be on the market.’
‘See you tonight, Grandpa!’ said Becky Jones on Thursday morning.
She dropped a kiss on the top of the old man’s bald head with its pattern of liver spots and fringe of white hair. He sat alone at the breakfast table, at the head where he’d always taken his place, in the same Windsor chair, its arms polished to the surface touch of silk by the grip of his hands over fifty or more years. But the authority this implied had long dwindled to a mere token. He was the last to finish as always, chewing slowly and methodically through his bacon, long gone cold, and thick slices of buttered bread.
‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘Listen to the teacher, learn something.’ He chuckled at his own wit.
He said the same thing every schoolday morning and his thirteen-year-old granddaughter made her reply absently as she picked up her books and stuffed them into her canvas bag. Her mother’s voice came distantly from out in the farmyard, calling impatiently to her to ‘hurry along, for goodness’ sake!’ Becky scurried out and scrambled into the front passenger seat of the family’s elderly car.
Mrs Jones ground into gear and they lurched through the gate and down the track connecting the farm to the potholed road which to the right went to Stovey Woods, and to the left, to the village. Becky was a pupil at the Bamford Community College.
‘Radio was saying there’s extra traffic on the main road this morning,’ Linda Jones said fretfully. ‘Seems it’s been diverted because of some road-works or other. I do wish you’d stir your stumps of a morning, Becky. You know I have to allow half an hour to get you to school.’
‘I was only saying goodbye to Grandpa,’ her daughter defended herself.
Linda sighed. ‘There’s another slowcoach. He takes so long over his breakfast, longer every day it seems to me. It makes your dad that cross.’
‘Why should he be cross? It doesn’t interfere with him. He doesn’t have to clear up the breakfast things, you do.’
The car bounced over a rut out into the road through the village.
‘It’s not that, Beck. Your father’s got a lot on his mind lately what with livestock prices being so low and everything. He’s worried about your grandfather.’
‘Grandpa’s all right!’ Becky’s voice rose defiantly. There was an edge of tears in it. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He eats slowly because his teeth aren’t any good.’
Linda glanced at her daughter and said soothingly, ‘I realise that. I know he’s all right, really.’
Which he most certainly wasn’t, she thought sadly. Despite herself, an audible sigh escaped her lips.
Becky heard it. ‘Is everything all right, Mum? I mean, apart from the lambs not fetching decent prices and all the rest of it. Dad’s not been making a fuss about Gordon again?’
‘Gordon? No!’ Mrs Jones wrenched the wheel round to avoid a cat which had decided to settle down in the middle of the road. ‘Nothing like that. He’s been grumbling a bit about old Billy Twelvetrees.’
‘Poor old Mr Twelvetrees,’ said Becky.
‘Poor old, my foot!’ snapped her mother. ‘He’s a mischief-making old scoundrel, is Billy Twelvetrees!’
Becky conceded that Billy was a gossip and worse, a bit of a bore. ‘But Dad wouldn’t really throw him out of his cottage, would he?’
‘Of course not. Not while your grandfather is still alive, anyway, and he wouldn’t throw him out. But that cottage is worth a lot of money, you know, Becky, and well, if Mr Twelvetrees wasn’t in it, we could do it up a bit and sell it on for a tidy sum. I won’t say the money wouldn’t come in useful.’
‘Sell it to second-homers, you mean!’ her daughter said scornfully. They were passing the church as she spoke and she added, ‘I don’t know why people want to buy a place in Lower Stovey. It’s dead dreary.’
‘It’s quiet,’ corrected her mother.
‘It’s the pits,’ said the younger generation unrepentantly
Linda didn’t argue. They’d left the village behind and reached the junction with the main road. She could see there really was extra traffic today. They’d be stuck here for ages trying to get out.
Eventually when they did manage to pull out into the main stream of cars, she said, picking up the conversation, ‘There’s worse places than Lower Stovey.’
She knew her voice lacked conviction. The words were a mantra she’d been repeating for more than twenty years and she’d yet to be convinced by it. She’d hoped that, by saying it, bad things would be kept away. But bad things had come back, only just recently, with the finding of those wretched bones. Linda couldn’t see into the future and told herself she didn’t want to. She was already resigned to what it would hold. Becky would fly the coop when she left school, just as Gordon had done. In five years’ time, she and Kevin would reach that time she dreaded, when both her children would be gone, her father-in-law would very likely be dead, and she and her
husband would be left alone together at Greenjack Farm, staring at one another across the table with nothing to say. All they’d have would be memories and they wouldn’t want to discuss those.
Yet Kevin was a good man, loyal and hard-working. He did his best to look after her and Becky and his increasingly senile father. He’d looked after Gordon. She wished he got on better with Gordon. It was no fun for her being piggy-in-the-middle, trying to keep the peace and sympathize with both sides. Of course, Gordon didn’t want to stay on the farm. Why should he? It’d be the same, even if Gordon had been—
Becky’s voice broke in on her thoughts, eerily echoing them. ‘Mind you, since they found those bones, life’s got a bit more interesting.’
‘Becky!’ Linda’s voice burst out, shrill, causing her daughter to start in surprise.
‘Calm down, Mum. You’ve got to admit normally nothing happens. Since the bones were found in the woods, my friends are dead keen to know more about Lower Stovey.’
‘Pity they’ve not got better things to talk about!’ said her mother sharply.
They were into Bamford now and Becky abandoned the topic of the Stovey Wood Remains, as the local press called them.
‘There’s Michele! Let me out here, Mum. I can walk the rest of the way.’
Linda felt a surge of relief. ‘I suppose you’ve got time and I’ve got to call by the supermarket.’ She pulled into the kerb and waited while her daughter struggled to get out, hampered by her bag of books and efforts to signal to her friend.
When Becky finally reached the pavement she turned back, lowered her head by the still open car door, and asked, ‘Can I come home on the later bus tonight, Mum?’
‘No, my girl, you may not.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘I’ll pick you up at the bus-stop, quarter past four, same as usual. You be there.’
The door slammed on her daughter’s muttered response. Linda drove on. There was no convenient bus in the morning so she had to drive her daughter to school. But there was a bus later in the day which Becky could catch at four o’clock and which stopped just before the turning to Lower Stovey. It was a blessing because it meant Linda hadn’t to drive all the way back into Bamford a second time. She simply drove up to the turn and picked up her daughter there.
The disadvantage was that Becky had no time after school to socialize with her friends unless she caught the bus which ran a full two hours later. Of late, she’d been doing this more and more and Kevin had put his foot down.
‘Running round town with those silly girlfriends. You don’t know what mischief they’re into. Anyway, she ought to be back here at the farm, lending you a hand with the supper.’
Normally, Linda was more easily persuaded by Becky’s pleas. But her daughter’s words about the grisly find in the woods had annoyed her. She began to think Kevin was right and Becky was better not spending too much of her time with those addle-pated girls. If those after-school companions were girls and not boys. A cold fist closed on the pit of Linda’s stomach. Becky was thirteen. She was pretty. Don’t throw your life away, Beck, oh, don’t! And don’t trust men.
This early in the day the supermarket car park was half-empty. In the store itself the girls on the cash-tills chatted to one another as they waited for customers. Linda helped herself to a basket and went to the bread-counter where she pushed half a dozen loaves into the basket to stock up her freezer. Kevin took sandwiches out into the fields most days. In his youth, when old Martin had run the place, Linda’s mother-in-law, long gone, cooked a meal every day at midday except at harvest-time. It wasn’t just the time and trouble which had caused this custom to be dropped. It was economy. Anyway, it made sense to eat of an evening when Becky had come home. She debated over doughnuts which today were ‘buy one, get one free’. Eventually she bought the one plus one, a little treat for Kevin and the other for the old man, on the principle of it being a good offer. She didn’t need one herself. On her way back to a till, she passed through the meat department, not because she wanted meat but to check on the prices. She picked up one cling-film-wrapped pack after another and put it back with a sigh. To think Kevin got almost nothing for the last lot of lambs and just look at the price of lamb chops here.
She drove home feeling depressed. As she passed through Lower Stovey, she saw a figure she recognised and tapped the horn. The walker looked up and waved.
‘I wonder where’s she’s going?’ mused Linda and, almost immediately, forgot all about it.
That Thursday Meredith came back to Lower Stovey. Fate worked in a funny old way. She’d often thought it. When she’d
left here with Alan that day some hiker found bones in the woods, she’d privately resolved never to set foot in the place again. But back, before you could say Jack Robinson, she was.
Meredith pulled her car into the parking bay before the church and got out. The slam of the door echoed round about and sent jackdaws from their tower roost to circle her head in a cawing squadron of black shapes. There was a bit of a breeze today. It knocked the jackdaws off course and rustled the churchyard trees.
She had thirty-five minutes to spend before her appointment with Mrs Scott at twelve. She meant to spend it taking a proper look at the village. Even if, on second viewing, she decided the house was a possible, it wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t live in this village.
Meredith jammed her hands in the pockets of her fleece body warmer and strolled down what she supposed was the main street. There was no sign of life. Where were they all? She reached the end, turned and walked back, branching off down a narrow thoroughfare marked as Church Lane. It was lined with rows of cottages, nicely painted but apparently as deserted as the Marie Celeste. At the far end stood a very old, uneven building which appeared to be two or even three knocked into one. A house sign bore the name The Old Forge. Ruth Aston’s house. Meredith remembered her invitation and wondered whether to knock at the door. Not a good idea, perhaps. She might get talking and be late for her appointment. She walked back to the main street and glanced at her wristwatch. Her perambulations had taken a mere five minutes. The door of the pub, the Fitzroy Arms, was ajar. They must serve coffee.
She crossed the road and pushed at the stout oak door. It swung open easily and a smell of stale beer, cigarettes and lavatory cleaner drifted out. Despite this, the bar looked comfortable enough. The walls were lined with sporting prints. The beams which ran the length of the room suggested the core of the building must be old. Someone, in an excess of enthusiasm for horse brasses, had tacked dozens of them to the beams.
She could see no customers but a movement at the rear of the bar took her eye. A middle-aged man stood there. His head was oval and his hair thin and flat. The skin of his face looked soft, pinkish and abnormally clean as if it had been subjected to some chemical process. It was quite unlined and the features seemed fixed as if the eyes couldn’t blink or the lips move. When she’d been a child, Sunday morning breakfast had always been a boiled egg. When she’d finished her egg, she’d pass the shell to her father. He’d upend it in the cup and draw a funny face on it for her. Now she felt she was looking at one of her father’s egg faces come to life. She didn’t know if he’d been there when she entered and she’d failed to notice him or if he’d arrived later, attracted by the sound of her movements. He stood watching her, motionless but for his hands which moved methodically, as if of their own volition, to polish a glass with a cloth.
‘Good morning,’ Meredith offered.
‘Morning,’ he replied. His voice was as soft as his facial skin. The cloth continued to buff the glass. She thought, irrelevantly, that he’d have made a good undertaker. He was, she presumed, mine host.
‘Do you serve morning coffee?’
‘Don’t get much call for it. But the wife will make you a cup.’ He went into a rear room and she caught a distant murmur of voices. He came back. ‘She’ll be a couple of minutes. Make yourself comfortable.’
Meredith chose a chair by the unlit hearth in which a pile of dusty logs awaited winter. The landlord, to her relief, put down the glass he’d been polishing. He placed his palms on the bar counter and surveyed her in the same dispassionate way he’d had from the start. It made her uncomfortable and she hoped his wife would hurry along with the coffee and that she would prove a more lively person. The silence was unbroken and seemed to stretch out endlessly.
At long last feet clattered on a tiled floor and a small, bustling woman appeared carrying a tray. She scurried across the floor to Meredith and put her burden on the table.
‘Coffee,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Milk, sugar. I thought you’d like a couple of digestive biscuits.’
‘That’s kind of you, thank you,’ Meredith said.
The woman’s head was almost as much a perfect round as her husband’s was oval. She pushed it into Meredith’s face, giving Meredith a close-up of the greying roots of her dyed hair. She had small, bright, squirrel’s eyes. ‘I like a digestive,’ she said as if imparting a state secret. ‘You can dunk ’em.’
With that, she retreated to whatever lair she inhabited at the rear of the place and Meredith was left alone with the landlord.
‘You’re not very busy at this time of the morning?’ she asked in what sounded an abnormally loud voice. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that.
‘Twelve,’ he replied and blinked at long last. ‘They’ll be in after twelve.’ From where she sat, it looked as if he had no eyelashes. ‘What’s brought you here, then?’
He’d shown so little curiosity until then that the question startled her. Meredith opened her mouth to reply that she was just passing through, but remembered in the nick of time that no one passed through Lower Stovey as its road was a dead end. And they didn’t come deader, in her book. ‘I’m looking at property,’ she said cautiously.
He moved his head in a curious sideways twist, like a parrot inspecting something new. ‘Generally a house or two for sale around here. You’ve seen the old vicarage?’
‘Yes. It’s – it’s big.’ That was a daft reply, she thought. But for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything better at the moment. She covered her confusion by sipping her coffee which was very weak but hot. Meredith nibbled at a digestive biscuit.
‘One of those little houses in School Close is up for sale.’ His mouth turned down disparagingly. ‘No room to swing a cat. They should never have been allowed to build so many on the site. It used to be the school, you know.’
‘You’re a local man, then?’ she asked.
His gaze slid away from hers. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said.
Whatever that meant, thought Meredith crossly. She was getting a bit fed up with this. If she and Alan moved to Lower Stovey – and the idea was becoming less attractive by the minute – they certainly wouldn’t be drinking in the Fitzroy Arms, not if she had any say in it. Alan, however, had a liking for weird pubs. He’d probably love this one, spooky landlord and all.
He spoke again, disconcerting her once more. ‘My mother was a Twelvetrees,’ he said ‘That won’t mean anything to you.’
‘As a matter of fact, it does!’ She had great pleasure in contradicting him and seeing the skin above his eyes pucker. He had no eyebrows to speak of to raise. ‘I met an old gentleman called Billy Twelvetrees in your church the last time I came here.’
He nodded. ‘That’ll be Uncle Billy. He’s always popping in and out of the church when it’s open. Not that he’s religious, mind. He likes to chat to the ladies who keep the place clean and tidy, Mrs Aston and her friend, Miss Millar. Nothing else for him to do, is there, at his age? Mrs Aston, she was Miss Pattinson before she married. She was the old vicar’s daughter.’
‘I’ve met Mrs Aston,’ Meredith told him.
‘Seems you’ve found out a lot about us, then,’ he retorted.
She had the feeling he was annoyed. Good. He’d annoyed her. Let the boot be on the other foot, as the saying went. But she didn’t want to linger here. Quit when you’re ahead.
‘Thank you for the coffee,’ she said. ‘How much do I owe you?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Fifty pence be all right?’
Meredith put down a pound coin on the dark oak counter. ‘It hardly seems enough when your wife had to make it specially for me and gave me biscuits as well. I don’t want any change.’
He stared down at the coin. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you.’
She left the place with unseemly haste. Outside she saw with surprise that it was still only ten minutes to twelve. What was it about this place that it seemed able to suspend time?
‘It gives me the creeps,’ she muttered She glanced across at
the church. She had to waste at least five minutes before she could call at the Old Vicarage. Meredith decided on impulse to glance into the church. Perhaps Ruth Aston would be there.
She walked across the road and pushed open the lych-gate. As she passed under its wooden roof, she saw, in the far distance, a squat figure hurrying away among the graves and ramshackle tombs. The figure had a stick and hobbled but was making remarkable speed.
Meredith passed into the porch and opened an inner door made of chicken wire stretched over a home-made wooden frame which bore the words ‘Please keep this door closed to prevent birds flying into the church where they might die of thirst.’ The church was dark, except at the chancel end where sunlight coming through the Victorian stained glass window splashed coloured daubs across the choir stalls. It was cool, still and silent apart from a clatter above her head made by the jackdaws hopping about on the roof.
Meredith’s eyes accustomed slowly to the gloom as she searched for the Fitzroy tomb. There it was. She walked to it. Here lay Sir Hubert, his stone features mutilated out of any semblance of humanity. Beside him for eternity lay the wife he’d not wanted beside him in life. Her face looked serene within its coiffed head-dress. Her long thin hands were pressed together in prayer on her breast. Someone had stuck a piece of chewing gum on her right sleeve. Meredith wished her Latin were good enough to decipher the inscription around the base. But lack of scholarship and what looked like more intentional damage meant that apart from ‘Hubertus’ and ‘Agnes uxor sua’ she could make out nothing. Even the years of their deaths had been obliterated.
Meredith turned away and, able to distinguish clearly now, saw that she wasn’t alone, after all. A woman knelt in prayer in a pew on the other side of the church, beneath the tablet commemorating periwigged Sir Rufus. Her head was bent right forward, her forehead resting on the shelf for prayer-books fixed to the back of the pew in front. Meredith, embarrassed at disturbing such intense private devotion, began to tiptoe out. But at the door, she paused and glanced back. The woman was so still. There was something not quite right about her posture. Her hands weren’t clasped but dangled loosely at the end of her arms which hung down straight by her sides.
The hair prickled on the nape of Meredith’s neck. She walked rapidly towards the crouched figure. As she neared, she asked, ‘Are you all right?’
There was no movement, no reply. The woman’s slumped form lacked all bodily grace and Meredith couldn’t see her face, only her coarse curling grey hair. Meredith put a hand out and gingerly touched her shoulder. Something warm and sticky smeared her fingers. She snatched back her hand and looked down at bright red blood. Stooping, Meredith tried to see the hidden face and met the unseeing gaze of one glazed eye half-open beneath a drooping frozen eyelid. Nausea rose in Meredith’s throat and she stood up hastily. Round the woman’s neck was wound a scarf patterned with geraniums but not all the scarlet splashes were printed flowers. There was a straight tear in the silky fabric. The blood had oozed into the scarf and from it, by a process of osmosis, down the woman’s lightweight sweater. There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that she was dead.