Joanna looked at her suitcase, which seemed to have shrunk over the holiday, and wondered how on earth she would fit it all in. On the other side of the room, Matthew was more successful. He had already fastened the huge bottle-green Berghaus rucksack he’d had from his student days.
‘I don’t suppose you could squash in a couple of pairs of shoes?’ she asked hopefully. ‘These wedges take up an awful lot of room.’
He opened the top, gave her a severe look and held out his hand. ‘I don’t know why you have to bring so many pairs of shoes,’ he grumbled. ‘Surely hiking boots and one pair of evening shoes is enough?’
‘Oh my word,’ she said, mocking. ‘One day engaged and we’re already having a domestic about shoes?’
Matthew took a sideways look at her and burst out laughing. ‘Do you know how good it feels,’ he confessed, ‘to see that black pearl on your finger?’
She looked down at it. ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said. ‘It feels good to me too. I love it. It’s so special. Thank you.’
‘Come on then, give me the shoes.’
‘Thanks.’
‘My pleasure, my lady,’ he said, still grinning. The holiday levity was staying with them both. She wondered how long it would last when they were home and she was back to work with its irregular hours and stiff demands.
The smell was worse. Kathleen Weston knew it. She didn’t care what her husband said. It wasn’t simply an obsession or her imagination. It was worse. She could even smell it on the pile of washing she’d just ironed.
‘Steven.’
He looked up guiltily. ‘Darling.’
Now it was her turn to look suspicious. Why would he call her darling? He’d stopped calling her that years ago. She narrowed her eyes and gave him a sharp look. Intuitively, she knew that particular word was well-oiled. It had slipped out without him even thinking. She put a finger on her chin. Now what could that mean? She knew about the lustful looks he’d given that belly dance teacher who lived at the end of the road. The one who exposed her rather plump midriff between low-slung jeans and crop tops and wiggled her backside like a randy grasshopper.
The witch, she called her privately. The wiggling witch.
But now looking at her husband’s face, startled because he’d realised what he’d said, she changed the epithet to whore. Wicked whore. Well, she thought. The whore had better look out because she had her in her sights.
Kathleen Weston was a deeply vindictive and vengeful woman. She was patient too. It was a potentially lethal mix.
‘The smell,’ she repeated tightly.
‘What smell?’ But his face betrayed him. Steven Weston was a poor liar, which was lucky for his wife because it kept her informed of what he was up to. She stared back at him, waiting.
‘I think it’s coming from the farmyard,’ he said finally. ‘An animal must have died or something.’
Even as he said it he could have bitten his tongue off. She would be bound to want to investigate. He watched her, knowing. He should have remembered her love of animals. This tough, brittle woman was as soft as marshmallow where animals were concerned. He’d seen her cry when stories came on the television about dogs or cats being neglected. She’d driven into Leek once to take an injured hedgehog to the vet, had sobbed uncontrollably when she’d hit a rabbit with her car – even though it had bounded straight back into the hedge. He’d watched her free flies from spiders’ webs and then worry what the spider would eat for lunch. She’d stopped the traffic once to retrieve a dead cat from the middle of the road. Her love of animals didn’t stop there. She spent three days a week helping at the animal charity shop in Stanley Street. In contrast, her toughness towards the human race was little short of Draconian. She was for hanging, castrating, flogging, cutting ears off. All her pity was focused on the animal world.
‘You think an animal’s died?’ Her face twisted in alarm.
He twitched.
And as he had looked at her, she now studied him. A thin, worried, guilty face, thinning hair – just like his father. Bowed shoulders, which made him look years older than his early forties. Fast on the heels of these observations came a further thought. What the dickens did Faria Probert see in her husband?
Sex? Was the woman a sex maniac?
Faria’s husband, George, was equally as unexciting as Steven. In fact there was little to choose between them. Maybe the explanation was that Faria was simply addicted to bland, middle-aged men. In spite of herself, Kathleen smothered a giggle, turning it into a cough. Perhaps Faria had a secret source of Viagra and turned these unexciting men into something else. The thought conjured up images too funny to contemplate.
Kathleen frowned and looked again at her husband. Yes, there were traces of the man she had fallen in love with – honest, hard-working, affectionate and loyal. Steven had had all these attributes together with a soft, sweet, private smile. But the years had intervened cruelly. Perhaps if they’d had children their marriage would have entered a second stage. But she had failed to conceive. How was it that it was she who had failed? Why didn’t they say that he had failed to impregnate her? But that was never the way. It had been she who had earned the looks of pity while he had merely smirked and said jauntily, ‘Not for want of trying,’ which had earned sniggers from both men and women.
Her lack of a family had, in turn, isolated them from their friends, who never quite knew whether to chat about their own offspring or pretend they didn’t exist. But the very worst thing about being childless was that they were exclusively together. In an undiluted form. Like too strong a cordial they’d needed water. As it was they had each other – or no one. But perhaps now he did have someone. Someone who was as fertile as rich farmland. Kathleen shivered and felt suddenly very alone. She plunged her hands deep into the pockets of the zip-up sweater she was wearing with jeans faded at the seams and reflected. Perhaps her love of animals was nothing short of an outlet for the love she would have lavished on children. She couldn’t help a weary sigh. She’d mentioned the word adoption to Steven only once. He had looked horrified. ‘Bring up some whore or drug addict’s kid?’
So she’d dropped the subject but felt her insides twist with grief at the thought of the thieving, fertile Faria, who had five children – and a lover – as well as teaching belly-dancing.
How did she find the time? The energy?
She looked up to see Steven eyeing her uncomfortably and the silence between them grew thicker.
‘The worst thing about holidays is the hours wasted hanging around at the airport,’ Matthew grumbled. ‘Why do we have to be here three hours early?’
He knew the answer, of course, as did everyone. The spectre of terrorism was enough to make travellers obedient to the rules. From removing their shoes at the security check to not taking liquids on board, putting lip-glosses in their suitcases and spending three fruitless hours at an airport. People stuck to the rules.
Joanna looked up reluctantly from Second Shot. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind the hanging around. At least you can’t drag me off to the sea for a swim and I can read my story in peace.’ She waved the book around. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I quite welcome the interlude once I’m holed up in a nice little corner with a good book.’ She bent her head then lifted it. ‘Why don’t you go to the bookshop and find yourself something to read?’ she said pointedly.
‘I’ve got my sudoku.’ He pulled the book out and licked his pencil with intent.
Joanna bent back over her novel.
Minutes later Matthew stood up again. ‘Want a coffee, Jo?’
She almost threw the paperback at him until she read the glow in his eyes, pleading. Reluctantly she inserted a bookmark, tucked the novel inside her bag and stood up.
Shit – she’d just been at the point where Charlie Fox was walking right into the enemy’s house. The book was as hot as a roasted chestnut.
Together they sauntered towards the coffee shop. Joanna tucked her arm in Matthew’s, gave him an amused kiss on the cheek. ‘You can buy,’ she said. ‘Make mine a large cappuccino.’
He bent his head and kissed her.
Finally it was Kathleen Weston who investigated – alone. The thought of an animal suffering or even dead haunted her so she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It was no use expecting Steven to accompany her. He’d suddenly remembered ‘an important appointment’ for which he needed to go to the office, urgently.
She walked slowly down the garden, making each step count, listening to the silence that wrapped her in the cold, damp day and seemed all the more sinister under the heavy sky. Now Steven had voiced his opinion she was apprehensive. What if a cow was slowly rotting in the September sunshine – or a pig? What if it was Ratchet, the dog. She smiled. Ratchet was a hound with a snappy foul temper; it was difficult to feel any affection for him. It had always amused her and once Steven too that old Grimshaw had probably named his dog after the scary Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest without even knowing it. This was just one of the casualties of the broken relationship. Since his affections had shifted towards Faria, nothing amused them both, at least – not at the same time.
She’d reached the wall. And now she was so close she could not think how she could ever have wondered what the smell was. It was so obvious. She remembered seeing people on the TV covering their noses and mouths with scarves after 9/11. At the time she had wondered why then assumed it was because of the dust thrown up by the collapsing towers. Now she knew. It wasn’t only the dust. It was the scent of rotting body parts.
It was then that she noticed something else; one of the copestones was missing from the top of the wall. And now she wondered why she had not noticed it before. It drew the eye as surely as a missing front incisor.
Dry stone walls are not made for climbing, which is why all through the Staffordshire moorlands the farmers are careful to maintain the stiles for the ramblers, discouraging them from clambering on the stone walls and destroying the environment. Once a dry stone wall starts to crumble it soon dissolves back into its natural state – a pile of stones; as Kathleen was quickly realising. She put her foot in a crevice between two stones only to feel her foothold immediately start to rock. She put her hands on the top, clambered up and watched the stones scatter behind her. She had started a small avalanche. Even when she was astride the wall she could both feel and hear the stones shifting. And the smell was overpowering.
She glanced across at the farmhouse, only partially visible behind a huge oak tree the roots of which had lifted the concrete in the yard. The house had a look of careless neglect, with peeling paintwork and moss smothered brickwork. It had not been touched for years – merely inhabited. Boards had been put over windows broken by a few young vandals from the town. The panels of reeded glass in the door had cracked, and it stood ajar. Yet it didn’t appear to be inviting entry, rather daring it. Challenging.
Kathleen could see no animals, hear no sounds, spot no movement. Which was odd. The farmer had cows, two Tamworth pigs and a dog. So why were they all quiet? She knew they were not out in the fields. Only the sheep grazed in the far field. In fact, now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any other animals on the farm for more than a week, which was in itself curious. The cows had not been in the fields, grazing as they should have been. The fields had been empty except for the sheep. Strangely so, she now thought. She shifted her weight uneasily, frowning at the oddity of the situation. She had not even heard the dog for some time.
‘Hello,’ she called.
Silence met her. Not even an echo replied. She shouted louder. ‘Hello. Hello. Mr Grimshaw. Hello. Are you there? It’s Kathleen Weston, your neighbour. I wondered if you were…’
The words ‘all right’ seemed suddenly fatuous.
She looked straight down, beneath her, realised her foot was within inches.
The wave of nausea washed over her almost before she had assimilated the cause.
Sometimes our eyes see things seconds before our minds do.
Then she retched and was sick, thus sullying the crime scene.
She staggered back to the house, and dialled 999.
In the moments immediately before the call, Korpanski had been feeling virtuous. He was catching up with the inevitable paper work, tidying up loose ends, when the telephone rang.
Detective Constable Alan King took the call, his long arms reaching right across the desk, bony elbows projecting like old-fashioned traffic indicators. He listened. ‘Put her through,’ he said, without consulting Korpanski. King listened for a few more minutes before covering the mouthpiece. ‘Sounds like there’s a body, Sarge.’
Korpanski felt the hairs start to prickle at the back of his neck. ‘Where?’
‘Prospect Farm.’
Korpanski frowned. ‘On the estate?’
‘No, Sarge, on the farm.’
‘Natural causes?’
King shrugged. ‘She didn’t get near enough.’ He spoke again into the mouthpiece. ‘Just you wait where you are, Mrs Weston. Someone’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
He put the phone down, stood up, recalling the hysterical words. ‘I think rats… Something’s… He’s…’
Korpanski saved all the data on the computer. ‘Who’s reported it?’
‘A neighbour. From number 1 on the estate. She says she thinks it’s the farmer.’ He looked almost apologetic, ‘and that he’s been lying there some time.’
Korpanski stood up then, revealing his entire, bulky, six-foot-four frame. ‘Well, we’d better get out there then, hadn’t we, see what’s what.’
He took Timmis and King with him, blue light flashing, siren screaming, racing along the Ashbourne road out of the town. A back-up car with a couple of WPCs and some uniformed officers kept up with them. As Korpanski drove he remembered. The odd thing was that he knew Prospect Farm quite well. When he was a kid, growing up in Leek, he had sometimes walked out to the place, just outside the town. He even remembered the farmer, a crusty old thing even then, and the daughter, who had been at the same school as him; a sly little girl who watched her classmates’ mischief without comment then whispered in the teacher’s ear. She had been a plain girl, insignificant, stick-thin, short on friends, always making a nuisance of herself wanting to play. He wondered what had happened to her and tried to remember her name but failed. The last he’d heard she was nursing somewhere in Stoke.
There had been a wife too but he didn’t know what had happened to her. She hadn’t been around for years and he couldn’t even remember what she’d looked like. The daughter must not live at home because the farmer lived alone these days. He’d seen him once or twice around the town on cattle market days, wearing the same blue cotton dungarees and tweed coat he had favoured years before, tied around the middle with orange nylon baling twine.
Korpanski screamed through red traffic lights, cursing as an aged driver in a Morris 1000 seemed paralysed before the kerfuffle and straddled the crossing, finally moving forwards so the squad car could inch through.
Korpanski resumed his dragnet of information about Prospect Farm and its inhabitants. About ten years ago the farm had shrunk as houses had encroached on its land, emphasising its scruffiness. Korpanski winced. Fran would have loved to have lived in one of the executive-type dwellings but the houses on the estate were out of the pocket-range of a mere detective sergeant. All the same, Korpanski had witnessed the area’s progress through the years with interest. Each time he’d found himself in the area, he’d driven round the estate, dreaming, noting that the contrast wasn’t simply manifested by the buildings; the gap between the yuppie types who inhabited the mock-Tudor houses and the crumbling farm seemed to be widening.
And now this.
He took the turn sharply into the Prospect Farm Estate, screeching to a halt in front of Number 1.
Kathleen Weston was waiting for him in the drive. He saw a distressed woman in her forties, dressed in a zip-up sweater and faded jeans. Her face was green, her arms wrapped tightly around her, hugging herself as she rocked to and fro on a pair of trainers. Korpanski waited as the second car pulled up behind him. This, he thought, with a touch of wry humour, needed a woman’s touch.
And Piercy was missing until tomorrow morning. Korpanski smiled to himself. She’d be furious at missing all the drama. He made a sudden face. Because for that matter, Levin was away, too. The most important thing to ascertain now would be cause of death. Natural causes, they could all go home. But if there were any grounds for suspicion… Well – no problem. He could manage this one for the first twenty-four hours at least. Korpanski gave a little grin of confidence to himself. Even up to Inspector Piercy’s standards.
He climbed out of the car. ‘Mrs Weston?’
She nodded.
‘You rang us?’
Again she nodded. The two WPCs stood either side of her, ready for hysterics, but Kathleen Weston looked calmer now, keeping herself tightly reined in for the police presence.
‘I think it’s the farmer,’ she said in a tense voice, lifting haunted eyes to his face. She would not forget what she had seen even when she closed her eyes. It was as though the scene had been painted on the inside of her eyelids. ‘I think he’s been dead a while. The smell,’ she said, her eyes flickering along the road as she tried to keep them open. ‘I’ve noticed the smell for a few days.’
‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’ Korpanski shot a meaningful glance at WPC Dawn Critchlow. However brave Mrs Weston was being he knew this pale, dead fish look of shock. She took the hint and moved towards Mrs Weston. ‘Come with me.’
Kathleen Weston led them through a tall oak gate into the back garden then glanced ahead to the wall, which was the boundary between her land and the farm. The first thing Korpanski noticed was the irregularity caused by the missing copestone. The second was the smell.
They call it the smell of death.
Korpanski and DC King left Dawn Critchlow to care for the shaken woman and walked carefully up the garden path, taking note of the orderly garden and the lavender hedge, which did little to mask the scent. He carried on, towards the boundary, took one look over the wall and, mirroring Kathleen Weston’s response, almost threw up.
The crumpled figure of the farmer lay propped up against the stones, almost tucked beneath them. His chin had dropped forward onto his chest, presenting the back of his head, and his legs were stretched out in front of him. Korpanski could see only too clearly the terrible damage done to the back of the skull and took in, within seconds, the entire bloody scene around him: the copestone, lying innocently nearby in the mud; the wall spattered with blood, hair and a nasty, dried-up jelly-like substance that he took to be brain tissue. And Mrs Weston was right. The fingers had been nibbled, probably by rats. He spoke over his shoulder to Alan King. ‘You’re going to have to summon a full forensic team,’ he said. ‘It’s either one hell of a coincidence that the stone fell on the exact spot where unlucky old farmer Grimshaw decided to have a picnic or else the poor guy’s been bashed over the head and we’ve got ourselves a murder scene. Either way we’ll need the police surgeon and some shelter.’ He backed away from the wall. ‘A couple of uniformed had better start house-to-house and interview anyone who’s at home this side of the road. Leave the other side till later. And try and contact the daughter for identification, will you?’ They walked together back up the path, nodding to Dawn Critchlow as they passed her, supporting the stricken woman. ‘We’d better make our access route up the farm track. That’ll leave this area relatively clear.’
Within an hour the farm was sealed off, as were the back gardens of the houses that backed onto the farm. A team of officers was interviewing all the inhabitants in the odd numbers of Prospect Farm Estate and Doctor Jordan Cray, Matthew Levin’s locum, was examining the body.
‘Can you say how long he’s been dead?’ Korpanski asked hopefully.
Cray turned to face him. ‘Somewhere around a week,’ he said. ‘There’s been quite a bit of rodent and insect activity. It might be worth summoning a forensic entomologist. Do you know when he was last seen alive? Family?’
Korpanski shook his head. ‘There’s a daughter,’ he said. ‘I think she’s now a nurse somewhere in Stoke. They’re trying to locate her.’ He was practically hopping from one foot to the other. ‘But I don’t think they were close. There was a wife but no sign of her for a number of years. Can you tell whether it was homicide or accident?’
Both Cray and Korpanski looked at the copestone. ‘Almost certainly the ultimate cause of death was multiple skull fractures due to this stone coming into contact with the poor man’s head, which I suppose in a very unlucky life could conceivably be an accident. But,’ he said, picking up one of the dead man’s bagged hands, ‘there are defensive injuries. And more than one blow. The poor guy was trying to protect himself from an assailant. He was felled and probably slumped against the wall. Then our killer probably dislodged that thing from behind, delivering the fatal injury.’
Korpanski nodded and looked around him.
As a crime scene it was a nightmare. Soft mud left impressions – until the rains came again and again and washed them all away. There were even animal footprints. Little paws, bigger ones. They had sniffed, licked, nibbled and walked away into the night, having sullied his crime scene.
‘Sir.’
He jerked in response to the urgency in DC King’s tone, following the detective’s tread with a feeling of foreboding.
The body of a black and white Welsh Border collie was stretched out on the concrete area near the front door of the farmhouse. The dog lay rigid, a feeding bowl just within reach of the chain that fastened him to the wall via a ring on his collar. Korpanski wasn’t a great dog lover. As a uniformed policeman on the beat he’d been bitten too many times to feel much affection for the animal. But he did love Border collies. Partly because his grandmother had owned one and partly because he saw the breed as the equivalent of policemen. Black and white, hardworking and loyal in a bouncy, energetic sort of way. Working dogs. He hunkered down on his meaty thighs and stretched out a hand. The dog was stiff and cold, its mouth open, saliva and vomit nearby.
When he stood up again he felt angry.
‘There’s more,’ King said quietly. ‘Animals in the sheds.’
Korpanski didn’t want to see it. He felt upset about the dog. ‘Call a vet,’ he said brusquely.
Mark Fask, the civilian scenes of crime officer, was taping off access corridors, marking the stones and organising a search of the farmyard and house, while the police photographer was taking pictures of the body, the wall and the dog.
Having made a pot of strong tea Dawn Critchlow was ‘chatting’ to Kathleen Weston. ‘So tell me, when did you last see the farmer?’
‘A week, ten days ago. I can’t remember precisely.’ Her face was blotchy but the colour was returning. The tea was working.
‘Would you like me to call your husband?’
An expression close to distaste crossed the woman’s face. ‘Don’t bother,’ she said dryly. ‘He’ll be home when he’s finished his work.’ The last word was uttered with a note of mockery, a fact which Critchlow squirreled away.
She glanced around the kitchen, taking in the cream units and black granite tops, and unwittingly echoed Korpanski’s thoughts. ‘Nice place you have here.’
Way beyond the pocket of a WPC.
Mrs Weston looked around the room as though surprised at the comment. ‘Yes,’ she said, frowning, ‘I suppose it is.’
Dawn Critchlow struggled not to roll her eyes at the mega-sized kitchen absolutely stuffed with units, which opened onto an enormous conservatory that housed not only an eight-seater dining table but also a soft and comfortable-looking sofa, which she would simply love to sink down into at the end of a busy day. WPC Dawn Critchlow’s husband had been a garage mechanic on the Ashbourne road but the garage had closed last year. He’d tried to open a car repairs business on his own and had ended up badly in debt. The only job he’d been able to find since had been as a shelf-stacker in the local DIY store, which was not only poorly paid but which he hated. However, he had no choice but to take what was offered. They’d remortgaged their tiny terraced house twice and only by the skin of their teeth avoided having it repossessed. To make up the short fall in their finances, she volunteered for all the overtime she could get, which made her permanently tired. Sometimes she dreamt of living in a house like this. And then she woke up.
She sighed. She didn’t mind folk living in wonderful houses but she hated it when they didn’t appreciate how lucky they were.
‘How long have you lived here?’ she asked Kathleen chattily.
Something passed across the woman’s face. ‘Five years,’ she said tightly. She could have said five unhappy years but instead she followed up with, ‘We bought it new.’
‘And do you like it here?’
Korpanski used to say that WPC Critchlow must have a degree in getting information out of people. She was a natural at the art. They didn’t even know they were being interrogated.
‘Not really,’ Mrs Weston returned frankly.
‘Any particular reason?’
‘The smell,’ Kathleen said.
‘That’s only been for the last few days – surely?’
Kathleen Weston took a deep lungful of air then wrinkled her nose as though her breath was tainted. ‘No – I don’t mean that. Yes, that’s new. The place was – I don’t think he looked after his animals properly,’ she said. ‘They were dirty, neglected. I never saw him clean out a barn or a shed. The cows and pigs were without water, sometimes left inside in hot weather.’ Her voice became impassioned. ‘He wasn’t fit to look after animals.’
Whoah. Animals’ Rights, Dawn Critchlow thought. She knew the sort.
* * *
Next door but one, PC McBrine was having more success with Peter Mostyn though instinctively he didn’t like the short, balding man with the shiny suit, the evasive eyes and the over-willingness-to-help syndrome, who smelt too strongly of an identifiable Lynx deodorant. Africa.
‘Anything I can do to assist the police.’
Mostyn was irritating him already with his pasty face and sweating forehead.
‘Just answer my questions, sir,’ McBrine began formally. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Six years.’
‘Alone?’
Mostyn’s face leaked anger. ‘Not at first,’ he said.
McBrine simply raised his eyebrows.
‘I came here with my wife. She left me three years ago. For another man. We’re getting divorced.’
McBrine almost sniffed it in: spite, jealousy, hatred, financial problems.
‘Any children, sir?’
Mostyn dropped the play-acting and scowled. ‘I don’t see what that’s got to…’
Which confirmed McBrine’s supposition. He smiled.
‘Three,’ Mostyn said tightly. ‘They spend a lot of time here.’
‘I bet they like it, with the farm.’
The simple comment softened Mostyn’s face to something proud, paternal, almost beatific. ‘My daughter, Rachel, does particularly,’ he said. ‘She rides the pony sometimes.’
McBrine smiled in fake empathy.
‘But my son, well…’ he held his hands out, palms uppermost. ‘I don’t think it makes any difference where he is,’ he said. ‘As long as he’s hooked into his video games. And my youngest daughter, Morag – well – she’s quite young. Only four.’
‘When did you last see the farmer, Mr Grimshaw?’
Mostyn looked vague. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said.
‘Might it be worthwhile asking your daughter?’
Mostyn shrugged. ‘Possibly. But I really don’t think—’
‘When was your daughter last here?’
‘She was here the weekend of the eighth and ninth. She left on the Sunday evening.’
‘And your son?’
‘Was here the same time.’
‘Did your daughter ride that weekend?’
Reluctantly, Mostyn nodded very slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she did.’
‘On the Saturday or the Sunday?’
‘Both days.’
‘We’re going to want to speak to her.’
Mostyn looked wary.
‘Naturally, as her father, we’d expect either you or your wife to sit in on the interview.’
‘Ex-wife,’ Mostyn said, but he looked mollified.
DC Danny Hesketh-Brown, next door, was having a pretty tough time of it. His problem was that his eyes were very blue, his hair dark, his features regular, and he was six-foot tall with an athletic bearing. Women were drawn to him like the proverbial bees to a honey pot.
Charlotte Frankwell opened the door to number 3 and gave the policeman one of her winning smiles.
He brandished his ID card in front of her nose and she invited him in. She sat opposite him at the kitchen table, leaning forward to display an impressive and possibly fake cleavage. What Charlotte didn’t know was that in spite of his appearance she was wasting her time. Hesketh-Brown had one man and two women in his life: one an intelligent and attractive wife, Betsy, who was a teacher in Tunstall, in the Potteries; the second, his daughter Tanya, who was six months old; and the little man, Tom, a sturdy six-year-old who already had a plastic policeman’s helmet that he practically went to bed in. And the tiny baby and his wife were the only women likely to be in his life for the foreseeable future.
However, for all his morals, Danny Hesketh-Brown was a man and he hadn’t missed out on the skinny jeans and white see-through shirt. And Charlotte Frankwell wasn’t wearing a bra to restrain those bouncing breasts. Had he been available she would have been a very tempting proposition. Heske-Brown sighed. Time was… Then he remembered the kisses that had sent him off to work that morning and felt ashamed.
‘There’s been an accident at the farm,’ he began awkwardly.
‘What sort of accident?’
‘The farmer, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed unconcerned. ‘Coffee?’
‘No thanks.’
She seemed not to have heard him decline the offer, clip-clopping into the kitchen on pink stiletto mules and absent-mindedly filling the kettle. She turned around then to face him in an almost choreographed move and he wondered why such an attractive woman who didn’t look over thirty felt she had to be so obvious – wearing blatantly seductive clothes and an awful lot of make-up. She concentrated on spooning deliciously scented ground coffee into a cafetière and filled it with boiling water. ‘Well, the farmer’s old,’ she said. ‘I guess it was bound to happen sometime.’
Hesketh-Brown hesitated. Grimshaw must have seemed ancient to her but all the same this was a callous response. Even if an expression of sympathy was sometimes a formality, he would still have expected it. He had to remind himself that Charlotte Frankwell wasn’t aware of the circumstances of Grimshaw’s death. He let her carry on believing that poor old Grimshaw had met with an accident. Too early to start promoting the official line, anyway. Until the post-mortem was completed, nothing was certain.
Charlotte poured the coffee and they sat around the kitchen table, Hesketh-Brown’s mind busily memorising details. Charlotte Frankwell wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. There was a brand new Merc C 350 parked in the drive, which the last time he had run a fantasy price check had been retailing at £32K. And she had a child. A daughter. He’d seen a pair of small, pink shoes in the laundry beyond the kitchen, which fairly obviously didn’t belong to Ms Frankwell. How the hell could she afford to live in a place like this? Rich parents? He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t think so. She didn’t have the polish of boarding or finishing school.
He sat back in his chair. Must be divorce, then, Danny, my boy, he thought, and felt pleased with himself for sorting out an answer.
‘When did you last see the farmer, Mrs Frankwell?’
Apart from raising her eyebrows at the ‘Mrs’, Charlotte simply looked bored. She carefully studied an intricately painted fingernail. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said impatiently.
‘Well, your land backs on to his.’
She shot him a look of scorn. ‘Unfortunately,’ she said. ‘Fairly typically of my ex-husband – almost my entire view of the dilapidated farm is taken up with a barn that’s falling down and a cowshed that isn’t much better.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps Gabriel hoped I’d be out in the garden one day and the bloody things really would collapse on me.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The entire place,’ she said, ‘stinks like a sewer. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known. And I’ll be selling up very soon. Moving to Spain the second I’ve sold. Put my darling daughter in boarding school. Preferably one with very long terms and short holidays.’
All of a sudden Hesketh-Brown didn’t find Ms Frankwell at all attractive. In fact she looked downright ugly. He looked around him. ‘But it’s a nice place,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky to be able to afford it.’ At your age.
Her eyes narrowed. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
How?
And she deliberately didn’t tell him.
‘Yes,’ she said coolly. ‘It is nice, isn’t it?’
Danny was getting fed up with this game. ‘So you don’t know when you last saw Mr Grimshaw.’
She looked up then and he caught a gaze of her amazing blue eyes heavily fringed with what he suspected were false eyelashes. ‘No.’
He stood up then, leaving the barely touched coffee on the table. ‘And you haven’t noticed anything suspicious around the farm?’
‘Like what?’ She pursed her lips.
This woman, he thought, is dangerous.
He had the feeling he was playing a game involuntarily. But far from seducing him, this woman was annoying him. ‘Well then, if you can’t help…?’ He left the phrase open, the ball firmly and squarely in her court.
‘Sorry,’ she said – without regret.
He gave up and left without saying anything more.
They were up in the clouds. Joanna was still sneaking a few pages of her book while Matthew, without enthusiasm, was struggling with the sudoku. ‘One of the difficult ones,’ he muttered.
She took no notice. Charlie Fox was facing her antagonist.
The airhostess came round with the drinks and Matthew eyed the small bottles of champagne. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Why ever not?’ He bought two and then confided in the woman in the seat next to him. ‘We’ve just got engaged.’
The woman, plump in a cream T-shirt encrusted with sparkly stones, was fulsome and generous in her congratulations. Joanna stared out of the window at clouds that looked like soft sand, as though you could run through them, sinking only ever so slightly. Matthew flipped the cork out of the champagne, poured her one and handed it to her. ‘To us,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ echoed the woman in the cream T-shirt.
Joanna took a long sip and acknowledged that she wasn’t looking forward to flashing her black pearl at Korpanski. She almost dreaded his response.
Korpanski, meanwhile, down on the ground, was enjoying directing the investigations and already anticipating bringing Joanna up to date. ‘Have we got the next of kin yet?’
‘We’ve just located her. She’s on her way from the Potteries.’
‘Sir,’ PC Timmis had got as far as the barns and was swinging the great door open.
Dreading what he would see Korpanski gave in, stomped towards the barn himself and peered inside.