Thea’s anger against this second corpse made her feel guilty. She ought to be appalled, enraged at the violence and the sudden death of a healthy young man. Instead she simply wanted to run away and forget the whole messy business. She felt personally attacked, the body set down carefully just where she was about to walk. But how could anybody know she would be coming this way? She and Gladwin had already been down the alley that morning – when there was definitely no dead man obstructing the way. The fact of him now was ludicrous. It was the stuff of fantasy.
‘Good Christ!’ Fraser Meadows exclaimed, after a lengthy delay. He had stared blankly at the body for what seemed like several minutes, while his daughter uttered high wordless squeaks and Thea’s mother stepped back and turned away, acting out something of what Thea herself would have liked to have done.
‘Has anybody got a phone?’ Thea asked. She had left hers at Thistledown.
Mo produced one like a magic trick, and held it up. ‘999?’ she asked.
‘No, we should call Gladwin direct. I know the number.’ She dictated it, and then snatched the mobile when Mo said it was ringing.
Gladwin answered her own mobile phone on the third ring. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘This is a private number.’
‘It’s me. Thea. I’m standing in Murder Alley, with the body of a man. I know who he is. He’s dead, Sonia. There’s been another murder. It’s the same as that girl. Everything’s the same.’ Her voice was rising dangerously and she paused for breath.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Yes you do. And it means he must have known who the girl was. They must be connected somehow.’
‘Who, Thea? Who is he?’
‘He’s called Reuben Hardy and he lives right here, in Silk Mill Lane. He’s got a wife and a puppy. It’s a sweet puppy.’ Somehow the puppy loomed largest in her mind, which she knew was daft and embarrassing, but the mind did that sort of thing in a crisis.
‘What do you mean, it’s the same? What’s the same?’
‘The way he’s lying. On his back, with his hands folded on his chest. Like an effigy on a tomb. It’s ghastly.’
‘Can you stay there until I reach you? Fifteen or twenty minutes, okay?’
‘There’ll be people. There are already people,’ she noticed, looking up the alley to the street at the top. ‘What should I say to them?’
‘Say you’ve called the police and they’ve asked you to keep everybody away. Are you there on your own?’
‘No,’ said Thea tightly. ‘And that isn’t really a lot of help. There are four of us.’
‘Send them away, then. Sorry – I’m ringing off now. I’ll be as quick as I can – and I’ll send a squad car. It’ll probably get there before me.’ The urgency in the detective’s voice went some way towards placating Thea, who was still experiencing some sense of personal outrage.
Her mother inadvertently contributed, too, by saying, ‘Poor man. So young! Doesn’t he look peaceful, though? Isn’t death the strangest thing!’
‘It is,’ Thea sniffed, caught unawares by sudden emotion. ‘I don’t think anybody really understands it.’
Fraser and Mo had retreated back to Silk Mill Lane, speaking in low voices and ignoring the others. Thea called down to them, ‘Go back to the house, will you? If Jason comes back, you can tell him what’s happened. I can manage here.’ Evidently, the couple were unsure as to whether or not to obey her. They stared all around them, as if seeking another opinion. Then they slowly moved out of sight and she forgot about them.
Thea had spoken too soon about managing. Before she knew it, a red-faced person was shouting at her, demanding answers to fatuously obvious questions. It took Thea a few moments to recognise the woman of the previous day who had shown her and Gladwin the path through Oliver’s woodland. Heap – that was her name. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’ she shrilled. ‘For God’s sake, why are you just standing there?’
‘The police are coming,’ Thea said tightly. ‘It’s all under control.’
‘Control! How can you say that, with two killings in twenty-four hours? What the hell is happening here? We’re not safe in our beds, that’s obvious.’
The woman had every reason to be hysterical, Thea told herself. She could understand it perfectly well. The madness of it was making her feel rather hysterical herself. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s terrible.’ It was a feeble word for the circumstances, but words always were feeble when somebody died. Mo’s inarticulate cries had been more fitting.
But why Reuben? His superior smirks and subtle insinuations had been annoying, admittedly. Perhaps he had worked out who killed Melissa and challenged the killer. That seemed a viable explanation, even if he would have had to move extremely quickly. Everything had been so fast. ‘The police are coming,’ she said again. ‘Don’t let those people get any closer.’ A knot of townsfolk were hovering at the end of the alley, perhaps having sent the red-faced woman as emissary. ‘Go and tell them they have to stay back.’
Somewhat to her surprise, her order was obeyed, but only after Priscilla had bent down and given the inert face a swift stroke with her fingertips. ‘I just wanted to make sure,’ she mumbled. Then she was gone and Thea was left with her mother and a dead man. Maureen stood straight-backed against the stone wall, watching and listening, but saying nothing. Her dilated pupils gave Thea some cause for concern. ‘Mum? Are you all right?’
‘Of course not. Only a psychopath could be all right, just at the moment.’
It was the sort of thing her father would have said. He had encouraged an open acknowledgement of emotion as a good rule to live by. ‘Don’t bottle it up,’ he would say, when one of his children was miserable or angry or frightened. ‘There’s no shame in having feelings.’ Their mother had been the repressed one, clamping her lips shut against tears or rage. Her feelings leaked out in a trickle of complaint and sighs.
‘I’m sorry,’ Thea said, limply. ‘You don’t have to stay. They’ll be here in a minute.’
‘I’ll stay. You might need reinforcements.’
It was reassuringly close to being a joke. ‘I might,’ she agreed, with a glance at the band of onlookers.
The alley was longer than she remembered it from earlier that morning. It began as a tunnel, the roof closed in, and then opened into a lane with plants sprawling over the walls, and a modern concrete block addition at the lower end. Reuben Hardy lay at the narrowest point, about halfway along. How was it possible that his killer could have been sufficiently calm to arrange the body, in broad daylight, and make an unnoticed escape only yards from a town centre? The answer was not difficult to find. Winchcombe on a Monday morning was far from busy. There was little expectation that the alley would be used more than once or twice a day. It was at the eastern end of town, beyond the shops, where few people would be walking. The opening to the alley was narrow and shadowy. Nobody driving past would have time to look in and focus on an object lying on the ground. If you had the nerve for it, then it was probably not such a risky enterprise after all. Somehow this made Thea feel sadder than ever.
At least they had an identity for this one, she thought, with a wife they could interview and a life they could dismantle in the search for a reason for his murder. And it was highly likely that a link would be discovered with the other victim, arranged in a similar funereal attitude. The neatness of it was repellent, suggesting something cynical and cold. She thought of Drew, gently settling his people into their coffins, and shuddered at the difference. Being placed like this in the open air, prey to birds and other scavengers, was dreadful. The lack of blood, the closed eyes, removed much of the violence associated with murder, and replaced it with something even worse.
At last, the police arrived, in a single car, without fanfare. It drew up in Silk Mill Lane, some distance past the bottom end of the alley, having failed to notice it. ‘They don’t know where we are,’ said Thea’s mother. ‘I’ll go and fetch them.’
They were two uniformed policemen, who herded the local people away and ran tape across the upper opening to the alley. They eyed Thea and her mother uncertainly, confused as to their precise role. Thea recognised them as having been present the day before, and they quite certainly recognised her. She quailed beneath their glances, aware that they were thinking dark suspicious thoughts.
Gladwin was there in another five minutes, arriving with two other plain-clothes officers. She questioned Thea, her manner intense and jittery. There were no smiles or jokes. The profound seriousness of the situation could not be avoided. ‘We were just here,’ she burst out. ‘Less than four hours ago.’
‘Yes,’ said Thea. ‘I know.’