DI Higgins had never been as forthcoming about police investigations as DS Gladwin was in her conversations with Thea. ‘We’re drawing diagrams,’ he said, over the mug of tea. ‘Trajectories, velocity, force and all that. Trying to decide whether it could have been an accident. Mind you, not stopping after a fatality is a serious crime in itself.’
‘It matters, doesn’t it?’ said Thea. ‘If it was an accident there’s no motive. It wasn’t an accident, though.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Not unless it was some boy racer, high on cocaine or something. That’s not impossible.’
‘If there was some sort of blockage on the main road, people might drive through the Oddingtons as a diversion and be in a great hurry – but there wasn’t, was there?’
He shook his head. ‘We checked all that sort of thing.’
‘So why are you here? You’re the third detective to visit me in one day.’
‘The super thought you might have remembered a bit more. Impressions. Details.’
‘I don’t think I have. The trouble is, anything I think I remember now will probably be dreamt up out of my imagination. Like the look on her face. I know I’ve embroidered that, based on pretty much nothing. There wasn’t time for any real expression, and I was too far away to see properly. But I did think there was something – maybe she only lifted her head slightly, or her eyes changed. But it struck me that she knew the driver of the car. That her very last thought must have been that there was no reason to be frightened because this was a friend. Somebody she liked. It’s a dreadful idea – the betrayal doesn’t bear thinking about.’
Higgins chewed his lips. ‘Embroidery is right,’ he said. ‘You can’t possibly have any real grounds for believing that.’
‘No,’ said Thea. But when she tested the strength of the idea, she found it stubbornly persistent. ‘And yet … would a stranger be so determined, so unswerving and lethal? A stranger wouldn’t plan it and carry it through like that. There had to be some very powerful emotion behind it. And the practicalities – getting rid of the car. Obtaining the car in the first place. There had to be a risk that somebody – or a camera somewhere – would take note of the registration number, or the make and model at least. So where is it now?’
‘You took the words out of Barkley’s mouth,’ he said. ‘She thinks exactly the same as you, and said so at the briefing this morning.’
‘There you are, then,’ said Thea. ‘More tea?’
‘No thanks.’ He turned a distressed face to her. ‘I sometimes think I’m not suited to this line of work. What you said just now – that Gabriella might have known and trusted the person who killed her. It’s right. A betrayal like that is too ghastly to contemplate.’
She thought about it. ‘You could say that all killing is a betrayal, unless it’s in a war. Every time a cow or pig is sent for slaughter, it’s betrayed by the people it knows and trusts. And murder breaks some sort of unwritten assumption that we’re essentially all brothers and sisters, and have agreed not to end each other’s lives.’
Higgins smiled weakly. ‘That’s why it’s the worst possible crime. And it’s why the motives so often turn out to be banal or inadequate, or just really stupid. I can hardly think of one I’ve heard that made me think the person might have had a tiny bit of justification. It’s often protecting their own reputation or self-image, which was never seriously under threat in the first place.’
‘Or somebody was in their way. Or their feelings have been so badly hurt they can’t rest until they’ve taken revenge.’
‘Or they feel betrayed, which is where we came in.’
‘I think revenge explains a lot, in many cases. And you might say that comes from a strong sense of justice. You just can’t let somebody get away with what they’ve done. I can think of a few where I’ve had some sympathy for that sort of motivation. I was talking about all this with Stephanie a little while ago, and she actually said she could imagine killing somebody in revenge for some horrible thing they’d done.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Nearly thirteen.’
Higgins sighed. ‘As I say, I often have a suspicion I’m missing something when it comes to this sort of thing. I’m fine with collecting evidence and spotting details, but the other stuff just scares me.’
‘And so it should,’ Thea said warmly. ‘It’s the scariest thing there is.’
When Higgins had left, Thea went to inspect the salukis, thinking she should have shown them to the detective inspector. They were comfortably loafing in their indoors quarters, showing little inclination to run around outside in the damp. Dolly was scratching her neck with an intensity that rang a mild alarm bell in Thea. She remembered that Hepzie had been scratching herself more than usual, especially first thing in the morning. Stephanie had muttered something about fleas, which Thea had ignored. To her mind, the occasional flea was nothing to worry about, and the expensive chemical treatment supplied by the vet was only resorted to once or twice a year.
If Hepzie had infested Dolly – and no doubt the others too – with fleas, what would Umberto say? Would he laugh and blame himself for failing to apply the medication, or would he be outraged by Thea’s careless behaviour? Either seemed entirely possible. The prospect of the latter made her feel impatient and rebellious. What was the world coming to, when a few little bloodsuckers caused such hysteria? Even Stephanie had been annoyingly insistent about it, claiming she had been bitten on her legs and was suffering as a result. And now it seemed the season was upon them again and action would have to be taken.
But what action? Where was the nearest vet, or pharmacy that would produce the right stuff? And what if she applied it to the salukis only to discover they were allergic to it and it killed them? She glared accusingly at her spaniel, and said, ‘This is all your fault.’
She could hardly contact Umberto about something so trivial – while at the same time she could not ignore it, either. By Friday there could be flea eggs lurking in every surface of the house – carpets, cushions, bedding – and nothing short of wholesale fumigation would destroy them. And it would indeed all be Hepzibah’s fault. Thea would have failed, despite her strenuous efforts to do a perfect job for once.
Umberto had left a list of instructions, mostly about food and exercise, with the phone number of a vet at the bottom. When he had handed it to her, he had flicked a finger at this final line and said, ‘I’m not expecting you to want this,’ as if it would be a serious dereliction of duty to need such assistance.
But he did love his dogs, for their own sake and for their potential value. He probably didn’t want them to be itching and restless. Something would have to be done and quickly.
First, she pulled Dolly close to her and commenced a close examination of her coat. The hair was not particularly dense, and the skin fairly easy to see. No small black insects came into view. Perhaps it was all a false alarm after all. But then a speck of something jumped onto her bare arm, and then jumped again back onto the dog, and the problem was confirmed. Dolly had fleas, damn it.
‘Come outside, all of you,’ she ordered. ‘Go and run about while I change your bedding.’ Knowing it was futile, if only because Hepzie had been roaming freely all over the house, she bundled the dogs’ fleecy rugs into the washing machine and set it as hot as she dared. Rummaging through the small wall cupboard where Umberto had vaguely told her there was all the dog equipment, she found a small white comb with very finely spaced teeth. A fine-tooth comb she thought to herself. Or was it a fine toothcomb? In any case it looked useful, and she started to deploy it on her spaniel who she called in from the garden.
It worked beautifully. In fact, too beautifully, because when she inspected it, she saw five quite large wriggling fleas caught between the teeth. ‘Oh God,’ she said.
At four o’clock she was still obsessively combing dogs and squashing fleas. Her own skin was crawling with imaginary parasites and the dogs were beyond the point of endurance. The bedding was transferred from washing machine to tumble dryer, since the weather was not going to co-operate with the process. There was a sense of having at least arrested the onward march of the infestation for a day or so, while she considered what to do next. On reflection, it had been a rather soothing interlude. All around the world, people – and apes – were dealing with fleas, ticks, lice on themselves and their fellow creatures. It was basic and real and mindless. There was no morality attached to it, no betrayal or viciousness, no violence or malice. It just was what it was, and there was something grounding about it. Here in the Cotswolds, where money ruled supreme and non-human species existed to serve or entertain homo sapiens, the disgusting basics still lurked just below the surface. As the hour went by, Thea found herself almost relishing the subversion of it all. These handsome locked-up houses would be chemically treated to repel ants or mice or silver fish, rendering them sterile and pristine – to what end? In her musings, Thea envisaged the inevitable invasions that would take place one day. It was a war that humanity could only win by destroying everything, themselves included. Pockets of the country had quite recently come to understand and accept this as true – but not yet here in the heart of Gloucestershire.
Food began to acquire ascendancy over everything else as she noticed how empty she felt. Lunch had been a slice of cheese and a small pot of yoghurt from the fridge, which Umberto had invited her to raid. The variety of food on offer was a source of pleasurable anticipation. There were also two bottles of white wine and some beer. ‘I’ve ordered you some milk for Wednesday,’ he said. The prospect of old-fashioned bottles on the doorstep made her smile, even though they would in fact be outside the gate, on the pavement where people could knock them over.
An early supper of cold chicken, coleslaw and tomatoes assuaged her hunger, and she opened one of the bottles which turned out to contain a very pleasing Sauvignon. She noted the label specially, so that she’d be able to tell Drew about it.
Outside, as on the previous evening, the sun was no more than a faint glow, shrouded with dense cloud. At some point the rain had stopped, but it could hardly be termed a fine summer’s day. ‘At least we managed a little walk,’ she told Hepzie. ‘That was plenty of excitement after yesterday.’
Yesterday’s ‘excitement’ was still very much present, the trauma fogging her brain and making her slow. She did not want to think – not just about the murdering car, but about anything. Her frank conversation with Higgins had not been therapeutic, it seemed. Only his steady gaze and endearing humility had persuaded her to turn her thoughts to the ghastly events. When he had gone, she shut it all down again.
Now there was a lengthy evening to get through. Television was the only viable entertainment, and she juggled the remote controls until a showing of an old James Stewart film turned up. In fact, there was a whole night of James Stewart films, starting with Vertigo, followed by Anatomy of a Murder and Winchester 73. That would take her through to well after midnight, if she chose to stay up for them all. The last one did not greatly appeal, but the first two would do nicely.
It felt decadent to be huddled indoors on a June evening, but that did not greatly trouble her. Whatever plans she and Drew might have for the long days – walking over the wolds, strolling beside a river or canal, simply sitting outside with some Pimms – they almost never came to fruition. June would fly by, mostly cloudy or cool, and then July would be upon them, perhaps with better weather, but much of the gloss of early summer expectations rubbed off. This year, after lengthy discussions, there was to be a family holiday in August. They would all go to Penrith for a week, taking kites, books about fell walking, sketchpads and indomitable optimism. Of them all, Timmy was by far the most excited.
Vertigo was not one of her favourite films. She had seen it in her twenties and found the plot entirely impenetrable. The loss of a moment’s concentration was all it took to turn it into nonsense. But now she gave it full attention. How, she kept asking herself, had poor Jimmy Stewart ever got down from that collapsing gutter, hundreds of feet above the ground, where he hung in the opening moments of the film? The subsequent story was gripping and distracting, but the question never went away. At the end, there he was on another high ledge, perhaps about to fall or jump off it. The events in between had all been a dream, then? Or a sort of avoidance of the inevitable awful death that was certain to befall him from the outset?
She made herself a large mug of coffee before the next film started, and went on reviewing the convolutions of Vertigo. Too late, she caught up with herself, and the slippery way her mind had linked it to what had happened to Gabriella Milner. Had her imagination constructed an entire fantasy in that single second between realisation and impact? Or had her brain died much more slowly than that, giving her ample time to relive her whole life and conclude that she had been most cruelly betrayed by somebody she trusted?
James Stewart – the character in the film never quite detached himself from the actor – had been betrayed most comprehensively. Deliberately and with infinite care, he had been duped. His emotions had been exploited and used against him. Nothing was as it seemed. It struck Thea as rather horrible that real life – and death – could run so closely parallel to something in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
True to form, she had left her phone in the kitchen, where she couldn’t hear it. When the film finished, she remembered it, and found a text from Drew had been sitting there for over an hour. ‘Hello? Are you receiving me? Everything fine here – hope you’re alive and well? With a generous dollop of love, Drew.’
She smiled and replied. ‘Sorry – got immersed in a Hitchcock movie. Love you too.’
He might be waiting for a proper call, but would settle for a text without complaint. After a number of such wifely absences, leading to entanglements with police investigations and no guarantee of personal safety, Drew had eventually learnt to accept that it was never going to change. He had been slow to redefine marriage with this second wife who possessed very few of the traits of his first one. Thea was a poor cook, a disinterested gardener, a sloppy housekeeper and a somewhat detached stepmother, although the last was evolving into something warmer and closer than Drew had initially feared. Stephanie and Thea now had a bond that seemed set to continue through the girl’s oncoming adolescence. Timmy had slowly relaxed into the new family life, after the hard lessons of loss and neglect he had suffered while his mother sickened and died. Karen – the first Mrs Slocombe – had been ideological, sociable, and a very devoted wife. Why, Thea sometimes wondered, had Drew ever thought he could possibly replace her? As it turned out, she concluded immodestly, he had really done rather well for himself.
At ten-thirty, having failed to immerse herself in Anatomy of a Murder she abandoned it before the end and took the dogs out for their bedtime routine, watching all three of them as they squatted in the further reaches of the field, and concluding that they were tolerating her and Hepzie pretty well, whilst refraining from any undue enthusiasm. They were essentially a self-sufficient pack in everything but food. She found herself idly wondering how long they would survive if a great apocalypse removed all the people. No time at all, if they were left in this big green cage, was the conclusion. By the time it occurred to them to try to climb over the fence to freedom, they would be too weak to accomplish it.
Ten minutes later, they had settled down meekly in their indoor quarters and Thea took her spaniel up to bed with her.
But she found herself unable to sleep, which was something that happened so rarely that it caused panic after twenty minutes or so. She put the light on and fumbled for the book she had brought with her. It had been a careless choice, and when she began it, she found that it was both set in a historical period and written in the present tense – a transgression to her mind that could not be borne. She liked her stories to follow the ‘once upon a time’ format. This happened, in the past – it is not happening now, for heaven’s sake. Her irritation only served to make her more wide awake.
Downstairs there were small sounds familiar in any house on a summer night. Things expanded and shrank, shifted and settled, with their little creaks and clicks. There were no bumps or thuds, nothing to suggest an intruder – and yet Thea’s volatile imagination envisaged a felon tiptoeing up the stairs holding a machete or even a pistol. She would hide under the bed or in the wardrobe, she decided – but what would become of her dog? Impatient with herself, she repeated inwardly that of course the salukis would bark if anybody came into the house. And besides, the fortifications were more than adequate to prevent such a thing happening.
Thea Slocombe was very much not a nervous person. She had found that by imagining every kind of horror she could address it and then put it away. She had just witnessed a real death caused by extreme violence, bones crushed and organs destroyed, life utterly extinguished. Nothing could be more horrifying than that. Playing with childish notions of axe-wielding burglars was simply a diversion, born of the night and the alarm at being unable to get to sleep. Smiling at her own nonsense, she sank back into the pillow and let her thoughts flow into fairy tales from Grimm and the magical mutations from Spirited Away and other Ghibli films so beloved by Stephanie and Timmy.
And then she was finally asleep and before long she was dreaming. In the dream a girl was being thrown out of a high window, and as she fell, Thea could see it was Stephanie. She watched the frail body land on concrete far below, and when she peered closer, it had become her own daughter, Jessica, as she had been at about fifteen. The dream continued, with Thea trying to reassemble the body, breathe life back into it, tears streaming down her face.
She woke up gasping for air, her cheeks wet. The spaniel twitched irritably at the foot of the bed. The sky was not completely dark, and when Thea consulted her phone she found it was just after midnight. ‘Post-traumatic stress,’ she muttered aloud. ‘So this is what it’s like.’
She put the light on, got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Wondering idly as to whether the lights had been noticed by anybody outside in the village street, she made herself a mug of tea, and added two biscuits. There was a rustling from the dogs’ room, but no more than that. The dream took a long time to fade, merging with what she had seen on Monday and reminding her that awful events could not always be tidied away and forgotten.