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- Herausgeber: Soundings
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Cotswold Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
August, and Thea is tired of having to entertain Drew's children so she accepts a commission to watch over a house in Barnsley. On her first day there, she rescues a fugitive woman she finds hiding under some bushes. The woman's story is thin and incoherent, but Thea gives her sanctuary for the night only to find her dead the next morning. The police are impossibly busy with a big investigation into the trafficking of rare animals and Thea is effectively on her own, trying to make sense of the murder. As she digs deeper into the woman's background, she discovers a tangled web of lies, secrets and at least three very likely suspects .
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Zeit:8 Std. 55 min
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3
Secrets in the Cotswolds
REBECCA TOPE
5
This one’s for Esther and Leonie
Contents
Author’s Note
As with all the titles in this series, the setting here is a real village. Liberties have, however, been taken with the barn and the business park, and individual private houses have been invented.
Chapter One
‘I thought you said you were going to Bibury,’ said Drew, shaking his head in confusion. ‘What’s this about Barnsley? Isn’t that in Yorkshire?’
‘Yes, but there’s a little village in Gloucestershire of the same name, and that’s where I’ll be staying. It’s near Bibury. All very upmarket over there.’
‘As opposed to the poverty-stricken hovels we live amongst down here in Broad Campden, you mean?’
Thea laughed briefly. She had been trying to reconcile her husband to her forthcoming absence for a whole week of the summer, and still he seemed to think it wouldn’t really happen. She was leaving him in charge of his two children and his alternative funeral business, with the assistance of his colleague, Andrew. The school holiday was almost halfway through, during which Thea had conscientiously entertained Stephanie and Tim day after day. ‘Why can’t we go to the seaside for a bit, as a family?’ Drew had asked three days into the holiday. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’10
Thea had shaken her head impatiently, without really hearing the tone behind the words. ‘We can, if you organise it,’ she said. ‘I can’t do that for you, can I? You’ll have to clear the diary, let the nursing homes know – and all sorts of other things.’ Thinking back on it later, her words sounded cold in her own ears, but they were nonetheless true. People did not die to a schedule, and the small-scale operation in Broad Campden had no facilities for embalming or long-term storage of more than two bodies. To close down even for a week would risk disappointing people who were relying on having one of Drew’s burials. Thea had gone on to say, ‘I think it’s a bit late now. Everything will be booked up already.’
For some days Drew had carried a thwarted look, which Thea belatedly supposed had to do with his own desire for a holiday. There was a subtext, which said, Most wives would have made sure something got done in good time. I’ve got enough to think about without arranging family holidays. But he knew what her answer to this would be: ‘If you want a family holiday, Drew – you fix it. Because for myself, I’m not sure it’s something I’d enjoy.’ She didn’t say that out loud, but they both heard it anyway. The unpredictable nature of Drew’s work really did preclude any prolonged absences. He did, however, frequently find himself with very little to do for three or four days in a row. He had become adept at using these periods for relaxation, guiltlessly watching old films, reading biographies or walking the local footpaths with Thea and her dog. But he seldom involved himself in household minutiae. He was a 11reluctant cook and inefficient cleaner. He would play board games with his children and hang washing on the line in the small back garden, but increasingly he left domestic matters to his under-occupied new wife. Again, there was a definite subtext that said, If you’re not going out to work, then surely it’s obvious that your job is to run the house and family. Thea could never find a persuasive argument against this assumption. She knew she had boxed herself in by having little desire to get herself an outside job, while finding the daily grind of basic survival increasingly tedious.
The suggestion that she abandon her husband and stepchildren for a short while had come a few months earlier from Detective Superintendent Sonia Gladwin, who had observed something of the reality in the Slocombe household in recent times. Her relationship with Thea had broadened and deepened over the years since they were first brought together in a village crime. Thea had found a body and Gladwin, newly transferred from the North-East, had been happy to make use of her, regardless of her amateur status. Now Thea was firmly established in a hard-to-define role that gave her an unusual level of access to police matters. Drew’s profession clearly helped to make them both acceptable as semi-official assistants in murder enquiries.
Gladwin, it turned out, had a friend by the name of Tabitha Ibbotson in possession of an old Cotswold house in need of renovation. The builders had to be supervised, the contents safeguarded, and the friend was temporarily unavailable. Thea would be paid to take charge, staying 12on the premises day and night. It was something she had done many times before, in the company of her spaniel Hepzibah. Only since marrying Drew had she abandoned her house-sitting career, and she found herself missing it.
But this time, Hepzie was to stay behind. Stephanie had insisted, with Drew’s somewhat surprising support. Thea was at first distraught at the prospect of a house-sit without her faithful companion, as well as doubtful as to how Hepzie would cope with the separation. ‘She’s never spent more than three days without me,’ she protested. Those three days had been the minimal honeymoon that she and Drew had awarded themselves, a year earlier. They had gone to the Scilly Isles, while Thea’s mother looked after the dog and Drew’s colleague Maggs had accommodated the children. The spaniel had sat attentively at their feet, aware of being at the centre of the discussion. Thea bent down and fondled the long ears, in an excessive demonstration of her love.
‘She won’t even notice you’ve gone,’ said Drew heartlessly.
While the argument was still raging, Gladwin had mentioned that her friend had vetoed the presence of a dog anyway. ‘It’ll get under the builders’ feet, and there’s quite a busy road through the village,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think there’s a proper door at the back. They’ve knocked a wall down, and it’s open to the world.’
Thea had gone to view the property at the beginning of July and hadn’t been back since. ‘There was a perfectly good door when I saw it,’ she grumbled.
13The distance between Barnsley and Bibury was barely more than three miles, which accounted for Drew’s bewilderment over their names. Initially Gladwin had cited Bibury as the location of the property, and somehow nobody had bothered to correct her to name the smaller village, which boasted a pub, a church and a hotel that called itself a spa. In a random piece of research, Thea had learnt that it was on an old drove road, which had been replaced by the B4425 two centuries earlier, shifting the focus to the south, and causing the hotel’s frontage to become its back. There was considerably more history going back to Roman times, which she resolved to investigate during the dull days of house-sitting.
And now it was only one more day until she took up residence there, and she was again reassuring Drew that he’d manage quite well without her. Stephanie was eleven, and Timmy almost nine; they could be left in the house for an hour or so while Drew conducted a burial. Thus far, he only had three funerals in the diary. ‘But there are bound to be at least another three before you come back,’ he said.
‘So? If you’re as worried as all that, you can ask one of their little friends’ mothers to have them.’
It was an unforgivably blithe response, as she well knew. Stephanie had two or three classmates she counted as friends, but they had made no plans to meet during the summer. They were all going to the same secondary school in September, and would undoubtedly regard the presence of Timmy as an intrusion, being a mere ‘Junior’. In any case, he would 14resist all attempts by adults to park him at some girl’s house, even for an hour.
‘I can’t,’ said Drew, listing several of these good reasons.
‘Well, you could hold it over them as a threat if they don’t behave.’
‘You mean if they burn the house down, or one of them falls out of a window and cracks its skull?’
‘Oh, stop it,’ she snapped. ‘You’re only trying to make me feel guilty.’
‘No, no. If I wanted to do that, I’d develop some psychosomatic illness and take to my bed. Then you’d tell me to pull myself together, and go off anyway.’
‘Like Emily’s Bruce used to do,’ said Thea. ‘He was a genius at it, until she realised what was going on. I think Damien can be a bit prone to it as well.’
Damien and Bruce were Thea’s brother and brother-in-law respectively. Damien was experiencing parenthood for the first time in his late forties. The resulting anxiety was bordering on the pathological. One of Drew’s many virtues was that he kept any tendency to worry under strict control. ‘My father worried enough for us all, when I was small,’ he said. ‘I grew up determined not to go the same way. Other people’s neuroses are such a blight. I wouldn’t inflict that on anybody who chose to live with me.’
Now he said, ‘If I get like Bruce or Damien, you have my permission to shoot me.’ This was followed by a sigh, which Thea chose to ignore.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘So stop agonising about the kids, okay? And don’t let them bully you. A bit 15of boredom will do them good. Stephanie’s quite happy with all her YouTube stuff, and Tim’s got that canal map to finish. Just leave them to get on with it.’
Drew sighed again at this brisk advice, but made no further objections.
The logistics of getting to Barnsley had not been considered until the last minute. The Slocombes only had one car and there was no question of Thea taking that. ‘I can drive you there,’ said Drew. ‘But then you’ll be stranded without any transport.’
‘I don’t suppose that matters,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I expect there’s a bus into Cirencester, so I can go and do some shopping. And I can walk to Bibury and other places. There’s a trout farm – I can live on fish, if necessary.’
‘You can order food online with your phone,’ said Stephanie, as if delivering a piece of wholly new information. ‘And a person brings it to your door in a van.’
Thea groaned. ‘That sounds terrible,’ she said. ‘Probably more hassle than finding a convenient bus.’
Drew was in complete agreement with this. ‘Take some provisions, then. Tea and coffee, beans and bread. Is there a freezer at the house?’
‘I don’t think so. The kitchen’s being gutted. I can just about boil a kettle, and I think there’s a microwave.’
‘Can you microwave trout?’
‘Probably,’ she said.
Stephanie, Tim and Hepzibah went with them on the Saturday morning, the car full of Thea’s luggage. 16Clothes, books, her laptop (although she had forgotten to ask whether there would be Wi-Fi at the house and it seemed unlikely), a sketchpad and several coloured pencils, the large-scale Ordnance Survey map, boots, phone, some DVDs – there was a small television and DVD player provided – and a grubby piece of needlepoint that she had started years ago and never finished. It had been sitting patiently in her house in Witney, which was now sold and forgotten. She had wanted to throw the needlework away, but Drew wouldn’t let her. ‘It’ll be lovely when it’s finished,’ he assured her. The picture was far from the usual cottage with garden and little stream: instead it depicted an urban scene with a crane, several high-rise blocks and cars in the foreground. Her first husband Carl had bought it for her as a joke, having found it in a charity shop, wool and needles included.
‘It’s never going to be lovely,’ Thea argued. ‘But it might keep me amused for a few evenings.’
Hepzie could not believe her senses when her mistress got out of the car, unloaded all her bags and then told her to stay where she was. She scrabbled at the window and whined, convinced that there had been an oversight. Stephanie clutched her to her chest and repeated, ‘You’re staying with us, Heps. It’s okay – your Mumma’s coming back soon.’
Thea waved them off, once Drew had checked she could get into the house, and advised her with all due humility to do something to barricade herself in at night. There were tears in her eyes at her own multiple betrayal as the car disappeared from sight. ‘Selfish – 17that’s what I am,’ she muttered, before adding a mental note that surely she was allowed to have at least some time and space of her own. They were Drew’s children – it was only reasonable that he should share the responsibility of looking after them. Any feminist would agree with her; but feminists seemed to be sadly thin on the ground these days.
She looked around, standing in the short driveway. At the side of the house there was a cement mixer, daubed with misshapen lumps of grey cement, its cable draped untidily around its legs. Exploring down towards the back, she found a small skip that must have been delivered on a truck squeezing through the space between the house and the hedge that separated it from a wooded area to the north-east. Whether or not there was a neighbouring house beyond the woods had yet to be discovered. So far, the only other house she’d noticed was across the road from the front gate. The skip was piled with cardboard, glass and rubble. The latter must be the ruins of the stretch of wall that had been knocked down, she realised. There was a hole into the kitchen, scantily covered with a plastic sheet. Peering inside, Thea could see rough walls where cupboards must have been torn down, and gaps waiting for new installations. There were no worktops, but the floor-level cupboards were in place. It seemed to Thea that there was a good deal of work still to be done.
She went round to the front, where she’d left the door ajar, and embarked on a quick exploration of the ground floor. The house was sparsely furnished, with no carpets 18in the hallway or dining room and no pictures on the walls. Her footsteps echoed along the hallway. When she opened doors, there were smells of fresh plaster, new wood, and the sharp tang of some kind of adhesive, but the main rooms did not appear to have been structurally altered. The work was all concentrated on the kitchen and what appeared to be a brand-new downstairs lavatory.
She felt much more alone than on previous house-sits. The absence of the dog went a long way to explaining this, but the ravaged condition of the house added to it. It lacked the essentials for comfortable existence – nowhere to sit with your feet up, reading a book. There was a table in the dining room, pushed against the wall, where she could put her laptop. There were two upholstered chairs in the living room, and a small television, but again, they were awkwardly positioned, as if placed there reluctantly for Thea’s use, without any thought. Everything felt temporary and indecisive. The owner of the house had lived there for only a few weeks, she remembered, having bought the house not very long ago. Presumably she had spent those weeks planning the renovations, and scattering furniture more or less at random. The fitted carpet in the main living room was clearly old and unloved. One corner had been pulled up and left loose.
A brief tour of the upper floor revealed a functioning bathroom, which she knew was also due for modernisation, a back bedroom that had been reserved for her, two further empty rooms and a locked door that had to be Tabitha’s private domain. Thea’s room contained a single bed, chest of drawers 19and chair. A narrow flight of stairs led up to an attic.
It was all perfectly bearable, she assured herself. On Monday morning, builders would arrive, and Thea would have all the company she could handle. There was a list of jobs to be done by the end of the week, and if everything went to plan, she would then be free to leave. There should be secure doors by that time, as well as new flooring in the hall and a set of modern appliances in the kitchen and bathroom. With a healthy dash of efficiency and forward planning, it had to be achievable.
She went back to the wreckage of the rear wall, to examine it from the inside. It would be quite easy for an intruder to get into the kitchen if he or she realised what was going on. The biggest risk, Thea supposed, was from unauthorised squatters – but the days had long gone when they could make free with an empty house, the law impotent to eject them. She had raised the question with Gladwin, who could speak for the owner of the house on every topic, apparently. ‘I’m pretty brave,’ Thea said, ‘but even I might feel a bit nervous about sleeping in a house with no back door. And Drew’s really agitated about it.’
‘Don’t worry – we thought of that. The builders have made a temporary thing between the kitchen and the rest of the house. You’ll see. It’s almost medieval in design.’ Now Thea had a look, and found two stout brackets fixed to the door frame halfway up, and a plank to slot into them. It was ugly and clunky, but it worked.
The conversation with Gladwin had taken place the week before, over a quick drink in the Broad Campden 20pub. Thea had been full of questions, characteristically. ‘I’m not really worried,’ she said, once answers had been comprehensively supplied. ‘The crime rate around here is pretty minimal, after all.’
‘Give or take the occasional murder,’ Gladwin smiled. ‘But I wouldn’t have suggested the house-sit if I thought you were in any danger. Mind you, there’s been a spate of pop-up brothels.’
Thea had assumed this was a joke, until the police detective enlightened her.
‘No, they’re perfectly real,’ Gladwin insisted. ‘Mostly people from the Far East, with girls who thought they were coming to respectable lives and jobs. Trafficking, in a word. They move into an empty house, set up shop for a while, and then melt away if somebody starts to show any concern. My friend Tabitha would not like that at all.’
‘No,’ said Thea faintly. ‘I don’t suppose they tidy up after themselves.’
‘Right.’
Thea had acquired a minimum of background information about Tabitha Ibbotson. In her sixties, and already earning decent money as a professional pianist, she had been left a considerable sum by her mother, two or three years earlier. The mother, it seemed, had inherited it in turn from a husband, who had been big in lawnmowers. Months before dying, he had sold the enterprise for three million pounds, and then left it equally to his son and second wife. Even after inheritance tax, they were both very much the richer. ‘He was a nice old 21chap,’ said Gladwin. ‘I knew him before I knew Tabitha and her mum, actually. He used to play bridge with my neighbour, and I sometimes made up a four with them.’
‘You play bridge? You never said.’ The game had been a factor in a recent investigation, which had drawn Thea in to an uncomfortable extent.
‘Well, I’ve lapsed lately. I don’t think I was ever very good at it, but it was a refreshing change when I was a stressed-out Tyneside rookie.’
Tabitha Ibbotson, stepdaughter to the lawnmower man, found herself in possession of almost all her mother’s inheritance, because the old lady died barely six months after her husband. Before long, much of the money had been spent on this house, and Tabitha was expecting to part with another fifty thousand on the renovations. ‘At least,’ said Gladwin.
There were five bedrooms, counting the one in the attic, a large bathroom, a lovely dining room and living room, both with decorated ceilings, and a garden approaching half an acre in size. Built of the usual mellow Cotswold stone, it was old and solid and beautiful. ‘It’d make a perfect brothel,’ Thea thought to herself with a smile.
Chapter Two
Managing without a car was a new experience, and Thea began to worry about it halfway through her first day. Bibury, which boasted a big hotel, several very famous old buildings, a river and a trout farm, was three miles away. The round trip would be quite a long way on foot. She also realised that she had hardly taken a walk without her dog in the past seven years. There would be something very weird about doing so now.
In the other direction from Bibury were the three Ampneys, which she was eager to explore. Ampney Crucis, Ampney St Peter and Ampney St Mary formed a cluster around their three venerable churches and would occupy a whole day quite easily. But there was also Quenington, about five miles distant, which she would have liked to visit. ‘I should have brought a bike,’ she muttered, annoyed that this had never occurred to her or Drew. While it would have been scary to set out on an open road on two wheels for the first time in over thirty years, she could in theory do it, if it was true that 23you never forgot how to balance and pedal at the same time. Perhaps she could borrow one from somewhere, she thought vaguely. As for shopping, she supposed she might have to accept Stephanie’s suggestion and do it online. The prospect chafed her, as did most activities connected to her phone. Often the ghost of Carl, her first husband, was conjured when modern technology raised its annoying head. Since his death, the world had thrown itself wholesale into all the delights that a hand-held gadget could provide, and Thea regularly acknowledged how much he would have deplored it. Drew was hardly more enthusiastic, and between them they waged a low-level little war against the whole intrusive business. They tried never to send each other texts, much to Stephanie’s bewilderment. They were scarcely more willing to communicate by actual telephone. ‘Will you want me to call you every day?’ she asked him before leaving for Barnsley.
‘Perhaps you should,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure everybody’s still alive.’
They’d both looked at the dog, knowing that her survival was, if not the most important, the most likely to be jeopardised. ‘Okay, then,’ Thea agreed.
She found the Barnsley kitchen to be completely unusable, since its electric supply had been cut off. Instead there was a microwave and electric kettle in the big dining room, on the oak table sitting at one side of the room. Plates, mugs, cutlery and a plastic washing-up bowl were also provided, along with a sheet of paper with the advice on it to ‘get water for washing up from 24the downstairs loo in the jug that’s in there. Food can be kept in the cool box in the hall. Sorry it’s all so uncivilised. You can always eat at The Pub. It’s open every day.’ It was signed by Gladwin, but must have been dictated by Tabitha Ibbotson. Thea had already ascertained that the pub was officially entitled The Village Pub, and was uncomfortably expensive. It would make a substantial hole in the hundred pounds a day that she was being paid, if she ate there each day.
She continued to explore, finding that there was at least Wi-Fi provision, rather to her surprise. The password was taped to the router box in a small back room evidently destined to be an office, and her laptop placidly connected to the great wide world without demur. The presence of a small amount of furniture indicated that Tabitha had taken up residence here herself, to some extent, before being forced to go abroad for her job. ‘Which is what, exactly?’ Thea had asked Gladwin.
‘She’s a professional pianist – surely I told you that?’
‘You did not. Not a word. Will there be a piano at the house, then?’
‘Bound to be – but you probably shouldn’t touch it.’
And there was. In the main living room at the front of the house, with its tall mullioned windows and decorated marble fireplace, there was a grand piano. It was shiny and black and important-looking. What a peculiar way to live, Thea mused – always needing something like this close at hand, and what a business it must surely be to transport it from one place to another.25
Tabitha Ibbotson’s lifestyle was becoming increasingly hard to grasp, as the exploration went on. Did she have some other home in Britain somewhere? A flat in London or a modest townhouse in Bristol or Manchester? After all, Gladwin had implied that she had been more than averagely well off even before her inheritance. Had she sold up and adopted the barely habitable Barnsley house as her sole base? How much did a professional pianist earn? Was she part of an orchestra or a solo performer? None of these questions had seemed remotely urgent until now, compared to the task of keeping Drew happy and reconciling herself to the separation from her dog.
It was midday and she was hungry. The cool box held milk, bread and some sliced ham, so she made coffee and a somewhat dry sandwich. By the evening, she would be ready for a much more substantial meal – provided presumably by the packets and tins she’d stacked on the floor. ‘Think of it as a camping trip,’ she muttered to herself. Beans on toast, cuppa soup, fruit cake, more ham. ‘Oops – no toaster,’ she realised. And no butter or any kind of spread. It was all much more irritating than she had anticipated, with the result that she decided there and then to go and eat at the Village Pub, regardless of the expense. At least it might be a way of meeting some local people. Which was another reason for resisting the idea of ordering a boxful of provisions from a Cirencester supermarket and waiting for a man in a van to bring it to her. She liked strolling around well-stocked aisles, seizing impulsively at random packs of exotic foods she would 26never have thought of while sitting at her laptop. And it would be good to find herself surrounded by people for a little while – if she could find a way to get there.
But before eating anything, she should go outside into the warm August sunshine and get her bearings. The house was at the northern end of the village, close to a junction with a small lane that ran westwards, and shortly before the road veered sharply to the east. Barnsley was on a kink in the Roman road known as Akeman Street (which was a lot more kinky than most Roman roads), presumably created in response to some long-forgotten exigencies arising from village life. A scrutiny of the map showed the little lane linked to another that ran in a nearly straight line from the A417 to the A429, with some zigzagging at its northern end. There was no shortage of minor roads in all directions, and without the dog to worry about, she could amble contentedly up and down them, even stopping to try her hand at a sketch or two if she felt so inclined.
So she set out to walk the bounds of the village, in a square route that added up to barely a mile in total. She went southwards, passing the usual handsome houses, the church and a particularly attractive village hall set back from the road. There were no other people travelling on foot, no dogs and no residents enjoying the sunshine in their front gardens. A small group could be glimpsed outside the church, and a pair of cyclists sailed past, smiling at her as they did so. Gosh, she thought, friendly cyclists. There’s a surprise. On a recent trip to 27the outskirts of Bristol by car, she had three times been treated to rude hand gestures from cyclists.
Turning off the main street, she quickly found herself in a leafy country lane, bordering fields. There were no long views, and only a single farmhouse was visible. Two cars passed her before she turned again, into the lane that led back to the house. The whole walk took barely half an hour, and had taught her very little about the nature of the place. She was back again in the house on the corner – which she realised had no visible name. This omission was concerning – how did the postman find it? And all those delivery vans filling the minor roads across the land, reliant on satnavs and clearly displayed house names: where did they leave their parcels? Gladwin had mentioned that it was known locally simply as the Corner House.
The quiet of the place bordered on desolation, and Thea experienced a flash of panic at the prospect of several more days like this. At least there would be builders to talk to, she reminded herself. By the end of the week, she would probably be craving some peace and solitude after their depredations. Would they have Radio One blaring, shout to each other through the house and demand regular mugs of tea? ‘Having the builders in’ was not something she had ever really experienced. Her Witney house had been in good order, with no need for alterations, and the one Drew had been left in Broad Campden was equally satisfactory as it was. Any decorating was done by themselves, and the occasional minor job needing a professional could be accomplished in a day.28
Meanwhile there was still half of Saturday and all of Sunday to get through. Thank goodness Tabitha’s living room did at least provide the television and dusty-looking DVD player. That was a major brownie point for Tabitha, given that most people ‘streamed’ their films nowadays, if their broadband was equal to it. But Thea, always a technophobe, had no idea how such a process was to be implemented.
The sudden absence of people (and dog) was uncomfortably difficult to adjust to. Although Broad Campden was no more vibrant or populous than Barnsley appeared to be, she did at least have Drew and one or two neighbours to chat to while the children were at school. And she had the use of the family car more or less any time she wanted.
All she could think of now was to explore the top floor of the house, and then sit out in the garden with a book and some tea. And a slice of cake. But none of that held much appeal. Make something happen, a voice insisted at the back of her head. She could send emails, make phone calls, even invite somebody to come and join her. She could stand in the little village street and try to thumb a lift to Cirencester from a passing stranger. She could hang around the church and accost people who turned up for a look at it.
She did at least carry her bag of clothes up to the bedroom she was to use, and then went further up to look at the attic. Thea liked attics for their potential to expose secrets. There had been one in Cold Aston, especially, which had been quite a revelation, and another in Chedworth. 29This one, she now discovered, was surprisingly clean, had a good-quality rug laid over most of the floor, and was entirely devoid of furniture. It had a dormer window overlooking the back garden and beyond. ‘No secrets, then,’ she murmured to herself. Except for its strangely pristine condition, perhaps. The whole inspection lasted barely two minutes, before she went down the little staircase again and out into the furthest end of the garden, beyond the piles of building materials.
She stood as far back as she could, inspecting the old house. It had obviously been added to at various periods, so there was no attempt at symmetry from this angle. The frontage had been left unchanged, while the back had been thoroughly interfered with, leading to an impression of two quite different buildings, depending on where you stood. A whole extra section had been attached to the back wall, fitting cleverly to the existing roof and rising above most of it to accommodate the attic space. It had a fairy-tale quality that Thea was only just starting to appreciate. She guessed the oldest part had to be eighteenth century at least, witness to the ancient droving road, and all the waxing and waning of fortunes that Barnsley had experienced.
And through it all, she could not ignore the little voice that kept asking, What are you doing? Why had she so violently and uncompromisingly escaped from her family, despite their obvious need of her? It had been Gladwin’s idea, and coming with such an endorsement, it had been irresistible. Thea had missed the novelty and unpredictability of her house-sitting years. She disliked 30routine and familiarity and tedious domestic chores. She had complained to the detective about it and hinted that she might be available for more official police work than the entirely unorthodox and disorganised help she currently gave them. ‘I could be some sort of consultant,’ she had suggested. ‘After all, I know my way around the Cotswolds better than most, by now.’ She had looked after houses in a dozen different villages, unearthing old secrets and making intelligent connections that had very often assisted police enquiries into violent crimes. Gladwin had ducked the question and come up with her own temporary solution to Thea’s lack of purposeful activity. ‘After all, they’re not your children,’ she had said, which had felt to Thea rather a dangerous remark. By marrying Drew, they had in effect become her children, surely? She loved them and was grateful to them for the easy way they had accepted her as a replacement mother. But there was something inescapably relentless about their very existence. She had raised her own daughter without really thinking about it. Carl had done a good share of the cooking, for a start – which Drew seldom did. Somehow, even ten years ago, life had felt simpler than it did now. Or perhaps it was merely that Thea felt under much greater scrutiny in her current role. Married to a well-known alternative undertaker, as well as being almost notorious in her own right, she could never shake free of the sense of being watched. Perhaps it was this that Gladwin – who was at heart such a very good friend − had noticed, and tried to help her to evade. And having successfully accomplished the evasion, she owed it to all concerned to make the most of it.31
It was still only mid afternoon. Perhaps, she decided, she should go out again and take a different direction, getting as full a picture of the village as she could. She might even make a start on working out how all the footpaths connected, preparatory to devising a route to Bibury that did not require a risky march along a road that made no provision for pedestrians. According to the map, a path ran northwards for a short distance, then veered to the east and eventually connected to a small track that emerged shortly before Bibury itself. It looked an easy walk, provided the signs were adequate. A patch of green along the way was labelled ‘Barnsley Park’ − not to be confused with Barnsley House. ‘Not very original in their naming,’ Thea muttered, before setting out to have a look.
It was frustratingly difficult to locate the path and took some time. Finally discovering that it began at a point behind the church, she was immediately confronted by a kind of stile she had seldom seen before. It was a solid slab of stone set into the wall, with chunky steps up to it on both sides. A dog would have to be lifted over unless it was extremely agile. She climbed over and found herself in a field liberally covered with cow pats, but no sign of any cows. The path was a thin thread of slightly browner ground, passing a tantalisingly secluded little cottage with roses growing up its back wall. A large tree turned out to be a walnut on closer inspection.
By the time she’d crossed the field, she had almost forgotten her purpose. There was more than enough to look at and enjoy for its own sake. Another two stiles 32took her over the road and into a long straight track that bore all the signs of having once been a handsome avenue approaching a substantial property. When she finally noticed the property itself, it was with a small shock. On her right, behind a wrought-iron gate, stood a lovely Georgian mansion, which appeared to be the main component of the tucked-away Barnsley Business Park. A sign on the gate said, ‘Proceed By Invitation Only’, which she thought must be the politest way of saying ‘No Entry’ she’d ever seen.
Still wondering about the business park, she pursued the path, and found herself in a time warp. To the left was a large Elizabethan-style garden, full of roses, herbs, privet hedging in geometric patterns and generally exuberant vegetation. To the right was a huddle of old stone buildings that must comprise the workshops and commercial units she had read about on the computer. There were also small houses, and parking areas. Between Thea and the big house was an overgrown ha-ha to catch unwary intruders. There was no sign of movement. No voices or engines or barking dogs. In that respect it was familiar Cotswold territory, but here the silence seemed deeper and less easy to explain.
Creeping closer, she could just see several cars neatly parked around a central yard. The whole enclave seemed secretive and unwelcoming. She had not yet located the road by which vehicles could access it. There was something deeply ambivalent about the notion of business people pursuing their twenty-first-century careers in this particular spot. They could be doing absolutely 33anything, tucked away from the public gaze, no doubt minding their own business where their neighbours were concerned. Asking no questions, turning blind eyes. Thea’s mind began to toy with a range of hypothetical activities going on within those solid stone walls.
There were undoubtedly other similar enterprises across the region, out of sight up small lanes. It was as if the old stone houses in the villages, with their handsome churches and upmarket pubs, were the false facade on something much more contemporary and businesslike. Had it taken her all these years to finally recognise this reality? Had she failed to notice that there was actually a great deal more going on than first appeared? Even living in the Cotswolds, she had been slow to appreciate the fact that not everybody commuted to Oxford or Stratford for their work. She regularly passed a small industrial complex right outside her own home village of Broad Campden, after all. But it was still startling to find here, in little Barnsley, that there was a fully-fledged business park, where people were not only employed, but obviously lived as well.
She consulted her map and tentatively followed a small path beside a wall that seemed to be going in the right direction. A man was coming towards her with a brown dog on a lead. Neither looked particularly friendly, and as they drew level, the man gave Thea a hard stare that made her flinch. She wanted to protest that she was on a public footpath, minding her own business, and he had no right to behave in such a hostile fashion. But she simply returned his stare with defiance 34and walked on. The dog had kept its head down, but there had been a slow tail-wag that suggested an inclination to make friends.
Ahead of her was another field containing sheep and several large trees, which she found to be mature beeches. The path was yet again ill-defined, and without the map she would have quickly become lost. Just one more stile, she decided, and then she would either turn back, or construct a circular path that led back to the house. There was something slightly bleak about walking in the countryside without a dog. Hepzie would have tried to befriend the one with the man she’d met and forced some sort of exchange with the hostile person. All sorts of things might have gone differently, in fact.
The final stile turned out to be the high point of the walk so far, in more senses than one. It loomed above her, at least seven feet in height, providing the only way over the equally high wall bordering the field. Thea’s feeling for history left her in no doubt that here were the remnants of a large and important estate, its boundaries constructed with great emphasis three or four hundred years ago. The wall was in good condition, unambiguously designed to repel invaders. The ‘stile’ was plainly a reluctant concession to the occasional need to get over the wall. There was no way of seeing over it, the estate concealed from view, at least from this direction.
She climbed the stone steps, each one at least eighteen inches high. No dog could have managed it, and many children would be confounded. Anyone with stiff hips or a delicate back would have to turn away and retrace 35their steps. But Thea scrambled up without any real difficulty, and was immediately dumbstruck by what lay on the other side.
The map showed a track, named Cadmoor Lane, which had led her to expect an easy path, possibly even navigable by cars – or at the least, horses and bikes. Instead there was a virtually impenetrable mass of vegetation. She could just discern an official way-marker pointing northwards, but more clearly visible was a printed laminated sign saying footpath, indicating that walkers should turn either right or left, heading west or east. Either would involve pushing through long grass, wild flowers, brambles and bracken. She decided at that point that she had definitely gone far enough. But then she saw something that made her pause and think again.
Chapter Three
Emerging from the dense undergrowth only ten or fifteen feet away, crouching like a wild animal and almost as wary, came a person. A female in some sort of difficulty, evidently. One shoulder looked lopsided, and the black hair was in disarray.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Thea, as she jumped down to ground level.
‘Hmm, umm, ohh,’ came the inarticulate reply.
‘You’ve hurt your shoulder, have you?’ Now fully face-to-face, Thea found herself looking at a woman of roughly her own age, with features that seemed Chinese or possibly Japanese. There were signs of suffering on her face. The body language heightened this impression. One hand was clutched to the opposite shoulder and the whole stance was bowed in pain.
‘I think it might be dislocated,’ came the reply. ‘I fell off that … thing.’ She pointed at the monumental stile. The accent was slight, the English perfect, rather to Thea’s relief. ‘But I was already hurt, before that,’ the woman added, as an afterthought.37
‘Gosh – you poor thing! That must be horribly painful. Can I get you to a doctor or something? Have you got a car anywhere near?’
‘No. No.’ The woman was breathless, but was clearly making an effort to seem less damaged. ‘I’ll be all right. I can walk.’ She kept glancing from side to side, as if expecting to be jumped on by something large and dangerous.
‘Well, I can’t just leave you here, can I? The trouble is, I’ve got no transport, either, so I’m not sure how useful I can be. We could go back to the business park and ask for help. Have you got a phone on you?’
The woman began to shake her head, before realising that this was likely to exacerbate the pain. Again she said, ‘No,’ and then added, ‘Sorry.’
Fighting against a growing sense of helplessness, Thea tried to assess the options. She looked more closely at the injury. ‘You know – I’m not sure it is dislocated,’ she said. ‘Your arm’s still at a fairly normal angle. From what I’ve heard, it would be dangling horribly if it was out of its socket. What exactly happened to it? I mean – did you land right on it? Did you fall from the top?’
‘I wrenched it. I tried to save myself from falling and it got twisted.’ There was a clear avoidance of Thea’s eye at these words, oddly suggesting the presence of an untruth. ‘That thing is an outrage.’ She glared at the stile.
‘Did you hear any popping sound? Have you put it out of joint before?’ Thea was frantically dredging up everything she had ever known about dislocations. Her father had had a brother who did it, making a famous 38family story that had been told fifty times. ‘There’s dreadful pain, for a start,’ she went on. ‘I can see yours hurts, but you’re not exactly rolling on the ground in agony, are you?’
This brisk attitude had an obviously bracing effect. ‘But it really hurts. It’s burning right down to my elbow.’ An undertone of indignation roused Thea’s innate curiosity. Who was this woman? Surely she had a whole lot of explaining to do?
‘Where do you live? Where were you going? I assume you must be local, if you’re out without a car.’
Again the aborted head-shake, but no eye contact. ‘No. Not local at all. I was brought here.’ An expression more of emotional than physical pain crossed her face. ‘I ran away.’
A host of thoughts filled Thea’s head. People trafficking. An irate husband. An effort to evade detection after committing a crime. Immigration difficulties. One by one, she dismissed them as unlikely. The woman was surely too old to be a reluctant prostitute, and too assertive to be afraid of a husband. This was no retiring violet; despite her suffering she had an air of competence. An aura of assurance and automatic assumption of equality emanated from her. ‘Well, we’ll sort it out somehow. My name’s Thea Slocombe. What’s yours?’ asked Thea.
‘Grace. I’m Grace.’
‘And where are you from?’
The woman briefly closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Thea groaned inwardly, hearing herself ask that age-old unthinking, viscerally prejudiced question. Was it only 39the Brits who challenged anyone of alien appearance as to their right to be on their precious island? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘That sounds rude. I don’t mean what country. Just whereabouts in Britain?’
She was making it worse, probably. But then Grace answered with no sign of having taken offence. ‘My father was British and my mother’s Chinese. I lived there for much of my early life, but since then I have been here. The past twenty years, anyway.’
It was a carefully delivered summary, revealing nothing that Thea regarded as relevant. Neither did it answer the question she had actually wanted to ask.
‘But where do you live? Have you got family here?’
‘No, not really.’ The words emerged as a whisper, vaguely regretful. ‘My father died.’
Thea did not waste breath on empty platitudes about loss. Instead she stuck to the same line of questioning, intent on getting hold of something relevant. ‘You say you ran away? Who from? What’s going on?’
Grace swallowed, and adopted a different tone. If anything, she became even more assertive. ‘You don’t need to know the details,’ she said with finality. ‘Are you local?’
Thea shook her head, aware of her supple neck and wholesale good health. ‘I’m looking after a house in the village. I could take you there, if you like. We should call the police, if you’ve been attacked in some way. Held against your will. Whatever it is that happened to you.’
Grace looked up with a complicated expression that seemed to involve making a decision to trust her rescuer. ‘I would be grateful for somewhere to sit down,’ she smiled. 40‘But there’s no sense in involving the police. There’s nothing they can do.’ The smile was fleeting, replaced by a much harder look. ‘I’m sure they must have better things to do,’ she added. ‘Which way is your house?’
Already Thea knew she ought to be regretting the offer of hospitality. There was something profoundly unsettling about this person. The scrappy story in itself would be a worry, but the demeanour of the woman added to the sense of venturing into something unsavoury. But Thea Slocombe, formerly Osborne, was no shrinking violet either. She was almost eager for something challenging; it could be as dodgy as it liked, if only it gave her something to focus on – it was the answer to a prayer. Drew would groan and her daughter Jessica would be horrified. Gladwin would sigh and roll her eyes – but with an understanding smile. This Grace was deeply intriguing. Small like Thea herself, and full of energy. Complicated, too. ‘You’ll have to tell me more about what’s going on,’ she stipulated. ‘I promise not to judge you,’ she added rashly.
‘Judge me? Why would you say that? Do I look like a criminal to you?’
They were still standing on the tiny pathway leading through the overgrown semi-jungle, while shadows lengthened. It had to be after five, Thea realised, feeling hungry. She was not inclined to answer the irritable question thrown at her. No human beings were anywhere in sight. ‘Do you know anyone at that business park?’ she asked, following one of many possible threads.
‘Will we have to go past it to get to your house?’ This 41was another oblique answer, but Thea assumed it meant, Yes and I don’t want to meet them.
‘Let me have a look.’ She unfolded the unwieldy map, and found an alternative route. ‘It’s a bit further,’ she warned. ‘And it involves walking through all this overgrown prickly stuff and then along a road. It’s very quiet, though. Is somebody looking for you?’
‘Possibly. I was hiding here all afternoon. They might have given up by now.’
‘Who are “they”?’
