TWENTY
‘When they left Torcross their means of transport to Chivelstone was a meat lorry… After the household effects were loaded, the chicken sheds came next and lastly, bags of coke on the tailboard with Reg sitting on top. Reg’s father had to leave the family car, a Rover, behind, and when they returned to Torcross it was discovered in the Ley.’Robin Rose-Price and Jean Parnell, The Land We Left Behind, Orchard Publications, 2005, p.78
Early the next morning, in spite of enjoying a full English breakfast at the B &B, I walked up the hill to Alison Hamilton’s with the taste of lamb rogan josh making an occasional, but not unwelcome appearance – a hint of ginger, a tinge of red curry – at the base of my tongue.
While Paul and Jon were attending a seminar at BRNC, Alison and I planned a second trip from Three Trees Farm to Coombe Hill carrying a small load of household goods that her father had packed up with the assistance of his right-hand man, Tom Boyd.
A few minutes before ten, I was dropping a detergent tab in the dishwasher, while Alison was scurrying around her kitchen, turning over newspapers, napkins and the previous day’s mail searching for her car keys, when the telephone rang. She snagged the receiver with one hand, and said ‘hello’ while moving cereal boxes around on the sideboard.
‘Oh, hi, Tom. We’re running a little late, but we should be there to pick up the boxes shortly.’ Alison paused, and I watched her expression change from mild annoyance to shock. ‘Stolen? You have got to be pulling my leg! Dad’s car is a wreck!’
I closed the dishwasher door, set the dial to normal wash, and focused my full attention on Alison’s end of the conversation.
‘Who would want it, Tom? Who? It looks like the last vehicle standing after a banger race.’ She leaned against the countertop, nodding. ‘Yes, yes, I understand, but are you sure he didn’t just drive it to town and forget where he parked it?’
Alison pantomimed an exaggerated eye-roll. ‘He could have walked home, couldn’t he, or someone could have given him a ride? Everyone knows my father… What? Of course you should, right away. And Tom? This time, we’re really going to take away his car keys. Right?’
Alison dropped the phone into its cradle, closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Tom had to ask me whether to call the police. My God.’ She took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. ‘Now, where the hell are my car keys?’
As my friend continued to rant, I spotted what looked like a Lucite sunflower peeking out from behind the electric kettle. ‘Fob shaped like a sunflower?’
Alison nodded.
I pointed.
Alison scooped up the keys, tugged on the hem of her T-shirt in a let’s-get-down-to-business way. ‘I swear, Hannah, the sooner I get that impossible old man into Coombe Hill, the better. When Tom showed up for work this morning,’ she elaborated, ‘Dad reported that he’d left the car where he usually does, in the courtyard, but when he came out this morning, the car was gone.’
‘Priuses are popular right now, hard to get.’ I’d read something of the sort recently in The Times. ‘Maybe they weren’t interested in the body, just the parts?’
Alison spread her arms wide. ‘That’s me! Body a wreck, but, oooh the parts!’
‘Nut!’ A tiny fact stored somewhere in my brain surfaced and began to wave hello. ‘Alison, didn’t you tell me that Tom worked part-time in a body shop in Plymouth?’
‘I know where you’re going, Hannah, but Tom’s worked for my father for more than ten years. There’s no way he could have been involved in something like that.’
‘How about Tom’s mates?’
‘Possible, I suppose, but not likely.’ Alison paced from the Aga to the pantry to the sink and back again, nervously tidying counters that looked perfectly tidy to me. ‘I told Tom to go ahead and report it to the police. Now, where did I put my handbag? Other than informing the insurance company, I don’t suppose there’s much more we can do.’
That tiny thought was now waving and shouting, you-hoo!
Was Alison’s father trying to scam his insurance company? He had been reluctant to file a claim for the damage from the accident, but if the car were reported stolen instead, who would be the wiser?
None of my business, of course.
I returned to an earlier, slightly less thorny topic. ‘Do you have to wait until the completion date to move your dad off the farm?’
‘No, thank goodness. We’ve had the flat from August first, so as far as I’m concerned, Cathy Yates can move into Three Trees Farm at any time, fancy New York interior designer and all.’ She winked. ‘Although that would be illegal, of course.’
By then she had collected her keys, her handbag, and a lightweight jacket, and we were headed for the front door. ‘What’s kept him on the farm until now was the cows. How he loves those cows.’ She grinned. ‘Feckless is Daddy’s little girl, I’m afraid. Did I tell you they were sold to another farmer?’ When I nodded, she continued, ‘Well, the transport lorry’s coming for them later this morning, so my father’s in mourning, everything but the black armband.’
Olivia Sandman, on the other hand, was far from mourning, if I interpreted the punctuation on her text message correctly:
Unc Alf confessed!!!! 8-O
‘Well, that’s that,’ I commented to Alison after sharing the news. I switched off my iPhone and dropped it back into my bag. ‘I suppose it will be all over the news tonight.’
Alison apparently feels compelled to look at you while talking, which is not particularly compatible with conversation while driving. I lived to see another day, because she pulled into a lay-by on the outskirts of Dittisham before facing me to say, ‘I’m glad they caught the fellow, of course, but there must be more to it than a simple exchange of words on a London street.’
‘Back where I come from, Alison, people kill people simply because they won’t hand over the North Face jacket they’re wearing, or give up a pair of one-hundred-eighty-five dollar athletic shoes, so anything’s possible. But, I agree, it’s puzzling.’
‘Maybe Susan did to Alf what she did to you.’ Alison touched my hand where it rested on the console between us. ‘You know, an off-the-cuff reading that hit close to home.’
‘A dark secret from his past, you mean? Something incompatible with his holier-than-thou persona?’
‘Exactly. Or maybe he was all fired up with religious indignation, saw her walking on the Embankment as he drove by and something snapped.’ She brought her hands together with a crack. ‘Stranger things have happened, Hannah.’
‘I’m sure. Remember the Crusades.’
Alison checked the wing mirror, then eased the car back on to the road. ‘Don’t have to think back that many centuries. Osama bin Laden springs immediately to mind.’
‘I’d rather not think about that madman, Alison.’ Two young naval officers, Paul’s former students, had been killed when terrorists flew an airplane into the Pentagon. It was a difficult subject.
Alison took her eyes off the road for a moment. ‘But that’s exactly my point, Hannah. Madmen are not governed by logic!’ After looking both ways, she turned right from The Level on to Riverside Road. ‘So, trying to understand or explain them is futile.’
‘If so, a lot of psychiatrists would be out of work.’
‘Boo hoo,’ Alison said.
Ten minutes later at Coombe Hill, I found myself unpacking dishes in the kitchen, while Alison worked on installing a small flat-screen television in the adjacent lounge. It was to be a surprise for her father.