I remembered Damien’s comment about the ghost in the prison. John Ellis, the hangman who’d slit his own throat. Was Damien with him now? A shadow swinging on a creaking rope in the dark end of the night. Another lost soul.
‘Where are we going?’ Maddie piped up, stopping my stupid fancies. Blame it on lack of sleep.
‘For a walk in the country.’
‘Will we see lambs?’
‘I think it’s a bit late for lambs, they’re born in the spring. But there’s a children’s farm.’
‘What, with children in?!’ She was astounded and then saw the joke. We both laughed.
‘For children. We’ll walk a bit then go to the farm. It might be feeding time.’
In the bottom of the valley, where Damien got off the bus, the road ran parallel to the river. We drove past the service station on the left and the pub advertising home-cooked food. From there I could see beyond the turn off to the bus shelter on the opposite side of the road, where Damien had been chucked off. I turned right at that junction to take the hill up to the cottage. The hamlet was pretty – maybe two dozen properties in all, clinging to the valley sides. Half of them looked to have grown out of the land, built low to the ground, the stone dark and weathered with age, the windows tiny – no doubt to avoid the punitive window taxes at the time. Somewhere like this must have been a working village, digging clay or lead or quarrying. The newer houses were bigger in scale: the same limestone but raw, glowing pale grey. They boasted picture windows, veluxes on the roofs and off-road parking.
I stopped my car partway up the hill, behind a vehicle on the left before the bend where the road twisted to the right. This was where Damien had passed two stationary cars and cased them for valuables. A Mondeo and a Volvo. The car in front of me now was a Volvo. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. It could be the same one. I used my camcorder to capture a shot of it and took in the locale as well.
‘What are you filming?’ Maddie smelt a rat.
‘This and that. We’ll take some of you at the farm, too.’
Jamie was awake but content and kicked her legs in excitement as I fastened her seat into the buggy chassis. The previous day’s fog had lifted and we had mellow autumn sunshine. Out here there was much more birdsong, the twittering of wrens and tits and finches pierced by the raucous calls of rooks patrolling two sycamores at the end of one of the gardens.
Damien had tried the cars, looked to see if there was anything worth stealing, then crossed over. I retraced his steps. As he rounded the corner he met a man coming down the hill. Pushing the buggy up the gradient, I tried to imagine the lane at night. There were some street lights, so it wouldn’t have been in complete darkness. The man had been heading down the hill. Where to? The man had crossed the road after he passed Damien, which was the wrong direction for the pub and the service station. Was he heading for one of the houses on that side of the road, or one of the cars? Or the bus stop?
If he lived here, how come he hadn’t been identified by the police? All the houses would have been visited, people asked to help. Damien had heard a car start as he approached the cottage. He’d frozen, listening in case it came his way but it had gone off down the hill. Driven by that man? I should have asked him if both cars had still been there when he fled down the hill after finding Charlie’s body, or had either of them gone? Too late, now. I’d never know.
The road straightened out again and there was the driveway on the right, at an incline and at the top, the side door and window of the cottage. It had been sited so the front, the longer aspect looked out across the valley to the hills on the other side of the road. There was no car around, no sign of anyone about. The place did look lived in; there were some pots of cyclamens beside the door. A sign at the bottom of the drive read To Let and gave a local agency phone number.
I pulled the buggy halfway up the drive then put the brake on and told Maddie to wait there a moment.
‘Why?’
‘I just want a quick look up here. I’ll only be a minute.’
‘Why, though? ’Cos it’s for rent? Are we moving?’
How does she do that, I thought? Pick up on undercurrents, on anxieties of mine, hone in on them. ‘No, it’s just a work thing. Now wait there.’
I filmed the approach and walked up the short drive to where it levelled out some four yards from the building. That fit with Damien’s description of the car parked just by the door. He’d come outside, feeling sick and stopped by the car. He’d heard the ticking, felt the warmth of the bonnet. The only explanation for that was that the car had been used recently. So Charlie had not been here very long when his attacker struck.
The man Damien passed – Nick Dryden or whoever – was perhaps waiting for Charlie. Charlie gets back, opens the cottage, the man kills Charlie, walks down the hill to his own car and drives away, narrowly missing being interrupted or caught red-handed by Damien looking for easy pickings.
Around the front of the house was a patio and seating area by large centrally placed French doors. There might have been barn doors there once. Gauzy curtains obscured any glimpses of the interior. The view was lovely, immediately below the road dipped in and out of sight, as did the river, and beyond the hills climbed up to meet the sky. The hillsides were stitched with dry stone walls and farm buildings dotted here and there. I could hear sheep bleating from afar. It reminded me of Geoff Sinclair’s place.
‘Can I help you?’
I started, cold sweat prickling under my arms as a man appeared from the far end of the house. His face was wary, he was middle-aged, casually dressed and held a pair of hedging shears in one hand.
‘I wanted to have a look at the cottage,’ I fudged my answer.
He looked at my camcorder. ‘I see. You a reporter?’
‘Mummy?’ Maddie piped up, out of sight.
‘Wait there a minute.’
‘I am!’ She was getting fed up.
He looked confused. I moved towards the road, where I could see the children, inviting the man to follow. ‘I’m investigating the conviction of Damien Beswick.’ I waited for recognition. And got it: a small nod. ‘Are you local?’ I asked.
‘Just down the road,’ he gestured. ‘I keep an eye on the place. You’re not with the police?’
‘Private, working for the family.’ After a fashion. I passed him my card. ‘The Volvo – is that yours?’
‘Yes, why?’ He frowned.
‘You always park it there?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘It was there, the night of the incident?’ I chose the blander word.
‘I already told the police,’ he said.
‘Do you remember another car, parked next to yours? A Mondeo?’
‘No, people come and go. I can’t see the road from my study.’
‘Do any of your neighbours own a Mondeo?’
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘Can we go now?’ Maddie yelled.
‘Just coming.’ I thought about the man coming down the hill. ‘Do you get people hill-walking up here?’
‘It’s a popular spot,’ he acknowledged.
‘Are there footpaths up that way?’ I signalled up the hill.
‘No, that’s private land this side, no access. All the trails are across the other side of the valley.’ He jerked his head towards the view I’d admired.
So whoever Damien had passed had not been out fell-walking.
‘They thought it was the girlfriend,’ he said. ‘Maybe they were right all along.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I told him.
After all, she was the one who’d hired me in the first place.
When I studied the Land Ranger map I’d bought at the service station in the valley, I could see that there weren’t any properties higher up the hill than Charlie’s cottage: it was on the very edge of the hamlet. The residential area was very compact; perhaps there were by-laws to prevent development outside the village centre.