“People like who?”
“Unconventional people, travellers.” She paused and added mockingly: “Hippies.”
“But you haven’t done much travelling recently,” Ramsay said. “Have you? I understand that you’ve been living here since last summer.”
He couldn’t place her social background. Her voice was without accent, deep, rather throaty. An actress’ voice, he thought, then wondered if the huskiness was caused by cigarettes, not a desire for effect. Perhaps he was being unfair to her.
“You have been living here since last summer?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Nine bloody months.”
“Haven’t you been happy here?”
“Would you be?” she snapped back, then seemed to regret her rudeness. “Look,” she said, ‘we were glad to move in. It seemed perfect. Right out in the country. You know.”
“But not so much fun in the winter,” Ramsay said easily.
“Bloody freezing, she agreed. “But it wasn’t only that…” She paused.
“What is it then? The inconvenience?” Hunter spoke for the first time and she looked him up and down before answering, sarcastically:
“Yes, the inconvenience.”
Of course it was more than that, Ramsay thought. He waited, hoping she would explain why she really disliked the place so intensely.
“It isn’t that bad here,” Sean said awkwardly. “Not really. I’ve lived in worse places.”
“You’re just soft,” she said. “I think you’d be happy anywhere.”
“I would,” he said. “Anywhere living with you.” The words were so sentimental that Ramsay thought he was teasing, but he was quite serious. Lily seemed infuriated by the remark.
“Then you’re a bloody fool,” she said.
“You could have moved on,” Ramsay said. “Couldn’t you?” He directed the question at Lily, sensing that she was the one who took all the decisions.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose we could.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “Partly money,” she said. “I work in the health food shop in Mittingford. It only pays peanuts but it’s too much for Sean to be eligible for benefit. We’re stuck in the poverty trap. Isn’t that what they call it? That’s what it feels like. We’d need some money to move on, to buy a van or a truck and do it up.”
“But it isn’t just money,” Ramsay said.
“No,” she said, ‘it isn’t just that.” She leaned forward, stubbing out the cigarette on the lid of the tobacco tin. “We’ve made friends around here. There are people we’d miss. Wouldn’t we, Sean?”
“Yeah,” Sean said. “That’s right.” But Ramsay thought the only person he cared about was Lily.
“Was Ernie Bowles one of those people?” Hunter asked abruptly.
“What?” She was startled, uncomprehending.
“Was Mr. Bowles one of the people you’d miss?”
“Good God, no,” she said. “He was why we wanted to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because he was hassle,” she said. “We should have realized. I don’t know how we didn’t see it when we first looked round.”
“In what way was he hassle?”
She turned to Sean. “You explain.”
“He was sort of strange,” Sean said. “Weird. You know.”
“How did that affect you?”
“When we moved in he was really helpful. Nothing was too much trouble. You know. He said he liked having us here, he wanted to meet our friends. That sort of thing. He used to drop in some evenings. We didn’t know what he wanted. I suppose we thought he was lonely. Then he seemed kind of disappointed and everything went sour. If we were a day late with the rent he was up here causing a scene. He even tried to start charging for bringing the Calor cylinders back from Mittingford.”
“What do you mean,” Ramsay said, ‘disappointed?”
This time Lily answered.
“He was a smutty old man,” she said. “He’d imagined all sorts going on here…”
“What sort of things?”
“He’d read the tabloid press,” she said impatiently. “He’d been young in the sixties, hadn’t he? Well, youngish. But his mother had kept him on a tight rein. He thought we’d be like a sixties commune: free love, orgies, you know.”
“Ah.” Ramsay too had been young in the sixties. He too had felt that he’d missed out. “I see.”
“We’re not like that,” Lily said. “Even when we were on the road we kept ourselves to ourselves.” Then in a brave attempt at a joke: “Besides, there’s not a whole heap of room in here for all-night parties.”
“Did he bother you?” Hunter asked sharply. “Personally?”
There was a pause and then she shook her head. “No,” she replied at last. “He wouldn’t have had the guts. Like Sean said, he was just weird.” She stared out of the window.
“So how did you come to live here?” Ramsay asked.
“We were desperate,” she said. “We must have been.”
“Did Mr. Bowles advertise the caravan for let?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. We heard about it through a friend. We were still dos sing in Sean’s van then but we kept getting moved on. And it was clapped out anyway. I’d been offered a job in the health food shop. We both like Northumberland. The caravan seemed like the answer to our dreams. Didn’t it, Sean?”
Sean looked up at her. He had very fine eyelashes, barely visible, which gave his eyes a staring quality.
“That’s right,” he said. “We were looking for a chance to settle down. Be a proper family. I even thought we might have a kid one day…”
“Dream on!” Lily spat at him, under her breath.
He turned away from her as if he’d been hit.
There was a silence. Ramsay looked at Hunter, thinking he might want to take over the questioning but he shook his head.
“When did you last see Mr. Bowles alive?” he asked, formally.
“Saturday evening after work.” she said. “He was ogling me through the kitchen window. Dirty bastard. He thought I didn’t know he was there but you could almost hear the heavy breathing across the farmyard.” She caught her breath. “I’m sorry. I’d almost forgotten he was dead. I don’t suppose he was so bad really. Just screwed up.”
“I saw him later than that,” Sean said.
“Did you?” She was still resentful.
“Yeah, don’t you remember? I was sitting outside and I called you to come and look. He was all dressed up and he drove off in the Land-Rover. We laughed. You said he must have found a woman at last.”
“Yes,” she said sombrely. “I do remember.”
“Did you hear the Land-Rover come back?”
“I didn’t,” Sean said. “I was out all evening.”
“Where did you go?”
“I went for a walk. I do a lot of walking. And thinking.”
“Communing with nature?” Hunter said unpleasantly.
“Yes actually,” Sean said. “Something like that.”
“What time did you get back?” Hunter asked.
There was a pause. Sean looked helplessly at Lily. “Seven-thirty on Sunday morning.”
“By man, that was a long walk,” Hunter said, scenting blood. It would all be over by the end of the day.
“I met some friends.”
“Just bumped into them, did you, out on the lanes?”
“It was a bit like that,” Sean said. “They were parked in the gypsy transit site.”
“And what were they called, these friends of yours? Just in case we want to check your story.”
“Wes and Lorna,” Sean said. “They’ve got a little girl called Briony.”
“Surnames?” asked Hunter.
“I’m not sure,” Sean said. “I don’t think I ever knew.” He looked at Lily again.
“Don’t ask me,” she said, “I never met them.”
“Will they still be at the transit site?” Ramsay asked quietly.
Sean shook his head sadly. “They were moving on yesterday. They dropped me off on the way.”