‘That it suited him just at the moment. He was between projects and he was enjoying exploring the country.’
‘Projects?’ Vera squinted at her. ‘What did he mean by that?’
‘I’m not sure. But that was what he said.’
‘Where did he come from?’ The questions were coming quickly now. Percy thought the fat woman would surely have an address, if she’d found his driver’s licence, so what could that be about?’
‘He didn’t say.’ Susan sounded disappointed. He saw that Vera Stanhope was providing her with attention, and she didn’t get much of that these days.
‘But you might be able to guess,’ Vera said. ‘From his voice, the way he spoke.’
Susan thought for a moment. ‘He had a voice like a television newsreader. A bit posh.’
‘From the South then?’
Susan nodded.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. Today I work for the people who live in the barn conversions. There are three houses at the end of the valley.’
‘What time yesterday?’ Again the question was fired at speed. Percy thought the woman found it hard for her words to keep up with her brain.
‘About four o’clock. I was in the kitchen and he came in with the dogs.’
‘Did he seem okay? Not anxious about anything?’
Susan shook her head. Again she seemed disappointed because she couldn’t be of more help. She had no juicy bit of information to pass on. The detective got to her feet and that seemed to break a kind of spell, because Percy found that he could stand up now too. At the door the fat woman wobbled a bit as she struggled to pull on her shoes, and Percy put out his hand to steady her.
She turned to Susan and smiled. ‘Have you got a key to the big house? Could I borrow it?’
For a moment Susan was flustered; she’d never been any good at taking responsibility. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should call the Carswells and ask their permission. They left me their phone number, in case of emergency.’
‘Why don’t you give me that, as well as the key, and I’ll sort it all out for you?’
So Susan handed over the bunch of keys and the piece of card with the number neatly written on, and the detective left the house.
They stood at the window and watched her walk out to her Land Rover.
‘Nice woman,’ Susan said. ‘You’d think she’d want to lose a bit of weight, though.’
Chapter Three
When Vera arrived back at the scene, Joe Ashworth had turned up. He was talking to Billy Cartwright, the crime-scene manager, and they’d taped off the road.
‘You here already, Vera?’ Cartwright said. ‘There’s something ghoulish about the pleasure you take in your work.’
She thought he was probably right, but she didn’t deign to give him an answer.
‘What have we got then, Billy? First impressions?’ Billy might be too fond of the lasses, but he was good at his job.
‘This isn’t where the lad was killed. You need to be looking elsewhere for the murder scene.’
‘It is murder then?’
‘Not my job to tell you that, Vera my love. Paul Keating’s on his way.’ Keating, a dour Ulsterman, was the senior pathologist. ‘But I can’t see that it was an accident. He was put in the ditch because it was close enough to the road for someone to get him easily out of a car. And he was hidden. He might have lain there unnoticed for weeks.’
If Percy Douglas hadn’t been caught short. And, by then, the rats and foxes would have been at the body and that would have made life more difficult.
‘Tyre tracks on the verge?’
‘One set, very recent, most probably belonging to the chap who found the body.’
She nodded and thought there was nothing she could do here until the experts had finished poking around. And she was restless. She’d never been good at hanging about. No patience. ‘Joe, you come with me. I know where our victim lived, or where he’d lived for the past fortnight at least.’
He started to climb into the passenger seat of the Land Rover, but she called him back. ‘We’ll walk, shall we? It’s not far and I could do with the exercise.’
He seemed a bit surprised, but he knew better than to question her. Vera liked that about Joe. He could be as bolshie as the rest of the team, but he picked his battles and didn’t make a fuss about the trivial stuff. That got her thinking about Holly, who made a fuss about everything. ‘Has anyone told DC Clarke what’s going on?’
‘Aye, I let her know as soon as the call came through. She said she’d make her own way, but she’d be a while.’
They walked in silence for a moment. Vera was pleased it was just her and Joe. That was how she liked it best. She couldn’t imagine being any closer to a son. There was grass growing in the middle of the road and, once they were out of earshot of Billy and his team, it was very quiet.
‘What is this place then?’ Joe wasn’t a country boy and Vera sensed that he was out of his comfort zone. Joe aspired to a new house on a suburban executive estate, somewhere safe for the kids to play out. His ideal neighbours would be teachers, small-businessmen. Respectable, but not too posh. Vera’s neighbours were aristo hippy dropouts who smoked dope and drank good red wine. And worked their bollocks off on a smallholding in the hills that could hardly provide any kind of living.
‘I’m not sure what they call it. The nearest village is back on the main road. Gilswick. And that’s nothing but a few houses, a church and a pub. Maybe this valley doesn’t have a name of its own.’
They turned a corner and came to the entrance to a drive. Crumbling stone pillars half-covered in ivy. No gate. No house name. Vera had seen it on her way to chat to Percy, but she hadn’t stopped. The drive led through wild woodland underplanted with daffs, and at this point there was no sight of the house.
‘This is a grand sort of place for a young man.’ Joe was tense, a bit anxious. His dad was an ex-miner and Methodist lay preacher. Joe had been brought up to think that all men were equal, but had never quite believed it.
‘He didn’t own it!’ Vera gave a little laugh, but her second-hand impression from Susan was that Patrick Randle might have come from somewhere like this. An idle young man with time to laze around in someone else’s home. Enough money not to bother with a proper job. ‘He was the house-sitter.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Someone who looks after a house when the owners are away.’
They turned a corner and the house was in front of them. Not a huge mansion with pillars and turrets. This was compact and square. Old. Solid stone. A pele-tower at one end, long fallen into disuse. One of the fortified farmhouses that had been built along the border, to see off the Scottish reivers. In the last of the sunshine, the stone looked warm. ‘Nice,’ Vera said and felt a momentary stab of envy. Hector, her father, had grown up somewhere like this. The third son with no claim to the land, and anyway he’d upset everyone and the family had disowned him. Then she thought of her little house in the hills – she couldn’t keep that clean and maintained; she’d have no chance with something like this.
They walked on. To the side of the house there was an old-fashioned kitchen garden. Fruit bushes covered with netting, vegetables starting to come up in rows. Everything tidy. Susan hadn’t mentioned a gardener, and Vera thought she would have done if the family had employed a man. So this was the Carswells’ work. They loved this place, and they must surely be retired to devote so much time to it. Beyond the garden the hill rose steeply to a rocky outcrop. They stood for a moment and heard sheep and running water.
Susan’s key let them into a big kitchen. An old cream Aga at one end and a drying rack over it, empty except for dishcloths and tea towels. Beside it stood a basket containing a fat black Labrador, and a blanket on which lay another, thinner dog.