Vera thought that figured. Nigel would see it as a first step to becoming established in the county. Besides, he’d love sitting on the bench and passing judgement on more lowly mortals. ‘What does Susan think of the wife? She seems a bonny thing. Younger than him?’
Percy considered. ‘She’s not that much younger. Not according to Susan. Well preserved.’
Vera thought Susan would probably know. She imagined the cleaner going through desk drawers when she had the place to herself, picking up birth dates and stray personal details. She’d be one to hoard information, loving it for its own sake. And isn’t that just what I do?
She looked across at Percy. ‘Did Susan pick up any useful facts about Patrick Randle, the house-sitter? She’d have been curious – a new man in the valley – but she might be a bit embarrassed to tell us, because she wasn’t supposed to go up into the flat. She wouldn’t want us to know she’d been prying. But she might have told you.’
For the first time Percy seemed uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair. ‘She means no harm.’
‘That’s not really an answer, is it, pet?’
The old man didn’t reply and Vera continued, ‘You know this place. Two men are dead. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you had any idea what might have caused it? Even if you only suspected?’
‘I don’t know anything about the murders,’ Percy said. ‘Really. I hate all this. The police in the meadow and the roadblock at the end of the lane, so I get stopped every time I just want a quick pint in The Lamb. If I knew owt useful, I’d tell you. I want everything back to normal.’
Vera nodded, satisfied at last.
She expected to find the station quiet, but Holly was still there. With a touch of guilt Vera suspected the officer had been waiting for her. If it’d been Joe, Vera would have taken him home, fed him something her hippy neighbours had left in her freezer, opened a beer. But she’d learned that Holly disliked that sort of approach, saw it almost as corrupting. So Vera took her to the canteen, bought coffee from one of the machines. That was about as informal as Holly was comfortable with. Their words seemed to rattle around the empty space.
‘So, Hol? How did you get on with Randle’s girlfriend?
‘She’d seen about the murder in the press. Of course she was upset. Although Becky was the one to end the relationship, I don’t think she saw the separation as permanent. She always thought there’d be a happy-ever-after ending.’
Vera heard the sarcasm, but ignored it. Holly could do with a bit of romance in her life. It might make her a tad less brittle.
‘If she still cared for the lad, why did she dump him?’
‘Because she thought he was keeping secrets from her. Maybe she thought if she threatened to dump him, it would jolt him into confiding in her. It didn’t work, though.’
Vera became more alert at that. Until then she’d been going through the motions, letting Holly know that she was taking her seriously. But now this was starting to get interesting. ‘Come on, Hol. Tell me more. What sort of secrets. Another woman?’
‘Nothing like that. At least I don’t think so. Apparently Patrick’s personality changed at about the time his mother took up with her new man. He became interested in the family history and started researching the past, digging around in the archives of the local paper. He got a bit paranoid about his university research too, talked about people stealing his data. I’m not sure what it was all about. But he sent Becky a text last week.’ Holly looked down at her notes. ‘Nearly fit to be your friend again. If you can forgive me. Which Becky took to mean that he’d finished whatever project had been taking up all his time, and he hoped it might be possible for them to get back together. That he might be prepared to tell her what had been going on.’
‘Did she reply?’ Vera’s coffee had been left to go cold.
‘She didn’t phone him. I’m not sure whether she texted.’
Vera tried to get her head around this. Of course the emotional affairs of two young people might have no relevance at all to the case, but Patrick’s obsession with secrecy struck her as significant. What could a young man from his background possibly have to hide? And where could Martin Benton fit in? She realized that it was starting to get dark outside.
‘Get on home.’ She made a little shooing gesture with her hands. ‘We’ve got a full day tomorrow and I can’t have you off your game. You’ve done brilliantly, Hol. Thanks.’ Then she smiled at the young woman’s confusion. It never did any harm to wrong-foot the team by giving a bit of praise. It occurred to Vera, watching Holly walk away to spend the night alone in her flat, that they had more in common than she liked to admit. She’d been spiky and defensive when she’d been a young officer, and though there were more women in the service now, Holly didn’t have it easy. No family around to support her. And it probably wasn’t her fault that she looked like something out of a fashion magazine, with legs up to her waist and American teeth. Holly left the canteen and Vera watched with a stab of sympathy. Then she thought she must be getting soft in her old age.
On the way back to her car she called into her office. On her desk was the brown Manila file she’d seen in Randle’s car and a little note from Joe: This is the file you were asking about. It was empty. No fingerprints except Randle’s. She thought that just about summed up the progress they were making with the case.
The next morning she woke very early. There was the cold grey light of just after dawn, but it was the noise of her phone that had dragged her from sleep. The landline. Everyone knew that her house had crap mobile reception. ‘Yes!’ She could feel the adrenaline racing through her heart, jolting her, scattering weird ideas in her brain. She thought she must sound as Percy had, when she’d rung his doorbell the afternoon before.
It was a voice she didn’t recognize and it took her a while to take in the words. ‘We think we’ve found the locus for the young man’s death.’
‘Where?’ Now she was fully conscious and aware of what was going on. She was already out of bed, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder, scrabbling to find a scrap of paper.
‘The vegetable garden of the big house. We didn’t look there yesterday and it was our first search this morning. There’s blood on the wooden rim of one of the seedbeds. Easy enough to miss, but one of my boys picked it up. I’ll bet you anything we’ll find that the soil on the victim’s shoes has traces of compost. There’s salad stuff growing in there, and some of the plants have been crushed.’
‘Thanks.’ Her mind was still racing and that had nothing to do with being wakened suddenly from a deep sleep. If Randle had been killed in the garden, why bother moving him? He’d be just as much hidden there as he’d been in the ditch. Then the thought came, sudden and urgent: It would help if we knew which of the victims died first. She realized the officer in charge of the search team was still on the end of the line. ‘Tell your people it’s my shout next time I see them in the pub.’
‘We’ll carry on looking. But I thought you’d want to know.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Friday morning and Annie Redhead was counting the hours until her daughter’s release from prison. They’d had a phone call from Lizzie and had been told she’d be let out of the gaol mid-morning on Sunday. Phone calls were always tricky. The background noise and the money running out, people in the queue shouting for her to be quick. Annie had offered to pick Lizzie up: ‘If that’s all right. If you haven’t made any other plans.’ She’d become used to being careful what she said to Lizzie; always felt it was important not to make assumptions. After all, Lizzie was an adult now. She had to be allowed to make her own decisions. Annie imagined standing in the gloomy prison hall where she waited when she went to visit and seeing the small figure of Lizzie being led along the corridor. Looking like a shadow. In her daydream Lizzie was always delighted to see her and, when she emerged into the hall, lit up through the Victorian stained-glass windows, her face seemed to be shining.