Reflections Page 8

  “They’re a bunch of geriatrics, too. We don’t have a hunt kennels: some of us keep a brace at home. Mine are called Dozy and Grumpy, which probably gives you a idea of the pack as a whole. The only exercise they take is on hunting mornings, and even then they mostly sneak off home after the first point. Which consist of three old men on Clydesdales breaking into a trot and one of them falling off. It’s the kind of hunting the League Against Cruel Sports loses no sleep over. The only chance of us harming a fox is if one ruptures itself laughing.”

  Brodie laughed too, but she wasn’t entirely persuaded. “It’s very odd,” she said slyly. “People who hunt have lots of reasons why they ought to be allowed to continue, but they can never agree what they are. I’ve been told there are so many of you that rural employment would collapse without you, and so few you can’t possibly do any harm. I’ve been told you offer a vital pest-control service to farmers, and now you tell me that you’re quite incapable of making a kill. Hunts claim to be a force for conservation, genuine animal-lovers, the last bastion of Old England and the victims of urban ignorance. And I can’t see how it can all be true.”

  Philip Poole was regarding her levelly. “What do you believe?”

  Her eyebrows rose and fell in a kind of facial shrug. “I believe that money talks. I know what it costs to hunt, and I can’t imagine you all spending that much selflessly on supporting rural employment or conserving nature. You’re paying for your pleasure. I think that, while hunting remains a legal occupation, you’re entitled to pursue it—as long as you allow the same freedom of expression to those who oppose you. But there’s something distasteful about blood sports enthusiasts trying to capture the moral high ground.”

  His gaze never flickered. “You’re right. I hunt because I enjoy it. I find it hard to be sentimental about an animal which, even if it’s prettier, is vermin as much as mice and rats.”

  “There’s nothing sentimental about it,” argued Brodie. “Opposition to hunting is nothing to do with liking foxes. Taking pleasure in the pain and distress of a living creature is an ignoble thing. Some things, even things that have to be done, shouldn’t be enjoyed.”

  A slow smile was spreading across Philip Poole’s face. When he met Brodie Farrell earlier he’d noted the striking features, the taut figure and perfect drape of her stylish clothes, and filed her under T for Thinking Man’s Crumpet. He saw now that he’d been wrong. She wasn’t anyone’s crumpet; she just might own the bakery. “My father would have despised every word you just said.”

  “But he’d defend to the death my right to say it?”

  “Like hell he would,” said Poole cheerfully. They chuckled together like friends. Brodie said, “I take it he was a serious hunting man. Or was The Three Downs always a joke?”

  “Lord no,” he exclaimed. “It was a smart hunt when I first rode out with the Ward girls. Kennels, whippers-in, the lot. There were still men riding in top hats. There was a hunt button that you had to be invited to wear. And fast? The moment their feet touched grass they’d be off, and you’d have gone three fields before anybody took a pull. If you couldn’t jump, either you learned fast or you fell off—and then you had to get out of the way pretty damn quick. Nobody waited for you. They didn’t even check you were alive. Most casualties were found by foot-followers.” Poole rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how any of us survived. Lord knows what our parents were thinking of.”

  “I know what your father was thinking,” said Brodie. “‘Damned easy hunting these days—we went twice as fast when I was a boy.’”

  Poole laughed out loud. “It was about then that skull-caps were coming in for cross-country riding. They’re safer than the old velvet caps, but my father said he was damned if any son of his was riding out in public dressed like a jockey!”

  “Parental affection like that makes you feel warm all over,” commented Brodie. “So did you promptly fall off and crack your skull?”

  “I’ve fallen off and cracked most things at one time or another,” admitted Poole. “Most riders have. Connie Ward broke her ankle hunting when were about fifteen. That’s when she came up with the idea of the Cheyne Phantom. The worst hunting injury I ever got was the thrashing my father gave me over that.”

  Brodie was intrigued. “Whatever did you do?”

  “It’s a local legend,” said Poole, “the Phantom Rider of Cheyne Wood. Connie thought it would be fun if the ghost appeared more often. So we rigged something up with an old mirror. Every meet people came back white-faced and shaking, claiming the Cheyne Phantom had been galloping beside them. We kept the joke going for weeks—had half the hunt carrying rabbits’ feet before we were found out. Someone saw Serena watching. She wanted to see the victim’s face when the Phantom Rider appeared.”

  Brodie shook her head in wonder. “There aren’t enough ways to die on a galloping horse in the middle of a wood without three brats trying to scare the living daylights out of you?”

  “Different days,” Poole sighed.

  Brodie finished her coffee and thanked Poole for his help. He was sorry he hadn’t got an answer for her yet but promised to keep asking.

  She sensed there was something else he wanted to ask. As he walked her back to her car she nodded at the heavy machinery. “My daughter Paddy’s a tractor buff. Other little girls have dolls and teddy bears. Mine has Massey Ferguson maintenance manuals.”

  Poole grinned but there was a hint of disappointment too. Without a word of a lie Brodie had gently readjusted his view of her.“How old is she?”

  “Five. She wants a combine harvester for Christmas.”

  “Me too,” said Poole fervently.

  Unable to make sense of Dr Roy’s discovery. Deacon returned to what he did best—asking questions and looking sceptical about the answers until people felt pressurised into elaborating. With no likelihood of finding new witnesses he went back to those he’d already interviewed and interviewed them again.

  Because Robert Daws was a successful businessman, so were many of the people who knew him best. Deacon didn’t like questioning important people, preferred a hardened criminal any day. You knew where you stood with people like that. You knew they’d lie to you for as long as they could get away with it but at least they didn’t threaten you with their lawyers. Pillars of the community could lie with equal inventiveness and greater authority, and always knew someone who played golf with the Chief Constable.

  In spite of which. Deacon didn’t actually think he was being lied to about Robert Daws. He talked to suppliers, colleagues and competitors, and got the same story each time. Daws was respected and liked by everyone who had dealings with him. Many of them knew of his difficulties at home and sympathised. But they were universally shocked by what had happened. One after another they paraphrased the same sentiment: that Robert Daws was the last man on earth they would have expected to stab someone, even his wife. They would have been sorry but less surprised to hear that he’d killed himself.

  And still, nine days after the event, none of them had any idea where he might be. Asking about company jets failed to provoke either confessions or discomfort. Those who had access to such facilities were able to produce log-books showing no discrepancies. A couple of them seemed quite flattered to be suspected. So far as Deacon could establish, for Robert Daws to have skipped the country he’d have had to turn into a swallow and fly south.

  “All right,” he said to Charlie Voss when they were alone again, “so he didn’t leave the country. He’s still around somewhere. Maybe he’s still around Dimmock.”

  “Why?”

  “Because …” Deacon thought. “Because his daughters are?”

  Voss found that plausible. “They’re all he has left. Maybe he can’t bring himself to head for Bolivia without them.”

  Deacon sniffed. “Maybe he’s looking for a way to take them with him. Maybe … maybe once they join their uncle in South Africa he’ll reappear and whisk them off.”

  “But if that’s what he h
as in mind, why risk staying? He’d be better going to South Africa and waiting for them there.”

  “Maybe he waited too long.” Deacon was thinking aloud. He thought Charlie Voss was a useful sounding-board because he could bounce ideas off him and they tended come back clearer and better than when they went out. “He failed to get clear during the first few hours before the ports and airports were on alert, and by the time he was ready to go it was too late. Now he’s trapped. It isn’t safe to stay here, but it’s even more dangerous to move.”

  “What? You think he’s staying in a B&B?”

  “Using what for money? It’s been nine days. Even if he had money on him it would be gone by now. Even a cheap B&B at the unfashionable end of Dimmock out of season doesn’t operate as a charity. Every cup of tea, every newspaper, every night’s rest he’d have to buy. He wouldn’t be able to avoid using his bank account and we’d know. No. If he’s still here, he’s under someone’s protection. Someone’s putting him up and feeding him, or at least providing him with cash to feed himself. Someone knows where he is. A friend, a colleague, an old flame.”

  “I thought we’d talked to them all. Twice.”

  “You always miss someone, and one person is all it takes. We’ve been concentrating on businessmen. Maybe we should be looking for a nice understanding woman who let him kick his shoes off in front of her fire.”

  “I’ll talk to his secretary again,” said Voss.

  Deacon had travelled to London to talk to Robert Daws’ secretary. She wasn’t his idea of a nice understanding woman. Now Daws was missing she was effectively running the firm. “Ms Steele?”

  “I mean, if he had a girlfriend she’d know about it. But there is another possibility. We keep hearing it: people would have been less surprised to hear that he’d committed suicide. Well, maybe he did. Maybe the reason he isn’t using his passport or his credit cards or his mobile phone is that he’s outside the service area.”

  The superintendent stared at his sergeant. “And we haven’t found his car because …”

  Voss nodded grimly. “Because he’s still in it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Helpless, bound hand and foot by sleep, Daniel heard screaming.

  This was not, per se, unusual. Still once a week, on average, he woke sweating, his own cries throbbing in his brain. But mostly, by the time he was bolt upright, kicking free of the jumbled duvet and groping for the light-switch, the echoes had died and he was aware that what had gone before was a phantasm, the after-glow of past horrors.

  This time the screams did not fade with the dark. Nor were they his screams. He thought he could hear both girls, and Peris’s voice raised above them. He couldn’t make out words but he knew the sound of terror when he heard it. Cramming on his glasses, dragging his clothes over his pyjamas, he flung open the cottage door as the lights came on in Sparrow Hill.

  His shoes crunched on glass and the back door was open. He crossed the kitchen at a run, emerged into the deep square hall, and two hysterical children in nightdresses hurled themselves at him, gripping him tightly. On the landing Peris Daws, stately in African print, leaned over the banister demanding imperiously, “What in hell is going on down there? Daniel? Is that you?”

  “It is now,” he said, breathless. “I heard screams and came running.”

  “There was someone here.” A white-faced Johnny stared at him through shock-wide eyes. “A man. There was a man in the house.”

  Daniel threw Peris a fast glance, and she surged down the stairs like the launching of a royal barge. “What? What did you say? What did she say?”

  “She said there was a man in the house,” Daniel said briefly. He looked Johnny in the eyes. “You’re sure? You’re sure it wasn’t me, just now?”

  She shook her head vigorously, the chestnut hair flying and a dew-drop spinning off the end of her nose. “Something woke me. I came downstairs for a glass of milk. I bumped into him. Right here!”

  “And that’s when you yelled?” The girl nodded. “That wasn’t me. All right. Peris, stay with them while I check the house.”

  Some stereotypes are difficult to escape. Any intruder would rather have met Daniel Hood in a dark corridor than Peris Daws, robed like a warrior queen and bearing down on him in furious indignation. Still Daniel knew the search was his responsibility. If it was successful he’d probably end up on his back with a bloody nose. But if he stayed with the women and waited for the police to arrive the shame would be worse. Daniel was not a man who worried overly what people thought of him, but he was a man and some obligations came with the testicles. One was evicting spiders, another was checking for intruders.

  With Peris on the landing it seemed unlikely anyone had got upstairs. He started on the ground floor—living room, dining room, sitting room, scullery. He looked behind doors, under tables and in any cupboards big enough to hide in. He found nothing, but with every door he opened his heart-rate soared.

  When he was sure there was no one downstairs he checked the bedrooms as well. Confident then that the four of them were alone in the house, he went back to the hall and sat the girls down on the stairs. “If there was someone here he’s gone now. Can you tell me what happened—what you saw?”

  Em was shaking uncontrollably, her little face pinched. Johnny was fighting to get a grip on herself. “I woke up. I don’t know why. Maybe I heard something, maybe I just woke up. I wanted a glass of milk. I didn’t put the light on. I came downstairs, and at the bottom I bumped into someone.”

  “We sort of bounced apart. I ended up sitting on the bottom step, and then I could see the shape of him against the window. He swore and groped round him. His hand brushed my hair and he grabbed hold. That’s when I yelled.”

  Em nodded urgently and took up the story. Her teeth were chattering as she spoke. “I heard Johnny shout, and when she wasn’t in her bed I came to look for her. I saw the man at the bottom of the stairs, and I screamed too.”

  “By now,” said Peris, “I was out of bed and on my way. But by the time I found the landing light it was all over. Johnny and Em were hugging one another down here and there was no one else in sight. Then you arrived, and the rest you know.”

  “The pane in the kitchen door’s broken,” said Daniel. “That’s how he got in. Broke it, reached through and turned the key”

  “He,” echoed Peris. “Who?”

  Daniel shrugged. “A burglar?”

  Peris did her old-fashioned look from under canted eyebrows. “A burglar? Just how unlucky can one family get?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t expecting to find anyone here.”

  “Of course he knew there was someone here! There’s a car in the drive.”

  He wasn’t sure what she was suggesting, or even if it was a suggestion. He turned back to the shivering girls. “This man. Did either of you get a proper look at him?”

  The girls traded another of their significant looks. Em hugged herself, cheeks silver-streaked with tears.

  Johnny said, “It was dark. And we were falling over one another. It was hard to see his face.” She looked expectantly at her sister but Em had nothing to add.

  “But you saw his outline against the window.” She nodded. “Was he a big man, like Superintendent Deacon? Or a small man, like me?”

  “Big,” said Johnny “Tall.”

  Daniel nodded encouragement. “And you heard his voice? When he swore. Did he sound familiar?”

  She thought, biting her lips. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It’s not easy, is it?” said Daniel. “When you’re taken by surprise and you don’t know what’s going on. Did you have the feeling that you knew him?”

  Peris was eyeing him oddly but Johnny didn’t notice. “I’m not sure.” Then she shook her head and would say no more.

  “Well, try not to worry about it,” said Daniel. “You scared him as much as he scared you, and when he realised he had two of you to deal with he turned and ran. He must have been going like a train or I’d have
met him in the courtyard. Anyway, he’s gone now and I can’t see him coming back.”

  He straightened up. “Why don’t you go back to bed, and I’ll let the police know what’s happened? Peris and I are going to have a cup of coffee, and it’ll be coming light soon after that.” The long-case clock in the hall was reporting four-fifteen, so there was actually time for a three-course meal before daybreak. But they weren’t usually up at this time and didn’t know. They trooped off upstairs without an argument.

  Daniel followed Peris through to the kitchen. They left all the lights on and the doors open. Daniel looked at the broken glass. “I’ll find something to nail over that.”

  “In the morning,” said Peris, waving him to a kitchen chair. “I don’t even know where they keep the hammer. Call the police, then come back in here.”

  He did as she said. The duty sergeant took the details, and said he’d have the area car call out immediately if there was any question that the intruder was still there. Daniel said that he’d gone and they’d be fine until Detective Superintendent Deacon got the message in the morning.

  Peris was waiting for him with mugs and a quizzical expression. “Who do you think it was?”

  Daniel tried to look blank. “I don’t know who it was.”

  “No. But you have a suspicion. Haven’t you?”

  He couldn’t lie. Even his face couldn’t lie. “It might have been their father.”

  Peris stared at him. “Robert? He’s in Venezuela by now!”

  “We don’t know that. Everything he cares about is here. Maybe he didn’t want to leave it all behind. Maybe he wanted to see his home and his daughters again.”

  “So he broke in and scared them half to death?” Her voice climbed like a jet plane.

  “He didn’t break in. Look where the broken glass is—out in the yard. He let himself in with his front door key and left the same way. Otherwise I’d have seen him running away. He tried to make it look like a break-in.”

  Peris’s broad face was perplexed but she was at least willing to consider it. “Robert was here? I’ve heard of people returning to the scene of a crime, but that would be madness.”