A Market for Murder (20 page)

‘But now you’re supposed to get it right, because Inspector Hemsley wants to know everything you find out.’

‘Only because he’s short of men, as usual, and wants me to provide him with some free assistance. Not a lot of people fully grasp that the vast majority of police investigations are resolved thanks to information received from members of the public.’

‘Come off it. Stop sounding so pompous. Anyway, of course people know that. It’s obvious.’

‘Only when you stop to think about it.’

‘Maybe so, but don’t forget
you
went to
him.
You’re
dying
to be part of the whole thrilling business again.’

He shook his head in defeat. ‘I can’t see that it really matters, anyway.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ She waved an impatient hand. ‘Let’s get
on
with it. You said yourself the public loos were probably the place the killer fired from. Seems fairly obvious to me.’

‘It isn’t obvious at all. It’s one of about ten possibilities.’

‘But it fits really well. Windows at the back, all along that wall, facing the market stalls. Chap goes in, with the crossbow under his coat, shuts
himself in a cubicle, fires out of the little window, replaces weapon under coat and walks away, in completely the other direction from where people will be looking.’

‘What if there was someone else in the loo? They might have seen him.’

‘Obviously, the killer would wait till there wasn’t anybody.’

‘They wouldn’t know if someone was next door, in the Ladies.’

‘But that wouldn’t matter. A crossbow makes hardly any noise. That’s the beauty of it. I wonder why they didn’t use it again at the funeral?’

‘Probably because it’s even more difficult to hide than a gun.’

‘Just as easy to aim from waist level, though. Or so I would think.’

‘It might not have been the same person,’ Den reminded her. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

‘I’m not. I know it could be two different people, with two different motives. Maybe it was Genevieve Slater, still after Drew and wanting Karen out of the way. You remember I told you about her? We buried her mother’s old friend this week.’

‘Yes I remember,’ Den laughed. Despite himself, he was impressed by her endless inventive enthusiasm. Her mind moved so quickly and competently, it was like watching sunlight
flickering over water. ‘What we still don’t have is proof – any sort of proof,’ he reminded her.

‘Well, we’d better try to find some then, hadn’t we?’

Den didn’t know quite how she proposed to accomplish that, but he acknowledged to himself that he was really looking forward to finding out.

Karen could feel herself emerging slowly from the gluey state she’d been in. So slow and fragile was the sense of return that she was afraid to give it her attention, in case it changed direction and plunged her back. There was a new touch on her hand, a dry firm grasp very different from Drew’s gentle stroking. ‘Karen?’ came a low gentle voice. ‘Can you hear me?’

Karen made no attempt to move or speak. It was far, far too soon for that. And besides, when she did re-emerge into the world of the living, she wanted it to be Drew who welcomed her.

But the person was insistent. She was doing something to Karen’s hand, lifting it, and placing it inside her own. ‘Wiggle your finger if you can hear me,’ came a clear instruction. ‘Just tickle my palm.’

She couldn’t ignore the order. It was such an easy thing to do. Without noticeable thought,
she let her forefinger flicker. It was as if it had wanted to, from the start.

‘Good girl!’ applauded her visitor. ‘Very good indeed. You’ll soon be better. Right as rain in no time, you’ll see. But now, I want you to help me. Karen – did you see the person who shot you? Do you know who it was? Wiggle your finger if the answer’s yes.’

Karen’s finger twitched again, as the face returned to her inner eye. That face, staring at her, full of cold intent. Oh yes – Karen knew who her would-be killer had been.

‘Excellent!’ breathed her interrogator. ‘Thank you, dear. Now, I could run through a list of names, and you’d probably reveal to me which was the right one, but I don’t want to tire you, or upset you. You’ve told me all I want to know for now. I’ll leave you to gather your strength.’

And it went quiet again, except for something ticking rhythmically somewhere in the room.

Sally Dabb was very much behind with her pickles. May was an awkward month at the best of times, with little or no fresh produce available for her usual range. Although she did have a few dozen jars remaining, she was worried that they’d all sell during the next few weeks. Geraldine had suggested some new lines – mint jelly, something with elderflower or even dandelion. ‘Why not try something herbal, too?’ the organiser had said. ‘Feverfew grows like crazy around here. Can’t you concoct some sort of headache remedy from it?’

Sally had not been keen. It felt like quackery to be selling folk medicines without proper testing. Besides, she wouldn’t have the first idea how feverfew should be presented. She knew
her mother had been in the habit of nibbling the leaves to assuage a migraine, now and then, but Sally had never really believed it worked.

She had planned to design some new labels and try them out on her computer, but Archie was doing his accounts and she couldn’t get near the machine. Anything that risked upsetting Archie these days would be a very bad idea.

She knew, though, that she absolutely
had
to keep busy. If there wasn’t something to occupy her mind, she’d go back to thinking about Peter, and that would lead to tears and Archie would notice and get angry again.

He had known all along that she was very fond of Peter. They’d all been at school together, and even now, fifteen years later, it was fresh in everyone’s minds. Peter Grafton had been the most handsome boy in the school. Ridiculously handsome, at about sixteen. His skin always seemed tanned, his golden hair burnished. He walked with a rare grace and smiled indiscriminately. All the girls had adored him. One by one they had wangled dates with him, triumphing over their sisters during those brief weeks of glory. But somehow nobody ever managed to keep him for long. It was simply too much hard work, they agreed amongst themselves, afterwards.

He hardly spoke, he passively agreed to any
proposals as to where they might go, and seemed to forget just which girl he was supposed to be going out with, from one date to the next.

Julie Grainger, who he eventually married, had not been a local girl. Her family lived in Yorkshire, and Peter had met her during his time at university. He had married her and brought her back to Bradbourne a month after they graduated. As far as anybody could see, she suited him very well. Over the years he changed from the beautiful dumb schoolboy to an assured man, gradually losing his looks. The more ordinary he became in appearance, the nicer his character seemed to be. Sally and others observed this with mixed feelings.

And then there he’d been, a fellow stallholder at the farmers’ markets, and such a very appealing person. He had been fulsome in his delight at meeting her again. He had admired the pickles and preserves, helped her arrange them, questioned her closely on what went into them. He was clearly converted to the whole business of local food production, zealously running off leaflets for Geraldine and showing up at all the meetings.

Then someone had killed him. Right there, inches away from Sally herself, so his blood splashed her and his dying gurgle echoed in her head. The police had wanted to know every
tiny detail, making her describe it again and again. They had wanted the whole story of her relationship with him, obviously believing the gossip that she and Peter had been having an affair. And Sally wasn’t daft enough to miss the implication that her husband was one of the very few people with an identifiable motive for the murder.

The police, Sally discovered, were very poor at grasping the complexities of human interactions. They seemed unable to deviate from the blinkered scenario: Married woman having affair with fellow stallholder; husband discovers this, is jealous and shoots lover. Simple. Happens all the time. Though Sally did wonder whether they regarded Julie Grafton with the same degree of suspicion. And if not, why not?

In any case, the police line was wrong on about a hundred details. Firstly, she and Peter were not in any official sense having an affair. They had not in fact had full penetrative sex together. They had kissed and cuddled a lot, in the back of Peter’s van. There had been skin contact and much use of hands. But in a court of law, she was fairly certain she would be found innocent of adultery. Peter had insisted on this, from the start. ‘We’re just good friends, having a friendly cuddle,’ he said, more than once. And indeed, Sally found it a relief to retain a clear
conscience. What she most enjoyed was their conversations, anyway. He made her laugh, he understood her feelings, he inspired her with ambition and optimism, with his vaulting visions of the future.

Furthermore, the police had shown no curiosity as to the nature of Sally’s own marriage. They had taken details of Archie’s work, and where he was on the morning of the shooting. And they had been forced to conclude that his alibi was sound, and he could not have been the killer. At that point they drifted away, leaving Sally oddly frustrated and resentful. Didn’t they owe it to her – and somehow to Peter, as well – to pay a bit more attention? Funny, she realised, how urgently she wished she could disclose the truth about her married life.

Finally, the threesome did get together for a long overdue comparison of findings and hypotheses. Maggs and Den drove to North Staverton at seven thirty that evening, and helped Drew put the children to bed. Stephanie had monopolised Den as soon as he arrived on the scene, and regularly complained that she didn’t see him as often as she would like. Timmy seemed to have embarked on a campaign, almost from the moment of his birth, to seduce Maggs into adoring him. He seemed to think he was making
progress, as time went on, albeit slowly. Den and he were thus in a kind of alliance, each seeking to discover the best way to please her, each basking in the moments of success. There were even times when they seemed to be teaching each other how best to achieve their goal.

The bedtime developed into a kind of muted party. The hospital had phoned Drew with their end-of-day bulletin, cautiously revealing that Karen was now in a far lighter coma, with a lot of flickering eye movement and healthier brain scan read-outs. He had agonised about whether to drive back to see for himself, but the sister had assured him it was still too soon for any real excitement, and they’d phone the moment anything substantially changed.

This came as a relief on a number of levels. Despite – or perhaps because of – his experience working as a nurse, Drew did not like hospital wards. His heartbeat accelerated and he felt itchy and hot, every time he walked into the building. Sometimes he felt sick, too. Good old-fashioned
fear
, he told himself. A perfectly rational response. But it was not something anybody would willingly put themselves through if they could avoid it.

So he threw himself into enjoying the company and good sense of his friends, encouraging the children to relax and be indulged. It was a warm
evening, and Timmy was grubby from playing outside. Drew organised a complicated bath routine, with Stephanie’s favourite Den given charge of water and bubbles, and her special story afterwards, while Maggs rolled up her sleeves and ensured that Timmy was entirely clean in all departments. It seemed, Drew noted, that everybody was more than happy with their allotted roles. Certainly the noise was all shrieks of laughter followed by murmurs of sleepy contentment in a surprisingly short time. He withdrew downstairs, and having already raided the freezer, slid three sirloin steaks under the grill and a quantity of chips into the deep fat fryer. A bottle of organic red wine was already on the table.

It was with a sense of defiance that he called upstairs, ‘Ready in five minutes!’ What if one of Karen’s market friends came to the door now? They wouldn’t be able to fault his choice of menu, but they might raise their eyebrows at the fact of a dinner party at all, with his wife struggling for life in a hospital bed.

But it wasn’t really a dinner party. It was the gathering together of investigators into who and how and why – the history, motives, methods and intentions of whoever had shot Peter Grafton and Karen Slocombe. A gathering that they all knew should have taken place some days earlier.

The steaks were tender – local pure bred Hereford cattle, killed in their own field, hung for three weeks and expertly butchered. The chips were made from Karen’s own potatoes, and the vegetables were last year’s broccoli and french beans. ‘It’s a feast!’ Den declared.

‘I sometimes think our meals are a trifle repetitive,’ Drew mused. ‘We never have rice these days, or anything with noodles or even much in the ways of pies. Just plain meat and veg.’

‘That’s the simple life for you,’ Maggs said. ‘You never have chicken, either. And hardly any fish.’

‘There’s a whole pig just gone in the freezer,’ Drew agreed. ‘Masses and masses of chops.’

‘Wonderful!’ enthused Den. ‘Don’t knock it, you fool. Most people would change places with you like a shot.’

‘And a head,’ Drew continued, after a small wince at the metaphor. ‘They make you have the head as well. In fact, there are now
three
pigs’ heads in there, because Karen’s not really sure what to do with them.’

There was no answer to that. Den and Maggs met each other’s eyes, and silently agreed not to venture any suggestions as to how to deal with a pig’s head. Neither had any recollections of mothers or grandmothers being called upon to resolve such a dilemma.

‘You live well,’ Maggs said, after the pause. ‘Everybody around here lives well.’

‘Thanks to the three witches,’ Den added. Drew’s stare of total incomprehension served to focus them all on the matter in hand. ‘You don’t know what we know about the three witches,’ Den realised. ‘Time I filled you in, then.’

Drew listened with complete attention as the former police detective lucidly recounted everything he’d learnt over the past week or so. The steaks disappeared magically, Den talking with his mouth full, and Maggs let him have the limelight while she enjoyed her meal. The wine was soon consumed, and Drew wished he’d provided a second bottle.

For afters, he produced a bowl of peaches, bottled in a heady syrup laced with brandy. ‘Sally Dabb made these,’ he said. ‘We’ve had them since Christmas. I think you’ll like them.’

Den’s tale was told by this time and Drew was trying to digest it all. ‘We still don’t really know as much about these people as Karen does,’ he worried. ‘She’s been working with them, going to meetings, dropping in for coffee, for a year or more now. She’s the real expert.’

‘Which is probably why she’s also the victim,’ said Maggs, with a sturdiness born only minimally of her alcohol intake. ‘She knows something that would incriminate the person
who shot Peter Grafton. That seems obvious.’

‘It’s an assumption,’ Den corrected her.

‘I know it is,’ she frowned. ‘Because I’ve already thought of at least one completely different scenario.’

‘Which is?’ Drew prompted.

‘That Karen was the intended victim the first time, too.’

‘What?’ Drew’s heart lurched at the idea. ‘But why? What possible …’

‘Maybe to do with the supermarket bomb,’ Maggs interrupted. ‘She was there. She saw Mary Thomas. She might have seen something else, without realising it.’

From nowhere, another idea hit Drew. It was like a barbed missile, smacking him in the face, attaching itself to his mind, making him desperate to shake free of it. He didn’t think he could utter it aloud.

‘What?’ demanded Maggs, seeing it clear in his eyes.

‘Stephanie was there, too. And she was right beside Karen on Friday morning.’

‘No, Karen was
holding
her. She was in Karen’s arms.’ Maggs was keeping up magnificently. ‘Their heads were almost level.’

‘But she wasn’t there on the Tuesday, when Grafton was shot,’ said Cooper, wide-eyed. ‘Nobody would deliberately shoot a little girl.’

‘They missed her by inches when they shot Karen,’ said Maggs. ‘And if the gun was concealed under a coat or in a bag, the aim wasn’t likely to be very accurate. It’s hard to believe they really cared who got hit.’

‘We’ve got it completely wrong,’ Drew said. ‘I’m all for some brainstorming, and looking at it from every angle, but this one makes no sense.’ He put down his spoon without finishing the peaches. ‘It’s sickening.’

‘Right,’ agreed Cooper. ‘But nobody’s asked Stephanie for her view of what happened, have they?
She
knows some of these people, too. She’s a witness.’

‘You don’t interview four-year-old children in a murder enquiry,’ said Drew stiffly. ‘It’s been bad enough for her as it is.’

‘Well, actually, sometimes they do,’ Den corrected. ‘Plain clothes WDCs, in special rooms, made to seem like home. Usually only when they’re directly involved, though. Their evidence isn’t usually admissable in court if they’re only four.’

‘I should hope not.’ Drew was cold to his bones. ‘You can’t call her a witness. It’s bad enough that she’s been involved in the first place.’

‘Relax,’ Maggs ordered him. ‘Nobody’s going to upset her any more than she is already.
But she’s a tough little thing. Always has been.’

Stephanie had spent much of her early life playing more or less contentedly in a corner of Peaceful Repose’s office, while Karen continued working as a teacher. Only when Timmy’s birth was imminent did Karen abandon work and become more available. Stephanie had somehow absorbed the realities of death and grief, just by being in its presence, or so Drew sometimes thought. He had seen her studying the faces of the newly bereaved, as they came to make arrangements for the burial of their loved one, and wondered how much she was understanding. It seemed now that she had learnt something of the deeper aspects of life and death, at that time. She was a serious child, compared to her brother. Stoical, in many ways, but alive to the emotional undercurrents, too. He found himself dreaming of how she would be at fifteen, or even
twenty-five
. What a friend and companion she might become. How proud he’d be of her, how uniquely understanding she was going to be, after the rich upbringing they were giving her. Stephanie, in short, was destined to grow up as somebody very special and infinitely cherished by her father.