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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Caffy Tyler believes she has well and truly left her old life behind her, in spite of her emotional and physical scars. Living in rural Kent, with a new job and new friends, she feels safe, and for the first time in her life happy. However a series of troubling events bring this brief feeling of contentment to a sharp half. The combination of seeing a dead body through the window of a house she is painting, and then running into her ex-boyfriend, a drug-dealer, in the local supermarket throw Caffy's life into disarray. Forced to assume a new identity, she discovers that there are more bizarre things going on than she had originally thought. Not only did the body she saw mysteriously disappear, but the police are being seriously unhelpful and, on top of that, she keeps seeing strangers wandering around the marsh in the middle of the night. Can it all be connected? Caffy needs to know who she can trust. The man she once loved is now a police officer and seems unable (or perhaps that's just unwilling?) to help her. And she begins to wonder if her new friends are as reliable as they seem...
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Scar Tissue
JUDITH CUTLER
For Kate Emans and the Paint Pot Girls, who resemble Paula’s Pots only in their enthusiasm and professionalism
Contents
Chapter One
The July day was very bright, the window reflecting like a mirror, so I might have been mistaken. I blinked hard, shading my eyes with my free hand – there was no way I’d let go with the other, not this high off the ground – and peered again. It was a body on that bed, all right. A dead body, if the rope round the neck meant anything. It was our rope, too. Paula’s Pots’ rope. Some of the strong blue plastic stuff we use to hold back climbing plants and roses – especially roses – from parts we need to paint. The sort we use to tie the back of the van securely, or lash the ladders on top. I’d left a coil with our other gear, in a lock-up garage the owner let us decorators use. As luck would have it I was working on my own today – the others were over near Tenterden tackling a big urgent job that the July rain had delayed. I opened my mouth to let rip with a few appropriate words, the sort that Paula, the Boss, so disapproved of. Well, she wasn’t anywhere round to hear.
But that wasn’t the sort of thing ladies did round here, was it? Not nice well-brought up young ladies. Though that didn’t apply to me, anyway. I was one of the Lower Orders, a working girl, paint all over my hands and trainers to prove it. And an accent that everyone down here had decided was pretty well foreign.
I came down my ladder rather quicker than I’d gone up, not easy with a brimming paint can in one hand and a brand new paintbrush in the other. I didn’t want to put one in the other because that would mean I had to clean it. Paula was very keen on clean brushes. Halfway down I saw sense and shoved it in my bib for safe-keeping.
Damn it, a body on a bed wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect in the country. I mean, back where I used to work, up in Birmingham, where there were turf wars between drugs barons and battles between rival pimps, you got used to seeing the odd body that hadn’t died of old age in its bed. I wiped my hands on my dungarees and fished out my mobile. Only to find we were in a black spot. That’s the trouble with rural life. All those things you take for granted aren’t there. Like mobile phone masts and round-the-clock supermarkets and big anonymous pubs. Well, anonymity in general. Which is how I knew that when I turned up at a police station with my big news they’d have heard a few rumours about me: someone’s mother or cousin would have whispered to someone’s father or nephew. So I’d be lost in the credibility stakes before I’d even started.
I always was a sucker for civic duty, though – a proper little Girl Guide without the uniform, me, and always had been. Litter, old ladies needing the far side of the road, motorists needing directions, old men needing a helping hand – that sort of good deed. I ran to the end of the road, still trying to provoke a spark of life from the moribund mobile, before realising this wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So I ran back – not sensible in the summer sun, which in Kent can shine quite convincingly, especially at midday – and shoved my stuff in the lock-up garage. If I could get what Paula insisted on calling Trev, and I preferred to think of simply as the Transit, to start, I’d do my civic duty in person. For once he – or in my terms, it – coughed into life on the second try, and we bundled off down an archetypal leafy lane in the direction of Lavange, the nearest village of any size. I knew where the police house was – I’d driven past it a couple of times. And found it with only three false starts. You see, a city girl’s used to big reflecting road signs, not discreet little finger-posts, readable only if you’re going at the rate of a pony and trap, and though the Transit was never going to win at Le Mans, it wasn’t that slow. Anyway, there it was – except it was no longer a police house, any old police house, that is, but Peel House, its architectural inadequacies hidden under bristling scaffolding. A chippy was just carrying his box through what would no doubt be turned into a noble false front aspect quadrupling its real estate value.
‘Nah. Closed a few weeks ago. A couple of days after the post office and a month before the pub.’
‘So where’s the nearest cop shop?’
‘You could try Halham: that’s open during the week, I think.’
By now, what with the heat and the maze of roads going nowhere, I was thoroughly rattled. If I’d had any sense, of course, I’d have tried my mobile again. But I was now on a quest, a mission. And missions inevitably mean blinkers.
Half an hour later I found the police station at Halham. Someone had made an effort with hanging baskets and tubs, which made my heart sink – another spot of privatisation by the look of things. No. There was an official-looking front door, complete with entry phone. But not one to admit me. I was your hoi polloi, wasn’t I? If I wanted to talk to the forces of Law and Order I could press a button or two and be put through to the main station in Ashford. I pressed. I pressed again. And nothing happened. I did the obvious thing. I banged the door and the adjoining window and yelled blue murder.
OK. A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man, as my gran used to say. It was clear I had to head for Ashford. I was on piecework, I had a house to paint in the brief interval of fine weather before the rain inevitably returned and here I was, driving to one of Kent’s less inspired country towns. Another day I’d have gasped at the beauty of the Downs I was driving across. Another day I’d have thought it charming to be held up by a little train chugging slowly across the road by a quaint old pub called the Tickled Trout. Today I’d have swapped the lot for Spaghetti Junction. Not to mention a motorcycle patrolman in his gorgeous leathers to whom I could have poured out all my woes.
Ashford has an irritating ring-road, which always traps me in the wrong lane. It’s got plenty of car parks, but you have to pay for those and I was parking simply as a helpful citizen, not as a mean shopper. There must be a spot for helpful Josephine Publics by the police station. There was. By the library. Jealously guarded by a parking warden, puce with the heat – or with anger: a motorist was just skidaddling out of the way. If I’d been in a linen dress in a Volvo, I might have got away with a smile and a nod and a point at the police station. Overalls and a Transit? Hardly. I ended up paying. Perhaps my honesty – OK, my cowardice – would stand me in good stead at the nick.
I’ve never felt comfortable in police stations – well, who does, apart, I suppose, from the folk who work there? But I squared my shoulders and breezed in, ready to confront an impregnable desk sergeant. Relief: the woman at the front desk was a civilian about my age and casual with it, at least about her mascara, some of which was melting into her sweat. She looked like those white-faced clowns I saw when I was very, very small and at my first and last circus. What was it the shrink on the detox programme had said: revisit your inner child? Well, there were flyers for a circus out Great Chart way early next week: I might take myself along if I have the time. I passed her a rather seedy Kleenex from my back pocket – in my panic I’d forgotten to peel my dungarees off, so I was even hotter than I needed to be. She rang through for an officer, and assured me, while I waited, that he was an absolute pussycat and I mustn’t be put off by his fierce face. I’m glad she had, or I’d have been absolutely terrified, whatever he looked like. The Filth had that effect on me. But I mustn’t think of the police as Filth or Busies or anything derogatory, I told myself, standing at best Girl Guide attention as he materialised on the far side of the desk.
‘DS Marsh,’ he said, his eyes a completely smile-free zone.
I nearly quipped that I knew his brother Romney, but thought better of it. It was his eyebrows that were the trouble: tangles of ginger, like Brillo pads left to rust on the draining-board. They were much thicker than his age suggested – brows apart, I wouldn’t have put him at much more than forty, about five nine tall and weighing in at about ten and a half stone.
‘Caffy Tyler,’ I said. ‘Except I’m not a Tyler, but a painter.’
‘Caffy Tyler?’ His brows quivered disapproval.
‘When I was little I couldn’t say “th”,’ I explained. ‘The name stuck. What I’m here for, Sergeant,’ I continued, thinking it was time I grabbed the initiative, ‘is to report a body. The body of a man in his fifties, I’d say. Big, heavy – lots of rings. In the guest bedroom of the house I’m painting at the moment.’
You’d think he heard such announcements every day. ‘And where might that be?’ He almost yawned.
‘Crabton Manor. Near Lavange.’
‘Full address?’
‘That is its address. It’s a big house – doesn’t need common things like a house number or a street. But it’s not a proper manor.’
‘No?’ For a moment he seemed almost interested.
‘No. Nothing medieval about it. Not like the one out Singleton way. Just a Victorian status symbol – you know the sort of thing: I can afford to waste more wood than you can afford to waste.’
‘Lots of –?’ His index finger described turrets and curlicues.
‘All the better for my pay packet. Until this afternoon. I’ve already lost two hours’ wages coming over here.’
Without meaning to, I had his entire attention: ‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve taken two hours to report a death?’
I reflected on my epic journey and found my chin hardening. ‘Not quite. But it’ll take me at least half an hour to get back. Now, would you like the details or not?’
The interview room he ushered me into wasn’t too bad – I’d certainly seen far worse. And while I’d rather expected him to radio for an immediate investigation, he seemed quite keen to get the details down as quickly as possible. After a moment or two towering over me, just to establish who was boss, no doubt, he sat down opposite me.
‘Now, the owner of this Crabton Manor is –’
‘A Mr van der Poele,’ I said, spelling the last bit. ‘A South African gentleman, if he deserves the term.’ He’d beaten Paula, my boss, down to a profit margin thinner than a coat of paint. ‘He’s not around much, which is good, because he’s got these huge dogs he lets run free. He thinks it’s funny if the ugly great brutes trap you up the ladder just when you need your pee-break.’
‘Tea break?’
‘You heard what I said. He has a lot of visitors, whether he’s there or not – a lot of coming and going.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘He told my boss, that’s Paula Farmer – she lives out Folkestone way.’ I burrowed in my bib and produced one of her business cards. She was very keen on us handing out cards, was Paula. But she might not have wanted him to clean under his nails with it. ‘He told Paula that he’d be in London for a couple of days. She may have his number.’ She was very efficient on contact details, too.
‘Women painters!’ He wouldn’t be asking for a quote for his house, would he? No, he inspected the proceeds of his ad hoc manicure and dropped the card on the table.
‘Yes. We do all sorts of jobs, large and small. One week it’ll be a pensioner’s bungalow, the next a big place – not just the Manor, but we hope to get the contract for a proper restoration job down at Fullers. We’re doing the outside at the moment.’
‘That place on the Isle of Oxney? Hmm.’ He nodded a couple of times, and pulled himself to his feet. ‘I’ll get on to my colleagues, Miss Tyler.’
I decided not to remind those eyebrows I was a Ms.
‘Would you like a cup of tea while you wait?’
Though I’d rather have had water, I was too astounded by the offer to tell him so. I’d never known policemen to be so generous with refreshments.
While I drank whatever he – or more likely, Melting Mascara – had brewed, he took a short statement asking me exactly what I’d seen and done. I was happy to tell him, especially as he hadn’t shown any signs of asking why I’d left my home city and come to Kent to work. He was as affable as Mascara had said he’d be.
Until she called him out of the room for a moment, and he came back in, his face like thunder.
‘I take it you’ve never heard of the offence known as wasting police time, Miss Tyler? I have to inform you that my colleagues have found no signs of the body you allege was at Crabton Manor. So would you like to tell me what kind of game you think you’re playing?’
Chapter Two
That miserable bugger Marsh more or less booted me out. There was no way I’d let him see how he’d rattled me, any more than I’d ever let coppers see how upset I was. Coppers or anyone else. Whatever the situation I always presented the stiffest of upper lips. I beamed brightly at Messy Mascara. From under her desk, I got a cheery wave; she was also giving Marsh a number of fingers so small even he should have been able to count them. He might have caught her screwing her index finger into her forehead but she managed to convert that into a dab at her eye.
At least the parking warden homing in on the Transit hadn’t seen any of this, so I managed to convince her that I’d been to report a crime and since the police had been so impressed by my news they’d given me a cup of tea, which had held me up. Since she’d not actually done more than prime her pen, she let me off. She looked hot enough to melt: why has no one in authority twigged that blue serge isn’t good news on hot days?
I regretted feeling sorry for the representatives of law and order when another serge-clad figure, albeit in shirtsleeves, hove into view. This one was a police constable with a gleam in his eye that told me that he was going to spend an hour at least checking whether the van deserved its MOT. I knew it did; the garage knew it did. Starting system apart, Paula believed in properly maintained tools, whether as small as a bradawl or as big as a bus. But Paula also believed in minimalism when it came to the law and her wheels, so I leapt inside, praying it’d start first pull. It did. And not a single nasty particle coming from its exhaust, not that I could smell, anyway. Paula’s Pots was an environmentally friendly firm.
I didn’t think anyone would ambush me with a speed-gun on the ring-road, but there was a lot of opportunity for an unfriendly traffic cop to accuse you of changing lanes at the wrong place or wrong speed or whatever, so I peeled off as soon as I could, heading for a great oval shopping mall called the Designer Outlet. Much as I was tempted to go and pick up a bargain or two, my conscience and the heat combined to make me pass virtuously by – them and the CCTV cameras I was sure the police would take an unnatural interest in today. No, these days I wasn’t usually this paranoid, but there was something about Marsh that reawakened all my former feelings about the police. I reckon it’s only the middle classes who believe they’re friendly, supportive individuals. Certainly people with my background don’t: we see folk literally getting away with murder because they speak nicely and know the right people. So I turned resolutely from trendy tops and picked my way gently back. It was good to find that, little by little, my pulse rate returned to normal and the only reason my palms were sweating was the heat. At last, after a decorous drive down the motorway, I was happy to park the van in the shade of one of Mr van der Poele’s mighty oaks. Well, it was actually a sycamore, but Trev wasn’t complaining and van der Poele wouldn’t have admitted to anything as vulgar as a sycamore on his patch. Did he have anything as vulgar as a new shallow grave at the bottom of his garden? It didn’t take me long to establish that he hadn’t.
And there I was, back up my ladder at Crabton Manor, seething and two hours adrift on my day’s schedule. Now the sun had shifted round, it was easier to see through the window: no, there was nothing on the bed, not now, but you didn’t need to be a forensic scientist or SOCO or whatever they were called these days to tell that something had once been there. It had lain long enough to make a dinge I thought I could still make out, and even my unscientific eyes had no difficulty seeing where the duvet had drifted on to the floor when someone had relieved it of the corpse’s weight. No, it had definitely been lying on, not under the duvet – in this heat, under a duvet?
In any case, I demanded, how could the police possibly have checked? The ladders had been where I’d left them padlocked together – Paula insisted on that: she didn’t want her ladders to be either victims or perpetrators of crime. Even though there was scaffolding climbing the gable ends you needed a twelve-foot ladder to get on to the first stage. Paula had a key to the outhouse that housed a loo, though I’d have been embarrassed to let anyone see, let alone use, so primitive a piece of plumbing with nowhere to wash your hands afterwards. But van der Poele had insisted that she give him advance notice when we needed access to the inside of the house itself to paint the tops and insides of window and doorframes. There’d be someone there to let her in and let her out, he declared. So the police wouldn’t have been able to get hold of keys from Paula. They’d not broken down the door. How had they got in to see that all was well?
As I twisted to get a better angle to work at, a simpler explanation occurred to me: that the police had done nothing at all and were bluffing me, to save themselves hours of tedious paperwork. I wouldn’t have blamed them, but there was no need for Marsh to have been so nasty to me. Maybe I’d give Messy Mascara a bell in the morning to see if he was usually like that or if he’d produced a special performance for me. Maybe it’d be safer not to bother.
I peered down at the tyre tracks crisscrossing the semicircular gravel drive in front of the house. Even if they’d been on snow or mud, I couldn’t have made much of them. So I couldn’t have swept back into Ashford police station demanding the head honcho to tell him one of his subordinates was a lazy, lying layabout and waving the photographic evidence under his eyes. But maybe I could photograph one thing. Paula insisted that we keep in the van glove-box one of those party cameras you use and throw away. People see big vans involved in road accidents and assume it’s been driven by some testosterone-fuelled youth who’d ploughed it into innocent hapless family cars. Paula reckoned that if we could take photos before the vehicles were moved, we’d always be able to prove we were the innocent parties – which we damn well had better be. Maybe the camera worked like a rabbit’s foot, or maybe we were too scared of Paula’s response if we bent her Trev so much as a thou. out of true. So far, anyway, there’d been no need for the little gizmo.
I nipped down the ladder, retrieved the camera, small enough to tuck into my bib, and swarmed back up again. Just think, out there are thousands of women paying millions of pounds to their local gyms just for the privilege of doing an exercise I get to do for free every day.
I was sure there were all sorts of technical procedures for photographing through glass, but I’d no idea what they might be. I tried pressing the lens right up to the glass, and holding it well away, straight on, diagonally across. And then I realised that the light was better than it had been all day for this particular bit of fascia board, so I applied my efforts to that.
It usually takes me about twenty minutes to do a section the size I was working on. Because I was on my own, and I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks leaning to the side, I decided to quit after ten minutes to shift the ladder a little. I’d forgotten, as I always did, just how heavy it was. It’d be so easy to let it slip the tiniest bit and put one of the sides through the window. So very easy. And so very tempting. But before I could let my nosiness overcome my professional pride, I found another pair of hands was helping me. Paula’s. And Paula’s hands did not let ladders slip within half a mile of vulnerable glass.
‘Working late,’ she observed, treading on the bottom rung to plant the end firmly in the earth.
Paula didn’t ask questions. She made statements. You had to respond to the statement.
‘There was a little problem earlier,’ I admitted. ‘So I thought I’d put in a bit extra to finish off.’
She waited, unsmiling. Although she’d only be about ten or twelve years older me, mid to late thirties perhaps, she had this nasty habit of making me feel about thirteen again, having sneaked back into school for a bit and then being carpeted by my headteacher for not going more often and staying longer. Perhaps it was Paula’s size: she was about five foot ten and strongly built. She dwarfed me, although I turned in at five-five and eight and a bit stone. To be fair, Paula had shown more kindness while I’d been with the Pots than the headmistress had the whole time I’d been technically in school. But I wouldn’t push my luck.
‘As a matter of fact, it’s easier now – the sun’s at a better angle.’
‘Quite.’ She still didn’t smile. There was more to come. If not now, later.
I put my foot on the first rung.
‘Client confidentiality, Caffy.’
Honestly, she made us sound like plastic surgeons or bank managers. I took a risk and shot upwards. Perhaps that’d be the sum total of my bollocking. Perhaps it wouldn’t.
To be fair, she didn’t leave me to tidy up on my own, but busied herself down below while I finished my section and rather more than made up the time I’d lost. Lost? Wasted? Used doing what I saw as my duty?
Risking a snub, when I was on terra firma again I asked, ‘Fancy a drink? Down at the Hop Vine?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll meet you there.’ She locked the garage, checking the padlock twice before she was satisfied, and set off in her hatchback.
Forgiven but not quite not forgotten. I, too, gave one last check round, then another, pressing my nose against the windows. There was something wrong somewhere, wasn’t there? Surely? If only it showed.
To my amazement – she was usually slow getting to the bar – Paula had set up the drinks on one of the Hop Vine’s outside tables, the one furthest, as it happened, from the children’s play area. She even smiled as I straddled the bench.
‘I didn’t think you’d be able to wait for your Bishop’s Finger,’ she said, toasting me with her glass, which held her usual tipple, red wine. She claimed this had medicinal qualities.
I raised my glass and drank deep. The beer was just the right temperature.
‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘that mud-stirring sometimes means the stirrer gets splashed.’ If she’d had spectacles she’d have looked over them, meaningfully.
She didn’t need to. She was referring to my past, wasn’t she?
‘The police came to you and told you to shut me up.’ I could make statements, too.
‘They came for the house keys, originally,’ she conceded. ‘And then started talking about you and wondering whether I was employing the right sort of person. You were very brave not to change your name, Caffy.’ She sounded as if she meant it.
‘Or naïve. But then, who’d have thought I’d be doing anything that’d make the police want to look me up on their computer? I’m only painting up that ladder, you know.’
‘Quite. And what interests me is that they knew all about you when they came to see me. Funny they should bother when you’d have thought they might be more interested in looking for this body of yours.’
‘There was a body, Paula. Honestly. You don’t imagine things like that, do you?’
‘Tell me about it.’
I drew a little picture with my index finger in the pollen dust on the table. ‘He’d be about your height, I’d say.’
‘About five foot ten, then.’
‘And built, as we used to say in Brum, like a brick sh –’
I bit back the expression. OK, it was the Bishop’s Finger talking. Paula allowed her smooth brow to crumple in a wince. She had a broad forehead like the women in those paintings of Dutch living rooms, and an expression that was slow to change. Her eyes narrowed slightly in a further warning as she said, ‘So it’d be hard work getting him off the bed and out of the house. Assuming that out of the house is where he’s gone.’
‘Rigor mortis,’ I put in, eager to divert her from my vulgarity. ‘Got to consider rigor mortis, too. Heavy and stiff: really tricky to shift. Plus he had some huge, chunky rings: big as knuckle-dusters. They might damage the wallpaper or paintwork.’
Paula nodded reflectively. ‘Though I can hardly see van der Poele asking us to do any touching in.’
I hung my head. If the manor were as scruffy inside as it was outside, there’d have been rich pickings for Paula’s Pots. Indoor work was better than outdoor, especially in the winter. As far as I knew, however, we were booked up nearly eight months in advance, thanks largely to Paula’s meticulous working methods. And someone like van der Poele would no doubt be bringing in fancy London-based interior decorators. Not that Paula didn’t have an interior decorator on her team. But Les Sprigg, cut it how you would, didn’t sound remotely glamorous, and he worked not from a design studio, but from the back room of his flat.
I sank the last of my half-pint. We only ever had one drink, unless the whole team of us were gathering together and we’d draw straws to see who got to collect and return everyone at the end of the evening. ‘Best be off then.’
‘Eventually,’ she nodded. She was fossicking in her dungarees pockets. At last she came up with a couple of keys on a ring, and a slip of paper. ‘I thought we might try these out first.’
‘In that case,’ I said, digging in my own dungarees, ‘we might try this again.’
‘Van der Poele’s agent slipped them to me,’ Paula explained, releasing two locks on the back door. She’d made us strip off our dirty clothes, donning the sort of paper overalls that wouldn’t have been out of place at an official crime scene but which she used when she’d got fine restoration work to do. And the overshoes might not have been forensically clean, but were brilliant when padding over valuable carpets to price jobs. ‘He thought it’d be a terrible pain to be here every time we wanted to open a window. But he swore me to absolute secrecy. Seems the Boss Man likes people to jump when he tells them to, regardless of what other jobs he’s also told them to do.’
‘Is this how the police got in?’
‘After we’d both told them we didn’t have any?’ Slipping on disposable gloves, she locked up behind her, a procedure I wasn’t entirely happy with, I must say. When I’ve been in a tight spot, I’ve always liked at least one way out.
‘What if –’ I began.
‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘Well, are you coming or not?’
I decided to trust her, and thrust my fingers into the clammy latex.
As I’d thought, the house was decidedly tatty. Rumour, pretty accurate in rural parts, I’d found, suggested he’d picked up the house and contents as a job lot. The kitchen still had an old range, supplemented by one of those microwaves that do everything, playing God Save the Queen while they do it. Some of the furniture was so ugly you couldn’t imagine anyone having conceived it, let alone having spoilt good timber making it. Some of it was so sweetly light I wanted to pick it up and take it home with me. The carpets looked as smooth as silk, but were badly worn in doorways. Someone had replaced old velvet curtains with bright new ones, skewing the whole balance of otherwise interesting rooms. But Paula wouldn’t let me dawdle, imaging things how I’d like them. She led me lickety-split up the main stairs and into one of the bedrooms with an incomparable view of our scaffolding. The sash windows came in a cluster of three, side by side. She opened the widest, the one in the middle. ‘And if necessary, leave any talking to me,’ she said.
I didn’t argue. The heavy mahogany furniture didn’t encourage arguing. I thought of countless ignorant young brides brought here and forced by this very fireplace into lying still and thinking of England.
The evening sun fell kindly in the rooms at the back of the house, the rosewood furniture glowing like fire.
‘Worth a mint,’ Paula said. ‘Even this stuff, which is fake – see, the grain’s been painted on.’ Going round a house with her when she was preparing estimates was always an education. I particularly enjoyed it when a piece of furniture pernickety couples had claimed was a priceless antique was nothing more, according to Paula, than compressed paper, worth even less than they’d paid for it at some superstore. The thing was, she’d treat the tat as carefully as if it had been real Sheraton, and expect us to follow suit.
Next on our itinerary was the room I’d peered into. Not only was the duvet dragged sideways, there were a couple of what looked like blue rope fibres on the pillow. There was another halfway to the door. I took photos of the room itself, but doubted if the lens was up to taking details like the fibres. All the same, I tried.
‘Something tied in our rope was here anyway,’ she whispered. She picked up one, and wrapped it in a tissue before stowing in her pocket. And then she grabbed my wrist, touching a finger to her lips.
I heard it, too. The scrape of a key in a badly maintained lock. We were back like lightning into the room the window of which she’d prepared earlier, and out on to the scaffolding’s top platform. We’d both had enough practice closing windows tightly and soundlessly. There was a ladder between our level and the next, where we stripped down to our summer shorts. Paula held out her hand for my overall and overshoes. She balled them tightly with hers, cramming everything into a space between the scaffolding and the planks it supported as if it were there to stop a bit of movement. Down the next ladder to the next level.
I gripped her wrist – I probably hurt her a lot. Because though I’d have trusted her to talk the hind legs off a donkey, if necessary, I couldn’t see even an explanation that would con Mr van der Poele cutting any ice with his dogs. No wonder she was on her feet, screaming the place down.
Baying. That’s what they were doing. Baying. I’ve always kept my own counsel about hunting and other countryside issues, never knowing whether my next client would be pro or anti-Countryside Alliance. But I tell you this, I was glad I’d been incarnated as a human, not a fox. There wasn’t a hair on the nape of my neck that was lying flat: I was ready to wet myself with fright. And here was my boss on her hind legs drawing everyone’s attention to our plight. She’d told me to let her do the talking – should I leave the screaming to her as well, or, as my instinct demanded, join in? Those animals must be jumping six feet into the air.
I decided to scream a bit too. Well, the scream more or less came out of its own accord.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ He didn’t say ‘hell’, actually – he used the sort of word that would have driven even Paula’s eyebrows skywards.
A man with a bald patch strode in our direction. From here we could see the regular tufts where he’d had hair implanted. Not that his grooming was our immediate concern.
‘You – you two up there! What the hell are you doing?’
The anger in his voice raised the dogs to new paroxysms of baying. I’ll swear you could hear the snap of their teeth as they bit furiously at thin air they’d much rather have had thickened with a nice bit of my flesh.
I also heard the snap of the whip as he cuffed them back into simmering, resentful silence, legs braced for another attack.
Paula stepped forward to the edge of our platform. A quick flap of her hand meant I was to stay out of sight. I obeyed. ‘Good evening, Mr van der Poele,’ she said, as if greeting the vicar at the beetle drive.
‘Miss Farmer, is it? Would you care to explain what the hell you think you’re doing on my property?’
She gave him one of her bland, unfurrowed stares. ‘Painting it, Mr van der Poele. Or I was earlier and will be tomorrow. I was just going over tomorrow’s schedule with my employee, here, when we were set on by your dogs. I thought after the last incident you were going to keep them under proper control.’
So she’d complained to him without telling us, had she? Good for her.
‘I’m entitled to set my animals on trespassers,’ he said. ‘Without warning.’
‘Fine. But not on my staff. I have an employer’s duty of care, as I said the other day.’
Van der Poele snarled an order, reinforcing its message with the whip. The dogs whimpered and lay down.
Paula made another of her statements. ‘When you’ve confined them, we will come down and leave you in peace. By the way, did you know that one of your windows isn’t properly fastened? I found it unlocked when I was discussing tomorrow’s work.’
Van der Poele barked an order. Another man appeared, leashed the dogs and dragged them off to the outhouse housing our loo. I hoped they wouldn’t stay there – I’d rather wee behind the bushes than brave them.
For security’s sake, there was no ladder from here down to the ground. ‘So how do we get down?’ I muttered. ‘It’s too far to jump.’ It was dusk, too – and goodness knew what lurked to break an unwary ankle.
We’d often teased Paula about the little rucksack she always carried. She pointed out – rightly – it was high fashion and we could get our own from that nice shop in the Outlet. We didn’t dispute that, merely pointing out that torches and plumb lines weren’t your average fashion accessories. Nor would we wear ours up ladders. To be honest, where she lived the torch might well have been useful: there were no pavements and no streetlights. Just to add to the fun there were no speed restrictions either, so if you didn’t want to be squashed as flat as a hedgehog, it was either dress like a traffic cone or flash a strong beam at any oncoming speedster. Anyway, my camera was safely stowed, and Paula’s torch was already in her hand, its beam illuminating bolts making easy hand and foot holds. When I was down she dropped the torch neatly into my outstretched hands and followed suit.
The van welcomed us phlegmatically enough, starting third go – just enough hesitation to set the dogs off again – and we set off sedately through the lanes. Paula said nothing till I dropped her back at the Hop Vine. I could rather have used another drink, but all she said, as she headed to her car, was, ‘You join the others on the Tenterden job tomorrow. I’ll work on van der Poele’s place myself.’
I opened my mouth to protest – you get attached to a project, and I’d have liked to be able to point at the newly-painted eaves and say, ‘All my own work.’ But I thought better of it and simply waved her goodnight.
On the way home I saw bats and a badger, and felt very glad to be alive to see them. But then I came across a lifeless pheasant, its brave tail stuck up like a signal of surrender: life wasn’t all roses, even out here.
Chapter Three
‘You don’t want to worry, Caffy,’ Meg said kindly, first thing the following morning. ‘We’ve all got phobias. I can’t go up ladders the way you do, and mention a bat to Helen here and she’ll go all hysterical on you. And those dogs would put anyone off.’
Meg was the oldest of the team, forty at least, and tended to mother us all. Her dark hair was streaked with grey, not from age but from where she’d run distracted painty hands through it when we worried her. Helen, her pale, blonde niece, was the youngest, eighteen or nineteen, and thin to the point where I was worried about anorexia. We all kept an eye on her, making sure she ate well while she was working. On the quiet, I watched to make sure she couldn’t wander off and make herself vomit. But she stayed thin. Perhaps she was just blessed with skinny genes, and when we sank into tubby, waistless middle age, we’d be full of envy, not anxiety.
We were all in Trev, since he lived on the road outside my flat. I’d picked them up from Kingsnorth, once separate from Ashford, but now being swallowed rapidly by the dormitory estates the government seemed obsessed with building. I stuck to country roads as far as High Halden, because I was totally unable to resist the crossroads known as Cuckold’s Corner. Then I joined what claimed to be an A road, but was really a glorified lane, with nowhere to overtake the heavy lorry that might just reach thirty if the driver sold his soul. I saw a chance to change the subject.
‘I thought the South East was supposed to be rich,’ I chuntered. ‘And yet – motorways apart – it doesn’t seem to have a single decent road. Haven’t you ever heard of dual-carriageways?’
‘It isn’t as though we haven’t asked for them,’ Meg protested.
Good: with a bit of luck I could keep her on roads and off dogs until she’d forgotten she was supposed to be feeling sorry for me. While I’ve never minded lying my way out of a spot, it’s always seemed to me easier to stick to the truth if possible, probably because it’s easier to remember. Since in general I had a very happy relationship with canines, I wasn’t too sure about Paula’s reason for my no-show at Crabton Manor. Still, she had to say something, and after yesterday I owed her.
‘A lot of very rich people do live down here, it’s true,’ Meg was saying. I must have missed a bit. She ran off the names of several former and current pop stars. ‘But they don’t shop locally – I mean, can you imagine someone like Mick Jagger popping into Paula’s mum’s salon and asking for highlights and a trim?’
I was hard put to imagine anyone popping into Paula’s mum’s salon – even Paula wriggled out of that.
‘And some incomers certainly can’t be described as assets to the community,’ she continued, warming to her theme. ‘There was that supermarket shooting last year – the gangland vendetta?’
I watched in my side mirrors the frantic attempts of the Jag – yes, latest series – to overtake me. Or perhaps he was just trying to hitch up on the tow bar.
‘That’s the one. Imagine being at the checkout when a murderer pushes his basket ahead of you.’ Helen supplied a satisfactory shudder, like a heroine in a silent movie.
I just sat very firmly on memories of the sort of things that happened in gangland vendettas.
‘And, of course, there was that kidnap at the hotel near Tenterden. But perhaps that doesn’t count, since the gang came down from London…’
And had been pretty incompetent, as I recalled. Even so, reducing such a vile thing to a matter for gossip made me feel uncomfortable. ‘You’ll have to remind me of the turn,’ I said. ‘It’s a while since I was here, and you know how hopeless I am with roads.’
‘If Paula heard you saying that, she’d be furious,’ Meg said. ‘You know how she hates people putting themselves down.’
Helen said languidly, ‘I wouldn’t mind going into Tenterden. I forgot to get myself any lunch.’
If ever there were a green signal, that was it. The van headed purposefully for the Waitrose car park, disgorging Helen and Meg – and then, yes, me too. Tenterden is one of those pretty little towns that I can’t resist. While the others went into the supermarket, I drifted to the High Street. I knew the shops were geared for the tourist market – a steam engine from the preserved railway whistled even as I locked the van’s doors – but I loved the wide village street, the quaint (and stupendously expensive) houses, and the immensely solid church, which looked as if you really could find sanctuary, if not solace, there. It wasn’t nine o’clock yet, and though Paula liked us to be at work by then, we could clip a bit off our lunch break to make up. Just to walk up and down made me feel more comfortable than I could ever remember feeling back in Brum. OK. I exaggerate. Like a lot of people I didn’t have an idyllic childhood, and in my later teens I was constantly looking over my shoulder. Me, and a lot of my friends. Here, though, the sun was shining, there was enough wind to blow a hint of the engine’s coal smoke into the town, and a wonderful sense of contentment and well-being. Maybe I even started to hum as I ambled along.
If I did, the music choked in my throat. Over by a swish dress shop was – No, I couldn’t, mustn’t believe it was –.
Gasping for breath, I leant a second against the nearest shop window. Antiques. The owner came out, ready to shoo me away, but was soon fussing round asking if I was all right. Half of me wanted to hug her, the other half wished she’d go away and leave me alone, lest her mother-hen act attracted the attention of that man. Even the shop itself might – he liked fine things.
It was him. Had to be. You don’t sleep with a man for nearly three years without recognising certain gestures, certain movements of the head. All that talk about criminals, and who should be almost within earshot but Clive Granville.
Gabbling my thanks to the shopkeeper, I pulled myself clear and dived into a newsagent’s. If I grabbed a paper I could put my head down in that and hope he’d not notice me. And I could buy things, not just the paper I was already queuing for. It was patchily damp from where I’d touched it.
I broke away from the queue, nipping to a stand of sun specs and another of baseball caps. Camouflage. That was better. Retreating to the back of the shop, as a final touch I rolled up my dungaree legs: now I looked like a rather shabby all-American girl (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms!) with my tan and perkily cut sunbleached hair. I was sure, however, that no cheerleader had ever gone for Joseph’s coat trainers like mine, dappled with a hundred odd colours.
The others would be waiting for me. What if they came looking for me, yelling my name? Not a lot of Caffys in Tenterden. They’d lead him straight to me; and I’d have led him straight to them. More potential victims. I’d left Birmingham not just to save myself but also to protect the few friends I had left. Now I had a brand new group of friends, family, more like, and he could sniff them out and punish them simply for befriending me. I couldn’t bear to think about what I ought to do – except that, in the short term, I’d better get back to them. So I paid up, and slipped gently from the shop into a waxing tide of elderly ladies. It was their shopping hour, just as it had been their shopping hour since William the Bastard had landed not all that far down the road. On one of my free weekends I’d actually walked to the site of Harold’s battle. Poor guy, it had probably been an old lady’s walking stick that had polished him off, not an arrow at all. Or being hacked with huge, heavy swords. I didn’t envy poor Edith Swan Neck, his mistress, her job of identifying him. I’d had to do it once or twice for friends, if not lovers, in the clinical privacy of a morgue, with the relevant bits sanitised as far as forensic medicine could accomplish. It wasn’t pleasant.
And I wanted to make damned sure no one had to do it for me. Which meant staying very much in one piece. It was hard to walk along trying not to have eye contact with anyone but making sure I saw Clive well before he saw me. I nipped sharply into the pedestrian way leading to the car park and was ready to heave a sigh of relief. But who should be looking into the very smart ladies’ shoe shop (come on, Caffy, is there any other sort in Tenterden?) but Clive himself. He and his female companion, a woman rather younger and even slimmer than I’d been when he selected me, were engrossed in a row of sexy sandals. I scuttered past, hoping, indeed praying, that Helen and Meg didn’t take it into their heads to yell greetings at me as I approached. Yes, they were turning towards me, and yes, their mouths were forming great round O’s. Perhaps I could convince them I wasn’t me. At least I had the paper to shield my face – I hadn’t meant to buy the Guardian, but that was what I’d picked up. It would have been Taz’s natural choice. But I mustn’t think about Taz now. I must think about quietly and unobtrusively weaving round the car park and returning to the van by the most circuitous route possible: once anyone identified me with it I’d had it, it was so easily identifiable.
‘Just say nothing, pretend not to be with me and go and open up,’ I told Meg, flipping her the keys.
She took one look at me and caught them, bundling me in ahead of her.
‘Don’t ask. Just start and drive off.’
I was halfway under a dustsheet already.
The bloody van wouldn’t start. Maybe that’s why Paula insisted the damned thing was a he, it was so sodding temperamental. Shit. Not like me to swear these days. Neither Meg nor Paula approved.
‘It’s no use,’ Meg almost wept, ‘I can’t do it. You’ll have to try, Caffy.’
If it didn’t start soon, it’d be under the bonnet time for me. Not where you want to be when you don’t want to draw attention to yourself. Not when Granville prided himself there was no motor he couldn’t tame. Motor or, of course, woman. By whatever means.
Just as kindly people were gathering round to help, I got it to fire. I should have handed over to Meg, of course. But I was so intent on keeping the engine ticking over, I stayed in the driving seat. And as I crept out of the car park, my eyes met, as if it had all been staged, the disbelieving eyes of Clive Granville. Despite the shades, he knew me.
I almost threw up. There was only one thing to do. Make sure he didn’t catch up with us.
I ruthlessly carved a Mercedes, driven, by its octogenarian owner, more in the fashion of a Reliant Robin, took to every side street I could find, and finally found myself going in exactly the opposite direction to the one I wanted. It was only after I’d completed a lumbering U-turn that Meg spoke.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Not your fault,’ I said, truthfully. ‘I know Paula thinks it’s a bit cute to have a van only I can start, but it really isn’t funny. I can’t think why she doesn’t get the sodding ignition system sorted. Fucking stupid not to. She bosses us: why doesn’t she boss the garage?’
‘I know you’re upset, Caffy, but all the same …’ Meg sighed, because I’d sworn, I suppose. ‘And we don’t criticise Paula, remember, not behind her back, do we?’
‘Just shut it, Meg! Please!’ These were my friends. I should be yelling at fate, not them. I took several deep breaths. ‘Sorry.’ Another breath. If I talked normally maybe I’d feel a bit more normal. ‘Did you get some lunch, Helen?’
‘I didn’t fancy anything there,’ she whined.
‘But,’ Meg declared, ‘she can have my egg sandwiches – I’ve bought a baguette to replace them.’ Despite her increasing pudge, Meg wouldn’t miss lunch. Or fail to notice where the speedo needle was. ‘Careful, it’s that very sharp bend coming up.’
She was right. If I wasn’t careful I would roll the van and kill us all and save Granville the job. And no, I wasn’t exaggerating.
