Country Pursuits Read online

  Rance had already set up an incident room at the station. Photos of the Reverend – dead and alive – were stuck on one of the walls. On another wall, a large white board covered in red marker pen indicated the victim’s last movements. In the centre of the board Rance had written the word ‘motive’ and underlined it several times. So far they had none. In the middle of the room, surrounded by empty Ginsters pasty wrappers and cans of Red Bull, sat a mixture of grey-faced detectives in crumpled suits, moaning about being drafted in to work over the weekend, and a few young, shiny-eyed uniforms. Even with the grumbling of the more seasoned detectives, there was a certain frisson in the room. Bedlington CID had never seen such a thing before and it was causing quite a kerfuffle.

  ‘You’ve had calls from the Bedlington Bugle, the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror, sir,’ Rance was informed by the only female police officer, a small, squat, blonde woman typing away furiously on a laptop in the corner of the room.

  Rance rolled his eyes. ‘Not the bloody nationals as well! It’ll be front-page news all over the country tomorrow. The last thing we need are hordes of reporters descending like locusts and getting their facts wrong.’

  ‘Bound to be something to do with devil-worshippers, Guv. You know these religious types,’ remarked one of the detectives, a ravaged chain-smoking forty-something called Powers. He dragged on his cigarette and blew smoke rings expertly up towards the yellowing, nicotine-stained ceiling.

  Rance coughed. ‘Yes, well, we don’t know that yet, so I don’t want any of you making assumptions from the off. We’ve got a hell of a job in front of us. We need someone to put out a press release, get on to the press bureau.’

  ‘Sir,’ said another detective, reaching for the phone.

  ‘DS Powers. After the staff cuts in this area we’re short on manpower. I know it’s not normal procedure, but you’re pairing up with PC Penny. Give him the benefit of your expertise.’ Rance allowed himself a sardonic smile. Penny looked like he might pass out with excitement but Powers was outraged; detectives worked a murder case, not some pimply faced young uniform!

  Rance carried on. ‘I want you two to be in charge of all the house-to-house calls in the village. Talk to everyone, find out what they know, how they got along with the Reverend.’ Penny jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and started fishing for his pocket book, while Powers groaned and muttered under his breath.

  ‘Anything from CCTV?’ Rance asked the room.

  ‘Only camera in the village is in the shop, Guv,’ said Penny. ‘I don’t think we’re going to get much.’

  Rance sighed. ‘What about next of kin?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘Victim’s unmarried. Parents both deceased, one sister who’s a missionary in Africa,’ chirped Penny.

  ‘Track her down, will you?’ Rance said. ‘One word to remember – sensitivity.’ Penny nodded vigorously. ‘Guv!’ He’d got his colour and enthusiasm back.

  ‘Right,’ said Rance, sounding more decisive than he felt. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Chapter 36

  THAT AFTERNOON POWERS and Penny found themselves over at Fairoaks, interviewing Brenda Briggs. Brenda had been the one to discover the body, when she’d popped over to the rectory to pick up the latest copy of the parish newsletter. On finding the back door slightly ajar, her curiosity had got the better of her and she’d entered the house, calling out the Reverend’s name. Five minutes later, Freddie Fox-Titt had been driving past when a hysterical Brenda had rushed into the middle of the road and flagged him down. Freddie had immediately called 999.

  Brenda was still in a dreadful state. She was clasping a glass of single malt whisky in one hand, trembling as she took the occasional sip. Her husband Ted was sitting silently beside her, his huge calloused hand occasionally patting hers. Brenda hadn’t been able to face going back to her cottage because she could see the rectory from her kitchen window, so Clementine had insisted they both get away from the scene – and the hordes of camera crews – to the relative serenity of her house.

  ‘Had you seen anyone suspicious hanging around the victim’s property recently?’ asked Powers, while Penny took down copious notes.

  ‘No one!’ replied Brenda tearfully. ‘Oh, why would anyone want to kill him? He was such a nice man. Seeing him lying there . . .’ She dissolved into floods of tears again.

  ‘We don’t know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt the Reverend,’ Clementine told the officers. ‘Churchminster is an extremely close-knit village and he was a very popular man.’ A memory rustled distantly in her brain as she said it, like leaves blowing in a gentle autumn wind. Was there something she should remember? Oh, her mind was all over the place!

  ‘No ex-wives with a grudge, or anything?’ asked Powers hopefully. Clementine shook her head. ‘The Reverend was married to the church, Detective. It was what he lived for.’ Her voice wobbled but she fought to maintain her composure. ‘It’s simply too awful for words. Here, in Churchminster!’

  Next, the two policemen spoke to a hysterical Dora and Eunice Merryweather, and were stuck in their sitting room for nearly two hours. Clutching embroidered hankies to their bony chests, both sisters were convinced the Reverend had been killed by devil-worshippers.

  ‘It’s happening all over the place!’ cried Dora, her sister nodding in fervent agreement as she offered them another slice of dried-up fruitcake. Powers got quite excited until he realized the Merryweathers didn’t have one shred of evidence to back up their theory, it was just that Dora had been reading a similar plot in one of her sensationalist crime novels.

  ‘We’ve wasted half the evening listening to them prattle on,’ complained Powers when they finally managed to escape from the suffocatingly hot cottage.

  ‘Aah, they’re harmless,’ said Penny. Dora and Eunice had reminded him of his great auntie Betty, who had always spoiled him with her homemade farmhouse fruitcake. Powers looked at him like he’d lost his marbles.

  Subsequent calls at Camilla’s, Babs Sax’s and the Jolly Boot disappointingly yielded nothing. At Benedict Towey’s the lights were off and no one was home. The village shop had also been closed as a mark of respect, so there was no Brenda to stir up gossip and just maybe give Penny and Powers something to work with.

  It was gone eight by the time they had reached the Maltings, and both were feeling dispirited. House-to-house calls were notoriously long and laborious, but so far they had nothing that gave any clue to the Reverend’s death. The general consensus was that he was a kind, friendly man, committed to his job and the parish. No one could think of anyone who would want to harm him. ‘The man’s so squeaky clean, he makes Mary Poppins look like a bleedin’ crook!’ exclaimed a frustrated Powers as they parked up.

  A shaken-looking Freddie welcomed them in. ‘Can I get you chaps a drink?’ he asked, showing them through into the living room.

  ‘No thank you, sir, we’re on duty,’ said Penny, looking around enviously at the expensive silk curtains and thick carpets you could sink ankle-deep in. What a pad!

  Angie was curled up on one of the huge sofas, with one of Freddie’s Arran jumpers wrapped around her shoulders. Even though it was the height of summer, ever since she’d heard the news of the Revd Goody’s death she just hadn’t been able to get warm. Now she was staring into the bottom of a huge G and T, still trying to take it in.

  ‘We’re trying to build up a picture of the victim’s last movements,’ explained Powers, trying not to stare at Angie’s chest, impressive even hidden under a layer of wool. ‘Can you tell us if you saw anything out of the ordinary, anyone suspicious hanging around?’ he asked ponderously. They both looked at each other and shook their heads.

  Then Freddie suddenly spun round to face them. ‘Hang on a tick, there was something!’ he exclaimed. Both policemen sat up alert in their seats and leaned forward, listening.

  ‘Yah, it was actually a few weeks ago, which is why it didn’t spring to mind immediately,’ continued Freddie. ‘I was driving back from
an evening out in Cirencester—’

  ‘What time was this, sir?’ asked Powers, as Penny scribbled away.

  ‘About midnight. I remember listening to the news on Radio 4. Anyway, I was just driving home on the Bedlington Road, when I swear I saw a hooded figure standing by the wall outside the rectory.’

  Angie looked horrified. ‘Darling, why didn’t you tell me this?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I thought I was imagining things,’ replied Freddie. ‘You know how badly lit it is along there. But when I stopped and pulled over, there was no one to be seen.’ He looked at the police officers.

  ‘Height, age, weight?’ asked Powers.

  Freddie screwed up his brow in concentration. ‘He – or she – had this hooded black top on so it was hard to say. But they reached the top of the wall, so they must have been about six foot. Not fat either, they had quite a long, lean outline. But hell, I don’t know if it was just the light playing tricks on me.’ He turned to his wife. ‘You know how you’re always badgering me to get glasses, darling.’

  Powers sank back in his seat, deflated. Still, it was better than nothing. Freddie couldn’t give them any more than that, so the officers thanked the couple and left. They walked over to the patrol car.

  ‘So we’re looking for a tall, thin apparition, answers to the name of Lord Voldemort,’ said Powers sarcastically.

  Penny let out an excited squeak. ‘I swear I could smell marijuana in there,’ he said.

  Powers snorted with laughter. ‘As if you’d know what that smelt like! Besides, I can’t really imagine those two sharing a joint over To The Manor Born of an evening, can you?’

  ‘I have smelt it before, when we did that raid on the youth club,’ protested Penny indignantly. Just then his mobile started to ring. He pulled it out of his coat pocket; it was another PC back at the station. Penny listened and rang off, his eyes shining. ‘Just got a call in from a Mrs Caro Belmont, Mill House. Says she might have seen a suspicious vehicle.’ He turned on the ignition and they headed back towards the village.

  ‘I thought it was funny at the time,’ said Caro ten minutes later. She was making both policemen coffee in the kitchen while they sat on high stools at the breakfast bar. Powers’s libido was going into overdrive – another great pair of hooters! What, did they stand the women in this village in special nork fertilizer or something? He chuckled at his own joke. Pity his own wife Janet was as flat as her beloved ironing board.

  ‘It was about ten days ago,’ Caro continued, spooning freshly ground coffee into the cafetière, blissfully unaware of the lustful glances her bosom was receiving. ‘Milo – he’s my son – had been having a difficult night, so I was in the nursery trying to get him back to sleep. Anyway, his room looks out on to the green, and as I was standing there cuddling him, I glanced out the window and saw this black car driving around the other side, near my sister’s cottage. That’s No. 5 The Green. Anyway, I had to really look, because it didn’t have any lights on. Like it didn’t want to be seen, you know?’

  Penny nodded violently. This could be their first break! ‘Did you get a registration, madam?’ he asked in his most efficient tone.

  ‘Fraid not, it was too far away,’ said Caro. ‘It had blacked-out windows though, I think.’

  ‘Model?’ asked Powers. Caro shook her head, looking extremely flattered. ‘No, I’m a housewife. I used to work in human resources but . . .’ Seeing their nonplussed faces, she cottoned on and flushed bright red. ‘Oh! I see what you mean. I haven’t a clue. As my husband will tell you, I’m hopeless with cars. It was quite sleek and low though. Maybe a sports car? Ooh, it really was rather creepy.’ As much as they could see Caro wanted to help them, ‘creepy’ was not going to find the vehicle. Their spirits quickly deflated again.

  It was ten o’clock by the time the two policemen got back to the station. Rance was still in the incident room, going through the Reverend’s phone records. His face was grey and there were violet shadows under his eyes. ‘You look how I feel, Guv,’ yawned Powers, and relayed both Freddie’s and Caro’s stories. Despite the gloomy report, Rance was pleased by the news. ‘A car and a suspect. They’ll both need following up. Great start, lads, well done.’

  ‘Can we knock off now?’ asked Powers, slightly mollified by the praise.

  ‘Yes, but I need you back in here at eight tomorrow morning,’ said Rance, going back to his paperwork.

  ‘Bloody murders, I might as well kiss goodbye to any beers down the pub,’ said Powers as they walked out of the building. Penny was still full of energy, and Powers felt even more weary as he watched him skip off across the car park to go home and watch his Police, Camera, Action! DVD for the fifty-third time.

  Chapter 37

  THE NEXT MORNING DI Rance was at home in Bedlington, shaving in the bathroom, when he heard the heavy thud of the Sunday newspapers landing on the doormat. He wiped his face clean, let out the water from the sink and headed downstairs.

  It was worse than he had thought. There had been a little bit in the papers on Saturday, but now it was front-page news. ‘Country Vicar Slain!’ screamed the Sunday Mirror. ‘Dead In His Bed!’ gasped the News of the World. Rance exhaled heavily; public hysteria was all they bloody needed. Flicking through the coverage in the second tabloid, he noticed a small sidebar on how Churchminster was also under threat from a big property developer called Sid Sykes. Carve it all up and build the bloody houses, thought Rance uncharitably. Would stop those bloody rich gits running around like they owned the place. Which most of them probably did.

  Rance wasn’t a big fan of the countryside. An Ealing boy born and bred, he had joined Hendon police training college at eighteen, and six months later was patrolling the mean streets of Ladbroke Grove and the less salubrious side of Notting Hill as a fledgling member of the Metropolitan Police. He met a girl called Susan at a pub on the Portobello Road, and two years later they were married and living in a poky flat somewhere behind Paddington train station. For eight years, they existed fairly peaceably together, then all of a sudden Susan started swapping her copies of Grazia and Marie Claire for Country Living and Homes and Gardens. Against his better judgement, they found themselves living in a little cottage on the outskirts of Bedlington, Rance with a new job at Bedlington CID. Susan was blissfully happy. Rance couldn’t stand it. God, he missed the action of living in a city. And all this fresh air made him feel ill, having been quite happily brought up on a cocktail of traffic fumes and pollution.

  ‘I’m off, love,’ he shouted up the stairs to his wife. ‘It could be a long one.’ He realized he hadn’t said that in a long time, and left the house with a spring in his step. He might be going to work on a Sunday, but at least he wasn’t going to be dragged around a garden centre looking at sodding petunias.

  Later that evening, a predatory darkness fell over the village. Caro had just finished watching one of her old Sex and the City box sets, at about 10 p.m., when the doorbell rang. She sat up nervously – who could it be? Sebastian was away on a work conference in Italy (which actually translated as shagging Sabrina’s brains out in a very expensive villa next to George Clooney’s place on Lake Como). For the first time in the house, she was feeling very nervy. Switching on all the lights as she went, she made her way to the front door and looked through the spy hole. To her surprise, it was Benedict Towey. Caro unlocked the door and pulled it open. Benedict was standing on the doorstep in a light grey suit, blazer slung casually over his left shoulder, a crumpled white linen shirt encasing the muscular contours of his chest. His blond hair was ruffled, and there was a five o’clock shadow starting to appear on his chin. He looked like a Greek god.

  ‘Er, hi,’ she said awkwardly. Was he going to have a go at her about something again?

  Benedict shifted on the step. ‘I’ve just got back from work and I heard about the Reverend’s death. I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.’ As usual, his tone was flat and unfriendly. Caro had to let his words sink in for a momen
t.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Of course it’s been a dreadful shock to the village and . . .’ Stop wittering, she thought as she gushed on about what a lovely long service there had been that morning, conducted by the Revd Brian Bellows from Bedlington. A bored expression flickered across Benedict’s handsome face and he started backing down the path again.

  ‘Give me a shout if you need anything,’ he said gruffly, making it sound like it was the last thing on earth he wanted her to do.

  ‘Er, I will. Thank you,’ Caro called after him as he disappeared into the gloom at the end of the path. She closed the door gently behind her and leaned against it for a moment. Was that his half-hearted attempt at being a friendly neighbour? She wasn’t sure why he’d bothered, he clearly couldn’t stand the sight of her. She checked the answering machine in the hall as she went upstairs. No red light flickering, which meant Sebastian still hadn’t called her since she’d left a tearful message about the Reverend on his voicemail yesterday. ‘Probably hasn’t had time to charge his phone,’ she thought, trying to convince herself.

  Around the village, others were preparing to go to bed. Without telling her sister, Camilla double-locked the back door for the first time. Calypso noticed when she tried to go outside for her last fag of the night. She went to unlock it, thought for a second, and decided to smoke out of her bedroom window instead.

  After an intense discussion at the Maltings, Freddie and Angie decided to get a guard dog. Their own dog, an adorable fox terrier called Bella, was more likely to lick an intruder to death than anything else. Up at Clanfield Hall, Harriet’s parents had insisted that, after their usual Sunday night dinner, she stay in her old bedroom in the west wing of the house. For once, Harriet didn’t protest.