A Death in the Woods Read online

  ‘That house!’ said Eden, slowing for a fox.

  ‘You hated it,’ said Jess, enjoying his disdain for the half-painted rooms, the uneven floorboards, the off-kilter wooden settle beside the jumping fire. ‘You didn’t even drink your tea.’

  Eden wrinkled his straight-as-a-die nose. ‘My mug had a crack in it.’

  ‘Poor guy’s doing his best. He’s coping on his own, remember.’

  ‘Are you implying, Jess, that Hungry Hill Farm needs a woman’s touch?’ Eden raised that eyebrow again. ‘Oddly sexist, coming from you.’

  Knott snorted.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Jess. ‘Women aren’t genetically engineered to handle a Hoover. I’m saying that Mitch is grieving and missing his wife and trying to be both mum and dad.’

  She had liked the house’s bohemian feel. The children’s – frankly terrible – drawings pinned up alongside an Impressionist print. Mitch might have no money but he did have taste; the house was pleasing.

  Even if the mugs are cracked.

  ‘Why,’ wondered Jess, ‘would a man like Mitch Dalton move to a backwater like Castle Kidbury?’

  Knott snorted again. She was big on snorting. ‘You tell me. You moved back here, after all.’

  They passed the shuttered windows of The Buttonhole florists.

  ‘Those girls,’ said Knott, ‘were little monsters, Sarge. Did you see how thrilled they were at finding a corpse?’

  ‘That’s just kids,’ said Jess. She suspected that Knott had never been a child; she had exited the womb in an A-line skirt holding a notepad. ‘They took their lead from their dad. He was keeping it low key so they didn’t get panic.’

  As she’d helped him wash up at the sink – nothing so modern as a dishwasher at Hungry Hill – Mitch had said, in an offhand way, that he often felt it would be better if he’d been the one to die.

  ‘Fathers,’ he’d said, ‘are more dispensible than mothers.’

  ‘It’s not a competition,’ Jess had said.

  His grief had been palpable, like another person standing between them as he washed and she dried.

  Jess was grateful for the streetlights of Castle Kidbury, and the strip-lit hubbub of the police station.

  They kept the woods at bay.

  CHAPTER 4

  REASSURINGLY HORRIBLE

  Monday 2 November

  ‘So, Dad, what did you want to talk about?’

  The Judge lifted his eyebrows, once the same dark brown as Jess’s, now King Lear white. ‘Does there have to be something?’

  ‘Duh.’ Jess wasn’t falling for all this casual let’s-have-brunch-at-the-Royal-Seven-Stars malarkey; the Judge was resolutely anti-brunch. ‘What am I getting told off about now?’

  She was smiling. It was a gag. And yet the Judge didn’t laugh. Instead, he poured them both water from the jug on the table.

  ‘Only joking, I didn’t mean . . .’ Jess ran out of steam. She sipped at her water. They were in the more genteel dining section of the pub, and they had to raise their voices to each other. It was unusually busy for a Monday. Over the rim of her glass, Jess looked covertly at her father.

  This desire to evaluate the Judge’s health was relatively new. When she’d had the complete set of two parents, Jess was blithe. With only one left, she felt duty-bound to look after it. She and Bogna had agreed not to tell him about the fresh little heart left by an ill-wisher on their step.

  A silence. One of those complicated ones the Castle family could patent.

  Then she asked, ‘Is it the murder case?’ He had been caustically vocal about her ‘playing at’ detectives back in June.

  ‘The . . .?’ The Judge seemed puzzled, then relieved. ‘Yes. The case. That’s it.’

  That’s so not it. He had chickened out. Nothing scares Dad. Perturbed, Jess looked around for her Welsh Rarebit. Melted cheese always improved matters. ‘I won’t get as involved this time,’ she lied.

  ‘I wish you’d concentrate on this new position at Bristol University, Jess. You were lucky to get it after . . . what happened.’

  ‘You mean after I cocked everything up at my last lecturing gig.’

  ‘Your hobby almost got you killed, remember.’

  ‘Helping Eden isn’t a—’ She gave up. Why bother?

  ‘If I know Eden, this case’ll be wrapped up pretty quickly, and you can stop running around in that banger of yours and knuckle down.’

  Jess didn’t like the idea of knuckling down. It sounded uncomfortable. ‘It’s complicated, Dad.’

  ‘Murder always is.’

  Sometimes Jess forgot her father had spent years presiding over criminal trials and thought of him only as that mildly disapproving man at the edge of her line of vision.

  ‘Norris is implicated, I hear. Odious character. The man showed no remorse whatsoever during his trial for that appalling assault. Mark my words, it’s highly significant that the murder took place immediately following Norris’s release. A career in the law teaches one to mistrust coincidence.’

  ‘I mistrust it too.’ Jess supposed, with a start of surprise, that she’d inherited her keen curiosity about the how and the why of human nature from her father.

  ‘I saw Norris the very afternoon he was freed. He was being thrown out of the Spinning Jenny for spouting racist bilge about Meera not being able to make a proper British fried egg sandwich.’

  That was blasphemy. The Spinning Jenny was Jess’s favourite café; Meera had a way with a sausage like nobody else. ‘Norris is EDL through and through. Which is odd because his mother’s Romany, which means Norris is racist against her.’

  ‘And therefore himself. Self-hatred is the most dangerous trait of all.’

  ‘He gives me actual chills.’

  Eddie was suddenly there, a Welsh Rarebit in each hand. ‘Who does, love? Mind the plates, they’re hot.’

  Any decent criminal would spot the landlord of the Royal Seven Stars for an ex-copper a mile away. Eddie Barnes was stout, watchful. Utterly ordinary, preternaturally bright. His Mancunian cynicism tethered him to the ground and endeared him to Jess.

  ‘Ouch.’ Despite the warning – maybe because of it? – Jess touched the hot plate.

  ‘Tuck in.’ Eddie lingered. He liked to keep his ear to the ground.

  They tucked in; until recently Jess would have made a short speech about the Judge’s cholesterol level, but since his heart procedure, she enjoyed watching him eat previously verboten foods. She was wondering why Satan owns all the best food – chocolate, potatoes, Curlywurlys – when her father asked her a question.

  ‘Jess, are you aware we have Eddie here to thank for Norris being brought to justice?’

  ‘Hardly, James. It was you that sentenced him.’ Eddie folded his arms and draped a tea towel over his shoulder.

  ‘But you collared him, Eddie. Norris was evading the police, sniffing around the back of the pub, and Eddie here kicked him down the cellar stairs. Held him there until the police turned up. You did Castle Kidbury a favour, Eddie.’

  Eddie was having none of it. ‘Right place, right time. I only hope John Eden has enough to lock the bastard up again. The town’s holding its breath, hoping this is a one-off. It’s all my customers talk about.’ He changed tack. ‘What d’you make of the new decor?’

  The pub had been shut for a month while it was doused in Farrow and Ball.

  Jess’s expression couldn’t lie.

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Eddie caught his reflection in a reclaimed mirror. ‘Punters came here for horse brasses and crisps, not good taste.’ He looked like a man who really really missed his red Dralon upholstery.

  ‘It’s the way of the world,’ said the Judge. ‘We refurbish everything, even that which was perfectly good to start with.’

  ‘Exactly!’ It was uplifting for Jess to agree with her father. ‘It misses the point. Take the Jolly Cook chain; why make them over? The food’s meant to take you back to your childhood, and the surroundings should be reassuringly horrible
.’

  ‘That Nic Lasco fella, the one who’s doing their new menu, keeps dropping in here to do interviews with journalists.’ Eddie leaned in and whispered, ‘Can’t stand him. He critiques my grub as if I’m the Savoy.’ He looked at Jess. ‘S’pose you fancy him, like every other woman in the UK.’

  ‘God, no.’ Jess thought of Nic Lasco. His super-shiny hair. His pudgy fingers. His jumpers. ‘I suspect that kicks in at the menopause.’

  The Judge changed the subject, as he always did when somebody mentioned the mysterious land of lady insides. ‘Those artworks, Eddie.’ He pointed at the torn pages taped up and incongruous on the new taupe panelling. ‘It’s hard to dislike primary school children’s drawings, but they don’t quite fit in.’

  ‘True.’ Eddie smiled. Part fond. Part exasperated. ‘But they’re not done by kids, James. An artist by the name of Squeezers.’

  How to describe Squeezers? Jess would say he was misunderstood, that the filthy undernourished man of indeterminate years, who wore all his coats at once and browsed dustbins for his dinner, was a vital citizen. Others would say he was a one-man petty crime wave and brought Castle Kidbury property prices down all on his own. Nobody knew his real name; perhaps he didn’t have one.

  ‘Squeezers is finally getting help for his, well, his issues. The voices in his head, and that,’ said Eddie. ‘John Eden sorted him out with social services. I’m not sure Squeezers takes his medication, but he toddles along quite happily to art therapy. I pin ‘em up. Makes him happy.’ Lest anybody should suspect the barrel-shaped landlord of soppiness, Eddie added an unconvincing, ‘The silly sod.’

  A ding from Jess’s phone interrupted them. ‘S’cuse me.’

  The text wasn’t, as she hoped, from Rupert. He was busy, apparently. Up there in Edinburgh.

  ‘Jess . . .’ The Judge fought the good fight against Phones At The Table.

  She was already on her feet. ‘It’s Susannah. She needs to talk.’

  ‘Want a doggy bag, love?’ asked Eddie.

  For a reply, Jess stuffed the rarebit into her mouth, garbled a cheesy goodbye, and left the cloistered pub to blink in the winter sunlight of the market square.

  ‘Susannah, hi, it’ s me,’ was as far as she got before her sister-in-law let rip. Stephen this. Stephen that. Jess moved through the shoppers and dog walkers and meanderers as her brother’s latest crimes against marriage were listed in her ear.

  With Denis Heap dead, it was impossible not to peek down Fore Street. A policeman stood outside The Buttonhole. It was no longer just one of Castle Kidbury’s independent businesses; it was set apart from the Spinning Jenny and the charity shop and Dickinson’s Books by the perverse glamour of death.

  Silver River, the Chinese takeaway next door to The Buttonhole, was obscured by scaffolding. Life went on. The small town breathed in and out.

  ‘Look Susannah, I’ll, well, I’ll see what I can do. Bye.’

  Jess often found herself promising to see what she could do, when deep down she knew she could do nothing. The wheel of the year kept turning. November grew darker and danker. Relationships foundered, and people were nailed to tables, and all the while the little town just kept on keeping on.

  Without warning, the mayoress was upon her. Jess was a wounded gnu seized by a lion. The metaphor was apposite; Patricia Smalls, head to toe in provincial boutique chic, was a hunter, chasing down gossip on the Serengeti of the market square. She smelled of several competing mid-range perfumes, and her coiffed hair was as hard as the helmets worn by the workmen swarming over Silver River. Her first question was the usual, inevitable one.

  ‘Your dear father, Jess? How is he?’

  ‘He’s good, fine, great.’ The operation was long over. The Judge’s recovery steady.

  ‘Tell him I’ll pop in to check on his progress soon.’

  ‘Okeydoke.’ The Judge would surely pop out the second Patricia arrived. The mayoress’s pursuit of the Judge was a family joke. Harriet, however, had never laughed; Jess nursed painful memories of her mother standing by as this supposed friend flirted leadenly with her husband.

  ‘This murder, dreadful business.’ Patricia lowered her voice. ‘So bad for the town’s zeitgeist.’

  ‘I had one of those once.’ Jess backed away, determined not to be caught in the mayor’s tractor beam. ‘Had it lasered off.’

  ‘You are funny.’ Patricia said this instead of laughing; one of many reasons Jess distrusted her.

  A tall woman, a gym-hardened exclamation point in black with a breadknife nose, made an impatient nose. ‘Patricia! We’ll be late.’

  ‘Jess, do meet my dear new chum,’ said Patricia. ‘This is Gillian Cope.’ She gave the name great emphasis, vibrating with pride. ‘You’ll know her from TV, of course.’

  ‘Yes, hi, um, Gillian.’ Jess didn’t like meeting celebrities. She didn’t know how to be around a woman she’d seen on screen. Particularly one whose fame was as an entrepreneur, and who now had a second career bullying ‘real’ people into setting up doomed businesses while the nation watched.

  Gillian ignored her. ‘Patricia, come on,’ she said, and clambered into a low-slung sports car. Gillian seemed to be a Midas; everything she touched was expensive. Her car. Her caramel-coloured hair. Her impeccable nails. Even her boots would feed a family of four for a week. ‘Don’t waste my time on nobodies.’

  ‘She seems nice,’ said Jess, confident the sarcasm would be lost on Patricia.

  ‘She’s stressed out. It’s the opening of BiGrKid on Friday. So much to do!’

  ‘Bigger what?’ Jess was keen to get going; she had students to lecture.

  ‘Oh you, pretending you don’t know! It’s Gillian’s latest venture. An adult soft play franchise, and the very first one is opening here at the old library. Such a coup for Castle Kidbury.’

  ‘I liked it when it the old library was actually a library.’

  The historic building, beloved by Jess, no longer housed books and hobos and ten-year olds looking up the rude bits in the classics. Patricia Smalls was determined to make it a ‘community hub’. As if a library isn’t exactly that. The last silly venture – ThinkSpace – had crashed spectacularly.

  ‘We must move with the times, Jessica. BiGrKid is a dynamic leisure-based genre-busting initiative.’

  ‘Lovely.’ It was tiring being a gnu.

  ‘Even BiGrKid can’t take people’s minds off murder. I’m doing my best to ensure that any vulnerable constituents are reassured at this worrying time.’ The lioness never forgot that she was also a mayor. ‘Speaking of whom, I assume you’ve dropped in on your dear old auntie?’

  ‘Actually, no.’ Aunt Iris would shoot Patricia if she heard her calling her either ‘dear’ or ‘old’, and would see off a murderer without spilling her martini.

  ‘Poor Iris is a resilient woman.’ Patricia lowered her voice, saying with insinuating emphasis, ‘She’s been through so much.’

  ‘Like all my family, Patricia, she’s allergic to sympathy. Everybody has ordinary heartbreaks.’ There was loss, of course, in Iris’s long past, but nothing newsworthy.

  ‘Hmm. Well. Losing a husband is one thing . . .’ Patricia spoke as if Iris had mislaid him down the back of the sofa. ‘But the death of her son . . . Do you remember David?’

  ‘I do.’ Do I?

  ‘He and your father were very close.’ Patricia let that land, then added, ‘Very’.

  This was a lot of intrigue over a tragic but long-past riding accident. ‘I’d love to stay and chat,’ said Jess, ‘but I’m on my way to work.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Patricia, redundantly. They both knew Jess was no longer a girl and had never been good. ‘Careful of that monstrosity.’ She pointed to a dented flatbed truck turning into the square.

  ‘Mitch!’ called Jess, when Patricia had lowered her stick insect body into Gillian Cope’s car. ‘Hello again!’

  The vehicle slowed. The window wound down. ‘G’day and yes we really do say that where I’m
from.’ Mitch leant out. He was dishevelled. Comfortable. ‘We meet again. Are you following me or am I following you?’

  ‘Bit of both.’ Jess heard giggles and shouts from the open back of the truck. The kids were dishevelled too. ‘Your girls are enjoying themselves.’

  ‘They always do.’ Mitch’s hair was cut any old way. He wore it well.

  ‘They’re like a little band of gypsies.’

  ‘Want a lift?’

  The truck had never been washed. Jess could smell eau de farmyard. It was tempting. Jess liked the pretty blot on Castle Kidbury’s landscape that Mitch and his family made. ‘Can’t. Duty calls. I’m off to Bristol.’

  Mitch was holding up traffic. He gestured at a minicab to go round him. ‘I’m off to Richleigh. To a real place. Where you National Trust types go for basic supplies.’

  ‘Yeah, Richleigh’s our tart with a heart. We all use her but we don’t invite her to Sunday lunch.’ The window of the Spinning Jenny caught Jess’s attention. Only one man’s head was that shape. Rupert was at their table.

  ‘Plenty of places to buy homemade jam in Castle Kidbury,’ said Mitch. ‘But, toilet roll, not so much.’

  ‘Yeah.’ How come Rupert didn’t tell me he’s home? ‘Toilet roll.’

  Mitch’s eyebrows mated above amused eyes.

  ‘Toilet roll,’ repeated Jess, distracted by Meera handing Rupert his bill, both of them laughing. ‘I, um, love it.’

  ‘I feel like I don’t know you well enough to be having this conversation.’

  ‘God, sorry, I’m away with the fairies. I don’t use toilet roll. Well, I do. God, yes I certainly do.’

  ‘I think,’ said Mitch, ‘we’ve covered the subject of toilet rolls.’ He looked where she was looking. Saw only people he didn’t know. Didn’t recognise the tall man pulling on a dark overcoat and hurrying away from the café.

  It was ridiculous to feel insulted by Rupert’s cheerful demeanour. But Jess was often ridiculous. ‘You’re being honked again,’ she told Mitch.

  Gillian Cope’s expletives were drowned by the noise of her car horn.

  Mitch pulled away. ‘You’re a strange woman, Jess Castle,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Next time let’s discuss incontinence pads.’