Murder Served Cold Page 3

  “What?” I peered over her shoulder. “‘Thieves stole washing from launderette’? I agree. As headlines go, it’s not the snappiest. I think I’d have gone for Phantom knicker nicker strikes again. Much more impact.”

  “I don’t mean that. It’s this. Look.” She pointed at a small paragraph in the final column. “It’s a report on a planning committee meeting that was held last week. They’re only talking about building another hundred and fifty houses on the edge of Dintscombe. It’s bad enough trying to find somewhere to park on market day as it is.”

  Dintscombe was the nearest town to Much Winchmoor and even that was a thirty-minute drive away. But that could easily extend to an hour, if you were foolish enough to try and go there on a Wednesday, market day, ever since a celebrity chef opened a gastro pub a couple of miles away and had praised the quality of the fresh, local produce to be found at Dintscombe Market. It brought people flooding in from miles around, many of whom were only there in the hope of catching a glimpse of Sleb Chef poking the potatoes or prodding the parsnips. Except, of course, he had minions to do that for him. Not that the stallholders ever told anyone that. Instead, they’d say things like: “Do you know, you’ve just missed him. You’ll have to get here earlier next week.” Which, naturally, the punters did.

  All this, while good news for the charity shops and coffee houses which was all that had survived the opening of the new retail park a couple of years earlier, was not so good if you were in town for a visit to the doctor or dentist and had forgotten it was market day. Parking was a nightmare in the town, and was a constant source of grumpy letters to the editor of The Chronicle.

  Mum had got up a head of steam now and there was no stopping her. “Honestly, what’s the Council thinking of?” she muttered as she went across to the stove and stirred whatever was in the saucepan so vigorously, she was in danger of wearing a hole in it. “They’re destroying our towns and villages with all these ill-considered developments. If you ask me, they’re all on the take, the whole sorry lot of them.”

  “Even our own Councillor Crabshaw?” I raised my eyebrows in mock horror. “Surely not.”

  “Especially our own Councillor Crabshaw,” she growled.

  I poured myself a glass of apple juice. “Well, at least they’re not building those houses in Much Winchmoor.”

  “Not for want of trying. There was an application for outline planning permission for a development of sixty houses made a while back.”

  “Sixty? But where?”

  “On a field off the lane that comes out at the back of the village hall. Drove Lane, the old boys in the village call it.”

  “The field with the old stone barn, that belonged to Jules’s grandad?” My friend Jules and I used to spend hours in there, when we were kids. It had been everything from a haunted castle, to an indoor arena for imaginary horses. As we got older, it progressed to our favourite place away from adult eyes, where we experimented with illicitly acquired cigarettes and cider. Both experiments were spectacularly unsuccessful and I, for one, had been unable to so much as smell a glass of cider without wanting to throw up ever since. A bit of a downside to my new, but hopefully temporary, career as a barmaid.

  “Not that field. The one next to it. Anyway, it’s not going to happen because, to give Gerald Crabshaw his due, he spoke up against it and the whole thing was rejected on account of the poor access.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” The population of Much Winchmoor was a mere nine hundred (or nine hundred and one if you counted me) and an extra sixty homes would have a significant effect on the character of the place, not to mention the increase in traffic on the narrow, single track lane that was the only way in and out of the village. “Although, having said that, at least it would probably have ensured that the village school stays open,” I added.

  Mum frowned as she peered into the saucepan. I looked over her shoulder, didn’t much care for what I saw and hunted in the cupboard for a packet of biscuits.

  “Do you want some of this?” she asked as she spooned globules of grey, gloopy sludge into a bowl. “It’s highly nutritious.”

  “No thanks,” I said quickly. Frogspawn was probably highly nutritious as well. But that didn’t mean I wanted to eat any for breakfast. “Do you need me in the salon this morning?”

  She shook her head. “No, love. Why don’t you go and see Will instead?”

  “I would, but the thing is—” I bent my head and wrestled with the wrapping on the biscuits. “I thought I’d work on my CV this morning. And check through the situations vacant in The Chronicle. You never know. Then I’ve got a load of washing to do and—”

  “It won’t get any easier,” she said quietly. “You can’t keep putting it off.”

  “Putting what off?” I asked, although I knew full well what she was getting at.

  “Going to see him.” She leaned across and covered my hand with hers. “I don’t understand, Katie. You used to be such good friends. What happened?”

  “People change. That’s all. We’ve changed. Will and I, we—” I broke off, as I caught the look in her eye. Mum always knew what was in my mind, sometimes before I did. “The truth is, Mum, I don’t know what to say to him. Not just that silly row, but not going to his mum’s funeral. I feel really bad about that.”

  “Well, don’t. You and Nick were away skiing. Even if you could have afforded to fly back early, there was no way you’d have got there in time. Will understands that.” She took a spoonful of the grey gloopy sludge and chewed it slowly. “You’re surely not going to have nothing but a couple of chocolate biscuits for your breakfast, are you? Eat some real food, for pity’s sake.”

  “Real food? Is that what you’re eating? What is it?” I pointed at the mixture that looked more like wallpaper paste – or frogspawn. “You’re not on another diet, are you?”

  “It’s barley risotto with chia seeds. And it’s not a diet. It’s a change of lifestyle.” Her eyes shone with that fanatical gleam she always got at the start of a new diet. It was a look that Dad and I knew and dreaded.

  “You remember Janet Thornton, don’t you?” she went on. “Well, she came in to the salon a few weeks ago and I didn’t recognise her. She’s lost three stone on this. It’s brilliant. All you have to do is eat a couple of bowls of this highly nutritious mixture every day, and the rest of the time you can eat normally.”

  “Eat normally?” I laughed. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never eaten normally. There was the grapefruit diet, the baked beans diet – and what about the one where you ate all that disgusting cabbage soup?”

  Mum gave the contents of her bowl a stir. “It’s all right for you. You can eat whatever you like and still be like a stick insect.”

  “Hardly. Don’t you remember how Gran Latcham used to tell me it was just puppy fat? That I’d grow out of it?”

  “And, for once, she was quite right, wasn’t she?” Mum said grudgingly. Mum had shared a very uneasy relationship with her mother-in-law and even now, after all these years, still blamed Gran Latcham for encouraging me to do a Media Studies degree at college instead of the hairdressing and beauty therapy course Mum had earmarked for me.

  “Do you know, I still can’t get used to going past her old cottage and not seeing her, pottering around in her garden,” I said as I took another biscuit. Gran Latcham died just a couple of months before my eighteenth birthday and, even though that had been five years ago, I still missed her.

  “It’s a holiday cottage now.” Mum pulled a face as she took another spoonful of sludge. “Half the houses in the village are.”

  “Sure you don’t want one of these?” I held the packet towards her.

  She shook her head. “No. I mustn’t. And neither should you.”

  “As for me losing my puppy fat, as Gran called it, that was nothing to do with diet and everything to do with taking up judo when I was at college.” In judo, I’d discovered a sport that I was not only good at, but actually enjoyed. And alt
hough I could no longer afford to go to a gym now that I was unemployed, I still kept myself fit by going for a run two or three times a week. “You should forget all those daft diets and come running with me instead,” I said.

  “Oh yes, that’s exactly what I need, after a day on my feet in the salon,” she said. “And don’t lecture me on healthy living, young lady. How can breakfasting on chocolate biscuits be healthy, for goodness sake? At least have a banana.”

  “I’m sorry, Mum, but I’m not that hungry. And, by the look of it, you’re not either.”

  She sighed as she put the spoon down and pushed the dish to one side. “It’s no good. I can’t eat this. Maybe I made a mistake in the recipe. Here, pass me one of those.” She took a biscuit. “I’ll start tomorrow. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. I need to keep my strength up. Thank goodness Sandra will be back today.”

  Sandra had been working for Mum for as long as I could remember. The years of standing up all day had taken a toll on Sandra and she was, she always said, a martyr to her feet. She’d spent the previous day travelling all the way to Bath to try some wonderful new chiropodist somebody had told her about. Which was why I’d been co-opted into working in the salon.

  “Sure you won’t need me?” I asked. “I’m due at the pub for the lunchtime shift. But I can work until half past eleven, in case Sandra’s feet are still playing her up.”

  “Absolutely sure. Sandra and I will manage. So you’ve got no excuse not to go and see Will, have you? Just say you’re sorry about his mum. That’s all you have to do. For goodness sake, Katie, how hard can it be?”

  How hard? She had no idea. For a start, the last time I’d seen Will had been when Ratface and I were still an item (before I found out what a cheating lowlife he was) and I’d brought him home for the weekend. He and Will had met in the pub and it had been a case of mutual loathing at first sight. And now, I knew, Will would be unbearably smug about how he’d known it wouldn’t last and how I must have been pretty desperate to have been taken in by such a poser. He wouldn’t be able to resist it.

  But the other reason, The Big One, was that I didn’t know what to say to him. Not after that terrible row. It was going to be pretty difficult to say how truly sorry I was about his mum (which I was – Sally was a really, really nice person and used to make the best meat and potato pies on the planet) while trying to forget that the last time we’d met, Will had called me – among other things – a stuck-up, selfish little cow. And I’d called him – among other things – a pig-headed, carrot-crunching oik.

  When his mum died, I tried to call him but he didn’t answer his phone. I tried texting him but he never looked at his messages, least of all replied. In the end I sent him a card, but I didn’t know what to say so just wrote something banal. And the longer I left it, the harder it got. I hated being bad friends with him – and he had been right about Ratface. So I’d just have to put up with his I-told-you-so. I guess I owed him that one.

  Mum was quite right. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I left her working her way through the chocolate biscuits, fished my bike out of the garden shed and set off to cycle up the steep, narrow lane that led up to Pendle Knoll and the Manning farm.

  ***

  Before I moved to Bristol, I could cycle right up to the top of the hill without breaking into a sweat. Now I told myself I must have pushed myself a bit too hard on my early morning run, as I was gasping for breath before I’d even reached the village primary school, which was only about one third of the way up. As I struggled past, the children were obviously all in the main hall for morning assembly as I could just about make out the sound of their shouty singing above the rasping of my breath.

  To add to my discomfort, the rain, which had been threatening ever since I left the house, arrived at the farm the same time as I did. It was blown in on the ever-present wind that rampaged around Pendle Knoll. A light breeze in Much Winchmoor always morphed into a full-on gale by the time it reached the farm. Pendle Knoll Farmhouse was, I reckoned, built in the windiest place in the county and Will always said he was going to install a wind turbine at the back of the house, even though it would probably bring howls of protest from the village, spearheaded no doubt by Marjorie Hampton.

  I leaned my bike against the gate and headed across the thankfully empty farmyard. I was not terribly fond of cows since the day one of them head-butted me into a ditch and Will had laughed himself silly as he pulled me out.

  Half way across the yard I stopped and looked around me. Something was weird. Out of place. Different. Like that feeling you get when you go back to a place you haven’t been to in years, and you find that nothing’s quite as you remembered it.

  When I was young I’d spent every spare moment up at the farm. It was my second home and I would follow Will around like a little duckling. We were both only children and he was the brother I’d never had. And like any other siblings, we squabbled and fought all the time (it was always his fault, of course) but we usually made it up pretty quickly.

  But when we fell out, the last time we met, it was for keeps. His refusal to answer my calls or texts made it pretty clear he didn’t want any more to do with me.

  All the time I’d been struggling up the hill on my bike, in between fighting for air, I’d been practicing what I was going to say to him. But I needn’t have bothered, because the place was so deserted I half expected to see tumbleweed bowling across the yard towards me.

  No tumbleweed. No humans either. And the only animals I could see were a load of black and white kittens skittering in and out of the barn doors like leaves in the wind, and one of those crazy, wild-eyed collies that always lurked about the place.

  It took a few minutes to work out what it was that was so different. Then I saw it. Mud. Or, to be strictly accurate, the absence of mud. I’d put on my oldest shoes in the certain knowledge I’d be wading ankle deep in goodness-knew-what just to get to the back door of the farm house. Instead the concrete yard looked as if it had been bleached, the raindrops leaving big fat splodges on its unnaturally clean surface The door of the milking parlour, its once shiny blue paint now faded, lurched half-open on broken hinges. The windows, that used to be clean and sparkling, would now let in precious little light through the thick grime that coated each surface.

  The whole farm had a down-at-heel air, so different from the bright, well ordered place it had been when Sally was around.

  Mum said John Manning had let himself go, and I’d seen it for myself last night. But Will? Had he let himself – and the farm – go as well? I’d had no idea things had got so bad. Poor, poor Will. My heart contracted with pity for him and I felt worse than ever for leaving it so long.

  “Hello? Will? Anyone around?” I called, but the only answer came from a dog inside the house who started barking and sent the other one in the yard into a frenzy, running around me like I was a stroppy old ewe she was determined to return to the flock.

  “Tam. Enough.” My heart lurched as I recognised Will’s voice. I turned round to see him emerge from one of the barns on the far side of the yard. He looked bigger than I remembered, his shoulders broader, his hair a little longer. But his eyes were the same deep blue with the long, sweeping eyelashes that I’d always told him were completely wasted on a bloke.

  He stopped dead when he saw me and, instead of the welcoming grin I’d been sort of hoping for, he scowled.

  “Oh, it’s you. I heard you were back. What do you want?” he said, while the dog sidled up to him and pushed against his leg, ready to pin me down at the first nod from her master.

  “Well, not to be bowled over by the warmth of your welcome,” I retorted. “Which, as it turns out, is just as well, isn’t it?”

  He scowled again, looked as if he was about to say something equally snippy, then changed his mind. He raked his fingers through his hair and gave a half smile. “Jeez, I’m sorry, Katie. I didn’t mean—”

  “My name’s Kat now as you very well know –” I began, but might
as well have saved my breath.

  “I’m sorry, Katie.” This time he emphasised my name deliberately. He was doing it to annoy me. Like he always did. Although I had the feeling it was more out of habit than conviction. But at least it was a bit of normality between us, so I let it go.

  “I’m a bit distracted, to be honest,” he went on, his hair sticking up all over the place, like a small boy who’s just been dragged out of bed. His eyes were as blue as ever, but now I was closer to him, I could see they were underscored by deep shadows, as if he’d not slept properly in weeks.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s Dad. The old fool didn’t come home last night.”

  “But I saw him last night,” I said. “He was in the pub.”

  “I know he was. But I’ve already phoned the pub. It was the first place I checked. Donald said he left about half past nine.”

  “Yes, that would be about right.”

  “Was he with anyone? More to the point, did he leave with anyone? Donald was his usual vague self when I asked him.”

  I thought how John had sat, alone, in the furthest, darkest corner of the bar. How each time he’d shambled up to the bar everyone else had done this kind of side-stepping shuffle, as they’d tried to edge away from him without making it too obvious. It was like some weird slow motion dance and all a bit sad. But John had been too far gone to notice.

  “He was on his own all night,” I said. “Donald was chatting to him for a bit at one time, but that was all. I don’t think he even recognised me. And I’m pretty sure there was no one with him when he left.”

  If there had been, I thought, they might have stopped him ricocheting off the door frame. But I kept that thought to myself.

  Will rubbed his face, his fingers rasping across several days’ growth of stubble. There was a bleak, hopeless look in his eyes, as though he was lost and a bit scared. I’d never seen him look like that before.