‘Oh, in case it could have been a revenge attack that went pear-shaped? They just got the wrong house?’
‘Valley View is directly across the lane from the Chadwicks. I thought if the attackers were coming into the village by an indirect route, they might easily have got confused.’
‘It’s possible. But…?’
‘I didn’t bother checking in the end. It doesn’t seem necessary now.’
At The Cottage, Cooper was invited into a sitting room somewhere in the depths of the barn conversion, with French windows looking out on to a large pond surrounded by reeds and oriental grasses. There was no sign of the herons today. Had they been scared off, or had they simply exhausted the available supply of fish?
Marietta Chadwick did most of the talking. Her husband sat fidgeting with anxiety, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
‘This isn’t a place where we expect violence to happen, you know,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘It’s rather beyond our experience.’
‘Not for all of you.’ said Cooper.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Some of the residents in this village are probably more familiar with violence than you might think.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Never mind.’
She twisted her hands together nervously. ‘I’m just trying to explain why we… well, why our initial response might have been the wrong one, in retrospect.’
‘Oh?’
‘We didn’t want to put ourselves forward, that’s the truth of it. We’ve got so used to trying to keep a low profile. Just in case, you know.’
‘There’s really no need to make excuses, Mrs Chadwick.’
‘I wasn’t… Well, anyway… it’s about Russell Edson.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’ve never been happy with him. Such an odd man. That Barry Gamble is odd, too, of course – but in a different way. We’ve always thought he was harmless. Not everybody agrees with us, though.’
‘Mr Edson?’ said Cooper, trying to steer her back on topic.
‘Edson, yes. Well, he’s a complete pain in the neck, to be honest. Have you seen his place? Of course you have.’
‘It’s well protected.’
‘He uses that CCTV system like a surveillance network. We imagine him sitting inside the house, watching his monitors twenty-four hours a day. If you do the least thing on that lane, he sees you and comes out to object. If you park your car with its wheels slightly over the verge, or let your dog go to the toilet on the grass, or even pick a blackberry off the hedge… The smallest thing, and he’ll be out shouting that it’s his property and you have no rights. He’s a very rude person. Very arrogant.’
‘It’s a wonder no one ever punched him on the nose,’ said Chadwick.
‘William,’ said his wife warningly.
‘I’m speaking metaphorically, of course.’
‘Oh, his metaphorical nose,’ said Cooper. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘Also, he wants to cut down that wonderful monkey puzzle tree,’ said Mrs Chadwick.
‘Does he? I thought he was quite proud of it.’
Mrs Chadwick shook her head. ‘He has no feeling for anything if it gets in his way. He wants to clear the view of Riddings Edge from his terrace.’
‘I see.’
‘Those trees are dying out in their native habitat, you know. Climate change is causing forest fires in Chile.’
‘That’s very interesting. But…?’
She nodded, and looked at her husband. Cooper had the feeling they must have discussed this long and hard, maybe all week. Had it taken them five days, ever since the death of Zoe Barron, to make their minds up about what to do? What had convinced them in the end? he wondered. Another death? Or two, even. The deaths of Martin Holland and Jake Barron had intervened.
‘We didn’t come forward before, because it seemed to us that it would only complicate matters,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘The situation here is worrying enough, after all. And we kept hearing that police resources were overstretched. We didn’t want to distract you from doing your job with irrelevant information.’
‘When you say “we”…?’
‘Bill and I talked it over, of course. And…’
‘Who else?’
‘Well, we discussed it with one of our neighbours.’ She pointed vaguely to the north. ‘Mr Nowak, at Lane End.’
‘This is about Tuesday night?’ said Cooper impatiently. ‘The time of the attack at Valley View.’
‘Yes. There were people in the village that night, you see. Oh, I know that sounds strange. There are always people in the village. And it’s not always clear why. But these were different.’
Her husband couldn’t resist butting in.
‘Russell Edson used to have parties, you know,’ he said. ‘All kinds of people came then. But they haven’t taken place for a while. That’s why we noticed, I suppose.’
‘Did you see any vehicles at all?’ asked Cooper.
‘Nothing unusual.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘Well… one. Though the vehicle itself wasn’t unusual. We see it in the village all the time. But it was a bit late for it to be around.’
‘A bit late?’
Mrs Chadwick looked at Cooper rather too brightly.
‘Yes, late. After all, you don’t do much gardening in the dark, do you?’
When he got back to his car, Cooper wondered whether to return to the office. There was a nagging voice at the back of his mind – a constant muttering of anxiety, a fretful whisper reeling off all the possible developments at Bridge End he should be worried about. But he knew that if he stopped to listen to it, he would never do anything else. He had to find something to occupy his mind. Carol Villiers had been right. He had to focus, and stay focused.
A call came in before he could make up his mind what to do next.
‘Gavin? Have you got some news?’
‘Yes. I was feeling particularly spiteful today, so I decided to check on Mr Edson’s alibi for Tuesday night.’
‘He was out for dinner,’ said Cooper.
‘Yes.’
‘You checked up with the restaurant? What made you do that?’
‘I don’t like him. Is that a good enough reason?’
‘It’ll do for me, Gavin.’
‘When we visited him, I remember him being very specific about what he and his mother ordered. Migratory ducks and all that.’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘To me that suggested a very good memory. Or more likely that he’d made a note of it, so that he could sound totally convincing if he was asked about it later.’
‘Gavin, sometimes I love your appalling cynicism.’
‘It gets results,’ said Murfin modestly. ‘See, by doing that, he wasn’t actually telling us a lie. Only by omission, anyway.’
‘Go on, then. What was it he omitted to mention?’
‘That it wasn’t just him and his mother who were supposed to be eating at Bauers that night. They had a
