“True.”
“Anyway, I’m sure it’s fine for old people, people who’ve retired down here, but I haven’t got to that stage of my life.”
“No. At your age you should be having a good time.”
“What chance have I got of that in a dump like this?”
“Presumably your parents knew you weren’t keen on the idea before you came?”
“I kept telling them. Whether they took it in or not is another matter. When Dad gets a bee in his bonnet about something, he does it, regardless of what anyone else thinks on the subject. And Mum…well, she just agrees with him all the time. Anything for a quiet life.”
Jude was impressed by how shrewdly the boy had assessed his parents’ relationship. “Putting the fact that you’re stuck in Fedborough on one side for a moment…”
“How can I put it on one side? I’m aware of it every minute of the day. There’s nowhere to go down here, nothing to do.”
“But – ”
“Don’t start talking to me about all the wonderful scenery around, and the walks I can go on, because who wants to go on a bloody walk? And I’m not into ponies like the girls are. Animals are just boring. And I don’t care that Dad’s buying a bloody sailing boat! You’ll never catch me on that thing!”
“I wasn’t going to say any of that, Harry. I was going to say that presumably you can still keep in touch with your London friends.”
“How?”
She pointed to his mobile phone. “That. Or you can email them.”
“Yes,” he admitted truculently. “I could.”
Suddenly Jude saw it all. Harry Roxby’s problems didn’t begin with the move to Fedborough. He hadn’t had many friends in London either. He was suffering that terrible teenage sense of isolation. Geographical isolation only compounded a pain that was already there.
But she was too canny to say anything to him about her realization. Instead, she abruptly changed the subject.
“Let’s talk about when we last met, Harry. When you found the torso in the cellar…”
All colour drained from the boy’s face.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Fourteen
Downstairs, Grant Roxby and Carole Seddon were getting on much better than had initially seemed likely. Their mutual contempt for the excesses of healing and psychiatry had bonded them. She’d even, in spite of the car, accepted his second offer of a glass of wine.
Kim had cleared the lunch things around them. Grant made no offer to help, increasing the impression that he ruled his household in a rather traditional manner. The two girls were off having riding lessons. Being younger, they had been attracted more quickly than Harry to the charms of country life.
Carole had no difficulty in bringing the conversation round to the Felling House torso. “Must be a relief for you to be allowed back into your own house.”
“Yes. The police were surprisingly sensitive, caused as little disruption as they could, but even so…” He chuckled. “Mind you, what happened may have speeded up our assimilation into Fedborough society. Everybody in the town knows exactly who we are now, and they all feel like they’ve got carte blanche to come up and talk to us in the street.”
“Giving their theories about what happened?”
“You betcha. God, the number of names that havebeen whispered discreetly to me…You’d think Fedborough was entirely populated by serial killers.”
“And do you have any theories yourself, Grant?”
He made a negative grimace. “I don’t know enough of the personalities involved. I’ve a feeling whatever happened happened at least three years ago.”
“Do you base that on something the police have said?” asked Carole eagerly, as her mind matched his words with the date of Virginia Hargreaves’s disappearance.
“No. While everyone else has been extremely generous to me with their theories, I’m afraid the police – the only people who might have anything vaguely authoritative to contribute – have said bugger all.”
“So where do you get your three years from?”
“Well, I met the Carltons…you know, while the house purchase was going through…and I just can’t believe they had anything to do with it. Besides, the state of the body when I saw it in the cellar…it looked like it had been dead a long time.”
Carole shook her head wryly. “Maybe. From the description Jude gave me, it sounded as if it had been sort of mummified, which would make precise dating a lot more difficult. Could be three years, could be a lot older…or indeed a lot more recent.”
“You know about these things?”
“I’m not an expert. But I used to work for the Home Office, and picked up some of the basics. The only thing that the state of the body does seem to indicate is that the woman was killed – or perhaps we should say, pending further information, met her end – somewhere else.”
“And was moved into the cellar here?”
“I should think that’s almost definitely the case, yes?” Grant Roxby looked thoughtful, and picked up the wine bottle. Only about a third of its contents remained. He gestured towards Carole, who shook her head again, and he filled up his own glass.
“You sound as if that news has affected your thinking about the case, Grant.”
He shrugged. “As I said, what do I know? On the other hand, it might make sense of something else…”
“Hm?”
“Well, because of what I’d assumed to be the age of the body, and because I hadn’t considered the possibility it might have been moved here, I had rather ruled out as suspects the people we bought the house from.”
“Debbie Carlton and her husband?”
“Ex-husband, yes.” Grant Roxby tapped his chin thoughtfully. “But maybe this explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Apparently Francis Carlton has been summoned back from Florida.”
“Summoned?”
“Yes. The police want to talk to him.”
“I saw it,” said Harry truculently. “Whatever they say doesn’t change the fact that I saw it.”
“‘They’ being your parents?”
“Of course.” He looked at Jude with defiance. “They like to control everything in my life, but they can’t do that. They can’t control my thoughts – or my memories.”
“‘They’ in this case being your dad.”
“Well, I suppose…Like about everything else, Mum just goes along with what he says.”
She was silent for a moment. “Are you telling me your parents don’t want you to think about what you saw?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t dwell on it, Harry. Just forget it. Don’t keep picking away at it, Harry!” Though the impersonation of Grant was not a good one, it caught some of his energy and bossiness.
“But putting that image out of your mind completely must be very hard.”
“Hard? It’s impossible.” His bottom lip trembled and tears threatened. At that moment he looked nearer ten than fifteen. “I’d never seen a dead body before. Any kind of dead body…let alone one in…in that condition.”
“Pretty ghastly, wasn’t it?”
“So you can’t just keep something like that out of your mind, shut the lid on it and never think about it
