He rubbed his hands up and down his face, and Langham wondered if Oliver was seeing it all again.
“It fucking hurt my head. Then she seemed to get the hang of it, to get herself calm, and she spoke again, and this time it was slower. She said she’d been knitting, watching the twenty-four-hour news about someone who’d broken into a house, would you believe. Someone banged on her back door, she said, and she jumped—the story on the news had got her jittery. Anyway, she went to see who it was, thinking it would be a family member, because all of her family knew not to knock on her front door.”
“So she wasn’t afraid of who would be at the door.” Langham grimaced. “Whoever killed her knew that her family always went around the back. Someone who lives here then, or knows the family. That narrows it down.”
“I thought the same, so I asked her if it was someone she knew. She said she knew her all right.”
“Her?” Jesus wept.
“Yes, her.”
“Did she tell you who it was?”
“Not yet.”
“So what happened next?”
“She let her in, thinking they’d have another row, that the woman would say her piece then go away again like she’d done before. But she didn’t. She said she had some people coming to visit—the killer did—and that before the old woman could get her hands on them, she was going to sort her out.”
Langham swallowed a slew of bile that had zipped up into his throat. This didn’t sound good. “Ask her now. I don’t want to know how she got killed, I just want to know who did it.”
Oliver closed his eyes and mumbled a few words, then said louder, “She’s whispering. I can’t make out what she’s saying. Sounds like, ‘Tell him. Tell him what I said first.’ Right. So the killer pushed her down onto her sofa then knelt on her chest, pinning her there. She was angry, probably how she had the strength to do that, and bent over, putting her hands around her throat. She squeezed, and the woman, the one being killed, coughed. A spray of blood came out—like a fine mist—and went on the killer and… Shit, it’s her from The Running Hare, isn’t it?” He stared at Langham, eyes wide as realisation hit him.
“That’s what I thought.” Langham shook his head. “And afterwards she went home, scrubbed her face—which is why it was so red—and washed her hair. Except she didn’t wash her chest properly. I can see it all now, how she would have rushed because she knew we were coming. She hadn’t ‘totally forgotten’ our arrival at all.”
“She killed because of us, because we were coming to stay.” Oliver blinked several times.
“No, not because of us specifically. It could have been anyone booking a room there. She’d got herself so pissed off with this place getting all the guests it tipped her over the edge. And when she was in our room, and we came back, she knew we were leaving. She’d probably watched us come here. And now she’ll be angry, or maybe even disillusioned, about how she killed and we left her anyway. And think about it, she must be deranged. How would killing the gran stop people staying here? Wouldn’t she have to kill the receptionist or her father? Her mother, if she has one around? And this,” Langham said, reaching into his pocket, “I have to call in.”
He switched his ringer and vibrate alerts back on, then selected Fairbrother’s number from his contact list.
Fairbrother took a while to answer. “What are you doing ringing me?”
“I know I said I wouldn’t but—”
“And if it’s about Mondon and Hiscock, Mondon’s at home, but I don’t have a location for Hiscock yet. I can handle them. Have your holiday.”
“It isn’t about them.”
“Oh. Right. What is it about?”
“Has our division had a call about a murder in Marsh Vines?”
“Oh, you’re kidding me? Does crime follow you or what?”
“Seems that way.”
“I haven’t been called out to anything, but I can check whether someone else has.”
“You’ll need to. I know who the killer is and why she did it.”
Fairbrother sighed. “Okay, give it to me. Then go back to your holiday.”
* * * *
“We’ll be leaving in the morning,” Langham said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”
He sat next to Oliver in the bar, in one corner beside a jukebox that stood silent. He was grateful it wasn’t belting out any noise—he couldn’t be doing with that at the moment. He had a pint of Guinness in his hand, which reminded him of the man in The Running Hare. Had the old duffer known what the pub owner was going to do? Was he her husband? Was that why he’d stared at them the way he had, as though they had no right being there, arriving just a little bit early while she’d been murdering?
Oliver swallowed a mouthful of lager. “No, I don’t mind. Where will we go?”
“Home.”
“Oh.”
“To pick up our passports, make a last-minute booking online for abroad, then we’re fucking off. What do you fancy? My treat.”
“Anywhere other than England. Somewhere we can’t be called back from easily. Unless one of our family members is in an accident or something.” Oliver paused, seeming thoughtful. “But since we went and visited my mum and she made it even clearer she wants nothing to do with me, I might not even come back from abroad if she was ill.”
Langham put his Guinness down. “I don’t have anyone. Haven’t had for years. Had the same problem as you. Family turfed me out, you know
