‘No,’ Clement admitted. Before being asked to take a closer in-depth look at things, it hadn’t really been necessary for him to inspect it in person. ‘But from the reports I read, it’s about a quarter of mile from the farmhouse itself, out of sight and up a hill, in the middle of his wheat fields. Used to house equipment and store some over-spill grain after the harvest, and some straw for winter fodder.’
‘At least the weather’s nice and dry,’ Trudy said, glancing out of the window to make sure a sudden shower wasn’t in the offing. ‘So we won’t need wellingtons.’
‘In any other circumstances, it’d be a nice day for a walk,’ Clement agreed.
Chapter 7
Because the coroner had begun giving Trudy driving lessons, he drove his ‘Aunty Rover’ out of the town, and then pulled over on a country lane so that they could swap seats. This meant that she could continue the seven miles or so to the village of Middle Fenton without too much difficulty or danger to other traffic whilst she was still such a novice. She was doing well, he noted with pride – very rarely now scraping the gears, and only stalling once, at a deserted country crossroads.
She carefully parked his Rover P4 in a shady part of the Dewberry farm’s cobbled forecourt, which was deserted. Not even a sheepdog barked a warning, and Clement supposed that both of the Dewberrys, father and son, were out working the land.
The farmhouse was typical of the vernacular, made of local stone, a sturdy, no-nonsense square building with a vast slate roof. It had probably stood in this spot for nearly two hundred years or so.
‘At some point we need to have a long talk with Ronnie Dewberry,’ Trudy said as she climbed out of the car and carefully locked it, before handing the keys back to her colleague. ‘They grew up together and they were best friends all through primary and the local grammar school. And David either chose to come here to die or his killer decided it was a safe spot to kill him. Not that that’s necessarily significant – all the locals know about the barn, and anybody out taking a country walk could have stumbled on it too. But if anybody knew what was going on in David’s head, it’s probably his best friend.’
Clement nodded, although he didn’t feel quite so confident as his companion. He knew that the boy’s close friendship of childhood probably wouldn’t have lasted long into adulthood even had they both survived, especially with David Finch attending university in London, and Ronnie settling into life at the farm. All too soon, they’d have lost touch, with David increasingly staying away from the village as he made his life and home elsewhere. Childhood friendships could be intense, but they rarely stayed that way into adulthood. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised if that process hadn’t already started. ‘Remind me again what the dead boy was hoping to do for a career?’
‘Civil engineering,’ Trudy said promptly.
Yes, Clement now remembered reading that in the notes. Once, he wouldn’t have had to ask Trudy for the reminder. Since he’d confirmed his self-diagnosed illness, he’d taken to doing mental exercises every day, to both stimulate his brain activity, and to monitor any rates of serious decline in his mental faculties. So far, the progression of his illness was very slow, leaving him more and more confident that he might have a few good years left, if he was lucky. And if he could keep his condition a secret for that long.
‘The barn’s presumably that way?’ Trudy said, yanking him back from the precipice of his darkening thoughts and pointing to a grass-and-stone track that led up the hill away to the left. Years of tractor usage had sunk the track several inches into the ground, leaving ruts that made it look a bit tricky to walk on.
Clement shrugged and set off after her – but not before casually retrieving a walking stick from the boot of his car. It was a knotted length of hazel that he’d cut out of a hedgerow himself and whittled into shape a few weeks ago. It now looked suitably rustic and offhand. Not at all the sort of hospital-produced, medical affair that would suggest he had any difficulty walking.
Not that he did, as such. Well, not so that you’d notice, but he had become aware lately that he was getting into the habit of dragging his feet without realising it, and if he wasn’t careful, that might one day lead him taking the odd tumble.
He glanced around at the greening barley fields with their silvery-looking feathered ears, and took a large lungful of fresh air. Above, a skylark, startled by their presence, rocketed up into the sky, singing perpetually as he rose into the clouds – a challenge that was promptly answered by a rival in the next field.
Some corn buntings, sitting at the very tops of the tallest bushes in the hedgerows – usually elders – also watched their passage with a nervous twittering. Lining the hedgerows, cow parsley frothed creamy white, a magnet for orange-tip butterflies, and Clement looked around with real pleasure. There was nothing quite like England in the springtime!
The gradient of the hill was one of those deceptive ones, so gradual it didn’t pull on the knees, but so long that it gave you a surprise when you reached the top, and you looked down from quite a high panorama. Unfortunately, the hill was the wrong side of the fields to overlook the village, which meant the police had probably had zero luck by way of locating any potential witnesses. If anybody from the village had seen the lad set out on his last journey, none of them would have been able to track his
