Who would be next?
Chapter 34
Ray Dewberry looked at Clement with such a totally blank gaze that it sent chills up Trudy’s spine. She’d have felt better if he’d begun ranting and raving, or crying, or trying to explain and excuse himself. Anything would be better than that blank nothingness.
‘Dad, don’t,’ Ronnie repeated, but he sounded helpless, ineffectual.
Clement, in a bid to keep Ray Dewberry’s focus firmly on himself, and not on either Janet or Trudy, stepped casually to his right, a couple of paces away from his young friend, widening the distance between them. He suspected the farmer wouldn’t like it if he moved forward, trying to get closer to him, but at least he could make it harder for the man to shoot both himself and Trudy in quick succession. It might give her some sort of a chance …
‘Did you know what your father had done, Ronnie?’ he asked casually. ‘Or did you only suspect it?’
Janet blinked at this new idea, but (rather belatedly) now kept wisely silent. She had come here to confront Ronnie, safe in the knowledge that the whole village knew she was with him, thus making it impossible for him to do anything to her unless he was willing to hang for it. But even as she’d carried out her plan, she had never really, deep inside, believed that Ronnie was a killer. Instead, hadn’t she, deep in her heart, foolishly, stubbornly hoped that he’d be able to somehow explain away all her fears, and David Finch’s naming of him in his diary? But she had never, even in her wildest imaginings, thought that he might have been covering up for his own father! Now she turned wide, wondering eyes on him. She had fought for her own identity against the cloying demands of her mother for so long, that it had never occurred to her that the man she’d always wanted for herself might also have such a threatening and damaging relationship with his only parent.
Ronnie shrugged helplessly. ‘I wasn’t sure. I thought … When Iris turned up dead … I knew … But then there were so many other men … I hoped … I mean, my own father… I just couldn’t believe …’ He trailed off into silence.
Although his answer had been all but incoherent, Trudy had followed it easily. ‘You knew that your dad was another of Iris’s … what shall we call them? Admirers? Victims? But you told yourself that since there were so many men in Iris’s life, it could have been one of them that snapped and killed her?’ she said gently.
‘Yeah,’ Ronnie admitted, his voice barely a mumble.
‘How long had Iris been … seeing … your dad?’ Trudy asked, not sure what good it would do to ask so many questions now, but thinking that the more she could keep them all talking the more time it would give her to think what to do.
‘Months,’ Ronnie said bitterly. ‘Bloody months. She was bleeding him dry, always wanting this, asking money to buy that …’
‘Shut up boy,’ Ray Dewberry interrupted him, but without heat. His voice sounded as flat and expressionless as the look on his face.
‘She was even nagging him to sell off some land,’ Ronnie said, clearly not about to shut up at all. He’d gone from a mumbling ineffectual young lad to fired-up and almost fizzing with emotion in less than a blink of an eye. Trudy could only guess how tense and wound up he’d been the last few weeks, but now was hardly the time for him to let it all explode. They needed to calm things down, not make them even more fraught!
‘Land! That’s the one thing a good farmer will never let go,’ Ronnie continued angrily, disgust deepening the tone of his voice now. ‘But she kept on and on at him, pleading, whining, wheedling. You think I didn’t know?’ Ronnie shot his father a swift, venomous look. ‘But I heard her, up in your room, when you thought I had gone out to the pub. “We could go to the Caribbean, Ray-Ray,”’ Ronnie said, parodying a girl’s sweet voice. ‘It made me sick. “Wouldn’t you like to see Monte Carlo, Ray-Ray? Think of it, walking into the casino and just placing one bet on the roulette wheel. Wouldn’t it be fabulous?” Oh yes, I heard her,’ Ronnie snarled. ‘And after having her in your bed – in Mum’s bed – you were really thinking of doing it too, weren’t you?’ he all but shouted now. ‘Selling off an acre or two here, an acre or two there. So you could spend it on that piece of—’
‘I said shut up boy,’ Ray said again. Oddly enough, he said it in exactly the same tone of voice as he’d said it before. His voice hadn’t risen, it hadn’t got angry, or threatening. It was just the same, flat, rather tired demand for him to be silent.
Clement didn’t like it. He didn’t like it all.
He took another step, placing him further still away from Trudy.
Then he saw Trudy notice what it was that he was doing. Saw too the flash of anger and accusation cross her face as she realised why he was doing it. Then he saw it change to one of quiet resolution, and he felt, for the first time, truly and utterly terrified. And to his horror, he saw her take a few steps of her own – in the opposite direction. Placing them even further apart – but in a forward direction, closing the space between them and the farmer. Putting her first place in the line of fire.
He wanted to shout at her to stop it. But he knew that he couldn’t – he didn’t dare. He must do nothing to draw attention to her. Not when Ray Dewberry was standing there, quiet and calm, watching them all thoughtfully, the shotgun held with comfortable ease in his hand. As a farmer, he’d probably
