think.’
‘Double bullshit. What was she, a trick cyclist? She balanced on bicycle pedals for long enough to tie a noose round her neck and the other end round a tree. Bullshit in triplicate!’
It was kind of nice, in a way, seeing her composure slip.
‘Yeah, I get the point,’ he said. ‘You hungry?’
‘She couldn’t have done that by herself. You heard her, she didn’t know her knots from her knitting. She had help.’
‘Possibly. Pub grub do you?’
‘What the hell do you mean, possibly?’
‘Danielle didn’t die because someone found her and cut her down,’ said Joesbury. ‘They phoned for help and then legged it. CID never found them. It’s possible it was some sort of black joke that went a bit too far.’
‘She couldn’t identify them?’
Joesbury shook his head. ‘Unconscious when they found her. The important point to take away from today is that websites don’t seem to have unduly influenced her.’
‘She visited them.’
Up ahead was a pub. The sign outside said it served food all day. It also said it offered overnight accommodation. Oh, if only. Steak pie and chips, a bottle of good claret and then upstairs for the rest of the afternoon.
‘Of course she did,’ he said. ‘Anyone semi-computer literate contemplating any major step Googles it first these days. What we don’t have is any indication that what she found online made a significant difference.’
Make that the rest of the week.
‘Guess not,’ agreed Lacey.
Joesbury indicated left and pulled into the pub car park. ‘So, you’ve had a day out of school and done some proper detective work,’ he said, as he switched off the engine. ‘Now, can you get on with the brief you were given or do I have to replace you with an officer who understands the meaning of the phrase do what you’re told?’
For a second, maybe two, they stared at each other. She’d kissed him once, last October, at around four in the morning, had pulled him gently towards her bed. And he really could have done without remembering that right now.
‘Is it a disciplinary offence to call a senior officer a patronizing bastard?’ she asked him.
She might never know what it had cost him to say no. What every second in her presence cost him when he couldn’t touch her.
‘Pay for lunch, Flint,’ he said, ‘and you can call me what you like.’
THE SUPPER PARTY at which I’d been invited to be Evi’s guest was in the middle of nowhere. Or, if you want to be picky, a tiny hamlet called Endicott, between two villages called Burwell and Waterbeach, some eight miles north-east of Cambridge. I was well and truly in the Fens now. I had a feeling that, had it been a clear night, the view would have been un-interrupted until the North Sea. I’ve spent my life in cities and I was finding the vastness of the East Anglian landscape disturbing. There was just too much of it somehow, too much emptiness. No place to hide.
Mind you, the sunset that evening as Joesbury and I had driven back had been awe-inspiring. There had been plenty of cloud cover all afternoon, and as the sun went down the wind picked up and the heavens began to swirl with endless shades of orange, crimson and gold. If someone had told me the sky was on fire, I might just have believed it.
The awesome skyscape seemed to have affected Joesbury too. He was silent for most of the journey back and dropped me off with barely a goodbye. Now, colour had largely fled the world and just a few ribbons of gold broke up the unrelenting blackness. Like memories of a day I really hadn’t wanted to end.
I spotted the gap in the hedgerow Evi had told me to watch out for and turned off the road. A few yards down the lane I switched off the Black Eyed Peas album I’d been listening to. There was something about the farm track, stretching for what seemed like miles ahead of me before disappearing into a black void, that made hip-hop seem entirely out of place.
The surface wasn’t great and I had to go slowly, rocking and lurching from one rut to another. I seemed to have left civilization behind, my headlights the only break in the darkness for miles. Nor could I rely on anything astral. Someone had taken a vacuum and cleaned the sky of stars, and if the moon had come up at all this evening, it had changed its mind and gone in again.
On a whim, I slowed right down and switched off the headlights, just to see. The night seemed to solidify. It leaped closer, surrounding the car. I swear I could hear the metal of the bodywork groaning under the pressure. Completely freaky! I switched my headlights back on quickly. I’d had no idea that night-time could be so intense.
I carried on past farm buildings on the right-hand side of the track and what could even have been a house. No lights though. No parked cars. Nothing to indicate a gathering. I think I was almost considering giving up when I passed through two tall stone columns and saw the farmhouse ahead. Several vehicles were parked at the front and there were lights on in the downstairs windows. I parked and got out. The email Evi had sent me earlier had warned against wearing heels. Easy now to see why. This wasn’t even a rough gravel drive. This was rock- spattered earth.
The house was two storey, square built, of stone construction. It looked like a haunted house in a children’s story book: carved window ledges, elaborate crest over the front door and those nasty imp-like statues that leer down at you, tongues dangling, from the roof edge. There was a large iron ring centrally placed on the door. I lifted it, was about to let it fall.
‘That door hasn’t been opened since the old Queen died,’ said a voice from the side of the house. I turned to see Nick Bell heading towards me, lit cigarette in one hand.
‘This is your house?’ I asked when he was closer, cursing my stupidity for not asking Evi whose party she was inviting me to.
‘I rather think it owns me,’ he replied. ‘Laura, isn’t it? Evi told me you were coming. Good to see you again.’
He bent lower and kissed me on one cheek. The skin of his face was cold and his breath smelled of smoke and red wine. I couldn’t help a shudder as his lips made contact.
‘So did the old Queen die here?’ I asked, more to cover my confusion than because I have any interest in deceased royalty. The house looked old enough for any number of dead queens to be associated with it.
‘Quite possibly,’ he replied. He was wearing jeans and the same blue and brown flecked woollen sweater I’d seen him in at the hospital. ‘Her rotting corpse could still be in one of the attic bedrooms,’ he was saying. ‘We get some very odd smells from time to time.’
I followed Nick round the side of the house, past smokers huddled around a fire-pit and in through a boot room that smelled of dogs. On a counter I saw what looked like a cardboard box of fluffy yellow chicks. I leaned closer. Chicks all right. Dead ones. I was about to ask Nick why he kept dead poultry in his boot room when he ushered me into the kitchen. A slim woman in her early fifties with shoulder-length dark hair claimed his attention and a couple of pointers grabbed mine.
I have very little experience of dogs but it’s difficult to resist creatures that are so unashamedly pleased to see you. Both were predominantly white with speckled markings. The smaller and slimmer of the two had a chocolate-brown face with ears so active they almost seemed to be talking at me. The other, with red-brown face and markings, looked older, its big cocoa-coloured eyes both wise and friendly. The name tag on the older one said Merry. The younger was Pippin.
In my experience, people who are very keen on
