Damien had been uncomfortable when I asked him if he’d touched the body. What I’d been trying to find out was whether Charlie’s skin was cool to the touch – or warm. It would be in the police case notes; the pathologist called to the scene would have taken the temperature of the victim and estimated time of death. Maybe Geoff Sinclair would be able to remember? I made a note to phone him. Charlie couldn’t have been there for very long; he’d not left home till four.
The second thing that puzzled me was Damien’s description of Charlie’s car: how it had been ticking as the metal contracted, how the bonnet felt warm. Cars cool down pretty quickly anyway and it was November time so the temperatures would be lower; that suggested that Charlie had used it very shortly before his death, before Damien arrived.
Third was Damien’s ‘walker’. The passer-by with the rucksack. The only living soul that Damien admitted seeing from getting off the bus to climbing on board again later. Sinclair said the police had no knowledge of this character. But in the days after the murder, they would have crawled all over the village, interviewing anyone home or in the area that day and cross-referencing everybody’s accounts. Appeals had been made for witnesses: ‘Anyone who saw anything, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant or irrelevant it may seem, please let us know.’ And at that stage it would be another two weeks until Damien Beswick was apprehended.
So imagining this man existed, if he was an innocent bystander, he walked past the cottage on the very day that a brutal murder was carried out. He went home after his walk or whatever, had a shower, made his tea. The next day on the telly, or in the papers he read how close he was. Why not call it in? Maybe he didn’t notice Damien and so thought he had nothing to tell the enquiry. Maybe he got home that evening and changed for his holiday in New Zealand or wherever, and flew off and missed the brouhaha.
Or he kept quiet, lay low, because he wasn’t innocent, he hadn’t been up in the hills walking – he’d been killing Charlie. And he’d left the cottage moments before Damien arrived. Damien’s description was pretty vague but one detail that he had recalled without my prompting was that the man had been out of breath, panting, which would fit if you were hurrying away from a murder scene, though it would fit equally well if you were an energetic fell walker coming down the hills at the end of a hard day’s tramp. And he had been lugging a backpack with him.
If this was a suspect, what was his motive? Nothing was stolen apart from the wallet that Damien took. There weren’t any other suspects, unless… My mind darted back to the old business partner that Libby had mentioned: the alcoholic who bore a grudge even though he’d been the one dragging the firm to the edge of insolvency. I flicked through my notes: Nick Dryden. Had something happened that made him suddenly act many years after things had turned sour? Was there some personal crisis that had tipped him over the edge from angry drunk to homicidal maniac? How would he know where to find Charlie? Charlie wasn’t at home. Had Dryden been stalking him and followed him to the cottage? I shook my head at the image that conjured up: the little convoy setting out on a winter’s afternoon. Charlie in front heading for Thornsby and looking forward to seeing Libby; behind him Valerie driving Heather, the anxious wife looking for evidence to prove her suspicions, and after them Nick Dryden, out for blood.
I gave up on work. I would ring Sinclair the following day, see what he could tell me about the estimate for Charlie’s time of death, how warm the body was and if they had made any efforts to trace Nick Dryden and find out where he’d been the day Charlie was killed.
Maddie was in full strop from the moment she came out of school. It’s never a good time of day – I know she’s often tired and hungry and cranky so I made allowances when she slung her lunch box under Jamie’s buggy and it flew open, spilling wrappers and a squashed up drink carton. And when she refused to put her coat on and walked home shivering, going blue around the gills.
I made them some toast and hot chocolate and thought things would improve. They scoffed it at the kitchen table, where Jamie was sitting in her seat.
‘Jamie’s got her first tooth,’ I told them.
‘Let’s see.’ Tom stood up and craned his neck, as I gently pulled Jamie’s lower lip down. Maddie refused to be impressed. Maddie was jealous. The first flush of interest in the baby had given way to feeling usurped.
‘Feel it with your finger,’ I suggested. He did and Jamie clamped her mouth shut.
‘She bit me!’ He didn’t know whether to be cross or delighted but I could tell he wasn’t hurt. ‘It’s sharp.’
Maddie went off to the living room and Tom peered at his finger for a moment, then ran after her.
‘Stop following me,’ I heard her snap.
‘I’m not. I just want to watch telly.’
‘Well, you can’t. You always talk,’ she said.
‘I do not!’ Tom protested.
‘Liar!’
Maddie wasn’t getting enough attention and behaving badly was a sure-fire way of attracting lots of it. Before it could get any heavier I intervened and they settled down in front of the box. But ten minutes later, while I was feeding Jamie, there was an almighty crash from the living room. I pulled the bottle out of her mouth and hurried to see what was going on.
The television was face down on the floor. Maddie looked flushed and guilty. Tom was crying.
‘He was in the way,’ Maddie said sulkily. ‘I told him to move.’
‘I was not,’ Tom shouted, furious with passion and his face dark, snot bubbling out of his nose. ‘She kept getting closer.’
Jamie began to cry.
‘She kept pushing me. She pushed me into the telly and-’
‘He pulled it down,’ Maddie said quickly.
‘It fell down!’ Tom screamed.
‘All right.’ I plonked the baby on the sofa and held up both my hands.
‘He’s trying to blame it on me,’ Maddie insisted.
‘Shush,’ I told her as I knelt and unplugged the television.
‘You always take his side,’ Maddie shouted now and ran upstairs. Tom was sobbing and Jamie was howling.
I moved and gave Tom a hug. He usually came off worse when the kids fell out. Maddie was more calculating, devious even, and Tom couldn’t bear the injustice. She’d engineer an argument or a fight and then try to seize the moral high ground. Being a year older, and a girl, also made her more articulate and she’d confuse him and trip him up with the way she put a spin on things. It wasn’t a trait I liked in my daughter and I guess, like many parents, there were times when I wondered whether I’d done anything to encourage it.
‘We’ll talk about it properly when you’ve both calmed down,’ I told Tom.
‘Is it broken?’ He took his arms from round my neck; his dark eyes were wide and soft and shiny with tears. He winced as Jamie’s cries reached glass-shattering pitch.
‘I don’t know. I’d better finish feeding Jamie and then I’ll have a look.’
He swiped at his face with both hands.
‘You go blow your nose,’ I said, ‘and stay away from Maddie for a bit.’
The crying had given Jamie hiccups and it took twice as long to feed her. She filled her nappy, again, and the contents were particularly virulent, probably to do with her teething. She didn’t show any signs of going to sleep once I’d wrested her into clean clothes, so I peeled a piece of carrot for her, large enough so she couldn’t choke on it, and gave her it to gnaw on. If the tooth was hurting her at all maybe it would help. She took to it straight away, making little droney sounds.