Fry looked at him. ‘What are you saying? Has Blake got something to hide?’
Kewley touched the side of his nose — a conspiratorial gesture that he somehow managed to make look obscene.
‘You know what they say — the higher a monkey climbs up the tree, the more you see of his arse.’
He laughed and turned away. It was a signal that she wouldn’t get any more out of him on that subject. Not right now, anyway. She might need some kind of pressure she could bring to bear. But that was for another day.
Angie Fry hadn’t liked the idea of involving Andy Kewley, and she told her sister so after that first meeting in the cemetery.
‘I didn’t say I liked it either,’ Diane had said. ‘But he’s useful. And he was my old partner. There ought to be some loyalty there still.’
When she thought back to her meeting with Kewley, Fry wondered if he’d been right, after all. Had she been sacrificed for some purpose she wasn’t even aware of? I mean any case, no matter who the victim is... Anybody can get tossed aside, if it suits them. Yes, justice was a slippery concept indeed.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Angie had said. ‘I think he’s dirty. I think he probably always was dirty.’
‘Maybe. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Like hell it doesn’t. I know this sort of character. He’s playing both sides. If you don’t watch him, he’ll lead you into a trap, sis.’
‘But who do we trust? Who is there we can trust?’
Angie had laughed. It was a short, bitter laugh that seemed to sum up decades of hard experience.
‘No one,’ she said. ‘There’s no one we can trust. That’s the best advice your big sister can give you.’
‘Thanks a lot. I’ll treasure it.’
It was Andy Kewley who’d been late for his second meeting with Diane Fry. That was unlike him. She’d been waiting among the tiers of catacombs in Warstone Lane Cemetery, with tombs blackened with soot and that powerful, sickly sweet smell still strong on the night air.
It was very dark away from the street lights and Fry pulled a small torch from her pocket. She looked down from the top tier of the catacombs to the grass circle below, the centre of the amphitheatre.
For a moment, Fry thought the vandals had struck again since her last visit to the cemetery, that another memorial angel had been toppled to the ground. In the light of her torch, she saw blank eyes pressed into the grass, a face mottled with damp.
But when she looked again, she knew this was no angel. The face was pale, but it wasn’t stone. The eyes were blank, but they were human. The mottled dampness was much too dark, as dark as clotted blood. Death had caught up with Andy Kewley.
29
Chloe Young had pitched it just right for the evening. Jeans and a white silk top that set off her dark hair, now tied up in what she described as a double-knotted pony. She looked smart, but not overdressed. Ben had emphasised that they were visiting a farm, after all. They’d be lucky if they found Matt Cooper wearing a clean pair of jeans and a shirt that wasn’t ripped.
When he and Chloe entered Bridge End Farm, Ben felt ridiculously nervous, as if he were a teenager bringing his first girlfriend home to meet his parents. There was no reason to feel like that, of course. He wasn’t a kid any more. He’d passed that stage a long time ago. He’d been engaged, for heaven’s sake — and almost married too. If his marriage with Liz had gone ahead, he might have been a father himself by now. So his nervousness was ridiculous.
No, it was the house that made him feel like this. He couldn’t escape the suspicion that the ghosts of his parents were still lurking in the dark corners of the hallway, peering out from behind the door of the snug, looking down from the banisters on the landing. Wherever he looked, his father and mother were almost there, but just out of sight. In a way, he still needed their approval, to know what they would have thought of the new woman in his life.
Chloe had raised an eyebrow in surprise when Ben led her to the back door of the farmhouse and entered without knocking. He paused for a moment, realising how odd it might look to some people. He’d never stopped thinking of Bridge End as his home, even though he’d lived in Edendale for years and now had his own house in Foolow. It would never have occurred to him to use the front door, or to knock and wait for someone to answer, the way visitors did. And he was certain Matt and Kate would have thought it very strange if he started to do that. They would take it as an insult. He’d be treating them as strangers instead of family.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘This is what we do here.’
‘Good job we’re not burglars, then.’
‘Oh, Matt would have his shotgun pointed at us by now.’
A look of concern crossed her face.
‘I’m joking,’ said Ben.
‘Right.’
He hoped he sounded convincing. The trouble was, Chloe knew perfectly well that Matt Cooper had been involved in an incident a few years ago when a would-be burglar had been shot and wounded right here in the farmyard. Matt had faced the prospect of prosecution for a while until the CPS had taken the view that it wasn’t in the public interest. There had been too many cases of that kind already, particularly in rural areas, and everyone knew what kind of outcry could be expected.
They stepped into the back hall, and Ben closed the door behind them.
‘Hello!’ he called. ‘We’re here.’
‘Come on in,’ answered Kate’s voice from the kitchen.
Ben put his head round the door. ‘Something smells good.’
Kate laughed, wiping her hands on a towel. ‘That’s what Matt always says.’
‘This is Chloe.’
‘Well, I thought it must be.’
The two women shook hands and appraised each other with that quick wordless assessment Ben had seen so often. It always made him wonder what passed between two women at a moment like this. It was as if they were communicating through some extra sense that he didn’t possess, like two dogs sniffing the air and reading everything in a scent.
The test seemed to be passed on both sides. Kate and Chloe smiled at each other.
‘We’re so glad to meet you at last,’ said Kate.
‘I hope you’re not going to say you’ve heard so much about me. I know none of it would be good.’
Ben heard an overly dramatic cough at his elbow and turned to find his niece Josie.
‘Oh, and this is—’ began Kate.
‘I’m Josie. Are you the one who cuts up dead bodies?’
‘Well, I suppose I am,’ said Chloe.
‘Brilliant.’
Over dinner, Josie couldn’t be restrained from bombarding Chloe Young with questions about death, body parts and mortuary instruments. Matt began to look increasingly unhappy as he ate. But he’d never had much control over the females in his family.
‘I blame you for this, Ben,’ said Matt afterwards, when they found themselves alone in a quiet moment.
‘For what?’
‘First Josie said she was going to join the police, and now apparently she wants to be a pathologist.’
‘She’ll grow out of it. She just gets enthusiasms.’
Matt grunted. ‘Always the wrong kind, though.’
‘She doesn’t want to come into farming, then?’
His brother’s expression turned sour again.
‘Nobody wants to come into farming,’ he said. ‘All everybody wants to do is get out.’
‘But you’ll never get out,’ said Ben. ‘Never.’