"A lady up the road reported an intruder on her property," said the younger of the two, pulling on his cap as he approached. He gestured to his right. "Has anyone from here set off in that direction in the last hour or two?"
Bella felt Wolfie tremble. "I didn't see anyone, darlin'," she told the policeman cheerfully, "but I've been facin' toward the road… so I wouldn't, would I?" She was cursing Fox roundly inside her head. Why make a rule that no one should leave the site after dark, then break it himself? Unless, of course, the only reason for the rule was to give himself free run of the village. The idea that he was a common thief appealed to her. It brought him down to a manageable size in a way that Wolfie's constant references to the cutthroat razor did not.
The other officer chuckled as he moved into the light. "That has to be Bella Preston," he said. "It'd take more than a scarf and a bulky coat to disguise that shape and voice. What are you up to this time, girl? Not organizing another rave, I hope. We're still recovering from the last one."
Bella recognized him immediately as a police negotiator from the Barton Edge rave. Martin Barker. One of the good guys. Tall, brown-eyed, forty-plus, and a heart pleaser. She lowered the scarf with a smile. "Nn-nn. It's all aboveboard and legal, Mr. Barker. This land don't belong to anyone, so we're claiming it through adverse possession."
Another chuckle. "You've been reading too much fiction, Bella."
"Maybe, but we're planning to stay until someone produces deeds, proving it's theirs. We're entitled to have a go-anyone's entitled-we just happened to think of it first."
"No chance, darlin'," he said, aping her manner of speech. "If you're lucky you'll get a delay on the usual seven days' notice, but if you're still here in two weeks I'll eat my hat. How's that for an offer?"
"Should be amusing. Why so confident?"
"What makes you think this land isn't owned?"
"It's not on anyone's deeds."
"How do you know?"
It was a good question, thought Bella. They'd taken Fox's word for it, just as they'd taken his word on everything else. "Put it this way," she answered, "it don't look like anyone in the village wants to take us on. A couple of them have blustered a bit and threatened us with lawyers, but the only lawyer that's turned up wasn't interested in talking about squatters on his client's doorstep."
"I wouldn't pin your hopes on it," Martin Barker warned kindly. "They'll get round to it as soon as the holiday's over. There's too much money invested in this place to let travelers bring down the price of the houses. You know the rules as well as I do, Bella. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and there's damn all the likes of you and me can do about it." He put his hand on the rope. "Are you going to let us in? It would be useful to confirm that no one here was involved."
Bella jerked her head in invitation. They would come in whatever she said-on suspicion of breach of peace if nothing else-but she appreciated Martin's courtesy in asking. "Sure. We didn't come here to cause trouble, so the sooner you count us out the better." She was prepared to play "keeper" to Fox's son but not to Fox himself. Let the bastard make his own explanations, she thought, as she eased Wolfie from under her coat. "This is Wolfie. He's stopping with me 'n' the girls while his mum's away."
Wolfie shook with alarm as he stared at the constables' faces, his trust in Bella running like sawdust from his knees. Hadn't he told her Fox wasn't there? What would these men do when they found the bus empty? Bella should never have let them in… should never have mentioned his mother… they'd search for bruises and take him away…
Martin saw the fear in his face and squatted on his haunches to bring himself to the child's level. "Hi, Wolfie. Do you want to hear a joke?"
Wolfie shrank against Bella's legs.
"What do you call two rows of cabbages?"
No response.
"A dual cabbageway." Martin studied Wolfie's unsmiling face. "Heard it before, eh?"
The child shook his head.
"You don't think it's funny?"
A tiny nod.
Martin held his gaze for a moment, then dropped him a wink and stood up. The boy's fear was palpable, although whether he was afraid of policemen per se or of what a search of the camp might find, it was difficult to say. One thing was certain. If Bella had been looking after him for any length of time, he wouldn't be dressed in such inadequate clothing for a winter's night and he wouldn't be looking half-starved.
"Right," he said, "do you want to introduce us to your friends, Bella? My colleague here is PC Sean Wyatt, and you might like to make it clear that we're not interested in anything except the intruder at Shenstead Farm."
She nodded, taking Wolfie's hand firmly in hers. "Far as I know, there's nothing to find, Mr. Barker," she said with as much conviction as she could muster. "We're all families and we started this project the way we mean to go on… doing it by the book so the people round about wouldn't have nothing to complain about. There's the odd bit of dope stashed away, but nothing worse."
He stood aside for her to lead the way, noticing that she chose to start with the bus to the right of the semicircle-the most distant-where light leaked from cracks around the window blinds. He, of course, was more interested in the bus to the left, which drew Wolfie's eyes like magnets and appeared to be in total darkness.
DS Monroe passed the campsite on his way to Shenstead House and saw figures milling in front of the buses, thrown into relief by the headlamps of his colleagues' parked car. It was a reasonable assumption that the face at the window belonged to a newly arrived traveler, but he intended to exploit Mrs. Weldon's insistence that her friend had turned "peculiar" since she visited the site. It was an excuse of sorts to interview Mrs. Bartlett because there was nothing else to investigate. No complaint had been made against her, and the file on Mrs. Lockyer-Fox had been closed for months.
Nevertheless, Monroe was curious. Ailsa's death continued to play on his mind, despite the coroner's verdict. He had been the first on the scene and the impact of the sad little body, propped against the sundial, wearing a thin nightdress, a man's threadbare dressing-gown, and a pair of Wellington boots had been powerful. Whatever the final conclusion, it had always felt like murder to Monroe. The bloodstains a yard from the body, the incongruity of insubstantial nightclothes and solid Wellingtons, the inevitable conclusion that something had disturbed her sleep and she had ventured outside to investigate.
He had played down Prue's hysterical conclusion that Eleanor's "peculiarity" meant the face at the window was Darth Vader's-"You have a habit of putting two and two together and making five, Mrs. Weldon"-but he was interested in the coincidence of the travelers' arrival and the falling-out between the women. He was too experienced to assume a connection without evidence, but the possibility that one existed remained at the back of his mind.
He drew to a halt at the entrance to Shenstead Manor, still undecided about whether to talk to Colonel Lockyer-Fox before he spoke to Mrs. Bartlett. It would help to know exactly what the woman had been saying, but if the Colonel refused to cooperate then Monroe's already limited excuses for questioning the woman would vanish. He needed an official complaint, a fact that the Colonel's solicitor would certainly point out, assuming he was the one advising reticence.
It was this reticence that really intrigued Monroe. The idea that lodged in his mind-strengthened both by the need for a voice distorter and the lawyer's remark to Mrs. Weldon that her friend's knowledge of the family was very detailed-was that Darth Vader was closely related to the Colonel.
And he kept remembering that, in the hours following his wife's death, the Colonel had accused his son of murdering her…