‘Don’t point that thing at me, there’s no need for that,’ I said in my friendliest I’m-just-a-harmless-detective voice. ‘You must be,’ I opted for neutral ground, ‘Ms Stone.’
‘Right first time. Now up the hill and back where you came from. I’ve had enough of people creeping round my place.’ She motioned with the rifle. ‘Go on.’
By now I’d had time to take a closer look. She was covered in several layers of the kind of washed-out olive drab and used-to-be-blue kind of stuff people working in the country always seemed to wear but her feet were trendily clad in pink wellies. Ms Stone tried hard to sound and look fierce, squinting along the barrel of her gun and lowering her voice, but that couldn’t disguise the fact that even in all this dripping murk she looked somehow. . sunny. Cheerful. There was sandy beach-blonde hair escaping from her multicoloured knitted hat, the unsquinting eye was a clear sea blue and her tanned face was strikingly devoid of hairy warts and other witchy accessories.
‘I’m harmless, honestly. And that’s an air rifle you’re pointing at me. It’s hardly a deadly weapon.’
‘At sixteen pounds per square inch it would certainly ruin your day if I pulled the trigger, I can promise you that much.’ But she lowered it nevertheless and pointed it at my mud-caked boots instead. ‘Start walking then.’
‘I just want to talk. I’m a private investigator.’
‘Don’t care.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘There’s enough signs up there telling you people to keep out but you just keep coming.’
‘It’s true, I did see the signs and ignored them but then there wasn’t a bell to ring or anything,’ I complained. ‘So if one doesn’t walk past the signs how does one get to see you?’
‘One gets invited. You one didn’t invite. So get lost, will you?’ A note of tiredness had crept into her voice. ‘I’ve had enough visitors to last me the rest of the year. Perhaps longer.’
‘The police?’
‘Yes, them too, though they were a joy compared with some of my other callers.’
I took out my packet of cigarettes, shook one out and lit it, mainly to buy some time. Her eyes followed my every move, as though mesmerized. I offered her one. She closed the fifteen feet of space between us and yanked a cigarette out of the packet. She had it lit so fast with her own lighter, produced from a trouser pocket, there could be no doubt that I was watching a true addict suffering from extreme nicotine deprivation.
She sucked greedily at her cigarette, the gun comfortably cradled in the crook of her arm, then let the smoke out slowly. ‘I’m trying to give up. Why aren’t you walking yet?’ But her shoulders slumped in relaxation as she took another puff and exhaled with a sigh of contentment.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sabotage your efforts to give up smoking. I know how difficult it is.’
‘Ah, bollocks, I just can’t really afford to buy any, that’s all. And tobacco is the one thing I don’t grow down here, far too much hassle.’
‘What is it you are growing down here? Herbs, someone said.’
‘Herbs mainly, but I try and grow most of my own food as well.’
‘And you live here?’ I failed to keep the astonishment out of my voice.
‘Yeah, anything wrong with that?’
‘No, not at all, it’s very. .’ I was looking for a word that wouldn’t wake up her trigger finger. ‘. . romantic,’ I said.
‘Romantic, my arse. Not when half your crop’s keeling over from botrytis in this damn weather, blight has got your spuds, the rabbits have had your carrots, the badgers your sweetcorn and the pigeons the rest.’
The aroma of cooking intensified in the air and I suddenly identified the smell. I nodded towards the shepherd’s hut. ‘I think I can smell pigeon now.’
‘Oh, shit.’ She rushed past me, up the three steps and through the door into the hut. ‘If it’s ruined then it’ll be your bloody fault,’ she cried.
I followed her. The inside of the hut, which was no more than six by twelve feet, was a cosy affair, lit by a couple of low voltage lamps. On the left under the window were a table and chair, both covered in books. There was a small leather armchair in one corner and the squat wood-burning stove in the other. She had taken the casserole off the stove with a pair of gardening gloves and put it on the floor, where she was examining it, cigarette dangling from her lips. She grabbed hold of a wooden spoon.
‘If it’s stuck to the bottom it’s best to decant it into a fresh pot without stirring it,’ I warned.
She gave me an exasperated look, then pushed past me out of the door, leaving her gun leaning against the wall. A moment later she returned carrying a fire-blackened cast-iron casserole dish with an ancient-looking dog following at her heels. I shrank against the wall but the tired mongrel only sniffed perfunctorily in my direction, then flopped down near the stove. ‘Don’t mind Taxi, he’s too tired to bite.’ The Stone woman tumbled deep red sauce and pigeons into the clean casserole dish. ‘It’s all right, it was only just catching at the bottom.’ She took a swig from an open bottle of red, added a good slug to the dish and stirred it in. With the casserole returned to the stove top she let herself fall into the battered red armchair. ‘You can cook, huh? Dropped in to give me a cooking lesson, that it? Or perhaps you just have a lot of experience burning stuff? Who are you anyway? You look slightly less menacing without your goggles. That was you yesterday, wasn’t it? Persistent, aren’t you? And you’re a private investigator?’
‘Do you always ask half a dozen questions in one breath? Yes, no, yes and yes, it was and I am. I think that covers it. My name’s Chris Honeysett. So, was it you who tried to scare me off with airborne top-fruit?’
‘Tried to? Worked pretty well, I thought. I’m Gemma Stone. Most people call me Gem.’
‘Gem Stone, I get it.’
‘Very astute, only I’m not the precious type. So what do you want from me? You’re also less muddy today. Did you crawl here yesterday?’
‘I came by bike yesterday but the engine conked out at the ford.’
‘So that’s what I heard. I wondered why the engine sound didn’t come any nearer. Made me suspicious. People with legitimate business know to sound their horn at the gate and wait.’
‘Ex-gate.’ I felt it was only fair to point this out. ‘I was unsure of the etiquette. And at the time quite hornless, I assure you. My normal conveyance, by the way, is a black Citroën DS21.’
Her mouth formed a silent ‘oh’ and she nodded sagely. ‘So that was yours, was it?’
‘Did you see it?’
She pointed for me to sit on the wooden chair. ‘Just chuck the books on the table.’
I did. All of them were about aspects of horticulture and herbalism.
‘No, didn’t see it but the police told me about it. I’m afraid I couldn’t help them either. I haven’t been up that way for ages, too busy down here. They said there was a dead bloke in the back. You didn’t have anything to do with that then, presumably.’
‘Nothing at all. My car was stolen from a car park in Larkhall and found in that field with a dead body in the back.’
The dog closed his eyes and sighed. ‘And what exactly made you come to me with this story?’
The answer to that was easy. Cairn had overheard two men talking about a guy called Albert and ‘the old witch’, though here in the light I guessed Gemma was still comfortably in her thirties. ‘For a while the police thought I had killed the guy. Perhaps they still do. Thought I might do a bit of investigating myself. I’m asking everybody.’
‘The police already asked me. Sorry, no idea.’
‘And you’re not missing anyone, obviously.’
Her eyes were resting on a gardening calendar pinned to the wall by the table. ‘No, can’t say I do. It’s a one woman show, this,’ she said but a note of doubt had crept into her voice.
‘I think the dead man’s name was Albert Something.’