‘They’ll have to park and walk, sir, we’re closing the road until the Collision Investigation Unit have been.’
Ollie saw the figure of the farmer, Albert Fears, sitting hunched and forlorn in the back of one of the police cars.
Fortinbrass and the Minister of Deliverance, Benedict Cutler, were in that purple car. He knew it. And he could see from the way the passenger compartment had been flattened, like a sardine tin that had been stamped on, that no one in there could be alive.
That asshole farmer Fears, he thought, feeling sick. Staring at the blood again, he thought for a moment he was going to throw up.
He shivered.
He shivered again at the memory of those words, just a short while ago.
God, what the hell was happening? Was he responsible for this somehow? Was his mind somehow controlling events?
He tried to rationalize. It was clear what had happened. Fortinbrass had been driving up the hill and turning right into Cold Hill House. Albert Fears had been thundering down, recklessly as usual, in his tractor. Either Fortinbrass had misjudged the farmer’s speed, or he’d stalled the engine. Whatever.
He felt deep, black despair seeping through every cell in his body. What was he to do now? Ride back up to the house and tell Caro that their big hope had just been snatched away? She needed help. They all did, but Caro most of all right now. Who could give it to her? Her mother? Her mother would be best.
Or what about Annie Porter, he wondered?
His kindly neighbour would understand Caro’s shock. She would probably be seriously shocked herself, and he was surprised, with all the commotion, that Annie hadn’t come out to see what was going on. Especially remembering how angry she was about the reckless speed at which the farmer, Albert Fears, always drove his tractor.
‘May I come past?’ he asked the officer.
She escorted Ollie hurriedly past the crash site. As he wheeled the bike he glanced back at the scene in horror. His view of the wreckage was partially blocked by fire officers, one wielding a hydraulic cutting device, like giant bolt-cutters, and paramedics who were kneeling, peering in through the windows. There were shouted instructions, intermittent static crackle and bursts of voices from radios.
Bile rose in his throat. Swallowing hard, he jumped back in the saddle and freewheeled a short distance down the lane, swinging across and stopping by the front gate of Garden Cottage. As he dismounted again he noticed, to his surprise, that the gate had been painted — a brilliant white. He wondered when she had done that — must have been over the weekend, he decided.
He leaned his bike against the fence carefully, and noticed that, in addition to the new paint, the gate was no longer sagging and had new hinges as well. As he walked up the short garden path to the front door he saw it was also newly painted, a gloss navy blue. There was a small, shiny brass lion’s-head knocker, where before there had just been two empty clasps. She’d really had a makeover on the cottage, he thought, rapping hard, hoping this did not mean she was sprucing the place up to sell it and move away. He liked her a lot.
A few moments later the door was opened by a pleasant but weary-looking woman in her twenties, holding a grizzling, puce-faced baby in a spotted babygro. A male voice called out from another room, above the sound of a television, ‘Who is it, Mel?’
Ollie suddenly realized the interior looked quite different. Annie Porter’s antique furniture and her framed nautical pictures and photographs on the walls had gone. Instead there was a gilded mirror and three watercolours of cricket scenes on newly decorated walls. It all looked so completely different from when he had last been here, just days ago, that he wondered, for a moment, if in his confusion he had come to the wrong house.
But that was impossible: this was the only cottage for a good three or four hundred yards.
Wasn’t it?
‘Yes?’ the woman said, sounding mildly irritated, and he realized he had just been standing there, looking around. Was she Annie Porter’s daughter, or perhaps niece, he wondered? Were she and her husband doing a makeover of the place for the old lady?
‘I just popped in to have a word with Annie — is she in?’ he asked.
‘Annie?’
Now he was really wondering if he had come to the wrong house. ‘Yes, Annie Porter.’
She was pensive for a moment. ‘Annie Porter? You mean the old lady who used to live here?’
Ollie felt a strange sensation, as if the ground was moving very slightly beneath him. ‘Used to live here? This is Garden Cottage, isn’t it?’
The young woman was staring at him very strangely. ‘Yes, this is Garden Cottage. But we’ve been almost a year. We bought this as an executor sale, after Mrs Porter died. You didn’t know she’d died?’
‘Died? That’s not possible!’
‘I think she’s buried in the village churchyard.’
The cottage seemed to sway even more. He felt the ground rising beneath his feet, tilting him. He touched the door frame to support himself. ‘I’m Oliver Harcourt — my wife and I live just up the lane — in Cold Hill House. I saw Annie here only a few days ago. I don’t understand — I— I—’
The young woman continued to stare at him very strangely. ‘Kev!’ she called out, suddenly, with slight panic in her voice. ‘Kev!’
A harried-looking man in his late twenties, in a grey T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, came out into the hall. ‘What is it, Mel?’
She pointed at Ollie. ‘Kev, this man doesn’t believe me that we’ve been here for months.’
He frowned, tilted his head at her then stared directly at Ollie, frowning again, and asked her, ‘What man?’
56
The woman with the baby turned and went back into the house. As she did so, Ollie heard her say, ‘There was a man standing there, Kev, I promise! I saw him! He told me his name — Oliver Harcourt. He said he lived up the lane in that big house, Cold Hill House.’
‘Mel, there was no one there,’ her husband replied.
‘I didn’t imagine it!’
‘Your postnatal depression. Maybe it’s playing tricks on your mind?’
The door closed behind her.
Ollie stood still for some moments. What the hell was going on? Was he trapped in the middle of some elaborate conspiracy to drive him insane? Annie Porter dead?
Impossible.
‘I think she’s buried in the village churchyard.’
He climbed back on his bike. The sirens had all stopped. There was complete almost ethereal silence, just the last twitters of birds as darkness fell. His head spinning, he rode on down into the village. He passed the cottage that always displayed the ‘Bed & Breakfast’ sign. The sign was gone. Then he braked hard as he reached the smithy. It was no longer a smithy. Instead a large sign outside proclaimed: YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE.
When had that happened? It must have been in the past few days, because he’d not seen that earlier in the week.
Moments later, as he pedalled on, something struck him as different about the front of the pub. It had been spruced up, painted a lighter colour that was hard to make out in this light — white or cream — and ‘The Crown’ pub sign had gone. In its place was a larger sign, in elegant script.
He braked hard, locking up the back wheel, and stared, blinking in confusion. Several smart cars were in the car park; the place looked expensive and rather precious.