The Sting of Death Read online

  Den smiled. Julie’s passion for bygone fiction was legendary. She’d read everything, and drove everybody mad by comparing present experiences to something she’d just come across in a book. It got her into trouble at times. Julie, for heaven’s sake, why can’t you live in the real world? was a commonly-heard complaint.

  ‘Teignmouth’s a dump,’ he agreed. ‘Not too many hayricks round there now, either. What was the penalty, by the way?’

  ‘What? For burning the hay? Oh, transportation for a first offence. Hanging if you did it more than once. Though it seems the judge had some discretion about that. Scary, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Cooper was wistful. ‘If they hadn’t arrested anyone for years, it must have worked pretty well as a deterrent.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Julie looked up at him, as everyone had to. ‘You don’t look as if Corfu did much to refresh you,’ she observed.

  ‘Corfu was fine; the company was disappointing,’ he summed up.

  ‘Oh dear. New girlfriend not up to scratch?’

  ‘You see a different side of people on holiday.’

  ‘So –?’

  A year or two ago, he would have resented the interest. He’d struggled to keep his private life separate from work. Now it didn’t seem to matter any more. ‘So she is now an ex-girlfriend,’ he said baldly.

  ‘Well, she’s got plenty of company, hasn’t she? That must be quite a big club by now.’

  He sighed and picked at his nose where the skin was peeling. ‘I’m giving up on women,’ he announced. ‘It’s obviously never going to work.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ came the unsympathetic reply.

  Philip Renton drove jerkily, impatiently overtaking at every opportunity, only to find himself forced to a crawl behind yet another maddening old person, apparently out for a leisurely spin. Surely it wasn’t his imagination – there really were more of them every time he went out.

  Recklessly, he pulled out from behind the latest old dodderer, forcing the Saab into third gear and revving ferociously as he passed the Fiat Uno. He threw its driver a savage look, which went entirely unheeded. Coming towards him was an oil tanker, travelling much faster than Philip had first judged, leaving scant space for him to return to his own side of the road. Swinging the wheel, he made it, cutting up the Uno in the process. The tanker sounded its horn in a long reproach, and Philip scorched away, grinning manically to himself.

  Ahead the road was temporarily clear, and he reached ninety before having to slow again behind a caravan. A glance in the mirror showed no sign of the Uno, but if he couldn’t pass soon, it would catch up with him, and the driver was unlikely to feel very well-disposed towards him after his demonstration of impatience. At the very least, Philip would feel humiliated at his lack of progress.

  It would all be perfectly all right, of course, if only they’d put some money into improving the roads. This stretch was crying out for some dual carriageway – with all these stupid dips and bends making it so tricky to overtake on single lanes. But the car knew its stuff, and he shot past the caravan the instant an opportunity arose. This was more like it, he rejoiced – and only six or seven more miles to the motorway now.

  He hadn’t wanted to do this trip, anyway. He’d planned a lazy Monday tidying his office, and sending out some advertising copy to a few of the local papers. The straw harvest had been good, and his stores were growing rapidly, as he bought up the product of fifty or sixty farms across the South of England. The trick, as always, was going to be to get ahead of the competition, persuade his customers to order enough for the whole winter’s needs, at a price that could turn out to be inflated. The whole business was based on risk. A long cold winter, with animals lying in that crucial week or two longer than usual, could make straw a highly sought-after commodity. Those who bought extra stocks now might make a modest profit by reselling it later. But a short mild winter would leave them with a surplus that nobody wanted. Philip was a clever salesman – he let people think they’d got a bargain, as well as being foresighted enough to lay up secure stores for the winter to come. Considering he was new to the game, he’d taken to it very successfully. Unsettling, then, the way it came over him every few days how much he disliked it; how much he craved to go back to the days when he’d been a real farmer, with real animals and none of this nonsense with giant lorries and all this wheeling and dealing.

  ‘So restock, why don’t you?’ his wife and others asked him repeatedly. ‘Everybody else has.’

  It was true that all his neighbours had bought in new herds of dairy or beef cattle, new flocks of sheep, too. They seemed to have got over the agony of 2001. Philip, it seemed, could not.

  He’d been called out by Ralph Gardner, all the way up the M5, nearly as far as Tewkesbury. Ralph wouldn’t take the responsibility of passing 150 acres of wheat straw as best quality, because there was ragwort growing in amongst the corn. Although straw was seldom used as fodder, there were always going to be animals nibbling at it, if it was left outdoors where they could reach it, and ragwort could kill horses and cattle. Philip had been irritable. ‘Well, is there or isn’t there? Tell him we won’t buy it if it’s not clean.’

  ‘It’s just in one corner of one field. He says he’ll keep that stuff separate.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t trust him. And I haven’t got time to stand here watching him while he combines the field. If you speak to him, put the fear of the Devil into him, he’s not likely to try anything.’

  Ralph was part of Philip’s network, negotiating on his behalf, arranging transport, scheduling pick-ups and drops, but he was always careful to avoid taking responsibility for hard decisions.

  Sheena wouldn’t be back till late – probably they’d turn up together somewhere around seven. The evening meal would be some microwaved junk that would have made Philip’s father gag. Philip had grown up on Gladcombe Farm, his father a specialist in dairy cows and sheep, the yard full of hens and geese and two or three collies. But the entire stock had been wiped out the year before in the cataclysmic foot and mouth epidemic, Frank Renton had hanged himself in the barn, and Philip was left to pick up the pieces. He’d taken up the dealing, and let his wife, with her high-powered career, bring in three times the cash that he could earn.

  The old cottage, home to old Sid Pike for sixty years, had been one of their residual assets. Sid had reluctantly gone to live with his daughter near Taunton, and Justine Pereira had been taken on as tenant. The arrangement had worked smoothly, Justine doing fill-in childminding for young Georgia, when both parents were out in the evenings or at weekends. Justine worked at her pottery in a small barn, keeping herself afloat financially. As far as Philip had been aware, she had no objection to the babysitting. She took Georgia for walks, played with her, told her stories, and in many ways acted more like a loving mother than Sheena did.

  He’d been warned, of course, that having a young female lodger was asking for trouble. Ralph had been the first to put it into words: ‘If she’s pretty, you’ll be running off down there every chance you get,’ he’d predicted. ‘And if she’s not, there’ll be other problems. Depression. Loneliness. What’s she doing, living all by herself like that, anyway?’

  Philip had dismissed it all. ‘Keep up, mate,’ he’d admonished his colleague. ‘Women these days, they’re a different breed. She’s an artist, putting everything into her work. No time for any goings-on.’

  ‘And is she pretty?’

  Philip shrugged. ‘Not particularly. Very thin and pale. Big strong hands, from working the clay, I suppose. Straggly black hair.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ was Ralph’s knowing reply.

  Justine had lived in the cottage for almost two years now. Trouble had accompanied her, after all. But not at all in the way Ralph had predicted.

  Well-trained by her old-fashioned father, Penn sat down that evening to write a short letter:

  Dear Karen and Drew

  It was a great treat t
o meet you at the weekend, as well as Stephanie and Timothy. They’re a real credit to you. Lunch was delicious, and we were lucky with the weather, weren’t we. It’s probably going to rain for a month, now!

  I’m sorry to dump all that stuff about Justine onto you, but I would appreciate anything you can glean about her whereabouts. It’s ever so good of you to take an interest in something that must seem very peculiar. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow evening, to talk it over again.

  Once again, many thanks for your hospitality.

  With my very best wishes

  Penn

  Roma let the dog jump out of the car ahead of her, watching it fondly for a moment before scooping up her shopping and ducking out of the vehicle herself. Laurie was inspecting runner beans inside the front gate. ‘Aren’t they lovely!’ he said. ‘They grow them for the flowers in some places, you know, and hardly bother with the edible angle.’

  Roma ignored him. ‘You’ll never guess what’s just happened to me,’ she interrupted.

  He looked at her, noting the bristling quiver of her shoulders. ‘Dangerous driving accusations?’ he hazarded.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Sheer luck.’

  ‘Well, it’s ridiculous. Lolly knows to keep still when we’re driving.’

  ‘You won’t get any sympathy from me. Who saw you?’

  ‘Some officious young constable with nothing better to do. He actually chased me, pushing me off the road into a layby. That was far more dangerous than having the dog on my lap.’

  ‘There was a woman stopped for eating a piece of toast while driving, not so long ago. Dogs on laps are obviously well beyond the limit of tolerance these days. If you persist in doing it, you’ll have to take the consequences.’

  ‘Don’t be so boring.’ Roma tossed her head. ‘Everything’s gone safety mad, these days. They all think they can live forever if they just follow all these lunatic rules. Haven’t they any idea of how it all actually works?’

  Her husband sighed softly. ‘Evidently not,’ he murmured. ‘Come and have some coffee. You’re not going to be charged, are you?’

  ‘Certainly not. They wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘No – they probably wouldn’t,’ he agreed.

  But Laurie knew her well enough to realise that she’d been quite badly stirred up by the incident. He could imagine the righteous indignation on the face of the policeman, the subtle scorn directed at this middle-aged madwoman. It happened to Roma over and over again: the rash assertion of her unconventional ideas so often brought her face-to-face with other people’s contempt. And contempt was very wounding, all the more so because it was generally what she herself felt towards the world at large. The ongoing restless unfocussed power struggle that she waged against authority and institutions was exhausting and, Laurie felt, quite unnecessary.

  The protracted battle against dismissal from her teaching job had badly shaken her, but hadn’t noticeably altered her general attitude. Laurie had been as supportive as he knew how to be, but he knew he’d been disappointing. They had only been married a year when the business started and the shock to him had been very nearly as bad as it had to her. They both knew she was effectively on her own in this and other crises, not least because of her prickly reaction to his clumsy attempts to help.

  She wasn’t always like this, of course. Absorbed with her bees or her fruit bushes, on long companionable walks, reminiscing about her early years, she was the best possible partner. Funny, shrewd, uninhibited – Laurie knew how to appreciate her good qualities and to turn his face away from the flipside of her nature. If there were taboo areas between them, well, he’d just have to live with that. Nobody was perfect, after all.

  ‘It’s turning out nice,’ he commented. ‘They said it’d clear up.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ was her unconvinced reply. ‘We’ve seen the best of the summer, all the same. There’s rain forecast for tomorrow. It all goes by so quickly. The creeper’ll be turning red any day now.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he protested. ‘It’s got three weeks yet, at least.’

  ‘Well see,’ was all she said, leaving Laurie with a feeling that she wasn’t just talking about the changing seasons.

  That afternoon, with the sun making a poor effort at breaking up the persistent cloud layer, Laurie heard the phone ringing from where he was making a new rock garden, some distance from the house. Ten minutes later, Roma came out looking for him.

  ‘Did you hear the phone?’ she asked, her voice unnaturally tight.

  He nodded. ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘It was Penn. She’s been getting herself in a state about Justine …’ The name emerged with trails of emotion attached to it. Laurie could almost see it floating over the lawn. He knew from the constriction in his own chest that they were about to embark on something that any sensible person would work hard to avoid.

  ‘Oh?’ he said.

  ‘Some story about the wretched girl being missing. It sounds quite odd, but then I don’t know any of the background. Why has she come to me about it? Especially now, when she could have said something yesterday. You know, I had a feeling she was keeping something back. Even more than usual, I mean.’

  ‘Justine’s missing?’ he echoed. ‘It sounds as if Penn’s very worried. Who else would she turn to for help?’

  ‘She’s not turning to me. She wanted to tell me she’s asked Drew to help find her. As if she needs my blessing.’ Roma frowned, a hand on her throat. ‘There’s obviously much more to it than she’s told me.’

  ‘Drew?’

  ‘You know – that boy with the burial ground. Married to Penn’s cousin. She went to see him after leaving us yesterday.’

  ‘But why tell him about Justine?’

  ‘Oh, he’s got a bit of a name for solving mysteries like this. In the right line of business for it, I suppose. He more or less offered, the moment Penn let drop that … Justine … was missing.’ It didn’t seem to be getting any easier to articulate her daughter’s name.

  Laurie cocked his head sideways, as if hoping to catch some omitted piece of data. ‘Am I being very dense? I don’t seem to be following this very well. How long has Justine been missing, and did you know about it before today?’

  Roma moved unsteadily to a slatted garden table, and leant on it. Laurie experienced a surge of anxiety. ‘Are you all right, my darling? Here, sit down. You’ve gone all pale and wimbly.’ He forced a flippant laugh, more for his own reassurance than hers.

  She echoed the sound and stood up straighter. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It’s just turning into one of those days, where you wonder what the hell’s going to happen next. I could kill Penn for involving me in this. Why should I care? I haven’t seen the blasted girl for five years, anyway. For all I know, she’s been missing ever since then. It’s the same as if she was dead – same effect, at least.’

  ‘It’s not the same, though,’ Laurie told her, summoning up the strength to voice his thoughts. ‘If she was dead, you’d have to give up hope of things coming right between you. And—’ he fixed her with a fierce look ‘—don’t tell me you haven’t wanted that. You’ve been waiting for her to phone or write with an olive branch, or to turn up with a new little grandchild astride her hip. Even after five years, you can still pretend it’s all just a temporary interruption to your normal relationship. You’d have to forget all that if she was dead.’

  ‘Well, she isn’t dead. Of course she isn’t. Who said anything about her being dead, anyway?’

  ‘You did,’ Laurie reminded her. ‘And I’m beginning to think that Penn probably did, as well. I can’t think of anything else that would knock you so off balance. So sit down and tell me the whole thing from the beginning.’

  They settled side by side on a wrought iron garden seat, casting brief glances at each other’s face, but mainly addressing the lawn and the field beyond. ‘Justine’s been living on some far
m near Exeter, apparently. And Penn visits her a lot.’

  ‘And you didn’t realise they saw each other frequently?’

  Roma shook her head. ‘I had no idea. I didn’t think their paths had crossed since we … well, since we fell out. For all I knew, she was still in London. That’s where I’ve imagined her.’ She threw a look at her husband. ‘Penn didn’t tell you any of this, did she, when she came here last week?’

  ‘Most definitely not. She wouldn’t have done that. It would be demeaning.’

  ‘Would it?’ Roma frowned. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, going behind your back, giving me information that I wasn’t allowed to share with you. Maybe not demeaning. Unethical. Divisive. And since I never met Justine, it wouldn’t have been very appropriate.’

  Roma inhaled deeply. ‘I’d certainly have been furious if I’d found out,’ she acknowledged. ‘Anger’s always the easy option, isn’t it.’

  ‘We all know how hurt you’ve been by the rift,’ he said gently.

  Her breathing began to thicken, and he saw the tightening of her jaw. ‘And there I was, trying to keep up the act of an uncaring monster,’ she laughed shakily.

  ‘That doesn’t matter now. Please tell me what Penn said. The whole thing.’

  ‘She apologised for worrying me, to start with. Said she’d hoped it would all turn out to be nothing, and I never need know about it. Clever of her, come to think of it. Whetting my curiosity like that. The rest is what I’ve just told you. She and Justine have been close friends since … well, all along, I suppose. She went to have a look at the cottage, last week, after Justine failed to turn up for a lunch they’d planned, and didn’t answer her phone. Apparently, there’s no sign anywhere of Justine …’ She swallowed painfully.

  ‘Didn’t she ask the farmer if he knew where she was?’

  ‘She says she did, but he was impatient and unconcerned. Apparently the cottage is some distance from the main house, and Justine didn’t see a great deal of them. But she hinted that she doesn’t think he’s telling her everything.’