“I don’t think so, do you?”
“No.” She treated me to a glance of withering assessment. “Perhaps not.” She took out a cigarette and lit it, then offered me one. I shook my head. “My, we are becoming ascetic, aren’t we?”
“Just taking care of my health.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Is that what Offa’s Dyke was all about?”
“Partly.”
“But you got more than you bargained for, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“Well, getting mixed up in these murders.”
“I’m not mixed up in them. I just… happened to meet one of the victims.”
“The last person to see her, according to Hilda. Other than the murderer.”
“Apparently.”
She stroked her neck reflectively. “Was it really rape, do you think? Or just some fun that got out of hand? Sex can, can’t it? Sometimes.”
“It was rape. The woman I met wouldn’t have…” I grimaced, aware of the expertise with which she’d drawn me out.
“There is something to tell, then?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
“The place where it happened. Whistler’s… Whistler’s…” Her wrist made a few jangling circles in the air.
“Cot.” Another grimace.
“Did you see it while you were in Kington?”
“No, Bella. I did not.”
She nodded and took a thoughtful sip of her spritzer, then grinned mischievously. “Want to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you must be interested. Just a little. If you had your car with you, I bet you’d drive up there and take a look before going back to Brussels. Too good a chance to miss. But you haven’t, have you? So, perhaps I could give you a lift. Come along for the ride, so to speak. Satisfy my curiosity as well as yours.”
I couldn’t suppress a chuckle at her audacity. “No. Definitely not.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No.”
“The day after?”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.” She gave a throaty laugh. “I know you will.”
My meeting with Adrian the following morning went as well as I could have hoped. He made it clear I’d be expected to pull my weight; the works directorship was no sinecure. If offering me the post was a favour, it was the only one he meant to do me. But that’s how I wanted it as well, so we parted on good terms. Mercifully, he said nothing about the Kington killings. He probably considered it beneath his new-found dignity. Whatever the reason, I was grateful to be spared another round of explanations.
“When do you go back to Brussels?” he asked as I was leaving.
“Sunday.”
“So, you’d be free tomorrow? I’ve got three tickets for the Test Match. Debenture seats. Simon and I were going to make up a threesome with…” His face fell. “Well, with…”
“Hugh?”
“Yeh.” The managerial mask had slipped for an instant. “Hugh liked his cricket. Never missed a Lord’s Test that I can remember.” Adrian had known Hugh better than me, probably better than Bella. He’d certainly respected him more. And now he missed him. All this show of confidence and control was really only over-compensation for the loss of his big brother-and mentor. “Can you make it? It should be a good day. And it’s been years since-”
“Sorry, but I can’t. I’d really like to. But… I have to be somewhere else.”
Bella collected me from Greenhayes at nine o’clock on Friday morning and by midday we were in Kington. The cross-country route and heavy traffic should have delayed us, but Bella was so annoyed by the drizzle that forced her to keep the roof up that she drove even more aggressively than usual. She’d hoped for brilliant sunshine and a warm breeze to stir her hair. But instead the day was grey, still and sappingly humid.
Kington was exactly as I remembered it: a small unpretentious town busily attending to its own affairs. The media circus that had rolled in the week before had rolled out again, leaving the staleness of old news in its wake. Normality had so completely reasserted itself that I could have believed-as part of me wanted to-that nothing had happened there at all.
With some difficulty, I persuaded Bella to leave the car by the church at the western edge of the town and walk down Hergest Road to Butterbur Lane. On foot I thought we’d look less like sensation-seekers than townies out for a stroll, but Bella’s idea of casual wear didn’t preclude a conspicuous quantity of jewellery and an ostentatiously styled hat straight out of Harper’s & Queen. We attracted several suspicious looks from occupants of wayside cottages who happened to be in their gardens. And the haughty stare which Bella treated them to in return probably convinced them we were a TV director and his secretary-cum-mistress researching locations for a fictionalized study of rape and murder in the Welsh borders.
Butterbur Lane itself was quieter, as if the residents were deliberately lying low. The cottages here were tucked away behind overgrown hedges and folds in the hillside, sheltered from prying eyes as well as winter winds. We climbed in silence towards a sharp bend which I knew from the map was about halfway to Whistler’s Cot. Nothing but the knowledge of what had occurred there infected the scene with strangeness, the breathless air with expectancy. But even Bella sensed it.
“What a place for such a thing to happen,” she whispered to me. “It’s so… eerie.”
“You’re imagining it.”
“I know. But that doesn’t-”
Suddenly, a car burst round the bend ahead of us, the sound of its approach deadened till the moment it appeared by the banks and hedges to either side. It was a large maroon estate, travelling too fast for such a narrow lane. It slewed round the corner, peppering a garden fence with pebbles, then swung back to the crown of the road and headed straight for us. Instinctively, I grabbed Bella’s arm and pulled her towards the ditch. Only for the driver to realize the danger and slam on the brakes. More pebbles showered up behind him, followed by a crunching skid and a cloud of dust. Far too late for comfort, he lurched to a halt.
And stared blankly at us through the open side window of the car. He was a man of fifty or sixty, with a thatch of silver-grey hair and a round sagging face. Loose skin hung beneath his jaw where once it might have sat confidently as a double chin. His cheeks were hollow, his eyebrows drooping. And he was crying. His eyes were red and brimming, the tear-tracks moist against his skin. For a second or two, he looked at me, as if trying to frame an apology. I saw him lick his lips. Then he mumbled, “Sorry,” released the brake and coasted on down the lane.
“Stupid bugger,” hissed Bella. “He could have killed us.” I heard him engage a gear and speed up, moderately this time, as if he’d been shocked back to reality. “What did he think he was doing?”
“Probably didn’t think at all. You know what it’s like. Some old codger who’s never passed a test or driven in town.”
“He wasn’t that old.”
No. He wasn’t. Nor did he fit the picture I’d painted in any other way. He hadn’t looked remotely bucolic. The car was new and in good condition, for which we could be grateful. And he was disorientated by grief, not failing faculties. But I was reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion-that he’d been mourning one or both of the people killed at Whistler’s Cot. Why I couldn’t have explained. Unless it was the intensity of his grief, the glimpse it had given me of the passion such events could stir. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to admit how deep it could run, how formidable it could be. Perhaps I just didn’t want to understand.
We went on, both of us shaken but pretending not to be. The bend approached, then fell behind. The cottages thinned. Hints of field and heath appeared beyond the hedges. And then we were there. I recognized Whistler’s Cot instantly from newspaper photographs: an old half-timbered dwelling facing the lane, with a modern brick wing running away behind and a garage to one side, set a little back from the line of the house. A gravelled path between led to the rear, without gate or hindrance. The garden looked neglected, the house likewise. Tiles slipping, paint peeling: money spent but never followed up, or never replenished. The name, Whistler’s Cot, carved on a wooden sign in runic characters. And some weird sculpture by the front door, half cherub, half God knows what, crudely carved by design, one hand raised, as if to beckon or bar the way but uncertain which.