Healers Page 14

  Joan shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t, you see, I had my principles. Faye would have understood that.”

  “Did she ever try to get in touch with you?”

  “She sent me a postcard,” Joan said. “The summer before she died.”

  “Where from?” Sally said. “Perhaps you kept the card?”

  “No,” Joan said. “Ron made me get rid of it. But I remember where it was from. Mittingford. There was a picture of the church. I thought she’d chosen it specially. She’d think I’d like that.”

  She sat back in her chair with her eyes closed.

  “What was she doing in Mittingford?” Sally asked. “Did she say? Was she there on holiday?”

  Joan shook her head. “She’d got a summer job there when she finished college in July. A sort of au pair. Minding a couple of bairns while their mother was at work. That’s what she wrote on the card.”

  “Did she mention James?”

  “No, I hoped she’d packed him in, left all that wickedness behind.”

  “Did she say exactly where she was staying?”

  “No,” Joan said. She looked at Sally Wedderburn, hoping for understanding. “If she had I might have gone there to see her.”

  Outside Hunter had given up his wait on the pavement and was sitting in the car. He hit the horn impatiently.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hunter was uncomfortably aware that he’d had too much to drink at lunchtime. He’d taken Sally to a little pub he knew near the river. He’d planned it before the farce at the Irving house, hoping to impress, but he’d needed a drink after that. Several drinks. There’d been a row. Now, sitting moodily in the car, waiting for James McDougal to come home from school he thought he hadn’t been interested in Sally Wedderburn. Not seriously. He saw vaguely that the desire to impress had become a habit, an object in its own right, and his thoughts returned to Lily Jackman, who wouldn’t be taken in anyway by a smart pub lunch.

  “Oh shit,” Sally said. “He’s been there all the time.”

  They had rung the doorbell but when there was no answer had assumed that he was still out. Now they saw that he must have been in the garden, at the back. He came round to the front with a pair of shears and began to chop furiously at the privet which separated the house from the property next door.

  Sally Wedderburn got out of the car.

  “Do you want me to come?” Hunter said nastily. “Or do you think you can handle this better on your own too?”

  For a moment Sally was tempted to reply but she shrugged and said nothing. The boy heard their footsteps on the gravel and turned to face them nervously, holding the shears in front of him like a weapon.

  “It’s all right,” Sally said. “We’re from the police.” She held out her identification. The boy looked at it then relaxed.

  “Sorry to be so jumpy,” he said. “I know it’s silly

  “Quite natural I’d have thought,” Sally said. “I’m afraid we want to ask you some more questions. Is that OK?”

  “I suppose so.” He was unenthusiastic but not rude. He led them round the back of the house and in through the kitchen door.

  “What a lovely garden!” Sally said.

  “Yeah. Mum loved gardening. She did it all herself. It was starting to get untidy. Dad’s not bothered. I wouldn’t be normally but Mum would have liked it sorted out.” He flushed.

  “You’ve been to school today?” Hunter asked. James was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt, but you couldn’t tell. Sixth-formers were allowed to wear anything these days.

  “I couldn’t face it,” the boy said. “They understand …” He stared out into the garden then turned back to face Hunter. “How can I help you?”

  “Did you know a girl called Faye Cooper?”

  “Faye? Yes. She was my girlfriend. For a while.”

  “Until she died?”

  “No. She packed me in before that. Found someone else.” The words were bitter. He screwed up his face like a child trying not to cry. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I still get upset. I’ve never met anyone else like her. At least when she was alive there was some hope that we’d get back together …”

  He got up abruptly and pulled a can of Coke from the fridge. “You want one?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Do you know the name of the lad she went out with after you?” Hunter asked.

  “It was no lad, “James said angrily. “At least that was the impression she gave. Someone mature. More mature than me at least. She never told me his name. And then she took that summer job in Mittingford so I couldn’t pester her. That’s what she said. Just because I was younger than her, still at school, there was no need to treat me like a kid.”

  “You were jealous then?” Hunter said.

  “Of course I was jealous. I wanted her back.” He ripped back the ring on the Coke can.

  “Where did you first meet Faye?” Sally asked.

  “In a pub in town. She’d just moved to Otterbridge and she didn’t know anyone. We started chatting. We liked the same music, shared the same ideas.”

  “The New Age thing?”

  “I suppose so, though I’ve never been sure what that means. It’s only a label, isn’t it, now? Used by the press. But she cared about more than making money and having a good time. I liked that. And her independence. She lived by herself, you know. Her parents had thrown her out. She had a bed sit over the bookie’s in Bridge Street. She didn’t have much money but she made it really nice in the end. I helped her. Decorating, going to jumbles and car boot sales to pick up stuff for her. I spent a lot of time in that place …”

  “The belief in alternative therapy was one of the things you shared?” Sally asked. She had to repeat the question. He was still dreaming of long lazy afternoons and Faye.

  “Yeah. It was part of being open to new ways of looking at things. First we went to a talk by Magda. Faye was dead enthusiastic then and asked me to take her to the Sunday group in Mittingford. She never had any transport and Mum let me borrow her car.”

  “Then your mother got involved too?”

  “Yes. I explained to Inspector Ramsay about that. But Faye was always the most heavily into it. Mum and I were more detached, more critical. Faye swallowed it whole. I suppose she needed something definite to hold on to.”

  “Your mother was at Juniper Hall when Faye died?”

  “Yes.” He took a gulp from the Coke can. “What is all this about? Why are you so interested in Faye?”

  “We received an anonymous letter this morning. It implied that Faye’s death was connected to your mother’s murder.” Hunter paused. “I don’t suppose you sent that letter?”

  “Of course not. If I’d had anything to tell you I’d have come right out with it.”

  There was a silence, then he asked: “Do you think Faye was murdered too?”

  “There’s no evidence of that,” Sally said carefully. “Did your mother tell you about the accident when she came back from Juniper Hall?”

  “Of course. She was dreadfully upset. She’d liked Faye. Not just because she was my girlfriend.”

  “She never expressed any doubt that it was an accident?”

  He shook his head. “She said no one knew how it happened. It was a mystery.”

  “When was the last time you heard from Faye?”

  “At the beginning of the summer holidays when she went off to work in Mittingford. His voice became hard. “She was terribly kind. Told me there was someone else, that she was very fond of me but that I was to leave her alone.”

  “Do you know where she was working in Mittingford?”

  “Didn’t you realize?” He was surprised by their ignorance, shocked by their incompetence. “She worked for Daniel and Win Abbot as a sort of nanny. She looked after the kids, did a bit of cleaning.” He hesitated. “I don’t think they were paying her very much but when I asked her about that she told me to mind my own business. She said she’d have done it for nothing.”


  “It would help us to know if Faye was particularly lonely or unhappy just before she died. Do you know anything about that? Perhaps she talked to your mother at Juniper Hall? It sounds as if they were close.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Mum didn’t say …”

  He seemed lost again in thoughts of his own. Through the open window they could hear a woodpecker drumming on one of the oaks at the bottom of the garden.

  “Would Faye have been capable of suicide?” Sally asked carefully.

  James considered.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think she would. She was wild, you know. You had the impression that in the end she had nothing to lose.”

  “Except the new boyfriend.”

  “Yes. Except him. If anything went wrong there I think she’d have been pretty desperate.”

  He sat in a gloomy silence. Sally and Hunter looked at each other.

  “Is there anyone else she might have confided in?”

  “I don’t think so. Magda perhaps. Or the Abbots.”

  “No special college friends?”

  “No. She was always a loner.”

  He stood up. “Look,” he said. “I don’t think I can stand much more of this. I ought to get on with the garden.”

  “There’s nothing else you can think of?” Hunter demanded. He was reluctant to let the boy go. He wanted a result from the interview and the bloated feeling caused by too much beer made him belligerent.

  James paused. “If you want to know Faye’s state of mind before she died you should look in her diary. She might not have confided in the rest of us but she bared her soul in that.”

  “She would have had it with her at Juniper Hall?”

  He nodded. “She took it everywhere with her. And she certainly didn’t leave it in the bed sit Mum and I went and cleared all her stuff out of there.”

  He stood, quite still.

  “I looked in her diary once. Just before she chucked me. Perhaps she meant me to see it … We were in her bed sit and she went out to the bathroom. Usually she hid it away in a drawer somewhere, but it had been left out on the windowsill. I know I shouldn’t have looked but it was too much of a temptation. That’s how I found out she was seeing another bloke.” His face twisted into a miserable grin. “She called me “sweet” in it. I suppose she meant that as a compliment.”

  “What did the diary tell you about her new boyfriend?”

  “Not much. Then he recited, as if he had learned it by heart: “I wonder what it would be like to be a farmer’s wife. I really like the idea.” I supposed then that the bloke she’d been seeing was working on a farm. And that she must have thought there was a future to the relationship. After all, she never talked about marrying me.”

  Hunter and Sally stared at each other. Surely Ernie Bowles couldn’t have been Faye’s secret lover. Not of a pretty young girl like that! James was quite unaware of the reaction he had caused. He picked up the shears from the kitchen floor and said firmly that he had nothing else to tell them.

  Later he wondered if that was quite true.

  When he finished in the garden he lay on his bed. It was still light and his father was not yet back from the university. He seemed to be spending less and less time at home. James tried to remember the last evening he had spent with his mother, the Sunday evening before she was killed. The details were remarkably vivid.

  Charles had been sulking. He had spent all evening in his study and had hardly spoken to them. Val had gone off to Magda’s group and when she returned she was strangely subdued. When Charles was out of the way James had teased her about it. They were sitting in his bedroom. She was helping him pack for the geography field trip, piling clean clothes on the bed, but really just wanting the excuse to talk about what had happened. He’d switched down the music so they could chat.

  “Was it good?” he had said, slightly mocking. After all, he felt that he had grown out of that. “New insights? Lots of personal growth?”

  “I suppose so,” she had said, but not so enthusiastic as she usually was.

  He could picture her, still wearing the leggings and loose sweater she had put on for the Old Chapel group, squatting over his rucksack, looking up at him frowning.

  “What went wrong?” he had asked. “Something blocking the energy? People too uptight to get anything out of it?”

  “Quite the opposite,” she had said. Then: “Don’t you think there’s a danger that we can know ourselves and other people too well. There’s a need for privacy, even for self-delusion.”

  He had shrugged, not sure what she expected of him, not in the mood to be heavy.

  “I don’t think I’m going to go back there,” she had said, and he had sensed that she shivered slightly although the day was not cold. “It’s served its purpose. It’s time to move on.”

  Now, lying on his bed in the last of the sunshine, he wondered if she had told anyone else of her decision.

  On the way back to Mittingford the atmosphere between Sally and Gordon Hunter was more cordial, or at least slightly less frosty. There was a shared sense of achievement. They had valuable information to take back to Ramsay. They had perhaps even discovered a connection between Val McDougal and Ernie Bowles. It was possible, they told each other, that Faye had seen in Ernie some sort of father figure, that he was the man in the diary.

  But when they returned to the Mittingford incident room, Ramsay could not accept it. The Faye he had come to know through reading the police reports was passionate, enthusiastic. She would have nothing to do with the grubby, overweight farmer from Laverock Farm, no matter how much she needed a father. He settled the matter by phoning Win Abbot. She would not talk to him for long. In the background he heard a baby screaming and she seemed preoccupied. But she knew that Faye had had a boyfriend. He sensed rather that she disapproved.

  “Was he a local man?” Ramsay asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “She went out with Peter Richardson. His father farms Long Edge.”

  “The farm next to Laverock?”

  “Yes,” Win said. “That’s right. I’m not quite sure what she saw in him.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sean Slater was setting about making himself indispensable. Whatever happened to Laverock Farm he wanted to be involved. After years of drifting he thought he had found a project he could believe in. At least that’s what he told Lily. At the back of his mind there were other ideas which he would have found hard to confess to her. Marriage, children. He saw Laverock Farm as a way of finally tying her down.

  Already they had moved from the caravan into the house. Somehow he had persuaded Bowles’s solicitors that it would be safer. The security was dreadful and they could keep an eye on the place. The Abbots had not been able to refuse.

  “It’s only camping,” Sean had said to Lily. “But at least there’s room to swing a cat.” And it stakes our claim, he thought.

  If Lily realized what he was up to she made no effort to escape. She even seemed to encourage him in his plans. The day the anonymous letter arrived at the incident room Magda Pocock and the Abbots came out to the farm, to survey, as Daniel grandly put it, their new estate. It was evening and the low sun made the place more attractive, warming the grey stone, hiding the rubbish with long shadows. Sean and Lily were in on the meeting and Sean was full of ideas.

  “I think Stan Richardson up the valley would buy most of the land,” Sean said, hardly giving them time to get out of their car. “I talked to him about it. In general, you know. No commitments. That would give you the working capital to convert the house. I thought we might turn some of the outhouses into staff accommodation. That would leave the house for guest rooms and lecture halls. There’s plenty of space.”

  “You had no right to talk to Richardson,” Magda said sharply. “The house has nothing to do with you.”

  Lily was surprised by Magda’s anger it wasn’t like her but Sean was unabashed. “The police took the livestock up to Long Edge,” he said.
“I had to speak to Richardson about that. Then he dropped some pretty massive hints that he’d be interested in the land. The sooner the better, surely, from your point of view. Once you’ve got the money you can start on the house.”

  “We mustn’t get carried away,” Daniel warned, but he seemed to be getting carried away himself. He could imagine the place humming with people and ideas. They would attract the best teachers from all over the world. There’d be other spin-offs books, for example. He’d always wanted to write. And perhaps a training facility for other practitioners. The new EC directives would make further qualifications essential. And money. He had to admit to himself that he imagined the prospect of making money. “Still, I think Sean’s got a point, don’t you? It would be great to make a start.”

  Magda said nothing, though Lily could sense her disapproval.

  “I thought an organic garden,” Sean suggested enthusiastically. He was leading them across the farmyard. “To provide food for the Centre. It shouldn’t take long to get Soil Association approval. It’s run wild since we’ve been here and I shouldn’t imagine any pesticides were used even in Cissie Bowie’s day. Look, it’s a wonderful place.”

  He pushed open a rotten wooden door in a high stone wall and they were in an enclosed garden. Once there had been glass houses built against the wall and paths and fruit trees. Now it was an overgrown wilderness. The panes of glass had shattered and rotting vegetation lay everywhere.

  “It’s sheltered from the north wind by the house,” Sean said. “You could grow anything in here.”

  “It would take a lot of work to get it straight,” Daniel said, but he saw it with Sean’s eyes, pictured neat rows of organic vegetables, the trees and fruit bushes pruned back. “We could have a herb garden. Medicinal and culinary herbs. There’d be nothing else like it in the country …”

  “I wondered if you’d like me to make a start on it,” Sean said diffidently. “Just clear out the rubbish. Dig it over perhaps. So when you take the place over we’ll be ready to start.”

  “I’m not sure …” Daniel hesitated.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Magda interrupted briskly. “Not before all the formalities have been completed. That’s the time to take stock of the situation and to decide which way we want the project to go.”