Hung Out to Die Read online

  Chapter 3

  The large house became considerably quieter as the evening drew on. The two police officers had left to interview more of the party guests, and then to oversee the setting up of the Incident Room. Eleanor, as she always did, was spending the early evening in her office, situated right next to the shop itself. She had taken it over on her marriage over fifty years previously, when it was just a small, almost disused storeroom, and had flatly refused to move to anything bigger, or better, ever since. Desmond and Gwilym were sitting in their favourite room in the house, a small, side sitting room, doing as they’d done for virtually thirty years, and finishing off the day with a large and very welcome drink. The flickering firelight cast both warmth and shadow across their faces as they settled deep into the large, comfortable armchairs placed on either side of the fireplace.

  “Robert Calderwood said a curious thing as I was leaving. Asked us to let him know if we think of anything else,” remarked Gwilym into the companionable silence.

  “Yes, he said something similar to me; it’s standard, surely?”

  “Yes, but he also said that any impressions we had might be useful. Curious, that’s all,” responded Gwilym, shrugging slightly. “You didn’t recognise him did you?” he continued after a moment’s silence.

  “No, should I have?” Desmond asked startled, raising his gaze from the crackling flames in the large open fire.

  “Not necessarily, I suppose,” Gwilym said, suddenly sorry that he’d raised the subject. “You might not have met him actually. He was only a very junior probationary constable, being put through university on the fast track route. You only got involved towards the end of...” He trailed off, unconsciously reaching towards his neck for the second time that day.

  Anger flared in Desmond’s eyes as he followed his partner’s hand. “Towards the end of the episode that almost got you killed, and did cost the life of one of our closest friends – due almost entirely to the cack-handed inefficiency of that lot!” He nodded angrily across the Green to where the two policemen were still setting up their operations room. “Or was it just their bloody indifference? You know, I could never quite make up my mind!” He stopped suddenly, shaking so badly that his drink fell out of his hands, the glass smashing on the stone hearth.

  “Des! I’m sorry!” said Gwilym, rising quickly and kneeling in front of the other man, gripping his arm with one hand and bending to pick up the broken glass with the other. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it; it was daft.”

  Desmond took a deep breath and smiled weakly, steadied as ever by Gwilym’s presence.

  “No dafter than some of the other things you’ve said over the years!” Rising with an effort and stepping past the other man, he went and poured them each a fresh drink, using the time to completely steady himself.

  “You’re right,” he said in a calmer voice, as he handed the generous scotch to Gwilym. “We need to talk to everyone who was at Mother’s ‘do’ the other night. Maybe someone knows something about why she was killed. Bit of a tall order, though; there were over sixty people there!”

  “Even more to the point, maybe the killer himself was actually at the party,” said Gwilym flatly, unknowingly echoing Eleanor’s earlier observation of the party’s probable significance.

  Desmond froze at the ramifications of what the Welshman was saying. “What makes you say that?”

  “I’m not sure, but the viciousness of the attack tells me there was more than just casual violence involved; there was real hatred. Remember, she was very new to the village. Also, remember that a large percentage of the people there were meeting her for the first time. It makes sense that maybe whoever killed her was there, that’s all,” he shrugged, not wanting to add to the horror on Desmond’s face.

  After a shocked pause, Desmond nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. You usually are over this sort of thing,” he acknowledged, smiling a little. “And she had only recently moved here. Whatever drove someone to kill her, and in that dreadful way, had a lot of hate in them. Hate towards her. There must have been, to kill her like that!” he ended, shuddering as he recalled the bloodied and slashed face and body of the woman. “She’d not been here long enough to generate that much hatred, surely? The motive for the murder – and the murderer too, come to that – must be from outside!”

  “Yes, almost certainly, and, once we know more about her, I can get some things checked,” said Gwilym.

  Desmond nodded. He was well aware of his friend’s strong links with the Metropolitan police, not all of them official. Along with the local contacts he’d maintained whenever they’d been back in Beldon Magna, he should, his friend knew, be able to pretty easily find out not only any background on the murdered woman, but any developments in the actual case as they happened. After some discussion, they, unknowingly following the same logic as the police, decided they would try and talk to as many who were at the party as possible Beldon Magna, starting with those five couples who still had strong links to the capital.

  “And Des,” Gwilym added, using the nickname that only he was allowed to use, “two things. If we’re right, and someone who was at the party is involved somehow, you may have picked up something.”

  Desmond looked back at him, nodding. They both knew that his people-watching and people-reading skills were second to none. An innate gift, it had been honed in the hard world of the London theatre. He not only knew what people liked, but could frequently tell by watching an audience’s reactions not just whether a show – his, or anyone else’s – would be a success, but even, on occasion, predict just how long it would run for.

  He nodded. “Yes. I’ve been thinking about it, of course I have, but I’ll do it a bit more logically now. You said two things,” he added after a moment.

  “Yes, yes, I did,” replied Gwilym, now choosing his words even more carefully. He didn’t want to alarm Desmond, but he equally didn’t want him blundering into any danger. “We need to be careful, very careful, how we go about it, what excuses we make for contacting those who were guests. Us asking apparently casual questions is one thing, but if whoever did do this knows about your skill at recalling things, well, you could be at some risk too.”

  Chapter 4

  In the short term, neither of them had to do much in the way of thinking up excuses to contact people, one or two of them came to them; or rather, to Desmond.

  Piers Bellamy and his sometimes-estranged wife, Laurel, were the first to call. ‘To offer our deepest sympathy to dear Desmond,” gushed Laurel, a day or two later, handing over an overly large bunch of ridiculously expensive flowers to an unimpressed Eleanor, who’d answered the door in anticipation of just such visitors.

  “Thank you so much,” she said, smiling extremely politely as she started to close the door on the disappointed pair. “I’m sure he’ll thank you himself when he’s ...”

  “It’s alright, Mother, I’m fine,” Desmond said, appearing over her shoulder, having correctly anticipated what would happen.

  Beyond a slightly raised eyebrow when Laurel threw herself at her son, almost sobbing on his shoulder, Eleanor said nothing and left them to it.

  “Dreadful do, old chap, dreadful!” said Piers giving him a manly handshake as he gripped his shoulder.

  “Yes, though I scarcely knew her, of course,” Desmond said, wondering, as he politely offered them coffee or tea, where the hell the man got his dreadfully false accent and vocabulary from. It came across as a Bertie Wooster sort of voice, unpleasantly leavened after one or three too many drinks, with a Thames estuary twang which, Desmond strongly suspected, was the man’s original accent.

  “You don’t have anything a bit stronger, old man, by any chance?” Piers asked in a voice tinged equally with hope and anxiety.

  Desmond nodded politely, realising it wouldn’t, despite it being only mid-morning, be the first of the day for either of them.

  Happily settled with their drinks, Laurel quickly moved onto the rea
l reason for their visit. “Even not knowing her, to find her like that …” she added, wriggling as much as her very tight outfit allowed. Watching her rather ample and, he was virtually certain, surgically enhanced chest strain against its scarcely sufficient Lycra top, Desmond idly wondered if, as rumour, had it, she’d been a stripper before she’d snared her wealthy husband. If she had been, he wished her well. He’d known many girls who worked the clubs and streets in his London years, and he sadly knew that far too few got out to anything like a decent life. Though whether life with the podgy, balding, shallow and totally self-obsessed jerk in front of him did count as better was, he suspected, something she not infrequently asked herself. It would certainly account for the strong smell of alcohol on her breath when she arrived – and, perhaps, the speed with which she demolished the very large gin and tonic he’d only just given her.

  “Yes, it must have been awful for you, finding her! Slashed to death! Mutilated and covered in blood!” said Piers, his relish of the imagery seeping through his air of respectful mourning.

  “Yes, dreadful,” Desmond responded, shivering slightly and resisting the sudden urge to join them with an equally large drink. “She came from London too, I gather. The police asked me if I’d known her. I didn’t, of course; different worlds, and she came from Chelsea and we lived in Soho. Did you know her?” he asked casually, carefully watching their reaction. “You originally came from the Chelsea area, didn’t you?”

  “Eh? Oh no! Never met her before she moved here. And then we’ve not really seen much of her – different set you know,” he responded, nervously mopping at some of the drink he’d spilled when Desmond had asked the question.

  “Yes, not really our type,” agreed Laurel. “Not mine, anyway,” she continued sweetly. “I think you saw a bit more of her than I did, didn’t you, darling?” she murmured. “More than a bit, actually,” she added, smiling a smile from which laughter and humour were both entirely absent.

  “Who, me?” responded her hapless husband, glaring at her. “No! Oh you mean at the tennis club? I did there, yes. She played a mean game, you know; for a woman,” he added with unconscious chauvinism. “Shocking thing to happen in a place like this,” he added. “God! She must have been covered in blood, from what I hear; her throat cut from ear to ear. Hardly bears thinking about!” said Piers, almost smacking his lips as he continued. “Impaled too, I hear. God! I hope she was dead when he did that, I really do.”

  “Piers! You’re making me go all shivery!” protested Laurel. “Anyway, I’m sure all of that’s not true!” she added, as she looked across at Desmond, hoping to get the real version.

  “The police have asked me to say nothing, unfortunately, otherwise I’d tell you more,” he lied. One part of his mind was wishing to hell that he’d let his mother get rid of them at the door. The other part, though, was aware that if he and Gwilym stuck to their plan to try and talk to everyone at the party, they would both be exposed to much more of this unpleasant, vicarious thrill-seeking.

  After a second large drink apiece, and with Desmond studiously ignoring their hints for a third, the couple left without any of the salacious details they’d hoped to have to share in their various planned, voyeuristic conversations with their like-minded cronies.

  Well, well, thought their relieved host as he thankfully shut the door behind them, so Piers was having it off with our victim, was he? Not to mention the other one Jemma mentioned. Yes, definitely worth the gin, he thought with satisfaction as he made notes for discussion later with Gwilym.

  *

  When they did meet up, Desmond found Gwilym had managed to get hold of a copy of his mother’s list, and was still laughing as he passed it over.

  “Bang on the money, though,” said Desmond as he read about one person, whose family had lived in the village for three hundred years, summed up as ‘quite pleasant, completely harmless, terribly dim due to family’s access to too limited a gene-pool.’ Another, more recent, resident got skewered with ‘a little shallow, rather vacuous, quite harmless unless valuables are left lying around when she visits.’ Knowing both the individuals he couldn’t but agree with her.

  Gwilym, knowing the police would focus first on the ten with the most obvious links to London, had marked them. Desmond, after bringing him up to date with his morning’s encounter with the Bellamys, added that two more on the list had planned to call on the following morning. Unlike Piers and Laurel, they had had the decency to phone first.

  “Which was a bit of a waste of time, really,” Desmond continued, “as I got another phone call about an hour ago. They’ve both been called away on some rush job or jobs. They’ll call us when they get back,” he added.

  “A pity, but can’t be helped,” responded Gwilym. “I’ll be very interested in what you find out when you do talk to them. John’s in broadcasting, isn’t he?”

  Desmond nodded. “Yes, and I gather Harriet’s in Public Relations, so again, the visit may be doubly useful. More so than the Bellamys anyway,” he added.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Gwilym demurred. “Don’t forget that we’re now virtually sure he was having it off with Della, so a picture is building, which is all we could expect so soon.”

  “True, and the media world is one where I see the late Ms. Riminton coming from. More so than the charity or caring fields, anyway,” he added, smiling. “So let’s hope that either John or Harriet came across her, or know someone who did, when she lived in London.”

  Gwilym nodded in agreement. “Oh, by the way,” he added. “I can save you some time; one or two couples on the list will be at the Whist Drive later in the week.”

  “The Whist Drive! Bloody hell, Gwil! I’m not going to spend an evening with that bag of old fossils! Anyway, surely none of the London crowd go?” he added, hopefully.

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “You’re right, I would,” Desmond replied flatly. “Though it may be a good idea,” he added, after a moment. “And, as I need a partner, we can both go!”

  “I’d love to Des, I really would,” lied Gwilym, “but – the pub you know. So I’ve fixed you up with one!”

  “Bloody good of you. Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Excuse me?” choked Desmond after a moment’s stunned silence, then, “You. Have. To. Be. Joking!”

  “Thought you’d be pleased,” murmured Gwilym.

  “I am not going to any Whist Drive with my mother!” Desmond had not played cards with his mother since he was twenty five. On one of their regular Christmas visits, he was partnering her against Gwilym and his father. A consummate card-player herself, she had, as always, been full of advice. Desmond, driven to fury, had flung his cards down, vowing he’d never play with her again until she stopped treating him like a child, to which she’d calmly replied that of course she’d stop, once he stopped playing like one.

  “Anyway, she said much the same,” Gwilym carried on, stirring happily.

  “She didn’t!” said Desmond, feeling affronted; somewhat unreasonably, Gwilym thought.

  “Of course not, just winding you up; most enjoyable!” Gwilym laughed.

  “Bastard. So I’m not going to the Whist Drive, then!” said a relieved Desmond.

  “Oh, yes, that bit’s true. Your partner’s Jon Peters. Apparently Louise can’t go; her father-in-law’s taken a turn for the worse and she doesn’t want to leave him too long.”

  “Oh, well, if I have to go, Jon’s not too bad, I suppose. I’d better read up on the rules, it’s years since I’ve played,” muttered Desmond, reaching for his laptop and a card playing site.

  Chapter 5

  “You sure you want to do this?” asked Gwilym the next morning.

  “No, but I need to – and she needs a walk anyway,” he added, pointing downwards.

  “I’ll come with you then,” said Gwilym loyally.

  “You’re bloody right you will!” Desmond responded ungratefully. “I’m not going back up there on my own. And
it’ll help you get into the habit of walking that!” he added glaring down at the puppy. The little dog, oblivious to his displeasure, had been happily following him round most of the morning, carrying one of his favourite, and now partially chewed, slippers.

  “Whoa! It’s your dog, not mine,” Gwilym hurriedly disclaimed. “An expensive and thoughtful present to show how much your Mum and I think about you,” he added, a little sanctimoniously.

  “It was an evil gift meant to cause me every bit of the hassle she has already caused. And, since I looked up that the average life span of a cocker spaniel is twelve to fourteen years, I see no short cut out of the misery caused by your ‘thoughtful’ gift. So, I’ve decided that we’ll all have to share in her upbringing; that’s my gift to both of you!” responded Desmond triumphantly.

  “I look forward to watching the success you have with your mother!” laughed the Welshman, knowing that Eleanor was not the greatest fan of any canine. Nor, indeed, since earlier that morning, and the finding of a chewed CD which she’d been particularly fond of, was she a fan of the particular one under discussion.

  “Let’s hope I succeed, for your sake,” responded Desmond with a smile of triumph. “Otherwise, you’ve got her workload too!”

  Laughing companionably, they left the house, and the puppy, tail wagging joyously, shot over the lawn straight to the little gate.

  They quickly reached the edge of Corbett’s field and, with the little dog safely back on her lead, both stood pensively looking out across its windswept expanse. Even though the police tent still shrouded the actual spot where he’d found the dead woman, in Desmond’s mind it disappeared. He could clearly see the figure he’d thought was the scarecrow etched starkly against the grey skies of two days previously.

  “Dear God! It’s a bleak spot to die in,” Gwilym muttered.

  Desmond nodded. “But why here? I mean it’s so god-forsaken, so far from anywhere, particularly in weather like the other day,” he added aggrievedly, thinking fleetingly of his failed Wellington boots.