Hard Evidence

Chapter 26 (#)

Chapter 27 (#)

Chapter 28 (#)

Chapter 29 (#)

Chapter 30 (#)

About the Author (#)

By Emma Page (#)

About the Publisher (#)

CHAPTER 1 (#)

The thriving, bustling town of Millbourne looked its best on this sunny Tuesday afternoon in the third week of April. In his first-floor office overlooking the main street, Donald Fielding closed the file on which he had been working. He stood up from his desk and returned the file to its cabinet. He was a tall, lean man, thirty-seven years old, with thick, dark hair and sharp grey eyes. He was the proprietor of the Millbourne Advertiser, a highly successful freesheet, one of a number of such newspapers he owned in this part of the county.

He glanced at the phone, looked at his watch, expelled an impatient breath and crossed to the window. The top sash stood open to the soft air, laced with traffic fumes and the scents of spring.

After a few moments he turned from the window and went back to his desk; he began to work again. All his movements were quick and decisive. He glanced frequently at his watch. Whenever the phone rang he snatched up the receiver on the instant.

It was almost four when the call he had been waiting for, the call from George Gresham, head of Gresham Enterprises, at last came through.

Fielding sat leaning forward, rigid, listening, then his expression began to lighten, his shoulders relaxed. By the end of the call he was smiling broadly.

His tone was now briskly cheerful. ‘Right, then. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll be there.’

He drew a deep breath of relief. He felt exuberant, charged with energy. He had the look of a man long resigned to old hindrances and restrictions, who sees all at once exciting challenges opening out before him.

Then his expression altered. Before those new opportunities could be grasped an existing association must be ended. He was foolish to have let it continue so long when it was plain weeks ago that the time had come to cut loose.

He rested an elbow on the desk, cupped his chin in his hand. He remained for some time frowning, pondering, calculating.

Wednesday dawned chilly and overcast but by lunch time the sun had broken through.

In the walled garden of Honeysuckle Cottage, in a secluded spot three miles from Millbourne, Audrey Tysoe spent the afternoon as she had spent many other afternoons since her retirement a few months ago at the age of fifty-five: working in her garden.

The cottage stood on its own at the end of a lane, some distance from the nearest village but within easy walking distance of a bus route into town. The garden was a fair size but she managed it herself.

Today she was busy clearing a tangled corner; the wheelbarrow beside her was now full. She wheeled it across the garden and emptied it onto the compost heap.

She was a dumpy woman, strongly built, with a slight, habitual limp. A shrewd, weathered face that no one had ever thought pretty; hair taken back without artifice into a scanty bun. Neat and tidy, even in her old gardening clothes; the air of a woman who has never bothered overmuch about her appearance and certainly doesn’t intend to start bothering about it at this stage of her life.

As she turned from the compost heap she heard the sound of a car in the lane. She glanced at her watch: just after 5.30. She gave a little nod. It would be Donald Fielding; he had phoned to say he intended coming. She had worked for Fielding until her retirement.

She heard the vehicle turn in through the gateway. By the time she had walked round to the front of the house Fielding was getting out of his car in the parking bay at the side of the drive.

He raised a hand and called out a greeting. He came up to her and put an arm round her shoulders, kissed her affectionately on the cheek. They sat down close together on a garden seat and were soon deep in earnest conversation. They had just about reached a satisfactory conclusion when there came the sound of another car approaching.

Julie Dawson came along the lane in her white Mini. As she turned into the driveway she saw Fielding’s car parked in the bay.

She drew a trembling breath, hesitated, then drove slowly round to the garage at the rear of the cottage, flicking a glance as she went by at the pair sitting side by side on the garden seat. They both looked across at her but neither waved, neither smiled. She felt a nervous tremor run through her.

She sat for a moment in the car, steadying herself, then she picked up her holdall and shoulder bag. Before she came into view again she squared her shoulders and assumed a confident smile. She was slightly built, twenty years old, with a pretty, heart-shaped face, sharp little features, a satiny skin. Hazel eyes, very bright, flecked with gold. A wealth of curling brown hair, full of russet lights.

She walked jauntily towards the other two, chattering cheerfully as she approached. ‘It wasn’t so terrible, after all. Just one filling, no injection. I could hardly feel it.’ She worked at the Advertiser and had been allowed to leave early to keep a dental appointment. ‘I went shopping afterwards, I felt I deserved a treat. I bought myself a jacket.’

She halted, reached into her holdall and drew the jacket from its wrappings. ‘It was marked down quite a bit. It seems a terrific bargain to me. I can’t see anything wrong with it.’

She held it up against her. An expensive-looking garment, fashionably cut; fine, smooth cloth in a muted grey-green check. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked. ‘Do you think it suits me? It goes with all my things.’

Neither of the other two responded to any of this with so much as a smile or a glance at the jacket. Fielding got to his feet and Julie’s stream of chatter fell away.

‘We need to talk,’ Fielding told her brusquely. ‘We’ll go inside.’ Without another word or look he went into the house.

Julie stood irresolute. She turned her head as if about to make a run for it, then she gave her shoulders a little shake and followed him with an air of compliant meekness.

But the look in her eyes as she stepped across the threshold was far from compliant.

Audrey sat gazing after them with an expressionless face, then she stood up and went limping over to a bed of daffodils. Here and there she nipped off a faded bloom, to be cast down later onto the compost heap.

CHAPTER 2 (#)

Rain began to fall early on Friday morning, dying away by eleven. It was almost noon as Detective Sergeant Lambert drove back to Cannonbridge. His inquiries had taken him to a couple of outlying villages where he had spent a fruitless morning chasing shadows. He felt tired and irritable, hungry and thirsty.

The sun shone down from a clearing sky. His route took him along minor roads little more than lanes, between flowering hedgerows, grassy banks starred with primroses, past orchards of pear trees snowy with blossom. His sour mood began to evaporate.

When he was still some half-dozen miles from Cannonbridge he rounded a bend and saw on the grass verge, a short distance ahead, a white Mini, standing sideways on to him, its back wheels sunk in the ditch. As he came up it became clear that the rear bumper had got itself hooked under a boulder, one of several strewn along the verge, which had fallen from the crumbling stone wall backing the ditch.

A girl crouched beside the vehicle, trying to free the bumper. She got to her feet as Lambert pulled up close by. He ran an appreciative eye over her. A pretty girl with strikingly beautiful brown hair glinting in the sunlight. She was trimly dressed in a dark green skirt, a smartly cut jacket in a muted grey-green check.

She was delighted at his offer of help. ‘I overshot the turning,’ she explained. ‘I was reversing and I skidded back into the ditch.’ She gestured over to the right. ‘I’m going to Calcott House.’ She saw the name meant nothing to him. ‘It’s a hotel,’ she added. ‘Quite near here.’

He got her to move aside the stone as he eased up the rear of the car. The end of the bumper was twisted and dented. ‘It’s no great damage,’ he assured her. ‘It won’t cost a fortune to put right.’ She thanked him profusely for his assistance.

‘This hotel you’re going to,’ he said. ‘Do they serve lunch to nonresidents?’ The notion of a decent meal in civilized surroundings appeared distinctly cheering. Particularly with the chance of a pretty girl to share his table.

‘I think they do,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t stayed there before. I used to live round here, in Calcott village, but I left three years ago. This is the first time I’ve been back – I’ve no family here any more. Calcott House used to be just a residential hotel but there were changes a few years ago; they did a lot to the place. I think maybe it changed hands at that time but I can’t quite remember. Anyway, they started doing bed and breakfast, catering for holiday-makers. I’m pretty certain they began doing meals for nonresidents at the same time.’ She gave him a friendly smile. ‘I’m sure they’ll give you lunch.’

He followed her Mini till they came in sight of tall wroughtiron gates standing open to a long drive flanked by flowering shrubs, running up to a large Victorian house framed by mature trees. A board by the gate assured him the hotel did indeed serve lunch and dinner to nonresidents.

In the car park the girl suggested it was time they exchanged names; hers was Julie Dawson. She wore an air of pleased expectancy as they walked across to the pillared entrance. ‘I always longed to come here when I was a child,’ she confided. ‘It seemed a mysterious, romantic place. But I never even set foot in the grounds. I used to make up stories about it. I used to tell myself: “One day, when I’m grown up, I’ll go and stay there.” I imagined that would be about as far as anyone could get in the high life.’

She gave him a grin, like an excited child. ‘Now here I am, walking in through the doors. I decided to come this weekend on the spur of the moment. I rang up and found they could take me. I was delighted.’

He waited for her in the lounge bar while she checked in. When she rejoined him he asked what she would like to drink.