Scared to Live

‘Has to be within twenty-four hours.’

Kessen cursed quietly. ‘Twenty-four hours is useless to us. Useless.’

The DI pointed at his two detectives. ‘We’ve done the initial house-to-house, but the immediate neighbours will have to be interviewed properly. They must know something about Rose Shepherd. Take one of them each, will you? Someone will give you the names.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘A woman with no family and no friends,’ said Hitchens bitterly. ‘How can we reconstruct the life of someone like that?’

‘She must have had at least one enemy,’ said Fry. ‘That’s a start.’

‘It’s some kind of relationship, anyway.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Kessen. ‘It means she had a close enough relationship with someone for that person to hate her. To hate her enough to kill her. That’s not some casual passer-by that she once said hello to in the street. There’s a history between them.’

‘But as far as this house is concerned, the victim seems to be a woman without a history. Without a life almost.’

‘Look, if there’s no evidence of Rose Shepherd’s past in this house, it means only one thing – that she had a past she was trying very hard to hide.’

Fry touched Cooper’s arm.

‘Ben, have you got your car here?’

‘Sure.’

‘Give me a lift down the road, then. I had to leave mine miles away.’

‘No problem.’

Fry brushed some cobwebs off her jacket. ‘This house is dirty, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I noticed that. Have you seen the décor in the sitting room, though?’

‘That charcoal grey? Yes, very minimalist.’

Cooper stopped in the doorway to take a last look at Bain House before he left. Was the house dusty because Miss Shepherd couldn’t be bothered with housework, or because she’d never been used to doing her own cleaning? Or might there be another reason?

On an impulse, he crouched towards the floor and looked into the sunlight flooding the pine boards. A layer of dust showed up clearly, glittering in the light from the windows. It would be possible to tell immediately if anyone had walked across this patch of floor. Their footprints would be visible in the dust. Perhaps that was why it had been left undisturbed.

Abbott’s lamping theory was an interesting one. When a rabbit was caught in the lamper’s beam, it was mesmerized by the light and seemed to forget to run away. Yes, Cooper had seen it happen. He could picture the unnatural stillness of the animal, its eyes reflecting light like two glass beads, stunned by the sudden glare when it thought it was safe in the darkness.

Fry was waiting outside for him, no doubt getting impatient. But for a moment, Cooper thought about Rose Shepherd, shot down at her bedroom window as she stood in her nightdress and slippers. She must have been an easy target in a sniper’s sights, silhouetted against the light. It was impossible not to picture her frozen to the spot, waiting for the bullet to strike.

7 (#u85de6a30-c750-5369-ab1c-8f2eeb654e00)

‘Nice barn conversion,’ said Cooper. ‘Somebody’s done a good job of it. Probably worth a bit of money, wouldn’t you say?’

‘More than I’ll ever see.’

Fry got out of the car and walked across the gravel as Cooper drove away. Actually, it was more than a barn conversion. She could see an entire range of farm buildings here. They formed three and a half sides of a square, facing on to a central courtyard. A two-storey stone barn, cleaned up and fitted with patio doors and casement windows. A tractor shed converted into twin garages and workshops. The door of one garage stood open, and the nose of a blue BMW was visible.

According to information from the control room, the neighbours on this side were called Ridgeway, Martin and April. Fry took a small detour before crossing the courtyard to their house, and looked in through the windows of one of the outbuildings. Games room. A gym. And a sauna. Very nice.

The Ridgeways themselves could have stepped straight out of Derbyshire Life. They had perfected the country look: corduroys and cashmere, tweed and waxed cotton. Fry wasn’t at all surprised when she heard their accents and discovered they both came from Luton.

‘We noticed all the activity, of course,’ said Martin Ridgeway, who wore the corduroy and waxed cotton over an Antartex shirt. ‘And a young constable called about an hour ago to ask us if we noticed anything suspicious in the early hours of Sunday morning.’

‘And did you notice anything, sir?’

‘No.’

He invited Fry into the house, which she thought was probably further than the young constable had got. She was taken into a dining room, with six spindle chairs around a polished table. A spiral staircase with cast-iron balustrades led to a first-floor gallery, what must have been a hayloft or something at one time.

‘We’re members of Neighbourhood Watch, you know,’ said Ridgeway. ‘But our co-ordinator says the police won’t give him any information. Has there been another robbery?’

‘Another?’

His eyes widened in astonishment. ‘You don’t even know about them?’

‘No, I’m sorry. Right now, we’re conducting enquiries into a suspicious death.’

‘Good heavens! We didn’t know that. But I suppose we ought to have guessed it was something more high profile, to justify all this activity. Who is it that’s died?’

‘Miss Rose Shepherd, at Bain House.’

‘Oh,’ said Ridgeway.

He sounded distinctly non-committal, as if he didn’t want to appear either too upset or too pleased at the news.

Fry thought of Keith Wade, the Mullens’ neighbour back at Darwin Street. It was odd that both Ridgeway and Wade were members of their respective Neighbourhood Watch schemes, one in a well- off rural community and the other on an Edendale housing estate. There were no superficial similarities between them, but theoretically Martin Ridgeway ought to be equally well informed about his neighbours.

‘What do you know about Rose Shepherd, sir?’ she asked.

Ridgeway turned his head. Fry could see a room through a doorway that appeared to be a home office, a desk loaded with computer equipment.

‘Was she foreign?’ he said vaguely. ‘We heard a rumour in the village that she was foreign.’

‘Not so far as we’re aware. Did you never speak to her yourself, Mr Ridgeway?’

‘No. Why would I?’

‘Well, she lived right next door.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not as if these are semidetached properties. I don’t know anything about her.’

Fry found herself staring at a mahogany barometer on the dining-room wall. She’d never understood those things. If the mercury was up or down, what did it mean? She preferred those weather houses, or whatever the things were called, with two little Jack and Jill figures. At least it was always clear what they were telling you. Sun or rain, and no ambiguity.

‘Didn’t you say you were in Neighbourhood Watch?’