The Rhyme of the Magpie Read online

  I pulled away and walked on ahead of him. When we reached the yard at the cottage, I said, “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. Can we stay for a bit?”

  “Yes, let’s stay—we need to talk. Do you still have a key?”

  I whirled round. “Of course I have a key. Did you think I’d been excommunicated?”

  “I don’t know your story,” Michael said, regarding me with an icy look.

  “There is no story,” I replied. Over his shoulder I could see into the back garden and the derelict playhouse where Bee and I would serve Mum and Dad tea on summer afternoons. At that moment, I would’ve given anything in the world to be that happy-go-lucky little girl again.

  I took a deep breath and put the key in the door. “I’ll have to go through and switch on the electricity at the mains. We turn it off when we’re going to be gone for a while.”

  We walked into the dim light of the front hall, and I headed straight back with Michael behind me. We got to the kitchen—it was lighter here, with a window above the sink and one over the table—and a sound stopped me. A hum—the hum of the fridge. I looked over at it, and Michael followed my gaze. He reached over and tried the switch on the wall—the overhead light blazed.

  “Rupert?” I called in a loud whisper. “Dad?” Louder this time, as I ran back into the hall, poking my head into the front room and into Dad’s tiny study. Upstairs I flew, searching the three bedrooms and bath, shouting his name as I went. But the cottage was empty. I dragged myself out to the stairs and sank down onto the top step; Michael stood looking at me from the bottom. “Where is he?” I didn’t bother keeping the tremble from my voice. “Why isn’t he here?”

  “Maybe he’s in Cumbria.”

  “That was a lie and you know it,” I whispered.

  “Was it?” Michael asked. “What made you say Cumbria instead of the Isle of Skye or the Pennines?”

  I shrugged. “It just popped into my head. We’d talked about starting an ‘Endangered’ segment of the show, and Rupert had mentioned wanting to feature the hen harriers in Cumbria.”

  “There you are, then,” Michael said. “Not a lie at all—Rupert could very well be in Cumbria at this moment, field glasses trained on the sky.”

  “Is that how it’s done—lying? You choose something reasonable and people believe you?”

  Michael studied me for a moment. I tried to hold his gaze, but finally dropped my eyes, exhausted with the effort. Just plain exhausted.

  He climbed halfway up the steps and held out his hand. “What about that tea?”

  I wouldn’t normally need assistance getting down the stairs, but I was still a bit wobbly, and so I took his hand—at least he didn’t want to shake. In the kitchen, he filled the kettle as I began to rifle through the pantry.

  “The tea is here on the counter,” he said.

  “I’m starving,” I said, head deep into a shelf that was almost empty, but for two tins of steak and kidney pudding that had been there for years.

  “That’s right,” he said, “you’ve had no lunch.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him in case he was mocking me. The corner of his mouth went up in a grin, and his eyes flashed electric blue. Those eyes could put on their own light show. “And you?” I asked, retrieving my prize, a packet of cream crackers. “Never need to eat?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a meal,” Michael replied.

  “Well, don’t think I’m going to whip up a soufflé for you.” I ripped open the crackers and offered him one before tucking in myself. “A bit soft, but they’ll do,” I said. As the kettle switched off, I walked out to the cold porch. “Never mind about the tea.” I came back with two bottles of Adnams Southwold Bitter.

  “That’s more like it,” Michael said.

  We settled at the table without speaking—my mind was too full for words. I tried to focus on Rupert, but visions of the man’s body by the river kept popping in. I shook my head to reset.

  A few crackers in, Michael asked, “Did you recognize him?” He took another cracker and tapped it on the table as if he was ridding a ship’s biscuit of its weevils. I lifted my eyebrows, asking for clarification. “The fellow we found,” he said.

  I thought of the bloated face and the pool of blood and tried to shake the vision out of my head. “He wasn’t Dad,” I said. “That’s all I could tell. Do you know him?” This was a police matter; should we really be talking about it? My eyes flew to the door, but I didn’t know what I was afraid of—that the body would walk in or that Sergeant Flint might be perched in the tangle of honeysuckle above the door.

  Michael attended to his cracker for another moment, before replying without looking at me. “I heard them say his name—they were looking through his pockets while you were unconscious.” At the thought of hands searching the dead man’s pockets, the crackers, which had so recently gone down my throat, threatened to come back up. I took a swig of my beer. “Kenneth Kersey,” Michael said, and watched me.

  At first, my mind was too full of horror for the name to register. After a moment, it sounded vaguely familiar, and after that, a door creaked open to reveal the storage closet of my old life, and the name floated down from a top shelf.

  “Kenneth Kersey,” I repeated. “Communications director for Power to the People—the wind-farm company. He’s their mouthpiece…” At that word and the image of what had happened to him, the crackers made good on their threat. I got to the loo just in time.

  Chapter 6

  I took two deep breaths before I stepped back into the kitchen. Michael stood up when he saw me. “Everything all right?”

  “Oh yes, everything is ducky.” Ravenous all over again, I sat down and set in on the crackers and beer—crunching covered the worry that had started nibbling away at me. Michael sat, too. “I’ve seen him, of course—Kersey. But I didn’t recognize him, not the way we found him. Rupert’s had arguments with Kersey,” I said. “Public arguments. Rupert called him an insufferable ass.”

  “Well deserved, I’d say.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I know enough.”

  “Kersey was an ace at double-talk,” I said. “He would say how much the company cares about the environment, while at the same time they were planning to run roughshod over hundreds of acres of important habitat.” I took another cracker and began breaking it into pieces. “But why was Kersey here—so close to Marshy End?”

  Michael kept his eyes on the table as he replied. “Kersey could’ve been on his way up to the wind-farm site, don’t you think? We’re not too far off the road.”

  “Maybe he was meeting Oscar Woodcock—managing director for Power to the People. They could’ve been spying on Dad—trying to find something to discredit him.”

  “I don’t see Woodcock as the spy type,” Michael said.

  “Are you defending him?”

  “I am not,” Michael said, his eyes flashing. “But we can’t jump to conclusions—at least not publicly. Woodcock will use any misstep to his own advantage.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know so much about him?”

  “It’s my job to know as much as possible.”

  His job, my job. “The thing is,” I said, “this could be a sticky situation for Dad, and he doesn’t need that. Word will get round, and when they realize just who Kersey is, the police may want to talk with Rupert.”

  “Most likely. It’ll be a routine matter, of course, but still, he needs to be aware of what’s happened before they speak to him.” Michael looked round us. “Was Rupert here?”

  I took in our surroundings—tile counters neat and tidy, plates in a line on the rack. I got up and opened the fridge. A small carton of milk—expiry date two weeks out—and half a block of Dad’s special indulgence, double Gloucester cheese, were its only contents. I stepped on the pedal of the rubbish bin and the lid flipped open. I lifted out an empty Jaffa Cakes wrapper—those soft biscuits with a dab of marmalade and covered in chocolate were the best tracking device possible whe
n it came to my dad’s whereabouts. I nodded miserably. “Yes.”

  “Here’s what must’ve happened,” Michael said, sitting up and brushing crumbs off his lap. “Rupert stopped by Marshy End on his way to Cumbria. Kersey came by looking for him—but Rupert had already gone. Kersey left Marshy End and met with someone else along the river. Whoever did that to him.”

  I liked that—it made good sense.

  “First order of business,” Michael said, “is to find Rupert.”

  His words had buoyed me. Perhaps he was right—we could sort this out together and keep the spotlight off Dad. But I remembered there was more than just the two of us concerned. “No,” I said, pulling my phone out. “Not the first.” I studied the screen, getting up my nerve before ringing.

  “Julia?” Beryl answered, her voice full of anticipation. “Have you heard from Rupert?”

  “No, Beryl, I haven’t. I just thought I would…see how you are.”

  Michael shot me a questioning look. I shook my head at him. I was a coward—I couldn’t tell her about Kersey. But whether it was to spare her worry or to protect my dad, I didn’t know.

  “Oh. Thank you,” she said politely. “I’m fine, really. After all, we know how your father is. Just off on a project.”

  I balked at being swept up in her familial “we”—I wanted no part of her. And yet, I heard a thinness to her voice, as if she was a millimeter away from cracking.

  “Yes, well. You’ll let me know when he rings?”

  “Of course, Julia. And you will, too—you’ll give me any news?”

  “Yes,” I said, the word fairly choking in my throat.

  I dropped the phone on the table and stared into nothing. After a moment, Michael said, “So, Beryl’s had no word from Rupert?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It was probably better you didn’t tell her about Kersey.”

  I frowned. “Was it? I suppose. Yes—no sense in worrying her.”

  Michael watched me for a moment. “What’s between you and Beryl?”

  I sat up straight but wouldn’t meet his eye. I pushed the packet of crackers away as I spoke. “Nothing. She’s my dad’s wife. What could there be between us?”

  Michael bent his head to catch my gaze, and when I at last looked up at him, he said, “Your mum died last year, didn’t she?”

  I crossed my arms. “Last summer.”

  “My dad died more than twenty years ago, and my mum has never found anyone else. I always hoped she would—you know, so she wouldn’t be so lonely.”

  “If you’re telling me to be thankful my dad remarried before we were even finished mourning my mum, then you can…” The steam was building up in me, and my voice shot up an octave before I could catch it, but I caught myself in time, taking a sharp breath. “Is your mum…does she live round here?”

  Michael smiled. “She lives with one of my sisters in Glen Parva near Leicester. Works nonstop—volunteering, you know. Parish council, garden club, Women’s Institute.”

  He said it proudly, and I responded in kind. “WI—my mum tried to get me to join, but I never did.”

  “Still could,” Michael said.

  I rolled my eyes. “All that jam, I don’t know.”

  We lapsed into a pleasant silence, a small break in the harsh reality pressing on us. But my mind drifted back to the subject at hand, and I searched for something that would help.

  “I may not know where Dad is, but I know someone who might.”

  Michael frowned. “Who?”

  “A family friend,” I said. “Tomorrow, I’ll go have a chat.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He fairly jumped at the opportunity, and for some reason I didn’t try to identify, it made me back away. “No, it would be better if I went alone. But I’ll be sure to ring you later if I hear anything,” I said.

  “And how will you get there?” Michael asked. “You’ve no car.”

  Yes, how would I get to Cambridge the next day? Again, I’d forgotten about my nicked Fiat. Must ring the police. Must ring insurance. And again, a niggling thought tried to work its way to the surface. I pushed it back down in order to stay in control. Must not give in to Michael—I’m the one to sort out any difficulty Dad may be in. “I’ll manage.”

  —

  When we left Marshy End, Michael drove slowly past the spot where the footpath took off from the road. Two unmarked cars were parked on the verge, but we could see nothing else.

  We continued in silence, except for the noises my stomach made—crackers had not been enough. Almost to Mildenhall, I said, “We could stop for a sandwich. The Wheaten Cairn is coming up.”

  The headlights illuminated the sign as we pulled in—a terrier standing on a bench as if being judged at a show, and the pub’s name above in Old English lettering. We dashed from car to door through splattering rain.

  The Cairn sat at the edge of one of the few hills thereabouts and looked south. It was a long building, but not deep. Inside the door, the lounge went off to the right, but I turned left into the tiny bar, beyond which one further room held an old upright piano, shelves of dusty books, and four little tables.

  A small man in a dark suit huddled at a tiny table near the window. Michael and I approached the bar, which was barely long enough for us and the two fellows at the other end. They were watching the television on the wall as the minister of food gave a speech, and seemed to be in the middle of a mild disagreement. “No,” one of the fellows said, “I’m sure he blinked twenty-seven times in the first minute—I counted. That’s a pint you owe me.”

  “It was nineteen,” the other replied. “I’d swear to it. We’ll have to watch again.”

  Michael nodded to a sign that read “Kitchen Closed Sunday Evenings.” “Will they do sandwiches?” he asked.

  The barman, Valentine Spore—a round fellow with a Friar Tuck fringe of hair and small eyes—appeared from the adjoining room with a tray of glasses. He broke out in a toothy smile. “Julia! Haven’t seen you in here for ages.”

  “Hello, Val. How’re things?”

  “We’re going great guns here,” he said as he began to pull a pint. “I’m expanding—building a hotel right next to the pub. Just waiting for the local authority to grant approval. Sure to get that now—the way is clear. You need more than just a pub these days, you know.” He looked over my shoulder. “Is Rupert with you? Rupert Lanchester,” he said to the room in general, puffing out his chest. “He’s a great friend of mine, you know. Drops in quite often.”

  Val had always been a bit of a boaster. “Have you seen Rupert?” I asked.

  He picked up a glass and studied it in the light before he began polishing. “I have—he was in just the other day. Let me see now—I believe it was yesterday. Rupert’s always stopping,” Val said again to the unresponsive room, “just one of my usual customers.” He turned back to us. “I had barely unlocked the door at eleven o’clock, and there was Rupert.” Val leaned over the bar. “I say, Julia, he looked a bit weary. I know it’s been a tough time for him and you, with your mum and all.”

  “Was he here today?” I asked. “Did he go to Marshy End?”

  Val’s eyes flickered past my shoulder to the door, as if he expected Rupert to walk in at that moment. “No, I didn’t see him today.”

  “Are you sure? He could’ve stopped while you were away from the bar.”

  Val barked a laugh. “I’m never away from the bar. Now, what can I get for you?”

  I sighed, and Michael, who had stood still beside me, stirred. “We’ll have two pints of Broadside,” I said, “and could you do us a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches?”

  “I will indeed,” Val replied.

  It was a while before the evening crowd arrived, and we were spoilt for seating choices. I headed to a small round table in the further room.

  “You’ve the magic touch,” Michael said.

  I shrugged off the compliment. “They’re only toasted cheese sandwiches. Too bad we were
n’t here earlier—the Sunday roast is not to be missed. Val keeps his own pigs in the field below, and that’s what he serves here.” The Cairn was our local pub from Marshy End, for both the production team on the show and our family. It felt a bit like home.

  “Locally sourced food and drink are selling points these days. Not many publicans can boast that,” Michael said. “He should add a veg patch—he’d draw in the real-ale crowd as well as the slow-food customers.”

  “And it’s popular with birders,” I said, seeing the Cairn in the new light of my life as a tourism manager. “Below the pub is the pig field, and then a small wood, and on the other side of that is a fen. There’ve been a few rare sightings there.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows in response. “Your friend Val shouldn’t miss such a great marketing opportunity.”

  Val called out when our sandwiches were ready, and Michael collected them from the bar. The fine dining occupied us until, halfway through his sandwich, Michael said, “We’ve a start. Rupert was here and at Marshy End.”

  A bit of cheese had oozed out onto my plate, and I worked at scraping it up as I said, “But did he see anyone while he was there?”

  Michael picked up his sandwich and cocked his head. “He’s mentioned Kersey a couple of times lately,” Michael said. “Kersey’s asked him about specific birds—I don’t know if they were rare ones or not. Rupert thought it was a start, that maybe Kersey was beginning to understand what was important.”

  I smiled proudly. “That’s Rupert—he can bring round the hardest heart.” Except mine, of course—his own daughter’s—made of stone. “He’ll be horrified when he hears about Kersey.”

  “Worse—he could be a suspect.”

  Michael spoke my fear, and I didn’t like hearing it. “No, not a suspect. What even makes you say that?”

  “It seems likely, and that’s why we must get to Rupert one way or another.” He tossed his napkin onto his empty plate. “I didn’t know about this place—good thing you did. It would be better if we worked together. This family friend will know something?”

  I preferred to keep an ace up my sleeve—time for diversionary tactics. “Have you and Dad talked about the new season? How far out have you scheduled his lectures?”