The Pillbox Murders: The second Inspector Dalliance mystery

By Simon Rae

Nestling in undergrowth by the bank of the Thames, an old wartime pillbox, relic of the nation’s troubled past, finds itself at the heart of events that will haunt the idyllic village of Cardwell.

With last summer’s case still weighing against his name, Chief Inspector Dalliance arrives at the scene of a particularly unsettling

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Elms Books Ltd
• Release date: Jul 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781910533185

Simon Rae

Simon Rae tried supporting Canterbury City but switched to Liverpool FC for the 1965 FA Cup final against Leeds United. He stood in the Kop on a few occasions in the 1970s and presumably saw all the stars but cannot remember any of the football (possibly because he couldn't see any of it). He missed the one FA Cup final he was offered a ticket for (missing the train from Canterbury) and only watched the World Cup final in 1966 because rain stopped play at the county cricket match he was attending. Decades later, he brought up his son, Michael, to be a Liverpool supporter but - as he is constantly reminded - has yet to take him to Anfield. Simon's first love is cricket, and his definitive biography of W. G. Grace (1998) was praised by John Major. In addition to a second cricket book (It's Not Cricket), he has published six novels and several slim volumes of poetry. He presented Poetry Please! on BBC Radio 4 for five years and wrote satirical verse for The Guardian for ten years.

Book preview

Prologue

I

t was quiet, but she could still hear the sounds of the world outside as the day wound down: a distant tractor carrying on with the harvest; a boat chugging along the river; someone shouting at a dog or a child. Background noises you would normally never take any notice of. But now she was listening intently: a twittering of swallows, and further off the deeper call of a wood pigeon. Then, much closer, the sudden buzzing of a bee.

She hated bees. If it came in, she’d panic. She’d be helpless. She flexed her arms, but there was no give in the twine that bound her hands behind her back. She tried to push forward, but the rope across her stomach was tight.

The bee zig-zagged outside. She strained her eyes to pick it out against the dark leaves of the underbrush. She felt like screaming, but the duct tape was taut across her lips. She felt a spasm of fear. She wanted to go to the loo, even though she’d just been before leaving the pub.

She heard voices, and stiffened. A man and a woman. They had to be coming down the lane from the village to the river. A couple out for a walk in the last of the light. Which way would they go – left or right? If they turned left, they’d walk right past, only a few feet away. They might even come in, just to have a look. People sometimes did.

She wondered whether she could make any noise at all. Her throat and mouth were dry, but she tried all the same. It sounded like a cow in labour – but a long, long way away. No one would hear that.

She listened again. She couldn’t hear the voices. Besides, there were no footsteps outside, so they must have gone right, taking the path upstream.

She let her body sag, but there was no way to make herself more comfortable. She moved her shoulders up and down, but it was no good. She just had to wait there, a defenceless victim. She wished she were back at home, barely half a mile away. Suddenly her eyes stung with tears. She shook them away with a flick of her head. She had to be brave. But it was hard. The waiting was hard. How long would it last?

And what would happen when it ended?

One

M

onday morning. The call had come at 8.21 – a walker, alerted by her dog’s interest in a pillbox on the riverbank. She’d called it, but got no response, so she’d followed him inside. That was when she’d seen the body, and made her hysterical 999 call.

Barely an hour later, DCI Dalliance and his sergeant were blinking in the bright morning sunshine as they walked towards the police tape and the group of white-clad SOCOs bustling around the crime scene. DS Riley felt the inevitable surge of adrenaline and could tell from the Chief Inspector’s purposeful stride that he felt the same.

Dalliance tried to repress the sense of excitement, but it had been a dull few months – a short-lived spate of inept armed robberies, a couple of city-centre stabbings (one fatal), and a messy domestic involving a lot of blood but little challenge beyond the insoluble problem of humankind’s propensity for violence. A murder in a pillbox on the banks of the Thames seemed much more promising.

A uniform directed them along the river path. Fifty yards ahead they saw the heavily built concrete structure with its dark, blank apertures like empty eye sockets.

A tall figure moved towards them and helpfully lifted the tape for them to duck under. Dr Anderson, pathologist.

‘Thank you, Anderson. What have you got for us?’ Dalliance asked.

‘Sex crime, by the look of it. The usual squalid tragedy.’ Anderson sighed. ‘Take a gander if you want, but it’s not pretty, and the fewer pairs of feet we have in there the better. We’re photographing everything and it’ll all be in my report.’

‘Where’s the entrance?’ Riley asked, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

‘Where do you think?’ the pathologist retorted in his best schoolmasterly tone. ‘Round the back, of course. This is a defensive structure, so you hide the most vulnerable feature from the enemy.’

On closer inspection, Riley could see the worn grass leading around one side of the pillbox.

Given his opening, Anderson developed his theme. ‘It’s a Type 22. Pretty standard, hexagonal design, five outward facing walls, each with embrasures, and, as we were saying, the entrance at the back. Inside, again pretty standard: Y-shaped ricochet wall – in case Jerry managed to throw a grenade in, Riley – and this is what our victim was tied up against. Rather expertly tied, I might add, after her hands had been trussed behind her back.’

A member of the SOCO team came up to offer the two detectives white overalls. Dalliance hesitated. It was a bit early in the day for an encounter with a corpse, but in the end he put out a reluctant hand. Riley was about to follow suit when Dalliance stopped him.

‘I’ll do it, Riley. You go and get started with your notebook. That looks like your first port of call.’

Riley gave his boss a grateful nod. He could see the head-scarfed woman a safe distance from the pillbox, clutching a mug as if her life depended on it. There was a small dog at her feet looking up at her and whimpering, while PC Bowen stood by holding a thermos flask.

‘This is Mrs Draper,’ she announced as he joined them. Then, slowing her speech and raising her voice, Bowen spoke to the woman. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Riley. He’s going to ask you a few questions, Mrs Draper.’

The woman turned her distraught face to Riley. It was difficult to judge her age: early sixties, he guessed. The grey eyes stared into his but without focus. Unprompted, she started to speak.

‘It was terrible. Terrible. I thought I was going to pass out. She was just – I don’t know – I couldn’t believe it. It was horrible. Horrible. I can’t tell you –’

‘It’s all right, Mrs Draper. We’re here now to take care of it. I know you’ve had a shock, but I just need to get a few facts down, and then you can go home.’

‘Home?’ she echoed, as though the thought was a strange one. For a brief moment, she reminded Riley of the victim of an earthquake whose home had been reduced to rubble. He gave the PC a glance and received a sympathetic look in response.

‘I’ll take you back to your house and make sure you’re all right,’ Bowen said gently. ‘DS Riley just needs to get a few facts. Then we can go. Is that okay?’

The woman looked down at the dog as though seeking guidance.

‘I suppose so,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Terrible…terrible… I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. Never.’

Then she seemed to brace herself.

She looked directly at Riley. ‘Sin,’ she said. ‘Maddened with it. All of them, these days. Just like the cities of the plain.’

Riley frowned slightly. The pretty village they’d been summoned to hardly struck him as a likely twin for Sodom or Gomorrah.

‘Who’s maddened with sin, Mrs Draper?

‘It’s not for me to say. But God knows. God knows everything, and his vengeance is as sure as it is terrible.’

Riley told himself to be patient. He jotted the date at the top of a new page in his notebook. ‘So, Mrs Draper, if we could just have a few details. You live in the village, I take it?’

‘Holly Cottage, Church Lane. I’ve lived in Cardwell for twenty years, the last ten on my own, since my husband died. Heart attack. Only fifty-four, he was. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ She sighed before adding, ‘And only He knows his purposes.’ The shake of the head suggested bewilderment at the Divine plan.

Riley looked over her shoulder at the sluggishly flowing water of the Thames, glad as he so often was that a complete absence of faith let him off trying to square the impossible circle of a benign deity and a world of endless, inexplicable suffering. His attention fell on a couple of boats moored on the opposite bank, a little upstream. He wondered if anyone might have been around to see anything, but there was no sign of occupation. Just weekenders probably.

‘Coming to this morning, Mrs Draper, could you tell me exactly what happened – and when?’

‘It was Solomon who found her. He never normally goes inside it’ – she nodded in the direction of the pillbox – ‘horrible, dank, smelly place. A nasty place for nasty things. Not good for dogs.’ She had adopted the slightly childish tone people used when talking to their pets. She bent down to pat the dog. He nuzzled her hand and gave a little bark, before lifting one of his back paws to give his side a vigorous scratching, seemingly indifferent to the drama he’d innocently triggered.

‘And what time would you say that was, Mrs Draper?’

‘Oh, the usual time. I normally set off after the news at seven, and I like to be back in time for Thought for the Day. Though of course, that’s not what it was. They had some rabbi on the other morning. A rabbi! This used to be a Christian country. You never know what they’re going to spring on you next.’

As it happened, Riley had heard Thought for the Day that morning. Or rather, it had been on in the background as he was getting dressed. It was a C of E vicar, but a female one, and he suspected he knew where Mrs Draper stood on that particular issue.

‘So what time would you have got down to the river, Mrs Draper?’

‘Twenty past seven.’

‘That’s very precise.’

‘It’s our routine, isn’t it, Solly?’ She bent down and tickled the dog’s ears. The stumpy little tail wagged with pleasure.

‘So this is a regular walk for you?’

‘Oh yes. Regular as clockwork. We hear the church clock chime the quarter as we come to the bottom of the lane, and most mornings we’re on our way back up by half past. We go on a longer walk later. But this is just to get the business done. To find the place, as we call it, don’t we, Solly?’

Riley glanced briefly up at the cloudless sky, flicking his biro to and fro between his fingers. Could it really be worth his while spending time with this bitter, bigoted, pet-besotted, lonely old – his eye met Mrs Draper’s. He had a moment of panic and pummelled his features into an encouraging smile.

‘I keep him on the lead through the village and then let him off when we get to the river.’

‘So then he’s free to run off where he likes?’

‘Oh yes. He likes those bushes there. A lot of them do.’

Riley looked at a clump of trees and saplings huddling up around the pillbox. He could imagine the state of the ground thereabouts.

As though reading his thoughts, Mrs Draper said, ‘I always clear up after him, though there’s an awful lot that don’t – even with a bin not fifty yards away.’ She produced a little black plastic bag from her pocket. ‘Always take two, don’t we, Solly?’ she said to the dog. ‘Just in case.’

Riley sighed. At least she’d had time to dispose of the used bag before he interviewed her.

‘And then?’

‘He likes to run ahead a bit, and then we turn round and go back to the cottage for breakfast.’

‘How far would he go – normally?’

‘Not far – here and there. You know what they’re like, noses into everything, sniffing around in the bushes, then running on, and running back.’

‘And what was different this morning?’

‘Well, it was the pillbox. As I say, he never goes in. But he’ll sniff around. The other dogs leave messages, if you know what I mean. And he will too sometimes.’

Riley glanced at the pillbox, imagining the village’s many dogs raising their legs against its stained concrete, then forced his mind back to the interview.

‘But this morning?’

‘Well, he went up to it like he normally does. But then he seemed to get agitated. I think he’d got a different scent – from inside. Anyway, round the side he went, and I could hear his paws on the steps. I shouted for him to come out, but he didn’t, so I had to go in after him.’

The face showed another spasm of terror, and although her mouth was open, no sound came. The PC said soothingly, ‘It’s all right. We’ll soon be done. Just tell the sergeant what you saw.’

‘I’ll never forget it, as long as I live. Never. There she was – tied up and – oh, it was the devil’s work, I’m telling you. An abomination. Wicked, beyond belief.’ She paused, her eyes fixed on the pillbox. Then she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t surprise me.’

Riley looked questioningly at her.

‘The wickedness nowadays. There’s no morals. People think they can do what they like. Whatever they like; and the worse it is, the happier they are,’ she added darkly.

‘And do you know who she was?’

‘Sinead Hopton.’

Riley scribbled in his notebook, then looked up again. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh yes. No doubt at all. What with her tattoos and what-do-they-call-them, piercings, and those skirts.’ She raised her eyes. ‘And this is what it comes to.’

‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ Riley said.

‘Lust and temptation…’ Mrs Draper said, staring directly into his eyes. ‘In my day we were taught modesty, decorum. But it soon changed – everything good rejected, mocked, jeered at.’

But surely you couldn’t blame everything on the permissive society, Riley thought before asking: ‘Are you suggesting it was her fault she was killed? That whoever killed her was justified because she was wearing a short skirt?’

The woman shook her head, but then said, ‘But I’m not surprised. Not surprised it was her. I mean, if there was going to be one girl from the village, it would have been Sinead…’ She paused. ‘Her poor mother, what she’s put up with. And now this.’

Riley flipped over a page in his notebook and spent five minutes taking down the hard facts about the dead girl while trying to filter out the running commentary on the terminal decline that the world in general – and the village in particular – was bent on.

‘Thank you, Mrs Draper,’ he eventually said, seeing his boss emerging from the pillbox. Part of his job was shielding Dalliance as much as possible from the less salient parts of an investigation, and he was keen not to give this woman any chance to button-hole him with her views on the nation’s moral decay. ‘We know where to find you if we need to ask you any further questions. Would you like Constable Bowen to walk you home?’

Mrs Draper looked slightly mystified at being dismissed, but accepted the offer of company back to her cottage. Dalliance joined Riley, and the two detectives watched their witness’ sturdy frame clumping along the path towards the lane up to the village, with the PC’s hand hovering at her elbow, her tiny dog zigzagging ahead of her.

As Dalliance started stripping off his overalls, Riley gave him a brief summary of Mrs Draper’s account of discovering the body – and a flavour of the diatribe that had accompanied it.

Dalliance sighed as he finally extricated himself from the bodysuit and wrapped it irritably into an untidy ball. Looking around for someone to give it to, he said, ‘A lonely old woman whose only pleasure in life is watching the locals trip down the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire. I know the type. Still, probably a reliable witness.’

He looked out over the river as though its waters contained some indelible truth about the passage of time and the futility of human life, before turning back to the scene. ‘I suppose we’d better go and find the next of kin. Mother a single parent, we think?’

Riley nodded.

‘Find out the address, and we’ll get it over with.’

‘6, Churchill Close,’ Riley confirmed after a quick call back to the station. ‘It’s a bit away from the village centre,’ he added, looking at the map on his phone.

Of course it was, Dalliance thought, picturing a seventies estate with its cramped little boxes hidden away so as not to spoil the Olde English Village experience for the summer tourists. He wondered if anyone had ever done research into the correlation between murder victims and the architecture of the homes they came from. It would be instructive, he thought.

‘Did Anderson have any idea of the time of death, sir?’

Dalliance shook himself out of his reverie. ‘Between eight and twelve probably. Certainly last night.’

So the killer had at least an eight-hour start on them, Riley thought. ‘Mrs Draper said she’d been tied up. And it sounded as though she’d been interfered with.’

‘She was right, Riley. And yes, a sex motive is the obvious one to start with, though we’ll have to wait for the post mortem to see whether she was interfered with, as you so primly put it.’ After a pace or two, he added, ‘She had her arms tied behind her back and was roped to the central pillar – completely defenceless. It’s our job to find out who did that before strangling her, and put him inside for as long as possible.’

Two

T

he two detectives walked back up Ferry Lane which linked the river and the village of Cardwell. On their arrival an hour before, Riley had seen it as a stereotypical rural community. There was a church, several pubs, one or two shops, including a store-cum-post office and a charity shop, and a primary school, next to which stood the village hall. There was also a market square and a small green, by the side of which stood a war memorial.

The car was parked in the square, but a glance at the map on his phone showed Riley there was no need to use it. They walked up a pleasant lane lined with well cared-for cottages, before the architectural style changed radically. It gave Dalliance no satisfaction to find he had been right about Churchill Close. To think that the second greatest Englishman should give his name to such a depressing cul-de-sac.

He stood on the doorstep contemplating the frosted glass panel, pausing a moment before pressing the doorbell. It gave a sing-song chime, which immediately triggered a burst of barking. A woman’s voice shouted for quiet, and a door slammed, muffling the noise. Then a shadowy figure came into view and opened the front door.

‘Mrs Hopton?’

The anxious face peered at them. ‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Police,’ Dalliance said, holding up his warrant card.

Riley saw the look of panic.

‘It’s Sinead isn’t it?’

‘May we come in, Mrs Hopton?’

She opened the door wider and ushered them down the hall into a functional kitchen-diner. The barking started again, more urgently this time.

‘Be quiet, Casper! Stupid animal. Good as gold really. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Riley had met a lot of dogs like that, and was glad Casper had been confined, even though the purposeful scrabbling of paws against a flimsy door was a distraction.

Mrs Hopton was oblivious to it. ‘What’s she done? Where is she? I’ve been worried sick, I have. Out all night, without even a text to tell me where she was or what she was doing. Have you got her?’

‘I think you’d better sit down, Mrs Hopton.’

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘I was going to put the kettle on.’

‘My sergeant can do that,’ Dalliance said. Riley stepped forward, letting Dalliance steer Mrs Hopton towards one of the faded armchairs either side of the empty fireplace.

‘I’m afraid we’ve got something very serious to tell you,’ he said once he’d lowered himself into the other armchair. Riley opened a cupboard door in search of tea bags. The kettle began noisily to come to the boil.

‘Oh God, what is it this time? Has she done something wrong?’

‘It’s not anything she’s done, Mrs Hopton, but what someone has done to her.’

Although he was bracing himself for her response, Riley was not prepared for the piercing cry the woman made when Dalliance explained why they were there. Rising above the noise of the kettle, the wail mutated into a terrible keening, which eventually died into whimpering sobs.

Dalliance waved Riley to hurry up with the tea.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hopton. So very sorry. But we will get him. I promise you that: we will get whoever killed your daughter.’

‘Jed.’

The sobbing had stopped abruptly.

‘Jed Sanders, that’s who you want. Nasty, dangerous boy, that one. Always had my doubts about him. I warned her. But would she listen? No, always after him, always giving him the eye – goading him, almost. I said to her: He’s not interested in you: he’s got his own interests – out in the woods with that mad poacher friend of his. He’s violent. He likes killing. He doesn’t want a girl hanging around, cramping his style. But did she take any notice?’ Her head sank into her hands.

Riley approached with the tea.

‘Sugar,’ Dalliance hissed. ‘Plenty of sugar. And see if you can find something stronger – there might be some brandy for the Christmas pudding somewhere.’

He was right. Riley found a nearly empty bottle and tipped about a pub’s measure into one of the mugs.

‘Here,’ Dalliance said, holding it out. ‘Drink this. It’ll make you feel better, Mrs Hopton.’

‘She was always a difficult girl, never knew what she wanted, good at school one year, excluded the next, off to college to re-take her exams, and then drops out and sits around the house all day staring at her phone. I told her – she had opportunities I never had, and she was just wasting her life. And the clothes, and the tattoos – and the piercings. She used to be such a pretty girl.’ Mrs Hopton dabbed her eyes, then pointed to a framed photograph on the mantelpiece.

Riley reached it down. A fresh-faced girl in her early teens, the face open, smiling, pretty without being striking. A picture of normality.

Dalliance thought back to the corpse he’d just seen in the pillbox. Things had clearly changed radically in the intervening years.

Mrs Hopton turned to him. ‘It’s my fault. That’s what people will say anyway. It’s always the parent’s fault, isn’t it? And I suppose they’re right in a way. Ryan and me, we weren’t exactly perfect parents. Though God knows, I tried my best.’

‘Ryan?’ Riley asked, looking up from his notebook.

‘My husband. Ex-husband,’ Mrs Hopton looked at him as if for the first time. ‘Ex in both senses.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dalliance said.

‘Don’t be. He was a drinker. Ruined his life – ruined my life – and Sinead’s. And in the end it cost him his. Driving like a maniac. He always said he knew the lanes like the back of his hand.’ She shook her head at the memory. ‘I knew the back of his hand, and the front, come to that.’ She put her fingers to her left cheek. ‘Broke my jaw once,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘That’s not something any child should see. But she did. Standing at the top of the stairs in her pyjamas, looking at me being beaten up.’

‘Did you press charges?’ Dalliance asked quietly.

Mrs Hopton shook her head. ‘No, not even when the social worker told me to.’

She looked from one to the other, as though seeking understanding, then shook her head. ‘One minute he’s slapping me, the next minute… No one understands. I loved him. Always wanted to believe he meant it when he said it wouldn’t happen again. But I should have been strong. For Sinead, if not for myself. It messed her up. Messed her up badly.’

‘How?’ Dalliance was leaning forward slightly, giving her his full attention.

‘School…boys. Like I say, she was good as gold to begin with. But then it all changed in her teens. Bad results in her tests – that’s all they ever seem to do with them these days – test them. And if you don’t pass, you feel you’ve failed. And after a while she just gave up. Sod the lot of them! she said. She was standing there at the door, and she threw her bag on the sofa, got herself a drink and went up to her bedroom and slammed the door. And that was that, as far as school was concerned.’

‘And boys? You mentioned trouble with boys.’

‘Well, you know what girls are like at that age. They don’t know what they’ve got, half of them. Well, half the time they don’t. I was a TA for a time at the comprehensive – well, it’s an academy now – same difference if you ask me. But you had to feel sorry for the boys sometimes, surrounded by these lovely girls just coming into bloom – while they were all gangly and spotty and awkward. And the girls – some of them – enjoyed leading them on, there’s no doubting that. Enjoyed the attention. Sinead did, I know she did, even though I warned her she was playing with fire. But it was boyfriend after boyfriend. On the phone all the time to this one or that one, playing one off against the other.’

‘And did she –’ Dalliance smoothed his moustache. ‘Did any of these relationships last – did they develop?’

‘Oh no. She’d drop ’em – just like that. I’d ask after them, and she’d say: No, I dumped him, mum. He tried to touch me. Maybe it was a way of getting back at her dad. I don’t know. Anyway, once she’d given up on school, she started hanging out with a bad set – sitting around in the bus shelter, smoking, drinking, going off into the woods…’

‘What did they do there?’

‘Drugs. Sex.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what she got up to. Maybe nothing. But she certainly got a bad attitude.’ I was at my wits’ end. I couldn’t control her. Of course, if Ryan had still been around, she’d never have been so bad. I didn’t know what to do, so I just shouted at her. Even threatened to throw her out of the house, though I can’t believe I could have said it now, even though I never meant it.’ She sobbed, and dabbed her eyes feebly with her handkerchief.

‘And was Jed part of this group?’

‘Oh no. Not at all. He knew them, of course. But he was a loner, liked his own company – except for old Holtham.’

‘Old Holtham?’ Dalliance asked.

‘Mad old bugger – lives in one of the cottages in the woods. Keeps himself to himself, and makes himself unpleasant if anyone goes near him. The kids wind him up for a dare sometimes, but they’re terrified of him really. Except for Jed. Always going out there. Don’t know what he does – sets traps, shoots crows, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘And you’d say that Sinead pursued Jed, rather than the other way round?’

Mrs Hopton nodded. ‘Saw him as a challenge, I think. Everyone thought he was a weirdo, and with a dad like his, it’s hardly surprising. But Sinead just wouldn’t leave him alone. Kept sending him texts, getting him to take her to the pub, that sort of thing. And look where it got her...’

‘But the lad would hardly strangle her to get her off his back?’ Riley said, half to himself.

‘Of course not,’ Dalliance replied, looking around the village square where they had come after handing over to Constable Mayhew to arrange Family Liaison support.

‘So what was his game, sir?’ Riley said.

‘We’d better go and ask him,’ Dalliance said. ‘You’ve got the address.’

Number 9, Casterton Crescent was, if anything, even more dispiriting than Churchill Close. It was one of an enclave of late-fifties council houses, which for the most part had been well looked after, and probably, Dalliance thought, brought into the private market by tenants happy to take advantage of Mrs Thatcher’s Right to Buy campaign. Number 9 was the exception.

The garden gate was nearly off its hinges, and when they lifted it open, they found themselves in an unkempt front garden, which hadn’t seen a lawnmower in months. They picked their way up the concrete path to the door and Riley pressed the bell. It made a cracked buzzing sound, like a large insect trapped inside a metal box.

The door eventually opened, but only as far as the security chain would allow.

‘Mrs Sanders?’ Riley started, producing his ID.

Dark eyes flickered suspiciously. ‘What do you want?’

‘We need to talk to Jed. Urgently.’

‘He’s not in.’

Riley deftly got his foot over the sill before she could shut the door.

‘It’s very important,’ Dalliance said.

‘I just told you – he’s not ’ere. And neither’s his dad. I don’t see what you want of me.’

‘Can we come in? It really is in Jed’s best interests that you talk to us.’

The door pushed to and they heard the rattle of the security chain.

‘I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what he’s been doing. All I know is he’s been out all night and not come home yet.’

There wouldn’t be much to draw anyone back to the place, Riley thought. It looked as though it were camped in rather than lived in. The few sticks of furniture might have been found in a skip; one wall of the living room was painted a faded green, but the paint had run out, leaving the other three walls with their original striped wallpaper, while the floor was a mess of floral carpets which had never been properly secured to the skirting boards.

‘I’d offer you tea…’

‘We’re all right, thank you,’ Dalliance said, noting the pile of washing up in the sink.

‘Make yourself comfortable. If you can find anywhere to sit.’ Mrs Sanders swept a pile of assorted magazines off one of the chairs. Dalliance glimpsed covers showing men with deerstalkers posing with double-barrelled shotguns, racehorses and cars. He sat down gingerly, while Riley waited for Mrs Sanders to shoo a resentful cat off the sagging sofa.

‘What’s this all about? What do you want with Jed?’

‘Do you know a girl called Sinead Hopton?’

‘Sinead? Why?’ she said suspiciously.

‘Were she and Jed in a relationship?’

‘Were? What do you mean?’

Riley could see the annoyance on Dalliance’s face at his slip.

He re-set the question. ‘What do you know of their feelings for each other?’

‘That girl’s a damn nuisance – leading him on – sending him stuff on his phone.’

‘What sort of things, Mrs Sanders?’

‘Texts, photos, what-do-they-call-them, selfies, you know? And they don’t leave much to the imagination either.’

‘Did he show them to you?’

‘Course not. But I saw one over his shoulder once when he didn’t think I was looking. Little tart with her fishnet tights and her skirt halfway up her bum.’

‘And how does Jed respond?’

‘He goes along with it, just to keep her quiet, I think. But really he’s not interested. He’s got his own things to get on with.’

‘And what are those?’

‘He’s a countryman, like his dad.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Oh, you know – shooting. Rabbits mainly. We had a lovely rabbit pie last night.’ Her glance strayed towards the sink. ‘Nothing against the law in shooting a few rabbits is there?’

‘Of course not. But you don’t shoot rabbits in the dark. Do you know what he was doing last night?’

‘No, I don’t. And I don’t like it. But his dad says it’s all right for him to be out all night. Says it’ll stand him in good stead when he joins up.’

‘So he wants to go into the army?’

‘Always has. The SAS. He’s been mad about them since he was a kid. So spending the night in the woods once in a while is probably good for him. That’s what his dad says, anyway. It’s not as though he’s a burglar, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘How old is Jed?’

‘Nineteen. Twenty come the autumn.’

‘So he could be in the army now?’

‘Yes…’ she said doubtfully.

‘They take them at sixteen – with parental consent,’ Dalliance said.

The look on her face indicated that that was the issue. ‘His dad said sixteen was too young. I know he could have gone after, but we persuaded him to do college instead.’

‘How easy was it to persuade him?’

‘He didn’t want to at first, but his dad told him –’

‘Told him? I thought you said you persuaded him? Sounds as though there was a bit of conflict?’

‘They’re both strong-willed. Jed’s just like him. Stubborn. Stands his ground.’

‘So they rowed about it?’

A sigh and a nod. ‘In the end he agreed to stay and do college.’

‘But he must have finished by now?’

‘Earlier in the summer. He did really well.’

‘So?’

‘His dad got him to stay till the autumn. Just one last summer, and then he could go. He’s useful, when he wants to be. And…and I wanted him to stay.’

From the look on her face, she was obviously dreading the day he would leave. Riley felt a spasm of sympathy for her, knowing the bombshell that was coming.

‘And what does your husband do, Mrs Sanders?’

‘Metal mainly. Scrap – but any odd job that comes up. He’s got a van. A man with a van. No job too small, you know the sort of thing.’ She smiled unconvincingly.

‘Is that what he’s doing this morning?’

‘Yes, he’s got a load to take to town.’

‘What sort