The Killings at Badger's Drift Read online

  Someone was approaching her door. She held her breath. There was a knock. It sounded tentative, almost apologetic. She waited, covering up her bare skin as if the door had been transparent. After a minute or two the slippered footsteps moved away. She breathed out, a long sated exhalation. She must let him in next time. It had been simply ages. And he’d been very good, considering. But God - what a contrast it would be . . .

  She’d been born Barbara Wheeler in Uxbridge ‘some time in the late fifties’, she told people with coy deceit. Her father was a ganger on the railway, her mother a household drudge. They had five other children. Only Barbara was beautiful. They were packed into a terraced house flush to the pavement, with a concrete back yard. She shared a bedroom with two sisters, now household drudges themselves, defending her space and belongings with tigerish possessiveness. She had scorned their cheap clothes and cosmetics, holding her nose when they sprayed on their Californian Poppy from Woolworth’s. She started stealing at fifteen - creams, perfumes and lotions, peeling off the price labels, knowing that no one at home would ever have heard of the brands.

  After her sisters had been consumed into the local sweet factory she got a job as a filing clerk in a solicitor’s office and, it seemed to her, a precarious toehold on the slippery slope that would lead her out of a slummish and ugly environment into the glossy perfection of middle-class life. A world where you didn’t have to go to a park filled with screaming kids and snapping dogs to enjoy grass and trees but had them actually belonging to you, in your own garden. Where people washed their clothes before they looked dirty and men shook hands when they met whilst women brushed powdered cheek against powdered cheek in easy, meaningless display.

  Barbara was not especially intelligent but she was shrewd and worked hard and quietly, keeping her mouth shut and her eyes alert. She started to take clothes from one of the larger department stores in Slough - choosing, as nearly as she could, styles resembling those worn by the elder partner’s young married daughter. This stage of affairs continued until she was almost eighteen. She was still a virgin, partially because she’d never met anyone she fancied enough but mostly because she had some vague extravagant idea that to be able to offer virginity to a serious suitor might cancel out the debit of her shabby beginnings. She never mentioned them of course, but was constantly nervous in case the easy, upper-class patronage that she encountered in the office would somehow flush them to the surface.

  Alan Cater, newly articled to the firm, started work there on her eighteenth birthday. He was tall, fair, had sharp blue eyes and smoked slim brown cigars. He had a red Cobra sports car and a watch that was the slimmest wafer of gold. He smiled a lot, especially at Barbara. He touched her too, only casually, nothing you could take offence at: a hand on her shoulder, an arm around her waist at the filing cabinet. She was rather shocked at the surge of pleasurable excitement she felt when he did this but said nothing, not realizing that her quickened breath and flushed skin gave her away.

  One evening in midsummer he was late leaving the office. He was playing tennis straight from work and had gone into the cloakroom to change. Barbara never left before he did. She had graduated to dicta-typing, taking lessons in the evening, and was covering her machine when he came out in brief shorts and a white Aertex shirt. Everyone else had gone. He had stood looking at her for a long moment, first at her face, then everywhere else. Then he locked the door and told her he had been longing for this moment. Barbara had felt sick with excitement. He stood very close to her, said, ‘Shall I show you what you do to me?’ and guided her hand. As he opened her blouse, in the moments before she was completely swept away, Barbara saw them framed in the doorway of an old country church, herself in white of course, Alan in morning suit. There would be champagne afterwards and a three-tier cake, with some kept back for the christening.

  ‘You’re a lovely girl, darling.’ He unhooked her bra. ‘Come on - what’s the matter? You’re not going to pretend you’re surprised?’

  ‘My legs seem to be giving way . . .’

  ‘That’s soon solved. There’s a settee in old Rupert’s office. And a mirror.’

  They walked there, arms entwined, leaving her blouse and brassiere on the typewriter. They lay on the settee facing the mirror and a net-curtained window looking on to the street. When she was quite naked Alan threatened to pull the nets back. This, which should have alarmed her, made her even more excited. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. It hardly hurt at all, not like people said it did, it just seemed to be over so quickly. She wanted more and he gave her more. After an hour someone knocked at the outer door and he smiled, touching her lips with his finger. She was sitting straddled across his knees and saw a girl in a white tennis dress, her long hair tied back with a scarf, walk past the window. It was nearly nine o’clock when they finally left.

  After this they met often, usually quite late in the evening, Alan explaining that he had to catch up with his studies first. He would drive out into the green belt and find a secluded spot or, if the weather was bad, they would use his car. She never took him to her tiny bedsitter and had already told him (to save awkward questions at invitation time) that she was an orphan. On the evenings they didn’t meet she was restless, consumed with longing. He treated her very professionally in the office, occasionally winking at her when the coast was clear. Once, when they had been briefly alone, he had stood behind her chair and slipped his hand down her shirt.

  Halfway through the winter she discovered she was pregnant. She had felt slightly anxious when telling him, as if it had been all her fault. She ended her confession by asking what his parents would say. He had looked disbelieving, incredulous and then amused for a moment, then given her a casual hug before saying, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort something out.’

  At the end of the week Rupert Winstanley had called her into his office and given her the address of a private clinic in Saint John’s Wood and a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds. She had never seen any of them again.

  She had had the abortion, being too distressed and lonely to work out an alternative. She wouldn’t now, of course. She’d drain the buggers dry. If she couldn’t get their respect or admiration or love she’d make bloody sure she got their money.

  She’d been home from the clinic about a month and working as a shelf filler at Sainsbury’s when someone knocked at her door late one night. She opened it a crack. A man stood there smelling faintly of cologne and, more strongly, of beer. He wore a blazer with a badge, striped tie and grey flannels. He said, ‘Hu . . . l . . . l . . o . . .’ and eyed her up and down.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Alan’s, actually. He thought we might . . . you know . . . get on . . .’

  She slammed the door. Rage and pain and disgust boiled up in her. She stood very still as if moving might wound. The bastard! The pain ebbed away; the disgust rushed down the conduit of memory, redirected at Alan and his kind. Only the rage remained. She listened. No footsteps. He must be still there. She reopened the door. He gave her a sloppy smile.

  She said, ‘It’ll cost you.’ She watched the beery complacency slip a bit, and thought, so wrap that in your old school tie and stuff it.

  ‘Oh . . . um . . . all right . . .’ He made as if to step into the room. She put her foot in the gap. ‘How much have you got?’

  He fumbled with his wallet, pulling out notes, a driving licence, a child’s photograph. ‘Fifty pounds . . .’

  Nearly a month’s wages. She opened the door wide. ‘You’d better come in then, hadn’t you?’

  And so it had gone. Recommendations. A friend of a friend. She’d never actually been without anyone. On the other hand she’d never really felt secure. The rent was always paid. She’d had some presents. Some very nice presents. A wolf coat from Harrod’s, a vast colour telly, a holiday in Portofino when the man’s wife was having a hysterectomy. But no security. No financial security, that is. Emotional security she had. None of them touched
her. She would look down at them, as if from some high vantage point, huffing and puffing like saggy, impotent sea lions, and despise them all. She would never again let herself feel that sweeping golden rush of pleasure that had carried her so completely from the shores of sanity in the offices of Winstanley, Dennison and Winstanley over twenty years before. She couldn’t even remember Alan’s second name let alone his face.

  And then she had met Trevor Lessiter. She had bumped into him, literally, in the food department at Marks and Spencers. Turning a corner in one of the aisles too sharply, their trolleys had locked antler-like in a metal clinch. She had immediately flashed him a radiant professional smile. He had been bowled over by the radiance and had quite missed the professionalism.

  He was a funny little man with a round head, pepper and salt hair and a woolly scarf although it was quite a warm day. Expensive clothes, she thought, running a knowledgeable eye over his appearance, boringly old fashioned of course. The sort of man who carries his change in a purse. They pushed their trolleys round together. His was already over half full.

  ‘Your wife must have given you a very long list.’

  ‘No . . . that is . . .’ he stammered, looking at her quickly then back to the shelves. ‘It’s my daughter’s list . . . I’m a widower.’

  With hardly a break in her step she said, ‘Oh - how thoughtless . . . I just didn’t . . .’ She stopped walking then and looked straight at him. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  They went for tea at a café over the Odeon. Barbara excused herself as soon as they were settled and retired to the Ladies’ where she removed one set of false eyelashes and half her lipstick, and put on some more scent. They met for tea again, then dinner at a hotel on the bank of the Thames at Marlow. They drove down in his beautiful old Jaguar. The doors clunked when they closed and it had real leather seats. At the hotel there were candles in glasses and flowers floating in glass bowls. She was used to dining in out-of-the-way places, but not with men who didn’t keep looking over their shoulders. He told her about his wife’s accident and about his daughter. He said, ‘I’d like you to meet her.’

  This took some time to arrange. Weekends came and went and Judy always appeared to have something on. However eventually, at her father’s insistence, a Sunday afternoon was set aside. Barbara dressed very carefully: a soft paisley dress and a light tweed coat. Hardly any makeup: just blusher, bronzer, soft lipstick and a light brown eye pencil.

  The village was nearly thirty miles from Slough (thank God, she thought) and as they drove along she kept saying prettily, and only half falsely, ‘I do hope she’ll like me.’

  And he, obtuse and self-deluding, said, ‘Of course she’ll like you. Why on earth shouldn’t she?’

  When he turned the car into the drive she thought at first that there must be some mistake. That he was calling on a wealthy patient or dropping in on some friends before taking her home. Lawns swept each side of the drive. There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds. The house was a large Victorian villa with a turret and gables and (she discovered later) seven bedrooms. She felt cold as she got out of the car. Cold with longing and hope and fear.

  She said, ‘This reminds me of my father’s house.’

  ‘Oh. Where was that, dear?’ She had never before mentioned her family.

  ‘In Scotland. It went, I’m afraid, like everything else.’ She looked up at the many windows and gave a heavy sigh, pulsating with remembrance and loss. ‘He was a terrible gambler.’

  ‘I hope you’ll -’ He checked himself. Barbara knew what he’d been going to say and cursed the unseen girl in the house. She had never got on well with women, never had a close woman friend. Well - she’d just have to play it as it came.

  It came as an absolute disaster. The daughter had sat, lumpen and disapproving (that was my mother’s favourite chair), dispensing tea and heavy damp wodges of home-made cake. Barbara tried to make conversation, the daughter either didn’t reply or spoke only of times gone by when Mummy did this or Mummy did that or we all went . . .

  Meanwhile Barbara looked around at the chintz-covered puffy sofas (two) and armchairs (five). At the bowls of flowers and washed Chinese rugs and beautiful mirrors and ornaments. And through the french windows a flagged terrace with urns of brilliant flowers leading to the shaven, incandescently green lawn, and prayed for the first time in years: Oh God - please make him ask me. She realized she was gripping the handle of her delicate cup with unnatural force and set it down very carefully.

  Driving back in the car, he had said, ‘She’ll come round.’ She wouldn’t of course, thought Barbara. That sort never did. Frigid little bitch. With that granular complexion and a bum that nearly touched the ground. A born spinster. She’d be there looking after Daddy when she was ninety, never mind nineteen.

  ‘Oh - do you think so, Trevor? I was so looking forward to meeting her.’ Her voice shook a little. As he parked outside her flat she said, ‘Would you mind coming in for a moment? I feel a bit down.’ It was the first time she had issued such an invitation. He bounded eagerly out of the car and up the steps.

  The flat was in Mancetta Road over a newsagent’s in the centre of the town. She didn’t offer him anything to drink, just flung her coat over a chair and slumped on the mock ocelot sofa, burying her face in her hands. Immediately he was beside her.

  ‘Don’t be upset.’ He put a lumpy tweed arm around her shoulders. She turned to him, childlike in her sorrow.

  ‘I wanted her so much to like me. I pictured us talking about clothes and makeup and things . . . I thought I could look after her . . . after both of you . . . I suppose you think that’s silly?’

  ‘Darling, of course not.’ He suddenly became very conscious of the heaviness of her breasts, pressing into his shirt front. And the scent of her hair. He raised her chin and was touched to see tears in her eyes. He kissed her. For a moment her mouth parted eagerly under his, he even felt the tip of her tongue, then she gasped and pushed him away. She got up and crossed the room, turning to face him. She was panting.

  ‘What must you think? Oh - Trevor. I don’t know what it is . . . you’re in my thoughts all the time . . . I should never have asked you up here.’

  Then she was in his arms again. For a moment she let her whole body relax and press against his, noting that at least he was going to be able to do it when the time came. Another long kiss. His hand moved. She allowed herself one little cry of excitement before breaking away. ‘What do you think you’re -’

  ‘Barbara . . . I’m sorry -’

  ‘What sort of woman do you think I am?’

  ‘Forgive me, darling . . . please . . .’

  ‘Just because I love you - yes I admit it! I love you. Oh Trevor’ - she started to cry again - ‘you must go. It’s all so hopeless.’

  He went and was back again the next day. And the next. For three weeks he visited, agonized, tumefied, was refused entry, subsided, begged, pleaded, squirmed and writhed. The day he cracked, Barbara had been feeling so unhappy that she had not even bothered to dress and was sitting by the gas fire wearing an edge-to-edge peignoir.

  They were married on the morning of 30 June 1982. The night before the wedding he stayed in the flat, experiencing transports of delight which he was to remember, with an increasing degree of resentful yearning, for the rest of his life. Then they drove off to Badger’s Drift to break the news to Judy.

  And now - Barbara let the strap slip and studied the bite again - she was putting it all at risk. A mixture of frustration and boredom had led her to take a lover. And what a lover. Only a few hours since they had parted, and she already wanted him again. For the second time she had slipped out along the golden stream. Her body felt things she hadn’t allowed it to feel for years. She had been very, very careful, but for how long could the affair stay concealed? Yet she couldn’t stop. He was as necessary to her now as breathing. She got into bed and lay for a moment experiencing again in memory the rhythmical movements of love, then slid into a deep an
d dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Two

  The cordoning of Miss Simpson’s cottage caused more interest than a whole platoon of Sergeant Troys. Half the village seemed to be out, ignoring the patently untruthful statement from an attendant constable that there was nothing to see.

  The scene-of-crime men worked deftly and methodically through the whole house. Barnaby wandered about, went into the garden. The bereaved bees thrummed in their hive. He noticed without surprise that any unplanted ground was already full of weeds. He returned to the back door and the sweet scented arch of the Kiftsgate rose.

  ‘We found this under some laurels near the larder window, sir.’ Barnaby was shown a garden fork already labelled and in its polythene bag. ‘Probably been used to fork over any prints. Somebody’s certainly been out that way.’

  By lunchtime the men had finished. A car left, taking information obtained to the forensic laboratories, the cordons were removed and the team repaired to the Black Boy for beer and sandwiches. Half an hour later they drove out of the village to the beechwood. Most of the crowd had by then given up, but Barnaby heard a woman on the pub forecourt say, ‘Run home, Robbie, and tell your mam they’re going down the lane.’ A small boy shot off and, shortly after they had parked on a layby near the beechwood, another interested group had arrived.

  In the woods the cordons enclosed a very large area. The scene-of-crime officers plotted it out, taking sections at a time for a fingertip search. Barnaby described his own movements and those of Miss Bellringer. The watchers pressed eagerly against the ropes, craning their necks. A man ducked underneath, saying, ‘It’s a free country, you know - we’re not in Russia yet,’ and was ordered back. A large woman with a golden retriever called: ‘I’m sure Henry could help.’

  Barnaby watched and kept out of the way. He realized he was becoming impatient. These things could not be hurried, but so much time was going by. Another day for the reports to come through. He had the feeling that everything was turning to dust in his hands before he’d even started. He beckoned to Sergeant Troy and hurried back to the car.