CHAPTER 8
From the open window of the shepherd’s hut, Pat could smell meaty smells and garlic.
Prichard had let himself into her kitchen again and was clearly cooking up something delicious for supper.
He was a good cook, enthusiastic and adventurous.
He was wont to snip out recipes from the Saturday and Sunday colour supplements and give almost anything a go, the more obscure, flavoursome and complex the better.
And he nearly always used Pat’s kitchen, since his brewing equipment and distillery took up a lot of the work surfaces in his own.
He’d complained once, years ago, that cooking for one was miserable and a frightful bore, so now he regularly turned up at Ivy Cottage, using every pot and pan, grater and whisk in the place.
He was one of those extreme-sports chefs who demanded gadgets and bowls and feedback, applause and appreciation at every turn.
Much like Pat’s ex-husband, who used to cook one meal a week, usually Sunday lunch, which she and Sofia had to talk about in complimentary tones for the rest of the week.
But Pat had to admit it, unlike his home brew, Prichard’s food was excellent.
‘Ox cheeks!’ he declared as she walked in after her final Zoom session of the day, through a fug of fumes and steam and simmering jus. ‘à la Tom!’
‘Tom?’ enquired Pat.
‘Kerridge.’
That was the other thing about Prichard.
All his dishes were authored by chefs he was apparently on first-name terms with: Nigel (Slater), Nigella (Lawson), Jamie (Oliver) or Otto (Lenghi).
Pat had never had the heart to correct him on the latter.
He found Otto’s dishes to be complicated, requiring more herbs and spices than they had at the local Co-op, so he had to drive to Brighton when he turned his hand to such exoticness.
‘Ox cheeks?’
‘They had them on offer at the butcher’s and I thought, waste not want not, so here we are.’ He lifted the lid off a simmering stainless-steel pan and fogged up his glasses. ‘I marinated them for two days; they’ve been on the stove for a mere four hours.’
‘They smell absolutely delicious,’ replied Pat.
‘Hungry?’ he smiled.
‘Very.’
Prichard had laid Pat’s pine kitchen table.
He’d even gone so far as to put out some green paper napkins.
He served up his braised ox cheeks, cabbage with cumin, and buttery mash, while Pat sat down and poured a glass of red wine.
It was actual wine from an actual shop. Much as she enjoyed Prichard’s efforts, sometimes it was safer to go with a Blossom Hill.
‘Tell me about the police,’ he asked. He pulled out a chair, saw Dave was on it, pushed it back and took another. Pat put down her knife and fork and rubbed her creased forehead.
‘Well, it wasn’t great,’ she replied, before going on to talk Prichard through her encounters with DS Stevens and the more sympathetic PC Footer. She spared no details of the photos of Henry’s body, even though Prichard was squeamish.
‘And the note?’ he said with his mouth full.
‘In capital letters, in red pen. It didn’t look like it was written by Henry.’
‘So a fake, then.’
‘I was about to photograph it when we were interrupted by DS Stevens.’
Prichard’s eyes rounded. ‘How dramatique! I’m amazed she didn’t try and arrest you.’
‘Me too,’ Pat sighed. ‘She just reiterated that the case was closed and that if I carried on poking about she would charge me with wasting police time or messing with evidence or something along those officious lines. But to be honest with you, she strikes me as lazy, more interested in her lunch break than arresting anyone. You don’t have long fingernails like that if you’re rounding up criminals.
She also seems strangely familiar with that Airbnb, Fin du Monde, for someone who actually lives around here. ’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘She doesn’t take long lunch breaks for her digestive system. There’s a reason why her engagement ring is a little tight. She’s got no intention of going down the aisle with whoever gave her that tiny chip of zircon. I’m pretty sure she has a bigger fish in mind.’
‘Nothing gets past you,’ said Prichard, cutting into his ox cheek.
‘Except who killed Henry.’ Pat took a sip of her wine. ‘Oh, and I saw that Dorna woman in the pub celebrating her golf deal.’
‘That’s not going through, surely?’ said Prichard, putting down his knife and fork. ‘I went to the meeting, it was laughed out of the parish council. That land is a nature reserve. You can’t build on it. There have been protests about it. I know that. Save the Seashore.’
‘That sounds familiar.’
‘They’re the local group who were going to glue themselves to something,’ Prichard chortled.
‘The cliffs, I think, but it turns out nothing sticks to chalk. They didn’t need to in the end, as bats were found in that barn.
You can’t build with bats.’ He chomped on a bit more cheek. ‘That’s the rules.’
‘Who owns the barn?’
‘That Dorna woman.’
They carried on eating in silence, both of them glancing up occasionally at the cork noticeboard with Henry’s name in the middle and Derek’s right next to it.
After a minute, Pat put down her fork, picked up the Post-its and, grabbing the black pen, wrote the words Fin du Monde and Dorna Braddon and slapped them both up on the board before sitting down again.
‘Really?’ Prichard waved his knife at the board. ‘D’you think?’
‘Well, she was very anxious to dismiss Henry’s death as suicide last night. And she has a bandage on her hand. Maybe due to a violent struggle? That deal is clearly worth a lot of money. And she’s new to the village. And she was pleased with herself in the pub.’
‘Are murderers generally pleased with themselves?’
‘Murderers are many things,’ Pat said thoughtfully, ‘but often there’s a certain grandiosity with dangerous criminals, a belief that the rules don’t apply to them.
You see a lack of empathy, a disconnection from consequence, sometimes a streak of paranoia or the sense that they’re one step ahead.
Violence doesn’t always trouble them the way it should.
And yes, control is often part of it. Needing to dominate the story. Stay in charge of the narrative.’
‘And ordering too much champagne in the pub,’ added Prichard.
‘Not really, no.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But it might mean you’re obnoxious, and I’ve got an idea how you could check out quite how obnoxious.’ He had a grin on his face.
‘Like what?’
‘Book club?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s hosting a book club next week at her house, and she’s invited a gang of people. We’re reading Intermezzo. You know, the book by Sally Rooney?’
Pat took a sip of her wine. ‘The sad one about being sad?’ She took another sip. ‘We? I didn’t realise we’d all agreed.’
‘We … um …’ Prichard had the decency to blush, and looked down at his ox cheeks. He ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and scratched behind his ear. ‘It’s on the village WhatsApp group.’
‘The village group? The whole one? Or the other one?’ It was Pat’s turn to sound defensive.
‘The one you were banned from.’
‘Oh, that one.’ She rolled her eyes and popped a piece of cheek in her mouth.
Communal WhatsApp groups were something that tried her patience.
They never stopped pinging on her phone.
Pat liked to keep her phone for people she was fond of, and her clients.
Fiona had even WhatsApped a complaint about the van that delivered Pat’s papers waking her up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. Pat had ignored that one.
Then there was Wi-Fi Gate. How was she to know that her practical solution to the piss-poor Wi-Fi problem in the village would have elicited such a pearl-clutching response?
Unfortunately, she had mentioned on the smart village WhatsApp group that a broadband using satellites rather than wires worked better.
It was more expensive, but Pat relied on a good connection for work.
She could not spend hours staring at a frozen screen while her clients waited on the other end of the line with their audio going in and out.
Jacqui posted that personally she didn’t want to give her money to Elon Musk, who owned the satellite.
No one branded Pat a Trump sympathiser to her face.
If they had, she would have hooted with laugher at the foolishness of the idea.
No, it was more insidious than that. A quiet tap of the tom-toms. It went around the village in hushed tones, and then she was quietly removed from the group.
She didn’t notice to start off with. It was something of a relief not to be updated about how to contribute to the sponsored walk, or where the next car boot sale was going to be.
In the end, it was Prichard who broke the news to her after a glass of some unspeakable turnip wine.
She’d been kicked off the group as she was apparently a MAGA fan.
Pat had laughed so hard she could barely breathe.
Prichard was worried and said that perhaps she should apologise or make it clear that she was not a Trumpian Republican. But Pat couldn’t be bothered.
‘How many people are going?’ she asked now.
‘Eight from the group.’
‘Only eight?’
‘It’s women only,’ he said. ‘And me.’
‘No husbands or partners?’
‘Isn’t that the point of book club?’
‘Eight whole opinions on Intermezzo. What an evening!’
‘You should come,’ he suggested.
‘I think I might be busy with my sock drawer. Or putting red-hot pokers in my eyes.’
‘Come on,’ he said, glancing up the corkboard. ‘A chance to see the killer in her lair?’
‘Well …’ Pat cocked her head to one side.
‘I can’t imagine you passing up the chance to poke around that new glass-box house she’s built.’
‘The one with the phallic clipped bushes outside?’ Prichard squinted across the table. His long nose wrinkled. ‘Oh, come on!’ Pat continued. ‘You can’t possibly have not noticed the enormous yew penises she’s sculpted out of the hedge!’
‘I can’t say I have.’
‘In which case, I shall show you! What day, what time?’