Chapter 5
He wasn’t dead. But he was as good as. Apparently, there was a flicker of life in him, hence why half the Dorset ambulance service turned up. Nigella rang me the next morning to tell me he was on life support in Bournemouth Royal Infirmary.
“It’s fifty-fifty whether he’ll ever wake up,” Nigella said down the phone as she sniffled.
“God, I’m so sorry, Gella. I know he’s a friend.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” she said. “Thank God that Mrs Crocker forgot her reading glasses at the church the day before and went to look for them. Otherwise, he’d have died on the floor there all alone.”
I told Nigella not to think like that. I was sitting at my breakfast bar, idly pretending to work.
It was a sunny Sunday morning that promised to turn sweltering later in the day.
Kennedy was half-heartedly chewing one of his toys at my feet, and the cats were nowhere to be seen. Off pillaging and murdering, I assumed.
My laptop in front of me dinged with a new message update.
Ollie: And now the vicar is dead? You didn’t half choose a wild place to live.
I chose to ignore the tone of the message and replied that he wasn’t dead, merely just nearly dead.
Ollie: Have the police got any leads?
Not as I know of. But they don’t often tell me those things.
Ollie: I saw your man on TV this morning talking about it.
This grabbed my attention. Which man?
Ollie: Posho I met at the party back a few months. The blond.
The irony of Ollie calling others posh.
“Apparently, Guy was on TV this morning talking about it?” I blurted out to Nigella, interrupting her telling me about Delia Crocker’s cataracts.
“Oh, yes, of course he was. BBC South West.”
I found the page and opened it.
VICAR LEFT FOR DEAD read the headline. There was a short blurb underneath: Dorset Police are investigating the motive of an attack at St Candida Church in Lilbury, which has left one man in hospital with critical injuries that are thought to be life-threatening.
Local sources have confirmed the man as Jethro Fulford, 44, who has been the parish vicar in the local area for several years.
I pressed play on the video. Scenes of the cordoned-off church were followed, naturally, by a mention that this was where Arabella was murdered a few months previously.
“Arabella Sweet was a barmaid at a local pub and daughter of the businessman Miles Sweet. Her alleged killer, Tarquin Scott, is imprisoned awaiting trial after being caught while he was trying to kill two people who were witnesses to his purported crime.”
At least they didn’t mention me by name. Odette popped up on screen. “Local residents are shocked,” said the voiceover from the reporter.
“This isn’t the sort of place where this happens,” said Odette.
“It’s because we have lots of people from London moving down here, and they’re bringing their drugs and crime connections with them.
There’s Arden Forrest, for instance; he was dating the man who killed Arabella, and some around here think he was in on it. ”
“Arden Forrest, the writer?” the reporter asked.
“Yes, Arden Forrest. That’s F-O-R-R—”
Guy popped up on screen alongside Riz. “Local resident and Conservative Party candidate in the Central Dorset by-election, Guy Frobisher, agrees. He was joined by Labour Party candidate Riz Patel to call for more community policing in the area.”
“Riz and I both agree that swinging cuts to rural policing has seen crime rise in these areas, and we want this to be looked at,” Guy said.
Riz nodded. “Both Guy and I are fully agreed on this. Robust community policing must be in place to stop tragedies like these from being allowed to occur.”
I shut the laptop. Well, at least the near death of our vicar had brought the Left and Right together again. Nigella was still talking.
“Riz and Guy are running a meeting tonight outside the church, a sort of vigil cum community watch thing. I think Roz is making sandwiches.”
My doorbell rang. “Gotta go, Gella.”
“Come tonight. I’m heading over with the boys about seven.”
“I’ll be there.”
I hung up and made my way to the door, unsure of who I’d meet. But it definitely wasn’t the person I got.
“Guy, how nice to see you.”
Guy Frobisher was a very handsome man. He had a slightly lined face from too much sun and not enough interbreeding with other social classes, but if you were looking for good hair and symmetry in face shape, he was that.
He stood in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of light green chinos and brogues. Summer election wear for the modern hug-a-hoodie Tory.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.” I stood aside to let him pass.
“Hello, boy. Who’s this?” he asked as Kennedy jumped on him.
“My ferocious guard dog, Kenny.” Said dog licked Guy’s face and then tried to stick his nose in his crotch.
Guy made an inscrutable facial expression at my guard dog comment, but said nothing. “Coffee?” I asked.
“Please, God, no,” he said. “I’m having thirty cups a day at the moment. Campaigning is basically caffeine addiction writ large.”
I stood awkwardly then, unsure of what to do. Guy picked up on this, stopped stroking Kennedy to stand up fully again, and looked at me.
“I’m sure you’re aware that Tarquin is planning on pleading not guilty.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice doing an involuntary crack. “I was aware. God only knows how he thinks he can.”
“Because he’s a narcissistic sociopath who thinks he can bring others down with him if he has a trial. He’s hoping for some eleventh-hour reprieve.”
“You’ve spoken to him?” I asked.
“Lawyers,” he said, calmly. “Anyway, as family we get informed of all the developments, but I wanted to let you know what was going on. It looks like it’s all going ahead to trial. They are going to start calling witnesses, the whole shebang.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Guy. “Yeah, it’s all a bit shit, isn’t it?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry he’s dragging this out for you and your family.”
Guy shrugged. Wary resignation washed over his face. “I’m trying not to think about it.”
“Is that the reason you’re running?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “Some of it.” He made to leave. “I wanted to let you know … Anyway, er, will I see you at the vigil tonight? For JedRev?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
He made his way to the door. “Oh, um, Arden.” He had gone bright red.
“Yes?”
“Everything that’s gone on the past few months …”
I stood very still, waiting for him to continue.
“My feelings haven’t changed,” he said.
“As in your feelings for …” I said, stumbling over the words, my brain not quite working.
“For you,” he said. “When I asked you out a few months ago, I said I liked you. I still do.”
“Guy, I’m not really sure this is the right time—”
“I know,” he said. “It’s shit timing. But you dated Tarquin and Tarquin murdered Arabella, and he was my best friend, and now I’m trying to be an MP.
The timing is never going to get better.
The timing is going to be as shit now as it is in a year or five years’ time.
That’s why I have to tell you this. Because if I don’t, I’ll keep on finding excuses not to. ”
I didn’t really know what to say.
“Right,” is what I eventually managed to come out with.
“Would you like to go to dinner?” he asked after a pause. “One night next week? There’s an Italian place in Sittingston that’s very nice.”
I thought for a few seconds – the cons went through my head. A) My ex’s best friend. B) My ex that I shot. C) Who murdered Guy’s cousin.
But also, he’s really hot, and it’d been a few months.
“Um, sure. I mean, it’s just dinner, it can’t hurt.”
Guy’s face changed into a large grin. “Great. I’ll text you about it. I’ll see you later at the vigil.”
He left, and I closed the door after him. “Kennedy, Daddy has a date with a very posh man. Do you think I should go read some Mitford sisters’ novels to learn how his people act?”
I sat back at my laptop and worked for a few hours. I was just managing to make some headway on a part of the novel that had been causing me headaches for several days when Verity called.
“Bloody hell, it’s like Piccadilly Circus in here today,” I said as a greeting.
“How is your village like Midsomer Murders? They’ve killed a priest now?”
“Vicar.”
“That’s not a difference.”
“Can I help you, Verity? I’m terribly busy writing the book you want from me.”
“Your priest is on the front page of the Mail Online.”
“Am I mentioned?”
“Why? Why would you be mentioned?” Verity had gone into agent = panic voice.
“You know, that whole ‘my ex tried to kill everyone’ thing that happened a few months ago.”
She scoffed. “People won’t put two and two together. Oh, wait, I’ve scrolled down. It has a big section about it.”
I put my head in my hands. “Is it bad?”
“I mean, it’s not great,” Verity said. “Unless the publicity makes you sell more books. In which case, yes, it’s great!”
Verity was a capitalist at her core. My oldest, dearest, friend was also my agent.
She’d quit her job as an editor at the finance magazine I’d been a reporter at to go back to her first career as a publishing agent and then opened her own agency.
“I’ll sign you,” she’d told me when I showed her my scribbles when we first met.
“As soon as I have my own agency, you’ll be my first client.
” I’d scoffed at the time. She’d kept her promise, and I’d been her first author.
Our working relationship was sometimes clouded by our personal friendship, and vice versa, yes, it was true. However, in the near five years since I’d published the first novel, we had never had a sizeable falling out and had limited our emotions to the odd eyeroll and cross word with each other.
“Did you know him well?”
“‘Do’, not did, Vee. He’s alive.” Just.
“Yeah, yeah. Do you know him?”
“We’ve met socially a handful of times. He knows Nigella well and Guy, too. I think he might even be friends with Simon.”
“Posh lady, posh guy MP… guy who you fucked on the floor, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I forget you haven’t met any of these people. You really should come down for the weekend.”
“By all means, invite me to the pheasant hunt, or whatever it is you all do down there.”
“The landlady of our local pub is Black, so you can’t pull that card.”
“I can pull multiple cards. I’m a casino card dealer.”
“A croupier?”
“There’s an actual word for that?”
“I feel we’re getting off track. Anyway, I’m going to some … vigil-type thing tonight for him,” I said.
“Sounds awful. If you ever need a break from all this rural intrigue, I can offer you a place to work, you know.”
“Canary Wharf? No thanks.”
“The house in Surrey is nearly done,” she said. “Just waiting on the final touches. Should be in by autumn. If ever you need a place to escape in the country from the country.”
“This was my escape in the country.”
“The offer is there. Right, now I’ll leave you to your murder-fest village. Do some fucking work.”