Chapter Four
Met Office weather forecast:
Exceptionally high temperatures across parts of England and Wales now updated to extend into Monday.
‘Summer.’ DS Donna Dolby blew out her broad cheeks expressively.
‘Bad idea.’ She cast a grim glance round the garden centre café, which looked much as it had the previous day, the sun hats, the T-shirts, the open windows.
It was even hotter today. Already the temperature was nudging the mid-thirties and outside the pylons over the cattle market stood stark against the dazzling blueness of the sky.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of things that kick off at barbecues,’ she said.
‘You’re busy?’ said Thelma politely.
‘Is there a vowel in the month?’ The police officer’s gaze lighted on an elderly couple eating an all-day breakfast; she regarded them impassively for a moment as though considering the possible need for a taser. ‘Anyway.’ She turned back to Thelma. ‘How are things with you?’
The gaze she gave was shrewd and questioning, the sort of gaze that, Thelma realised with an unexpected stab of panic, could see straight through any form of pretence. She felt an unwelcome flush of shame. Get a grip! Surely DS Dolby couldn’t know about what had happened to her?
‘Fine,’ said Thelma. ‘Just enjoying this beautiful weather.’
Donna regarded her, face expressionless. ‘Your hubby still on with his vicar-ing at the college?’ she asked. Thelma smiled at this description of Teddy’s former vocation.
‘Actually, he stopped working in Ripon last year,’ she said. ‘He’s now working as a delivery driver.’
Donna slowly nodded. ‘Interesting.’
Thelma smiled again; initially she’d been against Teddy’s unexpected change of career to a delivery driver for Wait A Minute Mr Postman (known as WAMMP) but these days the thought of her husband sailing serenely round the postcodes of Ripon and Thirsk, windows wound down, The Best of the Goons playing full blast, brought an envious pang.
‘So …’ DS Donna leaned forward on her elbows. ‘There was something – or rather someone – you wanted to know about.’
‘There was,’ said Thelma. ‘Thank you.’
DS Dolby retrieved a notebook labelled ‘Let’s Smash This!’ from her battered leather shoulder bag and flicked it open.
‘Neville Hilton,’ she said. She looked at Thelma. ‘What I’m about to tell you,’ she said in the careful, deliberate tones she always used during these sessions, ‘is in the public domain but even so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share it with all and sundry.’
‘Of course not,’ said Thelma gravely.
She regarded Donna’s broad face and bleached blonde hair not so much with affection exactly, but with esteem.
It was undeniably useful to have this contact in the police force, but as ever the encounter felt a tad too formal to be termed a friendship.
Indeed, she wasn’t at all sure on what basis their relationship actually worked.
From time to time, they’d meet up and from time to time Donna would share information with Thelma – whether this made them friends she was uncertain.
The speed at which Donna would respond to her requests was always gratifying.
She thought guiltily of Contralto Kate in the choir and her ongoing woes with her disabled parking space – three weeks on and still no word from the police – yet here she was a mere twelve hours after sending DS Dolby that tentative text.
‘Neville Hilton,’ said Donna again. ‘Sixty-two, found dead at the holiday let adjacent to his residence in Hollinby Quernhow, having been dead, according to the pathologist, between twelve and fourteen hours. At the time of his death, he was alone; the tenant of the holiday let had left earlier that afternoon and his wife – Ffion Hilton – was at some horse-riding event in Carlisle. He’d been last seen at a Rotary meeting around six thirty where he’d seemed fine but of course that’s not unusual in cases like this. ’
She paused to fan herself with the notebook, before continuing.
‘The autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a massive heart attack; according to Mrs Hilton and medical records, Mr Hilton had been under supervision for a number of years. No signs of anything suspicious or untoward.’ She shut the notebook and looked at Thelma. ‘Or are there?’
‘Apparently,’ said Thelma. ‘He was looking rather terrified when he was found.’
Donna nodded unconcernedly. ‘A not uncommon feature of a sudden heart attack,’ she said. ‘Anything else?’
Thelma took a deep breath and told Donna about wheelie bins, Neville’s sudden recall to the property and a yellow line appearing on the wall of the holiday let.
DS Donna nodded again. ‘Granted these might all be relevant factors if the death was suspicious in any which way. But it wasn’t. Mr Hilton obviously came back from wherever he’d been; maybe saw a light on in the holiday let or something, went inside and kaboom.’
‘A light?’ said Thelma. ‘At seven o’clock on a sunny June evening?’
‘Or a window open or something,’ said Donna uninterestedly. ‘And as for that yellow line.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was planning to redecorate?’
Thelma nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
Donna nodded back. ‘You’re very welcome, Mrs Cooper,’ she said. For the first time the trace of a smile cracked those grim features. ‘However, should you find out anything—’
‘Anything like what?’ said Thelma innocently.
Donna fixed her with a broad, professional gaze. ‘Oh, you know – vanishing charity shops. Anonymous letters. Anything like that. You know where I am.’
The combined blast from the coral-pink handbag fan and an altogether larger tabletop variety ruffled the pages of Angela Hartnett’s Summer Suppers, open at courgette and hazelnut salad.
From the sweet spot where the two blasts of air met, Pat regarded the slender, tanned girl in the mint green shorts who was photogenically perched on her oak kitchen table.
‘That’s such a shame,’ she said to her.
‘I know!’ Tiffany-Jane looked mournfully at the pyramid of brightly coloured toilet rolls she was in the process of photographing.
‘Poor Lin and Mex! They were such a strong couple!’ She sighed and took a volley of shots with her phone; Pat could almost see a line of broken-heart emojis forming in the air above the girl’s burnished gold head.
‘I am beyond gutted!’ She swapped round the orange dotted and the blue striped rolls and sighed as she considered the effect.
From across the room Larson, the dog, eyed the lithe figure warily.
Pat felt considerably more than beyond gutted – beyond beyond gutted.
She regarded her eldest son’s girlfriend.
Tiffany-Jane was undeniably a sweet enough girl, as she’d said so many times over the past few weeks to Liz and Thelma.
Pat just happened to find her exhausting.
She regarded the toilet rolls. Beyond exhausting.
It had been some four months since Justin and Tiffany-Jane had been forced to relocate from their glass-and-steel flat in Manchester to Pat’s spare room in Borrowby.
It was a common enough feature of these straitened times; what her various trashy magazines termed the ‘back to the nest syndrome’.
Because the sad simple fact was whatever consultancy and influencing employment Justin had and whatever influencing Tiffany-Jane did, it was no longer enough to fund life in Salford Quays.
Justin, after several optimistic but ultimately heartbreaking weeks of Chasing Opps and Nailing Meetings had resorted to working at a call centre in Northallerton.
(Strictly short-term, folks!) Tiffany-Jane, however, had resolutely avoided ‘leaving her path’ (as she termed it) as a social media influencer and spent her days Creating Content – which seemed to involve taking delivery of and photographing a bewildering assortment of items from wrist straps to non-organic muesli.
How she made any sort of living from all this was beyond Pat, but a combination of her ten thousand followers (TEN THOUSAND!) and a series of perky, bright images of Tiffany brandishing these various items managed to somehow net the girl a thousand-odd pounds a month.
Although naturally dismayed at this turn of events in her son’s life, Pat had rather looked forward to getting to know his girlfriend.
Tiffany-Jane had proved such a refreshing change from Justin’s usual parade of high-maintenance, high-octane women, collectively termed by Rod as ‘Les Misérables’.
Indeed Pat had hoped this eloquent, motivated and yes, friendly girl might be the one to add some permanent shape and purpose to her son’s enthusiastic but rather aimless existence of motivational talks and podcasts.
She only really knew Tiffany-Jane through her various social media posts (Ms T.J.
Rox!) – but now, after nearly four months of living under the same roof, Pat felt she hardly knew her any better.
Such conversations as they did have were short, chirpy exchanges with all the depth and brightness of – well, a social media post.