Chapter Twenty-one
Hambleton Council: Hot tips for hot weather:
Two people in a bed means twice the body heat. Stretching like a starfish with a fan on nearby may be the coolest option.
The Northern Lights took Ripon and Thirsk by surprise that night.
Between one thirty and three, a time when most people were snatching what fitful sleep they could, the skies beyond the moors were washed with dazzling, shimmering sheets of turquoise, amethyst and lime green.
By three thirty when many people were stirring more no matter how wide open the windows, how big the fans, how thin the sheets, the spectacle had largely faded and by four thirty when Pat, Thelma and Liz were if not exactly wide awake, certainly far from peacefully asleep, all that remained were a few pale smears away in the pearly-grey north-east.
Pat lay in that semi-conscious state common to mothers waiting to hear the noise of a child’s return home from a night out.
This was something that had become second nature to her during her son’s teenage years; like Larson she’d used to sleep with one ear open until the click of the back door, the flush of the toilet announced a safe arrival home.
This instinct had been something Pat thought gone for good, but that night it had slammed back prompt and strong when she realised she had not heard Justin come back home from his ‘catch-up’ with Taj.
Now she lay in an uneasy doze wondering whether to wake Rod or Tiffany, or text Justin or even go the whole hog, ring all the hospitals and inform the police that her son had stormed out in a strop and failed to come back.
Thelma was sitting yawning at her kitchen table.
Spread out before her lay a veritable jigsaw of prompt cards plus two pretty, thick booklets and a boxed-up computer programme – all her prep for the speed awareness course in two days’ time.
Where on earth to start? When she took her driving test – her mind shied away from just how long ago that had been – there’d been none of this.
Just one, holly-green Highway Code booklet, which she’d duly memorised. And now …
Blinking her tired eyes, she looked blankly at the untidy heap of information consisting of current rules for motorists.
Of course, the speed awareness course hadn’t said anything about mugging up on the Highway Code but she wanted to do something to address this icy nag of anticipation she still had, despite now being able to attend by Zoom.
Liz was also sitting at her kitchen table enjoying the relative cool flooding in from the open window.
These days whenever she woke early, she’d got into the habit of opening the downstairs windows when the heat (and the pollen) was at its lowest ebb.
Now, luxuriating in the cooler air on her face and neck, she was looking drowsily at footage of Chapel Lane, Hollinby Quernhow, date-stamped Friday 13 June.
The footage alternated between looking up and looking down the lane, punctuated by a dizzying swivel as the camera swung from right to left.
Earlier, idly scrolling through her phone, she’d seen an email from Jacob (what was he doing sending emails at 12.
43 a.m.?) outlining the ingredients needed for spinach and kale risotto.
She made a note of them – plus a guilty memo to replace the Vegan Moments – then, lacking the energy to go back upstairs, listlessly flicked through her junk folder.
She’d nearly deleted the crucial email – CCTV 4 U!
– along with yet more offers for solar panels and discreet hook-ups with Estonian hotties.
It was the name that had stayed her finger – Sidrah? Sidrah!
The CCTV from Chapel Lane!
She’d now been staring at the screen for some ten minutes and excitement was rapidly giving way to boredom and drowsiness.
It looked like Sidrah had been right. Aside from the lone figure of the tenant from the Snuggery crossing and recrossing the lane and then driving off at 4.
03, there had been nothing and no one entering the Old Barn.
Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the odd vehicle passing, the views of the honey-stoned front wall, the banks of lavender, plus that brief glimpse of the building’s frontage when the camera swivelled, the views could have been photographic images.
Liz found herself thinking of Ffion, her sense that the woman was scared.
But of what? Or who? Those wild rumours on the village website?
Or being a target of whoever shouted at Neville?
Or was there a darker reason? Ffion … on horseback …
in the car park … framed in the window …
Outside the kitchen window the sky was paling from slate grey to mauve; from the fuchsia bush by the back door could be heard the first business-like peeps and cheeps of the dawn chorus.
Soon it would be time to close the windows against the onslaught of the day’s sun.
She jerked upright in her chair. What had she just seen?
What was that beige flicker on the screen that had dimly registered on her sleepy vision?
She rewound the CCTV and there was Neville’s beige hatchback pulling smartly into the driveway of his house.
Annoyingly it was just after the camera had swivelled up the street, so Liz had to wait a frustrating twenty-five seconds until it pivoted back.
It took a couple of goes to freeze the image at the exact moment when the front of the Old Barn was in view – showing no signs of Neville or the car, both now out of sight round the side of the building.
Liz tutted in frustration, abandoning the wild hope of catching a glimpse of whoever it was who had called Nev into the Snuggery.
She took a note of the time stamp – 18.52 – and was about to close the window when she saw the shape in Neville’s study window. Too dim to be distinct, the face shrouded but the body language unmistakable.
A body language Liz had seen similarly framed in a window only that afternoon.
Ffion Hilton.
‘Are you sure it’s her?’ Pat squinted at the vague, blurry outline on the screen of Liz’s phone. ‘It’s not very clear.’
‘That’s her,’ said Liz obstinately. ‘It’s how she stands. It’s how she was standing when I saw her watching me from the back window yesterday. She must’ve come in round the back; she’s not on any of the CCTV film—’
‘So,’ said Pat in her best ‘let’s get this straight’ voice, ‘Ffion Hilton dashes into her home, shouts at Nev, maybe paints a yellow line down the wall, dashes out and hot-foots it off to Carlisle.’ She stifled a yawn; it had been gone five when Justin had finally arrived back and she’d not managed to get any proper sleep since then.
‘It’s what must’ve happened,’ said Liz. ‘When she ranted at me last night she was scared, I know she was – and now we know why.’
Pat looked across at Thelma who was stirring her coffee and gazing thoughtfully out of the window at the baked car park.
Thankfully the garden centre had taken steps to combat the worst excesses of the heat; hefty linen blinds were muting the sun’s glare into something more bearable and a number of silver floor fans were racketing away sending blasts of cooler air round the ankles of the customers.
Once more the round table in the corner was usable.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Pat commented.
Thelma looked back at them, with the air of someone waking up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking. If it was Ffion who was shouting at Neville – and it does make sense because Ffion was there – I was just wondering—’
‘Wondering what?’ cut in Pat.
‘Wondering why Ffion was in the house and not the Snuggery. After all – that’s where all the shouting took place.’
‘Well, she’ll have seen him drive in,’ said Liz. ‘And followed him over to the flat and had a go at him there. Or’ – her voice grew excited – ‘or she maybe deliberately wanted him in the flat because she didn’t want suspicion to fall on her.’
‘She couldn’t have known he’d have a heart attack,’ pointed out Pat.
‘The thing is Ffion was there – at the property – when she said she wasn’t,’ said Liz, emphasising her words with a briskly tapping fingernail.
Thelma nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It just doesn’t seem to fit somehow.’
Liz bristled at this damp dismissal of her theories. ‘Well, who else could have been there?’ she said combatively.
In reply, Thelma looked at the open page of her green book and the neatly printed names: Chloe … Rev. Caro … Son Masters.
‘As far as I can see, any of them could have turned up at Neville’s shouting the odds,’ said Pat, peering into the book. ‘And having met Son I do think his voice could possibly be mistaken for a woman’s – especially if he was upset.’
Thelma frowned and added another name to the list in her neat script: Annie Golightly.
‘The head teacher?’ said Liz. ‘I thought you said she was very ill.’
‘She is,’ said Thelma. ‘But this was five weeks ago, remember; she could well have been a bit stronger then. She was well enough to attend Davey Fletcher’s memorial service. Oh! Of course!’ She gave a soft exclamation. ‘And there was someone else—’
‘Who?’ said Liz.
‘The tenant of the holiday flat,’ said Thelma.
‘The tenant who left at four p.m.?’ said Pat.
‘The tenant who made a point of announcing she was leaving at four p.m.,’ corrected Thelma. ‘The one who spoke to your friend Sidrah, claiming to love gardening and then making some totally inaccurate comments about her plants.’
The other two looked at her.
‘You mean,’ began Pat slowly.
‘People don’t generally make a point of announcing their departure from a holiday cottage,’ said Thelma. ‘They just go.’
‘So, you think what?’ said Pat.
Thelma stirred her coffee. ‘I suppose it just feels to me a bit like she was drawing attention to the fact she was leaving.’
‘Is she on this CCTV?’ said Pat to Liz.