FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) (9 page)

‘What are you doing?’ he said to Adam, now acting as if George wasn’t there at all.

‘I want to show George my room,’ said Adam quietly.

‘You can’t,’ he said shortly, bending down to his vegetable patch to strangle and yank out a weed. ‘Your mother’s resting. She’s not very well today.’

George followed Adam’s gaze to an upstairs window, the curtains closed.

‘We’ll be quiet,’ Adam said.

‘I said no,’ he returned.

George thought the man looked really hot and bothered, like nothing had gone right that day.
Had his vegetables really been giving him that much trouble?

Adam didn’t argue. He lowered his eyes, as if embarrassed.

‘That’s OK,’ said George. ‘We’ll play in the lane.’

‘Hello boys,’ a voice drifted from the house.

That was the first time George ever remembered seeing Sylvia Tredwin, except now he felt he was forcing himself to remember, and wasn’t so sure it was what actually happened, or a version of what his inventive mind wanted to remember. Anyhow, he remembered – true or not – how pretty she was. He used to think his mum was pretty, but Sylvia Tredwin was like one of those models in his mum’s magazines. She stood in the doorway, tall and slender, not much of a chest to look at as he could remember, but with long shapely legs dropping out of a thin cotton dress, the plain blue material wafting in the breeze. Her dark hair hadn’t been brushed and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She was like one of those fairies he’d seen in his sister’s old books. But, he thought, surely she must have been pregnant with their daughter Eva at the time? Why didn’t he remember as being pregnant?

Bruce Tredwin called out to his wife.

‘You’re unwell,’ said Bruce. ‘Go back inside, lie down.’

‘I don’t want to lie down,’ she said. ‘Come in
side Adam, and bring your friend.’ She waved a white hand that seemed to flap in the air like a limp handkerchief in the wind.

‘Don’t upset her,’ Adam’s father warned as the boys drew level with him. He glowered down at George. ‘I don’t want him here,’ he said to Adam. ‘Why’d you bring him?’

‘It’s only George,’ Adam defended.

‘He’s a Cowper,’ he said acidly.

‘I’m a Lee,’ George corrected. ‘George Lee.’ The boy even held out a tiny hand to shake, like he’d seen the grown-ups do, but the man ignored it.

‘I know who you are,’ he growled. ‘You can have five minutes, no more, and then I want you out of my house and off my land.’ He turned to Adam. ‘Never bring him back here again.
Never
. And I don’t want you playing with him, you hear?’

George wondered what he’d done to upset everyone on the planet, even people he’d never really met before. No one liked him. No one except Sylvia Tredwin, who put an arm around his shoulders as he came up to her…

God, yes, he remembered that now! She cuddled him. He felt a warm rush of emotion envelop him as he stared up at the shattered old Tredwin house.

‘There’s milk in the fridge,’ said Sylvia, ‘if you boys want a drink.’

It was only when he got close to her did he see the dark patches beneath Sylvia Tredwin’s beautiful eyes. The lines on her face that told of unknown troubles. The pale, almost translucent skin of someone who had never ventured far outside for a long time. She looked ill. She sounded ill. Her eyes appeared to be drifting off to look upon faraway landscapes, not quite under her control. And her hands shook all the time.

The inside of the house was not neat and tidy
, so unlike theirs. There were clothes thrown everywhere, piles of dishes in the sink waiting to be washed, a thick grey film of dust on the mantelpiece, and the television screen looked decidedly grubby. Sylvia Tredwin did not keep house. George was shocked. He thought all women were like his mother.

Adam gave George the guided tour, mindful of the imposed time limit set by his father. They paused at a shelf of paperback books.

‘We don’t have many books like this in our house,’ said George, gazing up at the brightly-coloured spines of the well-thumbed paperbacks.

‘They’re dad’s,’ said Adam.’

‘Yeah?’ said George, his eyes ballooning.

‘Would you like to have one down?’ said Sylvia, plucking one out of the row and handing it to George. There was a picture of a cowboy riding a stallion on the cover.

He started to read the title. ‘
Dark Days of Con…’
But then faltered over the last word. ‘What does that say, Mrs Tredwin?’ he asked, showing her the cover of the book.

She took it, squinted, cocked her head and handed it back. I’m sorry, I can’t make it out. I need my reading glasses and they’re at the menders.’ She handed it to Adam. ‘Do you know?’

‘
Con…se…quence
?’ he said uncertainly. ‘
Days of Consequence!
’

‘Very good, Adam,’ said Sylvia with a flicker of a smile. She wandered off.

‘She doesn’t have any reading glasses,’ Adam whispered to George.

‘Then why…?’

‘She never reads. Says it gives her migraines.’

‘Oh,’ said George. ‘What’s that one?’ He pointed out another book.

Adam got it off the shelf for him. ‘Dad like space books,’ he said.

George
was enthralled. The cover was dominated by a flying saucer and a robot firing a laser gun. ‘Wow…’ he said.

‘What have you got there?’ said Sylvia hurriedly, coming back to them. ‘Don’t go messing with any more of your dad’s books, there’s a good boy.’

She took the book and stared at its cover, transfixed. Her lower lip started to tremble, her eyes to grow moist.

‘Are you alright, Mrs Tredwin?’ George asked. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you… I didn’t mean to…’

Then, for no reason, Sylvia Tredwin burst into tears and ran about the house closing all the curtains.

‘They’re coming,’ she said, getting more hysterical as she tore about the place. ‘Quick, hide, hide!’ she begged Adam and George.

Genuinely frightened he allowed himself to be ushered by the panicking woman to a cupboard under the stairs. She pushed them both inside and locked the door on them. In the pitch-black confines George began to cry.

‘It’s OK,’ said Adam. ‘She does that.’

They heard Bruce Tredwin rushing inside, talking to his wife, and the creak of wood as he led her upstairs. Ten minutes later – though it appeared to be ten hours to the terrified George – the door to the cupboard was unlocked and Bruce Tredwin ordered them out.

‘What did you do?’ he asked, his face livid.

‘Nothing,’ said Adam. ‘George wanted to see one of your books, that’s all…’

‘It was you!’ he thundered at George, pointing an accusatory finger that might well have been a lethal bayonet for the fear it struck into the little boy.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he stammered, almost falling out of the cupboard. He ran to the door in tears.

‘Get him out!’ Bruce Tredwin
said. ‘Get that bastard Cowper out of here before I kill him!’ he screamed, every bit as hysterical as his wife had been.

George ran all the way home
, terrified that whatever was coming after Sylvia Tredwin was about to come for him. Once home he hid under his bed. ‘Everybody hates me,’ he sobbed, sniffing up the thick smell of dust. ‘Why, God? Why, God? Why, God?’

Weird, he thought as he
now gazed upon the doorway where he’d first seen Sylvia Tredwin all that time ago.

He’d been so upset by the affair he’d not really wanted to remember the incident. It had been blocked from his memory, more or less, till now.
He could almost picture Bruce Tredwin in his vegetable patch, watching him with venom in his eyes.

But the house didn’t look
lived in now, he thought. There didn’t seem to be any evidence of any building work going on either. He went to the gate and stood on the path. He half-expected Sylvia to open the door.

Then he saw the face at one of the lower windows. A
young woman’s face. A flash of long dark hair as she pulled the curtains on. It seemed to be the same woman who was at the wall of the graveyard.

So this was Eva. Adam’s sister.

He was torn. Having been seen by Eva he really ought to go up to the door and make his presence known. But it was apparent she didn’t want to see him from the way she yanked the curtains closed. And what exactly would he say to her? In fact, why was he here in the first place? What had drawn him to the Tredwin house?

So he stood there for an agonised minute or two before turning on his heel and making his way swiftly away from the house
. He swore he could hear Bruce Tredwin’s angry voice chasing after him.

‘Get the bastard Cowper
out of here before I kill him!’

The White Hart pub-cum-restaurant was filling up with people as the evening wore on and the sun began to lower itself begrudgingly into the comforting folds of the surrounding hills. It was another warm, bright evening, when night never seemed to want to fall. There was a bubble of amiable chatter from drinkers at the bar, from diners at the tables, the odd-tinkle of laughter, the clink of cutlery, the smell of roast beef and curry.

Christian Phelps had changed the White Hart quite a bit, thought George Lee, moved with the times, and where once the old pub had suffered a steady dwindling of customers and looked as if it was on its last legs, it was positively thriving now. But that was because Phelps’ dad, the old landlord, had died and allowed his son to finally take hold of the reins. George didn’t like the olde-worlde makeover, though, with its selection of hunting prints, brass and copper kettles and jugs, and rusted scythe over the bar, but he guessed that’s what punters wanted these days. A taste of an Olde England that never was. A lot of the customers, he noticed, weren’t locals, but drawn in from the surrounding towns and villages. A far cry from the spit-and-sawdust pub of his youth.

He couldn’t see Adam Tredwin amongst the cheery crowd. Somehow he didn’t expect him to turn up. He took his three pints of cider to a table where his uncles sat. His Uncle Gary rubbed his hands together in anticipation as the
cold, condensation-frosted glass was plonked wetly in front of him. Uncle Robert nodded his silent thanks.

‘
Expecting someone?’ said Gary, taking a noisy slurp of cider. ‘You keep watching the door.’

‘Adam Tredwin,’ he said casually, hiding his face behind his own glass as he took a tiny sip.

‘Adam Tredwin!’ said Gary. ‘He’ll not come in here.’

‘Said he would.’

‘Yeah, well, he might say it, but that doesn’t mean to say he meant it. We never see him except in the yard of the garden centre. He even orders all his food online, so he doesn’t have to visit the supermarket. How he ever sneaks out to put petrol into that van of his I’ll never know, because he’s never been seen to do it.’ He laughed. ‘They were always the same, the Tredwins. Weirdoes, the lot of them.’

‘That’s unkind,’ said George in a rare moment of compassion. It prompted a raised brow from
Gary. ‘I mean, you don’t know him or what he’s like. What happened to the Tredwins happened a long time ago. People change.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said
Gary with a faint snort into his raised glass. ‘Like hell they do.’

‘Are you going to be talking about the Tredwins all night?’ said Robert tiredly.

‘Better than talking about nothing at all, you misery,’ said Gary.

The two brothers stared daggers at each other.

‘When’s the band coming on?’ said George, trying to divert their attention.

He needn’t have asked. The members of Mud-Puddle Frog were filing onto the small stage in the corner of the pub, plugging guitars into amplifiers and the like. For the most they were dressed Swampy-like, with jeans and shirts that looked like they’d already been worn for a week and ready for the wash. Two of the four had plaited ponytails, and the lead singer, with his battered old acoustic guitar, sported a sharp-edged beard and cowboy hat. They got straight down to it, a mixture of
your rhinestone cowboy country-and-western, English folk with a bit of Irish thrown in, and a sprinkling of Eagles-like rock. It seemed to appeal to the slightly tipsy audience, who applauded enthusiastically after every number, but George had turned off long before they were into their third song.

Adam Tredwin still hadn’t showed when the band took their bows for the last number at the end of their first set and trudged off to the bar. Well, it was perh
aps a little too much to ask, George thought. He’d not spoken to Adam in thirty years or so, so why would the man who apparently never came out of his garden centre come out tonight?

But he was proved wrong. Adam Tredwin came through the door, stood there staring around the crowded place like a lost soul, and looked on the verge of turning around and going straight back out again when George stood up and waved him over to th
eir table. As Adam approached he regarded the Cowper brothers with apprehension. They returned his stare with narrowed-eyed stares of their own.

‘Hi, Adam,’ said George warmly. ‘We’ve saved you a seat. Have you met my uncles, Gary and Robert?’

‘I remember you vaguely from when I was a boy,’ he said, shaking each of their hands in turn.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ said George.

‘Sure. A coke.’

‘Coke?’ sniffed
Gary, rather too harshly George thought. ‘Is that all? Nothing stronger?’

‘I’ll get my own,’ Adam said quickly, rising.

‘No, it’s fine, I’ve got it,’ said George, flashing his uncle a meaningful glance. What had he got against the man?

Gary
pushed away his chair and said he’d get another round in. He barged through George’s protestations that it was his round anyway, and lumbered to the bar, creating a path through the crowd there by sheer bulk.

‘Ignore
Gary, he’s always the same when he’s had a few drinks,’ said Robert affably. ‘How are you settling back into Petheram, Adam? How’s the garden centre doing?’

Adam smiled weakly. ‘I’m doing fine. The garden centre’s doing fine, too.’ He looked nervously about the room, as if any sudden noise might see him bolt for the exit.

George noticed how Adam had his hands clasped tight together on his lap beneath the table. He said, ‘Glad you could make it. Does you good to get out once in a while.’

‘Yes,’ he replied, like he wasn’t so sure.

‘What made you want to come back to the village after all these years, Adam?’ asked Robert.

‘Why shouldn’t I
?’ he returned, as if the question were loaded.

Robert shrugged. ‘Guess you don’t need a reason. But something generally makes people want to come back. Nostalgia, maybe.’

Adam eyed him. ‘Nostalgia? I have nothing to be nostalgic about. You know that.’

Robert nodded slowly. ‘Just asking. Sorry if I touched a nerve…’

‘Is that Adam Tredwin?’ said Christian Phelps as he served Gary Cowper his drinks, nodding in the man’s direction.

Gary Cowper grunted. ‘Yeah, that
’s him. I fancied a nice night out, taking a few jars, watching a band, you know. But now George goes and invites a Tredwin along. That’s put a dampener on my entire evening.’

Phelps grinned. ‘Don’t be such a bloody misery,
Gary. What have you got against him?’

‘Got nothing against him. But he’s a
Tredwin
.’

‘So? That was a long time ago. That was his mother.’

‘We both know what a batty woman she was,’ Gary said. ‘They make me feel ill, being with people like that. People who aren’t quite right in the head.’

‘That’s not very nice,
Gary,’ Phelps said. ‘Anyhow, maybe it’s best to give him some leeway, for the sake of a quiet life, huh? We don’t want things being dragged up, do we?’

Gary Cowper did what he did best and shrugged. He could shrug for
England, thought Phelps. ‘Yeah, sure. But you ain’t the one having to sit with him. Every time I look at him I see Sylvia…’

Phelps took money from
Gary and gave him change. ‘He won’t be in Petheram long,’ he said quietly.

‘You think so?’

‘I know so,’ he said.

‘Still, you don’t have to sit with him…’ he returned and clutched the four glasses in his large hands and left the bar.

Christian Phelps watched Gary’s broad back. Looked across the room at Robert and George. Adam Tredwin had his back to him. Even from here he looked like his mother – same slim build, same colour hair except cropped short. It made him feel uneasy too. He shook his head of thoughts and asked the barmaid to take over while he went to speak to the band, take them a few drinks on the house.

Gary came back with the drinks and set them down. He avoided eye contact with Adam and sat down, arms folded and staring at the empty stage.

‘Garage doing OK, Mr Cowper?’ Adam asked
Gary.

‘Sure it’s doing OK,’ he replied. ‘How are the pansies selling?’

George and Robert exchanged glances.

‘I hear there are a lot of people hitting deer again this year,’ Adam continued.
‘Denting car wings.’

Robert stared at Adam. ‘You get that,’ he said
. ‘Some years there are more than others roaming over the roads. Like badgers. And at certain times they just seem to have a death wish. We’ve had a few cars in recently for repair that have hit animals, that not so, Gary?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Loads.
We also get a lot of busted clutches. What of it?’

‘They can do some real damage, deers,’ Adam said quietly.

‘I came out to escape the garage, not talk about it,’ said Gary.

‘You should retire,’ said George, ‘if you hate it so much. You’re way past retirement age.’

‘Who said I hated it? I hate being quizzed about it, that’s all.’

‘I wasn’t quizzing you…’ said Adam.

‘Sure sounded like it.’

‘Give it a rest, Gary,’ said Robert. ‘
You’re already drunk and the man’s only making friendly conversation.’

‘I didn’t know such a simple question would bother you that much,’ said Adam.

Gary Cowper rolled his eyes. ‘It doesn’t bother me! Just leave it be, huh? Let a man have his drink in quiet. I don’t need to go on about busted car wings.’

The band came back on stage and the stilted conversation was brought to a thankful close. George Lee sighed in relief, surprised at his uncle’s reaction. The Mud-Puddle Frogs cranked up the music and for a while George forgot the bad start they’d got off to with Adam. Forgot it until the lead singer, three or four numbers into the last set, got close to the mike and introduced their next song.

‘We’ve had a request. As you know, we perform old and new folk ballads. Well this next one is relatively new as far as folk ballads go, but it’s one we learnt from an old Petheram guy about five years ago. It always goes down well. We haven’t performed this in Petheram before, for obvious reasons, but since we’ve had someone local come up to us and ask, well, we all think it’s about time it got aired in the village that helped create it. It’s a sad song about a beautiful woman. It’s called
The Ballad of Sylvia Tredwin
.’

George looked at Adam, whose face was dropping paler by the second.
Gary’s eyes had narrowed and his lips were set in an inexplicable angry line. And the words of the song seemed to George to sear the very atmosphere with their heated meaning

From a stormy sky,

High, high, high,

From rolling clouds

That ask

Why, why, why?

They thundered down,

A shower of blazing light

And frightening din.

Found her scared in lonely Flinder’s Field,

And took poor Sylvia Tredwin.

George Lee blinked as the song reached a crescendo. Some people in the audience were joining in with the catchy chorus: ‘
Why, why, why?
’ they sang tunelessly. Adam Tredwin was shaking, but it was hard for George to be certain whether it was fear or anger that made him react so, forced his eyes wide and bulging.

But it was Gary Cowper that eventually broke. He stood upright and shouted across the pub.

‘Shut that fuck up!’ he yelled.

Everyone turned to look at him. The band carried on for a little while lon
ger, thinking they’d got nothing more than a drunk on their hands. But he shouted again, and this time someone else stood up and told them to stop singing the song. The music faltered into silence, and the tension in the room became palpable.

‘Christ, sorry…’ said the lead singer. ‘We had a request…’

‘Fuck the request!’ Gary said, his face red, now very much aware that he was the centre of attention. ‘That was in bad taste.’ He sat back down, his arms folded tightly against his chest. ‘That was in bad taste,’ he said under his breath. ‘Ah, fuck!’ he said, rising again and dashing out of the pub.

Adam got up, too. ‘I think I ought to leave,’ he said. He was visibly shaking. His voice faltering.

‘I didn’t know they were going to do that…’ said George.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Adam
returned. ‘Anyhow, I’m not wanted here. That much is clear.’

‘Ignore
Gary,’ said Robert. ‘The drink…’

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Adam quickly.

The band began another song, and most people turned their attention away from looking at the Cowper table, thankfully, thought George. But the pub’s jolly atmosphere had been ruined somewhat.