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Chapter 27

The man who had spoken to Paul, clearly the lord of this manor, took a few steps towards Sampson’s car.

Sampson weighed up his odds. Five men with shotguns, and they looked like they knew how to use them. They’d probably been killing things since they were at boarding school. He put his foot on the accelerator and drove on. Kate and Wilson had got away, for now. It was time to put some more distance between him and the scene of the widow’s death, anyway. Stupid old bitch. Still, she’d be with her husband soon. Not in Heaven or Hell – Sampson didn’t believe in all that shit – just mouldering in the grave.

He headed back towards the forest. There was something he needed to pick up before he left the scene completely – he’d seen the phone bounce to the ground from the window of the Peugeot as he came around a bend. The sudden movement near the hedgerow had caught his eye, even at speed.

As the sound of the Audi’s engine faded into the distance, Kate and Paul exchanged a look of relief, and Kate put her hand on her chest. It felt as if her heart was about to burst out. She turned, as the woman in the Barbour said, ‘Who was that?’

Kate didn’t reply immediately.

‘A friend of yours?’ pressed the woman, licking her lips as if the taste of intrigue was a rare treat.

The first man turned to his four friends. ‘Why don’t you chaps get on and I’ll catch you up in a little while?’

The men nodded and strolled off with their shotguns, one of the dogs scampering behind them. As she and Paul followed the woman and, presumably, her husband into the house, Kate silently hoped that they would have a fruitless day’s hunting. Then she thought again about Jean Bainbridge lying in the road, gunned down. She took a deep breath, fighting the urge to throw up.

‘You look like you could do with a cup of tea. I’ll put the kettle on,’ said the husband.

The kindness of strangers, thought Kate. They were led into a vast sitting room, where they sat down on plump sofas with a view of the garden. The remaining dog sat down by the French windows, looking longingly towards the hunters walking away towards the woods. Kate could hardly speak; not until the tea had been placed in front of her. She could have expected a bone china cup in a saucer, but it came in a mug with a chip in the rim.

‘Thank you.’ Kate sipped the tea. Sometimes, in Boston, she felt like she was turning into an American, but the reinvigorating effect of the tea persuaded her that she was still English through and through. ‘Mrs . . .’

‘Mrs Braxton. But call me Penny. This is Andrew.’ She nodded towards her husband, who smiled at Kate. He had a pleasantly craggy face and exuded an air of old money. But he was passive, cast into shadow by the fierce brightness of his wife’s personality. Penny clearly wore the jodhpurs in this relationship. Kate suspected that Andrew probably ranked somewhere below the dog in the domestic pecking order.

‘I’m Kate, and this is Paul.’

Introductions over, Penny put her tea on a coaster on a small occasional table. ‘So why was that chap in the black car chasing you?’

Paul said, ‘We don’t know. Just some random nut.’

Kate stared at him but he ignored her and continued, ‘We made the mistake of overtaking him up on the main road – next thing, he was right on our tail, horn blaring, trying to barge into our car. We couldn’t shake him off. If I’d been on my own I might have pulled over, had it out man to man, but I had to think about Kate here.’

‘I see,’ said Penny, looking over at Kate, who was trying to rearrange her face from a look of incredulity. What the hell was Paul playing at? Why was he lying? She still couldn’t believe that he hadn’t let her call the police. And that he’d thrown her mobile out of the window.

‘There are a lot of lunatics about on the roads these days,’ Andrew said. ‘Only the other day . . .’

‘Yes darling,’ Penny dismissed him and turned back to Paul. ‘Do you want to call the police?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate pointedly to Paul. ‘Do we?’

‘What’s the point? It was just road rage. He’ll be long gone by now. And he didn’t actually do anything they could prosecute him for. It’s not as if we’ve got any evidence either.’ He avoided Kate’s gaze. ‘We don’t even know who he was.’

‘Didn’t you get his licence plate number?’

‘No . . . Look, I really don’t think there’s any point calling the police.’

Penny looked at him long and hard. She obviously knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth. But he returned her stare without flinching.

‘Well, it’s your decision,’ she said after a while.

‘That’s right.’

Kate could feel her heart jumping beneath her blouse. The pointer padded over to where she sat and stuck his wet nose into the palm of her hand. Suddenly, a wave of tiredness washed over her. She knew that, in times of extreme stress, the human brain sometimes takes the option of shutting itself down to avoid trauma. Mrs Bainbridge; seeing Sampson again; the pursuit, the confusion over Paul’s strange behaviour. She wanted to sit here and stroke the ridiculously-named dog and not have to think about any of it.

But that wasn’t an option. Oh, how she missed the cool atmosphere of the lab, where all made sense; where everything could be measured and weighed and analysed. Where, if things didn’t go as they should, there was always an explanation.

‘We ought to get going,’ Paul said.

‘But what if this road-rager is still out there?’ Penny asked.

Andrew said, ‘I could take the Land Rover out and check if the coast is clear.’

He moved to the door.

‘Be careful, darling,’ Penny said, with a tremor of genuine concern in her voice.

Andrew returned fifteen minutes later – fifteen minutes during which Penny paced the sitting room with the dog at her heels, her nervousness a reproach to Kate, to not make snap judgements about other people’s relationships. Or her own relationships, for that matter, she thought. She was desperate to get Paul on his own to find out why the hell he’d been acting so weirdly.

‘No sign of the bugger, so I think it should be safe for you to leave,’ said Andrew, throwing his Barbour down on an armchair.

Paul stood up immediately. ‘Excellent. Let’s go, Kate.’

As Kate rose to her feet, Andrew added, ‘Big story on the local radio news. Some elderly woman has been found shot outside her house.’

‘Shot?’ Penny exclaimed.

‘Yes, in Penkridge.’

‘Good heavens, that’s where I play boules! How could something like that happen in a sweet little place like Penkridge?’

Kate tried to remain calm, but she couldn’t shake the image of Mrs Bainbridge crumpling in front of her hollyhocks and lavender. She had taken a bullet meant for Paul, and Paul was now standing here, staring intently into the garden, grim-faced.

‘You didn’t come through Penkridge, did you?’ Penny asked.

‘No. No, we didn’t,’ said Paul.

‘We should go,’ Kate said, her voice trembling. ‘Can I just use your toilet first?’

‘Of course.’

When Kate emerged from the loo, Penny and Andrew were deep in conversation, holding hands. She was sure she heard Penny call Andrew ‘poppet’.

Penny said, ‘Your friend has gone out to his car already.’

‘Oh. Okay. Well, thank you both so much.’

‘Think nothing of it.’

After the young couple had driven away, Andrew turned to Penny. ‘What did you make of that?’

‘I didn’t believe a word they said.’

‘No. I certainly didn’t believe all this stuff about road rage. I didn’t believe that Paul chap when he said they hadn’t been through Penkridge either.’

He saw his wife’s face light up with an expression of thrilled horror. ‘Good heavens. You don’t think they might have had something to do with the old woman’s death, do you?’

Andrew strode towards the phone. ‘I made a note of their registration number when I went out. I’m going to call the police.’

After dialling the Stafford police and explaining about the strange couple that had visited them, Andrew went outside, keen to join the rest of his hunting party. He looked around for his shotgun.

‘Penny, darling,’ he called. ‘Have you seen my gun?’

She emerged from the house. ‘No – where did you put it?’

‘I left it right here, propped against the wall. I . . . oh, blast.’

They both looked towards the road.

‘I’d better call the police again,’ Andrew said.

At Kate’s insistence, she and Paul had backtracked a little way to try to find Kate’s phone but there was no sign of it. Paul used his own phone to call Kate’s number, but nothing rang, even though they walked back and forth along the road close to the spot where Kate was sure Paul had thrown it, nervously half-expecting Sampson to jump out at them from behind a tree. While they were searching, Paul asked Kate about Sampson, and she explained about the creepy odd-job man at the CRU who never seemed comfortable in the role.

After ten minutes’ fruitless searching, Kate was forced, reluctantly and with bad grace, to accept the fact that her phone was gone. She felt annoyed with Paul, both about the phone, and about his odd behaviour. They drove in silence to the outskirts of Stafford, glancing behind them in the car’s mirrors all the way, and as they passed a row of shops and a pub, Kate said, ‘Pull over. We need to talk.’

Paul pulled up outside the pub, The Red Lion.

Kate took a deep breath. ‘Why did you lie to them, Paul?’

He reached for her hand, and she flinched away.

‘Kate . . .’

‘No. Don’t touch me. Not until you’ve explained yourself. Why did you tell them you didn’t know who was chasing us? Why did you lie about Penkridge? And why wouldn’t you let me call the police?’

He pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at the dashboard for a long time. He thought about the shotgun in the boot of the car, wondered if his impulsive move to take it had been a mistake that would destroy Kate’s trust in him even further. Finally, he turned to look at her. ‘Okay. I’m going to tell you the truth now. I’m sorry I didn’t before, but when you hear it, you’ll understand why. But first I need a drink – and so will you.’