Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

“I live in a village on the south side of Kimmerston. But just because I’m not local… “

“The village of Holystone?”

“I’m not sure what my personal details have to do with the matter in hand.” And he was so stupid that he really couldn’t see. Anne felt a brief moment of conscience because he was such an easy target, but she was enjoying herself too much to stop now.

“Could I just quote from a passage in the Kimmerston Gazette dated July twenty-first? The headline is: HOLYSTONE RESIDENTS RISE IN PROTEST.

The article is about a planning application for an open cast mine by British Coal Contractors. Could I ask you if you remember that application, Mr. Benn? It was made two years ago.” He continued to stare into the audience. Panic seemed to make him incapable of rational thought. His mouth opened, fish-like, but no words came out. She persisted, ruthlessly.

“Tell me, Mr. Benn, weren’t you vice chair of an organization known as HAVOC the Holystone Association Versus Open Cast Mining?”

This pushed him at last into coherent speech. He blustered, “Really, I can’t allow any individual to take over the meeting in this way.”

“I have proof,” she said gaily. “There are letters from HAVOC which bear your signature to local supporters. I don’t think you can deny it. And it seems very bizarre to me, Mr. Benn, that you are so concerned to provide work for the youth of our community through the development of the quarry, yet so reluctant to give the same benefit to your own. I’m sure the open cast mine would have provided work too.”

She sat down. Behind her there was cheering and clapping and a couple of catcalls. It served Derek Benn right. If he’d been more even-handed in his chairing of the meeting she’d never have brought up that business of HAVOC. He hadn’t given a toss about the open cast mine, hadn’t even attended most of the meetings. His involvement with the group had provided an alibi, an excuse to be out of the house when he was meeting her. Good God, she thought, whatever did I see in him?

After the meeting a group of protesters went to the pub to discuss strategy. It was midsummer and still light. Anne would have preferred to be in her garden, but she followed them across the road to the Ridley Arms. Living at the Priory had given her a certain, ambiguous status within the village. A responsibility. She wasn’t in the same league as the Fulwells at Holme Park. They wouldn’t be expected to participate in village events, except occasionally to open the church Summer Fayre. All the same she had a standing.

They’d invited her to be St. Mary’s churchwarden, for example, although she hardly ever attended church. The job seemed to go with the house. They’d thought her a stuck-up cow for refusing.

Inside the pub it was noisy and chaotic and very quickly she was forced to take charge. Some of them wanted to organize a petition. She talked them out of it. “Look,” she said, “Planners don’t take much notice of petitions. They get them all the time. They know people sign bits of paper without reading them properly or because they don’t like to say no. You should organize individual letters of protest.

They carry more weight.”

When she sat down Sandy Baines, who had the garage, asked shyly if she’d like a drink.

“I’d have thought this quarry would be in your interest,” she said.

“The lorries would have to fill up somewhere, wouldn’t they?”

It seemed that this idea hadn’t occurred to him and she saw with amusement that as soon as he delivered her G &T, he disappeared. He had been caught up in the village’s general suspicion of change and strangers. She doubted if even self-interest would make a difference to that.

She was approached next by the small man, whose name she could never remember, who lived in the modern ugly bungalow on the way into the village.

“Look,” he said. “A few of us have been talking. We’d like you to sit on our action committee. Speak for us, like.”

He had a head the shape of a sheep’s and white woolly hair. She fancied the ” came out as a ”. She seemed to remember now that he had once been a butcher. She declined graciously. Despite her support for the project and enjoying a fight, she knew she’d soon be bored with it. Bored at least with them. She finished her drink and stood up to go.

“My husband will be wondering where I am.” Though she knew that even if Jeremy were at home he wouldn’t give a shit.

Outside the pub she stood for a minute enjoying the last of the birdsong. Someone had been cooking a barbecue. She realized she was hungry and almost turned back into the pub because although Milly was a crappy landlady who understood sod-all about customer service, as Anne was some sort of heroine, she would at least have to come up with a plate of sandwiches.

Then a sleek, black car pulled up in front of her, moving out of the shadows with hardly a sound. The window was lowered with a purr. She saw Godfrey Waugh and knew then that he must have been waiting for her.

“Mrs. Preece,” he said, as though he had arrived there quite by chance. “I wonder if I might offer you a lift.”

She had recognized him at once as the owner of the quarry company. She had seen him on the platform during the meeting. He had been introduced though he had hardly spoken. When she had looked at him from the audience, stiff and uncomfortable in his subdued suit and highly polished shoes, he had reminded her of an interview candidate trying too hard to please.

“I have my own car, thank you.”

A grotty little Fiat. When she married Jeremy she had assumed there was money in the background. It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

“I would very much like to speak to you. Have you eaten? Perhaps I could buy you dinner.” He was diffident, a bit like the old men in the pub.

“I’m not bribed that easily.”

“No, of course not!” He took her seriously and was shocked.

She smiled. She might look, in a bad light, like Camilla Parker-Bowles but she knew the effect that smile could have.

“Oh well,” she said. “Why not?” By now it was too dark to do much in the garden and she was curious.

“Would you like to come with me? Or perhaps you would prefer to follow me in your own car? I was thinking of the George.”

Very nice, she thought. The George was an unpretentious hotel in the next village where the chef worked magic with local ingredients.

“No, I’d rather come with you if you don’t mind bringing me back here later.”

Suddenly she didn’t want him to get too close a view of the grotty Fiat. There was something about him which made her feel the need to impress. At the time she thought it was his money.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. She was leaning across the dinner table, her elbows on the white cloth. There was candlelight for which she was grateful. Recently she had noticed fine lines above her upper lip and knew that she could no longer get away with sleeveless dresses.

It wasn’t the George Hotel but another evening, another restaurant.

Godfrey Waugh had called her that morning.

“I thought we should get together again. I found the last meeting very useful. I’d like to hear any suggestions you might have for making the quarry more acceptable to the community.”

But she told him here in the restaurant she would rather discuss him.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said, though she could see he was pleased to be asked. He spoke with a local accent, with a slight stutter. He was very shy. She realized at their first meeting that if it ever came to seduction, it would be down to her. She would have to be the active partner. He might be as old as she was, but there was something awkward and adolescent about him. She had been expecting a brash and vulgar businessman not a boy, and she was touched.