Martin Edwards - The Cipher Garden

‘Even so.’

‘All right, but we need a new theme. And lots more colour. It’s drab and dark here. Except for the foxgloves. They’re starting to die off, but they are so pretty in full bloom.’

Daniel gazed at the purple flowers shaped like bells. The means by which Jacob and Alice Quiller had killed themselves.

‘You know their leaves are poisonous?’

She laughed. ‘Typical. You always have to look on the dark side.’

‘Sorry. You’re right, we need a fresh start. As for a theme — how about celebrating a new life?’

She smiled with almost childlike delight. ‘Wonderful.’

The scent of the roses was heady, butterflies were fluttering to and fro. A picture came into Daniel’s mind. Jacob Quiller bent over the ground, grim in his determination to convey a confession through his work. Back-breaking labour, but an escape from sitting inside by the fire, while his guts churned in despair. No such escape for Alice, as the clock ticked on towards the anniversary of John’s passing, the date they had fixed for ending it all. Both of them were obsessed; Jacob with macabre garden patterns, Alice with the loss of her only son. It was on Alice, of whom he knew so little, that his thoughts lingered. The housemaid who became mistress of the little cottage in the clearing, proud mother of a young man who left his native shores to fight for Queen and country, never to return.

The love between mother and child could break down all restraints and scrape away the coat of varnish that protects from raw emotion, rage, and violence. Bees buzzed in the background, Miranda ducked her head to smell the flowers, and Daniel tossed possibilities around in his mind.

Suppose Oliver had not only found his long-lost mother, but his father as well. Who was a more likely candidate to impregnate a young girl in the village than the late and unlamented Warren Howe? Consider it from Chris Gleave’s perspective. What if he was driven by jealousy, what if he hated the man who had given Roz a son, when he had not?

It might add up to a motive for murder.

‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ Hannah said.

‘You’re wrong, ma’am.’

She bent forward. ‘Ma’am? What happened to Hannah and Nick?’

‘Sorry.’ A threadbare smile. ‘You’re wrong, Hannah. You need to know this. What you do with the information is up to you.’

She poured two cups of coffee, marvelling at the steadiness of her hand while her stomach was somersaulting. She dreaded what Nick might confess. A breach of regulations, perhaps even a crime, something that would destroy his career. That he’d had a gay relationship didn’t matter, even though learning of it had floored her. Even as she watched him deliberate, working out how much to say and how much to leave out, she realised how many clues she’d missed. Nick was a good actor, but there were limits to his ability to pretend. She recalled an interview she and Nick had conducted with a man called Allardyce, not long after she’d first met Daniel Kind.

‘You know what women are like. Or maybe you don’t, eh?’

She remembered her sergeant colouring at the gibe. At the time she’d dismissed it, but although Allardyce was a brute, he’d sussed Nick out in a matter of minutes. She’d been fooled for years. Call herself a detective?

If he was a closet gay, no wonder he’d never tried it on with her. It was one of the differences, she understood now, between her relationship with Nick and that with Ben Kind. With Ben, she’d always had this sense that he wanted to touch her, but held back, perhaps because he was afraid of rejection, perhaps because he knew it was wrong to start an affair with a young subordinate. With Nick, the friendship never threatened to become more than platonic. For all her occasional wishful thinking in bed or in the bath as she recalled his smooth features and long lean limbs.

‘It’s not such an unusual story,’ he said at length. ‘A teenage boy, uncertain about his sexuality. Chris and I were each in the same boat. Conventional upbringing and outlook, desperate to be part of the crowd, but aware of secret longings too dangerous to acknowledge. No wonder we were drawn together. I’m not going to give you all the gory details, OK? Let’s just say we enjoyed each other for several months. But both of us were riddled by guilt. Especially me. Pathetic, really. In my defence, I was only seventeen. Trouble was, that was below the age of consent. Another reason for feeling bad.’

‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Didn’t we pass a couple of posters for the Gay and Lesbian Police Association as we walked down the corridor?’

‘Do me a favour. I never wanted to be a pink policeman.’

‘All I mean is, times have changed. So have attitudes.’

‘On the surface. But that’s beside the point. I’ve no desire to join a protected species, I’m just an ordinary bloke. Which is why Chris and I split up. The angst was more than I could handle. I’d set my heart on joining the force and I wanted the orthodox life everyone in my family had. A pretty wife and two point four children, a modest mortgage and a decent pension. Boring, boring, boring, as far as Chris was concerned. He wanted to make music. Money didn’t matter to him.’

‘He had the luxury of inheriting it.’

‘Fair comment. We went our separate ways. I joined the force, got married. You know the rest.’

Do I? ‘It was your decision to break up?’

‘Yes, but Chris wasn’t bitter. We kept in touch. I went along to his concerts, every now and then. He told me he’d had a few other boyfriends, but nobody special.’

‘He wanted you to get back together again?’

‘I suppose so, but it was out of the question. I’d made my choice and so far as I was concerned, he had to respect it. Which he did. Next thing I knew, he was engaged to Roz. I didn’t know what to expect when I met her. When I found out it was a genuine love match, I was thrilled for him.’

‘All’s well that ends well?’

Nick nodded. ‘Until I heard that he’d disappeared from home, and while he was missing, Warren Howe was killed in his back garden.’

While Miranda absorbed herself with the laptop, working on a first draft of her latest article for Ethan Tiatto, Daniel stayed outside. He yearned to talk to Hannah, share his ideas about the murder with her. He took out his mobile and dialled her number. Straight to voicemail. Shit. Better to try later rather than leave a message. How to explain in a couple of crisp sentences the speculation swirling around inside his brain?

He paced up and down the path outside his own front door, striving to reconcile the known facts with his guesswork. When he’d called at Keepsake Cottage, he’d overheard the Gleaves discussing whether a secret could be kept. He’d assumed it was connected with Kirsty’s death, but there might be a link to the murder of Warren Howe.

Would there be harm in a return visit to the Gleaves’ home? Hannah might insist he shouldn’t poke his nose in, but he might have more luck than a police officer in gleaning crucial information.

He went back inside and told Miranda that he’d be out for an hour or two. She nodded, but didn’t look up from her work in progress. On his way out, he tried Hannah again. Still no answer.

Weaving through the country lanes, he stretched his brain, refining his theory that Chris Gleave had killed Warren Howe. He’d spent such a short time in the man’s company, he found it impossible to do more than guess at what made him tick. By instinct he rebelled against the idea of a likeable musician committing a savage murder, but it made sense as a crime of passion, fuelled by jealousy and loathing.

Rounding a bend, he found his way blocked by a farm boy standing in the middle of the road with upraised hand. Behind him plodded a herd of cattle, on their way from one field to another. Daniel breathed out. His reasoning had also run into a jam. How had Chris contrived his alibi? He must have been in the frame for the murder, yet the police hadn’t come close to pinning him to the scene. A bizarre location for a murderer to choose, if there was any degree of planning. Why kill someone in your own back garden? It had to be a crime born of panic, yet that didn’t square with an alibi strong enough to defy intensive scrutiny from a team of detectives under pressure to solve a high-profile crime.