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  Copyright Information

  Weycombe: A Novel of Suspense © 2017 by G. M. Malliet.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2017

  E-book ISBN: 9780738754956

  Book format by Bob Gaul

  Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Malliet, G. M., author.

  Title: Weycombe: a novel of suspense / G. M. Malliet.

  Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota: Midnight Ink, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017022256 (print) | LCCN 2017036124 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780738754260 | ISBN 9780738754260 (alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. |

  Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A4535 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A4535 W49 2017 (print)

  | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022256

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  Midnight Ink

  Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For my dear and greatly missed friend Rebecca.And as always, for Bob.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Bill Krause, Terri Bischoff, Katie Mickschl, and Sandy Sullivan for the warm welcome. Apparently, you can go home again.

  And special thanks to Lisa Black and Dale Steventon for their guidance on forensics. All mistakes are my own.

  Prologue

  I remember Anna clearly. Not Anna as I wish she had been. Anna as she really was.

  We tend to deify the dead. It’s simpler to build a temple to them and seal them inside than to keep tearing open the old wounds, replaying their transgressions until our blood is stirred by a familiar anger. And so we resist the memories of bad times. We forget the many failings, although if we’re smart and we’ve learned our lesson, we do not forgive.

  I won’t paper over Anna’s defects as I write the story of her fall: her selfishness, her indifference to anyone’s suffering but her own, her offhanded willingness to betray, her lies—most of all, the glibness of her lies. Who could forgive? Well, perhaps her husband, a man who excused her deceits as the lapses of a woman so special she could be allowed to bend every rule. I guess you could say gentle Alfie made Anna what she was.

  I can call to mind every detail of her appearance, too. I made a video of her, to promote her business, but I don’t need it to remember her by. She made a token offer to pay me for my trouble, but I didn’t really mind. The equipment mostly sat unused in my closet otherwise.

  So I spent the better part of a day trailing Anna, getting her to talk naturally, making a study of the few physical flaws she possessed. She was Rubenesque, with a lush build and that lit-from-within coloring, if thirty pounds lighter than Ruben’s women, those women who always seemed to be dancing naked or having someone beheaded.

  When you look at a person through a lens, it is the one time you are allowed to stare, when politeness does not dictate that you avert your eyes. Anna, looking the way she did, must have been used to stares. That white complexion—not just pale or ivory, but a pure and pore-less alabaster white. The perfect canvas for the black hair, the green eyes, the red lips. The camera loved her, obediently creating shadows and clefts that molded her face and drew attention to those shining emerald eyes, and I barely had to adjust for shadow and contrast. She sat preening and smiling, her teeth small and white against the fullness of her red lips, and almost in spite of myself, I could not get a bad image of her. It was on this occasion she talked to me about her background, and her worries about her stepson, in that plummy-posh voice she sometimes used to disguise her origins. To my American ear it sounded like music. I liked her then. She seemed so human.

  When she died the village spiraled into deep mourning, not because of her big heart or her record of good deeds, but because someone so fair and so (relatively) young had been murdered. They could not get their heads around the fact that gorgeous Anna had been killed, had been done to death, and if someone like that could die in such a seemingly random fashion, so could they.

  Of course, they didn’t know Anna as well as I did.

  Part 1

  1

  Weycombe: 2017

  The reflectors on Anna’s runners caught the eye, mirroring the sunlight, twinkling silver among sodden, fallen leaves. But the shoes were tied to feet that were motionless and oddly splayed, as if they’d snapped from the ankles. No one could not notice something was wrong. She looked posed, like a woman in a snuff film. Not that I would know what that looks like.

  I rang 999 from my mobile, looking round and up and behind me before I punched in the numbers. You never knew who might be watching, and I felt exposed standing there on the river path. I resisted the ridiculous urge to clamber down the bank and tug at the legs of Anna’s shorts where they ruched up around her hips, revealing the lace of her Fleur of England knickers. Her little wallet that presumably held her house key and some form of legal tender was still attached to her wrist, a wallet not large enough to hold a mobile or any form of self-defense, like pepper spray. The need for mace in broad daylight in the bubble-wrapped perfection of Weycombe was hard to fathom, anyway.

  I stood in the path to block the view of anyone passing by, but there was only one helmeted cyclist going very fast and one woman who, with the sun in her eyes and a phone to her ear, didn’t notice she was walking past a corpse. On a distant hill, a woman I thought I recognized walked two arthritic golden retrievers.

  The first responder was a uniformed policeman. He strolled over from his small blue-and-yellow patrol car, taking his time and hitching up his trousers, looking for all the world like he was about to nail me for speeding. He told me he was Sergeant Milo and flashed his card. I told him I was Jillian White and pointed to the riverbed where Anna’s body lay.

  As if to humor me, he walked over for a look-see, peering down the steep bankside. He did a double take and stepped back quickly. Visibly shaken, he began barking into the mic on his shoulder. A woman’s voice squawked back. I’ve never understood why they didn’t just use mobile phones already but I supp
ose radios were more secure or something.

  Keeping me in view, he began walking up the path and back, doing a visual search of the area. Soon we were swarmed by officialdom, all ranks and sizes and sexes in a group that grew large and loud as it became apparent what they were dealing with. This sort of thing does not happen in Weycombe, where the worst scofflaws go in more for antisocial behavior (a cozy British term covering a raft of sins from littering to vandalism) or the occasional shoplifting spree at Boots or Waitrose. Some of the guys in uniform were looking positively elated but trying to hide it.

  Not Sergeant Milo. Solemnly, he indicated I should step aside and wait. He didn’t seem to consider that I might just run away, although I did consider it. The assorted officials stood about arguing, pointing down the bank and gesturing downriver until finally it was decided the best way to reach the body—those eyes; no question it was a body—without destroying evidence was to get a skiff or two in the water; that way they could bring the examiners in as close as possible. It was probably going to be the only way to retrieve the body, too; it had landed at what was in effect the foot of a small cliff. Where they got the skiffs from I don’t know, as there were no official markings on them, but soon we were treated to the arrival of a forensics unit trying to look as dignified as Cleopatra being paddled upriver in her barge.

  Some guy I took to be a police surgeon got out first, wading over to feel for a pulse and make sure she was dead. But anyone could see from the look of her there was no chance of revival and no call for heroics. Finally I looked away; that image of bulging eyes was too much. The surgeon studied his watch and although I couldn’t hear what he said, it was clear he was making some official pronouncement to his colleagues; one of them checked his own watch and made a note. The surgeon was followed by two men in another boat, one of them wearing light blue disposable coveralls and something like a shower cap. He looked like a hazmat plague doctor. What I know of crime scene procedure I got from my former job and from watching CSI but that had to be a forensic pathologist or coroner. He carried with him a worn black leather bag, its edges scuffed gray. As he crawled out of the boat, wellies squelching in the shallow water, I was taken aback to realize he was someone I recognized. I guess it’s true you get to know everyone in a village, but I had not known his profession when I’d seen him in the Bull the year before on the odd evening out with Will. Probably a good thing, since there is a huge ick factor attached to that job that doesn’t allow for small talk. You can’t ask them how their day was because you don’t want to know.

  He began murmuring into a small recorder and a few phrases drifted toward me on the breeze. Milo, engaged now with writing in his notebook, showed no sign of wanting me to leave or even of remembering my existence, so I openly eavesdropped. By now they’d begun putting up a cordon of sorts—they had to improvise with a tarp draped over the tree branches as the tent-like structure the occasion called for wouldn’t hold on a riverbank. Words like “rigor” and “hemorrhages” floated back to me over the top of the screen, and finally “bring her in for an autopsy.” That last word totally creeped me out. Dead was one thing, cut open like a tiger shark was another. Couldn’t they just let it be?

  Now a woman in an ill-fitting gray suit arrived; I guessed she was a plain-clothes detective from her gruff, knuckle-rubbing manner. Milo stepped away to have a word. At one point he gestured back with a nod to where I stood, no doubt pointing me out as the one who had found the body. She gave me a mistrustful once-over before returning her gaze to Milo. She hung on his words, her eyes never leaving his face, in a way that went beyond just getting information from him, even though he was a uniformed peon in their world of stripes and badges. Maybe she just thought he needed watching. Maybe she thought he was hot. I know I did.

  Sergeant Milo, if he’d been wearing camo, might have jumped straight out of a Marine recruiting poster. Before the sight of Anna’s body had wiped the smile off his face, I’d seen a flash of pearly teeth and brilliant blue eyes, and he’d revealed a bristly brown crewcut when he lifted his hat to smooth back his hair. Once he saw the body, that manly jaw had clamped shut, the searching gaze had narrowed to a glare, and the hat with its checkerboard band had settled low over his brow. The glare wasn’t necessarily aimed at me, but seemed to be more a sort of free-floating distrust at the novelty of the situation. He began scanning the river as if expecting to see a pirate ship sail by. It was then I noticed that while his uniform might be crisp and his shoes shiny there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked haggard beneath the professional gloss. I thought he might have pulled some kind of all-nighter stakeout.

  Eventually he ambled back over to where I waited at the sidelines. Uniforms were by now blocking the path at either end to passersby; I stood obediently behind a ribbon of crime scene tape. Milo sighed.

  “She’s in bad shape,” he told me, pulling the notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket with a sigh.

  “I know. Cellulite.”

  “I mean she’s dead.”

  Realizing I might have sounded flippant—a habit when I’m nervous—I arranged my features into a suitable grimace of concern.

  “You know her?” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Ma’am?”

  Ah. Well. As much as I was tempted to deny ever having met her, that wasn’t an option, for Anna lived—had lived—in the terraced house right next to mine. Even in Surrey you can’t pretend not to know that near a neighbor. Especially if she’s in your book club. Correction: had been in your book club, before it dissolved in bitter tears and shouted accusations over Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies. The members of the Weycombe Court Book Club had stormed home, leaving behind their trays of canapés, carefully decorated with sprigs of parsley, but taking with them their half-empty bottles of good French wine.

  “Sort of.”

  He crossed his arms. All the time in the world for me to explain, sort of. Every movement made him jangle and creak from all the stuff he had hanging from his belt. It reminded me I needed to call the plumber, the last guy I’d seen similarly accessorized.

  “She liked Eat Pray Love. Thought it was life-changing. She sells houses. Sold houses. She sold us our house. Her husband is sort of an invalid—he caught some virus or other working for a development outfit in Africa. She has a son—stepson.” (Insert a slight pause here, for Jason was a problem child, a bad and lingering odor in the staged perfection of the Monroe household.) “She used to do some sort of volunteer work helping a local MP get re-elected, but she quit. Said they were all liars, like she didn’t know that going in.”

  “What’s eat pray love? A restaurant?”

  “It’s a book,” I told him. “We read it for book club.” Unconsciously, I began speaking very slowly, using hand gestures to mime a person holding an open book and turning the pages, as if talking to someone with a less-than-perfect grasp of English. Then I reminded myself that Eat Pray Love was hardly Shakespearian. I started to summarize the plot for him but stopped at Italy as his eyes drifted impatiently over my shoulder in the direction of Anna’s body. He’d just have to Netflix it.

  I could hear the whoop-whoop! of sirens as more responders squeezed their way down Church Street and inched toward Cobbetts Hill, no doubt having to wait at this morning rush hour for eastbound drivers on their mobiles to get out of the way. Priorities get very skewed in the Stockbroker Belt as people claw to the top of their chosen anthill.

  I sent up a small plea (Do not let him ask about Jason right now—too soon) and turned my attention back to Milo, warrant number 4992S8. He wore no shoulder identification and he’d barely flashed his card along with that gleaming smile but I have an eidetic memory that I have found useful for nothing much apart from passing exams and memorizing lines of plays.

  “You say she has a stepson. Where is he?”

  “I don’t really know. She and I weren’t that close.”

  So far, so true. Lat
ely I’d only seen Anna to speak to as we stood by our respective recycling bins at seven a.m. on rubbish collection day, trying not to count the empty bottles of wine or comment on the number of yogurt containers. Until the book club went off like a bomb, she and I had had lunch with the same group of women every few weeks. We’d sailed together on the Misty, rented yearly by our homeowners’ association in a forced show of goodwill that thus far had not resulted in any deaths by drowning, deliberate or otherwise. For Weycombe, this counted as an intensely close relationship but I didn’t think Milo would understand the finely graded system used to judge these things. I’m not sure I understand it myself. I shook my head in frustration, for truly I wanted to help direct his inquiries in every way I could.

  “She wasn’t around a lot,” I added. “Her job. You know.”

  “You’re American?” he asked. Perhaps to him that was a logical springboard to the reasons Anna and I weren’t close. Probably it was. After ten years in the UK I was used to people expecting me to chew gum and champion the war in Iraq.

  I nodded. “She worked outside the home, you see, and I work inside the home.”

  Well, that right there was a stretch, and I was glad I wasn’t hooked up to a polygraph just then. Okay, sure, I worked, if you can call it work “punching up” my CV and making the occasional fitful attempt to get a job after having been made redundant nine months before. That and reading blogs about stay-at-home moms, clearly far better people than I, who had established cottage industries at their kitchen tables and within weeks were cashing checks for millions of pounds by making documentary films or embroidering baby clothes to sell on Etsy or blogging about their trendy neighborhoods or inventing things they’d crowd-sourced on Kickstarter. I also watched videos about, for example, how to make a hair dryer diffuser from chicken wire. In nine months I could have produced a baby, an irony not lost on me. Instead I’d produced nothing of interest but some disjointed notes for a novel I kept trying to write.