Free A Dirty Death by Rebecca Tope Page A

blouse and bright red shorts, which struck him as an outfit unsuitable for farmwork. She had wide bony shoulders and slim hips, giving her the silhouette of a young man. She held a cigarette between her fingers and a towel was wrapped round her head.
    ‘Sorry. I was washing my hair,’ she said. ‘Come in.’
    She took him into a living room that looked asif it had just been ransacked by a very determined burglar. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she said carelessly, obviously not sorry at all. They sat together on a sofa, forcing Den to twist at an awkward angle in order to watch her face as she answered his questions. She answered readily in a husky voice. She had lived in this house for twenty-five years. She and her husband had moved here from Bristol and produced three children, the youngest of whom had died in an accident when she was five. The husband had left her not long after and then died of cancer. (‘Served him right!’ she laughed.) The surviving children were now in their twenties and living in Wales and Spain respectively. Sylvia herself made a precarious living by breeding Angora goats – which were a real pain, breaking out all the time and never doing what you wanted them to – as well as keeping fifty free-range hens of various kinds, and teaching a few hours a week in the evenings. When asked for more detail, she explained that she currently ran classes in rug-making, plant propagation and recovering from divorce. ‘Funny mixture, I know – but I reckon to turn my hand to almost anything. Most people are more ignorant than me,’ she said, ‘though I say so myself.’ She had got back from Corfu the evening before last, landing at Gatwick and driving herself home. ‘Bloody airport car park – cost nearly as much asthe flight,’ she grumbled. She had been fast asleep, dead to the world, until at least ten the previous morning, and no, she couldn’t prove it. No, there couldn’t possibly be any connection between the two deaths. She was still getting over the news about Guy – it had been a complete shock when Miranda phoned her yesterday. She had liked the Grimsdales very much. She always stopped for a chat on the rare occasions they came into the village. ‘Isaac was two sandwiches short of a picnic,’ she said, ‘if you know what I mean.’ Asked for elaboration, she explained that the older brother had been very dependent on Amos, although perfectly able to do outside work and drive a tractor. ‘It’s lucky it wasn’t the other way around,’ she said. ‘He’d never have coped on his own.’ As for Guy, well, she’d liked him. Under his bad-tempered and bullying veneer he had been an intelligent and trustworthy man. It was true that he’d been awful to Sam, and sometimes much too sharp with young Roddy, but she’d met worse. Miranda seemed to cope with him, which was the main thing.
    She visited Redstone all the time. She and Miranda were best friends. They had coffee together at least once a week, and had minded each other’s children and animals over the years – Miranda’s children and Sylvia’s animals. They had met the first week the Beardons had arrivedat Redstone, in the shop. They’d just clicked instantly. They made each other laugh.
    ‘Oh, one thing,’ she said as he was leaving, ‘see if you can catch Phoebe Winnicombe. She’ll tell you plenty about the Grimsdales.’
    But Phoebe and her daughter Elvira had not been there when he knocked on the door of the stone cottage overlooking the churchyard, so instead he had made his way to the Rickworths’, an expensive, modern house on a slope, with a small paved garden. He was expecting to be similarly disappointed on a weekday morning, but surprisingly both Tim and Sarah had been at home. Tim, not much older than Den, opened the door and smilingly invited him into the main room, where Sarah sat in front of a computer with headphones over her ears and a microphone attached. She was clearly interrupted by Den’s