Free Slaughter in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope Page B

thought you knew about dogs.’
    ‘I know about Hepzie. I’m sure she’ll be back any minute now.’
    ‘How long ago was this, did you say?’
    ‘Nearly three hours,’ she admitted.
    ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve no intention of traipsing over hill and dale in the faint hope of finding them. When I was a boy, our dogs could be gone for twenty-four hours at this time of year. Even in those days, it was a worry – younever knew what they’d get up to. Nowadays, they stand a real risk of getting themselves shot. Luckily for you, there don’t seem to be any sheep farms left around this area.’
    ‘There’s one – just over there.’ She pointed towards the back of the house. ‘Mr Angell warned me about it.’
    Phil sighed and tutted again, and Thea fought against the image of herself as an irresponsible teenager. She looked at him closely, analysing him as if for the first time. There was nothing especially remarkable about him; his skin was good, lightly tanned and smooth. The brown hair had a narrow fringe of silver over the ears and temples. His eyes were set deep, blue and thoughtful. Even before the onset of political correctness he would have considered the effects of his words before he spoke. But inevitably he had lost some of the natural human bounce he must once have possessed, thanks to the deadening influence of the police force. He had seen too much, suffered too many traumas and crises and attacks to maintain the kind of smiling resilience that Carl had had. The damage to his back a few months earlier had further weighed him down. Now he thought twice before making any sudden movement. It had added to his air of caution, and made him a more frustrating companion in Thea’s eyes.
    The murder of the previous evening had quickly been transformed from a simple piece of one-on-one aggression to something much more complicated. Phil plainly had a lot he wanted to say about it, but was inhibited by her words on the phone. The diversion of the errant dogs was as annoying to Phil as it was a relief to Thea. She found herself more and more resistant to the thought of discussing Emily and the suspicions that the police were apparently entertaining.
    ‘I’m sorry to ask you this,’ he began stiffly, once the subject of the missing dogs had been brushed aside. ‘But you can’t evade it entirely. Did your sister tell you she’d got lost almost as soon as she left here?’ he asked.
    ‘More or less, yes.’
    ‘But did you know she had a SatNav in the car?’
    ‘Is that the thing she calls a TomTom?’
    He kinked a reproachful eyebrow. ‘You know it is,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, well, it’s all a mystery to me. As it happens, though, I did ask her about it, and how come she’d got lost in spite of it. She said she didn’t like it giving her orders. That’s typical Emily, by the way. It might be that she didn’t know how to work it properly, either. I had to give her directions for getting here.’ A thought struck her. ‘Aha!’ she chirped, holding up a fingerto suggest a sudden enlightenment. ‘I know why she turned right when she left here. I directed her that way when she was coming here – I told her to come through the middle of Lower Slaughter, because I wasn’t sure she’d find this road from the south. So naturally she tried to retrace her steps. Then she must have missed the next right turn into the village, and headed straight for Upper Slaughter. It all makes perfect sense,’ she concluded, with satisfaction.
    Phil had listened closely to this verbal map, one eye closed in concentration. ‘I think I get it,’ he said slowly.
    ‘I can draw it for you if it helps,’ she patronised. ‘It just makes me all the more certain there are perfectly reasonable explanations for everything she said – or didn’t say. She obviously wasn’t hiding anything when she came back last night – she told me the whole story and it all rang quite true.’
    ‘She didn’t tell you she knew the victim,’