Free Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder by Ann Cleeves Page B

father want?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Laurie said angrily. ‘He said he was too busy to talk to me.’
    ‘So?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t he always too busy to talk to us?’
    ‘He talked to Steve,’ Laurie said, with a sudden flash of jealousy. ‘He offered Steve a job.’
    ‘What sort of job?’ she demanded.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Laurie was sulky, because mention of Steve would always provoke her to a reaction. ‘He paid Steve fifty pounds.’
    ‘Why didn’t Steve tell me?’
    ‘He might be your favourite,’ Laurie said, aware that he was being childish again, but unable to help himself. ‘He might be your favourite but he doesn’t tell you everything.’
    She seemed about to say something, but then they heard children’s voices outside. They had been playing in the sandpit in the park and they had sand in their shoes, in their pockets, in their hair. They ran in demanding food and their mother’s attention. They wanted to tell her all about it. Heather followed them, as excited as they were. She had heard in the town that Eleanor Masefield was dead. She had been pecked to death, people were saying, by one of the big hawks from Puddleworth.
    ‘Is it true?’ she asked her mother. ‘What do you know about it?’
    Nan Oliver shook her head.
    ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she said.
    The police did not arrive to look for Frank Oliver until later. The two younger children were in bed. The police searched the rest of the house then insisted that Michael and Carol should be woken up so they could search their bedroom.
    ‘What’s he done?’ Nan Oliver demanded, facing the police officers, her legs braced as they had been when she stood ironing. ‘ He’s never been in trouble with the police. He’s a bastard but he’s always stayed within the law. I don’t want those children woken.’
    ‘We need to talk to him,’ they said, polite, sympathetic, but becoming impatient.
    ‘He’s not here,’ she shouted. ‘What do you want to talk to him about?’
    ‘Eleanor Masefield was murdered,’ they said. ‘We think he may have information about her death.’
    ‘Not murdered,’ she said quietly. ‘They said in Sarne it was an accident. With the birds.’
    She had no stomach then for the fight and let them go upstairs to search the children’s bedroom. When they came down they would not leave. They sat on a sofa in the sitting room and stared at her. Dazed, Laurie and Heather watched them question their mother, and when one said: ‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ Heather got up to make it.
    There were two of them, a man and a woman in civilian clothes. They had introduced themselves as they came in but Laurie never saw them again and did not remember their names.
    ‘Divorced are you?’ the policewoman asked.
    ‘Separated,’ said Nan Oliver.
    ‘When did you last see your husband?’
    ‘When I left him four years ago.’
    ‘Did you know he was in Sarne?’
    ‘Not until this afternoon. Laurence, my son, saw him at Gorse Hill and told me.’
    ‘But you were in Gorse Hill this afternoon. Didn’t you see him?’
    ‘No,’ she said, trying to keep her temper. ‘I was in the kitchen all afternoon. I was busy. Didn’t they tell you that?’
    ‘When did you last have any communication with your husband?’ the man asked.
    ‘I’ve told you. Four years ago.’
    ‘You haven’t spoken to him on the telephone or written to him since that time?’
    ‘I’ve written to him asking for maintenance,’ she said bitterly. ‘But I never had any reply.’
    ‘You didn’t tell him about a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on the hill above the hotel?’
    She looked at the policeman as if he were mentally defective.
    ‘I left him because of his bloody birds,’ she said. ‘What would I want to do that for?’
    They seemed at last to believe her. The policeman turned to Laurie.
    ‘Had you arranged to meet your father this afternoon?’
    ‘No,’ Laurie said.
    ‘But you knew he would be at Gorse