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  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I replied, opening my car door and tossing my bag onto the passenger seat. I straightened. She folded her arms and raised both eyebrows. ‘Doug is covering it,’ I said. ‘I’m quite annoyed about it, actually, but you know how he is.’ This was true. I was annoyed that I was no longer Chief Reporter the minute anything of interest occurred. It didn’t happen often but when it did I couldn’t help wondering whether I should defect to the Leicester Mercury.

  ‘But won’t he want the Village Correspondent’s angle . . . ?’ Miss Crabbe trailed off, crestfallen.

  I got into the car – rude of me while she was still talking, but I was in a hurry. I wound down the window before I slammed the door. ‘I’m sort of more or less doing that,’ I said out of the window. I started the engine. Then I added, ‘Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed vehemently. ‘Terrible. Absolutely awful. In their own home. I do hope they catch him. That poor girl.’

  Oakham Police Station was once a pre-fabricated hut with a felt roof and a small car park behind it. Crime has never been big round here. Plastic letters above the doorway used to read PUBLIC ENTRANCE, although for several years the sign was intermittently incomplete. Local lads were in the habit of climbing up under the cover of darkness and removing the L.

  Later, we got a proper red-brick police station, just like a grown-up town.

  The car park was full and cars were lining both sides of Station Road. Doug and I had walked round from the office. As he lumbered his way past two journalists talking to each other on the steps, one of them murmured to the other, ‘Douglas Hartley, edits the local comic.’ I wondered what that made me, trotting in his wake; his glamorous sidekick, perhaps.

  Inside, the small lobby was full of waiting journalists. The two closest to the door were giggling to each other. ‘Plastic ferns,’ one was saying, gesturing towards the fake foliage in the red-brick border that rings the lobby. ‘Plastic ivy, plastic yucca, for God’s sake.’

  WPC Alexander was standing behind the wooden reception counter.

  Doug went up to the counter and leant his elbows on it. ‘I’ll ’ave half a cider, Carol,’ he said to the WPC.

  ‘So will I an’ all,’ she muttered.

  Inspector John Collins arrived. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, would you like to come up?’

  John normally held his Tuesday morning press call in his office, as his audience usually consisted of Doug, me, three black coffees and a packet of chocolate digestives. With over thirty journalists to accommodate, we were now moved to the officers’ recreation room, where rows of chairs had been set out and the pool table pushed up against the wall. When we were all seated, John introduced the fat super in charge of the investigation.

  Sixty police officers had been drafted into the county to assist in the search for Gemma Cowper. (The fat super referred to her throughout as ‘young Gemma’.) East Midlands Water had donated sonar equipment to help search local beauty spot Rutland Water. RAF divers were expected to join in. Special caterers would be hired to feed the various personnel involved. Many local people had volunteered their help. The response from the public had been overwhelming.

  At this, one of the nationals called out, ‘What makes you think she’s still in the area?’ and another replied, ‘Shut up ’til he’s finished.’

  The search would of course be extended nationwide. The longer it went on, the more concerned they were becoming for young Gemma’s safety.

  Most of us had our heads down while we were making notes. We raised them to look at him when he got to the interesting bit.

  There had been a sighting in the area of a young man acting suspiciously the day before the murders were presumed to have taken place. He was described as white, early to mid thirties, with black curly hair, scruffily dressed but with red baggy trousers made of a loose fabric. A photofit would be available later in the day. They were most anxious to trace him in order to eliminate him from their inquiries.

  There was also another as yet unconfirmed sighting of someone who might or might not be the same man driving an extremely dilapidated car, make unknown, with a girl answering Gemma’s description in the passenger seat.

  A thicket of arms was raised at the question and answer session but the response to all queries was more or less the same. It was too early to speculate. Wrapping up, the fat super informed us that he would now hand us over to Inspector John Collins to continue with other local crime. There was a rising hubbub as everyone except Doug and me scrambled to their feet. Those who had seated themselves at the back rushed melodramatically for the door.

  ‘Do you want me to get this?’ I asked Doug.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you get back. I want to try and get John on his own, see if I can get anything.’

  I was standing on the kerb of Station Road, waiting for cars to pass before I could cross.

  ‘Alison! Hi!’ From the tone of voice, you might have thought I was being greeted by an old boyfriend from years back, one who had never quite got over me. I turned.

  David Poe was standing at the top of the police station steps and waving down at me. He gambolled towards me with that loose-legged, casual motion that very confident people use when going down steps – all four limbs swinging. It always makes me hope they will trip and fall flat on their faces. Other journos glanced at him, then at me. I wondered how he knew my name.

  ‘Hi!’ he repeated, with boundless enthusiasm. I pretended I couldn’t remember who he was. ‘David Poe,’ he said. ‘Stringer. We met last week in the court session.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What have they sent you for? I would have thought all the nationals would have sent their crime boys.’ I said this in loud, ringingly dismissive tones, in the hope that one or two of the passing big shots might overhear.

  ‘They sent me anyway, seeing as I’m familiar with the local area.’

  So now he was an expert. He had probably looked through a few back copies of the Record to find out my name. Thanks to his previous visit, he would be able to stand in the pub with the other guys and say things like, ‘Independence was taken very seriously round here, you know’ and ‘The thing about this area is . . .’

  And I was supposed to help him out. I was going to be his source for those all-important insider titbits that might pull his story forward from page eleven to page five – his bit of local colour.

  You can get stuffed, pal, I thought venomously. If I’d wanted to hang out with jerks like you I’d have moved to London years ago.

  The Big Boys had all leapt into their cars and were screeching off to drive back to hotels and guest houses mostly ten minutes’ walk away. David Poe followed me as I walked up Church Street.

  ‘Whereas actually,’ he was saying, ‘I’m completely ignorant.’

  Honesty is just one more technique as far as some people are concerned. I didn’t reply.

  ‘And – this won’t really surprise you – I need your help.’

  ‘There isn’t anything you can’t work out on your own,’ I said, walking briskly.

  He trotted next to me. ‘You could show me round, if you have time that is . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t have time. I work for a living. This is not the only story happening round here just because it’s the only one you’re interested in.’

  ‘You could give me a few pointers . . .’

  ‘If I have any leads I’ll be following them up myself.’

  ‘I could shadow you.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. Forget it.’

  We walked along in silence for a while. I was beginning to feel less harsh than I sounded. At least he had come straight to the point – at least he hadn’t pretended that he wanted to take me out to dinner.

  ‘Dinner?’ he said.

  I turned to face him. ‘Get your notebook out,’ I said. He looked at me, then he stuck his hand in the pocket of his over-sized jacket and pulled out a hand-held tape recorder. He held it up in his hand. ‘If you want a nice walk,’ I said, ‘go
up to Rutland Water, it’s a big puddle on the way to Stamford. They have watersports and a Butterfly Centre. If you want decent fish ’n’ chips you have several options but I can recommend Mill Street. Nearest cinema is Melton Mowbray, ten miles away. Try a pork pie while you’re at it. Nearest large hospital is Leicester, twenty miles away, so try not to stub your toe.’ I leant forward towards the tape recorder. ‘Now sod off.’

  I turned sharply down Church Passage.

  I couldn’t resist glancing back at him. He was looking at me, and smiling.

  Horseshoes are considered to be a symbol of good luck worldwide. In Russia, they put one by the door. In the States, all over Europe and, I understand, some parts of Syria, they are also associated with good fortune. In America, most people hang them in a downward position. It is only in funny old Britain that we think we have to place them upwards, otherwise the luck will run out.

  Except in Rutland, of course. In Rutland, we hang them downwards. Most people round here would think this is terribly quirky and English – their hair would stand on end if you told them it actually makes us more like Europe.

  I don’t believe in luck, but there is a horseshoe nailed to the front door of my cottage which dates back to the nineteenth century. It is hung the Rutland way, pointing downwards, and every time I notice it I think, nobody can spend their life just waiting for something nice to happen to them. We all have to shape our own destinies.

  I believe in electricity – and I believed the quotation which an Uppingham electrician had pushed through my door while I was out that Tuesday. The whole cottage needed re-wiring. It was going to cost me over two thousand pounds.

  I had been putting off the re-wiring for years. It needed doing as soon as I moved in – I still only have one power point in each room with cracked plastic surrounds which are almost falling off the walls. It’s amazing I haven’t electrocuted myself before now. I had been planning to get it done straight away – I can’t decorate properly until I do – but it cost me a fortune to get the stairs put in. When I moved in, you reached the two tiny rooms upstairs by a wooden ladder. I sleep on a futon because there is still no way you could get a bed up there.

  I didn’t have two thousand pounds. My mortgage was taking every penny of my measly salary. I had only been able to buy the cottage in the first place with the minimum deposit – and I’d only scraped that together because our gran left us a bit of money and I’d lived at home for five years after school, moonlighting in a pub three nights a week.

  I sat at my kitchen table and held the quote in my lap, pulling faces. I had been there for over three years and it still needed all sorts of renovation. I had got my mortgage on the condition that the remedial works were done, and I was way behind. I was sick of worrying about money.

  I hate people who tap at windows.

  I was sitting glumly at my kitchen table, staring at the electrician’s quote and trying to summon up the energy to make myself a sandwich and a cup of tea. The tapping was not that loud but its source was so unexpected that I jumped anyway.

  Miss Crabbe could have knocked at my door but she probably knew I wouldn’t answer. She must have seen me pulling up outside and thought she would catch me before I ran a bath. When I looked up from the table, I could see her shadowed, angular face at the kitchen window. She was looking right at me and her expression was anxious. It was dark outside.

  It had been a long day. Doug wanted to add another four pages to the newspaper so that we could do special reports on the murder, which was all well and good but it meant we still had to fill the rest – and if we got another front four that meant there was an extra back four as well. We had brought forward every ad in the basket and the subs were going bonkers. Then, mid-afternoon, I had the inspired idea of running the police photofit slap bang in the middle of the front page, right under WHERE IS GEMMA?. Doug disagreed. He said people would want more copy. So we had a big to-do about that and finally settled on running it on page three but still as big as I wanted. I could write surrounding copy. The only problem was, the police were not giving any details about their source. It might or might not be somebody who lived in the village. Left to my own devices I might have been able to track them down but the gits from the nationals had knocked on every door in Nether Bowston over the weekend. Nobody would talk. It was all right for them. As soon as somebody was charged and the whole thing became sub judice, they would disappear back to London. I still had to live round here and do a job of work round here. They were fouling my turf.

  So I was not in the best of moods as I rose from my kitchen chair. Miss Crabbe had disappeared from the window and re-appeared at my door. My front door opens straight onto my sitting room, so when you open it, you feel you have already invited someone in.

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard?’ she said, making her way through to the kitchen. ‘About the man. Sounded like one of those down-and-out types to me. Probably homeless. Do you think he’s still around? I know they are supposed to be searching the barns.’

  ‘I think that’s highly unlikely,’ I said wearily. Miss Crabbe’s first name is Emily but I have never been able to bring myself to call her that. Emily is a little girl’s name. Calling her ‘Miss Crabbe’ would seem too formal, considering how long we have been neighbours. So I call her nothing.

  ‘The police were round here this morning, doing house-to-house. That’s what they call it, isn’t it?’

  God, she’s a pain, I thought. ‘Yes.’

  ‘They couldn’t give me much of a description, though. Dark curly hair. Do you think he had a bit of colour in him and they don’t like to say? Are they allowed to say these days?’

  ‘They are allowed to say. He wasn’t black. They told us. They were supposed to send us a photofit.’ How could I get this tiresome woman out of my house? ‘I don’t think he’s still around. They were talking about seeing him in a car. If he’s abducted Gemma, it’s not very likely, is it?’

  ‘Unless he’s murdered her too and they just haven’t found her yet. God, she could be buried just a few feet from here, within earshot.’ Miss Crabbe had a fertile if illogical sense of imagination.

  I had a bright idea. ‘Are you worried? Do you want me to come and check your doors and windows?’ Twenty minutes at her place, then I could come home and have my bath.

  She hesitated. ‘No, I’m not nervous. But you could come and have an omelette if you like. I was just about to do one for myself. It’s no trouble.’

  Miss Crabbe’s chatter was a high price to pay for supper – but I had had one of her omelettes before and it had been delicious. I was starving.

  The outer shells of our homes may have been similar but from the inside you would not have believed that Miss Crabbe and I inhabited the same architectural space. Our cottages are semis, but hers was renovated in the seventies. Her kitchen had been moved to the back and the rest of the downstairs interior gutted and made open-plan, with a gallery area instead of the front upstairs box room. She had had it all shelved in plywood with a teak finish. Her sitting room was teak as well, with round brass handles on all the cupboard doors.

  And all over the place, there were books; detective books, romances, Ancient Greek history, you name it. A pile of newspapers sat by the settee, so tall it almost reached the top of the arm, and tatty edges hung down where she had taken cuttings and left shreds of paper hanging out. A pair of scissors lay on a grubby, tufted rug with articles strewn around it. I thought that old ladies who lived alone were supposed to be incredibly clean and tidy and dust their vases every day. Not Miss Crabbe. There must have been money behind her somewhere, a small inheritance perhaps. She certainly didn’t live off what we paid her at the Record. The Village Correspondents get tuppence a line.

  She saw me glancing at the detritus. ‘A little research of my own,’ she said over her shoulder as she went into the kitchen.

  I went and leant against the doorpost, watching her while she moved around. Her kitchen was covered in beige tiling. Each tile
was decorated by a tiny fern in the bottom left-hand corner, in a slighter darker shade of beige. It was the kind of tiling which anyone with any taste would take personally: I couldn’t help looking at those tiles and thinking, they’re doing it to get at me.

  For someone who was getting on a bit, Miss Crabbe was surprisingly lithe. She bent down to retrieve a glass mixing bowl from a floor cupboard, then raised her arm to pick a carton of eggs from a high shelf. There was a casualness to her gestures. ‘Two each or three?’ she muttered to herself, fingering the eggs. ‘Oh, let’s go wild and have three.’

  ‘Do you want me to take a look at your windows?’ I asked, remembering how I had wangled my free omelette.

  ‘I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking,’ Miss Crabbe replied, which seemed to settle the matter. There was a short silence while she cracked the eggs.

  ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘You can get two place-mats from the dresser and put them on the dining table, then you can sit yourself down. This won’t take a minute. I want to talk to you about something.’

  My fork was scraping the last small wash of melted butter from my plate, when Miss Crabbe brought up what was on her mind. ‘Do you think it would be tasteless to write about a murder in this village, now that one has really happened?’

  ‘You mean for the newspaper?’ I asked, kissing the brown cotton serviette she had laid out for me.

  She looked irritated. ‘No, of course not. That’s just journalism. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my book.’

  Miss Crabbe, it emerged, was writing a book. Actually, she was writing a novel. She was over halfway through it already. It was set in Nether Bowston, and it was about a snail farmer with a secret in his past who was found dead one summer’s afternoon with his livestock crawling all over him.

  ‘Do you know, during the war, our housekeeper’s father was killed by beetles?’ Miss Crabbe added.

  I judged that no response was required.