Page 68 of Pressure Head
The Harpenden job ended up taking longer than expected—twenty years of limescale needed to be chipped off before I could even get at the taps. The water round here’s so bloody hard it practically comes out the taps in lumps. It wasn’t so much plumbing as open-cast mining. By the time I’d finished, I was hungry enough to eat a pit pony, but I was running too late to stop for lunch, so I grabbed a cheese roll from the baker’s in Vaughn Road and ate it on the way to the next job. Not great for the digestion, maybe, but at least keeping busy was keeping my mind off—well, off stuff I’d rather not be thinking about.
Later that afternoon, just as the sky was starting to get dark, I passed through Brock’s Hollow. I’d been thinking about popping in on Pip—after all, if she’d been cut up about Robin getting taken in for questioning, how much more upset would she be about Merry’s death? She was a churchwarden; she had to have known him pretty well.
This time, the lights were on in Village Properties, I noted as I parked the van in the lay-by next to the chippy. They were also on in the WI shop, and the old battle-axe in there glared through the window at me as I went into the estate agents. I made a mental note never to go in that shop in case she stabbed me with her knitting needles for fraternising with perjurers.
Robin gave a big, welcoming smile as I walked in the door—then he realised it was me and stopped bothering. “If you’re here to ask more questions, I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to leave,” he said, with a hint of steel in his tired eyes that didn’t make him any less attractive.
“Nah—reckon you’ve had enough of that in the last few days, right? I’m just here to say hi to Pip,” I assured him, turning to her corner. “Bloody hell!”
She had a bruise on her cheek. “Did that bastard hit you?” I demanded, striding over to her desk. “Pip, love, you’ve got to call the police. You can’t let him treat you like this.”
“It’s all right,” Robin said from right behind my left ear. “Persephone is with me now. He won’t hurt her again.”
Pip smiled shyly as I looked from one to the other of them, and she nodded.
“I’ve left Samantha. She can keep the house. I doubt she’ll even notice I’m gone,” Robin added with a touch of bitterness.
“Yeah, you’ve got that place down by the river,” I said without thinking.
They both stared at me.
“Uh, sorry. Phil,” I explained with a shrug. They seemed to get the drift. “So . . .” I pursed my lips. “That night Melanie died, when you were supposed to be working late—might I be right in thinking you were with Pip? Sorry, Persephone,” I corrected myself.
She blushed. So did he. “You might,” he conceded.
No wonder she’d been sure he hadn’t done it. He’d been way too busy doingherat the time, ’scuse my French.
“So you’ve got a brand-new alibi, then?”
His turn to shrug. “If it’s needed.” He didn’t sound all that bothered, but I wasn’t sure why.
Then it hit me. “You think the Rev’s suicide means he did it?”
He moved pointedly around me to put his arm round Pip, who wasn’t smiling anymore. “It does seem fairly obvious,” he said.
Poor Merry. Then again, if he’d really killed Melanie . . . Was that it? Had he killed himself out of guilt—nothing to do with his secret past? At least, not directly.
I didn’t know what to think. I said my good-byes, and then, working on the basis that thinking’s a lot easier on a full stomach, I nipped into the little Tesco’s down the road for a Mars Bar. I got a bit distracted by the two-for-one offers and was just debating whether to get a pack of chocolate éclairs as well to see me through till teatime, when a hand touched my arm.
“Hello—it’s Tom, isn’t it?” It was the friendly old lady from the church. From the way she was smiling serenely, I guessed the news about the Rev hadn’t reached her yet.
“Edie!” I said with a smile that probably wasn’t nearly as serene as hers. “How are you?”
“Can’t complain, dear, not at my age. One’s glad to be still walking around after so many years! Have you met Judith?”
The woman next to Edie seemed vaguely familiar. She had a worn-down, nervous face, and somehow managed to look ten years older than Edie while still being clearly thirty years younger.
I frowned at her, realised what I was doing, and tried to look a bit more pleasant. “I think I saw you at church, yesterday? Sitting next to Pip Cox?”
A spark of recognition flickered and died in her eyes. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Judith is our parish administrator, although she’s taking a little break at the moment,” Edie said.
The little wheels whirred and clicked, and I remembered. She must be Mrs. Reece, the one who’d been ill, and who Melanie had filled in for. I wondered what the illness had been. “Lovely to meet you,” I said, offering her a hand.
She hesitated but grasped it briefly, her ice-cold fingers bony and dry.
“Must be a lot of work, that,” I said, more to put her at her ease than anything else.
