The body beneath the wil.., p.1
The Body Beneath the Willows, page 1
The Body Beneath the Willows
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One January 2020
Chapter Two
Chapter Three The next day
Chapter Four Six months later
Wednesday
Chapter Five
Chapter Six Thursday
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven Saturday
Chapter Twelve Sunday
Chapter Thirteen Monday
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty Earlier that afternoon
Chapter Twenty-one Friday
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three Sunday
Chapter Twenty-four Monday
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Epilogue
Afterword
Canelo Crime
About the Author
Also by Nick Louth
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
For Louise, as always
Chapter One
January 2020
Angela Blanchard was surprised to see her husband’s car backing up the drive towards the house at four o’clock in the afternoon, while it was still light. The big white Volvo, sporting the distinctive tangled blue and green arrows logo of his employer, Aqua Western Ltd, rolled right up to the garage door. She put the kettle on. Normally he wouldn’t be home until five, except on a Friday. But today was Tuesday. Usually she would hear his cheerful whistling as he approached the door. The kicking off of the work boots in the porch, if he’d been on site, greeting the cat which rolled over on her back to have her tummy rubbed. And, at the end of every week, the banging out of the car mats against the wall, to get the mud off. It was a fixed routine.
But today he came straight in wearing his boots, dumped his briefcase on the hall table, ignored Felix, who was miaowing by the door, and clumped straight upstairs without saying hello. Most unlike him. She followed him, calling from the foot of the stairs.
‘Are you all right, Ozzy?’ she called. Lumps of mud flecked the stair carpet. Angela made allowances. She was an understanding woman. He must be stressed about something.
There were mumbled replies. He was fine, apparently. Clearly not true, but no doubt he’d tell her in his own time. As she waited, the rising roar of the electric kettle seemed to mark her husband’s blood pressure. Ozzy was already bustling from his home office with a couple of big file folders and his laptop. She squeezed to one side on the stairs as he thundered down, arms loaded.
‘Do you want a cuppa?’ she called after him.
‘Fine for the moment, thanks.’ He disappeared out to the garage for a few minutes. Angela heard the sound of the car boot slamming, and then he hurried back inside.
‘Ozzy, what’s the matter? Do you have to go back to work?’
‘There’s a bit of a flap on. A project crisis.’
She assumed that meant yes. ‘The Winchester to Havant phase two again?’ She was proud to be able to hold up her side of abstruse water engineering conversations, learning the names and techniques, taking an interest. Accommodating the technicalities. One time she had gone to lunch with Jill, and given her a five-minute overview of the ongoing problems with the narrow-bore deep reach pump, whose failure to reach technical spec on overcast days had been holding up WinHav II, as it was known. Jill, who worked part-time with Angela at the local pharmacy, was impressed but baffled. Angela had her explanation. ‘It’s my job to help him get stuff of his chest.’ She explained that it was one of the reasons for the success of their twenty-seven-year marriage. To listen and pretend to understand.
Ozzy, now back upstairs, asked: ‘Do you know where my old Thames Water jacket is? I thought it was in the wardrobe in the spare bedroom.’
‘That old blue one? That’s in the under-bed storage in the spare room. I was thinking of chucking it out. It’s not waterproof anymore, is it?’
‘It’s good enough.’ He thundered back up the stairs, and she could hear the sounds of activity.
‘Ozzy. Why do you need that old coat now?
There was a few seconds’ silence. ‘I said I’d lend it to a friend.’
Angela was quite baffled by that. What kind of friend would need an old coat?
‘Ozzy?’ There was no reply this time, so she returned to making the tea. There was more activity up and down the stairs, a couple of cardboard boxes carried out. Something else moved from the garage she couldn’t quite see. A flash of orange. The old tent? That was all she could think of. The Volvo boot went again. She stood on tiptoe to peer out of the kitchen window. Ozzy was moving more stuff out of the garage. In one hand he had his guitar case, and in the other the old leather briefcase that he’d used in his first job when they got married, half their lives ago. He stowed them in the back of the Volvo, and slammed the boot down again.
Now she had moved from baffled to alarmed. If he had to go back to work what did he need to take the guitar for? In all the years she had known him, he had never had to rush back in to work. That was for the maintenance people, dealing with floods and so on, But he was a new-projects manager. Half of it was desk work. In piddle management, as he liked to say. New sewers, overflow pipes. Lots of concrete. In all his long years as a water engineer, his projects had been carefully planned, the schedules laid out over many months. There was none of this seat of the pants stuff that she was seeing now. She poured boiling water from the kettle onto a teabag in the teapot, and gave it a quick stir before putting the lid back on. While it brewed, she headed out to the front door and opened it.
‘Ozzy? What’s going on?’
‘A bit of an emergency,’ he said, staring down at the phone in his hand. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He gave her a perfunctory smile. He’d always had a lovely smile. Back in the day, when they’d met in Goa, India, she’d been quite taken by the lean, tanned man who had nice teeth, brown eyes and lovely long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He still had the nice eyes and good teeth, but only some grey fuzz for hair.
‘What about your tea? You’ve got time for a gulp or two surely?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Why are you taking the guitar?’
He stared at her, dumbfounded.
‘I saw you carrying it out from the garage.’
He stared around the driveway, as if there were answers to be found there. ‘Tell you later. I’ll be back by six.’
As the car slid onto the suburban road, it left an ominous silence behind in the house. In that emptiness grew pain. Through all their quarter of a century of life together, from the moment she and Ozzy had settled down, Angela had thought she could see where they were heading. A long, straight, predictable pipe, where each section fitted snugly onto the one before, heading to the horizon, their life together safely channelled within. All thanks to his good job, two holidays a year, and a decent pension at the end of it, now just four years away if he took the early retirement option. She’d thought she was happy.
Angela was an accommodating woman, and a little old-fashioned, but she wasn’t a fool. He was gone. He’d said he would be back by six. But actions speak louder than words. The tent, the guitar, the paperwork. It appeared to her he was leaving for good.
* * *
He’d been gone less than five minutes when the landline rang. She recognised the voice. Kelvin Arrowsmith, regional financial controller at Aqua, she thought. He didn’t introduce himself, but simply asked to speak to Ozzy. She told him that he had just gone back into work. ‘The Aqua site office, or regional HQ?’ he asked.
‘He didn’t say. Is that Kelvin?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Kelvin, honestly, he did seem in a bit of a flap.’
There was silence at the other end, then Kelvin said, ‘I can’t reach him on the mobile. When he calls in, ask him to ring me urgently. However late. Thank you, Angela.’
There was the briefest gap between the end of that sentence and Kelvin hanging up, not anywhere near enough for the many questions that Angela wanted to ask. But in that gap she distinctly heard the sound of Kelvin cursing under his breath.
Chapter Two
Ozzy Blanchard soon ran into heavy rain and winter darkness as he left Hemel Hempstead. The Hertfordshire town, just north-west of London, had been his home for two decades. No longer. The die was cast. He wasn’t going back. His destination was familiar, but this time the journey was urgent. The next hour would be crucial. Weeks ago he’d sketched out a plan B for this moment. Plan B wasn’t detailed, because he’d never expected to need it. Plan A should have worked.
He hadn’t expected to be this scared. The first part of plan B was that he should take a different route from usual. Minor roads, country lanes. Break the routine. His prep hadn’t been great. Everything should have been packed and ready. Was he not a professional project manager? But to make the plan in all its detail would have meant considering the worst-case scenario. Ideally he should have taken his own car, not the company one. But this one had more space and was fuelled up
As he drove he cursed the name, again and again. Just one man had put him in this predicament. A greedy, smug bastard. And now his life was at risk.
It was gone five when Blanchard sat impatiently at a set of roadworks traffic lights, a long queue of rain-smeared tail lights visible through the sweeping wipers. A huge four-wheel-drive, its lights on full beam, sat right on his tail, gunning the engine impatiently. He could hear the thump of music, too. It brought his enemies to mind and made him nervous. He reset the satnav, and turned off right on a minor rural road. As the Volvo splashed through the puddles, Ozzy Blanchard tried to think. Every change of route would cost him time, but unless they had discovered everything he would still be safe. Or should be. They couldn’t have discovered everything, could they? Not yet. Once he arrived at that familiar village, got her into the car and away, they would be safe. Their new life could begin.
He rang her on the hands-free, and after six rings it went to the message. He whispered, as if being overheard: ‘It’s me, pick up if you can.’
* * *
An hour later, Blanchard was edging the big Volvo down the cramped, puddled lane of Victorian cottages. Familiar, welcoming, the soft warm glow of lights from within, families sitting down to an evening meal, a night in front of the TV. Reassuring. He edged up outside the house, flecks of rain drifting through the beams of the headlamps. The kitchen light was on, and one upstairs behind curtains. He rang her again, and again left a message. ‘Come on. It’s me. I’m here.’
Suddenly headlamps flicked on from a big dark vehicle parked further down the lane, and an engine roared. The door of the cottage opened, and a man he recognised leapt out, running down the garden path towards him.
It was a trap.
Blanchard jammed his vehicle into reverse, gunned the engine and leaning over his shoulder guided the Volvo backwards at high speed up the narrow lane. The big car, a BMW X5, followed him, almost nose to nose. The first thirty yards were fine, then he sideswiped a parked car’s wing mirror. At the village green, he reversed straight onto the grass, intending to turn out on to the main road. The BMW blocked his forward route, so Blanchard continued to reverse, right over the steps of the war memorial, back down to the footpath, then turned sharp right, smashing down the memorial green rose bushes and into the lane which led down to the dual carriageway. He sped past the Anvil Arms at sixty, overtook a van on a blind corner, then headed for the slip road. The big BMW was right behind him. His heart was hammering, and he was taking risks he had never taken before. But he couldn’t let them catch him.
As he approached the dual carriageway he could see arc lights in the distance. Once on the slip road he realised why. There were major roadworks, traffic was stationary, and he was being fed right into the queue. He was still doing over sixty and had one second to make a decision. He flicked the Volvo to the right, crossing the slip road hatch marks. He was headed the wrong way along the dual carriageway exit lane. That sharply curved slip road, designed to slow down exiting traffic, caused his tyres to squeal. He was gambling his life on a single calculation: that this was such a minor turn-off there would be no vehicles coming the other way.
He was right. But everything changed the moment he was on the carriageway. A closing speed of 120 miles an hour to oncoming traffic. A large white van swerved out of the way into the fast lane, horn sounding. Blanchard too pressed his hand to the horn and kept as far to the right as possible, but this was the start of an overpass across the River Wey. There was no hard shoulder, just a one-yard strip to the crash barrier which guarded the drop to the water below. The next two vehicles gave him space as he crested the top of the overpass at sixty, but 300 yards away one articulated truck was overtaking another coming up the incline towards him, and there was literally nowhere to go. The railings ended in 150 yards to be replaced by an embankment and bushes, and he had to get to that spot before the two trucks closed off the gap. Blanchard accelerated, and saw the needle flick to eighty as he squeezed the Volvo to the right, one wheel on the grass and one on the edge of the tarmac. The vehicle seemed to leave the ground almost immediately afterwards, and Blanchard had one last glimpse in the mirror.
He wasn’t being followed any longer.
Chapter Three
The Hampshire Constabulary Range Rover arrived within ten minutes. PC Colin Andrews emerged from the vehicle into the pouring rain, while colleagues from other patrol cars closed off the carriageway. He donned wellingtons and latex gloves and picked up a powerful torch. The beam followed the trail of damage, which included a broken stanchion on a large green road sign, into the undergrowth. No tyre marks on the carriageway, perhaps not surprising in the weather. Still, the exit route was straight, which indicated the vehicle had remained under control. No evidence of last-minute braking.
Very strange. Almost as if this was intentional.
He set off to follow the path of smashed stems and flattened nettles, heading up and over the embankment then down towards the river. He radioed in his findings, then followed the trail of destruction, steadying himself with a hand on some saplings as he began the muddy descent. There, fifty yards further down in the beam of his torch, was the Volvo, on its roof, in the shallows. The tail lights were still on. With only one hand to guide him, the other holding the light, the steep descent through the wrecked bushes and churned earth was treacherous. Finally, he stumbled through the broken branches of a weeping willow and plunged up to his knees in water. The car lay ten yards from the edge of the bank, held above the full depth by the felled boughs of trees. Wading across, his wellies now full of water, he shone his beam in through the crazed windscreen and between the inflated airbags. There was no one visible.
‘Call out if you can,’ he shouted, over the sibilant waters, hissing over the stones. There was no reply. The driver-side door was creased inwards, the window frosted and broken, shards of glass curled outwards. He squatted down in the shallows and shone the torch horizontally. There appeared to be no one in the car. At the limits of what he could do without wading waist-deep into the river, he was relieved to hear the sound of approaching sirens. Back up on the bridge he saw fire appliances, an ambulance and a recovery vehicle, and made his way back to brief them.
‘Any casualties?’ asked the burly fire chief who greeted him.
‘Not that I can see,’ Andrews replied. ‘Wriggled out somehow through the driver-side window. Miraculous, really. Probably a drugged-up joyrider. Who else goes the wrong way up a dual carriageway?’
The next day
DI Helen Kaplan of Hampshire Constabulary rang the doorbell at 14 Wycherley Crescent, Hemel Hempstead. The woman who came to the door was a trim fifty-something with silvery hair. Kaplan introduced herself to Angela Blanchard.
‘Any news on the search?’ Angela asked, showing the detective into the lounge. A long-haired cat was lying splayed out in the middle of a white leatherette settee, leaving the women to sit on the other two components of the three-piece suite.
‘Nothing so far. We think he got out of the car. We traced the signal on his work mobile phone moving for about five minutes afterwards until it ceased. I take it you’ve not had any phone calls?’
‘No. I would have let you know if I had. Why wouldn’t he ring me?’
‘Well, the phone may not have been usable, even though it was giving out a signal,’ Kaplan said. She kept from Mrs Blanchard the news that the phone had been used to call another mobile phone nearby, an unregistered one, in the minutes after the crash. Such news was likely to be an unwelcome addition to the shock of hearing her husband had been in an accident.
