Chapter 60: Further Down the Road
As Troy brought the car back straight in the left lane and the narrow road dipped into a shallow valley, Barnaby loosened his fingers' grip on the door. At least no cars were bearing down on them from the opposite direction. All for the best, he thought, taking a deep breath as his heart—slightly racing—slowed again. It's a miracle he hasn't killed us over all these years.
"Sorry, sir," Troy said quietly once more.
"That was just a call back from an old colleague of mine, in London," Barnaby went on, feeling for the buckle of his seat belt, still firmly latched in place. It was a small comfort against the inevitable chaos, sitting in the passenger seat.
Troy looked at him. "London?"
"Eyes on the road."
He turned his gaze back front, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "Right."
"Remember, Troy, it's always a good idea to avoid burning your bridges."
Barnaby heard the younger man sigh as he tapped the indicator again before taking a left turn, leaving the main road another time for the dustier back ways into Midsomer's villages, the land on either side wilder with unkempt fields and overgrown trees, their spindly branches sometimes stretching overhead. "More bricks, sir?"
He nodded. "Don't dismiss them, I find more all the time. But yes, just a follow-up to your school counselor's memory yesterday."
"Oh?"
Another sharp curve turned Barnaby's stomach. He would have done well to have kept hold of his stomach tablets. "Turns out, he's found your Mr. Huhes. In London."
"Where, sir?"
"At university, studying accounting."
Troy snorted quietly, like he was holding in a laugh as he hooked his hand around the steering wheel for another bend in the road. "Looking for a bit of excitement at the weekend, is he?"
"You've done well not jumping to conclusions yet, Troy, even if your suppositions are still far-fetched. Don't muss it up now."
The road sloped upward again, approaching the junction with the road that, in opposite directions, led to Upper and Lower Warden: coasting lower on the path to Upper Warden and rising higher on the way to Lower Warden. "I'm surprised you went through the trouble to ask," Troy muttered, the car finally rolling to a stop at the sign.
"It may be far-fetched," Barnaby said, nodding again, "but I will grant you it's the only lead we have—for the moment." With the turn to the right—venturing down the hill to Upper Warden, it had never made sense—the tires screeched again. "Or maybe ever," he added.
Now the trees mostly gave way to erstwhile bushy shrubs, their familiar shapes transformed into decaying skeletons with the falling of their leaves. What remained were some amalgamation of grey and brown, the the first signs of autumn's death rattle until the next year. Not much left to cushion the blow. Another thing not to worry about, Barnaby reminded himself. How many times had Cully entrusted herself to Troy's driving? Too many times. But, unless he was entirely mistaken (and that was unlikely, with the changes in his daughter and sergeant over the last few days), it might all be a thing of the past. That alone eased the tension beneath his ribs.
The first few cottages marking the approaching the border of Upper Warden rose up behind the thinning shrubs, gravelly drives appearing between them. More trees—even the occasional woody stems of ancient roses dying ahead of the winter—poked their noses through the withered bushes. "Civilization," they all seemed to say. "Safety."
"Unlikely," Barnaby said under his breath. Nowhere in Midsomer was truly safe.
"Did you say something, sir?" Troy asked, leaning forward, trying to catch sight of any sign marking a crossroad.
"Nothing."
The next five or so minutes passed in silence. Troy drove more cautiously than usual, consulting his notebook as they approached each nearly invisible intersection, two or three times stopping to read a sign when it sat too far back from the road to see the name properly from a moving car. Each new corner drew them farther into the wilder undergrowth, cutting them off from anything resembling a road, now hardly more than a faint country lane. The façade of bushes and shrubberies on either side had long since vanished, now just a snarl of bare branches. After three or so turns, Troy peered through the passenger window again, just past Barnaby, like he was searching for a number or a name. "Well, this is it, sir," he said quietly, making a final turn from the ancient country road. "At least I think."
Their car rolled up the rough drive into the newly barren landscape, drifting to a standstill halfway up the path as they approached the lone house at its end. "Yes, Troy," Barnaby murmured, snapping open the buckle of his seat belt, "I usually trust your ability not to lose us on the road, even if not suspects."
The pebbles and gravel scattered across the drive crunched under his feet as Barnaby took his first step out of the car, not waiting for Troy before he closed his own door.
"Sir, that happened, what, once?" his sergeant asked, and Barnaby heard the slam of the driver's door.
"And that is more than enough."
The structure before them didn't remind Barnaby of the quaint cottages and petite houses typical of a Midsomer village. Around the foundation, what remained of the grass for the year grew in sparse patches, and all through it, the little pockmarks of rodents' burrows. The dirt path to the front door sprouted weeds bent over and wilted, and the façade wore faded and chipped paint, long ago white. On either side of the door—dark wood with a brass knob, bearing decades of scratches never repaired—rippled glass was stained with dust and the shutters on the lone window were mostly askew.
"What a shame," Troy said. "Looks it might have been nice once."
Taking another step toward the door, Barnaby nodded; its bones were strong, like a remnant of pride, perhaps even finery. "It does seem so."
"Sir!"
Turning back, he spotted Troy striding off, around to the right side of the house. Following, he just caught up with the younger man approaching the boot of a boxy old car, rather like what a young man in university might be able to afford. Like Cully, he thought, before she started working more and more in London. Mixed with Troy's footprints, tire tracks were dug deep into the earth, the indentations nearly black with the damp. But the dew that so often settled in the morning would confound any thoughts about whether the vehicle had moved since the last proper rain. "Is that the registration number?" he asked, rubbing his his fingertips against the scratched dark blue paint on the bumper. The metal was cool beneath a thin film of the grime, the dirt that builds up over a few weeks of disuse.
Troy dug his notebook from his breast pocket, flipping its cover open and through one page after another. "Yes, sir. And it's the proper make."
"Well, that's a first thing to be going on, isn't it?"
"Right," Troy said quietly, snapping his notebook closed before he tucked it back into his pocket.
His sergeant followed as he took a first few steps toward the front of the car, pausing to peer through the back passenger window. It too was coated with a layer of dust and muck, a thicker grey layer that came away on his fingers as he wiped away a small circle to allow the morning sunlight through. A few blankets lay on the seat—industrial and rough at a guess, probably for covering things rather than for warmth—and just in the shadows in the footwell, the metal shining through the darkness, Barnaby could begin to see the shape of a hammer's head (its handle likely hidden beneath the seat), and beside it the curve of a crowbar. "You see that, Troy?"
Standing aside, Troy had a glance through the dirty window. "Looks like you were right, sir," he said, standing straight again before once more reaching for his pen and notebook.
"About what, this time?"
Flipping through those pages again, he clicked the top of his pen. "We're not dealing with some criminal mastermind." Troy scrawled a few words, no doubt comments about what they had both observed. "Just a lucky bastard."
"Most of them are." Taking a few steps toward the front of the car—its front bumper crinkled on the left corner—Barnaby pressed his hand to the bonnet, feeling for warmth. All he found was the chill of the day. "Engine's ice cold." He wiped a finger across the windscreen, the same layer of muck spread across it.
"Well, not surprising, is it?" Troy asked, snapping his notebook shut at last, folding it and that pen into his right palm. "What with the weather and this early in the morning."
"Oh?"
"If he is a uni student—and if he's about—probably having a lie-in."
"Is that so?"
Troy shrugged. "No point being up and about before noon for them, is there?"
Barnaby sighed, leading the way around the car again, back toward the front of the ramshackle house. "I see Cully never told you about her time studying art history."
"Not much, we used to talk—"
"Regardless, Troy, time to work, not speculate."
He didn't wait for Troy, traipsing back to the front of the house as his sergeant caught pace with him. That car hadn't moved for several days, possibly longer with so much dirt caked on the windscreen. Only makes sense, he thought, the worn front of the house rising before him again. Haven't had any reports for a spell. Troy's footsteps were louder, drawing closer as he caught up. Didn't see his name on the last of those reservation lists he had, so I suppose that makes sense.
The front door loomed again, its worn wood and the paneling all bearing the weight of a house long inhabited and neglected. And what does that say about Mr. Huhes? he thought, scratching at his neck. Time will tell. "Troy?" he said quietly.
The younger man was already prepared to jot down any notes. "Sorry?"
Barnaby stepped back, motioning his sergeant forward. "This is your theory, it's only fair that you take the lead." Nodding, Troy rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the worn wooden door. Several seconds of silence passed before he lifted his hand to do so again—
It opened before he could, the sour smell of smoke greeting Barnaby's nose before he saw who stood at the threshold. She wasn't tall—the top of her head might reach his chin—and a white housecoat spattered tiny yellow flowers hung from her shoulders over a loose brown dress. The toes of her scuffed slippers butted up against the bottom of the door frame and the smokey haze from the tip of the cigarette between her fingers swirled around her grey hair and lined face. "Who are you?" she rasped before pressing the fag back to her lips.
"Detective Sergeant Troy," Troy said, reaching for his badge just as Barnaby did, " and Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby."
"So?"
"Is Iain Huhes at home?" Barnaby asked, tucking his badge safely away and trying not to breathe too deeply.
"Nah, he ain't."
"And you are?" Troy asked.
Another mouthful of smoke blew into their faces. "I'm his nan, Madge Huhes."
"So Mr. Huhes is your grandson?"
"'Mr.' is a kind way to talk about him."
"Mrs. Huhes, please," Barnaby said quietly.
"What are you doing here anyway?"
He turned to Troy. Time to think on your feet, if you're still hoping to sit the inspector's exam.
Troy tapped his pen against the open page of his notebook. "We had," he began slowly, "...reports of a vehicle registered to him at this address—seen driving recklessly in Causton."
Passable.
"When?" Mrs. Huhes asked, propping her free hand against her hip.
"Over the last couple of weeks."
Very good. Whether or not the young man had been about, that should draw some information from his grandmother.
"Can't have been him."
Troy looked up from his notes. "How do you know?"
"'Sin London, hasn't been back for weeks."
"London?" Barnaby echoed.
She puffed on the cigarette again. "Yeah, he keeps saying he's studying...something there."
"Studying what?" Barnaby asked quickly. There was still no telling when his sergeant's mouth would run ahead of his brain.
"Finance, he said last," Mrs. Huhes said, shrugging beneath her housecoat, and Barnaby finally noticed the frayed edges of the neckline.
Leaning toward him, Troy whispered, "Almost accounting."
Nodding, Barnaby whispered back, "Yes."
"What'd you say?" the old woman asked, breathing out another mouthful of smoke into their faces.
"Nothing, ma'am," Troy said, not wafting the grey cloud from his face. "Does anyone else drive his vehicle?"
"Just Geoff sometimes, whenever he's 'round. Drops in from Causton every now and then."
"Has he for the last few weeks?"
"Nah," she said, waving her hand around the corner toward the car, "the damn thing hasn't moved since he was last here."
"Which one of them?"
"Iain."
"When was that, Mrs. Huhes?"
Pressing the now spent cigarette out against the door frame—perhaps that was the architect of some of the house's sadness, Barnaby wondered—she flicked it out into the browning grass, happily still damp with the morning dew. "A month ago, something like that, I think."
A month, he thought, his eyes drifting to Troy, writing furiously in his notebook. You remember it, too.
"And who is Geoff?" Troy asked after a moment.
"Me Iain's boyfriend, he says whenever he comes round. Doesn't shut up about him some weekends."
He saw Troy stiffen as they both contemplated Mrs. Huhes' words. "And what do you know about him?" Barnaby asked quickly. No use in Troy stumbling over his opinions with his own two feet, as he usually did.
"Nothing much," she said, sneering. "Some toff he met in secondary. Been playing around with 'im for years, and doesn't know what's good for him."
"Do you know when you'll see either your grandson or his—I mean, either of them next?" Troy asked, still adding a few new notes.
"Can't say about Geoff, he mostly drops in when Iain's about."
"And your grandson?"
Mrs. Huhes dug into the pocket of her housecoat, pulling out another cigarette and biting the filter between her lips as she then found a lighter. "Should be Friday, he's usually about by early afternoon," she said, lighting the tip of her new cigarette with a few clicks of the steel wheel.
Troy looked up. "Did he tell you that?"
"Course. Knows I don't have the patience to deal with him if he shows up whenever he feels it."
"Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Huhes."
Your most interesting point and you haven't asked it? Barnaby thought. "One last question," he said, "if you don't mind."
"You're here, ain't you?"
"Is he—"
"Is your grandson left- or right-handed?" Troy interrupted.
Very good again, Troy, you finally remembered.
Already puffing hard on the cigarette, she spat out another mouthful of smoke. "Left-handed, and he's got the writing to prove it." Stepping back from the threshold, she slammed the door; for a brief moment, Barnaby wondered if the walls trembled with the force.
"Well, that's all quite interesting isn't it, Troy?" Barnaby said as they turned round, retracing their steps along the dirt path pocked with scrubby weeds.
"I'd say so," Troy said, tucking his notebook and pen into his breast pocket a final time, now searching for his keys. "And how—charming."
"We're about due for another one or two in a few days, if the last few months are anything to go by, and here she says that he'll be back in a few days."
"I know you don't like coincidences, sir—"
"You're right, I don't," Barnaby muttered, finding the passenger door's handle. "Your theory is looking more reasonable every day."
Troy allowed himself a small smile. "Thank you, sir—"
"As is mine," Barnaby added, wrenching the door open, settling into his seat.
"Beg pardon?" Troy asked, clamoring into his own.
"What's the matter, you and Cully." He yanked the door closed rather louder than he meant. "We needn't have dropped in on her earlier, I could have just given her a ring."
"I don't know what—"
"Come now, Troy. Normally, she'd be quite pleased to see you—and you the same."
"Uh—nothing, really," his sergeant said quietly, closing his own door before finally fastening his seat belt. "I just wasn't happy to hear she was going to Cambridge—I mean, I wasn't expecting to hear it. Not that I thought she should say—"
"Yes, it was sudden," Barnaby said, nodding. "Or at least neither Joyce nor I were expecting it, though she did mention it once before."
The engine roared to life and as he changed from first to reverse, Troy turned his head over his shoulder before the vehicle jolted backward along the gravel drive. "When?"
Barnaby clenched his hand on the door panel. "A couple weeks ago."
He heard Troy's quick breath. "Two weeks..." the younger man muttered, like he was thinking aloud, forgetting Barnaby sat beside him.
"She just didn't say anything about it again until...Sunday, I think." The acceleration increased, the tires grinding on the pebbles as the car spun back onto the road and the strap across his chest tightened as he jerked forward. "Troy!"
The car slammed to a halt with a squeal. "Sorry, sir—"
"If you want to prove your theory about all this, you might want to be alive to do it."
"I know, I just..."
"Yes?"
Troy shifted the car into the next gear, his foot now more careful on the accelerator. "I really enjoyed spending time with her, sir."
Well, that's another change, Barnaby thought, his fingers finally loosening as his heart rate slowed. I wouldn't expect him to use the past tense. "And you think you'll miss her, while she's away? It will be two or three months."
With his free hand, Troy fumbled for the small piece of paper with his directions to the Huhes' home. "I hadn't really thought about it yet."
"I find that hard to believe." Pointing through the windscreen, he added, "It'll be a right here." Troy didn't bother with the indicator—they hadn't seen another car since turning off the main road to Upper Warden—his gaze straight ahead on the road but for the brief moments to consult his directions. "Cat got your tongue?"
With the next turn, Troy sighed. "Just, if I'm being honest—"
"That's all I've ever wanted."
"Well, you're right, sir."
"About what?"
"I'll—" Troy stopped for a second. "I'll miss her, if she does."
"Surprise me, Troy."
"You're the one who asked!" Troy snapped, his foot falling more heavily on the accelerator.
Barnaby slammed his palm against the curved top of the door panel, ignoring the sting in his fingers. "Look, Troy, what is really going on between you and Cully, the last few days! What happened back there?"
Troy shot him a glare. "What sort of question is that?"
Up ahead, at the next turn they needed to take, a dark shape scurried across the narrow road low to the ground—and Troy slammed his foot hard on the brake pedal. At the screech, that animal (a hedgehog?) froze, its head swiveling back to peer at them, perhaps contemplating its narrow escape. "One I don't think I'll have an answer to, if you're going to risk our necks like that."
Troy scowled, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as the creature waddled off the worn pavement and leaning further back into the driver's seat. "Don't know if I should bother."
"When we're at the office, Troy. Until then, keep your eyes on the road and see if you can get us there in one piece!"
"Right," his sergeant said quietly, at last creeping forward again as the animal vanished into the shrubs. His gaze rose from the lane ahead to the rear-view mirror, though there was still no sign of another vehicle in this warren of twisting back roads. "It doesn't really matter—sir, if that's what she wants."
Doesn't matter? Barnaby thought, his fingers tightening on the door panel anew. You can't hide from whatever it is forever.
A/N: I'm still coasting on the US making its first moderately successful attempt to undo its prior disaster and embarrassment on the world stage, even while doomscrolling nonstop for almost two weeks. We'll see how it goes, but we have a chance. A REAL chance. (And suck it, Ohio. We broke you.)