The small patch of freshly laid ground was kept company for some time. The rain continued to pelt Barnaby and Jones, the weather's howling rage backed up by the icy wind that clawed at their skin and ripped at their clothes. The DCI was reluctant to pull Ben away, watching him in his peripheral vision every so often, not once failing to notice his pale skin, gleaming with water droplets or the shiver that shook his shoulders more than the threatened but suppressed tears. Eventually, his hand that had never left the DS's shoulder patted the younger man more insistently, drawing his attention from the grave.
"There'll be time to come back," Barnaby said earnestly. "But if you stay out here much longer, you're only going to catch a cold." Jones nodded numbly, allowing himself to be led carefully through the churchyard, placing his feet gingerly on the slippery cobblestones. His eyes trailed the floor and, even at Barnaby's car, he did not look back.
The remainder of the weekend passed quickly although John was plagued with an infuriating concern for his sergeant. Despite the long walks with Sarah and Sykes, both members of his small family could see his detachment and sense the distance between them all.
"Just phone him," Sarah eventually vented her frustration, "Pick up the phone and stop being such a - a man about it."
"What are you implying?" John replied with a small, irritating smile that his wife returned reluctantly.
"Never talking about your feelings, either of you," she muttered to herself under her breath, hands kept busy wringing a dish cloth with almost enough threat to send Barnaby for the telephone. However, he stayed put.
"I don't want to smother him," he said adamantly, "If anything, I'm sure he's mortified enough that I saw him at the graveyard. Maybe I shouldn't have approached him after all." Sarah tutted to herself and made a disapproving sound followed by a disparaging sigh. Wrong answer.
"The poor man is grieving," she bit back, "And for all your psychology essays, sometimes all someone needs is a voice on the end of a phone. Occasionally they only want to be listened to, John - you don't have to put much of an effort in to do that."
"I do hope you don't think I'm leaving him alone out of pure laziness," he said quietly all of a sudden. He looked up from his frustrated survey of the wooden floor with troubled eyes. "It's important to know the boundaries when it comes to Ben." Sarah nodded, memories of the day she had spoken with him before work resurfacing.
"You don't want to alienate him entirely," she voiced Barnaby's reasoning for him, "I understand, John. Just promise me you'll be there for him, on behalf of the both of us, when he needs it." John was reminded of Jones' rushed promise to his Gran's friend on the phone that night, involuntarily furrowing his brow at the thought of the vow that had been broken so forcibly.
"I will," he replied eventually, not quite ready to promise something out of some irrational, surprising fear of letting the sergeant down.
In the early hours of Monday morning, a call came through to the police station. An apologetic voice floated down the line, its lilting tone laced with uncertainty and doubt. They reported hearing a disturbance in their neighbour's house that evening, a house that had not shown any signs of life since the day before. It was a quiet day for the police, the tail ends of a well founded case tied neatly in a bow and sent on their way to court. A certain arrest; one more crisis averted.
Barnaby pulled up at a modest cottage, inhaling the lonely countryside air with relief at the sight of their potential crime scene. For once, none of the less qualified officers had gone in first, carrying mud from halfway across the county in the treads of their boots and disturbing the evidence. Before he could exhale the cloud of warm air against the cold, his mood was dampened by another car that had already pulled up nearby to the tape and the back of a head talking to the officers who patrolled the boundary.
"Jones," Barnaby said pointedly, drawing the younger man away from prying ears and lowering his voice, "What happened to using up the several days of leave you've built up over the years; visiting family, you said." The sergeant winced slightly, his nose wrinkling with a look close to guilt. Barnaby shook his head to clear it, reprimanding himself for the overanalysing he had been doing recently. He'd talk when he wanted to, Sarah's voice told him.
"Not entirely true, sir," Jones replied as Barnaby bit back the urge to retort sarcastically, "I'd rather distract myself with work." The inspector did not bother with the lecture he had often given the DS about people dealing with grief. It usually went along the lines of 'suppressing emotions will only cause them to build up and plague you at the wrong moment,' followed by the customary Jones eye roll as he tried to understand the way their grieving witnesses reacted. Barnaby wasn't quite sure if he wanted to see the effect of his speech on Ben now that it was him who needed the advice.
"Wasn't this just a typical report of a disturbance?" he changed the subject reluctantly, "Run of the mill, nosey neighbour?" Jones shook his head, leading the way under the tape and towards the cottage, talking over his shoulder incessantly. No gap in conversation for the lecture, Barnaby noted with a lopsided smile, the young man was learning.
"No response to knocking, sir," he said, "Uniform didn't want to go in and disturb anything, seeing as you always prefer to get the first look so they just cordoned it off preemptively. It might not be anything, but the neighbour - a Mrs. Carling - said the man who lives here is always up before she is. The curtains have been shut since last night, none of the lights have been switched on or off either." They had reached the front door which Barnaby knocked on for a final time before shrugging in Jones' direction. The sergeant produced a key, gesturing to the neighbour's house at Barnaby's questioning glance, and unlocked the rusting door gingerly.
The stonework was old and weathered, peppered with the beginning of moss clumps and lichen infestations. The once neatly piped cement between the bricks was wearing away, leaving chips of stone and cobwebs in its place. Climbing up the front wall, a trail of vibrant, green ivy crawled through the stones, winding around the upstairs windows with reaching fingers. The front door itself was an old country entrance, with both a top window that opened and the main door. As Jones withdrew the key and placed a hand on the wood, a small trail of falling red rust followed his hand, settling onto the iron handle before blowing away in a stiff breeze.
The hallway was neatly tidied, with shoes pushed against the wall beside the door, each pair aligned with laces tucked away into corners. The photo frames on the walls decorated old prints and landscapes from Midsomer, each hung at perfect right angles and without the common thin layer of dust along the top. A mirror stood against the opposite wall, reflecting the garden back at Jones and Barnaby who moved systematically down the corridor towards a door, the only one that was ajar.
The house had a stillness about it that suggested it was completely empty; only the gentle breaths of wind down the chimney sounded besides the two sets of footsteps that moved side by side into the traditional farmhouse kitchen. Ben moved around the expansive room swiftly having noted the lack of a body and only lingered for a moment at the old aga oven. He held his hand up over it and almost moved forward before pausing mid stride.
"Warm?" Barnaby asked sharply, his head suddenly whipping around and surveying the hallway behind them. With his back turned he did not hear Jones move away again with a shake of his head and turned irritatedly. "Jones? Wait, what is that?"
The sergeant held a small recording device that had been left on the table, a tape still fixed into the machine and the play button pressed down. The quiet sound of tape cycling through a reel suddenly became as loud as the roar of the sea on a beach as Barnaby realised it had been there in the background the whole time.
"Someone was here recently then," he deduced thoughtfully, "Those tapes don't last forever." Jones shook his head in agreement, still running his hands over the small object with contemplation.
"What were they listening to?" he asked aloud, almost dropping the tape machine as it crackled into life. The voices were intermingled to begin with, like a frequency between two radio stations where the words interfere and combine. They began to separate and as they did, Ben indeed dropped the tape on the kitchen table and moved back to stand with Barnaby.
"Can you account for you whereabouts-"
"We have reason to believe-"
"Scarecrow... scare... scare-"
The tape clicked off again, this time the play button depressed and the sound of winding came to an end. The kitchen fell totally silent, the tape recorder lying perfectly still as if it were dead and had never broadcast a word.
"Those were our voices, sir," Jones said with a subtle exhalation.
"Perceptive as always, Jones," Barnaby replied with a grim attempt to be sarcastic, "Although how they could have got those recordings..."
"It's the tapes from the interview we did on Friday," Ben remembered with a frown, "I signed them into evidence before I went home. And there was only one copy." The inspector nodded, not quite in the mood to press the matter further, perhaps suggesting that it had slipped the sergeant's mind. But then he remembered Friday afternoon himself.
"I saw you," he replied slowly, "You took it into evidence which means someone must have signed it out. We should start there; round up anyone who had access to the tape over the weekend and get the rest of the recording analysed. It could have been going for at least an hour before we arrived so there may be some more evidence on there." Jones moved to follow the inspector's retreating back when he stopped in the doorway.
"And the missing person report?" he questioned suddenly. Barnaby turned around, taking a final sweeping gaze around the hallway.
"Well, nothing can be done officially for 24 hours. Contact the family if there is someone to contact and see if we can get some information. But for now, If we find the owner of the tape, we find them." He did not add the slightly more morbid, 'dead or alive' although he was sure his expression conveyed the message adequately as Jones nodded, more to himself and continued to follow behind him.
There was a new mystery to solve and it was threatening to hit a little too close to home for Barnaby's liking.