The Edge Read Free Page A

‘She’d invite a whole crowd over at once. They were great people for parties, the Hoads. A real worry it was to Ned when the kiddies all came flocking down and wanting to pet the animals. Most of them were townies, wouldn’t know a bull snaffle from a sprig o’ cow parsley. We were always scared they’d get up to mischief and hurt theirselves.’
    â€˜Angela had a friend staying overnight,’ Yeadings told them. ‘Rather plump, with thick blonde plaits. Her school clothes had name-tapes sewn in: Monica and the initial J. Would you happen to know her surname?’
    â€˜Oh, that little girl. Yes, that’s just what her name was. Jay, see. Like that screechy bird. Her dad’s a lawyer up in London,’ Ned helped out. ‘They got a big place over at Ashridge. Her mother plays at farming, like the Hoads; only her herd’s not a patch on ours. Mostly Friesians, see. Bulk producers, not quality like English Shorthorns and Channel Islands.’
    Beaumont shot to his feet and left the room, reaching for his mobile phone. Slower to grasp the import of what Yeadings had said, Connie could barely wait for her husband to finish his derogatory comments. ‘D’you mean there was this other little girl up there last night?’ she asked, aghast. ‘You said earlier on that there were just four killed.’
    Yeadings nodded. ‘So there were. At first we took Monica Jay for one of the family. It made four because the son was absent. Would you have any idea where Daniel might be?’
    There was an instant of horrified silence. ‘Oh, Lor’!’ Connie cried in anguish. ‘What a terrible thing for him to do!’
    So she’d jumped to the same snap assumption as Beaumont. It
was odds on that the press would do the same. Under tomorrow’s screaming headlines they could twist it deviously into libel-limit suggestion.
    â€˜He never done it,’ Ned declared scornfully. ‘Too much of a milksop.’
    â€˜We’ve certainly found nothing yet to make us think he did,’ Yeadings warned, looking up as Beaumont returned. He passed to him the further information about the Jays, but his sergeant nodded as if he already knew.
    â€˜Did you ever meet Monica’s parents?’ Yeadings asked Ned.
    â€˜Took them around with a lotta visitors the first time. There was a party up at Hoads’ and they came down, wanted to see the milking parlour. After that, Mr Jay always made a point of talking output to me.’ Now Ned was certainly curling his lip.
    â€˜Bit of a bluffer?’ Beaumont suggested.
    â€˜Not real country folk. Incomers, see?’
    Both detectives saw. They’d met his kind: part of the Home Counties influx of businessmen playing at being squire: property developers, bankers, politicians.
    Ned reached out a horny claw for a second scone. ‘These are all right, Mother.’
    Already, Yeadings thought, they were beginning to assimilate what had happened, seeing it as an event, however horrific, in a series dogging their efforts to get by. He guessed life hadn’t been easy for them, and he appreciated that the Hoads – at least the adults of the family – might not have been their favourite people.
    â€˜So what will happen to the farm now?’ Yeadings asked.
    â€˜We’re still here, so it goes on working, and them going won’t make no difference. Another lot’ll come along to buy. Might even get somebody knows a bit about cattle for a change.’
    He sniffed, ignoring Connie’s murmured warning about respect for the dead. A practical man, he clearly hadn’t had a lot of it for Frederick Hoad alive.
    Â 
    DI Salmon had materialised, suitably chuffed at his temporary promotion. At 2.30 p.m. the nuclear team re-assembled in Yeadings’ office, less Z, sent to obtain a photograph of the Hoads’
missing son. When they were seated the Boss surveyed them grimly.
    â€˜Except for