The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [83]
“Twisted fucker,” she said in disgust. “It was probably another dog…a little one that tried to defend itself. I’ve seen a Jack Russell take on a Rottweiler when it was backed into a corner.” She put the eggs onto plates with bacon and tomatoes. “Did he set the dogs on you?”
“No.”
“But you thought he was going to?”
“Yes.”
She handed me a plate. “I’d have been frightened, too,” was all she said before joining me at the table and lapsing into her usual silence while she ate.
To break it, I told her about my failed attempts to get hold of my parents. “I don’t suppose the phone rang while I was outside?” I asked.
“Nn-nn. I spotted your mobile when I went up the ladder to see if you were in the loft. If you’re expecting them to call on that, you’ll have a job hearing it downstairs.”
“I know. Did my mother say anything to you about checking out?”
“Not that I remember, but it’ll be on that piece of paper if she did.”
I felt in my pocket for Jess’s note, and pulled out a handful of receipts at the same time. “It just seems so odd…and very unlike her. She hates missing calls. And why get you involved? She could have left a message here.” I isolated the note but there was nothing more than Jess had already told me.
“She said you weren’t listening to them.”
“I always listen. I don’t necessarily answer.”
“Maybe that’s what your parents are doing. Teaching you a lesson.”
“It’s not their style.”
Jess’s response was predictably blunt. “So phone the police. If your gut’s telling you something’s wrong, then something’s wrong. Talk to this Alan bloke. He’ll know what to do.”
“He’ll say I’m being ridiculous.” I checked my watch. “It’s barely an hour and a half since I made the first call to Dad. The chances are Ma got bored and went back to the flat, and they’ve gone out for a meal because there’s no food in the fridge.”
“Why are you worrying then?”
“Because—” I broke off. “I’ll have another go on the mobile.” I stood up and pulled the remaining slips from my pocket. “I knocked these down while I was in the outhouse. I think they’re receipts for the oil. Do you know if they’re supposed to be in date order?”
Jess turned the pile to read the top slip. “They’re delivery notes. Burtons’ driver leaves them by the tank to show he’s been, and when the bill arrives you check the delivery note matches what you’re paying for. Lily never bothered to bring hers in, so these probably go back years.”
I looked over her shoulder, curious to see Lily’s signature. “Why aren’t any of them signed?”
“She never bothered. I don’t either. The driver just whacks it in and leaves.” She looked amused at my expression. “Dorset folk are pretty honest. They might go in for a bit of poaching but they don’t try to cheat the oil suppliers. There’d be no point if they ended up on a blacklist.”
“What about the supplier short-changing the customer?”
“That’s what the gauge is for. If you don’t check it, you deserve to be ripped off.”
“On that basis any victim of theft deserves it. We should all live behind security fences with multiple bolts on our doors.”
“Too right. Or kill any bastard who breaks in.” She eyed me for a moment. “You get what you ask for in life…and victims are no different.”
“Is that a dig at me?”
She shrugged. “Not necessarily…it depends how long you plan to let this psycho mess with your mind.”
As I left her sorting the notes by date, I tried to imagine any other circumstance that would have allowed us to become friends. Assuming she’d been willing to talk to me if I’d met her socially—and I couldn’t conceive of that happening except in an interview—her uncompromising attitudes would have had me heading for the door very quickly. Yet the better I came to know her, the better I understood that her intention was to empower and not to censure.
She did it clumsily, in bald, clipped sentences which often followed a prolonged silence, and the views she expressed could be woundingly blunt, but there was no malice in her. Unlike Madeleine, I thought, as I reached the top of the