Page 27 of Worse Than Murder

‘Is he listed as a missing person?’

‘No. The local police believe he was swept out into the storm. Case closed.’

‘What do you believe?’

‘Can fourteen people be wrong?’ Tania asks.

‘Are the sightings still coming in?’

‘You’d need to ask Alison about that. I haven’t had one for a few years.’

‘How well do you know the Pembertons?’

‘Fairly well,’ she says. ‘When Jack and Iain were converting the farm into stables, they asked the paper to run a few features in the hope of generating publicity. They were very different, for brothers.’

‘In what way?’ I ask as I help myself to another biscuit. I can never resist a Bourbon.

‘Iain was the confident, talkative one. Jack was always in the background. He couldn’t make eye contact. Iain told me he suffered with depression. After Jack went missing, Iain turned to the drink. He told me in the local one night that, when they were kids, their father used to bully Jack.’

‘Did he hit him?’

‘I don’t think so. Iain said that Jack was a quiet child. Iain was always out with a football, playing cricket in summer and rugby in winter, a proper lad, according to their father. Jack preferred to stay at home and draw or read. Their father didn’t like that. He wanted his boys to grow up to be real men and real men weren’t creative.’

‘He sounds like a shit.’

‘He was. There weren’t many tears shed when Granville Pemberton died, despite how he went.’

I frown. ‘How did he go?’

‘He was working himself to death anyway, by all accounts. He was taking pills for his heart. The doctors assumed he had an attack of some kind and collapsed in the pigsty.’

I feel my frown deepen. ‘I don’t like where this is going. You said assumed.’

‘There wasn’t really much for a pathologist to examine. The pigs got to him before Jack and Iain could.’

‘They ate him?’

‘Not all of him. Parts of him.

I decide against another Bourbon. ‘Oh my God!’

‘You can see why the brothers were eager to convert the farm. They didn’t want to be reminded of what happened. I tell you; it was a while before I ate bacon again.’

‘What a way to go,’ I say, giving a shudder.

‘Strangely, it was Jack who took it the hardest.’

‘I’m surprised they all stayed. If it had been me, I’d have sold up and moved on.’

‘People around here either get out while they’re still young or they stay here for life. Trust me, I know that only too well.’

I look at her and notice the hint of sadness in her eyes. Tania clearly wanted to have left High Chapel many years ago. She wasn’t stuck here. She was trapped.

‘If you suspected Jack was behind the disappearance,’ I begin, taking the conversation back to topic. ‘What did the other villagers think?’

‘The majority focused on the tragedy. They couldn’t do enough for Jack and Lynne. Iain sort of acted as a barrier, stopped the villagers from knocking on their door every five minutes with a cooked meal or a word of sympathy they didn’t want to hear. I kept popping round, making a nuisance of myself. Eventually, it got too much for them, too. Iain started drinking more. Nothing anyone could do could help any of them.’

‘And when the case went cold?’