Murder Comes Calling by C. S. Challinor Page B

gate at the front entrance?” Rex asked.
    “That was before. Malcolm and I, and a few other residents, got a petition out, but a handful of homeowners resisted because of the expense. Obviously it had to be a unanimous decision, since everyone would have to be equipped with remotes or the keypad code.”
    “Was there some concern for safety at the time?” Rex asked.
    “We were mainly thinking about break-ins. There’d been a spate of petty theft. Bicycles and tools, that sort of thing. There’s a wall around the community and we thought it would be an idea to close it off completely.”
    “But no wall at the back, just the river,” Rex said. “And not a very daunting one at that.”
    “True. In any event, putting a gate in now would be a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.”
    “It would not have impeded a menace from within the community,” Rex pointed out while Sandra continued to sip at her sherry, more nervous now that her husband was home.
    “Like the biker gang on Owl Lane?” Rick Ballantine asked. “There’s a menace for you. It’s likely they were responsible for some of the stuff going missing. They were the most vocal in opposing the gate. Wouldn’t have been fair to give them access when everyone else had to chip in.” Ballantine suddenly looked at his wife. “Where’s Will? I didn’t see his light on upstairs.”
    “He’s with Alex.”
    “Alex Leontiev? You know how I feel about him hanging out with that boy.”
    “He’s his only friend around here.”
    “I just don’t like it.” Ballantine rolled the cut-glass tumbler back and forth between his palms. “He’s an Islamic militant,” he told Rex. “And what are his parents doing stuck on that farm?” he asked his wife. “They barely speak English and I don’t see them growing anything. One of the farms on the other side of the river,” he explained to Rex.
    “It’s almost winter, Rick,” his wife pronounced in clipped syllables.
    “Can’t you grow turnips in winter?” he asked. “Oh, what do I know?” Ballantine shrugged and downed the rest of his liquor. He looked as though he were contemplating a refill.
    “Have you been to the farm?” Rex enquired.
    “Once or twice, to collect Will. Never got out of the car. It’s mucky out there and they keep a couple of German Shepherds as guard dogs that might actually be full-blooded wolves, by the looks of them. They’re not tied up. A trespasser is going to get mauled to death one of these days. And Will told me Alex’s dad has a shotgun. I’ve only ever spoken to the mother through the car window. The father never says anything.”
    “She’s very nice,” Sandra told her husband. “She invited me in for tea the other day while we were waiting for the boys to return. She served tea from a samovar. We had no difficulty communicating in spite of her thick accent. There were novels on the shelves by Solzhenitsyn and story collections by Anton Chekhov. I recognized those names in Russian. I teach literature,” she explained as an aside to Rex. “And also lots of textbooks, though I couldn’t make out what they were about.”
    “Bomb-making?” Rick snorted in derision.
    “I thought maybe farming.”
    “How to grow cannabis?”
    “Really, Rick. I never knew you were so prejudiced.”
    “I’m a realist. We don’t know anything about these people, and I do wish you wouldn’t encourage Will seeing Alex.”
    “What makes you think this friend is a militant?” Rex asked in response to Rick Ballantine’s earlier comment.
    His hand around the glass, Ballantine pointed a finger at Sandra. “My wife found a recruitment website on our son’s laptop. Training in Dagestan. ‘Kill the infidel and be rewarded with a bevy of virgins in heaven,’ sort of thing. Powerful stuff for a teenage boy.”
    “He said he was doing research for a current affairs essay.”
    “And you believe everything he says,” Ballantine riled at his wife. “Don’t