by Ann Cleeves
‘I think she’d like you to ask her,’ Joe said. ‘She’d be proud. Really.’
‘Maybe I’ll risk it then,’ Lenny said. ‘Maybe I will.’ And he disappeared to make the tea.
Later, a mug on his knee, Joe asked, ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Hearing his voice, he almost winced. It was patronizing and with that forced jollity that bachelor uncles and priests put on when they are talking to children.
Lenny was immediately suspicious. ‘What am I supposed to have done?’
‘Nothing!’ But surely the man deserved an explanation. ‘Someone killed Miranda’s cat and laid it out in the Writers’ House chapel. A sick joke maybe, and nothing to do with the murder, but we’re asking everyone what they were doing that afternoon. And at the time someone broke into Nina Backworth’s flat. You do understand. It might help us track down the killer.’
There was that frown again. ‘I wouldn’t do something like that. And I couldn’t even get to the Writers’ House. I don’t have a car.’
‘An officer came to see you before, to ask you where you were that day. You told her you couldn’t remember.’
‘That young lass,’ Lenny said. ‘Snotty cow. She wouldn’t even sit down. Worried maybe that she’d catch something.’
‘Where were you, Lenny?’ Joe tried to keep his voice light. He liked the big man. ‘You don’t have such a hectic social life that you really don’t remember.’
Lenny paused and for a moment Joe thought he was preparing an answer. But at the last minute the man shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘When you’re home all the time like me, one day seems just like another.’ He stood up. ‘But I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t upset Nina or Alex. They’re good people.’
Joe realized that Lenny hadn’t answered the question. Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to lie. But he knew fine well where he was, those days of the bizarre happenings. He just wasn’t saying.
Joe found a card in his pocket. ‘This is my mobile number. Give me a ring if anything comes back to you.’ He could tell that forcing the issue now would just make Lenny more stubborn. Lenny left the card on the table where Joe had put it, but he nodded.
Outside, Joe thought the day was turning into a disaster. One failure after another. He’d wanted to bring Vera good news to justify her faith in him. At the car something made him turn back to look at the flats. He saw Lenny, holding the curtains a little apart, looking down at him.
He wants to tell me, Joe thought, but he’s scared. What could a big man like him be frightened of?
When Joe got home the kids were ready for bed, but still up and waiting for him. Sal had put on a DVD for the big ones and she was sitting beside them, feeding the baby. They all looked up when he came in, but none of the children seemed excited to see him. They were drowsy after their baths and their attention was on the screen. A cartoon about giant insects. He was pleased to find the house calm, but oddly disappointed all the same.
‘I ate with the kids,’ Sal said. ‘I wasn’t sure what time you’d be home.’
Her voice was flat and he couldn’t tell if she was apologising or if it was a complaint.
‘No problem. I’ll get something when they’re in bed.’ He scooped up the middle child, the boy, and put him on his knee. His thumb was in his mouth and he was almost asleep.
I need to spend more time with them. When the investigation’s over . . . All evening – with the kids, and later eating scrambled eggs on a tray, with Sal sitting next to him – Joe felt that he was a peeping Tom, snooping on his own family. It was as if he was in the garden, peering in through the window. He wasn’t part of it at all.
Sal went to bed early, but he said he’d stay up for a bit. He was all wired up and he’d only keep her awake too.
‘You drink too much coffee.’ Her only comment, but he could tell she was hurt. He heard her upstairs, her footsteps on the bedroom floor, the flush of the toilet. Every sound a reproach.
He’d been reading Miranda Barton’s book Cruel Women and finding it heavy going. Too many words that he didn’t understand. Not very much happening. It was about a single mother making her way in London. The first chapter described the woman giving birth and he thought she made a lot of fuss about something that Sal took in her stride. The rest of the novel followed her encounters with work colleagues and lovers. Even the sex scenes were boring.
It was eleven o’clock, but there was only one chapter left. Joe read on; he wanted to be sure Sal was fast asleep before he went up. In this scene Samantha, the businesswoman central character, had just been rejected by a lover. The book ended with Samantha slumped on the floor. The conclusion was ambiguous. Perhaps she’d committed suicide or perhaps she was just sleeping. To Joe, that felt like cheating.
But despite that, Joe reread the final chapter, making sure he didn’t skip a word. Not because the story held his attention – he couldn’t, for a moment, believe in Samantha or her desperation – but because the setting of the final scene was so familiar. The encounter took place in the home of a friend, in a conservatory. The arrangement of the furniture and the plants, the colour of the new rug on the floor, the newspaper on the table, all these matched exactly the room in which Miranda had found Tony Ferdinand’s body. And the position of Ferdinand’s body, in a corner, had mirrored that of the fictional Samantha. Once again, it seemed, a scene from a story had been brought to life.
Joe’s first impulse was to phone Vera Stanhope. Other detectives saw intricate complications in a case as distractions or put them down to coincidence. Vera was excited by them. She hated things to be too easy. Where was the challenge in that? Then he decided there was no rush. Let his boss have her beauty sleep. The notion of ‘Vera’ and ‘beauty’ in the same thought made him smile, and he was still smiling when he went upstairs. When he climbed into bed beside Sal and felt how warm and soft she was, he no longer felt like a stranger in his own house.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Of course I knew the book was important,’ Vera said. ‘That’s why I took it from Miranda’s cottage.’ She didn’t care if Joe believed her or not. His description of the final chapter of Cruel Women was firing sparks in her brain. Confusing sparks. She’d thought she was groping towards a solution. Did this new information confirm her theory or would she have to think again? They were in Hector’s Land Rover, breaking all the rules about officers using their own vehicles, but she had plans for later in the day and didn’t want to be tied to a pool car.
She looked at Joe, expecting him to challenge her, but he let the comment go. He probably realized she’d have got round to reading Miranda’s book in the end. She changed into four-wheel drive to go down a steep bank. In the night there’d been hail and the roads were still greasy.
‘So that’s why Miranda was so hysterical when she found the professor’s body,’ Vera said. ‘It would have been like walking into one of her own books. Or into a nightmare.’
‘Like Nina finding Miranda on the terrace and recognizing her own short story.’
Vera looked at him sharply. She couldn’t work out what was going on between Joe and the Backworth woman. This was something else that confused her. A month ago she’d have bet her home on Joe Ashworth’s fidelity. Now she wasn’t so sure. And she’d never have thought he’d go for someone intellectual and skinny.
‘Aye.’ They’d reached the bottom of the hill and she changed gear again.
‘Is that coincidence, do you think?’ Joe said. ‘The writers discovering the bodies? Or did the killer organize it that way?’
‘Joanna could have found the first one.’ Vera thought she shouldn’t have had to remind Joe of that. He was losing his focus on the case. ‘And she was meant to. All that business with the different knives and the note. Miranda came along later and screamed the house down. I don’t think that was intended.’ It wasn’t grief that had caused the hysteria, Vera saw now, but shock because she recognized the scenario; she’d created it. And Miranda had recovered from that more qu
ickly than anyone would have expected. It seemed she hadn’t really cared for Tony Ferdinand at all.
‘Why didn’t she tell us that the scene came from her book?’ Joe frowned and looked like a school kid doing difficult sums. ‘That’s been bothering me since I read that last chapter.’
‘Perhaps she was worried that we’d see her as the killer.’ Vera paused. ‘And then she decided she could use the situation to her advantage. If she worked out who was playing games with her stories.’
‘Blackmail?’
‘It’s always seemed likely as a motive for the second murder.’ But Vera thought that wasn’t the big question. The big question was, why had the killer created the fictional scenes in the first place? A warped sense of fun? Or was there a greater significance? And you could ask the same questions about the objects he’d left behind.
Now they’d reached the highest point of the road and there was a view of the coast and the house below them. The earlier storm had stripped the trees of leaves, so the outline of the building was clearer than Vera had remembered. It was strange being back here with the place almost empty. No CSIs, no students, theirs the only car in the visitors’ car park. Alex had heard the Land Rover and came out of the cottage to meet them. He seemed calm enough, but slightly dazed. Vera thought he was probably still on tranquillizers. Or maybe it was losing a mother he’d never been close to.
‘I’ve just had Chrissie Kerr on the phone,’ Alex said, his voice distant and uninterested. ‘She seems to ring about three times a day. This time it was about what time the caterers can get here on Friday. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal for her.’
Oh, I do, Vera thought. It’s her big chance.
‘You’re not doing the cooking yourself then?’ Joe was concerned for the young man. He probably thought Vera was a callous cow to allow the party to take place here. Vera saw that he wasn’t sure what they were doing here now. Why was it so important for them to visit the Writers’ House? And she didn’t know that she had an answer for him.
‘Chrissie asked if I’d like to do the cooking,’ Alex said. ‘She told me that she’d pay the going rate. But I didn’t think I could take it on. These days I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Are you sure you’re up for the party?’ Vera knew she was going through the motions even as she put the question. She was desperate for the event to take place. Like Chrissie, she saw this as her last chance. Her only opportunity to get this killer. How would she react if Alex said he wasn’t sure, that the last thing he wanted was his home invaded by a bunch of strangers?
But Alex reacted exactly as she’d hoped: ‘My mother would have loved it. All this fuss in her name. It’s the least I can do. Then maybe I can move on.’ The last phrase sounded trite and uncertain, as if it had been suggested by one of the doctors in the hospital.
‘Show us round then, will you, pet? Show us where it’s all going to take place.’
And Alex did as he was told, leading them through the grand rooms as if he were an estate agent and was showing around a prospective customer, as if he had no emotional tie to the Writers’ House at all.
It was only as they were drinking coffee in the kitchen that they discussed his mother’s book. Vera was aware of time passing. She had another place to be. ‘Have you ever read your mother’s novel?’ she asked. ‘The famous one that was adapted for telly?’
Alex seemed confused by the question. ‘Years ago, when I was a teenager. At least I tried. I’m not sure I actually finished it.’
And Vera left it at that. She could sense that Joe wanted her to push the point. Why else were they there? They’d achieved nothing by trailing round the house after Alex. Joe even opened his mouth to ask more questions, but she hurried him out of the house. ‘Come on, Joe, man. I’ve got a train to catch.’ And she drove straight to the station at Alnmouth. They got there just as the London train was pulling in, so she left Joe to park her Land Rover and to arrange for a taxi to get himself back to the office. Looking out of the window as the train moved away from the station, she saw that he was still frowning.
London. She could find her way round well enough. If Hector had taught her anything it was to read a map. And the city didn’t scare her. She knew you could get scary people anywhere. She just didn’t like it much. She didn’t like any city. Even a visit to Newcastle was a bit of a chore and she was glad when it was time for her to leave.
First stop was St Ursula’s College. A mellow redbrick built around a north-London square. The horse-chestnut and plane trees had shed their leaves and the late-afternoon sun threw shadows of the branches onto the pavement. Vera had arranged to meet Sally Wheldon there and found the poet in a small office, sitting at her desk behind a pile of books. Vera had picked up a copy of her work from the independent bookshop in Kimmerston, had been surprised that she’d enjoyed it. Much of it concerned the domestic and was funny. One poem had moved her to tears. Sally was tiny, dark-haired and dark-eyed. From her voice, Vera had expected a larger woman and it took a few seconds to reconcile her imagined picture with the reality.
Vera had just introduced herself when a student knocked at the door. A young man with thick glasses and wild hair.
‘I’m busy, Ollie,’ Sally said. Her voice was amused and a little impatient. ‘I’m sure it can wait until the tutorial.’ He sighed and left the room, and she turned to Vera. ‘Sorry about that. Some of them are so intense. Occasionally I’m tempted to tell them to get a life so that they’ll have something real to write about.’
‘You’re keeping things going then? Without Tony Ferdinand?’
‘We’re just about managing.’ A smile to show she was being sarky, but not malicious. Vera liked that in a woman. Sally went on, ‘Shall we go for a walk in the square? That way we’ll be sure we’ll not be interrupted.’
They wandered across the road and found a bench to sit on.
‘I’ve been asked to take it on,’ Sally said. ‘To run the creative-writing MA.’
‘Will you do it?’
‘I think I will. Just for a limited time. It saps the energy, working with students. They suck the life from you. But I’ll consider it as a sabbatical, a time away from my own writing. I’d like to change the ethos of the course, make it gentler and more positive. It’ll be worthwhile, I think, if I can pull it off.’ She paused. ‘And of course it’ll raise my profile professionally.’
‘What do you know about Tony Ferdinand’s family?’ Vera asked. ‘Did he talk about them? We haven’t been able to trace anyone.’
‘He doesn’t have one. He was an only child and his parents died ages ago. No wife.’
‘No children?’ Vera couldn’t help herself.
‘If he had, he never acknowledged them.’ Sally gave a quick smile. ‘I told you, when he was mugged that time I was his only visitor. Most of the writers and editors in London would recognize him, might even describe him as a friend, but there was nobody really that he was close to. Rather sad.’
‘Where did the attack happen?’ Vera didn’t know where all this was going or how it could be important.
‘Just about here. He was crossing the square on his way back to his flat. It wasn’t particularly late, about eight o’clock at night, but the square is quiet in the evening once all the students have gone home. It was last February, foggy. He would have been very badly hurt, but one of our office staff came along and frightened the guy away.’
‘It was definitely a man?’
‘Must have been, mustn’t it?’ Sally looked at Vera strangely. ‘How often do you get female muggers?’
‘Yeah.’ But Vera was lost in thought. ‘Yeah, of course.’ It was beginning to get cold and she pulled her coat around her. ‘Did you know Miranda Barton? She worked in the library here before she became a full-time writer.’
‘No, that was before I started.’
‘An odd coincidence.’ Vera could have been talking to herself. ‘Both victims connected to St Ursula’s.’
‘
But surely it must be a coincidence,’ Sally said. ‘It’s years since Miranda worked here.’
‘Aye.’ But Vera wasn’t convinced. ‘There must have been talk about them, even when you started here. Tony and Miranda. Him turning her into a star overnight. Like a kind of fairy story. What was it with the two of them? And what held them together after all this time? What persuaded him north, to do her a favour by being a tutor in her house in the wilds?’
‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I try not to listen to departmental gossip.’
‘An affair, do you think?’
‘Maybe, but Tony was never romantic, even with women he took to bed.’
A group of students, laughing and teasing, crossed the square in front of them. They seemed not to notice the two middle-aged women sitting on a bench.
‘Did Miranda ever come back to St Ursula’s?’ Vera asked.
‘Occasionally. Tony would take her out to lunch. He never invited her to the SCR or to any of the college dinners.’
‘Like he was ashamed of her?’
‘Perhaps.’ Sally stood up. ‘But really I’m not prepared to speculate. I didn’t know enough about the pair of them to do so. Now I’m sorry, Inspector, but I have to go back to work. I’ve got a meeting this evening and I need to prepare.’
‘Is there anyone in the college who might remember Miranda?’ Vera got to her feet too. She felt that the encounter had been unsatisfactory. She’d arranged a meeting with an admin officer to look at college records, and that might prove more fruitful, but so far it had been a long train journey for so little.
‘Jonathan Barnes, our senior librarian, has been there for years. You might talk to him.’
St Ursula’s library was housed in a new building behind the college and hidden from the square. Barnes was a small, round man with a huge belly. He made coffee for Vera in his office and he, it seemed, had no qualms about passing on gossip.