by Ann Cleeves
‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’ Vera bared her teeth. No one else smiled. She watched Livvy pour tea into blue cups. ‘You can leave mine in the pot a bit longer, pet. I like to taste what I’m drinking. Has he been staying here since he left the restaurant?’
‘Good God, no.’ Robert was horrified. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to stand the strain.’
‘When then?’
‘He went to Nancy Deakin’s first. You asked me about her once before. I don’t know exactly what made him bolt there. Something put the wind up him. When his daughter’s body was first found he seemed content to stay at the restaurant.’
‘You were in touch then?’
‘Of course.’ Robert was gruffly embarrassed. ‘To offer condolences. That sort of thing. I thought he was bearing up very well.’
‘Had you been in regular contact?’
‘No, but at a time like that, one has to make an effort.’
‘Why did he leave Nancy’s?’
‘The two women who’d been working with Grace went round there. They were asking questions. He thought you’d sent them, so he got in touch with me.’
‘Tut, tut,’ Vera said. ‘Paranoia indeed. How did you get him here?’
‘I picked him up in the car late one night. Nobody saw.’
‘And you saw it as a short-term measure until you could persuade him to talk to us?’
‘Exactly that. Yes.’
‘Who knew you were helping him?’
‘Nancy Deakin. I didn’t tell anyone else. Not even Livvy. I couldn’t have her involved.’
Haddaway and shite, Vera thought. You’re scared of her.
‘Could anyone have found out he was there by chance?’
‘I don’t know how. Everyone on the estate knew the house was empty. He wouldn’t have opened the door to a salesman or visitor.’ Robert paused. ‘Look. There’s something I want to say. I wouldn’t have been prepared to help him if I’d thought he’d killed his daughter. If that’s what you think then you’ve got it all wrong. He was devastated. He talked about it being his fault, but that didn’t mean he’d strangled her. He said he should have protected her. He’d never been much of a father. And he was frightened. That’s why he was in such a state this morning.’
‘But the kitchen door was open. If it turns out he was killed he let his murderer in.’
‘I don’t care.’ In the face of these two fierce women Robert had become stubborn. ‘I might not have seen much of him recently but we were brothers. We grew up together and I tell you he was scared.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
It was late by the time Vera got back to Baikie’s but she thought the women would still be up. They’d want to know what had happened. Not that she’d have had much to tell them even if she’d been prepared to pass the information on. The pathologist was an old friend, more willing than most of them to commit himself after a first inspection, but still he’d been tentative.
She’d caught him as he came out of the cottage on his way to his car and they stood sheltering under his large black umbrella.
‘There’s nothing obvious,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t stabbed and he wasn’t strangled.’
‘Not like the daughter then.’
‘No.’
‘But you must have some idea.’
‘Most likely scenario at the moment? That he’d drunk himself insensible.’
‘And that killed him?’
‘It made things easier for the murderer.’
‘You think it was murder?’
‘That’s what I’m working towards.’ He paused. ‘My intuition. If you believe in such things.’
‘I believe in yours.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he’d been suffocated, smothered. You do realize I’m just thinking aloud at this stage?’
‘How?’
‘I’m not a clairvoyant.’ But despite the words he didn’t sound irritated. He stood, patiently, with the rain drumming on the umbrella. Vera thought, He’s got nothing to go home to either. He asked, ‘Have you been inside?’
‘Not yet.’
‘The house was partly furnished. Apparently it was let like that to employees. There’s a three-piece suite with a few scatter cushions. One of the cushions could have done it. But there’s no sign of struggle. He’d hardly have known what was happening.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And the time of death?’
‘I never like to commit myself on that.’
‘I know.’
‘After midday, before five o’clock. I really can’t be more specific. It’s only a guess.’
‘Understood.’
He was a thin man in his sixties, always dark-suited and gently spoken, reassuring, like a family undertaker. He had once told Vera that he was an elder in a small Presbyterian church. So far as she knew that was the nearest he had to family. Would it be enough for him when he retired?
He walked her to her car, holding the umbrella over her, though she was already wet from her walk from the house and the drips must be going down his neck.
‘I’ll be in touch as soon as there’s anything definite.’
‘I know,’ she said. Her hand brushed his as she fumbled in her bag for her keys.
As she had expected there was a light still on in Baikie’s. No one had bothered to draw the curtains and she felt a flash of anger at Joe Ashworth or whoever had replaced him. The women were sitting targets like that for anyone lurking in the garden or on the hill beyond. Then she thought, but that’s what I made them. That’s what my strategy boiled down to in the end.
She had been so convinced that she’d been right. She’d known that the murder had something to do with the development for the quarry. She’d felt it in her bones. She’d grown up with this countryside, with people who were passionate about it and she’d thought she’d understood. She’d seen the murderer as a nutter with a strange obsession about this landscape or these women, or both. She’d thought that if they’d stayed put eventually he would come back. He wouldn’t be able to resist it. But obviously she’d been wrong. She’d have to start again with an open mind. That meant work. More than she knew if she could handle.
She parked her car in the yard and went in through the kitchen. Her sandals were squelching wet so she took them off at the door and went on, leaving damp footprints on the lino. The sound of rain on the roof and windows must have drowned out the noise of her car because she surprised them. They were sitting at the table playing cards. Joe Ashworth had been replaced by a constable in uniform and he held a hand too. They turned, fixed for a moment, in the soft light of the standard lamp.
Vera crossed the room and drew the curtains over the French windows.
‘That’s a lot more cosy,’ she said. Then: ‘Is there any of that booze left? I could murder a Scotch.’
Edie poured some into a tumbler.
‘Mrs Preece’ll have told you what happened.’
‘That Edmund’s dead,’ Rachael said. ‘Is it all over then? He killed Grace because she wouldn’t lie for him to stop the quarry, and now he’s killed himself.’
‘Too early to say.’
Whatever the pathologist had told her had been in confidence. She might be a gabby cow who broke more rules than she kept but that information wasn’t to be passed on.
‘But he couldn’t have been murdered?’
They’ve been celebrating, Vera thought. Not with a great fuss because that wouldn’t be very nice with two people dead. But they really think it’s all over. Case closed. No more looking over their shoulders on the hill or in their mirrors on the road.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s impossible to tell until the doctor’s done all his tests. I have to assume it’s a suspicious death until I hear otherwise. If I didn’t I’d waste hours, even days of an investigation. So there’ll be questions to ask. And no doubt you’ve got questions too.’
‘What was he doing here?’ Edie asked.
>
‘Hiding out, though we’re not sure why. We didn’t really consider him as a suspect until he disappeared.’
‘Guilt perhaps,’ Edie said. ‘If he’d killed his daughter.’
‘Perhaps.’ Vera looked at Anne and Rachael. She wanted them to lighten up. She felt responsible for bringing their celebration to an end. ‘He was at Nancy Deakin’s when you went there to talk to her.’
‘No!’ She had succeeded. They were amused by the old lady’s duplicity. ‘He must have been in the bedroom all the time. No wonder she didn’t want us to go upstairs.’
‘I heard a noise but I thought it was the budgie.’
‘Is that why he moved on to the estate?’ Rachael asked. ‘Because we went to Nancy’s?’
‘Probably.’
‘So we might have provoked his death. At least he had someone to keep an eye on him there.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Vera said. ‘I asked you to go.’ She leant across the table. They had discarded their cards which lay on the table as down-turned fans. ‘Now look. I’ve got to carry on as if Edmund was murdered. It doesn’t mean he was but that’s the assumption I’ve got to make. Do you understand?’
They nodded.
‘When Rachael suggested that Bella and Edmund might have known each other, that they might have been in hospital at the same time, I didn’t take it seriously because it didn’t seem relevant. Grace was the victim. Edmund had hardly had any contact with her. But now it could be more important. Perhaps Rachael was right all along. Can you remember anything Bella said which could have linked them?’
‘No. How could I? I didn’t even know she’d been in hospital until after her suicide.’
‘I mean more recently. Anything to suggest Bella and Edmund kept in touch?’
‘No, she never mentioned friends. Apart from people in Langholme who’d known Dougie for years and she wasn’t close to any of them.’
‘But she must have left the farm sometimes.’
‘She went to Kimmerston on Wednesdays. Market day. That was when she did all the shopping. And she always had lunch out. Her little treat. Social services sent someone to sit with Dougie while she was away.’
‘Where did she go for lunch when she was in town?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose the White Hart, like all the other farmers.’
Vera had a picture of Bella and Edmund sitting in the gloomy dining room. Surely they wouldn’t have met there. Not if Bella valued her privacy. Not where they could have been seen by any of Dougie’s farming friends.
‘No.’ Rachael interrupted her thoughts. ‘There’s a coffee shop in the precinct where she went. I remember her coming back one day when I was staying at Baikie’s. She came in for some tea and a chat but wouldn’t have a biscuit. She said she’d had the biggest meringue in the world. The coffee shop did the best she’d ever tasted.’ Rachael stopped. ‘This seems so trivial.’
‘That’s what most of my job is. Trivia. Chat and gossip. That’s why I’m so bloody good at it.’ It came out confidently enough but to Vera it sounded hollow. ‘Tell me again what happened when you last went to see Charlie Noble.’
‘We told you.’
‘OK. I wasn’t listening properly. It didn’t seem important. Edie?’
‘Bella had phoned a week before she died and got through to Charlie’s wife, Louise. Louise promised to tell Charles that she’d been in touch but she didn’t until much later, until after our first visit. Bella said that she’d phone back.’
‘But they never heard from her again?’
‘That’s what they said.’
‘Do you think they might be lying?’
‘I don’t know. I got the impression that Louise hadn’t wanted Charlie to tell me about the call. Perhaps they both regretted it. Certainly they weren’t very forthcoming. And it seems strange that Bella didn’t phone back.’
Anne had been listening in silence. She stood up and seemed very thin and gaunt lit below by the lamp. Shadows fell over her face, lengthening her forehead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired. I’ll have to go to bed.’
‘Of course!’
‘I probably won’t see you tomorrow. I’m leaving early.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Vera said.
‘More questions?’
‘Oh, there are always more questions. And you two will be going tomorrow too,’ Vera said after Anne had left the room, after they’d heard her footsteps on the bare stairs. ‘This place will be empty. Nothing left but Connie’s ghost.’ She paused awkwardly, tried to phrase her question to Rachael delicately, then decided that bluff and hearty was more her style and got to the point quicker anyway. ‘Are you planning to see Mr Furness again?’
‘Why?’
‘Because you should know I’ll be asking him more questions too.’
‘What has he got to do with Edmund’s death?’
‘Nothing. Probably. Except that he used to live in that house. And according to Robert Fulwell no one can remember him handing back his keys.’
There was a silence. ‘We’re kidding ourselves, aren’t we?’ Rachael said ‘Edmund was murdered.’
Vera didn’t answer.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Vera woke early, just before the first Edinburgh train started to growl in the distance. She waited until it had screamed past, rattling the sash windows in her bedroom, before she got up. The train hadn’t woken her. She’d grown up with the trains, could remember steam, trolleys of milk churns on the platform, wicker baskets of racing pigeons delivered by old men in tweed caps.
Vera didn’t know why Hector had bought this house by the railway line soon after she was born. She would never have asked him. The junction, closed long ago, had served a hamlet half a mile away and nearby farms. Their house, grey stone, small windowed, stood end on to the track. She supposed it had suited him. It was near enough to the hills for his forays after birds’ eggs and then, while the trains still stopped, it was only a twenty-minute ride away from Kimmerston where he taught in the grammar school. He was solitary by nature. She couldn’t imagine him on a smart new estate making conversation about the mortgage rate or the latest model of Vauxhall.
It had occurred to her as an adult that the Gregorys had attracted him there. Mr Gregory had been the stationmaster and his wife looked after Vera until she was old enough to let herself in from school and have her dad’s tea ready by the time his train got in. It was possible that some arrangement had been made with Mrs Gregory before they moved. Nothing was said but Vera fancied that Mr Gregory could have been one of the brotherhood of egg collectors. He had that pedantic, meticulous way about him. And certainly Hector hadn’t minded being by the railway line. She’d caught him writing down train numbers in one of his bird-watching notebooks.
Vera had liked Mrs Gregory. She was a soft, motherly woman whose children had all grown up and married. Even when Hector had stopped paying Mrs Gregory to look after her, Vera had treated the Station House as a second home. When the junction was closed and the Gregorys had moved away she’d cried, though she’d never let Hector see.
She got out of bed and opened the curtains. Her room faced away from the track over a low meadow towards the hills. Now the grass was long and mixed with buttercups and clover. The rain had stopped but everything was wet, gleaming. She looked at her watch. Six o’clock. Too early to phone Ashworth. Just.
Since the Gregorys had moved the Station House had changed hands several times. Recently a couple in their forties, vaguely New Age in character, had taken over. They’d bought the field on the other side of the lane and grew vegetables and kept animals. From her window Vera could see a tethered goat and a wire mesh chicken run. The cockerel crowed. Perhaps that was what had wakened her.
She lay in the bath and planned her day. If she hadn’t been used to it the room would have depressed her. The bath had chipped and scaled enamel. The walls were white tile with greying cement. There were dead flies trapped in the f
rosted glass bowl which covered the light bulb. Apart from burning the contents of the spare-room wardrobe she hadn’t made any changes in the house since her father’s death. Plans but no changes.
By the time she was dressed it was ten to seven and she thought, Bugger it. If he’s not awake by now he ought to be.
Joe Ashworth answered immediately, but with the shocked voice of someone startled in the middle of a dream.
‘Didn’t wake you, did I?’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He was short. It wasn’t like him to be bad-tempered.
‘I thought babies got up early.’
‘He’s been awake all night with his teeth. We’ve only just got him back down.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. Meaning it even if it didn’t sound as if she did.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘There are a couple of things I want to sort out this morning. Can you get over to Holme Park? Start putting together a list of the people who were there yesterday afternoon. Livvy Fulwell should have one. See if there are any names we recognize.’
‘Like who?’
‘Anyone connected with the quarry. Godfrey Waugh, Peter Kemp, Neville Furness. They were business acquaintances of the Fulwells. It’s possible they got an invite.’
‘Wouldn’t Mrs Preece have mentioned seeing them?’
‘I didn’t ask. She was very shocked still. And there was quite a crowd milling around. She might not even have noticed.’
‘Can I ask what you’ll be doing?’
‘Me? I’ll be going out for coffee.’
The night before she’d arranged for an officer to visit Rod Owen. He’d supported Edmund more than the family and deserved to be told personally about his death. With what she thought of as great consideration she waited until after she’d finished her Shredded Wheat before phoning him. She presumed that restaurateurs kept late hours.
When he answered, however, he sounded brisk, businesslike. ‘The Harbour Lights.’
She started to give her name but he seemed to recognize her voice and broke in. ‘Any news?’
‘Not yet. A question though. Did Edmund have a regular day off?’