by Paula Daly
Steph places her menu flat on the table. Her expression has hardened. ‘You asked me here to find out what sort of person my murdered friend was? That’s it? That’s all you want to know?’
Tess again finds that words escape her so Avril steps in. ‘We received some information that you knew things about Ella. This person said you knew things about Ella that no one else did. We’re hoping you can talk to us about that … This person—’
‘What person?’
‘I can’t say, I’m afraid,’ replies Avril.
‘OK, so someone,’ Steph says, rolling her eyes, ‘you can’t say who, this someone says I know something, and you want to know what that something is? Have I got that right?’
Avril tells her that’s right. ‘To be honest, we’re running out of leads. We’ve hit a bit of a dead end.’
‘Well, she had a boyfriend,’ says Steph. ‘Maybe that’s what this someone is referring to.’
‘Yes. Pete Kamara,’ says Avril.
‘No. Another boyfriend.’
Avril tilts her head. ‘She was seeing two people at once?’
‘Yep. Ella was my boss at the café. She talked about her love life quite a lot. It passed the time.’
‘Did these two boyfriends know each other?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tess leans in. ‘Was this other guy ever investigated for Ella’s murder?’
‘I don’t think so … his name was never mentioned in court, but I suppose he could’ve been.’
‘Who is he?’ asks Tess.
‘Greg Lancashire,’ replies Steph.
‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘I don’t think she wanted me to.’
‘Because …?’
Steph sighs. ‘Because, frankly, he’s a bit of a dick … He wanted to keep her to himself, he wouldn’t let her see her friends. He’s the jealous type – which I would’ve hated, but I think, in a weird kind of way, Ella liked? I think she enjoyed feeling important to him. She’d never had that before.’
‘Is he married?’ asks Tess.
‘Divorced. Ella said she wouldn’t go out with another married man. Not after what happened with Carrie.’
‘Because she felt bad about the affair,’ states Tess.
‘No. It was more that when Carrie turned up at her door, threatening she had to stay away, she decided she didn’t need that kind of drama in her life any more. She said she’d learned her lesson and wouldn’t get involved with anyone married again.’ Steph pauses. ‘Bit too late by then though, wasn’t it?’
Tess and Avril share a look. This is a very different version of events than Carrie’s recollection.
Tess takes out her notebook. ‘Do you know where Greg Lancashire is now?’
‘Last I heard he was living on the caravan park ’cause his life had kind of gone to shit. When Ella was with him he used to be a mechanic for Jaguar Land Rover and he rented a nice little cottage with some land alongside in Carnforth. Ella liked it there.’
‘What happened?’ asks Avril.
‘Greg’s got a temper on him and he threw a torque wrench at some salesman’s head so they had to let him go. I heard he lost his house after that ’cause no one would employ him, so he’s like a self-employed welder now or something.’
‘You never see him around?’ asks Tess and Steph shakes her head just as Tess becomes aware of a large group of people making their way out of the pub.
The group filter past their table; it’s clear they’ve all had a boozy lunch, and there is much laughter and bonhomie, everyone speaking a little too loudly, faces flushed, arms linked, and a woman who Tess assesses is not really a natural high-heel wearer trips over her feet, and Tess watches as she falls towards their table of drinks. This all seems to happen in slow motion and just as she’s about to crash, perhaps resulting in her sustaining cut palms, perhaps even a bloodied face, she is caught from behind and pulled back to safety.
She apologizes profusely. And the man who caught her apologizes too. But then he stops. His eyes land on Steph and—
‘Steph!’ he booms. ‘What are you doing here? How’s your dad? It’s good to see you, are you—’
And then his eyes alight on Tess.
It’s Bill Menzies. The lawyer. The lawyer who has taken care of the affairs of Steph’s family since the adoption and who hand-delivered Steph’s letter to Tess. The letter informing her of Steph’s adoptive mother’s death.
Bill beams at both women. He stands back, puts his hands in his pockets, and rocks back and forth with a well-I’ll-be expression on his face.
Bill can’t stop smiling as he looks between the two of them. ‘Bloody hell,’ he says. ‘Bloody hell. I can’t believe you actually found each other.’ He leans over and gives Tess’s shoulder a firm squeeze. ‘I never thought it’d happen. I never thought I’d see the day when the two of you made contact.’ Bill shakes both their hands in turn, saying, ‘Well, as you can see, this has made my year.’ Then he decides that this occasion warrants a bigger gesture and he dips down, trying to hug/kiss first Steph and then Tess. ‘Bloody hell,’ he says again, quite overcome.
Bill tries to gather himself. ‘Right,’ he says firmly. ‘Right. I’ll leave you to it. You don’t need me interrupting your big reunion.’ He bows at the waist. ‘Goodbye, ladies.’
And finally, he leaves.
Tess is afraid to look at Steph. But she does look and it’s immediately clear Steph is poleaxed by this turn of events. Tess is unsure whether Steph wants to yell or cry. It’s probably both. Steph stares back at her mother, hurt, disappointment and fury dancing in her eyes, and Tess feels skinless. Exposed. She can almost see Steph’s brain running through what has just happened. What happened at the Midland Hotel too.
Suddenly her beautiful daughter looks so brittle she might crack into pieces.
Tess reaches out her hand.
And Steph looks down at it, appalled.
She flees.
Both Tess and Avril rush after her and when they get outside they see Steph’s already halfway down the street, running. She is running as fast as she can to get away from Tess.
‘Do you think you should go after her?’ Avril asks.
And Tess thinks about this for a moment before heading back inside. ‘We need to collect our coats,’ she says.
Now
TESS IS TRYING to get hold of Clive. The sound of the dialling tone fills the car and Avril reaches forward to adjust the volume so it’s less of an assault on their ears. Tess taps her fingers on the wheel impatiently. She has not discussed what happened earlier in Wetherspoon’s with Avril. Nor is she likely to.
They hear a click as the call finally connects before there’s a loud crack. This is followed by the sound of wind rushing, then a rustling, and then, finally, Clive’s voice, which is faint, as if far away, saying, ‘Bloody hell.’
‘He’s dropped the phone,’ says Avril.
‘Looks that way.’
After a few seconds, Clive’s phone finds its way to his ear and he says, ‘Miss Gilroy. To what do I owe the pleasure? Sorry about that, nearly dropped my phone in the bath. The kids have come home covered in paint.’ Tess can now hear splashing and the lovely infectious giggle of a child. Oh, yes, she remembers, Clive’s kids. Clive has kids. This is something she often forgets.
‘I need an address,’ she tells him.
‘For?’
‘Greg Lancashire. I think he’s somewhere in Morecambe.’
‘OK, I’ll see what I can do, but Tess?’
‘What?’
‘When can I see you? I need you. I miss you. I know you saw Rebecca. We need to talk – I just need to—’
‘Hello, Clive!’ chips in Avril.
‘Oh, Avril,’ he says, embarrassed. ‘Didn’t realize I was on speakerphone.’
They end the call and head to the supermarket. Clive said to give him an hour to find Greg’s details, so, short of anything better to do, Tess and Avril agree they may as well stock up on gro
ceries as sit there in the car twiddling their thumbs.
The day is cold. Minus two. This is rare for Morecambe, as the moisture-laden air masses which regularly envelop the coast prevent the winter temperatures from dropping too low. Today though, the winds are coming from the north so there’s a real bite in the air – which is just as well because, as Avril points out, it will stop their freezer stuff from melting in the boot.
Avril pushes the trolley while Tess throws the stuff inside. Tess’s items are at the front, Avril’s at the back. Tess picks up things in the fresh produce section that Avril has never seen before and marvels at Tess’s ability to confidently deal with a small swede, a butternut squash and a globe artichoke. ‘What do you do with that?’ Avril asks, holding up the artichoke, and Tess tells her it’s a little hard to explain. ‘Is it like an avocado?’ she enquires, and Tess tells her it is, sort of, because it’s easier. ‘I cut my palm open trying to get the stone out of one of those once,’ Avril says. ‘Never again.’
‘The trick is to cut it into quarters, then the stone falls out easily,’ Tess tells her, but Avril is shaking her head repeatedly whilst pulling a face to suggest that those who do partake in such business are taking an ungodly risk.
Tess is loading the groceries on to the conveyor belt when Clive gets back to her. ‘OK, I’ve got it,’ he says.
Tess hands over her debit card to the checkout assistant, a man of seventy-plus years with cloudy eyes and skin covered in liver spots. ‘Go on,’ she says to Clive.
There’s a pause.
‘Hello?’ she says, wondering if they’ve been cut off.
‘Listen, he’s a bad lad, this Greg Lancashire … I’m not sure I like the idea of you going around there. He’s got previous and I’m really not happy about—’
‘I’m a big girl, Clive.’
‘What if something happens?’
‘It won’t.’
She hears him exhale. ‘Anyway, I need to see you,’ he says. ‘Why have you been ignoring my calls? Rebecca came home in a state saying she’d broken into your house. I went berserk. I told her she was insane but she’s been doing all sorts of stupid shit lately.’
‘Because she thinks you don’t love her.’
‘I do love her,’ he says.
‘Not enough. Not nearly enough. And she knows it. So she’s going to keep doing stupid shit until you sort that out. She’ll keep testing you and behaving like a madwoman, or a petulant schoolgirl, she’ll keep crying for you to love her until she gets the assurance she needs. You need to either commit fully to her or walk away.’
‘Do you want a bag for life?’ asks the checkout guy.
‘I’d like two, please,’ replies Tess.
‘Let me see you,’ Clive says.
‘I told Rebecca it was over between us, and I meant it. I can’t keep doing it to her. It’s not fair.’
‘Please, Tess.’
‘What’s the address, Clive?’ she says.
And she hears him exhale again. When he’s sure she’s not going to budge on either issue, he says, ‘I’ll text it to you.’
Ten minutes later they pull on to the caravan site. But this is no holiday park. These are long-term residences, home to Morecambe’s most hard-up. The sky is almost fully black and as Tess drives along the track, which loops around the site, she’s finding it difficult to make out the numbers affixed to the vans. It’s not a nice place. After dark, this is not where you want to be. ‘Seventeen … nineteen …’ Avril reads the numbers aloud. ‘Twenty-one. Here it is. Twenty-one, right?’
Tess stops the car and double-checks the text from Clive. ‘Twenty-one,’ she affirms. There is nowhere to park, so she pulls the car on to the grass in front of Greg Lancashire’s home. They get out. Greg’s caravan itself is in darkness, but from the light of next door’s van, Tess can see it’s in a bad state of repair. There’s a layer of filth covering the entire fibreglass shell and one of the front window frames has come loose. Give the thing a firm pull and it would probably come off in your hand. ‘I don’t like this,’ Avril says.
There are raised voices coming from the van opposite. Yelling. It’s a man and woman. Husband and wife, by the sounds of it. ‘You? ’ the woman shouts bitterly. ‘What are you gonna do? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘I’m warning you, lady.’
‘You’re warning me?’ she says. ‘You couldn’t warn a fucking cat.’
Tess taps her key fob on the door of number twenty-one and almost immediately, it’s opened. The inhabitant must have been watching Tess and Avril approach. She’s a fragile-looking woman in her early twenties. She’s rail-thin – her body is that of an eleven-year-old – and has a quilt draped around her shoulders for warmth. Tess can smell a musty damp odour coming from the girl. ‘Hi,’ she says, ‘we’re looking for Greg Lancashire?’
‘Are you the police?’
‘God, no,’ replies Tess. ‘I hate the police. We’re with a charity that looks into miscarriages of justice. We have some questions for Greg. Is he around?’ The woman shakes her head. ‘Maybe you could help us, then?’
Inside, it’s pretty squalid. Avril’s eyes widen when the woman switches on a lamp and the full extent of the place is revealed. Tess avoids Avril’s gaze. Her own eyes are drawn to the tiles behind the cooker; they should be white, but it’s as if someone has thrown a pan of soup against them and left it to dry. Tess’s boots make a soft thwacking sound as she walks across the kitchen linoleum, which is sticky with grease, following the woman into the lounge area. A cat is curled up inside a cardboard box; she has four black-and-white kittens attached to her belly who are making tiny mewing noises. Across the back of the sofa area is a large, glass aquarium. But it has no water inside. When Tess sees movement in the lower left-hand corner, she realizes it’s housing a snake. A big snake. She experiences a moment of horror as she looks from the kittens, so small that they can only be a few days old, back to the snake again. What if they feed the kittens to the—
‘Sit down, if you like,’ says the young woman.
Tess resists the urge to dust off the chair before perching. Avril, meanwhile, is hovering a couple of feet away, reluctant to sit at all. Tess glares at her. And Avril glares back, appalled that she’s being asked to make physical contact with anything inside this hellhole. ‘Do it,’ mouths Tess, and Avril acquiesces, settling her bottom on to a ladder-back chair that seems to sigh under her weight.
‘Are you Greg’s girlfriend?’ Tess asks the woman, who holds out her left hand to show a stupidly large, ostentatious ring.
‘We got married last year.’
Tess smiles. ‘Congratulations, Mrs Lancashire.’
Hearing ‘Mrs’ makes her go all coy. It’s as though she’s still a child pretending to be grown up. ‘I’m Shannon.’
The snake moves and Tess flinches. She needs to get out of here. She is not good around reptiles. That said, she doesn’t like to see any animals abused, and she’s not sure that keeping a large predator inside a dirty glass tank is any kind of life for the poor snake. She wonders how Greg Lancashire would fare if he were kept inside one. ‘Did Greg ever mention Ella Muir to you?’ she asks Shannon.
‘Just that he was with her for a while. It was big news around here so I knew about her being murdered.’
‘What’s he like?’
At this Shannon seems taken aback. As though no one’s ever been interested enough to ask her a personal question before. Struggling to answer, she says, ‘He’s like …’ and then she stops.
‘Is he a good husband?’ prompts Avril.
‘Yeah,’ she replies, firmly, as though persuading herself. ‘Yeah, he’s a good husband.’
‘He treats you well?’ asks Avril.
‘I think so …?’
Tess smiles encouragingly at Shannon. ‘Shannon,’ she says, ‘tell me, does he ever … does Greg ever get mad with you?’ and Shannon looks towards Avril, quietly panicked. She seems reluctant to answer Tess’s question but does not have the
skill set to divert the conversation. ‘Does he ever, say, stop you from seeing your friends? Stuff like that?’ pushes Tess.
‘Sometimes,’ replies Shannon, ‘but that’s only because he’s frightened I’ll go off with another fella. He’s very protective. He really treasures what we’ve got together, so it’s only right that he gets mad. It’s not because he doesn’t like my friends or anythin’.’
Tess smiles again as though she understands. As though Greg’s behaviour is perfectly reasonable. Every woman’s dream. Then she drops her voice to just above a whisper. ‘Does Greg ever scare you, Shannon?’
And Shannon drops her head. ‘Now and again.’
‘Does he ever hurt you?’
Shannon nods, head down still.
‘Do you think Greg could be capable of really hurting a woman?’ she asks. ‘Say if he was more than angry?’
And Shannon looks up. ‘Maybe.’
Now
‘WHY THE HELL wasn’t he investigated?’
It’s the following morning and Tess and Avril are in ‘Interview Room 3’ with a defiant DI Gillian Frain. Gillian refused to see them initially, claiming, via the desk sergeant, to be up to her eyes in paperwork. So Tess issued a warning: ‘Tell her to get down here or I’ll pass on this information to the press,’ and Gillian gave in. It was an empty threat but Gillian Frain was with them within moments and Tess made a mental note to use the bluff more regularly. The police’s reputation is taking a battering in the British press right now, reports of non-submission of vital evidence being an everyday occurrence. DI Frain is yet to see her own name in the papers and Tess assumes she’d like to keep it that way, hence the reason she’s with them now.
‘He was not investigated,’ DI Frain replies to Tess’s question, ‘because, as I explained, we didn’t know about Greg Lancashire’s link to the victim at the time of the murder.’