by Ann Cleeves
‘A bit of a nervy lad, was he?’ Vera asked.
‘Maybe that was my fault. There was only him and me and I always hated being on my own. Perhaps I smothered him a bit. I couldn’t have borne it if anything had happened to him.’ She paused, gave a little complacent smile. ‘He’s a good lad. I had a stroke a while back. Not major, but some sons would take their opportunity to put their mam into a home. Not him. He took time off work, brought me home and looked after me here.’
‘You’re close, then?’
‘Aye, very close.’
‘You’d know if anything was bothering him.’
‘Well, that’s a different thing, isn’t it? He’s not one for wearing his heart on his sleeve, our Clive. I’m not sure I can ever tell what’s going on in his head.’
‘Has he been seeing a lass lately?’
‘No!’ She seemed to think the idea inconceivable. ‘We’re quite happy here, just the two of us.’ Then she added, for form’s sake, ‘Not that it would worry me, mind. I mean, it would be lovely if he could find a good woman to settle down with. I’d love a grandchild.’
‘Has Clive ever had any treatment for his nerves?’
‘What do you mean?’ She was suddenly suspicious. She’d been eating the pastry with small delicate bites, nibbling away at the edges, mouse-like. Now she frowned over the cake at Vera.
‘I’m just asking, pet. Lots of people do.’
‘He’s not depressed, if that’s what you’re saying. We’re very content here, him and me. We don’t need anyone else prying into our business.’
Vera let it go, wondered if the woman was protesting too much.
‘You don’t mind when he stays away?’ she asked.
‘It doesn’t happen much these days. One time, it was every weekend. Up the coast with those grand friends of his. I didn’t complain, mind. He has his own life to live. But since I had the stroke he’s been a bit more thoughtful. I said to him, “How would you feel if I had a turn and I was here by myself?”’
Vera was starting to think Mary was a poisonous old witch. She could have understood if Clive had wanted to do away with her. ‘You knew he was going to be away last Friday?’
‘Of course. He wouldn’t have arranged it without asking me first.’
‘He prepared you a meal?’
‘Like I said, he’s a good lad. He usually cooks if he’s here. He didn’t eat, mind.’ She sniffed. ‘He was going to get something fancy at the party.’
‘What about the Wednesday?’
‘He was a bit late home from work because he went shopping on his way home. I was waiting for him. When you’re on your own all day, you look forward to the company.’
‘He doesn’t drive much now, he was telling me.’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘I used to quite enjoy our jaunts out in the car, but he never much liked driving. When it failed its MOT a few years ago, he didn’t bother having the car fixed and sold it for scrap. He says it’s better for the planet to use public transport. It would be handy for me now, though. He’d be able to give me a lift to the outpatient clinic at the hospital.’ She gave a quick look to the clock on the wall. ‘Is there anything else? Only the quiz I like on television comes on soon and it makes my day.’
Vera decided she’d go before she said something she regretted. She’d checked out Clive’s story. She couldn’t see him as Joe Ashworth’s madman, who killed young people just because he was jealous of the way they looked. He might be depressed, but who wouldn’t be, saddled with the self-obsessed mother?
Mary had switched on the big TV. Vera had begun by being sorry for her. Now she thought the woman had her life organized very much the way she wanted it. Vera got up. ‘I’ll see my way out, shall I?’
The little woman nodded. ‘If you don’t mind. I’m not so good on my feet, since I was ill.’
Vera closed the living-room door behind her and stood in the hall. The signature tune from the television faded. The host made a joke. Mary chuckled. Vera pushed open one of the doors leading from the corridor. It had a thick white carpet on the floor. A double bed with a pink candlewick quilt. That old ladies’ smell of worn nightclothes and talcum powder. The next door she tried was the bathroom. It was very small, a shower over the bath, the blue shower curtain with a pattern of beaming fish. The smell in here slightly more masculine. Shower gel? Aftershave? She looked at the bottles on the shelf. Had Clive always made an effort with his appearance, hopeful perhaps that one day he’d find a woman, an excuse to move away from his mother?
Then she was standing at the door of Clive’s room. It was firmly shut but not locked and opened with a gentle click. The curtains were drawn and she had to switch on the light. She had been expecting something dusty, full of specimens like the workroom in the museum, but it was uncluttered, anonymous. A single bed and matching pine wardrobe and chest of drawers. A bookcase with standard field guides. In one corner a mist net packed into a canvas bag. So Clive must be into ringing birds too. A few fantasy novels, an upturned book on the bedside table. A computer desk with the ubiquitous PC. A chess set. No pictures on the wall. It was as if he knew his mother had access to his room and he wanted to give nothing away. There was just one photograph, propped on the bedside cabinet, where you might expect the picture of a girlfriend or lover. This was of the group of four friends – Clive looking shy and awkward, Gary laughing, and each side of them Peter Calvert and Samuel Parr. It had been taken at the lighthouse and they were all gazing out to sea.
Vera walked back into the corridor. There was a burst of laughter from the television studio audience. She took advantage of the noise to shut the front door behind her and walk out into the street.
She stood for a moment then walked three doors down to where the Sharps lived. Now she was here, she might as well talk to Davy’s wife.
Chapter Thirty
Vera could tell that Diane Sharp knew who she was as soon as the door was opened – not her name or where she came from but that she was a police officer. She must have developed some sort of sixth sense after years of practice. She was a plump woman in her forties, with very pretty features, hair which looked as if she had it done every week. She wore a pink blouse and a white linen skirt.
‘You’re wasting your time here,’ she said. ‘Davy’s inside. Acklington.’
‘I know. I spoke to him last week.’ Vera was trying to remember if she’d met Davy’s wife before, thought she probably hadn’t.
‘And our Brian doesn’t live here any more. He’s got his own place in town.’
‘It’s you I want to talk to,’ Vera said.
The woman seemed surprised by that, so surprised that she stood aside and let Vera in.
‘I don’t get mixed up in their business.’ As she spoke she led Vera through to the back of the bungalow. Everything was very neat, very respectable. She opened a door and suddenly light flooded into the space. There was a conservatory the width of the building, looking out onto a tiny patch of lawn. ‘Davy had this done last time he was home,’ she said. She settled herself into a wicker chair, nodded for Vera to join her.
‘This isn’t about what your men get up to,’ Vera said. She paused. ‘I was so sorry to hear about Thomas.’
The woman sat very still before replying. ‘That was an accident,’ she said at last. ‘Nothing for you to trouble yourself about.’
‘Are you sure about that, Mrs Sharp?’
‘Aye, it’d have been easier if there was someone to blame, but it was just lads larking around.’
‘You’ll have seen in the paper that Luke Armstrong was killed?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was a smashing lad. Tom spent a lot of time at his place.’
‘Did he come here?’
‘Not so often. Brian was still at home then. There were things going on. I didn’t want Tom involved.’
‘What sort of things?’
She hesitated, chose her words carefully. ‘Brian mixes with a rough set,’ she said. She could hav
e been talking about a five-year-old mixing with bad company at school.
Vera knew one of the rough set had been convicted of attempted murder, a stabbing in a city-centre pub, but she let that go. ‘Tell me about the memorial they did for Tom. The flowers on the river. Whose idea was it?’
‘I’m not sure who started it.’ Diane was looking through the glass at the trimmed lawn. ‘Someone in the street probably. Everyone here was very fond of Tom. I don’t think it was organized. At first there was one bunch of flowers. Then everybody joined in.’
‘Did anyone blame Luke Armstrong for Tom’s death?’
The woman looked up. ‘You’re thinking of Brian? After revenge?’
‘Your little brother drowns, you’d want someone to blame. Like you said, we all want that.’
She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t Brian. I’d have heard.’
Vera thought that was probably true. Besides, Brian Sharp would have kicked the Armstrong door down, battered Luke with fists and boots. He wouldn’t have charmed his way in with flowers.
‘Tell me about the Stringers,’ she said. ‘Your neighbours.’
Diane seemed surprised by the sudden change of subject. ‘Why do you want to know about them?’
‘Clive’s a witness in another enquiry. I’m just curious.’
‘Mary Stringer was like a mother to me when we moved here,’ Diane said. ‘Davy wasn’t around much and I was pregnant with Tom. She was on her own apart from Clive. She lost her husband in an accident. Clive wasn’t like either of my boys. He was very quiet. Always had his head in a book. No trouble. Not really. He was teased a bit as a kid, but Brian soon put a stop to that. We were almost like one family. Mary looked after Tom for me most days until he started nursery. I had my hands full with Brian and she was only on a widow’s pension. She needed the money and I was happy enough to slip her a few pounds. Clive loved having Tom around. Most lads wouldn’t have been interested, but for a few years they were like brothers.’
‘Did Clive ever meet Luke Armstrong?’
‘He might have done. Tom never said.’
Vera couldn’t think of anything else to ask and stood to go. Diane shut the door firmly behind her. Outside, Clive Stringer was standing next to her car. He must have left work as soon as his mother phoned him about Vera’s intended visit. He was wearing black jeans, a black polo shirt, black trainers. He had the sort of complexion which easily burns and his face was red, greasy with sweat. Vera could tell he’d stood there, fuming, getting hotter and crosser, waiting for her to return to her car.
‘You had no right bothering my mother.’
‘She didn’t seem to mind, pet. We had a nice pot of tea.’
‘Anything you want to ask, you can come straight to me.’
‘You look as if you could do with a cup yourself. Is there anywhere round here we could get a drink? Save bothering your mam again. Stand here any longer and we’ll start gathering a crowd.’
A gang of teenagers were slouching down the road on their way home from school and they’d already begun to stare. Clive shrugged. ‘There’s a caff on the corner’ He set off along the pavement leaving Vera to follow.
The cafe had set a garden table and chairs outside on the pavement. Any attempt to create a continental atmosphere was ruined by the smell of greasy burgers and stale cigarettes coming through the open door, but the pavement was in the shade now and they sat there anyway. Vera drank instant coffee, Clive a bottle of bright-orange fizzy pop. She thought again that he’d never grown up.
‘It can’t have been easy,’ she said, ‘growing up without a dad.’ As soon as the words were out she thought that was a patronizing thing to say, but in the short walk Clive seemed to have become calmer.
‘My mother’s never been easy,’ he said. He looked up with a sudden grin as if he’d made a joke.
‘She depends on you?’ Vera was feeling her way with him. One wrong word and she knew he’d clam up again.
‘There’s nobody else. No relatives. She’s not very good with friends. She makes demands on them, but won’t make any effort in return.’
‘She made an effort with Diane Sharp.’
‘Diane paid her. Besides Mam liked Tom when he was a baby. She could make believe he was hers. She didn’t like him so much when he was old enough to answer back.’
‘You never answered back?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never got the hang of it.’ She expected him to smile again, but he seemed quite serious.
‘How did you get on with the Sharps?’
‘At one point they were like family,’ he said and Vera thought that Diane had said almost the same thing. ‘It would have been easy to get sucked into all that. You know, the stuff they were into. But the bird-watching came along and that was a way out for me.’
‘And another sort of family.’
‘Aye,’ he said, grateful that she seemed to understand.
‘Do you have any idea what lies behind these murders? The flowers. The water.’ Of all the people, she thought he might have. He had the sort of mind which could see the patterns in things. The question came out before she’d considered whether it would be sensible to ask.
He sat for a moment, his eyelids blinking wildly behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Felicity had assumed Vera Stanhope would collect Lily Marsh’s ring and was a little confused to find a young man standing at the door. He introduced himself as Joe Ashworth and, when she still seemed unsure, he showed her his identity card and explained, ‘DI Stanhope’s my boss.’ He could have been the junior partner in a small business. He was well mannered and engaging and she took to him at once. She realized then that she’d been foolish to expect an inspector to turn out on such a trivial matter.
Almost immediately afterwards, James arrived from the school bus. They were still on the doorstep and he ran past them into the house and into the kitchen, shirt untucked, trainers unlaced, ravenous as he always was when he got in from school. Even when they followed, he took no notice of the stranger and continued pulling biscuits out of the tin, talking with his mouth full about sports day. She wished he had given a better impression, been more polite. But Ashworth seemed to understand children and smiled at her over the boy’s head. He sat and made small talk as if he had all the time in the world.
‘Your husband says you’re the gardener in the family.’
‘I suppose I am. He’s very busy. And though he’s a botanist by profession, his real passion is birds. He’d much rather be out on the coast.’
‘We live on a new estate,’ Ashworth said. ‘There’s not much of a garden at all. My wife makes it pretty, though. She watches the makeover programmes on the telly.’
While he was chatting about his wife and daughter and the new baby on the way, Felicity thought what a nice young man he was and how she wished Joanna had married someone like that, instead of Oliver, who worked in television and hardly seemed to notice that he had a child at all.
‘Recently wor lass has got into making home-made cards,’ Ashworth was saying. ‘They had someone to speak at the WI about pressing flowers. Sarah’s started growing plants she can pick for pressing. She sells them round the village. She’ll do a one-off if someone wants a card for a special occasion. There’s not much profit in it, but she covers the costs and she loves doing it.’
‘Goodness! I wish we could attract some younger women to the Institute here. The average age must be about seventy-five and I’m the youngest by miles.’
‘Maybe you had the same woman as a speaker?’
‘I don’t think so. But all those talks on craft become a bit of a blur. I’m not really interested. Two left hands. Any spare time and I’d rather be in the garden. I’ll show you round later, if you like.’
James ran outside to play with the girls from the farm, but Felicity and Ashworth stayed in the kitchen to talk. She set the ring on the table between
them. ‘Such a pretty thing.’ She smiled, confessed, ‘I was almost tempted to keep it.’
‘You’re sure it belonged to Lily Marsh?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘As soon as I saw it I knew it was familiar. It was only when I got back to the house that I remembered where I’d seen it.’
‘You didn’t notice Lily drop it?’
‘If I had,’ she said primly, ‘I’d have returned it to her.’
‘Of course.’ He paused. She thought he was more deliberate than Vera Stanhope, slower in his thought and speech. ‘I’m not clear how she might have lost it. Did she use the bathroom there? Take it off, perhaps, to wash her hands?’
She played back in her head the young woman’s appearance at Fox Mill. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, she went to the bathroom here in the house, before we went across to the cottage. Perhaps it had just come loose. If she’d lost weight since it was bought…’
‘Yes.’ He gave a doubtful little smile. ‘Wouldn’t you have heard it drop, then? Unless the cottage is carpeted?’
She was starting to lose patience. She wondered if she had been wrong about this young man. Had he taken her in with his stories of his wife and daughter? Was he trying to trick her? ‘There’s no carpet,’ she said more sharply. ‘Flags downstairs and wooden floorboards in the bedroom. Does it really matter? She must have dropped it. I’m handing it back.’
‘It might matter. If she was still wearing the ring when she left, it would suggest that she returned. We still don’t know where Miss Marsh was killed. You do see how important these details are now?’
Felicity felt suddenly sick. She couldn’t quite get to grips with what the detective was saying. ‘Do you mean she was killed in our cottage? That’s ridiculous. Impossible.’
‘I don’t think it’s impossible,’ he said calmly. He could still be talking about pressing flowers and the WI. ‘It’s not that far from here to where her body was found. We know it was her ring. We know it meant a lot to her. It was a present from someone very close to her. If we can find evidence that it was still in her possession when she left you, that would be significant, wouldn’t it? It would mean she came back. Probably on the day she was killed.’