by Ann Cleeves
Her eyes were becoming adjusted to the dark and, before she came to it, she saw the five-bar gate which led into the observatory garden, and beyond that the matt black shape of the cottage. There was no car. Not on the lane, at least. It was possible that it had been pulled onto the drive and was hidden by trees and a bramble thicket. She wouldn’t see it from here. She walked on down the lane in the hope of getting a better view of the front of the house, where there were windows. Would he take the risk of turning on lights? Was he there at all?
At first she saw nothing, then there was a flicker of light. The striking of a match or a torch being switched on and off. So brief that she could have imagined it. If she’d been the imaginative sort. Perhaps Joe was right after all. Perhaps Parr was here. She imagined how triumphant Joe would be when she told him there was someone in the bungalow. She allowed herself a daydream. She was in Julie’s kitchen, her arm round Laura. I’ve brought your girl home, pet. Though she had no evidence that Laura was still alive she wanted that moment so much that it hurt.
She turned and walked back to the car, let herself in. She’d just shut the door when Ashworth’s phone went, startling her so she felt her heart suddenly race.
He pushed the button after the first ring. ‘Yes?’ Even his whisper seemed very loud after the silence outside. Then she felt him relax and she could tell it wasn’t his wife on the other end. She must still be tucked up at home with her cocoa. He wouldn’t have to run back just yet to be present at the birth. ‘It’s Charlie,’ he said. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
She took the phone from Joe. ‘Well, Charlie? What have you got for me?’
‘I found Parr.’
‘Where was he?’
‘The first place you suggested. The cemetery. Next to his wife’s grave. It’s twenty years today since she killed herself. When I got there he was sitting on the grass. Looked as if he’d been crying.’
‘You got someone to check his tyres against the mark on the road at Seaton?’
‘Aye, and they’re nothing like,’ Charlie said. ‘He drives a new car. Billy Wainwright said the tyre that left the mark was almost illegal. Besides, I don’t think he’s been in a fit state to snatch the girl. Sounded to me as if he’d been in the cemetery since early this morning. He puts on a good show, but I’d say finding that lass at the lighthouse brought it all back. When I got there he could hardly hold it together. I asked him about Laura Armstrong, if he knew what had happened to her, but he didn’t have any idea what I was on about. Really, all he could talk about was how he’d let his wife down. I took him home, had a quick look round inside the house before I left him. There was no sign of the girl.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’ She handed the phone back to Joe. ‘They’ve found Samuel Parr. He had nothing to with abducting Laura.’
‘So that’s it, then. We can go back to Kimmerston.’ She couldn’t tell if he was pleased that his theory had come to nothing, or pleased that he could get back to his wife.
‘Someone’s in the cottage. I saw a light.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain. I’m not given to visions.’
‘One of the birdwatchers, perhaps. The members have keys. They’re supposed to let the booking secretary know they’ll be there, but they don’t always.’
She saw him sneak a look at his watch, took no notice, shut her eyes to help her concentrate.
‘Why don’t we just go to the front door?’ Ashworth said. ‘Find out who’s there and what’s going on.’
She ignored him. It was important to think this through. Perhaps Samuel Parr’s short story about the abduction of a child was irrelevant. A strange coincidence. She’d been so desperate to find Laura Armstrong that she’d allowed herself to be misled, swept along by Joe’s enthusiasm. But the details were so similar, so consistent. She thought of the jacket of the anthology, the swirling greens and blues of the design, a stylized image of waves. The title in white, sharp against the patterned background. Parr’s name at the bottom of the page. She’d borrowed the book in hardback from the library. Hundreds of people could have had access to it.
When she opened her eyes, she knew what had happened. She’d been right all along. It wasn’t a surprise to her. She usually was.
Chapter Forty-Three
She was relieved when they found the door of the cottage was unlocked. Ashworth hadn’t mentioned it again but she wasn’t sure he believed her about the light. Not when they pushed open the five-bar gate, lifting it carefully on its hinges, and the place was dark. They walked across the grass to avoid the sound of their feet on the gravel drive. The grass was long and felt cool, slightly damp, through her sandals. Then a thin moon appeared and she even questioned her own judgement. Perhaps what she’d seen had been some sort of reflection. She’d wanted so much to find Laura here. She looked through the window, but could make out nothing inside.
But why would the cottage be open if the place was empty? She touched the door gently until it opened a crack, and listened. Joe Ashworth was making his way to the back of the house. She couldn’t hear a thing, not even his moving. She stretched in her arm and ran her fingers over the inside wall, feeling for the light switch. Woodchip wallpaper, then the smooth plastic of the surround to the switch. She struggled again to remember the layout of the bungalow. She was sure there was no hall. This was the living room. Beyond it lay the kitchen and to the right two doors leading to the bedrooms which were used as dormitories. She gave Ashworth a few more minutes to take up position, switched on the light, pushed the door wide open.
The light came from a low-watt, energy-saving bulb which hung from the centre of the ceiling, but for a moment it blinded her.
‘Police. Don’t move.’ She blinked as she shouted, heard a noise somewhere, a door being opened.
There was no one in the room. It was much as she remembered it. A table under the window. It might once have been a decent piece of furniture but now it was scratched and covered with rings from coffee cups and beer glasses. Two upright chairs pushed under it. A sagging sofa and two easy chairs facing the empty grate. On the walls photographs of birds and a number of paintings and drawings, mostly terrible. A few shelves with natural history books, maps and field guides. In the seconds it took to look around her, Ashworth appeared. The noise she’d heard had been him opening the door into the kitchen.
Without speaking she threw open the doors to the bedrooms. They were both surprisingly neat. Three sets of bunks in each. Grey blankets folded at the foot of each bed. A faint smell of mildew and socks.
She turned to follow Ashworth, who’d wandered back into the kitchen. It was the time to admit she’d been wrong. To get him to promise not to tell the world they’d cocked up and to let him go home to his enormous wife.
‘Someone’s been here very recently,’ he said. ‘The kettle’s still hot. The light you saw could have been someone lighting the gas.’
So there was still a chance they’d find Laura before she was killed. She wanted to kiss him.
Ashworth seemed not to realize the effect of his words. ‘He can’t have gone anywhere. We’d have passed a vehicle in the lane. There’s no car in the drive. He must have parked further down the track.’
‘He knows we’re here now,’ Vera said. ‘Switching on that light wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve done in my career. You’ll be able to see it for miles.’ She ran out of the house and into the garden, stumbling on the last step from the front door. The pond was ahead of her. There was hardly any reflection from the water, only tiny patches of silver around the edges. In the centre a black shadow. She found herself praying in her head to a God she’d never believed in. Please let her not be there. Not the girl. Not Laura. She heard Ashworth close behind her, the sound of his breathing, the rustle of denim against denim as he walked. I hope you’re praying, she thought. You’re a believer. He might listen to you.
She crouched to get closer to the water. Began to make out the shape of a young woman’s body, arms out
stretched, when Ashworth switched on his torch. As the narrow beam swung over the surface, the image changed. She saw flat, waxy leaves, balls of tangled vegetation sucking in the light, but nothing human. Nothing dead. She realized she’d stopped breathing and took a lungful of air. She felt her head swimming.
The girl might already have been killed but she hadn’t been posed. Not yet. She hadn’t been used for effect, turned into a piece of art which had nothing to do with the real Laura. At least Julie had been spared that.
Vera straightened and tried to keep her thoughts clear, to remember the detail of what had happened during the Deepden party. Because she’d been determined to keep Hector on the straight and narrow, she’d been perfectly sober. The memories should be sharp. There’d been the guided tour: a walk through the orchard, sunlight sloping through the trees, a look into the cottage, which had been freshly painted for the occasion, a ringing exhibition.
The ringing exhibition. They’d stood in a semicircle while a tall man in a blue smock reached out a bird for them to see. A yellowhammer, loosely held, the head caught between his second and third fingers. Through the door, they’d seen him weigh it. He’d slid it head first into a plastic cone which clipped onto a spring balance. He’d measured its wing with a metal rule. With his free hand he’d taken pliers from a shelf and a silver ring from a string hanging on the wall. He’d fitted the ring on the bird’s leg, then squeezed it carefully into place. Then he’d stood at the door, the bird resting on the palm of his hand, until it had flown away.
It hadn’t been the cottage door. She was sure of that. She dug in her memory for a picture of it. A flimsy wooden door held shut by a padlock which the ringer had unlocked when he’d returned from catching the birds. A door into a hut, the size of a big garden shed, made with stained wood panels. A corrugated iron roof. And surrounding the hut a thicket of bramble and buckthorn, so it was hidden from the garden and the house. They’d been surprised when the tour guide had led them there down a path cut through the undergrowth. The bushes had been cleared close to the front of the structure and that was where the group had stood, an audience waiting for the show to begin.
Now she tried to get her bearings. Standing next to Hector on the night of the party, while the ringer did his stuff, she’d felt her father start to get restless; he could only take not being the centre of attention for so long. She’d thought that he might escape, show his boredom by making an obvious run for it. It would have been easy enough for him to do that. The hut was right on the edge of observatory land, on the boundary with the field of rough grazing which led to the sea.
She began to move along the edge of the grass, looking for a gap in the vegetation. It seemed to her that the moon was brighter, or perhaps her eyes had adjusted to the dark. Then she found it, a narrow path leading through the bushes. She made herself walk slowly. She knew if she hurried, he’d hear them coming. If he was listening out for them he’d hear them anyway. Some noises she couldn’t prevent – her laboured breathing, the snapping of dry undergrowth as it snagged on her clothing. The path was so narrow, she couldn’t help that. But perhaps he wouldn’t be listening out. Perhaps, locked in the hut, he hadn’t seen the light from the cottage. Her fear was that if he knew they were there, he might be goaded into some grand gesture. It would upset him to be denied the water and the flowers, but he’d love a live audience.
He’s forgotten why this started. He’s become seduced by the glamour of it. He probably keeps a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings. Where will we find them?
The hut was just as she remembered it. Perhaps the paint had faded, the roof rusted, but in this light it was impossible to tell.
They stood on the edge of the clearing. Vera put her mouth so close to Ashworth’s ear that she could feel his skin briefly against her lips.
‘Wait. Until I call.’
She inched her way across the grass, aware of the weight she carried, the space she took up. As if, inside the hut, he’d sense the vibration of her feet on the ground, the displacement of the air.
At the door she stopped. There was no padlock. It had been pulled to from the inside, but she didn’t think it had been bolted. She listened. No voices. Then she heard a rhythmic creaking, metal not wood, then a hissing. A white light appeared in the crack between the door and the frame.
Opening it, she tried to imagine she was visiting her neighbour. No fuss, quiet and easy. Wanting a favour. I’ve run out of booze. Don’t suppose you could spare a bottle of wine?
Clive Stringer stood beside a narrow wooden table, his face lit by a tilley lamp. That had been the sound she’d heard, the creaking had been the pump as he’d primed it, the hissing the noise as it caught. Beside the lamp lay a bunch of flowers, mostly ox-eye daisies, their stems wrapped in damp newspaper. She tried not to look at them, or to peer into the shadow to look at the girl. Rolled up in bags in the corner, the mist nets used for catching migrant birds. And tucked inside, the thin nylon rope used as guys to anchor the poles. There’d been a mist net in Clive’s room. She was sure now he’d used a guy rope to strangle his victims. She was glad of her size, blocking the doorway. He seemed very slight.
‘It’s all over now, pet,’ she said. She kept her voice friendly. She didn’t expect him to put up a fight, thought he might even be relieved to be caught. ‘You’d just as well come with me.’
He stared at her without speaking.
She went on talking, keeping her voice even. ‘You were the obvious suspect once I knew Lily was involved with Peter Calvert. You linked both families. But I couldn’t work out why. You did it for them, didn’t you? For Tom and Peter. Your friends.’
She thought he would answer, but he took the lamp by its wire handle and flung it against the wall. The glass smashed and the wood caught immediately; the paint bubbled and blistered and the flames licked along the line of the spilled paraffin. Stringer backed away from Vera into a corner. She ignored him, all her focus now on the girl, a still figure lying on the floor at her feet. Laura was wrapped in a blanket. Her face was covered. Vera picked her up, felt how thin and light she was. Ashworth was at the door, yelling for her to get out. Vera passed the bundle to him and turned to Stringer. He was almost surrounded by flame, though none of his clothing was burning. The red light was reflected in the lenses of his glasses. She wanted to get through to him.
‘Come away out, man. Your friends wouldn’t want this.’
He gave no indication that he’d heard her.
She was going to move towards him, but Ashworth took her by the arm and pulled her outside.
He’d laid the girl on the grass. Her face was filthy, her mouth covered by parcel tape, her hands and feet bound. Vera ripped the tape from her mouth, felt for a pulse. She didn’t see the hut crumble in on itself, the heavy roof fall onto the man inside, trapping him so even if he’d wanted to escape he couldn’t. If he screamed she didn’t hear.
Chapter Forty-Four
Vera had dreamed of taking Laura back to Julie. From the moment she realized the girl was missing that picture in her head had kept her going. She’d seen herself in the kitchen, her arm around Laura’s shoulders. Look who’s here, pet. I told you I’d get her back to you safe and sound. And of course Julie had been grateful. In the dream.
It didn’t happen like that. What happened was that Ashworth turned into the hero. When they stripped the tape from Laura’s mouth she started choking and wheezing. The stress of the day finally bringing on an asthma attack. Or having her breathing restricted for that length of time. It was Ashworth who worked out what was going on, called for an ambulance, went with the girl to the hospital. He sat with her, holding her hand as the sirens wailed and they sped down the Spine Road to Wansbeck General. By the time they reached the hospital she was a lot calmer. They kept her in the hospital overnight, but by morning she was itching to be home. A little girl again, wanting her mam.
It was midnight when Holly brought Julie into the side ward where Laura was under observation. The woma
n was tense and frowning. Until she’d seen her daughter, she didn’t dare to believe that Laura was safe. Ashworth was still sitting by the bedside when they arrived. He was the one to see Julie weeping and to receive her gratitude. And though Vera knew it was pathetic, she minded it. She’d wanted it to be her Julie thanked with tears in her eyes. But she’d been right about the killer. There was some consolation in that. Instead of delivering the girl to her mother, she stood in the garden at Deepden waiting for the travelling circus which always followed a major incident. The fire engine arrived first. The fire fighters seemed disappointed that it was such a small fire, so easy to contain. She had the feeling that only the fact of a fatality made them think it was worth their being there. While she watched them she couldn’t get rid of the image of Clive Stringer in the flame-red spectacles, standing quite still while the hut fell around him. He’d had his grand gesture after all. Later, when the scene of crime team searched through the wreckage, they found a couple of stems of daisies whole and undamaged.
Vera got to Fox Mill just as Peter Calvert was getting into his car. She saw Felicity watching them through the kitchen window, her face pinched with worry. The mood she was in, Vera couldn’t feel much sympathy.
‘I want a word,’ she said.
Calvert began to bluster.
‘You lied to me,’ she said. ‘I could charge you.’ She wished she was a man. She wanted to hit him. ‘We’ll go and chat in the cottage, shall we? Back to the love nest. It might jog your memory. Don’t worry, I’ve got a key. I rescued it from the CSI. We don’t need to bother your wife with this. Not just yet.’