by Ann Cleeves
He was waiting for me to speak. ‘Just curious.’ I paused, then confessed, ‘I’m a townie myself, actually. Interested but ignorant.’
‘A lot of our members live in towns. Their support is vital.’ He had the enthusiasm of the evangelical Christians who came to the door occasionally to convert me, though they didn’t dress up as bears. Jess always invited them in and gave them tea, so I’d have noticed. I smiled encouragingly and waited for him to go on, but he was too clever to push it. ‘The facts speak for themselves,’ he said. ‘Take the literature and come back if you’re interested.’
‘What would I be signing up to?’
‘As much or as little involvement as you wanted. The membership fees support our work. We’re grateful for that.’ He smiled, acknowledging that the money was what they were after. His teeth were straight and even. ‘Your membership buys certain privileges too – discounts at country house hotels, restaurants, camping shops, that sort of thing. Since foot and mouth, things have been tough for rural businesses. If you wanted a more active role – helping out on farms, supporting our research in a practical way – that would be welcome, but it’s not a condition of joining.’
‘And fund-raising?’
‘Of course. Every charity is always on the scrounge. There’s no obligation to dress up, though.’ The smile again. ‘And in fact we’re very fortunate. We have a number of generous corporate sponsors.’
‘Can I think about it?’
‘Sure.’ If he was disappointed he was too professional to show it.
‘And you’ll be here all afternoon?’
‘No. I’ll have done my stint soon. Someone else will be here to help you. Or if you’d rather . . .’ He took one of the brochures I was holding and scribbled in the margin. ‘That’s my mobile number. If you have a credit card I can join you up over the phone.’ His voice was insistent and it seemed an odd thing to suggest. I wondered if he knew who I was and wanted an excuse to talk to me without an audience. Someone else wanting ghoulish details about knives and blood. But how could he? There’d been no photograph with the newspaper reports of my discovery of Thomas’s body and I wasn’t wearing my name on a badge. Perhaps there was a competition among volunteers to see who could recruit most members. He could even have been on commission. There was another queue to get into the tea tent. When I looked round from my place in the line he’d gone, disappeared into the crowd.
Chapter Twenty-one
Although there was a queue to get into the tea tent, inside it was peaceful and ordered. No self-service or plastic beakers here. The canvas filtered the noise from outside and, after the glare of the afternoon sun, the light was hazy. I seemed to see the scene in soft focus, as if from a long way off. There were small tables covered with gingham cloths, a posy of flowers set in the centre of each. It could have been a tearoom in Harrogate, mid-week, locals only, if the waitresses hadn’t been wearing fishnet tights and top hats. One of them approached me. She was plump and I thought she’d be stuck with the pattern of the net on her thighs for days.
‘There’s a seat over there if you don’t mind sharing.’
She pointed to a table where a couple were in conversation. The woman was dressed as Pierrot in a quartered silk costume in pink and white. Her hair had been tied back from her face, which had been painted white too, with delicate black triangles above her eyes and a black teardrop on her cheek. It was Joanna Samson. I couldn’t tell if her companion had dressed up for the occasion or not. He had on a tweed jacket in loud checks of various shades of brown and mustard. It was just what the owner of a tacky, provincial circus would have worn, but it could well have been Stuart Howdon’s idea of casual weekend chic.
‘That’ll be fine,’ I said.
When I approached the table Joanna gave me a look which could have been bemused half-recognition or a polite welcome to an intruding stranger. Howdon had his back to me and continued to talk. It was something about papers to be signed. His voice was hectoring. I remembered what Dickon had said about hating him. What hold could he have over Joanna? Why did she put up with his bullying?
‘We’ll need some sort of decision,’ he said. ‘Honestly, Jo, things can’t go on as they are.’
Something about her face made him fall silent, but still he had his back to me.
‘You don’t mind if I join you?’
He hesitated for a moment – perhaps he recognized my voice – then he did turn and he shrugged an acceptance of the inevitable. He gave no sign that we’d ever met. He had some nerve.
It wasn’t the place for a scene. Once I wouldn’t have bothered about that. Now I wasn’t up to telling a woman who’d been recently widowed that her husband’s illegitimate son had been brutally murdered. Not in front of a crowd. I did wonder if the police had been to see her to discuss a possible link between Philip and Thomas, but it didn’t seem likely. Farrier hadn’t believed my story in the end and he was kind enough not to want to deliver that particular bombshell. Why cause her grief for nothing?
I drank tea and ate scones and jam. The conversation between Joanna and Howdon spluttered into self-conscious small talk about mutual friends and then about the preparations she’d been making for an exhibition of her work in Morpeth.
‘You will come tonight, Stuart?’ she said. She made her voice little-girl pleading. ‘I know it’s only Morpeth, but we’ve invited some of the nationals. I always get so nervous before a new show. Bring Marjorie if you like.’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘You are such a tremendous support.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up, startling us both. ‘I must go. I haven’t seen Dickon since lunchtime. And there’s so much to do.’
She walked out. There was a moment of silence in the tent as people watched her go. She was a celebrity. Everyone knew who she was. Howdon waited until the hum of conversation had resumed before leaving himself.
I found him by a stall selling toffee apples. The smell of caramelized sugar caught in the back of my throat, made my voice husky when I shouted.
‘Mr Howdon!’
He hadn’t expected me to follow. Had he thought I’d accept his refusal to recognize me and slink home without facing him? Anyway, I took him unawares.
‘Yes?’ He turned sharply and the ridiculous jacket flapped open. His paunch was large and fleshy.
‘What are you playing at?’ I kept my voice even but it was hard to keep control. I had an urge to kick out at the fleshy stomach. I wanted to wind him and break down his pretence. I wanted to make him cry.
‘I’m sorry. Have we met?’ He furrowed his forehead. The bushy eyebrows met in the middle.
‘You know fine well we have!’
‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to remind me. My memory’s dreadful. Age, my wife says.’ He smiled jovially as if he expected me to appreciate the joke.
‘Lizzie Bartholomew.’
‘No, I’m afraid it doesn’t mean anything.’
When I’d first met Howdon I’d dismissed him as an oaf, a besotted family retainer. Now his skill at this deception made him frightening. It really was hard not to believe he was telling the truth and I didn’t know what to do. He stood there, as children galloped past to buy toffee apples, appearing to humour me, tilting his head forward politely to hear what I had to say. The only sign of discomfort was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, but it was a very hot day.
‘We went to your office. For Christ’s sake, I sat beside you at Philip’s funeral.’
‘You knew Philip?’
‘Of course I did. I was only there because you wrote to me.’ I was shouting. I knew it would do no good, but I couldn’t help myself.
‘I’m sorry, young lady. I’m afraid you’re making a terrible mistake.’
He turned and walked off towards the house. It was only as I watched him bobbing through the crowd that I wondered if there was an intended threat in his final words. I suppose I could have chased after him, but I’m not sure even now what good that
would have done. I stood and looked after him and felt as helpless as I’d ever done. I felt tears coming. I hate crying in public. It’s pathetic and you look red-eyed and ugly, and people always think it’s because you’ve been dumped. I had a horror of bumping into Joanna again too. If she saw me crying, I suspected she’d be sympathetic, and that would make things worse. People were starting to leave and already there was a queue of cars at the gate waiting to turn into the lane. I was too restless to sit and wait for the line to move. So I turned my back on the stalls and the kids with faces sticky with candy floss and the dressed-up parents, and set off towards the church.
When I got to the lich-gate I turned back. I couldn’t see the garden with the stalls and the tents, but the fairground music, unbearably jolly, bubbled on. I thought the thick walls of the church would block it out. There I’d sit in the cool and the dark and sort things out. But when I turned the ring handle on the big arched door there was no movement. The building was locked.
I sat on the step in the full sunlight and shut my eyes. My head spun. It was like when you’ve been drinking. All afternoon and all evening, moving from bar to bar, shouting and laughing, never still for a moment. And when you finally lie down to sleep, the moving continues. We call it the whirling pits. Perhaps everyone does. It’s like you’re on one of those old-fashioned roundabouts in kids’ playgrounds. The ones you scoot with one foot to get moving. That’s how I felt sitting on the step of St Bede’s. And in that moment I could believe again that Farrier was right, that the meeting with Howdon and the commission to trace Thomas, all that was a dream. I’d made it up in a drunken stupor and it was spinning round and round in my head.
‘Hello.’ A friendly voice. I opened my eyes. Dickon stood there, wonderfully normal in shorts and a striped T-shirt. No fancy dress.
‘Hi.’
‘You’re the lady who was at Dad’s funeral.’
‘You remember that?’
‘Of course. We met on the beach. You’d been to Morocco. You met Dad on a bus.’
The sunlight was full in my eyes, so I had to squint to look up at him. It meant that he was the only thing I could see sharply. Everything else was a fuzzy yellow background to his face.
‘If someone came and asked you,’ I said carefully, ‘would you tell them I was here that day?’
‘Which someone?’
I hesitated. ‘The police.’
‘Why would they want to know?’ He was very serious. It was like talking to an adult. And you could tell he’d been brought up to respect the police. I’d have to remember that.
‘I told them I was here and they don’t believe me. It’s not their fault. They need to check.’
‘Like an alibi?’ He was suddenly very excited. ‘You want me to give you an alibi?’
‘Yes.’ I tried not to smile. If he thought I was laughing at him he’d be offended. ‘Exactly like that.’
I considered telling him it was a secret, just between us, but it didn’t seem right to ask him to keep stuff from his mother. Besides, that was me being paranoid. Whatever games Howdon was playing, he wouldn’t put pressure on a little boy. Dickon stood there looking down at me, the halo of light still around him. Philip’s other son. He was probably curious about what the police thought I’d done. I didn’t want him to run off. I might start to believe I was imagining him as well.
‘Have you had a good afternoon?’ I asked. ‘Or is it a pain having all those people in your house?’
He shrugged and looked over his shoulder, distracted by more exciting possibilities, the beach perhaps, a secret den. Living here, his childhood must be like those I’d read about in books – Swallows and Amazons, Enid Blyton. There would be adventures every day.
‘I found a dead squirrel,’ he said. ‘I collect skulls. I need to boil it down, but they won’t let me into the kitchen.’
‘Is it a big collection?’
‘I keep it in a suitcase under my bed. I’ll show you sometime. There are wings too. And a tawny owl pellet.’
‘I’d like that.’ It was a lie of course, but he seemed pleased.
I took the foil-wrapped package out of my bag and offered him a cheese and pickle sandwich. He took it and sat on the step beside me.
‘Did your dad have a friend called Ronnie?’ I asked.
‘Ronnie Laing?’
My mouth was full of bread. I nodded and waited for him to give more details in his own time. But he didn’t have a chance to go on. The shadow of a figure was thrown from the gate towards us. We were both startled and looked up. It was Flora. She must have been playing in the band, though I hadn’t noticed her there, because she was wearing the uniform waistcoat and bow tie. She looked older than she had at the funeral. The waistcoat was tight and she already had the figure of a young woman. Her long hair was plaited down her back. She walked towards us. Her face was pink from too much sun.
‘There you are,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Mummy wants you back at the house.’
‘Why?’
‘You did promise to help. It’s the party to launch the exhibition tonight. You know how she gets.’
‘Has the Fat Controller gone?’ He looked at me. ‘That was what Daddy called Mr Howdon.’
‘I don’t know.’ She frowned. She didn’t like him talking to me about family things. ‘You’ll have to come anyway.’
He stood up reluctantly, scattering crumbs and slivers of cheese.
She turned, knowing he would follow her, a young dictator. She hadn’t acknowledged my existence with a glance or a nod. I might have been invisible. Dickon gave me a little wave and ran after her. She marched along the path, her long plait bouncing up and down, glinting silver, the newly developed bum swaying.
I stayed where I was. The sun had moved behind a tree and it was pleasantly cool. And my head was full of questions. If Philip really was a friend of Ronnie Laing, he must have heard of a stepson called Thomas Mariner. So why had he needed me to trace him? He could have asked Ronnie to make the introductions, or to give Howdon the information he was after. But that would have meant acknowledging Thomas as his son. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to do that before he died. I longed for Philip still to be alive. I wanted him sitting beside me in the shadow of the church. I wanted his arm around my shoulder. Most of all I wanted an explanation of all this mess.
Chapter Twenty-two
I walked down to the beach to finish my picnic. The tide was higher than it had been when I’d first talked to Dickon, high enough for me to hear the water sucking back against the sand. Something happened to me there. A change of mood. The righteous indignation I’d felt about being pissed about by Howdon turned to fury. Lisa the nurse would have told me there was other stuff going on as well. Stuff about Nicky and not wanting to be a victim again. Perhaps I knew that even then, but it didn’t make any difference. I was seething. I needed an acknowledgement from Howdon that he was playing games. I needed to take control. I sat on the empty beach and thought of revenge.
When I got back to the house all the visitors had gone. The big top was a heap of canvas and rope on the grass. The rubbish bins were overflowing. People were clearing up, but there was no one I recognized. A torn paper mask was all that was left of the Countryside Consortium stall.
Of course, I could have gone straight home. I’d given Jess and Ray long enough on their own. I tried the deep breathing that they tell you relieves stress. I tried to persuade myself that Howdon wasn’t worth the hassle. But it didn’t work and I didn’t really want it to. I thought it was just as well I’d changed out of my jeans and was suitably dressed. It was years since I’d gate-crashed a party.
Joanna’s exhibition was being held in a room over a café bar on the main street. The bar was one of those places which makes you believe you’re in the Cotswolds or Hampstead, full of expat southerners with loud voices. I’d been there for a meal once with a couple of social workers. They weren’t local either. One of them had written a play. Up
stairs that day there’d been a poet reading and a woman playing a tenor sax. At the same time. We’d listened for a while, then we’d gone downstairs to eat. The menu had been chalked on a blackboard beside the bar, but I’d not been able to read it because two women had stood right in front of it, debating their choice of wine. Showing off. Performance art to compete with the poet. I’d been well behaved and only caused a minor scene.
I parked next to Safeway’s and walked through an alley. A pack of adolescent girls prowled up the middle of the street in search of a pub which would serve them. I checked my appearance in a shop window, pulled my fingers through my hair. There was a faint green stain on the back of the dress – seaweed from a rock or lichen from the church step. I hoped the lighting inside was dim. Otherwise I’d have to stand with my back to the wall.
Joanna had hired the whole place for her party. There was a young man with an open-necked shirt and a game-show host’s smile collecting cards at the door.
‘Oh, shit!’ I said, putting my hand to my mouth. The arty middle classes like bad language. ‘I didn’t think about the invitation . . . Look, it’s Lizzie, Lizzie Bartholomew. You can always check with Joanna. Or Stuart if he’s here . . .’ I smiled. My voice was ditzy, apologetic. I’m a girlie. Decorative. I don’t do organized. And I don’t want to brag, but you’d have sworn I was born south of Sunderland.
He smiled back. ‘No problem. Drinks and canapés down here. The exhibition’s upstairs.’
There was no natural light in the bar. It had an old-fashioned feel which I’d not noticed on my previous visit, candles in bottles, a natural-wood floor, cane chairs. Perhaps the décor had recently changed and rustic Mediterranean was in fashion again. It was so dark in there that I thought I could have gone topless without embarrassment. I hadn’t needed to worry about the stain on my dress. A woman in jeans and a skimpy top stood in the light of the doorway carrying a tray of drinks. I took an orange juice. My anger didn’t need fuelling with alcohol. The juice had that bitter aftertaste which meant it had come out of a long-life carton. Every expense spared.