by Ann Cleeves
I looked around for Howdon. I didn’t have a game plan. I wanted to know what he was playing at. I wanted to see his face when I said, Strange you don’t remember me. Ask Dickon. He does.
I walked to the end of the room. It was long and narrow. Everyone seemed to be smoking. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I picked out groups of people who seemed to be there for the free party, not the photos. The bar’s usual Saturday night clientele. I wondered how many others the charmer on the door had let in without invitations. There was no sign of Joanna or Howdon. I set my glass on the bar and made my way upstairs.
The exhibition space was larger than I’d expected, much bigger certainly than the bar below. It must have spread over the neighbouring shops. Again the light was artificial. There were black blinds at the windows. The photographs were lit by a series of ceiling spots. And there were a lot of photographs. They hung on the walls and on freestanding screens which partitioned the room. I was impressed. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting. Not something this professional. A lad was standing at the top of the stairs. He handed me a folded sheet of printed paper, a catalogue or programme, with the titles numbered. It said which of the pictures were for sale and gave a list of prices which made me whistle under my breath. It said that a percentage of any profits would be donated to the Countryside Consortium. It didn’t tell us how big a percentage.
The exhibition was called A Landscape under Threat, though as far as I could tell the specific nature of the threat wasn’t explained. Despite myself, I got hooked into the images. I knew what I was there for but I found myself distracted. The pictures disturbed me. They were all in black and white. Some were enormous, huge landscapes with chiselled valleys. Some were little and the subjects were domestic – not in any sense family snaps, but they seemed as accessible as that.
There were a lot of people in the big room but they spoke in reverent whispers. If background music was playing, it was so faint that I couldn’t hear it. The screens acted like the walls of a maze, guiding us through the room. Howdon could have been there, hidden just round the next corner, but I didn’t hurry past. My attention was held by the pictures and I stopped before each one. They had all been taken in Northumberland. There was a sweep of sand dunes with a brooding, thunderstorm sky. A field of fat lambs surrounded by grey dry-stone walls, lit by a low evening sun. A swollen river sweeping past a barn. Then there was a scene which was familiar. It showed sunlight slanting through bare winter trees onto a narrow lane. I’d seen it before on Ronnie Laing’s wall. If it wasn’t a print of the same photo the shot must have been taken at the same time on the same day.
I got so caught up with the shapes on the walls that it took me a while to work out why I found the images disturbing. I mean, they were attractive, pleasing, so why did they make me feel uncomfortable? Because they weren’t real. Even when I recognized the place in the picture, the sense of place was wrong. I thought it wasn’t true that the camera never lies. I mean, the physical shape of the landscape was true, but the viewer’s response to it had been manipulated. Perhaps that’s what art’s all about. Perhaps I was being naïve. But I’m straightforward. I don’t like being messed with.
The pictures of the coast, for instance. In a storm like that, there’d have been litter blown against the grass. There’s always litter. In the distance there should have been one of those concrete bunkers they put up in the war to stop the German tanks rolling up the beach. Even further away I’d have shown the cokeworks at Lynemouth or the chimneys of Blyth power station. And none of her farmhouses had satellite dishes, or scrappy machinery in the yard, or black polythene covering silage. There was no sign of foot and mouth, no Keep Out police notices. If this was a threatened landscape, why hadn’t she shown that dump at Widdrington, where the carcasses were buried and the lorries leaked blood? What I’m saying is that this isn’t a pretty landscape and she’d made it look pretty. It made me think she had a fairy-tale vision of how the world and her life should be. Philip’s illness and death must have come as a shock. She wouldn’t have been expecting something like that.
I turned away from the picture I’d seen on Ronnie’s wall and there was Howdon, standing in a corner with a glass in his hand, talking in a low voice to a man I’d never met and a little woman in a purple jacket and a purple skirt with thin pleats, like the umpires at Wimbledon wear. She had a thin rat-like face and a complexion drained of all colour. She shouldn’t have worn purple. She had a long-suffering look, which made me think she was Howdon’s wife. He hadn’t noticed me and suddenly he began to laugh. It wasn’t loud. A restrained chortle which he held in with his handkerchief. Perhaps the man had told him a joke. Perhaps he’d told one himself. Anyway, that laughter pushed me over the edge. I could believe it was me he was laughing at. I lost it.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ I’ve told you I don’t usually swear. I like to think I don’t need to any more. But I needed to then. The words rang out in that quiet room. I could imagine them bouncing off the walls and the high ceiling, the sound waves like ripples, but getting bigger not smaller. No one intervened. Thank God for English embarrassment.
He looked over at me. He could hardly pretend I didn’t exist. Not with such a big audience. For a moment he didn’t know how to respond. He stood with his mouth open – a cartoon fish.
‘Who is this, Stuart?’ The woman. She thought I was his mistress. Perhaps he had a history of screwing around. I wouldn’t have been surprised. If he felt the need to justify the affairs, he’d have told himself he’d lost the love of his life to Philip Samson, and he needed the comfort. That was the sort of pathetic man he was. ‘What’s going on?’
Her voice was firmer than I’d have expected from her appearance. She might put up with infidelity but not with a scene at a friend’s party. Not a grand friend like Joanna. And she’d sensed that he’d recognized me. I could tell. She wouldn’t let him pretend otherwise.
‘Stuart?’
I wanted to scream, Christ, I’m not his girlfriend. Credit me with some taste. But that would have implied that she had none and my quarrel wasn’t with her.
‘Your husband lied about me to the police,’ I said, lowering my voice, keeping it calm, fuming inside.
‘Stuart?’ she said again, impatient now. She might have been talking to an annoying and not very bright child.
Still he couldn’t find the words to reply. I yelled at him, ‘I was arrested for murder. And it’s all your fault.’ Pathetic. Like a kid in a school playground. But the scary thing is that if I’d had a knife I’d have had a go at him.
At last he regained his powers of speech. ‘No, no. I never meant that.’
‘Well, what did you mean?’
‘He was trying to protect me.’ It was Joanna in 1930s film-star mode. Every time I’d seen her, there’d been a different style. I couldn’t get a grip on her. Tonight she was in a long sheath dress. Her lipstick and nails were red, the red of fresh blood. It was quite an entrance. Everyone was looking at her. They pretended to stare at the pictures, but none of us were fooled. I thought then that she was enjoying the attention, but perhaps I was wrong, because she took my arm. ‘Let’s find somewhere to talk,’ she said. ‘Somewhere quiet.’
There was a little room off the main space, an office with a desk, a computer and a couple of chairs. No window. She must have changed there; someone had propped a full-length mirror for her against one wall and there was a make-up bag on the desk. She showed me through the door and disappeared. I wondered if she wanted Stuart there to hold her hand, but she returned almost immediately with a bottle of wine in a cooler and two glasses.
I told her I was driving but I took one glass. That was all. When I left her later, the bottle was nearly empty. She must have been drinking steadily, though I didn’t realize at the time. Her voice was quite reasonable throughout.
‘Did you know he was married?’ she asked. ‘In Morocco.’
‘I guessed.’ Immediately. In the b
us.
‘Look, I don’t blame you for what happened. I just wondered if he mentioned me.’ Her eyes were hungry.
He’d said she’d deny him nothing. I wasn’t sure that was what she wanted to hear. He’d said she was a saint and even then I’d thought I’d heard an implied criticism.
‘It was just one night,’ I said. Not lying.
‘You made an impression all the same.’ She was trying to make a joke of it, but there was still that look in her eyes.
‘How do you know what happened in Marrakech?’
‘Philip told me.’ She stared at me steadily over her glass. ‘I didn’t mind. How could I? He knew he was dying. It was only natural that he would want to have as many experiences as possible. I should be grateful to you. I find that difficult, of course, but I certainly don’t resent you.’
‘Did you know about Thomas?’
‘No.’ It seemed hard for her to admit it. ‘I never even guessed.’ She refilled her glass. ‘Stuart explained it all this afternoon. It unnerved him bumping into you at Wintrylaw. He told me about the instructions Philip left with the will, about the boy being murdered.’ She looked up at me again. ‘Stuart was distraught. Really. It can’t be easy for a solicitor to lie to the police.’
I didn’t say that in my experience solicitors lie all the time. She was an innocent. She probably even believed in God.
‘He didn’t want me to find out that Philip had had an affair in Morocco and he didn’t want me to know about the child. He was thinking about me and the children. Our children. Honestly.’
Like I said, she was an innocent.
Chapter Twenty-three
Inspector Farrier rang at lunchtime the next day to say that as far as he was concerned I was no longer a suspect in the Mariner murder. Joanna had promised that Howdon would go to the police, but it had happened more quickly than I’d expected.
‘Stupid prat,’ Farrier said. ‘I’d like to do him for wasting my time, perverting the course of justice, but he’s persuaded someone more important than me that it was some kind of mistake. A misunderstanding.’
Joanna had said ‘misunderstanding’ the night before at the exhibition, but I’d heard the quotation marks. We’d both taken the irony as read. Just before I’d left the room in the gallery, where she’d sat like a leading lady before opening night, drinking the last of the wine, I’d asked, ‘Why do you put up with him?’
‘Who? Stuart?’
‘Yeah. The Fat Controller.’
That had made her start for a moment. Perhaps she was thinking of Philip too. ‘Because he’s kind. Really. He’d do anything for me. He’s a sweetie.’
But I’d remembered what Dickon had said about his mother hating Howdon and I wasn’t taken in. If she was the sort of woman who needed admirers to feel good about herself, there’d be plenty of other men to play the part. I’d heard the way the rugby players talked about her at the funeral. Howdon had some power over her. I wished I knew what it was, but only in a vague, curious way. It didn’t seem personal any more.
When I replaced the receiver after talking to Farrier, I supposed I should celebrate. I was in the clear. The trouble was that I had nobody to share the celebration with. Jess was out with Ray and anyway I couldn’t spend all my time with a mother substitute. It suddenly hit me how lonely I was. It hadn’t always been like that. When I’d worked at the unit I’d had lots of friends: colleagues, people from university who’d stayed in town. I’d done all the usual stuff – drank too much, danced, laughed. Since Nicky I hadn’t wanted company. Now, for the first time, I missed it.
So I thought I’d celebrate alone. I drove up the coast to Craster, left the car there and walked out to Dunstanburgh Castle, grey sprawling ruins surrounded on three sides by the sea. The headland was almost empty. A stiff westerly blew against the incoming tide and helped clear my head. I walked back along the beach and hit the pub in the village in time for an early supper: crab soup, then smoked salmon from the smokery over the road sandwiched between chunks of home-baked bread. I made the food last. I didn’t want to hurry home.
When I got back to Sea View I was still feeling a bit low. It hadn’t been fun being a suspect in a murder inquiry, but it had been exciting. And it had given me an excuse not to think about my future. What was the point of making plans if I was likely to be arrested at any moment? Now everything seemed flat and I was restless and disengaged. Jess and Ray were sitting in the living room, cuddled up together on the sofa, listening to music. Not folk this time but that sort of jazz where all the notes slur into each other, so it makes you think of a drunk telling stories, being mellow and nostalgic. No one else was in. The bad lads were out causing chaos in town.
‘There’s some wine open in the kitchen,’ Jess said. She was as mellow and sleepy as the music.
I poured myself a glass, then went back and joined them. It was nearly dark but they’d not bothered to close the curtains. A light buoy was flashing in the bay. Three sharp flashes then a gap. I sat cross-legged on the floor and looked out at the water.
‘That solicitor’s realized he’s made a mistake,’ I said, without turning towards them. ‘He’s told Farrier.’
‘Eh, pet, what a relief!’ She didn’t ask how I knew. She didn’t even care that much that Howdon had lied. She was so full of happiness that there wasn’t much room for a response to my good news. I was pleased for her. Really, I was. But I was jealous too. I wanted to be curled up on a sofa with someone who made me feel that way. I didn’t want to feel empty and bitter and frustrated.
‘They’ve released his body,’ Jess said suddenly. ‘That lad, Thomas. It was in the Journal. His funeral’s next week.’
I decided then to go to the funeral. There seemed no reason not to. I thought that for me it would be the end of the matter. If Philip’s funeral had marked the start of my troublesome relationship with the Samsons, then Thomas’s would mark the finish. I didn’t tell Jess. She’d have thought it was an intrusion, sick even. Why, Lizzie, a funeral’s a time for families, pet. Families and close friends. You didn’t even know him.
But I knew his father, I thought. And that makes me family in a way. None of the other Samsons will be there. I’ll go to represent Philip. Of course, that wasn’t the real reason. My motives were more mixed up than that. Not nearly so noble. It was about missing the excitement, and wanting to see Ronnie Laing again, and feeling that until I knew who killed Thomas I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the money Philip had given me. All that besides a sense that by not finding Thomas alive I’d let Philip down.
Thomas’s funeral was in a new Methodist church not far from where the Laings lived. It was built of red brick. Inside the brick was exposed and hung with banners, a bit like the ones the unions carry on gala day. The banners were in bright primary colours and letters cut from felt spelled religious texts. It wasn’t like being in St Bartholomew’s. I left my car at Nell’s house and walked to the church with her and Dan. I’d phoned Dan up the day before to find out if they were going.
‘Nell’s keen,’ he’d said. Then, ‘Why on earth do you want to bother?’ I could tell he’d be glad of an excuse to get out of it but he’d go because of Nell.
‘Oh, you know, to show my respect.’ I still wasn’t sure I had a real answer and that was as good as anything.
It was a close and overcast day, with thunder flies swarming under the trees outside the church. We waited at a distance and watched the mourners go in. There were a number of well-dressed women in early middle age. The Methodist Wives, I thought, there to support Kay and to eye up each other’s black frocks. Thomas’s grandparents, Mr and Mrs Mariner. Mrs Mariner was already patting her eyes with her hanky and Archie was doing his best to comfort her. He had to take her arm to help her up the steps. Harry Pool with Kenny and a couple of lads from the yard. Ellen from Absalom House in a snot-green velvet skirt and jacket, her hair freshly dyed. A young man wearing an expensive suit who could have been Marcus Tate. Without the animal mask it was hard to
tell. As they climbed the white stone steps, everyone wiped the thunder flies from their faces and their clothes, and shook their heads to clear them from their hair.
‘Well,’ Nell said, ‘are we going to stand here all day?’ And she led us in behind the stragglers and we flapped and shook the flies away just as the others had.
We sat near the back, sheepish, as if we had no right to be there. The church seemed mostly to be full of Kay’s friends. Apart from the boys from Harry’s Haulage and Marcus, I thought we were the only people Thomas would have bothered with. When I turned round once, halfway through the first hymn, I saw Farrier across the aisle from us, singing lustily. He must have come in at the last minute. He didn’t seem shocked to see me. He winked.
I didn’t see Kay and Ronnie until they followed the coffin out. They had been sitting on the front row with the little girls. It appeared that Thomas would be cremated. There would be a brief service but only for close family. I thought Ronnie saw me as he walked out, holding the hand of a little girl on each side. He gave a brief glance in my direction – shocked recognition, disbelief. Then something else which I couldn’t place immediately but which could have been fear. Almost a hunted look. Why would he be frightened of me? I waited in the church until all the other mourners had left, blocking the pew so Nell and Dan couldn’t move either. I didn’t want to meet Ronnie there, and I certainly didn’t want to see him in Kay’s company.
When we did get outside the hearse had gone.
Harry Pool wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His face was even redder than I remembered, glistening with sweat.
‘I don’t know about you lot,’ he said. ‘But I could use a drink.’
So we all trooped off to the pub on the corner, which was one of those soulless, cavernous places, built in the 1930s but more recently done up in mock Victorian, with two different wallpaper prints and dark furniture and hunting pictures. And even that had started to look shabby. It had just opened for the day. It had that morning smell of last night’s beer and last night’s cigarettes. We must have seemed an unlikely crowd to the barmaid, who stood, her bum leaning against the wall, languidly rubbing glasses with a tea towel. Harry Pool got in the first round. He’d loosened his tie and undone the top button of his shirt, but he still seemed breathless and wheezing.