by Ann Cleeves
‘Was that why Shirley was in the valley yesterday?’ Joe thought this might be a breakthrough; it could explain the victim’s presence in Gilswick. ‘To talk to you about Lizzie?’
‘No!’ Annie sounded impatient. ‘I told you, I went to her office in the morning. She wasn’t going to do a home visit until next Monday. Lizzie will be released from prison tomorrow, and Shirley said she’d give us a day to get settled. If Shirley had wanted to talk to me before that, she had both my phone numbers. She wouldn’t have dragged herself all the way out here.’
‘How did she seem at the meeting?’
‘Professional,’ Annie said. ‘Efficient. Kind. I thought she had Lizzie’s best interests at heart.’ There was a pause. ‘You don’t think about people like that having personal problems, do you? I mean doctors and social workers. I can’t imagine their lives away from work. I just think they’re there to provide a service.’
Like the police. We’re not supposed to have personal lives, either.
‘What did you do after you’d seen Shirley?’ Joe thought none of this was helping.
‘I came straight back here. Had lunch with Sam. Then I thought I’d better tell our friends here in Valley Farm that Lizzie would be coming to stay with us for a bit.’ There was another pause, then an attempt at humour that didn’t quite come off. ‘That we’d have a convicted offender in our midst.’
‘And was everyone at home when you went to call?’ Joe found he was speaking gently, as if to an invalid.
‘Yes. I didn’t see John O’Kane. He was working in his office upstairs, but he was there.’ Annie set her mug carefully on the floor beside her. ‘Janet was lovely. So kind. Then I went next door to tell the Lucases . . .’
Her voice tailed off and Joe had to prompt her. ‘How did they react to the news of Lizzie’s release?’
‘Nigel was fine.’ A hesitation. ‘They’ve never had children. It’s easy to judge, isn’t it, if you’ve never had any? You think the parents must be to blame if a child goes off the rails. I used to do it myself.’
‘And what about his wife?’ For a moment Joe struggled to remember the name of the Lucas woman. ‘Lorraine?’
‘She found it harder to accept. She worked in prisons at one time. Education. She taught art and crafts. Maybe you’re used to all the sob-stories if you work with offenders every day. You become less sympathetic.’
Not me, Joe thought. I’m still a soft touch. According to Vera, at least.
Annie was still talking, trying to explain her friend’s reaction. ‘I suppose she moved to the valley to escape screwed-up kids, and the last thing she’d want would be to have one turn up here. This is their idea of paradise.’
‘What time was that?’ Best stick to facts. He was more comfortable with those.
‘Oh, I’m not sure.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t wear a watch. We don’t need to, out here. Mid-afternoon sometime.’
‘Did you see or hear anything unusual while you were out visiting?’ Joe knew he was clutching at straws now. If Annie had seen a stranger she’d have mentioned it by now.
She shook her head.
‘Mrs Hewarth drove a black Golf. Did you see that along the track at any time yesterday?’
Another shake of her head before she turned to her husband for confirmation. Joe turned to him too.
‘Where were you all afternoon, Mr Redhead?’
‘Here, in the house. In the kitchen. Listening to a play on the radio. Then I pottered in the garden for a while.’ The man shrugged. ‘Time seems to pass without me noticing, and some days I wonder what on earth I’m doing with my life.’
‘And later you all went round to the Lucas house?’ Joe found himself overtaken by the same lethargy as the people he was questioning. He’d always envied people who could afford to retire early, but now he wondered what he’d do with his time all day if he wasn’t at work. He’d always been crap at DIY. ‘Was it a special celebration? A birthday?’
‘I think we were all feeling a bit strange,’ Annie said. ‘It was those two killings at the big house. Right on our doorstep. The fat detective poking into our business. I suppose we thought a bit of a party would be a way to relieve the tension. Besides, it was Friday night. We always get together on Friday night.’
‘Can you talk me through the evening?’ Joe thought it was pretty weird, these three couples living on top of each other. If they’d wanted to escape the horror of what had happened in the big house, wouldn’t Sam and Annie have chosen to get away from Gilswick altogether? The pictures in town followed by a nice meal perhaps. By themselves, so they had a bit of privacy before Lizzie landed up. The last thing he’d want, in their position, would be to spend the night with the same people he’d see every day.
‘It turned into a bit of a session,’ Sam said. ‘Nigel had made one of his lethal cocktails and the evening went downhill from there.’
Joe couldn’t imagine the man enjoying a party. A play on the radio seemed much more his sort of thing.
‘Did anyone leave the house during the evening?’
They looked at each other. Joe wondered now if their pallor and confusion were the result of a hangover rather than distress at another killing.
‘I can’t be certain,’ Annie said. ‘People came and went all evening. At one point Nigel came in and said how beautiful the stars were. I knew then that he must be seriously pissed. John might have gone out for a couple of sneaky fags. He pretends he doesn’t smoke, but we all know that’s not true. What I do remember very clearly is Janet leaving later, to take out the dogs. She told us to send out a search party if she was gone longer than a quarter of an hour. I was watching the clock then. And suddenly she was screaming.’
‘You could hear her from that distance?’ Joe tried to picture where the body had been lying. ‘Over the noise of a party?’
‘We were all quiet by then. There wasn’t any music and the windows were open.’ Annie must have sensed that Joe still wasn’t convinced, because she added, ‘It was definitely Janet screaming. We all heard it and ran outside. Perhaps she’d come down the track towards the house to call out to us.’
Joe made a mental note to ask Janet O’Kane, but let the subject go for now. ‘What time was that?’
‘A quarter past midnight. As I said, I was watching the clock.’
Joe tried to picture the scene. The five adults at the end of the day, sitting in companionable silence. The scream coming from a long way off. ‘You must have panicked.’
‘We all ran outside. Almost tripping over each other. It was dark. No street lights, all the way up here.’ Annie shut her eyes briefly.
‘You had no sense that anyone else was about?’ Joe thought it unlikely that the pathologist would pin down the time of death with any real accuracy. Paul Keating was scathing about theories that suggested such a thing was feasible. It was possible that the murder had been committed not long before the body was found, and that the killer had still been in the area while the party-goers were looking for Janet O’Kane.
The Redheads looked at each other. ‘It was just confusing,’ Annie said at last. ‘I have no sense where any of us were. I caught a glimpse of Nigel at one point, and I think Sam was right beside me all the way down the track. Other than that . . .’
‘Did you hear anything? A car in the distance?’
This time Sam answered. ‘All I could hear was screaming and the dogs barking, people slipping on the grass in the dark. It was like a nightmare.’
‘But you grew up round here.’ Joe remembered the details written in black marker pen on the whiteboard in the operations room. ‘Your family farmed the land. You must be able to find your way around the valley blindfolded.’
There was a moment of silence. Joe could feel the hostility coming from both people on the sofa. They stared at him.
‘What are you saying?’ Sam’s voice was very quiet. ‘That I’m telling lies? Our farm was on the other side of the valley. And besides, last night the shouting and the dog
s and that poor woman lying there covered in blood – it was my idea of hell.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was gone ten when Vera and Charlie arrived back at Kimmerston and the team was still waiting for the evening briefing. No energy now. Everyone desperate for bed and food. She sat on the desk in front of them.
‘Right. Quick as you can and no messing. Just the important stuff. We’ll go into more detail in the morning. Joe?’
‘Everyone at Valley Farm has the same story. They’d got together for supper and drinks in the Lucas house. Everyone had too much to drink. Janet O’Kane went to take out the Carswell dogs. The dogs sniffed out the body. She screamed and they ran out to see what was going on.’ Joe paused and looked up at her. ‘It’s a long way for a scream to carry, but they’d all have to be in collusion if they’re not being straight about that, and why would they lie?’ Another brief pause. ‘Annie Redhead’s the only person who admits to knowing Shirley Hewarth – they met up yesterday morning to discuss Lizzie’s release from prison.’
Vera felt like a spider in the middle of a web of information. A very large, black spider. Who needed the Internet? ‘OK. Hol, how did you get on with Shirley’s ex-husband and son?’
‘I met them both at the university. All three seem to have been on very good terms, even after the divorce. A nice family. Jonathan last saw his mother a week ago for Sunday lunch. He said she seemed quiet, but put it down to her feeling a bit under the weather. She contacted Jack during the week and asked if they could meet for a drink – she’d had a bad couple of days and needed to chat to him about something. In the end a crowd of her friends came into the pub and they didn’t get the chance to talk.’
‘Pity.’ Vera tried to assess the significance of that. Shirley obviously had other friends and colleagues. Why would she turn to an ex-husband if she wanted a shoulder to cry on? ‘Well, Charlie and I have had a very pleasant day out in the country visiting Alicia Randle and her bloke. Who is very classy, if not exactly my type. Some kind of representative of Her Majesty’s Government overseas. Or he used to be, before he retired. Alicia couldn’t shed any light on how there was an envelope with a Wychbold postmark in Shirley Hewarth’s kitchen, but luckily it seems that Patrick was very green. He saved all his paper for recycling. And in the box in his bedroom I found this.’ Vera waved the letter in its transparent evidence bag. She already knew it off by heart and recited it word-for-word. ‘So it seems the correspondence between Patrick and Shirley went both ways.’ Now she spoke almost to herself. ‘Why on earth would this pair be writing to each other? If we know that, we’ll know who killed them.’
Vera was alone in her office. The team had dispersed for the night, but she was still fizzing and not ready for home and sleep. Listening to her voicemail – the requests for statistics and completed overtime forms, replies from technicians and scientists to her own demands for speedy updates – she felt a little calmer. There was nothing new. Nothing that needed immediate action. Then she was surprised by another voice. This was someone unused to leaving a voicemail message, very different from the rattled-off information from a colleague who no longer expected to speak to a real person. The caller didn’t even give his name, but after a couple of seconds she recognized the hesitant voice: Percy Douglas, the old man who’d stumbled across Patrick Randle’s body.
‘Inspector, you asked me to call you if I came across anything. Well, it wasn’t me, like, but my Susan. It’s probably not important, but it’s secret, like. I can’t see it can have anything to do with these murders, but I thought you’d be interested in anything secret. Can you come along in the morning? I’ll stay in until I’ve spoken to you.’
Vera replaced the receiver and smiled. Oh yes, Percy Douglas, I’m interested in anything secret.
It was another glorious day, more like June than April. Early sun slanting across the valley. In the big house’s garden the bluebells had opened even more, forming a lake under the trees. Vera found Percy and Susan eating breakfast. A smell of bacon that made her mouth water as soon as she opened the door. Susan was on her feet, sticking another couple of rashers under the grill. ‘You’ll manage two eggs? Janet’s hens are doing so well she’s giving them away.’ No offer of coffee, but a big pot of tea in the middle of the table and a mug set down beside the guest. Vera’s idea of heaven. Why would I ever want to retire from doing this?
‘I feel bad.’ It was Susan again. Percy still hadn’t said a word, just given Vera a quick grateful nod when she walked into the kitchen. ‘Dad dragging you all the way out here, when you must be so busy.’
‘It’s worth coming for the breakfast.’ Vera knew Susan couldn’t be hurried and she couldn’t be made to feel guilty. Let her tell her story in her own time.
‘It’s not that it’s anything sinister.’ Susan stood by the sink and put the frying pan to soak, then finally turned to face Vera. ‘And it’s not as if I was snooping. But nothing’s been said. I’m not even sure that her husband knows. I mean, I can understand her wanting a bit of privacy, but not telling your husband . . .’
Vera’s mouth was full of bread and egg and she didn’t say anything.
‘Just get on with it!’ Percy was almost yelling. ‘Let Mrs Stanhope know what you found.’
Vera smiled, but didn’t correct him.
‘When I was cleaning last week—’
‘Before the murders at the big house?’ Vera thought it had been a mistake to interrupt, but she needed to make the facts clear.
‘Yes. Tuesday morning’s when I do Valley Farm, so it would have been the day Dad found young Patrick’s body.’ Susan came to a stop again. Her father nodded for her to continue. ‘I found a letter.’
‘Where?’
‘In the Lucas house. Nigel and Lorraine were out and I thought I’d give the place a bit of a blitz. It’s that time of year, isn’t it?’ Another hesitation. ‘There’s a room upstairs that Lorraine uses as a studio. For her art. She tells me not to bother doing in there. “It’d only get mucky again and, besides, I don’t like my things to be disturbed.” Not even Nigel goes in without knocking, and that’s always seemed weird to me. I mean, a married couple – it doesn’t seem right.’ Another pause.
‘But you thought you’d take the opportunity to give it a proper spring-clean.’ Vera had finished eating and pushed her plate to one side so that she could sit with her elbows on the table. ‘While they were both out.’
‘Yes!’ Susan sounded grateful. ‘I thought there wouldn’t be any harm just going in. See if there were any cups that needed washing. Lorraine often took her coffee upstairs.’
‘So this letter?’
Susan had begun to blush. ‘It was in the drawer of the big pine table she uses for her paper and stuff.’
‘And what did it say, this letter?’
‘It was a hospital appointment. The Department of Oncology at the Freeman in Newcastle. Inviting her in to discuss her options. It must have come a while ago.’
‘So Lorraine Lucas has cancer.’ Vera pictured the woman she’d seen in the old farmhouse. Skinny and pretty. Still all her own hair, as far as Vera could tell, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. ‘Why do you think she hasn’t told her husband?’
‘Because it’s never been mentioned. I remember her going into town the day of the appointment. It was a couple of weeks ago. Nigel didn’t go with her. Lorraine said she was going shopping; she wanted to buy some summer clothes because the weather was so warm.’
‘Do you remember the name of the consultant?’ Vera didn’t think this could have anything to do with the murder of three people. Cancer brought its own terror. But Douglas had been right. Secrets were always interesting, and it might say something about the couple that Lorraine hadn’t confided in her husband.
‘Robinson,’ Susan said. ‘I think that was it.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I put the letter back in the drawer and went downstairs. I knew I shouldn’t have been in there. It was
only me being nebby.’ The blush deepened. ‘I didn’t tell Dad about it until yesterday. I knew he’d be angry about me snooping.’
‘Then I phoned you.’ Percy looked at Vera, wanting to be reassured that he’d done the right thing.
Vera nodded. ‘Quite right.’ She turned to Susan. ‘Is there anything else you’ve come across?’ Trying not to accuse the woman. It seemed almost like an illness itself, this need to pry into other people’s business. ‘Best to tell me now. You’ve already said that Nigel had applied to become a magistrate.’
Susan only shook her head.
‘You’ll probably know those people as well as anyone,’ Vera said. ‘In their homes every week, and I expect they take you for granted and hardly realize you’re there. They probably say things in front of you that they wouldn’t tell anyone else.’
‘I’m like the dust-fairy.’ Susan gave a small, sharp smile. ‘You’d think their houses get clean as if by magic. Never any thanks. Not like Mrs Carswell, who’ll sit down for a chat when I’m finished.’
‘So is there anything you can tell me about them? Do they really all get on as well as they say?’
Susan shrugged. ‘They put on a good show.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s all sweetness and light in public. In their own homes it’s a bit different. Professor O’Kane’s the worst. He doesn’t have anything nice to say about anyone. He’s arrogant; thinks he’s better than the rest of them because he knows about the past. All snide comments.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
Vera got to her feet. ‘Nobody else must know about Lorraine’s illness,’ she said. ‘It’s private. Not our business.’ At least not your business.
‘I don’t gossip. Not really.’ Then a confession of sorts. ‘I don’t have much of a life here, just me and Dad. I’m just interested in other people’s lives.’
‘Ah, pet, you and me both.’