A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘You’ve got the address?’ Liz heard Ian shout. ‘Right. See you there, then. We’ll probably get there before you do,’ he added, before ducking away to retrieve something from just inside the Boar’s main door.

  Liz opened the passenger side to wait in the car. Damphaired and despondent, she stared out through the rain-mottled windscreen at the wind shaking what remained of summer from the trees. Her socks were wet from where rain had seeped through the lining of her slippers, and her feet were freezing – it was all she was conscious of; the fact she was about to leave a place she’d once been so happy in left her surprisingly numb and disconnected.

  ‘Fucking brewery.’ The door behind her clunked open. It jolted Liz out of her introspection. ‘They’re such bastards,’ Ian growled and slid whatever he’d gone back to fetch from the pub on to the back seats of his Volvo. ‘Could have given us a bit more time. It wouldn’t have killed them.’ He slammed the door shut again.

  Liz flinched when he swung his burly, belligerent self into the driver’s seat.

  ‘All they’re fucking concerned about is money,’ he continued to rant as he turned the ignition. ‘Business would’ve picked up soon enough … once the fuss died down.’

  Fuss ? Died down ? That’s my darling Ellie you’re talking about. His callousness banged inside her head, but she didn’t challenge him. From his blotchy face and sweating brow, it was obvious he was spoiling for a fight. A fight she didn’t have the energy to give him. Instead, she swivelled to see what he’d put on the back seat.

  ‘What’s that?’ She jabbed her thumb at an old-fashioned suitcase.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Give it to the removal men, then – they can take it on the lorry, can’t they?’

  ‘No, they can’t. I need to keep hold of it.’

  ‘Why, what’s so special about it? Why can’t it go with the rest of our things?’

  ‘I don’t want it getting lost.’

  ‘Getting lost? For God’s sake, Ian, we’re only going to Cinderglade.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘You wouldn’t let me bring my guitar separately, and that could easily get broken. What’s in it?’ She gestured to the suitcase again.

  ‘Just stuff.’

  ‘What stuff ? Must be pretty important stuff if you’re afraid to let it out of your sight.’

  ‘Look. It’s stuff of Dean’s, all right.’

  ‘Stuff of Dean’s ,’ Liz shrieked, smacked her hands against the dashboard. ‘Why d’you want to keep anything that belongs to that bastard? If I ever clap eyes on him again … I swear … I swear … ’

  ‘Calm down, love.’ Ian spoke in his reasonable voice – the one that had the facility to rile her even more. ‘It’s just stuff of his mum’s.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the wonderful Maggie … I wondered when she was going to rear her head again. The perfect wife … the wife and mother I’ll never live up to.’ Her face crumpled and she burst into tears.

  ‘Love … love .’ Ian placed a consoling hand on her sleeve: to soothe, to temper; but Liz could tell he didn’t mean it and shrugged it off. ‘Be reasonable, eh? The boy left in such a hurry. He meant to take it with him … He did. You know how much he loved his mum.’

  ‘Don’t. I. Just.’ Liz spat out her bitterness. ‘But I still don’t know why you have to be so bloody precious about it.’

  Present Day

  ‘But it suited the vicar to have Dean out of the way too, didn’t it?’ Wearing a poppy-red bruise on her temple and a butterfly stitch on her brow, Joanna watches fast-moving clouds obscure then expose the sun through Pludd Cottage’s windows.

  ‘It’s true he didn’t like him,’ Mrs Hooper agrees.

  ‘Didn’t like him ?’ Joanna blurts. ‘I know I was only a kid, but even I could tell he hated him.’

  ‘There was more to it than that. It was complicated.’

  ‘Was the complicated how Carrie persuaded him to talk to the police on her behalf about Dean?’ Joanna asks this through the continuous drone of a headache: one of the many leftovers she’s living with after her terrible ordeal just over a week ago.

  ‘I think Tilly Petley was the driving force there; you said yourself she was keen to shift police focus away from her husband.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Joanna doesn’t sound sure. ‘But reading Carrie’s notebooks in hospital – scribbles, most of it nonsense – she kept making references to a dreadful secret the vicar was hiding.’ She lifts her eyes to Mrs Hooper’s. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

  ‘Me – why would I know anything?’

  ‘Because you said you and the vicar have been friends for years. From what you told me about Amy when I was last here, he obviously confides in you.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I suppose it’s safe to tell you.’ Joanna watches a blush travel up from Mrs Hooper’s neck. ‘The person it would have hurt’s no longer alive.’ She inhales deeply, as if about to dive into a swimming pool. ‘Carrie may well have seen us together; Timothy and I weren’t always as discreet as we should have been.’

  ‘Seen you together! What – you and the vicar?’ Joanna presses her damaged knuckles to her lips.

  Mrs Hooper looks uncomfortable. ‘We managed to keep it a secret for years.’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s still going on?’ Joanna looks away, her incredulity muffled by her fists.

  ‘We don’t have furtive meetings in the woods any more – we’re both too old for blankets and picnics, but yes, we keep one another company,’ Mrs Hooper whispers, even though Gordon, Mike, Freddie and Ethan are still out on a walk, and they’ve the place to themselves.

  ‘That was you, was it? Yes.’ Joanna answers her own question and drops her injured hands to her sides. ‘It makes sense now. Us kids … we found one of your abandoned picnics down by the lake. I should have guessed it was you, Carrie obviously did. There were chocolate brownies, weren’t there? We ate them in the boat … you used to give us them when we came round.’ A brief smile into the memory. ‘I can’t pretend I’m not shocked.’ She skims her gaze to Mrs Hooper again. ‘Honestly, though, I’d never have put the two of you together in a million years.’

  ‘I know Timothy’s a bit of an acquired taste.’ Mrs Hooper fiddles with the cuffs of her blouse. ‘But he’s been good to me. I was at my lowest when we started seeing each other, worn down from providing round-the-clock care for Derek. And, of course, he had troubles of his own at home.’ She bunches her shoulders. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you are.’ Joanna is having difficulty picturing Mrs Hooper as the scarlet woman. ‘Did his wife ever find out?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Hooper answers.

  ‘You hope she didn’t. But whether she did or not, it was pretty mean of you to be carrying on with her husband when she was … was … stuck in that wheelchair.’ Joanna runs out of steam.

  ‘I’m not making excuses, but –’ Mrs Hooper seems to want to explain – ‘I think Timothy was a symptom of what living in a place like this did to me. Looking out, day after day, on nothing but greenery. You could forget you were human.’

  ‘I can understand that much, I suppose. Coming back to Witchwood as I have as an adult, there’s nothing here, is there? You can’t even get the internet, for goodness’ sake.’ A sigh. ‘So,’ Joanna, wanting to move things on, ‘that’s how Carrie got the vicar to take her to the police station, is it? By threatening to expose the pair of you.’

  There isn’t the time to answer.

  Their heads dart to the opening door and the bubbling chatter of Joanna’s children.

  ‘Oh, you’re back – did you have fun?’ Joanna cuddles Freddie and Ethan with as much gusto as her battered body allows. ‘Your dad given you a towelling?’ she asks the wagging Buttons, ruffling his damp head. ‘We don’t want you bringing mud into Mrs Hooper’s cottage.’

  ‘I’m boiling the kettle,’ Gordon announces, and bends to remove his cycle clips. ‘Anyone for tea?’ Lean as ever inside hi
s usual shirt, tie and suit trousers. His full head of steel-grey hair gives him a distinguished look. ‘Great,’ he says to a show of hands, and pitches from the room.

  ‘You all right, Jo?’ Mike asks, giving her a kiss. Keeping Gordon company in the kitchen since they arrived that morning – peeling vegetables, stirring the gravy – he looks scruffy by comparison in jeans and Sunday stubble. ‘’Cos, you’re looking a bit pink – isn’t she?’ He twists his question to Mrs Hooper.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Joanna smiles. ‘It’s probably the fire – lovely as it is, I’m a bit over-warm.’

  ‘You’re not running a temperature again, are you?’ Mike tests her forehead with his hand. ‘Isn’t it time to take your painkillers?’

  Joanna checks her watch and unbuckles her handbag to dig through its rattling innards. Unscrewing the lid of prescribed co-codamol and tipping the recommended dose into her palm, she puts the bolus in her mouth and swallows with a sip of the tea Gordon’s just made her. Tasting the bitterness on the back of her tongue, she wishes the distress of nine days ago, along with her week-long stint in Gloucester Infirmary, could be as easily numbed.

  ‘Thanks for that delicious lunch, Gordon,’ Joanna says. Then, determined to banish her recent trauma, along with the news Mrs Hooper’s just divulged, she swivels her attention to her fair-haired sons. Back from their yomp through the woods, they sit rosy-cheeked on Mrs Hooper’s peacock-patterned carpet, Buttons spread between them, totally absorbed with an old Monopoly set someone fetched from the loft.

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it.’ Gordon draws on the last of his gold-tipped cigarette before extinguishing it in an ashtray. ‘You must come again.’ As elegant as ever, he folds his violin-making hands in his lap.

  ‘It’s a real treat not to have to cook – not that I’m in any fit state.’ Joanna continues with her gratitude. And with the cup of tea balancing on the arm of the couch, her bruised legs and bandaged foot tucked under her, she scans the front page of the Sunday paper Mike brought in from the car.

  ‘No, you’re not in any fit state. You’re to take it easy, Jo – d’you hear? It’s going to take a long time to get over what that brute did to you.’ Mrs Hooper fiddles with the garnet brooch Joanna returned to her, which is now pinned to the collar of her blouse. ‘You were lucky to get out of there alive, you poor love. What a thing to happen.’

  ‘Gave as good as you got, though, didn’t you, Jo-Go.’ Mike, proud from his position by the fire.

  ‘What I can’t get over,’ Mrs Hooper shares her amazement with the room, ‘is how your search for Dean Fry ended up solving Ellie’s murder. But I have to say, I always had a bad feeling about you digging around in the past – and now I know why.’

  ‘I never liked Ian.’ Gordon, from his armchair. ‘And the cheek of the man, calling me a pervert.’

  A resigned ripple of agreement from the grown-ups. Freddie and Ethan, heads bowed, throwing dice, counting out pretend money, don’t look up.

  ‘I always said he was a nasty piece of work. He was vile to Gordon,’ Mrs Hooper adds for the benefit of her Sunday guests, then turns to her son. ‘He was only like that to you to deflect any blame and suspicion from himself. It’s clear as day now, love.’ Her cup clatters noisily into its saucer.

  ‘All I can say is, thank God Gordon arrived when he did. He meant to kill me, you know.’ A glance at her sons; Joanna is thankful they aren’t listening. ‘I reckon he’d been watching the cottage from the moment I arrived. Liz must’ve told him I’d come here when she said she’d given me the suitcase. He knew I’d be alone until Mike arrived later Friday night.’

  ‘Only in conversation, though,’ Mrs Hooper says. ‘I’m sure Liz didn’t have the first idea what he was up to.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Joanna shook her head. ‘She can’t possibly have known what Ian was hiding in that suitcase, or how desperate he’d be to get it back. I was working it out in hospital – that suitcase was the key to everything. And while he had it safely stashed away, he was in control. No wonder he went off his head when he realised it was, for the first time ,’ she stresses, ‘out of his control, and that someone else had it. And he wasn’t able to contain what he’d been holding in for the last twenty-eight years. It didn’t matter that he’d have to kill someone else, me –’ aware of her children sitting close by, Joanna drops her voice – ‘all that mattered to him was getting his suitcase back and being in control again.’

  ‘Bit irrational, isn’t it?’ Mrs Hooper frowns.

  ‘Yes. But what d’you expect? The man’s a murderer. Imagine the sort of twisted mind he’d have. But, I tell you,’ a tentative touch of her temple, ‘I wish I’d never taken the damn thing.’

  ‘I was going to ask why Liz gave it to you.’ Gordon throws one knee over the other. ‘If it was so easy to get rid of, then surely it could’ve been lost years ago?’

  ‘I suppose. Except it wasn’t hers to get rid of, was it? Ian told her it belonged to Dean, making out it contained precious things belonging to Dean’s mother, and he was keeping it for him,’ Joanna explains. ‘The only reason Liz gave it to me was because I said I was going to find him.’

  ‘Fair enough. But Ian took a hell of a risk keeping hold of those photographs, anyone could have found them.’ Mike shares his thoughts and sits down next to Joanna on the couch.

  ‘It was only the two of them living there, and Liz had no reason to question what Ian had told her. Liz wanted nothing to do with anything belonging to Dean or his dead mother. As far as she was concerned, they were just keepsakes he forgot to take with him in his rush to get out of Witchwood.’

  ‘He did leave in rather a hurry, didn’t he?’ Mrs Hooper chips in.

  ‘Thinking about it, Liz was only able to give me the suitcase because Ian was at work. I was the one who prompted her to it. It was buried under a heap of junk and took her an age to dig out. She told me she’d wanted to sling it years ago, but couldn’t because Ian was so precious about it – and we all know why now.’ Joanna pauses into the weight of the revelation. ‘My fault for looking inside the damn thing.’ She hugs herself. ‘Talk about curiosity killing the cat – it nearly killed me.’ Another glance at her sons.

  ‘But then we’d never have known what he’d done, would we?’ Gordon defends Joanna’s recriminations before they have the chance to properly form.

  ‘And how were you supposed to know what was in there? You thought it was all perfectly innocent,’ Mrs Hooper adds.

  ‘I did, yes.’ Joanna squeezes out a smile. ‘But after I’d seen those photographs of his … and then him confessing what he’d done –’ she sucks in air through her teeth – ‘there was no way he was going to let me go.’

  ‘But how can he have got away with it for all these years?’ Mike quizzes. ‘He’d have been the first person they’d have suspected, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘You’re right, and it’s not like the police didn’t have him in for questioning enough times,’ Mrs Hooper says. ‘He can’t have had an alibi, can he?’

  ‘Liz told me there was some confusion about when Ellie actually died.’ Joanna shares what she discovered a week or so before. ‘Everyone knew she went missing early on the Saturday, but because me and Carrie didn’t find her until the Tuesday, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time.’

  ‘More to do with her being found in fresh water, I should think. It must have been like keeping her in cold storage. Sad thing is,’ Gordon pulls a face, ‘there may well be ways to test the body temperature more accurately now, but not back then.’

  ‘Talk about a muddied timeline – must’ve made it near on impossible for the cops to establish exactly where anyone was.’ Mike rubs a hand over his stubble.

  ‘And with all the evidence washed away.’ Mrs Hooper, eyes downcast.

  ‘It’s why the police kept on at Dean,’ Joanna says. ‘With so little to go on, Carrie’s claim about seeing him being rough to Ellie would have seemed pivotal.’

  The room goes quiet, its occupants lost in priv
ate thought.

  ‘I dread to think what would have happened to you, Jo, if I hadn’t phoned Gordon to say you were here.’ Mrs Hooper is the first to speak. ‘You were so keen to see her, weren’t you, love? You drove from London as soon as you could.’

  Gordon nods through the mellow glow of firelight.

  ‘I’m so grateful.’ Joanna tries not to cry. It hurts too much to cry.

  ‘Anyway, like I said, he was a nasty bugger,’ Mrs Hooper pipes up again. ‘And to think he was happy to let the whole village blame his own son for Ellie’s death.’

  ‘Happy for the police, too,’ Gordon adds. ‘It was only by the skin of his teeth Dean was released.’

  Another chorus of agreement.

  ‘Liz as well, don’t forget. Living as man and wife, lying to her all those years, letting her believe her stepson had done it. What kind of man does that?’

  ‘A monster,’ Gordon says gloomily.

  ‘And all to protect his own scrawny arse,’ Joanna affirms, before remembering her boys are within earshot. She flicks her eyes to Freddie and Ethan again, relieved to see them still engrossed in their game of Monopoly.

  Lamplight leaches into what remains of the day as they sit on mismatched armchairs and sofas. To stop himself from dozing off, Mike gets up to rekindle the fire from a basket of hazel sticks.

  ‘Freddie.’ Joanna gets her son’s attention. ‘Be a darling, offer the chocolates round.’

  ‘Oh, just the one. Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Hooper plucks one and bites it clean in half.

  Joanna takes a coffee cream herself, closes her eyes as it dissolves on her tongue.

  ‘Gordon?’ A slightly flushed Lillian jabs a finger in the direction of her study. ‘Wasn’t there something you wanted to show Joanna?’

  ‘What? Now?’ Gordon, dithering, looks unsure.

  ‘Yes, now. I think we’ve all waited long enough, don’t you?’

  ‘Righty-o.’ Gordon slips to his feet in one easy movement, as lithe as he ever was. ‘Be back in a jiffy.’