by Ann Cleeves
‘You set Clive up. You were his hero. You knew he’d do anything you asked. You told him about Lily. How she was threatening to go public about the affair. When? At one of your cosy Friday lunches?’
‘I needed someone to talk to, Inspector. It was a stressful time.’
‘How did you put the idea into his head? “If only she were to have an accident…” You told him you’d sent the card. Were you worried she’d use it as evidence of the affair? “But at least I didn’t sign it. No one will trace it back to me. We were very careful.” But you didn’t mention the kisses.
‘Only Clive had a more elaborate plan than you’d anticipated. He was a chess player. He liked intricate patterns. And he had no real grasp on reality – my sergeant realized that after one meeting. It wasn’t enough to kill Lily Marsh. He had to distract us from you. He had his own reason for wanting Luke Armstrong dead, so he killed him first. And to reinforce the connection to Lily, and to protect you, he sent the card. You must have known about that. Otherwise why lie when I asked if you’d sent a similar one to Lily?’ She paused to catch her breath. ‘When was that, Dr Calvert? When did Clive admit he’d killed Luke and Lily?’
The man didn’t answer.
Vera thumped her fist on the table, so hard she knew it would be bruised the next day.
‘You’re quite safe, man. I can’t really charge you. The CPS would throw out the case in minutes. You’re bright enough to know how these things work. But tell me. Satisfy my curiosity.’
‘There was a Marmora’s warbler at Deepden a few days ago. I gave Clive a lift back to town. He told me then. As if I should be pleased with him. I was horrified.’
‘Not sufficiently horrified to tell us what had happened, though.’ Her voice was deceptively calm. ‘There could have been another victim. But still you kept your mouth shut. Why was that, Dr Calvert? A warped sense of loyalty? Or were you scared Clive would implicate you in the murders?’
‘I don’t have to listen to this, Inspector. As you said, you can’t charge me.’
He got up from his seat and walked out through the open door. Vera watched him cross the meadow, and stop to blow a reassuring kiss to his wife, who must still have been looking from the window.
* * *
At ten that morning Ashworth’s wife went into labour. He phoned the office at teatime, to tell her they’d had a boy. Jack Alexander. He’d been nearly ten pounds, a real bruiser. Vera was just about to leave the station for bed, but she agreed to meet up with him for a drink. She found it hard to celebrate other people’s babies but she’d rather have a few drinks with Joe than go back completely sober to an empty house. In the end, she suggested he come to the old station master’s house on his way through. She knew she’d not be able to stick at a couple of halves and it’d save her having to drive. On the way home she stopped at the supermarket and got a bottle of champagne and a huge bunch of flowers for Sarah. She thought Ashworth would appreciate the gesture. Also in the trolley she put a ready-cook Indian meal and a bottle of Grouse. She’d need something to get her to sleep.
Ashworth arrived just five minutes after her. From her kitchen window she saw him leap out of the car, bleary-eyed and beaming. She’d already had a large Scotch. She rinsed out the glass and put it back on the tray, so he wouldn’t know.
They sat outside. The house was even more untidy than usual and she didn’t want him seeing it. She couldn’t bear it if he started feeling sorry for her. She was light-headed through lack of sleep. Their conversation was punctuated by the sound of her neighbours’ animals – sheep, goats, the inevitable cockerel.
‘You were right, then,’ she said. ‘Stringer was a nutter.’
‘You knew it was him, though, didn’t you?’
‘I thought it was a possibility.’
‘You didn’t let on.’
‘No proof. And I met a few lads like Clive Stringer when I was growing up. Obsessives. Loners. They didn’t all turn into serial killers.’
‘Why did he?’
‘He was a romantic,’ she said. ‘He believed in happy families.’
‘That’s no kind of motive.’
‘It made sense to him,’ she said. ‘It had a weird sort of logic.’ Looking into the distance, she thought the hills seemed very sharp and close this evening. She wouldn’t be surprised if the weather didn’t break soon.
‘You’ll have to spell it out.’ Joe believed in happy families too, had done even before he got one of his own. But then he’d grown up in one. She caught him looking at her as if she was daft.
‘Clive was a loner,’ Vera said. ‘No dad. No friends. Only that witch of a mother who tried to suck the life out of him. He had two surrogate families – the Sharps and Peter Calvert’s birdwatchers. Both murders were committed to protect them. He was very close to Tom Sharp, looked out for him when he was a kid, blamed Luke for his death. The Calverts were his idea of a perfect couple. He idolized Peter and fancied himself in love with Felicity. He didn’t want her hurt by news of her husband’s affair.’
‘We’ll never really know what was going through his mind, will we?’ Ashworth looked up from his glass. She could tell his head was full of the wonder of his new son, wrinkled and red and screaming. She’d had to hear all the details of the birth before he’d let her start talking about the murders. About how brave Sarah had been. ‘All she had was a couple of puffs of gas and air.’ He didn’t care why Clive Stringer had murdered two people and kidnapped a third. Not tonight. Nutter was good enough for him.
But Vera cared. And she knew.
‘Peter Calvert was his hero. Clive was doing what Peter wanted, saving his marriage, getting rid of Lily Marsh for good. Do you remember, we asked Clive in the museum if he’d keep quiet if he’d found out one of his friends had committed murder? He said of course he would. We should have asked him if he’d commit murder for his friend.’
She spoke almost to herself. The sun and the whisky and the lack of sleep had sent her into a sort of trance. ‘If he’d kept it simple he might have got away with it.’
Joe looked up from his drink, his attention caught at last. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Lily Marsh was his first target. She was threatening to make life difficult for Calvert. We know she was starting to get awkward. That was why she turned up with James to look at the cottage. She assumed Felicity would tell her husband Lily had been there and he’d realize it was a threat. Take me back or I’ll tell your wife. She was phoning Calvert at work. She’d even convinced herself she was pregnant. Calvert confided in Stringer. They met up for lunch every week. He knew he was Stringer’s hero, has the sort of ego to allow him to believe a friend would commit murder on his behalf. We’ll never be able to charge him with it, of course.’
She imagined Clive in the bungalow in North Shields, Calvert’s words rattling around in his head, planning the murders while his mother watched television game shows in the other room. Obsessing about it, as he obsessed about birds and friendship. ‘He played chess,’ she said. ‘He used to play with the Calvert boy. He worked out the moves in this drama well in advance.’
‘So why Luke Armstrong? And why was he killed first?’
‘He had to be. Stringer didn’t want Calvert implicated in any way with the murders. By making Luke Armstrong the first victim, he thought we’d concentrate on the boy in our search for a motive.’
‘So the first victim could have been anyone? Stringer chose him at random to throw us off the scent?’
‘No. It wasn’t random. Stringer would never have worked himself up to commit murder unless he’d convinced himself that Calvert needed him, but I think he was glad of an excuse to kill Luke. He blamed him for Tom Sharp’s death. Lots of people did. He looked on Tom as a brother. As I said the Sharps were his surrogate family. And he was there when Gary was talking about his plans to go out with Julie, so he knew she wouldn’t be in the house that Wednesday night. Perhaps he saw it as a sign, decided it was time for him to make a move. He didn’t know about Laura,
though, didn’t know she was there when Luke let him in. Gary told him later that Luke had a sister and she’d been in the house.’
‘So that’s why he abducted her?’
‘Nah,’ Vera said. ‘He’d started to enjoy it. Being in control for the first time in his life.’
‘And he got the idea for the flowers from Tom Sharp’s memorial on the Tyne?’
‘Maybe. He knew the best way to keep Calvert out of the frame was if the police considered the two murders as one case, the random killings of a madman. They had to be linked. That was the reason for the flowers, the water. I don’t see Stringer as naturally theatrical. The posed bodies and the dressing of the scene was part of the plan.’
‘You wouldn’t think he’d have that much imagination,’ Joe said.
‘Well, he didn’t dream it all up himself, did he, pet?’ Vera poured herself another drink, hoped Joe was too distracted with thoughts of the baby to notice. ‘He got the idea from that bloody story. Parr’s story. The one that almost had us convinced he was the murderer. In that the victim was strangled. How did Parr describe it? “Like an embrace”? And then the corpse was laid out in water. Clive had the book in his room when I visited the house. But it was in paperback. A different edition from the one I’d borrowed from the library. A different jacket. I didn’t take it in at the time. He took his mother’s bath oil to put in the water in the Armstrongs’ house. When I looked round the Stringers’ bungalow there were only male toiletries in the bathroom. I should have noticed.’
She reached out and finished her drink. Her third? Or her fourth? ‘As I said, it was all planned. Very carefully. He knew Calvert had sent Lily a card with a pressed flower. So he sent one to Luke.’
In the distance her neighbour was calling her hens to be locked into the coop for the night, rattling a bowl of mash with a spoon to bring them in. The stupid woman had names for them all, cried when they had to wring their necks. Vera took the carcasses off her to casserole.
‘He stole a car to get there. We checked car-hire firms, but not stolen vehicles. I was taken in by him, never had him down as a thief, but he’d knocked around with the Sharps for long enough to realize how it was done. He’d been good at it at one time, I heard today. Supplied cars for Davy on and off when he was still at school. Gave up when Calvert got him the job at the museum. After killing Luke, he dropped the vehicle back in Shields. If he’d stopped there we’d never have tracked him down. But that wasn’t the object, of course. The object was killing Lily Marsh, saving Calvert’s marriage, making himself indispensable.’
‘Did he kill her in the cottage at Fox Mill?’ Ashworth asked. Interested enough at least to put the question, drawn into the story despite himself.
‘He must have done. How else would he get a woman like that alone? He wrote her a note, perhaps. Forged Calvert’s writing or did it on his computer. We might never know. But I’m sure he was there. I phoned Felicity Calvert this afternoon. When I pressed her she remembered seeing a white Land Rover in the lane when she was bringing James home from school. Given long enough the CSIs would find a trace of him.’
‘The white Land Rover,’ Ashworth said. ‘Stolen from Northumbria Water. That was how he got her body into the gully.’
‘He took it from the depot,’ she said angrily. ‘Nobody missed it until I asked them to check. That was what Davy Sharp was phoning up for yesterday. He’d heard that Clive had been stealing again. Couldn’t understand it when he had so much to lose. He’d heard that the girl had been abducted. With the Land Rover he could get all the way to the gully over the grass and rocks. That was why nobody saw him with Lily’s body.’
Now, she was starting to feel properly tired, starting to relax. One more drink and she might sleep tonight. ‘Clive must have gone back to Seaton, watched the house, maybe from the footpath by the pond. Seen Laura. He was a regular there. He’d been birdwatching in the area since he was a lad. If anyone saw him with binoculars it wouldn’t register with them. The birders are a part of the scenery. The day of the abduction he’d have followed her almost to the bus stop, waited until the road was quiet. She was a skinny little thing, easy enough to overpower. He’d never had a girlfriend. Imagine the fantasies, as he lay awake at night reading that book. She’d have fascinated him. Especially as she was so similar to the figure in Parr’s story. He’d have justified it to himself – that she might have seen him the night he was there with Luke, or he needed to throw our attentions back on the Armstrongs because we were getting so close to Calvert. But that wasn’t why he went out early in the morning to take her while she was on her way to school. He kept her alive, because he liked the thought of having her there for him. He locked her in the boot of the car he’d stolen while he went into work and established his alibi. And all the time he was planning the murder, how it would look. How beautiful she would look when she was dead. He took flexi time and left early, took her up the coast to Deepden and locked her in the ringing hut.’
‘But he intended to kill her?’
‘Certainly. He had the flowers with him.’
Ashworth finished his drink, looked at his watch. ‘I’ll get back. Hospital visiting. And Sarah’s mam’s had Katie all afternoon. It’ll be good to have everyone together at home tomorrow.’
Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she’d been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she’d be so bored she’d commit murder herself.
By Ann Cleeves
The Vera Stanhope Series
The Crow Trap
Telling Tales
Hidden Depths
Silent Voices
The Glass Room
Harbour Street
The Moth Catcher
The Seagull
The Shetland Series
Raven Black
White Nights
Red Bones
Blue Lightning
Dead Water
Thin Air
Cold Earth
Wild Fire
Praise for the Vera Stanhope series
‘Nobody does unsettling undercurrents better than Ann Cleeves’
Val McDermid
‘Cleeves sets a good scene, this time in Northumberland during a heatwave, and she brings a large cast to life, shifting points of view between bereaved relatives, victims and suspects in a straightforward, satisfyingly traditional detective novel’
Literary Review
‘Ann Cleeves … is another fine author with a strong, credible female protagonist … It’s a dark, interesting novel with considerable emotional force behind it’
Spectator
‘Cleeves has a way of making unlikely murders plausible by grounding them in recognizable communities. In this world, neighbours are close-knit, and close ranks’
Financial Times
‘Cleeves weaves an absorbingly cunning mystery and fans of Vera, the messy, overweight, man-less heroine of this crime series, will soon have a face to put to her, as the actress Brenda Blethyn takes on her endearing character in a forthcoming television series, Vera, based on the books’
Daily Mail
‘Ann Cleeves is a skilful technician, keeping our interest alive and building slowly up to the denouement. Her easy use of language and clever story construction make her one of the best natural writers of detective fiction’
Sunday Express
‘Stepping into The Glass Room is a little like being transported back to the golden age of mystery stories: a windswept landscape, isolated country house, disparate people thrown together, crime scenes mimicking their fictional counterparts and a plot liberally strewn with blind alleys, red herrings and mis-directions. This book has all the elements of Agatha Christie at her best’
S. J. Bolton
‘Cleeves is excellent not only on the main character but on the mixture of exasperation and respect that she provokes in others. Combined with the intricate plotting, this makes for a compulsive read’
; Independent
‘Beware the author with a big imagination and criminal intent. This shattering plot involves DI Vera Stanhope on the trail of one of her hippy neighbours who’d gone off to hole up in a writers’ retreat. When a body is discovered, is someone taking murder off the page?’
Daily Mirror
‘The latest novel is as smoothly written and entertaining as anything Ann has ever produced … I’d rank this as one of the best books she’s written … Her mastery of technique, developed over more than two decades, would be worthy of study by anyone starting out as a writer of popular fiction … An excellent balance of puzzle, character and setting that makes for first-rate entertainment’
Martin Edwards
‘This novel has all Ann Cleeves’ trademarks – great timing, strong characters, lots of tension and plenty of red herrings to keep the reader hooked … If you like the TV series, you’re in for a treat – because the atmospheric but realistic books are even better’
Press Association
Praise for the Shetland series
‘Raven Black breaks the conventional mould of British crime-writing, while retaining the traditional virtues of strong narrative and careful plotting’
Independent
‘Like a smoky Shetland peat fire, this elegantly written, slow-burning intrigue shrouds you in mystery and crackles with inner heat’
Peter James
‘Beautifully constructed … a lively and surprising addition to a genre that once seemed moribund’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Raven Black shows what a fine writer Cleeves is … an accomplished and thoughtful book’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Ann’s characterization is worthy of the best writers in the field … Rarely has a sense of place been so evocatively conveyed in a crime novel’
Daily Express
‘In true Agatha Christie style, Cleeves once again pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction’
Colin Dexter
‘The setting is Fair Isle, full of birds and beauty, but, in Cleeves’ hands, deeply sinister’