by Fay Sampson
They had asked the same question of Aidan. The forensic examination of Rachel’s body must have turned up some trace of white wool. But nothing in Aidan’s memory matched it.
“Thank you both. We won’t keep you from your lunch any longer.”
With a start, Aidan realized that the morning had gone. No time now to take Melangell through the displays of the Lindisfarne Centre.
Outside, in the glazed entrance area, the Cavendishes were still waiting their turn. David pointed to his watch. “It’s a disgrace! We’re supposed to be here on holiday, and they don’t even let us get our lunch. I’ve had enough.” He got up and headed for the door. “I’m going. It’s a free country. They can’t keep us here against our will. It’s what we should have done the moment this unpleasantness came up. I’m heading back over that causeway. We’ll find ourselves a B and B somewhere else.”
Frances tugged at his sleeve. “Sit down, David. You’re making a spectacle of yourself. You can’t leave now. They’ll think we had something to do with it if you run away.”
She took out the inevitable knitting. The little blue jacket. David glowered at her and sat down.
Being the last in the queue was, Aidan supposed with a flash of sympathy, the penalty of being the most innocuous of Lucy’s group. It was hard to imagine this unimaginative couple having anything remotely to do with a drug-taking, petty criminal teenager like Rachel.
Hang on, an inner voice told him. Don’t underestimate them. They used to run a children’s home. They will have seen their share of troubled teenagers. He looked at them with a new respect.
In the fresh air outside the school, a breeze was chasing the clouds away. Aidan caught sight of Lucy ahead, on her way back to St Colman’s for lunch. She rounded the corner by a hotel.
As Aidan and Melangell came in sight of her again, a woman stumbled from the hotel garden across Lucy’s path.
“Sorry!” She lifted an almost empty beer glass and waved it in front of Lucy’s face. “Don’t I know you? Well, I’ll be jiggered! It’s Lucy Pargeter.” The voice came high, the words slurred.
Lucy halted, her body suddenly rigid. “Karen!”
The woman was blonde, hair permed but now dishevelled. She wore tight-fitting white jeans and a striped blue-and-white jersey. Make-up, more vivid than most younger women wore nowadays, slashed her face. She must be middle-aged, but she was trying to defy the years.
Lucy glanced round to see Aidan and Melangell approaching. She turned to them. Her face behind the smile seemed wary.
“This is Karen Ince. Rachel’s mother.”
Aidan registered shock. Lucy had told him about Rachel’s inadequate parenting, but it was hard to associate that dark, brooding girl with the inebriated blonde in front of him.
Lucy struggled with the everyday formalities for Karen. “Aidan and Melangell. They’re part of my group. When did you get here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? … Oh, I’m sorry, Karen. I shouldn’t be talking like this. I’m so terribly sorry about Rachel. I feel responsible. I brought her here… Do the police know you’ve come?”
“Not bleeding likely. Some horse-faced WPC came round to the house to tell me. Bleeding shame. Poor little kid.” Tears welled in the woman’s mascara-smeared eyes. She staggered. Lucy caught her and helped her to a wooden bench beside a picnic table in the garden.
“I think,” she said quietly, nodding to Aidan, “someone ought to tell CID she’s here.”
“Will do.” He set off back towards the school.
Behind him, he heard a man’s voice. “Making a spectacle of herself again, is she?”
Aidan turned his head to see a man come out of the hotel to join Karen and Lucy. Smartly dressed in blazer and pale trousers, with a cricket sweater. His fairish hair was carefully arranged, as Karen’s too must have been when she started the morning. A yellow cravat at his throat.
Rachel’s mother’s latest boyfriend?
Aidan was rounding the corner to deliver his message to DSI Barry and DI Harland when a loud shout arrested him.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
He turned sharply. The man in the blazer was stalking towards him.
“Lucy thought I ought to let the police team know Rachel’s mother is here.”
“So she’s told me. And what police team would that be?” He was standing close over Aidan now, breathing heavily. “The girl’s dead, isn’t she? Probably suicide, that WPC told Karen. What the blazes are they doing still asking questions?”
The enormity of today’s developments sank home to Aidan. “Didn’t Lucy explain? I’m truly sorry, but it’s become a murder investigation now. There are police all over the place, questioning those of us who knew her… slightly… and possible witnesses from the village.” A move of his hand indicated the street ahead. Uniformed officers were still visible making their house-to-house enquiries.
He glanced back at the man in time to see what he sensed was not just shock but fear in his eyes.
“Murder! I hope you’re not bleeding well suggesting Karen and I had anything to do with that! They asked us to arrange about the body, and she just wanted to come and see where it happened. Ghoulish, I told her. You can leave us out of this. We only arrived last night.”
“I’m sorry. I really think I should do what Lucy asked me.” Aidan started to move on.
“And I say you bleeding well won’t!”
A fist shot out and caught Aidan on the side of the chin. He staggered, off balance, and crashed down beside the garden wall. As he fell, his head caught a projecting stone.
He lay on his side, stunned by pain. His eyes found two crisp packets and a ground-out cigarette butt on a level with his face. They seemed to assume an inexplicable importance as he stared at them.
The wider world swung back into focus. Above his head, he was aware of Melangell flying at his attacker. Her small fists were pummelling him.
“Don’t you dare do that to my dad! I hate you!”
Aidan tried to lever himself up from the pavement, but sank back with a groan. Then Lucy was there before him, in three quick strides. She caught hold of Melangell and put restraining arms around her. He heard the authority in her voice. This was PC Pargeter, not the Reverend Lucy.
“Easy now. Stop right there!”
A small crowd was gathering. The man’s eyes flickered round at them. Karen was hobbling towards them at an unsteady run. Her feet were falling sideways on inappropriately high heels.
“Gerald! Are you OK?”
With difficulty, Aidan hauled himself to his feet. “I’m the one you should be asking.”
Lucy’s voice dropped lower, but still held a steely edge. “Just what do you think you’re doing? Who are you?”
“What’s that to you? I don’t have to give an account of myself to some do-gooding lady parson.”
“You’ve just knocked down a man who did nothing to you… Aidan! You’re bleeding.”
Aidan lowered himself again to rest on the wall. He put up a hand to the side of his head and found it sticky with blood. He felt more sick than he wanted to admit.
“It’s all right,” he managed. “I’m not going to pass out on you like James.”
He hoped it was true.
As Lucy’s arms relaxed their hold, Melangell ran to him and hugged him tightly. “He’s not allowed to do that. He shouldn’t have, should he?”
“No, love. Definitely not.”
Karen’s hand was gripping Gerald’s arm. She was looking up at him, her lipsticked face distraught.
“It’s all right, Gerry. They can’t say this has anything to do with you. You weren’t here when it happened.”
Lucy’s level voice cut through hers. “You still haven’t told me who you are, or why you found it necessary to attack Aidan just because he was going to tell the police that Rachel’s mother is here.”
“He’s Gerald Morrison, if you must know.” Karen was still clutching his arm possessively. “We go back a long way, him
and me. He’s Rachel’s father.”
She gave her partner an uncertain smile.
The world was spinning slowly around Aidan. He grabbed the edge of the wall for support.
Gerald Morrison spoke over Karen’s dishevelled hair-do. “Let’s just say I didn’t come here to be questioned by the police. Nobody warned me this was a murder enquiry. I’m getting out.”
Karen’s eyes grew round. “Rachel? Murder? You never said! The police didn’t tell us.”
“I’m really sorry, Karen. I didn’t have time. It’s a new development. I was trying to break it to you gently, but Gerald jumped the gun.”
“Oh, yes! So it’s my fault now, is it? I’ll have you know I’m a bereaved father.”
Lucy threw him an unsympathetic glance. “I don’t recall that you showed any concern for Rachel all the time I knew her. I’d be surprised if your behaviour just now was caused by grief.”
“That’s a lie!” Gerald was coming towards her now belligerently. Aidan wondered if he would have the strength to fight him off. “She was my kid. You’re to blame for her death. You brought her up here. If you hadn’t done that, she’d be alive today. She was my kid, and somebody’s going to pay me for her death. I want compensation.”
“Compensation! Rachel’s dead, and all you can think about is money?” Lucy retorted. Yet at the same time she took a step back from the angry man. She was standing close to Aidan now. He heard her breath come fast. This wasn’t like her.
Nevertheless, her voice steadied. “If anyone’s talking about compensation, it should be Aidan. Look at him. He certainly didn’t cut himself shaving.”
He thought he saw the ghost of a smile in her blue eyes as she looked into his bloodied, bearded face.
Gerald Morrison glared at them both. “I’ll get someone for this!”
Chapter Twenty-nine
AIDAN STEADIED HIMSELF AGAINST THE WALL. “I’ll get the police,” he said thickly. His jaw was throbbing. He had forgotten about it until now, because of the violent pain in his skull. He wondered if he could walk in a straight line. But there was no way he was going to be yet another burden on Lucy’s leadership.
“I’ll go,” she said in concern. “Are you sure you’ll be all right alone?” She cast a meaningful look at Gerald Morrison.
“I’ll do it,” Melangell cried. “I know what to say.”
Before anyone could stop her, she set off at a long-legged run, back towards the school.
“Are you sure?” Lucy took a step after her. “Let me come too.”
“Leave her. She’s a bright kid. She’ll get it right.”
“She is rather special, isn’t she?”
Karen had collapsed on to one of the picnic benches outside the hotel. Gerald gave a last scowl at Lucy and Aidan, then went to console her.
“Have you met him before?” Aidan murmured.
“No, never.”
Almost immediately, Melangell reappeared with a woman police constable in tow. The officer stopped when she saw the blood on Aidan’s head.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“No. But I’ll do.”
“Do you want to press charges? I take it that’s the gentleman over there?”
Aidan shook his head, then wished he hadn’t. “No. There are more important things right now. They’re Rachel’s parents.”
The police officer strode briskly towards the pair.
“Let’s get you back to the house,” Lucy said. “I should probably drive you to the hospital. The causeway’s open.”
“I’ll be OK.”
As they moved away, he saw the officer cross the hotel lawn to Karen. A sharp shout from Gerald Morrison rang out.
“Now look here, young woman. I haven’t come all this way to be treated like a criminal. Do you know who I am?”
The policewoman’s reply was lost behind them.
“Who do you think he is?” Aidan asked. “Somebody important?”
“No idea. As I said, as far as I’m concerned, he never featured in Rachel’s life till now.”
“Do you think that’s really what brought him up here? The fact that he might be able to sue somebody for her death?”
Lucy stopped dead on the road. “I’ve had a sudden terrible thought. All this time I’ve been telling myself that murder victims are usually killed by somebody they know. To read the tabloids, you’d think the greatest danger was from strangers, but it’s really not true. Ever since we found it wasn’t suicide, I’ve been puzzling my brain to think who on Holy Island could possibly want her dead, or had got her into a position which ended up with killing her accidentally. What if it wasn’t one of our group? What if Gerald Morrison was already on Holy Island on Sunday? Is it possible he could have killed Rachel?”
“For the chance of compensation? It sounds a bit far-fetched. And why wait till she’s in Northumbria? Wouldn’t it have been easier to do it in Devon?”
Lucy persisted. “It’s just the unlikelihood of it happening here that would be his best cover.”
Aidan was relieved to find he was walking steadily now. They were almost at St Colman’s House. He glanced down into Melangell’s anxious face and managed an uncertain smile. But the face he turned to Lucy was more sombre.
“Could there be another reason? Something in his career that would make the discovery of an illegitimate daughter with a criminal record a blot on his prospects?”
“I would have thought it was hardly unusual enough for that to matter nowadays. And killing her wouldn’t destroy the record. It would be more likely to draw attention to him. But I still think there’s a darker reason for him to be here.”
Aidan realized he would be glad to get indoors and sit down. But an insistent thought would not be silenced. “Are you sure you’re not latching on to him because you don’t want to think it’s someone from our group?”
“That would be a relief. But look at the way he hit you. He’s obviously got a violent streak if he’s crossed. And it’s almost a carbon copy of James’s injury. James still can’t remember what happened, or he says he can’t. But don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence? Two of you falling and sustaining head wounds? It looks very much to me like the same modus operandi. What if he found Rachel and James together? Knocked James out and… disposed of Rachel?”
Aidan turned his head cautiously as they crossed the guesthouse car park. Lucy was striding towards the door with renewed animation.
He called after her, “There’s one name you haven’t mentioned. One person besides yourself who’s known Rachel a long time. Who’s been sunk in depression ever since she died. Hasn’t it occurred to you that if Rachel knew her killer, then the most likely person is Peter?”
“No!” Melangell cried out.
Lucy spun round to face him. “That’s impossible! Peter cared about her. He would no more have killed her than I would.”
If blue eyes could be said to blaze, hers did.
Aidan held up placating hands. “I’m only following your logic. That most murders are committed by someone the victim knows. And nobody here knew her better than Peter, except you. How do we know what went on between them?”
He had a sudden picture of the day of their arrival. Meeting Rachel running down the stairs, her eyes bright and provocative. She had been coming from the top floor where Peter had his room.
Lucy’s face in front of him was very still now, as she thought about his words. Then she shook herself, slowly. “I can’t believe it’s Peter. Especially now that I’ve seen how violent her father can be. Believe me, I’ve had experience of that kind of man.” He saw her shudder.
“When you were in the police?”
There was something more to it than that.
She looked at him guardedly, as if wondering how much to say. Then she turned away. She spoke so quietly he hardly heard her.
“Yes and no. My partner was in the police force too. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good officer in his way. But not a good human being.
If I did the slightest thing wrong, he hit me.”
Aidan held his breath, waiting for her to go on.
“If I’d stayed in that relationship, I think he might have killed me.”
Lucy stood in the hall, still shivering with remembered shock, while Melangell bounded upstairs to get ready for lunch and Aidan followed more slowly. What on earth had possessed her to share that most painful secret of her past with this foxy-bearded man she had only known for three days?
All the same, she had been very glad to have him with her when she met the violent anger of Rachel’s father. She winced. Aidan had come out of that encounter with a bruised jaw and a bloody head. At least he was not playing the martyr, like James.
Should she really take him to the hospital, in spite of his protests?
But the thought came crowding back of the appalling suggestion he had made.
Not Peter.
She sat at the lunch table, struggling for once to find conversation with her guests. She was alarmingly conscious that Valerie was glaring at her malevolently. Did she know, or guess, that Lucy had told the police about that threatening visit and Elspeth’s luring Rachel to take cocaine?
“Pass the mayonnaise,” Elspeth barked.
Lucy jumped. It was ridiculous to react as if the most normal request was filled with menace.
Across the table, she caught Aidan’s eye. He gave her a small smile, and she immediately felt better.
But she hadn’t told him everything. Aidan had heard Simon warning her to take care, but she had refused to tell him where that threat had come from.
Her eyes fell on Peter at the foot of the table. Aidan was right about one thing. Peter’s large form was slumped in his chair, a picture of depression. A pang of guilt seized her. Had she done enough to try and comfort him? He had taken Rachel’s death hard.
A treacherous worm of thought was boring its way in. She hadn’t picked up the impression that relations between Peter and Rachel had gone that far. She had never thought of Peter as being in love with the troubled teenager. Just a loyal friend, doing all he could to help Rachel out of the mess she had made of her life.