by Jo Allen
‘Hmm.’ The look she gave him was a searching one. ‘Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘No, it’s fine. I wanted a quick word with you anyway.’
‘I’m already running late.’
‘Mikey can wait another two minutes.’ Jude got out of the car and strolled over to his mother, as casually as he could. ‘You’re doing him the favour. I wondered if you remember anything about someone called Steven Lawson. You were at school with him.’
‘Goodness. Well, that’s a long time ago.’ She crinkled her face and looked towards the distant fells. ‘No, not much. The girls were all a bit keen on him and the boys all hated him, but Steven could look after himself as I recall. If I’m honest I don’t really remember too much about that time of my life.’
‘You weren’t one of the girls running after him, then?’ he joked.
She made a face. ‘Most of the time I was mooning after your father and him after me. A fat lot of good that did me, in the long run. Yourself and Mikey excepted, of course.’ She got into the car, but wound the window down so they could continue the conversation as she turned it in the lane. ‘When I think of it, I do remember that Steven always seemed very angry. You couldn’t get through to him. He didn’t know how to return a smile for a smile.’
That made sense. ‘Do you know what happened to him after he left school?’
‘I heard he’d killed a man in a fight.’ She twisted her head to see as she reversed. On the other side of the road Holmes appeared, fixed Jude with his yellow eyes and, fighting shy of the car, slunk under Becca’s gate and out of sight.
‘Do you keep up with any of your old schoolmates?’
‘No, not really. I thought we were a very unlucky class, in a way. There was poor Nick, of course. He was a lonely soul. And then Clare, who was a saint in human form, dedicated her whole life to charity and then died. And those two boys who were killed. And of course, there was nearly me.’
Jude leaned across and kissed her quickly on the cheek through the car window. ‘Let’s not talk about that. We all have narrow escapes.’
‘I know. And now there are these suicides. There’s so much sorrow in this world. I’m so proud of everything you do to stop it.’ And she stuck her foot on the accelerator and drove off before he could respond to the compliment.
He stood watching her for a moment, hands in pockets, and took a moment to reflect as the sun dipped below the western line of Rough Hill. He couldn’t bear to think what his mother would do if she lost Mikey because Jude and his team couldn’t solve the puzzle of the Eden Valley suicides. It would be unimaginable failure.
As he stood there he sensed, rather than saw or heard, the front door of Becca’s cottage open. The grey swirl of feline smoke that was Holmes whisked up the path towards the door and stopped halfway.
Jude turned, the scene replaying itself as it had done a few days earlier. Becca, dressed in jogging bottoms and a baggy tee shirt as if she’d come to the end of her tether and given up for the day, stood on the doorstep, watching him. He waited. In an unusual quandary, Holmes dithered between them, unable to decide who to favour and who to slight, then gave up on the decision and stalked off, tail vertical, nose in the air.
‘Holmes,’ Becca said, a trace of irritation in her voice. ‘What time do you call this? I thought you were inside.’
She caught Jude’s eye and her irritation turned to amusement. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just talking to the cat.’
‘Maybe you need someone different to talk to.’ He hadn’t meant to say that. It just came out, a thought finding expression in a way he’d trained himself never to do.
‘Maybe.’ She advanced a few steps down the path, and he sensed her uncertainty. ‘I know I shouldn’t ask, but are there any updates? On the suicides.’
‘No.’ He was reluctant to talk work, even though he’d half intended to ask her, yet again, to keep an eye out for Mikey. There was no need; she was already on the case. So there must have been some other impulse that made him stop and wait for her when he’d had plenty of opportunity to drive off. ‘At least, nothing I can tell you that isn’t in the public domain.’
She came a bit closer. He knew her habits, knew she liked to get in from work and sink into a hot bath, and that must be what she’d done. Her hair was still damp, her face pink and pearled with moisture, and the fresh smell of Body Shop foam bath overrode the rising tide of night-scented stock from the border next to the wall. ‘I’m keeping an eye on Mikey, as much as I can. I think he’ll be all right.’
‘Thanks.’ He mustered a smile to cover his uncertainty. A ridiculous, unarticulated thought was crystallising in his brain, even as he looked at her and listened to his heart. She didn’t look directly at him. Maybe she was thinking the same.
But she’d never say anything. She thought he was still dating Ashleigh. ‘I’ll keep watching over him, though.’
‘Like an angel,’ he said, in words that sounded so unlike anything he’d ever said to her before that she looked at him in surprise.
‘My goodness,’ she said, twisting the hem of her tee shirt in what looked like anxiety, ‘What’s come over you tonight? That’s very fancy talk, for you.’
Adam Fleetwood, who’d always been handsome, popular and charismatic, had a stock of chat-up lines like that, and had over-employed them until he became a standing joke. With age Adam had also acquired cunning, and from what Jude had heard around the town he’d learned to be more subtle. But the lines he’d used had worked with Becca. He knew she was thinking that. Her face wouldn’t have gone so shamefully scarlet otherwise.
‘I wondered,’ he said, and took a few more steps up the path until he was standing close to her. At the edge of his vision Holmes seemed to realise there was something going on in which he might have a passing interest, and scuttled down the length of the flowerbed before cutting out and pretending to be casual as he strolled across to play gooseberry.
Holmes, Jude always thought, was on his side. To keep him that way, he dipped a hand down to touch the cat’s soft grey head. ‘I hoped we could let bygones be bygones.’
‘We have. Haven’t we? I mean, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you weren’t…’ She took a deep breath. ‘So forgiving. Because I know you think I behaved badly and you’re probably right, but I do want us to be friends.’
It was his turn for the deep breath, as if there wasn’t enough air for both of them. ‘We could be more than friends. Couldn’t we? I might as well be honest. I still feel about you the way I did…before.’
‘Before I let you go?’ Becca claimed Holmes, scooping him up in her arms and holding him against her until he turned a reproachful head away and looked at Jude with the ultimate feline expression of contempt, though whether it was for Becca’s weakness or Jude’s it was impossible to tell.
‘Yes. I thought I’d get over it, but I might as well be honest. Maybe it doesn’t hurt like it used to but it still hurts. It always will. I’ll always miss you.’
‘Really?’ She clutched Holmes more tightly and her voice chilled him. ‘And does Ashleigh know you think this way?’
‘I imagine she does. Does that matter?’
‘She’s your girlfriend. I’d have thought it matters a lot.’
‘She isn’t my girlfriend any more.’
‘Right.’ She lowered her head, rested her cheek against the top of Holmes’s soft grey head. ‘As of when?’
‘As of Wednesday.’
‘I see. And did she end it, or did you?’
‘It was always going to end.’ Though it had lasted longer than he’d thought it would. He tried to read Becca’s expression but she kept her head down, avoiding him.
‘She did, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’ Becca lowered Holmes towards the ground and he jumped free at the last minute, wriggling away and off again as if to avoid the ending he sensed coming. ‘So. Your girlfriend dumps you and you come round here and try and hit on me a
gain. Great.’
‘I’m not trying to hit on you. I miss you. I love you. If it had been up to me we’d never have split.’
‘We split because you were never around. Because there was always something else that came up. Because other people’s needs were always more important than mine. Because your work was more important than your friends. That’s why.’
‘I think I’ve learned my lesson now.’
‘Really? Give me one example.’
‘I turned up at Mikey’s twenty-first—’
‘Late, because something happened at work.’
‘But I turned up,’ he pleaded, taking a step towards her. The something had been a murder and an arrest. She didn’t understand.
‘There’s another thing, Jude. You always promised you’d change and you never did. I appreciate your honesty and I’ll be honest in return. Of course I still care for you. I always will. I think I probably still love you, in a way, and I really want you to be happy. But you’ll never change. I don’t want to be married to your sense of duty. I’ve had enough of that. I want someone who’ll put me first.’
‘I’ll do that. I swear I’ll—’
‘But you promised before. I want to believe you’ll change, but I know you won’t. So I’m sorry, Jude. No.’
She waited for a second to allow him time to answer but he couldn’t find the words either for acceptance or argument and so she turned away and headed back up the path.
He shrugged it off, for her benefit at least, and turned his back, but there was a hollow where his heart ought to have been and a numbness where a few moments before the blood had been hammering through his veins. It had been folly to try and win her back in the first place and if he’d had the slightest chance of success, he’d sacrificed it in the heat of the moment, snatching at it as if it was the one opportunity he’d have.
That was Ashleigh’s fault. She hadn’t put the idea in his head but she’d fanned the flame and tripped him into declaring himself too soon. He knew she hadn’t done it deliberately but the effect on him had been the same as that of Eden Whispers, intentionally or otherwise ill-wishing the vulnerable and prompting them to believe that the answer was simple and immediate.
‘I expect I’ll see you then,’ he said over his shoulder, not caring if she heard. From here onwards he’d have to avoid her for the sake of his self-respect. Becca would confide in her sister, because she always did, and Kirsty would tell her husband, who was close friends with Adam Fleetwood, and from there the news of his humiliation would spread among his peers.
‘I’ll see you.’ And then: ‘Oh, Jude!’
He turned back more quickly than he should have done, the devil that was hope rearing up only to die when he saw she’d only paused on the doorstep and still she wasn’t looking at him. Go on, he willed her, say it was a mistake. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s what I was coming out to say to you before this nonsense.’
So it was nonsense. Now he knew what a fool he’d been. ‘And?’
‘Leslie Chester. I meant to say to you before and I forgot. He told me he has Nicholas’s diary. I don’t imagine it’s important but I thought you might be interested.’
‘Thanks. I’ll ask him about it,’ he said, and waited until she’d gone inside and closed the door, until he was sure she wasn’t coming out again, before he turned to head home.
Twenty-Two
‘I wondered,’ Jude Satterthwaite said, standing in Vanessa’s cramped excuse for a consulting room and regarding thoughtfully, as if he was trying to read her mind, ‘if it would be okay for me to call in and visit your father at Eden’s End.’
The man was doing his best, Vanessa knew, but he and his colleagues were almost endearingly ineffective. Anyone with half a brain would have tracked down the source of Eden Whispers straight away, and the nonsense about resources and priorities and time that Faye Scanlon had spouted at her was all too obviously a smokescreen for the fact that they either weren’t in a hurry or didn’t have the capability.
Or didn’t have a clue. She’d never been a great fan of the police but she had more time for Superintendent Scanlon than she had for DCI Satterthwaite. The man annoyed her. ‘I don’t think you can hold my father responsible for shepherding these young people to their deaths, Chief Inspector, no matter how desperate you are to find yourself a villain. He’s a little too old for that. In any case, he has a rock solid alibi. He hasn’t been out of Eden’s End since l took him out for lunch at Easter.’
Easter Sunday that year had chanced to fall on Nicky’s birthday, which had made it a difficult occasion. Everyone around them in the restaurant had been enjoying themselves on a fine spring morning, and she’d struggled to jolly the conversation along. Her father had wept, silently but copiously, throughout the meal and Vanessa had been impatient with him. She still hadn’t forgiven herself for it. These days Leslie’s emotional wellbeing was all that mattered.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever suggested anyone’s shepherded them to their deaths,’ he observed, after a moment’s thought.
‘Then perhaps you think he has the technical knowhow to run Eden Whispers? On the office computer, perhaps? Not to mention the psychological grip of the nuances. Which, by the way, are many and complex.’
She thought he tried not to sigh. In her experience the man was usually fairly equable but he didn’t seem in the best of moods that day. ‘I don’t think that, either. It’s much simpler than that. Someone told me your father has a diary that your brother kept, and I wondered if it might give us a lead. That’s all.’
‘I don’t quite understand what poor Nicky’s accident has to do with this matter, if I’m honest with you.’ Having kept him standing purely because she could, she finally waved him to a seat. When he’d popped his head around the door claiming he was just passing, she’d assumed he’d come to update her on the progress of the investigation. It appeared not.
‘I can’t stay long.’ He remained standing, one hand on the door as if he was indeed in too much of a hurry to talk to her, but he met her gaze when she challenged him to and didn’t look away. ‘I might as well be honest with you. I don’t imagine there will be anything in the diary but if, as I believe, your father was talking about it in the context of the local suicides, there’s just a chance there might be something in it that will help.’
Someone at Eden’s End must have been talking. It was understandable. Everyone felt the deaths so keenly they were desperate to help, seizing on something they’d heard or thought or feared, until it was hard to see what was real. If Jude Satterthwaite was following every one of those leads, as he was surely obliged to do, the case would drown in irrelevance long before he could reach any kind of conclusion. The suicides would end and only one person would be content with the way things had gone — the perpetrator.
‘My father is nearly ninety,’ she said with a sigh,’and he’ll have nothing to tell you. He’s very frail and although he’s mostly lucid he can become confused.’ The memory of Leslie’s tears struck at her. At least five families would suffer as he had done. ‘Old people often conflate the past and the present. I’m astonished you don’t know that.’
‘My late grandmother used to talk about the old queen,’ he remarked, conceding the point, ‘and we were never quite sure whether she was talking about the Queen Mother or Queen Mary.’
‘Precisely. My father has seen this on the news. He’s heard the carers in the home talking about it.’ She’d warned them not to, knowing how it would play out in his mind and his soul, and now it was all happening exactly as she feared. She’d have to go into Eden’s End and read them the Riot Act. Again. ‘Dad will be keen to help, I’m sure, but it’ll be a waste of your time. Even after all this time he’s only thinking of Nicky.’
‘You feel your brother’s death very keenly,’ said Satterthwaite. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Is that what motivates you?’
God help her; he fancied himself as a bit of a psychologist. There was nothi
ng more dangerous. At that moment, she hated him. ‘Nicky’s death destroyed my mother and broke my father’s heart. I saw at first hand how the death of a child affects the parents. Regardless of the circumstances, when a parent — or anyone in loco parentis — loses a child, they blame themselves. The only relevance my brother’s death has to this is that it’s made me determined to make sure such a thing never happens again.’
‘And so say all of us,’ he remarked, with a touch of levity. ‘You don’t know anything about a diary, then?’
‘I know Nicky kept a diary. Many teenagers do.’ Two of the district’s lost teenagers had done so, and their grieving parents had shared their children’s innermost thoughts with her in an attempt to understand where they’d gone wrong. All had found things in there for which they could reproach themselves, and it had added to their burden. Vanessa allowed herself an ironic smile at the way of the world.
‘But you don’t know where it is?’
‘To be honest I haven’t given it a thought in years. If I’d known at the time what I know now, I’d have advised my parents to destroy it without reading it. If I thought about it all, that’s what I’d have assumed they did.’
‘Perhaps your father didn’t.’
‘Maybe he didn’t. I certainly wasn’t aware of him having kept it and he never mentioned it to me.’ She paused, wondering whether she’d be rebuffed if she offered to be helpful. ‘I’m going down to see him this evening. Would you like me to ask? It would be less disruptive coming from me, I think.’
‘I’d like to talk to him about it myself.’
‘Leave it until tomorrow.’ Irritation rippled through Vanessa. ‘He’s old, he’s very distressed. He really doesn’t need anyone else reminding him about Nicky, least of all the police. But if you must do it, give me a chance to warn him and explain why you want to talk to him. He’s far more likely to cooperate if he knows it’s coming. And I’d like to be there when you see him.’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘I don’t see why not.’