Cat, watching the older woman, was well aware that she was grappling with some internal struggle. Everyone in the police had seen this kind of conflict when interviewing people in the course of their work. People trying to shield loved ones, people afraid of revealing information which could wreck someone else’s life, people wondering how they could cover their own backs with a lie. People terrified of the repercussions if they spoke out.
Cat waited. As she sat, looking down at her hands, she was already thinking through the discussion she would have with Ed on the developments which had emerged during this interview. And it suddenly occurred to her how glad she was that she had made the decision to join his team.
She looked up and saw Ruth staring back into her face, her eyes now burning with her need to share her desperate inner worries. Cat held still, knowing the critical point of revelation was near.
At that moment Ruth’s young protégé came back with the milk. And the moment of unburdening was gone.
*
Later on, Ruth sat at the kitchen table, the padded envelope once again in front of her. She was on her own as Craig had gone up to his room. She supposed that after all those years of imprisonment he sometimes found the strain of being in the outside world overwhelming and felt safer sitting on his bed with the door closed and his thoughts free to swirl in his head, trying to make sense of his new life.
She picked at the red sealing wax and gradually worked the flap of the envelope free. Inside was a mobile phone and a further envelope, also sealed.
Ruth stared at the shiny black phone. She was well aware of being a Luddite as far as the use of new technology went. Having been a prison chaplain’s wife for thirty-odd years and having shared the burden of answering phone calls on his behalf for much of the day and some of the night, she had always considered the ownership of a mobile phone to be a terrible intrusion into one’s life. To be constantly available at the end of one of those little gadgets seemed to her like a kind of hell. She smiled to herself, recalling that her grandson Jake liked to tease her about her ancient two-tone grey bakelite phone with its push-around dial being a museum piece, and to marvel at the diminutive size of her television.
She turned the little phone around in her hands, then hesitantly ran her fingers over its blank grey screen. Nothing happened. She had no idea whether it required turning on or not. And maybe its battery was flat, an inconvenience which was a constant source of frustration for Harriet.
She guessed Craig would know what to do to bring it to life. But did she want that? What revelations might the little phone be hiding? And the envelope. Were the photographs Mac the Knife was wanting inside that envelope? Fear made its spider-legged way down her spine. Could she face finding out? She heard Craig coming down from his self-imposed sole confinement and thrust both the phone and the envelope back into the drawer.
She smiled at him. ‘Would you like a trip out in the car?’
Instantly he was wary, but excited at the same time. ‘Where do you want to go?’
Ruth smiled at him, wondering how long it would take him to build up the personal self-esteem which would enable him to consider that he had a right to be a party in making a decision regarding the destination of a trip out.
‘To a little place called Burley-in-Wharfedale,’ she told him. ‘It’s about twenty minutes drive from here. I need to check on an apartment there. For … a friend of mine.’
He thought about it. ‘OK.’
Ruth got out a map. It was so old it had torn along the creases. But it had Calverley Street clearly marked on its southern side. She took the countryside route, driving close to the bank of the River Wharfe and past farming estates that once used to rely wholly on farming for their livelihood but now were more centred around the catering and tourist industries.
Craig looked out of the window, entranced with the views. The ground and the hills were so vividly green, and the sky above enormous. Ruth pointed out the river and suggested that he might see some interesting birds: herons, perhaps, or woodpeckers. He didn’t manage to make out any birds, but the river itself fascinated him – a broad motorway of water, sometimes gently sliding, sometimes flowing fast and choppy, all the time gleaming blue/black in its banks.
Once in Burley, they drove along broad residential streets bordered by tall trees and big stone houses. At the end of the street Ruth was looking for there was a small two-storey block of flats built of red brick. A band of grass and some scratchy-looking green bushes formed a communal garden. More tall, old trees bordered the garden and when they got out of the car they had to be careful not to trip over the roots which had burst up through the paving stones like the knuckles of giant fingers.
Craig looked up at the flats. ‘Why do you need to come here?’
‘I need to sort through my friend’s things,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he asked, childlike in needing explanations of things a person of his age who hadn’t spent years in prison wouldn’t have thought twice about.
‘I promised I would,’ she said calmly, and that seemed to satisfy him. Inside herself, she felt a strong reluctance to go on with this mission and would have liked to run back to the safety of the car and go home. She was afraid of what she might find in Christian’s flat, fearful of getting more embroiled in whatever had been going on during Christian’s last days. And then there was the here and now, the fear that somehow Mac the Knife was watching her, knowing every move she made.
Christian’s flat was on the ground floor. The July sun was shining on the windows, picking out the grime and highlighting the cheap, flimsy curtains.
‘Has your friend gone away somewhere?’ Craig asked, watching her fit the key into the lock.
‘Yes,’ she said, brisk and terse at the notion of being on the brink of an awful revelation.
Which was, to some extent, the case.
As they walked into the living room they could see that the place had been ransacked. The coffee table had been upended. A single mug lay on the floor, its contents having spilled out, making a dark stain on the small beige rug on which the table stood. The sofa had been overturned and the covering fabric slashed in several places. All the drawers had been pulled from a CD cabinet which stood against the back wall.
A large slimline TV seemed intact, its red standby light glowing. Craig went across to it and pressed a switch. A superlatively clear picture came up on the screen: a herd of elephants walked across a desert under a cobalt blue sky. ‘Digital,’ said Craig. ‘The buggers who came in here must have been mad not to take it.’
Quite apart from the havoc created by the intruders, Ruth was taken aback at the dismalness of the flat. The wood plank floorboards had been painted black, the varnish chipped and dusty. The wallpaper was faded and torn, showing islands of dark red paint underneath. The furniture was an assortment of cheap tat, the kind of thing you might take out of a skip, or buy from a junk shop, devoid of any pretence to be stylish. Worn out, shabby items no one would ever have bothered to love and look after.
The kitchen was small and bore little sign of any cooking having taken place in it for a very long time. The contents of the waste bin were strewn on the floor – empty takeaway boxes of Indian food and pizza, empty cans of lager.
Ruth sighed, thinking of Christian coming home to this soulless, brutal place.
In the bedroom the bed had been stripped and the mattress pulled out to rest at a crazy angle against the base. It had been savagely ripped open in several places.
‘Wonder if they got what they were looking for,’ Craig said, leaning against the door frame.
‘What makes you ask that?’ Ruth asked, with a degree of sharpness.
‘Because if they left that telly behind they were either blind, cretins, or looking for summat else.’
That was the longest speech Ruth had heard him make. He was coming on.
There was a knock on the entrance door.
Ruth froze. A picture of Mac the Knife leapt into her head.
‘I’ll get it,’ Craig ambled to the door and opened it.
A man in a stripy T-shirt and dark-blue jeans peered expectantly at Craig, then seeing Ruth hovering in the background ventured a tentative smile. ‘I’m from the flat across the hallway,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of a half open door. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Oh! Come in,’ said Ruth, highly relieved to see anyone who was not the snake-eyed Mac. ‘We’re looking through Christian’s things. I’m Mrs Hartwell … a relative.’
‘I see. I heard noises and I wondered if everything was all right.’ He looked around the room, suddenly realizing that it had been gone through by someone with no regard for the well-being of the contents. ‘Bloody hell. What’s been going on here?’
‘We don’t really know,’ said Ruth.
‘I’d no idea about all this lot,’ the neighbour said. ‘I mean, if I’d heard anything I’d have been in here like a shot.’ He looked down at his hands which were covered in flour, then wiped them vigorously on a tea towel tucked into the waste band of his jeans. ‘I’m a bit messy.’ he apologized, ‘I’m making bread.’
Ruth was looking around the room again, thinking that Christian had made very little attempt to make it a comfortable and welcoming place. Even before his yellowed and battered paperback books had been strewn around the floor, and his duffle bag tossed into a corner of the room with its contents of worn shirts and underpants scattered over it, the place must have been hollow and unwelcoming. Maybe he’d been staying somewhere else in recent months, maybe there had been a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter, and he had been staying with them.
‘I’m really sorry about Christian,’ the neighbour said. ‘I didn’t know him well. I’ve only been here a few months. But he seemed a nice guy.’
‘Yes,’ Ruth said. ‘He was.’
‘I wonder how they got in?’ the neighbour said, rubbing his forehead and leaving little white grains of flour in his shaggy dark fringe. ‘Mind you, the main door’s not much stronger than paper. It must be dead easy to get in this place. We’ve asked the landlord to get us a new door. It’s promised for next month. We can but hope.’
‘It’d be no bother getting in here,’ Craig said, grasping the lightweight entry door to the flat and swinging it to and fro. ‘I mean, any burglar with a bit of savvy could pick that lock. It’s pathetic.’
‘Thanks for the free advice,’ the neighbour said, grinning. ‘I’ll take heed.’
‘Did you say you were making bread?’ Craig asked him.
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you really do that? On your own?’
The neighbour smiled. ‘Sure, I’ve done it loads of times. Do you want to come and watch? The dough should be risen by now.’
They went off together, Craig smiling like a small boy who’d been unexpectedly invited to a party.
Ruth hung back, going through the place again, picking up the mug from the floor, rubbing at the dark stain of coffee and wondering if there were cleaning materials in the kitchen she could use to try and get it out, make the place look more ordered and homelike. She stood at the bedroom door and imagined Christian sitting in his bed in the mornings, drinking his instant coffee and contemplating his day. In her mind, she went back through the years, seeing him as small and alone as he had been when his mother abandoned him, just a speck of humanity, as helpless as the dust in the atmosphere, blown about by all the invisible currents. Gently, she shut the door, sensing that reviving memories of Christian was like running the tip of your tongue around a troublesome tooth – poking at the tender and painful flesh and making the pain worse.
She looked into the small bathroom, which was surprisingly clean and fresh-smelling. She noticed a pine-scented air freshener on the windowsill and smiled.
Returning to the living room, she took a last look around, resolving to find a reliable house clearing firm to take everything away and dispose of it. Christian’s effects. She couldn’t bear to look at them ever again.
She shut the entry door to the flat behind her, locked it carefully and went in search of Craig. A glorious smell of baking filled the hallway and guided her to the door of the neighbour’s flat. The door was ajar and she went straight in, heading for the kitchen. Craig was watching transfixed as the neighbour pulled a batch of golden bread rolls from the oven. ‘Wow!’ he said.
‘I think we should go now,’ Ruth said to him.
Craig looked about to protest, then thought better of it.
‘Here,’ said the neighbour, ‘I’ll put a few in a bag for you.’
Ruth told the friendly neighbour. ‘I think I’ll get some house clearers to deal with the rest of the things.’ She wanted to explain why she had chosen this seemingly heartless attitude towards Christian’s belongings, but couldn’t quite think how to phrase it.
‘Aye, you do right. There’s nothing much of value to take away with you,’ the neighbour said, consolingly. ‘Are you going to contact the police … about the break in? It would help our case about the new front door.’ His tone was both apologetic and urging.
‘Yes, I understand,’ Ruth said. ‘Leave it with me.’ Damn, she thought. And then it suddenly dawned on her that, of course, she must contact the police. Specifically Chief Inspector Swift. This was surely no routine break-in. She thought of Mac the Knife, and once again fear swirled inside her.
Craig accepted the rolls from the neighbour with a smile of thanks. He looked at Ruth, seeming rooted to the spot. She guessed he could hardly bear to tear himself away from the baking session.
‘You’re not going to leave the TV are you?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘The telly in your friend’s flat?’
‘Oh!’
‘He’s right,’ the neighbour said. ‘It’s a nice one. I’m sure Christian would have wanted you to have it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know’ Ruth protested. She supposed it was all legal and above board to take away any item of Christian’s, bearing in mind she was the sole beneficiary of his will. But it didn’t seem right to do so soon after his death. And she hated being cast in the role of greedy relative.
Ruth looked at Craig’s eager face and capitulated. ‘OK, then. But won’t it be very heavy?’
‘Nah, no problem.’ He drew himself up and flexed his shoulders and biceps.
‘Nah,’ said the neighbour, grinning up at Craig, ‘A piece of piss, if you’ll pardon my French.’
Swift and Cat met up in his office around 5.30. Having exchanged details of their findings of the day, they sat in reflective silence for a time.
‘Slow progress?’ Cat suggested, optimistically.
‘You could put it that way. I’ve contacted the Burley-in-Wharfedale team. They’ve had all hands on deck chasing a bunch of rampaging truants from the local school but they’re going to send a couple of officers to look at the flat in Calverley Street and get back to us as soon as possible.’
Cat nodded. ‘So after your follow up visit to The Black Sheep Inn it looks like there’s no need for me to polish up my French in order to make a call to the police in Algiers about whatever it was Brunswick got up to there twenty years ago,’ she said with a degree of regret.
‘Afraid not. I can see no way Brunswick could have got himself to Fellbeck Crag, tracked Hartwell, pushed him off the crag and then set fire to him, even if he had known Hartwell’s whereabouts.’
‘And if he didn’t know, he’d have had to have spent time finding him and tracking him,’ Cat said.
‘Exactly.’
‘We need to get Ruth Hartwell to spill the beans on what’s bothering her,’ Cat said. ‘And I don’t think she’ll do that when big-boy ex-con Craig is around.’
‘We could invite her in to talk to us here,’ Swift suggested.
Cat looked around. ‘It’s a bit of a monk’s cell.’
‘I could ask Ravi Stratton for another chair and a plant to make things look more welcoming,’ Swift said, attempting to keep a stra
ight face.
Cat grinned. ‘Good thinking,’ she said. Then, ‘Do you think Ruth is frightened of Craig?’
‘No, I don’t think she is. According to her daughter, Ruth is a serial rescuer of people in need. She was married to a prison chaplain and was herself a social worker and a prison visitor. My take on it is that Ruth has a very clear idea of the risks she takes with her lame ducks, she knows what she’s doing and she’s basically a very confident woman.’
‘But something has rattled the bars of her cage,’ Cat pointed out. ‘Or, more likely, someone.’
Swift was in full agreement, but would Ruth be persuaded to tell them who? Because if not, he doubted once again that they were going to move this case on. He dialled the number of the Old School House but, as Cat had found before, there was no reply, and Ruth Hartwell didn’t use an answering service.
‘I’ll call her in the morning and invite her in,’ he decided. ‘No point in trying again to get her now and having her fret all night about it.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And possibly using the time to cook up some tale to satisfy us,’ he added, reflecting on Ruth Hartwell’s shrewdness. He shut down his computer, and said to Cat, ‘Time to knock off. And I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast.’ He was about to invite her to join him for a bite to eat, then remembered that she had Jeremy to think about as regards a dinner companion.
‘Fancy a quick drink?’ Cat said cheerily.
‘Sure.’ He glanced at her, the faint surprise clearly showing in his face.
‘Jeremy and I are going out to dinner this evening,’ she told him. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a glass of wine with you first.’
Swift took her to a nearby French bistro. Cat sipped at her wine, washing it down with a glass of mineral water so there was no risk of driving over the limit. They fell back into the easy friendship they had shared over the years. And when it came for her to leave he was dismayed to discover how much he wanted her to forget about Jeremy Howard and come home with him instead.
*
At the Old School House Craig had spent some time fiddling with the television which had once belonged to Christian Hartwell and eventually got a picture up on the screen. He felt elation. This TV was the most fantastic piece of equipment he had ever had in his hands and under his control. It had numerous digital channels and a remote with tiny black buttons which responded instantly to the touch of his fingers. He pointed it at the screen and channel-hopped until he was dizzy.
The Killing Club Page 12