by Ann Cleeves
‘Off you go then.’
And when Charlie shambled out of the room Joe felt a sudden sense of relief.
They took Mark Winterton first, because he had furthest to travel home and Lenny seemed to be in no hurry. The ex-policeman took a seat opposite them. The hotel had provided a trestle table, and Joe thought this felt more like a job interview than taking a witness statement. Tell me, Mr Winterton, why did you decide to apply to be a writer?
And his first question was almost like that. ‘Why the Writers’ House course? It’s not cheap, is it? And pretty intensive for a beginner. I’d have thought there’d be places closer to home, if you were interested. Evening classes. That sort of thing.’
Mark Winterton blinked at him through the small, square spectacles. ‘I thought I’d already explained that to your colleague.’ He nodded towards Holly. He kept his voice patient and polite, but the blinking eyes suggested a repressed irritation. ‘I’d always enjoyed writing, and this seemed like a great opportunity to kick-start the crime novel I’d thought I might write.’ He paused. ‘As to the money, I don’t have many extravagances.’ He gave an awkward smile. ‘I paid maintenance for the children of course, when I was first divorced, but they’ve left home now. My ex-wife married again very quickly and her husband’s a wealthy man. My pension seems rather generous for a man of simple tastes.’
Joe wondered why Winterton felt the need to share all this personal information. Perhaps he was just lonely. Perhaps that was the explanation for him attending the course.
‘I was sorry to hear about the death of your daughter,’ Joe said.
‘You know about that? Of course, you’ll have checked up on us all. Nothing is ever the same afterwards.’ He looked up. ‘I discussed that with Miranda yesterday afternoon. The loss of a child. How that affects absolutely everything that happens later. Miranda was immensely understanding. I’d never really talked about it to anyone else in the same way. She was a sympathetic woman.’
‘When did you have this conversation with Miranda?’ Joe kept his tone light. The woman had never struck him as particularly sympathetic. Beside him, Holly was twitching like a hunting dog scenting prey. He hoped she’d have sense enough to keep her mouth shut.
‘Before dinner. I’m always early. At work I was a tyrant about punctuality, and I see now that it was my obsession. I’d showered and changed and was waiting for the others in the drawing room when Miranda came in. She brought me a sherry and we began to talk. She was nervous, I think. She wanted the final evening to be a success, despite Tony’s death. I’d never been alone with her before and I was surprised at how well we got on.’
‘Did she ask for your advice?’ Joe remembered that Miranda had invited Nina into her cottage the same day.
‘I had the sense that she wanted something from me, but I never quite worked out what it was. You must have come across that, Sergeant: acquaintances with vague anxieties wanting reassurance. About children mixing in unsuitable company, or neighbours who seem suddenly to have come into money. I suspect it goes with the job, but of course we have no answers. We can’t always keep our own family safe.’ Winterton looked up. Joe had the sense that he wanted to prolong the discussion and that he was in no hurry to return home to his empty house. Joe wondered about the ex-wife. Had she had a lover even before the separation? Was that the cause of the divorce? Joe thought it would be interesting to meet her.
‘What anxiety did Miranda have? Did she have concerns about her son?’
‘Certainly we talked about our children. But I don’t think Alex was causing her any problems. He always seemed the sort of boy you’d be proud of. I did wonder…’
‘Yes?’
‘… if she’d had a daughter. Perhaps who’d died when she was still a baby.’ He put his hands on the table in front of him. Ashworth saw he still wore a plain gold wedding ring. ‘Miranda spoke with such understanding about losing a child,’ Winterton said, ‘and last night there was a slip of the tongue that made me think she’d had a baby girl. She was talking about the experience of giving birth. I’d never known pain like it, but once I’d taken the baby into my arms it was all worth it. She was so tiny.’ Really, I’m sure she said she, but I didn’t want to follow it up.’ He looked up and frowned. ‘Of course none of this is evidence. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But sometimes in an investigation small snatches of gossip can make a difference. I thought you should know.’
Joe’s attention was caught by a bright-yellow coach that had pulled up outside the hotel. Elderly people climbed stiffly out. The driver began to unload luggage. Joe dragged his focus back to the room.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Would you mind waiting until we’ve finished talking to Mr Thomas? Then we can give you both a lift to the Writers’ House.’
‘No problem at all.’ Winterton stood up and gave a polite little nod. ‘I’m not in any rush to get home.’
Lenny Thomas sat awkwardly looking at them across the table. ‘I wouldn’t have killed her,’ he said without introduction. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t have killed either of them. But Miranda picked me to go to the Writers’ House and I loved every minute of it. I’ll always be grateful to her for giving me the chance. For taking me seriously. As a writer, like.’
‘We’re not accusing you, Mr Thomas,’ Holly said. They’d agreed that she should take the lead on this one. Only fair. But Joe wished he was asking the questions. Sharp, bright Holly would make Lenny nervous and tongue-tied. ‘We’re just trying to find out what happened.’ She paused. ‘Last night you read your piece early in the evening, while the group was still in the dining room.’
‘Aye.’ He looked at her. ‘You were there. What did you make of it?’
The question obviously threw her. ‘It was very good,’ she said at last. ‘Very moving.’
Lenny grinned widely at them both. Joe was reminded of his youngest child, coming home from nursery with a gold star on a painting.
‘What did you do later in the evening?’ Holly asked. Joe sensed her, tense and impatient. Under the table her foot was tapping on the floor.
‘After Jack Devanney came in, shouting his mouth off, I moved out of the dining room with the others and listened to their readings in the drawing room.’
‘And after that?’
‘They all went off to bed, but I didn’t. It was my last night there and I wanted to make the most of it. To make it last. Do you understand?’ He directed the question to Joe. He’d think Holly was too young and too confident to understand.
Joe nodded.
‘What did you do, Mr Thomas?’ Holly broke in immediately. ‘Did you sit all night in the drawing room?’
‘I sat there for a while. Then I thought I’d take a walk, clear my head before going to bed. Outside it was dead still. And there were all those stars. In the town, with the street lights, you never see the stars. And the moon making a road over the sea. I wanted to remember it. One day I might write about it.’
‘Where did you walk, Mr Thomas?’ Holly managed to sound bored and hostile at the same time.
‘Onto the terrace. But there was nobody there. No body, either.’
‘Are you sure?’ Joe asked. ‘It was dark.’
‘Aye, but like I said, there was a moon.’
‘And it was cold,’ Joe said. He was aware of Holly firing furious glances in his direction, but he took no notice. ‘Did you go upstairs to get a coat before you went out?’
‘No, there was a jacket in the cloakroom downstairs for folk to borrow. I took that.’ Lenny looked at Joe as if he were daft.
‘What did you do with it when you came back inside?’
‘I put it back!’
‘And then?’ Holly asked, determined now to have the last word. ‘What did you do then?’
‘I went to bed,’ Lenny said. ‘I couldn’t make the night last any longer. It was going to end, wasn’t it? I had to get ready to go back to the real world.’
‘What time was that?’ Joe
wondered if the week at the Writers’ House had been a good thing for Lenny. Had it set up expectations that would never be realized?
‘Twelve-thirty. I looked at my watch when I got into my room.’
‘Did you listen to any music when you were sitting in the drawing room?’ Joe asked.
‘No. Why?’ Now he just looked confused.
Joe looked at Holly. She shook her head to show that there were no further questions.
* * *
Joe ended up giving Lenny a lift back to his flat in Red Row. Lenny said he didn’t have a car any more. His ex-wife had offered him her old one, but he couldn’t afford to run it. They dropped Mark Winterton at the Writers’ House to pick up his Volvo. The lane was blocked with vehicles. A reporter from BBC Look North was doing a piece to camera with the house in the background. They watched him straighten his tie, then nod to the cameraman. At last the media all moved aside to let the car past. Joe thought Lenny might be interested in the activity, but he sat in the passenger seat, listless and unengaged.
Red Row had once been a mining community just inland from the big sweep of Druridge Bay. Recently there’d been a new private development, big houses all looking out to the sea, but the village itself still looked sad. As if there were no longer any point to it. A main street with red-bricked terraced houses and a small council estate. A boarded-up shop.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Lenny sounded eager, but he expected refusal.
‘Aye, why not? I could use a cup of tea.’
And before the words were out of Joe’s mouth, Lenny was knocking at his neighbour’s door to scrounge some milk. The old lady who lived there seemed pleased to see him: ‘Eh, Lenny lad, it’s good to have you home.’
Sitting in the small, cold room, Joe wondered what he was doing there. Was this about pity for a lonely man? ‘We talked to your wife,’ he said. The words were out of his mouth too quickly. He hadn’t thought them through. This sounded like interference.
But Lenny didn’t seem offended.
‘She’s a grand woman,’ he said. ‘A great mother.’
‘You don’t think you could still make a go of it, the two of you?’ Joe wondered what Vera would make of this. You’ve turned counsellor now, have you, Joey boy? Well, maybe you could always get a job with Relate.
Lenny looked up at him and grinned sadly. ‘Likely too much water under the bridge,’ he said. ‘And I can’t fancy being a kept man any more. It might have been different if I’d got the contract with the publisher. That would’ve put us on an equal footing. You know what I mean?’
Joe nodded.
‘Not that I don’t dream about it,’ Lenny went on. ‘Late at night. Not that I wouldn’t do anything to make it right.’
Driving back to Police Headquarters, Joe Ashworth thought Lenny was a romantic, the sort of dangerous romantic who might kill for the notion of the perfect relationship. But Joe couldn’t see how the deaths of Tony Ferdinand or Miranda Barton could help him achieve his aim of a perfect marriage.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vera had agreed to meet Paul Rutherford at the Lit & Phil Library in Newcastle. She’d suggested the venue. He’d said he’d only have an hour spare before he took the train south, and the library was just round the corner from the Central Station. The Lit & Phil was a Newcastle institution, a private subscription library. Hector had been a member, had dragged her there for lectures and meetings until she’d been old enough to leave alone in the house in the hills. Usually Vera despised the things and places Hector loved, on principle, but the library still held a place in her affections. Each year she renewed her membership. If she was struggling to make sense of a case, occasionally she’d go down the stairs to the Silence Room in the basement, and ponder the details of the investigation away from interruption. She recognized some of the regulars – the tall, skinny man who was never without a hat, the glamorous art historian, the famous poet – and nodded to them whenever they met, as if they were friends.
Upstairs in the magnificent main Georgian library, with its domed roofs and balconies, silence wasn’t expected. Today two elderly men sat at the big table and talked about shipbuilding, re-creating the life of the Tyne with books and memories. Vera bought herself a cup of coffee and a sticky bun from the woman behind the tea counter and waited. She found a quiet table with a view of the door. She’d googled Paul Rutherford. He had a slick website and there was a photo of him beaming out of the home page. When he arrived she probably would have picked him out anyway, a stranger, hesitating very briefly at the top of the grand stone stairs, before preparing to make an entrance.
He was wearing black. Informal black, so that she found it hard to believe the meeting that he’d used as an excuse for being in the North-East. Didn’t politicians always wear suits? Rutherford wore black jeans, a black T-shirt under a black jacket. She thought he’d find it cold outside without a proper coat, and then wondered if he’d dressed deliberately to create an air of menace. Was he out to intimidate her?
But it seemed he intended to try charm first. She stood up to greet him and he approached her as a longlost friend. ‘Inspector Stanhope. Thank you for taking the time to meet me. I know how busy you must be.’ The voice clipped. Posh south, but without the drawly vowels. He gave a thin smile that had no warmth or humour in it. His eyes never quite met hers. The elderly men walked past them and out. The library was empty apart from the tea lady and a librarian at the front desk.
‘Coffee?’ Vera asked. ‘Or are you a tea man?’
‘Oh, tea,’ he said. ‘Every time.’
She bought him tea. He didn’t offer to pay for it. Meanness or arrogance? Did he believe that the small social niceties didn’t apply to him? They sat round the corner out of sight of the librarian. Rutherford took no notice of the beautiful surroundings or the shelves of books.
‘I’m not quite sure,’ Vera said, ‘why you wanted to see me.’ She smiled brightly at him.
‘I still feel some responsibility for Joanna,’ he said. ‘It’s some time since our marriage ended, but one can’t turn off one’s feelings. I hate to think of her in trouble.’
‘Is she in trouble?’ Vera looked up at him, wideeyed.
That threw him. ‘I understood, from the newspapers, that she’d been questioned about a murder. Tony Ferdinand’s murder.’
‘Questioned,’ Vera said, ‘but not charged. We’ve questioned everyone who was staying in the house. Even your old friend Giles Rickard.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Rutherford said. ‘Giles Rickard wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’ve known him since I was a child.’ He held his teacup, sipped and gave a small grimace to show that he was accustomed to better. Vera saw that his hands looked older than his face. Rutherford went on, ‘He was like a second father to me.’
‘But you think Joanna would be capable of murder?’ Vera asked. She looked at him, as if the answer was of considerable interest to her.
‘She tried to kill me!’ he said. A flash of almost childish anger.
‘But that surely was rather different. As far as I know, Professor Ferdinand hadn’t kept her prisoner or beaten her up.’ Vera kept her voice even. She wouldn’t get this chance again and she didn’t want to lose her temper in front of the man. Besides, she was enjoying herself. This was an interesting experience. She didn’t come across psychopaths very often. It occurred to her that there might be a greater proportion of psychopaths in Parliament than in prison.
He paused for a moment and gave another tight smile. ‘You do know, Inspector, that your words are slanderous.’
She leaned forward across the table, made her voice intimate, almost flirtatious. ‘Somehow, Mr Rutherford, I don’t think you’ll sue.’
They sat looking at each other. It was very warm. The hot water in the radiators gurgled. At the desk a phone rang.
‘We’ll stop playing games, shall we?’ Suddenly she’d lost patience with him. ‘Why are you here? What did you want from me?’
‘I wanted t
o warn you,’ he said, ‘not to be taken in by my ex-wife. She tells stories. Not just to the people around her, but to herself. Eventually I think she comes to believe them. Do you really think that I locked her in our apartment in Paris? That I hit her? It’s the stuff of melodrama.’ His words were scathing. ‘She’s plausible, vulnerable. And very clever. She has a knack of making people love her. Then she makes fools of them. Don’t let her make a fool of you, Inspector.’
He began to stand up as if he was about to leave, but she nodded for him to remain seated and he stayed where he was.
‘When did you last hear from Joanna, Mr Rutherford?’
He paused and she thought he was deciding whether or not to tell her the truth. Or perhaps he too was enjoying the drama, and the hesitation was to add to the suspense.
‘About a month ago.’
‘Would you tell me what she wanted from you?’
Now he did get to his feet. ‘Money, Inspector. That’s what she wanted. Joanna was blackmailing me. Of course I refused to pay. It does seem a coincidence that suddenly I find her picture all over the popular newspapers. Though I find it hard to believe that even she would commit murder to spite me.’ He turned suddenly and walked out. Vera sat where she was and watched him go.
* * *
As she drove north into the country, it occurred to Vera that she might have been wrong all along about Joanna. Perhaps Rutherford was no psychopath, just a man who suffered from stress and was being harassed by a flaky ex-wife. The idea was shocking: Vera wasn’t used to being wrong. But why did you want the money, Joanna pet? Why stoop to blackmail? Vera really couldn’t get her head round that one. The Joanna she knew boasted about the charity-shop clothes, the bartered veggies, the Freecycle fridge. Joanna despised money as common, vulgar, and thought an obsession with money displayed the worst possible taste. What had she called greed? The meanest of vices. So why was she so desperate for cash that she’d got back in touch with the man she hated?