by Ann Cleeves
‘Why?’ She knew he wanted something from her. Living with Rosie had given her a sixth sense about people bumming favours.
‘What about going to Cranford? This afternoon. We can give all this information to Porteous in person. That’ll stop him hassling you.’
Who are you kidding? she thought. That’s not what this is about. This is about you showing off to the police. You want the glory. You want to sit there and gloat.
‘We could stay the night. I could meet your friends. We could be back in time for work tomorrow.’
‘Go on then.’ She couldn’t think of an argument against it and, as Rosie knew, she’d always been an easy touch.
She phoned Porteous from the library. Dave had sloped off and Marty pretended not to listen.
‘Mrs Morton,’ Porteous said. ‘I was hoping to speak to you. More questions I’m afraid. Something’s come up.’
‘I can’t talk now. I’m at work.’ She couldn’t face an interview over the phone. She wanted Arthur there.
He said he was tied up all day and that he’d come to The Old Rectory in the evening. She sensed he was preoccupied and wondered if there’d been a development in the case. Perhaps he’d discovered Michael’s background without Arthur’s help.
Later she phoned Sally and asked if she could put the two of them up for the night as paying guests.
‘A double room?’ Sally asked mischievously. ‘The honeymoon suite?’
‘Of course not!’ Hannah thought her humour hadn’t developed since they were children. She’d always been a tease about sex.
Arthur hadn’t quite finished his class when she arrived at his room at lunchtime. Some form of role-play was going on. Hannah walked back down the corridor so she wouldn’t be tempted to watch. She found that sort of exercise embarrassing enough without spectators, though she’d come to realize that Arthur liked play-acting and games.
He admitted as much in the car. He’d been asking about the people who’d been around at the time of Michael’s death. She described Roger Spence, Sally and her disc-jockey boyfriend, Stephen and Sylvia Brice. By the time they arrived at The Old Rectory she had the feeling that he knew them as well as she did and probably understood them better.
‘What’s all this about, Arthur?’ It was her librarian, who’s-been-turning-down-the-page-corners voice.‘I really think we should leave it to the police.’
‘Come on, girl. Don’t spoil my fun.’ She was about to say tartly that it wasn’t fun for her when he added, ‘I might leave it to them if I could be certain they’d get it right.’ He paused. ‘You must have met men inside who don’t deserve to be there.’
‘I’ve met men who say they don’t.’
‘Well, I don’t want any cock-ups in this case.’ He smiled but she wasn’t reassured. He worked for the Home Office. He should have had more faith in the system.
It was just after two when they arrived. Hannah had expected Sally to be at work but she was there to meet them. Curiosity about Arthur, Hannah thought, and a nose for a story. Sally hustled them into the dining-room and organized a late lunch. Later, over coffee, Roger joined them too.
They talked about Michael Grey. It was Arthur’s doing, but perhaps the Spences were eager to talk about him anyway. Sally had her own agenda.
‘I had the impression he’d come from the private system,’ Roger said, ‘but his Latin wasn’t up to much. Hardly prep-school standard. Not what you’d expect.’
‘Was he doing Latin A level?’ Arthur gave the impression he was just being polite. Hannah knew better.
‘No, but I dragooned him in to help with one of my first-year groups. In the end I let him go. He wasn’t any use at all.’
‘Perhaps he just wanted his free period back.’
‘Perhaps. I don’t think so. It’s quite hard to fake genuine ignorance, isn’t it?’
‘How did you get to know him if you didn’t teach him?’
‘Through the school play. I coached him. Individual rehearsals.’
‘Were you surprised when he disappeared?’
‘Not very surprised. Not at first. He liked mysteries. I remember one session when I talked about him bringing his own experience into his acting. He said he was already doing that but he refused to discuss his past with me. I was more surprised when he never returned. I kept expecting him to turn up out of the blue to astound and amaze us.’
Arthur turned lazily to Sally. ‘How well did you know him?’
‘Only as Hannah’s boyfriend. And I’m sorry, pet, but I didn’t really take to him. He was a bit arty-farty for me. There was too much pretence.’
‘Whereas you . . .’ Roger interrupted, ‘you had your own bit of rough.’
She laughed, not offended in the slightest. ‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘And very nice it was too. You’ll be able to meet him tonight, Arthur. Chris. My ex-bit-of-rough.’
She narrowed her eyes. Hannah thought Sally knew what he was up to. Perhaps journalists and psychologists had similar techniques when it came to ferreting out a story.
Sally continued, ‘There’s a wedding party in the annexe and Chris is doing the disco. He’s still playing the same sort of gigs. I think it’s a bit sad that he’s never moved on.’
In the afternoon they left the car at the hotel and walked to the lake. There was a footpath through an old deciduous wood and then a strip of forestry-commission plantation. The footpath was overgrown and looked as if it must have been there in Hannah’s time, but she couldn’t remember having used it, and at the lakeside everything was so different that she found it hard to get her bearings. A group of teenagers in orange life-jackets stood where once Chris had bought her vodka. A woman was spelling out the rules of safety on the water, shouting to get their attention. Hannah thought that if they capsized they’d be able to walk back to the shore. The water level was even lower than she’d expected. The beach, which she’d remembered as a narrow strip of sand, had widened to an unsightly expanse of mud, rock and shingle. The trainee sailors had to push their dinghies to the water on trolleys, lifting them occasionally over the larger rocks. A new island had been formed at the north end of the lake.
She didn’t know what Arthur hoped to gain by the walk. A sense of place perhaps. She’d told him about her first romantic encounter with Michael by the bonfire on the beach. But this scene, on a sunny afternoon, with the giggles and squawks of the school party coming to them over the water, had nothing in common with the night after the exams. She felt it was an anticlimax. She’d waited so long to come back and now it meant nothing. Arthur seemed dissatisfied by it too, because he sat for a moment in the sun then suggested that they return to The Old Rectory by the lane. On the walk back she started to fret about what Porteous would want from her and how she would explain her failure to pass on the information about Maria’s grave. She said nothing to Arthur. How could she tell him she felt like a schoolgirl, waiting for one of Spooky Spence’s beastly tests?
Outside the hotel a battered white transit was parked. One headlight seemed to be held on by gaffer tape. Chris was standing by the sliding door, shuffling a loudspeaker towards him so he could get his arms around it. Hannah didn’t want to face him yet and touched Arthur’s arm to stop him from approaching. Chris shifted the balance of the speaker so he was taking all the weight and walked slowly with it round the side of the building. His hair was a lot shorter and he was a bit thicker round the waist but he hadn’t changed much. It could have been the same black T-shirt as the one he’d worn to the party after Macbeth.
‘I don’t suppose you recognize him,’ Hannah said.
‘No. Why should I?’
‘He’s been done for dealing. He might have ended up in our place. If he did he never used the library. I wondered if you’d come across him.’
‘No. Look, why don’t we talk to him now? Once all the wedding guests turn up it’ll be impossible.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to say.’ Again she regretted starting all this. But Arthur was unsto
ppable.
‘Just introduce us. Leave the rest to me.’
The party would take place in a room Hannah hadn’t seen before, a large one-storey annexe built on to the back of the house in stone. It had a polished wood floor for dancing, a bar at one end and a scattering of small tables around the walls. It was quite different from the rest of the hotel – more up-market working men’s club than country house – but she supposed that in the winter the dos held here would make up most of the Spences’ income. Chris was setting up his equipment on a low stage. He was bending over so his T-shirt had ridden up his back. He heard their footsteps and turned round.
‘Hannah Meek,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well. The police haven’t locked you up yet then?’
She blushed. She’d always known Chris was hostile. He’d thought her stuck up and prudish. But she hadn’t expected such an obvious display of rudeness.
‘Why should they lock her up?’ Arthur sounded interested, a bit amused.
‘Who are you?’
‘Arthur Lee. I work with Hannah.’
‘Oh? Where’s that then?’ He pretended to stick wires into sockets but his heart wasn’t in it.
‘I’m a librarian. I work in Stavely Prison.’ She threw that out as a kind of challenge but he didn’t seem bothered.
‘I never got there. Not a long enough sentence.’
‘Perhaps another time.’
He laughed. ‘Nah. I’m too old for that now. Didn’t Sal tell you? I’m settled. Content. I’ve got a lady. She’s expecting our kid.’
The kitchen door must have been open. Hannah could hear the clattering of pans. There were cooking smells.
‘What were you like then?’ Arthur asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When Michael Grey was murdered. You weren’t so settled then.’
He accepted that as a compliment. ‘We were all a bit wild I suppose.’ He paused. ‘Except Hannah. You never did wild, did you, H?’
‘What about Michael? Was he wild too?’
‘I never knew him that well.’
‘You didn’t know anything about him before he came to live here? You’d never met him before?’
‘How would I? He went to some sort of posh school.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘Him or someone else. How should I know? Anyway, what’s it to do with you?’
Arthur ignored that, continued with the questions, sharp and impersonal.
‘What was he like? You were older than the others, more experienced. What did you make of him?’
‘He wasn’t the angel they all thought.’ It came out grudgingly.
‘One of your customers, was he?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. She glared at Arthur. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘Come on, Hannah,’ Chris was fighting back. ‘You know as well as anyone that Michael Grey was hardly the perfect gentleman. Don’t you?’
She didn’t answer. She wanted to drag Arthur away, to drive immediately back to the coast, but knew there was no way he’d give up now. She’d have to stick it out.
‘Have the police been to see you yet?’ Arthur asked.
‘Of course they’ve been to see me. Anyone farts in this town, they knock on my door.’
‘What did they want?’
‘They wanted me to tell them about the party at the caravan site. The last time any of us saw Michael Grey alive. The party after the play. You remember the one, Hannah.’
‘Did you tell them?’ she asked.
‘Of course I told them. I’m a law-abiding citizen now. What else could I do?’
He smiled. His teeth were brown and uneven. Then he turned back to the large, black speaker.
Chapter Twenty-One
Macbeth had gone well. Everyone involved in the production felt the buzz, lapped up the success. Even Hannah, who was on the edge of it. It was a manic time. Exams were only days away. People were up all night revising. You’d have thought it was the worst possible day for a party, but everyone had so much nervous energy and they felt like celebrating.
Hannah never knew whose idea it was to hire a room at the caravan site. Perhaps one of the cast was related to the manager. She thought it was something like that. She spent the afternoon at home getting ready. On her own. She’d asked Sal to come round. Sal was better than she was at clothes and make-up. But Sal hadn’t had much to do with the play and anyway seemed to spend all her free time with Chris. Years later Hannah would be able to remember the clothes she was wearing that night. She wanted it to be special. After the exams everyone would move away. It would probably be the last time they’d be together.
She soaked for an hour in the bath, got dressed and looked at herself in the long mirror on the landing. She was wearing a long skirt with tiny green flowers printed on to a cream background. It had a drop waist and she’d made it herself. There was nowhere in Cranford to buy clothes. It was the first time she’d worn it. A cream top with a gathered neck. A shawl which Sylvia Brice had crocheted for her birthday. Jesus sandals. And masses of black eye make-up. The last throes of flower power, which anyway had come late to the town.
Then, just as she was about to leave, her mother threw a wobbly. Hannah should have seen it coming. It had been building for days – resentful comments every time she went out, tearful self-pity when she returned.
Now Audrey blocked the front door, stood in front of it with her arms outstretched.
‘Don’t go.’
Hannah was panicking. ‘I must. They’re expecting me. It’s to do with the play.’
She didn’t say it was a party because Audrey would have played the guilt card – I never go out, you see your friends every day. That sort of thing. And Hannah had to go. During rehearsals she’d hardly seen Michael. He’d seemed to be slipping away from her.
Audrey crumpled. Her knees buckled and her back slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. She began to sob. The tears gouged drains in her face powder. Hannah could see the tops of her tights and her knickers. Words came in muffled, snotty bursts.
‘I’m so sorry. You mustn’t mind me. I only want you to be happy.’
Hannah couldn’t leave her like that, though more than anything she wanted to ignore the tears, step over the body and force her way out of the door. She took Audrey’s arm and coaxed her to her feet, settled her on the sofa and made her tea. She switched on the television. Immediately Audrey became absorbed in one of her favourite programmes.
‘I’ll go now, Mum, shall I?’
Audrey turned, waved briefly and returned her attention to the set.
They’d hired a minibus to take party-goers to the lake. Courtesy again of some anxious parents. A disabled lad had gone missing a couple of years before and for a while there’d been a fuss about youngsters out on their own. Hannah was too late to catch it. She began to walk, sticking out her thumb for a lift every time a car went past. She’d never hitched on her own before but now she was too desperate to think of all the adult warnings. It was still light and the road was busier than she’d expected – mostly families on their way back to the site. They didn’t seem to see her. Each time a car sailed past she stared after it with loathing. Her sandals were new and a strip of leather cut into her toes.
Then, when she was thinking she’d have to walk the whole way, someone stopped. A young bloke in a rusting estate car. He was chatty and in the few minutes it took to drive the rest of the way she found out he was visiting his girlfriend. She worked on reception in the site office and had been given a free caravan for the season. He was obviously smitten.
She heard the music as soon as she got out of the car.
‘Some party, that,’ he said, before driving off through the maze of caravans to find his love.
The party wasn’t in the bar, but in a room next to it, which sometimes held bingo for the older visitors and talent competitions for the kids. In natural light it would be gloomy, but Chris had rigged up some coloured spots and someone had decorated
it with balloons and streamers. It was full. The dancers jostled for space. The first person she saw was Mr Spence, who was dancing with the fifth former who’d played Hecate. Some of the cast had dressed up in their costumes and hers was black, floaty and long. Ribbons of frayed black cloth trailed from her cuffs. Mr Spence danced with his eyes half shut, his body twisting and swaying to the music. Hannah saw at once that Michael wasn’t there.
She didn’t ask any of her friends if Michael had been with them on the minibus. The music was so loud that her ears were already singing and the room was full of people she didn’t know well. Boyfriends and girlfriends and stray hangers-on had gatecrashed. Sally was there, though her only contribution to the play had been to hand out programmes at one of the performances. She was beside Chris, dancing on her own. She already seemed drunk. Hannah didn’t want to ask her about Michael. Chris would have made some sarcastic comment. He always did.
She went outside, walked down towards the lake where the noise of the music wasn’t quite so loud. She told herself that Michael might have gone for a walk on the shore, that he might be waiting for her there. The sky was a crazy mix of colours. Violet streaked in the west with gold and grey. Soon it would be completely dark but now it was light enough for birds still to be singing and she could make out the paler strip of sand and the reflection of the last light on the water.
They were lying on the spiky grass between the road and the lake. Jenny Graves, otherwise known as Lady Macbeth, was sprawled naked on the grass with Michael Grey, otherwise known as Theo Randle. The picture had the quality of a photographic negative. The background was grey, their bodies milky. Michael’s hair was startling white, her black braid lost in the shadow. It wasn’t a shock. She’d looked out for Jenny in the dancing crowd too and registered that she wasn’t there. Hadn’t even expected her to be. Throughout the rehearsals she’d watched Michael and Jenny, his charm, her flirting. But Hannah hadn’t felt able to demand an explanation, because then he’d have told her, not using the exact words of course, that he wanted her as a friend and an audience, not a lover. That is was Jenny Graves he’d write his poems for. Hannah stood for a moment staring, fascinated despite herself by the entwined limbs, the panting, the moans, thinking in a dispassionate way – So that’s what happens, that’s what it’s all about.