by Ann Cleeves
‘Do you remember the nanny’s name?’ Porteous asked.
‘Lizzie. Lizzie Milburn. She came from Newcastle. Her parents were teachers and she was crazy about babies. Just as well.’
‘You think your smoking might have started the fire?’
‘No one said. I told you Crispin tried to protect me. But going back over the facts I think that’s most likely. I went to look at Emily. Crispin came with me. There were no baby alarms in those days and I did feel responsible for her. Perhaps if I’d had the nerve to let Lizzie go, if I’d been forced to look after Emily myself things might have been different, but really I don’t think so. I was very ill.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, I’m rambling. Crispin and I had dinner together. He’d come back from London in a foul mood. He’d always been ambitious and someone had said something to make him believe he didn’t have a chance of promotion in the next reshuffle. He probably blamed me. I was hardly an ideal MP’s wife. Certainly nothing like Maria, who was perfect apparently in every way. A saint is a hard act to follow. Crispin had a lot to drink over dinner. I had a couple of glasses with him. Not sensible considering the strength of the medication I was on. When we went up to the nursery we were both a bit unsteady. Crispin didn’t stay long. He wanted to get back to the brandy. But I loved to watch her sleeping. That was the one time I could really believe I loved her . . .’
‘You think you might have been careless with a cigarette?’
‘I think it’s possible. I’m sure Crispin blamed me. I wonder sometimes if he thought I did it on purpose. An act of madness. He thought I was crazy. Certainly he believed I was responsible for the fire one way or another. That’s why he took Theo away. He said he couldn’t trust me to look after him any more.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘She says the boy never lived at home again after that,’ Porteous said. ‘I’ve seen the fire investigator and the coroner’s reports. There was no real structural damage to the house. The fire started in the nursery and was contained there, but the girl was trapped in her cot and when the bedding and nightclothes caught, there was no hope for her.’ There had been a photograph in the fire investigator’s report of a small charred body pushed to one end of the cot as if she had been trying to escape the smoke and the heat, the arms raised in the pugilistic stance common in burn victims.
‘I suppose it was an accident.’ It was evening. Eddie Stout had come out to Porteous’s home. It had never happened before. Porteous had reciprocated the Stouts’ hospitality with a meal in a restaurant. He’d told them it was because he couldn’t cook, but that wasn’t true. He liked home and work kept apart.
He’d been home for an hour and had almost finished writing up the notes of his interview with Stella Randle, when his doorbell rang. He’d seen Stout’s car from his window and had gone down, planning to keep him outside, thinking they could talk in the garden, even walk to the pub at the end of the lane if it was going to take a while. But Eddie had been so diffident and apologetic that a response like that was impossible. It called for something more friendly.
‘Of course, you must come in. No, really, it’s a pleasure. I was just going to have a beer. I’m sure you’ll join me.’
And Porteous had found it helpful to describe again his conversation with Randle’s widow. They were still standing, each with a glass, looking at the view down the valley. Stout continued without waiting for an answer to the original question.
‘It couldn’t have been an insurance scam turned tragic? Nothing like that?’
‘No. The fire officer said it was consistent with a cigarette or match having been carelessly dropped, not an attempt at large-scale damage. It started in or near the nursery. If it had been deliberate they’d not have done that. I know the technology wasn’t so precise then, but the officer was experienced and he was confident of his decision. When the fire really took hold the parents were at the other end of the house and hardly conscious – Crispin was drunk and Stella doped up to the eyeballs. Luckily the nanny came home earlier than expected or they might all have been killed.’
‘Where did Randle take the boy?’
‘Stella was very vague about that.’ After her description of the fire and her daughter’s death she’d hardly seemed to hear his questions. ‘Perhaps to stay with relatives until Crispin could arrange a boarding place for him.’
‘We’ve finally found out where he was at school then?’
‘No. Crispin would never tell her where Theo was. Not precisely. It was as if she’d relinquished all her rights over the boy. A way of punishing her for the death of his daughter. Theo came home occasionally for holidays, she said, but she was never allowed to be alone with him. As he got older he seems to have found better things to do. It can’t have been much fun at Snowberry. Randle had resigned his seat in the Commons and was drinking. I presume Theo invited himself to friends’ homes for the vacations. By all accounts he was a charmer. I don’t suppose it was difficult. Or there may have been other relatives.’
‘Where do the Brices fit in?’
‘I don’t know. Stella didn’t recognize the name.’
‘Not much further forward then.’ Eddie didn’t sound too disappointed by the lack of progress.
‘Oh, I think so. We should be able to trace Theo’s school with the information we’ve got now. Two schools probably if he was only ten when he went away. There must be someone who remembers him . . . I’ve been thinking that the reason for his leaving boarding school could have been financial. Crispin could have run through the family money very quickly. Perhaps he just couldn’t afford the school fees.’
‘Is this background relevant to the murder do you think?’
Is it? Porteous thought, and realized that he’d hardly considered the real business of the murder investigation all afternoon. He’d been wrapped up in the domestic tragedy. They’d all suffered – Crispin, Stella, Theo and Emily. When the wedding pictures were taken they must have seemed an ideal family. Porteous could imagine them posing for a similar photo to go with the constituency Christmas card. But the happiness had been shattered even before the fire.
‘I can’t imagine Stella Randle tracking down Theo and sticking a dagger through his ribs if that’s what you mean. She wouldn’t know where to start. And why would she?’
‘Could she have blamed the boy for the little girl’s death?’
‘She might have been psychotic when she was very ill, and dreamed up something like that, but she didn’t strike me as delusional today.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t a delusion.’
‘What do you mean?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Perhaps he did kill his sister. An unsupervised boy playing with matches could have the same result as a cigarette fire.’
‘There was no mention of that at the time.’
‘It would give another slant on Crispin keeping Theo away from his stepmother. Perhaps she was threatening to harm him even then. Much easier to blame the boy than take responsibility for her own negligence.’
‘It’s a possibility . . .’
‘But you don’t think it’s likely.’ Eddie finished his beer and grinned. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to humour me. I’m not a kid. I’m . . .’ he paused. ‘What’s that technique they always use on the team-building courses? Brainstorming.’
‘I’m not dismissing any ideas. It’s just that Stella did take responsibility for Emily’s death as soon as I asked her about it. And she’d almost forgotten about Theo. I don’t think she’d have been able to do that if she’d killed him.’
‘Did you ask her about the Gillespie girl?’
‘Yes.’
On the way out. He’d stood on the doorstep looking across the garden to the wide sweep of the bay, with the lighthouse at one end and the mouth of the Tyne at the other, then turned back to her as if the question had just come to him: ‘Does the name Melanie Gillespie mean anything to you?’
She’d stood with her arms clasped across her chest as if she were cold. A breez
e was coming off the sea and her cardigan was thin, but Porteous still felt warm. Then she’d giggled. ‘What’s this, Inspector? A sort of quiz?’ Then she’d gone into the flat shutting the door behind her without answering the question.
The sun was so low now that it shone up at them through the long window of the barn and they were dazzled. They turned away and sat down. Porteous offered Eddie another beer but he shook his head and for the first time Porteous saw how excited he was. It had been a struggle to contain himself in the conversation about Stella Randle.
‘What is it, Eddie? What have you got for me?’
‘I went to see Jack Westcott. You remember, he was the history teacher in the high school. Just retired.’
Porteous nodded.
‘I turned up before opening time this morning. Caught him when he was completely sober. We went for a walk in the park. His wife’s the house-proud sort. You could tell she was glad to have him out from under her feet. He was glad of the company, I think. He’ll miss those kids.’
Porteous nodded again, thought Eddie would get to the point in his own time.
‘I just wanted to get him talking. Claire Wright hasn’t found any teacher who moved from Cranford to the school on the coast, but I thought there might be some informal connections – specialist music teachers, drama festival, sport. That sort of thing.’
‘Anything?’
‘Not that Theo was involved in. So I asked about the other kids in the school. It occurred to me that Melanie’s mother and father would be about the same age as Theo if he’d lived. But Westcott couldn’t remember a Richard Gillespie or an Eleanor of any description, so I could kiss goodbye to that theory.’
‘Worth checking though. And it’s possible that Richard Gillespie was at Theo’s boarding school.’
‘Aye. From what I’ve seen of him on TV he’s got the air of a public-school boy about him . . . I’d pretty much given up hope of anything useful when Jack said he’d been digging around at home and he’d found some more photos of the Macbeth production. Would I like to see them? Most likely an excuse so he wouldn’t have to face that dragon of a wife on his own, but I thought he might have a sharper photo of the boy we could give to the press, so I went along with him.’
Porteous was finding it difficult to give the story his full attention. He didn’t mind Eddie Stout being here as much as he’d expected, but the evening sun was making him drowsy.
Eddie continued. ‘You’d have thought he was a schoolboy himself, the way he spoke to his wife. He took me upstairs to a sort of den where he hides away from her. There were cardboard boxes full of snaps. There must have been pictures in there of every school play in the past thirty years, but he’d sorted out the ones he thought were relevant.’
‘Anything of Theo we could use for the media?’
‘No. Jack must have had the shakes even then. None of them were brilliant. But amongst them I found this.’ Carefully, holding the picture by the edges with his fingertips, Eddie handed it over. It was a black and white photo of the audience, taken probably from the side of the stage just before the show was about to start. Parents clutched hand-printed programmes on their knees and chatted to their neighbours. There was no indication that they’d been aware of the photographer. Eddie pointed to a couple in the front row.
‘Those are the Brices.’
They looked ordinary, elderly. They could have been anyone’s grandparents. Stephen wore a hand-knitted sweater over corduroy trousers. Sylvia had made more of an effort about dressing up and had a high-necked blouse over a long black skirt. There was a brooch at the neck. They were holding hands.
‘Interesting,’ Porteous said. He always found it helpful to put a face to names. But he couldn’t quite understand Eddie’s excitement. It was hardly worth a trek into the country at tea time.
Eddie took a deep breath. ‘That,’ he said, pointing to a pale, insignificant man sitting next to Sylvia, ‘that is Alec Reeves.’
Then Porteous did understand the excitement. This was Alec Reeves who’d worked as assistant manager in the hardware store in Cranford high street. Alec Reeves, uncle to Carl Jackson, the lad with the learning disability who’d disappeared not long before Theo. Alec Reeves, who, according to Eddie, liked young boys and had gone off to get a job in a children’s home.
‘I thought Sarah Jackson said he’d left Cranford by then.’
‘She did. He must have come back.’
Porteous looked again at the photo. Although Sylvia was holding Stephen’s hand she was talking to Reeves. Her head was turned to him and she was smiling. It was the relaxed conversation of friends. ‘You said they knew him.’
‘Aye,’ Stout said bitterly. ‘You’d have thought they’d have had better taste.’
‘This changes things,’ Porteous said. Slowly. Not wanting to wind Eddie up any further. But Eddie was buzzing already.
‘Of course it does. Alec was there that night. It must have been the last performance, because Hannah Morton says that’s when the Brices were in the audience. No reason why he couldn’t have got hold of the knife. I bet when we check the records we’ll find other lads in his care who’ve mysteriously disappeared.’
‘Theo wasn’t in his care,’ Porteous said. ‘Not as far as we know.’ And Melanie Gillespie wasn’t a lad, he thought.
‘He could have been. Perhaps the Brices asked Alec to have a word with the boy. Perhaps Theo was depressed because of the mess he’d made of his love life and they asked Alec to help. He was always a sympathetic listener. I’ll give him that. Maybe he offered to take Theo out for the day, offered a shoulder to cry on. He was nearer the boy’s age than the Brices. More like a father.’
‘How would he explain Theo’s disappearance?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Eddie’s words tumbled over each other. ‘Someone told the Brices that Theo had decided to go back to his dad. It must have been Alec Reeves.’
‘It’s certainly a plausible theory,’ Porteous said. Then gently, ‘Where does Melanie Gillespie fit in?’
‘Maybe she’s the last of a string of teenagers who’ve disappeared. We don’t take missing teenagers very seriously, do we? Not the restless, unsettled ones. We put them down as runaways and hope the Sally Army will do the business for us.’
‘Melanie didn’t disappear though, did she? Her body was found. No attempt was made to hide it.’
‘Perhaps Reeves was disturbed. Or all the publicity about the body in the lake made him want to come out into the open. Could be he’s been enjoying the glory.’
Porteous said nothing. He wished he knew more about the subject. Perhaps after all he would have to talk to Hannah’s fat psychologist, ask his advice. He drank his beer absent-mindedly. He hadn’t eaten and felt it go to his head, mixed with the medication he’d taken earlier in the day. Like Stella Randle, he thought, I should take more care.
‘Sir?’ Eddie was on his feet. He was obviously desperate to move the case forward.
‘Peter. Call me Peter here, please.’ He set the glass on the table, stood up too, tried to sound decisive when all he had were questions. ‘I want to know where Reeves is. Don’t go to Sarah Jackson. I don’t want him frightened off. Put a watch on her bungalow. But be discreet. When you find Reeves, don’t pull him in. Tail him but leave him where he is. We’ll need more evidence, any evidence, before we question him. At present he doesn’t know there’s anything to connect him to Theo Randle and that’s how I want it. Show this photograph to the barman in the Promenade who said someone was looking for Melanie. Reeves will have changed since then, but it’s better than nothing. Tomorrow we’ll talk to her parents. See if the name means anything to them.’ He paused. ‘Go easy on this, Eddie. Bet will be expecting you back for a meal. Most of this you can do from home.’
But as Eddie bounded down the stairs Porteous knew he was wasting his breath. Eddie was a man with a mission and was losing the power of rational thought.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Porteous arrived at the police station the next morning – early for him though he’d still walked, still kept to the same routine – Stout was already there. He looked as if he’d spent all night at his desk. He’d shaved but he was wearing the same clothes and he spoke too quickly, feverish through lack of sleep.
No use to man nor beast in that state, Porteous thought. Then recognized that as the pious sentiment of the newly converted and he listened to the steps Stout had already taken to track down Alec Reeves.
‘There’s an empty bungalow over the road from Sarah Jackson’s. The council were going to do it up before the next tenant anyway. I talked to a chap in building services who goes to our church. He pushed the work to the top of the list. They’re going to start this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Should be there already. I’ve sent Charlie Luke along as part of the team.’
‘Won’t the council workers talk?’
‘No, they think he’s a management trainee. They have to do work experience in every department.’
Porteous smiled at the thought that Luke could pass as management material, but Stout was continuing. ‘He’ll have a key and can let our people in at night. If the neighbours get used to workmen being in the place it shouldn’t cause so much gossip.’
‘Good.’ Porteous thought the plan unnecessarily elaborate. They had no evidence that Reeves would try to contact his sister. But he knew Stout wasn’t in the mood to take criticism. Counselling had taught him the futility of knocking his head against a brick wall.
‘I got an address for Reeves from the DVLA. He lives in a small town in the Yorkshire Dales.’
‘Back to Yorkshire,’ Porteous said. ‘Hannah Morton thought Theo had been at school there but we didn’t get anywhere when we checked earlier. Could Alec have introduced Theo to the Brices, I wonder? I suppose it’s more likely to be coincidence. Theo would have been in a boarding school and Alec a care assistant in a Social Services assessment centre so it’s hard to see where they’d have met. Not that I’ve traced either establishment yet. But it shouldn’t be difficult now.’