by Ann Cleeves
‘Any news on Reeves?’ Eddie demanded.
‘Nothing. He’s not visited his sister and he’s not gone home.’ She was sitting at her desk and didn’t look up from her computer screen. Eddie walked away. He knocked an empty Coke can off the desk and didn’t bother picking it up. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Reeves,’ Porteus said. ‘Eddie’s convinced he killed a disabled lad before Theo Randle, and he likes him for these two. If there are only two.’
‘Looks that way at the moment. We’ve pulled up all the serious-crime reports that might be relevant. I can’t see anything which fits into a pattern with Randle and Gillespie. Not yet.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Members of the public have been ringing in all day, claiming they saw Melanie on the evening she died. It’s taken time to sort through. We’re following up anything that looks promising this evening. OK?’
‘Sure.’
He went to his office to start tracking down Ray Scully. Scully’s mother still lived at the address given to him by Eleanor Gillespie and she answered the phone on the first ring, shouting a little so he realized she was hard of hearing.
‘Yes? Who is it?’
He explained, repeating the questions louder when she didn’t seem to understand.
‘Ray isn’t here.’
‘I know that Mrs Scully. Where is he? We want to talk to him.’
‘What about?’
It was obvious that she didn’t read the newspapers and the Gillespies hadn’t bothered telling her. He didn’t want to break the news of her granddaughter’s death over the phone.
‘He’s not in any trouble, Mrs Scully.’
‘Are you sure?’ The deafness made her sound truculent.
‘Absolutely.’ Crossing his fingers, wondering if this was true.
There was a long pause.
‘Mrs Scully?’
She made up her mind suddenly. ‘He’s in Cromer. Norfolk. Summer season in the theatre at the end of the pier. Playing in the band for the musical turns.’
‘Has he got a telephone there?’
Suspicion returned. ‘No. He phones me. Once a week. Regular as clockwork.’
‘Can you ask him to contact me? Tell him it’s about Mel.’
He repeated the question to check that she’d understood, but she’d already gone. He left a similar message with the theatre manager.
It was six o’clock. Too early to visit Lizzie Milburn, so he could make a start on finding out everything there was to know about Frank Garrity, the manager of the Prom. A treat to himself after a dispiriting day. There was nothing he liked better than a dig through the files and records. He found what he was after quickly, made himself a celebratory mug of coffee and went to look for Eddie. He was at his desk, engaged in an earnest discussion with Charlie Luke, who was holed up in the bungalow opposite Sarah Jackson’s.
‘Nobody’s been there all day except a bloke selling dodgy dusters.’
‘I know why Frank was so reluctant to talk to us,’ Porteous said.
‘Why?’
‘He was charged with rape twenty years ago. It never came to court. The girl changed her story. But he was held on remand for a few days. It must have made an impression.’
‘Could he have killed Melanie? No one else saw the bloke who asked for her. He could have made it up to muddy the waters.’
‘He could. But he’d have still been in primary school when Theo Randle was killed.’
‘Could Carver be wrong about the links between the deaths?’
Could he? Porteous thought about it. It wouldn’t be the first time a team had wasted weeks following up connections which didn’t really exist.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t like the man, but he’s a good pathologist. And he’s put his reputation on the line.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘Has his completed report been sent over yet?’
‘I’ve not seen it.’ As if he didn’t really care. As if all he cared about was nailing Reeves.
‘I want you to talk to the Spences and Chris Johnson tomorrow,’ Peter said.
‘Why?’ As truculent as Mrs Scully.
‘Back to basics, I suppose. They were at the party where Theo was last seen alive. Ask them about Reeves. Did they know him at the time? Show them a photo. Both photos. Did anyone see Reeves and Theo together? Has he been knocking around recently?’
‘Yes,’ Eddie said slowly. ‘I could do that.’
Then he was on the phone again, asking for an update from Charlie Luke.
Lizzie Milburn was in her fifties, but rather glamorous in an efficient, power-dressed sort of way. Certainly more glamorous than he’d expected someone who spent her days with three- and four-year-olds to be. But it seemed she ran the Early Years Centre on a big council estate on the edge of the city and spent little time these days with paint and sand. Porteous arrived at her home before her. She had a flat in what had once been a large country house. When there was no reply he was about to walk back to his car to wait, but she drove up, very quickly, and pulled to a stop beside him, scattering gravel. She was in a convertible Golf and the roof was down. She slid one slim leg out and stood up to greet him. She smelled expensive. Her skirt was short. Her shoes were dusty.
‘You wouldn’t believe the mess on the estate,’ she said. ‘It’s like a dust bowl. They’re knocking down most of the flats and putting up houses. A good thing. No one wanted to live in those high rises. But they seem to be taking for ever. And it’s worse in the winter. You need wellingtons to get from your car.’ She didn’t expect any response and went on, ‘Sorry I’m late. Parents evening. In a place like ours it’s hard to get the parents there and we don’t feel we can chase them away.’
At the door she slipped off her shoes. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but I really must have a very large G and T. I don’t suppose you . . . ?’
‘Just a tonic,’ he said.
She’d been married, it seemed, but it hadn’t worked out. He had the impression that she’d got rid of a husband who hadn’t lived up to her expectations, re-assumed her maiden name, and carried on as if he’d never existed. There had never been any children but she’d done well financially out of the divorce. All this he gathered in the first few minutes. They sat, without ceremony at the kitchen table and he was reminded of his conversation with Stella Randle. Another kitchen. Two women of a certain age, but remarkably different.
‘What’s all this about, Inspector?’ Her hair was rinsed auburn and cut short. Her make-up was still intact. Despite the difference in their ages, despite the fact that she wasn’t at all the sort of woman he usually went for, he found himself attracted to her.
‘Theo Randle.’
‘Oh? Usually when the police come to see me it’s because one of the fathers has been suspected of abuse. Or the mums have been shifting stolen property on our premises. Or some little vandal has set fire to the place again.’
‘It is about a fire I want to talk to you.’
‘Is it true that the body you found in Cranford Water was Theo?’
‘Yes. He’d changed his name before he died but it was Theo.’
‘Poor boy.’ She went to the freezer to fetch ice for their drinks. ‘You’d have thought he started out with every advantage. Compared with the children I work with now. But he didn’t. He didn’t stand a chance of a normal life.’
‘Why?’
‘Before I arrived at Snowberry he’d been left almost to his own devices. Crispin went to pieces after Maria died. Kept up a show for the constituents but he was hitting the bottle even then. Theo was minded by a series of women whose main job was to keep the house clean. He got whatever he wanted so long as he left them in peace. And it was much the same when Crispin was there. I suppose things were better when he started school but it was a snotty little prep place and I think it must have been pretty bleak. Theo must have been well screwed up even before Crispin married Stella.’
‘Did he resent his stepmother?’
; ‘No. Quite the opposite. He worshipped her. She took time to listen to him, read him stories, played with him. She wasn’t much more than a girl herself – a bit giggly and silly – but she made a real effort to get on with him. I met her first when she was pregnant. We were about the same age but she made me feel about a hundred and one. She treated the whole thing as a game. As if having a baby was all about parties and presents. She’d been totally sheltered. Mummy and Daddy were friends of Crispin’s. She’d done boarding school, a year’s finishing in Switzerland. The job as Crispin’s secretary was to give her something to do with her time before marriage and of course she didn’t have to look very far for a husband. It was hardly surprising that she went to pieces when Emily was born. Her depression was a nightmare for everyone at Snowberry but especially Theo. He thought he’d found someone who cared about him. Then suddenly she didn’t care about anyone. She couldn’t. The doctors Crispin got in didn’t help. They just pumped her full of drugs. I tried to spend as much time as I could with Theo, but I couldn’t replace her and I was pretty busy with Emily.’
‘Did you keep in touch with him when he went away to school?’
‘I didn’t keep in touch with any of them. Crispin made it quite clear my role in the family was over when Emily died. The day after the fire he gave me a month’s wages in lieu of notice and he sent me away.’
‘Tell me about the fire.’
She swirled the remaining gin in her glass. ‘I’d been out. It didn’t happen often. Snowberry was miles from anywhere. The only entertainment was the pub and those days a woman didn’t go out drinking on her own. One of the lads on the estate asked me to go to the pictures in town. He had a car. That was the only reason I went and I made sure I wasn’t late back. The nursery was at the back of the house and I couldn’t see the fire from the front. The first thing I did was check on Emily but I couldn’t get near her room. You wouldn’t believe the heat and the smoke. Sometimes I wake up at night and I can still taste it. Theo was asleep but I managed to get him out. Crispin and Stella were still up. They’d both been drinking and they hadn’t noticed a thing.’
‘Was anyone else there?’
‘Not in the house itself. There was a couple who looked after the place, but they lived in a cottage at the end of the drive. They didn’t know anything until the fire engines woke them up.’
‘Are you sure it was an accident?’
‘You think the fire’s related to Theo’s murder?’
He shrugged. ‘I hope I’ve got an open mind.’
‘Stella wouldn’t hurt a fly, even in her maddest moments. Crispin had a fearsome temper. I can imagine him lashing out at Stella, but he loved the baby. And even if the fire was his fault, why kill Theo after all that time?’
And what, Porteus thought, could any of this have to do with Melanie Gillespie?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Porteous had made an appointment to see Melanie’s psychiatrist. Walking from the car park to the day hospital, all glass and concrete like the superstore next door, he tried to walk in her footsteps, see it through her eyes. On the step by the entrance, a young couple stared blankly into space, smoking cheap smuggled cigarettes. In the waiting-room a middle-aged man with wild hair paced backwards and forwards talking to himself about God. Sitting on one of the orange plastic chairs in the corridor a plump woman in a neat, grey raincoat sobbed discreetly into a handkerchief. What would Melanie have made of them? Would she have considered herself different and sat apart? Would she have visited the place alone, her parents too busy to be there? He found it hard to imagine Melanie here at all. He thought Richard Gillespie would have arranged somewhere private, an exclusive clinic where discretion would be guaranteed, the sort of health farm where customers were force fed instead of starved.
The receptionist on the main desk gave him a brief smile of recognition, but when he showed her his warrant card she shook her head. A sort of apology for mistaking him for one of the patients. The waiting-room was unusually busy. The hospital tried to see patients on time. If they were kept hanging around some lost their nerve and walked out. Others turned nasty. Porteous had a sudden qualm of conscience about taking up the doctor’s time.
‘Mr Porteous, the doctor will see you now.’
They watched him, aware he was jumping the queue, but too apathetic or too cowed to comment. The nurse started walking with him.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know the way.’
He followed the corridor with its jolly posters promoting healthy eating and adverts for self-help groups, until he came to the door. He stopped outside, feeling for a moment the old anxiety, the breaker of rules outside the head teacher’s study, then he knocked lightly and went in.
Collier was a red-headed Scot with freckles and blue eyes. He ran marathons and looked horribly fit.
‘Peter. You’re looking very well.’
Despite himself he felt pleased. Collier had always been honest. If he looked lousy he’d have said so. This meant he must be doing OK.
‘I’m not here for me. Didn’t they say?’
‘Yeah. There’s a note somewhere.’ He scrabbled through a pile of scrap paper. Porteous would have loved the opportunity to go through the desk, to reduce it to a series of neat piles. ‘And I had a phone call,’ the psychiatrist continued. ‘From Mr Gillespie.’ He lay back in his chair. ‘What you might call a warning shot across my bows.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh aye. I’m to respect Melanie’s confidentiality although she’s dead. The cheek of the man. You’d think he was paying me.’
‘Isn’t that odd? I mean Melanie being treated on the NHS. He must have private health insurance.’
‘I’m the best,’ Collier said, quite seriously. ‘If he’d asked around he’d have been told that. And I don’t do private.’
‘I do know. That you’re the best.’
Collier grinned. ‘And they might have gone private before they came here. They said not, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d tried something else. Herbal remedies. Acupuncture. Hypnosis. Any damn thing to avoid having to face what was going on. You’d be surprised by the number of patients who’ve been fooled by some quack but who’re too embarrassed to admit it.’
‘So,’ Porteous said cautiously. ‘There’s nothing you’re prepared to tell me. You’ve been warned off.’
‘I can’t tell you about the lassie’s illness.’
‘When did you last see her?’
Collier opened a desk diary. The pages were covered in scribbled notes and crossing out. The lack of order made Porteous wince.
‘A week ago. It was a house call.’ He paused, frowned. ‘Oh bugger Gillespie! But just be discreet. He says he’ll sue. He couldn’t, of course, but he could make things awkward. Eleanor, the mother, phoned up in a state. She said Melanie was delusional, in the middle of some sort of crisis. She needed to be in hospital. I offered to send in a community nurse but that wouldn’t do. By the time I could get there Gillespie had turned up. He said the same as his wife but more forcefully. I had to treat the girl as an inpatient.’
‘But you didn’t admit her?’
‘No. I wasn’t going to be bullied. I’d have liked to talk to Melanie alone but the parents weren’t having any of it and I didn’t think I could insist. It was an awkward situation. I was on my own. Sod’s law. I’d been trailing a female student around with me the rest of the week.’
‘How was Melanie?’
‘Angry. She’d had some sort of tantrum, throwing furniture around, smashing plates. It was over by the time I got there but I presume that was why Eleanor phoned.’
‘The anger was directed at her parents?’
‘That was the impression I had.’
‘Was it about the anorexia?’
‘Melanie used food as a weapon in every situation. But as to what triggered the scene . . .’ He shrugged.
‘Could it have had anything to do with her natural father?’
Collier
looked up at him sharply then shrugged again.
‘I don’t know. By the time I arrived Melanie was very controlled and she wasn’t giving anything away. She insisted she didn’t want to be in hospital and I don’t have the beds to admit every young person who causes their parents grief. She was perfectly rational and I didn’t think she was suicidal. No grounds for sectioning. I made her an outpatient appointment.’
‘When for?’
‘I would have liked to have seen her immediately. Get her here, away from home territory. I felt there’d been some sort of breakthrough, that, you know, she trusted me for standing up to her father. But I couldn’t make it for a couple of days. I was speaking at a conference in Edinburgh. I gave her a chance to see a colleague but she wasn’t happy about that.’
‘When was the appointment?’
‘The morning her body was found in the cemetery.’
There was a pause. Porteous was aware of the patients in the waiting-room, their nerves twisting to breaking point as the minutes ticked on. He knew Collier was thinking of them too.
‘Had she ever been in Redwood?’
‘The assessment centre? Alice Cornish’s place? Not so far as I know. Why?’
‘One of our suspects was a social worker there. It would be a link. And that’s privileged information too, even if I can’t sue.’
‘They never said. I mean, I took a history. Schools. You know the sort of thing. But I didn’t check. Why should I?’ He paused, tilted back in his chair. ‘Redwood was an amazing place. I did a residential placement there. One of my options. There’s no reason why the Gillespies wouldn’t have admitted to her having gone there. It was harder to get into than Eton. Something for them to brag about.’ His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall and Porteous realized his time was up.
Outside the sun splashed off the big glass windows of the hospital and the superstore. His car, trapped between the buildings, was sweltering. He opened all the windows but didn’t start driving. He couldn’t face Cranford and Eddie’s obsession, the rest of the team expecting answers and leadership.