The Sleeping and the Dead

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Michael was a private referral. It did happen occasionally. We were registered through Social Services and most of the children came through them, but sometimes we were approached by desperate parents who’d seen stories about us in the papers. Of course, they kept legal custody. Michael was unusual because he stayed with us for such a long time.’

  ‘His father brought him to you?’

  ‘I believe he did.’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I wasn’t here. I was in Geneva. Receiving some award.’ She waved her hand as if it were of no importance. ‘I wasn’t keen but the staff thought I should go to raise the profile of the house. We’d not long opened. We were a democratic organization. I went. When I returned there was a new little boy. Michael. White hair, beautiful manners. Very distant. Very withdrawn. He didn’t speak for months. I was told his mother had severe depression and his father a drink problem. A sister had been killed in a fire. The family didn’t want Social Services involved but they thought we could help. I thought we could too. We were a good team . . .’

  ‘Why the change of name?’

  ‘I don’t know. To me he was always Michael. Perhaps the family were in the public eye and afraid of publicity.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Porteous thought it an extreme move. Once interest had died down after the fire, would anyone care what happened to a small boy?

  ‘Did the family visit?’

  ‘The father. Occasionally. Usually he was drunk when he turned up. When Michael was ready to leave we tried to arrange meetings with family members to discuss his future. But the appointments were never kept.’

  ‘Michael attended a private school as a day boy?’

  ‘It was what his father wanted. He made the arrangements. If Michael had been allowed to choose I think he’d have gone to the local grammar.’

  ‘There was a fire at the school.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was Michael implicated?’

  ‘Not in any way. The police came here first of course. We housed “problem” children. But he had an alibi. A member of staff was with him all evening.’

  ‘Alec Reeves?’

  ‘No. Not Alec Reeves.’

  ‘How did he end up with the Brices?’

  ‘Was that the name of the couple who took him in?’

  He nodded.

  ‘When Michael was sixteen we had a problem. Frankly he was taking a bed which could be better used by another child. He’d turned into a bright and well-adjusted young man. He’d enjoyed being at Redwood and he hadn’t wanted to move, and we didn’t want to throw him out. Of course we waited until he’d completed his O levels before thinking about it seriously at all. There was no interest from the family – we’d even had to subsidize his school fees because they’d stopped paying. So what to do with him? The fire in the middle of his lower-sixth year brought matters to a head.’

  ‘Alec Reeves came up with a solution?’

  ‘Yes. He’d not long started working with us. There was a retired clergyman and his wife, he said, in his home town. Childless, but full of love. We all met. Michael liked them. It seemed a wonderful solution.’

  ‘Until he died less than two years later . . .’

  ‘I never knew about that. Not until the press reports of his death.’

  ‘Tell me about Melanie Gillespie.’ If he hoped to shock her into some admission or indiscretion he was unsuccessful. She seemed lost in thought. The ginger cat had moved on to the grass beside her feet and she stopped absent-mindedly to tickle its ear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t recognize the name.’

  ‘Melanie Gillespie was one of the children in your care. Much more recently. Within the last three or four years.’ At least, he thought, I hope she was. Otherwise I’ve nothing to work on at all.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘She had an eating disorder. Probably another private referral.’

  ‘I’ve explained that in recent years my contact with the centre has been minimal.’ She seemed tired now, rather than hostile. ‘But we can check. Come inside and I’ll show you my book. My record of achievement you might call it. More precious to me at least, than all the awards put together.’

  She took him into a dusty and cluttered study. The book was gigantic, leather bound. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a cathedral. In it successive children had signed their names, written scraps of verse, drawn pictures.

  ‘When do you think she left us?’

  ‘Two years ago. Three perhaps.’

  She turned the pages slowly.

  ‘You see, Inspector. No Melanie Gillespie.’

  ‘May I look?’ Theo Randle had changed his name. Perhaps Melanie had too.

  He found it immediately. Mel Scully written in spiky italics. Beside it a cartoon. A stick figure with cropped hair holding an electric guitar, with a balloon coming out of her mouth. Inside the balloon the words: What now?

  ‘Scully was her father’s name,’ he said.

  ‘I do remember her! Very bright. Very articulate. Self-destructive with her eating. A lot of aggression directed at her parents. Not nearly as confident as she wanted everyone to think her.’

  ‘Had there been a child, do you know?’

  ‘You think she’d been pregnant? Certainly not while she was here. Before?’ She shrugged. ‘She was someone we never quite got through to. She never felt able to trust us.’ Porteous remembered Collier saying something similar. She closed the book suddenly. The air displaced by the heavy covers stirred the dust. ‘What’s happened to her?’

  ‘She’s dead too.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Despite his sleep in the garden Eddie Stout was tired. As he drove to The Old Rectory he found his concentration slipping, the car bouncing suddenly on the Cat’s-eyes in the middle of the road. The Spences had agreed to see him at four. That was their quiet time, they said, between lunch and dinner. Sally would leave the paper early especially.

  And they were waiting for him. A young woman in a black dress met him at the front door and led him to the lounge where the Spences sat, expectant and curious. Between them a small table was set for tea. There was a silver pot and china cups, tiny sandwiches, a double-tiered plate with scones and cakes.

  ‘Just in time, Sergeant. I was about to pour.’ Roger Spence wore a white shirt and a red bow-tie. He handed a cup and a plate to Stout, who juggled with them awkwardly, in the end balancing the plate on the arm of his chair. He noticed that Spence’s fingers were very long, the nails beautifully manicured. Spence set down the teapot and rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, how can we help?’

  They both turned towards Eddie and smiled in a predatory way. Sally was dressed in a grey silk tunic over trousers. She filled the armchair, a huge grey walrus. He wondered how she would manage to prise herself to her feet. Jack Sprat and his wife, he thought. Throughout the conversation images and words came into his head unbidden as in a dream. Perhaps he should have followed Porteous’s advice and waited until he was less tired. He felt he was no match for these two, especially now.

  ‘I’ve been hearing rumours,’ Sally said when he didn’t answer immediately. Her tone was confidential, slightly flirtatious. She leaned forward and he could see the top of her bra. ‘People are saying that you’ve linked Michael’s murder – I still think of him as Michael – with that girl on the coast.’

  ‘We’re ruling out nothing at present.’ The standard line. If she were any sort of a journalist she’d know anyway. And he thought she probably was very good at her job. She had the necessary ruthless streak

  ‘We didn’t know her,’ Sally went on. ‘The girl on the coast. We’d never met her.’ She seemed very keen to make that point.

  Eddie struggled to stamp his authority on the interview. ‘It’s the first murder I’d like to talk about.’

  ‘Oh?’ She smiled again, took a chocolate éclair from the plate and bit it in half.

  Eddie turned to include them both in his qu
estion. ‘You were at the final performance of Macbeth? The Friday before Michael disappeared.’

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant. I was selling programmes and Roger was helping to direct.’

  Eddie watched the second half of the éclair disappear into her mouth. He unclipped his briefcase and took out the photograph given to him by Jack Westcott.

  ‘Do you recognize the gentleman sitting next to Mr and Mrs Brice?’

  Roger flicked his eyes towards the picture and immediately away again.

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ he said casually. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re trying to trace as many people as possible who were there that evening. If you could try to remember, Mr Spence.’

  ‘I know who it is!’ Eddie almost expected her to clap her hands like a little girl who’s just come top in a spelling test. ‘It’s Mr Reeves, isn’t it? You must remember Roger. Alec Reeves, the scout master. There was talk . . .’

  ‘Was there?’ Roger licked his fingers with a long, darting tongue and patted his chin with a napkin.

  ‘Probably all rumour,’ she added quickly. ‘You know what this place is like.’

  ‘What exactly did the rumours say?’ Stout asked, as if the information was new to him.

  ‘Oh, you know. That he liked the company of young boys too much. I’d never met him. Not really. He ran the hardware store next to where my father worked, and I went into the shop sometimes on errands. My dad thought he was all right but then my dad said that about everyone. I didn’t think there was anything particularly creepy about him, but then I was only a kid. But I’m sure Mr Reeves had already left the town when Michael disappeared. There was a new bloke in the shop when I was in the sixth form. Younger. Good looking in a dark, moody sort of way . . .’

  ‘But Reeves came back for the performance of Macbeth,’ Eddie said.

  ‘He must have done, I suppose, if the photo was taken that night. But I don’t remember him. I was backstage, helping with the costume changes. Roger was a real dictator. He wouldn’t let us out during the interval.’

  She grinned at her husband but he didn’t respond.

  ‘Do you remember seeing that man, Mr Spence?’

  Spence took the photograph, holding it with exaggerated care by the edge of the print.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Quite impossible after all these years.’

  ‘Of course, he looks a lot older now,’ Sally said.

  They both stared at her.

  ‘You’ve seen him recently?’

  ‘About ten days ago. Don’t you remember, Roger? He came in here with Paul Lord and his wife. I knew there was something familiar about him. I’m surprised that they stayed friends. Poor Paul, he was tainted by his association with Reeves when he was young. I mean, he was never going to be the most popular boy in the school. Not with that acne. Though I remember one night Hannah coming pretty close to snogging him . . . And he was a boy scout, wasn’t he? His picture was in the paper when he won some award and he never lived it down. That awful uniform. But then it came out that he was big buddies with Alec Reeves, and when all those rumours started he was teased dreadfully.’

  She continued talking but Eddie had stopped listening. Paul Lord was the lad who’d given Alec Reeves an alibi after Carl Jackson had disappeared. Eddie had interviewed the boy himself. He remembered a stuffy sitting-room, a mother, flustered and embarrassed, and Paul, hidden as Sally had said behind a layer of acne, stubbornly refusing to change his story. At last Eddie had given up and soon after Reeves had left the town.

  ‘Is Mr Lord a regular customer?’

  Roger answered. ‘Yes. Mostly at lunchtimes. He’s a businessman. He brings his clients here.’

  ‘What is his business?’

  ‘He’s some sort of computer consultant. He and his wife are partners. They work from home. They turned the outhouses of the farmhouse where they live into an office.’

  ‘The address please?’

  But he knew it already. Porteous had phoned there when they were trying to identify the body in the lake. Balk Farm. Home to Balk Farm Computing. Once home to Carl Jackson, the lad with learning disability, and his parents.

  In the car Eddie tried to phone Porteous, but his boss’s mobile was turned off. Eddie saw that as an opportunity and didn’t leave a message. He thought he’d be late for his interview with Chris Johnson, but that didn’t seem important. Now he had to speak to Paul Lord, who’d been with Alec Reeves ten days ago, who must know where he was hiding out.

  He drove too fast, still in the daze he’d been in since his sleep in the garden, his thoughts woolly, his eyes prickling with exhaustion. He came over the brow of the hill and had a flashback of himself, young and fit, standing in a line with other men and women, searching for Carl, prodding into the heather and bracken with a long pole. They’d improved the entrance to the farm, widened it and he sailed past, seeing out of the corner of his eye a big sign advertising the computer consultancy. It was only as he pulled into a lay-by to turn back that he thought what a fool he was being. Alec Reeves might be hiding out at Balk Farm but what could Eddie do about it, single-handed and without a warrant? Only warn him and drive him away. He drove slowly back to the town, his heart racing with panic at the damage he’d almost done.

  He arrived at Chris Johnson’s house without remembering how he’d got there. He was late and the conversation started badly. Johnson had recently moved into a small terraced house on a modern private estate. A woman, very young and very pregnant, opened the door. She wore a sleeveless dress which clung around her stomach and heavy breasts. Her frame looked as if it would snap under the weight.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘But his van’s still here.’ Stout nodded towards a transit pulled on to the pavement.

  ‘He’s not got time to talk to you. The soundcheck’s in half an hour.’

  Stout was too tired to argue. ‘Just let me in. It’ll not take long.’ He pushed past her, not roughly, hardly touching her, but usually he would have been polite, and he was surprised at the change in himself. He walked straight into the living-room. Chris Johnson was watching television. In the corner was a flat-pack cot, still in its box, and a white fur rabbit. Eddie picked up the remote from the floor and zapped off the television. The woman followed him in and levered herself carefully into an armchair. There was nowhere else to sit so he leaned against the door.

  ‘I want to know where you were one evening last week.’ He gave the date Melanie had been taken, but all the time his thoughts were racing about Alec Reeves. His hands were shaking at the thought of how close he had come to wrecking the whole investigation, and then he imagined Reeves driving down the track to the road by the reservoir before he’d had a chance to have it watched. He should have sorted out surveillance before coming here. He was losing it. ‘Now!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve not got time to mess about.’

  ‘I was working.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘An eighteenth birthday party. Some village hall out in the sticks. Why?’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘You can check. Some of the kids got a bit wild. The police were called. It was that sort of place. No fun after nine thirty or the neighbours have a seizure. The cops came in and told me to turn down the sound.’

  ‘What time did you get home?’

  ‘About midnight.’

  ‘Can you confirm that?’ To the woman. Going through the motions. Though no way would Johnson have been able to pick up Melanie from the Rainbow’s End and be back here at midnight.

  ‘Of course.’ There was a mischievous look in her eye which said – But how can you trust me? I would say that, wouldn’t I? Eddie ignored it. Duty done.

  ‘Does the name Alec Reeves mean anything to you?’ The question was directed at Johnson. The woman wouldn’t have been born when Alec was running the hardware shop in the high street.

  Johnson shook his head. Stout got out the photographs. Reeves as he’d been at the perform
ance of Macbeth. Reeves more recently handing out Duke of Edinburgh award certificates. ‘You don’t recognize him?’

  Johnson stood up quickly. ‘I’ve told you no. I’ve got to get to work.’ He pulled a leather jacket from the back of his chair, felt in the pocket for car keys.

  Running away, Stout thought. What scared him?

  ‘You weren’t one of Alec’s little boys were you, Chris?’

  ‘Jesus, are you crazy?’

  The blasphemy hit Stout, as it always did, like a slap.

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of if you were. Not your fault.’

  ‘I told you. I didn’t know the man.’

  Chris went up to the woman, bent to kiss her on the forehead, stroked her belly, then he stood in front of Stout, challenging him not to let him out. Eddie opened the door for him. He watched for a moment as Johnson slid open the door of the transit, climbed in and drove off. The woman didn’t move or speak. She looked at him from her chair, waiting for him to go.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  They decided to go into Balk Farm early the next morning. Not mob handed. Porteous and Stout would knock on the door, very polite, very civilized. There’d be a car at the end of the track and someone on the hill behind the house with binoculars in case Alec tried to get out on foot. Because, as Eddie said, Reeves knew every inch of that hill.

  The team had all crowded into Porteous’s office to make the final arrangements, and Eddie stayed, even after the rest of them went. So wired up that Porteous knew he wouldn’t sleep. Porteous wanted to get home and felt the nerviness was contagious. He tried to wind up the discussion.

  ‘Then a team to search the house,’ he said. ‘Like we decided. Good people. Tidy and careful. It’s all sorted, Eddie. Nothing left to do.’ Still Stout didn’t take the hint, so he added, ‘Let’s go home. We’ll have an early start.’

  But Stout wouldn’t move until he’d gone through it all again.

  Peter woke before the alarm went off. It was just light, a grey mist in the valley, the first blackbird screaming. No walk to work today. A break from routine. He’d arranged to pick up Eddie from home and knew he’d be awake too, probably already dressed, pacing the floor. Porteous understood his sergeant. He’d been there. Like a reformed smoker he wanted to preach. He wanted to yell: It does you no good. All that stress and adrenalin. It’ll make you crack up. Except it probably wouldn’t make Eddie Stout crack up. He was tough, with a wife who was there when he came in at night, to help him relax and to stroke away the tension.