The Sleeping and the Dead

by Ann Cleeves

  Peter showered, made tea, toasted a piece of wholemeal bread, forced himself to eat it. He was scared. Not of Alec Reeves, who was probably pathetic, not half the monster Eddie had described. But of cocking this up. If he made a mess of it he didn’t think he’d be able to work with Eddie Stout again.

  He was early but Eddie must have been looking out because he was halfway down the drive before Porteous had switched off the engine. He was carrying a foil-wrapped packet, which he threw on to the back seat.

  ‘Bet insisted on making sandwiches. I told her it would all be over before dinner.’

  They met up at the police station and drove in convoy round the reservoir, held up at one point by an ancient tractor. The only other traffic was a post van. They pulled into the lay-by where Stout had turned his car the day before while the team got into place. Stout didn’t mention that. He didn’t mention how close he’d been to going it alone.

  At seven thirty exactly they drove up the track. That was the time they’d decided on. Not too early to cause offence if it did all turn out to be a mistake and Reeves wasn’t there at all. Stout dismissed the possibility, but went along with the theory. These were business people, keen surely. They’d be checking their emails, planning their day. But it was still early enough to catch them on the hop, to emphasize that they were here on serious business.

  ‘This has changed a bit. I don’t think I’d have recognized it.’ Stout was driving. He pulled into a marked parking bay in what had once been the farmyard. A brass sign by the door of a converted barn said ‘Reception’ but they ignored that and went towards the house. Everything was smart, spruce, clean. The garden was landscaped. A conservatory had been added. Porteous took a breath and rang the doorbell.

  The door was opened by a child, a boy of about twelve, half dressed for school, his shirt hanging out, his buttons undone. Porteous hadn’t expected that. There’d been no mention of children.

  ‘Could I talk to your father please?’

  The boy grunted. He still seemed half asleep. He led them through the house to a large kitchen, all new oak and terracotta tiles. There was a smell of coffee and faintly of cinnamon. At a table by a big window sat a couple, the woman in a silk kimono, the man, his hair wet from the shower in a short towelling dressing gown. The table was laid for three but it seemed the third place was for the boy because there was no sign of Reeves. Either the couple hadn’t heard the doorbell or they thought the boy had dealt with it because they didn’t look up. They were discussing work, planning a meeting for later in the day. If Reeves was there, Porteous thought they weren’t aware of what he’d done. They had no sense of danger.

  The boy stood dreamily. His bare feet had made no sound on the floor. Eventually he seemed to remember what he was doing.

  ‘Dad.’ Then they did look round and he nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the visitors before wandering off.

  Paul Lord must have taken them for potential clients. If he was surprised or annoyed that they’d turned up at such an inconvenient time, he didn’t show it. Perhaps it wasn’t unusual. He stood up, held out his hands, a gesture of welcome, but also of apology for the dressing gown, the half-eaten breakfast. He was confident, rather good looking. There was no sign of the spotty schoolboy. His makeover had been as dramatic as that of the farm.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Then he turned to Stout. ‘Don’t I know you? I remember, you were a policeman. That dreadful case when I was a boy. Do you know, you’ve hardly changed.’

  ‘Still am a policeman, sir. Here to ask you a few questions.’

  And still Lord remained courteous and composed. Too courteous? Porteous wondered. Wouldn’t most people be irritated, hostile, if they were interrupted in the middle of breakfast. But perhaps it had become a habit to be pleasant. Perhaps that was why he was so successful. He treated them now with a puzzled good humour.

  He asked to be allowed to dress first and they let both of them go, because even if Reeves was hiding out somewhere in this big house and tried to do a runner the team outside would get him. That might be better even. Save them having to search and it would look better in court if he had been trying to escape.

  ‘Does Phillippa have to be involved in this, Inspector?’

  Phillippa, the wife, had remained silent throughout.

  ‘We do have questions for both of you.’

  And he accepted even that without a fuss.

  While they were waiting in the kitchen the boy came in for breakfast. He shovelled in cereal, then, well trained, stacked the bowl in the dishwasher and returned the milk to the fridge. He showed no curiosity about who they were.

  ‘Do you need a lift to school, lad?’ Stout asked.

  ‘No thank you.’ Very polite, very well brought up. ‘I get the bus from the end of the track.’

  Like Carl Jackson, thirty years before. Doesn’t that haunt Paul Lord? Porteous thought. He was involved in the case even if it was only as a witness. How can he send his son up that lane every morning without a worry?

  They carried out the interview in the conservatory, drinking the best coffee Porteous had tasted for years from chunky, hand-thrown mugs. Stout took the lead. That was what they had decided.

  ‘A bit of a coincidence you living here,’ he said. ‘After you were involved in the Carl Jackson case.’

  ‘Not really involved,’ Lord protested mildly. ‘I gave Alec an alibi. That was all. And not really a coincidence. I’d kept in touch with Alec. When Sarah’s husband died he knew she was wanting to sell. I was looking for bigger premises and he knew that too . . . He put us together. She saved on agents’ fees. We got the place for a good price.’ He shrugged.

  ‘It’s Mr Reeves we’re here about.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’d like to talk to him. He seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘I mean, why do you want to talk to him?’

  Stout paused. ‘It’s in connection with a murder inquiry.’

  ‘The body in the lake? Michael Grey? You’ve got things all wrong. Again. Alec had left town before Michael disappeared. Before he arrived even.’ He kept his voice amused. Still he wasn’t rattled.

  ‘He came back,’ Porteous said quietly. ‘To watch a production of Macbeth. It was special because Michael was the star and Alec knew him very well. We’ll call him Michael shall we, though that wasn’t his real name. Michael had been staying at Redwood, where Mr Reeves was working as a care worker. Were you aware of the connection at the time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you find that strange? You were the same age as Michael. Wouldn’t Mr Reeves have introduced you? So you could help the boy settle into his new school.’

  ‘He might have done I suppose, but he didn’t. It wasn’t necessary. Michael was confident, immediately popular. Alec would have recognized that he didn’t need any help from me. Besides, after the business with Carl, all the gossip at the time, my parents didn’t want me to have anything more to do with Alec. I expect he was trying to save me embarrassment.’

  There was a pause, then Stout turned to Phillippa, changing his tone. ‘Are you a local woman, Mrs Lord? Had you heard about all this?’

  ‘Only what Paul’s told me. We met at university.’ When she’d gone off to dress she’d put on make-up. Her lips were glossy, her complexion flawless. She was dressed in a neat little skirt and a sleeveless top. A jacket was hung carefully on the back of a chair.

  ‘When did you first meet Mr Reeves?’ Stout asked.

  She gave a frown, not because the question worried her but because she wanted them to see how irrelevant all this was. It was eating into the important business of her day. ‘He came to our wedding.’

  ‘Did he?’ Stout raised his eyebrows, a pantomime of surprise.

  ‘Paul doesn’t have many relatives. His side of the church would have been rather thin.’

  ‘And Alec is an old friend,’ Lord broke in. ‘He was very good to me.’

  ‘You’ve kept in touch ever since?�
�

  ‘Yes. Phone calls. Christmas cards. If he visits his sister he calls.’

  ‘Did he talk to you about his work?’

  ‘A little. Not in detail. He wouldn’t consider that ethical. Confidentiality must be very important in social work.’

  ‘Quite.’ Stout deliberately set down his mug. ‘You can tell us now, Mr Lord. After all these years. You were under pressure at the time, we all know that. A boy. But now there’s a chance to put things right . . . Where was Mr Reeves on the afternoon Carl Jackson disappeared?’

  ‘With me. Just as I said.’

  Phillippa looked again at her watch. ‘Look, I’ve got a meeting. I really should go.’

  ‘A few more minutes, Mrs Lord.’ Stout didn’t even look at her. He continued to hold Lord’s stare. ‘When did you last see Mr Reeves?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I can’t remember the date. He phoned the day after the school reunion. He said he was going to be in the area, he’d like to take us out for a meal. We arranged to meet at The Old Rectory the following evening.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Want? Nothing. Our company perhaps. He’s a kind, elderly man. Occasionally he must get lonely.’

  ‘Did he talk about Michael Grey?’

  ‘I think we must have discussed the identity of the body in the lake. It was a matter of interest. Everyone in Cranford was talking about it.’

  ‘Did you introduce the subject, or did he?’

  ‘I did. I remember Michael going away in the middle of exams. We all thought he’d gone back to his father.’

  ‘At the meal at The Old Rectory, did Alec tell you that he knew Michael, that he’d worked with him at Redwood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Odd that, isn’t it? You were gossiping about the body in the lake. Enjoying the drama even. Nothing wrong with that. But Alec didn’t tell you it was through him that the boy had come to town?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Alec was scrupulous about confidentiality.’

  ‘So you did. Did he stay here the night after the meal?’

  ‘No. We offered to put him up, but he’d made other arrangements.’

  ‘What were those?’

  ‘I don’t know. I presumed he’d be staying with his sister.’

  ‘How did he seem that night?’

  For the first time Lord hesitated before answering. ‘He seemed suddenly very old. We wondered if he might be ill. He said not, but it occurred to me that he’d arranged to meet us . . . almost as a way of saying goodbye.’ He looked up, gave a little smile. ‘Probably just my imagination. All that talk of death.’

  There was a pause. Porteous could sense Phillippa’s impatience but still Stout held the stage and she didn’t dare move. When Stout spoke at last he was cheerful, a jolly surrogate uncle who should have been invited to the wedding too.

  ‘You said you got a good price for Balk Farm. You’ve made a lovely place here, a real family home. Why was the price so low? A payment was it, for backing up Alec’s story all that time ago?’

  Lord stood up. At first Porteous thought Stout had succeeded in provoking him into losing control, but he held it together. All the taunting and bullying as a child had held him in good stead.

  ‘I think you’d better take your sergeant away, Inspector, before he says something else you’ll both regret. You’re welcome to search the house if you don’t believe me about Alec. Phillippa and I will be working in the office. We’ve wasted enough time already.’

  The team searched the house but Porteous left them to it. He could tell it would be futile. He had to get Stout back to the police station, find some way to deal with his disappointment. In the car the sergeant sat mute, shaking his head. He didn’t speak until they were in Porteous’s office.

  ‘I played it all wrong. But I don’t know what else I could have done.’

  ‘Perhaps he was telling the truth.’

  Before Stout could answer the phone rang. Porteous listened, said little, replaced the receiver.

  ‘You’ll need those sandwiches of Bet’s after all,’ he said. ‘Reeves’s neighbour contacted the Yorkshire lads. She thinks he came home last night.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Reeves lived in a tidy bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac of similar houses. Porteous parked at the end of the street and they walked down, but still he was aware that they were being watched. Not from Reeves’s place. The curtains there were still closed. But in the other bungalows neighbours were twitching behind the Venetian blinds and the bleached fancy nets.

  ‘The old lady next door said it was very late when he got in. One thirty at least. Though according to the local lad who spoke to her she’s as deaf as a post and he didn’t think a car would wake her.’

  The car, a red Metro, was parked on the drive, pulled right up to the garage door.

  ‘She says it must have been late when he got here or he’d have put the car away. He always kept it in the garage. Security conscious. Head of the neighbourhood watch.’

  ‘A model citizen,’ Stout said sneering.

  They knew there was no way out from the back of the bungalow. A thick leylandii hedge separated the garden from a railway embankment. Occasionally high-speed trains roared past, making conversation impossible. Porteous rang the doorbell. They stood back and waited. Nothing happened. He rang the bell again, then tried the door. It opened.

  They stepped into a wide hall with a door on either side, and a corridor ahead which led, Porteous presumed, to bedrooms and bathroom. There was a pale grey carpet on the floor, a small table with a telephone.

  ‘Mr Reeves?’

  There was no answer. He opened the right-hand door into a kitchen. A yellow roller blind covered the window, but let in enough light to show empty workbenches, a spotless tiled floor. There were no plates or cups draining by the sink and the dishcloth folded over the mixer tap was dry and hard. Porteous looked in the fridge. It had recently been defrosted and was empty.

  ‘He must have gone straight to bed,’ Stout said. He couldn’t stand still. He was fidgeting like a kid. ‘Let’s wake the bastard up.’

  But Porteous shook his head. He went back into the hall and opened the opposite door into the living-room. The bay windows were covered by thick velvet curtains and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. Stout came up behind him impatiently and switched on the light. The room was lit by two lamps on the walls. They had bulbs like imitation candles and heavy fringed shades. The central light was operated by another switch and didn’t come on, but it was a chandelier with similar fittings. It must have been more substantial than it looked, because it supported the weight of Alec Reeves, who hung by a noose of blue nylon rope, twisted around the chain which fixed the chandelier to the ceiling. A kitchen stool, overturned, lay on the floor beneath him.

  Stout was about to go into the room but Porteous pulled him back.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do. It might be a crime scene.’ He wondered why he wasn’t more surprised. Had he been expecting this as soon as he realized the door was open?

  ‘What are you talking about? He knew we were on to him and he topped himself.’ Stout was almost weeping with frustration. This wasn’t the way it should have ended. He still had things he wanted to say to Mr Alec Reeves.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What do you mean, “perhaps”? He came in last night and killed himself.’

  ‘Why didn’t he lock the door?’

  ‘What!’ It came out as a scream.

  ‘Suicide. It’s a private thing. You wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’ Peter thought he was an expert. At the depth of his depression, he’d contemplated suicide in all its forms. Walking into the sea. Taking pills. Hanging. Jumping off a bridge like his dad. One of the things that had stopped him in the end was the possibility of an audience. The terrible embarrassment of being caught in the act.

  Eddie was looking at him as if he were mad. ‘Maybe he just forgot.’

  ‘He wasn’t that sor
t of man. He was careful. He had a routine. And the key was in the lock on the inside of the door. He used it to get into the house, took it out and put it in on the inside. A deliberate act. Why didn’t he turn it then?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t care.’

  ‘Oh, I think he cared.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That I think he was murdered.’ He spoke quietly, apologetically. For thirty years Eddie had thought of this man as a monster, the human form of the devil he talked about in pulpits on Sundays. It was like expecting him to accept he’d got all the other Sunday stuff wrong too.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t think he killed Theo and Melanie. I don’t know about Carl. Perhaps not even him. I think we got it wrong.’

  ‘Not “we”!’ Eddie bellowed. A child having a tantrum. Wanting to be important, even if it meant taking the blame. ‘If anyone got it wrong it was me.’

  ‘We need the scene-of-crime team.’

  ‘Why was he murdered if he wasn’t involved?’

  ‘To make us think he was. If the house had a Yale lock we’d have been taken in by it. The murderer would have been able to pull the door to behind him and we’d never have known any different. The pathologist should throw some light.’ He paused, turned to Stout. ‘Look, I might be wrong. I’m just saying how I see it.’

  ‘No,’ Stout said. ‘I don’t think you’re wrong.’ Then, muttering, just loud enough for Peter to hear. ‘I don’t think you’re ever wrong.’

  Porteous left him waiting for the local team and went to see the old lady who’d reported Reeves’s return. She took a while to answer the door. She used a Zimmer frame and she was a big woman. Walking was an effort. But she’d moved as quickly as she could, frightened that he’d go without giving her the low down.