by Ann Cleeves
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘How did you know?’ Sally had demanded. ‘How did you know that Bernard and Claire were having an affair?’
‘It was something Bernard’s mother said. I suppose we should have realized before. Considered it at least.’ He saw it as a failure of his, this refusal to consider the obvious. It was another sort of arrogance.
‘It really changes things, doesn’t it? I mean if they were working together we’ve got motive and opportunity.’
‘I suppose we have.’
Although this too was obvious he resisted the enthusiasm. He wasn’t ready yet to make an arrest. She was like a hypomanic kid on the eve of her own birthday party. She couldn’t keep still. She bounced around the office on the balls of her feet and came to rest at last with her bum on the window sill.
‘When you first suggested it I couldn’t believe it,’ she said. ‘ I mean he’s old enough to be her father. What a creep!’
I suppose he is old enough to be Claire’s father, Ramsay thought. Prue’s friends who were into self-enlightenment and therapy would make a lot of that. It was plausible enough. They’d say that Claire, who had recently lost her father, was looking for a substitute. If the couple ever came to trial there would be a probation officer’s report before sentence and he could predict almost word for word what would be said about Claire’s bereavement. But he thought something quite different was going on in the relationship. It wasn’t a father Claire was looking for but a child. Someone to take care of. And Bernard Howe had never grown up.
‘Surely we’ve got enough to bring them in for questioning,’ Sally said. She was as macho as Hunter when the mood took her. She’d persuaded the girl to talk. Now she wanted a bit of glory and a result.
‘Probably.’ Ramsay spoke calmly.
‘We’ll go for it, then, shall we?’
‘No,’ Ramsay replied. ‘Not yet. We’ll talk to them at home. Separately if we can. That shouldn’t be a problem. They’re not sophisticated enough to put up any resistance.’
‘But why not here? Formal questions. In the Interview Room with the tape running. They’ll be blaming each other within minutes.’
‘Because the press will get to know.’ He was annoyed by her callousness, disappointed in her. He’d supposed that because she was a woman she’d look at things differently. And didn’t that make him every bit as much of a bigot as Hunter? He tried to contain his irritation.
‘You know as well as I do that if we say a witness is helping the police with their inquiries the world assumes he’s guilty. There’s the girl to think of. And what if they’re innocent? It’s easy enough for us. We just move on to another case. But they’ll have to put together some sort of life and that’s not easy when the neighbours are whispering murder.’
Sally turned away without saying anything. Sometimes she thought Hunter was right. Despite his reputation Ramsay was getting old and soft. He was perceptive enough but he didn’t have the guts to see a thing through.
‘Where’s Gordon?’ Ramsay asked.
‘In the canteen.’ Sulking, she thought. Because I got the girl to tell me about Bernard and Claire.
‘I want him in on this too.’
She was going to ask why but managed to bite her tongue just in time.
When they got to Cotter’s Row only Marilyn was in. They heard her clatter down the stairs to come to the door. She’d changed from her uniform into washed-out jeans and a sweater. When she turned to let them in Ramsay saw the label on the jeans pocket. It wasn’t one that any of her friends would have recognized. Her mum had probably bought them for £5.99 from a stall on Blyth market. Prue’s daughter wouldn’t have been seen dead in them.
‘Claire’s baby-sitting for Kim Houghton,’ Marilyn said. ‘ Dad’s gone with her.’ Then, speaking directly to Sally, ‘I suppose they wanted a bit of privacy.’
‘When do you expect them back?’
She shrugged.
‘Not till late. They said not to wait up.’
‘Bring them back here now, Gordon.’ Ramsay spoke quietly but they could tell he wasn’t going to be pissed about. ‘Find out where Kim Houghton is and get her home. If necessary Sally can baby-sit until she gets back.’
As soon as he’d spoken he knew Sally wouldn’t like it. She hadn’t joined the force to be a childminder.
‘That is all right, Sally?’ With hardly a trace of sarcasm.
‘Of course,’ she said huffily. She started away from the door then turned back hopefully. ‘Unless Marilyn wants to do it. It might be less awkward for her to be out of the house.’
‘No.’ For some reason he couldn’t even quite explain to himself why he wanted Marilyn there. Perhaps to remind Bernard and Claire of their responsibility. Or to represent Kath Howe. Because no one else had liked her very much and that wasn’t a good enough reason to let a killer get away.
It took half an hour to fetch Kim Houghton from the club. Sally decided that as Kim was just down the road she wouldn’t be needed as sitter. Ramsay could wait that long. In number two Ramsay waited downstairs alone. Marilyn offered him tea. When he declined she went back upstairs to her room. To someone without experience of teenagers that might have seemed strange or rude, but Prue’s daughter ignored all adult visitors to the house as a matter of course. A matter even of honour.
He was glad of the silence and the opportunity for thought. He went into the living room intending to rearrange the furniture to his liking before the interview and he was struck by the change in the place. When he had looked in on his first visit to the house it had been cluttered, uninviting, dirty. It still looked as if it was never used, but much of the junk had been taken away and it was spotless. There was a smell of furniture polish. He thought the carpet had been cleaned. He supposed Claire had been spring cleaning. Her way of making a fresh start? Or something more sinister?
Hunter came in.
‘They’re on their way. Kim and her fancy man were just down at the club.’
‘This house was searched, wasn’t it?’ They had been looking for letters, an address book, some indication that Mrs Howe knew her murderer.
‘Yeah. The day after the body was found. You suggested it and Mr Howe gave his permission.’
‘But properly searched?’
‘Well, we didn’t pull up the floorboards. I mean the chap had just lost his wife. Be sensitive, you said.’
Because there had been no real suspicion then that Mrs Howe had been killed in the house. And if anything had been hidden after the murder it would be long gone now. Still, Ramsay thought, it wouldn’t hurt to get a team in.
He and Hunter interviewed Bernard first. They took him into the front room.
‘By man, it’s like an ice box in here.’ Hunter shivered to make his point. Bernard switched on an electric fire, but it seemed to have little effect on the temperature.
Ramsay, remembering what Marilyn had told Sally about thin walls, had suggested that the women might like to watch television while they waited. The noise from the back room was distracting but at least the interview would not be overheard.
Bernard was red faced, blustering, defensive. There were three easy chairs in the room, all covered with the nylon stretch covers which are advertised in mail-order catalogues. Ramsay motioned him to sit down.
‘I don’t know what this is all about,’ Bernard said. ‘Really, it’s not on.’
‘Come on, man.’ Hunter was chummy. He perched on the arm of Bernard’s chair. ‘You can’t expect to keep things quiet when you sneak off for a night together. What do you think Kim made of the two of you turning up on her doorstep? She’ll not have thought you were there to play Scrabble.’
Bernard blushed a deeper crimson, said nothing.
‘Or didn’t you turn up together? Is that how you worked it? Claire went first, then you trotted on down when the coast was clear?’
There was no answer. Hunter’s voice hardened.
‘Is that how you worked it?’
‘Well, all this secrecy has really landed you in the shit.’ Hunter was all smiles again. ‘You do see, Bernard, that the only way to get out of it is to answer all our questions? If you lie to us again we’ll think you’ve got something else to hide. Beside your little affair, I mean.’ He got up from the arm of the chair, looked down on his victim. ‘You do see that, Bernard, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Despite the cold he had begun to sweat. ‘But we didn’t really lie.’ He was panicking and the words came out as a babble. ‘Not about anything important. Not about Kath’s murder. If you’d asked us we’d have told you.’
‘What would you have told us?’
‘Well, that Claire and I had become …’ He paused. ‘… friendly.’
Hunter walked away in apparent disgust. He stood with his back to the fire, his arms folded, watching.
‘Tell me,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘When did you and Claire start to become “friendly”?’
Bernard looked at him suspiciously. He, too, had changed from his work clothes. He was wearing olive green cords, worn thin at the knees and a Marks & Spencer’s patterned sweater in lilac and pink. A Christmas present, Ramsay supposed, from his mother. Claire would have had more taste and Kath would have considered it an extravagance.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was it soon after Claire came to stay with you?’
‘She wasn’t under age!’ The panic had returned. ‘ She was seventeen.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that you might be abusing a position of trust?’ Ramsay asked.
Of course it didn’t, he thought. That’s what the Minister’s wife said when you wandered off into the night with the little boy. Like the spoilt child you are you did just what you felt like. You didn’t consider the consequences at all.
‘Abuse never came into it,’ Bernard said. ‘ You ask Claire. We were happy together. That didn’t seem wrong.’
‘I don’t suppose that’s how Kath saw it.’
‘No,’ Bernard muttered. ‘ Kath didn’t understand. Not at first, anyway.’
‘How did she find out?’
‘It was September. Claire hadn’t started working for the Coulthards. She’d finished at the college but she couldn’t find a job so she was home a lot. My office works flexitime. If I do enough overtime I can have the occasional half-day off. We knew Kath was going to be out that afternoon. She was doing a course at the Open Door Learning Centre. Word processing. She thought she’d be able to help Marilyn with her school work. It was every Wednesday. But the tutor was ill so she came back early.’
‘She didn’t come home because she suspected you were being unfaithful?’
Bernard winced at the word, shook his head. ‘ No, she didn’t suspect anything. That might have been easier. It was the shock. That’s what floored her.’ He stared past Hunter. ‘You should have seen her face.’
‘What happened?’
‘She ran out into the street. It was getting dark. I heard a screech of brakes. Some fool driving too quickly up Cotter’s Row. I thought she’d killed herself. But she was only frightened.’
‘You went after her?’
‘Of course. I was worried. We both were.’
‘Were you?’ Ramsay’s voice remained polite but faintly sceptical.
‘Yes! We didn’t want to hurt her. That’s the last thing we would have wanted. That’s why we’d kept our friendship secret.’
‘Not because you were afraid Kath would want it to stop? That she’d cause a scene?’
‘Not exactly.’ He paused. ‘ When we’d made sure she hadn’t been run over we thought it would be better to give her some time alone. That was what she wanted. I was booked to do a magic show. I took Claire with me. I thought by the time I got back Kath would have calmed down.’
And none of you considered Marilyn, Ramsay thought, coming home and finding no one here.
‘Had she calmed down?’
‘In a way. It was horrible. She cried. I’d never seen her cry before. She wasn’t angry. She blamed herself. When we got in Marilyn was in bed and Kath was sitting in her chair in the kitchen with tears running down her cheeks. I’d have done anything to make her stop.’
‘So you and Claire promised to break off your relationship?’
‘No!’ He seemed astounded by the notion. ‘We couldn’t do that. We love each other.’
‘I don’t quite understand, then, what happened.’
‘When we’d had time to think about it we realized that nothing need happen. That things could go on just as before.’
That’s not how Marilyn tells it, Ramsay thought. She told Sal that Claire and Bernard stopped being ‘ friendly’ when her mother found out. Was she deluding herself? Or is Bernard lying again?
Bernard was continuing. ‘ Kath didn’t want to leave. We were quite happy for her to stay. If we were discreet there shouldn’t be any upset or disruption.’
Hunter couldn’t contain himself. ‘And she was ready to go along with that? To share your bed at night knowing you were screwing her little sister on your afternoons off.’
Bernard seemed horrified. He looked to Ramsay for support. No one had ever spoken to him like that before. Ramsay said nothing.
‘We worked things out in a civilized way,’ he said, very much on his dignity.
‘Wasn’t your wife jealous?’ Hunter demanded. When he went out with a lass he expected undivided attention. Any flirting or funny business and she’d be out on her ear.
There was a brief silence.
‘If she was, she was too proud to show it,’ Bernard said. ‘She was a little withdrawn for a while, but things soon settled back to normal. Kath was frightened of being on her own. That’s why she agreed to the arrangement.’ Deliberately ignoring Hunter he sat up straight and turned to Ramsay. ‘And that, Inspector Ramsay, is why I had no need to murder her.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Claire sat very straight with her hands in her lap and her ankles crossed. Her dark hair was pulled away from her face. She wore no make-up. She hadn’t been given the opportunity to talk to Bernard about his interview but she didn’t seem curious. She waited for the questions like an earnest schoolgirl before an oral language exam.
Hunter had been sent into the back room to watch television with Bernard. It was Sally’s turn to sit in on the conversation. But it was Ramsay’s show. He was the examiner.
‘Let me take you back to the day your sister was killed,’ he said.
She said nothing. If there was any reaction it was a faint amusement.
‘You came home for lunch?’
‘Yes.’
‘And to see Mr Howe?’
She raised her thick, dark eyebrows. ‘You know about Bernard and me,’ she said. ‘I suppose Marilyn told you. I thought she’d guessed more than she was letting on but Bernard couldn’t see it. It’s probably for the best. There was no need to drag us away from Kim’s, though. We’d have told you if you’d asked.’
‘That’s why you came home that lunchtime? You knew Marilyn would be out?
She nodded.
‘You must have thought Mrs Howe would be out too. That was part of the deal, I presume, that you’d wait until you had the house to yourselves before …’
‘Making love?’ she finished impassively. ‘Yes. There was no formal arrangement. No rules. But it wouldn’t have been kind, would it, to do that while Kath was in the house?’
‘Was it kind to have an affair with her husband?’
She didn’t answer but he didn’t think that the question had disturbed her. He left it and moved on.
‘What made you think Kath would be away from home that lunchtime?’
‘I thought she’d planned to go into Otterbridge with Marilyn on the bus.’
‘She told you that?’
For the first time Claire seemed unsure of herself. ‘ I don’t remember. I suppose she must have done. Otherwise I’d have stayed a
t the Coastguard House for lunch.’
They stared at each other, then Ramsay asked again, more slowly.
‘Well, was it kind to have an affair with your sister’s husband?’
She put one elbow on her knees and leant forward, eager to make him understand.
‘Kath was a strange woman, Inspector. She didn’t feel emotion. I don’t think she was upset even when our mother died…’
‘You were too young to remember that, surely?’
‘I remember that I was upset. And that Kath was never around to comfort me. There were no cuddles at bedtime. I don’t think she ever read me a story. As soon as she could she left to marry Bernard.’ She paused. ‘I don’t blame her. I don’t think she was capable of emotion.’
‘She cried when she found out about you and Bernard.’
‘Yes,’ Claire agreed. ‘But that was because her pride was hurt. She never loved Bernard. Not truly. Not like me.’
The self-justification, Ramsay thought, of mistresses everywhere.
‘Did she love Marilyn?’ he asked. ‘ I presume she cuddled Marilyn and read her bedtime stories?’
‘Oh yes,’ her voice remained light and cool but somewhere under the amusement he thought he detected a note of jealousy. ‘Kath surprised them all when the baby was born. For the first time in her life there was something she cared for. She wasn’t much good at the practical side. So clumsy apparently that they thought she might drop the baby. But there was plenty of affection. Perhaps too much.’ She stared up into Ramsay’s face. ‘It’s not the same, though, as love between adults.’
‘Is that really what you and Bernard have?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When the relationship started you were seventeen. Only just an adult.’
‘Age has never mattered to us.’ She paused. ‘Bernie didn’t corrupt me if that’s what you’re saying.’
‘No. I’m sure he didn’t.’
From the room next door came a swelling soprano singing the backing to a deodorant advertisement.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Ramsay said, ‘is why Kath didn’t ask you to leave. You claim there was no great bond between you. And it’s not as if you would have been homeless. You were just about to start work for the Coulthards. It’s normal, isn’t it, for nannies to live in? They would have had the space to put you up.’