Hidden Depths

Chapter Thirty-Three

Vera caught up with Kath Armstrong at the hospital. Her shift had just started and she was in a meeting with the day staff. Vera waited by the nurses’ station and heard muttered voices coming from the sister’s office, an occasional stifled laugh. Visiting was over and the ward was peaceful. The women in the side rooms were plugged into their televisions or reading. There was a little desultory chat. Further down the corridor the tea trolley was being wheeled away. On the window sill funereal bunches of flowers drooped in the heat. Vera had never been in hospital and knew she’d hate it. Not the illness or the pain. Not even the dreadful food and going without alcohol. But giving up control. Being at the mercy of people who knew more about her body than she did.

The meeting broke up and Kath came out. She was still chatting to a colleague, didn’t notice Vera sitting in the orange chairs where patients waited to be discharged. ‘I’d like a word,’ Vera said. ‘Sorry to bother you here, but something’s come up.’

‘Nothing’s wrong, is it?’ A moment of panic. Vera knew she was thinking about her little girl.

‘No, nothing like that. Is there anywhere we can talk?’

Kath turned away to whisper to a motherly middle-aged woman in a sister’s uniform. ‘Maggie says we can use her office.’

They sat where the nurses had been huddled in their meeting. There was a photo on the desk of two small boys leaning against a farm gate next to a bearded man in specs. The ward sister’s husband and kids. A child’s drawing was pinned to the wall. More happy families.

‘What’s this about? Have you found out who killed Luke?’

Vera ignored the question. ‘You didn’t tell us you knew Lily Marsh.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘She wasn’t dead when I spoke to you, pet. You’ll realize it’s just a bit important. Two murders within a week and you knew both victims.’

‘I didn’t know her well. I mean, I just thought: What a weird coincidence. I couldn’t contribute anything to your enquiry.’

She seemed genuinely puzzled. Vera wondered if she spent too much of her life investigating crimes, making connections which were insignificant, seeing motives which didn’t exist. A sort of strange paranoia, which didn’t allow for coincidence at all.

‘How did you know her?’

‘We grew up together. I mean, I’m quite a bit older than her, but we lived in the same village. My mam was good friends with Phyllis Marsh. You know how it is in a place like that. They’d been to school together, they met up at the church, the WI. Lily and I were both only children. I ended up looking after her when we were younger. We were close in a way. She loved coming to visit. You know what children are like with older kids. Especially girls. And maybe I’ve always had this maternal thing. We lost touch when I moved into town and started working here.’

‘But you met up again more recently.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘She came into the hospital as an outpatient. She thought she was pregnant. She’d missed a couple of periods, but her home pregnancy test had come up negative. She wanted to check. I bumped into her in the lift when she was on her way out.’

‘Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d see your GP for?’

‘She’d have had to wait for an appointment. For some reason she was desperate to know.’

‘She wasn’t pregnant,’ Vera said. It was a statement not a question. The post-mortem had been clear about that. She remembered the pathologist’s sadness that Lily would never be a mother, would never carry a child.

‘No. And I could tell she was upset. It was the end of my shift and I took her for a coffee. The mothering thing again. I should learn to leave well alone.’

‘She wanted a baby?’

‘Desperately. I said all the usual things. She was young. It would happen sometime. It would be better anyway when she’d completed the PGCE. I could tell that none of it was having any effect.’

‘Did she tell you who would have been the father?’

‘Not in any detail. She said he was an older man. That was all.’

‘Was that the only time you saw her?’

‘No. I was worried about her. I knew she’d had a bit of a breakdown when she was in the sixth form. The stress of exams. Phyllis expected so much from her. Oxford, the glittering career. She didn’t have much of a marriage and was living through Lily. Nobody would have been able to stand the strain. I asked Lily if she was seeing a doctor. She lost her temper, said she wasn’t ill, everything was fine. I gave her my mobile number, told her to give me a ring if she wanted to talk.’

‘And she did.’

‘Oh yes.’ Kath took a breath. ‘To be honest she became a bit of a nuisance. She’d often be waiting in the car park when I finished work. After a night shift all you want is to get home, have a long bath and a few hours’ sleep. And I didn’t really think I could do any good. She needed psychiatric help. Then one day, a Saturday afternoon, she turned up at the house. We were having a day at home, one of those Saturday afternoons when you just want to chill. Rebecca was in the garden playing and Geoff was watching sport on the television. Luke was staying and he was glued to the box too. I was in the kitchen, keeping an eye on Rebecca through the window. And suddenly Lily was there, in the garden. She started chatting to Rebecca, then lifted her onto the swing and started to push. By the time I got out, she had Rebecca in her arms.’ She paused. ‘I’m not quite sure what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.’

‘You think she might have gone off with her?’

‘I don’t know. I’m probably overreacting. She was training to be a teacher, for goodness’ sake. Why would she do something like that? But I made it clear that I didn’t want her coming to the house. I said Geoff wouldn’t like it. Luke wandered out into the garden and was obviously a bit anxious when he saw I was upset. She went without a fuss, said she was sorry she’d turned up when it was obviously not convenient. The next time she waited for me outside work I made an excuse not to spend time with her. I felt mean, but she wasn’t my responsibility. There was nothing I could do. I told her again she needed medical help, said I’d sort it out for her if she wanted. A veiled threat, I suppose. I never saw her again. When I heard she was dead, I suppose my first feeling was relief: Well, at least she won’t come bothering us again. Isn’t that dreadful?’

‘Was she upset when you threatened to arrange a psychiatrist to see her?’

Kath paused. ‘Not so much upset as angry,’ she said. ‘She didn’t say anything but she glared at me, then turned away without a word. It was horrible. I felt she hated me. I was tempted to go after her, just to make things right between us, but I didn’t. I couldn’t face the idea of her turning up at the house again.’

‘You never heard from her after that?’

‘No.’ Kath looked at her watch. ‘Look, I should go. There’s a patient coming up from casualty. I need to admit her.’

‘She didn’t say anything which made you worry for her safety? She didn’t seem afraid of anyone? The man she’d been seeing?’

‘Nothing like that. She said he loved her. I wondered if that was true. Perhaps he’d rejected her and that was why she seemed so upset. If I had any worry at all, it was that she might harm herself.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Perhaps.’ Kath stood up and led the way out of the office. ‘Look, I should probably have been kinder, made more effort to see she was OK. But my family came first.’

Vera drove home, pleased to be leaving the city and the investigation behind. Turning west into the hills she was almost blinded by the setting sun. When she arrived at the old station master’s house, she sat for a moment in the car, too tired even to go in. Then she roused herself, got out of her car, unlocked the door. She stepped over the pile of mail on the floor, took a can of beer from the fridge and carried it outside. Even now, in the dusk, it was still warm. She sat on the white seat, where once passengers had waited for the small local train, and looked out over the valley. Everything was in shadow and drained of colour. Here, she thought, it should be possible to rest.

But her mind couldn’t leave the investigation behind. She felt as feverish and obsessive as Lily had been, turning over details, chasing connections. If I could write it down, she thought, perhaps I could let it go. But she was too exhausted to get up to fetch paper and pen. And there was something creative in this concentration, in being forced to keep all the details clear in her mind at once. It came to her suddenly that this was what it must be like to be a writer of fiction. All the characters and stories and ideas spinning around her head. How could you bring some order to them? Make sense of them, give them shape.

If I was writing a novel, she thought, Lily would be the murderer. It would be one of those psychological thrillers, where part of the action is seen from the murderer’s point of view, written in a different font or the present tense. Vera borrowed books like that from the library sometimes, enjoyed throwing them across the room when they got the details of police procedure wrong. So, Lily’s the central character. She’s been screwed up from childhood. A repressed mother and a depressed father. An illness that’s been covered up by her mother, hidden away, never diagnosed. She’s become a loner. A beautiful, obsessed loner. The reader will see her fall in love with an older man. Lily sees him as her salvation, even becomes happy for a while. Then he rejects her, because she’s becoming too demanding, a nuisance, and she gets ill again. Imagines a pregnancy. And everywhere she goes there are happy families. Kath, Geoff and Rebecca. And Luke. Within the fiction she might kill the boy out of anger. A twisted revenge. Not realizing that he’d had a lot to put up with too.

Without being aware of it, Vera had wandered into the house, thrown the empty beer can into the box for recycling, opened the kitchen window to let in some air. She put the last two pieces of bread under the grill, sliced cheese to go on top, looked at the unopened bottle of white wine in the fridge and resisted the temptation. Took another can of beer instead.

All the time thinking, teasing out the different strands of the plot. Lily hadn’t been a murderer, she’d been a victim. So how did that work out? How did that make sense?

She’d been a nuisance to Peter Calvert. He’d been happy to have a beautiful girlfriend, sex on tap, no strings attached. That would have done his ageing male ego no harm at all. Then she’d started to make demands, intruded into his respectable life of university big cheese and happy family man. No way was their separation mutual. Lily’s conversation with Kath had made that clear. There couldn’t be another older man in Lily’s life.

Had Calvert killed her? Vera couldn’t see it. He was too much of a coward, had too much to lose. His wife had indulged him in everything else in his life, why not in this too? Vera could imagine the conversation in the elegant living room at Fox Mill, the windows open to let in the breeze from the sea, the view to the lighthouse. I’m so sorry, darling. I don’t know what came over me. You will forgive me. And of course she would because she had as much to lose as he had. Anyway, where did Luke Armstrong fit into that scenario?

If Lily had been killed first it might have worked. There was a motive for Lily’s death. Luke could have been an involuntary witness. But this way round it made no sense at all.

Vera sat at the kitchen table and ate her cheese on toast. She switched on the light, so the clutter on the worktops, the stains on the floor near the bin, were all illuminated. Her thoughts turned to the four men who’d been there when Lily’s body had been found. All different. But all screwed up when it came to women. Clive, so dominated by his mother that it made Vera want to weep. It was too close to home. She’d spent all her life in Hector’s shadow, could get maudlin, if she let herself, about the missed opportunities when it came to men. Gary, who’d persuaded himself that Julie was the answer to all his prayers. But still pining for some slender lass with big eyes and no tits. Samuel, whose wife had committed suicide. And Peter, who pretended to have a perfect marriage, but had come under Lily Marsh’s spell. It came to her suddenly that there was one logical suspect. But until she knew why Lily and Luke had been killed, that insight was no more than a guess. It couldn’t influence the way she moved the enquiry on.

She drank more beer, knowing it was a mistake and she’d end up having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Unsteadily she went upstairs to bed, still no nearer to any sort of conclusion. She took the collection of short stories by Samuel Parr from her bag and started to read.