Telling Tales

Chapter Twenty

The eczema on Vera Stanhope’s legs distracted her. Her limbs felt alive, as if small burrowing animals had penetrated the surface, were living off the fat and the blood. She imagined she could sense the snuffling and digging. It was always the same when she wore trousers. She longed to let the air to the skin, but there wasn’t much she could do about that now. It wouldn’t be seemly for a senior investigating officer to drop her pants in front of the hoopla of a crime scene. Whatever would the pathologist, the examiners in their white paper suits and the local detectives make of it? If she was to be the senior investigating officer, which had still to be established.

Her doctor had said that stress made her skin condition worse, but it wasn’t stress she was experiencing now. It was exhilaration and guilt. She didn’t believe police officers who denied being excited by murder. Who would fail to be turned on by the drama, the costume and the show? Why else had they joined the service? It was different for the relatives, of course, and that was where the guilt came in. She had a responsibility. She’d been playing this slowly, nosing around like the mythical creatures under her skin, feeling her way into the complexities of the situation, picking up on hostilities and lies. She worried that if she’d adopted a more orthodox approach, this other death might not have occurred.

Aye, and you’d still be in the dark, pet. If you’d had them into the station, taken them through their original statements, word for word, you’d be none the wiser than the day you arrived. This way at least you understand the people. You have a feeling for what went on.

She’d never been lacking in confidence and usually didn’t see the point of regret.

They’d rigged up spotlights and a tent over the ditch. There was the rumble of a generator, four-wheel-drive vehicles reversing at the bottom of the narrow lane, earnest conversation. She thought there was nothing to be gained here now. She’d been liaising on the Mantel case with a local DI called Paul Holness. He was a middle-aged man, bluff and cheerful, and he’d joined the force from Lancashire since Abigail’s murder. Ambitious in theory, he was too idle on the ground to be any threat. No way would he want to be Senior Investigating Officer. Too much responsibility in this particular case. Too much shit flying around. He was talking to the pathologist in the gateway to the Old Chapel. She made her way to join them.

“Definitely murder,” Holness said. “You can’t see with him lying on his back, but his head’s bashed in.”

Any sign of the murder weapon?”

“Not yet, but they’ve not had a chance for a proper search. We’re organizing that now.” He stamped his feet and wrapped his arms across his chest. He was wearing sheepskin gloves but he still seemed to be feeling the cold. Vera thought they were a soft lot, these

Yorkies. “What was the mother doing out here anyway?” he asked. “Has anyone said?”

“She was feeling the cold and came to get an extra jacket from the car, according to the husband.” She hadn’t been able to get any sense out of Mary. “Any idea of the time of death? I mean could he have been here for hours, only nobody noticed him on their way in?”

Holness shook his head. “You know pathologists. They never like to commit themselves. But highly unlikely, she said. She thinks he was dead for less than an hour when Mrs. Winter found him.”

“Can you take over here?” Vera asked. “I want to talk to the witnesses before they have time to embroider. You know what it’s like. Everyone wants a consistent story and they fill in the gaps, without realizing what they’re about.” She saw with some satisfaction that she’d lost him. “I’ll be at Springhead House if anyone needs me.” It wasn’t a bad thing to stamp her authority, she thought. Make sure everyone realized she saw this death as part of the Mantel case. That she was still in charge.

She’d arranged for someone to take the Winters home. The woman wouldn’t stop sobbing and the noise had got to them all. Robert had wanted to take his own car.

“This is a crime scene,” she’d said. “There could be a trace, you know, someone knocking against your vehicle. We have to check.”

He’d accepted that and gone quietly enough in the end.

Above her the sky was still clear, but pools of mist had collected over the ditches and in dips in the fields.

The track to Springhead House was pitted and her tyres crunched through the frozen puddles. The people inside must have heard the engine, but they didn’t move when she went in. A uniformed police woman opened the door and showed her into the kitchen where they were all sitting, facing towards a big brown teapot on a tray, not speaking. Robert Winter sat at the head of the table with his wife slumped beside him. James clasped a mug of tea between both hands. Emma was holding a sleeping child on her knee.

Vera nodded gently towards the baby. “You collected the bairn, then?”

It had been Emma’s main concern when Vera had asked them all to leave the lane and wait for her. Robert had wanted them back at Springhead. Mary was hysterical, he said. She needed to be in her own home. Emma had been worried about Matthew and had insisted on going to the Captain’s House first. Vera had been surprised by that. The woman’s brother had been killed and her only response had been a calm insistence that they go back to Elvet to collect her child. But then Vera couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be a mother and anyway people expressed their grief in different ways.

Vera hadn’t expected Mary still to be with them. That grief had been raw and obvious, especially shocking because the woman seemed so reserved. Later Vera would tell her sergeant that it was like a vicar’s wife getting up on the church hall stage and doing a striptease. It made you uncomfortable. She had told the policewoman, detailed to stay with the family, to get a doctor, had imagined Christopher’s mother would be in bed, sedated.

Though they all sat wrapped up in thick sweaters, the kitchen was warmer than it had been outside. The sudden increase in temperature set off Vera’s eczema again. She resisted the urge to scratch the back of her knees and joined them at the table.

“Tea, ma’am? It’s not long been made.”

The constable was hovering. Vera waved her away impatiently. The others sat, looking at Vera with fixed, dazed expressions, waiting for her to speak. Despite herself, Vera savoured the moment. She’d always liked an audience.

“We believe that Christopher was murdered,” she said carefully. She knew they’d find it hard to take in the facts. It was a kindness to be straight with them. “He has a wound to his skull.”

“Could he have slipped?” James asked. “The road was very icy.”

“He could have slipped and knocked his head on the road, perhaps. But that wouldn’t explain his lying in the ditch. There was nothing there which could have caused that sort of injury. I’m sorry.”

Mary gave a deep intake of breath which was released as a sob.

“Are you ready for this?” Vera asked. “I can speak to you tomorrow, if you’d prefer. Should we call a doctor?”

The last question was directed towards Robert but before he could answer Mary said sharply, “No. No doctor.”

“It would help me to know what Christopher might have been doing at Mr. Mantel’s house.”

“He could have been there to look for us.” Vera thought Emma spoke reluctantly, but perhaps she was just being quiet, worried about waking the baby.

“Of course. That must be it!” Mary seemed feverish. Her eyes were bright and there was a flush to her face. “He came to Mantel’s to find us. There were posters all over the village about the open evening for the lifeboat. I told you, Robert! I told you he wouldn’t go back to the university without coming to see us.”

“Christopher was a student?”

“He held a postgraduate research position at Aberdeen,” Robert said. There was a pause. “He was an extremely gifted scientist. A zoologist.” He looked at Vera apologetically as if he’d realized that this wasn’t the moment for parental boasting.

“Was there any special reason for the visit? Was it planned?”

“No,” Emma said. “But nothing much he did was planned. Except his work. He was always completely wrapped up in that.”

“Had he warned Mr. and Mrs. Winter of his visit?”

“No,” Robert said. “We didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t know he was in Elvet until Emma phoned me at work at lunchtime.”

“You work as a probation officer, Mr. Winter?”

“That’s right.”

“You worked with Jeanie Long?”

“I prepared the home circumstance report for the parole board. That was all.”

i Vera made no comment. There was a moment of silence, which Emma filled. “I phoned Mum and Dad here as soon as I realized Chris had gone, but by then they’d both already left. I didn’t like to bother them until lunchtime. I didn’t see him this morning, you see. He’d gone by the time I got up.”

An early riser, was he?”

“Not usually, no. I was surprised, a bit worried, I suppose.”

“Worried? Why was that? It seems a bit strange to be worried about a grown man.” There was a pause. “How did he seem last night?”

Emma and James looked at each other. Vera suspected an unspoken request from Emma, which James ignored.

“He was behaving oddly,” James said. “He was drunk but there was more to it than that. He’d always come across as intense about his work, pretty self-obsessed, but last night he seemed completely absorbed by some problem of his own. I wondered if he was having a sort of minor breakdown. It sounds callous but I was too tired to deal with it and I was still on call. In the end I left Em to cope with him. I don’t know if she got any sense out of him.”

“Did you, Emma?” Robert asked. He had been sitting, quite calmly, following the conversation. Vera couldn’t make him out. His son had been murdered but she had no sense that he was grieving. There was a terrible self-control. Perhaps it had something to do with his faith. Dan Greenwood had told her Winter was an evangelical. She’d always thought they were the showy bunch who waved their hands in the air, though there’d been no sign of that at the church service she’d attended. Did he think it would be wrong to grieve for a son who was now with his maker? Is that why he sat, rigid and frozen, so only his eye’s moved?

“We talked,” Emma said at last. “Like James has told you, he was very drunk. He didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Vera nodded sympathetically, but there was the flash of excitement, which was why she’d come into this job, what it was really about. You’re lying, pet. You know more than you’re saying. Why’s that then? What did your brother tell you? Skeletons in his cupboard, maybe. Are you trying to protect your mum and dad? Or is something more sinister going on here?

“How old would Christopher have been when Abigail Mantel died?” she asked.

“Fourteen,” Emma said. “He was a year younger than me.”

“Did he know her?”

“He’d seen her around with me. And at school.”

“Go back to that Sunday, the day you found her body. Was Christopher at home that day?”

“He came to church with us,” Robert said. “Then we all had lunch. He was still here when Emma went out. It wasn’t the weather for being outdoors.”

“The original investigating team would have spoken to him?”

“I can’t remember.” Robert frowned. “They were here, of course, that afternoon, talking to Emma. I presume they interviewed Christopher but I can’t remember it.”

“There’ll be a record, at any rate,” Vera said, though she wasn’t convinced. There were more gaps in the Mantel file than a trawl net drying at North Shields Fish Quay. And the smell was much the same too. “But if he was in all day he couldn’t have seen anything which would have been a threat to the murderer. You see the way my mind’s working?”

“I’ve said he was a quiet boy, but he wasn’t lacking in confidence,” Robert said impatiently. “If he’d seen something suspicious he’d have said so at the time.”

“You know, I don’t think that’s necessarily true.” Vera sat with her forearms flat on the table. “It didn’t take the police long to arrest Jeanie. He’d have no reason to question their judgement. It’s not only hairns who believe we’re infallible. He’d have dismissed any evidence which pointed elsewhere, wouldn’t he?”

“Until now,” James said quietly. “Until it’s become clear that there was a miscarriage of justice. Then he’d remember. Did he mention anything like that last night, Em?”

Emma shook her head. “He wasn’t very coherent, but no, we didn’t discuss Abigail’s murder. Not specifically.”

“Besides,” Robert said. “We’ve already established that Christopher was with us all that Sunday. He couldn’t have seen or heard anything significant.” Vera thought he had the tone of an irritable schoolteacher trying to drum the obvious into a stupid pupil’s head.

“You could see the field where I found Abigail from his bedroom,” Emma said slowly. She turned to Vera. “His bedroom was right at the top of the house. Afterwards, that night, we watched from the window. The spotlights and the scientists in those white paper suits. Just like tonight. We watched them carry Abigail’s body back.” She seemed lost in the memory.

“Did he spend a lot of time in his bedroom?”

“Hours,” Robert said, more irritable than ever. “I’ve explained. He wasn’t the sort of boy who needed company.”

Vera thought Emma was about to comment, but seemed to think better of it, so she stood up suddenly, scraping her chair on the tile floor.

“That’s enough for tonight; she said. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.” She touched Emma’s arm. “Before we go would you show me where the lad used to sleep?”

Emma handed the baby to James and led the way upstairs. As they reached the second landing they could hear the baby screaming. Emma paused for a moment, then the noise faded and she continued.

The room was on the third floor and much as it had been when Christopher had been sleeping there. It was long and narrow, with one long side making up the outside wall. In that there were two windows. The opposite wall was covered with book shelves. The books were mostly non fiction and looked as if they’d been collected from charity shops and jumble sales. There was a single bed with a striped quilt, and a wardrobe which had been painted white. Ice like fine lace spread up the windows from the sill and the rest of the glass was covered in a mist of condensation. The window sills were low and thick enough to sit on. Emma leaned against one and wiped a hole in the mist with her hand. Vera took the same position at the other.

“This is where we sat,” Emma said. “The two of us. You can’t see much now. You’ll need to come back in daylight.”

Vera stared out at the scene. The moonlight was pale and none of the details of the landscape were clear. “Where was the body?”

“About three fields in.”

There were no houses visible, no street lamps or car headlights. The Mantel house was hidden by a clump of trees and a slight dip in the land.

“Flat as a witch’s tit,” Vera said. “You could see for miles, couldn’t you? Anyone coming and going along that path. Do you remember your brother being interviewed?” She knew the answer before Emma had shaken her head.

Chapter Twenty-One

Vera drove slowly away from Springhead House towards Elvet. It was late, but she felt more awake than she had done since arriving in East Yorkshire. Her thoughts were clear and sharp and focused on Caroline Fletcher. They came fully formed and beautiful like the crystals of ice on Christopher Winter’s bedroom window.

Caroline would have been waiting for a phone call since the case against Abigail Mantel had fallen to pieces. She must have been. She’d have been expecting a phone call or a letter, a formal summons to the station for interview. She’d have run the questions in her head. Can you explain your reasons for charging the suspect at that point? Why did you restrict your lines of enquiry in this way? And she’d have rehearsed the answers. Over and over.

Caroline must have heard that Vera and her team had been called in. She’d still have friends at headquarters. Maybe she’d done a bit of research, asked about Vera’s style, looked at old cases. She’d have been wired up and ready. But the days had passed and nothing had happened. Her nerve would have been starting to crack. Perhaps that was why she had turned up at the bonfire. It took guts to sit and do nothing but wait.

And now she’d be more strung up than ever. Another murder and her at the scene.

Vera was planning her approach. She’d turn up on Caroline’s doorstep. No warning. Nothing official. I thought it would be a good idea if we had a chat, pet. No need for a solicitor, is there? Put on the kettle and well see if we can get it sorted between us. She’d play on their sisterhood, the struggle they’d both had to be taken seriously by male colleagues. She imagined reeling Caroline in, disarming her. Beautiful women never see fat, ugly ones as a threat. She longed to take on Caroline now, was almost too excited to wait, but she knew that wouldn’t do. It was already midnight and if the woman did get hold of a competent solicitor Vera didn’t want accusations of harassment flying around. She’d go back to her hotel, get a couple of whiskies and a few hours’ sleep and hit Caroline Fletcher first thing in the morning.

Her phone went. She pulled onto the verge. The road was greasy with ice and she couldn’t do two things at once at the best of times. The signal wasn’t brilliant and she got out. The cold took her breath away. Her feet snapped the frozen blades of grass.

“Ma’am.” Faint and familiar, slightly ironic. She grinned slowly.

“Joe Ashworth. Where the hell have you been?”

“You said to leave it a few days. Then when the news of the Winter lad’s murder came through I thought you’d like me there immediately.”

“Taken to mind reading now, have you, lad?”

“Not really. It was the boss’s idea.”

But your suggestion, she thought. You’d not want to miss out on anything. “Where are you?”

“The services on the M62. About half an hour from Hull. They’ve booked me into the same hotel as you.”

“Have they, though! It’s a decent sort of place. I hope their budget will run to it.”

She stood there for a moment before driving off. Ashworth was her sergeant. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Too gullible for one thing and born a city boy for another. Too wrapped up in his wife and baby. But he’d be an ally against all these bloody Yorkies. And he was the closest thing to a son she’d ever have.

They arrived at Caroline Fletcher’s house early the next morning. The quiet spell of weather was over. There was a piercing east wind and rain with shards of ice in it, sharp and grey as flint. It was seven o’clock and the street was waking. Caroline lived a couple of villages inland from Elvet and the estate was new and smart. There were double garages and fancy cornices, and a fat conservatory bulged behind every house. It was the sort of place Ashworth would like to live one day, when he got promotion. Vera would have been hounded out for an untidy garden and unruly friends.

She stood on the drive and looked around her, challenging the neighbours to notice. “I think we’ve been very discreet,” she said. “We could have come in a panda.”

Ashworth could tell she was enjoying herself and knew better than to spoil her fun. A small child was peering through the curtains of the house next door. It was a girl in a pink dressing gown with curly hair, about the same age as his son. He waved at her and she disappeared. Vera was already banging on the front door. There was a light in an upstairs window. They heard footsteps.

The door opened. A tall man with a newt’s face and a long neck looked out at them. He was wearing a sober suit and a dark tie. Undertaker or accountant, Vera thought. His hair was still wet from the shower.

“Can you tell Caroline we’d like a word?” Vera gave a wide, easy smile.

A paperboy in a black anorak slouched up. Like a woman in a burqa, the hood hid everything but his eyes. He thrust a copy of the Financial Times into the newt’s hand. Accountant then. The newt seemed distracted by the headline and didn’t answer immediately.

“We’ve not got all day.”

“I’m not sure…”

Vera breathed in deeply, then spoke loudly, with an exaggerated clarity. “I’m Vera Stanhope. Northumbria Police. I want to see Caroline Fletcher.”

The paperboy stopped at the gate and turned to stare. It would be all round the estate before he got home from school. The man’s face turned scarlet, the colour of the curtain which covered the small window beside him. Very fetching, Vera thought. Maybe he’s not a newt after all. More like a chameleon. “Go in,” he said quickly. “Caroline’s inside.” Then with an attempt at dignity, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m just on my way to work.” He grabbed car keys from the hall table, a briefcase from the bottom of the stairs and pushed past them.

Caroline was standing in the middle of the living room. She must have heard the exchange, but she waited until they’d stepped in and closed the door behind them before she spoke.

“Can I help you?” As if she was one of those icy women who sell perfume in high-class department stores. The ones who usually let Vera walk past unhindered. It was still not seven thirty but she was dressed and made up. It was as if she’d known that Vera would turn up, though she couldn’t have had inside information. Vera had told no one at HQ_ of her plans. But of course Caroline had worked in CID for six years. She’d been promoted quickly, had been good at her job. Vera had underestimated her. This would be how she’d have played it too.

“Who was that?” Vera asked. “Your hubby?” They were all still standing.

“You know I’m not married. You’ll have checked. Alex and I have lived together for four years.” She looked severe, dressed in a black skirt over black boots, a roll-necked top the colour of ripe plums. No bulges or sags, everything trim and in its place.

“Very nice,” Vera said vaguely. She sat on an easy chair next to the gas fire, pulled a notebook and biro out of her bag. “How old are you now?”

“You’ll have checked that too. Forty-six.”

“You’re wearing well,” Vera said with admiration. She meant it. There wasn’t much difference in their ages but Caroline looked ten years younger. “What are you doing with yourself now?”

“I’m an estate agent.”

“Any good at it?”

“I shift more property than anyone else in the company.”

You’ll have to be best at whatever you set your

mind to, Vera thought. Where does that come from, then? And is that why you left the police? Nothing more sinister than a fear of getting it wrong. Because in this job failure’s inevitable. Not every time. But most of it.

“Coffee?” Caroline asked.

“Aye, why not? White, one sugar. Joe here takes his black.”

While the coffee was being made Vera doodled on her pad. Spiders and interlocking webs. Joe Ashworth, looking at it from across the room, thought a psychiatrist would have a field day. Caroline must have had everything prepared in the kitchen, the tray laid, the kettle boiled, because she returned almost immediately, preceded by the smell of the coffee. She set the items on the table a large cafetiere, three matching mugs, sugar bowl, milk jug, an arrangement of shortbread biscuits on a brown plate. Vera looked up.

“Were you still at Mantel’s when they found the lad’s body last night?”

“No.” Caroline focused her full attention on pouring coffee. “I only bought a ticket because it was such a good cause. I didn’t stay.”

“You’ll have heard who was killed though?”

“It was on the radio this morning.” And someone will have phoned you, Vera thought. Bound to have.

“Christopher Winter, the brother of the lass who found Abigail Mantel’s body.”

“A strange coincidence,” Caroline said calmly. She handed a mug to Ashworth.

Aye. Maybe.”

“You think his death is relevant to the original enquiry?”

Vera didn’t consider that worthy of an answer. “You must have talked to the boy first time round. What did you make of him?”

There was a brief pause as Caroline sipped at the coffee. She left a smear of lipstick on the white porcelain. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I mean I don’t remember even talking to him. He was just a kid. Younger than Abigail. Not in the same year at school.”

“But he could have been a witness.” Vera kept her voice even, reasonable.

“He was with his family all day. Church at ten thirty, then home for lunch. He didn’t go out. Dan Greenwood had a chat with him the day of the murder.”

So you do remember. Or you’ve looked at your records. Prepared your story at least. Looking more closely at Caroline, Vera saw how tired she was. Had she slept? Been to bed, even? Had she been up all night trawling through her memory for facts to use in her defence? Vera tried to ward off a wave of sympathy. “Did you ever see his bedroom?”

There was a pause. No immediate response. She was good, Vera thought. She’d have been brilliant in court. Unshakeable. The Crown Prosecution Service would have loved her.

“I don’t remember,” she said. “I’d have to check my notes.”

i Vera leaned forward. “Look,” she said. “I don’t understand why there’s a problem here. I mean, what have you got to lose by playing it straight with me? You’ve already left the service. No one’s going to find you negligent. What would be the point? Or if they do, it’ll be in an internal report that’ll never hit the press.”

“I’m an ideal scapegoat, then, aren’t I?”

“I’m writing the report. You’ll not end up carrying all the crap. Not unless you muck me about. I know what it’s like to be a woman working with this lot.” She paused. “So, I’m going to ask you again. Did you look in the boy’s bedroom?”

“No,” Caroline said. Then, interested despite herself. “Why should I have done that?”

“From his bedroom he had a view of the field where Abigail’s body was found. He was there all afternoon. He could have been a witness to her murder.”

She crumpled as if she’d been thumped in the stomach and winded. “Shit,” she said. “Oh, shit. How could I have missed that?”

“You were blinkered. Convinced from the beginning that Jeanie Long was the murderer.”

“Everything pointed to it. She had motive, opportunity, the alibi she gave didn’t check out.”

“But no forensics. And no confession, even after ten years.”

“It was the murder of a young girl. A pretty young girl. You know what it’s like. Her picture on the news every night. The press, the politicians all after a result. There’s a pressure to clear it up quickly.”

“Aye,” Vera said. “That’s true enough.”

They sat in silence. The rain spat against the window.

“So it wasn’t personal, then?” Vera asked.

“What do you mean?” Caroline’s head shot up. She was ready for a fight again.

“Maybe you took against Jeanie Long.”

“I’d never met her before the murder.”

“That’s not what I meant. Some suspects… It’s hard to stay detached… They get under your skin…”

“Perhaps there was something like that,” Caroline conceded. “She wasn’t easy. Arrogant, I suppose. Superior. As if a degree and a knowledge of posh music made her better than the rest of us.”

“I know the type.”

And she hated Abigail. OK, I accept now that she couldn’t have killed the girl. But she was pleased she was dead.”

“Was there ever anyone else in the frame? Before you pulled in Long, I mean.”

“Not really. Keith Mantel put us onto her very quickly. He said Jeanie had always been jealous of Abigail and then when he asked her to leave it was the girl that she blamed.”

“You checked out the local loonies and sex offenders?”

“Of course, though I never had it down as an attack by a pervert. There’d been no sexual assault. Her clothes hadn’t even been disturbed. And if not that, who else, besides Jeanie Long could have had a motive? Abigail was only fifteen, for Christ’s sake. A schoolgirl. No money to leave. She’d hardly lived long enough to upset people.”

“Was she a virgin?” Though Vera knew, of course. She’d read every report there’d been.

“No, but that isn’t unusual for a fifteen-year-old, even ten years ago.”

“Did you trace any boyfriends?”

“No one who admitted sleeping with her. But they wouldn’t, would they? She was under age.”

“What did her father make of that?”

“He wasn’t shocked that she’d had sex. He told me he never played the heavy-handed father. It wasn’t his style. He just warned her to take precautions.”

“Did she ask his advice? Talk to him about the lads she was going with?”

“He said not, and I believed him. Why would he lie?”

“Emma, the lass who found the body…”

“Yes?”

“You’d have thought she’d have known who Abigail was sleeping with.”

“Perhaps.” Caroline hesitated. “I didn’t ask her. Once we had Long in custody it didn’t seem relevant. I didn’t see the point in raking through a young girl’s past.”

Vera considered this without speaking. Ashworth, too, seemed lost in thought. Outside the window a cat was crying, but despite the rain, no one got up to let it in.

“Why did you leave the job?” Vera asked.

It was a question Caroline hadn’t planned for. A crazy oversight like not interviewing Christopher. Was that all her failure came down to? Vera thought. A lack of thoroughness in her approach to her cases.

“It was personal,” Caroline said in the end. “Nothing to do with the work.”

“You know better than that,” Vera snapped. “Nothing’s personal in my enquiry.”

“I was engaged. I thought that was what I wanted. Marriage, kids, the whole package. I didn’t see how the job would fit in with that.”

“What happened?”

“It didn’t work out. I mean, I couldn’t go through with it. Maybe I’m not the marrying kind.”

“But you didn’t come back?”

“I got used to regular hours, a full night’s sleep, bloody big commissions.”

“You enjoy what you do now?”

“I told you, I’m good at it. Selling. Sometimes I think that was what I was born for.”

What was I born for? Vera wondered. Seeing through people who lie to me? Then why can’t I make out exactly what’s going on here? She knew there were more questions but couldn’t find the right words to ask them. She stood up. Joe Ashworth followed, surprised the interview was over so quickly. Caroline Fletcher didn’t show any relief at their leaving. Vera thought she understood they’d be back.

Chapter Twenty-Two

When they arrived at the Captain’s House, Emma was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by the remains of breakfast. James was on his way out and dressed for work. Vera looked him up and down admiringly as he let them in. The uniform suited him, though he looked very tired and pale.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, keeping his voice low. They were in the high-ceilinged hall but the door to the dining room was open and they could see through into the kitchen beyond. “I don’t really like leaving Emma on her own and she doesn’t want me to call in her parents. She says they’ve got their own grief to cope with.”

“Do you have any family who could keep her company?” asked Ashworth. He came from a close family and so did his wife. He couldn’t imagine an important event in their lives without an audience of relatives. On those occasions his parents’ small terrace would be crammed, people knee to knee on chairs pulled from all over the house, kids running wild upstairs, his mam in the kitchen preparing catering quantities of sandwiches and tea, his dad handing out beer to the men. Looking back, the events which had brought them together bereavements, engagements, christenings -all blurred together.

James, however, seemed to regard the question with suspicion. “No one local,” he said. He shouted goodbye to Emma and left the house.

Emma apologized for the mess but didn’t make any move to clear it. “Who are you?” she asked Ashworth, then immediately she put her hand to her mouth, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I suppose I’m used to Dan.”

“This is my sergeant, Joe Ashworth.” Vera ignored the reference to Greenwood. She didn’t know what to make of it. Was there something going on there that she didn’t know about? Dan Greenwood playing silly beggars? She could see him as the sentimental type, falling for someone unattainable like the pilot’s wife. “Joe works with me in Northumberland. He’s here to help. Why don’t you chat to him while I make some coffee.”

Ashworth took a seat opposite Emma. He pushed aside a cereal box so there was nothing between them. Vera put the kettle on and stood by the sink, watching the conversation, keeping her mouth shut even when she was tempted to interrupt with a question of her own.

“Did Christopher have a girlfriend?” Ashworth asked gently. “Someone who should be informed of his death.”

“I don’t think so. No one regular.” Emma looked up sharply. Vera saw that she’d been crying. She’d probably been awake and crying for most of the night. The skin around her eyes was tender and swollen as if she’d been thumped. It looked as if you could rub it off with your thumb, like the skin of an over-cooked beetroot. “Christopher blamed Abigail for that. When we were talking that night he was here, he said he’d been obsessed by her. That summer and ever since. No one else could live up to her. That wasn’t true of course. If he was obsessed with her at all it was only the fantasy his girlfriends couldn’t live up to. How can you compete with make believe?”

“Are you saying he went out with Abigail the summer before she died?”

“No. Of course not. In his dreams.”

Are you sure?”

“She wouldn’t have looked at him twice. Except to mock. He was younger than she was, geeky a bit weird. I thought he’d grown out of that, but maybe not. He seemed weird enough when he was here.”

Abigail did have a boyfriend, though.”

No, Vera screamed in her head. Don’t move on. Not yet. Follow up on the weirdness. Was he different from the other times he visited? Why?

But Emma was already answering Ashworth. “I didn’t know about a boyfriend. It seems unlikely. I mean, we spent a lot of that summer together and she never mentioned it.”

“She wasn’t a virgin. Did you know that?”

“No!” Emma seemed astonished, shocked. There was a pause while she seemed to assimilate the information. “But I was very innocent, very naive. I’d led a sheltered life. When I thought about boys I imagined them kissing me, putting their arms round me. Nothing more than that. I knew about the biology, but it wouldn’t have crossed my mind…”

“And Abigail was more worldly-wise?”

“In every way, but that wouldn’t have been difficult. I thought of her as sophisticated. She knew so much more about everything.”

“Like what?”

“Music. I’d never heard of half the bands everyone was talking about at school. We didn’t have a television. Do you know what a handicap that is? I went to her house to watch Tbp of the Pops, and they had satellite even then… Make-up. I didn’t even know how to use cleanser and moisturizer. It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed any of that stuff. Just that it would have been considered frivolous, a waste of time and money… Fashion… The names of film stars… She made me realize I was ignorant about everything.”

Ashworth smiled. “You must have known things that she didn’t.”

“Yeah, right. Latin verbs. Equations. The Bible. Just the stuff you want to boast about in front of your mates when you’re fifteen.” She paused. “Look, mostly it was her talking and me listening. I didn’t realize at the time, but that was what I was there for. To show her how clever she was in comparison.”

“Sounds like she was insecure, maybe? Always needing to be right.”

“You think so? I never saw it like that.”

There was a moment of silence. From the baby monitor on the dresser they could hear Matthew snuffling in his sleep. He began to whimper.

“Did she talk to you about sex at all?”

“All the time in general terms. At that age you don’t think about much else. But it was stuff like who we fancied. Which pop stars, which teachers, which of the lads at school. She certainly didn’t tell me she was sleeping with anyone.”

“Why do you think that was? Was she worried about shocking you?”

Again there was a silence. At last Emma said, “It’s so hard after all this time to know what she was thinking. I had one memory of her and then Christopher gave me another. I’m not sure any more what was going on in her head. I don’t think she’d worry about shocking me. She enjoyed making me out to be stuffy and old-fashioned. Perhaps her boyfriend wasn’t as impressive or cool as she’d want him to be. A bit of a loser. She’d keep that to herself. Otherwise I can’t see why she’d want it to be a secret.”

“Not even from her father?”

“No. I always thought she and Keith got on really well. I mean they never rowed. He never shouted. She could do what she liked. I thought he trusted her. But he can’t actually have spent much time with her. He had Jeanie to keep sweet and work took up most of his time. Abigail could have anything she wanted but I’m not sure he listened to her. His mind was on other things.”

“Poor little rich girl?”

“Yeah, something like that. I suppose she was lonely and that was why she took up with me.”

“Can you give me the names of her other friends?”

“It’s odd but there really wasn’t anyone else. Not once I turned up. Not girls, at least. It was as if she didn’t consider anyone else worth making an effort for. I found that flattering at the time.”

“Lads then?”

“There was one boy. Nick Lineham. His father was deputy head of our school. He was a couple of years older than us and she fancied him like crazy.”

“Could he have been the lover?”

“I can’t see why she wouldn’t have told me.”

“Does he still live round here?”

“He teaches English at the FE college in town. We kept in touch after school. The odd phone call, you know. He never bothered with me when Abigail was alive, but perhaps he felt sorry for me. Or felt we had something in common. He got me a job at the college. Adult education. I taught languages.”

Vera caught something wistful in the voice and wondered what had caused it. The man or the work? She poured water onto instant coffee, took it to them. She’d restrained herself for long enough. “Last night your husband said Christopher was drunk when he was here. Drunk and upset. Going through some sort of crisis. What do you think that was all about?” She pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. It was one of those bent wood affairs, old and stripped down. It creaked when she moved.

“I think Christopher was being over dramatic blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Maybe he did have a crush on Abigail when he was fourteen. So what? He told me the other night that he followed her around like a juvenile stalker but I can’t see it was the big deal he made it out to be. We’d have noticed if he’d been lurking in the bean fields every day. Like you said, it’s pretty flat round here. There’s nowhere much to hide. And I don’t remember him changing that summer. He was still into the things he’d always been passionate about natural history, astronomy. If he was pining away he was discreet about it.”

“What had upset Christopher so much now, then?” Vera demanded. “Could it have been Jeanie Long’s suicide?”

“Perhaps. Though I don’t think he ever knew her. How could he?” Emma hesitated. “I think the publicity around the anniversary of Abigail’s death provided him with a convenient excuse. He was miserable. Perhaps some woman had dumped him. Perhaps things hadn’t been going well at work. So he resurrected his adolescent fantasies about Abigail and convinced himself that she was the cause of his depression.”

The baby’s whimper had turned into a high-pitched whine which shredded Vera’s nerves. “Look,” Emma said. “He’ll need changing. I’ll have to fetch him. Is there anything else?”

“Not for the present, pet.” Vera was glad of the excuse to leave.

“Do you think the brother was mad?” They were sitting in the car, cut off from the rest of the village by the horizontal slashes of rain. Ashworth was in the driver’s seat, waiting for instructions. The question seemed to come from nowhere. There was no thought behind it. He opened his mouth and it came out.

“I don’t know,” Vera said. “Depressed maybe.”

“You don’t suppose…” he hesitated.

“Go on, pet. Spit it out.”

“He couldn’t have killed the girl? If he was obsessed with her, despite what the sister says. Obsessed and keeping it to himself like a guilty secret. Perhaps she teased him, taunted him, like, and he snapped.”

“Then went home and pretended that nothing had happened?”

When they’d first started working together Ashworth would have left it at that. But he had more confidence these days. “Pretended so well that he convinced himself too. Hid it away somewhere at the back of his mind, told himself when Jeanie was found guilty that it was all a bad dream. Until she committed suicide and the case was reopened. That would explain why he was behaving so oddly. Imagine waking up one morning and remembering you strangled a lass. You’d need a few drinks to come to terms with that.”

“You’ve been watching too much day-time telly,” Vera said. “Tame psychologists spouting off. I don’t believe in that sort of amnesia. Too convenient. Besides, he didn’t leave the house the Sunday Abigail died. Everyone said so.”

“Would they remember? After ten years? Would they know? He could have gone out while they thought he was in his bedroom.”

She pictured the layout of Springhead House. There was one door into the kitchen from the yard which the Winters usually used, but another at the foot of the stairs leading out into a small walled garden. It was an old house and the walls were thick. They wouldn’t have heard his leaving.

i She saw the boy, slight and skinny, as he’d been in the photo there’dbeen of him in the hall at Springhead, running against the wind along the path between the fields towards the Mantel house. Had he been hoping to spy on Abigail? See her in her bedroom through an uncurtained window, trying on new clothes, brushing her hair? But perhaps the girl had been bored, left alone again by her father. Perhaps she’d set out for the Winters in search of an audience. And they’d met on the path.

He’d been a strange boy. They’d all said that. Self-contained. Obsessed. Vera pictured him blocking the girl’s way, insistent.

I have to talk to you.

What do you want?

I can’t stop thinking about you.

What? As if the thought had disgusted her. Though deep down she’d have been flattered, he wouldn’t have realized that.

Perhaps she’d tried to push past him and he’d held onto her shoulder, desperate now that he had her to himself to make her understand. And, excited by the touch of her, he hadn’t let her go.

Fuck off, you little prick.

But he’d twisted her towards him, stronger than he looked, and put his other hand on her neck, almost a caress. She’d shouted at him to let her go, told him what she thought of him in language which would have shocked a well-brought-up lad. He’d pulled her scarf tight around her neck, thinking only to cut off the words she was spitting out at him, but not able to stop, even when he realized what he was doing.

The rumble of an East Riding bin lorry, blurred by the rain into an unrecognizable shape, brought her back to the present. She shook her head to clear the nightmare from it.

“I can see Christopher killing her,” she said. “Being driven to it in the way that you said. But forgetting all about it afterwards. Nah, I don’t buy that.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

They drove in silence to Springhead House. Vera had her head full of the Winters and what it must have been like for Emma and Christopher growing up there. It was too close to making fiction, she thought, this attempt to recreate the past. But how else could she do it? She couldn’t depend oh the memories of the family. Even if they believed they were giving her the truth, after all this time there’d be gaps, bits that had changed with the telling over the years.

When they arrived they stood for a moment outside the house. The old farmyard was empty. There wasn’t even Robert’s car to provide shelter from the weather.

“A gloomy sort of place,” Ashworth said. “You can see why the lad wouldn’t want to come home much. What are they like, the parents?”

“Decent. Hard working. On the surface at least. You can never tell with families, can you, lad?” She slid him a sly, teasing look. He was a great one for families.

She knocked on the kitchen door and was surprised when Mary answered. The woman was wearing a grey tracksuit and a worn fleece, bobbled by too many washes. She’d aged overnight, shrunk inside her skin.

“What is it? Is there any news?” Vera couldn’t tell if she was grasping at the possibility or if she was scared that there might be something worse for her to cope with.

“Not yet, pet.” She paused. “Where’s Linda?” Linda was the officer who’d stayed overnight.

“I sent her away. She was very kind, but sometimes you need to be on your own.”

“And Robert?” Vera asked gently.

“He’s in church.” Mary stood aside to let them in. “I told him to go. He couldn’t settle. I heard him all night, moving around the house. I thought he might find some peace there. But he’s been longer than I expected. That was why I was so jumpy when you knocked at the door.”

Vera said nothing. She’d been brought up by her father to believe that atheism was the only rational standpoint, at a time when all her friends were sent to Sunday school. She’d watched the others straggle back from the parish hall clutching their coloured pictures of the disciples fishing and Jesus walking on the water and wished she could be allowed to join in. Church had been a forbidden attraction, the only social centre in their small village. Besides the pub. She’d crept in once to a harvest festival and had loved the noise of the organ and the singing, the colour of the stained-glass windows and the piles of fruit. But she couldn’t see what Robert would get out of being in church at a time like this. Wasn’t one gloomy building much like another? Wouldn’t he be better off here, comforting his wife?

Perhaps Mary sensed her disapproval and felt the need to explain. “He’s confused, angry. It’s a testing time.”

“For you both.”

“Faith has always been more important to him than it has to me.” She hesitated, then went on in a rush, “He does so much good here. In the village. With his work. It would be a dreadful thing if that was lost. My role has always been to support him in that.”

Vera would have liked to follow this up but she didn’t know what questions to ask. She was out of her depth. She wanted to say, You’re an intelligent woman and he’s a grown man. Why can’t he support the work you do? But she didn’t want to offend her. She looked towards Ashworth. He too seemed uncomfortable with the idea of faith.

“Was he specially close to Christopher?” she asked at last. “His only son?”

The last phrase had a vague resonance, but she didn’t pick it up and wondered why Mary looked at her so oddly.

“Robert was proud of Christopher, of course.” Her voice was clear and considered. Words mattered to her. “He was a brilliant child, one of those who can pass examinations without really trying. But I don’t think you could call them close. No. Not like some fathers and sons.” She paused to gather her thoughts and when she continued her voice was wistful. “I work in a library. Most of the staff are women and they gossip about their relatives. I hear them talk about husbands who take their boys to football matches, fishing, and when they’re older, to the pub. We aren’t that sort of family. Not social in that sort of easy way. Do you understand? Perhaps it was a sacrifice we all had to make. For Robert’s work. That had to come first. It was hard on the children.”

“But you see James and Emma, your grandchild?” Vera felt the need to reassure her.

“Oh yes, and that’s wonderful! Such a blessing! We always have Sunday lunch together.” She paused and then added sadly, “But that’s more formal, planned. We’re not very good about spontaneity. We’re all very careful about how we treat each other. Perhaps it was a result of Abigail’s death. Knowing that tragedy can strike at any time, it seems important not to argue. We’d been arguing that afternoon…” She came to a stop but Vera waited. This was what she needed. A picture of the household Christopher had grown up in.

And soon Mary continued. “I’m not blaming Robert for the formality. No, I’m not saying that at all. In fact, Robert is somewhat more gregarious than I am. He suggested only last week that we should have a party for my fiftieth birthday. Invite all the family, friends. That’s the sort of thing normal people do, isn’t it? We used to have parties when we lived in York, go out to dinner, have meals with friends. The city is very different, of course. Perhaps I have become antisocial, but the idea of a gathering like that here terrified me.” A thought flashed into her mind. “I suppose now I’ve an excuse to cancel it.” Immediately after the words were spoken she looked up, her face tight with shock. “That was a dreadful thing to say. How could I? I’d suffer a thousand parties to have Christopher back alive.”

“I know,” Vera said. “I know.”

Absent-mindedly Mary moved to the range. She lifted the lid and slid a wide-bottomed kettle onto the hot plate. “I’ll make some tea, shall I? I expect you’d like tea.”

“Can we talk to you about yesterday?” Vera asked.

“Of course. I feel so helpless. It’s something I can do, at least. Answer your questions.”

“Did you know that Christopher was planning to visit Elvet?”

“No. But that wouldn’t have been unusual. He did turn up occasionally, out of the blue. He hadn’t lost the knack of being spontaneous, perhaps. It was always lovely to see him, but I wouldn’t have wanted him to feel it was a duty, an obligation.”

Vera remembered that Michael Long had said something similar. Children owe nothing to their parents. So once Christopher had left home Mary had been forced to be patient, to say nothing, to wait for her son to drop in on a whim.

“You must have missed him. It wasn’t like Emma living just up the road.”

“I did,” Mary said. “Very much.”

“Whose idea was it to go to the lifeboat fundraiser?”

“Robert’s. A last-minute decision. He felt, I think, that we all needed cheering up. This weather is so depressing. It gets you down in the end. And Emma has been tied to the house since Matthew was born.”

“Were you friends with Mr. Mantel?”

“Friends? No!” The idea seemed impossible to her.

“Your daughters were once close friends. I wondered if you’d got to know each other socially at that time.”

“No, he’s very busy, isn’t he? And rather grand in that smart house with his shiny car. I’m not sure we’d have had very much in common. I mean, we knew him to say hello to. We bumped into him at village events. But there was always an awkwardness. It was ridiculous, I know, but I always felt guilty when we met.”

“Because your daughter was alive and his wasn’t?”

She looked up gratefully. “Yes, exactly that.” There was a moment of silence then she added, “Now, I suppose we have both suffered the loss of a child and perhaps I’ll feel differently.”

The kettle suddenly whistled. Vera found the noise unbearable and had to force herself not to leap to her feet and move it from the heat. For a moment Mary seemed not to hear it. At last she got up to make tea.

“Can you talk us through yesterday evening?” Vera asked when Mary settled at the table again. “From arriving at the Old Chapel, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“We parked in the lane with everyone else and walked round to the back of the house. There was a queue of people waiting to meet Keith and his young girlfriend. As if we were at one of those weddings, where the bride and groom stand at the door of the reception to greet their guests. Or as if they were royalty.”

“You sound as if you don’t like Mr. Mantel very much.”

“Do I?” Mary frowned. “I don’t mean to.”

“How did you feel about Emma and Abigail becoming friends?”

“We were relieved that Emma had found a friend at all. We’d underestimated, I think, how much the move from York would upset her.” She paused for a moment. “It effected both the children in different ways. Emma had become rather withdrawn before she met Abigail.”

“But was Abigail the sort of girl you would have chosen as a suitable companion?”

“Why not? She was different in temperament from our daughter. More confident. More flamboyant, perhaps. But we knew nothing against her. I was more worried, I think, that she would suddenly become bored by Emma and drop her for someone else. I don’t think Emma could have coped with that.”

Vera let that line of questioning go and returned to the evening before. “So you greeted Keith and his girlfriend? What happened then?”

“We helped ourselves to drinks and tried to join in. There were lots of old friends. People from the church. Robert’s quite a public figure because he’s a warden. He’s well known in the village. I stayed indoors for a while. Most of the older people were sitting in there. Outside it was cold and rather rowdy. Noisy music. I chatted to a couple of women from the Mothers’ Union, then I went to find Robert.”

“Are you sure Christopher wasn’t there?”

“I can’t be. There was quite a crowd by the time I went out. And it was dark of course. The people in the field by the fire were just shadows.”

“Did you notice Caroline Fletcher?”

“I’m sorry. That name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“She was the police inspector who investigated Abigail Mantel’s murder.”

, “Of course. I’d forgotten the name. I should have remembered. She was supportive at the time of the trial. Was she there? I’m not sure I’d have recognized her. Not after all this time. Does that mean she’d kept in touch with Mr. Mantel? How thoughtful!”

Aye,” Vera muttered. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Why did you go out into the lane, Mrs. Winter?”

Ashworth spoke for the first time and Mary seemed thrown. She looked towards Vera as if she needed permission to answer.

Vera smiled encouragingly.

“I wasn’t really enjoying myself,” Mary said. “I never do, these days, in crowded places. It’s strange how things change, isn’t it? When we were younger, I’d have loved it… I asked Robert if we could leave. I was sure someone else would give Emma and James a lift back to the village. I said I was cold, which was true, but an excuse too, I’m afraid. Robert took me at my word. He said there was a thicker jacket in the car. He offered to fetch it but I took the keys and went myself. I was glad of a few moments alone.”

“What made you look in the ditch?” Ashworth asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“It was dark in the lane. No street lights to speak of. Only one just outside the house. Moonlight apparently, but you’d have to look where you were putting your feet. It was icy. So, I’m trying to understand how you came to see your son’s body. If you were concentrating on not slipping. I’m sorry to make you go through it again, but it’s the details which can help sometimes. Was there something in the hedge which caught your eye?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. The car was parked right on the verge so other vehicles could pass. The grass is rough and the car wasn’t level. It was Robert’s. He uses it for work and I never drive it. I knew there was a lever on the dashboard which opened the boot but I couldn’t find it immediately. While I was fumbling I turned on the headlights by mistake. The beam shone down into the ditch. That was when I saw Christopher.”

She stared blankly out at them.

“Could he have been there when you arrived?” Ashworth asked. “Or would you have seen him when you parked?”

“I was sitting in the back with Emma. Chatting. Trying to pretend that I didn’t mind Christopher going back to the university without making the effort of visiting us. But James and Robert would have seen if he’d been there. No, Christopher must have died while we were at the Mantel house. He was so close. But we could do nothing at all to help him.”

Chapter IWenty-Four

“What did you make of her?” Vera asked. “Was she telling the truth?”

“She didn’t seem the sort to me who’d lie.” They’d taken time out for tea and buns. Vera’s decision. She wanted to talk to Robert Winter but he was still in the church at least his car was parked in the square and she thought she couldn’t face him with low-blood sugar. She’d need to be on top of her game for that conversation. Besides she was embarrassed about breaking in on him. Suppose he was praying. She couldn’t imagine herself sitting on a pew next to him, while he was on his knees. Just along the street from the Bennetts’ house there was a bakery. She’d smelled the yeast and the sugar from the forge once and Dan had taken her in. Next to it there was a small, dark room, with a couple of tables where they served weak instant coffee and bacon sandwiches. And sticky cakes from the shop. From the narrow window they could see the church and Winter’s car in the street. There was no one to overhear. The other table was empty and the waitress was in the shop gassing to the woman behind the counter.

“Maybe not,” Vera said. “But there’s a difference between lying and telling the whole truth. She was very careful in the words she chose, wasn’t she?”

“I can’t see it. I thought she was a decent woman.”

“Not a lot of fun in her life, is there? Work and church. Do you think that’s all there is?”

“Maybe that’s all she wants.” Ashworth shrugged. “Someone of her age

…”

“Listen, lad. She’s about the same age as me and I can still manage a few laughs. But it strikes me there’s not much to laugh about in Springhead House.” She spooned sugar into her tea. The way she was feeling she needed the energy. “Do you think the husband slaps her around?”

“No!” Ashworth was shocked. But then he was easily shocked. Some days that was the only entertainment Vera had, provoking a response from him.

“You didn’t think she was frightened of him, then?”

“No,” Ashworth said slowly. “Frightened for him perhaps. Worried that he was taking so long in the church. More protective I’d say. Like she was the mother and he was a kid.”

“A spoiled kid,” Vera said. As I heard it, he joined the God Squad, decided to give up his business in York and move out here and she just went along with it, dragging the family along with her.”

She broke off. Her attention was caught by Dan Greenwood, who emerged from the pottery and blinked as the cold air hit his face. Without bothering to lock the door behind him he ran across the street into the bakery. Vera watched him, wondered what it was about him that stopped her looking away. He disappeared from view, but they could hear him in the shop next door ordering a roast ham and mustard harm cake and a vanilla slice to take away. He returned to the Old Forge without seeing them.

“What is the story with Dan Greenwood?” Ashworth asked.

“He worked on the Mantel case first time round,” she said. “Fletcher was his boss.”

“Like you and me then,” Ashworth said. He looked about six, Vera thought. A gob of red jam from a doughnut on his chin. Not fit, really, to be let out alone.

“Oh, aye, I look a lot like Caroline Fletcher.”

“Was there something going on there, like? Did he fancy her?”

“No. They never got on.” Though that wouldn’t have stopped Dan fancying her, then despising himself for it, Vera thought.

“Oh?”

“You could see what Fletcher’s like. Hard as nails. On the surface at least. And Dan was too sensitive for his own good. One of those people who don’t like the sort of games you have to play to get on. He’s simple. Not dumb, I don’t mean that. But straightforward. No pretence. No small talk.” Intense, she thought. That’s why you can’t take your eyes off him. Too much emotional energy. Then wondered if she was being daft.

“Is that why he left? Personality clash? You’d think he’d manage a transfer.”

“He had a breakdown,” she said. “Stress related. He’d always struck me as a bit nervy. One of those people who can never sit still. He left on medical grounds soon after Jeanie Long was put away. Later he moved to Elvet and set up the pottery over the square.”

“Was it the Mantel case which made him ill? I’d not have thought there’d be that much pressure. The press would be pushing all the way, of course, but they cleared it up canny quickly, didn’t they?”

She could tell he was thinking of some of the cases he’d worked on. Cases which had gone on for months, days without sleep, without seeing his family, and then no result at the end of it.

“He never believed Jeanie was guilty,” Vera said. “But he didn’t have the guts to make a fuss at the time.”

“So now he blames himself for her suicide?”

“Maybe.”

“How do you know him?”

“We’d met a couple of times, courses, training days. Then a lad from Wooler jumped bail and ended up down here. I came down for a few days. I liked Dan. He was one of those people you take to straight away. Like I said, no side to him. No agenda. He phoned me before he left the service. They’d offered him this deal and he asked my advice.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we needed people who cared about the job, but that if it was making him ill he should take the money and run.”

“Why did he think Jeanie Long was innocent?”

“He was in on the interviews. He believed her.”

“And that was it?”

“There was no forensic evidence. And Dan said it all happened really quickly. Easily. As if it had been set-up. As if someone was pulling the strings.”

“You think that was Mantel?”

“You get a grieving father pointing the finger, saying he knows who killed his daughter, that’s hard to ignore. Especially when he says it in public. And when he’s a big figure locally. With friends who are magistrates and on the police committee.”

“In everyone’s interest to clear it up quickly, then.”

“Everyone’s except Jeanie Long’s.”

“Whose strings exactly was Mantel pulling?”

Vera pushed half a curd tart into her mouth. “We’ll have to ask him, won’t we? But that’ll have to wait. There’s Robert Winter coming out of the church.”

Winter was still standing in the church porch when they met up with him. He was poised as if to set off down the path towards the gate, restrained, it seemed by an invisible barrier. The path was slippery with wet leaves and at one point Ashworth almost tripped, but Winter gave no sign that he had seen them approach. He stared out at the bare trees which lined the churchyard.

“Your wife will be worried about you,” Vera said.

Only then did Robert acknowledge them with a courteous nod. He didn’t respond, though, to the words.

“We’ve only just come from your house. Mary wasn’t expecting you to be so long. Here, give her a ring.” Vera groped for a mobile phone in her bag. “Tell her we want a quick word with you first, but you’ll not be long.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “Of course. I’ve been very thoughtless.” He took the phone and at last made the effort to leave the porch, walking a few paces away from them, turning his back so they couldn’t hear what was said.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Vera asked when he’d finished.

“Here? In the church?” As if, she’d say to Ashworth later, she’d suggested an interview in a brothel or a gents’ lav.

“If we wouldn’t be intruding.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

So they ended up in the little room by the bakery again, with more tea. On the way they passed the news agent and the headlines in the local papers screamed Christopher’s name. But Vera couldn’t feel sorry for Robert Winter and all the time they were talking she wished she’d been more forceful, stood her ground. What was it about the man that he always seemed to get his own way?

She began with a question he wouldn’t be expecting, hoping to throw him.

“Why the probation service? A bit different from architecture.”

“More challenging.” He smiled politely. She thought he’d played these word games before.

“What do you get out of it?”

“Not money, certainly,” he said. “Architecture was more lucrative. Most professions would be.”

Beside her, she could sense Ashworth willing her to change tack. She knew what he was thinking. Robert Winter was a bereaved relative who should be handled with a bit more sensitivity.

i “So, what then?” she demanded.

“Occasionally we can make a difference,” Robert said. “Change lives. When that happens there’s no more rewarding job in the world.”

“Did you make a difference to Jeanie Long?”

“Obviously not.” Still he kept calm, didn’t even show a trace of irritation. “I accepted the judgement of the court that she was a murderer. I failed her because I didn’t believe her story.”

“You must feel bad about that.”

“Of course I do, but I can’t let it affect my work with other prisoners. I don’t think I can blame myself. Many of the people I work with are manipulative and plausible. Many of them claim to be innocent. Sometimes we get it wrong ‘

“You see,” Vera interrupted, “I think it must be a bit like joining the police. The same motivation, I mean. It gives a licence to meddle. It’s a way into all that muck and corruption we respectable folk wouldn’t normally come across. There’s a glamour about crime, isn’t there? An excitement. Everyone’s curious about it, but we’re paid to stick our noses in. And so are you.”

“That’s one interpretation, Inspector. But not one I’d subscribe to.”

“Did Christopher have any girlfriends while he was living at home?” Vera asked.

“Not that I knew of:

“Would you have known? Is that the sort of thing you’d have talked about?”

“Possibly not. Christopher was a very private young man.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” She smiled to show that she intended no offence at all. “You probably knew more about the lives of the offenders in your care than you did about your own son.”

She moved on quickly before Robert could respond. “Why were you so keen to take your family to the bonfire last night?”

“It had been a difficult time for us all. Jeanie’s suicide, the Mantel case all over the newspapers again,

it had brought back the unpleasant memories. I thought it would be good for us to get out for the evening. Stop brooding.”

“Didn’t you think that meeting Keith Mantel might have the opposite effect. On Emma, at least?”

“No,” he said. And Vera saw that it was possible he was telling the truth. He hadn’t realized Emma might find it hard to return to the house where her best friend had lived at the time she was murdered. And Ashworth thought she was insensitive. “No. It happened a long time ago. Emma has moved on. We all have. I thought it would be a pleasant evening for everyone.”

“You hadn’t expected to meet Christopher there?”

“Not at all. I was sure he’d gone straight back to Aberdeen. It was inconsiderate he knows his mother looks forward to his visits but quite in character.”

Quite suddenly he seemed to lose patience with the questions. “Is there anything urgent, Inspector? Anything which won’t keep? Only my wife’s been alone for a long time. As you said. Really, I think I should go back to her.” Without waiting for a reply he stood up and walked out. Through the window they watched him stride along the pavement. An elderly woman, obviously distressed, scurried up to him to offer her condolence. He stopped, bent towards her and took her hand in both of his. Then he continued towards his car.

“I wonder,” Vera said slowly, ‘why I dislike him so much.”

“The religion?” Ashworth suggested. “It was never your thing.”

“Maybe. But I want you to get a list of the people who were at Mantel’s last night and talk to them all.

Did any of them notice Robert Winter leave the bonfire? Did anyone see him out in the lane?”

“And what will you be up to?”

“Me?” she answered. “I’m going to the prison. Where Jeanie Long spent the last ten years. There’s another victim in all this. And I don’t feel I know anything about her.”

Chapter TWenty-Five

Vera parked where it said Visitors. The place was nearly empty. The staff car park was nearer, but there was a barrier operated from the gatehouse. Some days she’d have enjoyed pushing the buzzer and demanding to be let in, but today she wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

She’d phoned ahead and they were ready for her. She’d asked to speak to anyone who’d known Jeanie well and was surprised when she was shown straight to the governor’s office. She thought she could work out what that was about. Suicide in custody was a sensitive business. There were probably league tables. He’d want to make it clear that his institution wasn’t responsible, that they’d followed the guidelines to the letter. But as soon as she saw him she realized she’d misjudged him. He was standing at the window, looking down at a square of concrete, which was already dark because of the high walls surrounding it. A group of women was being escorted across it. They stood waiting, stamping their feet and shouting, while an officer locked the door of one building and walked round them to unlock the door of another.

“That’s the education block,” the governor said. “Jeanie spent a lot of time in there. I thought it might help, that she’d see it as a constructive way to pass the time. Obviously I was wrong.”

“You didn’t consider her a suicide risk, then?”

He turned back into the room. “No. But I wasn’t surprised when it happened. I feel responsible. I should have seen it coming.”

“You have a lot of women in your charge.” She said it as a fact, not an excuse, but he dismissed the idea, shaking his head.

“None of them had been here as long as Jeanie. It was a terrible waste. She was never a security risk. If she’d said the right things, she could have moved to an open prison years ago.”

“But she refused to play the game?”

“I think she was incapable of lying,” he said. “I’ve worked for the prison service for twenty years and I’d never met anyone like her.”

“You believed her defence at the trial, then?”

“Jeanie Long didn’t kill anyone,” he said firmly. “I was quite sure of that as soon as I met her.”

Vera thought that he’d been a little bit in love with her, and that he was too easily moved to be in charge of a women’s prison.

“How did she fit in here?”

“She didn’t. Not with the other women. Lifers often achieve the status of celebrities. It’s not that everyone here is a ghoul. It has more to do with the publicity surrounding the case than the nature of the crime. For the lifers themselves, it’s easy to be flattered by the attention and it can make life inside easier. Jeanie refused to play the role. She only talked about the offence to protest her innocence.”

“Was she close to anyone?”

“As I said, to none of the women. We appointed a new chaplain a year ago and Jeanie seemed to respect her.”

“What about the officers? The teachers?”

“No. Prison works on the principle of consent. Offenders recognize their guilt and the right of the authorities to order their lives. Jeanie never did. She questioned, challenged. It made her unpopular. The standard of teaching in prison, especially a prison like this, which doesn’t hold many long-term inmates, has to be pretty basic. Jeanie could be dismissive, almost rude. She’d had a better education than most of the teachers and didn’t hide it.”

“How did she get on with her probation officer?”

“There wasn’t much contact. Probation officers are supposed to maintain a link with offenders in custody, but there are often more pressing demands on their time. I looked at the welfare report after Jeanie died and Robert Winter seemed to have been very fair. He tried to encourage her to say and do all the right things. He visited her father in the hope of rinding her a supportive home after her release. I’m afraid Mr. Long wasn’t very helpful.”

“Long thought she’d killed the girl and deserved to be here.”

The governor seemed unable to speak. Vera wanted to slap some life into him. “Did you know that Mr. Winter was indirectly involved in the Mantel case? His daughter found the girl’s body.”

“No.” The governor seemed shocked. “But then I never met him. I had no reason to. I have regular contact with the welfare officers who are based here, of course, but not with those who come in from outside.”

“When did he last visit Jeanie?”

The governor reached over and pulled a file from a tidy pile on the table under the window, but Vera had the impression he knew the answer already.

“Three days before she died.”

The chaplain had a small office behind the chapel. Usually she would have left by now, the governor said, but she’d hung on specially to see Vera. He called an officer to take her, a friendly young woman, who shouted to the women on the wing by name. It was teatime and they’d formed a disorderly queue along the corridor to collect food from a hatch. A very thin girl with unkempt hair and slashes on her wrists was singing to herself. Something loud and aggressive. No one took any notice. Jeanie would have stood here too, Vera thought. Aloof and friendless.

“Did you know Jeanie Long?” she asked the officer.

“Yes.”

“What did you make of her?”

The woman shrugged. “Not much to tell the truth. She thought she was better than the rest of them. And she’d managed to twist the number one governor round her little finger. Not that it’s hard to do that. He’s taken in by all their sob stories.”

She realized that she’d been indiscreet and they walked on through the jostling, curious women in silence.

The chaplain was small. She wore a white nylon roll neck sweater, under a brightly coloured cardigan, to represent the dog collar, and red cord trousers. She made Vera tea.

“That’s all some of them come for,” she said. “lea in a china cup and biscuits. I don’t mind. It doesn’t seem a lot to ask occasionally, does it?”

“What did Jeanie Long come for?”

“She said it was for some intelligent conversation and a break from the noise on the wing.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Perhaps. And rather arrogant. I didn’t find her an easy person to like, Inspector. She believed she was different from the other women. She wasn’t prepared to give them a chance.”

“She was innocent,” Vera said, trying to contain her anger. “That made her different. How often did you see her?”

“Once a week, on Friday mornings. The governor asked me to talk to her when I first arrived here. He said she was having a hard time. She wasn’t getting on with her named officer. We fell into the habit of weekly meetings. I’m not sure what she really got out of them.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Not religion,” the chaplain said quickly. “She made it clear from the beginning that that was a no-go area. “My mother believed in all that crap and look what it did for her.” She was always on her guard against anything which might seduce her away from the fight. As if she had to stay angry to keep faith with herself. “It would be so easy to give in,” she said once. “To let it go.” The only times I ever did see her let it go was when she talked about music. She became a different person then, gentler and more relaxed.”

“Did you discuss the Mantel case?”

“She did certainly. At every opportunity. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t want to encourage false hopes. The case went to appeal once, soon after she was sentenced, but it was thrown out. There was no new evidence. I couldn’t see that it would ever be reopened. And of course all my training and belief, and the ethos of the prison, is about acceptance of wrongdoing. That has to come before the possibility of rehabilitation.”

“You believed she killed the girl, then?” Vera thought this was a load of sanctimonious nonsense.

“I’m naive. I didn’t think the court could get it that wrong. I thought perhaps she’d convinced herself that she was innocent because she couldn’t face the horror of what she’d done. And I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that she was very manipulative, that I was being conned.”

“Did she take any practical steps to clear her name?”

“I think she did in the beginning. She wrote letters to the newspapers, and anyone else she could think of, protesting her innocence. Though soon she wasn’t news any more and the press lost interest, until The Guardian picked up on the ten year anniversary of the trial. Soon after her conviction her mother took out an advert in one of the London papers with a photo, asking anyone who’d seen Jeanie on the day the girl was killed to come forward. Then her mother died, and I suppose she gave up hope. All she could do was to go over and over the facts.”

And that’s what she did at your meetings?”

“For much of the time. I didn’t think it was healthy, repeating the same stories, week after week. She said she had to remember. Everyone else would forget what had happened. Some day, she said, she might have to stand up in court and give her version of events again. She’d need to know what to say.”

“Can you remember what she told you?”

“Oh, I think so,” the chaplain said. “I heard it often enough.” She turned slightly in her chair, so she wasn’t looking directly at Vera. Outside there was a brief commotion, raised voices, the shout of an officer, but she took no notice. “Jeanie was passionate about music. Ambitious. She wanted to make a career of it. Not teaching, she said. She’d never have managed that. She knew it would be tough to get into the profession, so at university she stayed focused, concentrated on her work. She went out with a couple of lads, but there was nothing serious. They’d have got in the way. Then she met Keith Mantel and she was in love. The way most kids are when they’re fifteen and fall for some pop star But Keith Mantel was real and available and he seemed to reciprocate her feelings.”

“What did she feel about Mantel when she was inside?”

“She said she had no regrets. That summer was the most wonderful time of her life. Remembering it was all that kept her going. I think she still had the fantasy that when her name was cleared they’d get back together’

“Did she talk about Abigail?”

i “Yes, and it was almost as if she blamed the girl for her own murder. I hated the way she spoke about her. She said the power Abigail had over her father was unnatural, strange. “If I was religious, I’d have said she was evil. I tried to understand her, but it’s hard to understand someone who’s that screwed up and self-obsessed. Of course, I could see how it had happened

her mother dying when she was young, her father spoiling her. But she’d turned into a monster and there’s no excuse for that.” She blamed Abigail, of course, for Keith’s decision to throw her out. I could tell that still hurt. She was still making excuses for it, trying to find an explanation which didn’t have her playing the role of spurned lover.”

“Did she describe the day of the murder?”

“Yes, and it was much as she told it in court. She phoned the Old Chapel early in the morning. There was only the answer machine. That didn’t mean Keith wasn’t in. She said he wouldn’t talk to her, that he knew if they spoke together he’d have to let her back. She was tempted to go to see him, but it was a weekend and she knew he wouldn’t be himself if Abigail was there. On a whim she decided to go away for the day. She drove to Hull and took the first train to London. She got a train back in the late afternoon. No one saw her or spoke to her. When she arrived back at her parents’ house she learned that Abigail was dead. She tried to phone Keith to offer her sympathy, but again there was no reply. Her parents persuaded her not to go to the house. Later she was told that he’d moved in with a friend so he could grieve in peace. Only a few days later she was arrested.”

“Did she have any theories about who had killed Abigail?”

“Usually she spoke vaguely about Abigail asking for trouble. The way she dressed and led men on. Posing and giggling and flirting. Some sad, sick old man, Jeanie said. I did wonder…”

“Yes?”

“I did wonder if Jeanie might have been talking about her father. If that was why she hated him so much. Not because he’d killed Abigail. She’d have forgiven him for that. But for letting her take the blame. For leaving her to rot in here. I didn’t believe that, though. Not for more than a moment. I thought she was guilty.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

When Vera arrived back at her hotel it was almost dinnertime and she was spoiling for a fight. From the prison she’d gone into Crill, into the police station, where the incident room had been set up. She’d expected to be treated as she was at home. Not quite as a female deity, but as someone whose word counted for something. It hadn’t been like that. Paul Holness had been there, lording it over the incident room, shouting his orders, handing out scraps of praise to his adoring team. He’d treated her requests first with a patronizing amusement then with downright hostility. She’d misjudged him. Holness might not be bright but he didn’t want her playing an active role in the Christopher Winter murder enquiry.

In the hotel, she went straight to the bar. It was furnished like a gentleman’s club with dim lighting and music so low it was impossible to make out what it was. It seemed more like a vibration in the background than music, the irritating hum of an insect. She could have done with a shower but she needed a drink more. And she didn’t feel like drinking on her own. She phoned Ashworth’s mobile.

“Where are you?”

“Just got in.” He sensed her mood and added

‘ma’am’. An insurance policy. It didn’t do any harm and sometimes it mollified her. Not tonight.

“Get down here. I’m buying.”

She sat, taking up most of a leather Chesterfield with her bags and her coat, fuming, until he arrived.

“How was the visit to the prison?” he asked, mildly.

“Interesting, but we’ll talk about that later.”

“And your meeting with the local plods?”

She didn’t answer directly. “What did you make of them, anyway? Did they give up the list of witnesses who were at Mantel’s? Without a fight?”

“No bother. But it saved them a bit of work, didn’t it? An extra body to check through the statements and do the follow-up visits. They weren’t going to turn that down.”

“I found them bloody obstructive.”

He said nothing, thought, You didn’t get your own way, then.

“They want to treat the two cases as separate investigations. There’s no evidence to link the two enquiries at this point. So they say. So Holness says. It’s madness. And even if there were, it’s not my role to find out who killed Abigail, only to reach a decision about how the original team got it wrong.”

“It’ll be political,” he said. “They’d not want an outsider taking over a live murder case. It’d make them all look incompetent. You never thought you’d get away with that? I can’t imagine you agreeing to it on our patch.”

“Maybe not,” she said.

“Holness could have asked you to put the Mantel enquiry on hold, while the current investigation is underway.”

“I’d like to see him try!” She hated Ashworth when he was being reasonable. “Besides, the press would see it as a cover-up.”

“Are any of the officers who worked on the Mantel case part of the team looking into Christopher Winter’s murder?” he asked.

“No.”

“I can’t see that you can object, then. It’s a fresh team. Not likely the same mistakes will be made this time. And they’ll keep you informed of developments…”

“They say they will. Especially if they turn up anything which relates to the Mantel investigation.”

“Well, then.”

She drank her Scotch and suddenly grinned at him. “Don’t mind me, pet. I just want to be home. You know.”

He nodded.

“How did you get on?” she asked.

“I don’t think we’ll get much from the witness statements. It seems the Winter family were among the last people to arrive at the party. Caroline Fletcher arrived later but she told the locals last night that she didn’t meet anyone in the lane on her way in.”

“So if anyone at the bonfire killed Christopher, she was the most likely?”

“Nah,” he said. “Any one of them could have slipped out to meet the lad without the rest of the crowd noticing. No one saw Robert Winter leave, but then they didn’t miss Mrs. Winter either when she went out to fetch her coat.”

“Have they found the murder weapon yet?”

“No. They’re going to continue the search at first light.”

“They’re not much further forward then,” she said, unable to keep the satisfaction from her voice.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“We need to talk to Mantel. They can’t object to that. He was our victim’s father. It’s only right.”

When they approached the Old Chapel the next morning it was only just light. The rain had stopped, though there was still the wind, which blew a paper fertilizer sack into the road in front of them, and dead twigs from the bent trees, and eddies of sand and straw. It was the wind which Mantel mentioned first when he opened the door. “Blowing into a storm,” he said, looking up into the grey, racing clouds, as if he’d lived in the country all his life, as if he knew about boats and tides and the weather.

Vera introduced herself.

“You’re leading the new enquiry into my daughter’s death?”

“That’s right. This is my sergeant.”

“I thought you might have been here to see me earlier. It would have been courteous. I only heard they were reopening the case from the press.”

Vera muttered something about only having made preliminary enquiries, but she knew he was right and anyway he hadn’t made the point aggressively. Whatever his past record, whatever Michael Long had thought, seeing him now, she felt sorry for him.

“You’re lucky to catch me in. I decided to work at home today, cancelled all my meetings. I couldn’t face it. That business with the lad the other night, it brought it all back.”

They were still standing at the arched wooden door and could see the crime scene. A bit of blue and white tape had come loose and was blowing crazily, like the tail of a big, flash kite, the sort controlled by two strings. A line of officers in overalls and navy anoraks walked slowly, eyes to the ground, across a neighbouring field.

“Two young people dead,” Mantel said. “What a terrible waste.”

“Three,” said Ashworth. Mantel didn’t respond, but Ashworth had spoken quietly and perhaps he hadn’t heard.

They followed him through to the room where the old ladies had sat two nights before. No evidence remained of the gathering. The extra chairs had been removed, the carpet hoovered. In the conservatory beyond, a plastic crate stood by the outside door. It contained empty wine bottles, some jammed, neck down, into the layer below. Through the glass they saw the remains of the bonfire and dead fireworks strewn on the grass.

Mantel nodded at them to sit down. “Do you think they were killed by the same person?” he demanded. Then, when there wasn’t an immediate response, “I mean Abigail and the Winter boy.”

“There’s no evidence either way yet.”

“I was convinced Jeanie was guilty. It was all that kept me going. The anger. The court case. Seeing her sent down. I went to court every day, sat in the gallery after I’d given evidence, waited the four days it took them to come up with a verdict. I’d have hanged her myself then, if it had been possible.” He stopped abruptly. “You are sure she was innocent. It’s not just the press after a story, her lawyers playing the system.”

“Quite sure.”

He sat very still. “I didn’t believe it until last night,” he said. “I thought it was the do-gooders and liberals out to clear her name. Then when there was another body… Even I could tell it was too much of a coincidence.” He looked up sharply. “What do you think? Some mad man on the loose?”

“It’s too early to come to any conclusions. They’re treating it as two separate cases until there’s more evidence either way.”

He seemed about to argue, but thought better of it. “What do you want from me?”

“Tell me about the months leading up to Abigail’s death.”

“What good will that do after all this time? You must have access to the statements.”

“It’s not the same as hearing it from you.”

He shut his eyes, scrunched them up tight like a child trying to fight off tears, but when he opened them again and started speaking, his voice was calm.

“Her mother died when Abigail was six. Breast cancer. She was only thirty-three. Still lovely. If you’ve been doing your job properly you’ll know I played a bit dirty when I was younger, but by the time she became ill I’d settled down. I didn’t think I deserved it, losing her, I mean. I pushed the rules to the limits perhaps, but I stayed within them. Then at least. I was successful. Lucky. Tragedies like that didn’t happen to me.

“When Liz died I wanted to run away, pretend it had never happened. But I couldn’t because of Abigail. I suppose I spoilt her but that’s what fathers do, isn’t it?

They spoil their little girls. And then I spent so much time at work. When I was around, I wanted to make it special for her.” He paused. There’d been other women before Jeanie. I’d brought some of them home. But they all knew that Abigail came first.”

“Jeanie must have been special, then.”

“Not particularly, no. She was young, pretty enough. A talented musician. But there have been others prettier, sexier.”

“Yet she was the first one you moved in.”

“I didn’t move her in. She turned up, uninvited, with all her bags, after a row with her father. When I came in from work she’d unpacked. A fait accompli.”

“Why did you let her stay?”

“Apathy. Devilment. Her father had never liked me and it was amusing to wind him up. And there was something about her. Something innocent, I suppose. She reminded me a bit of Liz when she was a girl. She made me feel young again. That first night she was so grateful to be here, so eager to please. She’d have done anything for me. It was flattering. I took the easy way out. It wasn’t as if I was home much. I told myself it would be good for Abigail to have the company of someone nearer her own age.”

“But Abigail didn’t like her?”

“Couldn’t stand her,” he said simply. “Too used to getting her own way, I suppose. Always being the centre of attention.”

“So you told Jeanie she’d have to leave?”

“Eventually. In the autumn. I could tell by then it wasn’t going to work. I was too old after all. She was so intense and it became clear that she wanted more from the relationship than I did.”

“Marriage?”

“Maybe. She never mentioned it but I wouldn’t have been surprised.” He hesitated. “Besides, there was someone else. I was looking for an excuse to get rid of Jeanie. The situation was messy, a distraction.”

“What happened when you asked Jeanie to leave?”

“It was horrible. I knew she could be moody, unpredictable, but that day she lost it completely. She blamed it all on Abigail. I’d always thought of her as rather prim, but she let fly with a stream of filth.”

“What did she say about Abigail?” Vera asked. “Precisely.”

“She called her a dirty little slut. Amongst other things.”

“You didn’t mention that in your statement.” Vera waited but Mantel didn’t respond and she continued slowly, “I can understand why you were so angry. What do you think made Jeanie so abusive?”

“Because she knew it would hurt me. She was jealous.”

“Why slut though? Why that particularly?”

“If you want to know about Abigail’s sexual history, you could ask,” Mantel said and that made Vera feel like a worm again, as she had when they’d first arrived.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. You do see why it could be important.”

i “They asked about boyfriends first time round. Sexual partners, they said. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might have been sleeping with someone.”

“You were shocked.”

“I had no right to be shocked. I slept with women, many of them not much older than Abigail. I was surprised. I had thought she would talk to me about some thing like that. I’d known it would happen, of course. I’d prepared myself for it. Imagined her bringing some boy home. I knew I wouldn’t take to him, however decent and respectable he might be, but thought I could pretend. Welcome him in. Then I wouldn’t lose her. I hadn’t thought she’d keep it a secret.”

“She was under age. The boy would have been committing an offence.”

“Perhaps that was it.”

“You had no idea at all who she was seeing?”

“None at all. She had a party for her fifteenth birthday. There were boys here for that. I could probably remember the names of some of them. But I was around for most of the evening and there didn’t seem to be anyone special.”

“Nick Lineham? Does that ring a bell?”

“The teacher’s lad. Yes, he was one of them.”

“And Christopher Winter?”

“Emma was here, of course. She and Abigail were best friends. But I don’t remember seeing the boy. Abigail had laughed about him, talked about a crush, but I don’t think he’d have been invited. Wasn’t he quite a lot younger?”

“Only a year,” Vera said. “That was all.”

He was staring out into the garden, distracted for a moment by the cloud of rooks which scattered from an old sycamore and he seemed not to hear.

“Let me take you back to the night of the bonfire.” In her mind she saw him, standing there, welcoming his guests with his trophy girlfriend by his side. Middle-aged of course but fit and charming. This person seemed older. She liked him better. “Did you see Christopher Winter during the evening?”

“I don’t think I would have recognized him. Ten years makes a lot of difference to someone that age and I only saw him a few times while Abigail was alive. Sitting in the back of his mother’s car when she came to collect Emma. Once on the Point, I think. His parents were here last night. They’d have seen him, surely, if he’d been one of the guests?”

“Probably. Were there many strangers here?”

“People I didn’t know, certainly. The tickets were on sale in the pub and the post office. The lifeboat crew brought their friends.”

“You recognized Caroline Fletcher?”

“Yes. She was the officer in charge of the original enquiry.”

“Did you invite her?”

“No.”

“Why was she here?”

She could see him framing a noncommittal reply in his head, then give up on it, too exhausted perhaps to make the effort to lie. “To check up on me. To remind me that we could both face problems if I spoke to the authorities.” Then, flippant, “Because she can’t keep away.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.” Though she was beginning to. Understanding was seeping into her brain like water into an estuary.

i “Look. I said that I’d met someone else before Jeanie moved in here and it made things messy, complicated.” He paused.

“Go on.” She was sitting very still, staring into his face.

He returned her gaze. Again she thought he would refuse to answer.

“The woman was Caroline.”

“You were going out with Caroline Fletcher while she was investigating your daughter’s murder?” Vera was apoplectic, scarlet, marble-eyed. Only just holding it together.

“We were close, yes.”

“And it never occurred to her to declare an interest? She could have wrecked the whole case.”

“We’d been discreet. We didn’t think anyone would find out.”

Dan Greenwood had guessed, Vera thought, but he’d been too daft and too loyal to say anything. No wonder Fletcher had taken against Jeanie from the beginning.

“What did you promise her to get a conviction?” Vera demanded.

“Nothing. There was no need. She wanted it as much as I did.”

She was besotted, Vera thought. What is wrong with all these women? She was a strong, clever woman and she threw her career away for a prat like you. That was why she left the service. So she’d be free to marry you when you asked her. Is that what you promised? But you never did. She was even more of a mug than Jeanie Long.

Mantel walked with them to their car, and stood shivering while Ashworth patted his pockets for the keys.

“One thing,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Emma’s husband. The one who calls himself Bennett. The pilot on the river.”

“What about him?”

“I recognized him last night. He didn’t realize. You should check him out. That wasn’t his name when I first met him.”

“What was his name?”

He shrugged and Vera couldn’t tell whether he didn’t remember or he thought he’d told them enough.

Before they could ask him more he turned and walked quickly back to the house.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Vera was stranded in the deep armchair. It was too low for her to climb out with any sort of dignity. She ate the last chip, licked her finger and collected the last scraps of batter, then screwed the greasy paper into a ball and hurled it overarm towards the waste bin in the corner. Dan Greenwood retrieved it from the floor. They were in the Old Forge, in the room next to his office. Just her and Greenwood. She’d sent Ashworth to the FE college where Emma had worked, to talk to Nicholas Lineham who, when he was a lad, might once have had sex with Abigail Mantel. So many connections, she thought. People waltzing in and out of each other’s lives. She felt her eyes glaze as she pictured the patterns, the lines of connection. Her lids began to droop. At her age she deserved a nap in the afternoon.

“Did you make that coffee?” she said. Some temptations you couldn’t give into.

He nodded to the tray on the upturned crate beside him.

“Well, it’s no good to me there.”

He lifted the mug to within her reach.

“How did you know Mantel was screwing Fletcher?”

“I didn’t.” Defensive, touchy.

“You’re not surprised though.”

“She was never happy without a man in her life. She doesn’t come across as the needy sort, but it was like she couldn’t believe in herself without a man to admire her.”

“Oh, God.” She leaned back in her chair, legs stretched ahead of her, heels on the floor, and stared at the ceiling. “Not another one.”

“What?”

“I’ve had Ashworth spouting psychobabble ever since he arrived.” She pulled herself more upright so she could look Greenwood in the face. “Did she ever have a go at you?”

“What do you mean?” He took out a tin of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. His hands were shaking.

“Don’t go all coy on me, Danny. You know what I’m getting at.”

His neck, underneath the beard was flushed. “Nan,” he said. “I wasn’t important enough. She never took me that seriously.”

“Did you ever see them together Fletcher and Mantel?”

He shook his head slowly. “I heard a phone call. She didn’t know I was there. I mean, it could have been to anyone. By that time my judgement was shot and my paranoia was sky high, but I thought it was to him.”

“What did she say?”

, “It was just after we’d taken Jeanie into custody. She was telling him that she’d be charged by the end of the day. That was all. But it was the way she was saying it. Like she was a little girl. A good little girl who’d done as she was told.”

“Christ,” Vera said. “You’d want to puke.”

“I felt sorry for her really.” Greenwood nipped the end off the cigarette. “Like I said, my judgement was shot. I should have stood up to her. I knew we were cutting corners.”

Vera drank her coffee as if she couldn’t trust herself to say anything.

He rolled the cigarette in his fingers but still he didn’t light up. “I met her last week.”

“You met Fletcher?”

“She phoned me, asked if we could go out for a drink. I told her I was too busy. Just a quick one before closing time, she said. She picked me up from here…” He looked at Vera, but she refused to help him out. “By then the pubs were closed so we went back to my place.” He blushed. “Nothing happened. Nothing like that. Just a drink and a chat.”

“What did she want then?”

“Ib know if I’d heard anything, if you’d been in touch. She couldn’t understand why she’d not been contacted.”

“And you told her. Of course.”

“I felt sorry for her. I explained. She’s not as tough as she makes out.”

“You do realize she’s a suspect in a murder enquiry? Probably the prime suspect as things have turned out.”

“No.” A rejection of the whole notion.

“She certainly had a motive for killing Abigail Mantel and arresting Jeanie Long. We’ve only her word for it that she didn’t speak to Christopher Winter at the time of the original enquiry. It’s possible that he saw her with Abigail that afternoon and she persuaded him it was of no importance. You can see she could be persuasive. Especially with a young lad. Perhaps that was why he turned up in Elvet now. He wanted to set things straight.”

“No,” Greenwood said again. She thought he would like to put his hands over his ears and shut out her words.

“She was there the night he died,” Vera went on relentlessly. “She had possible motive, opportunity. And she disappeared just before the body was found. There’s a stronger case against her than against anyone else involved.”

He’d been looking at the cracked and dusty tiles on the floor. Now he looked straight at her. “You don’t really believe she’s a double murderer?”

“Probably not,” she said. “But she’s bad news. If she gets in touch with you again let me know.”

They sat for a long time, staring at each other in silence.

“What do you know about James Bennett?” Vera said at last.

“He’s a pilot on the Humber.”

“I know that, man. It’s all anyone says about him.”

“You can’t have him down as a suspect. He wasn’t living round here when Abigail Mantel was killed.”

“How do you know?”

“He only moved into the village when he married Emma and they bought the house over the square.”

“When was that?”

“Not long. Two years at the most.”

“You’re mates, aren’t you?”

“I suppose so.” The concept seemed to embarrass him. “We both play cricket for the village team. Have a few pints together after a game.”

“So he’ll have talked about his background, his family. You know where he grew up.”

“Not really,” Greenwood said. “Mostly it’s talk about the mid-order collapse or where we can find a decent bowler.”

“You’re winding me up.”

“He likes talking about his work. Pilotage.”

“Safe ground,” she said. “He won’t be caught out on that.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to Mantel, he’s not who he says he is.”

“How would he know?”

“He recognized him apparently.”

“And you believe Mantel?”

“Yes,” Vera said. “I think I do.”

She stood up. She’d arranged to meet Ashworth in the teashop over the road. It would do as an office for the time being. Better than the station in the town which had turned out to be enemy territory. Eventually, she supposed, she’d have to put in another appearance there, show her face round the door of the incident room, smile to show they were all on the same side, working together, but at the moment it suited her to keep her position ambiguous and detached. Better all round if no one knew where she was and what she was up to. Caroline Fletcher, it seemed, still had a way of inspiring loyalty among her former colleagues. She looked down at Greenwood. He was hunched forwards, his shoulders tense.

“Will you be all right?” Trying not to fuss.

He looked up and forced a smile. “Sure. It’s about time I did some work here. There’s a trade fair at the end of the week. I should be preparing for that.”

“You should find yourself a good woman.”

He paused before speaking and she waited, expecting some confidence, but obviously he thought better of it. “Yeah, well. Easier said than done. I’ve never had much luck in that line.”

He looked straight up at her. Those dark eyes that made you think like something out of a soppy magazine.

I’d be your woman. Good or bad. Only no man has ever wanted me. The words came suddenly into her head and she was shocked by their bitterness. She turned away. Outside the light had almost gone and the street was quiet. There was a smell of wood smoke. Not from a bonfire. There’d be wood-burning stoves in the big houses on the other side of the square. It was a wealthy village this, she thought. It wasn’t showy like the estate where Fletcher lived, but there was plenty of money around. As she waited to cross the road Ashworth pulled up. While he was parking she watched a group of girls in school uniform come out of the post office with cans of Coke and bars of chocolate. She wondered what they’d do in a place like this for a good night out. All kids liked to take risks, but until the murders you’d have put this down as one of the safest places on earth. So what would they do? Hang around each other’s houses looking for porn sites on the Internet,? Drink too much? Have sex with unsuitable lads? A girl like Abigail Mantel must have been bored silly here. What games had she been playing to bring a bit of excitement to her life?

“We’ll be closing in five minutes,” the woman in the bakery said as soon as they opened the door.

“Eh, lass, what about this wonderful Yorkshire hospitality we hear so much about. A pot of tea and a couple of currant tea cakes and we’ll be no trouble. You can leave us to ourselves and finish up in here.”

The woman shrugged but she nodded them through to the back room before changing the sign on the door to Closed. She’d know who they were by now. It would be something to talk to her friends about. Vera thought again Elvet was that sort of place. You had to find your excitement where you could.

The chairs had all been put upside down on the tables. She chose a place furthest away from the shop and made herself comfortable. “Well?”

Ashworth sat opposite her. “Lineham’s a really nice bloke…”

Vera sighed theatrically. Ashworth thought well of everyone. He made most of the social workers she’d come across seem flint-hearted.

“He is! He was wondering if he should come to speak to us. Then he thought it might not be relevant and that we’d see him as some sort of ghoul wanting to get mixed up in a murder investigation.” Ashworth stopped speaking as the woman from the shop came in with a heavy tea tray and continued once she’d left. “He was older than her, in his last year of the sixth form when she died.”

“Did he sleep with her?”

“Only once, he says. One afternoon. Soon after her fifteenth birthday party. They both bunked off school, drank a couple of bottles of wine that had been left over from the party, and ended up in bed together.”

“Where?”

“Her house.”

“I thought there was some sort of housekeeper who was there to keep an eye on her.”

“There’d been a succession, apparently. None of them stayed long. According to Lineham it was the woman’s day off.”

“So it was planned in advance?”

“By Abigail, at least. It was all her idea.”

“According to him.”

“He sounded genuine to me,” Ashworth said. “His dad was a teacher at the school and it was hard for him to get away with much. The way he tells it, it was a sort of a dare. She taunted him into skipping a class and going back with her. Afterwards he threw up. More nerves than the drink, he said.”

“Was she experienced?”

“More experienced than him, but that’s not saying much.”

Vera tried to picture the scene, get it clear in her head. She wished she’d been there at the interview. She’d like to have known what the weather was like, where they’d sat to drink the wine, what music they’d listened to. “How did they get from the school to her house?”

“The lunchtime bus to the village and then they walked.”

“Was it a regular thing for her, sagging off school?”

“He said he had the impression that it had happened before. But she could have been showing off.”

“How could Emma Bennett not have known about this?” Vera was speaking almost to herself. “She must have realized Abigail was playing truant. Unless Abigail lied to her, came up with a plausible explanation for the absences. Or perhaps Emma has been lying to us’. She shared the last of the tea from the pot between them. “What do you think?”

But Ashworth hadn’t been listening. “There’s more,” he said.

Something in his voice made her look up sharply. “Spit it out, man.”

“Afterwards Lineham got cold feet. Maybe the…” he struggled for an appropriate word ‘… encounter didn’t live up to expectations. Maybe he was so scared of his father that he wasn’t prepared to risk another dirty afternoon with the girl, however good it was. Anyway, he told her that was it. He didn’t want it to happen again. Not until she was sixteen, at least, and he’d finished his A levels.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t like that,” Vera said. “Not a spoilt little girl like Abigail.”

“But Lineham said she did like it in a strange kind of way. She saw it as a challenge, a game.”

So, Vera thought. That was how she got her kicks.

Ashworth was continuing, “If he’d gone along with her she’d probably have lost interest, but it gave her the excuse to play nasty.”

“In what way?”

“She said he had no right to treat her like that. If he didn’t agree to spend more time with her, she’d go to his dad and tell him what had happened. But she’d say it had all been Lineham’s fault. That he’d got her drunk and seduced her.”

“Innocent little darling,” Vera said. “Wasn’t that what one of the headlines called her at the time?”

“You can’t really blame the lass,” Ashworth said. “Only fifteen and no mam to keep her straight. The lad didn’t have to jump into bed with her.”

Vera said nothing. Perhaps Ashworth was right. And perhaps Caroline was misunderstood too and as vulnerable as Greenwood had made out. But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason. Then she brought herself up with a start. What was she thinking? That the girl had deserved to die horribly at the edge of a windswept field one cold November afternoon? That she’d asked for it? That made her as bad as Jeanie, brooding in her cell, calling the girl evil.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did Lineham call her bluff?”

“He didn’t need to. The following week she was killed.”

“Oh, God,” Vera said. “Another bloody suspect.”

“No. He was in Sunderland all weekend with his family. His grandma’s funeral. I’ll check, of course, but I’m sure he’s telling the truth.”

“Abigail used blackmail to bring a bit of excitement into her life,” Vera said. She saw the woman from the shop standing in the doorway with a mop and bucket and stood up to show they were ready to go. “What else turned her on, do you suppose?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vera was having problems seeing Jeanie and Mantel as a couple. Michael Long had described how they’d met, but he’d put his own spin on it. He’d disapproved from the beginning and hadn’t bothered trying to understand. The prison governor thought Jeanie had been a saint and the chaplain hadn’t got on with her. Vera wanted to understand what had brought the two of them together. She thought she owed Jeanie that. Ashworth went off to check Nick Lineham’s alibi for the day that Abigail was strangled, but Vera stood in the street, pondering the matter, not ready yet to go back to the hotel.

The pub had just opened for the evening and was still empty. Vera pushed her way in. She was an expert on pubs and thought she wouldn’t mind this as her local. There was a jukebox, but no background music and none of those machines that beeped and flashed lights. The ashtrays were clean and the tables were polished. She’d guess the beer would be well kept. Not that she was a snob about such things.

She sat at the bar for a moment before a woman came from the back to serve her, apologizing for keeping her waiting. She was in her fifties, smart and if she’d seen her in the street, Vera would have put her down as one of those efficient businesswomen who can hold a company together. Vera ordered beer. Tbo early for whisky, she decided.

“And whatever you’re having…”

The landlady pulled the beer, then took a small bottle of orange juice, opened it expertly, checked the glass was spotless and poured it.

“You must be Veronica,” Vera said. “Michael told me about you. You’ll know who I am. A place like this, word gets about.”

“You’re the inspector come to find out why an innocent woman spent ten years in jail, then killed herself because she could see no way out.”

Vera was surprised by the anger. It was the first unambiguous support she’d heard for Jeanie in Elvet. She liked the woman.

She lifted the glass to her lips. She’d been right about the beer. Aye,” she said. “It was a tragedy.”

“It was a crime.”

“Did you tell them first time round you’d thought they’d got it wrong?”

“I tried,” Veronica said. “I made an appointment to see that other woman. Fletcher.”

“What did she say?”

“That if I didn’t have any evidence, or couldn’t provide Jeanie with an alibi, I was wasting my time. But as I saw it, they didn’t have the evidence to convict her. I worked as secretary to a solicitor before Barry and I took this place on. I’ve never seen a case handled like this one. As I saw it there was no one really to fight on Jeanie’s behalf. Michael had never understood her and Peg was ill by the time it came to court.”

“You knew them all? Mantel and Jeanie and the girl?”

“Mantel and Jeanie certainly. My son went to school with Abigail, but he was a bit younger so I didn’t really know her. She came in here once with a couple of lads, dressed up so I hardly recognized her, hoping to get served. Stupid to think she’d get away with it, but they all try it on at one time or another.”

Vera had a thought. “Did you know Christopher Winter? He must have been the same age as your son.”

“Not then, not at the time of the murder. He’d only just moved to the village, and though he was in the same year as my boy, he was a different type of lad. Academic. Later I got to know him a bit better.”

“How?”

“He came in here a few times when he was home from university. Looked like he could use someone to talk to. If it was quiet I’d chat.”

“Was he always on his own?”

Aye, always.”

“And what did you talk about?”

“Nothing important. Anything that took his fancy. World news. Village gossip. I had the impression he just wanted an excuse to be out the house for a bit. Glad to escape his father, maybe. I don’t think they got on.”

Vera sat for a moment, thinking about a boy whose only entertainment on his break from university was to sit in a quiet pub making small talk with a middle-aged woman.

“Did he drink too much?”

“Sometimes. No more than other lads his age. But he never got fighting drunk, never made a nuisance of himself. I saw him come over a bit sentimental a couple of times and that’s when he talked about his father. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m his son, at all. I can’t believe he’s anything to do with me.”

An elderly man came in. Veronica had his pint pulled before he reached the bar. He put a couple of coins on the counter and carried the drink to a corner without speaking. Vera waited until he was out of earshot then continued.

“You must have known Jeanie well, though. She worked for you.”

“Aye, in the restaurant first, then when she was eighteen in the bar too. I liked her very much, though Barry said she was too quiet to be a barmaid. Not outgoing enough. I didn’t care about that. She was interesting. I looked forward to the days she was working. We talked about music and books. You don’t get much of that conversation in here.”

Or with Barry was the implication.

“Not everyone seemed to have liked her,” Vera said. “I’ve talked to a few people. Arrogant, they called her. Cocky.”

Veronica thought about that. “Maybe she could seem that way if you didn’t know her well. She was different from the other girls in the village. She couldn’t talk to them. But it was more shyness than anything else. And later, after she’d been through the court case, I suppose she had to be hard to survive.”

“Did you ever go to visit her in prison?”

“I told Peg that I’d go if she wanted me to. I asked her to get Jeanie to send me a visiting order. But she never did. Perhaps she couldn’t bear anyone else to see her in that place.” There was another pause. “She was proud. Even when she was a youngster. Sometimes you get some comments in here. Lads when they’ve had too much to drink, sneering, acting all macho. She’d never show that they’d got to her.”

“Did her father get to her?”

“Oh, aye. I don’t know what it was with Michael. He could never let her be. Always criticizing and passing comment. About her clothes or her hair or how she spent her time. But she’d not let on that he bothered her either. Like I said. Proud.”

“Tell me about how she met Keith Mantel. Was that while she was working here?”

Veronica stared towards the door, as if she hoped someone would come in, so she could avoid answering. “I worry about that sometimes. The way things happen. If I hadn’t taken her on here, perhaps she’d still be alive.”

“You can’t think like that, pet. It would drive you crazy.”

“I know, but maybe I should have done more to warn her off Mantel. She might have listened to me. But he charmed her. Keith can be irresistible when he turns on the charm. I’ve seen him in action in here.”

“What was the attraction for him? I mean, why Jeanie? I can’t see her as his type.”

“She was beautiful,” Veronica said simply. “In the way some models are. The ones that make all the money. Not pretty. Abigail was pretty. Jeanie was stunning. And it happened very quickly. One day, it seemed, she was this gawky teenager given to spots, then this interesting young woman. Not everyone saw it. They remembered the old Jeanie, even when the new one was standing right in front of them. Even

Michael didn’t realize. Mantel saw it though. I could see him watching her. Jeanie didn’t realize herself how she’d changed, until he pointed it out.”

“That’s why she fell for him, then?” Vera said.

“Aye, he was older, a bit of a crook, but he made her feel attractive for the first time…” Veronica paused. “It helped of course that her father couldn’t stand him.”

“What was all that about? Why did Michael take against him?”

“Michael had pretty well run the village before then. His family’s lived here for generations. His father was cox of the lifeboat. He kept a fishing boat down on the shore. And Michael had worked for the pilots since he was a young man. Then Keith Mantel turned up, throwing money around, and folk started taking notice of him instead. Stupid really. Like little boys in a playground. It made you want to bang their heads together.”

“Did Jeanie carry on working here after she moved in with Mantel?”

“No. He wouldn’t have liked that. He likes his women dependent on him. And I know what he said in court, about Jeanie turning up on his doorstep and him not being able to turn her way. As if he didn’t really care about her one way or the other, but I’m not sure that was true. Not at the beginning. At the beginning, she really got under his skin.”

i Vera considered this for a moment. Perhaps she’d been wrong about Mantel. Perhaps he’d been capable of love after all. Perhaps if the couple Tiad been left alone, if Abigail and Michael and everyone else in Elvet had left them alone they could have been happy. No, she thought then. This was never going to be a fairy-tale romance. He’d still been seeing Caroline Fletcher all the time. It would never have worked out.

She emptied her glass and set it on the bar.

“Another?” Veronica asked.

Vera thought about that seriously. “Best not.” She slid from her stool.

“I saw Jeanie,” Veronica said suddenly, and Vera hoisted herself back onto the seat. “The week before Abigail was killed. I never said at the time. If the police had asked me about it, they’d have got the wrong impression.”

“In what way?”

“She turned up here just before opening time and I made her a coffee. She just wanted to let off steam. About the girl Abigail. About what a little madam she was. “I don’t know what to do. If I tell Keith what she’s getting up to, he won’t believe me. But I can’t just let her get away with it.””

“Away with what?” Vera asked.

Veronica shook her head. “I don’t know. If I’d pushed her maybe she’d have told me. But it was nearly opening time and one of the reps came in. She said she could see I was really busy and she’d come back. Ten days later the police had her in custody for murder.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The next day Vera drove to the Point. There was a car park in the dunes. She left her car facing the river and walked down the track towards the jetty. It was nine o’clock, and there was a bright, morning light. Sharp shadows and a glittering reflection from the water. She was pleased to be away from the village, from the suspicious glares of the locals and the persistent probing of the journos who seemed to lurk on every corner. They’d seen her in the bakery and some of them had taken up permanent residence there.

She’d sent Ashworth to check Bennett was who he said he was. Birth register, national insurance number, passport details. It would take time, but he’d do it well. He’d already found out that Nick Lineham had been sobbing his heart out in a crematorium in Sunderland when Abigail had died. She’d suggested that he work from police headquarters. She wanted to know what was happening with the Winter investigation and Holness wasn’t going to volunteer information to her. Not after the way she’d spoken to him when they last met. People liked Ashworth. Wherever he went they trusted him, talked to him. She knew she rubbed people up the wrong way. She hoped Ashworth would come back with a feel for how the Winter enquiry was progressing.

If she asked for specific details the local team would probably tell her, but she wanted more than that. She needed the wild theories, the gossip in the pub at the end of the day. Besides, she had too much pride to ask.

She was glad to be outside to clear her head. Each night she promised herself she’d have a night off the drink but she never quite managed it. She never got drunk, not stupid, student drunk, but some evenings she knew it was the only way she’d sleep. She had to reach just that point when her thoughts got mellow and blurry, and the details of the investigation didn’t matter quite so much. Then in the morning she’d wake up with a distant, heady feeling. And that was how she’d felt this morning. She’d carried on drinking when she’d got back to the hotel.

The smell of frying bacon came out of one of the lifeboat houses, and she walked past quickly, because the way she was feeling she’d rather have salt and seaweed in her nostrils. Beyond the modern lifeboat houses there were two square white cottages, which had once housed the coast guards but where the coxswains now lived. In one of these Jeanie Long had grown up, and Michael had nursed his wife until she died.

A woman came out of the cottage nearest to the sea. She was dressed in the coxswain’s uniform but her shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and she didn’t make her way to the jetty where the launch was moored. She was carrying a white enamel bowl. She walked round the house to a whitewashed shed in the back garden and returned with the bowl half full of sandy potatoes.

A bit early for your dinner,” Vera said.

The woman stopped. It seemed she didn’t mind chatting. “I’ll be working most of the day. Might as well get them peeled now.” With a bit of a wink. “I’ve got a friend coming for supper.” Then, “My dad’s got an allotment. He keeps me in veg.”

“Nothing like home-grown.”

“So he’s always telling me.”

Vera took out her warrant card. “I’m looking into the Abigail Mantel murder. Have you got time for a word? You can do the spuds while we’re talking.”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ll be glad of an excuse for a coffee. Come in. I’ll stick the kettle on.”

Her name was Wendy Jowell. The first female coxswain on the Humber, she said. It wasn’t like being a proper pilot. All she did was take the launch out to collect the pilot from the ship once he’d got it out of the river. Or take him out.

“The pilots,” Vera asked. “They’re all men, are they?”

“Of course. That’s where the money is, isn’t it?”

They laughed. “One time,” Vera said, ‘you never got female detectives. Not above the rank of sergeant. Things change.”

“I’m not sure I’d want it, anyway. Too much responsibility. Too much pressure. I’m all right where I am.”

“Do you know Michael Long?”

“He took me out a few times when I was training. Not that he liked doing it, miserable sod. He couldn’t understand how they could appoint a woman. Then I tqok over from him when he retired. I’ve not seen him lately. He hid himself away after Peg died.”

“Were you living round here at the time of Abigail’s murder?”

“In Elvet, in one of the council houses. I was still married then. It was just before I saw sense.”

“Did you know Jeanie?”

“A place this size, you know most people. To say hello to at least. She worked in the Anchor sometimes. We might even have been at school together though I don’t remember that. She’d have been younger than me.”

“What did you make of her?”

“I liked her. Some people said she was a bit arsy just because she got all her exams and went off to university. I think she was shy, that’s all. You’d see her in the pub, blokes making smutty jokes, pervy Barry eyeing her up and she hated it. She put on a good front. I admired her for that. But she wasn’t used to it. She’d been away to college yet you’d think she was just a kid. And it can’t have been much fun having Michael Long as your dad.”

“Why not?”

“Not exactly sensitive, our Michael. Typical bluff Yorkshireman and proud of it. Bit of a bully on the quiet too.”

“Violent?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but aggressive. Especially when he’s had a few drinks. The way he talks now, you’d think him and Peg had never had a cross word, but it wasn’t always like that. Before she got ill he didn’t mind having a go at her. In public sometimes. Once in the Anchor, when she was trying to persuade him to go home, he started yelling at her, calling her all sorts. I wouldn’t have put up with it, myself.”

“It’s humiliating,” Vera said, ‘when it happens in public’

“Tbo right.” There was a moment of silence when they both seemed lost in memory.

“What about Emma Bennett?” Vera asked. “Emma Winter she’d have been then. Did you know her around the time of the murder?”

“She’d be the exception that proved the rule. I wouldn’t even have known her if I’d bumped into her in the street. She was a lot younger than me and they’d only just moved into Springhead then. After it had happened people pointed her out. You know how people gossip “See that lass, that’s the one who found the Mantel girl’s body.” But until then I had no idea.”

“And now she’s married to one of the pilots.”

“Aye, to James.” She lingered just long enough over the words to give a sense of appreciation. Vera said nothing, hoped she’d continue. “Now, James Bennett,” Wendy said at last. “There’s a man who’s too good to be true.”

“What do you mean?” Vera kept her voice even, barely interested.

“Well, he’s something else, isn’t he? Good looking, considerate. And a bloody good pilot.”

“So everyone tells me.”

“Some of the pilots hardly acknowledge you. I mean, it’s like they’ve called a minicab on a Friday night to get them home from town. You get a grunt if you’re lucky. James is different. Even when you can tell he’s knackered, he’s polite.”

“Does Emma know how lucky she is?”

“James is besotted, I know that.” And Emma?”

“You can’t tell, can you? She’s a bit like Jeanie Long. All restrained and tongue-tied. Repressed. Another one with an overbearing father.”

“How do you know Robert Winter?” Vera was surprised. She wouldn’t have thought they moved in the same circles. But maybe, as Wendy had said, in a place the size of El vet everyone knew everyone else. Or thought they did.

Wendy paused and for a moment Vera thought she would avoid answering. “I married a loser,” Wendy said in the end. “He was a flash bastard, full of schemes and dreams and promises that we’d be rich, but it was all make believe. All that happened was that he ended up in court charged with fraud and nicking credit cards.”

“He got probation,” Vera said.

“Aye, and he always had something better to do than keep his appointments in the office, so we’d have Robert Winter sniffing about the place looking for him.”

“You didn’t like Mr. Winter?”

“He was so patronizing. Like he was perfect or something and the rest of us were too dumb to organize our own lives. Jed, my bloke, was no angel. He was into all sorts of stuff that I didn’t know about. Didn’t want to know about. And he could get nasty when he’d had a few drinks. Like Michael Long. I could recognize the type. But I didn’t need Robert Winter to tell me that. And I’d have left him a hell of a lot sooner if Winter hadn’t kept telling me to.” She smiled. “I always was a stubborn cow. Never liked being told what to do.”

“No,” Vera said. “Nor do I. That’s why I got myself up the ladder a bit. So I could do the telling. I wouldn’t have thought that’d have been Mr. Winter’s style, though. I’d have thought he’d have been into the sanctity of marriage. He’s religious, isn’t he?”

“He’s a creep.” But Wendy seemed to have lost interest. Anyway, I didn’t have to see him much after that. Jed got nicked again and was sent away. By the time he got out of prison I’d got a job on the ferries. That gave me the bug and I ended up here.”

“How did James end up here?” Vera asked, as if it was the most natural question in the world, as if, really, she couldn’t care less. “I mean what’s his background?”

“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “That’s one of the great things about him. He doesn’t talk much about himself. With most blokes it’s all me, me, me, isn’t it? Not James. He just seems interested in other people.”

Outside in the glaring sunlight, Vera thought that did sound a bit too good to be true. She sat on one of the wooden benches outside the cafe and drank milky coffee, not really sure what she was waiting for. A couple of birdwatchers in ridiculous hats munched their way through sausage sandwiches. They spoke with their mouths full about birds they’d seen and missed. Vera, whose father had been a birdwatcher of a kind, felt a strange nostalgia. Grease from the sandwich dribbled down one of the men’s chin but he wiped it away before it hit the lens of the binoculars which were strung round his neck. Wendy Jowell came out of her cottage and walked along the jetty to the launch. Vera watched it slide from the shelter of the river into open water, then bounce against the incoming waves, until it disappeared round the Point. The birdwatchers wandered away and she was starting to feel cold, but still she couldn’t bring herself to move off.

Her phone rang just as the launch came back into view. It was Ashworth.

“I thought you’d like to know what we’ve got so far.”

We. So he’d already started to work his magic, making allies, building bridges. The local team would feel sorry for him, being managed by a fat cow like her.

“Go on.”

“I’ve checked with the DVLC and the passport office. According to them everything seems OK. James Richard Bennett. Date of birth the sixteenth of June 1966. Place of birth was Crill, East Yorkshire.”

“Local then. And Mantel must have got it wrong when he said Bennett wasn’t his real name. Or be making mischief. According to Michael Long they grew up in the same town. Maybe it was a case of settling old scores.” She was disappointed. She’d felt in her water that James Bennett wasn’t real. He wasn’t a man she could believe in. Like Wendy had said, too good to be true.

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh?”

“His birth wasn’t registered in that name. No national insurance number, no record of his existence until 1987.”

“When he’d have been twenty-one. So if Mantel knew him as someone different he’d have been very young. But they could have met. They both lived in Crill. I wouldn’t have put it past Mantel to involve young people in his dodgy businesses. They come cheap, after all.”

“I checked with the Public Record Office. He changed his name by deed poll in 1987. Did everything right. Got an old teacher to support the application. It has to be someone who’s known you for at least ten years. Advertised in the London Gazette like you’re supposed to. Signed the deed poll in his old and new name.”

“What was his old name?”

“Shaw. James Richard Shaw.”

“Not a name that you could take exception to,” Vera said. “I mean some names, you can see why someone would want to change them. But not Shaw. So why go through all that effort? Who did he want to hide from?”

“Mantel?” Ashworth suggested.

“Maybe. Bennett went away to sea. That suggests running away to me. Then perhaps he came back when he thought he was safe.”

“To a village where Mantel was living? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Perhaps the situation had changed. Perhaps he was prepared to risk it for Emma to live close to her parents. People can look a lot different after fifteen years. Do you think the wife knows about the name change?”

“She wouldn’t have to. If you’re already married, you have to notify your spouse of a name change, but banns of marriage can be called in the new name.”

“All the same,” Vera said, ‘it’s a big secret to keep. You’d need a good reason not to tell your new wife that you grew up with another name. And wouldn’t she find out when she met all the relatives?”

“Perhaps she hasn’t.”

“I don’t suppose James Richard Shaw has a criminal record. That he was in a Young Offender Institute until

1987 and he changed his name to put that behind him?”

, “I did check,” Ashworth said. “First thing I thought of

Smart-arse, she thought. “Well?”

“Nothing. Hasn’t been in trouble in either name. Not even a speeding ticket.”

She didn’t speak again immediately. The launch was pulling back into the jetty. She saw two dark silhouettes on the deck, sharp against the sparkling water. They began to climb the ladder from the boat.

“What would you like me to do now?” Ashworth asked.

The figures reached the top of the jetty and she could see them more clearly. One was James Bennett.

“Nothing,” she said with regret. “A bit more digging. If there’s something odd about Bennett we don’t want to let him know we’re onto him. Not until we’ve a bit more of an idea what it’s about.”

She was still sitting outside the cafe when the pilot drove past. She didn’t think he noticed her.

Chapter Thirty

When Michael Long opened his door to her, she was surprised by the response a mixture of irritation and relief.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” he said, as if she’d been deliberately trying to avoid him.

“Well, you’ve got me now so you’d best let me in.”

He stood aside and she went ahead of him into the small front room where they’d sat and talked the week before.

“Every time I phoned there’d be someone different to talk to. Sometimes no one at all, just a recorded message. And none of them would put me onto you.”

“They’re busy,” Vera snapped. “A case like this, do you know how many calls they get to the incident room?”

He looked at her as if she’d bitten him, but he stopped complaining. She thought there’d been no need to be so sharp with him. Was she less sympathetic because of what Wendy Jowell had said about him being a bully? She was trying to think of something to say to make him believe she was still on his side, but he spoke first.

“I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Daresay you’re ready for a brew.”

God, she thought, any more tea and I’ll float away up the Humber like one of those bloated container ships. “Aye,” she said. “Why not?”

When he came back, carrying the tray, he was so eager to please, to pour the tea strong as she liked it, that it was easy to appear understanding.

“Why did you want the pleasure of my company, anyway?” she said. “What was it that wouldn’t wait?”

“I saw the lad, Christopher Winter, the day he died. I didn’t know it was him when I saw him. But they had his picture in the paper, asking if anyone had seen him. I recognized him from that.”

“You should have told the officers in the incident room,” she said carefully, not telling him off exactly, just making the point. “It could be important.” But even as she was speaking she couldn’t help feeling a childish satisfaction because she’d got hold of the information before the local team.

“Aye, well. I might have done if they’d been less rude.”

She let that go.

“Where did you see him?”

“In the cemetery at the edge of the village. I’d gone to visit Peg’s grave. It’d been a while since I’d been there and I wanted to pay my respects. Show her I was on my feet again, like.” He looked up. “Daft, I know.”

“Not daft at all,” she said. “What time was this?”

“Early in the morning. Around eight o’clock.”

“What was Christopher Winter doing?”

“Same as me, I think. Mourning. He was standing next to the grave of the lass our Jeanie was supposed to have killed.”

“Did you speak?”

Michael Long shook his head. “He was too upset to notice me. I mean, there still wasn’t much light, but even if there had been, I don’t think he’d have seen. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation myself

“What was he wearing?”

“One of those long waterproofs with a jumper underneath. Jeans, I think.”

She nodded. Those were the clothes he’d been wearing when Mary had found the body.

“Did you see where he went after? Or was he still there when you left?”

“He went before me,” Michael said, “but he seemed to vanish into thin air. I walked back to the village soon after he’d left but I didn’t see him ahead of me.”

“Maybe he just walked faster than you.”

“Aye, maybe. But I don’t move badly for my age. It wasn’t the weather to hang about. And if he’d gone back to Elvet someone would have seen him. He’d have had to pass the bus stop and there were a load of kids waiting there.” He seemed to lose his concentration for a moment. Vera waited for him to continue. “At the time I wondered if he’d gone in the opposite direction, towards the river, but I can’t think what would have taken him there at that time of day.”

“Is there anything else?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I might have got it wrong and I know how important it is, not jumping to conclusions…”

“You know how important it is people speaking up. If that lad who saw Jeanie at King’s Cross had said so at the time…”

“I heard him talking,” Michael said. At the time I

thought he was just raving. I mean, that’s what it looked like. Some madman. You could believe he was talking to himself. Later I wondered if he had a mobile phone. The way he was standing, he could have been using a mobile. I saw a couple of lasses at the bus stop later gabbing into one and that made me think.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“He sounded angry, frustrated. But I couldn’t hear the words.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That could make all the difference.”

She sat quite still for a moment before she remembered what she’d come for.

“You must have worked with James Bennett.”

“Aye, he started a year or so before I retired.”

“What did you make of him?”

“All right. A competent pilot.”

“Did you realize he’d married the lass who found Abigail Mantel’s body?”

“Someone must have told me. A place like this you get to know things without realizing how.”

“When you were playing detective, digging up the dirt on Keith Mantel, did you ever come across mention of Bennett?”

Michael looked at her as if she was crazy. “Of course not. Why?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “A stupid idea probably. Did Bennett ever talk about his past to you, his family, what he did when he was a kid?”

“We weren’t on those sort of terms.”

No, she thought. James Bennett wasn’t on those sort of terms with anyone. She ferreted in her bag for her phone. “I need to make a call,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“I’ll make myself scarce. Wash these pots.”

He was on his way to the kitchen when she called him back. “Would you show me after where you saw the lad? The cemetery first, then we could take a walk to the river. Show me the path you think he might have taken. If it’s no bother.”

“No.” He smiled, glad to be in her good books again. “It’s no bother at all.”

Ashworth must have been in the canteen because she heard a background clatter of crockery and chat.

“Are you OK to talk?” She meant was he on his own.

“Go ahead.”

“Did Winter have a mobile phone on him?”

“No one’s said. Do you want me to find out?”

“I’ve got a witness who saw him early that morning. He thinks Winter was talking into a mobile. Could have been, at least. If the lad did have a mobile on him, they’ll probably already have checked the calls, but this makes it a priority, doesn’t it? And before you give me a lecture I’ll bring my witness in to make a statement this afternoon. You hang on for me there.”

She switched off the phone before he could ask for more details and called to Michael who was making a show of waiting tactfully in the kitchen, “Ready when you are, pet. Let’s take a constitutional. I could do with some air.”

Vera could tell people were taking notice of them walking down the street together. There was nothing obvious, no staring or twitching of curtains. But it was there in the studied way the old ladies in front of the post office continued their conversation, only breaking off later to follow them with their eyes. And the vicar, who seemed about to cross the road to talk to Michael, stopped when he saw Vera and contented himself with a wave. Only a lone reporter approached them, but she flapped her hand at him, and without his colleagues he seemed to lack the courage to pursue them. Vera wondered if the locals were all just curious or if they believed she had a professional interest in Michael. Could they think she was arresting him? Was that the cause of their awkwardness?

She knew about small places, villages where people had grown up together and knew each other’s secrets, but Elvet depressed her. It was something to do with the flat countryside, everything the colour of mud, the unrelenting wind. No wonder Christopher Winter had been reluctant to return once he had escaped. What had dragged him back? He hadn’t been summoned for a special family occasion. He could have kept away.

There was a pile of dog muck on the pavement, and Michael took her arm briefly to steer her round it. She thought people who didn’t know them could take them as a married couple. Shambling and dysfunctional, dependent on each other for survival. She moved away from him and they walked down the lane several feet apart, not speaking.

There were no ancient graves in the cemetery; it must have been established once the churchyard was full. The sun had gone and the breeze was cooler than ever, tearing at the remaining dead leaves on the sycamore, shredding them so only the stalks and the veins were left.

“Was Christopher here before you?” Vera asked.

“Can’t have been. I’d have had to walk right past him to get to my Peg.”

“Did you see which way he came from?”

Michael only shook his head. The place seemed to have knocked all the spirit out of him. Vera stood looking about her for a moment. Beyond the dry stone wall there was open country on three sides, tussocky grass grazed by sheep. In a field there was something dead. It was too small for a sheep, probably a rabbit. It had been picked over by crows, and only bones and a scrap of fur remained. The wall was too high to be scrambled over without a fuss. Christopher Winter must have come through the gate.

“Show me where this road goes, then,” she said, opening it to let him out. “Can you drive all the way down?”

“Aye, some people keep boats there in the summer, and there’s a bit of a car park for folks who want a stroll along the riverbank. Do you want to go back for your car?”

“Is it far?”

“Half a mile at most.”

“We’ll walk it, then, shall we?” She was thinking she should warn Joe Ashworth that they’d be a while getting in to the station, but when she looked at her mobile there was no signal. The lane was straight, with a sparse hawthorn hedge on one side and a full ditch fringed with blackened reeds on the other. The hawthorn bushes had knotted trunks, smeared with green lichen and a scattering of berries. A small flock of redwing chased along the hedge, flipping occasionally into the field beyond. In the distance was a farmhouse surrounded by a graveyard of rotting machinery.

“Who lives there?” she asked.

“No one now. Cyril Moore died a month or so ago. Someone said it’s been sold. They’re going to turn it into a riding school. No money in farming these days.”

The tide was out when they arrived at the river. There were acres of ridged sand and mud, which seemed to stretch almost all the way to the Lincolnshire coast. A cloud of small wading birds, gathered like insects into a swarm, rose in a cyclone above them then settled back onto the mud. The hull of a clinker-built boat rotted upturned on the shore. There was a rough car park containing a red telephone box, a notice board, which might once have given details of how to contact the coast guard but which had faded into illegibility and a white wooden post with a life belt attached.

“Is this it?” Vera demanded. She was hungry and cold and thought she’d come on a wild goose chase.

“I did say I couldn’t think what could have brought him here.”

“So you did.” She tried her phone again. Still it refused to work.

They were back at the edge of the village when she realized how stupid she’d been. She recreated that morning in the cemetery in her head, trying to bring it to life. Christopher Winter had been at Emma’s. He’d sat up all night getting maudlin drunk, decided before it was even light that he needed to visit Abigail’s grave. Then what? He’d phoned someone. To accuse them of her murder? To demand an explanation? Support? Help? If he’d tried his mobile, it would probably be a number he’d kept in his head, or that he’d already saved on his phone. So it would be someone he knew well, or a number he’d checked in advance. But what if the phone hadn’t worked? Perhaps this was one of those black holes which swallowed mobile signals. It was possible that the angry words Michael had heard were the lad venting his frustration on the limitations of technology. What would he have done then? Surely he’d have found a phone box, used that. The nearest public phone was at the river car park. He’d have known it was there. He’d have played all round the shore when he was a boy.

Vera stopped abruptly and Michael considered her anxiously. “Are you all right?”

“Go back to your house and ring this number. It’s my sergeant Joe Ashworth. Direct him to the car park on the bank and tell him to meet me there immediately. Say it’s urgent.”

“What are you going to do?”

“None of your business,” she said, giving him a wink to soften the blow. What would she say even if she trusted him absolutely? I’m going to freeze my butt off standing guard over a stinking phone box in case a member of the public thinks to cover any fingerprints of Winter’s which might still be there. “Was that lad wearing gloves when you saw him in the cemetery?”

“No,” Michael said. “I thought at the time he’d be feeling the cold.”

When Ashworth arrived, Vera took his car and left him to wait for the crime scene examiner. She was sitting in the caff next to the bakery, full of sausage sandwich and chocolate eclair, when he arrived. The resident reporters must be following some other lead because she had the place to herself. It was warm in there and she could feel herself nodding off. She knew she’d be more use taking Michael into the station and getting his statement, but she was curious.

“Well?”

Ashworth waited until he’d sat opposite her, leaned forward so the staff couldn’t hear. “He got a couple of decent prints. One from the handset and one off the interior door handle. They’ll test for a match.”

“Could be anyone’s, though, couldn’t they? I mean, I can’t imagine people queuing to use the phone, but it could have been used once in the last couple of days. It’ll be worth seeing if there was a call from it the morning Winter died, though.”

“Not really,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s bust. Has been for at least a fortnight according to BT, but because it’s so little used this time of year the repair wasn’t a priority.”

“Bugger,” she said. Not angry. Resigned. It had been that sort of day.

“We’ll know from the prints if he tried to make a call. He didn’t have a mobile on him, by the way.”

She looked up at that. “Did he own one?”

“They’re trying to find out.”

“You’d better tell Mr. Holness,” she said, ‘that trying’s not good enough.”

Chapter Thirty-One

She caught up with Caroline Fletcher at an ugly house in Crill, the seaside town further up the coast where Keith Mantel had first made his money. The estate agency had given a list of addresses of the properties on her books and Vera had chased from one to another always just missing her.

To reach the town she had to drive past Spinney Fen, the prison. A ragged line of people were hurrying out of the gate. The end of afternoon visits. After the death of her mother Jeanie had received no visitors. She’d had to listen to the other inmates relive their conversations with loved ones, knowing that if she admitted her guilt she’d be moved to a less secure prison with more humane conditions, where there would be more contact with the outside world. Vera briefly stopped the car outside and thought about that, wondered if she’d be so principled or so stubborn. Maybe she would. She was known for her stubbornness after all. But she’d have promised anything to avoid the ministrations of Robert Winter, the preaching and the pity.

The house Caroline was trying to sell was a mock Tudor monstrosity in a road which ran along the edge of the cliff just outside the town. Another twenty years of erosion, Vera reckoned, and the garden would be crumbling into the sea. The prospective buyers didn’t seem impressed either. It was dark by then. They must have come straight from work and she could tell all they wanted was a strong drink and something mindless on the telly. Vera sat in her car and watched them make their escape, in too much of a hurry even to shake hands with the agent on the doorstep.

Caroline was still locking the door when Vera caught up with her. Vera could move quietly when she wanted. It was one of the skills she’d learned from her father. But Caroline didn’t seem startled by her approach. Maybe she thought it was the purchasers returning. Maybe she had a clear conscience.

“Inspector,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Probably not. But what do you mean?”

“I’d hate you to jeopardize your position in the service. There are too few successful women as it is. Not exactly orthodox, is it? Bothering me at home. And now at work. Especially when you’re on your own. Or is your little friend waiting in the car?”

“Nah,” Vera said easily. “Joe’s mam wouldn’t let him out to play today. It’s you I’m thinking of, pet. We can go back to the station if you like, but I thought it might be embarrassing for you. Having one of your old mates sitting in on the interview, I mean. Or did they all know about you and Keith?”

Caroline’s hand was still for a moment, poised with the key not yet in the lock, but there was no other reaction.

“He told you, I suppose,” she said.

“Did you really think he’d keep it quiet?”

“I thought, as things are, he had as much to lose as me.”

“Shall we go back in and talk about it? Like I said, more discreet than the station.” Behind her back, Vera crossed her fingers. She no more wanted to make this official than Fletcher did.

Caroline shrugged, as if to say she didn’t care either way, but she opened the door and led Vera inside. The house had been cleared of furniture but the owners must have left the heating on, because there wasn’t that chill you get in an unused house. There were no light shades and the naked bulbs showed the patch of damp on the ceiling and the peeling wallpaper in the hall. Caroline threw open the door to the living room and allowed Vera to go ahead of her, as she must have done with the prospective buyers earlier. It was a big room, with a bay window looking out to sea. For the first time Vera thought it might not be a bad place to live. In the distance there was a constellation of tiny lights ships, presumably waiting for the tide at the mouth of the river and somewhere down the coast, the mesmerizing flash of a lighthouse. In the bay window stood a card table and three folding chairs, on the table a pile of estate agent brochures, a floor plan of the house, mortgage information. There was no other furniture. Here Caroline must sit her customers, positioning them so they looked out at the view and had their backs to the scuffed skirting boards and snot green paint. Vera took a seat and nodded for Caroline to join her. She stretched out her legs and the chair creaked. Opposite, the estate agent regarded her with distaste.

“What has Keith Mantel got to lose, then?” Vera asked.

“It looks like corruption, doesn’t it? He wanted a result and he got it. He’s a pillar of society now, sits on committees, talks to ministers about neighbourhood renewal. Being a bit wild when he was a kid is one thing. Colourful. They can forgive him that. But pulling strings in a murder case which only happened ten years ago and won’t go away, that’s something quite different.”

“So why did he tell me?”

Caroline seemed hypnotized by the irregular beat of the lighthouse. “Who knows? Perhaps he’s been living the good citizen for so long that he actually believes it. Perhaps he’s got so many powerful friends he thinks nobody can touch him. Perhaps he hates me so much he doesn’t care.”

Vera was surprised by the bitterness and hurt in the woman’s voice. “When did it start between you and him?”

“Before Jeanie Long moved in, ages before that.”

“How did he explain that one away?”

Caroline turned away from the window and shrugged again. “He didn’t need to. I could tell Jeanie wouldn’t survive. She was only a distraction, not really his type.”

“You weren’t bothered about sharing him?”

“I was more bothered about losing him altogether.” She sat very upright in her chair, constrained by her suit, by the short neat skirt and black tights, waiting for another question. But none came. “There hasn’t been a day since we met when I’ve not thought about him. I keep telling myself I’m behaving like a crazy teenager and that it’ll pass but it doesn’t. I moved in with Alex because I thought that would make a difference, but it hasn’t.” She looked up at Vera. “You must think I’m mental.”

Vera didn’t reply directly. “How did you meet?”

“At a party. He was a friend of a friend. I presume Keith had been told I worked for the police, thought it would be useful. I’d just started as a DC. Maybe he even got me invited. All I knew at the time was that he was a businessman, a widower with a little girl. I don’t know what he did that night or what he said that was different from all the other men who’ve chatted me up at parties. But something happened. He got inside my head and under my skin. An addiction. It’s still there. That night Christopher Winter died, I didn’t go to the Old Chapel to find out if you’d talked to Keith. I told myself that was why I was there, but it wasn’t true. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted a fix. No self-respect, you see. That’s what addiction does to you.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He told me to get out. To leave him alone…” She paused for a moment. “I’d met him a couple of days earlier at the Point. I said we should get our stories straight before you interviewed us. He’d told me then to stay away from him. Only I couldn’t do it.”

Vera didn’t know what to say. Mantel had lost patience. That was why he’d told her about his relationship with Caroline. She’d become a nuisance and he’d wanted the police to do his dirty work. Vera couldn’t bring herself to rub the woman’s nose in it. She picked a question at random. “Did you ever meet Abigail?”

“A couple of times.”

“What did you make of her?”

“Honestly? I suppose I resented her. Keith was besotted. I tried to make friends with her because I knew that was what he wanted, but she never took to me. She could probably tell what I was after. She was a bright little thing. A shame because I thought we had a lot in common. Both obsessive personalities perhaps and you could tell she was lonely. If I’d had her on my side things might have been different. I mean really different.”

“Marriage? Happy families? A white meringue dress and a kid of your own?”

“Yeah,” she said defensively. “Why not? Other people have it.”

Aye,” Vera said. “But we’re not other people, are we, pet?”

They looked at each other across the wobbly table.

“Who do you think killed her?” Vera demanded, suddenly businesslike. “We know it can’t have been Jeanie Long, so who was it?”

“I really thought it was her. Maybe I took a few short cuts, missed things, but it wasn’t because it was convenient to have her out of the way.” She looked up at Vera and repeated more forcefully, “I really thought it was her.”

Vera couldn’t let that go. And so did Keith. No doubt he was pleased when it all got cleared up so quickly. Grateful, was he? I bet he was. Not grateful enough to marry you, though. Is that what he’d promised?”

“Something like that.”

“Where were you the afternoon she died? You’ll have thought about it. You’d know I’d be asking.”

“On my own,” she said. “In my flat in town. A day off.” She paused. “Crying my eyes out because Keith had said he’d take me out and he’d phoned up at the last minute to cancel. Abigail had said she’d cook him supper so he had to stay at home. I was so pissed off I went into work. That’s why I was there when the call first came through.”

“Was Keith at home when she was found?” Turning the knife. Not proud of it.

“No. They finally tracked him down in his office. Something urgent which turned up at the last moment. So he claimed. Like I said Abigail and I had a lot in common. He let her down too.”

“You haven’t said who you think killed her now you know it’s not Jeanie.”

“You’ll think I’m really crazy…”

“Go on.”

“The girl that found her, Emma Winter…”

“Emma Bennett now.”

“There was something about her, that first day I turned up to do the interview. Something weird. I thought it was the shock. Stumbling across her best friend like that, I mean you’d be expecting her to be acting strangely. But it was as if none of it was real. Like she was telling a story she’d already made up, that she’d rehearsed somehow, over and over again, though how could she? It didn’t take us long to get there that afternoon.”

Vera sat for a moment taking that in. “Could she have done it? Would the timing have worked out?”

“The pathologist said Abigail couldn’t have been dead long when Emma found her. You know they can’t be precise about these things. I’d say it was possible that they met up on the path, had a row and Emma killed her then. I’m. not saying that’s what did happen. But you were pushing me for an opinion.”

“Aye, maybe I was. Was there anything else which pointed in that direction? Besides Emma’s behaviour when you interviewed her.”

“The way I’d heard Abigail talk about her. She was really patronizing. As if Emma was the most stupid person she’d ever met. She once said to her father while I was there, “Emma doesn’t know anything.” If I’d been Emma, I’d have felt like killing her’

“Was Abigail bullying her?”

“Probably not. Just pretending to be her best friend and undermining her every chance she got. And Emma was the sort who’d let that get to her. A natural victim. They can be dangerous when they let go.”

“Emma was hardly likely to do away with her brother, though.” Vera seemed to be talking to herself. “And I might not have realized that his bedroom had a view of the field if she’d not pointed it out.” But she’s a strange woman, you’re right about that. Full of fancies. And where does the husband fit in?

“What do you know about James Bennett?”

“Nothing. He wasn’t living there when Abigail was murdered.”

“Keith never mentioned him?”

“Why would he?”

“I had the impression they were friends once. In the old days.”

“Oh, Keith had a lot of friends in the old days. He never introduced many of them to me.”

“Did he ever ask you to do anything else for him?”

“What do you mean?”

Vera banged her fist on the table. The noise echoed round the empty room. “Don’t play games with me, lady. You know exactly what I mean. Did he ask for information? Tell you to turn a blind eye? Influence any other investigation in any way?”

“Only once.” The words seemed like a whisper after Vera’s dramatics. “And it was information which he’d probably have been able to get hold of anyway.”

“Well?”

“He wanted to see a copy of the sex offenders register.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

There was a pause. “Keith’s work is all about influence. He needs people on his side. Councillors. Planners. Maybe he felt he could exert a tad more influence if he knew something about the people he was working with.”

“Was he interested in anyone specific?”

“Maybe. He never said.”

Blackmail, Vera thought. That’s what he was after. So it ran in the family. She kept her voice even. “When was this?”

“Not long before Abigail was killed.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Vera had decided it was time to speak to James Bennett. She could have gone back to Keith Mantel, but no way was he going to give up more information than he wanted. Joe Ashworth had been digging, but he wasn’t local, he didn’t have the contacts and she didn’t want to wait any longer. She found out that James was working and took Ashworth with her to collect him from the Point. She thought they’d take him to the station. That way there’d be no distractions. She told herself there could be all sorts of explanations for his name change, but her imagination was working overtime. He’d been involved in some of Mantel’s illegal operations, she thought. Why else would he want to hide behind an alias? That didn’t make him a murderer, but it made him worth talking to. They didn’t make a show of waiting, just sat in their car next to the pilot’s vehicle until James showed up.

When she saw him walking towards them she had second thoughts. James had been up since the early hours and had that drawn, grey look which is the result of nights of disturbed sleep. She wanted him focused. The way he looked now she could see him dozing off in the interview room, his head on his arm, no good to anyone.

He’d already seen them so they couldn’t drive off. “We can postpone it until later,” she said. “It’s not urgent.”

But James insisted.

“Do you want to let your wife know, then?”

“I’m in earlier than I thought. She’ll not be expecting me for a couple of hours yet.”

They were in a room with no natural light, a strip light which flickered, the smell of stale cigarettes. Vera and James sat opposite each other across a table and Joe Ashworth watched them, his chair pulled away so he seemed an impartial observer, a referee perhaps at a chess match. Vera was wearing one of her shapeless, old lady dresses and a cardigan which she’d buttoned up wrongly at the front. James, still in his uniform, was immaculate.

“This is an informal chat,” Vera said. “Things come up in an enquiry. They’re probably not relevant, but they need clearing up. You’ll understand.”

He nodded.

“Keith Mantel said he’d met you before. Only then you were calling yourself something different. We had to check.”

“Of course.” Very polite, almost as if he was sorry he’d put them to the trouble of snooping round in his past.

“So I was hoping you’d clear it up for us. Explain what it was all about. And at the same time maybe fill in the background details on Keith Mantel.”

Vera hadn’t been sure what to expect. Probably something bland. To be told that it was perfectly legal to change a name by deed poll and that no explanation was required. That it was none of their business. Certainly not this. For James fidgeted briefly with the cap which was sitting upturned in front of him on the table, closed his eyes in a moment of decision and then began to speak, taking them right back to the beginning, telling them, in effect, the history of his life.

“When he was a young man my dad worked on the trawlers. I grew up with all the stories the storms and the larger-than-life skippers and the big chance catches but by the time I was at school, he’d come ashore. Maybe the danger and the discomfort outweighed the adventure; already at that time they were having to go further for fish. It wasn’t easy money. More likely, I think, my mother persuaded him to give it up. It can’t have been much fun for her when he was away.”

Vera nodded, said nothing, waited for him to continue.

“At that time he and my mother ran a news agent and sweet shop in the area where they’d both grown up. I was an only child, but there were cousins to play with in the street, my gran to cook my tea when Mum and Dad were busy. It seemed friendly and safe. There was a lot of bitching, of course. You get hurtful gossip in small communities, I suppose. But it didn’t touch me. I remember it as a good time.

“When he was at sea my father was active in the union and he still took an interest in politics after he’d left. You’d have thought he’d be a natural Conservative, a small businessman making his own way in the world, but it wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a communist. Not quite. But certainly a socialist of the old school. I can’t imagine him having any truck with a New Labour government. He’d always been a party member and he had time then to become more active. I remember him canvassing during elections, coming home full of the arguments he’d had on the doorsteps. I don’t know what my mother made of it. She probably realized he needed something to stop him getting bored. At first, I think, she saw it as a harmless hobby, like fishing or train spotting

“I was halfway through high school when he was persuaded to stand for the council. Not that he took much persuading. By then the marriage was going through a rough patch. They kept things polite for me, managed a show of affection while they were in together, but as I’ve said, it was a small community and people were only too eager to pass on the gossip. I learned he’d had a number of women. Finally, it seemed, he settled on another party member, a teacher. As I heard it, they were inseparable. I was furious at the time, humiliated. How could he carry on like that and come back at night to my mother? She must have come to the same conclusion, because one night while my father was at a council meeting, she packed up all her stuff and left. She didn’t ask me to go with her and even if she had done, I’d probably not have gone. Despite his faults, I always believed I had more in common with my father and anyway he was the more vulnerable. Of the two of them I felt he needed most looking after and that I had a responsibility towards him. My mother could take care of herself. It turned out I was probably right, because, soon after, she set up home with an insurance salesman. She would have had a regular income, at least. She invited me to visit her in their new house somewhere in the suburbs, but I couldn’t do it. It was irrational but I was angry on my father’s behalf. When I left school, I joined him in the business.”

He paused for breath and again Vera could see how tired he was. “Can I get you anything, Captain Bennett? Coffee? A glass of water?”

He seemed surprised by her kindness and shook his head. “I’m sorry to be so long-winded. I suppose none of this is relevant.”

Vera leaned towards him across the table, seemed almost about to touch his hand. “You tell it in your own way, pet. I’m listening.”

“It must have been around that time that Dad got friendly with Keith Mantel. Keith was a small-time developer then. He’d buy a few properties in rundown areas of the town, do them up and sell them on. The ones on the se afront he tried to let as holiday homes. You could tell he had grand ideas, but Dad probably thought they were in the same league independent businessmen trying to claw a living in competition with the big boys.”

“Did they meet socially?”

“That’s all it was at first, social.”

“Were you involved?”

“Not often. Sometimes Keith would come round to our house. To escape one of his women, he’d say. They’d stay up all night drinking. Dad would start on his stories of life at sea and Keith would provide a willing audience. I tried to keep out of it. Someone had to be up early to sort the papers and anyway I didn’t trust the man. Dad was on the council’s planning committee. It seemed obvious to me that Mantel wasn’t just there to talk about the good old days. He’d be after something.

“Then he took Dad away on holiday. The teacher was off the scene by then and Keith set up a trip to a villa on the Algarve with a couple of young women in tow. It didn’t cost Dad a bean. He was so naive. “Can’t you see what you’re setting yourself up for?” I said. “What do you think he’s going to want in return?” But he wouldn’t have it. They were just mates. That’s what mates did. They shared around their good fortune.”

“What did Mantel want in return?” Vera asked.

“I’m not sure the first time. I never heard the details. I know that soon after a development of Mantel’s passed through the committee on the nod. It was old people’s flats, I think. Sheltered housing. There was a grand opening and Dad dragged me along to it. I don’t know how he squared it with his conscience. Perhaps they’d have approved the plans anyway. But after that it was always going to be difficult to stand up to Mantel. The crisis came with the proposed building of a new leisure centre. Mantel put in the lowest tender but his plans weren’t as good as those of the competitor company. After the planning meeting my father phoned him up to tell him he’d been unsuccessful. I was in the room when he made the call. “Never mind, eh, lad. You win some, you lose some. Better luck next time.” He really thought Mantel would have a few beers and put it down to experience.”

“But he didn’t.”

“He came round to the house that night. A bottle of whisky in one hand. A big brown envelope in the other. I tried to stick around but Mantel sent me away. I went out for a couple of hours and when I came back he was leaving. My father was sitting on the floor. I’d never seen that before. Men of his generation didn’t sit on the floor. All around him on the carpet were photos from the Portuguese trip. Dad in a deck chair with an almost naked blonde sprawled all over him. Dad sitting next to Mantel in a restaurant, laughing at one of his jokes. He was sitting on the floor and he was crying.”

“Mantel had threatened to go public?”

“He said he’d leak the story to the papers that he’d bribed Dad to approve the sheltered housing scheme. He’d bounce back, he said. But Dad wouldn’t. Imagine the headlines. Holiday Romp for Socialist Councillor. Sex and Sangria on the Rates. In one sense it was true of course. My father had allowed himself to be influenced. He’d been a fool.

“He wasn’t only bothered about what his friends in the party would think. It was the people he drank with in the club, and the family. All the aunts and cousins who’d supported him through the divorce because they believed he was something special.”

James paused. The strip light flickered again and faded. Ashworth stood on his chair and thumped the plastic casing. The light returned. James continued as if there’d been no interruption.

“His trouble was that he’d been taken in by his own propaganda. Marty Shaw, champion of the people. He’d believed in that. He didn’t like the real man… I told him he could resign. Keep a low profile for a bit. People would forget. “People might,” he said. “I won’t. Nor will you, will you?” I couldn’t answer. He’d had a lot to drink and I helped him to bed.

“When I woke up he’d gone and so had his car. I thought he’d just taken off for a few days. It would have been in character, running away. I imagined him holed up with an old friend from his fishing days, feeling sorry for himself and drowning his sorrows. I carried on as usual, running the shop, making his excuses to the customers.”

“But he hadn’t run away.”

“Not like that. Three days later his car was reported abandoned.”

“Where?”

“In Elvet. In that car park by the river.”

Where Vera had been with Michael Long the day before. Close to the phone box where Christopher Winter had tried to make his call.

“But he wasn’t in it?”

“He’d left a note. At least he’d bothered to do that. Sending me his love. Asking me to remember him kindly…” James took a deep breath. “He must have waited until the tide was high. He just walked out into the river. He’d never learned to swim. He walked until the current took him, sucked his legs from under him, pulled him down. The shore is uneven there, mud and shingle and outcrops of rock. Perhaps he stumbled. I wonder sometimes if he fought it at the last moment. If he tried to hold the air in his lungs when he went under… It was nearly a month before his body was washed up. Hardly a body by then. They identified him through his dental records.

“In the docks when I’m working late, I think I see him sometimes.”

i “That was when you changed your name?” Vera asked. “At the time of the suicide?”

“Yes.”

An extreme reaction.”

“You don’t understand. It wasn’t just the name. I didn’t want to be Marty Shaw’s son, associated with backhanders and bribes. I didn’t want to run the family business, putting up with the pity, listening to the poisonous gossip of the customers and the family. I wanted to start again.”

“All the same…”

“Look, I was young. You do overact at that age. There was a terrible embarrassment. The pictures, Mantel… It all seemed so squalid, in such bad taste. I sold stories like that every Sunday to fools who slavered over them, then turned self-righteous. If my father had been involved in a major fraud, insider dealing, something like that, I’d probably have found it easier. Emma calls me a snob sometimes. Perhaps she’s right.”

“So you ran away too.”

“If you like. But it was more than that. I felt like somebody different, that I could start from scratch, be the person I was meant to be.”

“You chose to go to sea. That must have been your father’s influence.”

“All those stories he told me when I was a child? Perhaps.”

“Why did you move to Elvet?”

“Emma came from here.”

“Did you know that Keith Mantel lived in the village?”

“There was all that publicity when his daughter died. Her murder made it easier for me to contemplate living in the village. I don’t think I could have risked running into him otherwise. I mean, I knew then that he’d lost someone close to him too. It was harder to hate him.”

“Revenge?”

“I wasn’t sorry she was dead,” he said sharply. “But I wouldn’t have killed her.”

“No?”

“Besides,” he went on, ignoring her. “By then I had a new life. I could believe I was James Bennett, not Jimmy Shaw. I couldn’t let him get to me. And I didn’t think our paths would cross much.”

“You moved to Elvet because of your father, then? To remember him kindly.”

“No!” he said crossly. “I moved there because I found a house that I liked and to be close to my wife’s family. It had no more significance than that.”

Vera left it. He was a good story-teller. Plausible. It might even have been true. She organized a car to take him home. She showed him out of the building and stood waiting with him for the car to arrive.

“Why didn’t you tell Emma? Didn’t you think she had a right to know?”

“It was James Bennett she fell in love with and married. Why would she need to know about a stranger?”

“You should tell her,” Vera said. “You don’t want to put yourself in a position where Keith Mantel could make mischief.”

James seemed to listen to her words and consider them seriously, but he didn’t respond.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Vera and Joe were back in the gloomy hotel. The bar was empty apart from a couple of businesswomen who were discussing, in bright staccato voices, a training programme for software advisors. After a couple of beats, Vera stopped listening. The language was unintelligible. How could this place make any sort of profit? she thought. Then it came to her that there was an Agatha Christie book about a respectable hotel which didn’t pay. That had turned out to be a front for international crime. She struggled to remember the title, but failed.

On the table in front of her there was a large Scotch. She stared into the liquid and thought it was probably the loveliest colour in the world. She knew she’d had enough to drink already, that she couldn’t allow herself another after this. So this one would have to be taken slowly, every mouthful savoured. She lifted the glass to her mouth, sipped.

“What did you make of Bennett?” Joe Ashworth asked. “Or whatever his name is.”

“Bennett,” she said. “Legally, it’s Bennett now.”

“Living a lie for all these years.”

“Was it a lie?”

“He’s told his wife both his parents are dead. His mother’s shacked up with an insurance salesman and lives just down the road. The poor woman has a grandchild she knows nothing about!”

“It’s not a crime,” Vera said quietly. “And we all tell lies.” But righteous indignation had taken over and he wasn’t listening. With part of her brain she heard him ranting about how he’d feel if his wife had treated him in the same way. Her mind was following a path of its own. If someone asked me how much I’d had to drink tonight, I’d knock off a couple of units. It’d be automatic. I’d not think about it. 1b put myself in a better light. Don’t we all do that? Find excuses, justifications? Even Saint Joe Ashworth. He loves his job. He doesn’t even mind being separated from his wife and kid. Not really. At least he gets a good night’s sleep and a break from the mucky nappies. But what does he tell himself? That it’s a sacrifice. But he’s prepared to do it to serve the community. Like he’s some sort of martyr.

She realized that Joe had stopped talking and was looking at her strangely.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Sorry, I was miles away.”

“Do you think Bennett killed Mantel’s daughter in revenge for his father’s suicide?”

“No,” she said. If she was pushed she could come up with a rational argument for thinking that way, but that would be a sort of lie too. Her reply was about trusting her own judgement. Faith, not reason. “He could have killed the brother, though,” she went on. “If Christopher had found out about his past. To protect his new identity, the happy family, all that. Yeah, I can see Bennett being prepared to kill to keep that.”

“You think there could be two different murderers, then?” Joe was sceptical, but still polite. He always was.

Do I? “We can’t dismiss any possibilities.” And I know that’s a cop-out because just at this moment I haven’t got the concentration to think it through.

“He’d have had the opportunity,” Joe said. “I’ve talked to the witnesses. He could have slipped away from the bonfire. People were coming and going all the time. You were there. Is that how you remember it?”

“Aye,” she said. “There was some light from the fire but that only lit up the people closest to it. The rest were silhouettes.” She sipped the whisky, held it in her mouth, swallowed it slowly. “Bennett would have had to know Christopher would be there. He’d have had to arrange to meet him.”

“Maybe it was Bennett who Christopher was trying to phone.”

“Aye,” she said. “Maybe.” But she’d had too much to drink to focus any longer on the detail. Her imagination was soaring, like one of the goshawks which flew out from Kielder Forest, close to her home in the hills. She felt she should be able to look down on this flat and empty landscape and see the bigger picture.

“What did Abigail Mantel and Christopher Winter have in common?” she asked suddenly, realizing as she spoke that her voice was too loud.

Joe Ashworth looked at her. “Not much. She was a spoilt brat and he was a screwed-up student.”

“Both screwed up, wouldn’t you say?” She shot out the question.

“I suppose.”

“By their parents?” Vera could have quoted Larkin, but Joe would have been shocked.

“Well, the lass didn’t have a mother she could remember. But if what Bennett told us is right, her dad wasn’t much of a role model.”

“And the Winters? What did you make of them?”

“They’re odd,” he said at last. He paused. “I’m not sure I’d want to grow up in that family.”

“I wonder what Caroline Fletcher’s parents are like.” And Michael Long’s. And Dan Greenwood’s. And the grandparents. How far could you go back? The moment of clarity, of seeing the case as a whole, was over. The goshawk had crash-landed. She was left with a headache behind her eye, the knowledge that tomorrow there’d be another hangover and that the glimpse of an answer had probably been an alcoholic illusion.

“I’m off to my room,” Joe said. “I need to phone home…”

“Of course.”

“If there’s nothing else, that is…”

“No,” she said. “You get off. I’ll be up myself in a minute.” But she sat on, looking into the empty glass, unable to face the square overheated room with the television fixed to the wall. The businesswomen paused in their conversation for a moment and looked at her with pity. That made her move. She got up, walked past reception and out into the darkness.

The hotel was on the main road out of the village and there were street lights, but no pavements. When a lorry came towards her she had to climb onto the verge and stand with her back to the hedge. She headed towards Elvet with no real sense of why she was there, but enjoying being outside and alone. Her headache started to clear. In the centre of the village, the streets were quiet. The Anchor was still open and through the small window she had a snapshot of two men standing at the bar, their mouths open in laughter, standing beside the giant whisky bottle where they collected change for the lifeboat. Beyond them a barmaid with a diamond stud in her nose. But she continued walking and the picture disappeared almost immediately.

In the Captain’s House, the curtains were drawn. Were James and Emma Bennett having a cosy chat by the fire? Was he telling her the real story of his life?

There was a light at the Old Forge. She banged on the arched door. Nothing happened.

“Come on, man. Let me in. I’m desperate for a piss.”

Eventually she heard footsteps and Dan Greenwood shot back a bolt and opened the door. He seemed dazed, as if he’d been woken from a deep sleep, or interrupted from work which took great concentration.

“You’re working late, Danny boy.”

“Just as well, if you’re as desperate as you claim. The toilet’s in the yard out the back.”

She walked through the pottery, but paused by the back door and looked at him before she went through it. He was piling together some papers from the top of his desk and shoving them into a drawer. When she returned the top of the desk was clear.

“Do you always work so late?” she asked.

“A habit it’s hard to get out of when you’ve been a cop. Besides, there’s not much to take me home.”

“No woman in your life, then?” She’d remembered the last comment he’d made about that, thought that at this time of night he might be more prepared to talk about it.

He shrugged noncommittally, gave a brief smile. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“That’s a bit cryptic for this time of night. What’s not to be sure about?”

“I like her well enough. I’m not sure what she thinks of me. Not sure where the whole thing’s going.”

“Maybe you should ask her. I always favour the direct approach myself.” Though look where that had got her, Vera thought. There was no man in her life. Hadn’t been for years.

He smiled again and she guessed he was thinking the same thing, but was too much of a gentleman to say so. “What are you doing wandering round on your own after dark?” he asked. “Don’t you read the crime prevention notices?”

“Just restless,” she said. “You know what it’s like.”

“How is it going?”

“I’m losing it,” she said. “Losing the big picture. There’s too much going on here. You know what it’s like with an investigation this size. All the information. All the detail. Too much to take in. You just get swamped.”

Aye,” he said. “I remember.”

“Was it like that with the Mantel case, first time round?”

“First time round it seemed there was just the one suspect. Right from the beginning.”

“But you never thought it was Jeanie Long, did you?”

“It could have been her. It just didn’t seem likely.”

“Why not?”

“Sounds daft; he said. “Trite. But she just didn’t seem the type.”

“Who was, then? You must have had an idea. Someone you fancied for it.”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “No,” he said. “Not really. I just didn’t think it was Jeanie.”

“Could it have been Caroline Fletcher?”

“No! No way. She broke a few rules, cut some corners. And she was besotted with Mantel. But she was no murderer.”

“Fletcher thought Emma Bennett could have been involved.”

“Did she?” He seemed surprised, shocked even. “She never said so at the time. I never interviewed Emma, but it doesn’t seem likely. Even now she seems timid, shy. Then she was only a girl. Caroline must be mistaken.”

“You always think the best of everyone, don’t you, Dan?”

He stood up briskly and moved away, anxious, it seemed, to put some distance between them. “I suppose you want some coffee.”

“Well, Danny, that’d be very civil. And if you could dig out the chocolate biscuits… That place we’re staying, the size of the portions, you’d think they were feeding hairns…”

She watched him go into the small scruffy room with the tray and the kettle. The door swung to behind him. She opened the drawer where he’d stuffed the pile of papers when she’d turned up, demanding to be let in. Underneath a stack of invoices there was a photo album, hard covered, ring bound. She lifted it onto the desk, turned the pages. It was a record of the Mantel investigation. Grainy newspaper articles, snipped out and pasted in. The names of the papers and the date of publication had been written in black biro at the top of each piece. They came from nationals and locals and some had been bought on the same day. If they were too big they were just stuck at the top and carefully folded. They’d often been looked at. In some places the folds were close to ripping. Then there was a faded copy of the forensic report and the pathologist’s report. A photo of Abigail lying at the crime scene, and another of her on the stainless-steel table at the mortuary.

On the last page there was a photograph of the girl when she was still alive. A studio portrait, head and shoulders, the body side on to the camera, the face turned towards it. Abigail was smiling seductively. In the background there was a loosely pleated curtain, the lighting could have been filtered, certainly the image seemed soft focused. She was wearing make-up which looked as if it had been professionally applied and her hair was piled onto her head. Her neck and shoulders were bare apart from a pearl necklace. She looked much older than fifteen and it couldn’t have been taken much before her death. Perhaps it had been a birthday present from her father, Vera thought. His style. The sort of thing he’d do. But how, then, had Dan Greenwood got hold of it?

In the small room, she heard the kettle click off and the rattle of teaspoon against mug. She folded back the newspaper clippings and shut the book. When Dan came in, carrying the tray, the desk top was clear. She was leaning back in the chair as if she’d been dozing.