The Cipher Garden

Chapter Nine

‘You know my sergeant, I gather,’ Hannah said. ‘Nick Lowther?’

Chris Gleave nodded. ‘We were at school together. A good man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Bright, too. I’d expected him to have made chief superintendent by now. If not chief constable. But perhaps that’s not what he became a policeman for.’

‘Perhaps not.’

Chris put his hands behind his head, as if in aid to thought. A slender fair-haired man in a white open-neck shirt and beige chinos, he looked younger than his years. Hannah didn’t often encounter men as handsome as Marc, but Chris might be a contender. Not that she fancied him. Despite Nick’s glowing testimonial, beneath the agreeable exterior, she sensed something cool and distant.

‘He had this weird idea that your job is to serve justice, as I remember. I suppose you can do that as easily as a sergeant as a superintendent. Especially if the police service is like most hierarchical organisations. The higher you climb the greasy pole, the more careful you have to be not to upset the people at the top.’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said, allowing him a faint smile.

‘Nick could be too sardonic for his own good. I remember that one of our rugby teachers really had it in for him and-’

‘More tea, Chief Inspector?’

Roz bustled through the door, bearing a crowded tray. From the moment Chris had arrived home, she hadn’t left them alone for longer than it took to boil a kettle. She fussed around her husband like an overprotective mother with an only child. Was their marriage like this all the time, Hannah wondered, or was she afraid of what he might say to a detective asking about Warren Howe?

‘No, thank you. I don’t expect to keep your husband long.’

Roz put the tray down on an occasional table. The furniture in Keepsake Cottage was old and made of pine, the china Crown Derby. Hannah’s chair faced a huge oval mirror, which revealed that she had a ladder in her tights.

After pouring a cup for Chris and herself, Roz sat on the sofa beside him. Their thighs were touching, and she looped an arm around his thin shoulder. Some men would have betrayed embarrassment, but not Chris Gleave. Legs negligently crossed, he gave the impression of a man at ease with himself, unaware of his wife’s attentions. Possibly he expected nothing less.

‘So what’s caused you to investigate what happened?’ he asked.

What happened. Hannah remembered the pictures of Warren Howe’s from the autopsy. She banished the image. Better not throw up all over such a lovely old Persian rug.

‘My team has a brief to review unsolved murders. It’s one of a number of cases we’re reconsidering.’

‘Pure routine, then? No new leads?’

‘I’m afraid the details of our inquiry are confidential.’

‘I wish you luck. Warren wasn’t a nice man, but nobody deserves to die like that. So how can I help?’

‘Can we talk about the statement that you gave to the police when you…returned home after the murder?’

‘There’s nothing to add.’

‘I was saying to your wife earlier, it’s surprising how often, after a lapse of time, something else springs to mind. Something you might have overlooked previously, or thought too unimportant to mention.’

Chris shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m afraid I didn’t have anything to contribute to your colleagues’ investigation all those years ago and nothing’s changed.’

‘So you can’t cast any light on the case? Even though the murder was committed in your back garden? And the victim was a man you’d known for years?’

‘Roz knew him better and longer than me.’

‘You were aware that she was Warren Howe’s girlfriend in her teens? Until — sorry, Mrs Gleave — he chucked her?’

‘All that was history,’ Chris said quickly. ‘They had a fleeting teenage romance. No lasting significance for either party. Far less me. Water under the bridge.’

Roz’s cheeks were rose-pink. ‘You’re surely not suggesting Chris was jealous? Jealous of Warren?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. You told my colleagues that you had no idea that Warren Howe’s body had been found in your garden while you were away, Mr Gleave.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Must have been quite a shock.’

Chris exhaled. ‘To be honest with you, Chief Inspector, I’d been through a great deal in a short time. I hate to sound cold-blooded, but hearing about the death of a man who was scarcely a friend was the least of my problems. What horrified me was to learn that I’d left my wife to cope on her own with all the sound and fury of a murder investigation. It was a long, long time before I forgave myself for that.’

‘But you managed to forgive yourself in the end?’

The barb didn’t even graze him. ‘Life is short, isn’t it? We beat ourselves up all the time, and so often it’s for no purpose whatsoever. I’ve often made the mistake of feeling guilty over something trivial that wasn’t even my fault. Perhaps you have yourself, once or twice?’

Hannah prayed she wasn’t blushing. ‘I’m sorry to pry, but can you tell me about the circumstances of your disappearance?’

Roz made as if to protest, but he silenced her with a sideways glance. ‘If you’ve read the old files, you’ll know as much as me.’

For the first time, there was a note of irritation in his voice and Hannah cheered inwardly. She hadn’t lost her touch after all; she could still shake the calmest witness. ‘Even so, I’d be grateful. Unless you have a particular objection?’

‘I didn’t hold anything back.’

‘Your explanation for your disappearance was that you’d suffered a nervous breakdown.’

‘As it happens, that was the doctors’ diagnosis. Or whatever medical term they use. Anxiety, depression, stress, whatever. The bottom line is, I was a mess. Overwrought, not thinking straight.’

‘Chief Inspector, you don’t realise,’ Roz muttered.

‘I’d slaved night and day over the CD, but the whole project was going pear-shaped. I’d have found it easier if the reviewers had hated my music. Instead they said it was bland, uninspired. Someone compared it to flock wallpaper, for God’s sake. The CD was meant to be a turning point, a crowning achievement after years of sweat and tears, but it sank like a stone in a sea of critical indifference. I simply couldn’t handle it. Can you understand that, Chief Inspector Scarlett?’

‘Well,’ Hannah said judiciously, ‘I’ve never brought out a CD.’

‘I decided I was a rotten failure, that I’d embarrassed Roz and everyone else who’d believed in me. I just wanted to crawl away somewhere and hide out of sight.’

Roz squeezed his hand. ‘You never embarrassed anyone, darling.’

‘Why go to London?’ Hannah asked.

‘It’s vast and anonymous. People you pass in the street couldn’t care less whether you live or die. Perfect if you want to escape.’

‘Did you have friends there?’

He nibbled at his fingernails. ‘I told you, it was precisely because I wanted to run from the people I was close to that I headed to a city where no one knew me. I didn’t take much money, little more than the clothes I stood up in. I found a crummy bedsit and did a bit of busking to pay the rent. Not that I managed to earn enough, even to live in such a hellhole. I started drinking heavily. God knows, if I’d stayed there much longer, I might have ended up sleeping in a gin-soaked cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge.’

‘So why didn’t you, what brought you back?’

He took Roz’s hand in his. ‘My wife saved me, Chief Inspector, simple as that.’

‘It was down to you,’ Roz said. ‘You had the courage to make that phone call.’

Pass the sickbag, Hannah thought. She drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair, wanting them to get on with the story.

‘I had too much to drink one night and started getting homesick. I’d been so selfish, so cruel, walking out on Roz without a word. She hadn’t a clue where I was, what I was up to.’

‘I explained to the Chief Inspector.’ Roz paled as the memories returned. ‘I realised you were unhappy, but you’d retreated so far inside yourself that not even I could reach you. I was so afraid that one morning I’d wake up and a policeman would be banging on the door, come to break the news that your body had been found in some cave or on a fell.’

Chris said hoarsely, ‘The instant I dialled this number, I started to panic. What would I say, how could I make up for all the harm I’d done? Thank the Lord Roz snatched up the receiver. If she hadn’t, even Dutch courage wouldn’t have let me try a second time. Tell you what, Chief Inspector. Once we’d talked for a couple of minutes, I began to sober up. Come to my senses. I was in tears, mind. But they were happy tears.’

‘I told him I still loved him,’ Roz said. ‘We all make mistakes.’

‘I asked if she’d take me back,’ Chris said. ‘And she didn’t hesitate.’

‘Not that I’ve regretted it.’ Roz squeezed his hand. ‘Not for a moment. I promise you that, Chief Inspector.’

Hannah grunted. Faced with such connubial bliss, she was lost for words. Or at least words that she could decently utter.

And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Warren Howe.

‘You’re a lucky man, Daniel Kind,’ Miranda said.

‘Uh-huh.’

An hour ago Louise had announced her intention to go for a walk and explore the far side of Tarn Fold, along the beck beyond the old corn mill. He’d seldom seen her so relaxed; already Rodney was a fading memory. While she was out, he’d been surfing the Net, searching in vain for information about the Quillers. He was hunched over his computer screen when Miranda came up behind him and started massaging his shoulders. As the tension trickled away, Miranda took off his shirt. Her long bony fingers were working at his flesh with a steady rhythm.

‘I mean,’ she murmured, ‘you don’t just have me. You have a lovely sister of your own as well.’

‘No comparison.’ He breathed in her musky scent. ‘Promise.’

‘What I mean is, she’s your own flesh and blood. That’s so special, you don’t realise.’

Miranda had been adopted by an elderly childless couple, who had striven to give her everything she asked for. By her own admission, it was never enough and she’d repaid their idolatry with childhood tantrums, and later a determination to indulge in everything they disapproved of. Within weeks of her twenty-first, both of them were dead and it was too late for guilt about her youthful ingratitude. As for her birth mother, she’d never met the woman, knew nothing of her.

‘You could always…’

‘Trace her and suggest we get together for a cup of tea? Pray for a tearful reunion with lots of hugs and kisses?’ Her fingers stopped moving. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It might be the best thing you ever did.’

‘She rejected me once. That’s enough for anyone.’

Above his desk was a framed watercolour of Buttermere in myriad shades of blue and green. Reflected in the glass, her face creased in distress. The pain bit deep, he knew, and yet in her shoes he would not have been able to rest until he had solved the mysteries of the past.

‘We all deserve a second chance.’

‘Listen, if she shut the door on me again, I don’t know what I’d do. It would be more than I could bear.’

He didn’t want to let it go. The law had been changed to allow birth mothers to track down the children they’d given away through intermediary agencies. Even though she didn’t have to agree to meet, she might yet be contacted out of the blue and then feel guilty for not having made the first move.

‘For all you know, somewhere out there you have a ready-made family of your own.’

She raked his skin with her nails. ‘Who are quite happy as they are and don’t need some neurotic female turning up for a cosy chat by the fireside.’

‘You’re not neurotic.’

She was breathing hard, he could feel the warmth on his bare neck. ‘How old will she be now — forty odd? Presumably she was young when she had me. I must have been a mistake, an accident. A cause of untold angst. She’ll have spent the last twenty-odd years trying to make a new life. She’s probably settled down, scrubbed me out of her mind. Or simply forgotten I was ever born.’

‘She won’t have forgotten.’

‘One thing she won’t want is a skeleton climbing out of her cupboard.’

He swivelled in his chair. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Suppose she was very, very young when I was born? Suppose she was raped? It frightens me even to think about it.’ Tears were forming in her eyes and he cursed inwardly for pushing too hard. ‘You just don’t know what it’s like, being on your own.’

‘Hey, you’re not on your own.’ He stood up and took her hand in his. ‘I’m so sorry, I never meant to…’

‘You don’t realise, do you? When I see you with Louise, I feel so fucking jealous!’

He stared at her pretty face, contorted with anguish, unsure what to say or do.

The front door banged. Louise’s voice floated up the stairs. ‘I’m back!’

Oliver, she needed to be with Oliver. If only they could spend long enough together, he would come to understand her better, appreciate that she was ready to give him anything he could ever want. Not money, obviously, she couldn’t match Bel on that score. But cash in the bank couldn’t compete with a burning desire.

After the disastrous encounter with her mother and her boyfriend, Kirsty hurried straight home. Back at the house, she ran upstairs and stepped under a cold shower. The icy water was a sweet torment, a means of washing away the grubbiness of her family, of her life.

She changed into a purple top with a high neck and set off again for the restaurant. Her long strides took her past a group of middle-aged men in expensive hiking gear. A small bloke with a film of sweat on his brow gave her breasts a lingering look, a man with a serious beer belly whistled at her. It said something about the mess of her life that it was the nicest thing that had happened all day.

As she entered the restaurant car park, she spotted the two Croatian girls, little and large like cartoon characters, loitering near the side door. They were having a quick smoke before getting ready for dinner. Veselka waved. She put on a smile and waved back, thinking: it’s your lungs you’re ruining. Why didn’t people look after their health better? If they didn’t watch out they’d finish up in a cancer ward. Sam was even worse; it was as if he had a death wish.

The kitchen windows were open. Kirsty had developed a habit of skirting along the front of the building and past the windows on her way in to the restaurant. Sometimes she heard Oliver and Bel having a private conversation, nothing to do with problems at the wholesalers’ or the best place to buy strawberries this summer. It was fascinating to listen to people talk when they didn’t know you were there. All the more so when one was the man you yearned for. She might have been a forensic scientist, peering through a microscope for hints of disharmony. Oliver always seemed crazy about her, it had to be a sham. He was trapped like a fly on sticky paper. The relationship with Bel was going nowhere, had nowhere to go.

She trembled at the sound of his voice. A week ago, Veselka had caught her eavesdropping on him in the dining room and given her a mocking smirk, as if to say: You haven’t a hope. Jealous bitch, just because no matter how high she hitched her little black skirt, Oliver paid no attention.

Kirsty hesitated. Just my luck if Veselka comes out from round the side of the building right now, she thought. But she had to chance it. The opportunity to eavesdrop was irresistible.

‘A chief inspector?’ Oliver sounded awestruck.

‘A woman, too. Roz was saying, you know you’re getting older when even the chief inspectors are young and attractive. She said this one was friendly enough, but single-minded. Not easy to fob off.’

‘Why would Roz want to fob her off?’

‘Darling, who wants to be reminded of a murder?’

Kirsty flinched. The casual intimacy of that darling was like being soaked with a wet sponge.

‘Besides, it was a thousand times worse for Roz. It was a low point in her life, what with Chris going missing as well. You can’t expect her to enjoy being questioned again by the police after all this time. Just because she found the body.’

The body. Kirsty’s head swam. Her knees felt as though they were about to buckle. They were discussing her father. She clutched at the window sill, desperate not to lose her balance.

‘Why would they send out someone so senior?’

‘She’s in charge of investigating cold cases, sweetie. Roz said she recognised her from an interview on regional television a while back. They look into old crimes.’

‘Why Warren’s murder in particular?’

‘Look at it from their point of view. No one arrested or charged, let alone brought to trial. It was a failure, a black mark. Can you remember people being grief-stricken when he died? The police probably took it worse than anyone else.’

I always knew you were heartless. This wasn’t just about Bel’s insensitivity. First the letters, now a detective asking questions. What was happening in Old Sawrey, why was the past coming back to haunt everyone?

‘They must have received some new information.’

‘Forensic stuff, maybe, it’s all the rage these days.’

‘I can’t believe that. Not after all this time. Remember, he was found out in the open air after a downpour. What sort of forensic evidence would be left?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Roz tried to worm the details out of the Chief Inspector. But she was keeping her cards close to her chest.’

‘So what did she want to find out?’

‘Anything and everything. She even gave Chris the third degree when he turned up.’

‘But he wasn’t even around when Warren was killed.’

‘Exactly what Roz said!’

‘Sounds as though they don’t have any idea.’

‘We’ll be able to judge for ourselves soon, darling. Roz says the police are going to talk to everyone who knew Warren.’

‘Christ. Does Kirsty know?’

‘It might explain why she was looking so awful at lunchtime. I thought she was sickening for something.’

‘I’m sure she’s fine, it’s only…’

As Kirsty craned her neck to listen, Veselka appeared from round the side of the restaurant. Her round face was split by a grin of triumph. Making her look, Kirsty thought, like some kind of manic ventriloquist’s doll. With a gap between her front teeth as wide as the Kirkstone Pass. No wonder Oliver never gave her a second glance.

‘Everything OK, Kirsty?’ Her English was good, although the accent was hard work and she’d developed an irritating habit of making every sentence, however mundane, sound like a question. ‘You don’t look so happy?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘That’s good?’ Veselka giggled and blew a smoke ring into the soft summer air. ‘I was worried about you today? Wondering if you might have — what would you say, boyfriend trouble?’

‘So you didn’t know that Peter Flint and his partner’s widow were in a relationship?’

Nick Lowther shook his head. ‘News to me.’

It was half six and they’d bumped into each other in the car park behind the police station. Hannah fiddled with her keys, wondering how much to tell him, and then rebuked herself for having any reservations about candour. They’d known each other a long time and she trusted him as much as any man. Even Marc.

‘Who’s to say that they weren’t having it off at the time Warren was killed?’

‘They must have taken enormous care to cover their tracks, then. If Warren Howe had caught them in flagrante, it’d have been Peter Flint’s corpse that Roz stumbled over in her back garden.’

‘He was the jealous type?’

‘We never found any evidence of Tina giving him cause. She was the one who always had to turn a blind eye. Her line was that there’s more to a marriage than sexual fidelity.’

Les Bryant, reversing out towards the exit, pipped his horn and she mouthed goodnight. ‘Perhaps she was thinking about her own behaviour, as well as his.’

‘Warren always came back to her, that was what she cared about. Or so she said.’

‘He might not have been bothered if she was playing away. Sauce for the goose and all that.’

Nick made a sceptical noise. ‘Warren wouldn’t fret about inconsistency or double standards. And Peter shagging his missus wouldn’t have appealed to his sense of irony. No, he wouldn’t have rested until he’d taken revenge.’

‘Suppose Tina decided to kill him before he found out?’

He considered her. ‘You think she’s guilty?’

‘Not on the strength of an anonymous tip-off. But Roz Gleave gave me the impression she didn’t have much time for Tina.’

‘They were never close. Whereas she became friendly with Gail.’

‘Linz is due to see Gail tomorrow. She lives near Coniston these days. Peter had to buy her a cottage as part of the divorce settlement.’

‘I interviewed her myself.’

‘Yes, I saw the statement. Did I read between the lines correctly? You didn’t take a shine to her.’

‘She’s an ice maiden. Very different from Tina Howe. She might have lacked a cast-iron alibi for the murder, but there was nothing to link her to the scene. And there was the question of motive. It was in her interest for her husband’s business to flourish and Warren was an integral part of that business.’

‘It seems to be flourishing now.’

‘Good line to be in, isn’t it? Everyone fancies having their own little Eden outside the scullery door.’

‘True, but Gail must be worth a second look.’

‘Hope Linz gets further with her than I did. Mind you, if Peter’s swopped Gail for Tina, Roz will be seriously unimpressed. She’ll blame Tina for breaking up the marriage. In her book, that’s as serious a crime as murder.’

‘She’s certainly stayed true to her own husband.’

‘Yes.’ Nick shuffled his feet on the tarmac. ‘What did you make of them, then?’

Hannah chose her words. ‘I’d say they look after each other very well.’

‘Is that it?’

‘You know them better than me.’

‘Too well to regard them as suspects.’

‘And you assume I do?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Stop fencing, Nick. If you must know, I liked them, but I thought they were holding back on me. Why, God knows, but there’s something they don’t want me to find out They’re your friends, but I’m sorry, I can’t let that influence me. If they’re keeping a secret that’s relevant to this inquiry, you can bet I’ll find it out.’

He didn’t answer. The only question in her mind was whether he knew what the Gleaves’ secret was, but if he did, he wasn’t telling. For a few moments they looked at each other before he gave a curt nod and walked away towards his car.

As she watched his retreating back, an overwhelming sense of loss flooded over her. Whatever was going on in his mind, she was afraid that things between them would never be the same again.

When Kirsty arrived home after work she found her brother asleep on the sofa. The stench of drink and uninhibited flatulence hit her as she walked into the living room. His snoring reminded her of his motorbike’s snarl. He was still wearing his muddy trainers and you could see dirt on the cotton throw covering the back of the sofa. Mum would kill him when she found out, but right now she was nowhere to be seen. She would be over at Peter’s. Unbidden, an image slid into her mind of Peter Flint’s white, stringy body stretched out on top of her mother’s fleshy curves.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Of course! When she realised, despite herself, she couldn’t contain a blast of laughter.

Mum would insist on being on top, no question.

‘You all right?’

Marc had been sitting cross-legged on the carpet, checking a pile of dusty hardbacks for the tiny flaws that would diminish their value to serious collectors and sliding them into protective see-through jackets. Now that the task was completed, he was paying attention to her again. Not for the first time lately, Hannah felt she’d prefer him to remain buried in his own affairs.

She mumbled something non-committal and kept leafing through the latest guidelines for the conduct of staff appraisals that she’d spread over the table. The yearly box-ticking ritual would need to be conducted soon and she was dreading it. Everyone had to pay lip service to the benefits of performance management, but in private everyone ridiculed the whole process. How could you guarantee a level playing field, consistency and an absence of favouritism and score-settling across the whole county? The whole exercise was a time-consuming waste of energy that everyone except the people who mattered thought would be better devoted to real police work. Yet it was becoming ever more important, with scores affecting competency payments and pension benefits for officers at the top end of their salary scale. People like Nick.

‘I said, are you all right? You’ve hardly said a word all evening.’

Guilty, m’lud. She had a raging headache and had economised with effort over their meal, heating up a cheese and salami pizza and disinterring some fruit salad from the fridge. When it was made, she hadn’t felt like eating. The encounter with Nick in the car park kept nagging at her and she’d paid little attention as Marc recounted a triumph of Internet book dealing. Within hours of his advertising it, someone in Idaho had paid a small fortune for a book by Cecil Waye that he’d found in the job lot from Ravenglass.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Things on my mind.’

‘For a change.’ Bitterness frosted his voice. ‘Work’s all you ever think about these days.’

She almost said: for God’s sake, stop whining like a caricature of a neglected housewife. Just in time, she bit back the words. For one thing, he was right.

‘I am sorry.’

She picked up the appraisal documentation and slung it into her briefcase. It could keep. She walked across the room and bent to kiss him on top of the head. He reached out for her wrists and when he pulled her down on to the floor beside him, she shrieked in mock protest whilst making no attempt to resist.

But even as he unfastened her blouse, even as he touched her nipples with his cool fingers, in the way that once had driven her to ecstasy, her thoughts began to stray. Marc wasn’t entirely right, it wasn’t just work that was bothering her. Filed away at the back of her brain was a suspicion so scary that she daren’t acknowledge it to herself, far less to Marc.

Kirsty turned up the volume of the television until her brother spluttered and stirred from his torpor. As he came round, he swore repeatedly and with uncharacteristically inventive imagery. For Kirsty, it was water off a duck’s back. Their father had been as bad.

‘And what the fuck’s that?’

On the screen, arrows were being fired at a young Chinese man wearing nothing but boxer shorts who was chained to a vast brick wall.

‘New programme. Brothers from Hell.’

‘You are so hilarious, move over Joan Rivers.’

‘Actually, it’s one of these endurance programmes. You know, how much can one human being be expected to cope with? Any day now they’ll start filming behind the scenes at The Heights.’

Sam snorted in derision. ‘You don’t have any idea, do you? What it’s like in the real world. Your idea of a tough day is when the latest coachload of geriatrics doesn’t stump up a single tip.’

She cringed at the smell of the beer fumes on him. ‘The real world? Getting pissed and riding motorbikes is your idea of the real world, is it?’

‘Why don’t you piss off, little waitress?’

Ripping off the scarf, she said, ‘See what you did to me?’

‘I can hardly see anything.’

‘You haven’t even said sorry.’

He uttered a long, low groan.

‘I suppose that’s as close as you’ll come to apologising.’

‘You shouldn’t have provoked me.’

‘I didn’t…oh God, what’s the use? Anyway, I’ve got news for you, if you’ll only break the habit of a lifetime and actually listen.’

‘News?’

‘The police are reopening the investigation into Dad’s murder.’

‘What?’ He sat up as though the sofa had been electrified.

‘You heard.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That would be telling. The point is, they are bound to want to interview us, aren’t they? His nearest and dearest.’

‘Oh, for Chrissake.’

‘They’ll poke around in our lives. They’ll find out about the anonymous letters.’

‘So what?’ He glanced back at the television screen. A medal was being put around the Chinese man’s neck.

‘So what if they discover that we lied about the Hardknott Pass?’

‘Who’s going to tell them?’ he demanded.

‘They have ways and means.’

He reached towards her and gripped her arm so hard she squealed. ‘Listen to me, Kirsty. You’ll keep your mouth shut about that day, if you know what’s good for you.’

Her arm stung and she could feel tears pricking her eyes. He’d never hurt her like that before. What if he became seriously angry, what if he lost it altogether? Maybe next time he tried to kill her, he’d make a proper job of it.