The Glass Room

Chapter Twenty-Two

Joe Ashworth stood outside the cottage door and took a deep breath. Inside the house there’d been a sweet and unpleasant smell. Chemical. Air freshener or some kind of cleaner? Maybe trying to hide the smell of incontinent cat, maybe something more sinister. The CSIs would move on to the cottage when they’d finished on the terrace.

The yard was busy. A couple of men in overalls and navy uniform jackets were deep in conversation, and a CSI, peeling off her crime-scene suit close to the van, hopping as she pulled it over her foot, shouted to a colleague, ‘Where are the toilets? I am so desperate for a piss.’ Beyond the end of the track Joe saw the aerial of a radio van. So the press were there already. The journos, who’d been camping out there since Ferdinand’s death, had dwindled away the day before, and now they were back. He was glad someone had had the sense to keep them well away from the house. And Charlie was there, leaning against the bonnet of his car, drinking tea from a mug with the Writers’ House logo on it. The whole place was still lit with the sunshine that bounced off the car windscreens and the frozen puddles and turned faces the colour of butter.

Joe called over to Charlie, ‘Someone was shouting for the boss. She’s busy. What have they got?’

Charlie pushed himself upright. ‘The murder weapon,’ he said. ‘They think.’

‘Where?’

‘Down on the beach. I’ll show you. Apparently they were lucky to find it.’

Charlie bent to put his mug on the doorstep and walked round the house until they were looking out to the sea. On the terrace, work continued in the white tent. The nylon fabric, with the sun behind it, displayed the figures inside as slowly moving shadows.

Walking through the garden, Joe remembered what Alex Barton had said about moving here from London, about how much he’d loved the place when it was still just a family home. This would be a paradise for a child. Trees to climb and dens to build, rock-pools to poke around in, and on the odd good day when it was warm enough there’d be the sea for swimming. And a child would know every inch of it. If anyone could find a hiding place close to the house, it would be Alex Barton.

Charlie had started on the steep path down to the beach. He slipped once, ripping a tear in the leg of the crime suit, and swore, and by the time they’d reached the shingle he was breathing heavily and sweating despite the cold. He leaned forward, rubbing the stitch in his side.

‘You’re out of condition, man.’ But Joe was feeling the effort too. Too many greasy breakfasts and not enough exercise. There were times, kicking a ball round with the kids, when he felt age creeping up on him.

Three figures stood at the base of the cliff. From this distance and in this light it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. A small flock of wading birds ran along the tide line and took off, calling, as Joe and Charlie approached, black commas against the white sky. The figures near the cliff became clearer, more than silhouettes. Two men and one woman. One was the crime-scene manager Billy Wainwright, who would have been at the house already, working on the terrace. Two others Joe didn’t recognize. Members of the search team.

They’d heard Joe and Charlie approach over the shingle, and Billy waved at them. Closer still and they saw he was grinning.

‘What have you got?’ Joe asked the question. Charlie was wheezing.

Billy moved to one side. Still Joe saw nothing unusual. There’d been a small rock-slide, a pile of boulders at the foot of the cliff. Water leached from the ground, a spring or a hidden stream, and ran across the sand to the sea. Joe imagined his bairns playing here, building dams, castles and moats.

‘The rock-fall’s not recent, is it?’ He was starting to lose patience. Billy was a great one for playing games. Practical jokes. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Here!’ And in the shadow of the rock-slide there was a rusting outflow pipe, more than half a yard in diameter. ‘Once it would have carried the waste water from the house. They use mains drainage now, I guess.’ He shone a torch into the pipe, at an angle so that Ashworth could see inside. In the distance, an arm’s length from the cliff face, there was a glint of metal and something soft and dark.’

‘What is it? The knife?’

‘Definitely the knife. But something else. Clothing? I’ve done all I could in situ. I was just going to pull it out.’

He spread a plastic sheet over the shingle beneath the outflow pipe and reached inside. First out was the knife. A black handle with a serrated blade.

‘Similar to the one in the kitchen up there,’ Joe Ashworth said. ‘The bread knife.’

‘Similar to knives you’d find in every kitchen in the county.’ Billy dropped it onto the plastic sheet.

‘The murder weapon?’

‘Not for me to say.’ Billy straightened for a moment. ‘You’d need to ask Mr Keating. But I’d bet my pension on it.’

He lay on his stomach and reached in once again. This time it was harder to retrieve what was inside. It was a snugger fit and caught on the jagged edge of the pipe.

‘This might help you, though.’ He pulled the bundle free and allowed it to fall onto the sheet. ‘A waterproof jacket. Gore-Tex. Large. And I’d guess that those stains aren’t just salt water and rust.’

‘Blood.’ Ashworth squatted to get a closer look. He felt relief, the comfort of tangible evidence. Let Vera Stanhope get deep and meaningful with her witnesses. He preferred forensics. Fingerprints and DNA. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything on the jacket to identify the owner. Anything in the pocket?’

Billy Wainwright turned the jacket over and felt with his gloved hands into the outside pockets: a tissue, a biro and thirty pence in change. ‘You should get DNA from the tissue. Though surely someone will recognize the coat anyway.’ He slipped his hand into the inside pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. A newspaper cutting. Or rather, Ashworth decided, a cutting from a colour magazine. Billy laid it carefully on the plastic and smoothed it out so they could read it. A picture of a younger Miranda Barton. The blonde hair shorter and more flattering, the body slimmer. The caption read: One Cruel Woman.

‘What is it?’

‘Looks like something from a women’s magazine,’ Billy said. ‘I don’t think it’s a Sunday supplement from a paper. An interview with the victim. I didn’t realize she was famous.’

‘She’s not.’ Ashworth stood up. ‘Not any more.’ It occurred to him that this was no coincidence. The piece had been put in the jacket pocket specially. The killer had expected it to be found. They’d thought they’d been clever finding the evidence, but all the time the murderer had been playing with them.

‘Look at this.’ Billy had moved his fingers to the neck of the jacket. A white label had been sewn inside. On it in permanent marker the words: For use by Writers’ House residents. Feel free to borrow in bad weather, but please return to cloakroom after use. ‘It belonged to the house,’ he said. ‘Not to any individual. I guess any of your suspects could have worn it. Let’s hope we can get DNA on the tissue.’ He sounded almost cheerful. Ashworth couldn’t bear the flippant tone and turned his back on the group and looked out towards the sea. He knew they’d get nothing useful from the contents of the pockets. This was a set-up, a piece of theatre. The coat and the knife were props, just there to distract them. He resented being made to look a fool.

Someone was making their way down the path from the house to the shore. The figure was tall, wearing a full-length black coat. It took a while for Joe to realize it was Nina Backworth.

‘What the shit’s she doing here? Who let her onto the beach?’ He was glad to have an outlet for his frustration. Nobody answered, and he took off suddenly and strode towards the woman, allowing the salt water and the wet sand to splash his trousers.

‘You shouldn’t be here, you know,’ he said, while she was still at some distance away from him. His voice was raised.

‘Why?’

She was very pale. He knew she’d found the body. Her story had predicted the murder. Her sleeping pills had knocked out Tony Ferdinand. And now she was here. Checking they’d found the coat and the knife? But still he couldn’t imagine her as a killer.

‘Because the area’s forensically sensitive,’ he said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ She spoke to him as if he were a particularly stupid student. ‘The tide’s been over here this morning. Any evidence will be halfway to Norway.’

They stared at each other. He didn’t know what to say to her.

‘I’ve been sitting in the library all bloody morning,’ she said at last. Tears began to roll down her cheeks and he saw how tired and scared she was. ‘Nobody will tell me anything. Holly talks at me, but there’s no information, just fatuous empty words. Am I under arrest? Do you all think I killed Miranda Barton?’

‘No!’ As he had in her room the day before, he wanted to put his arms around her shoulders. If it hadn’t been for the audience in the shadow of the cliff he might have done it. ‘But you can’t stay here. Come back with me, and I’ll try to find out if you’re free to go. Or at least if you can join the others in the hotel.’

‘No!’ She was standing very close to him. The refusal, an echo of his own word, reminded him of his daughter in one of her stubborn moods. At those times, nothing would persuade the child to change her mind. She’d just repeat herself: No, no, no.

‘Don’t you see?’ Nina cried. ‘One of those people is a killer. They slashed Miranda’s throat. How can you expect me to sit in a room with them all? To drink tea and make polite conversation.’

She turned away from him and stamped back towards the house. He had to run to catch her up.