The Glass Room

Chapter Thirty-One

Further north the weather changed suddenly; the sun disappeared and there was a mountain of cloud to the east. A brisk northerly breeze blew against the Land Rover and found its way through the gaps in the windows. Winter had come early. Vera hadn’t warned Giles Rickard that she was coming, but he didn’t seem surprised to see her when she knocked at his door. His holiday cottage was in Craster and looked out over the harbour. There was a narrow front garden, everything brown and salt-blown. The first splashes of rain.

‘My Dad used to come here every winter,’ she said, looking down at the exposed sand. ‘To get Mediterranean gull for the year. There’s one that turns up in the autumn, regular as clockwork.’

He didn’t respond.

‘You’re not a birdwatcher then? Aye, well, it’s not much of a hobby and I expect your writing has taken up most of your time. They’re bonny birds, mind, Med gulls. Get someone to point it out to you if you get a chance.’ She followed him into the house.

The cottage was small and unpretentious. The front door led straight into a living room with a wood-burning stove, a table under the window and a couple of armchairs. She looked round, making a show of it. ‘No computer?’

‘I don’t write any more, Inspector. I’ve retired.’

‘How does that work then? You just wake up one day and decide you’re not going to tell any more stories.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly how it happens.’

‘What do you do here all day?’ She was genuinely interested. She and Rickard had a lot in common. No family. Few friends, it seemed. She might learn something from him that would help her come to terms with her own retirement.

‘I read,’ he said. ‘I think. I remember.’

‘Aye, well, it’s your memory I’m interested in.’

‘I really don’t think I can help you further, Inspector. I’ve told you everything I know.’ His voice was firm. ‘I bought this place so that I’d be undisturbed. In London there are always people who expect me to be pleased to talk to them: journalists, students. I’d thought that would end when I stopped writing, but it seems not to have been the case. This is where I escape from unwanted conversation.’

‘Indulge me,’ she said. ‘I’ve come a long way.’ She sat in one of the armchairs, wedged herself in, making it clear she was there for the long haul.

He looked at her and decided that further argument was futile. He opened the door of the stove and pushed in a log. ‘Can I offer you a drink, Inspector?’

‘Eh, pet, I thought you’d never ask. Whisky with a dash of water. Unless you’ve got a single malt, and then I’ll take it neat. Just a small one. I’ll be driving.’

He poured whisky for them both. No water. She saw that his hand was still and didn’t tremble. His movements seemed stronger than they had in the Writers’ House. Perhaps he felt happier on home territory. He pulled a small table between them and set the drinks on it, then took the other armchair. It came to Vera that anyone looking in from the outside would see them as a couple. Happily married for decades, sharing a drink before dinner in front of the stove. For a moment she imagined herself into the fiction. What would it have been like? To have this domestic ritual? This comfortable silence? Boring, she decided. It would be bloody boring.

‘I spoke to Alex Barton earlier,’ she said.

‘How is he?’ They could have been discussing a mutual friend. A neighbour perhaps. Nobody too close or dear to them.

‘I don’t know. He seems a strange young man to me. I’m not sure if that’s because his mother has just died or if he was always like that. I don’t like the thought of him in that place on his own. But he claims he’s fine. He’s an adult. I can’t force him to find some company, and I can’t see him being happy away from the house. Seems to me he only ever leaves it to go to the shops.’ She turned slightly in her chair so that she was looking at Rickard. Before pouring the drinks he’d switched on a wall light. Now he stared at the wood-burner and his face was in shadow.

‘Some of us function better on our own,’ he said.

‘You never fancied marriage?’

‘No.’ He paused and seemed entirely lost in thought. She might not have been there. Then he jerked back to the present and realized more was expected. ‘There was somebody I was very fond of at one time,’ he said. ‘It never worked out. Now I’m accustomed to being on my own.’ A gust of wind rattled the sash window. He got slowly to his feet and drew the curtains.

‘Alex told me you turned down their offer to tutor at the Writers’ House at first. You changed your mind at the last minute.’

‘An old man’s prerogative. But we’ve discussed this already, Inspector. I was intrigued when I saw that Joanna Tobin would be one of the students.’

‘So it had nothing to do with Paul Rutherford?’

He turned to face her. ‘What are you saying, Inspector? We’re both too old for games. What do you really want to know?’

‘Joanna tried a bit of blackmail,’ Vera said. ‘At least your friend Rutherford called it blackmail. She said she was making a claim on what she was owed. I’m still not sure what that was about. Did he ask you to have a word with her? Scare her off maybe.’

For a moment Rickard didn’t answer. He sat facing the stove, his chin on his chest. Good God, she thought. Perhaps he’s dead. He’s had a stroke or a heart attack. What do I do now? ‘Mr Rickard?’

He turned slowly to face her. She thought his face was like a tortoise’s. Impassive and grey. He gave nothing away.

‘What are you suggesting? That I scared Joanna away by killing two strangers?’ His voice dry, laced with sarcasm.

‘I’m not suggesting anything! I’m asking if you went to the Writers’ House because Rutherford asked you to. I need to clear the decks here and work out what’s really important. There’s too much stuff getting in the way.’

He was staring into the stove again and she thought he might refuse to answer, but after a moment he started speaking.

‘Yes, I came to the Writers’ House because Paul asked me to. Joanna had contacted him at work and demanded money. He said she was crazy again. He was worried about what might come out, if she decided to go to the press with an election only months away. You’re up in Northumberland anyway. It’ll only be for a few days. See what’s happening. What’s rattling her cage after all this time.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ Vera said, ‘is why you agreed. You’ve retired. You hate meeting readers, all the marketing bollocks. Don’t you? You’ve just said that’s why you bought this place.’

He nodded his tortoise head. ‘As you say, I hate the bollocks.’

‘So why didn’t you tell Rutherford to deal with his own shit?’ Vera wondered why she felt the need to be crude. It wasn’t like her. She could swear like a trooper in her own home, but was professional enough when it came to work. Did she hope the coarse language would shake Rickard from his slow and solid resistance to her questions?

He paused for a beat and then he started talking. He didn’t look at her and the words came with difficulty. She saw he had never told anyone this before and he wanted to be precise, to describe the situation accurately. Vera kept her mouth shut and listened.

‘Paul Rutherford is the closest thing to a son I ever had.’ He shut his eyes for a moment and then opened them. ‘I loved his father. Not as a friend. Or at least as a friend, but as much, much more than that too. He was my passion. Do you understand what I’m saying, Inspector?’

Vera nodded slowly. No comment needed.

‘I think Roy realized, but he never said anything. I never made a move on him. I wouldn’t have known where to start. It wasn’t uncommon at school: crushes on other boys, on the younger teachers. But as an adult I was lost, out of my depth. It was considered beyond the pale then, of course, but that wasn’t what prevented me…’ He hesitated and put the following words in conceptual quotation marks ‘… exploring my sexuality. I was a coward and I didn’t want to stand out. And sexual experimentation was never really what it was about, despite my fantasies. Though I had fantasies that would have made your hair curl, and which certainly shocked me. It was about Roy. I wanted to be with him. To serve him. There was never anyone else. Physical contact has never been so important to me. I was happy to make do with the occasional touch: an arm around the shoulder, a handshake.’ He looked at her. She noticed that his glass was empty. ‘I’m sure you think I’m foolish. He married after all. He had a son.’

‘I think you’re fortunate to have found someone you were able to love.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘Did that never happen to you?’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘We’re not talking about me,’ she said at last. ‘I think you should value what you had.’

‘Yes, I suppose that I should. But now Roy’s dead, and all I have left of him is Paul. I see his father sometimes in Paul’s expression, the way he stands. Like an indulgent parent, I can deny Paul nothing. As I’ve said, I’m a foolish old man.’

‘Does he know how you felt about his father?’ Vera asked.

‘No! I don’t think so.’ Rickard was shocked. ‘Do you think he guessed?’

‘Younger people are more sexually aware than old ones. And he seems to have been prepared to exploit your affection for his father.’ She swirled the remainder of her whisky in her glass. It was unlike her to have made it last so long. She thought this had been a peculiar encounter. She’d even been tempted to make a confession of her own. ‘Just be careful what he’s dragging you into, eh?’

‘Joanna had told Paul that she’d won the bursary for the Writers’ House. Paul asked me to go there and report back on her state of mind, Inspector.’ The acerbic and witty tone returned. ‘He didn’t ask me to commit two murders.’

‘Did you know that Rutherford published Miranda Barton?’ Holly had texted Vera with that information; the message had been on her phone when she got out of the Land Rover at Craster.

‘Everyone’s entitled to make mistakes.’ Rickard pulled himself to his feet and took the bottle of whisky out of the sideboard. He offered it to Vera, but she shook her head. He poured a splash into his own glass. ‘Even Roy.’

‘Was it a mistake?’ Vera asked. ‘To publish Miranda?’

‘She was never a great writer. Not dreadful, and the market was less demanding in those days. But Roy had founded his business to champion traditional storytelling and she was never particularly good at that.’

‘Was Roy susceptible to her female charms, do you think? Is that why he decided to publish her?’ Vera tried to imagine how that had worked. Had Ferdinand become involved even at that stage? Had he approached Roy Rutherford on Miranda’s behalf? There are too many connections in this case, she thought now. The Writers’ House had sucked them all in together and created too many suspects with a shared history.

‘When it came to publishing, he wasn’t susceptible to charms of any gender.’ Rickard gave a little smile. ‘He was extremely hard-headed. He must have believed that her books would sell. And he was right for a while. For a year, after Tony Ferdinand’s article in The Observer, she became almost a celebrity.’

‘As you are now,’ Vera said.

‘Ah, she was much more famous than me. And she enjoyed it.’

Vera got to her feet so that they were both standing, facing each other. Outside the wind was even stronger and blew around the chimney. There was a loose slate on the roof.

‘Do you know what happened at the Writers’ House last week?’

He looked at her sharply. ‘If I knew, Inspector, don’t you think I would tell you?’

She didn’t answer that, but pulled her jacket around her and headed out into the storm.