The Healers

Chapter Nineteen

Faye Cooper’s mother lived in a row of terraced houses which ran steeply towards the river Tyne. Her name after her marriage was Irving. Sally Wedderburn, who had done her homework and was as determined as Hunter to make her mark on the case, called her Joan.

“Just a few words, Joan,” she said as they stood on the doorstep trying to persuade the woman to let them in. “We won’t take up much of your time.”

Hunter looked down to the Tyne, to a dredger moving slowly up the river. Two lads, sitting on the pavement with their feet in the gutter, stared back.

The woman was reluctant. The door was only open a crack and she was ready to close it again.

“No, thank you,” she said, as though they were selling dusters and broom heads. Then: “My husband wouldn’t like it.”

“Come on, pet,” coaxed Sally Wedderburn. “He need never know we’ve been here.”

“Of course he’ll have to know,” the woman said sharply. She peered out, saw the lads on the pavement and drew back her head. “The people round here have nothing better to do than mind other folk’s business.”

“Tell him we’re the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Sally said. “Come to convert you.”

“I’ll have no blasphemous talk in my house,” Joan Irving said, but by then somehow they were in, standing crushed together in a small hall. There was a smell of lavender furniture polish and bleach.

“Is the lounge through here?” Sally asked. She pushed open the first door she came to. “Nice little places, aren’t they, these? Cosy.”

The room they entered was small and square, dominated by the harmonium that stood against one wall. The colour scheme was brown and mustard. The smell of furniture polish had become overwhelming. It was impossible that anyone sat here and relaxed. The cushions propped against the brown leatherette settee were symmetrically arranged. There were no books or newspapers. The only ornaments were framed religious texts which hung on the walls and were propped up on the tile mantelpiece.

Hunter shivered. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. From Ramsay’s description of the family he’d imagined someone feckless, a slut who’d got herself pregnant, then conned some poor bloke into marriage to get the rent paid and her brat cared for. Someone with loose morals who’d ditched the girl as soon as she could. Not this stern, pinch-faced woman who was only forty but looked older than his mam. He wasn’t sure how to handle the situation but he wasn’t going to let Sally Wedderburn have all the running.

“Is your husband out at work?” he demanded.

She did not answer, but backed away from him, apparently panic-stricken, until she was pressed against the wall.

Christ, he thought. She’s mad as a hatter.

“Well?” he said impatiently. She looked wildly about her. Still she did not speak.

Hunter swore under his breath.

“Haven’t you got a call to make, Sarge?” Sally Wedderburn said.

“What?” He turned his anger towards her.

“A call. From the car.” She motioned for him to leave the room. He stamped out, banging the front door behind him, then stood on the pavement smoking a cigarette. It came to something when you were ordered out of an interview by a subordinate. Still, he told himself viciously, it was better to let a woman deal with the hysterics. It was all they were good for.

In the brown and mustard living room Joan Irving had begun to tremble.

“Can I get you something?” Sally asked.

The woman shook her head. “It’s my nerves,” she said. “I’ve always been bad with my nerves. There was no need for him to shout.”

“No,” Sally agreed. “Why don’t we sit down and start again. I can explain properly why I’m here.”

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “My husband’s out at work. At Swan’s. But he’ll be back soon. They’ve been on short shifts since the receivers took over the yard.” But she did as she was told and sat on a straight-backed, fireside chair, her knees locked together, her hand gripped in her lap.

“I’m here about Faye,” Sally said gently.

“That’s all over,” Joan Irving snapped. “She’s dead.”

“Are you sure it’s over?” Sally asked. “As far as you’re concerned?”

“I don’t know what you mean!” The panic was returning. She began to take gasping breaths. Sally moved closer to her and took her hand. She waited until the breathing returned to normal, then said:

“We had a letter about Faye this morning. We wondered if you’d written it.”

There was a silence.

“No,” Joan Irving said at last. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re investigating two murders. A farmer at Mittingford and a teacher from Otterbridge. Perhaps you read about them.”

Joan Irving nodded. Ron had pointed the items out to her in the Chronicle. A sign of the times, he had said.

Sally continued, “Then someone wrote to us and suggested that Faye’s death could be linked. To these murders. Do you know why anyone would think that?”

The woman shook her head. She seemed genuinely bewildered.

There was a pause and Sally tried again. She could see the back of Hunter’s head through the window. It was a sort of challenge.

“It must have been a shock hearing out of the blue that Faye was dead,” she said tentatively.

“Of course it was a shock, “Joan snapped back. “Wouldn’t you be shocked? If it were your child?”

“I haven’t got kids myself,” Sally Wedderburn said. “Not yet. I’m working on it.”

Outside the window Hunter began to pace up and down the pavement. Sod him, she thought. I’m not rushing this. “Did you go to the inquest?” she asked.

Joan shook her head. “Ron went. He thought my nerves wouldn’t stand it.”

“But you did accept the verdict? You did believe her death was an accident?”

“Nothing in this world is without purpose,” Joan said piously. Then: “An accident, of course. What else could it have been?”

Sally didn’t answer the question directly. “I’d like you to tell me all about Faye,” she said, ‘if it wouldn’t upset you too much.”

“No. I want to. Ron doesn’t like me talking about her. It’s morbid, he says.”

“Ron’s your husband?”

She nodded. “He says she brought it on herself.”

“In what way?”

“For getting mixed up with those people. The New Age hippies. We’d heard about all that in our church. No better than witchcraft, Ron says.”

“And what do you think?” Sally asked quietly. “About Faye’s death? Do you think she brought it on herself?”

“No,” the woman said uncertainly. “No one deserves that, do they?”

She got suddenly to her feet. Sally thought for a moment that the panic had returned and she was running away, but she opened a drawer in a small sideboard and pulled out a photograph album. She held it out to Sally with an awkward gesture, as if she expected it to be rejected as unimportant. Sally took it carefully and opened it on her knee. Joan Irving sat beside her on the sofa and began to point out Faye as a baby, Faye on her first day at nursery school, Faye starring as Mary in a nativity play.

“She was very pretty,” Sally said, and indeed the girl was attractive, fair-haired, blue-eyed.

“I look at it, “Joan said, ‘when Ron’s not here. It’s all I’ve got of her.”

“You never married her father?” Sally asked. “You brought her up on your own until you met Ron?”

“I’d made my bed,” she said, “I had to lie on it.” She paused, embarrassed but wanting to explain. “I was working in an estate agent’s. He was my boss. It happened at the office party. My first time. Too much to drink. When I found out I was expecting I just left. I couldn’t face seeing him again.”

Bloody men, Sally Wedderburn thought. Hunter, on the pavement, was lighting another cigarette, cupping his hand around it to stop the wind putting it out.

“She looks very happy in all those photos,” Sally said. “Was she a happy child?”

“Once she started school,” Joan. said. “She wasn’t an easy baby. Always restless. The health visitor said she was bright and I should be pleased.” For the first time she smiled and made an attempt at a joke. “I told her I’d have been pleased to get more sleep.”

“You must have been very close,” Sally said.

“I suppose we were. Then.”

“How old was Faye when you met Mr. Irving?”

“She was twelve. She’d just started at the high school.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the chapel. That was before we started to worship as a house group He was kind. Took us out for treats. He said he liked kids.”

I bet he did, Sally thought.

“I really married him for Faye, so she’d have a dad like the other children.”

Then there was a silence. On the river a boat’s hooter sounded.

“Twelve’s a difficult age, isn’t it?” Sally said. “They’re just starting to grow up. Was Faye difficult?”

Joan Irving became tense again. Her spine straightened and her knees locked together.

“She never liked Ron,” Joan said. “She made things difficult, right from the start.”

“In what way?”

“Cheeking him. Not doing what she was told.”

“Was he strict then?”

Joan was defensive. “No,” she said. “Not really. I suppose I’d let her have her own way too much. There just being the two of us. Ron said I’d spoilt her.”

“Why did she leave home? Did Ron tell her to go?”

“No! He wouldn’t have done that. He knows what’s right.”

But he made things so uncomfortable for Faye, Sally thought, that she was forced to leave.

Joan Irving was continuing. “He had rules,” she said. “He wanted to know where she was and who she was with. There was nothing wrong with that. Faye was always wilful. She didn’t see he wanted the best for her.”

“So there were rows?”

Joan nodded. “About her staying out late and make-up, and the clothes she was wearing. Always rows.”

“It must have been a relief when she decided to leave home.”

Joan looked at her suspiciously. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it was.”

“But you kept in touch with her? You went to see her? Helped her find somewhere to live?”

“I did at first. Ron works one weekend in four. On the Saturday he was working I’d go into Otterbridge to see her. To keep an eye. She was always wild.”

“You went to her bed sit

Joan nodded.

“And was she all right? Managing?”

“It was tidy enough, but then she knew when I was coming. I don’t know what it was like the rest of the time.”

“Wasn’t she lonely, on her own?”

“She said not, but then she would. Pride being one of her faults.”

“Why did you stop going to see her, Mrs. Irving? Was it because Ron found out?”

She shook her head.

“Why then?”

“She got herself a boyfriend.”

“And didn’t she want you to meet him? Or didn’t you approve? She was sixteen. Old enough to have a boyfriend.”

“Not that boyfriend, “Joan Irving said.

“Why?”

“He was bad for her. Took her off to pagan festivals. Introduced her to all that wickedness.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

Joan shook her head. “He was called James,” she said. “I remember that. Came from a nice home too, according to Faye. He should have known better.”

“She discussed the New Age ideas with you?”

“She talked about them all right!” Even after all this time Joan was indignant. “She said it would help me. I ought to go along to some group. Meet this Mrs. Pocock. Then I wouldn’t be so uptight. I told her, “I’m not uptight, my girl. I just know right from wrong.”

“So you stopped going to see her.”

Joan nodded. “She would have thought I approved. Besides,” she added honestly, “Ron would have killed me if he’d found out.”

“And you never saw her again?”

Joan shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t, you see, I had my principles. Faye would have understood that.”

“Did she ever try to get in touch with you?”

“She sent me a postcard,” Joan said. “The summer before she died.”

“Where from?” Sally said. “Perhaps you kept the card?”

“No,” Joan said. “Ron made me get rid of it. But I remember where it was from. Mittingford. There was a picture of the church. I thought she’d chosen it specially. She’d think I’d like that.”

She sat back in her chair with her eyes closed.

“What was she doing in Mittingford?” Sally asked. “Did she say? Was she there on holiday?”

Joan shook her head. “She’d got a summer job there when she finished college in July. A sort of au pair. Minding a couple of bairns while their mother was at work. That’s what she wrote on the card.”

“Did she mention James?”

“No, I hoped she’d packed him in, left all that wickedness behind.”

“Did she say exactly where she was staying?”

“No,” Joan said. She looked at Sally Wedderburn, hoping for understanding. “If she had I might have gone there to see her.”

Outside Hunter had given up his wait on the pavement and was sitting in the car. He hit the horn impatiently.