Too Good to Be True

11 The Watcher

It was mid-morning in Stonebridge when Jimmy Perez got back from Berwick, and the sun was shining on the gleaming snow. He felt as if he was returning to another world, though Berwick was hardly more than an hour away. He saw this village as a place full of secrets where nothing was quite as it seemed.

On the drive back he’d been trying to piece together all he’d learned about Anna. He was convinced now that she hadn’t committed suicide. She was a kind woman who cared too much about her daughter and her parents to leave them. And it seemed she’d been getting happier. She had passed the worst crisis of her depression.

But still there were too many unanswered questions for him to make up his mind what had happened to her. Who was the new man who’d become a part of her life? Perez had assumed that if she’d been having an affair with a man in Stonebridge, then the lover had been Tom King. But perhaps she’d been seeing someone quite different. Perhaps the note arranging a meeting on the night of her death had been for this other person.

Now Perez sat in his car outside the Stonebridge Hotel and considered what to do next. On impulse, he started the engine again and drove towards the farm where Gail lived. Gail was a local and a gossip, and if anyone knew who Anna had been seeing, it would be the farmer. She would have heard any rumours.

Perez found Gail mending a hen house in the orchard by the side of the yard. She looked up when she saw him. ‘One of the planks is rotten. A bloody fox will get in if I don’t fix it. Do you mind if we talk out here?’

‘That’s fine.’ He leaned against one of the trees. ‘It’s possible that Anna was having a relationship with someone other than Tom King. Had you heard anything about that?’

She straightened her back. There was still a hammer in her hand and it made her look fierce, like a female warrior from the Norse tales he’d read as a boy. ‘No! Who was she seeing?’

‘I was hoping that you might be able to tell me that.’

‘It must have been a married man,’ Gail said. ‘There’d be no need for secrecy if he was single. She’d have known that there were rumours about her and the doctor. Being seen out with a single guy would have stopped them once and for all. That would have been a good thing as far as she was concerned.’

Perez hadn’t thought about it in that way, but he saw it made sense. ‘Any likely candidates?’ he asked.

Gail shrugged. ‘She was a bonny lass. It could have been anyone. It doesn’t take much to lead a man astray.’

Perez looked at her. She sounded bitter. He remembered that she’d only lost her husband a short time ago in a car crash. Perhaps he’d been the sort to find comfort elsewhere too.

Gail seemed to guess what Perez was thinking. ‘I was lucky with my husband. He was a good man, loyal to his family, but there are lots of bad ones out there.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘I met a few of them when I was younger.’

‘Tell me about your husband’s accident.’

She didn’t answer for a while. She’d finished mending the hen house now and started to gather up her tools into a canvas bag.

‘It was the start of the autumn,’ she said. ‘There were fallen leaves everywhere and then it started to rain, so the roads were very slippery. Much worse than ice. John skidded on his way back to the farm after a night in the village. A witness says there was another car driving much too fast the other way, and that’s why John had to swerve. But that driver was never found.’

‘That must be hard. Especially if people in the village are saying he’d been drinking and it was his own fault.’

Gail shrugged again. ‘I could let it eat away at me. All those “what ifs”. What if the other driver had been more careful? What if John had stayed home that night? But it does no good. I have our daughter, Grace, to think about.’

Perez didn’t answer. He’d had a sudden, strange thought. He was wondering if Anna Blackwell had a car and if she’d been out the night of John’s accident. If Anna had caused Gail’s husband’s death, that might provide a motive for murder. Then Perez decided he was being crazy. He couldn’t see Gail as a killer. And besides, she’d been at the farm the whole night of Anna’s death, looking after two fatherless children.

He walked with Gail back towards the farmhouse, carrying the piece of rotten wood she’d replaced.

‘Will you find out what really happened?’ she asked.

This time it was his turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got much time left. I have to go home to Shetland tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps that’s a good thing,’ Gail said. ‘Perhaps we should forget about Anna’s death and remember her life. That’s what I try to do with John. We should let the dead rest in peace.’

Perez didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her that the love of his life had died not long before and so he understood how Gail was feeling. He had decided to let Fran rest in peace too. But in the end he just nodded and got into his car.

As Perez pulled out of the farm track onto the road, he saw a dark figure standing in a lay-by, staring. Perez was sure it was the man who’d been watching his hotel the night before. He slammed on the brakes and backed up the road to the lay-by, but the man had gone. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air. He must have run off into the trees. It made Perez wonder if his mind had been playing tricks and if the watcher had ever been there at all.