Telling Tales (11 page)

She eyed the remaining biscuit but left it where it was. “Perhaps they could have done more. Gone national. Appealed for witnesses. But they thought she’d killed the girl. It wasn’t their responsibility to make the case for the defence.” She gave a wide, dolphin’s smile. “That’s right, isn’t it, Danny? You all thought you’d got your murderer. What is it they call it? Noble cause corruption. And who could blame you for being corrupted? The motive was clear from the beginning. Jeanie hated Abigail Mantel because she could persuade her father to do anything, and she’d persuaded him that the two of them were happier on their own.”

Dan didn’t reply, seemed not even to hear. He was looking out of the window so Emma couldn’t tell what he made of Vera’s words, what he’d thought at the time.

“So, it’s precisely ten years on and there’s a small piece in the Guardian about Jeanie Long. Not claiming she’s innocent. Not exactly that. But claiming she was turned down for parole because she refused to admit her guilt. And that she would have been moved to an open prison years before if she hadn’t stuck to her story. The article gave a bit of background to the case and mentioned that she’d never found an alibi to support her story. The next thing that happens is that a witness comes forward. You wouldn’t believe it could happen, would you? Not after ten years. But this is for real…” She paused. “What’s his name, Danny?”

Emma knew that Vera remembered the man’s name quite well. The pause was for dramatic effect.

“Stringer,” Dan said. “Clive Stringer.”

“Clive was at university with Jeanie. It seems he had a bit of a crush on her, even went out with her once or twice during their first year. He saw her at King’s Cross on the day of the murder.”

“How can he remember after all this time?” Emma heard the desperation in her voice. The story which had been constructed ten years earlier, the story which had made some sort of sense, was starting to crumble.

“The date meant a lot to him. He was on his way to Heathrow. He’d been offered a postgraduate research post at a university in the States, and that was the day he flew. Even if there had been an appeal for witnesses, he wouldn’t have been around to hear it. He didn’t even know that Jeanie had been charged with murder until he read the Guardian piece.”

“Couldn’t he have made a mistake? You see someone in a crowd, it’s easy to convince yourself…”

“I’ve spoken to him,” Vera said. “He’s down-to-earth. Not given to flights of the imagination.”

They looked at each other across the table. Emma didn’t know what to say.

“I did think at first he might be an attention seker,” Vera went on gently. “We come across plenty of those in our line of work. But he keeps a diary. Has done since he was a bairn. It’s a bit sad, I think, summing up your life in a few lines scribbled at night. There must be more to it than that. In this case, though, it’s a blessing. I’ve seen the entry for November fifteenth 1994. Do you know what it says? “Saw Jeanie at King’s Cross Station, looking lovely in a bright red sweater. Red always suited her.” We checked. Jeanie was wearing a red jersey when she returned to her parents’ house that night. Forensic took it. Of course they didn’t find any thing to link her with the murder. But it didn’t really matter. She was charged anyway.” For the first time Emma realized that Vera was angry, volcanically, terrifyingly angry.

Vera must have seen that Emma sensed her fury. She shifted in her chair and smiled again to prove she wasn’t dangerous, became confiding and folksy.

“I’m from up country,” she said. “Nothing to do with Yorkshire and Humberside Police. I’m impartial, that’s the theory. It’s my job to look at the Mantel case again, see what went wrong. And the sooner I can get it done and go home the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m used to the hills. There’s nowhere to hide here, is there? You can see some bugger’s washing on a line in the next county. It gives me the creeps.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your memories,” Vera said immediately.

“I’m not sure how reliable they are after all this time.”

“Don’t worry. It’s what I’m best at. Working out what’s real and what’s fantasy. Joe Ashworth, my sergeant, thinks I’m a witch.”

Emma looked up sharply but couldn’t tell from Vera’s face whether she was mocking herself or her audience. Because that was what Dan and Emma had become. Vera was playing them as if she was the best stand-up in the business. And already she’d moved on, taking them with her.

“Suppose today, we just start with a few questions. Things that have been troubling me, and no one else has been able to answer. Not even Danny here. Like, why did Keith Mantel ask Jeanie to move out?”

“Because Abigail asked him to.” If she can’t understand that, Emma thought, she might as well piss off back to her hills now.

“But he must have realized there’d be a problem before he moved Jeanie in. I mean he and Abigail had lived in that place on their own since her mam died. Everyone says he treated her like a princess, spoilt her rotten. If they were that close he wouldn’t have brought his lover into the home without mentioning it to the girl. “What would you say if Jeanie came to live with us? They say men aren’t the most sensitive beasts in the universe but he’d have managed that. And if she hated the idea, Abigail would have said, wouldn’t she? She doesn’t strike me as the shy type. No way, Dad. It won’t work. Something like that. And he’d have listened to her and made some excuse to Jeanie, even if only to spare himself the hassle. Sorry, love, but Abigail needs more time.”

Listening to the detective Emma thought she was some sort of witch, because even if those precise words hadn’t been used, it was just what each of them might have said. But Vera was continuing. “So that’s my problem. I don’t see how he got himself into that mess.”

“I don’t think he had a lot of choice.”

“What do you mean?”

Emma hesitated. “This is what Abigail told me. I don’t know if she was telling the truth.” Because Emma knew now better than anyone that Abigail could be the biggest liar in the world.

Vera nodded encouragingly. “Like I said, you can leave that for me to decide.”

“According to Abigail, Keith hadn’t really wanted Jeanie there in the first place. She’d had a row with her parents and just stormed out of her home. She turned up on the doorstep of the Chapel with a rucksack of clothes and her violin. He couldn’t turn her away.”

“Too kind-hearted for his own good, I daresay,” Vera said, and Emma could tell she’d already formed an opinion of the man and disapproved of him.

“The first thing Abigail knew about it was when she found Jeanie in the kitchen cooking supper.”

Abigail had recounted the story the next day. It had been another hot afternoon, sultry, airless. There must have been rain that summer, sea fog, but Emma couldn’t remember it. That day Abigail had agreed to go with her to the beach and they’d walked there together down the path between the sandy fields. Already most of the harvest had been in but in the distance she’d heard the churning of a baler and there’d still been a patch of barley left to cut. The feathery fronds had brushed their legs as they walked. There had been a row of swallows on the wire, and clouds of insects, and Abigail, striding in front along the narrow path, had shouted to Emma, following behind. She hadn’t stopped talking all the way. Her voice had been incredulous and she’d repeated herself often to show that she still couldn’t believe the cheek.

“I mean she was just standing there, rooting through the cupboards. And then she started on the freezer. “I thought I’d do ri sotto Is that OK with you, Abby?” I mean, no one, but no one calls me Abby. You don’t call me Abby and you’re my best mate. And still I didn’t get it. I thought it was a one-off, one night. Then I went up to dad’s room and there were the things she’d already unpacked. Like, she’d been there an hour, and already her clothes were hanging in his wardrobe and her knickers were in his drawer. Well, I know he won’t stand for it. She’ll be out by the end of the week. Dad likes his space. Even I’m not allowed into his room without asking.”

“Why did he stand for it?” Vera asked. “That’s the question. More relevant than why he asked her to leave in the end. Jeanie was there for three months. Why didn’t he boot her out sooner?”

“He loved her,” Emma said. “Didn’t he?”

“Oh, no,” Vera replied, quite certain. “Love didn’t come into it. Not on his part.”

“Abigail was certainly surprised that she didn’t get her own way immediately.” Emma smiled, remembering her friend’s frustration, the strategies which all seemed to fail. There had seemed some justice in the fact that Abigail had been forced to suffer an upset in her life. Emma had looked on at the rows with the same mixture of sympathy and pleasure as if Abigail had sprouted an enormous pimple on the end of her nose.

“Why did Keith suddenly give in?” Vera demanded. After three months?”

“Perhaps she just wore him down with her persistence.”

“Aye. Maybe.”

“Why don’t you ask the inspector who worked on the case at the time? She must have spoken to people, come to a conclusion.”

“Caroline Fletcher doesn’t work for the service any more,” Vera said briskly. “Like Danny here.” She paused. “Strange, isn’t it, that the two officers most actively involved in the investigation retired from the police soon after Jeanie Long went to court?”

She turned her wide smile on Dan, inviting him not to take offence.

Chapter Thirteen

Outside the sun was still shining. A gusty westerly promised more rain. Cloud-shaped shadows were blown across the fields where the green shoots of winter wheat were already showing. In the little house Vera was still holding forth and Dan was still listening. Emma made her excuses and left them to it. She drove to the end of the Crescent, then, instead of turning towards the village, she took the opposite direction towards the coast. Wendy, the coxswain of the pilot launch, was the nearest thing she had to a friend here, and liked it when she dropped in with Matthew. Emma felt she needed an excuse to be out of the house, away from the television and the local news. She couldn’t face seeing Dan again on the screen. He’d been thinner then, his hair shorter. But the way he’d been glowering at the camera, you could still imagine him letting his temper get the better of him. She couldn’t imagine him taking orders easily and wondered if that was why he’d left the police.

Every year in the autumn there were predictions that the Point would be washed away by the tides of the equinox. One big gale, people said. That was all it would take. And certainly it was skinnier than it had been, a spit of land, shaped like a drooping, wasted phallus, hanging into the mouth of the river from the north bank. In places the old road disappeared into the sea and a new track had been made through the sand, the sea holly and the buckthorn. The Point bulged slightly at the tip, where the jetty was and the houses belonging to the lifeboat station had been built. These houses were incongruously modern, all the same, as if they’d been made from a kit. Easy to leave behind, Emma supposed, if that one big gale did come. Only the cottages where the coxswains lived had any substance.

She parked opposite the houses, next to the mobile cafe which sold coffee and fry-ups to the birdwatchers and fishermen. Matthew was awake and began grumbling as soon as the car stopped. She fed him there, sitting in the front passenger seat, looking out over the water, with her coat draped around them both. There was no one to see but she didn’t even like going without a bra. Wendy, who claimed never to have been bjjpody in her life, loved to watch the baby feeding, but Emma didn’t want an audience. Not today. James said the baby was as regular as the tide in his habits and it was true. Her life was punctuated by six hourly interruptions. She was getting used to it.

Mathew settled and she allowed her mind to wander. These quiet times of waiting were when she would usually conjure up dreams of Dan Greenwood. There would be nothing exotic about her fantasies. At night she would wander into the pottery and he would kiss her and touch her. She seldom imagined herself making love. Hers were the fantasies of an immature teenager, comforting and harmless. The fantasies she might have had when she was fifteen, before Abigail had died. She told herself she should leave them behind. She was grown up and they had no meaning now. But it was harder than she had imagined to let them go.

As she pulled down her jumper two teenage lads raced from one of the houses and began to kick a ball against the sea wall. Still carrying Matthew she got out of the car and looked down the river. The smell of mud and seaweed mixed with the frying bacon and chip fat from the cafe.

The cafe was a relatively new arrival on the Point. Before it, there had been an ice-cream van, but only on fine days and at the weekends. And, thinking of the ice-cream van, Emma suddenly remembered that this was where she had first met Abigail Mantel. She hadn’t thought of the encounter for more than ten years. Even relating the history of their friendship to Caroline Fletcher, it had slid somehow out of the story. Perhaps it had been too trivial. Now it came back in jagged flashes, like the sunlight on the pavements. She thought, This is what it is like to be old. This is how old people remember their childhood.

It was June, the end of their first week in Springhead House. Robert was still elated by the new purpose in his life, optimistic about the house, his work, the whole deal of living in the country. “A new start,” he’d say, over and over again. “Really, we are so blessed.” Though Emma didn’t feel blessed. She felt uprooted. Literally. As if someone had yanked her out of hard-packed soil and dumped her to rot. She’d tried to talk about it to Christopher, but he’d only shrugged. “It’s done,” he’d said. “They won’t move back. Not now. Best make the most of it.” She’d thought then it was the sort of thing an adult might say and had considered him almost a traitor.

In contrast, Robert had bounced around the place, wearing them out. And now it was Saturday and although their belongings were still in boxes and Mary looked exhausted, he insisted that they take a trip out to explore their new surroundings. Perhaps they were carried along by his enthusiasm or perhaps they didn’t have the energy to put up a fight, but it was agreed very quickly without argument. A bike ride, he said. Obvious. Ideal because the country’s so flat. And he climbed over the packing cases in the garage to pull out their bikes.