Telling Tales (19 page)

Her phone went. She pulled onto the verge. The road was greasy with ice and she couldn’t do two things at once at the best of times. The signal wasn’t brilliant and she got out. The cold took her breath away. Her feet snapped the frozen blades of grass.

“Ma’am.” Faint and familiar, slightly ironic. She grinned slowly.

“Joe Ashworth. Where the hell have you been?”

“You said to leave it a few days. Then when the news of the Winter lad’s murder came through I thought you’d like me there immediately.”

“Taken to mind reading now, have you, lad?”

“Not really. It was the boss’s idea.”

But your suggestion, she thought. You’d not want to miss out on anything. “Where are you?”

“The services on the M62. About half an hour from Hull. They’ve booked me into the same hotel as you.”

“Have they, though! It’s a decent sort of place. I hope their budget will run to it.”

She stood there for a moment before driving off. Ashworth was her sergeant. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Too gullible for one thing and born a city boy for another. Too wrapped up in his wife and baby. But he’d be an ally against all these bloody Yorkies. And he was the closest thing to a son she’d ever have.

They arrived at Caroline Fletcher’s house early the next morning. The quiet spell of weather was over. There was a piercing east wind and rain with shards of ice in it, sharp and grey as flint. It was seven o’clock and the street was waking. Caroline lived a couple of villages inland from Elvet and the estate was new and smart. There were double garages and fancy cornices, and a fat conservatory bulged behind every house. It was the sort of place Ashworth would like to live one day, when he got promotion. Vera would have been hounded out for an untidy garden and unruly friends.

She stood on the drive and looked around her, challenging the neighbours to notice. “I think we’ve been very discreet,” she said. “We could have come in a panda.”

Ashworth could tell she was enjoying herself and knew better than to spoil her fun. A small child was peering through the curtains of the house next door. It was a girl in a pink dressing gown with curly hair, about the same age as his son. He waved at her and she disappeared. Vera was already banging on the front door. There was a light in an upstairs window. They heard footsteps.

The door opened. A tall man with a newt’s face and a long neck looked out at them. He was wearing a sober suit and a dark tie. Undertaker or accountant, Vera thought. His hair was still wet from the shower.

“Can you tell Caroline we’d like a word?” Vera gave a wide, easy smile.

A paperboy in a black anorak slouched up. Like a woman in a burqa, the hood hid everything but his eyes. He thrust a copy of the Financial Times into the newt’s hand. Accountant then. The newt seemed distracted by the headline and didn’t answer immediately.

“We’ve not got all day.”

“I’m not sure…”

Vera breathed in deeply, then spoke loudly, with an exaggerated clarity. “I’m Vera Stanhope. Northumbria Police. I want to see Caroline Fletcher.”

The paperboy stopped at the gate and turned to stare. It would be all round the estate before he got home from school. The man’s face turned scarlet, the colour of the curtain which covered the small window beside him. Very fetching, Vera thought. Maybe he’s not a newt after all. More like a chameleon. “Go in,” he said quickly. “Caroline’s inside.” Then with an attempt at dignity, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m just on my way to work.” He grabbed car keys from the hall table, a briefcase from the bottom of the stairs and pushed past them.

Caroline was standing in the middle of the living room. She must have heard the exchange, but she waited until they’d stepped in and closed the door behind them before she spoke.

“Can I help you?” As if she was one of those icy women who sell perfume in high-class department stores. The ones who usually let Vera walk past unhindered. It was still not seven thirty but she was dressed and made up. It was as if she’d known that Vera would turn up, though she couldn’t have had inside information. Vera had told no one at HQ_ of her plans. But of course Caroline had worked in CID for six years. She’d been promoted quickly, had been good at her job. Vera had underestimated her. This would be how she’d have played it too.

“Who was that?” Vera asked. “Your hubby?” They were all still standing.

“You know I’m not married. You’ll have checked. Alex and I have lived together for four years.” She looked severe, dressed in a black skirt over black boots, a roll-necked top the colour of ripe plums. No bulges or sags, everything trim and in its place.

“Very nice,” Vera said vaguely. She sat on an easy chair next to the gas fire, pulled a notebook and biro out of her bag. “How old are you now?”

“You’ll have checked that too. Forty-six.”

“You’re wearing well,” Vera said with admiration. She meant it. There wasn’t much difference in their ages but Caroline looked ten years younger. “What are you doing with yourself now?”

“I’m an estate agent.”

“Any good at it?”

“I shift more property than anyone else in the company.”

You’ll have to be best at whatever you set your

mind to, Vera thought. Where does that come from, then? And is that why you left the police? Nothing more sinister than a fear of getting it wrong. Because in this job failure’s inevitable. Not every time. But most of it.

“Coffee?” Caroline asked.

“Aye, why not? White, one sugar. Joe here takes his black.”

While the coffee was being made Vera doodled on her pad. Spiders and interlocking webs. Joe Ashworth, looking at it from across the room, thought a psychiatrist would have a field day. Caroline must have had everything prepared in the kitchen, the tray laid, the kettle boiled, because she returned almost immediately, preceded by the smell of the coffee. She set the items on the table a large cafetiere, three matching mugs, sugar bowl, milk jug, an arrangement of shortbread biscuits on a brown plate. Vera looked up.

“Were you still at Mantel’s when they found the lad’s body last night?”

“No.” Caroline focused her full attention on pouring coffee. “I only bought a ticket because it was such a good cause. I didn’t stay.”

“You’ll have heard who was killed though?”

“It was on the radio this morning.” And someone will have phoned you, Vera thought. Bound to have.

“Christopher Winter, the brother of the lass who found Abigail Mantel’s body.”

“A strange coincidence,” Caroline said calmly. She handed a mug to Ashworth.

Aye. Maybe.”

“You think his death is relevant to the original enquiry?”

Vera didn’t consider that worthy of an answer. “You must have talked to the boy first time round. What did you make of him?”

There was a brief pause as Caroline sipped at the coffee. She left a smear of lipstick on the white porcelain. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I mean I don’t remember even talking to him. He was just a kid. Younger than Abigail. Not in the same year at school.”

“But he could have been a witness.” Vera kept her voice even, reasonable.

“He was with his family all day. Church at ten thirty, then home for lunch. He didn’t go out. Dan Greenwood had a chat with him the day of the murder.”

So you do remember. Or you’ve looked at your records. Prepared your story at least. Looking more closely at Caroline, Vera saw how tired she was. Had she slept? Been to bed, even? Had she been up all night trawling through her memory for facts to use in her defence? Vera tried to ward off a wave of sympathy. “Did you ever see his bedroom?”

There was a pause. No immediate response. She was good, Vera thought. She’d have been brilliant in court. Unshakeable. The Crown Prosecution Service would have loved her.

“I don’t remember,” she said. “I’d have to check my notes.”

i Vera leaned forward. “Look,” she said. “I don’t understand why there’s a problem here. I mean, what have you got to lose by playing it straight with me? You’ve already left the service. No one’s going to find you negligent. What would be the point? Or if they do, it’ll be in an internal report that’ll never hit the press.”

“I’m an ideal scapegoat, then, aren’t I?”

“I’m writing the report. You’ll not end up carrying all the crap. Not unless you muck me about. I know what it’s like to be a woman working with this lot.” She paused. “So, I’m going to ask you again. Did you look in the boy’s bedroom?”

“No,” Caroline said. Then, interested despite herself. “Why should I have done that?”

“From his bedroom he had a view of the field where Abigail’s body was found. He was there all afternoon. He could have been a witness to her murder.”

She crumpled as if she’d been thumped in the stomach and winded. “Shit,” she said. “Oh, shit. How could I have missed that?”

“You were blinkered. Convinced from the beginning that Jeanie Long was the murderer.”

“Everything pointed to it. She had motive, opportunity, the alibi she gave didn’t check out.”

“But no forensics. And no confession, even after ten years.”

“It was the murder of a young girl. A pretty young girl. You know what it’s like. Her picture on the news every night. The press, the politicians all after a result. There’s a pressure to clear it up quickly.”

“Aye,” Vera said. “That’s true enough.”

They sat in silence. The rain spat against the window.

“So it wasn’t personal, then?” Vera asked.

“What do you mean?” Caroline’s head shot up. She was ready for a fight again.

“Maybe you took against Jeanie Long.”

“I’d never met her before the murder.”

“That’s not what I meant. Some suspects… It’s hard to stay detached… They get under your skin…”

“Perhaps there was something like that,” Caroline conceded. “She wasn’t easy. Arrogant, I suppose. Superior. As if a degree and a knowledge of posh music made her better than the rest of us.”

“I know the type.”

And she hated Abigail. OK, I accept now that she couldn’t have killed the girl. But she was pleased she was dead.”

“Was there ever anyone else in the frame? Before you pulled in Long, I mean.”

“Not really. Keith Mantel put us onto her very quickly. He said Jeanie had always been jealous of Abigail and then when he asked her to leave it was the girl that she blamed.”

“You checked out the local loonies and sex offenders?”

“Of course, though I never had it down as an attack by a pervert. There’d been no sexual assault. Her clothes hadn’t even been disturbed. And if not that, who else, besides Jeanie Long could have had a motive? Abigail was only fifteen, for Christ’s sake. A schoolgirl. No money to leave. She’d hardly lived long enough to upset people.”

“Was she a virgin?” Though Vera knew, of course. She’d read every report there’d been.

“No, but that isn’t unusual for a fifteen-year-old, even ten years ago.”

“Did you trace any boyfriends?”

“No one who admitted sleeping with her. But they wouldn’t, would they? She was under age.”

“What did her father make of that?”

“He wasn’t shocked that she’d had sex. He told me he never played the heavy-handed father. It wasn’t his style. He just warned her to take precautions.”

“Did she ask his advice? Talk to him about the lads she was going with?”

“He said not, and I believed him. Why would he lie?”

“Emma, the lass who found the body…”

“Yes?”

“You’d have thought she’d have known who Abigail was sleeping with.”

“Perhaps.” Caroline hesitated. “I didn’t ask her. Once we had Long in custody it didn’t seem relevant. I didn’t see the point in raking through a young girl’s past.”

Vera considered this without speaking. Ashworth, too, seemed lost in thought. Outside the window a cat was crying, but despite the rain, no one got up to let it in.

“Why did you leave the job?” Vera asked.

It was a question Caroline hadn’t planned for. A crazy oversight like not interviewing Christopher. Was that all her failure came down to? Vera thought. A lack of thoroughness in her approach to her cases.

“It was personal,” Caroline said in the end. “Nothing to do with the work.”

“You know better than that,” Vera snapped. “Nothing’s personal in my enquiry.”

“I was engaged. I thought that was what I wanted. Marriage, kids, the whole package. I didn’t see how the job would fit in with that.”

“What happened?”

“It didn’t work out. I mean, I couldn’t go through with it. Maybe I’m not the marrying kind.”

“But you didn’t come back?”

“I got used to regular hours, a full night’s sleep, bloody big commissions.”

“You enjoy what you do now?”

“I told you, I’m good at it. Selling. Sometimes I think that was what I was born for.”

What was I born for? Vera wondered. Seeing through people who lie to me? Then why can’t I make out exactly what’s going on here? She knew there were more questions but couldn’t find the right words to ask them. She stood up. Joe Ashworth followed, surprised the interview was over so quickly. Caroline Fletcher didn’t show any relief at their leaving. Vera thought she understood they’d be back.

Chapter Twenty-Two

When they arrived at the Captain’s House, Emma was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by the remains of breakfast. James was on his way out and dressed for work. Vera looked him up and down admiringly as he let them in. The uniform suited him, though he looked very tired and pale.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, keeping his voice low. They were in the high-ceilinged hall but the door to the dining room was open and they could see through into the kitchen beyond. “I don’t really like leaving Emma on her own and she doesn’t want me to call in her parents. She says they’ve got their own grief to cope with.”

“Do you have any family who could keep her company?” asked Ashworth. He came from a close family and so did his wife. He couldn’t imagine an important event in their lives without an audience of relatives. On those occasions his parents’ small terrace would be crammed, people knee to knee on chairs pulled from all over the house, kids running wild upstairs, his mam in the kitchen preparing catering quantities of sandwiches and tea, his dad handing out beer to the men. Looking back, the events which had brought them together bereavements, engagements, christenings -all blurred together.