Telling Tales (22 page)

She could tell he was thinking of some of the cases he’d worked on. Cases which had gone on for months, days without sleep, without seeing his family, and then no result at the end of it.

“He never believed Jeanie was guilty,” Vera said. “But he didn’t have the guts to make a fuss at the time.”

“So now he blames himself for her suicide?”

“Maybe.”

“How do you know him?”

“We’d met a couple of times, courses, training days. Then a lad from Wooler jumped bail and ended up down here. I came down for a few days. I liked Dan. He was one of those people you take to straight away. Like I said, no side to him. No agenda. He phoned me before he left the service. They’d offered him this deal and he asked my advice.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we needed people who cared about the job, but that if it was making him ill he should take the money and run.”

“Why did he think Jeanie Long was innocent?”

“He was in on the interviews. He believed her.”

“And that was it?”

“There was no forensic evidence. And Dan said it all happened really quickly. Easily. As if it had been set-up. As if someone was pulling the strings.”

“You think that was Mantel?”

“You get a grieving father pointing the finger, saying he knows who killed his daughter, that’s hard to ignore. Especially when he says it in public. And when he’s a big figure locally. With friends who are magistrates and on the police committee.”

“In everyone’s interest to clear it up quickly, then.”

“Everyone’s except Jeanie Long’s.”

“Whose strings exactly was Mantel pulling?”

Vera pushed half a curd tart into her mouth. “We’ll have to ask him, won’t we? But that’ll have to wait. There’s Robert Winter coming out of the church.”

Winter was still standing in the church porch when they met up with him. He was poised as if to set off down the path towards the gate, restrained, it seemed by an invisible barrier. The path was slippery with wet leaves and at one point Ashworth almost tripped, but Winter gave no sign that he had seen them approach. He stared out at the bare trees which lined the churchyard.

“Your wife will be worried about you,” Vera said.

Only then did Robert acknowledge them with a courteous nod. He didn’t respond, though, to the words.

“We’ve only just come from your house. Mary wasn’t expecting you to be so long. Here, give her a ring.” Vera groped for a mobile phone in her bag. “Tell her we want a quick word with you first, but you’ll not be long.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “Of course. I’ve been very thoughtless.” He took the phone and at last made the effort to leave the porch, walking a few paces away from them, turning his back so they couldn’t hear what was said.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Vera asked when he’d finished.

“Here? In the church?” As if, she’d say to Ashworth later, she’d suggested an interview in a brothel or a gents’ lav.

“If we wouldn’t be intruding.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

So they ended up in the little room by the bakery again, with more tea. On the way they passed the news agent and the headlines in the local papers screamed Christopher’s name. But Vera couldn’t feel sorry for Robert Winter and all the time they were talking she wished she’d been more forceful, stood her ground. What was it about the man that he always seemed to get his own way?

She began with a question he wouldn’t be expecting, hoping to throw him.

“Why the probation service? A bit different from architecture.”

“More challenging.” He smiled politely. She thought he’d played these word games before.

“What do you get out of it?”

“Not money, certainly,” he said. “Architecture was more lucrative. Most professions would be.”

Beside her, she could sense Ashworth willing her to change tack. She knew what he was thinking. Robert Winter was a bereaved relative who should be handled with a bit more sensitivity.

i “So, what then?” she demanded.

“Occasionally we can make a difference,” Robert said. “Change lives. When that happens there’s no more rewarding job in the world.”

“Did you make a difference to Jeanie Long?”

“Obviously not.” Still he kept calm, didn’t even show a trace of irritation. “I accepted the judgement of the court that she was a murderer. I failed her because I didn’t believe her story.”

“You must feel bad about that.”

“Of course I do, but I can’t let it affect my work with other prisoners. I don’t think I can blame myself. Many of the people I work with are manipulative and plausible. Many of them claim to be innocent. Sometimes we get it wrong ‘

“You see,” Vera interrupted, “I think it must be a bit like joining the police. The same motivation, I mean. It gives a licence to meddle. It’s a way into all that muck and corruption we respectable folk wouldn’t normally come across. There’s a glamour about crime, isn’t there? An excitement. Everyone’s curious about it, but we’re paid to stick our noses in. And so are you.”

“That’s one interpretation, Inspector. But not one I’d subscribe to.”

“Did Christopher have any girlfriends while he was living at home?” Vera asked.

“Not that I knew of:

“Would you have known? Is that the sort of thing you’d have talked about?”

“Possibly not. Christopher was a very private young man.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” She smiled to show that she intended no offence at all. “You probably knew more about the lives of the offenders in your care than you did about your own son.”

She moved on quickly before Robert could respond. “Why were you so keen to take your family to the bonfire last night?”

“It had been a difficult time for us all. Jeanie’s suicide, the Mantel case all over the newspapers again,

it had brought back the unpleasant memories. I thought it would be good for us to get out for the evening. Stop brooding.”

“Didn’t you think that meeting Keith Mantel might have the opposite effect. On Emma, at least?”

“No,” he said. And Vera saw that it was possible he was telling the truth. He hadn’t realized Emma might find it hard to return to the house where her best friend had lived at the time she was murdered. And Ashworth thought she was insensitive. “No. It happened a long time ago. Emma has moved on. We all have. I thought it would be a pleasant evening for everyone.”

“You hadn’t expected to meet Christopher there?”

“Not at all. I was sure he’d gone straight back to Aberdeen. It was inconsiderate he knows his mother looks forward to his visits but quite in character.”

Quite suddenly he seemed to lose patience with the questions. “Is there anything urgent, Inspector? Anything which won’t keep? Only my wife’s been alone for a long time. As you said. Really, I think I should go back to her.” Without waiting for a reply he stood up and walked out. Through the window they watched him stride along the pavement. An elderly woman, obviously distressed, scurried up to him to offer her condolence. He stopped, bent towards her and took her hand in both of his. Then he continued towards his car.

“I wonder,” Vera said slowly, ‘why I dislike him so much.”

“The religion?” Ashworth suggested. “It was never your thing.”

“Maybe. But I want you to get a list of the people who were at Mantel’s last night and talk to them all.

Did any of them notice Robert Winter leave the bonfire? Did anyone see him out in the lane?”

“And what will you be up to?”

“Me?” she answered. “I’m going to the prison. Where Jeanie Long spent the last ten years. There’s another victim in all this. And I don’t feel I know anything about her.”

Chapter TWenty-Five

Vera parked where it said Visitors. The place was nearly empty. The staff car park was nearer, but there was a barrier operated from the gatehouse. Some days she’d have enjoyed pushing the buzzer and demanding to be let in, but today she wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

She’d phoned ahead and they were ready for her. She’d asked to speak to anyone who’d known Jeanie well and was surprised when she was shown straight to the governor’s office. She thought she could work out what that was about. Suicide in custody was a sensitive business. There were probably league tables. He’d want to make it clear that his institution wasn’t responsible, that they’d followed the guidelines to the letter. But as soon as she saw him she realized she’d misjudged him. He was standing at the window, looking down at a square of concrete, which was already dark because of the high walls surrounding it. A group of women was being escorted across it. They stood waiting, stamping their feet and shouting, while an officer locked the door of one building and walked round them to unlock the door of another.

“That’s the education block,” the governor said. “Jeanie spent a lot of time in there. I thought it might help, that she’d see it as a constructive way to pass the time. Obviously I was wrong.”

“You didn’t consider her a suicide risk, then?”

He turned back into the room. “No. But I wasn’t surprised when it happened. I feel responsible. I should have seen it coming.”

“You have a lot of women in your charge.” She said it as a fact, not an excuse, but he dismissed the idea, shaking his head.

“None of them had been here as long as Jeanie. It was a terrible waste. She was never a security risk. If she’d said the right things, she could have moved to an open prison years ago.”

“But she refused to play the game?”

“I think she was incapable of lying,” he said. “I’ve worked for the prison service for twenty years and I’d never met anyone like her.”

“You believed her defence at the trial, then?”

“Jeanie Long didn’t kill anyone,” he said firmly. “I was quite sure of that as soon as I met her.”

Vera thought that he’d been a little bit in love with her, and that he was too easily moved to be in charge of a women’s prison.

“How did she fit in here?”

“She didn’t. Not with the other women. Lifers often achieve the status of celebrities. It’s not that everyone here is a ghoul. It has more to do with the publicity surrounding the case than the nature of the crime. For the lifers themselves, it’s easy to be flattered by the attention and it can make life inside easier. Jeanie refused to play the role. She only talked about the offence to protest her innocence.”

“Was she close to anyone?”

“As I said, to none of the women. We appointed a new chaplain a year ago and Jeanie seemed to respect her.”

“What about the officers? The teachers?”

“No. Prison works on the principle of consent. Offenders recognize their guilt and the right of the authorities to order their lives. Jeanie never did. She questioned, challenged. It made her unpopular. The standard of teaching in prison, especially a prison like this, which doesn’t hold many long-term inmates, has to be pretty basic. Jeanie could be dismissive, almost rude. She’d had a better education than most of the teachers and didn’t hide it.”

“How did she get on with her probation officer?”

“There wasn’t much contact. Probation officers are supposed to maintain a link with offenders in custody, but there are often more pressing demands on their time. I looked at the welfare report after Jeanie died and Robert Winter seemed to have been very fair. He tried to encourage her to say and do all the right things. He visited her father in the hope of rinding her a supportive home after her release. I’m afraid Mr. Long wasn’t very helpful.”

“Long thought she’d killed the girl and deserved to be here.”

The governor seemed unable to speak. Vera wanted to slap some life into him. “Did you know that Mr. Winter was indirectly involved in the Mantel case? His daughter found the girl’s body.”

“No.” The governor seemed shocked. “But then I never met him. I had no reason to. I have regular contact with the welfare officers who are based here, of course, but not with those who come in from outside.”

“When did he last visit Jeanie?”

The governor reached over and pulled a file from a tidy pile on the table under the window, but Vera had the impression he knew the answer already.

“Three days before she died.”

The chaplain had a small office behind the chapel. Usually she would have left by now, the governor said, but she’d hung on specially to see Vera. He called an officer to take her, a friendly young woman, who shouted to the women on the wing by name. It was teatime and they’d formed a disorderly queue along the corridor to collect food from a hatch. A very thin girl with unkempt hair and slashes on her wrists was singing to herself. Something loud and aggressive. No one took any notice. Jeanie would have stood here too, Vera thought. Aloof and friendless.

“Did you know Jeanie Long?” she asked the officer.

“Yes.”

“What did you make of her?”

The woman shrugged. “Not much to tell the truth. She thought she was better than the rest of them. And she’d managed to twist the number one governor round her little finger. Not that it’s hard to do that. He’s taken in by all their sob stories.”

She realized that she’d been indiscreet and they walked on through the jostling, curious women in silence.

The chaplain was small. She wore a white nylon roll neck sweater, under a brightly coloured cardigan, to represent the dog collar, and red cord trousers. She made Vera tea.

“That’s all some of them come for,” she said. “lea in a china cup and biscuits. I don’t mind. It doesn’t seem a lot to ask occasionally, does it?”

“What did Jeanie Long come for?”

“She said it was for some intelligent conversation and a break from the noise on the wing.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Perhaps. And rather arrogant. I didn’t find her an easy person to like, Inspector. She believed she was different from the other women. She wasn’t prepared to give them a chance.”

“She was innocent,” Vera said, trying to contain her anger. “That made her different. How often did you see her?”

“Once a week, on Friday mornings. The governor asked me to talk to her when I first arrived here. He said she was having a hard time. She wasn’t getting on with her named officer. We fell into the habit of weekly meetings. I’m not sure what she really got out of them.”