Telling Tales (25 page)

“Will you be all right?” Trying not to fuss.

He looked up and forced a smile. “Sure. It’s about time I did some work here. There’s a trade fair at the end of the week. I should be preparing for that.”

“You should find yourself a good woman.”

He paused before speaking and she waited, expecting some confidence, but obviously he thought better of it. “Yeah, well. Easier said than done. I’ve never had much luck in that line.”

He looked straight up at her. Those dark eyes that made you think like something out of a soppy magazine.

I’d be your woman. Good or bad. Only no man has ever wanted me. The words came suddenly into her head and she was shocked by their bitterness. She turned away. Outside the light had almost gone and the street was quiet. There was a smell of wood smoke. Not from a bonfire. There’d be wood-burning stoves in the big houses on the other side of the square. It was a wealthy village this, she thought. It wasn’t showy like the estate where Fletcher lived, but there was plenty of money around. As she waited to cross the road Ashworth pulled up. While he was parking she watched a group of girls in school uniform come out of the post office with cans of Coke and bars of chocolate. She wondered what they’d do in a place like this for a good night out. All kids liked to take risks, but until the murders you’d have put this down as one of the safest places on earth. So what would they do? Hang around each other’s houses looking for porn sites on the Internet,? Drink too much? Have sex with unsuitable lads? A girl like Abigail Mantel must have been bored silly here. What games had she been playing to bring a bit of excitement to her life?

“We’ll be closing in five minutes,” the woman in the bakery said as soon as they opened the door.

“Eh, lass, what about this wonderful Yorkshire hospitality we hear so much about. A pot of tea and a couple of currant tea cakes and we’ll be no trouble. You can leave us to ourselves and finish up in here.”

The woman shrugged but she nodded them through to the back room before changing the sign on the door to Closed. She’d know who they were by now. It would be something to talk to her friends about. Vera thought again Elvet was that sort of place. You had to find your excitement where you could.

The chairs had all been put upside down on the tables. She chose a place furthest away from the shop and made herself comfortable. “Well?”

Ashworth sat opposite her. “Lineham’s a really nice bloke…”

Vera sighed theatrically. Ashworth thought well of everyone. He made most of the social workers she’d come across seem flint-hearted.

“He is! He was wondering if he should come to speak to us. Then he thought it might not be relevant and that we’d see him as some sort of ghoul wanting to get mixed up in a murder investigation.” Ashworth stopped speaking as the woman from the shop came in with a heavy tea tray and continued once she’d left. “He was older than her, in his last year of the sixth form when she died.”

“Did he sleep with her?”

“Only once, he says. One afternoon. Soon after her fifteenth birthday party. They both bunked off school, drank a couple of bottles of wine that had been left over from the party, and ended up in bed together.”

“Where?”

“Her house.”

“I thought there was some sort of housekeeper who was there to keep an eye on her.”

“There’d been a succession, apparently. None of them stayed long. According to Lineham it was the woman’s day off.”

“So it was planned in advance?”

“By Abigail, at least. It was all her idea.”

“According to him.”

“He sounded genuine to me,” Ashworth said. “His dad was a teacher at the school and it was hard for him to get away with much. The way he tells it, it was a sort of a dare. She taunted him into skipping a class and going back with her. Afterwards he threw up. More nerves than the drink, he said.”

“Was she experienced?”

“More experienced than him, but that’s not saying much.”

Vera tried to picture the scene, get it clear in her head. She wished she’d been there at the interview. She’d like to have known what the weather was like, where they’d sat to drink the wine, what music they’d listened to. “How did they get from the school to her house?”

“The lunchtime bus to the village and then they walked.”

“Was it a regular thing for her, sagging off school?”

“He said he had the impression that it had happened before. But she could have been showing off.”

“How could Emma Bennett not have known about this?” Vera was speaking almost to herself. “She must have realized Abigail was playing truant. Unless Abigail lied to her, came up with a plausible explanation for the absences. Or perhaps Emma has been lying to us’. She shared the last of the tea from the pot between them. “What do you think?”

But Ashworth hadn’t been listening. “There’s more,” he said.

Something in his voice made her look up sharply. “Spit it out, man.”

“Afterwards Lineham got cold feet. Maybe the…” he struggled for an appropriate word ‘.. . encounter didn’t live up to expectations. Maybe he was so scared of his father that he wasn’t prepared to risk another dirty afternoon with the girl, however good it was. Anyway, he told her that was it. He didn’t want it to happen again. Not until she was sixteen, at least, and he’d finished his A levels.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t like that,” Vera said. “Not a spoilt little girl like Abigail.”

“But Lineham said she did like it in a strange kind of way. She saw it as a challenge, a game.”

So, Vera thought. That was how she got her kicks.

Ashworth was continuing, “If he’d gone along with her she’d probably have lost interest, but it gave her the excuse to play nasty.”

“In what way?”

“She said he had no right to treat her like that. If he didn’t agree to spend more time with her, she’d go to his dad and tell him what had happened. But she’d say it had all been Lineham’s fault. That he’d got her drunk and seduced her.”

“Innocent little darling,” Vera said. “Wasn’t that what one of the headlines called her at the time?”

“You can’t really blame the lass,” Ashworth said. “Only fifteen and no mam to keep her straight. The lad didn’t have to jump into bed with her.”

Vera said nothing. Perhaps Ashworth was right. And perhaps Caroline was misunderstood too and as vulnerable as Greenwood had made out. But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason. Then she brought herself up with a start. What was she thinking? That the girl had deserved to die horribly at the edge of a windswept field one cold November afternoon? That she’d asked for it? That made her as bad as Jeanie, brooding in her cell, calling the girl evil.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did Lineham call her bluff?”

“He didn’t need to. The following week she was killed.”

“Oh, God,” Vera said. “Another bloody suspect.”

“No. He was in Sunderland all weekend with his family. His grandma’s funeral. I’ll check, of course, but I’m sure he’s telling the truth.”

“Abigail used blackmail to bring a bit of excitement into her life,” Vera said. She saw the woman from the shop standing in the doorway with a mop and bucket and stood up to show they were ready to go. “What else turned her on, do you suppose?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vera was having problems seeing Jeanie and Mantel as a couple. Michael Long had described how they’d met, but he’d put his own spin on it. He’d disapproved from the beginning and hadn’t bothered trying to understand. The prison governor thought Jeanie had been a saint and the chaplain hadn’t got on with her. Vera wanted to understand what had brought the two of them together. She thought she owed Jeanie that. Ashworth went off to check Nick Lineham’s alibi for the day that Abigail was strangled, but Vera stood in the street, pondering the matter, not ready yet to go back to the hotel.

The pub had just opened for the evening and was still empty. Vera pushed her way in. She was an expert on pubs and thought she wouldn’t mind this as her local. There was a jukebox, but no background music and none of those machines that beeped and flashed lights. The ashtrays were clean and the tables were polished. She’d guess the beer would be well kept. Not that she was a snob about such things.

She sat at the bar for a moment before a woman came from the back to serve her, apologizing for keeping her waiting. She was in her fifties, smart and if she’d seen her in the street, Vera would have put her down as one of those efficient businesswomen who can hold a company together. Vera ordered beer. Tbo early for whisky, she decided.

“And whatever you’re having…”

The landlady pulled the beer, then took a small bottle of orange juice, opened it expertly, checked the glass was spotless and poured it.

“You must be Veronica,” Vera said. “Michael told me about you. You’ll know who I am. A place like this, word gets about.”

“You’re the inspector come to find out why an innocent woman spent ten years in jail, then killed herself because she could see no way out.”

Vera was surprised by the anger. It was the first unambiguous support she’d heard for Jeanie in Elvet. She liked the woman.

She lifted the glass to her lips. She’d been right about the beer. Aye,” she said. “It was a tragedy.”

“It was a crime.”

“Did you tell them first time round you’d thought they’d got it wrong?”

“I tried,” Veronica said. “I made an appointment to see that other woman. Fletcher.”

“What did she say?”

“That if I didn’t have any evidence, or couldn’t provide Jeanie with an alibi, I was wasting my time. But as I saw it, they didn’t have the evidence to convict her. I worked as secretary to a solicitor before Barry and I took this place on. I’ve never seen a case handled like this one. As I saw it there was no one really to fight on Jeanie’s behalf. Michael had never understood her and Peg was ill by the time it came to court.”

“You knew them all? Mantel and Jeanie and the girl?”

“Mantel and Jeanie certainly. My son went to school with Abigail, but he was a bit younger so I didn’t really know her. She came in here once with a couple of lads, dressed up so I hardly recognized her, hoping to get served. Stupid to think she’d get away with it, but they all try it on at one time or another.”

Vera had a thought. “Did you know Christopher Winter? He must have been the same age as your son.”

“Not then, not at the time of the murder. He’d only just moved to the village, and though he was in the same year as my boy, he was a different type of lad. Academic. Later I got to know him a bit better.”

“How?”

“He came in here a few times when he was home from university. Looked like he could use someone to talk to. If it was quiet I’d chat.”

“Was he always on his own?”

Aye, always.”

“And what did you talk about?”

“Nothing important. Anything that took his fancy. World news. Village gossip. I had the impression he just wanted an excuse to be out the house for a bit. Glad to escape his father, maybe. I don’t think they got on.”

Vera sat for a moment, thinking about a boy whose only entertainment on his break from university was to sit in a quiet pub making small talk with a middle-aged woman.

“Did he drink too much?”

“Sometimes. No more than other lads his age. But he never got fighting drunk, never made a nuisance of himself. I saw him come over a bit sentimental a couple of times and that’s when he talked about his father. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m his son, at all. I can’t believe he’s anything to do with me.”

An elderly man came in. Veronica had his pint pulled before he reached the bar. He put a couple of coins on the counter and carried the drink to a corner without speaking. Vera waited until he was out of earshot then continued.

“You must have known Jeanie well, though. She worked for you.”

“Aye, in the restaurant first, then when she was eighteen in the bar too. I liked her very much, though Barry said she was too quiet to be a barmaid. Not outgoing enough. I didn’t care about that. She was interesting. I looked forward to the days she was working. We talked about music and books. You don’t get much of that conversation in here.”

Or with Barry was the implication.

“Not everyone seemed to have liked her,” Vera said. “I’ve talked to a few people. Arrogant, they called her. Cocky.”

Veronica thought about that. “Maybe she could seem that way if you didn’t know her well. She was different from the other girls in the village. She couldn’t talk to them. But it was more shyness than anything else. And later, after she’d been through the court case, I suppose she had to be hard to survive.”

“Did you ever go to visit her in prison?”

“I told Peg that I’d go if she wanted me to. I asked her to get Jeanie to send me a visiting order. But she never did. Perhaps she couldn’t bear anyone else to see her in that place.” There was another pause. “She was proud. Even when she was a youngster. Sometimes you get some comments in here. Lads when they’ve had too much to drink, sneering, acting all macho. She’d never show that they’d got to her.”

“Did her father get to her?”

“Oh, aye. I don’t know what it was with Michael. He could never let her be. Always criticizing and passing comment. About her clothes or her hair or how she spent her time. But she’d not let on that he bothered her either. Like I said. Proud.”

“Tell me about how she met Keith Mantel. Was that while she was working here?”

Veronica stared towards the door, as if she hoped someone would come in, so she could avoid answering. “I worry about that sometimes. The way things happen. If I hadn’t taken her on here, perhaps she’d still be alive.”

“You can’t think like that, pet. It would drive you crazy.”

“I know, but maybe I should have done more to warn her off Mantel. She might have listened to me. But he charmed her. Keith can be irresistible when he turns on the charm. I’ve seen him in action in here.”

“What was the attraction for him? I mean, why Jeanie? I can’t see her as his type.”

“She was beautiful,” Veronica said simply. “In the way some models are. The ones that make all the money. Not pretty. Abigail was pretty. Jeanie was stunning. And it happened very quickly. One day, it seemed, she was this gawky teenager given to spots, then this interesting young woman. Not everyone saw it. They remembered the old Jeanie, even when the new one was standing right in front of them. Even