Telling Tales (28 page)

Vera stopped abruptly and Michael considered her anxiously. “Are you all right?”

“Go back to your house and ring this number. It’s my sergeant Joe Ashworth. Direct him to the car park on the bank and tell him to meet me there immediately. Say it’s urgent.”

“What are you going to do?”

“None of your business,” she said, giving him a wink to soften the blow. What would she say even if she trusted him absolutely? I’m going to freeze my butt off standing guard over a stinking phone box in case a member of the public thinks to cover any fingerprints of Winter’s which might still be there. “Was that lad wearing gloves when you saw him in the cemetery?”

“No,” Michael said. “I thought at the time he’d be feeling the cold.”

When Ashworth arrived, Vera took his car and left him to wait for the crime scene examiner. She was sitting in the caff next to the bakery, full of sausage sandwich and chocolate eclair, when he arrived. The resident reporters must be following some other lead because she had the place to herself. It was warm in there and she could feel herself nodding off. She knew she’d be more use taking Michael into the station and getting his statement, but she was curious.

“Well?”

Ashworth waited until he’d sat opposite her, leaned forward so the staff couldn’t hear. “He got a couple of decent prints. One from the handset and one off the interior door handle. They’ll test for a match.”

“Could be anyone’s, though, couldn’t they? I mean, I can’t imagine people queuing to use the phone, but it could have been used once in the last couple of days. It’ll be worth seeing if there was a call from it the morning Winter died, though.”

“Not really,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s bust. Has been for at least a fortnight according to BT, but because it’s so little used this time of year the repair wasn’t a priority.”

“Bugger,” she said. Not angry. Resigned. It had been that sort of day.

“We’ll know from the prints if he tried to make a call. He didn’t have a mobile on him, by the way.”

She looked up at that. “Did he own one?”

“They’re trying to find out.”

“You’d better tell Mr. Holness,” she said, ‘that trying’s not good enough.”

Chapter Thirty-One

She caught up with Caroline Fletcher at an ugly house in Crill, the seaside town further up the coast where Keith Mantel had first made his money. The estate agency had given a list of addresses of the properties on her books and Vera had chased from one to another always just missing her.

To reach the town she had to drive past Spinney Fen, the prison. A ragged line of people were hurrying out of the gate. The end of afternoon visits. After the death of her mother Jeanie had received no visitors. She’d had to listen to the other inmates relive their conversations with loved ones, knowing that if she admitted her guilt she’d be moved to a less secure prison with more humane conditions, where there would be more contact with the outside world. Vera briefly stopped the car outside and thought about that, wondered if she’d be so principled or so stubborn. Maybe she would. She was known for her stubbornness after all. But she’d have promised anything to avoid the ministrations of Robert Winter, the preaching and the pity.

The house Caroline was trying to sell was a mock Tudor monstrosity in a road which ran along the edge of the cliff just outside the town. Another twenty years of erosion, Vera reckoned, and the garden would be crumbling into the sea. The prospective buyers didn’t seem impressed either. It was dark by then. They must have come straight from work and she could tell all they wanted was a strong drink and something mindless on the telly. Vera sat in her car and watched them make their escape, in too much of a hurry even to shake hands with the agent on the doorstep.

Caroline was still locking the door when Vera caught up with her. Vera could move quietly when she wanted. It was one of the skills she’d learned from her father. But Caroline didn’t seem startled by her approach. Maybe she thought it was the purchasers returning. Maybe she had a clear conscience.

“Inspector,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Probably not. But what do you mean?”

“I’d hate you to jeopardize your position in the service. There are too few successful women as it is. Not exactly orthodox, is it? Bothering me at home. And now at work. Especially when you’re on your own. Or is your little friend waiting in the car?”

“Nah,” Vera said easily. “Joe’s mam wouldn’t let him out to play today. It’s you I’m thinking of, pet. We can go back to the station if you like, but I thought it might be embarrassing for you. Having one of your old mates sitting in on the interview, I mean. Or did they all know about you and Keith?”

Caroline’s hand was still for a moment, poised with the key not yet in the lock, but there was no other reaction.

“He told you, I suppose,” she said.

“Did you really think he’d keep it quiet?”

“I thought, as things are, he had as much to lose as me.”

“Shall we go back in and talk about it? Like I said, more discreet than the station.” Behind her back, Vera crossed her fingers. She no more wanted to make this official than Fletcher did.

Caroline shrugged, as if to say she didn’t care either way, but she opened the door and led Vera inside. The house had been cleared of furniture but the owners must have left the heating on, because there wasn’t that chill you get in an unused house. There were no light shades and the naked bulbs showed the patch of damp on the ceiling and the peeling wallpaper in the hall. Caroline threw open the door to the living room and allowed Vera to go ahead of her, as she must have done with the prospective buyers earlier. It was a big room, with a bay window looking out to sea. For the first time Vera thought it might not be a bad place to live. In the distance there was a constellation of tiny lights ships, presumably waiting for the tide at the mouth of the river and somewhere down the coast, the mesmerizing flash of a lighthouse. In the bay window stood a card table and three folding chairs, on the table a pile of estate agent brochures, a floor plan of the house, mortgage information. There was no other furniture. Here Caroline must sit her customers, positioning them so they looked out at the view and had their backs to the scuffed skirting boards and snot green paint. Vera took a seat and nodded for Caroline to join her. She stretched out her legs and the chair creaked. Opposite, the estate agent regarded her with distaste.

“What has Keith Mantel got to lose, then?” Vera asked.

“It looks like corruption, doesn’t it? He wanted a result and he got it. He’s a pillar of society now, sits on committees, talks to ministers about neighbourhood renewal. Being a bit wild when he was a kid is one thing. Colourful. They can forgive him that. But pulling strings in a murder case which only happened ten years ago and won’t go away, that’s something quite different.”

“So why did he tell me?”

Caroline seemed hypnotized by the irregular beat of the lighthouse. “Who knows? Perhaps he’s been living the good citizen for so long that he actually believes it. Perhaps he’s got so many powerful friends he thinks nobody can touch him. Perhaps he hates me so much he doesn’t care.”

Vera was surprised by the bitterness and hurt in the woman’s voice. “When did it start between you and him?”

“Before Jeanie Long moved in, ages before that.”

“How did he explain that one away?”

Caroline turned away from the window and shrugged again. “He didn’t need to. I could tell Jeanie wouldn’t survive. She was only a distraction, not really his type.”

“You weren’t bothered about sharing him?”

“I was more bothered about losing him altogether.” She sat very upright in her chair, constrained by her suit, by the short neat skirt and black tights, waiting for another question. But none came. “There hasn’t been a day since we met when I’ve not thought about him. I keep telling myself I’m behaving like a crazy teenager and that it’ll pass but it doesn’t. I moved in with Alex because I thought that would make a difference, but it hasn’t.” She looked up at Vera. “You must think I’m mental.”

Vera didn’t reply directly. “How did you meet?”

“At a party. He was a friend of a friend. I presume Keith had been told I worked for the police, thought it would be useful. I’d just started as a DC. Maybe he even got me invited. All I knew at the time was that he was a businessman, a widower with a little girl. I don’t know what he did that night or what he said that was different from all the other men who’ve chatted me up at parties. But something happened. He got inside my head and under my skin. An addiction. It’s still there. That night Christopher Winter died, I didn’t go to the Old Chapel to find out if you’d talked to Keith. I told myself that was why I was there, but it wasn’t true. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted a fix. No self-respect, you see. That’s what addiction does to you.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He told me to get out. To leave him alone…” She paused for a moment. “I’d met him a couple of days earlier at the Point. I said we should get our stories straight before you interviewed us. He’d told me then to stay away from him. Only I couldn’t do it.”

Vera didn’t know what to say. Mantel had lost patience. That was why he’d told her about his relationship with Caroline. She’d become a nuisance and he’d wanted the police to do his dirty work. Vera couldn’t bring herself to rub the woman’s nose in it. She picked a question at random. “Did you ever meet Abigail?”

“A couple of times.”

“What did you make of her?”

“Honestly? I suppose I resented her. Keith was besotted. I tried to make friends with her because I knew that was what he wanted, but she never took to me. She could probably tell what I was after. She was a bright little thing. A shame because I thought we had a lot in common. Both obsessive personalities perhaps and you could tell she was lonely. If I’d had her on my side things might have been different. I mean really different.”

“Marriage? Happy families? A white meringue dress and a kid of your own?”

“Yeah,” she said defensively. “Why not? Other people have it.”

Aye,” Vera said. “But we’re not other people, are we, pet?”

They looked at each other across the wobbly table.

“Who do you think killed her?” Vera demanded, suddenly businesslike. “We know it can’t have been Jeanie Long, so who was it?”

“I really thought it was her. Maybe I took a few short cuts, missed things, but it wasn’t because it was convenient to have her out of the way.” She looked up at Vera and repeated more forcefully, “I really thought it was her.”

Vera couldn’t let that go. And so did Keith. No doubt he was pleased when it all got cleared up so quickly. Grateful, was he? I bet he was. Not grateful enough to marry you, though. Is that what he’d promised?”

“Something like that.”

“Where were you the afternoon she died? You’ll have thought about it. You’d know I’d be asking.”

“On my own,” she said. “In my flat in town. A day off.” She paused. “Crying my eyes out because Keith had said he’d take me out and he’d phoned up at the last minute to cancel. Abigail had said she’d cook him supper so he had to stay at home. I was so pissed off I went into work. That’s why I was there when the call first came through.”

“Was Keith at home when she was found?” Turning the knife. Not proud of it.

“No. They finally tracked him down in his office. Something urgent which turned up at the last moment. So he claimed. Like I said Abigail and I had a lot in common. He let her down too.”

“You haven’t said who you think killed her now you know it’s not Jeanie.”

“You’ll think I’m really crazy…”

“Go on.”

“The girl that found her, Emma Winter…”

“Emma Bennett now.”

“There was something about her, that first day I turned up to do the interview. Something weird. I thought it was the shock. Stumbling across her best friend like that, I mean you’d be expecting her to be acting strangely. But it was as if none of it was real. Like she was telling a story she’d already made up, that she’d rehearsed somehow, over and over again, though how could she? It didn’t take us long to get there that afternoon.”

Vera sat for a moment taking that in. “Could she have done it? Would the timing have worked out?”

“The pathologist said Abigail couldn’t have been dead long when Emma found her. You know they can’t be precise about these things. I’d say it was possible that they met up on the path, had a row and Emma killed her then. I’m. not saying that’s what did happen. But you were pushing me for an opinion.”

“Aye, maybe I was. Was there anything else which pointed in that direction? Besides Emma’s behaviour when you interviewed her.”

“The way I’d heard Abigail talk about her. She was really patronizing. As if Emma was the most stupid person she’d ever met. She once said to her father while I was there, “Emma doesn’t know anything.” If I’d been Emma, I’d have felt like killing her’

“Was Abigail bullying her?”

“Probably not. Just pretending to be her best friend and undermining her every chance she got. And Emma was the sort who’d let that get to her. A natural victim. They can be dangerous when they let go.”

“Emma was hardly likely to do away with her brother, though.” Vera seemed to be talking to herself. “And I might not have realized that his bedroom had a view of the field if she’d not pointed it out.” But she’s a strange woman, you’re right about that. Full of fancies. And where does the husband fit in?

“What do you know about James Bennett?”

“Nothing. He wasn’t living there when Abigail was murdered.”

“Keith never mentioned him?”

“Why would he?”

“I had the impression they were friends once. In the old days.”

“Oh, Keith had a lot of friends in the old days. He never introduced many of them to me.”

“Did he ever ask you to do anything else for him?”

“What do you mean?”

Vera banged her fist on the table. The noise echoed round the empty room. “Don’t play games with me, lady. You know exactly what I mean. Did he ask for information? Tell you to turn a blind eye? Influence any other investigation in any way?”