Telling Tales (32 page)

As she turned to leave, Emma saw Dan Greenwood leaning against the railings. He must have been watching her. He smiled and raised one hand in greeting. She felt her face flush, a sick excitement in the pit of her stomach. There was still a thrill of connection. That was what made James different, she thought. She never really felt connected to him. He was just a character in one of her stories.

“What do you think they’re doing?” She nodded towards the figures in navy, who had started to organize themselves into groups. One of the parties filed through a gap in the hedge into the field nearest the river.

“They want to find out where Christopher spent the day he was killed. The cemetery was the last place he was seen and the farm’s empty. He could have been in there. They’ll be checking if he left any trace of himself behind.” He didn’t speak as if he was guessing. She supposed he must still have friends in the service who kept him informed.

She walked out through the gate to join him. He smelled of the tobacco he rolled into cigarettes; she stepped away until it was lost in the background scent of dead leaves. Safest not to get too close.

“You haven’t got the baby with you today, then?” he said.

“No:

“You must feel you need some time to yourself occasionally.” “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“Let me walk back to the village with you. I don’t like the idea of you being out on your own.”

She thought again that James hadn’t bothered about that. “I can’t see there’d be any danger. Not with all these police around.”

He didn’t answer, but moved over, so he was closest to the road, and fell in step with her. Despite the misty drizzle, he wasn’t wearing a coat, just a jersey of coarse navy wool, and the damp smell of that overlaid the tobacco. She felt awkward, clumsy.

“What made you decide on the pottery when you left the police?” she asked, for something to say.

He didn’t speak for a moment. “It took me a while to decide on anything. I’d had a sort of breakdown. Stress. I knew I wanted to do something creative. When I first left the service I went to art school for a couple of years, but I couldn’t get my head round most of it. Conceptual art. What was that all about? Some of it I liked though. The craft side. Ceramics, producing something concrete for people, something useful.” He paused. “Not making much sense, am I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“I had a bit of a pension from the police. Enough to get me started. Then my mother died and left me the money I needed to buy the forge.”

“Is that why you left the police? Because the stress was getting to you?”

“I suppose.” He smiled to make a joke out of it. “Ibo sensitive for my own good, I daresay. I couldn’t forget the victims were real people.”

They walked on in silence until they reached the village. At the door to the forge they paused. Emma knew she should carry on walking, cross the road, let herself into the Captain’s House. James might be looking out for her.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a coffee,” she said. She could feel the colour rising in her face. “As you said, I don’t have the chance to get out much without the baby. I’m not sure I can face the house again just yet.”

“Of course.”

She couldn’t tell at all what he made of her request. Did he think she was going mad? Put it down to grief? “But perhaps you’re too busy,” she added. “Perhaps I should go.”

“No.” The door had warped and caught at the bottom against a flagstone. He put his shoulder against it to push it open. “I’ll be glad of the distraction.” On a bench just inside the door there was a row of jugs he’d hand painted, swirling patterns in intense blues and greens.

“They’re lovely,” she said. “They make you think of water, don’t they? You feel you’re drowning in the colour.”

“Really?” He looked genuinely pleased. “When they’re glazed you must have one.”

The sick excitement came back.

They sat in the small room she’d seen on her first visit. He made the coffee, apologized for the chipped mug, the lack of fresh milk.

“What were you doing at the cemetery?” she asked suddenly. It was hot. She felt ill at ease. Now she was here, she couldn’t carry off the situation with polite conversation. She wished she could do the joking banter which had come naturally to her colleagues at the college. “Were you there to visit Abigail’s grave?” She remembered what he’d said as they’d walked back to the village. “Was it because even though you’d never met her, Abigail Mantel was a real person to you?”

He seemed startled by the question. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

“I’m sorry. None of my business.”

“I’d heard the lads were starting a search on Wood-house Farm and even after all this time it’s hard not to be curious. I suppose I miss the police in a way. The friendship, certainly. I keep in touch with some of the lads but it’s not the same.”

It seemed sad to her, the thought of him watching his former colleagues working two fields away.

“Did you ever meet Abigail while she was alive?” She didn’t know where the question had come from, regretted it as soon as it was spoken.

He looked up sharply from the coffee he was cupping in his hands. “No. Of course not. How could I?”

“I’m sorry. It’s brought it all back. Christopher dying.”

“I did meet him! Dan said. “That afternoon you found the girl’s body, I was talking to him in the other room, while my boss was in the kitchen with you and your mother.”

“If he’d seen the murderer he’d have said, wouldn’t he?”

“He answered all my questions. I didn’t have the impression he was keeping anything back. Did he ever say anything to you?”

“No.” She set down her mug. It was still almost full. “I should go. Taking up your time like this.”

“There’s no hurry,” he said. “It’s a lonely business this. Tell you the truth I’m glad of the company.”

“You should find yourself a woman.” She spoke lightly and was quite proud of the jokey tone. It would make him realize she had no designs on him.

“Maybe I’ve already found one. But things aren’t working out quite how I’d hoped.” He stared at her and a ridiculous thought came into her head. He wants me to ask what he means. Is he talking about me?

“Look,” she said. “I must go now. James will be wondering where I am. I don’t want him worried.”

“Come back,” he said. “Whenever you want to talk.”

She didn’t know what to make of that and left without answering. Outside she stood for a moment, trying to recover her composure, before going home. On the other side of the road, the bulky figure of Vera Stanhope appeared in the bakery door. She crooked her finger and beckoned for Emma to join her. Like the witch, Emma thought, out of Hansel and Gretel, tempting her into the gingerbread house. And like the children, she felt compelled to obey.

“What have you been up to?” Vera asked.

“I went for a walk. Bumped into Dan. He invited me in for coffee.”

“Did he now.” There was a pause, loaded with a significance Emma couldn’t guess at. Then Vera added lightly, “At your age you should know better than to go off with strange men.”

“Dan Greenwood’s not strange.”

There was another pause. “Maybe not. All the same, just take care.” The same instruction Joe Ashworth had given at their last meeting. The inspector turned away with a little wave and Emma was left with the impression that she’d been warned off.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Michael Long hadn’t seen Vera for days. Not to speak to. He’d glimpsed her across the street, and once he’d approached her, but she just gave a friendly wave and continued on her way as if she was too busy to talk. At least he thought that was the impression she’d wanted to give and he didn’t think it was fair. He deserved better than that. Not only was he Jeanie’s father, he was the man who’d pointed Vera in the right direction when it came to Keith Mantel. And he was an important witness, the last person to have seen Christopher Winter alive. Michael would never have put it that way, but he felt like a jilted lover. He wanted Vera to take some notice of him again. He stayed at home in case she called. Whenever there was a knock on the door, he hoped it might be her.

Then he thought, Sod it. He wasn’t going to hang around for any woman. He’d do his own research, collect his own information and he’d show her. He imagined presenting her with a fat file on Mantel, all organized and typed. It would provide her with everything she needed to show the man was a murderer. Because that was what Michael wanted to prove to her. Mantel was a monster who’d killed his own daughter and the young Winter lad. And Mantel was to blame for

Jeanie being locked up all that time, for her desperation and suicide.

He got the bus into the town up the coast where Mantel had first made his money. He knew it had a decent-sized library. The high school was there too and he shared the bus with kids on their way in. He told himself this was a nuisance and indeed the noise of shrieking girls and boys locked in continual mock battle irritated him to distraction. He muttered under his breath about feckless parents and bringing back national service. But it had its compensations. The bus was full and he was squeezed on a bench seat which faced into the aisle. Beside him was a girl of fourteen or fifteen, with a white powdery face and narrow eyes lined in black. She seemed too dignified for the chaos surrounding her and was annoyed as he was by the shouting and chucking of missiles. She sat with her legs crossed at the knee and her bag on her lap. “Why don’t you just grow up?” she snapped at a lad with a face scarred with acne when a pencil sharpener missed its target and hit her arm. Then she turned to Michael and rolled her eyes conspiratorially, as if they were the only sane ones there.

When they got off in Crill, in the windswept square close to the se afront he was reluctant to let her go. He was tempted to follow her, just for the pleasure of watching her walk. She had a straight back, long legs, a’ haughty tilt to her head. But he told himself he had work to do. In the square, council workmen were erecting Christmas lights from a truck with a hydraulic lift. The library was a grand building with pillars in the front and wide stone steps leading to a double door. It was shut and wouldn’t open until nine thirty. His irritation returned. He ranted under his breath about the idleness of the staff. He could have walked with the girl as far as the school, after all. Then he told himself it wouldn’t do to get into a state. Peg had always warned him he would get into serious bother one day if he didn’t learn to calm down.

He asked one of the workmen where he could get a coffee and he was pointed down a narrow street. The place was called Val’s Diner and was full of noise and steam. It reminded him of the cafe on the Point. The bacon in his sandwich was just as he liked it crisp and brittle and his temper improved. These days, he thought, it took something that small to alter his mood. He wondered if he’d always been like that and if everyone was the same.

He knew the woman who ran the local history library. She was called Lesley and she was efficient and jolly with a loud voice, which made the readers in the reference section look up and tut in disapproval. He’d first met her just before he’d retired. He’d started to get nostalgic about what he was giving up. Lesley held the archive of the lifeboat station and the pilot office on the Point, and he’d come in to look up the history. There’dbeen one photo, he remembered, of the house where he’d lived all those years with Peg. It had been taken in the twenties, and the Point had been quite different then. The dunes had stretched further and the two cottages and the lighthouse had been the only buildings. Outside their cottage, a man with a large grey moustache had been leaning against the wall by the front door, glaring out at the camera.

Lesley was sitting at her desk and looked up when she saw him approaching. He could see from her face that she’d read about Jeanie in the papers, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even show that she recognized him, which he found upsetting, because when he’d been doing his research into the Point, he’d thought she liked him. He explained that he was interested in the back issues of the local paper going back twenty, even thirty years. “They are available?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and she smiled. “Are you after anything specific?” Because she was still sitting at her desk, she seemed to be squinting up at him.

“No! Nothing like that. Just general interest.” Immediately he was sorry that he’d been so sharp, but she hadn’t seemed to have noticed. She sat him in front of the microfiche machine and showed him how to use it, repeating the instructions patiently when he asked her to.

“If you need anything, just give me a shout.” Her voice carried across the large room and she could have been talking to any of the customers there.

He started at the time of Abigail’s murder and worked back. At first he found himself distracted by other stories. Not the murder. He moved quickly past that and when he came across a photo of Jeanie he shut his eyes. He couldn’t bear the thought of her captured in the machine where anyone could come and stare at her. It was the less dramatic stories which caught his attention. The largest container ship ever to come into the Humber. Cows wandering across the river at low tide and becoming stranded on a sandbank. A festival of tall ships in the estuary. When he looked up at the clock on the wall it was nearly eleven and he’d found nothing useful. He forced himself to move on more quickly and began to find mentions of

Keith Mantel. Flashes in words and photographs. Michael began tracking him back in time. It was like watching a jerky old film played in reverse.

The most recent reports, the ones he came to first, were positive and he had to stop himself from sneering out loud. There was a picture of Keith Mantel standing beside a giant cardboard cheque, Mantel Development’s donation to a charity which provided respite care for disabled children. A beaming girl reached out from her wheelchair to hold the other end of the cheque. Keith Mantel with a group of others, appointed as NHS trustees for the local hospital. Keith Mantel in Wellingtons, planting a tree in the wildlife garden of a junior school. Michael muttered under his breath about the gullibility of the public, but looking at the smiling, confident face, he thought if he hadn’t known any better, if he hadn’t tangled with Mantel in the village, he’d have fallen for it too. He’d have believed in Mantel, the entrepreneur with a social conscience.