Telling Tales (33 page)

As he followed Mantel’s story back, his memory was wakened. Occasional references triggered a recollection of incidents he’d investigated before, when his only reason for disliking Mantel was that the businessman was an arrogant sod who’d tried to undermine his position in the village. A brief report about the grand opening of a leisure centre took him back to a conversation with an old friend. They’d been to school together, but Lawrence Adams had been promoted within the family business and suddenly turned gentleman. He’d taken up golf and got himself elected as Tory councillor. A couple of big contracts had been awarded to Mantel and Michael had been sniffing around to find out why. They’d met, at Lawrence’s request, in a small, rundown pub near Hull prison. It had seemed a strange place for a rendezvous, not Lawrence’s usual sort of haunt.

“Why here?” Michael had asked.

“No one will recognize me here.”

And Michael had liked that. He’d realized that this was a kindred spirit, someone else to share his paranoia about Mantel.

“Mantel can’t get at you, can he?” He’d thought Lawrence had too much money to be corruptible.

“He can get at anyone. Just keep out of his way.”

And then he’d rambled about the leisure centre, not making too much sense, so Michael thought he’d been drinking before he’d arrived. “It should never have gone to him. We came to a decision at the planning committee. All sorted we thought. Then suddenly the preferred contractor withdrew. No reason given. So it went to Mantel in the end.” Lawrence had looked up from his beer. “You know how he started, don’t you? How he first made his money?” That was when Michael had heard the story of the old lady leaving Mantel her house, the story he’d passed on to Vera Stanhope when she’d knocked at his door. And he still wasn’t sure how true it was.

As they’d left the pub to head for their cars, too drunk to drive legally, but reckless, Lawrence had said, “I mean it. Stay away from him. Look what happened to Marty Shaw. He was no friend of mine, but I’d not wish that on anyone. Mantel was behind it, you know.”

Michael hadn’t heard of Marty Shaw and had no idea what Lawrence was talking about, but he’d made enquiries, found out that he was the man who’d been washed up on the riverbank. Michael had heard about that. Some poor sod from Crill who’d walked into the river and drowned himself. It had been all they’d talked about in the Anchor the day he’d been found. He hadn’t realized at the time that there’d been a link with Mantel, or he’d have taken more notice.

It hadn’t been difficult to pick up the rumours. Michael had had friends everywhere then. He’d been sociable, famous for it. Not like now, when he hid away in his bungalow built for sad old people, drinking alone. Then there’d hardly been a pub on the peninsula where he’d not been known. Everywhere he went there’d be people he’d gone to school with, or served on the lifeboat committee with, or done a favour for. He sat now in the quiet library staring at lines of print through the microfiche machine. They told one story. The memories of those conversations of years before fleshed out the details.

Back again in time. He found the report of the inquest into Shaw’s death. Suicide. He’d left a note so the verdict was inevitable. They hadn’t said what had driven him to it. Poor stupid bastard, Michael thought now. Then he’d been less charitable. He’d always thought suicide was a coward’s way out. The report said the dead man had left behind a wife and a son. Michael couldn’t remember if he’d picked up on that at the time. It felt suddenly grubby, this digging around in the past, and he was tempted to give up. Then he looked out through the long window across the square at the men who were still trying to string up the tacky lights and thought he had nothing better to do.

He almost missed the significance of the photograph. It seemed at first like the more recent stories. Keith Mantel as local hero. This showed the opening of a sheltered housing complex for elderly people. The sort of place Michael would end up living if he didn’t take more care of himself. The picture was taken in a courtyard, paved with plants in tubs. Behind the party the brick building looked brutally new and hard-edged. In the centre the mayor, a plump middle-aged woman, held a pair of scissors to cut the ribbon strung across the front door. Beside her stood Mantel, but around them were crowded a number of councillors and their families. There must have been a free lunch, Michael thought, to have brought so many people out. He read the names idly, putting off the time when he’d have to leave the comfort of the library. Councillor Martin Shaw. James Shaw. James stood next to his father. It was obvious that they were father and son. The resemblance was striking. Marty Shaw’s face seemed familiar and Michael thought perhaps he’d seen pictures at the time of his death. Then an image flashed into his mind of the man in uniform. A pilot’s uniform. Not Marty of course. But Marty’s son.

Then the old paranoia took over and he imagined Keith Mantel and James Bennett working together, a web of conspiracy, which took in Jeanie’s suicide, his own enforced retirement from the pilot service and two murders.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The psychiatrist was a pompous bastard. As soon as she walked into his office in the big new general hospital, Vera saw this would be a waste of time. He seemed too young to be a consultant, with his dark hair and his clipped black beard which looked as if it had been painted on. There wasn’t a trace of grey. She spent a moment wondering if it had been dyed. He looked up from his desk.

“Inspector Stanhope.” He was a man who liked rank. He’d call the nurses sister or staff nurse just to put them in their place. “My secretary said it was urgent.”

“I’m leading an enquiry into the Abigail Mantel murder case.”

“Yes.”

“One of the detectives working on the investigation was a patient of yours.”

He said nothing.

“Daniel Greenwood,” she said. “Is he still your patient?”

“You know better than that, Inspector. I can’t discuss individuals.”

But he was interested, she could tell. He’d been hooked by the drama of a famous murder case, just like the people who slavered over the same story in the tabloids, then said how disgusting they found the publicity. Murder had a glamour all of its own.

“Of course not.” She settled comfortably into the leather chair. She might as well take the opportunity to take the weight off her feet. “I was after more general advice. The benefit of your expertise.”

He smiled, pulling his narrow lips back from his teeth. There was a gold crown on an upper molar. She found it hard not to stare. “Anything I can do to help the police, which doesn’t compromise me professionally, Inspector … Of course.”

“I’m interested in…” pausing, an attempt to find the right words, ‘.. . a person with an obsessive personality.”

“Yes?”

“I’m talking a stalker. Someone who is fascinated by a young woman. Follows her maybe…”

“Such a man could be dangerous.”

The psychiatrist smiled again. Under her polyester trousers, Vera felt her flesh crawl.

“It would be a man?” she asked suddenly.

“No, no. Not necessarily.” He stroked his beard very slowly. “There have been many recorded cases of women taking an unhealthy, delusional interest in a man. Often an ex-lover. Most commonly, they refuse to believe that a relationship is over.”

i Jeanie Long never accepted Mantel didn’t love her, Vera thought. She wasn’t mad.

“But if the object of the obsession was a young woman?” Vera said.

“Then the stalker is more likely to be a man,” the doctor conceded.

“In what way could the obsessive become dangerous?”

“His fantasy would be that the object of his desire shared his feelings. If the fantasy was shattered, he could resort to violence.” He looked at her. “We are talking still in general terms here. I must make it clear that I have no evidence of such behaviour in any of my patients.”

What does that mean? That you suspect Dan Greenwood of stalking and killing Abigail Mantel, but you have no evidence for it? Or that he wouldn’t hurt a fly?

She contained her impatience. She knew he would only enjoy it if she lost her cool. “Is there such a thing as a serial stalker?”

“In what sense?”

“Suppose the scenario you’ve described were played out. The obsessive killed the young woman and got away with it. Is it possible that he could transfer his attention to another victim?”

“Certainly it would be possible.” He paused. She suspected he enjoyed making her wait for the rest of his answer. “He could have been excited, aroused by the violence. While that might have been unintended in the first instance, it could become an integral part of the fantasy in the second.”

“So he’d dream of killing her? That would be his intention?”

“As I’ve said, it’s possible. Certainly not inevitable. As I’m sure you’re aware, very few mentally ill people, not even those who are seriously disturbed, commit acts of violence.”

“Would I know if I met him?” Vera demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“If it was someone I met in the street, or socially, or at work, would I realize he was mad?” She threw in the last word as a provocation. He didn’t rise to the bait.

“In the street, almost certainly not.”

“Would someone be able to function normally, hold down a regular job, and still behave in this way?”

He considered for a while and still couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. “I’m not a forensic psychiatrist. This isn’t really my area of competence.”

“Give me an opinion.”

“It would take considerable control. The separation of the fantasy life and the everyday. It would be exceptional.”

“But not impossible.”

“No. Not impossible.”

Driving back to Elvet, Vera thought she’d made a fool of herself. She should never have gone to the hospital. It had been a spur of the minute impulse, an excuse to get out of the village. She’d over-reacted to Dan Greenwood keeping a few momentos of his last major case. It wouldn’t do to start rumours that Dan was some sort of weirdo. A place like this, that was the last thing he’d need.

She drove through the square and saw that he was working in the forge. She was tempted to stop. Why not just ask him why he’d kept the material on the Mantel case and how he’d come into possession of the photograph? But she continued on the road towards the coast until she came to the crescent of small houses where he lived. She pulled her car into the verge on the main road and walked towards his home. The street was quiet. In one house an elderly woman was watching a game show on the television in her front room. She sat with her swollen legs on a footstool, a Zimmer frame within easy reach. When Vera walked past she kept her gaze fixed on the screen.

Vera stopped before Dan’s place and went up to his neighbour’s front door. She rang the bell. There was no reply. She did the same thing at the house beyond. The street was only built on one side. It curved round a small children’s play area. Satisfied that no one was looking, she approached Dan’s. The door was locked as she knew it would be. She looked under the mat. No spare key. One of his larger pots containing a small evergreen shrub stood next to the doorstep. She shifted it. Nothing. The bedroom window at the front was open, but she didn’t have the build or fitness for climbing drainpipes.

There wasn’t much of a garden, just a square of muddy grass and a low privet hedge to separate it from the houses on each side. No hiding place. Because the Crescent was a terrace, the only access to the back gardens was from the fields. She was about to give up. She wasn’t in the mood for shinning over farm gates or wading ankle-deep in muck. Then she returned to the shrub in the pot and felt around the wood chippings scattered on top of the soil. One mortise lock key. She wiped it clean on her jumper and opened the door. She slipped off her sandals and put them sole up on the carpet. She closed the door behind her and padded barefoot into Daniel’s home.

It’s a skill to search without leaving a sign of the intruder. It takes time. But Daniel’s house was easier to look through than most. He had few possessions and he kept them ordered. Vera started at the top of the house. There was a small bathroom, probably renovated in the eighties, with an avocado suite and black mould in the sealant around the bath. In the mirror-faced wall cabinet, she found a packet of paracetamol and a bottle of antidepressants. These had been prescribed by his GP, not the hospital consultant. Daniel’s room contained a double bed, neatly made with sheets and blankets. No duvet. There was a pine bedside table. He was reading a novel by James Lee Burke, a paperback with a black and purple jacket. In the drawer she found a couple of packets of condoms. Unopened. Wishful thinking? Or had he found a girlfriend? Some secret woman prepared to take him on? He had admitted to bringing Caroline Fletcher home for a drink, after all. Perhaps there was more to that relationship than he’d let slip. His clothes were all folded and neatly hung in a white plastic fitted wardrobe. The laundry basket in the corner was empty. If he had killed Christopher Winter, there would be no forensic evidence to link him to the scene. The second bedroom was at the back and smaller. The curtains were closed. They were heavily lined and when Vera first entered she could see nothing. She switched on the light. In the second before the room was lit, she felt breathless, frightened for what she would find. But at first it seemed there was nothing out of the ordinary. Under the window stood an ornate dressing table, with three mirrors, angled, all surrounded in cheap gilt. Then, next to the wall, a narrow single bed covered in a floral quilt. On the dressing table there was a photograph of a woman. From the style of hair and clothes it had been taken in the early fifties. She was young and smiling into the camera. Daniel’s mother, perhaps? The woman who’d died and left Daniel enough money to buy the forge and set up his business. On the bed lay a pair of women’s panties. Black. Tiny. A heart in sequins sewn on the front. Not the sort of garment Caroline Fletcher would go for. Too brash and down market Vera could see the label inside from where she stood. The garment had come from a chain store which catered to younger buyers. It should be possible to find out when they’d been produced, Vera thought. She hoped they were a recent addition to stock, that they hadn’t been part of the range ten years previously.