Telling Tales (34 page)

Downstairs she found nothing of interest. She was meticulous although she was aware of time passing. Did she want Daniel to find her, so she could confront him and give him a chance to explain? Certainly she took her time, sorting through the CDs in the living room and the drawers in the kitchen, emptying the small freezer compartment in the fridge so she could feel to the back.

At last she was satisfied. She opened the front door and looked out. Still the road was quiet and the playground empty. She put on her sandals and stood on the doorstep. She locked the door and replaced the key. A few bark chippings fell from the pot onto the concrete path. She picked them up and threw them into the gutter as she walked to her car.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Michael knew it was no good going to see Vera Stanhope yet. His mind was fizzing, the thoughts chasing each other, becoming wilder and more fantastic, but he was sane enough to realize that she’d need more than theories and accusations. At the moment she’d see him as a barmy old man with a grudge. Why should she listen to him?

He left the library in a hurry, hardly taking time to thank Lesley, not waiting to put on his bulky coat, gathering it instead under his arm. In the square the men had finished putting up the decorations and were testing the lights. There was nothing magical about them, Michael thought. He couldn’t see the point of all that effort. A whole morning’s work, for what? The bulbs were as big as you’d find in domestic light fittings, but with garish colours, pink, lime green and a sulphurous yellow. There was a snowman which had been cut out of grubby polystyrene and hung from a wife strung between two lamp posts. Its grin leered at passers-by. Michael found the crooked smile disturbing. It followed him down the street to Val’s Diner, where he drank a cup of coffee and tried to order his thoughts. He needed to plan what to do next.

At the bus stop there were a couple of women who’d come into town from Elvet to do their shopping. He heard them talking from a distance. “Only a month until Christmas. Fancy.” They wore little fur-lined suede boots, identical, and there were piles of white carrier bags on the pavement surrounding them, so each was stranded in her own island of plastic. Michael knew them. If he’d allowed himself a moment to think about it, he’d have remembered their names. They’d been friends of Peg’s. But he was still racing after the ideas which seemed to be galloping away from him and nothing else mattered. He stood behind them to form a queue, became suddenly aware that he was being spoken to.

“It’s nice to see you out, Michael. In town on a bit of business?” It was the shorter one with the white bubbly hair. He looked at her sharply, wondering for a moment if there was anything sinister in her question. It even occurred to him briefly that she might be a spy for Mantel. That was the extent of his anxiety. Then he told himself that he was letting his imagination run away with him. He’d spent too long brooding on his own. Still, it was as well to be careful.

“No. Just here to visit the library.”

“You couldn’t find anything that you liked, then?”

“Sorry?”

“Books. You’ve not got any books with you.” She spoke very slowly, then looked pityingly at her neighbour.

“No. I wasn’t there to borrow. I wanted to look something up in the reference.”

“A shame,” she said. “It can be very healing, a good story.”

He was saved the necessity of replying because the bus arrived, spluttering and spewing out diesel fumes from the exhaust into the cold air. Michael had to pay full fare because he’d never bothered to get a pensioner’s pass and half the way home he had to put up with the Elvet women telling him how to go about applying for one. The bus dropped them all outside the church and Michael stood there for a moment to give the women time to move away.

He looked across the street at the Captain’s House. He could see there was a fire in the grate in the front room. Emma Bennett came out and closed the door behind her. She paused for a moment then walked up the street. She looked very smart in a long black coat, and he wondered where she could be going. She didn’t have the baby with her and he thought James must be inside. It was tempting just to knock at the door and confront him with the questions he had to ask. At least that way they wouldn’t still be inside his head. But James had always intimidated him, even when they’d worked together every day. He thought he’d have to find another way. He couldn’t face the bungalow and started walking out of the village, towards the sea.

When he’d been living on the Point with Peg, there’d been nights when he’d walked home from the Anchor. Not because he was scared of getting done for drunk driving once in a blue moon you’d see a cop in Elvet then. It wasn’t like now. Since this latest murder every other person you saw was a stranger and you could tell, even if they weren’t in uniform, that they were police. No, he’d walked then for the pleasure of it. A good night and a belly of beer, then the walk down the Point with the river on one side and the sea on the other, and knowing that Peg would be waiting for him in the big, soft bed. Just the starry sky and anticipation. That was how it had been, hadn’t it? He hated the thought that his memory might be playing tricks.

He’d started out on foot just because there was a relief in the exercise, though the walk seemed harder and longer than he remembered, with a stiff breeze from the south blowing into his face. But it helped him think more clearly too and he saw what he should do. He’d talk to Wendy, the coxswain of the pilot launch. She’d been friendly with James Bennett from the start, before he was so highly qualified, before he’d moved to Elvet. Before he’d married. Michael had even wondered if there’d been more between them than friendship, though he hadn’t been around to find out. He’d only worked with Wendy for a few weeks, a period of han dover before he’d retired. If James Bennett, usually so stiff and reserved, had confided in anyone about his past, it would have been Wendy.

It was mid afternoon before he reached the pilot station and the light was starting to go. Stan, the second coxswain, was on duty. He was sitting at the desk, his legs in front of him, reading the paper and drinking tea. When Michael walked in you’d have thought he’d seen a ghost. “Eh, lad, what are you doing here?”

Michael thought it had been a fair few years since he’d been called a lad.

“Just a bit of a constitutional,” he said. “You’re busy, I see.”

“Another half hour and I’ll be out to collect a pilot.”

“Which one?”

“A new man called Evans. You’ll not know him.”

“Do you know if Wendy’s around?”

“Her day off. She’ll be in the cottage if she’s not out gallivanting.”

“Does she do a lot of that these days?”

“More than she used to. I think there’s a new man in her life, but she’ll not let on.”

Michael went back outside before Stan could ask what he was after. The grey bulk of a tanker was moving up the river, approaching the mouth of the estuary. It had started to spit with rain.

It was odd to knock at the door of the cottage after so many years of just letting himself in. There was a light on upstairs and the sound of music so he knew she was there. He knocked again more loudly. At last there were noises inside water in a drain, someone clattering down the stairs and she opened the door to him. She was wearing a dressing gown and her hair was wrapped in a towel. She recognized him at once and was surprised. If it had been someone else, he thought, she’d have been angry about being disturbed. One good thing about being bereaved. People felt they had to be kind to you.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was in the bath.”

Her feet were bare and he couldn’t stop staring at them, at the feet and the smooth legs which disappeared into the to welling robe. He imagined her lying in the bath, shaving them. Her toenails were painted silver. Who was there to see them this time of year? It wasn’t the weather for sandals. He stared at the painted nails, couldn’t stop.

“Can I help you, Michael?” she said, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. He realized she’d been waiting for him to explain why he was there.

“Maybe I should come in. You’ll be catching your death standing there with the door open.”

She nodded, giving in to the inevitable. “Just give me a minute. I’ll get some clothes on.”

She let him into the kitchen and left him there. In Peg’s day he would have taken off his shoes before going in, but now there didn’t seem much point. He would never have recognized it. He could tell that underneath the mess nothing much had changed. They were the same cupboards and benches Peg had chosen from the MFI on the ring road. But everywhere there was clutter. Dirty washing spilling out from a basket, a pyramid of shoes and boots, mucky plates and pots, drying cat food on a purple plastic dish. He didn’t know what to make of it. He tried to work up some indignation, told himself Peg would have a fit if she could see it, then thought it didn’t really matter. When Wendy came back in, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and top, slippers too big for her, she cleared some clothes from a chair and sat down.

“Now then, Michael, what can I do for you?” Not unfriendly but brisk, making it clear she couldn’t give him much of her time. No offer of tea either, and after the walk he was gasping.

Now, he wasn’t sure how to start. On his way he should have planned how to go about it. He shouldn’t have let his mind wander back to the good times.

“It’s about James,” he said. “James Bennett. How well do you know him?”

“What are folk saying?” She narrowed her eyes, seemed to curl back in her chair like a cat ready to spring.

“Nothing. Nothing like that.”

“Only you know what it’s like, one woman working with men, people make up all sorts.”

“No,” he said. “But I thought he might have talked to you, that’s all.”

“What about?”

“His childhood, where he grew up. That sort of thing.”

“Why would you want to know?”

He felt the room swim around him as he grasped for an explanation which would satisfy her. “I thought I might have known him when he was a lad.”

“Oh.”

Again the spinning panic. “Did he go to the Trinity House School?”

“No, he’s not a Trinity House lad.”

“Local, though?”

“I don’t think he’s ever said. He’s not one for chatting. He doesn’t give much of himself away… Michael, what is all this about?”

“Like I said, I thought I knew him. Came across an old photo. It was the spitting image. But he wasn’t calling himself Bennett in those days. Shaw, that was his name. I wondered if he’d talked about it to you.” He realized he was gabbling. She was looking at him as if he was one of those mad old men let out into community care, who rant to themselves as they walk down the street. He wondered, as he had that day talking to Peg’in the cemetery, if that was what he’d come to in the end. Perhaps that was what he’d come to already.

“Why would he change his name?” she said reasonably. “You must have made a mistake. You can’t really tell from an old photo, can you? Why don’t you ask him next time you see him, if it’s troubling you.”

“He must have said something about his family, what he did before he joined the pilotage. You know how you get chatting while you’re waiting for a ship.”

“James doesn’t chat,” she said. “He’s always pleasant and polite, but he likes his privacy. And so do I.” She stood up and he saw he’d have to go.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you. You’re right. It must have been a mistake. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not myself at the moment.”

Then she felt sorry for him again. “Look, how did you get here? Give me a minute and I’ll take you back to the village.”

“No, I’ll not trouble you. Stan said he was bringing in a pilot. I’ll get a lift back with him.”

They stood awkwardly. She was blocking his way to the door and moved to let him out. At exactly that moment there was a sound upstairs, a slight creak. One of the floorboards in the bedroom had been loose even in his day. She saw that he’d heard it.

“Must be the cat,” she said.

Aye.” Though he knew it wasn’t any cat. It wasn’t just the sound from upstairs, which had more weight behind it than the heaviest cat. It was the way she looked as she said it, furtive and excited at the same time, as if she was playing a secret game. After she’d shut the door behind him, he stood in the small garden and looked upstairs where the light had been, but now the curtains were drawn and he couldn’t see anything. The single car parked behind the cottage he recognized as Wendy’s.

The launch was out and he waited beside the office for it to come back to the jetty. He didn’t feel he could just let himself into the office any more. The boat nosed back through the gloom and he felt the stab of nostalgia which he’d expected to feel in the house. Later, he stood with Stan looking out towards the river while the pilot made a call to the data centre.

“Who is it that Wendy’s taken up with? You live next door, man. You must have seen him go in and out.”

“Never. He must be like the Invisible Man.”

“There’ll be rumours. I know what the gossip’s like round this place.”

“One thing’s obvious.” Stan touched the side of his nose with his finger. “He’s married, isn’t he? Why else would she keep him secret?”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

They sat in church, in their usual places. Mary and Robert, Emma with the baby on her knee and James. At Mary’s feet the dreadful fat handbag which Emma hated and which was always full of rubbish. A splash of sunlight shone through the glass, coloured the dust which swirled in the draught from the door and stained the surplus of the priest who walked down the nave to shake the hands of the congregation as they shared the peace. He reached across James to touch Emma’s head. “Peace be with you, my dear.”

The sun had shone briefly in just the same way on the morning of their wedding. James remembered sitting on the front pew, next to Geoff, the colleague he’d persuaded to be his best man. It had taken some persuasion, he thought now. Not that Geoff hadn’t been pleased to be asked, but he’d been surprised, unable to hide his bewilderment. “Of course I’d love to. But usually it’s family, isn’t it? Or some mate you’ve been to school with. Someone you’ve known for years at least.” James had said there wasn’t anyone. No one he’d rather have than Geoff.