‘Because I thought it might help.’
‘It did,’ says Star. ‘It was the only thing I clung on to during that first awful night. I’ll always feel a special kinship with Michael.’
Judy wishes that she hadn’t remembered the name. ‘Concentrate on Ava,’ she says. ‘Babies are good at making you live in the present.’
‘The secret of health is not to mourn for the past or worry about the future but to live in the present wisely,’ says Star. ‘That’s what Cathbad says.’
‘I think Buddha or someone said it first,’ says Judy. ‘But it sounds like a good idea.’
When Judy leaves the house she is irritated, if not entirely surprised, to see Maddie sitting on the low wall of the front garden. She is scrolling through her phone but looks up when Judy emerges. ‘Hi.’
‘Are you following me again?’ says Judy.
‘Is it true that Star’s mum abducted Ava?’
‘There’s a press conference on now,’ says Judy, looking at her watch. ‘Why aren’t you there?’
‘I thought this was where the story was.’ Maddie gives her a wide smile, eyes big and innocent. Even though she knows it’s an act, Judy can’t help smiling back.
‘Let’s leave the family in peace,’ she says. ‘Ava’s back with her mother. That’s all you need to know. Can I give you a lift somewhere?’
She expects Maddie to refuse – like her father, she’s an indefatigable walker – but she says, ‘Could you drop me in Wells? I’m meeting someone for lunch.’
‘OK,’ says Judy. It’s not far and she enjoys the drive along the coast. After last night’s rain, it’s suddenly a beautiful day with the promise of spring in the air. Maddie doesn’t ask any more about the case but chatters on about her flatmates and the prospect of a trip to Greece in the summer. When they get to Wells, the sea sparkling like a Sunday night TV show, boats clinking in the harbour, Maddie says, ‘You can drop me here.’
Judy stops the car. They are outside a small shop, trays of jewels catching the light, red, green and gold. Little Rocks, reads the sign.
‘Who are you meeting for lunch?’
‘Roxy. She’s an old schoolfriend. She works here.’
Judy looks at her almost stepdaughter. Does she know about the link between this shop, and its owner Kim Jennings, and the death of Margaret Lacey? It’s possible that she doesn’t. Maddie was, after all, brought up in the area. She could well have a schoolfriend who works here.
Judy watches as Maddie enters the shop, the bell ringing as the door shuts behind her. She looks at the trays displayed outside, jewellery, seashells and souvenirs of sunny Norfolk. She remembers Annie’s scathing description. Full of old tat covered in glitter. Judy gets out of the car and moves closer. There’s a whole tray of seahorses: coloured stone, silver, silk and satin embroidered in bright colours.
It came to me about five years ago that Margaret had said something about a seahorse..
That’s what Kim Jennings had said when Judy asked her about the day when Margaret went missing.
Seahorses.
See horses.
*
Pete Benson seems confused by Clough’s request.
‘You want to talk to me about Margaret. Why?’
‘We have received some new information,’ says Clough. He is finding the whole thing rather difficult. Karen and Pete have always been nice to him. They asked him to read at Margaret’s funeral. Now he is having to use phrases like ‘information received’ and ‘interview under caution’.
‘Is it about Ava?’ says Pete. ‘Dave rang us last night and said she’d been found. He sounded odd on the phone.’
‘Ava’s back home with her mother,’ says Clough. ‘As far as I know, she’s in good health.’
‘But who took her?’ says Karen, who also seems bemused. She is youthfully dressed in white trousers and a sparkly top but, as she hovers around her husband in the hall, she suddenly looks like an old woman. ‘I keep ringing Annie,’ she says, ‘but she’s not answering her phone.’
‘Ava is safe,’ says Clough. ‘That’s all we can tell you at present.’ Keep him in the dark, Nelson had said, then we can spring the questions about Margaret. That’s all very well but the boss isn’t having to shepherd a confused elderly man into a police car. Karen comes out to the car with them. ‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Pete. His hands are shaking.
‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ says Clough. He opens the back door for Pete and then gets into the passenger seat. Tanya is driving.
They drive slowly through the estate. Haig Road, Marshall Drive, Byng Place, Allenby Avenue. John Mostyn’s house still has police tape outside. The windows have been boarded up, presumably to stop the locals breaking them.
‘Why are you taking me to the police station?’ asks Pete, querulously, from the back seat.
‘There are just some questions we need to ask you,’ says Clough.
‘Under caution,’ adds Tanya, from behind the wheel. Clough thinks that she is enjoying herself far too much.
*
The skewbald is still grazing in the paddock outside the house belonging to Steve and Alison Jennings. What was its name? Patch, something like that. But Steve had said that, at one time, the family had owned a few rescue horses, including Cuddles, the pony belonging to Kim Jennings.
At first Judy thinks that there’s nobody in but after a few minutes the door is opened by Steve, wearing another of his woolly jumpers.
‘Hallo?’ He doesn’t recognise her.
‘Hi. I’m DS Judy Johnson. I came to talk to you the other day, about Margaret Lacey. There’s something else I wanted to ask you.’
‘Come in,’ says Steve but Judy thinks that he looks wary. There’s little trace of the cosy granddad today.
There’s no trace of the grandchildren either, or of his wife. Only the elderly dog snores by the electric fire with its fake coals. Even the cockatoo’s cage is covered by a cloth.
‘Ali’s collecting Daisy-Mae from school,’ says Steve, in answer to Judy’s query. He doesn’t say who Daisy-Mae is.
Judy is beginning to wish she hadn’t rushed over to the Jenningses’ house so recklessly. She texted Clough saying where she was going but, if he’s in the middle of an interview, he won’t look at his phone. She should have waited for proper back-up. But she’s here now, so she might as well get on with it.
‘Mr Jennings,’ she said. ‘Did you see Margaret alone on the day that she disappeared?’
She had thought that Steve’s face had changed earlier, when he saw her at the door. But she was wrong; it changes now.
‘What are you talking about?’ he says.
‘Kim told me that Margaret said something about a seahorse. But I think she said that she was going to see the horses, your horses.’ Judy remembers Karen being quoted, in Maddie’s article, as saying that Margaret had liked ‘dancing and ponies and dressing up’. She thinks it was Margaret’s love for ponies that had led her to accompany Steve Jennings on the sunny July day. And, after all, the man was her best friend’s father; she had trusted him. What had Annie said? There was no one strange there. It was just our friends and family.
‘What happened, Steve?’ says Judy. ‘Did you take Margaret back here, to your house?’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ says Steve. ‘This is slander. I’ll sue.’
‘You were seen,’ says Judy, suddenly sure of it. ‘John Mostyn saw you.’
‘That nutter,’ says Steve. ‘You can’t believe a word he says. Anyway, he’s dead now. Dead men tell no tales.’
The cliché sounds very sinister in Steve’s flat Norfolk accent. Suddenly, despite the fact that it is midday and she’s in a sitting room filled with pictures of smiling children, with a dog snoozing on the hearthrug, Judy is afraid.
‘What happened?’ she says again. ‘What happened to Margaret?’
Steve turns away and seems to be looking for something in a drawer. With his bac
k still turned, he says, ‘It was an accident. I just wanted a kiss. She was a tease, that girl, prancing about in shorts and skimpy tops. “Hallo, Uncle Steve.” She knew what she was doing.’
‘She was twelve,’ says Judy.
‘Twelve going on thirty,’ says Steve. He turns to face her. He’s smiling now and it’s a few seconds before Judy realises that he’s holding a gun.
*
Pete still seems confused when he’s ushered into Interview Room 1.
‘What’s going on?’ he keeps saying.
‘Interview with Peter Benson under caution,’ says Tanya into the microphone. ‘Present, DS Tanya Fuller and DS David Clough.’
‘We wanted to talk to you about Margaret,’ says Clough, still feeling slightly awkward. Pete fixes him with mild blue eyes, clearly thinking that Clough is his only friend in the room. ‘I believe you knew the family before you married Karen. Did you know Margaret?’
Pete blinks twice. ‘I did know them,’ he says slowly. ‘My brother-in-law Steve was a friend of Bob’s, Karen’s first husband. I met the family at his house a few times.’
‘How well did you know Margaret?’ asks Tanya.
‘Not well. I mean, she was a young girl, always playing with Steve’s daughters. I don’t think I spoke to her more than twice. But I feel that I’ve come to know her since she went missing, if you know what I mean. She’s a big part of our lives still.’
Clough, remembering the wall of photographs, thinks that he does know what Pete means. Marrying Karen must have meant marrying into the shared family grief.
‘Were you at the King’s Lynn street party on the twenty-ninth of July 1981?’ asks Clough.
‘No,’ says Pete. ‘I lived near Swaffham then. I think I watched the wedding on television at home and then went to the pub for a quick pint. I only heard about Margaret going missing when it was on the news the next day. I rang Steve. He was quite distraught.’
‘You had an allotment, didn’t you?’ says Clough.
‘Yes,’ says Pete. ‘I’ve always enjoyed gardening. I’ve got an allotment now too.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us that you used to live near Scarning Fen?’ says Clough. ‘We asked if you had any connection to the area.’
‘I don’t think I realised it was near there,’ says Pete. ‘I didn’t recognise the name. What’s all this about? Why are you asking me these questions?’
Clough glances at Tanya. They have discussed this beforehand. It’s just a matter of who says the words.
‘How well do you get on with your stepchildren Annie and Luke?’ asks Clough.
Pete shakes his head, seeming bewildered again by the change in direction.
‘Well enough, I think. They were teenagers when I married Karen. Luke was almost an adult. So things were a bit tricky sometimes. Luke had got used to being the man of the house, I think. Annie too. It was almost like she was in charge. She used to order Luke to do things and he’d do them. It was like he didn’t have any free will. Both of them tried to look after Karen, they were very protective of her, but it sometimes looked like bullying to me. Things were easier when they left home to go to university. Then Karen and I had Richard and Bradley.’
‘Did the siblings get on?’ asks Clough.
‘Yes. Annie doted on the boys when they were young. She was always good with babies. I think that’s why she became a paediatric nurse. Luke was always more distant. I think I spoke to him more when he came home for Margaret’s funeral than I ever have before.’
Was that because Luke already suspected him of killing his sister? thinks Clough. And was Annie, the girl who had loved babies, already planning to abduct her own daughter’s child?
But Pete’s mind has been moving in the same direction.
‘Is this to do with Annie and Luke? Did they think I killed Margaret? Oh my God.’
Clough lets silence answer him.
*
Steve levels the gun at Judy. It looks like an old service pistol, old-fashioned but, unfortunately, still in working order. Steve’s voice is now quiet and reasonable, as it was the first time Judy met him. ‘I tried to kiss her,’ he says. ‘I took hold of her, just to steady her, but she pulled away and she fell and hit her head. There, on the fireplace.’ He points at the fire surround, which is made of rough-hewn stone, a sixties attempt at antiquity. ‘When I went to pick her up, there was blood coming from her head and she was an awful colour, sort of grey. I went to get something to put over her and, when I came back, she was dead. No heartbeat, nothing. I didn’t know what to do. Ali and the kids were due back from the street party any minute.’
Judy remembers Kim Jennings saying that, after she had parted from Margaret, she went back to the party to sit with her ‘mum and sisters’. No mention of her dad, who was presumably, at that very moment, driving Margaret away on the pretext of seeing his horses. Yet, later, Steve had been one of the men out looking for Margaret, even though he knew that she would never be found.
‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance when she first fell?’ says Judy. ‘You might have saved her.’
‘I told you,’ says Steve. ‘I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. It was a terrible shock. Imagine Kim coming back to find her friend dead on the carpet. I had to act quickly.’ He actually sounds quite sorry for himself.
‘What did you do?’ asks Judy.
‘I wrapped her in a blanket and tied her up,’ says Steve, as if this is perfectly normal behaviour. ‘Then I put her in the boot of my car and went to join the search party. Later that night I buried her.’
‘In your brother-in-law Pete’s allotment near Scarning Fen.’
‘What a clever policewoman you are,’ says Steve. ‘Such a shame about the way you’re going to die. The gun just went off accidentally, that’s what I’ll say. I’ll probably only get a suspended sentence, what with having such a good name in the community. Devoted family man and all that.’
And that’s precisely how Judy had thought of him, until about half an hour ago. She thinks of Kim Jennings and the way her face looked sad in repose. Did she somewhere, deep down, know what her father was?
‘My colleagues know where I am,’ says Judy. ‘They’ll be here any moment.’
‘Rubbish,’ says Steve. ‘I saw your face just now. You were terrified.’
‘Police!’ shouts a voice behind them. ‘Drop that gun!’
Steve doesn’t drop it but he half turns and that’s enough for Judy. She swings her arm upwards and knocks the gun from Steve’s hand. Then she punches him in the stomach. He groans and doubles up, his head near the spot where Margaret breathed her last. Somehow the dog sleeps on.
*
Judy is bending over Steve’s hunched body and putting on handcuffs.
‘Call the police,’ she says to Maddie.
‘I have.’ Maddie’s voice has gone back to normal now. Where did she find that commanding tone earlier? The shout of ‘Police’ had almost convinced Judy herself.
Judy kneels on the carpet beside Steve, who is still breathing heavily.
‘Are you OK?’ says Maddie.
‘I’m fine. How did you find me?’
‘I followed you.’ Maddie gives her a sudden grin. ‘Like you’re always telling me not to do. Roxy gave me a lift up here. I knew you were on to something.’
‘Well, I’m very grateful,’ says Judy. ‘That shout was amazing. I thought you were the real thing for a moment.’
‘I tried to sound like that superintendent. The one who’s always doing the press conferences.’
‘Jo Archer. Yeah, that’s who you reminded me of.’
‘Did he confess?’ Maddie nods towards the crumpled figure on the hearthrug.
‘Yes. This is the man who killed Margaret Lacey.’ Steve mutters something indistinct. ‘He’ll be confessing it again later in a taped interview.’
‘Can I have an exclusive afterwards?’
‘You certainly can,’ says Judy, as the sirens sound in the distance.
&
nbsp; Chapter 36
Despite her words to Maddie, Judy half expects Steve to deny everything when he is questioned at the police station. But, in a recorded interview with Judy and Clough, live-streamed to Nelson in the viewing room, Steve Jennings describes how Margaret Lacey died. It’s murder, in Judy’s book, but she knows that a lawyer might try for a plea of manslaughter. Luckily Steve has waived his right to a solicitor and Judy makes sure that she gets on tape the fact that Steve didn’t call for an ambulance when Margaret first fell and hit her head. He says he went for something to put over her but did he really just wait for her to die? Maybe he even hastened her death by smothering her? Traces of material were found around Margaret’s jaw bone and Judy is willing to bet that Steve’s DNA is on them and on the rope that bound her body. Steve is helpfully quite expansive about his feelings for Margaret, which should damn him in the eyes of any decent-minded jury. ‘She knew what she was doing, that girl. She was the type who could wind men around her little finger.’
Clough, who is less good at hiding his feelings than Judy, clenches his fists under the table.
‘I only wanted a kiss,’ says Steve. ‘Was that so bad?’
‘She was twelve years old,’ says Judy. She wants this clearly on the tape.
Steve laughs. ‘She was no innocent, believe me. She was just like her mother. A right little prick tease. I could see it when Margaret used to come to the house. She was always looking at me under her eyelashes. Flaunting herself. Tempting me.’
‘You’re talking about the times when Margaret came to play with your daughter, Kim?’
‘Margaret never had much time for Kim, to be honest. I think she came to see me.’
Can he really have believed this? thinks Judy, looking at the grey-haired man across the desk, even now smiling complacently, hands folded across his paunch. And what about Kim, the little girl who was always in Margaret’s shadow? Did she know that her father was lusting after her schoolfriend? Judy hopes not.
‘I went to kiss her,’ says Steve. ‘And she pulled away. I grabbed her. I knew she wanted it really. And she fell. She hit her head on the fireplace. It was an accident.’
The Stone Circle: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 11 Page 26
