Telling Tales

by Ann Cleeves

  “But she’d killed his daughter! What could she expect?”

  “Certainly he thought she had. And according to Jeanie that was the worst betrayal of all. That he could think her capable of murder.”

  “Why didn’t you recommend her for parole?”

  Emma thought he would refuse to tell her. He never talked about the details of his work. It was confidential, he’d say. He had the same responsibility as a priest to keep secrets. But today he seemed eager to talk. It was as if he needed to justify his decision to her.

  “Partly it was her anger. I couldn’t be sure she could control it. At the trial the prosecution claimed that she strangled Abigail in a moment of rage and jealousy. I couldn’t take the risk that she might lose control again, strike out at someone who’d hurt her. It might have been different if she’d shown a willingness to cooperate with the prison authorities. I asked her to attend one of the anger management courses which we run at Spinney Fen but she refused. She said that if she attended it would be like admitting her guilt, admitting that her behaviour needed to change.”

  James appeared at the door with Matthew in his arms. She caught his eye. “Can you give us a few minutes?” she said. He was surprised usually she was only too happy to be rescued from her family but he backed away.

  Robert, still engrossed in his own thoughts, seemed not to notice the interruption. He continued, “Then there was the home circumstances report. I went to see Michael Long to discuss it. Jeanie’s mother used to visit her in prison but Michael never did. Since Mrs. Long died, Jeanie had no visits at all. I wanted to find out if there was a possibility of a reconciliation. If Michael had agreed that she could stay with him on release, even for a short period, that might have made a difference to the board.”

  “But he wouldn’t?”

  “He said he couldn’t face having her in the house.” Robert looked up from the table. “So you can see why he felt so guilty, why he needed to blame me. He had believed his own daughter to be a murderer.”

  Chapter Six

  Michael slipped out through the church door and paused to catch his breath. He was shaking. The rain was blowing straight into the open porch. It stung his face and hit the grey fabric of his suit, each drop spreading as the Communion wine had spread through the fibres of Robert Winter’s white surplus. Michael struggled into the waterproof jacket he still carried over his arm, and although the storm showed no sign of abating he started off for the road. The service would soon be over. The old crones inside would be coming through on their way to the hall for coffee and he couldn’t bear the thought of them gawping.

  The sweet taste of the Communion wine remained in his mouth and on his lips, and suddenly he was desperate for a real drink to wash it away. He hesitated outside the Anchor. He hadn’t been inside for years, but still he was tempted. Then he realized the place would be busy with men waiting for their Sunday dinners to be cooked, and he didn’t want to meet anyone he knew. He didn’t think he’d manage to be polite. The fury which had overcome him when he’d seen Winter, coming towards him with the chalice, still roared around his head. He wasn’t proud of the scene he’d made, but if he hadn’t spat at him, he’d have had to hit him. He still wanted to hit someone.

  It had been a crazy idea to come to the service in the first place. He saw that now. Whatever he’d hoped to get out of the ritual, he’d been disappointed. Peg had been the one for the church, not him. He’d always thought it a daft do. Grown men dressing up in frocks. What had he expected anyway? Jeanie’s voice sailing out of the rafters, “It’s all right, dad. I forgive you.”

  He lived in a small row of council bungalows, just behind the church, had done since he moved from the Point after Peg had died. The reporters who’d been there when he’d left, still stood on the corner, shouting their stupid questions and waving their microphones. He ignored them and opened the door just enough so he could slide in. He didn’t want them looking inside. He thought, as he always did coming in, how small and cramped it was. How dark. That was one of the reasons he didn’t like going out much. Coming back each time was like being locked up in a prison cell. He hated it.

  He hadn’t thought Jeanie had hated prison. Of course no one would enjoy it, but he hadn’t thought being shut in would send her into a panic. She’d never liked the outdoors much. She’d been terrified in a small boat, even when it was flat calm and she had a life jacket on. She preferred being inside with her music, and she’d had that in prison. They’d taken her a.cassette player and a load of tapes. Her music was all she’d really needed. That was how it had seemed to him and Peg when she was a youngster. She’d shut them out, excluded them. They’d brought her up and that didn’t seem fair. Like she’d dumped them when they stopped being useful to her. Then she’d hanged herself and he wondered if he’d got it wrong about her not hating the prison. That and other things.

  He tried not to think that he might have been wrong. If Jeanie had hated the prison even as much as he hated this place, it must have been a nightmare for her. He couldn’t contemplate that, whatever she’d done, and grasped around for someone else to blame, knowing it was unreasonable even as he was doing it. He settled on Winter, the do-gooder, the pretend vicar. He was an easy target.

  In the cupboard in the kitchen there was a litre bottle of cheap whisky he’d had delivered from the Co-op with the last lot of groceries. He half filled a tumbler and drank it down in burning gulps, then ran his tongue around his lips. He still fancied he could taste the wine and poured himself another glass, carried it with him.

  He walked through to the bedroom and began to change out of his suit. He took the trousers off first and folded them over the back of the chair. Some change fell out of the pocket but he left it where it dropped. He thought of the bedroom in the house on the Point, the window so close to the water that its reflection bounced off the ceiling. It had been as near to being on a boat as you could get on dry land. There had been a continuous watery soundtrack the call of seabirds and waders, the drag of the tide on the shingle, the breaking of waves. He had taken it for granted until he’d moved here and had been almost suffocated by the bungalow’s dense and dreadful silence. Here, the rooms were so small that he could stand with his arms outstretched and almost touch the walls on each side.

  He should never have retired as coxswain of the pilot launch.

  That was what Michael told himself, standing in his underpants, struggling to get the fold in his trousers in the right place. But to tell the truth he hadn’t had much choice when it came down to it. If he hadn’t resigned from the launch they’d have had him out anyway, using the drinking as an excuse. As if all the pilots didn’t like a drink. At least this way there’d been a bit of dignity in his going. Peg would have approved of that. But he missed it with the same ache as he missed Peg. He missed the crack with the pilots and the girls in the data centre. He missed the satisfaction of bringing the launch into the lee of a big ship, holding it steady, while the pilot climbed down the ladder and jumped aboard. It hadn’t been like him to go without a fight and it still rankled. He’d felt the same humiliation as when Winter had turned up on the doorstep of the bungalow wanting to talk about Jeanie.

  It had been a while ago now, but Michael still remembered the encounter with great clarity. He had gone over it many times in his mind. It was like one of those fairy tales about giants and monsters that children return to: frightening, but comforting in its familiarity. And it stopped him from thinking of worse things. Jeanie hanging in her cell by a bit of torn sheet. Him being wrong about his only daughter.

  ; So, Winter had turned up on his doorstep. It would have been January or February almost a year ago. Michael had only gone to answer it because he’d thought it would be the lad from the Co-op with his groceries. Normally he didn’t bother answering the door. He had no time for people selling things or collecting for charities. But there was this man. Winter. Michael hadn’t recognized him. He’d been dressed in a brown duffel coat, the sort nav
al officers used to wear in the war, but Winter had had the hood up, pulled right down over his forehead, so Michael had been reminded more of a monk.

  “Mr. Long,” he’d said. “I wonder if I might come in for a minute.”

  Michael had been about to slam the door on him, to mutter something about it not being convenient, but the man had put his face very close, so Michael felt he couldn’t breathe, and he’d said in a quiet, preachy voice, “It’s about Jeanie.”

  And it was the last thing he’d been expecting, so he’d stepped back in surprise, and Winter had taken that as an invitation to come in.

  “Perhaps I could make us both some tea,” he’d said. And Michael had been so affronted by the cheek of the man that he couldn’t speak. And again Winter had taken the shocked silence as an invitation. He’d walked into the kitchen as if it were his own and filled the kettle right to the top with no thought for the extra electricity that might use.

  They’d sat in the little front room. It was filled with the few bits of furniture Michael had brought with him from the house on the Point and they’d had to sit almost knee to knee in the big armchairs.

  “What’s Jeanie to you?” Michael had demanded. He still remembered that. He’d thrust his face towards Winter’s hoping to cause the same panic he’d felt on the doorstep. “What’s Jeanie to you?”

  “I’m her probation officer,” Winter had said. “I have to prepare a report.”

  “She didn’t get probation. She got life. And there were reports enough done at the time.”

  Too many reports. All of them prying. All of them wanting to find someone else to blame for what Jeanie had done. Him and Peg had never been given copies of the reports of course. They’d been excluded in that process too. But he guessed that they’d featured. It was always the parents’ fault, wasn’t it? The reports would have said that they’d never understood Jeanie, never given her what she’d needed. He could figure out that much from what had been said in court.

  “This is different,” Winter had said. He’d had one of those voices stuck-up teachers use with daft children. Patient, but as if it’s a real strain being patient. As if he was a saint to be able to manage it. “Jeanie will soon be eligible for parole. If she’s released back into the community, it’ll be my job to supervise her on licence.”

  “They’re not thinking of letting her out?”

  “Don’t you think she should be?”

  “It just seems like she’s been in no time. And after what she did to that lass…”

  “She still says she’s innocent, you know…” He’d paused as if he expected a response from Michael. Michael had been staring at the little window which was shrouded in net so he couldn’t see out, unable to take in the notion that his daughter might soon be released. “It won’t help her case for parole, I’m afraid, insisting she didn’t commit the murder. Prisoners are supposed to confront their offending behaviour and show remorse for their actions. I’ve tried to persuade her.”

  “I wouldn’t think she’d be much good at remorse.”

  “I’m new to the case, Mr. Long.” Winter had leaned forward, so Michael had been able to smell his breath, peppermint masking something spicy from the night before. Not booze, of course. Winter wouldn’t be a drinker. There wasn’t the life in him for that. “But there’s no record of you having visited your daughter’

  “Peg went, before she got too poorly.” The words had come out before Michael could stop them, though he’d sworn to himself that he’d tell Winter nothing. He’d driven his wife on visiting days, dropped her right outside the prison gate, because there always seemed to be a wind when they went and rain blown almost horizontal. Then he’d taken the car to the visitors’ car park and sat with his paper lying unread on the steering wheel until all the people streamed out. He’d been surprised by how ordinary they’d looked, the parents and the husbands of the women locked up. From a distance he’d not been able to pick Peg out from the rest.

  “But not you?” Winter had kept the patient voice but his eyes had been full of judgement and distaste.

  “Nor Mantel,” Michael had said. “He never visited her either.”

  “Hardly the same thing, Mr. Long. He believed she’d killed his only daughter.”

  And Michael had turned away at that, acknowledging the justice of the words, but hating the contempt in them.

  “And he told Jeanie that he loved her,” he’d said quietly. A futile attempt at defiance. Then, on firmer ground, “Have you got a daughter, Winter?”

  “That’s hardly relevant.”

  “Aye, you do have a daughter.” He’d been able to tell by something in Winter’s face. “Imagine how you’d feel if your lass did something like that. Strangling a child

  II

  just because she’d come between her and her lover. You’d feel able to support her, would you? You’d not mind visiting her in that place?”

  Winter had hesitated for a moment and Michael had felt a stab of triumph. Then the probation officer had resumed in the saintly voice which made Michael want to slap him, “I might hate the crime, Mr. Long, but I’d not hate the girl who’d committed it.” He’d set down his cup and continued briskly, “Now about the parole.”

  “What about it?”

  “The parole board would need to know she had somewhere to come back to. Support.”

  “You’re asking if she can move in with me?”

  “I know you’ve found it difficult, but it need only be for a short time until she sorted out somewhere more suitable.”

  “Have you been listening to a word I’ve said, man?” Michael had discovered that he was screaming. “She killed that lass and that killed my wife. How can I have her under the same roof as me?”

  Only now it seemed she hadn’t killed Abigail Mantel. Sitting here on a wet Sunday after church, with nothing to cling on to but the remains of the whisky, he kept coming up against the fact and sliding away from it. It was too much for him to accept all at once. If Jeanie hadn’t been a murderer, what sort of monster was he? He’d turned her away. Outside the sky darkened but he still didn’t move. Only when the taped bells in the church tower started up again, scratchy and raucous, for the evening service, so that he knew people would be walking past, did he get up and draw the curtains and switch on the light.

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning Michael was awake before six as usual. It was a habit he’d never get out of now. Activity was an addiction. He’d worked twelve-hour shifts as coxswain of the pilot launch, and even after being on call all night, he’d not been able to sleep during the day. The enforced idleness of retirement made him panic. Jeanie had been lazy. Some days she’d spent hours in her room, and when he’d asked her what she was doing, she’d say she was working. It hadn’t seemed much like work to him. Occasionally she’d left her door open a crack and he’d peered in. She’d be lying on her bed, not always even dressed, and there’dbe music playing and she’d have her eyes closed. He liked some music a brass band or a march, a tune with a beat, the songs from the old musicals but she never played anything like that. This would be strings usually, or a piano, something high-pitched which made him want to piss. “Wee-wee music’ he’d called it to her, sneering, when she was being stony and blank. He didn’t know why her stillness had irritated him so much, but it had. He’d felt like screaming and lashing out at her. He never had but the anger and resentment had bubbled away. Only Peg knew it was there.

  Maybe they should never have had a child. They’d been happy enough as they were. He had been, at least. He’d never really known what Peg had thought about it. Or perhaps by the time Jeanie arrived he’d been too old, too set in his ways. But he thought he’d done right by his daughter. He couldn’t see what he could have done differently. He’d paid up for the music lessons, hadn’t he? He’d driven her every week into the town, listened to the scratchy violin, the repeated scales on the upright piano which had belonged to Peg’s mum. Peg had played the piano too. After a cou
ple of brandies when they’d had a few friends round, she’d played for them. It had always been songs which belonged to their parents’ generation, old music hall turns, but they’d all joined in, making up the words as they went, collapsing in laughter before they’d finished. He couldn’t remember ever having seen Jeanie laugh like that, even as a kid.

  At least that daughter of Mantel’s had had a bit of life about her, a bit of spirit. He’d seen it during the Sunday dinner when they’d all come to the Point. You could tell by the way she’d tossed her head; she’d wanted you to look at her. If Jeanie had been a bit more like that perhaps they wouldn’t have fought so much. Except, he thought, there had never been much real argument. More a bad-tempered silence, with Peg acting as a buffer between them, squashed between Jeanie’s surly resentment and his anger. The Sunday dinner had been Peg’s idea. “Jeanie’s obviously mad about the man. He’s older than her but that’s no reason to disapprove, is it? You’re older than me. It’s not like he’s still married.” He’d tried to explain to her that there was more to it than that, but she hadn’t been able to see it.

  At seven o’clock Michael allowed himself to get out of bed and make some tea. Still all he could think about was Jeanie and how he might have got her wrong. The anger had become a habit like waking up too early, only now he had no one to turn it against except himself. Even conjuring up images of the probation officer didn’t work any more. While the kettle was boiling he thought of the whisky in the cupboard under the sink and it was a real effort not to reach down and fetch it out. Then he heard Peg’s voice. Had to stop himself from turning round because he could almost believe she was in the room with hinfr Drinking before breakfast, Michael Long? I’d not put up with that. As he squeezed out the tea bag against the side of his cup it occurred to him that he might be going mad. What he was going through would send anyone crazy. How could he stand the same thoughts and memories rolling around in his head until he died? That was why he’d gone to church of course. He’d thought there might be magic, that when he put the round cardboard wafer on his tongue, they’d all disappear. It was nothing to do with repentance or forgiveness at all. But it hadn’t worked. Nothing would.