by Ann Cleeves
Vera was muttering almost to herself. If she’d bumped into her in town, Emma thought, she’d have put her down as a bag lady, one of those smelly women of indeterminate age, who sit on park benches talking to the trees. She looked around for James, thought he might be amused that this was the detective who had been sent to sort out the case, but he seemed to have disappeared.
“You must already have talked to Caroline about what happened back then,” Emma said.
“Must I? Na, pet. That’s not the way I work. I make up my own mind first. Look at the notes, talk to the people who count. And the police don’t count for much in most cases. I’ll talk to Caroline when I’m good and ready.”
“Perhaps that’s why she’s here. To talk to you.” “You think?” Vera gave a little laugh and walked away, helping herself to someone else’s lager as she went. When Emma saw her next she was still muttering, but now into Dan Greenwood’s ear. Dan had been a cop, Emma thought. And he seemed to count. When she looked for Caroline Fletcher, the dark woman had disappeared too.
The screaming started at about the same time as the fireworks, so for a short time Emma missed it, because it was hidden by the screech and wail of exploding rockets. She heard it first because she was standing furthest away from the fire. She didn’t like to admit it, but fireworks scared her. It was the breathless moment between their lighting and the rush of sound. In that beat of silence she felt her heart pound and she became faint. She would have liked James’s arm around her so they could cover the silence with conversation, but he was talking to Dan Greenwood and Robert. They were standing, all blokes together, laughing. A rocket shot into the darkness, exploded in a shower of gaudy stars and she heard screaming.
She walked around the side of the house towards the road because that was where the sound seemed to come from. The lane was lit with sparse street lights and the skinny moon. A woman was standing and screaming. It was like when she had found Abigail Mantel’s body, but in negative, a reverse image, a parallel universe. Because this time it was her mother who screamed and she who ran. And her mother pulled her arm and pointed into the ditch by the side of the road. And again there was a body.
But Abigail Mantel had looked ugly in death, much uglier than when she’d lived. Christopher, lying on his back in the ditch, was lit by the moon so his skin had a frosty blue sheen, which reminded her of the fabric of a bridesmaid’s dress she’d worn once to a cousin’s wedding. A densely woven satin with a matt finish and silver threads. All this was going through her mind as she took Mary into her arms and whispered the same reassurances she’d been given ten years before, “It’ll be all right. Everything’s going to be all right.” Not believing what she was saying, but feeling her mother’s sobs subside and her breathing grow calmer.
Then Vera Stanhope appeared, solid and brusque.
“Who’s this, then?”
“It’s my brother, Christopher.”
There was a horrified pause then, “Oh, pet,” she said, and briefly cupped Emma’s face in her huge hands, so for a moment, in her confusion, Emma thought she intended to kiss her. Instead she put her arm round each of the women’s shoulders and led them away from the scene. Then she stood in the middle of the road so no cars could pass and spoke urgently into her phone.
Part Two
Chapter Twenty
The eczema on Vera Stanhope’s legs distracted her. Her limbs felt alive, as if small burrowing animals had penetrated the surface, were living off the fat and the blood. She imagined she could sense the snuffling and digging. It was always the same when she wore trousers. She longed to let the air to the skin, but there wasn’t much she could do about that now. It wouldn’t be seemly for a senior investigating officer to drop her pants in front of the hoopla of a crime scene. Whatever would the pathologist, the examiners in their white paper suits and the local detectives make of it? If she was to be the senior investigating officer, which had still to be established.
Her doctor had said that stress made her skin condition worse, but it wasn’t stress she was experiencing now. It was exhilaration and guilt. She didn’t believe police officers who denied being excited by murder. Who would fail to be turned on by the drama, the costume and the show? Why else had they joined the service? It was different for the relatives, of course, and that was where the guilt came in. She had a responsibility. She’d been playing this slowly, nosing around like the mythical creatures under her skin, feeling her way into the complexities of the situation, picking up on hostilities and lies. She worried that if she’d adopted a more orthodox approach, this other death might not have occurred.
Aye, and you’d still be in the dark, pet. If you’d had them into the station, taken them through their original statements, word for word, you’d be none the wiser than the day you arrived. This way at least you understand the people. You have a feeling for what went on.
She’d never been lacking in confidence and usually didn’t see the point of regret.
They’d rigged up spotlights and a tent over the ditch. There was the rumble of a generator, four-wheel-drive vehicles reversing at the bottom of the narrow lane, earnest conversation. She thought there was nothing to be gained here now. She’d been liaising on the Mantel case with a local DI called Paul Holness. He was a middle-aged man, bluff and cheerful, and he’d joined the force from Lancashire since Abigail’s murder. Ambitious in theory, he was too idle on the ground to be any threat. No way would he want to be Senior Investigating Officer. Too much responsibility in this particular case. Too much shit flying around. He was talking to the pathologist in the gateway to the Old Chapel. She made her way to join them.
“Definitely murder,” Holness said. “You can’t see with him lying on his back, but his head’s bashed in.”
Any sign of the murder weapon?”
“Not yet, but they’ve not had a chance for a proper search. We’re organizing that now.” He stamped his feet and wrapped his arms across his chest. He was wearing sheepskin gloves but he still seemed to be feeling the cold. Vera thought they were a soft lot, these
Yorkies. “What was the mother doing out here anyway?” he asked. “Has anyone said?”
“She was feeling the cold and came to get an extra jacket from the car, according to the husband.” She hadn’t been able to get any sense out of Mary. “Any idea of the time of death? I mean could he have been here for hours, only nobody noticed him on their way in?”
Holness shook his head. “You know pathologists. They never like to commit themselves. But highly unlikely, she said. She thinks he was dead for less than an hour when Mrs. Winter found him.”
“Can you take over here?” Vera asked. “I want to talk to the witnesses before they have time to embroider. You know what it’s like. Everyone wants a consistent story and they fill in the gaps, without realizing what they’re about.” She saw with some satisfaction that she’d lost him. “I’ll be at Springhead House if anyone needs me.” It wasn’t a bad thing to stamp her authority, she thought. Make sure everyone realized she saw this death as part of the Mantel case. That she was still in charge.
She’d arranged for someone to take the Winters home. The woman wouldn’t stop sobbing and the noise had got to them all. Robert had wanted to take his own car.
“This is a crime scene,” she’d said. “There could be a trace, you know, someone knocking against your vehicle. We have to check.”
He’d accepted that and gone quietly enough in the end.
Above her the sky was still clear, but pools of mist had collected over the ditches and in dips in the fields.
The track to Springhead House was pitted and her tyres crunched through the frozen puddles. The people inside must have heard the engine, but they didn’t move when she went in. A uniformed police woman opened the door and showed her into the kitchen where they were all sitting, facing towards a big brown teapot on a tray, not speaking. Robert Winter sat at the head of the table with his wife slumped beside him. James clasped a mug of tea betwee
n both hands. Emma was holding a sleeping child on her knee.
Vera nodded gently towards the baby. “You collected the bairn, then?”
It had been Emma’s main concern when Vera had asked them all to leave the lane and wait for her. Robert had wanted them back at Springhead. Mary was hysterical, he said. She needed to be in her own home. Emma had been worried about Matthew and had insisted on going to the Captain’s House first. Vera had been surprised by that. The woman’s brother had been killed and her only response had been a calm insistence that they go back to Elvet to collect her child. But then Vera couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be a mother and anyway people expressed their grief in different ways.
Vera hadn’t expected Mary still to be with them. That grief had been raw and obvious, especially shocking because the woman seemed so reserved. Later Vera would tell her sergeant that it was like a vicar’s wife getting up on the church hall stage and doing a striptease. It made you uncomfortable. She had told the policewoman, detailed to stay with the family, to get a doctor, had imagined Christopher’s mother would be in bed, sedated.
Though they all sat wrapped up in thick sweaters, the kitchen was warmer than it had been outside. The sudden increase in temperature set off Vera’s eczema again. She resisted the urge to scratch the back of her knees and joined them at the table.
“Tea, ma’am? It’s not long been made.”
The constable was hovering. Vera waved her away impatiently. The others sat, looking at Vera with fixed, dazed expressions, waiting for her to speak. Despite herself, Vera savoured the moment. She’d always liked an audience.
“We believe that Christopher was murdered,” she said carefully. She knew they’d find it hard to take in the facts. It was a kindness to be straight with them. “He has a wound to his skull.”
“Could he have slipped?” James asked. “The road was very icy.”
“He could have slipped and knocked his head on the road, perhaps. But that wouldn’t explain his lying in the ditch. There was nothing there which could have caused that sort of injury. I’m sorry.”
Mary gave a deep intake of breath which was released as a sob.
“Are you ready for this?” Vera asked. “I can speak to you tomorrow, if you’d prefer. Should we call a doctor?”
The last question was directed towards Robert but before he could answer Mary said sharply, “No. No doctor.”
“It would help me to know what Christopher might have been doing at Mr. Mantel’s house.”
“He could have been there to look for us.” Vera thought Emma spoke reluctantly, but perhaps she was just being quiet, worried about waking the baby.
“Of course. That must be it!” Mary seemed feverish. Her eyes were bright and there was a flush to her face. “He came to Mantel’s to find us. There were posters all over the village about the open evening for the lifeboat. I told you, Robert! I told you he wouldn’t go back to the university without coming to see us.”
“Christopher was a student?”
“He held a postgraduate research position at Aberdeen,” Robert said. There was a pause. “He was an extremely gifted scientist. A zoologist.” He looked at Vera apologetically as if he’d realized that this wasn’t the moment for parental boasting.
“Was there any special reason for the visit? Was it planned?”
“No,” Emma said. “But nothing much he did was planned. Except his work. He was always completely wrapped up in that.”
“Had he warned Mr. and Mrs. Winter of his visit?”
“No,” Robert said. “We didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t know he was in Elvet until Emma phoned me at work at lunchtime.”
“You work as a probation officer, Mr. Winter?”
“That’s right.”
“You worked with Jeanie Long?”
“I prepared the home circumstance report for the parole board. That was all.”
i Vera made no comment. There was a moment of silence, which Emma filled. “I phoned Mum and Dad here as soon as I realized Chris had gone, but by then they’d both already left. I didn’t like to bother them until lunchtime. I didn’t see him this morning, you see. He’d gone by the time I got up.”
An early riser, was he?”
“Not usually, no. I was surprised, a bit worried, I suppose.”
“Worried? Why was that? It seems a bit strange to be worried about a grown man.” There was a pause. “How did he seem last night?”
Emma and James looked at each other. Vera suspected an unspoken request from Emma, which James ignored.
“He was behaving oddly,” James said. “He was drunk but there was more to it than that. He’d always come across as intense about his work, pretty self-obsessed, but last night he seemed completely absorbed by some problem of his own. I wondered if he was having a sort of minor breakdown. It sounds callous but I was too tired to deal with it and I was still on call. In the end I left Em to cope with him. I don’t know if she got any sense out of him.”
“Did you, Emma?” Robert asked. He had been sitting, quite calmly, following the conversation. Vera couldn’t make him out. His son had been murdered but she had no sense that he was grieving. There was a terrible self-control. Perhaps it had something to do with his faith. Dan Greenwood had told her Winter was an evangelical. She’d always thought they were the showy bunch who waved their hands in the air, though there’d been no sign of that at the church service she’d attended. Did he think it would be wrong to grieve for a son who was now with his maker? Is that why he sat, rigid and frozen, so only his eye’s moved?
“We talked,” Emma said at last. “Like James has told you, he was very drunk. He didn’t make a lot of sense.”
Vera nodded sympathetically, but there was the flash of excitement, which was why she’d come into this job, what it was really about. You’re lying, pet. You know more than you’re saying. Why’s that then? What did your brother tell you? Skeletons in his cupboard, maybe. Are you trying to protect your mum and dad? Or is something more sinister going on here?
“How old would Christopher have been when Abigail Mantel died?” she asked.
“Fourteen,” Emma said. “He was a year younger than me.”
“Did he know her?”
“He’d seen her around with me. And at school.”
“Go back to that Sunday, the day you found her body. Was Christopher at home that day?”
“He came to church with us,” Robert said. “Then we all had lunch. He was still here when Emma went out. It wasn’t the weather for being outdoors.”
“The original investigating team would have spoken to him?”
“I can’t remember.” Robert frowned. “They were here, of course, that afternoon, talking to Emma. I presume they interviewed Christopher but I can’t remember it.”
“There’ll be a record, at any rate,” Vera said, though she wasn’t convinced. There were more gaps in the Mantel file than a trawl net drying at North Shields Fish Quay. And the smell was much the same too. “But if he was in all day he couldn’t have seen anything which would have been a threat to the murderer. You see the way my mind’s working?”
“I’ve said he was a quiet boy, but he wasn’t lacking in confidence,” Robert said impatiently. “If he’d seen something suspicious he’d have said so at the time.”
“You know, I don’t think that’s necessarily true.” Vera sat with her forearms flat on the table. “It didn’t take the police long to arrest Jeanie. He’d have no reason to question their judgement. It’s not only hairns who believe we’re infallible. He’d have dismissed any evidence which pointed elsewhere, wouldn’t he?”
“Until now,” James said quietly. “Until it’s become clear that there was a miscarriage of justice. Then he’d remember. Did he mention anything like that last night, Em?”
Emma shook her head. “He wasn’t very coherent, but no, we didn’t discuss Abigail’s murder. Not specifically.”
“Besides,” Robert said. “We’ve already
established that Christopher was with us all that Sunday. He couldn’t have seen or heard anything significant.” Vera thought he had the tone of an irritable schoolteacher trying to drum the obvious into a stupid pupil’s head.
“You could see the field where I found Abigail from his bedroom,” Emma said slowly. She turned to Vera. “His bedroom was right at the top of the house. Afterwards, that night, we watched from the window. The spotlights and the scientists in those white paper suits. Just like tonight. We watched them carry Abigail’s body back.” She seemed lost in the memory.
“Did he spend a lot of time in his bedroom?”
“Hours,” Robert said, more irritable than ever. “I’ve explained. He wasn’t the sort of boy who needed company.”
Vera thought Emma was about to comment, but seemed to think better of it, so she stood up suddenly, scraping her chair on the tile floor.
“That’s enough for tonight; she said. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.” She touched Emma’s arm. “Before we go would you show me where the lad used to sleep?”
Emma handed the baby to James and led the way upstairs. As they reached the second landing they could hear the baby screaming. Emma paused for a moment, then the noise faded and she continued.
The room was on the third floor and much as it had been when Christopher had been sleeping there. It was long and narrow, with one long side making up the outside wall. In that there were two windows. The opposite wall was covered with book shelves. The books were mostly non fiction and looked as if they’d been collected from charity shops and jumble sales. There was a single bed with a striped quilt, and a wardrobe which had been painted white. Ice like fine lace spread up the windows from the sill and the rest of the glass was covered in a mist of condensation. The window sills were low and thick enough to sit on. Emma leaned against one and wiped a hole in the mist with her hand. Vera took the same position at the other.
“This is where we sat,” Emma said. “The two of us. You can’t see much now. You’ll need to come back in daylight.”
Vera stared out at the scene. The moonlight was pale and none of the details of the landscape were clear. “Where was the body?”
