by Ann Cleeves
“Come back,” he said. “Whenever you want to talk.”
She didn’t know what to make of that and left without answering. Outside she stood for a moment, trying to recover her composure, before going home. On the other side of the road, the bulky figure of Vera Stanhope appeared in the bakery door. She crooked her finger and beckoned for Emma to join her. Like the witch, Emma thought, out of Hansel and Gretel, tempting her into the gingerbread house. And like the children, she felt compelled to obey.
“What have you been up to?” Vera asked.
“I went for a walk. Bumped into Dan. He invited me in for coffee.”
“Did he now.” There was a pause, loaded with a significance Emma couldn’t guess at. Then Vera added lightly, “At your age you should know better than to go off with strange men.”
“Dan Greenwood’s not strange.”
There was another pause. “Maybe not. All the same, just take care.” The same instruction Joe Ashworth had given at their last meeting. The inspector turned away with a little wave and Emma was left with the impression that she’d been warned off.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Michael Long hadn’t seen Vera for days. Not to speak to. He’d glimpsed her across the street, and once he’d approached her, but she just gave a friendly wave and continued on her way as if she was too busy to talk. At least he thought that was the impression she’d wanted to give and he didn’t think it was fair. He deserved better than that. Not only was he Jeanie’s father, he was the man who’d pointed Vera in the right direction when it came to Keith Mantel. And he was an important witness, the last person to have seen Christopher Winter alive. Michael would never have put it that way, but he felt like a jilted lover. He wanted Vera to take some notice of him again. He stayed at home in case she called. Whenever there was a knock on the door, he hoped it might be her.
Then he thought, Sod it. He wasn’t going to hang around for any woman. He’d do his own research, collect his own information and he’d show her. He imagined presenting her with a fat file on Mantel, all organized and typed. It would provide her with everything she needed to show the man was a murderer. Because that was what Michael wanted to prove to her. Mantel was a monster who’d killed his own daughter and the young Winter lad. And Mantel was to blame for
Jeanie being locked up all that time, for her desperation and suicide.
He got the bus into the town up the coast where Mantel had first made his money. He knew it had a decent-sized library. The high school was there too and he shared the bus with kids on their way in. He told himself this was a nuisance and indeed the noise of shrieking girls and boys locked in continual mock battle irritated him to distraction. He muttered under his breath about feckless parents and bringing back national service. But it had its compensations. The bus was full and he was squeezed on a bench seat which faced into the aisle. Beside him was a girl of fourteen or fifteen, with a white powdery face and narrow eyes lined in black. She seemed too dignified for the chaos surrounding her and was annoyed as he was by the shouting and chucking of missiles. She sat with her legs crossed at the knee and her bag on her lap. “Why don’t you just grow up?” she snapped at a lad with a face scarred with acne when a pencil sharpener missed its target and hit her arm. Then she turned to Michael and rolled her eyes conspiratorially, as if they were the only sane ones there.
When they got off in Crill, in the windswept square close to the se afront he was reluctant to let her go. He was tempted to follow her, just for the pleasure of watching her walk. She had a straight back, long legs, a’ haughty tilt to her head. But he told himself he had work to do. In the square, council workmen were erecting Christmas lights from a truck with a hydraulic lift. The library was a grand building with pillars in the front and wide stone steps leading to a double door. It was shut and wouldn’t open until nine thirty. His irritation returned. He ranted under his breath about the idleness of the staff. He could have walked with the girl as far as the school, after all. Then he told himself it wouldn’t do to get into a state. Peg had always warned him he would get into serious bother one day if he didn’t learn to calm down.
He asked one of the workmen where he could get a coffee and he was pointed down a narrow street. The place was called Val’s Diner and was full of noise and steam. It reminded him of the cafe on the Point. The bacon in his sandwich was just as he liked it crisp and brittle and his temper improved. These days, he thought, it took something that small to alter his mood. He wondered if he’d always been like that and if everyone was the same.
He knew the woman who ran the local history library. She was called Lesley and she was efficient and jolly with a loud voice, which made the readers in the reference section look up and tut in disapproval. He’d first met her just before he’d retired. He’d started to get nostalgic about what he was giving up. Lesley held the archive of the lifeboat station and the pilot office on the Point, and he’d come in to look up the history. There’dbeen one photo, he remembered, of the house where he’d lived all those years with Peg. It had been taken in the twenties, and the Point had been quite different then. The dunes had stretched further and the two cottages and the lighthouse had been the only buildings. Outside their cottage, a man with a large grey moustache had been leaning against the wall by the front door, glaring out at the camera.
Lesley was sitting at her desk and looked up when she saw him approaching. He could see from her face that she’d read about Jeanie in the papers, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even show that she recognized him, which he found upsetting, because when he’d been doing his research into the Point, he’d thought she liked him. He explained that he was interested in the back issues of the local paper going back twenty, even thirty years. “They are available?”
“Oh yes,” she said, and she smiled. “Are you after anything specific?” Because she was still sitting at her desk, she seemed to be squinting up at him.
“No! Nothing like that. Just general interest.” Immediately he was sorry that he’d been so sharp, but she hadn’t seemed to have noticed. She sat him in front of the microfiche machine and showed him how to use it, repeating the instructions patiently when he asked her to.
“If you need anything, just give me a shout.” Her voice carried across the large room and she could have been talking to any of the customers there.
He started at the time of Abigail’s murder and worked back. At first he found himself distracted by other stories. Not the murder. He moved quickly past that and when he came across a photo of Jeanie he shut his eyes. He couldn’t bear the thought of her captured in the machine where anyone could come and stare at her. It was the less dramatic stories which caught his attention. The largest container ship ever to come into the Humber. Cows wandering across the river at low tide and becoming stranded on a sandbank. A festival of tall ships in the estuary. When he looked up at the clock on the wall it was nearly eleven and he’d found nothing useful. He forced himself to move on more quickly and began to find mentions of
Keith Mantel. Flashes in words and photographs. Michael began tracking him back in time. It was like watching a jerky old film played in reverse.
The most recent reports, the ones he came to first, were positive and he had to stop himself from sneering out loud. There was a picture of Keith Mantel standing beside a giant cardboard cheque, Mantel Development’s donation to a charity which provided respite care for disabled children. A beaming girl reached out from her wheelchair to hold the other end of the cheque. Keith Mantel with a group of others, appointed as NHS trustees for the local hospital. Keith Mantel in Wellingtons, planting a tree in the wildlife garden of a junior school. Michael muttered under his breath about the gullibility of the public, but looking at the smiling, confident face, he thought if he hadn’t known any better, if he hadn’t tangled with Mantel in the village, he’d have fallen for it too. He’d have believed in Mantel, the entrepreneur with a social conscience.
As he followed Mantel’s story bac
k, 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, bu
t 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.
