The Healers

by Cleeves, Ann

  Then there was a silence. On the river a boat’s hooter sounded.

  ‘Twelve’s a difficult age, isn’t it?’ Sally said. ‘They’re just starting to grow up. Was Faye difficult?’

  Joan Irving became tense again. Her spine straightened and her knees locked together.

  ‘She never liked Ron,’ Joan said. ‘She made things difficult, right from the start.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Cheeking him. Not doing what she was told.’

  ‘Was he strict then?’

  Joan was defensive. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really. I suppose I’d let her have her own way too much. There just being the two of us. Ron said I’d spoilt her.’

  ‘Why did she leave home? Did Ron tell her to go?’

  ‘No! He wouldn’t have done that. He knows what’s right.’

  But he made things so uncomfortable for Faye, Sally thought, that she was forced to leave.

  Joan Irving was continuing. ‘He had rules,’ she said. ‘He wanted to know where she was and who she was with. There was nothing wrong with that. Faye was always wilful. She didn’t see he wanted the best for her.’

  ‘So there were rows?’

  Joan nodded. ‘About her staying out late and make-up, and the clothes she was wearing. Always rows.’

  ‘It must have been a relief when she decided to leave home.’

  Joan looked at her suspiciously. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was.’

  ‘But you kept in touch with her? You went to see her? Helped her find somewhere to live?’

  ‘I did at first. Ron works one weekend in four. On the Saturday he was working I’d go into Otterbridge to see her. To keep an eye. She was always wild.’

  ‘You went to her bedsit?’

  Joan nodded.

  ‘And was she all right? Managing?’

  ‘It was tidy enough, but then she knew when I was coming. I don’t know what it was like the rest of the time.’

  ‘Wasn’t she lonely, on her own?’

  ‘She said not, but then she would. Pride being one of her faults.’

  ‘Why did you stop going to see her, Mrs Irving? Was it because Ron found out?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘She got herself a boyfriend.’

  ‘And didn’t she want you to meet him? Or didn’t you approve? She was sixteen. Old enough to have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Not that boyfriend,’ Joan Irving said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was bad for her. Took her off to pagan festivals. Introduced her to all that wickedness.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  Joan shook her head. ‘He was called James,’ she said. ‘I remember that. Came from a nice home too, according to Faye. He should have known better.’

  ‘She discussed the New Age ideas with you?’

  ‘She talked about them all right!’ Even after all this time Joan was indignant. ‘She said it would help me. I ought to go along to some group. Meet this Mrs Pocock. Then I wouldn’t be so uptight. I told her, “ I’m not uptight, my girl. I just know right from wrong.”’

  ‘So you stopped going to see her.’

  Joan nodded. ‘She would have thought I approved. Besides,’ she added honestly, ‘Ron would have killed me if he’d found out.’

  ‘And you never saw her again?’

  Joan shook her head sadly. ‘ I couldn’t, you see, I had my principles. Faye would have understood that.’

  ‘Did she ever try to get in touch with you?’

  ‘She sent me a postcard,’ Joan said. ‘The summer before she died.’

  ‘Where from?’ Sally said. ‘ Perhaps you kept the card?’

  ‘No,’ Joan said. ‘Ron made me get rid of it. But I remember where it was from. Mittingford. There was a picture of the church. I thought she’d chosen it specially. She’d think I’d like that.’

  She sat back in her chair with her eyes closed.

  ‘What was she doing in Mittingford?’ Sally asked. ‘Did she say? Was she there on holiday?’

  Joan shook her head. ‘She’d got a summer job there when she finished college in July. A sort of au pair. Minding a couple of bairns while their mother was at work. That’s what she wrote on the card.’

  ‘Did she mention James?’

  ‘No, I hoped she’d packed him in, left all that wickedness behind.’

  ‘Did she say exactly where she was staying?’

  ‘No,’ Joan said. She looked at Sally Wedderburn, hoping for understanding. ‘If she had I might have gone there to see her.’

  Outside Hunter had given up his wait on the pavement and was sitting in the car. He hit the horn impatiently.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hunter was uncomfortably aware that he’d had too much to drink at lunchtime. He’d taken Sally to a little pub he knew near the river. He’d planned it before the farce at the Irving house, hoping to impress, but he’d needed a drink after that. Several drinks. There’d been a row. Now, sitting moodily in the car, waiting for James McDougal to come home from school he thought he hadn’t been interested in Sally Wedderburn. Not seriously. He saw vaguely that the desire to impress had become a habit, an object in its own right, and his thoughts returned to Lily Jackman, who wouldn’t be taken in anyway by a smart pub lunch.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Sally said. ‘He’s been there all the time.’

  They had rung the doorbell but when there was no answer had assumed that he was still out. Now they saw that he must have been in the garden, at the back. He came round to the front with a pair of shears and began to chop furiously at the privet which separated the house from the property next door.

  Sally Wedderburn got out of the car.

  ‘Do you want me to come?’ Hunter said nastily. ‘Or do you think you can handle this better on your own too?’

  For a moment Sally was tempted to reply but she shrugged and said nothing. The boy heard their footsteps on the gravel and turned to face them nervously, holding the shears in front of him like a weapon.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sally said. ‘ We’re from the police.’ She held out her identification. The boy looked at it then relaxed.

  ‘Sorry to be so jumpy,’ he said. ‘ I know it’s silly…’

  ‘Quite natural I’d have thought,’ Sally said. ‘I’m afraid we want to ask you some more questions. Is that OK?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He was unenthusiastic but not rude. He led them round the back of the house and in through the kitchen door.

  ‘What a lovely garden!’ Sally said.

  ‘Yeah. Mum loved gardening. She did it all herself. It was starting to get untidy. Dad’s not bothered. I wouldn’t be normally but Mum would have liked it sorted out.’ He flushed.

  ‘You’ve been to school today?’ Hunter asked. James was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt, but you couldn’t tell. Sixth-formers were allowed to wear anything these days.

  ‘I couldn’t face it,’ the boy said. ‘They understand …’ He stared out into the garden then turned back to face Hunter. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Did you know a girl called Faye Cooper?’

  ‘Faye? Yes. She was my girlfriend. For a while.’

  ‘Until she died?’

  ‘No. She packed me in before that. Found someone else.’ The words were bitter. He screwed up his face like a child trying not to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘ I still get upset. I’ve never met anyone else like her. At least when she was alive there was some hope that we’d get back together…’

  He got up abruptly and pulled a can of Coke from the fridge. ‘You want one?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Do you know the name of the lad she went out with after you?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘It was no lad,’ James said angrily. ‘At least that was the impression she gave. Someone mature. More mature than me at least. She never told me his name. And then she took that summer job in Mittingford so I couldn’t pester her. That’s what she
said. Just because I was younger than her, still at school, there was no need to treat me like a kid.’

  ‘You were jealous then?’ Hunter said.

  ‘Of course I was jealous. I wanted her back.’ He ripped back the ring on the Coke can.

  ‘Where did you first meet Faye?’ Sally asked.

  ‘In a pub in town. She’d just moved to Otterbridge and she didn’t know anyone. We started chatting. We liked the same music, shared the same ideas.’

  ‘The New Age thing?’

  ‘I suppose so, though I’ve never been sure what that means. It’s only a label, isn’t it, now? Used by the press. But she cared about more than making money and having a good time. I liked that. And her independence. She lived by herself, you know. Her parents had thrown her out. She had a bedsit over the bookie’s in Bridge Street. She didn’t have much money but she made it really nice in the end. I helped her. Decorating, going to jumbles and car boot sales to pick up stuff for her. I spent a lot of time in that place …’

  ‘The belief in alternative therapy was one of the things you shared?’ Sally asked. She had to repeat the question. He was still, dreaming of long lazy afternoons and Faye.

  ‘Yeah. It was part of being open to new ways of looking at things. First we went to a talk by Magda. Faye was dead enthusiastic then and asked me to take her to the Sunday group in Mittingford. She never had any transport and Mum let me borrow her car.’

  ‘Then your mother got involved too?’

  ‘Yes. I explained to Inspector Ramsay about that. But Faye was always the most heavily into it. Mum and I were more detached, more critical. Faye swallowed it whole. I suppose she needed something definite to hold on to.’

  ‘Your mother was at Juniper Hall when Faye died?’

  ‘Yes.’ He took a gulp from the Coke can. ‘What is all this about? Why are you so interested in Faye?’

  ‘We received an anonymous letter this morning. It implied that Faye’s death was connected to your mother’s murder.’ Hunter paused. ‘I don’t suppose you sent that letter?’

  ‘Of course not. If I’d had anything to tell you I’d have come right out with it.’

  There was a silence, then he asked: ‘ Do you think Faye was murdered too?’

  ‘There’s no evidence of that,’ Sally said carefully. ‘ Did your mother tell you about the accident when she came back from Juniper Hall?’

  ‘Of course. She was dreadfully upset. She’d liked Faye. Not just because she was my girlfriend.’

  ‘She never expressed any doubt that it was an accident?’

  He shook his head. ‘She said no one knew how it happened. It was a mystery.’

  ‘When was the last time you heard from Faye?’

  ‘At the beginning of the summer holidays when she went off to work in Mittingford.’ His voice became hard. ‘She was terribly kind. Told me there was someone else, that she was very fond of me but that I was to leave her alone.’

  ‘Do you know where she was working in Mittingford?’

  ‘Didn’t you realize?’ He was surprised by their ignorance, shocked by their incompetence. ‘She worked for Daniel and Win Abbot as a sort of nanny. She looked after the kids, did a bit of cleaning.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think they were paying her very much but when I asked her about that she told me to mind my own business. She said she’d have done it for nothing.’

  ‘It would help us to know if Faye was particularly lonely or unhappy just before she died. Do you know anything about that? Perhaps she talked to your mother at Juniper Hall? It sounds as if they were close.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Mum didn’t say…’

  He seemed lost again in thoughts of his own. Through the open window they could hear a woodpecker drumming on one of the oaks at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘Would Faye have been capable of suicide?’ Sally asked carefully.

  James considered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think she would. She was wild, you know. You had the impression that in the end she had nothing to lose.’

  ‘Except the new boyfriend.’

  ‘Yes. Except him. If anything went wrong there I think she’d have been pretty desperate.’

  He sat in a gloomy silence. Sally and Hunter looked at each other.

  ‘Is there anyone else she might have confided in?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Magda perhaps. Or the Abbots.’

  ‘No special college friends?’

  ‘No. She was always a loner.’

  He stood up. ‘ Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can stand much more of this. I ought to get on with the garden.’

  ‘There’s nothing else you can think of?’ Hunter demanded. He was reluctant to let the boy go. He wanted a result from the interview and the bloated feeling caused by too much beer made him belligerent.

  James paused. ‘If you want to know Faye’s state of mind before she died you should look in her diary. She might not have confided in the rest of us but she bared her soul in that.’

  ‘She would have had it with her at Juniper Hall?’

  He nodded. ‘She took it everywhere with her. And she certainly didn’t leave it in the bedsit. Mum and I went and cleared all her stuff out of there.’

  He stood, quite still.

  ‘I looked in her diary once. Just before she chucked me. Perhaps she meant me to see it… We were in her bedsit and she went out to the bathroom. Usually she hid it away in a drawer somewhere, but it had been left out on the windowsill. I know I shouldn’t have looked but it was too much of a temptation. That’s how I found out she was seeing another bloke.’ His face twisted into a miserable grin. ‘She called me “ sweet” in it. I suppose she meant that as a compliment.’

  ‘What did the diary tell you about her new boyfriend?’

  ‘Not much.’ Then he recited, as if he had learned it by heart: ‘”I wonder what it would be like to be a farmer’s wife. I really like the idea.” I supposed then that the bloke she’d been seeing was working on a farm. And that she must have thought there was a future to the relationship. After all, she never talked about marrying me.’

  Hunter and Sally stared at each other. Surely Ernie Bowles couldn’t have been Faye’s secret lover. Not of a pretty young girl like that! James was quite unaware of the reaction he had caused. He picked up the shears from the kitchen floor and said firmly that he had nothing else to tell them.

  Later he wondered if that was quite true.

  When he finished in the garden he lay on his bed. It was still light and his father was not yet back from the university. He seemed to be spending less and less time at home. James tried to remember the last evening he had spent with his mother, the Sunday evening before she was killed. The details were remarkably vivid.

  Charles had been sulking. He had spent all evening in his study and had hardly spoken to them. Val had gone off to Magda’s group and when she returned she was strangely subdued. When Charles was out of the way James had teased her about it. They were sitting in his bedroom. She was helping him pack for the geography field trip, piling clean clothes on the bed, but really just wanting the excuse to talk about what had happened. He’d switched down the music so they could chat.

  ‘Was it good?’ he had said, slightly mocking. After all, he felt that he had grown out of that. ‘New insights? Lots of personal growth?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she had said, but not so enthusiastic as she usually was.

  He could picture her, still wearing the leggings and loose sweater she had put on for the Old Chapel group, squatting over his rucksack, looking up at him frowning.

  ‘What went wrong?’ he had asked. ‘Something blocking the energy? People too uptight to get anything out of it?’

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ she had said. Then: ‘Don’t you think there’s a danger that we can know ourselves and other people too well. There’s a need for privacy, even for self-delusion.’

  He had shrugged, not sure what she expected of him, not in
the mood to be heavy.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to go back there,’ she had said, and he had sensed that she shivered slightly although the day was not cold. ‘It’s served its purpose. It’s time to move on.’

  Now, lying on his bed in the last of the sunshine, he wondered if she had told anyone else of her decision.

  On the way back to Mittingford the atmosphere between Sally and Gordon Hunter was more cordial, or at least slightly less frosty. There was a shared sense of achievement. They had valuable information to take back to Ramsay. They had perhaps even discovered a connection between Val McDougal and Ernie Bowles. It was possible, they told each other, that Faye had seen in Ernie some sort of father figure, that he was the man in the diary.

  But when they returned to the Mittingford incident room, Ramsay could not accept it. The Faye he had come to know through reading the police reports was passionate, enthusiastic. She would have nothing to do with the grubby, overweight farmer from Laverock Farm, no matter how much she needed a father. He settled the matter by phoning Win Abbot. She would not talk to him for long. In the background he heard a baby screaming and she seemed preoccupied. But she knew that Faye had had a boyfriend. He sensed rather that she disapproved.

  ‘Was he a local man?’ Ramsay asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘She went out with Peter Richardson. His father farms Long Edge.’

  ‘The farm next to Laverock?’

  ‘Yes,’ Win said. ‘That’s right. I’m not quite sure what she saw in him.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sean Slater was setting about making himself indispensable. Whatever happened to Laverock Farm he wanted to be involved. After years of drifting he thought he had found a project he could believe in. At least that’s what he told Lily. At the back of his mind there were other ideas which he would have found hard to confess to her. Marriage, children. He saw Laverock Farm as a way of finally tying her down.

  Already they had moved from the caravan into the house. Somehow he had persuaded Bowles’s solicitors that it would be safer. The security was dreadful and they could keep an eye on the place. The Abbots had not been able to refuse.

  ‘It’s only camping,’ Sean had said to Lily. ‘But at least there’s room to swing a cat.’ And it stakes our claim, he thought.