by Ann Cleeves
‘I knew he wanted to get inside my knickers,’ Joanna said. ‘So it would have been more sensible to stay away. But this was so exciting. I had to go, didn’t I? When I got the note, no way was I going to stay away.’
‘What note?’ Vera leaned forward. The bed was soft enough, but she could have done with something to lean against and there was a crick in her neck. She wanted to stretch, but that might have given Joanna the impression that she was bored.
‘We each have a pigeonhole near reception. If there are outside phone messages or the tutors want to leave work for us, they leave them there. I had this note from Tony. Come to the glass room after lunch. A major publisher has expressed interest in your work.’
‘How did you know it was from Tony?’ Vera asked. ‘It could have been from any of the tutors. And he was a university lecturer, wasn’t he? Not a publisher.’
‘It was signed,’ Joanna said. Vera could tell the woman was making an effort to be patient. ‘Not a proper signature, but initials. And I knew Tony liked to sit in the glass room. He’d escape there most days after lunch with coffee and a brandy. I think he liked looking down on us. Literally, I mean. From the balcony he could see onto the terrace and that was where the smokers all gathered and chatted. I caught him once, listening in.’ She paused. ‘And he was much more than a university professor. He had influence, contacts in the industry.’
‘What did he get out of it?’ Vera asked. ‘I mean if he’d found you a publisher, would he get a cut?’
‘No!’ Joanna was losing patience now and struggled to make Vera understand. ‘It wasn’t about the money. It was about power. If he’d helped me become a best-selling author, I’d always have to be grateful to him, wouldn’t I? It would be like he’d created me. That was what turned him on.’ She considered her earlier assessment of Ferdinand. ‘It was power he was greedy for, not money.’
Vera still wasn’t sure she got it, and decided to stick to the facts. ‘What happened next?’
‘I knocked at the glass-room door. It’s a public room, but Tony tended to treat the place like his own. There was no answer, so I went in. There was nobody there. I thought Tony had been there. There were two coffee cups and a glass on the table. The chairs were arranged differently from usual, and I wondered if he’d been chatting to one of the other students, if someone else had received a similar offer. That was when I saw the knife.’
‘Where was it?’
‘On the floor. Next to that big plant pot. I picked it up to take back to the kitchen. I mean, in my experience that’s what knives are for. Chopping meat and peeling vegetables. Not killing people.’
‘You didn’t go onto the balcony?’
‘Obviously not.’
It was possible, Vera thought. The body wouldn’t have been visible. Not from the table.
‘Didn’t you hear the screaming?’ She would have liked to believe Joanna, but none of this made sense.
‘What screaming?’
‘Miranda Barton yelling fit to bust! I could hear her from outside. You’d surely have passed her in the corridor.’
‘I didn’t pass anyone,’ Joanna said. ‘Until I met Alex in the corridor. And I didn’t hear anyone screaming. The walls here are very thick. I wouldn’t, unless I was in the drawing room or standing outside.’ She stood up and suddenly towered over Vera, seeming very tall and strong. Had she towered over Ferdinand with a knife in her hand? ‘All I heard was music. Someone with a CD player in his room, I suppose. The Beatles.’ She looked down at the detective. ‘That was what happened. You can believe me or not, as you like.’
Chapter Five
Joe Ashworth got the call from Vera just as he was on his way home. He’d left work a bit early because it was his birthday and his wife Sarah, known in the family as Sal, had planned a family tea party. It was supposed to be a surprise – the kids adored surprises – but he knew how it would be. A home-made banner on the wall, balloons and a cake covered in candles and chocolate buttons. The bairns wild with excitement, topped up with a sugar-high after licking out the cake bowl and dipping their fingers in the icing. He loved these family events, of course, but it’d be a bugger putting them to bed afterwards, and he had his own ideas about what constituted a birthday treat. The last thing he needed was Sal fraught and knackered.
So Vera’s call, taken on the hands-free, provoked a mixed response.
‘You slipped out of the office smartish tonight.’ Her voice was amused rather than disapproving, just wanting to let him know that she was aware of what was going on, even in her absence. She’d phoned the station and they’d told her he’d already left.
‘Aye, well, it’s my birthday.’ He slowed down to pass a cyclist in helmet and lime-green Lycra.
‘I’ve got a birthday treat for you, lad.’ And he listened as she talked about the murder, recognizing her excitement. Hearing too his wife’s voice in his head: That woman’s a ghoul – the delight she takes in other people’s misery. He pulled over to the side of the road so that he could write down the details, the postcode and the OS coordinates.
‘I’m on my own at the moment,’ she said, ‘apart from a couple of plods. So quick as you can, Joe, eh?’
He sat where he was for the moment, deliberating. Should he call in quickly to the house, so that the family could do the hiding behind the sofa, jump out and wish Daddy happy birthday? It was only a couple of miles out of his way, and Vera would never know the difference. Or should he send Sal a text, explaining? But a text was the coward’s way out, and if he did that, Sal would be seething when he finally got home, even if it was at some unearthly hour of the morning. He couldn’t imagine life without Sal, thought she was the best wife in the universe, but she knew how to hold a grudge. Better face her now. He started the engine and drove off, thinking that at least he wouldn’t have the nightmare bathtime and bedtime hour to deal with.
Half an hour later he was on the road again, two slices of chocolate cake wrapped in foil on the passenger seat beside him. For some reason the kids had taken to Vera and always remembered her. They sent her gifts and paintings, which he seldom passed on. He thought she’d sneer and chuck them in the bin. She wouldn’t turn up her nose at cake, though.
He drove slowly down a narrow lane, worried that he might miss the turn to the house. There was woodland on either side of him, the bare trees caught in his headlight beams as he turned a corner. No moon. He leaned forward, his hands tense on the wheel. A shadow crossed the road ahead of him, caught just on the edge of his line of vision, and made him brake sharply, skid on the frozen fallen leaves towards the verge. He regained control of the car in time, but found he was shaking. He told himself it was nothing. A deer perhaps. Too big for a fox. Just as well he was on his own. Vera would have ridiculed his panic. What’s wrong with you, Joey-boy? Scared of your own shadow now?
He crossed the brow of the hill and suddenly the valley below him seemed full of light. He passed Vera’s Land Rover parked in a farm gateway on his left. There was no possibility after all that he would miss the place; it was the only house for miles. The entrance to the drive was marked by a lamp. To one side of the house there was a car park. As he walked towards the front door he saw a minibus with The Writers’ House painted on one side.
A uniformed female officer stood at the door. She must have recognized him because she let him in with a smile. ‘DI Stanhope said to send you straight upstairs. She’s expecting you.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘I’ll take you.’ He was a large man, the size and shape of a bear. ‘Lenny Thomas, one of the students.’ He held out a hand. ‘Is that big woman your boss, then?’
Pots and kettles, Joe thought. ‘That’s right.’
‘I’ve written a crime novel,’ Lenny said. He ambled away and Joe followed. ‘But from the perspective of the villains rather than the cops.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘I don’t suppose she’d let me in to look at the crime scene. For research, like.’
‘Not a chance.�
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‘Aye, well.’ Lenny sounded unbothered by the rejection. It seemed to Joe Ashworth that he was probably used to it. ‘No harm in asking. You know what they say: shy bairns get no cake.’ He stopped at a door. ‘They’re in there.’ Lenny added hopefully, ‘Do you need me for anything else?’
Joe thought he was like one of those big soft dogs that follow you round, desperate to be taken for a walk. ‘No thanks, mate.’ He waited for Lenny to disappear back down the hall before knocking and going inside.
He recognized Joanna Tobin at once. He’d taken a dislike to Vera’s neighbours when he first met them, thought them feckless and irresponsible, though over the years he’d recognized the work they put in on the small hill farm and had developed a grudging respect. By keeping an eye out for Vera, they took some of the pressure off him. But this was probably the first time he’d looked at Joanna properly, and now he stared at her as if she were an artist’s model and he was about to paint her. She sat against the uncurtained window in a dressing gown of blue and green silk. Her clothes were in a transparent scene bag on the floor, and a blue jersey inside matched the blue of the silk. Her legs and feet were bare and brown. There were a few remnants of polish on her toenails: vivid pink. Her hair had been tied into a loose plait, but strands had become loose and fell across her face. She was frowning and it seemed that she’d hardly noticed him come in.
‘You know Joanna Tobin,’ Vera said. ‘It seems she’s mixed up in this, one way or another.’
He nodded. Joanna looked at him and smiled.
‘We need to get Joanna back to the station to take a proper statement,’ Vera went on. ‘She admits to picking up the murder weapon, but not to killing the man.’
Joe found himself with nothing to say.
‘Organize it, will you, Joe? Don’t just stand there.’ Vera was losing her patience. ‘Get a couple of the uniforms downstairs to take her in, and ask Holly to do the interview. Drag Charlie in too. I’ll stay here while Joanna makes herself decent. You’ll have other clothes you can put on, won’t you, pet? Tell Holly to drop her home afterwards.’
‘You’re not arresting me?’ Joanna turned her gaze slowly towards Vera. Joe thought she was almost disappointed. Was she a drama junkie then? One of the weirdos that turned up at the station on occasions, admitting to crimes they’d seen on the television news.
‘Not if you didn’t kill the man,’ Vera snapped back. ‘What’s the problem? Don’t you want to go home? Scared of facing Jack, are you?’
‘I don’t know what to say to him.’
‘Whatever you like, as long as it doesn’t hurt him,’ Vera said. ‘I don’t want him turning up in my house again, like some sort of whipped mongrel.’ Then she turned to Joe and let her anger loose on him too. ‘Are you still there? Sort out transport for Joanna to the station, then tell all the other guests and staff that I want to talk to them. Herd them into one place and start putting together a list of names and contact addresses. And find out where Tony Ferdinand’s bedroom is. Tape it, and get an officer on the door. I’ll be down as soon as I can.’
Joe nodded and left the room. He was used to Vera yelling at him. It was like him shouting at the kids when he’d had a bad day – just a way of letting off steam. The time to worry was when she was being pleasant.
He wandered along the corridor and must have taken a wrong turn, because instead of coming down the narrow stone steps that Lenny had taken him up, he found himself at the top of rather a grand staircase, all curves and polished wooden balustrades.
Joe looked down into an entrance hall and beyond to a double door, which must once have been the main way into the house. Another uniformed officer stood just inside the door. The sound of a gong reverberated through the space, startling him for a moment. The noise was loud and must have been made just outside his line of vision. It seemed that murder wouldn’t stop the residents eating dinner, and a line of people crossed the hall at the foot of the stairs into what was obviously a dining room. Most carried drinks in their hands. Somewhere there must be a bar. Walking further down the stairs, he could see them inside a panelled room with an arched ceiling. A long table had been laid with silver and a white cloth, and glasses reflected the candlelight. Joe thought some of the diners had dressed especially for the meal – there were long skirts, and a couple of the men wore suits. It seemed there was no dress code, though. Lenny was still in his jeans and sweatshirt. They all took their places at the table and sat with a hushed reverence. They could have been waiting for someone to say grace. Usually, Joe supposed, they’d be talking over the matters of the day. Today there was an air of anticipation, as if nobody knew quite what to expect.
A large middle-aged woman walked to the head of the table. She was dressed in wide black trousers and a raspberry-coloured velvet jacket that was so long it reached her knees. Her unnaturally blonde hair was pinned to the top of her hair with a tortoiseshell comb. She wore a string of large, diamond-shaped black beads around her neck. She seemed to Joe to be terribly pale. Was this the woman Vera had described shouting to alert the company to the tragedy? If so, there was no sign of hysteria now, and only the pallor of her skin indicated her distress.
‘You’ll all have heard of Tony’s death,’ she said. ‘A terrible tragedy. A loss to the literary life of the country. And a sadness for poor, unbalanced Joanna and her family too. The police are in the house and have promised to cause as little disruption to our lives as possible. There is, after all, no mystery about what happened here this afternoon. I’m sure Tony would want us to continue with our programme, and we’ll do that, and although it’ll be impossible for some of his old friends to concentrate on fiction at this terrible time, we owe it to him to try.’ She poured red wine from a bottle on the table into a glass. ‘Let’s drink,’ she said, ‘to the memory of Professor Tony Ferdinand.’
The group stood up and raised their glasses. The scene had, Joe thought, a strangely theatrical air. It was as if they knew they had an audience watching them from halfway up the sweeping staircase.
He wondered what Vera would make of it, and of the general assumption that Joanna Tobin was a murderer.
Chapter Six
It seemed to Joe that Vera’s bad-tempered instructions, issued from Joanna’s room, had already been carried out. He’d found Ferdinand’s room. It had the same layout as Joanna’s, but was bigger and rather more grand. He’d stood at the door and looked in, tempted to look in drawers and pockets, but knowing the CSIs would want to be there first. The residents of the Writers’ House were all in one place. He’d give them time to eat, then he could start taking their contact details. Or perhaps Vera would be free by then. She loved being the centre of attention, and it would be like all her Christmases had come at once, to walk into that fancy dining room and lay down the law. He didn’t really do public speaking and still got nervous at the team briefings, if someone from outside was there.
He continued down the stairs. The dining-room door had been shut. He called over to the officer standing by the main entrance, ‘Keep an eye on things in there and give me a shout if it looks as if they’re coming to a close. I should be back in plenty of time, but just in case.’ He passed over a card so that the man had his mobile-phone number.
While it was quiet he wanted to get a feel for the space. Especially in the dark, with no views from the windows, he’d lost all sense of direction, of the way the house was laid out. He presumed the big double doors faced east towards the sea. He wandered around the ground floor, peering into empty rooms. It was a large house with the feel of a country hotel, and too plush for a college. There were dark wooden floors and the furniture was large and looked comfortable. The smell of flowers and furniture polish. In one room the chairs had been pulled into a semicircle facing a whiteboard, which still contained a list of underlined headings: Crime scene? Weapon? Suspects? A strange parody of the board they’d soon be looking at in the incident room back at the station. On the lecturer’s table there was a pile of
handouts. He glanced down briefly. They seemed to contain a book list. The sheet was headed North Farm Press.
He realized that there were books everywhere. They were piled on coffee tables and on the arms of chairs in the room with the whiteboard. One large room looked just like the public library in his village. There were even books in the small bar and the public lavatories. Joe wondered what his wife would make of it. She’d recently joined a book group, but he thought the attraction was more about a night out with her mates, giggling over the Pinot Grigio and nosing into someone else’s home, than a serious study of literature.
He opened the door into a large and well-equipped kitchen. A mix of industrial catering and farmhouse traditional. An Aga and a stainless-steel range cooker. A big scrubbed pine table and gleaming worktops. On one of the benches desserts had already been placed in fancy glass bowls on two big trays and covered with tea towels. Some sort of mousse, he thought, lifting the corner of the cloth. Lemon or orange with a raspberry sauce. He felt hungry and wished he’d stopped to eat his birthday cake. A big pan was still bubbling on the slow plate of the Aga. It smelled of beef and wine, herbs and garlic.
A swing door on the opposite wall opened, letting in the murmur of voices from the dining room beyond and a skinny dark man.
‘Who are you?’ The man stopped in his tracks – startled, it seemed, by the intruder into his territory.
