by Ann Cleeves
She tried to settle back under the sheets, but could tell immediately it would be impossible to rest. The shock of waking suddenly had made her muscles tense and she’d never been any good at relaxing. She got out of bed and opened the curtains. Her room looked over the sea and in the distance a light-buoy flashed. There was no wind; it would be another quiet day. She pulled a jersey over her pyjamas and made tea. Then, sitting in the easy chair by the window, her notepad on her knee, she continued to work on her short story. The words came easily and she thought that this was what she was made for.
At breakfast she found herself sitting next to Giles Rickard. Still exhilarated by the hour’s writing, she was tempted by the smell of coffee. Usually she never drank caffeine, and now, sipping from the mug, enjoying the smell and the taste, she found her body responding immediately to it. She felt alert, more awake than she had for months. She saw the arthritic hands of her companion and wondered how she would describe them if she were writing about them. It occurred to her that hands like that could never hold a knife with the firmness needed to push the blade through skin and muscle. This man at least could be no suspect. She said as much to Rickard.
‘You’ll have to tell the inspector that, my dear. I’ve already had a message from her asking if I could make myself available for a chat in the chapel this morning. That was her word. Chat. Of course she hopes that we’ll underestimate her – we’ll see her size and her clothes, and discount her obvious intellect.’
‘What are you working on at the moment?’ Nina didn’t want to discuss Ferdinand’s murder or Vera Stanhope’s investigation. She had noticed in the few days that she’d known him that Rickard enjoyed gossip. He revelled in it like a lonely old woman, could be spiteful and bitchy, though he was always charming to one’s face. She suspected that she might have been the object of his venom herself on occasions and didn’t want to give him further ammunition.
Besides, this was an opportunity to pick the brains of one of the most successful crime writers of his generation. Did he plan his work in detail in advance? And what were the commercial pressures? Did he feel the need to turn out the same kind of book each time?
‘I’ve more or less given up writing altogether,’ Rickard said. ‘It became rather a chore, you know. A means to an end. I considered the last six books as my retirement fund.’
‘Then why did you agree to come here?’ Recklessly Nina reached out to pour more coffee. She saw that her hands were trembling very slightly, the effect already of the caffeine. ‘If you don’t even enjoy writing, it must be tedious for you, discussing your work with the students.’
For a moment there was no answer, and Nina wondered if the old man had considered her question impertinent.
‘It was a matter of unfinished business,’ Rickard said at last. ‘Yes, I think that’s how you might describe it.’
She was going to follow up with another question when she heard a loud voice in the reception hall outside the dining room. Around her the other residents fell silent and Joanna Tobin walked through the door. She stood just inside the room, making an entrance.
‘I hope you’ve all saved some bacon for me,’ Joanna said. ‘I’m starving.’
She was dressed even more flamboyantly than she had been at the beginning of the writers’ course, in black canvas trousers and a silk top of clashing oranges and pinks. The equivalent of war paint. But Nina thought she looked white and strained.
There was a moment of awkward silence while the other residents stared at the newcomer. ‘Come and sit next to me,’ Nina said. Her voice sounded forced, overly jolly. ‘I’ll get you something.’ She found the hostility embarrassing, and was glad to turn her back on the group to fetch Joanna’s breakfast.
Walking back from the serving table, Nina saw that Joanna and Rickard sat without speaking, the space where she’d been sitting an invisible wall between them. She was disappointed; she’d hoped the old man might make some gesture of welcome, even if only to irritate the rest of the house. She set a plate of food in front of Joanna, but the woman hardly seemed to notice.
‘Why did you come back?’
Joanna looked up at her, and her voice was loud enough for the whole room to hear her answer. ‘The bursary was for the whole course. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘What did Vera Stanhope make of your decision to stay on the course?’
‘The police haven’t charged me,’ Joanna said. ‘I’m a free woman. It doesn’t have anything to do with bossy Vera.’
As if on cue, Vera Stanhope appeared at the dining-room door. Nina thought the whole meal had the air of a tense Whitehall farce. Everyone was overacting like mad and making dramatic entrances. Soon people would be diving out of windows and taking their clothes off.
Vera walked towards the table and nodded to Joanna. The room was still quiet, so they could all hear. But if they were expecting an angry confrontation, and to see Joanna being led away again, they were disappointed. ‘I thought I saw your Jack’s van driving away up the lane,’ the inspector said easily. ‘I hope he’s sorted out his MOT. We wouldn’t want him picked up by the plods on the A1.’
Joanna grinned, but didn’t answer. Giles Rickard was struggling to get to his feet. Vera moved towards him, and Nina assumed she was there to help him out of his seat, to take him into the chapel for their chat.
‘You stay where you are, Mr Rickard,’ Vera said. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to postpone our little meeting. I need a few words with another of the guests first, and it’s a bit more urgent.’ She turned to Nina. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with us, Ms Backworth. We’ve just got a few more questions.’
It was the last thing Nina had been expecting. She began to blush. She followed Vera out of the dining room, aware that everyone was staring at her. She felt like a girl pulled out in front of a school assembly for a misdemeanour she hadn’t realized she’d committed.
In the chapel the lamps were lit because the narrow windows let in so little daylight. The table and chairs were as they’d previously been, at the head of the nave, like a stageset in a theatre. The inspector lowered herself into one of the seats and gestured Nina to take another. Nina was aware of Joe Ashworth leaning against the bare wall as she walked in, but from where she sat he was outside her line of view.
‘Can I help you, Inspector?’ Nina knew she could come across as haughty. She thought that she and Joanna had a similar defence against the world: they became hard and brittle. Confrontational. ‘I’ve already given you a very full statement.’
‘So you did.’ Vera shut her eyes for a moment. It was as if she was rerunning the previous interview in her head. She opened them suddenly. ‘But other facts have since come to light.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Mr Ferdinand died from knife wounds. He was stabbed repeatedly. It seemed odd to us from the start that he put up so little resistance. He was a tall man. Middle-aged, perhaps, but physically fit and, if someone came at him with a knife, you’d have thought he’d put up a bit of a fight.’ Vera paused. Nina saw that she was expected to comment, but what could she say? She pictured an intruder in the glass room, the damp heat and the plants, the knife and the blood, but still she could feel little sympathy for Ferdinand. So she remained silent.
‘Ferdinand didn’t fight back because he was drugged,’ Vera went on. ‘He’d hardly have been aware of what was happening. Maybe he was killed on the balcony because that was where he lost consciousness. He’d have been given the pills earlier in the day. During lunch perhaps. Or maybe Ferdinand fell asleep in one of the chairs in the glass room and the killer yanked him out and half-carried him outside. Thoughtful enough not to make a mess on the smart tiled floor. We probably won’t know, unless the murderer tells us.’
‘This is very interesting, Inspector,’ Nina said, ‘but I don’t understand what it has to do with me.’ And the first part of the statement at least was true. She did find the means of Tony Ferdinand’s death interesting. Could she work something s
imilar into her story? All writers are parasites, she thought again.
‘It has everything to do with you, Ms Backworth.’ The detective’s voice seemed unnaturally clear, jerking Nina away from her fiction. ‘You take sleeping pills.’
‘Yes, I suffer from insomnia. My GP prescribes them.’
‘And your pills have the same chemical composition as the drug found in Ferdinand’s body, according to the toxicology report that we received from the pathologist this morning. He’d have taken them earlier in the day. As I say, they could have been added to his lunch or his coffee. You’ll know yourself that they don’t work immediately. You told me that you were sitting close to Professor Ferdinand that lunchtime.’
There was a silence. Nina felt the mindless panic that had struck her when she’d woken that morning, the sense that her world had been invaded and that there was nothing she could do to control it. Then things started to come to life again. Her brain slipped back into gear.
Her first impulse was to fight back, to protest about her personal belongings being searched, invoke her human rights, threaten an action for breach of privacy. She realized in time that such a response would be counter-productive. She had to present herself as a reasonable, intelligent woman. ‘I didn’t kill Tony Ferdinand,’ she said calmly. ‘I didn’t poison him and I didn’t stab him.’
Vera flashed her a smile. ‘Aye, well, pet, no doubt you would say that. Even if you were the killer. Have you noticed if any of your pills have gone missing?’
Nina pictured the brown plastic bottle, kept in her washbag. She hadn’t taken any tablets the night before. Her doctor had told her they’d be ineffective if she used them too often.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, no, I haven’t noticed.’
‘Had you told anyone here that you had them in your possession?’
Nina thought back. Had she mentioned her insomnia on the first evening of the course? Everyone had seemed so tense and ill at ease, talking too much as they clasped their glasses of wine, trying to make an impression, and she’d admitted that she too felt anxious in this new place and in this gathering of strangers. ‘Most people knew I had problems sleeping,’ she said. ‘I didn’t talk about taking stuff for it.’
‘But someone might have put two and two together?’
‘I suppose so.’ But Nina was sceptical. This all sounded too elaborate to her. Murder wasn’t a parlour game, the moves planned out in advance. Surely it was usually a brutal outburst of anger, sudden and unforeseen? Not in her story, of course. The action there was as elegant as a Regency dance. But in real life.
‘I’m trying to help you out here!’ Vera said. ‘If your pills weren’t stolen, you become the murderer. You do see that?’
Nina didn’t answer.
Vera suddenly seemed to lose patience. ‘Take Sergeant Ashworth to your room and show him your tablets,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to take them away, of course. Do you keep your room locked?’
‘Only from the inside at night,’ Nina said. ‘Not during the day.’
‘Ever had the feeling that someone’s been in there, rifling through your things?’
‘No,’ Nina said. ‘Never.’
It seemed to be the answer Vera was expecting. ‘Get along!’ she said. ‘I have other people to see.’
Chapter Fifteen
Ashworth didn’t know what to make of Nina Backworth. She was the sort of woman who would usually terrify him. But following her up the main stairs away from the lobby he found himself aware of her body, a sudden and powerful attraction that left him breathless. At her bedroom door she turned and gave an unexpected grin:
‘I thought police officers were supposed to be fit.’
He felt confused, unsure what to make of the observation – had she noticed the effect she was having on him? His words came out as brusque, almost rude.
‘The pills, Ms Backworth, if you don’t mind.’
Her room was on the same floor as those of all the other tutors. While she went into the bathroom, he stood by the window and looked out at the sea, trying to regain his composure. At an angle below him was the terrace, with its wrought-iron furniture. The garden, rather overgrown and unkempt, sloped steeply to a path that led down to the beach.
He looked back into the room. It had a faint smell of citrus. Her perfume. He’d noticed it as he’d come up the stairs. Everything was ordered. She’d made her own bed, and her pyjamas – white silk – were folded on the pillow. On the desk were a notebook and a fountain pen, neatly aligned. He hadn’t realized that anyone wrote with a real pen and ink any more. He was thinking how classy she was, well outside his sphere, when she returned from the bathroom carrying a red toilet bag.
‘The pills are inside,’ she said. ‘I didn’t touch the bottle. I thought I might smudge fingerprints. Something like that.’
Her prints would already be on the bottle, of course, but he should have thought of that, should focus now entirely on the task in hand. This was ridiculous. He was behaving like a teenager. Though when he’d been a teenager he’d already had his future mapped out. He’d met his wife when he was still at school. Sixteen years old and I was already middle-aged.
He took a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and, using it as a glove, he slipped the bottle inside. Then he held it to the light and tilted it so that he could count the tablets.
‘There are four left,’ he said. ‘Is that what you would have expected?’
‘No.’ He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her face was white and set. The red lipstick like a splash of fresh blood on her face. ‘My GP gave me a prescription for a month’s supply. I’d used about ten.’
He did the arithmetic in his head and checked it before he spoke. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of this woman. ‘So there are sixteen missing?’
‘I can’t be precise, but certainly about that. At least a dozen.’ She slumped, so that she was sitting on the bed, leaning forward. The straight spine and upright posture were so characteristic of Nina Backworth that it seemed another, more vulnerable woman was there. A stranger. ‘Someone came into my room,’ she said. ‘They went through my things.’
He wanted to sit on the bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s a horrible feeling.’ The words seemed inadequate to him.
‘So you believe me? You know I didn’t poison Tony Ferdinand?’ Something of the old spark returned. ‘You know I wouldn’t be so foolish as to use my own sleeping pills!’
Ashworth took a moment to answer. ‘My job’s not about belief,’ he said. ‘It’s about fact. Evidence.’
She looked up at him. ‘Then do your job,’ she said. ‘Find your evidence. Prove that I didn’t kill Ferdinand.’
Downstairs Vera was waiting for him. ‘Charlie’s coming over to pick up the pills,’ she said. ‘He’s bringing some stuff he’s dug up about Ferdinand and Lenny Thomas.’
Ashworth nodded. He knew it was ridiculous, but Nina’s words had given him a new energy, a new determination. ‘We’ve got time to fit in an interview with Rickard, then. And Charlie won’t mind waiting if he can get his hands on coffee and a home-made biscuit.’
Vera looked at him. ‘Did your lass put something in your tea this morning?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You seem like a new man.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to lead on the interview with Rickard? I mean, I know there might be some history with Joanna, so maybe you’re better doing it.’
But Ashworth shook his head. Rickard was a writer, intimidating, and anyway at the moment he wasn’t sure he’d be able to concentrate. ‘Nah, you do it. I’ll sit in.’ And from the beginning of the interview he could tell he’d made a wise decision. Vera was at her sharpest, her most outrageous and clever.
From the moment Rickard came into the chapel, leaning on a stick and struggling to push open the heavy door, Ashworth couldn’t get past the fact that this was an old man. Old men weren’t murderers. It wasn’t just th
at it seemed physically impossible: Rickard couldn’t have stabbed Ferdinand, and certainly couldn’t have lifted him from the wicker chair in the glass room and out onto the balcony. It was more than that. In Ashworth’s mind, old people weren’t wicked. Vera seemed not to share this inhibition, and Ashworth wondered if that had something to do with her relationship with her father. Horrible Hector, she called him, or my beastly father, though she’d spent most of her life looking after him.
Now Vera was leaning forward across the desk towards Rickard.
‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why you’re here at all. You’re a famous writer. Even I’ve heard of you. Seen your books in WH Smith at Central Station in town. So why give up your precious time to spend a week on the Northumberland coast?’ She smiled and stretched back in her chair, waiting for the old man to speak.
Rickard hadn’t expected the question. Ashworth thought he’d anticipated a gentle and routine interview, that he’d be treated with deference because of his age and his celebrity.
‘Perhaps, Inspector, I feel the need to give something back to the writing community. Success is such a matter of luck, and mine certainly has little to do with the quality of my work.’ He gave a little smile, apparently pleased with his answer.
‘Don’t give me that crap.’ Her voice was icy. ‘Did you know Joanna Tobin would be here, before you agreed to be a tutor?’
There was another silence. Through the window Ashworth saw that the sun had come out. From here, the blue sky gave the initial appearance of a summer’s day, but even with this restricted view he saw that the light was different. Colder. And the shadows would be longer. There must be a coffee break; students had spilled out into the courtyard. He couldn’t see them from where he was sitting, but Rickard had left the chapel door open and he could hear the voices outside and smell the cigarette smoke.
