The Mill on the Shore

by Ann Cleeves

  Phil and Cathy were waiting for them. Sharland must have phoned to warn them that the relationship between Mardon Wools and Nick Lineham had been discovered. Phil was subdued and washed out. All the energy and bounce had gone. He alternated between defiance and apology but beneath the occasional blusters he was profoundly miserable.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d both be around tonight. To gloat.’

  ‘No,’ George said. ‘Not to gloat. To get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to have principles,’ Phil said with one of his sudden outbursts of anger. ‘You can afford them, George. If the TCE leak had been made public all those years ago I’d have lost my job. I had a wife and a child to support. I suppose you think I should have gone to the authorities and said what a bad boy I’d been. It wasn’t even my mistake!’

  ‘It might have been easier,’ George said flatly. ‘ In the long run.’

  ‘It wasn’t even my decision!’ Cairns said, pity and self-justification taking over once more. ‘The directors decreed that the thing had to be kept quiet. If I’d come out into the open with it they’d have sacked me, made me a scapegoat. I couldn’t win.’

  The three of them had been standing in the kitchen and Phil turned suddenly and led them into the living room where Cathy was sitting in a rocking chair, staring into the fire.

  ‘Look, love!’ he said with mock surprise. ‘We’ve got visitors. George and Molly. Isn’t that nice?’

  She turned slowly, not seeming to recognize the sarcasm, and nodded.

  ‘I suppose you’ll feel you have to go to the NRA,’ Phil continued bitterly. ‘ Do your duty as an environmentally concerned citizen.’

  George did not say that he had already been to the NRA. Let Phil think, for the moment, that all his information had come from Sharland.

  ‘That’s not really my business,’ he said. ‘Especially after all this time …’

  ‘No,’ Phil said. ‘It’s not your bloody business.’

  ‘If it were an ongoing problem it might be a different matter …’

  Still Phil did not respond.

  ‘I was concerned, for example, to discover that there’d been another, more recent leak.’

  Phil was astounded. ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘Jimmy told me. In a way. And then there was that swan on the shore.’

  ‘So it was a guess,’ Phil said. ‘Is that it? You’ve no proof. I know you’ve not got the swan. I disposed of that myself.’

  ‘There is proof,’ George said. ‘Jimmy had proof. He took a water sample from the Mardon Wools outfall.’

  Phil was silent.

  ‘It was an accident and it’s sorted now,’ he said at last. ‘You can do your own test if you’re worried. You can forget it.’

  ‘But Jimmy couldn’t forget it, could he?’ George said. ‘You asked him to think again about publishing the story of the cover-up in his autobiography. And he might have done. You were friends and anyway it was ancient history. But then he took the sample from your outfall and realized that it wasn’t ancient history after all. All he needed was a few dying swans and publishers would be falling over themselves to pay him a hefty advance for the book.’

  ‘He didn’t say that was what it was about,’ Phil said. ‘He said it was the corruption that was important, the attempt to bribe NRA officials and the way anyone who was prepared to come out into the open was threatened with the sack. Hypocritical bastard.’

  ‘He came to tell you that on the afternoon of his death?’

  Phil nodded. ‘I suppose I’d expected it. But I thought we were friends. I thought I could get him to change his mind.’

  ‘Did you go and see him later that night to make him change his mind?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Phil shouted. ‘I knew it would be no use. He had little enough respect for me anyway. I wasn’t going to grovel to the man.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘What about you, Cathy?’ George asked. ‘Did you go to see Jimmy later that night?’

  She shook her head. It was a gesture of resignation, not defiance.

  ‘But you must have gone at some time,’ George said. ‘Either late that night or the next morning.’

  ‘It was the next morning,’ she said.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Phil demanded. ‘That Cathy murdered him? You’re mad. I had more reason to do that than she did.’

  ‘I’m not accusing Cathy of anything,’ George said. ‘Not at this stage.’ He turned back to her and she faced him, strangely compliant.

  ‘So you went into the Mill that morning?’

  She nodded. ‘Meg had gone with the ambulance. They must have realized that he was dead by then but they’d called an ambulance. The rest of the place was in chaos. Nobody saw me but if they had I don’t think it would have registered. I went to his study and took the autobiography and the Lineham notes, everything that referred to the pollution incident.’

  ‘Did you find the anonymous letter which started the investigation?’ George asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I wasn’t looking for it. I thought it would still be in London.’

  ‘You were burning the notebooks, weren’t you?’ he said. ‘When I came to see you on that first day. I thought there was a lot of paper in the bonfire.’

  She nodded. ‘ I wasn’t sure what to do with it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want it published but I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it. It represented, I suppose, so much work. Then Meg told me that you were coming to investigate so I knew I had to get rid of it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Phil said.

  She shrugged. ‘You were in enough trouble,’ she said. ‘ I didn’t want you implicated.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘For you,’ she said simply. ‘ Because I owed you so much. To do something to pay you back.’

  ‘How did you know Jimmy was dead,’ Molly asked, ‘if you didn’t kill him?’

  ‘Because Ruth phoned me. She thought I should know. We were quite close, Ruth and I. She used to stay here when Hannah was alive. It would never have occurred to Meg.’ She paused. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  Something about the inflection of the last phrase, a slight emphasis on the last word made George look up sharply.

  ‘Perhaps you had better tell us,’ he said quietly, ‘how Aidan Moore came to die.’

  ‘He knew about the first TCE leak,’ she said. ‘Jimmy sent him up here to snoop around when he first got wind of it. Aidan was only a lad but he dug up enough dirt to make Jimmy take it seriously.’

  ‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I’d realized that.’

  ‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I suppose you would.’ She looked at him closely. ‘He thought Phil had killed Jimmy,’ she said. ‘When you started stirring things up, making everyone believe Jimmy was murdered, he thought Phil must be responsible. Who else could benefit from Jimmy’s death?’ She smiled wanly. ‘He was even frightened of Phil. He was planning to run away.’

  ‘And make Jimmy’s story public himself,’ George said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He wanted to put the record straight. He thought it would be some sort of memorial.’ She looked at her husband with affectionate irritation. ‘Jimmy was his hero too.’

  ‘How did you know what he intended?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Not definitely. But Ruth told me he was going away. I explained that Ruth and I were close. She finds it easier to talk to me than she does to Meg. She’s rather lonely and had grown very fond of Aidan.’ Her voice which had been controlled suddenly faltered. ‘ I never meant to do it,’ she said. ‘ I wouldn’t have hurt either of them on purpose.’

  ‘When did Ruth tell you that Aidan was leaving?’

  ‘That night. The night Aidan drowned. He’d taken her to the pub. She had expected, I think, some declaration of love. Instead he told her he was going home. She came here to cry on my shoulder.�
�� Cathy paused. ‘I thought that was suspicious. I had to know what he intended doing with all the information on Mardon Wools.’

  ‘How did you try to find out?’ George asked.

  ‘I phoned him,’ she said. ‘At the Mill. I said I wanted to talk to him. He thought I was prepared to pass on information about the recent TCE leak. He’d heard about that from Jimmy. He agreed to meet me on the shore.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘ He thought I was prepared to betray my husband. Phil didn’t know anything about it I told him that all the uncertainty over Jimmy’s death had upset me and that I needed a walk to cool down. Then I went out.’

  ‘Why was it so important to see Aidan?’

  ‘I’ve told you. To find out what he knew and what he intended. To persuade him, I suppose, to leave the thing alone, that no good would be done to rake everything up.’

  ‘Did he listen?’

  ‘Oh he listened,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t take any notice. It was ridiculous – I should have known that it would be no good. Jimmy might be dead but Aidan Moore was still under his spell.’ She paused and started to describe the scene: ‘ It was very cold. We were standing on those boulders which stretch out towards the spit. I didn’t want anyone at the Mill to see us and I’d switched off my torch. We talked by moonlight. I got there first and I saw him come over the bank and watched him walk across the shore towards me. He was shy, you know, but quite determined. Jimmy had told him there’d been another TCE leak. He’d been very excited about it apparently. Aidan wanted to know all about the pollution, demanded to know who was responsible. He said he was planning an article to go in Green Scenes. He thought Jimmy would have appreciated that. “And I’ve even got a drawing to illustrate it,” he said …

  ‘When he realized that I had nothing to tell him he said I was wasting his time and he turned away to go back to the Mill. I ran after him to try to persuade him. I caught hold of his arm and pulled him back. I thought if he would only hear what I had to say, if he realized the misery he would cause, he would understand.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘He called Phil a murderer. He wouldn’t believe that Jimmy had committed suicide. That was your fault, George. You started all this.’

  ‘What happened then?’ George asked, implicitly accepting the criticism.

  ‘I was still holding on to his arm. It had made me so angry. That anyone who’d known Phil could think him capable of that! I pushed him away. He was standing awkwardly and the boulders were uneven. He fell back and hit the side of his head on a rock.’

  She was suddenly very pale.

  ‘Was he dead then?’ Molly asked gently.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said. ‘It never occurred to me. He’d tripped, that was all. It was a silly accident. And I was still furious. If he’d knocked himself out I didn’t care. I thought he deserved a sore head. I just walked home.’

  ‘Didn’t you turn round later to check that he was all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But a cloud had gone over the moon so I couldn’t see.’

  Phil Cairns was looking at her in horror. ‘Why didn’t you tell me what happened when you came in that night?’ he said. ‘I would have gone to see him. I might have saved his life.’

  ‘I didn’t know his life was in danger,’ she shouted. ‘It was a silly accident, he tripped. How could I know it would end like that? I’d made a fool of myself out there on the shore, pleading with him for favours. I wanted to forget all about it.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘You’ll have to tell the police,’ Phil said. He took her hand. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ll see it through together.’

  She did not answer.

  ‘It would look better,’ George said, tentatively, ‘ if you went in voluntarily and offered to make a statement. You can explain that shock and panic caused the delay in reporting what happened.’

  ‘We’ll go now,’ Phil said. Something of the old energy had returned. He turned to her. ‘Did you do all that,’ he asked, ‘for me?’

  ‘Oh, Phil,’ she said, smiling despite herself, despite her tears. ‘You are a fool.’

  Late that night George had a jubilant phone call from Reg Porter, the detective in charge of the Moore case.

  ‘I thought you’d like to know,’ Porter said. ‘It was an accident, that drowning earlier this week. Or an accident of a sort. I don’t know what conclusion the coroner will come to in the end. Cathy Cairns was involved. There was an argument. The lad wanted to publish an article which reflected badly on her husband. I don’t know the details.’

  Why not? George thought. Why didn’t you ask?

  Porter was continuing breezily: ‘ That bitch did herself no good by keeping quiet for so long but they’re like that, aren’t they, brainy women? They tend to get hysterical. We’ve bailed her anyway and we’ll see what happens. But murder it certainly wasn’t.’

  He laughed unpleasantly, concerned only that he had been proved right.

  He paused, hoping perhaps for congratulations or an admission of defeat.

  ‘So you’ll be able to go home now with a clear conscience, won’t you?’ he said when none came. ‘I told you it was suicide and accidental death. No conspiracy and no murder. So you can go home and forget all about it.’

  George replaced the receiver without speaking but he thought it unlikely that they could leave immediately. Aidan Moore’s death had been a distraction. It had little to do with the real issue. On the drive back from Salter’s Cottage, Molly suddenly remembered where she had seen the person who fitted Cedric’s description of the man who had met Jimmy Morrissey the weekend of the accident. They had discussed the possibilities the identification suggested and had come to the conclusion that the answer to Jimmy’s death lay even closer to home. It was all about families, Molly said, and it could be found at the Mill.

  Chapter Twenty

  After breakfast the next day Meg called George into her flat. She told him that the investigation was over. She had decided that no more good would come of it.

  ‘But you asked us to come for a reason,’ George said, ‘and we haven’t fulfilled our commitment.’

  ‘You’re upsetting everyone,’ she said. She was at her most regal, dressed in a navy twin set and a navy pleated skirt. She was even wearing pearls. ‘I can see it’s not your fault but I hadn’t thought there would be so much disruption. Then there’s that business with Aidan. Poor Ruth is heartbroken. And now you tell me that dear Cathy had to go through the trauma of a police investigation.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how Jimmy died?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’

  She was standing by the window looking out and she would not meet his eye. She seemed to come to a decision and turned back towards him.

  ‘Can I be frank, George?’ She sat down. He saw that it was confession time and it would not come easy to her. ‘Perhaps I was a little impulsive when I decided to call you in. Over-emotional. Of course I wanted to find out how James died. I’m still not convinced that he would have committed suicide. It was not like him. But if I’m honest that wasn’t my main motivation.’ She hesitated. Somewhere in the building Caitlin was playing the flute and the sound, piercing and shrill, seemed to be mocking her. ‘ I was frightened,’ she said at last. ‘ It was the missing autobiography – I was afraid it had got into … unsympathetic hands. Now I know that it’s been destroyed that concern is no longer relevant.’

  ‘What do you mean by unsympathetic hands?’

  ‘People who would have published pieces out of context. The press, I suppose.’

  ‘You were afraid that the Cairns’ role in covering up the pollution incident in the Marr would be made public?’ He would not have thought her so altruistic.

  ‘What?’ She seemed surprised. ‘Oh no. It wasn’t that. I knew about the incident at the time and I thought it was a mistake for James to be so high-handed. I tried to persuade him to drop it – we
were friends after all – but to be truthful I thought it was a fuss about nothing.’

  ‘Why were you so worried then that the autobiography would be published?’

  ‘I was never allowed to read it,’ she said resentfully. There was a silence filled again by the laughing notes of Caitlin’s flute. Meg seemed suddenly irritated by the noise. She got up and shut the living-room door. The music faded. ‘ I suspected that James might have made some rather scathing remarks about the family,’ she said. ‘ Our family. It never had the same priority for him as it did for me. He might have been tempted to ridicule our ideals. Without realizing of course quite what he was doing.’

  ‘And that would never have done,’ George said, with gentle sarcasm. ‘ Would it? To make fun of England’s favourite mother.’

  ‘It would have been embarrassing,’ she said. ‘ James could never see it. He never took my work seriously.’

  ‘And when it was stolen you thought someone had sold it to the press?’

  ‘It occurred to me,’ she said. ‘ Some of the less principled rags would have paid something for it, I suppose. I panicked on the evening of the memorial service. There were all those people, involved in the media. It seemed unbearable that they should be given the ammunition to mock me. I decided then that something would have to be done.’

  ‘And who did you think had stolen it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘ One of the students perhaps. Rosie? Jane? I thought you would find out.’

  ‘And now you know Cathy Cairns burned it on her bonfire you’ve decided you don’t need us any more.’

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ she said graciously, her natural self-confidence returning. ‘ I’m very grateful for all your efforts of course. And Molly’s too. But I think now it’s time to stop grieving and to look forward. I have to consider the children in all this. I don’t think it’s healthy for them to live with this uncertainty.’

  ‘I think Jimmy was murdered,’ George said. ‘You were right about that.’