by Ann Cleeves
In the office, Vera held the morning briefing. Joe Ashworth had checked all the car-rental places in North Tyneside.
‘Nobody of Clive Stringer’s name or description hired a car on Wednesday night or Friday. I suppose that lets him off the hook.’ He sounded disappointed.
Vera almost felt sorry for him. She described the interview with Peter Calvert. ‘We know he was Lily’s lover. We know he’s a lying bastard, with an unhealthy interest in bonny lasses. We know she left her silver and opal ring in the Calverts’ cottage. But we can’t prove she didn’t drop it when she looked round the day before. And we can’t prove any connection between him and Luke Armstrong.’ Then she’d gone on to describe the connection between Lily and Kath. ‘Is it significant that the new Mrs Armstrong didn’t tell us she knew the Marsh lass? God knows. It is to us, of course. But we’re living and breathing the investigation. Maybe she just wanted to forget all about it and get on with her life.’
Then Vera had retreated to her office. She knew there were more important things to do, but she told herself that her team would already be doing them. She was pulled back to the story, the strange central character. Then the phone rang.
‘Julie Armstrong on the line, ma’am. She won’t speak to anyone but you.’
Vera listened in silence when Julie described the envelope, the writing. ‘I didn’t want to bother you, like. But last time you seemed to think it was important. We haven’t touched it. Well, just my mam when she brought it in from the front door.’
‘Has Laura got a mobile?’
‘Oh aye, they’ve all got mobiles these days, haven’t they?’
‘Phone her and tell her to stay at school. She’s not to go out with anyone, not even someone she knows until you pick her up. I’ll send someone in a car and you can go and fetch her. I’ll contact the school. Leave the card where it is. Don’t open it.’
‘She won’t have her phone switched on,’ Julie said. Vera could sense her confusion, the onset of panic. ‘It’s a rule. They’re not allowed.’
‘Don’t worry, pet. Just send her a text and leave her a voicemail message. I’ll see to the rest.’
She hung up and took a moment to compose herself. She’d picked up some of Julie’s panic, could feel her brain start to scramble, the eczema start to itch. Then she phoned the high school in Whitley Bay, bullied her way past an officious secretary to the headmaster. He understood at once what was needed, motivated, Vera thought, as much by the possibility of tabloid headlines – How did they let it happen? Young girl snatched from school gate – as by concern for Laura’s safety. Then she told herself she was a cynical old bag. He said he’d track Laura down and keep her in his office until Julie and the police car arrived. He’d phone Vera back and let her know when that had happened. Vera sat, waiting. Her eyes wandered back to the book on her desk, the atmospheric jacket in muted blues and greens. The phone rang.
‘Yes?’
The headteacher didn’t identify himself. She heard the tremor in his voice when he spoke, thought he was starting to panic too. ‘She didn’t arrive at school. She was marked absent at registration.’
‘Nobody followed it up?’
‘We wouldn’t. Not one day. And with what happened to her brother, we could understand she might want to take some time.’ Justifying himself to her, and to the unforgiving press which would want someone to blame. Already making his excuses.
‘Of course,’ Vera said. ‘Not your fault.’
But mine? Should I have seen it coming? ‘Does she have a history of bunking off?’
‘No. She’s reliable. A worker. One of the bright ones.’
‘Can you ask around, friends, people she might have come in with on the bus? I’ll send someone to take statements.’ She thought she’d send Ashworth. He’d be good with young lasses.
‘Can you be discreet?’ he said. ‘I mean, no flashing lights and uniforms. I don’t want to start a mass hysteria, parents coming to take their kids away. Luke was a pupil here too.’
She was distracted. ‘You knew him? I mean, as more than a face, a name.’
‘Yes, I like the kids like Luke. The ones who struggle. It’s what I came into teaching for. Important not to forget that sometimes. I took an interest.’
‘Can you think why someone would have wanted him dead?’
‘No!’ The answer was immediate and vehement. ‘He was bit slow, but he was a nice kid. People enjoyed his company.’ He struggled to explain. ‘He was completely inoffensive.’ He wouldn’t be satisfied with that description, but she understood what he meant.
When Vera arrived at Julie’s house, the door was open and she was waiting to go. Her mother was hovering in the background. Julie turned to say goodbye to the older woman, but by then Vera was out of the car and blocking the door.
‘A change of plan,’ she said comfortably. ‘No rush now. Let’s go in. Any chance of a brew, Mrs Richardson?’
She led Julie into the living room and sat her on the sofa. ‘Laura’s not at school, pet. Did she definitely get on the bus?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t here. I stayed last night with a friend.’ She looked up at Vera. ‘I was at Gary’s place. Don’t tell my mam. But I needed to get away, have a few drinks.’
‘What time did you wake up? A bit of a hangover, was it?’
‘Aye, something like that. I was out of it till ten.’
‘And was Gary with you all that time?’
‘We didn’t sleep together. I was on the sofa.’
‘So he could have gone out without you knowing.’ Vera was speaking almost to herself. She didn’t expect an answer.
‘Where’s Laura?’ It came out like a scream, brought her mother rushing from the kitchen.
‘We don’t know. We’re all looking for her. The school. My team, and they’re the best you’ll find anywhere.’
‘What time did Laura leave the house?’ Julie turned to her mother. ‘Did she get the bus?’
‘She left at the normal time. In a rush, no time for breakfast as usual. I’d made her a packed lunch but she wouldn’t take it.’
‘Did you have a go at her, before she went out?’ Julie was red and angry. ‘You always have to nag.’
The older woman was almost in tears. ‘I didn’t have a go at her. I said she was really brave for going and I hoped she’d have a good day.’
‘Oh Mam, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I should have been here. I was so wrapped up in myself and she needed me. It’s like Luke all over again.’
‘We’ve really no time for this,’ Vera said. ‘You can save the tantrums for later, when we’ve got Laura back. I need information. The time of the bus. The names of the friends she travelled in with. Favourite teachers. Teachers she hated. Boyfriends past and present. You start making a list. I’m going to look at this card.’ She tore a sheet of paper from a notebook and gave Julie’s mother a pen. When she left them they were sitting side by side on the settee, both with tears drying unchecked on their cheeks, but working through the problem, coming up with names.
The envelope was lying in the centre of the kitchen table. From the moment she’d got Julie’s call Vera had tried to tell herself this might all be a waste of time. The woman was probably overreacting. It was a card from a friend or a relative or a teacher. Nothing sinister. But when she saw it, she recognized the capital letters at once. This time there was the correct address. It even had the postcode. The envelope hadn’t been sealed. The flap had been tucked into the paper at the back. No saliva. Nor on the stamp, which was of the ready-stick variety. Vera pulled tweezers and latex gloves from her bag, put on the gloves, lifted out the card. A pressed flower. Something small and blue which she didn’t recognize. The back was blank, just as the one which had been sent to Luke. No kisses.
She got on her phone to Holly at Kimmerston. ‘It’s definitely the same. I want it to the lab now and fast-tracked. And chase them up on the others.’
She phoned Ashworth, but heard immediately that he
was surrounded by a gaggle of girls and couldn’t speak. ‘Call me,’ she said. ‘As soon as you have something.’ She knew he didn’t need telling that but it made her feel better to be dishing out orders.
She put on her calm, slightly daft face before going into the living room. She wrote down the direct-line number for Holly and gave it to Beryl Richardson. ‘She’s a nice lass. Give her a ring and give her all the names you’ve come up with. Julie, I’d like you to come with me. Show me the way Laura would walk to the bus stop. I’ve got my mobile on me and they’ll call as soon as there’s any news. We could both do with some fresh air.’
She had Julie on her feet and out of the house before either of the women could complain. At the gate, instead of turning left towards the centre of the village and the main road, Julie turned right. ‘Laura didn’t like waiting with the crowd at the bus stop by the pub. Specially since Luke died. She always felt awkward with lots of people anyway, but since then it’s been even worse. She walks along the cut here and gets on at the stop nearer town.’ She stopped, turned to Vera. ‘I should have given her a lift in. But I was such a mess myself. I couldn’t face it.’
‘This isn’t your fault,’ Vera said, slowly enunciating every word. ‘None of it.’
Julie led her down a narrow alley with allotments on one side and the backs of houses on the other and arrived at a stile. Vera heaved herself onto it and waited, perched on the top, panting for breath, looking out at the landscape beyond. The footpath followed the side of the field which had been cut the day before, along the edge of a patch of woodland towards the main road. Laura would have been visible from the upstairs windows in Julie’s street all the way. Vera thought she’d get a team to do a house-to-house. It was an outside possibility that the girl had been seen, but worth a shot. If Laura had been taken, this surely was where it had happened. Once on the bus, she’d be surrounded by other kids all the way to school. She lowered herself down the other side, pulled down her skirt so she was decent. Julie followed.
‘Who else would have known Laura took this path to get the bus?’ Vera stooped to pick a bit of straw from her sandal, tried not to make too much of the question.
‘I don’t know. The other kids, I suppose.’
‘Geoff? Kath?’
‘She might have mentioned it. I can’t see it, though. She hasn’t exactly been chatty lately.’
So it was planned, Vera thought. They knew that anyway because of the card, but this confirmed it. Someone had waited and watched, followed the family’s movements. Not from the street. That would have been noticed. Perhaps from here on the edge of the wood, where you had a view of the village. A good pair of binoculars and you’d see inside the houses.
Then she thought that whatever the reason had been for the first murder, the killer was now enjoying himself. Or herself. It had become a game, an obsession. A piece of theatre. Not just in the staging of the body, but in the events leading up to that. She hoped the killer would want to make the pleasure last. She hoped it meant that Laura was still alive.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The morning Laura Armstrong disappeared, Felicity Calvert walked back from dropping James at the school bus and tried to come to terms with the news that Peter had been Lily’s lover. She supposed she should feel betrayed. Not by Peter – what right did she have to judge him? But by Samuel. She was convinced that Samuel must have known about Peter’s affair with Lily Marsh. Probably all four of the men who were there when James found the body had known. Peter would have wanted to boast about the conquest. It was quite impossible that he would have kept something like that to himself and he confided in Samuel about everything. Perhaps that was why Samuel had seemed so weird lately, so wound up and tense.
Peter had told her about his relationship with Lily when he’d returned from the police station. He’d arrived back at the mill in a taxi, looking drained, rather vulnerable. By then James was in bed. The boy seemed to have accepted the story that the police needed to talk to his father as an expert witness and had gone to his room without a fuss. The house seemed remarkably quiet as she waited for Peter’s return. Usually she had the radio on or listened to music, but tonight she could face neither. She had opened the windows and could hear the water of the mill race, very distant.
Felicity had watched Peter climb from the taxi and gone out to meet him. He’d taken her hand, as if they were teenagers, and led her inside. Without saying a word he’d lifted a bottle of wine from the fridge and opened it. This quiet was so unlike him that she was scared. He should have been raging against the indignity of his imprisonment, the impudence of the police in carrying him off. She almost believed that he was going to admit to murder. But he was free, wasn’t he? It couldn’t be that.
He poured two glasses of wine and sat at the kitchen table. The kitchen was her space and he seldom sat there in the evening. He preferred the comfort of the sitting room or the privacy of his office. To sit with her was an apology in itself.
‘Are you hungry?’ she said. ‘Can I get you something?’
‘Perhaps later.’ He sipped his wine, met her eyes. There was another moment of silence, then he said, ‘I was having an affair with Lily Marsh.’
She didn’t say she’d worked that out. There was a more pressing question. ‘Did you kill her?’
‘No!’ Horrified. He reached out and took her hands. She found herself excited, thrilled by the touch. In their everyday routine – the family, the house, even the sex – they seemed to slide away from a real encounter. This had the charge of being touched by a stranger.
‘She was very beautiful,’ she said. ‘I can see how you might have been tempted.’
‘I was flattered.’ He paused, drank more wine. ‘Do you want me to tell you about it?’
She thought about that. Did she want all the details? How they’d met? Where they’d made love? She worried she might find that exciting too. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s your business.’
‘Would you like me to move out?’
‘I don’t know. No. It never even occurred to me.’
‘Lots of women would.’ He seemed puzzled that she was taking his revelation so calmly. Was he disappointed, even, in her lack of response? ‘It would be their first reaction, at least.’
‘Perhaps an affair doesn’t seem so important with two people dead.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
She stroked the top of his hand with her finger. ‘I believe you.’
Now, walking back from the bus in the shade of the elder hedge, she thought that in this short, taut exchange there had been more communication than they’d had for years. Unbidden there came into her mind a possible headline for one of the women’s magazines she only read at the doctor’s and the hairdresser’s: My husband was suspected of murder – And it saved our marriage!
Even the night before, sitting opposite him, she had found the exchange melodramatic and faintly ridiculous.
‘It was over,’ he said. ‘Ages ago. I wasn’t still seeing her.’
‘Who finished the relationship?’ More mag speak.
‘I did. Lily was unbalanced. I should have realized no normal pretty young woman would fall for me.’ Perhaps there was a hint of a pause while he waited for contradiction. She kept quiet. At least his adultery meant she didn’t feel obliged to play games with him. ‘She’d become obsessed. She turned up at work. Phoned me.’
‘I think she called here,’ Felicity said. ‘Several times when I picked up the phone, it went dead.’ She remembered the roses in the cottage, the sound of footsteps in the hall. ‘She might have been here too.’
‘She seemed convinced that I’d leave you to marry her. I never promised her that. I didn’t promise her anything.’ He got out of his seat to fetch the wine from the fridge again, filled her glass then his own. ‘I told the police that we’d parted amicably. I didn’t want them to think I had a reason for killing her. But it wasn’t true. It’s been a nightmare. She was stalking me. I never knew where sh
e’d turn up next. She must have arranged the placement in the school in Hepworth, so she could get to me through James. And then that charade, turning up here, pretending she needed to rent the cottage.’
‘I don’t think,’ Felicity said, ‘that you can expect me to sympathize.’
He was apologetic again. ‘No, no, of course not.’ And suddenly she felt ashamed and exhilarated at the same time, because her secret was still intact. Should she confess too? About her and Samuel? There was something addictive in the rawness of the conversation and she wanted that to continue. She felt as she had when she was a student, sitting late at night with her friends, the room lit by candles, something gloomy on the record player. Then, every discussion had the intensity of the confessional. But reason took over, a sly realization that while the balance of power had shifted between them she should make the most of it. Insist that James go to the local high school, for instance, rather than being shipped off to the institution in Newcastle which had screwed Peter up. In this penitent mood, he’d agree to anything. Besides, she told herself, this wasn’t her decision to make. Samuel wouldn’t bear it if their relationship became public knowledge. It would kill him.
Later that night they’d made love, with the windows open so she could still hear the water outside. Afterwards they stood together looking out towards the lighthouse. I’ll finish it with Samuel, she thought. No one need ever know. It’ll be as if it never happened.
The next morning they got up as usual, Peter left for work early while James was still having breakfast. The boy had been full of questions about the police and the CSIs. Peter had been patient, looked over James’s head to give her a wry smile. He kissed her on the lips before he drove away. It would soon be James’s summer holiday and she walked up the lane with him to meet the bus, making the most of their time together. Next year, she knew, James would insist on doing it on his own.
