Hidden Depths

by Ann Cleeves

  She reached the house and let herself in. She hadn’t slept well and felt restless, edgy. The walk hadn’t helped. If Samuel were asked to choose between me and Peter, she thought, Peter would always come first. That was why he didn’t tell me about Lily, why he didn’t warn me.

  She made herself coffee and stood by the kitchen door to drink it. There was still blue-and-white tape across the cottage door, and while she was standing there a car appeared in the drive. It was one of the crime scene investigators from the previous day. He waved at her, before climbing into his paper suit and walking across the meadow.

  In the cool of the house she phoned Samuel. It was quarter past eight and she thought he might be still at home. He lived only ten minutes from the library. Before dialling she didn’t have any idea what she was going to say to him. When the answerphone clicked in, she was quite relieved. She thought she might have made a fool of herself by demanding an explanation. Didn’t it occur to you that I deserved to know my husband was having sex with a girl younger than our daughters? But he could have retaliated. You were having sex with your husband’s best friend. Besides, she’d never made any demands on Samuel. It was the basis of their relationship. She replaced the receiver without speaking.

  On impulse she decided to go into Morpeth for the day. She wanted people around her, the feel of fabric between her fingers as she looked for something new to wear, coffee, a good lunch with a glass of wine. She didn’t even bother to change or put on fresh make-up, just picked up her car keys and her bag and almost ran out of the house. As she locked the door behind her she heard the ring of the phone inside. She paused for a moment but she didn’t go back in. She might call into the library to see Samuel later, but she needed time to plan what she was going to say to him.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Vera had left a family liaison officer with Julie, with instructions that she should be taken away from the house – to a friend’s, to her parents’ home, anywhere as long as it wasn’t in the village where soon a team would be doing a fingertip search of the length of the footpath leading from the allotments to the main road. Now Vera was back in the station. She’d called the team together, her three closest staff, shouted them into her office from her open door. Charlie was still on the phone to the officer who was coordinating the Seaton house-to-house enquiries. Joe Ashworth had just arrived from the high school, serious, rather flustered. She realized he was thinking of his own daughter. When Katie was fourteen, would he have the courage to let her get into school, into town, on her own?

  ‘Laura definitely didn’t get on the bus,’ he said. ‘The other kids didn’t make anything of it. They thought she just hadn’t been able to face school after what had happened to Luke.’ He paused. ‘I had the impression she didn’t really have many close friends. They were shocked that she was missing, excited even. But none of them seemed terribly upset. The teachers told me she kept herself apart from the other kids. One of them said she was a bit aloof.’

  Of course she was aloof, Vera thought. Since she was young she’d had to put up with people teasing her about Luke. And for a moment Vera wondered if it was all much simpler than they’d been making it. Perhaps Laura had killed her brother. Revenge because he’d not saved Tom Sharp when he fell in the Tyne. Because he was always the centre of attention and he’d made her life a misery without even trying. And now she’d run away. Perhaps Lily’s death was nothing but a horrible coincidence. Then she told herself that was ridiculous. The idea that there was no link between the two deaths was preposterous. And still at the back of her mind was the thought of the one obvious suspect.

  Holly came in with a tray of coffee: four mugs of black liquid, a pile of plastic pots of milk on a chipped saucer. It was the first time ever Vera had seen her make drinks without being bullied into it.

  Charlie finished the phone call and joined them. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Some of the residents of the street are still out at work. I’ve told the team on the ground to get their phone numbers, call them at wherever they’re working to see if they saw Laura this morning.’

  In any other circumstances Vera would have been pleased that they were pulling their fingers out, working together, showing a bit of nous.

  ‘I got the coroner’s report on Parr’s wife’s death,’ he went on. ‘It was definitely suicide. She slit her wrists. The paper’s on your desk.’

  She nodded her thanks.

  ‘This puts the focus back on the Armstrong family,’ she said. ‘Perhaps all the business with Peter Calvert was a distraction. Perhaps Lily Marsh was never an intended victim at all. She saw something, got in the way. Are we any closer to knowing what she was doing the night Luke Armstrong was killed?’

  ‘The girls she shared the flat with were out that night. A trip to London to the ballet. Very classy. They stayed with friends in Richmond. They can’t tell if Lily was there Wednesday night or not.’ Holly had become an expert on Lily’s flatmates.

  ‘What would Lily Marsh have been doing in Seaton? An ex-pit village on the coast. I mean, it’s just not her sort of place, those clothes she wore. She’d have stuck out like a sore thumb. Nobody saw her. I did the house-to-house myself Charlie had worked that patch as a PC and still had friends who were community police officers. ‘There have been no strangers around at all.’

  They sat, each of them trying to imagine Lily in her silk and her beads in the street where the kids played skipping games and the mothers sat on the steps watching them. All of them failing.

  ‘Where do you think Laura’s body is?’ Charlie asked. The question they’d all had at the backs of their minds, none of them wanting to speak it.

  ‘We don’t know yet that the girl is dead.’ Vera didn’t shout, she kept her voice calm and reasonable. It wasn’t the time for being showy. But she meant it. Or maybe she just wanted it to be true. For Julie and for herself. She wasn’t used to failing and another death, the death of someone young, who’d never had the chance yet to be happy, would be the worst sort of failure.

  ‘He didn’t keep the other victims alive,’ Joe said. ‘Not that we can tell. Certainly not the boy.’

  ‘This might be different.’ Vera knew it was irrational, the idea she’d formed walking along the footpath with Julie, that the killer was enjoying himself, the game, the spectacle. That he might want to prolong the pleasure by keeping his victim alive.

  Charlie knew better than to argue. ‘If there is a body, where will it be?’

  ‘In water,’ Holly said.

  ‘So where should we look? Every house in Tyne and Wear has a bath.’

  ‘No,’ Vera said. ‘He won’t use a bath again. Laura’s a striking young woman. Not beautiful like Lily, but big eyes, cheekbones you’d die for.’ She caught her breath at the phrase but nobody else seemed to notice and she continued, ‘She looks odd, exotic. He’ll want to turn her into a picture. It’ll be somewhere dramatic.’

  ‘Then he must be holding her,’ Joe said. ‘Either alive or dead. He won’t risk posing the body in broad daylight. Not again. He got away with it with Lily, but he’d never try it a second time.’

  ‘Did we ever hear back from Northumbria Water?’ Vera demanded. ‘Weren’t they supposed to have blokes working at the outfall by the lighthouse the afternoon Lily was killed? Has anyone spoken to them?’

  ‘That outfall hasn’t been used for five years,’ Joe said. ‘Some European directive on sewage and clean beaches. The guy I spoke to reckoned a team must have just parked up there to have a break.’

  ‘Well, talk to him again. Get the names of all the workers in the area that day. They’re the closest we’ve got to witnesses.’

  There was a moment of silence, then Vera jumped up, stood in front of them. ‘I want ideas,’ she said. ‘Any ideas. Crazy as you like. Places to look. Places we can keep under surveillance.’

  ‘The Tyne. That’s where Tom Sharp died. That was flowers and water. The start of it.’ Charlie again. More animated than she’d ever known hi
m.

  ‘Eh, man, that’ll be some surveillance, the whole of the Tyne.’ Joe looked around at them. Not being cruel, but demanding they be more specific. Joe was always the practical one.

  ‘He’s right, though,’ Vera said. ‘That’s where it started.’ She wondered if she could justify another trip to Acklington Prison to talk to Davy, wondered if by now he’d have something for her. She decided it would have to wait. She didn’t want to be too far from Julie if the worst should happen.

  ‘Where, then?’ Charlie was sitting on the edge of her desk, hunched forward. This had become personal for him too. Vera wondered if he had a daughter, realized she’d never asked him about kids. She didn’t like talking about other people’s children. It gave her an empty, jealous sort of feeling. ‘The Fish Quay at North Shields where Tom Sharp had the accident? There’s that sheltered bit of the water where the boats tie up.’

  ‘That’s busy until the early hours. Bars, restaurants. People living in those smart apartments they’ve put up.’

  ‘It would be some statement, though, if he could get away with it,’ Vera said.

  ‘Does it have to be a he?’ It was Holly. She was the most detached of them all. She’s still young enough to feel immortal, Vera thought, and to be self-absorbed, untouched by another person’s tragedy.

  ‘Physically a woman could have done the strangling. Carrying Lily across the rocks to put her in that pool, that’s another question. Who were you thinking about?’

  ‘Kath Armstrong is the one person who links all the victims,’ Holly said. ‘She’s a nurse. They’re trained to carry, aren’t they?’

  Not the one person. There’s someone else too.

  ‘What motive could she have?’ In her head Vera was trying to find an answer to her own question. Perhaps it had something to do with perfect families. Lily, Luke and Laura had all intruded on the little family in the neat house in Wallsend. Were the crimes Kath’s warped attempt to protect her own little girl?

  She was imagining the Tyne at North Shields late at night. The shadows thrown by the buildings, the harbour master’s office, the deserted fish market, the lights from the south bank. Within the dock the water was calm and oily. She pictured the dark shape of a girl, a silhouette against the reflected light on the water. But a body wouldn’t float. Not at first. Perhaps the murderer would find something for her to rest on. A pallet? A fish tray? A small dinghy? And cover her with flowers. What a picture that would make. She tried to clear her head and leave her mind open to other scenes, other places.

  ‘So, any other possible scenarios?’

  ‘What about Seaton Pool?’ Joe said. ‘It’s close to where the girl must have been abducted and isn’t there a hide there? The birdwatchers would know about it.’

  ‘The locals have looked there already,’ Charlie said. ‘It was one of the first places they tried because it was so near to her home, and they know some of the village kids hang out in the hide when they’ve bunked off school. They found a pile of empty lager cans and some graffiti. Otherwise nothing.’

  But Vera thought it could very well provide the sort of setting that the killer would be looking for. Seaton Pool had been formed by the subsidence of mine workings, though there was no indication now of the industrial past. It lay between the footpath where Laura had walked to catch her bus and the sea.

  When she was a girl, Vera had once sat in the Seaton Pool hide with Hector. There must have been some reason for him to have made a rare trip to the lowlands and it troubled her for a moment that she couldn’t think what it was. Then she remembered. An American coot. They’d waited for more than an hour for it to appear out of the reed bed. It had been a cold sunny day and the pool had been ringed with ice. She’d been bored and Hector had been characteristically offensive to the other birdwatchers. The bird had occasionally been disturbed by people passing along the footpath which followed the west side of the pool. It was a favourite place for dog walkers. During the day, Vera thought, it would be a risky place to set out the body. But the murderer seemed not to mind risk. He seemed not to care whether or not he was caught. And later in the evening there would be no danger at all.

  ‘Are they still searching along the footpath?’

  ‘They’ll be at it all day.’

  ‘But not this evening. Not once the light goes.’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll call it off then.’

  ‘I want someone watching all night,’ she said. ‘From the time the search team finishes up there and all the wooden tops go home. Hidden. Unobtrusive.’ It crossed her mind briefly the effect that would have on the overtime budget but really she didn’t care.

  ‘Is there any chance he’d go back to the lighthouse?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Or there’s the stream at Fox Mill,’ Joe said. ‘If the cottage is significant. If Lily came back, met someone there, lost the ring Calvert had given her, the place could have a special meaning for him. It’d be risky with people in the house…’

  But he doesn’t care, Vera thought again. The risk is all part of the game, part of the performance. He’s come to realize that he likes an audience.

  They were waiting for her to make a decision. There was a moment of quiet which sometimes occurs in busy buildings. Outside, a baby was crying in the street and a mother was trying to comfort him.

  ‘Three teams,’ she said. ‘One at the Fish Quay. Talk to the harbour master. One at Seaton Pool, camped out in the birdwatching hide. And one in the house at Fox Mill. The least the Calverts can do is let you use the house, the runaround they’ve given us. I can’t see him using the lighthouse again. The tide’s such a variable there.

  ‘But that’s for tonight. Before that I want the detail checked. Go back to the beginning. By this evening it’ll probably be too late. The girl will be dead.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  When Felicity arrived back at the mill from town she saw that there was a car in the drive. A car different from the one belonging to the CSI. She presumed it was someone else to do with the murder enquiry and wondered when it was going to end, this invasion by strangers, the prying into their business. She supposed she should be grateful that the press hadn’t got wind of their involvement and wondered even if the car belonged to some reporter. When she looked at the cottage she saw that the crime-scene tape had been removed.

  She’d just had time to take off her shoes and put on the kettle when the doorbell went. From the kitchen window she saw the young detective sergeant who’d come to take Peter away the evening before. She went to answer the door in bare feet and she saw him looking down at her toenails, which were painted a very pale pink. She sensed his disapproval and wanted to say something to him. Doesn’t your model wife, who belongs to the Women’s Institute, paint her toenails? Or don’t you like it because I’m a grandmother? But she said nothing. She stood, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘We’ve been trying to phone you,’ he said. There was accusation in his voice and something else. Anxiety verging on panic.

  ‘I’ve only just got in.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Into Morpeth.’

  ‘Were you with anyone?’

  She didn’t answer that. It was none of his business. ‘Why, what’s happened?’ Because she could tell that there was something serious. ‘Another murder?’

  He didn’t answer. ‘It would be very helpful if you had some proof of your whereabouts this morning. Did someone see you?’

  ‘No,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I was there on my own.’

  ‘A till receipt, then. Something showing the date and time?’

  Then she began to panic too. She imagined herself being carted off to the police station in Kimmerston, sitting in a cell, being questioned. Perhaps they thought she and Peter were involved together. What would happen to James then? ‘I didn’t buy anything. I intended to, but I ended up just window-shopping.’

  Then she had an idea and went outside, still in her bare feet, the gravel on the dri
ve stinging her soles, to look in her car. At last she found a parking ticket for the Safeway car park under the seat. The date and the time were clearly marked and Joe Ashworth’s attitude changed slightly. He grew more polite and asked if he might come in.

  ‘A young woman’s gone missing,’ he said. Back in the kitchen the kettle had already boiled and switched off automatically. She made coffee for him without asking if he wanted one. ‘There’s a possibility that it’s linked to the two murders. I’ve been into the cottage. I hope you don’t mind. The CSIs have finished and you weren’t here to ask. In the circumstances…’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course. You must do everything you can.’ But she was shocked he still considered the cottage as a potential crime scene. Did that mean the men in white paper suits had found something? Did it mean Peter was still implicated?

  ‘Did your husband leave for work at his usual time?’ Ashworth asked. His tone was polite and lacked urgency, but she wasn’t taken in. She wasn’t going to tell him that Peter had left early this morning.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘At about the usual time. And you’ll be able to check when he arrived at the university. They sign in. Fire regulations.’

  He smiled so she realized that had already happened. She wondered if Peter had actually been there when they’d checked or if they’d spoken to his secretary. She would have liked to ask, but had too much pride.

  The kitchen clock squawked. Some bird call she didn’t recognize. She saw it was already two o’clock.

  ‘I haven’t had any lunch,’ she said. ‘I’d planned to have something in Morpeth, but in the end I couldn’t face it. I was going to make myself a sandwich. Can I get you anything?’