by Jane Adams
Peterson glanced across at Mr Norman. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Mike, would you . . .’
Mike led them along the narrow rabbit path and across the stile into the first patch of oak wood before they reached the Forestry Commission land. It was hot and still, silent but for the song of birds and their footsteps, half muffled by the grass. Peterson followed directly behind Mike after the first stile, leaving Mr Norman to help his wife. Her skirt and heeled sandals made it awkward for her to climb and Peterson had no wish to make her feel uncomfortable by having him watch her struggle.
Mike paused as they reached the second stile. ‘It’s just through here,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you certain you want to do this, Mr Norman? Mrs Norman?’
It was Julia’s mother who answered, with surprising firmness. ‘I need to see it,’ she said. ‘I won’t believe it till I’ve seen the place.’
Reluctantly Mike led them on.
The gully was steep even for those in flat shoes but Mrs Norman would allow no one other than her husband to help. She laddered her tights and scratched her legs on the exposed tree roots, but she made it down.
The place where Julia’s body had lain was still cordoned off, the yellow plastic of the tape seeming to glow in the semi-dark. Mrs Norman stood as close to the cordon as she could and stared at the rough altar of branches and now wilted flowers on which her daughter had died. Her gaze took in the dozens of tiny candles, burned down to mere stumps, that decorated the branches of the trees and travelled upwards to the dark canopy of leaves blocking the sunlight overhead. Then she let out a little cry before covering her mouth tightly with both hands.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Norman?’
She nodded, hands still tight over her mouth as though she wanted to be sick. Her husband circled his arms around her and pulled her close.
‘It’s the same place, isn’t it?’ She pulled away enough so that she could look up into his face.
He nodded. ‘Yes, I think it is.’
‘The same place?’ Peterson was questioning. ‘Same place as what? You’ve seen this before, Mr Norman?’
‘It’s in a painting,’ he said slowly, his voice thick with tears. ‘At Christmas, Julia gave us a painting. One of hers. It was beautifully done, but it was not like her usual work.’
‘A painting of this place?’
‘Yes. This place. We knew it would be, that’s why we had to come. We knew when you told us where she died. The flowers and the candles and all the things you told us, we had to come and be sure.’
‘This painting,’ Mike asked, ‘it was more than just a landscape?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the father said softly. ‘It was more than just a landscape. There was a woman lying on a bed of flowers. Lilies and white roses all painted so clearly you could tell what every one was meant to be. All stained with blood.’
Chapter Seven
22 June
Sunday morning brought a surprise in the shape of a phone call from Charlie Morrow. He and Mike had spoken during the earlier investigation and Mike had visited him several times while he had been in hospital receiving treatment for the severe burns he had suffered. He’d had a call from a couple of reporters, he told Mike. They’d done a good job of tracking him down and wanted to do a feature article on him.
‘My first reaction was to say no, but I’ve been thinking about it and it might do some good. You’ve not exactly been getting sympathetic coverage.’
Mike laughed. ‘No, it’s been more like, why don’t those useless coppers get off their backsides and get their collective fingers out. Seriously, though, do you feel up to joining the media circus?’
‘I feel well enough to be bored out of my brain and very left out,’ Charlie told him. ‘I’ve been lying on my bloody back in hospital for months. No television in case it upsets me and no one willing to tell me a damned thing. I learned more interrogating Macey on the phone for ten minutes than I’ve pieced together in the past six months. Seriously, Mike, it’s been the most frustrating time of my life.’
Mike sympathized and promised that he’d try to get to see him. He still wasn’t used to the slight slur in Charlie Morrow’s voice when he spoke. The burns to the right side of his face had tightened the skin and scarred his upper lip badly enough to have necessitated grafts.
‘I’ve had a lot of time doing nothing but think and there has to be something I can help on.’
‘If I could offer you anything, Charlie, then you know I would. Lord knows we need the extra brain-power, but while you’re officially on the sick . . .’
There was silence for a moment at the other end of the line. The truth was that it would be a long time, if at all, before Charlie Morrow returned to full duty. ‘Charlie, I’m sorry. I really am.’
‘Yes, I know. I know. But it rankles, Mike. I figure I owe that bastard one.’
* * *
Mike returned to Lyme to spend some time with Maria. They walked at Essie’s pace along the shoreline out towards the headland jutting like a rocky finger into the sea. It was rough going over stones and heavy boulders, especially as Essie insisted on taking the hardest way across and shouting for Uncle Mike to look at every fossil that she found embedded in the rocks. Finally, they paused at a spot where the boulders gave way to flat rock, covered with weeds and broken by shallow pools full of shrimp and tiny fish. Essie was delighted, dipping her hands into the warm water, trying to catch the darting fish or sorting among the pebbles for the fossils that Mike had shown her how to identify.
The adults took the time to talk — a conversation interrupted every few minutes by another of Essie’s finds, but still much more than they had enjoyed for many weeks.
Jo had given birth to a baby boy the night before and Maria looked forward to seeing the new addition to their family.
‘You ever thought about having children?’ Mike asked, surprised that he had never asked before.
Maria laughed. ‘Are you proposing something?’
‘Maybe. I don’t really know. Sometimes I think, yes, I want to settle down again. Have kids before it’s too late and I get too cynical or just too old.’
‘Poor heading-for-middle-age man that you are.’
‘Exactly that,’ he said with a grin. ‘Other times I think of Stevie, of how it felt when I lost him, and I know that I’m afraid of it happening again. Of having something as precious as a child and losing it.’
Maria reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly. She was about to speak when Mike stood up abruptly, turning to face the cliff and shading his eyes against the sun.
‘What is it?’
‘I thought I saw something. A flash of light, like something reflecting off a lens.’
Maria shrugged. ‘Probably twitchers. There must be a ton of bird life up on the cliff.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Mike said, but he continued to scan the clifftop, looking for the source of that elusive flash of light.
Maria touched his cheek, turning his face towards her. ‘You’re really spooked by all this, aren’t you?’
‘Anyone would be.’
‘Of course they would, but, Mike, you’ve got to let up a bit or I’m going to be seeing you professionally.’
Mike tried hard to make light of it. ‘I didn’t think the rules allowed that,’ he said.
Maria half-smiled in return, but her eyes were worried. ‘I’ll have to bend the rules, then,’ she said.
Chapter Eight
23 June
At the briefing in Honiton on the Monday morning Peterson unveiled the painting Julia Norman had given to her parents. He set it on a table leaning against the wall.
It was stunningly beautiful, Mike thought. A large canvas, some three feet tall by two across, the towering pine trees almost black against a glimpse of pale sky, with broken shafts of sunlight filtering through the branches, bleaching the colour from the ground.
The woman seemed to be at one with the scene. There was nothing anomalous about the figure lying pro
ne upon a bed of flowers. The entire painting had a magical quality that allowed anything to happen within its frame.
Mike bent to look more closely at the figure. It was undoubtedly a self-portrait, with Julia’s auburn hair and pale skin, her full lips curving in a slight smile. She looked as though she could have been dreaming.
Peterson had pictures of the crime scene, blown up to the same size and pinned to the wall beside the painting. He’d had them taken from as close to the same angle as he could get and it was obviously the same place, down to the details of the fallen trees and the light filtering onto the forest floor.
He turned towards those assembled.
‘Your thoughts, please,’ he said.
‘She must have been there.’
‘Maybe, or she could have painted from photographs.’
‘So, did she take the pictures or did Jake Bowen?’
‘It was a gift to her parents, sir?’
Peterson nodded.
‘Well, it seems a bit of an odd thing to give your mum and dad. A nude self-portrait, I mean.’
‘They thought it strange,’ Peterson acknowledged. ‘They said it was not like her usual stuff.’
‘Have you seen any of her other work?’ someone asked.
Peterson nodded. ‘A couple of pictures they had at home. Most of it’s still at the college and back at the house she shared. I’m having Mike collect it later this morning, but from what I’ve seen a lot of her work was semi-abstract stuff she was doing for her degree project. This is definitely not typical.’
‘So why did she paint it?’
Mike took a few steps back, standing so that he could see both the painting and the photos of the crime scene from the same angle.
‘It’s summertime,’ he said.
Peterson looked blank for a moment and then realized what Mike had said.
‘And I’d say early summer,’ he added. ‘The greenness of it and just the general look. She either painted it last summer, in which case they’d probably have seen it at home — a canvas this size is not exactly an easy thing to hide — or she did it after she moved out in the autumn from pictures or sketches made earlier.’
‘Her parents have no recollection of her coming here,’ Peterson said thoughtfully. ‘But, as you say, if she took the pictures herself or made working sketches, she must have come to the site well before her course began in October. She was only in her first year at the college. I’ve had a list made up of friends and associates, Mike, I’ll leave you to go through it with the parents and identify those who are pre-college, so we can do a follow-up. Conningsby and Pierce, when the rest of her artwork gets here, see if she sketched this place or anything like it.’
‘And we should look out for portraits,’ Mike added. He indicated the painting. ‘She obviously had some skill in that direction.’
‘You think she might have drawn Bowen?’
Mike shrugged. ‘We should be so lucky. It’s possible. Anything’s possible.’
‘What if Bowen took the pictures? If she did the painting from those?’
‘She could have got her reference material from anywhere,’ someone else put in.
‘But if Bowen did provide it, then it points to him coming here a full year ago. Maybe he took a holiday?’
‘So, check all the local holiday properties for June and July.’
There was a general groan from those assembled.
‘I know, I know. There must be tens of properties and hundreds of visitors, plus all the B&Bs and camp sites. Look, break it down. Start with those closest. Christ, I don’t need to tell you how to do your jobs.’
He broke off as the phone rang. Mike picked it up.
‘The front desk have got your wife on the line,’ he said.
* * *
Peterson’s usual beat was Bristol. He lived at Somerton with his wife, his two daughters having left home, one for university, the other married with three young children of her own. Jenny, the eldest, was there with her children when he and Mike arrived at his home an hour later and his wife met them at the door.
‘Jenny’s terribly upset,’ his wife told him. ‘I know I should have called the locals, but well, when you see the pictures, you’ll know. It’s got to be something to do with what you’re working on.’
Peterson’s daughter and three grandchildren were waiting in the kitchen. Only the oldest child, who was seven, seemed to have any comprehension of what was going on. She stood beside her mother’s chair, clinging to her arm, while the other two played with Lego on the floor, arguing between themselves.
‘Oh, Dad!’ Jenny got to her feet and almost collapsed into her father’s arms. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Roger but he’s out on site somewhere and his mobile’s not switched on.’
‘Did you tell them what was wrong? At Roger’s work, I mean?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Just that there was something urgent. He’ll probably think one of the kids is ill, but I’ve left word that I’ll be here. I’m not going back home, Dad, I’m not.’
Peterson held her tightly and then led her through to the living room, while his wife took charge of the children. Mike followed.
‘Sit down, Jen,’ Peterson said.
She did as she was told. ‘They’re in there,’ she said, pointing to a plastic freezer bag sitting on the table. ‘I opened the envelope, obviously, and I looked inside, but as soon as I realized what it was I tried not to handle it too much. I just shoved everything in the bag and drove over here.’ She smiled weakly. ‘The way I was driving it’s a wonder I didn’t get arrested.’
‘Never a policeman around when there should be.’ Peterson returned the smile, then reached for the plastic bag and carefully emptied the contents onto the coffee table.
‘These came with the normal post this morning?’
Jenny nodded. ‘This, a postcard from a friend on holiday and the phone bill.’
With the eraser end of a pencil, Peterson moved the six pictures around, spreading them out on the table. Three of the images seemed innocent enough: the children playing in the garden at their home, one on the swing, the others on the climbing frame; a bright summer afternoon, blue-skied and filled with sunshine. But the everyday images had been scanned into a computer and subtly changed so that at first it was not clear that there was anything wrong. You had to look closely to see the ligature around the neck of the youngest; the empty, bloody sockets of the oldest’s eyes; the missing hand . . .
Peterson stood up abruptly and crossed the room, standing by the window and staring unseeing at the world outside. Jenny got up and joined him, clinging to his arm as her own child had done earlier to hers and hiding her face against his chest.
Quietly, Mike took plastic gloves and an envelope from the pocket of his jacket and gathered the pictures together, opening the envelope and hiding them inside.
* * *
Macey had been a little surprised when Charlie Morrow had agreed to see him, despite his assurances to Liz that he’d be unable to resist.
Charlie had kept him guessing until late on the Sunday night, then called to say he could fit him in on the Monday morning.
‘Fit him in.’ Macey had laughed at that. As if the man had anything better to do.
Macey had some trouble offloading his scheduled work, but he managed it and arrived at the nursing home, Liz in tow, just after eleven.
Charlie was waiting for them in the lounge, positioned so that he could watch them arrive through the half-open door. He watched Macey’s reaction as the nurse pointed the way through and the journalist caught sight of him, the livid scars puckering the right side of his face and the pressure bandages on his hands and upper body just visible beneath his shirt.
He gave Macey eight out of ten for control, the way he put aside his shock and strode forward, businesslike and brisk, with his hand extended. The girl following behind was less able to hide her reaction, but Charlie didn’t object to the frank way she looked at him. Anyway, she had
pretty eyes and a body that invited equal notice, so he considered it a reasonable trade.
Macey sat down opposite Charlie and glanced around. ‘Posh place,’ he said. ‘Private, is it?’
Morrow laughed. ‘My wife took out health insurance years ago. We’ve been divorced for more than a decade so that’ll tell you how long. The payments went out direct debit and somehow I never got around to cancelling. I thought it was time they gave me something back.’
‘Not public money, then? Police charity fund or something?’
‘No, so feel free to splash it across the headlines. Hero cop goes private.’
Macey made a show of writing it down, then grinned at Liz. ‘Grab that table and bring it over here,’ he said to her. ‘That’s unless you’d like to go somewhere else, Charlie?’
‘No one’s going to bother us,’ Charlie assured him. ‘I’m an acerbic bugger and they leave me alone. Now, what have you got for me?’
It had been a condition of Macey’s visit that he bring Charlie up to date on the Bowen case and Liz had spent a good two hours with the photocopier, making a record of Macey’s archive. She’d piled it into a black pilot’s case, which she now proceeded to empty onto the coffee table. Charlie eased forward in his chair; eyes gleaming with anticipation.
‘Your copies of everything I have,’ Macey told him. ‘Enjoy. Now, do you mind if I tape this, or should we make Liz do her bit with the shorthand?’
* * *
The incident with Peterson’s family had disturbed Mike deeply. He left them comforting each other and discussing the safest course of action while he tried to get through to Maria on his mobile phone. She was with a patient, he was told, and couldn’t be disturbed. He thought about insisting, but it seemed a little pointless. What could he tell her beyond the fact that she should take extra care?
And that she should check on Essie.
He had Maria’s mother’s number somewhere, he remembered, but it was back at his office and, anyway, the same thing applied. What could he tell them? In the end he called John Tynan and filled him in briefly on what had happened, reluctant to say too much over the air.
