by Ann Cleeves
‘There was a murder in the valley. A young man called Patrick Randle.’ Lizzie realized that she was moved by the thought. Although she’d never met Patrick, she pictured a good-looking young man lying on a table in a mortuary. White and waxy. Some of the women in Sittingwell knew about violent death and had described the procedure. Even those inside for less serious crimes were fascinated and borrowed books about famous killers from the prison library. They told her all about the process, about the crime-scene investigation and the post-mortem, forensics and DNA. She knew where the pathologist cut into the body. She looked at Shirley, expecting a comment, but none came. ‘And an older man.’ Lizzie had no interest in picturing his body.
‘You’ve heard about that?’ Shirley spoke at last. She seemed surprised. Upset.
‘Were you going to tell me?’
‘Of course!’
Lizzie looked at the social worker. She thought Shirley Hewarth had secrets too – so many secrets that they might get confused in the woman’s head.
‘How did you know about the murders?’ Shirley sounded shaken, uncertain. Lizzie thought she seemed tired, with that deep exhaustion that comes from several nights without any sleep.
‘I’ve just been interviewed by a detective.’ Lizzie looked up. ‘He asked me about the murders. Because they happened close to where my parents live. He thought Jason might be involved.’
A silence. Outside someone was walking on the gravel path beyond the window and they both waited until the sound moved away.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing,’ Lizzie said. ‘There was nothing to say. Two strangers were killed in the valley. What could that have to do with me or Jason?’
‘Of course.’ Shirley wiped her hand across her forehead and Lizzie thought again that she looked exhausted. ‘We’ll have to think about finding you work,’ Shirley said, her voice suddenly bright and professional. ‘I thought the hospitality industry might suit you. You’re articulate and present very well, and you’ll have picked up a lot from your parents. You might consider a college course in September, but it would be good to get some hands-on experience before that.’
There was another silence. Lizzie couldn’t imagine working in a restaurant. She’d never been any good at taking orders. She had travel in her head. Wide spaces, to contrast with this place. Huge grasslands and orange deserts. Once she’d made her peace with her family and raised the funds, she’d disappear overseas. She’d joined the creative writing group in Sittingwell and had secret dreams of writing a book to capture her travels. Didn’t writers make money?
‘I’ve been thinking I should go to the police.’ The social worker’s voice burst into Lizzie’s dreams. ‘Explain about Jason. This is murder, after all. The things he told you might be more relevant than you realize.’
‘No!’ Lizzie forced her voice to be calm. ‘You promised. Everything we discussed was confidential. I trusted you.’
Shirley didn’t reply.
‘I’ll be out soon and we can discuss things properly. Will you at least wait until then?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Shirley said. ‘It’s making me ill. There are things you don’t understand. Martin Benton, the older victim, used to work for me.’
‘Do you know who killed him?’ Lizzie felt another tingle of excitement. She could understand why some of the women inside loved those true-crime books. The ones with pictures of blank-faced killers staring out of the pages. There was something compulsive about the sadism. The sexual violence. She remembered again Jason’s words, his hard laughter and his scorn at her tears. The books the women read were all about pain and humiliation.
There was another long silence before Shirley spoke again. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So you’ve nothing to tell the police.’ When she was a child and hadn’t been able to persuade her friends to do as she wanted, Lizzie had thrown tantrums, pulled hair and dug fingernails into soft flesh. Now she’d learned to be more subtle, more reasonable. ‘What can you contribute to the investigation? You’ll just be another crank with weird stories to tell.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’ Shirley was about to stand up.
‘The older dead man,’ Lizzie said. ‘The one who worked for you. What’s his role in all this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Now Shirley did get to her feet. She began to walk towards the door to call to the officer sitting at the reception desk in the grand lobby that she was ready to go. ‘Really, I can’t see how he might have got caught up in this business at all. I don’t understand any of it.’
Watching from her chair, Lizzie thought Shirley was lying.
Chapter Nineteen
Holly stood beside Alicia Randle in the mortuary and tried to put herself in the older woman’s place. Why had Alicia felt the need to travel north to look at a dead body? There was nothing of the young man left inside the grey skin but bone and muscle. A white sheet reached to his neck. Alicia stretched out an arm. Holly was afraid that she was going to pull back the sheet to reveal Paul Keating’s dissection. Instead the woman touched her son’s forehead. She needed to be certain, Holly thought suddenly. All this time she’s been carrying the hope that there was a mistake, that her boy wasn’t the victim. She twisted her body so that she could see Alicia’s face without seeming to stare. The woman was crying. No sound. Even in her grief she felt the need to maintain a certain dignity.
‘That is Patrick?’ The Carswells’ cleaner had made the formal identification, but Holly felt now that she needed to ask.
‘Oh yes. Or it was Patrick.’ Alicia stroked the forehead again, bent to kiss it lightly and then turned away.
She was booked on a train later in the morning and Holly drove her into Alnmouth for coffee, instead of leaving her to wait on her own at the station. They sat in the window of an old-fashioned tea shop. In the car there’d been no conversation, but now Alicia seemed to feel the need to talk.
‘I found Simon,’ Alicia said. ‘My first dead golden boy. He’d hanged himself. Tied a belt round a bannister and dropped into the stairwell. I still have nightmares. I don’t think he meant me to find him. Of course his father was alive then, and I was supposed to be spending the day with friends. But I got bored and came back to the house early. It was this time of year. Simon was home from Oxford for the Easter holidays and I wanted to spend some time with him. I could tell that he was stressed. My husband had high expectations of both the boys. I’ve always thought Simon planned for his father to find the body. A petty act of revenge and quite unfair.’ She was dry-eyed now, but the words flowed instead of tears. ‘Suicide can be a kind of violence too, don’t you think? It hurts the people left behind. It took me a long time to forgive Simon, but I understood even at the time how desperate he must have been. At least I can grieve for Patrick without those complications. Without blame.’ She paused and sipped the coffee. The cups were very small and painted with flowers. Vera wouldn’t have got her fat fingers through the handle.
Holly didn’t know what to say. Usually she was confident and decisive at work, but this case seemed to be undermining her judgement. ‘We can’t find any motive for either murder,’ she said at last. ‘You don’t have any idea why someone would have wanted to kill Patrick?’
‘In the last year I felt as if I’d lost touch with him.’ Alicia poured more tea. Her hand shook a little and there was a spill on the tablecloth. ‘We’d been so close, especially after my husband died, but more recently if he’d had problems, I don’t think I’d be the person he’d come to. Perhaps he disliked the fact that I’d fallen in love with another man, though he always seemed to get on well enough with Henry.’
‘Can you think of anyone he might have confided in?’
Alicia shook her head. ‘At one time I’d have said Rebecca, his girlfriend, but as I told you last night, they’d separated. There were colleagues, people at the university. I don’t think he was particularly close to them, though. They shared a passion for Lepidoptera,
but not much else.’
‘Does Rebecca know that Patrick is dead?’
‘Not from me! I suppose she might have seen it in the media. Of course I should have phoned her.’ The woman seemed distraught. ‘How dreadful not to have thought of that!’
‘I’m sure she’ll understand,’ Holly said. ‘Would you like me to tell her?’
‘Oh, please do. Pass on my apologies. Tell her I’ll be in touch. She might like to come to the funeral.’ Alicia’s voice tailed away.
‘Have you had any thoughts about that?’ Holly thought how hard it must be to plan a funeral for a child. Somehow it was unnatural for a son to die before his mother. Two sons.
‘I’ll bury him in the churchyard in the village, next to his brother,’ Alicia said. ‘They never met, but I know that’s where Patrick would like to be.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The train won’t arrive for half an hour, but would you mind driving me to the station, please? I’m afraid I’m not very good company, and I’d rather be there in plenty of time. Punctuality has always been an obsession. Patrick used to tease me about it.’
At the station Holly got out of the car and shook the woman’s hand. With anyone else she would have been less formal, put an arm around her shoulder, taken a hand, but she knew Alicia Randle wouldn’t want that. ‘Shall I wait with you?’
‘No, no.’ It sounded as if the woman was horrified by the thought and Holly understood. Alicia was close to tears and wanted to sit on the empty platform and cry in peace.
Back in the police station in Kimmerston, Holly tried to track down Rebecca Brown, Patrick’s ex-girlfriend. The number that Alicia had given them over dinner was unavailable. She was about to call the university in Exeter when Vera wandered up to her desk. ‘Can you sort out a media release, Hol? I’d like to get it out for the lunchtime news. If there was a stranger in the valley, somebody must have seen him, and the canvassers have come up with bugger-all so far. Let’s appeal to all the nosy stay-at-homes in the surrounding villages and the people who were walking on the hills or along the burn. We need details of any unfamiliar cars or people. I’ve still got teams out there, but we need a wider hit.’
Holly nodded and replaced the phone. The call to the university would have to wait.
‘How was Alicia Randle?’ Vera leaned against the desk. The fat on her backside spread inside her Crimplene skirt, made it bulge. Holly found herself fascinated by it.
‘Very brave,’ Holly replied. ‘She said it was easier to grieve for Patrick than for her first son. Less complicated. He couldn’t be in any way to blame.’
‘Let’s hope that’s true.’ Vera slid away from the desk, leaving Holly to wonder exactly what she meant.
Later, when the media release had been sent to the press office for approval, Holly tried again to track down Patrick’s former girlfriend. The woman at the end of the phone in Exeter University’s school of medicine was cautious. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you back. You could be the press.’
The phone rang half an hour later and the university admin officer had all the information Holly needed. ‘Rebecca Brown’s at home with her parents in County Durham.’ She read out the address. ‘It’s still the Easter holidays and she won’t be back at the university until the middle of next week. This is her mobile number.’ She finished the call without asking any questions. Holly couldn’t tell if she was very busy or very discreet.
A male voice answered Rebecca’s mobile. ‘Who is it?’ Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘Becky’s not up to talking now.’ He sounded angry.
Holly supposed this meant that Rebecca had seen the news about Patrick’s death and had been upset by it. She introduced herself. ‘And who are you?’ Keeping the question polite.
‘I’m her brother. The press have tracked her down. So-called friends must have told them she knew Patrick. It’s been a nightmare. We’re worried that if someone doesn’t answer her phone, they’ll just turn up on the doorstep.’
‘We’ll need to talk to her, I’m afraid. Can I come there?’
There was a pause and Holly heard a muffled conversation in the background. ‘When do you want to come?’
‘Now,’ she said. ‘If that’s all right.’ She thought again that she’d be glad to escape the office and Kimmerston.
The young protector at the end of the phone agreed and gave directions.
The Browns lived in a small market town on the edge of the Durham moors. Once it must have been prosperous. There were grand Georgian houses and an impressive town hall stood on the market square. Now, though, many of the shops in the main street had been closed and were boarded up, and even in the sunshine it had an air of desolation. The Browns lived in one of the big merchants’ houses close to the square. By the time Holly arrived it was late afternoon. The market was closing down, the stallholders folding tarpaulins and clearing tables. Cauliflower leaves and overripe tomatoes littered the cobbles. There was no sign that the press had tracked down Rebecca’s address, and the street outside the house was quiet.
The door was opened by a young man who must have been close to Patrick Randle in age and a little older than his own sister. ‘I’m George. Mum and Dad are out. Dad’s a GP and he’s still at the surgery. Mum’s just gone into town to visit a friend. Becky’s in here.’
It was a big family kitchen looking out over an untidy garden, and a young woman sat in the window-seat looking out. She was big-boned, tall and blonde. When she saw Holly she stood up. Her eyes were red from crying, but she managed a smile. ‘Sorry I’m in such a state. I can tell George thinks I’m being a bit of a drama-queen. It sounds like something out of a women’s mag, but Patrick really was the love of my life. I can’t believe he’s dead.’ A pause. ‘That someone killed him.’ She sat back down, but now she faced into the room.
‘Had you heard from him recently?’ Holly took a kitchen chair. The room looked as if it had been furnished by individual purchases from auctions. Lots of beautiful pieces, but nothing coordinated. Holly thought she wouldn’t have been able to stand the clash of colours and the clutter. It would bring on a migraine. She’d need to clear the place and start from the beginning.
‘There was a cryptic text a week ago.’ Becky pulled out her phone. ‘I’ve saved it, of course. It says: Nearly fit to be your friend again. If you can forgive me.’
‘What did you take that to mean?’
‘That whatever project had taken up the whole of his head for nearly a year was complete.’ Becky looked up at her. ‘That he was planning to come back to me.’
‘And you’d have had him back?’ Holly wouldn’t have considered returning to a failed relationship. It would never work and anyway she had too much pride.
‘Of course. I’ve told you he was the love of my life. But I couldn’t be with him as he was. Semi-detached. Obsessed with strange conspiracy theories.’
‘What sort of theories?’
Becky shrugged. ‘At first I thought it was about his work. Some scientists are haunted by the thought that another researcher will publish before them or steal their data. And Pat’s stuff was quite topical. There are still climate-change deniers, and his findings would have made their position seem even more ludicrous. He was always passionate about his work.’
It seemed unlikely to Holly that research into the habits of flying insects could provide a motive for murder, but she kept quiet.
Becky continued, ‘Then I thought it was something entirely different that was eating away at him. Something to do with his family. It seemed to start when his mother took up with another bloke, but the timing could have been coincidental. Or perhaps that triggered his desire to know more about his close relatives. Anyway all his spare time was taken up digging away in old newspaper reports and family-history sites online. And his attitude to his mother changed too. They’d always been very close, but suddenly he was cold when he spoke about her. It was as if visits home were just a drag. I hated the way he was with her. It wasn’t the Patrick I’d known and lo
ved.’
‘He’d discovered something about Alicia? Something he disapproved of?’
‘I don’t know what he’d found out, because he wouldn’t talk to me about it. That was why I broke off with him. He seemed to be going faintly loopy, but I didn’t split up with him because I thought he was losing his mind. If I’m going to be a GP, I’ll have to deal with that and I knew he wasn’t really mad. And it wasn’t because I thought he was totally crazy to give up the chance of an immediate research post, when that was what he wanted since he was about twelve. I dumped him because he was being so bloody secretive. I only know that his family had anything to do with his obsession because I caught him digging into past copies of his local newspaper online. He seemed to be brooding over his father’s obituary. And even then he wouldn’t talk to me. He said he’d tell me the whole story when he knew it himself.’
‘What’s the name of the newspaper?’ Holly thought it was a long shot, but Vera Stanhope liked detail.
‘The Hereford Times.’
‘So you were the one to end the relationship?’ Holly was trying to make sense of this. The boss would love it. She enjoyed complication, stories of past feuds and tensions. In Holly’s experience, murder was usually much simpler.
Becky nodded. ‘And, you know, I think Patrick was almost pleased. Because that would give him a free hand to carry on with his research. Or whatever it was that was keeping him awake all night.’
‘Was anyone helping him? There was another victim. An older man called Martin Benton.’ Holly was already imagining taking all this information back to Vera, but it would be even better if she could find a connection between the two men.
‘The name doesn’t mean anything.’ Becky had turned back to face the window. Outside an old apple tree was in blossom, the flowers the colour of candy floss. ‘But. as I said, Patrick didn’t talk to me about it.’
‘Do you know if the Randle family had any connection with Northumberland? Did the county have a special meaning for him?’ Holly thought the man could have come north to continue his research. ‘We still don’t know why he chose to come to the area.’
