by Jo Allen
‘You sound so defeatist.’
He looked across the field, through the gap in the fence towards the New Agers’ camp. Geri was standing with her hands on her hips, Storm behind her with the expression of a small boy making faces behind the teacher’s back. In the background a line of washing sagged in the damp morning. Raven must be somewhere out of sight.
‘I don’t think this type of talking helps,’ Geri was saying, her voice drifting across to them on the wind.
With Ashleigh in his wake, Jude edged closer.
‘There’s no point in pretending,’ said Raven, her voice given some carry by an unusual note of exasperation. ‘We’re all going to die at some point. It’s just that I’m going to die soon.’
‘You’ll live a whole lot longer if you let me look after you instead of being so bloody stubborn. If you come and stay with me then at least you can be comfortable and we can enjoy a bit of time together. And I don’t need to tell you that this needn’t have happened if you’d been sensible in the first place and seen a doctor.’
In the background, Storm confined himself to a helpless shrug. Once upon a time, Jude knew, he’d been a forceful character, at the top of his professional game. When he’d discovered inner calm and a resistance to aggression, his confrontational streak must have wasted away like an atrophying muscle. It lived on in Geri, standing no nonsense.
‘But death comes to everyone when it’s our time.’ A clearer, younger voice piped up. Jude and Ashleigh exchanged glances. Izzy. ‘Some people die young. It’s natural. You shouldn’t interfere with Nature.’
‘I don’t need your input. Especially not if you’re going to be irresponsible. For God’s sake, don’t we all have a responsibility to live?’
‘Perhaps you should go, Izzy,’ Raven said. ‘Come back and see us later, if you like. You know we’re always here.’
‘You can come and see Mum when she’s comfortable in my house,’ Geri directed. ‘It’ll be a whole lot more convenient for you. Really, it’s no wonder everyone goes on about murder all the time, stuck in this sinister old wood.’
Jude and Ashleigh exchanged glances. No-one but the police was talking about murder. Even Vanessa seemed to see Eden Whispers as sinister and dangerous but not explicitly criminal.
‘I’ll see you.’ After a few seconds’ silence, Izzy appeared through the gate into the lane, wheeling her bike. Turning left towards them, she pushed the bike along the track into the stone circle.
‘Morning, Izzy.’ Jude smiled at her. His soul had been leaden for days, since Becca had turned him down, but here at least was a spark of cheerfulness.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid. Mikey would kill me if I did.’ A weak smile. ‘Nothing’s wrong?’
‘No,’ Jude said, ‘nothing at all.’
‘Were you looking at the tree? It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Did you know that this is part of an ancient forest, and that trees used to be thought of as a ladder between this world and the next? The locals call it the Sentinel Tree and no-one knows why, but I think that’s the reason. It’s a gateway to the underworld. But only the dead can travel that way, so only the dead will ever find out.’
The tree, Jude judged, wasn’t that old — a couple of hundred years, perhaps, but nothing like the age of the other two oaks that grew within the circle, still alive, their thick trunks gnarled yet still optimistically sprouting new growth. The Sentinel Tree was graceful in its death, its bare branches bleached white by the sun and the rain, stripped of twigs and bark. ‘It’s a fascinating legend.’
‘I don’t think it’s a legend. I think it’s true.’ Perhaps deterred by their presence, Izzy turned her bike and, where the track became a road, got on and cycled off, without a backward glance.
In the field, Geri continued to castigate her mother, in the face of her father’s helpless annoyance. Jude turned his attention once again to the Sentinel Tree. It was clear why Izzy was so attracted to it. It had a commanding silhouette, its branches reaching out like beckoning fingers, inviting the unwary — or the all-too wary — to partner it in a dance of death. It was easy to understand how Izzy was constantly drawn to something she must know wasn’t the right course. People were. They were compelled to do wrong things, or things that would hurt them, or other people. Mikey, pursuing a vendetta of silence against his father when forgiveness would have helped everybody. Becca, rejecting him a second time when she must know she still loved him as much as he loved her. Ashleigh, trying again and again with Scott and always doomed to suffer for it. What was it Vanessa had said? I can only help those who put themselves forward for help.
‘I hope that ruckus in Lazonby didn’t ruin your evening,’ he said, for something to do, still standing looking at the tree. A bird — a sparrow — dived into its embrace and settled on a branch.
‘It did, a bit.’ She looked in the same direction, almost certainly thinking the same. How could they save Izzy Ecclestone when they couldn’t even save themselves? ‘I was out with Scott. Just for a walk, just to see how things went.’
‘I see.’
A pause. ‘Aren’t you going to go on at me about him?’
‘No.’ Another bird flew in to the tree, to the same branch. The first bird shuffled along an inch or two.
‘Lisa would.’
‘Lisa’s your friend. I’m your ex-lover. If I say anything it’ll sound jealous and possessive.’
‘I like to think you’re still my friend, too.’
For the first time, uncharacteristic resentment rose within him. ‘For what it’s worth.’ He avoided her gaze but he knew she’d be looking at him as if she could work out what he was thinking. Maybe she could, and he didn’t want her to see it.
‘I meant to ask you. Did you go and see Becca?’
‘Yes.’ He did look at her, briefly, and then looked away again, back to the Sentinel Tree and its long, pale, beckoning fingers. Come and die. No wonder Vanessa thought is should be cut down. ‘Not that I should have bothered. She wasn’t interested in trying again. So that’s that. I won’t mention it again.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Ashleigh was very touchy-feely and any other time she’d have crossed over to him, laid a hand on his arm, but today she didn’t. Today their friendship was very much secondary to her futile love for her worthless ex-husband and Jude himself had been cast aside by both of the women he cared for, like a branch washed up on a sandy spur of the river bank. Where did that leave him? With nothing but constant concern about Mikey and his father, about everyone but himself.
What was it Vanessa had said? No-one is too old or too strong or too clever to have problems, and it’s normal and natural to look for the easy way out. And with that came the implication that the easy way out might be the attractive one. Even Vanessa, the woman putting her time and her effort, her emotion and her experience, into saving lives, had explicitly acknowledged that sometimes it was easier to let go.
‘Jude!’ said Ashleigh, with sudden vehemence. She moved towards him swiftly and her hand, belatedly, came down on his arm. ‘Stop thinking like that!’
He snapped out of it, shocked at himself, at the ludicrously glib and easy way he’d fallen into such negative thinking. He wasn’t like that. He was positive and forward-thinking, a problem-solver not a man who surrendered to circumstances. ‘No. You’re right. I don’t know what came over me.’ He turned his back on the tree and saw Ashleigh’s face white with fear. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because I thought it, too. And I’m not like it either. But somehow it came into my head. That actually when things get complicated it might just be easier—’
Things didn’t come into your head. Someone put them there. It was the website, Eden Whispers, sliding into the subconscious. And, more explicitly, it was Vanessa Wood, confiding. I shouldn’t really say this because I wouldn’t want people to think death might be the answer… ‘Is it possible? That it was Vanessa, putting those ideas into those kids’
heads?’
‘I don’t know.’ She let go of his arm. ‘Actually, of course I know. Yes, it’s definitely possible. Definitely. It’s a question of whether she did. And whether we can prove it.’
Jude’s mind was whirring. ‘We can try. My money says she was behind Eden Whispers, and all those posts she claimed to have seen on the Facebook group. We know she was counselling some of those kids, at least.’
For once, Ashleigh looked bewildered. ‘But she was the one who drew our attention to that.’
‘Yes, presumably because she reckoned we couldn’t or wouldn’t trace it. She’ll be smart enough to hide her tracks — the name on them was an anagram of Josh Foster, remember. She’ll have done it to put the blame on him. She must have known we’d find it eventually, so she pointed it out to us.’
‘She double-bluffed us. Oh, God. She’d know exactly what to say to tempt people to their deaths, of course. And she had the perfect access to pick off the ones she wanted to hurt, encourage them to die when they came to see her, and then offer genuine help to the others.’
‘Yes. We’ll have to prove it, of course. But I don’t think Faye will argue any more about getting authorisation to see who’s behind it. We know what we’re looking for, now.’ The caller usage records from the victims’ phones, when they got them, would be revealing and almost certainly damning. He stepped back, out of the shadow of the Sentinel Tree, and was surprised how easily it let him go.
‘There are the two cold case murders,’ said Ashleigh, following him into the sunlight. ‘What about them?’
‘It’s possible she could have done them. We need proof—’
‘We also need a motive.’
Jude stopped and thought of Vanessa’s cold, intense, suppressed fury, of Geri’s antagonism towards counselling, of Josh’s resistance to questioning. ‘I’ve an inkling. I think we’ll find it in Nicky’s diary.’
‘Did Leslie have it, then? Did you get it?’
‘No.’ Jude thought of Leslie, of Ellie Jack’s smart but inappropriate move to check it out as if she were the policeman. ‘He definitely had it, but he doesn’t now. Vanessa must have taken it. That’s what it’ll be. And if she didn’t destroy it she’ll still have it. So I reckon now we have enough evidence to ask a magistrate for a warrant to search her house — and to arrest her.’
Twenty-Five
Jude hadn’t realised how close to the scene of the Eden Valley suicides Vanessa lived — a bare mile and a half from Lazonby. As he got out of the car he saw Ashleigh looking towards the village, too obviously thinking the same as he was. You could walk there from here, across the fields, unseen or unremarked. You could meet someone on the railway bridge without passing a house.
Vanessa wasn’t at home. ‘I didn’t think she’d be here,’ he said to Ashleigh. ‘At work, I imagine. We’ll go along there afterwards, and see what we can find.’ The warrant covered her office as well as her home. ‘But I have a feeling if we find the diary, it’ll be here.’
‘I think today is one of her open session days at the school,’ said Ashleigh.
Jude had sent Doddsy down to see if he could find and arrest Vanessa — something Jude would normally have taken on himself. In this case, he was more interested in uncovering Nicholas’s diary. He turned to the uniformed officers who were just getting out of the the cars behind him. ‘Looks like we’ll have to force entry. You lads can get on with it.’
He left them tackling the door while he strolled around the side of the property and assessed its location in more detail. It was a nice enough spot. You couldn’t see Long Meg and her daughters itself, but if you knew where to look you could see the spot on the horizon behind which it lay, and you could see the dark shadow of Cave Wood, too.
A crash and a shout from the front of the building brought him back to the job in hand. He strode around to the front, where the four uniformed policemen were waiting for instructions. ‘Are we good to go, Boss?’
‘Yep. You know what we’re looking for. Any computer equipment, anything which might be a written record of any offence, or which might be any evidence of an offence. Specifically, a schoolboy’s diary.’
They listened, then shouldered their way in to the silent property and began the search. Jude and Ashleigh followed.
‘Vanessa always seemed so confident, didn’t she?’ Ashleigh said, with a sigh.
He nodded, reviewing his interactions with the psychiatrist. He’d seen dislike and challenge in her attitude, but now he understood. She’d been probing for his weakness; latterly she must have begun to wonder how much he knew, how much he suspected. Her number would be on all of those young people’s phones; with time and intent, her messages would be accessible.
It was entirely possible Vanessa had hidden the diary, or destroyed it. On balance he thought the former, because if it was in any way incriminating she’d surely have got rid of it long before. There must be some sentimental value to it, for her father if not for herself, if Nicholas’s death still gripped them both so tightly.
He left the uniformed officers to look in the living spaces and began his own search in the downstairs room Vanessa used as a study, pausing for a second to stare out of the window. The house was an old one, solid sandstone with walls a foot thick and views, like Geri’s, across the Eden Valley. You couldn’t see Cave Wood form this window, or even see the river itself, which wound its serene way beneath steep sandstone cliffs.
The desk yielded nothing. The bookshelves were stacked with psychological texts and included, he noticed, a few heavy volumes on medical psychology and suicide counselling. Among them was a bound copy of Vanessa’s doctoral thesis, in the name of Vanessa Chester — a long and complicated title in scientific language he barely understood, but which dealt with adolescent suicides. He flicked through it, scanned the abstract. Vanessa had studied what to say to the potentially suicidal so it followed, therefore, that she must also know exactly what not to say. Interesting, and evidence. He placed the thesis in an evidence bag and also salvaged a back-up hard drive from the desk. God knew what secrets that would reveal. But there was no diary.
They moved on, opening every box file and every drawer, going through the shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen, learning about Vanessa from her possessions and yet not finding anything that gave her away. In the living room, the row of photographs on the mantelpiece revealed her family, including the image of Nicky that Becca had described to him, but most were of Vanessa and her parents. In the pictures of Vanessa as a child, she looked open and interested. Nicholas’s death had had far-reaching implications, turning her into a bitter woman.
‘No computer, though,’ said Ashleigh. ‘Do you thinks she’s tried to destroy it?’
‘I expect she keeps most of it at the office. Don’t worry. We have the back up.’ And when they’d searched the office they’d have the laptop, too.
‘It looks like that’s it,’ he said, at last, to the constables, once they’d combed the entire property and failed to find the diary. ‘You can get this hard drive back to the office so the tech lads can have a look at it. Someone needs to stay and get someone to make sure the property is secure.’
‘She might have been right, then, about not having it.’ Ashleigh sighed as he followed her out and closed the door.
‘We didn’t find it. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have it. She could have hidden it, or destroyed it.’ There had been no ashes in the grate, no sign of a bonfire in the garden. The shredder in Vanessa’s office had been full, but when he’d raked though it he’d seen nothing that resembled a forty-year old, brown paper covered diary. ‘Remember those two lights Raven saw in the wood on the night Juliet died? It makes sense, now. One of them could have been Vanessa.’
‘Making sure Juliet killed herself?’
‘Or helping her.’ Whispering to her, too, that whatever she was obliged to say professionally there was another truth, an easier way than fighting. ‘She might have thrown the phone in the river in case there w
ere any texts that might link them.’
‘But she said they’d been in contact. She’d have had a legitimate reason for texting him, perhaps.’
‘If it looked like a suicide she’d think no-one would bother checking the phone records.’ Now Faye would harass the tech team, and they’d soon know.
He was still thinking of phones when his own rang. He looked down at it. ‘It’s Mikey. Give me a second. I need to speak to him.’ In such fevered times any scruples he had about dealing with personal matters on work time went out of the window. No-one would hold that against him. ‘Everything okay?’
‘You tell me.’ Mikey was in an unusually chirpy mood. ‘I’m playing detective and tuning in to the local gossip network. Izzy says your guys are up at Dr Wood’s place. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Jude said, rolling his eyes at Ashleigh to indicate that this was trivial, ‘but I can hardly tell you why, can I? So don’t look to me for the chat.’
‘I’m in Penrith having lunch with Izzy,’ Mikey said, regardless, ‘and her mum was on the phone about it. Someone saw the cars up at the house. And I’m guessing you’re looking for something, even if you can’t tell me what.’
‘What’s this about? I don’t have time for jokes, Mikey.’ There were lives on the line, but he wouldn’t say that, with Izzy Ecclestone, frail, vulnerable and over-interested in death, listening in.
‘I’m not joking. I’m deadly serious. Izzy says, have you looked at the flagstone in front of the cooker?’
Jude thought about the kitchen, a traditional one with a woven rug on the floor in front of the built-in range. He’d seen one of the constables lift the rug, look and put it back. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘No.’
Ashleigh had been listening in. Her eyebrows flicked upwards and she moved towards the patrol car. ‘Hold on a moment. I don’t think we’re finished here.’
