by Ann Cleeves
He paused for a beat and then he started talking. He didn’t look at her and the words came with difficulty. She saw he had never told anyone this before and he wanted to be precise, to describe the situation accurately. Vera kept her mouth shut and listened.
‘Paul Rutherford is the closest thing to a son I ever had.’ He shut his eyes for a moment and then opened them. ‘I loved his father. Not as a friend. Or at least as a friend, but as much, much more than that too. He was my passion. Do you understand what I’m saying, Inspector?’
Vera nodded slowly. No comment needed.
‘I think Roy realized, but he never said anything. I never made a move on him. I wouldn’t have known where to start. It wasn’t uncommon at school: crushes on other boys, on the younger teachers. But as an adult I was lost, out of my depth. It was considered beyond the pale then, of course, but that wasn’t what prevented me…’ He hesitated and put the following words in conceptual quotation marks ‘… exploring my sexuality. I was a coward and I didn’t want to stand out. And sexual experimentation was never really what it was about, despite my fantasies. Though I had fantasies that would have made your hair curl, and which certainly shocked me. It was about Roy. I wanted to be with him. To serve him. There was never anyone else. Physical contact has never been so important to me. I was happy to make do with the occasional touch: an arm around the shoulder, a handshake.’ He looked at her. She noticed that his glass was empty. ‘I’m sure you think I’m foolish. He married after all. He had a son.’
‘I think you’re fortunate to have found someone you were able to love.’
He looked at her sharply. ‘Did that never happen to you?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘We’re not talking about me,’ she said at last. ‘I think you should value what you had.’
‘Yes, I suppose that I should. But now Roy’s dead, and all I have left of him is Paul. I see his father sometimes in Paul’s expression, the way he stands. Like an indulgent parent, I can deny Paul nothing. As I’ve said, I’m a foolish old man.’
‘Does he know how you felt about his father?’ Vera asked.
‘No! I don’t think so.’ Rickard was shocked. ‘Do you think he guessed?’
‘Younger people are more sexually aware than old ones. And he seems to have been prepared to exploit your affection for his father.’ She swirled the remainder of her whisky in her glass. It was unlike her to have made it last so long. She thought this had been a peculiar encounter. She’d even been tempted to make a confession of her own. ‘Just be careful what he’s dragging you into, eh?’
‘Joanna had told Paul that she’d won the bursary for the Writers’ House. Paul asked me to go there and report back on her state of mind, Inspector.’ The acerbic and witty tone returned. ‘He didn’t ask me to commit two murders.’
‘Did you know that Rutherford published Miranda Barton?’ Holly had texted Vera with that information; the message had been on her phone when she got out of the Land Rover at Craster.
‘Everyone’s entitled to make mistakes.’ Rickard pulled himself to his feet and took the bottle of whisky out of the sideboard. He offered it to Vera, but she shook her head. He poured a splash into his own glass. ‘Even Roy.’
‘Was it a mistake?’ Vera asked. ‘To publish Miranda?’
‘She was never a great writer. Not dreadful, and the market was less demanding in those days. But Roy had founded his business to champion traditional storytelling and she was never particularly good at that.’
‘Was Roy susceptible to her female charms, do you think? Is that why he decided to publish her?’ Vera tried to imagine how that had worked. Had Ferdinand become involved even at that stage? Had he approached Roy Rutherford on Miranda’s behalf? There are too many connections in this case, she thought now. The Writers’ House had sucked them all in together and created too many suspects with a shared history.
‘When it came to publishing, he wasn’t susceptible to charms of any gender.’ Rickard gave a little smile. ‘He was extremely hard-headed. He must have believed that her books would sell. And he was right for a while. For a year, after Tony Ferdinand’s article in The Observer, she became almost a celebrity.’
‘As you are now,’ Vera said.
‘Ah, she was much more famous than me. And she enjoyed it.’
Vera got to her feet so that they were both standing, facing each other. Outside the wind was even stronger and blew around the chimney. There was a loose slate on the roof.
‘Do you know what happened at the Writers’ House last week?’
He looked at her sharply. ‘If I knew, Inspector, don’t you think I would tell you?’
She didn’t answer that, but pulled her jacket around her and headed out into the storm.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In the Land Rover Vera saw that she had missed calls from Joe. She called him back.
‘Where are you?’ he asked immediately. As if she were a teenage girl out on the town without permission. Vera thought his daughter would have a tough time when she was old enough to think for herself.
‘I came to visit Rickard,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’ Maybe. She wasn’t sure she wanted Rickard’s sexuality the subject of canteen comment. She imagined Charlie sniggering and couldn’t stand the idea.
‘The break-in at Nina Backworth’s wasn’t a coincidence.’
Vera listened as he explained about the fruit in the glass bowl, the fact that nothing had been stolen.
‘The CSIs haven’t found anything?’
‘All clean,’ he said. ‘No fingerprints on the bowl or the table.’
‘And nothing stolen?’ She couldn’t see how this could be relevant, how it could relate to the Writers’ House killings.
‘Nina claims not.’
So it’s Nina now, is it? Is this our Joe with ideas above his station?
The tide had come in since she’d arrived in Craster and, with the wind behind it, the waves were breaking against the harbour wall. The Land Rover was suddenly covered in spray.
‘Nina couldn’t have set it up herself?’ she asked suddenly. ‘She’d know about the key in the neighbour’s flat. And the whole scene sounds like something she’d write. A good way to mislead us, if she were involved with the murders.’
‘No!’ He sounded horrified. ‘She’s scared. Scared enough to go and stay with that publisher at North Farm for the night.’
When she switched off the phone Vera sat for a moment. She could go home. Light a fire and watch a few hours of bad television to unwind. There was nothing cosier than Hector’s house with the wind and the rain outside. She could stick some washing in the machine and have a couple of drinks to help her sleep. Rickard’s malt had given her the taste for it.
But she didn’t take the road inland towards the hills and home. She turned down the coast towards the Writers’ House. In the lane leading to it the path was covered with small branches, already snapped by the wind. At one point she had to drive on the verge to negotiate the debris. There were no lights in the main building, but two of the windows in the cottage – one downstairs and one up – were lit. The curtains hadn’t been drawn, but she saw no silhouette. And there was a light in the chapel. Alex Barton was still rattling around this enormous space on his own. She thought if he hadn’t been mad to start with, he certainly would be now.
When she got out of the vehicle the wind caught her and she almost lost her balance. Even from this distance the sound of waves on the shore was deafening. There was something exhilarating about being part of the noise and the gale. She ran towards the cottage and knocked on the door. No answer. She pushed it open. The kitchen was as she had remembered it. The rocking chair by the Aga, the small table with its oilcloth cover. No fat tabby cat, though. And no clothes airing. Alex had kept the place tidier than Miranda had done, but there was a dirty plate, some cutlery and a frying pan on the draining board and that seemed out of character. There was no sign of Alex. She opened the door to the
stairs and shouted up. He might not have heard the Land Rover over the noise of the wind.
When there was no reply she climbed the stairs. His place was as clean and impersonal as a room in a hotel. The bed was made. His computer was still switched on and had reverted to standby, a screensaver showing a mixing bowl and floating wooden spoons. Vera pressed a button and Alex’s Facebook page appeared. The photo showed him in his chef’s whites. A list of messages expressed condolence. Vera supposed there was no way of telling whether these were real friends or people he’d met through the Internet. Virtual friends. She’d never been on Facebook before, though she’d caught Holly on it once at work. On Alex’s wall, written two days earlier, was the post: The wicked witch is dead. Had he really disliked his mother, or was this his way of dealing with his grief? A young man playing at being cool? Vera still wasn’t sure.
Outside the wind was as strong as it had been before. Still no sign of Alex, but she saw his car was parked outside the cottage. He couldn’t be far away on a night like this. From the top of the bank Vera had seen a light in the chapel and she made her way there. It was possible, she supposed, that the violence in the house had persuaded Alex to turn to religion. She’d always thought it would be comforting to have faith, had tried it in her youth because Hector had despised it, but had never found it possible to believe. Rationality had been the one perspective on which she and her father agreed.
She pulled open the heavy door, remembered Alex bringing her here the morning following Tony Ferdinand’s death to set it up as an interview room. Inside there was one light, suspended from the high ceiling on a long chain. As she opened the door the wind caught it and made it swing, scattering the light over the dark wood chairs, throwing moving shadows. Vera tried to remember that she was a rational woman. Still she couldn’t see Alex. She called his name and her voice echoed around the space.
There was an object lying on the stone floor in front of the table at the end of the nave. Not Alex. Too small for a grown man. And besides, it glittered, reflecting the swinging light. She walked towards it. The sound of her feet on the flags sounded very loud.
She knelt to look at the object on the floor, and felt suddenly sick. Like some new PC, she thought, called to her first corpse. Pull yourself together, Vera. This is a crime scene and you don’t want to throw up all over it. You’d never live it down. It was Miranda’s tabby cat. As a way of focusing away from her nausea, Vera tried to remember its name. Ophelia. A stupid name. Why call a cat after a mad lass in a play? The animal looked fat and ridiculous, lying on its back. A kitchen knife had been stuck in its belly. Part of the blade was exposed and that was reflecting in the hanging light. There wasn’t much blood, but the guts were spilling out.
She stood up and saw another corpse on the white table, this time tiny. A robin. No blood. She remembered the bird feeders outside the drawing-room window of the big house, and Alex filling them with nuts and seed. Had he been attracting the birds, just to kill them? Or was stabbing the cat a kind of retribution because it had caught the robin? Mad, either way.
The chapel door banged and she stood up.
‘What are you doing?’ Not her voice. The voice of Alex Barton standing at the back of the nave. He looked wild and windswept. No coat. A thick jersey and baggy jeans. Baseball boots on his feet. He stood, blocking her exit from the building.
‘We’ll go back to the cottage, shall we?’ Vera said. ‘I could murder a cup of tea.’ She thought she could make a phone call from there. Get the mental-health team out. He probably just needed a few nights in a psychiatric unit to sort him out. Unless he turned out to be a murderer. And now, alone with him, she didn’t want to think that way.
‘Didn’t you see the cat?’ he demanded. He almost ran up the aisle towards her. ‘Did you see what happened?’
‘Did you do that?’ She tried to keep the judgement out of her voice. She’d never liked cats much anyway. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘No!’ He almost spat out the word in his frustration, his determination to make her understand. ‘Of course it wasn’t me. Somebody was in here. I heard them outside.’ When she didn’t answer he continued, ‘Look at that bird! That has nothing to do with me. You know how I felt about them. And I hated the cat, but it reminded me of my mother. I needed to have it around. I wouldn’t even have given it away to a good home!’
Vera saw that he was quite overwrought, on the edge of tears. She thought a couple of nights in hospital wouldn’t do him any harm anyway. She’d persuade a sympathetic medic at the Wansbeck Hospital to admit him later. But not until she’d had a few words with him. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘I’ll deal with all this in a little while. Let’s get you home.’
* * *
In the cottage he curled up in the rocking chair like a baby. It was hard to remember him as the confident young man in charge of the kitchen in the big house. She found milk in the fridge and heated it up on the Aga, made mugs of hot chocolate for them both. ‘They say you need tea for shock, but chocolate always cheers me up.’ Wittering as usual. Outside it was still windy, but she thought the worst of the storm had passed. She felt awkward in front of his grief. A real woman – a woman who’d had kids – would know how to deal with him.
She sat on a hard kitchen chair and leaned towards him.
‘Are you up to talking me through what happened here tonight?’
He nodded. Big eyes over the rim of the mug. He looked like a boy who’d woken from a nightmare, still confused and unsure what was real.
‘You made yourself something to eat,’ she said.
He nodded again. ‘An omelette. Fried potatoes. Broccoli.’
‘Then you went up to your room to use the computer.’
He didn’t seem surprised or upset that she could guess his movements. ‘I was just going to check my Facebook. I knew I wouldn’t be long. I thought I could do the washing up afterwards.’
‘What happened then?’ She kept her voice gentle. She didn’t want to scare him or stop the flow of the story.
‘I heard a noise outside.’
‘A car?’ How else would an intruder get here? She tried to remember if she’d passed a vehicle in the lane. Certainly there’d been nothing coming the other way up the track.
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘Footsteps.’
‘And you could hear those over the noise of the wind?’
‘They were on the gravel path just under my window. And we don’t have double-glazing in the cottage.’
She nodded to show that she believed him and to encourage him to continue talking.
‘But by the time I got up to look outside, there was nobody there. I thought I’d imagined it. It’s easy to get spooked all by myself in this place.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anybody would be. I shouldn’t have let you stay here on your own.’
They sat for a minute in silence. She wiped the milk from around her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Where was the cat?’ she asked. ‘Was it in the kitchen while you were eating? Cats seem to know when there’s food about, don’t they?’
‘She wanted to go out,’ he said. ‘I opened the door for her to go into the garden. She hated the bad weather and I thought she’d be scratching to come back in straight away, but she didn’t. I went upstairs and thought I’d shout her in as soon as I came back down.’
‘I’m sorry I interrupted you.’ Vera sat back and waited for the rest of the story.
‘I was still at the window,’ he said. ‘I’d looked out and there was nobody there. Then a light came on in the chapel.’
‘My God! You must have been petrified!’
‘I was going to bolt all the doors and call the police,’ he said. ‘That was the first plan.’ She thought he was beginning to recover from the shock. He uncurled his legs, seemed almost embarrassed by his previous outburst. Sat upright. Set the half-drunk mug of chocolate on the table with something like disdain. Too cool for chocolate too.
‘T
hat would have been a sensible plan.’
‘But I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sit here. Some sitting duck. Helpless, waiting for the killer to come.’
Vera thought he’d seen too many horror movies. Or he could tell a good story.
He looked at her with something of the old competence. This was the man who had greeted her on her first visit to the Writers’ House. ‘I had to do something.’
‘So you went into the chapel?’ she said.
‘Outside the storm was so wild I could hardly think. It was brilliant actually. Liberating. It reminded me of when I was a boy and used to swim in the sea. Nothing but the noise of the surf. For a while I stopped being scared. After all, what did it matter?’
‘So you went into the chapel?’ she asked again. She preferred the quiet, scared Alex to the manic one.
‘Yes.’
She thought she would have to prompt him, but he continued almost immediately. ‘There was nobody there. The light was still on. Then I saw Ophelia.’ He looked up at her and gave a quick smile. ‘That was what we called the cat. Mother’s idea.’ He paused for a beat. ‘I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t believe anyone would do that. Like it was a sacrifice. And then there was the robin on the table.’
‘What did you do then?’ Vera had finished her drink. It was obvious that Alex didn’t want his. She wondered if he’d notice if she took it.
‘I couldn’t stay there. I went outside. Screaming. Something like: Where are you? Come out! I ran round the house to the terrace, in case he was there.’
‘It was dark,’ Vera said. ‘How could you see?’
‘I’ve lived here since I was nine. I could find my way round with my eyes closed. Literally.’
‘And then?’
‘I stood for a moment on the terrace. Letting the wind blow against me. Listening to the sea. I wondered…’
‘What did you wonder?’ She took his mug and finished the drink. Enjoyed it immensely. More than she had her own. Stolen pleasures.
He looked up at her again. ‘I wondered what it would be like to run down the path to the shore and run into the sea and keep on running until I drowned.’
