The Sleeping and the Dead

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I’ve found out where Reeves worked.’ Stout was jubilant. Porteous tried to be gracious in his moment of glory. ‘It was a place called Redwood. It wasn’t run by Social Services. Not officially. They bought in places there for difficult kids they couldn’t persuade anyone else to take. It was operated by a charitable trust. It closed about a year ago when the person in charge retired. A woman by the name of Alice Cornish. Apparently she’s famous.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Porteous said. ‘She’s very famous.’

  He was surprised Stout had never heard of her. Alice Cornish had been committed to providing quality care for children before the improvement of residential services became a fashionable cause. She’d worked in local-authority children’s homes in the late sixties and resigned, very publicly, exposing a series of scandals. The press hadn’t known what to make of her and in some quarters she’d been portrayed as an idealistic but rather hysterical trouble maker. She’d gone on to qualify as a doctor and then to set up an establishment of her own – Redwood – in a farmhouse in the country. Her peers found it hard to understand why she was bothering with grubby and disruptive children when she could be earning a comfortable living within the health service, but her qualifications made them take her seriously. She welcomed research teams into Redwood and they had to admit that her methods worked. She had gone on to be hugely respected in the field of social welfare. She had been made a Dame and chaired committees of inquiry into widespread abuse. Yet still she maintained her personal contact with Redwood and the children who’d lived there spoke of her with great affection. It seemed inconceivable that she would have employed anyone suspected of abuse. Porteous said as much, tactfully, to Stout.

  ‘She wouldn’t have known, would she? He was never convicted. Never even charged.’

  ‘I just don’t see how he would have got away with it at a place like that. Dr Cornish’s whole philosophy was about listening to children. The kids wouldn’t have been frightened to talk if Reeves had tried anything on.’

  ‘He’s clever,’ Stout said stubbornly. ‘Cunning. You don’t know.’

  Again Porteous saw no point in arguing. ‘Is Reeves at home now?’

  ‘I got in touch with the local nick. They sent a community policeman round there yesterday evening. If Alec had answered he’d have got a pep talk about the neighbourhood watch, but nobody was in. According to the neighbours he’s a model citizen, keeps his lawn cut, does his stint driving meals on wheels round the village and – get this – he helps organize the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme at the local high school.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s how he met Theo Randle,’ Porteous said, almost to himself.

  ‘Perhaps that’s still how he gets to meet young lads.’

  ‘Had the local bobbies heard that anything like that’s going on?’

  ‘They didn’t say.’ Stout sounded disappointed. ‘But he’s known as a loner. Well thought of in the village, but no real friends, no wife, no ladyfriend.’

  You could say the same about me, Porteous thought.

  ‘Did the neighbours have any idea where Reeves had gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Away for a week to visit an old colleague. They think he’ll be back today or tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they mentioned where the old colleague lives?’

  ‘No. The old lady who lives next door asked but he wouldn’t say. It wasn’t like him. Usually he was happy to have a cup of tea with her and a chat.’

  ‘Suspicious . . .’ Porteous said, but only to please Stout. He didn’t want Reeves to be uncovered as a child-abuser and serial killer. His employment at Redwood would be seized upon by the press. Alice Cornish would lose her credibility. And it would mean that Stout had been right all along. He hated to admit it but an element of competition had crept into the inquiry. Stout had found an address for Reeves, but still Porteous hadn’t discovered where Crispin Randle had taken Theo to be educated after the fire. He didn’t want Stout to be proved right about this.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment to visit Mr and Mrs Gillespie,’ he said. It would be the first formal interview with Melanie’s parents. According to Richard Gillespie the doctor had said Eleanor wasn’t up to it before. Gillespie still wasn’t keen but Porteous had persisted and he’d reluctantly given way. He must have realized it would have to happen eventually. ‘One o’clock. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘You want me to come?’

  ‘I don’t want to miss anything. And while we’re at the coast I thought we’d see Melanie’s friends. Rosalind Morton and the boyfriend. You’re good at teenagers.’ He’d thought Stout would be pleased to be asked. ‘Don’t worry. They’ll let us know if there’s any news on Reeves.’

  When Stout left the office Porteous made his decaffeinated coffee and spent most of the next hour on the phone. His first call was to an official in the Department for Education. He needed to find out where a child had been at school thirty years ago. It was urgent. A murder inquiry. Was there any way of finding out? There was a moment of silence and Porteous sensed the usual shock and excitement.

  ‘State sector or private?’

  ‘Private.’

  Another silence. Then: ‘Did he take any public examinations?’

  ‘O levels. He must have taken O levels because he went on to the sixth form.’

  ‘You could try the exam boards then.’ The official hesitated then offered tentatively: ‘If you don’t mind giving me the details I can phone round for you. Call you back later.’

  Porteous didn’t mind. He gave both Theo Randle’s names and his date of birth. ‘We think he was in school somewhere in Yorkshire.’

  He replaced the receiver and felt he was easing back into contention in the race with Eddie Stout. Then he remembered two kids had died and wondered how he could have been so petty.

  The next phone call was to Hannah Morton’s house. It was answered sulkily by a girl who sounded as if she’d just woken up. If anything when he identified himself she was even ruder. ‘Don’t come to the house,’ she said. ‘I’ll be working. The Promenade. A big white pub on the front. You’ll need to talk to Frank anyway and I’ll make sure Joe’s there. Make it mid-afternoon when we’re not so busy.’ She replaced the receiver before he had a chance to object.

  He was wondering whether to break his routine and have another cup of coffee when the DFEE officer phoned him back.

  ‘I think I’ve traced your lad.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He took O levels in the name of Michael Grey. Passed seven well. A grades in Art and English. Failed Latin.’

  That’s all it took, Porteous thought. One phone call. Why didn’t I think about the exam boards before?

  ‘Have you got the name of the school?’

  ‘Marwood Grange. It doesn’t exist any more. I checked.’

  ‘Where was it, when it did exist?’

  ‘Out in the sticks. Yorkshire.’ He paused. He was good at dramatic pauses. ‘I tracked down one of the teachers. He works in the state system now. You can phone him if you like. Name of Hillier. This is his number.’ Porteous was just about to replace the receiver, when he added, ‘By the way. There’s no record of A levels.’

  ‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘There wouldn’t be.’

  Hillier must have been waiting for his call because he answered immediately. ‘Marwood Grange,’ he said. ‘What a nightmare. It put me off private education for life.’

  ‘Do you remember Michael Grey?’

  ‘No. I was only there for a couple of terms before the place closed down and that was a bit of a blur. Like I said. A nightmare.’

  ‘Why did it close?’

  ‘Well, the fire was the final straw, but I don’t think it would have survived long anyway. A couple of parents had complained and several more had taken their kids away.’

  ‘Tell me about the fire.’

  ‘It started late one night. I was junior housemaster. It started in a classroom they think, but it spread to the dormitories. We got a
ll the boys out but only because a kid got up for a pee. There were no fire doors. No extinguishers. There should have been a court case. It was gross negligence. I’d have been a witness . . . The guy in charge must have had friends in high places because it never came to that. He cut his losses, claimed the insurance and agreed not to run a school again.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t remember a boy called Michael Grey?’

  ‘Certainly. I really only remember the boys in my house.’

  Porteous saw Stout hovering outside his office door, ready for his trip to the coast, and waved him in. Another fire, he thought. Can that be a coincidence?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Gillespie house had the dense quiet of an old church. It struck Porteous so strongly because he could tell that usually it wouldn’t have been like that. As they approached the front door he saw through the living-room window an electric guitar and a practice amp, a battered upright piano with music on the stand and scribbled manuscript in a pile on the floor. In the hall the telephone had been unplugged.

  Richard Gillespie let them in and took them to a room on the first floor which he called his office. It had a desk and a computer but it was big enough for a leather sofa and a couple of armchairs. He left them there while he went to fetch coffee. The room was at the back of the house and looked over the garden to public tennis courts. Two women were playing a scrappy if energetic game and occasionally shouts of triumph and cries of ‘well done’ floated through the open window, emphasizing the quiet inside.

  When Gillespie returned with a tray he was still alone.

  ‘Mrs Gillespie will be joining us?’ Porteous asked.

  ‘If you insist that it’s necessary. She’s resting.’

  ‘It is, I’m afraid.’ Porteous was glad Eddie Stout was with him, solid and unimpressed. He found Gillespie intimidating without being able to work out exactly why. Perhaps it was an impression of anger, only held in check with great self-control. Without Eddie as minder he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand his ground.

  ‘While we’re on our own I want to know what’s going on,’ Gillespie said. ‘No one’s told us anything. I’ve a right to know.’

  ‘Of course. We’re linking your daughter’s murder to that of a boy called Theo Randle, nearly thirty years ago. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Any relation to Crispin Randle?’

  ‘His son.’

  ‘Crispin never told me his son had been killed.’

  ‘He didn’t know. We retrieved the body from Cranford Water a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘That body?’

  Porteous nodded. ‘Did you know Crispin well?’

  ‘Through business really. We had a couple of boozy nights together, but everyone who worked with Crispin ended up drinking with him.’

  ‘Was Mr Randle involved in the computer business?’ It was hard to picture.

  ‘Hardly. No. And I was never a computer scientist or engineer. Still don’t really understand the technology. I trained as a lawyer and worked my way up through the company’s legal department before becoming MD. When I first qualified I worked briefly for a firm of solicitors in town. We sold some property for Crispin.’

  ‘Snowberry?’

  ‘No, he’d already sold that. This was a house in Gosforth. We got a good price for it considering it was nearly falling down round his ears.’

  ‘Tell me about your daughter,’ Porteous said.

  Gillespie shifted in his seat. For the first time the suppressed anger gave way to uneasiness.

  ‘It must seem like prying but we’ll need all the information you can give us.’

  Eddie sat with his pencil poised over his notebook, waiting.

  ‘She wasn’t my daughter.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I mean, not biologically. Legally of course. I adopted her when I married Eleanor.’

  Porteous wondered if that explained the anger. His position was compromised, ambiguous. Eleanor’s grief would be more straightforward. Had she made him feel he couldn’t possibly understand what she was going through?

  ‘Does Melanie’s natural father know that she’s dead?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. We’ve no way of tracing him. He’s a musician. That, at least, is what he calls himself. I think there was a card at Christmas. From North Africa, Marrakesh, somewhere like that. He travels a lot. I don’t know how he supports himself. Not now.’

  ‘What do you mean? “Not now”?’

  There was a pause. Eventually Gillespie said, ‘I gave him money. Enough to last for a while.’

  ‘Why did you do that, Mr Gillespie?’ Eddie Stout spoke for the first time, shocking them both. Both, too, sensed the disapproval in his voice. Not now, Eddie, Porteous thought. Now’s not the time for a moral crusade.

  But though the question seemed to make Gillespie defensive, he wanted to explain. ‘It was when Eleanor and I married. I didn’t want Ray around, dropping in every afternoon with his unsuitable friends, confusing Mel. I wanted to be her dad.’

  ‘So you paid him to go away?’

  ‘And to agree to the adoption, yes.’

  ‘How old was Melanie then?’

  ‘Five. Six by the time we went through the whole process.’

  ‘And he just disappeared from her life?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I thought it was the best thing at the time, all right? Ray Scully was mixed up in all sorts. He’d been convicted of fraud. He’d even been to prison. What could someone like him give Melanie?’

  ‘Did Mrs Gillespie know about the financial arrangement?’

  ‘Look, it was no big deal. A one-off payment. I wasn’t stopping him keeping in touch for ever. Like I said, he wrote to her, sent her cards.’

  ‘So Mrs Gillespie knew?’

  ‘No. She just thought it was Ray being irresponsible again. He’d been disappearing on and off since Mel was born.’ He stood up and stared blankly out of the window. The tennis game was over. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘I’m very pleased that you did.’

  ‘You won’t tell Eleanor?’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s any of my business. Though we’ll want to trace the father. Is there any possibility that he’s been in touch with Melanie recently?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything. But I don’t suppose she would have done. Communication had pretty well broken down here.’

  ‘You know a middle-aged man went into the Promenade looking for her. It didn’t occur to you that it might have been her father?’

  ‘No. He knows where we live. He could have come to the house.’

  ‘That wasn’t part of the deal, was it? You’d paid him to stay away.’

  Gillespie shrugged. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Eleanor thought that was the start of all Mel’s problems. Ray going away.’

  ‘What problems?’

  ‘She was never an easy child. Bright of course, but attention seeking, hyperactive. Then in the last few years there’s been the anorexia.’

  ‘Was she being treated for that?’

  ‘Oh, she’s been treated for everything.’ He must have realized that sounded callous. ‘We wanted her to be happy. I don’t think she ever has been, really. When we moved here and she started making friends I thought things were looking up. But in the couple of weeks before she died she was more disturbed than I remember.’

  ‘Who was her psychiatrist?’

  ‘Dr Collier at the General. He seemed a decent enough bloke, but I don’t know how effective he was.’

  Oh, he’s effective, Porteous thought. Trust me. I know.

  ‘He wanted to treat Mel as an inpatient. She hated the idea. He was talking about sectioning her. Not on the food issue. She was eating enough, just, to keep her alive. But because she seemed to be depressed.’

  ‘How did that manifest itself?’ Porteous thought he sounded a bit like a doctor himself.

  ‘Listlessness, insomnia, withdrawal.
’ He paused. ‘Sometimes I thought she’d lost all touch with reality.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She seemed to hate her mother and me. She couldn’t believe we were trying to help her. There was some fantasy about us trying to control her.’

  Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Porteous thought and stopped the facetious words slipping out just in time. It was true. In hospital he’d met a man who was convinced he was about to be blown up by the IRA. The staff thought he was psychotic. A week after leaving the place he’d been killed by a car bomb. He dragged his attention back to the present, was aware of Eddie staring at him. He nodded at Eddie to take over the questions.

  ‘Had Melanie complained of any unwanted attention? Unusual phone calls, perhaps, strangers trying to engage her in conversation.’

  ‘I told you. In the last few days before she was killed she didn’t go out.’

  ‘She hadn’t had a problem with her boyfriend?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They hadn’t had a row, for example?’

  Clever Eddie, Porteous thought. On the look out for another connection. But Gillespie shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know how Joe put up with her but he was always remarkably patient. Eleanor and I like him a lot. He’s respectable, despite the hair and the clothes. Comes from a good family. He was devoted to Mel. It was a relief when they started going out together. It was someone else to keep an eye on her. You know?’

  Porteous nodded. ‘Would it be possible to speak to Mrs Gillespie now? We could talk in her room if that would be easier.’

  ‘No. She won’t want that. But you’ll have to wait while she gets ready.’

  ‘Perhaps in the meantime we could look in Melanie’s room. Is it as she left it?’