‘No, of course not. I specialize in landscapes.’ I point to the lake and the spectacular sunset. ‘I was all set up and ready when that man, not to mention you and your colleague, came along and ruined my shot.’
‘Ruined your shot?’ His voice is full of contempt. ‘You saw a man take a little girl into the woods and all you cared about was taking snaps?’
‘It was none of my business.’
He bunches his fist and draws his arm back. But at the last moment he slaps his arm down by his side. He takes a running kick at the tripod. It keels over and smashes on to the ground.
‘Have you any idea how much that camera cost?’
From the look on his face he’s going to tell me what I can do with my precious camera. But in the distance we can hear the woman shouting. The man in the tracksuit bursts through the trees. The policeman barges him in the stomach. He collapses, grunting loudly. The officer kneels on him, takes handcuff’s from his pocket and secures his wrists behind his back. The man utters an obscenity then lies quiet.
~ * ~
21.13 hours
‘Natalie?’
She’s lying very still under a tree. Her dress is muddy and torn. She’s wearing one pink sandal. The other lies on the ground, exposing a smooth pale foot.
‘Natalie,’ I whisper. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right now.’
But my throat is thick. It’s not all right. It will never be all right.
I gently touch her leg. Still warm. Her arm, her cheek.
Her eyelids flutter.
‘Natalie!’ I don’t mean to shout but I can’t help it. She flinches. Her eyes shoot open with terror.
‘I’m a police officer,’ I say quietly. She puts her arms out to me and my heart buckles. I hold her tight.
~ * ~
The world has gone mad. The air is filled with the sound of sirens. Two more police cars arrive and the man in the tracksuit is bundled into the back of one of them.
The female officer emerges from the woods, carrying the little girl. The child clings to her like a young chimp clings to its mother, arms circling her neck, legs gripping her waist like a vice. She walks past me, without so much as a glance, but when she reaches her colleague I hear her tell him to get my details. She places the child in the back seat of her car and gets in the front.
The young man takes my name and address. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says, and spits on the ground. Not a word of apology for the injuries I’ve suffered or the damage he’s done to my equipment.
There’s a lot of noise as the cars perform complicated turning manoeuvres on the narrow track. Then they roar off towards the main road.
Peace at last.
I tentatively swing my arm. There’s some pain, but it’s not, after all, a broken clavicle. I should be able to handle the bike. I pack up the camera and tripod. If the Canon is ruined it will be a great loss. But in some ways the greater loss is my failure to get the picture I crave. These opportunities don’t occur very often. I have other cameras but who knows when there will be another evening like this?
Now the clouds have lost all definition and interest. The lake is a dark pool and in the sky, there’s just a prosaic red glow. I watch, filled with regret, until the sun goes down.
Night falls.
The golden hour is over.
<
~ * ~
THE HABIT OF SILENCE
Ann Cleeves
N
ewcastle in November, Joe Ashworth thought, is probably the greyest city in the world. Then running up the steps from the Westgate Road he realized that he’d been to this place before. His seven-year-old daughter had violin lessons at school and he’d brought her here for her grade one exam. They’d both been intimidated by the grandeur of the building and the girl’s hand had shaken during the scales. Listening at the heavy door of the practice room, he’d heard the wobble.
Today there was rain and a gusty wind outside and the sign Lit and Phil Library open to the public had blown flat on to the pavement. Taped to the inside door, a small handwritten note said that the library would be closed until further notice. Mixed messages. The exams took place on the ground floor but Joe climbed the stone staircase and felt the same sense of exclusion as when he’d waited below, clutching his daughter’s small violin case, making some feeble joke in the hope that she’d relax. Places like this weren’t meant for a lad from Ashington, whose family had worked down the pit. When there were still pits.
At the turn of the stairs there was an oil painting on the wall. Some worthy Victorian with a stern face and white whiskers. Around the corner a noticeboard promoting future events: book launches, lectures, poetry readings. And on the landing, looking down at him, a tall man dressed in black, black jeans and a black denim shirt. He wore a day’s stubble but he still managed to look sophisticated.
“You must be the detective,” the man said. “They sent me to look out for you. And to turn away members and other visitors. My name’s Charles. I found the body.”
It was a southern voice, mellow and musical. Joe Ashworth took an instant dislike to the man, who lounged over the dark wood banister as if he owned the place.
“Work here, do you?”
It was a simple question but the man seemed to ponder it. “I’m not a member of staff,” he said. “But, yes, I work here. Every day, actually.”
“You’re a volunteer?” Joe was in no mood for games.
“Oh, no.” The man gave a lazy smile. “I’m a poet. Sebastian Charles.” He paused as if he expected Ashworth to recognize the name. Ashworth continued up the stairs so he stood on the landing too. But still the man was so tall that he had to crick his neck to look up at him.
“And I’m Detective Sergeant Ashworth,” he said. “Please don’t leave the building, Mr Charles. I’ll need to talk to you later.” He moved on into the library. The poet turned away from him and stared out of a long window into the street. Already the lamps had been switched on and their gleam reflected on the wet pavements.
Joe’s first impression, walking through the security barrier, was of space. There was a high ceiling and within that a glass dome. Around the room a balcony. And everywhere books, from floor to ceiling, with little step-ladders to reach the higher shelves. He stared. He hadn’t realized that such a place could exist just over the room where small children scratched out tunes for long-suffering examiners. A young library assistant with pink hair sat behind a counter. Her eyes were as pink as her hair and she snuffled into a paper handkerchief.
“Can I help you?”
The girl hadn’t moved her lips and the words came from a small office, through an open door. Inside sat a middle-aged woman half hidden by a pile of files on her desk. She looked fraught and tense. He supposed she’d become a librarian because she’d wanted a quiet life. Now she’d been landed with a body, the chaos of the crime-scene investigation, and her ordered life had been disrupted. He introduced himself again and went into the office.
“I suppose,” she said, “you want to go downstairs to look at poor Gilbert.”
“Not yet.” As his boss Vera Stanhope always said, the corpse wasn’t going anywhere. “I understand you’ve locked the door?”
“To the Silence Room? Oh, yes.” She gave a smile that made her seem younger and more attractive. “I suppose we all watch CSI these days. We know what we should do.” She gestured him to sit in a chair nearby. On her desk, behind the files, stood a photo of two young girls, presumably her daughters. There was no indication of a husband.
“Perhaps you should tell me exactly what happened this morning.” Joe took his seat.
The librarian was about to speak when there were heavy footsteps outside and a wheezing sound that could have been an out-of-breath hippo. Vera Stanhope appeared in the doorway, blocking out the light. She carried a canvas shopping bag over one shoulder.
“Starting without me, Joe Ashworth?” She seemed not to expect a
n answer and gave the librarian a little wave. “Are you all right, Cath?”
Joe thought Vera’s capacity to surprise him was without limit. This place made him feel ignorant. All those books by writers he didn’t know, pictures by artists whose names meant nothing to him. What could Vera Stanhope understand of culture and poetry? She lived in a mucky house in the hills, had few friends, and he couldn’t ever remember seeing her read a book. Yet here she was, greeting the librarian by her first name, wandering down to the other end of the library to pour herself coffee from a flask set there for readers’ use, then moving three books from the only other chair in the office so she could sit down.
Vera grinned at him. “I’m a member of the Lit and Phil, pet. The Literary and Philosophical Society Library. Have been for years. My father brought me here to lectures when I was kid and I liked the place. And the fact that you don’t get fined for overdue books. Don’t get here as often as I’d like though.” She wafted the coffee mug under his nose. “Sorry, I should have offered you some.” She turned back to Cath. “1 saw Sebastian outside. You said on the phone that he found the body.”
The librarian nodded. “He’s taken to working in the Silence Room every afternoon. We’re delighted, of course. It’s good publicity for us. I’m sure we’ve attracted members since he won the T. S. Eliot.”
Vera nudged Joe in the ribs. “The Eliot’s a prize for poetry, Sergeant. In case you’ve never heard of it.”
Joe didn’t reply. It wasn’t just the smell of old books that was getting up his nose.
Cath frowned. “You know how Sebastian hates the press,” she said. “I do hope he won’t make a scene.”
“Who else was around?” Joe was determined to move the investigation on. He wanted to be out of this place and into the grey Newcastle afternoon as soon as possible.
“Zoë Wells, the library assistant. You’ll have seen her as you came in. And Alec Cole, one of the trustees. Other people were in and out of the building, but just five of us were around all morning.” The librarian paused. “And now, I suppose, there are only four.”
The Silence Room was reached by more stone steps at the back of the library. This time they were narrow and dark. The servants’ exit, Joe thought. It felt like descending into a basement. There was no natural light in the corridor below. The three of them paused and waited for Cath to unlock the heavy door. Inside, the walls were lined with more books. These were old and big, reference texts. Still no windows. Small tables for working had been set between the shelves. The victim sat with his back to them, slumped forward over one of the tables. There was a wound on his head, blood and matted hair.
“Murder weapon?” Vera directed her question to both of them. Then: “I’ve been in this room dozens of times, but this is the first time I’ve ever spoken here. It seems almost sacrilegious. Weird, isn’t it, the habit of silence?” She turned to Joe. “That’s the rule. We never speak in here.”
“I wondered if he could have been hit with the book.” Cath nodded towards a huge tome lying on the floor. “Could that kill someone?”
Vera gave a barking laugh. “Don’t see why not, with enough force behind it. Appropriate, eh? Gilbert Wood killed with words.”
“You knew him?” Why am I not surprised? Joe thought.
“Oh, our Gilbert was quite famous in his own field. Academic, historian, broadcaster, writer. He’s been knocking around this place since I was a bairn and he’s turned out a few words in his time.” She turned to Cath. “What was he working on now?”
“He was researching the library’s archives. The Lit and Phil began its life as a museum as well as a library and there’s fascinating material on the artefacts that were kept here. Some very weird and wonderful stuff. We thought it might make a book. Another boost to our funds.”
Outside there were quick footsteps and a man in his sixties appeared in the doorway. He was small and neat with highly polished black shoes, a grey suit and a dark tie. Joe thought he looked like an undertaker.
“I was working upstairs,” he said. “The accounts for the AGM next week. Zoë had to tell me that the police had arrived.” There was a touch of reproach in the voice. He was accustomed to being consulted.
“Please meet Alec Cole.” Cath’s words were polite enough but Joe thought she didn’t like him. “He’s our honorary treasurer. It’s Alec who makes sure we live within our means.”
“A difficult task,” Cole said, “for any charitable organization during these benighted times.”
“You knew the deceased?” Joe had expected Vera to take charge of the conversation, but she was still staring at Wood’s body, apparently lost in thought.
“Of course I knew him. He was a fellow trustee. We were working together on the restructuring plan.”
Now Vera seemed to wake up. “What did you make of Gilbert? Got on all right, did you?”
“Of course we got on. He was a charming man. He had plans to make the library more attractive to the public. His research into the archives had thrown up a variety of ideas to bring in new members.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“He wanted to develop a history group for young people. History was his passion and he was eager to share it, especially since he retired from the university. He thought we could run field trips to archaeological sites, invite guest lecturers.”
“Aye,” Vera said. “He tried something like that once before. I remember an outing to Hadrian’s Wall. My father thought it would be good for me. It was bloody freezing.”
“It’s not so easy to set up field trips these days,” Cath said. “There are implications. Health and Safety. Risk assessment. I wasn’t sure it was worth it. Or that we could justify the cost.”
Joe sensed that this was an argument that had played out many times before. He was surprised at Vera allowing the conversation to continue. Today, it seemed, she had no sense of urgency.
“Perhaps we should go upstairs,” he said, “and talk to the other witnesses.”
“Aye,” the inspector said. “I suppose we should.” But still her attention was fixed on the dead man. It was as if she were fascinated by what she saw. She bent forward so she could see Wood’s face without approaching any closer. Then Ashworth led them away, a small solemn procession, back to the body of the library.
They sat around a large table with the vacuum jug of coffee and a plate of digestive biscuits in the middle. There were six of them now. Sebastian Charles had been called in from the landing and Zoë had emerged from the counter. Joe Ashworth thought she looked hardly more than a child, her face bare of make-up. He saw now that she was tiny, her bones frail as a bird’s. The pink hair made her look as if she were in fancy dress.
“This is where the old ones sit,” Vera said. “The retired men and the batty old ladies, chewing the fat and putting the world to rights. Well, I suppose that’s what we’re doing too. Putting the world to rights. There’s something unnatural about having a murderer on the loose.” She looked at them all. “Who was the last person to see him alive?”
“I saw him at lunchtime,” Zoë said. “He went out to buy a sandwich, and for a walk, to clear his head, he said. Just for half an hour.”
“What time was that?”
“Between midday and twelve-thirty.” Zoë wiped her eyes again. She made no noise, but the tears continued to run down her face. Like a tap with a dodgy washer, Joe thought, only leaking silently. No irritating drips. “He brought me a piece of cheesecake from the bakery. A gift. He knew it was my favourite.”
“Any advance on twelve-thirty?”
Joe found it hard to understand his boss’s attitude. She’d known the victim yet there was this strange flippancy, as if the investigation were a sort of game, or a ritual that had to be followed. Perhaps it was this place, all these books. It was easy to think of the murder as just another story.
“We had a brief discussion on the back stairs,” Alec Cole said. “Just after Gilbert had
gone out for lunch, I suppose. He was on his way down to the Silence Room to continue his work on the archives. I’d just gone to the gents. I asked how things were going. He said he’d made a fascinating discovery that would prove the link between one of the early curators of the Lit and Phil Museum and the archaeology of Hadrian’s Wall. Esoteric to the rest of us, I suppose, but fascinating to him.”
“Did you notice if anyone else was working in the room?” Vera asked.
“I couldn’t see. The door was shut and I was on my way upstairs when Gilbert went in.”
“And if there were anyone inside he wouldn’t greet Gilbert,” Vera said. “Because of the rule of silence. So you wouldn’t hear anything either way.” She paused. “What about you, Cath? Did you see him?”
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