Telling Tales (30 page)

“No?”

“Besides,” he went on, ignoring her. “By then I had a new life. I could believe I was James Bennett, not Jimmy Shaw. I couldn’t let him get to me. And I didn’t think our paths would cross much.”

“You moved to Elvet because of your father, then? To remember him kindly.”

“No!” he said crossly. “I moved there because I found a house that I liked and to be close to my wife’s family. It had no more significance than that.”

Vera left it. He was a good story-teller. Plausible. It might even have been true. She organized a car to take him home. She showed him out of the building and stood waiting with him for the car to arrive.

“Why didn’t you tell Emma? Didn’t you think she had a right to know?”

“It was James Bennett she fell in love with and married. Why would she need to know about a stranger?”

“You should tell her,” Vera said. “You don’t want to put yourself in a position where Keith Mantel could make mischief.”

James seemed to listen to her words and consider them seriously, but he didn’t respond.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Vera and Joe were back in the gloomy hotel. The bar was empty apart from a couple of businesswomen who were discussing, in bright staccato voices, a training programme for software advisors. After a couple of beats, Vera stopped listening. The language was unintelligible. How could this place make any sort of profit? she thought. Then it came to her that there was an Agatha Christie book about a respectable hotel which didn’t pay. That had turned out to be a front for international crime. She struggled to remember the title, but failed.

On the table in front of her there was a large Scotch. She stared into the liquid and thought it was probably the loveliest colour in the world. She knew she’d had enough to drink already, that she couldn’t allow herself another after this. So this one would have to be taken slowly, every mouthful savoured. She lifted the glass to her mouth, sipped.

“What did you make of Bennett?” Joe Ashworth asked. “Or whatever his name is.”

“Bennett,” she said. “Legally, it’s Bennett now.”

“Living a lie for all these years.”

“Was it a lie?”

“He’s told his wife both his parents are dead. His mother’s shacked up with an insurance salesman and lives just down the road. The poor woman has a grandchild she knows nothing about!”

“It’s not a crime,” Vera said quietly. “And we all tell lies.” But righteous indignation had taken over and he wasn’t listening. With part of her brain she heard him ranting about how he’d feel if his wife had treated him in the same way. Her mind was following a path of its own. If someone asked me how much I’d had to drink tonight, I’d knock off a couple of units. It’d be automatic. I’d not think about it. 1b put myself in a better light. Don’t we all do that? Find excuses, justifications? Even Saint Joe Ashworth. He loves his job. He doesn’t even mind being separated from his wife and kid. Not really. At least he gets a good night’s sleep and a break from the mucky nappies. But what does he tell himself? That it’s a sacrifice. But he’s prepared to do it to serve the community. Like he’s some sort of martyr.

She realized that Joe had stopped talking and was looking at her strangely.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Sorry, I was miles away.”

“Do you think Bennett killed Mantel’s daughter in revenge for his father’s suicide?”

“No,” she said. If she was pushed she could come up with a rational argument for thinking that way, but that would be a sort of lie too. Her reply was about trusting her own judgement. Faith, not reason. “He could have killed the brother, though,” she went on. “If Christopher had found out about his past. To protect his new identity, the happy family, all that. Yeah, I can see Bennett being prepared to kill to keep that.”

“You think there could be two different murderers, then?” Joe was sceptical, but still polite. He always was.

Do I? “We can’t dismiss any possibilities.” And I know that’s a cop-out because just at this moment I haven’t got the concentration to think it through.

“He’d have had the opportunity,” Joe said. “I’ve talked to the witnesses. He could have slipped away from the bonfire. People were coming and going all the time. You were there. Is that how you remember it?”

“Aye,” she said. “There was some light from the fire but that only lit up the people closest to it. The rest were silhouettes.” She sipped the whisky, held it in her mouth, swallowed it slowly. “Bennett would have had to know Christopher would be there. He’d have had to arrange to meet him.”

“Maybe it was Bennett who Christopher was trying to phone.”

“Aye,” she said. “Maybe.” But she’d had too much to drink to focus any longer on the detail. Her imagination was soaring, like one of the goshawks which flew out from Kielder Forest, close to her home in the hills. She felt she should be able to look down on this flat and empty landscape and see the bigger picture.

“What did Abigail Mantel and Christopher Winter have in common?” she asked suddenly, realizing as she spoke that her voice was too loud.

Joe Ashworth looked at her. “Not much. She was a spoilt brat and he was a screwed-up student.”

“Both screwed up, wouldn’t you say?” She shot out the question.

“I suppose.”

“By their parents?” Vera could have quoted Larkin, but Joe would have been shocked.

“Well, the lass didn’t have a mother she could remember. But if what Bennett told us is right, her dad wasn’t much of a role model.”

“And the Winters? What did you make of them?”

“They’re odd,” he said at last. He paused. “I’m not sure I’d want to grow up in that family.”

“I wonder what Caroline Fletcher’s parents are like.” And Michael Long’s. And Dan Greenwood’s. And the grandparents. How far could you go back? The moment of clarity, of seeing the case as a whole, was over. The goshawk had crash-landed. She was left with a headache behind her eye, the knowledge that tomorrow there’d be another hangover and that the glimpse of an answer had probably been an alcoholic illusion.

“I’m off to my room,” Joe said. “I need to phone home…”

“Of course.”

“If there’s nothing else, that is…”

“No,” she said. “You get off. I’ll be up myself in a minute.” But she sat on, looking into the empty glass, unable to face the square overheated room with the television fixed to the wall. The businesswomen paused in their conversation for a moment and looked at her with pity. That made her move. She got up, walked past reception and out into the darkness.

The hotel was on the main road out of the village and there were street lights, but no pavements. When a lorry came towards her she had to climb onto the verge and stand with her back to the hedge. She headed towards Elvet with no real sense of why she was there, but enjoying being outside and alone. Her headache started to clear. In the centre of the village, the streets were quiet. The Anchor was still open and through the small window she had a snapshot of two men standing at the bar, their mouths open in laughter, standing beside the giant whisky bottle where they collected change for the lifeboat. Beyond them a barmaid with a diamond stud in her nose. But she continued walking and the picture disappeared almost immediately.

In the Captain’s House, the curtains were drawn. Were James and Emma Bennett having a cosy chat by the fire? Was he telling her the real story of his life?

There was a light at the Old Forge. She banged on the arched door. Nothing happened.

“Come on, man. Let me in. I’m desperate for a piss.”

Eventually she heard footsteps and Dan Greenwood shot back a bolt and opened the door. He seemed dazed, as if he’d been woken from a deep sleep, or interrupted from work which took great concentration.

“You’re working late, Danny boy.”

“Just as well, if you’re as desperate as you claim. The toilet’s in the yard out the back.”

She walked through the pottery, but paused by the back door and looked at him before she went through it. He was piling together some papers from the top of his desk and shoving them into a drawer. When she returned the top of the desk was clear.

“Do you always work so late?” she asked.

“A habit it’s hard to get out of when you’ve been a cop. Besides, there’s not much to take me home.”

“No woman in your life, then?” She’d remembered the last comment he’d made about that, thought that at this time of night he might be more prepared to talk about it.

He shrugged noncommittally, gave a brief smile. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“That’s a bit cryptic for this time of night. What’s not to be sure about?”

“I like her well enough. I’m not sure what she thinks of me. Not sure where the whole thing’s going.”

“Maybe you should ask her. I always favour the direct approach myself.” Though look where that had got her, Vera thought. There was no man in her life. Hadn’t been for years.

He smiled again and she guessed he was thinking the same thing, but was too much of a gentleman to say so. “What are you doing wandering round on your own after dark?” he asked. “Don’t you read the crime prevention notices?”

“Just restless,” she said. “You know what it’s like.”

“How is it going?”

“I’m losing it,” she said. “Losing the big picture. There’s too much going on here. You know what it’s like with an investigation this size. All the information. All the detail. Too much to take in. You just get swamped.”

Aye,” he said. “I remember.”

“Was it like that with the Mantel case, first time round?”

“First time round it seemed there was just the one suspect. Right from the beginning.”

“But you never thought it was Jeanie Long, did you?”

“It could have been her. It just didn’t seem likely.”

“Why not?”

“Sounds daft; he said. “Trite. But she just didn’t seem the type.”

“Who was, then? You must have had an idea. Someone you fancied for it.”

He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “No,” he said. “Not really. I just didn’t think it was Jeanie.”

“Could it have been Caroline Fletcher?”

“No! No way. She broke a few rules, cut some corners. And she was besotted with Mantel. But she was no murderer.”

“Fletcher thought Emma Bennett could have been involved.”

“Did she?” He seemed surprised, shocked even. “She never said so at the time. I never interviewed Emma, but it doesn’t seem likely. Even now she seems timid, shy. Then she was only a girl. Caroline must be mistaken.”

“You always think the best of everyone, don’t you, Dan?”

He stood up briskly and moved away, anxious, it seemed, to put some distance between them. “I suppose you want some coffee.”

“Well, Danny, that’d be very civil. And if you could dig out the chocolate biscuits… That place we’re staying, the size of the portions, you’d think they were feeding hairns…”

She watched him go into the small scruffy room with the tray and the kettle. The door swung to behind him. She opened the drawer where he’d stuffed the pile of papers when she’d turned up, demanding to be let in. Underneath a stack of invoices there was a photo album, hard covered, ring bound. She lifted it onto the desk, turned the pages. It was a record of the Mantel investigation. Grainy newspaper articles, snipped out and pasted in. The names of the papers and the date of publication had been written in black biro at the top of each piece. They came from nationals and locals and some had been bought on the same day. If they were too big they were just stuck at the top and carefully folded. They’d often been looked at. In some places the folds were close to ripping. Then there was a faded copy of the forensic report and the pathologist’s report. A photo of Abigail lying at the crime scene, and another of her on the stainless-steel table at the mortuary.

On the last page there was a photograph of the girl when she was still alive. A studio portrait, head and shoulders, the body side on to the camera, the face turned towards it. Abigail was smiling seductively. In the background there was a loosely pleated curtain, the lighting could have been filtered, certainly the image seemed soft focused. She was wearing make-up which looked as if it had been professionally applied and her hair was piled onto her head. Her neck and shoulders were bare apart from a pearl necklace. She looked much older than fifteen and it couldn’t have been taken much before her death. Perhaps it had been a birthday present from her father, Vera thought. His style. The sort of thing he’d do. But how, then, had Dan Greenwood got hold of it?

In the small room, she heard the kettle click off and the rattle of teaspoon against mug. She folded back the newspaper clippings and shut the book. When Dan came in, carrying the tray, the desk top was clear. She was leaning back in the chair as if she’d been dozing.

Part Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

There is still a wind, but it has turned southerly and is soft and heavy with unspilled rain. Emma sits at her window in the Captain’s House and looks out over the street. It is late afternoon. A light is switched on in the forge. She hasn’t seen Dan Greenwood for days and is hungry for a glimpse of him. But as she is willing him to make an appearance, her attention is caught by four elderly women who bustle out of the church. They all wear hats shaped like upturned button mushrooms made of felt or fake fur and short woollen coats and they seem to peck at each other as they talk. There has been a service. Mid-week evensong or a meeting of the Mothers’ Union. Emma wonders if Mary has been there too, if she’s dragged herself out to face the world. She hopes so. She hates to think of her parents stranded in Springhead House, enveloped by the damp and the silence, brooding on the loss of their son.

Emma considered this story for a few moments. Did it need polishing? Redrafting? Did the women coming out of the church really seem to peck at each other? Was that the right phrase? And was she still hungry to see Dan Greenwood though she knew now he was an ex-detective, whose response to her had been embarrassment not lust? Certainly, she thought. If anything, greedy came closer to describing her feelings. But why? All her certainties were cracking and shifting. The old life, the life of happy families had been founded on secrets and half truths. Now her image of her parents and James had blurred like the outline of a melting candle. Since Christopher’s death, the fantasy of Dan Greenwood seemed more real than anything else in her life. It was a comfort. She held onto it greedily. She wanted him more than ever.