Too Good to Be True (4 page)

‘You must put all these rumours to rest, Tom.’ It was the woman again. She sounded like a parent telling off a naughty boy. ‘I don’t care how you do it. Can’t you
get Sarah to help? I’ve always seen her as a pillar of the village. Surely she can persuade these gossips to stop?’

‘I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do,’ Tom said. ‘We just have to hope that it all blows over and the village finds another target for its
malice.’

Tom stood up, said a sharp goodbye to his colleagues and walked out of the lounge. He passed so close to Perez that the inspector was sure the doctor would see him. But Tom was so upset that he
seemed not to notice that Perez was there.

Back in the lounge, the two other doctors continued talking.

‘I think he’s hiding something,’ the woman said.

‘Not murder!’ The man was shocked. He was older, grey-haired. ‘Not Tom! I’ve known him for years.’

‘Perhaps not murder, but there’s something he’s not telling us. You’ll have to sort it out, James. You’re the senior partner. We can’t go on like
this.’

The woman got to her feet, grabbed her bag and swept past Perez into the darkness outside. The older man stayed where he was, apparently lost in thought. Perez left his hiding place and took the
seat beside him. The chair was old and very comfortable. It was a chair for relaxing in.

‘I was going to order some coffee,’ Perez said. ‘Will you join me?’

The older doctor looked surprised. ‘I’m sorry, but do I know you? You don’t sound as if you come from round here.’

‘I’m a detective based in Shetland. I’ve been asked to look again at the Anna Blackwell case. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’

They were still the only people in the lounge, which was dimly lit and very warm.

‘Ah,’ the doctor said. ‘We’d hoped that was all over. It seems rather a shame to rake over the case again, but I suppose you have your work to do.’ He paused.
‘Yes, if we have to talk, coffee would be splendid, thank you.’

Perez went to the bar to order the drinks. When he came back, balancing cups on a tray, the doctor was almost asleep. Perez set the tray on a low table and the man roused himself and held out
his hand.

‘James Given,’ he said. ‘I retire from the surgery next year. I’d rather be leaving without all this scandal.’

‘Did you know the dead woman?’ Perez asked.

‘I only saw her once when she brought her daughter into the health centre with an ear infection.’ He paused. ‘She seemed a kind woman. She cared a lot for the child.
That’s why . . .’ James Given paused mid-sentence.

Perez completed it. ‘That’s why it seems unlikely that Miss Blackwell committed suicide?’

James nodded.

‘Gossip has it that Anna and Tom were having an affair,’ Perez said.

‘I don’t believe that for a second!’ the doctor said. ‘Really, Tom adores Sarah. They’re a perfect couple.’

Perez remembered that he didn’t believe in perfect any more. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ he asked. ‘Anything I should know?’

There was a moment of hesitation.

‘I think Tom might have known Anna before she moved here,’ the doctor said at last. ‘I don’t mean that they were lovers. No, there was nothing like that going on,
whatever the gossips might be saying. I think perhaps Tom was a friend of her parents. It was just a sense I had when Anna brought her little girl to the surgery. She’d asked to see Tom but
he wasn’t free, and she explained that she’d chosen him first because he was almost like family.’

Perez thought that made sense. It might explain why Anna had moved into the rented house in Stonebridge without having to provide a deposit. He was starting to think that he should drive to
Berwick the following day to talk to Anna’s parents.

James Given stood up. ‘The most important thing to tell you is that Tom King is a good man. All this gossip is nonsense, and I hope you can put a stop to it. If it goes on, I’m
worried that we’ll drive Tom away from the village, and then Stonebridge will have lost a very fine GP.’

Perez watched Doctor Given walk out of the hotel to his car. It had started to snow again, with large soft flakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground. In the distance a dark figure stood
under a street light. He seemed to be staring at the hotel as if he was making up his mind whether or not to come in. Perez didn’t recognise the watcher, though something about him seemed
familiar.

When the man saw Perez looking his way from the hotel doorway, he seemed to lose his nerve. He turned abruptly and hurried away.

Robert Anderson, the local detective in charge of the case, phoned back just as Perez was finishing dinner. Perez kept him on the line until he’d climbed the stairs to
his room. He didn’t want anyone listening in to their conversation.

‘How’s it going, Jimmy?’

Perez took a chair by his bedroom window. ‘I had a wee look round Anna’s house.’

‘Did you now?’ Anderson seemed annoyed by his interference. ‘And what did you find?’

‘I think Anna had a visitor the evening she died.’

There was a moment of silence at the end of the line. ‘And what makes you think that?’

Perez explained about the note he’d found in Anna’s bedroom and the freshly cleaned glass in the kitchen cupboard. ‘That changes things, don’t you think?’

Another silence. ‘Perhaps,’ Anderson said at last. ‘Are you sure the note was in Anna’s handwriting?’

‘Certain.’ Perez remembered looking through the file in Anna’s living room. ‘I checked it against some lesson plans she’d written that were in the house.’

‘All the same,’ Anderson said, ‘we’ll need more than that to reopen the case. What do you plan to do tomorrow?’

‘I thought I’d go to Berwick to chat to Anna’s family. It seems that she knew Tom King before she moved to Stonebridge. They might be able to tell me more about the
relationship.’ Perez moved to the window, but there was no sign of the man who’d been standing under the street light. ‘I’m wondering why they didn’t offer to take on
Anna’s daughter.’

‘They have problems of their own,’ Anderson said. ‘Joan Blackwell has early onset dementia, and George, Anna’s father, is her full-time carer. They couldn’t cope
with a growing child.’

Perez thought how unfair that was. The couple had problems of their own, and now they’d lost the daughter who might have supported them. He wondered what effect their troubles might have
had on Anna. Could they have caused the young teacher more stress? Might they even have driven her to suicide? Then he thought how everyone had described Anna as a kind woman. If she knew that her
parents had problems and might need her help in the future, wouldn’t that have given her a reason for staying alive?

‘I might go to Berwick all the same,’ Perez said, ‘just to find out more about her. Anna wasn’t in Stonebridge for long, and I don’t feel that anyone here really
knew her.’

Except Tom King, he thought, and Sarah doesn’t want me talking to him.

He ended his call to Anderson, and on impulse phoned his ex-wife, Sarah. She answered softly, almost in a whisper. ‘Yes?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.

‘You can’t come here because Tom’s home.’ She spoke normally now. She must have moved to a different room where she could talk in private.

‘Can you come to me? I’m staying in the hotel.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If we meet in the bar, someone might see us. This place is nothing but gossip.’

‘I’m starting to realise that,’ Perez said. He gave her his room number, and it occurred to him that anyone listening in would assume they were having an affair. It was easy to
jump to the wrong conclusions, and perhaps that was what everyone involved in this case was doing.

Half an hour later Sarah tapped on the door and he let her in. There were melting snowflakes in her hair and she was shivering, though the hotel room was very warm. He made her tea, struggling
to open the tiny plastic pot of UHT milk, and gave her his chair. The only place for him to sit was the bed, so he perched there.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you tried to get rid of Anna from the school, even though you were in favour of her getting the job at the start?’

Sarah blushed but she didn’t speak.

‘I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,’ Perez said.

‘It was a mistake to give her the post,’ Sarah said at last. ‘She was too young and too inexperienced. She let the children get away with murder.’ She realised what
she’d said and blushed again.

‘Did Tom know Anna before she moved here?’ Perez felt so frustrated that he wanted to shake the truth out of Sarah. He wondered how he could have loved her so deeply, how he could
have spent all those nights dreaming about her after she’d left him.

I felt sorry for her, he thought. Because she was desperate for a child and suffered one miscarriage after another. I blamed myself. It wasn’t a good basis for a marriage.

Sarah looked up at Perez over her mug of tea. ‘I
thought
Tom might already know her. I couldn’t be certain.’

‘What gave you that idea?’

‘I saw them together once in the health centre just after Anna moved here,’ she said. ‘Tom’s car was in for a service, and I’d called in to give him a lift home.
Anna was in the waiting area when I got there. She didn’t have an appointment – she wasn’t there because she was ill. I think she was just hanging on until he’d finished
work. It looked as if she was hoping to surprise him. Anna didn’t know who I was – she must have thought I was just a patient – and when he appeared she called out to him:
“Tom! Look who it is!” It was as if she thought he’d be pleased to see her.’

‘Was he pleased?’

‘Well, I was there, so he just seemed awkward. But I could tell that he knew her.’ Sarah paused. ‘He lied to me. He said he’d never met her and that she must have
mistaken him for someone else.’

‘And that was why you set up the petition to get Anna out of the school?’ Perez thought how childish Sarah was. She’d been hurt, so she’d wanted to lash out. She’d
wanted to make the young woman pay. Again he thought how unfair life had been to Anna.

‘I looked at her daughter in that waiting room and it was like looking at one of my own children,’ Sarah cried suddenly. ‘Lucy had the same dark hair. The same smile. She
looked so like Tom that I thought everyone in the village would see the likeness.’

‘You think Tom was Lucy’s father?’ Now Perez understood Sarah’s anger towards the young teacher. Perhaps anyone would have responded in the same way.

‘I can’t see that there’s any other explanation,’ she said.

‘And what did Tom say?’

Sarah set her mug carefully on the windowsill. ‘I’ve never talked to him about it. I was scared that he might tell me the truth.’ She looked up. ‘What will you do
now?’

‘What you asked me to do,’ Perez said. ‘I’ll try to find out if Anna Blackwell committed suicide or if someone killed her.’ He met her eyes. ‘Do you think
that Tom could have murdered her? Is that why you’re so frightened?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Where was he the night Anna died?’ Perez asked.

‘He was out on a call. He didn’t get back until late.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘But Tom’s a doctor. He wouldn’t kill anyone. And he often has emergency calls at
night.’ She paused again. ‘I wondered if Anna was blackmailing him. I thought she might have asked him to help her keep her job at the school.’

‘And threatened to make their affair public if he didn’t?’

She nodded. ‘In the middle of the night, when things are going round and round in my head, I start having crazy ideas like that. I think I’m going mad. That’s why I called you.
I have to know what’s been going on, even if I find out that Tom’s a killer.’ She stood up. ‘I must go. I told Tom I was just calling in to the village to drop a letter in
the post.’ She slipped out of the room.

From the window, Perez watched her run from the hotel to her car. The shadow had returned to his post under the street light, and he was watching Sarah too. Perez tried to work out where he
might have seen the man before, but the memory slid away.

The next morning Perez got up early and was the first person into the dining room for breakfast. The nosy landlady, Elspeth, wasn’t on duty, so he was spared her
questions and could eat in peace. Today he was going to visit Anna’s parents at Berwick. He cleaned the ice and snow from the windscreen of his car and then headed off towards the coast.
Again he felt a sense of relief and escape as he left the village. He looked out for the dark watcher from the night before but there was no sign of him.

As Perez drove east, the landscape grew greener and less snowy. The sunshine was pale and lemony and shone straight into his eyes. Anna Blackwell’s parents lived in a bungalow on the
outskirts of Berwick, and as he approached he caught sight of the view across the red roofs of the town and the river Tweed, then out to the sea.

Perez had phoned the night before to warn them that he’d be coming. When he rang the doorbell, Anna’s father peered through faded lace curtains at the front window before letting him
in.

George Blackwell was older than Jimmy had expected and quite frail. He must have been approaching fifty when Anna was born. His wife was sitting in an armchair in the overheated sitting room,
staring at daytime television. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of Anna. She looked about ten and she was in shorts and a T-shirt playing on a beach, kicking a ball.

‘We’ll speak in the kitchen,’ George said. ‘Joan will be fine on her own in here. She loves that baking programme.’ He bent and kissed the top of his wife’s
head. The woman turned briefly and smiled vaguely. ‘She was a great cook before she got ill.’

The kitchen was small, old-fashioned and very clean. They sat at a table that was so tiny their knees almost touched.

‘It must be very hard,’ Jimmy Perez said, ‘that your wife’s so poorly.’

‘It’s only hard because she’s so much younger than me, and I worry what will happen to her when I die. Anna and I talked about it. She said I wasn’t to fret and
she’d look after Joan when I wasn’t able to.’ George looked up at the detective. ‘Anna must have been desperate in order to kill herself. She wasn’t a girl to forget a
promise.’